Recovering from a nausea once thought to be eternal, unplugging from the future expected and making slow sad peace with the future ascendent. Things much slower, much roughly, much looser than expected. The past tells the story, it knows what will happen next. Resignation, not retirement. A long road, not a gold watch. Were they ever really gold in the first place?
My grandfather sired twelve children from the comfort of his easy chair, ruling with fear and a fist of bone and meat because bone and meat really is all you need, iron overrated and no longer produced in America. The first five remember a severity, the next five lived in its reputation's shadow, the last two never even heard its story. He slapped and kicked and died in a hospital bed.
It's all so much more analog and tactile than the acid-eaters thought it would be. Undone by the common decay more than anything else. I read somewhere that deviance is a sacrifice made in response to longer lives, that it pays to be normal when being weird can take years off your life. On the one hand, what are the years worth if they aren't lived? On the other hand, if the years aren't worth their own value, what value does anything have?
Larry Bird was a mean son of a bitch. In being mean, he surpassed racism. Maybe there is a wisdom in unmitigated and unmodulated cruelty. I'm in my own hole, stay over there in yours. We're all in holes and maybe there have been dreams that we might get out, dig tunnels to each other, share chestnuts and tips on how to build ramps. But what's out there, anyway? Nothing is waiting, might as well get to it.
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