To write my way out. That would be the Protestant Work Ethic way out of my predicament. To write myself into Existence. Into Legitimacy. Into Capital Letters. Rather, I’ll eat an entire pineapple on my porch, and write my way, with no prepositions following. I’m writing. It’s a way. It’s not a way to. Or a way up. And certainly not a way out. I don’t want out. These hunks of pineapple are glorious. And there’s a grapefruit sitting here. And pumpkin bread. I’m not sure what else I could want, where else I would want to be. Well, I can think of a couple of places. But they’re not places, really. So here I sit, not going in any direction. Not writing along the compass rose. Thinking I should butter this pumpkin bread. Be right back.
Butter acquired, now I can focus. It’s the last day in May. It’s late in the day. I’ve got a lot to say. It’s Monday.
The butter was a move in the right direction. It turns out pumpkin bread comes alive, wetly alive, when it’s been buttered. As I come alive when I have movie scores playing in my ears. It’s like, why watch movies when you can just get the good stuff, the music, and do other stuff at the same time. Like chowing down on citrus fruit and “healthful” bread. So chow I do, and listen I do. I wonder about the people who walk by. Are they Protestant Work Ethical? Do they get after it during the week, with the politicking and the maneuvers and the stratagems (a diamond is for the everyest)? I don’t know. I don’t know if the ducklings from the marsh today will reach middle age. What is duck middle age like? Is there a running away from accumulated responsibilities? Is there the rejection of typical duck roles and family structures? Does one pick a different migration pattern? Do ducks even migrate? I don’t know anything about ducks. I’m not even sure if I’m middle aged. I’m pretty sure it’s not the middle ages for this civilization of one. Here I am, eating a whole pineapple that I’m cutting with my only cutting knife, slicing pumpkin bread with the same knife (but buttering it with a butter knife, so I’m not in my twenties anymore). So early youthful middle ages. With a few pagan religions still circulating among the people. My kidney still believes in the rain god, my ears worship the birds. How does one place oneself, prior to finding the one mono-the-ism to rule them all? In a panoply of chaos and calamity, surfing the edges of the pineapple to try to get most of the meat. Wondering if one is in the right place, but looking left until one’s neck is sore.
My neck isn’t sore right now, to provide a little more plot for the reader. I’ll forget all of this, but maybe you’ll remember. It’s the curse of a memory that primarily operates in RAM (Random Access Memory, as opposed to harder, long-lasting memory on hard drives or on a cloud server); the RAM can fill up like a bathtub, and I’ll have a good soak. But then the bathtub drains out, and I’m left with a few notebook pages that I’m likely to burn and the husk of a pineapple strewn all over a cutting board, and I can only wonder what happened, where my enormous tropical fruit went.
I’m poking along, gliding like the child in the behind-the-seat child seat, watching the world go by and not having very much control over how it goes by. I wonder if the sense of control is increased by motion, by locomoting. It does often feel as though there is coherence when I’m not the only one steering. When someone calls out a latitude and I call out a longitude and we plot the points, orienteering then along the trail. And yet here I am, with the shattered remains of a pineapple. Wondering what chapter 7 could have been about, not sure what happened in the intervening pages, lost. But when one is lost, the best thing to do is to lay down, and if there is a mushroom next to your head, eat it. Don’t do that, mushrooms are usually poison, maybe. But lay down when lost. But not inactively. Like the laying down yoga pose. Breathe through the moss and the dirt. Be on the ground. And then be not lost. Be on the ground, that’s where you are. Put your fingers in the dirt, tear and whatever plants are near to hand and crush them between your fingers, smell them. Do this even if they’re mushrooms. I think that’s okay. But your on the ground, smelling the earth. You’re there. Even if there’s a citrus fruit that looks like you might have eaten it nearby, take something alive and crush it between your fingers. A plant. And just a little bit. Leave a little trace. Because then you were there. You are here. And perhaps, after twenty five or twenty six deep inhales and twenty six or twenty seven cavity-emptying exhales, you’ll get up and be on your path again. Because if you’re walking, you’re on your path. If you’re on a bike, you’re on your path. If you’re lost, you’re definitely on your path. Such is the way. And sometimes the latitude will get called out and you’ll pick an incompatible longitude. And you’ll be on the way. You’ll butter your pumpkin bread, wonder what you must have been thinking about recently, and you’ll fall asleep, just for twenty four minutes. Probably a little less, but you’ll lay there, smelling the pine you crushed between your fingers, or mint. Or perhaps it’s poison oak. And then, just don’t put your fingers all the way into your nose. And certainly don’t wipe your ass after a nature poop. Modern medicine has at least one purpose.
It’s more often that I’ll feel lost in time than in space. I feel as though space and I have come to a rather complete understanding. But time and I, we still have a few thinks to have together. Time wonders, “is he middle aged?” I wonder, “is Time aged”? Does it matter if we understand each other? Or will we always shout at each other across the chasms of calendars, clocks, and alarms? I have found myself in time, lying on the ground, smelling the plants that I’ve traced. In that moment, time becomes. Time is, it’s the fact of the world. It’s the downgoing, the upgoing, the crossing. It’s religious, it’s a farce. It’s a folly, it’s a certainty. And then it’s nothing. There is no moment to subtract from the moment before. I’m captivated by the smell of the pine or the mint or the poison. I give up counting. I stop measuring. To find that point would be to measure it. And at that moment it becomes immeasurable. It’s not friendly to modern science, as it cannot be replicated experimentally. It’s more like if Hunter S. Thompson were a professor of paleontology, and wrote subjective, riveting polemics about Darwin and physics. Not this time, but that’s where he was going.
If I were a professor of paleontology, would I be willing to do my part and tear apart Daniel Kahneman and his econopologist ilk? To wonder about the progress-bound arc of history in a way that might compel intellectuals that worship at the altar of Ver-writ-taas to wonder what the hell they’re doing? I hope so. But not this time. Time wants to be the monotheistic Yah to my way. But step back, time. You’re getting over your skis. Too big for your britches. Fall apart from your bootstraps. You’re a cliché. You’re a trope, an archetype for lazy screenwriters making sequels to inarticulate superhero movies. Get out of my face. Who put you in the denominator of every equation? A bunch of idiots. Work divided by time. Money divided by time (and nettishly presently valued). People divided by time. Time is the mistake. The thing that threw off all those 20th centuries philosophers tripping over themselves to articulate the relationship between being, nothingness, time, and repetition. I have had too much pineapple per time. It’s not quite gone, but every bite is so acidic as to make me believe that my gut bacteria and kidney have found their Mephistopheles, if not their big G-o-d. The number of hours of sleep. Number of hours of work. Number of meals per day. Hours in a day. Time is pretty gnarly. We’re like sloths who didn’t move while the tree of time grew all around us. And now we’re stuck in the wood. I say relax, let go of the tree, and fall into the dirt. Get out of the tree of time and rather be among the forest. I’d rather. I’m free from the clock. It might be the photographer’s hour, where the sun strike every face just so, so that when pixels per time are counted and arranged, gorgeousness per time, instantly. But what do I know. I think knowing is tightly woven up with time. I know is a statement as much about time as it is about me. It’s certainly not about knowledge. Because what is that? The belief that’s replicable that sometime, something is the way it is, and that perhaps it will be that way again at another time. Time time time. Word repetition only happens when me feet are forward, in the car-accelerator position, in the fast biking position. They’re flat on the ground again. At this time. I could say “good night and good luck”. But it’s not night. Luck is a function of time. And of course, so is good. So instead, I’ll just the only useful word from that sentence. And. And now I’m going to get up, get on my path, lay down, and crush whichever plants come to hand, leaving a trace and entering the land beyond time.
Roman Ryan 