the day after in forty-eight and a half

on the day the thing is decided, the northern sky is clear and an unseasonably warm wind whips through canyons created both by mountains and city streets, off the vast ocean that extends so far that the numbers no longer truly matter, an entity entirely unto itself, ancient and unknowing, and yet knowing all over the span of aeons, such is its cycle.

on the day after the thing is decided, the northern sky is grey and forbidding and soon opens up, cold hard drops lashing the earth, lesser rivers of mud and shit and the scurf of humanity flowing helter-skelter through the streets, seeking uncertain destiny in that same vast ocean.

he goes to bed without knowing what has been decided, and wakes up in the same state. he resolves to move forward knowing as little as possible, except for what is before him, maybe a little off to the periphery even, as his newfound frailty permits.

able to arrive at that internal compromise because of a calm, a clarity, that comes from an understanding that he is a nameless, faceless captive of the larger moment, when the momentum of what is understood as history rolls over, destroys, disrupts, changes, and then lays down other moments - brachiopods, trilobites, crinoids, conodonts, dinosaurs, hominids, neandertals, akkadians, hittites, mycenaeans, romans, olmecs, inca, 0ttomans - to be subjected to the same terrible and transformative momentum, come and gone, and so on.

he feels a little nauseous, but he will swallow the bitterness in his salt-scarred esophagus, and move on.

because there is nothing else but for it.

Last updated November 09, 2016