Tuesday, March 29, 2022

I started the stopwatch on my phone for something over the weekend—timing the length of a work presentation. When I opened the clock today for something else I was startled to find it still running, 39 hours 26 minutes and something something seconds, tenths and hundredths flashing by. It was eerie to observe the stupid machine going on like this, devoid of human attention and oblivious to it, too. It could run for a million hours, it doesn’t care. A hundred million hours. Long after life on earth has been eclipsed and our sun has collapsed into a singularity the machine will be counting the hours. Long after time does not exist, the machine will be counting the hours.


Saturday, March 26, 2022

I peered up at the sky from the sidewalk table on Fifth. The white expanse was screened by leafless branches, budding in the early spring. I remembered lying on the couch with an ear infection circa 1975. The pain shot through my skull. I tried to kill time by tracing sinuous lines around the bare branches in the picture window; they were a maze, a problem to be solved. I saw a Facebook post of a newspaper photo from 1976 of seven or eight kids from my high school, musicians. Due to the composition those in the front row had to kneel, hands behind their backs. Their posture was deeply familiar to me, triggering a peculiar emotion. It occurred to me this is how terrorists present their captives to video cameras before beheading them.


Tuesday, March 01, 2022

Day 8

While up in the parasail I observed to Jackie that it almost looked like you could see the curvature of the earth. It was a dumb remark but we were up high, higher than I’d noticed on previous rides. We approached a tiny island with a boat moored nearby. There was no one on its patch of beach. In the distance were the curving white shapes of resorts, Sandals, Hedonism II. I was aghast at how easy it might be to unhook myself from the harness. Or maybe it wasn’t easy. Perhaps safety features were in place, an autolocking mechanism. I didn’t try to find out. It was better to look down.

Day 7

I must have lost consciousness for twenty seconds or so on that floatie. I found myself on the other side of the roped-off area. In the neighboring zone, with its different swimmers and different beach. I propelled myself back with my hands. The sky looked the same.

In a land far away they’re lining up for rifles to shoot at the rampaging invaders from the East.


They’re playing The Song now, I’ve heard it twice. Everything goes to hell eventually.