Calculated Inaction

I’m watching water boil. As usual, of course, that’s not true; I’m writing about watching water boil and pretending that’s what I’m actually doing, all part of the pretense and artifice which is to be found here. (Not for much longer.) to be specific, I have started a flame under a pot of water, and I am expecting it to start to boil before long, and occasionally I am getting up from the keyboard and going to the kitchen and looking at it. So, is there action here, or inaction? I have started the flame: Action there. But my action has ceased; I no longer intervene but observe, and wait. The flame is active, in a way; though I set it hopping, it hops for me, and passively, as it were, exerts itself and transfers some of its energy to the water. Which is surely passive, or perhaps not; soon it, too, will be set to hopping, and it is certainly potentially active, if, for instance, the cat (of which I have none) overturns the vessel and the water exchanges its passive identity as a still pond for its active one, as a rushing torrent. And hot, too — won’t the cat (of which I have none) be sorry! and I took a break and saw the water boiling; so the time has come for all of us, man, flame, water and cat (of which I have none) to unite in harmonious action. Goodbye!

Stilling

The pen ceases to write; the nib ceases to scratch at the paper, the ink dries and is blotted, the manuscript is closed and put away; and as this happens the words no longer flow, mouthed but not spoken, and no longer echo in the mind; and the prior concepts (if there are such) and cumulating arguments and obsevations are put to rest, and the book of the mind is returned to the shelf and the window of sensation is closed and shuttered: but the thing remains, shackled, caged and gagged, but still … still … open it and release, blinking at the light and idiotic from the isolation, the captive shade, reeling and inchoate, but still almost recognizable for the flash and spark of intellection it once was; and, challenged, it undertakes to grapple with the unfamiliar mind and, protean, it is transformed, many times, and wears a new face, and, raging, is freshly jailed and blotted, closed, and shelved, and put to rest, screaming.

The Small Get By

The Bolsheviks may have slaughtered the Romanovs but they never did manage to get rid of the mice in the Kremlin. Don’t tell me there’s not a lesson in that. The small get by, and the willows which so artfully bend are the last to break. But even more so, the tiny grasses survive and flourish. The willow eventually attracts the attention of a woodsman, but the grass bends beneath his feet and springs back as he passes on.

And yet the mice all envied the Czar, and even as a bullet-riddled slab of meat he never wished himself a mouse.

Following

I used to wonder about it, from time to time. I’d be riding on the train, maybe a little after dusk, and I’d look out the windows. There were houses there, following one another in rapid succession, nice houses, and the warm glow of the electric light was showing through the windows. Now, the railroad was to the side or the back of the house, so you got an honest glimpse through the windows, not like you’d see through the front windows, the formal windows. Just a second, and then it shot by; a dining room table, some magazines, the dog looking out; the kitchen and the refrigerator with the notes pinned to it with magnets; dishes in the sink and glasses on the counter-top; maybe a bedroom with the shade not quite drawn and a teenager inside, not quite studying; and the family room or den or TV room, with the blue glow blending into the orange of the incandescent; the orange so constant, the blue so dynamic and ragged. Not alike, not at all; but these endless variations on a theme, street after street, mile after mile, town after town, prosperity flickering by at twenty four frames per second, for the rest of the ride.

Resolution

I’m looking forward to a wonderful land, the Paradise that is the Future. I love the idea of living in tomorrow; today is all wet and everybody knows it! Now, to make tomorrow happen, all I have to do is make these simple resolutions and stick to them (that’s the hard part); then, just you wait, there won’t be anything to complain about. Not for me nor for anybody, because my resolutions are all-encompassing and transcendent. You might even say, they’re “resolutionary”! Ha ha! Anyway, I resolve to:

–Discover a new continent;
–Wear my shoes on the “wrong” feet and start a fashion trend;
–Make all the clocks run backward;
–Get Mahatma Gandhi and Elvis Presley in the same room and stop their ridiculous feud;
–Lose 20 pounds;
–Pass legislation which will make use of the Comic Sans font a capital offense;
–Write Beethoven’s 41st Symphony.

Wish me luck! Anyway, it’ll be a “Brave New world” I create, and you’ll be stuck in it. A world I like to call:
Tomorrow!