Aloha Means Goodbye

First, the thanks: Thanks to those who read, and especially those who wrote comments, comments deserving, probably, of replies that I won’t offer. Thanks to the rest of the participants in Holidailies, and its creators, and its current sustainers. Thanks for reminding me to dust off the fountain pen and inscribe a few diphthongs on the virtual palimpsest. Or whatever.

Second, my apologies: For being inconsistent, inconstant, inconsiderate. For going nowhere in the most roundabout way possible. For not taking the project seriously, but occasionally being too solemn, for being too artificial and not candid enough, for treating the entries as exercises and not as opportunities. My apologies for not writing “A Red Death Christmas”, and, consequently, not posting it. My apologies for the pastiche and the pretentiousness and the parody which is the hallmark of my writing.

Third, the finger: To WordPress, for making the mechanics of this exercise such an ordeal.

Fourth, Goodbye: See you on the poop deck.

Case Closed

It’s all evidence. There is dust on the tabletop, there are fingerprints on the glass; every word that was said was recorded by unseen witnesses and can be recounted to testify. Against. You. There are traces of those steps you took, steps in shoes, steps barefoot, steps in stalking feet, the twelve steps, the thirty-nine steps, the Odessa steps, dance steps, serious steps, sinister steps. The ultraviolent light reveals them all.

You were followed, by a host of recording angels, in plain brown wrappers, and they stood under the lamppost while you went inside, writing it all down. When you went in, when you came out, the light that came on in the third-story window, the crazy shadows that fell against the window shade, and what they reveal. (Who knows? We all know!)

Chemistry can reveal a lot, too. The stains may be invisible but they speak volumes. Not to mention your browsing history, your marital history, your job history, and your academic history. Clear cache? Sorry, dude; that wave broke. Don’t surf if you’re not ready to wipe out.

There are psychologists ready to testify. Not just ready, eager. They can prove that everything you haven’t done proves that you suffer from a personality disorder, a crime spree waiting to happen, and that everyone who doesn’t remember the vile things the evidence implies, well, the very fact that they don’t remember proves something even worse must have happened.

So why waste everyone’s time? We’re all happier when we finally admit what everyone wants to hear. After all, just look at that dust.

Plus (Six)

Six hours into the new year, and nothing has changed yet. It’s dark out; that’s the first thing I’d like to change. First resolution: make the days longer. It can’t take that much will power to stretch the daylight by, say, thirty seconds or a minute every day. Then all it takes is steady application, and by October, it’ll be daylight maybe twenty hours a day.

I made coffee. whole bean so I had to find a grinder with my eyes closed. Disaster averted. I had a series of unpleasant dreams last night but they are all slipping away. Lisa? I’ll text her. I shouldn’t bother trying to write first thing in the morning. The keyboard is a menace.

I think I’ll try to get to work by eight, not that there will be much to do. The coffee was a little weak, I can have coffee there, but I probably drink enough of it at home.

Half past six and it’s no less dark out than before. I should really do something about that.