Objects in working memory.
The Absolute came close to finding itself when it was born.
1. It was supposed to be the storm of the century. Nobody actually said that, but you know how minds are—minds and moments, etc. It’s twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit because I live in America and in a suburb, which is a place like any other. It’s a world, accidental minds and moments—an homage to a dead storm god. A suburb’s got a memory like a small town where the courthouse burned down so they built a new one that also didn’t survive the millennium. The suburbs are where past learned to be prologue. Now that it’s cold, time is my suspended epigenesis, my obsession—my tautological indifference. A suburb: three centuries of history, changing slowly until I arrive to live in past tense. It was supposed to be the storm of the century.
2. I’m an American, which means I’m supposed to be a pragmatic individualist without an ego. I was supposed to read Nietzsche in my early twenties and come to my senses by thirty. And I did, in a sense: I didn’t write so much I’d remember. I didn’t remember to read. I stopped doing drugs.
I’m going to write a story.
A STORY.
‘Yasser Arafat is a bad man.’ Once, this was a necessary truth. There are no unnecessary truths.
For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m nineteen and talking to an old man on an old man scooter (red). We’re at an intersection (it prefers we don’t cross). Let’s say we’re in Florida. One of the sensible cities—like Orlando, Ocala, or Saint Petersburg. It’s right after a gentle shower, but I don’t know what petrichor means.
‘Fine, but we all have to believe in something.’ The sun squints and stares at me through a puddle. The old man stares too. I hope he doesn’t understand what I mean. He believes in America, but only like a registered trademark. I believe in that too except I’m skeptical of authority, so they kicked me out of the Army. I’m certainly not going to tell the old man that. We have rapport. I like it.
‘Well, you’ll grow out of it.’
3. I want to write a proper essay, that way you’ll know I’m serious. I want to sing for the nihilist on the Metro and the realist suspended over surface streets (in a different city). One day I’ll talk the latter off his ledge and he’ll leave a toxic relationship and trade some baggage for a child. But that isn’t enough for me, just like it’s not enough to sit in the confessional and in silence. That’s why I want to write an essay; I want to say what’s already been said, dress it up like a doll I’ve never played with. I write poems to grapple with feelings I’ll never have. A proper essay would change everything. A proper essay proves epistemology.
4. On Chopin. A cliché wouldn’t be a cliché if it didn’t mean a lot. Cliché is only a sensation we’re tired of having. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, only that nobody wants to listen and so the older we get the more it aches. That’s a cliché.
I know what petrichor means. Now I know the sensation of the sun as it sets over the Blueridge Mountains, its breeze wanders the uneven terrain between myself and the closest peak. It’s the sensation of Nocturne No. 1, remembered just as No. 2 crescendos then trills. No. 3 reminds me of a last date that never ends. It was the first time I said I wanted to be a poet; it was the first time I wanted to explain. Later I would promise to never be sentimental.
But that’s not how Chopin works.
Chopin is like comedy, only taken seriously by the writers of proper essays. The rest of us, if we listen, we can hear him. He never strays far from a disarticulated arpeggio, or a moment drawn out just long enough to make us feel as suspended as a realist who has discovered that real-time is too broken to trust.
5. Petrichor. I finally understood petrichor this morning. The cat—the black one—was scratching at me through the blanket. The other had jumped onto the windowsill and for a second I could see the snow. It’s come earlier and thicker this year, I think. Later, after I stand up, I notice that all the houses have turned into steeples. I realize the weather and minds and moments mean the same as they did before. Meaning: few things are less themselves than the rumors you tell yourself because you get old and it snows while your spouse or partner or significant other is downstairs talking to a psychiatrist on the telephone. That’s petrichor.
6. It was supposed to be the storm of the century.