Geese on Lake Michigan. Facing-page translations. People you know who voted for 45. Fellow commuters on the el. Yesterday. Ex-lovers on social media. Last season's smart phones. Crows at dusk in the tree outside my office window. Retirement. Guys, the day after you put out. Today. Voices on the radio. The perfect body. Mom's hugs. My next job. The last sentence of the chapter I'm reading / writing. Constellations. Red blood cells below your skin. Crabapples and cherries growing from the blossoms on the trees right now. The past. Photos in your high school yearbook. The sound of the neighbor’s lawn mower. The smell of movie house popcorn. The sharks eating whale chum beside the Pequod. Paradise. Hell. That black hole they photographed. Pen pals. Catastrophes in headlines. Laughter on the other side of the lake, of an evening. That bowling ball from that one time we dug a hole in the ground, filled it with black gunpowder, put the bowling ball on top, and lit the gunpowder and it shot into the air and no matter you ran, that bowling ball was going to land on you. Summertime. Happiness. A good night’s sleep. That day when we all go together to pick wild mountain thyme.
“Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers’ hearts.” –Chapter 64 “Stubb’s Supper”, from Moby Dick
Dedicated to Scott Schoepp, who just finished reading Moby Dick and is a little disappointed about the doubloon.
Retirement.