Reasons

Because:
I started a new work schedule on December 1.
I have had a very bad cold. This week.
I am not as comfortable sharing as I used to be.
I couldn't come up with a theme this year.
Thinking about it was easy, doing it was hard.
The interface is difficult to work with.
Spotty wifi.
Haven't I said it all before, and better?
My obsessions are probably boring to others; obsessions usually are.
I can keep my writing exercises to myself.
Not much is happening.
I don't feel any need to chime in on public events;  that leaves only private ones which seems narcissistic.
Fictions may be mistaken for fact.
It's not as easy to maintain an enthusiasm any more.
The internet isn't what it used to be.
Sometimes I'd rather go for a walk.
Once you've skipped a day, it's easier to skip the next. Repeat to end of month.
Silence is an underutilized option.

See No

Some we see: some we are permitted to see: some we permit ourselves to see. Some we do not see: some we are not permitted to see: some we do not permit ourselves to see. Habitually I do not see that which I should see; occasionally I see what I should not. Or seeing I do not believe,  but not seeing I do believe; or believing I therefore see, and not believing manage therefore not to see.

Is there a country where it is against the law to see the color red? Is there a group of like-minded people who see only shadows? Is there a network that broadcasts only black?

The Street Where I Live

The other morning I took the trash out to the curb before I left for work. In the eastern sky the moon and Venus were shaking hands, standing on a ground of orange, under a veil of blue. The houses across the street were dark;  no one was up but me.

It is not a very interesting street. No historic homes, just cheap-but-expensive suburban houses. All variations on two or three plans, old enough to a bit worn out, mostly made over a time or two, but neither quaint nor fashionable.

I don't see inside the houses; I imagine that inside they are much like they are outside,  that nothing wild or strange or brilliant or fantastic is to be seen in them. But they are all perfectly fine, respectable houses, different enough from one another but not too different. At night they are illuminated from within, like the sky that morning, blue and orange. The blue emitted by the television,  the orange by the electric lights.

Outstanding in her Field

My friend just closed her produce stand yesterday, kind of late for New Jersey. There wasn't a whole lot of produce left for sale, to be honest: some Swiss chard, broccoli, gourds, potatoes and onions. And garlic, the best garlic in the world. But it was a beautiful warm day for December and a good day to say goodbye.

The week before I was walking by and saw her car but not her. I turned to go but heard my name being called. I looked out across the field and saw her in the distance by the few green rows that remained. I walked across the furrows.

Wet and muddy, and it has been a dry year overall. As it cooled the rains came. Of course it's always too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold, too cloudy or too sunny, and for all I know, too beautiful or too ugly. For a farmer, good weather in too much abundance is as bad as bad. A cliche,  it is true, but an accurate observation too much observed.

The dog came over. A new dog, not much like the one that died. But just as well adapted to a life at a roadside, where strangers come and are friendly,  cars come and go, and the smells of the earth and its children abound.

After we talked for a while she went back to picking her Swiss chard and I went back on my way. There were a few clouds and it was cool.

Sometimes

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my feet are itchy.  I get up and go for a walk; outside the night is full of dark and stars and silence. Sometimes I do exercises in the kitchen while waiting for the coffee to brew. Sometimes I wonder what my friends are doing at that hour.  Sometimes I go to work in a bad mood.  Sometimes I think that the birds are smarter than us. Sometimes I look out the window and don't see anything that is out there.  Sometimes I remember things that never happened.  Sometimes I sing songs I haven't heard in years.  I remember the melodies better than the words.  Sometimes I feel sad about the things that never happened.  Sometimes I make conversation with the people in line with me at the grocery store. Never at the liquor store. Sometimes I get home late and can't find my key in the dark. Sometimes I wonder what makes people so horrible. Sometimes I just have a sandwich for dinner.

Conventions Used in this Manual

For the purpose of clarity, allow me to take a moment to specify the conventions which will be observed in the following pages. What may appear to be tedious now, and I must reluctantly admit that in this case the appearance may be indistinguishable from the reality (in fact this is certain to be the case), will in fact reap unimaginable benefits to the reader in the future: the numbing prose set down here will allow a more streamlined experience in the pages to come. However, the hopeful tone of the foregoing carries with it an implicit warning: if the pages immediately following are bypassed, the entirety of the manual may seem incoherent and nonsensical. Reader, be warned.

But first, a few preliminary words on the manner in which these conventions were chosen and the substrata, so to speak, that underlie their relations to the particularities under discussion. For there is a grammar of grammars and a meta-syntax; and in order to tie together the systems, objects, and their relationships in order that (shortly!) the pace may be brisk and the meaning unambiguous,  it is imperative that every term in use be aligned as on a grid with every other term, so fixedly, so immutably, so fatally, that no false or misleading meanings can escape, every word a metaphorical space ship spiraling around a black hole, falling forever into an oblivion of unmistakable, tautological meaning. So, with all of this clarified, let us carry on to the heart of the matter.

Ultima Thule

This is the last place; this is the first place. This is a place without feature; this is a place of infinite detail. It is empty here; it is overflowing. This is the gate to a new world; it is the door that leaves all the old worlds behind.

In equal measure, hope and fear. And one more thing: truth. Hope and fear will grow if the truth recedes. As the truth grows both the hope and the fear diminish.

This is a place of continual light; this is a place of perpetual darkness. There are no shadows here; yet nothing is fully illuminated. Nothing moves; nothing is permanent. This is the end; this is the beginning.

Welcome, and farewell.

Terra

Tunis: a group of foreigners play a game near the ancient ruins. Turin: cats in the cathedral. Tunbridge Wells: a man is building a stone wall. Tenerife: these are the books that we have read. Tristan da Cunha: the sea, always the sea. Tenafly: a fire hydrant, painted with a crude face. Trenton: Trenton makes, the world takes. Terre Haute: a truck, just passing through. Texarkana: what do you watch? Tarzana: we all aspire to something. Tahiti: it's all in the code. Tonga: welcome to next year. Teheran: the streets are full of ghosts, pretending to be birds.

Sargasso Sea

Like shellac. Sorrowful lessons there is a season as a sea sounds a cessation. Session is in court, short as a breeze on a ceaseless sea. Silly faces see phases of races, shallow forces for memorial murmurs. These phrases cease to seem full, seem to seize souls. Faceless laces fail the thrushes of the series. Here is the series the cereal herons parries. Ceres, Eros, Ares and Eris select the Susurrus they share with the heroes. Chase a shack, a pallid valis, like shellac.

Rhodesia

The last time I saw Greystoke he had just got back from an expedition to the Lost Gold Mine of the Zambezi. He was running then every fortnight like clockwork, had the crocs plunging on cue and the hippos roaring as the steamer went by, a little excitement with a cordial crowd shaking spears and whatnot, he was making a pretty good living. But things were getting precarious, with the communists and the natives making a fuss, and he was inclined to get out.

He'd developed a taste for gin during his trips back home, quite a prodigious taste to be truthful, and I found him propping up a bar on a back street on Salisbury. Horrible place, but at least it was so dark you couldn't see the lizards.

We got to talking, and it seemed that he had one last scheme. There was this ape. A most talented ape, strong as the dickens and clever. He could talk to the apes, you know. Damned useful skill, got him out of more than one scrape. So he'd been talking to this ape, name of Don, who'd been watching the newsreels and had seen a chance for the two of them to make a bit of coin. Of course America would never do, those that had gone out there had come to a bad end, but Don thought maybe Japan might be a land of opportunity. There had been a big lizard, he'd made a bit of a mess but had gotten popular nonetheless.

As it happened, I knew an Italian chappie who was also trying to make good in the land of the rising sun, and had developed a few contacts. I told Greystone about him, we had a last drink or six, and I went on my way. Out of Africa for good, thank heaven. Of course Don and the Italian fellow did all right, but I never heard anything more of Greystoke. I suppose they cut him out, poor sot.

Qena

The sun is bright, the sun is hot. You can smell the water but you can't see it. You see nothing but bright limitless earth beneath, bright limitless sky above. The water, the living, moving water, it is an invisible presence, the limitless third party just beyond seeing, just beneath the horizon. A blue ribbon in the middle of the earth. Endless this way, endless that way. The life in the midst of. And where life is, time begins. No water no life no time. And here the still form, tongue out, eyes open, beneath a limitless sky, bright sun, hot sun. You can smell it, you can see it. Tongue out. Smiling, you smile. Still life, no life. A tentative sniff. There is no water to be seen. There is no time like the present. No life no water no time. It is still moist.

Philadelphia

There are two cities, and two loves. Augustine proclaimed this truth, but it was up to Christopher Morley to fill in the details. And, like Kitty Doyle, we stand between our two cities and our two loves, which places us, probably, in the neighborhood of Plainfield, New Jersey, or not very distant from the present location of this writer. And it is not clear, not ever, which city, which love, we will ultimately embrace.

But really, to choose that useless Wyn? Unlikely; even if I'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Olympus

It isn't the way it used to be. The mountain is the same, at least it seems so at first, but then it is obvious. It's gotten so ... shabby. All tarnished metal, broken crockery, crumbling plaster. Even the clouds seem less majestic, the Brocken specter seems less spectral, the clear skies less brilliant and the dark ones less terrible. Less terrible, also, the gods who once dominated this peak, drained of ichor and exhausted by the burden of immortality, less deities than curiosities. No powers that the hundred handed beasts below can't duplicate if not improve upon. Apathetic, they watch, they wonder, they fade away. Conquered by the clay they molded.

New London

I guess I would have to walk it again to really remember. Time and memory are such tyrants, they conspire to only let you down corridors that lead nowhere and reveal nothing. On a day like this I would have been going down the hill, possibly begging a ride but more likely walking, even then a walker.

I would have taken Williams Street, and it's odd that I should have forgotten the name of it when I was so well acquainted with it. Past the stores and under the highway, also past the old mill, closer to  the river and the commercial center of town. Bank Street. But I wouldn't have gotten there, not today. It would have been windy and cold, I suppose; I wonder what I smelled. Exhaust, mostly, it would have been too far from the beach to get those smells, the briny ones and the aroma of decay. How long a walk was it, I wonder? Less than an hour, even weighed down with a little luggage and some records.

And then the train station. Richardsonian Romanesque, I learned, and apparently a pretty good example. Inside, though, it was nondescript, and I would have gotten my ticket and sat down to wait.

In a way, I'm still waiting.

Mickewa

Mickewa is ready.

Mickewa is ready for industry. With over twenty miles of paved roads, passable waterways, the potential for air, train, foot and time travel, and neighboring states within hundreds of miles. With population centers fully populated with people. With raw materials more raw than material. With attitude, gumption, and clotted blood: Mickewa is ready!

Mickewa is ready for commerce. With several bank branches. With lax regulation and "friendly" officials. With the nation's largest natural source of debt: Mickewa is ready!

Mickewa is ready for agriculture. From the verdant swamplands of Dismal County to the heartbreaking stone hills of half the state, all of our outdoors is admittedly natural. And most, or some, is theoretically fertile. Again: Mickewa is ready!

Mickewa has long provoked appalled shudders across the nation. Today it is no different, for Mickewa is ready. Are you?

Loveladies

Not one of the footprints is quite like any of the others. The first are vague depressions, shallow simple in the loose sand. Gradually they become more and more distinct, until, in the damp, firm sand, they are images of feet, intaglio. Then they become indistinct again, filling with water from below and fading away. On the rocks they are monochrome prints, no detail, only broad shapes and spatter. And less and less, until no trace is left.

And there are the waves, and three is the sky, and the is the sea. And three is not a footprint to be seen in all of it.

Kabul

It's been the year of sudden death, and it makes me sad. I heard of another one yesterday, a death leaving in its wake not only unfinished business but unstarted. And there's nothing to say, nothing but cliches, platitudes and falsehoods.

And the year started on a similar note, as word came from a friend that her dear friend had been killed in a bomb blast in Kabul. Someone I had never met and now never would, someone responding to the best impulses in human nature and falling victim to the worst, someone irreplaceable and leaving behind not one vacancy but a hundred or a thousand. Potentialities never to be made concrete.

And more sudden deaths, over the year, public ones, private ones, all different, all the same, and finally the year is coming to a close. And there's nothing to say, and I insist on saying it, when I should just respect the skene and shut the hell up.

Jenny Jump

I don't believe the sorry for a minute, how in colonial times an Indian brave crept out of the woods and scared the child Jenny, and she jumped to her death. Like a lot of stories, it lacks originality, though heaven knows real life contains is share of clichéd and hackneyed narratives, more often it is characterized by the unexpected, the bizarre detail, the anticlimax, the loose end. But Jenny Jump it is, and the traditional explanation of the name will have to do. It's not that far from here and I have never been. I suspect it's quite lovely and serene, the empty peace after the leap and before the crash. I think it would be nice to take her there some day, as long as she doesn't jump. Of course I also want to take her to the marble museum in Nebraska, and there is no explaining that.

Ilion

Yet aged Priam, rich in courage, mounted up
The battlements of Troy, his daughter,
Cursed Cassandra, at his side.
And there before him spread the wreckage of his land,
Set ablaze and crumbling in the dark.
The scurrying Myrmidons, like ants, ventured to and fro,
Raising their war cries as they plagued
The outskirts of the city, famed Troy.
The last Trojans were taken to the sword
And spewed black blood as they gave up the ghost
And descended in a troop to twilit Hades;
And Priam hid his face, and wept.

Honolulu

I am an alien and an invader; and I am legion. I am furtive and I lurk in the shadows, but I am ravenous and aggressive. I am indifferent to everything that I cannot exploit.

I came here and saw a peaceful, temperate landscape, azure skies, azure seas, islands of milk and honey. And, more to the point, I saw waste, debris, detritus, sewage, garbage and shit. I made myself at home.

You can pursue me, but you will never eradicate me.