A Consolation Elsewhere

… So much for the hordes mad to redeem legislated dreams, mad to buy, mad to fatten fleeting moments in the caress of the well-turned bauble …

Upon entering the wholesale club today I saw an old man pause before a plasma television. His face slackened before it, becoming smooth again like a child's. His eyes took him to where he was no longer — basting in brute splendor and feats effortlessly fell, off-handedly manly.

On its electric surface doe eyes framed with lashes like lazy punkahs batted at him and implants thrust achingly forward. Clefts beckoned, swells cajoled. Under the spray-on insulation and girders and halogen lights the box wove its spell. A bright bit of moisture on his lip told me all I need to know. I pressed on to lettuce and socks secure in the sexlessness of it, in the stripped down necessity of having to feed and dress day after day after day.

Someday, a coffin makeweight.

Perhaps this old man and I are already dearly departed, trapped in bodies whose failures signify, whose successes are purely nugatory (“Went the whole day without a twinge in my hip ...). We share this life where life — real life in its ruddy, muddy essence — is a mere memory flung in our face by the beautiful big boxed-in world and it shapely, deathless fauna.