I Have Seen the Jubilees But No Animals
What I couldn't explain to the friend group that had now grown to nearly a hundred in number was that I had finally located the Jubilees. I thought it would be animals, maybe they'd be positioned one suspiciously random day on a meadow under a Steely Curtain of Rain. But then I looked around: police with hands poised over hips. Friend group amassing furtively. Suspected rapist still in house. And now it was time to go! I thought easily about going on, this was the only place going on could be thought about easily, in the friend group.
No, not at all. The numbering of holy days wouldn't happen with animals sketched into verse description, or come as I thought printed on rough-woven paper and inked. I wanted the resistance of the shorthaired animal under Our fingernails scratching against its growth pattern, wanted to clean animal dandruff from under the fingernails. Instead I received this clanky gloss by invitation in the mail.
The invitation came simply after I'd read enough good books to be given a hundred years to live.
And it came more precisely after giving up reading. Not so much giving up because I don't give up things I like, and I like reading because it's good for you. No, it came after I simply could not read any more. I can't even be around books, the smell of glue, of ink, the warming of air molecules when turning the page that hits the nose to penetrate the septum, making right for the brain before the decision to set the shelf on fire to be rid forever of the deaths in the books (I am all about life.) I just can't do reading anymore. My brain is a big pink erasor that pushes that rubbed-pencil scent out through my attractive mouth. I talk to others and they become nostalgic, and I too little at ease again. I probably smell like a mummy.
The invitation arrived by dream, which make no mistake is a viable form of communication. Not the boring sleep kind nobody wants to hear you narrate because you aren't at work yet; these dreams come through the slot somebody cut in the front door for just such purposes as getting mail. These dreams are in fact part of the original cutting of the slot in the door, screwing a metal hinge on it and so on, the fact that somebody knew what they were doing when they cut it out with a jigsaw or pushed the button so the machine stamped out the slot--however it happened, the mechanics don't matter. What matters is they thought of somebody somewhere getting mail through this door.
Well, OK, the mechanics do matter in a similar way that the mechanics matter when your friend group continues to grow in number as you cut around the corner away from something rough like a flourescence-soaked T-shirt and gift shop and move toward something smooth like an amber cove, a brick tavern, a deli with a peanut machine. But the mechanics don't guarantee anything and as soon as the mechanics are understood the mechanics fail.
Our friend group enters a Jubilee Center, and I have my invitation still in its oversized manilla envelope. I wonder if there will be enough seating for us all, and if the Correlator will speak English, because I only have a hundred years to live and I didn't want to spend any of those years learning another language. I understood that I would be punished for learning another language, because that's how it works On Vacation.
No, not at all. The numbering of holy days wouldn't happen with animals sketched into verse description, or come as I thought printed on rough-woven paper and inked. I wanted the resistance of the shorthaired animal under Our fingernails scratching against its growth pattern, wanted to clean animal dandruff from under the fingernails. Instead I received this clanky gloss by invitation in the mail.
The invitation came simply after I'd read enough good books to be given a hundred years to live.
And it came more precisely after giving up reading. Not so much giving up because I don't give up things I like, and I like reading because it's good for you. No, it came after I simply could not read any more. I can't even be around books, the smell of glue, of ink, the warming of air molecules when turning the page that hits the nose to penetrate the septum, making right for the brain before the decision to set the shelf on fire to be rid forever of the deaths in the books (I am all about life.) I just can't do reading anymore. My brain is a big pink erasor that pushes that rubbed-pencil scent out through my attractive mouth. I talk to others and they become nostalgic, and I too little at ease again. I probably smell like a mummy.
The invitation arrived by dream, which make no mistake is a viable form of communication. Not the boring sleep kind nobody wants to hear you narrate because you aren't at work yet; these dreams come through the slot somebody cut in the front door for just such purposes as getting mail. These dreams are in fact part of the original cutting of the slot in the door, screwing a metal hinge on it and so on, the fact that somebody knew what they were doing when they cut it out with a jigsaw or pushed the button so the machine stamped out the slot--however it happened, the mechanics don't matter. What matters is they thought of somebody somewhere getting mail through this door.
Well, OK, the mechanics do matter in a similar way that the mechanics matter when your friend group continues to grow in number as you cut around the corner away from something rough like a flourescence-soaked T-shirt and gift shop and move toward something smooth like an amber cove, a brick tavern, a deli with a peanut machine. But the mechanics don't guarantee anything and as soon as the mechanics are understood the mechanics fail.
Our friend group enters a Jubilee Center, and I have my invitation still in its oversized manilla envelope. I wonder if there will be enough seating for us all, and if the Correlator will speak English, because I only have a hundred years to live and I didn't want to spend any of those years learning another language. I understood that I would be punished for learning another language, because that's how it works On Vacation.
posted by the landscapers of at 10.9.07
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