When is the Question? I Think You Know the Answer

Prefatory Remarks

He says what he says, saying things as he tells people things, the things he thnks he needs to say, things he imagines he should say, what thinking and imagining have in common he has not considered in too long he would say if he remembered, what memory has to do with saying what we say what he says what I say he does say, to say or not to say; he speaks to others and to himself; he talks to himself; he talks to others; he has conversations with himself; he imagines he has conversations with others. I say, “You do not think enough about what it is that you do when you read.” I tell you that you do not think enough about what it is that you do when you read. To read or not to read, I recollect the question, the font on the page before me, seeing it as I do looking out the window now this morning on the mothers taking their children to school, some by hand and others not by hand, having the ability, I do, to see them walking and this page too, a page of text with the title, “To read or not to Read,” that would have been a question, seems now to be a question that our freedom and our democracy hinge on, no?

The After-preface

“Did you order it, or are you cheap?” He asked. He paused. He waited. There was no reply.

“If you ordered it, did you read it–or have you only superficially skimmed the pages as so many people in America lurking about to be made great by a billionaire-pedophile-greedy-son-of-MOLOCH must have this morning skimmed the sport’s pages of the great yellow tabloid press?” He asked.He paused. He waited. There was no reply.

“Our grandfathers are rolling over in their graves that we have become stupid enough to watch FOX news, more heinous than the infotainment of mainstream television news; rolling over in their coffins that we have become stupid enough to listen to Trump for as long as many people in America seem to be listening to him,” he said. He paused. He looked out the window. He waited. He waited some more. There was no reply.

“Why would I imagine that there would be a reply to anything I have here said,” he said aloud. He paused. He audibly took a breath, nothing as usual. He looked to the ceiling and the light and shadow contrast made by the lamp behind him at the table with his laptop Mac opened.

Nothing more. The rain on the air-conditioner still in the living room window taps pitter pat, pitter pitter pat, he imagines saying—imagining he says, you see, only imagining, you understand.

“The fact that I get few to no comments about my writing or on my actual websites other than insipid LIKES on FACEBOOK only shows me that most people I know or have known suck, and that virtually all of them are frightened, full of shit, narrow-minded philistines. And that’s me being kind.” Perhaps he has been hasty. Perhaps he does not have enough information;perhaps he has not considered enough and has been mistaken in his views, Facebook really does not face anything; nothing comes at us on Facebook dead on, straight away, directly in sight. Everything comes at us from the oblique. It is a great deception, Facebook; it is one of the great horrendous lies we live; it is one of the great enablers of pedants and philistines; it is the first and last tool of sloganists and their slogans which are always in better service of the narrow and narrowing politically conservative views, themselves more knee-jerk than any of their pronouncers have ever been able to convince me the Liberal position anywhere at any time has ever been.

I think he has meant to tell all those who have ever been his friends to go fuck themselves for not supporting literacy, intelligence and art,  although he really does not hope they die soon. Why would he hope that, the latter, I hear you ask? I have no patience for literalists any more than I do religious fundamentalists–whether they are reading Holy Koran, the Holy Gospels, Holy Torah, or my friend’s websites or book of poems.