In a Landscape: III

It appears that we’re living (which isn’t always the case), depending on how one defines such things, in a “now you see it / now you see it” kind of way. We can say we’re working on our age, as well, listening to Bob Dylan songs where people can age in whatever direction supports the theme. “Too bad life doesn’t get themes,” Robin says, and yes, that’s right, and then we can all go do whatever it was we were going to do anyway. “It’s either that, or pay off the kidnapper,” as Neil Young had it, back in the mid-70s. There’s always an analogue, and someone to tell us about it, how, no matter how fast you run, you can’t run fast enough to get away from yourself. You could even call it a theme. For instance, I was the first one to an eighteen-wheeler accident on the highway once, in the early 90s. I didn’t know what I was going to find. It was just tossed there on its side, across both lanes. So I got out of the car and walked around to the front, only to see the driver standing inside the cab that was resting on the driver-side door. He was simply standing there behind the glass, parallel with the dashboard, a little blood on his forehead, looking as lost as I felt, looking back at him. All his things (magazines and maps and cigarettes and pens and snacks) in a little pile at his feet. When I left, a guy was hitting the windshield with a baseball bat. You go to the room, and the place you like to sit is missing. This is an opportunity to trust, I suppose, or perhaps for blind panic, if one were to consider this a metaphor for something. But say it’s not, say there are no such things as metaphors for a moment, and where does that get you? Presently, it gets me to a row of green and yellow plastic chairs, those 1950s-looking ones I imagine Kenton would like to collect. They’re joined together by shiny metal clasps, chrome, and the whole thing is full of sunlight through the plate glass window. It’s the kind of scene I think of as lickable, how everything looks like cheerful candy, and I wonder if there might be a way to be there or here without a beginning, or without an ending, or if perhaps there might be a concept for no middle.