There’s an old round Polish couple that always sits in the corner of my coffee shop, and I watch them proudly. The man is short, values khaki, is seldom without a light gray coat, and is very proud of mustaches. She’s a tad shorter, prefers wool, is thinning on top, and has sparkling eyes. In their days of dreaming, they dreamed of freedom and America and of house and a job and however else freedom looked. This couple was lucky, for they managed to find a way in to America, probably because they knew someone rich, or knew someone who knew someone rich. He drinks espresso, takes small sips long after going cold, and she drinks tea, with honey, I think. They sit in the corner, seldom with books, seldom in speech. They just sit, side by side, watching all of us as the ages go by overhead. They don’t see it, and it doesn’t really matter that they don’t, for they will soon be dead, by natural causes, hopefully. As for the college kid next to them, the one with the stack of biology books and those on psychology and economics, he’s fucked. The age is upon him, ravenous, full of lust, already feasting, and he, reading those unadaptive writ of stones, is without hope or mind or will to resist.
In this place are many windows. There is a world outside that comes and goes, and at night, sometimes the brightness of the lights obscures and distorts the goings on outside. When standing afar from the windows, we only see our reflection, sparkling against the black backdrop, but dim. I choose this venue for writing and thinking because of the people. There are many types: young, old, healthy, sick, Asian, Indian, Arab, Persian, Hispanic, white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestant. I could spend my whole life writing about them and never run out of things to say.
Humanity, with its soft outer layer and fragile soul, all bound up in some kind of fear, is a beautifully treacherous thing to behold. We can spend all our days thinking and hoping and trying to be that dishonest something, unaware of the slave-drivers and opiates making us go along the way, to a certain way, to think a certain thing. Here, in the belly of the allusion, Orange County, California, the predators of the sky are always ahead of us, dropping barbiturates from flight. Clive Lewis said we are far too easily pleased; he was right. And I say, we have no idea what true pleasure is, and as such can only live through our medications.
I call this the Invisible Age, because in the air are whispers and signs of a terrible storm,
though the people are still making preparation for good times, normal times, as they always have,
as if normal times is such a thing.
We feel something though.
Its moving under our feet.
Its moving our feet.
We are afraid to ask the guy over there if he felt it too because we know he will say he did.
Then we would be forced to talk about it.
No keep quiet, I’m just tired, going mad.
There is a unsaid exhaustion among the looks of lovers, and friends too.
Its tingling skin, heavy sighs, red eyes averse to contact with other red eyes.
They itch.
Its invisble.
The Invisible Age is not really an age, for it has superseded all the ages.
Its the sum of every age.
Its what all the ages wanted to be.
To encompass everything.
Its floor underneath us, drawing us forward, into this great dark opening,
into serfdom.
On the walls shine our many distractions,
and on we go being distracted,
never fully knowing ourselves,
knowing human nature,
not really caring either way.
The predators of the air are circling above the dark opening.
They already have all the money they could ever want, now they want all the power.
Power is in our blood.
The blood is on the ground, as it has since Abel was killed.
Don’t worry though, down in that dark opening are drugs of all sorts, so we won’t care much. I wonder if we will even care when our toes and fingers are nibbled off. Maybe when we only have our elbows left, maybe then we will cry out to God for our liberty.
Liberty without arms. I don’t know.
The old round Polish couple is leaving which tells me its nine o’clock. I will see them tomorrow, and the kid too, and regardless of everything I have said, they’re all beautiful. They’re all beautiful, even as they try to outrun the guy next to them to keep from being eaten.
I hope, that when the age is revealed, we don’t think like that,
like outrunning our brother will bring us salvation,
because in many respects,
that is how we got here in the first place.
In America anyway.
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