to athena

i can stare into your grey eyes all day long, athena, and see storms pass, and sun too. things are not what you think they are, and in every significant way, they are better. it is no contradiction that you are beautiful and funny simultaneously, that your stories get better as you grow old, and that the glass of wine you are drinking now sits astride a million million universes, some of them with similar glasses of wine, some with nothing but echoes. you have lived through so many things, seen so many things, and fought so many battles worth fighting, against adversaries more powerful than yourself, and not been beaten. how many times have you taught Perseus to use the mirror against Medusa, or doomed poor Hector for his folly? like Odin, i have plucked out my good eye, and with it, i can see storms of my own, and sun too. we weather them together, my love, like two planets locked in orbit, storm and moon and sun and tide.

carbon

To say that i am grateful not to be spending this particular year decomposing underground is a tremendous understatement. I am elated, because even the worst of days have air and sunlight, in such wasteful abundance that clouds sing and mist abounds. There is snow cover, and seasonality, and the inevitability of spring, and whatever happens, it will not come again. None of it. I wish i could spend a day seeing through your eyes, love, be you four or twenty four or forty four. I would like to experience your joys and feel your frustrations. We are so alone in our minds, each of us, and yet we send out tendrils of experience through stories. If we are lucky, our stories will last a little longer than we do, and fade only after the passing of centuries. The moments fall like leaves, and the stories get more numerous. Lakes melt. Seasons change. Carbon cycles.

What it is like to be old

You asked me what it was like to be old. Maybe you thought you were kidding, but you were not. I can tell you this much. You know more stuff. You have had more time to learn stuff, and it is easy to know a lot of shit about a lot of things. You have more stories. More time equals more good stories. Period. Everything hurts more. Things hurt at your age, but more things hurt when you are old, and they hurt for longer. You have slightly fewer childhood memories-you forget a few, and memories of when when I was your age feel like childhood memories. I don't really know that much about the person who did those things i have memories of. I have some idea of his motivations. Still, he made so many decisions, good and bad, that I would not have made if I were there back then. I was not there, some other, earlier version of me was there. You, dear, are an early version of somebody else, and you will come to know that person. That person will appreciate your clothes, your sense of humor, your gift for friendship. She will be glad you had so much fun and realize that you should be so much easier on yourself. Or maybe she will appreciate you for your heart. A person changes You will change, but it is not like a marathon or even continental drift, it is instead like a frog race, where you start at the center, like every other frog in the race, and jump outward from it. You could end up anywhere by then end of it. Prison cells, brain transplants, transmogrification, celestial servitude, dens of iniquity, piss stained underpants. You make different kinds of plans. Time means less to you. You have seen enough change that it is fun to compare now to then, but most people are not inclined to listen to your stories unless you frame them right. The imaginary futures you thought might happen as a child have not happened. Emotions do not spike with the same amplitude, but have a serious and studied intensity, at my age. You get used to not being as attractive as you once were. Most people get funnier. If you have children, you start living two ages in parallel-the result of this being that you can no longer go out at night but you get to play with crayons. If you have kids, there is much more to worry about, otherwise, there is usually less. There are moments you would like to go back to. There are things you wish you could find words for.

For you

Let me make this abundantly clear. It is only through cold, hard determination that our Triassic ancestors survived long enough to reproduce. Natural selection does not favor pessimism, or even irony. Burrows need to be dug, prey need to be killed and eaten, eggs should be hidden under a layer of sand and guarded ferociously. None of these things comes without brute understanding that things could be a hell of a lot worse, and could turn bad at any moment. Smell the air. It is the mammal sense. Is it an an enemy or a mate- that smell that lingers over the nostrils and summons us into the moonlit forest surrounded by land crocodiles. Time will tell. Time will tell.

one year later

Smoke, fire, doom. A firedrake circles overhead. A town burns. Today is a good day.

this is the way the world ends. devoured by spongy headed mutants. hacksaw wielding freaks, a bucket of chicken in one hand and a rusty meat cleaver in the other, wondering what kind of sauce to use on us. so it goes.

A Tesla Coil Crackled in the Dim Basement

Books, everywhere books, some of them with anatomical diagrams. Surgical sutures, abundant needles, manacles. Somewhere in this infernal basement is the formula I need. A tesla coil crackles in the dim basement. Rats scurry. They are the hooded Norway variety, fed on surgical waste, and clever. I digress. This companion of mine, sutured together from components collected, over the course of the last few months, from fellow humans of mine who met with unfortunate accidents. Car accidents mostly, and a skier. The mind is either that of an upright schoolteacher who volunteered his time to teach math and history, or a raving lunatic who ate his family. Frankly, I cannot remember details like that. Where are my goggles? This life I create will no doubt turn on me, lonely for another of its kind, which I cannot create because I will be so horrified by the sight of its existence. Now that I think of it, that is not like me at all. The next one will have impressive breasts and a shock of white through its excellent hair. I do this all for humanity, or a version of it anyway. There is nothing humankind was not meant to know. Torches outside, must hurry.