He looked down at a piece of
paper held in the clipboard he salvaged nearly thirty years earlier
out
of a trash bin of some corporation whose name he couldnt recall which had one
of its armed guards direct him to park the boxed truck he drove to the rear of
the building where he could access its loading dock
despite the security he picked
out the clipboard and several broken reams of copying paper
This is
trash right he said to the maintenance
worker who was to direct him to where the company had assembled the 30x60
rental office desks and six-foot folding tables they didnt need any longer
If its in that bin its trash
Any feelings if I take this stuff
Hell no You cant believe the
stuff they throw away If you can use it help
yourself
Done Waste not want not My parents didnt raise a shy child
Mine did Did a lousy job of it Just dont let the guards see em as you leave Theyll shit
Security detail my ass or else and I shudder to think it this is probably all we can expect of
security
clutched in the Bear-of-a-Clip on
the reverse-side of some advertisement mailed to him that he didnt ask for or
want the page bore his handwriting etched in the black ink of a Pentel RSVP
fine point pen and also with medium point blue and red Bic Cristal inks
seeing his handwriting on paper soothed
him
maybe because few people could
read what he wrote
though sometimes he
couldnt either
particularly when what he wrote expressed a gnawing agitation that
sped his hand as it helplessly tried to keep pace with the maelstrom at his
reeling brain
but
even his illegible handwriting soothed him
phrases appeared like broken
shards and splashes of individuals names with whom he was unfamiliar and then
quite concerned that he didnt know of them because their names appeared in the
midst of things and histories he had overwhelming interests in and yet they
were sudden ghosts reared before him
apparently
however
having always been there
how
was what possible what else had he missed
and they all turned looking out of the margins
or inward or upside down
rightside up with no gravity to hold them
they were as he wanted to be firm and unsubstantial tethered and without the laws of physics
though their appearance on the
page was enough to placate and genuinely
humour him
they eliminated any need or want
of sedatives or script physicians happily wrote
and then
like a new toy or
never-before-constructed jigsaw puzzle he went at them to satisfy his curiosity
there were so
many entries that he failed to note where he found them or what they may have been bonded to
except
he would only have found them where his interests took him
rendering him they yanked a black cloth sack over his head
and pitched him headlong onto the back seat of a comfortable sedan
there are worse ways to travel
and worse places to find oneself
1242, Sunday,
25 1. 15
