I shan’t be present at the meeting.

I won’t be there I’m afraid.

I can’t find the time, sorry

I don’t want to take up space

He broke his back the usual way by falling down some stairs. His coccyx, or tail bone had been a source of some pain for months after landing awkwardly the day of Anne and Pete’s wedding.

He’d been polishing cutlery in the main dining hall and been asked to deliver them outside, out through reception. After an hour of polishing he’d slipped on the thick maroon carpet and thrown glittering blades of polished metal clattering off the walls.

He’d landed plumb on his buttocks and had the wind knocked out of him, sliding once and then rolling into face down position. Knives and forks gently poking into him as he moaned an inward breath and pressed his face into the cold marble floors.

The cutlery that he had laced with poison was somewhere among the jumbled reflective metal. He worried that perhaps he was laying on them and that he may have opened himself up in falling.

In the time it took to worry, people emerged from some of the adjoining rooms. He was helped to his feet, though the stood at an obtuse angle, bent at the tail like a poor impersonation of a duck.

He waddled from the room, after unbinding himself from the helpful arms and white gloved hands that had picked him from the floor. Swiftly he escaped somehow managing to prop himself in such a way that he could drive.

Phyllis and Errol both guest of the groom experienced heart attacks that evening and subsequently passed away. A strange occurrence of misfortune, especially bizarre to the guests, as they had all eaten and drank much the same contents, from much the same utensils. And so the coincidence stood and the marriage went ahead.

‘If a large enough rent could be created, the surface may be turned anew. The world is a cell and at it’s core is the larvae necessary for a new beginning’

Society of the 21st century was in distress and distanced itself from reality. Quietly anxious and confiding all hope in others that would willingly give up their lives to solve the problems and puzzles of the working world. The pursuit of happiness was rife with misuse. Shame hung off humanity like a cape, soon it became the carpet we walked and finally it surrounded us with shadows, when the sun began to lose it’s shine. With itself, humanity pursued a hard line of willful ignorance. The borders of science continued to spread, and with it the factory of consumption. Natural resources feeding transportation, housing and food were squandered in these early times and perpetually grew more scarce in the times following.

Scientists and Engineers of the time explained that we would come up with a means to break down and recycle everything, and in some ways this has become true. Plastic, heavy metals and radiation, as I write this, now cover and infiltrate the global being. As staph infection burrows down through the skin, the litter of humanity has burrowed in, with most of humanity tracking down and deep into the earth. At first we built up towards the stars. But our future was not written into constellations and soon we were digging our cities into the ground. Massive vaults, deposits of humans in lock box graves. More metal, more construction – a fatal last move in a losing game of chess. Burying ourselves in the bosom of the earth, fearing the pregnancy of our own demise. We dug in, or at least… most of us did anyway.

Now, arguments ‘after the fact’ have been something I’ve managed to leave to historians – as we choose to learn lessons and cast our vote in any such direction, it helps to have the guidance of past mistakes. But the argument over what happened and how it shouldn’t have been, is something I will not permit. This is my life now and the dump that marks my living reality of flotsam, jetsam and detritus hails anyone of any society or social class. All are damned through the association of proximity. All livelihood came crashing down in the fallout. While Tsunamis demonstrate themselves in Denver, there is no ice in anyone’s drink. No factory or stable source of electricity that has been established. Now the tumbling waves are scabbed with plastic and poles, floating fabrics and the smell of rot. When the fish died, the famine began and there was a global exodus from the drowning coastal cities. Some societies became nomadic, while others attempted to flee. The irony of a global closed borders policy meant that half of modern civilization was up against the wall or fence, begging for a status they would never achieve.

A crayon image – The world is a dumpsite; flooded and overrun by the oceans. All natural sources of water have the taint of radiation. Rain is acid, the oceans have alkalized. What was once the pacific, is now known as Clagg. The mixing of oil-spill and dense plastic deposits were alighted, burned and fused to create a mass so large it created the largest continent. From above it is a black scab of debris, a smoldering fusion of toxic waste. Similarly in the pacific the failed ‘lime project’ has changed the density of the ocean which in turn has created a malign ecosystem, sickness, mutation, flesh devouring bacteria, radical evolutionary abominations. Some feathered, others milky eyed, furthermore algae covered salamanders that have thrived in the mess and degradation.

Our outpost is North ‘Quarantine nation’ within the arctic circle is all that remains. We are sustained by annual snow-melt as here is the only location uncontaminated water can be found. The cold climate is our barrier from the bacteria, as well as any creatures bold enough to thrive in this era of misery and reclusiveness. Humanity is now but a fleet of military vessels and a small solar powered water-shack that housing 11,900 people.

The junker that we’re using for our mission is the decommissioned ice breaker ‘Renewal’. It was retired shortly before the Meltdown, and was used as a tourist vessel going from Denmark to Greenland. Now my team are tracking a similar path towards mission end – Mariana Trench, south by south-west.

This month – be good at what you can control and great at what you can’t.
Beard great. Hand-stands… good.

Neither you nor I should be regarded as sole entities. Both are incomplete and basic explanatory models. We are multifactored with inter-polyrelational aspects of a complex, transitional fluid that makes up one total phenomenon.

Mirroring that, Gandhi walks into a pizza shop and asks the guy at the counter ‘Can you make me ONE with EVERYTHING?’.

The pizza guy just nods.

Scumbag Scale:

1-10 working draft

1 – I’m going to be late scumbag
2 – Sorry I forgot scumbag
3 – Actually I changed my mind, and made other plans scumbag
4 – You ignored me in the supermarket scumbag
5 – You stole my parking spot scumbag
6 – Trainee/Intern/Student Scumbag
7 – Full Time Scumbag
8 – Master Scumbag
9 – Elite Practitioner/ Professor Scumbag
10 – Overlordo/Evil Dictatoro Scumbago

They surmised he had some kind of ailment or affliction of the mind. Such was the nature of his accident. A regular on his bus route commented that perhaps it was his ex wife that troubled him so.

On the 6.04pm bus past the sandy bay housing estate along the main road, at the corner of sandy bay and the first bottle shop junction, a large white building haunted with the foam and feelings of older generating he would honk as he passed by. Each time, every night for 4 and a half years – not one sick day was ever taken, not leave. Every day he would honk. Sounding the hurt and the knowledge that he passed her block. A horn in the evening fade of summer or winter black.

I told a kid tonight that I honked because my ex wife lives on that corner. Really I’m just bored, bored with it all and it brought humor and mystery to my behaviour. A dirty and strange habit. Maybe our likes are perverse. So I told a white-lie, so what? If they want me to justify they can have something, a noting secret, really it was just a quirk, my quip at their meaningless travel. I drove them, insanely I took them places. You’ve got to laugh.

A blind person can’t propaganda.

I went back in my mind, searching for meaning and what i meant then isn’t what I asked for now.

Meant is only used in the current’s confusion. I paddle with the streams of time, hoping that what I mean has meaning that can be mirrored in these waters.

Wade or float.

Cut through or quote –

That’s not what I meant.