OTHER THINGS IN VIEW

Often it’s like a dream and we’re stuck, the water’s rising and we’re running laps on a shrinking track. Just look at you, Whistle. Soon the beautiful, terrible demands of the day will break the hours around you into waves, no horizon in the distance and only occasionally the amnesia of deep sleep, otherwise a half-waking half-life that keeps all eyes trained on the next set of hurdles, on the stupid stopwatch. In other words, too often keeping afloat is all we can do. My friend does the math in her head, says what are we talking about, will our children have no children? and Whistle, she means you. We mean we know already nestled in the pockets of all the bodies are millions more, each of us a slippery bridge across we don’t know what crossing soon foreclosed. From this position, Whistle, it seems everything has been a mistake. We ate when we were hungry. When we were forced to flee, we fled. Old movies look silly to us now and we wonder whether ever anyone sat in the velvet dark staring up and thinking the giant jerking puppets and the women and children screaming beneath them looked lifelike, like life. This week the twenty-ninth Godzilla movie will be released. Now we like the monster to mirror not just our fears but the fears that are our fault.