Hypothetical Haunting Man

"Storyland" Series"

I am going to give up reading the news in the mornings for awhile. Are we allowed to take a break from the news? I am just tired, and it is giving me nothing that I need right now. I need fiction, overwhelmingly good stories that have been worked on and worked out artfully. There is no art in news. Even less than in a daily blog. I'm sick of Anderson Cooper and the other storyland journalists who attempt to turn news into a feature or a feature into news. So I'm taking a break.

I'll try magazines once again. Vanity Fair used to be good. My subscription to the New Yorker ran out a while ago, but I think I'll renew it. I want those silent authorial voices rubbing over me again. How did I fall away from that? As Mike says in "The Sun Also Rises," two ways, first slowly, then quickly. It is shameful.

I have tied myself up in the politics of the workplace. It is a monstrous struggle of the not-so-good-guys against the bad guys. I'm aligned with the not-so-good. We are the underdogs running at the power structure which means we have to find our bullets lying around where we can. It is consuming, for as they say, if you're going to kill the king, you don't want merely to have wounded him.

But there are problems with every revolution--mainly other people. I am not a group person. If we win, I will have to be on the other side of things. It is congenital, I am convinced.

For every mystery that we solve, a thousand others take its place. Yesterday I read a story about a study (always dangerous to rely on a story about a study) which reported that magnetic waves in the brain can change the moral choices a person makes. Now that science is spooky. I want to put a lot of heads in the MRI to see what happens. Not mine, thank you. I like it just fine. No, there isn't anything wrong with me that a little collagen and cartilage wouldn't fix.

The news just reminds me how sick I am of people. Until I meet one. The one's you meet are endlessly fascinating. Person vs. People, I guess. Here's a little poem about that. I'd almost forgotten.

The Negro

James Emanuel

Never saw him.

Never can.

Hypothetical,

Haunting man.

Eyes a-saucer,

Yessir bossir,

Dice a-clicking,

Razor flicking.

The-ness froze him

In a dance.

A-ness never

Had a chance.