Laramie and Alias followed the tree-lined road into the woods ostensibly seeking a lost calf trapped at the stream.   Lost and trapped.  Deciduous acres.  They shuffled the gravel in silence, which evolved to branches and leaves – a crackle and whisper.

Considering age and death, feeling lost and trapped – Alias.  Laramie pursuing a calf, something young.

“Sorrow is sorrow,” Alias vocalized in his head or his chest, his throat or his gut – wherever we hear ourselves.  “Aging – decay.  Watching one’s world erode.  Losing and trapped in the stream.”

Luckily alive after all of these years, Laramie felt hale and sturdy.  And the bluejays, the owls, finches and starlings.  The titmice.

Alias thought he might keep living each day “if I could think of at least one reason, event, thought or experience that justified enduring that day.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Laramie contributed, aware of Alias’ delimiting logic, “for you’re the only sanctioned arbiter in that case – fixing yourself to a very strange loop indeed.”

The trail of the calf, sunken hoofprints.  Age faltering for beauty, youth, and strength.  “someone refers to this as ‘an attachment to loss itself – a condition otherwise known as melancholy,” Alias intoned.

“For fuck’s sake Alias – is this how it’s gonna be?  The ‘apophatic’ way?  Via negativa? Only what isn’t there, what ya haven’t got – jabs at the pure potential?”

Fox, weevil, deer, cow.  “You’re only 54,” L declares.  “In a culture worshipping youth and perpetual childhood – the nubile and ageless and free – augmented and cyborg,” Alias retorts.  “Not me.”

“I told ya I choose ‘OFF’” Laramie chokes.

“I demand or command or beg of it,” he continued…”OFF.”

***************************

Alias the Conjurer

I drill and devour.

A storm, a tornado.

Construction.

Destruction.

WHO cares?

Effort.

A human with language.

HUMAN                                               LANGUAGE

Writers and speakers and singers and parents.  Wise men and theorists, children and fools.

LANGUAGE

SYMBOLOGY

DEATH (finitude) & LANGUAGE (infinite abstraction)

Grandiose and meaningless at one go

(not to overreach nor undersell).

It might matter

It might not

BEING

(we don’t know)

A bone.  A tomahawk.

Human creativity as, is, a war against death.

Fizzles & sparks.

Last ditch.                                                                                                                                                   Activity.

                                Efforts.                                                                                                                 Attempts.

LOVE

HOPE

ridiculous realities

MAINSTAYS

MAIN STAY(S)

In the main…

to stay.

ON

ON

ON

ON

To persist

Insist

Continue

                (against death)

Against death

Against death

– to act, to do, to create –

TO CONJURE.

************************************

Laramie rides.  OFF.

Alias goes further, deeper, further…on…(in)…

INSISTS                            PERSISTS                              CONSISTS

I, as human, consist as what I persist in insisting on.

= a composite “I.”