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Title: Just So Author: Annette Hakiel Language: en Topics: short story, anarcho-syndicalism, socialism, solar punk, fiction Notes: originally written for the Grist Imagine 2200 inaugural fiction contest
âYes. We are almost done.â
âmy husband, after I complain of our progressing ages.
Lock the door, lie down, and take off your mask; let it dangle by the
hookâjust so. There will be no need to remove your clothes, dear; I
would have already just done so. Youâve been devastated your entire
life, dear, havenât you?âor have you forgotten almost losing the world,
as I am now in this moment placing my left leg over your tattooed right
shoulder, moving your right hand down by my left hip, slowly, then
pulling down the sheets off of you, and watching as you slip off the bed
to push a towel against the bottom slit where yellow LED light sneaks
through the base of the doorway where we should put a door snake, to
insulate, for our building has been retrofitted for deep energy, and
itâs been electrified, but we canât seem to figure that part out yet.
And one more towel at the foot of the bed, for later? Yes? I donât have
to worry about pregnancy; Iâm older, as are you. Take out your teeth.
And there you are, the future you, as if youâve been marooned, S, and
youâve never minded? As if the world having been saved doesnât matter.
As if the chemtrails over the park streaming red, blue and green donât
matter. Donât conjecture. Donât contemplate or estimate. Stop it, S;
youâre no good at it. S: itâs useless. You, licking wholeheartedly at
the small red oxbows collecting around the outer threads of the rinsed
pickle jar and furtively lapping a mediocre year of Bordeaux Superior
(the season still too hot) without realizing that youâre fixated, still,
on my delicate pink eyelids; future you, resisting that itch to
speculate with me upon the existence and survival of our outside world.
Thereâs no need to any more, donât worry about any late Anthropocene
holocausts, there arenât any, or wonât be any more, and so: sink into
me.
Yes, I see it⊠Yes, do it, S. Perhaps the automated lights along the
streets will have already turned on, powered by wind and sky and a
battery made out of two lakes, in the distance, the lakes themselves
man-made, an eel farm, and covered by floating solar arrays; perhaps
there are silly teens spray-painting the otherwise ignored public works
of art outside, no longer sculptures of any confederates or racists in
this syndicosocialist utopia, for those have all been torn down in some
wonderful monumental mixed-manic dysphoria.
Perhaps for all we know in the future suicidal businesspersons who
couldnât find a better job after the revolution hit leap out of
buildings downtown all afternoon kind of like they did in â01, for
different reasons; for all it matters, love, perhaps the true bones of
someoneâs lord and savior have at last been discovered to rotate around
the sun in exactly the same fashion as everything else, his parables
having been thought now as lessons in sustainable development: no
overfishing; the strategic use of nets, and the use of the World Wide
Web, radio in extension services and the word; two fish as a family
limit and injunction against overfishing; the building of bridges to
walk over waters; also the use of bread and food and beverage to bring
people to a central location where an overseas farmerâs market might
rise up, after which, a whole city.
But none of that would matter to future you. It would be a given. Donât
you dare start gambling on it, S; you mustnât. Letâs say you luck out
with that crypto backed by trees. It doesnât matter â pay it no mind:
sprawl across the bed in the haphazard positions so your limbs are numb
and you canât tell which is whichâŠ
S, you have been devastated, itâs true. S, youâve been betrayed, but you
never said anything. Thatâs why later Iâll watch you breathe lightly in
bed, why Iâll keep an eye on you as the still loud but now electric and
AI driven eighteen wheelers still hums through the valley in the
distance delivering goods, toilet paper, the vaccines, at this pandemic
weâve been living through...and you tremble...the moon light suddenly
flooding your completely oblivious body, with the way your put together
perfectly (S, how can you not forgive yourself?) your floppy
grey-wing-tipped hair, you sculpted shoulders, your articulate wrists.
Yes, Iâll climb into our future bed, S, Iâm sure of it. S, Iâll touch
your shoulder. You would have one cocktail to celebrate and nothing
else. Yes, I see it, Iâll still worry about your breathing, for you
smoked, and this air, or what it was, smog choked, and Iâll first touch
your skin-sweet, muscular shoulder, the way only I can right at this
moment in the future, an old married couple together, celebrating the
momentous event, the world has been saved but for a moment and weâve
reached that point, temporarily, that you were glad I worked on and
cared deeply for, even with my schizophrenia, but by work through poetry
and community, and but for which you barely mentioned, except in dreams.
As if you could have forgotten the worldâŠ
From past to present, yes, S? Youâll forget all of it. Youâre good at
this. You do it better than you could consciously do this. I still love
for my eyes to behold you, still, yes, for I love you, and you more
reasonable than you think you are, so it will be easy for you: from
sports stats to wars, celebrity divorces, time of sunrise or sunset,
number of minutes until the garbagemen is brandishing algorithms for
what is recycling and what is trash, the can loudly clattering down this
street every Tuesday at 4 am, or the time until he is suddenly wielding
the lids against the privileged hippistas (the new hipsters) pillaging
the curbside piles, those three who dumpster dive every week on our
street and who decide to eat, in a cartoon understanding of recycling,
food thatâs already been thrown away. And why is it still? We havenât
picked up composting, our building. But they do it at the MRF...they
sort all that, with machines, and with AI. And we will have the food
waste monitors. So, love, then forget you, this future you, then forget
especially all that came beforeâyou canât even fathom it. You will never
understand it, youâre bad at understanding such far out things. So:
forget it, S. Just enjoy. You werenât made for such a tremendous doom,
so make our and this world afresh, made for you to glory in it. And just
glory, gloryâŠ
You were made for the bedâso forget everything but this bed before you
and the naked woman you will be with.
Later, you will call to me, âHey, chicken butt! Miss Sassafras!â
Later, you will call to me, âHey Thighs like White Elephants, I got some
coffee!â
Do I trust you? after all these years, do I?
Does it matter? do you trust me?
So play dumb, only, donât play, S. No more games. Just only: an
oblivion.
Yes. There is more than just one kind of oblivion. So choose wisely.
Choose this one, the one where we still have Earth, each other, in the
future, and the days later where I will have let the vegetarian bean
soup burn and completely evaporate on the induction stove top (youâve
finally agreed to eat less meat). Where Iâll fail to do even one dirty
dish that either one of us failed put them in the water-saving sink,
barely manage to shower, though we do that less now, and after that,
finally put clothes on, the same clothes we have for the last forty
years, the clothes made in sustainable, durable fashion. But it will all
be for the better. Both of us should live like hermits, during this
strange second worldwide lockdown, binging for at least four whole days
on nothing but canned beans and sex and cheap wine (we have the access
to tap water, so no worries there) as if it were a form of sensory
deprivation and submersion of each other, completely sunken into each
otherâs flesh and animalistic urges, like two beasts stuck in one locked
cage bound to either kill or screw.
Later, donât let yourself leave the apartment, unless itâs to buy
toothpaste. Much too hot out. This much is necessary. And you wonât be
alone. At last! You wonât be alone! All those years in your office,
alone and working! Under the energy saving air conditioner. Behind the
smart solar glass walls. Up high in this mixed use wooden constructed
tower, first of its kind here. So let yourselves pivot; you will pivot
in small circles. Eat the string cheese straight from its biodegradable
plastic seaweed wrapping with nothing else if you must, then eat the
wrapper, in our kitchen, if you must, under the glorious solar glass
chandelier we got for our fiftieth. Gorge on carrots, farm fresh, or
split peas if you can. Get used to the smell of our own bodies, and
sweat. We are considered native New Yorkers, the soft-form sea wall set
in place, cement objects for shellfish. Stare at the water, now
replenished with oysters and dolphins. Be one with your body, that body
you so often ignore⊠a life of the mind, law, and words, you have lived.
You retired today.
And although the world has been shut down again, we reached the point of
Drawdown, even if temporarily; that curve has been bent, back on itself.
And people know what to do and act and do so swiftly with regards to the
virusâ are prepared this time for this new pandemic. Some were
surprised; we had saved forty-five percent of nature after all, and we
thought there would be less zoonotic disease. But it happened again.
This time no one blamed any foreign state. So remember the urge to
urinate, eat, defecate, drink, smoke your cigar, just this once, only
when you must, and the idea actually comes to you from some small
molecular need. S, itâs like youâve been marooned your entire life.
Youâre on no schedule. Itâs like youâve been devastated your entire
life, S. We never had children, S, and itâs the end of summer. No
progeny. But will still be ancestors. We call them on our devices.
Carbon emissions have already peaked, now the ppm has leveled off. What
was it all for? Three more fighter jets on bio-safe fuel stream past the
sky, streaming colors in red, green, and blue, and we show them, the
nieces and nephews, now adults. Even the flag has been proposed with
colors changed, more stars. Let me and your future self make prisoners
of our love for a week. For there are no more prisoners of law. Good.
They closed them, the prisons. Yes. You fought the good fight. Fought
for civil rights. You note here you have a free schedule, though you
will still do offer services pro bono publico. I know this, I asked
after you. Thatâs the way to do it. Thatâs the way itâs going to happen,
Iâm sure of it.
Iâm sure of it, S.
But, yes here in the future, the party is over. We saw the celebratory
low emission fireworks on the East River Estuary, now bestowed with
personhood. Everyone opened their windows and clapped and cheered,
blowing horns.
---
Oh, for the love of godâif that disembodied creature existsâyouâve let
your mind be noble, now let your body, just, be.
And for the love of godâif that disembodied creature existsâlet me hear
it.
Open your window S.
Open it.
By the grace of all things holy that I know you do not believe in, let
me hear it: I want to hear you laugh and sigh sighs of relief. Cry.
Clap, cheer, and cry.
S, a wind is picking up.
Have you noticed? The wind, it is getting stronger. I think a light
storm is brewing, but no more cyclones, or worsening tropical storms,
just some gentle rain.
I look across the alley, I finish the dishes, put down the dish towel,
heave. No. no S, Iâve changed my mind. You havenât opened the window
yet...and itâs not raining.
Thereâs our line hanging with clothes and sheets, such a regular sight
these days, dangling with our shirts, outside between the two buildings,
saving energy, especially in this heat, and underneath the solar glass
archways above every ally and street, harvesting infrared and
ultraviolet only.
If only I could be the one, S. The one to praise your soul, S. Your
soul. For life, I hope so. If only I could musterâŠmay you be the one to
bury me.
S, this is happening while youâre older. Much so.
S, S, in the future do you remember me? Have we aged, together? gained
or lost weight? grayed? Divorced? Do you notice me still? Am I...alive?
There you are: staring into your mirror.
In the future.
Pick up the comb, S...pick up the wooden comb.
But no, S, you just stand there.
Because it was not that you dislike life, no, that wasnât it. And itâs
not that you cared so much for living, but that you had grown used to
it. Yes, S, that is how you put it then, that future then: You didnât
love life, (no, how could you?) but you had grown accustomed to it, and
that is why you donât contemplate the act of suicide as a way out. You
consider yourself a good existentialist.
But, S. Dear, S! You are a bad, bad existentialist.
S, my pet! You pick up the comb! This is the way it is, the way it must,
alas be: for me to know you, all of you, to watch you, to keep an eye on
you, to completely understand you, to know you even more than the
biblical understanding of the word know, and for you to not even be
conscious of my existence.
No.
Because Iâm a ghost, Iâm gone. Because I know these things will happen:
you pick up the wooden comb. You pick it up because you want to comb
your hair, but when you move your hand all youâre doing is a good
impression of a man combing his grey, grey hair. Instead of parting it
on the left, you part it on the right.
And this is how we lived through it all, loyal, stubbornly optimistic.
And even if one dies.
And this is how we loved, just so.
No.
No, in the future, but the less distant future, I am not there with you,
I, like others, am gone, and the lost people in the Westâincluding those
who go about their daily chores but are in the process of losing
earthâdonât spend these days wearing out the sitting room carpets of
their apartments, pacing over fading floral designs, all the while
wondering in which one of those two rooms they inhabit it would be best
for them to die, whether by their own hand, of nuclear war, the next
COVID 19, mass shooting, or droughts, fires, famines, deep freezes,
storms, or blackouts brought on by climate change. Such a morbid
occupation is generally the exclusive hobby of 90s miserable Goth
children, the histrionics of the 20s, incorrigible hack poets of the
romantic period, and the feckless.
And people who are losing earth donât often commit suicide, itâs true.
They may, on rare unmeditated occasions decide itâs all too much and
step in front of a bus, but they certainly do not contemplate it. Their
heads are filled with other things besides thoughts of death, and arenât
moping about the house with a death wish on their mind.
There are still readily identifiable traits that can tip a person off
that someone is a lost one. For instance, first and foremost, the
occasional but always breathtaking placidity of that future personâs
eyes â which may cause any inclement weather to be seen reflecting
therein â is often a key indicator that a body has lost earth, or losing
earth, and losing hope, as is the degree with which the eyelids start to
slope pathetically over said eyes whenever certain songs of longing and
yen, from Clair de Lune to a well-chosen Patsy Cline tune, plays
overhead on the Alexa. But a sure sign that someone has trying
desperately not to realize they are losing Earth but has lost it (hope)
and all they know is the way the chest canât help but to rise and fall,
everyday, repeatedly, for a this future person persists and does not
commit suicide. It is still illegal and they respect the law. Life is
sacred. And all of humanity and the species other than human should live
in coexistence.
S, you will believe (and rightly, in my humble opinion) that, in terms
of location and behavior, the perceived high incidence of these lost
ones, those people losing earth (also called doomists, denialist,
inactivistsâŠthose who insist that we are all doomed from climate change,
or just simply those with severe crippling eco-anxiety) are in areas
where poor weather conditions predominate is an improvable truism. These
lost people in the now arenât moving to rainy, windy, and/or cloudy
cities, such as those in the north on either coast, and around the Great
Lakes necessarily, itâs just the weather is getting even crazier
everywhere, and thereâs more fresh water. But in fact, with the
lockdown, itâs hard for many of them to move anywhere at all.
The newly lost, for instance, are notable for their
peculiar lack of ability to lift up their own arms.
Itâs true that those who have been lost and forlorn for quite some time
tend to sit in one spot and lean, usually against a horizontal surface
such as the counter at a deli, library, butcher, café, or the some
random American county DMV office, and languish. For years it seems. As
such they often grow either very fat or very thin when compared to their
original state. Lost people of the west, above all else, are waiting;
they know they might wait forever, that is, wait until eternity or
longer for the final end.
But in order to do so, in order to lean on, say, some random American
county DMV counter with a still the way that man does, with a sad look
of dismay and wait, patiently to lose earth, the lost person must be
alive. And anyway, they arenât always doing so. That is, they arenât
always engaged with leaning.
Leaning on at a counter at the DMV may be inhibited by, for instance, an
irreligious inordinate jerk sports nut refusing to take off his Yankeeâs
hat for a driverâs license photo, stating with conviction that first, it
would be against his religion, and second, it would ruin someoneâs home
run streak. Even though he took off his mask.
As one is refusing presently at the front of the line in which you are
in as I watch you from above.
Lost people are often found in lines, it is true. As are you. You go
about your daily routines and bump into them, rarely talking about the
very worst things. Losing home. Losing our planet, losing earth, losing
loved ones. But lost ones rarely give the impression of impatience or
impertinence in any obvious way. Crass, belligerent remarks like âhurry
up, dickwad,â or âcâmon buddy, letâs fucking get this over with, gimme a
break,â are rarely uttered by these forlorn. Itâs not that they take
their fate at the back of the line with monk-like patience, or even
complacency, on the chin, or even great stride. And itâs not like they
think that they will be eventually rewarded with the true object of
their longing if they are patient enough. Lost people barely think of
such a reward. But what I mean to say is that lost people rarely tap
their foot, check their phone, stand contrapposto or with limbs akimbo,
too reticent to approach the very question, having already accepted
their status in an unremarkable but comfortably recognizable limbo.
If you were to follow one, you might see the round hump of their sloped
shoulders, the slow movement of their soft, befuddled hands.
And so for them to methodically move from kitchen, to office, to
bedroom, to deliberate on whether or not to use a bullet, a noose, a
knife, such thoughtful consideration towards the future is too much of a
level-headed thing for a lost person to do, to exacting and proactive.
Lost people donât pace and consider suicide. Such a thing would be
utterly antithetic to their struggle.
Anyway, lost peopleâpeople losing earthâ are more likely to imagine
other peopleâs death than their own death. Climate change being for them
a distant reality if not fiction.
Part of their plight, and indeed, identity, is that they are willing
witnesses to their own distress, to the fact of their lostness, their
incessant noise that the climate game is either a hoax, or a game
already up, a kind of deficiency of which they are excessively
possessive.
And so when future you, not so future to as have already won back hope
for Earth, and who has just gotten home from our morning errands (you
had needed a new photo ID), walks from room to room of your apartment
where your organic eggs are cooking, it isnât because you are
entertaining gloomy thoughts of your own death and feel you have lost or
given hope on earth.
You have lost something else.
âWell, if you tell me what youâre looking for, maybe I can help you,â
Lâ, the maid who is paid very well and your helper, tells you as a you
scavenge and the faint scent of burnt toast emanates from the bright
kitchen.
---
You have moved back into to a rainy Northern America Eastern coastal
city somewhere parallel to the near the Great Lakes, which is not far
off from the northern American city that was your hometown, to work. You
know, on some level, that we might very well die here, but didnât come
here to die.
For you, the pursuit of beauty, poetry, justice, truth, things are
undying.
Except, of course, your life. But you canât help that. And you donât, in
any circumstance, proactively encourage your own demise.
It would only prove that people like you werenât man enough. Or woman
enough.
The lost ones though, how they pretend to others, or try to, and for the
rest of their life, that either they are not bothered by âitâ or that
âitâ was a forgone conclusion for such an eager heart such as theirs
(âitâ of course being the desperate failed pursuit of eternally or at
all obtaining the love-object, human eternity).
So as you shuffle between several different rooms of his apartment
located in one northern US stateâlooking now in the thin slot between
your undusted vintage mahogany roll-top desk and the wall of your home
office, and next in between the pages of the sci-fi novel you were
reading last night on his armchair that has moments of a terraformed
Marsâthe rain coming down outside is completely incidental, and is no
direct indication of the sogginess or sleetiness or torrentialness of
your inner state, your shoulders slouching slightly, the smallest bit of
panic very at home in your slim chest, with the maid staring
bewilderedly at the back of your heroically, dumbfoundingly large head.
For those that are truly lost, lost earth, even the simply act of
turning the spoon in the coffee, the simple act of remembering in the
shower if one has already soaped up or not or already washed oneâs hair,
the simple act of politely nodding back and responding to the man at the
booth, these things can become unbearable. And life is, yes, dear
readers, unbearable, but especially those in a state of having lost or
are losing earth But who is wont to deny the spoon, the shower, all for
the beguiling heartache of the lost of the immensity of the enduring
feeling of ideal and perfect lack? So is it really any surprise that
you, dear future widowed husband, who has lost his papersâpapers!âare as
distraught and quietly forlorn as you are today?
Resigning yourself to live a life, connect with those you find yourself
next to by happenstance (perhaps once again), thinking life is not
filled with grand triumphant human schemes, but that this was it:
imperfect and casual, familial talkâyou are beginning to believe that.
âMy papers, Lâ. Very important papers. Thatâs what Iâm looking for,â you
quickly answer her. You call your many digital devices papers, they are
that thin now as though you still remember using actual paper. You still
call the balcony the porch.
âOk. What papers.â
âImportant papers! White pages, with writing on it. Papers that I need.â
âDonât be an asshole,â Lâ, whom I trust to tell the truth, tells not too
distant future you, as you search, turning her attention instead to the
kitchenâs burning toast.
And âHoly holy holy holy holy holy!â You are chanting romantically, to
me, in some netherworld, lost to the second pandemic which hit quickly
after the first, quoting Allen Ginsberg, for even the asshole is holy.
---
Itâs not that me and you, my dear future widowed husband, have imagine
our death. That often.
âBreakfast!â the she sings out from the kitchen as the electric toaster,
just cajoled, as it must every other morning, with the help of the blunt
end of butter knife, finally yields a somewhat inharmonious ding.
All a tumult, unindividuated, and without center, you wash your eyes
over the horizontal surfaces of your home office.
You looked in every one of the eight manila âfoldersâ on your desk, bag,
trash bin back beside your desk, in the pile of âpapersâ of which you
have no idea from where it originates but that is on his shelf
regardless, then again the trash bin, then again in your bag, then again
the eight manila folders on your desk, then again behind the desk and in
between the pages of the books you were reading last night. But
everywhere you turn there are distractions, sirens, stacks of the wrong
papers, objects conspiring against you so that even this most trivial
task has become epic; even though one now calls out to you about
breakfast and for you to hurry up, you cannot.
With legal pads, sheets of printer paper, forms, and digital files flung
everywhere, itâs as if you are lost at sea, itâs as if you have become
Ulysses.
You stand in place and survey the mess of your home office once again
from the doorway and sway in place slightly. âThanks, but I donât have
time!â You holler, again impatiently wasting food.
You sit back down at your desk.
Lost people may experience occasional dizziness.
Stumped by some mythology of loss that they cannot see past, having
failed to differentiate themselves from the soupy atmosphere of ideals
eco minded or otherwise idyllic, these people tend to drift, apparently
aimless and move through their discombobulated life, as a child heavy in
dream. A perceived but inarticulate sense of displacement haunts their
psyche, and they carry with them a burden of innumerable tiny crosses
which shine in no direction but mark all the absence in their starless
skies âan indefinite and formless constellation of loss...mapping
nothing.
Whence this cloud? Wherefore this befuddling, unnavigable mass, this
impenetrable thing that has somehow become life? Their life? Their
hopeless, shameful life â shameful for the very fact that they generally
have everything needed to live a normal, productive, fulfilling life,
whatever family that raised them, a well paying and intellectually
stimulating career, the ability to travel, not to mention the
heartbreak, yes, including the heartbreak that is supposed to accompany
such things as a full wisened life? How did we get stuck here? In this
fate to knowingly live without? Into a place where they should be happy,
perhaps more than happy, a place where âordinary nameless
apprehensionsâ, baffling losses, misgivings, and hilarity still ensue
without regard or relation to the one they still long for, and yet the
meaning, if thatâs what it is called the real wisdom or whatever has
never come, the meaning seemingly forever differed?
Your missing file was not in the pages of the science fiction book you
were reading last night. You rub your forehead then quickly pull the
âJuliana v USâ, the historic childrenâs climate case, that file from
beneath your ass, on the chair away from the rest of the rubble,
specifically placed there last night for the sole purpose of not
misplacing it this morning. (The lost oneâs innate affinity for the
concepts of magnetism, propulsion, and force often play out in the chaos
of their messy offices and bedrooms.)
And with that, you, after the hassle of this morningâs errands, runs
past the kitchen to the door, without even kissing poor my photograph,
not necessarily unloved, but unmourned and sitting there in the kitchen
holding a plate of toast and jams â goodbye.
You cross the street that is no longer flooded like it will be years in
the future, you hop quickly down two blocks south to get to the subway.
Although an ecab would keep you drier if you found one quickly and drop
you off right in front of the building where you need to be at now,
youâre running late, and the subway is assuredly faster, with no
traffic. Itâll be just crammed full of peopleâs rain-moist bodies
smooched next to each other, inches away, if not touching on another;
complete strangers on top of one another during rush hour.
But I wanted Earth back. I wanted us there. I wanted to be alive. I
wanted back Earth.
I wanted to love you, in the future, balanced like keys or a mask, those
on the hook, just so.
âordinary nameless apprehensionsâ⊠I believe this must be from Edward
Gorey
People who couldnât find a better job⊠is adapted from Tongo
Eisen-Martin