2. Time's geometry

(Licensed taproom of Marshall’s Tavern, Marathon, Ontario– the Frenchie, Clamence talking above the sound of the upright)

I wait by the water.

Any shore’s a parable. Here’s how this story works. Let’s start with the idea that we map the world in declining thirds, mostly wrong. Suppose the present is indeed, as we think it, the surface we float upon. Yet what in turn floats upon it isn’t, as we might like in turn to think, the future (and who’s inner tube when he’s far flung home?). That eleven hundred foot long boat out there, deck creaking and klaxon sounding at intervals, isn’t a space ship, eh? Not some UFO saucer keeps on slipping, slipping into the future. No, if the present is no more than the thin membrane where time and sky merge, then future and the past are but two great currents spiraling together beneath it, pumping and swelling up together from the depths, hydraulic-like eh, with only the tissue of the present itself keeping them from spewing up into the night sky like a geyser of stars or northern lights’ roman candles. (Another Golden, eh? hon.)

No, it’s we’re what floats upon the surface of our own past and future, don’t you see? Keel deep in each and ale-ballasted (Thanks, hon), we’re just the day-to-day story, a fight for love and glory all the thirty plus hours of the night, the same sad builds-strong-bodies-88ways honky tonk story Glennie’s ticklin’ over there, just a sound on the water don’t you see, Yahweh pissin’ in the bidet, subconscious design exulting upon a pinnacle of potency, a sonar ping medley of Downtown and the wreck of what fitz, that’s the whole tale. You get through it, yer done, no regrets, no more dreams allowed. No such number, no such phone.

“And the sky then, eh?, Monsieur Plato Beans? what’s that stand for in yer tricoloric map?” hoots one of the fellows from across the taproom.

The sky’s just a mirror of the deepest thing, que vous etes trop damn dumb to ask about. Our monstrous underpinnings. What lies under past and present in the unplumbed, thalidomidic dark of the lake bottom. Dark children with Scifi shining eyes, scaly creatures without eyes, eyes without creatures, sounds stuck in the suffocate’s throat. Shards of things, skeletons of the dead and almost dead, fragments: the upsidedown bottom of all, you ignorant damn canuck lumberfuck, that’s what...

(Then after a time (not a seventh day but a perfect fifth & half weeping into his beer) mutters to himselves.)

Who’s in her when he’s at Nome? What goes around comes around... eh? (And.) Another Golden, hon!

(Exeunt ille)