A lost gesture. We are the last race of the carbon copy, the generation before the migration into light. “Why do they call it a tab?” Jeremiah asks. (We call him electronic boy.) As I try to explain I envision the chrome silver tabs above the greased teeth of the carriage of the Royal Standard on which I had taped the mantra:
lean silent gentle extravagant
Your body, too, is carbon my son, migrating to light. The colon beyond the abbreviation has become part of what they call an emoticon, a usage I am never used to, never seeing my face in the letters (though Caro tells the story of how when she was a girl her mother once thought to amuse her by drawing a face in the C and, though she knew her letters, she could not get beyond the face; it didn’t make sense). Carbon copy: two eyes: see sea.
caro meo teo oyo