Person Present


Dear Eugene,

It's getting colder.  Colder than yesterday, I think, for sure than two days ago.  For me it is easy to tell: heat is finally running in my house.

What is the point to compare with the past?  Today is singularly cold, cold the way I'm receiving it as meaning and direction for the very present.  One can review what has gone on in the past days months and years in a weather app, but really, who does that?  Not until a hobby becomes a profession, something personal is at stake, money and reputation, we are responsible for and responsive to nothing but the sensations of the here and now.

You see, Eugene, I don't even know where I am going with this.  I was thinking about something else when I walked up the hill this morning, and sometimes I would even record my own voice articulating early morning thoughts though I didn't today.  But that moment has gone; what mattered then doesn't matter now.

What was useful once is now useless, like a fallen soldier.  We might devote a brief moment to summon a collective recollection of a vague category of someone like him, but his face remains blurry, too impersonal to matter much to us, persons with a new understanding of personhood, persons who want to "keep things real" and respond only to the "authentic" as our current personal sensations are authenticating so.  A cool war movie could bring us to the cinema.  A Social Studies project might force us to turn a dusty page. Otherwise we are just thankful for next Monday off, a good seasonal kick-off for the retail and restaurant business and hopefully to jingle us all the way to the end of time.  The economy of our meaning is the meaning to our economy.

That's all for (my) now.

Yours, Alex

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