Dear diary,
At this point, I begin to develop a taste in top-ten music, like pop songs that shoot to the number one position on the sales charts; so I acquire the habit of listening to the radio, since that is where these songs are often played. But, alas, the tower with the giant antenna that broadcasts my favorite program’s signal topples over during the worldwide fire and smashes to bits. There it lies, on the ground, burning forever. Therefore no matter how carefully I tune the dial on my portable boombox, which I carry with me everywhere, I cannot get any songs to play — there’s only the squeaky sounds of space-static and a multiplicity of political talk-shows.
“This worldwide fire is now provoking me to change my daily routine,” I cry; “I almost wish it would stop.”
Now a passing librarian overhears me complaining. She stops and dries my tears with a silky kerchief that she draws from out of her blouse. “What’s wrong?” she sez.
“I prefer to bob my head to pop records from the 1950s and 60s, but now I’m forced to listen to dead-end political chatter,” I explain.
“Cheer up,” smiles the librarian; “I have good news. All the recordings that you desire to hear are still available in our interlibrary system. Never forget that we live in the far, far future, and that one can therefore find and borrow any item that was created in the past by performing a simple search, noting its identification number, and then submitting a request form.”
“But I like when the burden of all this curation work is shouldered by the local radio station, which selects the playlist for me, so that I can simply relax while corporate management chooses all the tunes to play. As it is written: Freedom of choice is what I have, but freedom FROM choice is what I want.”
“Now you’re just pulling my leg, right?” the librarian eyes me askance. “You don’t strike me as the type that needs others to make his aesthetic decisions for him.”
“You’re right,” I smile; “I was just trying on an attitude, to see what it feels like. But what about the materials in your system? — I mean the physical items in the library’s collection that you say are available for checkout: aren’t all your books and vinyl records and digital video discs and microfiche all burnt up? Didn’t they melt or turn to charcoal in the grand, worldwide fire-baptism? I would imagine that nothing exists beyond political material that favors the current, corrupt establishment.”
“It’s a funny thing,” the woman replies: “but our Library of Alexandria is the ONLY place on Earth that remains undestroyed — it has never been touched by the flames; either that, or the flames have no effect upon it (I don’t know the exact details of the situation, because, during much of the time when the world first spontaneously combusted, I was busy reading storybooks to children); weirdly, it continues to stand pristine, all throughout this trial by fire.”
“Hmm, that IS strange,” I perk up; “it’s like the opposite of our globe’s Achilles’ heel.”
“That’s kinda right!” sez the librarian.
“By the way,” I say, “I feel as though we’ve met, but I cannot remember your name…”
“Yes, I’m Jeanette MacDonald from 1929; I played Athena in that previous episode — you know, the one with the cows on the Cloudmobile pontoon…”
“No, no, I mean your character’s name, this Alexandrian librarian,” I say.
“Oh,” Ms. MacDonald laughs, “of course — yeah, no: this role is unchristened; look here, it’s just printed in the screenplay as ‘THE LIBRARIAN’.”
“Ah,” I say, holding the script first one way and cocking my head; then turning it upside-down and squinting at it from another angle (my usual shtick when pantomiming reading). — Now, handing it back, I add: “Darn, I wish they would’ve named you. Then we could exchange contact info.”
“Well we’re still going out for drinks after the shoot,” she sez, “right? I mean, what’s the difference?”
“Yes, but that’s eternity,” I pout. “Sometimes I like to remain in clocktime.”
“Ah, I understand,” sez Jeanette; “this kosupure [costume-play] can be addicting.” Then she references one of our favorite William Blake proverbs: “Eternity IS in love with the productions of time.”
“I just think you’re great as a librarian, and it would be nice to continue this fantasy beyond bounds, to lend some more mythical space to the escapism; like when you’re waking from a good dream and you wish to lure the vision to linger but sleep is fleeing.”
“Like I said before, cheer up,” smiles Jeanette the Librarian; then she paraphrases Kafka: “All sin is impatience.”
So we exchange contact info and walk off into separate parts of the raging inferno that surrounds us.
§
As I creep thru the tunnel of flickering flames, the first figure that confronts me is the spectre of my father. I draw my glittering sword and defeat him in battle with ease. “Piece of cake,” I remark, sheathing my sword. Then I encounter a dragon in its nest. I slay this dragon just as quickly as I defeated my father; and I then approach the eggs in the nest and kick them around, looking for my reward. Soon I hear the sound of a semi-nude woman trying to get my attention: “Psst,” she sez, “over here!” I look to one of the torch-lit corners of this fire-cave and behold Jeanette MacDonald circa 1929 wearing a translucent nightdress.
“You really came thru for me already,” I say as we embrace; “I didn’t expect that it would be so soon.”
“The fire-tunnel that I took curves around and intersects with this one,” she explains as we hold our embrace-pose; “we’ll meet again and again, during the course of your journeys. That’s why I was saying before: Never worry — simply let be, and bear yourself like the time.” (Only the clever members of our audience realize that she’s quoting an amalgam of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Two Noble Kinsmen.)
“Thank you,” I say, “I really appreciate it. I’ll see you soon, then!”
We wave and part in opposite directions again, thru the flames.
Now I battle a lion and kill it and skin it and model its pelt. Then I face my worst fears: First, a pit of snakes, which creatures I befriend over the course of our charming evening together — the snakes and I dine, and it turns out that they are very wise if one dares to listen to their ideas. Then I conquer my fear of heights by walking across a rickety bridge that continually threatens to give way beneath me, as it swings in the violent wind (the bridge is made of frayed hempen rope and little rotted pieces of wood), but I make it to the far side, even tho the wind has now become a tornado.
I tell the sea and the sky: “Be calm” and they obey me; then I choose to work twenty-three hours a day as a laborer on a farm, just to avoid being labeled “lazy” by United Statesians. (I really want to impress the United Statesians.) — I pick oranges from the trees. I pull turnips out of the ground. I pick blueberries from the bush.
Now I realize that the hour of sleep that I allow myself daily is unnecessary. It turns out that I have the strength to work right thru all twenty-four hours of each day; so I do this. Now my days fit together seamlessly in one continuous stream of endless labor. And, to avoid causing my boss and his owners the inconvenience of having to dig my grave when I die, I dig my own grave and leave it open by my side while I am working. I teach my fellow harvesters how to shove me into the hole with their foot if I ever collapse during our labors, so that my corpse will roll and fall into the grave and remain out-of-the-way. But the overseer happens to walk past when I am explaining to my co-workers this simple procedure to make sure that I’m properly buried, and the overseer shouts:
“Why are you talking instead of laboring?” And he whips me, leaving a laceration that covers the width of my chest.
I look down at this bleeding wound. Then, looking back up, I notice that the man is preparing to whip me again. In that instant before his whip falls a second time, I decide to leap forward and physically grab him to stop the attack. Instead of clasping his arm, however, my hands close around his neck, and I end up choking him. He pries himself loose and falls back, gasping. While he is lying on the ground like this, purely on instinct I heft up a large boulder that is nearby and lug it over to the man and drop it directly onto his head. There is a satisfying crack.
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