The Boulevards of Extinction. Andrew Benson Brown

an outlier that makes one proud to be normal, but becomes a fact to be memorized, venerated, and resented. History is habit writ large, madness made readable.

      The Personal Is Political

      —Insofar as the political represents the will of a dominant individual, expressing the destiny of a great man or the tyranny of a small one. But even here, the masses will stowaway as many private moments as their pockets can hold. The more transparent an individual is forced to be, the more he implies his opacity. Like the moon, a man shows us one face reflecting the light of others and keeps the other side of himself in continual night—no one knows what is beneath that hair. This reflective side is politics, and the public Confucianism of every person fuels a private Taoism by distracting from it. In the most refined of these identity obfuscators—congressmen and housewives—private is merged into public; Taoist stages are filled with Confucian props, the actors withdrawing into themselves in a Yin-yang spin cycle of duty. Picnic blankets are laid in rolling pastures, oil drills in deserts, and in the name of “right attitude” bellies and pockets are filled. In the most thoroughly confused individuals, character is made into an expression of nature, even as consciousness proclaims only “We!”

      Mannequin Museums

      When asked about our model of beauty, the tour guides of the future will say, “Confining their statues to clothing stores, it was a society that valued individuality of layering over form.”

      “But why sculpt in plastic?”

      “Thrift was their lesson to posterity.”

      Imagination Bounded by Experience

      One never bothers to wonder about the everyday life of some mediocrity, not realizing its comparative excitement when measured against those who enshrined themselves in cultural memory by escaping the glees of pleisure into a higher calling. Most people, lacking the innate sense of duty which talent imposes on its bearers like a destiny, instead fantasize about the status surrounding responsibility. They fill every particular image with the boundless delights which the supposed autonomy of the artist, the power of the politician, or the fame of the celebrity would bring them. In these cases, though, it is not freedom, power, or fame they imagine possessing, but the promises of their stereotypes: lack of surfeit. They can only conjure more of what they have already spent their entire lives in pursuit of, believing the difference between pleasure and joy to be a matter of degree.

      Peering through the fence surrounding the pool of highborns, the eyelids of the talentless soon begin to droop from watching their betters drudge so much. Possessed of the naïve happiness arising from simply not being born genetic accidents, they take for granted their red-blooded impulse for excelling at the task of life. Natural supremacy is the privilege of the chained draft mule.

      Mood and Memory

      Although I have become too happy to be great, I still have the memory of my misery to drive me on—if not to attain glory then at least honorable mention. And yet . . . reflecting on this gap in status may, with any luck, be enough to destroy my happiness. But on my rise out of the dustbin of notability, I would hit this wall: the fond recollection of that happiness. The commemoration of a kaleidoscope of emotional states reroutes every thoroughfare; my fate is a beltway flanked by an overpass. What I need is a touch of karma, a demolition job, a gravel road—Alzheimer’s.

      Laughter Is the Best Toxin

      Let us outline the future of smiles, the upshot of every dimple display. Wouldn’t one rather have early wrinkles from stress and toil? Then at least there would be some appearance of a tangible goal, a point of respect for personal sacrifice. Instead, only a tombstone that reads “Here lies one who laughed himself to death”—needle in a haystack for the unfortunate family searching a cemetery of millenials. As president Garfield’s assassin chose a gun with an ivory handle because he knew it would look good in a museum exhibit, so do we embellish naked merriment with granite tributes to the placid soul.

      Maximum Greatness

      The secret of achievement? Moderation in nothing—but diet. Minimization of joy comes afterwards, the side effect of a dead social life. For what is there to talk about among friends without a meal between you?

      Subaerial

      Dirt . . . a gust of wind blows it into my eyes, it gets stuck in my boot grooves and I tread it into the house. Dirt . . . one descends to the bottom of the sea, hoping to find an answer, and one finds only clumps that fog up the water. We put mulch down, saying we want to prevent weeds from growing . . . when really what we want is to forget the dirt, our origin and destiny. One watches children playing on the beach, slapping mud together to build sandcastles, and realizes that we ourselves are constructed from this same playdough. Dirt . . . my only point of contact in-between volcanic churning and meteor showers, it shields me from upheavals and downpours. Though it follows me everywhere and is the closest thing to myself, I cannot even return to it when I die—my corpse will be too full of chemicals. Made of the blood of Tiamat’s second husband, I cannot seep into the dirt but will need to be separated from it by a casket to prevent polluting the earth’s excrement.

      The Dispassionate Relation

      “We’re such good friends!”

      “Yes we are. The best.”

      “I never expected to find someone like you. So generous, so much fun.”

      “Nor I you.”

      “We’re more than just familiars, aren’t we?”

      “I would say so.”

      “I mean, we just have so much in common.”

      “We’re never at a loss for something to do together, its true.”

      “You want to know something strange? Whenever I think of you I get hot-blooded, but seeing you for the first time in a few days, I turn white as a ghost. I don’t understand it, you just get my nerves going.”

      “That is strange. Maybe you’re just thinking of that Ford 302 we’ve been working on. Picked up a crankshaft damper for it, by the way.”

      “Did you have to bring that up now?”

      “Why not?”

      “I’m trying to have a serious conversation and all you want to do is talk shop.”

      “Sorry. I thought you liked getting oily in my garage.”

      “I do. It’s a good excuse to get away from the wife and kids.”

      “Oh yeah, how are they doing?”

      “Why do you want to know?”

      “Well, it’s just that I so seldom ask.”

      “You have never asked.”

      “All the better reason to ask now.”

      “I still don’t understand the relevance of this.”

      “I’d only like to know something about your previous history, your life outside of us and all that.”

      “Please, no! Friends simply don’t talk about those things.”

      “I’m getting a bit confused as to what we are supposed to talk about.”

      “Us, of course!”

      “Could we at least add a few more of us for good company? I’d like to show a companion of mine what we’ve been working on.”

      “Oh . . . hmmm . . . no, I don’t think so. I’d be terribly jealous.”

      “I see.”

      “You seem upset.”

      “Its only that I don’t know what to say.”

      “Just promise me you’ll never move away, friend.”

      “If we don’t finish that engine I won’t have a choice.”

      ***