Brad Liening, “The Other Plague”

We live in a time of grave uncertainty. It brings strange textures prevailing in the air, a sense of angles subtly misaligned, drifting unease. Trees don’t produce the typical number of seeds. Dogs walk sideways. There’s fervent, almost hysterical interest in charter schools.

*

My wife and I keep several bottles of wine on hand and one bottle of whiskey. The nights begin to last longer but it seems to be the wrong time of year for this. Almost no one goes to the beach anymore. People acquire a furtive aspect to their looks I do not care for one bit. I am a doctor.

*

Mr. Lally, a man known and respected by all for his good sense and soundness of character, was found dead in an alley this morning. He was wearing women’s underwear. One suspects he would make quite a beautiful woman if he applied himself to the task, which chance he will now never get. Which is the real tragedy? The cause of death is at present unclear.

*

Last night there was a shower of gold. By morning it was gone.

*

There’s decreased interest in popular music. Who are these people on the radio? Did we ever really care about them? It seems unlikely that we did. People talk of taking long trips to faraway countries, but most everyone stays at home. Evenings are getting longer and very quiet. People complain of a vague, fishy odor. We appear stranger to ourselves.

*

Airlines are plunged into financial crises. They entice would-be travelers by painting their planes sprightly colors and promising to let them steer once they’re over the ocean. They also ply us with free alcohol. This works, a little, and then doesn’t.

*

New objects and ideas begin to populate the cultural landscape. Among the older citizens there is nervousness about these new tokens and still greater nervousness at the suddenness with which the younger citizens embrace strange-looking teddy bears, their excitement over beautiful new weapons with mellifluous names, the giant snake that threatens to eat the film crew assigned to film it, which assignment was based solely on the snake’s purported size and viciousness. This was a modestly successful movie, based on a true story. Several sequels followed.

*

There is a great deal of speculation, both public and private, about how we got into this mess, and there is even outright argument over its particulars. Is uncertainty the correct descriptor? Is anxiousness more accurate? Does speaking openly about it invite our continued ruin? Are we simply growing older? Is language itself a trap? Is language itself a trap? Is language itself a trap?

*

The president appears on television almost every night now. Never a large man physically, he now appears to be shrinking.

*

A small industry grows up around our safety in these uncertain times. It grows the way we might imagine a mountain growing, or an ocean rising in the cold shadow of a retreating glacier, or the heavy curtain of lava bearing down on the village below. It’s hard to tell which. It’s possible that for a long time we haven’t known what we were doing. This thought is comforting, in a way.

*

Mrs. Lally has disappeared.

*

Vast clouds drift over vast salt flats which themselves begin to drift into lawns, lanes of traffic. Small gatherings are held almost every night now. People take off their shoes and slip out of their houses to convene with neighbors after the children are tucked into bed and told to go to sleep. The adults speak in low tones in the kitchens and living rooms, their socks wet with dew.

*

My youngest daughter tugs at my pant leg and asks if imprisoning subjectivity destroys the concept of an objective reality through which we experientially forge said subjective thought and thus destroys also the potential to necessarily collaborate and solve the grave problems that now threaten us.

Must we suffer in isolation? she asks. What problems, sweetie? I say.

 

 

/bio: Brad Liening is the author of Ghosts and Doppelgangers (Lowbrow, 2011) and he helps edit InDigest Magazine. http://bradliening.blogspot.com