It’ll be a fairytale, they told her when they met her. Her mom, especially, she said: “I’m one who knows! You are aware, of course, that Father is a debtor, and so you have to, even if you hold your nose!”
And Father added, him not wishing to upset her: “My princess, love will come eventually; it grows. From what I’ve heard, the man is sharp, a real go-getter, and loves his fashion, he’s at all the fashion shows!”
The princess heard, of course, you can’t avoid the chatter and though ecstatic when the Emperor proposed, Life’s not a fairytale, she wrote them in her letter, expressed in verses, as the princess hated prose.
When royals marry, some for worse, and some for better, You’ve heard of some of these, and certainly of those For it is surely a completely different matter, when it’s the empress that’s the one who has no clothes.
Chrysanthemum lit gently by the moon, its petals basking in her eerie glow. Oh, Mistress of the Night, don’t leave so soon. No, let the hourglass sand suspend its flow,
so I can sit here, by the window sill, and capture it with my imperfect brush. Stay there and shine, be absolutely still, while I attempt to suade the purple, lush,
imperiously self-important bloom, to grace this eager canvas with its shape, so others, too, can place it in their room, and find in it a moment of escape,
a moment when the Mistress of the Night engulfs you too in gentle, holy light.
If writing plays a significant part in your life, this cliche is familiar:
No one wants to write. Everyone wants to have written.
Repeated by numerous notable authors, George R.R. Martin among them, and most often attributed to Dorothy Parker, though in fact originating earlier still, it’s a cute, clever explanation for the scourge of writer’s block that affects nearly everyone who’s ever tried to put a sentence on a piece of paper or Gorilla Glass.
The reverse (or is it inverse…?) sentiment is expressed less often, but is older and surely truer — how many of us have confidently chimed in on a movie scene that we’ve never seen — I remember doing that in high school, or wax rhapsodically in proper social primate fashion on classics which we’ve never come close to starting, let alone finishing? (Don’t punish me for skipping Crime & Punishment, at least I’ve read War & Peace, French paragraphs included)
Our ever-shortening attention spans are partially at fault, but there’s something else at work here as well, exacerbated by sites such as Medium or Substack: we get on them to be read, not to read, and while some of us break out and get larger followings, most of us can’t escape the feeling of the circle-jerk, especially when one sees the quite common, breathless “let’s follow each other and spread the word” Substack messages.
No, we don’t want to read any of these other missives. We click if the bait is sufficiently tasty, and then rush through to the summary. No amount of site gamification (e.g., paying for thirty seconds) can make us slow down enough to dwell on any purported wisdom therein. We didn’t come here for that.
We came here to have someone read us, not to read them.
The faded tombstone reads: sic transit gloria, a maxim best experienced when etched. The granite tries to puncture my euphoria, as if the dead are seeking to, hands stretched,
to prove me wrong: no, you won’t live forever. You’ll turn to dust like all of us below, no matter how important or how clever, You won’t succeed in getting time to slow,
much less to stand. You think yourself a pharaoh? Like all the ones before who’d tried their hand at bending the direction of time’s arrow and slowing the relentless falling sand?
It lies, this faded, worn, decrepit stone. I know, because the story is my own.
“So, how did it go today?” Johnny took another swig of the Corona before carefully landing the bottle back between the bowls of chips and dips on the coffee table. He dipped a stale Dorito into a dangerously dark quac. “Any luck?”
A satisfying cymbal crash drew his attention back to the large screen TV in front of them, where Mike’s orc was writhing on the ground, felled by an enemy’s sword, said enemy performing a triumphant dance, no doubt to be shared on TikTok.
“Ugh!” Dejected, Mike dropped the controller and threw himself back on their living room couch. “Nothing is fucken working today.” He pretended not to hear Johnny’s question. “Let’s just watch something.”
Johnny used the remote to flip to their ad-supported Netflix account. “WIN EVERY FIGHT IN YOUR GAME” glared across the screen. “They caught you? How?” He wouldn’t let go. “I thought the game chat moderator gig was a shoo-in.” He couldn’t quite hide the irritation in his voice at his unemployed roommate. “I told you, come work with me at Uber Eats.”
Mike made a face. “Like you’re so safe. Amazon drones are taking a share, and you know it. Plus, wait until Optimus finally launches, Tesla is going to be making these door-to-door.”
“Dude, at least I’m working!” Seeing Mike’s face, Johnny immediately regretted saying it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it, honest. I know you’re trying. So what happened? How did they catch you? Was it the volume?”
The gig had said “Chat Moderator AI agent wanted.” Mike, who’d play on multiple screens and his phone, and maintain a half dozen chats simultaneously, thought he could handle it.
Mike shook his head. “It was sooo stupid. I thought I was doing great, but they kicked me off after an hour.” He grabbed his own Corona, drinking half the bottle before putting it back down. “Said that I wasn’t the first one attempting it, but their AI figured me out… It was the stupid dash.”
“What?” Johnny didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“The stupid em dash,” Mike said. “I guess I’ll know better next time. But they said in an hour’s worth of chats, I hadn’t used it once. That’s how they knew, fuckers… What are we going to watch?”
Johnny shrugged, looking back at the screen, which was showing the last of a three-minute ad stint.
I wake up in the Land That Time Remembers. No living fossils here, except for me. The fireplace’s gently dying embers are fake: electric is the place to be.
My windows open up to shiny vistas: Utopias, each itching to be real. The coffee’s great, the neighborhood baristas delivering according to their deal,
and so the Keurig rests, although the Roomba is hard at work on every fleck of dust. What’s after breakfast, yoga, run, or Zumba? Alexa will soon tell me what I must
to keep it off — so thankful for Ozempic, and of the side effects, I’ve had no trace. It’s surely time for one more “now and then” pic. And this time, both the penis and the face.
It’s strange indeed, this land, but like as not, much better than the Land That Time Forgot.
