In the Bureaucracy of Meanings

Yes, there she was again. No one understood but the three of them. Not exactly anyway. Who could fathom such things in a place such as this. This, this place which is a bit like the old one but without all the heartaches and nuisances. People come and go you know.

There was this fellow you see. I think he delved into Shinto or something equally grand and unimaginably de rigeur, pertaining to the hobby-horse context you know. I contacted him and he planted in my mind an image of a teak-wood deck. Yes, a deck. There is no thing more pleasant than a deck with nice people sitting upon their deck chairs and embellished by their very own late-in-coming happiness. Nothing.

I don't know why it bothered me so much but it did. Well, not bothered really but intrigued to the point of not wanting to really know much more at all about the two of them. Smiling, somehow practical but not really frugal or to the point of being exceptionally well rounded in anything but this Shinto stuff. It was so completely satisfying to know this about that fellow that it bordered on what one might call cynicism. Predictable. Not the outskirts of reality at all but appearing to be so only it was too late for such inimicable conversions to such things as Shinto or even the laid back cuisine that must have been just steaming itself to pieces in the sparse but richly appointed kitchen. I can't really explain it but that is how it appeared to be in that frame at least. Other frames could have contained similar examples or maybe not. It did not matter.

One frame is all one needs to calculate how much expertise goes into styling oneself into what oneself believes one already is, should be, would be or has to be in order to feel what some must call satisfaction and others call happiness.

I think I'll call him Stuart and she can be his Donna.

As always, we can discuss things naturally or the way we always did before, like a team. Life is full of things accidental but only because the ignorant cannot read between the lines or to the end of the page. Those ones do not last when the first foothills come into view. There is a place to rest there if you like or we can call it Pirtleville. Pirtleville is as nice a place as any in a large swathe of desert full of such places as Cascabel and Tuba City. A couple of houses here and there, a horse maybe and some broken down cars is always a must in a macabre arrangement such as that. It's a nightmare really. Alone and nothing to do but work on feeling a little less so.

It was a long time ago but if I remember right, he smiled just a little too often in my direction. It could be my imagination but I hardly think it matters after all these desperate years, to come to that sort of conclusion. It was a fill in the blank kind of relationship really. No one got hurt except when they wanted to. And then they did...like a bunch of pre-programmed foolhards but lacking the necessary profundity to get really mad about something. It was really rather fake but all the same, looked kind of real to the outsiders. Oh...the outsiders showed up like they do in certain episodes found in certain pieces which I am relatively sure no one can remember. But I can. Pull the curtains aside and say supercilious things like I told you so. And I did that too. Folks like us are good predictors you know. It is actually quite frightening to live like this. Dangerous even. Almost got me erased from the ongoing plot at least three times.

Yes, we can call it Pirtleville. Few paint scenes like that anymore. It just doesn't pay very well to be honest.