Blubberguts

I get emails from Honda. They're glad I bought one, and eager to know if I'm also glad I didn't spend the money on something else, like a degree I might actually use, or a small holiday on an unmapped island, or enough sardines and gas masks to last through what's coming. I haven't read any of these emails, only guessed what they want from their titles and first lines. I don't need to get any more involved in the life of the person they're intended for, who isn't me, who lives a few thousand miles away under a similar name and nearly identical email address. I've been sent his friend or business associate's vacation snaps, featuring a baseball stadium in China with directions and a let me know what you think when you get there. I responded saying I keep telling you people I'm not him, though Google has a little pop-up flag that insists I'm in the intended recipient. I've been invited to urgent-sounding seminars and asked what I thought of the synagogue last week. Now it's a needy car dealer and a Chinese baseball nerd. And I don't want to tell Google it's lying when it says all my messages are for me, in case this either triggers a global knowledge crisis or it says it just doesn't care, try telling someone and see if they believe we could ever make a mistake. I wonder what deluge of astonishing treats intended for me the other guy might be enjoying, while he remarks to his rabbi that his recent Honda purchase has been remarkably hassle-free.

Doubt Corral

There are a lot of Post-It notes on the wall in front of me and the wall to the left and the bit of wall that sticks out to the right. They've all got vague things written on them in capital letters and are arranged in groups in a way that's supposed to seem methodical. Behind me is the door and sometimes I leave it open when I go out so that anyone walking past can look in and think of incremental potential fulfilment and move their mental image of me a bit closer to their mental statue of Winston Churchill. One of the Post-Its says ELBOWS, one says RICHARD GERE, one says STOP MAKING SENSE with SENSE crossed out and JOKES written underneath. I sit down and look at them and tell myself I know what it all means and I'm really onto something and have a good haircut. There will be nothing to compare the result to so I'll be unable to think it wasn't a successful arrangement. A major breakthrough. An ivory trench. Please send me a photo or pickled head or drawing of your own system along with ten thousand letters about how it is or isn't helping.

Don't Look Now, Now, or Now Either

I'll have twelve pages of nonsense to give away at the upcoming event, but it won't be what it was because the untrusty laptop has finally died, of complications, it was a simple beast. And I am also a simple beast, and not the kind that backs anything up in any kind of regular or systematic way. So what I was preparing is not what I am now preparing, and I wonder what it'll be, and how to print it without spending more than the few chunks I have left.