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Clint McCown Modern Cartography |
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In my teens I would have made a good evangelist, juiced on hormones, wiry and determined, loud enough to pitch my voice to the rafters, dumb enough to tell a stranger what to think. And I still see hints of revelation and rapture in the way every screw untightens itself over time, rising against
gravity. But I’ve also seen those photos of distant nebulae shrouded in pink fluorescent gasses, looking like membranes from the delivery-room floor;
misshapen galaxies that may have vanished eons before the first postcard arrived. There’s no telling what’s out there. We’re alive somehow in a field of shifting coordinates, and I’m too torn between architectures to cheerlead for anybody’s collection plate. Gone keeps coming to mind. Even locally: good
health is just a delaying tactic. My father used to say his knees were killing him, but that wasn’t what killed him. You know how it is, a thing gradually takes on weight, then the load shifts and suddenly you’re jack-knifed on the highway. Every image is a story and every story answers a question. The early Choctaws shaped a legend of great ragged mountains in the west, calling them the backbone of the world. That’s fine with me, land or sky, geography is always the best compass point for myth. But I take things more personally. Here’s a my friend Russell went uptown for a game of chess and got stabbed instead. Here’s a my friend Rick’s heart gave out. Life is life sometimes. And every story raises a question. Are pivotal moments inevitable? If David’s aim had failed him, would Goliath have just stood there until the boy got it right? Maybe not, and that’s how fragile history can
be. We each have our own mysteries to fall back on. I’d like to know what happened to all those silver graduation pens. I’d like to know the last safe place on earth. And what if the thing you’re most afraid of is sleep? What if you never make anyone proud? What if we aren’t dead until all the chaos we contributed has run its course, which means not anytime soon? What if logic goes out the window even in a room with no windows? Getting the facts right is never enough. What if love turns out to be a snapping
turtle? Do we pray for thunder? The trouble is my ideas are all over the map, and the map’s been in the glove compartment too
long. New roads have been laid out, and I’m left with limitations:
I was a grown man before I knew concrete gave off heat as it hardened. I used to yearn for bosses to thank me. If there’s an etcetera involved, I don’t want to hear
it. Nevertheless, I have beliefs: that civilization wasn’t born in a teacup; that no species can rule the world without a good skeletal system; that there’s more to contemplation’s bottom-line than here we are at last. You think you need an afterlife? Okay, but what if it’s a ransacked closet in the back room of a burgled house in a bad
neighborhood? What if it’s a rusty bucket of discontinued paint? What if it’s the same old voice saying, Well, what did you expect? |
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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