David Gilbert ~ The Singed Hair of the Commentariat 

  1. More Days Than Nights

 Tiresias sits alone chew­ing gum like Lolita. Her dog, Little St. James, sleeps on her lap. Even though her implants are hurt­ing, she sol­diers on and will tease the dis­as­ter out of the moment.  The oth­er pas­sen­gers have drawn pic­tures of their gen­i­tals, know­ing their best lives await them on the island.  In an abun­dance of cau­tion, agents storm the plane.  They col­lect the crayons and draw­ings, then throw the evi­dence into the wine-dark sea.

  1. That’s a Great Question

The lawyers hud­dle togeth­er hold­ing their briefs. The size of the mas­sage table is not con­test­ed.  In her squeaky voice, Tiresias claims to love the sin­ner but hates the sin. The inter­ro­ga­tion of sin is a show tri­al for sys­temic ask­ism, she claims in a voice slow­ly regain­ing its husky core. God is in the hands of angry sinners.

  1. Truckers Know Where to Eat

Tiresias hired me after read­ing my Craigslist ad. She is a world-class prophet and I am a monolo­gist, edi­tor, and per­son­al train­er.  On first meet­ing her, she claimed that “it is what it is” depends on the def­i­n­i­tion of what “is is,” and how it inter­acts with truth’s stand­ing among all com­pet­ing truths. Words mat­ter full stop.

  1. Plantar Fasciitis on the Mormon Trail

Our work arrange­ment allowed me time to work on my writ­ing when I was not march­ing around the island in sup­port of “is is,” which was with­out a strate­gic pur­pose.  If she was virtue sig­nal­ing, she did not iden­ti­fy the virtue and no one was watch­ing, an over­whelm­ing yet often ignored dif­fi­cul­ty. By the time we left the island, I was exhaust­ed from drag­ging our suit­cas­es through the sand.

  1. Elvis Stole More Than Music

Tiresias chal­lenged the authen­tic­i­ty of my refer­rals. In my defense, I said the “is what it is” of “is is” has emerged out of the “it” fac­tor of  evo­lu­tion­ary fit­ness and finds itself in the bina­ry of is and “is is.”  It accu­rate­ly repli­cates the per­for­ma­tive hip rolling of gamey (gamed) gametes when they are medi­at­ed by the “is is” in its dystopi­an prop­a­ga­tion, which is unabashed­ly pro-life in its embrace of lite rock.  The decline or absence of the “it” fac­tor in humans results in sub­jects being put down for bad hips. Elvis, for exam­ple, would have been euth­a­nized if he had­n’t had a time­ly pass­ing on the can. This is not to be con­fused with eugen­ics and the sperm sam­ples giv­en by tech moguls in or on their gift bags.

  1. Yet Another Narrative — Yeah No!

The claim (with­out evi­dence) that Tiresias uses a teleprompter strapped to a deus ex machi­na is deep-state dis­in­for­ma­tion, a tun­nel efflu­ent. She says we won’t give up on the visu­al, even if appear­ances van­ish. The cre­ation of dis­tant plan­ets will be aban­doned with­out lib­er­tar­i­an fund­ing. She wants to use the tun­nels to rehab as we devel­op new sense organs that will grow out of our faces and help us nego­ti­ate the col­lapse of the sense world.  I’m not always sure what cri­sis Tiresias thinks she is address­ing. Her range of emo­tions is lim­it­ed. She may be par­o­dy­ing my ideas which I rethink dai­ly to stay ahead of self-censure.

  1. Moral Panic

The moral arc of his­to­ry is an instant clas­sic.  This is a claim Tiresias makes but then admits that she is arc-pho­bic.  Another moral arc lives rent-free in ark sim­u­lacra and its pub­lic rela­tions empire.  Yet anoth­er moral arc bends toward a bil­lion­aire and one thou­sand clap­ping robots.  All known arcs end in swamps.  When the swamps are drained, the har­vest­ed con­tents will be laid out upon a table.  As such, they can­not be iden­ti­fied or walked back to the right side of his­to­ry and its thrum of chis­eled flourishing.

  1. Debbie Does it on the Grassy Knoll

Tiresias wants to busk in a glob­al­ist tun­nel. She plans to use her prophet­ic mate­r­i­al for songs of protest, even if they are no longer time­ly.  She has a gui­tar, but the few chords she knows do not work with her bois­ter­ous atonal­i­ty.  Unfortunately, she has the wrong idea about life in the tun­nels after the ped­erasts were dri­ven out.  They are now a safe place to raise a fam­i­ly, attend church, and shop in strip malls.   I’ve lived in the tun­nels and only left to post Craigslist ads and check my writ­ing sub­mis­sions.   If Tiresias hadn’t respond­ed to my ad, I would still be shred­ding in the tun­nels, drainage permitting.

  1. Coughing During the Requiem

The tun­nels encour­age the use of gar­ish nouns where they are freely recit­ed in rit­u­als of prod­uct place­ment.  The nouns are kept out of reach of the chat­ter­ing class and coastal elites.   The crit­i­cism that gar­ish nouns sup­pu­rate on the sen­tence’s sur­face is a bad faith inter­sec­tion (and result) of is and “is is.” As the pro­duc­tion of nouns moved from our heart­land to child-labor coun­tries, prayer was reclas­si­fied as work but has yet to pro­duce a pay­check.   Noun prof­its have paid for ginor­mous yachts the length of a work­ing liar’s nose. With the launch­ing of the yachts, the tide rose and sank all the boats fer­ry­ing the dead home from their temp work. The eulo­gies for the drowned are fraught with lan­guage cribbed from the pub­lic rela­tions work done for oil spills. After lis­ten­ing to hours of eulo­gy on YouTube, Tiresias con­cludes that when a temp work­er is dead, why say anything?

  1. Totally

The appre­ci­a­tion of Tiresias’ work is long over­due.  The Book Award for her tell-all, “At the End of the Day,” is spon­sored by a shad­owy front group.  Tiresias is thrilled but con­fess­es she does not remem­ber writ­ing a book. I assure her that a text slip­ping from mem­o­ry is a com­mon occur­rence, espe­cial­ly for those suf­fer­ing from the trau­ma of prophe­cy and its fact check­ers.  The book will give her the acclaim and audi­ence she deserves, even if there is a prob­lem with its authenticity.

  1. The Banker’s Contrition

I accom­pa­ny Tiresias to the cer­e­mo­ny and use the booz­ing hour to schmooze and present my aes­thet­ic the­o­ry even though it is a work in progress. When we are well into the drinks,  I tout the alchem­i­cal place­ment of a sin­gle bis­cuit of hard­tack between mir­rors and ab machines for the unpre­dictable reac­tion that leads to pre­serv­ing indi­vid­ual tal­ent and the sup­port of per­son­al­i­ties.  Of course, many tra­di­tion­al cre­ative prac­tices still have val­ue.  They are avail­able at your region­al MFA fran­chise, staffed by the writ­ers and agents attend­ing the ban­quet.  Scholarships are available.

  1. Jug Jug The Zoom Call

At the end of the ban­quet, I’m asked to accept the posi­tion of hard­tack czar, a posi­tion charged with unpack­ing the hard­tack hack, a drunk­en play on words.  I pro­pose work­shops for mem­oir writ­ing with­out hav­ing a cur­ricu­lum in mind.  Until then, I’m pre­pared to land, lean, and pro­pose an equi­table and time­ly feed­ing sched­ule for all hier­ar­chi­cal spaces that have suc­cumbed to the noise of infi­nite apolo­gies, a job for AI.   One robot blam­ing, anoth­er apol­o­giz­ing, as long as there are batteries.

13.   Nutrient Barn

Used as a sup­ple­ment, hard­tack stopped the voic­es of dead authors mum­bling in the white noise that is con­scious­ness as I know it. This is not meant to be yet anoth­er the­o­ry of con­scious­ness.  Rather,  it’s what it is like to be a con­text influ­encer with unlim­it­ed nar­ra­tives col­lid­ing in a safe envi­ron­ment.  As a cre­ative process, it will mature into a restora­tive brand and lifestyle. Tiresias loves it!

  1. One Hundred Percent

The next lev­el nar­ra­tive thanks you for your ser­vice in restor­ing the low-hang­ing fruit for those suf­fer­ing from answerism, which drove Tiresias out of Ibiza.  She worked as a DJ in a club spin­ning discs and moan­ing for mul­ti­ple choice. Her undo­ing was con­fus­ing riff­ing for prophe­cy.  This led to her fir­ing and years of unre­solved wan­der­ing until my employ­ment and our relo­cat­ing to Los Angeles, a har­row­ing jour­ney through the urban tun­nels.  Above ground, Tiresias is keen on rein­vent­ing her­self and work­ing on her abs.  I’ve stopped try­ing to steel­man her infat­u­a­tion with celebri­ties. I’m more con­cerned with remain­ing employed despite not hav­ing been paid.  Tiresias claims she hasn’t been paid and is dis­traught after learn­ing that her book was pulped and her award was a sham.

  1. Neocons in Spin Class

We rent­ed an apart­ment in a black site with a Starbucks and a tun­nel entrance manned by beefy guys at the vel­vet rope. The apart­ment has a water bed, a kitch­enette, but not win­dows. Tiresias likes the heavy met­al sound pumped into the units all hours of the day. In this dark atmos­phere, we tried to teach our dog to bark rather than moan. When the overde­ter­mined moan­ing gets too loud, our neigh­bor pounds on the wall and tells us to stop watch­ing porn.The man­ag­er has acknowl­edged that the dog’s moan­ing masks the mis­un­der­stood moan­ing from the work­rooms, where the agents gath­er intel in live shows.        

16. Instrumental Reason

The bot­tom falling out of a buck­et is a non-event. Are there few­er minds than selves?  Who has the train­ing and enough moral high ground to mon­i­tor false flag events such as gen­der reveal?  Tiresias plans to use these tropes in a TED talk, which we work on obses­sive­ly over smooth­ies and giant bags of the­ater pop­corn.  When I’m tired of her talk­ing and nag­ging, I take her for a stim treat­ment.  She doesn’t mind that the car bat­tery and cables aren’t san­i­tized after ses­sions with the sweaty and skanky club mem­bers. She loves the class and leaves believ­ing she is tied to a mast in a per­fect storm. The rope burns on her arms have no expla­na­tion and are often mis­tak­en for self-abuse.  This is not incon­sis­tent with a prophet’s pro­file but it’s embar­rass­ing when we have spinach sal­ads in Santa Monica with her wound­ed Popeye fore­arms flop­ping on the café table.   The mad prophet act is hard to dress and hard­er to monetize.

17.   Oddyseus Does the Downward Dog

Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, Tiresias insists on using a gram­mar-check­ing pro­gram on the text of her TED talk. An end to her tor­tured syn­tax is near. She will become a pub­lic fig­ure and sub­ject to ridicule and can­cel­la­tion. I scour her ado­les­cent mes­sag­ing for offen­sive posts, skid marks, and self-harm rants. We believe in this pro­gram and AI’s poten­tial for prophe­cy. Tiresias begs me to stay even though we’ve had dis­agree­ments.  She needs me to find her favorite hot yoga stu­dio in the tun­nels.  If we become des­ti­tute, I know how to set up a tent. As a ges­ture of loy­al­ty, I agree to work as a barista in our Starbucks until she is paid for her TED talk.

  1. Friends of the Library

Agents have bugged our apart­ment in their dogged pur­suit of the apoc­ryphal Book of Names, believed to be held by some­one from the Little St. James dias­po­ra.  As a ploy, they express inter­est in my Book of Nouns and offer to pub­lish it as a chap­book.  They believe I will even­tu­al­ly give them the names, if not the book. Even though every run­away in the tun­nels has a chap­book, I hope they will pub­lish mine, now that I’m above ground.

  1. A Primer Mover Clogged with Body Parts

The week of the TED talk, Tiresias sur­prised me with a cache of dick pics she claims were tak­en on the island.  She will not say how she got them or if we are safe hav­ing them.  One pic­ture has been blown up and the pix­els reveal a map for the Second Coming of Christ.  Tiresias says the imme­di­a­cy of Chrit’s return has been con­firmed by her con­tacts in the Pentecostal prophe­cy world.  The return is always in the works, which is half the fun.  But this time the return is a sure thing.  

  1. Pump the Brakes

We move to a bou­tique hotel across the alley from anoth­er black site where the escha­to­log­i­cal fire escape is bolt­ed to the brick wall.  Tiresias keeps watch as she does yoga on the hotel bal­cony. Her asanas are los­ing form and our cred­it cards are maxed. We can no longer order take­out.   We are liv­ing off the com­ple­men­tary fruit and pas­tries from the lob­by, but I haven’t seen Tiresias this hap­py since she climbed on the cabana roof at Little St. James and held forth on deprav­i­ty.  The prince was sweat­ing like a pig.  Fornication stopped for a moment then com­menced with vigor.

  1. That’s Another Great Question

Christ climbs out of a win­dow onto the fire escape, wav­ing to us. Tiresias runs across the alley with a hotel chair.  She shame­less­ly asks Christ to lis­ten to her TED talk.  If I can get to Christ, I’ll ask if he needs a guide for the tun­nels and a sec­re­tary to record his teach­ings as they are giv­en. I’ll advise against mir­a­cles — they’re for rubes at coun­ty fairs.  Tiresias uses the chair to climb to the bal­cony where Christ is wait­ing.   There is a pool and bar on the roof. Christ may be an agent after the book, but I have to fol­low. Happy hour is approach­ing.  I hope he has some cash.  Hold on tight.

~

David Gilbert has pub­lished sto­ries and poet­ry in Mississippi Review Online, Blip, New World Writing, First Intensity, In Posse, Caliban, Screens and Tasted Parallels, and oth­er mag­a­zines.  He has coedit­ed with Karl Roeseler two col­lec­tions of sto­ries:  Here Lies and 2000andWhat? He is the author of four books and eBooks of sto­ries: I Shot the Hairdresser, Overland, A Third Bridge, and Central Casting.  He has also authored Five Happiness, an obstruc­tion-dri­ven narrative.