Chapter 3.
What's the Holdup?
Herman got stuck in a hubris, well why not? Humans were the ones alone, perhaps in the universe thinking about thinking. He was human. He just knew it in his bones, a self evident applied engine of coherence. Human was the mold his goo hardened into. The goo also common amongst his fellow mortals subliminal in essence most often expressed as presumption, a pre and post catastrophic interlude taken as granted to last their whole lifetime through. Herman read daily and heard of the tragedies everywhere around happening all the time. But he lived fingers crossed in the last place any of that would ever happen. So far anyway life was unfolding as his Ontario and Manitoba public school english classes outlined for him so long ago, from the fog into the mist, strung along earth ground events weighted by our sorrow. Herman stood corrected from his place in a story unfolding, conforming to the automatic, blended in the blender. If the universe suddenly emptied all around all at once Herman could still be here, of this he had no doubt. Whatever then appeared before him, he hoped it came with lunch.
Stars pepper the darkness along the perimeter, the great cosmic divide.
Herman parked his butt as much as he could in a thin veneer of being-space from a moderated world view aware of issues circulating in the imagine-o-sphere.
He had to snarl to hold his place in line and growl to get on the next up deck, actually bear down and strain for this shot at a mortal existence. He'd been here before and would be again but he had progressed and there really was no rush. The always on turned on once, the on and off within it.
Time he thought for his fourth act trot cross the planks, then an epilogue, he hoped and a coda. Herman let the days become nameless, really he said it's Wednesday?, the last syllable rises in pitch, it feels like it's the weekend. He zeroed in on the kitchen calendar daily, so that part of him, still alive and well, just out of the room once he's centered then plumb bob smack dab in the middle, he floats off into his pillow of time. Plummet and bob, plummet and bob, Herman twists the knob then nothing, a silence, he listens.
Everyday is like any other day, a little longer toward the summer and shortening toward the fall. Then in a wobbly come around the cycle starts again, the circle never ends.
Herman thinks that's clever enough to put down on paper but it's not clever so he doesn't. Spare us all, he prays to his god, from the the long winded and also, he adds, noisy eaters.
Wake up. You are living in an endtime all the time. It has ever been so. The absolute end time may be witnessed from behind a very thick plate of protective transparency. Very chilly on the other side very quiet. Then, let's imagine, a nap and debrief. Then line us up what needs it. And a line for those that think it best. Then those that sort of flutter off and them that won't wake up.
The portal in is the portal out. The box built. The stage set. There you are.
Herman led astray and had been led astray. If the place to be is really here then the perfect approach is the quickest, the shortest. But time is built for dragging your feet, honing restraint and exploring.
Herman's Dreamtime Exhibition #3 digital image Ross Miller