down dark/the new Iphone/death as a mistress

What's that shit down dark, down deep, that shit that keeps me half-present in all of the most present situations? The stupid haunted shit that has me with a parachute ready to jump out of anything any minute no matter how relevant/fulfilling/positive? That's how they should brand the iPhone -- escape life constantly. Too negative? Fine, fucker, but test it -- see if that shit resonates with your core audience. Marketing relevance, dear reader, may be more questionable as I age out of a traditional target demographic and into something more appropriate for the subject of a late Saul Bellow novel, some paralyzed fucker midlife who can't get up off his couch and no one cares. The new IPhone X... this one's for you, middle aged douchebag. Yes, the new IPhone, and when all else fails you can chuck it at a window to ease the defenestrative process ahead. But more a comic defenestration really, something out of Vineland. Not South Jersey Vineland, I know you were wondering. But what is that shit down dark? On the most fundamental level it's that I'm in recovery and I've been trying hard to do the next right thing and yet only doing that sometimes on a good day and telling myself I don't need the basic supports of recovery. Yesterday I finally hit a meeting and it was wonderful -- it was a bunch of smart struggling people saying every single thing I needed to hear. and it stays here. here here. and for weeks prior the only little god shots I would get (above and beyond my daughter's wide and beautiful eyes, my son's humor, my wife and son's riffing humor) would be if I ran into a friend of Bill on the street, and how quick could I get out of that? (The denizens of this mystic place assault you without warning. You face: 3 well meaning travelers. Turns tail and flees.) Some part of me wants to live forever, some part of me holds out for the requisite improvements in technology to see it through ad infinitum. Some other part has begun to understand more the circle of life -- that i'm passing energy and love to these kids who can carry it forward better than I ever could. To the extent that I'm willing to accept death it's as a mistress, a sultry and cold and impossible mistress emerging in teasing glimmers over the decades ahead. i'll know her better by then -- i'll see her handiwork on others, be forced to admire it, be forced to accept it. And when my time comes, I want that last conversation to be erotic (yes, by that point, we realize, in the best outcome I'm demented off my head and like 108 years old and no more capable of eros than i am of drinking my own pureed dinner). But again, assuming the improvements in technology, maybe I've still got a brain, still got language... And the closing conversation is a long one, by turns breathless on both sides, and my final acceptance of it is with sharp teeth on neck, is with a smiling exhale into the pulsating dark... That's how they should brand the new Iphone. With Siri emerging from the shadows, scythe in hand, erotic, sharp-toothed, lithe and smiling, pale and whispering. And that delicious ending bite and what I thought was some masterpiece of erotic poetry whispered in my dying ear was I realize too late, her saying, "I'm sorry Ben, something went wrong, can you try again?"

HELLO WORLD

They're digging for frozen mastodons and dinoDNAforfailsafethemeparks but instead deep in a block of bored suburb ice the crew unearths a fullyformeddaresayrotundrobust 21st century man. He's freezegripping a remote and a laptop and a halfate pint of ice cream. They shrug and continue the search deeper down. The attention-crazed slob awakens, sluffs off the ice dregs and continues on his pintmission. The remote still works bygub but the television is now far too advanced for comprehension. Fkit he takes up jogging. Sprints to the 7-11 saintsbepraised still open for ice cream. Jogsicecreamhuffspuffswalkscrawls back to the couch. Laptop still with smidge of life! Slob types: 10 PRINT HELLO WORLD! World complies (nightlit version). Electric nightbirds all alit and stuff on frozen branches. Moog chirps. Sound waves everywhere, echoing, cancelling. Good townsfolk using torches merely for ceremonial lighting. Out there there's a little girl who doesn't know yet she's our daughter, our kid's mei-mei. Out there the spring stuff's dying to happen, is starting to happen. Out there in the helloed world there's that little girl poised to type: 20 PRINT HELLO BACK! 30 GOTO 10. IloveIlikeI'llbemorepresent, I swear. I'll stop hiding out in radio silence, stop hoping the world stays still, instead hopehelpmakeitagoodspinningone for you and you and you and youse.