The Sunshine Bores The Daylights Out Of Me

I’d ask you to wipe that smirk off your face. This is a serious matter.

This world is plunging further into darkness.

Okay, so maybe I’m being overly dramatic, but I can barely hold my head up. It’s damned hard to hold your head up when you’re living in a crawl space.

Ordinarily in a situation like this I would warn you: Here comes another stream of incoherence, but at the moment there’s something you can perhaps explain to me.

The other night, when I was out walking with the visiting black angel, I kept seeing these neighborhood watch signs that read, “If I Don’t Call the Police, My Neighbor Will.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does that not sound like a complete cop-out to you? Doesn’t that sound like passing the fucking buck? It’s so American, yet I’ve no doubt it’s supposed to be seen as some kind of deterrent to criminals. Why would it be, though?

Because, look, that sign is logically fucked. It’s a shrug of indifference, or at least a smug acknowledgment that, hey, don’t sweat it; somebody else will take care of it.

Let’s suppose, for instance, that each of us assumes the position of the ‘I’ on that sign, that each of us takes that attitude. Do you see what I’m trying to say? If up and down the block each neighbor automatically assumes that his neighbor will call the police, then of course nobody calls the police.

Maybe, come to think of it, that would be for the best after all. No sense in getting messed up in something that’s none of our business in the first place.

In the end, what it comes down to is appetite–

the enforced idleness, the solitude:

nothing, hectares of nothing, litanies of nothing on microfiche.

—August Kleinzahler, from “Epistle XIV”