The Wages Of Pascal's Wager

--I’m in a sentimental mood….Okay, now that’s over with.

--Wow. Glad that didn’t last.

--Halfway away, halfway home.

--Like the girl who stole a stole.

--She acted alone?

--Dreamed alone. That’s all we know for sure.

--The ecstatics declare things for us.

--Sure they do. I saw them declaring. It wasn’t much less than genius being declared upon entering a foreign land, a place one wishes at least to not throw up in.

--Glad the old movies are showing though. The same old movies. It’s reassuring. It’s eventful.

--I have a great love for the old movies, for all the old movies I know.

--Leave it to the cinema. Always doing old and wonderful things.

--I who have nothing. I who am so utterly alone. I who am no one. Watch. Watch. Watch. Dancing away. Watch. That’s about it.

--It’s gravitational.

--How so?

--From somebody who is way too interested in his own self, well, let’s just say…well, it’s heavy.

--There are mountains. There are gaps between episodes of galactorrhea in the unwed mothers. If we can get a grip on our own sandy sadness, if we can trash the sleepy bags ‘neath our carefully winnowed eyes, then maybe a retraction we shall get.

--Describe your first love again.

--She had scabs on her knees and her socks slid into her loafers and she could throw a football farther than any guy in class. She was a tandy kleptomaniac with short black hair and a penchant for Lucky Strikes and heliotrope.

--Always. Always you’ve got to mention heliotrope when you speak of her. I don’t understand this one bit.

--Really? I do?

--There you go. Bloated with complacency again.

--If you’re not looking for four-leaf clovers you’ll just find weeds and chaparral. One must exercise one’s sedulity at every opportunity. Squint if need be. Make an effort.

--Visions of heliotrope clouding fear and other sinister claims to fame, while you shuffle the cards of your days, inadvertently in repose.

--Really? I feel like I am always heedful of my repose.

--You’re quite borderless sometimes, you know that?

--Emulating the freewheeling dispatches from Bulgaria, that’s where my payola streams in from.

--I’m glad it comes from somewhere. Still, I think we should hold off on the champagne for now.

--Coffee perhaps?

--If I never sleep again. If I never sleep again. I won’t ever sleep again. My lord. My lord. I been up all night long. Don’t know what’s been wrong. Going to pull down the shades and block out the sun, and sleep, sleep, sleep, all the daylong.

--Sleeping….the day away. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong-ways up.

--Oh. Well, I don’t go in for all that music nowadays.

--You’re right. Something clever does fall by the wayside when all the mockingbirds have gone to sleep. Let your lone thoughts stir some mischief into your boredom’s coffee. Invest some quality time lifting yourself up so you won’t slip so easily back down again. Falling is easy. It’s the climb that kills off the less-than-great of us.

--Ovations come and ovations go.

--Distractions.

--Sleep, sleep, sleep, all the livelong day.

--Come home and rest your weary bones my son. Come home and be calm. Come home.

--Yesterday I thought I saw the girl of my dreams. She was riding in a taxi. A smile was all she was. A glance in the glass. She left before I could smile back.

--I am trouncing the home team.

--Gone before I could say hi or goodbye.

--I am bluffing ignorance.

--What’s left?

--Blue moons and the crumbled wrappers of eaten ice cream sandwiches.

--Make sure my bier is kept clean.

--The ones at the top will see to that. The ones who don’t get paid by the hour. The ones who run the whole show by wiggling their fingers, commanding others to do the work, while they go all-expenses-paid through life, stuffing their pockets with the gold of others’ sweaty labor.

--They’ll see to it?

--Probably not. But, there’s always a chance.

--Efficiency isn’t always the most stand-up way to wow people.

--Leave me in the dust? Well, bravo to that. Kudos and all the likes.

--Change my channel while there’s still a chance.

--A voice strained with chokes of sorrow.

--Saintly patience pays off at last, right?

--If I might melt at the sight of gallantry, well, then the stole was stolen for all the wrong reasons.

--Pass me the collection plate. I’ve got a few pennies burning a hole in my shoe.

--Death won’t spare thee.

--Fuck him then. Fuck him. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Death. Death don’t give two shits about me. Because I did not stop for him? Really? Fuck that. The horses’ heads are always towards eternity anyway.

--Kindly. We must remember, kindly, Death will still stop for you. Play chess with him all you want. It won’t matter. Nothing you think or say or do will matter. Haste is not in his nature. The carriage moves along through the centuries like days.

--And the dogs lose their bark, right?

--Weep no more, says the narcissist, and then dunks his head in the river.

--But we still have the old movies. We’ve still got plenty of reels to watch. A multitude of stock footage. Mirrors and bells. And, if we’d like, there are steam engines to go for a ride on…as far as our fantasies can take us.

--Never quite far enough.

--Oh, that’s just your blue period talking. Let’s bring in some fall colors, some shades of red even.

--Or a saxophone even. That’d pick things up.

--Paint the town burgundy.

--Even that.

--Like a break in a field of avocado trees. A clearcut in the forest of your imaginings. The old movies play on.

--The old cinema has much to say.

--We are creatures of I-don’t-care.

--We hold these falsehoods to be self-defeating.

--We run away every chance we get to split.

--Hurry, hurry, hurry. Chase that dream all around until it’s weighed down with everything you’ve got.

--We’re smart enough to be dumb about most anything.

--A musical perhaps?

--Not in rudimentary times like these.

--At the apex of her philosophic flight the attendant brand-name film critic became unmoved by all things celluloid.

--Apple core, say a lot more.

--We follow plot lines like they used to follow Jesus.

--We get too used to beginnings, middles, and ends.

--Getting used, trying not to get sued, plodding around in piddling tide pools while the sharks circle.

--Enough with all this excogitating. Express something.

--No thanks. The old movies have expressed it all already.

--All twist with no shout. It’s nothing special. I ain’t buying it. Get that pre-lachrymal tickle out of your throat.

--Ah, a life punctuated with frustration and insomnia. Build up your stamina. Hold court among blanketed morons and make your adversaries scream, “Uncle!”

--Too careful. The old movies show us how to behave.

--Tell us, you mean.

--Encourage.

--Bland meliorism preaching moderation and steadfast cooperation.

--Operating with a flying-solo attitude while bandwagon jumping.

--But still, even without the old movies, the smell of home resonates. I was onboard when the captain abandoned ship. I went for a stroll. Saw many things. My mom was driving recklessly on the freeway. The road was Astroturf. I got in a fight with my sister. She called me a fruit fly. I made the shape of ass-kicking with my hands. My personal life seemed a waste of time.

--Take yourself out to the old movies.

--A real treat. The old movies.

--Black leather jackets. Holes in the wall. Glimpses of empty slippers. Civilian casualties. Monsters roaring glossolalia at innocent victims of circumstance. Erstwhile glories turned down to simmer.

--We’re dancing around our fear while the old movies play on.

--Checkmate.

--Damn.

--Yep. Just another example of how capitalism forces us to be nice to each other.

--The dollars they pay make us give our time away.

--Helping others nonetheless. Doing something possibly beneficial…and, also, quite possibly, for the wrong reasons.

--Sometimes I think it’s a sin, when I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.

--Gordie boy?

--But of course.

--Senor pie ligero.

--The one and only.

--It takes time to catch on. For each individual to perform her task for the general good. We give so much of ourselves away, yet we don’t think of it like that. Would the bus driver drive the bus, help all these people get around, if she weren’t getting a paycheck in return?

--Buying and selling: The world going around.

--Breathing. Getting involved. Feeling lonely. Making hamburgers and French fries for hungry customers. Smoke breaks. Listless walks home late at night. Using ATMs. Finding love. Texting. Dreaming. Making jokes. A roof over the head when it rains. All paid for out of the pseudo-good-natured hauntings of our hearts.

--When all you want is for the hours to just go by, for time to just be gone, and for that bell, that magical tintinnabulation to set you free.

--Getting the least out of life. Ignoring things, letting moments escape with no chance of ever getting them back.

--And then that rather corpulent rug salesman starts whistling The Prelude from Carmen.

--All’s ill that starts sick.

--Quite.

--It is only in a moment of stillness that one can become aware of another life within one.

--To always be attentively watching.

--To discover what it means to be you.

--To go bounding out into life again.

--An interior silence behind words.

--Not grasping, only open to a fullness which is all around.

--Bad news. Bad news. It creeps through the alabaster. It murders the glassy marbles in our eyes.

--But we’ve still got Margaritaville to waste away in.

--Stay there all season. Maybe get a tattoo.

--Nah. Too permanent. Don’t you know? Everything passes. It’s all a continuum, an ongoing process that never ends. Time will take care of us all in the end.

--But there is no end.

--Sure. But still, for us, speaking from our own tiny glimpse of things, there is.

--While we blow out our flip-flops, step on pop-tops, cut our heels and have to skedaddle on back home.

--In a manner of speaking.

--Always got to mind ‘em, don’t we?

--In this case I could disagree with you less or more, agreed?

--See that? That’s me waving the world’s smallest white flag above my head.

--Oh. That’s what that is? Surrendering at last?

--At last. At long last, silence will, maybe, come to us all.

--Oh, to ponder nothing would be serene, everything portending nothing, lost in a smile, gazing langorously at forever-fleeting shapes that mean less than we’ll ever get to know.

--The old movies.

--Yes. The old movies. They’ve got it all.

--And they don’t even know it.

--Of course. That is too rare a thing for which to hope.

--Of course.