Sanguine

"The clock indicates the hour but what does enternity indicate?"         Whitman     Imagine, being told cubism isn't painting. That     Beardsley didn't die at 26, unheralded as a boy genius     or Corot didn't come to Paris after all.     Imagine, The Louvre without a rooftop, the     intelligentsia sitting down to a ragged table     surrounded by sawdust intellects, Proust not being     able to write his name.     Now that's splendour    -    that's in-depth "feeling".     That's emotion to pull your socks or catch the bus on     a brittle day.     It's easy. Try to "feel" the event. It's 1896. People are     perturbed (or so we are told) because the century's     getting old. Time's rushing by. There's an alarm clock     set to buzz at eternity's gate, Midnight 1900.     In probing the malaise that hit Europe circa 1881,     psychologists would have us believe the world grew     despondent. Despondent because a whole hundred     year cycle was about to elapse; despondent because     life itself was running out. Those poor Edwardians!     Poor lovers of the elegant, the late Victorians, belle     epoquers. A penny for their thoughts when     confronting a Picasso without the vantage of     hindsight.     If Europe and its child bride, America, grew uneasy in     the declining years of the past century. How then our     era? (These same psychologists pinpoint people's     spirits rise in the opening years of a new century.)     Now we're poised for the "really big one": the     cataclysm. What a boon for the absurdists. Peaches     and cream    -    not just one century dangling but the     culmination of ten.     There's even a word for it. Millenium, I'll say it again.     Better yet, a mere two millenia since Christ's     departure, we are poised again on the threshold. Half     & half. Like a party twelve pack    -    six of one, half     dozen of the other.     Remember. when contemplating your ennui or     malaise (whichever word is currently most     fashionable), you can hardly figure for less. Eternity's     given to you, my peers, a singular opportunity. And     from what we know of the 20th century. it should be a     grand slam homer. Already the clean-up batter is     staged for action. The bat looms over the plate.     There's so much bad news it's enough to make an     optimist greedy. After all, with this much horror there     is caused only for danse macabre celebrations.     1985. Only 15 years left before the digital watch rolls     over. before the cannon with the flower pops out.     Those forward looking voyeurs of hundred years     back must have felt cheated when mentally reversing     their lot with the denizens of the 20th century.     Page 13     In 1885, you could only gripe about the aging process     of a single tenth of one component. In 1985, you've got     that and the Millenia. Trendy things like atmospheric     pressure, negetive ions, adverse body rhythms and a     welter of other pseudo impressive formula abound to     help out in your witchhunt.     Surprise. 1066 saw comets, omens. signs coded in     stars speeding ecross the sky    -    a host of ditlurbing.     natural phenomena to boot. The vigilant saw meteors     at Caesar's, death.     The National Enquirer predicts Australia will break     into the sea. Californians will be upstaged. The     futurists will all need waterwings. The Club of Rome     hints the next years auger more chilling holocausts.     Everywhere, survival scenarios proliferate. Pro-lifers     will rearrange proverbial deck chairs on the     Titanic. Soothsayers will become all the rage as we     plot myriad escapes. A year's supply of canned goods,     anyone?     1885 has a lot to teach us. Umbrellas, a gentle ennui     like fine mist compounded by traffic in & out of the     Moulin Rouge. Perhaps a surfeit of absinthe helps just     as its equivalent does today. "Cheer up, there will     always be an England" doesn't sound so bad after all.     And there's always that one recruiting poster, "What     did you do in the Great War, daddy"?