Round pegs, square holes. Round pegs, square holes.
I believe in the teleological suspension of the practical. But I also believe in the the practical. You see? I'm going to dream of the world I want to live in, but here in the overground, there are things to do, matters to attend to.
Sleeping on trains and on planes is a poxy halfbreed sleep, and vacation can be a liminal existence. There are dogs waiting at doorsteps, and friends crossing their own thresholds, meals reserved like restaurants in reverse, and the early-morning crosstown bus with a shining bright sixth-grader.
Well, here I am again, and I saw my apartment from the air on this shining cloudy day. The chair is solid beneath me, the post office roof out my window is smiling faintly in repose, I'm ready to slip this city on again like my autumn coat and walk out through the October breezes.
This is the season of shifting leaves, and there are games afoot, big changes coming, here they come at the Laboratorium. The Lab is engaged in some strategic repositioning, we're about to embark on a program of brand diversification.
What's the point of having Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks if you're not going to run an experiment now and then? One invests in fume hoods for a reason, and if one winds up needing the eye wash station, well then, that's still the kind of experience one learns from.
There's nothing in the Lab contract about ever and forever, and we're going to be trying out some new ideas. The Laboratory Notebooks have taken over more of the site than I ever meant them to, so we're going to see about beefing up some of the more neglected corners. We're lining up some strategic partners, we're rethinking our assumptions, we're going to try out some new ways of being in the world.
To answer questions, and to raise them. To answer questions, and to raise them.
There's a place for stories, and a place also for questioning them. We pays our money and we takes our chances, and we keeps our eyes open. Nothing without labor.
Look inside, ask yourself what you're doing and why. And if you see the idiocy, but it's a glorious idiocy, does that change matters? Does the illusion of control, or the illusion of destiny, justify all? How many different ways are there of misunderstanding, and will we need to invent whole new kinds of numbers to count the ways?
The smell of the radiator coming on, the crack and rustle of a hardbound spine, the sudden sparkle of a new idea. It was good to be away, but it's good also to be here again. This time for sure, Rock.
This is not about, has never been about, me. Here at the surface, sure. And in the deep and primal sense, perhaps. But in the middle layer, the in-betweens of meanings, no, never, there are more important things at stake.
Zesty reality bits, heightened with a dash of secret imagination sauce. Onward and upward, fixed in our folly. New color scheme, new this and new that, but the same old slicing sideways through the scenery.
I should be tired, but I'm not. I'm ready to pick up the bags and set out for the hill, to pick up this thing and figure out which end you press to make the music come out. The sun is falling crosswise on the seagulls and the cars, and the Sunday is settling in, and I'm looking forward to the unforseen extensions of what has gone before. The unanticipated and the preordained lie in wait and play endless hands of cards with each other, waiting for me to arrive so the day can begin in earnest.
I'm good. You?