Three Final Thoughts

Goodbye, Thank You and Merry Christmas....

Despite what you believe this blog has not been about movie reviews, book criticisms or pop culture inspired rants. Now that I am signing off on it after a long absence I think I can tip my cards and show you what it has been about all along and why I can't sustain it.

Did any of you ever read any of the books, listen to any of the music or laugh at the videos that I spent hours reading, watching, and writing about? It doesn't matter. What you people do on your own time, it the privacy of your own windowless vans or bus shelters is of no concern to me. I didn't do any of this for you weirdos anyway.

I did all of this for one person. It didn't begin that way, but that is what it became and that is how it ends. She read every word from afar even when she had to do so covertly. She took me seriously even when I couldn't. She laughed at my stupid jokes and assured me I was a good writer even when I knew I was a hack. She called and e-mailed and talked about things like Canadian literature and Leonard Cohen. She helped make, and is still making me a better writer -and person- every day.

I don't blog on Infinite Monkeys anymore because I don't need to. I live with this woman now and I will soon marry her. If I want to "impress" her with a witty remark or show her a stupid video I don't have to do it across the interweb anymore. Even though she looks at me sometimes and I wonder if she wouldn't prefer my antics confined to cyberspace again.

Merry Christmas Sheila. This blog, for as long as it exists, is my gift to you. It always belonged to you anyway.

-Michael

www.theautoblography.blogspot.com

Sleepwalking Into The Future

If you listen very closely you can hear it...The spectral chanting in another room of a billion voices counting down to midnight...The abuses visited upon ourselves and the home of our host will not be soon forgotten. The blinding, deafining, orgiastic shamelessness of it all will be the topic of conversation for generations to come...History will remember us, however unkindly.

So stagger over to the bar and grab one last barrel of sweet, light crude. The fossil fuel party is just about over. And there are not enough painkillers on earth to dampen the screaming bitch of a hangover that waits for us all tomorrow...

I don`t normally give myself over to alarmist schools of thought. Generally it is my unshakeable belief that life is pretty damn good and we should strive to make the most of it every day. Occasionally however, someone will come along and piss on my silver lining, undulate my aura of peace and tranquility and pollute my pristine pool of yin with a dark oily abundance of yang. Lately, that someone has been James Howard Kunstler. He`s a plain-speaking intellectual gunslinger of a man with a message that makes the current enviromental movement look like a bunch of kids with their fingers jammed haphazardly into the dyke. Get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness, Al Gore. Kunstler is pulling back the curtain on the most inconvenient truth of them all: Our so-called society is on the brink of collapse and no one -not governments, educators, business leaders or the media- is prepared to do a goddamned thing about it.

Just so you can share in my paranoia, I`ve helpfully included all five parts of his recent interview with the online edition of Orion magazine. If that`s not enough and the obsessive compulsive side of your nature demands more straight talk about where our species is headed if we continue on this narrow road, you can pick up his book: The Long Emergency. You may also want to work on your farming skills. Looks like you`re going to need them.

A Walk Into January

A sodden trip through the memory of snow
Embraces boots,
Exposes roots
And exhales with wet malevolence.

The silver salt lick flash of sky
Brings into sharp relief
The precious scarcity of emerald and the brief
Gasp as summer's fiery pallette lies down to die.

The trail flows through broken bones of trees
The whispering scent of loamy earth
And graveyards marking the brief lives of countless flowers.