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say that was the butcher’s district—old Union Square—until the animals ran out. I thought, somebody must have eaten what was around that skull once. I thought I could smell something there. I like to watch the men defecating and smoking indifferently. Don’t even wear Tsuits. Most lie on the ground sleeping. That skull was stripped of skin. I look at the rows of men defecating and smoking, gazing blankly into the distance that’s not really distance, and I wonder, looking at their brooding eyes gazing blankly towards the water—I think, what’s the difference between them and me? Their dirty dark bodies, the black water—Black-Kali—my mother said she worshipped Kali, some kind of god, she said. We used to grin into our iMeMys like baboons, she said. Punching buttons, grinning, shrugging, sending messages. Plugged in to Speak, using Think, what kind of life was that? Good riddance, she said.
    “Thing is, you know, nobody’s free. My mother always told me that. She said we were all dishonest and insecure and if we wanted to remain alive, we had to use those qualities to remain alive. Like my father, she said. I always wanted to turn my sickness into art. That sounds profound, doesn’t it? This was a lunatic world, she said. Full of cause and effect. Don’t let it happen again, she said. But there was no hope. It was historical necessity, she said. But the crazy thing, she said, was that history was a now a myth. It was a fantasy, fantasies, nobody knew what was up, what was cause and effect. What happened to progress, she said.  We were taken out of time. We had no history. She said we’d lost our memory, but actually, she said, I didn’t have any memories, she had only a few, not enough to make a difference, and the little she had were getting wiped out, she said, and my memory was bogus, she said, I didn’t and couldn’t have memories of something different, all I ever knew was this dystopia, she said, not that things ever were a utopia. She said people, cultures used to have alternative values and practices, but the wars, scarcity, entertainment, pollution, and technology had killed this kind of diversity. We were all the same now. We were all primitive now, she said. We’d made the final adaptation—the neuron adjustment—it was no longer survival of the fittest—now it was take the line of least resistance.
    “I told you I like the feel of charcoal in my hand. Have you ever wondered what charcoal is? Since the War, we’ve got a lot of charcoal. We must have had some forests here. Eucalyptus, pine, bamboo, or something. Anyway, I’ve got little sticks and clumps of charcoal I use for drawing. I like the feel of the charcoal in my hand. I feel power. I feel like a god ready to create. You don’t see too many holding a piece of charcoal. You know what I saw? I saw the defecating men eating bamboo charcoal. They say it relieves hunger and indigestion. How ’bout that Mother Nature? I did some drawings of the defecating men. My drawings hint at the terror of existence, I hope, though we hardly need any more hints, do we? Anyway, still, that’s what it does—hints at the terror of existence. Can’t escape that. But at the same time, my drawings affirm existence. How about that? We’re human. Rational and all that. But we’re dark. Like we have some unfathomable strains inside us. Those defecating men. They could be our ancestors. They could be lined up in some kind of sexual fertility rite, they could be the obliteration of consciousness, the  beginning of consciousness, the simplicity of existence, rootedness, with hardly a thought intervening in their existence. I mean, my drawing, could be standing for something else! Perhaps my drawing expresses a longing for our earth—our poor destroyed earth. It could stand for plenitude and well-being. The drawing could be a tragedy, the end—or beginning of violent ritual, a tragedy. The return of the earth goddess! A longing. That’s art! My