The Last Communiqué

Around me, at least what appears to be around me, is rubble. It is dark here now, but soon, following the dawn, the trucks will come. And with the trucks, men I do not know. Men I do not know who will put the rubble into the trucks. That is when the exodus is to begin. A journey south through a fog-dripping and stagnant southern April morning. A journey across the metropolitan statistical area to a place both the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture define as rural. A journey past fields overgrown with kudzu and past lonely dry lot horses staring at the interstate from pens made of moving pallets and barbed wire.

They put, into my mouth, yesterday; a tooth made of gold. Smooth and polished as I slide my tongue on it. The gums swollen and sore and a deep ache in my jaw where they buried the syringe to keep me from crying out while they did this. But I had agreed. More than agreed. I had paid them to put the golden tooth into my mouth. And I had paid the Census Bureau. And the Department of Agriculture. And agreed. Mostly, I suppose because I am a socialist, but partly because the only other way to get a gold tooth is to go to prison.

It is quiet now. Before the dawn. Before the trucks. Later of course, it will be after dawn, and later still, it will be after the trucks. That is when I will be rural.

It seems to me to be a fundamental flaw of the English language that one can refer to the future as “it”, that one can use a third person singular pronoun to talk about the future. As if “it” were a mere ottoman or something. I suppose it is because we lag behind praxis, are forever pulled behind it like a u-haul trailer several seconds behind the reality of the bugs smashing the windshield for our entire lives. Incapable of witnessing even our own deaths as we experience them – or more appropriately as we learn of them some small piece after the fact. A time at which it is just a little too late.

And so it is I will move today. Move to rural, move to the future, move with my gold tooth. And perhaps, if I can hang my head out the window and lean toward the hood of the car, if I can reach forward from myself just one little bit, I can experience praxis as the bugs smash into my teeth.