GETTING IT OUT OF MY SYSTEM
“Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836.
Nobody. Nobody “looks upon” a river. Nobody in Late Capitalism has the luxury of a meditative hour when time is money amidst the logistics, the drops offs and pick ups and obligations and to-do lists and appointments and trysts and assignations. We build bridges across a river, ride boats on top of it, kill fish and flora by dumping into it human waste and labradoodle waste and viruses and bacteria from storm water runoff, the cides of pesti and herbi, plus gas station seepage, septic system seepage, construction site seepage of aluminum arsenic, nitrates, copper, lead, uranium, magnesium, manganese. Nobody looks upon a river, unless maybe a dead body is floating by and catches peoples’ attention and has them on their phones (and for a minute, not for a meditative hour). Let’s bring ourselves current, shall we? Besides, the flux of all things cannot be contemplated. The flux of all things is too cold. The flux all things goes hard.
---Randy Waldo Stark, 2026
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