The price of everything
The price of everything keeps going up, and just this morning the shopkeeper stepped outside, as he does every morning, with his placards and his long pole, standing below the large sign that is 25 feet above the ground, and he hoists the long pole into the air and, using some sort of suction device at the far end of the pole, he plucks a 4 from its place on the sign, lowers the pole, releases the suction and drops the 4 to the ground, then uses the pole to grab hold of a 9, raises it into the air and puts the 9 where the 4 had been, so now the sign reads 37.92 and the numbers are where they belong for today, though belong is not the correct word because no one truly thinks the 9 belongs there instead of the 4, nor do we understand why the 3 must belong there when just a few months ago it was a 2, and of course none of the numbers truly belong at all since we know they will only change again tomorrow, replaced by higher numbers, and with every replacement comes this strange feeling inside of us all, as if it were our body temperatures rising or a sudden surge of bile coming up the throat, as if those numbers were inside our bodies, which they are not, they are merely numbers on placards put in place every morning, numbers that are tethered to the items we need to purchase, which are tethered to the money in our pockets, which is tethered to the tasks we take on to earn the money, which are tethered to the time it takes to complete the tasks, which is tethered to time itself, which no one really knows what it is, this time of ours, which somehow moves faster than we’d prefer yet also drags on and also never seems to make much progress and which seems to hover just above and beyond us in spite of our measurements and management of it. There once a child who would watch the shopkeeper raise the prices every morning with his placards and pole, and once the task was completed and the shopkeeper tucked the placards under his arm and held the long pole parallel to the earth and began to walk back toward the door of his shop, the child would applaud and smile and holler Bravo, Bravo to the shopkeeper until he reentered his shop, and why shouldn’t our children cheer and smile, and why shouldn’t we allow them these years of belief in the magic of a world where the daily change of numbers on a sign are not tethered to our time, and why shouldn’t time itself inhale and exhale all around us still, hovering and untethered?
Currently reading: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Being Peace, Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress, Bob Sykora’s Utopians in Love
Currently listening to: The Sundays’ Blind, Jade Bird’s Different Kinds of Light, Julien Baker & TORRES’ Send A Prayer My Way
Currently watching: Andor
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Image 1: Detail from one of Joel Daniel Phillips’ Killed Negatives series
Image 2: “Gaia reconstructs a sideview of our galaxy” from NASA’s APOD