Vaulting the Sequence

 It’s the year’s end and it feels it’s hardly begun, 23 having once been a prime ‘Illuminatus’ number and now soon only reluctantly to depart, thus making it a potentially sticky turning-point. Not even a High Suspectibility. Indeed, it is a Nonse Quitur creeping up on such a singular cusp just to touch a crossing-point of two indescribable prayers with an ephemeral elbow of time. A vertical eye peering through a narrow crevice at 24, a number already maxing us out with its many factors. Let’s hope it doesn’t tally. And we reach the lesser factored 25 without touching the base of a new year now unmentionable and unilluminable by anything I can say or do. Whatever you say or do, don’t look back at it.

THE UNCAN-OPENER

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Writing about the Uncanny is like being stuck at a foggy railway station and ending up overnight in a waiting-room rather than at your intended destination. Whether you reach some conclusion on the nature of the Uncanny, however, depends upon who spends the night with you. The brand new year today that I have already airbrushed from history seems unfair to blame for the fog because this year has only just started and has had no chance to re-configure itself as our present moment. The trains had already been running late, in any event. And the nearest hotel was more than even a trek away. This is exactly what happened, but nobody would later own up to being party to the company they kept nor to being the soul of that selfsame party, let alone its star. Whatever the case, everyone in the waiting-room turned out to have one thing in common. They happened to be travelling to the same destination, i.e. to a party hosted by me, and I sat alone, surrounded by the congeries of seasonal decorations wilting on the walls, now become the spectral guest in my own empty mansion waiting for all the hosts to arrive.
I blew a squeaky toy that failed to squeak.
I took up a dummy that failed to speak.
I dressed as a ghost with a veil and pique.
Perhaps they’ll all arrive next Sunday week.
Until then, let’s play Sardines, not Hide and Seek.