The Imperative Mood Read online

  IT’S A NEW DAY: act like it. Put the behind behind. Appreciate the lunacy of that, of all advice. Just have a look at appreciate itself. If you inspect the weirdness of all advice, of the imploration that it be followed, you might have a look at the advisability, the integrity, the tenability of the imperative mood itself. Now that we have, just bag it.

  Cross the stream. Build a small perfectly shaped teepee-style Boy Scout campfire and watch it burn and put it out when you are done according to standard overkill practices so that if the woods burn down tomorrow you will be blameless, even in your own head. Recall how you have felt the times you have inadvertently burnt the woods down and appreciate that this feeling clear of guilt for having redundantly shoveled a fire apart even after you have drowned it twice will be a stronger good feeling, the freedom from the guilt, than the strong dumb feeling you have had doing all that nonsense to the fire. While having the strong dumb feeling knocking apart and drowning the tiny gratuitous fire that was not even that much fun to have sat beside and watched, look around the woods for the absent wildlife. Strain your ears; hear the flutter of a sparrow or a finch, and know that you can’t, but some people can, identify that bird by that flutter alone. Marvel at how some people became smart and some who once fancied themselves smart, that would be you, never were smart and never became smart, coasting along all that time without need to become smart because of the presumption that they (you) already were. You may even want to confess that you identified presumers of this sort with your best scorn until you joined the club. The appropriate expression for this surmise is “Shit.” You may go ahead now and say it, by the little late fire in the wee noise of the lone fluttering bird, aloud in the woods.