The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108
by David Ackley
If you take a death count, first thing every day with your coffee, is that, well….Healthy?
Suppose history is just a collection of bad habits we're disinclined to give up because…what would we be without them?
If the time is truly “out of joint,” is that like dislocated, like when Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon,” dislocates his shoulder and has to run it into a wall, screaming with pain, to pop it back in place? How much would it hurt if it turned out everybody all at once had to run into the same wall without knowing even whether it would work?
It used to be, before the latest, that every other day brought something dubbed “historic,” a big flood, a really hot day, some guy—who turned out to be on massive doses of steroids-- hitting more homers than Babe Ruth, a land speed record, various flights into space, a guy hitting the first golf ball on the moon (remember that), wars small and large, shorter and longer… Finally the news and history became so hopelessly interchangeable you lost any sense of which was which. And now this…
And if historic events are anyway only mile markers on a road without end?
The joint might be arthritic, like my hip, in which case it could be functionally and quite brilliantly replaced with titanium and probably outlast its present owner.
But maybe it's not that kind of joint, but a joint in the argot, like a club or a beer joint or a pub and history would be like the keeper, intoning at the closing hour (bow to Old possum) :
“Hurry up, please, it's time.”
But then
“It's always too late to think about time.”
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Author's Note
Some reflections from within a "historic," moment.
Other stories by David Ackley
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Interesting speculation. Do you know Philip K. dick’s “Time Out Of Joint?” You may like it. It’s all interchangeable. I like this. *
"Suppose history is just a collection of bad habits we're disinclined to give up because…what would we be without them?" Yes.
Here - at least in my head - we see that the "history of this moment" [I've been reading James Baldwin: "History is not the past. It is the present."] is shown or expressed or understood as the assembled glimpses of these days, 108 to this point - "history" as the stream running through your head and your pen/keyboard [I don't really know your normal writing habits, David]. In this moment - your moment - all the disparate bits coalesce into your new narrative thread of CNF, and it's fine work. Truly.
In this series fragments of your world's fabric fall into place - as in this section: coffee, bad habits, "Lethal Weapon," Babe Ruth, steroids, golf, wars, mile markers, the "A Game of Chess" section of Eliot's great opus.
This a strong addition to your grand work.
This is good stuff. *
Thanks, mightily, John and Sam.
John, Of course I was initially thinking of Hamlet's line( my constant lodestar, Shakes in general and Hamlet in particular)
"The Time is out of Joint, Oh cursed spite that ever I was born to put it right." Which seems to apply to whenever there is a true world historical event, and you feel this disjoining in your bones, as it were.
The line also establishes a key theme in Derrida's SPECTERS OF MARX, another meaningful text for me of late.
Sam, I appreciate your very astute comment as I try to apply the culture in all its odd bits that float around in my brain to some take on what is happening now, day by day. Not history, surely, but a kind of filtration of various raw materials that may be useful to a more coherent reconstruction a few hundred years hence. Or just another photo album to store in the family attic. But then that's history too, isn't it?
Baldwin's experiencing a deserved resurgence now, yes, Sam.
Another thing I read somewhere:
That the present is really the past present, the present present, and the future present.
Interesting lines, David. "That the present is really the past present, the present present, and the future present."
I'm pondering.
Me too, Sam.
Enjoyed this *
But the fragments cohere.
*
Thanks Foster and Bill.