C'est, what have you heard?

Mais oui. Mais non. Je ne sais pas.

I've been reading a text by Victor Hugo, the account, fictionalised, of the events of the period after the French Revolution. Names, names, and mo' names.

A simple account with many ledger entries. Guillotin and Robespierre closer friends than one would have imagined. Marat. Many others. Louis XVI a head of his time.

When one has given one's life, one has no debt to pay. Others may rummage through one's chest for more, or pull pages from one's family tree. Pourquoi? Or a pourquoi story?

Emptiness. Empty nest. Elliott Ness. Just a pile of sounds. Maintenant. Maintenance. Not even close. Paris and Moscow on better terms than Estonia and Leningrad?

You can't tell the people that their rising unemployment is part of the numbers racket called economic cycles. They can't buy theories when they want gas for their guzzler to go buy bread with their bread. If you rob Peter to pay Paul, Mary won't be around to sing harmony.

But these are superficial observations. I'm looking at what you're not. I'm seeing what I can't hear.

Sashimi at noon? Maybe later, the sushi orders backing up. Mo' tea. I'm floating. While my miso so settling, I talk to a pardner about rustling up some business on the range.

I see Putin hold a tank of natural gas in his hand and ask what can I do to help get that on a tanker truck or shooting down a pipe when really I need to ask what's the alternative. Sleight of hand. Look at a data center and see an orange grove in Brasil. Look at an asphalt paving crew and see a sewing factory in Malaysia. Je m'appelle Rick. Et vous?

The desert, an island and a deck of cards. Eurovision. A watch. A ceramic cup.

My goal is getting people on board an orbiting hotel. Their goal is getting tickets for a revolution.

I write because I have words that sprout from the end of my fingers. I make no cents so I make no sense. I value Babli even though I don't know if she's real. We take the virtual for granite and don't have our marbles.

Blow sand in people's eyes and see what they do. Put up a smoke screen and watch from around the screen door. There's where you find what you ought to do with what they automatically do first.

I'm just an observer, giving words a thrill ride for the sake of the species I call our own. I detour off the bypass to find the entrance to the exit for the shortcut. Then, the destination is behind me and I know where I'm going. It's what the Book of the Future told me to do yesterday when I was still looking for tomorrow. Every moment is the history of the past and the future. Only when you live only in the moment will you only know only. Be providential. Be colloquial. Be wrong. Be right.

Scatter, collect and then read the I Ching. You are the fable of you. You are the untruth, the fib, the lie of what you were. We live in the moment. There is no past. There is no future. There is what we do. I am doing this right now but not what I did a sentence ago.

I enjoy being here because I believe I am the only one writing this although facts to the contrary tell me otherwise in the past. Right now, I am the only one reading this. Is there a line that separates my writing this from my reading this in the moment? Where in my thoughts does the writing take place? Where in my time does the reading take place?

Why do I write a lot of nonsense when there's work to be done to move our species to the next moment? I write nonsense to scatter the wind, to tear down the walls of previously painted moments, to shred the fabric of time which does not exist. Then, I live in the moment.

Therefore, my moments are tearing down the past and building up the future and living as if the moment is all I have. I am not who I was so I don't need to feed the thoughts of a previous self or selves or ancestors or descendants or debts/credits on a ledger. This moment is all I've got. And now this next moment is all I've got. We see moments like "Memento" or other savage chicken jokes and almost see what we're supposed to not see that we're looking at. I almost get what I'm saying but the blinders haven't completely fallen off and I'm still chomping at the bit.

I am the only one who has to get me and live in my moment. I live in our moment so I'm trying to get you while I live with the rest of us for our species. Escher and Marquez, Suzuki and Porsche. Sentimental sentiment sentimentality sediment. Stretch your thoughts and Silly Putty laughs back.

When I can write sonic nonsense in more than a dozen languages that uses phonics and memes and inside jokes that read backwards and forwards and sideways and all about, I will have found the person I'm looking into the past at my mirror image for. And then our species will be the Book of the Future's Book of the Future in the moment. Humour is serious business. That's what I just figured out. And now I'm in the next moment, free of the past.