TRACT EXTANT

Don't fool yourself. Do you think your life is still run by the
passing of the seasons, by some back-assed rubes calling in
the harvest, by thaws or freezes or tidal sways? No. The
instruments are much more subtle than that now. Fiber-
optics? We might as well be discussing a toilet brush; it's
gone way beyond that.

A feeding frenzy of minnows in the South Pacific, a
presidential candidate in his limo sliding up mirrored glass,
wind flipping the pages of a newspaper in Brazil. These are
the signs we should be looking for. You might be told that
the scattering of animal guts to divine the future is an
outmoded practice, but that is because they don't want
certain information leaking into the marketplace.

In the barrios, a white chicken is strung up facing east.
In the X-ray metal detectors, the patterns of key-chains
and spilt change make their own random prophecies. It is
all in the way you point your hunger.

But be careful. They're taking inventory.

I am not afraid. I have taken precautionary measures.
I have learned the sweet crisis of internal shut-down.
Beware. Even crop-duster planes, a seemingly pleasant
anachronism, cannot be trusted. Blacken the photo, dose
the back yard in gasoline. Don't think for a moment that
this is not a kingdom, that the categories aren't up for grabs.

The terror of the obsolete grows in every organism. It is a
biological trick, to keep its eyes open. But the tracking
systems are compensating for this. Remember the old
saying about the whites of their eyes? Now they've brought
the barrel closer, but kept it at a distance.