In one year

 

In one year clerkmanifesto will supposedly be regaling you with tales of life in coastal France. There's a lot to be done before we get to all that. Not least of which is just living life as it comes for many months. And though I am full of imaginations of our future life, I do understand they are not greatly useful, nor are they likely to be accurate.

Nevertheless moments come upon me where my computer window is drawn to looking at my future, and little daydreams of me and my darling wife's coming times flit about me like butterflies I feel sure I didn't invite in, but probably did.

So yes, I sent my advance guard along to check out our future home of next Fall and Winter. Yes, this is our little town, the one of all our initial planning and carful booking, but presented in only half real versions. Real versions don't seem right for dreaming, and fox and skunk wouldn't deign to visit them in that guise anyway.

Getting ahead of ourselves

 

Bon jour!

It is hard to believe it is already 2026!

How the year has flown by.

I write you barefoot from our apartment in the South of France. I wander into the kitchen like Pablo Picasso to get a bit of cheese and a glass of cognac before I sit down to conduct the art of my later years.

This is that art!

If it does not look much like art, well, yes, you are not alone. But let me tell you: It has never been easier to find people who feel exactly the same way about the work of Picasso.

Not that I'm really like Pablo Picasso. 

I even wrote a song about it. It included the lyric:

"I'm not Pablo Picasso".

But there's not much profit running through all the other lyrics as the key point has been made clear enough.

You are probably wondering if I'm going to do one of those boring year in review essays where I tell you the stocks that went crazy in 2025, the Superbowl and Champions' League winners, and which cities were wiped out in nuclear holocausts in this year past, but I am not.

I say we look forward to better and brighter things. And I think 2026 is going to be delightful. Or, as we say here in France, delicieux.

Oh, what's that?

It's not 2026?

It's 2027?

My god how the time flies.

The future

We are living in the idealized nostalgia of the future. To someone fifty years from now we are experiencing the thrilling, unreproducible charms of an era that can never be replaced. Fifty years from now people are chatting and one person is saying "I would kill to live in the mid twenties; Taylor Swift! Free water! The state of Florida!"

They don't know the state of Florida isn't all that great. They just know it existed. Which is awesome. And they have a point: existing is kind of amazing, albeit easily taken for granted since everything everywhere is... already doing it.

Fifty years from now someone will say to you: "Wait, you read the actual clerkmanifestos, as they were written?"

And you'll get super humble and proud and say, "You know about clerkmanifesto?"

And they'll respond "No. You must have misheard me because you are pretty old."

And you'll think "Back when we had Florida people were slightly nicer."

Maybe we were, maybe we weren't. You'll be nostalgic too.

A pandemic vision

For all the places in the world the pandemic has so far gone softer on Minnesota, but we still don't know the long term on any of this. Different futures can be imagined. So I do. Someone has to.

I walk the streets of my town and sometimes they seem ghostly, desolate, in the throes of Apocalypse. 

And sometimes they seem almost completely normal.

With the exception that all the cars drive so fast.

The one thing all those Mad Max movies got spot on is how everyone drives after the fall of civilization! Desperately. Ferociously. In a big fucking hurry!

And I see it and I think "What is the hurry?"

There is no place good to go. Every good place to go has been shut down. There are no concerts. There are no parties to go to, or bars, or cafes. No one is on their way to a pleasurable shopping trip. The libraries are closed. You cannot go out to eat. Where can you go?

You can go to some crappy job if you cannot work at home I guess. That's what I do. But I take my time when I do it, barely speeding at all.

You can do some chores, I guess, going to pick up some sprockets or some pasta, if they have any.

You're not going to a friend's house. There is no baseball game to get to. You are not racing to the airport to catch your plane for your amazing safari trip to Botswana. There are no amazing safari trips to Botswana right now.

So what's the hurry?

There is nowhere to go. Slow down. Nowhere is open anyway.

I mean, except the hospitals.



Oh.

Same as it ever was

I'm at the closed library. I am sitting in the back room. I am working, such as it is, which it isn't. Maybe the phone will ring, maybe it won't. Half a dozen co-workers are somewhere out in this large library, I really don't know where. That's less than half of what we normally would have. I have no idea where the rest are- absent from fear, bunkered down, or on ventilators.

That last bit wasn't very funny, was it? No one here is on a ventilator, yet.

The world spins as ever. People like to say "We don't know what will happen tomorrow."

Yes we do.

Every day we know generally speaking what will happen tomorrow. We are accurate enough 99 times out of a hundred. That is an amazing level of accuracy!

But fucking hell that one time...

Global Warming

To be honest I don't pay much attention to all this global climate change stuff. Not only is it depressing, but having no descendants I guess it's okay if the world just holds together until my wife and I are finished with it. Then the rest of you are on your own. But that doesn't mean I'm not sad for you, or your children, or whatever. And I definitely don't like it getting hotter. I'm more of a cool weather person myself. So all told I guess I am against this Global Warming thing. I like glaciers. I dislike millions of people being killed in violent storms. I wish we could fix it.

So imagine my relief today when I read that 2018 is on pace to be cooler than 2015, 2016, and 2017! This means it is on pace to be the coolest year since 2014! It's finally over. Global Warming has been cured. Hopefully all the lost glaciers and ice caps will start forming up again and all the extinct animals will appear from out of their secret burrows saying "We were here all along, just keeping cool you know. Mmmm. Feel that breeze!"

Of course, the way the media put it was that 2018 is on pace to be the fourth hottest year on record, behind only 2015, 2016, and 2017. 

Oh these nattering nabobs of negativism! Can't they just accept that the global climate crisis is over?

It's over. Do the math.

Anyway, we've got bigger fish to fry. Maybe whales? They're probably not even endangered anymore and I bet they're delicious!

Yoko Ono

Sometimes on Thursdays, in a vain attempt to stop a peculiar glitch that causes incoming phone calls to temporarily disable my Internet, I answer the phone.

"Hello?" I say, and I'm usually pretty cranky when I do so.

This time a gentle voice says "This is Yoko Ono."

"This is Yoko Ono?" I confusedly repeat.

"Is this the author of the essays on clerkmanifesto?" She asks.

"Um, yes." I reply with an awakening interest.

"Your account of when you heard of my husband's death, while you were on the edge of the Grand Canyon, was the most beautiful eulogy of John that I've ever read. I wanted to personally thank you."

"You're welcome Ms. Ono, but I don't believe I've written that account yet."

"What year is this?"

"2017." I replied.

"Oh. How inconvenient. Well please do so, won't you?"

"I plan on it, eventually."

"Yes, I suppose you would. Good luck to you."

"And to you Ms. Ono as well."

"Call me Yoko."

"Really?"

"In a couple of years, yes. I'll be in touch."

"It's been a pleasure." I said, and it was.

Plus my Internet was already working again.

Presidential Interview: Religious issues

MSM:  You have been on the record as saying that you were told by God to run for President?

F. Calypso:  Well, yes, that is so. I was told by a god to run for President wherein it was prophesized that I would lose, acquiring zero votes.

MSM:  God told you to run for President wherein you would receive no votes?

F. Calypso:  Yes, amazing, isn't it?

MSM:  Um.

F. Calypso:  Do you think I will get any votes?

MSM:  That's really not the subject of this...

F. Calypso:  It's a simple question. Will I get any votes for President?

MSM:  Okay. No. I don't think you'll get any votes.

F. Calypso:  So you agree that this god has prophesized the future! That's a god worth listening to.

MSM:  If I predicted it would be sunny today, and it turns out it's sunny, that doesn't make me a prophet.

F. Calypso:  Did you, in fact, yesterday predict it would be sunny today?

MSM:  As a curious matter of fact, yes, yesterday I did say that I understood it was supposed to be sunny today.

F. Calypso:  Wow!

MSM:  No, that's my...

F. Calypso:  I am enmeshed in a thrilling web of prophecies! Tell me what to do next!

MSM:  No! That's not, I'm not God.

F. Calypso:  Well of course not. No one is God. 

MSM:  I'm glad we...

F. Calypso:  You're obviously a god though. What do I do next? Do you have any lotto tips?

MSM:  I'm not a god! Look, what if I voted for you? Wouldn't that make the prophecy false and call your campaign into question?

F. Calypso:  It would have actually had to have happened, which it hasn't, oh god of... something.

MSM:  Fine, I'm voting for you. Just wait and see.

F. Calypso:  Yeah, that's how all these interviews seem to end up.

The end of nostalgia

I honestly don't know why it's such a singular memory to me, but I do distinctly recall the popularity of the show Happy Days. It was a big deal in my middle school, in the seventies, when I was in sixth or seventh grade. It was a nostalgia for an almost unfathomable past, the fifties.

I like to think of that relationship to the past now, and how the measure of twenty years has so utterly changed for me. Once it was inconceivable, now it is not nostalgic or mythologizing, it's merely memory, as in:

Last Friday we went to the museum to see the Delecroix exhibit.

and

In 1995 we went into a near northern suburb to catch a showing of the movie Babe.

Same difference.

But now I will tell you one of the sweetnesses, or perhaps it's a skill, that has come with age:

I believe in history now.

No, seriously. In 1976 the fifties were a different time. And for much of my life the past was tinged with fantasy. The world was a different place in history. But now I understand that the fifties were exactly like now.  Because whether the Sun is younger or dinosaurs walk the earth or baroque buildings are going up all over Rome all the differences of the Universe's vast diversity of presentation pale against the terrible power of one astonishing, unifying thing: Now. 

Now has always felt like now, wherever, whoever, and whenever you are. Time is just window dressing.

For my future readers

Every day it looks more likely that my work will not become canon. My blog will not be swept up into notoriety, or acclaim, or written into to annals of human experience. I won't get rich, or lionized, or passionately discussed. Millions will not flock to my blog like monarchs to milkweed.

I can live with that if I have to.

But while there stands one tiny chance, one lottery sliver of possibility, I don't want to pass up the opportunity to mark this time of my anonymity, to speak amongst the small number of my readers, and to excoriate with full prejudice and disdain, the seven billion people who are not reading my blog right now.

If, as is so likely, my blog falls off the face of the earth the second I stop writing it, if in 20 months or 20 years it is unfindable, unread, and forgotten, so be it. These words will be like a seed that never grew, a bright flower that did not bloom in its radiant designs of vindictive revenge. There will be no revenge and no cause for it to have ever been.

But if by some monumental freak, through what could only be a kind of astonishing miracle, I am launched to fame and glory, then my wrath here will grow wild and cover the land. A black mark will be emblazoned on the failing souls of every able person on this planet, circa 2015, every person other than those patiently reading this now, here in the years of its obscurity.

If in 2015 you are, or were, 16 or younger, you are safely exempted. Likewise if you are old and of a last guard unacquainted with computers, or you are too poor or illiterate or non English speaking to encounter me in my present time, you too are fully exempted.

But everyone else...

Here, let me put it to a kind of personal example. As it is unlikely to match your exact situation you will have to write yourself in. Let that be a part of your penance.

The year is 2035. My Nobel Prize is in my hand. My blog posts have been translated into hundreds of languages. This very post here is frequently assigned reading in 11th Grade classes (don't forget to ask your teacher where they were in 2015 kids). I am frequently quoted. My blog collections are readily available in volumes covered with fawning quotes by the most revered people on the planet.

I find the whole thing surprisingly disturbing, but that's not the point here.

You are a huge fan. You've read all eleven volumes. You can freely recite me, and often do. You even stick up for my more uneven later works. You are the same age in that future that I am right now, 50. You absolutely love clerkmanifesto. It is the most important work of art you encountered in your whole life.

Thank you so much. I am touched. I treasure you, my dear future reader.

But right now, in 2015, you are tooling about on the Internet. You are checking Facebook, looking at cats, Reddit, Boing Boing, reading wherever things lead you on the Internet, like falling down a hill forever. If one of my posts came before your eyes you wouldn't even recognize it for anything. It would pass through you like air. Above all, you are not here.

So I just want to say to you now this one small thing, for all time, and with all due affection, presence, wisdom and regard: 

Fuck you.

The immortal quote

There is no shorter path to immortality than writing a really, really, fantastic quote.  The person who coined the phrase "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" will be remembered forever. Why, I was fondly remembering John Capgrave just the other day, good old John Capgrave, and it has been vast hundreds of years since he jotted down that pithy piece of advice! Aye, the quote is so old that it originally looked like this:

It is more sykyr a bryd in youre fyste
Than to have thre in the sky above


"Hey," You wonder in an only mildly interrupting way "How, in the excitement of dashing off a really splendid bon mot, do I know if it's just pretty clever or if it's a quote for the ages. How do I know if I've struck pay dirt, achieved immortality, and can finally relax and stop trying to say wise and witty things which so wear me out?"

I am here to provide you with a litmus test for your clever sayings. It is not enough for you to think you have hit upon something witty to the point of legendary. You must observe at least three of the following signs to be assured that people will be echoing your statement for millennia to come.


1. You are already famous. Sorry, this one sets the bar kind of high at the outset. It may be a little like this (adapted version of a) Steve Martin joke: I will tell you an easy way to make a million dollars! First, get a hundred million dollars... And, actually, the principle of the thing is pretty much the same.

2. When you say your brilliant, pithy quote people act as if they've been hit by a bolt of lightning. Then they either say "Wait. Say that again." or "That's really quite good. No, seriously, that is quite good!"

3. After a reasonable gestation period you start to find your quote being attributed to Mark Twain or possibly Lady Gaga. Hold tight, eventually the quote will be re-attributed to you, unless, of course, you stole it yourself. If that's the case you should try to limit your time with Lady Gaga for awhile.

4. You are killed in what is clearly a miraculous act of God just moments after speaking your for the ages quote.

5. Your quote clearly seems to fix the world for the better. But beware, the bar is high on this one, only two quotes have ever met this standard, one by Chuang Tzu and one by Groucho.

Remember, you only need for three of these conditions to be true, but it has to be at least three. Bartlett awaits.

Religious text

What none of you may have realized at this point in clerkmanifesto (two years in) is that I am engaged in writing a religious text, like the Torah, or the Tao Te Ching. 

Even now you suspect I am kidding.

One might think I am kidding because I so often here play the fool. But then, religious texts have all been written by people playing the fool. You just probably didn't notice. Most people don't.

One might suspect that I cannot be writing a grand religious text because this does not have that monumental, elaborate air of the great religious writings. But that is because like all those that came before me, this writing is a core framework designed for age, for the accretion of patinas, rust, and obsolescence. These words are like trees in a new and carefully planted forest. They are conduits for a thousand years. What you read now waits to become arcane. In a thousand years this will be indistinguishable from The New Testament or the Bhagavad Gita.

One may suspect that this cannot be a master religious text because without god speaking to me it cannot partake of the timeless, true, deep wisdom.

And there one is wrong on both accounts.

1. God is speaking to me. God will seriously not shut up.

2. To achieve that greatness for the ages, to shine the everlasting light of wisdom, most of what I have to do is edit god out.

To the future Internet

The Internet already provides such a shattered mirror vision of the world as it is to us in the present that I worry about the Internet viewers 50 years from now and what they will think, looking back at us, here in the Internet, without the proper context for our time. And so I have composed this letter to the Internet as it is 50 years hence. My letter is a time capsule of context. I hope my present day readers will bear with me as we perform this public service for the future.


Dear Internet 2065:

1. Though it appears that everyone in the world is rich and famous in my day, there are actually several hundred poor people who either have an amazing hidden musical talent or are ready to be so grateful for someone's gift of new sneakers that it melts your heart when you see the video of it.

2. Sorry about all the heat and water everywhere.

3. We are not, as it appears, all savagely argumentative and mean to each other all the time! We are only that way through the anonymity of the Internet! And I guess sometimes we are that way between different religions. Also between religious factions and between different countries. I guess we can be cruel and argumentative as well in family groups, as rival sports team fans, amongst co-workers, between races and ethnic groups, and from rich people to poor people. Actually, come to think of it, the list is far too long to cover here, but I am nearly certain that these are all exceptions.

4. We are not as beautiful, gifted, confident, and happy as we appear. Our educational system is primarily geared towards teaching us marketing.

5. On the plus side we don't fall down, humorously crash things, or spectacularly hurt ourselves nearly as often as we seem to.

6. This will probably weird you out the most, but, no, I am not nearly as popular in my time as I am in yours. This, I hope, will explain to you why in all my posts I find a way to compare myself to Van Gogh.

7. No, none of the content on the Internet was "lost" between my time and your time. We really did just look at the same 100 things over and over.

I hope this helps.

Oh, say "hi" to me for me will you? And speak up because ever since I turned 90 my ears produce enough wax each day for a Cathedral full of candles.

Your friend at,

clerkmanifesto.com