The quiet, simple truth is
that life has passed you by. But it comes up against
hyped, noisy,
powered truths: you let it pass, you never
found something to fall back on, or mastered
wiring, money, computers, relationships,
cars; all blame is on selves and you have only
yourself to blame. Capital even
retrieves from its early, definitive
judgments of you the term
“underachiever.” It’s one of those rare,
true moments of clarity; you
know because it offers no forgiveness.

And is therefore intolerable. Its
spirit as I say is that of capitalism,
to which famously no one can any
longer imagine
an alternative, so that the only
weapon against fact
is metaphor. You live in a port city. Cranes,
containers have eliminated stevedores,
jetliners liners; the docks rot; the tang
remains, commercially faked. Yet it’s a
port, which means its secret truth
(think New York, L.A.) is failure, a.k.a.
timelessness. At every moment
life passes everyone
by, not just with every ship
that comes or leaves but every wave, and it’s
impossible to distinguish
(a phrase from Camus, who is also passé)
between “solitary” and “solidary.”