Up chin, down chin (an extra-literary exercise)

Small tasks are comforting. They are quiet in their forgetability and their ability to offer a correct answer in a mode of life that most often demands interpretive dance, conundrums and all of the above. The small task can be closed, can be right, can be a perfect quatrain and still leave room for the interliners of thought and the vagueries of intertextuality.

Thackery, Gorey, Satrapi, Powers.

She had written down the date in her pocket-book of the day when she dispatched it. To her son's guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not communicated any of her grief and perplexities.

In the small task you can meditate on a glance. Shift eyes your to the left, close and then open and send out semaphore that takes the slow train (the one that delivers the mail to Fossil, Medina and Mist along the way) before arriving at the recipient's back and crumpling to the floor. Oh well, here comes the next creased dollar, the next Naugahyde bag and pulpy codex. Ad infinatum circulation. Closed system. Plastic and tape. Close the pages. Tuck it in. It will keep until tomorrow.