Dowbrigade

The Dowbrigade sits at his computer, crouched next
to a tiny electric space heater trying to keep his arthritic hands limber
enough to type. It’s a 40-40 day; outside a cold brute nor ‘easter
rages up the Atlantic coast, 40-mile-an-hour winds rocketing 40 degree
raindrops sideways into windows, telephone poles, unsuspecting bystanders.

Unfortunately, we are completely out of home heating oil. Just ran out
the other day. Why buy more, it’s May, for Christ’s sake, how cold can
it get? Prices are bound to come down. It’s so hard to plan ahead. Sometimes
it’s incredible we remember anything.

In fact, sometimes, like today, we feel that our personality is deconstructing.
That we are coming apart as a viable persona, existing over time. But
not in a bad way.

Its a memory thing.  As though we can’t remember who we are from one moment to the next. Each instant, a new person, with
no memory of the others, or expectations of the future. Makes it hard
to know what to say and do.

Who is this person?  Do we know him or her? What are we doing here?
What is expected pf us in this situation?

We use hints and hunches to figure our what to say. Something appropriate
to the situation, otherwise everyone looks at you funny. Luckily, we
have developed over the years a fairly cohesive and constant personality,
so if we just go with the first thing that comes to mind, it usually
makes sense and passes mustard, even if we have no memory of what we
said a few minutes earlier, or what the person we are talking to expects
us to say.

Why does this not frighten us? The dissolving of a sequential persona
could be a serious handicap in day to day living. But personality is,
after all, an artificial construct on top of consciousness. If we learn
to trust our instincts, we will always be in the right place at the right
time. Conventional chronometrics are highly overrated. Individuality
is highly overrated. Memory is an ego thing.

The rain hardly notices.