We spend a fair time waiting, waiting for this, for that, for them and those to come and go, to start and end, to rise and fall, full and eclipse. And for Spring to spring, our world coiled like hair in plastic curlers held in place with bobby pins (see F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”).
We don’t wait in Winter, when we freeze in place and live in the cold moment (waiting is Samuel Beckett’s dry theme), but as the great slow thaws finally come we start to wait for a stronger sun and almost believe again in Spring and Spring does come slowly over the horizon and up the sky climbing a ladder of weathered trellises where last year’s climbing vines still cling frozen in place.
We anticipate Spring with its cartoon-like colors unfolding:
At the mall I walk thru glass and almost fall trip boarding an escalator in the book store, my feet not quite aligned to alight gracefully.
I pass a lady who looks lost and a mannequin just found her head squeezed dahlia pops at the top of a pair of stylized skinny jeans.
I walk through sounds smelly perfumes, anonymous noise guy in uniform and money bag reading a mall directory two robots pass by glistening.
Old guy sitting in food court selling postcard size drawings on his face a weathered frown lady in front of me at coffee cafe dabbing red stained tissue on arm.
Janitor pushing cleaning cart picking up fallings the mall as clean as a movie screen playing Logan’s Run (1976) countryside bubble malls.
I study a few of the other people at the mall and try to see us as others might see us in the mall season reasons even Mr. Mall forgets.
I pause in a general sitting area and pull out my cell phone and work on a few comics then the cell rings and it’s time to meet back up.
Just what the on-line world needs, another Joe Linker site. But while The Coming of the Toads blogs onward, I continue to doodle, and the results often suggest cartoons. A perfect cartoon is one that needs no words. Thus my new site, titled “Cartoons at Joe’s,” promises: “The less said the better, but there will be captions.” Interested readers, anyone looking for a smile, can find “Cartoons at Joe’s” by clicking here. It’s over at Substack.
The set up for “Cartoons at Joe’s” is minimalist, the writing sparse. And the readers few – so far 3 subscribers. Subscriptions are free, but at the cost of yet another email in your inbox. But the reward of a smile hopefully defrays that cost. But you can also check out “Cartoons at Joe’s” anytime you want with a Google bar search, or by saving the link, or a thousand other ways well paid programmers have come up with. I’ll be sitting at the bar, where there’s no wait.
You might have seen a few of the cartoons before, elsewhere, here, in fact, maybe. That’s ok. Watching reruns of classics is a perfectly acceptable use of your time. And I’ll always be doodling for new cartoons.
After the fall before it was all over knowing all along wrong from the start belief belittled after awhile persistence paid well and the interlude did not feel like a slump who sat still felt trapped and everyone all worked overtime all the time along the line here and there a smile a smell a breeze even if the windows wouldn’t open not there not in that building which like a fortress ship full of pink dresses tight collared pinched and pitched swollen with wariness almost fearful slow not quite sure diagnosis acute nervousness jim-jams and on pajama day all asked who sits here without benefit of knick-knacks pics of all the kids the stout spouse keeping house and at the all sporting game asked in all seriousness why do you all do what you do and all could answer the question without already all knowing the answer plainly clearly concisely in the land of milk and honey hidden behind partitions attached to all the others in confetti filled aisles tolerable hours what a waste they all said their baskets full of bread but in the end the trends the lines of best fit all fell it was all about math all along days numbered fell they all fell and in falling looked for a place to land without breaking in pieces some fell up some fell down the ones who often played the clown cried and claimed all fell and all broke in the office of the one doomed it was like after a war all fallen astrew forced hands held together with screws.
“Nothing to be done,” Didi and Gogo bicker, essentially about what to do, like an old couple of a long suffering, loving marriage. Nature is no refuge; the one tree in their world seems sick. They can’t go anywhere, for fear of missing their appointment with Godot. They hang out and talk, express various physical complaints, visit the past, ask questions they can’t answer.
The play, Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” is famously about nothing. Nothing fills the stage, informs the dialog. If they carried cell phones, their batteries would surely be dead. In any case, they’ve no one to call, and no one to call them.
The two (often described as tramps, bums, or hoboes of some kind, clowns of some sort, lost from their circus, or stripped to being human without diversion down-and-outs) might be among the last few of a pandemic, or simply retired, their pensions just enough to enable them to do nothing but talk freely, which is everything in a world of nothing.
It’s not easy – doing nothing. Even contemplating nothing can be a nerve-racking business, fraught with anxiety. Consider, for example, what nothing is. Nothing is what is not. In the beginning – well, just before the beginning, all was nought, and from naught came all.
And it’s not easy doing nothing responsibly. nān thing. And yet, if you make a practice of it, you are called a do nothing. But there is no such thing as nothing. Nature overkills. If the universe is infinite, and the universe is composed of things, there can be nothing within, and nothing without.
Consider a bottle out of which you suck everything, leaving nothing, and you cap it, a bottle of nothing. Would it be dark in there? Like dark matter? For if everything is taken out, light too must be absent. If scarcity creates value, what could be more precious than nothing? And Didi and Gogo are its brokers.
His metaPhone (Q 1) holstered on his belt and boasted like a pearl-handled spatula a fine tweezer feature purest in the kitchen but as a mycophagist on vacation he was slow to get the picture: he should have left the phone at home.
She skiffed his phone like a stone across the stream and it smacked the face of a rapid rose to the lip and flipped onto the river rocks where it slipped like a fish and caught between silly and sorry mess
while the water ebbed aback and swirled about him he dove again and again for the mother-of-pearl case for his applications and poisonous twins and recipies his personal algorithms and desserts
calendars his files and messages tips and notes settings and cameras and his unfinished Joy of… his meals his awards medals commendations his secret usernames passwords fundamental
identities his capabilities capacities radio interface multi-mode banking signaling his data to Universe. Drown rather than lose his cell. They were supposed to be on vacation, but he was on his cell phone
and while he was on his call stung was she by the venomous double away they swam leaving him and his phone in the hot sand where he smelled the world at his feet.
Now we must close our caper of the nose before the plot thickens the dickens to play for a meal is saga but a poem mere snack one is shared the other kept under the hat.
The Coming of the Toads 