You will get wet and you might even get cold.

***

Something I’ve been thinking about:

Power is directly proportional to the leverage one entity has over another.

Force of will and manipulation can encourage people to act, but ultimately, if one does not have the means to act on their threat, then they have no one to threaten. Conversely, if one has nothing to be threatened, then he or she is at the mercy of no one.

Yes—this applies to work and life and relationships. Yes—this applies to larger entities like countries and corporations and law.

Most recently, he stood 65 floors above the empty sidewalk, looking out over a balcony that’s railing eyed, flirted, teased, seduced him. He wasn’t depressed or angry or even annoyed. He wasn’t worried or tense or stressed or numb. Moreover, he was curious what it would be like to fall, to let go, to be bound only by gravity, and to know that, for once, one’s fate is truly, utterly, determined.

Perhaps, then, in this sense, the act of jumping to his death was less about the end as it was about the means. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t considering killing himself as much as he was considering the act of jumping.

Or falling.

That it would end with a splatter was ancillary.

He wasn’t scared, and that’s what made him—on a wholly different level, a far more self-aware, less-instinctual level—a bit nervous. His brain, fighting instinct against instinct grew tired, and the prospect of jumping became less interesting and more terrifying, if only slightly so. He decided that the best thing to do might be to go back inside.

He wondered how people could survive living so high above the ground, always tempted by the sense that destiny was just a lift and a kick away.

At least insofar as the public eye was concerned.

In a poll distributed to nearly 3,500 consenting adults, auditors asked a number of preliminary questions ranging from socioeconomic status to education to knowledge of current events.

They even asked what brand of bud they wore.

Then, they were given a list of fifteen potential ways that the world might end. Number 16 was “Other.” Below that was the question “How?” and a few blank lines for free response, at the bottom of which was a small line of text reading “If more space is required for response, please write on another sheet and attach.”

Respondents were then asked to rank the cataclysms in terms of perceived likelihood.

The results of the poll and the implications therein were disputed within media for weeks. Many respondents failed to rank “Other,” while others ranked “other” without giving explanation of what “other” might be. Others misunderstood the intent of the “How?” and wrote, instead, explanations of why they ranked such and such wherever or discussed what they were thinking about or feeling or, simply, “Because.”

Many people in media pointed to the vagueness of the poll, discussing it as just another failure of a malarkey administration, another failure of a corrupt government entity, an indication of a broader public ignorance or a general disregard for testing in the schools, another reason the CSA is unreliable, etc.

The results became a punchline. Extra terrestrial alien invasion was third. God was fifth.

Incidentally, media called the poll “The End Day Survey.” Its actual name: “Public Poll A039281-29: Requested By The Department Of Defense At The Urging Of The Secretary Of Intranational Defense.”

Quick Haiku:

breathe free kind donkey
tomorrow you brush your teeth
for now, your gums rot

Below, a stale crimson fog lavished and hung. The sewers flooded through broken pipes, a viscous water that stank of dog and rot and sweat, an earthy dew that salted the seas of crumbled grain.

Within minutes, they grey remains of death covered the streets, inches deep in a mid-summer blizzard, each unique flake a piece of something that used to be. Leaves, stone, people, birds, glass, metal, wood, rubber, plastic, tile, bugs and worms and grubs. All soot and ash. Crosses, apses, domes, pillars and pews and pulpits. All soot and ash.

Within hours, waves washed the streets. Mildew corpses moldered in fish stew, a fecund boil that begat a fine green salt that dried in clumps and lined the rubble with undulating stencils that parodied the tide…