Meanwhile, in a galaxy not that far away

Last night The Empire
Strikes Back, & a shot of
Yoda resting his 900-year-
old chin on the hand grip
of his walking stick. &

today I am sitting with
my weary chin on the
handle of my walking 
stick, waiting for the plane
to take us to Sydney, five

years after I last flew. In
between, faulty knees +
hearing + breathing. & no 
holograms around to en-
able me to use The Force.


& on the flight south

I find in the seat-back
pocket in front of me
a finger-sized bar of
milk chocolate, & The 
Road, a book by Cormac 
McCarthy. Though temp-
ted, I leave the chocolate
where it is, but take the
book to take home with
me. There it will be
placed at the back of a 
queue which already
includes the last half-
dozen Lucas Davenport
novels by John Sandford
which I am re-reading
& a number of other 
crime novels picked up
at remainder prices in
the (almost) local Big
W department store.

Do not remove all the chairs

The pipe is overhead. Free from all disc-
ursive attachment, it can float anew in 
its natural silence. Make no mistake, 
nothing is easier to recognize than a pipe. 
This is the first rule to be observed. The

second? Never sit down to the piano unin-
vited, unless you are alone in the parlor. An 
old custom not without basis, because the 
entire function is so scholarly as to allow 
the object it represents to appear without 

hesitation or equivocation. & the third? The 
small articles of a wardrobe require constant 
care. Should be of such material as will bear 
the crush of a crowded store without injury. 
A dignified, modest reserve is the surest way 

to repel impertinence. No truer remark was 
ever made. In vain the text unfurls below
the drawing with all the attentive fidelity
of a label in a scholarly book. A figure in 
the shape of writing. The image of a text.

Sources:

This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley