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ephmrlst
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Alexander wasn’t sure when he became aware of the ephemeralist. At first, he’d only heard the name, thought it was maybe an email discussion group (the ephemera list). But he noticed more and more mentions and eventually found it.
The trick was leaving all the vowels out after the first “e” as if the word were already going away. Whoever Twittered and retweeted under the name covered all kinds of transitory happenings–locations and specials of the newest food trucks, gps coordinates of pop-up restaurants, schedules of subway flash mob dance troops, Saturday night invitation-only book auctions in the empty apartments, street corner moment-museums…
For a while, it was enough to read about them, but actually tracking one down seemed intimidatingly hip for Alexander. His job involved turning weekly statistics into multi-color charts for a multinational more or less in the financial services industry and he coveted the trendier existence in the marketing and advertising departments two floors up.
Then he stumbled across a food truck that had been mentioned the day before, and he was hooked. It was as if that Chinese steamed bun filled with spicy Ethiopian stew was something he’d always craved but never imagined existed. His still devoted his days to surrounding pie charts with haloes of callout lines, but evenings and weekends he explored cuisines, places, events, micro-societies that wouldn’t exist in a week, in a day, in an hour, that might have already ended.
On the subway, after watching midnight PechaKucha projected 50-feet tall on an abandoned building, he dozed for a moment, and woke to find his iPhone displaying ephemeralist’s Twitter page. He looked again–he wasn’t viewing, he was logged in with a new tweet just started. It read “The next.”
He looked around–the ephemeralist must be here, pranking him. The girl in the hoodie and earbuds not meeting anyone’s eyes? The middle-aged hospital scrub-wearer with spiky frosted hair? The ponytail guy reading Stieg Larsson?
He had a quest, and began scanning his fellow attendees for any repeat visitors. Easy enough–she always wore the same sweatshirt.
“You’re him!” he said, plunking down in the next seat on the train.
Beside him sat Mr. frosted hair, eyes closed, snoring lightly.
“Sure,” she said. “I’m infected, same as you.”
Out the corner of his eye, he saw the man in scrubs was texting in his sleep–something about a moment-museum…
A Few Notes Concerning Griffins
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
The thing about griffins, and nobody really takes this into account, is that it isn’t just the beak–the whole digestive system is avian. That means gizzard stones, and that, in the case of griffins, with their fondness for hoarded riches, should mean swallowed rubies, opals, and chunks of jade as big as your fist. Which would be pretty much inaccessible except the feline side brings with it a grooming instinct. And that means hairballs.
The sound is a fearful thing, particularly when echoing among the dunes on a night when the new moon is a low huge matte-gray absence overhead. A sound like a freight train hauling an angelic choir roaring by, then slamming into a glottal stop the size of Rhode Island. Not a sound you forget, or one that I could resist investigating.
So, after hours wandering the dunes, I found the griffin around dawn, stretched out in a garage at the burnt-out end of a cul de sac where the lawns were all sand and switch grass, gnawing on a truck tire.
“What do you want?” said the griffin.
Ever since the apocalypse, lying hasn’t seemed worth the effort, so I answered with utter honesty: “Treasure.”
“Help yourself,” said the griffin. “Plenty for us both.” It waved a claw in the direction of the lawns, and I saw, by the plum-colored sun that had just crested the split-level ranch opposite, that the sand was strewn with the stuff you give away two hours after your your yard sale should have ended–a broken blender, a stack of Steven Seagal DVDs, a bedraggled Cabbage Patch Kid…
The good stuff was heaped in the back of the garage, and it wasn’t all that good. A cherub-encrusted chandelier. A plastic faux-jukebox hutch. One of those sad clown paintings. The griffin’s taste was abominable.
I had just realized the whole priceless hairball thing was pretty iffy when it made that disgusting, angelic, and, at this distance, skull-splitting sound again.
“If I help you with that,” I said, “what’ll I get?” I was thinking, Androcles and the Lion; I was thinking, hairball remedy and vasoline in the cupboards of the abandoned subdivision; I was thinking, something in that hoard-heap might be worth a decent meal in one of the shanty-burbs.
“You’ll get,” said the griffin, “not eaten.”
I was thinking how its eagle side and its lion side had carnivorousness in common.
“Deal,” I said.