As he’s falling asleep my son covers his eyes and tells me he loves me so much he could almost live with me. First it’s the hottest August on record. Then it’s the coldest August on record. I try to tell the drunk guy on the bench who’s covered with weeds that August isn’t really a month anyway. It’s an outdated piece of Roman propaganda that has managed to slip through the cracks for two millennia. He just wants to talk about Ronald Reagan. So I tell him this. My father. He had the same name as that guy who broke into Reagan’s ranch with a handgun. This was a source of great joy to him when he was living in my living room looking for a job. Somewhere he could just use a pencil and a ruler. He kept a small fish tank next to the couch. One day the water went septic in a matter of hours. This is just a model, of course, for what will happen to the oceans one day. Maybe one day soon. Already there are vast dead regions nobody wants to talk about. This is how I’m falling in love with you. Small regions of my heart becoming afflicted now and then. But one day, suddenly, the whole thing’s going to go. Sometimes my son wakes up in the middle of the night screaming. I go into his room and rub his back until he falls asleep again. This is the only thing I can do to keep the oceans from dying.

 

 

Project For A New Mythology 2/2