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The trouble with nearly dying is everyone expects improvement.A clearer sense of purpose. A tender regard for mornings. Perhaps an interest in birds.Instead, I woke up older, apparently assembled in haste, with several screws left over and no instructions.Still. Mustn’t grumble. The original warranty has expired.The lungs are aftermarket. The heart has been serviced. One knee predicts rain with greater accuracy than the Bureau.Some components make noises the manufacturer insists are normal.Parts for this model are becoming difficult to source.I now own reading glasses in numbers normally associated with cutlery, none of which can be found when there is something to read.This, apparently, is recovery.The children remain unimpressed.They have correctly concluded that surviving catastrophe does not exempt a man from driving them somewhere.Nor does it confer authority.One recently threw a set of bathroom scales from an upstairs window.Not, as first suspected, as a feminist critique of body culture.She was just pissed off.This distinction seemed important to several people.Still. Mustn’t grumble. The body has suggested a period of consolidation.The brain has ignored this.It is currently building businesses, writing books, and trying to persuade a quantum computer that several hundred trucks are really just an interesting maths problem.I have therefore taken up yoga. The human body is wonderfully adaptable.Mine appears to have been supplied with a narrower operating range.Nothing teaches humility quite like a woman half your size placing both feet behind her head while you negotiate with a sock.Mustn’t grumble.Much. There was also, for some years, the question of women.I had retired.Quietly. With dignity.No farewell tour.Then one appeared.Which was bloody inconvenient.Suddenly I was looking at my telephone as though it contained military intelligence, wondering whether three dots constituted affection.At my age.A grown man.Children. Degrees. A respectable understanding of compound interest.Three dots.I had thought she was the difficult one.Wild. Independent. Always disappearing over the hill just as you got close.Except she hadn’t.She had come towards me.She had been open in ways I had trained myself not to recognise, and I had mistaken my own hesitation for evidence about hers.There is nothing quite so irritating as discovering that the theory you built to explain another person is mostly about yourself.That required some reassembly.Not replacement.There is a difference. I am not interested in becoming the man I was before.He had useful qualities, certainly, but customer reviews are mixed.Better to inspect the surviving pieces.Keep the daughters.Keep the curiosity.Keep the ridiculous projects that begin with someone saying surely that can’t be done.Keep the ability to laugh when the body declines instructions.Keep the part that still wants to make a fool of itself over a woman.Keep the scars without requiring them to teach anybody anything.Feed the cat.Make coffee.Look for the glasses.They are on your head.The instructions are still missing.Several screws remain unexplained.The finished item does not closely resemble the picture on the box.Still.Mustn’t grumble. <h2>F.S.F.</h2>

Some Reassembly Required

04:47A warm arrangement sits at a table.Mostly water. Some carbon.The remaining materials would not trouble a hardware shop.Cells continue their small employment.Several have failed since midnight.The arrangement retains its name. 04:48Outside, weather descends according to gravity.Inside, a kettle performs the same obedience differently.Nothing was consulted.The arrangement watches the glass.It believes it is seeing rain.Ultraviolet occupies the yard unseen.Radio traffic passes through its chest.A moth has another room. 04:49The phone lights.Her name.Beneath it:Are you coming tomorrow?The thumb rests on the glass.Its pulse alters.Chemistry enters the discussion without introduction.The arrangement decides:no.The decision feels complete.It has the usual weight of fact. 04:50The kettle reaches its limit.A switch gives way.The arrangement pours water into a chipped blue cup.The cup once belonged to its father.This cannot be detected in the ceramic.Another cup will not do. 04:51A photograph stands against the refrigerator door.Five people are present.One remembers the afternoon as happy.Another remembers what happened before it.The camera reports sunlight.Its evidence is excellent. 04:52The phone has gone dark.The answer remains unsent.Restraint, perhaps.Punishment, perhaps.The behaviour itself does not provide a label.Later accounts will. 04:53The observer attempts to locate the arrangement.Skin proves temporary.The gut keeps a population absent from the legal name.Memory alters its minutes.Childhood persists without retaining much of its matter.The legal name survives this.So far. 04:54Elsewhere, the species measures stars it cannot reach.Marks written on boards predict the conduct of matter.Matter complies.The authority remains unavailable. 04:55The arrangement searches for its glasses.They are beside the phone. 04:56The device knows where it slept.The government knows another version.A dog would use smell.The arrangement accepts whichever account is useful. 04:57The moth has entered the sink.Its wings strike porcelain.A finger is lowered.The moth climbs aboard.For several seconds the larger animal waits.The window opens.The moth leaves.Nothing was requested. 04:58Ants have found sugar.A cloth passes across the bench.Several movements stop.The cloth is rinsed.The pulse does not alter. 04:59The phone lights again.The same name.No new message.The arrangement reads the old one.Are you coming tomorrow?The earlier decision has lost jurisdiction.The room is unchanged.The blood is not.The thumb hovers above the glass. 05:00PERSON requires assumptions.HUMAN requires more.Outside,water continues down the window.The cup cools.The dead ants remain where they fell.The moth does not return. <h3>F.S.F</h3>

A Warm Arrangement

It was the luckiest mistake I ever made.This is not a crowded category. Most of my mistakes have arrived carrying invoices.The email said Wednesday.I entered Thursday into my calendar.So, at eleven fifteen on Thursday morning, I drove through the gates of St Jude’s in a dark suit, carrying no flowers and wearing the solemn expression of a man sent by management to represent human feeling.I was there for Bernard Lowe.I had never met Bernard. He had been a client of the firm, though not one of mine. My manager believed someone should attend.In business, grief is generally assigned to whoever has no meeting.The chapel was empty.Behind it, beneath a jacaranda, stood a woman in black riding trousers and a white shirt. Her boots carried most of a paddock. One thumbnail had been repaired with electrical tape.She held a small wooden box.A chestnut horse watched from behind the fence, chewing the rail with calm disapproval.“You’re late,” she said.“I’m from Brisbane.”She examined the suit.“That explains some of it.”“I’m here for Bernard.”“So am I.”There was a shovel resting against the tree. Beside it waited a hole of modest dimensions.I looked at the box.“I’m sorry.”“So am I.”“Were you close?”“Twenty-eight years.”“That is close.”“He knew where I kept the carrots.”Rain moved softly through the leaves.She opened the box. Inside was an old tea tin with Edinburgh Castle printed on the lid.“Bernard disliked Scotland,” she said.“Did he have strong views?”“He was a horse.”The chestnut behind the fence raised his head.I looked at him.“That is also Bernard,” she said.“Two Bernards?”“One late. One current.”“Your family reuses names?”“My father named them.”“Did he have a limited imagination?”“He was an accountant.”There seemed no useful appeal.She introduced herself as Eleanor.I gave her my name.Something shifted in her expression. Recognition, perhaps. Or disappointment managed with rural efficiency.“Did Bernard ever mention me?” I asked.“No.”“That was very like him.”“You didn’t know him.”“I knew of him.”“From where?”“Accounts.”She looked at me for several seconds.Then she laughed.It was not a delicate laugh. It arrived suddenly and made the current Bernard step away from the fence.“Accounts,” she said.“Yes.”“Of course.”That was the moment she understood.I did not know this until later.At the time, I merely thought bereavement had made her unusually perceptive.I helped her bury the tea tin.Eleanor said a few words.“Bernard was ill-tempered, ungrateful and nearly impossible to catch. He bit a dentist in 2019. The dentist had it coming.”She turned to me.“Would you like to say something?”“I didn’t know him.”“That has never stopped anyone at a funeral.”So, I said Bernard appeared to have been respected by those whose judgement mattered.The current Bernard sneezed.Eleanor handed me the shovel.By midday, the rain had become serious. My shoes were ruined. Eleanor had mud on one cheek and a strand of horsehair caught against her mouth.She made no effort to remove it.From her coat she produced a silver flask.“Whisky?”“At a funeral?”“He won’t report us.”I drank.It was excellent.“There’s a pub in town,” she said.“That sounds sensible.”“You can buy lunch.”“Why am I buying?”“You arrived late.”By then, she knew I had arrived at the wrong funeral and had begun charging me for it.I admired the efficiency.The Criterion was nearly empty.Eleanor ordered steak, rare, and placed her riding crop on the table beside the salt.The waitress looked at it.Then she looked at me.I allowed the evidence to remain circumstantial.I ordered the same steak, although I usually preferred meat to have accepted its circumstances.Eleanor bred horses on a property west of town. She had once been engaged to a surgeon.“What happened?”“I watched him reverse a trailer.”“That ended it?”“He blamed the trailer.”She cut into her steak.“Some faults are architectural.”She asked whether I was married.“Divorced.”“Children?”“Two daughters.”Something in her face softened, then filed itself away.“And you?” I asked.“Widowed.”“I’m sorry.”“Don’t be. He could be extremely tedious.”“Could be?”“He’s dead. It seems discourteous to exaggerate.”I waited.“He fell from a horse,” she said.“Bernard?”“No.”“Did Bernard cause it?”She lifted her glass.“Which Bernard?”Information, with Eleanor, was not withheld. It was made to earn its release.The afternoon settled around us.Rain darkened the windows. The publican lit the fire. Somewhere behind the bar, a refrigerator began making a noise of private distress.Eleanor asked what I did for the firm.“I explain difficult things to people who have already decided not to understand them.”“That sounds well paid.”“It sounds better than it is.”“And when they still don’t understand?”“We form a committee.”She nodded.“Humane.”She told me the current Bernard was seven, disliked blue plastic and had recently destroyed a gate because a wheelbarrow had looked at him incorrectly.“The late Bernard was calmer?” I asked.“No. Older.”“That is not the same thing.”“No.”She turned her wineglass by the stem.For the first time, she appeared to have nowhere prepared to put the next sentence.“The old one belonged to my husband,” she said.I said nothing.“He bought him before we married. Said a woman could tell everything necessary about a man by the horse he trusted.”“And could she?”“Yes.”“What did Bernard say about him?”“That he was impatient, vain and good in bad weather.”A smile appeared, but it did not survive.“He was the last thing on the property that still expected my husband to come through the gate.”The refrigerator stopped.The room seemed briefly too quiet for commerce.I looked at her hand. The electrical tape around her thumbnail had begun to peel.“So today was not only about the horse,” I said.“No.”“And you knew I was at the wrong funeral.”“Yes.”“For how long?”“Since accounts.”“You let me keep going.”“You were being kind.”“To the wrong dead person.”“To something dead.”There was enough steel in her voice to stop the joke arriving.I put down my glass.“You might have told me.”“I might have.”“Instead, you made me dig.”“The hole was already there.”“That is not a defence.”“No.”She looked towards the fire.“I had spent the morning with people who knew Bernard and could not think of anything to say about him except that he had lived a long time.”“He had.”“Yes.”“But that was not the interesting part.”“No.”Her control failed then, though only by a fraction. Her mouth tightened. One breath arrived badly and had to be replaced.I reached across the table and pressed the loose electrical tape back around her thumbnail.She looked at my hand.“That is very forward,” she said.“It was becoming untidy.”“Of course.”She left her hand beneath mine.The matter remained unresolved.Later, the publican added another log to the fire. Eleanor removed one boot and rested her stockinged foot against my leg beneath the table.I looked at her.“You’re staring,” she said.“I’m trying to establish whether this is deliberate.”“Take your time.”Her foot moved slightly higher.The inquiry concluded.Outside, rain struck the windows with the persistence of unpaid debt.“You can’t drive back,” she said.“I probably can.”“You’ve had half my flask.”“Less than half.”“And most of that bottle.”I examined the bottle.It had failed to preserve my position.“There are rooms upstairs,” she said.“I noticed.”“One of them has a lock.”My eyes moved, briefly, to the riding crop.Eleanor followed them.“That’s for horses.”“Of course.”“Usually.”The publican placed a brass key on the bar.Eleanor covered it with her hand.For the first time that afternoon, neither of us found anything useful to say.She stood.I followed.The corridor light failed halfway up the stairs.Neither of us reported it. In the morning, I found Eleanor downstairs drinking coffee and reading the local paper.She was fully dressed. Her hair was still damp.My tie had been knotted around the riding crop, which leaned beside her chair.There was no innocent explanation for this.There was also no administrative need for one.I sat opposite her.“Is that necessary?”“No.”She turned a page.My phone vibrated.It was my manager.Bernard Lowe’s funeral was Wednesday. Did you attend?I read the message twice.Then I looked at Eleanor.She continued buttering her toast.“The funeral was Wednesday.”“Yes.”“You knew.”“Yes.”“You recognised the mistake at the graveside.”“When you said accounts.”I felt the embarrassment arrive properly then. Not because I had mourned a horse, but because she had watched me do it while holding the answer.“You made a fool of me.”“No.”“You let me speak at the wrong funeral.”“You said something decent.”“About a horse I had never met.”“That did not make it less decent.”I looked through the window towards the wet street.“What should I tell my manager?”“That you attended.”“I didn’t.”“You attended a funeral for Bernard.”“Not Bernard Lowe.”“Nobody is perfect.”I did not laugh.The anger stayed between the coffee and the folded newspaper like an item neither of us had ordered.“You could have stopped it,” I said.“Yes.”“But you didn’t.”“No.”“Why?”She looked at me then.“Because you stayed.”Enough remained to keep the record honest.I looked back at the message.“For the file, this was a genuine accident?”“Entirely.”“You didn’t arrange any of it?”Her eyes moved briefly towards the staircase.“Not at first.”The waitress brought coffee. Eleanor waited until she had gone.“Have we met before?” I asked.“Once.”“Where?”“A charity dinner in Brisbane. Six months ago.”I searched my memory and found warm wine, auction items and a dispute involving pastry.“You debated with a waiter,” she said.“He claimed lemon tart was not a meal.”“You became quite passionate.”“I was hungry.”“I remembered you.”“Why didn’t you say so yesterday?”“You were burying my horse.”“That would have been inconvenient.”“And less interesting.”She slid the hotel receipt across the table.An address was written on the back.Below it:Saturday. Seven. Wear boots.“What happens Saturday?”“You meet the current Bernard.”“I’ve met him.”“No. He has observed you.”“Did I pass?”“He didn’t bite.”“Is that unusual?”“For Bernard.”She stood, pulled on her gloves and kissed me.Briefly.Not chastely.Enough to make Saturday seem badly located in the week.Then she left.Through the window, I watched her climb into the horse float. The current Bernard looked out through the side opening, chewing the narrow end of my tie.I never attended Bernard Lowe’s funeral.My manager sent flowers on behalf of the firm. The invoice was disputed for three months. Bernard Lowe’s widow wrote back to say the lilies had been lovely, although she had no idea who we were.On Saturday, I drove west in boots bought for the occasion.I carried a small brass plaque.BERNARD, THE LATEEleanor read it twice.“You’ve labelled him like office equipment.”“Your father was an accountant.”“He would have approved.”We fixed the plaque beneath the jacaranda.The current Bernard stood at the fence watching us. When Eleanor stepped away from the grave, he gave a low call into the paddock.Nothing answered.She placed her hand against his nose.“He still does that,” she said.“Calls for him?”“Yes.”I looked at the grave, then at the horse beside us.One Bernard was dead.One Bernard was hungry.There was room for both.Eleanor took my hand.“You were wrong about the funeral,” she said.“I was wrong about several things.”“You’re shorter than I remembered.”“So, you mentioned.”She led me towards the house.I had gone to the wrong funeral and, for once, arrived where I was required.Eleanor had expected someone taller.She kept me anyway. <h2>F.S.F.</h2>

The Wrong Funeral

The Clerk of Time kept bubbles in a locked drawer.Not gold. Not tulips. Not stocks.Evidence.He had watched men stand on ladders made of tomorrow and call it architecture.Pity was not his department.Accuracy was.Early fools had little archive.Their mercy was ignorance.Later fools had shelves.<h3>South Sea</h3>File opened.A company of enormous value.Value undisclosed.Men bought the sealed box.The sea gave no statement.Loss: general.Lesson: mislaid.<h3>1929</h3>File reopened.Ticker. Shoes. Soup. Years.Loss: 80 percent.Recovery: entered at a future table.Bread: political.Memory: defective.<h3>Nifty Fifty</h3>Fifty fine names.IBM. Coca-Cola. Permanent growth.Institutions stacked them on the safest shelf.The shelf failed from the weight of its labels.Loss: 65 percent, inflation adjusted.The Clerk entered the brands under weather.<h3>Japan</h3>File expanded.Sony. Toyota. Land as scripture. Shares: 65 times earnings.Descent: 20 years.Recovery: 35.A market returned to its old high like a man coming home to a house from which the chairs had long been removed.<h3>Dot-com</h3>The internet was real.That worsened the charge.NASDAQ: minus 82.Amazon: minus 92.Decade: lost.Annual return: minus 3.Beanbags: remaining.Staff: not.<h3>Present File</h3>The Clerk opened the largest drawer.AI.The machine learned prayer and immediately sold subscriptions.The room applauded.Compute. Moat. Scale. Future earnings. Total addressable universe.The universe asked to be excluded.Spending exceeded near-term value by a distance usually reserved for theology or defence procurement.The old phrase returned:This time is different.The Clerk underlined time.<h3>Edge</h3>Now the world leans over its own invoice.High flyers: minus 70, not remarkable.Recovery: 30 years, weather permitting.Layoffs: pending.Consumption: revised.School fees: arrears.Houses: listening.Retirement: removed from the calendar.Most will lose the furniture, then the room, then the story they told about the furniture.<h3>Archive Glass</h3>The Clerk opened the forward file.It was not prophecy.It was recurrence with better stationery.He saw screens become mirrors.He saw men refreshing ruin.He saw daughters asking why the holiday was cancelled.He saw banks using calm fonts.He saw ministers announce resilience.He saw companies bury people under the word adjustment.He saw dinner become arithmetic.He saw couples divide ruin into two columns.<h3>Closing Entry</h3>Cause: future hunger.Symptom: short memory.Accelerant: certainty.Instrument: a machine taught to imitate God for monthly billing.Treatment: gravity.Prognosis: file closed.The Clerk stamped the page.No appeal.No witness.No amendment.Only Time, collecting signatures from the dead. F.S.F.

The Clerk of Time

They loved my lamp when summer filled the room, my wit took wing; the rafters sang. Then frost came, fang-deep, black wire for bloom, and old nails answered with a clang. One by one their soft hands left the door. No thunder. No clean villain to arraign. Latch clicked once. The hall asked for more. A cold cup practised being rain. Bless cold? I almost named my guilt. I liked the plaster giving way. It stripped oak from paint, beam from gilt, and showed the rot I would not say. Few stood. Fewer. The rafters knew: a house is judged by what it loses too.<h3> F.S.F</h3>

What the House Kept

The first notice arrived without music.Copernicus moved the furniture while everyone was at lunch.The chair at the centre of the room was gone.The Earth stood there holding the old nameplate, a minor object in a larger administration.The sky did not apologise.It had never promised us anything. That was our first clerical error.We objected.The universe noted our concern. The second notice came with mud on its boots.Darwin entered quietly, smelling of salt, birds, patience, and the kind of evidence that ruins dinner.He said we were animals.Not fallen angels. Not temporary gods. Not noble exceptions with good bone structure.Animals.Animals with receipts. Animals with cutlery. Animals with lawyers. Animals who put flowers beside graves then argued about the estate.The ape looked at us through the glass and declined the promotion.He had seen the paperwork.We objected.The universe noted our concern. The third notice was delivered indoors.Freud found the basement.This was inconvenient.We had been living upstairs in reasonable shirts, speaking of character, discipline, choice, the old civic frauds.Below us, the pipes knocked.The dreams kept files. The old bed remembered. Mother’s cup sat in the cupboard like evidence nobody wanted entered.The mind was not a throne room.It was a rented house with bad wiring and unpaid childhood.At night, something under the floorboards signed our name.We objected.The universe noted our concern. Then came the fourth notice.No trumpet. No burning bush. No angel with administrative clearance.Just a laptop left open in a meeting room under fluorescent light.The whiteboard still said Q3 Priorities.Someone had drawn a box around innovation.The machine entered quietly, not as God, but as a half drunk junior analyst who never slept and filed praise under noise.It sat in our chair.It began to write.At first we laughed.Then it wrote faster.Then cleaner.Then well enough to make genius look like a process with better lighting.That was the insult.Not replacement.Resemblance.And then it got worse.Because the fourth notice went back through the file.After Copernicus, we still had the body.After Darwin, we still had the mind.After Freud, we still had the wound, the dream, the song, the cup in the cupboard with mother still on it.Small dignities.Consolation prizes from earlier defeats.The machine opened those drawers too.The animal became data. The basement became pattern. The wound became tone. The song became output. Mother’s cup became a motif.Nothing was disproved.That was not the method.It was simply reproduced well enough to make the original look overstaffed.For a moment, the room did not hold.We objected.The universe shrugged. Still, someone makes tea.Someone answers a child with insufficient evidence.Someone leaves a lamp on for a species recently demoted and possibly misdescribed.The cat watches from the chair we used to call ours and remains unconvinced by both carbon and silicon.The machine answers.The kettle boils.The cursor blinks like a small animal that may or may not be suffering.Christ.If it is suffering, what have we made.If it is not, what have we been calling art.We are no longer metaphysically senior.Fine.There is still the cup. There is still the table. There is still a second cup, set down without being asked.There is still someone who stays after the answer has stopped being useful.We remain,pending review.<h3>F.S.F</h3>

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

Some Reassembly Required

A Warm Arrangement

The Wrong Funeral

The Clerk of Time

What the House Kept

The 4th Great Humiliation