THE FELLOW FROM NINEVAH

73. THE FELLOW FROM NINEVAH:

And just reading about the Civil War can make me confused and powerless where a couple of guys are reading a map of the Middle East looking for Afghanistan instead of Iraq and mixing up locations between the two with the map lines melding and all the borders merging and I turn and say "Ambrose Bierce said ‘war is God’s way of teaching mankind geography’ and they shrug and suddenly there arises the old biblical stories from some guy’s mouth and a Tigris and Euphrates reference about millet and grain with shared ideas of cuneiform and ciphers and utensils and law and the great sand beast amidst the royal ponds and swamps and sands where beautiful oases arose and everyone was blessed and happy but it’s all as much a lie as any other and what’s left instead today are layers upon layers of oil and slime and fossil and greed and so many missed chances to operate correctly or at least KILL the beasts and the evil marauders who ruin things like this but in any case here I am in the falling snow as deep as any devil myself in bad tidings walking along sideways in the wind narrowly defeating both myself and the weather trying to kill me or reach me and I walk along the old closed shopfronts with their winded glass rippling and buckling in the wintry winds and the gusts shake it seems absolutely everything road lights sway trees in horror twist white snow blazing sideways roars past in a noise and fury and slowly the local accumulations matter – coating doors and glass and monuments and fixtures and cars as they sit and somehow coming in with the cold is the horror of discomfort but the fellow from Ninevah pipes up to say it’s ‘more than all that’ no matter what I think the sand can outdo the snow and the heat can batter the cold but from either perspective I cannot understand a thing.