Part Of The Problem 7

Long memory is not quite the opposite of short-term memory. Most people lack both these days. You stare at computers all day and allegedly have access to every piece of information, then you become reliant and who cares what you can or can't remember without prompting.
What if the power goes out? Then you head to the dimly lit bookstores. But those are mostly gone too. I've worked in those bookstores and libraries and seen the computers move in.
A few years ago I worked with R. P. Dunaway, a man who had started a bookshop on Delmar when you could still travel by train and visit stores in other cities. That was the way you found things that didn't knock at your door and weren't generally available in your particular city. Pat, as his friends called him, knew books and loved them. Books should be more precious but they have become commodity like all art and knowledge in a capitalist society. The more obscure, the more valuable to the seller, despite the usefulness on the contents. Pat also knew history, partly because he had lived through so much of it, but also because he thought it important to learn and remember. He liked baseball and boxing too, pasttimes that have also endured. He cursed the computers and painted a funny picture of the future devolved man, with short arms only to reach the keyboard and big buggy eyes to see the bright screens.
I showed up at work awaiting new stories or bits of history from him each day. When he died in September 2004, work became just another job. My disinterested ass got fired. There was a flashlight in his desk drawer which he used to see the titles on the bottom row of shelves. I took it, and on my next trip to Chicago, I brought it along. I left it on the still visibly upset spot in the ground where he'd been buried in Findlay, Illinois.


DEAD TREES

sit there keeping score, keeping track of everything
remember it all, always learning
watch the changes from behind the door
walk content in the way you weathered it
block the punches, dodge the blows
and counter with your stance alone
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read

hundreds of people moving in front of me
this progress it takes no care
hundreds of people
and all i can see is you who are no longer there
spend my days in a room, in a room full of dead trees
left a flashlight on your grave
because it's dark and you'll need it to read