I don’t think or see how a day could go by without an increment of accumulation in my mind. The ever increasingness of everything. I see a license plate. Its first letter is K. K is, with the exception of vanity, commercial and other specialty plates, the highest first letter of a New York state license plate. We have not reached L but boy, when we do there will be balloons and fireworks and speeches on the triumphant entry of the letter L into our drive-time observations. The letter’s iLLustrious history will be discussed, with a panel discussion of linguists and language lovers who shall delve into the special place the letter L now holds in our hearts for being the highest first letter of a standard New York State license plate.
A similar feeling of accumulation occurs at work. I have to connect with people throughout the day who identify themselves by their 6-digit employee ID. Typically these are in the range of something like 367587 but once in a while I get someone whose # is something like 256789. The gap is significant (to me) because it indicates this individual has been doing this job for a very long time. It’s a very high turnover job and I feel the numbers increase every time I connect. When we cross the 4##### threshold there will be consequences we cannot yet fathom.
Accumulation is everywhere. A reasonable metaphor for its release is human waste, either bowel, urinary, nasal, or vomitous. And ear.
…
Sitting at a coffee shop where, months ago, I left a couple of my Payphone Radio cards on the public business card shelf rack thingy. Mostly it’s real estate brokers and such but mine stands out, at least I think it does. I actually left 5 or 6 cards, of which today only two remained.
…
Someone wearing the second Grateful Dead t-shirt I’ve seen today just walked past. I saw one earlier and question how the dead could be grateful. I guess that’s what you call a joke, right? The dead, though, that’s something else that will never stop accumulating. I once imagined a mausoleum but modularly, so it could just go higher and higher until it reached the firmament. It would like spread horizontally first, spreading wide enough that a mountain of the dead slowly obscures the horizon, and darkens a nation.
