He even feels in the mood to write a poem. Jim is a poet, he is a poet, he is he is he is.
He finds it hard going, however, because the piles of poetry collections on his bookcases and around his junk-jammed desk contain so many masterpieces that he can’t stand it. Every tap at the old computer keyboard is mocked by the volumes behind and around him, Shakespeare, Shelley, Stevens, Snyder, shit! It’s impossible to write any more poetry in this day and age. The best poets of his time make Jim laugh with scorn, though he imitates them slavishly in his own attempts. Postmodernism, moldering in its second half century—what does it amount to but squirming? You have to do something new, but there’s nothing new left to do. Serious trouble, that. Jim solves the problem by writing postmodern poems that he hopes to make post-postmodern by scrambling with some random program. The problem with this solution is that postmodern poetry already reads as if the lines have been scrambled by a random program, so the effects of Jim’s ultraradical experimentation are difficult to notice.
But it’s time to try again. A half hour’s staring at the blank screen, a half hour’s typing. He reads the result.
Rent an apartment.
There are orange trees growing under the floor.
Two rooms and a bath, windows, a door.
The freeway is your roof. What shade.
The motorized landscape: autopia, the best ride.
Magnetism is invisible, but we believe in it anyway.
Step up the pylon ladder in the evening sun.
Lie on the tracks to catch a tan.
They truck the sand in for all our beaches.
Do you know how to swim? No. Just rest.
Eat an orange, up there. Read a book.
Commuters running over you take a brief look.
Okay, now run this through a randomizer, the lucky one that seems to have such a good eye for rhythm. Result?
The freeway is your roof. What shade.
Eat an orange, up there. Read a book.
The motorized landscape: autopia, the best ride.
Rent an apartment.
Lie on the tracks to catch a tan.
Two rooms and a bath, windows, a door.
Magnetism is invisible, but we believe in it anyway.
They truck the sand in for all our beaches.
Commuters running over you take a brief look.
Do you know how to swim? No. Just rest.
There are orange trees growing under the floor.
Step up the pylon ladder in the evening sun.
There, pretty neat, eh? Jim reads the new version aloud. Well… He tries another variation and suddenly all three versions look stupid. He just can’t get past the notion that if you can let your computer scramble the lines of a poem, and in doing so come up with a poem that’s better, or at least just as good, then there must be a certain deficiency in the poem. In, for instance, its sequentiality. He thinks of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Shelley’s “Julian and Maddalo.” Is he really performing the same activity they did? “Rent an apartment”?
Ach. It’s a ridiculous effort. The truth is, Arthur was right. He doesn’t have any work that means anything to him. And in fact he’s almost late for this meaningless work, the one that brings in the money. That isn’t good. He throws on shoes, brushes his teeth and hair, runs out to his car and hits the program for the First American Title Insurance and Real Estate Company, on East Fifth Street in Santa Ana. Oldest title company in Orange County, still going strong, and when Jim arrives at his desk there and boots up he finds that there’s the usual immense amount of work waiting to be typed in and processed. Transfers, notices, assessments, the barrage of legal screenwork needed to make sales, move land in and out of escrow. Jim is the lowliest sort of clerk, a part-time typist, really. The three-hour shift is exhausting, even though he does the work on automatic pilot, and spends his time thinking about the recent conversation with Arthur. Everyone’s typing away at their screens, absorbed in the worlds of their tasks, oblivious to the office and the people working around them. Jim doesn’t even recognize anyone; there are so many people on the short shifts, and Jim has so few hours, that few of his colleagues ever become familiar. And none of them are here today.
It gets so depressing that he goes in to visit Humphrey, who is sort of his boss, in that Humphrey makes use of the services of Jim’s pool. Humphrey is the rising young star of the real estate division, which Jim finds disgusting. But they’re friends, so what can he say?
“Hi, Hump. How’s it going.”
“Real good, Jim! How about you?”
“Okay. What’s got you so happy?”
“Well, you know how I managed to grab one of the last pieces of Cleveland when the government sold it.”
“Yeah, I know.” This, to Jim, is one of the great disasters of the last twenty years: the federal government’s decision, under immense pressure from the southern California real estate lobby and the OC Board of Supervisors, to break up the Cleveland National Forest, on the border of Orange and Riverside counties, and sell it for private development. A good way to help pay the interest on the gargantuan national debt, and there wasn’t really any forest out there anyway, just dirt hills surrounded by a bunch of communities that desperately needed the land, right? Right. And so, with the encouragement of a real estate developer become Secretary of the Interior, Congress passed a law, unnoticed in a larger package, and the last empty land in OC was divided into five hundred lots and sold at public auction. For a whole lot of money. A good move, politically. Popular all over the state.
“Well,” Humphrey says, “it looks like the financing package is coming together for the office tower we want to build there. Ambank is showing serious interest, and that will seal things if they go for it.”
“But Humphrey!” Jim protests. “The occupancy rate out in Santiago office buildings is only about thirty percent! You tried to get people to commit to this complex and you couldn’t find anybody!”
“True, but I got a lot of written assurances that people would consider moving in if the building were there, especially when we promised them free rent for five years. The notes have convinced most of the finance packagers that it’s viable.”
“But it isn’t! You know that it isn’t! You’ll build another forty-story tower out there, and it’ll stand there empty!”
“Nah.” Humphrey shakes his head. “Once it’s there it’ll fill up. It’ll just take a while. The thing is, Jim, if you get the land and the money together at the same time, it’s time to build! Occupancy will take care of itself. The thing is, we need the final go-ahead from Ambank, and they’re so damn slow that we might lose the commitment of the other financiers before they get around to approving it.”
“If you build and no one occupies the space then Ambank is going to end up holding the bills! I can see why they might hesitate!”
But Humphrey doesn’t want to think about that, and he’s got a meeting with the company president in a half hour, so he shoos Jim out of his office.
Jim goes back to his console, picks up the phone, and calls Arthur. “Listen, I’m really interested in what we talked about the other night. I want—”
“Let’s not talk about it now,” Arthur says quickly. “Next time I see you. Best to talk in person, you know. But that’s good. That’s real good.”
Back to work, fuming at Humphrey, at his job, at the greedy and stupid government, from the local board of supervisors up to Congress and this foul administration. Shift over, three more hours sacrificed to the great money god. He’s on the wheel of economic birth and death, and running like a rat in it. He shuts down and prepares to leave. Scheduled for dinner at the folks’ tonight—
Oh shit! He’s forgotten to visit Uncle Tom! That won’t go over at all with Mom. God. What a day this is turning out to be. What time is it, four? And they have afternoon visiting hours. Mom’s sure to ask. There’s no good way out of it. The best course is to track down there real quick and drop in on Tom real briefly before going up for dinner. Oh, man.