arthur bacon
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2017
- Messages
- 5
The End Of Life (in Seattle)
If death did not exist we would have to invent it.
A while ago I was in Australia at an international conference for nuclear nonproliferation and we watched the Seventies film, On The Beach with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. Besides the amour on the beach, the story is simple: The A-bomb Club of Russia, France, Great Britain, China and The United States got themselves into a big shitstorm and ended up throwing every atomic submarine, missile and plane at one another until there was nothing left but a giant radioactive cloud that extinguished all mammalian life north of the equator. The radioactive cloud is slowly wafting its way down and across the entire southern hemisphere killing everything in its path. An American nuclear submarine is all that remains of western European civilization as it makes port in Melbourne to announce the imminent apocalypse. What do you do when you know you only have a few weeks left to live?
The Australian government begins handing out suicide pills while some people race motor vehicles at suicidal speeds, others pack up their sailboats and shove off for Antarctica and others just go about their normal golfing, fishing and tennis as though, like ostriches with their heads in the sand, act like nothing is actually going to happen. Everybody is FINALLY realizing that god is a hoax so even the shamans cannot provide succor. There is nothing anybody can do. This is it. The last hurrah.
Bobby Fisher was right when he said, “Chess is life”, except that in our case it is pool; for us pool is life and there are only a few days left and Dave has not received his shipment of suicide pills from Tbilisi yet. Players talk in hushed small groups about the possibility of a new room opening up like it has happened in the past; after the 211 closed, Doctor Cues opened and when that closed The Fleece opened. But I think this is wishful thinking in as much as Seattle is one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet and a dozen pool tables take up a LOT of space; space that could be full of motorcycles, desks, guns, books, Lazy-boys or wine bottles. One bottle of cheap Chateau St Michelle Pinot Noir makes as much money as three hours of Nine Ball and it only takes two minutes to negotiate the deal.
What do you do when you find out that you have stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer? Would a new Ferrari assuage the hopelessness? You have a month to live so do you eat at Le Pichet drinking Chateau Margaux ($1,000 per) every night? Do you have a partner who is up to the task of satisfying your moribund carnal lust? You used to talk about wanting to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. Did you live as compassionately, generously, productively and richly as possible? Death is the great leveler; after the game both the king and the pawn go in the same box.
Like the Aussies racing recklessly around their death tracks we are all playing our last games of One Pocket and Rotation amid the inexorable evidence of a lifeless future as furniture is stacked in corners, pictures eviscerated from the walls, bets waged higher and play perfunctory notwithstanding the fact that there is no time left to **** around. Keep dreaming folks, as though “the cloud” is going to dissipate. Seattle is NEVER going to see another companionable Stygian room with a dozen Diamonds, blue Simonis glowing amber under islands of luminescence. God is dead. Pool is dead. Where’s my 9mm?
Harborview and the Polyclinic are offering free suicide counseling sessions for all One Pocket players because at midnight, 31 October 2018 “life” will cease to exist in Seattle.
Arthur Bacon, Seattle, 2018
If death did not exist we would have to invent it.
A while ago I was in Australia at an international conference for nuclear nonproliferation and we watched the Seventies film, On The Beach with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. Besides the amour on the beach, the story is simple: The A-bomb Club of Russia, France, Great Britain, China and The United States got themselves into a big shitstorm and ended up throwing every atomic submarine, missile and plane at one another until there was nothing left but a giant radioactive cloud that extinguished all mammalian life north of the equator. The radioactive cloud is slowly wafting its way down and across the entire southern hemisphere killing everything in its path. An American nuclear submarine is all that remains of western European civilization as it makes port in Melbourne to announce the imminent apocalypse. What do you do when you know you only have a few weeks left to live?
The Australian government begins handing out suicide pills while some people race motor vehicles at suicidal speeds, others pack up their sailboats and shove off for Antarctica and others just go about their normal golfing, fishing and tennis as though, like ostriches with their heads in the sand, act like nothing is actually going to happen. Everybody is FINALLY realizing that god is a hoax so even the shamans cannot provide succor. There is nothing anybody can do. This is it. The last hurrah.
Bobby Fisher was right when he said, “Chess is life”, except that in our case it is pool; for us pool is life and there are only a few days left and Dave has not received his shipment of suicide pills from Tbilisi yet. Players talk in hushed small groups about the possibility of a new room opening up like it has happened in the past; after the 211 closed, Doctor Cues opened and when that closed The Fleece opened. But I think this is wishful thinking in as much as Seattle is one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet and a dozen pool tables take up a LOT of space; space that could be full of motorcycles, desks, guns, books, Lazy-boys or wine bottles. One bottle of cheap Chateau St Michelle Pinot Noir makes as much money as three hours of Nine Ball and it only takes two minutes to negotiate the deal.
What do you do when you find out that you have stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer? Would a new Ferrari assuage the hopelessness? You have a month to live so do you eat at Le Pichet drinking Chateau Margaux ($1,000 per) every night? Do you have a partner who is up to the task of satisfying your moribund carnal lust? You used to talk about wanting to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. Did you live as compassionately, generously, productively and richly as possible? Death is the great leveler; after the game both the king and the pawn go in the same box.
Like the Aussies racing recklessly around their death tracks we are all playing our last games of One Pocket and Rotation amid the inexorable evidence of a lifeless future as furniture is stacked in corners, pictures eviscerated from the walls, bets waged higher and play perfunctory notwithstanding the fact that there is no time left to **** around. Keep dreaming folks, as though “the cloud” is going to dissipate. Seattle is NEVER going to see another companionable Stygian room with a dozen Diamonds, blue Simonis glowing amber under islands of luminescence. God is dead. Pool is dead. Where’s my 9mm?
Harborview and the Polyclinic are offering free suicide counseling sessions for all One Pocket players because at midnight, 31 October 2018 “life” will cease to exist in Seattle.
Arthur Bacon, Seattle, 2018
