Jake Burnett's Blog - Posts Tagged "ubi-sunt"
The Last Word
Someday someone will write the last word written. The last word will be written long after we stop reckoning time; long after we liberate ourselves from the pressing and necessary consciousness of the sun, the moon, and the stars. No words will have been written for a long, unmeasured time before the last one. There will have been no need, even if anyone could remember how.
The writer will be anonymous forever—who will read his name, or who would remember such an eccentric? That will not be unusual, though. Nobody then will have a name. We won't need them. Nevertheless, he will be distinct from the rest of us, as much as is possible. He will be an eccentric, an atavism. A curiosity to his friends, who will worry about him. A bore to strangers, who talks incessantly about his hobby. A burden to society, which tolerates him with the amused indulgence of affluence. Only his assistant will truly love him—even in those distant empty days there will be love.
The bulk of our bodies will long since have atrophied due to evolutionary obsolescence. Therefore, when he sets out to resurrect the ancient art of orthography, he will have to think machines into being to duplicate the action of the pentadactyl hand. Nouns he will naturally develop through his studies, but verbs will give him a good deal of trouble—nothing will have happened in so long that even the idea of a verb will be painfully slow in coming. He will only put in adjectives for show—like decorative shutters—but having no real idea of where they belong, he will have to rely on an aesthetic sense that is necessarily imperfect and therefore often insert too many or too few, and always in the wrong place.
Two stars will burn themselves to ash illuminating his progress. Three more will grow too dim to write by. When he comes to the end, he will say—well, what will he say? Nothing, of course. He will simply release the book to drift through the silent spaces, smile once at his patient assistant, and slip away.
And that will be the end of one more beautiful thing.
The writer will be anonymous forever—who will read his name, or who would remember such an eccentric? That will not be unusual, though. Nobody then will have a name. We won't need them. Nevertheless, he will be distinct from the rest of us, as much as is possible. He will be an eccentric, an atavism. A curiosity to his friends, who will worry about him. A bore to strangers, who talks incessantly about his hobby. A burden to society, which tolerates him with the amused indulgence of affluence. Only his assistant will truly love him—even in those distant empty days there will be love.
The bulk of our bodies will long since have atrophied due to evolutionary obsolescence. Therefore, when he sets out to resurrect the ancient art of orthography, he will have to think machines into being to duplicate the action of the pentadactyl hand. Nouns he will naturally develop through his studies, but verbs will give him a good deal of trouble—nothing will have happened in so long that even the idea of a verb will be painfully slow in coming. He will only put in adjectives for show—like decorative shutters—but having no real idea of where they belong, he will have to rely on an aesthetic sense that is necessarily imperfect and therefore often insert too many or too few, and always in the wrong place.
Two stars will burn themselves to ash illuminating his progress. Three more will grow too dim to write by. When he comes to the end, he will say—well, what will he say? Nothing, of course. He will simply release the book to drift through the silent spaces, smile once at his patient assistant, and slip away.
And that will be the end of one more beautiful thing.
