The news today is dreadful, is dreadful every day, is a time loop of humanity tumbling down the sewer hole again, again, again. We are news impresarios; we are sleight-of-hand and slight of substance.
Perhaps the news before was not so dreadful, or at least not such a sledgehammer kind of bad. Wikipedia tells me that on this day in 1882, a German physician announced that he'd discovered the cause of tuberculosis. A bacterium. That must have been awfully good news for everyone, except for all the consumptives with holes already punched all over their lungs. They were screwed, obviously. But finally! A cause! A cause could lead to a cure!
They were always curing things before, but now it seems like new diseases are replicating faster than we can name them and there is never any cure. The virus, it might be in my computer or in my blood or in my head and can I use a cream or an ointment or a pistol to get rid of it? Can I set the dogs on it? Can I listen to it, can I ask forgiveness for it, can I dream about it and when I wake there it will be, shiny and sweet and cloying under my pillow, marinating in its own juices and ready slither into my ear and push my cells/self out the other side? Will there be an massive explosion, a vomiting out of the world's insides? Will the whole universe finally burn with fever? And if it does, who will report the fact of it? Who will Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, chart it, graph it, analyze it play by play and type it up in cold black ink for the internet to drink up and splat back out?
I suppose there will be no news that day.
Amber Sparks's work has appeared in all kinds of spaces, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, the Collagist, Wigleaf, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review, and a contributor at the literary blogs Big Other and Vouched. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, and most days you can find her on the intertubes at www.ambernoellesparks.com.
Perhaps the news before was not so dreadful, or at least not such a sledgehammer kind of bad. Wikipedia tells me that on this day in 1882, a German physician announced that he'd discovered the cause of tuberculosis. A bacterium. That must have been awfully good news for everyone, except for all the consumptives with holes already punched all over their lungs. They were screwed, obviously. But finally! A cause! A cause could lead to a cure!
They were always curing things before, but now it seems like new diseases are replicating faster than we can name them and there is never any cure. The virus, it might be in my computer or in my blood or in my head and can I use a cream or an ointment or a pistol to get rid of it? Can I set the dogs on it? Can I listen to it, can I ask forgiveness for it, can I dream about it and when I wake there it will be, shiny and sweet and cloying under my pillow, marinating in its own juices and ready slither into my ear and push my cells/self out the other side? Will there be an massive explosion, a vomiting out of the world's insides? Will the whole universe finally burn with fever? And if it does, who will report the fact of it? Who will Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, chart it, graph it, analyze it play by play and type it up in cold black ink for the internet to drink up and splat back out?
I suppose there will be no news that day.
Amber Sparks's work has appeared in all kinds of spaces, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, the Collagist, Wigleaf, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review, and a contributor at the literary blogs Big Other and Vouched. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, and most days you can find her on the intertubes at www.ambernoellesparks.com.
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