Anonymity (Doffs, Tips a Macintosh)

People disappear. 

They wake up Tuesday morning and decide it's better to be a no one somewhere else than some damn fool soul here. 

Happens all the time. 

You expect a familiar face and are greeted by a stranger with a story.

"He moved to Michigan."

"Michigan?"

"To Dexter, I think.  Not even a town.  A village."

"What's in Dexter?"

"A village.  He wanted to live in one."

Who could blame him?  The living in hamlets ain't easy.  (Settlements neither.)  No one with any sense plants roots in unincorporated municipalities anymore. 

Why not abscond to villages distant and remote? 

Why not abandon the inessential and reinvent yourself somewhere pleasant?

The appeal's as obvious as it is compelling: no one appreciates the person rank circumstance created.  Everyone thinks they could be more given a fair shake in honest environs.

Only everyone is wrong.

Some people are destined to fail spectacularly.  Doesn't matter where they move to or who with, in two months their straits choke desperate. 

They disappear into and become the Man in the Macintosh. 

This they desire, to be anonymous and unknown, to flit from mourner to mourner without explaining anything to anyone. 

Tortuous anonymity is palpable from space. 

(Even in Michigan.) 

Like Joyce I wonder who it is who makes this מנין sing:

Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now, I'd give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

We all come to look at it eventually.

Then we die.

(cue earnest horns)

Comments

[Flowbear]

I don't know why, but I've always imagined the M in the M as Barney Rubble in a pervert overcoat. It makes the scene altogether less sad.

[Ahistoricality]

Some people are destined to fail spectacularly. Doesn't matter where they move to or who with, in two months their straits choke desperate.

Thanks.

[va]

The Man in the macintosh loves a lady who's dead. He's Bloom's father, I thought, Virág Rudolf.

Does he have a blog? Did I just out him?

[Lloyd Mintern]

"People don't live and die, people just float,
She went with the man with the long black coat."

Bob Dylan (Ring Them Bells)

[felixculpa]

Penguins! Damn penguins!
An older gentleman much loved by the young locals; who specialized in Pernod,
from the end of a cobbled Oxford alley leading down to the Sheldonian where
the penguins and their limos gathered for a fête for the Prince and Princess.
Penguins! Effing penguins! Yelling perceptively. Perceptibly.
He asked after the health of my finances then was shocked when I offered him
a pound; knowing I was a foreigner he urged me to reconsider but no. A sip of
Pernod was sufficient unto the late afternoon watching the penguins gather.

[Adam Roberts]

Dexter, is it? But he's a serial killer! Tell your friend to watch out ...