A steeple chimes for the close of the working day, as if one holy sound wept for the frenzy, the toil and the road kill in this Möbius immortality of living to end beginnings, of dying to be remembered, uncorrupted by the notion that someone else is always worse off than you on this love-it-or-leave-it, do-or-die, WYSIWYG planet Earth. The elevator is occupied by a hungry plant trapped in an indoor blizzard of dust mites and aircon, so you take the stairs to the glass doors of your see-through building, the transparent décor a camouflage of impenetrable inequity. Outside, you are seized with a desperate but uncertain wanting to hole up by a tree in the park and watch others as if they were fires. A man in an orange truck by the food cart plucks his eyebrows in the rearview mirror, weeding out the past one white memory after another, as if refusing to believe in ghosts. A woman sells tacos, dim sum, falafels and popcorn, hedging her bets on desire, a far cry from herself, oblivious to the seductions of time. And a boy and a girl on a bench teach themselves how to whistle, scaring the pigeons that parachuted down for some crumbs, but like you would rather be flying.

Bio: Jack Cooper