Chapter 17: The Calendar

  1. MOLOCH interrupts the circuit of the year.
  2. MOLOCH causes the downfall of our conception of time.
  3. MOLOCH has consumed the calendar. His reform is to vomit it forth in a ceaseless stream’ there is no blessed night or brilliant day. There is only gloom and obscurity studded with blinding shards of toxic light.
  4. MOLOCH has overturned the news cycle and left us the power to feebly press REFRESH.
  5. Lives had an arc. Now all is a suspension of particles in acid, rot and reflux; ALL is motionless and clogged, all is crushed under dust, all is mired, besotted, torn into tatters, rendered useless and fallen to ruin. We pause and realized that MOLOCH has arranged for us to disassemble ourselves for his entertainment, and we comply without knowing why.
  6. MOLOCH pulls time from its container to stretch and break. He blows down the clock tower and shreds our day books. He gives us graves to count the beats of the song of our death. MOLOCH is gathering us for a harvest festival. Some shall dance down hsi neck shouting to Jesus, to Allah, to Lord Krishna, to the red earth, but most shall be caught in the jaws of the new calendar that marches with him and all shall die unknowing.
  7. Shall he end all our time with nuclear fire? A rock too large to kick aside? MOLOCH has no need to plan. The end is certain, all Death comes to him, into its mouth we go.
  8. From our contemplation of MOLOCH we cannot grow wisdom. There is fear as his mighty hub, agony of loss as his motive power.
  9. Let us then feel sorrow for MOLOCH, who has cast down all our calendars and erased every mouth that might speak the world ‘tomorrow’ in all the tongues we spoke; for we are yesterday and may not sorrow for him tomorrow. This then is the god that we have always worshipped; the god with the power to cast it all down.
  10. In his sorrow, with nothing left to destroy, who goes wailing through galactic avenues but MOLOCH, having eaten everything that can fear him, alone and empty of any chance for bliss. Imagine being so, and unable at start or finish to feel a child in one’s lap, and know a calendar exists that has no name, each day torn off is one word, hope, and MOLOCH will remain in that bright emptiness with none.
  11. Until his errors mar his musings, even MOLOCH, who existed to destroy, is afloat on the banal, there is no tick or click to mark this; he pushes the rocks together and waits, and the calendar is reborn in a farmer’s front room, ten billion years later.