Tim Burr Holler

Let’s call him Henry Hunter.  That is not his name because he is a character, but real nonetheless as you or me because he was born in the 1830s in a huge old-growth forest along the left bank of the Rhine River which is just as real as the Mississippi, as luck would have it, and Henry’s father was the gamekeeper of that huge forest along the Rhine.  Plantation is what they would call it in America back then… but in Henry’s forest the trees were planted by God and picked by timbermen who measured time by the age of certain trees, each one having a name.  So maybe names are important.  To US, he is just Henry. All we have to guide us, for better or for worse, is what we can observe and measure. Henry was paid to observe and measure during the war.

We can physically describe that, successfully, either with or without an objective, observer-independent reality. At this moment in time, it’s up to each of us to decide whether we’d rather add on the philosophically satisfying but physically extraneous notion that objective reality is meaningful.  It don’t mean shit.  And shit has meaning.  And there we are.  Or as Kiowa says- there it is.  Where-what-is individuals get blinked by a cannonball or trampled by the herd.  That is what Henry observed and measured on the plains, out west and in the US Civil War.  Money didn’t mean shit either.  Henry lolled into the war like most young do- driven by chemicals and luck to kill or fuck- or by will to pander and thrill whatever… however

Henry saw money in his youth as we would see plastic chips in a casino now… as we are working for the house anyhow… on our way home- to get in line for a hookup.  You could be a train or a box of cargo getting gas because that’s how it works.  Romance.  Chemicals.  Much different when you are 90 than when you are nineteen.  Another story.  This is about the timber of the 19^th century.  Ship masts pike handles gun stocks and cuckoo clocks not to be confused with Victorian timbre which is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note.  Like the vote.

By the time the shorthorns fired on fart somefuck Henry was already crazy as a cuckoo clock- burnt out as a buffalo chip and soaked as a riverboat gambler open for suggestions.  Young Henry combines cards from America class ocean liners with close magic by forest people who travelled by road with the old tricks learned Early.   Old Henry loved boats and girls before- but never a horse… steam engines and sabers- but never a cat. He is a telephile- and there was no word for that… even though Pygmalion is an ancient story and Pandora’s Box of curiosity is still locked in the armory. Before the war, that is.    

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