BURY THIS BOOK

Imagine a world where the measure of success is failure to disturb. Let’s curb our impulse to bother, to impact with our presence, everyone and everything. Let’s pretend we’re not here. Let’s disappear.

First, we’ll need to check out, lock our keys in the car, push the car off a cliff. Smell the burning down there? It’s the scent of our need to disengage. And we will: no more ignition, connection, innovation, invention. Let’s be done with all -tions. Verbs speak louder. Let us be.

Now: abandon, let go, leave behind the folly of four walls, electric lights, shit-swirling commodes. No soap, no clothes. The muck will shelter us with new skin as we worm into the earth, naked, not needy. In no way will we utilize any resource, so-called, for personal gain ever again. Using is wrong. There is no “I” anyway, and so nothing to have or to be had. We will not produce nor consume. As is. Ever was.

Now’s the time to act, but do not interfere. Now, let. Limit to this: Zero Emission. No, no -sions! Stop thinking. Listen: do not emit. Function protonaturally, as before the first sharpened stone. Rewind. Revise. Start over. This means end first, then not begin but be. Bisect the excess, reduce syllables, conserve breath. Start over.

The same as not being.

“There’s so little difference, in the end, between a bag of oranges and a body, when both are spoiled.”

Decay is our birthright. There is no time. Hunger dissipates. Teeth are an ornament. Are you listening? Let’s go all the way back. We don’t need tongues to hear. Understand? Then bury this book.

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James Kaelan's We're Getting On is a dark comic story about scaling back one's carbon footprint to the extreme.

You may have seen the 26-year-old author's bare-chested cover shot for Poets & Writers, one of the only magazines 'for writers' that matters.

You may have heard about the brilliant promotional tie-in to this novella -- Zero Emission Book Project -- Kaelan's 1900-mile West Coast reading tour on a two-wheeler (with pedals) from L.A. to Vancouver. He's in Sacramento tonight.

You may want to order the book with its first-edition seed paper cover (bury it and see what happens) from Flatmancrooked.

Or you can read another boring review of it.