Number 411 smells like #4711

Today is an anniversary of sorts, the way every day is another step closer toward extinction. This is post number 411 of the Dot Matrix, which was an eponymously titled blog until a few months ago. We suspect that a year or so from now, the title over this broadsheet will change names again. We are in no rush to hurry circumstances, only aware that constant change is here to stay.

While the title on the masthead changes, we do not start a new blog as our direction dithers. There is a rich, deep archive of entries to be spelunked for those who have the time. People with patience will learn that Whalehead King has committed whatever voodoo he does regardless of setting. His initial entries while he was the Bard of New London, Conn. bear a striking similarity to his observations about his current home in Dorchester, Mass. They will probably differ little wherever our man in the field finds himself encamped.

A man is a person and an upright person lives true to his or her code. Know where you stand. I once took a scoop of Mississippi River water in my hand and sucked it down. It tasted like metal. It tasted like all the effluent of America washed across a continent about to be dumped into the Gulf of Mexico as food for the shrimp. I felt lucky to take a sip even if it burned my throat and gave my gut a touch of dropsy. I had sipped what the continent offered and I had slaked my thirst to satisfaction.

I dipped my palm into the Neponset River today and tasted its nectar. It was clean and dirty at the same time, like salty zinc and leaf dander. What does your city's water taste like? Chlorine? The river that separates Boston and Milton is a brew steeped with bitterness and hope, with woe and joy, with smug satisfaction mixed with small scale horrorsbows. The Neponset brings Massachusetts to the brink of the Atlantic and then the river exhales. To the north, on the shore I was crouched on, lay Boston. To the south was the rest of the world. I tasted the Neponset and I headed back into the heart of Dorchester, Mass. I live in Dorchester. The air is a cologne that clings to my lapels and beard stubble.

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