New Lakes

Is it a lake or a pond, or swamp? All three are fine things, and what the locals call it gives the form and meaning to the body of water. To me it was a lake, because the locals called it a lake. It was a body of water covered with water lilies and surrounded by wildflowers, and deeply embdedded in the wildflowers were rabbits, possums, raccoons, and deer. I had run through the fields two months earlier and I learned I needed a hat because the bugs were vicious, and even with the hat they got the eyes and ears and neck and anything else. Paradise is guarded and you can't enter unless hardened, softened by swells, hands that don't move, the long burning sun of Paraguay. "I bought all of this land away from the developers. They wanted to put 36 homes in cul-de-sacs here, but I bought the land on both sides of the lake and I own the road that drives in to this park. 30 years ago I asked for an easement and 30 years later I am granting one."

"The first guy who owned this land owned all of it. He invented the RV with three winos in a barn in back of a bar. Was so damned big they had to tear down the barn. But he made millions but he was an eccentric. Criminal. His son bought him out, how many millions it took, I don't know. His son bought him out and now he's a near billionaire. His wife passed away recently. But he owned all of this, and made a great industry from what his father created with the winos in the barn in the back of the bar."

"I'm too old to chase away the rif-raf at night with my rifle. The drug addicts, the homosexuals, the hobos. I want to sell my land to a man who wants to build one home for himself and leave the land as it is."

"I managed 400 men in 4 plants. I've seen it go up and down. They are raising rates now and gas is too high. It runs in 9-year cycles, and this feels like one of them. I'm 72 and I've seen these things."

Looking for hidden transcripts

What would it be like to have no hidden transcripts? Would it be akin to a day among friends, playing cornhole, drinking beer, and grilling brats?

It's strange that at this hotel, people congregate out in the back courtyard at night, like they do in Brasil. Is there no hidden transcript here, or are they leaving the public transcript behind? Maybe the public transcript has gone away, and when there's no public transcript, there is no hidden transcript.

Perhaps this is what Moraline gets at with social media. Here, people grill and drink beer together. There is no large, alienating crowd, no mediating simulacra. Or perhaps people wind down at night and wear their hidden transcripts on their sleeves. It is small and intimate, perhaps that is where the good begins. The trouble begins with too much, too many people. This idea of surplus emerges again.