By Mark Nowak

Encyclopedias and empires go extinct. Eternity isn’t an option. Enjoy the evanescent moon before it evaporates into another eerie dawn, eerie day. Shuttered used car lot across the street from Wastequip headquarters sells eggs for $3 a dozen and flies a Blue Lives Matter flag. It’s the ecosystem nowadays. The Anthropocene. Chickens coming home to roast. The rent is overdue. Eventually we won’t be hired any more, won’t be here anymore. It happened at the Energizer battery factory in Burlington, Vermont. Imagine the Energizer Bunny with no more joie de vivre. “We are committed to making our colleagues’ transition(s) as smooth as possible.” So start searching for jobs on Indeed. Please. It’s always been about entropy. At either end of Lake Erie, the abandoned factories: Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit (though a few factories have been gentrified into condos for the elites). Drive through Albany and head east. Drive from Pittsfield to North Adams to the Vermont border. Endless empty parking lots, endless erosion. It isn’t erroneous to think this way. It’s the essence of this country. The evacuations will be everlasting.