AUTOMOBILE FILTER PAPER

One week from now and I'll have been back here, Baraboo, WI 53913, the same city I've occupied for 19 years straight and alternating seasons for the past 4; here, 1011 6th St, the same address my father lived at when he was a kid; here, the same room I where I'd wage dream world wars against my little brother who slept on the bottom bunk; here, right here, the middle of all the clutter 23 years accumulate. Sifting through this amorphous mass of physical and emotional junk has taken up much of the time I don't spend sleeping to avoid the perpetual boredom this city exudes. I need a job.

Mexican Jumping Beans. Strange. I found this amongst the junk; I learned that my sister's friend gave them to her. I wonder how long this one lived after if finally freed itself from the bean only find it was stuck in a slightly bigger one. It's clear, there's a world outside, but how to get to it? Maybe it never thought about getting to it. Maybe it crawled out of the bean and thought, "Wow, this is so cool! I can't believe I'm seeing all of this stuff." And that was the world for him. Until he realized he had no food. And no mate. But then maybe he didn't know what they were. How could he? he never ate, so hunger was normal. He never knew other bugs, so he never knew loneliness. There are a lot of people who do just that at some point - hatch then accept what is around them as what is, and because they never know anything else, they think what they've got is the best. Or maybe they become cognizant of the world outside the box and long to join it, but don't know how to get out and after a brief struggle they give up and content themselves in the box. Make do with what you have.

I bet this brincadore, because of instinct, knew hunger and tried to satiate himself on the dry beans and even its pupil casing. I bet it knew lust and longed to complete its reproductive purposes. This knowledge made it conscious of the world outside the clear plastic box, it made it dream of the other side, it filled its starved hallucinations with instincutual images other bincadores and beans. The friction generated enough heat to form other emotions; anger, envy, frustration. All actions outside the box brought it closer to insanity, but thanks to their short life span, it probably died before that set in.

How to get out of the box...?

After I fumbled with the beans I left on my desk. Shortly there after I heard a slight *tick*. I thought it was my speakers. I turned off my Battles and waited. The *tick* came again and I was able to place its origin as the small, clear plastic box that still housed the corpse of the lonely bincadore. Another slight *tick*, long pause, *tick* *tick*, silence. It hasn't made a sound since.

In Brislington church cemetery there is a grave which states that a Thomas Newman was 153 years old when he died. TWO mysteries surround the grave of Thomas Newman. Firstly, the inscription states that he was 153 years old when he died in 1542, but the record for the oldest person we know of is 120.

So did a local wag, or even the stonemason, add the figure one to the 53 way back in the 16th century and nobody noticed, or did Thomas really live to that great age?

Secondly, the gravestone in St Luke's states: 'This stone was new faced in the year 1771 to perpetuate the great age of the deceased.' ut the greater mystery is that there is another grave of another Thomas Newman, also aged 153, in Bridlington, Yorkshire, with almost the same inscription. So, is the Brislington stone the one that disappeared from Bridlington hundreds of years ago? Or was a headstone put in each space because nobody was sure where Thomas lived?

But would people living in 16th-century England know that there was both a Brislington and Bridlington hundreds of miles apart? Could there have been two Thomas Newmans who both lived to 153? I doubt if the truth will ever be known.

The celebrated farmer Thomas Parr, who was buried in Westminster Abbey in the 17th century, claimed to be 152! - When the average life span for a male was only 30.?