Ze-end (zē ĕnd): an efficient Teutonic buzzreplaces the e...

Ze-end (zē ĕnd): an efficient Teutonic buzzreplaces the effete th of the English; otherwise thepronunciation is much the same. To pronounce it withthe proper authority one must smoke a cigarette at thesame time, holding it in the peculiar underhand fashionof pre-1945 Germany—or pre-1989 East Germany—asif a needle to be precisely inserted into a vein, and notcasually hooking it between the index and middleknuckles à la Humphrey Bogart. Ideally, black should alsobe worn along with highly polished thigh-high leatherboots. The monocle is optional. “The end” (thē ĕnd),without an accent, when announcing the conclusion ofa story, but more commonly (thə ĕnd) with the schwae so faintly pronounced, the two words frequently elide(thĕnd), the speaker typically having been so fatigued bythe misguided euphoria of the beginning and the longcomplex confusion of the middle to expend any efforton the extra syllable. Songs with this title never makesense. Those who pen the lyrics to such songs are moreappropriately posted on the posters of teenage girls’bed and dorm rooms. The idea of an end precludes thatof a beginning. The universe defies this supposition.As we have learned, the beginning was a donut. Theend, therefore, is spaghetti. Westerns of that variety,anyhow: windswept plains and rolling tumbleweeds, abe-holstered thigh and cowboy-capped noggin, scragglycheeks. It is noon, and the sun is high, so we shall say highnoon. An American saunters along the wooden sidewalk.Click clack goes a bullet chambered. Wait, maybe the endis a kiss, lips parted drawing near, the outline of bodiesmaking even a heart silhouette in the beach sunset. Backit up and the men part yet again, distance themselvesfrom one the other, a wave of goodbye. Perhaps the endcontains explosions (see Action Film, The pg. 2), thespace cruiser scuttling away with a roar of inexplicableengines somehow captured from the reader’s (viewer’s?)point of view in space’s vacuum. The explosion, likewisea tremendous candle snuffing, a sneeze, an ejaculation,molecules and dust spread only to coalesce with gravityover what the documentary narrators call millennia,though it’s more like billenia, and yet another star willburst forth. In the end, the heroine survives the slasher’sonslaught, knives dripping and ripping air, gunfire, rollersrolling their lights across suburban house frames, sirenslike sirens of a Greek epic lulling the stupefied to whatseems to spell safety. But the whale will ram the whaler,the lovers’ forebemoanéd moan silenced with a poisonedkiss, but that slow-boy-grown-to-a-slow-man-child’s ragebellows from the carriage round Jefferson’s Confederatemonument, and don’t you know that god is pooh bear?And the end should’ve ended just after we said all rightthen we’ll go to hell. Or when that bullet passed throughLenny’s cerebral cortex; when Rosasharn offers herstillborn’s milk to the starving, when the flood watersrecede; when they nailed up the man who invented thechurch; when the great rich guy floats in his estate’s ownpool; when the dueling swords end their play and makeamends before poison overtakes and Norway invades;when the dragon’s dead like the aging hero; when thosewho were not the one dead turned to their affairs;when Anna throws herself under the train; when, like aZimbabwean, we saunter off, sunset-bound.