BENEATH FEATHERS

Funny, but perhaps a story is forming, or an idea. But it's a shape shifter. I'll leave that thankless task, finding it, to someone more perceptive. A well tailored theme, though, seems fitting that calls for Democracy or Socialism, Tyranny or Fascism. Some system or another to finish the compost so we can start over with a better plan. Then let's get back to humus, build planter boxes, get on with our organic betterment.

I like tomatoes. Easy to grow. However, from the back of the room, out of the recesses of my own Storehouse, comes already the grumbling of the zucchini people. Next thing there will be separate wheel barrows.

By the angle of the sun in the sky now – clear sky, no smoke – comes bright warmth for my feet. Autumn sun with its programmed angles fetches moods. Warm feet look forward to winter fires in the hearth, apart from the forest fires now destroying memories, plaintive photos found amongst the ashes, recorded by a cameraman/her who learned the angles in photography school – the angle of the sun tugs a web of prefab passions, none of which will unlock a front door turned to ash near a surviving fireplace. Even beneath Moscow, shock and awe will answer.

A story goes away when the book is closed, a luxury of sentiment in recollection, dread from a safe remove not far from the creek bed.

Nonetheless, something is being said here. Just that it will not announce itself categorically. It sniffs around the edges. Trying to catch it is a firefly hunter without a jar. A game fun for all, or maybe a nervous laugh as the roller coaster cranks laboriously towards its peak. In the old days before strip malls one could take comfort in the familiarity of trees passing on the way up, their dwindling crowns receding into oblivion, a recognition of the coming terror.

Those were the days of inadvertent philosophy, sprung with cotton candy that deflected all weight of meaning. Before the walls, I mean. Dwindling memories of terra firma. There is a certain familiarity. Sometimes also a strong yearning for the lilt of fleeting friendships, passed with strangers on the way up, soon forgotten when the ride is over and terror slinks back to its spot in the shade, licking invisible wounds, purring and waiting.

But damn, it refuses to end. Stories are supposed to end. Or they're too much like the life being replaced.

Here philosophy arches its back, biting its own tale. (perhaps tail was expected?) It becomes pornographic, philandering in self absorbed discussions on the nature of reality or being, screwing its own cousin.

So you can see, readily, how it sniffs and snuffles, trying not to let on how scared it is, clanking methodically on the way up, and up, and up . . . without end!

So isn't this an improvement over that self-knotted logic of Lewis Caroll?

I for one, maybe the only one, prefer just an ordinary back yard. No one really notices it's actually here 'cause there are so many. And so why actually look. The ultimate in privacy is to be hidden in plain view where no one actually looks or cares to look, or really cares about anything much at all. Streets are made of boring asphalt, painted with dashed lines down the middle. Who will distinguish one dash from another? Ordinary, anonymous, private. Right out where everyone is in a rush to get somewhere else. Maybe to buy a Slurpee.

There are no Slurpees in my backyard. And that's as close as I'm going to get to establishing some sort of system. Fascism. Democracy. Whatever.

What people really, really want is what's happening right now. The story of it becomes a shipping container, making commodities of a unity. Infinity with a sale price sticker. Which I will gladly affix – here take THIS word – 50% off with the proviso that it's a clearance sale. Everything down to the bare floor and I get to throw the doors wide open. Anyone can walk in and see it's empty.

The doves have lighted on the fence as we look at each other. The one I imagine to be male starts to groom, scrounging wing feathers. She wants to help, beaking under neck feathers where he can't reach. Words are unnecessary.

The NWS within the past two hours has updated its forecast from mostly sunny to a 20% chance of thunder storms. The air in lymphous gentle flows, remnants of a hurricane that formed near Hawaii. Our neighbor over the rear fence is making some progress under their veranda, flailing off notes that resemble primitive guitar chords. An accomplishment that towers over last week's plodding attempts, which resembled a child trying to strum a refrigerator shelf.

Anyone with a mortgage may rightfully claim that this, tuneful or not, will not phase their interest rate. Even if it rains. Perhaps Socialism. But what it is, beneath the feathers, comes down to a search for happiness. It's either there or not, in fact better after the sale is over and the doors are flung open. No system can substitute for the genuine article which no one can see, even looking over our fence with the doves on it, where no one has put anything. Even I am not the creator. It's not constructed.