CONTAGION

I hope there is no market for this. You should understand that it's not that your patience is unappreciated, unimportant, but just that it's a free choice. Entertainment? Pastime? Exploitation of some mythical root devil, giant spider on a ship's rigging at sea? Shaw!

Here I have addressed you directly, ignoring well known rules. But suppose we both like refried beans? Which I don't, but then isn't a frank admission something kindred? No pandering here for money or readers, and those who stroll this path may sense adventure.

It's just ordinary life. The TV screams. There's a vocal young baby half a block away, in the morning as I sit, and the adventure is you complete the scene. Imagination is a lettuce plant going to seed, its profusion of cottony white seed fliers forming, gathering sun heat, preparing. The stage is set. Where's the money in that?

Last week, or perhaps it was a couple of months ago does it matter? it was the power crew. City power workers in day glow vests, climbing the pole across the street, taking down a dangerously weakened cross arm, under the rusty transformer up there, and the seeds flying past, riding high over the world.

Today's dandelion lettuce seeds flew last week, last month, the indefinite future if taken literally. We'll keep this a secret, just between us. I won't tell. No one will read it. And maybe your grandchild, or your neighbor's, will find them, spot them floating by, seeds not to be kept in a cedar chest because it smells so deliciously of something forgotten, pressed photos on a Facebook page. This invisible stuff lives forever on the web. We can exchange names but they will never go away.

By now a sense of no particular place dawns. Whether or not it was supposed to be this way it's snatched away like a baseball in a hurricane, beyond making sense, bouncing down halls, over bocce courts, laughing on no one's behalf.

So that's why this can't be sold. We share it. It's nothing to do with any rules, no damn story, no payoff. All the world's not a place to pay admission. Bless you. Don't sneeze.

By now this sense of adventure, the unformed seeds, contagious . . .