Bouncing down the hall, the marble passes a row of closed doors, except one – my door. Always open.
Inside on my desk is my Indian head, with its way of staring. I flip it, it lands and wobbles, faster and faster. Until the sound buries itself.
“How!”
In movies after the news reel we learned this. Black and white, Eyes And Ears Of The World, the music blaring. Gritty and grainy, meant to inspire buttered popcorn. Why any of it should be worth a bit of coin now is a question lofted through the reaches of time, in PDF format.
In those echoes past, long corridors were hatching dormant dreams of glass towers, meant to awe the human spirit. In hidden seeds of Ponzi schemes, often misspelled Pyramid. The echoes thundered Progress, rhythm of the day, that was the tune, and civilization with automatic sprinkler systems.
The marble backslid into B. F. Skinner's box, to invade a Turing test and ruffle Schrodinger’s cat, which was already making a fuss. I heard the meow. It all seemed so cruel. So, late at night, I opened another door.
That's when the cat escaped, dragging along a Geiger counter by its cord. It was clicking faster and faster, like the Indian.
Peering inside the empty box, the night duty physicist couldn't help but, “How?” A solid fun moment. And the marble is still bouncing, bumble boogie, out into the night.
Oh, but it's a play on words, yes? Of course. As gods play with dreams, intermingling, drifting along with the sun before dawn, or a web before its spider.
The words giggle, having won the game of hide and seek. The world makes heavy rocks, deep oceans and high birds. It's ever so cumbersome, how could it ever not shoot hoops without words?
The marble disappears, having reconsidered. Clumsy pyramid, the rim has no choice but to return laughter. A bounce shot. It is not wounded or embarrassed, but simply dribbles a composition of one hundred words, which belie a century of preparation, a slow growth churned in buttermilk. Explanations are laid out in dried sheets spread over the steps of City Hall. Apologies to the Mayor.
Well if a god-like imagination decides on god, it is delightful, I say, being free. Words and I are untethered. The me I use is the eye that sees the eye, that peers through the doors of perception, and there they are – wide open – clean as a whistle right from the beginning.
Clouds at play, and I thought oh, a metaphor escaped ahead of its time. But that's where words drop off the edge.
“Thar she blows!”
As the USS Swindle steams off the edge of the earth. Impossible, yes? But people on shore are going about their business. A view from the space station shows little difference; they are celebrating a new space toilet.
But careful images beamed down to KPIX5 in San Francisco show plumes of smoke splaying out over the whole bay area. It's sweltering. Dry as tinder, with Profit Safety Power Shut Offs in place. And the Weather Channel brings images of heavy rain in our eastern states. Flooding. A phenomenal dip in the jet stream is ripping down through any last pretense of normal.
And so, without any nccessary connection to a laser beam, comes a memory of Ms Safer, who used to come and sit next to me at Kannon Do. She seemed somehow out of place, wearing large bracelets that jangled. She spoke at inappropriate times, though seeming uninterested in having a conversation. She was an artist and brought one of her paintings to the zendo. It was a scene from outer space, in the bright colors of a nebula or a galaxy, as I guessed. And this was her conversation. And while I sat, perhaps like a mountain, perhaps a block of iron, there was a force I felt, as though the tug of a magnet.
A time of many strange happenings. I accepted her presence without much further thought. That these many years later she should suddenly come to mind seems a premonition run backwards. But it was simply a visit to now. Strangeness resolved.
Oh but yes, it's really happening, though so differently that few want to think about it. Oh, this couldn't happen here . . .well, maybe things weren't quite fair before. People getting screwed, as usual, but mostly other people. Bottom rung, burger flippers, addicts, drop outs, criminals, wrong skin. Oh, the dream – work hard and get more. More! Enough to fill a truck, buy a condo, have it delivered. Wheels and deals, ride the freeways (so called) – but then the rage . . .
Do not go gently into that good night . . . rage, rage until the dying of the light!
Fill the tank. Buy some groceries, carrots and beer. Don't think. Get home before the weather fouls. Don't breathe too deep, it's the little stuff that gets you. The virus.
When you heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
In third world countries they have coups. Here we got a pandemic. The fickle hoax of fate, we've been told. Twist the new democracy and watch it wring itself out. Pivot to forest management -- when the smoke clears, lo! Nothing left to burn. Isn't that good? Smoke goes away on its own.
There are no curtains, here in the backyard. But I take license to give form, a performance of what lies nowhere in my field of vision. It's not a bird sitting on my shoulder, though that happens sometimes. The path we follow, felt in passage, melds into empty air. Before parchment were my clipboard and ball point pen. Ignoring reason, logic, and everyday comprehension. And so?
Life is a weed springing up between cracks in the pavement.
We need sidewalks!
Trees are scarce as papyrus on many sidewalks. We cannot see weeds, much less trees.
A tissue of glass scintillates, reclaiming night lit Pyramids!
The great Sphinx yawns. Frankie stretches out on the warm patio – on his back – paws up in the air.
He migrates to my foot stool, curling into the arch of my foot. How we got from a blue stage curtain to this is a mystery that does not concern him. And now in the waning heat friends arrive as twilight gathers, red tinged in the smokey air. My favorite dove comes by herself to sit on the fence. Bits of walnut and seeds in the feeder are ignored. Baby hummingbird flies in to hover by my hat, briefly, but not for a drink from the feeder. Squirrel scampers past, ignoring offerings on the fence. Crows that used to follow me on my route, chasing lawn bugs ahead of my mower, have built a nest in the hackberry tree, just overhead.
