TRIPOLOGY

The bottle is vacant now. The ship is out surfing a URL, on a trip similar to that of the octopus who escaped from an aquarium by climbing out of an opening left by maintenance workers and squeezing down a drain that led to the sea.. Using a ball point pen, the Captain writes: “It's a shame to mar this beautiful sheet, vast as the sea, but another journey must begin . . .” Mindful of rogue waves, he nevertheless opens an email with the subject line, Evolution of Chaos, and reads, “Perhaps it is either purple or green. Does it fall as rain, or patter like a rain gutter?”

Me, oh my. Why the bottle? Such a metaphor ought not to mutate. The ship was surely fashioned to exacting dimensions. More importantly, no sponsor is mentioned. Just look outside. Hanging down the spiral staircase, all those helicopter blades, all stringy and dripping fog. Not only, but several newspapers, one radio broadcast, flurries of orange confetti insects molting blue wings. So I am sane again.

This spectral retrenchment of statistics, facts, and peer reviewed papers will not end up in a rap. Buffoonery of a white elephant can't buy the art world.

So --

For today only, 20% off, buy this oatmeal. Tomorrow maybe peaches. I declare, do mightily declare, a military air sprung free, The Thunderer! Unhinged joy under a clear blue sky, as our Los Gatos Union High School Marching Band paraded down Church Street. And a menage et quarte doing the twist under a red and yellow dragon in the Pride Parade, the very blood of headlines in another key.

The Captain scribbles, “Well and good. But I speak for myself, sailing where I please. Outside, beyond the Money Bottle, is a hologram.”

Silent runs the olfactory rose, a brilliant monarch butterfly resting on slythy toes. The sand paint mantra fuses to Tibetan donkey beads, dribbling down cheeks of a Chinese bureaucrat. Redwood groves snoring in their many mansions.

A dripping faucet.

The mind's ear resonates, and I google on, calling up You Tube: “1950 HITS ARCHIVE: The Third Man Theme – Anton Karas (his original #1 version),” the one I remember, with a picture of the blue London label. “Recorded in Europe, made in U.S.A.”

1. Nothing dies on the internet.

2. I am older than I can remember.

Up there it's spidery on that slack-wire, swaying between office towers. Play the balance pole ~

A scintillation aligns beach umbrellas. Toy helicopters beneath are bower birds arranging iPhone displays that randomly switch to America's Got Talent, then the scarab beetle's next vacation. It's walking the plank this afternoon.

Captain's blog: “Vast philosophies have disembarked unaided, stowing warp and weft space-time co-ordinates on the other side of this sheet. Profound things. Now all of you sponsors, it's time to tie your own shoe strings. In the top drawer of the roll top, rummage for Publishers Clearing House prize number stubs. Find the one with this note -- 'It may take awhile to find this, but rest assured, Time is an illusion.' Your ship will . . .”

The rest seems to have disappeared down the drain!