Insect Goggles, phase 1...

There are many things that I did not plan to do. They were just the logical progression of events that had already taken place. I would believe that my life is fairly logical and rational. How other people think about that is not for me to judge, I’m sure. But…
I did not plan to wander off into the woods. I had no intention of going much beyond the first row of flowers in the garden, the row of flowers that is to ward off insects from the tomatoes and peppers. They can have the peppers. I hate green peppers.
But not the tomatoes. The tomatoes are lovely and a respite in the overwhelming heat of the summer.
I had just planned to peek over the flowers to see if they really worked at warding off the insects. I was wearing my insect goggles. The green ones that have yellow orange glass in them. I get dizzy when I wear them because it makes to many pictures go in front of my eyes and I can’t tell exactly where to go. Sometimes I trip when I wear them. But I had to wear them up to the flowers to see if I would be warded off. I was seeing how insects see, so logically the flowers would think I was a bug. Then I would know that the tomatoes were really safe. If the insects gobbled up all the tomatoes and left only the peppers what would happen to the end of the summer, when the heat got to be like a wet wool sweater… all itchy and stinky and kinda stuck to your clothes and skin and mama won’t let you take it off for fear that you will leave it somewhere because she’s “not gonna carry that thing, too!” Tomatoes were the only good thing about all that.
Oh, but it is just way too hot and difficult now for me to venture any further in this progression. And my head is not quite right because of the goggles and all. I will lie down for a spell and tell you the rest tomorrow.
Come back tomorrow. There will be tomatoes. No peppers, I promise.
Oh, and also wolves. Maybe.

Viral Progressions Thusfar...

Dream: wherein the girls are taken...

I developed a new board game and everyone on the island loved playing. There is laughter on the island in the common areas. People emerge from their sleeping areas with a smirk of joy lingering on their lips. We are living in happiness. We know bliss. But under this bliss we seemed to overlooked a sense of foreboding.
Everything seemed to be going quite well until someone changed all the rules. The rule change was gradual and very subtle. You know the kind of changes where you know something is different by yet you can't quite put your finger on it. The kind of thing where your head cocks to one side so that you can look at it in a different light.

So the rules changed but no one seemed to acknowledge any change. Then one day as the game was in high swing a young girl just vanished. She was there one moment and the next...gone.

I asked where she has been taken.

"Where 'who' was taken?"

"The girl. The girl who was sitting here playing the game with me."

"You have been sitting there all by yourself for the whole day. There was never a young girl next to you."

"What? Yes. Yes, there was. Where did she go?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. If you are going to scream and yell like that you will have to be sedated in your sleeping cove."

In order to save myself the sedate shakes, I move away from the common areas. As I wander back to my room, I notice there are no young girls in the common areas. They are all gone. Well, not all gone. But not here. Not in this space any more.
The space is austere and cold and there is no laughter. Feels like there never was any laughter. Or perhaps like there was laughter, bubbling up and filling the whole space. But now it is all gone and scrubbed away as if someone wanted to sanitize the area of its effects.
Then I realize that it has not that things have been changing. Instead all of the young girls have been removed from the common areas, from the space where people are. The lack of their presence, of their laughter, of their energy has had the effect of a rule change. Their absence has been a barrage of totalitarian rules. Everyone is somber and serious. The space is heavy and viral.
When I ask where are the young girls are, I am looked at as if I am speaking gibberish, as if I have said something a lunatic would have said. Then it hits me. I have understood the problem. But in my understanding I am alone. There is a division between those who have taken the girls and hide the fact from the rest of us and the rest of us who merely cock our heads in order to figure out what is it that is different. I am dangerous in my loneliness. It will not be long before I too vanish.

Brown Bread

There is a hunk of brown bread left on the table. That and a few crumbs from what appears to be, if the crumbs are divined properly, some beautiful, light and springy bread that would melt as it entered one's mouth. As the heavenly, Utopian loaf is consumed and absent, I take the brown bread and put it in my pocket, thinking not at all for the ramifications to come on washing day.

The kitchen is conveniently placed in a shaded forest grove. Who knew kitchen design was so cutting edge in these parts. I step away from the table and move onto the path. As I walk, I see a little house further down the way.

Approaching the house, I realize that it is a little house...made for someone half human size. In an Alice moment, I grab my brown bread and nibble a little piece as I close my eyes. With my eyes still closed, I feel myself getting smaller, shrinking. So eyes closed I step into the little house only to whack my head on the roof line.

Brown Bread does not make one grow smaller and it does gross things in the washing machine.

Dream

I find I am drowning and this factoid is completely novel to me. I realize that I am Michael J Fox. My palsy is gone. I am kissing my beautiful wife. I am filled with deep and total contentment in the act of kissing her and being close to her body. The world is at rest in act of her fragrance.

Also, my car is clean. I mean really clean- vacuumed and grimeless. I am renewed.

Suddenly I feel the rushing in of water, pushing me down into the current. I panic as the palsy returns. I manage to pull myself out of my body and watch as it goes tumbling, bobbing up and down in the mad, raging current. With the lack of a body, I am unable to tell it to be careful or scream out for help.

However, my car is clean.

Morning

Morning often comes too soon it seems these days. I am left rushing around, twitching at the end of the afternoon and zombie-like in the evening.

Small details are important...the twinkling of the dog's collar, the turfy smell of the first coffee, the layered strokes of graphite on the paper.

The solution I think to the quickness of the morning is to get off the unicycle every once in a while to make sure my feet still work.