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fish-gazing - 2000-08-03
"in your dream there are three things: there is you, and you are morose and in love that is very much unrequited there is the sky that is like what you always imagined a perfect night sky to be... countless stars... endless possibilities... a world of mystery. and there is a very old, very rotted picnic table, and it is splintering your ass." There is my prompt. 10:30 in the morning, I coughed up a sixth tear. I always liked the number six, though I internally deny it by using digits like 2,5,7 and 0 in my PIN number. Don't tell, because I need the money. Rent was due on Tuesday, and I just slipped it into that account on time. That could easily have been a seventh tear, and I don't have any great passion for the number seven, submerged or otherwise. By 10:30, mind you, I was at my desk, and I needed to be a little subtle about the crying. The ones at quarter to ten were less self-conscious. Frankly, everything before ten was on a totally different scale of personality. Everything before eight was on another plane. Dreaming, had a tremendous argument with my mother about the fact that she kept putting out Kam's cigarettes, and about her super-human doubts about my decision making. Then a giant skunk climbed up a little league baseball bleacher and tried to lick my nose. I stayed really still, like there was a hornet on my eyeball, aware that at any moment the skunk could go off, blowing the bleacher to tiny reeky bits. He just seemed lonely, though. A minute later he was off, flapping great furry-striped wings. I am sucker for flying mammals. How cute would an avian badger be? Exactly. This dream was my waking one, the dream that ends with the alarm harshing Mr. Dressup's buzz. The one that I start the day with. Skunks, my mother, anger. Things are generally better if I try to go back a bit farther, but that is often very hard to do. I clearly remember, though, that the skunk's tongue was rough like a cat. Before that it was night. It was dark night, with the moon and blink more open than tonight. The moon tonight is an eyelash, a mere crescent of evening. I was high, like on a bridge, not alone. There was light on the river, and the clouds were glowing softly, and between was iron, concrete, twine, yellowed paper. There was a voice with me, a round voice, flat at the edges. Male, invisible, barefoot. Exactly six syllables short of the end of every sentence. Hesitation wearing an Indiglo© watch. He is talking about death at the start of every sentence, and his unspoken six are bristling the hair on the back of my neck. I lean forward over the water and the noise of the river lifts me from the waist, and the paper, the twine, the iron, the voice are gone, and me, the moon and the water wash up on a sandy beach, the bright bits of the moon completely buried beside a conch shell. I blink at the sun for a few minutes, fumbling for the moon. Enter the skunk. This evening, immodest in omen, there were two skunks, male and female hanging out on the sidewalk in front of my house. They were considering crossing the road. A jackass threw a stone at one of them about halfway across the road, and the male arched his back. I watched from the porch. I happen to really like skunks. They are truly animals that amble. They swagger to the point of tipping, but maintain a certain graceless poise, a permanently dyslexic rhumba. I think that they were looking for cardboard. They do that. — fishy --- Thanks to fishy for the very first acknowledged special-guest stargazing. You can do this to, I'll send you a prompt if you ask.
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