you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better then you are better then you are better then you are better then you are better then you are better then you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better than you are better than. If the sun didn't rise until you finished your homework. If you walked on strings hung between parking meters. If holding hands were all-day breakfast, were toll booth change, were scratch-n-win. See the sun rise and listen to the first word of the day. [buy other stuff from Green Owl]
Swan Lake - "Warlock Psychologist"
I wake up aroused and mosey into a pile of clothes and emerge fully draped. Finest cottons and denims and rubbers wrap themselves like slick vinyl around my parts and I'm at once hidden and completely showing. I pretend to address the nation as I take down yet another bowl of grains and water with the greatest of ease. "Dear Nation, prepare thyselves for an onslaught unlike you have ever felt. For soon and forever will you feel the impending impact. Get ready, peons." Soft wheat dribbles down my chin, but I wipe it with my sleeve, I catch most of it, gather the rest off the blue flower print of my kitchen table. I gallop from my garage on my rollerblades and enter a state of mind I can only call My Travelling Trance. After 15 minutes I arrive at work unscathed, and switch to my inside shoes and head to my post. I run the reception desk at a YM-YWCA, I hand out towels and amend memberships. My co-worker Cyndi brings her cat to work, a habit I detest. It makes me want to dive backwards through the reception windows and land three stories below in the olympic size pool. But today, today something happens. There is nothing special about today, so I don't see why it should happen now. Sure, I dribbled a bit of wet wheat on my chin this morning, but I wiped it up, I don't see why it should cause anything like this. I can't describe it any other way than to just say it, so I will say it: I dropped my pen, and as I bent down to pick it up, I locked eyes with the cat. And the way you back away from a structure to see its full size, I suddenly saw the whole of this cat's life. As if it spoke to me in pictures, as if its form stretched somehow through this space and into another, into thousands, and I saw them all. This cat feels love and it feels jealous and it fights and it believes and it grows fond and grows distant and cold and fucking tired. It gets what it wants, it never gets anything it wants, it completely moves between the three walls its given and it hates and it clings and it cares. It thinks often of a face it holds dear, it remembers only the things that keep it alive. It is like a fresco so fresh that it's dripping and I begin to bawl like some portshore widow. Right in front of Cyndi and all the damn patrons and all the kids standing in pools of pool water with their foggy goggles in their foreheads and all the poor snack-munching masses. Nation, I'm crying about a cat. [Buy]
Posted by Dan at July 10, 2009 1:12 PMDan -- really liked the cat story. Thank you.
Posted by Bryan at August 27, 2009 10:36 PM