Grasshopper

Once upon a time there was a grasshopper that could jump really high. One day he jumped so high that he landed on the very top of a tree. Then he decided to jump again and jumped so high that he landed on a cloud after which he jumped really high again and landed on the moon. Very impressed with himself he decided to jump as high as he could. He jumped so high that he landed on mars where he found a peanut butter and jelly (grape) sandwich. The peanut butter and jelly (grape) sandwich was 8 times his body weight but he ate the whole thing. Feeling very stuffed he decided not to jump again and lived out the rest of his days on mars, which is how the rumor started that there are grasshoppers on mars.

what he saw

Never one to arbitrarily throw out a good piece of plastic, he thoughtlessly threw the empty aspirin bottle into his back pack and didn’t give any more thought to it for several months. Upon the passing of several months he found himself needing to empty out the contents of his back pack at an airport security checkpoint one day on his way to a vacation destination of his choice. He was surprised to see the empty aspirin bottle because he hadn’t remembered packing it and he hadn’t remembered throwing it in their several months earlier. The security guards looked at the bottle and then looked at him suspiciously and then looked at each other with resignation. They turned their attention back to him and simultaneously asked him to open the bottle, which seemed strange to him because it was clearly empty. Indeed, the bottle was made with clear plastic only partially obscured by the paper used to brand which ever brand of aspirin it was that he had bought however long ago he bought it. But, always one to oblige burdenless requests he went ahead and pushed down on the cap whilst giving it a good twist to bypass the child safety feature. And as expected, the bottle opened with ease and it was as empty with the cap off as it was with the cap on. He placed the bottle and cap in the outstretched and upturned palm of the security guard to his left who grasped the bottle after emptying the cap into his other hand and brought the bottle to his right eye while squinting his left eye shut thereby allowing him to peer through the uncapped bottle. The bottom of the bottle faced his field of view and he focused on the clear bottom and then looked through until he could see out the open end that was obstructed by the other security guard’s eye that was in turn looking through the bottle from the other end. In an instant their singular eyes mutually focused on each other. The guard peering through the open end of the bottle suddenly noticed that his sight was quickened and carried through the clear plastic bottom and was carried through the empty container and also carried through the others guards eye transporting his own consciousness into the body and mind of the other security guard. Suddenly he was aware of everything about the security guard that there ever was to be aware of from his entire history, to his motivations and intentions and his feelings and insecurities about everything and everyone he ever experienced including some disturbing and also some euphoric experiences some of which disgusted him and other of which pleased him. The only thing he did not know was whether the security guard might be experiencing a reciprocal event within his own body and mind and that very thought contracted his own consciousness because he, like most people, had some private moments he didn’t want to share with any stranger even if he had suddenly become aware of that stranger’s most private moments together with his public and even mundane and routine daily events. And with that contraction of consciousness his sight within the guard’s being and life retreated and he was only left with the memory of as much of another person’s lifetime that one could remember under such circumstances. Realizing this strange moment was over he stared blankly for a moment through the empty bottle a few milliseconds more until he realized the guards were eyeing him and not the bottle any longer. They asked in unison if he was alright to which he replied with a stammer that he was. They followed up by asking if he was sure he was alright to which he gave a confident response that he was and which response dissipated any further reason for suspicion so they let him go on his way. And while on his way to the airplane terminal and on his way through the skies and while vacationing at the destination of his choosing and even upon return and for the rest of his life he reflected on that moment and everything he could remember from his experience that conveyed to him the things and intimate details about the life and existence of another human to a degree he never realized possible and never experienced again and that caused him to never look at an empty aspirin bottle the same way ever again. 

may not make sense, may not care

Conversant transistor merchant jumpers cram mouthfuls of potato jam where their mainstream monocles filter out combined moments of genius testers.  Never so ambulatory as when the music infuses and so it’s a horrible death to sit at a desk all day long, chained by porcupine tentacles and breathy landscape drum circles. Still, he got up and walked away, left it that way forever although it followed him, trailing not far behind, but he never looked back and didn’t succumb. The gravity was real, especially in the evenings but it was something else in the mornings and so he tried to fly by singing his wings into being fantastic under the awnings of Brooklyn salesmen wearing lipstick and gorgeous smiles, grinning ear to ear, causing the initiated to fear what might be hiding behind the façade, the showcase windows, into the shadows but something lurking within called him in and he was never ever seen again. 

no time for muffin funk

While the muffins may have been a little over four days old and left out in a sweaty plastic bag in the waning heat of summer’s end, he didn’t expect that the muffins would develop the funk. He opened the bag and took out a muffin with his mouth agape, ready to taste it. When his mouth closed over and bit down, he at first suspected and then as he chew, he knew, his muffins had fallen victim to the muffin funk. But he didn’t want to believe it so he took another bite and found himself engaged in some kind of battle in his mind nearly willing himself to not notice the funk, as if he could manage to impose the lie he was telling himself on the remainder of the muffin and the other muffins in the bag, curing them of the muffin funk and restoring his world to the balance that had possessed it before this discovery he was attempting to unknow. He took a third bite and was almost there, almost believed that there was no funk, that all the muffins were just perfectly fine but finally, his rational mind powered through the story he was telling himself bursting open the imaginary damn he had constructed in his mind, protecting himself from the knowledge of the funk causing his mind to undeniably flood with the sensory experience of the funk. Almost involuntarily he put the muffin back in the bag and then determinedly he threw the whole bag of muffins in the garbage, disgusted at the waste and the commitment to a change of plans that put him face to face with the unknown when he didn’t have time for new inventions. Rather than think of something new, he simply took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and considered that having foregone the time to chew the muffin, he found himself with a little extra time to think that morning.

and the Gods made humans

In all of the Universe and possible and probable and likely imagined and unimaginable existence, the Gods were unlike any others and they made a lot of stuff taking great care in their designs to the point of a kind of fastidiousness that might be annoying amongst mere mortals but for Gods it was rather secondary to their nature and they had a lot of patience being perfect beings like they were. The Gods had many unique designs among them and some even ventured to say that every design of each living creature both plant and animal and even human and non-human, even from living to non-living, was unique just like the snowflakes they were so fond of. Sure, there were similarities and in some instances the same raw materials would be found in any amount of any given samples of this and that but the arrangement of those materials and subsequent emergent properties all presented uniqueness upon uniqueness in quite stunning fashion; although, most Gods were pretty careful not to let it go to their heads (and were privately displeased when some Gods did let it go to their heads but they were too perfectly polite to ever confront such issues of such little consequence which were assuredly of little consequence because, uniquely amidst all the entirety of all existence, the Gods were quite perfectly self-critical and were very efficient in self-chastisement, with special care not to be shameful, which they found a rather ugly phenomena, so that they might self-correct and not be prideful so that they could eventually continue on in their perfection.) But the Universe was a funny thing and in its totality saw fit to include an occasional weakness amongst perfection so that perfect might be truly perfect rather than perfectly boring and thus the Universe limited the Gods in their ability to discern the future and as a compliment to this weakness the Universe introduced variability from the very beginning of its self-existence and was thereby eternally entertained in its observations of all the on goings that could possibly ever happen. And it was because of the Gods’ inability to accurately perceive the future in a predictive manner and because they did not know of the details of the randomness that the Universe introduced that the Gods were constantly trying to match their unique creations to the ideal circumstances so that their creations might achieve what they conceived of as perfection in both their creations and the context of their creations according to the Gods’ own perceptions. When they matched creations to circumstances well, wonderful things would happen and would often be replicated, which is one of the reasons why so many planets and solar systems were eventually created and continued to be created, they had such fun with those things and marveled at all the different colors of the planets. Other things were replicated often such as clouds and the aforementioned snowflakes as well as geological patterns. Nebulas were a favorite past time among many and so were black holes, although, they were often lost. Occasional accidents occurred such as errant meteorites crashing into planets but that also kept things interesting to the Gods, which is exactly why the Universe introduced randomness. Amongst all of the designs they created, the designs of life were the most fickle and temporary and amongst the designs of life, humans were even more difficult to match to ideal circumstances. Many Gods were confounded by humans’ seemingly unpredictable responses to what the humans encountered during their existence. Some of their responses were surprisingly amazing such as the pyramids and they were even more so amazed by the depths of compassion that the humans would occasionally display. But disappointingly, the humans caused a lot of problems and in turn created a lot of stupid things as well such as bottled water. But generally, the Gods marveled at how the humans employed the unique features that the Gods installed within them which led the Gods to continue to develop the uniqueness of their human designs. They just couldn’t figure out why some of the unique features were used in such unintended ways so as to yield amazingness or horribleness and more and more that some of the most unique designs among the humans were unrecognized and lost to obscurity. Try as they might to match such unique humans to the ideal circumstances where such uniqueness could be employed to miraculous effect, other humans would just screw it all up causing the Gods creations to languish and eventually perish having never been realized to the fullest potential, which potential even the Gods were not sure of but of which they hoped to learn. Thus is was that many of the unique features they built into the humans were wasted by a lack of available circumstances that would showcase such special features. Still, the Gods tried and tried and unknowingly struggled against the weakness the Universe gave them (unknowingly because they didn’t realize the Universe could have made them fully omniscient knowing the beginning from the end but simply chose not to on a whim one day) and the Universe observed and observed taking notice of the evolutionary trajectory of the Gods as they continued to try and learn how best to match their creations to circumstances. The Gods lamented wasted opportunities, especially those they saw amongst their human designs but they also triumphed at human successes and even surprises, which gave them the passion to keep on trying and was the motivation that ultimately propelled the Gods to learn more and more of the science of matching their creations to circumstances, but on the balance the Gods felt that humans mostly lost their opportunities and achieved such a small fraction of their fullest potential, which if they were to achieve, the Gods knew, would be most glorious. As a result, the Gods agreed to only experiment with human designs on one sole planet until they understood better how to effectively match the humans to circumstances that would allow them to fully develop their potential. Meanwhile, the Universe chuckled because only it realized what the cause of the Gods befuddlement was regarding the humans, which was the randomness it had introduced into all of creation, which randomness the Universe was interested to see caused unintended consequences that not even it would have predicted. But that was what was most interesting to the Universe even if it was to some degree at the Gods’ expense, but the Universe, being as omniscient as it was, knew that the Gods had a pretty good sense of humor. 

such fluffy cows

The cows looked so fluffy against cobalt blue skies of afternoon summer sunshine floating there in a stop motion kind of silent gaze as if my world might be paused just like theirs. Their legs just dangled there, obviously theirs, but somehow they seemed so unnatural, so protruding there as if I could reach up and grab their legs but even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach I reached up anyways and just as I expected, their legs were so far away. So I laid back and watched their utters, also dangling there in midair underneath the cows but not as far down as their legs and I noticed they were milking themselves giving birth to baby clouds that would float away and matured into new cows eventually so fluffy just like the others and they too became so still and tranquil. And it was one of those days where there were a lot of fluffy cows floating there piled on top of each other giving birth to one another and the sunlight was still able to shine amidst the back drop of cobalt blue skies. It was such a pretty sight that I just continued to sit back and lay there and I watched the fluffy cows float by as still as could be, without a sound, seeming to stop time and entertain me. 

something personal

I sometimes miss those rainy dreary days when I’d wake up early in the morning to grey cloud filtered light, barely able to see the paper of my journal in which I’d write and I’d listen to the same music over and over again because it explained exactly how down I felt in anticipation of facing every inevitable bad day that I knew would always be the same, dragging me lower and lower nearly towards an inescapable fate. As horrible as those days were, I felt so real in the mornings contemplating what had become and where I was and what I wished for with just enough hope that someday a difference would come. My children, just babies then, would come and sit on my lap as I listened and thought and wrote sad things, sipping yerba mate that helped me hang on while I held on to them and the rare feeling in my world that felt right. By the time the first was older, the second came and sat on my lap just the same and I wrote more sad things in that same place under the grey cloud filtered light again as if the sun never shined but in those eyes, asking again to be held and content in that moment to be held by me is a feeling I can still remember and how right it felt.