The Perverted Turtle

One day a perverted turtle showed up on the nice family’s lawn doing the most offensive things the young family had ever seen.   The children cried and the mother made exclamations such as “oh my” and “well I never”.   The father recognized his duty to take charge and said to his family, in the deepest most monotone suburban dad voice he could muster, “don’t look family, it’s a perverted turtle”.  They ignored the turtle the rest of the morning and tried to act normal with each other but it was obvious things weren’t normal.  The tension in their house that morning was unbearable and they all just wanted life to go back to normal.  Unfortunately for them, the family dog had also taken notice of the turtle and it being a dog, took great interest in the things the turtle was doing.  Eventually the turtle did leave to carry on its perverted activities in the depths of murky ponds and near large rocks on golf courses but the dog never forgot the things it saw that day and the family’s life was never the same again.

Roast Beef

The roast beef tasted like cold death on a severed tongue.  It was hard to swallow because he didn’t want to have to actually chew and taste it.  The cold lump made its way slowly down his throat followed by regret reflected in night windows.  Out there somewhere there were the stars in the firmament but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.  He was lost in the thoughts of some otherworldly fog dancing illusions through his head as real as anything else surrounding him but more important than attempts of his life.  The absurdity he faced was as difficult to swallow as the roast beef so he inhaled deeply and let go of it all on the out breath since in the end, nothing really mattered at all. 

His Bankrupt Heart

He didn't mean to frivolously spend more love than he had but he had and once he did his heart suffered a bankruptcy that he hadn’t realized but eventually experienced when he was in one of those moments where all you need is love but instead the emptiness of his heart dragged him down and made him feel so heavy.  He willed himself to do what someone with a heart full of love would do but everything he did felt insincere and meaningless because he was simply making the motions, which was difficult because of the heaviness.  Without love he couldn’t sustain the weight of the meaninglessness so eventually he failed much to his own disappointment but which lead him to the suspicion that he might have a bankrupt heart.  He stood in front of the mirror and peeled back the layers of skin and muscle. With a spoon he pried open a wider space between his rips to look through so that he might see what was happening with his heart but he couldn’t actually see inside of his heart to know what was going on.  Part of him didn’t want to look because he didn’t know what he would find but he knew he had to look inside to know for sure if he had a bankrupt heart.  He slowly turned the knob and applied a gentle force to open the door to his heart and braced himself for what he might see.  Once the door was open and he looked inside he simply saw that it was empty, which he thought to himself was what he should have expected to find since he had thought he might have a bankrupt heart.  His suspicions were confirmed and he wondered what to do as he stood there in the mirror looking at his bleeding chest and the door to his heart dangling open, the hinges creaking with each breath, when suddenly a rush of something came from somewhere and swooshed past him, summersaulting into his chest, filling up his empty heart.  Feeling the weight of whatever it was, he instinctually closed the door, removed the spoon and placed two band-aids over the flap of skin that he so recently peeled back for the exploratory procedure he performed on himself.  He considered the new feeling in his chest as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and smiled realizing how much he really loved everything. 

Space

Just like it’s wrong to say that they aren’t making any more real estate, it’s equally wrong to say that they aren’t making any more space.  Along the edges of the universe, between known existence and unknown somethingness, which could also be nothingness but no one knows for sure, space farmers toil and work planting space seeds, fertilizing and nurturing them until the seeds grow into plants and the plants eventually produce an intriguing black fruit that will ripen becoming so black as to transcend all blackness until it becomes almost reflective, mirroring the vast darkness of the universe with all its planets and stars and mysteries floating throughout.  When the time comes and within a breath of wonderment, the fruit itself will seem to disappear so subtly that it's barely perceptible, as if evaporating from the outside in, shrinking before the very eyes of the space farmers who anticipate the moment but who also know that the fruit is not really disappearing at all but becoming more space just as it was intended to do and leaving behind another space seed to continue the cycle.  It’s hard to tell whether the new space is simply added on to the edges of the universe to extend the universe’s reach out into the unknown somethingness or if the newly harvested space pushes the existing space further towards the center of the universe where it is theorized a black hole converts space into the unknown somethingness that is funneled through worm holes beyond the known universe thereby maintaining an equilibrium of space within the universe.  Either way, there is nothing like the smell of fresh space.

friends

He tucked his fish in, kissed its head and said good-night before turning out the lights.  “Sweet dreams little fish” he said and closed the bedroom door.  He loved that little fish like any little boy would and it wouldn’t be long before they were outside again playing catch, flying kites and exploring the world together.  One day, his little fish wanted to go into town so they headed towards town to explore the world, the fish leading the way and the boy following.  The little boy noticed that the further and further towards town they went, the more and more fish there appeared to be.  His fish seemed to be rather friendly with the other fish and soon the little boy felt strange and out of place.  Disheartened, he made his way back home all alone feeling abandoned and forgotten by the little fish he loved so much.  As the day went on and was about to conclude, the little boy thought he might never see his fish again but just as he was about to abandon all hope, the fish came home and sat down next to the little boy where he was watching the television.  “Boy am I glad to be home”, the fish said.  “Let’s not go into town again, those were some strange fish”.  And with that, they contentedly watched the television together until bedtime. 

future cloud rancher of america

It wasn’t long before he made up his mind and decided to start a new life as a cloud rancher in Montana.  He could imagine it so easily it seemed more like a memory from the past than a dream for the future. Clouds as big as apples and just as wistful to raise amongst the blue skies of the open West.  He’d keep a good eye on them and make sure they didn’t get too rowdy, keeping them in line and all that like an experienced rancher would do. Checking in on them early in the morning and ensuring through the day they were content and growing up healthily and plump, billowy and delicate like cotton candy with good dispositions and properly schooled in the things clouds are schooled in.  He could feel it in his bones even more than his bones.  The good life.  A Shangri-La for his mind.  Happiness for his soul.  Cloud ranching in Montana.  He was on his way. 

Dr. Thompson

He was the premature reincarnation of Hunter S. Thompson preceding Dr. Thompson’s death by several years. Being premature, peculiarities possessed him like any peculiarities would in anyone reincarnated prematurely; however, the result was to partially negate the once pronounced peculiarities of the original Dr. Thompson himself leaving his reincarnated self less peculiar than he previously was.  The less peculiar reincarnated Dr. Thompson was thus not so peculiar but rather just slightly odd and as it turned out the difference between peculiar and slightly odd was the difference between brilliance and ordinary. He went on in fact to live a rather ordinary life burdened with the gnawing sense that there was something more to life, which is in fact the hallmark of a very ordinary life. Had the Reincarntor 5000 functioned as it should have back on that day of February 20, 2005, as opposed to malfunctioning several years before, the world would have had another fully peculiar Hunter S. Thompson to walk the earth and would have been better for it.  But it did malfunction when it did causing the world to be an all the more ordinary place.