Him

A lot of people learn to dispose of their bad habits throughout life but not him. He collected and curated them as part of his own personal museum of dysfunction that was on display for all to see, free of charge and open to the public seven days a week.  For some people he was more like a theatre that blurred the line between actor and audience demanding participation as well as victimization in the unknown plot of his tragedy.  Chores ranging from janitorial to managerial were usually abdicated to whoever was near and capable or gullible or ignorant enough to accept him as a responsibility when he appeared in the storyline of their life.  Their demise was just another display culminating in the sum total of who he was, another tragic act leaving distant observers wondering how the story would ever resolve and conclude itself.  Hope had long ago been displaced in those that cared about him; displaced by a disappointment they could no longer bear.

Grapes like bees

He raises grapes like some people raise bees meaning he keeps them in a hive and polishes their wings to a blinding shine.  Grapes, however, fare less well than bees in traffic often meeting their ends upon the windshields of vehicles traveling at relatively high speeds.  Grapes sometimes bounce off of the windshields of slower cars but they burst upon impact with the faster cars leaving a grapey pulpy mess that windshield wipers alone can’t wash off.  In reality, the grapes that survive barely survive at all because of soft mushy bruises and broken wings incapable of raising the grapes to flight ever again.  And this is where the cruel irony of evolution is sadly evident.  Grapes had become such proficient fliers through their history that eventually they lost the need for legs entirely and eventually lost their legs in all actuality.  Laying there bruised and broken by the side of the road, these poor grapes slowly succumb to their injuries and yield to the call of death beckoning them to the spirit world.  What is to be learned from the sad plight of such unfortunate grapes is unknown and it is also mostly unknown that grapes even have wings.  

Honey

When the farmers made a deal with the devil to kill off the bees, they weren’t thinking of the consequences because that’s how the devil made deals.  They were just thinking of those summery picnics with plenty of watermelon sliced and ready for the eating.  They didn’t want those bees buzzing around their watermelons.  They could buzz around their flowers and their crops and even their grilled meats but not around their sliced watermelon.  That is where any self-respecting farmer drew the line and so when the opportunity came to make a deal with the devil, they were ready.  And it was simple too.  The devil said to just spray their crops with as many pesticides as they could find and that the bees would die.  In retrospect, the farmers wondered if they really needed the devil to tell them how to kill off the bees but regardless, they were happy with the results even if it did cost them their souls.  

Underwater

He didn’t know why his mom and brother were taking him to the bottom of the lake but he looked towards the surface of the water above that shown green shafts of light below and his heart sank as he descended further down.  His brother told him to stay there and he understood that meant live there and he wondered what it was going to be like to live at the bottom of the lake forever.  He didn’t take this as unkindness; although, he knew he would miss his family and all that was familiar to him.  The lake was a cold and wet place and it was dark and there were fish.  Soon his brother and his mother were back on the boat and he watched them from under the surface of the water.  He felt so close to them in that moment but he knew they’d soon be gone and that broke his heart more than his heart had ever been broken before. 

beyond

Traveling at near light speed had become a rather customary and safe affair.  His speed was not the problem that morning rather it was his decision to follow the subtle path that beaconed him between the second and third dimensions.  He knew the elusive inter-dimensional space was not well known but it seemed like a good idea at the time until that moment when the unforeseen space-time ripple threw him for an interstellar tumble.  Within seconds he realized he was going to miss his appointment and a few seconds after that he realized he might never be heard from again.  He had no idea what direction he had been thrown in and he had no idea how to stop the inertia he had become subject to.  Resigned to his fate he tumbled along for an unknown quantity of time watching the universe spin and spin around him until eventually, and for unknown reasons, the spinning begin to slow down until ever so gradually he slowed down and stopped in some unknown region of the universe.  He floated there looking around himself to gather his surroundings, which he noticed were completely empty of anything that could possibly surround him.  All he could see was an empty blackness.  He peered into the blackness and thought that where ever he had been thrown to was the emptiest region of the universe he had ever seen.  Then he thought that maybe he wasn’t in the universe at all.  Had he been thrown beyond the universe?  Had he been thrown out of the universe entirely?  He had always wondered what was beyond the universe and to look around it seemed to him like there wasn’t anything at all. 

Empty

He didn’t intend to become a shell of a man and he didn’t realize that was what he had become until one day, late in life, he took an actual look at himself and discovered that he in fact had become a shell of a man.  He reached deep inside himself, deep inside his chest cavity, and felt around and felt nothing but the empty swish and swash of emptiness occasionally feeling his boney spinal cord, which he was glad to feel.  At least there was his spinal cord, he thought, otherwise he might have slumped over long ago into a lump of immovable flesh and he would have been deprived of the ability to do so much of what he had enjoyed doing in life such as reading the newspaper and…and….and….and…, and to his surprise, he couldn’t think of anything else in life that he actually enjoyed.  All he could think of was that he enjoyed reading the newspaper every morning.  It was what he looked forward to and it was what motivated him to get out of bed in the morning.  He thought some more about it and thought some more after that and he couldn’t figure out what there was about the newspaper that might be enjoyable.  Upon deep reflection he realized that newspapers mostly reported on the problems that precipitated from the progress that was supposed to fix all the problems and the dissatisfaction of life felt by so many after they bought so much of the stuff that was assured to provide so much satisfaction.  He started to wonder how much of his life he wasted with all the problems and stuff that he ingested through the syringe of the newspaper.  He felt agitated and needed to move around and dissipate an unsettling energy that overcame him.  He got up and began to walk around and eventually found himself walking around outside.  He was about to conclude that his entire life had been wasted but was soon distracted when he began to observe things as he walked around outside.  Upon observing things, he found himself thinking about the things he observed and then began wondering about the things he was thinking about and wondering what else he might observe if he were to walk some more or if he were to walk somewhere else that he had never been before.  More and more he observed, thought and wondered and wondered what more there was to observe in the world and he desired more and more to observe whatever there was to observe and wherever he might observe such things.  After spending considerable time observing, thinking and wondering he started to feel something inside of him and the more he observed, thought and wondered, the more he felt something in there.  He got curious as to what might be going on inside of him so he reached deep inside himself again and felt around.  To his surprise, instead of the swish and swash of empty emptiness that he remembered feeling before, he felt the squish and squash of strange gelatinous liquids and lumps.  He tried to grip those lumps but mostly they slipped from his grasp until finally he was able to find one that he was able to wrap his hand around and hold tightly as he pulled it from his chest cavity.  As he pulled this mysterious object from his cavity, he was more excited to learn what he might observe than by the fact that he was no longer just a shell of a man.  To his further surprise, he observed a flower unlike any he had ever seen before and he wondered how it got in there and then, as he reached back in to replace it, he wondered what other things he might grow in there.  

strange night

It was a strange night and got even stranger when I started eating this weird bird and I wasn’t even sure if it was cooked or raw or vegetarian but I didn’t care at the time.  I just starting eating like I hadn’t eaten in so long but then I remembered I had eaten not too long ago because I had eaten breakfast earlier on and it seemed ironic that I had eaten an egg for breakfast and then I was eating this weird bird later that night.  I intuitively felt this strange notion that coalesced into new knowledge but it was new knowledge that I couldn’t believe because it revealed that I was eating the bird that had been born from the egg that I had already eaten for breakfast and my mind couldn’t possibly comprehend how such a time line could exist wherein I could eat the future bird from an already eaten egg but somehow it made sense when I realized that upon ingesting the egg into my being it gave birth to my existence which existence was the essence of the egg’s potential embodied in this weird bird that I was eating meaning that I was essentially eating myself and ingesting my own being and incorporating myself into the structure of my own flesh, blood, bones and life force.  Like I said, it was a strange night and it got even stranger and I wasn’t sure what moment marked the beginning and the end or if it even mattered.