Flashing cursor,
A seagull has taken up residence above my building. The cars in the lot in back of the dilapidated structure shine like a lake. Apparently. Often, things we see in our lives are illusions and déjà vu repeat kicks in and we think it might be just so. A plan for the spirit.
An old Gypsy curse: May you get what you want.
And may you want what you get.
The seagull wants security and friends. It eats out of dumpsters and it hangs with crows that know where to eat. The pigeons don't sweat it. The seagull hopes it has nothing to do with a Gypsy curse and is happy to be patted down and manhandled by little hands on the Rome subway stop near the Vatican.
Are you the seagull? Because your shirt says so.
I heard a story once about a fisherman who let loose on a cast into Lake Mille Lacs. He was fishing for walleye over a rocky break. He was in a canoe and didn't have an anchor. His pal was paddling feverishly to maintain the boat at the lie of the drop off ledge. The fisherman was using a flat head pierced by a 1/16 sinker. Anywho, he cast the line and a seagull swooped down and snagged the minnow. No shit. Funny thing is that the walleye were biting on leeches that day.
The seagull is sitting atop the gas station sign on the corner. I shout up that the lake is way north and he's missing the fishing boat entrails.
"Go up North yo,", I shout "ain't nuthin' here to see".
Some girl waiting for the bus shouts me a look and I drop some quarters into the newspaper machine and pull the handle. The seagull caws.
Reading and examining the philosophy we have, or might share, we dig into the figurative dirt and make a hole. Can you smell the fresh dirt and the half earthworm that wriggles in the debris pile? Now you can.
So we dig a hole in metaphor soil and we stand in it, and stick our spade in it so the wooden handle sways. We have a hole and some grackle has eaten the half earthworm. Have a glass of lemonade, it might take a while to figure out what to do with this hole. Fill it.
Fill it with the dirt you scooped out, but put the topsoil on top yo, you don't want an uneven lawn.
The seagull is strutting around the parking lot. A cat is sleeping under a Mazda nearby. Pigeons purr prism waves as their gray finds trickles of rainbows we don't ever see. I wonder if this seagull is reminding me a something. I wonder if it is a clue. It is ratty frayed like me. Rat with wings, right? Kick that mo-fo to oblivion. Throw a rock at it.
Emotion is an interesting phenomena and to stir it around in another is too wonderful to bear. We jab elbows into our riff raff friends and razz them about their fat girl escapades and drunken stupor jokes. We cringe at the call from our mother and listen to her leave a message. Pull the covers up tight and sigh 'cuz apathy is in the building. Go apathy! Caring takes an effort with a dark cloud hanging over it. We all know what the dark cloud is.
Living ain't all what they crack it up to be. Who says you can't be a seagull in the city? If life isn't about cracks and jacks then anything is possible. You just gotta let it flow like the soaking wet rain of July standing on the Hennepin Ave. bridge, or better yet, the Stone Arch Bridge looking over St. Anthony Falls. Think about all the cats that jumped off of there and drown. Think about them. Those poor bums on skid row working the railroads in the winter and living in chain linked rooms in the summer, or down by the river, under the slope of the bridge. Those cats drank Polish pop and pulled each others' ears hoping for a moment.
When those cats under the bridge ate baked beans and fished for catfish, they would see a seagull pass by with bent wings and say,
"There goes a seagull".
The seagull may have been the same one in my parking lot. Thing is, that the seagull on the river getting pointed at by bums, hung in wind pockets forty years ago, it couldn't be the same seagull.
Regardless, the seagull has the same name and had someone point at it.
p.s. Believe in yourself. | 
