Another day. A Monday, as exceptional as all of them.. there is a department meeting, the five of us, and i realize my manager is a
sweet kid, doing the best he can in his
Disneyfied
whitebread American way, and all he wants to do is
make it work. What we all want, to introduce some elegance into the world, to make the parts move together, to unjam it a bit.
After work, i finally see Fred Eaglesmith, with my parents, and the Molloys, and Ed Molloy's brother & his wife - everybody knows everybody else. Half of them are wearing Fred t-shirts. I remember again the intimate might of live music in a small space, and the power of words. I want to node those lyrics! I think you'll love them.
It's raining and i walk home. Out of the corner of my eye, i see a short wide woman out of a funhouse mirror walking up the abandoned main street. She's wearing pink. I'm thinking of other things and get halfway across the darkened train tracks before i realize that i don't know where those boys ahead of me went, and i can't hear them. But the setting is so familiar, even in the dark, i banish fear. What happens, happens. The bubble will keep me safe. I refuse to sprint.
In the safety of streetlights, i pass Scott's house. But though he woke up with me this morning, i find myself too shy to knock on a closed door.
Probably unintentionally, the downstairs neighbors have a jar of daisies in front of their porch light. It's a scene in an unshot movie, that glow. The plot will lend it symbolism, and the lens immortality. This all in a flash.
I'm getting back to writing, with no one looking over my shoulder: was that my problem? One, unreading, ungiving audience, an opaque eye, no mouth? I need to limber up, reacquaint myself with the language. I think something might be coming.
But now - there is so much transition, people moving in and out of the apartment, that i am used to boxes in the hallway. But, almost ready to sleep, i notice this one sealed says IDEATH on the top, a 9 inch cube. A mail bomb? Who's it from? Who lives in Pennsylvania? I open it, and it's full of packing peanuts, but buried inside, an indistinct, shifting dark shape: then the odor hits. Someone has sent me a very very well-packed bag of fragrant, fabulous chocolate chips. But no clues! So, okay, who is it? Hello? Thank you!