The Emotion Surrounding Pine

A big nomadic welcome to my faith in pearls. Let’s just get that out of the way. The rain does it with hay. It gushes out of the ground with the force of a pagan invasion and makes the summer grow into its pirate ships and Tilt-A-Whirls like a giant Chau gong, awakening a brave new world of screaming and thirst. 

We would all like a detonation about now, wouldn’t we? Something on the wall in a bone black background, something like a hole. There is a feeling in me that muscles its way into expression like a cement truck and just sits there, idling, the big barrel turning. I like the idea of a hole. I can sprint toward it and then jump. And there I go. Into the hole. 

A feeling greets me on the other side. It’s the same feeling that I had before, only shinier. Now it’s a faucet. 

We all speak our language with ease, but learning to speak another language is best achieved by a return to childhood. That’s the central thickness of unemployment, but not its power. The power of unemployment is in its waterfronts and shores. Anyone who says Chicago is ugly at night hasn’t seen its cutlery. Not up close, where it counts. I mean there, on the table, waiting for an order of salt-roasted beets with whipped goat cheese and pistachio butter to come gliding within your purview at The Purple Pig. 

What prominence so distends into the stars that a country is born? 

I capture a banana whenever I feel sadness and peel it and eat it and then stare at the wall. I figure that if the quintessence of manufacturing is acquired by my bubbles, by my bubbling, all it should need at that point is bubbles. Right? 

Wrong. The bubble is a globule of one substance in another, generally a gas in a liquid. That makes it touching and lucid, like a greenhouse, or pronoun. I will sleep on it and give you my answer in the morning. Was anyone hurt in that crash outside? 

The vague substantive of an ambassador hangs in the air like a bad joke. 

There is a funny perplexity about the camber of a road needing writing, needing to be written about, needing the ruffles of a potato chip to drift westward from the piling of the wharf. Down there, where the water slaps against all that wood encrusted with barnacles. It’s green. And cold. You can tell how cold it is by staring deeply at the narrative bobbing up and down in your mind. 

I have a thin piece of the chasm’s perplexity in my hand. It has the scent of lavender soap. The sauce during our card game was magnificently rude. How do you even describe something that fierce? By obstinately heating the breath thermostat. By ploughing the dirt until it screams with corn. Or rapeseed or beans. It’s your time, your tractor, your field and acreage sisters and brothers of the written word, your plans, your plains, your pleasures and pains. 

Of words put together by monks two thousand years ago. What do you do when you find yourself increasingly drawn toward the obscure? 

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! 

You must glean parcels of time from the carpentry of butterflies. The falcon’s weariness found respite at last in the cricket’s furniture. I’m going to paint your eyes and let the sun’s canaries find our planet warmer than before. The carpet flies through your tattoo as if the forks were sonatas of silver. Even the armadillos have fingers. To cross this geometry my Bohemian beauty you must design a haberdashery. You must know how to treat a cardiac arrest. You must protect the signs. 

Do I sound bossy? I apologize. I feel pungent with airplanes. We can do this together, you and I. we can bridge this gap. We can enjoy some tea. Watch a movie. Build something out of wood. My hunger calls for something bent and programmatic. Everything in life is mutable. Even the grease stains on the other side of the garage are slightly romantic. Don’t you think?

We feel the absence of the divine most acutely when we’re at the shopping mall. But what happened to the shopping mall? Even that’s gone. 

What, exactly, are we up against? Does it have a name? Can it be translated? 

I don’t know but there’s a new garage door being installed up the street. You’ve got to love a garage. The best things happen in garages. 

Also, some very nasty things. But let’s not go into that. This is a time for reflection. The mosquitos are hollow. Give them sugar. Give them gum to experience shoes. Make chains. Not the invisible kind that clank around inside you and that you nobody can hear, but nurturing knots that come undone like hair, crabs walking sideways, a smack on the lips, a grapple on the beach. Phenomena that nurture the sparkle of camaraderie. Let’s put butter in allegory, glistening in swells. A prickly rapport with Polynesia that peppers the day with pearls and grabs the night with fish. 

Resilience is good. Try that. Try anything. Try cloth. Try crying. Try aluminum. Ride an elephant backward into Hamlet. Write a letter to Iggy Pop. Dear Iggy: what do you think of Hamlet? What do you think of elephants? How do you feel about garages? Do you like garages? Do you like doors? Do you like doors that pull open or swing out? 

Pumpernickel summers with no mirrors. That’s what. Laughing is monstrous. And so we like it. We will summon it to the garage. We will crash into ourselves. That’s pretty much the story right there. How it is one night that we had impact on the emotion surrounding pine.