Martian Sunset

Have you ever noticed that if you play a guitar just right you can cut the air into little sections and set them on fire? And then there's all that energy in the brain, you know? It's like a furnace, an athanor, a Slow Henry, as the alchemists called it. Everybody's got one. Or not. Some people seem to get by fine without it. You know who you are. Standing over there by the church holding the bible. So adorable.

No amount of logic can explain a clam. But I can tell you the mind dilates under the influence of certain phenomena. A crinkly old dollar. Zen mosquitos on a hairy arm. Speaking of which, there’s an unseen power that creeps from flower to flower like moonbeams on the loose. It wandered out of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley & appears to be lost. As for me, I like the little bulbs at the top rim of the mirror in the bathroom. This is where I get my face going. And think about how weird the world keeps getting. And what to do next. And wondering how it all began.

There are some feelings you can shake, get rid of like a pestering bug, or wasp, ruining the picnic. Some feelings can be sculpted into better feelings, smoother feelings, big feelings surrounded by columns. Some feelings can be coaxed into mutation. This is when the blues turn gray or the grayness turns blue and the fog lifts and there’s a mountain looming over you, indifferent, craggy, sublime. The other feelings go berserk & explode into airy pinkish blooms. These get written down, or sung, or inserted into a circular piece of DNA & become contagious. 

I keep forgetting that that bright silvery sound that violins make is caused by the friction of the bow - hair from the tails of horses - on the strings, which are catgut, nylon & steel. But the main thing is friction. Friction that makes olives of sound sweat in the air. The blood of the poignant impinge on the guitar. There's a sound for everything, even thirst. Thirst is the sound of a pharmacy at night. It occurs quietly in the mouth, like cotton. At first, it's unpleasant. Then it becomes a craving. Then, if it's still not satisfied, it becomes a movie. The world is a vast hallucination. Water makes it real.

And so I got into a mode of watching the Martian sunset. A lot. Once a day, at least. I would also enjoy a Martian sunrise, but Curiosity, so far as I know, has not filmed a sunrise on Mars. The sunset will do, for now. I do wish I were standing there on the Martian desert watching it. But it's easy to mistake this visual dessert on YouTube as anything like Earth. That solitude might be overwhelming. And there is still that nagging dependence on technology. There are always these details tumbling out of the rational part of the brain. That sudden deflation when the mind is pulled back into the body. Mars pops like a balloon and I'm back on earth, listening to Méa Culpa Jazz sing "The Wind Will Carry Us Away."