Weird Shit

A drawer so stuffed with junk I have to lightly press on it to get it to close. I found something wet and filamentary under the desk this morning and assume it’s something the cat coughed up. Weird shit happens all the time. Taxi drivers in Bangkok, idled by Covid, are starting vegetable gardens on the roofs of their cars. And here in Seattle, UPS and Amazon Prime drivers will park anywhere, the middle of a busy street or turn lane, blocking traffic, and nobody seems to mind. But it’s the seemingly insignificant that gets my attention, as always. Two plastic water bottles on the bed one empty one full. The empty one is full of emptiness and the full one is an emptiness waiting to happen. I keep thinking about time, and language, and non-existence. Imagine, for example, Hamlet is holding your skull and talking to you. Shall I enter the body of Proust and learn the intricacies of Parisian life at the turn of the century or Danny Kirwin circa 1969 and learn the desperate feverish moments of a guitar in the hands? Let’s be prudent and find out what’s on Netflix. Democracy is long over. The oligarchs won. But won what? What was it the oligarchs wanted all along? To take a shit in the weightless conditions of space while looking down at Earth and remarking on its beauty? Wednesday morning I get out of bed open the door and discover the corpse of a wolf spider on the floor, its legs curled up, and Athena sleeping nearby. She gets up, stretches, and I take the corpse of the spider into the bathroom and drop it into the wastebasket, an ignoble end to all the struggles and goals of this member of the Lycosidae family. Such is life. Here today, gone tomorrow. But you don’t see this from space: what you see is a big beautiful blue and white ball floating in the black void that is the universe. You don’t see the fragility of its ecological balances, the thinness of the atmosphere, the death of its oceans, the hatred and conflict among its populations of homo sapiens, the primates that evolved to build rockets that propel themselves into space by burning aluminum. And I find this utterly remarkable. The contradictions are dizzying. Is there anything more fascinating, more baffling, more limited and illimitable, then human perception? And imagine what shifts in perception would come after an encounter with extraterrestrials, or their counterparts on earth, its poets. I go to pick up a refill at the supermarket pharmacy. No one is behind the counter. R goes to get some wine. I wait. And wait. I lean in to see if anyone is there. I see a woman in a white coat on the telephone. I continue to wait. I look for a bell to ring so she’ll know I’m there. I don’t see a bell. I continue to wait. Then I think well, she probably doesn’t know anyone is here. So I go “hello, anyone there.” “I’ll be there in a minute,” the pharmacist shouts. And a couple of minutes later she’s there, but very harsh, stiff & formal. She’s obviously pissed. She asks for my birthdate and name and gets my refill, I sign the etch-a-sketch thinga-ma-bobber, and leave. I tell R I have to take it slow, I’m so intoxicated by the woman’s charm, I need time to take it all in.