Extravaganza

There is something metallic under the tarpaulin, I can elect it as something to amuse myself, the ashes being too stubborn, too cold to lead into the realm of reverie. After I finished reading Mallarmé, I folded myself into an eyelid, a species of banister steeped in Celtic mythology. The tarpaulin was something I’d shrugged off as supernatural, and not worth the splendor of a single minute, however infrared the exhilaration, or beautifully framed the cocoons. Everyone reacts differently to depth, the sugar drapery that hides in a snowball. I happen to like Ice Age art and find in it a pleasure with which to mend my mind. The snow looks so eloquent atop a mass of tarpaulin. I see reindeer crossing from one world to another in a single sentence, a single chain of words drawn over the abyss of existence. This is how we make bridges from one dimension to another. The shaman of the Ice Age used hematite and charcoal. Manganese oxides. Crushed calcite, chalk, and gypsum for white. We use liquid crystal display technology with light emitting diodes for backlighting. I prefer a little hustle and bustle on the shore, some shades of conflagration in the underground. Fountains are silly, and therein lie their true sagacity. It's as if the water had a reflective voice and the plumage of an extravaganza. How to express oneself at the foundry should follow one's own capricious inclinations. Anything else is a waste of Jello.

I have, here, a box of almond furniture. I generally wear silverware to dinner, but I'm always willing to make an exception for the unknown pedestrian wearing silver earrings, whoever they might be or whoever they think they might be. Life is a tricky clarinet. Challenges include embouchure development, fingering complexity, and the need for precise breath control. Other than that, green denotes weirdness, not surliness, though in this case I can never finish feeling old. I use geometry for juggling and calculus for rock climbing. Everything in between requires a healthy dose of inquiry, and a good shoe polish. I can get us as far as Satori, but Pittsburgh is out of the question. I just need to pick up a prescription in Damascus, and get a tattoo in Stuttgart. I’m a man of the world, you know. I started life as a ball of confusion. Maps were a luxury. I had to feel my way to awareness, picking up hints along the way, certain sensations, certain russets and seminal inputs. Eventually, I came to discover that I have eight tentacles, ninety-two testicles, four rotary wings and a ruby appendix. The air has depth. It tastes like a banana. Things are a little spooky. Exits are hypnotic. And there’s nothing like a B major to lead you back home.

I’m beginning to wonder if I belong to the final generation of human beings on this lovely planet. I get this way around harmonicas. I use my arms for lifting and my hands for praying. I’ve got a tongue that flickers with sonnets and a table made of ultimatums. Grace and plumbing are understandings born of the cascading frailties of sugar that characterize so many sad warehouses in the district of broken hearts. You can’t ride a pony to the moon. It's high time I loosened my suspenders. The Queen of Melee has entered the arena. Limitations are sometimes disguised as plankton. You can see it in the way the words press forward, always seeking resolution, always alert to slippery situations, things written down so that they get discovered, or drag something completely unexpected out of the air, and translate its movements into a legible sexuality. I’m looking for a new habitat, a new perception, a new body of water, a new shadow to carry on the back of a worm, where the sun eats the darkness and the darkness eats the results. Where the old are young and the young are old and the roots grow into the sky and the leaves fall up in the fall.

Life is huge, though, isn’t it? We get lost everywhere. It can’t be helped. One cannot step into the same river twice. It takes a benevolent knot to hold the aroma of a diving board. The ephemeral helps explain the many amenities of being temporary, but it’s difficult to identify with any certainty the many dazzling folds and hollows in the chambers of the human heart without a flashlight. It was the era of the light bulb and the hands of the gifted and brave were spent dog-paddling in the deep end of a very louche simulacrum. Excuses were silly. There was never any need for an excuse. Those days are gone. When was the last time you saw a hummingbird? It’s a well-established fact that the saints have come to realize their lost state. Who can blame them? The world has become a sad arena of lost vision, bitter reflections and bankrupt distilleries swarming with ghostly ambitions and tantalizing exoplanets. Appetites are huge. Things quickly get out of hand. Perturbation is a way of life. The garden hose spews cotton. The Coke machine provides free advice. The minotaur at the center of the labyrinth was once a financial wizard on Wall Street. It’s impossible to predict the choices people make when the supports holding the culture together are no longer there. Money means something very different than what it meant a few years ago. The more it loses value the bigger the debt. The bigger the debt, the greater in value. I can stare at it all day. There's something stubbornly empirical about a glass of cold tea. What we need is synchronized dancing. What we get is artificial intelligence. Clogged veins. Zoom cameras. Stressed trees. Inexplicable urges. Shaggy thoughts. And a stake in bitcoin.