Egregores

I.
A thronging mob of street performers in clown makeup clash against a public demonstration either pro or against something I wasn’t really paying attention to, before a newsstand vendor on a crowded thoroughfare at lunchtime on Sunday.
They both stop, halt, barely avoiding one another then look the other way before coming together once more. Some of them look down at a streetside wooden shelf in front of the newsdealer: Crisis in Japan, fear of nuclear disaster upfront on the cover of the week’s periodical.

Their glances cross one another’s; they nod and go their separate ways. But the fear of fallout remains.

Everywhere you go the fear remains, people scared of nuclear energy, people scared of the even-worse fatwas to ensue the toppling of the week’s muslim dictator, the collective fear of traffic and crime and growing up alone and by god the mileage of one’s car per liter of fuel.

That’s how we live but that’s also ho we die.


II.
I had Cybill sleeping in my arms yesterday afternoon after lunch. We were both naked under the soft cool of the air-conditioner and my bedroom was all closed shut, tight against the scorching heat outside. She just lay there in utter silence but her footsteps reverberated inside my head like thunder pushing the mother-storm over the horizon, its booming soundwaves rippling out, crashing against all of my future expectations, exposing my nude vulnerability to a collective fear of an uncertain tomorrow and the fragility of my status-quo.
“What are you gonna do for the rest of your life,” her closed eyes asked me without a sound, “And who are you going to be with?”

I thought of you for one second, then thought of her for two.

Three seconds after that, the fear set in.

Fire

...currently in times of war... hang on... kind of unexpected though... But seriously: Whoa....

All tomorrow’s parties

Dear Lyla, what can I say?

The rubber straps of my flip-flops glow in the dark.

It’s late at night on a Friday and I’m walking across the living room towards the kitchen with an empty glass of wine in my hand. Sixteen Candles is on TV tonight and I’d rather not go out for a change. All the lights are out save for the TV’s eerie bluish glow behind me now. The rubber straps of my flip-flops glow in the dark.

This will probably make no sense to you, but as I stay home tonight and do nothing, talk to nobody, all the plots advance on their own, multiple story arcs connect: Cybill’s apple, the blonde, the wine, the TV, Dennis’ motley crew, the Springsteen bootlegs, the park, the flip-flops, a recent photograph of you, spending a fortune on comic books this month, my job that sucks & I’m looking for a new one.

Vacations from work start today. I don’t know it yet, but tomorrow I’ll wake up at 6am and jog for over 12 miles at the park in slightly more than one hour and a half. It will nearly rip me to shreds and pretty much total the rest of the Saturday but I’ll do it anyway, and then when I’m over at Dennis’ for drinks before dinner he’ll clearly point out that all the effort must be for something, that I either want something too bad or desperately need to get away from it.
I’ll tell him of Cybill and I’ll tell him of Cindy and above all I’ll tell him of yourself— only not really, only in broad brushstrokes, no details, hardly any names. He will say nothing, smile and then casually mention he’s invited Tess for dinner with us but she’s just called in to cancel it for no good reason.

But I don’t know that yet. It’s still Friday.
And the rubber straps of my flip-flops glow in the dark.
And I so dearly wish you were here.

Ouroboros

I’m running laps around the pond at the park and on the water all the ducks are swimming in one perfect line, one after the other, against the early Saturday morning sky, cloudy and gray.

I’m running mostly for the exercise but also because I’m confused— there have been all the travails of the weeks before yet in the end something unknown steps in and messes up everything, then Cybill flies off to parts unknown, or way-too-known, taking the obvious apple with her for the holiday and god only knows what happens when she gets back and Cindy herself goes back to her boyfriend who’s lost weight or something and then for what seems like the thousandth of times but it’s actually only the second Tess calls in shortly before we go out to dinner and says she’s down with the flu, leaving me alone staring at the South African Pinotage I’d bought especially for the occasion even though that was kind of cheap from my own part if you think about it but I wasn’t really too keen on dishing out too much money on wine anyway because it was mostly for when we’d come back to my place after the dinner, which would have been at some fancy pricey place already and I’d half-expect for her too be a little buzzed by then anyhow.

So no matter what I do I just seem to run in circles unable to veer off some great terrifying Karmic wheel and even when I do my best and actually break free I end up at an entirely another cycle just to fall back on the usual tracks, stepping up from a zero to this number eight lying down, the snake eating up its own tail.

When I was a kid, Mandalas scared me witless: I couldn’t bear to see one on a carpet or on a tapestry or tattooed on somebody’s arm. And now I think I know why— yet these ducks here at the park if you think about it, they swim yonder in this one perfect straight line, like an arrow skipping over the water, not only going somewhere but getting there.