The Last Straw
copyright @aladreth
"I think every artist worth
a damn has a red picnic basket." - Stephen King
I nearly died twice in the night.
Today, I have a horrible burning itch to write. It's bright daylight. Spring is springing, about to bubble, just bubble right over. In the clouds afar off in the northern sky, I see an angel with great big wings sitting at a projection screen.
I hunt through the 'croc' bag to find a pen to write, my hands shaking, and ... shit, shit, shit!!! By the time I find my pen it has floated away - it is gone - no shiny halo remains, no white remnant, no fluffy feathers. It looks only like a cloud. A cloud within a cloud.
I help earth conservancy programs. I trim my own hair. Everywhere I go I steal pens. There is no paper. There is an envelope holding a bill. A bill from the carpet I bought. I'm still paying for this carpet and it's still sitting uninstalled in my bedroom. Such is my life. My personalized license plate is ADHD33.
So, I write on the back of an envelope, "The world is a red lamp, girls walking cat string - it's the year of the rat, tangerines and dope."
I don't know if it's really the year of the rat but it feels like it.
Life is funny. In my dream last night I was so beautiful and happy at the beginning. At the end, I went smash, great big smash on the floor.
You think you are getting better. Then you find out you are Kathleen Turner. (I mean the "Now" Kathleen.)
God, what happened to us?
This strange vision in the clouds, oh my, oh my. It was perhaps a great big hint to pay attention. God, it could be that one day I will be looking back over my life on a great big angel's projection screen and find I did matter and I fucked up so many peoples lives.
I realize Loren and I talk much like Death and Taxes having lunch.
Death (Moi) says; "Life is brutally cruel, unfair and damn short!"
Taxes (Loren) replies, "All the more reason to save each and every one of your receipts!"
They say to write about what you know. Well, I know Loren and me and I know after twenty-three years, he still doesn't "get" me.
I have lunch at the park with him. We call it the dirt park. There is no grass. There is lots of dirt. There are crazy people who talk to me. I wear a T-shirt that says, "If you are crazy, talk to me."
The nice crazy man with the "Obama-Biden, Two Minds Are Better Than None" T-shirt talks to me. He has bread, butter and a banana. He's fit.
Everyone is fit nowadays, but me. And Kathleen Turner.
The nice crazy man wants to talk about Obama, a basketball his radiant dog flattened all the air out of and dressing in women's clothes while reading Goethe.
I like the crazy man alright. He talks about a lot of things. Then he leaves.
My egg drop soup is gone and Loren and I am left at the park with one other person. A lone man in a white truck is sitting there. We leave the park and go to the post office. When we come back to the park, the man in the truck is still there.
Loren asks, "Who sits at the park for all this time?"
I say, "Makes you wonder if he's going to kill himself."
"I never thought of THAT."
"That" is said in capitals with the tone once again, "I don't get you. I just don't get you."
I dream of being the first inventor of the roller coaster and my first customers are Barbie Dolls. Not the current dolls, but those 1960's dolls my cousin wants back from me because now they're worth three thousand dollars. I won't let her have them because I know her greedy husband will just sell them on E-Bay. He's a dirty, rotten cheater.
These Barbie Dolls love getting twisted around like they are tied in the middle of a jump rope. They raise their little plastic arms with total excitement and praise to me, the first inventor of the roller coaster, and the rest of the grubby flannel world begs to pay me five bucks a piece to get on. I get the filthy money shoved in my hands from every side.
Finally, I exhale, "Thank God, I didn't kill any Barbies on my fancy smancy roller coaster!"
I wake with myopia in the middle of the story three days beyond dirt patted off our behinds, cactus picked out of our soles.
Sometimes we are ghost town in the flesh. Sometimes we are that sea in Israel that never gives. It holds on to its water like a thirsty pirate, nothing growing, all sick, drowning in ivory hours.
Everyone is writing about Galveston.
Not me, though. At the end of the day, I don't really know what I am writing about.
How small we've grown. Have we outlived the book? To ill to think to the next?
Yes, how small we've grown.
