Flotsam

Originally Posted Saturday, August 10, 2013

I can make posters for crime novels if there is any publisher out there looking for such things.  White Heat. Women in Chains.  That sort of thing.  I can shoot men, too, depending on what you need.  I have mastered the elements.  Get in touch.  Soon. 

Summer ebbs and I haven't any plans.  I am like the flotsam and jetsam on the tide.  Perhaps I am saving up my resources for something that has not yet become conscious.  More likely, though, it is a mental/spiritual disorder. 

The time I should be in deepest sleep has become haunted again by that empty nothingness into which one can fall when things are darkest.  This is not a call for succoring, just a detail.  I am blaming it on my binge watching of "Breaking Bad."  I hate that show but keep watching nonetheless.  I think it disturbs my sleep. 

I no longer envy animals.  They have no lessons to teach me any more.  They can neither help nor save themselves. Their condition is more horrible than ours.  I watched a mockingbird nest for several days in a small tree just outside the window in front of a row of treadmills at the gym.  The mother would fly off to get a bug and fly back.  There were three offspring.  I watched the mother, watched the chicks, and knew right away that only one would survive.  It was larger than the others and had the widest mouth, the loudest cry, and she kept feeding it.  A woman next to me marveled to me upon observing the scene.  It is not something you often get to watch.  "See the big one," I said.  "He's getting all the food.  I think the others are going to starve to death."  She looked at me with a mixture mild horror and disgust.  Why couldn't I be nice, I wondered?  Why do I have to be both observant and vocal. 

Two days later, there was only one chick in the nest.  I want to go up in a week or so and see if there are tiny skeletons I can steal.  Certainly they would come in handy.