swim

i've been living quite within myself.  wading in the pleasure centers in my brain, between fiction and non-fiction.  i see the waves coming towards me.  i'm in a low, squat beach chair, my rear end centimeters from the sand.  i'm watching whales and you.  both mysterious and guarded, beautiful and incomprehensible.  i catch a tail sinking back into the deep.  i make up what the body must look like.  make it up from images i've seen on tv and drawings in books.  it is, i proclaim, a whale.  and so it will be from now into the future as i have recorded it, as i have named it, as i have laid claim and tightened down on it.  forever, this story in my head. 

i've sent out a message on the rolling seas.  whales.  and so many things.  bigger than me. 

(it feels good to clack, clack on the keys again.  i warn myself to not make any grandiose statements such as, "i'm back, i'm writing again".  writing doesn't like being called.  writing is the most beautiful of dancers that really doesn't want the audience until it's performance is complete and the images and phrases are echoes left by feet already treading upon new landscapes.

it's tuesday morning.  my breakfast consists of peanut butter toast and coffee.)

the waves peak like so many hungry mouths, all sky bound, all reaching for a distant star with their wants and dreams.  i see reflected in these open chasms, the shouts of so many thoughts carried from distant shores, rolling along, one self affirming message after another, all proclaiming, "I am here!"  and so we are, remarkably here.  i walk to the water's edge and attempt to catch a falling wave, to cup the water softly to my ear, to hear it's cry, to know the news from some other time zone.  but water drains quickly from my eager palms.  i scoop and scoop like a child playing and each hand full falls away from me.  i am bid to immerse myself.  immerse myself in the hollering of the world.  i walk back to my beach chair and watch whales.  the water's too rough to swim.

i send out a message with the tide.  there are so many things i don't understand.  i look up at the clouds, mouth open and eyes closed: why. 

nonsensical lines. the writing practice.

I have been on a wondrous voyage that has kept me from writing to you.  Now I find myself stricken by some sad common illness and my prancing about has come to a halt.  As it should, for now is the time to recount the months since your last letter.  Erving has been a doll, having three pups of his own to care for he has somehow found space in his heart and room on his financial teat to support me.  I’ve met a young man named Clyde and while I don’t much like the male species and quite truthfully am disgusted by testicles, Clyde and Erving have shown me that not all males are created equal.  Ah, but perhaps I’m jumping ahead.  Such a little field mouse I am.  Let me start at the beginning of things.

                I came to these dreary neck of the woods to do one thing: find the elixir of life.  Yes how very common place you might say, how very prosaic but I have never been one for imagination and rather merely find myself the owner of a body in a body of recycled tales.  That was of course until I met a peculiar mushroom named “Wang-Fun”.  Fear not, I did not consume this little fellow as you might assume because how else would I deduce a name such as “Wang-Fun” but truthfully it was written as plainly as I write to you.  These letters, “Wang-Fun” were painted on a little sign beside the most blue of objects.  Fearful of anything foreign, especially Asian, I thought not to approach Wang-Fun.  And yet there was a certain draw, a certain need even to converse with this strange little creature.  I did as any sane mouse would and logged down the details of Wang-Fun’s location and returned to my office to mull over my peculiar stirrings.  As I sat upon my rubble mound called “thinking chair” I pondered.  Clyde was soon about and questioning me with his one good eye.  I try not to stare directly at him because I think he feels inadequate having only one eye.  Mostly however, I fear his blue, blue eye is too big, and deep and infinite for a small mind like me.  I only came for the elixir of life not the purpose of it. 

“What now you be pondering?” he asked gruffly

“A blue mushroom called Wang-Fun”

“Wang-Fun at the bottom of the hill?  Wang-Fun blue radiant?”

“Yes”

“Hrm” he responded and laid himself down by my feet.  He started licking his paws.

“You know anything about him?”
“Everything”

I waited for him to elaborate but Clyde had clearly finished talking.  I prodded him, “What is everything?”

Clyde rolled his one eye, “You expect me to tell that to you in just one lifetime?  You’ve got a lot of patience to grow” he chuckled.

“I can’t get that mushroom off my mind”

“Join the club”

“What is it about Wang-Fun that makes me want to know him?”

“What is it about anything that makes us want to know everything?”

Clyde was getting heavy again.  I didn’t like when he got all heady, I felt out of my league, 10000 below.  A drowned mouse at the bottom of a milk bucket.