The Taste of Noise.

It’s difficult for me to read at home. I have to have silence and little distraction in order to concentrate. But in my house there’s the TV and it’s accompanying library of movies that call to me. What about the wife and son? They’re tough to overlook with her inquiries and his jumping solidly onto the floor every few minutes. There are the neighbors who love to howl beneath our floor when listening to raging techno music. So I try to spend some time reading and writing in pseudo-solitude at the library. Generally, that’s a place that’s kept silent. But not right now. There’s an alarm shrieking that I’m desperately trying to ignore. My silence has been shattered.

I watched with interest when the little Asian man viewed the door that said “Emergency Exit Only.” He inspected the door hesitantly, touched the handle lightly with his thin fingers to ensure no alarms would sound. Nothing happened. Then he forcefully pushed the door open. In that last moment before the alarm went I off, I too thought as he did, that he’d made it through without setting it off. But when he took his first step through the door is when the alarm went off catching us both off guard. As it rang, he came back in and swiftly pulled the door shut tightly hoping that the sound would stop. Then he searched the entire door for a switch or a trigger to kill the sound. After he was unable to locate any device to halt the noise he ran away.  He left me sitting here listening to this noise. 

Bookface

She seemed larger than I remember. She grew to be a giant. I remember her small frame, blonde hair, and sharp nose that fit her foreignness so elegantly. Maybe the prettiest nose I’ve ever seen on a woman? But now her giant body cast large shadows on the wall and obscured the light that was behind her back. Why was she wearing an old blue nightgown that belonged to my grandmother? Suddenly, there was a shift and she became normal size and I was reduced to a small phantom. She looked older now. She never once spoke to me. And maybe if she did her heavy words would pin me to the floor. She kept her distance and never looked me in the eye.

         But I desired to speak to her or write a note and lay it near the lamp for her to read. If I wrote the words down they would’ve said, “You have so much to offer like a black hole.” But I never did. I wondered who the child was that sat in the corner. There were intricate hoses and tracheotomy tubes protruding from the boy’s nose. They appeared advanced and were grey in tone with strange fluids flowing through their slender lumen. I never understood what exactly was going on but I was there again near her and that felt peaceful

Constraint

I’ve always found my dreams to be very interesting. I’m communicating fears or hopes within them. How do I/we come up with some of the images or language that is expressed in dreams? I’d like to use my dreams as a constraint for the next project. I might view them in the style of New Criticism or maybe not. Then again I like the idea of taking other associations into account. I’m still uncertain. I am thinking of the dream that I had last night and what it meant. I’ve never been one for social media, especially Facebook, but looked at the site recently and it rekindled my memories. But it was all too easy to do. To “see” people you haven’t visited in years all I have to do is look them up on my computer. I could see them, their kids, and what kind of lifestyle they lead. No mystery, it was figured out in a matter of minutes. Running into an old friend at the Outpost? Boring. Anyway, all of that relates to my dreams. Somehow, my dreams connected Facebook with elaborate tracheotomy tubes

Higgs boson, what have you done to my room?

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The God particle. Faith vs. science. A black hole in Switzerland? I try to imagine what would it’d be like if they accidently created a black hole and the whole planet was swallowed up instantly. I hope it’d be instant anyway. If it took two or three days that would just be ridiculous.  Humanity’s demise resembling a Mike Bay feature? We may never know.

 Anyway, the first thing that comes to mind is all the work that I’ve done, like this blog and beyond, would’ve been for nothing. And by nothing I mean nothing. Not even a trace of it will remain. Not even a hint of a computer or shred of paper left in the galaxy. All of our music and art, gone. Maybe the energy will exists in space somewhere becoming fuel for a star or a few grains of sand on Mars. Or maybe not? Maybe Mars get swallowed up too. Forget about the last toasters strudel that my wife ate; I got black holes to worry about now.

God is on ESPN

It had happened so fast and everything was once again normal. There was nothing moved or misplaced. Everything was just as we left it. All the doors were closed still and air was calm. We looked outside and there was no place for a person to hide without being seen or heard. It was then that we could hear someone shouting from the living room. An old man’s voice rang violently over the walls and wobbled some of the ornaments from their positions. We both peeked around the corner and saw a preacher standing firm with a bible cradled into his arms.

He looked like a sweaty hog with dirty pink skin and a mouth filled with crooked teeth. He screamed, “It was the divine power of the lord that has saved you from your sins. The Shepard has risen and wants to see his sheep reclaimed. Can I get an amen or hallelujah, y’all? Can I get a couple of them? Ah, yes! Can you guess where God is now boys and girls? Heh, heh, the only place that is safe for him to hide! I’ll tell you. Well, he’s in the tv, radio, and on your computers right now. I can hear the drums and horns right now, y’all!”

False Dream

I pressed the trunk upward with both hands. I crawled through the bedroom and saw him sitting on the bed searching through an old shoebox of his. He called me inside to sit with him and reminisce. He took a picture and pinched it between his dry fingers. It was photograph of me as a young boy. My father was holding me in the air with a smile on his old face. I saw a black mass flat upon the ground. I wondered what it could be so I crawled toward it carefully. As I got closer I believed it was a dead animal that somehow wandered too far into the room.

The apparition in the window, the footsteps, and the energy of the house made me fearful of living there anymore. This place would either consume me or I’d consume myself. I noticed a subtle movement from my bedroom window. It was just enough to grab my attention but I just assumed it was a strong breeze that blew the curtains. I happened to look up at the window again and saw a dark figure of a man in the window, waving. Suddenly, he was moving furiously with an uncontrolled panic. His arm and legs were twisting and striking the bed with quick bursts of anger. I sat still, admiring the picture of myself.