The server dropped the tray of glasses
Right after saying, “Don’t worry I’m a professional.”
Rushy.
Could not out plates down fast enough
Before picking up new ones.
Meritoriously.
Feet bones cracklin
Pork ears
The following morning
IT sent an email.
Meanwhile, the coil leaked.
And my hair sits flat today.
And I smile.
At a memory.
You said noodles used to be tradeable.
(Funk & Wagner photo)
Alight.
A light
A’lit.
Alit.
A bit lit.
Branches bumble and shake snow on me.
Wet, excited dogs preparing to come in after a romp.
I slip about on tip toes.
Inside ampersand outside.
Hamhocks hog tie knots.
Due to recent disuse.
I disabuse them of their notion of stiffness.
To remind.
Renew.
A sun barely seen still strikes the sheets
Too brightly.
So much light.
The chain letter of et al. saluted the Dear Gentleperson.
Lines of lives that move as
lilt, lag, loll.
Silicon sand and office rebrands.
We measured the sheets of snow in ankles,
While the neighbors line stood-up dominoes in rows.
And we all leveled latitudes,
gauged by arcing sways.
Time was askew and this manifested in the way I viewed things.
Things moved too slowly. I moved faster than the flow of the world.
Intermittent whiteouts/color bursts of vision only to return and have missed a few scenes.
I was caring for a young boy of about ten. There were no words exchanged.
He looked sallow, yellowish skin from poor nutrition.
Deep set, big dark saucer eyes.
It was an informal, novel arrangement for the short term.
He asked me there for the night?
His mother. His mother was aweful and possibly maleficent.
He lived in a trailer home, that connected to others like an aluminum apartment complex.
One story.
My cat kept plying at doors, as always.
The door to the connecting abode. She kept opening it and running inside.
I kept sneaking inside to retrieve her. Worried I’d get the boy in trouble with his neighbors.
I finally met the daughter girl of the neighbors. She was about 20 years old. Beautiful.
Suddenly, I’m her age too.
We attend school. We are friends, but it is hard and dangerous to have friends in this place, so we are very quiet.
Her home is immaculate and in the Thai decorative style.
Her mother wears very traditional almost ceremonial garb.
The mother watches me and her daughter but says nothing to me.
Never formally acknowledging me, but I feel comforted by this. Welcomed nonetheless.
The mother talks in mutters to her husband in a language, presumeably Thai, that I do not understand.
Those are the only words.
Me and the daughter never speak.
We draw geometric figures on the hardwood floor with chalk.
I notice a discoloration that is dried urine on the floor.
I worry my cat did this.
She writes, “my brother.”
I never meet him.
It stays grey outside, but now it is darker.
I return to the boy.
He and I take off running into the night.
Frenetic, nervous. Running. Like animals nervous before a storm.
We run for hours through meadows in dim moonlight.
Sparse trees here and there.
Everything is an aqua teal green.
You can feel a building electricity.
Like the accumulation of major internal static charges.
The boy stops. Freezes.
I’m running so hard I almost do not notice.
I stop, turn heel, and tear ass to be at his side again.
I make it to his immediate proximity.
The earth tremors. Isolated to the area immediately in front of us.
The earth tears open like a ripple over water.
A slight scar forming.
It is his mother.
Aweful. Pure force and energy. Intuited.
The boy is now catatonic, stood upright behind me.
There is a surge of fear followed by the security of knowing exactly what you are supposed to do.
Even if you have no idea how to do it.
Just do not let the boy touch anything.
The mom comes up from the ground in colors and consistency the like of a nebula and the root structure of an old tree. Explosions in the air like fireworks.
I just watch. The task is easy, if you do not panic.
~
It may snow today.
The story renders it incumbent upon the reader to engage a very active imaginative capacity. As such pictures help. Pictures also bias.
The tradition of Courtly Love in literature comes in three types: allegories, lyricals, and romance (aka færy tales).
In prudence of full disclosure, be aware that Richard Wagner’s opera was tentatively titled Parzifal (just as WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH had titled the protagonist) until 1877, when he switched to the handle Parsifal. This change was informed by one theory about the origin and etymology of the name (Perceval > Parzifal > Parsifal).
Vidēre licet the name as of Persian order Fal (Pure) Parsi (Fool).
At this time, your historian has been unable to validate any other origin theories for the name.
Though we shall encounter, virtually, every story ever told within Parzifal, a breakdown of the tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as Eschebach tells it is justly prudent.
We concern ourselves, as the reader, with (1) Provençal troubadours, (2) French trovères, and (3) minnesänger.
I’m Wolfram von Eschenbach. I’m a bit of a minnesänger.
Note that Eschenbach states that a Provençal called Kyot (my research suggest Pyot to be a correspondant name in other texts) sent ” the book” to him.
Of keen interest to your historian is the patron enabling Eschenbach to afford the luxury of his composition. Wolfram was under the patronage of Medieval German Mæcenas Herman Landgrave of Thuringia.
The tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as seen from the Critical perspective:
The overall gist, to be concisely reductive) of works concerned with courtly love seems to be the romance of self-perfection in knighthood, where both the chivalric and the spiritual receive their due as part of Love and Sensualism.
Parzifal had the knowledge of chivalry concealed from him until he was of an age able to think for himself.
In C.S. Lewis’ Allegory of Love, he presents the literary tradition of courtly love to include four basic characteristics: humility ; courtesy ; adultery ; Religion of Love.
A feudalization of love.
We will consider the meaning of the above shortly.
The genius of the above description will be revealed in history of words.
Metatext (analogue ; tape ; printed to paper)
Light falls upon pages.
Back light shines from digital pages.
Eternal fascinations.
Measuring circles & David Bowie.
I wanna high kick like that. Geez.
Calling out for collection.
Just a collect call or two through conductive cables.
Throw me a land line.
Far too tangled as between
the trident’s skewers under this sea.
I woke up here,
From a saga of the strife-filled dream of another.
Am í of this dream?
Nave, Knave, Navel, Novel
In this sphere, am í finally loųe unfolded?
I have already been so many things.
I feel weary from all this dreaming.
Again. Rising ignorant and beside myself.
Alone, in barbarous prudence.
Hand-made
Handmaid
Maiden
Maid
Mave
Maven
Litle blue polka dots over my ivory stretched canvas.
Pyramid built for a moth.
Knights vainly going to nowhere fast, keep passed.
You Pure Fools will do fine if you do not hide your eyes.
Troubadours, minnesängers, trovères, you already made a feudalization of loųe
Diabolical idiotēs, you are well-endeared.
Venus stays near as my ally.
I carry but a cordon as an ornament of beauty.
My other hand holds a lamp.
Needing enkindling.
Pyramid for moth.
Conducting that underground current into specific key sites.
Where lode-stones are meticulously fawned over through ritual, mysticism and magic. Pressing them firmly into earthen mound prepared.
I feel as though a hermit knight tonight.
I feel like Persephone waiting for the weather to change.
And now I am Kore: Made. Maiden. Mistress.
But Babylon awaits. So I shall abide.
In lovesome patience, heavy.
I stand up.
I sit down.
I look for something.
I think of something else.
I forget what I seek.
I still look for the forgotten thing.
It is not what I wanted anyways.
Where did I last see my attention?
Oh. I have left on it on you.
Again.
The words really do get curious and capricious. I am Alice Ladder; and even the hair on my arms stood on end. Hair-raising. Un baffoon ambulent I must have appeared on my walk home.
Parcigal is lovesome, diligent, loyal and kind. But the gal is also lewd and licentious. A real hærlot. Engaging in all sorts of hærlotries, and what not. She is a complete philolofile. Thinks she’s pretty funny.
Vitz. She really likes words and is a lovesome dummy.
Before we meander Hear I make three formal remarks below. The rest is simply me doing my best.
Alice Ladder
Carroll, VVündųrlvnd
TIMESTAMP: 07/09/10 15:00
》All knowledge is nothing more than symbolism.
》》 Word is bond and magic. Be impeccable. Do not use it against yourself either.
》》》What you see inside the mirror is just an image of reality; which means it is virtual reality. It is a dream.
Revælation
i. surprising disclosure of a previously unknown
ii. remarkable thing
iii. supranatural ; præterhuman ; divine ; daimonion
*remember that we must distinguish between a homo dormien (sleeping human) from a homo vigilance (waking man).
⊙
“A private individual.”
hermit
Just a “fellow temple-servant.”
Homo-doulus with the swans kuknoi.
Word has it that Socrates believed his master [despotēs] gifted him a prophetic capacity [mantike] not inferiors to that of swans.
Metathesis: transposition or interchange.
Metastatics: change and shifting
Metatithemi: interpose, change a meaning.
¤
Maverick.
Pure Fools talk freely.
So listen closely.
Everyone’s gonna shout.
Babble on anon, anon.
“When the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say, ‘There lived a race of people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby, they injected a new meaning into the vein of history and of civilization.’ And we’re gonna do that.”
Martin Luther King Jr. @ Bus Rally in Montgomery, AL. Dec 05,1955
That is how you speak in a mythos that all can understand.
Five Points South water fountain. Five city streets converge into one confusing intersection.
I lived on the same Birmingham city block as Dreamland BBQ (2nd location) across from Wilson’s Market. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (go Blazers: best mascot in the state: dragon!) is about four blocks away. The ‘professional downtown’ area took about 4 minutes to drive 3-ish miles, over bridges with railroad tracks below. It is a shell of almost-skyscrapers. Sky-risers. Many blocks look forsaken. A seeming majority of professional spaces in these older buildings sit empty and yet, next door you will find the home offices of several major American Banks, Insurance Companies, etc. (Circa 2016 from memory).
All or nothing.
Sloss Furnace looms like an industrial dreamscape an installment of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser universe.
I also lived quite near a number of historical sites that witnessed the struggles of social revolution. I lived in this area 30+ yrs since childhood. I went to public school. The memory of this time is very much a still a live, shared cultural memory. A work in progress. The future needs some magic, leadership, and kindness.
Birmingham incorporated in 1878. Already, there were 20–25 major iron and steel producing blast-furnaces and companies in the Jefferson/Shelby county seat. The name ‘Birmingham‘ was picked to correspond with Birmingham England (the center of that country’s iron industry.) The new Alabama city boomed so quickly that it came to be known as the “Magic City.” It later became known as the “Pittsburgh of the South” after the Pennsylvania center of iron and steel production. Jan 8, 2008 
This tribute to local deity Vulcan looks over the city and protects the workers. Many, many moons ago, his arrow would shine at night: green if there were no casualties in the steel/iron mills & red if a person died working. This was discontinued after the number of red light nights began accumulating to a simple majority of the time. The citizens found it distressing. The light was removed. I cannot be sure, but assume this resolved the problem and decreased the number of deaths substantially. Ahem…..
Protest organizers knew they would meet with violence from the Birmingham Police Department and chose a confrontational approach to get the attention of the federal government.[22]
“My theory was that if we mounted a strong nonviolent movement, the opposition would surely do something to attract the media, and in turn induce national sympathy and attention to the everyday segregated circumstance of a person living in the Deep South.”[21]
Wyatt Tee Walker, one of the SCLC founders and the executive director from 1960 to 1964, planned the tactics of the direct action protests, specifically targeting Bull Connor’s tendency to react to demonstrations with violence:
He headed the planning of what he called Project C, which stood for “confrontation”. Organizers believed their phones were tapped, so to prevent their plans from being leaked and perhaps influencing the mayoral election, they used code words for demonstrations.[38]
The plan called for direct nonviolent action to attract media attention to “the biggest and baddest city of the South”.[39]
The final day the arrests totaled 1,200 jailed protesters in the 900 person-capacity Birmingham jail.
King wrote his essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail“. It responded to eight politically moderate white clergymen who accused King of agitating local residents and not giving the incoming mayor a chance to make any changes. Bass suggested that “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was pre-planned, as was every move King and his associates made in Birmingham. The essay was a culmination of many of King’s ideas, which he had touched on in earlier writings.[55] King’s arrest attracted national attention, including that of corporate officers of retail chains with stores in downtown Birmingham. After King’s arrest, the chains’ profits began to erode. National business owners pressed the Kennedy administration to intervene. King was released on April 20, 1963.
The facts of the dogs and hoses, bedlam, and barbarism is imprinted. But King’s language and lyricism during his lifetime would feel right at home alongside the best strings of words that world and classical literature has to offer.
“The right to protest for right.”
“When you are forever fighting a degrading and degenerating sense of nobodiness…”
“Grim and bold determination…grim and firm determination.”
“If we are wrong, justice is a lie.”
Many public domain documentaries can show you the footage immediately following the rally. Here is my summary of one of the most poignant documented parts of this entire Birmingham campaign.
~
In an attempt to handle the anticipated volume of arrests of public demonstrations, Birmingham authorities brought in the big yellow school buses, proudly proclaiming Jefferson County School on the sides,
Dr. King Jr. fills the Birmingham jail with arrestees from demonstration activities enacted over the past few days. 2,500 people were arrested in total and held in the 900-capacity Birmingham jail. Genius. The arrestees were very nearly in number severe enough to overwhelm their captors physically, should they choose to. They did not, of course, but Bull O’Conner saw what could have happened.
The city at stalemate.
“Laying the issue before the conscience of local and national communities.”
While arrested, King very clearly defines that for which the movement campaigns. He calls them “requests”. Adept. The very reasonable nature of these requests and the disproportionate reaction by segregationists shocked the country. It turned out it was VERY different in Alabama.
With great fluidity the demonstration rapidly disperses from the church, issuing onto the public sphere. No yelling, no first pumping aggression. People stream out politely; there is no human spill over into the road way; there is no trodding over “other people’s grass.” It is orderly and almost like a formal dress code was needed to join the campaign. People looked sharp. Jackets and slacks with ties. Dresses, hose, small heel, nothing immodest. The Birmingham authorities wore collared, short-sleeved pseudo dress shirts. The police uniforms aired of casualness in uniform. They were in uniform. That’ll do her well ‘nough. My assumption is their time was spent mobilizing shields, gas, hoses, dogs, practice runs and meetings to review. That was their focus. Such a large number of people dressed decorously makes even the smallest wrinkle in uniform, the slightest slag of an unpressed pant, the casualness of the collared, short-sleeve work shirt, tie-less, top button undone, highly noticeable and suspect.
As a lone policy car siren wails upstream this human river current, it is able to drive easily along a defined and unobstructed roadway. The car might feel encroached upon, but not infringed on by the demonstration Mass; most of whom now smile, broadly and even wave a joyful hello to the cameras which are taking them to living rooms all over the country. Even the little kids know it is ok to be excited–after all the nation just saw.
There is no yelling or antagonizing from the procession of the rally Mass. There is music audible and sung in sincerity.
Then the camera pans back. The police encroach the scene. They are already certain physical violence will break out when the Mass gets to the streets.
This explains why they bring weapons, dogs, body armor and shields. They expect and planned for various eventualities in preparation. They are nervous. They are being filmed. They are scared to engage.
The first two or three police show up on foot “to see what’s going on here” and generally “just wanna make sure we aren’t gonna have no problems, here today.” The Mass gets antsy at their presence but does not provoke. Nods and waves of hello become bitten thumbs, emasculating mocks before a television audience.
The first handful of cops seem to struggle with identifying who exactly should and should not be arrested–appearing, at times, to choose indiscriminately. Then they brought out the dogs and simply let them choose. Now, a smooth river of people flowing turns into a stewing churn of confused particles.
You have heard the sound of what follows as more cops arrive: frenzied barking, panic of voices, whoosh of water bursts. in. spurts. Monsoon pouring onto concrete for 15 seconds. Ceasing. Beginning again.
You can fill in the blanks. That part of the story is very well-known.
Back to back hits from The Isley Brothers.
For decades, white rock acts covered the most famed material of The Isley Brothers, particularly, “Shout” and “Twist and Shout“.
The Isleys decided turn about was more than fair play and decided to do the same to music made famous by white artists such as Stephen Stills, Eric Burdon and Neil Young.
The artists they chose to cover were not musicians that were apt to cover a song by the The Isley Brothers. In fact they were contemporary artists with unique voices and sounds they developed themselves. I like that these were the artists covered on Givin it Back. So many ways to interpret Giving it Back as an album title.
Slyly, titling this album Givin It Back, the Isleys prove they can re-enliven the music of others, thoughtfully. Distinguishing “a cover” and “a reinterpretation”.
Ohio/Machine Gun is my favorite gem.
CSNY might as well have written Ohio for the The Isley Brothers to perform.
And, I like CSNY’s version but when it is stood aside The Isley’s version, a certain, subtle social commentary forms. The songs speak to one another. The Isley’s version casts a subtle irony on the earnestly enthusiastic tradition of white protest music. Now, a naïveté tints the original.
The original release of Ohio, topical to the very hostile American political climate of the time, intended to make a statement, to shine light on injustice in order to produce change. It purports righteousness that slides toward self-righteousness when considered with The Isley Brothers rendition.
Among the songs they covered were “Spill the Wine”, “Love the One You’re With”, the social commentary medley of “Ohio” and “Machine Gun” (from Jimi Hendrix), “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor and Bob Dylan‘s “Lay Lady Lay“.
Their covers of “Love the One You’re With”, “Lay Lady Lay” and “Spill the Wine” became charted hits. Bill Withers plays guitar on the Isleys’ version of his “Cold Bologna”.
In 2015, Givin It Back was remastered and expanded for inclusion in the 2015 CD box set The RCA Victor & T-Neck Album Masters 1959-1983.
First, we drove close down by the river: just to look up at the the truss bridge monolith.
With unbothered eyes, we traced along the interconnecting triangles that criss-cross and distribute mass in motion.
The Parker Truss took the standard triad of members: chords, verticals, diagonals.
But this Parker camel-backs with the upper chord and consists of exactly five segments, not three.
The triad but with a pair of camel humps to top it. Accessorized.
Stressed sometimes with tension, sometimes with compression, and sometimes both, in response to dynamic loads.
“It is almost a full moon?”
Untarnished by the rust of daily practicum and edified on precipice and to edge, the bridge is high-sided as though set to plummet.
Just a scaly spanner anchored in a bit of wet water, hydrating ferric oxides on wrought iron.
Reddish-brown-yellow.
A little shunt allowing red-blood cell autos to flow, permitting the heart-engine dry passage so it can cross over, neatly, without going all the way under.
“An old design and cheap.”
“The physics of statics.”
“Fancy way to say that it works, huh?”
Then we climbed the steep hill by the river: just to look down on varicose vein highways zig zagging over dirt legs.
Without the clean shave of hot asphalt pressed tight by the compaction of Caterpillars, tires tire along dusty bumps.
Yet, the paved jet-streams below us back up.
Multiple bottlenecks and arterial traffic jams clot the circulation.
Blood pressure rises under this cellular road rage.
[ Court etiquette deserves a modicum of decent civility.
Coquette or not, it is not about dress, but language (un)used.
Courters do best by being dumb(founded), but not stupefied, together.
Stupid talks a big game and sings with precious, unnatural affectation.
Dumb keeps quiet and abides.
Until.
Like windows. Still.
Without dressings.
My temples tighten, feeling the impetus but not wanting to be too impetuous.
“Good, huh? Can we go dancing now? Kiss hard like we did last time. Get felled and sleep?”
“We came here so you could show me what it was before. The part prior to this now we presently share. So tell it in words out loud.”
I wonder at the time:
“I worked hard; so he could get one degree more. I arranged to rearrange. But new arrangements required rearranging. Then a couple of years later, I prepare to rearrange again.
Because when I wanted out of my hometown, the question got asked:
(Good prospects out west.)
He prospected jobs.
Deeds are not always actions. Sometimes just unimbued words.
~
He asked the cashier to break a twenty and change one dollar into four quarters and nineteen into ones.
Automated doors. Artificial wind.
Plunk. Twist.
Black cat.
Pink elephant.
Costume piece with a bit of black cord.
Lost as easily
Release/d
~
“Now I remember why we came back.”
“It looks different through new eyes, huh? Let me be charmed.”
Giggles.
~
Then we climbed back down the steep hill by the river: just to flip on the car’s radio, turn on the headlights, and sway. Spotlight dancing on grass while crickets chirp ambiance.
The above is incorrect. Just my opinion, in light of the below.
Parcigal learned the powers of personal appearance, nearly two decades past. She learned its ability to exploit and/or to be exploited, nearly a decade ago. Hell, all gals did where she was from, Alabam, the Dirty South. Personal appearance stood as the primary source of feminine efficacy (next to blood kin).
The place where they raised her never addressed that which she regularly pondered: the long game for pretty lady face.
This type of prettification during youth resulted in an aged-self prettifying to remain relevant, as a new generation of beautiful gals arose.
The true Tao seemed to be finding Beauty unmasked.
Bare face.
No jewelry.
Unadorned.
She started to let her face be as it is. Washed it, moisturized it, but that was all.
She became the appearance of the female she was.
She did this, going about daily public interactions, until she knew her face,
Became the female she is.
Then she wields the power of makeup’s masking properly. Not defensively.
Parcigal lived her dream of Art. She reinterpreted Myshkin anew, unbound to previous ties made.
Allegory.
Of course now, books are more often quoted than read.
The once enumerable is now innumerable.
Hypertextuality.
Parcigal recoils from monastic traditions. It is being one a crowd, faceless.
Initiation required heavy control over the individual’s entire life. Gives very little free will. They seperate sexes, assuming gals are even allowed at all. It imparts a tacit intent to shame the sexual nature of the h. sapien mammal. She does not doubt the resiliency of these traditions. But, her energy does not run properly in their circuits.
She recoils from secret societies and erudite traditions, because she distrusts agendas she agrees to but cannot fully see. It feels, in her mind, like blindly giving away power.
But she is wary. She is also extremely lovesome.
A lovesome nature required diligence.
What was the use of sensualism with a resonant partner?
Why was this primal magic so hidden?
Magnetism and electricity.
Conductors.
Conductive bodies are conducive to utilizing each resonant body.
By nature.
So, in her Fool way, she left her Ewer the note below.
The morning after she spent her first night in the handmade.
Before she snuck out (after two minutes of hard doting on his sky-eyes) without rousing him.
The sun begins to make cameo appearances.
The trail crew came through.
Cutting back.
Below is tribute to felled ones.
Ready to be reabsorbed into the ecosystem.
No waste.
The water rose.
See the fish (salmon) ladder flow from both sides
The first night, I dreamed,
We three ran roof top to roof top of the dilapidated neighborhood.
There for the wrong side of the tracks [sic. haven] provided by Amy A’s abode.
Mary C. ampersand Julie Ann B. (two grace filled people who took a sharp veer on the Christian side to which I’d never relate).
We ran atop house `o house til the abrupt end o’ the block.
Four stories high was the final structure, condemned, that used to house god knows what.
Mary C. at the far edge.
Me at the opposite far end.
Julie Ann B. cheated away from my edge like a 1st base runner poised to steal 2nd.
The house does a pendulous sway.
We all freeze.
Having seen Amy A. (a few hours prior) make an untested, brazen, leap,
resulting in a ten foot multiple tumble into a rocky canyon.
We could not see her, but her howl could curdle milk.
We quite and in quiet acted in diligence.
Holding the space of the present tense
While immediately looking to one another
And then the other.
Are we in harmony? How are we distributed?
Does the outfield (us) need to shift?
And then we three dance and (re)distribute our weight.
Slowly and gracefully descending to the ground.
With a hand and help from one another.
Leverage exploited.
Physics.
No words exchanged or needed.
In perfect peace and health.
Hours later we reunite with Amy A.
I cannot gauge her. In health or worse for the wear?
Rode too hard and put up too wet.
This much is clear.
Amy and I wait tables under a skinny, reformed Cody B.
I keep forgetting that is my purpose.
No one else cares. My tables moan but move on unfazed. Not angry, despite slow service.
The following night, I dream.
Mary C. (far on one side) , Julie Ann B., again, nearly cheated from my position on the polar, more precarious, side
We, all three, find ourselves (precariously) alit.
This much is clear:
The ledge will withstand two of us, not three.
My edge is the most likely to give way.
I feel tired and glad.
Like my path does not follow theirs anyways.
I tell them to shift their weight toward Mary C.’s edge while I test my edge.
Julie Ann B. sees my intention clear.
She pivots across the broken plank making my edge the most lethal.
She and I now share the same bit of ledge.
She hugs me.
Her back to the ledge
Her feet pointed to mine.
My heels pointed barnward.
She is now poised between me and the free fall I was glad, nearly excited to make.
My life now hangs with hers,
Instead of alone.
I feel sad, but loved.
And yet she increases the likelihood of us both dying.
With her additional mass
On the already precariously split wooden plank.
I feel deep disappointment at having to take her mortality and life into consideration.
I’m not committing suicide, mind.
I’m moving to a new plane. I’m more than prepared for it.
But what was proper for me (letting the plank split, myself fall, into the mystic. Unafraid)
Was not proper for her.
She was still here.
It occurs.
What I mistook for wood is cheap alloy
Perhaps. I think,
I could smash the back of my head into the barn
Until the alloy gives
And we could three slip in.
Reverse Head smash one: alloy gives several inches.
I am encouraged.
I look at Mary C. on my far side.
She sees my intent.
Nods.
No words needed.
Julie Ann B., still clasped about me in a hug,
screams
She has a much more frightening perspective than Mary C., or myself.
The quicker I do this the better.
I think.
She will panic and inadvertantly pull us off the ledge.
I’m fine with this, but it is not proper for her.
Reverse headsmash 2
Reverse headsmash 3
None hurt me.
Each produces more give in the alloy behind us.
A shadow encroaches from over our heads.
Pressing forward.
From our backs.
The back of the barn
Directly behind us.
Directly overhead.
All encompassing.
Reverse head smashes, without pain, continue.
No panic in my mind.
No true bravery either.
Just a desire to get JAB inside the barn.
My mind fears the shadow is from a UFO.
The biggest airborne ship I’ve ever seen.
How could it not be alien?!
Panic for the haven of the barn’s interior now.
Reverse head smashes continue.
Sans hurt.
I feel a wet trickle
I feel scraping, like forest branches, from behind my head.
Cutting my temples, face, neck, and shoulder tops.
Nothing hurts.
I just feel blood run on my face and neck.
Barely.
I realize I’ve broken us into the barn’s interior.
I twist and fling Julie Ann B.
into the hay loft immediately behind us.
Mary C., who has never weighed more than 100lbs, jumps across
To my ledge, I catch her hands and propel her inside the loft.
Still on the ledge. but safe now,
I turn to see the fearsome shadow’s progress overhead.
I realize it is just a regular commercial jet
But it is about to crash into the field ten feet away.
We have hay behind us.
I worry the heat of the explosion’s backdraft will ignite this dry material.
I expell loud nonsense in an attempt to say all this as a warning.
The plane crashes.
I wake up.
I’ve been sweating hard in my sleep.
WrittenCasey 