BAD NEWS
Fall is about used up. It happens
every year. It’s like life. It goes along following a prescribed course, never
wavering, but with a different story line for each of us, through the good and
the bad, right up to that last sweet breathe. It always ends the same. The
seasons and life, intertwined together in an intimate dance. I had some
tarragon planted in a pot that needed to go into the garage. After all, winter
is coming. That’s when I saw it. A menacing looking little devil. A yellow- lime color, like pistachio pudding,
but without the pistachios. Lime Jell-O wouldn’t work to describe it. You can’t
see through it, and I doubt it would giggle. While not a very imposing little
thing, it shines in that faded yellow-lime color, like it could glow in the dark.
Like it belongs in the dark. It burrows down into the soil, some of its flesh
falling off to the side, reminding me of a Halloween scene with the faces of
Zombies peeling off. Not to say that I’ve ever seen one in real life. Only
movies. Make-believe. The body of this
hideous thing gleams clear and bright enough to see yourself in, about 3 inches
high, getting thicker towards the bottom, with a ring about a quarter of an
inch down from the top. The head reminds me of a Chinese hat, sitting on top of
a pudgy body. I have no idea why, maybe
an old cartoon. They didn’t worry about being “politically correct” back then.
The base seems to go deep into the pot, almost to the bottom, but not quite.
The pot is terracotta, clay red with a bright red band around the top. That
bright band was put there for a purpose.
That thing is not going to get out of that pot, thank God. I don’t think
it likes the brightness. My thoughts catch me off guard: What if you were to
ingest this thing? The mind can play funny tricks on you. Right when you think
you got everything together, you drift off into some primordial muck that is
stuck in your past. A mushroom I once ingested made me see music and I could
smell color. This thing makes it look like you would regret the stupidity
involved in trying to find nirvana in a mushroom. This thing looks like bad
news.
Flying in a
six-seat Cessna at 5,000 feet on a clear night can be an exhilarating
experience. What a
sense of freedom and escape. Floating
above everything, like Superman. If I close my eyes and
stretch my arms out, it
feels like I could stop a speeding bullet, or catch a rogue drone in a single
leap. Looking at all the lit-up towns is
truly fascinating. Small patches of 50, 100, 5,000 lights.
Single lights off in
an isolated nowhere. Imagine, under all those lights, the stories: fathers
struggling
to teach their sons how to be a good man; a wife wondering why she
married an abusive husband;
daughters yet to be married; careers yet to be
realized, others cut short by untimely circumstances.
Births, deaths, town
heroes, town whores, lovers of life, killers of hope. Things beautiful and
thoughts ugly flood into my mind. If only I were Superman. I could ease the
pain and save the day.
The plane turns dark, except for the lights below and
the millions of stars above. Stars all
over the
place. The constellations look like they are alive. The Milky Way,
pouring out its miracle elixir.
Orion, ready to do battle with evil. The North
Star, about to get a job. It will need to guide us home.
The regulator on the plane is out. The
instrument panel is black. There is no way to know if the
landing gear went
down or not. It was a pity such a
beautiful night ends with such bad news.
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