Arcade
1:25 AM, With the rain falling in perfect lines, like vertical static, I’d want to zoom in on the horizontal splash-plane. Little pops of white spattering and spraying out as raindrops hit slick gray asphalt. Then do a Matrix turn, jump-cutting to people in motion. Just fragments, intercut into a rapid mosaic. Cut and zoom to a single droplet sliding slowly down a velvety flower petal.
Monday (but not this one).
Summer is now a stratospheric pile of time perched on the top of my head. Blue-skied to the distant top. I ran in a race on Mother’s Day — almost twice as slow as I did it last year. Still, I did finish. Going out to a cd release party the night before and not exercising for months in advance probably did not help my performance. I’m glad I ran, though.
Talking.
I’ve been talking to interesting and involving people. Unexpected verbal and textual gifts, these are.
I’m sleepy today — though I rose late and consumed twice my normal amount of coffee. Sky Cries Mary is on the cd player. I don’t know what I am today. I don’t feel like a thing of this world at all. I’m a static rain ghost. My voice would sound like that. I’m dreaming awake. Or I’ve not awakened at all…
Time to eat.
Time stretches backwards, vanishing over a slow curve into the past. At 3:06 PM (then) a small brown bird flew in to perch on the grill of a faded Ford Ranger. The animal sat there a moment, seemingly surprised at its location. Then it flew away…
At another point (closer to the curve) Johnny Indigo sat back during the twelfth day of May, contemplating heated air. Ceiling fans cut an intermittent breeze: delivering parcels of coolness that arrived and vanished like ghosts. He was thinking of a woman. Then. The sounds of the highway surged and receded through an open window in the background. A tide of engines.
Now.
Well, that’s a relative word, isn’t it?
The music playing now is Depeche Mode (Only When I Lose Myself) and it is night. The month? June.
— JWR, 6/20/00