Sucked into the Vortex

A murderer for hire

Once suggested

I read his book

The finished film

Had more violence less irony

I ate dinner from a Warhol soup can

Can someone explain

Why we're chasing pearls

She decided to answer

Its crucial

To be removed from reality

A psychiatrist offered this analysis

In a tale of philosophers

Whom will you believe

I've met a number of people

Who feel as I do

Either you get into it or you don't

It'll be increasingly clear

What you're made of

Microbiome: Chapter 7, Jane in the Garden

She sat on a bench in a city parkette that seemed hardly bigger than her apartment. There used to be two benches. They took one away during the world's first rearrangement of Covid's initial go round. The benches were once beside one another. Now a concrete slab remained where that bench used to be. In it were four round holes, one with a rusted bolt sticking out of it. It was a small thing but it left a big hole in the Garden of Eden. It was a reminder of what used to be.

The parkette was sandwiched between two identical brick buildings making it a shadow world long and narrow. A wrought iron fence went from building to building and in the middle was a gate that allowed entry. The gate's hinges needed oiling.

There were three trees of the same species planted down the center of the little park. They were perfectly shaped and spaced and the dark green leaves of the bottom branches nearly touched the walls. They were planted, she supposed, to provide shade, but the space only received sun for an hour or two each day.

Someone lovingly maintained the little oasis. She never saw anyone prying at the dirt so its Eden like perfection seemed more a creation of  magic than one of toil. She saw naught a single stray hair of grass tufting out of the beds or squeezing its slender way between border stones. She recognized Hostas and Solomon's Seal and patches of little colorful flowers she thought were Violas. The brick paths were swept clean and litter free.

For Christ's sake the garden fared better than her.

My life stinks. I am in a race to nowhere.

Her hunger had passed. Her meal remained wrapped in paper napkins lodged in her purse. The purse sat on the bench beside her. Yellow mustard seeped through the napkins.

She leaned forward resting her elbows on her knees and rolled a cigarette. She bit off the end and spat the bit onto the manicured path. That was the wrong thing to do. She reached down and picked up the papery tab then without looking flicked it with her finger onto the sidewalk behind her. Then that seemed wrong too but damned if she was going to go pick it up.

Everything felt wrong lately. She slouched back on the bench, the unlit rollie drooped from her lips. She breathed deep of the air and her head lolled back to look up at a single white cloud in a blue sky.

She sat like that for awhile. Her mind quieted. The whir of ungreased gears subsided. Something was different. Getting outside seemed to dispel her morning dread. Talking face to face, even briefly, to George felt like something.

Her neck hurt. She sat up straight.

Why did she ask George if he traveled? What was that all about?

She took hold of her purse, stood up with the paper dart still wedged between dry lips and walked out of the garden. Without noticing, her foot stepped on the little paper bit, and behind her the gate swung closed. The gate's hinges need oiling she thought.

 

Microbiome: Chapter 8, Snow in the Amazon

Snow sat in the seat, in the dark, with the door open. One leg rested on the floorboard and the other foot hung out the door touching the ground. After awhile he brought his leg in, reached over, closed the door, yawned, adjusted the seat to give himself a little extra leg room then rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead into the stygian gloom that makes the darkness of the night in the tangle of an unchanging jungle so recondite.

His fingers felt around for a button then pressed it. A noise sounded, like the hum of a humming bird. Air drifted in, cool to the skin, and he leaned back in the leather seat.

He liked being alone in the dark, in the car. It no longer ran but the electrical system functioned and with a solar panel he kept the battery charged, charged enough to open and close the windows, to let the air in or keep the rain out, and to listen to the radio on nights like this. Reception was non existent except now and then. On certain nights, when the clouds or the atmosphere were just right, signals from far away places would come in and he'd hear a snippet of a song or a voice speaking an alien language.

He turned the radio on. Static. Turned the dial back and forth along the bandwidth. Nothing but static. He turned the radio off.

He had an urge for a cigarette and sighed.

The urge possessed him now and then even after forty some odd years. He missed the ritual as much as the smoke itself. It was the completeness of the dark that seemed so often to bring him to this place and then take him to other places he didn't necessarily want to go and it was his body that remembered things as much, if not more, than his mind.

If  he could he would lean over right now. He would open the glove compartment and take out a small cardboard box. He would peel off of the plastic film wrapper and listen to the crinkle. He would pry back the top, and if he was not distracted by his thoughts he would notice the sweet faint scent of tobacco.

In the press of the night, and barely aware of the sounds of the night, of reptiles and insects and the occasional cry of some creature hunting, or dying, his fingers would feel the little tubes all packed in like good little soldiers and he would choose one carefully, sliding it out with his thumb, tap it once or twice on the box or the dashboard, and place it exactly so into the corner of his mouth like James Dean or a young Brando.

He would lean to one side and straighten his leg so he could reach into his pants to get hold of a lighter buried somewhere in there. He would rub one hand through his wavy hair, the epitome of  Dean, and then the lighter would flick and a yellowy flame would illuminate his face and the interior of the car, and then there would be the dark again, and he would be invisible but for a little orange glow that moved this way and that and brightened and faded now and then.

And smoke would swirl and curl and float out the window in the dark.

But cigarettes were no longer a part of who he was so instead he sat stiffly clutching the steering wheel, and after these moments of longing had passed he relaxed and imagined himself driving, as he once did, along the old 66, somewhere, anywhere, between Gallup and Albuquerque. He could see the eastern sun rising up over the edge of the dry desert and its pale orange light revealing New Mexican scrub and sand. The desert wind blew through his hair and he felt free to go anywhere he pleased.