Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The FlyGrass Prophecies

Age never was a factor when it came to the convergence of the Flygrass Prophecies. As time passed, it was merely "recycled," a non-factor in the end, since there was no tangible end or conclusion after that had been started. Only a slight, barely detectable hiccup at the point where the cycle met itself to begin anew. Not a perfect circle, but a perfect cycle. RealTime was created from this Recycle process. All existence was in RealTime now.

The Flygrass Prophecies were loosely-translated, leather-bound, tea-stained, onion-skin manuscripts from PreTime, before RealTime had reached the first Recycle. Now held in the highest regard and more commonly known as The Words, they had taken the place of earlier scriptures destroyed before the first Recycle. All dwellers were weaned, taught, punished, and rewarded by The Words as they matured, and then encouraged to follow The Words as they departed into RealTime as adults.

Point Made, Point Taken

The blanket of clouds was louder than the blue sky. The sun was still asleep. The dawn pavement was busy reflecting life passing above, the iron bridge trembling carrying furious traffic over small life below.

Weeds waved, train yards smell of metal and rust, wet newspaper stuck to the yellow diamond traffic sign.

On the way back into daily slog, it's all simple but not too simple. Life runs a course that is anything but of course; Caribbean dreams reluctantly morph back into their gray concrete dull gritty alter egos. The sublime ghosts of casual thought hide in dim corners and then in plain bright view, waiting with the patience and resolve of time itself.

Labeling an impulsive endeavor as improper can be proper, theoretically. Only if undue motivation has provided the catalyst. Sequestering the drive to break the mold and create an alternate tangent can be overwhelmingly daunting. Electing to follow your nose to that end will provide unknown results. Some exist only to accomplish the adrenaline infusion for the push. Others are comfortable in solitude.

Point made, point taken.

An epilogue to close the symbiotic soliloquy.

The Beginning

Created before the birth of Isaac, the list of Minori was long and solemn, but yet it was as complete as a list that old could be. The names of all the Sitorlings were on it. That was a fact. Undisputed, even by the elder ones. Written in blood, it was said, although that was disputed.

"Will it have my name on it?" Sandruel though out loud. Loud enough that a gray and orange shedstool overheard, and flew over to perch on a lower limb. "Fly away little one," Sandruel said to the small birdlike creature. "You're much too small to be this close to me. I will eat you like a dry finger of tajnel in the bright afternoon's heat." He laughed as the creature fled at the thrust of his voice.

Sadly he turned back to his wonderment, and touched his forehead, mocking a sign of reverence. "I will run before they can make that final judgment," he said flatly. "They will have to search the entire planet to find me."

The sun was high and scorching his fur with it's intense heat, so he decided to seek shade under a tall paraya plant. "I'm far enough away already, and I will make my break for the wallfront after the day has ended," he though.

Many Years Ago...

Buttons and pale fabric lay on the floor where they had been dropped many years ago. A yellow drinking glass and a broken ceramic pitcher stood covered with a layer of dust on the bedside table.

The floor was so dirty. No one was there to clean the mouse droppings along the walls and where the floor-boards were uneven. No one was there with a broom and pan to gather the pile of dusty feathers in the corners from the pigeons that took to roost in the eaves overhead.

The hot afternoon wind danced around the room, breathing life into tiny dust-devils which would live and die in the blink of an eye. The white wooden door to the porch stood partially open, the tattered screen door rapped out a staccato slapping as each volley of hot air swept by. The tinkling of a windchime sparkled in the silence, and a lone, dead oak creaked back and forth; barren branches reaching to the white-blue sky, a low howl lifting from it's hollow trunk.

Ewie: Chapter 1

Old man Ewie was a part time clown. He just wasn't funny enough to support himself as a full time clown. He supplemented his clown income by selling men's shoe insoles from a stand on the shoulder of where highway 44 and route 6 intersect. You know, over by the Jameson's old farmstead.

The horse flies were bad that hot summer day, and Ewie had to wear a shady, floppy hat to cover his bald head and weathered brown face. He groaned and tried to get comfortable on the cracked vinyl of the barstool. His skin was sticky and wet, and the sweat ran off the end of his nose.

"Easier said than done," Ewie said, swatting furiously at the circling pests. He tried to stay busy with a tv guide crossword puzzle.

"Ouch," he exclaimed as he slapped at a fly on his neck. "Buggers."

A orange-red pick-up slowed down with a scraping of brakes and pulled off the road onto the dusty shoulder across from his stand. A pudgy woman climbed out of the passenger side, grimacing against the heat and brightness. Slamming the truck door, she pulled a blue and orange scarf around her head. After tying a sloppy knot below her chin, she yelled over to Ewie.

"Hey, you over there, I need some insoles for my tenny runners," she said in a raspy chainsaw-like tenor. "I've got five bucks that ain't doin' nothin'. Whatcha got for a hottie like me?"

Ewie looked over and shaded his eyes with both hands. He had forgotten to bring his clip-ons so his eyes were watering and he could barely see through the blur.

"Sorry," he said. "I only carry men's insoles. Maybe you could try the CVS in town off Marble avenue and 10th."

"Good Lord you are a moron," the portly woman chortled back at Ewie. "If I wanted damn CVS insoles I would've just gone there right? Jeemeny Christmas." A sudden gust of wind tugged at her scarf, and gray wisps of hair framed her face as she rolled her eyes in disgust.

Ewie stuck his thumbs in the waistline of his trousers and shrugged his narrow shoulders. He wished he would have taken that serpentine belt job at the Tankton assembly plant last month.

"Anything has to be better than this," he sighed under his breath.

He was right.

The lady climbed back into the truck and it ground into gear and sped off in a cloud of gravel and dirt.

"A dish of pineapple sherbet would hit the spot right now,'" Ewie thought, rubbing his belly. "And a big fat cigar to smoke and forget all those damn kid party contracts."

The kid party contracts. It was a secret that he would take to his grave. See the things was, even though he was a part time clown, he had worked some kid parties that were earmarked for full timers only. It was a racket, and a shrewd one, but he had danced with the Devil. He loved to dance that dance, and who doesn't? Carnal gratuity had him on the fast track to the land down under. Not Australia no, no, not Oz. H, e, double toothpicks. He felt the knot in his stomach.

"Damn agent. Wish I'd never met him. He dragged me into this mess and now I have no life," he said.

Not a good mental condition for a clown. He knew it. The kids knew it. Even the fish knew it. But for now he was stuck. Like a pork chop in a mud puddle.

It was time to pack it in for the day. He closed up his little silver-gray lockbox and with his satchel under one arm and the lockbox under the other, he started walking home. The wind was getting stronger, pushing his hat back on his head, and billowing his shirt as he made his way along the barren interstate.

His legs were tired and his lower back was aching like a sad winter ptarmigan when he finally passed the gas station and crossed the parking lot of Mama Cho's delicatessen. He had been dreaming about sherbet and that firecracker-hot Mama Cho all day long. What a sight for sore eyes!

Mama Cho had been selected from over 1,000 Chinese refugees to relocate to Hartleyville over two years ago, with a federal loan, and a new lease on life as well as a delicatessen. That was the day Ewie fell for her like a shaken cake.

Mama Cho was a natural sandwich queen, the way she moved, the way she sliced, and the way she spread the condiments. Nothing escaped her sandwich-maker's eye as she flew around the kitchen north, south, east, and west.

Ewie would sit for hours with his nose pressed against the window glass of his 1982 Chrysler Le Baron, watching her as she molded balls of poor man's meat for foot longs on the back deck of the deli. She knew he was infatuated, and she would play with it, daring it, tempting it to develop into a situation that neither could handle.

What type of future could a part time clown and a sandwich queen possibly have? Oh it burned in the back of their minds, but neither would make a move. Neither would take a step towards the light.

He saw his old car sitting out back so he decided to sit in it and watch her for a while without her knowing. Even though that made him feel like a peeping-tom pervert he did it anyway. After all they were kind of dating.

Cleveland's the Man

Tim Cleveland wasn't a very tall man. He stood 5' 10" with his favorite shoes on, and he had no noticeable stoop. It must've been his buzz cut that made him look taller. He wasn't very old either, unless one considers fourty-seven too far into middle age, and his waist size was still the same as it was when he was twenty-something–33".

He patiently waited in front of Clarice's Boutique under the overhang on that cold, November morning in his hometown of Oakwalla, Wisconsin, for the 8:15am downtown bus. He had to bend down a little to stand under the red and white canvas sagging under the weight of the water which had gathered from the overnight rain. The wind was cold but there was no snow, which was strange for that time of year. Just gray clouds that scooted across the sky creating quick cracks of cold blue which would peek through. It scoured through the crop on his head and made his cheeks feel like stiff cardboard. He pulled the collar on his jacket up tight around his neck and wished he had worn a scarf.

The cold made it feel like hours until the bus finally arrived. It pulled up with a squeal of brakes and a cloud of exhaust, plowing through the gutter water. The doors opened and Tim climbed up the steps, his rubber soles squeaking and the leather uppers creaking, slid his plastic pass through the reader, and made his way down the middle aisle, past the lady with her sniffly brown and white poodle, to an empty pair of seats near the back.

Prelude to a Tome: Part 1

As old, gray, and slightly arthritic Professor Wineburst entered his morning classroom, he noticed something unusual hanging quietly on the back wall. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and turned around three times but it was still there. The tingling in his foot reminded him that he had been sitting for quite some time before he had gotten up to enter the room. His entire left leg had been asleep...

"Oh darn, I wish I was still in the Barnswallow pub having a dark malt with me mates," he whispered to the slightly-built but delightfully-colored parrot perched proudly on the glistening white window sill.

The parrot's name was Milton, and the professor didn't know it but the way the parrot was standing was very significant to what was hanging on the back wall.

"Shibbledeedee," said the parrot and flew out the window, which by this time of the morning was wide open to let the fresh morning sea air come in.

"Gone," said Professor Wineburst. "As gone as the day is long, but not forgotten."

He looked at the back wall again and the unusual thing had moved. Now it was on the floor, looking quite like a pool of linen; chartreuse linen with an interwoven ivory and lemon patchwork pattern that reminded the professor of his fun-soaked childhood in the high mountains of St. Alaban.

"Ahh St. Alaban," he sighed. "To be young and in St. Alaban again. So many happy hours, so many sunny days and tin can fights. So many times I can't remember most of them."

He realized he was talking to himself and remembered what his therapist had told him, so with a hard pinch to his left under arm he came back to the situation at hand.

Years ago when he was a boy, his grandmother had knitted for hours making skirts for the foreign girls that spent summers interning for the local gentries on their rolling, sweeping, densley-wooded estates. The skirts she made them would swirl around their legs as they walked by and he tried to tend to his chores. They would laugh, his grandmother would laugh, and he would laugh along with them.

As the professor bent down to touch the "linen" he was struck in the back by a sharp object. It felt sharp at least. It actually felt a little like a stabbing pain shooting through his lattisimus dorsi, paralyzing his left side momentarily, but since he was a man not prone to complaining he stifled his reaction.

"Ouch," he said. "That hurt my back."

He tried to rub it, but the professor was not a man with double joints or inclined towards contortionism, so he could only rub his hip which wasn't doing much good at all. So he chuckled and stopped.

He noticed there was a small nut-brown porcupine with an solemn yet intent expression on his porcupine face throwing porcupine quills right at him! The porcupine was standing outside the door so the professor walked over and closed it.