This is 2 of 9 pages
3.
I have a friend named Betsy Ross. She has heard all the jokes and references to her name that you could ever think of. Recently an Asian country that wants to change its name asked her to design (and sew) a new flag for the newly created State of Being. Betsy has been searching for appropriate graphic symbols to stitch onto the banner. I can thus far report she has not had any success.
This is incidentally the same person who got into big trouble when she told her boss his pink slip was showing. He denied it and she insisted by saying in a very dramatic voice “me thinks he doth protest too much” which was like throwing gas on the fire. Later, after he had left the company, most people thought he had left out of embarrassment.
9 + 1 = 1 + 9
4.
The chair was on top of a table. One leg rested on a soda pop can, another on a tennis ball, the third on a lipstick, and the fourth on a red, stiletto heeled shoe laying tipped over on its side. There were no curtains over the window and the wall was painted a faded shade of yellow ochre. Outside the sky was electric blue, and pink clouds raced by and I watched as the window slowly and noiselessly drifted open.
The smell of gardenias lay heavy in the still air of the room and reminded me of a funeral I had attended as a child. The smell reminded me of the dead body of my scoutmaster lying in his open casket. I was twelve. The catholic ritual of the wake was unfamiliar, and I teetered on the edge of nausea and fear. I blinked.
Everything was still and if the clouds hadn’t moved, I might have been in a painting. I could have easily been dead and not even known it until there was a life confirming sound.
The noise began slowly and softly at first. It was an oompah pah band that sounded far away in another time and place. A heavily lipsticked lady rushed by me in a long, transparent red gown. I could see her naked body moving inside the fabric. Behind her ran a tall George Jensen spoon with short legs and behind the spoon, a yellow-rimmed dish with long legs. Both ran in double steps because they were shorter and had to keep up with the lady.
I shouted, “Where are you going," and the spoon yelled back, “come and see”. I hesitated and turned on my tiptoes to follow. There was no other side of the room. It had only three walls. At the foot of the missing fourth wall was a black, volcanic sand beach. It stretched away as far as I could see and the surf rolled up over my bare feet and covered them with salty foam.
I ran down the beach after them; the lady, the spoon, and the dish. The sound of the oompah pah faded with the light. We ran into the warmth of a thick indigo night. It was good and I didn’t think or care where we were going. We ran and ran waving our arms that had become long thin artist’s brushes with fire streaming from the ends. We stopped suddenly and wrote our names with fire, in the air of the indigo night.
