— From the Fool —
George is my Facebook friend from Akron Ohio. I don’t know him, he just turned up one day and I thought well now I know a person in Akron Ohio. That might come in handy some day.
George reads a lot even though his mom always told him he’d ruin his eyes but his eyes are fine. His head is another matter. He gets a bug in his brain and it’s there to stay. He just read a book about the universe which is a lot to chew on and his mom always told him chew your food so it doesn’t gum up, so he does.
It’s pretty scary. They figure that the sun is going to flip off in five billion years, give or take a few. So we have time to get in rocket ships to go to another planet if there’s still economy class. We might have to move sooner if the rent keeps going up.
But then they say that the universe will freeze and that’s it for us unless there’s another universe to go to. That could be as soon as a trillion years. Which is a pretty long time but it’s got George worried. His mother always told him to plan ahead.
According to his book, we might find a wormhole to slip through if it doesn’t kill us. Or where time warps back on itself and you’re there before you start. Or we’ve got a whole universe less than an inch away with different dimensions than we see but we might be able to google it some day. That must be where ballpoint pens and hairpins go. But George is pretty depressed about the prospects.
And he said what if we plop into a universe where things were different. Like if cats ruled the world. Or everything was mush. Or gravity pulled down our underpants. He’s got me thinking.
— From EF —
I’m on my annual pilgrimage, writing this on my iPod with a slow thumb whilst sitting in SFO. I have satisfied the TSA gods, offering up half an hour of standing obediently by a trash can while they located a female officer to do a pat-down. A person decorated with as many brown moles as I sport should avoid the scanners, or so says my dermatologist.
CB offloaded me at International Departures plenty early because we were driving from Oakland, not Sebastopol. Saturday evening there was a big delicious party at the home of a friend who is not only a genius photographer, he’s a colossally gifted cook. And he has fascinating friends. Knowing that we were airport-bound the next morning, he offered us a guest bed — yes.
So here I am, rested, fed, entertained, and about to be blessed by time with dear ones: Theo in Amsterdam, Jo and Fra in their stunning Tuscan home, Erika and Peter in their theatrical lair in Zurich, and then to walk among the stones at Carnac. Lastly, I will visit the long narrow southern tip of the Quiberon peninsula to say hail and farewell before the death sentence of the rising sea obliterates it. I am more aware than ever of the need to greet anyone and everything with love. Not tomorrow: right now.
— From CB —
I’m sitting at a sidewalk coffee bar
four circular black mesh tables
uncrowded this time of the day
while a lady with reddish dreadlocks
reads business news
I wonder if she’s got money
while a Mr. Rooter truck parked
at a sphincter of Mother Earth
gouges out the blockages
while fragments of voices behind me
explain recent changes to Medicare
and the great fires descending
while a young guy billed blue cap
brown corduroy slacks one-legged
sips an Americano
his Doberman lying on concrete
while frolicking shadows
cast patterns across its haunch
his eyes mid-twenties maybe
bleached by nightmares old reruns
he watches when nothing else is on.
I imagine the sterile excision of a leg
with delicacy with elegance
or a sandblasted blowing-off
and the rest of the New York Times
held fast by a blue-painted rock
against the rising wind.
Then the young man one-legged
mounts his aluminum crutches
whistles up his dog and
charges into the sun.
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© Bishop & Fuller 2015
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