The Squishy Problem

((((the squishy problem - part 1.))))

A vault of selfishness contains original designs on a napkin, complete with coffee rings and powdered sugar. Nearly incomprehensible drawings show the co operative relationship between separate metallic screaming elements, apparitions from the fifties, silver angel hood ornaments picking on the aging chauffeur, both of them like quarreling children enacting a tired maypole dance, all while standing perfectly still in the driveway, in the garage, in line, stiff as a board, man and machine. This is pre double-helix, the kind of dream that wont ring any bells at first review. the timing is disturbing. "This never happened," interrupts an uninvited voice.

(((The squishy problem - part 2.)))))

The mechanics of a living thing at its core plays with electricity and stuff smaller still, vital minerals and metals exchange electrons in a realm vast and indiscernible from outer space, like a nerve ending in a bad tooth emergency, measures uncomfortable and wholly uncouth come into being and enact themselves at conception like a homeless beggar gathering leaves and sticks and bones and skin in a frantic strike against the cold. We have an arrangement, to split our work load and became the living canopy. This is true. Echoes in the fog distort and create forms in the dark, space rewards the bold and wilds unkempt bow and move aside for my fantastic machine. Mary Shelly I love you. I saw a coyote smelling flowers and recognized my brother. I am changed and send a wall of sand into the river with bare feet and watch the organization, the perfection, we all fall down in a symphony of math and magic. "I gots to move" I say to myself in a visible shamble, I need to eat and surf and make love in the grass and smoke strange leaves to ponder the marbles in my head. Music is mine, It's good to be alive. We chose to be here, How could we forget?

(((the squishy problem - part 3. ))))))))

Multiple entities with similar interests have a pup tent shelter cool enough to franchise. What kind of event can be a place with extra gravity? The circus comes to mind. The Ocean however, with time to kill has a stone to polish and the mind to father a fiction still. I get paranoid, could you blame me? Equals meet opposites and contracts get signed, a Napoleon complex is loose and roaming the streets so we found his equal getting loaded downtown and force our way to the place we can get them together to fight. This ain't your ordinary berg, It's a complex planet of its own with a curious trending towards gang violence and squishyness, How gross...Time slows down in the gelatinous goop zones. What a nightmare. I am told its a privilege to tap my feet on solid ground and I try to believe it. In a small town community headline, a midnight staffer got creative. "IT'S ON!" printed in double black taking up half the page. An anti-repugnance campaign got itself underway and like any good revolution the time was right for incestuous riots to break out all over town. Squishy versus Solid, the lines were drawn and denial was free and marching to the tune of a good house cleaning, "whistle that song and wave the new chosen hope you dogs!" comes the call from the television box that all other boxes be judged by. "It sounds like an unvarnished threat to me!" sez the tiny blobular jellyfish man sitting loosely on the bar stool next to me. I say I agree with him to keep him happy (its best to humor a drunk) but he seems to be eyeing the angle of my elbow with suspicion. The poster boy to hang the whole fiasco on is an image hard to shake hands with. A perfect square. Normally a circle takes the square but the liar in us all was left unchallenged for too long. Liars beget liars till the squishy and the fluffy and the funky and the hard proud ground are forced to deal with each other. Secretly on their own they have to admit a similar enthusiasm for seeing Jack released from the his proverbial box. Such an impressive state of affairs is a rolling circus with executions (oddly enough)in the square at the end of every shift. If you are on the outside, the red and yellow tents make a showing of the crowd inside, the fire light makes shadows of the the people sitting in bleachers that dance like unwilling fish that don't know they have just been caught, an aging parking lot is a substitute for something I cant describe. My perceptions of the world are my own and I wont deny my long time allegiance to hot water but a flat rectangular life is what I represent doing stories for the yellow press. a job is a job and a paycheck is a motivator, I try to blend in. The squares sing a song of professionalism and wag their fists at me as I dig around in my pocket for my ticket. All I find is a hole, my money is gone, along with nine quarters a couple of rubber bands and some sand, I turn to go home and almost get trampled, large groups of the recently possessed are bound to trample somebody. I'm glad I got away but feel left out of all that energy that I wont get to see first hand. The poor kids tend to go off and make round kids behind square doors and populate the earth. The joke is on me and it has a sour punchline. The world is full of holes, tents, prisons, stomachs and pockets, we spend our time going through them. ((((B.E.B.

micro photos by Brandon & Julia Bristow, ;)

The Soda

On a recent trip to Las Vegas Nevada, observations jumped out and begged for written attention. Sometimes though, you are compelled to pet the runt of the litter, something a little less overt. Being surrounded by opulence and false bravado is like riding the Tilt o' Whirl, the smear of color and sound sharpen one's focus on pivot points and the big bolts near the heart of the contraption. Eyeballing the low center of gravity needed to hold it's mooring with it's arbiters In human form, moving with purpose and dedication like ticks moving slowly to the host's softer portions. I was waiting for the second race of the Breeder's Cup at Santa Anita to get under way in the belly of the Palms Hotel, I checked my phone and realized two conflicting thoughts. One, it's sixteen minutes to post and two, it's way too early to have a beer. The betting room is standing room only and I immediately cave in to my inner flight response and shuffle outside to shed some crowd-induced claustrophobia, not being a smoker you are faced with a funny feeling, standing still. People going hurriedly in or dragging painfully out looking like the recently exhumed while clutching their free promotional red hats. What an incredible mark, I think to me self. Long gone are the days of chalking your whales on the back, nowadays they simply set up a table and we stand in line for half an hour to wear our sucker status proud as a peacock through the casino for all to see. The barkers have grown up and peer down through the smoky black spider eyes in the ceiling. After losing twenty two dollars in the first race, and I am still somehow having myself a good time here, and bravo! to our hotel for such a delicate robbery, it reminds me of the vampire bats feeding off of horses with pain killer spit to get the job done stealthily. Splendid! Fully satisfied that I am being ripped off by the best in the business (excluding the government) I turn to head back in for more abuse, but not before noticing another person standing in the sun and seeming as equally still and indifferent as myself. A bum. A person of the lower leisure class with the perfect demeanor to slide right in, nearly unnoticed. Thinking nothing of it, I went back in myself and found a nice place to watch the race, a wall with a flat granite top to rest my elbows and racing form, someplace solid to hole up for the storm, to pray on my five dollars to win, to root for magic forces and hopefully not be tapped out before lunch. Having an eye for the unusual, I noticed a round white table with an untouched glass of dark soda filled with ice with at least 5 minutes of condensation making a small pond at its base, sitting there full to the brim and lonesome with two newspapers and a racing guide all huddled together, abandoned and equally as unattended as the two half pulled out chairs. This was a scene in itself because all the seats were taken leaving the latecomers like myself to stand against the walls and edges close enough to see the screens to the left of collage football and directly under a giant blonde with huge tits showing how to shake a martini. She was muted thank god, but distracting for sure. By the time I got my eyes back to the dark soda table to consider the open seat, to my surprise now sat the guy from outside, the bum from off the street and what perfect timing it was. He now held the once lonely soda like a proud papa looking intensely at his inherited racing digest sitting confidently with such an Oscar worthy performance I had to be amused. So good in fact was his portrait of a thirsty gambler that I thought for a second that I was mistaken and this was indeed his seat, his dark soda and by obvious extension, his important papers. The tell? His eyes darted left and then right, the hallmark of vaudevillian criminals everywhere. He lacked a pencil thin mustache to twist, but his cover was totally blown by those coyote eyes, however, he received no notice from the staff and was given the moment savor his victory. I was full of petty envy over the seat and table and was struck with the Marx brothers grace and fluidity that put him there before any of us and tipped my mental hat his way, "well played sir." My race had nearly gotten off to a start without me, so with a rush or rookie gamblers adrenaline I focused my attention on the smaller screen under the giant martini shaking tits and watched my chosen pony swing wide and lose all hope in the back stretch. Bam! Just like that, another five bucks down the tubes, the grand total of twenty seven dollars lost before lunch, these figures added themselves up in my head auto-poetically and most quickly triangulated the time of day with the bleak contrast of future destitution. "So this is what Kenny Rogers was talking about" but I still wasn't sure how to proceed. I know! I need a beer, the cure all, hey it's Vegas I tell myself, I can have a beer in the a.m. if I damn well want one and upon this epiphany I noticed the empty table. He was gone and so was at least one of the papers, but most importantly the dark soda full of ice was gone too. He was out there some where, a winner with a free soda and a fresh newspaper. The only non fool on the floor. Between races, the other losers and me pour out into the place going different directions. I was stuck on the soda. The lost and lonely dark soda full of ice found love and attention in the form of a streetwise antihero, a bum flying under the radar, sliding right in here and going up against the best in the business, getting the only empty seats and leaving the scene unscathed and refreshed. In my own style I flagged down a waitress for a cold green Heineken, leaving her something close to a tip and taking time to register her absolutely blank expression. With a certain amount of resignation, I began making my way sheepishly to the back of the long line to get what I had earned. A free red hat from the Palms hotel to wear like a peacock, walking around in Las Vegas, Nevada. (((B.E.B.))))