And Maybe the Globe, Itself, Is a Myth

I said, this reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode when global temps get so hot for so long that the remaining survivors all go mad. And I still retain the image of paint melting off of a canvas and a woman screaming with her hands on her face.

This also reminds me of days and days of snow. A heat trap. If I escape, I again find my refuge in the supermarket, in front of rows of white milk cartons. Let me fall to my knees and press my cheek to the tile.

My entire body weeps: I watch sweat form in tiny beads at every pore. I didn't know I could melt away, like snow.

"nothing under my skin by light. If you cut me I could shine"

I half expect a lead ball with a lighted fuse to crash through my windshield as I drive home on the 4th of July.

Somewhere close, a boy could be shouldering an AK-47, or a gangster is writing his name on the wall of Hollywood Video with his Tommy.

Colors flash across the sky, and I wonder how I would feel if I went to sleep every night listening to these jarring beats.  People do.

And how would it feel to go to sleep knowing that the lighted fuse may direct mortality to my bed; this may be my last sleep.

Of course, this may be my last sleep.  But I still feel immortal.

I can't smell smoke.  I've never seen a body ripped open by bullets and shards.  Children don't carry guns here.

I can hear the stillness between explosions: sharp cracks and distant booms.

I remember being younger, sitting near water at night, watching the moon, feeling the same stillness... waiting for the beats.

Who doesn't know the expression of the moon on a summer night?  I wonder what will threaten my finity.

Grandpa Twain

This year in American Literature, we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) sometime around March or April.

We had some intense debates about whether not Jim, the runaway slave, is a liar.  I mean, what kind of honest person cons a homeless boy out of his last coin for a conversation with a hairball from an Ox's stomach?  You're missing out if you have no idea what I'm talking about.  Read the book.  Now.

I had read Huck Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (who's adventures precede Huck's) as a teenager.  In college, I discovered some of Twain's short stories, his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi, and his caustic Letters to the Earth.  I fell in love with the old gentleman's satire, and he became an American literary icon, etched in white, in my bookish heart.

Now I'm reading The Prince and the Pauper.  I don't like it.  Granted, it's some kind of "specially abridged for Puffin Classics" version, so I might be missing out on something.  Or am I?  Has anyone read this novel?  Does anyone else find yourself bored and weighted by the Middle English dialogue?  The characters' motives don't compel me to care about their story.  They don't seem to have any dimensions to them.  Don't get me wrong, Twain's a literary genius, and he obviously did his research and background checks for this novel.

Ah, I guess I'll trudge through it.

In Other News: Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux, another recent read, is quite good, but a little too simple.  I just felt like there was something missing... still thinking about what it could be.