Chaos

     How quickly the memories fade, almost as if one is pouring water onto the porous sand.  The shop is over run with people.  Everyone is moving and darting around in a mad quirky mob.  Going to and fro, back and forth bumping into each other, but not touching.  Knocking each other down, but all remaining on their feet.  I decide to walk across the street to the house.  Such a simple task, but not today.  The ground is not solid,  alas there is no ground at all, just uneven columns of various sizes, that you have to jump from the top of one to the other.  Not very big, some the size of a water glass, but not to land on the top will send you to oblivion.
     The house is more crowded than the shop.  Who are these people and why have they invaded my space?  The pool is full from the deep end to the shallow end and no one is wet.  I will go up the road to the top of the hill.  Finally some solid ground.  The car salesman is singing a song to me, almost like a siren.  "Come on in, buy this car and you will go far."  So stupid, but I hand over the money and get in.  Some one asks, "Why didn't you get the 396?"  I did not want a race car, I replied.
     The car turned into a weird spectacle.  I stood still, but the world came by me.  Whatever I imagined I saw, slowly coming by as if I were on a conveyor belt.  Joe had to go into town to look at some houses his mother had picked out.  We seemed to be on the same belt.  Where he went, I went, along with the fox squirrel.  That gray and white squirrel wanted to be friends, which was OK with me, but he had to quit biting my ass.  It hurts, but it must be a squirrel thing, for he seemed to enjoy it.  We made him wait in the lobby as we got into the broken down elevator with the house salesman.  We watched the sides of the building go by as we ascended to the top floor.  The door opens directly into the housing project apartment.  Everything is neat and clean, stark contrast to all else that I had been seeing.  Walking back into the living room, the woman lay on the bed trying to seduce Joe to buy the house.  He is oblivious to her and her nakedness.  The squirrel got off the elevator and we step out the window to the ground below.
     Where did I meet Joe?  Out of the sea of people, he is the only one I connected with.  We don't speak, but we know.  We were on the same conveyor belt going through the city's golf course.  Everyone had on their visors and green shorts.  Cocktail glasses were the golf clubs, olives were the golf balls and their mouths were the holes in one.  Drunkenness and lust, people shoulder to shoulder, drunk with stupidity, all crowded togather, kept them standing.  Everyone connected at some point by flesh, not one in the crowd that is not wired to someone else, but not touching.
     So much information from the crowd.  "I have the cure for baldness, guaranteed or double your money back." said the bald man with the rug.  I have learned how to cure acne, diabetes and migraine headaches.  Did you know that you can soothe and cool hemorrhoids with just one wipe from this miracle jar?  I did not even know that I had hemorrhoids.  I discovered by looking into this glass box that a bear does his business in the woods.  If he does not use this brand, then he will have paper scraps left on his butt.  His mother will use a lint brush to remove it.  He at first would use a whole roll, but as he got older he learned to get by with a lot less.  My life has been enriched by knowing all of this.
     As I rode the belt to Grandpas' house the ground disappears again and the columns are the only way to navigate.  It was a huge task to reach the swing under the giant pecan tree.  When I reached the back porch, everyone disappeared.  Uncle Buddy was gone a long time ago, then Grandpa, then Grannie and now dad.  Who is next?  Then I saw that old demon sneaking around.  I had not seen him for a while, but he was always around, worrying the shit out of me, always in my mind.  Some days I was strong and others I was not.  What did he want?  Leave me alone, go away.  I had a plan to draw him in.  I would drink to fool him, I would spin the chamber to entice him closer.  I would cock the hammer to get him drunk.  I would put the barrel to my temple to make him giddy.  I did not look, but his foul oder got closer.  He was giggling and the stink was so close that I could taste it.  As he lost control, I spun around and shot him dead between his evil eyes.  Freaking idiot, that damn fox squirrel was the demon.