A soft, sweeping light came back to get me from a little pocket of solace-nowhere. It swept me up and condensed into my eyes and blinked open to let more of me in. I'm back because I yawned Above and snoozed into this playful slumberland of name-and-form. Does the woman at China Star still hold the menus down with a container of uncooked rice? Will the Mexican fellow at the cafe still express excitement over the fact that he already knows what I want? Is the elderly Ukrainian woman still trying to use a tree at the playground to convince visitors that there is a God?
        Let us see.
        I stepped outside my door and discovered exactly what I have suspected would come true someday: low theatre attendance has caused subversive productions to spill out onto the street and impose a curious voyeurism upon the public at large. In this instance, a clever group of thespians had affixed a wire to the buildings on my street so that a pair of traveling, ghostly white globes creep their way along a mysterious path. A silent beggar with a shopping cart shuffles along my sidewalk, silent because one the many things he has collected in his cart is a small boom-box on which plays a narrative recording. He moves like a pied piper while a throng of wide eyed men and women still suited in their work attire follow close behind, enchanted by the hypnotic recording and the possibilities of the things they may see ahead. Sure enough, the phantom globes stop above a fully made bed cast into the gutter between parked cars. Passersby join the crowd curiously, as a couple mixed among the rumpled sheets perform their dialogue for the misplaced audience. I see the whole scene repeat itself each night. These theatre "fragments" have no identity all their own, for there is a show on the next street corner, and one on the next, and in truth they are altogether without fragmentation and indivisible. Just as Parmenides has said.
        I made my escape to the park down the street, only to find it consumed by a local carnival. Soft, malleable buildings had self-inflated in the crannies and the nooks were filled with children wading frantically through a cascading onslaught of purple balloons. Now and then, a strident clown horn cut through the murmur of giddy voices sending heads swinging to attention. I found G sitting quietly atop a grassy hill, contemplating the activity swirling around him.
        At the center of this carefully synthesized atmosphere of fun G confided in me a certain traumatic episode his friend had when searching for an answer to the question "What happens when you digitize everything?" recently posed at a conference. His friend signed onto the "Second Life" world for the first time to find out. His first "encounter," as fate would have it, turned out to be an inescapable screaming cube. The cube followed him everywhere, screaming incessantly, to the point where he was unable to concentrate on the task of exploration at hand and had to call a "moderator." The moderator then proceeded to summon the player who had called forth this relentlessly screaming cube. When the owner appeared little needed to be explained, for the fellow appeared in all his glory, complete with a massive, waving phallus. At this point, G's friend shut everything down and decided he wanted nothing to do with his second life.
        One doesn't have to sign into Second Life to see a world ravenously devouring itself in reverie or enraged by agitation: look around! Amidst this wild uproar and manic excitement, sending the children toppling over each other to press their squirt guns to each others chests, causing young women to frantically tear off their clothing down to the bare minimum and strut about aimlessly, and forcing the cars swerving to compete savagely with the hordes of skateboarders, I enjoy simply being the untouched, Silent Witness. There is a flowering of life all about me, most typical of the summer, which will inevitably devour some of its participants, and leave others in appreciation of the Grand Design. I find myself geared toward the latter, reflecting on a comrade, Eddie Boros, who built a towering mountain in my neighborhood of all the discarded things that many have made the decision to do away with. I had filmed him, many years ago, transcending all the thises and thats which people had surrendered, transcending his alcoholism and general mental instability, transcending his aging physical state, to ascend his creation for so many stories high above the city and reside like Shiva atop Mt. Kailash.
        Eddie died this past April, in his 70s, and I will share a secret now: I selected five items from my home, all of which I was very attached to, one even being my sole remaining connection to loved ones that passed away long ago. These are items that have taken more than a decade to let go. Now I am attached no more, for they find their new home among the mountain of agitations and reveries dumped by the Free as they claimed their bliss before me.

I salute you Mr. Boros! May you remain forever perched high atop the carcasses of your demons and your cravings.


For my patient readers: the first four leaf clover of the season. :)