space x
I don’t know how exactly I came to be speeding up 75 north to Jacksonville beach. Sometimes people say that like, “oh gosh I just don’t know what got into me!” but what I mean here, is that I woke up driving. Just outside of Gainesville and surprised to find the steering wheel in my hands, I have no memory of getting in the car, or passing the treehouses on my street, of turning onto Hillsborough, or stopping for gas which I must of done since I’ve made it this far.
But I do know where I’m going.
I asked you if you would come. I told you, ‘a rocket exploded over Melbourne, they have calculated that the pieces should start washing up on Jacksonville beach in a few days. I want to watch them come in, to pick them all up and not give them back like you are supposed to.’
You told me you would help, because you are strong and could probably carry lots of rocket pieces. You weren’t interested in why I was interested, but you like physical labor and you’ll help.
I think about an interest in whimsy being outside of the recipe you have made for yourself.
And so we have the same conversations again and again.
But I don’t concern myself with it too much.
I wonder if there will be others, on the shore, waiting. For the pieces to come in.
I might have left because of an infomercial I saw yesterday. I was waiting for my mom to get a pedicure and watching an infomercial with an asian woman who was waiting for more customers to come in. The spot was for some sort of dental surgery. I remember they said this surgery was preferable to traditional “cut and sew” gum surgery.
I thought about someone cutting through my gums.
I watched a woman razor callouses off of another woman’s claws.
We were at the testimonial part of the commercial. A vanilla looking woman with leaky brown eyes was telling us that after she had the surgery she got in her car, (deep inhale, tears welling) and took her very first selfie.
Her teeth had been holding her back.
Couldn’t have any selfies with these rotten teeth.
And what a shame.
There was a part I liked though.
A part that made me think, ‘you got me!’.
And that it’s all an elaborate joke, the design of culture and the universe is just a few steps smarter than me. Keeping me guessing and ultimately waiting to say “psychhhhhh!”
It was when at the end the same lady popped on screen and said “YOU CAN’T KEEP ME OUT OF A PICTURE NOW!”.
I heard her scream it in my head right after I heard her say it earnestly on TV.
I imagined her becoming very obnoxious about it. Elbowing her way into any picture she could find. Becoming the godmother of a New Port Richey crime family. People showing up at my door hitting bats against their palms saying “any pictures bein’ taken ‘round here?”. And then them biting my legs off with cut and sew jaws.
And then we were going home. And now I am passing Gainesville. What the fuck.
I was laying on the couch opposite my brother earlier. We are like lions, he and I and my dog Alabama. Love to be laying, always looking for distraction, we fall into the couches and put off whatever is coming for minutes or hours, sunsets at a time.
And I was telling him. I think this must be an evolutionary kink working itself out. This thing with the pictures. It must be a step in our merging with computers. I don’t know.
And he tells me the word “selfie” gave it power. And I said yeah, makes people feel justified in doing it. And then I felt sad, about how simple.
And the Milgram experiment, and Rube Goldberg machines, and all the songs on repeat in my head, that If I just had the discipline to lay out. Lay out the ideas like long silk ribbons on a table fit for two.
And examine the patterns and say “A-ha!”.
And then you whisper in my ear, ‘no one cares’.
And I laugh.
And a generation with a foot in each world, yeah yeah.