drugs side effects

But I Digress

herocious

I haven’t done this in a little. Write with the intention of putting it up here. I’m only doing it now because I know it won’t be up long. It will soon get lost in the shuffle.

That’s all right. That’s what I expect. I don’t know if I’m capable of writing something that stays up here forever. I feel like ‘the end’ of TheOpenEnd will have to be a blank page. Nothing. Because I don’t think anything deserves hanging around forever.

It’s strange how you can write things sometimes that make you want to erase them immediately.

I think that’s what TheOpenEnd is. A seed bank of erasable ejaculations.

I use that word ‘ejaculations’ with complete integrity.

Oh Dear Lord, I’m sounding crazy now. I can easily jump off the edge, without thought. It just happens, like something native to my person, the ability to sound crazy.

“Have you been thinking about Japan?”

(I stop typing madly. I stop typing to answer a question that came out of the ether. To say, “Yeah, I have.”)

“Yeah, I have.”

(I nod my head to add emphasis)

“That’s good.”

Probably 30 minutes ago I was outside, under a soft sun, no less than 6 ft from a tiger-looking wasp. This wasp was coddling its hexagonal home. I was in the middle of a conversation that had my attention until the appearance of this insect.

I looked at the wasp out of the corners of my eyes. It was to the right of the person I was talking with, above his shoulder. Before the appearance of this insect, I was completely attentive. Now my attention was split between the person talking and this devilish wasp.

(Oh Dear Lord, I’m writing again!)

“You have a wasp there.”

I probably interrupted to point this out. This is the kind of thing I always point out. Yesterday I was walking down a regular neighborhood street, and I was looking at how nice the houses here in South Austin are, when something riding the air came toward me. I could see the sun glimmering off it. It was brown (turned out not to be a wasp but a little leaf). It was flying incredibly fast and in a perfectly straight line. My whole body shuddered. The whole left side of my body viciously shied away from this object. It was like, if I reacted with the whole left side of my body, I’d be able to use my body as a shield. It was a really ridiculous notion. I mention it only because it justifies me saying, “You have a wasp there.”

“You puff up bad?”

“They kill me.”

I probably didn’t sound like a 31-year-old. I probably sounded like someone who just learned how to say both his first and last names.

(I’m listening to raga on WVUM.org. Hell yeah, I’m a hipster.)

“Oh really.”

I nodded my head to add emphasis to the all-around silence.

“Well, I was already planning on shutting the screen door and separating it from it’s home.”

This sounded like a good idea to me. I was full of approval. But that didn’t change the non-insignificant fact that the tiger-looking wasp was still above his right shoulder.

I feel like the relationship between me and this wasp is biblical. I don’t know why.

(I’m going to stand up and put on a light sweater now, walk around, stare at the blue pool water, touch Honeyed Cat, let my mind wander a little. I don’t think this will be conducive to my writing. But I’m not going to let this short break ruin things. I fully intend on tapping this sap-hole until it runs dry.)

There’s a little succulent on our balcony, which faces east, to the place where there is beach & ocean. This succulent is very phototropic. I remember learning for the first time how to read Bermuda greens. The grass actually leans toward the sun on its east to westward journey. Whenever you are lining up a putt on Bermuda grass greens, always take the sun into account. Learning this made golf a lot more about the universe for me.

But getting back to our little succulent, it was given to us, plucked straight off an ancient mother-version that sprawled from the height of my face straight down to the floor. We were supposed to propagate this little thing. It seemed largely impossible that this little thing would someday grow into this infinite-armed octopus. I couldn’t imagine it. I could easier imagine an entire world.

Just now, after putting on my light sweater, I stepped out onto the balcony and looked at our little succulent and decided it needed some attention. I made sure the soil was packed and I watered it thoroughly because the soil seemed dry, and water drains out the pockets of oxygen underneath the soil. This is what needs to happen because oxygen is corrosive. Oxygen in the soil will poison roots.

“Water until there’s water coming through the bottom of the pot.”

Whenever I see the water draining through, I imagine oxygen molecules getting lost in the flood. It’s a satisfying thing to wonder about.

Allergies are at their peak this time of year, when the trees are getting their leaves back and little flower-buds poke into the sky. Soon these buds will bloom, scattering an obscene and unimaginable amount of pollen spores into the air. This entire process takes about 2 months. Then allergies will relax their stranglehold.

Today I learned that it’s possible for someone who isn’t allergic to the stuff of plants and trees to develop allergies to them.

“After 6 or 7 years of living in Austin, you will develop allergies just because all this pollen settles and wreaks havoc inside you.”

6 or 7 years of accumulation and you develop the common allergy. In my mind I didn’t believe this was possible. Inside I reasoned that wasps can kill me, so I’m not susceptible to other, more annoying allergies. 1 lethal allergy is enough. To balance things out a little, I’m immune to developing allergies to plants and trees. The universe is fair like that.

But this is probably a pipe dream, a mark of ignorance.

April 6, 2011 1:33 pm

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