Carousel

The carnival was over and they hired a negro to clean up.  The boss stuck around for a day, but he never told the negro what to do.  The tents were gone, the rides were gone.  Besides a group of magicians, everyone was gone.  There was a carousel that spun slowly and a cornfield that surrounded some matted down grass.  A big cloud of dust floated over the road. 

The negro nudged leaves off the road, piled corn husks next to the carousel and waited.  The magicians sat around a plastic card table in a vein of shade from a pine tree.  They called him over.  There were seven of them.  They wore spotless white tuxedos.  One was short.  One was fat.  One was tall and pale and had a bow tie that spun in the wind.  The negro held his broom tight, not sure what to do.  The pale man’s bow tie wobbled like a bent bicycle wheel and stopped.  Looking awkwardly at his broom, the negro asked: “How do I know when I’m finished?”  The short one handed him half a deck of playing cards.  

“We can make your hands disappear,” he said. The backs of the cards were yellow and blue.  Before the negro could turn the cards over, the little one took the cards and shuffled them back into the deck.  

The next morning, the magicians sat on the horses, slowly rising and falling between the brightly painted bars of the carousel.  The fat one spoke rapidly into the open air.  The short one did cartwheels.  Mist was lining the edge of the cornfield.

They called the negro over again.  The pale faced magician with the spinning bow tie looked up from an upside down newspaper and nodded.  He was sitting on the black horse that flailed impossibly, standing on one leg.  The negro stood a moment next to the rumbling structure, watching the beasts and men blur together.  Then the bow tie slowed and stopped.  “When do you all leave?” the negro asked.  The little one wobbled over to him and pulled out a pack of cards.  

“Is this your card?" he asked. 

“You took the cards back.” 
"Is this your card?" 
"No sir."
Stuffing the cards back into his breast pocket, the little one held out an empty hand and squinted at the negro.  

“Pick a card, any card,” he demanded.   
The pale man passed by as the negro set his broom down. “Go on,” the pale man said, "choose." The negro reached and watched his hand pass through the solid air. 

That night he made a bed for himself by the cornfield. Later, he woke to a blue silence coming off the grass. The carousel was stopped. A green door sat in the middle with a single light above it.  The negro picked up his broom and approached the structure.  The lights came on and the carousel started spinning again.  He stood for a moment as the terrible black horse whined into the air.  "What do I have to do to get out of here?” he asked no one in particular.

Someone said: “Just walk through that green door.”  He stood a moment just outside the circle of light.  And with a pass, they went and painted the green door brown.

Weight

I’m going to call DCFS on myself for being a bad future-parent—just get it out of the way.  “Here kids, have some Bonanza! potato chips and orange soda.  I’ll be leaving soon!”  Wink wink.  Can’t do it.  No, I’m going solo.  I’ll watch a few movies in my thirties, pilot a Mississippi fog boat in my forties.  Fifties: gas station hobo—piss pants.  Sixties: big blue lip, army fatigues.  At seventy, Kentucky butterflies will land on my head. 

I had plans to climb Maine's 5,500 foot tall Mount Katahdin January 1st, 2000 .  

Before the sun comes up I'd take my son up there and say, “We’re going to be the first people in North America to see the sun rise.  That’s the Atlantic ocean out there.  That's where your great-grandpa came from."  Smartly up on my shoulders, his hands digging into my beard he’d say, “That’s the Stacyville Reservoir, dad.  We passed it last night.”  I didn't have my glasses on.  I’d throw him over the edge.   

Grandpa

Grandpa worked in a Cleveland airport for thirty eight years as a vender selling hot dogs.  He said people at the airport dressed like they were going to a wedding and that maybe they were.  He called work “people watching”.  He said these things to his grandkids and his dogs.  Sometimes his dogs died, so he would leave a steak out by the back door, wait for a stray and catch it, yanking a rope tied to the gate.  Sometimes he’d catch the mailman or milkman as a joke.

I sat on the front porch once, on a dirt grained board that creaked.  He spoke up suddenly and said, “I don’t like people to watch me shit.”  I looked around, the pines and the pond suddenly looking out of place.  “In the war I shit in a hole for three years until I got hit.  Then I shit in a bowl.”  He creaked back in his seat, eyes slits to the sun.  I saw the Philippines, how he might have looked at the water.

My mom walked out with a small box full of things:  a welcome mat with pine trees, little bears, wolves and deer, his old coffee tin.  Then we took him to the home.

Just Chat

On the internet I could find a man in seconds bending down to lick a woman’s vagina at a party while he masturbates.  Never try to subtract words, or anything fancy the time for that is over.  And God, if mothers were sexual what could we rely on!  Even if it’s light out or chemicals are on your hands take someone else’s food right out of the saucepan and put it in your mouth. 

I was on the porch a few minutes ago and could see the moon move because I had the reference point of a power line. 

It is right to talk about time going backwards because we just did.  And not playing with time is the wrong thing to do.  This is Georgia font.  A new one.  Invented in 1993 specifically for the internet.  There's really some awful stuff on the internet.  

Georgia is tall.  Look how high that IT goes.  Love, oh be with me, you know your name, say it, type anything, because they're just letters TO SHOW THE VARIATIONS, but you're saying something without saying something because where this is black are noises and people you've never met.  

This A is in Times New Roman and has 4 serifs.  See the little knobs jutting out from each leg?  Those are serifs. Serif letters create the illusion of a pen-stroke.  A sans-serif “a” looks like this: A. This is Verdana.  Notice how the bottoms are flat?  I find these letters are more honest, true to their formation.  For there was never a pen here.  

Verdana was designed to be easily read on computer screens (so this is the time for looking at pictures of Goldie Hawn on the internet). Verdana is a portmanteau, a word made of two preexisting words.  Verdant means “something green” and Ana is the eldest daughter of the inventor of Verdana.  

Smog is a portmanteau in practice and theory. 

Chatroulette.com is a website that pairs strangers from around the world for webcam-based conversations. A visitor is chosen at random and begins an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor.

Recently we’ve been talking about the noises in our house: the little clicks and nudges that accompany the clock when you're alone and nobody else can say exactly what anything means.
 

At any point either user may leave the current conversation by initiating another random connection.

It’s four A.M. and there’s a man squinting outside in Tunisia.  A little farm-boy looks wistfully away from the screen.  The moon has moved—entering my living room window.  A man dances in a wheelchair.  A shirtless boy sits all the way across a room.   In Idaho, a man masturbates furiously.  In Costa Rica, a shadowy room sits empty.  And with a flash, I can’t see.  A Chinese boy holding a Polaroid picture in front of the screen sits below a single light. 

Sea-gray, yellowing.  He’s smiling, holding the picture steadily.  The shadows arrive like a bruise.  A face, looking to the left, with a slight smile.  It was only moments ago.  I turn to where I was looking and remember nothing.  I was dimly happy, it seems.  He’s backing toward the door. My lips turn.  Eyes at his leg, eyes at his chest.  The ceiling a daytime floor never closing.  I glance out my window and behind him a door-less doorway floods with light.