Is everything a field of energy caused by human projection? From the crib bars hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts
surrounds the soccer field of what if. Sometimes it seems like a world where no one knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes both directions. How about a polymer
that contracts in response to electrical charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor? King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone who has traveled here knows the discrepancies
between idea and fact. The idea is the worm in the tequila and the next day is the fact. In between may be the sacred—real blood from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—
landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas are best sprung from actions like the children of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette, another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable
wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams, waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head: good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.
The stranded whale, guided out of the cove by tugboats, turns and swims back in. The violinist will not let go her violin which is 200 years old and still on the train
thus she is dragged down the track. By what manner is the soul joined to the body? Answer: an arm connecting a violin to a violinist. According to Freud,
there are no accidents. Astrologists and Presbyterians agree for different reasons. You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake. You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.
Human consciousness: is it the projector or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits and spray the grass so everything dies but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka
what he thinks. Sometimes they give you a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest is your problem. In one version, the beggar turns out to be a king and grants
the poor couple a castle and a moat and two silver horses said to be sired by the wind. That was before dentistry, which might have been a better gift. You did not want to get sick in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.
So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master of the short story. After the kiss from whom he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,
touches a bush in which birds are singing.
----
I Am But a Traveler in This Land & Know Little of Its Ways
Dean Young (B.1955)
----
Graphic - Victor Brauner 1903-1966
