THE JUICE
[enhancement:reach]
[retrival:journalling]
[obsolescence: op-ed]
[reversal:narcissism]
Friday, May 13, 2005
doggles, the dog who wore goggles
On some parallel plane of the multiverse travelling through time on a path so similar to our own as to be nearly undistinguishable, giant graceful millipedes take the place of streetcars. Cyclists worry not about wheels being lodged in streetcar tracks, but losing traction on filmy giant millipede trails.

The millipedes glide along. They are graceful. They drift like air hockey pucks with a purpose.

I stood against the window opposite the door. Standing frees up a seat for the elderly, pregnant, tired, lazy, or less-bi-pedal-ly-inclined individuals than myself. The millipede pulls to a stop at the city corner on the beautiful day in the beautiful sunshine next to a church. I watch the church doors as they open for the Man of God to pass through. All the the passengers silently attend as six old men carry one old man in one wooden box follow the Man of God down the steps into the sunlight. The millipede is deathly still and all heads aboard are oriented towards the procession. No one speaks, and we have transcended all spatial, social and temporal barriers to become participants rather than the ultimate passers-by.

This drive-thru sentimentality continues until the light changes and the millipede floats forward. I consider inventing a car wash for your heart, with a Turtle Wax compassion applicator. I contemplate the appeal of "Car Wash for your Heart" as a band name. Also that of "Turtle Wax compassion applicator".

Before leaving the stop the passengers of the millipede are joined by a friend of the man in the box. The air gets heavier when he boards. Seconds before, every pair of eyes were fixed on the funeral, but no one will meet this man's gaze. The immediacy is too much. It was comfortable and distanced and African Lion Safari and everyone's llittle moment of humanity and hollywood-mortality-contemplation-lite for the day until he boarded the millipede like a sperm into an egg and the air became pregnant with guilt and sadness.

He smelled like death and hospital, like Old Spice and regret.

He went out the doors ahead of me, to transfer to the subway. He moved down the stairs slowly. I think he could have moved faster, he looked spry enough. But underground was a place he wasn't keen on rushing to. The first old man from the church on the city corner in the sun to enter the ground that day took one step at a time and held his breath.

When the world starts spinning so fast and you feel so small and you have to fall. Collapse on the ground and dig in your fingers and hold on... not to fall off into space.