regarding the periphery

Good Morning. Have I missed you, gone these three days? Seems like it but it's too soon to tell. But I will tell you this. I went to Six Flags yesterday. Not to ride anything (my mutinous brain disallows frenetic mobility. Perhaps, I will talk about my brain some day--its acts of sedition, its pill addled neurons) but to spend time with my family and watch my nieces and nephews while the grown-ups played. More fun for me than it sounds--the kids are wonderful, beautiful, and HI-larious!

However, regarding the periphery, I have contention. To wit: For the sake of Pete, heaven, and goodness and for the love of God, nature, country, decency, medium-rare rib-eye, anything sacred, I'll even accept the thoughtfully profane; but geez-loise and hells bells--put some clothes on people! If the most nauseating thing at an amusement park full of loop-the-loops, centrifugal swings, and body odor is actually the pair of shorts on the lady in front of you in line--no, not pair of shorts, call it the pair of miniscules--those bursting gourds of fabric, those flesh-enfolded fig-leaves, those mustard-stained swatches plaid-ish denim, then we have a problem. Rule of thumb, if it would be a tight fit on your three year old daughter, leave it at home. Better yet, give it to said daughter for the comfortable coverage of her dolly's derriere.

Oh Ether, how enviable your Nothingworld now.

I believe, as I try to recover, I will leave you with this soothing poem. Short though it is, by the time you finish reading it, I will be in the shower futilely scrubbing my eyes with battery acid.

Mid-Morning Well-Spent

If I tried (and I have)
To enumerate
The songs
Of the mockingbird
On the guttered eave,
He would fly (and he has)
To another house
And sing
His song of songs.
If I wait (and I will)
For him to forget
I am here, he will
(and he does)
come back.