Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Momentum of the Universe

Can it happen like this: the toner falls on the page, makes a splotty inky good mess across the whole paper. Page 1 perfect. Then you just turn the page and wait for other things to fall, but only get a dead squirrel, a glass eye, and Thomas D. Howard’s old calculus homework. You sigh, unfold the homework and turn it in to professor Carlyle. The next day he beats you with it in front of the class, yells that calculus homework make an acceptable paper on John Milton. All you can do is go back to that empty field, open your notebook and hope for the best. Only nothing comes. You start thinking about ways to invoke the toner god. You check the Tree of Life so you might determine his formula– just one problem: the Tree doesn’t exist on this plane. Then a fresh slap across the face by a tuna fish and you’re thinking clearly again, remembering this time that you need to embark into the sea of opposites where you find a farmer trying to force a donkey and a tub of chocolate together. You take the unopened plastic Easter egg from your pocket (hoping maybe for something Wester), open it and receive this message on a fortune-cookie sized slip of paper: to neutralize a donkey you will need an anti-donkey. This of course sends you mind into thoughts of the quest for donkey repellent and the everlasting paper– just a digression. At each bump of the sea you find wonderful new things, water and sodium (very dangerous in this context), dog and cat (false dichotomy and true), love and hate (come hither go away), until you arrive at The Horizon where the night is dusky and you are shadowed by the Bull, red bull, Martian bull of the hooked tail reflected from the obverse. Lastly, you find yourself prostrate on your back kissing a sweet half-clothed girl who whispers in youthful ecstacy, “I’m so wet,” and realizing that this is the beauty and momentum of the universe, that anything soever shall seek its opposite.