Part 2

Part 2

Red mountain finally did it.

Its aperture waggled and swanked. Heaved, cried. Unbuckled and defolded slow and exact, like a napkin snapped open by a Dinner Guest. Due to proportions, it went much slower and gave Us time to be bothered.

We needed shelter to get away from Commercial Appreciation who’d just said that this is what everybody gets for cocking up the spin cycle on the Nature Machine.

O listen, I was trying to intensify the air around Us to get a reading (but Commercial Appreciation goes on: We get Raptures and We get low-paying Landscaping jobs, the Dangers of Thresholds, and Egyptian mummification. . .)

“Do I look like a mummy, milknose?” You asked. Won’t somebody slap the silly off this teabag? Leave it to a nonlandscaper to tell a Landscaper how to scape.

“We never got mummified and ain’t gonna,” I cued. And what’s this We? We is not you, Commercial Appreciation. “So get stuffed.”

It's a pornagraphic unfolding and my stomach leaps. I swat it like a mosquito. Our other organs strut around as if there's a convention starting soon. We started tapping at the aquarium we’d been recently studying. Within it, balanced sloppily on a Danger’s dorsal-spike, was the insight we needed into the Conspicuous Evolutionary Trend in Land Mammals. I need the compression chamber You keep in Your appendix cavity. A brain has its seams puffed, arched, and hisses at the draws of friction made by the rubbing of folds against each other as red mountain unfolds.

“Been looking for you,” I said, grabbing You clavicle to draw you away from Commercial Appreciation’s latest “demonstration” of mummification procedures he was sure We’d undergone. Commercial Appreciation stands pantomiming over and over a person whipping a check out of a checkbook. “Maybe you, gauzeballs, but not Us.”

We had to stay like that when friction was thickest, didn’t We? When you were over there, right over there, somebody talking your ear right down to the floor?

I made a mistake to cut him off with the stereoplotter, one swooping assessment after the next, layer after layer of his mustache dissected and gridded and numbered until he stopped resurrecting long enough to mummify him a second time so maybe he’d stay mummified this time. Our Landscape’d had enough of his type. At some point You Stop Forgiving So Things Can Get Moving.

But every atom is a tattletale. Red mountain seizured. It started resembling a tissue swan, origamic convulsions at wing and tail. Commercial Appreciation’s blood, powdered from soaking in canning jars, smelling like pickled pigs’ feet and bone marrow, spored the air like a jackhammered dandelion.

Resurrections always stink.

Aw damn, said the Conspicuous Evolutionary Trend in Land Mammals.

This always happens when We’re about to get some insight into that guy.

We did it though, we survived our first Resurrection Plotting. We weren’t lucky, We were prepared. We unhitched the mule, birthed its mule-foal, showed it to its mother, studied its ridiculous newborn stumble to see which way it leaned before falling over and announcing that it gave up, Unable To Take Any More, theatrically thrusting its newborn legs straight up into the air, letting its tongue hang out, X-ing its eyes.

We followed the stumble pattern until we found what needed: the huge Pink Eraser that could give us shelter from the aftershock of the crime. We hacked and hewed, tunneling into the eraser to peel away satisfying pink hunks of aromatic rubber and kicking shreds and strips behind Us struck by something being Normally On Our Hands Now Being On Our Bodies. We sat in total arrest of this odor and relived some Lovely Things about boxes.

Now I remember why we took this job, One of Us Said (sniffing a wrist).

You: I understand. Red mountain is a bit of refuse left here by a bird to nest as Such Birds are driven out by land mammals. The migration patterns of these mammals speeds up when a Rapture swanks ahead, sharp curve, razorin' away the Atmosphere behind it. Rapturing Pattern = wood shaving effect.

I: this tells me a lot more about the Conspicous Evolutionary Trend in Land Mammals.

Us: It's a good thing We're not here to fix anything.

Excerpting Our Own Hands, part 1

Upon looping this finger into that valance, the whole fixture waggles, after a fashion. We can't be picky about the realities of lift-off, the small items we are required to steal on a daily basis. The original projection was fueled by work and SANKA, euphemious for a polite persecution incited by the pathological condition of dust. A various disease. We rotated our health on a schedule so that our highs and lows became exhilarating and intimate.

We worked nights to study our feelings and perceived that they are archetypical. Biologically, athletically isn't the issue. Our betting pool for Next Conspicuous Evolutionary Trend in Land Mammals, our secret faith in repetition, everything.

The stereoplotter converged onward, disposing aerial bracken out of reach, driving us to bind our feet with shared mail.

The body of the mammal hat And Hovering. Why Red Mountain Hovers, keeping Birds and The Dead Waiting

Say.

Say didn’t We just come awake? Did we just die again? The diner’s closed, the wimples stashed, Big Top has been sunset-cauterized for the evening. Our plane is landing; suddenly We were not on vacation, and then We Are. We always Are! We meant it, and let there be no doubt.

The plane lands again. We gets off again. Red mountain, having lifted and soared overhead (Rapture Hat Standard Time), disco-doggied and tearing the covers off the earth's beds of dirt, loosening many birds from uniform dreams of arrows, now comes to hover a sec.

Forever.

What did we expect? Commercial Appreciation Season. We pause for a moment of gluttony and silence. Commercial Appreciation approaches us, swaggering like a cheese, cutting a path through the Zoned Area where red mountain had stuck forever, like the dorsal fin of a shark god whose teeth were cleaned by the dead.

The area on the drywallscape of the flown mountain time aperture showed a little darker, smelled a little stronger of fresh wall paint, had been a little less faded by afterlight and air. Red mountain had flopped like a Flopper In Bed and eventually flew the coop. Perhaps it always had! It did resemble a hat. Time works all different On Vacation anyways. But We knew one thing: things haven’t been the same since Our vacation began/ended! And now they haven’t gone back, although we Have and Always Will! As We get home to red mountain but It Not There!

Which is now our home again as the vacation portion of our topographical expedition shuts its mouth only to open another mouth. Red mountain be Hatted! We cried; we have Cried; I has and You has; We Have cried as we toss our carry-on bags of mesh on the water table! A few birds fly away. We have cried! and looked oddly at the toiletries we took with us on Vacation and gain suddenly a new appreciation, as though we'd just bought 'em and were dumping em on a kitchen table instead.

Let’s go to the store, seeths Commercial Appreciation. You All have to watch out. He is not Us, He is the bad man. He’s a squatter. He the absence of buried power lines and a car hitting a butterfly etc. He Not Rapture. He that keeps the dead from going about their business. He a clean window to a bird.

No, I say to Us, because We must not acknowledge Commercial Appreciation. If we do we will die and never come back. Not even look, iss a no=no.

No, let’s just get all this mesh out of the mesh bags. So We can see what we got on Vacation.

The Rapture works the body of the mammal hat.

Hide under a slow squeeze or inside the exposed spleen of your own recycled history, but consider making time with your most theatrical diner because it's the safest place on earth and most things will begin and end here. Don't you want a thing or two to begin and then end? Aren't you tired of your own pale tongue?

Eat the crispy fries, drink the ranch, and give yourself the callus of Our dreams. You'll need it when your own goodwill ends.


Item

Slipping into a game of batteries and waiting for the pinch isn't the same rush as it was that one perfect weekend. Open your crispy mouth and speak in the recycled tongues of your history. Try to mean it. Light a cigarette and throw it at the spire-speak of Professional Camping. Walk it off. Let your tongue become a potato chip of what it once was.

When you hear the faint kettle-whistle, don't look up. You mustn't look up. Pretend the whistle is coming from your soft own chip. It might. It might as well. When the whistle stops, you'll be the same but the air will smell like Our favorite detergent.
We love that smell.

About Our Veils, Barbettes, and Wimples: vacation pornography

To Juarez:

in case i don't get to work on this again today or We don't, here's part of a post to The Rapture Hat. I've still got a few photos stored in my digital that you may be interested in. Please edit this post for Coherence and Clarity, as it lacks something of the event. Barry and Lisa want to move me to the new store, but I'm hesistant. I've reviewed the attached photos and am bothered by the presence of kidney scarring and the light Swedish accent. It was a wakeup call.

____________________________________________
Again the Rapture Hat idled over. Concern for Our Welfare was growing, then diminishing, then growing again. The Kidney Larks swayed like gassed inmates on the auburn trees that grow at these elevations.

Concern for Our Welfare was growing. In fact, throbbing with each royal Hat pass. One of Us lost 10 pounds and gained it back again, as promised, "in the twinkling of an eye". Sometimes We would lose more and the Spectre of a Professional Modeling Career would crackle, glitter, crackle, and fizz in the ionosphere overhead. It would be Suddenly Fourth of July Song Day and the the buried ancestors of red mountain would rise too fast and their torsos sag backwards to break off like wet donut sticks. This was Our fault.

Did We put red mountain back exactly like it was? asked One.

I'm pretty Sure, said Another.

But we hadn't. We'd cocked it up. Red mountain's compass points had been thus skewed, the Lateral Hat Patterns growing more Pronounced as the inflection of its passage through the gaseous layers of the Rapture erred, ripping a little into layers above or below and We were at Big Top Casino and Kitchen talking with "miss" Barbara about ordering the Special.

Miss Barbara, you shouldn't smoke.

I'm too set in my ways to change.

When does the gaming area open up?

On Tuesdays.