Web of Fortune

                                                A RESCUE

I was working the front desk when one of my co-workers approached.

"There's a giant spider in the stairwell! ", she exclaimed.

"That's great!" I enthused,"it will eat 40 pounds of bothersome insects this year."

"Not this one", she said.

"Why?"

"I squashed it."

I was dispatched to clean it up.

My mother sure would be proud if she could see me scraping this spider off the concrete, I thought. And she used to say I'd never have a real job.

When I picked up the poor critter, it started moving and seemed to be rousing itself. I decided not to flush it away as intended.

I got on the elevator and headed  down to the main lobby, paper towel and spider held at arm's length. The elevator stopped once, on the 7th floor , and a middle-aged man started to board. He glanced at the spider, blanched and backpedaled out, waving me on. I continued to the lobby.

My mother would be proud if she could see me carrying this spider down the elevator and through the fancy lobby of the building I work in. She'd be extra proud for freaking out the dude on the seventh floor. My mom had a weird sense of humor.

I paused to take a picture with my phone and I noticed the spider was leaking. I am no spider-veterinarian but I don't think spiders are supposed to leak. It was still moving, so I took it outside and tossed it in on the grass in the courtyard. A bluejay hopped over and swallowed it in two gulps. I went back to work.

SIGNS ARE A GIANT WASTE OF EVERYTHING

Ignore that sign. Everyone else does. Everyone except me, that is. I was trying to read my book at lunch and I kept getting distracted by this tabletop sign admonishing me not to drive distracted.  I agree with what the sign says, but it misses an important point: people who drive while texting and talking on the phone do so because they are encased in bubbles of obliviousness. Traffic signals often fail to get their attention, so what chance does that tiny sign [above] stand?

I sat a few tables away from this sign [above] and watched people file past, loading up their purses, handbags and pockets with napkins, condiments and plastic cutlery. More goods than any one person would need for one meal. Not a single person so much as glanced at the sign.

Because that sign is useless. Less than useless. It is insulting. Adults really should know that stealing is wrong. If they don't know that, a tabletop sign is hardly a sufficient deterrent.

When I was younger I probably would have helped myself to some condiments too, but I'm older and I have a job. I can afford salt and pepper. I certainly don't need a sign to tell me that I'm not supposed to take things that don't belong to me. That sign doesn't do anything but piss me off. It would be better off recycled and converted into a napkin that I could blow my nose into.

This sign was left by me, for me. I doubt if it'll do any good either.

Plague Signs

This sign has been displayed in the bakery department of my local supermarket for over a week.
                                                    
"Picks, Kits, Plague  $1.00  Wow!"

Plague?

I think a dollar is a bit steep for plague. Frankly, I wouldn't pay a dime for that stuff. I imagine that I'll probably get it for free after another week of riding the bus. There seem to be a lot of sick people these days.

Me, I'm sick of signs. I especially loathe signs that attempt to correct misbehavior by conspicuously posting rules and regulations. This approach rarely works...I mean, the dude that is breaking the rules already knows that he is breaking the rules and he isn't going to let a mere sign stop him from doing so.
 

In fact, he might even think it's funny.

Meanwhile, the folks who are already following the rules  feel as if they have been upbraided for something they didn't do. I can't speak for anyone else, but that sort of thing really pisses me off.

I mean, I understand toilets and how they are used. It would never even occur to me to place any sort of paper into a urinal -  until this sign planted the idea in my head. It  also provided me with the paper that I needed in order to break the rule.

Bad  sign.

A Sign

Yesterday I saw this sign as a portent.

Usually I interpret traffic signs with a decidedly un-philosophical literalness. "STOP" simply means " stop your car." The subtext implies little more than: " look both ways before proceeding."
It's not very complicated- or at least it shouldn't be.

Yesterday, I saw this particular sign and instead of it's predictably consistent insistence to STOP, it was covered in fine, nearly illegible print. I had to get out of the car to read it.

It read something very much like this:

Stop. You are very hurt and angry right now and you don't even have a plan do you? I bet you're going to rush off and do something incredibly embarrassing, stupid or even deadly and then you will have some serious repercussions to deal with, so instead of driving off in a rage, why don't you go buy some pastry instead? I know that doughnuts aren't in the budget, but if you allow yourself to get too upset about that other thing, you will start feeling like a victim- and you aren't. You weren't betrayed- despite your protestations, you knew the truth. It wasn't hidden, you were just ignoring it in order to suit your own needs. If you insist on letting that sort of willful ignorance dictate your behavior, you will get hurt- victimized- and once you lapse into the role of resigned victimization,you will eventually pick up all the old habits of self-destruction that chronic victims tend to utilize.
In simpler terms, I bet that you could drink yourself to death in less than a month if you allow yourself to give in to the sadness and anger that you are feeling at this moment.
These feelings will pass.
So my advice to you, as a STOP sign and a friend, is to calm the fuck down and reflect a moment. You have no one to be mad with but yourself and even that is a stretch- why can't you just give yourself a break ? What happened to all that 'fresh start' talk, eh?


In other words, life isn't that bad. You got hurt. It happens. Now you need to get over it.

It seemed like strange advice to receive from an inanimate object, but it made sense. I got back in the car and instead of purchasing a handgun, sixty dollars worth of crack cocaine and a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, I went the other way and scored a pound of butter, two boxes of fresh (day old) muffins and a half-gallon of grape juice.

My cholesterol and my weight are perfect. I can survive a two-day buttered muffin binge without a hitch, no problem. Grape juice, according to some, is actually good for you- but I like it anyway and it goes inexplicably well with blueberry muffins...almost made me forget that I really wish I'd bought milk. Oh well. I'll live. My stomach hurts, but in a good way.

I'm considerably less sanguine about my chances of surviving a bitter, drunken, crack-fueled handgun misadventure, so I'm glad to say I that have ruled option out. I didn't need a road sign to tell me what a bad idea it is to follow that path , but it didn't hurt to have the reminder either.

I suppose that it's not a very good indication of my general mental health that I am having impromptu therapy sessions with traffic signs, but in this case it worked- with some long-distance assistance from my friends and family. Allow me to digress and offer my biggest thanks to my brother, my grandmother and my friends for offering to help with next month's bills, allowing me to finally turn on my air-conditioner (it wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't lost my savings and my job inside a 30 day period)...fuck, I just remembered that I'm going to need extra money to buy medicine once my insurance lapses... I wonder if my stop sign offers medical treatment as well as psychological counseling?

Come to think of it, my tax dollars paid for that traffic sign- perhaps the occasional therapy session is not too much to ask for? I am a long-time advocate for socialized health-care, after all.

Anyway, I have been a bit disorientated lately. I was so busy trying to understand what was happening in the alley that I almost forgot about the traffic on the street.
Feel that warm diesel breeze? That's the bus that almost hit me.

I think I should pay attention to signs.

Salt Free

Everything is bright grey.

Bright grey?, I wonder to myself as I look through the bars of my cell. Is there even such a color as bright grey?

And what am I doing in a cell? I have never been here before, I know that much.

I look around and I notice that it's not really a cell at all- it's an apartment, one of many inside this building. Nicely furnished, soft furniture in dark colors.

Through the bars and across what is probably a street I see another building, the facing wall has been removed; I am reminded of the bombed-out buildings of Baghdad or Beirut, but there is no rubble or jagged edges- it's as if the wall were never there in the first place.

Inside the neatly-partitioned apartments people are moving.

Look: There's a fat man shaving. He's nicked his lip and he's desperately trying to staunch the blood with bits of tissue paper...it works on the third or fourth try, but it's a bit undignified to look at. I laugh, but I hope no one else does- I hate shaving cuts.
Good luck, Fat Man, I think. Rub your belly, maybe you'll get your wish.

Look: There's a woman undressing. She's talking to someone in another room as she pulls a sweater off over her head. No bra.
She looks over at me and we make eye contact, which is odd, since I am staring at her breasts. Oh, of course.
She's got eyes in place of nipples.
I've seen this before and it's not nearly as frightening as it sounds.
Her left nipple winks at me. It's OK to look, it says.
I blush anyway.

Look: There's a family of four sitting at a table, two adults and two children of grade-school age.
They are waiting for someone to pass the salt. There's untasted food on their plates and I can feel it growing cold from here.
Pass the salt!
Nobody is moving, all four are waiting.

I look around some more. I could use some rubble right now- I'd like to throw a rock at the family and get their attention:

" You haven't even tasted your food yet! How do you know that it needs salt?"

Christ, I wonder how many perfectly good meals have gone to waste because some fool waited too long for salt that wasn't needed in the first place?

Behind me, a man speaks.

"Is this what you're looking for?"

It's my friend Scoe. He's got a book in his hand. Scoe has given me many books in the twenty years we have been friends and every one has been a winner. I bet he can help me out.

"Damn. I'm glad to see you. I need a good brick and I left mine in my other dream."

"Here."

He hands me the book, which has become a baseball. I take it from him and I'm pleased to find that I still remember my two-fingered pitcher's grip. Oh, yeah, this thing was made to be thrown.

I go into my wind-up and throw a perfect strike into the family's dining room but they are gone already and my effort is wasted. The ball bounces off the inside wall and rolls back towards me, falls off the edge.

I hear a splooshing sound. I look down and see that there is no street between the buildings, only slow-moving dark water.
I wonder if baseballs float?
I wait, watching to see if the ball bobs to the surface.

It doesn't.

"Hey, man, did you see that? That family. Where did they go? "

But Scoe is gone too, and gone with him are the fat man and the woman with the winking nipple.
I'm alone now.
Below me, the water is visibly rising, moving thickly.
It's only a few feet below floor level and it's black as pitch.
I laugh at my own horrible pun and wish that I hadn't thrown my baseball into the water.

I reach for the bars in front of me.
They are made of smoke and the motion of my hands blows them away.

I steel myself, reach down and extend a finger into the dark , roiling liquid which is now just a few inches below. I expect it to be blood, or even the ichor of some long-forgotten demon, but it's nothing but cool, clear water.

The darkness is due to depth, not pollution.

Ka-pap! Ka-pap!

That's the sound of a baseball bouncing off concrete.
It's behind me. Has Scoe returned ?

I turn.

It's not Scoe. It's the woman with the chest that stares back. She's wearing one of my t-shirts. Why be modest now?, I wonder without panic, the water is rising and we are going to either swim together or drown apart; in any case , clothes aren't gonna help.

She reads my mind and smiles. The shirt is gone but she's got a clean white sphere in her left hand, tossing it up and down, following it with one eye while the other three study me.

That's mine but it looks good in your hand.

More telepathy and another smile, this time accompanied by laughter and a single word.

"Catch."

Reunion at Vampire Beach

So I'm sitting on a bale of hay near the summit of a tall grassy hill. It's warm and bright and the day will be good because what else can it be? I've been here before- once every six months or so, according to a recently unearthed mental note- and this is a good place, despite it's somewhat eccentric population.

In front of me, the hillside descends steeply, abruptly cliff-like for fifty yards or more, before gradually becoming a wide, sandy beach covered with a shifting mass of blurry people . At the bottom there's an large open stage, (although it's tiny from this vantage) backed what I used to think was the Pacific Ocean. This visit, I somehow know it's really just a hundred miles of unbroken water and then lots of nothing. Maybe a waterfall, but who cares?

It's a Flat Earth, I know that much, but I'm not overly concerned about falling off of it.

There's going to be a good show today; I've seen it before- on this very same day but in a different dream- but I can never remember who's playing.

Overhead floats a block-long dirigible in the shape of a cartoon pig. I wonder if this is a Pink Floyd concert from the Animals tour. I hope so. That was a damn good show, or so I was told.

Whoever is playing, I must be Hot Shit to get seats this good.

"You must be Hot Shit", says a familiar blond vampire using a fake British accent, "to get seats this good."

Damn. It's Spike from the old Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. He's reclining on a chaise lounge and drinking out of a brown bag. What's he doing here? I think I remember what happens next, but I'm distracted as a group of happy but featureless people walk by. One of them is calling my name but I don't know the voice and in a moment it is gone.
Maybe next time, I think.
I will be coming back, after all. I know that.

There's lot of people down there, but there's plenty of room up here.
I hear a cough beside me. Right.

"Well," I finally reply, turning to Spike,"It is my subconscious. I don't remember inviting you 'round".

Oh shit. I'm speaking in a cheesy Brit accent too. I hope I stop.

He doesn't seem to notice or care.

"Fancy a snort, mate?", asks Spike.

"No, thanks. Trying t' quit."

"Suit yerself", he says, swilling away, "y'wanna know something? Just between us?"

"What's that?"

He wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his trench coat, muffling his reply.

"Beg pardon?"

"It's all bullshit", he repeats, clearly this time.

"Bullshit?"

"Yeah. This bloody vampire crap and all the muddleheaded idiots who get all gooey reading Anne Rice and sleeping in coffins and the like. You won't see me sleeping in a coffin, nooo...not enough wiggle room ,ya know", he finishes by nudging me and winking.

"Spike", I ask, pointing upward at the blazing sun, "shouldn't you be on fire or something? You know, the sun, you being a vampire and all that."

"I told you it was all crap. Here hold this a sec' if y' would," he says, removing his coat and handing it to me.

"I'll show you."

With one hand, he grabs his forehead, his other hand clamps on his chin. He removes his face. It's just a mask.
Underneath, he's the guy who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's S&M torture movie.
He's wearing what looks like a diaper. It's not especially clean.

The bottle is gone.

Too bad for that, I think, suddenly ready to start drinking again.

"Excuse me", asks the imitation Christ,"but which way to the stage? I seem to be having a spot of trouble seeing."

He's got blood in his eyes from the crown of thorns he's wearing. Given the sunny weather, a ball cap would be more practical and a lot less painful.

I notice that the trench coat I'm holding for Jesus/Spike has changed into a clump of tissue paper.
There's a sticky wet spot on it. I don't think it's snot.
Gross.
I get ready to throw away the sticky mess when I remember the bloody-faced Jesus.
I'm not a believer, but I'm not a monster.
I'm not gonna let this poor dude wander around a dangerous cliffside half-blind ; son of God or not, he might fall and get seriously hurt.

I find a dry section of the kleenex ball and wipe his eyes clear.

"Thanks, man", says Jesus as he heads downhill toward the crowd and the stage.

"No prob."

I'm left holding a nasty kleenex that's soggy with the blood and jizz of Christ.

I am going to make a fucking fortune on eBay, I think to myself.

A few minutes go by and Jesus returns, this time heading uphill.
"Forgot something", he mutters.

A moment later he passes again, downhill, only this time he's got a wooden cross on his back. It looks as if he's fake-staggering under it's weight, like it's a Styrofoam prop.

At least no one's whipping him, although he's gathering a crowd as he heads downhill. Someone presses something to his mouth, but from here I can't tell what it is.
It might be a sponge, or maybe a pretzel. The soft kind that's good with mustard.

A woman's voice calls my name. I turn.
It's Willow, also from the Buffy show.



"Hey. I've been saving a seat for you" she tells me , patting the empty side of her hay bale.

"That's hay alright", I quip stupidly, sitting down.

"Every one's here", Willow informs me, gesturing with her arm. Sure enough, the whole Buffy cast is scattered throughout the crowd, along with every character on every TV show I've ever watched, including Ultraman-the real Ultraman- and Joe, the fugitive German Shepherd from the short-lived Run, Joe, Run Saturday morning TV show.

Willow passes me a perfect joint. Oh, yeah-that's the Pacific down there alright, I think as I briefly vanish into a sweetly skunky haze. As my headrush subsides, I wonder who's playing on the stage below us.

I ask Willow.

"I dunno. I was hoping you were."

"Really? I was hoping you were- that musical episode was funny as hell."

"Ooo...look!" She grabs my arm. I feel an intense tingle of pleasure from this contact. I like Willow and I'm glad she likes me.

Down by the stage, a group of people are dancing around a large bonfire. As we watch them dance, a wall of fog begins rolling in. The dancer's shadows get larger and more distinct against the mist as the fogbank thickens; in moments we are encircled by swaying, weightless giants.

I have never felt more safe in my life.

We are protected by beauty and power.

Willow says, "wow".

I agree.

Flat Stanley's Day of Horror

Last night Blooger wouldn't properly upload pictures. In the morning, I was delighted to see Horror on my computer. I had to wait for the plumber to get the hot water fixed, so I had me a little extra time to think this morning- and that's usually how I get myself in trouble- by thinking.
Well, maybe it's not the thinking that's the problem, it's the ideas and thoughts that come with thinking that mess things up. I started thinking that trying to make sense out of why people do what they do is about as easy and useful as trying to make a canoe out of mud. Just thinking about all that crazy uselessness made me want to do something crazy of my own. So I took Horror out on a Flat Stanley Day.

First, we had coffee and blogs."Look," squealed a giggly Horror, "I'm on TV!"

So what else is new? Fuck, I'm running late waiting for work because I had to wait for a shower- I'd better drive in and eat the parking costs...damn.

--

You know, by the time I pay for tolls and parking, I'll lose money by rushing to work. It costs almost twice as much to park for a day as I make in a hour- I'll save money by arriving at work later. I love this logic!
I opt for the noon bus. Honestly, I wasn't too keen on driving around with Horror, so the bus was kinda my excuse to keep Horror off the road, if you understand.


--
I'll give Horror credit for this : It can sell the motherfuckin' hell out of some newspapers. The last time I saw this box empty was after the Harvey family murders.

--

"No one likes me," pouted a petulant Horror as it sat alone on a cold metal bench.

If only that were true, I thought.

--



Usually, I relax and read on the bus, but today it was hard to concentrate with Horror looking at me like that.

--


Downtown Horror. It's not so bad really, except the clock in the tower Horror is leaning on has some chimes that are seriously out of tune.

It's horrible on the hour.

--


Well, here we are. There's nothing between me and the office except traffic and Horror.
That's pretty much the case every day.

--


I do not like elevators. They don't exactly fill me with Horror, but they do make me nervous. Going up?
Crowd me in with Horror and it's more like throwing up.

--


Horror likes a good cup of coffee but we don't have that kind here. I give it some decaf and hope it settles down. I have work to do and don't have time to busy myself with Horror.

--



Horror awaits me at my desk.

--


I guess all those newspapers Horror sold had to go somewhere.

--

I've seen a few training flicks about what to do in case of a mailroom Terror incident, but I'm really not sure what to do with Horror. My first impulse is to mail it somewhere very, very far away- like to the Sun. The hot part of the Sun.

--

I looked at our building's All-You -Can- Eat buffet with Horror and sorta lost my appetite.

--

A real Horror NEVER gives it away.

--
A little indoor garden of Horror brightens up the lobby.


---

And finally, home with Horror. It instinctively leapt from my hand and into my mailbox, which is where Horror customarily waits for me in the evening, nestled amongst the bills and pre-approved credit card offers.

----------

The really weird thing is I spent all day taking pictures of public Horror and no one- not my boss, no one- nobody at all even gave me a second glance or asked what was up with the Horror pics.

That's horrible.