NEEDLING

I’ve got to get myself warmed up. Today is my day off from the liquor store. I got the French CD’s playing on the jam box, the shutters are down, the yellow tungsten light not so bright is shinning. I’ve got to remember to go buy a brighter lamp otherwise I’ll hurt my eyes and go blind... and that wouldn’t be so good. Maybe I’ll have the courage for once to travel through all those mysterious lands of prairie dogs and sneering gods and demons who have elected to live inside my head. Slowly enter inside through that tiny little door in the back behind the barnyard animal shelters and next to the wine cellar door. That little wooden door black from years of dust and spider webs with rusted hinges and an old key hole so old it’s big enough to get a glimpse of what’s beyond, that is if there was any light on the other side. I’ll have to go to the superstore and buy me a flashlight, one of those you strap around your forehead, one of those which makes you look like a coal miner. Matter fact, while I’m there, at the superstore that is, I should also get me a small portable hatchet, a machete, a bowie knife, a Swiss army knife with a cork screw and little scissors with which to scrap the crud from underneath my fingernails, possibly also a Leatherman, and some nail clippers. What else could I possibly need for such an excursion? Open up the oubliette, sure, if that’s what you want... but be aware you might not like what you find. Possibly all the souls and demons are dead already for years now... their corpses have been rotting, decomposing, and all you’ll find might possibly be only the skeletal remains barely glowing from previous and forgotten spectral self-awareness. Like a post personal big bang... my thoughts are merely like dust blowing through space... the tiny little proofs of what once was... whole... or at least structurally sound... a personal burst of energy I’ve somehow ignored going through my physical life walking from place to place as if nothing was going on in there beyond the little black door... and now all is dead and emptier than space... or maybe I’ll find some old drinking buddies sitting around a table recounting old stories of things which have never happened in the outside world... old friends forgotten somehow though I’d promised myself I’d never forget...