sounding the fury

The wheels sputter awake, and then it’s down the streets, jittery but still alive, hard turns and unexpected bursts of speed. Courting disaster, wooing her until we don’t know who’s going to take who home, prowling like a shark, one-way streets if ever you can, cause pedestrians and stoplights are slow pangs of misery. I curb the desire to drive to the home of every person I know. The stereo can only sing too loud or not at all, so spin the knob and let it land where it may. The words on signs reflected in the mirror blur with almost every heartbeat, screaming that I’d know where I am if I would just care enough to read them, but I’m soaking up what barely passes for home now, fully present and gone all at once.

The deep rumble of engine and speakers may be emanating solely from my chest now, and I’m driving low, not slouching, just coiled, free hand filled with a fistful of either hair or clothing, riding every minute of time to its component parts, less killing time than dissecting it, struggling for the scalpel, no anaesthesia for anybody involved. The window’s rolled down just enough to taste the air, carrying the smell of either perfect velocity or approaching sirens, and maybe not the kind that you’d think.

Hills pocked with potholes and speed bumps, alleys, dead ends, and constructions zones and streets, streets filled with students and muggers and lovers and assailants and just kids, all kids, and they all have something to say. If you drive hard enough, you can hear each voice raised in the same song. Can’t tell what it is; stereo’s too loud. The city growls and protests under my gaze. I’ve never seen it so beautiful.

When I get out, the sudden silence barely sighs before hoarse bleats split it. It takes me a second before I realize it’s from birds and look up at the huge line of birds, auks, if they’re heralding their own arrival. The formation wavers and breaks, the point inverting, and that point breaking and inverting, holding there until they wheel, by turns north, west, north, west.

If they herald somebody else’s arrival, too bad for him. I’m angry and caged, and disaster’s got a fifth of gin in her and her skirt hiked up. Leave a note.

No.

Dedicated to Tara.

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The pen wobbled as it flew through the air, and my eyes traced the arc of its path out the window, disappearing from view into the garden below. “A little bored, Adam?,” asked Deirdre.

Adam shrugged, and without shifting his gaze, threw a tiny jar after the pen. The jar, currently holding tiny screws after the baby food had been removed from it years ago, shattered satisfyingly somewhere outside. Adam’s hands found a dirty plate, which met the same fate, although it did not seem to smash with the same gleeful panache. “If you’re going to do this to everything, I’d like to help,” said Deirdre. She picked up a small black and white tv. It had plastic faux wood panelling, and was missing the channel knob. Adam smiled grimly in response, and she shook off the pliers that changed the channels, jerked the cord out of the socket, and threw it hard towards the window.

It hit the sill, and spun sideways, flinging glass inside on the weathered floor before striking the oppposite side and continuing on to the attractive mass of the earth. They took turns throwing things. Adam, propped against an overstuffed nylon backpack, tossed whatever detritus was in reach and didn’t require him to change position. Deirdre, increasingly frenzied in her choices, selected heavier items, tearing them from their surroundings with a steady calm. Their pace remained leisurely, almost lazy.

I took a beer, and handed Adam the remnants of the six pack, which he tossed. “You should really clip those plastic rings before littering,” I pointed out. Deirdre answered by throwing a rusty birdcage, and Adam took the cup of sunflower seeds I was eating, and threw them in apology. The stuffed macaw inhabiting the birdcage did not escape as the cage spun, but presumably would be well-fed when she landed.

Deirdre knocked down the yellowed windowshade with the lid to the toilet tank, her back already turned in her search for her next item. Adam sniffed reproachfully, and threw a charm bracelet and an old paperback novel in quick succession. Both had belonged to Deirdre’s sister, and Adam’s choice did not go unnoticed. Since she hated her sister, Deirdre couldn’t really have minded, but by now the ritual had taken on rules, evolving and expanding moment-by-moment, rules I could at once understand and not predict. Blood began to leak from Adam’s nose when his head hit the ground, and his eyes crossed briefly. Deirdre had yanked the from underneath Adam. He wiped the blood from his face with a sock that had escaped from a torn seam in the backpack before throwing it after the backpack. When the sunlight began to slant heavily, the room emptying quickly of anything but the golden tones of late afternoon, Deirdre and Adam began to throw each other’s things. Sensing where this would lead, I left without a word. I only had five dollars in my wallet, a hawaiian-styled nylon affair that shut with velcro, but I didn’t want to lose the punch ticket that would entitle me to a free sandwich with my next cup of coffee. I headed out to the garden, ignoring the things that continued to fall. I tripped on a jumprope that had been evacuated near the day’s start, and fell into the well at the far corner of the garden. When my vision cleared, the summer sun had nearly given way. The remains of the backpack had cushioned my landing, spilling out when the seams tore under my weight. The straps floated next to my feet in the cool water that filled the bottom inch of the well. Damp as it was, I was content to just lay there. Above me, at the top of the well, a dragonfly launched from a blade of grass. I heard the shrieks of passing children as they saw it, calling it a darning needle, calling it posionous, and squealing joyfully with imagined fear as they fled.

I removed my shoes with my feet, toe to heel, toe to heel, and lay there the whole night, gently spashing my toes in the water until they wrinkled beyond recognition.

I am not a big fan of ice. I mean, yes, yes, the ability to create and utilize ice is probably on par with the use of fire in the spectrum of human development, although it comes a lot later.

And, I mean, harnessing cooling processes like evaporation in a low-tech fashion and spreading that technique (take 1 big clay pot, put another smaller pot in it, put sand in the interstitial space, fill small pot with stuff needing refrigeration, make sand wet, ENJOY) across less-developed countries is, quite frankly, badass.

But I hate ice in my drink. Also, you know what else is neat¹? The Planck temperature, which is the hottest anything can get (1.41679 × 10³² K, and I like how that number is huge enough that you would think the extra .41679 wouldn’t make that much of a difference in terms of human conception, but somebody figured it out anyway), and to me seems to be the conceptual counterpart to absolute zero.

Hey, did you know that the Kelvin scale is the same as Celsius with different reference points?

Anyway, the point is, ice bumps into my teeth, dilutes my drink, and makes my throat cold. In your face, ice. In your FACE.

¹ See how I avoided the pun there? You’re welcome.