It
is a prettyparticular beach by brightnight.
Three friends walk along the boardwalk,
pretending to be tramps on a starmission.
They
are
named Snookypants, Bigman and Gigglegirl.
So named just by me,
(real
names of Taty, Brian and Shavana are
witheld for privacy), but they know
who they are. Winkwink. They are having
fun being poor and doing nothing but
changing the world twice a minute
so that no-one notices and try to
stop them before they can escape up
the sky ropeladders they keep in their
back pockets for immoral emergencies.
Pretendme richlike people watch themselves
closely and suspiciously in three-way
mirrors in their new beachview apartments
full of cheap rubbish like reallish
gold and silver ornaments and diamond
studded chokers around their skinny
ankles and fat slimy throats, turned
angry frog-green by the secret copperalloy
content. Snooky, Big and Giggle leave
footprints in the sand so light that
they must be made of cloud sugar.
As they walk on side-by-side the prints,
all different colours not invented
yet in movies, float gently up into
the sky and hang for a while before
popping like silent shimmerdownbombs.
It is not as if the beach is strangely
a rippling escalator carpet, it actually
is that way not unnaturally. Walking
needs no effort, they are light as
anti-air.
So they walk.on with no room for twenty
dollar notes in their souls and no
pockets in their minds to keep even
the small change they plant in prankish
patterns (mostly space alien four
letter words) for the metal detectorists.
And they talk fitfully about the sadness
of the scareful richlike personages
looking out of their spectacle windows
for a miracle which never comes. The
miracles do come, but only when they
are not looking out of their windows,
and they all look away at the wrong
moment, to miss these eternal surprise
gifts.
Shooting stars from Andromeda which
make smiley motions and loop-the-
loop twice before going home again
for a cup of tea and a bath in Milky
Way juice.
A cheeky fox cloud chasing a flumpy
rabbit cloud across the sky in half
a second so marvelously amusing that
Jumbo Jets stop for a good look but
nobody will believe their own precise
memory. Miracles are believed only
when they are funny at the time. Afterwards,
everyone with sadness in their shoes
just says it has been done before.
It might be so so-so and maybe-if-but
never and quite messageless drivvle
altogether for the turkey people who
gobble up newness with no relish on
their tongues. But for the conniseur
of miracles, every moment alive is
a holiday for the heart. So the three
friends know that anti-sadness must
begin first in the shoes, for all
the soul is based in palm of your
feet where sensations are fed by the
runny, gurgling centre of the earth
is laughing through its toasty crust.
Laughing at the silly sky for being
so blue and then so black and then
cloudy and moony and rainy and frosty
and shiny and so many twos and threes
of bashfully unpredictable things
at a time so it can never make up
its mind to be one thing or the other.
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The centre of the earth is always
making up jokes about the sky, but
it isn't cruel humour, it is magmaminous.
The night sky can take itself too
seriously, it has a very dark kind
of humour, without punch lines raining
down all the time.
And the changing positions of the
stars are hardly ever detected either.
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Telescopes
of menstronomers and ladystronomers
and their dogstronomers keep quite
still on one point inthe darksparkly
sky as the universe revolves around
eskimoland looking for an igloo to
eeeon. So the world asleep or at all
night parties would get the impression
(if they weren't asleep or drunk or
half drunk and getting there soon)
that stars were parked up for the
night, just too bored to move even
a bit side to side just to keep their
legs from getting stuck in black hole
quicksand duckponds.
Snooky, Giggle' and Big' have stopped
walking and have been looking up at
the fox chasing the rabbit for at
least half an hour each (a total of
one and a half hours) but the beach
is rippling underfoot like a horizontal
escalator magic carpet. It is now
acelerating at five hundred miles
an hour to make up for the space time
condiminium.
Many minutes or years ago the three
pseudo tramps have run out of Brighton
Beach (New York origami style) and
they are skimming over the becalmed
Atlantic Ocean in a bucket, still
watching the rabbit, who is now chasing
the fox's nose with his tail in an
effort to slow the earth in a cup
down backwards like Superman saving
Lois Laine again.
Under the surface fillions of fish
swim at half the speed of lighttttt,
chased by dolphins and sharks a thousand
or million miles long each.
Turning past Cornwall, with an instinctive
lean of their hips, the sea shufflers
take a quick left at Brighton Beach,
England. Breakfast is all day long,
a year at a time there. A year is
soon over though, because the sky
of earth fills the entire visible
universe for only enough time for
the friends to grab a free breakfast
of everthing over easy before all
goes back to normal in the crack of
a one finger click.
It is bright daylight, my first over
the sea at light speed jet lag is
having strange effects on my mental
equilibrium. I am beginning to doubt
the miracle trip and the rabbit and
fox and the angry
green
chokers.
My friends have returned to Brooklyn
by yesterday mistwishtaxi and I bet
they will not back up my tale.
Goodbye to Snookysocks and Gigglewiggle
from Biglump. See you next time for
a trip to New Zeland by rugwingbike.
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