Metaphor, Simile, and Dream Spin Catcher on the Fringe of Physics

Metaphor, Simile, and Dream Spin Catcher on the Fringe of Physics

L. Edgar Otto    09 May, 2012

Sometimes in a strange town where we know no one or our way down its dark streets and buildings lighting up the emptiness within or windows dark where unknown strangers sleep or sleep walk in the alley ways of stalking night, we become aware of the uncanny end or beginning of turns along the way in the loneliness and self-consciousness only relieved by crisis flight we in the dream of lucky rides or just the cold still crystal light of stars in their witching hours.

We face the bottom of the fall to a solid ground, pointing down the explosion that heats the earth in some net gain of reflection, unwinding coils, slippery grids of hoarfrost from the dew so too our coats of fur or down we contained light. As well these spinning things, the evidence of trees so high should we look up, the dinosaurs of shrubs to we small creatures near the shadow floor far from the light voracious struggling for a place in the canopy.

Nature too rains down the belt of seeds we imagine as the stars or its thousand maple helicopters for one half lucky seed.  But the ground is half real as we do cannot really measure its depth or heights from where we stand in fall or bouncing back from the slowly churning rocks on which in some lucky crack the roots take hold and plants seem to walk fast as they begin to cover the earth.

We cannot quite say of what our dream catchers are made, perhaps a little more in the metaphor or simile that of what dreams are made of themselves, what sink or source, what the tourniquet on our flow of nightmares or the message or that these are real in that they are but pink unicorns.

It is perhaps enough in parallels, in simile that in a new place the denizens look like those you have already known or some combination of the familiar faces and that is not unexpected until it seems they act similar in ways as if one can predict past their woven webs of shifting uncertainties in the game of wasps and spiders to which in their imaginations perfection leads to death or the chaos gives us less than nothing as we put forth our stands and weave not knowing really what comes from without or from within of light and dreams- we thirst when the universe is full of dew that could fill our cisterns even in the deserts where no water tables flow or the flowing in spins or a tidal wall sucks us into sink holes.

I nod off by the sea wall to await the morning light, I only made it as far as Day Town and not the Keys to where I recall Orenda teaching me to fish and telling me of the stars as she held the half crystal ball of the paper weight seeing the twins or the shadow cat, Maw Tea, in the bubbles fixed, as I now stuck in the closing fixing of time some lonely space, only partly back to where we cannot come back to that home.

I walk the boardwalk as the greater day and not the last lone star twinkles out and the faceless walk, the concessions open up with their tricks to glean the money, balloons and dull darts, some numbers under duck in a round river moat. I grow used to the salty smell of the sea breeze and the cradle song of waves and hear the hippodrome of race cars in the distance, the bikers full of colors and skulls and cross bones, surfers crosses and rebel flags and lone wolves relishing the difference standing out, the engines and crashes and checked flags in rushes and tested engines in the pit stop.

I reach down thru the rocks on the shore and find some tangled filament and a rusty hook, dislodge a lady slipper and cast my line by hand, catch at first the warty blow-fish full of toxins and drums of air- throw it back until in the bounty of the sea catch sailors choice the sunfish for kids in stocked ponds so eat my fill.  Then going the wrong way having met the painters with my last pennies at the crystal burger to find them for work, look for the green sea horse in the yard.

I knock on a door and explain.  She says I can stay the night but she does not "ball".  I finally find my rest on her couch until the next morning back to the beach looking for those seasonal painters from Milwaukee the work on roller skates at Crystal Burger making more friends than the hustling Lebanese, and they help me get back the way I came again as if I can see the same old place and time anew.

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Inspired by Gibbs