2.
The strangest thing happens sometimes, and you may perhaps call it something of an existential observation I've been having as of late, mostly on those chilly nights as you drive back home in your car for possibly the 5,000th time after playing out somewhere--you know, late, late at night, looking around, at the road, the people and the trees and everything...right there, well, exactly right there, the strangest thing just starts to happen. And it starts with what you see. Things that have names, things that are understood as things--the most common, most basic and accepted things in the world--begin to look not common, not understood at all, but something else. Your mind begins to ask you, well, what if these very normal things were NOT accepted as they are, but they just...were? What if I just showed up here from another dimension and started looking around? What would I think of it all? Let me explain.
Case in point: driving.
You cruise along, wrapped in a metal house-that-moves, no, not really a house but actually a small can. No, not a can--what the hell is it? Well shit, it is what it is, says your brain. I'll be damned if it's not a boxey-wheely thing, of course; and in it you zip down along these flat black oily-stripey strips that humans figured out how to lay down over actual grass and living stuff that existed way before they ever had the idea to do this, just flatten it all down and dig up and shove aside everything to make space for all the black oily-stripeys for our boxey-wheelys to move back and forth thereupon. Yeah, well sure, you say. Of course, you say. That's how it works Here, you say. Animals look over at and are occasionally obliterated by our boxey-wheelys--I mean those fuckers never had a chance not-moving against our colorful boxey-wheelys doing nothing BUT moving--boxey-wheelys which by the way, and for no reason at all, are all basically the same exact shape, with some subtle variations: for example, some are slightly more boxey, still others just a touch more wheely, but regardless, they all drink toxic nasty-juice and spew out disgusting toxic chokey-gas. This of course we find perfectly acceptable as long as they can move us along the oily-stripeys to get back to our pointy-cozys. Here in New England all the cozys are basically pointy, the idea being that the fluffy-freezy that FALLS FROM THE FUCKING SKY SOMETIMES will slide off and pile up in big freezy-mounds that we can then move around to other mounds, either with scoopy-stickies (considered to be a primitive process, as it takes a while and also hurts later), or if we're lucky to have enough magic green men-pictures, another boxey-wheely--only this one, while still sighing toxic cloudey-death, is much smaller, has no seat in it, and slowly eats freezy-mounds only to spit them out to make the other-mounds about 8 feet away, so we can have a place for our bigger boxey-wheelys amidst all the fluffy-freezy. I submit to you now that this is Perfectly Normal, and happens all the time up here.
So about halfway home, I begin thinking about why fluffy-freezy falls from the sky at all. I mean what the heck, right? See, it only happens every while or so, usually just when you were beginning to enjoy air feeling good on your skin, and you always know it's coming because suddenly you go outside and air feels fucking sharp and tinglesome on your skin! And for some reason we decided together, a long time ago I guess, that we would in this iconic way mark the passage of thingsy-happen--which by the way does not, has never, and can not ever itself be felt on your skin, or really anywhere for that matter. Thus, we order our lives around the fact that every such while, the air feels tinglesome on your skin and these weird, perfectly-symmetrical-yet-bogglingly-unique fluffy-freezy bits come down from nowhere so you can move them all around with your small no-seat boxey-wheely (if you are a lucky human with many men-pictures), or if not (alas), with naught but your scoopy-sticky. Ouch!
In addition to the aforementioned periodic freezy-stuff, we also notice that much more often than this, the warmy-growy seeing-lines come down from a gigantic flashy-ball that moves around above us, and while the seeing-lines feel GREAT on our skin, they can, in fact, cause it to really hurt and actually PEEL THE FUCK OFF a day or two after we feel it (!). Which is also fine becuase our skin (technically, feely-wrap) somehow knows how to grow back. Good show, feely-wrap! Also, looking at the friendly flashy-ball REALLY hurts RIGHT THEN, so we don't do that much. We just kind of figure it's there because our feely-wrap feels warm and also objects tend to exist to us when the great flashy-ball is floating around up there. Although, interestingly enough, half the time it's NOT around, and everything disappears, yet still hurts if you bump it with your toes. We consider all this fucking normal, however. Why NOT have seeing-lines sometimes and then also not always? As often as we get the seeing-lines, pretty much exactly that much is how often we DON'T get them, and also everything we just knew was there turns to the same color as the oily-stripeys we lay down through the woods (which to clarify also, is really a bunch of super tall hard-standys that always seem not to move when other ojects move into them, most notably our boxey-wheelys). Still following me here? I mean this is still all pretty basic stuff. So to recap: sometimes we have not-visible seeing-lines and pretty soon after that we don't, but so far they always come back so I guess that's something we don't have to worry about maybe as much as other things. Like fluffy-freezy, which is actually quite fun and which we all encourage our children to play in and EAT, but which can also kill us accidentally. So these continual patterns help us understand thingsy-happen--which, again, does not exist and has never existed but we all still PRETEND ACTUALLY DOES, to help us do things together. For instance, the pattern of thingsy-happen set down by all the seeing-lines allows us to know when to move our boxey-wheelys to other pointy-cozys, which are in point of fact not nearly as cozy as ours because instead of the glorious snuggly-boxeys we have in our own cozys (upon which we spend a third of our entire lives living other random lives, often with such convincing profundity that we must come to terms with coming back to this life and REMEMBERING IT IS ACTUALLY THE REAL ONE almost every time...we all know what I mean here), we have clicky-tappys and rolly-sits, and way brighter seeing-lines that come from squinty-bars above us and DO NOT feel good on our feely-wrap. Like, at all. Zip. In fact, the squinty-bars strain our eyes (which again if you want to get technical are themselves basically the blinky-balls in our heads) when we are in our rolly-sits, unhappily using our clicky-tappys for most of the time the flashy-ball is floating around in the sky outside.
And we do this a lot, actually. Seeing-lines appear, boxey-wheelys go out, clicky-tappys get used (actually I should mention we all decided that we would do this five times in a row and then not, for a couple times, and then start over. So...super great idea! #notrandomatall) We do this with gusto, mostly because it helps us get the magic green men-pictures, which are actually mostly now just littly blipply-blooplys on our clicky-tappys (interestingly) but which nevertheless help us get many other neat things, most of which are (again interestingly) actually killing us slowly, or sometimes, killing us less slowly. We believe that men-pictures are good for this reason and do many things for to acquire them. So as we go along, measuring thingsy-happen with fluffy-freezy-times and also with seeing-lines and the lack thereof, we begin to notice other changes too. These changes have less to do with our Here and much more to do with, well, Us. For example, the boxey-wheelys are somehow a little different every ten or so freezy-times. Maybe they drink more toxic nasty-juice, or less, or maybe they change their shape. Not generally a lot. Mostly they are still boxey, and almost always have the exact same level of wheely. But see, then there are those of us who look at the boxey-wheelys, living together as they do in great herds, waiting to be traded for men-pictures and let loose to cough-and-wheezey over the oily-stripey hills, and these humans say to other humans, "You know, I really miss the boxey-wheelys from many freezy-times ago/very many seeing-line there/nots ago." And they sincerely mean it.
To these humans, the before-now boxey-wheelys are what have come to be called "classic". Collectively, they are classics. Much better perhaps than the boxey-wheelys of today because of various pumpy-things inside you could not see and dongly-things outside you could see. "Man, they sure don't make boxey-wheelys like they used to," they will say to one another, and also anyone who will listen to them. "In fact, before I lived through many seeing-line there/nots, they used to make boxey-wheelys with DONGLY THINGS that were so much better. God fucking DAMMIT I miss those dongly things. I actually miss them every goddamn seeing-line there/not!" Still others insist that, in fact, it is the NEW boxey-wheelys that are the way to go. "Cool down, bro," they say, generally to the before-now boxey-wheely enthusiasts. "Check out dees new SPINNEY THINGS on my boxey-wheely, Holmes! All shiney and circularley enticing-like for the blinkey-balls during thingsy-happen involving seeing-lines! Holy blue! Madre de dios! etc. etc." And they mean what they say, and say it often, thereby expressing exess meaning in the frequency of their sayings. And so there are many who are unhappier more for the lack of exceptional boxey-wheelys that they have than for the seeing-line there/nots they must spend working on clicky-tappys while enduring the punishment of bright squinty-bars and poorly-made rolly-sits. For these poor humans, anything that will get them just a few extra men-pictures (in the form of blipply-blooplys or otherwise) is deemed a more than fair trade for the eventual joy of having a true classic/not classic boxey-wheely (complete with before-now dongly-things/actually-now spinney things) sitting by their pointy-cozy: the true envy of all boxey-wheely-havers of any sense or taste whatsoever, anywhere.
So as these things slowly drift through my consciousness, I realize I am still moving in my own boxey-wheely (speaking of), looking around and noting to myself a) the absence of seeing-lines b) the probability of coming fluffy-freezy based on feely-wrap tinglyfactor and c) OTHER BOXEY-WHEELYS MOVING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION AS ME GOING VERY FAST AND NOT-HITTING ME ALL THE TIME, albeit barely. Is this practice wise (??), I ask myself. A thought occurs. Perhaps because we do things many times does not mean that it is now any more or less different/nonlethal than the first time we did them. Our boxey-wheelys do move on the oily-stripeys very fast, and after all, not everything, remember, wants to help us up in Here. Seeing-lines sometimes melt our feely-wrap off. Fluffy-freezy is fun and, occasionally, kills you without you realizing. Most of the crap we can get with our men-pictures is killing us slowly or killing us less slowly, the latter generally considered a tie with the fluffy-freezy. Even though our very favorite pointy-cozys are all made of hard-standys, sometimes they can accidentally get full of burney-blazey and turn into black dust. ...What the fuck is that?!? I mean who came up with this? Moving on.
Some hard-standys are turned into tall line-drapeys and put next to the oily-stripeys to move invisible zappy-zappy around to our pointy-cozys so we can use our clicky-tappys from our snuggle-boxeys. Sweet! This is considered to be a good thing, and it is, except when sometimes the zappy-zappy makes burney-blazey in the wrong place and turns you and your clicky-tappy into black dust again. And you thought seeing-line feely-wrap peeling was bad! Also if one of the lines from the line-drapeys ever happens to land on you--let's say for instance as you go along in your boxey-wheely over to find an even better, newer boxey-wheely from the herd nearest to your pointy-cozy, which will really be much much better because they BROUGHT BACK THE DONGLY THINGS FROM THE CLASSIC BOXEY-WHEELYS AND ADDED SPINNEY THINGS NOW TOO BITCHES!!@$!--you can expect, basically, for much zappy-zappy to enter you and your new boxey-wheely and basically explaode your blinky-balls from the insides, out. Ouch! This has not happened to enough humans for the rest of them to decide that the line-drapeys are bad and, say, for example, move them a little further away from where all the boxey-wheelys go. So I guess that's fine, really. Remember that even though there is lots of zappy-zappy over your head as you go around on all the oily-stripeys sporting your #donglyspinneyswag, there are also many many boxey-wheelys coming straight at you all the time as fast as you are going at them, and mostly, both of you are not-hitting the other.
...Mostly.