Perspective

No crows two days in a row. Odin guesses it’s the umbrella. No rain today and a crow turns up. That doesn’t prove it was the umbrella, it might have been the rain itself, but Odin has a feeling it’s the umbrella.

It’s not like crows are afraid of the rain. Are they? Have you paid attention to that?

Odin can’t say that he has.

He stands on the corner and feeds a crow part of a random sandwich. The crow buries most of it under leaves, and discards the lettuce entirely.

What say the slain?

From above, an umbrella is a large mask.

From above, umbrellas are black monsters eating people.

That the people carry around.

From above, it is a long way down but you’re still flying so it’s okay.

Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Except existential horror, that is, because even after everything has gone wrong, more can go wrong.

Rain and sunshine are equally beautiful.

It snowed just now

I stood out on the sidewalk watching it, using a sewing machine as an umbrella. Wearing my bowler hat. An umbrella wearing a bowler hat is absurd. The cat had a worm. Possibly more than one, so I took her and her brother to the vet for a pill each. And to make an appt to have her sterilized. They shaved her belly and did an ultrasound to see if she is pregnant, because she refused to pee on the little paper stick.

There I stood, looking at that familiar ultrasound monitor image, trying to think of a good joke, none coming. How will I explain it to my wife if one looks like me, like that. And all the while, big flakes of fallout drifting to earth out the window. Apocalyptic humor.

Freshly-shaved cat belly is a soft thing.

We’ve been looking for the leopard slug, or whatever it was, unsuccessfully. It’s out there, somewhere. It’s a feeling like when the jungle drums stop, you know? That slug is out there.

I hear they come from Spain. Climate change. They come from Spain, like these butterflies a friend found on her oleander come from Greece. Like the butterflies, only way more slowly.

Except, it didn’t snow.