Flash Friday; Watch, Swan, chi in Flash Friday

The day the world ended my watch stopped. No, no, sorry, I have that backwards. It was cause and effect. The watch no longer measured time, in a very real, but singular, relative way, all the hours were gone. I tried using that to explain death. Disassociation and empathy fraying the fringes, implying with the passing of any single life, the world as it was ends.

I asked her when she’d be back. Huh. I often asked her when she’d be back, once, neither the first nor last time, I asked and she answered.

“See that fly on the sill?”
“Yes, when are you coming back?”
“To him; a lifetime.”
“What does that — how do you know it’s a him?”
“Same way I know it’s a fly. Soon, I’ll be back soon.”

And she was that time. Weeks later I was obsessed with hindsight scenarios. The fly had died about five hours before she had gotten home. I had all these elaborate fantasies, two weeks later, about staging fly movements with electroshock or finding a look-a-like stunt double for the fly. I have no idea why, now it seems petty like I just wanted to get one over on her. Maybe it was always petty.

Both the fly and my watch … I don’t know how to finish that. They’re empty, the energy that had animated them are gone. But I don’t know how to measure the change in them. I can’t help but think I can sense somehow in the world around me a taste of one less fly and one less watch.

Back when and where things grew wild, I’d take the kid down to the park. He called it Swannee because there was an old swan in the duck pond. There was a duck pond, a garden stroll and a playground. The grass was worn off the playground and around the edges of the pond. I walked the kid down once on a summer dawn, quietly, to hide in the bushes and watch the ducks and old gray swan pecking at the grass.

Across the street from the playground was a retirement home, a mom and pop place, sort of like a boarding house for seniors, but nicer, I imagine. I had a kid and a job and a she, at the time I had a she, and I didn’t think about old folks’ homes much. Before the kid was old enough for short pants and a blazer we’d be at the park around 10:30. On Tuesdays and Thursdays they did senior tai chi. This fascinated the kid and, as many a parent will tell you, it gave me a vicarious fascination. Sometimes the kid and I would play the “what’re they doing?” game for hours. It spilled out into other things as the kids’ world got bigger and if I had to shrinkify the most subjective and ephemeral of human traits, a sense of humor, I’d say the very core of the kids was situational. You’d have to be four, swinging, sun on top of your head, watching the creaky choreography, the eloquent chaos, and know, inherently, how much that tickles, to give it a caption needs finesse; you are directing attention to natural funny, not the funny yourself. Shit, I thought it was cute as hell. Sometimes She did too, sometimes she apologized.

And where did the wild things go? I read the book, twice, it’s just fiction, or, you know, based on actual events then put in a blender. Add a pinch of watch, a scrap of fly and distillate of geriatric tai chi and emulsify. I mean you can make your own fiction but it has boundaries, the most obvious being that it’s made up. Like if I wrote that the wild things hung out on the corner of John R and Twelve Mile and you went there expecting wild things … I’d try south Telegraph and Jolly.

I think it takes an effort of will to grow wild. Any fool can be raised by wolves, outside of that, though, you have to work at it. Wolves are a pack animal. Urban wild things are loners. It doesn’t take a pack to raise a pup, but it sure makes it easier. They say wolves mate for life, if I were trying to be funny I might say ‘gee that’s a long time, I can go maybe ten minutes …” The kid would take a different approach, like, if a wolf was chasing his tail he’d say “He’s practicing mating for life” or “That’s how bachelors mate for life.” I don’t know, we don’t talk much these days. Nothing’s wrong, we just don’t have much to say, but in a pleasant and comfortable way, and yet, I find myself screwing up his punchlines.