Skid

Whale Watch

Whale Watch Sometimes you may feel alone and crushed by what you cannot accomplish but the thought of failure is a fuzz we cannot rid ourselves of anymore than the clouds can their moisture. Why would they want to anyway? It is their identity and purpose above the radish and radicchio fields. Just because a thing can never be finished doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The most vibrant forms are emergent forms. In winter, walk across the frozen lake and listen to it boom and you will know something of what I mean. It may be necessary to go to Mexico. Do not steal tombstones but if you do, do not return them as this is sentimental and the sentimental is a larval feeling that bloats and bloats but never pupates. Learn what you can of the coyote and shark. Do not encourage small children to play the trombone as the shortness of their arms may prove quite frustrating, imprinting a lifelong aversion to music although in rare cases a sense of unreachability may inspire operas of delicate auras. If you hook, try to slice. I have not the time to fully address Spinoza but put Spinoza on your list. 38 Do not eat algae. When someone across the table has a grain of rice affixed to his nostril, instead of shouting, Hey, you got rice hanging off your face! thereby perturbing the mood as he speaks of his mother one day in the basement, brush your nose as he watches and hidden receptors in the brain will cause him to brush his own nose ergo freeing the stupid-looking-making rice. There is so much to say and shut up about. As regards the ever-present advice-dispensing susurration of the dead, ignore it; they think everyone’s going to die. I have seen books with pink slips marking vital passages but this I do not recommend as it makes the book appear foolish like a dog in a sweater. Do not confuse size with scale: the cathedral may be very small, the eyelash monumental. Know yourself to be made mostly of water with a trace of aluminum, a metal commonly used in fuselages. For flying, hollow bones are best or no bones at all as in the honeybee. Do not kill yourself. Do not put the hammer in the crystal carafe except as a performance piece. When you are ready to marry, you will know but if you don’t, 39 don’t worry. The bullfrog never marries, ditto the space shuttle yet each is able to deliver its payload: i.e. baby bullfrogs and satellites, respectively. When young, fall in and out of love like a window that is open and only about a foot off the ground. Occasionally land in lilacs or roses if you must but remember, the roses have been landed in many times. If you do not surprise yourself, you won’t surprise anyone else. When the yo-yo “sleeps,” give a little tug and it will return unless it has “slept” too long. Haiku should not be stored with sestinas just as one should never randomly mix the liquids and powders beneath the kitchen sink. Sand is both the problem and the solution for the beach. To impress his teacher, Pan-Shan lopped off his own hand, but to the western mind, this seems rather extreme. Neatly typed, on-time themes strongly spelled are generally enough. Some suggest concentrating on one thing for a whole life but narrowing down seems less alluring than opening up except in the case of the blue pencil with which to make lines on one side of the triangle so it appears to speed through the firmament. Still, someone should read everything Galsworthy wrote. Everyone knows it’s a race but no one’s sure of the finish line. 40 You may want to fall to your knees and beg forgiveness without knowing precisely for what. You may have a hole in your heart. You may solve the equation but behind it lurks another equation. You may never get what you want and feel like you’re already a ghost and a failed ghost at that, unable to walk through walls. There will be a purple hat. Ice cream. You may almost ruin the wedding. You may try to hang yourself but be saved by a kid come home early from...