On the Fun Train

I'm sitting here on the "fun train," half about to burst and half death herself. I only got around five hours of sleep last night, but that's okay. I already had two Pepsi's.

Some kid is screaming and it sounds like an awful recording of a wine whine and someone keeps turning up and down the volume. The Pepsi is not settling well.

Anyway, I just got up to go to the bathroom. Some "drippy" (her word, not mine) waitress was trying to talk to me about the difference between "Disney" and "Busch Gardens." Whatever...

The sky is gray today-- the kind of heavy scratched gray of acrylic paint strewn with patches of canvas. The train is moving rapidly now and I am overwhelmed by the blankness of the past few weeks-- as blank as the cloudy, pock-marked sky.

The earth is soft and swampy and I marvel at the skill of those who carved a city and wonder what grazed their ankles.

We are up to my favorite part now-- with Fantine (her arrest).

Is it true what I've done? To an innocent soul?

And I clench the answer in my chest because it is too cliched to even rise to my lips or eyes.

One cloud is too white-- too cotton... like the artist didn't mix anything with the titanium, but instead applied it straight out of the tube. And now that cloud watches with a pointed finger (two fingers to heaven, or all four?). But the rest of the landscape has been scrubbed with dirty bluish water and looks like something out of the Industrial 19th century, what with the plummeting train and all.

And what does it mean that Jean Val Jean couldn't pretend? But then he went back to pretending.

The windless gray reminds me of the bus from Paris to St. Malo and I wish I had a wide brimmed hat and a three piece suit. (Can I really write for four hours?)

Now her death. So, I pause.

There is a clown dancing in front of me and I pray (pray) pray that he doesn't' try to talk to me.

He didn't.

*******************************************

Now I am avoiding the wrath of BINGO and it really isn't the job of these people to make my life "fun." Is a little "apathy" too much to ask for?

love,
h