Words that rhyme
Running across a reference to Don McLean's American Pie, a reference addressing the incomplete nature of a non-Don's musical memory of the song, the line came around on the head ticker, "helter skelter in the summer swelter / the birds flew off for a fallout shelter." The notion of "eight miles high" also came around, but my attention had reverted from the ticker to the big picture because there isn't much reason anymore for distances to be more than scrolling yellow bands.
But the words I had seemed inappropriate for the day. Beautiful day. The sun brought out the green the way the rain had once last week, and holes in the tree cover seemed to indicate, from the open window's one direction, a lazy blue sky undercut of its starch by a lake-like breeze. So it was not a swelter. It was not the bite-size hail and tornado storm that fell here Friday night either. It was Sunday morning in the spring.
If only seasons were that easy — "spring," one word intrinsically defined — then our discontent would be over and not still gray. It doesn't look gray at all, like I said it's green and blue, spring's traditional colors before we get scorched, but time and seasons are now a slippery slope. Buenos dias, El Nino; Hello, you've got mail; Happy Christmas, kept in your heart all the year long (war is never over).
The breakdown of the system and the schedule are confusing because I'm not sure what end around to take. Do I find a wall to brace against and fight? Doing so would assume there is concrete force to fight. I hold 7-11 somewhat responsible for teaching the world that the night can be profitable, but now, maybe, we are all The Other. The thought scares me and makes me add the "maybe" because life's becoming like those late quarters of calculus with virtual zero — except now the difference between virtual and actual is reality. The curve itself is either megalomania or powerlessness, but whatever it is, we're under it.
Back upstairs, domestically disturbed, "helter skelter in the summer swelter" led in my head to the Beatles' "Helter Skelter," but I couldn't tune that name — a culturally induced, Beatles-specific, reactionary failing — and ended up with the massive God-or-demon beat of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter." It was spring, and war and love were equally questionable.
