Happiness setpoint freewrite

The bar for the happiness setpoint is ever raising for those without joy. No sooner do they reach the pinnacle where happiness, like a lenticular cloud hovers over the summit like a flying saucer up in its own weather system, blithely incarnating folklore about the Lemurians and Proto Atlanteans. Notice, how all the cool guys are from another planet. Not like Jesus, who was born within the midst. That’s mist with a D, folks. The idea being that a savior should come from within the throngs, the brainwashed hordes, not the elites. No matter that the couple was enroute to a census. Stand up and be counted. 

And the Bible belters of Jesusland are cheering on the war in Iraq, they rejoice when another tree falls, when Armageddon comes. The sooner the better, where they will be saved. Imagine their happiness: the end is nigh. They rejoice and sing modern day timbrels to the Lord in the street, sawhetting across the face of mother earth in the commute lane of exponential catastrophe.

It reminds me of the politician, who said. When you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all. And ketchup is a vegetable. And that other wonder that burning bush in the White House who today declared $250,000 plates to eat an inaugural dinner with the president, wanting a ceiling on the price of a plate so that school teachers and bus drivers could afford to attend the inauguration. There are happiness setpoints considerably lower than a quarter of million. 

But look, all the stars are ablaze in the heavens, only in America where happiness is legislated. But the Bible thumpers say the end is nigh. The world will end on December 31. The rapture is nigh. God bless America. 

12/10/2004. Writers’ Group

Candlelight freewrite

A slender finger of light dances in the breeze, Shiva’s nail scratching the darkness. A cat lies in the sun, sharpens, her claws, stretches, yawns, her become jewels in the night. Phosphor fire. Either fear or science will make an excuse for her eyes. Retinal mirror scrying the soul. 

Have you ever looked at house windows and seen them as eyes following you as you walk down and unfamiliar street at night? What thoughts arise? But look, a light in the window, harkening back to centuries before. Someone placed a candle in the window, so that the dearly departed could find their way back home. 

Candlelight in each window, the flickering pupil, sentient, ever watching. The hurricane lamp from the turret for sailors coming in from the sea. Bonfires on the hill. Markers of time. Names for surcease, for that dark moment when lights no longer drink in the darkness. 

That solstice when the sun sleeps, when we light the candles, and the moths circling the fire, confuse them for the stars. The odor of wings like burning hair, angel hair, when the rain comes when we’re weaned from the electric grid, freed from the tyranny of Edison’s light dream, the candle becomes a ritual for dinner, reduced to romantic interludes or for religious reasons. 

Or birthdays, marking the passage of time, or the big bang. Dangerous candles, soaring light tapers for the church, split an atom, a sesame seed of blue light, a seed pearl at the center of everything. Imagine a flashlight as a placeholder in its stead. Imagine the inventor of the candle. What did he use for wicks dipped in tallow and honey. 

12/10/2004 Writers’ Group