What kind of world does David live in?

29.ix.2005

A world of plastic bins filled with plastic and glass bottles that are pulled out to the curb every Wednesday; fallen branches sprawled across the neighbor's front yard and encroaching upon their porch, the remainder of the tree from which it fell dead or nearly dead, a few remaining leaves scattered about the ends of branches and a snaking green vine forcing itself into the bark to absorb the trees hard-earned nutrients; fat feral cats howling at the other fat feral cats and stealing a bite off my porch whenever the door is closed. A cigarette butt is stuck through a hole in the window screen and from a distance looks suspended in the air. I spit on an ant mound by the walkway and this makes the ants come racing out to see what's happened, angry at the intrusion on the structure of their colony, the skewing of their daily routine.

I lie on the wicker couch still damp from last night's rain. The thunder woke me, more than once, and as I fell back asleep I kept re-entering the same dream. I thought the feel of the water that had fallen may give me access back to what that dream might have been. The brown coffee and warm sun made my skin flush and blood flow quicken.

I hadn't been up this early since I can't remember. The garbage and recycle was still there, waiting for the man in the big truck to come take it away to a place where I could no longer see it with my eyes. Someone somewhere must still have to rest their eyes on it. Maybe I’ve even seen it again. Maybe the Coca-Cola bottle I sipped from months ago came back in the form of an Indian River Orange Juice bottle, a second encounter with an object I'd not even thought during the first, once used and disposed of and forgotten and now it was back, forcing itself upon my consciousness with its smooth transparency.

I took the cigarette out of the screen and threw it in the bucket at the edge of the porch. Fucking filthy friends. A car drove by, a Lincoln, and the kid inside shot at me with his hand, index finger straight, thumb up. I thought about shooting back but didn't, and my eyes followed the car's trunk to the stop sign where it stopped and took a right.

The sun had come up some, now above the roofs. The potted plants stretched to better embrace its warmth. My coffee is gone and my pants are now damp from the wet couch cushion. My dream-memory remains lost.

I could almost control it or I thought I could almost control it or I knew that I couldn't control it but could tell what was going to happen immediately before it occurred and I could react with omniscience of all events with no regard to their temporal occurrence in time.

My coffee mug was empty and the sun was up. I heard the garbage truck rumbling down the road, stopping, the crash of glass and the crunch of cardboard finding its way down the street of abandoned homes populated by fat feral cats and around the corner to my spot on the porch with an empty coffee mug in my hand.

I stood up and wiped the dirt from my feet before entering the house and closing the white door on the morning sun with its garbage trucks and cats and fallen branches.