Today I want to disappear into patterns, with my daughter, and let beauty explain itself to us both. If I could, I'd let us both seep like spilled milk into the kitchen rug, which is actually a horse blanket, and yes that horse was once a foal, and we could descend into the woolen geometries knitted by Anonymous in Mexico. In the pattern, various explanations would be revealed. Like what it means to conceive. Or renounce. Or locate the hidden fear. Eleanor knows everything except for one thing: everything else.
If I could, I'd storm my wife from the tackle box of work and we'd roadtrip all day long in expanded minutes, through Moab, the Painted Desert, and the Devil's Playground. We'd watch dolphins evolve from weirdo land mammals. We'd see stars implode. If today was that kind of day, I'd put all her images of freedom into my own mind. They would assume the shape of trees. I would sit in their shade, eating mangoes of ethical philosophy. I would invent a labor union for the little guy with no arms or legs. He would become king. Janelle & I would trade eyes for twenty minutes or so and see the kingdom through the eyes of the other.
Today I'd also like to remove Pablo from his NYC playground, where he photographs his dog, makes a home by the window, and every day rides the iron caterpillar from Brooklyn to Harlem, where he meets with the youths who will inherit the earth. I'd upset Pablo 2 degrees to the left of this physical plane. And I'd join him. And then we could play basketball with poltergeists, ping-pong with Ascended Chasid Masters, and fetch with the star dogs from Freedom City, then on back to Dona Olga's sister's cave in Queens for arroz con pollo frito and spaghetti. The youths would be problem-free in this twilight zone, blighted with the empathy of the land mammal. Pablo, then, would be out of a job.
If today wasn't a cold, dry, windy day, and if it wasn't the day it is shaping up to be, but another day, and if I had my "I would rather's," I'd have every Southerner who claims to be 1/8 or 1/16 Indian be a full-on Cherokee warrior. I'd take my father off the road, and place him & my mother in a total embrace. I'd have every tree on earth be decorated and lit up like a bisexual Christmas tree. I'd have all my friends in one place at one time, readily available for divinations and explorations of the patterns of the horse blanket in real time, and communion with wine made from fermented Sourwood honey, too. We'd play ping-pong with poltergeists. We'd let ourselves evolve into dolphins. Anything dangerous would become a fronded fern, contemplating the abyss with its invisible eyes. Time would be cool. God, a coffee cup.
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