Elevator Capacity

Force of habit, I calculate the total weight and weigh it against what the plaque says is our maximum. In public buildings I always use the stairs. People have become so fat, I fear for my safety. They have extra body parts that I can't identify. You take my dog or me, and the muscle groups are easily identified; in the super market, I'm not so sure, masses of extraneous tissue. I tend to live close to the bone, the only place that interests me, skip meals and wake at odd times. Angles of light, angels really, the last rays of moonlight over cloud banks, I don't draw any conclusions, just watch, another light show. I've seen it all before. I was attracted to Julie because she wasn't overweight and had a light blue vein on her temple. Empires are built on less. Your horse and my jack-ass, could make a sterile mule. Hendrix comes to mind. Anyone truly out there. Chuck Close, The Dead. Bach in the Suites. Everything is hidden, prize out what you can. A taste of things to come, Carolina on my mind, just like a friend of mine. Keep it clean. Opened the house up, last night before going to bed, and this morning there was a strange smell on the wind, a sweet citrus, and though I went out several times, I never did track it down. A resin maybe, or some trillium blossom I'd never noticed before. Reminded me (as smell makes you remember) of a frolic with a high school sweetheart in a grove of Opossum Brown oranges west of St. Augustine. The Opossum Brown is a juice orange, and we'd pull them off the branches, cut a round hole at the stem end, squeeze and suck the juice out, them turn them inside out and scrape the meat with our teeth. Anna let me lick the juice she'd dribble between her breasts. A highly charged part of my adolescense. I hadn't remembered that for years before the smell. Funny, how that works. Smell blind-sides you, the way it takes precedence. I can be intensely thinking about something else, researching a specific thing, books opened on every flat surface, and a smell will waft in. Might as well close down the operation. In fact it does. Leftover squid on toast. It's good, I'm not complaining, just reporting what I ate. God, that seems weird. Reporting what I ate. When did this become so personal? It snuck up on me. Last thing I remember, the geese were attacking the truck, leaving pock marks in the finish. We ducked down, I snapped it into 4-wheel drive. We don't require A second form of identity. I'm lost in the parade. Really.

Tom

Emily said something, but I forget what it was.