To be the first to eat ash after an eruption is a great honor because it is something where the grit--for once--goes where it should. I was conceived in the air--my parents sky dove tandem and had patches cut out at the crotch. I did not take the first time they jumped, they think. It took a few tries. My friends and I streak naked across the rifle range. We wear masks when we do it because we're all for fun and daring but not for litigation. We are fast when we streak. We've been wounded, sure, but we've not died. Not a one of us has died. We've all made it, and that's not silly. The people at the rifle range are nervous when they shoot. There were some fourth graders at the rifle range once. One of them, those Fourths, had brought a dad, a guardian, with them. What they wanted was to film each other shooting guns so that they could use the footage in a music video that they wanted to make. So they went and did the shooting and filming. They had a dad with them. They got the footage they wanted, but one of their shots hit one of us. This one of us had been, of course, streaking. With a mask on. This shot, though, was more than a wound. I was conceived in the air--when gravity was different to that in a bed.
I am a funambulist. I have fun when I walk because I walk only on rope. I only walk on rope. Only I walk on rope. I walk on rope only, and, when I do, I have fun. I have a house, but I rarely walk on its floors or through its halls. Instead, I have stretched rope all over the place. My grandmother came to my house. She is in her eighties, but she still drives. She drove an hour north from her home to see me. Her home is full of what she has collected. Ten years ago, I could make it though her hallways only by walking through aisles of her collections. Only make it through. Only I. Now, ten years later, she no longer has aisles. She has tunnels. She had built the aisles so high they leaned on each other. She is stooped, so she doesn't have to lean. Me, though, I have to get on my knees just about. She had me over because she wanted me to have some suits of my grandfather's. He's not dead. He's in another house for people who cannot speak and who sit on chairs that can move--by wheels and levers--easily. He sits next to a fishtank sometimes. Other times he's next to a cage full of little birds or a tv. The tv plays mostly things about animals, though sometimes they put in a tape that has a fireworks display on it. I was to pick one of my grandfather's suits. I am a funambulist, and my grandmother comes over to my house.
She had driven her car for an hour with animals in it. She came for me because she wanted me to drive her three hours west to a wedding. We went and got to the church three hours early. Instead of exploring the town we were in, we sat in the church parking lot for three hours. Got sunburns. She said she had not had a sunburn in twenty years. I told her I saw someone get one yesterday. The wedding had a lot of musical instruments in it, and each one, each instrument, was played incorrectly at one point. All the maids of honor had painted nails and all the best men had on coats. I knew no one at the place and let them look at me. After, we went to a reception and ate from three tables that had three different themes of food. A hotel room afterward--one with an elevator and a breakfast. One with an alarm some trickster had preset. She took me to a graveyard, and we easily found her parents, grandparents, and brothers. We stepped over others to get to them. I was holding her hand, I tried to lead her around people, but she stepped on them and over them. She didn't care because she was looking for names. We stepped on little pink flowers. Finally, we saw all we wanted and drove again through a gate. A gape. Agape. She was not ready for swimming since only yesterday she had seen three people.
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