Thursday, July 28, 2011

7 MWE: The drifter caught a butterfly and paid a passerby $20 to rip off its wings

He drank some cola. He mixed his cola with grapefruit juice and drank. He was not supposed to drink grapefruit juice because of the medication he was on. His father's hobby was collecting rocks to make a rock wall. His mother had a comforter she spent most of the day under. The cola dribbled out of the corner of his father's mouth. His father is in a care facility. His father has a tattoo on his forearm. This was not a tattoo his father wanted. Four of his partners held him down and forced him to get the tattoo. The tattoo is of a window. It is of a squash blossom. It is of a humming bird and a bee. The tattoo has a hummingbird at its center. Someone played the organ at the funeral. They did not have much money, so they had to do the funeral on the cheap. They could not afford a coffin, so they wrapped their father in his favorite sleepingbag. They filled his mouth with worms--red wigglers--to speed along the decomposition process. They filled his mouth with worms. They also put the seed of a chestnut tree in his mouth. They covered him with dirt. They covered him with a dirt nap. A dirt coverlet. He asked that his family grow vegetables on his grave. A row of carrots, a row of beets, a row of chard. Grow some tomatoes and marigolds and dill. Grow some purple cabbage. The cabbage is especially big this year. They took a large cabbage off their father's grave. They also took some new potatoes and white beans. First, they browned the potatoes with oil. Then, they put in the onions. Then, the white beans. Finally, they put in some chopped cabbage, and that was their dinner off their father's grave. Thanks, Dad.

The children went to the music room with their recorders. The recorders were plastic. They were kept in plastic sleeves. They came with a plastic wand with which they were supposed to clean their recorders. They learned to play Hot Cross Buns. The children got bells and learned to play songs with bells. The children sat on carpet. They were told that if they didn't behave they would have to tend the bees without the beekeeping outfits. A mania. An inspiration. An infliction that leads one to kill bees, even though one has never kissed a donkey. A rare disease spread by kissing. A bauble that is covered with chocolate. The children had chocolate all over their fingers. The children wore hoods they had made out of pillow cases. The activity for the children was to make hoods out of pillowcases. First, they put the pillowcases on their heads, and they'd have a partner mark off--with a marker--where their eyes, nose, and mouth are. Then the children use scissors to make eye holes. They can also make nose or mouthholes, but they do not have to make such holes if they don't want to. Then, with pens, puffy paints, pieces of felt, they decorate their hoods. Finally, they are asked to go into town and rob local businesses with knives and zipguns they made in shop class. In shop class, first they learned to make knives out of obsidian. They learned how to break obsidian chunks into shards. Then, once they had knife-looking shards, they learned how to make even smaller chips to make serrated blades. With pieces of wood and string of gut, they learned to make handles for their knives. They learned to make zipguns out of firecrackers and pieces of pipe. They had their masks, their knives, and their zipguns. They went into town to do a bit of fundraising for the carnival. They wanted to put on a fantastic carnival, but they didn't have the funds, so they had to go into town to take the funds. The liquor store was closed because it was 8:00AM.

The children started by learning how to make shadow puppets. They performed short scenes dealing with death and loneliness for their parents. The children learned how to make hand puppets. They performed scenes of sorrow and loss for their parents. They learned sock puppets and tennis-ball puppets. They performed scenes of killing and destruction. They worked their way to marionettes and foam-construction puppets. They filmed a TV show about pop culture and got picked up by one of the major networks that broadcast from the bottom of the Marianas Trench. You would think a billionaire would be the one to build a dwelling in the Marianas Trench, but it wasn't a billionaire who did that. It was a rat breeder. A woman who bread thoroughbred rats. These were rats people would pay $5 for. These were rats that knew language and grammar. These were rats that were obsessed with usage. Unlike college grads, they knew the difference between its and it's, your and you're, there and their. These were rats that charged rates if you went to visit them. One child had a rat. Somehow it came out that the rat was a prophet, so other children would beg the one child to have some face time, some real one on one, with the rat prophet. The child who owned the rat prophet. The child who owned the rat prophet was pigeontoed. This child had a shaved head, but she kept her bangs extremely long. Her bangs, when she flipped them over her face, could reach down to her toes. In fact, that's how she knew when it was time to trim her bangs--when they touched her toes too much. She had a shaved head. She had long bangs. She wore leather sandals with heavy rubber soles, and her feet stank. Her feet did not stink. They stank. She sits in her livingroom, sitting over the body of her mother. Her rat prophet is in the other room and is soaking in a bath and reading a book about edible plants.

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