My name is Paul.

I’ve been up since six.

The wind blows and it smells like rain, but I doubt it. Whistling and clanging. Sometimes things tumble. It’s never quiet unless it’s gonna rain, but I don’t think so.

What did I do yesterday?

I saw this cool nasal decongestant commercial where the whole sinus network was sorta represented by one of those vacuum systems like you used to see at banks and in old movies. All the tubes were clear so you could see all the capsules moving around. I like that kind of art. Sorta post industrial meets an ant farm/habitrail aesthetic.

I first glimpsed that technology as a kid along with the understanding that humans were the software. Workers contolled the flow of capsules and therefore the information. Data. Pretty cool. I want one.

It does describe my inclinations to a degree. I adore aquariums. Tunnels of all kinds command my interest.

I wouldn’t enter one. I grew up around the Comstock Lode. Hundreds of man engineered holes. I never went far enough into any where I couldn’t see sunlight.

My interest is exclusively microcosmic. It’s all in the diminutive. Dominance of scale. Beehives fascinate me but I won’t go near one.

I hate that I can’t remember. My hands are a little beat up.

I miss the Sears catalog. I could look at all those dioramas in the toy section forever.

Carefully, I remove layers of an ant hill with a small spade and gloves. The whole community under mere inches of desert; made ostentatious by a mound of their own participation. Like a perfect miniature volcano. I lift levels as delicately as I can. Each revealing the inside of a sand dollar.

I can’t remember what I did yesterday.

The more meticulous, the greater my reward. I am here to watch the tiny doomed scramble and panic in a labyrinth of caves and passages that had never been invaded by the light of the sun until now. Just stay upwind and most will blow the other way all while exposing the crude catacombs of the arthropods.

I’m thinking a little Iron Maiden and a grape soda.

I brought my looking glass, in case I find the queen. She’ll be plump and confused at first. I will roast her in her nest. She will writhe and convulse like an embryonic dragon. She’ll burst like a sausage casing full of blood and there will be a disgusting vapor.

The discretionary chaos of these tiny worlds is almost the entire catalyst for my enthusiasm to live a neat and orderly life. Everything in it’s place. I like right angles and symmetry. I’m both experimental and generous with angles of forty five degrees or multiples thereof.

Sometimes I get excited about insects in a morbid curious sorta way. Most bugs when divided in half exhibit ‘bilateral symmetry’. Each half mirrors the other. Crunch through the exoskeleton of a grasshopper with a scalpel and this will be your reward.

I have no regard for bugs. I loathe them. My most profound emotion is fear.

I really want a nice set of encyclopedias. I adore all the cutaway illustrations of ships and buildings and those cool translucent pages with various human body systems and structures.

My name is Paul.

3 Responses to “cuatro sweet and low”