Apocalyptic notes borrowed from Eliade Marcia Ratliff There are only fragments of a shattered universe and you are hopping between them like a squirrel between trees. Your sciurid movements don’t betray your thoughts: you might be excited or terrified, but you keep hopping, a small price to pay for that sense of eternity. Maybe grass grows beneath you, on soft ground, between the fragments which might be coming together, or apart. But the feeling of blankness beneath you drives you, abeyance of responsibility, like when you are underwater playing Marco Polo—no need to respond, no point in responding, even if you did hear something. Or you are less dramatic, running between the splotches of shade on the sidewalk, feeling the wind at your back and breathing sweat and sunscreen, almost the smell of childhood, summer again, anything except here. You are not so much, not so perfect, but your senses tell you that you are alive. You abandon things only to find them again, like the golf ball in the gutter or the Barbie you buried beneath the chives. You grow into your self and out of it, in an instant.
8
