Red Rain Barrow

In the face of a turbulent world, riddled with foes, snakes and ladders, I continue the great quest for a home. It’s a journey of mythic proportion. So much depends on a red rain barrow…

There are demons, monster and angels swirling in the crossfire of an enlivened quest for that one fundamental, elemental goal… home. Strange little chariots from pumpkins turned house gnomes and furry creatures that nip at my ankles. The little critter’s teeth gnash and burrow, sting like burrs yet their voices cheer and spur me on. I find myself swatting at them, but pausing from time to time, trying to sort out if they’re an irritant or a blessing. But then perhaps this is simply the fleas in the carpets, that have infested the apartment for years on end despite the no-pet moratorium in place in this fine crumbling villa for well over twenty years. It’s hard to tell.

The side the house is embedded still with large shards of glass from when my building blew up. Sometimes, on windy nights, I’ll hear the tinkling of falling and breaking glass as it loosens with the weather. Some of the shards are easily six inches long and have pierced and lodged into the wood siding of the neighboring building, where they’ve remained for nearly a decade. Perhaps this part of the old house is the part I like the best. The part that wanted so badly to reach beyond its own boundaries and become part of something bigger, leaving bits and pieces of itself in the things around it. It will not be difficult to leave this place.

And what waits for me on some picturesque hillside or dreamy bay? There are a few things I know. I’ll see the fog dripping from someplace else, but it won’t be upon me with its chilling fury. There will be a God damned red wheel barrow, covered with rain for chrissake, to depend on, not the roar and thunder of the diesel busses climbing the hill. If I have to I’ll simply spit on it, if that’s what it takes, and I’ll make the sun glisten through my saliva and cast prisms into unseen places.

I see my life becoming different - comfortably different. The City and all that it has come to represent will fade with my disdain into a beautiful landscape filtered through fog that I will look on with awe and wonder. Sometimes when you’re further away from things they’re more beautiful. Perspective is everything. A rolling hillsides appears almost liquid windswept. Such a different experience from the burrs that get enmeshed in my cotton socks from the thicket up close. The City is quite the same way. Appearing magical on a horizon but so toxic and crumbling while I’m here, in the middle of her, surrounded by her buildings, noise and perpetual exhaust. Home should be where you feel you can’t get near enough.

Okay, okay. I’ll get off the home kick. You’re thinking enough already. Okay. Enough.