the 7- or 8-year-old child on the airplane is screaming– blood-curdling, lung-rattling shrieks– and then words tumbling out, falling over one another– I wanna die I wanna diiiiieeee– I want to kill myself I wanna kill myself with a knife!— shhhh shhhh, murmur murmur from the mother– mommy I don’t wanna fly– it’s scary– mother, it’s sc-sc-scary— murmur murmur– then again a panicked crescendo– I wanna die I wanna die I wa— finally muffled crying as if he’s been braced against his mother’s chest. the flight attendants check in periodically. the captain comes back. all this while we’re still at the gate, unmoving. the voice breaks your heart, its stumbley consonants, phlegmy heaves. the scream at first is that of a toddler– but then: the words. to live like this. poor, poor child.
dotty dogses
you know what my current blogger template always makes me think of?
shari’s dalmation polka la dot. not that I ever actually *met* polka. never had that pleasure. but she lived large in my imagination, due to her most-apt name.
then there’s brad nowell’s (deceased lead singer of sublime) dalmation, lou dog, who adorns much of their album cover art and makes cameos in the lyrics. I credit lou with that bedsheet covered with sand brad complains about in “garden grove”– remember, I too had my lu, just not a dotty one, and following our visits out to fort funston, she’d leave some substantial beach in the sheets.