Inquiring Minds Want to Know

I clutched my unzipped backpack to my chest, my left hand scrabbling around for my keys.  Was this it? My fingers bypassed a crumb-covered pen and a wadded up plastic bag.  I noticed the tiny feet inching closer to my place of terror, and I backed up a few inches. A noise to my right made me whip my head around sharply. Two were advancing towards the garbage can, beady eyes at the ready, and little tufted ears cocked forward in battle position. Or…scavenger position. Or attack position.  Or something. My heart started to beat faster. I found my keys. Finally. And shoved them in the lock and fumbled for a while, my head still skewed around to keep an eye on The Enemy.

“You just…..stay where you are…devil creatures.”

Then the little fuckers chittered something at each other and ran, chasing each other up the fire escape. Another one disappeared into the back parking lot.

Damn squirrel town.

The city is home to many creatures- some on stalks, spikes or wheels, but the most sketchy looking beast by far, besides the specimens at the fish counter in the market, is the black squirrel.

Holy crap, those things really look like the pet of satan. Pure, dark, pigment-saturated fur. Peaked ears that look EXACTLY like furry little horns. And dark soul-less eyes. Mo says they run like water. I say they run like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Or …horsemen. Or …furry…..demon monkey rats. I don’t know.

Of course, they haven’t attacked me or anything yet. It’s just that I…strongly distrust them. City animals are really aggressive (or excessively stupid, like the pigeon in the subway), and in the past, I have been leery of them.  A squirrel chased me two blocks once. And they used to stalk me at work, peering from the trees and chirping their death-song. “Get out of my area, mother fucker, or I’ll throw a nut at you. If I miss, I’ll just come chew your legs off. Don’t temp me. ….La la la la ”

I might be squirrel racist.

But, if I see one attacking a baby, I will say I told you so. No, I will scream it.

Pretty sure I will.

Love,

Muse

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Unstable Ocean

Have you ever stood in the middle of something, where you could barely see the sky?  Like, if you craned your head all the way back, you could maybe see the glimmer of one star and the outline of half the moon? Well the city looms like trees.  Black and silver, like the kind of red-wood tree you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley way. The vans say “stick ’em up”. And the pedestrians dive in and out of traffic like pearl divers.  I can see the years floating off their lives, every time a car misses their shins by two inches.

I missed the smell. A combination of pizza crust, exhaust, rust, tension, technology and smoke. To me, the city reeks of mostly containable danger. Our hostess, standing outside on the sidewalk in bare feet, seemed like a warrior somehow. Wreathed in safety, wielding two keys and a reassuring laugh.  The lurid orange of this building is visible even in the semi-inkiness of the side street.

Outside the window, I can see the tops of flower baskets. Peering at the begonias flowering from a distance seems overly intimate. It’s  like the feeling you get when you are close enough to the top of someone’s head to see the part in their hair, feel the heat rising from the top of their skull and smell a hint of humanity and shampoo. I don’t know how I feel about viewing plants from above.

Something woke me by honking this morning.

Time to hop the subway.

Love,

Muse

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