. . . the invisible worm

Music: Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks If you were ever a fan of Coil, then you know.

This morning it is in the 80s and warm, and it was hard to sleep-in because of the heat. The forecast is that we will be pushing the 90s. Outside one can hear the unusual hum of air-conditioning fans . . . in November. My neighbors Glenda and Marsha are in their robes, drinking coffee, reading the paper in their living rooms; I just read mine, and was amused by a story on Tom Delay's mug shot, and there is rioting in Paris, and Glade has discontinued their "wisp" fragrance machine that I like so much, and my neighbor Vicki just called and invited me over for chicken and dumplings tonight and to watch the debate with her and Marsha on The West Wing, because I'm a socialist and good company for watching television.

In the patio, the roses continue to splode, and more buds have arrived, and the weather has confused the plants, and the cold snap a few weeks back killed the beetles and bugs, and so the roses continue to come with a kind of quiet jubilance, as if there is no end to a secret life somewhere I cannot see (the "secret powers" conspire, Hume mused), sometimes as if to cheer, sometimes as if to mock.

One of the bushes only produces one flower at a time. It begins as a white rose with red edges, and as the flower continues to open, the petals get redder and redder [edit: check the previous post; the flower to the right is the same "white" rose I posted a picture of on Friday!]. And just when the flower seems saturated, it falls apart.

I was thinking last night, well, dreaming, and struck by how much cliché can achieve a grave depth that bruises my cynicism. I remember at a conference some years back, I was in the mountains out West, and I had a hard time breathing, and there were little yellow flowers outside the hotel window, and I was noticing the flowers and I was watching CBS Sunday Morning, and there was a story about Ray Charles on the television, and he was talking about allegory and metaphor (and I remember thinking it was really about substitution--metonymy, you know) and the authenticity of indirection, and I was tearing, and my roommate started laughing at the television program. "Oh how sappy," she laughed. "How can you watch this?" And I knew she didn't know I was moved at that moment (and would have been embarrassed if she knew), so I said she could change the station, and I was called to my duty to be the vigilant cynic and debunker of bromides and the natural, because there is a worm in everything, an invisible worm . . . .