A noise & not music

What I needed was a tree-house. Maybe I could climb up there with my goldfish, and talk about the more serious issues of the world. Such as socializing healthcare, or mull over Carl Jung quotations.

Dear 8 of 9, (that’s my fish’s name, he was recently rescued from a Borg Cube) what do you make of this preposition,

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”

What are your thoughts on the only way to be in love is to be out-of-your-mind-in-hurt. That you want to memorize every etch in their fingers and kiss the hinges of their lips.

8 of 9 would follow my finger along the glass of his bowl. And if my lips were there, I think he’d follow them too.

All that aside, I think we’d keep some apple-butter and Amish Friendship Bread up there. 8 of 9 wouldn’t want any, partly because of the fish thing, partly because of the Borg thing. But he’d appreciate my love of it.

I guess the worst part about wanting a tree-house is that I don’t have a backyard. And the worst part about Carl Jung is that he’s smart, and of course right.

I’m not right though. And no matter how many quotations from famous psychologists I read, I’m not smart either.

Regardless, it’s hard to take yourself seriously no matter the subject floating around your head when you’re set on suicide, but are doing fifty down the highway in your black pants and polo shirt for a night shift at Starbucks. To have your hands shriveled in sanitizer water two hours after penning your last words to the world.

“How do you like your headset?” Greg, I think, asked two hours later. We both had the same shitty model car that we barely carried seniority over. It had developed some sort of deep 80’s car comradely between us.

“It’s cool, except the headphone goes below my ear, and it’s really kind of tight.”

“So it’s not cool then?” He was short and had a monkeyish look about him.

“Well, no” I said and laughed good-naturedly. I didn’t want him to go away, but I didn’t want him to stay here either.

“Did you just laugh at me?” He asked in a Joe Pechey “Goodfellas” knock-off way.

“No, I scoffed at you.” I dunked a mug into the water.

“Okay, no more two syllable words around me.”

My lips were chapped and when I smiled it was like an accordion opening.

“Deal.” He went away this time.

Earlier there was a fly on the drive-thru camera that told us when a car was outside. It made it seem like there was some bad horror flick going on outside. I never saw the whole thing, just huge legs that would appear then disappear in the corners of the screen. The girls working drive-thru with me keep saying how it was gross. You could see all the little hairs on the fly'a legs brush against the windows of the SUVs ordering their Pumpkin Spice Mochas outside.

I wish I could superimpose a fly over the faces of everyone that I saw. I bet Carl Jung would have something to say about that, about who the power shadows, about anything really. Then I could discuss it with 8 of 9 or whoever else would follow me up a tree.