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of a tree, the very tip top, she said, where no one could reach it, though it is so beautiful, it must be delicious. Ha! It is not an apple at all but an aerodrome, cleverly designed to look like an apple from the ground. You look up into a tree and you see the apple and maybe a fly comes out of a hole in it, if you can see it up that high, and around the apple whirls the fly, making a distant little whine, as flies do, and you think nothing of it, spy for the enemy

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doing what it does, that is, existing simultaneously in multiple coordinates of space-time. I don’t know who made it. Unless it was me. I was quite a weaver in my day. Once upon a time there was a dog somebody tried to store in a. In a. That’s what brought up the girl with the shift. She claimed to have a transdimensional satchel, too. Now. Now, that just isn’t possible, you know. I don’t really believe she had the shift, either. It’s true I saw her pull from the satchel an apple she said she had plucked from the top

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buttocks of an ox. I miss my transdimensional shift. In toggling through scenes offered me by remote sensing apparatus of fine and improbable range and access, I came once upon a scene in a shabby apartment wherein a young woman claimed to be showing her friend, sprawled on the dilapidated sofa, her very own transdimensional shift. I could not believe my eyes or my technology or my ears. A transdimensional shift is so rare I have a strong suspicion there is, in fact, but one! Should you spot a second you have merely come upon the only one in existence

Thousand in thirds?

I’m thinking about trying out a print on demand service and using a section from Thousand to see if I’m any good at design.

I’m leaning toward Amazon.com’s CreateSpace, mostly because my friend Mel C. Thompson is pleased with the books he’s done through it. Mel says the process is pretty easy and doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t cost anything if you make very basic choices, it seems. There are always options you can pay for.

Thousand has a long way to go, being as we’re not even halfway. But I thought it would be nice to have the first quarter or the first third in a hard copy book. I like to fiddle with pages as I read. Reading Thousand off the blog takes practice; you have to get used to reading in a leapfrog fashion, from the bottom to the top. I also recently noticed it’s not easy to find the first Thousand post. It appeared on May 4, 2010, if you’re curious.

I don’t know if anybody has read all of Thousand. I doubt it. As a story it’s probably more frustrating than rewarding. I’ve enjoyed writers like John Yau and Clark Coolidge who write things that seem to be fiction sometimes, but the words refuse loyalty to any single narrative. The reading is fun for the sounds and the surprises and the wit rather than the what-happened-next of a plot.

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out a few cute anecdotes about the afterworld. There’s the time I met my great great grandmother on my great grandfather’s side, having never met her during my time on earth, of course, one ghost might say, slipping her arm through yours, pressing her ectoplasmic eyebrow against your shoulder and looking up at you through dark lashes, she was so surprised she had a Japanese granddaughter, though I’m really only a quarter Japanese, and that I’m a poet, too, because, she said, nobody in her family could ever read or write or did anything but flick a switch across the

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picket fence mottled with lichen and moss, one cat so still and unnatural-looking on its fence post perch that you think it bad art until it hops down and disappears into the tall grass. Whoever lives there must really be quirky and original and ready to take under her wing some other individual of special talents and fresh ideas who could use a mentor, a guide over the rough patches on the tarmac of life, a listener, a thought-provoker, a spiritual wise woman who has communed with good ghosts happy to snuggle up to you on the windowseat and trot

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myth about yourself as not of the herd, unique, a maverick, if you will. Wandering off after your own drummer, who is, no doubt, slapping bongos painted all over with colorful rain forest animals and fruit, while the rest of them in their drab uniforms march dolefully and mindlessly after the tat-a-tat-tat tat-a-tat-tat of the snare, you stop to smell the wild white roses, disturbing a bumblebee which rises up and hovers before you as though to say, “Ah, it is you, the seeker, not the lost.” You find yourself before a shack almost buried in roses and honeysuckle, the

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won’t effect an immediate change on present circumstances, the past that led to where one is today has not been altered. This does not, on the other hand, mean that no past has been altered. Having a transdimensional shift in the first place means you have access to many alternate paths through space-time. The road less traveled is the one you take because it will make all the difference. Tell the truth, though. Deciding which road is the one fewer have trod is less about the relative abundance of weeds in the ruts than about your need to groom a

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mistake. I trusted someone who I shouldn’t a trusted. You know how that goes, right? Wouldn’t you rather believe someone than go around all the time suspicious? People tell you the truth most the time, right? Right, right. Well, water under the troll. Comet vaporized in the solar corona. What’s done is a future don’t. Can’t undo the past. Although, if you have your transdimensional shift in hand you can reach through to the space-time coordinates that correspond to the moment you made the fateful decision and touch your fingers to the exposed wires and complete a different circuit. It

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if you were in a box on a hostile satellite, traveling alone around a foreign sun? Wouldn’t you? Sure you would! I used to be able to get around. Yeah. I did. Used to be I had a transdimensional shift. It was very handy. Fact is. Yes. It’s what got me here in the first place. Or rather. I made a bad business decision. I traded knowledge of certain things. Which I won’t go into. They were very super secret things that nobody knows, so this is valuable information I’m talking about. And. And what happened is. I made a

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guessing. Weigh a fact gathered here against a fact gathered there and wonder if either is true. Here in my mirrorcade, the windows looking into windows, the voices speaking words and phrases other voices have already worn soft and vague. Here in my safe house, far from the madding cloud, perfect storms pretty pinwheels over distant seas, the hail hale and elsewhere. Are my eyes closed or open? Do I have eyes or is all visual information being loaded directly into my neocortex via third party vendors? Such questions! Wouldn’t you torment yourself all day with this sort of thing

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darned by a violet thread to a glacial physiognomy. You never know what is going to happen, except when it has been written on three by five cards, or it’s a movie. Those are easy. The Tomato is taxiing for a loop-de-loop. What a daredevil! A lot of those earlier aviators made derring do look like a daily spin around the block on a bicycle, the front wheel of which stood tall as a man. What was that about? The wheel’s radius had to be as long as a man’s leg? I’m just guessing here. I spend my entire life

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After noxious elements of the green perfection erupt in baritone wattles, the present collapses into three precise yet flexible performances of the rare amusement boutique, sometimes known alternately and sometimes incognito. We who love catalepsy recline! A fair wind begins again its riotous scribble across Martian faces, while the novena disliked by generations of hare-lipped children has been pared and pared and pared until the sounds no longer move one to the next but wander betwixt barricaded silences. Look, thou, upon the bearded menace of the gentle intelligence officer, his barred and vaporous bad thoughts, his thinning nonchalance, the smile

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caveat that uh. Forget the dog with wings, there’s a monkey crossing a wire between the two tallest buildings in the world, one in Dubai, the other in Bahrain. It’s always raining in Bahrain! Once upon a time there was a chimney sweep who dripped slowly into the repaired cheese, so much better to amplify the barium accent in tense objects, a new revelation potentially compressed. We who love ancestry abound! The vagrant tic calls a newer mate with a vibrating mandible and a noodle scented with patchouli albumen. Down among the yards wander the robots, sentient as cemetery roses.

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itself against a fence when it wants to raise a back leg for a scratch. Besides, those wings. Nothing glorious about them. I mean, the hummingbird-sized wings on Mercury’s heels are metaphors for fleet-footedness. What are these pigeon-sized wings on a dog’s back supposed to symbolize? Not that there’s anything unusual about novel creatures made from the parts of ones more familiar, the griffin’s lion body and eagle head, for instance, the chimera with its goat body, serpent’s tail, and lion head. Sphinxes have lion bodies, human heads, and wings. Lions go with everything, don’t they! I would add the

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Once upon a time there was a dog. But is it even a dog? Check out the little wings that are shaking out from the dog’s shoulder blades. I didn’t see them at first, the same gray motley as the rest of the shaggy mess. Plus they were neatly folded against the body. There’s no bird hiding on the dog’s back, unless there’s a hollow it can plunge its whole body and head into. Dogasus? Or dog angel? The worlds are infested with angels! An angel wouldn’t shamble, stiff-hipped like that, though, would it? I see it has to prop

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syrup and changes her mind. Is this scene contemporaneous with the gazebo make-out session? Let’s check back in on that for a sec. Yes, tongue sliding against tongue, a hand slid into a waistband. Nice weather. Desert conditions. Hot. Just gonna get hotter. I wonder if I can tune in Sir. Hm. Is that? Is. No. No. It’s another dog entirely. Doesn’t look healthy, patchy hair, a torn lip healed so the yellow canines show in a perpetual tired snarl, the lower eyelid on the left sags and the eye looks watery. Nerve damage on that side of the face?

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any ice cream?” she’s asking her sister. Eula shrugs and spoons up a curl of vanilla, a stripe of chocolate syrup stretching thin and breaking as she raises it to her mouth. “You never leave me any ice cream!” says Emily. “You never do. If you’ve had a bowl then there isn’t any left for me. There! See! You put it in. You. OK, there’s a little. Not very much. Where’s the chocolate syrup?” “On the door,” says Eula as she scrapes the bottom of the blue bowl. Emily opens the refrigerator and looks at the sticky-mouthed bottle of chocolate

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long slender nose, the shimmering gray eyes fringed by blond lashes, these firm lips. I suppose I could cut away to the comet again. Turning slowing back toward the sun, etc. It’s not that I’m squeamish or uninterested in the growing connection between these two boys. But I’ve already spent so darn much time on this scene and here in my box of rain on the dark side of the moon, twisting knobs and tapping dials, I have limited resources to devote to any one thing. Hang on, Emily is coming in on the next channel. “Did you leave me

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one look at and know what to do. Leprechaun, shmeprechaun. Giant worm with human heads for feet? Pah! This sudden confidence does not come with concrete plans, but Bernie is kissing a cowboy and that seems like something to be proud of. If you were to ask Bernie if he thinks cowboys are special, if snogging one is a grander accomplishment than getting an accountant to bat his eyes or fondling a giggling traffic cop, Bernie would at least have to think about the question. It’s not like cowboys are his ideal. But this one sure is pretty, what with

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orange. He nibbles the fingers holding it. The cowboy withdraws his hand and touches the fingers to his own tongue, then he peels off another section and puts it between his lips. Bernie moves in and takes the protruding part into his mouth and bites it off. Slapping his thighs, the innkeeper rises and bustles off, muttering something about a fresh pot of coffee. “This is a really good orange,” Bernie says, although the words come out more ilke, “Un um mernsh.” He feels very down to earth, practical, like nothing could come up that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t take

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his tongue, holding him to the earth. Wasn’t that just yesterday? How often is he going to be in danger of drifting into the stratosphere? Rather annoyed with himself Bernie now imagines he could have pushed away the rafters and coasted out into the air, bobbed off into the clouds. How far would his internal helium have carried him? He takes a deep breath, which, by the way, feels great, like he’s going to breathe out halos. I don’t suppose I was ever really off the ground, Bernie thinks. He leans forward, opening his mouth for the next piece of

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here in the rafters? Bernie wonders. As the cowboy pulls the orange apart, its white-skinned sections occasionally spurting fragrant juice, Bernie feels the table draw closer and closer until he is once more looking into Darn’s gray eyes. He is so grateful not to be lost in the rafters with that hideous leprechaun that, instead of taking an offered piece with his hand, Bernie opens his mouth. Like a baby. And Darn slides it in, pushing the section of orange gently into place on Bernie’s tongue. Bernie bites and the juice floods his mouth. He remembers the angel stepping on

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stumbling over one of the longer and more difficult words in his vocabulary. Did he even get it out? The word seems to have several syllables with eccentric stresses, consonants both implied and not optional, and a tonal quality that could be picked up only by gnomes. The cowboy is peeling the orange with a paring knife. The sharp sweet scent of it loops around and begins to cinch in Bernie’s expanding sense of connection to the universe. What cowboy ballad is that? “Hard, ain’t it hard, ain’t it hard,” Darn is murmuring. Am I really hearing it way up

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so. Not all wuss.” He shrugs and stabs a wedge of gleaming yellow omelette. “They’re not,” Bernie hesitates. “They’re not, you know, people with leprosy, then? Lepers?” Ishmael chuckles. “Polio. Polio,” he says. “This is good ay yugg,” says the cowboy. Jump ahead to something happening. The Tomato’s escape. The mayor’s heart attack. Pink kittens squalling. Bernie rubs his eyes. He either feels wonderful, or he feels sick. He stands up, the cowboy’s hand slipping from his thigh. His head tugs at his spine like a party balloon the knot that holds it to the garden gate. “I,” Bernie says,

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“Y’ever seen one o’ them lepers?” the cowboy asks. The innkeeper’s nose flares (even though it’s a bit flared already, it’s easy to see the nostrils twitching) and his lip curls (which makes his bristling black moustache rise in the middle and decline at the ends). “You shooting the lepers?” Darn shakes his head. “Not today. Not in uh while. I jes wonder, that’s all. You know, where they byin.” “Lepers?” wonders Bernie, not sure he should. “Little demuns,” the cowboy explains, making a patting motion with his hand. “Little ones.” “Are they ugly?” The cowboy thinks about this. “Guess

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cheese still melting from a hole in the omelette. The innkeeper removes Bernie’s and slides from a pocket of his pantaloons a perfect orange. He lays this in the plate’s place and nods rather more significantly than had the cowboy, Bernie thinks, especially considering the addition of an exaggerated wink. He looks from Ishmael to the orange and nods, figuring he can nod too when it comes to that. If there were a cockatoo at the table the nods would be more than a few, more than a few, yes sir. Bernie glances around to see if Sir has returned.

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into the gazebo’s rafters. Bernie is examining the plate for footprints as the new guest steps onto the boards. “Pleased tuh meet yew,” the cowboy says, offering a long freckled hand. “Mah name is Darn.” Darn? Bernie takes the hand and is pleased that his own is not crushed in the greeting. “Nice to meet you,” Bernie says, giving his name, his whole name, half expecting the young man’s eyes to light. But the cowboy nods mildly, seating himself on the gazebo’s built-in bench next to Bernie. With a flourish, the innkeeper drops down before the cowboy a fresh plate,

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employed at the right time for the right purpose. The leprechaun, reading the significance of Bernie’s glance, shakes his finger under Bernie’s nose, reiterates whatever it is that’s so important he has to stand in the gooey remains of an omelette to say it, then reaches one arm over his head and makes a sharp pulling gesture. The leprechaun folds his gnarled arms across his knotted chest and the braid of black greasy hair that hangs down his back snaps straight up, a thread must be woven into it, a thread which now whisks the leprechaun smoothly and soundlessly high

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enjoyed the pleasant buzz from the first cup and savored the squishy sweetness of the baked blueberries. He did not worry. It was nice. After that he tried to achieve it through conscious means. Usually he was unsuccessful. But forgetting proved to be a skill that got better with practice. He did worry his new power was a symptom of pathology. Alzheimer’s? Mini strokes, otherwise unnoticeable? But, looking over the shoulder of the ranting leprechaun Bernie sees the cowboy emerge from the back door of the house, followed by the innkeeper, and feels only the satisfaction of a well-developed skill

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had been so important he’d had to work on it during those most precious nighttime hours was now so cleanly gone, wasn’t that itself frightening? Imagine forgetting all the plans for a party. A party for which you are the host becomes a surprise party? How pleasant! Imagine forgetting the subject of your dissertation. You step into the faculty office to be quizzed and can only smile dumbly as the professors probe your knowledge of gender pronouns in Dickinson. The stuff of nightmares! As Bernie poured himself a second coffee and picked away at the heart of the muffin he

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morning feeling pretty good and got up and zapped a muffin, spread some butter on it, sat down at the little white table in the corner of his kitchen, and gazed out over the board fence into his neighbor’s garden, the red of the peppers, the red and yellow of the tomatoes among all the green, and picked the crusty top of the muffin into small pieces, he was puzzled that he had been up half the night agonizing over something. Something he could no longer remember. Wasn’t that supposed to worry him even more? That whatever it was that