Wednesday, March 2, 2011

12. CACTUS ENCOUNTER

In _______ Desert the floor is so perforated with snake holes and bed bug hills, you can't believe the whole expanse doesn't implode under your feet and send you hurdling towards the desert at the center of the earth.

As I was contemplating my next step following this, admittedly, pretty fucking lyrical observation, a cactus came out of absolutely nowhere and bit me something fierce.

"Hey," I screamed anthropomorphically, "You're supposed to be revealing universal truths about man, not biting people!" After twenty to thirty spirited flicks of my wrist, I realized the only way to dislodge the bulbs would be to embed them in my other hand, the result of which was the permanent co-joining of both. My hands were swelling at a sexually alarming clip, and soon were big enough I could see all the way down to where the tips of the nettles landed deep in my anatomy. The spikes were so fine, they didn't even break the surface of my skin. They shot directly through my pores, which by now were approximately the size of a wafting frozen pizza, and travelled effortlessly on down past my hand muscle, tendon, bone, marrow and gift shop. As the spikes were roughly the diameter of a beam of conscious light, and just as bright, I could see them surgically severing my bloated atoms and electrons, impregnating me with some universe and generating luminous orange and purple Romanesco-shaped worm holes that accessed the negative space around all energy. Matter I never knew existed, untethered from time, alternated between limitless potentiality and material stasis at light speed. I could smell ancient, familiar carbon. My ego construct struggled to discern my perceived individuality. I saw that deep, deep down, in the places only a cactus prick can go, there is radiant debris, living and dying as a cosmic refugee in the infinite black of my form which is so vast as to be utterly unknowable.

"That fucking hurts!" I cried, helpless.