thoughts about Hot Air Ballooning

That's me in there. In that balloon. Floating about out there. Above that field in between the trees. It really is.

I had the chance to go last year. It was brilliant. You speed (with the right wind) inches from the ground. You dart up suddenly just before you hit a tree. You touch the tops of trees and see Lama, darting rabbits, deer, fawns, foxes. You float over people's heads and back yards and can inspect their roofs. And one time, a labrador chased us with such abandon through corn fields it seemed to me to be exactly what joy looks like.

Also, I wonder. Is this how it feels to be Balloon Bird? He really is the luckiest of all birds to be able to float about like that. If I possibly could, it's the only way I'd travel.

As you waft along in the silence you can hear the tiniest sounds below you.

One thing I never knew about hot air balloons: you can control the up and down, but you can't steer. You just have to go wherever the wind blows you.

Hmm. Sounds a bit like something wise ...

aspirational broccoli

i'd never heard of it
(have you?)
but I just got some
and ate them all up
(they were delicious)

only now I feel horrid
not because they are disagreeing with me
because of their name
"Aspirational Broccoli"

I keep wondering
what were they hoping for?
were they hoping, one day, to maybe grow up to become Broccoli?

oh dear

these poor broccoli babies
this infant broccoli
that I just murdered
and cut up
and ate

baby spinach
baby arugula
baby vegetables
why is everything suddenly baby something?

I'm not all that keen on eating babies

particularly when all day long I'm writing stories for them

writing stories all day long to entertain them
only to have them on toast?
and heartlessly gobble them up for my lunch?

(THIS JUST IN: apparently Aspirational Broccoli is just another name for Broccolini. So that's all right then.)

(Although, now I think about it, doesn't Broccolini sound more like someone's little sister... or a cousin of Fusilli ... or in some way related of the Linguines of Queens?)

full stop, period

"There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect, as a period placed at just the right moment."

Isaak Babel (1894-1940)