Three Easy Steps:the little genuine things in life/sauteed whole peppers/easy roof repair

So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and 

it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to 

begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret 

circle, meeting right in their midst, where we joined magical forces, just 

like in a cartoon show of unwrinkled hands bearing secret rings of 

awesome and elemental powers. We would eventually think of somewhere else to roll 

off to and be unseen at for the rest of the free time. The egg faced 

adults were always a nearby danger that had to be very carefully 

avoided, if you wanted to have any kind of real fun. They 

always seemed a little deadened on the painted surface, or at their 

absolute worst, ghastly, not all there, like a television signal gone horribly wrong.

Even when they did somehow manage to smile at you, you thought 

they were going to end up trying to cook you up for 

supper that very same evening. But, I can still absolutely remember all 

of the very cool things that were happening to us, too, like 

a slowly burning golden edge that floated over the ends of everything 

around us, looking every bit like silently flapping sheer curtains of some 

sort. The point is, your image caught up in that fabric was

nothing short of a modern day miracle to me. I wanted to 

slam everything to a full stop, stop, stop, stop everything in existence, right 

then and there, from continuing to continue on past that point of silent 

motion, and just say, hello, hello, hello in there. It's me, and 

hey, it's also you. And it's amazingly wonderful, isn't it, this moment 

with you and me in it? I'm just going to be paying attention to 

this particularly sweet message, playing like a record machine that she alone brings to 

me, in my ears alone, if the rest of you don't mind, 

that is. I meant, surely it had to be important to more 

than just me I thought, because I'm going to try to slide 

in there first, if I can. Because you were there at all, 

I thought life must have some sort of truest meaning to it, I could learn to feel 

after all. We were all there and together. Why did this goofy thing 

have to make its stupid grandiose feelings of falling off a cliff ,

into the waiting ocean a thousand miles below anything known to man, made only to me?

I felt like I was riding away on a horse, far away 

from everyone I knew, and loved, forever, and a day. I couldn't 

stop myself from dissolving inside everyone else's eyes. Then out of nowhere, 

instead we were still playing frozen statues on the lawn, let's say 

at dusk, and later moving around in the sparkling dark, disappearing into 

different night vision rooms, walking in different lines, forking down to different homes, cooked

meals, talking different temperature baths, oh life, like there always is, I suppose. 

Snows came and wiped the world clean of its old scars. In the 

springtime more people died, and some people cried, including me. Crazy things

 happened to the world at six o'clock almost every night. All the 

time, and I mean every single second of every second, I was 

alive, though I was hoping to touch you there once more before 

I died. Through the sad waxy birthday candle smell on the too 

familiar walls, through the once sun swathed swimming pools of yesterday's laughter,

 that'd soon turned to cold ash, any old way, and the coffee, black 

puddles, throughout the many car rides with life's too many terrible teachers. 

I didn't know that where you had stopped, would be so far from 

where I was eventually going to find myself, going on. I couldn't feel 

myself, more and more gone over to the days that lay ahead of me.

Sorry. I missed you so much then. I miss you that much now. But there's this much to go they say.

There's always this much more. We'll have to find out how it works, together, some day, I hope.

060610

Bonus:

by Darryl Price