the turtle stalks the smoking lounge

a pleasant morning, and the weather here, in Chicago, feels like the weather then, in Costa Rica. Almost the same quantity of rain, though the wildlife is somewhat sparser...sunflowers bloom, already, and one is a mutant. a sport, the nurserymen call them, a carpel systematically replaced with a petal, in every flower, it looks like a sunflower carnation....such a simple trick of nature, it is what produced the ornamental rose. an air conditioner runs, uselessly, creating a tiny pocket of cool air that was somehow significant the night before. in space, a green lantern has lost his life to the caprice of an ancient demon, his ship crashing into a radiation belt. in wisconsin, osmia albiventris and andrena carlinii flourish, apparently, in the sandy wastelands between Madison and timber. the future swims full of malignant cells, and countermeasures, and measures to counter the countermeasures. as a hunter gatherer, i would be dead right now, my head crushed with a rock by some well-meaning member of the tribe, though it is not clear i would harbor the arthritis that would necessitate such a fate, it too, like the viruses that spring from our genomes like mice leaving a plague temple, is a product of the density of potential hosts, and immune system countermeasures, and overdone countermeasures that continue to last a lifetime. everyone seems to be coming down with one, an autoimmune disorder. as a priest, in ancient Sumeria, i would be completely at home. my kind are like that, content to preach. the turtle stalks the smoking lounge now. it is time to rise and remember things.