At the Airport New Age Expo, there is one little bald guy who passes styrofoam balls around and the idea behind his particular modality is that you stuff these balls into your mouth, hold them there for a while, then spit them out.  I move around the airport spotting celebrities.  There's Mary Tyler Moore carrying her own luggage.  There's Christopher Reeves and, God bless him, he walks.  There's a friend's cute brother.  He talks about his old 28-foot sailboat and his new 32-foot sailboat.  I want to go sailing with him.

There are still some foam balls lodged in my mouth.  I start throwing up, covering my mouth, trying to hide all this as I run around the circular airport.  The bald guy with the foam ball treatment sits by  himself at a little table.  His loafers are made of vinyl.  He is alone with his stupid method.  No one cares about him.

I have tried to tell the story of where my cat Bean went when he died but no one really wants to listen to a story about a place only seen by what appears to be a seven year old girl on acid.  So I will write it down instead.  When my cat died he went to the great twirling cat wheel in heaven where all the other newly dead cats go and all their little cat faces are pasted to this wheel going mew mew softly as it starts to spin but then the wheel goes faster and faster until all the faces are a blur and so then what happens is one little cat spirit becomes part of the whole undifferentiated cat soul of the universe and this is why after my cat died he didn't come back to see me the way newly dead dogs do and I miss my cat Bean very much.
 

           —Nancy Dunlop


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