I need a hit of acid just to click on this thread’s title. What are you all on? (and can I get some?)
The funny thing is I’ve seen groups of dragonflies and it seems like they have wingmen. They often fly one over the other alighting and standing stone still. Then moving as duelers. I think they are in tandem when they do this movement- prairie hopping, so to speak.
High on life, baby. High on life.
This is what dragonflies refer to as “making whoopie”.
ZebraShaSha, most excellent. Very well done. The challenge for me now will be to maintain stylistic integrity. Now then…several calls for a dusk setting. Evidently we think dusk would be great.
So then, you’re having a lakeside picnic at dusk with your beloved. Chicken wedges and fried watermelon. In the middle of the lake, not far off, is an island, and on the far side it is completely wild. Walking along the wild side of the lake is the sugarplum fairy. The walk turns into a dance and the fairy leaps onto the backs of a pair of enormous aligators, one bright purple, the other pink, who begin to ferry the fairy around the island and in your direction. The fairy waves her wand and disappears, but in her place are thousands of fireflies who begin to spin and whirl and flash at random. The cloud of fireflies expands until it has created a twinkling dome over the lake. The sun is completely gone now and you and your beloved are transfixed on the dome which has grown over you. And everywhere the dome touches the ground, silver mushrooms spring up in the shapes of small shurchbells–and they jingle when you brush them with your paws, for you have become kittens. Which makes the mushroom bells that much more exciting. You spend hours batting the mushrooms and swatting at the fireflies along the rim of the dome. And then the next thing you know you awake at dawn on the shore of the lake, with your beloved, and you are as you were before you were kittens. Wouldn’t that be great?
Yes, yes it would!
That is very cool, Zebra and Inigo. I think I might try my hand at it and see how it goes. I’ll post if anything besides gibberish comes out.
When I was a fish, a little purple and silver sunfish way back during my experimental years, I lived in this lake. It was a lake at the time, because I wasn’t yet grown enough to call it a pond.
I lived among others of my kind, in a city of trash and plants and plants that might as well be trash. My family lived on the west side, in a lawn chair and tire cave. Atleast we were told it was that, but it was still brown and sticky to the touch, its skin dancing rhythmically to the undercurrents.
Most envied our house, our cave, for most had naught. Most swam for years until they gave up and would float to the lake in the sky. That’s how it felt, having an ocean above us, a giant muddled bright brown ocean swallowing us whole. What lived in the ocean, or if any of those in the ocean could jump out and fly, was a constant concern for us in the deep dark recesses of earth’s grasp.
We hugged the earth tight, afraid of the water.
Once it grew dark down there, our ocean above evaporated or something, but it was so dark. No one could see, something was not right and no one could see.
Me and my accountant were concerned, and were supposedly the bravest in the village, so we decided to check it out. We packed our minds with all that we would need, closing our skulls around packets of bravado and baggies of cautious optimism. Off we swam, opposite of land, to what we felt was the ocean, but couldn’t be sure.
And so we made it, several years later, to what we could only describe as the wettest, dampest, coldest horizon in existance. It was so murky looking trough what might have been miles of the deepest, darkest ocean waters we had ever seen. And yet our ocean was moving, it was dark but it was moving. After watching for months, just watching and thinking and hoping we packed enough, we realized they were bugs.
It was a dome of bugs, surrounding our homes, darkening our lives.
“Off, swim off! You are all marvelous swimmers, but off you must, for we can’t see down here!”
They obliged us, and again returned the calm blue ocean, the brightest light in existance struggling mightly but in vain to exit the drain deep, way deep, down in the ocean’s murky bottom.
And so it was.
Here ya go - it’s not complete gibberish.
Standing teetering on the very edge, you decide now or never and allow your body to fall freely forward. You swoop downwards, wind blowing and buffeting you, gravity grabbing you and pulling you close to her bosom, but you came prepared - you know gravity’s secret, and how to unlock her gifts. Quick, before you can doubt yourself and fall out of the sky, you reach upwards with all of your might, and simply stop believing in her. Ah, that’s better - now you’ve got the knack. Rising skyward, you stretch out your arms and lay back gently on the soft bed of the sky. Where should we go? What should we do? Anything. Anywhere.
Wouldn’t that be great?
Eh. Needs more cowbell. And perhaps a lava lamp.
I love dragonflies. I have since, while on a fishing trip in Canada, I watched them picking off the deer flies that were driving me insane.
(not fanciful, but) You’re sitting on your deck, which faces in the direction of the center of town where there is a lovely park. It is evening in early October, you can hear the music of the Fall Festival wafting over the trees. Once the sky has darken, you see the first sparks of a starburst erupt against the night, then another and another. They’re all different colors, and they keep exploding, one after another, for a full half hour. Between the delayed booms you hear the distant crowd cheering. The street cat who likes to hang around you yard has joined you on the deck, and is purring contentedly on the glasstop table, occasionally watching a firefly and twitching its tail. The fireworks ebb and end, the music stops, and the crowd goes home. You decide to stay out as the stars become visible, now that the ambient lighting has dimmed. You start to doze, and imagine yourself among the stars, floating from one constallation to another.
That would be great.