I'm falling-down drunk off Time again, off the endless succession of events...

     Feeling trapped forever in the tiny cell of the Present Moment, a bit of self-conscious consciousness wedged in a one-horse bubble of Possibility busily tracing its forgettable path through unpasteurized white noise...

     Tapping again on pixel-infected walls...

     Pasting the rainbow sheen in my scrapbook before the bubble bursts....
 
 
 

     We humans don't seem to be terribly attuned to What Is, but we do an ok job of noticing Changing Conditions - provided they unfold neither too rapidly nor too slowly but Just So.
     The hand that's quicker than the eye can still rob Awareness blind no matter how many security cameras one puts up.
     Images trapped in Kodachrome amber transform my-you-look-lovelies into my-gawd-did-we-ever-really-dress-like-thats with the honk of a passing eon.
     Somewhere in between, we live our lives, we climb our days, one plodding little thought at a time.
     Like disembodied penlights touring our very own personal midnight grand canyons while strapped atop arthritic mules.

     If any of us sees farther than others, it is only because we were lucky enough to be strapped to the shoulders of mules wearing my-gawd-did-we-ever-really-dress-like-that high heels....
 
 
 

     The sunny, 75 degree weather of Monday has become the snowy, 35 degree weather of today.
     Yesterday's relentless rain has stripped the pretty leaves from the trees.
     Sunday's clock change has suddenly given us Midnight at 6 PM.

     Did anyone get the license plate number of that late model November-brand 2 x 4 that hit me in the head?
 
 
 

     Marilyn Monroe died in Los Angeles on August 5, 1962 at the age of 36.
     Last week, approximately 37 years later (or 13,597 days, to be exact), the auction house known as Christie's began auctioning off her personal possessions in New York City.
     Her 1956 temporary driver's license sold for $145,000.
     Six snapshots of her pet dog sold for $222,500.
     The dress she wore to sing "Happy Birthday" to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (American politician;  May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963) sold for more than $1.25 million.

     A new California temporary license costs $12.
     Six snapshots of my cat, Jester, can be had for $85 (I chose the shots).
     Nine out of ten doctors agree:  Whoever paid $1.25 million for a secondhand dress must have been awfully naked in the head....
 
 
 

     They even auctioned off her potholders.
 
 
 

     I didn't get them.
 
 
 

     But seeing them displayed in all their stained glory on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather last week made me stop and think.
     Did they sell her potato peeler, too? 
     Her last half-used roll of paper towels?
     Her used paper towels??

     Whatever happened to Clark Gable's potholders?
     When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman go out and buy potholders today, are they buying potholders that future generations will be proud to compete for?
     How much would someone pay for a borrowed rag grabbed in haste and used just once to save Madonna's smoking rolls?

     The mind boggles aerobically.
     Every famous person has stuff.
     History is full of famous people.
     Where is all that stuff now? 
     Is there enough money in all the world for each of us to get our little piece of it?

     Can modern science pinpoint the exact moment transubstantiation occurs and an item in a store like any other suddenly becomes Possessed By Greatness?  Is it the moment it is first spotted by Greatness?  Touched by Greatness?  Or must a thinner-than-a-wafer receipt pass from trembling clerk hand unto the Hand Of Greatness before the change is consummated?
     Where are all those receipts right now?

     And what if Greatness returns an item?  What then?  Can any item once Touched By Greatness ever really be the same again? 
     Is there a halfway house or a ten-step program to help its rejected molecules readjust to life among the common?
     And what of the receipts?  The poor receipts!  Are they confiscated (and possibly stamped!) by mortal hands?  Possibly even by temps??
     Though it may seem irrational to some, I take refuge now in my faith that Greatness simply needs no receipt....
 
 
 

     As the machine next to my bed beeps out the irregular sounds of my never-ending ennuigram, the womb of dreams inside my head secretly conceives comforting scenes of a better world...
     A world in which the Kleenex of Valentino rains down on us all from the sky
     While children frolic in the toothbrushes of Madam Curie or Lincoln
     And all the sink clogs in all the tenement buildings on this earth
     Are caused by the myrrh-scented hair of Cleopatra
     Or the highly-collectable pubic curls of Jean 
     Harlow....