Bumbles sighed as he put the book down for the final time. A curious read he thought. How could one differentiate between fact and fiction when the details of the lives of the protagonists were unknown to him? Perhaps that wasn’t the point though. Absent-mindedly he caressed the small blue disk in his pocket. Later, after a meal and a walk in the local park, he went to bed early. He ususally didn’t do this but something was pushing him to it this night. Mike was already asleep on “his” side of the bed (the end). Bumbles sleep was restless as he seemed to be wrestling with some sort of difficulty. The blue disc vibrated at a low level under his pillow pulsing heart like. In the morning Bumbles awoke feeling aweful. Nevethless he recorded his dreams as he ate breakfast. As the day progressed he felt the threads connecting the book and his dreams precipitate into an image. After supper, where Mike refused to eat even raw steak, Bumbles went for a walk in the woods beside the local river, at dusk. He always liked this time. Shadows revealing much more than just frights. What he was doing was holding the image from earlier in the day. Suddenly, after a glance into a thicket, the new connection presented itself to him. Garth rushed home to write his inspiration down. This is what he wrote:

Is There a Difference Between … ?

A mouse licking litmus paper and a nuclear bomb?

“Normal” life and death?

Nightmares and the nightmare of “normal” life?

A whale swimming in the sea and a seal swimming with plastic loops around its neck?

Electric cars and a dead child miner?

More money and the Etruscan shrew?

Spring tails and asphalt pavement

Ragnarok and Thanatos?

Mushroom mycelia and rusting bones?

A new story and a story newly told?

Egoic nuance and personal vendetta?

Denial and dialing a wrong number?

Truth, Beauty and Love and Money, Power and Choice?

Money as God and God as money?

Ecoterrorism and reading a newspaper?

Phages and a tazer?

Fertilizer and hunger going Boom?

COVID 19 and KN95 masks hanging upward?

Ghosts and stories of putrefaction?

Mystery and ARV?

Altruism in plants and farming trees?

Body torture and 2,4-dihydroxy-7-methoxy-2-1,4-benzoxazin-3(4H)-one?

Petrichor and petroleum?

The eye of the needle and sitting on an old log?

An asylum full of scientists and scientists full of asylum?

Breathing towards Mystery and AI?

Creating something new and destroying creation?

Sing a song of thirds to finish*

* Based on the book “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut

Bumbles put down his pen and looked for the blue disc. It was missing AGAIN!!

Share: