December 03, 2006

On a November day with endless, blue skies, my Visionary Indian Friend and I disappeared in the hills near Milton. The forest smelled like decay and charred meat, and we talked about girls and sorrow.

He told me what troubled his soul. I was suddenly transformed into a giant of tenderness and understanding.

“Take this dead flower,” I said. “It holds in its withered leaves a record of all that is sacred and evil about our hearts.”

“It does nothing for me,” he said, queasy and smiling with crapulence and the stench of dying meat coming from the trees. Pain is what reminds him he’s alive.