Topsy-Turvy
It was a cool night as far as the last few had been. The air was as limp as the people; listless, constantly shifting, never quite finding that comfortable spot. Everything was dulled, gauzy; like how your hearing gets after a day of swimming: underwater.
Heavy jazz notes drifted into my kitchen on and off again, a radio not quite tuned into the right station. Bright bursts shouldered out the dampening buzz of the a/c's, bringing the music just to the verge of awareness.
This soundtrack had most likely been there all evening, subtly orchestrating my perception.
It was a brief vignette in a David Lynch film.
I gave the phone an idle glance.
I half-expected Robert Blake to be on the other end...
Topsy-turvy
!
My mind buzzed with the static-cling of memory.
It was any summer day of a million when I was a kid. The August dampness had soaked into everything of my grandparents' apartment. I was sorting comics and baseball cards. I’d just been to Henry's candy store on the corner of 19th and Francis Lewis. It was a Halloween haul and a Christmas morning; everything fresh and new. I remember the greedy anxiousness of unwrapping the tightly-glued plastic wrappers, the smell of the ink from the comics. The bubblegum, an unnatural pink banished from nature. Hard and tough as gas station jerky. Its sickly-sweet smell perfuming the room.
I think that's what it was. The smell. And setting my clothes in piles on the bed. The dim mugginess of my room against the comforter I had on my bed as a kid.
Damn. the whole world was just that moment then.
So. Freakin'. Small.