Robin Ames

There had been tiny, little, baby praying mantises clinging to grass in the swamp. I had watched them. Protected by the government, I learned in life later that it had been a crime to kill them, if I had. I did not. At the shop, the chemicals they had used way back when, did babies ever really eat the paint chips off the window sills? Did this ever happen? Today, there are no toxic emissions at all. Beijing became what Detroit had been in America in the 50’s. People die going to work, die breathing in their own apartments. Rock n Roll died. Buddy Holly died. RFK died. And so did the others. The fen and swamp that became St. Petersburg, too, killed thousands and thousands of Russian peasants. People who used to live just like human beings in medieval times who just expected themselves to be used up like stones and that was it for a human lifetime used to live like that. That’s the way it goes. It would seem to be that that’s just the way life goes sometimes, anyway. The codes I follow from the catalog just for the customers: R6 B14 C42 W13. Then shake it up on the mixer, dab a bit on the lid wet for later, blow it dry with a blow dryer, tap it down. And you’ll be good for the next seven to ten years, ma’am, sir, I tell them. And my thumbs which are turned out and are only good for milking, just like my mother’s, were never used that way for milking for thirty years in the field for that now.

 

(read & experience egbertstarr.com)