Get Back

I did it. I shot John Lennon, and I'm going after Paul, George, and Ringo. Later, I'll tell the police that I'd woken up and realized that I had no idea how to get in touch with my high-school boyfriend and I was trying to get back to the 1980s.

Glass Houses

It wasn't until we got close to the house--we'd seen it from the highway, on our way out of town, and just couldn't pass it up--that we realized it was built of purple glass. Cinder-block-sized bricks of purple glass.

Suddenly finding ourselves on foot, we followed the driveway down and around to the back. A garage; a deck off the second floor; a couple of garbage cans--a suburban backyard tacked on to a Victorian derelict.

Back out front, the caretaker was dragging an broken badminton net to the curb. He looked like Mark Twain and spoke to us in Greek.

Inside, some neighbors from the Winstead days. Sunlight thorugh the plywood-covered windows illulminated the room: she was making a rag doll for a granddaughter; he offered us refreshments and directions.

Escape

We would escape on the river. The laundry bag, we had been told, would turn into a boat when it hit the water, but we--the two ghost-costumed children and I--we jumped too early and we almost went under before a wooden rowboat began to build itself around us.

On The Road, Almost

So I'm packing for the asteroid collision. Or maybe it's a nuclear explosion. At any rate, something is going to happen tomorrow, and intend to be ready. All the small frogs in my collection are going with us, carefully rolled up in toilet paper. I hate to leave the rest behind. I'll miss them.

The frogs will travel in a hatbox if they have to, but I want to have my hands free, and when I've put them all in my backpack, I'm pleased to find that I still have room for t-shirts and underwear.

Toy Story

I am a plastic figurine, and my role in the game is to belly-slide through a patch of clover. On the second try, there is a big bee in my way.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

Gettysburg. 1863. President Lincoln is attending the theater, attired in a suit made of an American flag.

It turns out John Wilkes Booth does a pretty good stand-up comedy routine.

When the word comes through that there has been a threat to the President's life, all in attendance draw their guns, eager to defend him, and those of us travelling with the President (e.g. me and Mark Twain) pull him down behind a balcony and escape to the parking lot.

We quickly clothe the President in the uniform of an Union soldier (I mean, really, the flag suit is a dead give-away) and hustle him into an SUV. As we peel out of the lot, I realize that someone is giving me a massage.

[Intermission to reposition George, who is running his toenails down my back in his sleep.]

The drive to our hideout takes us through some beautiful swampland. I think I see an Anhinga, but it might just be a Cormorant, I'm not really sure, and I don't have my bird book with me. I point out to the President the walruses and carnivorous rabbits.

Arrived at our hideout, I need to text my mom to tell her why I can't join her for church in the morning, but George keeps plyaing with the buttons on my iPad and I can't get the message to go through.

Little Pink Houses

Down a long, rainy path to a river, where I find a little pink house, the abode of a long-ago friend who invites me in and offers me a bed for the night. When I wake up, I argue with my mother about whether or not it is ok to put George to bed next to the dry cleaning.

In the kitchen, there is a display cabinet of Dr. Seuss books.