Photographing Monsters

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Photographing Monsters

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If You had Ten Minutes to do anything you wanted, would you do it?

Ten Minutes.

I'm thinking of lilacs in the summertime and orchids in purple fields. Thin cornstalks reaching upwards into a blue sky. Picture perfect. Snap. Crop. Cut into something other than what it is. I'm thinking of Yellow sunflowers dancing under a breeze. I'm thinking of a tie-dye back-drop behind poppies, and opium. I'm thinking of flowers budding in mid-spring, and wilting in winter. God's simplest example of the circle of life. Life begets death. Turns into nothing. Melts into eternity. I'm thinking of running through fields without fences, and blue skies, and blue water, with the bright sun glimmering off the reflecting water like a prism, the sun rising over tall and snow-capped mountains far away. Standing like amused statues, watching everything and nothing. I'm thinking of the quiet hum of an airplane flying overhead.. An old One-Seated World War One plane that Snoopy would have flown while trying to catch the Red Baron. Bright Red. I can hear the propeller running, slicing through serenity. This Is happiness. This is ecstasy. Pictures of fields without fences.

Snap. Crop. Cut back to reality. I'm in a car. Who's car? I don't know. Your car, maybe. Or my car. It doesn't matter. I'm not driving--like usual, I'm in the back-seat, wearing panty-hose on my head, a veil to my eyes, and my face. Nobody can see me through brown polyester. I'm invisible. I'm tired. I don't even remember how long it's been since I had good sleep. Really good sleep, the type of sleep lions, tigers, and bears get.

Suddenly I'm thinking of Judy Garland in ruby slippers singing about somewhere over the rainbow. Oh yeah, and a little dog too.

I feel butterflies deep in the pit of my gut, and I think they're having food fights with my stomach- acid because my belly, it's doing barrel rolls. Nauseous. Nervous.

Nine Minutes.

I'm thinking of Marilyn Monroe now. I'm wondering what she would look like if she was alive today. Suddenly I'm imagining her in a revealing sundress, bending over with her hands tightly clasped on her knobby knees, and her platinum hair pulled into an Amy Winehouse bun. Marilyn Monroe, the great sex symbol herself. Epitomizing the seven year itch for men around the globe. The piece of chocolate you cant afford, the delicious treat nobody could have. Supply, and demand. I'm imagining her sundress, with a big flashy red bow made of simple lace tied around her curvy waist. Suddenly, Marilyn Monroe fades into my mother, my beautiful mother, and I'm remembering all the Christmases and birthdays where I never saw a big red bow tied on a box addressed to me.

Snap. Crop. Cut back to reality.

Technology is a most brilliant thing. They created this new thing, Photoshop, which allows you to  edit, and cut people, places, anything right out of your photograph. A moment in time becomes a lie. It becomes just another fake memory.

I'm looking out the window at the Baltimore City Bank. Big marble pillars seem to hover on big marble steps leading into a big marble archway reading "A penny saved is a penny earned." I'm glad that my intelligence isn't being subdued by a Latin phrase, a "Carpe Diem", or some other assemble it yourself anagram. I'm thinking about Poor Richard's Almanac. Benjamin Franklin. Lighting rods. Did you know that lighting kills 58 people annually?

I'm looking out a window through panty-hose at a city bank. I have a rifle resting in my lap. The butt is resting right in my crotch and is pointed at no one in particular. We stop. Breath in. Breathe out. Release.