poorboyoftroy

What signal did the otherwise dormant katydids receive this past week notifying them that it is time again to awaken and take up occupancy in DC?  They are out in droves, he noticed, perched in the elms and dogwoods along Wilson Blvd, hunkered down in the oak trees of Farragut Square Park, and ensconced, he assumed, in the balance of DC's ample greenspace that he never sees.  The infernal chorus, which lasts somewhere between 5-20 seconds with intervals of roughly equivalent length, no doubt shocks tourists as it did him during his first summer here two years ago.  At that point, his body was still grasping for equilibrium with the punishing mid-Atlantic climate.  He was trying to determine the sacred ratio all DC-ites who manage to live and work here year-round seem to know: how much exposure/in what type of clothes, multiplied by a coefficient for level of exertion = a relative level of comfort in this ambient extremity?   The katydid chorus only seemed to a...

...at the seam by some sibylline strength at imperceptible speed.  Projecting that sound on to a two-dimensional plane dangling in front of the Walmart semi storming south carelessly through the corner of SE Morrison and Grand, he saw the gaping seam transform into a portal on the other side of which lay the perimeter of space and time.  There was no more proper way to conceive of death than as a radical repositioning of the self.  Best not to dwell on its organic realities.  Never a process, always a new geography.  That was death. But he didn't pass through that plane, not this time or any time before.  The adrenaline that had flooded his system for a split-second subsided as he realized the semi had passed and that he had, regardless, remained firmly planted on the sidewalk, toes akimbo.  Most Portlanders, being non-native, couldn't remember a time when this neighborhood had not been the province of pedestrians but of commerce-serving trucks that...