07 January 2003 - 12:48 pm
introducing joshua.

(experimental writing; mostly automatic. a real journal entry later.)

skies out there are blue today reports the weatherman and joshua turns away from the television looking at the rain drizzling down from the decidedly gray sky. he sighs and stops and says how are you to the plants that are wilting due to lack of water, they cluster around the television set like groupies, like addicts, peering at the screen and whispering vine-leaves graze it every once in a breeze, reverently. joshua gets up to go to the bathroom and stops in front of the window and sighs again at the rain and sits back down and waits for the telephone to ring even though he is not expecting any calls this morning this april morning this april morning at eleven fifty two am in the morning. joshua is never up this early, he knows how odd it is that he woke up when he thought he heard the alarm going and it wasn't and then slapped at a wasp buzzing by that he thought would sting him and didn't.

he puts a hat on his head and takes it off. he crosses and uncrosses his legs, then does the same with his eyes. he bites at a fingernail and eyes the phone. will it ring? probably not. it seems too dormant for that - phones that are about to ring have an air of energy, of charge, about them, as though the voice on the other end has to gather up in the receiver before it can actually muster up enough courage to ring.

fog rises from the ground outside. it's not menacing.

the phone rings and joshua pounces on it. "hello?"

there is no answer. joshua tries again. "hello, is someone there?"

"Hello, Mrs. Crack-ow-sky?"

joshua's heart sinks. "No, I'm sorry ... she's not in right now." and she won't ever be, he adds mentally.

"Is this Mr. Crack-ow-sky?" They sound it out like that, too. it's a woman. her voice reminds joshua of something disoriented. like a bird who smacks into a windowpane, unaware that there's a barrier there.

"yes," he answers. "well, no," he amends a moment later. then pauses. "sort of."

"Sort of?" The voice is disdainful.

"i'm .. well, um ... bye." joshua hangs up the phone. it beeps once.

a bird smashes into the window behind his head with a dull thud. joshua doesn't really flinch, because he'd been expecting it.

outside, the mail is delivered to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. it arrives in the form of mrs. p. dudley who drives a woodchuck stationwagon. she squeezes the white envelopes in around the sides of the other mail that hasn't been collected for months, and glances worriedly at the overgrown lawn and the dim windows. she sighs. "poor joshua," and rolls up the window and trundles on down the road.

further up the road, a telephone pole sparks and delivers a shocking message to all the houses on the street (or at least on that circuit) that electricity should not be taken for granted. the power in joshua's house is out, but he knows that it's gone out in the other houses too.

joshua thinks he knows everything.

he's often wrong.

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