TEMPLE HQ
THIS DREAM AGAIN, DEJA VU!
1-26-2022
Water flows down clogged gutters to pool in that half of the lawn left to putrefy in stagnant breeding ponds, sidewalk to the door slick in the bellyfat of toads hopping across to the deepgrass on the other side, an ecosystem already birthed in the first views of the lawn where insects feed on the corpse of a stomped-under “this is disgusting!” as the neighbor lashed against the blight.
A couch rots to soil substratum growing in the carpet culturing mycelium while he takes another hit off the joint and shuts his eyes into the moss and moldstained wallpaper melting to birdfeed and ratchew.
“Spread it, spread it” offal and cereal byproducts spread on the ground for the mouths of the earth. I’ve seen spontaneous generation firsthand in this house - carbon upon carbon was yoked to dead matter and he took it as his mission to return it, to turn dead matter transformed into putrid matter, composting the impossible one by one.
There’s a careful balance to be kept, to manage pestilence without letting one force predominate. The human intellect is key to constructing the ecosystem, scourging brutally species with no competition or which cannot live in symbiosis with others. I’ve seen his management of cockroaches and bedbugs. I never want to think about that again.
I’ve seen deer torn apart with bare hands and his teeth bloody alongside coyotes and raccoons as he taught them to feed on the weak and crawling things. Naked, he restored honor to the sharp-toothed and front-eyed things of the roadside wood.
What is plastic but a corpse desecrated? A corpse desecrated is always still a corpse and through some hidden alchemy, can be returned to a form that may be putrefied into the Earth. I’ve seen all colors of the dyeworks return to the rich brown of the soil in his hands. I heard some students from the university wanted to study him, though he couldn’t let them. He wouldn’t explain, but I knew why. His business partners among the good folk wouldn’t appreciate it.
“It’s all a mere intermediary, from one intermediary to a future one.” He once said to me, as he burned engineered lumber upon a dry mound centered in the backyard. “That’s what they don’t realize. They want it to last, they don’t let it crumble. They don’t let it get wet or dusty or fall apart. But that’s when we blossom, do you understand? Soil needs death. Roots dig into the ribcage and eat the organs - that’s what rot is. There’s no such thing as decay - only a transformation from one material to another. That’s the key. That’s the Earthen key.”