March 18, 2000

We came across a singularly interesting carnival just off I-69 on our way from the Garden Games down in Santa Clara this weekend. Mary was the usual stowaway. Not sure how long this meta-stable driving setup will last but I've tried hard not to rock the boat or even breathe at times.

I say "singularly interesting" due to the huge ferris wheel that dwarfed the Western sky when we came around the bend, and discovered the carnival. 5:35 p.m. The best I could gather was that Mary wasn't due home until 9:00 or so.

The Wheel of Fate loomed large on that there horizon. As Carol once jabbed, in one of many weak moments, "Take a chance," although I doubt if she'd appreciate the misquote in this instance.

By the time Mary and I parked the car and walked across the grass field to the carnival entrance it was well into twilight, and post dusk by the time we purchased tickets and settled into the amusement scene.

A Fellini-like fantasy: Satanic clowns, possessed children hooked on cotton candy, demented horses dancing feverishly in circles, and that gigantic ferris wheel to lift us out of there for a spell when my level of intoxication grew critical. Huddled with Mary high above the noise and facing West, my condition shifted from critical into well past the danger zone.

My mouth is gaping with cupid shooting me not with arrows but with a rifle, a continuous string of love's poison filling up my brain. Only seconds before I explode, covering foreground, Mary, notebook, camera, everything with a fine layer of crystallized love.

Give the little girl a prize, a stuffed, prancing pony. Give her the biggest one.