If All The World Were Jell-O (2019), Flora Yukhnovich
Hello, soulmates and forever-lovers! Have you missed your better half, your everything, your sun and moon and stars?
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been absolutely up to my ears in the blood-dimmed tide lately. I mean, right? What a mess. Literally everything I own is blood-dimmed now.
“What’s good” I texted a friend yesterday.
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned,” she texted back.
“Again?” I texted back. “Like stop going back in the water, dummy.”
“I know,” she replied. “I feel like the ceremony of innocence has Histrionic Personality Disorder.”
***
Later when I stopped by the gas station, the button that turns off the loud advertisements on the pump wasn’t working, and I thought, “Jeez, I cannot catch a break today, between this and the widening gyre.”
Could the gyre stop widening for half a second so we can get a little breather around here? Are all gyres like this? At the gyre convention, does one gyre fist-bump the other and say “Looking wider than ever, my man.”?
Anyway, I tried to shake it off. I went inside to get a snack.
“How’s it going” the gas station cashier mumbled.
“Things fall apart, you know the drill,” I said.
“Truth,” he said. “And it looks like some revelation is at hand yet again.”
“Yeah, slow down with the revelations already.”
“Word.”
But then I walked over to the candy aisle and saw this:
It’s the way it shatters that matters.
Another revelation. Motherfucker! I moved my slow thighs over to the cash register and threw the bag down on the counter.
The cashier’s gaze went from blank and pitiless to flat-out terrified.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
***
By the time I got home I was craving twenty centuries of stony sleep, but first I had to put some Aquaphor on my face. Is this widening-gyre situation making your rosacea flare up, too?
I don’t know about you, but when my face gets this red, I lack all conviction. I’m just like mere anarchy, whatever, why not just roll with it? This next darkness drop might be lit, what the fuck do I know?
I was halfway through the bag of Violet Crumbles when my phone rang.
“How’s the gyre over there?” my friend asked.
“Wider than ever,” I replied, biting into another chocolate. “But I’ve decided to embrace wide.”
“No cap,” she said. “The wider the better.”
“When do you think the indignant desert birds will get here?” I asked her through a mouthful of splintering honeycombs.
“Not sure,” she said. "But they can eat my face. I’m starting to actually look forward to it.”
“Skrrt,” I said. “Roll blood-dimmed tide!”
***
After an entire bag of Violet Crumbles and more than fifty centuries of stony sleep, I woke up in a cold sweat with a pounding headache, but my conviction was somewhat restored. I took a flu test and it was positive, but I didn’t even feel discouraged. “I’ll just write from bed,” I told myself. “It’ll be a nice vibe shift, like this low-key reeling-shadows, rough-beast trend we’ve got going on.”
My mother popped her head in the door to ask how I was feeling.
“Oh, I’m okay,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “I’m off to see Roger, but I wanted to mention before I leave that I bought a broccoli quiche for tonight, and also, just so you know, the falcon can’t hear the falconer.”
“He can’t hear him yet” I corrected her. “But apparently the falconer is going to wear pink tonight so the falcon will pay a little more attention and fix his bad attitude.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea!”
“And the falconer is also going to hold up a little round sign that says ‘THIS IS NOT NORMAL!’”
“Wow,” my mom said, squinting. “That’s a little harsh.”
“I know. Maybe he should’ve started with ‘Sorry to interrupt!’ or ‘This isn’t urgent, but when you have a second…’”
“I agree. You have to be realistic. I mean, how long could the center possibly hold anyway?”
“Right. Centers don’t just hold forever.”
“Exactly. Anyway, make sure to get plenty of sleep.”
Sleeping is always the best call when you’re sick. Twenty, fifty, a thousand centuries of stony sleep? Whatever it takes! Consciousness, free will, action, rights and liberties: all very overrated.
You can’t be healthy — or happy or halfway sane — forever. Things fall apart. Just remember, it’s the way it shatters that matters.
Thanks for reading Ask Molly! Your forever-bestie thrives through rough beasts and flu, thanks to loyal subscribers like you!
I read this and put my hands in my face and cried. Ash Wednesday indeed. Well, they may call Alabama the Blood-Dimmed Tide, so call me Deacon Midnight Blues.
Sick Molly can soothe and heal.
I'm sick too. Some sort of reaction to a reaction. I've also been writing from my sick bed. Had a piece published about brave young protesters who took over an arm manufacturing plant here that is supplying sniper rifles to you-know-where to kill you-know-who. Think little kids. So children are trying to save children and that heartens me.
I love bad Molly. I now have a wee pension so this poor author might actually upgrade to paid. And please anyone who has pity, buy The Seasonwife. Decades of work to produce my first novel at the ripe young age of 63. I'm now 65 and knocking out the next novel. Most often from a sick bed. But I will rally. Chocolate and sleep, the perfect recipe for oblivion.
The Ask Molly sub-stack gives me hope in the way that horror films give me hope, in the way that we are living the horror, so we need to beep truths to call in the light.
Thank you whoever you are wherever you are. I'm laid up in Aotearoa New Zealand. If I open the window I can just hear the sea calling and she thanks you too.