The Still Mobile

I am at a huge convention, an awards ceremony. This used to be a smaller affair but has grown tremendously in the last few years. I used to know everybody here, but now there are celebrities and thousands of fans packed into an open arena. I am still welcome due to my long friendship with the organizers, but really, nobody knows who I am. I choose to fly over the crowd and take pictures, sometimes flying in low for intimate face shots, but also fly so high I can see the whole stadium and its surroundings, a tropical locale. There is a power failure and the show can’t start. The television crews are wondering what to do, and there is mild panic amongst the 50,000 or so people in the crowd. I dart around while my friends try to solve the problem, but finally the show must be cancelled and the people leave. From my high viewpoint I watch the orange sun set into the ocean, the land below gets darker but the red carpet, where the famous are walking is illuminated, seemingly by the stars themselves.
I meet Demi Moore, of all people. She asks me to show her the floating Pose of Awareness as she has heard this is the most relaxing yoga position. She is more beautiful in person than in photographs I think, but her ridiculously inflated breasts seems cartoonish. I tell her to tilt her head back and let her body fall back into the air; it’s like teaching someone to float in the water. Her feet are heavy and sink down, she says she is too stressed out and worried about the paparazzi seeing her this way, so she gives up and moves on.
The sun has set and the stadium roof closed over; I am now floating inside a large, old, tin-sided warehouse. Jackson, my son, calls out to me, but I tell him not to bother me now. The warehouse interior is covered with lichen and is dank– Spanish moss hangs from the framework of the ceiling. I look back and see that Jackson just wanted me to join him for dinner, and it makes me very sad that I was angry with him and missed this chance. I tear up.
I see that the floor of the warehouse is dirt and has been dug up, excavated carefully like an archaeology site. The people left from the convention are working to pull out the odd finds, which mostly seem to be Mormon torture devices made from wood and metal, artifacts of the dirty history of the cult.
The Spanish moss has grown longer and longer, covered with burrs and sticky with black molasses. Hundreds of people hang stuck like flies to flypaper, their blank faces peeking out of the vines, their bodies rest no fight.
In the warehouse the still mobile are busy cataloging the torture devices. This is a room filled with ancient death and the humidity of failure. Among the workers are my three living brothers. My oldest brother Skip ask me about a record player, which reminds him of one he had when he was a teenager. My father is there to, he is dying and has decided to leave his house to Skip, and this makes me jealous but at the same time I feel happy to be done with it.
Demi Moore appears again, her hair pulled back tightly and wearing a white lab coat, she carries a clipboard and is checking off items as they are pulled from the dirt. I focus on an open, wooden toilet seat with leather belts attached to it and wonder, “Why?” Ms. Moore turns to leave, and most of the people seem to have left as well, or maybe have been caught up in the vines, which now hover about 8 feet off the ground. Some of the people, including my brothers have figured out how to fashion the vines into a shelter by pushing up on them into a matte, with a dome shaped roof they can safely sleep inside.
I look at the emotionless faces of the the people stuck in the vines. There is no sound and I think music will save them. A song comes to me, the lyric is “Catch her, catch her, I wish I had met her, now will be a better time.” But the song is too moody and does not help their plight. Is there nothing I can do?