How long has it been, anyway?

This is a large, sprawling, maze-like house (Brain really has no interest in simple architecture) and it has been repurposed as an antique store. The displays are both commercial and artistic, with lots of places where the shopper may rearrange large quantities of things—tiles, books, etc.—in decorative ways.

I am engaged in just such rearranging, at a shelf of tiny hardcover books, when somehow—perhaps by no more elaborate means than promotion or externalization of an interior monologue—I am now being questioned in Socratic dialog. The questioner is an attractive and authoritative middle-aged male who is at least in part a Fisher-Price Little Person. He is asking my opinions about socio-ethical stuff. Just now the dialog has come to: "So why do we teach our children [to share—toys, parental affection, etc.] in this fashion?"

The questioner is sitting behind a counter and across a large room, much larger than the cited house could accommodate; this space is more like a public accommodation, a bank or retail space or library. Despite the line of questioning, and despite the several other figures surrounding the questioner who are closely attending the exchange, there is no sense that the space is a courtroom or that this is in any way a civil or official proceeding.

My response to the childhood sharing question is an explicit confirmation of what my previous dialog (now lost) had suggested: We teach children to share so they don't end up killing each other. This response causes a real or imagined stir among the questioner's group, and I wonder, in quick succession, (1) whether my answer will convince the panel I am a sociopath; and (2) whether I am a sociopath. But hereupon the session peters out and the panel behind the counter disperse chaotically (think Alice mentioning Dinah to the caucus animals). I wander thither curiously—after all, it has not been explained why I was being questioned in the first place—but only a couple people remain and no one seems to remember I was being interviewed. In fact, they appear to be staffing a desk or counter in Morris Library, on the Lower Level, approximately where Government Documents used to begin.

So I wander the Lower Level, which here is mostly an office-and-cubicle maze resembling every newsroom ever depicted in the movies. I wander back through the T stacks (or where the T stacks were in the '90s). I see, and possibly exchange small talk with, some strangers. At one point I pass through a space I had already come through in the other direction, with a doorway whose door opens only maybe a foot wide, and I wonder, "How do large people even fit through here?" It didn't seem this narrow the first time through.

A short while later I am talking with the woman who has hired me back. We try to work out when I first left UD employ. How long has it been, anyway? Unfortunately it is not clear what year it is now or what year I left. Memory is tumultuous and unreliable. I consider it might be 10 years, or 13 years, or 17 years. (Note: IRL it has been 21 years and 1 month since I left my job in Hugh M. Morris Library at University of Delaware.) She notes the library contained a lot of physical books back then—much different than today.

Wandering the "stacks" morphs into wandering through a vast department store. Here I am scheduled to meet up with an old friend, possible Nathan Seney. I haven't seen him since he moved away and I've never met his two children, whom he's bringing along. He appears on cue—but 3 seconds before he does, another old friend shows up, and I am stuck acting out another reunion—this one with J.W., or possibly his son who is magically the same person his father was at his age (way more so than Yahweh and Jesus ever were), or possible Specimen (Aaron Michael Adams)—in any case, somebody with bleach-tipped hair with whom I was infatuated circa 1988. This guy is immediately physical—reunion means a lot of kissing—and he thus usurps the reunion I had been waiting for. By the time I can pause or cut short his reunion and turn my attention to [Nathan], the latter's sons have grown completely bored with waiting and have run off to play elsewhere in the store. Ok, fine, I don't get to meet them, but I have a nice reunion with their father anyway. 

Throughout this scene the identities of the two guys I'm reuniting with are slippery. Facial recognition is tumultuous and unreliable.

Some footage has been lost, but in the next surviving scene I am hanging out with two other guys [the social vibe is vaguely Matt Esterly and Dave Onuschak, but it's not really they]. Brain is still playing out a "since I left Newark" theme. We pause at a table on the sidewalk in front of a café–cum–party house. NotMatt goes into the café and NotDave sits down with me. He is agitated or anxious for reasons unknown. I pull out my pack of cigarettes and fetch out one for each of us; in the process of which, an unfiltered stub—not an extinguished butt, just a weird 1-inch-long tobacco fatty of unknown origin—falls out and into NotDave's lap. NotDave doesn't smoke much, but this is not the first time I've lit a cigarette for him. It may not even be the first time I've lit this cigarette for him. Time is tumultuous and unreliable.

After much more socializing and camaraderie, I'm left momentarily alone on a suburban lawn at dusk. It is almost but not quite Aunt Arlene's front lawn. Over by the house, I grab a (the?) decoratively etched metal disk—like a manhole cover but wider and nowhere near as heavy; I set it down on as flat a space in the lawn as I can find, sit down on it, and spin. (It feels much like spinning the car I had to myself on my recent twirl on the "Octopus" a.k.a. "Monster" a.k.a. "Spider" ride at Cedar Point, once the ride had stopped and my car was still up in the air.)

The guy I was most recently hanging out with comes back over: this one is apparently an ex-boyfriend. Brain appears to have modeled him on Chris, the beautiful Mediterranean-looking guy I waited tables with at Peppers and who later bartended at J.R.'s. He is cheerful and sweet. He tells me: "Don't wear that thing out, I'm gonna need to be spinning on it for years." We settle in to lounging together on the metal disk, in the process of which his short leather centurion's skirt opens, affording me ample space to rim him. He tells me he really missed me when I left town—how long has it been, anyway?—and that I definitely could have come back and "done that" to him at any time after my departure occasioned our breakup.

I had not suspected as much, and now that he tells me, I truly rue the missed opportunity. I do so while flitting through some sort of hippy bazaar in Newark—lots of beads and baubles and batiked scarves, incense burning everywhere—and through the Imaginary Deer Park—the one with a mall entrance on one side and a haunted house queue on the other side where the hostess table should be (just now empty)—and all the while, Brain is improvising a mid-tempo sugar-pop song whose refrain is "If it's not too late..."

Just now... well, before the hard-boiled eggs.

I am at a beach location, clearly a busy tourist area, but it doesn't feel like Florida. I think I remember somebody saying Texas. I wouldn't know what that feels like since I've never been to a beach in Texas. But here I am; I've been here a while, combining work and leisure, because despite being here to work on a proposal, there just hasn't been much to do. Something is funky about the proposal; we all think it's moribund or unwinnable or both but until something definitive happens we are bound to work it.

Walter and Don both dropped acid some time ago. At some point I hear Walter talking to someone he's just met about having "committed suicide" last year. I consider the oddness of using that phrase to mean an unsuccessful attempt—but he certainly committed an act, whether it was completed or not, so I decide the usage is fine. Walter appears to have been saved by a natural display of beauty that convinced him to live instead of die. The display was a sort of "aurora oceanis", an orange or salmon-colored show of lights dancing above the shoreline, caused by krill (Walter doesn't use this word and I don't think of it at the time, but it's clear from the color) that are borne on a cycle of subterranean water currents (as if the ocean continues under the land) and expressed into the air through evaporation of water near the shore. This phenomenon (doo doooo de doo doo) is not happening right now, but I either remember or imagine it happening, over yonder on that beach. Right behind the mountain range.

Geology is not Brain's strong suit.

I am aware of a group of young folk nearby talking about having had to repair an old junker, er, classic car, twice—seemingly just today. I am in something like an all-purpose room—church hall?—or waiting room, just eavesdropping. I don't think it is the put-upon car owners but some other group (including Darrius from NOLA) who are talking reverently about a "The Wire"-like television show with a popular but unofficial surname after a main character, something like "The Travels of Bobby Burma Shave". It's not that, but neither is it "The Travels of Jimmy McNutty". Whatever the show is, I *love* it and, hearing others gushing, now I want to binge re-watch, availing myself of all ephemera. I tell myself I need to shop online for "definitive companion" books, compendia of trivia, criticism and analysis.

I see Don walking past, heading down a side-arcade in a retail complex, and I call his name. It is the first time I've caught up to him since he dosed early in the day. I have conflicting feelings about Don (who is not quite Don Gordon, my deeply ill-advised unrequited love from Newark in the '90s). Mostly I cannot help finding him beautiful as a complete package: pretty, hippified, WSYWIG, even-keeled, thoughtful, mindful. If there ever was an argument for the existence of the human soul, it was Don. (Spoiler: there's not.)

After checking each other's wellness, he tells me with a hint of embarrassment that he'd like to consult the local papers for places to live—it's his first visit here and he already wants to move here. He tells me he has had a really nice trip but doesn't attempt to describe it. "I'm glad you got a chance to drop today," I tell him. (I myself did not dose.) "It was a gorgeous day." Indeed, it still is, with the light just beginning to dim. I'm still thinking about those salmon-colored lights and I wonder if Don has ever seen them. It would be great to see them while peaking.

Don mentions he was with or peripheral to the folks who needed to get the car fixed (just one of the two times). Then he wonders aloud how Bill (the boss) feels about the current solicitation. Does he just want it to be canceled by the customer so everyone can stop working on a losing bid? Yeah, Bill totally does want cancellation, I tell Don as we stroll around a green beachfront dorm-style building. That's what we all want, I tell him. Cancellation.

A Baseball Story

Let me tell you a story. It's not a long story, and there are illustrations. 

There was once a grumpy old man named Gordon who wanted to renew his season tickets to his local baseball team. One fine summer's day he received an email telling him how to do this. 

Gordon's grumpy old heart was filled with joy. He immediately clicked on the place in the email that read "Click here...". A new tab magically opened in his browser. It showed him a video! An exciting video! When the video was done a new screen appeared.

"Look," said Gordon, "It says 'CLICK TO RENEW NOW'. I shall click there." Gordon clicked there.

"Oh," said Gordon. "This is my log-in screen. Well, I guess I better log in!" Gordon clicked "LOGIN".

"Well, isn't that funny," said Gordon. "I now need to choose between my active account and a bogus one that the Nationals organization created by mistake in 2011 or thereabouts. Well, that's ok, I'll just click LOG IN on my real account." Gordon clicked LOG IN on his real account.

"Goodness!" said Gordon, "Here is another screen urging me to renew now by clicking here! There certainly is no shortage of these screens. Well, one must work hard for anything good that one wants. I'll click where it says OK." Gordon clicked where it said "OK".

"Um," said Gordon. "So the sole effect of clicking on the last pop-up was to make the pop-up disappear and reveal the 'Overview' screen where there is YET ANOTHER place I need to click to renew now. I don't mind telling you, I'm a little annoyed at this process. But what the hell, I'll click it." Gordon clicked where is said "CLICK TO RENEW NOW."

"Oh my motherfucking Christ, fuck this shit," said Gordon. Gordon fucked this shit. And he lived happily every after.

The more books you have, the more haunted you are, and other proverbs

Roze and I are preparing for a party. We are in a house that is partly 31 Thompson Circle, partly my grandparents house at 505 Edgewood Avenue in Collings Lakes, New Jersey, and partly a horror movie set with at least three floors and an attic. Preparation is cleaning and putting our own daily *stuff* out of the way, in cupboards and closets and whatnot.

Folks arrive early and we do greetings in the front room. Lorie brings some small reptiles, which actually be either insects that look like reptiles or mechanical geegaws—the mystery is profound—and I tell her I believe I have seen these on TV somewhere—perhaps Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, perhaps a commercial thereamidst. We find a place to house and/or display these on the bookshelves.

On a provisioning run, I seem to be in line at a deli counter and there are two staff behind the counter fulfilling orders. it's unclear whether there is one line or two. When I look away for a few seconds, some guy has wandered up close behind the clearly-almost-done person at the second station of the counter. Fortunately the line police are there and shoo him away.

But when it's my turn to order, it turns out it's a grocery line and I have a bunch of stuff to ring up. Except I could not find the coffee and so like an idiot I ask the cashier—only I don't ask for a pound of coffee; in the moment I apparently forget how coffee is packaged and sold, and I ask for a half-gallon of coffee beans. As if she has the coffee beans behind the counter and will dispense it. She gives me a look. And she takes me to where, in the store, the coffee lives: with bulk foods. It's a sort of health-food/coöp-y place, apparently. And damn, don't I need lentils. And some of this, and some of that. I worry I am holding up the line but I need all these other bulk foods besides coffee. I'm preparing for a party, after all! When I get back to the line, it turns out she has put my order on hold and helped everyone else, and there's no line at all.

Back at the house, I can't find my wallet. Surely I had it in the store; I hope I haven't left it there. No, I tell myself—hazy on the chronological sequence of my recent actions—I've left it in some clothes I was wearing. Probably that jacket I put away. Where did I put that jacket away? I think it was in the attic closet.

So I trudge up to the attic, where Rob is staying. He is annoyed with me and he makes no pretense otherwise. I ask him what the matter is. It seems to be two things having to do with stuff I've written lately. The first is some sort of observations about "life in the country"; he is irked that I have had the audacity to say anything on the topic, as if I could know what it's like. As if the first exit west (on, seemingly, the Pennsylvania Turnpike) qualifies as "the country". Only he says "the mountains". Clearly one has to go further west to find actual mountains; and once there, one must spend far more time than my casual visit(s) to say anything worthwhile and pertinent about them.

The second thing he's annoyed about is the dream I recently wrote down. (Note to self: exploit recusrion.) I ask what was wrong with it. He said it was full of "black exhibitionism". I tell him that my dream had lots of black people in it and I simply wrote down what they said—how they said they felt—and how they behaved. He seems pacified by this. I say this as if I had been watching a movie or TV show—someone else's fiction—rather than Brain having been the author of the black people in my dream. Neither Rob nor I actually notice that this is nonsense I'm spouting. Because we have White Privilege.

I check the closet where I hung my coat, but it is crammed full of multiple copies of board games—Monopoly, Scrabble, and Ooh the Game of Life. I think to check the narrow door next to the closet—I can't remember what this door is, exactly... back stairs? attic, level 2? By now Roze has joined me, and when I open the door we are reminded that there is an enormous disused library in the center of the house: despite that the rest of the house is full of bookshelves, this was apparently once the house's central library. It stretches from ground floor to far above the attic (don't even bother): the top looks very Disney Haunted Mansion. The labyrinthine staircases (more Eberbach than Hogwarts) are all in extreme disrepair; banks of bookcases sit like islands at all levels, inaccessible.

I had forgotten this was here, says Roze, echoing my thoughts. By now the strange amorphous space has gotten stranger and even closer to a Disney attraction: dead things frolic through the air. Roze and I, with one brain or two, ponder the vast, elaborate haunting we have chosen to have in our midst, in the center of our house. It's always seemed benign enough, I offer; and Roze says, Till it's not. I mean, look at that! And she points to a ghoulist horse floating through the air chomping on a human's neck. Though they are both dead and ghostly, an horrific gush of vivid crimson blood issues forth. Brain tries to figure it out: either it is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by neighbors, or it is real and we live with the risk of such monstrous Raimian forces o'ercrowing their library dungeon and threatening the wellbeing of us residents.

We shut the door.

Later, the party is in full boisterous swing. I am talking to an unspecified friend and I find myself tongue-tied. I explain I am just a little... (the moment in Bedazzled where Stanley Moon searches for a word that means "inarticulate" does not occur to me) and my friend offers "party-weary?" That'll do. There are two other people I don't know and don't trust conversing loudly right beside us, and I do not have the gumption to out-shout them to talk to my friend. When they leave, though, I explain—because he has stated he is a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, that I have a bunch of tickets for upcoming games; also a bunch of concerts. Apparently I scored a lot of tickets on some kind of discount service. I haul out my folder of tickets and find not one but two Simon and Garfunkel concert (one is past and I've missed it), a concert by an artist who may or may not be Mel Tormé... a bunch of others. Somehow my acquisition of these tickets has to do with my visit to what Robi has disdained as "not the mountains".

A short while later, I decide to play piano; but I'm vastly intoxicated and that is selom a good idea. Anyway, I sit down and improvise what I think should be nice, warm jazz chords. Nice, warm jazz chords come out. Like Chief Dan George says at the end of Little Big Man, Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. Delaware punks are in the house now, as is Mike Raney, who calls me "Lucy"—by way of Vince Guaraldi's music for "Peanuts", I suppose, but I don't think what I'm playing really sounds like Guaraldi. Anwyay, Mike starts singing along, scatting a slow viper drag-like groove. We duet. It sounds ok. By the end of the number, I'm playing books, not keys.

Lastly, at a far corner of the field (most likely the park described by Madison Drive in Newark, Del.), in an episode of Star Trek, two high-ranking non-human (Romulan?) characters are decreeing that a young man must die. The young man was slated to be promoted, perhaps coronated, to a position of great power, but he has been misled and betrayed. The leading Romulan figure is a young woman played by Masatoshi Nagase, and she calls him "Carl Perkins": "I am sorry, Carl Perkins; you cannot be the Imperial Commander. That role belongs to..." 

The guy they're *really* promoting is another young man, handsome and vulpine, but I do not catch his name. Not "Elvis". Not "Macbeth". There is some sort of high-tech transference of energy from Carl Perkins to his successor in fortune, and I am a functionary in this sci-fi rite, and having touched Carl Perkins (the death touch? it is not clear) I and up with a vivid colored pattern on my index finger: a center of bright metallic gold against a field of dark but still vibrant green. This, I suggest to Carl Perkins's successor, ought to adorn his beard. This is apparently not de rigueur, just symbolic. Hold still, I tell him, but his head twitches just as I make to applique him and it ends up smudged. 

Close enough, I tell him. Frankly, he's still adorable—I mean, as murdering, smudge-bearded politicians go.

How to Go to Outer Space

It is time for the launch, and everybody is heading over to the observation deck. I've never seen the observation deck but apparently they have a dress code. A while ago an unpleasant work-interpersonal thing happened and I flounced, left the work area, changed out of work clothes into shorts and have since been napping in a corridor away from the team's busywork. Now the entire team is filing past me to go see the launch; big- and middlewigs exert vague authority to get me to go along; lesserwigs give me guilt and try to share their own excitement.

The cajoling works and I tell them I will be there; but I need to change first. My mind wanders through the immediate future: what will the actual view be like? Have native geek engineers made the observation deck look like a Star Trek bridge? Will I feel the final moments of anticipation in my chest? By what chimaeric grafting of language will I balance pride and humility when recounting the moment to family and friends?

But first: where the hell are my pants? I have to change before heading to the observation deck, and I bleeb I left my work clothes in a closet all the way on the other side of this vast operations building. (We must be on Kennedy Space Center, though neither that name nor "NASA" is never spoken.) When I get back to the lounge area—exterior windowed wall running 70 feet along cozy conglomerations of comfy chairs and dining tables—Jaeger and maybe five other folks are sitting around a table rehearsing Pitoni's Cantate Dominum. I breeze past and open the closet. Here are my clothes, but the trousers I wanted are not here.

No matter: since the launch represents the actual end of this project, I need to get my shit out of here anyway, so I grab all the clothes of the hangers and drape them across an arm. Jaeger's group takes a break so Jaeger chats me up about how they sound.

I never make it to the launch, of course. The next thing I remember I am in the house I grew up in, in the master bedroom, or what passed for a master bedroom, by virtue of it being the largest room on the second floor. I'm sitting on the bed talking to Adam. The conversation is convivial but ominous notes are creeping in, suggesting that all is not well. I am relaying a recipe, and when I mention adding water, Adam interrupts, 'Well, water's off limits now.' 

Apparently I'm behind on the news and all the water is contaminated. 'Huh, they were still drinking it in Florida,' I say, but now I wonder if it was safe even back then. And now everything is disaster or portent thereof: I watch Adam talking and laughing but I think his eyes look sunken; and a casual, minor cough means he's gravely ill. It's clearly time to wake up.

Scenes from the Glass Struggle in Gourdes Brain

Scene 1. I am lying in a bed with many people, Eskimo style. Next to me is Donald Trump. We are talking about trivialities, not politics; it is not even evident that Donald is President, or a celebrity, or a sociopath—he's just some guy. Our conversation is friendly. (I believe Brain is trying to tell me it cannot possibly be as bad as all that. Brain lies. But shame on me for waxing editorial so early.)

I roll over to go to sleep, but Donald is in teasing mode: he says, "Why are your hips doing that?" which doesn't make much sense until he starts slapping my upper thigh rhythmically, which causes my leg to go into a sort of vibrating stasis, like a tuning fork. It doesn't tickle exactly, but it feels and looks so weird it makes me laugh out loud. This gets other people looking and they start slapping each other's thighs to achieve the same effect. The entire bed ends up laughing at what their legs are doing.

Scene 2. I am drinking with two guys who simultaneously are and are not Joe and Bill. The evening of drinking is built on a combination of supplies that I had in the house and some additional beer that the boys brought over. It's getting late and Joe has gone downstairs, presumably to scrounge up more bev. I am looking at what I have left upstairs: two beers. They are arranged on a tray with that I take to be empties but really the space next to the beers is itself empty—no content, just a rectangular form. Depending on what Joe has found downstairs (we had thought there was enough wine left for maybe two glasses) we each have either 1 or 2 drinks left (Bill is not drinking for some reason). I wonder what's keeping Joe and I head downstairs to check on him. 

There is a large duffel the lowest riser of the stairs, which Joe keeps moving so as to corral a pet—I realize I have been assuming a dog, but I am not sure whether it's a dog or cat or something else entirely. I step over the duffel and take my clothes off on a whim—I believe Joe is in the easy chair over yonder watching TV and my thought is to surprise him by jumping naked into his lap. But he is not in the chair. I look around and cannot find him. The space is now my grandparents' trailer (Lot 8, Mullica Mobile Manor) from the 1970s and '80s, and I realize Joe is in the main bathroom (his chair and the TV are in what was my grandparents' dining room). 

My drink is now an outsize cocktail glass, like one of those Margarita monstrosities from chain Mexican places. I have set it down on the coffee table; and as I hear Joe finishing up in the bathroom—running water shut off and so forth—for some reason it is important that I have that cocktail glass in my hand when he sees me. I rush back over to the coffee table and barely manage to pick up the glass by its side, with two fingers, as I hear Joe outen the light and slide the pocket door open. There follows an acrobatic flip of the glass, which I catch in my other hand, spilling none of its contents: an amazing cinematic effect that results in my standing there casually with glass in hand when Joe sees me. Presumably I'm still naked but that detail is forgotten. We talk about the liquor situation and about television and movies.

Scene 3. I am in a friend's kitchen (familiar territory in context of the scene but Brain made up the layout and details) and I have been prepping some sort of pesto or tapenade. I am unsatisfied with the result and I decide it needs to be turned into a mousse or meringue or souffle or something. I add dairy or eggs (I say this because it makes sense, but really it's not at all clear what I actually add) and begin whisking. The concoction is really slow to hold together—whatever I have added seriously means to reject the previous pesto ingredients. I have to step the whisking up a notch or twelve. It turns out I can turn up my wrist like an electric mixer to the point where I am whisking maybe 50 strokes per second—and my wrist makes the same sound as an electric mixer, too. This immediately has the desired effect, and maybe 30 seconds later I have the mousse consistency I was aiming for. When I stop beating, my wrist takes a few seconds to gear down. This is clearly a superpower and I had completely forgotten I had it. I go boasting and demonstrating to my friends in the butler's pantry and living room. Who cares whether the foodstuff I just made is edible—look at what my wrist does!

Scene 4. More talk of tv and movies, this time with two people are simultaneously are and are not Roze and Keith. One of us is sharing a DVD case of some recent adventure tale; on the cover is a completely forgettable male protagonist all in black and Judi Dench in radiant pastels. The advert text includes something like "...and Judi Dench from 'Captains Courageous: Idolatry'" (ok, probably not "idolatry" but it did begin with an "I"... insurrection? Insipidness?). Roze and Keith and I lament the epidemic of theft of literary brands by making up wholesale plots and adding ": [Unrelated thingummy]" to the title. 

I mention Helen Mirren (because if you talk about Judi Dench you then have to talk about Helen Mirren and vice versa) and ask R&K whether they have seen the incredible litany of stuff Ms. Mirren has been in lately? I have a whole list of movies and BBC series roles she has done—really good work, I tell them. 

And indeed, here she is now! We actually appear to be watching a live performance all of a sudden, with Ms. Mirren performing the opening of, perhaps, a one-woman show: my thought is of Beckett's Happy Days but in retrospect it is more akin to the opening of The Skriker by Caryl Churchill. And she is singing her performance, at which I realize (a) I know the text better than I thought I did; (b) the musical setting of the text is brand new and contrasts with a much more well-known and celebrated setting; and (c) Ms. Mirren set the text herself. It's not spontaneous musical invention, though it rather sounds like it might be. Rather it is clever and rhythmic, actually kind of cool-jazzy without being overt jazz singing. Ah! We loves her!

A Day at the Rences

I could swear to have seen this spectacle with actual dogs, but maybe it's just déjà vu. This morning, the the entire parking lot, as far as the eye can see along the rolling hills, is filled with people pantomiming holding dogs up to the windows of their vehicles so as to lick them. Everyone looks remarkably silly doing this.

Perhaps this is just a practice run and all the dogs are still in their cars: or perhaps management has banned dogs, which would rather defeat the purpose of this group exercise, which celebrates "Dog Days" (or some such), during which human companions attempt to reciprocate their canines' unquestioning love and fierce loyalty. And hey—subjecting themselves to silly mimery is a start. 

In any case, enough of this parking lot. I go into the actual Renfest, where, through the miracle of editing, some unspecified time later I find the sort of musical act I always want to see—always vainly want to see—at Faire: folks playing actual Renaissance music on period instruments. Think Baltimore Consort or Julian Bream. Jenn and I settle in to listen and, given our comprising the entire audience, sing along. The singer (a curious young girl) delivers a ballad of a curious young girl (the forerunner of Ogden Nash's Isabel, no doubt) who encounters an ogre or some such on the road; as the verse proper ends she is sorely menaced until, at the burthen, she produces a feather and tickles the monster into giggles. 

I realize I've heard this song before and join in on the burthen to sing about the feather. I recall that all the verses similarly set up some kind of predicament that the burthen then makes simple work of. But I cannot remember the "solution" of the second verse, which is all about NASA. Yes, that NASA. Renaissance NASA. The singer takes a few steps away from the stage and lifts what looks like a manhole cover, though she makes easy work of it with one hand; underneath is the NASA logo and some flag icons (the U.S. flag is not among them). Somehow the verse's predicament has to do with the arrangement of these specific flags—perhaps it's a détente thing. I cannot remember how this verse comes out but I venture a guess that one of the flags isn't a flag at all but a random conglomerate of bits of colored cloth that the wind blew into the dissemblance of the flag. My guess is wrong. 

The band and Jenn and I chat between songs. As expected, this enormously talented (and musically authentic) consort are always ill attended at Faire; all the audiences accrue to five-a-penny bawds belting out, with barely governed voices, drinking songs from the late 19th century that they have festooned with "thou"s, or filks of even more recent music. We commiserate. The band has moved from under a tent out into the thoroughfare to try to attract more attention. Surely they perform much more music but I don't remember any of it; if waking history holds, this is because I am increasingly drunk.