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Next Stop, Anxiety, Everybody Off
Heliocentric XXVIII
Once his mind got going like this the reins were hard to find.
He called it his Cassius Consciousness, named after his uncle, whose Communist father was obviously hoping a son who would someday smite Caesar. Instead Uncle C’s father got a scion whose verbally barricaded non-stop chatter would make people at parties come up with amazingly creative excuses for crossing a room — as well as make his nephew christen his Anxiety after him.
When he was in this frame his thoughts would feel like a string of subway cars — each filled with a myriad of characters, often with questionable hygiene — very firmly linked to each other, rolling through the tunnels, occasionally screeching as they took sharp turns.
Today it was at a Pelham One Two Three pitch. As he got up to dump the remains of the obviously ill-advised fourth cup of coffee, the cat looked at him and sensing the energy, bolted from the room the same way it did when the vacuum cleaner got turned on.
Well, the refrigerator needed cleaning so he began there, soon finding himself scrubbing the tub, picking dead leaves off the plants, changing bed linen, emptying trash — and finally sat down by the window with his mantra, sun streaming in, and let his meditation throw the switches, rerouting the express to a…
