that monster there...

     Fredrick      He was burbling, wrestling the words as they rushed out of his mouth and losing balance, falling over then righting himself. No one heard the words. They were all too busy stepping over the shadow on the sidewalk, too disgusted, distracted and too burdened with the next step and the one after that...      “The passage, unseen in plain sight – the door is formless and nowhere and everywhere and the key to the door is emptiness. Here…”      He holds out his filthy hands, cupping nothing, smiling and squinting into the sun, blinding white hot above the black shadowed shoulders of rushing figures.      “Mama, look!” exclaims a tiny girl draped in a hibiscus summer dress.      “This way,” replies Mama, fingers our, distracted, thumbing her phone and grasping for Papa.      “The restaurant should be over here, wait, no, over there… Lucy! That's a crazy man, yes! See him? See the crazy man? Cuckoo bird! Ok, this way!”      The miniature dress blots out the sun in

     There is cause for alarm at nearly every moment. The universe is tremendous, violent and all encompassing, while we are tiny, soft and mostly irrational.      This is what is bugging you. This is the cause for that horrid sense of groundlessness that attacks you just when you think you've put everything in order. This is the sudden, momentary dread that grabs you between the sugar packet and the spoon as you fix morning coffee.      If you bang your head in the shower at six am, you could be dead before noon. This is the way it works.      We are tiny drops of water mixed with tinier bits of clay and rock, glued together with specks of sunshine…      If only we were less distinct. I know, I've thought of it. If we, as individuals, were less solid and more fluid in both space and time – less individual really  – then we really wouldn't be as concerned about things that might grab us off the planet: a sudden aneurism caused by a bump on the head in the shower,  spont