Controlled Scribbling

Shallow Rocks

by Julie & Dennis

All day long it felt like it was one in the afternoon. Another perfect day in Carbondale. The air was still and the lack of humidity was just right. Laying on a large rock with just enough beer and just enough people to enjoy themselves thoroughly, they floated the day away. Everyone felt and looked young and beautiful. Life was good. One of the men on the rock thought he was quite clever playing with words and parrots and other mysterious objects. He met a girl on this fine day and was very pleased with the situation. Ann was her name, flirtation was her game. Laughing and flailing, he attempted to throw her into the inviting, man-made lake. Giggling and flailing quite a bit herself, she stopped him from accomplishing this feat.

"No! No! No!" she wailed. "Those rocks are way too shallow--They will hurt me!"

His mission aborted, he began to ramble as he so often did.

"Oh yah, these rocks are way, way too shallow," he replied, "You don't want to have anything to do with them. They don't give a diddley doo about you."

Two very happy girls tanning and drinking on the rock started to laugh with the two discussing the rocks as the giggling couple moved to another side of the rock.

"Ah! But look over here! These rocks, OH! They're much deeper. They are deep and meaningful and you could probably even have a relationship with them if you wanted. These people have told me you just have to open yourself up, and you won't get hurt. I tend to believe them, even though that doesn't seem to be how it works with people. I have found it to be the exact opposite with those unpredictable creatures."

The two girls were now rolling on the rock roaring with uncontrollable laughter. This pleased the man flirting with Ann. One of the laughing lunatic girls was Debi and he could never make her laugh. This, he thought, was a great accomplishment in his life. It was quite a high point for him. The rock the lake dwellers were on was pretty high itself, but he was even higher. Much, much higher. So high in fact, he thought he might be able to reach up into the sky and grab a cloud and stretch it in his fingers like cotton candy. No one knows if that can even be done as no one has ever actually tried it, not even rocket scientists or mathematicians (like Janet--but that's a completely different train of thought.)

But, you know, there have been rumors going around that some people have actually been on the moon. They have video footage of it, but no one can ever tell if that stuff is real or not...Some people think it's all mind games and tricks that the government likes to play with your eyes--Optical illusions, some people like to call them. These particular people on this particular rock didn't care much for governmental mind games... They played enough games with their own minds, as well as games with their eyes and noses and with each other. They played lots of fun games with each other, and there always seemed to be new people at this wonderful place to play them with, so they didn't have much time for (nor did they care for) these silly governmental games, whatever they happened to be. Sometimes their brains would start to ache and moan if they thought about those kinds of things too long.

Hence, their drinking patterns. You see, if they started to think too much, they would just drink more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And even faster then. Later they would awaken to find much of the day had already slipped away (not unlike much of their lives) and more often than not, they would regroup and recapture their endless cycle of lunacy. Of course, some of the others preferred to get stoned... Baked out of their minds... Higher than a Batman kite soaring in Central Park on a windy day... Higher than the sky and the clouds and the oceans and all the trees and birds. Especially the penguins--They don't get very high, those penguin things. They can't even fly. 'Why do they even call them birds?' they sometimes wondered silently to themselves, sometimes right out loud to the others... Sometimes even out loud to themselves.

The man on the rock decided he was glad he was not a penguin, and everyone else pretty much agreed. (What kind of good would have come out of a bunch of drunk penguins that couldn't even fly? Then again, what kind of wicked evil was coming out of them?) They couldn't have created a better scene if they tried, which was probably a good thing, because none of them had enough motivation to do anything like that. And if they tried too hard for too long to be happy, it simply became more and more difficult to reach their destination of contentedness. That would frustrate them to no end. (Even though many of them liked certain things to be long and hard.)

But, on this fine day, there was no frustration whatsoever. Not even sexual frustration. Everyone was happy and beautiful because, of course, they weren't trying to be. The day was long and simple and they whiled away the hours just being happy to be alive and on this beautiful planet some people like to call Mother Earth. Everybody laughed and laughed all day long at the silliest things. A bee flew in a shoe. They laughed. The lake dwellers floated on rafts in the relaxing waters and the warm summer sun. They laughed. Some of them knee-boarded. Most were knee-board virgins. They laughed. They barbecued. They laughed. And they dwelled on the rock... Some sat, some stood, some lay (some even got a lay later that evening). They cleaned up their rock, they packed up their stuff, and they went on their merry way. (And they kept laughing even then.)