Without the temptation to go anywhere, I don’t. I walk to the lake or the horse farms or I time travel back to Europe. I read more David Mitchell books knowing I’ll never be the writer he is but not letting that stop me. I sit under the cherry tree listening to the bees, thinking about the invasive giant hornets that just arrived here last week. It’s always something, some locust or beetle or “killer bees.” And that’s what I thought when I first heard about Coronavirus, a lot to get worried about if you’re inclined to worry about these things. These are happy bees, blue collar. They work from dawn to dusk, then go back to their little abodes and sleep a bee’s sleep, remembering all the pollen they gathered, harvesting happy blooms. In my dreams, my dead step-dad showed me how to restring a guitar. I thought about him in the day, so he came back to me at night. We are all taking melatonin now to sleep through the night, but it brings strange dreams. It’s worth it. I wake in a thick web like I’m stuck to my bed and can’t get up. But when I break through I’m refreshed, at the lake with the anglers who gather in the morning gloom and talk in low tones, illuminating bait with their phones. In my dreams I use a flamethrower on the giant hornets or saw-saber mandibles of my own, whacking their heads off with ninja lobster claws. Saving all the happy bees. Buoyed upwards by this buzzing sound…then carried far, far away.

Categories: humor, microblogging, musings, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, humor, Memoir, pacific northwest, prose, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer