LIGHT IN A BOTTLE...

Light in a bottle... a foreign self-luminescence at the bottom of the mare' (mah-rey), the belly of the ocean. More like that, than actually that thing. The euphemism developed naturally; but started out with the word play of an advertisment lodged in the local places. Places like malls, vision centers, bus stops and cab doors as well as between the lights and lisence-plates of cab asses.

'GET DONE YESTERDAY WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE TODAY!'

or

'PUTTING OFF TODAY WHAT YOU CAN LATER DO YESTERDAY'

All advert word plays on 'Dont put off till tomorrow what you could have got done today'
And: 'what you could have, should have, would have if, but you still (know you) didn't.

9:50 a.m.

"Carrin?", a questioning voice called down a hallway.

"Yes Ms. Dinh" the response answered.

"I forgot to wash the dishes from the party, god... ...all those people, I was a wreck having to talk to them all. I went straight to bed. The thought of all that food rotting in the sink... ... we have another one this afternoon. I know your not to keen on heavy cleaning but I'm in a jam..."

"Look at through the door', Carrin intereupted.

"They're all done!, Nice!"

"Okay its on my list the go to last night and finish them for today's party when I go shop for the extras I need for the party favors... I'll hire some helpers too. I expect they are already waiting to be paid, so I'll walk in here after I leave and tell you who I hired last night."

'Why do today what you can put off til yesterday', she kept misquoting the slogan in her head, within the schema of her own creative thought.

She carried her groceries with her in a super conductivity cart that was soft cuffed to her rist. Looking over the contents to be sure she had everything on her shopping list she noticed at a glance a fiftyish man toting a university student ID. He looks more like a professor, the bearded type than student, But then most professors are professional students aswell; so, she continues to give it little thought.

"Tamatinos, cremfresh, kiwi, spinach, chards....', her list written in cooking order, was not crossed off in order; and she had forgot to continue crossing it off while she was shopping. Her eyes darted about the cart to be sure she had everything.

"Looks like your missing sage", he used that as his intro to talk to her, noticing that she isn't wearing a wedding ring.

"Yes it looks that way", she replied like she knew.

He was talking to her since he noticed that she glanced up at him.

"I'm to old to make conversation with women who are not interested in me to some degree." He hoped his frankness would break the ice, and quickly. He was going to be diverted to the suttle going into the day he needs, and he wanted to get to the point before they would have to separate.

"Like the sage, I have plenty at home", refering to the possibility of a long term lover.

A pleasant terminal voice changed the mood a bit. The voice was delibeately designed to calm the rushed traveler. And the female voice seemed to not interupt even though it started mid conversation and at intevals.

"Last Tuesday, has been diverted to terminal T17'... the automated voice rested as though deliberatedly letting listeners continue where they left off--then it interjected a moment later-- ..."The travel desity is being tallied and a referal location is being determined, we apologise for the delay."

"Is your partner now, or then or after?", the bearded man asked since now there would b some time to talk. And he started getting bord as a reaction to the delay more than any actual waiting.

"Why would I tell a stranger that?", she replied.

"Well your bothering to talk to me at all, a lonely middle aged man who's headed or from anywhere. It Doesn't mean you love me or anything. I'm just passing time."

"He is in the now', she replied -acepting his divegence from flirting as genuine.

"You are my kind, but I like what I have- and I notice that you saw me take a peek at you. So I can't exactly fault you for flirting. But I am not looking, just noticing.'

"I have patches of pinapple sage at home. I noticed that I picked some when I looked at my patch this morning. I guess my home is between work and where ever our arrival site will end up being."

"There is sage at the store." He gave flirting one last effort.

"Growing your own and tasting what you grown yourself in the meals I cook tastes best. I can go to the store anytime I want. But I veggies from the store ( even fresh produce ) doesn't taste nearly as good as home grown.'

"Your a cutie though, I bet you have a vegitable garden of your own."

"No', he relied. "Mostly buding flowers and nearly rip fruit. I still find myself having to go to the store if I want to eat anything ripe enough to cook up right."

"Your a professor at which ever univrsity. Plenty of woman to cook with there, no!?!"

"Well I am, and I'm not.' He resolved that she was taken, still it is second nature to him to practice taking advantage of chances to be or at least look clever.

He waits for her next word to be a nonverbal cue of curiosity to a mild degree.

"I graduated, but I haven't taken any tests yet."

"Oh, I see and your going to take it, or is it more, now." He opened up a bit and now she saw the gist of what he is getting at.

"Its more."

"How the hell did you manage that? you know the material but didn't take that test. Is it minor, or am I correct in thinking that I'm getting from you that its a whole lot more"

He bounced up on his toes and back down; with his hands folded and a playful smirk behind and adding shape to his well trimed beard. Without any verbal communication.

"I'll take that as a shy, or guilty yes!- OMG!', she laughed.

"You never took any- but you've been teaching all this time- you had to have done the homework linear, and yor thesis paper-OMG!"

He held up an evelope and a sort of jump drive, still retaining his blush and smirk.

He broke in to the dialog to explain: "I missed a test, so I told myself I'd go back and make it up. Turns out that since its me I can go and do that at the university I attended/attend"

"Your kidding' she exclaimed with her hand on her mouth. "They allow that?"

"I guess so. I went to class and I got a B-. I blew off the next test and got an A++.'

"Most of the material that was hard for me back then is secondnature to me now. So I decided that after waiting this long, I didn't want to have to go back and do seven years worth of exams in my eighties and ninties. Turns out the test rooms are filled with people who figured out the same thing I did."

Love is Responsible

The volts pierced the metal that replaced bone, and fried the surrounding tissue. His subconscious felt the crackle of flesh you and I would hear if we were standing beside him bent over his injury listening as if our ear was to a door and we were trying to hear the sound distinctly.

His mind drifted out and into itself as the sealed envelope of his conscious mind let thoughts escape, through forced creases, from the feeling of his constricting muscles that jerked into other fresh tearing postortions in the predictably irregular forms. Even his lucid thought went out of order for instances surrounding the impact of his neck against the frame and the floor.

It was a crazy woman, that pierced him first. She sat down. Her almond eyes that were deep with senselessness. He couldn't tell, if she was lit, or just dim. He curled his lip into the bit of his naturally jagged lower teeth, as he thought about responding to her sudden approaching chatter, and rolled the inner lip against the straight slightly less protruded upper fang, the flesh swelled a bit as he rolled and squeezed it with a slight pressure that would leave it slightly inflamed every time he bit down. Enough swelling that he would bit through it some moments from now shattering three of his teeth in the process. When his heart rate would become faster than the slight raise she caused with her attraction or addiction.

He was distracted enough by the thought of letting go of the saint in himself and leaving with the attention, Her smile was a little to party girl for his taste, He thought to himself. He was too distracted to see the room change around them quick enough. The music was the same. The other general shapes of the walls and furniture still hung in his retina and hadn't been gone long enough for his eyes to catch up with what was missing until he knew that he was again present elsewhere. His leap from his chair would have knocked over the coffee table with the dive he took to avoid her cell phone lens if it wasn't too late. He saw his knees burst through the after imaging. Lunging through the remnant of the coffee table the first crack of electricity came out from the device she held in her palm. He didn't drop as he bit off a chunck of his inner lip. And another dozen angles sprang out at and through him igniting every nerve and bouncing instantly off every peircing, filling, wire- rod and metalic that replaced bone.

His heart stopped:


---



"Son you've got to clean it bye tomorrow."

"I'll do it, can you please leave me alone now.?."

"You act like I'm beating down your door, walking down my hallway, stoping and reminding you to set yourself up to be able to do the things you want and need to do to grow and thrive is hardly an intrusion. In fact. You protesting is an intrusion on my space, my rights. I only get one chance with you. If I fuck it up, then its done. You however have a world- a lifetime a head of you. So please stop asking me to fuck that up for you by letting you slide on taking care of yourself. Your a good son. I just want you to set yourself up to be free to do what you want to do"

"Okay' a voice answers back through the locked door. "But can I just have my space for a bit?"

"Yes son, I let you rest".

The father remembered when he needed more privacy, and what it was like to live in an orphanage where guys were used to not having anything but the stillness of sleep and a solitary cot or bunk if lucky, to border between privacy and exposure.

---

To be Continued:

"Hey. Will you be quiet! I can't think.'

"Ahhh me Ahhhh blow it up by itself'

"What do you need? Please figure it out. I need to get going on this.'

"Dad do you have any TV shows that are/ would be on right now that are really really good. ehm e ehm ehm ememem!'

"Try the fourth sword! Hey dad, dad!? How many gas stations do you see in New York?"

"Stop fighting- yes I'll come play. I wasn't getting much done anyway" "Dad I literally feel holloween in my soul, awe man my balloon holloween right now".

"Hey dad there is a sci-fi show on. Bone get my balloon!"

"Get your own balloon lazy butt."

"Guys stop fighting!' Arturo get your own balloon!"

Daudi managed to type a bit of narration and some quick notes.

-he sits thinking, wishing he was home with his lover. She misses him.

daudi got down an un edited first draft, forgetting to capitalize, without the chance to go over it twice or speak with any rhythm or voice, barely getting down his concept.

- he is bored, work is staggeringly tedious and boring, entangled pairs of photons, he escapes work through passages, synapses, goes to prison, slowly getting older to himself. quickly getting older to her, She doesn't notice that he is aging faster at first. But when he comes home one day with a broken arm, and the next day healed and with a full chestlong beard, she begins to imagine the truth. He dies in her arms only to be revealed to her at his the funeral: Into the rest of her old age. http://papertones.blogspot.com/2005/10/tandem.html (Linear order)

A few weeks later he got back to finishing garden preporations that he'd been putting off for weeks. He decided to get around to gardening and so he started using coffee cups, produce seeds, and dirt from around trees in the, not so near to work, ajacent, office blocks.

Setting up tomati~no clippings and shredding peppers into dirt filled cups got his mind relaxed and more smoothly kept pumping the ideas out and into a voice of his own. He thought about a chapter that talked about things that are

Daudi's mind was fresh on this idea, and how it would support the main body of his ideas as a whole. He put off writing down his thoughts to pull about a fresh jabo~neiro, that was starting to yellow, apart with his bare hands set the dirt in the botom of the cup to buffer between the decomposing leaves he laid in over the darker contrast of the soil visible looking into the cilindrical container beyond the browning leaves in the white coffee togo cup he was using for a starter pot. He set in some more dirt, then the small jewel-ish radiant orange pepper, and covered it with dirt; set the planter next to the steam heat radiator until Spring, or sprouting.

He needed to use the rest room. He'd write after he returned from the bathroom. He thought he could put off sitting down until after he left himself a quick post-it icon stuck to his desk top.

The lid was up at work. Only one woman was in the small section of the small office building. Everyone rented their own space. She had been there for a while; if she minded the lid being always up, he'd never heard her complain.

He finished shaking the residual urine directly into the center of the bowl, flushed the toilet and eased the under-side of the toilet seat down with the side of his shoe sole: The part of the sole that is on the side of most shoes; the in--or out--step that never touches the ground, mostly ever. Zipping his fly after tucking his flacid cock back under the gym shorts, a amorello golden beird and red hair school mascot, draw string pair; that he'd borrowed perminantly from the local city university, that seconded sometimes as boxer briefs: He turned to the sink, knudged on the lever controlled faucet with his elbow; out of habit/ritual he used a clean part and knuckled the soap dispenser push mechanism into yeilding clear honey-esk gue into the hand that aimed the stream and shook his cock free of urine. The hand was clean. His cock was clean. You could say that his cock was clean enough to eat off of. But he always thought as a child and up--that boys & 'men' who touched thier penis at the urinal, and then grabbed the bathroom exit handle were idiots. He would always tell Bone and Arturo how nasty that lack of consideration of other people was in any rest room, (private, or public) if he sensed that someone was about to try to leave the bathroom without washing their hand(s). No one wants to touch something that has just been touched by something that has just touched a clean, or worse dirty, maybe deseased genitels. He would tell his boys to never touch the bathroom exit door with bare hands. "Knudge it, Kick it, use tissue, or a towel; And always wash your own hands" he'd say.

Both Bone and Arturo would look at grown men with discussed if they had started walking toward the door after there father laid down his comment. This was particularly effective if the boys were a bit ragamuffin from a few days of striaght video games over a week end. In the sense that even people who are unkept for the moment won't accept nasty bathroom habits, from those who perceive themselves as 'clean enough.' "That, and people who are dumb enough to not hold toddlers up away from the bowl, children should never stand on their tip toes to pee into a toilet, or urinal. They almost always rest their valuables on the porciline right where everyone else has dripped. What kind of parent, or grand would let their child do that(?) Its disgusting", he would exclaim. With that, another set of people would correct their rest room etiquit with a bit more embarassment than the first set.

But now the mistake is his. As he turns to go back to his office to write, on his lap top, with his very clean soaped & rinsed hands, like his father taught him. He can feel that the underside of his cock is starting to burn. The last time he felt this burn was while rubbing an orange jabo~neiro on the lips and tounge of a lover before she went down on him to make the burn worth the pain.

"Shit" he thought to himself quietly. "Dang it! Dang it! Dang it! Damn eahreahr." He skirted back and about in the open door of the more secluded rest room. The burn was beginning to make him dance around. "it burns dang it". He left the bathroom door open while he was unbuckling his pants. He realised that he'd planted the jobo~neiro in the cup and gone to urinate standing; not realising to wash his hands before he reached under his mascot adored gym shorts a.k.a. boxers. This time the burn was intense. As he freed himself of his pants and shorts he realised that the door to the unisex bathrrom was still open. He also realised that he was chanting 'it burns dang it' out loud. The other offices were less than an earshot away. He didn't want his co-workers, or the other office renters to be able to use him to deflect attention from their own imperfections: So he deliberately said something to the like of, "Freakin jabo~neiros, God! I had to plant the jabo~neiro and not wash my hands before I went in here." He didn't say it too loudly. But loud enough that if anyone heard him saying 'it burns dang it' before; they would have a believable explanation other than thinking he might have an, or some s.t.d.(s).

S.T.D.'s.

He thought to himself while fuetilly trying to quench the burn that spread with every wet wip of dispencer hand soap, wadded toilet paper, water from the shaft of his cock over the bell tip reaching the rim of his ureathra, this time without the aid of being willing to sexualize the pain. The heat made his testicles hang further down cuping his limp shaft and bell, and so now he noticed his scrotum began to burn.

Helplessly he looked in the mirror, still trying to kill the burn with soap, and forgetting to wash his hands while touching the dispencer: He thought this must be what Herpes, Siph, or the drip feel like. He thought briefly about young kids from his country getting busted in other countries'; and having the police force soda pop and jalopa~nos up their noses. He would never want that to happen to his children he thought, as the burn was funny to him, but nipped and pinched in the nerves.

He hadn't seen his boys in a few days. and he thought he would never want them to go out and catch a disease as this must be what those S.T.D's feel like. He couldn't comprehend what that must feel like. Herpes inflamation. He both thought ew, and how much more he respected his friends who had to function through that kind of uncomfortable pain. And it hit him; "I can go to visit my kids, talk to their mother about it first of course, and somehow how get them put the pepper on themselves. I can have pleanty of dairy creamer ready for them to take to the bathroom. That way they know that not using a condom could leave them hurting like this all the time.' "Would that be cruel?', He thought to himself. "Not as cruel as letting them go out into the world and catch something..." *that is perminantly painful, because they acted indiscriminantly*, was the completion of his thought, that didn't pass from idea- into the language he was thinking in at the time.

He imagined leaving the jabo~eiros on the kitchen table, telling them that he'd acidentally got some on himself, so he would be able to tell if they were faking, and hadn't done as he asked.

He knew of a vegetable open market near their mother's house. He knew he'd have to talk to her about it first. So he got on the shuttle to make it there by dawn.

The chapter idea for Hidden in Plain Sight never went beyond the dictation program he forgot was on his PC that had recorded the idea only because the program was time set to open and had caught him say. "Chapter idea about everything that is hidden in plain sight."