Notes from a Floating Carnival

Over the ocean salt smell, the cloying scent of handspun cotton candy--how the air itself cuts the tender red skin of nasal passages and throat, aerated shards of glass. Elephant ears and funnel cakes. Or, what remains of elephant ears and funnel cakes after being ourselves handspun on tea cups or the Octopus. The "hand" has always meant a machine. There are things the human body cannot take. We pay dollar by dollar at a time to fail to take such things. To eat what we can't digest. To be handspun until our wallet is empty of all but worn receipts. The lights continue to flash their frenetic, epileptic flash. The sea laps more slowly at the piers. At such times, it is difficult to believe we are not all doomed. The ocean does not go on forever, nor do we. There is a bottom to all this.