"I don't like this cat. It reads minds" (old)

"I don't like this cat-it reads minds." pt 1 (old) 7/3/02 A bit expatriate to go to France of all places over the 4th of July. Some bomb brownies in place of alcohol and a few of my own misshapen thoughts and reveries to be my Sun. As the wide spillage of sky pools outside the airplate windows the thought of a scream plays out in the mushy spot between my ears. This scream is a singular, unexplained echo, chilling the blood in my overworked arteries, turning them to devil's slides of amber icicles. These icicles freeze from dripping to solid ice and my blood stops with them, leaving me with a gutless suffocating fear of death, an eye widened in a super quick rush of adrenaline. The slab of meat in my chest strains against the blocked passageways in its own push for survival. The scream is a bubbling now, boiling in intensity and rumbling through the stovepipes of my stomach, slowly bringing the amber slushy of veins back to warm, then hot, then scalding. My brain rattles and rebounds with the power of the blood, thrust to the shell of skull with what I can only describe as a loud thump. And with this, the scream is born. It rushes from the cavernous stomach like vision might explode in a bat's eye after years of only purplish radar blips. This is how I explain the scream that came flying full tilt out of my '84 BMW's sunroof (a hand crank sunroof, mind you) when I almost collided with the hind end of a very large and unforgiving truck. I had just dropped Julian off at the airport and was heading back onto the 880, rounding a curve and then realizing that traffic was stopped immediately in front of me - forcing the decision to switch lanes or trust the old lass to come through on the brakes ONE LAST TIME. But a quick glance to the side view mirror proves that by God the brakes better work or I am Fucked. This is the part where my blood goes cold. My foot comes down on the brake and a split second releases my AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK the car slowing down, barely, the brake all the way to the floor. But, in that split second of screaming out of the sunroof, I had pushed the brake early enough and the car complies. I doubt I could have hit a stack of ones with that stop, much less any insignificant piece of silver, but it's good enough to bail me out of this one. Have I mentioned that all this is an attempt to make it over the bridge in time for my flight to Charles de Gaulle? I think someone told me once that he was some commander, some victorious French guy. But my common knowledge is going to have to side with rich mogul of some sort of high paying industry or politician. We're talking about an airport here and no commander/military figure is going to have an airport named after him, especially in France. Politician - final answer. (Ed note: Reading this now, knowing he was both, is very humorous.) My fondest memories of French class - interjection here - I've been told that I write fast, but I can only think "not fast enough" for the moments the penstrokes take are like brick walls standing between the writing and the brain. So French class - Power to the People and Madame Tartera... TO BE CONTINUED