[Continued from above]

**********

I kept myself afloat and that lets everybody down.
I didn't give a damn about others and what they were thinking. Oh hell, it was hard but I tried my best.
My butt was not happy with my position the majority of the time. It kept complaining to the brain how tortured it felt.
I know it was not happy. The pointy rocks and the icy cold water were too much for the poor thing to handle alone.
I dipped my feet and arms into the water and somehow that made it happy a small bit. Haha, funny how it smiled to me.
Although it was not a piece of cake, I rested my head on the tube and soaked my mind and body with imagination and rest.
I guess everything went smoothly after I sacrificed my feet, arms and buttocks to the freezing water.
The weather that Saturday was what I had in mind.
The sun was terribly happy.
The clouds were stingy of its silver linings.
The wind was as weak as the breath of a dying horse.
The backdrop Mother Nature provided me that day was fascinating; though, not very captivating as the ones depicted on postcards.
There were the tall, green conifers with pale, weird-looking leaves that fell upon contact with the nesting, newly-wed wild birds.
There were the huge, round bushes that enticingly offer small, poisonous fruits of a rainbow's colors to unfortunate tubers passing by.
There were the harmoniously scattered rocks that formed chaotic rapids the light-greenish river bragged about all along its crooked path.
And ultimately, there were the series of well-built, spontaneous homosexuals urinating peacefully onto the conifers, bushes and rocks I described above.
Ah...what a relief it was for the groom birds!
Ah...what a relief it was for the pissing gays!
Ah...what a relief it was for me to enjoy all this on a drifting tube!
Haha
Haha haha
It was queer that all of a sudden everything in my life made sense at that instance of joy.
The 'why's and 'how's that bombarded me like a mad flight of migrating grasshopper before were satiated to brim.
Skirmishes of morality and conflicts of ethics ceased to exist and haunted me no more inside.
It was as if the great generals of war were on their wounded knees, bowing so humble and so innocent upon the revered emperor.
The picturesque landscape and the pleasing weather induced the inner depth of me to soak in what the river offered that Saturday.
The river had deprived me of my fears.
It had stolen my most prized possession: my weakness.
It was its never-ending flow of aqueous mass that had sunken my worries.
It was there for a reason that nobody knew what.
It was there for a period that nobody knew how long.
Its silent hymns sung by water colliding with the boulders and corroding the muddy banks were mesmerizing.
Everybody heard the river's heavenly sermon from as far as the sweltering metropolis and the swollen suburbia.
Everybody who were everything and from everywhere came running to the walking water.
Everybody except thee.
Oh how so deaf.
Oh how so blind.
Oh how so foolish.
Had they knew its power all along?

*********

My oh my.
There were a lot more people there at the starting venue than churchgoers' car parked on a sunny Sunday morning.
The place was crowded with tubes and their semi-naked owners queuing up in a curling line that almost surrounded a lone child.
She was petrified by the scene just as I was. Stoned from the neck down, our necks were like a horizontal pendulum: observing meticulously.
Her pink face was decorated with excitement but smeared with curiosity.
Her opaque, blue eyes were bulging out wild but her potty lips let the hollowed mouth ajar.
A beauty in its candidness.
A masterpiece in its work to perfection.
The massive exodus into the icy cold water was what the child's innocent glimpses caught on.
How astonishing and how perplexing it was for the child to witness the madness and to experience the fad.
The reasons of that strange novelty her still green perception could never illuminate upon till the day it'll ripe scared me.
All that were there were what all she needed to start walking waywardly towards the realm that kills the cat.
Enquire and enquire and let the truth exposes itself at its will and pray that it'll be satisfying.
It will be a long way for her to reach its fulfilling end.
How sad.
How sad for I had had the tedious walk.
How sad she was for needing to start going through that too.
How sad I was for I do not speak the language her world corresponds with.
I would be glad to explain this to you child, but I myself am not worthy of advice. I myself am at the misty venue you and I are.
But let the river do its job, I told her.
But let the others go first, I reminded her.
But let your will fall prey to destiny, I assured her.
And after that, everything went bizarre. Bizarre, I tell you. Bizarre!
As if reflected onto a mirror and leaped into my pupils, her face was transmogrified tremendously.
Her face that was decorated yet smeared had defragmented bits by bits into an expression that were never known to any of my senses.
Slowly and more slowly, it was changing in front of my milky white face. My feet were invigorated and warm with excessive blood.
But it was nailed to the sand and rocking vehemently to the slow beat of the child's changes.
My thoughts ran about looking for answers to what was happening.
My conscience roamed around searching for reasons to what had triggered it.
What have I done now?
What did I say wrong?
Oh dear.
Oh god.
She was smiling!

*********

Oh well.
Being so helpless and letting the current sweep away your problems wasn't so terrible.
Being so dependent and letting the river carry you to a predestined place wasn't so selfish.
It amplified each and everyone's darkest, concealed, subconscious secret.
How a-jerk they are.
Haha
Haha haha
Isn’t that right, o'wise river?

[Babble of Sept 3, 2000][A stranger amongst us all]
I am who nobody knew I am.
So, let the truth leaks and spoils the purest of lies, slowly.
Only then shall they be haunted by regret.
Their dying chants will echo:
"What if...what if".

{This is an excerpt from the ever confidential and personal piece of YB Lalat’s Babble Journal}

[Dinkytown, August 26th 2000]