The moth is a nomad with a guilty pleasure: light. God’s surveillance style is also light, so you could say the two are friends. A moth, however, doesn’t fly toward the sun. It is too bright and far away. Instead it flies toward a flame with its morph equipment ready and tiny manifesto in hand, flickering on and off, its poignant synergy with the darkness now complete. It could have gone other ways: violent sap, sticky web, deep winter, etc. God makes a tally and eyes the headset of her Oculus Rift waiting on the table nearby.

Riding down Milk Road on a motorcycle, you feel free. Life-size tourists with their pet children hang out near the shy fountains. Ten Anonymous Hymns for Guitar begins, and the miracle light reflects off the land juice, blinding you slightly (but in a good way). Year after year drips down your face, and every time you check the time, it’s spring.

A glass knife rests in a grass field. Mechanical chirps softly construct a familiar melody. Silver reading glasses magnify a toad’s rapid eye movement, asleep at noon. Two full sets of house keys wait peacefully. A stiletto, after standing upright for hours, falls over in the breeze.

Ten meters north of these relics, a translucent white container labeled “OUR FAULT” would be empty if, a few minutes prior, a dove had held its bladder while flying overhead.

A tiny hummingbird lands on the lid of the gleaming grand piano you just wiped down with Lemon Lysol. The bird cries a single tear that slips down its feathers, falls into the piano’s soundboard, and melts with the tonewood. You can’t blame the small creature—if your eyes outweighed your brain, your eye juice would sing too.

A tall glass of sarsparilla sweats condensation. Water pools around the base of the drink and makes a ring around the snake on a paper Chinese zodiac placemat underneath. Emerging out of the soft drink is a curly straw filled with bubbles that hover a brief distance and then pop. The bubbles reflect an elaborate table setting leafed in gold, and minute specular highlights reveal a broken window screen. Gossamer strands of a spider’s web connect the coarser fibers of the screen to the window frame. Caught in the web is a mosquito contemplating the scene from a position of sacrifice. Its compound eyes present a pixelated world-view that slowly dims to black.

almond extract, swiss roll, scented pantyliner, envelope glue, kitten calendar, bra straps, security ink, mother’s milk, banana boat, bavarian cream, vaseline.

Coral dawn casts its glow upon a mahogany piano. Dawn turns to dusk. Dusk turns to dust. Dust to dust. Aided by these rays, one can see minute particles of dust settling into fingerprints on the white keys of a beloved piano. In this rare light the black keys seem to recess into the background rather than rise higher than the ivory ones. I wonder what my metronome smells like?

Machines warm up just as you do. Pleather-finished foam grips on an elliptical yield slightly under sweating palms. It’s too hot today to run outside so you’re at Planet Fitness. It’s so hot that it’s cold inside, so you forget that it’s hot outside.

Following an agonizing leg day, you get into your car parked in the middle of the lot. Machines warm up just as you do. The cloying smell of the simulated leather interior is emphasized in this 93 degree weather. Legs stick to seat. It will hurt to peel yourself out of the car later. Isn’t it weird that it’s the inside of a car that is finished with skin. And not the outside? Like everything else that has skin? Like Snooki’s matte black snakeskin-wrapped Hello Kitty Escalade?

This national park is confusing. For example, the flowering trees never stop. And when they produce fruit, it’s more like gear. And the mountains are heaps of tiny colored bits. I can tell because when I look close at the ground, each stone is actually a tiny plastic eraser. And when I look to the sky, it’s cuter than usual. And when it rains from the cute sky, pez candy sprinkles down, resulting in a tiny bounce off the erasers.

You might be familiar with the wet steam room at the Russian and Turkish Baths. The last time I visited (for a Groupon-subsidized birthday) it was especially aromatic, and occupied solely by a man lying on the tiled bench. After a moment, he produced a vial and poured a few drops onto the heater, which instantly filled the room with mentholated white steam. It felt like my nose had become a Camel Crush after the cartridge was crushed. He said it was LSD.

Santal 33 is a similarly potent formula that’s slippery when wet. Except instead of a spicy, minty hallucinogen, the smell is closer to ginger. Pink pickled ginger, in a unisex steam room.