Rock Fever

There was something in the air on the Island.

Something that feeds the fungus. It's not exactly the heat or the humidity, but those didn't help either - it was something mixed into the Saharan dust that felt malevolent. The death of the desert is hiding in the hungry jungle. Eating poltergeists must be what gives the tropics its proclivity for the chaotic. People start to unravel under the weight of all that desert and ocean in the air they breathe. The fungus gets in your lungs and makes you squirm - I've seen people who put down roots only to succumb to rock fever in the end. I felt it tugging at the corners of me too whenever I'd notice how fast a cut leaf rots here. The herbs and greens lasting only a few days in the fridge. Ironic for a place bursting at the seams with foliage. But all that life has a debt to be paid in decay. I felt much like a plucked leaf myself: grown far away, picked up and put back down again, frail, woozy off chemicals. Some things I couldn't make sense of. Why did it take so long for wounds to heal here? Why was my memory so foggy here? Sometimes at night I felt sure that people were speaking in tongues but nobody else seemed to notice. I'd go two days without living then live three days in one and commit none of them to memory. "Oh just blame it on the Saharan dust." It gets in your nasal passageway and irritates the mucus membrane all the way to the frontal lobe. "This just happens when summer is heating up." “There was an accident-” They say that after Carnival the money will dry up and everyone will start to move more erratically. You can feel that tingle of potential energy. They speak of magic in hushed voices only. I still want to see it but some locals who know better than me would be appalled that I said so. Me, I’m appalled that all my bad memories seem to have been absorbed by the Island. I think they're bleeding out of my subconscious into the soil. And my ghost is disloyal. She likes the dust, not my lungs. She'll draw my blood to nourish the dirt, like the Sahara hands over its dead, she is compelled to complete the circle. She's like her mother, just an animal. I don't know who she talks to while I'm asleep, so I half expect people to already know by the time they get a look at me. It's their confused eyes that let me know it's not them - it's the rock itself and perhaps my own madness. My bad memories must be wriggling around in the roots. Deep in its bones, the Island knew what haunts me and what heals me. It gave me both all tangled up in vines and said "sort it out yourself." It taunted me. I'd get deja vu, I'd ask, "who told you that?" And get an empty stare in reply. I forget that they see a sparkling girl, innocent in paradise, not the ancient stinking tar that I feel like. The stuff that browns the sea after rain. I probably told them all myself, in my sleep when my spirit slides out the window and goes off to plays my part. I don't trust her when I don't dream and I curse her for going to your house in the dark. Why do the memories slip away? Are they disloyal too? I don't know what I did two days ago, all I get to keep of that slippery thing is an emotional residue. Did I live a day at all? Did I live three? Yesterday I met a dying man while I was driving with my friend. He's dying long and slow like he pulls at the vodka. We gave him a ride home. When he needed help inside, we saw that his house was a festering wound. We left the door open so the animals could escape. He had a picture of his daughter’s sparkling innocent face. I wondered when she'll feel like me. I remember the frame, not the girl. And my brain is already erasing his eyes. And my brain is erasing his name. I recall the smell of feces but not his mouth or the words that it said. I can feel his words vanishing one by one. The ones that remain smell worst of all. Now all I can remember is "please" "please" "please" There it is! That must be it! It's got to be the mechanism that took all my childhood memories and gave them to the deep magic in the ground. I finally caught a glimpse of the magician at work.

I wonder, if not me, then who is running my machine?