Dream of the Dragon

MJ #3

Chicago visited the streets today. The wind off the ocean gusted at 40 mph and drove the temperature into the low 20s – enough to bring the first real nips of winter. The 10-foot spray of one inlet’s fountain lost its symmetry, bending hard to the south as if its hose were kinked.

A stone fawn (kissed by a cockatrice) crouched behind the weathered picket fence of a small yard, looking out across the street.

The following small sign marked the entrance to a restaurant, hailed locally as a great seafood dive: “Future National Historic Site.” It’s simple enough to be overlooked, as respectable and unassuming as a monument marker. But it inspires so many questions! Has this site been recognized by some national committee, and now it just awaits some formal opening? Are papers processing? Is someone betting that something of great historic significance will happen there? Did someone from the future plant it as a joke? A fortune-teller’s prediction? A prank? Where can I buy such a sign?

Odds are there was some famous landing of early settlers thereabouts, now celebrated by cheap drinks and seafood. The sign offered no elaboration.

Icarus cries sand tears most days – the product of launching himself wide-eyed at fallen frisbees. If he fails to catch it out of the air, he jumps into the beach itself with equal abandon. After each attack he coughs up a handful of slimy sand and his eyes are ringed by little crystals. The tears show up hours later, most often after a nap. Usually it’s one for each eye, a mixture of sand and salt water that solidifies at the edge of his tear duct like a soft stone.

This evening, for the first time, a sand tear formed and rested below the center of his eye.