I look down at the broccoli in the glass dish. I blink, thinking my eyes are playing tricks on me. Nope, the little brocollettes are waving at me. Jazz hands, but broccoli. Come on, they beckon. Go for it. So I bend my head and dive into my belly button.
I emerge in the cloister in Arles, France. Van Gogh spent time here, walking this square corridor, itching to paint the colors that swirled in his mind. But he’s not here. Only Mao Tse Tung and the Tidy Bowl man. Mao is hitting his forehead with a board and reciting a rap verse over and over. The Tidy Bowl man just wants to trip him, but he has to do it without being obvious, or he will be punished.
I look around.
A huge rhinoceros wearing a purple cape gallops up to me. I can’t see where he’s come from and I’m scared he’s going to trample me. But he stops, stands up and says, in delightful English-accented tones, “I’m due at Wembley stadium, but I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Can you point the way?” I point up. He unfurls green iridescent wings, and, with two great wing-beats, is gone.
I sink through the cold stone floor and find myself face to face (or is it face to butt?) with a worm the size of a barn. Or, no, I’m as big as a poppy seed. Now I understand how the rhino could find himself so off-course. It belches purple powdery stuff and in an instant I become a sound wave, snake-shaped, bouncing off drum heads, against infinite eardrums, everywhere at once. This is just too diffuse.
So I focus myself into a particle and allow myself to expand. I glimpse the worm (who is now wearing a smoking jacket and sipping on a martini) and swim through some sort of watery bog. I zip through bubbly water until I reach terminal velocity and blast out of the ocean in a spray of blue iridescent wings. I have some too! And scales. I test my breath, and sure enough, fire comes out. No breath mints for me. I’m headed for Wembley stadium to find out why the rhino was headed there.
Soon I see the stadium. There are thousands of fantastic creatures, in every color and configuration you can imagine. The rhino isn’t easy to spot, so I tune into that frequency and settle down next to him. With no words, I ask the question.
His answer: Because I don’t like broccoli.
I emerge in the cloister in Arles, France. Van Gogh spent time here, walking this square corridor, itching to paint the colors that swirled in his mind. But he’s not here. Only Mao Tse Tung and the Tidy Bowl man. Mao is hitting his forehead with a board and reciting a rap verse over and over. The Tidy Bowl man just wants to trip him, but he has to do it without being obvious, or he will be punished.
I look around.
A huge rhinoceros wearing a purple cape gallops up to me. I can’t see where he’s come from and I’m scared he’s going to trample me. But he stops, stands up and says, in delightful English-accented tones, “I’m due at Wembley stadium, but I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Can you point the way?” I point up. He unfurls green iridescent wings, and, with two great wing-beats, is gone.
I sink through the cold stone floor and find myself face to face (or is it face to butt?) with a worm the size of a barn. Or, no, I’m as big as a poppy seed. Now I understand how the rhino could find himself so off-course. It belches purple powdery stuff and in an instant I become a sound wave, snake-shaped, bouncing off drum heads, against infinite eardrums, everywhere at once. This is just too diffuse.
So I focus myself into a particle and allow myself to expand. I glimpse the worm (who is now wearing a smoking jacket and sipping on a martini) and swim through some sort of watery bog. I zip through bubbly water until I reach terminal velocity and blast out of the ocean in a spray of blue iridescent wings. I have some too! And scales. I test my breath, and sure enough, fire comes out. No breath mints for me. I’m headed for Wembley stadium to find out why the rhino was headed there.
Soon I see the stadium. There are thousands of fantastic creatures, in every color and configuration you can imagine. The rhino isn’t easy to spot, so I tune into that frequency and settle down next to him. With no words, I ask the question.
His answer: Because I don’t like broccoli.
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