Semi-Daily Scribbles

It is the constant rubbing and touching and jostling each day that exacts such a toll on Miriam's stamina. She does everything she is told to do. Miriam gets up early. Eats red food and fruit. Tumbles out of her well-padded nest and jumps into the swift moving stream with all the other striped and slippery fish. The current eddies around the mouth of an enormous can, fitted and fueled; ready to receive the day's stunned cluster of citizens. But it is the contact, the closeness, that so confuses Miriam. She becomes exhausted from the attempt to attach meaning to all the incidental and flagrantly intentional reaching out and pushing away that defines such a confined existence.