[Mr. Caplan welcomes feedback at gabriel.caplan@gmail.com. His daily blog can be read here]

Dancing for the light bulb, which dangles, hitting my head. Such a low voltage, a low source of illumination -- and yet my head is attracted by some cosmic "otherness" I can't discern. It's as if the act of hitting my head is the riddle and the result is the answer: my head throbbing and slightly bleeding from the smashed glass.

The filament ebbs and throbs. Beautiful, like Plato's dream Clitoris. The translucent shell smashed on my ego, the metal wire still dangles, spreading light, revealing parts of the room I'd rather not see- like the bearded woman lifting her beaded skirt. Eck.

This basement is full of boxes. Some are stacked neatly but most strewn on the concrete floor. Unfinished walls are chalk full of asbestos: an albatross shadow from my folded hands.

I nervously tap my foot in time with the blood dripping from my nose. The beats are far between, but convulsive. Little shards sparkle as the electro-clit swings by once again. I shake the glass, sweat, and blood from my brow and wait. I catch the clit in my teeth with its next pass. I die.

Heaven is a bakers dozen so I drift by. The periphery of the Pearly Gates interests me. It is all clouds, yes. But there are shapes to the clouds by the Pearly walls of City Heaven. Like, a bundle of fluff forms a shrub. Little tufts of white grass shoot out from the level whiteness. Crazy.

Wandering through this fluff into a thicket, I swear to seeing a cloud-bunny bun by. Is this a cloud-deer munching on cloud-ferns? No, this is obviously a pale sailor still in uniform wandering towards me.

"How goes it, Shiny Warrior?" I take this greeting from an episode of Jakers: The Adventures of Piggly Winks I enjoyed earlier in the day.

"It doth do well, friend," he replies. He is an old man. His face is tired, set with a protruding nose that long ago gave up residency on the face, but was rejected at the border. He continues in a charming bellow, "And what bringeth ye to these parts? A cup of cloud-milk from the forest, perhaps?"

"No," I respond, shaking my head a bit for his possible deaf ears.

"No?" He questions, shifting his body weight in consideration before a further reply, "Do you seek treasure? We do have treasure in the outskirt of City Heaven, you know; wild fantastic treasures woven from the dreams and prayers of sinners."

He continues to bellow pleasantly, inching forward. "You know human prayers are fueled by conscious? Every time a darkly-clouded soul sends up a prayer, why it's like a catapult! The knave flings a dream without configuring for lightness. They are weighed down by guilt, fear, carnality. Those dreamers who dream well... well, their's are flung over the walls of the city. It's City Heaven's manna; their foodstuff. They can't exist without it."

"We? We take the dreams that can't make it over the wall. We fashion tools from them and collect our own foodstuff."

The errant sailor holds up a cloud-net and throws it over my head. "Have you been a sinner?" he asks, now against my ear. His net has pinned me down. He is licking me. I don't like it one bit. I bite his fluff-tongue and he howls in fluff-pain. I struggle with the net on the cloudy grassiness and feel the feeling of falling.

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