ELECTRICITY

 

 

The man climbing up the ladder is playing with thick black snakes. There is a whole nest of the black snakes near the roof of the building and what is the man doing? The grass is not green and the glass is cold. The man is at the very top of the ladder. I watch out the window. The man is doing something with the snakes. Not climbing but at the top of the ladder. He leans back but doesn't fall. I'm watching out the window. He should because gravity says so. You can't see it, you can't smell it. You can sort of smell it and you can almost taste it. Gravity is a mystery. But we all know what it does. It makes things go down. And I'm waiting for it, watching out the window. The man should be feeling gravity hard. Instead he stays leaning back high up off the ladder doing something to the black snakes. Next to him is the pine tree and past the green pine tree the not green grass goes to the street. Parked on the street is a bucket truck. It's mostly white, but it has some green on it. I can see it out the window. It has yellow lights flashing. There might be a switch for them inside the truck, but I think they go on automatically. The lights are to warn all the cars. I don't think they stay on when the truck is driving down the road. A bucket truck is also called a cherry picker because you could use it to pick cherries. But mostly even if they're called cherry pickers they aren't used to pick cherries. "A cherry picker boosts workers high." I watch it work out the window. The buckets take you up where ladders won't go. "Here is a bucket truck to help fix the lights." Through the cold glass I watch it go. The bucket goes way up high in the air. The bottom part of the boom goes straight up, while the other section turns and crosses over the street. It's tricky not to bump into all the wires. I see it out the window when a smaller bucket truck drives up. The man standing on the ground, on the sidewalk, and the man in the bucket wave it away because they got it okay with the big one. The man on the ladder is too busy messing with the black snakes to notice. I watch the smaller bucket truck barely slowing down before driving away from my window. The man in the cherry picker could be picking cherries. The big pole used to be a tree, but now the branches are wires. One fat grey one swoops down across the street over to the top of B-building where the ladder man is doing something to the nest of black snakes. B-building is getting the new electricity. That's what I'm watching out the window. Another grey one comes from the same spot on the pole but goes over to A-building. But A-building got the new electricity several years ago. I don't know when new electricity becomes old electricity. The man on the ladder leaning back from the ladder is held to the ladder by an orange belt. It's an anti-gravity belt. The black snakes are actually smaller but still thick wires that maybe come out of the big grey one. I don't know what he's doing with them, except that he's helping to bring the new electricity to B-building. I watch this out the window. Then there's the flash of orange like the lights on the truck, but it's a bigger and faster blazing fireball like the black snakes got angry and spit out lightning. It sends the man on the ladder flying away from the side of B-building, and the ladder comes too because of the anti-gravity belt that isn't working. The grass is not green like the pine tree and the paint on the bucket truck. The cold comes in through the glass. I look out the window and see. The new electricity doesn't want to go in B-building, so it smacks the man away. The ladder hops quickly across the grass following him. He barely taps against A-building, bouncing off, and then the top of the ladder comes down on the wall and he's dangling in the air. I watch this out the window. The ladder slides sideways, and they both crash to the ground. This is right out the window. The snakes spark and send puffs of smoke up into the air. The man on the sidewalk looks like he wants to move, but all he can do is make his head go all around. The man up in the bucket is flapping his arms like he's trying to fly. There are lots of tiny fires in the branches of the pine tree. I am seeing all this out the window.

"Dad? Daddy! Come quick. Hurry!!"

 

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