The Televisionary Oracle Read Online Free Page B

saltiness
are the words that come to mind to describe it. Ancient freshness. I flash on an immaculate spider web after a summer rain, and the leathery sweetness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose fragments I once sniffed in a museum. Weirdly, I’m also reminded of a vivid smell from childhood: my mother’s sweetly musty old khaki cloth bag full of marbles from her own childhood. She kept it in her closet, and when she wasn’t home I would sneak it out to examine the beautiful antique marbles. Strange that this specific old aroma would emanate now from the shirt of a stranger. It’s indescribably unique. There are no words for it besides the pictures and feelings they stir: chilly autumn Saturdays playing alone in the basement of the family home in Michigan while football games drone on the TV.
    All these fragrances together evoke in me a delirious happiness, a kind of dreamy unselfconscious joy from my childhood. It’s very different from the alert, calculating excitement that Rapunzel’s presence has provoked in me up till now, though also oddly synergistic. Adding to the celebration is my instinctive sense that all of her delicious smells are utterly natural. Nothing artificial in the mix, thank Goddess. No pheromone-destroying perfumes or deodorants.
    As I meditate on these glories, another item of clothing sails over the top of the stall and alights on my shoulder.
    “Sorry to say I don’t have a cardboard Burger King crown withme,” Rapunzel says. “Would you accept these instead?”
    I drink in the lovely sight of the dark plum-colored, silk bikini underpants. They sport the picture of a regal buzzard much like the one that graces the shirt pocket. The only difference is that this one has long, Rapunzel-like hair.
    I pull the panties over my head, dipping them down to nose-level before raising them back up and arranging them like a crown. Immediately I’m spinning in a hurricane of synesthesia. A collage of half-remembered, half-imagined tastes and visions from my childhood billows out of a mutating whirl of aromas. I’m slurping raspberry sorbet in a rowboat with my mother as we float on Otsego Lake in northern Michigan shortly after catching my first fish, a scared rainbow trout flipping around and pooping in a red bucket next to me. Or I’m lolling in a plastic swimming pool beneath a tree full of ripe pears in Marty Maxwell’s backyard while eating his mother’s delectable peanut butter and banana and maple syrup sandwiches as his younger sister Debbie lowers her bathing suit and shows us what girls look like down there. Or I’m lying at night in my bed dreaming of listening to the static-y radio broadcast of the Detroit Tiger baseball game when a ball of mist puffs in through my open window, smelling of lavender and vinegar and new-mown grass.
    Fermenting dreamily in this ripe vortex, I’m startled when Rapunzel bolts out of the stall and slips by me. “Catch you later,” she says and glides out the lavatory door.
    “Can I call you?” I yell after her, but the door smacks shut. I do a series of five tantric breaths of fire to refocus my awareness, fasten a couple buttons on my new shirt, and burst out of the bathroom myself. Rapunzel, wearing my favorite Indonesian-print shirt, is already trotting out the front door of the club. I lope after her, but by the time I reach the street, she’s disappeared. Gambling that she’s turned down Cathcart Street, I bolt that way. But when I arrive at the corner she’s nowhere in sight.

Why is it so important
    to the future
    of daffodils and sea urchins and the jet stream
    that childbirth be shown regularly in prime time?
    What is the best way
    for you to undo
    the black magic
    you’ve performed on yourself?
    What exactly do we mean
    when we predict that
    hedonistic midwives will one day rule the world?
    Why are we so sure that sooner or later
    each of us
    will be a well-rounded
    incredibly kind
    extremely wealthy
    genius
    with lots of leisure time
    and an