Surface Tension

I have discovered within my brain this strange association between bubbles and death.

At the place of employ, which (without going into too much detail, lest my whereabouts be known) is a "science museum" in "Southern California," we are exhibiting for the next three weeks our most successful and popular attraction of the year, which is a show performed by a certain "International Bubble Star," and whose show consists of "bubble elements" along with the respectably shameless promotion of his "patented bubble-making toys." You will never be able to crack this code. YOU WILL NOT FIND ME, GREGORIAT!

The man is obviously a story in and of himself. His life's work is bubble art. Not pictures made of bubbles or anything other-medium based like that, but the guy makes bubbles perform for you. He creates really quite beautiful bubble arrangements, does interesting tricks with them, really has a grand old time. He fills some bubbles with fog, some with cigarette smoke (Don't do drugs, kids! He will straight come to your house and put you in a bubble!) and he makes volcanoes and bubbles that bounce on the dang-dang ground and I have seen a square bubble form from his godlike whim. During the show, watching his face as he gazes upon his creations, you really get the feeling that this guy is Bublos, Greek God of Bubbles (though he's not Greek... no, that lofty classification is sadly lost to him).

He wears a semi-transparent, long-sleeved black shirt during the show. With slits along the upper arms. He's European, so this is all forgiveable. It occured to me that, were he American, people wouldn't put up with this madness for one second. It would seem frivolous, a man, completely sane and in touch with his consciousness, fooling around with bubbles like some lackadaisical schoolboy. Get a real job! Get a haircut!

But he's from Milan, he's Hungarian, and for a while he lived in Canada.

Oh. So that's okay then. God knows what those people have to go through. I only wish they could all become to lost in bubbles as to blind themselves from their hellish circumstance.

Anyway, I commented (as I am oft one to do) that I could die once I'd seen a square bubble, having been enamored with the concept (as aggresively as one could possibly be about any concept involving bubbles... anyone who's not Fan Yang) since seeing one blown by a pink elephant in Dumbo. You all know exactly what I'm talking about, damn it.

I know you do, GREGOR.

The man informed me that, not only could he blow a square bubble but, indeed, would blow a square bubble during his show. So, he said, don't die anytime soon. Slight chill.

And he did. As true as his word, he blew and I viewed a bubble cube-hewn. It was awesome, but he did a lot of other things that were awesome, too... and it seemed kind of dwarfed in comparison, as awesome as I, personally, found it.

Then, today, I was walking around campus, not feeling particularly stimulated after turning in yet another film exercise and dropping my two unnecessary classes perhaps prematurely but I simply couldn't sit around on them anymore with F's somewhere attached to my name and I'm in one class to make up for them but I'm waiting for the other notification to come in and I don't know how dropping them both with only one to replace them will affect my financial aid but at least twelve units is still a full load ow.... ow....

My brain.

I was walking around, these thing in the ol' noodly, when I suddenly thought (after having worked the Bubble Show all weekend) "I just want to go to work and watch the Bubble Show until I die." Because I like it a lot, you see, and because I am unreasonably fond of hyperbole. Anyway, larger chill.

So what's the deal? Why the terminal association with these light, frothy, airy little chambers? Is it the finality of life? Is it the inevitable conclusion all bubbles must face? Is it the thought process of seeing a man who has devoted his life to and defined his life by one singular thing so close to my own philosophy of purpose that I feel as if I'm merely looking thirty years into my future, and that the thirty years after that aren't too hard to see? How old is he, anyway? He's ageless. He is as old as the bubbles that broiled in the primordial sea, and as young as each new one he births from his soapy implements.

Of Death and Bubbles. I'm writing a book.

...

Also, "What Wings Do" would be a good title for something about Ameila Earhart. Or a horrible one. At any rate, it would be a title for something, wouldn't it?

I call him Gregor, for short. He hates it.