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December 18, 2001 hair trigger I am seated with a cup of hot herb tea that smells faintly of pussy.  I shall sip and sniff as I report on my observations of the last few days. I use Ivory soap because it smells like soap.  It was not formulated to smell like the great outdoors or the gland-oozings of an ox.  I also use Ivory because it is 99.9% pure and it floats.  Purity and buoyancy are virtues I revere.  I am not alone in this. If you are old enough, you will remember Ivory being advertised as "the soap that floats."  This was seen as an improvement over its original slogan, "the soap that melts quickly before splintering like mica in a vise."  Which, of course, it also does.  Anyway, I found inspiration the other day in just such a splinter of Ivory. On Friday, I unwrapped a new bar of Ivory soap and showered with it.  By Thursday, it had melted and, on the seventh day, it splintered into unusable slivers.  So I gathered the soap pieces and threw them into the toilet.  When I emerged from the shower, I flushed.  As I was brushing my teeth, I noticed that the soap slivers were floating around on top of the water in the toilet bowl.  So I flushed again.  And again.  Each time, the Ivory remnants got sucked down in the commode vortex and, each time, they popped right back up.  I became mesmerized and then emboldened by the tenacity of the sewer-bound surfactant.  I immediately recognized the phenomenon as a metaphor for my own resilience.  As one who has made more comebacks than The McRib, I was inspired by the struggle I saw played out in my crapper. Scoff if you like.  In matters of inspiration, a hair-trigger is crucial so long as the Beast lurks nearby.

©  2001 by the beastmaster