EVERYBODY IN MY FAMILY EVENTUALLY STARTS TALKING ABOUT THE OCEAN

I fell in love with marmalade when I was six years old and in that way I am very much the same person that I was when I was six years old.

I should mention that I have never eaten marmalade, but I have certainly looked at it for many years.

I like the strands and swirls and the fact that it looks like an ocean in a dream where you are wearing orange sunglasses on the ocean and the sails are full with air. Orange air.

Unless there is another kind of marmalade: lemon, maybe. Were I to eat either, I would no longer be the boy I was at six; I would suddenly become 48 years old and my clothes would be ripped because it was all so sudden.

I would be brushing my teeth carefully and trying to decide whether or not I liked marmalade. I don’t think I do. Ah, “Under The Lemon Sun We Be"–thus spake the

completely Dead Sea. Are you experienced? Jimi Hendrix once asked. I hope so, I would say, were I to say it, to Jimi.

Sailing across the ocean, I fall into a deep slumber that makes me forget that I still haven’t eaten marmalade and thus my love for you remains eternal.

No, you are not marmalade, but I have loved you since I was six. If I put you in my mouth, I would no longer be six, and everything would be the deliciously familiar orange and yellow.

I would no longer be six if I were to do what I were to say.

all artwork, except likenesses of Lyndon B. Johnson, by Crispy Flotilla ® 2006