tAILLESS kITES*

A blue sky crouching in the barrows of a whore’s skirts, some skies are different than others, mused the man in the hat, a faint simulacrum of sky, a sky within a sky, a skinless sky. Clouds were the god’s way of inducing order into the disorder of skies, a way of making sense of cobalt and cerulean, gunmetal blue and Prussian, indigo and azure blue, blue, so he thought. Umbrellas were useless things, he considered, especially when used to ward off rain and hail from the clutter of one’s head. Hats were much less cumbersome, as they required little property or use of one’s hands, thereby allowing for free access to things and people that lay in one’s way, such as alms men and harridans, and men with shamble legs and three-legged dogs with mange and cockle-eyes. Walking is less enjoyable, he concluded, when the umbrella, which is nothing more than a coleus of twisted spokes and battened cloth, had to be manhandled into submission, an unruly kite with an equally unruly tail. He much preferred the simple hat, a boater or a fedora tarweed with oilcloth, quid into place with scotching or a safety pin, to the umbrella, which was nothing more than a vexing encumbrance, a tailless kite with little regard for one’s desiccation or wellbeing.