Rub

Rub a dub dub: Mortals in a tub.

And how do you think they got there?

I don't mean to rub you the wrong way, to do the disservice of a rub of your nose in an indecent dimension.

I only desire descant without descent into dissension. I want to rub elbows with you. I want to rub shoulders with you.

One object moving, over and against one object stationary, along the surface, with pressure: Ah, there's the rub. It is the agony and the ecstasy.

We remember the agony of obstruction, the rub that is abrasion of uneven surface upon another. Serenity is marred. The difficult ensues. This is no rubber bullet. This rubbing in is rubbing out, lethal.

We find ourselves wandering in the night, sleepless, rubbing our hands to rub away damned spots of guilty body fluids unnamed and unidentified. And if we are unable to rub away the pain, we might obsessively examine rubbings, artifacts of memories etched stone walled in the archives of would be forgettings. Is this perseveration better than rubber rooms? Better yet is erasure, rubbing senseless into complete censure. Tabula rasa, no more and always less.

Rub a dub: Dub. My mouth is moving and sounds emerge, but all is rubbed senseless, origin and original meaning rubbed out. Superimposed aural rubbings rule. The sense of emergent sound and meaning rub against the deaf receiver. Misinterpretation is reified, dubbed onto oral cavity rubbings. A foreign rubber universe is laid over me, like a masking shroud. Is this the cost of contact? Is this the rub? Who can win in this? How can there be peace, or merely détente? I would even strong arm into victory to make it stop.

Perhaps the rubber match is not incendiary. Perhaps the tie need not be broken. The rubbers that erase and sterilize, that disconnect and insulate, simultaneously protect, allowing some rub, some connection of limited trust and thrust. Is this not a service? Do not mothers everywhere caution their children to wear their rubbers?

The rub is rubbing off on me.

"Rub" does not only name abrasion, after all. It is Russian currency and good Ugandan meat spice. It is Libyan date syrup lusciously lapping wheat flour cakes. It is lineament and the applying of lineament by skilled fingers. Rubbing is creative pattern making.

Rubbing is genesis of ecstasy.

I have seen the aerial roots of rubber trees. I imagine them mutually rubbing earth and sky, profligate yet unashamed. They are connecting the unconnectable even as they prepare to create the rubbery stuff of ultimate disconnection and insulation. Such is the rub.

I have hope that my words can rub you the right way, fingers upon desire, ultimate agonists altering reception of worlds.

Rubbing the Aladdin's lamp, I wish into existence twin bodies in embrace, rapt, wrapped. Afloat upon an ostensibly external sea they are kaleidoscopic yantra dancings. Apart from the rub they are not.

The rub is their nesting, their mingling and tingling and rampant song drumming. The rub at their single heart center is intolerable, inexorable, demanding and madness. With it they cannot go on. Without it they merely evaporate: senescent, evanescent, ephemeral, inconclusive.

But even then I would be the recognizing of it anywhere. It is every where and when and how, closer than the air that rubs us into being. It is we, clean and afloat in the rub a dub tub.

Shakespeare says it: "To die, to sleep. To sleep: Perchance to dream: Ah, there's the rub."

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.