this is not the story [maybe i'm a surrealist] {is that too obscure a joke, or do you get it}

there really was a pea soup restaurant.  i thought you made that up but it was true, literally.  probably lots of things are literally true and others are true, not literally.  i've been watching lost so i'm afraid you'll have to forgive me for running on this way.  or don't.  but i can't help it.  when i pull the story together from the scattered corners with my candle and feather it's all leaven.  the red wolf, the raven, even the thunderbird who hasn't made an appearance in a while, but i just keep coming back to fortune tellers.  can you tell a story that jumps around in time and space but keeps coming back to words?  the light in the attic, the cup of sugar, the flipflops.  how much sense will it all make?  probably you'll understand it, and that's all i ever really cared about.  and the fact that we live in a world that is largely imaginary is maybe good or maybe bad, or maybe both.  but the fact that you can live there with me is the reason.

i know that sounds like an unfinished sentence.

i'm like thumbelina, pocket-sized.  i am gulliver the giant from johnny swift or is that jonny quest i could swear you said jonny quest.  i'm always there, or never there, and that's just the way you maybe always wanted it to be.

 how i met your father?  well, when i was eleven or twelve i went to a fortune teller who said i would have a child who would be a scientist;  that i would get involved with his work and that would make me live longer.  but i think the gypsy was wrong.  i don't think you're the scientist, i think it's your daddy.  and i don't think 72 is the age i'm going to live to be, i think when he saw 72 it had to do with the names of god.  i could be wrong.  those psychic flashes tend to be metaphor.  your daddy, he knew me when he first saw me, but he was tripping balls, i think.  when he saw me again, he recognized me, but he didn't think i was all that and a bag of chips.  you can't see my fiery wings unless you're tripping.  anyway.  it took years and years and several wheels of good fresh cheese until he recognized me again.