Diamond Shaped Head

What's green, has a diamond shaped head and ten legs? I'd really like to know because one strutted out of my shoe this morning. A stowaway I brought home with me, I guess. Doesn't matter, anyway, he died far from home, alone and in a strange land.

They came, culled from all over the valley, to the farm house by the river. Their cars overstuffed with tents, provisions, sleeping bags and beer. We spread out over the fields and then congregated by the fire, after the band had finished and after everyone had been fed. I sat and laughed with Sandra and Tracy as we picked sentence fragments out of the air and tried to make a story. Then I listened to Claire and Brady sing, and even the Prophet joined in. The Fabulous Bee spent the night in the centre of one conflagration after another, weaving in and out of the ring around the fire. I went looking for some relief and found fifty reasons to feel better, and after the fire died and everyone fell asleep, the Fabulous Bee and I wandered through the tents just looking for something funny.

At home, tired and drained, I slept and dreamt of pure chaos as the images and fragments tried to file themselves away. Patterson and El Jefe sat on the hill laughing while all you pretty girls turned to face the river in unison. The Birthday Boy, naked but for a banner which read "Grain Fed Chicken", spread eagle on the dock, talked in a whisper about the stars that fell, one by one out of the sky and sent up sheets of water when they hit the surface. I paddled back and forth in front of the scene until I realized my boat was a dog and he was swimming for the opposite shore and wasn't going to turn around. I had to walk back in, the water almost at my nostrils until I fell exhausted on the beach, surrounded by my dead. They poked at me and I wished I was closer to the fire.

I suppose both versions of my weekend away are true, in some sense, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend any amount of time trying to figure it out. I do feel bad about the bug, though.