caveat emptor

Here we are, and now.

A year, after all, is no great thing. Years come and go, a manageable span of days. When we were young - remember? - a year was like an ocean. You could not contain it because it was vast. You could hardly swim without faltering across an hour. As we grow, years diminish. Now we can drink a year in one great gulp, from beginning to end. Soon no amount of time will satisfy our thirst for life. A year, after so many, is no great thing.

Once - remember? - an hour was enough time to do anything we wanted to do. How could we sustain any imagination or fancy for an entire hour? Today, I can hardly imagine accomplishing anything of worth in less than a year. In the end, I fear, I will come to realize that an entire life was not enough, not nearly enough, to accomplish anything at all.

You cannot stem time in its irresistible flow, nor can you divide it meaningfully into parts. The units may remain true, but the scale always shifts. I wonder why we try? Here we are, and now. The great accomplishment of our life is simply that we are alive. Here we are and now, born as fulfilled as ever we need to be. Close your eyes, or open them, and revel in the success of your existence. Somewhere calendars are cast into the fire. New calendars take their place. This is not who we are, it is just one more thing we do to fill the time. Time is running, but that doesn't mean it's running out. Who knows, really, what comes next?

Let not these humans scratches in time discourage us. Time means nothing without us, as far as we're concerned. We mean everything to each other, and here we are, and now.

Happy old year. Happy new.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Look Into Rayn's Eyes!

Resistance is futile!

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

A Lie. I Never Write Songs.

Starting only with a feeling, or maybe just the impression of a feeling, I attack the guitar. I've never seen the virtue for my own music in the intricate complexity of skilled play. I like the warm familiarity of full chords, struck with ferocity or joy, syncopating to the pulse of a feeling, or maybe just the impression of a feeling. Dancing, or compelling to dance, through the trance of chord progressions, I herd the hearers with dissonance and resolution along the rise and fall of the melody, a particular path through the terrain of the harmony of the whole. When the feeling, or maybe just the impression of a feeling, crystallizes in my throat, I pull it up with my mind and push it up with my viscera into words. I try to mean just enough, but not too much. I try not to convey concrete ideas, to tell a story without falling into a plot. I'm not particularly interested in the soul interruption of a narrative. I want to convey something more primitive, like a feeling, or maybe just the impression of a feeling. I don't like to dress up songs as though they are obligated to pretend to be more beautiful, more meaningful than they really are. A song should be allowed the dignity of being whatever it is, of coming to be in the heart and mind of every hearer. If the song that lives in you has rapport with the original song, the song that lived in me, then I have done well. I have given you more than sound. I have given you a feeling, or maybe just the impression of a feeling.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Talk to me, won't you?

Later. Love.

Art and Propitiation

"If I didn't sing the blues," he said, "there would be blood on my hands. I sing and play my murder, hoping to cleanse my soul."

You never know, when you see or hear or touch or taste someone's art, what tormented motivations went into its creation. Was painting de sterrennacht somehow less insane than cutting off the lobe of an ear with a razor? Though he gave the ear to the prostitute, Rachel, he did it for love of Gauguin, for fear of losing him. A few months later, when Guaguin was gone forever, Van Gogh painted de sterrennacht, The Starry Night, there in the mental hospital. What would he have done, I wonder, had they given him another razor instead of a paintbrush? What madness disappeared into those swirling stars?

Singing in a rough blues bar one night in Chicago in 1963, he was killed by a stray bullet from a drunken violence that had nothing to do with him. He bled to death on the stage, clutching his guitar. When they pried his hands from the instrument, there was no blood on them. His hands, though calloused by the strings of his art, were clean, like his soul.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

How We Do

She'll have no truck with the customary interchange of pretenses that we all toss knowingly back and forth at each other, hiding our hands. She has never stopped looking around earnestly long enough to blur her eyes in recognition of common patterns, having decided instead that she is more comfortable with the simple, understandable consequences of what is real, of who she really is. This might, if you're more common a person than she, make you a bit uncomfortable, but it's best kept to yourself. Do not trouble the smooth sincerity of her brow with your complex storms of nuance. She is best enjoyed like black coffee and warm, soft, unbuttered bread. If you take her as she is and draw her in she will wrap her pure humanity around you and teach you, soft and smiling, the harmless error of your ways, the way to be real, the warm, moist kiss of who you can be.

A voice calls out in the shopping mall, a consumer prophet warning you of what will come. "Tied to that stake, when all impurities are burned away, you need no gift receipt. What little purchase is left to your bare, blackened feet is final. Where now is redemption? For what would you exchange this, your fair-bought fate?" His beard hangs fanatical against his robe, the tags still dangling like accusations from his cuffs, mocking your inability to pay the price. "Limited time only!" he declares, pointing a bony finger at the center of your pounding heart. "Limited time only!" Mall security eyes him timidly from the food court, afraid to approach him in the shame of their unarmed authority, radios in their hand but no one to call. Shoppers pretend not to hear him, but his eyes are locked to yours and you cannot turn away. Here, today, you will barter with him for your very soul.

Usually she just smiles at my stories, having little use for such things. It's not what we're about, these hobbies, pastimes, careers and talents. I kiss her on the neck and she threads her fingers through my hair. We wrap ourselves in our personal purpose and live all the ways we have learned to do so. We take care of our small duties in quiet and talking. We come home when the day is through and own this life that owns us back, holding hands and embracing and even scuffing up against one another, fitting more fully together when it's done. I have no idea if this is the way it's typically done, but I know it works. For us, it works.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Snippets from Among Everything in the World

Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón sit in a dim bar in a small town in Mexico, smoking cigarettes and drinking dark Spanish port. That's where they are in my mind, anyway, when I picture them. Some part of me rejects the notion of Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón sitting at a McDonalds in the international terminal at Chicago O'Hare airport, eating an Egg McMuffin and a Sausage, Egg and Cheese McBiscuit and drinking small fountain drinks. I also could not picture them at Luby's cafeteria. Nor could I picture them at Buffalo Wild Wings watching college football. To me they are in Mexico, in a small town, partaking in ancient vices, spinning complex yarns. I can't help it. I'm just silly like that.

One of the regulars at the coffee shop this morning, the impossibly tall and impossibly thin girl who always stands by the window to wait for her order, is crying. She's trying to look like she isn't crying, but she is crying. You wouldn't know it unless you looked at her face, but it's unmistakable. She's crying and sniffing, trying to hide it. I wonder what is making her so sad. It's something I would never do, to go and ask her what's wrong, to try and make her feel better. I assume she would not welcome my becoming more than an anonymous face she sees each morning, that she would rather deal with the people in her own life, her own people, about such things. Still, there she is. She's crying. I hope she finds some way to feel better. I hope she's not crying tomorrow.

I'm getting close to understanding the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. When you understand this, segues become unnecessary. There are no non sequiturs. You can see how everything flows from everything else. We are all together, you, me, Alfonso, Guillermo, the tall and thin crying girl. We all flow from one another, follow one another, necessitate one another. Without all of us, there wouldn't be any of us. I'm starting to understand it, though I don't know if I could ever explain it to the rest of us.

Hello, friends. How are we today?

Later. Love.

Pearls Before Swine, A Lesson in Analysis

"I'm welding the chassis together with the transmission scattered all over the garage floor and you want to pick out leather seats," I said. "First things first."

"What?" he asked, confused.

"First things first," I replied.

"What was all that car stuff?"

"A metaphor," I said. "An illustration."

"An illustration of what?"

"First things first." It seemed like a pretty clear illustration to me.

"I'm pretty sure," he said smugly, "that car manufacturers pick out the leather seats before they start welding the chassis together."

I sighed and shook my head.

"And why scatter the transmission all over the garage floor? You'll lose something."

"We're still," I said with exasperation, "laying the groundwork. Your questions are premature."

"Are you going to gather up the transmission before we lose something?"

"What?"

"The transmission. Are you going to..."

"Yes," I snapped, standing to go. "I'll go to the garage right now."

"In this metaphor, is the garage your office?"

But I was already ignoring him, heading for the garage.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Art Warps Us, Good and Bad

She does not agree with the author of the Lord of the Flies that civilization is coming unraveled, that things are getting worse. She believes that, although there may be problems, there are always problems, so that doesn't mean the world is bad. She believes that, although there might be some bad people in the world, there are many more good people. She agreed more with To Kill a Mockingbird than with Lord of the Flies. I know this because she told me so. I was happy to hear it because I happen to agree with her. Mostly, though, I was happy to hear it because she is my daughter.

I had a dream where the gods asked a different artist every day to paint the world before the sun came up. There was Van Gogh day, brilliant and indistinct with thick texture and yellow wind, fading to dark orange. There was Dali day, the horror of which I will not recall. There was the swollen precision of Jan van Eyck day, crisp and stark and warped. Even Dr. Seuss had a day, a day in which I hid in my room for fear of the strange. If the gods asked you to paint the world, how would you paint yourself? How would you paint us?

Most scientists agree that singularities are caused primarily by gravity collapse and by the fiction of A. A. Attanasio. Who are we to argue? When I read Radix it made me feel askew and bent, a terrible feeling. I don't think I'll ever read it again, but how can I know? If Harper Lee had written Radix, I'd probably have enjoyed it more, as would my daughter.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Waiting for Father Garay

I sipped the coffee - the strongest, I was sure, that I'd ever had - even stronger than the shocking brew they typically drank here - and shivered at the feeble warmth of this thin robe, it's complete failure to keep out the bite of the cold morning wind.

"Hermano needs the warm clothes," said the sister with her sonorous accent, dropping a rough, heavy blanket onto my shoulders. She muttered something else in smiling Spanish, but I could only pick out the word "frío", cold. I smiled and nodded in thanks and she went puttering off, shuffling things around on tables and shelves as she passed as though nothing was in quite the right place, though everything was close.

I looked out across the stiff, yellow grass of the back field behind the abbey Santa María de las Rosas Negras at the wind-ruffled lake. Grey winter clouds passed swiftly overhead. Herons skimmed in low over the water from the south and, dragging their feet along the surface to slow themselves, came to rest among the short reeds just offshore. Black silhouettes of ducks bobbed along on the chill waves far out on the lake. The grey cold of the morning made me anxious for activity, for direction. For anything but this damnable waiting.

But, though they tolerated my presence with a kind of warm, courteous disdain, the brothers and sisters of this strict order would not accept my tainted help, the labor of an infidel, in their duties around the abbey. So, I could only sit. And wait. And write. My hands, however, were cramped already from hours of writing yesterday, and sleep in the drafty old shack where I was boarding did little to heal their stiffness. Though my mind was racing with ideas I wanted to explore, the thought of taking up the pencil made me wince.

Where was Father Garay? The brothers and sisters would only say that he was away and that they expected him to return today. They had been saying that for eight days now. "It will surely be today," they would say with a smile. Still there was no sign of him. If I had anywhere else to go I'd have left in defiance to their stiff-necked anti-courtesy, but I had to wait for Father Garay. He was our only hope. Only he knew how to defend against the laser beams of the Martian flying saucers. Only he could save planet Earth.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Weekend in Fuzzy Pictures

Did you ever wonder to yourself, "What did Scott do this weekend?" Did you ever scour the Internet for some indication only to come up with no information to slake your thirst for some knowledge of my goings-on? If so, this post is for you. I don't have time to recount, much though you might desire for me to do so, all the weekends past. Here, however, is a brief description of my weekend.

On Friday Susan and I went to her office holiday party at the Colonial Country Club. She was beautiful in her new dress, a gold-ish, brown evening dress. I wore a black suit, a red tie, and a dark grey shirt of which, although it was brand new, my Bichon Jenny had already nibbled the collar. The venue was beautiful, the food was great. The people were accountants. I don't have any good photos (the one of Susan was taken by a coworker of mine), because I only had my camera phone and it takes terrible, unflattering photos. I snapped a crappy "phone in the mirror" photo of me while Susan was dancing with some of her girlfriends from work. I also snapped a picture of the caricature we had done. Susan and I agree that, although it captures me decently, only the hair on her toon-self resembles her at all.

On Saturday afternoon River, my son, wrestled in a tournament. He made it to the final bout for his weight class (160). No one was pinned in the bout so it came down, after three rounds, to points. The other kid, though inferior to my son in every way, won 9 to 7. Afterwards River was so spent that he wore what I can only describe as a Napoleon Dynamite expression. Also his hair was mussed by his protective headgear. As his father, therefore, I have to post the picture, just to embarrass him.

On Saturday night Susan and I went to my office holiday party at a nice hotel in Las Colinas. The kids scattered to the winds and we got a room for the night. We had a nice time at the party, but I snapped no pictures. I snapped some pictures in the room, but those are posted on my "pay per view" site. It was nice to get away.

On Sunday, once we'd gathered the kids back from the corners of the world, we did gift shopping, decorated the house and did chores. No photos of that either.

That's it. You're welcome.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Self-help Donuts

Robert showered to the full potential of his showering capability. He put his all into donning his socks and shoes and tied them as tied as he could. Robert warmed instant oatmeal in the microwave and ate it with fully realized eating, holding back none of his will from the eating of it. Sliding into his fleece-lined hoodie and walking with purpose out into the fullness of the day, he was soon completely present at the bus stop, living in the moment without regret or fear. Robert put his all into riding to work, being the best pedestrian he could be from the bus stop to the donut shop door. The donuts he made that day were not excellent, having nothing special to recommend them among the other donuts of the universe. This was not, however, for lack of enthusiasm on Robert's part. Robert is fully alive, a disciple of wisdom, a follower of advice. He would make a really good ant, which is saying something.

Sometimes, in the winter, I like to imagine hot. The gritty sweat of your dirty skin runs over your sunburn. Salty drops run down your cheeks, leaving trails in the dirt from the hollows of your eyes to the corners of your dry, thirsty mouth. You are hauling brush through the dusty, dry grass of a Texas July field, placing it on a flatbed for hauling to a mulch yard. Triple-digit, afternoon heat makes you light-headed and tired, melting you where you stand. The metal of the truck tailgate is too hot to touch and it burns the skin at the back of your upper arm as you reach into the truck bed to lift the water jug. You wince back from the searing, snatching the handle of the jug as you do so. The water is warm but wet, replenishing the reservoir of your perspiration for a little longer. All around heat rises like distortion from the ground, melting the light as it passes through the air. The sun in the cloudless, pale blue sky is too bright to look full into, and you squint at turkey buzzards passing overhead. One day, you think to yourself, it will be winter again.

Robert cleans up the tub of custard he dropped with determination, trying to experience the full education of the experience. He is enthusiasm incarnate as he smears the custard around ineffectively, having chosen the wrong cleaning supplies with all the resolve of choice at his disposal. He is being all he can be, and that's all we can ask from him. He is Robert, master of the passable cruller.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - ToadMan made the Cheshire eyes from yesterday's photo of me. I like them. Thanks, ToadMan. And thanks, friends, for stopping by.

When I Was a Hero

At some point during the early part of eternity, after all the living was done and we were just hanging around, dead, they gathered some of us together in a place for reasons that weren't immediately clear to us. Once we were all assembled, they began calling on us in an order we could not discern, and we were each asked in turn to account for our being numbered among the heroes of the universe. One by one, stories were told of great exploits and accomplishments, deeds worthy of renown, heroic and laudable. Immediately I became uncomfortable, feeling for sure that I had been included by mistake. "What will I say?" I wondered to myself, but nothing came to mind. "Maybe we all feel like this," I thought. As the time came, however, for each woman and man to justify their presence, no one seemed to hesitate or display the sort of insecurity I felt. I became certain, then, that I was there by mistake. Slowly, trying to attract no attention, I wriggled my way through the listening crowd toward the back of the chamber and the doors through which we had all entered. When I made it to the back, I was afraid the door would be barred, that I would not be permitted to leave. As one woman told her tale, though, I pushed the softly against the door and it opened quietly, so I slipped back out to join the rest of humanity under the beautiful sky of the dead. Everyone makes mistakes, you know, even the people in charge.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Trees of Blackbird Earth

There was a time when I suspected that the universe was really just a Beatles song. I have since learned the truth. [Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.] I have since learned the truth.

The silhouettes of blackbirds gather in the sticky leaflessness of the sapling outside in front of the windy horizon sky. They puff up in the cold and hunker in the way that birds hunker in the buffeting winds. Were I a blackbird perched in a windy wintry tree, I'd sing the long ancient birdsong of spring, just to remind myself. Real blackbirds rarely sing songs, however. They only complain loudly, offended by the affront of a world run by lesser animals. The clouds move by behind them impossibly slow in the frantic wind, massive barges carrying rain somewhere else, far away. Blackbirds do not flit, they lumber from tree to tree, always looking for that perfect perch from which to scream their disdain at the world. You would never consider kissing a blackbird full on the beak. They have no truck with us, and they do not like us in that way. Much though I feel for their plight, out there in the blustery wind, I refuse the demands of the blackbirds. I will not surrender to their mastery, giving them the world we won with the might of our opposable thumb. Let them oppose our thumbs if they wish, we'll win in the end. We'll not sit, complaining, in the trees of Blackbird Earth.

The trees of Blackbird Earth. [Yeah, baby.] The trees of Blackbird Earth.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

My Favorite Place to Be

I am my favorite place to be. And so are you.

"The wind was so cold," she said, "we wanted to hide behind each other. We wanted to die in the prime of our lives, to a heaven or hell of warmth."

I thought how I'd never known cold like that. Even when frostbite gnashed against my face, leaving a rough scar, I felt laughing danger and foolish boy alive.

"The sky was so blue it made us colder. It was piercing blue, deep like oceans." She smiled as she told the story, gloried in the extreme past survived.

There is a kind of post-traumatic elation that rushes the beats of your heart up against each other, tension climbing the muscles of your chest toward your throat like a laugh that has possessed you and lusts to escape into the mortal world. I clench my fists nervously and flex my fingers in shared enthusiasm, a contagion of energy.

"When the snow finally fell in giant flakes we turned our heads up and watched them fall from as high as we could see them. We let them hit our cheeks and melt. One landed on the bridge of my nose and a couple of drops ran like tears down through the hollows of both of my eyes."

No one ever loved her again like I loved her in that remembered cold and blue and snow. Sometimes I recall something she said or a story she told. Sometimes I get a familiar tingling in my fingers, a surge of old laughter displaced in my chest.

She was my favorite place to be. And so am I.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

A Song of the Impractical

Sometimes the plight of the Snow Gnomes in the wintry bluffs of Mount Ravenheart is more important than your plumbing or the wind pouring through the place in your back door where the damnable dogs have torn away the weather stripping. Never mind that there is no Mount Ravenheart. It matters not that there are no Snow Gnomes. Their plight grips you, pulls you away to a magical land where there is no home repair. Can you imagine such a place?

There is no magic in plumbing. Plumbing is more mundane than the most Japanese of home electronics Owner's Manuals you can imagine. It lives fully in the land of necessity and practicality. Has a poet ever plumbed the depths of plumbing, extolling its virtue? Much though I would hate to live in a world without plumbing, I would hate even more to live in a world where plumbing was the center of life. I love that there are no cesspools outside the window. I love that my daughters don't have to carry clay vessels to the nearby river. I love the shower and the vegetable sprayer and the sprinkler system. I would gladly pay you money to keep them all working for me.

I wonder if the Snow Gnomes know how to fix weather stripping? If I could summon them here, it could be a win/win situation.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - This post is a great example of what has made Bob a genius blogger for, lo, these many years. Check it out. Thanks for stopping by.

Want

People at this time of year always want to know what you want. "What do you want?" they ask, thinking of shopping malls and checklists and holiday cheer. Are you the sort of person, I wonder, who knows what you want? Do you want small things, things that can be purchased and wrapped? Are there pieces of plastic or electronics or productions on disc that you've been hoping to procure? As for me, I have no idea what I want. These small things in life that you can own and use and enjoy, I give almost no thought to them and rarely desire them, though I can enjoy them when they appear. Don't misunderstand me. I'm easy to please within my parameters. I have very particular tastes in music, books, movies and such. Better not to get those for me unless you know something about me that would give you an insight into those tastes. As for gadgets, trinkets, knickknacks, tchotchkes, baubles and such, I like most things. I'm not particularly folksy or kitschy, but I like things artistic or expressive, totems and sculptures and carvings and pictures and figures. Any of these things will make me happy to have gained a new little treasure, a new small connection with the giver. That is, I think, the point.

What do you want? Do you know? I'm speaking now of larger things. Do you have a tangible desire for something in life? An accomplishment? A new situation? A person? A treasure? A life? Do you know what that thing is? Do you pursue it with the means at your disposal? Goals and objectives and such, do you have them? I never have had them in any sustained and effective sense. There are short spurts of aspiration, but I often give up before I achieve anything. Most typically, in fact, I just quit wanting it, whatever it is. I'm one of those people, perhaps you are too, that just pass through life and watch what happens, acting and reacting to events as they transpire. I've accomplished things in my life, a few, but not through striving and wanting. It was just through acting when the time came to act, spontaneously according to my best judgments. I continue in this mode to this day, and do not expect to change.

So, what do I want? I'm asking myself this question for my own sake. I'm sure each of you is caught up in such accord with the dynamics of your own life that you spend little time wondering what some random quasi-stranger on the Internet wants. In the spirit of continuing this narrative, however, I will observe a few vague things I want loosely. I hope to write works of fiction and have them published. I have no idea if this will ever happen and I don't expect to be too disappointed if it never comes to be. Also, I hope to find a path from my long career as a software engineer into a profession as a teacher or professor. I vaguely imagine doing this when my children are grown and the generous salary I now enjoy is not so disproportionate a factor in my decisions. I'd like to teach something in the humanities, since they are the only disciplines in which I believe with any conviction, being convinced that science and math will one day be proven irrelevant and preposterous by poets. Perhaps I'll teach English, or maybe sociology, or even history, though I'm more interested in the history to come than anything that has happened to date. Am I doing anything toward this end? No. Not a damned thing, except waiting. Maybe the waiting is what needs to be done now. Maybe it's all the preparation I need, an essential element to my eventual success, the achievement of my goals.

What do you want? What are the small things? What are the large things? Do you know? If not, tell me why. If so, tell me what, or how, or when, or why. Tell me everything you can tell me.

Or just tell me hi.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Pointedly Pointless and Mindblowingly Stupid

I just finished writing a novel about a cowboy who is lost in the middle of the ocean with his horse. The novel is 800 pages long and it alternates back and forth between what the horse is thinking and what the cowboy is thinking. The horse mostly thinks about how hungry it is and how tired it is of swimming. The cowboy mostly just tries to think up lyrics to cowboy songs. Also there is an octopus named Steve who becomes their friend. The whole book is, to be honest, a little derivative. It's also ponderous, or "ponderosa" as the French say (when they're speaking Spanish.) As soon as I finish gluing all the pages to the cardboard spine and cover I'm going to start submitting it to publishers. It's called Rusty and Sea Horse: The Steve Years. Check it out. (It might take a couple of weeks for it to appear in your local bookstore or checkout counter rack.)

I think I'm going to become the next Nostradamus. I've already gotten pretty good at the "writing things that don't exactly make sense" part. Now I just have to learn to see the future. Seeing the future is really easy. You just have to sit down and wait a while. Nostradamus was pretty negative, though. "Don't blame me," he might say, "I don't create the future. I just tell about it." Except he'd say it really mysterious-like and such. I'm going to have a more positive slant. I'm calling myself, for example, Yestrodamus. Coming soon, to a future near you.

One more thing: If you bought my book of spells and you're angry because none of them seem to work, please don't call me. You're doing them wrong. My advice to you: Do them right. They all work when you do them right. If none of them work for you, not even the simple ones, then you might have to face facts: You just aren't magic folk.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Laudable, Reachable, Laughable or Remarkable

I like to keep my hands empty so I can clap or grasp, in case something is laudable or reachable. I like to keep my mouth empty so I can laugh or remark, in case something is laughable or remarkable. "Emptiness," I often explain to my disciples, "is potential. There is no potential in satiation." "But surely," some disciple might ask, "a satiation of one kind prepares us for potential of another kind?" I always send my disciples away eventually. Follow me or don't follow me, but don't question the things I say. I'm just making this stuff up. I refuse to defend myself.

I always keep money and keys in my front, right pocket. I keep my wallet in my back right. My office key card and cell phone are in my left front pocket. My back, left pocket, however, is always empty. Everything I've ever placed in there has been lost, abandoned or forgotten. That's why I call that pocket my "Left Behind."

It's a bright and sunny day, dear friends, but don't be fooled. Here in my city it's cold enough to paralyze you, shocked and frozen in the biting wind. You will roll up into a ball like an armadillo and scream silently until Hill Giants come to pluck you up, carry you to their caves, sit you by the fire, warm you with the theurgy of some arcane draught, and tell you stories of times long past. Their laugh, that of the Hill Giants, is like healing to the human soul. Always thank them for their kindness. Always call them friend. Always look them in the eye. They will save us all from this fell winter. Then they'll carry us back to our cars so we can do our various errands.

I always leave the last paragraph empty so it can say whatever you need it to say to you, in case one of you is laudable or reachable or laughable or remarkable.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Rocket Christmas '08: The Southering

The clouds are moving in the wrong direction. They must not be local clouds. Around here clouds move generally eastward. These clouds are heading south, carried on the wings of birds, no doubt. Once these clouds pass others will take their place, heading east, like clouds should.

It's cold like a motherfucker in this coffee shop today. Cold indeed. I blame the clouds. They're all grey and lost.

This morning a coyote ran in front of my car on Boat Club Road. It ran across the road, hoping to duck under the brush atop the small rise on the other side. When it encountered the fence that supported all the brush, however, it was surprised and taken aback for just an instant. It turned then and dashed back across the road, just inches from my front bumper. Silly coyote. It was grey and lost, like the clouds.

It's Rocket Christmas again, the wind buffeting us with cheer. It's all up in your face, forcing your cheeks into a stiff, painful smile with its little claws. For the economy and for peace on Earth, everybody buy shit. Don't make me throw this plastic baby Jesus at you. Spend some fucking money, right now. It's a happy season or else the terrorists win. Merry Holisea$on!!!

Sometimes I just want to bundle up and head south for the winter, pulled along by the birds and these strange, confused clouds.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.