caveat emptor

On T-Shirts and the Absurdity of the Human Condition

Camus suggested that suicide was not an appropriate response to the absurdity of the human condition. He preferred revolution. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Camus was a hard guy to read, mostly because of all the French. I've never committed suicide, and I never will (as far as I know), but I'm also not a revolutionary. If I were going to commit suicide I'd shoot myself with a torpedo, just to be spectacular and ostentatious and to embrace the absurdity of the human condition. I want a T-shirt that says, "Embrace the Absurdity of the Human Condition" on the front and "Don't Hurt Yourself" on the back. Also I want a pet polar bear cub.

People are constantly putting things onto T-shirts, like pockets and slogans and cold, cold water. As for me, I want to be more revolutionary. I want to challenge people's assumptions about what a T-shirt really is. I want to paint slogans on the inside. I want to put laces up the front. I want to make T-shirts you wear on your feet. I want to set my hair on fire.

Sorry. I got a little carried away for a minute there. I want a T-shirt that says, "Sorry. I Got a Little Carried Away For a Minute There."

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Sentiment and Sediment: Boxes of Yesterday

"Before there was central heat and air we kept quilt boxes," she explained. "You cleaned and pressed the quilts when the weather got warm. You folded them and put them in the quilt box, ready for next winter. Then you could use the quilt box as a seat when you had company. Everyone kept quilts. You can't imagine how cold it got."

Under and among the stacks and piles of everything, he had two large quilt boxes in the garage, full of things someone had decided to save years ago. Most of those things were worn out now, rotten or obsolete, forgotten in the distraction of trying to stay alive.

It was probably a hundred and five degrees in that old garage this weekend, and we were all too tired and sweaty and dirty for sentiment. Small, audacious trees grew here and there up through cracks in the concrete foundation. Green vines snaked through the exposed rafters, invading through the eaves. Around the base of the open stud walls the wood siding had rotted away in spots, giant holes granting admittance to invaders of various species. Everywhere was dirt and cottony spider egg sacks and rodent droppings. There was a desiccated squirrel carcass under the workbench. Rats had been nesting in old rags under the larger quilt box.

Of course, there were treasures scattered among the trash. A Polaroid camera, older than any of us can guess. Look magazines from the 1960s with various Kennedys on the covers and advertisements that make my children laugh. "Try a little sugar in your coffee or tea. Sugar works with your Appestat to promote weight loss." His old uniform from Korea, moldering away in the disintegrating remains of a plastic garment bag. An Elvis LP. Pictures and newspaper clippings. Evidence of having been young stacked deeply under evidence of having grown old. Six truckloads to the trash and recycling drop site. Three truckloads to the garage of the new house.

The heat was almost more than we could bear, and the grime almost more than we could stomach, but we got it done. How could we, so young and so overwhelmed with heat, fathom the need for something like a quilt box in a place like this?

"In the winter we got cold, even in the house," she explained. "There was no central heating, so we used quilts. You can't imagine how cold it got."

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

These Happy Days Are Yours and Mine

Jeff Goldblum is alive and well, as is Harrison Ford. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson and Ed McMahon are all dead, though. I remember them from a long time ago, when I was a kid. The vapid trivia of my childhood is dying off. Fonzie is bound to go soon. That will hurt, when Fonzie goes. Potsie? Not so much. I mean, I don't wish death on Potsie or anything. It just won't bother me that badly, that's all I'm saying. I should have seen this coming when Gilligan died back in '05. They live in syndication now. And Fonzie's next. I can feel it. Poor, poor Fonzie.

Enough talk of death and old entertainment. Let's talk about something else. Hmmm...

I got nothing. I'm just so worried about the Fonz. I think it would be better to go like Chuck Cunningham. Just disappear before anyone ever cares. It's more humane that way.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Beautiful

The hair falling out (due to her chemotherapy) was driving her nuts, so we decided to do something about it. Isn't she beautiful?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Imperfect Journey and the Escalator of the Real

Being mortal, I can only wait so long for everything to be ready and right. Eventually, one day soon, I'll just have to get started, ready or not. Perfection is always just around the corner, or so I've always thought. I've rounded many corners and remain resolutely imperfect. This less-than-ideal state of affairs might just have to suffice if ever I'm to get this show started. No sense waiting around to die. Tomorrow. Tomorrow and no longer. If perfection doesn't arrive by bedtime tonight, I'll bundle up my faults and flaws in a knapsack and hit the road at dawn. You're welcome to come along, but I make no promises. Doom and hope ride on my shoulders, whispering directions into my ear. I'll try to choose the right path, but I've gone astray before.

Roads and journeys make wonderful metaphors for life. Symbols and images, though. That's all they are. In reality, life is a broken escalator in a seedy mall on the bad side of town. This is no metaphor, mind you. This is what life really is. If you concentrate, you can feel the rubber handrail lurching and slipping as the mechanism struggles to get moving again. Scientists don't know who built the escalator, nor whether it's meant to go up or to go down, nor what lies at either end. All they know is that it's broken, probably a belt has snapped or slipped off. Philosophers argue the virtues of calling a repairman. Mystics scry the customer service phone number.

I think it was Mitch Hedberg, may he rest in peace, who observed that escalators can never break. They can only become stairs. "We apologize for the convenience."

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Such Accord

Sunlight, flung from the distant eastern horizon and skimming in low over the scrubby treetops, scatters out across the floor, carrying shadows with it, and slams into the far wall. If you press your hand flat against the sunlit wall, starlight will paint your hand with warmth, touching you from the dark, cold void of space. To live in such accord with the spheres is the most mundane of wonders, something we think very little about. Beneath the pavement or the floor, the planet wheels away, carrying us with it. We're all along for the ride, light and shadow, hot and cold, you and me. If you press your hand flat against my sunlit chest, starlight will paint your hand with warmth, and I may shudder or cringe just a bit, being shy about such things, the everyday wonder of living in such accord with you.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Ambivalence and Art

I am overcome these days with passionate, flaming ambivalence. It wells up within me like a lack of fire out of control. I am consumed. How do I feel about my plight? Whatever. It doesn't matter.

My pro-diversity art project isn't going well at all. I had this beautiful idea that I would go into a public place, like a park or museum or library, and paint all the people different colors, really bright, wonderful, vibrant colors. No one gets it, though. It doesn't matter what color we are. We're all the same inside. It's a simple message, but everyone just gets angry when I start spraying the paint on them. It's sad how many people are racists and bigots. It wears off in a few weeks. It's only permanent on hair and clothing, not skin. Nevertheless, people are so attached to the color of their skin and clothing and hair that they cannot stand to be any other color for even a few minutes, much less weeks. Instead of appreciation or praise for my visionary artistic leadership, people just scream, "What the hell are you doing!" or "What the fuck is wrong with you!" or "My eyes! It burns! OH GOD MY EYES!" It depresses me. I guess the world just isn't ready for an artist like me.

Maybe I'll move on to my "Projectiles of Beauty" project, my idea to splatter-paint commercial airplanes in flight. We don't just have to shoot each other with weapons that kill. We can shoot each other with love and understanding and bright, happy paint delivered by surface-to-air missiles. Maybe people will understand that idea more readily.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Boop the Wobble

Boop was a Wobble. Wobbles were a blobby little race of wiggly, blue, peoplish, balloon things that lived in the shade of a large, ancient Ginkgo Biloba tree beside a deep, cold pool in a long-lost forest of the distant imaginary past. Boop was a middle-aged Wobble, having been alive for almost eight days. He was healthy for his age and would probably last at least another week. His job, as far back as he could remember, was to push away a large thing that had fallen across the food path. The thing, which, though Boop would never know it, was an acorn cap, was far too heavy for Boop to move. So far he hadn't managed to budge it, not one smidgen. Then he had an idea. He would try the same thing he had always tried, the only thing he could think of, which was just to push on the thing really, really hard until he was exhausted. It didn't work. I was never going to work. This didn't bother Boop. Being of above-average intelligence for a Wobble, he was amazingly stupid. He was happy, though. When he collapsed, exhausted, beside the big thing, he laughed. Some part of him knew, incorrectly, that he would figure out how to move the big thing. Boop was an optimist. As he stared, panting, up into the canopy of Ginkgo leaves far above, he thought many happy, stupid thoughts. He thought about his mother, who had died yesterday. The thought of his mother always made him happy. He thought about the big thing that was blocking the food path. Then he got an idea, the same one again, and he rose excitedly to his feet to try it out.

Up in the tree, unbeknownst, like most things, to Boop, the Wobble god smiled down at Boop. She loved him very much. She loved all the Wobbles. That was why she dropped the acorn cap. She knew it would make Boop happy. And she was right.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

How to Do Things, Vol 1529

How to brush your teeth:

1. Be born.
2. Learn to grasp tings.
3. Grow teeth.
4. Buy toothpaste and a toothbrush.
5. Pick up the toothbrush.
6. Put toothpaste on the bristles of toothbrush.
7. Open your mouth.
8. Scrub your teeth with the bristles of the toothbrush, using the toothpaste as an abrasive cleansing agent.
9. Rinse the toothpaste out of your mouth.
10. Rinse the toothpaste out of your toothbrush.
11. Put the toothbrush and toothpaste away.
12. Repeat as needed.

How to have sex with a beautiful woman:

1. Be born.
2. Learn to grasp things.
3. Grow up.
4. Pick out a beautiful woman.
5. Convince her to have sex with you.
6. Go somewhere private.
7. Take off at least enough of your clothes and of her clothes to allow the necessary access for sex.
8. Tell her she's beautiful.
9. Have sex with her. Try to be good at it.
10. Clean up as required.
11. Put your clothes and her clothes back on.
12. Repeat as needed.

I hope this helps.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Broken. Living on the Horizon.

Long ago he came to the mistaken conclusion that expectations in life were dangerous, to be avoided.

Staring down the road in front of him as the mostly empty highway passed by faster than the speed limit allowed, he drowned out his thoughts with loud radio music and rapid eye darting. If some notion started to whisper in his ear he would blink and glance hard to the right or to the left, out at the distant horizon and beyond. Sometimes he would shake his head abruptly, trying to clear some picture from his Etch A Sketch mind.

When he pulled into the driveway of the farmhouse, the only structure for miles in the flat wheat landscape, he clunked the old car into park and killed the motor. Two children, his, were tumbling enthusiastically down the porch steps toward him. Unfolding his tall, thin frame from the car and closing the door with a creak, he blinked at their approach, squinting at the sun far away behind them. His son, the four-year-old, crashed into his long legs and threw his little arms around them. He reached down and rested his hand on his son's shoulder, smiling absently at his daughter, six, waiting her turn. No words were exchanged. He hadn't prepared for the moment, hadn't given any thought to what he might tell them about where he had been, how long he might stay, why he would leave.

There is a kind of broken that makes every thought, every active engagement with life, more than one can bear. Every plan for the day feels like a setup. Every dream for tomorrow feels like a trap. Every conversation is an accusation. Every touch is a blow. You cannot listen and you cannot talk. You have to let the sights and sounds wash over you, wash through, keep going without you or carry you along.

He lives on the horizon now, too far away to see clearly, too far to hear you even if you scream. He is always on the journey and never arriving. He lives, broken, on the horizon. You cannot save him. You cannot even reach him. You should not even try. Bring your children back into your house and talk to them, laugh with them. Make your plans for today, dream your dreams for tomorrow, without him. Soon, within a couple of days, his car will be gone and you won't have to listen to his silence or watch his blinking stare ever again. He will take his bleak sadness, his brokenness, with him when he goes, and his story will not be yours. The best you can do for him is let him go. It's the only thing he wants anymore.

Long ago he came to the mistaken conclusion that expectations in life were dangerous, to be avoided.

Hello, friends. Bleak, I know. It's just what came out today. Whimsy will return, I'm sure.

Later. Love.

Nihilism Cannot Deny Itself

you cannot run away from everything

where would you go?

you must approach something

you might as well take it in your arms

and hold on tightly

right?

is that right?

you have to be somewhere

why not here?

you have to be someone

why not you?

you have to hold on to something

why not me?

the center of infinity

is everywhere and nowhere

forget nowhere

forget nothing

forget no one

forget no

give every a chance

at least give some a chance

at least give us a chance

this isn't what i wanted to say

but i don't know how to spell silence

in any language you can read

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

900: Bob the Angel

This is my 900th post on this blog. Have you read the other 899? Neither have I. Most of them are better than this one I think. Hmmm... let's see. What is this post going to be about? Hmmm...

Most of the time Bob the Angel can be found fishing from the rickety boat dock on Willow Lake, the old dock at the end of Miller Road. Have you met Bob the Angel? If not, you might picture something quite different. He doesn't look like you might imagine. His hair is curly brown and usually bushy. Most days he wears pocket T-shirts, though he has a couple of those thin, white Guayabera shirts that he likes to wear when it's warm. Jeans in the winter and tan cargo shorts all the rest of the time. Sandals. Always sandals, even when it snows. Also he has giant, brilliant white wings. When he stands they stay tucked in behind him. When he sits he flares them out and they just sort of wave above him. The sight is really something, sort of stirring, but he doesn't like to talk about them. It makes him uncomfortable for some reason.

Some mornings, when I'm out trolling my trotlines, I'll see him sitting there, white wings above his head catching the early sun and sandaled feet dangling over the water. Mostly I just wave and keep going, but once in a while I'll motor over and dock and we'll chat for a while. I like Bob. Even though he's an angel, he mostly talks like a regular guy. He's the only angel I've ever known, so I don't know how he might compare to your typical angel.

From what I hear tell, though I'm not sure how anyone would know, he's a guardian angel. Danny, that's my oldest boy, thinks Bob guards the lake. Wanda from the bait shop says that when Bob's charge, an old man who lived around here more than a hundred years ago, died, Bob just didn't go back. He's been here as long as anyone can remember, so that might be true. He doesn't like to talk about it. It seems to make him uncomfortable.

He'll talk as long as you care to about regular stuff, though. Fishing. Weather. Gossip. Even politics. Not angel stuff, though. Not religion. He just mutters something and gets quiet if you bring any of that up. Usually he'll just change the subject, or start into a joke. He has a strange sense of humor. His jokes are fun to listen to, but I don't usually get them. He'll hit the punch line and laugh and laugh, and I'll just smile and nod a little. Must be angel humor.

One time... have I told you this? Sometimes I tell the same story over and over to people. I lose track, you know? I'm not sure who's heard what. Well, anyway, one time, right after Linda died, he did say a little something. Linda was my wife, you know? "Time's different there," he said. "Everyone arrives at the same time." That's all he said and he wouldn't say any more about it when I asked him. I think about that a lot, though. It's good to know, you know?

Well, I better get going. These lines aren't going to bait themselves.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Dangers of Philosophy and the Perfect Cuban Sandwich

I have stumbled, mumbling, from some dark cave, slumber tumbling off my eyelids as I wake more fully than ever I have, embracing an awareness that attacks the new, bright world, demanding to know. Momentum is found in asking what and where and when and how, questions that human talents excel in answering, piling up great mountains of facts in stacks, indexed and categorized and synthesized. Never ask why, however. The question of why is an invitation to the cold, still void. The question of why will stop you in your tracks, tear down all your stacks, ravage all your facts. The question of why will bury you in the ruble of everything you used to know, set your mind to sleep in the deep dark cave of the ruins of your world. This is the way it's always been. No one knows why.

Meanwhile, across the country, a perfect Cuban sandwich was just plopped on the counter of a cafe, the bell rung to summon the waitress who will deliver it to your table. The pork is amazing, hot and juicy. The cheese is salty and melty. The pickle is sharp and crisp. The bread is wonderfully grilled and pressed. The mustard is grainy and tangy. The waitress is friendly and cute, sliding the plate from the counter and heading your way. This is your Cuban sandwich. It will be here soon.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Jazz Life

Baggy khaki chinos, hands in pockets, and a tank top undershirt. Brown leather shoes, scuffed and scraped, have seen better days. Tan socks with all the elastic blown rumpled down low. Third day tousled bedroom hair and whiskers of black and grey, scattered red. Bleary-eyed shuffling down the sidewalk, muttering about fortunes misplaced. Where have they gotten off to? Sweat at the top of the back of your neck says the muggy late morning will become a sweltering afternoon. Better seek shelter. Better watch where you're going. Weren't there cigarettes last night? Have they all gone up in smoke? Mumbling, not looking, off the curb and into and across the street. Smell of coffee from some open shop door. Light traffic in the warming city routine, the threat of lunchtime pedestrians looming on the clock hands high overhead in the church tower. Birds pass through building walls, though surely not. It's a play of light and hangover eyes, red and throbbing. Somewhere a car horn blares far away, a distant rage swallowed by the urban vacuum. She wasn't there this morning. They were separated in the night. Enough spare change for coffee and then maybe you'll try to remember where it all went wrong. Might be hot rains in the evening, sizzling and steaming in another night. This is jazz life, my friend. This is where the saxophone kicks in.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Regarding Bill Hitler (no relation)

My imaginary friend, Bill Hitler (no relation), always told me, "If you can't think of anything to say, make something up." I cannot help but feel that, being imaginary, he was only trying to bolster his own position. One could argue that he had a conflict of interest. One would be wrong, however, since there is no Bill Hitler (no relation). I made him up. Why? Because I had nothing to say, that's why. When I can't think of anything to say I make something up. Why? I already told you why.

That first paragraph has many logical and existential issues. Rather than address them, let's just move on.

This paragraph is a poem. Not a haiku, since I lost count long ago. It's what one might call a "free-form" poem or a "prose" poem or a "bad" poem. It doesn't rhyme, not intentionally anyway. Sometimes, when you aren't sure how to say what's on your mind, you should write a poem. Just start typing and see what comes out. Don't worry about capitalization or punctuation. Just flow. Let it go. Don't worry about truth or structure or reason. Just, you know, talk. Please use strict iambic pentameter or dactylic hexameter or atmospheric barometer, though. Don't be a cretin.

I'm going to stop now.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Wallflower Daydreams

If you sit for hours and look closely enough at the chemotherapy room, listening to all the beeps and watching the people rise from their recliners and walk, rolling the pole of their IV pump beside them, here and there and then back to their chairs again, you realize that it's a dance. The choreography is intricate and complex, and the timing is so slow that it strains the edges of your patient attention to recognize the pattern, but it's unmistakable. These men and women, strangers to each other most, are moving to the rhythm of their lives, the common beat of their hearts, the beep and whir of the infusion pump, a dance of hope and despair and life and death and sorrow and joy. You dare not envy them the beauty of their accord with mortality, an impropriety twisted and profane, but you cannot, once you have seen it, forget the beauty of their dance.

You cannot, in the end, find sense in the senseless or meaning in the meaningless. You can look and look and look and you will never find it. If you feel the need for sense and meaning, you have two options. If you are strong, you can try to build sense and meaning where there is none with your own hands. If, like some of us, you lack any real strength, you can always blur your eyes and pretend.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Wrong Trousers

Today I was planning to share with all of you the things I've learned in life. Now that I'm here and typing, however, I find that I left the list in my other jeans. Also, when I made the list, I accidentally "Moved" instead of "Copied" the information from my brain to the paper, so the things I've learned in life are not in my head any more. I'm not too worried. I can just read them off the paper and learn them again, right? I hope so. Except those jeans are in the washing machine now and I'm pretty sure the list is folded up in the back pocket. It's cool, though. I'll probably still be able to read most of it, right? I hope so.

So, now I have to think of something else to write today. It's pretty hard, you know? I mean, at this point I haven't actually learned anything in life. I'm tabula rasa, blank, undefiled, pure, empty, without regrets, ignorant, uninitialized, default, new. I got nothing. I'm wearing my other jeans.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

TBLPS!

It's Tuesday. You know what that means, right? That's right, it's time for the Tuesday Bulleted List Post Spectaculaganza. I know, I know. I hate the name too. Today's list has the following theme: Random Items You Wouldn't Expect To See Together In A Bulleted List, PART VII.

• The other day I was testing the myth that cats will always land on my feet. Lying on the couch with my feet clearly exposed, I threw two cats as high into the air as I could. One landed on the coffee table and one hit the ceiling fan and flew into the kitchen. MYTH BUSTED!

• I had a dream that Emily Dickinson hired me to paint the walls in her kitchen. As I worked, I kept trying to engage her in a conversation about poetry, but she didn't speak except to complain about the mess I was making. "Why are you using the glossy paint?" she asked at one point. "Because," I replied, "It's superior for doors."

• I wonder if General Motors is eligible to go back into the military now that the whole car thing fell through. We could use some good generals right now.

• Does this bullet point make me look fat?

• In Heaven Ray Charles will play whatever you want him to play. He's not a dick about it or anything. He seems to enjoy the attention and the music. It's one of the cooler things about Heaven. Ray Charles.

• Isn't all food technically organic? Probably not. I was never great in chemistry.

• This bullet point is a Haiku. Don't count the syllables. Just trust me.

• The last point in a list post is the most important one. It's the one that will stay with everyone. Make sure to end strong.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Invisible Therapy

"And how does this make you feel?"

Opening my eyes, I saw that I was sitting on the black, leather therapy couch again, floating in an otherwise empty void. I didn't even bother looking around for the source of the stupid, useless voice of the invisible therapist.

"How does what make me feel?" I sighed, remembering the pointless routine.

"You tell me."

"Why am I here?"

"Why do you think you're here?" I could hear a smile on his lips, or was it a woman this time? The voice was indistinct. It smiled indistinctly.

"I think I'm here because my brain hates me."

"Do you hate yourself?"

"No." I do not hate myself. I may have issues, but that is not one of them.

"So you think you and your brain are distinct people?"

"Well... no... but sometimes my brain does things I don't like."

"Interesting. So what part of you is 'You' and what part is 'Your Brain'?"

I had no response to that. It was a pointless analysis and I refused to engage in it. Instead I said, "Forget that. Let's go back to your first question. The answer is: It makes me feel afraid."

"What makes you feel afraid?"

"This."

"I see. And what is this?"

I could have replied that "this" is an empty void where all the voices are imaginary except mine. I could have said that "this" is the endless assault of questions with which we attack ourselves when there is no one to interrupt us. "This" is a place where all the sweet distractions of life are gone and we float in the emptiness and tear ourselves apart. I could have said all of these things, but I was too afraid.

"This is over," I said, and I pitched off the couch, lurching into the gaping void and falling upright in my bed, my heart pounding, sweat beading in my fevered hair.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.