caveat emptor

Smitten With Mortality

Loving mortals is foolish, an invitation to pain and loss. How can we help it, though? Mortals are so adorable, with their wide, hopeful eyes and their life gathered around them, holding on tight. You'd expect mortals to be sheltered, pushing away all potential threats. So often, however, they throw open their arms and, smiling, pull you into their short, tumultuous existence. When they wrap you in their small embrace and kiss you on the lips, how can you resist? Mortals love more sincerely than any other form of life, understanding the value of what they give, what they receive. "It is better to have loved and lost," mortals say, "than never to have loved at all." I think we can learn something from them, something about life and love and the bankruptcy of pure reason and the value of hopeless dreams. "I will love you forever," they tell one another. It might sound ridiculous, but you believe it. When you hold them in your arms and you feel their life burning and they stare into your eyes and say it to you, you believe it.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Inspiration and Memoir

If you want to write, really want to write, you can find inspiration in the strangest places. It lives in the bottom of empty mugs and underneath fingernails. Inspiration has been found in photographs and phonographs and in the want ads. I once found inspiration living under a rock in the back garden, just waiting for some writer to come along and discover it. It was hungry and dehydrated, dying of exposure. "How long have you been waiting here?" I asked, but it didn't have the strength to answer. Inspiration just smiled faintly and expired there in my hands. "I'm so sorry," I said, beginning to cry. "I should have come sooner." I tore down my garden shed and erected a great pyre of wood there in the back garden and burned inspiration like a pagan king of old. The smoke of passing carried inspiration's soul far up and away to the next place. The sun set and darkness came but I danced and moaned and wept around the blaze until it died out. When I awoke midmorning in the smokey dew of the lawn, I stumbled sore and bleary-eyed inside and began to write it all down.

"Do you think you'll ever write your memoir?" she asked.

"Only if I can make the whole thing up."

"That wouldn't be a memoir," she said. "It would just be a story, a lie."

I didn't have the heart to tell her I've just been making it all up as I go along. None of my life has ever really happened. It's a fiction I've been telling myself and anyone else who would listen.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

In a Hurry. Doggy in the Window.

Not much time this morning for thinking or writing. I overslept, or underawoke, or something. Barely time for oatmeal and coffee and a quick hello to the world. Barely time to hear Louis Armstrong sing All of Me. Whenever I hear Louis Armstrong scat sing it reminds me of my notion that it would be difficult for Germans to do so. Scat singing doesn't go well with hard constant sounds. Anyway, no time for such notions this morning. I'm running late, just like that white rabbit in that story.

You know, it's very hard to work with this outside the window.

Distractingly cute. She's, like, three feet away from me. I could reach out and pet her, if I broke the window.

Also, that's my Prius. She's cute too, in her own way.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Me on Clothing. Clothing on Me.

Some people wear clothes. Pants and shirts and such. Have you noticed? Have you seen girls wearing bifurcated britches? Socks and sweaters and dresses and mittens. Clothes are everywhere. Man makes the clothes. Some people wear long overcoats and bow ties. Cowboy boots and camisole shells. Spats and hats and corduroy sportcoats. Everywhere you look these days, people are wearing clothing. It's becoming quite a trend. It's gotten to the point that a person without clothes in public looks strangely out of place, unfashionable and shameful. No one wants to see your wiener on the elevator, your ass on the bus. We all love boobs, but not at the conference table. It makes it too hard to concentrate on such mundane topics. I'm considering getting on the clothing bandwagon. I've got my eye on a green leisure suit and a pink bow tie. Probably I'll get some sort of collared shirt to go with it, maybe something with fish or elephants on it. I saw a pair of hiking boots that looks promising. I'm retiring my birthday suit for a while. I'm gonna be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Dressed to the nines, whatever that means.

I'm still going to shower naked, though. I just can't imagine it being effective any other way.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Drowning in the Fathomless Shallows

Far be it from me to make light of the gravity of your teen tragedy. I know full well how easily one can drown in the fathomless shallows. Adolescence is a one act drama, over very soon, and I'll not bother to raise a lectern on this stage you're on, this stage you're in. You're only reading the lines written for you, cast against type into this requiem chorus, trying not to laugh. You are girlish and boyish exuberance thrilled to explore these dark, adult themes. Unrequited love and betrayal. Infidelity and lust. Playing with cellophane fire. Cutting yourself with safety scissors.

Four-hundred bucks and five hours and you can buy a new personality at the local mall. Save up your allowance and you might become more interesting, more acceptable, more unqiue. It's okay, really. Every child afforded the luxury plays with the world before getting serious about it. There is no shame in your exploration. Be and be and be. Change and change and change. Laugh and laugh and cry and laugh. One day you'll look reality unblinking in the eyes, ready for love and hate and sorrow and joy, having pretend been there a thousand times before.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Rain-Themed Post

Hard rain falling, and you know you need it, water to live, water to soften the sun-baked and cracking soil of your reality. So you rush in, panting, soaked through, clothes clinging to your skin. Hot, summer rain mixing with your sweat. Drops on your glasses playing tricks with the light, distorting the world all around. Standing in a growing puddle on the tile floor just inside the door, you curse the blessing of hard rain in the morning. Soft thunder rolls in from everywhere all around to massage your mind. The saxophone music that shuffled up on the cafe music system fits the weather, as if someone knew. Lightning strikes close, and everyone jumps at the bright flash and the loud boom, but the saxophone doesn't miss a beat. The parking lot outside is an agitated mirror of water, writhing with the impact of every new kamikaze drop. Grey above and below, with wet greens and browns and blacks in between. Cars on the highway ghosted with apparitions from the underworld below.

I don't like to use my windshield wipers when it rains. If you look past the glass to the world outside, it's all still there. It's like driving in a Van Gogh painting. It might be a car or a buffalo, but you should probably not hit it. Slow down a little. Watch the wavy white lines on the road. Turn off the radio and listen to the tapping of the rain on the roof, the hiss of water under the tires. Close your eyes and let go of the wheel. Press down on the gas. Hum in tune with the road wind. Everything will be alright.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

On Ugliness and Beauty

We're all ugly if you look at us long enough. There are things that just aren't right. Like that thing. And that other thing. And what the hell is THAT? I'm not sure we should be going out in public looking like we do. I think we should all be home in front of the mirror with various creams and clippers and concealers and treatments. We should really do something about all of this. It's socially unacceptable and disgusting.

If I were beautiful I would focus all my charm on you and sweep you off your feet. You wouldn't stand a chance. How could you resist my perfection? Look at this hair, this smile, these deep, lovely eyes. If you were as beautiful as I would be, I'd be helpless to resist you. Beautiful people are dangerous and powerful. If I were beautiful, you'd be done for.

Beauty and Ugly sat at breakfast, drinking coffee and talking lightly about the previous day. Ugly smiled a crooked smile at Beauty's story about work, a smile that caught Beauty by surprise, reminded her what she'd always loved about Ugly. Under the table Beauty slipped her lovely foot up against Ugly's lumpy leg and rubbed him softly, making his crossed eyes close partially with desire. Beauty winked at Ugly's bashful glance and sighed contentedly. Ugly swallowed loudly and began to break out in anxious hives of desire.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

I'll Never Be a Spaceman. Neither Will You.

In space you float, weightless. You're neither heavy nor light in space. You just are. In space there is no up. In space, if someone asks you, "Hey, what's up?" you can respond, "Nothing. Nothing is up." and you'd be right. I'm not a believer in space as a future home for humanity. I just don't think it's going to happen. We're wired for up. We're obsessed with our weight. We belong here, on Earth. We were planted here by celestial gardeners long ago.

Let me example you an example. Example this:

A young woman lounges on an overstuffed armchair and reads a book. A college girl, probably, with short hair that plays around her forehead and eyes and a thin summer dress that falls around her thighs as she reclines sideways in the chair. The book is a classic, your favorite classic, and she's completely enchanted by it, absent from this armchair world. It's a public place, a hangout for young people, maybe a cafe or the commons area of a university. The plot twists and her heart leaps, red flushing her cheeks. It's Earth on a Thursday, and you might, if you sat and watched her long enough, fall madly in love with this reading woman. Outside gravity holds everything down. People walking by glance up from time to time into the warm, blue, cloudless sky. The girl blinks and turns a page and your heart pangs for her. How silly are you? You don't even know her name, but you're smitten. She hasn't even looked at you, doesn't know you're alive on the same planet, that you have roughly the same sense of up that she has. You love too easily, but what can we do?

In space it's very difficult to lounge on an armchair. You drift one way and it drifts another. The glare on your helmet makes it difficult to see your book.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Grace, Like Glitches in the System

We might see each other, recognize one another, if our necks still turned, our eyes still glanced from side to side. Lockstep robot days. Machine mornings. Afternoon automata these days, joints stiff like mannequins as we plod, unheeding, along the demarcated paths. Our grace is that we have glitches, bugs in the system. Eventually we come off track. Eventually we crash. Eventually we fail to succeed any longer. Then we're free. Running rebellious across all the lines. Looking everyone in the eye. Grasping one another by the hand and fleeing for our lives. Running for the doors. Smiling for our lives.

Don't fix me. I've come to depend upon my flaws. I use them to tell me apart from all the rest of you. I'd hate to lose track of myself in this massive, thronging crowd. Just leave me this way, work around my issues. I'll try to shelter you from the most dire consequences of my personality. When we're alone, just you and me, I want to be there. I want it to be me. I want it to be you. Broken together, beyond repair.

Probably the bravest thing we ever do is falling back into step, rejoining the joyless robot march. We have to trust ourselves to escape again. They cannot break us. They cannot fix us. We are confident of this as the smile drains from our face and we begin to plod the path, staying always inside the lines, looking always ahead.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Thoughts Culminating in Underwear

It's a new day, people. You've never breathed this air before, never stepped into this river. No more of the old stuff now, new day people. Throw away all the clothes you wore yesterday. Toss out your appointment book and your address book. Cancel all your old accounts. Change your name. Today is too new to rattle around in those old bones. Walk away from your shed skin and become the you you are today, shiny and new, open to everything that never was before. Nothing that happened before matters anymore.

I've believe in time yesterday, but today I do not. Today I see no difference between now and then. I guess I've changed. I don't expect to believe in time tomorrow, but how can I know? It's so far away and there's nothing I can do about it now. Time still believes in all of us, but it's not always on our side. If you feel the need of an ally on whom you can depend then you must be beside yourself. This treachery always betrays itself in the end, when all the true colors become clear and we see through all disguises. Make sure your underwear is clean, therefore, and that it matches.

I came into this post with nothing to say and I can't seem to accomplish even that.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Idiot Stick

The field above the creek bank was rough, rutted deeply with tractor tracks from the back and forth of large diggers dredging the channel when the dirt was bare and muddy. There were large unearthed rocks and deep gouges dried as hard as rock in the hot summer sun. No one had ever come back to level it or sod it. It was left broken and ugly, with stiff, scratchy weeds growing to shoulder height over the entire acre. This field had destroyed a brush hog. No mower would survive the beating. No weedeater would cut through the thick stalks of the largest weeds. Our little Parks Department didn't have a huge arsenal of tools. There was only one option left.

All the other guys hated using the weed whip, or "idiot stick" as we called it. Some of the seasonal workers, high school students like myself, would beat them against the ground and break them if they were left to clear a trail or ditch with one for an afternoon. Most guys preferred the power equipment, the large mowers and tractors or, at least, the commercial weedeaters. Me, I loved the idiot stick. I'd never been a fan of the noise and smell and heat and jarring vibration of power equipment. If you put me out in a field or a ditch with an idiot stick, though, I would swing away all afternoon. Up one bank of a creek and down the other. Along a winding trail. Beside a dirt road. I was good at it. Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish. The rhythm of the swing was soothing, conducive to reflection and imagination. An idiot stick is the perfect tool for a thinker.

A weed whip is not a golf club. Keep the swing low, no higher than your chest. It doesn't take a lot of muscle, just a smooth cooperation with the flow of the swing. Newton will do most of the work if you let him. Swish. Swish. Swish. On a good weed whip with a triangular bracket, the screws that hold the blade will loosen as you work. Every hour or so you should tighten them to keep the blade in good working order. Swish. Swish. Swish. Try to keep the tempo. Breathe. Swish. Swish. Swish.

Every couple of weeks Steve, my crew chief and friend, would pull the pickup up to curb at the field above the creek after lunch. It was Texas summer afternoon hot, probably 105. After the first time he didn't have to tell me what to do. He'd stop and, without a word, I'd get out, close the door and grab the water jug and idiot stick out of the back. He'd nod at me through the back window and I'd nod back. He'd drive away. I'd start my pensive rhythm, clearing the entire acre by the time he came back to get me.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Dinner with the Monster

I often have dinner with my friend, the monster. We meet at a little downtown cafe with sidewalk tables. I like the place because it's positioned at the end of a garden courtyard running through the block of buildings so we get to catch the breezes that blow perpetually through the downtown alleys. I usually have a sandwich or soup, sometimes both. The monster eats children, five or six of them most evenings.

"It's so hot," I comment, swallowing a bite of corned beef on rye. Sweat drips from my hair down the back of my shirt. The breeze this evening is no match for the humid swelter of the summer dusk.

"Damn right," the monster answers, biting off a hand, "but I don't mind the heat so much."

Most evenings we talk about esoteric topics. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be monster? What is the nature of evil? This evening we talk about free will and fate.

"Oh my god!" screams a woman passing by on the sidewalk. Turning to look, I see her trembling and gawking and pointing rudely at the monster. "That monster is eating children!" she shrieks. Fortunately the host dashes over and forces the woman to leave.

"I'm so sorry," the host gasps, rushing over to the monster. "Can I get anything for you?"

"It's okay. I'm used to it," says the monster with something like a smile. "I'm fine."

"Some people," I continue when the host shuffles off, "think that we cannot but make the choices programmed into us by our chemistry and experience." I take a sip of peach iced tea and wait for the monster's opinion, knowing that the monster, like me, is a believer in the freedom of the intelligent mind.

A stray cat wanders among the tables, dangerously close to the monster. She's too quick, however, and just manages to skitters away from the grab of the monster's clawed hand. I can see the disappointment on the monster's brow. "Caprice is so evident in the world, but so many fail to see it," the monster responds.

It is a nice evening, if a bit too hot, and I enjoy the company of the monster, the civilized way in which the monster converses on so many interesting topics, the fascinating contrast from such thoughtful descriptions of so different a perspective. The monster also is fascinated with me.

"You're the only kid that ever got away," the monster will often observe, with something like a smile.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Old Under the Sun

It's another one of those days, coffee and oatmeal and ear buds and the universe spinning all around, begging for your attention. Music lies to you without malice, just a casual deceit for fun, for escape, for no reason whatsoever. As long as you don't believe it there is no harm done. Is this the same sun today? How do we know, really know, that it's the same star every day? Squinting up at it I am overcome with a lack of recognition. I've never stepped into this stream of light before. This warmth is strange to me, so bright and new, like never before. Meanwhile, there is nothing new under the sun. Same old oatmeal and coffee. Same old song. You know all the words. Won't you sing along?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Sweet Mistaken

I do not question this fragile faith I have that the people and places I remember, the place I was this morning, the woman I awoke beside, are real. They are not vain imaginations I have conjured here in this coffee shop world. There is more out there than I can see with my eyes here, more than this computer in front of me that I feel with my fingertips, more than this wooden chair, more than this tile floor, more than this aroma of brewing coffee wafting in my nose. I rely on my vast store of memories as another sense to tell me what the world is like, full of certain people with certain faces and certain voices and I am as certain of the reality of them as I am of this sunlight shining too brightly into my eyes, too warmly onto my jeans,  here in this place. If it is all a lie, this beautiful life I remember every day, then I am blissfully deceived and I will never admit the truth. I call myself a skeptic, but I am awash in the faith that I will see your face again. Meanwhile, here I sit, believing everything I see, everything I hear, everything I taste, smell and feel. My sensual life is my religion and I believe in it with all my heart and mind and strength, this rough stubble on my cheeks, this new wiry grey in my hair, this slick sweat on my neck.

We dwell in possibility

Or so the poet said

Though she spoke only for herself

The voice inside her head

Some dwell in tangibility

Their hands are occupied

My hand are empty, idle, still

I live my life inside

I dwell in need of levity

A lightness in the mind

Though burdened here with gravity

I will not be confined

Come dwell in possibility

Reality forsaken

Let's revel in denial, dear

Embrace the sweet mistaken

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Talking to the Ocean

Sitting in bare feet, jeans and a jacket on the spray-dampened beach, a thrill of gooseflesh trembles through me at the warmth of the moist wind coming in off the agitated ocean. Jeans and a jacket because it is winter, and the cold is biting. Bare feet because it's the beach, damn it. Tiny drops and grains bourne on the gusts encourage me to close my eyes lightly, blurring away the grey of the clouds, the blue-green of the waves, the white of the foam, the taupe of the sand. The sound is all motion, moving water and moving air, organic liquids and sibilants in the voice of the beach, with scattered explosions of gull screams ripping through it all.

Out in the rocking waves, farther out than I can see now, a bottle is bobbing. It contains my message to the world. I littered the ocean with it, my anonymous cry for attention, because I've never found an effective voice for asking things of the world, and I've never found the grace to accept the gifts given in reply.

The ocean rarely tells our secrets. The floor, far below, is littered with our vessels. Usually the corks come loose or the lids are not fast. Then the bottles fill and sink, the secrets disintegrating into the salty depths. Once in a while, though, a bottle washes up onto the curious shore. Once in a while our secrets are seen by loners or lovers or excited young girls, soon to be disappointed or confused by our clandestine hope or despair, our message to no one at all.

I'm alone on the beach as far as I can see in every direction. My feet are cold and my nose is beginning to run. My jeans are soaked through. Suddenly I am overcome with the obsessive compulsion to attack the waves and take back what I have said. It's too cold, though, and my message is too small and the ocean is too big. The feeling passes and, shaking forgetfulness into my head, I stand and turn my back on the sea where, unbeknownst to me, the bottle is already almost half full, optimistically, and the ink is blurred and illegible, and the paper beginning to decay.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Simplifying

I've decided to shut down the other blogs I post to each day and to keep just this one. So long, Mommy's Girl. As fun as it's been pretending to be a nine-year-old girl with a pet kitten and a passion for figure skating, I just don't have the time any more. So, I posted a note from "my mommy" explaining that some weirdo was stalking "me" and she had to shut down the blog. And no more fabricating "real stories" of the Afghan war for my blog Front Lines. I'm afraid Private Damen's luck just ran out. I just posted an anonymous comment saying, "I herd from some one who knowz him that Private Damen was shoot by Taleban fihters." He's a real hero.

Anyway, those of you who read this blog are in luck. My "Scott" character will continue to be developed. This blog isn't going anywhere.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.