caveat emptor

Hiatus

Have to take a break for a while. Just too busy. I'll be back. I promise.

Later. Love.

On Having Recently Seen Frankenstein's Monster

Not long ago I saw Frankenstein's monster hitchhiking along Interstate 35. He looked like he was heading north, maybe looking for work, maybe just trying to get away. There's big empty country up north on I-35, plenty of space for a monster to get lost, to avoid the cudgels and torches of angry villagers. There are wide, flat plains for miles and miles, little towns where nobody ever goes, barn lofts to hide in and tall grass where you can lie and rest your tired boots.

He looked a little worse for the wear, haggard and ragged from too many miles, too few friendly conversations, dogged and anxious but with that same stiff forehead, resolute in giving no foothold to the sinking, final despair that brings travelers down, lays them in the ditch, feeds them to the buzzards. One wonders how he can hold on, wonders at his crazy resolve. Were I in his place, a victim of the madness of manmade reincarnation, an alien to the circle of birth and death and lineage we all share, I don't know that I'd want to keep stalking the shoulder of the highway, putting one boot clumsily in front of the other day after night after day.

But there he was, nature's special child, heading north on I-35. No one stopped to pick him up, of course. No one liked the look of him. No one ever had. But nature loves him, perversely fascinated by this new thing under the sun, this unnatural selection in an otherwise featureless sea of survival of the fittest. Rain and wind caress his stitched, scarred skin as he sleeps each night, more alone than you can imagine, the loneliest sleep of all time.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Being Particular

In particle accelerators they speed particles up to amazing speeds and then smash them into an obstacle and measure the spectacle with sensitive instruments. They see the trails of tiny particles that are startled into being, set out enthusiastically for a short journey to oblivion, and then wink out of existence altogether. That's me. I'm a particle like that. And this my trail. And you are the sensitive instruments that detect me. Here I am. See? I'm right here. Please pay attention. I promise I won't last long.

Hello, friends. I hope you are well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Escargot For It

I cannot imagine a creature more intimately engaged with the path between Point A and Point B than a snail. As humans, we can and often do pass through the space between without even noticing it. We are preoccupied with thoughts or phone calls or text messages or simply planning our escape. We can hardly tell you where we've been, what we've missed, all the rough and rugged ground between there and here. I'm not saying that we're wrong, and the snails are not accusing us of any transgression. We're all good at different things, you know? Snails experience the path really well. That's their thing. I'm sure we're good at something too. No one is condemning us. I am, however, advocating that you take one day - today for example - and live your life like a snail. Take off all your clothes and press your stomach to the gritty ground. Slide slowly from your home to the grocery store or to your office or to your therapy sessions. Take your time. Stop often and probe the air with your gross little eye stalk thingies. Leave a trail of slime from your front door. Do it. Let me know how it goes.

Hello, friends. I hope you are well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Coming to Terms with Our Edibility

The greatest gift you can give a carnivore is yourself. Open up to love and let yourself be consumed.

It's a dangerous game, dining with omnivores. "We'd love to have you for dinner. It would be our pleasure to serve you." As long as you're pleasant company, upbeat and joyful, you have little to worry about. Cheer up, therefore, lest you end up down in the mouth.

A priest, a rabbi and a pig walk into the dining room. Only the rabbi walks out. We must assume the priest had a last supper of pork, so everything is kosher.

Hello, friends. What's eating you?

Later. Love.

The Man Behind. The King of the Mountain.

I was asked to come out from behind the text. I get this request in one form or another from time to time. "There's not enough of you in your writing." It's just that I'm going through this period of being highly disinterested in reality and all of us, the people that populate it (except for you, of course). Also I feel empty, or used up, like I've said my lot. I'm reminded of the lyric that says

Hello, old friends.
There's really nothing new to say.
But the old, old story bears repeating
And the plain old truth grows dearer every day.

I love that lyric sometimes. Enough of all that, though. Here's something else:

The boy in the bubble bounced up one day
Asking if we might come out to play
We burst his bubble and sent him away
Because of the king of the mountain

A girl with a red dress and curly hair
She wanted a kiss at the top of the stair
We left her broken and standing there
A nod to the king of the mountain

The back of the room, the end of the hall
A knife to the wood of the bathroom stall
A scar on our cheek, a gut full of gall
And all for the king of the mountain

The top of the mountain is covered with snow
No throne looking down on the world below
And we prance and howl and we ravage and crow
And bow to the king of the mountain

That's all for today.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

On Probability and History

It's a subtle point about scientific observations and probability that Richard Feynman makes when he says:

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

The passing of time from the future into the past is a great statistical equalizer. Everything that has happened has a 100% chance of having happened. The world we live in, the path we've taken, may not be and may never have been the most probable, may have been nearly impossible, but here we are. Here we are.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Settler

You've lost your way on the road, driving to nowhere with your mind a million miles from somewhere, and you don't even know yet that you've wandered away. Soon the realization will dawn on you, like a feeling spreading slowly up your spine, and the fog will clear from your eyes. Soon you'll become an active participant in the mystery of your predicament, shaking your head and looking around you, checking your mirrors, wondering how long it's been, how far you've come. The countryside here is beautiful, here in the middle of somewhere, here in parts unknown. There are trees and hills you've never seen before, the sun getting low in the strange new sky. You slow the car to a stop and pull onto the dirt shoulder of the country road, cutting the ignition and getting out of the car. Standing there in the cool of the evening you hear local birds welcoming you from the trees. The car engine ticks as it cools, and you look up and down the foreign road as far as you can see. "So, this is what it's like here," you think. And then you get to work. You'll need a house and a job. You'll have to make friends.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Tony Dagger and the Dame with the Viking Helmet

I knew when I saw her through the crack in the door that this dame was trouble. Maybe it was the come hither eyes. Maybe it was the little black dress, heavy on the little, light on the dress. Or maybe it was the giant Viking helmet with the massive horns that sat atop her head. I don't know.

"How do I do ya?" I asked in a slip of accidental honesty.

"What?"

"I said, 'What can I do for ya?'," I lied. She looked at me curiously for a moment and then pushed the door open and breezed in.

"Are you the detective they call Tony Dagger?" she asked.

"I'm Dagger," I answered. "Please, come in," I added sarcastically, closing the door.

"Mr. Dagger, I need your help," she said.

"Don't cry, miss," I said, reaching for my handkerchief.

"I'm not crying!" She looked at me, puzzled and a little annoyed. I could see that she was right. She wasn't crying.

"Sorry," I murmured, walking past her to take a seat at my desk. "Most dames are crying when they say that to me." I motioned for her to have a seat in the rickety wooden chair I kept for guests.

"Well," she replied, lowering herself delicately into the wobbly seat, "I'm not most women, Mr. Dagger."

"Call me Tony."

"I need your help, Tony," she repeated, looking at me earnestly and beginning to cry.

"Help with what?" I handed her the handkerchief.

"I can't remember where I put my Viking helmet," she sobbed.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Unwritten

Sometimes, when your eyes are dry and desert winds howl forlorn and aimless through the cavern of your chest, your muse feels pity at the sight of you and rises to dance. She doesn't say a word. She just smiles a subtle smile, a smile that is almost a sigh, and dances close to you, all around you. You could reach out and touch her if you so chose, if that were the nature of your relationship, but you do not. You can feel the breeze of her nearness. You can hear her light footfalls, her soft breathing. Into her dance she weaves all the notions, all the ideas, all the pictures that inspire you, those images and symbols that you both know so well. Your dry eyes fill with tears, and you take up your pen to describe how you feel, to remind yourself of everything you love about life. "No," she says, stopping in front of you to push your hand back from the page. "Keep it," she whispers. "This is only for you." And she dances on.

Hello, friends. I hope you are well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Friday List: ATILATIDINCO(E,OC,FTAA)

It's Friday. On Friday we make lists. Lists are easy. People like lists. Take my bosses, for example: My bosses would always rather read a bulleted list than long paragraphs of narrative text, however eloquent or well-crafted. Lists give you time to breathe. Lists have empty spaces between the words where your eyes can rest while you remember what it was like when you were little and everything was peaceful and easy and no one sent you lists to read.

A list should have a theme. Today's list has the following theme: "Alternating Things I Like and Things I Dislike In No Certain Order (Except, of Course, for the Aforementioned Alternation)". Enjoy.

• LIKE: Sometimes, when you have a harpoon stuck all the way through your shoulder, you find this certain position in which, for a few seconds, the agonizing pain goes away and you feel, temporarily, like you might survive this horrible accident and like surviving would be better than not surviving. I like that.

• DISLIKE: Getting a harpoon stuck all the way through your shoulder.

• LIKE: When your muscles hurt from sobbing and your eyes have run dry and you just cannot muster the energy or moisture to shed another tear and you collapse, defeated, into the couch, your body releases chemicals that make you feel peaceful in spite of nightmarish sorrow. I like that.

• DISLIKE: Nightmarish sorrow.

• LIKE: Post-emesis endorphins.

• DISLIKE: Pre-emesis retching.

• LIKE: The peace that comes with resignation to mortality.

• DISLIKE: Mortality.

• LIKE: The fleeting, stolen moments of passion human lovers share fiercely and urgently while hiding among the crumbling ruins of society's last few moments.

• DISLIKE: Coitus interruptus.

• LIKE: Flashes of magic in the monotonous doldrums of restless routine.

• DISLIKE: The monotonous doldrums of restless routine.

How about you?

Hello, friends. How are you?

Later. Love.

The Physicist and the Turtle

In my nightmares Stephen Hawking is chasing me down a dim, endless hallway lit periodically by florescent light fixtures that flicker and buzz, the pitch rising and falling with Doppler as I race below, sweating and panting.  The walls are infinite chalkboards covered with arcane scribblings of advanced math. I'm running as fast as I can, but his wheelchair, which must have been souped-up for performance, is gaining on me. "Wait, Scott," he's calling out in his dispassionate robot voice. "I want to show you something. It all makes sense now."

I've been feeling a little crazy lately, what with the nightmares, so I decided to start seeing getting psychotherapy. I couldn't afford a professional psychotherapist, so I've been seeing the wooden turtle that lives on my windowsill at work. This is one of the advantages of being crazy, all of the additional opportunities not available to sane people.

"We wooden turtles have a saying," she said to me. "'Survival of the fittest never changes, but approaches to fitness are constantly created and destroyed.'"

Staring blankly out the window I started to reply, "It's not a very catchy say..."

"No, but I think it's apt," she interrupted, annoyed. "I think you are offended by what you perceive to be a violation of natural selection."

"It's not even pithy," I said. "I don't even think I'd call it a 'saying' per se."

In my nightmares there is a small wooden turtle riding on Dr. Hawking's knee. "I'll show you pithy!" she screams.

Hello, friends. How are you?

Later. Love.

A Proposal for Controlling the Gnat Population

The mad scientist wanted to isolate nature and nurture as variables, so he isolated the child away from all nurture and care from a very early age. The result, ultimately, was most unnatural. Where humans are concerned, nurture is nature.

There are many secrets to raising children successfully. I have discovered and/or imagined many of these over the years and I've written them down on various scraps of paper all of which I subsequently lost. Some of these secrets stay with you, in your memory, forever. Here are a few of them:

• Keep the child's head above water or the child will drown.

• Smile at them when you catch their eye.

• Only paint children with nontoxic, washable paints of bright and vibrant colors.

• If you throw a child into the air, wait to see if they come back down. If they do, catch them.

• Only sacrifice worthy children to the volcano.

• If they make you cry, try not to let them know. They don't need that kind of guilt. Also, quit being such a puss.

• When their unique individuality strays from interesting into disturbing, get them out into the real world to remind them how humans generally behave. It's easy to forget when you're isolated.

• Some people are your children and some people are the creeps and jerks with whom you drink and act a fool. Remember the difference and behave accordingly. Try to keep the groups separated.

• Everyone is a murderer or worse. If a stranger approaches your child, set them on fire (the stranger, not your child).

• Your child will stare at the sun. This is because it looks really familiar. This is because the souls of children come from the sun, where the absorb all the energy they're going to expend in their childhood before cooling into adulthood and collapsing into old age. Buy shades for them.

• If you do not hug and/or kiss your child in the morning, they will forget who they are and forget where they live and wander away and shrink and turn into gnats. That's where gnats come from. It's sad how many gnats there are in the world.

I have no idea how many of these are true. Better follow all of them just in case.

Hello, friends. How are you?

Later. Love.

Like a Spirograph. Remember Spirographs?

Life is a loop of small spirals, the repetition of thoughts and patterns but never exactly the same way twice. We run in these smallest circles every few minutes or every couple of hours. In the most fitful times, maybe we make the smallest circles every few seconds, round and round and round, crooked variations each time. These variations in the spiral, the jagged or lumpy skew of the rounds, are the essence of life and progress. These variations keep us sane, I think. Then there are the larger circles, made up of the smaller ones. For many of us a day is a loop in a larger spiral, instantiating some class or pattern, one after the other after the other. Then there are the weeks. The months. The years. Wheels within wheels, like a complex fractal for which there is no equation but you or me or her. Of course, our loops interlock with the loops of others at various periods. New connections are made. Old connections are changed or lost. I wrap my circles around you and we spin together for a while. The pattern changes and you loop away. It's more about motion and speed and direction and acceleration than about shape or size. It's a dynamic thing, something you do, not something you are. These words are a loop I send out wide to intersect with as many of you as possible. If some temporary vector of yours crosses this one then maybe you spiral off in some different pattern, changed ever so slightly. Or maybe we miss one another this time. It's okay. We'll come around again. Around and around again and again.

Hello, friends. How are you?

Later. Love.