caveat emptor

Riffing in the Shadows and the Sun

The sun has just, once again, come over the eastern horizon and spotted me sitting here in this coffee shop window. Summer mornings I pull the shade and hide from the sun, but the autumn sun is not so hateful. I don’t mind having her paint my silhouette against the western wall, so clear that I can see my shadow fingers dancing in my peripheral vision as I type these words. Meanwhile, in the shadow world, my shadow is typing about having suddenly sprung to life on the western wall, about watching my flesh and blood fingers typing in front of the bright, autumn sun. How curious to live in such accord with the sun and the western wall and the world of shadows. What a mad universe this is.

Dust dances all around us all the time, sloughed skin cells or microscopic plant particulate or tiny extra terrestrial  matter that could, for all we know, be sloughed scales of extinct Martians or some other monster race from some other alien world. I heard somewhere that the world doubles in diameter every five minutes from the amount of dust that settles on it. Wait. That can’t be right. Where did I hear that? Maybe I’m remembering wrong. Meanwhile the sun exposes all the dust in my atmosphere and all the dust on my computer screen. It’s a small matter, this dust, but sometimes I worry about it. Sometimes my sinuses get scared and my nose runs. Still the dust dances, swirling all around like a dervish on his dizzy, dusty ṭarīqah.

Against the wall outside, various animals are bending and twisting and trying to cast shadows in the shape of human hands against the eastward-facing wall. It’s a game they play, rabbits and birds and snails and dogs. “See?” one says, “There is the thumb and there is the forefinger and my ear is the pinky. See?”

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well this sunny, shadowy, dusty day.

Later. Love.

Recurring Disappointments and Bebotherments (I Just Made Up That Word, I Think) Up With Which I Shall No Longer Be Putting

It’s finally happened. A straw has broken this camel’s back. I have been pushed beyond my threshold of tolerance. And so, having taken more than I can stand and refusing to stand and take any more, I am presenting to the universe (THAT’S YOU!) this list of recurring disappointments and bebotherments (I just made up that word, I think) up with which I shall no longer be putting.

Recurring Disappointments and Bebotherments (I Just Made Up That Word, I Think) Up With Which I Shall No Longer Be Putting

• Some of you are using titles for blog posts that are entirely too long. Maybe you think it’s cute or funny, but it’s not. It’s uncute and antifunny, and it’s getting on my nerves! Enshorten your titles, you raving asshat store patronizers!
• These gangs of young toughs roaming the highways on Asian and European performance bikes and pelting other vehicles with pumpkins and large butternut squashes should be stopped. Some of you may consider it just a bit of adolescent tomfoolery and may think that we should just wink and look the other way but maybe that’s because you’ve never taken a gourd in the neck at 75 mph because some teen maniac tossed it through your sunroof and then sped off in shroom-fueled wheelie laughing as you gasped for air and tried not to lose control of your semi-luxury commuter car. They should all be rounded up and taken to a prison farm and forced to grow squash and then eat it.
• I’m getting so sick of mock rage. CAN WE STOP THE MOCK RAGE, PLEASE!!!!!
• An exclamation point doesn’t need backup. DO YOU REALLY THINK IT’S OK TO USE MORE THAN ONE EXCLAMATION POINT, YOU MORON?!
• Don’t even get me started on the mixed exclamation point/question mark thing. LEARN. HOW. TO. PUNCTUATE. STUPID.
• All caps and periods after every word? That’s what she said. (Is that how you use that joke? I can never quite slip it in at the right place.)
• Liberal fundamentalism is not the answer to conservative fundamentalism. It’s the fundamentalism, stupid.
• A serious point in the middle of an otherwise ridiculous list is like pooping in the middle of a pool party, party pooper.
• Chihuahua BASE jumping is getting out of hand in major cities. It may be adorable (when the chute opens), but it just seems cruel and irresponsible.

I’m sorry. I just had to get these things off my chest. (That’s what she said? I don’t know.)

Hello, friends. Thanks for putting up with me.

Later. Love.

Babble (Featuring the Mole People)

Live long enough in the city and you start to think of other people as traffic. You just want to pass them, to avoid being stuck behind them. They are obstacles, rushing all around you, interfering with your trajectory. Sometimes, standing a line at the bank, you wonder to yourself if your liability insurance will cover you if you hit the person in front of you. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Turn off your metaphorical engine. We’re all in this together, the culmination of millennia of evolution all doing what we can to be fit enough to survive. We didn’t choose to exist in this time and place, but here we are. Life is not a highway, it’s a reunion. Here we are again, just us, together at last.

Meanwhile the mole people are amassing an army, preparing to invade the surface of the planet. It’s the largest mole people army ever assembled, and they are resolute in their resolution, have resolved to resolve their vendetta against humanity once and for all. They attack tomorrow. Scared? Don’t be. Mole people are only, like, two feet tall. Their only weapon is mud and there are only 37 of them in the army. Poor, stupid mole people. If you’re around when they attack, try not to hurt them. Try to make them feel like you’re afraid and like they’re doing a good job. They could use a confidence boost.

Sometimes I look at the things that humans accomplish, vast cities and monumental edifices, and I think to myself, “Wow. And we don’t even work together very well. We can barely stand one another.” I bet, if we could all just get along, with no division or strife, we could build a tower to the place where the gods live and force them to explain themselves.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Meteorologism

The weather hates when you equate him with the temperature. “There is so much more to me than temperature,” he’ll say. “Temperature is just one small aspect of my complexity.” The weather will go on and on like this if you let him, lecturing you on pressure and prevailing wind patterns and ocean currents and even the topology of the terrain. He’s very sensitive about this particular issue, being confused with temperature, but it’s not the root issue. The weather has been upset ever since he found out that most people consider him the stuff of small talk, a thing most people only discuss when they can think of nothing else to say. “Small talk,” he’ll sneer. “Small talk? What could possibly be bigger and more relevant to daily life than me? What?” The weather around here is mostly unbearable.

All of the seasons are always there, they just get very small when another season takes control. If you get down very close to the ground during autumn, however, and pay close attention, you’ll notice a millimeter or so each of summer and winter and spring. They stay low and small, waiting patiently for their turn. Scientists will scoff at this notion, no doubt, but that’s because scientists have a vested interest in the current notions of science. I have no such ulterior motivations. I am free to explore even the most ridiculous alternatives. I am free to postulate tiny seasons that play around your toes and rise and fall in their proper… well… seasons, as it were. I’m up to my knees in autumn around here, and summer is down to my waist. Not long now before I’ll be happily inundated in autumn and stomping summer underfoot with glee. These are good days to be alive.

The climate hates to be equated with the weather. “Weather?” she scoffs. “Weather is just a small part of what I am.” She’s been a little arrogant lately, what with all the attention she’s been getting in the press. “She’s changed,” a progressive scientist suggests, “but I think it’s our fault.” Others are less willing to take the blame. “If she has changed then I don’t think we’re culpable.” Climatologists around here are mostly unbearable.

Hello, friends. I hope the weather is kind to you today.

Later. Love.

A Feasible Future Night

It is the future, and I am sitting alone in the place where I live. I am in a tired chair that is nearing the end of its days, having supported me faithfully for many years. The evening is darkling outside and I am illuminated dimly by the single bulb of a lamp on the chair-side table, which also holds a sweating glass of nearly melted ice and a successfully emptied dinner plate. I am dozing and reading a book, irritated by the nagging knowledge that the remains of dinner are on the stove and should be properly stored or disposed and cleaned before I succumb altogether to evening's sleepy summons. There is more food than I required because I was expecting some companion who failed to appear without a word of explanation, something my reclusive soul both appreciates and mourns, being both reclusive and a soul. Waking with a start and a snort and a pinch in my neck two hours later, I pick up the book from where it has fallen and place it on the table. Reluctantly and with a groan, I unfold my old bones from my beloved chair, which sighs in relief. I place the glass on the plate and, switching off the lamp, walk though the dark familiarity of my quiet den to the kitchen, where, by spatial memory, I place the plate beside the sink and then reach over to switch on the little light above the curtain-drawn window. I make small and mostly silent work of my ritual midnight chore, a veteran of more dinner cleanups than I could ever recount. When the last dish clicks into place, I switch off the light and shuffle blind along the familiar path to bed. I am an artist and a poet. Within my soul creativity blazes like a fire, like a sun. I am powerful and wise and beautiful and impressive, none of which you might guess as I drop my clothes into a rumpled little pile and crawl, with a groan, into my solitary bed to sleep, perchance to snore.

Darkling City Nightlife Song

I was supposed to meet Tom Waits for drinks last night. We were going to get blitzed and, “shoot the shit,” as he says. It was his turn to buy, though, so he didn’t show up. Next time I see him will be my turn again. That’s him, you know. We’ve all got our things. So, after waiting for almost an hour, I finished my stout and wandered out into the cool air of the late city evening, the rush and ruckus of beautiful strangers heading somewhere else with other people. They were the sort of perfect people that you just want to stare at, to photograph, terrifying and seductive, in their evening attire and cosmopolitan abandon. I had to clear out before I lost it and kissed someone who wasn’t interested in me or, even worse, was, so I mustered all the frantic casualness I could manage and meandered urgently a couple of blocks over and one down to the park plaza. Homeless monsters shambled here and there in the shadows, but I stayed in the pools of light along the path, flitting quickly across the dark patches where Venn diagrams of brightness failed to intersect. I saw geese tucked up under low shrubbery for the night, dreaming of bread on the water and the mysterious, blood-borne routes of epic migrations. Up ahead a cat strutted audacious above its shadow straight toward me down the center of the people path, so I waited reverently for it to pass. It deigned to brush the cuff of my jeans but didn’t pay me the blessing of lingering in my company, of turning to stroll with me in the beer buzz night. In the dissipating wake of this feline visitation, I thought of her, the way she swayed at the hip when she walked away, as she always did. Somewhere far away a raucous cheer spilled out of some excited tavern, a moment of adulation for some briefly celebrated soul, and I whispered, “I love you.” And the city told me she loved me too, as Tom Waits at the piano played the final flourish of my darkling city nightlife song.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

p.s. – In case you’re interested in my personal medical plight to which I alluded yesterday, my doctor decided to start me on insulin injections last afternoon, much to my delicate disappointment. I am not especially nonchalant about needles. Nevertheless, heart pounding, I gave myself my first injection in the stomach last evening. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I can do this thing, I suppose. Just another thing. Thanks for stopping by.

On Falling Apart

You gotta help me, doc. All my teeth is backwards. My hair changes color every damn day. My fingers tingle if I drink cold coffee and the heater on the coffee pot is shot. My back complains about every damn thing. My eyes get all red and sore when I look at chicks. I can’t pronounce no hard words. Sometimes I hear voices askin’ me to pay the rent or stop starin’ or somethin’. My hands shake when I hold a crowbar. I can’t shoot straight with my eyes closed, and I can’t bear the guilt if I keep ‘em open. My throat gets wet when I drink and dry when I smoke. I can’t clap right with the song at the dance club. I think I might have dandruff, or maybe lupus. My uncle had shingles and all his shoes don’t fit. Maybe I got that. Maybe I got depression or I’m bi-Polish. I don’t know. You gotta help me, doc. I’m fallin’ apart over here.

As I get closer and closer to being infinity years old, my body is beginning to rebel against me. I don’t really blame it. I haven’t been very nice to my body for much of my life. My primary struggle now is with Type II Diabetes. My body produces insulin, but my cells have become resistant to it. When I eat and my blood glucose level rises, my pancreas generates insulin to trigger absorption of the glucose by my cells. My cells just ignore it, though, and the sugar floats around in my blood damaging things here and there. I can feel its effect in my eyes and in my numb, tingling hands. My kidneys fight to clean my blood, wearing themselves out. Because of the over-activity of my kidneys, I have to pee… hold on… I’ll be right back… pretty much all the time. This also means I’m always thirsty. Since I started measuring it in July, my blood sugar has been hanging out in the 300s. Sometimes it’s in the low 300s. Sometimes the high 300s. A couple of times it’s been in the 400s. A couple of times, the 200s. This is not good. I’ve changed my diet and started exercising again. (I’ve actually lost almost 50 pounds since July.) I started taking one diabetes medication. Then I started taking two. Nothing has budged the blood glucose level so far. I’m not sure what comes next. I see the doctor today. It sucks, but it’s okay. Hopefully we figure out some way to get this under control. Some have suggested that continued weight loss and exercise might bring it down, so I’m continuing along that path. We’ll see.

When I was a young man I could walk for years without tiring or missing appointments. I could climb mountains with bigger mountains strapped to my back. I could make women swoon with a smile or a wink. I could free dive to the depths of the ocean wrestle the giant squids or play chess with Poseidon. I could walk through the fire and sleep naked in the snow. These days I am not so powerful. I have trouble with basic daily tasks. I have trouble paying attention. I often remember things that never happened.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Perspectives on Today

Just to remind herself, she changed her name to Today. No last name. No middle. She is Today. The past may influence us, but we are ultimately free each day to choose who we’re going to be. Her ex didn’t agree with that. He believed that we are controlled by our personality, that we are doomed to exercise our free wills along certain lines predetermined by our past patterns. Today is no longer with him. She is wearing a light pink shell under a cream cardigan and a thin white skirt that comes to her knees. Somewhere in her office you will find one of the sandals she wore in this morning. Somewhere else you will find the other. Today she is not very focused on her work and she stares out the window at the white clouds shifting shapes as they pass slowly in the sky blue sky. These clouds were never here before and they never will be again. She knows that she is more like the clouds than she is like the sky. One day she’s going to be an artist, or a writer, or maybe a mother. For now she inhabits these small business functions in this serious office that says “Today” on the door.

The new day waits beside his bed for him to wake each morning. He catches a glimpse of the new day when the alarm first blares, but he slaps snooze and turns his back, covering his head with the pillow. He does this same thing every day. Nine minutes later he does it again. Most days he does this three or four times before finally sliding the alarm switch through rough clicks to the “OFF” position and sitting up to face the new day in the eye. He is convinced that every day is really the same day, and he treats the new day greeting him hopefully as though he has seen her before, already holding a grudge for the previous day’s misfortunes. The new day already knows what to expect from him, having been briefed by yesterday in the middle of the night. He rolls his eyes at the new day and walks past her into the bathroom. Later, in the shower, he remembers again a girl he once dated who changed her name to Today. She was beautiful and fun, but she had some stupid ideas about life. Rinsing the running shampoo from his face, he opens his eyes to see the new day staring up at him, smiling. There would be no escaping her, he knows. Every day, no matter where he goes, there she is.

Today is contemplating culinary school. She sits in the little evening cafe and reads culinary school websites on her phone, sipping green tea with honey. Beneath the table she has kicked off her sandals. It’s a little thing, a thing she always does. When she comes to rest in a place, she makes that place her home. To show that she has settled in, she kicks off her shoes. It’s like a flag, claiming the ground. It’s a pattern that she will repeat every day for the rest of her life.

Hello, friends. I hope you love Today.

Later. Love.

Escaping Fear and Overcoming Wealth

Do not fall victim, like so many do, to the fallacy that the world is a scary and dangerous place and that you should not venture out into it until an assurance of readiness manifests in your mind and soul. Believing this will paralyze you in your place, rob you of the joy of freedom and competence that comes from standing independent in the world and enjoying its cruelty and mercy on your own terms. The world is made of women and men like us, and we have every right to stand among them, and you no less than any of us. As welcome as you have always felt in your own home, feel even more welcome in the world. There is a place for you. Failure and success are fallacies. There is only life, easy and hard and happy and sad. Step out and join the game, the dance, the river’s flow.

There is a joy to be had in having barely enough, or maybe not quite, and surviving nonetheless. There is a nourishment that comes from a missed meal from time to time, missed because there was no food to be had. These are the terrible ethics of the self, the things you would never wish for another. For the self, however, there is the hope that suffering will come and that it will be overcome. For the self there is the dream of future lack, of an end to all this monotonous plenty that dulls our days and embitters our dreams. Or maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. I cannot speak for your self, for anyone else’s. Perhaps you aren’t compelled to laugh when you look back at hardships survived. Perhaps you don’t get that rush of joy in your chest when you look around at the beautiful settling of the aftermath and think, “Wow. I made it.”

Turn off your blinky, buzzy machines and wander outside. Unplug the tangled web of cords in which you are suspended and lower yourself back to the gritty earth. Move out from under your shelter into the vulnerability of the shadow of the open skies. Offer your visceral mortality to the elements. Shed all this unnecessary clothing and swim in the teeming waters, lie in the growing grass, participate in the pulsating play of the planet. Remember every day to be a good animal. Do not be afraid of your own home, this world.

Hello, friends. Live well today. And then keep going.

Later. Love.

I’mPerfection

We like to get together and compare personality flaws, to pit our faults against each other like fighting roosters and see which ones come out on top. Usually none do, but still we show up. We have this kind of pathological loyalty to one another, always there to steer the other astray. Self-destruction is easier, after all, with a little help from your friends. Sometimes you feel as though your life is headed the wrong direction and you need a friend – a friend like us – to encourage you to keep going. We’re right here with you, buddy. You jump, we jump. You don’t jump, we push. Either way, when you hit bottom we’ll be right behind you.

I’ve always had a strong conviction that we should embrace our fallibility. Embrace it tightly and never let it go. Fallibility is the only thing keeping expectations manageable, after all. No one really expects us to do that well. Everyone understands when we mess up. Were we perfect, however, the pressure would be unbearable. Would we be able to handle that kind of pressure? Well, yes. I guess we would, were we perfect. Still, I don’t like the idea. I like messing up. It’s fun. Is that healthy? Probably not, but what do expect from a guy like me? I’m not perfect, after all. At least there’s that.

One of my favorite things about Ray Charles is his celebration of peccadillo, poverty and prurience. He knows how to dress imperfection with irresistible syncopation and lusty backbeat seduction with a wink that makes it seem fine, as long as you keep it on the down low. You don’t have to worry, buddy. We’re all friends here. We won’t bother you with your best interests. Meanwhile Ray Charles sits at the piano and smiles behind those shades, picturing all the mischief in his mind’s eye as he sways to the rhythm of our inevitable persuasion.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

Later. Love.

White, Question Mark, Cliff Painting

When I was born I decided to be Caucasian because my parents were Caucasian. It seemed like the path of least resistance. Throughout my life there have been moments when I doubted the wisdom of that decision, but I have determined to stay the course. It would be a lot of trouble to change now. I’d have to realign my filters and prejudices. Plus there would be a lot of government forms to correct. Is being Caucasian fun? No, not really. Still, it’s all I know. I have no idea how to be Asian or Black or even Hispanic. I’m a big, lumbering white guy of the Northern European ilk, with a bulky frame optimized for subduing big women and an insulating layer of subcutaneous fat to protect against the cold Scandinavian night. I blame my parents for this. If not for them I could have been something exotic. Like a pygmy or a Mongolian warrior.

Speaking of sudden transitions, I’ve decided that I want a necklace to wear as a sort of talisman. I want it to be a questions mark. Something rough and craggy, not smooth and shiny. I want to wear it under my shirt against my skin to remind me of the truth. And this will be my hymn:

O question mark
Thou jot and sickle
Punctuating my curiosity
I place my doubt in you

In the dream we were searching for wildflowers at the base of a high cliff wall near the sound of breaking waves that we could only hear and smell but not see. Some flowers of deep blue were posing for watercolor sketching, dobbing and brushing into my painting notebook with its thick, rough pages. And, being so distracted, I lost track of you. I searched everywhere and, when I finally spotted you again, you were sitting on a tiny ledge halfway up the cliff wall. My heart lurched with the precariousness of your situation, and I called out to you, but you didn’t hear. You were looking off in the direction of the wave sound, swinging your feet out over the deadly drop. I couldn’t get your attention and you wouldn’t look away from the distant sea, so there was nothing I could do but turn the page and begin to paint. Blotchy browns and greys for the cliff wall. Green and scattered colors for the grass and flowers. Pink and white for you, perched up there on the edge of falling. Blue and white and grey for the gathering clouds and the sky. And the wind, as I remember it, was purple and yellow. I’m not sure why.

Hello, friends. I’m glad you’re.

Later. Love.

Bird Hands, Burgers, Skiing Uphill

Sometimes I wonder if birds ever wish for arms and hands. Seems like it would make their lives easier, some little arms with little hands and little opposable thumbs. Preening would be easier, especially for those hard-to-reach-with-your-beak feathers. Also, they could carry things. They could pick things up from the ground without using their mouths. That seems like an improvement, right? I wouldn’t want to pick things up with my mouth. Probably the arms wouldn’t be very aerodynamic, though. Might make flight less efficient. Plus they’d have to factor their arms into their complicated mating dances. Maybe they could clap while they pranced and strutted. I don’t know. Perhaps it would just be awkward for them, always wondering what to do with their hands. Still, I imagine them sitting on telephone wires, crapping on windshields and then shooting the bird at any driver who looked up.

My favorite hamburger joint is that one where we ate together, taking a few rare minutes to get away alone, sitting outside in the cool evening, talking about small things and epic things, finishing and getting to the car just before it started raining. The best thing about the hamburger was just being there with you. We should have hamburgers like that more often, maybe at a pizza place or a Mexican place. We could both drink margaritas against doctor’s orders. Man, that would be a great hamburger. As long as you were there with me, that would be a really great hamburger.

In the dream we were skiing uphill, just the two of us. You made it look easy, but I was struggling with gravity. “Just hold your feet like this,” you said, but I could barely hear you because you were getting pretty far up ahead of me. Snowbirds were pointing at me and laughing from the trees, slapping one another on the back and making obscene hand gestures. I wanted to call out to you, ask you to wait, but you were smiling and having more fun than I’d seen you have for a long time. So, I just struggled along behind as you faded into the clouds near the top, far above. I knew you’d be waiting for me at the burger joint on the summit.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

How He Left the Army

When the bullet ripped through his pectoralis major and then his lung he discharged himself from the army. It was almost midnight on a dark, new moon night when he fell, lurching off the rocky dirt road and into the ditch. Between the roar and flash of gunfire and artillery he could hear the rough scrabble of boots and jeep tires not far from where his face came to rest. When a rain of hot, spent shells rained down on him from a passing mounted gun, he gnashed his teeth at the pain in his chest and began to inch and crawl away from this damned war and into the recently mown field beside the road. A few yards ahead he saw in the sporadic flashing light the mound of a rough haystack, so he crept and inched agonizingly toward it and then around it to the relative cover of the far side, where he lay and panted, trying to forget that he had been in the army once, that there had been this war raging hatefully all around him. Before long the blood pooling beneath him frightened him and he forced himself to sit up against the scraggly stack. Wanting to staunch the flow somehow, he thought of using his sock, but he was sure he wouldn’t have the stamina to remove his boot. So, he clawed the dirty bandana from his pocket and, wincing, stuffed it as well as he could into the wound.

Once, a little later, his eyes fluttered open and he was surprised to see a yellow sun against a clear blue sky. The quiet of the morning field was shocking. He wondered if the war had just been a dream, then he drifted off again.

When the farmer’s wife found him, he was still alive, but just barely. When she fetched the farmer, his anger with the war almost convinced him to let the man die, but his basic goodness was bigger than all the violence. With their sons they carried the man into the house and cared for him. Two days later, when he awoke and saw his future mother-in-law dressing the wound on his chest, he tried to ask who she was, but she only smiled and said something comforting in a language he was about to learn.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.

Later. Love.

Generation, Art and Judgment

They were a generation in search of a crisis, looking for something for which to to search. They released the bird in the hand in order to better hunt in the bush for two or more. They preferred dull blades because they loved sharpening. They were annoyed that, when buying train tickets, you had to specify a destination. “I’m just leaving,” they would say. “I don’t want to arrive anywhere.” They stood on corners selling paper flowers and, if you bought one, they smiled and kissed you on the cheek as you took it, then they threw the money back in your face angrily. They made a point of insisting that the world was insane, that normalcy was madness, and then they cut themselves idly with their own point, writing nonsense words in the blood of their non sequitur protest. Many years later, another generation idolized them, mostly through an homage of fashion. “It wasn’t just about clothing,” parents murmured, trying to remember what the point had been.

The dancers and the painters live in a symbiosis of inspiration, each one performing their interpretation of the other, like the writers and the musicians. Art looks only inward. “That’s because it encompasses everything,” the painter insists as his eye measures the dancer’s curves. “Where else would art look? There is nothing else.” But the insurance underwriter has no time for such nonsense. He smiles curtly and dances away. Watching him go, the writer births a new verse on the recently blank page and hands it to the violinist, who smiles as his bow comes up.

“Are we judged as individuals or generations?” she asked the angel at the gate nervously.

“It’s nothing like that,” the angel answered with a friendly smile.

“So what is it like?”

“It’s more like storytelling,” the angel replied. “And then everyone tells you what they liked and what they didn’t like. Mostly people are pretty generous and kind about it.”

“That still sounds awful,” she said.

“It’s alright,” the angel reassured. “After you’re done you get to do whatever you want to do forever.”

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Auditing Chaos

In my nightmare I was the Assistant Treasurer for the Central Council of a large anarchist organization that had recently taken over the world. I was working on many projects and didn’t have the time nor the proper information channels to succeed at any of them. The two the really bothered me, however, were the “Banner Hanger Apparatus” project and the “State Symbol Eradication – Flagpoles” project. The first was assigned to discover some affordable and reliable apparatus for hanging anarchy banners all over the world. Ad hoc banner hangers were failing everywhere and the expensive black banners with the white and red anarchy symbol were falling down and being trampled. The second project was sponsored by the Reeducation Committee as a part of their effort to eliminate all symbols of the deposed ruling states all over the world. A subcommittee had created a budget and project plan focusing on “flagpole removal and flag remnant burning.” Both projects were over-budget and woefully behind schedule, so, it seemed reasonable and obvious to me to suggest that they exploit the synergies between them.

“What synergies?” the project managers asked, blinking blankly.

“Well…,” I replied, “isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

“Well… I mean… You're looking for something to hold up your ubiquitous banners, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re struggling to tear down flagpoles?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m struggling.”

“Ok,” I sighed, “but you are over-budget and behind schedule? That’s true, isn’t it?”

“So is he.” They were both feeling defensive.

“Ok,” I decided I should just say it, “so why don’t we just hang the banners on the flagpoles?”

They both just stared at me with suspicious frowns. Then they glanced at each other knowingly. “You do remember that this is an anarchist organization, don’t you?”

That’s when I woke up in a cold sweat.

Hello, friends. The world is in your hands. Be careful.

Later. Love.

Organization Tips in Mushroom Sauce

I’m a terribly disorganized person. How did I get to be this way? I blame my frighteningly powerful intellect. When you’re as smart as I am (which you aren’t), each thought you have is so much less lofty and impressive than each other thought you have that no individual thought merits the attention necessary to arrange the aggregate into a reasonably sustainable organization. Being so disorganized, therefore, I often wonder how I can keep track of all the swirling activities and expectations that assault my bewildered existence each day. So, I decided to consult some of the top thinkers in the area of organization, synthesize their ideas and present a distilled list of the best ideas for organizing your life. I never got around to that, however, so here’s some bullshit I’m going to make up as I type it:

How to Organize Your Life: A Bulleted List of Advice (Caveat Emptor)

• When you throw things into a pile, try to make sure the pile is leaning generally away from you. You don’t want to get crushed.
• When you get an email or letter or message from god or the devil that contains some assignment you are expected to complete soon, start a new “To-Do” list to replace the one you lost. There are several “To-Do” list templates you can download from online. Also there are task tracking programs you can get for free or for very little money. Start researching those. Download a few and mess around with them. You could probably write a better program than any of these. Start a new programming project and spend the next four hours working out the details of the color scheme, database or file configuration, splash screen and integrated help technology. Consider using some of the development and testing patterns you’ve been reading about. This program could also be a calendar program, with scheduling and everything. Research calendar widgets you could use. When the sun goes down, abandon the project forever. Why did you even start this in the first place?
• Try to store your socks and your underwear in a different place than where you store your fruits and vegetables. One too many banana and underwear smoothies has proven to me that this is important.
• Life is a complex cycle of life and death, creation and destruction. Burn down your office building every once in a while.
• Alphabetical order is too obvious for filing, too easy for spies and information thieves. Just throw everything into a drawer and go out for coffee, or wine, or beer, or counseling.
• Binder clips can be fun to play with. They come in different sizes and you can make animal sculptures out of them. Don’t put one on your lip or earlobe to see how much it hurts, though. It hurts a lot.
• You’re more likely to keep an important document for longer if you fold it into something interesting, like an airplane or a giraffe. Also you might doodle all over it and pin it to your cubicle wall. Then, when someone asks for it later, you’ll still have it. Don’t give it to them, though. It’s too cool for them. Just tell them you lost it.
• You are not responsible or mature enough to have a paper shredder. You will shred every paper or cloth item in sight, and then you’ll break the shredder trying to shred a stapler or a leather Mission Statement coaster or a business card holder.
• Is priority 1 the lowest priority or the highest priority? I can never remember. In math it’s lowest, so that means I do it last. Right? This always confuses me.
• It’s like being hot-natured or cold-natured. Which one means you like it hot? Which one means you always feel too cold and want it warmer? I cannot remember this either.
• Wow. I’ve really let this list get away from me, haven’t I? What was this list going to be about? Was it a grocery list?
• Granny Smith Apples

Hello, friends. I hope you’re still you. Someone has to be.

Later. Love.

Vengeance and Sex

He killed the scooter motor and coasted to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the biker bar. Standing, he removed his bright yellow helmet with the sunflowers all over it and placed it on the seat. He wanted to look his best, so he straightened the tuck of his extra-small pink golf shirt and smoothed the pleats of his Boy’s Department khaki shorts. Out of habit he reached down to pull his white socks up to his knees, but then he remembered that he was wearing his boat shoes and, therefore, had hosiery foot covers instead of socks. So, he wiped his bifocals clean with the silk handkerchief from his back pocket and patted his greying comb-over into place. Finally, feeling groomed and confident, he strode excitedly toward the front door of the biker bar. He was ready to kick some ass.

Life can be confusing sometimes. Take sex, for example. Everyone is always thinking about and talking about and singing about sex. When throngs of businessmen with briefcases suddenly break into wildly expressive and immaculately choreographed dance routines in the middle of Wall Street, it’s always because of sex. Soldiers rush the front line with their glittering, razor-sharp bayonets for glory and sex, but mostly for sex. Dozens of bathing suit women dive simultaneously into the pool and swim in intricate circles, arching their backs and bending their arms and legs into flesh blossoms and writhing symmetries and human mandalas of wet skin all for the hope of getting sex or giving sex or sharing sex with someone. It’s so confusing, this life, with its sex and Wall Street and war and synchronized water ballet. I just don’t understand.

He sat in the corner of the biker bar, sipping a fruity cocktail and seething. He was certain that it was this particular group of motorcycle thugs who had run over Apricot, his beloved toy poodle, and he burned for revenge. Upon entering the bar and seeing them, however, he had realized immediately that he would be no match for them physically. They would have torn him limb from limb had he engaged them. So, he just sat there in the corner sipping and trying to tell which of them might be the leader. As he scanned the rugged throng, he began to compose in his mind the strongly-worded letter he would write to the man. He would use the plain, unadorned stationery that he reserved for complaints to city hall and angry letters-to-the-editor. He pictured the man reading the letter and then weeping in wild remorse, and the vision made him smile a wicked little smile.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.

Later. Love.

An Impossible Communion

Sometimes I imagine a place, a situation, a type of existence in which we can all relate to one another as anonymous beings and personalities, without the baggage of roles, relationships, genders, languages, ages, physiques, races or even shared experience. I imagine a place where there is only unfettered communication, where I can feel what you feel without losing myself, where I can understand you and you can understand me and we can share how we are different and how we are the same and maybe even figure out some little part of why we are the ways we are, and why we are not the ways we aren’t. And then, once we’ve developed this filtered gestalt of one another, once we’ve come to an understanding and even affection, the lights come on and we see, across the table, the shocking physical reality of our differences. Can you imagine the embarrassment, the fear, the visceral conflict? can you feel the alarm of all our sense of relative position in society, our prejudices, our insecurities crashing back into place as we see this person with whom we just shared so intimate a communion? How powerful an education that could be, I think.

Hello, friends. I wish I knew you like that.

Later. Love.

Coffee Shops There and Here

There is a new coffee shop in town and I’d like to go there and check it out. It’s on another side of town, where other people live who are not like us. Nevertheless, I want to go there. I want to smell the coffee beans roasting. They roast their own, after all. That’s how they do it on that side of town. I want to smell them roasting and hear them grinding and taste the fresh, fresh coffee in my cold, ceramic cup. But it’s so far away, the other side of town. I’m not ever sure there are roads from here to there. I imagine there could be checkpoints and obstacles designed to keep me out. When I arrive, if I can, at the door, will they let me in? With my lowly money and my humble computer full of silly words, will I be allowed? Or will I have to stand outside and watch all those other-side-of-towners drink the coffee I thought might be mine? I don’t know how I would handle that kind of rejection.

We’re not bad people. I know we don’t look impressive, but we’re not dangerous or offensive. We try to stay clean and we hear things about recent styles, trying to emulate some form of fashion. We have ideas and we tell jokes. Our children have a sort of rugged, mongrel charm. If you’ll only give us a chance, you’ll find that we can be good company. And we’re loyal. We will never betray you or turn away. Where would we go? Won’t you just let us in? Won’t you give us a chance?

Back on our side of town we’re working to open a coffee shop. Someone has taken a box and pushed some tubes into it. Someone else wrote “Steem” on the box in crayon. If you close your eyes and make espresso sounds with your mouth, it’s a lot like we imagine a coffee shop machine would be. And we’re making aprons from old work shirts. We warm water over the fire and pour it through funnels filled with dirt and gravel, and it comes out brown. And we scream, “Latte! Latte is ready!” and we smile and cheer. This morning someone yelled, “Cappuccino!” and we all laughed and laughed and I cried a little bit.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

On Saying Things and Not

They had said everything to one another that could be said, that was hearable. Everything left was too damaging, too stark, too much. So, she got the sewing basket from the closet and they pushed back the coffee table and sat, cross-legged, facing one another in the middle of the den. Opening the basket, she pulled one of the larger needles, one with a large enough eye for the sturdy brown thread on the spool that she selected from among the others at the bottom of the basket. She threaded the needle and, after kissing him one last time, she raised the needle to the corner of his upper lip and, as he closed his eyes in a wince, she forced the point through his flesh, a small drop of blood welling up, and pulled the thread through. She looped around his lip and through again and tied off to hold the end in place. Then she pulled the thread over his bottom lip and stitched outside in through that, back out again through his mouth opening and up to his upper lip again. After the third stitch, the second in the top, she pulled firmly and closed that corner of his mouth snugly, and then continued in, back out, in, back out, tug, along the thinning opening of his mouth, until, finished, she tied off the other end. She wiped the little drops of blood from the stitching and, with a smile that he returned as well as he could, she handed the needle to him and leaned forward.

Meanwhile, across town, they always have something new to talk about. Music plays and they laugh and talk and talk all evening. Sometimes they have wine, sometimes cocktails, sometimes just coffee or tea. Sometimes they make love once in the early evening and again just before they go to sleep, sometimes only one time or the other, but not both, and sometimes not at all. They cook together. They clean up together. They cannot keep their eyes open long enough to finish all the stories they want to tell one another. Sometimes, when he is talking, she cannot resist and she leaps into the middle of his story and kisses him in the middle of his sentence, his favorite place to be kissed. They have no secret that they know of. This is just the way they are. They are people with an infinity of things to say and a finite time to say it, trying to get it all told before they disappear forever in an orgasmic explosion of cosmic joy and love.

Maybe it would be better to just go ahead and say those things you think you cannot, should not say. Maybe it would be better than this silence. Maybe it would be better than these long, empty pauses. Maybe it would be better than this crooked stitching that irritates our skin. Plus we have to eat. We didn’t think of that, I guess.

Hello, friends. I hope you have plenty to say.

Later. Love.