caveat emptor

When the Boatman Comes

Somewhere out there in the future there is a calm, endless sea. It goes all the way down, never hitting bottom. It stretches forever in every direction and never doubles back. It is flat and clean and cool and empty, except for you. You do not spend eternity there, floating alone in your own endless sea, staring up into the quiet, blue sky, but you float there for a long time. You float there until you have finished all the thoughts you had before. You float there until you have settled yourself on all the answers to all your questions, or accepted the lack thereof. You float there until everything that came before makes sense to you, until you remember all the important things and forget all the rest. When you reach that moment you will know. Some people laugh. Some people cry. Some people just smile. Some sigh.

Then the boatman comes. There's going to be a party, and you're invited.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Reflections on Water

I love the way the rain turns the parking lots and sidewalks and roads into poor mirrors, especially when it's still darkling outside in early morning because of the switch to Nightdark Saving Time. All the lights are reflected badly, ghost lights underground. They follow us around in the underworld, mocking our fuss of activity, our busy living. It's only an illusion, of course, a distraction for the mind desperate to think something, anything. The rain collects in all the lowest places, running always down and down and down, manifesting the underworld for all to see. Water is the window to the ghost world below. This is why we cry for the dead.

The weather factors heavily in my writing at times. It's one of my most reliable muses. The weather, after all, is always there. By the time a man is old, the weather is his best friend. An old man can sit for hours and commune with the weather, talk about the weather with other old men. It's one of the few things they have in common. "I remember the snow of '83." I remember it too. I loved that snow. I wonder where it is today?

Meanwhile the snow of '83 is crawling down the pavement outside, looking for the lowest spot, having found its way back to earth once again in the endless cycle of water. It's right outside the door, wondering what ever happened to you.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Party

We were fancy that day, all dressed up for a posh party. She wore her flowing dress of uncontainable happiness and I was in my heaven suit with the shiny shoes, dressed to the nines as people rarely say these days. Outside the afternoon in the city gardens was warm and moist, with thunderheads roiling themselves into a frenzy overhead. It looked like there might be a wedding brewing in the east plaza. There was rumbling and electricity and the threat of roses in the sultry air. "I wonder if they do," she pondered aloud. "They said they did," I replied, remembering vows I'd heard. It was May or September and birds waited nervously for what came next, crouched like tigers on trees and trellises and gazebos. Somewhere not far away a photographer was surely loading or unloading equipment into or from a minivan or hatchback car, uncomfortable from being dressed inappropriately for hauling lights and tripods and camera bags, dressed instead for a party to which he or she wasn't really invited, not like a normal person might be invited. We were dressed fancy too, having left the house that morning to go to a party. She couldn't remember where the party might be and I couldn't recall the occasion. We sat on the park bench and enjoyed our detachment from the wedding of strangers. We didn't even rise to seek shelter when the rain finally started. I took off the shiny shoes and squished my toes in the new mud. Her dress hugged her wetly and wonderfully as we talked and laughed. Somewhere people may have been wondering where we were, but surely we weren't the guests of honor. Surely the party would go on without us. The party always goes on, after all.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Trees of Blackbird Earth

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

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

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

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Laudable, Reachable, Laughable or Remarkable

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

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

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

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

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Hobglobins. And meta-blogging. And also hobgoblins. And Susan and me in the post scriptum.

If you're going to hunt for hobgoblins hiding in your house - and you know you will eventually - make sure you wear a felt, three-pointed hat with a feather in the back. These are not at all easy to find in stores, but you really need one. Trust me. You can always make your own. Here's how: Get felt and other hat ingredients. Form them into a three-pointed hat, fastening everything together with something. Stick a feather in the back. Also it's important to know this: There is nothing a hobgoblin fears more than loneliness. Sad, isn't it? There's really no way to use this against them unless you are a monster. Here's another important point: Don't be a monster.

Lately I've been posting a lot about time and the end of the world. Also there have been great sweeping themes of personal loss and sadness. Why? I don't know. These are just the things on my mind. I wrote once about the danger of treating sadness as an object, something to be examined in the abstract, to be dabbled with as though it were not highly contagious. Why do I bring that up? I don't know. Why not? It's my blog. I can bring up whatever I want.

Today I'm talking directly to you, the reader. I'm not hiding behind a story or some dumb joke. It's just you and me. Here we are, in the third paragraph of the post together. Are you enjoying it? Would you rather I just told you a story? Is this what they call meta-blogging? Who are they, anyway?

I abandoned that paragraph. This paragraph serves as an awkwardly self-aware segue into the next one, in which I hope to bring the post to a close, tying it all together. Here goes.

There are no hobgoblins in your house. There are no hobgoblins at all. There is only the fear of being alone in the world, the fear that this is all there is. Really, though, this is quite a lot. If there were more to life then life would burst at the seams. Hobgoblins would pour out and infest our houses. No one wants that, do they? Not with the dearth of three-pointed hat retailers.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - Here's a picture of my wife, Susan. She's more beautiful than I deserve, way out of my league. Seriously, look at me. (I'm the one on the right.) Thanks for stopping by.

End of the Line

The trees, they say, must see the forest for themselves. This is difficult, because they have no eyes. And you cannot describe the forest to them, because they have no ears. And so, though you would volunteer your services to them in your empathy, it is to no avail. The trees must see the forest for themselves. I would expect this to be plain to you at this point, but you are too distracted by cares and concerns to perceive the simple truth: You cannot see the forest for the trees.

When the end of the world came all the souls from the beginning of time had to stand in a long line, waiting to discover their personal doom. Somewhere, far up at the head of the line, some system or another was rewarding or punishing souls according to their merits or some such. It wasn't at all clear from the back of the line what was happening. We all just knew, somehow, that we had to wait in line for fate.

It took a long time. It took a really, really, long time. The line stretched off for miles over roads, across fields, over mountains, across bridges, along rivers, down into valleys and back up and out again, as far as the eye could see and farther still. We waited in that line for years. We didn't eat. Sometimes we talked to the people in the line ahead of us or behind us. We didn't drink. Sometimes we sat down in place, scooting along whenever the line moved. We didn't sleep. We were not hungry or cold or afraid or even bored. We just moved slowly along in line toward the end of the world and whatever came after. We were souls, all together in this line, at the end of the world.

Now it's been almost three hundred and fifty years, and we're still in this line. Are we getting near the front? I have no idea. Neither does the girl in front of me. Nor the man behind. It's a lovely day. We're atop a mountain now, looking down to where the line passes into the shadows of the valley below. None of us question, though you might think we should, whether perhaps the line never ends. It ends. And then destiny.

Is this what I expected? Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

One For the Fools

Once I was the most conservative of conservatives, convinced of black and white and good and evil and heaven and hell. The journey out of that was not short nor was it easy, but it was a journey I had to take, even though it meant, in the end, losing even my religion, and I was more religious than you can possibly imagine. I left huge chunks of my personal identity, real parts of who I was, behind me, and it has taken a long time for me to become, if even I have yet, a whole person again.

People come out of religion and conservatism for many reasons. For me it was not about a desire for personal freedom, though I treasure the freedom I now feel. For me, the ideas and ideals and tenets of the identity into which I grew from childhood - an identity that was shaped by a situation and environment that, like all children, I did not choose - were always and increasingly at odds with what I have come to recognize as my own natural, organic idea, ideal and tenet: I believe that people, all of them, are valuable and good.

Though some of you might also believe this, I know that many of you do not. That's okay with me. I think people are allowed to be wrong. It doesn't lessen their value or their goodness, just their quality of life.

From first hearing him speak and reading his words several years ago, I saw in Barack Obama a kindred spirit. I believe he and I share that same faith, a faith in all of you, in all of us. I hope more and more people can come to believe.

He's not perfect in the traditional sense of the word, I've seen this myself. Nevertheless, I love him. And I love that people like us, fools though we may be, can win such victories in this world.

Hello, friends. How are you today? I'm great. I can't stop smiling.

Later. Love.

A Defense Against the Lack of Magic in the World

It's a new year for witches. Is that true? I don't know. I heard that somewhere. If so, Happy New Year, witches. I could never be a witch because I don't believe in things. I'm a skeptic. Also I don't look good skyclad. Mostly, though, it's just because I don't believe in things.

On some darking evenings and on some kindling mornings winking grey and moist into the sky the absence of magic in the world howls at me like an accusation, as though it is all my fault, this flatness of our spherical world. "Consider wonders magic never made," I say. "There is a mundane wonder in the world, magic notwithstanding. Close your eyes and feel it embrace you viscerally. Open your eyes and watch it looking at you from across the room, smiling eyes more natural than super, ordinary as eyes ever have been, wonder blinking in kinship with your mundane soul."

"Words. Just words," the world sighs back silently, hitting you with the full blunt force of quiet, motionless inanimation.

Meanwhile you breathe and writhe in this chemical dance of vegetable and animal growth. "There is no life but us," we think to no one else. "There is only everything, but nothing more."

November in the hemisphere of my cultural identity is a vegetable month, tangible as earth beneath your fingernails. Harvest fills our hands and lungs and bellies, reminding us of more than we were, less than we will be. It is time now to love what is more than what isn't, seeds not spirits, no goblin on the wilting bloom. The wind would drown us in cinnamon and soil breath except that we need it. It keeps us alive, because we are indigenous here, perfectly suited to the deluge of air. There are places in the universe where there is no November, places where the air would kill the earthen vessels of our souls. Here there is vegetable harvest and animal plenty, a November for us, a paradise for such as you and me.

When the lack of magic howls at me, digging deeper these caverns in my heart, I hold my breath and slip under the water. I squish my toes into the mud. I open my submerged eyes and stare at the refraction of light bouncing off the blue sky. I cast these mundane spells to ward off the things that aren't but long so much to be.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - You may notice the logo in the margin of my blog. This can mean only one thing: It's NaLogoMo, National Logo Month, again. Here are the rules: Post the logo on your blog. Then, for a whole month, you don't have to do anything. Post. Don't post. Write. Don't write. Just do whatever. You can do it. I believe in you. Welcome to NaLogoMo '08. Thanks for stopping by.

Weeping and Sowing

How long has it been since you saw a butterfly? I can't remember. It's been a while, I think. I hope they're okay. Was there a butterfly plague? Had I known they would all be gone I'd have paid more attention to them when they were here. Have you heard anything about the butterfly plague? Do they know what caused it? Were there any survivors? Suddenly I feel sick in my stomach with the notion that we'll never see butterflies again. They were so beautiful, don't you think. Do you remember them? Can you still picture them? We should have taken more pictures of them, more movies and such. How will we describe them to our children so that they know? It was like two paper hearts sewn together, dancing in the air. There were more colors than you could imagine, wonderful patterns and designs. Yellow and black and orange and red. Flutter by, butter fly. Goodbye.

Once upon a time there was a girl with a seed to sow. I never saw where she went, but I've noticed new strange blossoms we've never seen before. Do you ever ask yourself who she was and why she came? Sweet fragrance on the wind whispers her forgotten name, telling the story of the girl. She had a seed to sow.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Fools Make Magic of Us All

The way she holds her head when she types can tell me, if I pay attention, that she believes art is neither a particular product nor a particular activity but a method. Anything done this way is art. Anything produced by this method is art. I've seen tears as art. I've seen art in silence, in the way one stands or walks. The difference is in the how and in the why. These shape the what. Wherever I am and whatever I do, I am only and forevermore interested in producing art. Function is peripheral and superficial where I live. From now until forever after I am only and always in my house, and this is how we do things here. All are welcome here but we do not compromise on a few things. Not here. Not in my house. Here we do art.

The Hope for the World walked in and, sighing a little, dropped with a groan into a chair. She wondered for a moment what this grit was under one fingernail, turning over and reviewing hands calloused and dry with good use. Her pants, stiff denim stained with soil, were frayed at the cuffs but sturdy and fit, except for one snag torn an inch and a half just below the knee. The cafe buzzed around her, dense with noise and life, unaware, as was she, that The Hope for the World sat tired and hungry, waiting to be served. Somewhere, in the future, we will sing songs for her, remembering her with fond tears of gratitude. Now she wishes she could have showered after work, her stomach grumbling under her sweat-stained shirt. In a cafe like this, however, people don't notice too much. Here, she thought as the waitress, napkin-wrapped flatware and menu in hand, led her to a table, you can just blend in have a bite to eat, maybe a little coffee or ice water. The Hope for the World thanked the waitress and slid into the little booth alone with a sore little sigh. Outside, in the parking lot and beyond, the world needed her unaware.

There is no practical magic. Close your eyes and run as fast as you can. Do it. Do it now. Fools make magic of us all.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

A Space Walk and a Dog's Life

Space walks leave no footprints. Personally, I don't really consider it walking. It's more like swimming. It's like falling in no certain direction very slowly. Space walks require special shoes. You have to watch where you step. If you step on the sun it will mess up your shoes. Let's take a romantic space walk, just the billions of us. What do you say?

Dog the cat walked slinkily along the sidewalk, staying close to the buildings and ducking behind carts, chairs, bikes and, finally, a newspaper stand from which one could obtain, for free, a local circular detailing cultural events that were going to happen two weeks ago. Dog the cat lay under the paper stand and stared out at all the passing shoes. Being a girl, Dog the cat might be expected to have a fascination with shoes. Being a cat on the city streets, however, she was mostly terrified of shoes. As she lay there she wanted badly to leap out, teeth and claws, and latch onto the flesh exposed by a pair of scary red pumps that strolled slowly by. She even rocked forward, muscles flexed and ready, and pretended she was going to do it. In the end, however, she relaxed and yawned. Normally Dog the cat was hungry, starving even. For now, however, Dog was sleepy and satisfied thanks to a generous handout of tuna fish given to her about an hour ago by the man. The man was a busboy named Hector, but Dog the cat didn't know that. Dog the cat didn't know anyone's name, and she certainly didn't know her own. Hector had given it to her. Dog. Hector fancied himself a funny man. Had she known and understood her name and who was to blame, Dog the cat would have peed on the spot where Hector always sat waiting for her. She did not know, however, so she considered the man a friend and would often pet the palm of his hand with her back. Dog the cat went to sleep under that paper stand for almost an hour. When she woke up it was nighttime, and she set out for the alley where mice live.

Did you know that NASA, when it was designing its Mars lander, actually studied falling cats? NASA was interested in how cats seemed, almost always, to land on their feet. I just made that up. I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds like it could be true. We could totally convince people that it's true. What do you say?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Love.

The Ruins

Democracy until we're all a little smaller, a little hungrier, a little dirtier. You might have to give away half of your bacon, lettuce and avocado sandwich. Maybe two thirds. Hands clasped across the world, holding onto each other, cannot be so clean as they once were. What if, in the end, there isn't enough? What if the mean isn't sufficiently nice? We will all speak the common language of food and sun, water and wind, too cold and too hot and sometimes just right. In the end it is enough for me to have tried, to have lived, to have died like everyone else. Far in the future, when all of this is forgotten, we will gather in a field to dance. We will see each other in everyone's face. We will break bread that we never imagined and drink strange wine, so strong it makes you warm, so cold it make you sigh. We are natives, all of us, of this place. Today we are afraid, but joy is up ahead. We will dance for joy in fields of forgetfulness.

If you cannot forgive, here is what you do: Run yourself through with a blade. Set yourself ablaze. Leap in indignation from the mountain peaks, spilling your ire onto the rocks below. Cut your wrists and drown the world. If you cannot forgive do yourself a favor. Die in your justified rage. It's for the best, believe me.

Today I am searching in the ruins of our cities for clues. I wonder to myself, "What ever happened to us?"

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Love.

P. S. - I just noticed that this is the 666^th post on this blog. I just thought I should tell you in case you're freaked out by that sort of thing. Read at your own risk. (Caveat Emptor.) Thanks for stopping by.

The Sun Does Gnot Care

It's the future and I'm in trouble. I cannot tell you why, lest I damage the flow of time. Suffice it to say that things are quite different, and that the concerns of the day are not the concerns I once knew so well. Animal life is my only concern these days, the struggle to see tomorrow's morning. Sitting here just after dawn, I stare at the perfect ball of the sun and, through the magic filter of the early day, my eyes are not blinded. The sun is orange above the scrubby trees and I am hungry again, but the sun does not care. I can tell, so far away, that the sun does not care. As I think this, I slip into an old memory, remembering an old friend.

It was another morning under a more suburban sun that shone down on smaller, sillier concerns. The grass was cold and wet with dew and I was lying on my stomach, digging with dirty fingers to find the roots of a clump of Johnson grass. As was always the case, I didn't hear him approach, so I jumped slightly as he said, from just above my ear, "You have narrow taste in grass."

I swiveled on my hip into a sitting position and faced him, able to stare him in the eyes even though he stood and I sat. "I don't like the look of this in my lawn," I said. "Hello, Chuck. How are you this morning?"

"I'm not sure how, but here I am," he answered, dropping lightly to sit cross-legged and kicking off his boots like they were slippers. They had been laced and tied a second earlier, I was sure, but there they were, untied and lying in the grass a few feet away.

"It's going to be hot," I said to him, planting my hands on the ground behind me and leaning back on them to rest my back. Weeding always made it sore.

"What's going to be hot?" he asked, staring past me at something in the neighbor's tree or beyond.

"The day," I said. "It's going to be hot."

"The day doesn't know if it's hot or it's cold," he said, and I think he might have smiled subtly, though it was hard to tell through his beard. "Perhaps you will be hot, but the day will not, and the sun doesn't care. The sun has too many concerns to care about all of them at once."

His playful mood made me smile. "Did the sun tell you that?" I asked.

"Of course not." He watched a dragonfly that flew between us as he spoke. "The sun does not converse with me."

"Well," I said, giving in to my aching muscles and lying back into the grass, staring into the dimming blue of the warming sky, "the sun doesn't know what it's missing."

"Funny," he said, lying back himself, "that's exactly what the moon always says."

We talked for a while then and he told me all the moon's secrets, but I cannot tell them to you. It is far in the future now, and I must find food to survive. The day does not know this, and the sun does not care, but animal life is my only concern these days.

Hello, friends. How were you today?

Love.

Forgotten Arts

It's been a long time since I painted. I may have forgotten how. Were I to try today, I'd grab the brush by the bristles or hair and, dipping the handle first into the canvas, try to paint pictures onto the palette. I'd try to blend after the paint dried. I'd paint the foreground and then the background. I'd balance my easel on the point, feet wobbling toward the sky. I'd name my picture after you.

Lately I've been experimenting with applying the philosophies and techniques of abstract artists and cubists to the tasks project management and computer programming. My work is being met with mixed reviews. My last Work Breakdown Structure was bold and innovative, but people wondered why its nose was upside down on its forehead. My database replies to all queries with other queries. My user interface faces inward, showing its back to the world. "I wanted people to really get behind the program," I answered in my defense, glancing around at blank stares. I think maybe I'm ahead of my time.

It's been a long time since I mowed the grass. I think my blade might be dull. I wonder how my Gnome is doing.

Hello, friends. Tell me something about you.

Love.

King of Mice

Last night, as I came out of the coffee shop, I saw, by the light of the single lamppost, a tiny dark flash of life scurry around the corner. It was, I assume, the smallest of mice. I dashed over to the corner to peer around into the shadows. Why? I don't know. Some part of me would like to see an itty bitty mouse skittering about, I guess. I'm a full grown man with a serious job and a world of responsibility on my shoulders and yet I was smiling and gazing into the darkness for some sign of a little mouse. He was too skilled, however. He was nowhere to be seen. Oh well. Good for him. I hope he lives a long time and has many children and grandchildren who love him. He is a king among mice as far as I'm concerned.

On beautiful days like this, days like this, cold and crisp and windy and endlessly inspiring, I am almost convinced that the robots or aliens or gods who pull the strings actually have some affection for us. We're growing on them. They like us. Good for them. Here's to them. Here's to you. Here's to the king of mice.

Tell me something that happened to you. Anything.

Love.

In Her Pocket

Dolores Ray might, if you checked, have a soiled napkin in the pocket of her jacket. Dolores Ray passes each day through a pattern so common it barely warrants description. She wakes in her apartment, eats cold cereal, drinks coffee, bathes, dresses, walks three blocks to the bus stop, rides the bus twenty-three blocks to work, does paperwork all day, shops for groceries on the way home, watches a little television before bed. She will, of course, go from time to time to lunch or dinner with a friends or a group of them. She will, on occasion, see a movie, a concert or a play. She often takes lunch at her desk or skips it altogether. She has a romantic interest, a nice guy, and a healthy if modest love-life. Dolores Ray is perfectly normal in her few talents, few strengths, few faults and general well-being. Even so, Dolores Ray might, if you checked, have a soiled napkin in the pocket of her jacket. Why? Well, it's because people use napkins for various reasons in the world, for little messes, and because waste baskets are not always near at hand. Dolores Ray, you see, would never, ever, ever consider casting garbage on the ground. This is a principle of hers and, quite without conscious attention, she holds to this principle without wavering. She has never, and this is no exaggeration, acted against this principle of hers. Were you to ask Dolores Ray if she feels strongly about littering, she would answer dismissively that people should not litter but that it's not a big issue with her. In truth, unbeknownst to her, it is almost the most important issue to her. Were you to threaten her with a gun and coerce her into casting the napkin from her pocket into the green grass of a nearby park, doing so would pain her unduly. It would haunt her. She might even, could she do so without much ado, stop by later to see if she could find the offending napkin and, if there were a receptacle sufficiently close by, dispose of it properly. Lacking such a convenient repository she would, as you might guess, drop the napkin into the pocket of her jacket. Dolores Ray knows unaware that to be human is to make choices that shape the way of your world according to your own strengths, resources and ambitions. Coming to a river in the wilderness, Dolores Ray would not undertake to build a bridge, however badly she might wish there were a bridge. Building such a bridge would be an exceedingly human thing to do, and humans have become quite adept at the building of bridges. Carrying around a napkin in your pocket, if it's for a principle such as Dolores Ray's, is equally human. Equal in every way. Dolores Ray might, if you checked, have the future of humanity in the pocket of her jacket. Hello, friends. How are you today? Later. Love.

Don't

Don't read this. Seriously, don't.

I feel a familiar stinging in the corner of my eyes and the familiarity sinks my heart. It's been a while since I felt this way, and I wish at least that it didn't still feel normal, that it didn't seem like returning to old patterns, like finally admitting to myself that maybe this is just the way it is. I'm howling again, inside. It's a maelstrom and I know from experience that all you can do is fix your eyes on a point in the distance and try not to let your mind wander. Try not to think at all. It uses your thoughts against you, rips them away and twists them and hurls them back at you. The key is to be blank, to blink in rhythmic patterns, to press your lips tightly together and clench your teeth, to dig your nails into your palms. You'll feel the urge to hide yourself away, to be perfectly still, to stop moving forward, to stop breathing. Just put your hands at ten and two and stay in the slow lane. You won't get anywhere, but you can't stop. Just don't stop.

I was asked what role you play in my life. Someone actually asked me that. I wanted to ask them in reply, "Why is that my responsibility?" but instead I just said nothing. It was awkward and spoke volumes, but I just couldn't lie about such a thing and I damn sure couldn't tell the truth. I kept thinking of those words. "And these shall go away." I hate those words.

I'm sorry about this.

Later. Love.

Final Agenda Item: Next Steps

I beginning to wonder if I've made a mistake. Should I have done this? It all started back in the garden, little round and smooth stones in a path that led across the shallow, trickling stream. You could step from stone to stone without falling into the water. I love those things. I was already out there, on the fifth stone, when I realized that they turned and did not head directly to the other bank. "What's this?" I wondered, and that wonder carried me away. About fifteen steps in, heading out into the deep part of the pond, I began to notice that each step was a little higher than the one before. "What's this?"

Up from the pond.
Over the hedges and the fence.
Through the tops of the trees surrounding the garden.
Winding in the wind to peek over the peak of the mountain.
Up into the blustery clouds.
Always one more step, just up and ahead.

And now I stand on this round, smooth stone high up among the drifting clouds. Where is the stone that was behind? What is the next step? Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of green or blue below, so far away. From this height, though it is day, I can see the stars faint in the dark blue above. What now? Up? Down? How long can I wait up here? I should keep moving, but I can't see the next step. I know, however, that I cannot stop here. Nothing is certain except this: You must keep going.

And so I close my eyes, breathe deeply the chilly air, and step...

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Drinking With Wisdom

Sometimes I have coffee with Wisdom. Whenever I have coffee with Wisdom she always orders tea. She sits across from me and inhales the aromatic steam. She doesn't speak much, only when she really has something to say. She mostly listens instead of speaking, so there are long periods of contented silence, because I am the same way.

Today I was telling Wisdom about some things I have been thinking, but I felt I was getting on her nerves a little. I was in a giddy mood, carried away by a silly humor. Wisdom is quick to laugh at a funny idea, but I get the impression that random and fitful whimsy annoys her.

"Animal violence is pathological," I said, "unless it serves to meet a real and present animal need. Like the need to TiVo reality television, for example."

She glanced at me over her cup and communicated her opinion of my mood very clearly with a single blink that lingered just an instant too long.

"It's true," I continued. "Although we cannot escape animal life and its demands, I believe we spend - and rightfully so - an increasing percentage of our time as humans on activities less and less animal. In these fantastic activities, I believe violence has no place. Violence is a demand, valid at times, of the flesh." I was going to make a joke that referred to the Billy Idol song "Flesh for Fantasy," but I couldn't construct a funny formulation quickly enough.

"So," she said softly, "you're perceiving and communicating through the filter of radical dualism between flesh and mind. You fantasize mind and vilify flesh. It's an old Gnostic notion."

"Well, not exactly," I said, "I don't think violence in service of real animal needs is wrong. I don't think it's wrong to be an animal. I also don't believe that Elvis is still alive, so I'm clearly not falling into Gnostic heresy."

She sighed quietly and shook her head. "Your words betray your opinion that the terms 'violence' and 'Gnostic' are pejorative. In your mind you condescend to be animal."

"Sophie, Sophie, Sophie," I said. "You can read me like a book. I hope I'm better than the movie."

"Did you know," she asked, "that 'Elvis' is an anagram for 'lives?'"

"No!" I said in mock shock, clapping my hand to my cheek. "You should tell Priscilla! 'Wisdom' is an anagram for 'widows,' after all."

"No it's not," she laughed a little, in spite of herself.

"It is an anagram for 'dim sow,'" I replied.

She glared at me in mock anger.

"I'm sure it's just a coincidence," I said, smiling a little and peering down into my coffee.

---

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - Aphter: 39. Thanks for stopping by.