caveat emptor

Where?

Does someone wonder where you are, when you aren't there? Does someone wish you were here? Sometimes it's nice to disappear, I guess. But when you're out for days, for months, and no one ever calls to ask, "Where are you? Won't you please come here?" you get that awful, endless howling. No one's going to call. No one wonders where you are. There's nowhere you're expected. You're completely free. Like a stray dog is free to fend. Like an abandoned farmhouse is free to fall. A forgotten name someone used to know.

No Chess, So a Dream Recounted Instead

I came downtown to observe the Friday night chess games at the coffee shop, but no chess players showed up, so, instead, I will regale you, the anonymous reader, with last night’s dream, about which I cannot stop thinking. I’m skeptical and scoff at most dream interpretations (please do not take this as a personal affront if you value them), so I’m not looking for meaning in it. I just want to recount it for you because it’s a story and telling stories is what I used to enjoy very much. I hope to rediscover that joy soon.

The setting was my home, but not my home. It was some fitful amalgamation of disjoint places to which I’ve never been and never hope to go. The mood was full of stress and dread, angry and worried. The house was bustling with my children and too many other people I didn’t know – ostensibly their friends – but no one specific. I was feeling generally invaded and deprived of my rightful privacy, as though I were trying to change underwear or examine some blemish in a delicate location while people kept opening the door and barging in for no good reason.

The first scene of the dream (or at least the earliest I recall) had River late for work. In the dream I felt as though he was being flippant about it and needed to display greater urgency, and I got bizarrely furious over it, to a point that I was roughly manhandling him (something I’ve never done) in an attempt to convey the gravity of his lackadaisical work ethic. It was strange and not at all pleasant.

I don’t remember the segue, but the next and last scene had everyone gone and me in my bedroom, alone and in a foul mood. I was getting dressed for bed when I noticed an odd motion under a towel strewn over a stuffed chair there in my room. Walking over, I removed the towel, and there, lying in the chair, was a strange baby girl. She was tiny, like an infant, but thinner and with long hair and an almost adult face, like some bizarre, baby grown up. I remember that she could talk, but I don’t remember what she said in her oddly grown voice. I remember feeling empathy for her – here where no one knew her and she obviously did not belong – but I also remember this sense that there was something darkly unnatural and even sinister – though not willfully so – about her. For some reason I picked her up and carried her to the hallway, where I turned to look in the mirror. I was immediately struck by something unusual in her reflection. I turned a bit, to change the perspective, but the peculiarity was still there, and the nature of it was specifically this: Her reflection was not in the correct place. It was five or six inches to the left of where it should have been. From my perspective in the dream I could look down in front of me and see her in my arms and I could also see the reflection, and it was shifted. They didn’t match. I remember being overcome with a sense of wrongness about it, and then I awoke.

That’s it. Not my favorite dream, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Odd, don’t you think?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

The Apple Picking Bag

One of the best purchases I’ve made recently was my online purchase of a harvesting bag, specifically a bag made for apple picking. I looked around local feed stores, farming supply stores, and big home & garden warehouses for such a bag, but to no avail. So, I searched online and finally ordered one from, of all places, Amazon. It took about a week for it to arrive, and I was probably disproportionately excited when it did. I’ve wanted such a bag for a while, and it’s perfect. It has a strong, thick, padded shoulder strap and the bag itself is of sturdy canvas and nylon. It’s like a big, tube of fabric with a shoulder strap, open on the top and the bottom, with a rigid, crescent-moon-shaped frame in the lining around the top to hold it open for easy apple depositing. You fold up the bottom of the bag and clip two metal rings attached thereupon to a couple of locking hooks about a foot and a half from the bottom, closing the bottom so the apples don’t fall right through. Then, when your bag is full of apples, you walk over to some larger apple-receiving receptacle, unclip the rings from the hooks, and the bottom falls open, easily delivering the apples and emptying the bag. I love it. I don’t have any apples to harvest, but I use it when I’m pulling weeds or pruning small trees or trimming shrubs. I prefer to work quietly and slowly, without loud power tools. To trim the shrubs on Saturday, for example, I donned the bag, took the small hand clippers, grasped overlong branches one or two at a time, clipped them and deposited them into the bag as I went. If I saw a weed as I worked, it went into the bag. It was peaceful and strenuous in a pleasant way. There was no loud, vibrating motor. There was no power cord or gas can. There was no cleanup when I was done. Just the quiet snip of the clippers and the sigh of the clipping sliding into the bag. I filled the bag once and then about two-thirds again, emptying it into one of the large, brown, recycled paper bags the city uses for yard and garden clipping collection. It took a while, but I loved both the finished result and the process. I think the apple picking bag might be my favorite thing I own.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Nonsequitur Crabbiness

They're marketing autumn at us now, all orange, yellow and brown. I don't know what it is about me, but I hate people marketing at me. I cannot see it as some kind of cooperative endeavor we're in together to keep our society functioning. As beautiful as these leaves, pumpkins and cornucopias are, I only feel resentment for them. Don't wield Halloween against me. I love Halloween. Don't attack me with autumn, my favorite season. Try to summer to me all you want – I hate summer – but don't take what's mine and market it back at me. I know autumn, and your product has nothing to do with it.

I'm sorry to be so crabby. I'm not sure why I do it. Maybe I have a chemical imbalance, or maybe I'm channeling the spirit of some dead jerk. I'm actually – if I stop to think about it – feeling pretty satisfied right now. Life is good, all things considered. Sure, some things could be better, but there's little I can do about that. I'm in relatively good health, considering all my maladies and my less than ideal lifestyle. My wife, sick though she is, still putters around the house and goes with the girls to buy dresses and meets me for lunch. My job is too busy a lot of the time, but at least I have a job. The pay is pretty good. The people are nice. I'm living, as we all do, in the wake of the practice of my habits, good and bad. So far, so so. Could be better, I suppose, but it could be worse. I could be a guy with no face and only one arm and three legs but two of them are broken. I could be a sea cucumber. I could be an ant washed down a shower drain. (I wonder what happens to them.) All in all, I'm fine, just a little crabby about marketing.

It's nearing October. You know what that means. In about twenty minutes they break out the Christmas marketing crap. Ugh. Don't get me started on the Christmas marketing crap.

Hello, friends. I hope you're coping effectively.

Later. Love.

Music. Deep. To Busk or Not to Busk?

The Béla Fleck song Sunset Road sounds exactly like walking down a road at sunset. If I ever walk down a road at sunset, I'm going to hear this song. I'll probably hum it. If you're not familiar with Béla Fleck, you should feel a slight embarrassment and then you should remedy your sad state of affairs. Check out your favorite online music purveyor. Unless they are lame, you'll find several Béla Fleck albums listed. Buy all of them. Listen to them. It's a free country, of course. We can be lame if we so choose. Far be it from me to try to control your sad, deprived life.

As I'm writing this I'm listening to the playlist I've named "Deep." It's what I listen to when I don't want my mind to be distracted by lyrics or music that draws me in. It's mostly instrumental music. Right now it's Itzhak Perlman playing a forlorn violin. Well, the violin might not be forlorn, but the music suggests a certain forlornness. It's okay, though. It's just music. Now the Gypsy Kings are playing Love & Liberté. It makes me sigh. It's a beautiful song. See? The music hardly distracts me at all when I listen to this playlist.

I should quit my job and play guitar on the street corner. I could put out a cup and people could give me money. "I'm going to need a lot more than that," I'd say to them. "I have a mortgage, three car payments, kids in college, doctor bills. I'm going to need a hell of a lot more than that quarter." Hmm. On second thought…

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

A Metaphor in Which Life is a Road and Uncertainty is a Fog

Uncertainty is a dense fog that has settled over the road that is a metaphor for my life. I cannot see what is coming, not very far ahead. This is a simple metaphor to understand, of course. I can see this evening, tickets to a show with my Susan. I can see vague outlines of employment surrounding me, this occupation in which I find myself. I know birthdays and holidays are up ahead, the rhythm of regular things unchanged in spite of it all. I cannot see where this road leads, however. I cannot see the horizon, what lies between here and there. How long will we walk it together? When does it fork up ahead? I want to send out a scout, but that's where the metaphor breaks down. It's not a road, it's life. It's not a fog, it's uncertainty. Of course, we're all drifting in uncertainty, but I'm not even sure what the goal is anymore. Get healthy. Be financially stable. Be the source of help and support. And what else? Write? I've lost the words for now. Maybe they'll come back. Teach? I always thought I might, but I wonder if I have the energy to do something so new, to start over, to succeed again from the bottom up. It doesn't matter, I suppose. I've been able to eek out contentment at least wherever I've found myself in this life. I'll still have that talent when the time comes. Maybe all I need to know are the next few steps, the now, the day's work, this evening's show, a little sleep tonight. Maybe that's enough for a guy like me on a road like this, metaphorically speaking.

I'll try, I will, to write posts that sound less like sighs. I really want to. Bear with me, if you will.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Still

Life is still about the same for me here. Snails still crawl slowly over the moist stones. I still spend most mornings in the coffee shop. Time still moves only forward. I still like to write these silly lines, though I don't do so as regularly as I did for several years. Summer still creeps up ominously in the late spring, foreboding sweat and breathless heat in the Texas oven afternoon. I'm working a different job position for almost a week now, Chief Architect. The Fates continue to take direction from the stars, though we largely ignore both these days, being driven primarily by the ding of the calendar reminder. The truth is still hiding in the shadows, hoping never to be found. Love still excites and wounds and thrills and heals. Birds flying overhead are posing for portraits painted on the ground by the noontime sun. Night still falls like sweet relief, like coming home to sleep, perchance to dream.

Hello, friends. I hope you're still well.

Later. Love.

Endless Possibilities Mostly Eschewed on a Regular Basis

You could, in this society, eat just about anything you want at any given time. You could go right now, were you so inclined, and find a triple decker hamburger of Elk, Ostrich and Buffalo. It's out there. You could have an octopus salad with cinnamon and sugar encrusted roasted walnuts and endive. You could have a flounder stuffed with a smaller flounder stuffed with crab salad. You could have the whole thing battered and deep fried with a side of jicama and mango onion rings. It's true. You could find it and put it in your mouth and say, "Mmmm. Tasty." or "Icky. No good. Blergh." We live in a society where you can eat almost everything. As for me, I'm having a cup of coffee and a small bowl of oatmeal with dried fruit and a nut medley. I eat this for breakfast almost every day. It seems like a sensible thing to eat, and also I like it. I'm not a health nut or anything, though I do try to consider my mortality when I eat… sometimes. I was awakened to the slackness of my health and fitness routine last night when I showed up, all dressed up to work out, at my local gym. I walked like a fitness veteran up to the counter and held out my membership card. The young man looked at me like I had tried to hand him a "Vote for Truman" pamphlet. "We haven't used those for about five months," he said. He instructed me to enter my phone number on the provided pin pad and scan my fingerprint on the provided biometric scanner. I put my antique barcode-encoded membership card back into my wallet and submitted to his new powerful sorcery, a primitive old man scared in this strange, foreign world of youth and magic. I began to doubt all my technology after that. I felt as if the iPhone with which I had planned to listen to music were a victrola or, at best, a portable 8-track cassette player. I was certain that, had I the confidence to look around at the younger, more beautiful people, they would all have some new space-age, robotic music devices pumping better music directly into their larger, superior brains. You can go and buy all this technology in our society. There's no limit to what you can consume. You could get a cerebral-interfaced YouTube jack implanted directly into your shades. You could get it all with a side of android French fries. I thought about all of this while I was sweating on the exercise bike and the treadmill, stopping occasionally to flip over the wax-pressed records on my antique music-box. And now I'm sitting here typing this out to you, sipping my coffee to the heavy, metallic pounding of the keys, bars and sorts of my typewriter, my empty oatmeal bowl encrusting with dried starch and oat dregs as the sun burns over the horizon in the window on my left. I could be anywhere eating, drinking and doing anything, but here I am, like every day. I've been here for years. Why stop now?

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

The Grand Design

We all have our own ideas about beauty and sadness. For my part, I don’t struggle with depression. And so, I can dabble in the sadder regions of beauty without feeling personally affected. I love life, and I am resigned to the darker aspects of contrast, the negative against which the positive is valued. Nothing true bothers me much, though I am distressed by lies passed off as truth. Anything true, however, can be appreciated and understood in light of everything else. There is, I believe, no imperative toward balance. There is no grand design. There is no karma. Everything could tilt off the axis at any moment and spill forever into oblivion. If it does, that will be alright. I just feel privileged to have lived so many years during the beautiful time, when everything spun in relative stability, when the sun peeked over the horizon every day, when the atmosphere was always there to fill your lungs. I feel privileged to wake up still next to my wife after almost twenty years now. There are no guarantees, and I think we’re all doing pretty well considering that. Yesterday she told me she had a renewed belief in the afterlife. She said she believed we got to see each other again. Then she started to cry and had to stop talking about it so she wouldn’t ruin her makeup before we got to the restaurant. She didn’t ask me what I believe, because she already knows and we don’t need to talk about it. I believe in life before death. I believe in sitting across the booth from her and enjoying a meal. I believe in each of us believing what we need to believe. There is no grand design. That’s the real genius of it all.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

It Ain’t Poetry, But It’s What’s on My Mind

Sometimes you just have to make things happen. Sometimes, mired in the inertia of the daily dysfunctional rigmarole, you just have to tell everyone to shut the fuck up for a minute and let you think. Then, once you’ve figured it out, you just have to make it happen. Everyone is waiting, trust me, for someone to make this thing happen. No one likes the way things are going. Unless you’re a complete dumbass, whatever thoughtful plan you dream up will be fine with everyone as long as you provide the proactive energy to see that it gets done. Do it. Just do it. Just fucking do it already.

Hmmm… On second thought, as fun as that sounds, it isn’t always the right answer. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, these situations happen and you get to kick ass and get shit done like a boss. Usually, though, what’s really needed is just for you – for everyone, really – to execute your part of the current plan diligently, cooperate with others in the execution of their part, and keep an eye always on opportunities for small, forward-looking, non-momentum-killing improvements to the process in motion. It’s not sexy, but it works better than despair, obstructionism and dereliction.

In all of this, one cannot overstate the importance of understanding. If you don’t understand the problem, don’t understand the plan, don’t understand the process, then you can’t execute effectively, much less revolutionize anything. Understanding is necessary for clear thinking, and clear thinking is necessary for progress.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Never Cared Much for Bright Copper Kettles

A rich beef stew, deep with flavor, simmering to beautiful completion in a heavy Dutch oven. Aromatic onion and garlic chopped and browned in oil. Tender beef roast cubed generously, floured and seasoned and then perfectly seared. A savory, thick roux. A well seasoned beef stock. Hunks of potatoes and carrot, Crushed whole tomatoes. Celery. Time and heat, patience. Warm cornbread muffins, not too sweet, slathered in butter and served on small side plates or, as some prefer, in the bottom of the bowl under the stew. Curtains and window shades open on the cold, wet grey outside, leaves dancing in the wind. Heavy, steaming bowls and sweaters and family and friends. Games or movies or just talking, laughing.

Hiking boots and comfortable jeans. Layers on top: pocket tee, long-sleeved flannel shirt, light jacket. Clothes without writing or brands on them, simple, real. A walking stick. The smell of firewood burning. Wet grass. Rocky trails with hills, trees, flat, easy fields of grass, a few challenges. Vistas of big, calm water. Glimpses of water running cold over rocks, down through canyons. The sound of water never far away. Cold at dawn that startles your lungs and throat, paints your breath on the air. Cool in the dewy morning. Warm in the afternoon. Long trails that take all day to bring you back to well-deserved rest. Some time alone, some not. Nowhere else to be, nothing waiting to be accomplished. Light, brief afternoon rain with thunder and then grey clouds scuttling apart and away leaving behind shocking, clean blue. Raptors soaring far above. Afternoon long and quiet. Evening slow and sweet. Bedding soft and shared.

Coffee roasting and grinding and brewing. Couches and firm, soft chairs and little, sturdy tables. World music, jazz, reggae or moody indie from all around. Live music in the evening. Books and sketch pads and journals and laptops. Fast internet. Stainless steel spoons and ceramic cups and saucers. Diverse styles, opinions, approaches intermingled amicably. Crowded to the point of communal energy but not bothersome or claustrophobic. Eclectic potpourri of various nuanced bohemian and gypsy sensibilities mixed in generously. Subtle excitement of personal boundaries lovingly and lightly challenged. Memory of clove cigarettes on hemp jackets. Talented someone with a musical instrument in the corner. Who spiked the coffee with mellow creativity? Seeds of a better world planted and cultivated in dim light and cool, smooth mojo.

Hello, friends. That stuff. You know?

Later. Love.

Filling in the Blanks

Here we are again, blank page, just you and me, staring at one another and waiting to see who blinks first. I’ve destroyed so many of you in my life, torn into you with my quill and ink, so to speak, until you bled all the words I wanted to say, scarred with my cruel eloquence and the relentless rage of my verbosity. I steal from you, each day, your unspoiled youth. I use you, bruise you, make you nothing more than an expression of myself. I take your blank silence as an insult, an affront, an accusation. And what have you ever done to me to deserve this? It was the teasing, the way you taunted me day after day, year after year, calling me a word-man with nothing to say. I have plenty to say, you blank bastard, and I will say it with your black ink blood on the skin your own ruined carcass, and you will lie there, a testament forever to my victory and your defeat.

So violent, that first paragraph, and from so tame a domesticated beast as myself, no less. It’s hard for me to see myself as a predator, really. I’m more of a shopper. Mostly, these days, we eat potluck dinners rather than hunt down and slay our food. But there it is, murder in my soul, waiting to be at least a metaphor in my life. And what a ridiculous murder metaphor. I’m murdering the blank page by writing on it? Surely the blank page wants to be written on. Surely that’s all it really has to hope for. I wonder, though, if the page enjoys being written on or being read more? Maybe it enjoys being read and the writing is just the torture it must endure to get to the pleasure. I don’t know. I guess, if we’re going to be honest about it, the paper is inanimate. It doesn’t like or hate anything. It’s just there. It just exists. Sad. To me it seems sad. I’d like to meet the paper, to be friends, or maybe enemies. I’m a ridiculous person.

The sky is blank blue today and I want to write on it. I want to write lies in the sky and then see who believes them. I want to let you in on the secret and we can laugh and laugh and laugh.

Hello, friends. Remember, it’s our secret.

Later. Love.

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.

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.

End of Days These Days

In those days you will rise before dawn with creaking knees and stumble on towels left strewn by distracted and slovenly bathers. In those days the toilet flap will stick and you will have to jiggle the handle lest the water run and run. In those days the shower will spray cold for several minutes before warmth slowly flows. The toothpaste tube will be empty. The socks won’t match. The hairbrush will be wrapped in a weaving of lost hair. In those days you will nick your chin with the razor in that same place where you’ve nicked your chin before, where your fathers nicked their chin and their fathers before them. And when you don the T-shirt with the overstretched neck and the underwear with the exhausted elastic band, you will know that the hour draws nigh. Then drag yourself to the coffee shop, boot up the laptop, and tell the world to make ready. The horsemen approach.

I have a playlist on my iTunes called “Writing.” It’s what I shuffle through when I write. Mostly it’s instrumental music, lots of movie soundtracks and some classical. Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Art of Noise, Gregorian chant, Howard Shore, Mouret, Bruce Rowland, Franz Shubert. You know, that kind of stuff. The primary prerequisite is that it cannot have lyrics. I find lyrics distracting when I’m writing. Lyrics always make me want to sing along. This is what I do. I listen. I write. I sing along. All day, every day, for as long as I can remember, this is what I do.

When the end of days comes I’m not leaving. I’m going to hide until the end is over and then come out and see what’s left. I’m going to look for others like me, people who have stayed behind. We’ll build a timeless society free of fate and doom. The end is over. It’s smooth sailing from here to forever after.

Hello, friends. I hope to see you there.

Later. Love.

Acquired Skills and Personal Negative Space

In my life I have developed various proficiencies and a smattering of random expertise. I can down a mug of lukewarm coffee from brim to bottom with only the slightest shudder even if it doesn’t taste very good. I can tell just by glancing at most people whether it would be a better idea to speak or to remain silent or to get the hell out of there, though I don’t always go with the better idea. I can juggle up to three items or two tasks at once. I can convert, through suppression and denial, rage and frustration that would otherwise manifest as murderous violence into slow-burning depression and general malaise. I can often talk people out of things they think they want me to do for them, or wait them out until they forget, thereby avoiding up to 75% of what is requested of me. I can sit and make small talk with my opponents, even gaining their confidence and trust. I can, using only the power of my mind, call down celestial fire to consume my enemies or to cook my supper.

Some people are sheltered and comforted in life with deep, wide friendships that surround them and cover them on all sides at all times. Some people have friends so present and intimate that they become like one organism, keeping nothing from one another. This kind of friendship, in the metaphor I’m crafting, is a blanket of such area and thermal efficiency that it fully suffices for the job of blanketing. And now, the contrast. Some of us, you see, grab scraps of friendship in passing where we can. Some small talk in a meeting. A joke at the coffee shop. Standing for a few minutes in a circle of conversation at some occasional party, everyone holding and sipping from a bottle or a glass dripping with condensation or perhaps nibbling from a small plate of party food an hour or two past its prime. We gather these little patches of friendship around us as well as we can in order to keep warm, in order to feel that we have some context in this vast, impersonal void. We have various reasons, healthy or pathological, for this vagabond behavior, this hobo companionship. Sure, there are drafts and exposures, but we survive out here. Give us a blanket and we’d just tear it to pieces, send you away bewildered and offended. It’s not that we don’t appreciate it, it’s just that we don’t need it. Well, maybe we need it, but we just can’t take proper care of it. I don’t know. This metaphor of engagement, this engagement of metaphor, has left me tired and I just want to be alone now. It was nice to talk to you for a minute. See you later.

You know how people say, “Always leave them wanting more?” I think I live by the inverse of that. If I am enjoying your company then I will usually walk away. I don’t want to wear out your welcome. I want to end on your high note. This is another talent I have.

Hello, friends. I hope you can see a way out, unless you like it here, in which case I’m happy for you.

Later. Love.

Trapped in Science and Math

I’m searching for the center of infinity. I’ve heard that it’s around here somewhere. “It’s everywhere and nowhere,” my mathematician friend keeps telling me, but that makes no sense to me. I’m searching for the center of infinity so I can plant my standard there and claim everything for myself. I have control everything or I cannot be completely safe in this overwhelming infinity in which we’re stranded. I have to make it mine. Don’t worry, though. I’ll share some of it with you.

[this paragraph redacted for now]

Somewhere, I imagine, there is a dimension of pure thought and emotion. In that place there are no frail bodies to weigh on us with their infirmities. I want to disappear into the plane with you. We can sever all our ties with the other dimensions and live there forever, thinking about how lucky we are.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

The Mighty Delusionist

My life will be a storm one day. I will run, mad and soaked to the bone, splashing through fields of marshy puddles. Lightning will split the dark afternoon skies of my future. Thunder will try to drown out my singing. I know it will happen, and I welcome it. Rain down on me. Try to wash me away. I will laugh louder than your maelstrom. I will open wide my long, strong arms and embrace your tempest. I am more of a storm than you will ever be. When the clouds break and the sun shines down there will only be me, smiling and satiated, drenched in the violent futility of your passing.

We are legends, people. Our every banality is epic. Our every mundanity is heroic. We are stories the universe tells to frighten its children around the fire. We are monsters, titans, gods and myths. When you walk the earth today, shake the ground with the power of your mystery and glory. We are the greatest thing that has ever happened to us.

Quiet and unassuming behind this computer in this otherwise insignificant coffee shop, no one would ever suspect that I am the single most amazing person in the universe, the main reason this place exists at all. People glance at me and glance away, unaware of what they’ve seen. I watch them come and go and I wonder when they’ll realize that this was as close as they ever got. If I catch their eye I just smile and nod. I could wink and they would explode, but I just gesture a subtle hello. Can you imagine?

Hello, friends. I hope you feel as amazing as I pretend you are.

Later. Love.

Field Mice and the Sun

The little islands of shrubbery in the parking lot of the grocery store I patronize are inhabited by tiny grey field mice. On Saturday evening I saw one dart out after a cricket and then dart back. Sunday evening, therefore, before shopping, I cruised slowly around the little islands and looked closely. I saw a total of fifteen little grey field mice. I tried to send them telepathic signals of friendship, but I’m not sure if they can receive human wavelengths nor whether I have such talents nor whether such powers exist. Most of the mice looked fairly friendly and open-minded, but one of them had a sinister affect and eyes that darted to and fro. They should watch out for that one, the one I’ve dubbed Lucian. Lucian has large ambitions and will stop at nothing to see them fulfilled. I am certain of this, and it makes me worry for Percival and Ethelia and especially for young Crispin.

In unrelated news, it’s been hot. Too hot. I often think to myself, “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines.” I wish his gold complexion would more often be dimmed, and that more often would a fair from fair decline and be untrimmed by chance or perhaps by nature’s changing course. Do you ever feel this way?

The Mice of Albertson’s Archipelago are excited to have received a correspondence from cousin Nathaniel. He is passing through on important business, sent by the Mouse King William, and wants to stay for a day. Crispin can hardly wait to hear Nathaniel’s stories, which are always so exotic and full of adventure. Percival is worried, however. He’s heard rumblings of trouble stirring in the fields and fears Nathaniel may bear dark tidings. Lucian said something in the council yesterday about changes, and he grinned that sly, disturbing grin, glancing about to and fro.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Bloggy Personal Post, With One Ridiculous Aside

Spent most of Saturday loading my new work computer, a monster notebook that they call a “Portable Workstation”: 12 GB RAM, 8 processor cores, 1 TB HDD, 17” 1920 X 1200 screen. It’s SO much faster than my old notebook. Me likey. Totally worth the back brace I have to wear to carry it around. The power supply is a brick too. Huge and heavy. Ugh. But, the performance is worth the pain.

Sunday we signed this contract for natural gas drilling on a section of land that includes our subdivision. Not much for our little lot, a few hundred dollars signing bonus and 25% royalties on our small percentage of the total acreage. Probably a few bucks a month. No big deal. I’m not quitting my job or anything. I can split a burger with my neighbor once a month or something.

My son, River, has a second job interview today. It will be his first job if he gets it. Retail. Best Buy. They’ll work with his college schedule. He’s got a line on another job if this one falls through. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe, the emperor of the Octopus People of Tentaclon IV sips seven glasses of Artellien whisky and taps his remaining limb on the table in front of him, trying to draw the waitress’s attention to his one empty glass. He’s been drinking a bit too much lately because elections are coming up soon and he’s not that popular with the masses. If he’s not elected emperor again then he’ll have to go back to work for his cousin, Larry, at the book-binders. Jerry—that’s the emperor’s name—really hates book binding. Being emperor is a much better gig. He gets into all the coolest bars, like this one, which is very trendy but it’s hard sometimes to get the waitress’s attention. “You’d think being emperor would be enough to get good service,” he thinks to himself. Usually it is, I suppose, but Emperor Jerry’s not very popular right now. People think he drinks too much.

Susan is going back to work today. It’s only part-time for now, but still she’s nervous. Wish her luck. I’m very proud of her.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well. Are you?

Later. Love.