The morning is overcast here in the apartment, but my flashlight is ready!  With a flick of the switch, I can fill the apartment with a bright beam of light, bounce it off of Imaginary Keith’s head, and then watch him closely as he searches for his own shadow.

Will my imaginary friend see his shadow?  Will gloom linger for six more weeks, or is something more promising just around his corner?  The decision is of course mine.  His fate rests on the whim of my twitching apposable thumb.

But Imaginary Keith is a bit grumbly today.  Shadow Day, much to my friend’s dismay, also happens to be anniversay day for him and The Other, which seems to cast its own unique shadow on the whole day.  It’s an unfortunate bit of imagination on my part, this mixing of holidays.  I don’t know if I can even imagine anyone celebrating an anniversary with someone they refer to as The Other.  I’m having a hard time.

Imaginary Keith cannot.  His stern face tells an easy story.  There will be no cards and no congratulations.  No hugs.  No kisses.  Eye contact is almost questionable.  Time, once measured in years and memories, now is tracked by house payments and monetary obligations fulfilled.  Things have changed.

A dinner date is planned for tonight, if it can be called such a thing, with the sole purpose of not breaking the heart of one small boy, whose excitement for life seems inexhaustible.  If it were not for the boy, Imaginary Keith would become a long distance runner, and instead of sitting down to awkward dinners, would spend his time getting as far away as possible.

Imaginary Keith would make an excellent runner.  If it were not for the inexhaustible excitement of the one young boy, Imaginary Keith would close his eyes and follow his feet.  His heart would beat, his feet would move, and together they would become a soothing rythym.  At night I would shine the flashlight for him, so that he would not have to stop.  He would fly across the land.  He would run so far that thin, wiry men, running across mountain tops in Kenya would step aside to let him pass.

But today, on Shadow Day, I may not click on the flashlight at all.  If I do, it will only be to illuminate the dinner table, so that everyone can get down to the business of eating. The future may be dark, but there’s no reason the table has to be as well.

And if Imaginary Keith even thinks of running, and his feet start to tap and move, I will slide under the table and grab hold of them.  I’ll wrap my little arms around them and hang on with all my might.

I suppose an explanation is in order.  A story should make sense, after all, if it is to entertain.  And while it may be entertaining to see Imaginary Keith singing and dancing with Janet Jackson, it is most certainly confusing.  I thought he had broken his back he was complaining so much.  I thought he had gone to see the doctor, not head off to the Superbowl without me.  Sometimes being the boy is no fun at all.

It’s really very simple.  Imaginary Keith has been known, on occasion, to take an odd song and dance job, filling in for the “big” names when their demanding schedules prevent them from attending practice sessions.  Justin, it seems, was held up on some sort of badboy business, so Imaginary Keith was called in.

But poor Imaginary Keith.  The pressure of this job was just too much.  When it came time to practice ripping Janet’s velcro shirt apart, my sweet old friend was simply not up to the job.  Too long since his last practice.  Out of the loop and out of luck. 

He confided to me (in the strictest of confidence) that reaching out towards Janet’s breast was the scariest moment of his life.

“You wouldn’t believe all of the Jackson lyrics that flashed through my head.  It’s way worse then having your life flash by.  The lyrics seemed to just go on and on and on.  And not just Janet’s.  No, Michael’s too.  And Jackson 5.  Everything.  My head just started spinning.”

“I can’t believe you!  Couldn’t you just close your eyes and think of something else.  You know . . . like pretend you were taking the vinyl cover off of the barbeque or something.”

“I wish.”

“I mean . . what were you thinking?  You’re at the Superbowl with Janet Jackson’s breast at the tips of your fingers . . and you get fired!  Fired?!  Just what kind of imaginary man are you anyway?”

“Ummm.”

“Forget it.  Just forget it.  Tell me about the game at least.”

“Well . . . I didn’t exactly watch the game.  I’m not really much of a football fan.”

“Jesus H. Christ!  Am I really going to grow up and be you?”

“Ummm. . . “

“Please!  Don’t answer that.”

Two men talk with the owner of the restaurant at the cash register.  The men apparently meet to read some sort of Bible verse a day book.  They confess that they read at the slower, more leisurely pace of a verse a week.  But somehow their conversation is about how they never see their wives.

“I get in about 10:00, and she gets in about 9:00.”
“I was saying that same thing myself.”
“We never see each other.”
“I know what you mean.”
“We never have time to talk.”
“That’s it exactly.”

You get the gist.

Meanwhile, in the booth next to me, sit another middle-aged couple.  Their heads are buried in newspapers.  Their eyes dart back and forth.  Hands move in perfect synchronization.  Pages are turned quickly and efficiently, without the aid of a licked thumb for better grip.  Their papers never fold or bend or become unruly.  They are newspaper masters.

But their kingdoms are tiny.  They hear nothing of the conversation going on not more then five feet away.  They are busy devouring their newspapers, which they are able to do faster then I can eat an order of eggs benedict.  But I am a slow eater.  My size is merely a deception.

I wish I could somehow switch the couple’s newspapers with the books clutched under the arms of the men.  I wish this very much.  I would like to see the couple rip through that Bible verse a day book.  I’d like to see them trying to hide from each other behind such a small cover. 

And I’d like to see the men stand around the cash register discussing what is important in life with nothing but newspapers under their arms.  I might make a casual gesture, and draw their attention to the newspapers.  I would sit back and sip my coffee and just watch the men, looking to see if salvation is as sure for men with nothing but local news to draw them together.

I would like all of this very much.

Each morning, without exception, the sole performer of the Coffee Urination Ballet Company dances madly up and down the hall of my office.  It is my secret passion, this coffee ballet.  I cannot seem to get enough.

This morning the ballet is in rare form.  With each stunning pirouette, each grand jete to reach the toilet in time, and each plie to flush, the phone has rung with perfect synchronization.  The toilet roars like an appreciative crowd, and the flush overpowers the ringing of the phone.  Unbelievably, I have missed every single call all morning.

I cannot express how much this pleases me.

Even now, I brew yet another pot, in hopes of an afternoon encore.

Mary Kay Lady #1: This is a fabulous moisturizer
Mary Kay Lady #2: Really?

Mary Kay Lady #1: This really gets in there and works.  They call it “plumping of the cells”
Mary Kay Lady #2 (staring at own hand, incredulously): Really?

Mary Kay Lady #1: whisper, whisper, whisper
Mary Kay Lady #2: whisper, whisper, whisper

Some secrets men are just not meant to know.

Tonight’s movie: Lost In Translation

I would trade the whole day to know the secrets whispered by Bill Murray into the ear of Scarlett Johansson.

What are the words that make everything better?
What are the words that heal emptiness?
What are the words that fill the void of longing?
What are the words that put a smile on a young girl’s face and a spring back in an old man’s step?

I would like to know a few of these words.

I have found that I am nothing but silent every since yesterday morning, when clicking on my link to may I be Frank ?, I find myself face to face with a last picture of Emma, the site’s author, and the sad news that she has finally lost her battle with cancer.

I’m not sure exactly why this bothers me so much.  I didn’t know Emma, but had stumbled upon her site when I first started this thing back in December.  Like others, I think I followed along because inside of us all lives this hope that everyone, everywhere, can win their fights.  This, of course, isn’t always true.

I found it ironic that the last post I entered was about words of reassurance, whispered into someone’s ear.  I found myself hoping that the members of Emma’s family, as heartbreaking as it may have been, found those words in themselves, and were able to make Emma’s last minutes more peaceful.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Maybe it was Emma who knew just what to say.  I don’t know.

I thousand thoughts have gone through my mind.  I find myself popping awake in the middle of the night, thinking about what to say.  Sentences and paragraphs line up in my thoughts, but I never get up, and never write them down.  None of it seems right.

I can’t help but see the words as incomplete, like the life of someone cut much too short.

But I’ll keep looking for the right words.  Hoping that something makes sense.

For forty years, Imaginary Keith slept like the proverbial baby.  Not the fussy, wake up every two hours and feed me kind, but the other kind.  The imaginary kind.  It’s only in the last two years that sleep has decided that its had quite enough of my friend’s good company.  The two still visit, but it is sporadic and forced.  The conversation of their old friendship now seems lost forever.

But that’s good news for me, perched in my usual spot down by the foot of the bed, near the corner where I have a good angle on all the twisting and turning that’s going on.  Two years of restless sleep for Imaginary Keith has become a real goldmine for me.  The motherlode of dreams.  Each morning my pockets bulge with therapy-sized nuggets.

“If there was a market for dreams, you’d make me a rich boy,” I whispered into Imaginary Keith’s ear last night, following a particularly action-packed, 1930’s looking version of Law & Order, only without the loud DAAA-DAAAAAA music between each scene.  It was all Imaginary Keith could do to stay out of the way, as bullets flew from all sides as some sort of high-stakes turf war raged between a brickmason’s union and a pizzeria owner.  And if that wasn’t action enough, there were meat locker coolers to be searched (rumors of dead bodies) and a meeting with a mysterious woman, hidden behind a dark pair of sunglasses, sitting behind the wheel of a gigantic 4x4 parked on the third level of a downtown parking garage.  The meeting goes poorly, and Imaginary Keith is pushed over the edge of the garage by the monster truck’s equally monsterous front bumper.  As he falls, he hears someone yell out that yes, the mysterious 4x4 woman is the same woman sought after by both the owner of the pizzeria and the brickmasons.

The dream went on and on, but there’s no reason I have to.

Around 5:00 am, just before waking up (again), the eyelids really get hopping.  Enough of the physical action, this time it is all mental.  Imaginary Keith, feeling under the pillows in the bed, begins to discover files and folders filled with family history that he knew nothing about.  Not ancient history either, but stuff going on in the present, right under his nose.  Good stuff.  The files are filled with pictures and references to kids in the family that he never even knew existed.  The only real surprise, he thinks, is just how many files there are.  How many secrets can one family have?

This last dream of the night is not that far from the truth, except that the family secrets aren’t kept conveniently hidden in files under the bed pillows.  Only three years ago, Imaginary Keith discovers that he is half-brother to some little renegade running around the streets of Costa Rica.  And rumors, yet uncomfirmed, are that there is also a little half-sister, running around those same streets.  This doesn’t bother my friend too much, although he sometimes fears they will show up when he is an old, feeble man, push their way into his home, and call him gringo.

After last night’s fresh batch of dreams, I can’t help but imagine what it would be like if Imaginary Keith did end up in therapy.

Therapist: Hello Mr. Keith, nice to meet you.

Imaginary Keith: Nice to meet you.  You can call me Imaginary if you like.

T: Would that make you more comfortable, Mr. Keith, if I called you imaginary?

IK: Of course.  I’ve always been more comfortable with first names.  More personable.

T: Alright, Mr. Keith, that’ll be fine.

IK: Imaginary.

T: Yes, imaginary, ok.  We’ll get to that . . now it says here (glancing at paper) that you want to talk about some dreams right away.

IK: Yea.  I’d like to get right down to business.  Get my money’s worth, you know.

T: Yes.  It also says here that you’d like only five minute sessions.  I’m afraid . . .

IK: If that’d be okay with you.  I think five minutes is about all I need each day.  I’ll just squeeze off one or two dreams and you just sort of shoot from the hip as I head out the door.  It’ll be fast and easy and I’m thinking you can just slip me in between a couple of your regularly scheduled sessions.  It seems like an easy money maker for you.

T: Well, Mr. Keith, first of all, I should explain to you that the concept behind . . .

IK: Wait, wait, wait.  Let’s just give this a try before you go and convince me I need more time.  Besides, five minutes a day, seven days a week, that’s almost a whole session right there if you add it up.  And don’t forget, call me Imaginary.

T: Yes, I keep forgetting, don’t I.  Well, Imaginary, the office is closed on weekends, and I’m afraid 25 minutes per week is hardly enough . . .

IK: Oh.  Oh, I know, I’ll just phone those days in.  You can give me your home number later.  And maybe a cell too, just in case.

T: Mr. Keith . .

IK: Imaginary.  Okay, here it is.  I was back in high school, walking down some hallway that I didn’t recognize.  And I think I was new to the school because I didn’t recognize any faces.  The funny part was that I wasn’t me, but a Shakespearian character.  I think I was Hamlet, but I may have been Polonius or even Touchstone.  It was a little hazy there.  But the point, I think, is that I kept asking for directions and no one could understand me.

T: Mr. Keith . .

IK: They weren’t laughing or anything, but just had these blank looks on their faces.  Like they couldn’t understand a single word I was saying. 

T: (staring)

IK: I’d say something like: I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my sense of direction, foregone all custom of excercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with me that this goodly frame, this goodly school of learning, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent hallway, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging flourescent, this majestical linoleum, fretted with hordes of underclassmen, why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours”

T: (nothing)

IK: We’re almost out of time, aren’t we?

T: Yes, I believe we are.

IK: Well, what do you think?

T: Mr. Keith, dreams are a complex . .

IK: tick tick tick

T: Mr. Keith, how can you expect me to understand . .

IK: Expect?  That’s it!  You’re a genius doctor.  The five minute miracle man.  How could I expect them to understand me?  It’s high school.  No one understands Shakespeare in high school.

T: I really don’t . . .

IK: Thanks a lot doctor.  See you again tomorrow.  Mornings are best for me.

T: In light of . . .

IK: . . . the incredible progress here this morning?  I agree.  Ten minutes a day wouldn’t kill me.  See you in the morning.

T (noticably depressed): Please see the receptionist on your way out.

Why do I keep hearing people say the word fondue?  Is there something going on that I should know about?

Three employees down at the movie store, who must be in their young twenties, are talking about their fondue party?  I half expect them to begin discussing harvest gold and avocado green appliances.  And earlier this week, I heard some other people tossing that word around like it was suppose to mean something.

Fondue?  The only person in my life who ever used the word with any authority was a former employee, Crabass Tom, who would pull the word out and use it occasionally to describe a fine dining establishment.

“Oh, you’ll want ta head down there and eat.  It’s re-ul fancy,” Crabass Tom would say whenever the conversation would head in the direction of fine dining.  “I mean re-UL fancy!  Fondue and everything!”

Of course, some of Crabass Tom’s other culinary tales included squirrels and opossums.  But he was a good-hearted backwoods boy, and in all fairness, I don’t think he ever mentioned the two critters being served together at the same meal.

I wish that life would only kick the shit out of you when you’re young, have more energy, and are more in need of lessons.

I wish that I was smart enough to realize that life already did, but I just didn’t get it the first time around.

I wish that customers wouldn’t be so damn picky about how I plan to spend their money.

I wish I knew where all that money went.

I wish that I had time to research all the stupid things people do for their god.

I wish that I had time to make a list of all the stupid things.

I wish I’d started my list by going to this tree wedding.

I wish that my flight over had been this flight.

I wish that The Other would stop giving me the details of her obsession with meaningless gifts.

Watching American Splendor last night, I wish that when I’d seen Harvey Pekar on Letterman back in the 80’s, I’d been a bit more astute.

Do we settle into life or does life settle into us?  I wish it was more clear.

I wish lots and lots of people, hundreds of thousands, would hear what was in my head and want more.

If this happens, I will wish that they leave me alone.

I wish that seeing my best friends didn’t involve changing planes in Denver or Dallas.

I wish that I change planes next month so I can wrap my arms around those big ugly guys.

I wish that work will resume on the book.

If I think about my daughter, I wish I would have done everything different.

If I think about my twenties, I wish I would have been braver.

If I think about my thirties, I wish I would have been honest.

If I think about my forties, I wish I would be braver.

If I think about my fifties, I wish they will not be a repeat of anything that has happened before.

If I think about my day today, I wish that it would never end.

No, better yet, if I think about my day today, I wish that it would get started.

Maybe then I could get everything done that needs done-ing.

The immediate family of Imaginary Keith is a disjointed bunch.  The connection between them loose and almost nonexistent.  When their paths do cross, as it did briefly last night, it seems more accident then plan.  In my mind, plans have direction and reason.  Imaginary Keith’s family, it would appear on the surface, seems lacking in these two vital elements.  And yet, each time I see them together, I am amazed at the casualness they have towards this paper thin bond that somehow holds them together.

Imaginary Keith’s mom was in the middle of a lengthy work and health-related story when she casually mentions that the Imaginary Keith’s brother will soon be getting married again.  The words fall out of her mouth as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening.  Like there’s a good movie on television tonight, and she is thinking about watching it.  Like hiking boots are on sale down at the mall.  Like the crocus are in bloom and did we see them on our way in.  In Imaginary Keith’s family, even the big events are worded carefully in the language of small talk.

But Imaginary Keith is equally casual.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do, or so the saying goes.  And when in Smalltalkville, do as the Smalltalkvillians do, small talk. 

Really, he says.  Or maybe he only thinks it and all that comes out of his mouth is, hmmmm.  Maybe he says everything with his eyebrows and a slight tilt of the head.  It’s hard to say it all happens so fast.  The conversation comes and goes with no apparent beginning or end.  Yes, I think I heard him say, I did see the crocus.  They’re lovely.

Where did all this casualness come from?  How did this happen?  How can Imaginary Keith find himself doing the marriage math, totaling the family grand sum in his head to himself?  What’s wrong with this branch of the family?  Is there really any humor in the fact that his family trades spouses with more frequency then their grandparents traded automobiles?

Imaginary Keith jokes to keep his sanity:

Well, they just don’t build them like they used to, and

Thank god I’m no longer the official marriage count leader, and

Does my brother have three crock pots, or is it four?

And while he jokes, still at work, he drives around in his van with a bobblehead Yukon Cornelius, still in the box.  Yukon was meant to be his brother’s Christmas present.  And although the two brothers live in the same town, only miles apart, Imaginary Keith has yet to find his brother.

And while he drives, Imaginary Keith thinks: What perfect timing, this wedding.  I will bring Yukon Cornelius then.  What a unique wedding gift.  One of a kind.

The metronome in Imaginary Keith’s brain functions poorly.  Yesterday I found myself poking my friend with a rather large stick, hoping that the physical discomfort might even the beat of his thoughts somewhat.  I wish that I could report this morning that rhythm had been restored, but it would be a bold, outright lie.  And I seem to remember something about wishing for less of those things in my life.

When poking didn’t work, I tried listening in Imaginary Keith’s ear, seeing if I could hear the unfortunate beat that was dictating his day.  Or should I say days?  Or should I say years?  I don’t know.  But whatever it is, I found myself ear to ear with Imaginary Keith this morning, listening for some sort of clue.  Anything that might explain this lump of man lying around the house.

I have to do something.  He’s too thick to make a decent rug, but not quite large enough to become a beanbag chair.  I could feed him more, plump him up, but then I remembered that beanbag chairs never were that comfortable to begin with.  All the work of plumping would be wasted when next summer I rolled him out onto the front lawn for a yard sale and sold him for a buck.

So I smashed my ear to his and listened really close.  It was early and the house was quiet.  No washing machine, no computer whirring, no phone or dishwasher, and no sound yet upstairs from the neighbors, getting ready for work.

Ear to ear, I could hear nothing except that low hiss of air that you hear when you listen to a seashell.  That low hollow sound that everyone pretends to believe is the sound of the ocean, somehow trapped forever inside the swirls of a thin, little shell. 

Could this be the case with my friend?  Could Imaginary Keith somehow have an entire ocean trapped in his head?  It was hard to believe, even for me.  Wouldn’t some of the water have to get out?  Wouldn’t I catch him crying once in awhile, letting some of that pressure out?  And wouldn’t he be salty with so much ocean trapped inside?  With an ocean raging around in his head, wouldn’t I see signs of it on the outside, like maybe salt deposits built up around his cheeks or something where battles were fought and won against the strength of a high tide?

But I saw nothing like that, nothing that would convince me that the ocean sloshed around inside of my friend’s big round head.

I will listen closely today and let you know if I hear anything.  I have managed to slip the big lug into a pair of jeans and work boots, push him out the door and into the work van.  At first it seemed a little irresponsible, letting him drive, but then no one around this city pays much attention to driving.  I showed him how to bonk his head against the steering wheel, in case he needs to use the horn, and how to use a cinder block to hold down the gas, in case his foot grows too weak to push the pedals.  I didn’t bother telling him about the turn signal, but I did point out the gear shift lever.

Put it in D, I told him.  D means direction (I think).  And everyone needs direction.

So I pulled the lever into D and dropped the cinder block onto the gas pedal.

I think Imaginary Keith will be just fine.

I slowly shake off the gloom of the last couple of days.  Maybe it was the one-two combination punch of Wednesday night’s movie, Stigmata, with Thursday’s time spent pruning roses.  Nothing straightens out a person’s thinking quite like the pluck of a rose thorn.

I should say that this in no way implies that my bleeding hands have anything to do with some secret, divine message.  If I’m bleeding, it’s only because I’m a careless gardener.

And if you are searching for god by way of Google, and your soul has arrived here as part of your religious pilgrimage, I apologize.  But then, pilgrimages have always been difficult and bumpy journeys, and any diligent soul searcher knows that the occasional sideshow will often appear alongside the path.

One of the charms of the house that I live in is the mail slot in the front door.  So around 11:30 each morning, if I’m hard at work at my desk, concentrating diligently on whatever particular diversion I’ve chosen for the day, the mailman can scare the living crap out of me when he flips open the squeaky metal flap and drops the mail through.  The first time I saw the mail slot I smiled, the first time the mailman used it I nearly jumped out of my skin, and now, nearly three months later, I’m beginning to wonder when my scare tolerance will begin to build up.  But I’m getting better.

Like yesterday.  I don’t think I jumped at all when the slot suddenly squeaked and in dropped one lone envelope.  Nearly all of my mail has that familiar bill-shape, but this one looked different.  Smaller, more square, more card-like then bill-like, so I headed right over and picked it up.

I’m not sure what takes me more by surprise - my age or some of the things that come along with it.  Who could possibly anticipate that their one and only valentine (yes, one single valentine!) would drop through a mail slot in Oregon from someone they’d never even met from the far off land of ice and snow and 10,000 lakes.  That same someone, it turns out, that I’d encountered while “researching” the whole blog concept and was trying to decide whether or not this was something I wanted to do.  The same someone who I saw made the blog experience a personal one, and not just a collection of rehashed news articles and opinions.

Jodi, Jodi, Jodi!  Thank you for the valentine!  What a nice surprise!

If I was in Minnesota right now, I’d sweep you out the door and off to dinner.  Well, depending on the weather and the time of day.  Maybe I’d just shovel the walk and ask you to lunch.  My only dilemma would be whether I would reciprocate your kindness and thoughtfulness with a bouquet of roses or or bouquet of books?  Roses are nice, but books smell great for centuries.  Wait, do they even arrange book bouquets?  Well, if they don’t, they should.

Today’s plan includes productive work.  If I don’t crank the handle and make a little music the monkey won’t know it’s time to dance.  Work, work, work.  I say that out loud, like whipping words to get me moving.

The beautiful / terrible thing about yesterday afternoon is that while I sat here redesigning this nonsense, I was able to accomplish not one tiny bit of house cleaning.  But it’s not like my eyes popped open and I looked around and thought I was in Hell.  It’s not that messy in here.  More like . . . my eyes popped open and I looked around and thought I had been reincarnated as the committee head for cheap suit inspections down at the local Kingdom Hall of Sweet Mother of Jevohah Can It Get Any Stranger Then This.

But it’s a small congregation, meek and scared.  Very easy to keep in line.  Watch.

“Hey!  That’s not polyester!  And wipe that smirk off your face!  You’re about this close to excommunication.  Or maybe you’re begging for a little eternal damnation?!  You wish you were so lucky.  No, no, no, not you mister.  No, for you, it’s a day of gardening in the freezing rain!”

Keith has worked with more then his fair share of “older” women during his days as a gardener.  Today’s Statesman Journal‘s cover story happened to feature one of his oldest customers ever.

His favorite memory of something she said:

I used to have a girl over to take care of things back there (referring to a sixty year old woman who helped with the perennials), but things have started slipping.  I just can’t get back there and boss her around like I used to.

She chuckles when she talks.  Very friendly.  When I asked her if people had asked her for help with the history of Salem, she replied:

Oh, gosh yes.  Someone’s always pounding on my door asking something.  Like they think I’ve seen it all.

I paraphrase a bit.

The newspaper story is real.  The picture, however, has me a little suspicious.  For one thing, what would Imaginary Keith be doing in the house, when there’s perfectly good work to be done outside.

The slightly dampened spirits of Imaginary Keith have prepared him for his day out in the rain.  Code will run through his mind as he moves about the garden, inspecting popping bulbs and buds, raking up an occasional messy pile of pine needles.  If only code could behave as reliably as a crocus bulb, he’ll think.  Clearly viewable through any eyes.  In need of no tweaking.

I slept so soundly last night that I barely woke up in time to catch the tail end of Imaginary Keith’s last dream, where Martin Scorcese was giving him tips on how to film a particularly tricky scene involving a dwarf appearing around the bend of a country road somewhere in Ireland.  It was night, you see, and the problem was not only lighting, but somehow making sure the camera would be able to distinguish the short little man from the stone wall that ran along the edge of the gravel road.

But that Scorcese, such a tricky guy.  He was showing Imaginary Keith how to hold this small hand mirror just s-o-o-o, angling it such a way that it caught every bit of light from the moon and shined it right back onto the smiling face of the dwarf as he popped around the bend in the road, right on cue.

I thought it was an incredible bit of cinematography.  But Imaginary Keith missed the whole lesson, his attention instead drawn to the stone wall behind the dwarf.  In the gathered moonlight danced the giant shadow of one small dwarf.

I don’t think even Scorcese saw that one coming.

Mondays are good.  A starting over and regrouping day.  Sunday’s shadow.

It’s the day I sit at home and slowly work out the weekend and the coming week.  A day of rest.  Kind of like if I was god, but off a day.  Which makes me think: who pestered god on his day off?  I have Imaginary Keith, but who did god have?

“How come we haven’t fired up the time machine like you said we would?”
“What’s for breakfast?”
“You should clean today.”
“You’ll never digitize all of those CDs and get the contract done before your meeting.”
“I’m bored.”
“I rehired Crabass Tom yesterday.”

Crabass Tom?  I thought we’d seen the last of his raw smile and rough face.  I thought we’d tolerated the last of his bad mechanics and smoky smell and grumpy aura.  I thought he was buried waist deep in snow somewhere in the midwest.

“He called and said he was coming back and needed a job.  Suze gave him the boot so he’s packing and will be here next week.  I said he could live in the RV behind the house.  Just until he gets settled.”

“Settled?  Crabass Tom is like . . 45 years old or something . . and he’s still not settled.  He’ll never be settled.  He’ll sit back there in that trailer like a troll, smoking and frowning.  I’ll be afraid to go behind my own house.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Imaginary Keith said.  “Everyone loves Crabass Tom.  He’s a company icon.  A symbol of hope.  For crying out loud - he’s Crabass Tom!”

What could I say?  Crabass Tom, behind the wheel of large U-Haul filled with junk, was heading my way.  But what did I expect?  It’s Monday.  The regrouping day.  And what could be more “regrouping” then the return of Crabass Tom?

I have some things to think about.

I have this feeling that it all matters very little. 

Alone and apart.  Or together and one.

Babies, born and thrown into life like a bottled message.  All that hope in one fragile container.

So we salt our waters and hope for some sort of buoyancy.  We marry, we divorce.  We work, we play.  We create endless diversions, then throw them into the brine and hope it is enough.

Sure it’s quiet around here.  I’d like to report that it’s all business as usual, but the last couple of years have been so strange I’m not quite sure what that means anymore.  As far as I can tell, there is no usual business in this house.

But I worked my way through the desk layers.  Nearly all the way down to the dust layer.  This in itself gave me a little tingly feeling of accomplishment.  Maybe that’s the old “business as usual.” Accomplishment and satisfaction.  I don’t know.  I do know that Imaginary Keith will be pushed out the door today to earn his keep, leaving me alone with my thoughts for a few hours.  Maybe I’ll think about the return of Crabass Tom, which is only days away now.  Try to imagine the positive side of his scowl, because there’s always a positive side.

Besides, when Crabass Tom drives up, I know that he and Imaginary Keith will shake hands or hug or just sit and grin like stupid brothers.  This is all fine and good, and I’d like to think that this is business as usual, but you have to remember that Imaginary Keith hasn’t been able to find his own brother since sometime before Christmas. 

When it comes to these sorts of things, it seems that nothing is usual.

A friend once told me that all stories require a certain amount of foreshadowing if they are to succeed.  Or maybe it was a professor.  Or maybe even one of the many, many people who’ve passed through my life but have long since been forgotten.  I like to think that it was a minister, and that somehow the word foreshadowing was a part of some marriage vows that I once promised to fulfill.

Wouldn’t marriages work better with foreshadowing?  Or would this just allow us to anticipate their demise better?  But wait, why would a minister use foreshadowing?  Isn’t the whole religious experience all about turning to the last page of the book and seeing how the story ends?  Where’s the foreshadowing in that?  I don’t think any of this makes sense.

But I digress.

I suppose that a bold banner splashed across the top of a slow-loading web page hardly qualifies as effective foreshadowing, but I’m too busy for subtleness.  That would be like the state of Nevada claiming to effectively foreshadow the arrival of Las Vegas just over the next rise in the highway by showing you that city’s electric bill.

I know, I know, it wouldn’t be like that at all.  But you get the point.  No, not that Las Vegas is around the next turn in your path, but that Imaginary Keith and Thor once lived together in Arkansas and one of their stories is on the way.  Ahhh, the hijinks that are soon to be relived.

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week.  Maybe never.  You can never tell with foreshadowing.  It’s sneaky that way.  Besides, mixing mythology with imaginary life is a tricky, time consuming business.  And it’s not like I don’t have other important, pressing business to attend to.  Phone calls to make, letters to write, contracts to draw up.

But if you’re anything like me, you’re asking yourself:  What could be more important then the story of Thor in Arkansas?  I mean, how in the world did Imaginary Keith and Thor end up rooming together in a twelve by twelve cinder block room in a southern college town?

Exactly.  Nothing could be more important then that preposterous story.

I’ve turned off the phone’s ringer.

No, not this morning.  No Thor yet.  Although it would be like just like Thor to come pounding in out of the early dawn fog, taking everyone by surprise even though we know he’s coming.  He’s just not the knock on doors, ask permission type.

Of course, back in college, Thor wasn’t quite so scary.  Being plucked out of the heavens and sent off to college in Arkansas took a lot of wind out of the guy.  But don’t get me wrong, Thor’s temper was always stoked and ready to burn at the drop of a hat.  College boy or Norse god, Thor was always ready for action.

But enough of that.  Today is a work day.  I half expect Imaginary Keith to give me one of those, “Awwww, do I have too” looks, but he knows better.  I’m a stern boy running a tight ship, and today I will not tolerate any of that blubbery lip stuff.

A thing has happened.  A thing that I knew would eventually happen but wasn’t sure when.  A thing that makes no difference, other then I think about it now when I didn’t before.

People who know me have found me.  More specifically, they’ve found this place.  This writing.

But so far only two, which isn’t such a big thing.  The first I barely, hardly even know, except in passing at a coffeehouse.  I know she works hard and drinks coffee and likes words and has a boyfriend or husband or something whose name just happens to be Keith - which for various reasons is an obvious plus.  But I don’t think that is the reason that Jill found her way to these words.  That wouldn’t be much of a reason at all, would it?

Interestingly, Imaginary Keith and I have almost always had someone in our life whose name was also Keith.  We like Keiths, and imagine the Keiths of the world spaced few and far between, so that to find one of the good ones is a challenge.  Imaginary Keith and I have always enjoyed a good challenge.

And now, just yesterday, someone else found their way here.  But this time it’s someone a tiny bit closer to the core of the matter then a girl in a coffeehouse.  Brian and Imaginary Keith have had conversations and worked together, so to speak.  Imaginary Keith’s task was to redesign and install a pleasing landscape for Brian and his wife, which he did over the course of a couple of months several years ago.  And when Imaginary Keith wasn’t sitting there staring ten years into the future, dreaming of how Japanese maples would arch up and over the edge of the flagstone staircases, or how red thyme would fill a particularly steep slope and grow around an outcropping of rock and burst into a vibrant splash of fuchsia color each spring and frame the softer hues of the azaleas and rhododendrons, or where a boulder should go or how much earth should be moved or a million other things - Brian and Imaginary Keith would talk and get to know each other a bit.

I suppose in time, others will find their way here.  People will follow Imaginary Keith home or ask him politely for the directions, and he’ll just tell them without a second thought.  He’s a great imaginary friend, but he doesn’t know how to keep anything to himself.