As I begin to get back into the swing of things around here, after my long, long, long two year brainfog (I think that’s just about as good a word as any), I have this growing feeling that I will become an expert at everything.  I think it may have been revealed to me in a dream.  But I can’t say for sure.

Maybe I should make a list later today of the many things I will become an expert at.  Will I have time to produce a DIY manual for each and every new expertise?  Highly unlikely.  I may do well to hire a stenographer to follow me around and take notes.

My accountant gave me a list of chores to perform today.  Damn her!  But the poor woman is completely in the dark about this higher calling of mine.  It’s not her fault.  On the other hand, I don’t dare mention anything or there may be tax forms to complete.  Extensive penalties for failing to file the proper paperwork.  Ideas must be recorded with the Internal Idea Service no later then the 15th of each month following the month that the original idea was conceived.  Was everyone aware of this new government branch?  I guess I have not been paying attention.  I am so far behind already that the penalties alone will be staggering.  Will they believe me when I tell them that I’ve already forgotten most of the good ideas?  Can I get an extension?

I’ve installed a gigantic bulletin board in my new writing room, ready to receive a steady stream of notes and ideas.  I’ve imagined this bulletin board my whole life, and now, there it is.  So far I’ve pinned a picture of my son, a black and white postcard of Doc Boggs that came with the CD I ordered, and a Spongebob basketball hoop that I got for Christmas.  I crumple up junk mail and shoot across the room, but so far haven’t made a single shot.

Apparently I will not become an expert at basketball.  It doesn’t bother me.  There are plenty of instructional basketball manuals already written.  I will focus on the untouched areas that others normally stay clear of.

My first book will be called How To Be A Self-Employed Thousandaire In Fifteen Short Years.  I will offer step by step advice on how to acquire thousandaire status, and detail many of the pitfalls one might normally encounter along the way.  The book will put that hopeful gleam back into the dull eyes of many a struggling entrepreneur.  Husbands and wives, sharing many of the concepts in the book, will make love with renewed vigor.

I’ve been to the same tavern three times now, which if memory serves me correctly, makes me a regular.  The girl behind the bar already knows I drink Hefeweizen, and the drunk guys a few stools down already make eye contact with me when they’re cracking Michael Jackson jokes.  They discuss Jackson’s finances, dividing into two distinct camps of thought - the first being that Michael Jackson has squandered away his money and is broke, and the other being that he is still filthy, stinking rich.

“Broke to Michael Jackson would be if he made four of my salaries.  That’s what broke would be,” says Bob, who appears to work in an auto parts store by the look of his jacket.  He is obviously in tune with the Jackson financial situation to be able to make such an accurate comparison to his own finances, and is readily accepted as his group’s spokesman.

“No.” The opposing sides position is solid and unwilling to budge.  Their spokeman is ironically named Rich.  “I have a cousin who has a friend down in . . . “

How is it that everyone but me has some sort of relative who knows someone, who also knows someone working in retail, who saw Michael Jackson shopping?  I feel like I have been deprived of some God-given right to hear third hand stories because my ancestors all chose careers in highway construction and appliance repair.  You can see why I am at the tavern.  Sure I sometimes need beer, but what I really need are the stories.

Linda, by the way, is nowhere to be seen, and I can only imagine that she is outside somewhere, battling the atmosphere.  Even Linda knows someone in retail, I bet.

Rich controls the bar for at least thirty seconds with his story of Jackson spending $8000 in less then a minute on something.  It is a grand tale of money squandered and drives home his point.  The men all shake their heads in agreement and then begin to talk about the Super Bowl.

I could be just about anywhere in the world sipping a beer, and can’t help but wonder why I am there.  On the television over the bar, the volume turned off, I watch Larry King silently interview a group of people.  I don’t have to hear his voice to actually hear it.  I don’t watch Larry King, and yet somehow his voice is in my head.  How can this be?  Is Larry King’s voice my third hand story of the distant friend who works retail?  I think about telling the guys at the bar, but they are so caught up in their Super Bowl stories that I don’t want to interrupt.  Maybe Linda will come in.  I could ask her.

I watch Larry King talk to a group of people who are said to be the powerful Christian conservatives who influence George Bush on a regular basis.  Franklin Graham is there, Billy’s son, and some woman named Beverly Lahaye.  The blurb under her name says she has founded a group called Concerned Women of America.  It is an interesting name for a group.  I think about starting my own group called Men Concerned About Women of America.  I think that it would be quite a large group.  We would need to rent the Astrodome or someplace like that to hold our meetings.

Anyway, I’m glad that the volume is turned off, because I think I might already have Franklin and Beverly’s voices trapped in my head, right in there somewhere beside Larry’s.  I swear I can hear what they’re saying, even if I know I can’t.  Besides, even if I don’t have their voices already in my head, by the looks on their faces and their painful gestures, I think I might be able to make something up.  And I’m glad that I can’t actually hear them, or I wouldn’t be able to hear the jukebox quite as well.  The Black Crowes come on, and as Franklin Graham talks, I pretend he is lip-synching the words to the song.

Am I just too crazy?
Am I just too proud?

Sometime later, Beverly Lahaye will do a nice job with a Blondie song.  Her passion and dedication for whatever it is she is talking about fits in nicely:

One way, or another
I’m going to find you
I’m going to getcha, getcha, getcha

It’s said that beginnings are so much easier then endings, but I’m not so sure.  I’m much better with endings.  Endings are easy.  There is a simple beauty to something coming to an end.  Painful but enchanting, like sand paintings blowing away in the wind.

With people, there are other things that are the wind, so I wonder if the beauty lies in the lack of control, or the idea of control.  Where is the wind when we reach the end?

I moved a lot as a child.  Life was a steady stream of endings.  I leaned into each move, my skinny body slicing through the changes.  The faces changed around me and it was like a dream.  Life was like a dream.  I leaned into the days, my feet barely touching the ground, my eyes closed as I felt the changes rush past my cheeks.  I spread my arms and people brushed by the tips of my fingers. 

Some were barely a touch and others tried to grab hold, but they all slip by, one by one, as I lean into the changes.  Some feel like a dull ache on my fingers, a phantom memory, long after they are gone, while others vanish without another thought.  Faces and voices.  Dark, black voids of space.  A laugh or a smile.  A tilted head or the nape of a neck disappearing into a mass of curls.  One child disappearing into a world far too big, another arriving without a breath.  I feel them all, slipping by.

Maybe death is nothing more then having leaned so far that the only thing left is to become a memory yourself.  To sweep past another’s outstretched fingers.  To become that dull ache in someone else’s mind.  To finally stop moving, and leaning, and trying so hard to control the wind.

* * * * * * * * * *

I know a blog is not a person, but I will miss berlin blog when it has slipped past.  I often feel like each breath of my own contains the words and ideas of someone else who has gone before me.  That we somehow create the air around us by surrounding ourselves with those we are most comfortable with.

I was comfortable reading the words of Catherine.  I will miss her.

I keep finding wallets.  Two this week, and that’s not counting the stack of loan papers sitting on the counter at the bank.  Names, credit cards, social security numbers, and secret bank account codes, scribbled in blue ink by people who must count on others cleaning up after them.  Do they see me coming, picking up their pieces?  How long did it take them to discover that everything about them was up for grabs?

Tell me, James Miller, what will you say if I decide to become you?  What will you tell those four children and that smiling wife?  It’s a handsome photo.  Mine now, if I want it.

I’ve forgotten the names of the others, but they were men, every single one of them.  Apparently it is the men who are desperate to be lost, then stolen and reborn.  I am yet to find a single woman’s purse or wallet or whatever it is women carry everything about themselves in.  Maybe I just don’t know what to look for.  Maybe I know as little about women’s identification as I do women themselves.  I usually trip into relationships, so maybe I’ll just look down the next time I stumble, and there it’ll be.

My boy ran through the barnyard this morning before school, running so fast that he threw a shoe, just like a horse, and kept right on going, cow shit and all.  Nine year old boys seldom stop for anything.  I don’t know why I mention this.  It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with all these wallets I keep finding, although maybe it does, and I just can’t see it, like all those purses I was talking about.

Is my own son trying to send me a sign?  Is he as lost as a wallet?  Is this just the beginning?  James Miller has lost his wallet and checkbook in the upper deck of a converted double-decker bus turned into a coffee shop, and now my own son is running crazy through cow shit.

And it’s raining again.  Everything is getting wet.  Somewhere out there is the next wallet, just waiting for me.  I am like a super hero.  I swoop in, saving lost wallets from the real thieves and handing out fresh socks to those in need.  I am like Clark Kent, working away in secret, and you are like Lois, never really knowing how much you think of me.

A good disguise always begins with the glasses.  Have you ever thought of that?  This is why I never trust the elderly, no matter how honest they look.  With so many of them in glasses, you never really know who you’re talking to.  Even my own grandpa, that tight-lipped Swede, was probably hiding something.

I’m not stupid.  I know they’re out there.  They wake up in the morning, just like me, fresh and thinking about that grain of sand that out of nowhere slipped through the crack.  They’re out there getting things done because I can see them all, every single one of them.  I can’t move through the room without knocking my shin up against one of their fresh ideas or cracking my head wide open, trying to stay out their way.  It’s gotten to the point where I’m afraid to move, but know I better or one of them will come by and polish me up like something they pulled out of thin air.

Like this morning when my eyes popped open in the dark and I knew I had hold of something in my head, but what was I going to do?  Can you tell me that?  It’s too slippery.  It’s all been done.  There’s no fucking way.  I’m wired all wrong or just don’t have what it takes.  I’m shy about ambition and spend all day trying to wrap my mind around nothing.  Sure I have ideas, but they’re like gnats, and cause me more irritation then anything.  I spend most of the day waving my arms around over my head, trying to make it all go away.

In some other kind of world, sports entertainment skews off on a tangent, and grown men end up playing some of the other childhood games for big money.  Football and baseball are a thing of the past, and instead, we tune in to watch highly paid athletes playing marbles or kickball, or maybe professional monkey bars (although this already sounds a bit like professional wrestling.)

“Look at the size of that shooter thumb!” we might hear on any given Sunday.

The Super Bowl would be replaced by Super Recess Sunday, and instead of cheerleaders, grown women would travel with the teams, pacing up and down the sidelines in small, intimate groups, whispering things to one another that no one could hear.  Dozens of strategically placed webcams would zoom in, trying to catch the lip movement, playing it back in slow motion on giant stadium screens.  The crowd would roar in appreciation. 

“Well, it’s fourth set and long, and the Pittsburgh Steelies have backed themselves into a tough corner here.

“Only three cat’s eyes left in the bag.  They’re going to have to go for it, Norm.”

“Either that or use up the last of their dropsies, and I don’t think anyone wants to see that happen.”

“But with five of their starters already benched due to pulled extensor pollicis brevis’, I don’t see as they have any choice.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.  But you hate to see it.  Especially after coming so far.”

excerpt from my soon to be released book, How To Be A Self-Employed Thousandaire In Fifteen Short Years

The Handling of Receipts and Cancelled Checks

When it comes to the handling of old receipts and cancelled checks, we will once again see the enormous difference between the millionaire and the thousandaire.  Unlike the millionaire, whose very existence has come to depend upon the use of the ever-popular shredder, when it comes time to dispose of receipts and cancelled checks, the thousandaire will realize the most satisfaction if they avoid the shredder altogether and stick to one of the more tried and tested methods.  For the thousandaire, there can be nothing more rewarding then dealing with the past the old-fashioned way - by burning.

The receipts and cancelled checks of any self-employed thousandaire can be safely burned in early spring, although it may be a good idea to check your local ordinances regarding the use of backyard fires.  Unduly severe or prohibitive laws can often be sidestepped using the popular “barbecue method.” I, personally, like to burn my own receipts in the fallow garden every fifteen years, usually in early February, while the surrounding ground is still plenty wet.

But be careful.  Unlike wood ash, which can be tilled into the soil in any quantities and is highly beneficial, the ash of the self-employed thousandaire’s receipts and cancelled checks must not only be handled with care, but must be spread out evenly over the entire garden.  The thousandaire receipt ash, contrary to popular belief, remains a highly concentrated reminder of the many financial failures encountered by the thousandaire over the years.  It is good to remember that the truth, no matter how big the flames, can never simply be burned away.

The ash of the thousandaire’s receipts, oddly enough, acts as a sort of natural growth inhibitor, and if not properly spread out over the entire garden, will cause all sorts of mischief.  I once forgot to spread the receipt ash and couldn’t grow a decent pumpkin for nearly three years.  The tomatoes never made it much past the blossom stage, and the snap peas, although healthy in every apparent aspect, left a taste in my mouth that reminded me of every bounced check I’d ever written.

I have realized, just this very second, how important it is that I share with the world everything I know about cloning.  And it’s not even eight in the morning!  What an eventful day this will be!

First I must deal with the boy (non-clone).  To school, son!  What?  You need more lunch money?  What’s going on here?

I am tempted to send him to some sort of religious school, where I’m sure lunch is free, picked fresh from the tree of knowledge.

Prepare yourself to embrace clones!  Because as everyone already knows, deep down in that dark, secret place that they think no one can see, the clones are coming!  They are so close I can almost smell them.  They smell just like you and me.

Imaginary Keith’s application for a cloning license has been passed by yet again!  We can remain silent about it no more.

It’s a travesty that the British regulators in charge of handing out the cloning licenses have given yet another one to Ian Wilmut.  A preposterous travesty!  What are they thinking?  Wilmut already had his chance with Dolly the Sheep!  Give some of the rest of us a chance, for crying out loud.

“Calm down,” I told Imaginary Keith yesterday, after we’d both come across the article in the newspaper.  (Fucking newspapers!  Always breaking our hearts!)

“Calm down?  Calm down?!  Do you know how many times I’ve applied for that cloning license?  Eighteen.  Eighteen god damn times!”

“Maybe nineteen is the lucky number.” Offering encouragement in the face of an obvious impossibility is not my strong suit.

“You know what the papers call him?  The Dolly Scientist.  Do you get it?  Dolly?  It’s just stupid, that’s what it is.  I was pulling the heads off my sisters dolls before Wilmut had even scrubbed his first test tube.  If anyone should be the Dolly Scientist, it should be me.”

“Is that what you’d . . “

“No.  But I’m just saying.  It’s not fair.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“ . . . the creation of cloned human embryos destined for experimentation and subsequent destruction is particularly abhorrent.”
- Julia Millington of the London-based ProLife Alliance

My own parents climbed into the back seat of some old Chevrolet, and without a single thought about my own subsequent destruction, created me.  I worry now, endlessly it seems, about the fact that most people are not created by unmarried teens in the back seat of old Chevrolets.  By definition, I myself am an aberration.

My life has been nothing but one big experiment.  My daily toil sees to the destruction of my body, just as time sees to the destruction of my memory.  I find the fact that I was born, only to one day die, particularly abhorrent, and am pushing for legislation that will outlaw any type of sexual behavior within Chevrolets. 

* * * * * * * * * *

from The Revised History of the Early 23rd Century Clone Wars

The troops of cloned evangelists, marching in crisp formation under the hot, midday Texas sun, passed across the massive, brick promenade of the True Capital in wave after wave.  The determination of Truth Training could be seen on every face and in the white-knuckle grip on every Bible.  And when True President raised his hand in tribute, it is said that that the roar from the troops, a unanimous call of “God Speaks!” was so loud, that even many faithful believers fell to their knees out of fear of what was being unleashed upon the world.

* * * * * * * * * *

“How come animals get no respect?” the boy wants to know.  He demands an answer.  Silence is not an option.

“If a cow breaks it’s leg, do we fix it?  No.  We eat it.  That’s what we do.”

How do you respond when your own children attack you for the way of the world?  Thank god I am not a cow.  I really have no leg to stand on.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.  I want to tell him what I’m really thinking, but he’s still too young.  In my mind it is all about the human desire to control everything around them, but a nine year old will not grasp this.  He already thinks that the world is about control.  His control.  Control is one of the basic tenets of being a child.  It is practice for being an adult, and being able to rationalize why we do things like keep dogs and cats as pets, but decide to eat so many other kinds of animals.  Why one bird can be ground up and made into inexpensive hotdogs, while another is sold to ride around on our shoulder and poop on our shirt.

The world of a nine year old is a highly distorted thing.  It’s a good thing.  He’ll need every single bit of it to survive as an adult.

* * * * * * * * * *

I don’t know about you, but I’m more then a little worried about the afterlife.  And now there’s this whole cloning business.  Talk about your theistic monkey wrench.

What if they clone me, and my clone gets to heaven before me?  Is this the sort of thing that worries you as much as me?  Who’s going to get in?  Both of us, or will it be first come, first serve?  Will god know the difference?  If clones are such an aberration, like many faithful believe, wouldn’t god just toss them back into the fire?

* * * * * * * * * *

I think people are uncomfortable with cloning for the same reason they’re uncomfortable about talking to their own children about sex.  The same reason we’re uncomfortable standing up in a crowd and saying our piece.  The same reason we don’t walk around naked, or tell our spouses what we’re really thinking, or put our picture up for everyone to see.  Let’s face it, we’re uncomfortable with just about everything.  We’re uncomfortable with the way other people dress or the cars they drive.  We’re uncomfortable with the weather or how clean our homes are.  We seldom tell people our middle names and become self-conscious when others watch us eat.  We don’t want people catching us in the shower or on the toilet, or reading over our shoulder, or with any part of our own body in our own hand. 

Let’s just say we’re an uncomfortable species, and leave it at that.

* * * * * * * * * *

Is that a clone growing in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Keith:  So, what’s going on?

Keith:  Nothing much.

Keith:  That’s what I thought.

Keith:  It’s because of all that clone talk.  Isn’t it?

Keith:  What do you think?

Keith:  What do you think?

Keith:  I am you.

Keith:  That’s almost like being a clone.

Keith:  Crap!  Now no one’s going to talk to us.

Keith:  Calm down.  You sound insane.

Keith:  (deep breath)

Keith:  Better?

Keith:  No

Imaginary Keith:  I’ll talk to you guys.

Keith:  We are in trouble, aren’t we?

Keith:  It’s just a phase.  It’ll pass.

Keith:  Like gas.

Keith:  Yes.  Just like gas.

Imaginary Keith:  Hey!  I’m right here!  Can you two hear me?

Keith:  Did he say, “you two?”

Keith:  I think so.

Keith:  Is he real?

Keith:  I’ve never been quite sure.

Keith:  What should we do.

Keith:  Ignore him.  Eventually he goes away.

Keith:  Like people when you talk about clones?

Keith:  Yes.  Just like that.

Keith:  Interesting.

Keith:  Yes, that’s what I thought.

The house is so quiet when the boy isn’t here.  It’s nice to be able to wake up and not be forced into an almost immediate conversation.  I know the minds of kids click away at a million miles per hour, but why this incessant need to let the mouth flap right along with it?  Is the mouth the exhaust pipe?  I swear some days that the fumes from all the words will kill me.

But this morning - quiet.  I drink some coffee and sit around in my underwear watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica in fast-forward.  It’s too boring and slow at normal speed.  Why do all the space shows suddenly seem to have blond women fighter pilots?  Maybe I’m just too sporadic a viewer to really know the facts.  But I tried watching Andromeda the other day, and now Battlestar Galactica, and I could have sworn for a moment there that the two shows were sharing a fighter pilot.  But no, now I see that the women are completely different. 

I stopped watching Andromeda right after I caught the ending of one episode where the captain has apparently thrown an old lover out into some sort of space trap, where she will remain imprisoned for a thousand years.  This sounds good in theory, and even peaks my interest just a tad, but if you’re going to do something like this, you need to follow it up by saying something profound.  You just don’t trap someone in a complicated set of space mirrors or whatever it was, and then walk away saying, “A thousand years should be long enough for her to get over me.  Maybe.”

The last thing I need is to be sitting around watching some new space captain who thinks he’s Captain Kirk.

It sure sounds like I sit around watching the sci-fi channel all day, but I assure you, I don’t.

I have better things to do.  I must get the house ready!  A visitor is coming!

Other Keith flies into town on Friday.  You’ve seen his name around here.  He’s a real life person and not something I made up, although he would make an excellent fictional character, if I do say so myself.  Can you imagine it?  Friday through Tuesday I get to hang out with a real, life adult.

So what do old college roommates do when they get together?  Other Keith and I like to push a couple of beds into the smallest room in the house, then throw in a television, a couch, a couple of stereos, a bunch of books, two desks, and all the clothes we own in the world.  The room need be no bigger then 10 x 10 as we recreate those fond dorm room days.  We sit around in bare feet and drink Dr. Pepper.

Only now it’s Diet Dr. Pepper.  And when we’re together, instead of skipping class, we skip work.

We’ve both come so far!

Hurry!  Clean!  The boy will be here by lunchtime.  Everything will grind to a halt and the house’s cleanliness rating will once again begin its unstoppable backslide.

I think I like sci-fi because starships always seem to be so spotless.  Why is that?  Is it because you need so little when you travel through space?  Or is it just because the prop department was tired of making fake cardboard space-looking things?

America has several prop departments.  I believe one is down that hall right over there.  Do you see it?  Yes, that’s it.  Third door on the right.  You can’t miss it.  A big sign, right on the door, that says “China.”

I should like cleaning with the boy.  Teaching him the ropes.  All the ins and outs of cleanliness.  I should like it, more then I do.  At the very least, I shouldn’t hate it.  How did I help hatch such a bossy taskmaster?  Did I not turn the egg properly?  Was the heat lamp too close?  Is that where all this misplaced, inner fire comes from?

I just dread the future.  The possibility that this boy will one day turn into a full-grown man and happen to want to marry some poor, unsuspecting woman.  I can hardly stand the thought of it.  I dread the day that I meet her and she looks up at me all happy and full of love for this boy of mine, and has to face all of that pity welling up in my eyes and spilling down my cheeks.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she’ll probably say.  “I’ve heard so much about you” or some such nonsense.

My reply with be equally polite and vague.

“I’m sorry,” I’ll probably say.  “I did the best I could” or some such nonsense.

We’ll all sit around and barbecue hamburgers or eat potato salad while yellow jackets buzz our paper plates, and I’ll find out if she likes beer or wine, and where her family lives, and three or four other fairly unimportant things.  And all the while, this boy of mine will stand off to one side, sizing the two of us up, wondering if he should try bossing us both around at the same time, or somehow separate us to make the task easier.

“He was a good egg,” I’ll whisper to the woman, and although she’ll try her best, she’ll be too young to conceal the fact that she thinks I’m crazy.

But she’ll get it, in time, and then we’ll both have a good laugh.

At first I thought it was kind of funny, the way the advertising at the Technorati site sort of followed along with everything that I said.  But I think it may be getting on my nerves.  I already have a boy who follows me all around the house, never more then two or three steps behind at any given moment.  I’m not sure where he thinks I might be heading, but there he is, right on my heels.  He’s so close most of the time that I’m afraid to swing my arms when I walk out of fear of giving him a black eye.  So not only am I being followed, but I’m being forced to walk with this awkward, slow gait.  I’ve given up any hope of escaping.

And now advertising is keeping an eye on me as well.  We all crowd our way down the hallway and into the bathroom.  The boy and the advertising watch me as I wet a sponge and start to scrub the sink.

“What are you doing?” the boy wants to know.

“I can recommend several good places to buy sinks online,” the advertising offers.

It’s hard to scrub with the two of them bunched up so close like that. 

What would you do if an Episcopal priest named you as one of his favorite bloggers, and suddenly larger then normal numbers of his faithful followers began arriving at your site, catching you in the middle of writing what could only be described as horticultural pornography?  (Most of what I speak of is thankfully buried deeply with the comments.  But deep enough?  No, I doubt it.  Funny how much a blog is like a city, with the entries becoming the store fronts and friendly smiles and nods of it’s citizens, while the comments section somehow bellies up to it’s own destiny, becoming the wrong side of the tracks, the seedy, red light district, and the town hall, all rolled up into one.)

Is this God’s plan for me?  Nonstop embarrassment?  I fear so.  It’s either that or this constant state of digression I find myself in.

(Thanks a lot ‘mouse.)

This all reminds me of an episode of Little House on the Prairie.  Do you remember it?  The one where the Reverend Alden shows up unexpectedly, catching Charles sitting in the outhouse, whose door has fallen off earlier in the show.  Mary has followed the Reverend to the outhouse, and immediately upon seeing her father sitting there, begins to go blind.  Charles apologizes profusely for the farm’s obvious state of disrepair, and sends Half-Pint running into town to fetch Doc Baker for Mary’s failing eyesight.  The Reverend Alden assures Charles that the Lord works in mysterious ways while the two of them wait on Caroline to bake them each a fresh pie.

Okay, so it’s not really an episode, but then horticultural pornography isn’t really my thing either.  Truth of the matter is, I’ve never actually been sure what my thing is, and in that regard, you and I may have something in common.  Maybe, maybe not.  You decide.

Oh, one more thing.  Don’t waste your time clicking away on the religious categories I set up more then a year ago.  They’re merely decorations.  Proof positive that I at least try to share a spiritual connection with the rest of humanity.  I am filled to the brim with good intentions, foolishly thinking that if I can just live long enough, or live right, or do or say the right things, some of these good intentions will slosh over my edges and end up doing something.  Something?  What does that mean?  Who knows.  Certainly not me.

In a dream, the ex begins taunting me with my own words, after she discovers the existence of this site.  I find myself listening closely to what she’s saying, trying my best to figure out what month she is reading from.

What a misguided dream.  Everyone knows that if someone discovers your blog, the first thing they do is look for what is written about themselves.  In the end, it all boils down to self-discovery, no matter how you go about it.

1. What does it mean if you find yourself becoming bored with your imaginary friend?

2. Why do my dreams always seem to involve some sort of battle or struggle?

3. The achilles in my right foot is bothering me.  It strained as I leaned towards the mirror, looking at my nose hairs.  Neither one of those things sounds particularly right.

4. I promised to keep my new car clean, yet looking out the window this morning, I know for a fact that all of my good coffee cups are out there in it, lying around dirty.

5. What did it really mean when my father told me that he didn’t want to be alone?

6. What did it really mean that I had no answer?

7. Why is eating more fresh vegetables such a hard habit to get into?

8. Why cling to a promise?  Why do we do that?

9. How did it ever become about money?

10. Why take chances?  And what’s more powerful to you - promise or chance?

I’ve gotten to the point in my life where sports no longer make any sense to me, so instead of watching or even playing anything, I just sit around making things up.

Like I sometimes try to figure out who would make the better basketball player - Jesus or Buddha.  I can waste huge blocks of time analyzing their imagined strengths and weaknesses on the court.

I might look outside at my basketball hoop this afternoon, and end up thinking something like:

That Buddha can post up like nobody’s business, and is a real strength when he’s in the paint.  His shot isn’t pretty, and he isn’t much of a leaper, but still somehow manages to come down with more then his share of rebounds.  And he knows how to work those big elbows to his advantage.  Sure he’s slow getting down the court, but come on, he’s Buddha.  What do you expect?

Jesus, on the other hand, he’s more juke and flash.  He dribbles like he’s working miracles, can pull up just about anywhere for the long three-pointer, but with his ability to ascend, is more likely to float by you on his way straight to the hoop.  His turn the other cheek attitude has made him a little weak when it comes to pounding the boards, and yet, he’s been known to turn over a referee’s table from time to time, making him interesting, but a real challenge to coach.

God’s grand embarrassment plan, designed specifically for me, continues to operate smoothly.  As one might expect.

Jake, the Episcopal priest who took the great, personal risk of offering me and my words high praise, tried to leave a comment this morning, only to be turned away at the door by my software, which is obviously in cahoots with the devil.

Begone!  Evil, underlying, unrecognizable, software glitch!  You are not welcome!  Jake will be heard!

Anyone interested in participating in the Computer Literate Religious Figure Consortium later on this afternoon is encouraged to contact us at their earliest convenience.  All are welcome to attend.  However, seating is limited, and interested parties are encouraged to register early.  A light lunch will be served.  (Kosher available upon request.)

Seriously: (note use of italics to denote honest seriousness) If anyone else has encountered this problem, I would appreciate if you would let me know.  It may help solve whatever is going on.

Later today . . .

The season premiere of Horticultural Pornography Theater.

Today’s Episode:

Iris runs off with the band, only to discover that life is not always as it seems.  Ivy grows more and more angry by Iris’ absence.  Guest appearance by the Sex Pistols.

Iris, growing tired of her clingy boyfriend, Ivy, has run off to become a groupie with the Sex Pistils.  But after only a week on the road, finds that not everything is as it once seemed. 

The band abuses Roundup like there is no tomorrow, and each night is the same, leaving them all weak and withered.  She has never even felt this tired with Ivy, in spite of all their fighting.  Sid is the worst, pounding down shot after shot of Roundup like water.  It makes her ill, just watching it.

What is she going to do?  Her own biological clock is ticking, her own bloom beginning to fade.  But is that any reason to go running back to that clingy Ivy?  She will never forget his last words to her, “Go ahead and run.  See how far you get, Iris.  No one wants a Bearded Iris as a groupie.” The words had stung worse then Orthenex.

“Hey Babe, why don’t you come over here and make old Johnny happy?” Johnny Rotten’s voice startles her.  Across the room she can see him, rubbing some sort of systemic over himself.  She has to get out of there.  Even back in the field, she’ll be better off then she is right now.  Just the thought of it gives her newfound strength.

“Fuck off, you old has-been.” She looks around for her purse.

“Fuck off yourself, Little Miss Hybrid.  Little Miss Bearded Iris.”

As the door slams behind her, she feels her own anger growing.  Always about the beard, she thinks.  Doesn’t seem to bother them when they want to pollinate.  Screw them all.

“I’m through with you all,” she yells.  The sound of her own voice feels good.  “Tug your own anthers awhile.  See how you like that.”

In our next episode:

The Sex Pistils take Iris’ words to heart and try launching The Organic Reunion Tour.

Ivy shows up at the Sex Pistils’ concert, clinging to the edge of the stage, angry and growing aggressively.  Security beats him back with hoes and shovels.  Following a mysterious tip, he races to the field Iris has returned to, only to find out that she has been uprooted by a crew of migrant workers, divided, packaged, and sold in pieces to the highest bidder. 

Iris, shipped south, thinks all is lost, but unexpectedly meets up with her high school sweetheart, Kudzu.

The Consortium is a success and dismisses earlier then expected.  Jake is granted access, and the demons are seen fleeing the software in large groves.  Some disappear into a tray of cucumber sandwiches, while others, unfortunately, lodge themselves inside my head.

I immediately thank everyone for their help, and dismiss them before they have any opportunity to ponder why demons would not be able to make a distinction between my head and a tray of cucumber sandwiches.  There is no reason to accomplish too much in one day.  Some things are best left for tomorrow.

In a plot twist that I jokingly predicted last week, my father arrives at the back door with no phone call or warning whatsoever.  It has been at least four years since we’ve seen each other.  It was my guess that he would show up unannounced the weekend that Other Keith is due to visit.  We may not say much to each other, but at least we’re predictable.

“So, a few things have changed around here while you’ve been gone,” I say.  Until just a few moments ago, he has known nothing about the separation and divorce.  He knows nothing about my two years in the apartments.  This might sound strange to you, until you realize that I had to find out that he and my mom were divorced by reading it in the local paper.  Having now surprised him, I consider us even.

“You’ll have to bring me up to speed later on tonight,” he says.

I wonder what changes the last four years have brought on him.  Will we really get up to speed tonight, or will we sit around and talk about my new television, or reminisce about how well the wood stove heats up the house.  “Up to speed” has many meanings, not all of them necessarily requiring any actual conversation.

In most families, the arrival of a long lost father would alter the entire weekend.  But around here that is not necessarily the case.  The weekend stands as planned.  Other Keith will arrive, Dad will borrow one of my cars to run a few errands, and other then that, it’s business as usual.

Chapter 2 :: Blinded By Passion, Ivy Sells His Soul

Ivy knew he was cut bad.  Security had hoed him up pretty good, his juices mixing with the dirt and oil of the back alley.  His left eye was swelled completely shut, but he could smell trash nearby.  A dumpster.  Something to hang onto and pull himself up with, at least.  He reached out, his tendrils blindly searching, then touching cold steel.  Thinking of Iris, trying not to think about the pain, he slowly pulled himself up until he was sitting, his back against the dumpster.

He had to get up.  Iris, his Iris, was getting away.

That was when he heard the shuffling of feet, right there next to the dumpster.  Someone was watching him, not more then three feet away!

“Take your best shot,” Ivy said, trying his best to sound tough.  He braced for the feel of the hoe chopping away at his chest.

“Brother, you couldn’t take any more shots.” The voice was low and gravely, the words so sharp and rough a man could cut himself just by listening too close.  Ivy knew the voice.  It was that lowlife Blackberry.  Blackberry!

“Blackberry?  Is that you?”

“Hell yes it’s me.  And lucky thing for you.  You’re in bad shape, brother.  A world of hurt.”

“I’ve been better.”

“Hell yes, I can see that.  What are you doin’ out here?  Beat all to hell.”

“Help me up, will you?” Ivy could feel Blackberry’s rough hands under his arms, lifting, the nails poking through his skin, digging in.  He winced, but it felt good to be back on his feet.

“Thanks, Blackberry.  I owe you.”

“Hell yes, you owe me.  You owe me big.  You’re after that lady.  I can see that.  Any time a man goes out and get himself all busted up, there’s a lady on the other end.  You’re chasing after that lady, aren’t you?”

“Did you see a woman come through here, Blackberry?  Tall, thin, yellow hair with a purple streak.  You see her?”

“You mean that bearded lady?  Hell yes I saw her.  A sweet little thing, she was, until I got a good look at that beard.  Man, you ain’t chasing after her, are you?”

“She’s my girl, Blackberry.  I gotta find her.”

“Man, you’re messed up worse then I thought!  Chasing after a bearded lady all messed up!” Blackberry started laughing.

“Just tell me which way she went.” Ivy could feel Blackberry’s dark, sweet breath on his face.  He was beginning to feel nauseous. 

“She ran off down that way.” Blackberry’s long, sharp arm pointed down the alley, toward the street.  “Now go chase down that bearded lady of yours.  Ha!  And don’t be forgetting that you owe me.  You hear?  You owe me.”

“I owe you, Blackberry.” Ivy began limping towards the street.  “Thanks.”

“Hell yes you owe me.  Now limp that sorry ass of yours out of here.” Blackberry watched Ivy make his way slowly down the alley, turn the corner at the street, and disappear.

“Chasing after some old ugly bearded lady.  Didn’t even smell sweet.” Blackberry leaned back against the dumpster and closed his eyes.  In the morning it’d be Wednesday.  And Wednesday meant that those hard-skinned little landscape boys would be by, and he had it all planned out.  Just one a little scratch and they’d grub him right out of there and throw him in the truck.  When they weren’t looking, he’d just slip over the edge and be on his way.  He’d done it a million time.

The back door to the club opened, and a man stepped out, a trash bag in each hand.

“Back for some more scratchin’?” Blackberry thought, slowly laying his arm across the lid of the dumpster.  He’d miss the old dumpster when he was gone, that was for sure.  Always something going on.  Plenty of action.

There’s not much time for goofing around today.  Other Keith will be here tomorrow, freshly scrubbed and, rumor has it, sporting a new haircut.  And with dad floating in from Costa Rica on some unseen South Pacific breeze, my duties and obligations as host will be stretched to the very limits.  Will I lose my tax-exempt recluse status because of too many visitors on one weekend?  What are the rules?  Are there any loopholes?

Look!  Not a speck of food or a decent drink to be seen for miles.  To the store.  And bathrooms must be scrubbed (or at least the air freshened), and I think I might need to buy a couple of blankets.

And don’t I suck at writing accents?  That’s rhetorical, feel free to keep it to yourself.  But I think the devil would come disguised as a blackberry, just as I think poor, unsuspecting Ivy has every right to sell his soul for one more chance with Iris.  Wait.  What am I saying?  Ivy is manipulative and abusive.  And my intention was for that devil Blackberry to be more suave and sophisticated.  But maybe he just played Ivy for the fool that he is.  Yes, that’s it.  Blackberry’s voice will sound different to everyone.  That makes perfect sense, for a walking, talking blackberry plant, that is.  Who just happens to be the devil.  Yes, that’s it.

And let’s not forget the big homework assignment, due the beginning of next week.  Presidents, as we all know, are not born, but made, and my son is hard at work right now, trying to make his own President.  If we have anything to say about it, Clinton will be reborn, scratched onto paper with indelible marker and filled with a thousand new ideas.  Some may claim that he is nothing more then an old idea, reworked in Crayola, to which I reply, hogwash. 

Behold my son’s William Jefferson Clinton in all his glory!  Dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeve tee, he is the image of something new, something exciting.  Washington needs a man like this to shake things up.  Notice the pens in the shirt pocket.  When have you ever seen someone look more ready for action, I ask you?

It is hard to get a single thing accomplished.  I keep meaning to mop the kitchen floor, but each time I go searching for the mop, the phone rings.  I’ve just now gotten off the phone with Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Don’t even ask.  I don’t understand it either.

“I can answer any question you ask me with a line of dialogue from Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Ms. Stowe said.  “Go ahead.  Try me.”

“I’ve of course read your book, Ms. Stowe, but I don’t think I can remember any lines.”

“You leave that to me.  Go ahead, now.  Ask away.”

“Okay.  How about this?  I can’t seem to find my mop.”

“That’s no question, young man.  Were you denied the opportunity of good schooling?”

“I’m sorry.  Where is my mop?”

“Oh, Mr. Symmes! - save me, - do save me, - do hide me!” said Eliza.”

“What?”

“The mop obviously does not want to be found.  You’re a lazy man, aren’t you?”

“I’m actually very busy, Ms. Stowe.  You’d be surprised.”

“Yes, I’m sure I would.  Is there anything else you’d like to know before I hang up?”

“Will I ever get the kitchen mopped?”

“Such a simple boy.  Here’s your answer -

“There was, said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift.”

The line was silent.

“I’m not getting that mopping done, am I?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Oh well.  I am sorry I don’t remember more about your book.”

“I forgive ye, with all my heart!” said Tom faintly,” she said, and then the line went dead.

I stick my hands in the toilet out of love and devotion and start scrubbing.  If anything, I will be Pine Sol fresh.  Friends deserve nothing less then a clean toilet to pee in, don’t you think?  The world, obviously, has gone mad.  I live on a farm.  He should be required to walk out to the field and pee with the rest of the animals.  We humans are such a pampered bunch.

The telephone rings just as I finish.  It is Theodore Dreiser.

“I hear Stowe called.  Claimed she could answer any question with a line of her own dialogue.”

“Yes, that’s true,” I said.

“What a show-off.  I can do the same thing.  Easy I’ll use my story The Second Choice.”

“Are you sure?  She was pretty much right on about the whole mopping business.”

“Are you questioning me?”

I’d always imagined Dreiser’s voice being deeper.  Maybe it was the connection.

“Okay.  Here goes.  When my friend Other Keith comes to visit, can I make him pee out in the field with the cows?”

“What?!.”

“Well, that’s what I want to know.”

“Alright.  The answer is -

How are you, Shirley?” he asked sweetly . . “

“You’re kidding, right.”

“No, wait, that’s not the one.  Here we go.  This is it -

What’s wrong, honey?  Aren’t you feeling well tonight?”

“Theodore . . “

“Hold on.  I’ve got it.

Make it Sunday, she pleaded.”

“It’s okay, really, Mr. Dreiser.  It wasn’t that important.”

“Wait!  I’ve got it -

Not this trip, anyhow, he answered bravely.”

“Yes, that’s the one.” He sounded proud.

“Excuse me, but I do believe that line is from The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.”

“Whatever,” and then the line went dead.

Dad is here.  Other Keith’s plane lands in a few hours.  The boy needs to get to school.  The dogs are out on the road.  An overweight stray black lab has found his way into the yard, and the boy wants to load him in the car and help him get back home.  The lab smells like something dead, but the boy would load salmon into buckets and help them get upstream if he could.  All creatures, great and small, will be saved, if he is put in charge.  All creatures, great and small, will be loaded into the backseat of my car and driven up and down the road until the are safely home again.

Oh look!  The space shuttle has just made an emergency landing in our back field!  The failed landing gear has unearthed a few more of Mr. Cooper’s bones!  There is sure to be an investigation!

What an exciting morning!  Everyone is barking.  Even the rabbits in their hutches.

Even though I am looking for him, Other Keith is somehow able to sneak up on me at the airport, which if you think about it, is ridiculous.  I like to imagine that I stand around with this unexplainable ability to notice everything, and yet, the one thing that I am watching for is suddenly standing right next to me, smiling.

But friends almost always show up out of nowhere, like some unidentified blip on a radar screen that was blank only moments ago.  Who can say with any degree of certainty where any of their friends actually came from?  What brought them into your life?  What kept them there, and how can such a bond even exist?  How does one explain this whole friendship thing to himself?  Where does one even begin?

Anyway, I’m standing there thinking all this while I watch hundreds of people take off their shoes and put them into those plastic tubs so security can have a closer look.  Bus tubs, I’m thinking.  That’s what they are.  Bus tubs.  If you work in a restaurant you pile dirty dishes in them and you call them bus tubs.  It all makes no sense.  What does it have to do with a bus?  But I bet after 9-11 the bus tub business has gone gangbusters.  I should have sunk some money into bus tubs, that’s what I should have done.

I think about everyone being told to get to the airport earlier and earlier because of more extensive security, and I wonder how much food and alcohol sales are up for the airport’s bars and restaurants during the last few years.  You know they’re up.  Americans don’t sit around without something to eat or drink in front of them.  No way.  Even bottled water sales are out of this world.  I look around for a drinking fountain, but I think the closest one is in the B Concourse, half a mile away.  I feel parched but can’t leave my post.  Not now.  I look at all the feet.  I watch security move stacks of bus tubs back and forth from one end of the conveyor belt to the other.  Everyone is so busy with something important to do.  Even me.  I must watch for -

And then, like I said, there he was, standing right next to me, smiling.  My radar never even picked him up, but I knew he was there.  A person senses these things about friends.  There always there, and they always will be.

I can’t remember why, but we start up with the laughing right away.  A five day trip.  A year’s worth of laughing.  You do the math.  We don’t have time.

Even though we have company in the house, I think it is important that life continue on as normal as possible.  Company or no company, we must survive, so I instruct Imaginary Keith that he needs to go to work.

“But it’s Saturday.  And Other Keith is here,” he complains.

“Yes, I’m sure we could come up with a thousand reasons for you to not go to work,” I tell him.  “But routine is important.  Routine is what gives a man backbone.”

Hmmm.  I’m not so sure that’s true, but I’ll say whatever it takes.

“Besides, you can take Other Keith to work with you.  Show him what you’re all about.”

Besides the landscaping, Imaginary Keith has a part-time management position that he’s worked at for several years.  There’s nothing wrong with doing a little moonlighting, I always tell him.  It builds character and lets a man sleep well at night.  You can never have enough work.  Work is what gives a man backbone.

Hmmm.  I’ll have to think about that one, too.  But it’s part of the spiel anyway, and always seems to get him out the door.

“You think Other Keith would want to go to work with me?”

“Sure.  Other Keith loves work.”

It’s true.  Other Keith works for one of those giant telecommunication companies that are taking over the world.  Just yesterday he took us to a website, and before I could do anything, my mouse pointer had changed from a little pointer into a little hand, just like that.  There was really nothing I could do.  That’s how powerful Other Keith’s company is.  Perhaps you’ve encountered it yourself.  It’s quite far-reaching.

“Yes.  Definitely.  Take Other Keith to work with you,” I encouraged.  “I think it’s important.”

“I guess that’d be okay.”

“Of course it’ll be okay.  It’ll be more then okay.  You’ll be making memories.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.  What if he asks me a bunch of questions, like What’s your mission statement? or Can you explain the company policies regarding employee disciplinary action? What if I’m forced to reprimand the employee?  What about that?”

“I’m sure none of that will come up.  If it does, and I’m sure it won’t, you’ll do your job.  That’s all there is to it.”

“Hmmm.”

“Don’t worry.  Everything will be fine.  I’ve already made the call for you.  You’re scheduled to work from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.”

“A 24 hour shift?”

“Nothing can go wrong.  He’s just one small employee.  You’ve been managing him for nine years now, haven’t you?  Surely you can manage him well for another 24 short hours.  Quit worrying so much.”

“I know.  But he asks so many questions.”

“True.”

“And what if he won’t stop talking the whole time?  What then?  And what if he drinks too many pops and starts bouncing around?  What about that?  And what about bedtime?  What if he won’t go to bed or starts arguing with me or gets all indignant and stubborn?  You know I have trouble with that once in awhile.  You know he can be a hard employee to manage.  He’s a handful.”

“He’s nine years old.  I would hardly call that a problem.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Now get to work.  Show Other Keith what we’re all about around here.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, we do have a mission statement, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“We do?”

“Yes.  If Other Keith asks, tell him our mission statement is Survive.

“Are you sure that’s our mission statement?  Sounds more like a motto.”

“And you sound more like a tired father then corporate management.  Now, off you go.”

The two Keiths are up to nothing, which for a couple of aging (but nowhere near old) men, is better then no good.  Anyone will tell you that.

The boy is off to his mothers, which means we can do just about anything.

“We can do anything we damn well please,” I say with a flourish of bravado.

“Why yes we can,” Other Keith replies. 

Twenty year old visions of past drinking and too much pizza flash before my eyes.  Other Keith and I are nothing more then a modern day Butch and Sundance.  Salem is at our mercy.  We hop in the car and tear off like a couple of reckless bandits.

“Should we go look at movies at Best Buy, Butch.”

“Sounds good, Sundance.” He rolls down the window and spits.

It’s good living in the West.  Out here, where the sun comes each night to catch some winks, every day is an adventure, and all the men walk around feeling just like heroes.

“Should we go get some coffee, Butch?”

“Sounds good, Sundance.” He reads the back of a movie, struggling with some shrink wrap.

We order vanilla lattes with skim milk and kick up our boots, our backs to the door.  It’s Sunday, and anyone who’s anyone in the West can tell you that a posse never rides on Sunday.  We have the place to ourself.  It feels good.

I am always on the lookout for a new and prosperous profession.  I’m all for change.  Change is good.  Folding money even better.

What about the job where I work as a secret, undercover, spy.  Only I’ll be a relationship spy.  People will hire me to vacation with their spouse or loved one, and then to secretly report back everything that is happening.  I will have all sorts of cool gadgets, cameras, and recording devices hidden in things like my hat or lapel.  (Do I have any lapels?  Hmmm.)

It sounds like such an easy job, until you begin to realize the moral dilemma I must face each day as I slowly become friends with the people I am being paid to spy on.  What will I do when I become sympathetic to their secret problems?  Will I end up keeping my own secrets, or worse yet, turn double-agent?  Will my new profession spur a new reality television series?  Who will play me?  Sure I’d love to play myself, but wouldn’t that blow my cover?

My only other lead this week was to create a national question competition.  For a fee, people would enter local question competitions.  They would list or say as many questions as they could in, say, five minutes.  Duplicate questions would instantly disqualify a contestant.  Winners would move onto regional competitions, then onto the nationals!  Speed rounds would focus on surprise topics, chosen by random.  Maybe Vanna would spin something. 

I always wake up early and want to grind some coffee beans so I can make some coffee.  I like coffee; you know that.  But grinding the beans is so loud, so I end up not doing it because I don’t want to wake up all the sleeping people.  So I will go without coffee, sometimes for hours on end, because I am so damn polite.

Politeness, it ends up, is ruining my life.

Even now, as I sit here writing this, I’m afraid my friendship with Other Keith is about to end if he doesn’t hurry and wake up.  It’s not like I want it to happen.  No, of course not.  I like Other Keith, and we’ve known each other so long now.  It’d be a shame to see it end over a few beans.  No, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t want to stop being friends.  That’s not what I want at all.  I didn’t ask to be this way.

I bet I could pinpoint that exact moment in every failed relationship I’ve ever had where things came undone.  And I would even go so far as to say that politeness, without exception, would be there at that moment, smiling away like some friendly-faced mass murderer.  With it’s arms outstretched, a box of chocolate in one hand, a chloroform soaked rag in the other, who can resist the embrace of politeness?

It’s not easy being polite.  Not easy at all.  But as much as I hate to do it, I need to go grind those beans.  It’s after 8:30, and if I don’t grind those things soon, I’m afraid I’m going to go back and smother Other Keith in his sleep with his own pillow, just so I don’t wake him.  And I ask you, what kind of sense does that make?  Friends shouldn’t smother friends.  No matter how polite I am, I know that’s not right.

Other Keith is flying home! 

Goodbye, Other Keith!  What will we do around here without you?  Sitting around doing nothing will not be the same.

I am suddenly very tired!

Other Keith is gone and I have just found out that my bank account could use a transfusion.  No, transfusion isn’t the right word.  Transfusion implies that something will be exchanged.  In with the good, out with that bad, and all that sort of thing.  Transfusion is definitely not the right word.

I call the automated bank account hotline just in time to hear my last coin disappear into some sort of black hole.  Ker-chunk! It sounds like a quarter.  Maybe a nickel.  I push “9” to repeat the options, and listen once again to the sound of my money disappearing.

Apparently I spend like a masochist but save like a sadist.  Or maybe that’s backwards. 

Is it spend like a sadist, but save like a masochist? I’ve never been comfortable around the financial metaphors, and really have no idea.

I am suddenly very tired!  Wait, I said that.  But it is worth repeating.

Tonight is the final night of preparation for the big Bill Clinton presentation, leaving little room for me to be tired.  A speech must be written and practiced, which means that I must press the boy into action.  Corral and guide.  Corral and guide.  Constant encouragement.  Support.  Yes!  That sounds good!  I must find the energy to do all of those things that seem so impossible when you’re exhausted.

I bet Dad shows up tonight, ready to talk.  Yes, that’s what will happen.  I’m almost positive.

The instructions for the presentation recommend a minimum of three facts for each of four different categories, but encourage the student to strive for more.

“It says three, dad.  Three is enough.” Who am I to argue with such logic?  When you’re tired, anything that means ‘less work’ makes perfect sense.

We struggle through the book, pulling facts left and right for the various categories.  Childhood, Education, Career, Interesting and Other Facts, we cover it thoroughly.  Little Billy Clinton’s glorious career, whittled down to twelve sentences, four of them somehow dealing with the elementary years.

“You’re doing great,” I tell the boy.  “How about you take a fifteen minute break?”

I retreat to the bathroom for some peace and quiet.  I will sit on the toilet and gather my thoughts for the final push, so to speak.

The boy follows me in, singing the schoolyard version of On Top Of Old Smokey at the top of his lungs.

On top of Old Smokey!
All covered with cheeeeeeese!

“I thought you were going to take a break,” I say.  The toilet is in the back corner of the room.  I am trapped.

“I am,” he tells me.

I lost my poor meatballlllllll
When somebody sneeeezed!

* * * * *

Fatherhood has no term limits.

Re-election is almost always guaranteed, and in most cases, a mandatory commitment.

And children almost never toe the party line.

The morning is buzzing with last minute speech writing for Little Billy Clinton.  How can the boy ever be prepared in time?  I’m afraid the presentation will be choppy and mispronounced.  He may very well be mistaken for the current president.

We are preparing a backup speech, just in case the crowd turns on him.

My size alone has destined me for a position in security.  I will wear dark glasses and an earpiece.  I will glance at the hallway mirrors often, watching for runners.  Security will be tight.  Delayed lunch break, and no recess until the motorcade has pulled away from the curb.

Someday I think I’ll write all about the girlfriend I had in junior high who wore the back brace.  She didn’t have it when she became my girlfriend, and then one day, she just showed up at school with the thing on.  Her shirt was suddenly all square looking.  From the back she looked like she a couple of extra spines, and from the front it was pretty much the same thing. 

It’s funny, being in junior high.  I don’t remember even saying a word about the brace.  I don’t think we talked about it even.  I held her hand, thinking that I was the only boy in school who had a girlfriend who had turned into a robot overnight.

I eventually moved away, like I always did.  The girl grew up and eventually lost the brace, her spine apparently deciding that it was time to get back to work.  I imagine that her shirts all settled back down into place.  Her breasts and shoulders reappeared, and she could turn her head without swiveling her whole body around.  She was no longer a robot.  She married one of my old friends, and the two of them got to work making a family.

I suppose it’s my job to someday go to a reunion just so I can meet her kids.  They’ll be wanting to know what it was like, you know, back then, when their mom was a robot walking the halls of a small, country school.  I know I’d want to know if my mom had spent any time as a robot.  That’s important stuff.

I’m busy.  You’re busy.  We’re all busy.

Other Keith introduced me to one great site while he was here.  It’s the internet, as it should be: zombo.com.  Everything you could possibly need, all wrapped up in one neat package.

The boy arrives by surprise, just as I am getting home from work.  “I’m staying here tonight!” he tells me.

The phone rings.  It’s Dad.  “What are the chances of a ride to the airport in the morning?” he wants to know.

Six white vans pull up.  It’s the investigation team, looking into the appearance of Mr. Cooper’s bones.

“Which way to the bones?” someone in a white jumpsuit asks.  I point off in the direction of the skid marks left behind by the crashed space shuttle.  I see him sizing me up, then jotting down something on a clipboard.  As if I don’t already have enough to worry about.  Fuckers.

“I’ll need to reschedule a meeting, Dad,” I say into the phone.  “I’ll call you right back.”

“Okay.”

“Who’s that?” It’s jumpsuit guy again.  Cripes.

“None of your business.” I suppose I should cooperate, but I’m just not in the mood.  Let him scribble away.  As far as I’m concerned, it was my dog who dug up Mr. Cooper’s bones in the first place.  If you ask me, finders keepers and all that business.

I go into the house.  The Little Billy Clinton presentation has been rescheduled for tomorrow.  Tonight we will tweak the coloring.  Add sky and some grass around his feet.  Search for realism.

I write and write, and every once in awhile, think I am making progress.  Everyone has dreams.

So it was exciting for a moment tonight, when the boy took a minute out of his busy schedule to reflect upon my writing career.  Endeavor.  Thing.  Whatever.

It seems his bit of enlightenment came after watching some other kid’s presentation today.  Today, my son’s class was visited by Isaac Asimov, or at least the Crayola facsimile.

“Dad, did you know that Isaac Asimov wrote 5,800 books?  Did you know that?  He wrote I, Robot, and he wrote almost 6,000 other books.  He wrote books for fifty years.

I do the math in my head and come up with something like a book every three days.  I share this with the boy.

“Daaaad!  He was an intelligent man.  Not like you who takes something like ten years to write a book.”

Twenty something years, but then, who’s counting.

“I don’t know,” I say.  “Maybe he could write a book in three days.  But surely not every three days for fifty straight years.”

“Dad.  It’s all he did.”

Well, it’s no wonder.

The hours of the day have been rearranged to make room for everything.  Morning meeting moved into the afternoon, making space for my second trip to the airport in two days.  I will squeeze a trip to the school at 2:30 to watch six presentations, the boy’s being one of them.  Breakfast at 8.  Airport and back.  Meet some people back here at noon to sell them some plants.  It is more action then I am accustomed to, but certainly nothing that I haven’t done in the past.  Ahhhh, those were the days.

I haven’t seen dad much on this trip, and I suppose I’ll be reflecting back on that in the coming days.  What does it all mean?  I think I see him through different eyes these days.  Part his doing, part mine.  We live in separate worlds, but then, I suppose we always have and it has just taken me these forty years or so to begin to recognize it.  I’m comfortable, seeing things for what they really are.  I think I’ve always been this way, but it’s a trait that has certainly grown over the past years.

There is nothing; not a single thing bouncing around.  I can make nothing up, or even make sense of the day.  I am tired and drained.

I turn on the camera to see what has happened.  Maybe it’ll know what I’ve been up to.  Something was surely captured.  It was, but not by me.

The best photographs to show up on the camera were all taken by the boy.  Other Keith and me, walking down the driveway, talking, only minutes before he left last Tuesday. 

And another, of my dad the morning that he left, as we all sat in the diner and had breakfast together.  It captures him, I think.  He was forever on the road, off working somewhere.  The diner, with its spattering of men, all sitting around drinking coffee, captures him in a way that is easy to remember, or at least imagine.  It makes perfect sense, a photograph of him in focus, yet off-center like that. 

I wandered the halls of the school, on my way to listen to the kids’ speeches.  I stopped to gaze upon the renditions of the presidents, drawn by the third graders and taped up for all to see.  If only the world was as kind as the visions of these kids.  Teddy and George Washington.  LBJ holding what I think is a small dog. 

Hoover and the promise of a chicken in every pot.  The angry Buchanan.

I went out for a beer last night and somehow ended sitting between two cousins who had not seen each other in 24 years.  The two women, one a hairdresser, the other some sort of brain surgery nurse, drank and whipped out pictures of their kids.  They talked about the feud that had kept parts of their family separated for decades, all the while using me as some weird sort of go-between.  I monitored the conversation and asked questions when appropriate.  Four beers into the night, I knew more about the two women and their extended families then I knew about my own family.  The drunker the brain surgery nurse became, the more she seemed to need reassurance from everyone around that she was pretty.  It seemed logical at the time.  I don’t think I could look inside other people’s heads on a daily basis without somehow beginning to doubt everything about myself.

I didn’t hit me until this morning that both women had chosen careers that dealt with the head.  One worked on the outside, while the other went in.

And more art from the classroom.  More of that age old political battle that rages between boys and girls.

I’ve been doing a lot of tossing and turning the last couple of nights, thinking of everything that has gone on over the last week.  I just sort of flip around under the covers, trying to imagine what it all means as I listen to the hum of the generator out in the field.  The investigators are still hard at work as they continue to dig up my field in their search for more of Mr. Cooper’s bones.  I’m beginning to wonder just who this Mr. Cooper really was.  I’ve closed the curtains, but the light from the floodlights streams in between the cracks.  I swear they have one aimed right at the house, watching.

I keep thinking about the conversation dad and I had as we drove the hour up to the airport.  All the same small talk that we always skate around on.  Ice so thick that you’d think nothing will ever crack it.  Divorces, marriages, new families, life in another country, life, death, and finances.  Love.  Loneliness.  Dreams and responsibilities.  Our skates barely scratch the surface, yet the slightest mention of any of it and you can almost see the two of us, pretending it’s gotten colder, looking around for another jacket.

One mile from the airport he brings up the fact of my broken marriage.  It is a safe distance to begin such a conversation, being only minutes from the baggage check-in window.  He knows he will be getting away and has a safe escape.

“I had no clue you and K were even separated,” he says.

“We didn’t really tell anyone,” I answer.  “We weren’t sure what would happen, so we just kept it to ourselves.” It’s a statement painted in both truth and lies.  A diplomatic answer.  What it means is that I told no one that I knew, other then my few close friends and everyone with access to the internet.  But other then that, I hadn’t said much.  Secrecy, after all, is the glue that binds us all together.  Once we learn the secrets, what would be left?

The conversation lives out its short life by turning into a series of brief, almost unrelated statements about life and relationships.  Everything that my dad says is about his own life, and what it meant for his own marriage to end with my mom, but of course, spoken in a completely guarded way.  Nothing is said directly.  There are no names or specifics given.  Everything is in some sort of code, and sitting there, I must elicit every meaning or emotion if I am to understand anything.  It is as if Dan Brown has written the entire dialogue for every conversation my dad and I will ever have.  We are the original Da Vinci family, hailing from parts midwest.  But you wouldn’t know that, not just by listening to us that is.  Not without knowing the code.

I stop the car and we unload his bags onto the sidewalk.  There isn’t much time, and I will only drop him off at the door.  We hug.

“I wish I could stay for a month,” he says.  “But I think some little guys need me more back there then here.” He gestures with his hand the height of his new little boys.  My half-brothers.  Three of them now, one of them whose name I can’t ever seem to remember.  It’s a strange thing to say, I think, as you leave one son and fly off to see three others, but then, there is always the code to fall back on.  Never get caught up on the words.  Read between the lines.  Find the meaning not in what is said, but in what is not said.  In the Da Vinci family, true meaning lies somewhere in the unspoken, but it is a code that I wish had been cracked and discarded a long time ago.  It seems as useless in today’s age as an heirloom teacup.  It all seems so fragile and requires so much protection.  One day, I think, someone’s going to smash that fucking cup.  Just throw into onto the ground and grind it under their heel until there is nothing left but dust.  Then what will the Da Vincis all stand around and talk about, when there is no more teacup left to protect and gather dust?  What then?

“I love you, dad,” I tell him, and we hug a second time.

I couldn’t tell you what he said back to me.  It’s not that I wouldn’t, it’s just that I can’t.  I don’t remember.  But I do know that it wasn’t what you’d think you might hear.  He stumbled on his response, I think, unsure of what to say.  Caught off guard, maybe.  I don’t know.  And that’s the point here, I think.  I might never know, not at least in the way that I imagine other people might know about their own fathers. 

Dad grabs up a suitcase in each hand and heads toward the doors, on his way back to Costa Rica.  I pull out the camera and try my best to capture an image of what it looks like to watch this man disappear.  I think of a lot of things in this way, if you really must know.  I look at things and see them as if they are about to disappear forever.  I can gaze at antiques for hours because I know that most of the things just like them have disappeared.  I stare at people like I am insane, because I know that only minutes from now, even seconds, they will not be the same person that I was just looking at.  Something will have changed.  Something will have disappeared.

But my camera is too slow, and I don’t get the picture that I thought I had in my mind.  Or maybe the camera also goes by the code of my family.  Maybe it knows that some things must remain a secret.  It senses this thing in me that would grind the family heirloom under my heel, and knows that I must be protected from myself.  Who am I to disrupt what has always worked?  The camera takes the picture, but slowly and deliberately, capturing only the faint outline of my dad as he disappears into the revolving doors.  It is an image that only I would recognize, having been there to witness it.  An image that would make sense to no one other then me.  I stare at the picture, thinking that maybe my camera knows more about what it means to disappear then I do.

“Goodbye, Dad,” I say, watching the place where he once was, noticing that the doors continue to spin, long after he is gone.

So lying there in the dark, with the floodlights streaming into my room, I think it is easy to see why I cannot sleep.  There is just too much to think about.  My weekend with Other Keith.  Dad’s brief appearance and disappearance.  And now this thing with the bones. 

Through the window, I hear the distinctive sound of a diesel governor kicking in.  It’s easy to imagine the government funded backhoe out in my field, pushing it’s bucket deep into the soft earth.  I have no need to sit up and look out the window.

Someone, it seems, is always looking for something.  Somewhere out there, there is always a man or a woman who seems lost, and for some strange reason, it doesn’t seem to matter to us whether or not they are dead or alive.  We don’t care.  When it comes to searching for the truth of someone, we seem incapable of making a distinction between the two.  And without a shred of evidence that the two are connected whatsoever, we begin to dig.