I started thinking about fried chicken, which led me to think about my mom.  My mom made fried chicken and I like fried chicken.  It’s easy to think about the two of them together.  I can even think about a big, black, cast-iron Griswold skillet if you’d like.

Here’s the thing: I love my mom, I know that, but I’m not sure I miss her as much as I sometimes miss fried chicken.  How’s that for truth on a Sunday afternoon?

I often wonder what the rules are for this sort of thing, sometimes thinking that there might be a quota we’re supposed to be filling on how much we miss people when they’re gone or away, and that I’m coming up quite a bit short. 

I’m not saying that my mom is dead, because the last I heard, she was very much alive.  She even lives here in the same town as me, not more then ten miles away.  Possibly even frying chicken, right now.

The influence of the father on the son!

Yesterday began with some tense negotiating, as the boy attempted to swing a deal he’s been working on since December when he, Imaginary Keith, and I moved back into the house.  The deal involved switching rooms - master bedroom for the boy’s bedroom.  An even swap, straight across.  Literally, I mean.  The doors are literally across the hall from one another.

I retreated down the hall, doing my best to stay out of the negotiations.  This was between the two of them, father and son.  Let them work it out, I thought.  Besides, the outcome is meaningless, as far as rooms go.  It’s the room I sleep in, and since I fall asleep in under a minute once my head hits the pillow, I almost never see the room.  I barely stay awake long enough to make it from the door to the bed.  My requirements for a bedroom are simple - a bed, a door to enter, and a clear path between the two.  I shared this bedroom philosophy with a friend of mine once, and all she had to say was, “Well, aren’t you the romantic.”

The conversation made it’s way down the hall and into the living room, so I listened.

“Dad, this closet is much bigger and will hold my toys and my clothes.”

“But you don’t hang up your clothes.”

“I don’t have any clothes.”

“Good thing, because you wouldn’t hang them up.”

“Maybe I’ll change.”

I hear Imaginary Keith laughing. 

It grew quiet down the hall for a minute or two then, the pair of them sitting down on the bed to mentally work out their strategies.  At least that’s what I imagined the two of them were up to.  The boy thinking hard about what to say to get what he wanted; Imaginary Keith thinking how best to fend off the attack of the boy and talk his way out of anything that might possibly involve more work.  It’s easy to imagine.  I don’t even think you have to close your eyes to see what’s happening back in that room.  Fathers and sons have been mentally working out these strategies for centuries, maybe since the beginning of time itself, if you go in for that sort of thing, and the two down the hall are not so different from all the fathers and sons who have come before them.  About the only difference might be is that they have me. 

Myself, I like to keep things simple.  I think about things I can remember, talk to people I can see, and listen to things within earshot.  I’ll leave the contemplation over all the rest, including the beginning of time, to those who don’t have anything better to do.  Me?  Like I said, I have the two down the hall.  They keep me plenty busy.

How about a bit of history, while our two characters mentally ponder?  I think we have time.  Just a few background facts to help the story push it’s way through the pages, so to speak.  Would that be good?

The mornings are always cool where I live, so when I get up I grab a sweatshirt before sitting back down on the edge of the bed so I can watch Imaginary Keith dream.  The fan is running, blowing across the bed, a constant sound, drowning out the rush of the occasional car on the road out front.  With the windows open the sound from the road is loud, but the fan helps, and it’s Saturday morning, before six.

He’s holding a gun on some people, but I don’t know why.  Three guys, maybe four, and a woman, who he stands across from, joking, in spite of the guns they have held on each other.  Beauty in dreams has a way of not holding still.  It flows and moves, more event then thing, something to enjoy rather then hold. 

Some people keep it all behind their eyes, he tells her.  In others, their stance, the way they hold themselves against the world, offering, then retreating, then offering again.  A constant dance.  I see my friend, staring at the woman’s face, the edges of the picture her hair, the men around her, the fence to his back, and the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, her lips slightly parted.

The lightest of freckles across her cheeks, barely visible.  You have to look right at the freckles to see them, too faint to spot by chance.  Does he see them, I wonder.  Did the fan blow them there, across my friend’s dream?

The guns are gone and they are laughing, then kissing, then in a small rental house of a friend.  They will live there.  It’s hard to describe, a jerky business, but watching a dream, and even better, dreaming a dream, is a change that is constant and smooth.  Dreams move and flow in and out of themselves, making sense.  Nothing holds still.  They are like life, my life.  Describing it is impossible, watching it a bit less impossible, living it the easiest thing of all three.  I watch my friend and the woman, dreaming together.

Hands moving over the outside of clothes, her leaning into him, him into her.  They are smiling, then looking around, then wandering.  Fingers set off passions that lead nowhere, which then turn into the architecture of the small house, hallway after hallway, rooms around every corner.  Doors to open, places to explore.  Look, she says, pointing to something sitting on a window ledge.  He leans past her, close, her hair brushing past his face; he breathes her in.

I watch the dream slowly slip away from my friend after that, disappearing as he tries to focus on the window.  He doesn’t know what it is the woman is trying to show him.  I see him searching, slowly losing himself, beginning to fade.  Then darkness.  He will sleep another hour, maybe two.

I move around the house, opening doors and more windows, inviting in the cold morning air.

Is everything temporary?  Even beauty?  Or does it have something to do with being forever on the move, that slipping motion from one existence or focus to another, the way dreams seem to slip away from us while we sleep?  Isn’t the dream still there, inside of us, lost somewhere in the brightness of the morning light.  Do dreams shine all day, invisible somehow to open eyes?

The boy sleeps and the cat runs in and out of the house through the open doors.

The coffee tastes good.

A neighbor’s rooster crows, far off in the distance, once, then twice, then yet again.

Bird song and a tractor starting up, three, maybe four farms down.

I see a copy of an Immanuel Velikovsky book on the shelf, Ages in Chaos, and think about my dad.  When was it that he read the Velikovsky books?  Earth in Upheaval and Oedipus and Akhnaton, I think are the titles.  The early 80’s, maybe?  They are the only books that I know of my dad reading, which seems odd in itself.  Why those, and why then?  And why did he quit reading, or did he?  The man is as unknown to me today as is what lies behind the pages of the Velikovsky books.  I remember us briefly discussing them once, a long time ago, but I was too young to hold my own, although the memory sticks with me as perhaps the closest we ever came, him and I, to actually opening up and talking about our own personal takes on what this universe could possibly mean and be about. 

I’ve never read the Velikovsky books, although I can see them, even now, sitting on the shelf next to the aquarium that I have grown to hate, then grown to ignore.  Twenty-five years they’ve waited for me, making me think that perhaps books are the one beautiful thing in this world that actually knows how to hold still. 

Is it possible that books are the dreams, visible in the light?  That writers are people who never quite wake up?

If Imaginary Keith ever wakes up I will ask him.  Are you awake, my friend, or are you still staring at freckles scattered across some imagined woman’s face, mistaking them for stars?

Days like today make it worthwhile.  Front stoop and a beer, the click of the sprinkler making its full circle around the yard every ten seconds, the drops barely reaching my bare toes.  A stone path to my right, leading around the house, thirty or more varieties of plants tucked in around the edges, visible from right where I sit.

Fernando and his brother installed the path some years ago.  Later that same year they would have a falling out over something they both tried to explain to me, but I have since forgotten.  The brother would quit, leaving me only a note.  The path remains and the brothers have since made up.

Blue star creeper between the rocks.  A tiny juniperus at the head of the path, a pottery frog at it’s feet, once clay-red, now blackened by age and covered with moss and lichen.  The juniper’s common name escapes me, as so many plant names do.  I remember the names of plants no better then I remember the names of people.  In one ear and out the other.  Events stick with me better.  A sound, maybe, or the way a heavy tree felt, the bark of the trunk against my hand as we struggled to settle it into a hole.  From the front stoop I see three maples, another just around the corner, out of sight.  A Crimson something or other, King or Queen, I can’t remember, planted long before I ever came along.  Mr. Cooper’s doing, no doubt.  I’ve added some variegated variety, a vine maple, and around the corner, a red dissectum.  My plantings all smaller varieties, more easily managed.  They will never contend with Mr. Cooper’s tree, choosing instead to bathe in it’s burgundy dark leaves each fall.

Some azaleas and viburnum, a couple of pieris, a choisya ternata and one lone shrub rose, all within the reach of Cooper’s maple, struggling to compete for both sun and water along the start of the path, which sits most of the day in shade.  The maple is a handsome but thirsty beast, the branches stretching out, grabbing at the house five feet from their tips.  But where the sun breaks through, near the turn in the stone that wraps the path around the end of the house, a dozen different plants thrive, warm and happy.  I’ve forgotten their names and am too lazy to walk over closer and try to remember.  An iris of some sort, a golden-tipped evergreen I can’t quite place, another viburnum, and from the looks of it, one sad, sparse-looking heather.  And daisies.  Daisies so white in the full sun I can’t look straight at them.  No one forgets daisies.  Not even me.

Imaginary Keith is hard at work this morning, arranging the bills into proper stacks.  After sixteen years in business, we were proud to discover that the company had finally outgrown the outdated Overdue / Due two-stack system.

“We’ve wasted quite a bit of time having a Due pile,” I noted.  “Aren’t bills always due, simply by default?”

“I think you’re right.” Imaginary Keith has been short with me ever since I cancelled Donut Friday nearly two months ago.  I keep thinking he’ll snap out of it.

“I suggest we streamline the entire accounting department into a single pile.” It is sometimes painfully obvious to me why I am in charge of the company, and not my friend.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a dedicated, hard worker, but let’s admit it, Imaginary Keith will always be one of the worker bees.  He looks to me for important decisions.  He depends on me. 

“Should we vote?”

Do you see what I mean?  I’ve always found dependence to be a sort of endearing trait in people.  We depend on people and in return they depend on us.  It’s a sort of two-way street, with the exception that someone must be put in charge of painting the yellow stripe.  The fair person, just like the fair business owner, realizes the importance of painting that stripe close to the middle of the road.  Everyone must be given as much room as possible.

“Good idea!  Yes, let’s vote.”

So by a 2-0 unanimous decision, the entire accounting department is undergoing a drastic restructuring this morning.  Sweat drips off of Imaginary Keith’s forehead.

“I’m a little confused what to do here,” Imaginary Keith says.  “Is it a single Due pile, or a single Overdue pile?”

I should mention that there are times when dependency feels like a wet, heavy sweater, pulling you under the surface of a swollen river, dragging you to the bottom.  The demands of your dependents will sometimes pound you against the rocks, again and again.  Many of their questions will simply be unanswerable.

Who would have imagined that a single pile accounting system could lead to such a philosophical conundrum?  I will have to do some thinking.

“More coffee?” I ask.

Since turning forty a few years back, I’ve suffered more ingrown whiskers on my chin then in all of the first forty years put together, which realistically only means twenty or so, since the first twenty years might easily be called my whiskerless years.  My face seems to have lost the will to push them through to the surface, but of course, is only a guess.  I have no real idea at all why my whiskers do or don’t do the things that they do or don’t do.  We might even go so far as to say that my whiskers are as much of a mystery to me today as they were the day they first appeared on the scene, which when I think about it, kind of bothers me. 

I always had this feeling that as the years passed and I grew older, I would be able to stare into the mirror and the picture of myself would become clearer and more precise.  I would know myself and the things about myself; that the mirror would reflect back an image that I could see inside of.  I would become transparent to myself, the mysteries would fade away, leaving nothing hidden, no secrets or unexplored paths, and I would understand what I had done, who I was, and even what I would become.  I thought I would be able to stare into that mirror and in that one glance see the story of myself. 

That, I’d think, is the story I will tell.

The thinning hair and wrinkles, the looser skin, discolorations and spots, eyes that no longer seemed to open quite as wide as I remember - these things were easy to understand.  Effects of the sun and gravity, stress and age, an eagerness and energy that naturally slips away from us right along with our elasticity.  I can accept getting old.  Part of me even looks forward to it.  I’m tired of trying so hard to keep up.  Staying young is the real struggle, but getting old, that’s easy.

So this morning I looked in the mirror and realized I was never going to understand anything about these whiskers, and in that one look, knew there was never going to be any clear and more precise vision of myself.  How can I possibly tell the story of myself when I can’t even explain the things that are growing out of me?  Hair, words, ideas, suddenly none of it made any sense, so I turned off the light and left the room.

A phone call would have saved her $600.  I know it and she knows it, but it’s not something we talk about.  We get to work and she retreats into her house.  Cats watch us from under the shade of rhododendrons.

The fencing company she’s hired has chopped into her pipes and wires in so many places that turning the water on literally brings her back yard to tears.  Water pours out of a half a dozen places and anything remotely electrical has been rendered useless.

“We don’t normally do fences,” were the contractor’s words.  “But I guess we can this time.” It’s hard to imagine that so many problems can begin with only a phone call, while so many others can be avoided.  My cell phone has been turned off now for a week, due to non-payment.  More of my own troubles, and nothing to do with this woman’s.  I’ve enjoyed being unreachable.  The most peaceful week of my life in a long time.

We finish the work by three.  The sprinklers are running and the shrubs are smiling.  The grass glistens under the fresh water and the woman is actually grateful to write me a check.  It is small business in America, the way it should be.  Problems fixed by hustling, happy workers with a smile on their face, and for the briefest of time today, I realize I am part of something productive.  In the almost overbearing heat, I have temporarily escaped my depression.  Sweat drips down my face, but I remain focused - blue to blue, white to white, red to red, a waterproof wire nut, recheck for a good connection.  No cutting corners, no shortcuts.  Do it right and do it once.  Don’t bury any mistakes.  Life is short enough.

There is a certain crocosmia leaf near the redwood that waves back and forth like mad.  Every time I look, there it is, shaking away when all the other leaves are perfectly still.  I have some theories - breeze next to the tree is different then away from the tree, the web of a spider is attached to it, affecting it somehow, and my personal favorite, frogs.  Two frogs, fooling around on the backside of the leaf, staring up at the brilliant orange/red blossom framed by redwood needles on one side and a perfectly clear blue sky on the other.

But I don’t get up to look, and for weeks now, I’ve watched that leaf shaking, content to do nothing.

I don’t know what to think about that.  Not the leaf, but me.  Staring out the window of the back door at a single shaking leaf without enough energy to drive my curiosity the thirty feet it would take to satisfy it.  Only ten steps.

This morning I’m outside at the back table.  House to my right, sun off slightly to the left and in front of me so I can see the words on this screen, and that leaf, straight out to my left.  Closer now, now that I’ve ventured outside.  Twenty feet, maybe, and still shaking.  Something is definitely going on over there.

At 8:00 the guys will drive in for work and the whole thing of daily existence will start all over again.  The leaf will disappear from my thoughts for another day, replaced by the questioning looks of the guys as they wonder what we will be doing.  I think it will be hot, or as hot as it ever gets around here, mid-90’s.  I will talk with Fernando, falling naturally into a sort of broken English that has become my second tongue over the course of the last eight or nine years.  Fernando is a great man and will smile as we talk.  Forever smiling, I think, like the leaf of the crocosmia forever waving.  The two of them seem always in motion, and sometimes when I am staring out at them from behind a window, it is clear to me that I will never possess whatever force it is that drives them forward.  The things inside a man seem his, and his alone. 

The coastal winds pick up, blowing in warm and slow, and now all of the crocosmia leaves are in motion.  I hear the sound of a slowing car, and then the front gate swinging open.  The boy will soon wake up and the sun will rise and the day will grow hot.  I will find and repair a broken wire today, hidden somewhere in someone’s yard, and their dry plants will be happy.  Everything is in motion.

And the day, as it always does, will push me along with it.

The roundup is a bust!  Before we even cross through the first gate, the four cows have spotted our approach and are heaving themselves up from the ground.  Four thousand pounds of potential ground beef, eyeing us with suspicion.  Maybe a suspicious roast or two.

“Do you see mine?” Harry asks, referring to his own steer who is also somewhere out in the field, having hopped the fence more then a month ago so he could hang out with the girls.  Harry is slower and leaner then the last time I saw him, maybe a year ago, and now leans into a cane meant to help him through what are to be his arthritic years.

“Over there.” The steer is on the far side of the field, near the slope leading up to the village, watching us.  Too far for Harry and his cane, I think, but he heads off through the grass anyway, his cane poking in the grass with each step, searching for level ground.  I trail along after him and the other two, Fernando and Susano, watch me, waiting for instructions.  My four cows have already spooked and are halfway to the south end of the field, gaining ground on us with every step, and looking back over their shoulders (the Chuck cuts) to see if we are coming.

“We’ll sell mine next week,” I tell Harry.  “No need chasing them around all morning.” I don’t mention that Fernando and I had been outsmarted by the cows last night.  I’d set out a bale of hay, trying to peacefully lure them up, and when that hadn’t worked, we’d tried rounding them up ourselves.  You wouldn’t think a 1000 pound, over-weight creature would be so quick, but they are.  Of course, you might also think that a 240 pound, over-weight creature wouldn’t be so slow.  The cows had zipped past me, kicking up their hind legs (the Round cuts) and laughing at me as I gasped for breath.  I could have poked one in the eye she was so close, although I’ve heard eye-poking only subdues sharks.  Maybe subdue isn’t the right word.  Anyway, my flapping arms weren’t enough to turn the herd and they’d brushed on by.  But that was last night.  This morning they were wary and on their toes (the dog treat cuts) and doing their best to keep their distance.

“Let’s just push mine up to that corner of the field,” Harry said.  “The butcher can get him from there.”

Rounding a steer into the corner of a field is much easier then rounding four scared cows into a barn, let me tell you.  Plus, the four girls were already standing in that poor steer’s fateful corner, so it took very little convincing that he, too, should be standing there.  Boys just follow girls, no matter what the consequences, the devil be damned, or in this case, the butcher, I guess.

A country butcher, if you don’t already know, must be proficient with both a knife and .22 rifle.  One shot and then he’s off to work. Twenty minutes later or so, all that’s left is a bloody spot on the field which the dogs will find and lick at.

And have you ever witnessed a herd of cows when one of the others is being slaughtered?  It could be a cow they’ve hung out with for years, their own off-spring even, but when that gun goes off and the cow drops, you might think they’d run, or at least startle a little, but you’d be wrong.  No, they just stand there, maybe look over for a fraction of a second at what’s going on, and then return to eating grass or chewing their cud or whatever else it was they were doing, which come to think of it, can’t be much.  I think the only thing left is drinking water.

So today one steer will die and four will live.  I’ll catch my breath and Harry and his cane will climb back into his truck and drive home.  Fernando and Susano will go to work, and I’ll go into the house for a cup of coffee.  Drinking as if nothing has happened.  Like a cow.

Mr. Smith still needs gates and a half a dozen people are waiting on a bid of some sort.  The floor’s piled high with unopened bills and credit card statements, I have more then twenty phone calls to return, work hasn’t seemed to line up correctly for my guys today, and the dogs need licensing.  But I do believe the coffee is ready.

I bounced around this weekend, wondering whose dream I was trying to live.  Anyone’s?  No one’s?  It used to feel like my own, but of course, dreams have a way of shifting, not so linearly, like time (hold on, is linearly even a word?), but with more of a back and forth motion, like a leaf or a sheet of paper slicing back and forth through the air as it makes its way towards the ground.  How about that?  The separateness of dreams from life, yet their yearning to be grounded.

Do even dreams need stability? Does even the most avant-garde artist keep a toe on the ground?

Will Mr. Smith be happy with gates on Tuesday?  What about the broken irrigation wires, hidden somewhere underground in Silverton?  I’d bet you anything there’s an overdue auto insurance bill sitting in that pile of mail that needs tending to.

Can you even remember the innocence of childhood, before the crush?  I’m losing mine, bit by bit, each memory systematically replaced with either a new wrinkle that starts at the corner of my eye and spreads across my face like a crack in a windshield, or a scowl, which seems harder to wipe away each morning.

The coffee tastes good.  Cool air blows through the window and across my desk this morning, and I hear the guys out back by the shop, gearing up for the day, counting on me.

Did I ever dream of being counted on?  I don’t remember.  It doesn’t sound familiar.

I don’t know about today’s big plan, but yesterday’s was the drive-in movie.  Gut all the back seats out of the mini-van, puff up the air mattress, sleeping bags and blankets, lots of pillows, and snacks.  The boy is always excited about the drive-in, although it might be safe to say he is just as excited about setting up the nest in the back of the van as he is the movie.  His own rolling fort.  It doesn’t take a kid to appreciate the fun in that.  Look at the size of the RV market, for instance.  It’s not something easily outgrown.

I still toy with the idea of living in an RV.  Selling enough of everything until my worldly possessions stow away comfortably in the space left between roof and wheels.  Furniture and art - gone.  No more desks and toys and too many clothes.  Whittle down the books to only the basics.  The whimsical part of the idea has me moving about the country as my mind moves me, writing stories about the people I meet and the places I see.  How about a satellite link?  Sure, why not.  I would publish to the web from the comfort of my rolling home.  I would be a traveling blogger.  No wait, a professional traveling blogger!  I would be paid to do this, somehow.  Writing and snapping pictures.  Conversations with complete strangers, asking questions that go straight to the heart of the matter.

There are problems with the plan, of course.  Money and stability for the boy to name only two.  There are others.  I’m also reminded by the boy about the animals. 

“We’d have to wait at least until Barncat dies,” he says.  “I don’t think Barncat would like living in an RV.” Yes, that makes sense, I think.  That’s sound logic.  We’ll wait until after Barncat dies.

“Maybe Molly can live with Mom, and Pepper and Tuxi can live in the RV,” he adds.  Leave it to him to start thinking about all the animals.  Hmmm, driving around the country with a boy and an RV full of animals.  You can almost hear the air beginning to leak out of the dream, can’t you?

Of course, the biggest hitch is the boy himself.  You just don’t drag kids around the country and away from their mothers for no reason other then you feel like it.  Sure I’m selfish, I’ll admit it, but then, I have this idea that all people are, no matter how they appear or act on the surface, and that at the core of each and every one of us lies a being being moved solely by it’s inner desires.  All the rest - side dishes.  Selfishness is the main meal.  It consumes us and we love it.  We love it because we love ourselves, more then anything else.  Mmmm.  We can’t get enough!  It’s the stuff that fuels vanity and desire, lurking behind all that is pleasurable.  It is the thing that is hidden behind every conversation. 

Keep in mind that I say this about selfishness fully believing that it’s been given a bad rap over the years.  The connotations of the word itself should be the only argument I need to present.  Everyone will tell you that selfishness is bad, and I would agree that, at times, this is true.  But is there good selfishness?  Sure, of course.  Who hasn’t needed and desired time alone to regenerate?  Who hasn’t wanted their career to flourish, knowing that it came at the expense of another?  The list is endless, but it suddenly occurs to me - what’s this have to do with what I was talking about?

Barncat dying?  Buried desires to be free of responsibility?  Unresolved anger issues over failed relationships and consequently, added financial burdens?  The subtle difference of feeling that I am being driven, rather then driving through life?  Overall issues about control or loss of control?

What I like best about the issue of selfishness is it’s ability to raise questions that would seem to demand an honest answer.  A tough question you can choose to either face or avoid.

Oh!  The movie.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which we both liked.  I’ve never read the book, but it felt like I detected Roald Dahl up there on the screen.  Or maybe I’m confusing Dahl with Burton, but I like them both, so I’m happy either way.  And Corpse Bride looks up my alley.  We were suppose to stay for the second feature, War of the Worlds, but the boy’s imagination ran away from him before the film even started running.  Aliens!  Yikes!

“Let’s go home, Dad,” he said.  “It’ll be too scary.”

So we gathered up our things and headed home.

Can you guess the first thing out of his mouth this morning?

Yep, you’re right.  “Dad, I want to go back and see War of the Worlds.  Daylight conquers all fears.

And even though I don’t gamble, I find myself gathering up a hundred red poker chips, strewn across the living room carpet now for more then a week, maybe two.  They are everywhere - under tables and edges of chairs, beneath pillows and couch blankets - each little round chip a reminder of something, I suppose.  The living room has been attacked by symbolism, leaving behind a trail of leftovers.  Clues on how to get back where I came from.  I try to remember to bend at the waist as I toss everything into tubs.

Past the couch, straightening cushions, brushing off crumbs, moving past the baby monitor that the boy found the other day, the transmitter portion now snuggled in amongst the couch pillows, the receiver sitting on my desk, next to the computer.  The boy’s idea of a good idea, since all the static came out on my end as I sat trying to work.

Dad, can you get me something to eat? Fifteen second break.
Dad, can you get me something to eat? Fifteen second break.
Dad, can you get me something to eat? Stomping sounds coming down the hall.

“Isn’t the monitor working, dad?” the boy wants to know.

“No, I am,” I reply.  The boy is sharp.  He knows exactly what I mean.

“Maybe it’s not turned up loud enough.” He adjusts the volume.  The hiss of the static is now unbearable.  It feels like we are trying to capture poltergeists on audio tape.  The boy stomps back down the hall.  I hear the thump of him settling back onto the couch.

Hsssssssssssss.

Dad, can you get me something to eat?

To the bedroom, strip the sheets and pillow cases, noticing the wear.  Now is not the time for my sheets to wear out.  You’d think they’d know that.  It’s the second load of laundry this morning, which means stretching out the drain pipe from the back of the washer, through the garage, and out the back door.  The septic needs work and can only handle two loads a day - if you space them out evenly, exactly twelve hours apart.  Miss the timing and water pours onto the laundry room floor and the toilets all gurgle the alarm.  Somehow when I wasn’t looking, everything around the house has become so temperamental.  Why again am I working so hard to save the farm?  Hold on, there’s no time for that question now.

Back through the living room to gather up clean clothes.  More toys.  Glance at the fish tank.  Damn, still alive.  To the kitchen, where I finally make it to the dirty broiler pan that’s been hiding on the counter for at least a week.  Okay, ten days.  Our eyes will look the other way on nearly anything if we let them.  The nose isn’t quite so easy going, but the eyes, they’re easy.  They’ll forget anything we tell them to.  That pan?  What are you talking about?  What pan?

“Dad, I’m starving!”

It feels like a flashback, but it isn’t.  The boy is there in front of me, actually starving to death.  He’s gaunt.  His clothes are loose, barely hanging onto his thin… wait a minute, those are my clothes.

“I’m starving!” Of course, it’s been four hours.  If one isn’t careful, the dietary requirements of small boys are as easy to overlook as dirty broiler pans. 

“Sure.  Okay.” I close my eyes and listen for the hum of my machines, busy scrubbing away at things in the background.  There should be a machine that feeds the kids, other then parents, I mean.  That would be a useful invention.  I remember one in the 70’s, on television.  I believe it was called Alice.

Poor Imaginary Keith, alone and tired, unable to work, out of money, out of sorts, wallowing in depression without direction.  And then thinking he could stop drinking coffee.  He’s such a joker.

“I see you brewed a pot,” I say to him.  “Even poured yourself a cup.”

“Yes, but I haven’t touched it, you’ll notice.  I bet it’s even cold.”

Giving up coffee at this point would be such a shame.  We just bought new coffee cups.  A whole set - plates, cups, and bowls - all with little garden theme pictures around the rims.  No, giving up coffee at this time makes no sense at all.

“I think beer might be the problem,” I tell him.  “Not coffee.  When’s the last time you stayed up all night drinking coffee?”

“I don’t know.”

“Same question, only beer instead of coffee this time.”

You know, the problem with my friend is that he believes in reason.  That behind every action should lie clearly explainable reasons, and that a person should have some sense of these reasons, in order to justify their actions.  The problem with my friend is that once he loses sight of reason, he also loses sight of action.

“I saw you working yesterday,” I say.  “That’s good.”

“You didn’t tell me they were going to take the house away.  What are you thinking?  You need to tell me these things.  I need to know what’s happening to me.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay.  Well, you’re cleaning the house this morning.” Sometimes with imaginary friends a person can end up feeling so Huck Finn-ish. 

“I am?”

“Yes.  The bank never takes away a clean house, only the dirty ones.  So I suggest you get busy.  Maybe start with the kitchen.  Banks hate dirty kitchens.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.  Have I ever lied to you?”

“What about my coffee?”

“You better have a sip.”

“Maybe just a taste.”

“Yes, just a taste.”

Because there are two loans on the farm from the same bank, the Notice of Intent to Foreclose notices arrive at the house in pairs.  Not so unlike the door-to-door missionaries, it seems, their promise of home on one hand and eternal damnation on the other.  It’s quite a sales pitch.  Pay the price, or, pay the price.  The choice is all yours.  No pressure, no right or wrong answer, but whatever you do, you better get it correct the first time.  Today’s economy isn’t geared towards the do-over.  No, it’s happy rolling over you the first time.

Blink, blink.

So good-bye four cows, Tuesday will be your last taste of this farm’s tall, sweet grass.  Neighbor Harry will arrive with his truck and trailer and you will load, two by two, like Biblical beasts, like hopeful missionaries, like foreclosure notices, like everything and everyone who’s walked blindly forward two by two, complacent with existence.  Good bye four cows.  You will with that cow-eyed innocence quite literally, at so many levels, have bought the farm.  At least for another month.  If you were younger, even one of you, I suppose we would eat you, but as luck would have it (whose it’s hard to say), life has a way of toughening nearly all things beyond the point of wanting to chew and swallow them.

Blink, blink.

I miss them already.

The behind-the-scenes software transformation went off with barely a hitch, and the gears around here are turning once again.

There is talk around the office of offering blog hosting and design; luring away a few of the disgruntled Typepad users who must tolerate unbearable slowness.  A small, happy family, living peacefully under the Word Shadows roof.

A forum module has been added, but is not yet open for business.  How will it be used?  Good question.  I have no idea.  But I know ideas exist, and because of this, a forum.  Why not!  It would be an excellent place for members to carry on extended conversations, moving one step beyond the often too-transitory, news-like nature of weblogs, where freshness is in constant demand.  Good ideas need a bigger, slower space.  Conversation and debate takes time.  So, of course, what else - a forum!  The perfect idea!

Tomorrow I wrap up the landscape project for Mr. Smith and his anxious wife, building two gates to keep out the world.  But today… ahhh, today I talk of community.  We are all people - three thousand parts talk, one part action.

Ode To Budlou**

DUSTY: How about Pereira?
DORIS: What about Pereira?
DUSTY: You don’t care! 
        Who pays the rent?
DORIS: Yes he pays the rent
DUSTY: Well some men don’t and some men do
        Some men don’t and you know who
DORIS: You can have Pereira
DUSTY: What about Pereira?

-- T.S. Eliot, fragment of a prologue
**to be read to the beat of “Who’s On First?”

I sometimes start to worry that T.S. Eliot will call me up and I won’t have anything to say.  I can’t just tell the guy that I read him in college and that was it.  One semester, maybe two if he’s lucky.  A couple of poems.  The drunk years, he’ll no doubt say, driving me even further into my corner.  Do I dare tell him that they’ve named a comedy show after his poem - The Hollow Men?  I think you see my problem here.  I watch my phone endlessly these days, fearful of who will call next, each ring more terrifying then the last.

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With a bobtail cur
In a coat of fur
And a porpentine cat
And a wopsical hat:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
          (Whether his mouth be open or shut).

-- T.S. Eliot, Five Finger Exercises, V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg

I am planning on upgrading the site Wednesday night to the newest software release of ExpressionEngine, so you can expect some down time beginning sometime tomorrow.

If all goes as planned, the switch will be painless and quick, and members of Scrine will be greeted by a new control panel look with some additional features.

If all doesn’t go as planned… well, then goodbye my invisible friends, and thank you for your participation in this wacky experiment.  Your addiction to this place should wear off in seven to ten days, so don’t be alarmed.  All will be well.

The Smiths are nowhere to be found, but the neighbor Greg is on hand to rattle my ear.  The fence project is to be a joint effort, with Greg providing the materials, Mr. Smith the money, and us, of course, all the hard work.  We approached the backyard with the air of proud slaves, our heads held high, shovels and posthole diggers thrown over our shoulders.  Greg and I make our way to the property line to discuss strategy.

If you don’t mind the constant irritation of another person’s voice, there is great entertainment to be found in people, especially if you happen to be listening to one of those people obsessed with mentioning their worldly possessions.  I have only fifty feet of fence to discuss, that’s what’s on my mind, but by the time Greg is finished talking, I know that he owns three white limos, one black limo, one stretch Hummer, (one I’ve forgotten), two hot air balloons, a tractor, three separate phone numbers, one of which rings by way of Las Vegas, a five h.p. Honda knock-off engine for one of the fans for one of the balloons which happens to have a broken crank or something (the engine, not the balloon), an extra hot-air balloon basket (called something else, I think) which he will either sell on ebay or to a local restaurant to hang from their ceiling as a decoration, two trailers, a welder (which he is willing to use for the fence project, should it be required), three phone numbers (yes, I know I did, but he apparently thought it was worth re-mentioning), a laser level, a nice bucket of brand new wooden stakes, and, as Greg put it, “the wife, who also balloons.”

I was beginning to understand Mrs. Smith’s reluctance to be seen.

“So shoot me a bid for the two gates, okay?” Greg adds as I try to walk away.  “And why don’t you slam in those two posts on the other side of the house while you’re at it.  You won’t be too awful unreasonable with me, will you?”

Unreasonable is a funny word, isn’t it?  One of those with no real meaning.

“And we can always trade some work for some time in one of those,” he says, pointing over to the limousine sitting in the driveway.  “I have six.  Take your pick.”

I walk away from Greg, trying to imagine being trapped in a limo with him, the happy-to-be-talking-with-you business man smile still stuck on my lips.

“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” I pretend to say in my head.  “I’d love to ride around in your car as a reward for sweating nearly to death today.  My, my, how lovely.”

Today’s adventure begins where we left off a month ago - at the home of one Mr. Smith, customer.  Mr. Smith would like a fence installed along one side of his new back yard, as well as an arborvitae hedge planted along the opposite side.

Mr. Smith is a nice fellow, but often tells me that his wife is growing anxious.  I have never seen the anxious Mrs. Smith, but I will assume she is there in the house, watching us through the kitchen window.

Perhaps Mrs. Smith is anxious for my current financial situation.  If she comes outside this morning I will tell her that I am going home to pay a few bills.  That will certainly calm her down.

I won’t tell her that the boys are going over to the coast today to play on the beach.  The ocean is much too large and ominous.  Is it a lie, to not tell her?  Or am I being nice?

The Smiths are also getting two gates.  One on each side.  I would very much enjoy seeing the Smiths use their new gates simultaneously.  I imagine Mr. Smith choosing the gate on the right, nearer the street, and Mrs. Smith on the left, where the property is narrower between the houses, and she will not be so easily seen by the neighbors.

Play continues.  The boys splash around in the pool while I try my hand becoming the new digital Van Gogh.  But with two ears, I’m afraid there is no punch to my color, but worse yet, no chin on my subject.  Obviously I am an impostor.  I stand here before you, shamelessly flaunting poor art reproductions.

The piece shown here is currently available** as the ever-popular refrigerator magnet.  Mail order only.

**while supplies last

The boys are still sacked out in the backyard, the tent sides billowing in the morning breeze, making me think each time I walk by the window that they are rolling out of their sleeping bags, preparing to storm the house with their talking and hungry stomachs.

I love a quiet house.  It ranks right up there as one of my favorite things.  No other creatures moving around making noise, that feeling of being all alone, my mind free to wander without the threat of distraction.  Thinking of nothing, thinking of everything, listening to the sounds that are the rest of the time masked by noise.  Maybe birds outside, or the creak of the timbers in the attic above as they warm up in the morning sun.  I can hear horses, off in the distance, and the breeze itself, barely moving, pushing it’s way past the screens and into the house.

I spent last night out under the stars, tucked into a sleeping bag with only my head sticking out to feed the mosquitoes.  Big Dipper to my left, all the rest straight up and to the right.  If I knew more stars, I suppose I’d mention them, but I don’t, so I won’t.  The Little Dipper, of course, I know about that one, attached somehow to the North Star, but it’s not one of those things I’d bet my life on.

Betting on the stars has never seemed like much of an idea to me.  Horoscopes make no sense.  The fact that you read them in the newspaper makes them highly suspect right there.  I don’t believe anything I read in the paper, especially a sentence or two that tells me how my good fortune will spin on any particular day.  Planets aligned be damned!  How does the universe know where I’m hiding out?  The stars don’t keep track.  Don’t try telling me that a burning ball of gas I can barely see has some bearing on my financial success or love life or ability to overcome adversity.  I won’t put up with it.  I can’t.  Besides, what if I did?  I’m Pisces, after all, which either means I’m at the start of some life cycle or the end.  Either way it looks like I’m screwed.  Common sense alone tells me to ignore astrology.  Anyone with any sense at all knows when to pull the cover over his head or crawl under the bed.  I’ll be damned if I’ll believe in something that tells me I’m about to start creation all over, and even more damned if I’ll give that whole ending business the time of day. 

The end of Keith Ecklund.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my days.  I’m just now coming into alignment. Full of heavens and light and god knows enough burning gas to illuminate a hundred galaxies, I may in fact be the North Star itself, uncertain of my own location in the night sky, but more then ready to point the way for everyone else.

And while I wait for understanding and direction, I play around with the Wacom graphics tablet, currently on loan from my good friend, Other Keith.  Look at this!  I am Vincent Van Gogh!

***I am also told that the new color design has a “celery green” look to it.  That is not a good thing. 

Word Shadows is going under the knife for the next week or so.

Pardon Our Dust is, I believe, the appropriate saying for such a situation, even if web design raises no dust.

But we like to think of accomplishment as having raised a big cloud of dust, don’t we?

My house is dusty.  Apparently it is being redesigned.

Word Shadows will be open for business during the remodel.  If blogging can be considered business.  Or open for that matter.

Oh, I’m sorry.  You see, I’m still much too busy, brooding about my good misfortune.  I am stuck in some mud you might say, my motivation spinning uselessly like a bald tire.

I think I saw a woman the other day who looked just like the girl I went to the high school prom with.  The junior prom, I guess you call it.  And I mean “looked just the girl” in the way I imagine she would look once she’d aged twenty five years like the rest of us.  Like me.  Anyway, I only think of it now because I remember pulling someone out of the mud on prom night.  Everything in the rural midwest, at least during the high school years back then, seemed to revolve around a keg of beer hidden away in someone’s barn along some muddy road.  Someone was always getting stuck.  I guess my turn has finally come around, although to tell the truth, I would have preferred getting the whole business out of the way back in ‘78.  I remember some girl tip-toeing her way through the mud in a white prom dress, but other then that, everything has just about disappeared from my memory.  Yes, it would have been good to have gotten this stuck business behind me.  I would have forgotten all about it by now, no doubt living quite happily with my small beer-gut and thinning hair.  I bet I would have even continued to enjoy watching football on television, like all the other men my age.  Everything would have been so different.

This morning I was thinking that the June house payment that I think I’ve finally gathered together was going to make someone happy, but then here it is mid-July already.  I’ve taken to hanging clothes out to dry on a line, which reminds me of some more days that have long since passed.  My mom hung clothes out to dry, when I was little anyway.  And I know my grandma did.  I can’t ever remember seeing any of the men do it, but I guess that’s no surprise.  Come to think of it, I can’t ever remember actually seeing the men.  I keep telling myself that hanging the clothes out to dry saves money, but we all know the drier doesn’t gobble up a house payment’s worth of electricity every month, don’t we?  I’m going to have to find another corner to cut somewhere.  Find another angle on this whole business.  But in the meantime, I’m remembering the stiffness of clothes that have dried in the breeze.

“It’s like the old days,” I tell the boy.  “Hang them straight and the shirts won’t be so wrinkly.”

“I kind of like them stiff,” the boy says.  “And I don’t care about wrinkles.”

He’s nine and must be forced to shower at gunpoint.  Of course he doesn’t care about wrinkles and stiff clothes.

I need to call up the IRS for another little chat.  My accountant is waiting on some money I don’t have.  I don’t think I’ve opened up any mail since returning from my trip at the end of June, so I really need to get to that.  And I think the fish may be about to starve, so I should take care of that as well.  The dog slept inside last night and somehow became entangled in the trash, but was lucky enough to shake everything loose across the kitchen floor by the time I woke up this morning.  I like coffee, but I sure hate trying to walk around wet coffee grounds.  My socks got wet and now I suppose I’ll be outside, hanging them up on the line later on today.  Oh, and my parenting class.  I still need to take that.  And pay the guys.  I can’t forget that.  They’re more important then the fish any old day.

And another boy arrives this afternoon to spend the weekend while his parents are away.  I should maybe look into buying some food.  They grow so restless when they’re hungry.

And now for your listening pleasure, the Bob Geldof Sex, Age & Death album, as promised.  One of those albums best savored whole, in it’s entirety.  Like anything in life that’s worth a second look or listen.  [Links removed]

I’ve upped the ante, promising a group of local poets that I will show up for their open mike night at the coffee shop and read something of mine.  I’m not sure anyone knows what this means.

“What kind of fiction do you write?” they want to know.  They stare at me, waiting for my answer.  Is this the hardest part of writing, pigeonholing your particular style?  What do I write?  That’s a good question.

I stare back at them.  They are younger then I am, so I will easily stare them down into submission.  I type this even as I stare, adding to my mystic.

Nonsense fiction is the best I can come up with.  “Mostly nonsense,” I tell them, realizing that staring silently too long at a group of young poets is no good for anyone involved.  Good Lord, there’s no telling how they will be scarred, or what they will write about tonight when they get home.

They return to discussions of poetry, I write this and continue to upload some music for tomorrow’s Bob Geldof festival.  And when that’s done, I will go home and retreat to my office for a long night of landcape related work.  I will bid and account and pay bills until I am blue in the face.

It’s a good thing the young poets can’t see that.  It’s a terrible thing.

It’s one of those days where by 1:00 p.m. I need a nap.  Behind on work again, my eyes are heavy, and I’ve just exhausted my recorded supply of the television show Ed, the only show I’d decided to watch this summer, and which, of course, I’ve just today realized has been taken out of TNT’s lineup.

I’m behind on my house payments and my eyes are not blinking correctly.  I think they’re moving too slow or something.  I can’t quite put my finger on the problem, which isn’t saying that I’m trying to poke at my eyes.

I’ve been trying to figure out what my secrets are, so that I can get them out of me.  I don’t want to go broke with secrets inside of me, and think that maybe these two things are tied in with the eye blinking trouble.  All this pressure, bunching up inside my head.  For the longest time I thought the trouble was ideas.  That ideas caused headaches and slow blinking.  Ideas are the culprits, I would tell people.  Those crazy ideas.  Lose them and the trouble will go away.

It makes no sense to take Ed off of television and replace it with two back to back episodes of Becker.  A one hour show makes more sense and is surely less work then two, half an hour shows.  Plus I don’t like Becker.  I can’t watch sixty minutes of grumpy sarcasm coming out of someone with that large of head.

I have similar reasons for not watching the news.

Someone asked me what happened to the opossum from the other day.  Same thing that happens to any opossum who gets chewed on by dogs and thunked in the head with a crowbar, I guess.  A day in the trash in an open topped cardboard box to keep it away from the dogs, and then a simple burial somewhere out back.  Twelve acres.  Lots of space.  More room then I’ll ever need because honestly, I hate hitting things on the head.  I know how my own head feels.  I wouldn’t want someone taking a swing at me with a crowbar, although if it comes down to it, being buried out back wouldn’t be so bad.  It’s peaceful around here, mostly, except around July 4th when the neighbors go crazy, and around the first of each month, when the house payment is due.  But other then that, life’s a breeze, or at least it will be, in twenty-nine and a half years.

I’ll be 73 years old.  I will have self-published three books and still in desperate need of some exercise.  I will continue to go out for coffee, and will think that the baristas all look like little girls.  When I look at them to place my order my dry as a bone eyes will still blink slowly.  I’m sure I will have lost much of my sight by then, as well as my hair.

I still won’t watch the news, and most likely will have no concept that a show called Ed even existed at one time.  And somewhere out in the back field, I know I will have long ago buried the two dogs and two cats that now share my life.  There is no getting around it.

Did you know that P.T. Barnum had his obituary printed in the papers two weeks before his actual death so that he could savor the words?

I’ve never been that good at planning ahead.

Why has no one bothered to tell me that this site appears so jumbled in Internet Exlorer?  That the side box, so cleverly cantilevered to the right, simply disappears into nothingness under the mighty power of Microsoft?  Maybe it’s only older versions, although firing up the PC today, I can’t imagine my version is that old.

ExpressionEngine has released a new upgrade version, and as soon as the bugs are worked out, and I feel safe putting the site under the knife, I will upgrade.  What this means is a little down time as well as a face-lift.  New doo, new you.

Tonight: complete the music meme which was handed off to me, maybe some more dark-of-night typing with eyes closed, and of course, Architecture Superhero action! 

Tonight’s episode: The Architecture Superheroes go undercover as college football players in order to steal ideas for a new stadium they have been commissioned to design and build - The U.S. House of Representatives / Vlasic Kosher Pickle Dome, with groundbreaking festivities scheduled as early as spring of 2008.

Coincidence that the new stadium construction just happens to fall during an election year?  Our hero thinks not.

And what of our hero, still held captive by Canadian architect John Bland?  Will he have his patriotic loyalties pushed too far as he learns some interesting facts regarding a few of D.C.’s secret tunnels and trapdoors?  Stay tuned!

We continue with our story just as our hero, his true identity yet a mystery, is running from the Architecture Superheroes, after having posed unsuccessfully as the architect/builder, Joseph Eichler.

Chapter Three

“He’s getting away!” I heard Anna Keichline scream, then hear more then see the fireproof K-Brick zip past my left ear and embed itself into a column on a nearby building.  The library, I think.

“Damn you, Keichline!” It’s Pei again, obviously perturbed about the column.  I consider turning around, just long enough to see if the old idealist Loos is secretly grinning, but can’t risk it.  First shake the architects and their pack of tenured faculty, then enjoy the humor of architects arguing over the importance of decorative columns.

I turn the corner around the library, taking one last glance at the K-Brick, then nearly collide full-speed into into a man hiding in the shadow of the building.  Short, gray and balding, the man seems unimpressive until he grabs my arm, stopping me in my tracks.

“Come with me.” It is not so much an invitation as command, and I feel the old man’s fingers tighten around my forearm.

“Who are you?” There are maybe more important questions I should be asking, but it is the first thing that comes out of my mouth.

“I am John Bland, Architect.  You may know me as the man who singlehandedly built Canada.”

I stare back at him, but draw a blank.

“I always thought that was Keanu Reeves.”

“American fool.” Once again, I get the feeling that it is more command then suggestion.

“What about Moshe Safdie?” I offer.

“Prefab housing!  Pffft.  And Israeli.  You know nothing of Canada.”

“Oh wait, I know.  Joe Shuster!”

“I know no Shuster, now be quiet.” Bland was slowly dragging me to the back of the building, where it looked like a car was waiting, the engine still running.

“Joe Shuster.  Of course you know Shuster.  He invented Superman!  I do believe he was Canadian.”

“This Shuster lived in Canada?”

“No, Cleveland, I believe.”

“American fool!” I was pushed into the back seat of the waiting car, and the man who singlehandedly built Canada, John Bland, jumped behind the wheel and the two of us sped off, leaving behind us an angry mob of architects and university faculty members, their knives still clutched between angry teeth.

How about I try typing in the dark with the screen on the laptop turned completely off.  Try to get it as close to the actual act of thinking as I can.  See how it works.

I found myself thinking today that death follows you around more on a farm then when you live in other places, or at least it seems that way.  Maybe not if you live in one of the world’s war zones, or say an AIDS ravished country, or any place for that matter that has something of value that the president of the United States wants, but other then that, I mean.

There’s always something dying around here, or about to die, or needing to die, looking for that little push over the edge.  Mice in the yard.  Moles.  Birds.  Lots of birds, especially in the spring, literally pushed over the edge of the nest, I guess.  Featherless and almost always wet for some reason.  Are they all plucked from their nest by some ruthless bluejay?  And is that why they’re wet?  Are birds mouths (beaks, I guess) even wet?  Or does that have something to do with the dogs, who like to carry the lifeless things around like prizes?

It seems like it would do everyone a little good to sit down and make a list of the things they wouldn’t mind killing, if the need arose.  Sounds harsh, I know, but bear with me.  Bugs would surely top everyone’s list, I guess, or maybe it’d be the microscopic creatures, like the amebas and such.  I don’t know.  Ants and spiders, pincher bugs and all sorts of little creepy crawlies.  How about those little dog-pecker gnats that buzz around your face when you’re sweaty?  Who needs those?  Top of the list for me, that’s for sure.

I suppose most of us, trying to create such a list, would go with the traditional food/thinking chain idea, where mankind is on top and all the rest, well, you know the routine.

Without thinking too much about it, the meat eaters already have a big hand in a whole lot of killing.  Cows, pigs, chickens by the millions.  Maybe it’s billions, I don’t know.  But how many of us would rank these animals right up there at the top of our lists if we had to do our own killing?

What about the rodents?  The mice and rats of the world? The opossums and raccoons and whatnot, creeping around outside, shitting and scratching up the place, doing what they do to try and survive as we humans encroach more and more every day.  What about them?  And those are just a few of the obvious mammalian examples that most people might possibly have a chance of encountering on a normal day around just about any place, no matter where you live.  And for the time being, I’ll leave out the mention of cats and dogs, so as to not alarm the pet-loving masses.  Oh how we love our cats and dogs.  According to one report I found (later, of course, I didn’t pull this typing straight out of my head), pet food sales in the U.S. alone topped 13 billion in 2003.  13 billion.  It’s hard to believe.  (I almost said, hard to swallow).  So no, we won’t be killing off our dogs and cats any time soon, unless of course we end up over-feeding and pampering them to death, which of course, the pet food industry will make sure is exactly what we won’t do.  And here we were, thinking that the old saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds” had something to do with animal behavior.  We don’t actually know what it’s about, do we?  I don’t think we have any idea who is feeding who.

Here’s a side thought: I wonder how much we spend feeding a similar number of children in the U.S.  I wonder how attention would factor into the equation.  How about a study comparing the amount of quality time spent with the average child compared to the time spent with the family pet.  If only our children were hairier and couldn’t talk.  Don’t worry, we’re getting there.

Today I found myself working out in the barn, trying to paint one of the landscape trailers, when the dogs start going crazy, tearing into a pile of peat pots stacked in the corner.  The dogs are knocking these things all over the place, making a big mess, but at least they’re staying away from the wet paint, so I let them tear.  Better then dropping what I’m doing and running out and buying them a billion dollars worth of treats.  Probably just a mouse, or maybe a rat, I think.  Good exercise for everyone involved.  Survival of the fittest, and all that.  Besides, they’ll never catch it, not with that many pots stacked in the corner.  Hundreds, maybe a thousand.  A million possible places for a mouse to hide.  And dogs, well, you know, dogs just aren’t the smartest creatures and are easily evaded by almost every other creature on the planet.  Man’s best friend.  Kind of a funny choice, if you ask me.

But suddenly the action cranks up a notch or two, and what do you know, the dogs end up pulling an opossum (or is that “a opossum") from the pile of pots and commence to shaking and biting.  By the time I get over there, the opossum is bleeding and in pretty bad shape.

Okay everyone, time to reach into those pockets and get out our lists.

“Sit,” I tell the dog, which he does for the first time ever (it seems like), “so I can check my list.” So let’s pretend for a moment that we reach into our pocket and pull out a complete, fully organized list of all creatures great and small, arranged in order of importance to remain alive.  Seems impossible, but what a valuable tool to have at that moment, surrounded like you are by half-crazed dogs, a half-crazed nine year old boy, a bleeding opossum, a trailer, only halfway painted, and daylight that is quickly running out on you.

Without the list we are lost.  We begin to argue inside our own head.

Now I suppose I should have a little sympathy for this creature.

But he’s crapping on the same pots that my employees will have to use.  Stinking up the place.

Yes, but he’s only trying to hide.

I know, but…

The argument could go on for days, couldn’t it?  We need the list.  We need simplification.  Our lives beg for simplification.  Because really, the opossum is just one simple example, and even with this one, we have a hard time.  Where does the opossum fit in?  Where do we all fit in?  Do we scold the dogs?  Nurse the opossum back to health at any and all costs?  Pick up whatever is handy, like a crowbar, for instance, and bop the animal out of his misery?  What do we do when faced yet again with the nagging question of life vs. death?

Emotion is probably one of the biggest players in the game of life and death, don’t you think?  Economics plays another lead role.  Growing up, when it came to animals, I remember the talk always coming back around to costs.  Throughout so much of history, it’s never been easy, being a sick or injured animal, especially on a farm.  Not when the nights are so long and cold, the predators so hungry and anxious, and the .22 shells so cheap and abundant.  No, it’s best to stay healthy, especially if you’re high on the list, or low, depending on how you look at it, or where you fit in.

They say that serial killers have little or no emotion whatsoever when it comes to killing.  How can this be?  That there is no scale to measure things against, for them.  No list is necessary.  As true killers of humans, they have somehow over-simplified this question.

Surely there is something in between.  Some place acceptable to exist.  Some space inside of us, as well as outside of us, where life and death finds some sort of balance.

***

I think I will type more in the dark.  It’s not so bad.

I met Frank Lloyd Wright once, at a hotdog stand, the two of us waiting to be served.  This was all purely coincidence, mind you, the two of us being hungry at the same time, and a hotdog vendor just happening by at that moment.

“You’re Frank Lloyd Wright,” I said to him.

“Yes I am,” he replied, “but I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.  I don’t know your name.”

“I am Joseph Eichler,” I lied.  “Perhaps you know my work.”

I am not particularly proud of lying to Frank Lloyd Wright, but come on, I was about to eat hotdogs with the man.  I was under a bit of pressure.

“I do indeed,” Wright lied back, which is to say that Frank Lloyd Wright saw through my lie, and not that he was unaware of the architecture of Joseph Eichler.

“Relish?” I asked him, as we were handed our hotdogs.

“No thank you.”

“Me neither,” I said.  “Architects and a dislike for relish.  So much in common.”

“Yes, it would seem so,” Wright lied again.

And then Frank Lloyd Wright turned and walked away, his steps crisp and straight.