Papers almost together, my debts lined up on a sheet of paper like a tough third grade math problem, ready for solving.

Now for a cost of living estimate, then begin the itemization of my assets and their current market value.  Small items into groups, lumped together for a single value.  Larger items alone and vulnerable on the list.  What goes and what stays?  The science behind bankruptcy is alien to me, an equation I won’t pretend to understand.

Cool air blows through my window.  I’m looking forward to the fall and it’s dark, wet days.  Today will be behind me and the clouds will gather in tight, just for me, and begin to drop their rain.  And if everything goes according to plan, I will be sitting in this very chair, watching it pound against the glass of this very window.  And fall will turn to winter and the rain will fall harder and longer.  And I will look out this window and think that this winter is better than the last, and maybe, just maybe, I will even dream a little about the winter after that, which will be even further away from today.

The boy beat me home the other day, getting dropped off from a birthday party by his friend’s mother.  When I got there, everyone was already in the house, waiting for me.  I won’t blame the complete disaster on the boys slumber party.  With so much going on these days - bankruptcy, business, and divorce - housekeeping has had a way of making its way to the bottom of the priority list.

“So this is the bachelor pad?” the boy’s mom joked.  I guess it was her polite way of making an observation about the mess.  I think I made some lame joke, rather than try to explain.  I’ve run out of energy lately for explanations.

I suppose the woman will lock an image of my life in her mind based on that one dirty living room, which is fine.  We all do it, even me.  I am tidying up a little before leaving for my meeting this afternoon, however, but not because of her.  I’ve been chasing after order now for quite some time.  Bankruptcy is the final step, I guess, in that long line of attempts I’ve made to regain financial order.

Can you imagine an attorney who makes house calls, helping you clear dirty dishes from your table and folding up blankets and clothes while the two of you discuss what actions to take against insurmountable debt?

No, neither can I.

I do, however, see that the cat has vomited in the living room this morning.  Bankruptcy, business, divorce, and cat vomit - add buying a house to the list and I believe you’ve just compiled a list of the top five stressful things that can happen to a person on a Tuesday morning in September.  Oh wait, it’s still August, isn’t it? 

Come on September!

Sometime today I meet with an attorney to discuss my options.  All that hope, wasted on this runaway train that has no intention of switching tracks.  A shame.  A letdown.  A realization that I’ve reached a place I never thought I’d be.  Past pleading that someone punched the wrong ticket.  Past looking for excuses.  Past looking for solutions.  It’s jumping time, my friends, before this thing reaches the end of the line.  This day may have been a long way in the making, but by God, I see the end of the line now, and it’s coming up fast.  A mountain of stone there’s no seeing over and no going through.  Not this time.  No, this time I jump and start that long, slow walk around.  Jump while there’s still time.

One thing about walking is that it gives you time to think.  Standing here at the edge, one last time, I’m wondering if I’ll remember the sound of this day as I walk around that mountain.  How long will the rumble of this train stay fresh inside my head?

Jump far, I remind myself.  Far enough from this train to escape regret.  If there’s one thing I know, it’s that a person doesn’t want regret tagging along as a companion on a long, slow walk.  Regret never shuts up, and the days become long and unbearable.

My hands grip the edge of this train for one last time.  The steel, cold and hard beneath my fingers, seems more demanding than I remember it being when I first climbed aboard.  The ride grew rough without me even realizing it.  I know this now.  Now that it’s time to jump.

It’s so easy to jump towards money, but no one spends much time jumping away from money.  Maybe I’ll think about that as I walk around the mountain.  I’ll certainly have the time.

I flex my knees and my thighs and calves grow tight.  I don’t remember if my eyes are open or closed, my fingers slowly go loose and my legs jerk us into the air before any part of me can change it’s mind.  And for the briefest of moments, I am neither part of the train, or the mountain, or the ground and that long, slow walk, or even myself.  For a bit of time that I cannot begin to explain, I am part of something else that exists somewhere within the cracks where all those other things join together.

I hit the ground hard, momentum tumbling me towards my future, and when I finally stop my eyes are closed and I can hear the train, already distant, speeding off without me. My face is pushed down into the thick dust, and it’s in my ears and mouth, and already I taste something of what this long walk will be about.  I lie there, still, thinking of that place I existed in for that one single split second, while the shadow of the mountain looms above me, searching, waiting patiently for me to pick myself up.

Boys sleeping on the couches in the living room, sleeping bags pulled up over their heads.

The cat stares down at me from the window sill as I type.  Odd that we like to believe we know what animals are thinking.

Clouds, the first in some time. 

Monday.

I made it almost 45 minutes without thinking about money this morning.

Money.

But now I have.  The race begins again.

I’ve been helping move things along over at Spanglemonkey while Jo attends a writer’s workshop in Hawaii.  I’m not sure she needs my help, and come to think of it, I don’t remember her asking me.  But since I have the key to her site, I might as well put it to good use.  While she works on being serious and furthering her writing career, I pretend to have shrunken down small enough to stow away in her suitcase so that I can attend the conference as her guardian.  To intimidate the other writers, I wear a turban.  I also have a fob and pocket watch which I stole from an airport baggage handler.  Did I say pretend?  That was a typo.  I am really in Hawaii, and I am really, really tiny.

Meanwhile, over at Spanglemonkey.....

The writing conference seems to being going quite well for our girl. No sign of tension and her spirits are high. Maybe a little too high, if you ask me.

“Watch this,” she said this morning, talking to the woman next to her, then made me replace my turban with a fireman’s helmet and my comfortable slippers with a pair of tiny rubber boots.

“Dance around,” she said.

“What?” I thought I was here to protect, not entertain. That other woman, the one I thought was so kind, caught on right away.

“Yes! Dance around!” Good Lord! I looked into Jo’s eyes, hoping for some sort of reprieve. But I’m telling you, there was nothing there but sparkle and fun. Our girl was in her element, pounding out the sentences. There would be no stopping the embarrassment. I tapped around the table a little, hoping no one else was watching.

“Oh my!”

“Almost as much fun as bad opening sentences!”

“Almost.”

“Almost.”

“Again!” A pencil eraser poked me in the stomach. I should have worn a shirt.

As I danced up and down the table, hopping around notebooks and drinks, I tried to concentrate on Jo’s happiness. Anything for her, I kept telling myself. Anything for her.

Oh, one more thing about this morning before I forget. What did I tell you about paper and writers? First the guy at the airport, now Jo. I’m telling you, if you have writers around, you need to staple down the paper. And even then, they’re going to thumb through it to see if there’s anything to read.

KJ walked up. Karen, Jo now calls her. Bonding between women always leads to more uncomfortable men. Believe me, I could see right off that this was going to get worse. She seemed to be studying me.

“Does he do policemen?” she asked.

“Have you got a small policeman’s hat?”

“No, but I bet the concierge can hunt one up. Hang on.”

God damn it. I knew that concierge guy was going to be trouble the moment I’d laid eyes on him. I think it was the way he’d eyed my small turban, sizing it up. I bet the resort now owned a whole array of tiny hats. Something to tickle everyone’s fancy. I swear, if it hadn’t been for the lunch break, I think I’d still be dancing.

My ugly toenail often takes a beating.  It’s the big one on the left foot, and for whatever reason, gets in the way of life more than other toenails.  Maybe it’s the brave one - the one who stands up when all the others are wiggling in fear; the one not afraid to take on the world.  To date, it has lost only two fights.  The first against a telephone pole that was being dragged behind a tractor, and a running tennis shoe being worn by a player on an opposing basketball team.  Those two fights were over before they even began.  One rounders, not worth the price of admission.  The toenail lost both fights by KO, which in case you didn’t know, means Knocked Off in this case.

And just now, while cleaning the shed, the toenail decided to climb back into the ring for a shot at a five-gallon bucket of paint.  It’s been awhile since it’s last fight.  I thought it’d retired.  I’d hoped it’d retired.

Could have been worse.  The paint bucket had a powerful jab, taking full advantage of the old, ugly guy as he sat out there unprotected in my sandal.  The toe never saw it coming.  I never saw it coming.  Another loss for the toenail, but at least not by KO.

But TKO, the right side pulled almost completely loose from the rest of the toe. 

I don’t know exactly what the “T” stands for in this case.  Maybe a cryptic abbreviation for the entire string of words that flew out of my mouth at the moment of impact.

Anyway, back to cleaning.  The other toes have all gathered around their injured hero, staring at him in wonder.  I’m staring too, wondering if he can stay out of the way the rest of the day.  It’s too hot for real shoes.

I began the slow process of preparing the boy for change several months ago.  Bits of conversation about the possibility of another move, this time with the idea that the farm would be sold.  It’s a big deal, the idea of selling the farm.  My business is located here, my parents owned the farm before me, and more importantly, especially for the boy, it is the one single place he has called home.  The idea alone of moving is not an easy one, so it’s almost impossible to begin imagining the actual reality of such an event.  I’ve lost countless hours of sleep over this very issue the last couple of years, trying hard to understand and accept.  I know it will be different for the boy, better in some ways, but worse in others.

The boy is one of those types who hangs onto original packaging.  You know the kind?  The kind of kid who enjoys arranging the interior of a refrigerator, then berates the parent for misplacing one of the condiment jars.  The kind of kid who hangs onto repetition long after repetition has lost its usefulness.  He talks about counting to four in his head, and the importance of things in even amounts.  Four has become something of a goal for him, it seems.  Not all things, but many things seem to need to meet this goal of four.  At night, for instance, the exchange of the words “good night” four times without interruption.  Interruption of any sort and the whole process begins again. 

My point here isn’t to open up a conversation about the possibility that my son will grow into a man with a hand washing problem, but only to say that the idea of moving from the farm is one that is being introduced slowly to a boy who has a hard time with change.  But then, come to think of it, when it comes to change, don’t we all have our problems coping.

It’s taken me nearly three years to cope with the changes in my own personal life.  I thought I was stronger, and maybe I was at one point in my life, but apparently over the years I changed without even knowing it myself.  I’d always thought of myself as a person who bounced back easily and didn’t get knocked down emotionally, but the last few years have shown me differently.  I’m different than I used to be, I see that now.  I don’t think I recognized that about myself when I was in my twenties, or even in my thirties for that matter.  It seems to have taken more than forty years for me to realize the truth behind the idea that my life, whether I like it or not, is in constant flux and going through constant change.

But like I said, I’ve begun to cope and accept the change.  I’ve begun to heal emotionally, slowly.  Unfortunately, no one that I’ve ever known has come up with a way to take emotional healing to the bank, and so while I sat around depressed for two or three years, things sort of crept up on me.  Financial things, of course.  Money things.  Debt things.

It’s my own fault, of course, for being the kind of person who goes through life believing that everything will work out somehow.  I’ve always been this way, as long as I can remember.  I’ve never pushed to reach results, but allowed them to come to me, and for most of my life, this seemed to work out alright.  I’ve never been the alpha male.  Never have and never will, and I know I like it that way just fine. 

I also know this.  It took me a long time to embrace the idea that I’m the sort of person who values the dream more than the reality.  I realized it a long time ago, but realization of something and embracing it turn out to be two different beasts entirely, it turns out.  I also know now, after more than forty years of ups and downs, that it is the process of art that I love more than the art itself.  That a photograph, or painting, or even words that move you have nothing to do with the thing itself, but the person they sprung out of.  I know now that this is the thing that I’ve been searching for all along - this thing that lives inside so many, but is expressed openly by so few.

So if hanging onto a farm has become a financial impossibility, I have slowly begun to change and accept the idea.  There is beauty in both failure and success, just as there is beauty in change.  After forty years, I slowly begin to realize this.

The problem, of course, lies within the boy, who has begun to find beauty in things adding up to four.  That, I’m sure, will be harder to understand than next month’s mortgage payment.

Saturday slides by with barely an effort.  I pick up the boy and we head off to the toy store to spend some new money he’s come into this weekend by way of his Grammy, who’s been visiting the last few days.  The boy scores big - $50 - and for the next hour and a half we wander the aisles, checking things out.  We both gasp out loud at the price of the Star Wars Lego sets, although I admit, some of the fighters look kind of cool.  Games, Magic 8 Balls (now with a pink, dating version, I see), then over to the remote control section.  The boy stares through the display cases at RC cars and boats while I revisit my childhood with a trip down the Matchbox aisle.  I’ve been thinking of buying a VW bus lately, a throwback to my younger days, so maybe a toy VW bus is just the thing I need.  A friendly enough man, young forties like myself, is pacing the aisle and immediately launches into a lecture about his toy car collection.  I am just the guy he’s been looking for.  An interested party with ears.  His own son, four or five tops, wanders off while the man explains to me the ins and outs of collecting Matchbox and Hot Wheel cars.

“So how many cars do you have?” I ask.  I squeeze in one question each time the man pauses for a breath, which I’m beginning to think, isn’t nearly often enough.  The man lives and breathes toy cars.  His son is nowhere to be seen.

“Just over 4000,” he says, “but most of them are in storage.  There’s only so much room in the house.”

“Man!” I don’t know what else to say.  What do you say when you learn something like that about a complete stranger?

“I keep the current year’s new models on display,” he tells me.  “I try to buy three of each.  One to collect, one for my son, and one for me to play with.”

Seriously, going into today I had no idea I would meet a forty-something year old man who would be telling me about his toy playing habits.  Surprises, it would turn out, awaited me around every corner, or in this afternoon’s case, in every aisle.

We talked some more, or more accurately, he talked some more, telling me about the five or six men who stormed the toy store every single morning at opening time so they could thumb desperately through the cars, searching for anything new and rare that might have been set out.  The VW collection, it turns out, are highly collectible, and there would be little chance of me ever finding one hanging on the rack.  Our conversation ends with an animated story of a ‘66 Ford Bronco Matchbox that the man passed up some years back in a store up in Portland - two of them, even! - and that he hasn’t been able to find since.

“But I keep looking,” he says.  It’s easy to see he could go on and on, but actually, I’ve started to worry a little too much about his son, who hasn’t made a reappearance the whole time we’ve been talking.  My boy, I know, is tucked away safely playing video games, but there is no telling where a five year old could wander off to.  I thank the man for the conversation and move on.

I make it one aisle.

“Excuse me.  Can you help me?” I look down the aisle and this is what I see, and in this order: a woman, then two beanbag chair sized breasts working their way out of a tank top, then a small boy in a cart, then the breasts again, and then the woman again.  Her explanation is that she needs a man’s opinion about a particular toy she is thinking of buying for her boy. 

“I’m the boy,” the boy says.  I, apparently, am to assume the role of the man.

Now I suppose I enjoy breasts as much as the next guy, but I’ll tell you something I’m sure you already know, it’s nearly impossible for a man to discuss toys with breasts bobbing around in front of his face.  It’s hard not to look.  It’s like a car wreck at the side of the road.  You shouldn’t look, there’s certainly no need to look, but you know as well as I do - you look.  But the whole breast thing is disconcerting, and not just for the reasons you might be imagining.  Think of it this way - what if Matchbox man had stood there telling me about his car collection with his penis hanging out of his pants?  I know that’s not quite the same thing, because of course the woman’s breasts weren’t completely exposed.  What am I thinking?  So let’s try to make this as fair as possible, if we can.  Let’s say that the Matchbox man’s penis is hanging out, except for the very tip, which somehow barely manages to stay hidden inside his pants, although the longer you stand there talking, the more the thing bobs around and looks as if it’s about to pop out completely.  Now, imagining that, how easy is it to stand there a foot or two away talking about toys?

About the only thing I know is that things are much easier when I stay home.  Once I leave the house, everything begins to get complicated.

I gave my advice to the woman then hunted up my own boy.  It was time to go home, although the boy insisted on showing me one or two more things before we left.  If anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have gladly told them that I’d seen quite enough for one day, thank you very much.

It all revolves around the explanation.  Even as kids, caught with a hand in the proverbial cookie jar, the explanations come quick.  “I can explain...,” we say, even before we know ourselves what words will come out of our mouths.  Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it, as far as I’m concerned.  I think we’re in it for the explanation, nothing more.  I think we live for the explanation.  Deep down, we want to be caught.  We’re constantly looking around for someone to catch us, seeing if anyone is near.  The desire to explain is strong, the necessity of the act almost overwhelming.  We grab at passing opportunities to explain ourselves the way a drowning man grabs for the sky, and when opportunities don’t exist, we create them.

Wherever the explaining began, it apparently will end with weblogs.  Which isn’t saying that it will end at all, only that it will grow bigger.  Explanations are, after all, more like lies than we care to admit, growing somehow with each telling.  Our own life is apparently not enough for us, so we create even a bigger one with our constant explaining.  Like I said - weblogs. 

I imagine someday (and maybe we’re already there), people will gather at weblogs to worship someone’s explanation the way people gather at churches now to worship God.  Clearly the explanations of some make more sense than the explanations of others, so it would seem to make sense to want to congregate around those people with the best explanations, and yet, how can that make any sense at all?  It’s the event that’s real, not the explanation, yet there we are, constantly, demanding that something be fabricated to explain something that no longer exists. 

Do you see what I’m getting at?  Of course you do, you’re no slugs.  No one needs to beat you over the head with a stick to get your attention.  It’s perfectly clear what I’m getting at - I need to explain something.  I need to explain the changes to this site.

Personally, I love when things take on lives of their own.  It’s why I write fiction and why I create things in my head.  I love a good explanation.  I certainly love the ludicrousness of attempting to explain a weblog on a weblog.  I imagine what I’m about to say (which I have no idea) will make no sense.  You may find yourself with that feeling you get when you listen to the President on television, explaining war.  Or maybe for you it’ll be one of those mixed-sense reactions, like when you sympathize for the homeless guy who’s cornered you in the coffee shop and is telling you that story that makes absolutely no sense, but at the same time, you find yourself revolted by his presence because of the unbearable stench of his urine-soaked pants.  Or maybe you’re just too busy with your own explanations to even begin to feel anything about mine.

Either way.  It doesn’t matter, because like I said before, we’ve reached the end of the line.  Weblogs.  Last stop on the explanation express.  This is where we all get off, whether we’re ready or not.

I’ll try to make this quick and painless.

One thing I’ve never liked about weblogs is their (notice how I speak about them like they are living, breathing creatures?) constant pushing of us into the present.  It’s bad enough that my children push me towards my grave by growing older a year at a time, but a weblog!  Each day it gives you a shove.  It’s like you’re on trial, the courtroom is crowded, the docket is busting at the seams and the judge is impatient to move on.  And then into the room walks your weblog looking like some spineless public defender, thrust on you at the last minute, attempting to explain everything about you to this impatient judge without once opening your file.  It’s all about the present.  Your public defender - your weblog - offers the the top page of your entire life to the judge as an explanation of your actions.

“Guilty.  Next case.”

Okay, maybe weblogs aren’t the end of the line.  Maybe there’s something more.

I decided a long time ago that not everything needed to be right out there on the front page for everyone’s easy perusal.  I’d just never done anything about it.  Newspapers, after all, contain more than one page.  Books are not fliers.  People are not one day’s worth of stories.  There’s more to us than that, and it bothered me that the basic format of weblogs seemed to try and cover up this fact.  The weblog was trying hard, is trying hard to reduce us all into sound bites of entertainment. 

I’m not exactly sure what I want my presence on the internet to look like, which is painfully obvious, given all the redesigns this site has gone through in less than two years.  In an email the other day, a short response to a comment I’d left on another site, Ronnie of sublethal.net ended with this:

p.s. you change your site layout more than anyone I know.

Can you guess what my first reaction to Ronnie’s email was?  Offer an explanation, of course.  I would take the opportunity to explain!  Luckily, I still have some common sense and let the matter go.  Ronnie was being polite.  A brief email to let me know he’d read my comment.  More than I do for people.  Can you imagine the poor guy at the receiving end of some long reply email offering an explanation that not only made no sense, but that he could care less about?  I would have become the man in the urine-soaked pants, which is easy to do in these days of invisible relationships.

(Naturally, I hang onto the belief that Ronnie is in fact, staring at his computer this very moment, anxiously awaiting my explanation.  I also believe that I can still jog, eat anything I want, anytime I want, and that sex, if I so choose, is waiting for me around every corner.  And large t-shirts make my stomach look flat.  I also hang onto that belief.  I’m sure there’s more, but let’s move on.)

This explanation is taking much too long, which is the problem with explanations when you’re not sure what it is that you’re trying to explain.  So much for quick and painless.

So here’s the deal.  I’ve decided to take entries that deal with my day to day life off of the front page, placing them conveniently behind a tab naturally called Daily.  I think you can see it up there.  And my work on story projects will eventually begin to take place behind that tab called Projects.  See how I’ve cleverly made the tabs as obvious as possible?  You know, I bet someday it’ll be a law that navigation buttons on websites will have to have a picture as well as words so that people who can’t read can make their way around.  Kind of like street signs. 

This morning, however, it dawned on me that there would still be people who would want to read every single thing, all lined up nicely in a big tall stack, so for them I’m going to put up a different page that includes everything.  Plus, while showering, it dawned on me that there are the news reader people, those souls who have everything filtered through RSS, stripped of everything even remotely visually pleasing.  What about them?  But I haven’t made that page yet, so I can’t actually say where it is.  Maybe a button, over on the left, called Original Sin.  No, not really, I just made that up as I typed.  I have no idea what to call it.

Anyway, that’s enough explaining for one Saturday morning.  I’ll freshen up my coffee and go outside to talk to the dogs, who as it turns out, seem to enjoy listening to anything I have to say.  Dogs care very little about weblogs.  Everything a dog needs to know about you could easily be printed on the backside of a standard-sized business card.  Not that they’d have anywhere to keep it, if you did fill one out and hand it to them.  Believe me, I’ve tried.

Do you feel the tension?  The sense of something about to happen?

All day I’ve felt like something was about to spring out of me.  The tingle of creation before it happens.  A mystery comes together, an electrical charge, a spark that ignites.  It’s in my head and in my gut.  It’s in the music.  My eyes can’t see the world but they can see this thing, feel it, sense it sitting there at the edge.

Trust comes hard, but I trust this.  Perfectly still I wait to be consumed.

Nothing can stop me, not even this silly song.  Who’s writing songs about Natalie Portman?  You have to love it.  Embrace stupidity!  The hope of humanity!

Play Natalie Portman!!

The day will begin with me talking my way out of a visit to the state fair.  The boy will beg and I will resist, and let’s hope, everyone leaves it at that.  Not that I have better things to do, but certainly other things.  The billing that I didn’t get to yesterday, for instance. 

The new site design is almost complete, with the exception of the About page, a page for new visitors that tries to explain the concept behind this site as well as give them a few clues as to the dangling story lines that will popup from time to time.  There are details to work out about design services and hosting options that I will begin to offer soon.  Looking to escape Typepad?  Hang on, I will have your answer soon enough.  And lastly, a new page I’m working on (currently titled Fiction in the navigation bar but likely to change to Projects) that will display stories that are currently in progress.  My idea is for the stories to appear alongside my notes.  Seems like it might be interesting, for people who are interested in that sort of thing, to be able to watch the development and have a glimpse of what I’m thinking at the time.  Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t.  I don’t know.  Might be more trouble then it’s worth.

My working boys are pulling out, the fans are in the windows for the final cool down of the house, the boy is still asleep, and I’m thinking about taking a picture of a chicken’s ear.  There is much to be done today.

Imaginary Keith goes about the business of existence, moving from room to room while I follow and watch.  I’m a child myself, remember, so it goes without saying that I don’t lift a finger to help.  It’s the business of adults to straighten, the business of children to mess.  The symbiotic relationship of family, although when I brought this up once, all Imaginary Keith did was mumble the word antibiosis under his breath.  He’s such a kidder.

Dishes, clothes, outside to tend the one lone rabbit.  Grandpa Slim, the giant lopped-ear died not two days ago, and now needs next to no tending, buried with the rest of the dead animals under the maple by the garden.  Goodbye, Grandpa Slim, we all said, then shoveled on the dirt, the boy asking if he could do the first scoop.  A solemn moment.  I secretly hoped that Imaginary Keith had dug the hole deep enough, given the curious noses of the dogs.

Then to the chickens, gather eggs and feed, fill the cow trough, maybe water the grass in the chicken area.  I follow him everywhere, watching.

How can Imaginary Keith keep it all straight - all these symbiotic relationships that attempt to coexist inside his head?  It’s pleasurable, walking out to tend a dozen chickens at ten in the morning with a fresh cup of coffee in one hand, and yet, the act itself suggests that there is not enough work.  He dumps the bucket of food scraps, and I see him wonder how much money his actions actual end up saving.  He eyes the chicken feeder.  How much does it cost each time a hen pecks at the pellets?  A penny?  More, less?  There is one friendly hen who likes to be picked up.  Imaginary Keith pats her on the back and she crouches down to his touch.  It’s the same stance a hen takes when a rooster shows a bit of interest; the same stance they take when they freeze in fear, after the gate has accidentally swung open and the dogs mistake them for a play toy.  A chicken will actual lie perfectly still while a dog plucks it to death.  It’s the same reaction my friend has been trying to recover from the last few years.  Life has plucked him right down to his bones.

“Don’t forget about the billing,” I say.  There’s really no need for a grown man, no matter how imaginary he might be, to stand around staring at chickens all day.

“If we don’t start selling eggs soon we’re going to have to eat eggs for every meal,” he says.  It’s true.  The eggs are really piling up.

I’ve never decided if practicality is a good thing or not.  It seems like a decent direction to go with your life, but then, maybe it’s only a survival technique.  A necessity, forced on us against our will.  I’ve never decided.

“We could pretend we’re Cool Hand Luke,” I say.  “That might be fun.”

“Okay.  I’ll be Luke.”

“And I’ll say, ‘What we got here is a failure to communicate.’ “

“And I’ll try to escape over and over.”

“And I’ll capture you and force you to do billing.”

We head back to the house, imaginary man with boy in tow.  I think of what messes I can make next.  I look over at the fresh grave, still undisturbed.  I wonder how many times I’ve walked up and down this same gravel driveway, between the barn and house.  The sun is warm but the air is already beginning to change.  Autumn is pushing at our heels.  I try to remember living in a place where summer lasted more then two or three weeks.  Everything seems so long ago.

During the process of creation, it’s easy to lose sight of the goal.  Where are you going?  Are you still heading in the right direction?  Why?  The biggest question of all maybe.  Why create at all?

Today - print out the monthly billing.  Money would be good.  And sweep through the house, quickly.  A guest is arriving.  It would be ridiculous for anyone to show up and be able to know that I had a chef salad three days ago, and that I sat in the massage chair, and that I didn’t quite finish my glass of juice.  Those sorts of things should remain mysteries, not sit around in the form of dirty dishes.

To the kitchen!

Change is good, but requires patients.  No, that’s not right.  Patience.  Yes, that’s what you need.  Plenty of it.

Lots of dead ends and broken links.  Bear with me while I shuffle things around and prepare for the future.  Did you know that all of the computers are going to crash on January 1, 2000?  Oh wait, that’s old news, and as we all know now, another false doomsday prophecy. 

I wish I was a doomsday prophet.  I think that might be fun.

Okay, let me finish with things around here and then I’ll see if I can’t come up with some doomsday prophecy for your entertainment.  I think I may just have some natural ability.

Have you ever woken up next to someone you didn’t really know?  Watched through guarded eyes as that strange, unfamiliar body rolled out of the bed and made it’s way gingerly around the room?  Maybe you offered the stranger a cup of coffee or a shower to freshen up, all the time trying desperately to remember what attracted this person to you in the first place?  Something they said?  A story they’d related?  Certainly couldn’t have been the body.  Good Lord!

What?  You think I had sex?  A one night stand?  Are you crazy?  Have you lost your mind entirely?  I’m talking about me.  Who else could it be?  I’m the one who rolls out of bed a stranger these days.  I have an eye on myself as I move around the house.  What was it about me?, I keep asking.  Surely there was something.

I’ve seen some things, that’s for sure.  Things I’m not sure I like.  And I’ll tell you about them in time, but not now, not while this stranger’s still in the house.  Let me send them on their way, then we’ll sit down and talk, the two of us.  Just the two of us.  Doesn’t that sound nice?  I’ve never been much for groups, I know that.  It’s hard enough listening to one person.

So what do I do as I watch myself, creeping around the house like a stranger?  What do I do as I embrace the idea of yet another failure and pin it like a note next to that ticking clock of my life?  What am I?  44?  I can barely see the hands of the clock there are so many notes.  Halfway and already so cluttered?  Well, I guess we’ll talk about that as well one of these days, but not now.

So, what do I do?  Well, the same thing that any self-respecting virtual man does to keep himself from going insane in times like these - redesign his website.  Cheaper then a walking tour of English cottage gardens, and certainly less tiring then any alcoholic alternative.  Yes, I am reinventing the wheel once again, and this time, I am pushing the limits.  Something new.  Something I can wake up with in the morning and think, yes, I know you. Not that a website is like a person, or that web design is anything like sex, but in times like these, I swear, it’s close enough.

It’s true, I’m going belly up and today’s the day for the paperwork.  It’s interesting that even failure requires a certain amount of paperwork these days.  No just throwing up of the hands and calling it quits.  No white flag waving frantically, sticking out from the bunker your feet have dug as you worried away the years.  Failure must be itemized, broken down into easy to understand line items.  Talk about value of life until you’re blue in the face if you want, but when it’s time to file papers, there better be a dollar sign in front of your every answer.  Value.  Debt.  Oh the sweet fragrant debt of the American dream. 

The weekend fell into place like it always does, then passed without looking back.  But there were moments of perfect timing, I’ll give it that.  My son and I turned on the television, scanning through the program guide.  My eyes immediately fell upon a show about feral children.  It couldn’t have been better.  Only an hour before the boy had been informing me how mean I was.  I think he may have even hated me as we walked through the movie rental store.  I can’t quite remember what set the whole thing off.  Something about slashing cheerleaders to pieces, maybe?  I can’t remember.  There are so many movies.

“No, not that one,” I said, bringing on the hate.  I’m not saying that cheerleaders shouldn’t be hacked to pieces, god knows they got in my way as I was trying to watch the basketball game from my permanent home on the end of the bench.  Who’d ever imagine that skinny little girls could be so irritating just by jumping around in front of you?  But that was a long time ago, and besides, that’s my problem, not his.

“No, find another one,” I said.

“You’re so mean!  I hate you!” You can’t stress out when you hear things like this from your nine year old boy.  The next thing out of his mouth will probably be something very kind and loving.  Something like, “I’m hungry.”

I found myself perusing the movies with the boy, giving him a kids-running-wild lecture.  An over-exaggeration of every detail.  What could happen if I just stopped caring and turned him loose.

“How about this one?” he wants to know.  A movie called Rats.  Rat eyes glowing red on the cover.  It’s good to know that my son is paying such close attention to me. 

But then later, like I said, the weekend fell perfectly into place.  Home again, television on, and suddenly there it was, the show about feral children, backing up everything I’d said less then an hour before.  Television to my rescue, how’s that for irony?

So we sat back for an hour and watched stories about children who had been abandoned by their parents and left in horrific situations at young ages.  The girl who had been turned out with the dogs by her alcoholic parents at the age of three and unbelievably left in the kennel for five years.  Even now, as an old teen, we watch as she often reverts back into dog behavior, running around the yard on her hands and knees, barking.  Another boy who survived from the age of four to six by running around the city with a pack of wild dogs, eating whatever scraps they could find.  And the girl, this one right here in America, chained to a chair each day until she was thirteen, never taught to speak or even walk.  Given no attention.  Spoken to by no one.  The boy watched with one hand over his eyes.  The barking children who thought they were dogs was too much for him.  It almost seemed funny right up until the point that you realized it was real.  Quite a place we live in, this big world of ours.

But now I’m sidetracked.  What was I talking about?  Oh, I remember, going belly up, which come to think of it, also seems funny right up until the point that you realize that it’s real.  I need to finish up with all this paperwork and then get on the phone with an attorney.  You know, sometimes it’s all I can do not to just start barking like a dog myself.  I look out the window and wonder if maybe that thing we think of as The American Dream wasn’t turned out a long time ago, and now we only catch glimpses of it as it darts between the buildings, lean and hungry for attention.

Eyes open.  Blankets pulled up tight against the chill.  The sound of fans, balanced in windows throughout the house, pulling in cold air.  My the time he gets up, the house will be 58 degrees.  He’ll make coffee in his underwear, muscles tensed for warmth, then close all the windows to keep in the cold, then head to the shower.  There’s no washing away what must be done today, the man knows that, but a shower will help.  Maybe.  He hopes.  But this thing has been a long time coming, clinging, weighing him down now for such a long time.  Yes, maybe a shower, he thinks, watching the water stream out behind the glass, waiting for the steam to show above the shower door.  Clean skin has a way of tricking us, making us feel that everything is better.  The man steps into the shower, closing the glass door behind him.  His eyes close and the water wraps around him, and for the briefest of moments, there is nothing else.

I could live out my life in complete secrecy, really.  My father was secret, and his father too, so you might say I have secrecy coursing through my veins.  I’m quite contend to say just about nothing about everything, and if it weren’t for Imaginary Keith pestering me all the time, I’m sure that’s exactly what I would do.  It’s peaceful, saying nothing about everything.  I know there are some who literally start falling apart at the seams when they get a secret inside of them, but not me.  I’m full of secrets, and as far as I can tell, not one loose seam.  My belly bulges a bit, but I think that might be something else.

But Imaginary Keith insists I keep everyone up to date.  “Tell them something,” he says.  “Anything.”

Fair enough.  He didn’t say it had to be a secret.  So here goes.  I’ll describe my day in ten sentences or less.  That’s how men with secrecy coursing through their veins talk about their day, in case you didn’t know.  And that’s the gabby ones.  The quiet ones will usually say nothing, or if you ask them how their day went, they’ll say something like, “Fine.”

Anyway, here goes.  My ten sentence day.

1.  I went to a parenting class this morning, mandated by the state of Oregon for everyone with children who are filing for divorce.

2.  By the end of the four hours, I would begin to realize that I had never imagined there were so many messed up people, or stories that involved drugs and alcohol, or people trying to get custody of babies they had never seen, or even so many people with restraining orders against them, for that matter.

3.  I met with a customer and talked about pink dogwoods and arborvitae and evergreen clematis (which, incidentally, grow faster then a Manute Bol clone but still cost nearly $50 a pop for a nice 5 gallon plant, which to me is outrageous and makes about as much sense as going to the doctor to have them give you a case of poison oak); she is happy.

4.  I poked around a nursery and bought some plants for a job (happy woman), joked around with the help (plant jokes, like holding up the Burning Bush I was buying and telling the guy to listen to me while staring at the shrub and imagine it was God talking to him), then went home for a late lunch.

5.  Listened to an update about my son’s doctor’s appointment, then finished some cleaning work on the fish tank, which I’ll tell you, is one of my least favorite jobs in the world, and, I’ll also tell you, seems to have done something to the filter pump, which is now so loud that it reminds me a little of the time I’d hear the fighter jets, warming up for take-off about a half a mile away from my barracks.

6.  Worked on some bids at the computer.

7.  Nearly wrapped up the work I was doing on a new website design for someone else (see secrecy statement above).

8.  Found the cat standing in the hallway next to a frog, who had somehow gotten into the house and managed to get it’s legs and body tangled up in what appeared to be every single bit of string and lint in the house, including, and I swear, a piece of tinsel (wherever that came from).

9.  Thanked the cat for her help in locating the frog (she looked guilty… the cat, not the frog… I wouldn’t have a clue how to tell if a frog is looking guilty), then spent a full ten minutes trying to untangle the wiggling frog from its entanglement.

10.  Washed my hands, brushed my teeth (nothing to do with the frog), then went to bed.

And that, believe it or not, made for a full, ten sentence day.

Without so much as a goodbye, Imaginary Keith was out the door and on his way this morning, blasting into the day.  Is that enthusiasm I spotted through the window, his head bobbing up and down as he walked down the driveway?  Look at him go!

Big news here in Oregon, I guess.  I turned on the television last night just in time to see the governor announce that the war on meth was going to get cranked up a notch.  Oregon, leading the way with more legislation to make life even more unbearable!  the idea - stop meth production.  The solution - make currently over-the-counter cold medicines available only by prescription.  I can’t help but think that the forefathers’ plan I mentioned only yesterday is falling into place rather nicely, don’t you think?  Now, not only will the majority of people not be able to afford health insurance, but they won’t be able to afford the cold medicines that they at least hoped were helping them, even if they weren’t.

So from the state that tries its best to champion the right to die, to choose your own death and end all your suffering, now comes even simpler legislation - the right to suffer! 

I have a feeling that this war on meth hasn’t been properly thought through.  Are they aware the murder rate is going to skyrocket, once all those unbearable sinus headaches start kicking in and the only relief people will still be able to get there hands on without a doctor’s prescription will be a small handgun, still available, I imagine, on just about any street corner in town.

Yes, the doctors have got to be loving this one.  Antihistamines by prescription only.  It was a day they’d only dreamed of.  But watch the drug companies scream when sales start dropping.  You thought a meth addict was bad?  Have you ever seen a gang of drug lobbyists out looking for a little revenge?  Dead-bolts, everyone.  Invest in dead-bolts.  It’s going to get ugly out there.

In more personal, work-related news:

Digging continues at the home of one Barbara S., currently satisfied customer.  Today’s adventure is entitled, The Beauty of New Dirt,or, Entwined in the Tendrils of Sweet Pea Love.  You should have seen Fernando’s shovel flashing yesterday in the hot afternoon sun!  The clay at his feet trembled in fear.

Monday begins with Barbara, the woman who was “at a complete loss what to do.” And no wonder!  Between the hard, clay soil that makes up so much of Salem and her husband’s now fading strength ("he once did everything, but anymore he’s just to weak and frail..."), Barbara needed help. 

“I miss our little truck,” she said.  “But it was time for it to go.  It’s hard now, without it....” Her voice trails off in sadness.

I haven’t even mentioned the woman’s petunias inability to stay petunia-y, or the two ugly, gravelly, five foot strips on either side of the back yard patio that won’t go away, no matter how much complete-loss dreaming poor Barbara does.  And of course, there is her husband’s fading strength which, by agreement, we can do nothing about.  You see, long before I was ever born a group of men gathered together and discussed the economic fate of all Americans.  They divvied up the money and the jobs and basically made sure what was what and who was who.  It was important work, so they often wore jackets with shiny brass buttons, shoes with decorative buckles, and large, powdered wigs.

“Let’s give them all hope,” someone suggested.

“Yes, very nice,” someone else replied.  “We’ll remind them of their independence.” There was great support for this idea.

“Indeed!”

“Oh yes, very good.”

“Excellent suggestion!”

“Hear, hear.  Good show!” (Which sounded a bit too King Georgie, and was amended in the meeting’s minutes to read: “I agree.  Nice idea.")

Then someone else chimed in.  “What about the landscapers?”

The men all looked at each other.  Surely he wasn’t referring to those broken-backed men who stacked the stone walls between proper men’s properties and along roadways.  A murmur went around the room.  Had someone let in a reporter?

“They’ll remain slaves, of course.” A vote was called for and a show of hands made it unanimous.

“Slaves it is, then.” Someone scribbled the vote results into the minutes.

“But we’ll still remind them of their independence,” someone said.  “And give them hope.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And maybe a small pittance would be okay,” offered another.  If there was a reporter in the room, this would throw him off-track.

“Yes, yes.  A small pittance.  We wouldn’t want to break their backs.” Everyone chuckled as they moved onto the next order of business - doctors and attorneys.

“How about they divide up whatever is left,” someone suggested.

“Yes, but plus 20%.  That’s important.”

Everyone was in agreement.

“Dear Lord!” someone suddenly burst out.  “What about us?  The politicians!  Is there anything left?” His face had gone pale, or it may not have.  He’d been to the doctor the night before for a leech treatment.

“Dear Sir, have no fear.  We’ll be discussing the concept of deficit spending after lunch.  It’s quite new and promising.  And, I do believe if I’m not mistaken that it’s time for lunch right now.  Gentlemen, let’s say we get back to this America idea at three this afternoon.  Four hours enough of a lunch break for everyone?”

So today we are off to Barbara’s house to restore order and health (although not her husband’s).  We will replace and amend the earth.  We will construct raised beds and trellises for masses of flowering vines, such as evergreen clematis, so that Barbara and her husband can hide from their neighbors.  We will dig and dig and dig, and all the while give thanks to those men who gathered together so many long years ago, who with their incredible foresight, knew to fill us with hope.  Yes, hope is a wonderful thing.  I don’t think a day goes by that our poor, landscaping hearts don’t overflow with the hope that we won’t cut through underground utilities.

Plus, Barbara is also aware of our forefather’s wisdom, and had agreed to pay us a small pittance.

Look!  The guys are here for work!

“To the pansies!” I yell out the window as their truck passes.  Despite my madness, Fernando is smiling.  In a few minutes he’ll be in the back, whistling and loading shovels.

The boy has a sleepover!

Unfortunately, I can’t give you many details because the whole night is still too fresh in my memory, and while the boys are now still asleep, any discussion of last night’s events may lead me to smother them in their beds.  I’ve never been a proponent of physical discipline of any sort.  You can’t whip a child into shape, just like you can’t whip an adult into shape.  But last night has me thinking… would a shock collar fall under physical or mental abuse?  And could I slip them around the boys’ necks without waking them up?

No, seriously, all I really want to know is this: how many hours can two children follow a person at such a close distance that every time you stop walking they bump into you.  I’m serious.  If the sun hadn’t gone down yesterday and I hadn’t gone to bed, I think they’d still be bumping into me even now.  I finally understand the reasoning behind space exploration.  Space!  We need space!

Molly the overly sensitive house cat has returned!  Oh the emotional drama and stress!  I wish there was some way to draw a cartoon about a boy who accidently overturns his worm farm, and we see the worms zipping down a bunch of worm holes, and the boy is all distraught, and the father is saying something like, “They’ll be fine, worms no how to take care of themselves,” but the boy keeps pacing and ripping at his hair, yelling something like, “I bet they’re dead!  I bet they’re all dead!  You don’t know they’re not dead, Dad!  You don’t know!!”

Anyway, Molly’s back from her traumatic daytime adventure, and spent all of last night walking around on top of me, poking me in the face while I tried to sleep.  Obviously continuing where the boys left off.

Collars for everyone, I say.  Collars for everyone.

The boy is up in arms, concerned about the missing cat!

“I don’t even like her that much!” he says, masking his concern.  “I don’t care if she’s missing.  She doesn’t even let me pet her.  She just does what she wants!”

“That’s how cats are,” I say.

“I’ll go find a picture to put on the missing poster!” He stomps off, his emotions bristling.

“Let’s go check the barn!” he yells from the back of the house.  “Come on, Dad!”

Where’s the chaperone monkey when you need him, keeping an eye on things?

“Dad!  Are you coming?!”

I glance over at the rabbit hutch as we head to the barn, making sure everything looks okay.  One animal emergency per weekend.  That’s my limit.  It’s hard to tell from across the yard.  I’ve never noticed before how much sleeping rabbits look just like dead rabbits.

“Hurry up, Dad!”

Yes, hurry up.  Hurry up, Molly, and return home so I can get on with my Saturday.  I’m thinking about pressure washing the house.  The outside, of course.

“Dad!”

“Coming.” The rabbits are just fine, sleeping or dead.  We hurry off to the barn on high alert.

56 degrees makes for a nice morning.  A couple of hours before I pick up the boy, which is more then enough time to throw out my back dragging the heavy lounge chair into the closest strip of shade I can find.  When are they going to make laptop screens you can see in the sunlight?  Does anyone know?

Birds chirping, Powerbook in lap, my coffee resting on an overturned Costco dishwasher detergent bucket, which serves double-duty every couple of weeks or so when it’s car washing time.  Life on the farm.

Molly, the indoor cat, is missing!  She decided a few weeks ago that it’d be a good idea to spend the nights running wild outside, hanging out with the farm’s oldest animal, Barncat.  Normally, around 4:00 a.m., she’d start mewing outside my bedroom window, letting me know that the party was over, get up, and open the door.  Surprisingly, at age 44, I still train rather easily, so the cat was having no trouble with the arrangement.

But this morning - missing!  Molly No-Show.  And now it’s way past time for me to release the hounds.  Ah, the foolish conflicts we humans put ourselves through in order to coexist with animals.

Just so you know, the four cows are in plain sight across the field.  Even from this distance I can see the movement of their big square jaws, forever chewing.  As you can imagine, cows are much harder to misplace then cats, although it has happened.  Back in my youth, our family had a small herd of twenty or so cows that would occasionally push through one of the farms old, broken down fences and go hide out in the neighbor’s corn field, eating everything in site.  It was my job back then to find them and bring them home.

I won’t be doing that with Molly.  Seriously, even if we were back in Iowa and she’d escaped into the neighbor’s field, how much corn can a cat eat?  No, she’s probably out in the barn having a roll in the hay with Barncat, which doesn’t sound half bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean with Barncat, but just in general. 

And the other farm news, you wonder.  What of it?  How are the animals?

The new chickens have started laying eggs!  The first eggs are tiny little things, barely bigger then an eyeball, unless of course you’re thinking of Marty Feldman or maybe Steve Buscemi eyes, then just about that big.  We gather them up and put them in the refrigerator, but you can bet no one’s going to want to eat such a tiny egg, which reminds me to find out if the movie Freaks has been released on DVD.  I’m also waiting around for Eraserhead to make it to DVD.

Do you see now why no one will eat those little eggs?  They just look like film stars of something gone wrong.

Oh, and we may be getting a monkey.  Imaginary Keith received a letter from one of his uncles who’s the captain of some ship, and the letter said that as soon as he could catch the monkey he would be shipping him to us for safe keeping, which makes it sound like the arrangement will be temporary, don’t you think?  I’m not sure about having a monkey around the house, but I suppose it could be trained to keep an eye on Molly when she goes out at night.  A monkey chaperoning two cats out on a date.  I can see that.

In a bizarre twist of fate… no that’s not right.

Good news, everyone.... no, that’s not right, either.

Oh, I know…

The previously missing bones of Mr. Cooper were discovered today in a desk drawer of Statesman Journal reporter Angela Yeager, leading to the…

No, that’s not true at all.  How about the truth for once?  Just for fun.

One of Word Shadows’ first members, Brian Hines, was recently interviewed by the Statesman Journal, Salem’s local newspaper, to give his take on the the world of blogging, and today when I picked up the paper, I was surprised to see his smiling face gracing not only the front page, but dominating the entire Local section.  The curious can go here to see what Brian had to say.

Brian, naturally, gave my name to Ms. Yeager, and I will admit that I wondered if she would call or email, wanting to set up a time to interview me.  What would I tell her?  Would I be receptive?  Brian, in his email, had said that he told Ms. Yeager that I was a “literary” example of blogging.  Could I possibly live up to such a claim?  What would I wear?  Should I move the ketchup bottle from the living room table?  The questions nearly overwhelmed me Thursday afternoon, as I contemplated the possibilities.  Was Ms. Yeager the same reporter who’d interviewed me several years ago for that gardening article?  Would she notice I’d put on weight?

But today I picked up the paper and noticed Brian’s smiling face right away, sitting there on his back deck with his laptop open, apparently ready to do some blogging.  It’s funny, the things you notice in a picture when you actually know the person.  Is that Brian’s real smile, or his best attempt to look natural in an unnatural situation?  And who planted those trees in the background and installed the pond?  Notice the change in the boards near his feet.  How could anyone possibly guess that an old, aging hot tub once sat there, and that we removed it and did our best to match up the existing decks?

Ms. Yeager certainly doesn’t know because she never bothered to interview me.  Oh well.  I imagine I would be a difficult interview, best saved for a television appearance sometime in the future.  I wonder if David Letterman will still be alive when I become famous?  He and I both have gap teeth, and I’ve always thought he would enjoy having me on his show.  I wrote him a letter once about Mr. Potatohead, but I’ll tell you, nothing ever came of it.

But I don’t have much time tonight to sit around worrying about the things that didn’t happen.  I’ve been invited over for dinner by another Word Shadows’ member, Jill, and her significant other, who also happens to be a Keith.  That’s right!  Another Keith, but not to be confused with Other Keith, who is a different Keith altogether around these pages.  (That’s important to note, Ms. Yeagar, in case you’re feeling guilty for leaving me out of the interview and now find yourself reading along.) Keiths are truly around every corner, waiting to serve mankind.  We’re your brothers and your teachers, your bankers and your blue collar laborers!  And, rumor has it, we may be eating tofu enchiladas!  I’ll let you know how that goes!

And to set the record straight, I harbor no hard feelings about being left out of today’s newspaper article.  Let’s get real for a minute, if we can.  For all I know, Ms. Yeager dropped in on Word Shadows to do a little background work and line up her questions for my interview, only to find me talking about God sticking an arrow in my head to turn me into a Twister spinner, so that he and Buddha and the rest of his buddies could walk around discussing the fate of the world.

I think I’ve said enough.

To the tofu!

Good Lord, if I tell you I found some more of Mr. Cooper’s missing bones this morning, I have this feeling you’re never going to believe another word I say.  The way I make it sound, his bones are turning up all the time, and you’re probably beginning to wonder just how many bones the man could possibly have had.  Not to mention that it’s a far-fetched story to begin with—me, becoming obsessed with the missing bones of Mr. Cooper, taking them away from my dog whenever he drags them up to the house, and then hiding them in a cardboard box out in the barn so the government won’t find them and take them away from me.  I suppose this makes me, in some way, the government’s dog, because sure as hell the moment they catch me with my hands on the box, staring down at my collection, they’re going to snatch them out from under my nose without so much as a thank you.  I wouldn’t even doubt if they tried slapping me in jail, which would be a shame, really, for everyone involved.  Especially my dog.  No one suffers more when a man goes to jail then the man’s dog.  Man’s best friend, sure, but does anyone give a second thought to man’s best lonely friend?  Go ahead, ask any dog who’s lost an owner, they’ll tell you.  You know, come to think of it, I don’t even think dogs have visiting rights in this state.  I live just down the road from one of the prisons here in Salem (for a small city, we’ve got ourselves an impressive collection of jails and prisons), and I don’t recall even once seeing any dog hurrying along all crooked-like down the gravel shoulder, worrying it might miss visiting hours.  But then, I haven’t been looking, but you can bet I will be now.

Maybe I should tell you about the mountain they’re building right across the road from me, built out of nothing but giant hay bales.  The thing is starting to tower its way into the sky, and even though they’ve only been working on it for a couple of weeks now, the sun has begun to set almost an hour earlier each night as it sinks down behind my new hay mountain.  I call it my hay mountain because I think I have the best sight of it of any house along my road.  The hay dust is flying, and if you can stop sneezing long enough to notice, the sunsets are sensational!

Or I could head off for a bit of work this afternoon.  A woman named Patricia has a sprinkler valve that needs replacing, a woman named Ernestine has a leaky pond, I could check in on the ongoing war I’m waging against some beetles outside the local Red Lobster, and a woman named Barbara called and is “at a complete loss what to do.”

“Does two this afternoon work for you?” I asked.  A complete loss!  Loss, lost.  Lost bones!  I’m all over this job.  “Yes, I know the street,” I tell her.  “I’ll see you at two.”

You are welcome to ask me any question, but please, don’t expect an answer.  Feel free to give me a task, but for God’s sake, not one that demands results.  Or maybe you could point me in a direction and plot me a course, but what ever you do, don’t wait around on the other end thinking I will show up.

I remember fishing when I was a boy, my hands dangling the pole over the side of the boat, my eyes fixed on the small, round, red and white bobber that floated not more then ten feet away.  My eyes would follow the line leading down from the tip of the pole, then stare hard to see the top of the the tiny, brass hook that hung onto the line.  The red half of the bobber above the water, shining in the sun, the white half just under the surface, still visible in the clear, cold water of Bay Lake.  So peaceful, the bobber’s existence seemed, riding up and down on the ripples, so quiet and perfect as it floated there waiting to announce the death of a fish.

But those days are long gone.  The faintest of memories.

Mornings have become my bobbers now, and I find myself staring at them for the longest time, wishing they could float in front of me forever.  Now I sit in the day the same way I once sat in that small, wooden rowboat with it’s faded, green paint. My body leans forward, my head hanging slightly over the edge while I gently rock back and forth, watching the ripples fan out. 

I’ve always liked bobbers more then fishing, the same way I like mornings more then the day.  That one perfect moment before the water breaks and the fight begins.

The house is buzzing!

We’ve gone shopping for food and the boy is pulled from the brink of starvation at very nearly his last second.  Fading and lurching around the room, clutching his stomach.  He may have stumbled.  The high drama of hungry children!  Before I can put away a single thing the microwave was dinging, door nearly ripped from it’s hinges, the kitchen filling with the greasy smell of hot dog air.  Squirt!  Squirt!  Ketchup coats everything. 

And there’s another boy in the house, this one the son of the man who was the boyfriend of the wife.  You don’t get to say that sentence often in life.  Don’t ask me how because I don’t know.  Some things in life just happen without explanation and we learn to accept, or suffer the consequences.  I barely know how to say who the boy is, and am having the damnedest time trying to figure out how to work him into the story.  It is beyond the scope of my storytelling ability!  We’ll leave it at that and call it good.

Did I mention the giant arrow stuck in my head?  Several years ago God stopped by and asked me if he could stick a giant arrow in my head.  He and a few of his friends were going to play Twister, and would I mind if the stuck the arrow in the top of my head, he asked, so that they could walk around and discuss the fate of the world while they played.  If the spinner was attached to a pair of legs, mine in this case, it could just follow them around while they talked.  I’m not sure whose idea it actually was.  Buddha’s, I think, but I’m not sure.  Certainly not mine.

“It won’t kill you, my son,” God said.  “It won’t even hurt.”

“I won’t fall for that one again,” Jesus said.  Everyone laughed, except me, of course.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk around being a Twister spinner.  Who’d want to play Twister with Buddha anyway, I thought, but kept it to myself.

That was a long time ago, but I still have the pointer thing stuck in my head.  I think with all the heated discussion going on about the fate of the world they just forgot about me.  Leave it to God and his buddies not to put away they’re toys.  It’s not so bad, I guess, except that I can’t wear tee shirts anymore.  I do miss that.

Now I’ve forgotten what I was trying to say.  It happens all the time.  Maybe it’s the arrow, I don’t know.

Maybe I was trying to figure out how I ended up grocery shopping with the son of this man who was such a big part of my marriage falling to pieces.

“You can each pick out a candy bar or something for tonight,” I told the boys while we were checking out.  I’m taking the two of them to the drive-in tonight.  An action-packed evening of The Fantastic Four and Stealth.  Plenty of punching and guided missiles on the loose. 

So what does this boy turn up with at the check-out stand?  Not a candy bar, but beef jerky.  A good choice, sure, but an expensive one.  Ah, what the hell, I think, and throw it on the pile.

I tried to estimate once what this boy’s dad had cost me by showing up in my life (or more specifically, my wife’s), factoring in such things as moving out of the house and into an apartment for a couple of years, all the lost work due to depression, the refinancing of the house from 15 years to 30, double house payments, eventual child support, etc., and then gave up when I knew it would be probably be impossible to figure, and even if I did, way, way, way too depressing.  I think I gave up as the number approached the $200,000 dollar mark.  (There’s a good joke there, but I’ll pass.  Someone’s reading over my shoulder, which is a different story in itself.)

So add four bucks onto the bill.  I like jerky, and the kid seems decent enough.  I bet he’ll share.

A slow Sunday, with the boy out of town and the music cranking.  A good day for cleaning.  Right now, the Haunted album by Poe, which I’ve posted for everyone’s listening pleasure.  I must study the intricacies of office furniture arrangement.  A spare dresser must be incorporated into the scheme.  Once again, sparseness somehow threatens to overrun me.  So much trouble to organize so little.  Always busy, busy, busy, wasting so much time.  My nondescript American novel will no doubt end up being about some nondescript unfinished paperwork scattered across an equally nondescript carpeted office floor.  Oops, that’s way too descriptive.  My novel will be much plainer.

A phone call.  The brother-in-law, wondering if he can send a Kirby carpet cleaner representative over to my house.  “They aren’t trying to sell you anything,” he says, “and they’ll shampoo your carpet for free.” I try hard to teach my own son that nothing is free, no matter what they say on television.  My brother-in-law is much too old to teach anything, so I don’t bother.  “Does your carpet need cleaning?”

Of course my carpet needs cleaning.  I have a nine year old son who loves to plop himself down in front of the television to eat food that I might as well have served on a spinning merry-go-round the way it flies off of the edges of the plate.  There is one particular round stain that reappears like an unexplainable alien crop circle no matter how hard I scrub at it.  The boy himself may be an alien.  There’s no real way of telling.  Or maybe I’m the alien and just see the stain because of my alien ultra-sensitive eyes.  This might also explain my rough skin and my one ugly toenail.  I may look into this possibility later.  I may have a space cruiser or something hidden out in the barn that I’ve completely forgotten about.  Yes, I definitely need to look into the possibility that I’m an alien.  It would certainly explain my—no, maybe I better not say any more at the moment.

Oh!  I’m on the phone!

“No, I don’t want them here,” I say and hang up.  I try hard to use the telephone manners my grandfather taught me.  The telephone was invented during his lifetime, so of course he knew the proper way to talk on the phone.  Say your piece then hang up.  Quickly.  Don’t waste time.  Saying goodbye is senseless.  Neither person on the phone is actually going anywhere.  You’re already there.  Hang up and get on with it.

I better find the bullets for the gun, I think, just in case he gives the Kirby rep the wrong message.  Anything is possible with that man.

I, of course, don’t have any real bullets.  Only a box of those powderless .22 shells that I tried to shoot the wild raccoon with, without success you’ll remember.  But I do think about shooting the Kirby rep, just for a minute or two.  It’d be kind of fun to watch the look in his eyes when I pull the trigger and the bullet bounces off the top of his head. 

You just know there’s a law against bouncing blanks off a salesman’s well-coiffed head, just like you know there’s not a law against door-to-door Kirby salesmen.  The world is a lopsided place, and I still don’t understand bullets that bounce off.  Who came up with that idea, and for what possible reason?

I have lots to do!  A hundred boxes of toys to move around.  Maybe not that many, but they are the gold in this house.  Under every step, stacked in every corner.  But first, to the office!  Move the printer and the bookcase.  Oops!  Some landscape plans slip behind the big bookcase as I try to fish a cable into place.  Lost forever.  Unimportant, most likely.  Everything delegated to the top shelf is of low importance.  Just like the broken toys in the movie Toy Story 2.  It’s true.  Look at your own shelves.  Almost everything on the top can be thrown away, unless, of course, it’s up there to keep it away from the curious monkey hands in your house.  When I was a tiny boy I climbed to the top of a big shelf and discovered my dad’s silver dollar proof collection.  Everything in tight, shiny wrappers, fresh from the mint.  I was five.  I opened it all up to do him a favor.  He would be so happy!  I touched all the untouched coins.  I was five.  When you’re five you touch everything.  Maybe I put them in my mouth, but I doubt it.  Why would I do that?  I’m sure I stole one or two.  That was my style back then.

What?  Another phone call?

Hey!  Things are looking up!  It’s the brother!  We’re going golfing!

Poor cleaning.  Always life’s last kid picked.

The monkey snapped closed the lid of the laptop.  The Blogathon was over, Bunni and Bakerina no doubt off to bed to catch up on some much needed sleep.  He could use a little himself, he thought, as he gave the compass in the frying pan a good shake.  Cooking was more tiring then he’d ever imagined, or at least would be tiring, if he were actually cooking something.  The monkey was no fool.  He knew it was a compass in the frying pan, not a focaccia.  He was only going through the motions to entertain the Second Mate, who he’d spotted peering in through the galley door window an hour or so ago.

He gave the pan another big shake then looked over at the door.  “Almost ready,” he said.  “Can you smell it?”

“Yes, I think I can,” the Second Mate said, his face pressed up against the glass.  “It smells good.”

And they called him the stupid monkey, the monkey thought.  You don’t fry focaccia.  Everyone knows that.  He grabbed the compass from the frying pan and slipped it into his pants pocket, then headed to the cooler for something cold.  Obviously, cooking was also thirsty work, which would explain the cook always being drunk.

“I’m parched,” the monkey said as he looked through the cooler for a beer, pausing only long enough to unzip his pants and pee into the leftover pot of chowder, the second time he’d done so in as many days.  The cook had taught him how, or at least, the cook thought that he’d taught him how, but of course, monkeys have been peeing into things since the beginning of time.  It’d actually been the monkey’s idea all along.  But the drunk cook had come up with the idea of calling it The Secret Ingredient, even though most of the time he’d just say, “Spice it up, monkey,” which worked for the monkey as well. 

“There better be some beer left,” the monkey said, pushing things around the cooler.  You don’t mess around with a parched monkey, even the drunk cook knew that.

The Second Mate was pounding on the door, trying to get the monkey’s attention.

“Is the focaccia ready?” the Second Mate was yelling.  “I’m starving.”

“Almost,” the monkey replied.  “Good focaccia takes time.  Would you care for some chowder while you wait?”

“Oh, alright, I guess.  I hope it’s better then last night’s chowder.”

“It is.  I spiced it up a bit.” The monkey shifted around on his feet, concentrating, seeing if he could pee again so soon.  “I think maybe I could crank it up a notch if you’d like.”

“Sure, sounds good.”

The monkey almost felt sorry for the Second Mate, standing there at the door like an idiot, breathing against the glass.  He could remember his second mate - young, wiry, a good grappler but with a short tail and too many fleas.  High maintenance.  He’d peed in her food, too.  Second mates never have it easy, he thought.

“Coming right up,” the monkey said, unzipping his pants.  Over his shoulder, he could see the small window of the door, steaming up, and from down the alley, voices that seemed to be approaching.  His hand touched the outside of his pocket, checking on the compass.  Maybe it was about time to get it out and navigate himself a way out of there.  The Second Mate would have to wait for his snack.

“Hey, monkey, where’s my—Captain!” The silhouette of the Second Mate’s head disappeared from the steamed up window, and the monkey could hear him scrambling to get to his feet.  Too late!  The Captain was already here!

“Monkey, I know you’re in there.  Now come out with my compass, NOW!”

“You sound hungry, Captain.  Chowder?”

Okay, okay, let’s calm down here.  The men are straightening up the ship and that compass will show up and things will be back on course in no time at all.  No need to panic, no, certainly not.  No man was ever outsmarted by a goddamn monkey, you remind yourself.  It’s a fucking monkey, for crying out loud.  How much trouble can one damn monkey cause?  It’s not like they sit around planning trouble.  Stupid thing’s probably hiding somewhere right now, scared half to death, playing with himself.  Sure would have been easier if he’d left the compass alone, though.  You can’t be captain and missing your compass at the same time.  It just doesn’t work.

Besides, you think, you don’t have time for this crap.  You’re hungry.  Running a tight ship makes a man hungry, leaving little time for chasing around a monkey with a compass.  You step around the gold and lean out the door, calling out for the First Mate.  Man you’re hungry.

“First Mate,” you say, “I’m off to the galley for a bit of lunch.”

“Aye aye, sir,” he says.

“You’ll let me know right away if the compass turns up?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And the monkey?”

“I believe the monkey has been spotted in the galley, sir.”

“WHAT!  I thought I made it clear that I was to be told the minute the monkey was spotted.”

“I believe it’s a new development, sir.”

“Well, what’s he up to?”

“Who, sir?”

“The monkey, dammit!  Do I need to explain everything?”

“No, sir.”

“I should hope not.”

“Yes, sir.”

You should have guessed right off that the monkey would hide out in the galley.  Come to think of it, the cook’s shoulder seemed to maybe be his favorite perch, which might explain the chowder.  You’d have to have a talk with the cook about that.

“Well, what is it?” you say.

“What is what, sir?”

“The monkey, for God’s sake!  What is the monkey up to?”

“The Second Mate reports that he appears to be baking a loaf of focaccia bread, or something.  The cook was too drunk to give a second opinion.”

“Good Lord, have you gone crazy?  Monkeys don’t bake!  You’ve lost your mind man!  Stand aside!”

“Yes sir!”

Baking focaccia, you say to yourself.  The whole ship’s gone mad, and it’s all on account of the gold, which you suddenly notice, appears have been cleaned up.  Thank God!  For once something is going right.