I tend to sleep in three hour blocks, and have told myself for years now that I would start writing down my dreams every time I woke up.  Think of all the ideas that I would save from being forgotten, I’d tell myself, not to mention the hundreds, maybe thousands of stories that were being lost each year alone.  Add up all those years of dreaming, and well, you see what we’re all missing out on here.

Of course it never happens.  You see, the thing about waking up every three hours or so is that all that motivation you had going into the sleep tends to become lost as you come out of it.  Motivation, I’m thinking, is a lot like the details of a dream, with only a very small window of opportunity that must be grabbed onto in order for the whole thing to come together.  Seriously, tell me this.  How many dreamers do you know who are also motivated?  I’m not saying they don’t exist, because they do, I know that.  I’m just saying I’m not one of them.

And since I’m alone here in the house at the moment, I don’t see any others around who fit the description, so naturally, I’m forced to come to the conclusion that motivated dreamers are few and far between.

I don’t even see any out the window I’m sitting by, and I can see pretty far out this one.

But!  Having said all that, it just so happens I was motivated enough last night to jot down some notes lying there in bed in the dark, the idea being that when the sun finally came up (which it is doing this very minute where I’m at) I would find myself looking at either something entertaining enough to share with the world, some deep, dark secret revealed to me for the first time, leading to a higher level of self-awareness and enlightenment, or a great, world-changing idea, which I would be happy to share with everyone for free.  I dream generously, you should know, so there should be enough to go around.

Before I get to the dreams, however, I should let you know that when I woke up around 1 a.m. I was just a little bit angry.  I wasn’t gritting my teeth or anything like that, which I think proves I’m a sensible, level-headed guy, because what I was angry about (just a little) was that the show I’d recorded and finally gotten around to watching wasn’t anything at all like how it’d been described in the synopsis, and I hate false advertising, even when I wake up at 1 a.m.  Even more when it’s tricked me. 

I’d recorded this show that’d claimed it was about some sort of Alaskan, Bermuda Triangle-style mystery.  Alaskan natives tell of mysterious spirits that steal people in the Alaskan Triangle, or something like that the synopsis had read, but the whole show ended up being about a couple of planes that went missing and couldn’t be found after extensive searches.  ”Every resource was used to find the missing U.S. Senator - Senator!  I should have known a politician was behind this!  Besides, who in their right mind wants to find a missing Senator? - and to this day, his disappearance, along with those he was flying with, remains a mystery.

Now that I’m writing my own mystery involving a spirit, I thought it made good sense to promote myself to mystery expert, which I’m thinking, should speed up the writing of this book considerably.  But that’s a side note, nothing more.  Something to add to your vast collection of information about me.

Do you ever think about how much junk you put into your brain?  No, I don’t either.

Anyway, I woke up mad not because the Senator (I forgot his name the moment they said it) stayed missing, but because the entire show, which had lured me there in the first place by promising stories from the Alaskan natives about mysterious spirits whisking away people, didn’t bother to talk with a single Eskimo about what was going on.  They didn’t even bother to add a single mysterious, native drum beat to a single scene of this so-called Alaskan Triangle.  And then they drew the area on the Alaskan map and that was when I really started getting mad.  It wasn’t a triangle-shaped area at all that the people were disappearing in, but more of a trapezoid!

But enough about my emotional stability.  To the dreams!

One

This first seemed to take place in a library, although it also had bookstore qualities about it, which ended up being true because when I started looking through a section of science fiction I found a small paperback with a slightly torn cover that I decided I was going to buy.  The fun fact of this particular dream is that the author’s name, which escapes me now, happened to be some sort of combination of H.G. Wells and Herbert Hoover.  Combine those two names somehow and that’s who wrote the book I was going to buy.

I was a grown man in the dream, but for whatever reason, my mom and dad had come to pick me up.  They were still married, although I knew in the dream that they were, in fact divorced (as they are in waking life), and I found myself watching them from behind the stacks of books, noticing how they kept a distance from one another while they walked around, waiting on me.

I’m almost ready, I told them, deciding at the last second that I needed to find a book on ghosts, which this morning, brings up what I suppose is a valid question.  Do I actually need to do some research on ghosts for the hermit’s story?  Should I try to work in some valid ghost facts, or just wing it and make up all my own? 

Two

Around 3:30 a.m. I woke again, this time jotting down some notes that involved the actor Peter MacNicol in his role as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt in the television show, Numb3rs.  We were discussing the universe and he was telling me about a string theory-based musical that he and some others in his department were going to be putting on, and that maybe I would be interested in attending.

“We’ve worked out a lovely little sashay number,” he said, which in the dream I took to mean song more then dance.

We talked more about the vastness of space, and I asked him if our molecular structures, which seemed to not only form us, but to be in constant motion around us and within us, spinning, forming, appearing, etc., might have a tendency to be drawn into other molecular structures simply by focus.  The astronomer, for example, whose passion builds because the stars pull at him as much as he pulls for the stars.  That somehow we are drawn into both infinite and finite space by paying attention to it and focusing.  Friendship and love, for instance, nothing more then attention to another’s details.  The artist or poet, drawing their insight not somewhere from within, but rather somewhere between themselves and whatever it is they’ve chosen to focus their attention on.  An artist such as Renoir, for example, saw the exact same light and subject as everyone else, yet was able to focus and draw from this environment something that others around him were not.

We walked and talked some more.

It was a good dream, although I wouldn’t have minded swapping Peter MacNicol for Navi Rawat.  Now there’s a smile worth dreaming about.

On the upside, at least it wasn’t a Judd Hirsch dream.  Not that I’ve ever had one.  My fingers are crossed.

Three

I don’t remember much about the final dream of the night, other than books were involved again somehow.  I was at a kiosk in the mall, looking over a children’s book that had a secret inside place that you could hide your teddy bear in, which I thought was kind of clever, although now that I’m awake, I’m not so sure.  Would a kid want to put their teddy bear inside a book and close the cover?

Anyway, the moment my eyes popped open, the dream and the waking world collided into another of my futuristic ideas that is sure to come true.  This one - the eventual union of public education with the retail sector, resulting in school classrooms that are built as part of a large shopping mall.  The kids will earn credits for attending and passing classes, which they can redeem at any of the mall’s shops which are, naturally, located along the hallways that the kids pass through on their way to their next class.  I even envisioned periods of history being divided up into sellable, corporate sponsorships.  The Victoria’s Secret Renaissance, “bringing out the architecture in every woman” for example, or how about The Cingular Wireless Industrial Revolution.

I’m full of good ideas.  It’s just a matter of time before someone starts asking for them.

Once enough things have happened to you in your life, recovering from that sense of paranoia that has slowly begun to take root at your core is easier said then done.  If you’re young, you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about here.  The twenty-somethings.  Yea, you.  You know who you are.  Bold, sexy, still full of yourselves, thinking that life boils down to connecting the dots between sexual encounters and love encounters.  That time when life feels like nothing more then that feeling of bouncing back and forth between the simple and the complex.  Simple, complex, simple, complex - my god, the drama!  That time in life where love moves in and out like the two ends of an accordion, and come to think of it, ends up sounding just about as good.  I can’t imagine there is any force on earth quite like the sense of drama that courses through the veins of the twenty-something, except, maybe, that sense of supremacy that marks the time known as the thirties.

Stupid twenty year olds, what do they know?  The thirties, now that’s where it’s at.

Or is it?  Or as my particular case demands, was it?  Was I actually ever thirty?  Could something like that have already come and gone, ripping through me like some Oklahoma twister on it’s way through another trailer park?  If it did happen, you’re going to have to break out the photo album to prove it to me, because God almighty as my witness, or maybe just use the plain stupid look on my face, I don’t remember a bit of it.  Not one bit.  Could those ten years of riding the tip of that twister already have come and gone, that my time of infallibility is over, and the forties are already here, my life scattered around me like all those poor trailer houses I just finished ripping through?  What?  You mean, the ride’s over?  Huh?  Gather all this stuff together?  This junk?  What the hell?  You mean this is my life!

Well, I’ll tell you, I’m no fortune teller, so I’m not even going to try and imagine what the fifties are going to be about.  But I can tell you one thing for sure, one thing about the forties.  The forties are all about gathering yourself back up, getting ready, I suppose you might say, to take another poke at the thing.  Whatever that is, anyway.  The thing.  I guess it’s life, I suppose, but I can’t say for certain, because so far the forties haven’t been one bit about knowing anything for sure.  That much I know.  Oh, and that I must have been one hell of a twister back in my thirties.

Pardon my language, but fuck!  Look at the mess!

Thinking a little this morning about the hermit and what motivated him, I started wondering about the multitude of problems we all confront on a daily basis, which led to some rather random ideas regarding the source of these troubles.

Sin, of course, is thrown out there as one of the religious-based causes.  Mankind’s internal flaw that must be redeemed in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of our lifetime of problems for all eternity.  I won’t get into my thoughts on that one, other than to say, blah, blah, blah.

Several things came to mind, but you know, the one thing that stuck in my mind this morning is the possession of land.  Ownership.  That “need” of possession that somehow has intrenched its way so deeply into our lives that it’s hard to even imagine it being any other way, and yet, the very description most (shaky ground here, for me) religions give of their own afterlife.  Odd, it seems.

Could everything possibly hinge on ownership in one way or another?  Couldn’t profit, for instance, (one of my favorite anti-western philosophy whipping boys), which is arguably either an offshoot of greed or solid economic policy, depending on your particular stance, boil down even further into the by-product of simply ownership?  Think of it.  Everything seems tied in one way or another to ownership or possession, and the person who attempts to form any sort of happiness or life style outside of this accepted, planetary wide way of living, is a person setting themselves up for unavoidable failure.  Living within the walls of possession-style thinking is hard enough, that living outside the walls has become a virtual impossibility.

Random thoughts, hopefully leading to development of the hermit.

• Possession is forced upon us.
• Money becomes proof that you are obeying the rules of possession and ownership.
• Simply seeking shelter and food has been taken away as an option.
• Every choice and every thought has been altered to revolve around ownership.
• The laws of ownership outweigh the idea of individuality.
• There is, in fact, no such thing as individual right.

Maybe the hermit traces his own fractured life down paths where all the problems and stresses eventually begin to share this common denominator of ownership, and that he begins to realize the human inability to happily and effectively live within such a demanding and impossible system.

I’m over-thinking the whole thing, of course.  All we’re talking about is a story about a hermit, a ghost, and some bones, after all.  But aren’t all stories just something more about ourselves?  Attempts to explain why we are?  How we got here?

This morning the plot for the hermit’s story came together so smoothly that it surprised me, even as I sat here, typing it out.  Can it be that obvious, I thought.  Really, was this under my nose the whole time and I didn’t see it?  It’s very exciting around here right now, if, that is, you happen to think a man in his pajamas, with a laptop, a cup of coffee, and a workable plot qualifies as excitement. 

Is it the potential of a good idea that gives the thrill, or is it the moment of discovery, that instant of time when you feel the idea converge with you, and for that brief moment you feel at one with something you’ve been reaching for? 

I’ve never climbed a mountain, but I imagine the thrill begins the very second you realize you have a workable plan, and that the climb has moved from wishful thinking and become an eventual reality that now advances towards you.  Because I think that’s the feeling I’m trying to explain, right there.  The feeling of something coming at you, rather than you struggling to get to it.  That’s the moment it becomes thrilling, when the direction changes and you nearly lose your stomach because the change is so sudden, so unexpected, even though you were looking for it all along.

For what it was worth, the day at least turned into somewhat of a success by figuring out what tone the story needs to take.  What began as a serious exploration of solitude seems fated to become a farce about a ghost, some bones, and a man’s search for something he can’t quite put his finger on.  Sounds like just about everything I’ve ever written, come to think of it, so there you go.  Who says there isn’t comfort in falling upon a familiar sword?

The month went by without me having a clue where this was going, but after today I finally have some ambition to put together an outline, giving this thing a little bit of direction.  Direction is good.  Beginning, middle, end, and all that nonsense.

Now, to figure out the tasks that Mr. Cooper’s ghost needs accomplished.  Unfulfilled dreams of the dead?  We’ll see.

Today the story’s hermit took a shift, becoming not the person telling the story, but rather the dead Mr. Cooper.  You remember the ghost trapped in the jar, don’t you?  Turns out, it’s Mr. Cooper.

Here we have Mr. Cooper’s ghost striking up a bargain with me, which will lead to some information about the how, when, why, and where of the bones being carried up to the house by the dog.  A little bit of mystery begins to unfold.  Keep in mind that it has already been revealed that the ghost can read my mind.  When I’m in the same room, at least.

How about a rough draft excerpt?

“I’ll tell you why I took myself away from people, but if I’m going to do that, you’re going to have to do some things for me first,” the ghost said.  “There’s a lot a person can do here on this side of things, but what I need done isn’t one of them.”

It wasn’t so much what he was saying, but just the idea of it that had me worried.  There was no telling what kind of things a ghost might need done.  Revenge was the first thing that came to mind.  Help righting some wrong that he now had no control over.  I wasn’t sure I was up for revenge.  Revenge was more of a follow-through activity then anything.  Follow-though and maybe compulsive.  I’d never been any good at either one of those things.

“It’s nothing like that.  Listen, if you do the things that I tell you to do, and you do them the way that I tell you to do them, then nothing bad is going to happen.”

“Bad?  What do you mean bad?”

“Don’t worry about that.  Now, do you want to know why I went off by myself or don’t you?”

“You already know my answer, don’t you?”

“If you didn’t already know it, I couldn’t know it, so what’s that say to you?”

“I think it says you’re screwing with my head.”

“At least brings up the question of who’s screwing who?  Which, I might add, always has been a very good question.  So, what’s it going to be?”

“You already know I need to find out.”

It was true.  I wasn’t sure what the ghost was going to ask of me, but now that I’d set my mind on finding out what had driven him to become a hermit, it certainly couldn’t be any worse then not knowing the answers to my questions.  I hated not knowing, even if it was something as stupid as this.  What could it possibly matter, that some ghost calling himself Mr. Cooper had withdrawn from the world around him until he eventually just disappeared?  What could it matter to me?

“You wouldn’t have trapped me in this pickle jar if it hadn’t mattered now, would you?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Besides, it’ll be worth it.  You’ll like the answers.”

“Answers?  How many answers are there?  I just want to know why you left, that’s all.  Why you went off all alone.”

“So you’ll do it then?  You’ll do what I ask?  No matter what?”

“I guess.” I was still worried about what he might ask.  Who knew?  Maybe he did want revenge and was just hiding the fact.  Revenge against me, for example, for trapping him in the jar in the first place.

“You’re just going to have to trust me on this one,” the ghost said.  “You can do that, can’t you?  I’m just a voice, after all, trapped in a pickle jar.  What kind of trouble do you think I could actually cause?”

“I don’t know.  That’s what I’m worried about.”

“If I were you, I’d be worried about getting some good sleep tonight.  You’ve got a big morning ahead of you.”

“I do.”

“Yes, you do.  Now, go let the dog in.  He’s ready for bed.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Trust me.  He’s ready.”

Sure enough.  When I got to the backdoor, the dog was staring in, his wet nose pushed to the glass.  I turned the knob and he padded in, plopping down in front of the fire.

“Now get some sleep,” came the muffled voice of Mr. Cooper from the back room.  “We’ve all got a really big day tomorrow.”

The dog seemed to be already asleep.  Maybe the ghost did know something I didn’t.  Certainly understood the dog better.

Today is the all day NaNo write-in, and even though I am hopelessly behind on my word count - reaching the goal by the deadline has become an impossibility - I still decided to attend, if anything, just to pull myself from the house for an afternoon. 

I’m still working on a way to get rolling, and lately have been falling to Meatyard images to jump start my brain.

It was worse before the arm, he’d told me one day, but that was before the girls had stopped looking his way, or at least, before he’d started thinking they were looking his way.

My mind would drift something terrible, he’d said, going on to tell me about some girl back in college, a swimmer with muscles so taut that any man in his right mind would want to lose himself in that body.

And she’d been there, he’d said, spread out on the floor naked with that body, spread out wanting to give him anything that he’d had a mind to take, and he’d tried, lord knows he’d tried, but then his mind would start to drift and he’d find himself thinking about where they were, or what it meant that they were there on the floor, rather then upstairs in his bed, or the story she’d told him about the summer ahead of her, and what she’d look like, moving around southern California with her people.  Who were her people?  He knew he wasn’t, and yet there he was, on that floor, kissing her while his mind played tricks on him.

I’ve got time now, he’d said.  Lots of time, with the arm and all.  Time to think about what went wrong, and what I could possibly have been thinking about.  All the fucks that never happened, he’d called it.  Never happened and never will.  Then he’d rolled down his sleeve while I stared at the hook, thinking about the girl.

There are several unimportant matters that we should dispense with before going on, the first of these being that the coffee is ready, but that it’s too cold in the house to actually want to get up and pour myself a cup.  57 degrees in here this morning, if you can believe that.  Downright nippy, which leads me straight to the second matter, which is, damn rain.

That’s right.  Damn rain.  Pouring down on that woodpile of mine, if I can even call it a woodpile anymore, and keeping everything wet.  I’ve burned up most of the good wood, and now all that’s left are mostly just scraps and chunks of knots that aren’t worth a damn for getting things going again.  Useless!  Just sitting there smoldering and hissing on top of what few coals were left this morning, not throwing out any heat at all that I can feel.  Kind of reminds me of when I used to try and turn on my wife at night by falling asleep while she was talking about her feelings.  Yea, that’s right, and don’t think you can get all indignant on me here this morning either.  I know you’ve done it yourself, so don’t try kidding anyone.

What?  A woman you say?  Well that’s different.  I’m sorry, baby.  I was just so tired.  No, no, it’s not you.  Really.  Go on.  I’m listening.

Which brings me to my third unimportant matter this morning - listening.

While everyone can tell you how important listening is, turns out there just aren’t enough good listeners in the world to go around.  Now, I’m not sure if this is because there aren’t enough listeners, or if maybe, there are just too damn many talkers.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and figure it all out here and force everyone to read about it, because I’m pretty sure that’d qualify as just more talking, and if I’m one thing, I’m no talker.  No, I’m more of a listener.  Except those times that I fell asleep, of course, but let’s not get into all that. 

Seriously, I’m all about listening.  Like this morning, for instance.  As I sat around my brother’s house yesterday, the two of us patting our full turkey bellies and thinking about dessert, we realized that it was time I incorporate his CD collection into my mp3 collection.  As everyone knows, the little brother is always indebted to the big brother, so I gathered up a handful of disks and am diligently adding them to my collection this very instant.  Stevie Ray Vaughan, some Scorpions, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and the soundtrack to the movie, The Wedding Singer, which incidentally, we saw a commercial for the moment we got home last night, which then led to the boy playing the song Rapper’s Delight over and over and over.  And over.  It’s the version from the movie where the little old lady sings with the helium voice. 

This afternoon I return to his house for a turkey rematch, and plan on downloading his entire Neil Young collection.  Which is good, considering the size of his sibling debt.

“I’ve got them all,” he said.  “The new one’s great.”

What?  You’re still reading?  You must need something better to do.  Here, listen to some Fabulous Thunderbirds.  [Links removed}

I Believe I’m In Love :: Give Me All Your Lovin’ :: I Hear You Knockin’

I found him, sitting beneath the trestle, clutched onto a small doll.  He didn’t appear to be lost, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t been crying, yet there was a sadness to the boy’s face that disturbed me.  I think I asked him if he needed any help, although at that point, I don’t know what I would have done.  I’d come to the trestle myself to sit in that very spot that the boy now sat in, his big face turned up towards mine.

“Did you know that the patterns always show themselves,” the boy said, “but by then it’s always too late?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true,” he said, his gaze returning to the doll he held in his hands.  “But every time.  Too late.”

I had my own problems to think about, so I left the boy with the sad face, sitting there under the bridge.  I’d come back later, I decided, after he’d left.

Light bulbs!  Brian called on Friday and needed some bulbs for the lights we installed, and since I’m the man, I have the bulbs.  “I’ll drop them by this weekend,” I told him, which I have to admit, doesn’t mean this upcoming weekend.  So, right there, you see I’m at least two or three days behind.

Pipes!  Then this morning, the phone is ringing again.  It does that quite a bit these days.  Ringing.  Yes, quite a bit of it.  This time it’s Luella, reminding me about her pipes.  “You’re hard to get a hold of,” she says to me.  Luella is wondering about her pipes that need a bit of work.  Warranty work, I’m afraid to say.  Yes, even the smiling Fernando makes a mistake from time to time that requires correcting, and Luella was wanting to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten.  “No, I haven’t forgotten,” I tell her, and then we reach an agreement for me to show up in the Spring, which really is good news for someone like me who has fallen so far behind on everything.  Buying time has become harder and harder for me these days, the cost of time being what it is and all.  I can hardly afford my own.

If I get poor enough, I think, I wonder if I’ll lose weight.  Or will I end up with one of those big starch bellies like you used to see on the children Sally Struthers would round up to sell sympathy?

I haven’t answered this one, but the phone display keeps showing me that British Columbia is calling, which I can only assume has something to do with the avian flu showing up the other day in a Canadian duck, leading to the U.S. ban on Canadian poultry, which can only mean that geese will soon be heading to the top of the U.S. suspected terrorist list as they continue their migration south for the winter.

I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how problems can begin and end just by something crossing over an imaginary border, but then, I’m dense that way.  Or maybe it’s called idealism.  I’m not sure.  Either way, I can’t help but find a little bit of humor in the fact that tensions between the U.S. and Canada will no doubt grow, which isn’t funny at all until you think that it all sort of began over a duck.

Of course, this won’t be the first time that the two countries will have been at odds with one another over something as deadly serious as avian flu.  Back in the 1920’s, if you’ll recall your school lessons, there was a little evil thing going around that was a lot like avian flu, only it wasn’t passed around by ducks or chickens but by some sneaky guys known as bootleggers.  Now, don’t shut me down without giving me a chance to explain myself, because swear to God there’s a connection here somewhere, although at the moment I can’t possibly think what it might be.  I think it had something to do with profiteering, but I may be mistaken, because now it seems to me that it has something to do with imaginary boundaries.

Anyway, back in 1929, March 20, 1929 to be exact, a ship of Canadian registry called I’m Alone was anchored off the coast of New Orleans, and had in its possession, or so I’ve read, nearly 3,000 cases of liquor on board, which in today’s world, might be like a Chinese freighter sitting just east of Boston with a cargo hold full of chickens.  You see the two-fold problem here, don’t you?  On one hand, you have this devilish thing running loose, which really has a bunch of people’s shorts in a bunch, while on the other hand you’re worried about how you’re possibly going to control who profits off of that freighter full of chickens, or put another way, how you’re possibly going to control who’s going to profit off of the spread of the avian flu.  So you see, it’s a touchy thing to have something unwanted sitting just outside of the range of your own ship’s cannon.

The waters around America at that time were patrolled by a growing fleet of cutter ships, then under the command of the Coast Guard, but originally created and placed into service in the late 1780’s by then Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to enforce the nation’s bold new tariff laws, which were vital if the young government was to survive financially.  Trade revenue, for America, was suddenly more vital then ever before.

It was one of these vessels, the cutter Wolcott, that now appeared on the scene, which immediately resulted in I’m Alone to begin moving seaward, away from New Orleans.  The Wolcott approached, asking the Canadian ship to heave to so that she could be boarded and examined, and when the I’m Alone refused, several shots were fired across her bow from the Wolcott’s single three-pounder.  The Wolcott’s gun jammed, however, forcing her to call for assistance.  The cutters Dexter and Dallas responded, the Wolcott continued to pursue the I’m Alone, and later that evening, the I’m Alone hove to, allowing an unarmed officer from Wolcott to board her.  The Canadian skipper, Captain John Thomas Randell, refused however to permit a search of his ship, the officer was returned to the Wolcott, and the chase continued.

This, I suppose, we could compare to some Canadian honkers touching down just outside St. Louis for a short rest and a bite of grass, but taking off before anyone has a chance to test them for avian flu.  Imagine, if you can, a band of frustrated CDC scientists, shaking their fists at the birds and jumping into their vans, vowing to hunt them down.

By the following day, the cutters Dexter and Dallas had arrived to join in on the pursuit, and it was the cutter Dexter that ordered the Canadian vessel to “Heave to or I shall fire at you.” Captain Randell refused, claiming that he was at that time on the high seas, 14 or 15 miles from land and well beyond the legal limit of 12 miles, to which the Coast Guard cutters responded by issuing a continuing volley of gunfire, interrupted by repeated demands to “heave to,” which was continually refused by the Canadian skipper, until finally the I’m Alone, having grown tired of the entire business, sunk.  It was March 22, 1929. 

The entire controversy surrounding the incident dragged on for many years, with considerable legal and diplomatic bickering between the two countries, but was eventually settled by arbitration.  The Canadian ship, it turned out, while certainly a British ship of Canadian registry, had been in fact owned, controlled, and at the critical times in question, managed by citizens of --care to take a guess-- the United States.  Further, it was found that Captain Randell and his crew had been acting in good faith, and that none had been a party to the illegal conspiracy to smuggle liquor into the United States.  The U.S., it turned out, had once again been fighting itself, rather than Canadians, as had been originally thought. 

The United States was ordered to compensate Captain Randell and his crew the sum of $25,000, which was divided as follows:

• Captain John Thomas Randell: $7,906.00
• John Williams, deceased: $1,250.00
• Jens Jansen: $1,098.00
• James Barrett: $1,032.00
• William Wordsworth, deceased: $907.00
• Eddie Young: $999.50
• Chesley Hobbs: $1,323.50
• Edward Fouchard: $965.00
• and for Amanda Mainguy, as compensation in respect of the death of Leon Mainguy, the only crew member of I’m Alone to die as a result of the fight, for the benefit of herself and the children of Leon Mainguy (Henriette Mainguy, Jeanne Mainguy, and John Mainguy): $10,185.00

And that, my friends, somehow explains why I need to get in my work van this very minute and drive over to Brian’s house and deliver some light bulbs before this whole thing turns into an international incident somehow. 

And somehow it explains how I feel about my telephone ringing off the hook.  Like I’m Captain Randell somehow, or maybe even Leon Mainguy, and every time the phone rings it’s like another shot plunging into my side, because let’s face it, my creditors stopped dropping shots across my bow about three months ago and now the chase is on.

I’m not sure it explains anything about how a duck in Canada came down with avian flu, and that’s fine, because I don’t think that’s really the point.

And finally, after all this, I’m just left with one question that I hope someone can answer for me.  What the hell was William Wordsworth doing on a Canadian rum-runner ship in 1929?  Wasn’t he born in something like 1770, which would have made him nearly 160 years old?  With a crew like that, it’s no wonder the I’m Alone couldn’t get away.

Somewhere along the way it was misplaced.  I’m not sure what, but I’ve looked everywhere, and it’s just not there.  I’d know it if I saw it, I’m sure, so I keep turning over cushions and opening up cardboard boxes packed away before I started to forget everything.  Maybe in here, I think, then struggle to re-fold the flaps when it’s not there.  I never have gotten the hang of that - that overlapping thing that holds it all together - and have to think my way through it, every time. 

Do we sometimes just reach a place where nothing will do except to rewrite the person we’ve somehow become?

How does one simply scrap routines that have grown too old and worn to function properly?  When do we know when it’s time?

Are we capable of recognizing that moment in ourselves when our efforts become meaningless and never quite enough?

And what holds us to that place?  Who were we to create those routines - what did they serve, why did we need them, where did they come from - and who are we now?  What holds the person we are now to the place we are now?  Is it nothing more then these failing routines, or something worse, something we’ve hidden from ourselves?

It didn’t come as any big surprise.  I’ve been on tangents before, so I’m thinking, what’s the big deal?  Life may in fact be mathematical by nature, but it breaks down, trust me.  I’ve taken enough wrong trails to know by now that there’s a reason the world is round, and it’s not because some giant god squished it into shape like a big mudball and gave it a toss.  No way.  And it’s more then some elaborate equation drawn up by mathematicians and chemists, astronomers, physicists, and bio thises and thats.  No way.  You get lost enough, you come to realize the answer’s been staring you in the face all along.

Hey, it’s not like I was actually lost, but more, I don’t know, how shall I put this, misguided?  So Zellar actually wants to be a Calvin Coolidge expert, rather then a Grover Cleveland expert, I can live with that.  Besides, it’s not what we want that’s staring us in the face, but rather, what we were.  You come to learn that, too, wandering around lost.  You may think you want to get out of the woods, or that job, or that relationship, or whatever the hell misguided path you’ve ended up on, but really, what you really want is to get back where you were.  The lost seldom hope to come out somewhere new, but follow along, dreaming of home.

Me?  Sure, I’ve got a closet full of them.  A whole house full.  A head full.  Enough misguided tangents lying around this place I could open up shop, only thing is, I’ve never met anyone looking for mistakes.  But they sure come along, don’t they?  Pass right through like they’ve been part of the plan all along.  Or maybe they were the plan, which would make sense, if what we were is, in fact, the thing looking out at us from the mirror.

What?  The world being round?  That’s easy.  You should have asked me one of the tough ones.  The world is a perfect collection of every mistake and misguided path ever taken.  Mine and yours, our mistakes falling back on themselves time and time again to form everything we know and everything we don’t.  We are the lost and misguided, accidental creators of mistaken perfection, walking through the mist of something that never was quite what it seems.

A funny commercial for health insurance

Doodles, Drafts, and Designs from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

Cassette Jam ‘05

Folklore, anecdotes about the development of Apple’s original Macintosh computer, and the people who created it.

Buzz Bomb Bicycles, a site about a couple’s passion for restoring vintage bicycles.  Beautiful, but not near enough pictures to keep me fully happy.

Most of this was found over at the Year 2015, home of Admiral Dewy Wilkins, fellow Scriner (relatively inactive, possibly retired).

Sometimes, one entry alone will put you on a link list.  Tonight I discover 2Second(fuse)

Personal Identity

What makes you who you are? What defines a human being? Thought experiments are big in philosophy, so try this one on:

It’s mid-afternoon, and Ania is plotting to have Vlad assassinated. She’s heard quite enough talk of fractal sound, science fiction, the coming Singularity and robotic overlords, so she’s secretly hired a hit-woman to shoot Vlad tonight at the café. “Ah, peace and quiet at last!”

All the excitement of his impending demise has made her a bit tired and being tired makes her cranky, so she lays down to take a little nap.

Shortly after Ania falls asleep, Vlad brings in his newly perfected duplicator machine, a device which will copy the exact configuration of a person and create another, atom for atom. It looks much like a cardboard box with controls pencilled on the side.

“This will show her,” he thinks. “She’ll see the usefulness of my crazy ideas after this.” He presses the big red button and Presto-Change-O! There are now two Anias sleeping soundly, just a few inches between them in the bed, where before was only one. He wakes the new Ania 2. Grumpy at being awakened and still groggy from sleep, she doesn’t notice the original Ania 1 lying in bed next to her. Vlad and Ania 2 proceed to the café.

At Café La Scala in Walnut Creek, Ania 2 orders her au lait and leans way back, savoring the sips as she waits for the hit-woman. She doesn’t know she’s only recently entered this world. Her memories tell her she’s lived a life of world traveling, college education and club-hopping leading up to this moment. She knows who her parents are and she knows she paid the hit-woman twenty dollars to shut Vlad up for good. She remembers doing it, but, unbeknownst to her, those memories come from Ania 1 doing the original legwork and passing the twenty to the assassin in a pack of gum.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Ania 1 has woken from her nap. She’s refreshed and feeling nice, all her previous unhappiness evaporated. She just needed to catch up on her sleep! She realizes she loves Vlad, even if his incessant rambling about things which make no sense drives her out of her mind occasionally. She’s had a change of heart about offing him. “Oh no! Look at the time! He must have let me sleep, like the sweetheart he his, and gone to the café alone! I must make haste and stop the hit-woman from shooting him!” She scrams out the door with a quickness.

At the café Vlad is working on his laptop, head bobbing to the beat in his headphones, lost in focus on his work. As Ania 1 enters the café, so does the hit-woman. The assassin sees Ania 1 and then, a heartbeat later, sees Ania 2. Both are looking at her expectantly and pointing to the guy she’s supposed to shoot. One is saying “Don’t shoot him, I’ve changed my mind!” while the other is saying “Shoot him, he’s driving me crazy!”

The hit-woman is very glad she brought two sets of handcuffs tonight, because her evening has just gone weird. She doesn’t like it when perps get jiggy and start appearing in two places at once. Yes, she’s an undercover agent in homicide and she likes to send people to the slammer.

As she slaps the cuffs on them both, Ania 1 says “I thought I wanted to kill him, but I realized I didn’t!” Ania 2, pissed off, says “I wanted to kill him, that’s why I made arrangements to do so. Who is this bimbo dressed up like me?”

Vlad looks up, finally. Seeing all the commotion, he assumes it’s excitement over his duplicator machine and begins explaining the situation to the cop.

Some questions:

Which Ania is responsible for the crime?

Ania 1 physically initiated the entire situation by doing the hiring of the assassin, but changed her mind about murdering Vlad in the end and told the hit-woman not to shoot. Should she be charged with attempted murder? Remember, she tried to stop the hit-woman at the end.

Ania 2 didn’t physically do the hiring, but thinks she did and remembers doing it, and was ready to conclude the deal and see Vlad capped. Should Ania 2 be charged with attempted murder, accessory to attempted murder or nothing at all because she wasn’t “the one” who did the hiring? She didn’t even physically exist when arrangements were made to off Vlad, but she was pointing the finger and telling the hit-woman to shoot. You could attempt to define her state as something akin to brainwashing, but if you remove the memories and motivations arising from them, what are we left with for Ania 2? She was an atom for atom duplicate of Ania 1, so there is nothing else.

What makes a person? Is it the configuration of their atoms? Is it their actions? Is it something outside of their material construction?

We know if a person’s brain is damaged, their personality and memories are damaged. They seem to change from the person they were before the injury. What is a memory? If I remember doing something, is this the same as having done it? Can I be held accountable for my memories? What if they are just duplicated brain configurations which make me think I performed the remembered act, as in the case of Ania 2 above?

If you have two people configured exactly alike down to the atom and the instant, are they the same person? Are Ania 1 and Ania 2 simply two instantiations of Ania? At this moment, if you let them jointly out of your sight you won’t know which is the original and which is the duplicate upon their return. Sharing a common memory of life up to the moment Ania 2 was awakened and went to the café with Vlad while Ania 1 stayed home asleep, how far will their paths have to diverge before they can be seen as obviously different people?

The above thought experiment, while sounding far-fetched, has implications for a wide range of issues we currently face as a world society:

• cloning
• gene-splicing
• abortion
• privacy rights
• intellectual property
• nationalism
• religious beliefs and other superstitions on identity

What makes a person? The sooner we answer this question, the sooner I’ll make the schematic for my fabulous duplicator machine publicly available.

So I had an idea this morning that I’d make a short film, but by the time I’d dug out my action figures (picked them up off the floor), got out the camera, and hunted down the tripod, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know how to operate the camera, or the computer’s software, for that matter.  So I gave up on that idea, which worked out just fine, considering it was almost time for my early lunch, which I seem to have gotten in the habit of taking.

And then there were the donations to deal with, thank you letters to write, because believe it or not, some of the world’s most generous souls tend to gather over at Scrine and have taken it into their head to click on the PayPal link to donate some of their own hard-earned cash for the cause.  It’s really quite something.

And because of their donations, there’s talk once again around the house of actually turning Scrine into the blog hosting site that was part of the original idea behind the site.

And then I wasted an hour or so hanging out at the Online Library of Congress, namely the American Folklife Center, where I think I could spend at least a month, poking around in old WPA pictures and recordings, online collections, and The American Memory Online Collection.

A few of the things I found this morning included a song about Arkansas, this harmonica rendition of The Arkansas Traveler, which you should listen to just for the jokes, and this strange campaign song about one of Grover Cleveland’s presidential campaigns.  That find I dedicate to Brad Zellar, who I once promised to help become the leading Grover Cleveland expert in all the land.

My favorite joke from The Arkansas Traveler:

First Man: There ain’t much difference between you and a darn fool is there?
Second Man: No, just a little space between the two of us.

Hya’

I’ve decided to give speed writing a try for a bit.  No thinking or second guessing.  No going back.  No editing.  No plan, even, of where it is the writing is supposed to be going.

In other words, desperation writing.  Time to crank out some words and get this baby up to speed.  Maybe some dialogue.

360 words whip by.  Kenneth and the hermit, continuing their conversation, following last week’s conversation that was taking place about loneliness.  I think that’s what it was about.  It’s been awhile.

The hermit’s memory wasn’t so good any more, and he knew that he forgot more things then he remembered.  It came along with the territory, he supposed.  Getting old, withdrawing inside yourself, falling back on old, more stable memories then the ones that came at you so fast these days.  It was impossible, really, the pace of the world.  At least in the hermit’s mind.  How could anyone remember anything at all, with it all coming at you so fast?  Impossible.  That was his opinion on memory.  Impossible.

“I honestly don’t see how you remember so many things,” the hermit said.  “All these memories of the farm.  Your father, your mother, the people that worked there.  How can you remember faces that you haven’t seen in so long?  How long has it been, say, since you played with that little boy on the farm?  Fifty years?”

“Longer then that.  Sixty years, at least.  No, seventy.  I would have been about seven or eight, so about seventy-three years.”

The hermit hadn’t given much thought to Kenneth’s age.  It hadn’t even crossed his mind, or at least if it had, he didn’t recall.  But eighty?  He certainly hadn’t thought of Kenneth as eighty.  He’d imagined him more around the age of his own father.  Sixty-five, maybe seventy tops.

“You’re older then I thought,” the hermit said.

“I have the same problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m older then I thought, too.” The two of them laughed.

“I didn’t mean to change the subject,” the hermit said.

“Forget it.  Last thing the world needs is another old man going on and on ‘bout being lonely.”

“I don’t know.  Might be that’s exactly what the world could use a bit more of.”

“Ha.  Obviously you haven’t spent much time down at the home.  You should stop by sometime.  Plenty of people down there, going on about being lonely.  They might not put it into quite those words, but they’re saying it, all the same.  Going on and on, all the time.”

“I imagine you’re right.”

“Oh, I’m right.  So much talk going on in that place man can’t hear himself think above the noise.”

360 words in 15 minutes.  Let’s give this storm a Category 1 rating.

My back is good for four, maybe five wheelbarrow loads of wood before the day is ruined completely, but seeing that the back porch is down to two sticks, something must be done.  Imaginary Keith claims to be printing out some invoices, although any more I’m beginning to doubt just about everything coming out of his mouth having to do with work.  Where’s the money?  That’s what I want to know.  In voices, I’m thinking.  Like the voices in his head.  The man has completely lost it, I’m telling you, leaving it up to me to gather the wood.

It’s cold, but the sun’s shining, so the day has that going for it.  I see the little dog has Barncat trapped halfway across the field - a standoff - much like me and the bill collectors calling me on the phone.  They’re the barking little dog and I’m the cat, trying hard to ignore the noise.

The first load of wood goes off without a hitch.  Over the summer wood has been dumped onto a big pile behind the barn, without much forethought whether or not it’s seasoned enough for burning this winter or needs to wait for next year, so I need to do a bit of sorting as I load up.  The whole business is no doubt a conspiracy against the muscles in my back, which begins to reveal itself while I’m pushing the second load towards the house.

So soon? I think.  The bastards! Of course, I’m not exactly sure who the bastards might be.  The wood?  The men who piled it?  Fuel oil itself?  A-haa!  The men who piled the fuel oil.  The prices I mean.  Them.  Maybe.

The dog, I see, still has the cat trapped, although I notice that the noise has edged its way closer to the barn.  That means safety for the cat, which I take as a good sign, an economic indicator of sorts, although I do hear the phone ringing as the wheelbarrow rolls onto the back porch.  Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.

The fourth load will be my last.  The muscles are pounding now, or maybe the Mastercard guy finally got tired of calling and instead just drove over, climbed up on my back, and started stabbing me with his phone.

The dog has stopped barking.

The chickens seem abnormally quiet.

I hear Bob’s tractor off in the distance.

I reach into the pile to pull off another log, maybe even the last one for the day, I’m thinking, when the conspiracy plot rolls into action.  Some skinny little stick grabs onto the log I’m lifting and launches itself somehow straight at my face.  Bonk!  Ploink! Or maybe it’s just a plain and simple Poke! All I know is suddenly the bridge of my nose is bleeding, and when I look down to see what hit me, the stick has fallen into a pile of three or four other sticks that all look the same.  Hiding!  An ingenious plot!

The dog, by the way, has started barking again, and probably only stopped so he and the cat could watch me get bonked.  Dogs can sense these sorts of things, you know.  Cats, too, but that’s mostly only because they plan them.

I wheel the final load up to the house, the bridge of my nose stinging all the way up the driveway.  The chickens watch me as I go by, no doubt staring at the bloody spot.  Have you ever seen how ruthless chickens get when there’s a bloody spot involved?  They’re no doubt in on the whole thing.

Inside, I tend to my nose and notice that somehow the whole morning has slipped away.  Molly, the indoor cat, is in the recliner, pretending to sleep.

I suddenly find myself overwhelmed by symmetry and take immediate action.  Some boxes, scooted up and over, the words shifted to the left rather then centered.  What was I thinking, I think, thinking that I thought I liked centered titles?

I followed a link today in my referrer log and found that someone had written that they wished he could be me.  I won’t say who, because who’s to say this person’s wish won’t come true.  Anything can happen these days, and often does.

After graduating from high school, I found out that there was another boy who wished he could be me.  Apparently he thought I was everything that he wanted to be.  I heard he grew up and became a limo driver, which seems odd now that I think about it, because although I’ve had a lot of jobs, I’ve never once driven a limo.  It’s clear to me that the boy just didn’t wish hard enough.  Or maybe he mistook me for someone else.  Or maybe he ate something spicy before going to bed and his dreams became turned around a little.  I know that’s happened to me more then once.

I kind of worry about ever attending a high school reunion, because what if his dream did come true and now he was just like me?  What would I say to him?  I’m sorry, I didn’t see it coming either?  No, best I just stay away.

I’ve gathered together some hermit material for the NaNo story.  Truth of the matter is, I’ve decided to cheat, realizing just this morning that it’s my only hope of finishing.  You do see where this is all going, don’t you?  First I steal a hat, now I’m cheating at NaNo.  No, seriously, do you know where it’s going?  I certainly don’t.

I can’t remember eating much yesterday, but I may be wrong.  No matter.  Ten o’clock and I’m already making lunch, frying up a couple of burgers.  Mmmm, fried muscle.

Where did I read yesterday that the Aztecs or Incas or someone like that sacrificed a quarter of a million people a year, and that many of them were eaten?  Not much went to waste.

Last night a visit to the coffeeshop for a visit among friends.  Some talk, but not support, regarding slavery, both old and new.

“Think of the freedom a person’s mind feels if they unequivocally embrace the idea of slavery,” someone says.  Think about it.  Concerns and worries mostly disappear.

“Have things even changed?” someone wants to know.  “Or have the shackles simply been replaced?”

Some talk about economic slavery.  “Look outside, right now.  The streets are filled with slaves.”

I showed up to take pictures, thinking that I’d find the entire front half of the school still in place.  When I’d driven by the day before, missing windows on two story walls looked into nothing but sky.  From the front it was almost as if nothing was happening, the entire attack taking place from behind.

But today I pulled up, the light fading fast, and there was nothing left but a pile of rubble and the school’s main entry, left standing for some reason I don’t know, and honestly don’t care to find out.  I’d rather pretend that a small streak of romanticism swept through the heart of the equipment operator, causing him to pull up short so he might contemplate what he’d done.  That he’d shut down the engine and gotten down to walk around in the quiet, much the same way I was doing, to look things over.

I wonder how many people with lives centered around destruction ever grow sad.  Or even if they do.

I suppose by this time tomorrow it will all be gone.  The concrete, the twisted metal and stacks of splintered cedar, even the sign I saw still hanging by the front entry, No Skateboarding, all trucked away, the ground scraped smooth of its memories.

Note: Apocalyptic-style sky coloring compliments of Photoshop.  Sorry to break the hearts of any photographic purists in the crowd, but Salem just isn’t that dramatic.

Theory of Insomnia

Dreams back up where the stream is blocked for whatever reason. What comes is lucid but unbidden: How that bartender looked at you thirty years ago when you ran out of money and begged a drink. How he held that look as he filled your glass. You discover there are no empty hours of night—each minute in fact is dense, expansive—the air itself might be folded and stacked in the closet. Shelves of books like lost friends whose problems bore you. Your own problem: how to let go of consciousness. What is death, divorce, illness, even drunkenness, to that? In the window you watch a giant hand hold the moon beneath the horizon, like a head beneath the waves. The ocean is pounding in your temples, pressing heavily against your back. And though you know this can’t go on forever, it goes on forever.

-- Jeffrey Skinner, found on Ausable Press

There was no end to the number of ways we came up with that summer.  Floating, first with balloons, then in our dreams, eyes squeezed shut so tight we woke up with headaches, wondering what we’d do next.  We tried digging our way clear, but that didn’t work, and then you came up with the idea of just walking away from ourselves.  “Just think of something else,” you said.  “Think of another place, of you being anything else other then you, and then just let yourself walk there.”

I tried everything you came up with that summer, but nothing worked, and before the two of us even had a chance, fall blew in out of nowhere and we knew we were stuck with one another for another winter.  There was no escaping now, not with things so cold and wet like they were.  We were trapped together until spring, until the sun could warm things up again, and the air grew light again, and we felt light again.  And we sat there, huddled together in the cold, not knowing what to do but wait.  “We’ll wait until summer,” I said, “and then we’ll make it somehow.  Next summer.  We’ll get out of here then.”

And you nodded and folded your head down into your drawn up knees, and I stopped pacing and sat down in the wet grass, cold, with nowhere to go but inside myself.

“The writers’ souls were in a small lockbox on his desk, but I didn’t see the key anywhere.  It’s got to be hidden somewhere, or maybe in his pocket.”

“You’re sure it was the right box?  The one with the souls?”

“Yes.”

“The writers’ souls?”

“I’m positive.”

“We have to be sure.  We can’t steal the wrong one.”

“No, it’s the right one.  I gave it a shake when he left the room.”

“What’d it sound like.”

“Kind of a rattling sound.”

“Like bones?”

“No, more like Scrabble letters.”

“Yep.  That’s the one.  We’ll break in tonight.”

I’m tellin’ you, it was like a frickin’ rainstorm out there, except it was like all these ideas just pourin’ down on us.  I don’t know how else to explain it.  Just ideas, over and over and over, and then it stopped, whatever it was, and it was like we were wet, all of us, just drippin’ wet with all these ideas.  I looked over at the others, and I could see they were feelin’ the same thing.  I could see it somehow, like it was one of the ideas.  And I don’t know how to explain what happened next, other then as soon as that storm passed, or whatever it was, the ideas just started dryin’ up.  I swear, it felt like we was dryin’ up just standin’ there starin’ at each other.  Like we wouldn’t remember any of it after a few minutes and there wasn’t nothin’ we could do about it.  I tried to look at the others, but I couldn’t.  I wanted to, but I was scared.  It don’t make no sense, I know, but I was scared of dryin’ up, like there’d be nothin’ left of me when it was over.  Nothin’.

Returning home from the NaNo meeting tonight, I realize two things I’ve forgotten to do today while the sun was still shining - gather wood for the fire and put a mouse trap in the van.  Running out of wood for the fire I expect, but come on, another mouse in the van?  What’s going on here?

Having all those boys over the other day meant going back behind the barn and breaking the van out of cold storage.  I don’t drive it much these days, preferring the Outback, and figure I might as well enjoy the Subaru for as long as I can, given the current financial situation.  These days, things could just about go either way.

I know this: there was no sign of mouse activity in the van when I pulled it up to the house Thursday afternoon, so sometime Thursday night, while it was parked in the driveway in front of the house, a mouse broke in, did a bit of pooping, nibbled at some gum, and tried his best to get to some soda that was left in a cup in a cup holder.  Tiny paws, gripping at the straw.  Cussing, I’m sure, in some squeaky little mouse language.  And pooping, of course, on the lid while he stood there swearing.

So dropping off the load of boys Friday afternoon, they rode along in the back with their feet all held up off the ground, as if the mouse was going to charge them or something.  Ten year old boys are loud, but basically still cowards at heart.  Little boy fears still rumble around in those growing bodies.

Then last night I forgot to set the trap.  Like I said, unless transporting troops of boys, the van gets forgotten.  But tonight pulling in I remembered, so as I sit here writing this, some poor mouse is being lured to his death by a piece of leftover KFC chicken.  A thigh, I think.  Extra crispy.

Let’s blame the painfully slow writing process on my swollen knuckle.  Every story needs a fall guy.

excerpt:

Kenneth had moved into the kitchen while he’d been poking at the logs, most likely to pour himself a cup of coffee.  The hermit appreciated self-sufficiency, which was another one of the reasons he’d isolated himself from people.  Not because of his own self-sufficiency, but because of what he saw as a lack of it in others.  As far as the hermit was concerned, there was too much dependency these days, enough that the thought of it was enough to almost make him physically sick if he dwelled on the idea.  The world had crippled itself somehow, kicking the legs right out from underneath itself.  With the exception of very few, it seemed to the hermit that everyone was no more then a step or two away from groveling at someone else’s feet, begging for help.  Kenneth had his flaws, the hermit knew, but at least the man knew how to get up and help himself to some coffee without making a big dance out of absolutely nothing.

The phone rang this morning, earlier then normal for a Saturday morning, and while I’m usually the one in charge of the phone around here, I was still in bed, trying to recover from the onslaught of boys from yesterday.  Boys, it ends up, are exhausting work.  I think it’s mostly the constant refereeing, necessary if you want to return them home without broken arms or wrestled off heads.

“Can you get that?” I asked Imaginary Keith.  He shuffled off down the hall without a word.

“Hello.” It’s always a curious thing, watching my friend interact with the world, mainly because I don’t see much of it.  He and I talk, he talks to the world, and I talk to the world when my hand is forced, but it’s not all that often that I have the chance to actually see him in action.  The phone must have been left out in the living room.  It was hard to hear what he was saying.

“Good morning.  Yes, I’ve heard of you.”
“No.  No, of course not.”
“Yes, but I’ll have to turn it on.”
“Yes, all the time.  Him?  Well, not so mu..” (lowered voice and whispering)
“Crops?  No.”
“The grocery store.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No sir.  No, no disrespect.  You just surprised me is all.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.  Yes emperor.”
“Right away.”

I hear the bang of a cupboard door closing.  Coffee mug.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“On the phone?”

“Of course on the phone.”

“Oh, that was Constantine I.  The Roman emperor.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“What’d he want?”

“He’s faxing over a decree, along with some deliver instructions.  The fax will explain everything, he said.”

“Better turn it on then.”

“That’s what I told him.  Constantine says there aren’t any grocery stores in 1st century Rome.  You think that’s true?”

“I doubt it.  I can’t imagine an emperor being much in touch with the world.”

The phone rang again and the fax machine came on.

“Here it comes,” Imaginary Keith said.

“Let me see that.”

To: Imaginary Keith

From: Constantine, Emperor of Rome

Page: 1 of 1

Note: I. Keith, Take the following to Washington.  For some reason, their fax machine won’t take my call.  Thanks.

Message:

“Let all judges and all city people and all tradesmen rest upon the venerable day of the sun. But let those dwelling in the country freely and with full liberty attend to the culture of their fields; since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain, or the planting of vines; hence, the favorable time should not be allowed to pass, lest the provisions of heaven be lost.” — Given the seventh of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls, each for the second time. A.D. 321.

“Blue laws!” I said.  “What’s Constantine think is going on around here?  Did you ask him that?”

“He got kind of mad when I asked him about grocery stores.  Told me not to question an emperor.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“What?  Blue laws?” Imaginary Keith asked.

“No, Washington.”

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t say D.C., though.  Maybe we can just take it up to Olympia.”

“You mean Seattle?  Seattle’s the capital.”

“No it’s not.  It’s Olympia.”

“I think that’s just where they make the beer.  Oh wait.  I think it’s Spokane.”

“Spokane?  That does sound right, now that I think about it.  Let’s take it to Spokane.”

“It’s closer, I think.”

“I’ll have to look at a map.”

“Will we pass through Olympia?”

“I don’t know.”

“If we do, let’s stop for beer.”

“I think that’d be okay.  Fax says nothing about not stopping.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The boys play on and the toilet remains nonfunctional.  What could have happened?  The toilet, I mean, not the boys.  I know what’s happening to them.  I’ve decided that friendship is nothing more then the accumulation of a series of bickering fights that have no real solution.  I bet love is the same thing, but I don’t have time to think about that right now.  Plugged toilet and all.

The chickens around here are mostly good natured and friendly.  An egg a day, decent manners, full of encouragement and hope, cackling pleasantly.  My chickens, it seems, would make excellent Mormon women, going door to door handing out literature.  I don’t mean any disrespect, really, comparing my chickens to Mormon women, because if you know me, you know how much I like my chickens.  I clean up a lot a chicken shit every week, more then I’d ever do for a room full of Mormon women.

I used to think of my cows as being the farms Buddhists, but now that I’ve sold them and they’re not around any more, I’ve started to imagine them more as Shakers.

“What happened to those lovely bovines,” the chickens might ask me, for instance, and I’ll find myself saying something like, “Oh, they’re not around any more.  Like the Shakers.”

“Oh my, yes,” the chickens might say.  “That’s too bad.  We had some literature we would have loved to share with them.”

When you live in the country, you often find everything coming down to what the animals might or might not say if they could talk.  Seriously.  Once you fill the place up with animals, just about every move you make is in one way or another tied directly to the care and well-being of the animals.  I suppose it’s the same way with people, come to think of it, but it’s easier thinking of it with animals.  People seem to always have this opinion on everything they’re always busy going on and on about, which can become quite annoying if you let it.  Animals, on the other hand, seem quite content to let you put words in their mouth.

from Iris Storm

Every morning now I wake up and lie there trying to make a life changing decision .. which is based on a dog. Last week an old friend of mine came to see me and we realised that we are both doing exactly the same thing. We live here in suspended animation, carefully ensuring that nothing specific ties us down so that we are ‘free’ to go to London or abroad at any moment. Except that we don’t. And we don’t really want to. So our life here is quite empty and sterile and our life not here doesn’t exist ... and the days drift along.

Funny, isn’t it, that people all over the world are drifting along through life, tied to some animal or another.  Not literally tied to the animal, of course, because that would be just about as silly as a henhouse full of chickens, thinking they’re Mormons.

But I did have a dog once, though, who was in fact a Baptist minister, and man could that dog carry on.  A black and tan coonhound, if recollection serves me correct.  We finally had to cut the old boy loose because he just wouldn’t shut up.  Day and night, howling at nothin’ and everything, carryin’ on and raisin’ such a ruckus that no one could get any sleep.  One night I just couldn’t take it any more, so I unhooked the chain and he headed straight out into the woods to do the Lord’s work.  Not one look back, I’ll tell you.  All those sermons we’d listened to through the years you’d have thought he’d at least say good bye.

I wondered if that old hound had his nose pointed towards Heaven that night, or if maybe he lit out in the direction of Hell, chasing after sinners.  The whole world probably stinks like sin to a Baptist minister hound dog.  Didn’t matter to me.  Either way, we were going to be sleeping better.

The minute you start joking around about overflowing toilets is the minute the water starts pouring over the edge of the bowl.

“Daaaaad!” I hear the whooping and the laughing.  Water flowing out into the hall and towards the kitchen.  Great fun for 10 year old boys who already relate about 80% of everything to poop somehow.

I’ve mopped up the water and plunged like a madman without success.  And it’s dinner time.  We review the groceries I bought this afternoon and it looks like I may have cruised only the snack aisles.  The boys vote.  KFC.  Fine with me.  They can wipe their greasy hands and faces around on something other then my house.

“To the van boys!” We’ve all played Halo on the Xbox, the screen split into four sections.  They team up on me, blowing me away time after time.

“How come my grenades won’t kill anyone?” I say.  Or maybe it’s whining.  I hate getting killed so many times in a row.  My ego hurts.

“To KFC!” I yell.  My plan is to buy them only gizzards.  Paybacks are hell.