Braindump - Justin Van Kleeck

Black Lace Beauty

2011-12-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

Black Lace Beauty

To Rosemary

With thin black lace on pearl-pale skin,
Her beauty hiding here and yet revealed
While flirting sweetly with her nakedness
So close and yet concealed.
She lies in webs of shadows that
Embrace her soft, enthralling form,
Embodiment of Beauty, now
Much more ideal by being real.
Could I but place a trembling kiss
Upon her wryly smiling lips,
And place my daring hands
Upon her fine and supple hips?
Though how and why Beauty has come
And taken shape in soft black lace
I cannot fathom or begin to guess,
I stand and gaze into her glowing face
And touch her body bathed in light
Like day that bears the touch of night.

Image credit: tonynetone, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Opening the Eye

2011-08-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

Opening the Eye

This old poem is another experiment with Chaucer's Rhyme Royal form. It is based on the legend that if you repeat Shiva's name enough times, he will open his eye and destroy the universe.

Awake, o dweller in the barren plains

Of dust and ash, of long-forgotten bones!

Thy ancient slumber hath endured too long

And blind men worship thee in cold black stones.

O God, destroy till naught of life remains!

Thy potent power shall blot out a race

Of cowards, cozened by a shepherd’s song

Of life eternal in his father’s grace.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

’Tis neither bliss nor loss of Self I seek,

Not dissolution into life divine,

No paradise is where my path shall end:

These foolish faiths are not as strong as mine.

For all but Nothing changes form, is weak,

Subjected to the whims of selfish Time;

But thou, o God, can all these wrongs amend

By granting me thy burning gaze sublime!

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Both joy and grief are simply shadows cast

By dense obstructions on the brightest day

(Remove the body and the image flees,

Remove the sun and shadows pass away).

The universe is but a soul held fast

Upon the Balance that may rise or fall;

Its fate depends on what the scale decrees

But none shall exit from this judgement hall.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Enough! Man’s “laws” and “systems” are but this:

The games that come when idle minds conspire;

Let Babble take the name Philosophy

And make Religion its perverted sire.

So self-assured, man leads himself amiss

(As if with thinking seconds can be bought!),

Expecting something that can never be

Except within his own deluded thought.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Mistake me not, there is no vengeance here

Within this heart for my misguided kin;

’Tis only seeing all that they have lost,

’Tis truly knowing what they could have been.

But Pity acts as servant-girl to Fear,

And that is gone from out my heart as well:

They sold their souls, now they must pay the cost

Of entrance into their internal hell.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s eye.

The heavens quiver at my solemn hymn,

A paean driven both by hate and love,

And angels hide themselves within their wings

As star-shine darkens in the sky above.

A world of light is now a wasteland dim

And fast approaching is its date with death

When all shall perish: just like finite things,

The vast immortals draw their final breath.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

I chant the name to open Shiva’s Eye.

Awake, my God, and take this life away!

In brilliant splendor let me be embraced.

When pain and pleasure hath become the same

The only hope is that they be erased.

Too long in coming is the fateful day

When sunlight falls before descending night:

The Lord Destroyer wraps the world in flame

As all creation comes into His Sight.

The time hath come for men and gods to die:

Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva…

The Religion of the Great Cosmic Sunflower...

2011-08-05T09:01:00.000-04:00

In the beginning, all was darkness, unformed, cold, and desolate. There was neither here nor there, neither time nor space, but only one vast eternal emptiness.

But then the Great Cosmic Sunflower lifted Its head and opened up Its petals, filling the emptiness with light and warmth. It beheld that vast space and, in a great act of divine love, dropped millions of sacred Seeds, so that they might sprout and bring forth life.

The seeds scattered across the infinite void...and soon, they sprouted as new universes, each filled with billions and billions of species of beings, all of them reflecting the light-filled image of their creator, the Great Cosmic Sunflower. It watched these things occur and saw that they were very good.

For eons upon eons, a golden age endured throughout these myriad universes. All creatures gave praise to the Great Cosmic Sunflower, thanking It and praising It for its unfathomable beneficence. Their oblations filled the ether and made the many universes places of joy.

But soon, as the lives themselves created new life, some creatures lost sight of their loving creator, the Great Cosmic Sunflower. They turned their eyes from the heavens and saw only the worldly things around them. The Great Cosmic Sunflower, in Its omniscience, saw these things and grew sad that Its creations had lost their love for It.

In Its sadness, the Great Cosmic Sunflower formed a tear-shaped seed, dark and bitter, which dropped from its head and fell deep, deep into the abysmal void. Finally, that dark seed came to rest in a cold corner of the void and, with time, sprouted. It quickly grew tall and strong, feeding on the darkness of the void, and soon became a towering Venus Flytrap.

The Dark Venus Flytrap gazed out and saw the many creations of the Great Cosmic Sunflower, and it felt painful envy and hatred. It vowed to devour everything the Great Cosmic Sunflower had made, to make hate the victor over love...and eventually to usurp the place of the Great Cosmic Sunflower as creator, preserver, and shepherd of all the lived...until the universes were again empty, cold, and bleak.

Thus began the unending battle between good and evil, love and hate. Sometimes the Dark Venus Flytrap gains the upper hand, devouring beings and worlds in its vast infernal maw; at other times, the Great Cosmic Sunflower bestows vast rays of loving, life-giving light to all its creatures, and the Dark Venus Flytrap can only cower.

The final chapter of this epic struggle is yet to be written. As humans and all other seeds of the Great Cosmic Sunflower grope and limp through life, along with all the other many beings, their brethren, none can see or foresee if faith, hope, and love will win out, ensuring eternal life for all...or if selfishness, hatred, and death will conquer all the good that the Great Cosmic Sunflower has wrought...

Image credits: Vulkan and Bouba, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Amongst the Tombstones

2011-07-30T18:56:00.000-04:00

Amongst the Tombstones

To Rosemary

We met one Sunday afternoon,
When all was silent, still as death,
Two spirits left alone to roam
A world that passed us by and seemed
To lead us far away from home
With every weary day and restless night.

Beneath the shade of ancient oaks,
We found each other...and some peace
Outside of time, if only for a while,
While all around the memories of lives
Gone by took on the forms of birds
And spread their wings to fly and sing.

And though the tombstones seemed to speak
Of loss, and absence, and the promised end
Of every joy that can be lived and held
For briefest moments, like a passing breeze,
Within the silence one could slightly hear
A murmuring of leaves, and breeze, and stone.

At last we reached a place upon the grass
Between those old and dirty monuments,
So worn and dulled by stubborn time,
Our journeys here too long and strange
To tell within a lifetime, though much more
Remained for each to walk, now hand in hand.

And as the hours stopped to watch us sit
Upon the grass, with life that buried death,
Our lonely spirits found some peace
That healed the wounds and many scars
Received upon the paths that led us here,
Now walking into life, with hand in hand.

Image credit: Basher Eyre, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

A Book Is a Hungry Animal

2011-07-26T14:44:00.000-04:00

A Book Is a Hungry Animal

To Jamba Dunn

A book is a hungry animal:

A snapper turtle
That latches on with iron jaws
And never for a moment
Will ever let you go.

A boa constrictor
That catches you unawares
And wraps you round and round,
Squeezing from the neck up.

A vampire mosquito
That buzzes in your ears,
Flies into your brain,
And slowly drinks you dry.

An ornery old elephant
That has run out of patience
And with too much prodding
Runs you right over.

A man-eating tiger
Burning bright amidst the leaves,
Prowling on seriffed feet,
And springing to attack.

A book is a fearful being:
Always hungry, never full,
Surely relentless, rarely sane;
Always-eating word devourer,
Its bark as sharp as its bite,
Speaking in tongues, in every tongue.

A book is a terrible creature:
The gargoyle on the Tower of Babel,
Gaping forth with mouth ajar:
The entryway, the threshold to cross
If the stairway would be ascended
And highest heaven reached.

A book is a hungry animal:
The snapper turtle on whose back
Four ornery elephants are poised,
Trying to keep their balance,
To keep from slipping off the shell,
To bear the weight of the wobbling world,
To keep the hungry snapping turtle
From biting off their leathery toes.

Image credit: Lin Kristensen, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

The Grief of Gethsemane

2011-07-22T13:42:00.000-04:00

This is an old, old poem...I wrote it in 2000. It was my first experiment with the Rhyme Royal form, created by Chaucer. It is also a meditation on Christ's moment of doubt in Gethsemane, which has always been for me the most fascinating part of the Bible...being the moment in the story when he seems most human.

The Grief of Gethsemane

Ego non sum ille

I.
As even falls, this hillside garden’s boughs
And newborn scents cannot eliminate
Dejection’s hold. The moon still keeps her vows,
And sailing heaven, guides the tides of fate.
Seductive maiden, prancing ’round her mate,
Stays chaste to tease him, mocking me as well.
Unfaithful world, your joys become my hell.

II.
The outer darkness, seeming more than night,
Like stinking pitch upon my sweat-slick skin,
Prohibits acting on these thoughts of flight
From what shall be: there is a strength within
Enduring all, even defeat, to win.
Upon these narrow shoulders shall I bear
The curse of millions, for none other dare.

III.
But could this moment somehow pass me by
And loose the shackles binding me to grief,
Would I choose life whilst knowing all must die?
Too bittersweet ’twould be to give relief.
Can love of self o’erpower my belief?
The end (the choice as well?) can never change
(And thereby grows this melancholy strange).

IV.
Alas! Alas! The dying breeze explains
In soft and somber sighs, “You are alone
To fight your fears so that no doubt remains
In what must be” (and this I’ve always known).
The midnight sky reveals, as etched in stone,
My path below the wandering stars and spheres,
The cross I’ll bear and water with my tears.

V.
In sufferance my greater purpose served
To all mankind, though they be hard of heart.
The cup of wine, wherein my life’s preserved
(Together with the bread I broke apart
Between my hands), shall by my love impart
The very thing that I am soon to lose;
The cup must fill, and I cannot refuse.

VI.
For one must come to humbly face his death,
Forever called the Son of Man (and God,
So ancient stories say); ere he drew breath
As mortal man, he once with angels trod
And led them kindly with a shepherd’s rod.
But is he me? Is all that I intend
A grand illusion, or a promised end?

VII.
Thrown flat to plead upon a cold dirt bed
That warms again once golden dawn breaks through,
I’m shown my triumph, though my blood’s been shed.
Then, like the Earth, my life will stir anew
(I must believe, if all I see is true!);
And high above the weeping stars unfold
Their painful lesson, as to children told.

VIII.
You children! Dozing as on summer eves
While one amongst you, with a serpent’s hiss,
Betrays for gain (but only loss receives).
Now all I’ve said and done must come to this:
In torchlight smiling, damning with a kiss,
He’ll greet me, “Rabbi!” with his serpent’s guile;
Yet as he does, I love him all the while.

IX.
I’m bound to serve, but can’t a servant feel?
His labor done, tomorrow comes anew.
Thus all he does, he does with lack of zeal
Because he must; and ’tis a pure fool who
Will greet his master with a rosy hue
Upon his cheeks, to have it beaten down.
Where are his robes, where his triumphant crown?

X.
A crown! By God so great a crown I’ll wear,
As would a king upon this hallowed throne
Of sticks and skulls, betwixt a stately pair.
This gracious court, they praise one king alone
In harmony: “Thou hast become our own
Anointed ruler!” (yet he inward mourns);
A dying king…mine is a crown of thorns.

XI.
To hang, not far beyond the morning’s prime,
Till noon draws near; and then the midday’s heat
Gives way to night, come long before its time
To wrap the land in seething dark complete.
Grim Death will ride to where these crossroads meet,
His sneering visage taunting from below
And telling stories none in life may know.

XII.
My body, raised upon a splintered pole,
Must face its beatings, stand a whipping gale
That churns the heavens as it steals the soul.
And “Desolation!” is the constant wail
It screams to torment while the temple veil
Is torn asunder, while the trembling Earth
Laments the shrieks of this demonic birth.

XIII.
The premonition of this frightful day
Has one last scene that may usurp the laws
Of sanity and lead my mind away:
At last the Presence from the shrine withdraws
And guarding cherubs stand on shattered paws
Before they topple from the mercy seat,
Now fallen idols of a vain conceit.

XIV.
The vision ends: on silent trees I gaze.
What power makes them strive to touch the sun?
What force compels them from the seed to raise?
No answers come; but once my deeds are done
I pray this knowledge be unknown to none.
Within those leaves that hidden secret lies;
Although it slays, a tree shall see me rise!

XV.
This moonlit garden, mute, still teaches me
About true love, a love surpassing pain.
The soft wind sighs her subtle melody
To calm my fears: no thoughts of self remain.
This garden’s grief does budding life sustain,
The bloom of Love. Dear God, I’ve chosen well:
For you, O man, thus shall I conquer hell…

XVI.
…No savior, dying to redeem a race,
My life is not a myth of guilt and fear.
My strength to overcome, no gift of grace,
May fade at times, but never disappear.
Although my tale may close to his appear,
There’s no messiah in the mirror’s glass:
This flight of fancy, like the pain, will pass.

Channeling Chaos

2011-07-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Channeling Chaos

Existence drips like melting wax
Over the trembling surface of the self
And deep down into the dark recess
Beneath the bedrock that we stand upon,
The stable structures that are built to float
Upon a maelstrom’s maddened waves.

So look upon the shapes, the forms it takes,
Like gaping faces with hollow, empty eyes,
And hungry maws, the jaws extended far
Too far to be perceived with mortal eyes,
And pouring forth scavenging beasts and flies
To pick the bones of all the slumbering dead.

Upon their bones is this great kingdom built,
Their blood and spirits mixed like mud to form
A mortar binding all these monstrous walls
To keep the swirling shapes and faces out
And stand erect against their moaning songs
Like waves that beat against a rocky shore
And wear it down, and wash its strength away,
And make the monolith a pile of sand.

For Chaos whispers, dancing on the edge
Beyond the walls we hide behind in fear.
It calls from deep within the silent space
Beyond the dark, and speaks in ancient tongues
Too old and senseless to be understood
But striking chords within our very cells.

Yet all have listened to that music now
For ages and for eons out of time,
Those songs that fill the boundless universe
And push it farther outward, push it all apart
With darkest energy so fierce but unperceived,
An orgiastic eruption of cosmic ecstasy.

And so we come together, toil, and build
A solid ground for selves to stand upon
And live within the swirling shadows of
A primal, wild, primordial world gone mad.
But stop and listen with an open ear,
And soon you might just recognize and hear
A harmony between our labor songs
And that dark voice from where the silence sings.

Image credit: Stephen Conatser, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

To Sleep, on Her Last Kiss Goodbye

2011-07-08T08:35:00.001-04:00

This is an older poem, but it is still pretty relevant at various times. And it is kind of fun...

To Sleep, on Her Last Kiss Goodbye

A frozen-hearted, virgin maid?
A wanton harlot smiling sly?
Or both at once? I know not what
To call this temptress, damsel Sleep.
I damn her to the nether-deep--
Then curse myself and beg her near!
The starry night, her ancient spell,
Creates a home of warmth for all
While I alone must suckle not
Upon the universal breast.
The fire has smoldered in the west,
Yet “day” and “night” are merely names;
My body’s numb, my mind’s a daze,
In this eternal waking death--
Where every tear and every breath
Are flawed and well-nigh worthless gems
I cast before her wandering eyes--
A gift! A tithe! A sacrifice!
Her luscious kiss, a paradise,
She seems to grant me, gained with ease:
A draught, a sip, makes heaven’s blood
The vilest dregs of bitter wine.
I think, At last her love is mine!
While fading fast, to sleep, to dream.
But when I wake, instead of her,
A wilted poppy takes her place.
This morning scene of my disgrace
Is cast and played, and played again!
And like the Fool whose part I take,
I’m none the wiser with each show.
But can you, Sleep, oh can you know,
That in your kiss there’s venom hid,
And that the ruddy of your lips
Is gotten from my dying heart?
Yet death is not yours to impart
(However much I wish it so);
Instead, I’m your Prometheus,
Enchained upon a rock of pain:
Asleep, awake, you e’er remain
My torment, feeding on my soul.
Each pick and nibble takes its toll
On one who is but mortal-born;
And every slumber traps me more
Within her web of gossamer.
I wonder if I can endure
The hope of what may never come--
Again she smiles, and strokes my cheek,
And wraps me in oblivion.
A blaze of fire! the rising sun
So rudely ends familiar dreams.
I know her, feel her in my veins,
But waking, truth is still unknown:
Was passion shared, or just my own?
I ponder as my mistress turns to go--
But through its sweetness, her last kiss
Did seem to have a biting pinch.

Weeds

2011-06-25T16:09:00.004-04:00

Weeds

In every crack and empty space between
The valued treasures, polished gems,
With some unrivaled skill they creep
And dig their roots down firmly,
Far too strong for nature's forces
Or the fickle tastes of pathetic men,
The dilettantes who stand with pride alone
In choosing not to eat or feed but "dine"
On meager fare, a minor fraction of
The bounty of the world before their feet.

And thus the battle rages fast towards death,
The dirty warfare claiming innocents
And wreaking havoc over miles and years,
All to shore up and protect the prize
Of thousands and thousands of years of toil
Against the force of these encroaching foes,
Who will not die and barely give their ground
With great resistance and a brief retreat
Until the opposition stops to breathe
And cedes the very lands they seemed to gain.

Though still we fight them, pull them, cut them down
And think the victory is close at hand,
The Weeds know better that the upper hand
Is truly theirs, the end their choice to make,
The strength of numbers and endurance theirs,
While we are shown to be the creeping horde,
The upstart interlopers self-deceived
Into believing that the land we claimed
Will one day do our bidding and be tamed
Instead of crushing us like noxious weeds.

Not Quite Hollow

2011-06-23T21:43:00.000-04:00

Not Quite Hollow

On the edge of the shell
Cracks are appearing,
And within
The space of solitude grows hollow
And the shadows form sharp edges,
Strange patterns
Equally eerily familiar, their shapes
Like metamorphosed men
Lingering
In corners and dark spots
Where the mind fears to wander
And constantly treads just the same,
Like picking a scab with abandon,
Relentless,
The painful pleasure of madness and woe
A dependable means of distraction
From that which wounds deeper by far:
The absence
Of that which was central and solid--
The heart of the darkness within
And without
And between.
But the cracks in the crystalline shell
Are extending and letting in light
That reveals
The hollow expanse to be empty,
Those shifty-shaped shadows
To be tricks of the air
And a mind seeking solace
Outside of itself
In the world
Somewhere on the other side
Of the delicate shattering shell.

On the Road Back to Home

2011-05-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

On the Road Back to Home

Written while driving from California back to Virginia, October 2006...

America.
The name is but a word we speak
Sometimes with sweetness, letting it float
In the air on the tailwinds of a sigh
And the endless trail of a stinging tear;
Or sometimes it gets spat out from the depths
Of the throat like phlegm less bitter by far
On the tongue than it is on the heart
Though still painful as, puffing, we breathe.

America.
No name could ever speak the truth
Of all the treasures found upon this land
That lies between two shores and two vast seas that seem
Themselves to sigh the name
From “Ah!” to “Ah!” with each wave’s crash,
The rest sung forth before the dawn
In myriad morning melodies
With winged notes that ride the light
That shows the sun its ancient path
And all its footprints made before.

America.
My feet have left much less a mark
Upon this fertile, fragile soil,
My soles too tender, my legs too weak
To race the sun and see what it has seen
So often, yet returning day by day;
Mine has been a much more humble course
Than that of him we honor as we say
America.

But still I’ve rambled, seen what I could see
From sea to sighing sea,
And on this journey, driven on by love
Of every jewel that makes the sunlight gleam,
The many winding paths I’ve walked,
The countless bridges quickly crossed
Have often left me scared and lost
Within the forest, by an icy stream,
In some far corner of America.

So hungry, bleeding, tired, and cold
I stand at last upon this stretching road
That leads me to the doorstep left behind,
Both sidewalks decorated now
With lamps of crimson, orange, gold, and green
That light the way from where I’ve been
And guide me, sparkling for a season, back to home—
Though now I pause, behold this autumn’s flare,
And sink as rain back into sacred ground.

Image credit: SayCheeeeeese, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

At the Broken Point

2010-12-07T07:33:00.000-05:00

At the Broken Point

Do you feel the weight of the stars on your back
     And the pressure inside your skull?
Do you feel the air grow thick like a stew
     And the world flood in through your skin
     As infinity shrinks to a speck
     And eternity ends with a thought?
I hear it: the imperceptible breaking of a toothpick
     On the other side of the house.
I hear it: the sharp snapping of a frozen twig in the snow
     On a mountaintop miles away.
I hear it: the brittle cracking of a thin piece of slate
     On the long cracked concrete driveway
     Of a house I used to live in
     Years and years and lives ago.
I hear it in all of the beats of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a heap of broken bricks;
I feel it in all of the sighs of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a temple’s fallen walls.

Image credit: Hamed Saber, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Mirrorworld

2010-12-03T08:47:00.002-05:00

Mirrorworld

"He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star."
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

With open eyes and bleeding heart
Take a hammer to the mirror
Of a cold and tired world,
And smash the dusty glass
Into billions and billions of shards,
The tiny gleams of light,
Like universes underfoot,
Then gather them one by one
With bloody fingers
And prickling palms,
And chew them,
Consume and subsume
The shattered light
Of a reflected cosmos,
The life and death
Becoming no more
Than ghostly forms glimpsed
From the corner of an eye,
Far beyond forgotten,
Long gone beyond the bounds
Of the mirror’s cracked frame,
And with burning bowels and fiery heart
Gaze upon the empty void
With eyes of flaming light:
For there are many new worlds
Just waiting to be made.

Image credit: Menetekel, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.

Green Books Campaign: Grey Owl and Me: Stories from the Trail and Beyond

2010-11-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on "green" books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

We civilized humans are a complicated lot. Whereas most other animals are intimately connected to, and immersed in, their natural habitat, most modern humans have “cultivated” ourselves right out of the natural world to a large degree. Now, we have to go “back into nature” to experience anything remotely like the conditions that our ancestors faced for the majority of our species’ history. But we can get glimpses of that environmental immersion when we plunge ourselves into nature--and sometimes we can do more than just glimpse it. Some of us actually live a large portion of their lives and build a large portion of their identity around a naturalized, “wild” way of life.

Of course, their lives are still pretty complicated in many ways as far as being “in” nature goes, especially if they try to bridge the gap between wild nature and civilization. Archie Belaney, an English-born Canadian who was known to the world as Grey Owl, is a prime example of such complexity. In his new book Grey Owl and Me: Stories from the Trail and Beyond, Hap Wilson, the Canadian adventurer, guide, conservationist, and writer, engages with the legacy of Grey Owl, who was and still is a crucial mentor for him through his writings on the Canadian wilderness and the need to preserve it. Published by Natural Heritage Books/Dundurn Press, and with illustrations by Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner, the collection of essays comprises a narrative adventure into their shared homeland that is both personal and graphic (in more ways than one!).

Wilson’s irreverent but thoughtful prose delves into the troubled history of Grey Owl, who constructed an identity and brand (of sorts) for himself as a white man who had “gone native” and become fully immersed in the Indian world, studying and practicing the ways of the Anishnabai peoples in the area known as Temagami. Grey Owl was a champion for wildlife like the beaver, the forest and other natural resources, and traditional ways that were characterized by harmony with nature. Yet he was also a heavy drinker, a distant father and husband (several times over), and a spinner of false tales about his own history and lifestyle. Once his true identity became known, it created a bit of a firestorm in Canada; but with time, he has come to be recognized as a “great Canadian” thanks to “his environmental work and poignant writing about the disappearing Canadian wilderness” (15).

And so it is that Grey Owl became sort of a tutelary spirit for Wilson as a boy, through his writings. Wilson admits, though, that “Archie Grey Owl was never my hero” and instead appealed to him for “the lifestyle he lived and … the places he’d been” (20). And Grey Owl remained a frequent, if not constant, presence for Wilson in his own (mis) adventures in the wilderness of Canada--and even other places such as New Zealand, as he recounts in one chapter of Grey Owl and Me. So while Wilson’s “ramblings may help to reveal or illustrate, or even justify, the rationale behind Archie’s troubled soul” (21), they also describe the crucial role that Grey Owl played in Wilson’s (equally complicated) life as a wilderness man.

The book does not follow any distinctive narrative thread, such as chronology, themes, or specific locations. As Wilson mentioned, they are “ramblings” indeed--or more correctly a collection of stories that are at once histories and explorations of important topics in one man’s life, touching at the same time on larger issues for the modern world. Thus we see Wilson collecting garbage, fighting seal hunters, riding his motorcycle on long journeys, tutoring Pierce Brosnan for a film about Grey Owl, and leading tourist families through all kinds of natural perils.

In all of these essays, and so in Wilson’s book as a whole, Grey Owl makes fleeting appearances at key moments. Many times Wilson will discuss some aspect of Grey Owl’s life and work that is relevant to the current moment in his discussion, such as his championing of forest-conservation measures in a time when the boreal forest is being devastated by logging. But just as often, Grey Owl appears and “speaks” to Wilson, admonishing or cajoling or laughing at him in fictionalized dialogues between the two characters of the tale. As Wilson says at one point after such an imaginary chat, he appeared and then “was gong again, as usual, showing up unexpectedly and leaving as if riding a breeze, tiptoeing stealthily through the shadows of my life as if still-hunting moose” (104).

This is, in fact, a good characterization of Grey Owl and Me in its entirely. While we do learn a lot about Archie Belaney/Grey Owl himself, he seems to be more in the background--or perhaps far in the distance, overlooking the stories in the book from atop a mountain or a canoe down the river. For the most part, Wilson’s essays are accounts of his own adventures, stories about (and personal investigations of) himself as a civilized wilderness man--or wild man in civilization.

Thus, to a great degree the book is a way for Wilson confront the identity he has made for himself, as Archie Belaney did, through his great love of the wilderness, his many journeys in the natural world, the lessons he learned by going into nature, and his extensive efforts both to speak out and take direct action for that natural world. And with his rough, rowdy, but also vivid and articulate style, Wilson creates some captivating tales as he wanders from place to place and topic to topic, at the same time always coming back to the bigger picture--how wildlife and resources are viewed and treated by modern society, how modern and traditional cultures interrelate and (may) inform each other, how the wilderness can teach us the ways to live a full, rich life.

Hap Wilson’s Grey Owl and Me, then, is best seen as an extended adventure under the guidance of one of Canada’s most famous wild men and environmental advocates. It can be frustrating or disappointing if one goes into it looking for tight organization or writing style, or if one expects the depth of philosophical profundity that can be found in some of today’s leading nature writers--such as Bill McKibben or Canada’s David Suzuki, to name just two. While it may be too specific to Canada for international readers, Wilson does speak well on issues that transcend boundaries and impact all of us. Further, his call to environmental consciousness is reflected in the very materials of his book, which is printed on materials from well-managed forests and approved by the Forest Stewardship Council.

That said, Grey Owl and Me can make for enjoyable reading for those of us who enjoy plunging into nature, reflecting on our relationship with the natural world, and doing our part to treat our environment with respect.

An Open Letter on Farmed Animal Welfare to Our Representatives

2010-10-17T14:29:00.000-04:00

An Open Letter on Farmed Animal Welfare to Our Representatives

Author's Note: This is a letter draft that I have used to contact my representatives (local, state, and federal) to ask them about their views on factory farming and animal welfare. It is also meant to bring this issue more to their attention and let them know that their constituents are concerned about animals. Please feel free to use it, modified appropriately, to contact your officials and speak out for the most abused animals on our planet, and in our entire history.

Dear Official,

I am concerned about factory farming, which I am sure you know is immensely and needlessly cruel to farmed animals. Whether it be poultry, pigs, cows, or sheep, our area is marred by the heavy presence of factory farms. The agriculture industry--agribusiness, to be more exact--is one of the most powerful lobbies in our country, and the world, and so billions of animals are brutalized every year due mostly to habit and a focus on profits over ethics.

Many of our representatives show little concern for these suffering beings, since any change towards more humane husbandry methods would effect corporate profits. And so here in our area, like so much of the world, animals are primarily treated as nothing more than bio-widgets, commodities, things.

Luckily, there are many local farmers who respect their animals and produce humane eggs, meat, and other products. They provide inspiring models on several levels--a focus on small-scale, local economies, humane husbandry, and traditional diversity. With less than 2% of our population now devoted to farming, farmers are losing their livelihoods due to the juggernaut of agribusiness. And at the same time, animals are suffering more and more.

I would like to know, what are your views on factory farming and animal welfare in general? Would you be open to, or even support, measures to help bring more compassion and humane methods to animal farming? Would you acknowledge the growing wealth of scientific data proving the rich, complex capacities and lives of the animals we use for our benefit?

Given the impact that large-scale factory farming of animals has on the environment, health, and of course ethics, I believe this is a tremendously important issue for our future on so many levels.

In his recent book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer emphasizes the profound duty that we have at this time in human history: “We are the ones of whom it will fairly be asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?”

I would appreciate learning your response to this question. And I would be more than happy to speak with you more directly on this, a subject which has been central to my life since childhood and has shaped so much of how I live and what I do. I believe we owe this much to our wonderful animal friends, and to nature as a whole.

Thank you for your time, and best wishes.

Image credit: Gunnar Richter (Namenlos.net), from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Broken Bird

2010-10-17T11:22:00.000-04:00

Broken Bird

This bird with broken wings
Is cradled in my hands
And lies as still as death
Against my aching breast.
Its heart is soft and slow,
Perhaps in peaceful sleep
With dreams as bright as life
Of flying towards the sun.
Perhaps it can forget
The sticks that broke its wings,
The hands that dealt the blows,
The eyes that turned away.
I hold it, share its pain,
And seek the proper way
To help this broken bird
Arise and fly again.

Image credit: Gaming 4JC, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Sub specie aeternitatis

2010-10-03T09:33:00.001-04:00

Sub specie aeternitatis

A golden morning of autumn
Has passed into dusk with a breath,
And shadows beckoning midnight
Are murmuring dirges of death
With tears as parents of laughter
That shimmer as stars on the sea
While everyone restlessly slumbers
In dreams of what was and will be.

A cold winter's dawn is approaching,
Its heralds the withering leaves
In myriad costumes and colors
That cover the Earth when it grieves.
But spring and summer are waiting
In temperate climes far away
To come back again where they started
As green in a garden of gray.

Now the clouds seem to ceaselessly circle,
And the Earth seems to sleepily spin,
And the universe seems to grow smaller,
And a song seems to rise from the din
As we wander forever and after
And follow what paths we may please
With shuffling feet in the twilight
Through the leaves at the feet of the trees.

Image credit: Nikater, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons license.

Mysteries & Miracles

2010-10-01T06:28:00.000-04:00

Mysteries & Miracles

In memory of Kristin Leigh Highfill
December 23, 1978 -- September 17, 2005

Hummingbirds twirl and flash around
Glistening flowers awake in their beds,
Catching the morning’s first light.
Who knows the taste of freshest dew
Rolling along their tongues?

Well-tuned bands of bees busily buzz,
Bumbling in blossoms newly born,
In praise of their conquering queen.
Who knows what treasures they find
Deep down where pollen hides?

A group of children gather to play,
Sometimes friends and sometimes foes--
But always children at play.
Who knows what secrets they spell out
In letter-blocks and finger-paint?

An old friend crosses the street
In the calmest hours of night
But does not reach the other side.
Who knows what she encounters
Or where her journey ends?

Spring, summer, autumn, winter pass,
Leading every thing to come and go.
Who knows what gifts are waiting
In nature’s gossamer shawl
If we would but hold out our hands?

Who can solve the mystery
Or analyze the miracle
Of the sunshine cupped in my hand?
Of the seed that has dropped from my hand?
Of the life that has slipped through our hands?

Image credit: EdyaT, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Hidden in the Harvest

2010-09-23T07:39:00.000-04:00

Hidden in the Harvest

To Susan Stone

Sunrise:
Not a globe of fire climbing out of night to rage
But a brush tip spreading strokes of golden wash
Across the frameless canvas of the sky and fields
Till nothing lacks a coat of lustrous light.
And there is no horizon.

A drop of paint takes wing from the palette in a swirl,
Its flight another voice in the chorus of song
That is also a vision of myriad sparkling forms
And poetry written in strong resounding bounding lines
(Though words at their best are but seeds scattered in the wind
That just may, in their season, take root, shoot forth, and bloom,
With fruit whose sweetness depends on the tongue).
And art is a natural wonder.

The crops extend into a shimmering plain,
Prolific artists lined in even swaying rows,
Collaborating, blending colors in the stirring breeze,
And signaling that all may gather for the show;
In swift responses, weaving in between, the beat
Of furry paws, of hooves, of tiny insect feet
Reveals the first arrivals for another day.
And earth is alive with the movement.

Then next the men and women, holding children’s hands,
Come beaming bright with smiles and blinking eyes
Still heavy in the morning’s rising mist of dew
To dip their limbs in the light as it streams,
The building heat its energetic, ever-vibrant pulse
And sign of its health at the height of its life—
Kinetic and conductive and contagious, shared
Among the many bathing in its brilliant depths.
And still the golden bounty of the fields rears up,
Enough that every eye and every heart is filled;
And still the haloed heads of grain are raised aloft:
Sunrise.

For there is a light surfaces can reflect
While it waxes to noon and then steadily wanes,
And there is a light barriers cannot bar
Shining in shining out in a loving exchange.

Image credit: Lev Kamenev, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.

By Candlelight

2010-09-19T16:50:00.000-04:00

By Candlelight

A candle burns within a dark abyss
And pushes back the awful, shadowed space;
It gives a warmth that soon gives birth to life,
And lights the way for life to grow and thrive.

Then soon a host of other little lights
Arise and strengthen the wan candle’s glow;
Like stars they sit and shine and seem as gods
Who watch and spill their joyful tears below.

The lighted bubble seems without an edge,
Without horizons or bounding line
To any eyes that gaze from here within
While blinded by the light they get and give.

They see the beauty and the pain of life,
Which sow the seeds that sprout in forms of art,
Or see the workings of the world occur
And fashion laws to understand and rule.

But always outside of the candle’s glow,
The dark abides, outside of light and life,
Beyond the language and the laws and arts
Of fleeting flames that flicker, fade, and die.

Image credit: NCCo, from Wikimedia Commons, under a GNU Free Documentation License.

An nihil ate

2010-09-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

An nihil ate

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."
- W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

"One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathurstra

The last man is riding
On the back of a beast
Slinking, slouching
Toward the center point
That cannot hold,
That is slipping outward
To the razor's edge.

And this madman rides
Upon this mad, mad beast
With a lion's grin
And a glint in his eye
And a pool of drool on his chin.
The reins are flying,
Since he let them go
Not caring to steer
Or to utter commands
To a deaf, rabid beast
That cannot hear
And does not care
But is creeping towards home
As it crumbles away.

When they come to the edge,
Both rider and beast,
Of the world they have trodden
And pounded down into dust,
They look into the void
At the eddies of stars
That are swirling, ecstatic,
Long freed and unfixed,
For the body of God
Is dismembered and torn,
And his mind is unhinged
Like a wobbling gyre.

But the fool and his beast,
In the light of a sun
That has risen in darkness,
Sending light through the void,
Start to dance on the dust
Of planets and stars,
Start to sing and to howl
As they leap on the bones
Of the gods and the priests
Who have died on their thrones
When confronting the chaos
Standing just outside their gates.

As these fallen lords rave
And feast upon themselves,
The fool and his beast
Step out into the void,
Fall in through the central
Singularity's door
And dance on the chaotic
Vortex of things
Plunging into themselves
Like a sparkling primrose
Closing inward at the dawn.

As the fiery stars fall,
And the corpses of gods
Blow away on the breezes
That whip through the void,
The fool and his beast
At last reach their home,
The abandoned home of God
That was built upon air
Out of crystalline sand,
Ad together with a mighty puff,
They blow it down into a heap
And lie upon it, like a bed, to sleep.

Image credit: Hlamo, from Wikimedia Commons, as a public domain image.

Crossing the Wild Line: Thoughts on Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man

2010-08-13T14:26:00.000-04:00

Crossing the Wild Line: Thoughts on Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man

Prompted by a philosophically minded friend, I recently watched the film Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog's documentary of Timothy Treadwell. For those of you who do not know of Treadwell, he is the fellow who went to Alaska and lived amongst the grizzly bears up there for 13 summers, filming himself and thus capturing some astounding wildlife footage in the process. In 2003, he and his girlfriend were killed by a bear--surely an ironic, as well as sad, end for this man who professed unreserved love for the bears and other animals, and who was an advocate and educator.

Grizzly Man is a compelling film, consisting mostly of Treadwell's footage with narration from Herzog and interviews with various people associated with Treadwell's life--and death. Among the most important questions it raises, I think, is how humans relate to and interact with animals, and along with that how we perceive them and their habitat. Whether driven by love or by greed, humans have a long history of crossing the "boundary" between species, charging into areas without full thought (or respect) for the indigenous inhabitants. And in the case of Treadwell, we see one instance of this trend...with typically tragic consequences.

First and foremost, I feel genuinely sorry for Timothy Treadwell, since it seems like he had serious personal issues that drove him to do something seriously foolish. This jumps out at you from the first few frames of Herzog's film, using only footage filmed by Treadwell himself, of himself. Your first thought may be that he is crazy or in someway mentally handicapped. But with more reflection and insights gained through the film, you start to understand how Treadwell's demons drove him to create a sort of nature boy alter-ego, to build an identity around his role as Savior of the Grizzlies...or Grizzly Man. Whatever altruistic and selfless love he might have felt for the bears and other animals, he surely was satisfying some deep personal need, which unfortunately killed him in the end.

At one point in the film, Herzog interviews a Sven Haakanson, the curator of the Alutiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska, near where Treadwell spent his summers, who explains his feeling about Treadwell's in situ activism. As he puts it, from a native perspecive, Treadwell pushed himself into the bears' territory and, though apparently well intentioned, ultimately disrespected the bears by thinking he was "one of them." Thus we see Treadwell swimming with and even touching bears, pursuing them to get footage or "study" them, and consistently acting as if they both understand and "relate" to him in some way. This form of sympathetic fallacy explodes the obvious biological and cultural differences between human and non-human animals. While we share so much with them on a physical and mental level, we are still very different in our capacities, our beliefs and desires, and our system of morality, to name a few. Pretending that humans are "the same" as non-human animals would be as fallacious as pretending that dogs and cats are "the same," or that fish and mammals are "the same."

This presumption and error on Treadwell's part are enough reason for concern for people who work to change peoples' disrespectful or apathetic attitudes towards animals, their habitats, and their very livelihoods. A foolish, naive understanding of animals can be as harmful as apathy or even cruelty, undermining the effort to use science-based evidence to show why they deserve respect and how to go about doing so most effectively.

But the larger error on Treadwell's part was crossing an ancient, primal line: not human-animal, but predator-prey. He forgot that those grizzly bears he cooed over and treated like teddy bears--stuffed toys like the one he slept with every night--are keen predators and, when pushed to desperation, will do whatever they have to to survive--even eating their own species, including the cubs of mother grizzlies. As we can see from his footage, Treadwell seemed arrogantly confident that he had "conquered" both them and nature, not to mention the people and civilization who did not have the guts to do what he did.

While it is important to view Treadwell with fair criticism and recognize his mistakes, at the same time I must say that I can completely sympathize with his desire to live with the animals in nature, his desire to help them, and his willingness to die for them or even at their hands--er, paws.

In the end, I think he was happy with his life and his death and would not have wanted to go out any other way, and I respect him for that. To be fully honest, the experiences he had (as we can see in the film) were of a sort that I and many people would wish for...and maybe die for. Having a fox for a friend, and touching and swimming with grizzly bears? Man...

In terms of the director's narration and "spin" on Treadwell, I was a bit turned off by some of Herzog's meta-commentary, and I disagreed to some extent with how he characterized nature as entirely cruel, as the cold antithesis to a somehow more civilized human world--only because his perspective puts it in a black-white, us-them duality, rather than recognizing the shared elements and the similarities and differences, and how the relationships are more complicated than just man vs. beast. It also dismisses the numerous examples of how nature is not at all "red in tooth and claw," and how cooperation and compassion are just as crucial for survival in the wild as a dog-eat-dog mentality.

In an age where anthropogenic climate change and habitat depletion are making it ever more perilous for animals in the wild, it is imperative that we adopt a mature, informed, and respectful attitude for them. If we treat them only as savage brutes or as stupid stuffed toys, we disconnect ourselves from them, reduce them to expendable "things," and risk losing them in the process through extinction. By respecting them fully, not stomping into their territory but accepting the fact that sometimes we do best by leaving them alone, we can allow them to live in their natural way and ensure that they continue to share the Earth with us, contributing to the rich biodiversity that makes all life thrive.

Herzog's Grizzly Man is a thought-provoking film, which will get anyone interested in animals, animal rights, and environmentalism thinking seriously about the philosophy behind their choices and the effects of their actions. Additionally, the film provides some astounding footage of animals in the wild...and human nature as well.

Losers

2010-07-14T06:55:00.000-04:00

Losers

Loss is a rotten apple swallowed whole,
Worms and seeds and all
In one swift and painful gulp.
It cannot be recalled,
Not one way or the other;
The poisons enter the blood
Too quickly to be purged.
There is no other choice
But to plod onwards,
Eat your fill and take
What nourishment you can,
Perhaps building up
With each bitter, fetid bite,
An immunity to the pain,
A dam against the tears,
A morbid acquired taste
For the drug of sweet suffering,
And a stubborn determination
To put one foot in front of the other
Again and again and again.
So we eat our fill and fall
In this endless orchard of fruit
That decays with our touch,
For the loss is all we are.

Image credit: Kulmalukko, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Lullabies of the Abyss

2010-07-13T06:37:00.000-04:00

Lullabies of the Abyss

Now lead me down to the abyss’s edge
And plunge me down into the cold dark depths,
Then set my silent, chilling corpse adrift
With this quick tide that sweeps from life to death.

Into the womb of chaos I shall come,
The primal birthing place of all we fear,
To hear the whispers of a babbling tongue
And drink the secrets of eternal tears.

Amidst the ghosts and shadows in my head,
The fading dreams long lost behind my eyes,
I sink into my heart, beneath the dead,
Afloat upon the murmured lullabies.

Image credit: Kaplanoah, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Veganism, Purity, and Human Nature

2010-07-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

Veganism, Purity, and Human Nature

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article on its website by Harold Fromm titled “Vegans and the Quest for Purity.” It was a poorly argued, logically flawed diatribe against vegans and veganism—which were criticized for being foolishly extremist, self-contradictory, impossible, and utterly valueless. The article touched off a large debate in the comments and on various other websites. In taking part in the discussion myself, I did a lot of thinking about issues that were raised, which speak to many of my core principles and, I think, also touch on some key questions of modern culture and human nature.

Whatever valid points Fromm might be making about purist veganism in his article, he is in fact writing in such a way to discredit ALL veganism—in contradistinction to “looser” (and so more acceptable) vegetarianism. What this essentially does is to put things in an all-or-nothing light, so that veganism in any form is cast as foolish and worthless. If we only think in ideal and absolutist terms, then yes, veganism becomes untenable. It would be impossible to draw absolute lines between what things could be eaten/used by us and what not, and it would sacrifice practical efficacy for unwavering rigidity.

But to portray any and all veganism as priggishly absolutist ignores the very real good that we can do by trying, as much as possible, to reduce the harm we cause for other beings through a vegan lifestyle. Why is this somehow foolish or worthy of ridicule? By adopting a vegan lifestyle, even without worrying about bacteria and insects but just the more obvious living creatures, vegans still do a great amount of good in the world (for animals, for the environment, for themselves...).

It makes me sad to have these efforts and intentions dismissed out of hand or mocked. I fear that Fromm may lead many people to disregard veganism completely rather than see what aspects of it actually are worthwhile and doable.

And yet, Fromm does actually get at a serious issue in criticizing self-righteous vegans who try to preach to the world and who cast critical judgment on anyone not as pure as themselves. But the root problem in this case is not veganism in the extreme, nor any particular “-ism.” The real problem is NOT one particular ideology or lifestyle choice…but the human tendency to get fundamental about our cherished beliefs. Be it religion, political ideology, racial identity, or even tastes in art, I cannot help but see a common underlying thread: Humans just love to get fanatical. The sad thing is that the minority of fanatics get noticed, while the majority of reasonable people in any “group” get lumped in with the extreme ends of their particular spectrum (e.g., “all Muslims are militant terrorists”).

This only shows me the need for all of us to work on tolerance, pure and simple, with a good dose of compassion and humility, not that any particular belief/lifestyle in itself is flawed (though surely SOME are…like slavery). We must never lose sight of tolerance (that is, respecting that other people will believe different things, not just dismissing them out of hand without any consideration), compassion, and being realistic while remaining true to one’s conviction.

I am a fruitarian and eat organic, both by principle more than anything. But it is not about purity or trying to feel superior to non-vegans, nor about giving myself a soapbox to stand upon and cast down judgments. Not at all. I am also skeptical of everything, including myself, enough that I recognize my way may not be the “right” way—for others, for the world, for the universe...

It all comes down to what my heart and my reason lead me to believe is important, then living my life consistently with that. Once you truly accept something as meaningful, then it is not about being “pure” or “impure,” or about struggling to stay on the path, but simply following the momentum...it is not an effort, but a way of being. I do not have to struggle with being a strict vegan because it harmonizes with every fiber of my being. It makes sense to me rationally, it fits my moral/ethical principles, it keeps me feeling physically healthy enough as I need, and it makes me feel more in-tune with nature.

I would love to see the world go vegan, simply because it would (I think) have such positive effects for EVERYONE...but it is not about making myself feel self-righteous or victorious, and I really do not need the world to go vegan to still feel at peace, at the end of the day, in knowing that I am doing everything that I can to follow my principles and act with compassion for other beings.

For me at least, it really boils down to an underlying intentionality: the intentionality to reduce the suffering of animals through humans’ lifestyle choices. If you have that core compassion and concern, then veganism is not about purity or perfection, but about considering the welfare of nonhumans as well as humans and striving to act appropriately.

I always think of the Buddha’s teachings on killing in this respect. He made clear that killing other life-forms is inevitable in our lives: just breathing air or drinking water or walking down the street; and today we know about the immune system, we have vaccines, and so forth. But the key factor, he taught, that determined if a word or thought or deed was a karma-creating one, was the intention behind it. I consider this a good way to think about mature veganism: trying as much as possible to do no intentional harm to other beings, not adding unnecessary suffering to their lives (or one’s own).

Where there is fundamentalism there is imbalance, and where there is imbalance there is no peace. I am at peace with my choices, even if that makes me an “army of one.” Luckily, I am not...and being a pacifist, I will try to let others do the fighting if they feel like it. I will work against injustice and speak out against cruelty, trying to do what I believe is right while also respecting the right for others to have differing opinions. And ultimately, I will strive to manage any anger and desire to be a savior (or martyr) that arises within me…and focus on living a compassionate, conscious, cruelty-free life.

Image credits: The Animal Liberation Front, Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons. Michael Tracey, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License. Brocco, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.Chris 192, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

The Crimes of Blindness

2010-07-04T11:55:00.000-04:00

The Crimes of Blindness

Imagine, if you will, that you are standing in some sort of a packed cell with hundreds of others--some of them family members, some of them friends, and many of them strangers. They all, like you, are visibly trembling and unable to move, even losing control of their bladders or bowels.

You have lost track of time, but you must have been here a long while, because the place stinks--with urine, feces, sweat, and fear, forming an invisible fog that is still thick enough to choke you. You suffocate and fight to stay conscious, not knowing where you are or what is happening.

Suddenly, a door swings open, and blinding daylight floods the confining space. Huge dark figures, silhouettes of strange alien shapes, rush in and start grabbing others around you. Some great clashing sound screams into life, the sound of metal and motor engines deafening you as you cry out, one voice among many.

And then you feel yourself clutched by the leg, yanked forwards, and inverted. Dizzied, you try to orient yourself and gather your senses, but things are moving too quickly in this terrible place. Something cold and hard locks on to your ankle, and you are moving, swinging to and fro in the air as you go.

On either side of you, others in a similarly up-ended position form a long line, swaying in the air like clothes hung out to dry in the breeze. The ride is short and fast, through a crowd of those alien figures. You watch as one reaches up towards you quickly, and with a flashing swipe, you feel an icy sting on your throat.

You try to cry out at the pain, but strangely your lungs cannot take in air…and then the real terror starts. You squirm and writhe, the sting in your throat sharp still but dulling as everything starts to fade. Before your senses escape you, though, you feel the skin of your ankle rip open and pull away from the bone…and you slip through the clasping fixture, flopping to the hard, cold floor.

Laughter and angry grunts get louder as one of the alien figures approaches you. Yet again, you are grabbed (by the injured leg no less, the useless limb now throbbing from somewhere so far away), hoisted into the air…and then slammed repeatedly against the floor, over and over. You feel your skull and vertebrae crack; your ribs shatter and pierce your organs; your blood fills your throat and blurs your vision. And then, finally, it ends…blackness, silence, peace…

I hope you feel some horror at the image of human beings like yourself, and including yourself, enduring such unjust, senseless violation.

But how do you feel when I tell you that the victims are chickens, not people? For the scene I have described is not some torture chamber in a fantasy world, nor an account of brutality from the depths of some draconian prison, but just one of many scenarios in the very real, very frightful animal slaughterhouses to be found throughout the United States and many other countries.

And what if I tell you that my narrative is the G-rated version, lacking so much of the nauseating abuses that come before--such as confinement of anywhere from three to five (or more) birds in a tiny cage, in fetid air and disease-infested surroundings, with fighting and even cannibalism, and involving genetic manipulation and stunting of every single natural instinct (from stretching limbs to scratching the ground), and much more?

Is there still no reaction, no horror? Are you still planning on having a chicken sandwich for lunch, a chicken or turkey breast for supper, fried chicken with all the sides for a holiday picnic? What about scrambled eggs for breakfast? Will you rest your head on a feather pillow tonight and sleep? Are these just the means to an end, the end of your living your merry little life just the way you always have and always will?

My point here is not to gross you out with just a few of the disgusting realities of modern animal “farming” and processing. Few people today can claim ignorance of the horrible conditions and abuses that animals face in factory farms and in assembly-line slaughterhouses. Thanks to many animal-rights organizations and various (if limp-wristed) legislative measures, such as the Animal Welfare Act in the U.S., we have learned a lot about these places and what goes on there. Not only do we know, but we have seen and heard these things for ourselves, in well-publicized and readily available photos and videos. If we stop and think, honestly and without bias, whence came the meat in the cellophane packages or the milk in the carton or the leather for our shoes, we know immediately that we could trace back a long trail of blood.

But we do not trace it. We do not see the realities behind the processed goods, nor the lives that they cost and the disproportionate amount of natural resources that went into their production. Why not?

Because we choose comfortable blindness over painful sight--over the cold, hard, accusatory facts of insight and honesty.

True, almost all of us know the realities of animal production, but the predominant reaction to the facts is something along the lines of “I do not want to know!” or “Do not tell me!” It is easier to live in state of self-imposed blindness than to open our eyes, to see the reality involved in our choices and actions, to own up to our own complicitness in the abuse involved, and then to take direct, sincere steps to end the atrocities.

One of the saddest things is that we choose blindness and allow the torture to continue for such trivial reasons. We like the tastes of meat, dairy, or eggs, the ways they fill the belly and the mouth watering, and we just cannot ever give them up, lest our lives somehow lose their pleasure and meaning and purpose. Or we dote on fur and the way it looks on our bodies. Or we simply follow habit because we can, because the goods are cheap and plentiful and are so completely processed that they bear no resemblance to the creatures they came from. Slices of bacon, veal cutlets, and Big Macs are not to be found walking around on the farmyard or roaming the prairies. Pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep, yes, but not the otherworldly “foods” they form a part of (as just a few of a long line of ingredients, as many of which come from labs as from nature).

Wherefore art thou, O man, but to eat, drink, be merry, and look chic?

It would be so easy, and entirely viable, to recognize the crimes of non-human animal use and consumption, change our lifestyles without any actual harm to ourselves, and so end our abuses of the other animals (our fellow animals) and of the ecosystem. We could trade the pleasures of the palate for a greater supply of nutritional, healthy foods, and in so doing give ourselves as a species more of the nutrition we need--putting the plant-based nutrition directly into our bodies rather than into the animals, which return it to us in diminished form and in smaller supply. And we could trade the tyranny of tradition for a cleaner planet, with more forests than grazing land, more and cleaner water, and a better relationship with our all of fellow animals (not just the familiar ones in our homes) based on respect and kinship, not commodification and exploitation.

After all, we have taken great strides to end slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of intra-species violations of basic rights. We have, generation by generation, raised our collective consciousness and granted equal consideration to others of our species no matter how different they might, on the surface, appear to be. Sure, we still commit shocking, senseless crimes against our fellow humans, and we still are plagued by bigotry and zealous ideology. But as a whole, we have extended our moral sentiments in many ways and undone the past abuses resulting from our mushrooming population, civilization (so called), and uninformed development. These are things to be proud of, draw hope from, and be guided by as we face the many challenges still remaining to us today and in the future.

So we can change, and we have changed. But when it comes to non-human animals, we do not. The progress we have made on this front is embarrassingly small compared to that affecting our own species. Habit, selfish pleasure, speciesism, skewed social mores, backwards and unfair market forces, ignorance, delusion: all of these obstacles to change combine to make us unwilling, unable (we believe), and often uncaring. We choose blindness; we do not want to see, we do not want to know…we do not want to change.

This mindset, or close-mindedness, is pervasive, a pandemic, one might say a defining characteristic of Homo sapiens sapiens. More than any of our hominid predecessors, and vastly more so than any of our fellow animals, we are able to know the finer details of so much of our world and to understand the repercussions that can result. We can watch events unfolding in the world and see that we live in a dangerous time, an era of global upheaval and portentous events spelling even greater dangers ahead. While other creatures must simply adapt or die, we can draw broader conclusions and make changes, to ourselves and to our environment, to improve conditions for ourselves and the other life forms here with us.

That power is what truly defines us, this gift and curse and duty as members of the natural world--members, not despots and not saviors. Our superior capacities of reason, our finely developed system of morality, and our hyperbolic tradition of technology, truly are not cranes to lift us above the “brutes” and take us “beyond” nature. They are not our tools to defy nature. They are our greatest ties to it. They are the signs of our responsibility and the means by which we can act upon it.

This is why choosing blindness, refusing to see the suffering and the peril we create and are surrounded by, is such a dangerous and criminal game of Russian roulette. For if we blind ourselves to suffering, how can we see what to change? And if we plunge ourselves into darkness, how can we find again the bright light of hope?

Image credits: Ethelred, and Dr. Temple Grandin, both from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Perpetuity

2010-06-11T07:37:00.000-04:00

Perpetuity

A crimson wave is breaking down
From shore to shore and pole to pole,
The blood of all our eons raining down
Upon our heads with drowning weight.

This ripple of a cosmic blast
Released from somewhere on the Earth,
The tragic triumph now achieved,
The monstrous birth of incapacity
And power blinded, driven mad with greed,
But trudging onwards over broken bones,
With every step approaching to the edge
Of its great shadow kingdom, built of dreams.

But as it teeters and begins to fall,
The empty human soul flings out a hand
In desperation for a solid hold:
Its fingers clutch and cling like claws
Onto the fabric of reality,
The weight of all the burdens it has borne,
Collected as the generations passed
And stored within its twisted genes.

The weight is far too great, and with a crash
The gauzy veil is split…then torn to shreds.
And as the stars collapse into the void,
They cluster, coalesce, and rush in waves
To fill the cosmos with a purging fire,
Extending outwards, far beyond the light,
Embracing everything to draw it in,
Consuming every shadow, scar, and stain.

With countless ages having passed again,
Their nights of darkness having found an end,
On some small planet lit by newborn stars,
A simple form will stir within the slime.

Image credit: NASA, public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Greatest Show on Earth

2010-05-23T08:48:00.000-04:00

Sorry this is so bleak and pessimistic...I guess I am in a mood.

The Greatest Show on Earth

"God was led infallibly by his wisdom and by his goodness to create the world through his power, and to give it the best possible form..."
-Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy

The curtain opens on a crowded stage,
A troupe of players draped in rags as fools,
Their faces twisted in distorted masks,
With bulging crotches or with parted skirts.
Yet wizened, age-bent, crippled by the years,
The centuries that they have lived and bred
Within a haze of pheromones and lust,
Though never draining their virility.

Now watch them stumble, drunken lechers all,
And weave across the stage, more crowded still,
As by the minute more and more walk on,
Crawl over, stand erect, and pound their chests.
And soon one trips and falls, a quadruped again,
Returning to the origins it never left.
Then others trip, making a roiling mass
Of limbs and genitalia, boiling pile of flesh,
Rising and extending in a self-spawned swirl
Of replication for the sweaty glee,
The hint and glimpse of immortality
Within the climax and the little death.

But underneath their beastly grunts and groans,
The sounds of screams and angry cries grow loud.
For here and there, the orgiastic waves
Are parted by the fists and flailing clubs
Of two, then three, then hundreds locked in war,
Their throats torn open by their battle cries--
The mass of flesh divided half and half:
Two parts, one whole: the ecstasy of blood.

And Death, a shady figure draped in bones and skins,
Is striding on to stand at center stage.
It gazes out, though lacking face or eyes,
Then turns its body, points to where the farce
Has entered into this, the final act.

For now two streams are spreading from the pile,
One red, one white, both draining life away.
Yet still the bodies pile higher, farther out,
The overflowing flesh collapsing on itself,
The forms devolving in their lust and war
And spilling over from the stage's edge.

The stage’s wood and metal groan beneath the weight,
The rafters shake and creak, the floor grows weak,
And flames break out behind the scenes:
The whole theater is about to fall
Upon the heads and humping, thumping forms
Now next to formless, shapeless shades like Death,
Amoebas swimming in the viscous streams...

Until the curtain falls, and silence reigns,
And everything is stillness once again.
The curtain quivers, but the troupe has gone...
There is no encore, for the show is done.

Image credit: Andreas Praefcke, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Cardinal

2010-05-13T12:34:00.000-04:00

Cardinal

Red red red! O glory of life!
My veins and arteries flutter,
My heart drinks you and spits you out
Like some wine aged to perfection.
The tops of rainbows shine with you,
And roses blush at your sweet kiss.
The fires of stars, the face of Mars,
The core of this planet of ours
Burn and explode to show your ire
Through cosmic spaces, dark and cold.

O red, these reflections are dim,
Mere embers long buried in ash.
What of that spark that once went BANG!
And threw off the spectrum of light,
A particle hidden within
Each frenzied atom as it fled?
Fear not, rage not: your spark lives on,
Is tended and held like a gem.

When first, in that moment long gone,
The universe opened its eyes,
That sparkling shard took a shape
And spread two feathered wings to fly
With black-mask face and orange beak,
Bearing this treasure with a song.
So now, if the sun strikes the breast
Of this avatar in the air,
The past becomes present, alive,
And promises wonders to come.

It is time: gather ’round this crook
Of a blooming dogwood’s thin branch.
The wind watches, holding its breath,
The sun brightens, peeking through leaves.
For here in this nest an egg cracks:
First sign of a color reborn.

Image credit: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from Wikimedia Commons, under public domain.

Religion: End It or Enlighten It?

2010-05-06T06:56:00.000-04:00

Religion: End It or Enlighten It?

I have wrestled for years with an interest in religions, from an outsider's perspective, that vies with an equally strong dislike and distrust of it. I waver between these two poles, often depending on what I read (say, Richard Dawkins vs. the Dalai Lama), and I can never settle that final question: Should religion be tolerated or terminated?

It is a troubling question. The hardest part is that being skeptical by nature, I have no problem seeing the fantastical and placating aspects of religion, the way it helps people feel good about themselves in a big, scary universe, while recognizing the ways that it can contribute to personal happiness--albeit at a greater price. So, looking at it through skeptical goggles, it seems silly at first blush to think something like religion could be all that dangerous or bad or harmful...

And then we have people crashing planes into skyscrapers. Or people killing other people because they are gay, offer abortions, or what have. Plus you add on top the ever-expanding circle of exploitation in the form of sexual abuse, money grubbing, power mongering, etc., etc. It is so easy to see how religion is as poisonous as it might be supportive. It cultivates and encourages a mindset of ignorance, setting for easy answers, not questioning assumptions and "authority." Meekness is encouraged, ignorance is bliss, faith is the key to heaven. Heck, you can even have someone ELSE die for your own sins!!!

So the damage of religion is the faith that, for such a vast majority of people, is nothing more than an excuse to be lazy. To turn off the mind and push the growling demons of doubt into the closet. To bury fear under a promise of heaven. It seems that the END of religion would be the BEGINNING of human empowerment. "If God did not exist, then all things would be allowed"...and, a la Nietzsche, humankind would have its first chance to truly realize its greatness

But really think about the likelihood of a Nietzschean future should religion suddenly, miraculously (forgive the pun) disappear. If religion were to end, how likely is it that the world would become a better place? How would people fill that hole inside of them, now suddenly reopened and left vacant, without religion? Would suicides skyrocket? Or drug addiction? Would we see the weaknesses of humanity in full display rather than its greatness? Would people lose the one source of moral structure that served as a guide for them? What would take the place--science, art, sports, gambling...? As sad as it makes me to say it, I think religion's replacement would quickly serve the same function as the original: a safe, easy excuse to give up critical thinking and just trust that "all will be well"...if you have the faith.

And admittedly, for all its ugliness, religion does have a lot of beauty in it and has inspired a lot of beauty in the world. Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel, for example. And it would be unfair to forget the moral structure and humanitarian efforts that all religions have brought to this world--and more importantly the people living in it. There are valid arguments against a blanket statement that religion is the foundation of morality, or even the protector and preserver of it, but it obviously plays a key role for a great number of people as a beacon for proper, ethical behavior (or at least lets them know when they are going wrong). Maybe the cost-benefit analysis would still show that the costs were not worth the benefits, but still...

For these reasons, and the fact that the actual likelihood of ending religion is minuscule to say the least (sorry, but I am skeptical to the core), I often wonder whether the better goal is somehow enlightening religion--or religious believers, that is. Would it be an acceptable "success" for atheists, non-theists, and skeptics to have people still taking part in "religion" but approaching it with a critical, questioning, active attitude. Like Thomas Jefferson: coming to Christianity and ripping out everything from the Bible that they found to be nonsensical, immoral, or inhumane?

If someone really, truly, and continuously "wrestled" with religion (think of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis, for which he earned the name "Israel," or "struggle with God"), and they still found sufficient good reason to be part of religion, would that be a victory?

It is hard for me not to see it as such. I think "religion" in that sort of a world would be a very, very different animal, and humans would be one step closer to fully realizing freedom and empowerment--here and now, not in some promissory afterlife with angels, virgins, and all the free ice cream you can eat.

Image credit: NHRHS2010, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons license

Ghost

2010-04-12T07:02:00.000-04:00

An old poem...but it still says so much.

Ghost

Hug the air above a candle’s flitting flame
And hold the hand of the shadow it throws;
Feel the presence of whom you love most,
The one who loves most to be yours,
Next to your heart, his heart speaking soft,
As though he were pressed to your breast.
Look into a mirror and see his clouded eyes,
Which once gazed unblinking in yours:
Both reflections clear enough to show your smile,
But one made hollow by the depthless glass.
Hear a whisper in an unfelt wind,
And think that his voice still remains,
Echoes speaking when there’s nothing left to say,
Forever speaking what he always tried to say.
Know he’s there although he wanders far from home,
A haunted ghost who walks the world without a grave.

Image credit: Matt Luttrell, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Two Poems for Spring

2010-03-18T09:09:00.000-04:00

Spring is almost here...!

Persephone, lift up your head

Persephone, lift up your head
That wilts with dewy tears;
Return, for from its barren bed
The lily bloom appears.
A golden eagle cuts the sky
To chase the cold away,
And satyrs lift their staffs on high
To call their nymphs to play.
Your shepherds pipe:
The time is ripe
To break the spell
And rise from hell!

The winter’s chains have melted down
As gray gives way to green,
And Hades, grudging, tips his crown--
While spilling tears unseen.
There’s love above and love below,
But life is only here!
O shadowed maiden, hear and know
The budding of the year!
Your shepherds pipe:
The time is ripe
To break the spell
And rise from hell!

Within your mother’s fruitful womb
The seeds of springtime stir,
As you, amidst sepulchral gloom,
Reluctant queen, endure.
The moment’s come; don’t let it flee!
For liberty is brief:
The blossom, smiling bright in glee
Must shortly frown in grief.
Your shepherds pipe:
The time is ripe
To break the spell
And rise from hell!

O never let the minstrels cry
And miss your pure embrace,
For ev’ry heart’s lamenting sigh
Invokes your absent grace.
This verdant garden earth awaits
To feel your tender kiss:
Persephone, your prison’s gates
Have opened unto bliss!
Your shepherds pipe:
The time is ripe
To break the spell
And rise from hell!

Spring Tease

March: most cruel of months I call you
(With the bitterest hiss of my love),
Giving birth to flowers and fields
In sunlight and long-awaited warmth
Like oases of vivifying fiery gold
On the fringe of a desert of dust--
Which you, black magician, dissolve
As if only a glamour or wish
Glimpsed on the wavering screen
Of a shivering, hibernating brain
Keeping warm in the jittery movement
Of the teeth and, at times, of the heart.

Be it a day, or several, or a week
At most you may grant, wicked tempter of hell,
In which all that lives can cast off
The layers of nature or machine
And breathe through every dormant pore
That essence infusing the blood
Through the breath, through the eye,
Through the ear, tongue, and skin,
And bearing aloft every vaporous thought
Afloat on the shimmering sea of the mind.

March: birthplace of so many things,
A charlatan and false deity I deem you.
For every bud breaking the shell of soil,
For every season coming round to its time,
For every creature gazing fresh upon the world,
You have a hidden freezing blow to cast and kill.

I evoke the frost, your imp, upon you
And call to the earth to cast off its hardened skin
And bury you down in its molten core
For purgation in plasma and flame.
May you learn all the virtues of heat
From the whispering earth deep below
And return, be reborn, both kinder and wise,
With the world in full bloom as it greets you:
Perhaps your beauty thus may penetrate within,
Fulfilling the promise teased out from your show.

Image credit: 4028mdk09, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

What Will Be

2010-01-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

What Will Be

She was standing in the kitchen, holding a cup of steaming coffee. The smell was brilliant and bitter, tantalizingly familiar as it pricked her nostrils and her throat. She looked around: brown wooden cupboards and matching pantry, faded flower-patterned linoleum, old-model microwave and toaster on the counter (both white), old-model white stove, humming white refrigerator, two windows in the wall looking into a wooded back yard (one with an empty bird feeder dangling in the center of the glass, hanging from the eave), ceiling fan with three lights….

Everything looked right, felt right. She looked at it all again, furrowing her brow with effort and frustration this time.

She knew it, every last detail, but those details were not coming together for her into a single, solid sense of ownership. They wouldn’t meld together, finally and completely, into the sense of being hers, because she couldn’t get the sense of who she was.

Then she saw a photograph on the lone wall shelf, above the small telephone table: an old man with a ring of white hair around a bald dome, wearing wire-rim eyeglasses on a narrow face, and a woman with fluffy white hair, slightly curled on the tips, full face, and broad smile, a butterfly pin on her collar….

Sheldon. The man was Sheldon. Her Sheldon, her husband. The man she had married back, what was it, 1956…over 50 years now. And that was the same man who she had laid in a grave over five years ago. Or was it closer to 10? She would have to look at the papers in her filing cabinet later.

Yes, the bright-eyed man in the photo was her Sheldon, and she…she was Millicent Bradley Crenshaw, “Millie” to anyone who knew her for more than, say, two minutes.

She breathed a quiet sigh of relief, feeling whole, real again now that she felt at home again, and sat down to read the newspaper from front to back while she sipped her coffee and ate her oatmeal with milk, raisins, and a banana…and a dab of maple syrup.

It was quiet in the house, the only sounds the occasional turning and shaking of newspaper pages, the clink of metal spoon on porcelain bowl and cup, the slurp of coffee or thin oatmeal. Ages of silence, the quiet morning hours of an old house with one small, slow, simple old inhabitant. The sun rose from the horizon, growing full and confident in its puissance. As it grew stronger, brighter, the thick forest of deep green pine and naked deciduous trees surrounding the house took on a burnished look, steaming away the winter morning’s cold and frost under the sun’s heat. Birds chirped and flitted around in the boughs and branches, hunting for food, singing to pass the time, visiting the empty bird feeder outside of the house’s window just in case there might be a few seeds this time that they had missed the last. Once, for just a few minutes, a doe emerged from the tree line into the backyard, nibbled at a few shrubs that had run wild with neglect, and then disappeared again into the shadows of the forest canopy.

The sights and sounds and signs of life hustled and bustled about on this cold February morning in lower Maine. But inside the small brick house, little was heard besides the few quiet sounds of one woman’s breakfast over the newspaper. Once in a while the house creaked, the gas furnace rattled into life and then clattered into rest, the refrigerator hummed and squirted and farted.

Hours passed, creaking towards noon unnoticed. Millie finished her paper, her cold coffee and sludgy oatmeal, and then went to do the dishes. She remembered, from habit rather than deliberation, that she had to take her pills now that breakfast was finished. First the dishes, one thing after the other, just as it should be…like walking in someone else’s footsteps in the snow. Or like taking a few oddly shaped pills from the proper cell marked for that day, one of the fourteen such cells in the two-rowed plastic pillbox she had in her cupboard.

Millie pulled the faucet arm up to start the water, easing it to the left, and peered out through the window over the sink as the warm water spluttered and splashed against porcelain and steel, against her dry, crinkly hands. The unseen doe was long gone, but there were still a few chickadees and titmice capering about, an occasional cardinal flashing through the green pine boughs dusted with white snow, a blue jay and a squirrel bickering over something near the big oak tree back in the corner where the fence boards had fallen out…oh, probably three or four years ago.

It would be noon in a few more hours, and she would make her lunch and do those dishes and look out of this same window into that same woods-edged backyard. For this moment, though, Millie felt the warm water on her hands and just watched the animals and the light at play outside. Billions of beautiful, delicate little sounds in and out of the old house accompanied the scene, but Millie heard almost none of them.

* * *

After her small, simple lunch in the quiet kitchen, Millie watched a few hours of television in the den. There wasn’t much to keep her interest--mostly pundits and talking heads bickering over politics or other news, the plights of health care or the economy, neither of which much concerned Millie--so she fought a losing battle to keep her head and eyelids up, plopped in her big recliner with feet in the air and a light throw around her. The TV, turned up loud so that Millie could hear everything--or hear some of it, and follow even less of it--drowned out her soft snores.

Stirring awake mid-afternoon, Millie caught the tail end of a weather forecast. According to the perky young chit standing in front of the map, who would make a better cheerleader than a scientist, there was a strong weather front moving northwards from the mid-Atlantic, riding along the Appalachians. Miss Chit, beaming and bopping and bending to accentuate butt and bosom, predicted at least a foot overnight, possibly as much as two in some areas. Millie snickered. She had seen more snow and blizzards and “monster storms” in her 73 years, and in this house, than she could remember. Or cared to remember if she could. Millie had long ago learned that the coming winter meant re-checking and, if needed, replenishing the ample stock of canned foods, non-perishables, powdered milk, and jugs of water in closet, pantry, and garage. If the power went out, she had a full supply of small logs (delivered each year) in the garage, with more waiting on standby out back of the woodshed, and she was still more than capable, thank you very much, of starting her own fire in the den’s big wood stove.

Chuckling at the threats of heavy snowfall, indeed looking forward to a little more white out the windows, Millie clicked off the TV and worked herself out of her chair: She had work to do.

Today was Saturday, Millie’s day to clean the house. It was her weekly “exercise” and her chore, a routine that was all the more dear to her because it was so time honored. It had become a hallowed ritual in the years since Sheldon’s death, something to occupy her time between meals, naps, and the TV, between jigsaw and crossword puzzles or books. And she never lost focus on cleaning, no matter how her mind might wander, fade, or skip around: With the rag, feather duster, broom, mop, or vacuum in her hands, Millie had a firm grasp on life.

She started in the den, as always, drifting around with her feather duster and rag. So much dust, in only a week, and with only her to stir it all up: on the picture frames, on the TV and furniture, on the lampshades. She stroked here, wiped there, sniffling from the dust as it wafted into the air on unseen drafts and swirled into eddies in her wake. She sneezed once or twice when the tingles in her nose got an attitude.

The den, like the house itself, was small and cozy, not cluttered with needless furniture or bric-a-brac. The most notable decorations in the room were several photos of her and Sheldon, and a couple of their respective parents, on end tables and atop the bookcases. She had similar photos throughout the house, at least one in every room--photos of her and Sheldon sitting for a portrait, or out in the backyard, or on the beach at Cape Cod, or in front of a glittering Christmas tree…. These were all she had to remember him by now. His place within her memory was fleeting, dwindling and growing vaguer with time. The photos filled the hole left by his death, a hole that was not filled by children or extended family to offer glimpses of him in their features, their voices, their names. Sheldon’s lone sister had died in a car accident as a teenager, Millie was an only child, and they had been unable to have children. (Sheldon had always blamed himself, blamed the concoction of hormones they gave the milk cows on the farm when he was a kid, though they never had tests done…and Millie never got past the chilling suspicion that she was the problem, not him). She attended to these mementos with extra deliberation and care, slowing further the motions of her routine to wipe the frames and glass, lingering to stare at the couple smiling back at her.

Besides the small end tables and two small bookcases, there was a small shelf on the wall above the TV. Almost half an hour after leaving her recliner, Millie reached the shelf and stopped, eyes wide and sparkling, lips parted as if seeing something wholly new and spectacular.

Most prominent were two American flags, each folded into a triangle and placed in a triangular frame of wood and glass, showing proud white stars on rich blue. The leftmost was her father’s. At the age of 28, James “Jimmy” Bradley had enlisted in the Army, shaken out of neutrality by Pearl Harbor and his President’s call to action. He had flashed through the ranks after entering service and then stormed the beaches at Normandy, pushing on through bullet wounds and shrapnel in his back. Jimmy Bradley kept charging on, as if invincible, through Europe. Before he was finished, conquered at last by a Japanese torpedo while in the Pacific, her father had won a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, a Croix de Guerre, a Distinguished Service Medal, and a personal signature from President Truman on the letter that informed his family of his death. The letter was in its own frame, to the left of the flag, and the medals rested in cushioned boxes in front of the flag.

Sheldon’s flag was on the right. For him, military service in the Navy had been the road out of poverty, the only way in fact, since his mind could not have survived a life of farm, logging, or factory work. Escaping the Vermont dairy farm on which he had been raised, which otherwise would have passed to him as it had passed from one Crenshaw son to the next, Sheldon had entered the Navy, studied mechanical engineering, and endured the Korean War. Afterward, he had gone on to a Masters in engineering from MIT almost as quickly, it seemed, as his honorable discharge had been finalized. Sheldon had not won any commendations or medals in his short military stint; he had been too busy finding ways to keep his ship (with the others in his group) out of harm’s way and thinking about everything he would do once his time was up. His flag had been folded and framed by his wife rather than by the military commanders after his death. Instead of medals and battle scars, Sheldon had racked up invaluable knowledge, experience, and reputation, all of which made the MIT degree more of an afterthought and formality. But that was his personal greatest conquest: the victory of a poor farm boy over the forces of tradition and hopelessness. Although he had left the military, the U.S. government knew a good thing when they saw one, and they had hired him after he graduated for a reliable, rewarding career in civil service to his country--working mostly on bridges, dams, roadways, other infrastructure, the essential things that never get acknowledged with glamorous prizes or awards ceremonies. Still, the government also allowed them to live comfortably in their golden years, through Sheldon’s military pension and federal retirement benefits, joined by those of her father and by the ample money from her mother’s side of the family.

When Sheldon’s career of service had ended at last, less than a decade before his life had ended at the age of 71, he had not collected hearts, stars, crosses, or oak leafs, those strange symbolic shapes heavy with significance. For him, Millie had very different, more meaningful things: Sheldon’s pipe, eyeglasses, and wedding ring--three things that he was never without, as far as she recalled.

The long-handled feather duster slid along the shelf, over the mementos of Jimmy Bradley first, caressing the wood and metal and glass, clutching the motes of dust that had collected there. Then it moved on to the flag of Sheldon Crenshaw, slowing here, resting more lightly, caressing and tickling more softly.

With the large TV in her way, Millie was forced to reach and raise herself on her toes, despite the duster’s long handle, in order to touch every surface. She had finished with Sheldon’s flag and was finishing his pipe when a sudden swirl of dust tickled her nostrils. She sneezed, lost her balance and pitched forward. Gasping, she flung her left hand forward and caught the TV, stabilizing herself enough to avoid what otherwise would have been a terrible fall--an old woman, at home alone…. But in her loss of balance and grace, the feather duster had gone wild, rammed the rightmost flag, and sent it toppling off the shelf. As it fell, it pitched the eyeglasses off with it, as a tottering man will grab for anything with which he might save himself the pain and embarrassment of landing on his butt. The triangular frame hit the TV with a thud and the sharp crash of breaking glass, followed by another thud as it hit the carpeted floor. Millie didn’t hear the eyeglasses hit anything as they fell, but she found them when she stepped down on something and heard a gritty crunch.

Gasping for breath, not yet fully balanced, sweating with fear and adrenaline, Millie leaned on the TV and shuffled away from the blurry debris at her feet. At last, she was able to clear her eyes and see it. The low light showed it all: the broken frame, the shattered glass, the twisted eyeglasses with shards instead of smooth, clear lenses. Leaning on the TV, bent over and gasping, she could see tiny sparkles scattered across the floor, the sparkling of glass, which soon was joined by the sparkling of her tears.

Hours later, Millie sat in her recliner again, resting in front of the TV, the entire house dark except the small light of the range hood in the kitchen and the lamp in the den. She had not finished her cleaning this afternoon. She had managed to clean up the mess she had made and, with glue and careful refashioning, accomplish some repairs to the broken flag frame and twisted eyeglasses. They rested atop the shelf once more, but Millie’s eye returned often and easily perceived the misaligned pieces of wood, the deformed metal, the incomplete shine of reflected light….

Exhausted, yet unable to sleep, Millie stared at the images on the TV. She heard the words and sounds, but they were just the squawks, clucks, pops, and gibberish of some obscure foreign language. Outside of the den window, fat snowflakes now fell like frozen cotton balls, plopping down to cover every surface, hitting the glass with heavy plops, accompanied by the sharp and crystalline tinkles of ice. Gusts of wind blew in every direction at once, making the white balls into projectiles and the ice into cold bullets.

Millie saw the whiteness swirling about outside but didn’t register it, even when she turned to stare at the dancing shapes. She heard the occasional tinkles of ice and thuds of snowflakes, but they were immediately drowned out by the booming TV and the ringing, pounding, that lingered in her ears, fatiguing her yet keeping her from sleep.

Only after the nightly news and the late-night talk shows, more meaningless blather, did Millie feel tired enough and recovered enough to climb out of the recliner and walk to her bedroom. She thought wanly about gathering wood inside for an emergency fire, but the power was still on, and she wasn’t up for it now, though even a few hours had given Time a little time to touch her with its healing powers. She would take her chances with the storm and the cold. She had lived through a lot worse in 73 years of life…and she wasn’t about to die at the hands of some snow and ice, no matter how drained she might feel. She looked back into the den as she passed through the door. Now, with the TV and lamp off and ice tinkling against the windows, the room was dark and cold.

* * *

The beaches of Cape Cod had a certain smell in the summer, a scent that became something physical, tangible, living, about the time when July tiptoed into August. Millie had smelled it, felt it, the first time her mother and she had summered there in an oceanfront cottage, when she was 12. Each year, it became more a part of her, and she more a part of the Cape Cod sand and the green-gray water and the briny ocean breeze. The return to Portland at Augusts’ end was a teary, slow trudge away from this place. But then months later, as the school year dwindled, Millie’s thoughts and daydreams inevitably returned to Cape Cod, as if they were preparing the way before her. The flowers of spring smelled of the sand and the ocean, the songbirds all looked and sounded like gulls…until Millie’s annual June return.

She was there, here at Cape Cod now, again, standing on one of the boardwalks, up on the dunes, so that she could see the beach extending to her left and right. From below her, children, adults, dogs scampered about under the sun, rested under umbrellas on the sand, swam and splashed in the water.

Millie saw, heard, and smelled it all, felt the life and joy of Cape Cod, so sweet and familiar. Someone took her hand. She pulled her gaze from the ocean, and Sheldon was smiling at her. His hair was a thin white ring, his skin was wrinkled and loose, his eyeglasses were perched on his nose, and his pipe was poking out of his smiling mouth. Same old Sheldon. She felt his warm, soft hand embracing hers; his pinky stroked her index finger, a touch she knew so well, stirring butterflies and goose bumps throughout her body, just as it always had. The bright sun fell upon him where he stood beside her, setting Sheldon ablaze with golden-white fire, the ocean breeze stirring up his light hair into dancing tongues of flame.

Tingling under Sheldon’s gaze and stroking pinky finger, Millie looked into his deep blue eyes. She felt the warm Cape Cod sun, smelled the Cape Cod sand and ocean, heard the laughter of children and teens on the Cape Cod beach.

Sheldon smiled, stroked, stared, but did not speak. He held her eyes and her heart, it must have been for hours, until a song of laughter made him turn his head towards the ocean. Millie’s eyes never left his head, his face replaced by a wrinkled ear and thin white hair, until he turned back towards her and made a slight jerking motion with his head.

Finally Millie looked away from him, and she saw a couple dancing at the edge of the water. The man was wearing red swim trunks. He was lanky but graceful, handsome but unexceptional, his lean muscles flexing as he danced, his blond hair waving in the wind. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, a few years older than the woman in the blue-and-white-striped swimsuit, whom he was spinning about like a top or grasping by the hips to pop up into the air. Her shoulder-length brown hair was straight, twisted by the breeze and the motion of her body. Her laughter was deep and rich, breaking in between the words of “Que Sera, Sera,” which she sang as they danced. Millie could see other people, couples and individuals alike, watching them as they sang and danced and played in the water, some clapping and singing the words that everyone knew so well.

Then Millie gasped out her breath in a quiet, shocked shriek. She knew the dancing couple…she remembered them. It was Sheldon and her. She stared at herself, 20 years old again, dancing with her husband before he was her husband, 26 and so full of life. This was--oh my, it must have been little more than a week after he had first approached her one early July afternoon as she lay on the beach with a book--it was Sagan’s A Certain Smile, the translation. She remembered it, and that she had never finished it…thanks to Sheldon. She had other love affairs to occupy her after he had come up to her and introduced himself, his MIT buddies sniggering at him from down the beach where they sat and gawked….

And here they were, here she was, dancing on the beach with him again, a week after they had met and four months before they had been married. Millie danced with Sheldon, singing in the sunlight and the ocean breeze: “Whatever will be, will be….” But Millie knew this shared future, had lived it, and it was glorious. She sat at the table and watched this future beginning to open like morning glory at dawn’s first light, her hand held and stroked by Sheldon’s as he, too, followed the two of them along the beach.

When Millie turned back, countless minutes later, Sheldon was watching her again. His pipe was sticking out of his lips at an odd angle and…and she cracked up. He always did that on purpose to make her laugh, pinching his mouth, squinting his eyes, furrowing his brow…he looked half mad, completely hilarious. Millie laughed until she gasped, holding her sides to keep her insides inside. Sheldon laughed, too, still stroking her with his pinky finger. Her breath returned under his gaze, and they stood there, in this sunlight and ocean breeze that could be found nowhere else on Earth, in no other summer than the summer of 1956, just staring at each other once again.

* * *

Waking was always an ordeal for Millie these days. Sleep, though fitful and stubborn most nights, was stingy with her, fighting to let her go. Her mouth was particularly dry this morning. The furnace must have run all night…yes, there was a winter storm last night, bitter cold and snow and ice and wind…but, well, at least the furnace had run, and the power had stayed on…she could hear it running now, in fact. Her eyes were crusty, sticky, hard to open. She must have slept on her arm, because it was asleep, pins and needles in her elbow and forearm…and there was the ache of the arthritis in her fingers and shoulder. My, had she done been wrestling under the covers?

And why was it so bright in the room this morning? Wiping the last grains of crust from her eyelids and lashes, she nearly had to squint because of the glare. Even with the curtains drawn most of the way across the two windows in her bedroom, the light pouring through was brilliant, overwhelming, as it reflected off of the white walls and ceiling, even the white comforter on her bed. She sat up and looked at herself in the vanity mirror, beyond the foot of the bed, seeing her old white face lit up as if with a spotlight, her white hair shockingly white.

Confused, Millie got out of bed and hastened over to a window, not noticing the cold air near the floor--she hadn’t bothered to step into her slippers. She parted the thin curtains…and then stepped back, raising her hand to her eyes. The sun was high and immense in the clear sky, each ray a sharp dart that bounced off the inches, no feet of snow that blanketed ground, trees, shrubs, everything outside. The wind was still blowing in hard gusts, and the swirling snow caught the light, shooting the darts off on crazy new courses…millions of them piercing the glass, striking her, passing around her to fill the room and slam into every visible surface.

After many minutes, maybe it was an hour or more, Millie watched as the swirls of snow seemed to gather, in one place back near where the garden had been, creating a tornado, a vortex of grainy whiteness. She watched the vortex spin and dance, hypnotizing, and was sure she could see something within it….

There was someone there, Millie was sure of it. It was a man…yes, she could see his flannel jacket, black and red, his tan pants, his green hat pulled down low on his head and earflaps tied under his chin. The man was facing her, but the snow obscured his face. He wasn’t moving, despite cold and wind…he only stood there, in the middle of the snowy vortex.

And then, suddenly, Millie knew it was Sheldon, her husband. That was his jacket, his hat, his lanky body under layers of padding and insulation…she knew them all, every detail, every square inch. Why, that same jacket and hat were out in the hall closet right now…she wore them sometimes when she went out to get wood or the mail.

Millie squinted, tried to focus her old eyes and see through the blinding sunlight on snow. She knew it was Sheldon, and she wanted to see him…because even from here, she could feel his smiling eyes holding her in their light. She knew, without seeing, that his pipe was in his mouth, his eyeglass were perched on his nose…his lips were pinched and his brow was furrowed, making the madcap face at her through the snow, and the distance, and the time, everything that stood between them.

Her hand was on the glass now. She stood there and watched the dancing snow and the still form within it, Sheldon, for a time out of time…until the snow scattered, the vortex collapsed, and the spell was broken. There was nothing, no one, there.

The bedroom was filled with light, beautiful, glaring light. Millie turned and sighed, seeing it spill out of the room and into the hallway…which was just as bright, the darts of light entering in through every window, gap, and vent of the old house.

The storm had come, poured out its fury, and moved on, leaving tons of snow behind, all before the first light of dawn while she slept. It was another winter morning in Maine, a morning to shovel and plow and build snowmen….

For Millie, though, this morning seemed brighter, perhaps, than any other in her long, light-filled life. She had slept well, and she felt fresh. She had dreamed, something about Cape Cod, but the memory was fading as she stepped into her slippers, wrapped her robe around her, and walked out into the bright hallway. She paused at the door and turned back, looking at the window. She had seen something strange and beautiful outside, had stood there for a long time watching it…but, oh what was it? Maybe it had been a deer? Or was someone out there? She tried to remember, holding her arthritic hand and rubbing her index finger of one hand with the pinky of the other hand. No, it wouldn’t come. She couldn’t remember what she had seen. But it was just another missing memory, something else slipping through her mind’s grasp these days.

Shrugging, Millie left the room and went to get the newspaper and make her breakfast. She walked down the bright hallway, into the bright kitchen, humming a familiar tune under her breath…

“When I was young, I fell in love….”

Original image credit: Erin McDaniel, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

How Patti Lost the Weight

2010-01-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

How Patti Lost the Weight

How can you be so filthy, Patti? someone asked.

How can you be so foul, Patti? another asked.

And yet a third: How can you be so weak, Patti?

“’Sn’t fault…st…stop,” Patti slurred. Her words wouldn’t form themselves, since her tongue was a rotten peach in her mouth. Her brain squelched in her head, three pounds of peanut butter mixed with marshmallow spread. “Hurts, stop.”

Patti, this is disgusting! How can you do this, Patti?

“Goway. Wantoo sleep…sleepy…tired…heads ache…cut off the TV Sue…noisy...”

Swimming between stupor and slumber, feeling nibbles of pain at the farthest tips of sentience, hearing sludgy voices familiar and alien, forgetting everything except a cloying sweetness and lingering emptiness, Patti cried out, shook herself to come awake, but then sank back into the warm ooze of semi-consciousness.

Thoughts and sensations floated up and sank, bobbed up and swam below, miniature marshmallows in slimy, viscous hot chocolate.

Patti tried to grab them, but the few she could hold either dissolved through her fingers or burned, stinging her and searing her already throbbing mind.

“Stoooooooppppiiiitttt…”

But the aching voices, the nibbling hunger, ignored her. Images, memories, played in a shaky loop through haze and funhouse reflections.

Do you want some more cake, Patti? someone asked her, snickering. Huh, Patti? Want some more? C’mon Patti, there’s a few crumbs left, a little icing on the edge of the plate…go on ’n lick it clean. You know you wanna, huh? Go on, no one’s watching after all…no one’ll know, Patti, and aren’tcha so hungry, Patti?

“Noooo…goway.”

Patti McLean lay in her sagging La-Z-Boy, sagging deep into the tired cushions and springs, much of her massive 625-pound body sagging and spilling out over the padding and fabric. Her eyelids fluttered, creeping open from time to time, and drool trickled lazily from the corner of her mouth, down one chin, then a second, and then a third, at last falling onto her polka-dotted shirt as she lay, twitching and muttering through spit bubbles and phlegm and chocolate residue.

The TV was on in front of her, turned to the Food channel, the volume turned low so that the chef whispered instructions on how to get the top of the crème brûlée caramelized just perfectly…like so…and voila! But Patti no longer could watch the chef’s culinary adroitness, could no longer salivate with Pavlovian precision. Patti McLean was no longer here.

The trailer was a mess, with food wrappers and papers and clothes and empty two-liter bottles of Diet Coke and Fresca scattered around on chairs, tables, and countertops, piled up on the brindle-colored pile carpet. It smelled like stale bread with an undertone of dollar-store air freshener. A navigable trail snaked its way through the clutter and smog, wide enough for the trailer’s extra-wide inhabitant and her cane.

The cane itself stood sentry, always within arm’s reach, beside Patti in her sagging recliner. It was the extra-sturdy kind, with a square metal base and four rubber-shoed feet, the better to stabilize her with. And Patti needed it. She could still get up and walk, miracle to be told, but an uneven surface or even a slight puff of wind (or breaking of wind) was likely to send her careening into empty space, and her poor muscles had long ago lost any possible hope of saving her should her 625-pound body acquire its own momentum. All it took was the slightest tip in any direction…and gravity would do the rest.

So Patti carried the cane. Even when she felt like she could, just maybe, walk a few wobbly steps without it, Patti carried the cane. For if she did fall, and no one was there to help her back up…who knew if she could get back up? She sure didn’t.

But now Patti sagged in her recliner, and the cane stood at attention on her right, the unflagging steel ready at moment’s notice to bear the burden of its commander-in-chief. On Patti’s left, a few shapeless chunks of chocolate cake remained on an age-discolored, knock-off Corning ware platter. White icing ringed the edge, white smears and dark-brown smudges within it creating a sugary masterpiece of abstract art. Patti’s face was a canvas of icing-white and chocolate-brown symbols, the art going from abstract to atavistic in its movement between the media of porcelain and flesh. Brown and white smudges veered crazily around her mouth, up her cheeks to her eyes, sideways to her ears and hair. Crumbs and clods dangled from her greasy brown locks, swinging like pendulums whenever she twitched or coughed.

Then she did cough, spitting cake and phlegm all over the polka dots and the burgundy imitation velvet of her tired recliner. Coughing, spluttering out the nasty bits in her mouth, Patti floated nearer the surface again, back to the world she knew and the life she hated, back to herself. Still, all that would come to her of that world were thoughts and memories, images and sensations. Her peanut-butter-and-marshmallow mind couldn’t grasp and form anything very well, but some things could rise to and ride on the sludgy surface, floating and bobbing beside her…

“Take cover, folks,” Bruce Dillinger screamed out over the din in the cafeteria, “we’re under a Big Mac attack!”

The hundred-plus mob of teenagers erupted in laughter as Patti tried to make her way to a seat in the middle of a long row of tables, turning sideways and scuttling along like a mutated crab, her face as red as the crab’s shell after being boiled.

Coach Turner had kept her late after gym class and railed on her (yet again) for sitting out of the President’s Physical Fitness tests, so she had been late getting to the cafeteria for lunch. Coach Turner hated her, loathed her, and never spared an opportunity to remind her of his disgust. She couldn’t run a mile (even a quarter mile), couldn’t do a pull-up, couldn’t do a sit-up, couldn’t do the vertical leap, couldn’t climb the rope. Hell, she could barely touch her toes. “How can you weigh 250 pounds at 16 years old, Patti,” Coach Turner asked her--a half-rhetorical question that he seemed determined to answer. Neither of them could find an answer, though that never stopped the Coach from interrogating her about it, with his well-muscled arms akimbo on sculpted hips, shaking his clean-shaven head in bewilderment. He delivered the same old sermon about the importance of exercise, watching your caloric intake, the virtues of willpower and by-the-bootstraps self-control. Damn it girl, it’s so simple, so why can’t you get it and get fit? He just didn’t know. Neither did she.

Today’s sermon had been longer than usual, and she had to change and go to her locker before lunch to get her books for Home Ec, which was on the other side of the high school. She would need all of the lunch period for eating and reading, of course, with not a moment afterward to spare for locker trips. Heaven help her if she arrived late to Home Ec. Kristin Shields was in that class, and Kristin hated Patti with all the virulence of Coach Turner but none of his professional courtesy.

Going to the locker after gym class had been a grave mistake, Patti realized now. She stood frozen, twisted sideways and holding her lunch tray at chest level. It was heavy enough on its own, supporting a sectioned plate with two chicken patties, two helpings of French fries, and an extra-large portion of buttery succotash, blueberry cobbler in a little bowl, a honey bun wrapped in cellophane, three packets each of ketchup and mayonnaise, two boxes of chocolate milk, a fork, a spoon, and three folded paper napkins. But now the tray seemed to be made of uranium, her flabby arms atremble as she stood and looked down at her meal, too scared to breathe. The blood had run from her head just as it had from her flagging arms, and she couldn’t think.

“Uh oh, watch out, she’s gonna fall!” Bruce screeched, feigning horrified fright. Then, for emphasis, he pushed his chair back with a harsh grind of the metal legs on linoleum and dove under the table, covering his head with his arms. “Watch out!” he called from below, “the Big Mac attack’ll kill us all!”

Every single person in the cafeteria, including the teachers who were there eating or acting as cafeteria monitors, sneered or chuckled or hid a grin behind napkins.

Big Mac. Everyone in Fairmont High School knew Patti McLean by this inglorious epithet, but only a chosen few actually called her this. Bruce Dillinger was one. Kristin Shields was another. And Coach Turner was a third, though he only let it slip occasionally, when he didn’t think she was within earshot…usually when he was goading some other kid on in an exercise. (“What’re you, another one like Big Mac…push it, push it…”)

What could she do? She couldn’t sit in the lone empty chair and eat her lunch now! And her usual space in the far corner, near the lunch-line doors, was already full. Because she wasn’t there, that usually under-populated table was full. Today the Big Mac had not been here, so there was plenty of room at the table, and all were welcome.

She couldn’t sit, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do a damn thing except stand there and listen to the laughter build, punctuated by hoots and whistles…even applause. It must have been minutes that she stood there until her arms gave out and the tray fell with a clatter on the head of some boy, and she barreled out of the row and out of the cafeteria and into the girls’ restroom. It had taken the school nurse over an hour to talk her out of the stall, where she set in a ball on the toilet. Her butt had been sore, the malleable cellulite bearing the deep impression of the horseshoe-shaped seat, as she got up and walked with Mrs. Dorsey to the office. Patti’s mom, Darlene, had come to get her and had taken her home. She hadn’t come out of her room for two days after that. She hadn’t gone back to Fairmont High School for a week.

The laughter of that day had carried on, ringing in her ears, getting louder or softer, for 21 years. Even now, as she half-dozed in her La-Z-Boy, Patti heard Bruce Dillinger scream “Big Mac!” from under the cafeteria table, heard teens and adults jeer and giggle from all around her, heard her tray clatter onto the head below it and then onto the floor.

The laughter was always the same, no matter whose mouth it came from. It echoed in her head, scratched away with taloned paws at the walls of her heart, gnawed with weasel’s teeth at her bowels. It was in her blood, in her flesh, in her thoughts. Patti dreamed the laughter in diabolical, freakish shapes.

The laughter burrowed into her, a tapeworm, finding her central core, where it fed and rotted and festered, a gangrenous malignant lump. It metastasized on the rich, nutritious resources surrounding it: Patti’s lonely, sensitive, beaten-down self.

Born of scorn and fed with hope, the worm at Patti’s core ate, and ate, and ate…calling for more, lisping to her, cozening her, from cupboard and refrigerator, from grocery-store aisle and drive-thru lane. And when it spoke, it would not be denied.

Patti heard it again now, floating in her La-Z-Boy, bobbing on her throbbing brain, tingling in her sleepy nerves, aching on her edges.

It sounded like…like rapid-fire Latino hip-hop, buffered by ear muffs or cotton balls.

“Turnit offfff dammit…tryin to sleep.” Patti’s voice was low, too low to be heard across the room, let alone by Jorge and Luis next door. She knew the music, even through the buffering of peanut butter and marshmallow in her head, and she grunted deep down in her chest. She coughed some more, spitting on her shirt.

Jorge and Luis lived in the trailer next to hers. Patti hated Jorge and Luis. She hated their pounding music, their noisy little souped-up cars, their friends, their yapping little pug dog Fidel. Most of all she hated their yard. Jorge and Luis had a taste for gaudy, kitschy bric-a-brac and a knack for showmanship, using almost every square inch of their tiny trailer-park yard for that purpose. They had a full flock of pink lawn flamingoes—but not just the plain pink birds, which were bad enough, but birds with personality: sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts, tuxedos and top hats, psychedelic multi-colored bodies, sparkly plastic gems… They stood here and there, some in clusters and others on their own.

In one corner, half a dozen flamingoes gathered with plastic rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, frogs, and deer around a three-foot tall plastic statue of Jesus. His arms were extended crosswise, and he wore a flowing plastic robe, with a huge red plastic heart in the center of his chest. He was preaching to these plastic parishioners, telling them about lilies in the field and mustard seeds, about sheep and goats, about needles and camels.

In another corner, an inflatable manger scene was set up, where the selfsame Jesus at a younger age nestled in his crib, worshipped by his parents, the three wise men, and a host of barnyard animals. At night, it glowed with electric lights, and a little star twinkled on the top of the rubber manger.

The Virgin Mary watched over the yard and the trailer from various places. You couldn’t walk ten feet without meeting her saintly face, eyes downcast, sometimes cradling her son as a cherubic child, other times cradling him as a bloody corpse just off the cross, here holding a rosary in silent prayer, there reaching down as if to feed a hungry animal or beggar. Most of the Marys were plastic, but some were stone. A few were accessorized, wearing flower necklaces, sunglasses, or even gangsta bling.

The worst, though, were the miniature Grecian nudes: replicas of Michelangelo’s David, Triton blowing his horn, and other icons of masculinity with genitals on full display. Like the Marys, these cocksure versions of yard art had been tricked out: gangsta bling and flower necklaces, sailor hats and leather jackets, painted-on tattoos that read “Mother” or “Hot Stuff.”

Jorge and Luis had moved into the trailer beside Patti six months ago or so, and they had unpacked the old hungry laughing worm with their big stereo and flamingoes and beer. They let it out with all the old, familiar maliciousness shortly after their arrival at Willows Glen Trailer Park. Through the sludge and stupor, Patti recalled that day.

She saw the mailman deliver her mail on the first afternoon of the month, which sent her dutifully out to the mailbox to see if her Social Security check had come yet. The money wasn’t much, hence her residency in Willows Glen (a.k.a. “Cockroach’s Den”), but it was enough. With her medical conditions and all--diabetes, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, bad knees, anxiety disorder, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, weak immunity, depression--Patti couldn’t work. She had tried once, as a teenager, to work in a Barnes and Noble bookstore. It had lasted a month, but then the standing had made her knees hurt, and the anxiety of dealing with customers had caused rashes and insomnia, so she had quit. She had not worked a day since, thanks to sympathetic doctors and social workers.

Four-footed metal cane in hand, Patti lumbered, huffing and wheezing, to the mailbox--which, by Willows Glen regulations, had to be posted on the street sidewalk. She plucked the check from the mailbox, along with a Weight Watchers newsletter (she had tried that once, about four months ago, and she never bothered to call and get off their mailing list; she just threw them out unopened every month), and began the trek back inside. Oprah had gone to a commercial, so she had to hurry, since Dr. Phil would be on next.

There was a burst of laughter, and Patti heard the low pounding of Latino music next door grow quiet from the newly occupied trailer. Two thin olive-skinned men, maybe Puerto Rican or Cuban for all Patti knew, were standing close--too close, Patti observed--to each other on their small wooden deck, looking at her. She could see them talking in low voices, grinning, their eyes wide and bright, their white teeth flashing under meager mustaches. She put her eyes back on the concrete at her feet and started again for the trailer. It was so far away.

“Hey mamasita,” the taller one (Luis, she later learned), called to her. “Te quiero…I love you.”

“Damn, mama, you so fine. You got a boyfriend, eh?” That was Jorge, who started to say something else but then doubled over, convulsing with laughter, dropping his can of cheap beer.

“Oh, baby, you gonna kill my friend here you so hot. You wanna come over and get down, mamasita, hey?” Then Luis bent over Jorge, spilling beer on Jorge’s back, the both of them falling in a heap on their deck.

She had made it back to the trailer, opened and slammed her door, and fell into her groaning La-Z-Boy, lungs empty of breath and face full of hot blood. It had been months ago, but now, like then, Patti was sweating all over, sweat mixing with tears. The revisited sting of that screeching laughter pushed her closer to consciousness again, sensations coalescing even as the memory faded. She could smell her own musky odor all around her, and she could vaguely see herself spilling out of the recliner as her dim gaze fell on her reflection in the glass door of her entertainment center.

As the images faded, she caught final memory-impressions of Jorge and Luis laughing outside as she sat in her recliner, trying to catch her breath and slow her heart. Their music had started to pound, pound, pound again, pulsing in her ears with their laughter, with her laboring heart, with her blood. She had heard them and the music as she sat, sweating and crying and wheezing, falling asleep at last sometime that morning in the repugnant mist of her own musk and self-loathing.

Patti could hear the pounding, the laughter, coming from next door, these sounds deadened not by time but by the stickiness in her head. She wanted to yell at them to shut up and go to bed, them and their queer hoodlum friends, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t quite collect her senses. She was too tired, too sore. She just wanted to sleep. And for a little while, the sludge-soft lullaby of Latino hip-hop faded to nothing. She lost consciousness.

The ringing in her ears had faded, too, when she sank away…but now it was back, not close to her yet still there somewhere, yet different. It sounded like a telephone underwater, all burbly and broken.

Patti’s eyelids fluttered, and she saw dim, blurry shapes around her. The ringing burst out again, and she felt thoughts build tentative bonds somewhere in her head. Her phone was ringing. She didn’t care, though. Let it ring. They can leave a message.

Farther away in space, the pre-recorded greeting on her answering machine played out, there was a loud beep, and there was a voice.

“Hey Patti, this is Dylan. I gotta run up to the store to get my Dad some chips and soda before the game comes on. Do you need anything? You there? Crap.”

She heard a click, silence, another brash beep, silence. Dylan, she remembered Dylan. Dylan lived with his father Buddy in the other trailer beside hers. Patti thought of Dylan, and she bobbed up a bit on a pleasantly warm wave. Dylan was her angel.

Dylan, poor Dylan, had grown up in Willows Glen. His mother had run out with a mechanic when he was four, leaving him under the reign of Buddy. The father was a belligerent drunk with a short fuse and a long reach. Now that his wife was gone, Buddy spent his drunken fury on Dylan whenever he could catch the fourteen-year-old boy. He worked at a textile factory, Patti dimly recalled, and left Dylan to find out on his own how to become a man.

Quiet and bookish, with thick-lensed glasses and little meat on his bones, Dylan also had little help from friends on the path of life.

“The kids at school call me ‘Gollum’…,” Dylan told her one day. It was a few days after she first met him beyond sight recognition, when he had helped her bring in some groceries--this must have been three years, and a hundred pounds, ago.

“Gollum?”

“Yeah, that freaky character in The Lord of the Rings. You know, with the big buggy eyes. ‘My preciousss...’ They love to call me that, and it is sort of funny.”

“That’s not funny, Dylan, that’s awful,” Patti said--trying but failing to hold back her own laughter. They had both laughed long and hard, sitting at her kitchen table glasses of milk and eating Oreos.

Despite more than 20 years separating them in age, Patti and Dylan had become friends of sorts. Dylan would pick up food for her at the store or medicine at the pharmacy when she needed him to, or he would cut her grass and rake her yard. Sometimes he came over to watch rented movies, which she paid for. He would make popcorn in the microwave--he always made the “natural” popcorn, with low-fat instead of regular butter melted and poured on top. She never said anything, only told him how good his popcorn was, though she knew the difference just by the smell, even the sound, not just by the cardboard taste.

Dylan also liked video games, and sometimes he brought over his game system to play on her big TV. Her screen was double the size of his, and she had it hooked up to big speakers, so the kid ate it up. They cranked the bass and the volume and often would play for hours on weekends or in the summer.

They were an odd pair, and Buddy ridiculed his son for spending more time with an “old cow” instead of a girl his own age (and size), but Dylan didn’t abandon Patti. Even when Buddy broke Dylan’s arm and blackened his eye after Dylan had spent the day working in Patti’s yard, forgetting to clean his own trailer in the process, the boy went out of his way to help Patti. He seemed to like being with her, in fact, though she couldn’t figure out why.

The phone blurbled again. Patti turned her head and forced her eyes open, trying to see through the syrupy stuff that surrounded every particle of her.

“Patti,” Dylan’s voice called out after the machine’s greeting and beep. “Paaaatttiiiii...? Okay, just wanted to try again. I’m leaving now. I’ll try again later.”

She wanted to get up to the phone then, wanted desperately to talk to Dylan, to tell him to get over here now and hurry. But she was just too heavy, to sticky all over. She ached to clasp him to her breast and bury him in her soft massiveness. But the sludge oozed over her and started to pull her under its surface.

Patti turned back and straightened herself in her La-Z-Boy, pushing her sticky eyelids open more and saw the cake plate on the table to her left, the remnants of cake and icing. She noticed again the minty-chocolate taste in her mouth, the clinging sweetness of sugar and flour. She saw the leftover bits, tasted the lingering flavors, and remembered…

The weather was cool this morning and the skies clear. Patti looked out of her windows now and again as the sun rose higher, feeling a strange longing within her with each peek through her curtains. Finally, she mustered her courage to venture out of the trailer and…try walking in the neighborhood. Dr. Zakaris had been on her ass like a bedsore to start exercising. She always ignored him, waved away his perseverance like a pestering mosquito, and left his office every time with yet another wad of prescription slips or medical forms for Social Services.

Dylan had started the new school year today and was planning to attend a Drama Club meeting or something afterward, so she would not be seeing him. She was feeling unusually good this morning: no pain in her knees or hands, no trouble breathing, no arrhythmias or asthma attacks.

Maybe I will try a little walk, just to end of the street and back, she thought to herself. “You can do it, Patti. It’s just a little ways. Then you can have a treat when you get back,” she told herself out loud, sitting in her La-Z-Boy.

Fifteen minutes later, Patti was lumbering out of her front gate, leaning on her cane. The late summer air was cool and crisp and fresh, and the light of the rising sun gilded the edges of the trees and the metal of the cars on the street. A few dogs barked in yards as she walked by, and she saw more than a few curtains flutter closed when she looked towards them, but she ignored them, and she walked. She could see the Stop sign, maybe 50 yards from her. She had made it nearly 20 feet from her own sidewalk, and she still felt fine. She knew she could make it.

It took nearly 15 minutes for her to reach the Stop sign, followed by a two-minute break for her to lean against the sign and get all of her breath back. She could see her sidewalk from where she stood, as well as her pine-green Dodge Caravan parked on the street in front of it. The distance looked a lot bigger from this end of the track, but Patti believed she could do it. With a puff and a grunt, she pushed off from the sign’s metal pole and trundled back, homeward bound.

Twenty minutes and two stops later, Patti turned onto her sidewalk. Her trailer had never looked so good, her comfy La-Z-Boy never seemed so attractive. Seated again at last, she would kick up her feet and give herself a little (no, a big) treat for such a miraculous feat. And wait till Dr. Zakaris heard about this! He would drop dead--if he believed her, that is.

Maybe I can get one of the nosey neighbors to write a witness’s statement for me, she thought and laughed.

Someone else laughed, too.

“Madre de Dios, look atchoo, mamasita.” It was Luis. “You as red as a tomate, big mama.”

Jorge walked out onto the deck, followed his partner’s gaze, and added, “Eh, Luis, she lookin’ so sweet…look at her jiggle, ah she…” But he lost it then, overtaken by laughter.

Patti stopped, taking in the sight of them, and watched without comprehension as they pointed and gawked and laughed.

She needed to get back to her trailer. Her knees were throbbing, and her chest was tightening up, closing off her breath. She hurried forward, working her tired legs and her sturdy cane.

Halfway up the sidewalk, she misplaced the cane, and one of the feet sank into the dirt. It stuck just enough to make her totter and lose her balance, and that was all it took for gravity to gain the victory. She fell half on the concrete, half on the soft lawn, bloodying her shin and elbow as she hit the ground.

Jorge and Luis stopped laughing for a few seconds, staring at her.

“Oh shit, man, now she tenderizing herself.” Luis exploded in laughter.

Jorge picked up the thread: “Hey man, I want somma that hamburger patty. Hey, Hamburger Patty, come over here, I’m so hungry and you so big, mamasita…”

They had laughed and pointed, heckled and hooted, as Patti lay on the ground and Fidel scurried around their feet, yapping and leaping. She couldn’t remember how she had made it back to vertical--the best she could manage now were vague images of the cane, vague impressions of straining arm muscles and tiny breaths and sweaty hands.

Minutes, hours, days later, she had been back inside, leaning on her kitchen counter, with the laughter ringing in her ears. She had stood there for a long, long time, weeping onto the cracking countertop, as her shin and elbow and arm muscles burned, as her fugitive breath tried to flee from her.

Patti had been so tired, and all she had wanted to do was sleep.

But you promised yourself a big treat if you made it, Patti. So go ahead…have yourself a treat. Go on…you deserve it…

And what better way to celebrate than a cake?

Patti drifted and bobbed, sitting in her La-Z-Boy, semi-conscious and sludgy, like a fat beetle in honey. She was too tired to stay awake any longer, too heavy and sticky all over. And she didn’t care. The taste of chocolate and mint was dwindling in her mouth, drying up with her saliva, fading with the clinging sugariness that seemed like a hardening caramel glaze on her world.

A few blurry, broken ghost-images rose to the surface of her inner sludge, but they held almost no interest for her now, the shaky film had gotten too painful to follow…

She…walked with a bloody shin and elbow into the bathroom, grabbing a full bottle of Percocet and a half-full bottle of Valium, and going back to the kitchen…collected the things for making a cake, opening the slim red box, laying out bowls and pans on the counter…took a full bottle of peppermint schnapps from the cupboard beside the fridge…measured cupfuls of schnapps and pouring them into the other dry and wet ingredients, stirring everything into a mint-chocolaty brown batter…sat at the table, crushing tablets of Percocet and Valium with a rolling pin, sweeping the pile of chalky blue dust into the round cardboard tub of white icing, mixing them together…sat, comfy again at last, in her La-Z-Boy, digging into the cake with a fork, not bothering to cut it into slices, washing it down with schnapps straight from the bottle.

Other images floated up, but they were too blurry and broken, the sticky sludge was too heavy now, and she was too tired now. All she wanted now was to sleep.

Patti had taken her walk, she had taken her fall, she had gotten back up, and she had gotten her reward. Stung by the laughter, the mocking, and the scorn of the world, Patti had walked her path. She had carried a heavy burden, bearing always the filth and foulness of a rotten world. But suddenly she felt light, so wonderfully light.

Now, having reached the end at last, all Patti wanted to do was sleep.

“Hey, Patti, you in there?” Dylan called out, pounding on her door and trying to peer in through the curtains. He thought he could see her in her chair, like always, but there wasn’t much light in there.

He hadn’t talked to her in three days, since before he started school, and he was aching to tell her about the Drama Club. He had her mail in his hand--it looked like she hadn’t gotten it in a while. He had seen the same circular of coupons sticking out for several days now--and he had a movie and a package of microwave popcorn in the other, the one he wasn’t beating against the door.

“Patti, hey, Patti,” Dylan called again. No answer. He tried the knob and found it unlocked, so he turned it all the way and pushed the door open. She had to be here. Her van was out front, she couldn’t have walked anywhere, and he didn’t know of anyone who would come and take her out someplace.

For just an instant, he envisioned an ambulance rushing down the street and stopping here, paramedics rushing up to the trailer with a stretcher and going in and then struggling to load Patti into the ambulance. He even saw the ambulance sink on its shocks before pulling away, its red and white lights flashing, but no siren just yet.

Putting all of that out of his mind, Dylan walked through the door. He breathed again when he saw that, yes, she was indeed in her chair, just with the lights and TV off. She must be sleeping. He tiptoed over to her. Maybe he could surprise her and wake her up so they could watch the movie and eat popcorn. Or maybe not…she might have an asthma attack if he frightened her.

It smelled weird in the trailer, which he noticed as he came up beside her. He saw the grimy cake plate on the end table. The dried cake crumbs and icing in a white ring. The empty bottle of peppermint schnapps.

Image credit: Brynn, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Rest Stop

2010-01-04T07:19:00.000-05:00

Rest Stop

The night was a dismal bog of black, with tiny pinpricks of light piercing through but doing little to break the darkness. The car’s headlights carved out a small area of substance and existence as Les drove, but none of what they showed so far on the shoulders of Interstate 10 had been worth looking at—tired trees, dying grass, colorless concrete dividers, road signs to nowhere special. The black night had fallen on and filled the world outside of his car. It had somehow managed to spill in through the closed windows and the metal, too. However it made it, the black night was in here with Les, and it whispered to him with the voice of a humming engine and rubber rolling over pavement: SLEEEEEEP, it said.

Les yawned, twisted his neck until he felt the satisfying pop of joints, and then looked down at the car stereo: 1:43. He cursed himself for being in his car, driving, at 1:43 in the morning.

I should be in bed, he thought, huffing out a bemused laugh. Then he thought of Sarasota, stoked his will, and pushed the accelerator down a bit to press on through the murk.

He was tired, but his fatigue was also laced with the heady mixture of adrenaline-alcohol-excitement that he had been jacked up on throughout his week in New Orleans.

Mardi Gras.

Les had been in New Orleans for the entire week once again, his annual ritual ever since college, come hell or high water or work. What was this, his sixth? Seventh? If he tried hard, he probably could remember…but he didn’t feel like trying right now. Instead, he reached up and ran his fingers along the bright bead necklaces hanging around his neck, under his shirt. The few beads that were visible above his collar sparkled in the glow of the dashboard lights as Les rubbed them. He felt the cold, hard plastic balls, one after another, and recalled the rosary his mother had given him once when he was a kid, with the same brown beads as her own, and which he had then lost somewhere with the utmost haste, to her great despair. Staring into the black night, he rubbed these cheaper, more colorful beads and thought—tried to think—back on this latest week-long extravaganza in New Orleans. God it was wonderful, like a cleansing release of one year’s worth of repressed frustration, anxiety, fear, guilt, desire…everything. In his fatigued semi-silliness, Les felt the dying traces of some unnamable, undirected wonder and reverence. His smile slinked along his face a little more, and he let up a little on the accelerator.

As wonderful as Mardi Gras had been this year, it hadn’t quite been the same as its six (or seven or eight?) predecessors. Andrea hadn’t been there with him this time. She still wasn’t talking to him, even after three months and his innumerable attempts to talk to her for more than a minute.

He had met her at his first Mardi Gras, which was also her first. That was in his first year at the University of Florida, also her first year at Ole Miss. Even now, that first glimpse of her face floating in the Fat Tuesday crowd was perfectly vivid, neither faded nor blurred by the years.

“Your costume is amazing,” Les had told her after walking to her and standing beside her on the sidewalk for at least five minutes. The city was luxuriating in the final day’s excess glitz, glamour, and gluttony. Floats were rolling by, musicians and dancers were flitting around on the street and among the crowd like impish spirits, beads and coins (and God knows what else) were flying, and Cajun spices seemed to flavor everything. But at that moment, Les perceived none of it.

“What?”

“I said your costume is amazing!”

“I’m not wearing a costume.”

“Really? I’d swear you were dressed as Helen of Troy. You know, the most beautiful woman who ever lived, the face that launched a thousand ships, Achilles vs. Hector…?”

“Oh, damn,” she said through her hand, trying and failing to stifle her laughter. “That has to be about the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

But she had laughed, and her brown eyes had softened. And then he had laughed, and his entire body had softened. And that was that.

Les sat in his humming car and watched as images of Andrea played on the black screen of the night, shots of her taken from the past seven years (It WAS seven, damn it! he thought):

Andrea in a bubble bath, just a head floating on the white bubbles.

Andrea dancing naked on the Florida sand as the sun rose.

Andrea hovering over him as they made love, her sandy-colored hair tickling his cheeks.

Andrea sleeping, her face relaxed and angelic in the timeless softness of sleep.

Andrea walking in on him and Courtney, their neighbor, having sex in his and Andrea’s bed.

Andrea turning, walking out of the bedroom, and closing the door.

Les stopped the film then. He dropped his hand from the beads and back to the steering wheel. He looked down at the car stereo: 2:13. He pushed the accelerator down.

How long had he been driving now? He had left New Orleans sometime after midnight. Mardi Gras was over, Fat Tuesday had come and gone, the city had exhausted itself once again, and he had felt a troubling, visceral urge to slouch home. Les had crossed over the Louisiana border just as Fat Tuesday, and all the maniacal festivities, passed into past tense. Now it was Ash Wednesday.

Les yawned again. He had maybe another hour to go now until he got back to Sarasota. The thought of crawling into bed--his still-familiar bed in his old room in his parents’ house, now just his mother’s house, where he had been staying since Andrea kicked him out of their apartment--beckoned him onwards through the black night and murky haze of exhaustion. He wasn’t stopping somewhere to sleep. He had to get home…then he would sleep, for days if needed to make up for the week in New Orleans and all the alcohol and food and…the other stuff.

A blue road sign came into the headlights, gaining substance and clarity as it grew larger and closer. Les had not bothered to note most of the things on the side of the highway--he had a vague recollection of seeing something about a place called Gautier recently, though he couldn’t recall exactly when and where that sign had passed him by. He noticed this one, though, and read it:

REST AREA 1 MILE AHEAD
TOILETS VENDING MACHINES

The car stereo show him that it was now 2:23.

“I need some caffeine,” he muttered. And he had to pee. Might as well stop now and refuel for the remainder of the drive.

A minute or so later, Les pulled off I-10 and rolled up to the rest area’s unremarkable, you’ve-seen-me-before building. He took a few moments to stretch his limbs, crack his neck again, yawn, stretch his legs, and get himself into sorts. Christ, he felt tired all of a sudden, all washed out under the washed-out glow of the vapor lights.

The night was silent around him, and very black. There were no other cars in the parking lot, nothing going east or west on the highway. Not even a God damned bird at this time of night--or morning.

Les hit the restroom first, answering that most essential of nature’s calls, and then went to look for the vending machines. He was hoping for a Pepsi machine…he wanted a Mountain Dew, something that packed a good caffeine punch but wouldn’t send him into seizures like those awful “energy drinks.”

He turned the corner of the building, imagining the sweet-crisp taste of the green nectar of the gods and remembering the rows of green cans lined up in his refrigerator…that is, the refrigerator in his apartment, the apartment that Andrea was now staying in alone, since he had been banished from said apartment within hours after he she had walked in on him and--

And stopped dead in his tracks. The hairs on his neck danced and tingled, the skin on his arms stiffening into goose bumps at the same time. The beads dangled against his chest, cold and hard.

A man was standing in front of one machine, the one with the snack foods. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties, maybe just breaking forty at most. He was a big guy, pudgy and sort of droopy all over, filling out his aged and dirty jeans, his brown-and-black-checkered flannel shirt, his creased work boots. His hair was clipped very short, incompletely covered by the faded yellow baseball cap on his head.

From where he stood, about ten feet from the man, Les could see the shadow of stubble on his face and neck. Or was it dirt? He couldn’t tell for sure. The guy looked dirty but not grimy—like he had just gotten off a long shift at some factory or gas station, not like he wallowed in filth or went long periods without bathing.

Les checked his watch: 2:33. What in the hell is he doing here at 2:33 in the morning?

Well, what the hell are YOU doing here at 2:33 in the morning? his prissily rational mind fired back, not missing a beat. Just turn around, before he notices you, get in the car, turn the key, pull out, and get the fuck back to Sarasota.

This fellow in the flannel shirt had not looked over to acknowledge Les when Les came around the corner and then stopped like a criminal in a prison searchlight, nor did he turn his face from the snack machine as Les sort of shifted where he stood and then continued walking over to the machines. He walked, listening to the prissy voice of reason badgering him in his mind, yet still walking, as if pulled or pushed forward. His body had transitioned out of that instinctual DANGER! state, with all nerves and reflexes on high alert. Now, Les felt…well, pretty damn relaxed. Whatever the voice of reason was saying about ax murderers and slow painful deaths, he felt not terror, but…fascination.

Les took his slow, easy steps, his eyes fixated on the guy at the machine. But the guy had never acknowledged Les’s presence when he turned the corner of the building, nor did he as Les approached him. He just kept feeding coins into the machine, reaching down into a fanny pack (which hung unusually low, as if trying to bear a burden too great, and covered his crotch instead of his fanny) to find a coin and then raising his hand to put it in the slot. Les felt his eyes follow that hand: in, down, up. Slow and casual, almost graceful. The coins would shine for a second in the fluorescent light, held with the tips of his fingers and drawn up through the still, silent black air.

Every now and then, this routine was broken as the man pushed one of the buttons on the machine. A motor would whir somewhere inside it, followed by that strange sound of some packaged convenience food bouncing down and off the glass and metal of the machine before landing with a crinkly thud-plop in the bin at the bottom. Instead of reaching down to take the fallen snack, like you were supposed to do, the guy resumed putting more coins into the machine, one after another, just as he had been doing before.

The scene seemed to Les like a sad tableau of an old, wasted gambling fiend parked in front of a slot machine in Vegas or Atlantic City. Quarter after quarter, dream after dream, pull the lever, take your shot at the big money. But all the quarters and dreams that went into the slot never paid off…they only drained the person as he put in another quarter and another dream, sipped his complementary booze, smoked his cheap cigarettes, and chased the skirt tails of Lady Luck. But she always ran too fast.

Although the man didn’t look filthy, from afar or up close, he smelled like cigarettes and stale beer. Les noticed this now that he was standing beside him, not more than five feet away. The man’s hand (his right hand it was) continued its arc from the fanny pack to the machine’s slot, up and down, coins going up and in but not coming back down. Then a pause, a push of a button, and a whir-thud-plop. Now repeat.

Les stood in front of the soda machine, but he wasn’t thirsty. Hell, he wasn’t even tired now. In fact, he couldn’t remember exactly why he had walked over to the machines, or why he was even here in the rest area in the first place. He just watched.

After standing there for more than a minute, Les’s wonder became something more like awe when he saw that the machine’s bin was full of packages. Chips, candy bars, peanuts, gum, breath mints…. They had not only filled up the bin. Now they were rising back up into the main compartment, inching up and up towards the other packages that still waited with eternal patience, cradled by the spiral metal rods. Many of the rods now held nothing, however. Indeed, it looked as if most of the packages were in the pile, not up in the rows. The guy had been there for a while. That was a big pile of food.

“You must be pretty hungry, huh?” Les asked. He jumped at the sound of his own voice in the night, not enough to be visible to someone else but still plenty for him to notice it and blush. He hadn’t been aware of the urge to speak, nor the act of doing it, before it happened.

The man didn’t notice Les’s little convulsion or the voice that caused it. His hand went into his fanny pack, found a coin, raised it up, fed it into the machine, and went back down for another.

“And it’ll sure be a pain in the ass to carry all that stuff back home with you.”

No response. In, up, down. In, up, down. Pause. Push. Whir-thud-plop. In, up, down.

“Hey, can I buy you a soda to go with your…supper? Breakfast? Something to wash it down….”

In, up, down.

“You look like…like a Dr. Pepper man, am I right? I’m getting a Mountain Dew myself, but I think you are a Dr. Pepper man. Let me--”

The man’s hand stopped midway through its return down to the fanny pack, and he turned his face to Les, cutting off the quickening noise of Les’s words as they tumbled out of his mouth. That face was blank, round and droopy and somehow gray with stubble and shadows; even the eyes looked gray, the irises dull as if with a thin coat of dust.

His baseball cap sat on his head at an angle, the bill pointing up towards the stars. It was raised enough that Les could see…a cross of gray ashes on the man’s rounded, bald forehead.

The man’s cheeks twitched slightly, and his lips started to lengthen. The smile spread across his face like a crack across a windshield, with imperceptible persistence, getting longer though it never actually seemed to move. The grayness of the eyes brightened some, too, and the man nodded. Then he turned back to the machine, found a coin, and fed it into the slot.

“So, Dr. Pepper it is, okay? Right.” Les pulled some change out of his pocket, found two quarters, and put them into the machine. He pushed the Dr. Pepper button, heard the motor whir, heard the can bounce and bang into the compartment. He took the cold can out and then fed two more quarters into the slot, pushed the Mountain Dew button, heard the motor whir and the can bang-bounce its way into the compartment, and took the cold can with his other hand.

“Here you go, my man. A cold Dr. P. just for you.” The can felt very heavy, and very cold, in his hand as he held it out through the space separating him from the guy.

The man’s hand stopped again, and the face turned towards Les again, and the smile crept across the face again, and the gray eyes locked with Les’s again. The hand reached out and took the can of Dr. Pepper.

“Obliged,” the guy said. Then he winked.

Les stared into the ashen eyes, stared at the ashen cross, held the cold can of Mountain Dew.

“Name’s Mike,” he said with a distinct, though not thick, deep-South drawl.

“Les.”

“Glad to know ya.”

“Same.”

Mike popped the top of his Dr. Pepper and took a long, slurping swig of the soda. He belched, smiled with satisfaction. He never took his eyes from Les’s.

Les popped the top of his Mountain Dew and took a short swig of his own soda, not noticing that he spilled a few drops onto his shirt, not taking his eyes from Mike’s. He felt the cold liquid flow down his throat, into his belly, but he didn’t taste it. Mike’s eyes held him, the gray irises deeper than a universe.

“Good. I like Dr. Pepper.”

“Yeah, good stuff. I knew you were a Dr. Pepper man. Better than that Mr. Pibb crap.”

“Ain’t had that before.”

“You’re not missing much.” Les still didn’t know what he was going saying or why, but he kept talking, in fact chatting with no bother to calculate or reflect. “Now, Mountain Dew is my kind of soda. Lots of sugar, lots of caffeine. Perfect for a long drive in the early morning.”

Mike nodded, still smiling, still staring with his ashen eyes into Les’s.

“I’m heading home. Sarasota. Just spent a week at Mardi Gras…whew, you know how that is. I’m bushed, but I want to get home tonight and sleep in my own damn bed, you know what I mean.”

Mike didn’t nod. He didn’t seem to know.

“I’ve been to six, no wait seven, and they’re always a blast. You should go sometime, man. It’s not that far, and you gotta live a little sometimes, you know? Let your hair down, loosen your belt, lock the Good Angel in the closet and listen to the Evil Devil on your shoulder….”

Mike kept smiling, staring at him.

“This one wasn’t the same without Andrea--she was--I mean still is--my girlfriend. She and I are, you know, ‘having trouble’ right now. She kicked me out…but she still loves me, really, and I apologized and all, so it’ll all work out. I know I deserve everything and all, but…huh, women, you know?”

Mike nodded, took a drink of Dr. Pepper, belched.

“Say, what’s with the ashes?”

Mike’s crack of a smile disappeared. His eyes tightened, and he fixed Les with a squinty stare for twenty, thirty seconds. Then he turned back to the machine. His hand went into his fanny pack, found a coin, rose through the air, and fed the coin into the slot. Les saw the round coin shimmer as it rose, looking silvery-white in the fluorescent light.

Whir-thud-plop.

“It was nice talking to you, Mike. I gotta get home now and get some sleep, okay? It’s been a long week.” Les spun on his heels and started to walk. As he took the first steps, he felt the beads tap against his chest, cool and heavy. In that instant, with the tap of the plastic, his mind flashed with his first glimpse of Andrea, standing on the sidewalk at Mardi Gras and smiling, then another flash of her face as she stood in the bedroom door, staring slack-faced at him and Courtney.

Tap, flash. Tap, flash. Two flashes, quicker than an eye blink, freezing him in his tracks for the second time that night.

Moved yet again by some unnamed inspiration, something biological below consciousness, Les spun on his heels and said, “Oh, but here, take these.” He reached into his shirt and pulled off one of the necklaces, the other three or four still dangling and tapping softly against his skin. He offered the necklace to Mike, who turned to look at him again and then took it with a reflexive movement, holding them in his left hand. “Something from Mardi Gras for you. Now, you know, you’ll have to go and get your own….”

Mike fixed him with another squinty stare. And then, with a graceful sort of deliberateness, he bent down, reached into the machine’s bin, and pulled out a candy bar. He reached out, offering it to Les with a little flick of his hand, and nodded.

Les stared into the ashen eyes, stared at the ashen cross, and took the candy bar.

Mike nodded, smiled, and turned back to the machine.

In, up, down.

Whir-thud-plop.

Les walked back to his car, got inside, started the engine. He sat there for a minute, in the utter silence outside and inside of him, and then got back on the road to Sarasota. He ate the candy bar, drank his Mountain Dew, and drove through the black night.

Later, that blackness changed with tender, graceful deliberateness into ashen gray as dawn approached.

But Les didn’t see it. As the night changed from black to gray, Les was sleeping in his bed in Sarasota, a smudge of chocolate on the right corner of his mouth.

Image credit: Rob Holland, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Moondancer

2009-12-18T13:17:00.000-05:00

The third of three poems to my beautiful buddy, Kendra.

Moondancer

To Kendra

A full moon’s whisper
Beckons,
Beckons
Once again
And reaches out
To grasp and pull
Each molecule
Of pulsing blood,
A silent, steady call
Heard only by
A listening heart
Opened and attuned
To ancient, secret words.

A nameless beauty
Dances,
Dances
As a mist
Of fluid motion,
Subtle sways,
And endless curves
Beneath the moon,
Bathing in the glow
And swirling
In an eddy
Of the mystic pool
Of shining silver light.

A constellation
Twinkles,
Twinkles
In the air
Around her
Like a spell,
A spirit form
She has called forth
To play a tune
With beating wings
Now singing
In the breeze
Evoked and stirred
By her twirling form.

A crowd of creatures
Scurries,
Scurries
To the edge
Of this small field
Within the woods
Well trodden
By her feet,
Their shining eyes
Reflecting as they watch
Till joining in
They circle round and dance
With soft and padded steps.

This nameless beauty
Dances,
Dances
In the crowd
Till dawn awakes
And paints the sky
With fiery gilded hues.
Her heavy heart
Ceases and she drops,
A crumpled mound
Of weeping, weary flesh
Encircled by the stars
That fall upon the grass.

And there she lays and weeps,
And there her heart seeks sleep,
But still her Mother Moon
Is calling for a dance,
And still her flesh is strong
And still she knows the steps,
So soon she stirs and stands,
And sways into the dance.

Image credit: Lachlan Donald, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Pandora

2009-12-16T13:12:00.000-05:00

This is the second of three poems to my beautiful buddy, Kendra.

Pandora

To Kendra

A midnight moonbeam, streaming misty light
Like liquid pearl, is swirling in a pool
Upon her dampened cheek, its soft caress
Too weak and wan to wipe away her tears.
Her face aglow although her eyes are dull,
She gazes down upon a sleeping world
From high atop a monument of steel
And waits to watch the sun awake again.

But now in darkness and a grim despair,
Her heart cries slowly like her sparkling eyes,
Its pulsing sigh and hidden, lambent fires
Grown dim but not exhausted lest they die.
This world in slumber, how it makes her weep
And long to hold it in a long embrace!
Those bodies, billions though they be, call out
And plead her passion bring them life again!

Within the silent shadows, this she hears,
And in her separate darkness, this she sees,
Envisioning within her mind much more
And feeling in her belly every prayer.

The moon now smiles upon a falling star
As she descends to give the world a gift
Too great, yet delicate, to be possessed,
Its secret borne within her naked flesh.

Image credit: Jules Joseph Lefebvre, from Wikimedia Commons; public domain image.

The Cry of the Fates

2009-12-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

The Cry of the Fates

The old Norns Cement plant had closed down about five years ago, the piercing scream of the whistle on the side of the factory announcing that the last remaining workers were quietly leaving at the end of that solemn day so long ago. It was the same note heard every weekday at 1:00 and 6:00 p.m.—the sound of lunch break and of quitting time—that had become such an ingrained part of daily life you could practically set your watch to. The amazing thing was how it had suddenly become a forlorn cry instead of the usual nostalgic sound penetrating the air as the workers slowly shuffled home. And as that once-great beast of activity died and soon fell to neglected ruin, so too did this little Appalachian town follow it down into obscurity.

Nearly all of us lost our jobs in the weeks preceding the shut-down—with my old age I was of course one of the first to go—and it left everyone with little more than a pink-slip and a hot temper. I think that the hollow feeling that you find suddenly residing in your stomach when the realization hits home that you're no longer the breadwinner had left a lot of people uncertain and scared. I remember that feeling, but things were different for me now. I didn't have the same responsibilities, the same worries that the other younger folks in town had. I simply went home to an empty house, thinking again of my wife and how much I had missed her these three years since her death, and I thought about what my next move would be. Should I finally just give in and retire, or should I look for another job just to pass my days outside of a lonely, quiet place that used to feel so warm for me? Fortunately, I had Social Security to fall back on, but not everyone was so lucky. My concerns weren't on finances, so I guess that made my position enviable from some people's perspectives.

Either way, the decisions had to be made, and shortly after the shutdown the anger of the town had abated, as it is always does, into an empty resignation that filled the hearts of those who had once thrown out bold talk of "strikes" and "filing grievances" with relentless fervor. They didn't know who exactly was there to listen, but I'd be willing to bet that the act of talking about it had at least helped to soothe the inescapable feeling of helplessness. Almost overnight, shops began to close, folks began to move to other productive factory towns nearby, and Perch Creek seemed to be fading away. Sorrow had soon turned to desperation, and desperation grew into fear as time marched slowly, steadily onwards and the fate of the town unfolded. Over the past five years since the factory shut its gates for good, I thought that the town had known fear and despair, and that the looming threat of financial and personal ruin had left us all questioning the future. That was before the Norns Cement factory whistle decided to start up once again.

It was about two weeks ago when things began going to Hell. I remember because it was Sunday, after church was over, and I was sitting up in the hills behind my house having a nice lunch. The view up there encompasses such a span of the horizon that I feel like I'm in Heaven itself sometimes. There's nothing like a high mountain view to make you feel like the world is entirely divine, despite how much you know there's stuff going on below you that you'd rather not think about. From above, everything looks pure, and it always made me understand why God has decided to forgive us all the times He has. Anyway, despite the light blanket of mosquitoes and gnats that buzzed around me when the breeze wasn't blowing, I was enjoying my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple, and apple juice. It was the same lunch I made every Sunday, the same lunch my wife had made for me every Sunday for years before her death. It was kind of a habit, one that you don't think about until you're doing it—and enjoying it all the more for how much it means to you. I was chewing the last bit of my apple when, out of the soft sighing of the summer breeze and the rustling of the leaves, the sound of something more sinister arose—a piercing metallic whine that seemed almost as angry as it did hungry.

I had set down my little glass bottle of juice, tilted my head, and just listened as the shriek rose to near-inaudible frequencies. Birds took flight from the trees in a frenzy of beating wings, squirrels chattered angrily as their endless quests for things to bury away were interrupted, and a dark band of clouds covered the sun as if to protect it from the sound. I sat in wonder as the banshee-like cry kept up for about a minute, finally dying as quickly as it had started. I chuckled to myself, I remember, out of sheer bewilderment.

"Now what's that damn whistle doing, blowing again?" I asked myself aloud. Still smiling, I picked the remnants of my lunch off the soft green grass, stretched my sore old legs, and walked back to the house.

The headline in the next morning's edition of The Perch Creek Gazette had caught my eye, but at that time I didn't make any connection with the day before and what had happened. "Resident dies in traffic, crashes into building," it read in big bold letters. The story below told about how Helen Troyan, a 47 year-old housewife in "top physical condition" according to her doctor's quote in the paper, had died of a sudden heart attack while driving down Central Avenue and crashed into the Granger Hardware Store. Luckily, no one else was injured, but what had caught my eye was the time of the accident: 1:00 p.m. That was around the same time I was having lunch—and when the whistle blew. I laughed a little, thinking that maybe the sick sound of that whistle had frightened the poor lady to death. It wasn't a funny event of course, don't get the wrong idea, but it was just one of those coincidences that life throws at you where all you can do is scratch your head and shrug your shoulders.

But there is coincidence and there is fate, I say, and that whistle-blow from the outskirts of town quickly turned out to be no mere coincidence. Every day after that initial Sunday, the whistle would unleash its strangely furious howl—sometimes at 1:00 and sometimes at 6:00—and every day the same thing happened. I started saving all the papers after the first one, cataloguing each death in order to prove to myself that it wasn't all just some strange nightmare. Every day that whistle would blow, and every time the next morning's paper would have a story about someone dying at that same moment. They weren't suspicious deaths or anything more than "natural causes," whatever that means, but the town soon took notice of the macabre timing of the whistle blows.

About three days after the Troyan woman died, the headline of the paper was in larger type. The story was not so much about Jonathan Shroud's death due to "heart attack after years of smoking and ill-health," but about the Norns Cement whistle that was blowing at the time of his passing. The editor asked if there could be some sinister prank going on in town, why the whistle suddenly started to blow and people suddenly started to die, and the article called upon Sheriff Vergil Chaff to launch at least a semblance of an investigation into the matter. Letters from curious, cynical, and yet still noticeably frightened townspeople took up most of the Editorial page, but nothing near panic had set in. It was still much too early for anyone to start panicking. I mean, this town had seen its main employer close with no explanation, laying-off nearly eighty percent of the residents, and we were still around. A little bit of strange coincidence was nothing for anyone to lose too much sleep over.

A week and a half went by before Sheriff Chaff finally went up to the factory to look around. With ten dead bodies in as many days and nothing but questions surrounding him, he was forced to do something about the matter, even if it was more for appearances than anything else. In a small town like this, people wanted to feel at peace, no matter if the monster still sat waiting in the shadows behind them, and that's what Vergil Chaff intended to provide. In an interview in Wednesday's paper, the Sheriff told everyone about what he saw:

"Well, I went up to the factory and kind of poked around, you know, just to see if I could detect any signs of illegal entry, tampering, that sort of thing. It was a dead place, a spooky place almost. You have to remember that there ain’t been anyone in there for five years now. It just seemed empty. I could tell right away that there hadn't been any break-ins or anything. The dust was so thick on the floor that it reminded me of snow, and all I could see were rat tracks, animal droppings, things like that along with the blanket of dust. I looked around inside the main production area, but the only things in there were them ol’ rusty machines, and since I didn't see any signs of vagrants or anything I went up to the main office where the controls for the whistle were all located. There was just more dust and stuff, broken knobs and cracked plastic panels up in there, so I headed to the roof to have a look at the whistle itself.

"I went over to the Eastern side of the building, where the whistle is, to look for any tampering. It was just a plain metal pipe running up the side of the factory wall, rising up to where the whistle housing sat about ten or twelve feet above the roof. It was a sight, especially after all run-down condition of the factory inside. The piping itself looked brand new despite the fact that the place had been closed for five years. It was nearly perfect, the casing intact and the housing at the top smiling down like it was glad to see me. It looked almost like a pointy little chrome hat for the air escape hatch sitting over the smile of the whistle’s mouth.

"The only thing I could see wrong with it was a four-inch gouge running down the pipe, which I'd say is why the thing sounds so sickly when it gets going. Whatever it was that made that crack, it must've been one hell of a force. I grabbed a hold of the pipe, just to test its strength, and it must have been two inches thick and stuck tighter to that building than white on rice. I could take my pen and stick the tip inside the crack, and that made me think that the air must have blown out a chunk of the pipe itself at some point. That was weird, the more I thought about it; but staring up at that little metal head perched high above me with its imbecile grin, I wasn't too busy thinking about weird cracks in a pipe. I just wanted to walk back through that dusty factory, climb in my patrol car, and get back to town. I sure as hell didn't want to be there if the damn thing started howling again.

"So, my official statement is that it's all just a strange coincidence. I'd say talk to the doctors in town, not me, and ask 'em why the people died. Judging by the sound of that whistle, I'd say it was shock more than fate that killed 'em."

As you can imagine, that story did little to encourage the town and even less to answer the big question of just what was going to be done. After reading the paper I called up George Fisher, my next-door neighbor, and talked to him for a few minutes. I could tell from his cautious voice that he didn't even like talking about the situation, but I pressed him anyway.

"Damn it, man, I actually start shaking when it gets near the times when that thing sounds off. I get an urge to just get in the car and drive out of town, but you know what Myra would make of that! She'd never let me forget it. I don't know what to think, what to do. It's even blowing on weekends! When did it ever blow on weekends before this, in all those years we worked there? Never. Something weird is going on here, and I'm planning to get up to my brother's place in Baltimore this weekend whether Myra likes it or not! You should think about leaving, too."

So people were scared, and hell I'll admit I was even a little scared; but I just kind of figured that if it was my time to go, it was my time to go. I sure wasn't gonna have some whistle run me out of the town I had lived in my entire life, no matter what it was doing to people every single day. Whether it be a massive coronary, a bus coming out of nowhere, or a whistle on an old cement plant, my time was gonna come regardless. Such is the way of life, the way God has run things for people ever since time began, and who am I to question that?

It has been two weeks, as I said at the start, and I think I'm writing this now just to put down on paper all the things that have happened in this little town called Perch Creek. It's funny when I think about it, how this little bump on the side of a mountain has had its share of the unexplained, but I think it just goes to show you that the complexities of life can show up anywhere. Fear and hopelessness and uncertainty can arise at any time, for any reason, and there's nothing we can do about it.

It's Sunday again, two weeks to the day after that whistle first cried out. I'm sitting in my kitchen now, eating my Sunday lunch as I have every week for the past thirty-some years, and looking out at the beautiful sun through my window. I can't help thinking of my wife, about how much I've missed her over these eight years since a drunk driver plowed into her car on I-81 as she came back from her sister's. I can almost hear her telling me to hurry up and finish eating so we can go out into the sunshine. Well, my dear, we'll be together in the sunshine eventually. The clock on the microwave reads 12:59, and I'm just wondering if anyone else will die after that whistle blows, if it ever does again. I doubt

{Editor's Note: The writing ends here, with no other marks or notes by the writer, one Herman Mercer. These pages were found among the many other things in Mr. Mercer's home, resting under his head after he died from a cardiac arrest on Sunday August 28, 1984. Also found were a collection of newspaper clippings, dating back approximately two weeks before his death, all of which related to the events recounted herein.

The Norns Cement factory described in these pages was torn down under the direction of Sheriff Vergil Chaff one week after Mr. Mercer's death, and the reportedly mysterious deaths in the town of Perch Creek stopped immediately. The former owners of the factory were unavailable for comment. The editor offers no opinion or explanation of these events, but merely presents the pages on their own merit. It will be noted that upon medical examination, Mr. Mercer's time of death was fixed at 1:00 p.m.}

Image credit: S-b, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Shadow and Light

2009-12-14T13:11:00.000-05:00

This is the first of three poems to my wonderfully special, beautiful buddy, Kendra.

Shadow and Light

To Kendra

She seeks the shadows of the silent woods,
The trees her troop of steadfast sentinels,
To flee the sun that pierces through the clouds
And burns away the fragile mists of morn.

Her friends, the animals, look on with dread
From trembling nests and chilly, hidden dens,
But none can offer her a safe escape
From what pursues her with a fierce desire.

Again, again he strikes the shielding leaves
With flaming darts that set their tops ablaze;
Again, again he beats the bending boughs
With fists of fury and a spear of fire.

She feels his longing as he rides aloft;
She feels his passion pouring down like rain;
She feels him crashing through the fallen brush;
She feels his scorching breath upon her neck…

But then, within a pool of shade, she turns
And shows the racing fiend her timeless smile;
She catches him upon her glowing breast
And lays him, sleeping, in her waiting womb.

Image credit: Mila Zinkova, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

The Poet

2009-12-09T06:29:00.000-05:00

A song for Blake, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, and Crowley...

The Poet

Weep for the world,
O, you son of the tears
Of the gods and the devils
With which you are fed.

Weep with your words
For the quick and the dead
For your brothers and sisters,
Though shunned and unheard.

Sing with the birds
As the nightingale mourns,
Forlorn and forgotten,
Without tongue or wings.

Bring us your song
And kindle our blood:
Speak to us, sing to us,
Give life to our hearts.

Bring us the fire
Of bright beauty and truth,
Remember and raise us
From shadowy sleep.

Now is the end
Of your exile: return!
Come to us, walk with us
Over your grave.

Bring us the power
To pass on through the night;
Bring us the truth
And the beauty and light.

Image Credit: Johann Friedrich Naumann, public domain image, from Wikimedia Commons.

Snow On

2009-12-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

Batten down the hatches, folks, we have the winter uglies coming our way tonight...

Snow On

Snow on a dead-skin-gray-cloud backdrop:
White freckles jumping ship to seek their color again
In warmer climes, anywhere but here,
While gravity grabs them to spite their denial.
“All things fall.” As if we need to be told.
And snowflakes, fat and heavy with the season’s weight,
Quietly descend (unless a whimsy wind stirs in their hearts)
And bring the seeds of winter from the cold but virile sky.

Snow on skeletal brown branches:
Bones of our bones with the flesh having changed,
Dermis and epidermis hardened and chilled;
Nails grown clear and long, creeping towards the ground;
Torso, loins, and legs boarded up as if in a coffin;
Blood turned to ice (or else seeping out of buried toes).
Trees know best what insulated mammals can only intuit:
All things freeze and slowly die from the inside out.

Snow on suffocating yet ever-green grass:
Billions of dollars’ worth of first-class lawn care—
Greenery groomed, pampered, spoiled like a prissy child—
Buried and mocked by a blanket of dusty white,
Its crystalline surface flawed by cracks from flurrying feet
And a snowman looming, a fat ephemeral god
With smile, top hat, carrot nose, and eerie button eyes,
Evoked and alive in this season shrouding all with death.

Snow on concrete (looks safe but watch your step!):
Blacktops, parking lots, driveways striving to keep their integrity,
The fury of specific heat waging war on snowflake ordnance:
Bombflakes striking without a boom, mushroom, fallout, or hell.
This battle has gone to the moderns, so high-tech designed,
But the ancient forces of white know persistence will win
And that “victory” here is but a holding of ground
For any and all things haughty in defiant hues.

Snow on the outside slowly drifting deep within:
In through the windows, in through the doors,
In through the clothing, the skin, and the eyes
As we watch ourselves, feel ourselves fall from the ashen sky.

Image credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Public Domain image, from Wikimedia Commons

In the Mouth of Chaos

2009-12-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

In the Mouth of Chaos

Black heart bangs booms beats
Arrhythmic—
Shatters black daylight
Swallows dead sunlight—
Tattoo pounded, skid mark of sound.

Sea foam swirls in black aether,
Choking suffocation
Breeds bleeding maggots—
Feeding puking feeding
On shit of stars and shadows,
Bleeding dying light
In ooze, black semen, pitch,
Excretions of cosmic harmony
Rotting corpse-like melody—
Sing sing sing, O bones of air:
ינתקבש המל ילא ילא
Χάιρέ κάκος άγιος Πάν!
Ιω Ιω Σωτηρ Χάος!
Bat wings clapping slapping beating,
Tympani played by brimstone hail
Sulfur notes waft
Through black piss rivers:
Ιω Ιω Σωτηρ Χάος!

Why, mother dear, are you here?                               i am
And father, you as well?                                        alone there is
Come, help me hold this nightmare spell             no god where
Away, away, till break of day!                                  i am

Black cock calls out black windstorms—
Black cock falls in black sea foam—
Scythes swing through fields of blood
Reflecting refracting
Deforming in eddies of lightless
Flame.
Names without meaning
Meanings without words
Words without language—
Names, black names:
Skeletons of scarabs
Buried in cold sand
Clinging to fossilized shit
Of cold suns.
Names, black snowflakes
Dancing over frozen flames
Of ooze, black semen, pitch,
Names of harmony
Dancing in discord—
Revelry ribaldry lustfully wed.
Ιω Ιω Σωτηρ Χάος!

Names of dead gods
Dismembered                dispersed
Remembered without members
Alive in molded clay.
Black semen, black river,
Golden child floating on black aether,
Swallowed by starving crocodiles
And serpents borne on wings of flesh.
Flowing black river, ancient sewer
Rancid with shit, piss,
Black semen flung on dirty curbs,
Seething with scavenging worms.

Black worm, black heart, black god
Of ancient aether,
Asshole mouth, dribble on—
Babble On! Babble On!
Names without words without meaning,
Skeletons of scarabs in black wind clinking:
Ιω Ιω Σωτηρ Χάος!

Image credit: Robert Fogliardi, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Through the Cracks

2009-11-29T07:31:00.000-05:00

Through the Cracks

“Come on, Faith, hurry up.”

“But Mom—”

“Hush, just come on. God damn New York traffic.”

“MOM!”

“I’m friggin’ an hour late already, so hurry up. You’ll just have to come to my office for a while, and I’ll take you to day care later during lunch or something.”

“But Mom—”

“WHAT, Faith?”

“My shoe’s untied.”

“I’ll tie it in a minute. Look, see, here we are.”

“Good morning, Bethany.”

“Morning Bri. I can’t believe it’s almost 9:00 already! Damn traffic on the bridge, wouldn’t you know. Maxine is gonna kill me.”

“No problem—actually, she’s not even in yet. Maybe she got stuck in the traffic, too? She hasn’t called in or anything…so you’re safe. And hello, Faith!”

“Hi, Miss Brianna!”

“Sorry I had to bring her in again, but traffic was a mess. I’ll keep her with me and then take her over to the day care center in Building 5 later.”

“Fine with me. And how is my favorite little girl this morning? You want to come spend the night with me this weekend? We can go play with some of the kids at Church…but your shoe’s untied!”

“I know Miss Brianna. I telled my Mom.”

Brianna, a thin pale woman, not more than a girl herself at all of 19, stoops down and ties Faith’s left Hello, Kitty! sneaker. The laces are white, bright white, and the glittery pink sneakers have a little white kitten on each one. The kitten is chubby, smiling with cherubic glee, watching Brianna as she ties the laces. The kitten’s eyes watch Brianna’s much narrower but equally cheery face as it concentrates, brow slightly furrowed, on the thin laces.

“Faith, if you’re a good girl in the office this morning, maybe your Mom will take you to FAO Schwarz after work! Huh, Mom?”

“Brianna, don’t get her started.”

“Can we go, Mom!!!”

“Maybe.”

“And if you’re extra good,” Brianna adds, “I’ll give you…five whole dollars for a toy!”

“Yay! I’ll be good. Promise.”

“Okay, then I’ll—”

But an explosion cuts short Bethany Shore’s sentence. The building lurches, throwing her, Faith, and Brianna to the thinly carpeted floor of the office. Brianna hits her head on the desk and lies still, as if napping—though it isn’t even nap time down in the day care center in Building 5, and definitely not here in the office. (At this moment, the day-care kids are having their snacks. Today it’s grapes and chocolate pudding in little plastic cups, the kind with the aluminum lids that you peel back. The triangles on the bottom have a “1” in them, so these are recyclable, though you have to throw away the peel-off lids. Miss Marietta, who runs the place, always tells the children to throw away the lids, wash the cups in the sink, and put them in the recycling bin. “Why do we recycle,” she asks them? At first they didn’t know, they were all less than four after all, but by now the older ones can tell her in chorus: “To save the Earth!” The younger ones do their best to sing along, too, like incompetent parrots. She always laughs when they sing it…they’re so smart!)

The building still hasn’t settled down yet. It seems like there was an earthquake, with constant aftershocks, and now the concrete and steel and glass are shivering, shuddering, groaning. Smaller explosions punctuate the movements, and…are those muffled screams, too?

“Jesus Christ, what the hell was that? An earthquake?” But that doesn’t make sense, Bethany thinks to herself. Earthquakes don’t happen in New York. “Faith, are you okay?”

“Yeah, Mom, but my ankle hurts. I think I breaked my lunchbox.”

“‘Broke,’ Faith—but don’t worry about that. Jesus, you’re okay?”

“Yeah. That was scary!” Faith says, though she’s obviously more amused than afraid.

By now the employees in the office are standing up at their desks or peering over cubicle walls, looking utterly perplexed. Some are chattering, asking stupid questions and offering equally random explanations of what just happened. Some phones are ringing. Quite a few in fact.

“Faith, stay here by the desk for a second. I need to go talk to the others.”

“Okay. I’ll try to woke up Miss Brianna.”

Bethany nods, not bothering to correct her daughter’s grammar, and then hurries back into the office, asking her own random but thoroughly predictable questions. What was it? What should we do? Is anyone hurt? Some people are on phones, looking scared but not panicking, and others are crowding around some of the office windows. Bethany looks over their heads for a moment and sees what she thinks is…smoke?

After a few minutes of fruitless question-and-answer pit stops, she suddenly feels the acidic bite of panic-fueled adrenaline hitting her cells, and she runs back to the front desk. Faith is sitting in Brianna’s chair, drawing with some colored pens on a little notepad; “Jesus is LORD!” is embossed across the top of the pad, inside a big cartoony sun, and “Brianna” at the bottom, just above the name of some church in town that Bethany doesn’t bother to descry at the moment.

“Mom…?”

Bethany looks at Faith and starts to speak, but then she hears some people yelling behind her. She turns around, her hand resting on her daughter’s head and the randomly fluttered strands of thin blond hair, proceeding to look back towards the window. As she does, her eyes catch something on the corner of Brianna’s desk. But she only glances at it; whatever else is going on is far more important.

The Sesame Street calendar on the desk is completely normal, though maybe not completely normal for a 19-year-old woman in a business office, and it’s the same one Bethany has seen every morning since Brianna somehow managed to get her job here in the office (friends of friends of parents is all Bethany had gleaned about that little affair). So by now the calendar is just part of the backdrop of everyday life, a minor detail in the scenery that gets lost in the shuffle. It’s the kind with one tear-away sheet for each day of the week, and since it’s Sesame Street, each sheet has one of the characters striking some goofy, eerily humanoid pose. Or some sheets have more than one character—like this sheet, for example, which has Bert & Ernie frolicking in some parallel universe for puppets, stocked with eerily familiar flowers and trees and butterflies and birds and whatever; there seems to be a caterpillar on the grass—yes, the calendar has grass, too. And the date, of course, floating in the sky of that parallel world like some sort of star that has fallen far too close to the Earth. And to Bert & Ernie, though they look punch-drunk happy.

(They’ve always creeped Bethany out, not as much as clowns but still pretty seriously. At least it’s not the fucking TeleTubbies…or more Jesus-freak propaganda, Bethany thought whenever she happened to look at the calendar and its Sesame Street cast, which was usually whenever she brought Faith into the office by necessity or to see Brianna before day care. Bethany personally hates all of this goofy childish crap, including the glittery pink Hello, Kitty! sneakers that Faith begged her for. She hates it, but she puts up with it…even gives into it sometimes when her guard and cynicism are down a bit and she can laugh a little. Coincidentally, those are usually the days she brings Faith over to see Brianna or takes Faith to Brianna’s place for babysitting. But still…it gets annoying.)

Bethany barely notices the calendar and the date before she hears people at the windows yelling something about…a plane? Flying too low, towards the other tower? She hasn’t finished articulating a full question in her head when another explosion punches the building from outside. It’s nowhere near as powerful as the first, but still the building shakes around her from the force of the blow.

Faith starts to sob quietly, and Bethany turns back to look at her daughter. But instead she rests her gaze on the calendar, with Bert and Ernie still frolicking happily in their parallel universe, suddenly so eerily innocent and, well, surreal. Oddly enough, it’s the same date in their world as it is in this one:

September 11, 2001.

It is a Tuesday.

I never really noticed her until she dropped a pot of coffee in my crotch. Not just the pot, actually, but the whole goddamn tray—steaming hot Colombian fair-trade and all the fixin’s. Just your trademarked all-American breakfast vittles, and they were hot, all of them. And man, they stained.

Hell, it wasn’t even my order.

I was sitting in my favorite, cozy cushioned chair in my favorite mid-sized café, a surprisingly friendly place in this otherwise cutthroat chaos of New York City, USA. I usually spent most of the mornings on Saturday and Sunday sitting in this chair, reading—a book, a magazine, or even the newspaper if all else failed. I loved this café because it was tasteful and not cheap, with genuine wood counters and bar, more than a few big cushioned chairs for us delicate patrons, a wide selection of beverages, and an equally wide selection on the menu. The café was an oasis for me as I struggled along in the big hungry city, trying to hack my way through life teaching a few writing classes here—all intro writing, of course—writing some freelance garbage there. Other than the café, which was much more comfortable than my super-efficiency apartment in a place I’d rather not name, I didn’t have a lot to look forward to.

This morning wasn’t noticeably unique in any way that I could tell. The only unusual thing about the scene was that it was Monday, not the weekend. I woke up early this morning and decided to go crazy—break the routine and try the café on a weekday morning. I had a few hours before class anyway, and my authorial well was running dry, so what the hell?

Having sunk into an article in The New Yorker, the only other thing in my universe was my pot of tea. There weren’t too many other people in the café for me to watch, so I just let the music they were playing drift in and out of my brain while I read. I rarely looked up, trying to make the most of my free time before duty called. I didn’t even notice the waitress walking by me at one point.

Then, voila. Who ever knew that a hot breakfast in your lap would make such a good ice breaker?

“Oh shit! I’m so sorry…Jesus Christ! Oh man, oh man. Let me get a towel.”

“Just calm down. It’s not that hot.” Meanwhile my guys are boiling, percolating, sublimating it feels like—solid to gas without waiting for liquid. I had never thought about having kids before, but at that moment I started to worry if I would even be able to in another minute. “Seriously, just calm down,” I stammered through the pain and worry about an unintended vasectomy.

“Oh shit, what the—”

“Wait wait, hold on. It’s all right.”

“Just hold on, I’ll get a towel.”

“Look…Brianna, your name’s Brianna, right? Look, I’m fine. Just, here, just sit down and catch your breath.”

“Yeah, it’s Brianna. Shit. Thanks. I’m so sorry. God, what the hell, I can’t be—”

“There, yeah, just sit down and let the old ticker get its rhythm back.”

“Man, thanks. Yeah. Whew!” she said in a puff, flustered still but at least laughing a bit. And smiling, her dawn light mellowing now, less panic than…damn, than pleasure.

And there she is, sitting across from me. I’ve never seen a face so red without sunburn or serious allergic reaction. I’m talking, like, peanuts or shellfish or that poisonous fish they eat in Japan. It’s quite remarkable, really. Cheeks just glowing. She was like a summer dawn, sitting there, the moment the sun breaks the horizon and the gold-pink-purple-orange really starts to shimmer. She was dawning there in front of me, flipping out but fantastic with fire and chestnut hair, and my own burning downstairs was turning to twilight.

With the danger to my vitals decreasing, I mustered my courage a bit.

“How long have you been working here? Not too long, right? Damn, I can’t even remember when you started.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you in here. I’ve worked here for a while, in fact, every Monday, and most other weekdays—as much as I can to help pay the bills, you know, since I won’t take charity from my folks anymore.”

“Oh, right. I usually come in on the weekends. Today is an adventure for me, an early pot of tea before I teach later. I guess that explains it—you know, why you’ve never been graced with my patronage before.”

She was calm now, her skin sort of pinkish cream with some freckles on her cheekbones, not hidden by makeup or even funny-colored lotion. But she furrowed her brow and squinted at me, apparently not sure if I was serious. Then she caught my minutely crinkled mouth…and she laughed.

“All right, smartass, keep it up and I’m not paying for dry cleaning.”

“No need for all that. Just buy me a cup of tea. Something new and exciting. What do you recommend?”

“Okay…but…first…what’s your name anyway? You left your nametag at home this morning.”

I smiled and paused, dug down in my gray matter (because my name and all other immediately irrelevant or useful information had somehow flown the coop of my skull), and finally answered: “Carter. My name’s Carter. Carter Flynn.”

“Carter. Like the president?”

“The peanut farmer.”

“What?”

“A joke. Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer.”

“Oh. Anyway, Carter, nice to meet you. Brianna Foster,” and she stuck out her left hand—still with a few bits of egg on it, which she noticed and quickly wiped away before sticking the hand back out.

“You’re a lefty, too? Small world. And nice to meet you, Brianna,” I said and shook, extending my own mercifully eggless left hand. Interesting…she was a lefty. Not many of us in that elite club.

“Yeah, go figure. And who’d a thought we would meet like this, not at the Grand Lefty Alliance meeting?” (She had noticed, too.) “I guess you haven’t gotten the flyers about it yet…we really need a new PR man. Small world indeed.”

I was still parsing this, wondering if she had picked up my brainwaves or something, but all I said was, “So how about the tea?”

“Ah, yes, well! My personal recommendation, though you shouldn’t feel obligated to accept it, is the sunflower tea.”

“Never tried it. I usually stick with Earl Gray or English Breakfast—you know, stodgy old British favorites…but hey, I just lived through an assault on my person by molten coffee and assorted animal parts, so why not live a little? Hit me up with a small…no, make it a medium pot.”

“Deal. Let me get this mess into the kitchen, and I’ll be back with your tea. I need a break, too, so care to share the pot?”

“Well, if it’s as good as you say, I may want it all, but I guess I can spare a little…just a little.”

She nodded, laughed, and started collecting the remaining things from her spill and cleanup effort to take into the kitchen.

“Hey, turn the TV up,” someone said from over by the counter. “Something’s goin’ on.”

Brianna and I both looked over at the speaker, an older guy who I’d seen often in the café, and then at the TV. One of the local news dummies was mouthing something, and there was a small square by her head, showing some sort of frenzied activity in some hitherto unspecified location.

“…reporting gunshots on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia,” the dummy said once the volume was loud enough for us to hear. Everyone was quiet and watching the screen now, cups and forks and spoons laid on tables. “One gunmen, possibly two, has chained the doors of Norris Hall and apparently has fired multiple shots. Blacksburg and campus police are on the scene, attempting to enter the building.”

I looked over at Brianna, and saw that she had gone frightfully white, and her mouth was hanging open. Her eyes seemed to be swimming, though she wasn’t crying, as far as I could tell. Not yet…but she was close to it.

“Earlier this morning, two students were shot in another residence hall on campus, but police and campus officials are unsure if the incidents are related.…”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, half to myself and half to Brianna, who obviously didn’t hear me. She was staring at the screen, looking more scared than confused. I was simply confused.

I looked back up at the screen, specifically the small square inset in the corner, and watched people in black uniforms scurrying around outside of a gray stone building. They were trying to open doors in one screenshot, talking on radios and moving stealthily in another, and there were other images of students looking out of windows in the building. Those images struck me the most—the round faces, shades from white to black to others I couldn’t quite name, sort of lurking in the shadows cast by a gray sky, eerily surreal. Other students were leaning out of windows, as if they were thinking of jumping. But the scenes kept changing, shuffling from one news camera to another, so it was hard to follow.

I was dumbstruck and spellbound, watching it all. Brianna looked lifeless. I reached across the table, staring at her face, and took her hand. Her left hand.

“My younger brother goes to Virginia Tech,” she half-muttered, not looking at me but still at the screen. “Simon. He’s a junior, in some kind of engineering…mechanical I think. And he’s in the Corps of Cadets there…the little shit is dead set on going in the Marines as soon as—holy Christ!” She gasped and ripped her hand from mine, using it along with the right to cover her mouth.

“What?” I asked, following her horrorstruck eyes. I saw a bunch of students running from one of the doors of the building, some being carried out by other students and guys in black uniforms.

“That’s Simon…limping?”

I barely heard her whispery voice, but I saw the guy she was talking about, a rather big monster with a buzz cut, and now with a noticeable limp. His shirt was orange, and it seemed to have a few red patches on one shoulder.

“Brianna, are you sure….”

She didn’t turn to me, and I just trailed off. She kept looking at the screen. I reached over and took her hand again, since it was on the table now. But I don’t think she looked at me again for almost an hour.

I remember looking back up at the TV at that point, with Brianna’s hand in mine. I scanned it to find the inset square again, but I remember noticing the ever-present info bar at the bottom of the screen. In the bottom-left corner, always there and always updating, they had a clouded-over sun graphic (it will be partly cloudy today), the time, and the date. I remember noticing it and then focusing on the inset square of video again, not really thinking about that rather minor detail in a much larger story:

April 16, 2007.

It was a Monday.

III

“No, Carter, I’m not going. I told you already, so leave it alone.”

Brianna’s mouth was tight, her eyes angry slits in her face, her nostrils flared. She looked pissed beyond common decency, demonic. I knew this was a losing argument even before I started it, but of course that only meant I dug my heels in deeper for the fight.

“I made the appointment a week ago. You need to go see him.”

“No, I do not, thank you. I’m fine.”

“Brianna, your brother’s been killed. It’s perfectly natural to freak—I mean, to feel grief and confusion when something like that happens. I mean come on, a flipping roadside bomb—what do they call it, an ‘IED’—on patrol in Afghanistan. Completely pointless, cowardly brutality. Senseless. It makes no sense, and…Brianna, you’ve lived through so much death already, and you’re not even 30 yet. Talking to a counselor will help. It certainly can’t hurt. Something’s wrong, don’t tell me it’s not—I can see it in your eyes, Bri, I can see everything in your eyes…something’s wrong.”

“Don’t call me Bri. You know not to do that.”

“Sorry, it slipped, I—”

“And I said I’m fine, Carter. You’re my husband, and I’m ‘Mrs. Carter Flynn,’ but you’re not my father and you’re not my master.”

She wasn’t going. She knew it and I knew it. But I couldn’t leave it alone, even shaking my head and acceding this battle and walking out of the kitchen. I’d seen the look in her eyes since her mom called her a week and a half ago and told her younger brother, Simon, had been killed in Afghanistan. He’d been in the Army for a year or two, I think, and practically fought to get active duty over there in some of the worst places. He was a gung-ho patriot, the sort of guy the Homeland Defense people drool over. Simon was also intensely xenophobic—anti-immigration, anti-foreign aid, anti-diversity; sometimes I worried he was a closet skinhead. After Brianna’s near-death at the World Trade Center on September 11th, I think Simon went on his own holy crusade, ranting about sinful Muslims and how they are all murdering fanatics. That is, he flipped out more than his sister did, who was there. The shootings at Virginia Tech, his own personal tragedy this time, only amplified his hatred, stirring the cauldron of mania inside of him and stoking the fire below it. He had been shot several times at Virginia Tech but not wounded severely. Instead of taking time off afterward to recover, in body and mind, he was back before the bandages and the stitches had been removed. It was obvious to anyone with two grains of sense that anger had metamorphosed into blood thirst. It was scary stuff.

The look in Brianna’s eyes when her Mom called to tell her that Simon was dead was beyond haunting, and it frightened me no less than her brother had when alive. It was the sort of thing that keeps you up late at night if you should catch even a glimmer of something like that in your partner’s eyes. It was the same sort of look, an abyssal depth and infinite darkness, that I had seen on the day I met her. That was over two years ago, in the café in New York—on April 16, the day of the Virginia Tech shootings and her brother’s brief limp across the TV screen. I remember watching her crumple up, as if some deep hole inside of her were sucking her into itself, imploding her life force and leaving a semi-functional biological shell. Her brother lived through the shootings, but it hit Brianna like…well, like a skyscraper falling on top of her.

In truth, Simon’s near-death experience at Virginia Tech was harder overall on Brianna than on him, for she had lived it just as personally. But for her it was a second dance with dark death. The first, of course, was more than enough for any one life. Brianna had come out of the ashes of the World Trade Center alive by some miracle, and so had one of the kids there, a young girl named Faith. The girl’s mother, who worked with Brianna, had been killed, along with most of the other people in her office in the north tower. Brianna somehow managed to get custody of Faith—I never got the full details and certainly didn’t want to dig for the rest, but her family helped out in the hearing, and Faith had no other capable relatives besides her mother, now deceased. And besides, Faith absolutely idolized Brianna. So since Brianna’s father knew somebody who knew somebody…etc.

Our story is less miraculous, at least objectively. After that first day, the day in the café and of the Virginia Tech shootings, we dated for a few months. We were perfect for each other—similar enough to bond on the deepest levels, different enough to keep each other interested, frustrated, aroused, and dedicated. It was perfect, magical, all roses and sunsets and sweet chocolate candies—along with worry, confusion, pain, anger. And make-up sex. Just the right mix to make it last.

Even Faith, who was 10 at the time, liked me. Hell, the little sweetheart liked everybody. We got along well, she said I was ‘a big goofball who talked to much and told bad jokes,’ and I think that helped Brianna come to trust me. The woman was, and is, absolutely devoted to the girl despite the fact that Faith is not her biological daughter. I think they both remember what they lived through and what led them together—not on a conscious level, but deeper, beyond the subconscious and down into the cells in a different sort of biochemistry. The fires and smoke of the north tower fused Brianna and Faith. Then Brianna and I got married later in the summer of 2007. And we were three.

We three moved out of New York in the early autumn of 2008. I had landed a good job as a technical writer for an engineering company in Pennsylvania, and we jumped at the chance to get out of the city. We wanted a better (and cheaper) place to raise Faith, to settle down a bit now that we were “older” and a “family.” I never felt anything like that before I got married, of course, but it wasn’t something we talked about in any way. It grew in us slowly, quietly, after we got married, and my new job was just the long-awaited opportunity (or excuse) to go somewhere else. Our apartment is bigger, the neighborhood nicer, and the rent a lot cheaper. Plus Faith loves her school and her new friends. We’ve talked about buying a house sometime soon, now that Brianna is teaching at an elementary school, but not looking at anything—seriously, at least.

So there we were, in our nice suburban apartment, with Brianna’s brother dead and me worried sick. After my failed attempt to get her into Dr. Singer’s office, I heard her stalk into our room. I knew she needed someone to talk to, someone with a long education and record of seeing patients behind them, someone who was not me and knew what to ask, what to say. That look in her eyes had scared the shit out of me. When I faced it again, after her Mom called, all I could think was that the abyss had leaked through the cracks of reality.

At that moment, face to face with whatever it was in Brianna’s eyes, the craziest thing happened. My grandmother’s voice spoke to me in my head. She was a proud, Protestant-hating, Mass-a-day Irish Catholic (though now an ocean away from the motherland, of course), with an ample supply of hellfire and terrifying illogic to terrify her wretched young descendants with. She used to tell us, “God is so big and so strong that no matter how big or strong of a wall you build around your heart, He’ll always come in through the cracks and find you.” From Grandma Flynn, any possible sense of love or protection in an affirmation like that was buried by much stronger sense of being threatened. The weird thing was, I had not thought about her or her one-liners in more than 15 years, which is just slightly less than the amount of time since I had seen her alive and badgering us with them. But when I saw the darkness leaking through Brianna’s cracks, I heard Grandma Flynn’s voice clearly and exactly.

But whatever I saw in Brianna, it was not God. Nor was it evil or death or even some strange force of anti-life. It wasn’t anything. That was the scariest part. It wasn’t against anything…it just wasn’t, neither pro nor con. It definitely was not God. “God,” like good and evil, is merely another human concept, our feeble attempt to name and so comprehend the infinite and eternal incomprehensible that lies beyond our tiny little understanding. Nearly all of us find that, even milder suggestions of it, far too frightening to face, so we slap the concept of “God” onto it and…voila, we have an intelligent, attentive, responsive Being out there in the darkest corners of the unknown to help us go to sleep at night. Even non-theistic conceptualizations of that-which-is-not-us draw their own safe boundary lines in the vastness, so that we at least can function and not go stark raving mad. But still the darkness outside sometimes leaks through the cracks in our bounding walls, colors inside of our bounding lines, and when you look at it, face to face, you know in your marrow that it is not God.

Try as I might to cover some of those cracks, I lost that argument with Brianna, and she never went to see Dr. Singer. I just canceled the appointment, told the secretary I might call to reschedule but not to hold anything for us. A few days later, I saw the newspaper with a large rectangle cut out of the front page. It was on top of the other recyclables, and I didn’t even pay attention to it then—I was busy separating plastics, glass, and aluminum, putting them in the right bags. Besides, Brianna or Faith cut stuff out of the newspaper all the time. I’ve seen my fair share of cute animal stories, stories about stuff for the local schools, and others I never even bothered to read. The story about Barack Obama’s election victory had stayed up there for over a month before I took it down, with all of the “YES!” scribbles, daisies, and other doodles on it from Brianna.

What normal human being would think twice about that sort of thing? Sure, we make connections and meanings and significations in every moment of our lives, waking and even occasionally sleeping. Hell, we’re biological significance machines. But only in hindsight do we make the big connections, the ones not related to our immediate interests. Only later do random insignificant details take on significance and make sense.

This story seemed as relatively unremarkable as most of the others Brianna had cut out. It was a short community piece with the headline, “Local Muslim community opens new mosque.” Brianna had folded it in half and put it in her desk drawer. I found it when searching for a black marker, since Brianna kept most of the office supplies in her desk—especially markers. (She was an elementary school teacher, after all. I didn’t have to be MENSA member to make that connection.) I had unfolded the paper, curious to see what silly newsflash Brianna had squirreled in her desk, read it at a glance, and then put it back. I had found a marker, so my deed there was done.

Coincidentally enough, the TV news ran a story about the new mosque later that night, while we were lying in bed—Brianna reading, me half-watching the dummy-stuff on the screen.

“Oh, hey, what’s the deal with the mosque story in your desk?” I asked Brianna in a sludgy pre-sleep voice.

She hesitated for a second. “What?”

“The story from the newspaper about the new mosque, the one on the news just now. What’s the deal? Why do you care.”

“I don’t. You know I’m not into religion or religious people anymore. So why should I care?”

“I don’t know,” I said, interested now after the mild heat in her answer. “I just found the article about the mosque in your desk, so it seemed to interest you or something.”

“Oh, that. There are a few Muslim kids in my class this year. I figured I could bring it in and we could do show & tell or something with it. You know, talk about diversity and tolerance to the kids. We need that sort of thing nowadays, considering the state of the world and our erstwhile stupid government.”

“Mmmkay,” I said, too close to sleep now to take the issue further. “Not sure ‘erstwhile’ is valid, though,” I said as a final parting poke before hiding in the shadows of sleep. It wasn’t a big deal to me anyway, and I wasn’t up for another socio-political discussion at present, so I let it drop. I wanted to sleep.

Brianna was right, of course. I knew she didn’t care for religion in any of its protean forms. Not anymore. She had avowed her sincere lack of faith to me more times than I cared to count, and I was agnostic to the point of complete ambivalence. I was fine with it, since my position was one of dismissal—God, faith, and religion had no place in my life, nor did I really want to make a place for it. I simply didn’t believe, didn’t care, had not yet seen sufficient reason to, and didn’t want to be bothered.

Brianna’s feelings, though, were a result of September 11th. She’d told me about how devout she’d been before that. Her family had raised her Evangelical, and she was pretty deeply into it. She had been to more than a few Jesus Camps or whatever they’re called, so she was a real “Bible Thumper,” as she put it. But that day in the north tower, falling with it to the Earth far below, had shattered her faith. Her brother Simon, of course, was swept up by the waves of backlash against Muslims and every other “Other” that swept across America, especially after he turned up the volume on his fanatical Evangelicism in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.

The September 11th attacks had broken her body and her faith in God, but they could not break her heart. Brianna was still deeply ethical and seriously wanted to make the world a better place—a place where things like September 11th or Virginia Tech would never happen. Nor did she sever ties with her still-fervent family, including her brother. In fact, I think she loved him all the more as he descended into his own hell of fanaticism. She just didn’t need or want God to be a part of that world. Her empathy and compassion had no bounds, national or denominational. And, as I said, I was fine with that. Hell, I agreed with her wholeheartedly.

So, of course I didn’t think any more about the newspaper clipping or the new mosque in town. A couple of weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in the living room and reading a magazine when Faith walked in and sat down beside me on the couch.

“Carter, what’s in the locked box in your closet?”

“What box? And why are you in our closet?”

“I was looking for Mom’s scarf—you know, the fuzzy purple one.”

“Oh yeah. I hate that scarf. I don’t know why Brianna bought that godawful thing. What box?”

“I dunno. A little metal box, with a lock, up on the top shelf.”

“Don’t know. Don’t worry about it, Faith. It’s not yours, and it’s not your birthday present, so….”

“Okay, jeez, no need to yell at me.”

Faith went out of the apartment—and I was up out of the couch before the door had closed behind her. The box was small and metallic gray, like something for letters or stationery. The lock was engaged, and that made me more curious. Why had Brianna gotten a metal box, with a lock, and why was it locked on the top shelf of our closet? I remember thinking maybe she had taken out a will or life insurance policy on me, laughing to myself as the thought crossed my mind. I also remember laughing that Brianna had left the price sticker on the bottom of the box. It was cheap.

It was also surprisingly heavy.

Locked metal boxes with no known provenance do not magically appear in your closet—the laws of the universe just don’t work like that, and surely God if he exists is not that banal—so now I was really curious. I rifled around in Brianna’s jewelry box and her clothes drawers, in the bathroom, and in her desk. No key. I thought of trying to pick the lock, but that was going too far even for a curious husband. I thought once or twice about love letters from an unnamed (and unsuspected till now) lover, or maybe some other type of incriminating evidence. But that was obviously stupid, I assured myself, so I didn’t try my hand at amateur locksmithing.

I debated asking Brianna about it later that night when she got back from grocery shopping and we had eaten dinner. It was a hard subject to broach, though, since I didn’t want to seem suspicious or prying or jealous. Plus we both had to work tomorrow, so I wasn’t sure if it was the right time to start yet another argument. Brianna was still distant and gloomier than normal, resisting all of my attempts to talk to her about Simon or about how she was feeling. That made me doubly hesitant, expecting even an innocent enquiry to spark an angry response.

Another week went by with no changes in Brianna—positive or negative. On Wednesday night, I had asked yet again about Dr. Singer, but she was as firmly resolved as ever against going. Her face said enough, though her “NO” would have been plenty on its own. I hadn’t seen the scary stuff in her eyes for a while, at least, so that gave me some hope that Brianna was coming to terms with her brother’s death and, after yet another terrible shock in her life, would be fine.

Then, Sunday. It was early afternoon, and we had just finished lunch. Faith was at a friend’s place—we had rented some movies for them and ourselves on Saturday—so it was just the two of us.

“I have to run out, Carter. Want anything?”

“No, not really. Where you off to? I thought we were going to watch our movie while Faith was out. And, you know, she won’t be back till tonight...so….”

“We will when I get back. I won’t be long, okay?”

“All right, Bri—Brianna. See you in a bit.”

“In a bit,” she said and walked out of the kitchen. I heard her in our room getting her stuff together, walking through the living room, and then opening and closing the door behind her.

Brianna’s timing was awful, I thought—I was feeling rather randy at the moment—but such is the wonderful glory of male life. I went into our room to shower and noticed that the closet door was open. I peeked inside.

The lid of the metal box was open, the box itself now on the floor. The key was in the lock, too. My curiosity returned, ready now to sate itself. But the contents were utterly perplexing at first glance, the sort of thing that seems unreal because it just refuses to fit into your picture of the universe. Banal deities and parallel universes aside, that is.

There was a small rectangular cardboard box inside, red on the big sides and yellow on the smaller sides. It was ammunition. Under it were several newspaper clippings. I found the one about the new mosque on top, and there were a few more about the Muslim community in our area. The connections between these items eluded me, so I just kept staring at them, shuffling the papers and picking up the opened cardboard box, which I saw was not full. Not even close.

Then I saw the last newspaper clipping. It was tiny, with tiny print and no photo. Only a paragraph of tiny print below a tiny bold headline: “Community remembrance celebration at new mosque this Sunday. All welcome.”

To say that your heart stops is a nauseating cliché, but I will swear until I die that mine stopped at that moment. Cold stone dead in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, or didn’t dare to in case that would be too much for my brain to handle.

She wouldn’t do anything. She couldn’t do anything. Ammunition…a locked metal box…a heavy locked metal box…her brother’s death…her strange withdrawal into darkness…a new interest with the Muslims in town…a celebration at the mosque...on this Sunday.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.

I don’t remember running out of the apartment and to my car, at least not as anything more than a passenger on a machine running itself. Nor do I remember much of the frantic and thoroughly lawbreaking drive to the mosque, which was maybe fifteen minutes from our place.

The world and I made a connection again when I pulled into the surprisingly full parking lot of the mosque and screeched to a halt in front of Brianna’s car. I was out of mine before the engine had stopped grumbling at being pushed so hard, even before I fully registered Brianna’s ashen face behind the steering wheel. She looked like a face made of white paper with two comically large holes punched out for eyes. Like one of those stupid Scream masks at Halloween. She didn’t look at me as I sprinted to her door and yanked it open.

“What the FUCK are you doing, Brianna?”

She didn’t move, not even her head. The gun was in her lap. And, as crazy as it sounds, her seatbelt was still on, across the lap and over the shoulder.

She wasn’t going anywhere at present, so I ran around to the passenger side and got in, slamming the door soundly behind me. The armrest hit me in the small of my back, hard enough to bruise, as I found out later.

“Have you—”

“Shut up and get out,” Brianna said, her voice icy and absent of feeling or of life.

“You can’t seriously be…you’re not going to do anything with that gun, Brianna. What are you fucking thinking!” She didn’t respond, but she turned her head to look at me—from frighteningly far away, but at least she looked at me. There was a lot of the abyss leaking out of her eyes at that moment, and it stunned me to utter silence.

But only for a moment. I was fighting for my own life here as much as for hers.

“This is not you, Brianna. You’re not capable of doing something like this. You can’t hurt someone else, let alone kill someone…kill a bunch of people. What…I mean, Brianna, seriously.”

“Carter, you don’t know….”

“Brianna, Bri, I do know. I know about the World Trade Center and what it did to you. I know about the Virginia Tech shootings and what that did to you. I know about your brother’s death in Afghanistan and what that did to you. I know, I know. Jesus Christ, I know how hard it must be for you to live through such pain and senseless death.”

She started to speak weakly, but I cut her off.

“Wait, just listen. Whatever it is that seems to make violence and killing necessary, it’s not worth it. It’s not true. You’ve told me a million times yourself, remember? Violence doesn’t stop violence, it only causes more? Remember? Your words, to me, whenever I wanted to punch a guy at work or scream at one of our neighbors? Christ, Brianna, you’re ten times more of a bleeding-heart pacifist than I am! And you’re going to take a gun and go on a rampage in a mosque? Honey, Bri, think about this. Your brother’s dead, and I know that hurts. He was killed in a foreign country, by people filled with hate and blinded by their screwed-up beliefs about right and wrong and justice and vengeance. But Simon’s death cannot be undone, and the deliberate murder of innocent people completely unrelated to his death cannot end your pain or make things right for you or your family or anyone else. Bloodthirsty vengeance will not make things better—not for you, not for those people in the mosque, and not for the world. Bri…?

“What about for our child, Carter?”

“Faith? What?”

“No. Not Faith. Carter, I’m pregnant. I found out the day before Mom called about Simon. The day before, Carter.”

“Pregnant…but….”

“My child, our child, can’t grow up in a world where people like them”—she pointed at the mosque—“are on a crusade to kill everyone they believe is an enemy. Us. I don’t want our child living in a world like that.”

“But how does this”—I pointed to the gun—“solve any of that, Brianna?”

“We…I…I have to show them that we’re not gonna let them destroy our world. I have to take a stand and send a message. To them. Everywhere. I have to show them it will never end unless they stop, now. If they think they can come here and kill us, they’re wrong. They have to know….”

I just stared at her. Something had fractured so completely within her that all rational understanding and sense of morality was in pieces. Now, in this moment in the car, only the abyss was left to fill the places between what remained. I was afraid of her at that moment. But I was more afraid for her.

“Brianna, listen to yourself. Think, dammit! You sound like one of the people you’re trying to stop. You’re on your own fucking crusade, Brianna, and yours is just as hopeless and stupid and bloodthirsty.”

“No, I can—”

“You can’t, Brianna. You can’t bring back the thousands of people who died in the World Trade Center, you can’t bring back the hundreds of thousands who have died in this utterly stupid war, and you can’t bring back your brother. And you can’t make the world safer for our child by killing anyone else. Look, look at this,” I said and pulled out my wallet. I had a picture of Faith in one of the pockets, and I took it out to show to Brianna. “Look at her, Bri. You love her, right? Right?”

“Yes,” Brianna sobbed—finally, something…tears.

“She’s your daughter, our daughter, right?” Brianna nodded again, sobbing harder. “And you know how she became your daughter. Remember that pain you both lived through. Remember how it was for her to lose her mother. Yet you both found joy from such tragedy, and you’ve survived. You were stronger than death, and your love was stronger than their hatred. Look at her, Brianna. There are kids like her in that mosque, and parents of kids, and brothers and sisters. Each one of them has a family, a history and a story that extends across the planet and is being told in each second. Each one of the people you kill or hurt will be a tragedy no less horrific than the World Trade Center. Look, Brianna! Think! If you use murder to ease your pain and calm your fears, you’re doing exactly what the people did who flew a plane into the towers and who planted the bomb that blew up your brother. How many new killers are you going to create in the course of killing these people, Brianna? How many murders will you inspire? How many?”

She was convulsing with sobs now. I watched her, every sense in my body on red alert, every nerve sizzling, every hair on my body seemingly standing at attention.

Something in Brianna shifted; there was a palpable change in her entire chemistry, changing with it the energy in the car. I could always sense her like that, reading her moods and thoughts viscerally, so strong was the connection we shared. She seemed to be weeping out her anger—her pain, her darkness. She seemed to be filling her cracks with the mortar of her own suffering and tears.

I took the gun from her, very gently, and put it down between my seat and the passenger door. Then I reached over with my left hand and took her left hand and squeezed it.

She squeezed back.

When Brianna finally looked up at me, her eyes were still shimmering with tears and were puffy red around the edges. But I peered deeply into them, searching for something familiar…or for something more frightening. I searched, while she stared wanly at me, and I relaxed a little. There weren’t any cracks or any black un-stuff leaking through. There was no God, no Devil, no death in her eyes. There wasn’t any room for them in Brianna now. Her own beautiful human life was too big for any of them to enter.

“Come on, my honeydew,” I said to her. “Let me clean you up a bit…and then how’s about we go meet some of our neighbors?”

That was September 13, 2009.

It was a Sunday.

Image credit: Juni, from Flickr/Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

From the Well

2009-11-26T11:34:00.000-05:00

From the Well

To Tina

Listen!
Do you hear it?
Between the bird calls,
Under the rustling leaves.
There!
Did you hear it?
A sound, a voice
From the wilderness.
Listen,
And follow it
Into the woods…
There…
And there…
And again
Like a drum…
Do you hear?
Come quickly,
Tread lightly
On crackling leaves,
And watch your step,
Never lose your way
In the shadows.
Listen!
Again…and again!
Over there, in the brush,
In the shallow pool
Of dim sunlight
That drips through the trees.
Look!
Can you see it?
The rim of a well,
A ring of broken rocks,
Cold and gray and green
With lichens and mold.
From out of the depths,
A broken sound…or a voice?
There…and again…
And again, like a drum!
Peer over the rim,
Peer into the dark,
Can you see
What it is?
Too dark, so dark,
Too deep for the light.
So reach down,
Extend your arm
Down deep into
The swirling black,
And break the cobwebs,
Scatter the dust,
Brush away the leaves,
And dig into the dirt.
Dig deep!
Can you feel it?
Something warm and wet
Trembling in your hand.
Now bring it up,
Give it some light
And a breath of fresh,
Long-forgotten air.
Look!
You have found it!
Down deep in the dark,
Buried, abandoned,
Once lost but now found,
Maybe better off dead
But still clinging to life:
Clasp it close to your breast
And kiss away the bloody tears.
Can you hear
What it says?
Over and over,
Always the same:
Thank you…
Thank you…
Thank you…
My friend…

Image credit: Andrew Bossi, from Wikimedia Commons, under a creative commons license.

Glory Without God

2009-11-04T07:32:00.000-05:00

I recently had a conversation (okay, an "interview") with a friend, who is a devout Christian, about my beliefs...which she did not know in full. Since I do not believe in God, I was admittedly anxious about responding. But luckily, she is also open-minded and intelligent. She wanted to understand how I can connect with and find value in the world despite living in a state of "godlessness." It ended up being a rewarding experience for both of us, so I thought I would share her questions and my answers. Long live the wonder of the world!

1. How do you connect with the world around you?

I am a nature junkie. I connect with the world around me in profound ways, at every level and in every moment. You see, I can appreciate the beauty, magic, and unexplainable wonder of the universe around me on its own terms, without any reference to, dependence on, or "explanation" through a conscious Designer. My love of the world takes the world for what it is, however it got that way, as it is in my experience; I do not have to seek some higher meaning or purpose at another level, a level I cannot experience directly. It is sort of like being a gift that you cannot enjoy and be grateful for unless you always refer it to the person who gave it to you. The value and meaning of it to you may still be very powerful, but it always requires another, separate element that, if lost, could diminish the gift's value.

In addition, I can respond to the frequent comment that a world without God is a cold, lonely place. Personally, and I know I speak for many other "heathens" like me, I actually feel so much warmth and connection and "love" in the universe that I am a part of—for however long I am a part of it, and however I happened to get here...which, in my view, can be fully and well explained in biological/scientific and sociological terms. I constantly wonder over how the universe works, how life popped up and continues to pop up and bloom before us. But I am even more amazed at the thought that it all happens without any intentional, "intelligent" design behind it all; it just happens because of fully natural laws, patterns that exist because that is how things just work. When I see a beautiful sunrise or stand at the top of a mountain, I honestly would feel sad if I knew it was arranged by God; it would feel too easy, too simple, too convenient. I can take heart and feel connected with all the other living and non-living things in this universe because we are all, in fact, connected...we are all stardust, in the end, for just about every element in our body came from the stars. I do not need to have faith in God to feel at one with the universe around me; I am at one with all things on a very physical, visceral level, right here and right now.

2. How do you focus or give direction to your spirituality?

At my core, I believe that the only meaning of life is the meaning(s) we give it, in the course of living it, being fully present and in it along with my fellow beings. So in my personal practice, I try my best to bring myself into the present moment, accept it as it is (pleasant or painful or neither), and then appreciate it in all its fleetingness. I try to be in the moment fully—a terribly hard task, but an important one nonetheless. On another level, I try to practice compassion and kindness as much possible, as well as tolerance. I wish for all beings to live free from suffering, as well as to be as knowledgeable as they can about the many sources of "enlightenment" available. I want them all to have as much understanding about various (important) issues so that they can make informed, rational decisions in their lives, not to fall victim to blindness and blinkered ignorance (often self-imposed...often going under the name of "faith"). At the same time, I am a terribly rational creature, and I love to study just about everything, so I am always reading about many topics—from philosophy to literature to science—in order to learn more about the world, about life, about us as humans, about myself, and about how I can live fully. Plus I just love to have things to think about—big questions to ask, even if I know (and revel in the fact) that I can never truly find the answer to most of them.

I suppose that for me, what it all boils down to, whether or not you believe in God, is the persistence of wonder. Just as with life, wonder can and will and should spring up wherever conditions allow it to. The greatest threat to life, fulfillment, and happiness is indifference. Ignorance is a pretty close second; in fact, they may be two sides of the same coin, two interdependent conditions. Either way, there is so much to wonder over in this life of ours. Why miss any of it?

Image credit: NASA, public domain image.

Enemy Fire

2009-10-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

This feels somewhat apropos, given the fact that President Obama is considering sending yet more troops into Afghanistan. Please, Mr. President, show us you deserve that Nobel Peace Prize. Violence only begets violence...bring the troops home.

Enemy Fire

My life has been a life of the gun,
A life of flying lead and heavy steel,
A life lived on the hair-like line
Dividing life and death.
My parents have pictures of me as a boy
With a loaded pistol in my right hand,
A loaded bottle of milk in my left;
I was quick on the draw with both
And could aim like a pro every time
With a squirt or a bang and a gummy grin.
I got myself a license to kill
Long before a license to drive
(And still to this day I am better by far
With the first of these terrible twins).
I had little interest in clubs or sports
Unless they required ammunition,
And the only games I cared to play
Were games of total bloody war.
I drove to school with a shotgun at my side
More often than I did with a book,
The one worn dull by my studious hands,
The other pristine in a jacket of dust:
For all the things I needed to know
I learned as a student of Professor Steel,
And I was always the teacher’s pet,
The favored disciple every year,
The one with all the bright gold stars
And smiley faces next to my name;
“Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out”
Was my quote in the high-school yearbook.
The Great Outdoors was only ever great
When it gave me a buck to mount on my wall
And a snapshot to show the kids I would have
With a tall tale to tell them once I had retired.
Some called me a killer deep in my genes,
An adrenaline junkie, a wannabe God,
A plague, a pariah, a terror, a scourge,
A demon of Hell—and a brother...
And I would smile and give a wink
With eyes that glinted like steel.

But here, so far away from home,
The shadows cast by dunes and dust
Upon an endless desert’s sands,
Beneath the beating hammer of the sun,
Will take the strangest shapes at times—
The shapes of does, of coons...of men.
I raise my gun and set my sights,
The scope revealing all that hides
Within those shifting shades of sand
Like soldiers watching from trenches.
I aim...but find no target there.
I fire...but only raise a puff of dust.
I fire...but only hear the echo fade.
I dream...but never sleep or seem to wake.
My life is a life of the gun,
A life lived in the crosshairs every day.
They tell me I am a bringer of death,
A killer down to my DNA,
A Storm against Evil, a Terrorist-scourge,
An Agent of God—and a Soldier
Of Steel...though now it feels like rusted tin
With stiffened limbs and joints in need of oil.
But sometimes I peer into the scope
And stare into eyes that shimmer and swim,
The crosshairs fixed on a pupil grown large
And fathomless like an abyss, like a dream...
And I forget that heavy, lifeless feel
Of the trigger dividing life and death
As I forget the side that I am on
When a leaden tear strikes the searing sand.

Image credit: soldiersmediacenter, originally from flickr via Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

fallen star fading

2009-10-14T07:41:00.000-04:00

This is another old one, and it feels appropriate for the sudden onslaught of COOOLD.

fallen star fading

Somewhere an infant screams in fear
And bears the curse in bloody tears.

The elements hear and echo the pain
As despair rolls like fog down a mountain.

A down of grass beneath my body,
Around me ground the dew has wetted,
A darkened firmament above me,
The sunset passed and not regretted:
Now all is still, this world gone silent,
A weary mother lightly sleeping
While somewhere else within a shadow
A something slowly rests from creeping,
Unlike the stars that float so distant
Along that inky stream and glisten
And whisper songs or ancient stories
To those who have the heart to listen.
But here is peace no sign of motion
Of life or breath to set me thinking—
Except the tears like flowing silver,
And cold, so cold, in softly sinking
And dropping down as stinging dewdrops
On to the ground to make it frozen,
To make the earth a slab of marble
To make a bier the bed I’ve chozen.
And still they fall and ever colder
Becomes my bed my bier my senses
As tendons acke and sinews stiffen
And all around a fog drips
And sounds are mixin.g no sense
is there to hear but. coldness
But still I heer the stilness
And hear the feeling of the chill
Is sinking in.
                    Is sinkinginto
                    The sound of snow
                    A snowflake
                    A snowdrop               a skull
Is falling down
          Is drifting down
     is dancing. Down
a snowdrop dancing
down. is silent
   as a Snowflake
drifting falling.
                    a tear
and i heer it above
dancing coldly
and i feel it drifting coldly or i hear
myfeeling
it.
   cold
as it drifts asitdances asit fals.
a snowflake droping
like a star falling Makeawish asleeep
a cold snowdropflake
star. on the ground frozen sleeps

Image credit: Barasoaindarra, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Two Poems for Autumn

2009-09-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

These are some old autumn poems for Autumn to celebrate its first day. Ave Autumn!

Sonnet: To Autumn

A stream of sunshine swirls upon the breeze
And wends its way between the waving leaves,
But all the wonders that the eye may seize
Seem trifles next to what the heart perceives.
These gifts you give must drop and turn to dust
Beneath the feet and paws that pass them by
Or scatter like a daydream in a gust
That sweeps them skyward, careless where they fly.
You lay your patchwork quilt upon the soil
To wrap in warmth each tender, sleeping seed
And bring to fruit another season’s toil:
The great repast on which your children feed.
Your glory falls--but thus proclaims your name;
Its embers fade--but set our hearts aflame.

The Gift of Gold

Autumn has only one color
Late in the season
When sunlight clothes
The otherwise drearily naked forms
Of everything and anything it can
In auras of gossamer gold.

The limbs of the trees, bare
Except for an occasional straggler,
Gradually lose their voices
Whenever the wind walks by for a chat;
But below, a cacophonous carpet
Cries out at the touch of the tiniest foot

And raises a storm of acrid dust--
A dazzling shower of gemstones
Alight in the swirls of the air,
Whirlpools of afternoon sun
That suck out each hesitant breath
And capture each word in the breast.

The bitterness stinging nostrils and tongue
Disappears in this sweet, ambrosial draught
Raining down from the heavens,
Every particle a flood washing through
The eyes, bathing clean and brilliant
Once again the heart and the mind.

These gifts of the seasons--gold, green, or white--
Have been offered each morning with kindness
And love like a parent's for one
Special child, one twinkling babe
Who at last crawls awake with a smile
And blinks in a halo of light.

Once, I found a ring of purest gold
On the floor of the forest, hiding there
Just beneath a layer of leaves.
And I carried it from door to door,
But no one would claim or receive what I held,
So I buried it back in the leaves after dusk.

On the Road Back to Home

2009-09-20T07:13:00.000-04:00

This is an old one, but it is one of my favorites. I wrote it while driving (literally) on Interstate 64, coming back to Virginia from California.

On the Road Back to Home

America.
The name is but a word we speak
Sometimes with sweetness, letting it float
In the air on the tailwinds of a sigh
And the endless trail of a stinging tear;
Or sometimes it gets spat out from the depths
Of the throat like phlegm less bitter by far
On the tongue than it is on the heart
Though still painful as, puffing, we breathe.

America.
No name could ever speak the truth
Of all the treasures found upon this land
That lies between two shores and two vast seas that seem
Themselves to sigh the name
From “Ah!” to “Ah!” with each wave’s crash,
The rest sung forth before the dawn
In myriad morning melodies
With winged notes that ride the light
That shows the sun its ancient path
And all its footprints made before.

America.
My feet have left much less a mark
Upon this fertile, fragile soil,
My soles too tender, my legs too weak
To race the sun and see what it has seen
So often, yet returning day by day;
Mine has been a much more humble course
Than that of him we honor as we say
America.

But still I’ve rambled, seen what I could see
From sea to sighing sea,
And on this journey, driven on by love
Of every jewel that makes the sunlight gleam,
The many winding paths I’ve walked,
The countless bridges quickly crossed
Have often left me scared and lost
Within the forest, by an icy stream,
In some far corner of America.

So hungry, bleeding, tired, and cold
I stand at last upon this stretching road
That leads me to the doorstep left behind,
Both sidewalks decorated now
With lamps of crimson, orange, gold, and green
That light the way from where I’ve been
And guide me, sparkling for a season, back to home—
Though now I pause, behold this autumn’s flare,
And sink as rain back into sacred ground.

Image credit: pfly, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Waves

2009-09-14T06:53:00.001-04:00

Waves

The hours of time, in silent waves,
Break on the shore and wear it down;
They sweep it outward and apart,
Each cell like flesh dissolved and drowned.
The foam has faces, fleeting forms
That float and then break on the sand;
They scatter, misty, and are gone,
Are lost as sighs in winter wind.
The water ripples, swells like thoughts,
When stirred above or far below,
Its waves dispersing, crashing down,
But silent in the scattered foam.
The faces fly, white butterflies
That swirl in water and in sky
And swim upon the silent sea
Of hours that laps the sighing shores.

Image credit: Elena Campos Cea, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Genesis

2009-09-13T07:07:00.000-04:00

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (John 12:24)

Genesis

Two spent rubbers--
Not one, but a pair--
Lie in the gutter
Of a rain-slick street
And glisten in the moonlight,
Perhaps from the rain,
Twisted and tangled
In slithering coils.

On this Sunday,
The Lord's Day,
His houses are filled
With the faithful,
Arisen to praise
Him with the dawn.

But here in the street,
These sacred vessels
Of a different faith
Have been cast away,
Like tokens of shame
Or a one-night fling.

The voices of choirs
Ring out and lift up,
And angels awake
And circle the sun
As if to give thanks
For life on this day.

But here on the street,
Are these chalices
Filled with the blood
Of God in the flesh?

To the White Rabbit

2009-09-11T07:08:00.000-04:00

Where has all the madness gone?

To the White Rabbit

Beware, White Rabbit, someone plugged your hole!
You better find another spot and dig
Your way to Wonderland, a hole to home,
For even now you make the Red Queen wait,
And you'll have hell to pay for being late.
So move your tail, get hopping now, and dig!
Just use those paws and stain that white fur brown.
There's not a second more to stall and stay.

But once you make it back, be sure to leave
The hole wide open and the path well cleared
To let a little of the wonder in,
The magic madness, long since laughed away.
For here the looking glass is cold and dim,
Reflecting monsters, freaks, and fractured light,
And all the Cheshire Cats have gone extinct
And all the Hatters have been locked away.

Image credit: John Tenniel, modified by GeeAlice, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

The Un-Pursuit of Happiness

2009-09-10T08:15:00.000-04:00

This is an old essay, which was also aired on WVTF public radio a year or so ago. Good times.

The Un-Pursuit of Happiness

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that everyone was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Note that last part: the pursuit of happiness...not happiness. Mr. Jefferson essentially promises us a wild goose chase; he does not promise that we will ever be happy, just that we have the right to give it our best shot. Or put another way, the wildly waddling goose never lays a golden egg but, to double my metaphors, is itself the golden egg.

Now, you may have trouble swallowing the idea that happiness can never be obtained and held like a little gilded treasure in the palm of your hand. After all, we have everything from sodas to televisions to prescription drugs to vacation packages promising us that happiness, yes HAPPINESS, can be ours with just one bite-sized charge on our credit cards—or an even more digestible payment plan. So bon appétit!

However, much as we celebrate the birthday of our country on July 4th, Independence Day, I believe that we can and should also celebrate our independence from the pursuit of happiness—that our life and our liberty are made stronger, more secure, when we base them upon an un-pursuit of “happiness,” however we define (or try to define) that state of mind and being.

Pursuit is a condition of restless activity, often frenetic energy and frustration, and so is the antithesis of contentment. For me, the best images of pursuing happiness are the nutty squirrels and their eternal onslaughts against my bird feeders. Let me tell you, neither side in this time-honored battle knows of true “happiness.” There is no peace; prisoners are not taken; there are no negotiations; there is no diplomacy; there are no treaties.

But if we can declare our independence from the pursuit of the idyllic ideal of happiness, then I believe we will find an endless storehouse of goodies waiting right at our paw-, er, fingertips. Why drive ourselves nuts trying to “find happiness”? Why worry ourselves into a panic attack by chanting, “Don’t worry, be happy!” like some mystical mantra? Why work ourselves into a sweat by running a marathon that only ends in some otherworldly state of bliss?

Instead, perhaps we can find happiness in the un-pursuit of happiness.

I mean, simply stop for a moment and really look at the way the sunlight sets a cardinal’s breast on fire. Pause for a moment and really feel how the bashful breeze caresses your skin on a summer day. Breathe deeply and appreciate the love that is shared in a friend’s hug, a stranger’s smile, a baby’s laugh….

We can be happy whether we have nothing or everything. We can be happy when the fireworks fade and the 5th of July dawns far too early. We need not pursue happiness. We need not seek some stealthy goose in order to pilfer its golden egg and bury it for safe keeping like those nutty, ingenious squadrons of little squirrels. We need not renounce what we own and who (we think) we are. We need not pursue happiness to be happy.

We are alive. We are at liberty. And, if we just realize these facts, then we may realize that we already are happy—standing right where we are, wherever we are.

Image credit: Jay Baldwin, from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License.

Tree

2009-09-10T07:34:00.000-04:00

This one was a bloody stubborn thorn in my mind...

Tree

Damn these roots, like iron they seem,
Growing down and out from me,
Grasping grass and stubborn dirt,
As greedy as a starving dog with a bone.
For every bit of life they find,
Soak up, and suck within myself,
Binds me tighter, holds me here
Beneath the swirling, rootless sky.

Damn this clinging, miserly earth,
For I can only watch the sun and moon
And stars fly over, mocking me
And calling me to come and see
What they have seen, to stand and step
And stride away from star to star.

Damn the weather, damn the spring,
And summer, autumn, winter--all!
The seasons simply tell the time
And freeze my sap with ice and snow
Or bring the warmth and make it flow
And bid me bear my rags of green
Or gold from year to year--
Year after year of servitude
With no release except for death.

These roots take ever-tighter hold
From year to year, from day to day,
And leave me here to stand on Earth
And raise my head, and reach my arms
Up to the endless, groundless sky,
And raise my silent, shrieking voice
Above the drowning din of life
That bustles just beyond my grasp.

Damn these roots, this armored trunk,
These branches flung both far and wide!
Bring me your sharpest ax or saw
And let me hack them all away,
So I may climb upon the rain
Like a ladder into the wandering clouds
And ride the lightning through the air
Instead of awaiting its fiery crash.
Or chop me down and, limb by limb,
Break me from these clinging chains.

Image credit: CopyrightFreePhotos.HQ101.com, from Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons License.

?

2009-09-10T07:12:00.000-04:00

I am ambivalent about getting up on this virtual soapbox and ranting away like some silly sidewalk prophet. But so it goes. This one, "?," is fairly recent.

?

This is the end
The end of days
Of hours and powers
And senseless sleep.

This is the time
To stop the clock
And tell the seconds
Till they're gone.

This is the day
To grasp the sun
And paint it black
And watch it fade.

This the bed

Of nails you made
To lay yourself
Upon and rest.

This is the path
Through forests of night
And over tombs
Of trembling dead.

This is the bell
That tolls for thee
In every halting
Hissing breath.

This is the dust
That drives the wind
And wears your body
Down to bone.

This is the stream
Become the flood
Of blood now pounding
In your ears.

This is the year
Of drought and plague
That rides in screams
Of locusts' wings.

This is the hot coal
That lies on your tongue
The fire from the sky
That scorches your bowels.

This is heaven
Torn down from on high
This is hell
Dragged up to the light.

This is the sound
Of the fury set free
This is the agony
This is the way.

This is the quest
And the question...?