tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44050510213037627142024-03-13T20:47:33.136-05:00Your Man For Fun In RapidanI was here. I left you some words.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.comBlogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-40784539553373964172020-03-04T02:32:00.000-06:002020-03-05T17:47:45.579-06:00Your Man For Fun In Rapidan: An Index<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every entry from<b> Your Man For Fun In Rapidan</b>: An index of links (Updated 3-4-2020):<br />
<b><br /></b><b><a href="https://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2019/12/one-night-one-fine-day.html" target="_blank">Alchemy</a>. Angels, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/missed-opportunity.html" target="_blank">guild of</a><b>. Animal Collective, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/butterflies-walk.html" target="_blank">as source of tension in therapist's office</a><b>. Animals, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/12/fall-on-your-knees.html" target="_blank">speaking</a><b>. Aristotle, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/some-extracts-from-aristotles-history.html" target="_blank">extracts from <i>History of Animals</i></a><b>. Anthology of American Folk Music, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/sixteen.html" target="_blank">discovery of</a><b>. Apes, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-conversation-about-stories.html" target="_blank">as aviators</a>. <b>Associative disorder, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/05/brief-portrait-of-associative-disorder.html" target="_blank">a case study</a><b>. Automobiles, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/two-twenties-and-twelve-ones.html" target="_blank">used</a>. <b>Bananas, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-days-as-produce-detailer.html" target="_blank">the airbrushing of</a><b>. Barber, </b>Samuel, <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/06/soundtrack-on-listening-to-barbers.html" target="_blank">Adagio for Strings</a>. <b>Barbers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/oh-my-stars.html" target="_blank">in Livingston, Montana</a><b>. Beard, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/02/archive-of-invisible-ink-from-crawl.html" target="_blank">inhabited by fairies</a><b>. Belief, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/these-things-i-believe_29.html" target="_blank">a personal inventory</a>. <b>Bells, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-bells.html" target="_blank">a Christmas story</a>. <b>Bergen, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/02/linkedin-profile-for-jergen-king-bergen.html" target="_blank">Jergen King</a><b>. Birds, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/without-rest.html" target="_blank">bleak</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2009/12/taking-stock.html" target="_blank">mysterious locutions of;</a> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-kind-of-sad.html" target="_blank">prehistoric</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/richard-riggins-grade-four-revisited.html" target="_blank">speaking Farsi</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/sort-of-thing-that-happens-to-me-when-i.html" target="_blank">history of talking</a><b>. Bobagorus, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/06/from-dialogues-of-bobagorus-cinema.html" target="_blank">from <i>The Dialogues </i>of</a>. <b>Bond, James; </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/lord-knows-child.html" target="_blank">only a girl</a><b>. Bones, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/fossils.html" target="_blank">waltzing</a><b>. Books, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/stop-time.html" target="_blank">black</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/fifty-books.html" target="_blank">fifty favorite</a>. <b>Boon, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/02/any-old-business-day-d-boon-died.html" target="_blank">D</a><b>. Bridges, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/ragged-angels-burning-bridge.html" target="_blank">burning</a>. <b>Bubbles, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-it-not-sometimes-make-you-wonder.html" target="_blank">as meteorological event</a><b>. Burger King, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-days-as-corporate-hamburger-slave.html" target="_blank">and human trafficking</a><b>. Butterflies, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/10/which-alas-i-am-not.html" target="_blank">the shooting of</a>. <b>Cannibalism, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-back-pages-defense-of-washington.html" target="_blank">on trial</a><b>. Carnap, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-stumbling-across-few-old-dispatchs.html" target="_blank">Big Leonard</a><b>. Carp, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/everything-was-stolen-from-germans-and.html" target="_blank">hour of the</a><b>. </b><i style="font-weight: bold;">Catcher in the Rye, </i><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/12/from-line-in-catcher-in-rye.html" target="_blank">an allusion to</a><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i><b>Cattle, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/drowning-season.html" target="_blank">drowning</a><b>. Cheese, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/08/cheese-angel-sent-straight-from-peanuts.html" target="_blank">craving</a><b>. Chickens, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/last-summer-of-rapidan-children.html" target="_blank">hit</a><b>. Children, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/true-enough.html" target="_blank">three in Texas</a>. <b>Conductors of the Moving World, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/conductors-of-moving-world.html" target="_blank">a mathematical breakdown</a><b>. Contentment,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/that-this-is-this.html" target="_blank">the slow dazzle of</a><b>. Country and Western, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/09/spruced-up-and-saved-from-oblivion-your.html" target="_blank">fifty greatest songs</a><b>. Dead people, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-too-i-might-be-inclined-to-believe.html" target="_blank">the singing of</a>.<b> Death, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/and-yet.html" target="_blank">before birth</a><b>. Desire, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/branded.html" target="_blank">claiming</a>. <b>Devotion, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/an-unhappy-devotion-dedicated-to-peter.html" target="_blank">unhappy</a><b>. DiGrippa,</b> Silvio<b>; </b><i><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/far-and-farther.html" target="_blank">Agents of Contagion</a></i><b>. Dog, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-remember-april.html" target="_blank">blind</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-things-i-say-to-my-dog.html" target="_blank">private remarks to</a><b>. Dogs, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/12/next-year-all-our-troubles-will-be-out.html" target="_blank">on payphones</a>. <b>Dream Motel, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/from-scrap-heap-exhibit-151b7.html" target="_blank">official lodging for convention of thwarted dreamers</a>.<b> Dreams,</b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/gathering-of-broken-dreams.html" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank"> </a><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/gathering-of-broken-dreams.html" target="_blank">broken</a><b>. Dying, the; </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-dying-do-from-series-of.html" target="_blank">what they do</a>.<b> Elephant, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/cautionary-tale.html" target="_blank">man who married a</a>n<b>. Elf, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2016/12/from-christmas-crawl-space.html" target="_blank">aborted</a>. <b>Eminem, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/lost-ghost-in-city-of-light.html" target="_blank">overheard</a><b>. End Times, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/05/day-god-called-it-day.html" target="_blank">surrender of the Almighty; possible reconsideration</a><b>. Exploration, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/from-annals-of-exploration.html" target="_blank">an incident from the history of</a><b>. Eyeglasses, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/seen.html" target="_blank">confusion regarding</a><b>. Ferry, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/12/shit-could-be-whole-lot-righter.html" target="_blank">Bryan</a><b>. Fire, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/just-fire.html" target="_blank">breathing of</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/world-will-sound-like-john-coltranes.html" target="_blank">buildings consumed by</a><b>. Fireflies, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/flying-fleeting-things.html" target="_blank">falling in love with swallows</a><b>. Fletcher, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/05/eight-days-in-ohio-during-which-i.html" target="_blank">Galen</a><b>. Forever in Bluejeans, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/exuviae.html" target="_blank">gravestone inscription</a><b>. Fortune cookies, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-not-try-to-make-yourself-useful.html" target="_blank">empty</a><b>. Free, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/09/contemplating-my-possible-worthlessness.html" target="_blank">there ain't no</a><b>. Garden, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/waiting-in-abandoned-airport-for-flight.html" target="_blank">abandoned</a><b>. Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/before-ice-age_08.html" target="_blank">a soundtrack to one summer</a><b>. Goats, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/make-believe.html" target="_blank">talking</a><b>. God, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/dailies.html" target="_blank">as cinematographer</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/12/in-his-dreams-he-built-first-ladder.html" target="_blank">birth of</a><b>. Golf, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-envoy-christmas-serial-part-one.html" target="_blank">miniature</a>. <b>Grasshoppers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-fantasy-fantasy-one-more-once.html" target="_blank">in dollhouse</a><b>. Gratitude, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/11/old-words-limbering-up-for-holidays.html" target="_blank">an expression of</a>. <b>Great Maybe Whatever, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/you-there-prayer-in-dark-time.html" target="_blank">a plea to</a><b>. Grief, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2017/04/wendell-dean-zellar-february-15-2007.html" target="_blank">keening</a>. <b>Hamburgers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/12/fall-on-your-knees.html" target="_blank">the business of</a><b>. Harpo, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/isnt-man-sad.html" target="_blank">Slim</a><b>. Harps, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/01/like-listening-to-house-full-of-music.html" target="_blank">a sanctuary of</a><b>. Heart, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/your-heart-at-rest.html" target="_blank">at rest and in motion</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/james-bond-only-girl-part-two.html" target="_blank">pea-picking</a><b>. Heaven, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/heaven-is-place.html" target="_blank">garbage disposal in</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-telestial-kingdom.html" target="_blank">the suburbs of</a><b>. Help, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/off-season.html" target="_blank">a cry for</a><b>. Henley, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/08/invictus-after-boys-of-summer-are-gone.html" target="_blank">Don</a><b>. High jumping, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-dont-know-why-i-do-it-but-i-do.html" target="_blank">the eroticism of</a><b>. </b><i style="font-weight: bold;">Highlights </i><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/letter-from-my-old-friend-ruckert.html" target="_blank">magazine</a><b>. History of Human Futility, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/planet-of-apes-return-to-eden.html" target="_blank">museum</a><b>. History, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/family-plot.html" target="_blank">smothered by</a>. <b>Horns, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/another-evening-with-scratch.html" target="_blank">French</a><b>. Horses, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/12/fall-on-your-knees.html" target="_blank">blind</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-post_30.html#comment-form" target="_blank">flying</a><b>. House of Coates, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/house-of-coates.html" target="_blank">self-promotion surrounding the release of</a><b>. Hypnagogia, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/night-comes-down-night-falls.html" target="_blank">a brief personal history</a><b>. Imagination, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/no-imagination-was-stretched-in-course.html" target="_blank">stretching of</a><b>. Insomnia, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/river-dreams.html" target="_blank">a possible cause</a><b>. Islands, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/take-your-time.html" target="_blank">in the North Sea</a>. <b>Jar, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/nice-day-for-that-sort-of-thing.html" target="_blank">voice in a</a><b>. </b><b>Jazz, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/09/no-flowers-please.html" target="_blank">groupies</a>. <b>Jigsaw puzzle, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/might-might-not.html" target="_blank">unfinished</a>. <b>Jonah, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/conundrums.html" target="_blank">the rational challenges of</a><b>. Keegen Bash, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/september-song.html" target="_blank">the; a reminiscence</a><b>. Kitchens,</b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/altogether-unpleasant-discovery.html" target="_blank"><b> </b>an exercise in forensics</a><b>. Ladder, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/07/twilight-now-that-my-ladders-gone.html" target="_blank">as clumsy metaphor</a>. <b>Landfill, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/02/landfill-at-bottom-of-day.html" target="_blank">at the bottom of the day</a><b>. Last Picture Show, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2016/02/no-direction-home.html" target="_blank">a lament</a>.<b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/upstate.html" target="_blank">Lawn statuary</a>. Librarian, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-vanishing-dump-unbroken.html" target="_blank">disappointed in love</a><b>. Life, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/all-those-lost-years.html" target="_blank">dear</a>. <b>Lightning, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/in-another-lifetime-and-in-this-one.html" target="_blank">heat</a><b>. Lions, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/unattributed-tribulation.html" target="_blank">a choir of</a><b>. Loneliness,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/last-public-utterance-of-man-who.html" target="_blank">and disgust</a>. <b>Loveliness, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/night-falls-and-keeps-on-falling.html" target="_blank">the difficulty of</a><b>. Magi, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/magi-of-soho.html" target="_blank">in Soho</a><b>. Magic Eight Ball, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/wish-list.html" target="_blank">desire for the 'Yes' answer</a><b>. Make believe, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/inquisition.html" target="_blank">an inquisition regarding</a><b>. Malls, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/02/malliest-mall-of-them-all.html" target="_blank">as factors in depressive episodes</a><b>. Manistique, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/where-theres-road-theres-way.html" target="_blank">anecdotal material regarding</a><b>. Meat, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-rock-starts-rolling-its-going-to.html" target="_blank">as community</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/sweet-soul-music.html" target="_blank">pining</a><b>. Memories, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/then-now-later.html" target="_blank">pleasant</a><b>. Mermaid, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/drain.html" target="_blank">in a bathtub</a>. <b>Mermaids,</b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-pond-mermaids.html" target="_blank"> obese</a>. <b>Messengers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/messengers.html" target="_blank">epiphanic</a>. <b>Michigan, Lathrop; </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/regarding-james-near-lathrup-michigan.html" target="_blank">in photography</a><b>. Milkman, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/from-obituary-in-forest-lake-times.html" target="_blank">dysfunctional</a><b>. Mind, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/like-something-thrown-from-furnace-of.html" target="_blank">state of</a>.<b> Minnesota, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/postmarked-minnesota.html" target="_blank">nice</a><b>. Monastery, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/from-landfill-breaking-of-ezro.html" target="_blank">bells</a><b>. Monk, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/foolish-indulgence.html" target="_blank">burning</a>. <b>Monks, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/12/upon-time-once.html" target="_blank">singing</a><b>. Morrison, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/house-of-coates.html" target="_blank">Lester B</a><b>. Motion sickness, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/insomnia-dispatch-from-foothills-of.html" target="_blank">terminal</a><b>. Mountains, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/mountain.html" target="_blank">the loneliness of</a><b>. Munch, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/12/gift-that-sets-stars-free.html" target="_blank">Beauteous</a><b>. Murray's Suave Outlet, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/load-sixteen-tons-what-do-you-get.html" target="_blank">pioneering blog</a><b>. Museum, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/neglected-frontier.html" target="_blank">of sound</a>. <b>Nabokov, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/fumes-memorious.html" target="_blank">Vladimir</a><b>. <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/05/ere-mine-errs-wer-een-oer.html" target="_blank">National Poetry Month</a>. Never </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/you-were-always-in-hurry.html" target="_blank">(never, never)</a><b>. News,<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/motel-news.html" target="_blank"> </a></b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/motel-news.html" target="_blank">local</a>. <b>Nightmares, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-envoy-christmas-serial-part-one.html" target="_blank">an inventory of</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/theres-medication-for-everything.html" target="_blank">as supreme entertainments</a>. <b>Noise,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/hold-out-hope-old-pep-talk.html" target="_blank">joyful</a><b>. Osteoporosis, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-long-and-fruitful-life-for-which.html" target="_blank">moral</a><b>. <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/and-fire.html" target="_blank">Otherness</a>. Paradise,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/02/paradisus-bestiarum-note-from-registrar.html" target="_blank">a bestiary</a><b>. Paranoia, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/two-little-stories-about-religious.html" target="_blank">religious</a><b>. Pessoa, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/after-dark.html" target="_blank">Fernando</a><b>. Pandora, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-afterthought.html" target="_blank">her unfortunate marriage</a><b>. Philosophy, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/11/consolations-of-philosophy-are-precious.html" target="_blank">the consolations of</a><b>. Photography, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-photographic-education.html" target="_blank">an education</a><b>. <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/12/your-lives-in-my-tiny-little-hands.html" target="_blank">Photomart</a>. Pianos,<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/mission.html" target="_blank"> </a></b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/mission.html" target="_blank">and colonialism</a>. <b>Poetry, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/lenora-sweet-lenora.html" target="_blank">about birds</a><b>. Presley, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/take-your-protein-pill-and-put-your.html" target="_blank">Elvis<b>; </b>in his underwear</a><b>. Professionals, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/ghosts-of-dead-snails.html" target="_blank">so-called</a>. <b>Puppetry, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2009/12/sound-advice-for-aspiring-puppeteer.html" target="_blank">sound advice regarding</a><b>. Puppets</b>, <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-strings-of-bertie.html">and homicide</a>. <b>Rabbits, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/04/regarding-photograph-that-young-woman.html" target="_blank">blind, discussing photography</a><b>. Radio Shack, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/07/last-dance.html" target="_blank">a love story</a><b>. Regrets,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/international-repository-of-regrets.html" target="_blank">International Repository of</a><b>. Relay, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/watching-words-relay.html" target="_blank">of words</a><b>. Ribs, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/11/perhaps-i-should-be-reading-other-sorts.html" target="_blank">broken by reading</a><b>. Rio de Ratones Poetry Society, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/08/remarks-prepared-for-inaugural-launch.html" target="_blank">imports dying castrato</a><b>. River,<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-woman-river-sand.html"> </a></b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-woman-river-sand.html">woman who was turned into a</a>;<b> Sad Museum, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/there-are-those-who-what.html" target="_blank">the unspeakable nature of</a><b>. Saint Nicholas of Myra, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/12/from-christmas-attic-scandal-of-richard.html" target="_blank">pageant of</a><b>. Salamanders, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/12/shaking-shadows.html" target="_blank">on the moon</a><b>. Satan, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/05/devil-in-steel-toed-boots-and-wetsuit.html" target="_blank">and the Sacred Bone</a><b>. Schlegel, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/08/once-upon-time.html" target="_blank">Ustave<b>; </b>and the giantess</a><b>. Schopenhauer, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/03/schopenhauer-and-spinoza-on-dogs.html" target="_blank">argues with Spinoza about dogs</a><b>. Schutz, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-thought-about-remembered-recalled-and.html" target="_blank">Susan Polis</a>. <b>Science,</b> <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/05/first-great-mysteries-of-science.html" target="_blank">mysteries of</a><b>. Scrub pads, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/03/helpful.html" target="_blank">in bulk</a><b>. September Song, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/10/september-song-part-one.html" target="_blank">part one</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/10/september-song-part-two.html" target="_blank">part two</a>. <b>Shadows, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/brief-associative-slideshow-for-end-of.html" target="_blank">and monsters</a><b>. Sheep, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/12/next-year-all-our-troubles-will-be-out.html" target="_blank">shivering</a><b>. Sherman, </b>William Tecumseh<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/hell-yeah-thats-exactly-whats-been.html" target="_blank"><b>; </b>"March to the Sea."</a><b> Show business, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/from-my-forthcoming-book-it-was-pure.html" target="_blank">obscurity</a><b>. Sky, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-exactly-do-you-mean.html" target="_blank">as the limit</a><b>. Slave, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/07/this-is-not-my-beautiful-house.html" target="_blank">orphans</a>.<b> Snack crackers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/03/apology-for-my-dereliction.html" target="_blank">bewildering slogans of</a><b>. Sno-Caps, </b><a href="https://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-thought-about-remembered-recalled-and.html" target="_blank">an appreciative memory</a><b>. Soup, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/pardon-my-french-encounter-with-soup.html" target="_blank">the god of</a>.<b> Springsteen, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/09/nothing-at-all-like-bruce-springsteen.html" target="_blank">Bruce</a><b>. Squirrels, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/04/never-not-to-say.html" target="_blank">phantom</a><b>. Stuttering, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/12/people-who-learned-to-hide.html" target="_blank">and general ostracism</a><b>. Sushi, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/02/linkedin-profile-for-jergen-king-bergen.html" target="_blank">truck stop</a><b>. Table tennis,<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/mongoose-vs-cobra.html" target="_blank"> </a></b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/mongoose-vs-cobra.html" target="_blank">the Mongoose vs. The Cobra</a><b>. Talk radio, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/02/land-of-dreams.html" target="_blank">and the dissolution of a marriage</a><b>. Tchaikovsky, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/01/my-memories-of-tchaikovsky.html" target="_blank">a remembrance of</a><b>. Teenagers,<a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/hill-pilgrims.html" target="_blank"> </a></b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/hill-pilgrims.html" target="_blank">moonstruck</a><b>. Terkel, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/04/from-studs-terkels-working-uncut.html" target="_blank">Studs</a><b>. Thanks, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2017/11/thank-you.html" target="_blank">the giving of</a>.<b>Thinking, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/05/i-cant-imagine.html" target="_blank">wishful</a><b>. <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/nothing-next.html" target="_blank">Tim Horton's</a>. Time, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/time-was.html" target="_blank">as snaggle-toothed bastard</a>; <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/09/second-fiddle-fiddling.html" target="_blank">rewinding of</a>. <b>Tony Orlando, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/nothing-is-sinking-something.html" target="_blank">and Dawn</a><b>. Trees, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2015/07/fourth-of-july-fort-snelling-1971-and.html" target="_blank">as unmanageable</a><b>. Uncle, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/01/cry-uncle.html" target="_blank">crying of</a><b>. Unilever, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/swabs.html" target="_blank">manufacturer of the Q-Tip</a>. <b>Upstate, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/08/upstate.html" target="_blank">New York</a>. <b>Urination, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2009/12/letters-to-editor.html" target="_blank">public</a><b>. Wedding party, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/07/another-jet-is-gone.html" target="_blank">contemplated by an unmarried woman</a><b>. Wendell, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/man-who-wins-dog-lottery-is-lucky-man.html" target="_blank">prized dog</a><b>. Whiskers, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/05/night-stand-thinking-of-growing-beard.html" target="_blank">brief history of</a>.<b> Whither, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/01/bit-of-obscure-canadian-history.html" target="_blank">also Wither</a><b>. Williamson, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/02/little-village_26.html" target="_blank">Sonny Boy</a><b>. Winter Olympics, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/10/oral-history-of-2010-vancouver-winter.html" target="_blank">Vancouver, 2010</a><b>. Wishes, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/12/catalog-of-simple-wishes-for-new-year.html" target="_blank">simple</a><b>. Words, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2012/06/insurmountable-uselessness-of-words.html" target="_blank">uselessness of</a>. <b>Wordsworth, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/03/wordsworths-world-is-too-much-with-us.html" target="_blank">William</a><b>. World, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/09/world-of-wonders-taxonomy-for-curious.html" target="_blank">of wonders</a>.<b> Zellar, </b><a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2013/07/keep-it-in-front-of-you-dwz-july-15.html" target="_blank">Dean Wilson</a><b>. </b>Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-67862134447115198622019-12-22T14:26:00.000-06:002019-12-22T15:16:24.716-06:00One Night, One Fine Day...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmV67L8f6lrioKtSC0GFo6p9z95TK6NS814Z8yslTvrdLiVlIEwvbMun1FpRARuuoRXCjzRKSXatfKoIuKtgymYJbOL_brl_sBtkPkymz4KoQug1ucMnnX-MNjiY9mIs3txU6unKVYcipZ/s1600/abelpann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="324" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmV67L8f6lrioKtSC0GFo6p9z95TK6NS814Z8yslTvrdLiVlIEwvbMun1FpRARuuoRXCjzRKSXatfKoIuKtgymYJbOL_brl_sBtkPkymz4KoQug1ucMnnX-MNjiY9mIs3txU6unKVYcipZ/s640/abelpann.jpg" width="484" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>(Image from Abel Pann's <i>Genesis</i>)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
One night back in the late autumn I got whacked
with a shovel and shoved in the trunk of
a beat-to-shit Nova. The tweaker who whacked me drove me out into the country and dumped my body in a corncrib.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
It was a cold night, and as I rocked at the edge of
consciousness my heart was removed from my
chest by an old and tiny man with strong hands. This little man, who was
wearing a miner's helmet, perched on my breastbone and opened my chest with a rusty saw. There was a stiff
wind whipping across the fields, and to keep himself from blowing away, the man
--he was from a long line of heart deliverers-- had secured his body to the
framework of the corncrib with strands of baling twine. He worked long and
diligently, and the procedure was precise but bloody work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
When he had finished he wrapped my heart in burlap and loaded it into a waiting carriage pulled by two
peacocks and driven by a fox wearing a red velvet top hat. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The carriage traveled many miles along dark roads.
At some point during its journey snow began to fall, and the snow grew heavier
the further the carriage traveled.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Eventually the carriage entered heavily wooded country, where the sky was
suddenly blown free of clouds and a bright moon illuminated mile after mile of evergreen trees heaped with
snow and mottled with shadow.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The fox drove long into the night, all the while
singing and whistling quietly to the drowsy and plodding peacocks. In the early
hours of the morning they arrived at a lake deep in the woods.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The lake was a vast thing, dark and ceaselessly
rolling shattered moonlight ashore. It stretched to the far horizon, and was so black in the
distance that the constellations appeared to be complex geometrical diagrams
drawn upon a chalkboard.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Out in the lake some distance was anchored a
miniature sailing ship with a scurrying crew of mice. My heart was a very small
thing by this time, and it was carefully unloaded from the carriage, unwrapped, and packed in a nest
constructed of pine needles and birch bark. It was taken aboard the ship by a
contingent of mice in a rowboat. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
While the peacocks drowsed and pecked tentatively at the snow-covered earth,
the fox watched these proceedings from his perch on the carriage. Though he had
been trained to not eat the mice, he was
distracted by their presence all the same.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Once my heart was safely secured in the ship and
the crew members were back aboard, the
captain, a fat old mouse with long whiskers and a jaunty cap, gave the order to
set sail. The ship eased out into the darkness of the lake, rocking in the turbulent waves, its sails
providentially bowed by the stiff breeze that carried my heart north at a
steady clip.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Two days and two nights the tiny ship sailed. Just after sunset on the third day the ship
came within sight of an island rising out of the lake.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The island was shaped like a large puff pastry, and
was dense with sturdy pines, many of which had survived generations in that
inhospitable place. Jagged rocks were piled up all around the circumference of
the island, and the wind was driving
waves against these boulders, creating loud and frequently spectacular
explosions of cold water that rose high into the night sky and were scattered
like luminous fragments of colored glass.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The Captain gave the order for his crew to drop
anchor. My heart was once again loaded into a round tub of a rowboat and
lowered into the heaving water. A dozen of the stoutest crew members manned the
oars and wrestled the boat through the
waves. My heart, frozen and lacquered with ice, was now a surprisingly heavy
and awkward burden.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
A weathered dock jutted almost imperceptibly out
into the lake at the bottom of a trail that emerged from the trees. The mice
maneuvered their rowboat into a position
alongside this dock.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
A trio of young women came down the trail through
the woods, their way lit by a swaying lantern. No words were exchanged as my
heart was transferred from the rowboat
to a wheelbarrow. As the women began to push the wheelbarrow back up the trail,
the little boat was already straining back out into the mist of the lake. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The trail zigzagged through the trees, purposely
digressive and worn over centuries at sharp, almost forty-five degree angles
designed to ease the steep incline. The growth of old trees obscured the fact
that the island jutted out of the lake to such an extent that its exact center
was a strenuous climb from anywhere around the island's perimeter. The trees
also hid from view a large chalet-style cabin that had been constructed on a
stone foundation at the top of the island.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
A sort of tribe had occupied this cabin for many
generations. They were quiet, purposeful people, small of stature and somehow
not entirely human. Though possessed of keen senses, every member of this strange
tribe was mute. All of them, everyone that had ever occupied the island, was
descended (in a manner of speaking) from a man who had settled there long, long
ago, this after having traveled a great distance by boat, accompanied by three
giant mastiffs.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
This man had fancied himself an alchemist. Once
established on the island, however, all of his attempts at alchemy had been
failures. Undaunted, and gifted with a prodigious and magical imagination, he
had nonetheless succeeded in time in conjuring, out of the raw materials at
hand, companions for himself. In the laboratory where he had hoped to turn base materials into gold he had
learned instead to produce breathing beings. And having failed at alchemy in a
literal sense, this founder of the island became instead a recycler of human hearts. The generations that followed him learned this delicate craft as well. They were surgeons and they were
artisans.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The first heart had arrived on the island in the
middle of the 19th century, on a cool June night when the moon was full and the
sky was so clear that the moonlight had made
of the calm lake's surface a glimmering jewel box. The original heart made its
journey alone in a boat. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Perhaps its arrival in that place was purely
happenstance, and it is entirely
possible that had not the moon been so bright that night, the heart would have
drifted right past the island and continued on its solitary journey north. As
it was, though, the heart had glowed like a luminous garnet floating far out in
the lake, and some of the island's
residents had spied the mysterious object and rowed out to investigate. Puzzled and amazed
by their discovery, they had towed the boat ashore and lugged the heart up the
trail.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The founder had known immediately that what he was
looking at was a human heart, badly damaged if not entirely broken. Without
hesitation he had determined that they would repair this heart, and after much trial and error he and his assistants
succeeded in restoring it to perfect
working condition.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Having mastered the most difficult task of all, they
were faced with the question of what to do with the heart. For a time they kept
it in a jar in their laboratory, where it pumped and gurgled and provided
continual astonishment. The old alchemist was troubled by its presence, though;
he felt certain that the result of their hard work was destined to find its way
south, back to the human world, where he
knew good hearts were always in great demand. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Eventually, as is so often the case, birds provided
the solution. A charm of finches, which often spent summers on the island, had
established a sort of telepathic communication with some of the mute residents,
and when the finches flew south in advance of the first snow they carried with
them the story of the repaired human heart. In the land beyond the lake the word traveled through all
the animals of the forest, and finally was passed along to an ancient Guild of
heart deliverymen. Though the members of this Guild hated the designation, they
were, at least technically speaking, fairies.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The Potentate of the Guild of Heart Deliverers
worked closely with a network of animals and angels (this sort of thing, of
course, is always difficult to understand and explain), and had been providing heart transplants centuries
before human medical science had ever dreamed of such a thing. Before connecting
with the island laboratory, however, the guild had always had to work with
whatever raw materials (often damaged) they could get their hands on, even as
they were diligent in attempting, as often as possible, to replace bad hearts with hearts possessed of genuine
goodness.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Once a relationship --however unusual, mysterious,
and informal-- was established between
the Guild of Heart Deliverers and the old alchemist, hearts began to arrive at
the island on a regular, if unpredictable, basis. Some were transported by
geese; others, like my own, were ferried by boat. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
These days each of the hearts is boiled in a
mixture of fish oil, cedar berries, and quicksilver, jostled for days in a
contraption that resembles a giant rock
tumbler, and then outfitted with all new plumbing.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Twice a year --once in the early spring and again in December-- a flock of sub-angels arrives at the island.
These creatures are grimy and ungainly, seemingly part geese, part human. They
are, though, celestial beings, but crippled, still tormented by mortal dreams
and aspirations, and as the lowest order of angels they are assigned a majority
of the grunt work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The repaired hearts are fed to these angels, who
fly them back south and implant them in the chests of their intended recipients
as they sleep. Thanks to the timing of these excursions, increasing numbers of these implants coincide with the arrival of Christmas.</div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The ragged angels will be making another trek to the island in a few days. I'm holding out hope that I'll be one of the
truly rare and lucky recipients and will get my own heart back. Only bigger, I
hope, and better.</div>
Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-57694060581644633162018-02-08T15:22:00.000-06:002018-02-10T23:41:46.737-06:00I Thought About, Remembered, Recalled, And Wondered: A Tribal Inventory (Channeling Susan Polis Schutz)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I listened to your incredible music today.<br />
<br />
I read your lovely words.<br />
<br />
I looked with admiration at your photographs and paintings.<br />
<br />
I admired your talent.<br />
<br />
I admired your passion.<br />
<br />
I thought about how smart and funny you are.<br />
<br />
I thought about your intensity, and envied you the courage of your convictions.<br />
<br />
I remembered your beautiful smile and the sound of your splendid laugh.<br />
<br />
I thought of that long conversation we once had, and how alive it made me feel.<br />
<br />
I thought of all the times you've made me feel so alive, and how grateful I felt to be so alive.<br />
<br />
I remembered the lights of the carnival that we saw looming across the dark fields, and the fireflies we watched from the top of the hill, and the marvelous light of Paris in late spring, and that little Inn in the Muenster Valley with the cows in their stall directly beneath our room, and that mysterious island in the North Sea, and those quiet nights on the dock in Upstate New York, and the other nights we listened to music and danced, and all the other nights when we sat quietly and read.<br />
<br />
Sometimes we were a bunch, and it was magical, and other times there was just you and me, and that was also magical.<br />
<br />
I remembered all the times you showed up to help me move.<br />
<br />
I remembered when you called and offered me a job for which I was absolutely unqualified, and how grateful I still am for that.<br />
<br />
I remembered how much you taught me that has made my life possible.<br />
<br />
I remembered Vampire Mansion, and playing King of the Hill on the snow mounds, and wandering the fields outside your old family home.<br />
<br />
I remembered when I was fucked-up and broken and you sat on my bed and told me exactly the right thing to do.<br />
<br />
I remembered the times we huddled together for warmth and comfort as we watched someone we love die.<br />
<br />
I remembered all the times we walked together, following a dog.<br />
<br />
I remembered waiting anxiously for your children to be born, and how thrilled I was for you when you made some long journey to finally bring your babies home.<br />
<br />
I remembered how much you loved the river, that place up north, the River House, the camp in the Adirondacks, the Upper Peninsula, your old family home, New York, driving, Talking Heads, Halloween, Christmas, Shakespeare, Joy Division, old movies, your dog, your cat, owls, Joni Mitchell, chicken pot pies, baseball, boxing, boats, <i>The Little Prince</i>, the memory of dancing on your father's feet, the sound of your mother's voice, your brother who died too young, soul music, Jimmy Reed, Laura Ingalls Wilder, that stuffed rabbit, your collection of dog photographs, Johnny Cash, <i>Breakfast at Tiffany's, </i>being with your sister, hanging out with your old friends, building bonfires, Michael Jackson, coffee, complimentary soda water, Scrabble, sleeping in, truck stop breakfasts, <i>The New Yorker,</i> Randy Newman, crossword puzzles, the State Fair, all of your beloved rituals and routines.<br />
<br />
There were so many things you loved, and your love was contagious. I hope you still love those things, and haven't lost too much of what you love.<br />
<br />
I remembered that poem you read to me. All the poems you read to me.<br />
<br />
I remembered all the times you saved me from drowning.<br />
<br />
I remembered when we walked together on a beach in Florida at night and talked about the astronauts that had been blown out of the sky two days earlier.<br />
<br />
I remembered when we closed our eyes and made a wish.<br />
<br />
I remembered the night, somewhere in Canada, when we slept in the backseat of our station wagon in a car wash.<br />
<br />
I remembered how you refused to give up on a disposable razor, and had a drawer full of the damn things.<br />
<br />
I remembered that time you tried to learn magic, and the old magic store you once dragged me into in Geneva, New York.<br />
<br />
I remembered that time in your studio, when you shot photos of me fucking around, and how many costume changes I put you through, and how hard we laughed.<br />
<br />
I remembered that zine you used to publish, and the way you used to play a right-handed guitar left-handed.<br />
<br />
I remembered the times we hitchhiked across the country, and hopped trains, and the time we got so lost in the fog that we ended up pitching our tent in an old woman's backyard.<br />
<br />
I remembered the time a bunch of thugs were beating and kicking a man in the subway and you instinctively waded right into the fray, screaming profanities and throwing punches, and made them flee.<br />
<br />
I remembered how kind you were, and how you always made me feel interesting.<br />
<br />
I remembered reading the emails you sent me when I was a grown man running away from home, and how I sat alone in a public library somewhere in Canada and cried.<br />
<br />
I remembered how desperately I wanted to find you the perfect gift or to make you something beautiful.<br />
<br />
I remembered the time we tried to build a roller coaster in our backyard.<br />
<br />
I remembered the time we laughed our way through "2001: A Space Odyssey" and lobbed Sno-Caps at the screen until they kicked us out of the theater.<br />
<br />
I thought of you holding a blue-eyed dog in your arms on a muggy night in August and letting him go.<br />
<br />
I thought of the time in Ireland when the little boy on the train asked to see your muscles.<br />
<br />
I thought of that smashing green suit you bought at Reach Out on Lake Street, and how lovely you looked in it.<br />
<br />
I thought about all those days and nights we spent together in a van, all over the country, trying to find pictures, voices, and stories. I thought about how you came along and inspired me at a time when I assumed my days of inspiration were behind me.<br />
<br />
I thought of your chapped little feet, your adorable little voice, your easy affection, and your wild appreciation for the cartoons of Tex Avery.<br />
<br />
I thought about that time I was in a strange new house in a strange new town, alone with my sick dog in my arms, and how reassuring it was to have your words pop up --again and again-- on the screen of my cell phone.<br />
<br />
I thought about the way you did that little shuffle dance to Low's "Just Like Christmas," and the way we sang along at the top of our lungs to The New Christy Minstrels while driving on Christmas morning.<br />
<br />
I thought about all those mornings I struggled to get you out of bed, to get you to go to school, and how proud I was to see you graduate, and how proud I am to see you now discovering what an amazing person you are and what an amazing thing this world can be.<br />
<br />
I thought about the life you have in front of you, and how marvelous I expect it to be, and how I can't wait to see all the ways you surprise me.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the times I've seen you scrutinize yourself in a mirror, comparing yourself to some impossible ideal, and I hope you will one day realize how beautiful you are.<br />
<br />
I thought about the time the police surrounded us, guns drawn, as I was trying to teach you to parallel park.<br />
<br />
I thought about how thrilled I was to see your band play for the first time.<br />
<br />
I thought about the time, in a torrential autumn rain, that we buried your beloved dog.<br />
<br />
I thought about how much we've come to resemble each other, and how much I wish I could sing like you.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the fireworks we've seen.<br />
<br />
I thought about the time you showed up to play softball with a glove held together with guitar strings.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the times I kicked your ass in Wiffleball.<br />
<br />
I thought about our last trip to old Yankee Stadium.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the baseball games we've seen together.<br />
<br />
I thought about your nightly text messages and how much they mean to me.<br />
<br />
I thought about that backyard talent show that now seems so long ago.<br />
<br />
I thought of you preparing to move into your first home.<br />
<br />
I thought about that time at Columbine High School, when we stood there in the eerie silence and cried in each other's arms.<br />
<br />
I thought of you in Mexico, and you in Poland, and you in Sweden, and I tried to imagine your life there.<br />
<br />
I thought of you on a plane to Japan, to China, to Argentina, to Europe, and I tracked the progress of every one of your flights on my computer screen, and thought about you alone in a hotel room somewhere across the world, and I hoped you knew how much I missed you.<br />
<br />
I thought about how thrilled I am to have your art hanging on my walls, and hoped all sorts of other people would buy your art to hang on their own walls and would love it as much as I do.<br />
<br />
I thought about the homemade chocolates you deliver to my door every Christmas, and your splendid company, and the dozens of acts of kindness --small and large-- you have shown me.<br />
<br />
I thought of the time we played ball in the park with your son, and how it filled me with both joy and a weird sadness. I thought about the obvious love that existed between you and your boy, and the way he looked at you exactly the way I remember looking at my own father, and the way you looked at him exactly the way I remember my father looking at me.<br />
<br />
I thought about how happy I was to have found you again, and all those times when we were young and you introduced me to so many of the things that blew my life wide open.<br />
<br />
I thought of that huge old boat you used to have, the one with the greenhouse on the upper deck, and I thought of your orchids and the incomparable days at the camp in the Adirondacks and your sketchbooks and your love of gardening and your impossibly beautiful garden in Michigan and that stunningly comfortable house on the St. Joseph River and that magical place in Montana.<br />
<br />
I thought of the time you gave me a souvenir from the 1965 World Series that had belonged to your father.<br />
<br />
I thought about how wrong it is that you are in prison, and hoped that you are holding up all right and know how often I do think about you.<br />
<br />
I remembered the joy of going to see your play performed for the first time.<br />
<br />
I remembered the time I bailed you out of jail, and the time you drove 200 miles to visit me in treatment, and the time you banged on my doors and windows and stood on my doorstep and yelled, "Look, take your goddamn time, but just know that I'm going to wait you out and I'm not going anywhere until you let me in."<br />
<br />
I remembered letting you in, and being glad that I did.<br />
<br />
I thought about all those weird and wonderful CD mixes you sent me, and the annual Christmas cards that continue to come without fail.<br />
<br />
I thought about our lunches and dinners at the Band Box and Bob's and Archie's and Steve's, and at all those drive-ins on the road; I thought about all that barbecue in Memphis, and the drunk Hibachi chef, and all the times we ate steak on my birthday or had backyard barbecues.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the times you cut my hair, and how happy I always was to be with you and just listen to you talk.<br />
<br />
I thought about how happy I was to see you at Palmer's that night, and at the Turf Club, or walking around Lake Harriet.<br />
<br />
I thought about you in those hospital rooms, alone at night and staring at the ceiling, and I hoped you would always remember that you are one of my heroes, and that you knew how desperately I wished I could drive across town with an ice-cold Bubble Up, load you in the car, and finally bring you home.<br />
<br />
I thought about how envious I am of your adventures and how so many of my own adventures would not have been possible if you hadn't taken me in.<br />
<br />
I thought about the thing we used to do where we'd pretend we were The Hold Steady performing the essays of Terry Tempest Williams. I remembered watching you pull an Edward Gorey book down from a high shelf in some bookstore, and experiencing a moment of painful deja vu.<br />
<br />
I thought about driving around in the Panhandle poking around in fish camps, and eating oysters and talking fishing with some of the locals. I remembered you playing "Lola" on a guitar in a music store in St. Joe's. I remember staying up late and talking.<br />
<br />
I thought about all the times we talked on the phone until my battery died.<br />
<br />
I thought about all those old photographs, and how it mostly doesn't hurt to look at them anymore.<br />
<br />
I remembered that wondrous little felt donkey you made me, and how you stitched into it the words, "Steadfast and True."<br />
<br />
I remembered walking around in an abandoned amusement park in the middle of the summer and watching a herd of reindeer disappear into the woods.<br />
<br />
I remembered your red door and your shiny black shoes and your neighbor's addiction to the FryBaby.<br />
<br />
I remembered the Wish Book, and how desperately I wished for those things.<br />
<br />
I remembered when I first heard Van Morrison in your bedroom.<br />
<br />
I remembered the letters you used to send me, and the notes you used to leave me.<br />
<br />
I remembered when you time and again pointed out things I wouldn't otherwise have noticed.<br />
<br />
I remembered when we had that big dream, and tried to make it real, and failed.<br />
<br />
I remembered how much you loved "Moon River" and "Hey Ya" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."<br />
<br />
I remembered the stories we used to tell each other about the way we thought the world would be.<br />
<br />
I thought about you.<br />
<br />
I thought about what you might be up to now.<br />
<br />
I remembered that one time, and another one after that, and another one, and there wasn't anything sad about any of it. It all seemed rare and precious and miraculous, and barely real, or at least not real in the terrifying way this world so often feels real.<br />
<br />
And so I did something I don't often do: I thought about how lucky I am. I thought about how grateful I am to have found you in this crowded, impossible world, and how I hope none of us is done yet and there will still be more and that I'll take you with me when I go.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-87423718450711889312017-12-24T11:14:00.001-06:002018-12-21T00:14:43.184-06:00The Bells<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgANSTZ8Fp1-oleLrUVfzCbTp3O0aIZM5S1J-9WAggu2FjR-tZQKL51zRLJ7bQwt0sMm8rvTqH0GRd0T-AWO0hbmeSy0WC_3kGerLAvi9z7tVuaWNhFYygJsFgEe8ZcFx4tp7PCrozk8EI5/s1600/christmasgreetings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="350" height="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgANSTZ8Fp1-oleLrUVfzCbTp3O0aIZM5S1J-9WAggu2FjR-tZQKL51zRLJ7bQwt0sMm8rvTqH0GRd0T-AWO0hbmeSy0WC_3kGerLAvi9z7tVuaWNhFYygJsFgEe8ZcFx4tp7PCrozk8EI5/s400/christmasgreetings.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Long after he had ceased to remember many things, the old man remembered being a boy, and had vivid memories of Christmases from his childhood, of candlelight and snow and a Christmas tree he chopped down with his father in the woods and decorated with his mother. All of the ornaments were things he and his mother had found in the world around them --bird's nests, feathers, pine cones, and stringers of dried berries-- or made out of paper and scraps of cloth.<br />
<br />
He could not remember the faces of either of his parents, nor the sound of their laughter, but he nonetheless remembered that there had been much laughter, and many stories, especially at Christmas time, and he knew that he had loved his parents, and that they had loved and cared for him until they were taken from him by soldiers. And he remembered the beloved dog who had helped him escape from the soldiers and whatever fate had befallen his parents.<br />
<br />
Strangely, perhaps, he remembered everything about that beloved dog, who had been his constant companion through the many difficult years when he had been lost and constantly moving through a world that seemed so dark and filled with so much menace. He remembered the dog's soulful brown eyes, and the way it constantly connected to and communicated with him through those eyes. He remembered countless times when he had awakened from a nightmare and found the dog pressed against his body and studying him with a combination of concern and adoration. He remembered the dog's exquisite and unique smell --a combination of old leather, wood smoke, and something sweet he couldn't put his finger on. He remembered the comforting sound of the dog's breathing at night, and the way his chest rose and fell (a chest on which the figure of a white dove in flight was outlined against a background of black fur).<br />
<br />
And mostly he remembered a Christmas Eve long, long ago, when he and the dog had sought refuge in the shell-torn church of a village that had been recently devastated by the conflict. There in that church their solitude had been interrupted by the arrival of soldiers, and he and the dog had found themselves climbing a seemingly endless and labyrinthine staircase that led them up into the bell tower. The higher they climbed the more dark and narrow became the passage through which the stairs ascended. Eventually they had emerged into the belfry, which was surprisingly capacious and had open portals on all sides. Since there was no further they could climb, they paused there in that cold, dark place and listened.<br />
<br />
The soldiers, it seemed, had been unaware of their presence or had chosen not to pursue them. Who were they, after all, but a boy and his dog?<br />
<br />
Then, as the boy and his dog huddled together on the top step, fearful, and the boy took the dog into his arms for comfort and warmth, the big bell creaked for a moment and then, very slowly, began to sway. And then its sound --deafening in such close quarters-- started to ring out over the village below. The boy pulled himself up to the ledge of one of the portals, from which he could see out across the entire village, crouched there in darkness. The boy knew there were people in the dark houses below, for he had seen them earlier in the day, scurrying furtively around to the few remaining shops that were still open for business. Some of these people were carrying geese, or crocks containing some scarce commodity, or huge loaves of bread. He'd even encountered boys not much younger than himself, dragging Christmas trees through the snowy streets.<br />
<br />
As the bell continued to sway and ring out over the dark little town, the boy was seized with wonder. Soldiers or no soldiers, that village, which had known so much recent distress and sorrow, was poised in the cold and the darkness, its remaining residents preparing for the momentary peace of Christmas, the merciful hush that would settle over the place after the bell had rocked back into silence.<br />
<br />
When the bell did finally stop swaying and ringing out, the distant voices of the soldiers had carried up that long staircase to the boy and his dog, and it dawned on the boy that it had, in fact, been the soldiers ringing the bell. After several moments of silence, during which the boy assumed the soldiers had departed the church, the men began to sing a beautiful and mournful song that the boy recognized from a Christmas past.<br />
<br />
The boy and his dog sat there listening for quite some time, until they finally heard the voices of the soldiers, subdued now, moving once again out into the streets of the village. After what seemed a safe interval, the boy and the dog crept back down the stairs, moving together slowly in the darkness, and emerged into the empty church to discover hundreds of burning candles fluttering in the drafty sanctuary.<br />
<br />
That night they returned to their hiding place in the woods outside the village, and the next day they began to travel further and further into the forest. The old man could not remember how many days they had traveled, but they had pressed on, becoming more and more lost, until the day they discovered the hut in which the old man still lived. It just appeared to them one day, as if it had grown up out of the ground or been built by prehistoric birds.<br />
<br />
The boy had left home with a pack stuffed with seeds and potatoes and corn --the bag had been packed by his mother before she was taken away-- and, together with these provisions, the hut and the woods around it and the nearby streams provided almost everything the boy and his dog needed to survive. From the time he was a little boy, the man had been at home in the woods, and over the years he had become an expert hunter, fisherman, and trapper of game. From both his parents he had learned to forage and cultivate a garden.<br />
<br />
The boy --who eventually became a young man-- and his dog were together every moment of every day, slept curled up together, woke together each morning, and wandered the woods from sun up to sun down. And each night they sat up together talking and remembering their long-ago life in a world filled with soldiers, darkness, and fear. The young man would often recount the story his mother had told him shortly before she and his father were stolen from him.<br />
<br />
"There are flocks of angels in the mountains," his mother had said. "They live in the high places with the wild creatures, but in times of trouble they come down into the valleys and wander out into the world to lead those in peril to safety."<br />
<br />
The boy had asked about all those of their acquaintance who had not been saved by the angels.<br />
<br />
"They cannot save everyone," his mother said. "They have limited numbers and limited powers. These are angels who have not yet crossed over, not yet traveled beyond the mountains, but their job is to do what they can. And if you are ever in danger, my boy, you must be vigilant; they will come for you and guide you to a safe place. You must go where you are bidden."<br />
<br />
They boy asked about his dog.<br />
<br />
"He works with the angels," his mother said.<br />
<br />
It didn't take the boy long to recognize his hut as the architecture of the angels. It resembled in no way any human habitation he had ever known, and from the moment he discovered it he had had the certain sense that it had never been occupied by another human being. Though it was humbly furnished, everything in it served some utilitarian purpose and showed no signs of ever having been used or even touched by human hands. The iron stove had never known a fire until the day the boy and his dog took possession of the hut. And though he and his dog rambled great distances in every direction, they had never encountered another person, had seen no footprints or signs of human presence or habitation.<br />
<br />
Though the man often had the sense that he was living on another planet, he did not feel lonely.<br />
<br />
The years in the hut went by so quickly, and the boy who had found refuge there grew into a man. Dogs, of course, grow old much faster than humans, and there came a time when the man was still young when the dog could no longer keep up with him on his long rambles through the woods, and often --and more and more frequently-- would stay in the hut, sleeping, as the man went about his daily routines. One day the dog could no longer get up from the floor without the man's assistance, and the man would carry him in and out of the hut and set him down in a clearing in the woods; from there the dog would wobble around in increasingly diminished orbits, and doze off in the garden while the man tended his plants or chopped wood.<br />
<br />
It seemed to the man that the dog had been his constant companion for as long as he could remember. He couldn't say with any certainty how old the dog was, or even how old <i>he </i>was; he had never bothered to keep any sort of calendar and had lost track of time there in the woods. It had never occurred to him that he might one day lose his beloved dog, and even as he watched the dog's slow but resolute decline he was incapable of imagining a day when his dog would die and leave him truly alone in the woods. Finally, though, there came a day when the dog would no longer eat, and then refused water, and at night the man would sleep on the floor with the dog held tightly in his arms, and he would listen with growing terror to the dog's labored breathing.<br />
<br />
Then one night the man had a vivid dream: He and the dog were once again climbing the stairs to the belfry, moving through darkness toward a flood of light high above them. When at last they reached the bell tower they encountered another staircase, even more narrow, that ascended still higher. They had sat there for several moments, looking into each other's eyes as they had on so many previous occasions, and then the man had buried his head in the dog's neck and said to him, "Go on now." And the dog had turned and headed up the stairs alone.<br />
<br />
When the man woke up from this dream the dog was lifeless in his arms. He who had not cried since he was a little boy found himself crying almost without cessation for days and weeks and months. He cried as he buried the dog alongside the wild rose bushes that surrounded his garden. The man was inconsolable, and as there was now no one to console him or to share in his grief, he felt very lonely. He had grown so accustomed to talking with the dog, all day and into the night, and almost overnight he lost his voice.<br />
<br />
The man barely ate, and would wake up in the night, calling out for the dog. Many times a day he would be convinced the dog was still there with him, sleeping nearby or following him on his rambles through the woods. Wherever his dog had gone he longed to follow him, to follow him once again to some safe place beyond his suffering and loneliness.<br />
<br />
Somehow, though, the man remained there in that place through the changing of the seasons. In time his grief settled in him as a persistent and nagging sadness. He grew old, and often thought of his mother's story of the mountain angels. For this, he thought, I have been saved? For a life of loneliness and grief? It would have been better if he and his dog had been taken by the soldiers that night in the belfry. He felt he had been forsaken, and alternately cursed and implored the sky, the clouds, the trees, the earth in which his dog was buried. He frequently thought about striking out into the woods in search of the world he had left behind. Perhaps in his absence some peace had been made, or found. He could not, though, bear the thought of leaving his dog behind there in that lonely place, and so he remained.<br />
<br />
One day the man found himself studying his reflection in the still surface of a little pond in the woods. It was perhaps a distorted or unreliable version of his face, but it was also clear enough to alarm him. He looked so old, so gaunt, so sad. He tried to remember the last conversation he had had with an actual human being, and was saddened to realize that he had no such recollection, however vague. He began to talk to himself, to try to regain his voice in the hope that someone, somewhere, might hear him, might be listening.<br />
<br />
Around this same time he started to have what he felt certain were hallucinations, or dreams that were carrying over into his waking days. One night he stepped out of the hut and was startled to see what appeared to be nests, immense constructions high up in the skeletal branches of the trees and pulsing with bright blue light. It was winter, and the sky had been dark and moonless, and from these luminous nests there seemed to emanate a sound like the shimmering of hundreds of sleigh bells, a sound that filled the woods all around him. In the morning all was once again silent, and the nests looked liked nothing more than towering structures of sticks and leaves. At night, though, and for many nights, the blue lights in the trees and the shivering of the bells returned.<br />
<br />
The man began to have the unshakable sense that there were other presences out there in the woods with him. Perhaps, he thought, his dog had sent the angels back to fetch him. For the first time in many, many years he felt the fog of his grief lifting.<br />
<br />
One day early in the winter he awakened from a peaceful sleep and had gone out to gather wood for his fire when he was startled to see a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. He dropped the wood and stood there for several moments, staring at the band and puzzling over it with his fingers. It was the shiniest ring he'd ever seen, and was so firmly and snugly set upon his finger that he discovered he could not remove it. For much of the day he studied the ring and fiddled with it and wondered about it. He sat up late into the night by the fire, listening to the chirping of the bells and gazing at the band on his finger, which was of such bright and burnished gold that it captured flickering firelight and often seemed to be burning.<br />
<br />
By the time he went to bed that night he was convinced that as he had slept the previous evening he had been espoused to a spirit. And with that queer conviction came a sense of almost overwhelming happiness.<br />
<br />
Each successive year following this nuptial visitation, around the same time, the old man would wake to discover that some new and increasingly extravagant gift had appeared as he had slept. One year he woke to find a piano in his hut. With this mysterious gift he also received the ability to play the piano as if he had been studying the instrument all his life. This last gift was a source of comfort to him, and he often sat up late into the night playing beautiful songs that seemed to flow directly from his fingers to the keys of the piano.<br />
<br />
Another year, very near the end of the old man's story, a boy and his father who were traveling through the woods had gotten lost in the swirling snow and darkness. The man and the boy were poor and were fleeing a cholera outbreak in the north that had claimed the boy's mother. The man hoped to return to the village where he had spent his childhood before being swept north with a wave of soldiers. He had not been back to the village in almost two decades, but an old woodsman and trapper who had outfitted him with a sleigh and two old, sturdy horses, had drawn him an elaborate map. Once safely through the northern woods, the trapper had said, they would find a river that would be frozen at that time of year; if they followed the course of the river as it meandered south it would eventually deliver them to a clearing that was just east of the village that was their destination.<br />
<br />
If things went well, the boy and his father were to travel through the woods for five days, and arrive at the river early on the evening of the fifth day. Things had not, however, gone well for the boy and his father. The snow in the woods was deep, and the way through often seemed impenetrable. There were frequent obstacles that slowed their progress and often stopped them in their tracks. The father had to keep struggling through the snow to clear fallen timber and brush, and when this proved impossible they had to make long and awkward retreats and detours.<br />
<br />
At some point the moon was blown over with clouds, the temperature plummeted, and the wind began to blow. The man could not keep his lantern lit, and the struggle to do so became an obsessive battle. Both he and his son were bundled in blankets and furs, but they were very cold. The sleigh provided no refuge from the wind, and the churning legs of the horses kicked up a constant swirling curtain of snow that enveloped the sleigh and kept the boy and his father pinned down in a blizzard from which they could not escape. The man would pull up for a few hours each night in some place that offered modest refuge from the wind, and he and the boy would curl up beneath their furs and blankets and struggle to find warmth and sleep.<br />
<br />
Even during the hours after daybreak there was very little true light, and they kept plodding --more slowly, it seemed, all the time-- into the permanent murk of the woods. Things grew more dire by the hour, and the father was becoming convinced that they were lost. For longer stretches every day he had to wade through the deep and drifted snow, coaxing the horses along, tugging at their frozen harnesses, and navigating around ever more impossible obstacles. The boy was silent and shivering in his blankets, and there was now a fine coating of ice on his eyebrows, lashes, and even on the downy hair above his lip.<br />
<br />
One evening in a mercifully sheltered clearing the man paused, thinking he might try to build a fire, and as he disembarked from the sleigh he was suddenly aware that the wind had abated; a hush had settled over the woods, the blowing snow was clearing at last, and as the man stood there he spied what he thought was a light a short distance ahead through the trees. He coaxed the horses along until he was close enough to confirm that what he was seeing was indeed a light in the window of a small, strange cottage, with smoke rising from its chimney into the cold night air. The man climbed back up next to his son, tapped the boy on the shoulder, and soundlessly pointed to the light through the trees. The boy leaned forward in his seat and stared at this unexpected vision. Steam billowed from the resting horses and the woods were eerily silent. The man listened into the silence and thought that he heard the sound of a piano, but the sound ceased before he could truly discern what it was he was hearing.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the old man in the hut lifted his head from his piano, his long and crooked fingers poised above the keyboard, and listened intently into the night. He was prepared to swear that he had heard sleighbells in the woods outside his window. This was somehow yet unmistakably different from the old persistent shimmer of bells that had now and again filled his woods whenever the luminous blue nests would make their appearance. This was the clear and isolated shaking of sleighbells, a sound he had not heard since he was a boy. <i>Humans</i>, he thought, and then: <i>Soldiers</i>. He had been hunted down at last. He was now too old for any of the true terror of his younger days, but he was nonetheless afraid. He listened more closely and heard the sleighbells again, a few seconds of emphatic shaking and then silence. He sat there at the piano and heard footsteps approaching through the snow. He heard the snapping of brush that sounded like gunshots after so many years of silence in those woods.<br />
<br />
And then he heard a child's voice just outside his window: "Father, I'm afraid," the little voice said, and this declaration was followed by one tentative knock on the door. The old man got up from the piano stool, moved across the room, and opened the door to find a man and a boy standing there, looking for all the world like frozen ghosts.<br />
<br />
"I apologize," the man said. "My boy and I are lost, I'm afraid, and we are close to freezing to death. We would be grateful for an opportunity to warm ourselves by your fire before continuing on our journey."<br />
<br />
"You are lost?" the old man said.<br />
<br />
"Yes," the father said. "We seem to have lost our way in the blizzard."<br />
<br />
"I was myself lost in these woods once upon a time," the old man said, "and I stumbled across this hut just as you have. It was my refuge then, and I would be happy if it could be yours now. You are welcome here, and I will treat you as my honored guests."<br />
<br />
The old man settled the boy and his father on stools near the stove, and fetched quilts and blankets from the trunk that had been magically replenished annually for many years. He hung their clothes to dry by the fire, and retrieved their frozen packs from the sleigh. He led the horses into a sheltered area near the hut and gave them food and water. In a small cold cellar he had dug off the back of the hut the old man had more food than he would ever eat --dried and smoked fish, wild boar, all manner of fowl from the neighboring woods, roots and herbs and berries, mushrooms, truffles, and various potatoes and vegetables he had grown in his garden from his mother's seeds. He had always eaten well, and was blessed with plentiful fresh water all around him. And now the old man was pleased to be able to provide a feast for his visitors.<br />
<br />
They sat up late that night eating and talking about the journeys they had all undertaken and the sorrow they had known. The old man was surprised to learn that the village to which they were destined was a place familiar to him, and very near the village where he and his dog had had that long-ago experience on Christmas Eve. As he studied the map the trapper had provided he recognized many of the landmarks, and realized that he was not more than two day's journey from the place he had started out from so long ago. All of the streams around his hut flowed into the river that skirted the village in question. He was surprised that no one had crossed his path in all those years in the woods, but was exceedingly delighted to have these visitors now.<br />
<br />
The boy couldn't take his eyes off the old man; with his long hair and beard and fierce and lively eyes, the old man reminded him of the pictures in his mother's Bible. And the old man was enchanted in turn by the boy, who reminded him of himself at a similar age.<br />
<br />
That night, as the boy and his father drifted off to sleep in the bed that had been prepared for them on the floor, the old man played quiet songs on the piano and thought of his beloved dog and the dream of their last parting in the belfry.<br />
<br />
The next day the old man packed the sleigh with provisions, drew a clear shortcut to the river on the trapper's map, and while the father went out to prepare the sleigh for departure he sat down in the hut with the boy and told him the story of the mountain angels. And then he stood in the clearing outside the hut and waved to them as they headed back out on their journey.<br />
<br />
That night the woods outside were roaring with the bells --the old man had never heard them so loud-- and the pulsing lights from the nests were so bright that they illuminated the inside of the hut as the old man drifted off to sleep and slipped away at last --quietly, peacefully, purposefully-- to follow his dog one more time.<br />
<br />
Early the next morning as the sun came up, the father paused the sleigh at a bend in the river, from which they could see the spire of the village church in the distance. As the father let out a whoop of happiness and urged the horses on, the boy was puzzling over a mysterious string he suddenly discovered tied around his neck and disappearing down into his many layers of clothing. His father clapped and cried out to the horses, and the boy slowly coaxed the string out of hiding and found himself gazing with wonder at a radiant gold band that now rested in the palm of his hand.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-40755766045560602132017-11-21T22:03:00.000-06:002017-11-22T09:31:05.345-06:00Thank You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Through most of my toughest times I've managed to drill through the darkness at the bottom of the day by making additions to an inventory of gratitude that I've been working on for more than 20 years. The giving of thanks is a habit like any other, a discipline that has to be cultivated, especially in a world where there's so much pressing preoccupation and suffering that gratitude can feel like an indulgence, or just another reminder of our often appalling privilege.<br />
<br />
I believe in the old Christian notion of Grace; very few of us have done anything sufficiently virtuous to deserve what --at the risk of being perceived as quaint or even daft--I'll go ahead and call our "blessings."<br />
<br />
There's a lottery aspect to this concept of grace that <i>should </i>be discomfiting to those of us who have things that so many other people in this world don't have, or have had stripped away by tragic and calamitous circumstances. There are perhaps others in this world who might be given a pass on gratitude. Much of the time, though, I can recognize that I'm surely not one of them.<br />
<br />
Like so many others, though, I have too often been guilty of the most petulant sort of ingratitude. Being ungrateful is an easy and knee-jerk thing, but how hard, really, is gratitude? How hard is it to sit down and make an inventory of all the things for which you should be grateful? Any of us --or most of us-- should be able to do this. Anyone, at least, who still has dreams and memories, however inchoate or bittersweet, swirling around in their skull, or anyone whose heart can still be stirred by music, art, or beauty; anyone whose heart can still kneel in the presence of suffering or sadness or grief; all of us, honestly, who have received so much more than we have given.<br />
<br />
Our responsibility as members of a family or a community, however large or small, however (these days) ersatz and virtual, is to share in each other's happiness and sorrow; to pick each other up when we fall, lift each other's spirits, carry each other when we're too sick, tired, or broken to go on, and to allow ourselves to be swept along when we're seized by joy.<br />
<br />
I depend on these things more than ever now that I feel so often stalled and thwarted in the backstretch of my middle years. Lately I have been spending too much time contemplating a Stanley Kunitz poem called "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54897/the-layers" target="_blank">The Layers.</a>" The question Kunitz poses in that poem is a tough one: "How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?" And his answer, I think, is that he --and we-- have to learn to turn, to go on, and to exult, to embrace life as a "book of transformations." Like Kunitz, I have "made myself a tribe of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered."<br />
<br />
My own tribe is truly scattered, fragmented, fractured; the only place I thought of as home for my first 50 years is gone now, and in the last year I have lost people --and a beloved dog-- I regarded (rightfully) as essential. Such losses, coupled with the daily poison that now masquerades as current events, inspired a good deal of glum rumination, but gratitude is a stubborn thing, a light --sometimes barely a glimmer-- that can penetrate even the most intractable darkness. And the older I get the more determined I am to honor and acknowledge all the light that manages to find me, or to go looking for it when necessary. I know how easily people can be crushed in this world. I know how painful it can feel to be here. But I also know that no one can survive for long on a steady diet of despair. You don't have to look very hard or very far to find examples of how tough and resilient humans can be. Most of us don't have to look beyond our own lives and the lives of our families and friends.<br />
<br />
Our suffering is something we have in common with the hundreds of millions of other people who've survived --and often triumphed over-- adversity, disappointment, and all manner of betrayals and loss. I like to believe that most of us are at least as sturdy as those people were and are, and that like them we can continue to press on by holding tight to our oldest and fiercest dreams and ideals, and by taking every opportunity to give thanks: For the passions that have shaped and sustained us, and for the people with whom we share those passions; for the blessings of our bodies; for the resilient miracles of nature; for every opportunity of communal ecstasy and grief; for the dizzying marvel that is the average American grocery store; for the idiot wonder inspired by a phonograph record, a baby, a giraffe, a magnificent musician or athlete, or even an iPhone.<br />
<br />
Sometimes this world feels like a foundering lifeboat, but in our more lucid moments we can recognize that it's crowded with all sorts of other thoroughly decent people who are doing everything in their power to keep it afloat.<br />
<br />
Thoughts and prayers --particularly when ceaselessly uttered by hypocritical parrots and politicians-- are much maligned these days, but "Thank you" strikes me as the purest and most simple sort of thought or prayer, whether offered to a particular person or as a hosanna to the majesty, mystery, and magic of life. Those simple words --"Thank you," much like the other simple words to which they are cognate: "I love you" and "I'm sorry"-- don't absolve anyone of anything or preclude a responsibility to act, but they nonetheless have a remarkable power to extinguish burning bridges and assuage hurt and perceived insignificance. They're part of the connective tissue that makes us human.<br />
<br />
We should all find more time --and more ways-- to say thank you, and to take stock of our gratitude. The United States is one of a small number of countries in the world that sets aside a day for its citizens to give thanks, but the pure and simple fundamentals of the occasion are too often eclipsed by precisely the too-muchness for which we're supposed to be giving thanks.<br />
<br />
Go ahead and eat too much. Let yourself go. Get drunk and argue about politics. But also try to take at least a few moments to look around, to appreciate and toast your friends and family and your ability to dance and laugh and care, and all the other things, whether frivolous or irreplaceable, that you've been given. And say thank you. Thanks a million. Thanks so fucking much. For all of it. For everyone you love, everyone you've loved and lost, and for all the other essential things that remain, and endure.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-32743122409280698662017-04-27T23:55:00.000-05:002019-03-03T15:19:49.015-06:00Wendell Dean Zellar: February 15, 2007-April 27, 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is a devastation beyond words, and I am utterly shattered, but words are the only way I know how to try to make sense of this senseless world, and to sing hosannas to the increasingly few precious people and things that make my life worth living at all.<br />
<br />
I have lost Wendell, we have lost Wendell --my lifeline and lamp through some of the darkest and brightest days of my life-- and I am contending with a loud, polyphonic chorus of howling pain and anger.<br />
<br />
We were awakened by Wen at 5:30 this morning, just as he was slipping into a seizure. He has been epileptic since he came into my life, and we'd grown accustomed to these terrifying episodes, and also thought that we'd become more adept at managing them. This time, though, there was no bringing him back, and he suffered a series of cluster seizures that were unrelenting. Just as one would abate, another, more violent one would come rolling in. After a nearly two-hour ordeal I held him in my arms, talked him through a desperate and improvised series of Last Rites, and told him he had my permission to let go. At which point his eyes finally swam back into focus, and we looked into each other's brown eyes for the last time in this world, he let out a long sigh, relaxed in my arms, and left us alone with this terrible desolation.<br />
<br />
Wendell did not die easily or peacefully, and I know I will be replaying that trauma in my head for weeks, and months, and years to come, trying to convince myself that in those last moments he knew that Kate and I were there, he was home, and that he had been granted in that last instant some measure of recognition and peace.<br />
<br />
I have never in my life had a more purely symbiotic relationship with another being, never felt such a visceral two-way current of connection, trust, and adoration. Wendell was a special-needs dog --epileptic, surrendered twice in seven months, with a rap as loud, destructive, an escape artist; he had parasites and a mouth full of broken teeth. He was, though, my dog from the first time I met him. I was a special-needs man, and we were on the same wavelength right from the beginning. Nothing in his rap sheet ended up having even a shred of validity, and for the first six years of our life together he was, quite literally, my everything. He got me up, dressed, and out of the house. He listened with not just patience but seemingly genuine interest --or at least curiosity-- to my long, lonely, and often incomprehensible monologues.<br />
<br />
He loved almost everyone who came into my life. If he wasn't wild about someone I quickly learned that his criteria for withholding were rock solid, and his instincts were to be trusted. Since I was a boy I have always regarded dogs as my most trusted and loyal companions and confidantes, and as the years have gone by I have chosen my friends almost exclusively based on those qualities, even as trust and loyalty have become harder and harder to come by in human relationships. I have, I know, often failed at being a good friend and a good human being, but I believe I am a good dog. If you are my friend I am fiercely loyal in a strictly dog way: You can take me for granted; I will not forsake you; I will always be tail-wagging happy to see you even if our paths in the real world seldom cross, and there is nothing I would not do for you. I adore and admire my friends, and I am perpetually grateful to have found a reasonably reliable pack of kindred people --dog humans-- in this world of so many broken solitaries.<br />
<br />
Wendell --and his beloved predecessor, Willis-- made being a dog seem effortless, an easy privilege touched by unlimited grace and a boundless capacity for joy. It is not, alas, easy for a man to be a dog, but I have learned from the best, and my failures are entirely of my own doing, and they are many. Perhaps the only thing I can say with unqualified confidence is that I have been a devoted and unfailing father of dogs. I never had children --a blunt sadness in my middle years-- but I have a fierce and devoted love for the children who have come into my life --my nieces, nephews, stepchildren, and the children of friends-- and I have also always treated my dogs as full members of my family. I have belonged to them, and have tried to raise them to be good citizens and gentle and joyful souls.<br />
<br />
Time and again they have shepherded me, and goaded me to be a better man, and a better dog, to measure up to their impossibly high standards. Wendell's joy was fierce, and it was contagious, but it was also gentle. And his capacity for serenity and affection were exemplary. Right now, I would give everything I have to watch him sleeping beside my wife.<br />
<br />
I believe I gave Wendell a good life. In our early years together we traveled all over the U.S. and across Canada. He traveled like a Zen master, uncomplaining, clear-eyed, and always eager for the next experience. We visited 35 States and four Canadian provinces, survived a roll-over in Ontario, and he seemed to enjoy every minute he spent with me in cars, tents, cabins, and motels. In the past few years he has settled into our home in St. Paul with a contentment that blew my heart wide open and also --and finally-- allowed me to learn to feel at home. He loved being part of a family, thrived on the constant activity and attention, and was touchingly and zealously devoted to Kate, and loved as well the kids and Boris (the cat), toward whom he maintained a deferential and almost courtly respect.<br />
<br />
And still he was my boy, and every morning I sang the same song to him to greet the day, and every night before bed we shared our sacred ritual of The Sweet Dreamers, an elaborate and rambling inventory of all of our shared blessings, and everyone --dogs, cats, humans, many no longer with us-- who was such a special part of our lives together. We talked about all the lost, lonely, sick, and neglected animals, and prayed to the God of Sweet Dreamers that they would find loving and happy homes. This ritual --equal parts prayer, poem, and batshit meditation-- could last anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour, and every single night Wendell listened patiently, without squirming, to every word.<br />
<br />
I would begin and end every day with the same wish/prayer: That I would be worthy of and honor the tremendous blessing and responsibility that was Wendell. I can say now, with a shattered heart and from a place of profound lostness shrouded in a fog so impenetrable that I am writing these words on auto-pilot and through waves of wrenching grief, that I have held up my end of that deal to the absolute best of my abilities, and to an extent that has often transcended my abilities. And I know that Wendell held up his end of the deal, and then some.<br />
<br />
I know that every genuine dog-human relationship is a sacred and mysterious thing, but I have been blessed with a series of dogs who seemed divinely-tailored to where I was in my life and what I desperately needed at that time. They have all, I'm sure, shaped themselves to my personality and needs, yet the truly amazing thing about my relationship with Wendell was that our lives collided at a time of maximum crisis, when each of us was in urgent need of a lifesaving connection. We found each other, and that impossible convergence of need, timing, and good fortune is and always will be all the evidence I require to believe in the miraculous.<br />
<br />
Wendell, I know these words are inadequate. I'm so exhausted and broken, but I want to keep going until I find the right words to sufficiently honor you and the dogman you have made of me. I love you with all my heart and soul. I feel certain that you knew that, and it is my only real consolation tonight. As I promised you every single day of our lives together: we'll be together for as long as I breathe. For so many years you kept me going, and I'm going to need to figure out how to keep going without you, even when I don't feel like going on at all.<br />
<br />
You tenderized me, my beautiful boy. You showed me how to love, how to pay attention, how to minister to those who were hurting or lonely, how to be responsible to someone other than myself. You introduced me to people and places that I would not have experienced were it not for your consummate skills as an adventurer and an ambassador. You loved me --adored me-- when I'd become convinced that I was unlovable. You salvaged hundreds of shitty days. You had the brightest, most expressive and attentive eyes. You were a world-class observer, listener, and an intuitive, first-rate psychiatrist. You knew when I was off, and made compassionate and intelligent inquiries with those lovely eyes. Many, many times I was utterly convinced that you'd spoken to me, that we'd had an actual and substantive conversation.<br />
<br />
You put my heart back together again and again, and now you've gone and broken it into a million pieces. I know that wasn't your intention, and I know you didn't want to leave us, and how hard you fought not to leave us. I also know how hard you had to fight just to find your way to me. I've spent a lot of time --too much time-- trying to imagine those first seven months of your life. How could you --the Genius of Love-- have been neglected, abused, or abandoned? How is it possible that twice people adopted you only to find you unsuitable or unworthy? These questions always trouble me, but I am grateful to those people --those idiots-- all the same, and grateful to you for persevering until we found each other at last. And I'm grateful --and full of wonder and admiration-- that you carried none of that baggage from those first seven months into our life together. You were, I choose to believe, patiently biding your time, waiting to become Wendell, to become my precious boy. And I know now that I was waiting for you.<br />
<br />
I knew I would love you, and take care of you until the end of your days, but there was no way I could have imagined the extent to which our souls would become cross-wired --there's probably never been a man who so wholly entrusted a dog with the keys to his metaphorical car, and who, in doing so, was so spectacularly rewarded.<br />
<br />
You've left a giant hole in my soul, Wennie, a giant hole in my life, at a time when all the holes in the world seem to be getting deeper and darker by the day. Wherever you've gone off to, I'm going to have to continue to count on you to keep feeding me a steady diet of light and life.<br />
<br />
Love, always, my boy, and sweet dreams. The Garden of Sweet Dreamers exists everywhere, especially in dreams. And my old promise holds: We'll be together as long as I breathe.<br />
<br />
(Here are a couple other Rapidan <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2010/02/some-things-i-say-to-my-dog.html" target="_blank">pieces</a> about <a href="http://yourmanforfuninrapidan.blogspot.com/2011/10/man-who-wins-dog-lottery-is-lucky-man.html" target="_blank">The Genius of Love</a>)<br />
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<br />Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-1183857506018143142016-12-06T13:14:00.000-06:002016-12-06T13:14:17.986-06:00From The Christmas Crawl Space<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every Christmas when I was a child much of my extended family would gather at my grandparents' farm outside a small town in Illinois. We'd all trek there from various points around the Midwest. My own family would usually arrive early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived nearby would come out to the farm for dinner that night.<br />
<br />
My grandparents had a big farmhouse. They'd raised seven children, so there was usually room for everybody. My uncle Dick, who had never married, still lived at home and helped my grandfather out around the farm. Dick was a bit of a drinker, and a big, jolly fellow.<br />
<br />
One year when I suppose I was maybe five or six years old uncle Dick corralled all the kids --there were close to a dozen of us-- after our huge potluck dinner.<br />
<br />
"Everybody get bundled up and come with me," he said. "I've got a big surprise to show you."<br />
<br />
"Oh, Jesus, Dick," my grandfather said. "Go on and leave that thing alone."<br />
<br />
It was already later than most of us were accustomed to staying up, and I remember it was a cold, clear night with a good deal of snow on the ground. After we'd all pulled on our boots and zipped ourselves into our snowsuits we headed out into the farmyard with uncle Dick. I imagine he'd had a few drinks by this point in the evening, and he had a big, hissing Coleman lantern that sent dark angles of shadow swaying before him as he walked. We followed him across the yard and along the fenceline that separated the feedlot from the fields, trudging through the snow and struggling in his tracks through the deep drifts.<br />
<br />
Uncle Dick led us way back along the fence to the edge of the property line, where the corn field gave way to a wood lot, on the edge of which was a frozen dumping pond. He paused there and bent low to illuminate something in the snow. We all gazed with a combination of horror and wonder at a pink, hairless thing, wincing, glazed with ice, and curled up like a fat grub in a cradle of snow.<br />
<br />
There was a sustained silence as we all crowded around for a closer look, the steam from our breath billowing in the lamplight.<br />
<br />
"What is it?" somebody finally asked.<br />
<br />
"That there is an elf fetus," uncle Dick said. "A dead little baby elf."<br />
<br />
"What happened to it?" one of my cousins asked.<br />
<br />
"Well, you know how it is with Santa Claus on Christmas Eve," Dick said. "He must have had an elf with him who went into premature labor, and when she squeezed out that baby they flung it over the side of the sleigh as they went flying by. That's how much Santa and his elves care about getting presents to you kids. On a night like this they're just too damn busy to fuss with a little baby elf when they're out buzzing around the world. They had to toss it overboard and go right on with their important business."<br />
<br />
A couple of kids started to cry.<br />
<br />
"Aw, don't you worry about a thing," Dick said. "There's more where that one came from. Them elves are like rabbits; they have babies all the time."<br />
<br />
Someone suggested we bury the baby elf.<br />
<br />
"Nah," Dick said. "Santa Claus will take care of it eventually, once he's done with his chores." He then reached down, grabbed the tiny creature by the head, and pitched it out onto the ice of the dumping pond.<br />
<br />
And then we all followed Dick back along the fence to the house, our heads --or my head, certainly-- full of all sorts of disturbing images and questions.<br />
<br />
The next morning I went out with my brother and some of my cousins to look for the elf, but --sure enough-- it was gone.<br />
<br />
I think I believed in that dead little elf longer than I believed in Santa Claus, and it wasn't until a few years later that my older brother told me that what uncle Dick had shown us that night was actually a stillborn pig.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-20179838370293160852016-02-07T15:42:00.000-06:002019-01-24T23:19:54.675-06:00No Direction Home<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(<b>Image: </b><a href="http://alecsoth.com/photography/" target="_blank">Alec Soth</a>. Hearne, Texas)<br />
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<i>I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I walk on the heads of men who lie prostrate at my feet; if they should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the ground, therefore, with iron chains. Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made powerful. They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still others, who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor, grow fat on their blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as partisans grown rich at the public expense fear to render their accounts, and as tyrants dread the word liberty. And then, to crown everything, they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: "Repeat my master's absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep your mouths shut."</i></blockquote>
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--<b>Voltaire, <i>Philosophical Dictionary. </i>1764</b></blockquote>
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<i>A long dispute means that </i>both parties are wrong.</blockquote>
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--<b>Ibid</b></blockquote>
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<i>We are surrounded by men stronger than we are: they can harm us in a thousand different ways; three times out of four, they can do it with impunity. What a relief to know that there is in the hearts of all men an inner principle fighting in our behalf and protecting us from these attempts. Without that principle, we could live only in a state of constant alarm; we would walk among men as among lions; and we could never be assured for a moment of our goods, our honor, or our lives.</i></blockquote>
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<b>--Baron de Montesquieu, <i>Persian Letters. 1721</i></b> </blockquote>
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<i>For the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received, and I fear never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. </i></blockquote>
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<b>--John Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration." 1690</b></blockquote>
It's difficult not to feel disgusted and disenchanted with the current state of politics in this country. With very few exceptions, in fact, I've felt disgusted and disenchanted with American politics since I came of voting age. The first year I was eligible to vote, Ronald Reagan won the Presidency, and in the years since there have been precious few occasions when I've felt genuinely stirred by a political candidate --two, actually: Paul Wellstone's first senate race in 1990, and the hopeful rush of Obama's 2008 campaign.<br />
<br />
For much of my adult life I've been obsessed with the writers, scientists, and philosophers of the Enlightenment, that astonishing period when so many of the fiercest and most enduring political ideals --the ideals on which American democracy were founded-- were first being formulated. For a man in the 21st century such writings can be a source of heartache. So much hope and so many lovely (and lofty) ideals have been squandered during the more than 250 years since most of those words were written.<br />
<br />
The writers of the Enlightenment <i>were </i>wildly idealistic, but they were also keenly aware of the foibles of human nature, religious hypocrisy, and the perils of both greed and power. Thus, in the 1750s, Denis Diderot could write in his <i>Encyclopedie, </i>"There are narrow minds, deformed souls, who are indifferent to the fate of the human race and who are so enclosed in their little group that they see nothing beyond its special interest. These men insist on being called good citizens, and I consent to this, provided that they permit me to call them bad men." And there was the Marquis de Condorces, writing in the late 18th century: "In looking at the history of societies we shall have had occasion to observe that there is often a great difference between the rights that the law allows its citizens and the rights that they actually enjoy, and, again, between the equality established by political codes and that which in fact exists amongst individuals; and we shall have noticed that these differences were one of the principle causes of the destruction of freedom in the ancient republics, or the storms that troubled them, and of the weakness that delivered them over to tyrants. These differences have three main causes: inequality in wealth; inequality in status between the man whose means are hereditary and the man whose means are dependent on the length of his life, or, rather, on the part of his life in which he is capable of work; and, finally, inequality of education."<br />
<br />
Reading again those words in 2016, and reading as well the words of the founders of American democracy, is an exercise in exasperation. They have a slippery and double-edged potency, and might be appropriated by people with otherwise wildly divergent beliefs. I'm pretty sure, though, that in my lifetime, beginning in my childhood in a smallish town in the Midwest, I witnessed firsthand the defeat of all those Enlightenment ideals (as I choose to understand them), incrementally and, eventually, catastrophically. I saw my hometown, and other similar towns all over the country, gutted by labor strife and the de facto defeat of organized labor. I watched with dismay as the universal corporate milfoil crept across the nation, town by town and State by State. Family farms lost out to giant agri-business. Main Streets and small, locally-owned businesses were decimated by the incursion of huge corporate retail establishments and franchise restaurants. I saw small banks absorbed by indifferent behemoths, roadside mom-and-pop motels replaced by hideous, prefabricated and endlessly replicated motel chains. I watched as small and once autonomous local radio and television stations whose programming was once full of distinctly local color and character were overrun by the glum, generic, and virtually unlistenable and unwatchable formats of corporate media.<br />
<br />
I experienced firsthand, in my own family, the devastations of corporatized medicine and the growth of the sadistic and labyrinthine insurance industry. I've also had exhaustive --and exhausting-- firsthand experience with the disabling and utterly callous game of Russian Roulette that the pharmaceutical companies engage in with the full and unquestioned collusion of the medical establishment.<br />
<br />
And in the wake of all these changes --let's call them what they are: predatory and invasive-- economic cataclysm and an epidemic of psychological disorders, loneliness, addiction, crime, and pathological disconnection have followed. People have suffered. Communities have withered, or at the very least the old, quaint conception of "community" has sustained a terrible blow. Even so many of the churches, which in the town of my childhood were so often nurturing and charitable agents of community and compassion, have become political pulpits, divisive, agents of intolerance, mercenary, grasping, insular; capitalist enterprises like any other, and more mega by the year.<br />
<br />
In the midst of all these seismic disruptions is it any wonder that our politics have become so strange, so cynical, so angry, and so charged with confusion, helplessness, and disengagement? Everyone seems to have the sense that they're under siege --their rights, their jobs, their way of life, their bodies, their families and communities-- and politics today is so divisive, so polluted with money and influence, and so bogged down by the broken machinery of Washington and the major political parties, that even otherwise principled and like-minded people are at war with each other about who's to blame and what's to be done. People on both sides of the great divide seem at the very least to be united in the two fundamental questions they most want answered--Where did our country go? Who took it?-- even as if often seems that we may be long past any sort of agreement on the answers to those questions.<br />
<br />
I know this, though: all those changes I've seen all over the U.S., all those identically-ruined landscapes and small towns and big cities, are not representative of either progress or progressive politics. And politicians at the community, state, and federal levels have been complicit in every step of this force-fed corporatization of America. These politicians didn't just allow those changes; they enabled them and lined their pockets and the coffers of their political parties. Time and again they caved in to special interests and lobbyists; they gutted environmental and safety regulations; they rattled their sabers for destructive and unnecessary wars; they consistently turned their backs on the working class, the poor, and the minority and immigrant communities, and have succeeded in demonizing those populations to a wide and angry segment of the populace.<br />
<br />
In my lifetime America has never known a class war or a revolution as either is properly understood. But make no mistake: we have lived through a class war --perhaps the most effective class warfare in modern history-- and a revolution, but they have been pressed, and fought fiercely and absolutely without ethics by the upper class.<br />
<br />
It may be too late for those of us who are prisoners of disillusionment and disenchantment, those of us who agree on many, many things, to decide that this country has a soul and that that soul is worth saving. And maybe the writers of the Enlightenment were naive, impractical, and even foolish, but their notions of liberty, democracy, and basic human rights, dignity, and values were crystal clear, and they have been perverted beyond all recognition.<br />
<br />
And if, at this late date, we're forced to conclude that all that gossamer, pie-in-the-sky stuff is in fact naive for the time and place and predicament in which we now find ourselves --that it just doesn't work given the complex realities of 21st-century America-- then can't we at least admit to ourselves how dangerously naive it also is to believe that these multi-tentacled corporations and the politicians who do their bidding have our best interests and welfare at heart?Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-47409942818384062602015-07-03T13:32:00.000-05:002015-07-03T13:33:13.738-05:00Fourth Of July: Fort Snelling, 1971, And Beyond<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Drunk, he could float, an oblivious spectacle. Gentle, wouldn't hurt a fly. People observed as much all the time. But so, so sad he didn't even know that it wasn't in fact the world he was feeling.<br />
<br />
He could dream on his feet, standing still or moving. Giant turtles, ancient, crawling again and again from out of the surf in his drowned brain. He didn't know where that came from, but they had been coming ashore for a long, long time.<br />
<br />
Turtles. Maybe it was something he'd looked at in a picture book at the library when he was waiting for it to stop raining, or shaking off the cold of another January night spent floating.<br />
<br />
He trembled and thought he was being shaken in a pair of giant hands. A single dice. Die. An endless, impossible series of ones.<br />
<br />
Often the things he spoke aloud would be remarked upon by complete strangers long after the fact: "Even the trees are unmanageable." That was one thing someone remembered years later. It was no random or idle thought, however. The world he wobbled through was divided by only one straight line in his mind; on one side was a sign that said "Unmanageable," on the other a fading but otherwise similar sign with the word "Manageable."<br />
<br />
It was a sort of straight line, anyway, even as a teeming, disorderly city of hallucinations jostled up against the border, permanently exiled from the increasingly desolate and dying town across the way. A hamlet, he would think in the moments when he could still recall such words. A hamlet of the manageable things.<br />
<br />
These things were quiet things, generally still and inordinately simple. He couldn't even really name them anymore, but he knew them by their ease. The hands of the woman at the Salvation Army who cut his hair. The dogs who spoke the mute, imploring language of his eyes. The sound of the night and the world retreating. Damp grass against his cheek. Once upon a time.<br />
<br />
He depended on the kindness of strangers, and took it on unrecognized faith that the world was full of kind strangers. He had never begged, but he had been fed. He had also, of course, been beaten.<br />
<br />
He could no longer remember if he had ever driven a car. He could no longer remember the sound of his mother's voice, or what sort of shoes his father had worn before he wore none. Things broke, of that he was certain. Tears had been shed, some of them surely his own.<br />
<br />
He was a little boy. Somebody put a tiny flag in his hand and he waved it and waved it and waved it.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-49240872573701040782014-05-31T16:38:00.000-05:002014-05-31T17:17:39.939-05:00The Strings of Bertie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">From the moment she
was finished, shoved in a box, and buried under a shower of styrofoam
peanuts, Bertie Rathbun understood that through some accident of God
she had been given a soul. As she had been dangled in the air at the
inspection station, and as her strings were jerked each in turn,
jiggling Bertie’s head, hands, arms, legs, and feet against her
will, she had caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the eyeglasses
of the woman who would initial the packing slip signaling her
completion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bertie was alarmed
not only by what she had seen reflected in the woman’s glasses, but
also by the fact that she could see anything at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Something
had happened, and though she was not quite sure <em><span style="font-style: normal;">what</span></em> had
happened, Bertie thought that whatever it was had occurred earlier in
the afternoon when one of the detailers in finishing –a small,
stooped, and melancholy Japanese man who was nearing retirement–
had bent over her, puffed his warm breath three times directly into
her face, and then buffed her painted features with a soft rag.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The little man had
then held Bertie Rathbun before him in his outstretched arms, and
with an expression of great sadness on his face addressed her in a
quiet voice. What the man said to Bertie, before he carried her into
the next room and hung her on a metal rack alongside dozens of other
puppets, was this: “Such a pity, little one.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And in that man’s
warm breath, and in his strange, inscrutable statement –somewhere
in that series of moments– Bertie’s soul had entered her body.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps,
even, it was not Bertie Rathbun’s soul at all, but the soul of the
old man, or a seed from his soul that he planted in her empty chest
or head. Bertie didn’t know a thing about souls; she didn’t even
know anything about <em><span style="font-style: normal;">knowing</span></em>,
but it would later occur to her that somehow she’d been given that
old man’s broad ignorance and disappointments, his longings and
desires and badly faded dreams, dreams that would appear to Bertie as
dim and fleeting images on an almost translucent screen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No sooner was Bertie
Rathbun folded up in the darkness of her box and she began to feel
the first fierce stirrings of resentment at her fate. She hated the
very idea that she was a puppet; even worse was the realization that
she was being sent out into the world as the most hopeless and
hackneyed of all-purpose metaphors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bertie also recalled
with horror that glimpse of her own reflection: she had absolutely no
idea what sort of puppet she was supposed to be. Was she a mouse? A
little boy bear? A kitten? Perhaps, even, a wingless bat?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like all puppets
that have been cursed with consciousness from time immemorial, Bertie
Rathbun dreamed of autonomy, of free will, of a life unfettered by
her cursed strings and her dependence on the hands and whims and
attention spans of complete strangers. Bertie wanted to play the
bongo drums and dance of her own volition and, regardless of what
sort of creature she was supposed to be, she wanted to live in a hole
in a river bank, ride about in boats, and sleep in a luxurious
four-poster bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All of these
thoughts went through Bertie Rathbun’s head during the many days
she spent smothered in the darkness of her box and being jostled
about and then, eventually, dangled and jerked around in a store full
of other bright and noisy toys.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A fat and smiling
woman finally purchased Bertie Rathbun one day and took her home and
hung her from a fireplace mantle alongside a glowering nun and a
stern gladiator, both of which were clearly as devoid of feeling and
soul as the leering nutcracker displayed on the ledge above them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The next morning a
little boy came down the stairs and squealed with delight when he saw
the puppets hanging above the fireplace. Bertie watched as the boy
first took down the gladiator and swung him around the room
gracelessly, tangling his strings and then letting him drop in a heap
to the floor. She saw the boy crouch to remove the giant sword from
the gladiator’s fist, and Bertie felt a spasm of hope and
excitement jigging in her chest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With her eyes Bertie
Rathbun tried to implore the boy to cut her strings and set her free.
And then she watched with horror as the little boy took the
gladiator’s sword and, rather than cutting Bertie’s strings,
plunged it directly into, and through, the neck of the nun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
nun did not make a sound or shed a single tear, but slowly at first,
and then in a bright torrent, blood began to stream from the wound in
her neck and started to drip, drip, drip down to the fireplace
hearth, entirely unnoticed by the little boy, who had moved on to
play with the other toys that were splayed beneath the Christmas
tree.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And at that moment
Bertie Rathbun watched as the translucent screen on which the old
man’s dim dreams were displayed in her head went entirely blank,
and she felt her soul leave her body.</span></div>
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Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-34077497027796845922014-05-05T23:00:00.000-05:002014-05-31T16:52:03.983-05:00Any Old Business? Ere Mine Errs Wer E'en O'er...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Lg9qtLQUSbD0Xu1BcnLdWn6tMDfTLqIo4RNBcCBWDg-CZUG9ehg6CPp0v7WsHMduZWSHC0xIhEqnrm4jezfjF1amt-UGMnpxasitv8XsInGkjOvQH3ovARjz17DCkcKHxXvL2gNsniXV/s1600/poutine.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Lg9qtLQUSbD0Xu1BcnLdWn6tMDfTLqIo4RNBcCBWDg-CZUG9ehg6CPp0v7WsHMduZWSHC0xIhEqnrm4jezfjF1amt-UGMnpxasitv8XsInGkjOvQH3ovARjz17DCkcKHxXvL2gNsniXV/s320/poutine.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467283717890783858" style="cursor: pointer; height: 261px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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Good lord, it seems another month is now stretching before me like the long mirage scene in <span style="font-style: italic;">Lawrence of Arabia</span>, a scene I recently spent some time fantasizing about recreating in the windy sand dunes of the Florida Panhandle, with my dog playing the Omar Sharif role. It turned out, however, that try as I might I could not get my trusty dog to move slowly enough. I could not get him to trudge. He is a Chilean Dasher, a very rare specimen, a representative of one of only two dog breeds ever to appear on the endangered species list, and such beasts are simply not built for plodding.<br />
<br />
I can trudge and plod enough for both of us, though. That's something I try to remind him of on a daily basis, perhaps as a way of trying to get him to slow down.<br />
<br />
Another National Poetry Month, as you may or may not know (or care), has recently come and gone, and though I tried to spend some time each evening properly observing the holiday in my own fashion, I should confess that the last poem I read before the month's expiration left a very bad taste in my mouth. I will not name the poet (he is, so far as I can tell, nothing if not insignificant), but I cannot get these lines from one of his poems --which pretty much exemplify everything I hate about so much poetry-- out of my head: "the sun dies once more in the west/the blush and bruise of vanquished light/ creeps slowly across the/troubled American <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span>/children are anesthetized by television before sleep/in the gloaming along the river/the great heron kneels."<br />
<br />
That sort of thing isn't deserving of a month, let alone a moment of silence, let alone a moment of silent contemplation. Yet here I am, sharing it with you, for which I beg your pardon. I was going to try to tell you the story of a boy who was turned into a fox by his father for cheating at bridge, but it's a long story I haven't quite worked out in my head. Suffice it to say that in the end the boy --who hated bridge yet was forced to play it each night with his parents-- discovers that he rather enjoys being a fox, and eventually --quite soon, in fact-- recognizes that his father has done him an unintended kindness, which inspires the only actual feeling of affection he will ever feel for his father, the great project of whose life was building a pyramid out of garbage deep in the woods. The garbage, as I imagined it in contemplating the writing of the story, was gathered each day by the mother, who would leave the family's modest cabin each morning at the first light of dawn, outfitted in an orange jumpsuit and toting an armful of burlap bags, and return, exhausted, after darkness had fallen --having traveled great distances and filled as many bags as she could carry with garbage-- just in time to eat an uninspired dinner and play bridge with her husband and son.<br />
<br />
There's really no reason now that I'll ever have to tell that story. It's likely no reason ever existed, but I nonetheless have time on my hands and feel compelled to think of something.<br />
<br />
Tonight, earlier, I was thinking of some kind of great river metaphor --lame, I know, but I'll generally spend at least a little time mulling whatever comes to me, if anything comes to me at all, and I'm sometimes grateful when something does. Sometimes not so grateful, of course, particularly when I'm feeling all mulled out, which is often.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I was thinking of this river, which in my imagination is too big and moves too swiftly, and this size and ferocity combined with the sense I almost always have that the ground is moving beneath my feet, makes it impossible to accurately ascertain what exactly the river is and contains, other than everything. Even so, I like to at least try to discern the constituent parts of things I'm looking at, even imaginary things, and I was --and am-- bothered by my inability to see all the things that are moving --or not moving, either temporarily (because they are stuck), or permanently (also because they are stuck, but in a different way)-- beneath the surface of the river, which I became more and more convinced was everything. Perhaps this business was prompted by the enigmatic phrase uttered to me by a hermit who lived at the edge of a swamp on the Florida Panhandle. In answer to my request for directions to the Apalachicola River he had replied, without a moment of hesitation, "Hell, son, it's all the river."<br />
<br />
I should say, regarding part of the above (the phrase "beneath the surface"), that I mean <span style="font-style: italic;">supposing there is a surface and we can agree what it is.</span> Does the notion of a bottom necessitate a surface? Is the surface a starting point, or a sort of platform, the place from which one's fall commences, or commenced?<br />
<br />
By this point I'm just going to assume that you have no idea what I'm talking about. Which is fine, but consider this: What is Ike Quebec, whose music is on the stereo as I type, doing right this moment, a moment that has sustained itself and been replaying over and over (if only hypothetically, but, make no mistake, I am hearing a dead man <span style="font-style: italic;">breathing</span>) for fifty years now? What is he doing if not going down a river?<br />
<br />
The wonders of recorded sound and all art, all preservation that, in one way or another, moves: You can just keep sending these boats down the river --the same river, yet, in both Heraclitian and literal terms, a different river-- again and again and again. And fifty years from now some poor fool, similarly addled as myself, will still be able to put Ike Quebec's boat in the water and listen to it go. The same fool could also launch any one of the boats from the foxed fleets of, say, Henry James or Henry Adams, William Trevor or William James, and every one of them would still float and still take the fool somewhere else.<br />
<br />
And now I'm thinking of all the ghost boats on my shelves, continually going down the river, or waiting to go back down the river. The ghosts don't even have to paddle anymore; long, long ago (or maybe not that long ago) they built their boats out of words and sound, put them in the water, and the river carries them still.<br />
<br />
The thing is, I guess, is that I always wanted to build boats that would still be going down that river when I'm gone, even if they spend the rest of forever traveling exclusively under the cover of darkness. Even if they're just docked on some lonely stretch of backwater, a lone lamp burning in the cabin into the wee hours, waiting for one more launch, one more trip back into the dreaming world that is the river.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-91456895671987483112014-01-29T21:30:00.000-06:002018-05-01T17:54:53.423-05:00Like Listening To A House Full Of Music Breathe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I once had a job driving harps to market.<br />
<br />
For a thousand miles across the Great Plains the wind blew through the open slats of the truck and the harps jostled in their trusses and keened mercilessly. By the time I pulled into the market stalls in Chicago some of them were still humming, but it was nothing like their highway music.<br />
<br />
If I live for another hundred years I won't forget that sound.<br />
<br />
There was no demand for harps anymore, and every one of those poor sons of bitches was destined for slaughter or salvage. You might think you've heard some piteous sounds in your life, but you haven't heard anything until you've heard a harp being slaughtered. It seemed like the dying just went on forever. It was like listening to a house full of music burn.<br />
<br />
That was a desperate time in my life. I needed the money, but after three trips I couldn't take it anymore. When I'd unloaded my last bunch of harps in Chicago I started talking. I wrote letters to the editors of local papers. I made phone calls. With the help of my daughter I started a Facebook page to call attention to the plight of the doomed harps. A young couple in Aberdeen started a shelter, but in six months they only managed to find homes for three of the harps, two of which showed up almost immediately on eBay and went unsold. One of those was eventually found busted up in a truckstop dumpster near Rapid City.<br />
<br />
When the shelter couple lost their lease I agreed to foot the bill for a couple storage units at a place just outside of town, and with the help of a few friends I hauled all the remaining harps out there and packed them in so tight they could barely breathe. There was no light or heat in those units, and it was the dead of winter. The thought of it kept me up nights.<br />
<br />
Then, just as spring was finally breaking out in earnest, I got an email from a woman in the western part of the state. She said she had a big family spread and was willing to set aside a parcel of land for a harp sanctuary.<br />
<br />
In early May I rented a truck --the same sort of truck I used to drive back and forth to Chicago-- and loaded the harps. On the trip out there I got to hear their old highway music one more time, but I swear it sounded different headed west. Lighter, I think.<br />
<br />
The woman had recruited a lively group of volunteers to help us move the harps out into the range. After we got them all situated --there were 61 total-- we walked silently back across all that open space; behind us we could already hear the harps beginning to breathe again.<br />
<br />
By the time we got back to the woman's ranch house, dusk was settling. It was a warm night, but a gentle breeze was blowing and the harps had begun to really sing.<br />
<br />
We all just stood there in the driveway and listened until there was nothing but the darkness and the music of those harps moving on the wind. Pretty much everyone agreed it was the most beautiful goddamn thing they'd ever heard.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-60230116820000650022014-01-26T15:28:00.001-06:002014-01-26T15:47:10.446-06:00The Woman, The River, The Sand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One day a long time ago a sad and beautiful woman was turned into a river. This transformation was intended to be a punishment for perceived insolence to the gods, who felt that the sad and beautiful woman was not sufficiently appreciative of her many gifts.<br />
<br />
The woman, however, quickly discovered that she rather enjoyed being a river. It was never boring and all day and all night she was singing and moving and going places. All she had to do was shake her hair and all sorts of interesting things happened. Sometimes --often, actually-- she saw faces and heard voices, and some of these were familiar to her from her days as a sad and beautiful woman. As a river she had the marvelous gift of being in many places at the same time. She traveled again and again, ceaselessly, past the little town where she had grown up and lived her entire life. Nothing there seemed to have changed since she had been turned into a river.<br />
<br />
She heard the happy laughter of children, the voices of fishermen, and the women who gathered in the shallows to thrash their laundry on the rocks. Everyone seemed happy. It was possible, she realized, that the people she had once known loved her more as a river than they had as a woman. She herself had never been very happy in that place and had always felt that she was a burden to her old mother, whose own life had been a constant trial since the gods had turned her husband into a serpent for cursing the wind.<br />
<br />
Every day the woman who had been turned into a river felt more and more delighted by her existence as moving water. She had never been so free as a human, and often had occasion to wish that she had affronted the gods much earlier than she had. It was liberating to have no bones, and no appetite for anything but grace, transition, and transformation. She did, though, love the rain, and looked forward to the quiet and endlessly fascinating changes that winter brought. Any displeasing trespass she was capable of disgorging with relative ease, but many pleasing things also, of course, found their way into the river, and these things she collected, treasured, puzzled over, and dispensed as gifts and surprises to favored visitors.<br />
<br />
At some point, however, the gods recognized that their punishment had been received as a reward, and their response was swift and merciless. Jove ordered the river's desiccation, and the once moving water became an arid trench, and the woman was turned to sand.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-74862674656889454162014-01-16T02:44:00.000-06:002016-05-18T22:46:30.569-05:00A Long And Fruitful Life, For Which Operating Instructions Were Unfortunately Never Located<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Too much lurching makes a crooked man, and this is for damn sure a world full of crooked men. Is there such a thing as moral osteoporosis? I'd say there should be, because I don't see a whole of people standing upright.<br />
<br />
Me? I can hardly stand, period, so understand that I'm not pointing fingers.<br />
<br />
Good lord, here's a horn chart from Nigeria (c. 1972) that's straight off a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass record from my salad days.<br />
<br />
Okay, listen, I do have a message: somebody has to discover the worlds this world refuses to discover.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time I intended to be one such person, but I've run out of gas and I've been having a hard time breathing and getting out of bed in the afternoon. I am 100 years old today. That is, I'm sure you'll agree, a long time to live, and almost certainly too old to still be buying Hold Steady records. The fact of the matter is that I may not live through this night, and that possibility, repeated over too many nights, will take an old man's thoughts on dim and bittersweet journeys.<br />
<br />
How many kindred spirits, I wonder tonight, does a fortunate man encounter in his lifetime? I'm thinking of truly kindred spirits, the sorts of people in whose company one can be both fully himself and fully alive, and at the same time have the unswerving sense that he's being seen and understood with absolute clarity.<br />
<br />
I don't have an answer to this question, unfortunately. I'm sure there are those who, owing to the place or circumstances of their upbringing, or just plain misfortune, never bump into a true kindred spirit in their entire lives.<br />
<br />
I once imagined a band of kindred spirits, possessed of almost genetically-linked imaginations, instinctively inclined to easy collaboration and boundless curiosity, working together over many years to create an encyclopedia of that collective imagination, complete with elaborate and fictional biographies, histories, maps, bibliographies, discographies, filmographies, photos, and art.<br />
<br />
I guess what I was after was a scene, a <i>movement</i>, something that would be assigned a name that would resonate into posterity.<br />
<br />
It didn't happen, of course. I met the occasional kindred spirit, but they've been surprisingly rare. Most people just aren't crazy enough, and the world conspires against long term relationships of any sort. People are always pulling up stakes, acquiring new affiliations, growing up and old, and settling in and down. I've long despised the word "bohemian," but in my dotage I do find myself wishing the modern world turned out more people who genuinely fit the job description, as it were. Plenty can master the pose --and that's often all it takes to make one's name as some sort of artist or eccentric-- but the real deal strikes me as a very rare creature indeed.<br />
<br />
I never entirely gave up on my encyclopedia --it has, in fact, sprawled off in many unexpected directions-- but I lost a good deal of steam as I aged, and in middle age turned much of my attention to a series of suicide scrapbooks. I now have a half dozen of these things, compiled at ten-year intervals. In many ways I like to believe I was ahead of my time in at least one respect; back in the 1960s I had an acquaintance who was one of these courtroom artists, and I hired her to produce aged portraits of me as I might look at fifty, sixty, and seventy. I can now report to you that many of these renderings, which she did annually over that thirty-year period, turned out of be uncannily accurate.<br />
<br />
I've also written and updated countless versions of my own obituary, penned reviews of the dozens of books I never published (or wrote), as well as fond remembrances from a long list of old friends, acquaintances, and the scores of fictional companions who have proved to be my most steadfast collaborators. I've even, on at least a half dozen occasions, mustered the inspiration to compose poems in my own memory.<br />
<br />
Paging through these scrapbooks now, on what could very well be the last night of my long and mostly happy life, I see photographs, random notes on scraps of paper, quotes, book and record receipts, old gym and library cards, as well as dozens of other forms of identification that prove I was once a reasonably active member of society; several sets of dog tags that once jangled from the collars of beloved dogs (and dozens upon dozens of photos of those dear creatures), postcards and other mementos from out-of-the-way places I've visited, and various other found scraps and curiosities.<br />
<br />
There are a half dozen set lists (compiled at different junctures) of songs to remember me by, or at least songs that were once capable of stirring in me some old happiness or sense of the preciousness of life.<br />
<br />
For each scrapbook there is, obviously, a suicide note (in some decades there are dozens), as well as letters to friends and family members, and some attempt to divvy up my possessions, or at least to insure that certain objects of significance to me were placed in loving and properly appreciative homes. With each passing year I have assembled an ever larger (and, frankly, obsessive) photographic inventory of my favorite things, including individual books and records.<br />
<br />
In 1990, when I turned 80, I decided that I wished to have my cremains cooked down until they corresponded as closely as possible to my birth weight. I've made it clear that I don't wish to have my ashes merely flung about, but would prefer to have some inspired person incorporate them into some beautiful piece of art.<br />
<br />
Traditionally the last dozen pages of each of my suicide scrapbooks have been blank, and black. That was always meant to be symbolic; so much life yet to be lived, and all that. I now wonder, though, if there might not have been a bit of optimistic thinking behind the gesture --it was possible, after all, that there was still more life to come, and more material for future suicide scrapbooks. I'm not sure, however, that optimistic thinking could properly be said to have ever played a role in the assembly of something so portentous as a suicide scrapbook.<br />
<br />
The scrapbooks --along with the tottering mess of my encyclopedia-- are here beside my bed right now, and they will perhaps be of some mild interest to some stranger should this, in fact, prove to be my last night as a resident of this beautiful and merciless world, and this the last entry in the last of my suicide scrapbooks.<br />
<br />
I will miss a great deal, I'm certain, but pretty much everyone and everything I would miss I've already been missing for far too long.<br />
<br />
I have very little in the way of advice to surviving members of my traveling party, other than perhaps this: Carry a tune. Carry it with you until it's capable of making you and those dear to you dance.<br />
<br />
I wish I had done this more often. <br />
<br />
"Whoever brought me here is going to have to take me home."Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-61919086854677850562013-12-23T01:30:00.000-06:002013-12-23T01:31:29.027-06:00A Gift That Sets The Stars Free<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="line-height: 24px;">
One night long ago in a once-upon-a-time world there was a little lost dog in a faraway forest. The dog was alone and hungry, and it was a bitter winter. The dog was settling into the den he had burrowed for himself in the snow around the roots of a tree, and as he curled up in the darkness he heard the distant shimmer of bells and, a moment later, voices carrying in the cold night air, a great many voices joined in some happy song. The dog had never known anyone to pass through the faraway forest, not once in his lost time in that lonely place had he heard voices like these, or the beautiful and wondrous stamping of bells.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The little dog crept to the edge of his den and sniffed, peering, in the direction of the music. A moment later, light from the many torches of the travelers swept creeping shadows into the clearing outside the den, then chased completely the darkness before them and became full, hissing light. The dog watched in wonder as the brightly clad travelers –laughing and singing—paraded into view, enveloped in a moving cloud of steam and smoke.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There were tiny acrobats and a tall, thin fellow toddling on stilts and several laughing jugglers. There were five shy horses pulling bright clattering wagons, and interspersed amongst the parade were dozens of chattering clowns. At the very end of this colorful parade, lagging almost outside the very last of the torchlight, there was a small, limping clown, leading an old and slow donkey. As the dog crept from his hiding place, the happy songs and jangling bells of the travelers were already fading away into the distance and the darkness of the faraway forest. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
The dog trotted along after the parade and soon found himself beside the limping clown and the old donkey. When finally the sad-faced clown became aware of the dog’s presence, a look of surprise and happiness came over his face and he let out a cry that startled the little dog. The clown crouched in the snow alongside the donkey and clapped his hands and called out, and when the dog came into the clown’s arms the little clown began to laugh and the small, laughing clown held the dog in his arms, rocking him gently and murmuring. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The clown –murmuring and giggling happily all the while—carried the dog in his arms as they brought up the rear of the noisy and colorful and clanking parade. </div>
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<br /></div>
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They traveled that night until the torches had all burned down to darkness, and then they stopped and set up their camp along a frozen river. It had grown cold, and the travelers bundled together under their blankets beside roaring fires, with the horses and the donkey huddled stamping and steaming just outside the circle of jugglers, acrobats, and clowns. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The clown had swaddled the lost dog in an old wool blanket, and he held the dog in his arms and rocked him as the others told stories and laughed and gradually drifted into silence and sleep. </div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
<br />
The clown’s name was Munch, or so he was known to his fellow travelers, and now he whispered to the dog in his arms, “I shall call you Beauteous Munch.” Together they sat up until the bonfire had faded to embers, and together they saw a sky above them where there were millions upon millions of bright stars. The clown sang quiet songs and interrupted himself at one point to say, “Look, Beauteous Munch, there goes a shooting star! Sweet dreams, my little wish.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
And that night, as he lay curled up beneath the blankets with the little clown, Beauteous Munch was warm and slept without shivering for the first time since the long ago day when he had first found himself lost in the faraway forest.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>There had been</b> a time when Beauteous Munch was a puppy living contentedly with his mother and his brothers and sisters in a wooden box in a small town. One day a man and woman had come to take him away to live with them in their house. They were loud and unhappy people, and try as he might Beauteous Munch could not make them any less unhappy. The old man was impatient with Beauteous Munch and shouted at him often.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
All day Beauteous Munch would sit at the window staring out at the children playing in the street and passing by his house. Then one day when the nights were beginning to get cold, the man put Beauteous Munch outside. It was raining very hard, and cry as he might and scratch at the door as he did, Beauteous Munch could not get the old man or woman to open the door for him so he could come in out of the rain. Beauteous Munch sat on the steps of the house for a long time that night, until he saw the lamp in the front room extinguished and it was dark up and down the street and the rain was beginning to turn to snow. That was the night Beauteous Munch wandered away and eventually found himself lost in the faraway forest.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That first night away from his home Beauteous Munch tried to sleep, but he was wet and cold and lonely. He missed his long ago once-upon-a-time life. He peered up through the big, wet snowflakes that were cart-wheeling out of the sky and he found a star there barely twinkling, a little star that looked lost and distant and alone. And as Beauteous Munch closed his eyes he wished upon that lost and distant star, wished that somewhere there was another wish lost and longing for a dog, and that attached to that wish was someone special with quiet magic in his hands and a soft voice and a smile that could wag a dog’s tail.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
<b>That same night</b>, far away from the faraway forest, Munch the clown was bundled up in a blanket next to his donkey, listening to the laughter and the songs of his traveling companions. He was stout and not as graceful as the others, nor as skilled. Even as a clown his only real role was to lead the donkey and the horses around the ring, and to assist some of the performers with their stunts. He could not sing, and because he spoke with a slight stutter he was the quietest of the troupe, and tended to settle by himself into the background, talking quietly with the donkey and the horses. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
The little clown looked up into the sky and wished upon a distant star; he closed his eyes and showed his crooked teeth to the moon and offered only the simplest and most humble of wishes: <i>Please</i>, he whispered, <i>Something Nice. Something happy. A small, happy thing</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
And so it was that on the first night he spent with Beauteous Munch, the little clown saw the beautiful shooting star tumble all the way down the sky and he thought to himself, <i>So that is what happens when two wishes collide</i> <i>with one another: An old star is freed from the heavens and falls into a distant sea where it becomes a thousand bright and glimmering fishes. A wish come true is a gift that sets the stars free</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 24px;">
<b>And that is</b> the story of how Beauteous Munch came to live with Munch the clown. Together they learned many tremendous and difficult tricks; the little clown taught Beauteous Munch to ride on the old donkey’s back and walk across a rope and leap through the tiniest of hoops, and all the signs the performers took around and posted in the towns and villages now said “BEAUTEOUS MUNCH –WONDERFUL SHOW DOG!” He was very popular indeed, and people would come from far and wide to see the amazing clown and his astonishing dog.</div>
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<br /></div>
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On clear nights, as Beauteous Munch and his friend the clown tuckled up and drifted off to sleep, they would stare into the sky above them and watch with drowsy wonder as star after star tumbled through the darkness and somewhere, they knew, a wish had come true.<br />
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Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-83345201315547867372013-12-22T10:57:00.000-06:002013-12-22T10:57:32.893-06:00Next Year All Our Troubles Will Be Out Of Sight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark, mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
--<b>James Joyce</b>, "The Dead." </blockquote>
Sleep, lucky world.<br />
A star is born.<br />
No, sorry: A child.<br />
The star was just an announcement<br />
to this little light lost.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I would follow a star</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
like that if it was</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the dead of night</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
and I was alone with a bunch</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
of shivering sheep.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Even, I suppose,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
if I was a wise man</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
on some sort of inexplicable</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
no-girls-allowed walkabout</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
in the desert.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I think it was a desert.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I imagine it was.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'm sure it felt like one.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Trust me, though,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
beneath these ribs lurks</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the heart of a true believer</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
with a big, booming drum</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
and a feather in his cap.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'll believe anything if it can</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
make me feel like something</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
other than a disposable</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
razor or a pink, quivering</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
grub nestled in shavings.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
For God's sake, people,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
there is not one thing you</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
could ever say that would</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
convince me that I am not</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the proud father of a dog.</div>
Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-13092382966505393862013-12-21T09:39:00.000-06:002017-12-22T13:33:51.001-06:00Fall On Your Knees<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It was a quiet horse, the color of gray corduroy, or those elephant slabs
of damp clay wrapped in<br />
cellophane. They delivered the horse to the pasture out
back of my trailer, and it had taken four men to coax her from the truck. She
didn’t kick or fuss, but simply refused to budge. I’d paid 100 dollars for the
horse to save it from being put down. My old girlfriend had a pathological
weakness for downtrodden animals of all kinds.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">One of the delivery fellows kept
referring to the horse as ‘daft,’ which I thought was an unusual word choice
for a young man who couldn’t have been more than 25 years of age. I didn’t
think the horse was daft, at any rate, just depressed. She tended to stand in
one place out in the pasture, with her head down, and I very seldom saw her
eat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I’d never in my life spent Christmas alone. The
day before Christmas Eve I’d driven into the nearest decent-sized city, a
college town of maybe 70,000 people, just under a half hour’s drive from my
trailer. The city was crowded with last minute shoppers from the small towns
that were clustered in the long valleys throughout the mountains. I’d stopped
at some cheap steak chain for lunch, and later splurged on a bunch of new CDs
for myself and nearly fifty bucks worth of treats for my dog. Heavy snow was
falling even as I made my way back out of town, and by the time I pulled into
the half-mile gravel road that led to my trailer visibility had been reduced to
next to nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I stumbled through the blowing snow
to the door of the trailer. My dog, a mongrel so strained as to look exotic,
was waiting for me in a state of pitched agitation, and I opened the door and
watched the dog disappear into the whiteout beyond the trailer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That night I drank enough to feel
genuinely sorry for myself, and almost managed to talk myself into flying out
the next day to spend Christmas with my sister’s family in Colorado. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The next morning, Christmas Eve, I
woke up on the couch, as hungover as I’d been in years.The trailer was
completely drifted in, and the wind was still tossing snow around and obscuring
the range down the valley to the north. I’d left every light on in the trailer.
The only radio station I could pick up in the valley was wheedling with
Christmas carols, the signal drifting in and out –some choir somewhere, with a
big echo effect that suggested a live feed from a cathedral. I was determined to drink down some
Alka-Seltzer and go back to bed, but I realized with a start that my dog was
still someplace out in the storm. It was rare that I would allow the dog to spend
the night outside in any weather.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I went to the door and called out
into the blowing snow. There was no response, and I still could not even make
out the gray horse in the pasture less than 100 yards away. I pulled on a pair
of boots, parka, mittens, and a hat with earflaps, and ventured out into the
drifts. My truck was almost completely buried. I tried to call out into the
snow for the dog, but my voice was swallowed in the swirling wind. Wading knee-
and sometimes hip-deep through the drifts I made my way around the side of the
trailer and managed somehow to locate one of the fence posts from the horse
pasture. I couldn’t see much, or far, but there was no sign of either the dog
or the horse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I crawled back into bed, bundled
myself in blankets, and tried to take a nap. My head was throbbing, and as I
lay there I kept imagining that I heard the dog barking somewhere out in the
storm. I actually got up and went to the door twice, but there was no sign of
the dog and no sound other than the howling of the wind. Even as I slept
fitfully I was aware of my heart pinging in my chest like a sonar in an
abandoned submarine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I’d traveled so far from the person
I had once been that the people I’d allowed myself to be close to, as well as
those to whom I was conjoined by blood, had become mostly uncomfortable
strangers to me. I had drifted out of touch. I had no axe to
grind, no extravagant grievance or baggage, and it now seemed sad and even a bit
shameful to think that my mother did not even know where I was now living or
how to get in touch with me. I hadn’t spoken with her in over ten months. When
my girlfriend had grown tired of the west and had moved back to Boston –it had
been almost two years—I’d given up the apartment in Bozeman and taken the
trailer in the valley. I was supposed to be finishing a set of illustrations
for a children’s book, but hadn’t made any progress in weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I’d been traveling further into
loneliness and its odd, romanticized solace and pleasures. My girlfriend had
been in possession of a more polished set of social instincts. She’d been an
English professor at a local college, and liked to host small gatherings,
enjoyed going out for dinner and shopping. Left to my own devices I seldom did
anything that might be considered social. I had made few real friends in the
years I’d been living in the west, and still hadn’t even bothered to have the trailer
wired for a telephone. The dog was a perfect companion: a good listener, an
enforcer of routine and a reasonable order in each day. It was also patient,
even-tempered, and eager to please –absolutely companionable. That Man’s Best
Friend business really was not overstating, not in this instance. It was
unconscionable that I’d allowed myself to get so drunk that I’d left the dog
outside in a raging blizzard all night. The poor animal could have strayed
miles in search of shelter by this time.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The odd thing about the whole
affair was that I’d seldom even gone into town without taking the dog along. I’d
been made careless by melancholy and drink, and I would chew myself up forever
with grief if anything had happened to him. As I lay there drifting
miserably along the blurriest edges of sleep and hangover, I imagined being
hounded to the end of my days by the ghost of that dog. In the two preceding
years the only real highlights of the holiday season had been the long walks down
the valley we had taken together on Christmas Eve.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I finally bundled myself up again
and ventured out in what was left of the afternoon daylight to look for the
dog. The storm had apparently lifted or moved on; I could see the last of the
clouds departing down the valley. The odd and alarming new development was that
not only was my dog missing, but there was no sign of the gray horse anywhere
in the pasture. The sky had cleared to the point that I could see the entirety
of the horse’s fenced enclosure, and the horse was nowhere to be seen. I
waddled along the drifts that were built up along the fence line and inspected
the gate. It was not only firmly latched, but drifted completely shut. I walked the length of the road to my
trailer, all the way out to where it intersected the main gravel road that led
out to the state highway. I saw no evidence of any traffic whatsoever, no
animal or vehicle tracks other than those from my own truck the previous
evening, and even those were mostly obscured.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I managed to get the truck started
and backed out to the turnaround. From
there the four-wheel drive got me through the drifted snow out to the gravel
county road, which was in pretty good shape.
From there to the blacktop state highway, a distance of just under two
miles, I saw no signs of either the dog or the horse. Once I hit the stop sign
at the highway I decided to make another trip into town. I had no idea what I
expected to accomplish there on Christmas Eve; it was almost five o’clock and
already getting dark. The highway had been plowed and road conditions were
fine. There were still Christmas carols looping on the radio station, and I
made up my mind to attend Christmas Eve services at some church in town. I hadn’t
been in a church in a half dozen years, at least, but I had fond memories of
the holiday services from my childhood, and felt very much like a man who needed
somehow to be forgiven. If God was ever going to grab me, I’d never felt so
susceptible. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In town I found a phone book and
tried to call the local animal shelter, but got the answering machine and a
deadpan voice wishing me a merry Christmas and encouraging me to neuter my dog.
I walked around downtown checking telephone poles and bulletin boards where I
thought I might find notices of lost and found animals, but turned up nothing
that fit the description of my dog. In the empty Greyhound station I picked up
a copy of the local newspaper and found an advertisement for Christmas Eve
services at area churches. There was a six o’clock service at a big Lutheran
church right in town, so I left my truck on the street and went off in search
of the place. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The service was packed with
families, and there were dozens of scrubbed and squirming children. I had a
tough time staying awake through some of the readings and much of the sermon,
but I nonetheless felt somehow better for having gone. My heart felt lighter
and heavier at the same time, a strangely emotional state that I have always
associated with the holidays. As I walked back to my truck I was greeted warmly
by at least a half dozen strangers. I remembered my late father coming in from
a last-minute errand on Christmas eve long ago; the old man was rosy-cheeked,
half in the bag, and happy as a clam. He was a man who loved special occasions,
and as he came in with his arms loaded with shopping bags he had bellowed, “The
whole damn town is lousy with Christmas spirit!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">All the way out to the trailer I
tried to repair the years in my mind, to line up memories and freeze them in a
place where there had still seemed to be so much time, all the time that had
since carried me past dark off-ramps, dimly-lit intersections, and all the
forks where I had chosen –or, unconsciously, not chosen—the direction that had
led me to this road along which I was now driving. I’d basically always let
each day shove me wherever it wanted, and when it stopped shoving I stayed put.
I missed the old man, a guy who’d been a shover, a dictator in the best and most
intoxicating way; he’d always gone his own way and dragged others along who
were helpless to resist him, right to the end. After he died my mother had
admitted that she’d been little more than one more of his tag-alongs. “He told
me he was going to marry me,” she said, “and I believed him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Back at the trailer I stood out in
the middle of the drifted-in driveway and called out to the dog. The sky had been blown entirely clear of
clouds. I stood and watched a jet make its way right through Orion’s belt in
the east. It was already close to nine o’clock, and I went back into the
trailer, mixed myself a glass of eggnog, and managed to nod off on the couch
for a time. At some point I was awakened by what I thought were bells. I sat up
in the dark and listened. All was silent, and then I heard voices. I pulled on
my boots and stepped outside the trailer. It was a gorgeous night. I could see
the Christmas lights twinkling from my neighbor’s yard across the valley. The
trees at the farthest edge of my fence line seemed to be nested with glowing
corposants. I walked around the trailer and there, a hundred yards away in the
pasture, was my dog, sitting attentively before the gray horse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The horse was standing perhaps
three feet from the dog, and her big head
was hanging directly above the dog’s, and their joint breathing had created a surreal little pocket of steam in which they seemed frozen. It was
an absolutely clear night, eerily quiet. The horse appeared to be conversing
with the dog, and as I approached the fence I swore I heard the words –clear as
they could possibly be: “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I
bring you good tidings of great joy.’” The dog emitted what sounded like a hoarse, incredulous chuckle. From
across the valley I heard once again the ringing of bells. Stars were stretched
out above me, precise, detailed constellations, the clear, dusty clutter of the
Milky Way. I was astonished to see fireworks bloom suddenly above the valley in
the distance, and was inexplicably moved to see the dog and the horse raise
their heads in unison to marvel at the display.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I let out a belly laugh that
snapped out into the cold air and was quickly swallowed up, and at that precise
moment my dog turned and saw me. As he came bounding in my direction I fell to
my knees in the snow, opened my arms wide, and braced for the impact.</span></span></div>
Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-71906941304403218762013-12-20T13:46:00.000-06:002018-05-01T18:27:18.334-05:00Shaking The Shadows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The dogs had been put to bed. That was Nico's job now, the big boy, even though he had just turned six years old. There were three dogs left, old hounds that had belonged to his grandfather, and they slept in an old shed lined with hay out back.<br />
<br />
Nico's grandfather had died on Halloween, sitting in the front room in his reclining chair with a book about flowers open on his lap and a rubber Frankenstein mask over his head.<br />
<br />
His grandfather had stayed behind to hand out candy while Nico, his younger sister, and his mother went trick or treating in the neighborhood. When they had returned home the old man --who had loved God and science in equal measure, and who had given Nico a revolving globe of the moon that was his most prized possession-- was unresponsive, and Nico and his sister were sent to their rooms.<br />
<br />
From his bedroom window Nico had watched as an ambulance pulled up their long driveway, its spinning lights carving up the darkness and splashing off the windows of neighboring homes. Nico saw small groups of costumed children and huddled adults gathered in yards and standing out along the road by the mailbox. It was a long time after the cart was wheeled out to the driveway, loaded, and driven away --the ambulance's lights no longer flashing-- before Nico's mother came to his room. She had changed into a robe and slippers, and sat down at Nico's little desk and absentmindedly spun his moon globe with her long index finger.<br />
<br />
She told Nico that his grandfather had died. Peacefully, she said. <i>He was mad about you</i>, she said. <i>You were the apple of his eye</i>. Nico did not say anything. His imagination was whirling in a hundred directions, just as it did when he was excited, confused, or frightened. His mother eventually got up, kissed him on the top of the head, and said, "You're a big boy," which pleased him in some way he didn't understand.<br />
<br />
The next day, despite the coming and going of many people, the house seemed almost unbearably silent. The visitors tended to congregate in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones to Nico's mother. Each time Nico would creep down to the kitchen there would be more plastic- and foil-wrapped plates and casseroles lining the counter. Later, after everyone had finally gone, his mother had Nico move all the food to the back porch, which was unheated. And there it sat.<br />
<br />
His grandfather's funeral, which was held several days later, was the first that Nico had ever attended, and he had sat through it in a sort of trance, not understanding a word that was said. Even when people were clearly talking about his grandfather Nico didn't recognize the man they were talking about.<br />
<br />
That night, alone in his room, he sat at his desk in the almost dark, the only illumination provided by the moonlight through his window and his little night light. His fingers explored every inch of the beautifully contoured and cratered surface of his moon globe. He imagined his grandfather up there now, wandering with a pack of his dead dogs and looking for frogs or salamanders. Surely, Nico thought, some of those who went to heaven were allowed to visit the moon. It must be so close.<br />
<br />
But now it was late. It was Christmas Eve, and the moon in the sky looked like an abandoned boat in a big, dark sea filled with bobbing stars. The dogs had been put to bed, and Nico had sat with them for a time, stroking their bellies and finding something comforting that he did not yet recognize as trust in their eyes.<br />
<br />
Afterwards he trudged back to the house through the snow, lunging occasionally in an attempt to either lose himself in his shadow --to merge with it-- or to shake free of it. He couldn't do either. On the back porch the plates and casseroles, still untouched, were exactly where he had left them almost two months earlier.<br />
<br />
His mother was at the kitchen table, sitting as she so often did at night, smoking a cigarette and staring at a piece of paper on which most of what she had written had been crossed out. She was wearing her robe and slippers, and as Nico passed by she reached for his hand and brushed it briefly against her cheek.<br />
<br />
Nico's sister was in bed, and he changed into his pajamas. As he was brushing his teeth in the only bathroom in the house, which was located between his mother's bedroom and the room where his grandfather had lived after he came to stay with them when Nico was very young, Nico heard his mother's voice from the front room. It was his mother's angry voice, which he had not heard often over the last two years.<br />
<br />
The toothbrush still in his mouth, Nico moved to the doorway between the bathroom hall and the front room, which was dark. As he craned his head around the corner he could see his mother in the front entry, blocking the half open front door and shouting. She was shouting at Santa Claus, who was standing on the front step, his glasses fogged over and puffs of his breath swirling in the porch light.<br />
<br />
"You must be out of your mind," Nico's mother said. "The kids are asleep and there's no way I'm letting you in this house." And with that she slammed the door.<br />
<br />
As he usually did when confronted with something troubling or inexplicable, Nico sat at his bedroom window for a long time that night, his moon cradled in his arms, thinking until he ceased to think and began to imagine. It wasn't hard to do.<br />
<br />
And the next morning, when he came down the stairs to discover that Santa Claus had indeed arrived after all, he was able to dismiss the previous night as nothing but a dream.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-56070451478424512392013-10-05T01:51:00.000-05:002018-05-01T18:10:56.179-05:00September Song: Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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That night, after she had finished correcting papers, she had lain awake wondering, trying to think her way back to the last letter she had written him. Had she somehow given offense or written something that had turned his heart from her?<br />
<br />
There was no sense in it, and she had resolved the very next morning to put it away from her and to live her life out from under what she refused to think of as anything but the bright and happy interlude their time together had represented. The memory was worth honoring, but that was that. Her life would have to be other things. She had never met a man like Richard, and would accept that she was unlikely to meet another. The woman who lived next door had lost her husband, and her own misfortune --and it was terrible, really, to even think of it as such-- was such a small thing in comparison. It was a pity, was all. She understood herself, and this understanding was the arrangement that allowed her to live with the way things were.<br />
<br />
She lived quietly, saved her money, and built her small and private life around her. She bought a little house in the neighborhood and filled her fenced-in backyard with a garden and flowers. She had a string of dogs, each of them dear to her, and each of which managed somehow to take on her own quiet, reserved personality. She enjoyed sitting in her yard with her dogs, surrounded by her flowers, reading; she loved travel diaries and British novelists. She stayed in the same job for almost 40 years, teaching high school students social studies and history. She considered herself a good teacher, capable and interested in the lives of her students. Over the years she maintained correspondence with dozens of her former students --always one-sided affairs; she gave little of herself away, to anyone, but she was patient and a good listener, and for several generations of her students she had served as a confidante for all manner of dreams, frustrations, and fears. Not one of those students knew the first thing about her life away from the school, and that was exactly the way she preferred it. She made few close friends, and had little social life away from work.<br />
<br />
There was a lake near her home where she could walk with her dogs and reliably expect to encounter present and former students and their parents, and to engage in pleasant small talk. A full-service grocery was also within walking distance of her home, as were a number of other stores where she could do most of her shopping. She had never owned an automobile, and was largely content to do her traveling through books. Over the years she had attracted the apparent interest of a number of men, and she had had what she supposed might truthfully be called dates, but none of these men had been able to push through her reserve or overcome their own obvious discomfort, and there had seldom been a second invitation.<br />
<br />
It wasn't as if she had been expecting to catch lightning in a bottle a second time --but, honestly, she would think to herself, was that what she'd imagined she'd done all those years ago? <i>Catch lightning in a bottle</i>? No, it was nothing like that. Life wasn't a movie. The truth was she'd always been fussy and private, even before Richard came along. She wasn't interested in wasting her own or anyone else's time, that was all. She certainly hadn't spent all those years fretting over the fact that there was no man in her life, and there was no one around to nag her about such things as marriage and children. She had quite enough of children with her job, and was always grateful to have summers away from her students. There were though times --very few times, really, when one considered all the years that had passed-- when she'd see a couple walking together at the lake, for instance, when she would briefly entertain the thought of what her life might have been like if things had not gone wrong with Richard, but there was no regret attached to such thoughts. She'd didn't like to think so, at any rate. It had been a decent life, full of small satisfactions. There was no point wasting time with idle speculation over what might have been.<br />
<br />
She liked to believe that she was someone who recognized that every moment of every day had offered her options and opportunities that might well have changed the direction of her entire life. She hadn't avoided anything, but she also wasn't one to go looking for change for change's sake. No, she had made do, and the bigger world had tempted her not at all. Yet...she'd had her blue spells, there was no point in denying that. The world was such a changed place, and her own neighborhood was more and more populated with strangers who couldn't be bothered with a civil hello. Hers was the only garden on the block anymore.<br />
<br />
The little church a few blocks from her home, where she had been attending Sunday services faithfully for more than 40 years, had lost so many members over the decades that they were now forced to sublet space to a daycare provider, a driving school, and a Zen center. There had in recent years been a constant shuttle of ministers, young people just starting out, mostly, or older men with personality problems of one sort of another, men who were nearing the end of their careers. Most Sundays anymore there weren't more than a couple dozen worshipers in attendance, mostly older people who lived in the neighborhood.<br />
<br />
Her faith was important to her --it had been instilled in her by her mother-- but she was not given to zealotry; nor was she interested in any flights of fancy or talk of dark recrimination. It was no one's business what anyone else believed, and she had no patience with people who spent their lives trying to force their own ideology down the rest of the world's throats. The tenets of her own faith were mostly constructed from common sense, and prayer for her provided a necessary unburdening at the end of each day. It was meditative in the best and most satisfying way, and quieted her mind.<br />
<br />
After her retirement she relished the open-endedness of her life. She read constantly, walked more than ever, and volunteered at a local animal shelter. It was a bit strange to her, but she didn't miss teaching, not for a moment. It had taken what it could from her, and vice versa. She still occasionally received cards and letters from former students, but they were all now scattered in so many directions, and pulled in so many others that she could no longer relate to or truly sympathize with.<br />
<br />
One morning she was sitting out on the little porch off the back of her house, reading the paper and drinking the first of the two cups of coffee she allowed herself each day. She had just turned her attention to the obituaries, as she did every day, when she was startled to see a tiny photo of Helen, the old department store girl from Richard's hometown. There was no mistaking her --as they so often did, someone had chosen a photo that was many decades old; it was, in fact, Helen just as she remembered her from that terrible afternoon on the bus. A big horsey smile and an outrageous over-sized hat. So startled was she to encounter Helen's photo that she may have let out a cry. And there in the small print beneath the photo was the corroboration of what she had long suspected: "Survived by her loving husband of 43 years, Richard, of Minneapolis."<br />
<br />
Yes, the same last name. She hadn't even noticed that. It was a unique name she'd never encountered elsewhere. What an awful feeling, she thought (not <i>I feel awful</i>; she still had that distance, that control of her emotions). She read through the obituary several times, more slowly each time, the rush of blood slowly receding from her head. Three children, two girls and a boy. The service was to be held that morning at a church not six blocks from her home.<br />
<br />
It didn't seem possible that he might have returned from the war, married that woman, and raised a family, right under her nose, possibly even in her own neighborhood. She might even have taught his children. She had resisted the temptation all those years to look up his name in the telephone directory. She didn't wish to be troubled by such knowledge and whatever foolish speculation it might have aroused in her. But now, nearly 50 years later, she felt she could at last allow herself this one indulgence.<br />
<br />
He was there, of course, right there where he had probably been all those years. And living not ten blocks from her home, a stone's throw from the high school where she had taught. She was overcome by what struck her as the strange impropriety of her interest; she had tried so hard not to think of it for so long. There was no denying that she felt suddenly awful, to have this shadow that had apparently been following her since that long-ago bus ride suddenly catch up to her, and now standing right before her.<br />
<br />
She wondered: <i>Is that what it was, after all? Is that how it was? </i>Had she allowed the memory of that man to keep her pinned down in her quiet life, afraid to ever again expose herself to such a vulnerability? No, she would not say that. She could not.Yet she imagined striking out with her dog, right that moment, to find the house where he lived. Perhaps she would catch a glimpse of him.<br />
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She realized with a start that she was crying. Such a silly thing, really. All those decent years and here she was, crying over that handsome and funny man for the very first time. It was the thought of him bereaved, she told herself, perhaps feeling some version of the thing she had not allowed herself to feel since that long ago Once Upon a Time. And then she realized that she was praying, resorting to that almost unconscious, ingrained habit that she believed had sustained her through all the disappointments and uncertain years, and suddenly the old, nearly forgotten questions were now being reformulated as desperate and wholly inchoate requests in her folded and trembling hands. With considerable effort she extracted one hand from the other, called the dog to her, and pulled his head into her lap. Her lips found the soft spot behind one of his ears.<br />
<br />
"There, there," she said. "There, there. There, there...."Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-6132656304094610322013-10-04T22:37:00.000-05:002018-05-01T18:07:02.250-05:00September Song: Part One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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He was still the one fellow who had ventured furthest into her heart, the only one, really, who had so much as set foot in the puzzling place (she knew it was just that, even to her). It had been such a long time ago, but she had sometimes wondered if he had kept some tentative map of her heart stashed somewhere in his head. When she was younger she had wasted time wondering if he might have retained some traces of it in his own heart.<br />
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She honestly believed that he had not hurt her. No, he'd just left her confused (that puzzle again). She knew that in the relatively brief time that they'd known each other he had shown her possibilities that she'd never even suspected. But she'd been young, and she also knew that she shouldn't have needed a man to show her such things, or, lord knows, teach her anything. Still, she had missed him all those years, the way, she supposed, that she missed things from her childhood.<br />
<br />
She had never married, never again had anything she would even have called a relationship with a man, but it certainly wasn't as if she'd spent her life grieving over him or torturing herself over what might have been. She'd gone ahead and had her life without him, and a quiet life it had been. I would have been noisier <i>with </i>him, she felt sure of that. It <i>had </i>been, noisier, that Once Upon a Time that dreamers liked to talk about. He'd been such a handsome man, bright, and sure of himself. It wasn't that he made scenes or played the fool, but he didn't mind being the center of attention, and had the charisma to carry it off.<br />
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She'd met him at a community event, a fundraiser for a local library. She'd just gotten a job at the neighborhood high school, and was fresh out of teacher's college in a small town in Iowa. She'd never so much as visited Minneapolis before she took the bus from Omaha to interview for the position. She hadn't been in town for even two weeks, and the library was just up the street from the little house she was renting in South Minneapolis. On one of her first walks around the neighborhood she had volunteered her services for an ice cream social in a park adjacent to the library. He was playing trombone in a Dixieland band that had been enlisted for the event. The members of the band all wore straw hats and matching vests, and there had been lots of exaggerated mugging. He was tall, dark complected, with a head of almost unnaturally black hair. When the band took a break she had found herself cornered by him. He was from South Dakota, he told her, also new to town, and was working for the city's streets department. At the end of the afternoon he had sought her out and asked if he might see her again.<br />
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They saw each other frequently right up until the beginning of the school year --movies downtown, dinners and dancing, walks around the lakes, and an outing to the State Fair. Once school started she had needed to adjust to the demands and routines of the new job, and so had felt the need to put the brakes on what felt like it was becoming a serious relationship. By Christmas, however, they were back to seeing each other at least two times a week. She'd realized even at the time that she had opened herself up to him in a way that she never had before, with anyone. She'd also never known anyone quite like him. She came from quiet, unassuming people; they didn't let themselves go. When she had left home for college she had never danced in her life, and had never seen her parents dance. There was never music in their house. It wasn't religion; it was reserve. Her parents worked hard and kept a quiet house. It was something of a shock to her, then, to have a young fellow spoil her with attention, even affection. He was very free with his money --"You can't take it with you," he'd say. He taught her to dance, and she supposed that had been the most fun she ever had, dancing to those bands at ballrooms and gymnasiums all over the Twin Cities.<br />
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Their time together lasted through her first year of teaching, and most of that time --since the Christmas holidays, anyway-- she had known there was a rival for his attention. He'd never been dishonest about it. There was a girl, a family friend, new to the city from his old hometown. This girl, he always claimed, pestered him; she didn't know another person in the city, he said, and couldn't find her way around to save her soul. They had known each other most of their lives, and had attended high school together. He was always going off to help the girl find her way someplace, helping her get settled in an apartment, find a job, even shop for groceries. He complained about all the demands the girl made on his time, but he was good-natured even in his complaining. He was simply a kind-hearted fellow, and didn't have it in him to turn away anyone who might need something from him. This, of course, was part of his charm, but she couldn't deny that she grew impatient with the time he was spending with the other girl.<br />
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Then summer came around, and she learned that he was being called up to the military effort. He'd known it was coming; the war had been escalating for more than a year, and they had figured it was only a matter of time. Before he left --it was in late June-- they drove to the North Shore together. They'd had a wonderful time, and she'd never seen anything so lovely in all her life, and would never forget her first view of Lake Superior. In all the time they were to spend together not so much as a cross word passed between them. He was the most easy-going fellow she'd ever met, and his natural extroversion was the perfect antidote to her own shy reserve.<br />
<br />
She'd seen him off when he left for the Service, and for six months they'd exchanged letters faithfully and regularly. Once he shipped off for Southeast Asia, however, his letters stopped coming entirely, and for a year she had worried about what might have become of him. It pained her to think that she really didn't know enough about him; she had no idea how to get in touch with his family, and didn't even know any of his co-workers. It was the girl from his old hometown, in fact, who was to provide her with the first news of him in more than a year. She had met this girl on several occasions before he'd departed for military training.<br />
<br />
Coming home on a bus early one evening she had found herself seated across from the girl from his hometown; Helen, the girl's name was, and Helen had always struck her as a plain girl who tried to hide her plainness with fancy clothes and bright lipstick. She knew it was uncharitable, but she could not bring herself to like Helen, who was loud and chatty and worked at a department store downtown. She also could not bring herself to ask the girl if she had any news. It was Helen, in fact, who inquired, "Have you had any news from Richard?"<br />
<br />
No, she said. She had not. Not for quite some time. She would not admit that she had been worried about him, or even wondering. "What do you hear?" she did ask, as casually as possible.<br />
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"Oh," Helen said. "I tell him he should write books. He writes such wonderful letters, and has such lovely penmanship. It's awful, really, the stories he tells. You feel as if you're right there with him sometimes. He has such a level head on him, though; you know how he is. Can you imagine? One of the fellows from home has been with him much of the time, so that's a comfort. To have someone you know so well. The war is, of course, a terrifying thing, but the way he tells it they're all holding up just fine. He says he misses things just terrible, and I just keep telling him how happy we'll all be when they're done with the whole mess and back home where they belong."<br />
<br />
She sat there listening to this silly girl Helen prattle on and all the while she felt as if her heart were taking on shadows and the truth was drawing her stomach in tighter and tighter. As she got off the bus Helen had offered the cruel assurance: "I will write him that I've seen you."<br />
<br />
Something had gone terribly wrong. She would never understand it. That was the way she was and the way she had always protected herself; she moved directly from "I do not understand" to "I will never understand," and then she went on with her life almost as if nothing had ever happened.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-77335512731886825512013-07-15T00:07:00.003-05:002022-08-14T03:01:16.792-05:00Keep It In Front Of You: D.W.Z. (July 15, 1933-August 14, 2002)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsCKUKSLTWUM78RRd8GwcVTalyCIXoKFYE0nUDzF3aPqK8T03QHdpepyxSSuo5skoqom6Aypzme6086kOTIsWfqkhxPgiR6fyuPTQxMCt23VsKoG-h37XzZ-n4pPTn1m13D94fzN21mdfx/s1600/DadRedWingBoots.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsCKUKSLTWUM78RRd8GwcVTalyCIXoKFYE0nUDzF3aPqK8T03QHdpepyxSSuo5skoqom6Aypzme6086kOTIsWfqkhxPgiR6fyuPTQxMCt23VsKoG-h37XzZ-n4pPTn1m13D94fzN21mdfx/s400/DadRedWingBoots.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 21px;">Those days were an iron wagon loaded with rocks that we dragged through muddy fields with our teeth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You were a magnificent burning boat that would not sink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">We were as prepared as anyone could be who was facing a long night like that. We had, at any rate, been preparing for it for decades. There had been tests --test after test, many of them grueling and sprung on us almost completely unawares-- and drills and close calls and false alarms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">We were all familiar --achingly familiar-- with that urgent walk through the darkness and humidity of nights just like that one, from which we'd finally emerge, perpetually stunned and blinking, into those long hallways of brutal light and blinding white walls, into the maze of that place, a maze that seemed constantly to be shifting and expanding and spiraling ever higher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">On nights like that, that building, that complex, would feel as vast and silent as a library in the worst and most inscrutable sort of nightmare, yet there were reminders everywhere of what the place was up to and how crowded it was with battered pilgrims in all manner of distress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">It was always astonishing to me how a place so full of suffering could be so hushed. The rising and falling of helicopters was a dull thrumming that you felt mostly in your feet. The hallways were zealously lacquered to such a sheen that you'd find yourself almost tip-toeing like a cat burglar to avoid the squeak of rubber or the clatter of heels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Sometimes, like that night, that morning, it felt like a holy place. There were saints everywhere, plaster mostly, with disturbingly abject or imploring looks on their faces. The image of Jesus strung up on the cross repeated itself again and again; again and again you encountered the grief of Mary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Most of the sufferers, hidden away behind white doors with whispering pneumatic releases, were in the hands of the most reprehensibly competent sort of unbelievers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">That night, that morning, you were somewhere in that maze, wired and plumbed like a man who was going to be electrocuted and saved in the same instant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">We knew when we once again retraced our steps that morning that this time we would not be coming back for you. We knew that you were ready –even if we were not—for a long journey, a journey for which you would require no shoes, no wallet or driver's license, no comb, razor, or shaving cream, none of the things, in fact, that we would carry away with us in plastic bags.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You and I had driven across the country together, east and west, and across Canada. We once drove a thousand miles with an eight-track of Lou Reed's <i>The Blue Mask </i>stuck in the deck and endlessly looping, and the entire time I waited for a protest from you that never came. We'd sat in the bleachers at spring training ballparks. You were always so happy, so eager, so utterly prepared to be amazed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Now that's a pretty swing</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">That is one beautiful bird</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Isn't that something</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">We stood together one night on a dark beach in Florida, where astronauts had recently been blown from the sky. We saw the lights of boats in the distance, trolling still for wreckage. You shook your head and said, "It's hard to even imagine," but you were already a marked man, and the way you said it I could tell that it wasn't, in fact, so hard for you to imagine at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">If you could see me now --and I like to think that you can-- you'd know that I've already lost so much of what you gave me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">And you'd know --I know you know-- that I'm going to get it all back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">I hope that your voyage, wherever it has taken you and whatever it has entailed, has been as eventful and full of wonder as the life you lived, and that the muffled clanging of that battered bell you lugged around, rattling behind your ribcage all those years, is now just a receding memory. I like to imagine you've seen some astonishing things, and that you are living now in some version of one of the old comfortable stories that you believed in so passionately.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">It gives me pleasure to think that you are at peace, and even greater pleasure to know that you lived, so fiercely, so gently, and that you were mine and ours, and that I belong to you still, and always.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">By the time you were my age you had four children, a bunch of grandchildren, and a literally broken heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You did what you could.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You taught wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 21px;">I used to sense you coiled like a discus hurler behind every one of my best intentions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Your blood was the blood that called me back to this world each time I crawled away disgusted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">Yours were the words of forgiveness I was always surprised to find crouched at the back of my tongue. The tenderness, unexpected, that seized me when I was in the presence of suffering or helplessness, that also was you feeling through me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times new roman, serif;">A thousand times you looked me in the eyes and said, "What's going on in that head of yours, B.D.?" And I always told you, and you never flinched. Every time you said goodbye you kissed me, and called me Precious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">My biggest dreams were yours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You pointed out the stars, and taught me to appreciate the gorgeous example of upholstery that is a baseball mitt. The short trigger, the hatred of condescension, the intolerance of cruelty, your compassion and affection for the little guy and the underdog, all those things you gave me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You could not, unfortunately, give me your unbridled optimism, your undying faith in human goodness, your stiff upper lip, or your genuine willingness to just let the world be the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">But your capacity for love, your sense of loyalty, your appreciation for a good road trip, the easy way you laughed, and your eagerness to play the fool --What can I say? I am your boy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">You showed me again and again how to live.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;">So often lately I've sat up in the middle of the night, half expecting you to knock on my door.</span></div>
Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-28642554034179270432013-07-03T01:36:00.000-05:002013-07-03T01:42:10.114-05:00This Is Not My Beautiful House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At some point --I suppose it was maybe fifteen years into the mess-- I looked around and said out loud, "None of this shit was my idea." Elaboration was requested, and elaboration was provided. I'd had a few belts on my way home from the office, and maybe a few more once I got settled in on the couch in front of the TV.<br />
<br />
My wife was in the bedroom just down the hall, reading some daft book club novel. There were fucking angels all over my fucking house.<br />
<br />
"How come every one of these fucking angels is a grinning, fresh-faced toddler?" I shouted. "It looks like a fucking toilet paper advertisement in here."<br />
<br />
I'll admit that this last remark gave even me a moment of puzzlement. <i>Toilet paper advertisement</i>? Were cherubs enlisted to sell toilet paper? I guess I had some memory that they were, but maybe it was fabric softener I was thinking of. And maybe it was just babies, not resurrected babies. I didn't care. The angels got on my nerves. I didn't buy them. I didn't put them all over my fucking house. And I didn't want them. It occurred to me that I hated them so much that I had repressed them. On the rare occasion that I did notice them I would experience a brief alien pang --<i>How could this possibly be my fucking life?</i>-- and then I would turn away in disgust.<br />
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There was a pillow at my elbow on which some slave orphan in Southeast Asia had embroidered the words, "Mi Casa, Su Casa." Did I buy that pillow? I did not. Did I want that pillow? I sure as fuck did not. Did I have anything to do with that pink breast cancer bear that was propped up in a junky, presumably 'antique' high chair next to the fireplace? I assuredly did not. And the faux-rustic sign that read "Dreams Spoken Here," which was painted on an old scrap of barn wood and hanging above the bed I slept in?<br />
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It wasn't mine. It just appeared one day.<br />
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Did I put that bow tie on the dog? I did not. Was the dog in question even a sturdy enough creature to fit my own personal conception of a dog? It was not.<br />
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The house I lived in always smelled like a combination of Fruit Loops and lavender.<br />
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One day I came home and my wife had bought a fondue pot. She had set out all these little plates of little pieces of wholly incompatible foods. When I told her I wanted to eat and not play with my food, she told me I could eat someplace else. Which I did.<br />
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The memory of that incident caused me to shout from the couch the same words that I recalled shouting on the fondue night as I slammed the door on my way out to the garage: "This is my goddamned house!"<br />
<br />
I shouted those words. Twice, if I'm not mistaken.<br />
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There was no response from the bedroom.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-10971409897938609172013-06-27T21:52:00.001-05:002018-05-01T18:24:59.922-05:00From The Dialogues Of Bobagorus: Cinema Purgatorio<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Tell me, Meers, does time go backwards or forwards? Does today get folded into tomorrow or swept away with yesterday?<br />
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<i>I sense, Bobagorus, that it goes out and something else comes in.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Goes out like a candle? Or a patron exiting a theater?<br />
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<i>Yes, sir.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So it is, then, both extinguished and disgorged?<br />
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<i>Extinguished, I should say, most certainly.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>Time dies?<br />
<br />
<i>Oh, yes, time dies. I feel certain of that. Millions upon millions of small expirations every year.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
But are there as well large expirations? And out and out extinctions?<br />
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<i>Without question, Bobagorus. Time itself has shown these things to be true.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So you are saying, Meers, that time is also like a magician, or a jeweler who displays his wares?<br />
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<i>A magician, yes, and perhaps also a bit of a jeweler.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
That's all good and fine, Meers. I appreciate your answers. I am, however, going to ask you to imagine something which it is my great hope you never have to actually experience. I have reason to believe that time is, in fact, nothing less than the world's most confounding cinema. At all times in this cinema films are being projected on both the front and back walls, and on the side walls, on the floor and ceiling, and in every nook and cranny; different films projected at different speeds. One simply cannot hope to take it all in, and even more impossible is the fact that each of these films is composed of millions of films, one superimposed on top of another. For does not each of us have an utterly unique relationship with time? Do we not each have our own histories and dramas, each with its own pace, incidents, and cast of characters? Then, of course, there is the shared course of human history and life on this planet. There is the past. There is this moment. And there is the future. And every one of these broad concepts means something different --and many different things-- to each of us. In effect, then, what you have is a sprawling cosmic cinema that is constantly and simultaneously screening quiet dramas, great tragedies, news reels, crime sagas, comedies, love stories, documentaries, action adventures, and science fiction.<br />
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The projectors never stop. They run at different speeds, and some of them are ceaselessly rewinding immense rolls of film. All of these projectors are time machines, and the images on those screens represent memories and dreams and the most wretched nightmares, the horizons of the past and the future, with the one-way Autobahn of the present straddling or connecting them. We all live in this theater; it's a version of the world, but the only people who can see, or are aware of, what's transpiring on all of the screens are a special class of ingrates and squanderers.<br />
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Nobody truly wants to see or know what's happening on all of the screens. To be able to view all the layers is of course a curse. I've been provided with brief glimpses of individual screens and layers, and there is nightmare enough in that experience; to live in the layers, with the fast forward and rewind and infinite transpositions, would be torturous. I have been told that there are literally countless brief sections of these films that are more than any sane human could bear --broken dreams, embarrassing and regrettable moments, grief, atrocity, myriad surrendered futures and bland compromises, rash words, hurtful actions, unspeakable cruelty, heartbreak and hope, birth, death, suffering, unbearable tenderness and innocence, shattered illusions.<br />
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The people who can see all the layers and who cannot escape the theater --they live with the projections wherever they are-- are doomed. They spend their lives queasy and cursing their fate. There is a special loop of their own suffering, recurring episodes from their cursed lives, so they cannot even escape that misery. They are trapped not just in the history of the world or personal memory, but in the history of human consciousness and dreams. One can certainly understand how crippling this must be; these poor wretches are pure spectators, ceaselessly tormented and utterly unable to act. They are paralyzed, as it were, in a theater seat that is revolving 360 degrees --sometimes very, very slowly; at other times with wrenching speed-- just as is the theater in which they are captive; just to make things even more insufferable, the seats and the theater itself spin in opposite directions.<br />
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Many of these spectators live in a state of perpetual nausea that has characteristics of both vertigo and sea-sickness. There are, as you might imagine, instances where people gouge out their eyes, and few are able to endure long sentences as spectators in this cinema. There are, however, rare cases --mostly failed screenwriters and novelists-- who actually seem to enjoy the experience.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-56833466939238028092013-06-20T22:56:00.000-05:002020-03-28T17:44:12.908-05:00Soundtrack: On Listening, In A Dark Time, To Barber's Adagio For Strings <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It sounds like a ship is sinking in a great storm.<br />
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It sounds like an elderly man asleep in his armchair with a shoe box full of neatly organized medical bills in his lap.<br />
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It sounds like a brokenhearted man walking through the Luxembourg Gardens in the rain as the leaves fall from the trees.<br />
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It sounds like a black hearse making the turn onto a gravel road and disappearing into the fields as the camera pulls up and away and eventually reveals a desolate stretch of countryside and a farmhouse down a long driveway.<br />
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It sounds like an old woman with a garbage bag in her arms, walking slowly, slowly, slowly out to her car in a hospital parking lot as winter darkness falls.<br />
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It sounds like a man who has just lost his job, his wife, his future, sitting out on the front steps and running his hand again and again through his hair.<br />
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It sounds like a woman in an empty classroom, slowly erasing an immense blackboard on which she had written the one great dream of her childhood.<br />
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It sounds like a man who lives alone dismantling a baby crib and hauling it down to a storage space in his apartment building.<br />
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It sounds like a dog pacing in an apartment and waiting for the arrival of someone who is never coming back.<br />
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It sounds like a young man staring at photographs of his childhood and unable to identify or remember the smiling man with whom he is time and again pictured.<br />
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It sounds like an old man alone at a kitchen table, moving photographs around with his trembling fingers as if they were chess pieces, or like another old man in his basement, sitting in the darkness and watching home movies of laughing children.<br />
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It sounds like someone startled awake in the middle of the night by the memory of a betrayal, a lie, an act of cowardice, a child who no longer remembers the sound of his voice or his laughter.<br />
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It sounds like a taxi scattering leaves as a procession of mute solitaries creep along the sidewalks beneath umbrellas.<br />
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It sounds like a man alone at the edge of a forest, watching as one after another the last fireflies of the summer disappear back into darkness.<br />
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It sounds like a shattered boy and his dog, walking along a frozen river outside a small Midwestern town.<br />
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It sounds like the last hour of the last happy day of the last happy year.<br />
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It sounds like a quiet hospital room, a cluster of silent people huddled together at a bedside.<br />
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It sounds like buildings falling down, again and again and again, in slow motion.Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4405051021303762714.post-84588532993046140862013-01-02T01:58:00.004-06:002013-01-02T02:59:53.827-06:00Dreams Of Failing, Etc.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>Why don't you begin by telling me about the dreams you said have been troubling you?</i></b><br />
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I'm locked out of my house and can't find the keys. I am walking around in an unfamiliar city and everyone I encounter is speaking a language I can't understand. I look in the mirror and I don't recognize the face that is looking back at me. I'm moving through a huge crowd with my family and friends and when I turn around they've all disappeared. I've lost my way in a dark forest. I'm being swept away in an avalanche. I'm falling from a great height. I'm in a little flooded boat that is rapidly being carried far out to sea. I am drowning. I'm being suffocated, strangled, smothered, buried alive. I am trapped in a burning building, aboard a sinking ship, in a car that is spinning out of control. I open my eyes and can no longer see. I open my mouth to speak and nothing comes out. I put pen after pen to paper and discover that words have utterly forsaken me; I am no longer capable of making sense. I place the needle down on record after record and hear only silence. I wake up one morning naked in an unfamiliar room and there is a pile of blood-stained clothes next to the bed. An inquisitor I can't see makes impossible demands of me, and my failure to satisfy these demands will result in my banishment from the kingdom that is my life. Returning from work one day I discover that my address no longer exists; the house I live in and everything in it has disappeared. I drive around and around for days at a time and never find my way back home.
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<b><i>This is a rather exhaustive --and exhausting-- inventory. Anything else you'd like to add?</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
(Hesitates briefly) Again and again and again my father is throwing a can of corn across the kitchen at my crying and cowering mother....Brad Zellarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794486622610791227noreply@blogger.com0