Missed Opportunity

Offered the opportunity to be an Okapi, I declined. I didn't even have to think about it twice. The city in which I live has a zoo, and a few years ago this zoo was the staging ground for the birth of an Okapi. Everywhere you went they were talking about the impending --and eventual-- birth of that fucking Okapi as if it were some long-awaited prophet. The local newspaper had a contest to name the damned Okapi and once the thing was born you'd see photographs of the actualized Okapi on bus shelters, billboards, and taxi cabs. It was an unsightly creature. I'm guessing the zoo decided in the end not to play along with the whole newspaper contest and just sold the naming rights, because, unless I'm terribly mistaken, the Okapi was branded in the end. Honeywell, I think it was, or perhaps Outback.

At any rate, I did not want to be an Okapi. And I had zero interest in being a fish, no matter how "big and magnificent." I could have been a fish, though. That offer also was presented to me. As was the opportunity to be a bird. I'll admit that I gave the bird notion a bit more thought. I could, it was explained to me, be an exotic bird --a talking bird, even, or a bald eagle. The problem, however, was that once the offer was accepted it was not rescindable. I suspect that I would, at least for a brief time, rather enjoy flying, but wondered about the dietary aspects of the avian life, as well as things like life expectancy and predators.

I was mildly curious about the bird opportunity, is I guess what I'm saying, but ultimately not curious enough to give up being a man, even a deeply unhappy man.

Eventually the genie (I'm guessing that's what he was, even as he looked like an old man who had worked in a post office for many years and smoked too many cigarettes) extended his offer in ever wider directions; I could be a cheetah, a bear, an elephant, a chimpanzee, an otter, a pine marten, a hippopotamus, or even a rabbit (a rabbit? This was when I began to suspect that the genie was mad, although I had been presented with convincing evidence that he had turned Ray Wilson into a horse, this after Ray's wife left him for Pete Mickelson, the local State Farm agent/Lothario).

The thing was, this character, this genie, had just started showing up at my door one day, almost like one of these guys who's intent on feeding you the Book of Mormon. It was a very bad time in my life, and the genie clearly knew it, although I could never figure out how.

"Face it," he'd say, "You're no great shakes as a man. Humanity's got nothing more to offer you, and it's a two-way street in that regard. Yet you've still got all the stresses and burdens of trying to survive as a human, and it's clearly not working. You'll never be free in that human suit. This is your one chance."

I recognized the truth in much of what the man said, but the idea of being either predator or prey spooked me, and I was no big fan of the elements.

"Couldn't I be a dog?" I finally asked. "The pet of someone loving and lovely, someone with a kind pair of hands?"

"No offense," the genie said, "but you're not good enough to be a dog, and I couldn't turn you into a dog even if I wanted to. That's God's work, and strictly a posthumous option. You have to die to come back as a dog, and the selection process is rigorous to a fault. Dogs hold an exalted place in the Angel Guild. So, sorry, but in my line it's strictly hands off so far as dogs are concerned. I could, though, do a cat, but between you and me, most human-cat transformations end rather unhappily. Cats are easily bored, and tend to develop an opinion of humans that's even lower than your own."

I chose --perhaps unwisely-- to remain a man, but you will understand, surely, when I tell you that from the day that genie disappeared from my life my dreams have been about virtually nothing but flying.

The Consolations Of Philosophy Are Precious Few

When you push it this far night after night you start to lose the battle with chronology. The story is what? Too many scraps and loose ends. Too many stray words.

Plodding. Bell burst. Black sky. Blue angels, kneeling. The man with an empty tower on his neck crawls across the long table and takes the flowers in his mouth. Bundle of ankle-bound bodies dangling upside down from a helicopter. Blind woman on the wall raises her chin, mumbles something about God. Not menacing: Puzzled. Pleading.

Sky, sea, land: layered like a '70s gelatin dessert. Fragments of a broken clown. Hanging man, upturned chair. Still, dark waters. Rock tumbler. Forlorn sign at the water's edge, no longer legible yet unmistakably a warning. Patch of tiny white flowers in the deep shadows of a dead oak. Rolling house, carried away on wheels with an old woman rocking a crying baby on the front porch, brown smoke billowing from the chimney. Fat man in a top hat tiptoes across an endless heap of skulls, wobbling, eagle-armed like a tightrope walker.

I can hear Chopin --or Arthur Rubinstein-- in the playing of John Lewis. I see the influence of John Singer Sargent in Francis Bacon. I believe that Maurice Sendak cribbed from Philip Guston. I could pick Steve Lacy's soprano saxophone out of a line-up. I have a radar for broken and neglected things, including people and places. I am able to communicate with animals, most keenly with dogs. I can parallel park like nobody's business and have a way with potatoes. I can go days without eating or sleeping. If you dropped me in the middle of nowhere I believe I would survive. Give me a job to do and I will do it reasonably well, or at least to the very best of my abilities. I have a high tolerance for pain. I am on occasion driven to tears by the abject posture and clear suffering of a stranger on the street. I have never had a decent photograph taken of me, which leads me to conclude that I am ugly. I am a hazard when bored. I can see in the dark, even when I do not like what I see.

I howl.

I can't tell you what you are looking for.

Now, again: the spy way the night feels, intrusive, the way it claims all sound, transmutes, muffles and swells.

Empty fountain. Bulldozer with wings. Dreaming rat in a drainpipe.

Too late: the lucid moment has dissolved.

Welcome to the Sacred Garden of the Sweet Dreamers.

Destination beyond this? Can't say. Can't see.

Waiting once again for the light to fetch me.

You Were Always In A Hurry

Where were you going when I passed you walking on the opposite side of the street the other day? You always did have that purposeful look about you. Even as a little girl you seemed like you were in a hurry to get somewhere.

I knew how important it was to you to be on time. Even when you had no particular place to go you liked to keep a tight schedule. It was as if you feared being late for some vague assignation that was loaded with hypothetical possibility.

I suspected you liked to keep moving out of the certainty that somewhere --someplace other than wherever you found yourself at any given moment-- was something you couldn't bear to miss.

But what am I saying? I never understood what was going on in that head of yours. I certainly did find you fascinating, though; there was always something happening in and behind your lovely eyes, and there were an awful lot of nights where I laid awake trying to imagine what the hell you might be thinking. Every once in awhile I'd get a little glimpse; you'd choose to reveal something. Those moments felt like offerings to me, and I used to collect them and try to piece together a portrait of who you might really be.

Sometimes it felt like I was getting close, but then you'd give me some new fragment that didn't fit.

And you never did stop moving, which made it hard to keep you in focus.

I eventually had places to go myself, of course --no place special, really, when all was said and done. My destination was ultimately just the sort of constellation of bland compromises that constitutes most people's ultimate destination.

I can't decide if you were lucky or not, but you were one of those people for whom all would never be said and done. You'd say so yourself, and I can still hear you say it: Never, you'd say. Never, never, never.

From The Landfill: The Breaking Of Ezro

I slid unwelcome into this world,
battered by the disappointment of those
to whom I was delivered.
I clawed my way up from out of their
unhappiness and learned to believe.
I found a place to stand
and kept moving.

I had one man's words and flung
them like stones at the world.
I cried in the moonlight beside
damp fields. I was a young man,
and heard the midnight dogs of your towns
as if they were monastery bells.

You cannot imagine how lovely your world
looked from the outside, how moved
I was to hear radios playing at dusk.

My ignorance was immense. The weight
of my little life made me a bowed spectacle.
Your libraries were sanctuaries, a refuge
from the puzzle. I let myself go too far
beyond what you could make an effort to
understand. I knew I was a reminder of
something, shambling among you,
dirty because your world was clean.

You yanked your children around me
on the sidewalks, invented your own
strange versions of what you saw as my
disappearance and not my journey.
But your children never forgot me.

My message was how far I had traveled,
how far I would travel still, how easy 
it was to disappear when no one was
looking for you. My message was that a
man could so believe, that he could stumble so
long with a slim lozenge of hope dissolving
so slowly in his mouth and the truth snaking
its way slowly through his mute, plodding
heart and slithering even more slowly
toward his tangled tongue.

After Dark

 Photos: Blind Child/Stop For Crazy Man/Police

There once was a dead man with a dog. The dead man, the dog, and the dead man's ghost all lived together in a cluttered apartment.

The dog seemed to have equal affection for both the dead man and the dead man's ghost, but the dead man and his ghost bickered constantly. They couldn't agree on anything. They argued about whose apartment they occupied, and contested the ownership of every single possession in the apartment. They disagreed over whose turn it was to exercise the dog, what music to listen to, and whether or not to watch television. The dead man would accuse the ghost of hiding a Lester Young CD or a book by Fernando Pessoa. The ghost would make petulant inquiries regarding a missing pair of sunglasses, and the dead man would wonder aloud whether it should be "pair of missing sunglasses," or even just "missing sunglasses," since a "pair of sunglasses," missing or not, seemed like a ridiculous expression.

On the whole the dead man spent a lot more time bitching and moaning, mainly because he could still feel things. What he mostly felt was pain. Pain and sorrow, although the ghost would claim that this was as ridiculous as "pair of sunglasses," since sorrow was obviously just another type of pain. The dead man would lament his inability to be more precise, or even to make sense of what he thought of as his predicament.

The ghost would at least allow that the dead man did indeed have a predicament on his hands. The law of things maintained that the dead man should have been gone; the ghost clearly had the law on his side, as well as a small and glum cohort of angels that kept coming by to check in on things and see if the dead man had been successfully evicted yet and driven into permanent exile. The dead man, stubborn for reasons he could not understand (he was reluctant, he supposed, to abandon the dog), refused to go.

Neither the ghost nor the dead man ever slept.

The ghost eventually became fed up with the whole shitty arrangement and went to live with the dead man's ex-wife in a house full of happier memories. And there, on lovely nights when the windows could be thrown open or on cold winter nights when lights glimmered on a Christmas tree, the ghost and the dead man's ex-wife would dance to the dead man's favorite records, including the Lester Young CD that the ghost had, in fact, stolen.

Isn't a Man Sad?

But when he came home there was no one to tell what he had seen --and if he picked the flowers and brought them home in his hands, there was no one to give them to. And when at evening, past the dark blue shape of a far-off island, the sun sank under the edge of the sea like a red world vanishing, the hunter saw it all, but there was no one to tell what he had seen.

--Randall Jarrell, The Animal Family 

Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it's supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There's nothing sadder.

Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.

And a man? Isn't a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

--Primo Levi, "Monday"

A man went out to his car one night, started the ignition, inserted a Chuck Berry disc into the CD player, and drove off into the darkness in search of space. He wanted to get out from under the street lights and the general overglow of the city, out beyond the tangle of freeways and the noise of rising and falling jets.

It was an old habit of his, to just pack his bags and go off in search of the unfamiliar. He'd been running from things most of his life, and had become expert in the art of retreat. He could by this time find the dead spots all over the country without an atlas. He knew how to follow rivers and find large bodies of dark water. He could feel the darkness drawing him like a magnet, and knew that where there was darkness there would be silence and space and, eventually, light.

There would be little towns thrown down in the middle of nowhere, towns where every home and business shut up early for the night. He'd roll down his windows and any music at all --Hank Snow, the Four Tops, Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed-- would sound like the most abrasive punk rock washing out into those dark and empty streets. There were forlorn motels in such places, motels where he'd have to rouse the owner and could pull his car right up to the door of his room.

On such nights and in such places he was almost capable of believing that he could still be anyone or anything, and that was a feeling he was trying to hold onto for dear life.

Fumes, The Memorious

Embracing my shoulders for an instant with his dovelike wings, the angel pronounced a single word, and in his voice I recognized all those beloved, those silenced voices. The word he spoke was so marvelous that, with a sigh, I closed my eyes and bowed my head still lower. The fragrance and the melody of the word spread through my veins, rose like a sun within my brain; the countless cavities within my consciousness caught up and repeated its lustrous edenic song. I was filled with it. Like a taut knot, it beat within my temple, its dampness trembled upon my lashes, its sweet chill fanned through my hair, and it poured heavenly warmth over my heart.

I shouted it, I reveled in its every syllable, I violently cast up my eyes, which were filled with the radiant rainbows of joyous tears....

Oh, lord, the winter dawn glows greenish in the window, and I remember not what word it was I shouted.

--Vladimir Nabokov, "The Word."

A Letter From My Old Friend Ruckert

Zellar,

The calendar rolls over. When I stumbled outside to take a piss at two o'clock this morning the first snow was falling. This, of course, is traditionally the cue to dig out a copy of my beloved Jackie Gleason Christmas album (I own several, as you know). From now until the icebergs begin to recede from the fields out back, Gleason's deliciously bleak and narcotic masterpiece will be the soundtrack to my nights.

I don't look forward to the icebergs, which I assure you are very real. I had one last year that was the size and shape of one of those buildings designed by that cultural abortionist masquerading as an architect; I forget the fellow's name, but I believe you once wasted my time by taking me to see some museum he created there in Minneapolis.

I await the night when one of these bergs (to use the parlance, I think, of the old explorers) heaves its way through my fence and obliterates the house along with me in it. At this time in my life such a fate would not be unwelcome.

At any rate, I like to think that you can imagine me here, abjectly slumped in my green chair, once again pondering Jackie Gleason's motives for creating this Trojan Horse of a Christmas album --what kind of sadist would attempt to deliver holiday cheer with a series of kidney punches and low blows? It would of course be wrong to claim that this record gives me any real comfort or --God forbid-- delight, yet it is nonetheless dear to me. The copy of the record I now have in my possession originally belonged to my father, and once upon a time he saw fit to write his name on the album cover, as if he actually feared someone was going to steal the thing.

I still remember the old man sitting down every evening after dinner --unlike me, he'd generally wait until after Thanksgiving-- to listen to Gleason on the hi-fi he had there in the living room. The lights would be turned down, and the stringers of colored bulbs on our hideously flocked Christmas tree would look like tiny Cambodian fishing boats lost as sea and laboring through an impenetrable fog. And there my father would sit, his third or fourth or fifth drink of the night sweating on the lamp stand next to his easy chair, listening to Gleason and staring --like a man being coerced to sign a confession-- at that album cover in his hands.

You've seen the cover, Zellar. I'm sure I've showed it to you. It looks like a crime scene buried under several feet of snow. There's a photo of a rural mailbox, a mailbox wrapped forlornly with a red bow. There appear to be gifts stuffed in that mailbox, but they are almost certainly gifts that will never be opened, because something terrible, something unspeakable, has occurred in that house at the end of the driveway. I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he listened to that music --which as a child I couldn't even begin to recognize as Christmas music, so thorough was Gleason's bleak deconstruction of the old carols-- and stared into that photograph, which I now like to believe allowed him to stare into the bottom of everything, to see the inevitable disappointment on his children's faces come Christmas morning, to see his own failures and disappointments, to see the endless dark winter stretching beyond the holidays, to see the passing of things, the unstoppable passing of everything, everything, everything. As he stared into that photograph it's entirely possible that he could even see his own neglected tombstone in a snow-swept cemetery.

I know what you're thinking, Zellar. You're thinking, there goes poor Ruckert again, projecting. And perhaps you're right. I seem to have powerful powers (powerful powers?) of projection these days, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Believe it or not, I didn't write you to discuss the lethal, slow-acting poison of Jackie Gleason's Christmas album. No, I intended to thank you for sending along a copy of your hideous magazine. I thank you because I am your friend, and gratitude seems expected, however unwarranted it may be. In this case, I'm afraid, it is entirely unwarranted. I am, I suppose, happy to hear that you are employed, Zellar, but I can't imagine what you are thinking. Nor can I begin to tell you how much consternation I experienced while paging through that goddamned magazine. Time and again I found myself shaking my head and pining for the consistent stimulation provided by the Highlights magazines of my childhood.

Still, I did read the thing from cover to cover, even as I wish I had not. If nothing else the experience convinced me that my retreat to this miserable hermitage was necessary, and must never, under any circumstances, be reconsidered. Someday, if and when you ever again manage to pull yourself away from your odious duties long enough to pay a visit to your old friend Ruckert, you'll have to attempt to explain what the hell it is you people think you're up to.

I'm sure there's a great deal I don't understand, but shouldn't one really desire to leave a large carbon footprint, if only to demonstrate to the mutants of future generations that giants once walked the earth? How can I possibly believe in a green world when I live in a place that seems to have been created by a God who owned nothing but various shades of brown and gray crayons and hadn't yet learned to color within the lines? But the snow, you'll say, the snow, Ruckert, is white, to which I will answer, no, Zellar, the snow is in fact gray, and will get grayer by the day.

I can assure you that, spurred by much of the nonsense I read in your magazine, I am more determined than ever to leave a carbon footprint that would be the envy of the giants of the Old Testament, a carbon footprint that would swallow both Paul Bunyan and his fabled ox without a trace. Everything I use is plastic and disposable --utensils, plates, cups, immense jugs of caffeinated beverages-- and powered by gas, oil, and aerosol; all manner of contaminants line the shelves in my bathroom, kitchen, and basement. Recycling in this godforsaken place is the exclusive occupation of ragged penitents, hermits, and the homeless (you might, however, find it interesting that the place where this pitiful army is rewarded for its garbage is called a "redemption center").

If global warming finally succeeds in driving this snow from my doors and ridding the frozen fields around me of icebergs I would be nothing but delighted. And if somehow I could also manage to leave a giant carbon footprint as well? I'll be damned if that's not a dream worth living for. What have I wanted my entire life but to leave a lasting message to the world I'll leave behind?

And what does that message boil down to, Zellar, and with what words is it most succinctly expressed? RUCKERT WAS HERE, ZELLAR! RUCKERT WAS HERE, AND THE SON OF A BITCH LIVED LARGE!

Engrave those words on a monument, bub, and erect it at the edge of my gaping carbon footprint, where future generations of wheezing pilgrims, outfitted in hemp and organic cotton grown in underground bunkers, can pause and --anemic with envy and delirious with meat cravings-- ponder with wonder my lonely and heroic existence.

I guess this is my version of a Christmas letter, Zellar, and so I will sign off with as much holiday spirit as I can muster: Ho-ho-fucking-ho!

Ad astra per aspera!

Ruckert, in exile.

Pardon My French: An Encounter With The Soup God

Late last night you were out for a walk with your faithful dog Sneaky Pierro when you ran into a guy who was so drunk he looked like he was riding a surfboard in an old Rock Hudson movie.

This was a guy, it turned out, who made a hundred fucking gallons of soup a day. And you have the nerve to ask if that's all he did? You got some fucking nerve.

All right?

Listen, shit burger, nobody makes soup like this guy. N-O-Body. There's people that drive all the way across town every single fucking day just for his tomato basil.

Don't ask him; so far as he's concerned there's nothing special about that one, but what does he know? It takes him like ten fucking minutes to put that one together. Easiest soup in the book, but the fucker's so popular he has to have it on the board every day or people have a shit fit.

He does six soups a day --five plus the tomato basil. He's the best soup guy in town, ask anybody: they'll tell you. He's the fucking soup god. He could stand right there on the sidewalk and name 100 soups, he's not shitting you. No fucking problem. You think he can't? You want to hear him name 100 fucking soups?

No, thank you. You believe the soup god. You do not want to hear him name 100 fucking soups.

If you gotta have a job, it turns out, making soup's a decent enough one. Did you ever have one of those chemistry sets when you were a little fucker? It's kind of like that. Oh, and hunting grouse? There's nothing else like it. Hunting grouse and catching bass, that's pretty much what the soup god would be doing if he wasn't making soup every fucking day.

He lives just around the corner, by the way. Just in case you didn't know that there was a soup god in the neighborhood.

People keep telling him he should open his own soup place like that guy on whatever the fuck that TV show is. But do you think he'd have any time for hunting grouse if he had his own place to run? No way, partner. The soup god will make his fucking soup, take his fucking check, and haul his ass out of there, thank you very much. If the place burns down in the middle of the night that's somebody else's fucking problem.

And then the soup god bid you good evening, curtsied to your dog, and said, "And a fine evening to you as well, my lady."

You felt foolish when you told the soup god that your dog was a "boy."

The soup god, of course, was having none of that. "No, no, no," he said, waving his hand like a drunken soup god aboard a wobbly parade float. "All dogs are ladies."

Now And Later

Right now, right this moment, you'd like nothing better than to sit staring at the splendid moon floating in a shallow milk-cloud saucer of milk right outside your window. There's a nice breeze, and surely memories are moving on it. You might even discover that a few of them are actually pleasant, if you could manage to shut your head down and sit still long enough to properly investigate them.

You often don't have the time to sit still or to sit quietly, but you should find the time. Because you should know this: it's creeping up on you. One day in the not so distant future you'll go to sleep or fall down and you're never going to get up again.

If you're lucky, when that happens you'll end up aboard a slow boat going up some fog-swept river in light that looks like autumn dawn. It's just that there won't be any sun rising, no moon, no planet beneath your boat, no bottom to the river.

It's okay. Trust me, you'll get used to it. You'll be in a better place. Your days in front of the television or your computer will be over, but you won't even notice that. So many of the things you think you'd miss you won't even remember.

You will, though, still get little taps and touches from the place you once inhabited with so much desperation, confusion, or whatever: the feel of someone's hand touching the small of your back or brushing the hair from your forehead; a finger tracing your closed eyelids or your lips; your legs tangled up with those of another; the whisper of a familiar voice, the bark of a recognizable laugh, the sensation of your nose pressed right up against the back of a sleeping dog's ear.

Once a year, generally on a crisp, lovely day in the fall, you'll be able to see clearly something or someone precious, and you'll be allowed to shed real tears for the life you left behind. It's a sort of holiday in the place you're going, and pretty much everybody learns to look forward to it.

The rest of the time, for the most part, you'll just sort of drift obliviously, and you'll feel just fine.

Planet Of The Apes: The Return To Eden

No animals were harmed in the making of this film. All sets, props, and costumes were made of recycled materials. Everything consumed by the actors (both on and off camera) and crew was prepared using certified organic, locally-grown ingredients.

The equipment necessary for the production of this film was powered by wind and solar energy, with the exception of the motor vehicles, the majority of which consisted of the most efficient available electric or hybrid models. Unfortunately the only helicopters we could find were real helicopters, and we needed them to film the explosions.

A team of conflict resolution and anger management counselors was on set at all times to insure that no egos were bruised, feelings hurt, grudges nursed, or instances of arrogant transgression committed. The director of the film --who had a prior reputation as mercurial, erratic, and frequently abusive-- behaved at all times like a perfect professional and a gentleman.

The screenplay, though fundamentally flawed, was treated with absolute respect and fidelity to its author's every word and intention.

If money was squandered (and it was), it was squandered in exclusively virtuous ways. For example: a guild of artisans from a Vermont craft collective was flown in to create all of the costumes from recycled hemp. The dyes used to provide the vibrant (or, in the early apocalyptic sections of the film, muted) hues of these costumes were prepared using natural materials acquired while foraging in various wooded areas no more than 45 miles from the site of production.

The robots were created from scrap materials by underprivileged children at a local magnet school.

An A-list actor and Academy Award nominee was dismissed early in the production for repeatedly bringing a can of Red Bull to the set and refusing to use the composting outhouse installed behind his yurt.

Smoking was strictly prohibited.

We are proud to claim that what you are about to see is the greenest film in Hollywood history. It is our hope that in seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of what has historically been a profligate industry we are also, as individuals, reducing our collective karmic footprint.

We hope you enjoy the film.

An Oral History Of The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics: Part One

Brad Zellar: I remember we were watching the Opening Ceremonies and I turned to Ralph Meers and said, "So now everybody has to come up with some version of the Flying Guy? I mean how many versions of the Flying Guy can there possibly be?" And then there were people with lights all over their bodies.

Ralph Meers: Mr. Zellar just kept saying, "Good God!" Several times I encouraged him to turn off the television.

Brad Zellar: It was painful listening to Bob Costas and his flunkies trying desperately to provide color commentary on all that monkey business. I actually felt sorry for them and kept imagining them smashing their heads with clipboards and saying a lot of things that included versions of the word "fuck" during commercial breaks for Chicken McNuggets. I actually thought I might die when they trotted out the bearded, beret-wearing "slam poet" "discovered on YouTube." I doubt that anyone will ever forget --or perhaps remember-- his rambling poetic tribute to Canada, delivered with the obligatory hand flourishes and awkward sort of Tai Chi movements. He was a beefy Canuck, so I don't think it's unfair to say that he wasn't particularly graceful.

Ralph Meers: Mr. Zellar was increasingly agitated, so I would occasionally leave the room. But then he would inevitably bellow and summon me back. He would shout things like, "Oh, my God, get in here, Meers, now there are a bunch of ragamuffins doing some sort of clog dance in logging boots!" At one point I ate a grapefruit. Mr. Zellar mentioned that he was not "a grapefruit sort of guy."

Brad Zellar: Some white guy got up there and said, "Tonight the longest domestic torch relay in human history arrives in this stadium, inspiring the kind of magic and awe that touches millions of hearts all over the world and causes dreams and imaginations to soar." Something awful like that. Then there were displays of aboriginal people in various native costumes. Then, as always, the French geezer had the final word, babbling in virtually unintelligible English, and then fucking k.d. lang sang "Hallelujah." and I wanted to throw something at her. Something heavy.

Ralph Meers: A lot of the female mogul skiers were cute as a button, and I observed that many of the speed skaters looked like eccentric old gentlemen in age-inappropriate clothing out for a brisk stroll. It also occurred to me that one didn't tend to see so many spectacular wipeouts in the summer olympics.

Brad Zellar: I'm prepared to swear that I saw a female Russian figure skater hock a big loogey while being spun around in the air by her partner, a fellow who was wearing a costume that suggested a bluebird that had been ravaged by a fighting cock.

Ralph Meers: At one point Mr. Zellar inquired, "Who the hell are these paunchy geezers, Meers?" To which I replied, "That, sir, is Rascal Flatts." "That or they?" Zellar asked. "That," I said.

Brad Zellar: It remains my opinion that the ice dancers are murderers of the Olympic spirit. There is no gulag harsh enough for them, nor for the buffoons who design their costumes and choreograph their routines. No man should have to watch a rousing game of ice hockey and then sit through a half dozen ice dancing routines.

Ralph Meers: While we were watching the snow boarders Mr. Zellar declared, "There is nothing I can do about it, Meers, I am highly suggestible." And then he dispatched me to McDonald's to fetch some Chicken McNuggets.

And Yet

Still. All the things that word can mean. Motionless. Stationary. Remaining in the same position or attitude. Quiescent. Habitually silent or taciturn. Subdued, soft; not loud. Making no sound. Having an unruffled surface (of water). Free from commotion. Unattended by wind; gentle; quiet (of weather). Not sparkling or effervescent (of beverages). A single image (of photographs).

Dead before birth. Inanimate.

Constant, continued until now, continuing.

A calm.

(Is the word somehow etymologically related to steal? And what of one of the oldest definitions, the noun connoting the apparatus used to distill liquor?)

Also: to subdue, allay, relieve (verbs). To stop the movement or activity of. To appease. To lull, soothe, cause to cease from weeping. To silence.

Without change, interruption, or cessation; continually, constantly, invariably, always. Indicating a continuance of a previous action or condition. In a further degree. Notwithstanding. Yet. As ever.

Are these various and seemingly contradictory definitions somehow related?

And yet. Even so. All the same.

Still.

Now as previously. Up to this time.

Paralyzed. Unmoving. Stuck. Etc.

Constant: yes. Always: yes. Without change or cessation: yes. Remaining in the same position and attitude: unquestionably yes. But calm? No. Free from commotion? No, ma'am. Appeased or soothed? No and no.

Always, yes, always, as ever, notwithstanding, all the same: Yes. Yet: still. Even so: yes. Even so: still.

But still. Still and all. Stillborn. Still life. Be still my heart.

And yet, all the same, even so: Yes. Always. Still.

Where There's A Road There's A Way

I was driving across Michigan's Upper Peninsula and do you think if my life depended on it I could find a decent fucking Indian restaurant? Did these people seriously believe a man could live on nothing but smoked fish and fudge?

Up the road from Manistique was a town called M'Alyce, and I wondered if Paul Weller had stumbled through this space at some point or if there was another such place in the world. Somewhere in the rear view mirror: the World's Largest Soup Kettle and a redhead who wore a sailor's hat well past the age where it was cute to wear a sailor's hat. A redhead who could swill Pabst Blue Ribbon like no woman I'd ever met, and who drove a beat-to-shit Nova with a bumper sticker that read: "Keep Moving Until You Fit Or You Stop Moving."

One night this woman --who was way too old for such monkey business-- showed up at my motel room with a couple cans of Krylon and said we were going to tag the living fuck out of Escanaba. It didn't quite work out that way.

"I've thought about this my whole life," she said, and then I watched her spray paint "Your Satisfaction Is No Concern Of Mine" on the cinder blocks of the Tidy Wash. I took this as a message pitch, and so took the paint can from her and tossed it in the blue plastic barrel out front.

I like a woman I don't know a damn thing about, but only to a point. That point came when we were driving around one night after I'd bought her a steak dinner and she directed me to pull off at a pay phone. I sat on the hood while she dialed a number and said, "Now what the fuck?"

There was a pause on her end, and then she said, "You know as well as I do that there's a goddamn world of difference between 'shot himself' and 'got shot,' so which is it?'" That was it right there. Weird is good. Weird can be fun. I don't like spooky, though, and I told her as much later as I packed my car.

I would not grow old gracefully. That much seemed certain, and was all I really seemed to be able to grasp of my fate, if in fact that's not too dramatic a word for what I was driving blindly into.

Every story has a 'then what?' and I suppose a truly satisfying story has a number of 'then what?'s to keep the reader moving along.

There is, unfortunately, only one 'then what?' left to this story, and it is this: My mother was dead, and she had a house in Ohio --and a shitload of shit-- that needed to be dealt with. I'd been procrastinating. It had taken me almost two months to make my way from Sioux City to the U.P. I would, I'd decided, finally knuckle under and head to my mother's, would get the matter taken care of once and for all. Who knew? I thought. Maybe I'd end up living for a time in the tiny house in which I'd grown up. Maybe after all the years I'd been gone there was finally something there for me.

There was nothing for me in Lorain, Ohio. There had never been anything for me in Loraine, Ohio. My mother's last hand of Solitaire was still laid out on the TV tray in the living room. Her bed was unmade. There was a refrigerator full of items that had long since become reeking science projects. Every clock in the place told a different time, and every one of them was lying.

Long story short: People hear gunshots and they call the police. I can't blame anyone. Gunshots in the middle of the night are startling. If you hear them, you're supposed to call the police.

I was just blowing off steam, I guess, talking to myself so people would hear me. Shooting out lights and reflective surfaces, trying to obliterate any sort of personal revelation. I felt like being in the dark. I didn't want to be confronted with any more images of myself, even as I fully intended to leave the photographs alone. Those were something else, something else, some other time when the light didn't feel like such a hostile interrogation. Still, I inadvertently ended up shooting up a few of those as well, and taking out a handful of other things --trinkets, I suppose you could call them-- that had a bit too much painful resonance.

It got out of control in a goddamn hurry, I'll admit that much, and it was a noisy, disruptive business, a textbook example of disturbing the peace.

So, yeah, the police were called. The police came. It was the middle of the night, and in the middle of the night when gunshots are involved you aren't going to get just one cruiser pulling up to the house. No, you're gonna have cop cars lined up all the way down the block, sirens flashing, radios squawking, and officers crawling around and crouched behind car doors with their own guns drawn. A sorry incident right out of Cops, to be sure. The sort of dust-up that wasn't going to go away for a long time.

Right away, looking out at that scene, I knew I was in deep shit. I knew there was a good chance I was going to get my face shot off. I knew that neighborhood would never again be home. I knew I needed a lawyer. These were the thoughts --or at least some of the thoughts-- that went through my head. Short term or long term, this was going to be a tough mess to get out of.

I put the gun down, went to the door, and stepped out onto the porch with my hands up, just like you're supposed to do. They weren't going to give me a chance to explain just then, I knew that. They were going to come rushing at me, all of them at once, yelling at the top of their lungs and swinging their night sticks, and they were going to stomp my ass and truss me up like a hog while the neighbors watched from their sidewalks and living rooms. And, sure enough, that's exactly the way it went down.

Nothing Next

I was into Tim Horton's last week and he comes in there just as skinny as he could be, skin and bones, a lost child we always said, well over six feet tall and pedaling all over town on a tiny little boy's bike, never wore a shirt if he could help it and more wild-eyed by the day --his poor mother-- and he always had a shiny silver mask from where they said he put the bag to his face and his hands were all coated with paint as well.

God help the boy, I'd think every time I'd see him, and when he was into Tim's that day I just wanted to buy him a donut or some Tim Bits but you didn't dare talk to him, you just didn't anymore, you never knew what you might be getting yourself into.

He would apparently sniff anything, he would smell anything if he felt it would get him wild-eyed and his mind rolling. He carried a dirty rag in his back pocket for just that purpose and any sort of paint or aerosol or mineral spirits he could get his hands on he would soak up in that rag and he was constantly pulling that rag from his pocket and putting it to his nose and breathing it like he was sobbing, it was like, almost like a man trying to pull his last breath.

He'd only come into Tim's to use the restroom and Tina who was the manager there said he was in and out every day looking for air fresheners or disinfectants, anything of that sort that he could add to his sniffing rag. They tried to hide things from him, but of course such things he could get his hands on all over town in one place or another.

He was living in Ray's motel, which is where the council kept a few rooms for the hard cases, his mother, poor woman, simply couldn't bear to have him under her roof anymore, and when they said in the paper he was missing we all knew of course that he was dead.

From The Scrap Heap, Exhibit 151b7: Convention

There will come a day when every conceivable human disappointment will make its way to a giant hangar somewhere on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas. Every dashed dream and broken heart from all over America will converge there to mingle awkwardly, stammer, and avoid eye contact. Just as in Las Vegas, there will be no natural light and no clocks, and the only way to mark the passage of time will be by studying the exhaustion in people's eyes.

Among those who will make the discouraging trek: the man who once upon a time dreamed of becoming an astronaut and grew up to become instead an unhappy insurance adjuster. The woman whose naked body was never seen --let alone touched-- by anyone outside a doctor's office. The failed writer of science fiction novels who lived with his mother and raced remote control cars up and down the sidewalk in front of his childhood home. The brides left at the altar and the broken, bitter bachelors. The boy who asked for a Dukes of Hazzard pinball machine for Christmas and received instead a Slinky, a seemingly small and isolated disappointment that nonetheless planted the seeds for a lifelong pathology of disenchantment.

Also present: Beauty pageant rejects, disgraced public servants, neglected children, actors that never got a break, persistent writers of ignored doggerel, misanthropes and alcoholics, those for whom an adolescent crisis of faith became crushing and permanent, brooders, pipe smokers, solitary chess players, stalled middle managers, the perpetually startled, permanent orphans, third-string quarterbacks, cheerleaders who grew old gracelessly, bankrupts, scores of shattered refuges from Nashville, Hollywood, and New York, and all manner of neglected or utterly talentless musicians, artists, and philosophers.

You can be sure the sleepless will be there, standing in zombie clusters at some remove from the shapeless huddles of the pathologically shy, the socially awkward, and the chronically fatigued.

There'll be quite a crowd, to be sure, and you're virtually guaranteed to recognize all sorts of old friends, neighbors, and co-workers, all of whom will bitch ceaselessly, provided they haven't been made entirely mute by their disappointment.

God knows there will be plenty to bitch about: It will rain every day, the food will be lousy, the accommodations substandard in every way. Entertainment --for lack of a better term-- will be provided by an assortment of some of the worst garage bands, barbershop quartets, karaoke singers, magicians, mimes, ventriloquists, and baton twirlers you've ever seen.

As the evening wears on a bullhorn will be passed among the conventioneers, and each person will be allowed to shout out one sentence or declaration.

It's interesting, if pointless, to speculate what those present might make of this brief opportunity to express themselves. How many do you suppose will use their moment in the spotlight to merely blurt terse, general condemnations laced with profanity? How many, however disappointed, will declare some enduring love or eternal regret? You can certainly imagine that there will be a great deal of stammering, and many will attempt to articulate some already broken promise, ineffectual apology, or last impossible wish. Others, of course, will have absolutely nothing to say.

Should you or I find ourselves there in that awkward crowd, what words would we find to speak to the assembled? What might we say to the better, happier people we --all of us-- should have been? And do you suppose there will be even one among us who will have enough remaining courage or faith to utter some small message of hope?

Finally, at some point in the endless night, black and white helium balloons will be distributed, and on command they will be released. This gesture will mean different things to different people, and to some it will mean nothing at all.

Brief Associative Slideshow For The End Of Another Long Day

It's true that I have ridden an elephant, 

but I have never ridden an elephant over 

the mountains or into the darkness.

I am one of those who can look at maps all day long and convince myself that I've actually gone somewhere. For a brief time, anyway.

Now let's talk about shadows and monsters, if you have a spare moment....

I want to be a dog,

when I die--

a dog, a dog.

--Robert Creeley, Hello, A Journal 13

(via Wood S Lot)

World Of Wonders: A Taxonomy For The Curious

Etch-A-Sketch. Invisible ink. Pig pile. Hangman. Pandemics. Poison pen. The quiet hours. Cannon fodder. Unsung heroes. Dead trees. Turn it up. You tell me and we'll both know. Prophets. Pariahs. Pardon me. Hold your horses.

The annotated desk. Doll house. Don't go changing. Land of the lost. Passport. Pro-Am. Pick your poison. The brier patch. Running water. Running scared. Running on empty. Convergences. Folk song. Final words. The natural world. Fifty states. Fragments.

The American Guide. Scenic byways. Miniatures. Discards. True or false. Phone Book Hitlers. Body image. Broken promises. Obituaries. Vandals. Mongrels. Strangers in the night. Missed flights. Bad science. Broken clock. Quaint notions (e.g. "cultural literacy"). Stray dogs. Scrapbooks. Keepsakes. Herdentrieb. Heavy metal. Redemption center. Wrecking ball. The foreign desk.

Fixed income. Underground. These colors don't run. Sad museum. Shadow puppets. String theory. Skinner's Box. The Repugnant Conclusion. The Tortoise and the Hare. One hand clapping. Art house. Vision air. Dancing bears. My space. Trick bag. Alchemy. Hermeticism. Hog wash. Vernacular. Zeitgeist. Sacred texts. Cartography. Libraries on fire.

Talking heads. Logos. Trademarks. Broken records. Bus stop. Cab fare. Brave new world. Brink's job. Class warfare. Class clowns. Populuxe. The price is right. Edge City. Street level. Private dancers. Fool for the city. Cat and mouse. Self service. Artifacts. Anachronisms. Archaeology. High times. Life of Riley. Anatomy of melancholy.

Founding fathers. Foundlings. Lost and found. Dead letter office. Destination unknown. Caste. Castaways. Talismans. Dream journal. Analyses. Crack in the sidewalk. Jackhammer. Wishing well. You don't miss your water. Divining rod. Dancing in the streets. Rent party. Ransom note. I don't hear a single. Death penalty. Poor, huddled masses. Parking spot. Three-legged sack race.

Shrines. Soul train. Entry level. Plumb Bob. Bootlegs. Bumper stickers. Celebrity roast. Earnest goes to camp. Profanity (inanity masquerading as profundity). Peep show. Penitents. Quixotes. Sisyphi. The Annals of _________. Analects. Analecta. Invisible world. Photo booth. Fact or fiction? Medicine chest. The new Bob Dylan. Bottle rockets. The Dark Ages.

It made Bud wiser. The Mendoza Line. Moral victory. Can this marriage be saved? The armpit fart. My boss is a Jewish carpenter. Pay the man. Somebody's daughter. The grindstone and the garden. Look, ma, no hands. Your guess is as good as mine. Redemption song. I love you this much. Abracadabra. Sticks and stones. Cosmetics. The bully pulpit. Last picture show. In my room. Close, but no cigar.

Flesh wounds. Moral combat. The Ballad of __________. Who's the boss? Night comes in. The Hegelian dialect. Horse feathers. You and whose army? Swag. Jet set. The secret drawer. The hidden door. Homeland. What's for dinner? Wherefore? Whither? Sick bay. Forensics. The Fountain of Youth. Guess again. The Donner Party. Knock, knock. Not in our house.

Elegies. Clue. Writ large. Silent screen. Exposition. Night stand. Night school. Black box. Trap door. Face book. Booby trap. Full-frontal. Foundations. Missed connections. Some enchanted evening. Icons. Per diem. Mixed messages. Monopoly. The varieties of religious experience. A word to the wise. Sideshow. Revival. Stitch in time. Ballroom. Blood sport.

Parlor games. Crazy Days. Etiquette. Predators. Step right up. This is only a test. Dissection. Dollar Store. Swap shop. Flea market. Gargantua. Colossi. Mores. Dispatches. Big deal. We can't wait. Rogue's gallery. Shrine of the immortals. Rackets. Greener pastures. Confidence men. A lonely business. Nice work. What's the big idea? Sweet dreams.

Wait, there's more.

You will not be sad in this world.

This is your life.

Further.