Friday, August 26, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Perspective
When the lady in the Subaru coasted into my rear bumper, it barely registered. Yes, I looked in my rear view mirror to see her throw her hands up in a gesture of apology, and made note of her front end as I pulled away (no readily visible damage), but I had other things on my mind. Mostly, my state of mind.
It was a pretty warm day, at least for around here. I was running errands in my rig sans AC, which included searching for a toilet seat to match a base ten years older than my twenty-five year old truck. In that I hadn't brought the old seat with me, I had a mustard color in my brain. Lots of white and bone-colored lids, but nothing tinted my way.
But this wasn't what was bugging me. I was wondering how I was going to squeeze in a visit with my fishing buddy before rush hour traffic, and this navigating what were already very congested roads. So, when rear-ended, instead of getting out to inspect the damage and scream obscenities, I opted to keep moving. Plus, I needed the breeze.
A minute later, the song playing on my stereo began to skip around, not the way a CD creates that fast and repetitious rhythm when it skips, for I do not have a CD player, but in the way that told me my iPod was overheating in the docking mechanism. How, one may ask, did I know that this was the case? Because I damaged the battery in the same manner a few weeks ago. Brand new iPod, brand new dock/player, and fuck, I did it again. It'll cost $80 to replace the battery, which, coincidentally, is the same price I had been quoted for a custom-order toilet seat.
Onward. My fishing friend owns a restaurant. A damn fine eating establishment. I was to meet him at the shop. He was breaking a sweat dicing bread to make croutons.
"We're getting ready for the next Zulu charge."
"You have a lot of reservations for tonight?" I was a bit surprised, for the last two years have been tough. He had to lay off his sous chef and cut his wait staff, but today the place was hopping with three waiters, a new sous and a dishwasher.
"Yeah. Ever since we announced we were closing we've been getting slammed."
"You're closing?" This after ten years.
"Didn't I tell you? I thought I mentioned it when I had to cancel our road trip last month." He had not. "Every night since it was in the newspaper. People crying, begging me not to close shop. The waittresses have been playing a little game with them, saying, 'We'll miss you, too. When was the last time you were in for dinner?' Oh, about a year and a half."
"Well, I imagine this place holds some good memories for some folks."
He told me to go sit on the patio and he'd be right out to chat. I found some shade under a big cedar and sat in a plastic Adirondack chair. Not my favorite kind of chair as it more or less forces one to sit back, almost recline. I looked up into the branches of a tree I had not noticed before today. Back in the day, I use to deliver vegetables through the same back door I had just stepped through. Even after we quit farming, a lot of the extras from the garden came here gratis.
"Yeah, we're closing in ten days." I didn't say so, but I was getting some closure as well.
The visit was brief but we covered a lot of ground. We both said things that needed to be said.
One more errand to run. The grocery store. I took the back roads home to avoid rush hour and even though it most likely took even longer, I had time to reflect.
When I arrived home I took another look at the toilet. It was more of a bone than mustard.
It was a pretty warm day, at least for around here. I was running errands in my rig sans AC, which included searching for a toilet seat to match a base ten years older than my twenty-five year old truck. In that I hadn't brought the old seat with me, I had a mustard color in my brain. Lots of white and bone-colored lids, but nothing tinted my way.
But this wasn't what was bugging me. I was wondering how I was going to squeeze in a visit with my fishing buddy before rush hour traffic, and this navigating what were already very congested roads. So, when rear-ended, instead of getting out to inspect the damage and scream obscenities, I opted to keep moving. Plus, I needed the breeze.
A minute later, the song playing on my stereo began to skip around, not the way a CD creates that fast and repetitious rhythm when it skips, for I do not have a CD player, but in the way that told me my iPod was overheating in the docking mechanism. How, one may ask, did I know that this was the case? Because I damaged the battery in the same manner a few weeks ago. Brand new iPod, brand new dock/player, and fuck, I did it again. It'll cost $80 to replace the battery, which, coincidentally, is the same price I had been quoted for a custom-order toilet seat.
Onward. My fishing friend owns a restaurant. A damn fine eating establishment. I was to meet him at the shop. He was breaking a sweat dicing bread to make croutons.
"We're getting ready for the next Zulu charge."
"You have a lot of reservations for tonight?" I was a bit surprised, for the last two years have been tough. He had to lay off his sous chef and cut his wait staff, but today the place was hopping with three waiters, a new sous and a dishwasher.
"Yeah. Ever since we announced we were closing we've been getting slammed."
"You're closing?" This after ten years.
"Didn't I tell you? I thought I mentioned it when I had to cancel our road trip last month." He had not. "Every night since it was in the newspaper. People crying, begging me not to close shop. The waittresses have been playing a little game with them, saying, 'We'll miss you, too. When was the last time you were in for dinner?' Oh, about a year and a half."
"Well, I imagine this place holds some good memories for some folks."
He told me to go sit on the patio and he'd be right out to chat. I found some shade under a big cedar and sat in a plastic Adirondack chair. Not my favorite kind of chair as it more or less forces one to sit back, almost recline. I looked up into the branches of a tree I had not noticed before today. Back in the day, I use to deliver vegetables through the same back door I had just stepped through. Even after we quit farming, a lot of the extras from the garden came here gratis.
"Yeah, we're closing in ten days." I didn't say so, but I was getting some closure as well.
The visit was brief but we covered a lot of ground. We both said things that needed to be said.
One more errand to run. The grocery store. I took the back roads home to avoid rush hour and even though it most likely took even longer, I had time to reflect.
When I arrived home I took another look at the toilet. It was more of a bone than mustard.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Spin
In this virtual place most of us are at best like ghosts, worst, walls
that speak. (Certainly not shadows, which is a good thing.) For surely ghosts can hear one another, as it's a shame walls don't have ears. Yet, even all of this is a presupposition or a fade/pass from view.
I have a friend who held his own wake on Twitter.
How could this be? Wouldn't he be dead and therefore incapable? Fear of dying... How about that instead? And the wake itself was appropriately, mercifully short. In other words, it didn't get the play he was hoping for, or so I assume, for we had stopped talking some time before that event.
The guy's dad died at age 44 of a heart attack. This friend kept that fact close to his own heart, and with each year he surpassed his father's last birthday, he made mention. I would say that he celebrated this occasion with a cheeseburger and fries were it not his standard fare. And when that day came when he fell to the ground unable to breathe because of the massive pressure in his chest, one wonders why the doctors in the ER wrote it off as asthma. Or, more to the point, why did he let them?
Six months later, still unable to walk a flight of stairs without resting, he returned to the doctors. It was on this visit he was told of his massive coronary way back when. And who did he blame? Not his father. Not himself.
Now, those of you who know me well, also know that I have no room to criticize. And this is most certainly part of the reason we no longer talk. So, when he said, "Let's just talk on Twitter so my wife can have the phone minutes," I did not protest. And now, sufficiently contrite for the time being, I can continue with the story.
The doctors put in a pace maker and stints to help the 40% of his heart he said was left. Still, very little help, and so he proclaimed to the Twittersphere, "I am dying." and proceeded to become a troll of principle (as all are), speaking the truth as his last words should be, while rewriting his past in heroic measure.
"I miss splitting firewood." A man who could not lift a 12-foot 2 x 6 without getting winded five years prior, his growing number of followers (thousands) none the wiser.
Then one day he went to the doctor only to find out that he had been cured, so he bought himself a milkshake to wash down the burger and fries, and moved his roadshow over to Google plus.
But I am being petty, for I have always cut fiction a lot of slack. It must be instead a guilty conscience from all of those years in advertising. That said, it is going to be difficult to convince you that while the above is not the case, you might find, on occasion, that I will refer to myself in some form of the third person. Blogger has those capabilities.
Denial, withdrawal, sparks fly between the words, so close yet how long can one hold another, hug, before there is a need to pull away. One knows it going in, or immediately within the embrace, and I would imagine there are some that would ask, "Then why start?" and choose to live apart. Frailty goes unchallenged, the selfishness of sophistry. Curse all that surrounds you and become the sun.
I have a friend who held his own wake on Twitter.
How could this be? Wouldn't he be dead and therefore incapable? Fear of dying... How about that instead? And the wake itself was appropriately, mercifully short. In other words, it didn't get the play he was hoping for, or so I assume, for we had stopped talking some time before that event.
The guy's dad died at age 44 of a heart attack. This friend kept that fact close to his own heart, and with each year he surpassed his father's last birthday, he made mention. I would say that he celebrated this occasion with a cheeseburger and fries were it not his standard fare. And when that day came when he fell to the ground unable to breathe because of the massive pressure in his chest, one wonders why the doctors in the ER wrote it off as asthma. Or, more to the point, why did he let them?
Six months later, still unable to walk a flight of stairs without resting, he returned to the doctors. It was on this visit he was told of his massive coronary way back when. And who did he blame? Not his father. Not himself.
Now, those of you who know me well, also know that I have no room to criticize. And this is most certainly part of the reason we no longer talk. So, when he said, "Let's just talk on Twitter so my wife can have the phone minutes," I did not protest. And now, sufficiently contrite for the time being, I can continue with the story.
The doctors put in a pace maker and stints to help the 40% of his heart he said was left. Still, very little help, and so he proclaimed to the Twittersphere, "I am dying." and proceeded to become a troll of principle (as all are), speaking the truth as his last words should be, while rewriting his past in heroic measure.
"I miss splitting firewood." A man who could not lift a 12-foot 2 x 6 without getting winded five years prior, his growing number of followers (thousands) none the wiser.
Then one day he went to the doctor only to find out that he had been cured, so he bought himself a milkshake to wash down the burger and fries, and moved his roadshow over to Google plus.
But I am being petty, for I have always cut fiction a lot of slack. It must be instead a guilty conscience from all of those years in advertising. That said, it is going to be difficult to convince you that while the above is not the case, you might find, on occasion, that I will refer to myself in some form of the third person. Blogger has those capabilities.
Denial, withdrawal, sparks fly between the words, so close yet how long can one hold another, hug, before there is a need to pull away. One knows it going in, or immediately within the embrace, and I would imagine there are some that would ask, "Then why start?" and choose to live apart. Frailty goes unchallenged, the selfishness of sophistry. Curse all that surrounds you and become the sun.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Ambivalence
It's not that I'm unaware of world events, and tend to react with a hell-in-a-hand-basket attitude even though I know full well that history sets a precedent for kicking and screaming into our future; only the names and technology change; and, the hair on my legs is nearly worn away.
Welcome to that club, anyway.
There is a fervor growing. Forty years out of secondary school and folks are getting antsy for a reunion. To get alums wound up, someone has started a list of all those who have died in that span, including the younger and older. I could add a few, but I won't, for that will just encourage others whom I either don't care about or remember to get chummy, forgetting that they'd rather forget as well.
My lord, I just saw a lot of them ten years ago, still using nicknames from way back when. A vestige, I suppose, for I could only recognize a few and was told likewise. I was gracious until my third scotch, which neatly coincided with a trip to the john where I was asked if I was a homosexual. As arthritic as my hands were from hand weeding and picking acres on my hands and knees, and taking this as an antagonism to put me in my place, I offered not to assume that familiar position on the farm but to take the discussion to another level. (One of my best friends in high school, also in attendance, is gay. Another guy who I wrestled to see who got the appropriate weight slot, instead of moving up, was gay. My best friend in college was gay. The wrestler, dead from a heart attack. My college friend, dead as well, and surely took some folks with him.) Ah, but he is a man of God, and my memory is long when it comes to proselytizers who come skinny dipping with the lot of us, all unattached save he with his girlfriend in tow, and stayed longer at the floating dock than everyone else. All fine and good, except for the chastising we received from him the next day at school. All sinners, we were.
No, he was asking only because it had come up in conversation the night before, meaning that known for my liberal politics back then, there was only one recourse for my sexual preference. That and I had never done the deed with any in attendance, a few former beauties among them. There is something to be said for dating gals from private schools.
I might go if they promise to have karaoke (a word that is not in my Webster's College Edition from back then). I mention this partly because for the rest of the evening I pretended to be gay. Imagine the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" with a heavy lisp. And, let's say an equally drunk classmate's husband was also at the party.
But I wasn't fooling anybody. Her last words: I'll never see you again.
My impressions of that night are not all what I care to remember, spending the majority of the time talking with her, for I recall another scene.
I don't recall his name but see his face plain as day because he got in mine. The whys and wherefores I can't remember but he offered to take a tussle. I declined in a manner that should have gotten me clocked right then and there. Anyway, for some reason he had brought his niece along, somewhat younger, indeed, and who, it seemed, took a fancy to me. That might have been it, the reason, you know, for his challenge. Maybe. Maybe he was sitting right there when this exchange took place:
She: Do you think my uncle will get mad at me for flirting with you all night?
Me: Why? Are you coming back to my motel room so we can fuck?
She feigned a negative reaction. All this long before I took up poker. Talk is cheap.
Some might call me a mean drunk. My gay friend who is still alive did. My bright smile of anger. In an attempt to verify this, I down a few shots on ice. The problem is that I do this in solitude. I note that my hands and arms take on a red color not seen before in the bathroom light. I become both worried and enthralled, repulsed and eventually inspired. The romance of decaying leaves relies on their fresh-fallen color or the stain left by tannins. The brown in between, not so much.
Welcome to that club, anyway.
There is a fervor growing. Forty years out of secondary school and folks are getting antsy for a reunion. To get alums wound up, someone has started a list of all those who have died in that span, including the younger and older. I could add a few, but I won't, for that will just encourage others whom I either don't care about or remember to get chummy, forgetting that they'd rather forget as well.
My lord, I just saw a lot of them ten years ago, still using nicknames from way back when. A vestige, I suppose, for I could only recognize a few and was told likewise. I was gracious until my third scotch, which neatly coincided with a trip to the john where I was asked if I was a homosexual. As arthritic as my hands were from hand weeding and picking acres on my hands and knees, and taking this as an antagonism to put me in my place, I offered not to assume that familiar position on the farm but to take the discussion to another level. (One of my best friends in high school, also in attendance, is gay. Another guy who I wrestled to see who got the appropriate weight slot, instead of moving up, was gay. My best friend in college was gay. The wrestler, dead from a heart attack. My college friend, dead as well, and surely took some folks with him.) Ah, but he is a man of God, and my memory is long when it comes to proselytizers who come skinny dipping with the lot of us, all unattached save he with his girlfriend in tow, and stayed longer at the floating dock than everyone else. All fine and good, except for the chastising we received from him the next day at school. All sinners, we were.
No, he was asking only because it had come up in conversation the night before, meaning that known for my liberal politics back then, there was only one recourse for my sexual preference. That and I had never done the deed with any in attendance, a few former beauties among them. There is something to be said for dating gals from private schools.
I might go if they promise to have karaoke (a word that is not in my Webster's College Edition from back then). I mention this partly because for the rest of the evening I pretended to be gay. Imagine the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" with a heavy lisp. And, let's say an equally drunk classmate's husband was also at the party.
But I wasn't fooling anybody. Her last words: I'll never see you again.
My impressions of that night are not all what I care to remember, spending the majority of the time talking with her, for I recall another scene.
I don't recall his name but see his face plain as day because he got in mine. The whys and wherefores I can't remember but he offered to take a tussle. I declined in a manner that should have gotten me clocked right then and there. Anyway, for some reason he had brought his niece along, somewhat younger, indeed, and who, it seemed, took a fancy to me. That might have been it, the reason, you know, for his challenge. Maybe. Maybe he was sitting right there when this exchange took place:
She: Do you think my uncle will get mad at me for flirting with you all night?
Me: Why? Are you coming back to my motel room so we can fuck?
She feigned a negative reaction. All this long before I took up poker. Talk is cheap.
Some might call me a mean drunk. My gay friend who is still alive did. My bright smile of anger. In an attempt to verify this, I down a few shots on ice. The problem is that I do this in solitude. I note that my hands and arms take on a red color not seen before in the bathroom light. I become both worried and enthralled, repulsed and eventually inspired. The romance of decaying leaves relies on their fresh-fallen color or the stain left by tannins. The brown in between, not so much.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Parables Preclude Any Final Word
Rumble, grumble. Bumble, fumble. Oh, hell, add stumble. Rehearsal should follow reflection, and then reflect some more. Call it
trepidation, unsaid as much as unknown. Commitment or fixation cannot
preclude the wonder of wandering. I'll trip past my typos like shoelaces untied while others take note. And, please do. It's just that I won't answer should you comment. There is a vast difference between oblivious and overwhelmed. And I am neither, or rather, not wholly, but both. Ain't we all?
OK, it works like this:
I had an idea a few years back, on which I followed through, pissing on a thistle everyday until it died. Except we had to go away for a week before I had killed it off. And when I came back home, it was completely brown. Now, even though it worked, I was a tad upset. See, I had been videotaping the process, and I couldn't very well go out there and tape the dead plant when the last footage I had had it still green. So, I started another project, this time on bedstraw, a most pernicious weed. For over three weeks I peed on that tangle, finally knocking it back to a point that showed progress. But there was still alive stuff showing in the frame. Cute, but not perfect.
Some time passed. Seven years to be exact, and I tried it again on a thistle about thirty-inches tall. Every day I pissed on that thistle, only to watch it grow larger and larger, and getting more and more flower heads on it. And the larger it grew, the closer in to it I had to get with my exposed peeny. Pretty risky, let me tell you! The flowers started blooming when the plant reached six foot, and I was faced with a choice: Continue to pee away, knowing full well that the flowers would mature and spread seed all over the field, or chop it down. Well, I continued to pee, and in fact increased my frequency, and the thing grew another six inches and started spewing.
Funny story: That first thistle way back when? I was filming one day and when finished, pecker still out, I happened to look up to see a van full of female Jehovah's Witnesses in our drive. Ain't been back since.
Lest one begin to think I am... wait for it... fixated on my member...
It might be fair to say that if I am not, at one point in my life, I was more so.
It's never cut and dry.
Yessir/ma'am, I cut that thistle, my indulgence, down to a nub. And then I went around the rest of the place looking for other thistles, took the machete to them as well, and buried the lot under a pile of mule turds. Now, everything depends on my industry. If I turn the pile, compost; and if not, fertilized.
But the day is not without reward:
I take joy in black, muddy boogers on a cloudy day
noting the buzzard didn't take the day off either,
even if it means flapping a bit more.
Hey!
I got some mowed-over voles
and who knows what else for you down here!
Better come get them before the crows do!
.
OK, it works like this:
I had an idea a few years back, on which I followed through, pissing on a thistle everyday until it died. Except we had to go away for a week before I had killed it off. And when I came back home, it was completely brown. Now, even though it worked, I was a tad upset. See, I had been videotaping the process, and I couldn't very well go out there and tape the dead plant when the last footage I had had it still green. So, I started another project, this time on bedstraw, a most pernicious weed. For over three weeks I peed on that tangle, finally knocking it back to a point that showed progress. But there was still alive stuff showing in the frame. Cute, but not perfect.
Some time passed. Seven years to be exact, and I tried it again on a thistle about thirty-inches tall. Every day I pissed on that thistle, only to watch it grow larger and larger, and getting more and more flower heads on it. And the larger it grew, the closer in to it I had to get with my exposed peeny. Pretty risky, let me tell you! The flowers started blooming when the plant reached six foot, and I was faced with a choice: Continue to pee away, knowing full well that the flowers would mature and spread seed all over the field, or chop it down. Well, I continued to pee, and in fact increased my frequency, and the thing grew another six inches and started spewing.
Funny story: That first thistle way back when? I was filming one day and when finished, pecker still out, I happened to look up to see a van full of female Jehovah's Witnesses in our drive. Ain't been back since.
Lest one begin to think I am... wait for it... fixated on my member...
It might be fair to say that if I am not, at one point in my life, I was more so.
It's never cut and dry.
Yessir/ma'am, I cut that thistle, my indulgence, down to a nub. And then I went around the rest of the place looking for other thistles, took the machete to them as well, and buried the lot under a pile of mule turds. Now, everything depends on my industry. If I turn the pile, compost; and if not, fertilized.
But the day is not without reward:
I take joy in black, muddy boogers on a cloudy day
noting the buzzard didn't take the day off either,
even if it means flapping a bit more.
Hey!
I got some mowed-over voles
and who knows what else for you down here!
Better come get them before the crows do!
.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Preface, Part III
So, I'm standing there taking a piss and thinking about writing. Specifically this blog. Or rather, in that it's been a pretty action-packed last few days, not. "Just live. No overflow," meaning to keep my own counsel, stay present, and whatever else in advise of that ilk. The successes and failures, revelations and doubts, assurances and fears, the vibrant and brown, the choppy and run-on.
The Spot and the Mark, the light and dark.
IMHO
I clicked my shutter a lot the day before yesterday. I aimed at people, just to see, for I saw two men walking boxers together and two more with dobermans, and two people with maps of our fair state tattooed on their right calves. Seeing is not getting good photos. I asked a young bag pipe player if I could take his picture, to which he agreed. So what and so-so. A dead baby sparrow lay on the sidewalk. Seen it. Two hundred photos, all told. And only one spoke to me. I think I'm onto something.
And along those same lines, maybe just one other, but a distant second.
It's telling, this watching, almost pornographic, which, should I decide to go forth with this thing, will become clear.
The Spot and the Mark, the light and dark.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
What good comes of it
25% nitrogen and 75% carbon is the recommended ratio for a compost pile to do its thing, which is cook. That and a lot of air. I suppose that includes carbon-based life forms, although leftover meat products are not suggested if one lives in the city. Attracts rats.
Speaking of rodents and compost (for this is the direction I intend), the pocket gopher body count continues to rise and they in turn are (yes) turned in with the grass clippings and mule shit. All but one, anyway, which was placed elsewhere in an act of generosity toward the vultures.
If only they had taken me up on the offer, one repeated time and again over the years without any (yes) takers. Instead, the dog found what remains (yes'd) the following morning, wife in tow, and I was called in to identify. I feigned and together we took the head and front limbs to the steaming heap.
We are not quite at the proper proportions for complete and timely decomposition, and there is a lot of dead grass molding that, when disturbed, mimics the difference in temperature between air and source. It is wise to be upwind, lest I find myself on the couch soon thereafter... Where am I going with this?
There are many more gophers to trap, times left to mow the lawn before the rains return and barrows of dung to shovel. By next spring the compost will be ready for the garden. Ah, beauty!
But we are not there yet. And I have not taken into account that a deer or two will be hit on the road and included.
There we go. Now I can proceed.
A lot of killing. For instance, the weeds out front on a hot day, the backpack sprayer heavy yet cool against my back, headphones on, so I keep an eye to the asphalt byway, knowing that my mother would not do well with two sons so departed. But it's there, like a fear of heights or cougars when taking the dog out at night for a final piss. There is lingering fear or doubt, I'm not sure which, that I'd jump if it was left up to someone else or leave the dog and go for a gun, assuming, of course, the dog would do the same for me.
Or folding laundry on our bed at midnight when I hear muffled voices outside:
"Shoot him!"
"Man, I can't! He's folding laundry for crissake!"
A tussle. "Gimme the fuckin' thing! I'll do it!"
I'd hit the deck, if needed.
Yes, I suppose I could have set that last scene up to make it seem like it actually happened, but then by the time I have the big cat catching me with my dick out while the dog and I take a piss together on the lawn, you'd know that I am just battling routine duties with a curious narcissism.
I wouldn't mind being composted when the time comes. Save the skull. The skull, mind you, not mine anymore, with its flat back I'd rather not have.
And, yes, it's a bit cliché, but you have to start somewhere, and tried-and-true will do nicely: I sit here with that skull in my hand while I think about lessons from nature, in particular the recycle, because everything that comes before that last moment so that others may continue makes for nice analogies, but lacks a degree of consciousness beyond survival, because, you know, even though birds sing, they can't read.
But, I suppose, dominion over allows for a certain anthropomorphism. It's our gentler side.
Speaking of rodents and compost (for this is the direction I intend), the pocket gopher body count continues to rise and they in turn are (yes) turned in with the grass clippings and mule shit. All but one, anyway, which was placed elsewhere in an act of generosity toward the vultures.
If only they had taken me up on the offer, one repeated time and again over the years without any (yes) takers. Instead, the dog found what remains (yes'd) the following morning, wife in tow, and I was called in to identify. I feigned and together we took the head and front limbs to the steaming heap.
We are not quite at the proper proportions for complete and timely decomposition, and there is a lot of dead grass molding that, when disturbed, mimics the difference in temperature between air and source. It is wise to be upwind, lest I find myself on the couch soon thereafter... Where am I going with this?
There are many more gophers to trap, times left to mow the lawn before the rains return and barrows of dung to shovel. By next spring the compost will be ready for the garden. Ah, beauty!
But we are not there yet. And I have not taken into account that a deer or two will be hit on the road and included.
There we go. Now I can proceed.
A lot of killing. For instance, the weeds out front on a hot day, the backpack sprayer heavy yet cool against my back, headphones on, so I keep an eye to the asphalt byway, knowing that my mother would not do well with two sons so departed. But it's there, like a fear of heights or cougars when taking the dog out at night for a final piss. There is lingering fear or doubt, I'm not sure which, that I'd jump if it was left up to someone else or leave the dog and go for a gun, assuming, of course, the dog would do the same for me.
Or folding laundry on our bed at midnight when I hear muffled voices outside:
"Shoot him!"
"Man, I can't! He's folding laundry for crissake!"
A tussle. "Gimme the fuckin' thing! I'll do it!"
I'd hit the deck, if needed.
Yes, I suppose I could have set that last scene up to make it seem like it actually happened, but then by the time I have the big cat catching me with my dick out while the dog and I take a piss together on the lawn, you'd know that I am just battling routine duties with a curious narcissism.
I wouldn't mind being composted when the time comes. Save the skull. The skull, mind you, not mine anymore, with its flat back I'd rather not have.
And, yes, it's a bit cliché, but you have to start somewhere, and tried-and-true will do nicely: I sit here with that skull in my hand while I think about lessons from nature, in particular the recycle, because everything that comes before that last moment so that others may continue makes for nice analogies, but lacks a degree of consciousness beyond survival, because, you know, even though birds sing, they can't read.
But, I suppose, dominion over allows for a certain anthropomorphism. It's our gentler side.
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