I was there. I saw it. I caused it.

And it was in those dwindling days of the empire that a new dance was born. Born of terror, in fleeing from hordes, barbarians, turn frock neighbors. It was born of thunder and lightening, as in those days great storms took root over the countryside weeks at a time. It was born of hunger, as the crops suffered pestilence and neglect, and their first fruits taken by mercenary soldiers with little to heed else their bellies.

I was one of those soldiers. The shear adrenaline, say of charging into a side street melee through a village crazed me for days. Coming down from the rush, I'd feel such damn hunger, I'd run through the unburnt fields to pick a' corn, sing a' song, pick a' corn all day long till my hunger satiate.

Mayhaps that's how it all began? There's no need to put myself in the center of things for any reason other than curiosity for cause and effect (its why I took up soldiering in the first place. The hitting of things then looking at how it was smashed up.

In the corn field, winding down from the rush of battle two days before, picking a' corn and singing a' song, I heard a' scuttering through the dense shucks. I dreweth my short sword and spat, hacking my way through with some seriousness, making my presence known with full gruff of creatures in greater portion than I would ever be especially in my unarmored state, nearly as naked as those knaves who go abouts getting plundered on our weekend retreats.

Slicing through and caught notice of damaged growth and there a few feet beyond spotted children, two and three hidden, huddled, shaking, mud smeared, tattered. I stared at them, my face with as much warmth as those idols in their town square after we knocked their heads off. Though somewhat absent from my present mind, I began to whistle a happy whistle. I tapped my sandal in the mud for a beat. I rolled my eyes and sheathed my sword. I unsheathed corn and played a mock flute for the children. They giggled hesitantly to each other and then at me. I took a piece of gold from my ear and tossed it to them. I said, "Boo!" quietly for the ghosts of their ancestors we'd unearthed in our sacrilegious zeal.

They looked at the gold, then back at me and one started to cry and shake her finger at me. She was angry. I said, "Then dance!" We circled each other, clearing a space in the corn, a circle. I took off my belt, dropped my short sword and various daggers and brushes. We continued circling, sizing each other up, a hawk to a pigeon, heads bobbing, a go-go beat beatboxed by the other children gathering, a dance unseen before crafted to meet the new aims of the neglected children. Neglected in home, hearth and now war, they would go on to be the greatest generation, regarding this particular dance.

That's how I think it all happened. I was there. I saw it. I caused it.

Gargadoodle. Do.

Sometimes you have to go with what you know. Its hard to go with what you don't know, because you don't know how to do it. It would be called a leap of faith, but in doing so, your leap is built off of something previously known. An entity or action with certain credentials. An offshore platform for bank accounts. A place to shout out loud with old friends, a den for the witches of Eastwick, or New Brunswick. Or a stick to throw for a certain hound dog mentioned in the last blog to chase down and chew upon...

...The ground gets softer with each step towards the creek. The whole area was once under water, from the winding of the waters path to a mile back up hill towards the cul d sac. Even up to a month prior, where we tread would have been ankle deep in water. The frogs still made their presence known, hopping from mud beds and into twigs, washed up leaves, tiny ferns and bramble. Footprints in the mud could belong to a raccoon, a badger, or perhaps the one we were looking for; a creature known as Gargadoodle.

She was long and tall and swayed like a willow tree. She wasn't Gargadoodle. But she knew of Gargadoodle. And I didn't care about Gargadoodle one bit. I cared about her. I wanted that deep hurt look she gave to stare into my deep hurt look I once craved to send back at the world, but now only wanted the balance achieved like that of the left and right hands of two'sies held tight.

You see, Gargadoodle was a ploy. To know him was to love him. And in loving him I became a vehicle for love to focus on my equal opposite. I hoped it was she beside me, both of us nearly ankle deep in mud as we came closer to the creek, our paddles packed tight in our waterproof bags, our inflatable raft lips ready to press against the mouth of our oxygen tank, our journey to find Gargadoodle on track.

Why Gargadoodle? The name, I mean? I don't know. I could always go back and find a different, less silly name. A more mature sounding name. A more sly, deft allusion to something reflexive showcasing my wit and literary might. But nay. My one day lady love out there will share a love of the name bespoken before. Gargadoodle. Do.

Or will be so...in the future!?

A hunting we will go, in our tuxedos, for in a moment's notice we may need to dance and sip champagne.

We're out in the wilderness. A slice of heaven, Parksdale, Missouri. A skyline from here to ya-ya. I bet those clouds go all the way up.

I was being stared at, as usual, by a hound dog. He was panting an easy going smile. He tried to maintain eye contact, and I with him, as we in the group munched cold chicken on the heated rocks, the opening of the trail within the over wise dense bushes, dense like a homemade pesto. Dense like a fire-brick pizza. Dense like a backyard game of hopscotch. The trail was dense like everything we left behind in old New York.

Except, it was a different kind of dense. It was uniform. It was in the natural world with a natural order. Sure, the backyard and stoop squabbles down 5th by the Bowery were if nothing natural. Natural to the area, to the squalor, the glint of sun off bricks, reflections distorted in show-room mirrors where person and product shown back in unified and deified light. Natural like the young girls flipping their hair at anyone with the fleeting attention that papa couldn't deliver between working night shifts and drinking away day shifts. Natural as the word "bupkus" spit between Spanish and Italian by men in shirtsleeves playing dominoes to beat the afternoon heat.

But we were in a real nature now. Natural as natural only in the density of the unification of what it was that made of the thing. Examples? Just go outside and breathe the fresh air, you termite. Stop burrowing into my bad writing for a taste. Its out there.

So anyway. Me. The group eating. The hound dog staring. Parksdale, Missouri. The sun was going down and we were getting sleepy, overheated in our tuxedos. Still awaiting word from the party ahead on whether to make camp and take out the partyfare, the champagne, the whistles and blowers and mad-cap laughs.

It was almost New Years. Did I mention that? Yup. Almost. It was a month away, and we were doing reconnasance to see if an outdoor hiking biddy party in tuxedos could be done for our farewell to the year 2887.

Did I mention it was the future? And we all had dog ears as a genetic mutation? And dog ears had us? And dogs were still dogs, but we could empathize more because we could all hear really good, and listening is the key to empathy? I think I forgot to mention those parts.

But its all true, nothing but the true, so help me Trudy.

Did I mention the hound dog was named Trudy? Or will be so...in the future!?

Did they have hobbies? Did they think about him? Cats.

That's why they call me bloggy Monday. Because I said so. Its the reason and I'm the rhyme. I'm the scheme and the dollar sign. I got deals that Cohen can't match, my optics latch to the latest catch and color me blind.

Its time to unwind with another installment of GC Subconscious.

Dog wind chime mutt strutt mcGoo.

If I could add one more element. Mountain man Wanted for Rodeo, Mixed Genre Beard-Oriented Confederate Send-Off, engagement, one-night only.

Shallow dissapear into the abysss. The shallow abyss.

Some people go into nature to leave the complications of the everyday and to meditate, perhaps seeking unity through the memories past that made up key moments in their lives. They need to leave the distractions for the unity of motion and intention in nature. And they do.

They do. I should. They go, I stay. Process of salt water in my veins, I'm ship on my mental sea in need of high tide while standing still I still rock along.

Oblong is the shape of my rear end from so much sitting, still my mind goes a mile a minute. In Euro, it would be a kilometer per three fourths a minute. In liters, in litters, a kitten hero arises, a cook, on Schemerhorn, not far Atlantic from me.

The management of the building didn't know what to do with the litter of backyard kitties born one cold December day. Many were given away, but one runt couldn't be placed with a decent home. So the little lady of the Management, Delorita, took in the baby cat. Named him TinTin de'Clawed. Made him a chef. Gave him lessons in pastries and rudimentary basting of meats. Told him that a good chef always tastes, a great chef spits up hairballs. It wasn't true, but the cat couldn't understand English, anyhow.

But he understood the showing. He understand the demonstrations and took to it like a substitute for cat nip. He chased the "laser pen" of knowledge all around the kitchen and through his years, learned all sorts; knife skills, herbs, soups, timing the courses, and of course, how to make friends with the mice so they stay away–for simply chasing them only leads to cartoonish behavior, and letting them be is nip for the health inspectors.

They were a team, Cat and Delorita. And they cooked! Mostly for family meals.

Many times cat looked out the window. Thinking about his brothers and sisters in their homes? What their lives were like? Did they have hobbies? Did they think about him? Cats.

the buzz of bees

A constant buzz was in the air. The flowers were full of them, but also the tall grasses, the beach sand, the low lit cabins at night. It was nearly the end of summer and like the bees, whose sound they emulate, the plants, trees, humans, even inanimate things were all getting busy.

I was in Cabin 9 with my new friend, Patrice. She was one score past seventeen. I found her milling about the supplies store with her cat in a bag peeking out. She'd seen a lot in her days and still loved to boogie down the aisles as the Isley Brothers played over the tiny speakers. There was little room for bass coming from those speakers, planted high on the ways, still Patrice swayed from corn starch to baked goods humming low notes to fill out the needs for the song.

I saw her in the check out line. I distracted an elder lady, pointing to the gum and slipped by to be behind her. Patrice saw my move, and when I put down the plastic bar to divide her purchases from my own on the rubber belt to the cashier, she took the bar in hand and gave me a smack on the arm.

At first alarmed, I then took one of my farm fresh eggs and threw it at her shoes. She laughed a deep and intense laugh, her tiny frame shuddering, her long, blonde curls thrown back with her body an arc to boom out her continuous laughter with force to reach through floorboards below and through my very shoes. A quake.

The quince paste? She rubbed in my face.

The mustard? I got on her skirt.

The kumquats? She made me do squats, bending low and taking a bite with each dip.

The cashier thought us crazy. We were. But not crazy enough to know how to get to the next place to elongate our craziness. We paid, offered to clean, but instead were pushed out by broom and it seemed we were buddies to be.

I flipped a coin. She caught it in the air. I said I didn't care and we'd go to cabin 9. We did. We made a feast of frozen things in the oven–which all came out spectacular. We made like the bees. We were busy. We played Yahtzee. She sneezed a few times, I took that as a mating sign. I dove for her and we made the most out of the dwindling sunlight, the summers final offerings in powerful scents and smells as the sensory world would again be shepherded by old man winter into the luminous final stages of the year.

We were people of the fall, anyway. Apple pickers. Tree climbers. Collectors of all things nuts. We were predisposed with a genetic understanding of winter and the shadow of death. We were star children betting on a place beyond death, though just below the furrowed brow, in some furrowed frontal lobe, we unconsciously understood that pain and suffering to get to the next astral plain would be unbearable. We were like onions. We felt compassion for them–that's why we cried each time cutting a peeling them, thinking of all the layers we'd sliced away, heated in the skillet of final agony, becoming translucent, ghost-like but oh so flavorful! All in order to make it to the next stage, the next showtime, the next performance if karma was a cooking show, surely we'd been through the prep stages. Surely.

But it wasn't up to us to name the time and place of presentation. It was the show's producers, the cosmos–and one got the feeling, especially while laying out at the beach dropping eggs on each other, pushing away the hungry hermit crabs and shooing away seagulls–that maybe the cosmos were askew. What if they hired the wrong host for the show of shows? What is said host wasn't ready with lines memorized, the corporal being prepared to deliver with conviction when the cameras began shooting?

Oh. It was illuminating and the purple from the night sea, the inky inkiness so apparent in the last chapters on the road; we succumbed in slumber and woke to find ourselves as ourselves, curious about this person wrapped well in our arms as ivy, shaken as whole milk to butter, the buzz of bees.

dirk storm strum the accordion.

On the life and death of Willard Oates. No, wait, on the life and death of Willard Oates. No wait. On the life and death of Willard Oates. No, not yet. On the sanctimonious sanctions on the life and death of Willard Oates, and Johnny Hasbeen. Hart strings hammer lock click bang. Sausage party, too many men, disruptions. No need to fight now, no need to right wrongs, no need to get by with all the caviar. Women heal women heal women heal. Heal toe, cha cha cha. Simple, elegant, secret element. soda fountain fought and fighting, hold the torch there's no more hiding hard up hamstrings no more running tired dirk storm strum the accordion.

so that would actually not be surprising there

Richard was on the mic, the spotlight beamed solely from his neck up. All else was dark. He wasn't doing well.

Yes, even the lighting guy turned on him after a series of bad puns and ill timed elbow scratches. Was Richard once again doomed to bomb? Was his life as a rising comedic star to be dashed? He had to think fast.

And that was his problem. He was thinking. He should have been doing. He wasn't seasoned enough a working comedian. In fact, he only had one good line but it took him far and wide. One one minute joke, and then nine minutes of fluff he could do nothing with.

That one line, more a curse than blessing. For years he'd been doing open mics on the lower east side. The night before (sometimes the hour before) he'd write on a cocktail napkin the five things wrong with a selected topic, usually found in a newspaper, in the trash, near the cafe the open mic took place. The crumpled quality and creases could make funny word play out of any metro topic.

And he was tolerated. By those also thankful to at least be tolerated, they laughed, and with unease. It was a sickening five hour weekly ordeal for all those involved, like a waiting room to a dentist who only stole a tooth a visit till the once bright-eyed and bushy tailed–still remaining bright-eyed and bushy tailed–looked a little crazy with gaps in their radiant smile.

Somehow, Richard got hold of one good joke about dogs and it stuck. The first time used,an October Monday, he started with a smile and a pause and spat it out. There was a surprise chuckle from those seated which echoed to the back bar. The chuckles spread like the chuckles of the Irish, with a twist at the end as if questioning the light fare of the humor, like the first time as a child realizing you could hear yourself laugh in your head verse laughing out loud, and then experimenting with the feeling and sound.

It was so good a joke that Richard got standing handshakes coming off stage. The top jokers actually put down their notes, which they only consult in between acts, and looked him in the face. It was a look of hard-earned, begrudged respect. A crowd of ten elders gathered, funny men who legend had it had sold jokes to cable tv shows. They asked him to do it again next week. Richard was if anything curious. He agreed, but still had to compute in his head what he did right. "Why so funny?" he wondered.

The next week and the week that followed he could do no wrong. They all waited for the one joke within his otherwise horrific list of zingers based on the summer city heat index. Each set he placed this golden egg in different settings within the otherwise rotten eleven; the top, the end, the middle, the middle-end, the top-top. He got to be a real craftsmen devoted to creating an arc to his act, to looking cold and hard at his lists and ask aloud, "Is this shit?" He started tweaking everything.

And then he got the call from Warner Brothers. Not "the" Warner Brothers, but Joyce Brothers brothers Warner and Timmy. I should have written Warner and Timmy Brothers, come to think of it.

Anyway, they wanted to book the act they heard so much about, had come to see a few times themselves. So they did. Gotham! Phil's! Gerties'! Comedy Madness! All the big venues, Richard did his act. And the people kind of loved him? He at least got by. They didn't mind the stink as long as the one funny joke acted as a breeze, fresh air clearing out all the stale jokes left behind from the night, from the day, from their own jobs, lives, lies, license to laugh.

Richard, again, was, if anything, curious. And he couldn't really take being a one joke man, simply because he wanted to know why. Why was it funny? Why was the rest of the material so bad. What is the secret formula that can be tapped and applied to make shit into gold?

He'd been told one must steal, beat, and break to get inside a joke. And he tried it all. At home he'd shut off the lights, draw the curtains and take out a gun. He'd hold it into the air and address the joke. He'd make his demands for the secret. He'd pull the hammer back and wait. Ge got tired of the approach day after day and decided to bribe the joke. He held up ham sandwiches, bottles of brandy, girlie magazines (the joke sections), but still nothing.

He'd write down the joke and think about each word. He'd rearrange them, retranslate them, sub in one for another. Still nothing was illuminated. And another gig was only a day away. He started to sweat.

Yeah, so back to the top. The spotlight is a guillotine. Richard knows his time is up. He's over thinking. He was told not to, but he can't stop thinking about not over thinking. So he does what any sane person would do, he over-over thinks with the idea that if the engine in his mind goes fast enough he can transcend time and space.

He wakes up the next day in 1955. Oh wait, it was New Years Eve, by the way. Of the year 1954, so that would actually not be surprising there. I should really edit this.

if they in fact had a happy ending, all of them, as stars.

They called her The One. She was followed by The Two and The Three.

They were former inmates at Sing Sing.

Not the prison, but the song. They were backup singers. They did stints in the 60s. Two week runs, six nights a week, five hours straight with forty minutes on and twenty minutes off.

They were last in Boston. A lot of mob bosses owned the clubs. They particularly liked the swing music and being an r&b combo, their group only knew one. So they played Sing, Sing over and over, five times a night, six nights a week.

The band had no horns. And that's when the singers stepped in to mimic the parts, hand motions and all. 1 = Gladys, trumpet. 2 = Ethel, clarinet/ alto sax 3 = Josephine, trombone.

Otherwise, they sang back up for Aretha type songs while Fats McGee played piano and sang, all the way from New Orleans to country western to cool jazz. Rogers on bass, Timmy on drums, Leroy on guitar.

Fats & His Tummy Rubs was the billing for they way they sang and presented the tunes in nightclubs across the northeast and down south.

At first the girls liked the gig. They were fresh-faced, had heard of Fats through the same church circles in which they themselves met; few times a year at pageants and youth conferences.

But you know how these things go. No? Well, I got to get back to practicing so without having to throw anything crazy in the mix, lets just say they all got along and became stars. All of them. They are remembered today as the Pointer Sisters (I'll have to go on wikipedia, read their bio and see if they in fact had a happy ending, all of them, as stars. But for now, lets go with it).

lighthouse on the lake shore up north

Ship-shape and shapeless at the same time, Bernadette swaddled her baby in a towel and headed down the main drag towards the pharmacy.

"I'll take two of these," she declared to the boy behind the counter. She held up a glass pacifier. The boy looked at the baby and then back to Bernadette.

"You want the glass ones, ma'am?"

"Yes, I do," she replied, "two of them."

Bernadette caught the boy's glances. She signed and moved through the aisles and racks of greeting cards and old folks rummaging. She picked up her paper bag, paid and left folding the receipt for her dress front pocket.

She walked Greene street towards the pier as the sun set, giving the baby boy a slight bounce on the cobblestone. She thought of her sister up north and the upcoming baby shower. She'd have to plan quick, take the train on a Thursday to make the most of the weekend. Baby showers in the bigger cities. She wondered if people brought their young children; would a baby ruin the surprise, dampen the anticipation and excitement when they start behaving as babies do?

She'd never had a baby shower of her own. She kept things quiet and liked it that way through the lean years and as the family gathered a little wealth unto themselves. Had a partner in her good husband, holding similar interests and hobbies. For one, she liked holding the bills on her lap while painting. Specifically, she enjoyed acrylics on the paint-by-numbers. She'd follow the instructions, sometimes mixing her own shades for a #1 blue, and giving a fade to the skyline with a little dab of orange and a smidgeon of white.

As she made her way to the water, a few stars out, the little one under her arm cooing, she thought again about her sister, the dresses they wore, the patterns they used. How different will it be? With Bernadette's oldest child just starting pre-school, the age difference could play out how between the siblings? Will they fight more or less? Will they share secrets? She always held an image of her sister as her pretty little thing, through it all and all. When they smiled together, strangers took notice, strangers that otherwise passed them by as two more children about their games.

"There are mines, and the jewels inside," went the night song they'd sing. Bernadette and her sister shared the room in those early days, their voices low hum, a beacon through the darkness between their beds. She'd sing and imagine the two of them going down a mine like in the Saturday morning movie she'd seen, and toiling and chiseling, flashlight helmets in the dark, finding ores of brightest green and orange and yellow. They'd chip away huge chunks of it. Not like jewels worth millions, but like the cookie chunk found in a sundae at Frannie's Homemade.

Down at the pier, she could smell the rain, a muddy lake water, catch a glimpse from the lighthouse on the lake shore up north.

dog, cat, mouse, broom; dog, cat, mouse, broom.

A writer is to their handwriting as an owner walking their dog.

I lifted that line from my old notebook. Now to tease it out. A dog's snout can sniff up a whirlwind of scents, but we, the owners, can't lay claim to the olfactory of our beloved animals. We can just see that they enjoy what they're doing. And vicariously, we feel joy in doing, sensing, the doggie busy-body.

Isn't that enough? You, the selfish, who would lay claim to both beast and burden? Let it go. Let them have their way. You don't need to micromanage your dog or cat with bird songs. You still have the dishes to do, by the way. And bills to pay.

And when winter comes along, if those bills aren't paid, are you gonna be able to afford Jordy's new four-leg sweater in the cold months, his once luxurious fur thinning out through his exponentially sped up doggie years?

Focus on your own olfactory. Take joy sensed through your own five. Stop stopping off at the hamper to huff on yesterday's merits. Stop climbing down the ladders you've risen just to rise again and admire the view of past competitor's receding hair lines.

These are the dog days of summer, I've been told. They are followed by the cat days of fall, chasing the mouse days of winter, and the mouse shits on the broom of spring that knocks about the dog, cat, mouse, broom; dog, cat, mouse, broom.

Coda

Soften the softener used in said laundry when you do finally wash out the clothes stored in said hamper of the past glories.

The dryer sheets of the mind add nothing to the design and cleaning the lint before is futile. Only clean after.

Sensory deprivation will get you no invitation to the ball. On the other hand, trying to own your pet's best senses will only get you invited to the pound.

Without construct, there is only missed opportunities to destruct.

Without a claim, you will still most likely be allowed to retrieve your dry cleaning. But its a hassle.

But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.

"There is no room at the inn."

I'd been hearing that all day. From inn to inn as we inched our way down the crowded Gotica area of Barcelona. I was surprised, because I knew this area as the tourist section with hostels, hotels catering to a crowd with limit currency.

And Spain's overall economy being what it was, I was confused. If Chester Cheeto was in "Less than Zero" which character would he have played? This ran through my mind all day, and at every stop, I'd ring the bell, be allowed to enter and first ask the inns keep this very question.

Sometimes I'd deliver the line while holding a large bag of cheetos against my chest as display, with the other hand stretched out, a single cheese snack club held between my fingers ready to bop the peoples on their noses.

In one case, the inns keep rose and bellowed, "There is no room at the inn!" Mostly they say it quietly, so I was taken aback by the venomous retort from said inns keep.

"Keep it down," I said in Castilian (it even kept the identical rhyme in translation). "People are sleeping." I went in behind his desk, helped myself to the clean white towels, returned to my side by the entrance, faced in, turned up my nose, dropped the towels and ran up the stairs giggling. He gave chase, caught me in the corner. My friends were left wondering down the stairs, probably going through the shampoos. But up on the third floor I was alone with the burly man inching closer.

I brandished another cheeto, held it up high in the air. "Don't get any closer!" But he kept coming and a thought occurred to me that I'd never actually used one of these outside of the practice range. Hell, I'd never even eaten one outside of elementary school systems of the Northwest, where I was packed and shipped every year to follow my father in his base stations through a failed military career.

No. I was in trouble and that was a fact. But it was do or die and I didn't ask why when the inns keep was in reach. I just faked left and then dove headlong into him, cheeto swinging, felling its victim.

Have you ever seen the neon orange of a cheeto covered in blood? Imagine that. But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.

No, it is the end rhyme.

We lost everything in order to save time. But now where are we? Back to our ancient civilization starting again.

The grain needs harvesting, I don't know what to do?

The clean water is in retreat, where to begin collecting, purifying, storing?

The neighbors are eyeing my wares and its their advantage to just take. They have more children on the way. Its not about needs, its about one growing tribe, and with whom shall I invest my early loyalties and strength in numbers? If proven honest and true to them now, maybe in my wizened years, their grown boys will at least deputize me, give me some clout over the others fallen, as the community attempts to rebuild. For every collective effort, there are those who fall out of line, those who's behaviors don't jibe, those who ask for too much. We're expected to survive, make it through another day, another prodigy on the way. At least in various circles within circles. This tribe I'm interested in. They are loyal to themselves and have a moral imperative to grow strong throughout what is not of the tribe. They are a collective Self. And Other will be harnessed to engrossify their kind.

The broader overlapping circle includes all those living in the 4th Ward, post-flood, post-starvation years, post rise and fall of the last with ammunition, and in the here and now. We have a moral imperative based on a loose connection, an idea of humanity, to move forward. To beget. To forget and beget and forget and beget. And to rebuild. As the circle grows larger, the connectivity looses its hold, and inner turmoil brews. The strength is in numbers, but how the numbers hold. Within the folds, there is more strength (or will) within a smaller number that can move through the larger, less committed.

Anyway, I'm teasing something out I can't get to. But I'm throwing in my lot here.

Read aloud, "I'm smoking like a joker. Something like a small girl."

They don't rhyme, do they? But they do. Maybe just the way I pronounce things. Its not the end rhyme, but the run-up to the end that does something.

No, it is the end rhyme.

And then we can do the dance

Something in the air in the last weekend of July. Happens every year. People realize

one more month of summer fun, and the stickiest of months, the least pleasant. Better make something happen.

It feels at first like a good natured collusion, people calling people, reaching out, no desperation in their voices (yet), still hope because technically its still July.

But when August hits, ho boy. Things are going to get kooky. The itch to make good on promises promised every time thinking about summer when off-season. What to do, so that we can all leave the sweet months behind with a memory or two, a downhill bike ride, a kayak trip, a leave-it-to-Beaver montage. A laurel wreath constructed solely from other people's merit. A fictitious ferret like creature climbs around the bar, sniffing at drinks, paws and claws in people's spaces, an inching around, an anxious hunt for fun. There's more than one. Again, people seem good natured starting the night, hopeful to find their summer love, but it can turn ugly.

Its turned ugly in me, twice. I get short-tempered. I get tankard. I need a lanyard that says "don't get too close" or, the way things have been as of late; "if you can read this sign, my eyes are up here."

Ladies, I know you need a little summer thrill, but I'm not the type, necessarily. And the more you ogle my torso, the more I feel inclined to go somewhere else with my wares and withdraw from public. I'm not a piece of luggage for you to store your emotional needs. I'm not a physical play gym for the worldy-despondants who think me the angel incarnate for a one time orgiastic fling.

I could be. But woo me softly. No onslaught of the genial towards a quick seduction. Keep it light at first. Make me laugh. Buy me a drink. It helps me relax. I want to have fun, too, with you and your friends, in the bedroom, feathers and french ticklers and the cat o' nine tails. But I have my own baggage, luggage, I lug around, and I can't just jump into your sensual world without first entering the neutral head/ heart space of friendship. I need to see myself transcendent of my past hurts and hurrahs.

And then we can do the dance.

maybe I should. Maybe I should.

The contestants lined up, engines purring and as the clock reached to half-past midnight, those purrs turned to roars. Those roars turned to shrieks as half-past midnight stretched on into a temporal suspension. Those shrieks turned to signs of relief as two past half-past midnight came and went.

There was no flag, no girl in white twirling a banner. There would be no race through the flood gates. There would be no honor at stake, no pride won or lost, nothing but the comfort in turning off the engines, putting down the remote controls, putting the suped-up matchbox cars back into the contestants dark trench coats, and back into the dark we all went.

I caught up with Gary on 4th and Baldingder. We ducked into the deli for a couple beers in brown paper. I hadn't noticed too good in the light what he was rolling with at the canceled race. I asked him about it. He pulled out a retro-fitted two-fist knuckle sandwich that I eagerly dodged. I shook my finger at him. I wouldn't get instigated into his fight. He knew this too well, and in hindsight I wondered at him trying to hit me with two fists at the same time, an awkward and slow attack. Almost no attack at all.

How's that? Lucien. Lucien first hipped me to an idea that you could weave letters together to form words. They could be words you learned in school, but they could be from the street. Lucien was the devil. He's since retired and in the tedium of retirement, took me on as a shipmate as he set sail through the twilight of his life.

Now, when I say "weave letters together" and "the devil" I don't mean to say there is sorcery going on. Just language. But language can have power, if we give it credence. By credence, I don't mean the band, but maybe I should. Maybe I should.

Timer's up.

Me with me "yee-haws" and they with their "cay-jun".

The only thing that really matters is that there is the finite. No. Wait. I can't grasp that. Too abstract.

The only thing that really matters is to keep moving, and let some sort of rhythm take place as the type, type, type goes. Something stirs inside me, a combination of key strokes and the sound of the words in my head, and a summoning of the dead...(no, not the dead, that was for the rhyme).

No, but it is something in the combination of rhythm and meaning of words, how one pushes the other along that can generate something new. Not something odd for the sake of odd, but careful foot paths along the river bank while walking in reverse can give direction in which way to turn, if at all needed, and in this one can then choose to drown or make it back to the bungalow....

....there were three of us staying at the family owned bungalow. It had been my uncle's, back when I called him Munca', back thirty years he signed the papers, for I was almost two. You do the math.

It was charming, this cabin, run down like our friendship; me, Leroy, and Labeouf. In cajun country, children grow together like kettle a' corn, both sweet and savory and tough. Not too popular in the rest of America, indicative with its pop culture matinees and movie theaters popping corn with its extra salt and butter smothered.

We were of a different cloth. A simple folk growing up, tossing the football, playing our fiddle and accordion and all said with a lovely dialect and pronunciation I lost when moving west.

It was part of the problem at hand. They still called me names behind my back, "The Wild One" "Kentucky Grass" "Shoot 'Em Up." There had been opportunities post high school in Lexington for all of us to pursue our goals in applied science with metallurgy. As a child, even spending summers in this very same wood framed house by the river, I dreamt of American industry, a return to glory of manufacturing solid products. The other boys had drum sticks and board games. I pretended to solder with my hair brush on the benches under the spruce trees.

I met Leroy and Labeouf young, but we never knew our shared love till we were older, by chance coming upon a Fernand Léger's "The Discs in the City" in a downtown red-light shop, snuck off from our field trip class to the dentist.

All through shop class and part time work at Thibodeaux's Body Shop, we dreamed of what we knew. Stories about going west, of a clay colored blue, like our own river's silt deposit but with a possible strength to strip out the alloy.

And when I got to Poly-tech in Lexington, I didn't turn back. I quickly lost my Cajun accent for the urban inflections. I brought my fiddle from my shoulder to rest under my chin. I met a girl who shared the love of metallurgy. We seduced each other with existential bent poems themed on the morning moments;

"Like liquid alloy in the morning, molten, unable to take a shape, the coffee whistles but still can't cool me the summer sun is no match until I'm poured into my vessel, a substance, a soul that takes me aches and all, as I withdraw and into being shapeless shape shifter knows no place to linger but I would gladly still in this blue clay for you simple soil with no alloy yet, yet you'd allow me to be as such as we twirl together."

And so we had problems, going back to the present, me and my two friends in the bungalow, the run-down cabin of my youth. But we worked in out. Me with me "yee-haws" and they with their "cay-jun".

job hunt

I love the children of the night. They are each loners, and though they may pairs of twos and threes.

They are inherent loners, though, each one. They seek to unite with other inherent loners, on orders of the office of external affairs. I just my door jamb. John is there. With a bow tie. Leave it to John. A heartache officer, is what he is. I'll soon be in LA three days before the wedding. Where will I stay? How will I travel? What will I do? What does it matter? Where will the wedding be? Should I rent a car? Ha! Drive? Rent? That ain't me, brother. But maybe its you? If so, please let me know.

Shabadoo. Forgive me.

Shabadoo. Forgive me.

Why when you come to me do I have to be resentfull? Aye, if only I wasn't such a child when I shouldn't be such a child.

To be a child is great, most of the time. The world is bigger and more beautiful, still within reach but with little hands that can only hold so much.

But sometimes I have to be a man. And when you needed space, I cried. I cried because it was my day one day off, and come on! I work hard and gee whizz, it was my one Sunday to go out and be warm in the amazingly warm, nonseasonal weather and see and be seen and go to the zoo, and why would you want to walk alone anyway?....shabadoo. (this is my "ohmmmmmm)"

Shabadoo. Forgive me.

play with serious consequences.

Four men in a room, one $400 bottle of wine, one glass each, twelve hour lockdown, one gun. What happens?

This is my pitch for a new play based on the '96 Vega Sicilia "Unico" a great wine from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. From what I understand, children across Spain sing odes to the Unico after their national pledge of allegiance. Old farmers sell their last cattle before retiring with a bottle into the long, dusty road to death. Its great.

So what happens to these four men? Who are they? What are the conditions?
_____________

Bruno, a french-emigree, mid-thirties, taste buds completely stripped in a Burgundy tasting accident, his olfactory senses revoked by border police when crossing into American from Canada and declaring that his inspector smelled of truffles.

Rudolph, the son of illustrious comic book illustrators. He is the only one from wealth, the only one who had in the past tasted any vintage Unico, the flavor profile forever imprinted on his brain.

Justin, a former teen-idol turned celebrated artist on his own right, in his own mind. This young middle class man from Wyoming does resemble Justin Timberlake, found this a means to an end early in youth and has cultivated the likeness to get what he wants. His three friends do believe he is in fact Justin Timberlake. Maybe he truly is this person, and he's playing games with me, his alternate world author.

The fourth is, of course, me. I am G-d to this slice of half-baked fiction, to this pile of dried beans in need of a soak and boil in the waters of meaning. But its my hill of beans, though it doesn't account for much.

_________

Scene 1. The four of us are in an empty basement looking room. We sit around a card table on folded chairs. One light hangs overhead. Italian opera plays, skips, plays, skips. On the table is the Unico and four glasses. A wine key balances perfectly on justin's nose.

BRUNO: So we begin our 12 hour adventure. Hands out, fellahs.

(We all reach into our pockets and produce wads of cash equalling $100. Rudolph places a revolver on the table).

BRUNO: That's right. $100 each for this $400 bottle of wine. And Rudolph, only a single bullet, yes?

RUDOLPH: Yes. A single bullet.

BRUNO: Let me see.

(Bruno takes the gun, spins the bullet holder thing, stops it and takes out the bullet it. He examines it and puts it back in with another spin of the thingy).

BRUNO: Right, so we all know the rules. A bottle of wine pours four glasses. There are four of us. We have twelve hours to enjoy. Nobody wants to finish first, but neither do they want to finish last. The last to finish is shot dead. Who can pull themselves away, even after twelve hours, from the transcendent experience of a glass of Unico? That being said; you guys know I have no sense of taste or smell, right? Chances are that we pour this baby, and I gulp it down real quick.

(The group nods that they do, in fact, know).

BRUNO: Just want to be fair, that's all.

ME: So lets proceed. Justin, first give us a song, then please open the wine.

(Justin does his thing, a rap about the Unico and life with a little dance, too).

JUSTIN: Unico. Unico. Unico. Yeah, baby. Hustle on this piece. Unico.

(Justin flexes, then opens the bottle with perfect poise. He pours the taste to me, I sniff it severely, nod that he continues. He pours a small and equal amount into each glass. We rise, clink glasses and then sit and smell. Rudolph addresses the audience).

RUDOLPH: How did the four of us come together? Not unlike the primary components of this or any wine. We were all picked...

(The four of us laugh).

...Bruno, like the grapes, was harvested from the ground. A former drunk, sprawled on a city subway station platform, he was plucked from his place of being, an anti-growth, shall we say? In his native Savoie, had he ever felt the sun? The good rain? A wash of water draining off in time to make the tasting roots crave more, dig deep into the soil, push out the great membrane of skin to protect the pim, the seed for future generations? What is it about fruit that tastes so good, but genetics?

BRUNO...butt genetics?

(We all laugh).

RUDOLPH: Justin, a teen idol, is like the magic of yeast. He speaks to us because he can sense what is in the air, a righteous bacteria, he knows what we all think and feel and can express it, fermenting our natural juices into a concoction with heady consequences. Then there is Gabriel, like the oak in which the juice sits for sometimes months, sometimes years. His heritage is rough hewn like French oak, imparting hints of hazelnut. Tannins–stick and bramble–are exonerated after years pent-up and add depth to the juice. Rudolph? Me? I am the merchant tonight. I am the negociant, picking crop from various fields to make the blend as I deem fit. Did we miss anyone?

GABRIEL: I am so sexy.

BRUNO: They say in zen that art is not complete without the viewer. It is only half, the archer pulling back on the bow, but the arrow can't take flight without letting loose, so lets get on with the juice.

(We all smell and then drink. I call out).

GABRIEL: Justin, pour the four glasses!

(Justin finishes pouring the four glasses with perfection. We all sit and smell and contemplate).

(SCENE 1 OVER AND OUT).

the bastard son of Lincoln, the everyman.

In 1886, Rod Lincoln, the self-proclamined bastard son of Abraham Lincoln, went for a proverbial walk down memory lane.

He sat comfortably in his whicker chair on his whicker porch, with the whicker window to his whicker house left open, the smell of apple pie drifting from its cooling spot on the whicker sill. Rod, 36 at this time, rested with his complete collection of the local newspaper's New Years editions starting from his birthyear to his present.

The first ten years of his life's worth of newspapers were provided to him and all the others at the orphanage each January from their arrival till their emancipation with a foster parent, or in the case of Rod, till they were forced out, in tears, at the still emotionally tender age of 16.

Oh Rod! The dissafected youth, always picked on, always waiting for a moment of truth. Since heralded into the orphanage at two weeks of age, Rod was always the runt. The brunt of all the orphan's dejection and anger at fate was then laid onto this outsider of outsiders, so that from from 1850 and California's entry as the 31st state and all the way to 1866 when Andrew Jackson formally declared the Civil War over, our Rod had a hard time with it.

Through the years, new orphans would come and go, and they always seemed to find Rod as a focal point for their frustration, a whipping post of sorts for their vocal lashes. No matter how old, how he thought of his senority, the case remained the same until the month before his 16th year.

In that month, Rod declared he'd take no more. He'd give no less than what he had taken. He gave every remained orphan, most new arrivals as foster care in this particular mountain and coal mining filled town was prosperous, with flowers. Then he was out with a sack of newspapers and a dream.

Rod dreamt of whicker. He loved weaving parts in and out, forming solid planes to then form chairs, mantels, animal shapes. Whicker was his thing. So at 16, Rod traveled the land seeking out masters of the whicker trade. He landed first in small town North Dakota, apprenticed to carnival whare whicker merchant named Sid. Rod ran the merchandize at the tables. He traveld with Sid and the company throughout the state for that season of country fairs. He learned to ferment whicker into a kind of whicker-beer. He invented a kind of slap bracelet of whicker that stands as a straight six inch piece, but upon slapping it against one's wrist, it curls around fitting snug and attractive.

He met his future wife, Belinda, while testing out his invention on the troupe of horseriders from Mongolia. Belinda had emigrated with her family some years before, having passed through mainland China, the southern province, to Hong Kong and stopped in Hawaii for childhood years. Her father, a juggler of pins great and small, was hired into one carnival after another with his most famous trick, the pincushion jugglethon lasting twelve hours.

They traveled, this restless Mongolian clan, eventually building such a reputation as to choose their own bookings, no longer at the mercy of ruthless promoters and small town gigs. They enjoyed the plains, the horses, the people of the Dakotas and took in with the particular carnival our Rod belonged to.
And then one day there was the slap bracelet, love, a common bond of whicker and Mongolian barbeque. Rod was always embarrassed at both his physical statue and his orphaned background, and decided to tell Belinda on their second date that he was in fact the lost son to former President Lincoln. She didn't believe him for a second, and said so. She added, "But sounds like a good story. Maybe I'm the descendent of Ghengis Khan, Chances are, what with all his concubines, that most of us are..." And it got into Rod's head one day, remembering this, as he flipped through papers, as his mind wove ideas not unlike weaving bands of whicker, he thought:

"Maybe we are all the descendents of Abraham Lincoln spirtitually, then. If Ghengis Khan had so many brides, that would surely influence things. But what if America, the land, is the bride, with time the mid-wife, and Lincoln, the great man fathered the nation from our great defining trauma. Afterall, the revolution was just a revolution. The means of ruling, the style and substance remained the same, but with a revolution in who did the ruling. But this great war of states? This was our defining moment and Lincoln our leader, a great father...."
That's what Rod thought about-Rod the bastard son of Abraham Lincoln-sitting with his newspapers and whicker and minding the apple pie and thinking about all the good Mongolian style bbq he and his wife and children and grandchildren would soon be enjoying.

Something like this.

Ah. John. John, John, John. Oh John Updike. Whewww.

Dear Anthony,

I know I haven't written in a while. I've taken an unpurposeful hiatus. But then John Updike died last night. And I feel so lonely.

I feel so lonely because John was the only one who understood me. And I know that the phrase connotes an act of listening on John's part to me. And I know that he didn't know that I myself exist amongst the many out there. But for him to be a writer seeing the world and recording the world the way he did–well, I just feel in reading his work that he understands me, that's all.

Do I understand him? I don't know. I haven't read enough of his work, and even if I did, who is to say truth and intent lie together at night post-coital from a day's attempt at unity?

I don't think that last sentence makes sense, but you know what I'm getting at, right?

John. John, John, John. Oh John. I'll have to take a present, a bookstore gift certificate from my parents from the holidays and buy your Olinger collection. I'll never forget reading "The Alligators" and just reaching the epiphany with the narrator and thinking, "man, so true."

I just read, 'A&P" at http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike. Wheww! Both stories are in the mind of a nice boy, the narrator, and the world moves around him and he wants to participate as a hero. And something catches up to him. And its beautiful.

Ah. John. John, John, John. Oh John Updike. Whewww. I wish I knew you better.