Hocus Pocus

This just makes me happy:

Invited Guest

There was rain. The yellowed grass husked green. The leaves are turning yellow.
Dad's skin smells like butter, flakes behind his ears into his cereal. O's. Honey O's.
Guy calls in a voice. On the telephone he says, There are toile dishes with peacocks,
blue, and fruit, lots and lots of grapes. Should I pick them up from this house with lemon scented banisters? Too much Pledge I think. Should I put them on a table?
Empty? To sell? To someone?
A crackle in the line. Or is it in his voice?
I say, It's getting cooler outside.
I say, There was a rush of ideas, and now September is nearly ended.
Guy says, What gives?
My sister's here, I say.
Sister opens the door. It squawks. She is holding a head of cauliflower. I picked this, she says.
Dad looks up from his Honey O's. He makes with his mouth the shape: O.
I put down the phone.
I put down Guy's voice.
Outside, the low growl of thunder.
Outside, the churn of weather.
Outside is not invited inside.

Abalone

Ne hao, I say.
Bao yu, I say.  
Shh, Guy says. I can't take it anymore.
What you got here? a man says.
Ne hao, I say in my head.
Stuff, I say in my head.
Junk, I say in my head.
S**t, I say in my head.
Things you probably don't need, I say in my head.
Or want, I say in my head.
Things falling apart, I say in my head.
Fine things we've picked up along the way, Guy says.
Cheap, Guy says.
Sturdy, Guy says.
Bao yu, I say.
Shh, Guy says.
Nice, the man says.
Very nice, the man says.
We are on the sidewalk. The things are on a table. The table separates us from this man. This man says, I'm Paul. This man says, I like old things because they make me feel good, because they don't make em like they used to, do they?
No Paul, Guy says, they don't, Paul.
I'm from Arizona, Paul says. It's hot there, but in a different way.
I know what you mean, Paul, Guy says. Dry heat versus...
Versus all this humidity, Guy says.
Half the time, I feel like I'm melting, I say.
Paul says nothing.
Guy clears his throat.
The other half, I'm freezing, I say.
I know what you mean, Paul says. He says, I'm working on a house.
He says, blah blah blah drywall blah blah blah drywall.
Guy says, I know what you mean about that blah blah blah blah drywall.
Drywall, I say.
Paul waits.
Is tough, I say.
Paul leaves.
I say, Goodbye. It is too difficult for me to say it in Chinese. So I say, Goodbye. Come back soon.

"S.U.P.P.O.R.T."

These days, as you may have surmised, Guy and I are propping each other up from the mud Forrest and Bubba Gump style. The question is never whether, but just what we're going to do with ourselves on any given day. Especially if there aren't any good flea markets or estate sales to go to. Old movies and long walks. Lots and lots of youtube. Guy wallows in his Tammy Wynette obsession, and I like watching him try not to cry when we watch this. We have a few old ladies whose lawns we mow for a few bucks here and there. They like me, which is nice, and I like them. I feel like our lives are not so dissimilar.

We write stories sometimes, Guy and I, and read them to each other. Guy is a horrible writer, and he makes me feel better about my own efforts. Guy loves adjectives. Sometimes we will write stories together, trading off sentences. I will introduce a horse, and Guy will describe the horse. Guy enjoys details.

We traded my accordion for this. I don't know how I was talked into it, but there is this Chinese girl who works at the grocery store who I am always trying to talk to. That might have had something to do with it. So we try to learn Mandarin Chinese together as well, off and on as we have the energy for it. Maybe one day we will sell enough stuff to go to China. Maybe we will just sell enough so we can drink beer that doesn't give me headaches.

Pet Mother

Guy opens a cabinet. He tells me, Curt is to butter as Guy is to kombucha.

There are jars and jars of the stuff. He takes one out and shows it to me, lets me hold it, and says that I should take it, that I should take care of his mother. I say, Don't tell me what I should do, and he says, You can take one if you'd like, it would be something like a pet.
A pet? I say.

Now, at home, the mother is on the table, my new pet. I watch it for a while, but it doesn't do much. But I am afraid that I might kill it, that something will happen and it will get loose and I'll never be able to find it, or that it will get run over by a car.

I pour a little bit of the kombucha into a glass and take a sip. It is sour, burns. It fills me, and Dad walks in and asks what the h*ll it is! I say, It's my new pet. Well, he says, get it out of here, it looks filthy! So I take the mother into my room. I set it on my bureau. I try to come up with a name. I fall asleep.

This is what it feels like

Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!

Guy asks to sell my accordion. Guy asks to sell my food processor. Guy asks to sell my knife collection.

These are all just things, of course, but they are my things, and they all mean something to me. Of course, Guy is my friend--and my family--and it seems like he is going through a hard time right now. I know when I am sad, sometimes it feels really good to sell things, or to clean, or to rearrange the furniture. I have heard that they rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, even as the ship was going down, because they understood that that is just the way we are wired as human beings. It is absurd, but we have to keep moving forward, like a shark, even if we know the things that we are doing are meaningless. So I tell Guy, sure you can sell my things, but I tell them they are worth way more than they are. The Accordion, 2000! The Food Processor, 200! And I tell him we are pricing them to sell! Cheap Cheap Cheap! If we cannot be free, at least we can be cheap!

That is what friendship is all about. We sit outside, drinking Big Flats, pointing out mosquitoes as they land on each other's backs. The mosquitoes are worse than bad. We could go inside, but it feels so good to be taking care of each other.

Small bag for small doody

I went to the zoo. I want an animal.
Even the squirrels on the footpath made me want an animal.
In the zoo, there were snakes. I could even own a snake! I want an animal as a pet.
There was a gorilla and all the people gathered round it, behind glass, and pounded.
They knocked. Mothers and fathers, their little children knocked on the glass, and the gorilla, provoked, jumped up and slammed his fists into the glass. It was like he was saying, If this glass wasn't here, I would smash you into the ground. I would pound on your chest until there was nothing to pound on. How would you like that? The crowd screamed. They liked what they saw. They liked how he pounded on the glass. He went away, and then the crowd dispersed. Then I stood at the glass and looked out at nothing, and wanted an animal as a pet, one that I wouldn't provoke. One who's poop I would scoop into a bag, or, if it was small enough, into a small bag.

But I've had this thought before. Many times, I've wanted an animal as a pet. Another dog. Two dogs. Three, even. This post is not a new feeling. It is an old feeling that I had to post about. You see, the zoo is also set-up in a large circle. You start at one point and end at the same point. If you went to the zoo everyday, you'd see the gorilla behind the glass. A crowd in front of it. Pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, and pounding.

Adjustments between the lines of a little world

I get the urge to see my old apartment. Not the old, old one, but the one I lived in not too long ago, but long enough. Just to check it out, to see if anything's changed. It looks the same--quiet, brick, pretty tall I guess--but it also seems so different. Moving is a strange thing, not a bad strange thing, just a different strange thing. I walk around the building and I see a man sitting in a chair, reading a book, and I'm surprised because I don't see too many people reading books on chairs outside. And around this man are two large dogs and the dogs are well-behaved and don't care that I'm looking at their owner, sitting in the chair, reading. I think this man is Curt. I mean, he is the one that's replaced me here, in this apartment building. I know, I can tell, for some reason, that he is the one that rented out my old apartment. I also know that his name is Curt. He just looks like a Curt. But maybe he spells it with a K or a Q, Quirt, or something like that, because he is obviously cooler than I was, am. He is younger than me, and his dogs seem so nice. He delivers papers, but he's much faster than I ever was. He has more hair and is reading a very big, difficult book on Einstein or trivia, just to be prepared for a trivia night on Einstein. A woman comes out and hands him a beer. Wow! This man has beer delivered to him! She sits down in a chair beside the man and starts reading an even bigger book! The man looks up from his book and I pretend to look at the bricks in the building, bringing my face real close to one in particular. It has a crack.
I hear the man say: Says here.
Where? the woman says.
I glance at them. The woman leans over the man's book and reads aloud:  Small memories are not smaller than the memories of larger ones.
That proves it, the man says.
The woman closes her book.

That's when I leave.

Juice

Guy is emotional, so we are listening to Juice Newton. Juice is just a poor man's Ronstadt, but Guy doesn't care. I guess I don't care either, because I am a poor man, too. We don't deserve Linda, so we get Juice. I have been talking a lot today, and I cannot stop, and it is all bad and negative and things that I should move on from but instead I drag them back up and kick them around out loud for some unknown reason. We are sitting at the kitchen table, and I can see the look on Guy's face, and I see his expression and I can remember watching Blind Date with my cousin Ruth at my Aunt's cottage before she moved to Costa Rica to ride horses and give massages.

Is it therapeutic for you to talk about these things? Guy says.

What do you mean? 

Would it be better for you to just sit quiet, or to try to talk about fun things, or something, or just anything else?? Guy says.

Do you want me to shut up?

Guy clearly wants me to shut up, but for some reason I can't. We are both not happy, I think because our scheme has been slow to catch. Inventory, Guy says we just need more inventory.

Guy says if we lived closer to Virginia Beach, we could go see the house where Juice Newton was born.

I point at the house across the street and tell Guy that if Juice Newton were born there, it would still be stupid.

What it means

Guy takes me to a house, and I don't even know why I agree to go with him, except I have nothing better to do, what with not having to work today, and without having anything to fill my days, so I go with him, to a house on the outskirts of the outskirts, in a cul-de-sac covered in trees and shrubs in need of manicures, lawn ornaments, fences, long driveways, dogs tied to trees with tennis balls in their mouths, or bones, and we go into the house and we walk from one room into another, around one person, into the kitchen, where I see these butter knives, and I know that I must have them, feel with my entire being that I must take them home with me, but that I must not use them, ever, and Guy moves on into another part of the house while I pick up the knives, remember the one I stole, and why did I steal it? and why do I want these knives? why do I feel that I must have them but must not use them to spread butter? and I gather them into my hands and pay for them, two dollars, and I put them in my pocket and when Guy comes back, with some knickknacks under his arms, some albums, a paperweight, a poster, a picture frame, and a koozie, he asks if I'm going to get anything, and I say no, no that I will not get anything, and he asks: How will we be able to sell nothing? I say, I don't know if I'm going to sell anything, and he pays and we drive back to my house, and I say goodbye to Guy, who says that he is going to sell what he's bought and if I want, I can join him to see what it "all about" and then he drives away and I make my way into my bedroom and take out the knives and place them on the pillowcase and crawl into the bed, beside them, looking at them, wondering what I'm doing, why I am like this, and I love them, and I will take care of them, good care of them, and I will never sell them, and I wonder how anyone could let them go, and for two dollars! I pick one up and pretend to spread something in my palm, a nice, cool butter in my palm and I spread and I spread, and I watch the knife move and do its thing, and it is doing it nicely and I set it down and I pick up another one and spread something, a nice, creamy butter onto my other hand, and then I set it down, and I am feeling something, something so strange and this must be what it means to be alone--to spread imaginary butter onto your hands in a bed on a Saturday afternoon, yes, this is what it must mean.

Dad has this movie on VHS:

Today, my sister came over and all three of us watched it.
Afterwards, my sister said she didn't feel well and left.
Dad walked away and has been in his room ever since.
Truth be told...I just don't know...I just don't know.

Dead Things

When people die, Guy says, sometimes a company comes to their house, or apartment, for one reason or another, and price their belongings to sell.

He is explaining something called "estate sales" to me, though I already know what they are and have even been to a few. But how do they know how much something's worth?

They don't, he says. That's why we gotta go to a few this weekend and buy what we can, and then set up a stand in the street and sell what we bought. But for much more.

I don't know...

Forget your cleaning job, Guy says. Forget the gas station. People want old things, small things, or big and sometimes ugly things. People want what other people once owned.

Why?

Because isn't that how it always is? Isn't that in our nature?

What? Whose nature?

You know what I mean. You want what I have, don't you?

What do you have?

I have what you don't have and I want what you have.

You do?

Sure, Guy says. All that butter. All that time you spend in your head.

I'll think about it.

Don't think too hard.

Dog Daze Butter

On TV, there is a dead horse in Houston. Though I've never met the horse, I know that it was gray and starved to death. That is all I know before Dad changes the channel.

Outside, it is hot. Hot, hot, hot. A truck drives by and a man says, "Caliente!" Maybe it is the name of a restaurant or a bar, one that plays Christian rock with Russian bartenders and has "Cheap pizza deals" on Tuesday nights. I feel something, and it is not bad or good, but the fact that I'm feeling is great.

This is how you make Dog Daze butter. You make butter, just plain old butter. Then you sit outside with it smeared on a piece of toast. But it has to be August and it has to be hot. There has to be stillness, and it has to be the late afternoon. The TV has to be playing somewhere inside, and you have to be able to hear it outside, where you have to be sitting, where you have to be thinking very little, in a place that has to be "off the grid." Then you have to take a bite of the toast with the butter and you have chew slowly, and it has be slow, otherwise it is not Dog Daze butter. Then you have to think about the butter, but it has to be a quick, lazy thought, it has to be both, not one or the other. And that is how you make Dog Daze butter. You can get up after you've finished the piece of toast. You can go about the rest of your day. But you don't have to. You can think about something terrible you saw on TV earlier. You can think about how hot it is. But you really don't have to.

His father...

had a harpoon gun, used to shoot spears into trees, or bales of straw, with a ten gallon hat on his head, screaming he was Tom Mix, godd****t! 

had a pet fish named Honus, after Honus. Used to throw chicken bones into the tank for Honus to eat, and later, we fished them out, and HE really believed Honus ate them.

had a trick, called "Crack the Egg," in which he would pretend to crack an egg on our heads, spreading his fingers out like yolk, except one time, he actually took a real egg and cracked it open on his son's head, then pissed his pants because he was so drunk. Later, since it was the 4th, he lit a sparkler and tossed it into the fish tank, for Honus to play with, and my mother came to take me home. My friend, he smelled like eggs for a long time afterwards, no matter how many times he washed his head. Everywhere we went, someone said, What's that smell? After that, my friend took to hard-boiling all the eggs in his house.

had a son, who was my best friend. We played and played, and when we did, we could almost forget his father outside, screaming, I'm Tom Mix!

What kind of cheese?

Today, I went to a lake.
Today, I went to a lake and saw my reflection in the water. I picked up a rock and threw it in the water, where it pierced my gut and sent small waves, erasing the features of my face. Then I watched myself return in the water. Then I left, in a daze. ]

At home, I read:

Perhaps he had stumbled a bit and something slipped in his brain. Perhaps something he loved had been lost. Perhaps he had been, unbeknownst to himself, waiting for something uncommon to occur.

Then dad shouted from the kitchen. He asked me how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. What kind of bread? What kind of cheese?

Pianola, A Story

One daughter wraps a scarf around the ruins of her face. The other daughter conceals her nail-less fingers in gloves. Both arrive with their father, the bearded salesman without a suit, who’s dragged them along.

The woman ushers them into her apartment with a gesture of her hand. She is not unkind, but not welcoming either—and watches them remove their snow-covered boots at the door while clearing her throat. The daughters, she thinks, must be ill because they are so thin. Their backs are slightly hunched. They are holding hands. She regards the scarf with suspicion. She does not wonder about the face it protects, keeps hidden.

The woman lives alone in an apartment with starved moths. She drinks tea and sighs while the larvae spin cases around themselves as they feed on fabric. While the woman stares unhappily at her reflection, they drag their cases with their head, their thorax, and three pairs of legs, across the woman’s oriental rugs, and grow within the patterns, lay eggs and eggs. The woman feels porous; when she moves, she feels the air passing through her. When she stops, she does not want to move again.

But she leads them quickly now into a paneled room, past a chaise lounge and tall open windows, though it is snowing outside, to the pianola in the corner. The daughters insert the roll, resting on top of the instrument, into the spool box. Once, the daughters worked in the Asch Building. They were locked in a room, cutting rolls of taupe-colored fabric to be sewn into shirtwaists. They grew thin, thinner. Their shears did not sing a kind song. There was a fire, panic. They dove through a window into a river of smoke. They glided along a current that met the ground. The older daughter bounded first, her fingernails rattling loose when she landed. The second daughter stared into the fire until it became impossible for her to close her eyes.

The father is describing the action to the woman in a whisper. He doesn’t know why he is whispering, but feels that it is the appropriate way to communicate with the woman. There is ice in his beard. The woman stares at the daughter’s red gloves, nodding. The paper moves inside the box, clicks. The keys depress. Chopin fills the room. The daughters work together, operating the pedal levers and the tempo control. Their movements appear simple and correct. The father describes the action, his beard dripping. He tries to catch the drops in his palm. The roll is a transcription of the music, he says. It is not an interpretation, he says. The woman stares at the other daughter’s scarf, nodding. The daughter, through the narrow spaces made in the scarf for her eyes, can spot small gaps in the woman’s sweater. If it were somehow fitted into the pianola, it would play a song not longed for, charming, yet forgettable, the daughter muses.

It is their job to instruct new pianola owners how to manipulate the instrument. The father feared he could not support the daughters, crippled by the fire. But they rose from the bed and he brought them to the Factory, manufacturing rolls of paper and burnished pianolas. He taught them how to insert and manipulate the music rolls for the instrument.

Sometimes at the Factory, there is a slip in the gears and the holes that have been cut into the rolls of paper are not aligned to mimic the music advertised. The rolls are discarded. The father brings these rolls home and the daughters inspect the holes and wonder what kind of music they would make. They try to discern the mistake, but cannot.

The woman does not know how resilient the daughters are—how they plunged nine stories onto a pile of heads, ribs, and pairs of legs. In their dreams, the daughters drag themselves across a coverlet of dead women. The women crumble beneath them like a near-ruined city in a storm. But the woman is moved by how the daughters operate the pianola. When the roll completes its course, and the music has ended, she applauds with tears in her eyes. She turns away and a wind tosses snow into the room.

There are holes in their memories. The older daughter recalls her sister howling on the ledge before leaping. The sound of flames rushing up into the air: a soft and terrible protest. But she does not remember falling herself. The other daughter remembers the bins of scrap material and the bins of finished shirtwaists burning with the same intensity. This was significant—but she has forgotten why.

The daughters prepare the pianola so that it can play again. The father encourages the woman to try and maneuver the levers. The woman, who has met good fortune all her life, is filled with sadness. The moths are crossing the carpet, tearing small holes in it because they are always hungry. The roll begins to move, clicks. The woman fears she looks clumsy operating the levers, and stops. The music is empty and terrible. She shivers. The daughters take the woman’s hands and bring them to the pianola. The woman closes her eyes. She is vulnerable, and angry that she is vulnerable. But she has been waiting for someone strong to show her what to do now for a very long time. 

Restoration, or, It is What You Make of It

The man suspected the middle of cities, the middle of ruins in the mountains. He lived in a building whose foundation stood firmly on the rubble of another building, in the middle of a city.  In the middle of a city, the man could tolerate contradictions and give careful thought to disorderly things, and this upset him. On his worst days, the man suspected himself of everything from clumsiness to utter failure as a person. He asked himself: “Why, why, why?”

In the afternoons he drew little naked dwellers in the middle of ruins in the mountains. He drew them cooling on a bed of ivy under the pressure of the sun. Each dweller signified a past memory, a mistake in the man’s life. He hated each one of them. They lounged, with leisure, and without shame in the middle of the mountains. In the middle of the mountains, a tree could fall and it would mean nothing, or everything. 

The man, when he considered the dwellers, thought: I harm certain others. Because of this, he did not assign them names. In this way, he could begin to forget the harm he would do to them later.

The man, he had lived, like many of his friends, to expect ordinary nothing.  But hairless spots began to appear on his head, and these were not ordinary. They were a condition, rare and terrible, and they were gruesome. They brought the man much attention, and he could not be other than a sad thought.

He believed that everyone sought a center. The center was not the middle, but all middles had a center. But his, the man believed, was a remnant of dust driven by rage like water in a basin inside his stomach. He was an angry man, and he feared this part of him.

In the evenings, he felt his heart eating beyond the open window, contemplating an interference. But an interference did not occur, so the man was able to tear the dwellers into pieces and savor them on his tongue. 

In this way, was he able to feel his center slightly restored. 

Future Past Present Tense

From time to time I show up in myself just long enough for people to know that they are not in the room alone. Usually, these are people who expect something from me--a near future, a not-too-distant future. What I tell them is limited to the people I have already had myself married against. Everything I say is to the best of my knowledge and next to nothing. It comes nowhere close.

--Gary Lutz

Bailey says, “You’re a little less kind.”

I say, “I am, but a little more patient.”

Bailey says, “You say a little less.”

I say, “But I think I think a little more.”

Bailey says, “Hmm.”

I say, “What did you expect?”

Bailey says, “I’m not sure, but I know there were expectations.”

I say, “What kinds of expectations?”

Bailey says, “Ones that haven’t been met.”

I say, “It’s been awhile.”

Guy says, “This is boring. Listening to you two is like watching a long commercial.”

Guy says, “Neither one of you has moved a piece in over five minutes, isn’t that against the rules or something?”

Guy picks up my pawn. “Look, you can move here or here. Or here. Ta-da.”

Bailey says, “Maybe we should have played another game.”

Guy nods.

I move my rook, diagonally.

Bailey says, “You can’t do that, but I can let it go this one time.”

I say, “Okay, thanks.”

Guy says, “I’m going to leave. You want a ride back to your place?”

I say, “Yes.”

Bailey says, “No one won.”

I say, “No one lost either.”

Bailey shrugs. He picks up the pieces.

Bailey says, “See you soon?” 

I say, “In the future.”

Guy is waiting in the car.

White Bear

for Homes

One morning, I woke up and knew that I was not myself—a cat with yellow eyes purred beside me, one I’d never seen before. I spoke to the cat from a mouth that was not my own, in a voice I’d never heard. I said, “Hi, my darling,” and “You are nice,” and the words sounded small.

                The bed was comfortable, which was a relief, but I wondered what had happened. The cat stretched out, then sprang from the bed. I crawled behind it into the bathroom and gazed into the mirror when I stood up. I discovered that I was astonishingly beautiful and young. When I tried to smile, my reflection would not return the gesture and I staggered back into the bed, clutching my stomach because it was filled with sadness and I felt hollow. I began to cry but, over what, I could not say, only that it was a great, grievous matter and that the difficulty I had in describing it made it the more dreadful.

The cat purred beside me. I said, “Why aren’t you a crocodile instead?” 

It clawed a corner of the pillow, swatted white feathers from a small split in the seam, hissing. I could feel the feathers leaving from beneath my head and I grew tired watching them float above me. When I awoke, I was myself again, in a hard bed I understood was my own.

                This happened several years ago. Since then, I’ve resolved to take better care of myself, to never feel so hollow again. I purchase local fruits and vegetables. I go for long bike rides. I started writing letters to prisoners. I correspond regularly with one inmate who calls himself White Bear. I’ve described to White Bear my experience and for several months, we’ve tried to determine who I might have been. Once, White Bear sent me a letter that was an outline of his hand. I traced my hand and sent it to him. Then, he sent me an outline of his other hand and I sent him an outline of my other hand and we continued like this for a long time. Now, I’ve pieced him together. Now, I know how much space he’d occupy in a doorway.

                White Bear tells me that he has blue eyes and that one of them is so lazy it stares into the back of his head. He can grow a thick beard. He misses pancakes and sauerkraut. He robbed three bakeries, but did not shoot that man. I believe he is a much different person now. Today, I received a drawing of his ear. It was smaller than I thought and I could tell that it was sketched in a hurry, but it fit nicely in my palm. When I attached it to the outline of his head, it made perfect sense. He looks like an innocent man.

The Study

 A Tale by Curt G. Jimenez

The Weiss Mountains run parallel and to the west of the town of Löewen, Germany. In the town, there is a residential street called Berg Strasse, in which this study was conducted in 2001.

·       The houses built facing the east on Berg Strasse receive 56% more sunlight than the houses built facing the west.

·       48% of residents living in the western-facing homes are more likely to own a cat, while 39% of those living in the eastern-facing homes are more likely to own a dog.

·       One out of eight residents living in the houses facing the Weiss Mountains has forgotten about food being prepared on the stovetop while staring out the window at their eastern-facing neighbors.

·       One out of ten words found in the journals of those that live facing the west is “doubt.”

·       It is 39% more likely that an adolescent will continue his or her education at the university level if he or she resides in an eastern-facing home.

·       25% of those facing the west feel, at some point during the day, that they cannot breathe or that they are not able to contribute to a conversation.

·       An individual facing the east is 45% more likely to vacuum his or her floors once a week, compared to an individual living in a western-facing home, who considers vacuuming 14% more often, but accomplishes the task 2% of the time, or once every 3 months.

·       63% of those living in homes facing the west have locked themselves in the darkest room of their homes, weeping uncontrollably, feeling helpless, or that the walls have been caving in around them.

·       86% of those living in homes facing the west find it difficult to swallow, or that when they do, those nearby can hear them.

·       Three out of five homes facing the east have a kitchen drawer filled with balloons, birthday candles, and blank greeting cards. 

·       Two out of five homes facing the west have more than three chipped dinner plates.

·       Four out of five women living in homes facing the east have gathered flowers from their yards and placed them in a green, clear, or white vase. 

·       Three out of five men residing in homes facing the west cannot knot their ties without a mirror. Four out of five have holes in six pairs of black socks. Eight out of ten wake up in the middle of the night without sensation in their feet.

·       It is 48% more likely that someone living in an eastern-facing home will read something that makes him or her smile later in the day than someone living in a western-facing home.

·       Three out of four people living in western-facing homes have itchy ears. Two out of five are double-jointed, but are unaware of their double-jointedness.

·       39% of the people in homes facing the east enjoy climbing trees. 72% enjoy taking walks. 46% know all the lyrics to at least three songs. 40% talk to themselves, and 20% talk to themselves without realizing

·       One out of three individuals residing in homes facing the east believes that statistics are invaluable tools for learning.

·       81% of the people residing in homes facing the west believe that 50% of statistics are made up.   

sad thing about not having dogs

when i get drunk and make too much popcorn and throw the excess all over the living room floor nothing happens

Eviscerate Your Memory

I am thinking of change again. It is spring, sure, or it feels like it. I am cautiously ready to go for it, like the robins I have seen flitting about, though I think we are all thinking that maybe there is another winter storm or two hiding out in the recesses of the sky. I am not sure if that is a metaphor, but it surely fits snugly on so many hands. There is calm, and there is madness, and the only way you really know which is which is through the absence of the other. Madness is lack of calm, and calm lack of madness. Dry is lack of wet. Warm is lack of cold. Cold is lack of warm. Drunk is lack of sober. Loud is the quiet, hiding. Lonely is the lack of you.

Is laughter the absence of tears? That is probably a stretch. I have been taking lots of solitary walks, occasionally jerking myself violently at squirrels for old times sake. Walking suddenly is pleasurable again, thanks to the absence of cold. My snot isn't freezing to my mustache. My mustache isn't turning into a beard.

You don't know what I'm doing anymore, the way you did two years ago. It feels like you are out of my life, but I know that you are still there, wondering if things are ok. Don't worry, I am wondering the same thing. It is not easy. It is never easy.

Freedom is lack of constraint. Lack is absence of stuff. Absence is lack of presence.

I wish I could still climb trees. I wish I could wake up and not feel 50something. 31 would be nice. Or 26. I don't suppose those days are coming back. My acid reflux has backed down a bit, but most of the other aches are still there, verily.

If you see me walking around, please say "hi". I have not felt so lonely in a long time, and I am not sure what to do about it. If I was 20 years older, I might be in an assisted living facility, and there would be card games and singalongs, and I don't suppose I would feel judged the way I do now. Maybe I would though.

This is not the change I am wanting for. Mm.

Hans, my Father's Neighbor. Evening. March 1.

The man said, "Schwul."
The man said, "Schwül."
The man said, "There is a difference."

At a certain distance from the middle, things start to appear, a tale by Curt G. Jimenez

The cartographer and his wife live in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, the cartographer leaves for several weeks, figuring out the lay of the land, returning with a map in his hands.

There is nothing beyond the middle of nowhere besides flat land.

At a certain distance from the middle, things start to appear.

But the cartographer draws mountain ranges, oceans, deserts, and jungles where there are none.

Mike, the cartographer’s wife says, What do you think about a garden this year?

That sounds nice.

I’m thinking tomatoes, peppers, maybe some broccoli. What do you think?

It’s important to me too.

Were you even listening?

The cartographer is not really a cartographer, but a shoemaker.

He loves feet but is ashamed that he loves them so much.

After a while, Mike believes it is easier to live with a lie than to deal with the consequences.

He is away for several weeks, walking in the middle of nowhere, testing the shoes he’s made because he loves walking.

His wife is not really his wife, but a woman named Melody who looks a bit like his wife.

The shoemaker’s real wife, fed up with being in the middle of nowhere, grabbed one of her husband’s maps and followed it to the ocean.

But where an ocean was indicated, there was a city.

She called the city Ocean, until a week later, she learned of what her husband had done and decided to never return to him.

She met Melody in a geography class. Both women wanted to know more about the world, but on opposite ends of the spectrum.

I don’t want to be anywhere, Melody said. Where can I find that?

I want to go everywhere, the shoemaker’s wife said. I’ve come from nowhere, she said. She handed Melody the map and they hugged until people started staring.

Melody went to nowhere and lived as the shoemaker’s wife.

Mike can’t tell the difference because he is always looking down at his feet.

Stop doing that, Melody says.

What?

Looking down. Why don’t you ever look at me? You hate me.

You have beautiful eyes.

Uh-huh.

From the day I met you, I thought you had the most beautiful eyes.

Melody wonders if anything can grow and be delicious in the middle of nowhere.

Mike’s wife goes to the ocean. She throws sand up into the air and some of it falls into her eyes.

But she laughs.