Drink Your Pudding!

sunrise

2013-04-28T08:23:00.000-04:00

I'm watching the sun rise. Other people find sunrises full of promise and potential. Me, not so much. The sunrise is the day just passed full of everything that didn't happen and a sink full of dishes and the need to get crackin' 'cause the clock's a-tickin' and time's a-wastin'. Sunrises are all about unmet deadlines and strangers who never become friends and all of a sudden everything's behind schedule and there's no hope. It doesn't matter what Scarlet O'Hara drawled to the retreating back of her beloved, tomorrow's just already today and ain't nothin' gonna change, because we're stuck with who we are.

Years ago I didn't believe in fate, because I believed in freedom and choice and being a self-made-man, but years ago I had never even heard of the federal reserve and I still thought we were on the gold standard. Or the silver standard. Or something. I didn't know then that "In God We Trust" means "In Middle-Aged Men With Ill-Fitting Chinos We Trust" and just as soon as I realized a bunch of random guys makes the money sink or swim, well it kinda made me question maybe if my own life was controlled by unknown operators in a room somewhere. I mean, if a dollar's nothing but a symbol, then maybe I'm a hologram.

Not that I really believe any of this. I don't have a bunker with nuggets of gold stashed in hollow walls and I don't really think I'm just a marionette on the stage of life, but that's the thing about sunrises, they make the philosophy come out along with the hangover, and there's no aspirin strong enough or bacon sandwich greasy enough to make up for the questions that I'd rather not hear echoing in the back of my head.

So on this day in particular, I'm watching the sun rise because that's what it does and it's not like I'm gonna turn my back on it just to prove a point, and the trees towards the west are reflecting back with shiny golden bark, and I decide the take the question of free will or fate and put it to the test. There's no reason not to, or maybe there are lots of reasons not to but it's easier not to think about them, and I start thinking of the plan.

Everybody uses tarot cards these days, and any fool has a copy of the i-ching in the glove box, and most high school kids use dice to get through the SATs. So the easy choices are pretty much already taken, and besides. they're too obvious, they've been done before, their script is so heavily encoded with social function and meaning that they're pretty much weighted on the side of fate, and don't give the free will a chance. What I need is a system that will challenge intuition at every step, that takes preconceived ideas and scrambles them, so that at some point in the future I can stand on a mountaintop and gaze back over the terrain of the past and see what patterns emerge.

What I need is the scientific method for free will and predetermination, but Schrödinger's long dead, locked in a box, and I don't think even he ever knew if the damn cat was alive or dead. Anyway, he was a freak. I need a scientific method that won't get the PETA activists all riled up and that actually makes sense.

The sun isn't really rising any more, now it's day right and true and I'm just as annoyed and put out as I was when the sun was rising, because the problem with having an argument with the universe is that it's hard to win before breakfast. Especially with a hangover. But I grab my jacket and some cash and head outside, determined to break every expectation I have of myself, and maybe honestly a little concerned about ending up in jail. There may not be any criminal codes about examining the underside of fate, but that seems maybe dicey. It's a chance I'll have to take, and I head to the street, determined to find the theory behind the theory, or the strings behind the curtain, whatever's there.

Daphne

2013-04-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

I remembered that you were not there, that you would never be there again, that now there was only the ghost of your memory for company, and nothing more. The woods were thick with scars of the past, fallen trees turning into mushrooms, fallen leaves turning into mulch, fallen rock walls turning into a fading story of fields and cultivation abandoned in the river of time. The memory of the woods runs deeper than my memories, for the trees have lifespans beyond my own, and from their anchoring watch, watch the world spin about them. It is not that the moon revolves around the earth which revolves around the sun which spins in the arms of the giant spiraling Milky Way; rather, the roots of the trees pin the sky to the earth, stitching together our past and our future, our air and our soil. The trees are the center around which we all spin, and I am alone in the woods with only your memory walking under the shadows of the trees beside me.

There are moments when I wonder what it would be to establish a nest amidst the trees, to live way up in the embrace of the canopy, to hear the song of the wind as a call to prayer, as lullaby. There are moments when I find an old chimney, lone remaining skeleton where once was home and hearth, and I desire to flesh out the bones of a house with walls of birch bark and floors of earth stamped firm and dry. The woods beckon with the stories of everyone who has lived here before, and I hold on to the glimpse of a land that once flourished under man and now flourishes under nature.

tossed by the winds

2013-04-21T11:44:00.002-04:00

(catching up on a lost month of time)

au cœur de la nuit

2013-04-21T09:58:00.001-04:00

Still I travel north, pushed into the land of the sun, and even the grays of twilight pale until it is always dawn or dusk and night is erased, a part of the past that has been left behind. Villages appear, tiny huts painted bright red, bright blue, with thatched roofs, and in the thatching wildflowers grow, tiny alpine blossoms in white and yellow. The villages are full of children, the sounds of the market, everywhere a tightly choreographed chaos. The children take my hands, grasp my skirts, pull me towards the maypole in the village green, and everywhere is the singing and the sound of bells that are both foreign and familiar.

We dance, I realize the song is the same song of my dreams from my childhood, that I know these people even though I have never been here before. In this land there is no night, and I ask the children: where do you store your dreams, where is your heart when you are asleep? And they tug my hair and laugh and run towards the edge of the village where the forest begins. Our dreams are the wild animals, they tell me, we see them, but only from a distance. Our dreams are shy and untamed and do no seek our company.

They pull me back towards the bright cottages, the thatched roofs, and I glance towards the shadows of the forest, where there is movement but not form. And then I let go of the night, I allow my dreams to depart wild and free, and in the pale dawn sleep without slumbering, surrounded by the chorus of song.

paschalis

2013-03-31T09:29:00.000-04:00

VI.

In the beginning the stories had not been written. In the beginning the stories had not been told. In the beginning the stories were not yet memories. In the beginning the stories had not happened.

In the beginning it was dawn and I held my pen and I watched the sun rise and it was good. So I wrote that down. Nothing else had happened and so there were no metaphors to draw from. There was no way to describe the feeling of a soul scrubbed clean from all the emotion and anger and disappointment that had passed before, for I did not know of the soul, I had never experienced emotion. That was all: the sun rose and it was good and I wrote it down, and in the writing it became anchored in place and time and it became memory.

In the beginning the sun rose and it was good and I wrote this down, it was my first, my only memory. As the day grew long shadows formed, shadows distinct from their shapes, for the shadows were unaware that they were expected to remain anchored to their forms. The shadows separated from their forms and there were two worlds at play: the separated shadows moved, formed alliances, danced, murdered. The evening grew close, chasing the heels of the afternoon, and as evening arrived shadows sought out the nests of their forms, returning home to roost and sleep in silence during the night. The two worlds were reunited and I watched the sun set and it was good, and I wrote this down as well. My second memory.

numerological

2013-03-27T06:09:00.000-04:00

I want to find my words, my dictionary, my thesaurus, my encyclopedia, my glossary, and I want my words to draw an atlas unlike any other, a map that shows a land never explored, a wilderness never breached, a place that previously was only an absence, here sketched out and illuminated. I want the key of language to open the charts to sail to this land, and I fear I've lost my compass, my sextant, my spyglass, for what I can see is without form, lingering in the shadows of my mind.

juxtapositional

2013-03-20T08:03:00.003-04:00

image descriptions:
New Orleans
New Orleans
Bear Fest, summer
Bear Fest, winter

follow-the-leader

2013-03-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

Well, everybody started cheering and hollering and then soccer practice kinda ended. I could tell coach was snake-spitting angry and I didn't want him yelling at me, because when coach yelled, wow, he yelled loud. Coach used words that I was pretty sure we weren't supposed to even know about and once he was so angry I saw him punch a car. It seemed like maybe a dumb idea at the time and he was just as angry after he hit the car as he had been before, then he had a funny splint from the hospital for a month. I never saw him hit a car again, but that's how he looked after the creature made that amazing goal.

So the creature and I, we moved fast to the other end of the practice field, and I didn't even help clean up the gear, we just ran all the way back home. Maybe coach would call Mom and yell at her, but Mom would just ignore him and everything would be okay. When we were about a block away from home, and it was just starting to get dark enough to turn on the street lamps, I stopped running and looked at the creature. It still didn't look like a dog. It didn't move like a dog and it wasn't shaped like a dog. People just kept thinking it was a dog because everybody has dogs and so that's what they expect to see. I knew it wasn't a dog. I just didn't know what it was, or why it was following me, or what it wanted.

round booth in the corner; coffee, jello salad

2013-03-13T16:44:00.000-04:00

B: What do you remember about when Uncle moved in?
A: Ain't nothin' to remember. Old lady who own the house died, it was on the market for a while, then this fellow and his wife move in. Happened like that all the time.
B: You know the old lady?
A: Everyone knew old Mrs. Ellis. She made it her business to know everyone. She had a bridge game once a week in her living room, and all the ladies had to attend. Just like the Queen on TV, wore jewelry and hats and Mrs. Ellis made sure they were all kept in line.
B: Did you ever join the bridge group?
A: Just the ladies. Never invited. Don't play bridge, anyhow.
B: But you went over to Mrs. Ellis' house at other times?
A: Nah. Saw her sometimes in town, but only the women were invited over. This about Mrs. Ellis or Uncle? I know even less about Mrs. Ellis than I do about Uncle.
B: How'd she die, again?
A: Dunno. She died of being an old woman. Maybe doctors have another word for it.
B: Anyone upset when she died?
A: What type of a question is that?
B: Was anyone upset when she died?
A: We had a decent funeral for her. Graveside, sent some type of flower.
B: Did lots of people look at the house, or just Uncle?
A: I dunno. I wasn't that interested. Not my business.
B: But was there an estate sale, an auction, was the house sold furnished?
A: How the hell would I know? That's just nosy, not anybody's business.
B: Maybe you should make it your business.
A: What, all out of the blue, me go around asking about a mint green velvet couch from a woman dead thirty years ago?
B: So you remember the couch.
A: I don't know. I made that up. Or I guessed. Every old lady had a mint green couch.
B: So you're going to find out for us?
A: How the hell do you expect me to do that?
B: You're an old-timer. You'll figure it out, ask some questions.
A: What is this about? I don't want to get involved, this is none of my business. This is none of your business, either.
B: We'll let you think about it and we'll be back in touch. You can find your own way back?
A: You leave me alone. I can't help you.

He leaves.

C: You think he's bluffing?
B: I think this coffee is watered-down asphalt.
C: Yeah, but does it fit?
B: Of course it fits. It's got to.
C: You gonna tail him?
B: Nah, nowhere for him to go. He's kept his secrets this long, he won't crack easy.
C: How'd you think of Mrs. Ellis?
B: Shot in the dark, kiddo, shot in the dark.

ready or not ready or not

2013-03-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

This night the fire cracked and the dog, restless, ran out into the orchard, and the mice in the walls ran and ran and ran, preparing their nests for winter, and I was awake. There was no reason for me to be awake, but in the cold light of the moon I could hear the mice in the walls and I could hear the dog in the orchard and I could hear the ashes of the woodstove settling and I saw the ghost sleeping in my bed. She was very old, very, very old. This surprised me the most, for I did not know anyone as old as the woman sleeping in my bed. She had grey hair braided in two braids, neat long braids, and she slept in a pointy hat which I thought might be red, the moon was so bright it looked like a red hat, and grey braids, and hands wrinkled, wrinkled, skin so translucent and papery white that it glowed in the moonlight.

It was her glowing that made me wonder if maybe she was a ghost, and then I looked at my hands in the white white moonlight and saw that they glowed, too, except my hands didn't have wrinkles, they had cuts and scratches and dirt under the nails that I was supposed to wash away but always forgot to. Then I wondered if the old woman was maybe a ghost because she glowed so bright, and if I also glowed so bright, was I a ghost, too? I didn't want to be a ghost. I didn't want to be a child, and I didn't want to be a grown-up, but there were lots of things I wanted to do that ghosts couldn't do, like jump in piles of leaves and swing up higher than the roof of the house and turn somersaults underwater in the lake and raise tadpoles into baby frogs in jars in my bedroom and watch their tails disappear and eat chocolate cake. I was pretty sure ghosts didn't eat chocolate cake, although maybe I was wrong. I didn't really know, it wasn't the type of question grown-ups liked me asking and I hadn't met any other ghosts before.

captured in amber

2013-02-27T18:25:00.000-05:00

It is quite unimportant the sequence of events that led to my expulsion, removed from what had been the reality of my life. When one becomes stateless, exiled, then one is a guest only of fate, a beneficiary only of luck, a plaything of chance. I did not intend to be exiled. That was not what was supposed to happen, it was not our agreement. There was no unlawful protest, no life lived in the counter-insurgency, no sculpture or poem contradicting a ruling elite. As if sculpture and poetry matter to the masses, are anything other than an annoyance to the powerful! But my exile lacked even the romance of intention. There were many days living, loving, laughing, feasting, playing, traveling, singing, exploring, and then they ended.

I cannot recall how or why they ended. There is a blank in my mind, a hole in my memory, like a badly edited film that jumps between future and present and past without any warning or transition. Suddenly my life had changed. If this absence did not yawn so deeply, becoming an abyss, perhaps the gap would contain material for a riveting best seller. I think of all the things that could have happened in those missing years, a political revolution, a drug cartel, rouge scientific experimentations, any one of a hundred tales of espionage and fighting the powerful and blackmail and double crosses. One day, when things are different, I will write each of these narratives, and the multivolume genre spanning set will be known as my memoirs, although none of it will have happened.

when magic had a taste all its own

2013-02-24T08:41:00.001-05:00

It was like watching somebody else's dreams. All of the colors were different from the colors that I saw, and the sizes of things were all mixed up. She blew on an eddy of magic and it took the shape of a rainbow-striped elephant, and perched on top of the elephant was a mouse, only the mouse was as green as the grass and wore a funny hat. She brought some of the clouds down closer to the earth and made rings and hoops out of the clouds, and the elephant and mouse started jumping through the hoops, and then they stepped into a ring together and the mouse became exactly the same size as the elephant and they danced together.

I could even hear the music they were dancing to, it was the sound of the river and the sound of rain and the sound of heartbeats and the sound of hoofbeats, and because it was my birthday and Grandmother was making the magic especially for me I stood up and danced with the elephant and the mouse. Then Grandmother stood and danced with the three of us, and because she was Grandmother the mouse bowed low, low to the ground, and gave his hat to Grandmother to wear. We danced and danced and danced, and then the sun began to set, and the elephant and mouse bowed deeply to the two of us, and Grandmother and I were alone together again.

discursive

2013-02-22T07:39:00.003-05:00

Years earlier, I'd stand up on the lowest rung of the fence, and listen to my grandpa. He'd talk straight through the whole thing, never missing a shot, and I'd follow every movement, shadow every gesture.
"You've got to be real careful, don't let anyone know where you are. It's a game."
"Like tag?"
"Little bit like tag."
"Like hide and seek?"
"More like hide and seek. You've got to aim low and aim good and then you've got to move fast, 'cause if you get caught then you know what happens."
My eyes widened. I shook my head. I had no idea what would happen but if grandpa said it was bad then I knew it was really bad. Grandpa was so brave he didn't even cry when he accidentally chopped off a finger with the cleaver, he just let grandma sew it up with her needle and went around like nothing at all was wrong.
"You've got to aim low and aim good and then you've got to move fast, 'cause if you get caught then they don't just put you in jail. They put you in the stocks on the middle of the town square, and people, they can kick you or throw things at you or do anything they want to you."
Sometimes grandpa told me things that were a little bit true and a little bit not true, but this time I believed him. There wasn't any funny twinkle in his eye, he kept aiming his gun and shooting as I stood there on the bottom rung of the fence.

lapsang

2013-02-13T22:04:00.000-05:00

There: in Scotland, peat, a fog, a forgotten evening.
So much, so much happened, I can't remember it all, I wouldn't want to remember it all.
Of the following morning of the forgotten evening, the peat, the fog, a cup of tea, a goodbye.
And then the silence; silence, silence stretching across the moors as the train followed the North Sea south, south, into silence.
Civilization gathers and buzzes: movement, people, footsteps, schedules, departures, a pause before changing trains, changing stations, a decision.
Was it the right decision, there, so far from the peat and fog? I cannot say.
I cannot say.
The silence stretches, the conductor in his scarlet uniform collects my ticket, I wonder.
I cannot say.
Deep in folds of memory the fog gathers, the peat fire smokes, and in the winds of time all of this will dissipate, forgotten; or it will crystallize, grow strong, pure, elemental.
I cannot say; the silence stretches between us, the fog, the peat.

the shoebox

2013-02-08T10:56:00.002-05:00

Strictly speaking, the box probably should not have come into my possession. Technically, I had neither claim nor right to it. That I was able to spend so many hours hoarding, voyeuristically engulfed by these letters and photos was something that my Puritan streak chastised me for. That is the problem with having a common name. That is the problem with employing a lawyer from the lower end of the profession to settle an estate. That is the problem with allowing curiosity to override ethical principles. Of course I should have told the lawyer that he telephoned the wrong person. Of course I should have returned the papers as soon as I realized just how personal they really were. Of course I did none of those things.

There are plenty of external factors that I could blame for this collapse of manners and morals. There are almost no excuses for my behavior that would be plausible, justifiable, or even have a remote chance of standing up in a court of law. That I was in the wrong I freely admit, just as any addict knows, on some level, that they are operating beyond the boundaries of polite society. I didn't care.

brethren

2013-02-07T08:06:00.003-05:00

We approached a clearing, where there was no bonfire, but a circle of white stones, tiny white stones, barely the size of pebbles. They were placed closely together, so thickly they covered the entirety of the pasture in a perceptible ring, the white reflecting the moonlight around the clearing like a mirror. Gathered in the center of the circle was a delegation of beings found only in fables, in fairy tales, tiny gnomes with leather vests and long beards, the women with embroidered skirts and braids down their back. Infants the size of kittens crawled within the perimeter of the stone circle, and my captors, my hosts, sat me upon a moraine in the center, handed me a thimbleful of wine. It was a sweet wine, an enchanted wine, and while I know better than to drink the wine of the forest dwellers, I raised the flagon in respectful toast, and drank deeply.

identities / eternities

2013-02-04T08:41:00.002-05:00

Thus I can assert that this moment did not happen, this moment never happened, by eliding past it and focusing instead on the time before, or the time after. Perhaps settling my gaze on the indistinct and unformed crystals of time that await excavation in the future, the essence of what will be drifting tantalizingly towards the past, beckoning, beckoning: forsake your empty memories and come forward, forward. And I try, I try, I grasp the corner of the future offered as proof that time does exist, I strive and pull and reach for that which one day will be, and I am always caught up short locked in a present devoid of memories and empty of anticipation.

There is only the here and the now, and the present has none of the bottled sunshine of the past, the present has none of the tempting aromas of the future. The present is the deep impenetrable fog of a cloud obscuring every possible direction, the present is shapeless and without form. The smooth calm surface of the mind is instead the rough ocean waves that indicate either a storm has passed or a storm is brewing, but without the cues formed by memory, the present is both anticipation of a storm about to arrive as well as the exhaustion of a storm weathered. The present is dark skies that are either meteorological or nightfall, but there is neither sun nor moon to give form to the void of darkness.

Walden Rewind

2013-01-17T20:10:00.005-05:00

Blink. Bring into focus the childhood of a grandfather. There is nothing. The void deepens and expands, there is not even the outline of a lost memory. There is no shape of parents, of siblings, of house, of habits. The depth of the silence is complete, impermeable emptiness. This is all that we leave behind, the detritus of all our anguish and all of our glories, a vacuum filled with the unknown.

I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately. Perhaps. Again, with conviction. I went into the woods because I wished to watch my footsteps disappear each morning as the sun burned away the dew. Again, more forcefully. I went into the woods and I cut down trees and I wished to claim this land is my land, and as the summer sun rose high above, the trees grew ever thicker around me, pushing me out, away from the forest, towards the town. Again. I went into the woods because I wished to be known, to be seen, even if only by the rabbits, and the summer was dry and I lit my pipe and the match started a flame that burned and burned and now I am known and will never be forgotten.

Blink. I wished to live deliberately. I wished to be eternal. I wished to exist in your grandfather's mind and your mind and your granddaughter's mind, where deliberate words are all that remain when the landscape has been washed away and nothing else exists. Nothing. Nothing.

three coins in the fountain

2013-01-16T13:30:00.001-05:00

Watch out for what you wish for, the molehill will become a mountain and you'll be on a sled falling falling at the speed of sound so fast the ice melts and refreezes from the velocity of your passage.

Watch out for what you wish for, lest dragonflies grow large as dinosaurs, dart hither and thither, stomping upon us, we who are too small to be seen in their manic flight patterns.

Watch out for what you wish for, or you will be left here, alone, on an island peopled only by the memories of ghosts you never met, without even the past for company.

Watch out for what you wish for, lest the great deserts shrink until they are contained in an hourglass, and the hourglass is infinity, and you are caught on the outside, locked out of time and space.

Be careful what you wish for, for if wishes were horses and numerous as the stars in the heavens, we would ride the crest of the stampede and fall off the cliffs of the universe.

doors of perception

2013-01-11T08:28:00.002-05:00

Each dream begins just as the others, as a small child I am laying in my cot in the tiny room just off the kitchen, the window is open, the curtains are blowing. It is cold, it is autumn or maybe the earliest days of spring, but there are no buds on the ground, no snow on the ground, just an icing of frost along the tips of the grass. I stand in front of the open window, watching the clouds light up as they race across the face of the moon, then the clouds disappear again into the night sky.

The big dipper hangs just over the barn, and stars seem to be pouring from the ladle of the dipper in a steady stream and landing on the roof of the barn. When they land the roof lights up with a little flashbulb of light, then the stars tumble to the ground. They pile up all together on the ground by the barn, but they are not bright like stars or on fire like candles. They glow just a little bit, like a lightbulb in a flashlight with tired old batteries, and the pile of stars grows as big as a haystack and glows and glows.

entanglements

2013-01-02T07:52:00.000-05:00

A soothsayer said to me, long ago, "Your future and your fate will be determined by the hills." I asked the old woman what she meant, how I was to interpret this pronouncement. She shook her head, she shook my teacup, overturned the leaves onto a saucer, held my hand. "I do not know, my dear, too much of who you are remains indistinct and uncertain. You will have to create your own fate. It lies entangled with the hills."

She would say no more, and I was young, and impatient, and left feeling frustrated and angry. If the soothsayer could not read the patterns across my palm, if my fate was truly unsettled, then perhaps I had neither fate nor future. Perhaps I was merely a ghost in the present, my feet treading too lightly across the world to leave impressions in even the softest soil.

eternal return

2012-12-24T18:45:00.002-05:00

2013: year of the Snake

The snake biting its tail: the sign of eternal return, the cycles of the world repeating themselves. Time keeps passing and yet there is still more of it -- even scientists don't agree on the nature of time. (The topic "time" is the subject of this year's "Flame Challenge," and I look forward to the results.)

Compiled into this year's card, eleven quotes from ten philosophers on the nature of time : Aristotle, Blaise Pascal, César Aira, Saint Augustine, Henry David Thoreau, Thich Nhat Hanh, Albert Einstein, André Breton, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot. Held together in the shape of a sphere, made of interconnected circles, continuing the theme of eternity.

The pattern for the paper bauble was discovered through the Guardian; the text was sourced using a vast array of leads from articles on the nature of time (researched for the ongoing calendar-project) with assistance from Google. Circles of text were laid out in InDesign, printed onto linen-weave resume-stock paper, and then the work of editioning began.

First the pages were printed then folded: each circle in half, and the half-way point between the circles, so that they would align when glued together. (Folding happens before oiling, since oiled papers crack when folded.)

Oiling provided durability and shine and a bit of translucence, and test pieces were treated with boiled linseed oil, purified linseed oil, tung oil, and (yes) WD-40.

I had wanted to stitch the edges of the pages together, but my gluing skills are vastly superior to my stitching skills (as evidenced by a sample of each).

Then the gluing. Glue, fold, weight, glue, fold, weight, trim, glue, insert string, fold, weight, open, trim, place in wrapper, place in envelope.

Forecasts for the year ahead aren't auspicious. Bunker down and be well.

in the shadows of the house

2012-12-21T20:12:00.001-05:00

One year we had a hut way up near the top of a mountain, in the Himalayas. It was the first place we had stayed where each house was designed first for the comfort and ease of the house spirit, and only as a secondary consideration for we humans and our lives. There were half-hallways and windows in unexpected places and doors that opened but only had walls behind them, they didn't lead anywhere. Our house spirit was as old as the mountain, so silent and still that for many weeks I took him to be a rock, or a sculpture. Then, suddenly, one day he looked directly at me as I raced across the house to the kitchen. That look stopped me, anchored me in place. I cannot tell you how long I stood there, silently, staring deeply into his eyes, which were so black they held all of the past, and all of the future.

the pride

2012-12-16T09:30:00.001-05:00

One could say only the big cats mattered, they were the only reason any of us were here. The big cats were what had paid for the cage, for the tent, for the costumes, even for the stage lights. I do not think the big cats cared about any of this. Big cats care about very little, or they care about very much but their thoughts stay private, hidden deep within their feline hearts. We would have been nothing at all without them, but I wonder if they knew they would be nothing at all without us, as well.

Stories abound about circus cats, about private zoos, stories about hunters and cruelty and orphans and training through pain and fear. We were not of that type. Nor were we cat-whisperers, speaking in the feral feline body language beloved by the media. We were a family that was as much of the big cats as it is possible to be, and yet still be human. In my earliest days, hours after my birth, I was nestled in my crib with a lion cub, both of us helpless, disoriented, curled together for warmth. We shared a bottle, and although the lion cub grew into the fullness of adulthood while I was still a toddler, it kept me as a member of its family, groomed me, shared my meals. Other children were given dolls to play with, or tasked with working in the fields, but not in our family. New cubs were born, and although I could barely walk, a kitten was placed in my arms, a kitten which soon outgrew me, every year until I was a teenager, and my family was a pride of big cats.

17 Very Short Stories. -17-

2012-12-11T07:55:00.000-05:00

-17-

The creek ran dry. It ran dry every summer, when the last of the rains ended and the springs emptied out, and then we used the ravine as a boundary line between the past and the present. It ran dry early, and I had just watched Indiana Jones for the millionth time, and I was excavating the creek bed, looking for dinosaur bones or Indian artifacts or something. There had to be something. The sun rose high in the sky, and I held my spade tightly, and I dug, searching for the bones of the past.