20. Weeping Bird

June 10, 2009 – 9:20 am

Maricela had bird bones.

Her father said, “Look at her go. She landed on the Johnson’s roof, up there by the wind sock.”

And she was only three. Maricela’s mother had to make Maricela’s clothes by hand. She stepped out of all her shoes. On the up side, no one had to worry about kites getting stuck in trees, and so, Maricela was invited to all the parties.

Upon graduation, she was recruited by the Army to fly into enemy territory for reconnaissance. She flew deep into the desert, recorded enemy positions. She returned with detailed reports, after which whole hosts of the enemy were annihilated.

“You’re indispensable,” the General told her. “Here’s yet another medal. Without you we’d have lost hundreds of men.”

“I refuse to follow your orders any longer,” Maricela said and flew out the window.

She hid in a truck-load of straw. She slipped through search lights, which striped the sky in vain for news of Maricela. She painted herself green and blended into the new cut grass.

“Such a weapon can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands,” the General told the President, who agreed. “Unfortunately,” the President said, “Maricela must be found. Or she must be assassinated, for I can’t think of a prison that will be able to hold her.”

“She’s my only child,” Maricela’s father told the General.

“I’m sorry,” said the General, “but this is a matter of national concern.”

“Fuck you,” the father said.

Maricela weighed in at 40 pounds yet had grown to a height of six feet five inches. In a land across the ocean, she lit on a stone and stood and the people there came and bowed to her, thinking her an angel, for at certain times of the day, when the light was at its thinnest margins, Maricela would disappear then reappear then disappear again, appearing again at the edge of a bed of dying embers in the islanders’ village with tears in her eyes. They called her the weeping bird.

“She’s really the devil,” said the Storyteller. He was a thin man also, stubborn and jealous. The Chief told him to watch his words.

“She an angel,” the Chief said.

“We shall see,” the Storyteller hissed, hatching plots, and as a plot hatcher he could thinking months ahead of the Chief, who had to contend with the day to day of his peoples’ lives. His people depended on cash crops, soy and beans.

One evening on a day Maricela guided hunters to hidden prey, the Storyteller burned all the soy and bean plants. The villagers brought water but to suppress such flames would have required several fire trucks, which the villagers had yet to invent.

“Our beans have never burned,” the Storyteller told the Chief. “This is what your angel has brought, starvation to the lot of us.”

“Bring her,” the Chief said.

The hunters returned with enough game to feed an army. The villagers cheered them; they cheered Maricela; the children sucked in their stomachs to pretend thinness and danced.

Maricela was called before the Chief but when the Chief saw the amount of meat Maricela and the hunters had brought, he began his own dance and hailed Maricela not just as an angel but as the queen of the angels.

The Storyteller had had enough. He found Marcela’s cell phone, which she’d forgotten about, and pressed speed dial. He didn’t know what he was doing. Her father answered the phone. “Maricela, ¿Dónde estás?”

“We have her,” said the General amidst his listening apparatus and his lieutenants.

Meanwhile, across the ocean: “Our crops are burned, the Storyteller hates you, but you’re a godsend. Look at all this meat,” the Chief said, breaking open a jug of wine.

“Do you have a son or a daughter I could marry?” Maricela asked the Chief.

“A son and a daughter,” the Chief said. “You can marry them both.”

The General spoke to an assembly of officers. He said, “We’ve traced Maricela to an island of primatives. We’re going to blow that island to hell. It’s a matter of security, gentlemen. I’ve dispatched a good portion of the fleet across the ocean.”

Tune in next week for another episode of Weeping Bird: Will Maricela escape? Will the General’s plan succeed? Will the Storyteller find his revenge? Will the enemy, who might also have been listening in, destroy the fleet and kidnap Maricela for their own dubious ends? Will the Chief’s son and daughter accept Marcela’s hand in marriage? Will an advanced race of aliens swoop down from the sky or materialize out of the aether and pronounce themselves kings of the universe?

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19. The Artist

June 9, 2009 – 8:25 am

The artist painted a man with yellow hair. She woke up at night and a man with yellow hair was seated at the edge of the bed. He said, “Paint me a woman, a woman with yellow hair. I’m lonely.”

The next day the artist began on a woman with yellow hair. The canvas progressed over two days. The night she finished, she came awake to the sound of a closing door. She rose, followed the hall to the door and out into the garden.

She saw in the moonlight the man with yellow hair and a woman with yellow hair walking hands held into the trees. The two walked to the pond, waded through to the image of a partial white moon and disappeared under the water.

The following night, unseemly movement disturbed the artist from her dreams. The man with yellow hair was seated on the edge of the bed. He said, “Paint me a woman with black hair, hair like crow, hair like night. I’m lonely.”

The artist said, “What happened to the woman I painted for you? She was lovely; I painted her that way. She had yellow hair, a frame like trees at dawn. She was exactly what you asked for.”

“I murdered her,” the man said, without much emotion. “It was an accident.”

“That’s impossible,” the artist said. “That’s impossible.”

The man showed her his hands and on those hands he wore gloves made of dried blood.

“I won’t paint you another,” the artist said. “I won’t paint another woman for you to accidentally kill. I’m not going to ask you how it happened but it’s not going to happen again.”

“I’m lonely,” the man said. His eyes sparkled in the dark. He moved closer to the artist. He kissed her on the lips.

The artist slapped and kicked the man away and rolled off the bed. With her back against the wall, she said, “If I paint you a woman with black hair, will you leave me alone and never return?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Yes. It’s a promise.”

The next day the artist got to work. She painted a woman with hair like crow, with hair like night. The canvas progressed over three days. On the second night, the man with yellow hair inspected the figure on the canvas, who was not quite whole, having only one eye completed in oils. “Make her obedient,” he said. “Give her a voice like violets. Make her eyes the color of wine.”

The artist said yes, but secretly she knew. On the third night, she applied one last detail to the surface. Behind a pocket, she painted a knife.

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18. The Wisdomgivers

June 8, 2009 – 8:45 am

Where are the wisdom givers now, the gurus? Is their absence just proof that they are so large or so few?

The speaker addressed a sizable crowd, both young and old. He followed the rows up to the lights.

He spoke: We know that in societies that do not change, the aged are venerated, because experience accumulates but rarely changes; the aged contain and know more than the young. But we know also that in societies that change and change rapidly, the aged become redundant, their experiences quaint and useless. With all due respect, I say this. In simpler societies, slowness is a good thing. The crops never change; whispers move at the speed of wind in the night; and the rituals can be memorized; and we know exactly why we have them. But in states of speed and complexity, the aged cannot keep up; they are left behind and are forgotten and grow into a perpetual state of forgetfulness, tweetlessness, moving room to room looking for an outlet to plug in their rotary phones. They grow tired, while the young grow forceful, ever increasing and growing more powerful with the new. But do they have the forbearance; do they have the discipline? Do they know when to sleep?

An old man raised his hand.

See, he raises his hand. He wants me to see him and treat him with respect, to acknowledge that a raised hand means anything to me. Where is his culpability now; where is his understanding now? He thinks that raising his hand is acceptable.

He should just speak. Why don’t you just speak your mind, old man? a young man said at the back. Man, you piss me off with your little old skinny white, raised hand and your old listening ears and your futile viagra. The thought of you with a hard on freaks me out.

The young man stood and as he came down the steps he slapped the old man across the head and said, You’re too slow, too inhibited. You want the rituals to stay the same. You want someone else to feed you. And you, speaker, the young man said, you pitch nothing we haven’t already guessed. Look at us, filling in the holes and the spaces, and, what’s worse, cleaning up your messes. So, I say we run you from this place, maybe even drink your blood. I say, he said, turning to the other young people, I say we rise up and remove this crust from the edge of the sandwich. Come on.

The young men and women stood, their litheness threatening, and already they’d unsheathed their glimmering devices.

Wait, my original question was a confirmation of my place, the speaker said. The answer is: I’m the guru.

Ha, if you’re a guru, then I’m Frodo. We knew what you would say even before you said it. It was already recorded. It’s on the newspaper’s front page but the feeds are already two days ahead of it. Did you know there’s video of you being helped across the street by some kid?

Where? Where is this video?

Out with you. Out with him. I’m taking over.

No, I am, said a woman with hair like a frozen shot of purple spray.

No, me, said another.

I should run things, said another.

Meanwhile, the aged and the speaker were being kicked from their seats and their places. One man was being dragged across the stage by his long gray beard. He kept saying, no, no, remember Gandalf.

I remember friggin’ Gandalf. He returned after being killed, but that ‘s a myth, a lie, an improper application of plot. There is no magic, old fool. Get that guy out of here.

The oldest are lightest and they are easy to dismiss, carry, and pack into crates. Outside of the auditorium a stack of boxes rose high, filled with the old men and old women. Accumulated crates full of old people weighed down the harbor barges. American old people; Mexican old people; Iranian old people–all pressed into boxes and floating off slowly downriver.

A young woman held a stethoscope to one of the boxes. She’d hooked the device into an iPod so that the whimpers that came from inside the box were saved onto the web.

Inside the auditorium the youngsters gathered. They began making videos; they wrote in their journals; they invented interesting devices that actually worked and generated very little heat and after each was finished a new team set to improve upon it. But even before it had been improved, a new device was thrown into the pile, and yet more teams went to work on its improvements until the auditorium was lit with the energy of competition and devices and papers filled with innovative equations and theses.

Rumors came that an old man had escaped from his box and was rushing on his way and that he should be here in a few days at his present speed.

When he gets here, we’ll make him the tester, said a young man. A lamp. Glue.

At night, the city pulsed. Cars pulled into the wet black streets, the air warm after rain. In a cafe, two men traded business cards and departed together. One of the men stooped to tie his shoe and was killed by a speeding car.

The next day, the auditorium was full of grief for the death of the young man. Everyone was quiet.

We should have a service, a young man said. Make a plaque or something. It was my fault. I should have walked him home. We’d had a few drinks. Someone skyped their sadness from Brazil. Someone flicked the image of a cluster of burning candles.

It’s not your fault, a woman said. It’s just the way things are; shit happens.

We should get back to work, someone said.

A door at the back flew open and an old man with a long beard waddled in. His eyes were wild. A few sticks of hay clung to his beard. He said in a voice that sounded like the brakes of a train, Remember Gandalf. Remember Gandalf.

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17. The Robber or The Image, Part 2

June 7, 2009 – 9:24 am

There is an image that extends from another (and a problem may be that in all images images extend).

A robber, for example, has just leapt into the path of a man and a woman on the sidewalk. The robber says, “Give us your money.”

He’s with three of his criminal pals, boys all, who, after leaping into the path of the pedestrians, might just as well have said, “Got you,” or “We eat raw animal intestine,” or “Welcome to our fair city.”

The robber has some fluency of language. His fluency is not the fluency of academic study but a fluency of present conditions. He thinks in instances as short as lightning strikes but also understands how the world might be weeks ahead. He uses the word “us” to utter to the ears of his companions that he’s “among” them and is a part of them; he’s telling the plasma of struggle to come that he intends to share the booty, even though he told Ronnie, who’s his younger brother, that since he’s the one who has to do the actual confrontation, Ronnie will concede to the notion that he deserves less, even though Ronnie may have no idea what his older bother means by “us” and doesn’t care. He, Ronnie, never even heard the order.

In this first case, “us” is not really intended for the victims but for the robber’s companions, directed away from the man with sunglasses and his woman companion. Then again, the robber may intend, in his way of thinking, “us” as a crude method of persuasion: “us” is likely to be more intimidating, as the man with the sunglasses may not have taken “Give me” as seriously. He, a utilitarian, might respond this way: “Well, if it’s just you who wants the money, then I’m not giving you jack shit.”

As this is the story of an image we can switch from the brother to Ronnie as he is a part of the image of his brother, the robber. He’s an organ, albeit subsidiary, inside the common system, sharing blood and oxygen, sharing space and, importantly, time.

Yes, Ronnie hears nothing. Ronnie’s watching the man whom they’ve chosen to rob and all Ronnie can think of is running and running swiftly and would his brother please be correct about what he’d said just moment before, which was:

“I’ll make sure you don’t die.”

Ronnie doesn’t know what to do, really. The guy with the sun glasses looks like he might, in a moment, unbind his muscles and leap at them like Jackie Chan or yank an AK-47 out of his leather jacket and blast the lot of them or haul out a long knife and start swiping at the thick veins of their necks like a wheat farmer.

No one moves. No one moves because this is not an image that moves. It’s an image in between movement, a still shot with implications of past and future, a potent force of momentum, a cross section of breath or breathing. The point, for Ronnie, for his brother, for the man with the sunglasses, and for the woman who is behind the man and who happens to be staring at the back of the man with the sunglasses’ head, is that hours before, when decisions were made, when the eyes fluttered dreams away like hands do flocks of butterflies, is that now has become perpetual and can thus be pulled apart, like the insides of a fish.

Ronnie watches. Above him are the words “I’ll make sure you don’t die” and “Give us your money,” which could just as well have been, “Let’s head to the courts for a game” or “California here we come, right back where we started from.”

But let’s not forget the robber, who is listening to himself say “Give us your money” over and over again. He’s already forgotten what he’d told Ronnie just a few moments before, which he actually never said and will never say and will, thus, actually never forget. He doesn’t know that Ronnie, in an instance of a future that will never come, can never come, will run, as will the other two companions (it’s not that they distrust the robber; it’s not that they didn’t believe him; it’s that they distrust fate, which they know the robber can’t control).

The robber doesn’t know that what will never actually happen, but may simply be implied, Ronnie and the two other young thugs dashing back into the shadows, will be his secret undoing, and that maybe the man in the sunglasses knows this, feels this, understands this. All the man in the sunglasses has to do is hold on for a few moments, a few moments that will last as long as paper and ink, and the robber will turn and find, to his disappointment, that Ronnie and the gang will have disappeared leaving him to face an expert in Kung Fu, or an AK-47, or a long knife alone.

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16. The Image

June 6, 2009 – 7:48 am

There is an image of a girl looking at a man from behind. The man stands in front of her, staring ahead. He wears sunglasses. Maybe that’s a scar or a shadow on his cheek. This image attracts.

What is the woman’s expression? Maybe she’s watching his back with surprise. He’s just said something like, “I eat raw animal intestine.” After saying this, he turns, and she stares at the back of his head with surprise, confusion, and the melting of an image she had built in their short time together, as either friends or lovers.

Her expression depicts or dramatizes an inner picture of him, an image that had begun to develop from the time they had first met to now. Bold and mysterious, curiosity and suspense to sudden and explosive disappointment or regret or just plain disgust. Her expression, a cluster of two inked eyes, a few lines at the forehead, and an ambiguous bent oval for a mouth remains as it always will be in that image, but the fact that she’s looking at the back of his head, the fact that she appears to have erected that countenance as a response to some word or action by the man with the sunglasses suggests a list of prior expression.

But it also promotes a likelihood of futures. Because the image may want the viewer to consider what the woman will do as a response to “I eat raw animal intestine” or “I never want to see you again” or “I just don’t like cats and never will” or “I hate Italian food” or “I have an untreatable disease.”

It could be, however, that the woman is not dramatizing something said by this man who wears sunglasses at all. It could be that her expression is more about some disruption to the normal progress of expected events. She’s not watching or “looking at” the back of his head; on the contrary, she’s waiting for him to respond to an occurrence some distance in front of them.

These people were walking together on a street and they’ve just been confronted by a gang of thugs, young thugs barely able to sprout hair on their faces, accosters with knives or bats. “Give us your money or else,” one of the young thugs orders, and the woman’s expression goes from anticipatory (for they were on their way to dinner or to a retirement party) to blank astonishment. Out of all the pedestrians in the city, out of all the lovers out for walks, we are accosted, we are threatened, we must deal with this now.

Her astonishment is made even more blank at a deeper linguistic response, which may be termed inappropriate, given the direness of the situation. For at the moment that she turns to see what her companion will do (give the robbers his money, which is a cowardly act, a practical response, or an act of charity; disentwine and proceed to club the boys with lightning fast Kung Fu kicks; or stay frozen in fear) she wonders momentarily at the speaker’s use of the plural “give us” rather than “give me” in his request for the money, and she’s watching the back of the man’s head for his own reaction to the deep-seeded impulses of language or insanity. She just finds it odd for the robber, or this robber, to so imply the fair or utilitarian “us” rather than the self-absorbed “me” in such a sinister situation.

The woman has responded to something “between them” or something “beyond them.” There is, in either case, disquietment and ambiguity. We don’t know if they will escape; we don’t know if they will repair the rift that has developed between them; we don’t know if they will ever return to the place where they originated or whether they will build new futures to accommodate or compliment or animate their lives. What we do know is they are committed to one another at this very moment and that something about the image reminds us of the birth of children, the flight of birds, the normal course of day to day harms.

Good Day.

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15. Computer Leon

June 5, 2009 – 8:50 am

They called Computer Leon. Soon, wire and card lawn signs went up saying “We called Computer Leon.”

“If it weren’t for Computer Leon, I’d have nothing but a thousand dollar paper weight on my desk,” a man said.

“Computer Leon’s a real pro. He had my PC up and running in little more than an hour. He didn’t even break a sweat.”

“He’s like the dog whisperer but with computers.”

More signs went up. “We called Computer Leon,” the lawn signs said. Even people who didn’t call Computer Leon put up signs that said “We called Computer Leon” because they wanted everyone to believe that they were the kind of people who would call Computer Leon, if they had computers. Computer Leon got busy with so many calls he had the income to make custom signs, such as “I called Computer Leon” and “Computer Leon for President.”

“Sure, he’s a bit odd. But he gets the job done.”

“I got a virus and I called Computer Leon. He came right over. He said he was on his lunch break but he came anyway. He found the problem and sent that virus packing to hell where it fucking belongs.”

“Computer Leon installed my new operating system. While we waited, I served him cookies. I didn’t know he was allergic to nuts though. Sure, his tongue got all swoled up and everything but he stayed till he had my machine purring like a new engine. Computer Leon’s the best.”

Computer Leon drove the neighborhoods computing the number of signs. “I’m on the constant go,” he told me. “I don’t have time to worry about politics and the world’s problems. I’m constantly on the go. You wouldn’t believe the things people do to their computers. The problems they get themselves into.”

“For instance,” I said.

“Like desktop clutter or using their CD trays as cup holders. But they’re all nice people. They show me their houses. Plans for additions. I know some of those houses better than the owners do. Some I’ve had to rewire and when you rewire you learn things.”

It was a Saturday when Computer Leon was on calls and he saw a sign on the lawn of a big blue Colonial that said, “We called Computer Geek Woman.”

He read the sign as an accusatory blow. Computer Leon asked the man at the door. The man said, “Because I called you and I got a message. I called and she came right over. Sorry.”

“Competition’s good for the soul,” his wife said.

“The hell you say,” Computer Leon said, hatching schemes.

More signs that said “We called Computer Geek Woman” went up. Soon he saw “We called Computer Geek Woman” signs next door to his own. Happy green clover decorated the borders. The bold brown script gave Computer Leon chills.

He called her. “My computer. I think it’s the hard drive.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” a woman said, cordial, competent. He said, “You can’t guess? I thought you were the great Computer Geek Woman.”

“Sorry,” she said. “But if you tell me what happened I’d be glad to help as best I can.”

He told a story. He tried to sound convincingly naive. “Then the thingy started to go bloop bloop and it just seized up” he said. She sped right over. He brought her downstairs. He’d rigged his virtual memory as a trap. She caught the problem straight away and reset to default.

“She’s good,” he told his wife.

“Leave her alone, Leon. She’s just trying to make a living. It’s hard times out there.”

He knew peoples’ schedules. He understood the neighborhood’s pulse. He slipped in through a sliding door and went deep into a man’s PC, and on his drive away he grinned at the “We called Computer Geek Woman” sign and said, “Fix that.”

In between calls he fouled two more Geek Woman clients. On one he broke open the case and took a needle to the ATX pins.

“These power connector pins are mutilated,” he told the woman when she called him. “No problem.” When he drove up the “We called Computer Geek Woman” sign had been removed and a fresh “We called Computer Leon” sign had been tamped in its place.

“Computer Leon’s my man when it comes to equipment,” the woman told me. “I run a home business. My life depends on my computer. I should never have trusted Computer Geek Woman.”

A few days later, nearby the Catholic Church, he saw a sign that said, “Computer Leon is a Fraud” and another that said “It’s Computer Leon: Lock Up Your Goat!”

On his answering machine: “This message is for you, Computer Leon. Two can play this game.”

“What the hell’s this about, Leon?” his wife wanted to know. She had a wooden spoon in her hand. She slapped its bowl hard into her palm. “Who is that? Whatever it is you’re up to, quit it.”

“The hell you say,” Computer Leon said.

“What’s this about, Leon?” asked Cruz, a man with a bank of Mac Pros in his office.

“It’s nothing,” Computer Leon swore, opening a case of CDs. “I don’t know anyone with goats.”

In his driveway, someone had put a wire-frame sign that said “Computer Leon called Computer Geek Woman.” He stuffed it in the trash.

He pulled signs up from the church, library, and bank lawn at midnight. His truck bed was soon full of signs that said “Computer Leon called Computer Geek Woman.” He dreamed about illicit signs. They checkered the landscape. He pushed a sign up hill over and over again that said “Computer Leon is Losing His Mind” and up hill still because the hill went up hill still.

He grew dreary with sleep loss; he swore while brushing his teeth. The skin under his left eye began to sag. But the calls kept him running: “I’m getting that fatal error message, Leon.” “My CD drive won’t read disks, Leon.” “My computer won’t turn on, Leon.” “It keeps freezing, Leon.” “What was that registry thingy again, Leon?” “What does a question mark on gray folder mean at bootup, Leon?” “My computer keeps telling me I’m an asshole, Leon.” “I spilled apple cider on my keyboard, Leon.” “I got that virus again, Leon.” “How do I start up a Facebook account, Leon.” “Are those commercials really true, Leon?” “What’s the matter with your eye, Leon.” “You look like crap, Leon.” “Well, Leon, if that’s the way you’re going to be, I’ll just call Computer Geek Woman.”

In the morning, Computer Leon practically had to throw himself behind the wheel. His hands were raw from pulling signs. He bore troubled dreams on his back like a load of hard drives.

On a lawn at the end of the block was a sign that said, “We called Dan the Computer Man.” Happy lady bugs danced across the bottom of the sign. The bold blue typography gave him chills.

The woman who opened the door said, “You were busy; she was busy. But this Dan fellow. Well, I called, and he came right over.”

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14. The Night

June 4, 2009 – 8:35 am

A young boy no more than ten woke to the dark with the need to pee. In this world, peeing at night was not so easy a thing. His mother and father slept in the room at the far end of the hall, the bathroom in between, two picture windows that looked out onto the lawn and the lawns of the other houses and a park beyond. His sister, Betty, slept in the bed beside him.

He got out of bed and paused with amazement at the door to the hall: Mother or Father had forgotten to shutter the windows at dusk. He should, he told himself, go back to bed but the pee threatened to explode. He thought about asking Betty. But something in him said no and to look. To test what always had been said and warned against. The windows must remain shut up when the sun goes down. The doors must be locked at night and every night, no exceptions.

He’d seen photos. They were only photos: stars, the moon, eclipses. “I’ll lock you out at night,” Betty would threaten. “Stop,” Father would say. “It isn’t funny.”

But could he just look? Would he? A quick look. Just take a quick glance, then pee, then back to bed, and shuffle through the whys in the morning when it was safe to do so, safe to ask questions, or safe to say “I risked and it wasn’t true. None of it has been true, Father.”

Last month he and Betty and snuck into the hallway and sat beneath the shutters, their hearts patting in their chests like crows wings. “No,” the boy had said finally. “No way.”

“We just shouldn’t,” Betty whispered. “We just can’t.”

So, why not just look now? He watched down the hall. The moon shown bright through the big windows. It was that Blue Time. Four or so. He’d seen the blue light only once before, early morning high in the mountains, where everyone sat on an enormous balcony, the hotel rising behind spatter-lit yellow from the random windows in the higher rooms. It had been so rare, Mother standing by Father at a stone lookout. They had drinks. Even together then they looked lonely and helpless and somehow guilty of a quiet collaboration in solitude and failure.

That time had been about this same time, so late and early, and everyone happy, a wakeful holiday, refusing in unison to sleep. He remembered how his mother’s head had slowly fallen to Father’s shoulder, his head to her head. So high they were, the clouds swirled below silver and humped, high and safe above a world where night never really came.

He felt the energy or thrill of impulse. He felt drawn from the door, drawn to the window. He moved his eye to the left of the frame, looked out for the first time at an alien night and encountered moon glow, the shadows of the nearer trees soft and silent on the bright white ground. Nothing, he thought. There was nothing, nothing to fear out there, all the rules untrue or just false.

The windows on the block were shuttered, blank spots against the gray sky. In the park, it must have been very far, he saw a dark shape drift rapidly out from the pines into a clear space on the grass, something that suggested spider but with only two or three legs, small so far away, then it was gone, like something painted on the ground by a breeze. He felt a pressure in his chest, something of an illicit sweetness at the bottom of his throat.

“They sense vision,” he remembered hearing. “They ignore us if we don’t see . . .” Grandfather said. They had been in Wisconsin with relatives. They had been eating in a windowless cafeteria. Grandfather told stories. He explained, while Mother and Father ate, ready to silence the speaker if he strayed. “. . . or look. I don’t know when precisely they came, but it was just after your mother was born, and we had to change. All of us, even governments. We lost the night everywhere to their teeth, their nails. But we’re safe if we don’t look. Safe if we shut the night out. We no longer have the moon to ourselves.

“They’re drawn to the human eye. They only take he or she who sees them. And so we board our windows. It’s safest that way. Sleep through the night. Keep the windows shut. Love the daytime.”

“Father,” Father said. “Please.”

The boy watched the night. Something dark slashed across a nearer street. Then the boy heard his Father.

“No,” Father said. He was standing at the bedroom door. “My god, son,” he said.

“Father,” the boy whispered, his voice shaking. “I just had to pee.”

“Oh my god,” the Father said. “Oh my god.”

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13. The Flight

June 3, 2009 – 9:32 am

Down for review

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12. Software

June 2, 2009 – 8:33 am

Assuming that we are all not machines in 2050:

In the year 2050 Leon paid full amount and clicked the circular lock into his head and tapped okay for five minutes of diagnostic ability. The left lower leg had been paining him for weeks since he’d slipped and with normal thinking he was at a loss for the reason.

An idea rose out of a sloppy yet congealing mash, the synthetic knowledge load working, a sudden memory out of the master database taking form: claudication, stress fracture, thrombosis, mastication of the nerves (a new idea, introduced into the literature 2035). He spent what might have been two minutes marveling at the structure of the brain (although he felt it no relation to his current condition, but who wouldn’t be amazed at what was known of the brain?) Then the five minute mark, and just as the lights went out, this thought came: sarcoma.

“Sarcoma, sarcoma, sarcoma,” he pitched to his neighbor from the balcony. She stretched her neck out a window and shouted, “Then you’re a goddamned dead person, Leon.”

“What were the others?” he asked. “Something about Claudia or stress.”

His neighbor said, “Consult the weekly sermon. And next time write it down.”

On the black market, high prices for soccer skills: an hour of synthetic Pele, a few thousand Euros. The fine print on the screen was writ: buyer beware . . . some infusions may not perform as desired.

As Jerry found, soon after assigning a paycheck’s worth of coin to the machine and filling his brain with a stab of Ronaldinho. He raced to the field, the crew stretching and footing handovers. Jerry joined them with Bush’s Grin and Clinton’s Twinkle. Pat raced around him, even though Jerry knew exactly what to do, visualized it, understood the hook, felt the freedom of it in the corner of his mind. Pat twittered. Jerry affected and fell.

“Dude, you need to lose about a hundred pounds,” Pat said.

Jerry felt the center of gravity jazz heavily to the right, to the left: wobble body, muscle toss, Jupiter overspinning. He could feel the excess weight snatch thickly at his bones and sling his legs toward the left bounds. He felt like a spit wad; he smelled like a barrel of crushed salamanders. At the field center, he fell again. Pat said later: “Man, it sounded like the pop of shattered ice.”

“I have five thousand Euros worth of flight training,” Lenox said, steading the nuclear chopper.

“You were never much of a mathematician,” his girl friend said. “You bought enough infusion for thirty minutes. Do you see the water beneath us? And San Francisco is an hour away.”

“Oh,” Lenox said, “but I only had enough for thirty.”

“You stupid ass, you stupid ass. The scales, the scales. The software comes with time ratios and warnings and preventions, you stupid motherfucker.”

An old man smiled at a counter in a small town, doesn’t matter where. “I want to feel young again,” he said, hoarsely. “Twenty, even forty. You know, just to hear the world again with the ears of the young.”

The young shop keeper had his chin in palm, his elbow on the counter. He said, with a small breath of requital, “It feels wonderful. It feels like a million. Just like a million.”

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11. The Bag

June 1, 2009 – 8:20 am

Assuming two characters and the existence of a bag:

(a) He told her that the bag had to get to Europe. He smiled. She smiled. Like those smiles before sex or at the end of a wedding or when you finally notice you have hands.

(b) She took the bag, bearing imperceptible value onto the road. She gave it to a man with an out-of-town destination written on his face. She told the man it must not get to Europe. It must go to California, instead, she said, and that this was a secret, but that it must be made to seem as if it had gone to Europe (c).

She smiled. He smiled. Like those smiles after sex or the morning after a wedding or when you finally understand you never go back home.

He took the bag into empty countryside. He thought he might be being followed. He met a woman in Bombay where the smoke moved like church ushers, and a child motioned a hand over a water-filled orb. He told the woman, (d) “You must take this to China.”

“I might be a double agent,” she said. “How do you know I’m not plotting harm?”

“I’m betting you are,” he said.

He smiled. She smiled. They had sex in a rented room.

(e) In Ohio she was attacked in an alley, just as she was about to pass the bag to a woman in a red car, but on the phone she had sounded like a man. Two men darted from the shadows with rubber clubs. The red car sped away.

She smiled, blood in her mouth. The men smiled.

(f) On the road, the thieves were smacked to death by a cargo truck racing at high speed. The driver of the truck fished through the crumpled wreckage and the twisted bones, drew out the bag, and the woman in the cab said, “This bag will never go to Europe. No matter what he wants.” (g)

And so, they headed off, and soon, crossing the desert, they passed a sign that said: “Welcome to California,” California, where a man waited in a house on the beach. He opened the door to the woman and the truck driver. (a) The man said, “It’s important that my bag eventually find its way to Europe.”

Repeat and vary a, b, c, d, e, f, g but you must never get the bag to Europe.

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10. The Point (a Sunday story)

May 31, 2009 – 9:19 am

Point was a point. He had no mass, thickness, or real measurement. He was, as the definition goes, a position in space and time.

In the parlance of the day, Point or Max could be identified as existing at the intersection of two or more lines, vectors, or intentions, such as two people–one named Jane, the other Jam.

Jane leaves the house at nine on a normal morning, 72 degrees. Jam puts her coffee into the holder, turns on the car. It’s five after nine. The sun cuts her head into two halves. The bottom half of her face is submerged in shadow.

Or two nations. One of these nations drives its population in one direction, the other into many, like marbles dropped from a box onto the sidewalk. There are good days in both places when people identify falling stars. Night clouds pass over the city roofs like dramatizations of uneasy slumber. Leaves shake like hard to read words.

Jane stops at Point or Max or some other arbitrary point along the way. Jam sees her and she also sees the street light. Jam waits. Jane considers Jam’s hair through the window, how she would look or feel with hair like Jam’s. Jam smiles. She wonders what it would be like to have grown up like Jane, with that hair and those lips and that orgasmic car.

Moments later Max reaches out, touched by his implicit emergence, for he is moded by complexity, an immanent matrix. He is not height until another point appears, unwidthed until inspired by volume. A name is an intertwingle of vectors.

War is collision. One people wants this way, it wants clarity; the other is hungry for calendars and wealth and can do okay with ambiguity. Jane powers down. Jam reaches for her sunglasses and departs the car, and in the vortex of honking in the street, they meet and kiss.

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9. The Champion, Part 2

May 30, 2009 – 10:32 am

The step mother, known as the evil step mother, raised a piña colada into the brown tavern smoke. “Three cheers for the Champion and my treacherous step daughter,” she cried.

Late evening sun crashed the windows white. But the frames were dark, like old burns in the surface of the wall, bruisings at the periphery of light.

“But you are the evil step mother,” a patron said. He raised a glass to follow, though, and gave three silent cheers. It would bring bad luck to ignore the toast. Slowly, the normal clank and carouse of the place rose again. “You said you were a character in a story. There was a Princess, a Champion, a few complicating devices, such as monsters of the elements.”

“How would you like to be a character in such a story?” the step mother said. “Let’s try it: You could be the Patron, some random drunk in some random tavern in some random city blah blah blah. You, the Patron, enter in out of the rain or from a distant town or time or genre. You seek company. You want to hear human voices. You want to be among.”

“And that’s as well why you’re here, to listen and call. To be amidst,” the Patron said, sipping a glass of wine.

“The Patron, growing tired, leaves,” said the step mother. “He’s ignored. The woman ignores him and to be ignored is the Patron’s greatest self-disgust and travesty.”

“Is that why you trapped your step daughter, then? Because she ignored you? Or, no, because she might have grown to ignore you, grown beyond you. Outside of you.”

The step mother ordered another colada. She sensed battle brewing. She considered that the Patron might be more dangerous than she’d first perceived.

“The Patron,” she said, “fell from the bed of a wagon. Before falling he cursed the poverty he’d been born into. He blamed his father. He blamed the gods. The wagon trundled on. He shouted. He called for the wagon to stop, for the father to rein in the mules or the donkey. ‘I’ve fallen. I’m here. Weep weep,’ weeps the Patron, left behind, uncared for.”

“You fear your step daughter showing you rather than you showing her the future, then. You resent a life of wasted devotion and love to a creature who thought you a mystery, a cloud, maybe even a hindrance, or, worse, a nuisance. And so, of course, the Champion assisted in her escape.

“He fought the elements for her hand and body; maybe the monsters of the elements nearly killed him, but he fought through, sucked in the pain, committed to dilemma and potential farce, risking cliche. Of course she tricked the Champion into believing that there was ever a spell, that there was ever a tower, ever a story in the first place to be written.”

The step mother smiled, a sapling crease at the corner of her mouth. “And so, the Patron came to the bar, once upon a time, and, once upon a time, he believed but lost that belief. Married, but no longer. His story over, or another about to begin. And so he is much like the step mother, here and now, drinking piña coladas in smoke and darkness and sepia.”

“Another then,” the Patron said, raising his glass. “Another then. For you and for me.”

“And another toast,” the step mother said. “For we are conditional, formulaic fictions.”

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8. The Question

May 29, 2009 – 8:34 am

In their living room a row of tubes emerges from a space near the French doors. The tubes curve up like strange wine glasses or the necks of luminous ostriches, filled to the rim with water.

Often a whale rises slowly and surfaces and squeaks or chirps at a person nearby in a rocker or easy chair. If the person is unresponsive, the animal bends its body and descends down-tube, undulating its way to a nearby lake, maybe, or a sea gray in the moonlight or green and flat in the sun, where the whale’s song echoes.

The dog stirs. Outside, a hollow wind blows at the house. Eggs rattle on a human palm in the garden. Soon, the trees are filled with small red birds with beaks like needles.

A bearded boy pauses at the curb. He checks his pockets. Counts the change. He calls to friends down block. They hear wings. They sense movement. They run best they can with their canes from what might drop from the sky at the shadows’ passing.

Yet another whale surfaces. She wonders why her spots are white, flight impossible, and when did these questions appear, changing me forever. All these years the world has been quiet and repetitious. Calls go unanswered.

The dog lowers his chin. A cat shadow passes on the floor. And down again the whale goes. She returns to the lake or to the sea, maybe, after swimming years to find here and find here what?

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7. The Champion

May 28, 2009 – 8:47 am

Once upon a time, a Champion crossed the desert, forded the river, climbed the mountain, and descended into the valley where a Princess, trapped by her evil step-mother, stood at a high open window.

“I’m here to free you from yon tower,” the Champion called up.

“You must first fight the Dragon and bring me back the Glowy Orb,” the Princess called down.

“Where is this mighty Dragon and this Glowy Orb, Princess?”

“In yon cave,” The Princess said, pointing.

“I shall accept this task,” the Champion called up. “Then you shall be my wife.”

“I shall. I shall,” the Princess sang happily.

The Champion, with his steed under him, rode to yon cave. He pushed through the Dragon’s mists and confronted the beast, who sat on a flat stone and wore the Glowy Orb as an amulet round his scaled neck, which was as thick as a stack of truck tires.

“I’m here to slay you, you nasty thing,” the Champion told the Dragon.

“You are but a dollar bill to me,” the dragon said. “Slay me, you say. Ha.” The Dragon opened his wings and aimed fire at the Champion’s head, searing his long locks down to the scalp. The Champion sucked in the pain and leapt high and as the Dragon opened his great jaws for another burst of fire, the Champion thrust his sword into the Dragon’s pickle-colored tongue, splitting his voice in twain, and hence slaying him.

“I have the orb, Princess. You are free, and so you shall be my wife.”

“Not quite,” the Princess said. “You must next fight the Sea Monster and find the Silver Ring he has in his guts. This with the Orb will assist us in unbinding my evil step mother’s spell.”

“Spell?”

“Yes, only the Glowy Orb and the Silver Ring will protect you from the Tower’s Touch of Inimical Death.”

“Then I shall accept this task and then you shall be my weib and we shall, together, eliminate this inimical Touch.”

“It shall be so,” the Princess called down.

The Champion rode to the sea and swam far. The Sea Monster rose forth from the waters and snarled: “Who dares enter the realm of me?”

“Tis I, and I am here to murder you and reclaim the Silver Ring, and then the Princess shall be my wife, you nasty creature.”

“Tis a trick,” the Sea Monster said. “I’m no nasty creature. Secondly, this Princess has uttered you lies, like a Wall Street monger of inimical rumors.”

“It is you who lies, for all men and women and children know that sea monsters are incompetent hedge fund managers.”

The Sea Monster, enraged, bit at the Champion. The monster’s fangs were sharp as spears, black as unlit basements, hard as trigonometry to a poodle, and he caught the Champion with one of those so described fangs, stabbing through a lung. The Champion sucked in the pain. The Sea Monster then tried to smash and drown the Champion with his massive chin. The Champion swam deep, slipped into the Sea Monster’s anus, crawled through his cavernous bowels, and found the Silver Ring in the gut. Then he ate the sea monster’s heart, which tasted of tuna sashimi and was the size of an apple, thus vanquishing him.

“I have the Silver Ring and the Glowy Orb, Princess. Now we may leave our throthhood and enter into post-troth. I have travelled far, lost my hair and a lung, and put myself otherwise in great jeopardy for these prizes.”

“At this moment Impossible,” the Princess said. “You must, thirdly, procure the Minstrel’s Violin from the Stone Giant, for his playing of it befouls the ears of my countrymen in the yonder woods and suppresses the song of the birds. Then, and only then, will we be wed and live happily ever after, my Prince.”

The Champion blew puffs of frustration from his mouth. He called up, “I shall accept this last adventure, my Princess, for your hand. Where is this mighty Giant?”

“In that forest across the plain,” the Princess said. “But be cautious for your sword will have no effect on the great Giant’s stoniness.”

“I shall triumph nonetheless,” the Champion said. And so forth he set, slept one day, and ate non-poisonous mushrooms, and made the forest the next. In a glade, he found the mighty stone Giant, who rose from the earth with the Minstrel’s Violin, which he strummed and strummed poorly, for his finger pads were as big as baseballs.

“Who disturbs my practice time?” the Stone Giant boomed.

“Tis I, the Champion, come to relieve the ears of the folk hereabouts from yon Violin, and then, and only then, will I have the hand of the Princess.”

“Fool, you are lied to, and to remove this here yon violin from my person will bring on the new ice age.” And then the Stone Giant swiped at the Champion with a fist the size of a net filled with numerous baseballs. The Champion ducked. The Stone Giant then raised his foot and stomped on the Champion’s, breaking the bones. Sucking in the pain, the Champion grabbed hold, climbed to the Giant’s head, took a clarinet from his pack, and proceeded to blow bars of Sidney Bechet’s All of Me in the Stone Giant’s ear, which was the size of a hubcap. The Stone Giant grew placid then and sat down.

“We shall make a deal,” the Stone Giant proclaimed. “I shall trade thee this yon violin for your wind instrument and then, and only then, shall you have the hand of the Princess in nuptials.”

“I accept this fair-sounding trade,” the Champion said. “For nuptials is all I seek in truth. But do not be disappointed, great monster, for thy fingers are quite large for the instrument’s holes, and I fear you may be an unproductive band leader.”

“Do not be alarmed, Champion, for I am no Stone Giant at all, but the Princess herself. Behold.”

The Champion leapt from the monster’s head and watched as the Stone Giant transformed into the slender and beautiful Princess, now free from the poisoned tower. She wore the Orb about her neck, the Silver Ring on her finger. She carried the clarinet in a black leather case and the Minstrel’s Violin on a sling.

“You are free and you are beautiful,” the Champion said.

“You risked your life for me, crossed the desert, climbed the mountain, lost your hair, lung, and foot bones, my Champion.”

“Indeed,” the Champion said, sucking in the pain.

“Then I shall give you of me, great sir, and we shall live in yon tower, and I shall heal your wounds, salve your head, and play tunes to you deep into the night. And we shall diminish hunger, restore honor to the land, bring roundness to the sharp edge, grow gardens where gardens will grow, imprison the miscreants, sharpen dull surfaces, uncover the oft unobserved or the obvious but lost, and build ships that will travel to neighbor galaxies.”

“We shall,” the Champion said. “We shall do all of it as you say, my Princess. But how, how shall we do it all, my love?”

“I know not, my Champion, for all of it is yet a fiction.”

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6. White Dwarf

May 27, 2009 – 8:18 am

They said he was a strange volume, scariest in flight. “My god, you’re torturing this boarding ramp,” a large woman in a business suit said.

The plane above Chicago struggled to climb. “What if I slip through the seat?” he asked Martha.

“Must I always fear losing you, Thin as String?” she asked. “Escalators are the worst. When you’re on, it slows down and groans, but it also craves you, that frame of yours, thin as the edge of a square.”

He passed scratchless through thickets. Martha and Liz crashed out pulling thorns and slapping at their arms and legs, hair twig-flecked and ragged. “God, a tick on my arm,” Liz said. “I wish it were yesterday or tomorrow but not NOW.”

Martha whispered to him at the theater. “You leave impressions where ever you go. Bill said you owe him for that ruined couch. And how many times have you forced a repair to his porch.”

“We’re never going back there,” he said.

He threaded his way around turnstile arms. “Help me,” he said. “Help me up.” His brother had climbed over the fence. “You just had to slide under it, Scrawn. That’s maybe five inches there at the bottom. Did you know Dad thinks you’ve crushed the mattress coils?”

“My pants keep dropping and it isn’t the school yard bully, Dad.”

“Suspenders, then,” Dad said. “That’ll do the trick. But you’ve got to walk to school from now on.”

“Why?” he asked.

“You keep blowing my tires, Shrimp.”

“Look how the water explodes from the sole’s of his sneakers after he walks through puddles on stormy days. They needed four grown men to pull him from the concrete he stepped into. The ferry rides low, you know the work day’s done.”

“Why are you always squeezed against me when I wake up in the morning?” he asked Martha.

“Why do you think?” she said.

“Because you love me so.”

“Scrawn, what happened to the swings?” “You’re not riding with me.” “He’s on our team.” “No ours. He’s running back and center.” “Scrawn, we’re locked out. Slip yourself under the door and get the keys.” “You’ll never be an astronaut.”

“Don’t bother with the lock,” he said. He eased through that small gap between the door and the frame and threw the door open to them with a smile. He had to let air out to ease past the dead bolt.

At the age of sixty? The connectivity of bone and muscle and other tissue grew worn, the fractured knobs of his joints saying, “Save us and save us soon.”

“Look, I’m a dusty raggedy doll,” he said, flinging himself about. The grandkids erupted. He had them all braying with mirth at his old and wrinkled puppet show. “Please,” his son said, “you’re going to smash through the goddamned floor, Pop.”

The system degenerated. He could no longer bear himself. One day in the garden, Martha saw him collapse, crush the roses, and slowly he elevated heavily into the air and gently disappeared over the house, like a colossal dandelion seed.

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