God and Country

The creature appeared on my front porch and struck a pose for my amusement.

Trash Day

Today is Trash Day. Last night, in preparation, I…

picked up the newspapers and stuffed them in a paper bag headed for the door to put them outside passed the checks Wife asked me to sign put down the bag to look for a pen rummaged through the drawer but no pen noticed my wrinkled pants I’d need for tomorrow thought I could unwrinkled them in the dryer remembered my white shirt was still in the laundry basket went to the basement to throw in the laundry forgot to bring the wrinkled pants on the way to the steps passed the cat litter which needed to be changed opened the new bag of litter but needed a trash bag to dump the old litter into headed back upstairs to get the trash bags once there remembered I’d previously moved the trash bags to the basement passed the newspapers picked them up and headed for the door but the phone was ringing so put down the newspapers found a pen near the phone picked up the pen but didn’t see where I’d previously seen the checks missed the phone call picked up the wrinkled pants and put the pen in the pocket because I also picked up the newspapers and was afriad I'd drop the pen before I could find the checks headed back downstairs to change the litter put down the trash bag and the pants with the pen in the pocket to pick up a trash bag for the old litter dumped in the old litter and left it near the newspapers threw the pants in the laundry and headed upstairs wtih the newspapers and the old litter in the trash bag headed for the front door to put out the trash and passed the checks so put down the trash and the newspapers to sign the checks but remembered I left the pen in the wrinkled pants which I'd accidentally thrown into the laundry instead of the dryer and which was just now turning all our clothes blue and for those of you still following this scenario yes I should have sat down and meditated.

More happened. I went to bed.

Vena Cava Cha Cha Cha (R)

You know the way the health of the pre-deceased is often described by a friend or loved one on the news ("He'd been saying that he wasn't feeling very well all day yesterday...")? That's how I've been feeling.

It's a sort of thrumpy, cored-out, gastrocardio-melange of retiring-and-disintegrating-cell-wall feeling, mostly located in the vena cava. I'm interested in hearing from any of my more knowledgeable readers

who may or may not be associated with the medical community, real or imagined, whether or not my symptoms are caused by an overabundance and/or lack of fiber or otherwise.

And just in case, you should probably practice your on-camera demeanor for the inevitable news byte.

(Oiriginally posted June 4, 2005, presented here in an attempt to add color to an otherwise dreary page)

The Unfortunate Resolution of Thing One

Because I tend to be assaulted by aggressive female drivers every twelve years or so, it all played out exactly as I had foretold: the more serious charge against me was dropped...I dropped the lesser charge against her...I was left with the lesser charge against me, about which I lied when I pleaded “Guilty, your Honor,” for I am, of course, Innocent.

After Veronica Peoria-Neilssen (not her real name) ran me off the road with her Suburban Assault Vehicle, she cut across my path like a marauding banshee. I veered to my right, and then swerved back onto the road. And continued on my way. As I left the banshee to her wiles, assuming she’d engaged her tachyon drive and streaked across the sky to taunt her next pathetic human victim, I congratulated myself for not feeling enraged. I’d avoided conflict. And continued on my way. Tra La. The Days of Road Rage seemed a relic of the late-Nineties and early-Aughts, before I became an almost daily train commuter. Sadly, I did not realize that when I’d swerved to avoid the hull of the mammoth vehicle that filled my windshield view, there had been contact. Alloy on alloy. Her keel had quietly run roughshod across my fender. There had been no screech or jolt. Only instant deceleration and the frame shift in the heat of sudden avoidance. I knew about the contact only after the police called me to tell me that I’d been involved in a hit and run accident, and that I had fled the scene. Hm, I thought. That doesn't sound like me. Swiftly and stealthily, Veronica had doubled back through the maze of side streets (an astonishing feat unless you’re a frequent passenger in, oh, I don’t know, Uncle’s or Lover's squad car), caught up to me, and secretly called in my license number to her friends and family at Borough Hall. Turned out she was the daughter of The Beadle, or The Prosecutor, or The Sahjhan. Whichever, the deck was stacked against me. The truth is that Veronica lied about her aggressive driving, and crushed me under the weight of her connections. Now she will be mailed a check to have the nominal scrape her Behemoth sustained replaced with a brand new hunk of whatever those things are made from. And, in the end, I’m stuck taking food out of the mouth of my family to pay for it.

I can only comfort myself by suspending my healthy skepticism and turning to a belief in kharma.

But you know me.

James 5:14-16 *

I walk past the old cemetery. A large section of the wrought iron fence has been damaged, wrenched off its posts and left leaning in place. I look up, suspecting high winds, falling branches, or even the giant criminals who roam these sad urban streets at night.

I turn into an alley. A man is approaching. He rides a bicycle. He wears a do-rag and a pained expression. Twenty feet from me, he stops, leans left, and unloads a voluminous esophagus-ful of vomit into the weeds and broken glass on the ground. “Oh God,” he says, mid-eruption. I step forward, feigning assistance, but heed the unspoken advice of the throng with whom I walk, and we quickly step around the dangerous-looking fellow. My heart skips a beat, then another, and I consider the consequences of losing consciousness so close to his sick. I imagine harmful microbes, liberated from the sticky mess and attaching themselves to my soles or my hair should I fall here. But the throng buoys me up, and, safely, we pass.

*Is any among you sick?