Vignettes

Freshened – Epiphany

One’s most cherished beliefs are continually tested and eventually become exhausted.  These beliefs often take one nowhere – motion without movement.  This is where we find Henry, finally free of everything but his beliefs.  One of them resembles the lyric, “it’s no better to be safe than sorry”.  Henry would no longer play it safe and he was already sorry and yet he could not make himself unafraid and he decided to leave a note.  Just in case.  To whom it may concern.  His obituary might start with, “A guy goes into a bar…”.

When you have gone where you were never told you could go, will you ever find your way back?  The lost have no yellow crumbs to follow…but move, faking it, as they feel they must.  One’s old belief map,  annotated with supplied destinations but without compass, etched with strict instructions but smeared by ignorance’s trappings and fear’s perspiration, but having essential clues which have escaped into the yawning holes created by anxious re-referencing, is useless.  You’ll get there, but via the path of least resistance.  Things will get better, but not before they get a lot worse.  The experience will make you stronger, if it doesn’t kill you.  Change always appeals in the abstract.  She fails to inform you of the initial pain.  The harsh reality of nurturing the new, in an environment favoring the old, where old can scorch, drown or simply ignore you and leave you stranded.  Sounds like fun.

He thought, Henry Peck thought: a secret meeting, at an unknown location, with a mysterious stranger – a Princess from Pandora – now that’s excitement…but something is missing – good sense.

Suffice it to say that getting screwed was better than being screwed, even if this might include a pinch of humiliation.  Being manipulated sexually, if that is what is actually happening, has to be the best kind of manipulation.  This guy has really thought this through.  Wouldn’t a torrid one-night-stand avenge the decades of subservience and accommodation?  A jumbo storage unit can always make room for one more ill-advised acquisition.

Henry Peck held the manila beer tab adventure map out the car’s window, between his thumb and forefinger,  under the dieing yellow light and tried to make out the smeared numbers on the distorted surface as in flopped in the growing night wind.

8D Pete Street. Got it.  Never been there but I know about where it was, 0ver in Badsoden in the decaying end of nowhere.  It was near the reservoir named after the swamp that fed the mills that once gave life to this town.  The meandering drive seemed to take longer than anticipated but that’s the way with unfamiliar places. And he was taking the shortcut.  We’re heeeeere…I guess.

The four story walk-up loomed, among a legion of identical run down tenements and back lighted by a broken down school bus horizon and embroidered with the shapes of the small town’s still sunken warehouses and silent sulking machinery.  Each of the devolving apartments in this man-made evil forest, faced front with no access and no expression and all entrances in the shadows behind.  Each apartment displayed it’s number tacked under an identical porch light by an identical door.  One by one each glowed respectable amber.  Level four, 8D Pete, was indistinguishable.  Not seeing a red light up above, Henry Peck descended his Hyundai Accent and began his ascent.

Henry noticed details as he moved.  The muddy ground was heavily trafficked, both vehicle and other.  A good thing?  Animals, maybe cats and dogs, also good…and then some other beasts, bigger cats and dogs?  He stopped and looked about.

I’m no authority on animal tracks, or feces, but… 

Climbing the winding wooden steps and landings would be a workout for anyone other than a world class stair climber and add age, conditioning and eager anticipation and you might have a cardiac case.  And what’s this stuff?  The railing’s flaking yellow lead paint forbade Henry from holding on for safety and the bite of curled paint chips gnashing at his hand like neglected teeth.  Each cluttered landing identical, each muddled porch distinguished by a potted  plant or a rotted coach or a mottled Tom…except 8D, distinguished by nothing.

Sheena stood in the darkened doorway, invisible in of its depth.  She was a 10 tonight, no detail left unattended.  Henry did not see but sensed her, as she had hoped.  He  double checked the address and stepped forward toward her threshold.  He stopped abruptly when she emerged, possibly stunned by the flash of her alluring smile and the pierce of her intent eyes.

“I wasn’t sure you would come” began Sheena.

“Neither, was I” replied Henry weakly.

“Oh, why is that?”

“You, first” countered Henry.

“I thought you would, pock, pock, pock, chicken out” Sheena teased.

“I shouldn’t be here” came Henry’s obligatory explanation.

Sheena caught herself, furtively, then replied, “We’ll see about that”.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“No”.

“OK”.

“Let’s go get a bite”.

“I don’t know the area.  I was hoping I could take you to a place you’ve never been”.

She smiled, that different smile.

“There is no ‘area’ here, but I have just the place for you…for us, I mean”.

 

Episodes

Freshened

Where can you go when there is no where else for you to physically go?  The crazy have a place.  The lonely have no place…except crazy.  So, in order for the displaced to delay insanity, they must freshen what they have.  They must take something new to a fresh place and try to invent fire.  Anyone of you can do it.  Anyone, as long as you are neurotic.  But don’t wait too long.  Don’t sleep through this opportunity.  All you’ll have waiting one morning is the over-long sleeves of a sexy straight-jacket or an hiatus of blood circulation and breathing with a one way ticket to hypothermia’s constant climate control.

Let me fill you in on this odd fellow before I turn this story over to him.  Henry Peck was once just a beak in the pen.  On the surface, no particular virtue, no particular vice.  But, inside, a set of hand me down beliefs which guaranteed a life of being screwed.  Not just screwed but humiliated while being screwed.  Further, his beliefs would not allow either blame or revenge to rise above his reactive temper.  Action and pursuit of rectification were not allowed.  Well, it would be better said that they were being stored for later use.  His emotional storage unit was over limit that day, when he got promoted out of the baby pool of impasse.

I couldn’t believe myself.  Enjoying everyone and everything.  No stress.  No real responsibilities.  No more oafish oppressors.  It all started when I calculated that I could financially make it without working for someone else.  I could also do without the burden of family – be that close, immediate or distant.  And friends?  Friends are just self confected zombies who transmute when the small “r” in that vile word dissolves.  Those fiends have no Reason for a Relationship with a Reciprocity expectant sycophant.

I’m playing videos games and killing.  Not only am I strutting my stuff in this game as Scooby-Doo, flailing a six foot link sausage like a chain weapon, destroying mercilessly everything in my radius, including my playing partner, but vanquishing the unwashed, teens who are obviously in awe of my strutting stuff.  Later, oddly, I stand by the game machine un-partnered after my last over-celebrated victory in-your-face jump and strut.  Those sneering punks and punkettes didn’t know who hit ’em.

The vanquished brood leaving suddenly didn’t really bother him.  It wasn’t really on this old man’s mind.  In its near recesses played an earlier game.  She was stuck in his mind.  It was Neytiri the Na’vi amazon princess from Pandora in Avatar.  He saw her.  Tending bar, an empty bar, an empty bar where she seemed to be waiting for his arrival.  He knew it was her by the leading contraindications: her skin quite smooth, sort of iridescent but definitely not cyan – and no stripes.  Tall – but under ten feet.  Slender, however, just like the princess.  The nose, definitely the nose, it was her.  The clincher occurred when he paid his two beer tab and rolled off his bar stool.  He turned to say goodbye and she gave him that genuine smile that vowed to him, “I will stalk you, and put an arrow through your heart, and feed your entrails to the viperwolves if I learn that you are less than pure”.  All of that from gratuitous smirk?

That was no gratuitous smirk, she thought.  Sheena Waderwicz launched a smart bomb with her intent gaze, choreographed pose and full display of near perfect ivory American teeth.  He walked into the door, she remembered, his head turning almost Exorcist-like to look back at her.  That was fun.  The near reality that he would be seeing more of her teeth was something else.  Nothing nasty for real.  But this might not be all for real.

Guys are stupid and this one was perfect in that way.  She would use her scarce assets, which seemed for some reason to captivate him, to manipulate a ritual rendezvous.  It will be so easy to lure this gentle, naive, trusting man-child into a situation he would never enter consciously.  But the spell, the spell almost any Delilah might cast will put his not so shabby tookus where she wanted it.  She really did smirk this time.  Maybe that’s what he’s seeking.  Finality.

Old Henry Peck stumbled out of the dank video game room into a too bright late morning sidewalk.  He fell flat on his face, missing the fact that a single step, just one, existed between his verticality and his being grounded.  No one saw this, that’s the important thing.  Doing careless and foolish things were normal for him.  Getting caught in the act made it unforgettable and, therefore, it would have become another thing to ruminate about.  With humiliation now unnecessary and the new freedom of angst now back in charge, he wondered, Is it was too early for a beer?

He’s baaaaaack, Sheena suppressed, as Henry maneuvered past the pesky door.

“Hey, stranger” Sheena said.

“Hi, ah, I didn’t catch your name last day, I mean time” said Henry.

“I didn’t toss it”.

This is fun.  Arousing she thought.

“Sorry, I’m Henry, I was in here…”.

“Sure, I remember you vividly, punkin’.  I’m Sheena and we talked about books and brothers and boy friends…my boy friend I mean”.

Embarrassed, relieved and  confused.  Boy friend?

“Sheena”, Henry started, in hopes of retaining her name, “you were telling me how you read lots of science fiction.  I think you said you read, not because you liked the science fiction but because you liked the challenge of figuring out the plot twists before the author revealed them”.

“Exactly.  You remembered.”

Alright-y then.  How did he remember that?  Henry hoped she would pick up the conversation. The unpunctuated silence made him anxious but he knew that the next person to speak would say something stupid…if that person were him.  A mouth full of beer might buy him some time.

Sheena returned to his darkened end of the bar, rag in hand.  She leaned forward, leading with her rolled up sleeve forearms, the naked limbs extended un-ringed and unpainted.  Henry acted nonchalant but sensed something of importance, not stupid, was about to be spoken.

“I expected, the time before when I showed you the sci-fi I was reading, that you would take the paperback from me and feign interest.  At first, I was disappointed, that you, you know didn’t feign.  I quickly concluded that, perhaps, this old hound is off his game.  Trying to be kind, you know”.

Feign? Old Hound?  Kind?  Henry suddenly felt vulnerable.  He knew, he thought, she was waiting for a response, hence the silence.  He knew there would be no one or nothing to twist this situation so that would not be compelled to say something stupid.  And ruin everything.  Everything?  What everything?  In any case, he was in over his head and sinking fast.

Sheena invoked that smile, that parting smile she gave him last week, which resulted in a bruise and a lump.  She leaned in.

“It’s OK” she started, he exhaled.

“I have some others I want you to see, you’ll be more interested, I know that, for sure” she concluded.

“Show me ’em” said Henry.  He felt like maybe he blurted it out, he had become so immediately anxious.

Sheena straightened and stepped back from the bar.   She gave a different smile this time as she positioned her hands.  Suddenly, her expression changed…deadpan.  The blueish window tint, the half opened wooden blinds, cast a transforming hue and pattern on this statuesque enigma.

“You want me to ‘Show ’em to ya'” the Princess said.

“I meant…I mean…the books…the ones you said you wanted me to see” Henry sputtered.  He wasn’t sure now to whom he was speaking, let alone being sure what they might be talking about.

“I don’t have them”.

“But you just said…”.

“I mean I don’t have what you’re inquiring about here”.

“But, how can I see…”.

“You’ll have to come visit me”.

“In Pandora” said Henry.

He completely captivated.  She completely confused.

“No”.

She began writing an earthly address on the back of Henry’s tab.

 

 

 

Vignettes

In Pursuit of Goat Milk

Every two weeks, on Thursday at 11 a.m., I satisfy my need.  White as the cotton clouds that sometimes bless the blue endearing sky.  Soft in texture like liquid silk streaming forth to quench the sour and stifled.  Taste enhanced beyond that which most any of us were reared or became accustomed.  I relish the arrival of this day and my anticipation builds into something surreal and, frankly, over done.  Yet I can’t stop myself from building to this frenzy.  The funny thing is, this build up to my one gallon refill of goat milk is always punctuated with disappointment.

One of hardest pursuits of a natural foods aficionado turns out to be acquiring regular raw milk.  Seizing, unpasteurized, right from the teat, bacteria, enzymes and all, raw milk.  If you are, like myself, insistent on that thick white silky slick nectar being pulled from the big teat of a small goat…the problems in procuring become factorial.  Take it from me, a simple fella (for sure, and in more ways than one), realizing raw goat milk has as many foibles as there are among the folks who claim to furnish it.

Selling goat milk must be profitable, but it seldom is.  If you own milk cows, you quite quickly conclude there is more net profit in your durable gorgeous Guernseys than your adorable Oberhasli or cute Nubians.  If you wish to be one of the few, the proud, who sustain goat milk customers, you might resort to a sort of slight of hand; substituting bovine product for caprine, pulling goat udder from another source…even if it’s illegal and unethical.  These are two obstacles I’ve encountered.  Then there is the small operator:  A few goats with a few customers and some spare time.   What could confound this colloquial conformation?

The modern milkmaid comes in many forms but few resemble the ones from childhood stories and medieval tales.  This one does.  Simple, unassuming, and shy.  An ethnicity that is hard to finger but reasonably it could be Mediterranean, if one is pressed to guess.  She possesses such a subtle beauty that it escapes definition but it surely possesses.  Though clad in modern casual dress, one with a fertile imagination can imagine her in a white ruffled bonnet and a blue apron attending to the chores of her rank.  Though sturdily built, the feminine figure and delicate form of her wrist and hands betray a softer quality.  The reality for the infrequent buyer, however, requires more than imagination to complete the commerce.

As we all know, good intentions are more sentiment than substance.  Also, sometimes persistence will flag while perseverance will often fly.  So I found in my continual attempts to do whey business.  The first obstacle to commerce was communication.  The business number was never answered.  The messages were always delayed in delivery.  The delivered messages, when received, were immediately forgotten.  And when forgotten messages were remembered, it was time for obstacle two: scheduling.

Because of kids and chores and cause galore getting an order filled requires a gauntlet run of all things priority and a precise timing required of the buyer with no guarantee from the seller.  Once agreed upon, the actual consummation of the goat milk merchandise exchange reverted back to the communication fiasco.  There was a simple solution but the buyer, me, couldn’t fathom what it would be.  It became incumbent upon the modern milkmaid to discover the failing communication flaw and to confect a resolution.  One day the light came on, she had her eureka moment.

She knew, and only she of the two, that she got her text messages always, all the time, and on time.  Phone messages came late, mostly.  They came infrequently, surely.  They were forgotten, immediately.  So, that would be it: Text your request to me for a sure response and scheduling.  And a bonus idea: Make it every other Thursday at 11 a.m. for one gallon of goat milk.  A plan set up by the milkmaid for the persistent customer to buy precious product.  What could go wrong now?  It’s all straightened out.

 

 

 

Vignettes

XLIX

I call it Super Bore, from the early games when both teams played conservatively and the object was to win the game without making the most mistakes.  Brings on nostalgia after watching the absurd extreme where the reach for glory reveals holes in the sanity of a team, while driving for the bold forgets about simple easy victory one yard from the gold.  But that’s not what this post is about.

Usually Super Sunday means Sloppy Joes, three IPA craft beers and nodding off on the coach at home before the third quarter nods off.  Last night, the emotions stirred.  Loss, tragedy and maybe a touch of growing insanity did background dancing as I watched the Pats and Seas parry their way to trophy and gophy awards.  Don’t get me wrong, I generate no emotional responses to sports events before, during, or after these charades of courage and skill.  But with no Sloppy Joe, no napping on the friend’s sack but only craft beer to keep and kindle my mind, I drifted off to the pained trials of others in places other, they without even the comfort of good beer.

After this night, neither I nor my game day hosts would be a changed person.  No game should do that to a person, though it happens.  Those gatherings taking place elsewhere, one far and one very near, were approaching their zenith.  Zeniths of internal conflicts.  Conflicts stowed away for decades and ripe, over ripe with the approach of death, and pending reluctant consecration.  This old dog will sit this high drama out.  Popcorn please.  Yes, real butter.  Medium salt.  It should be a good one.

The young are tough.  Resilient.  Usually indestructible.  But they can be damaged.  Permanently damaged if the adult irresponsibility irreparably scars or shames them.  Neglect?  No problem.  Favoritism?  Builds character.  Bad example?  Who isn’t?  I could go on.  Two sins are cardinal.  Two wrongs can never be put right.  Abandonment.  Abuse.  Keep them fed, clothed and dry.  In other words – stay.  No matter what your addiction, trauma or excuse – keep your hateful hands off of your children.  These things can’t be undone.  You may forget and escape them but the kids never will do either.

Gathered around a hospital bed, far from the home they knew, a mature family awaits the finality of the one who still held responsibility for the offspring.  This bad one lived the life desired giving nothing to those created and now lies unresponsive…not the expected scenario but clearly there was no long term thinking going on.  Life will go on.  But without this one.  Good riddance.

Child abuse, worse than abandonment, seems to inhibit hatred, which is the only joy bestowed by the abandoning parent.  Abuse cannot be reconciled.  Can not be justified.  Can not be comprehended by the child no matter what the age when harmed or what the age when pondered upon.  The nights are always frightful.  Holidays are always a hook back into the horror of the tragedy.  Time is frozen at the age of the assault and emotions can never quite grow up and away from them.  The shame is misapplied, and the damage also.

Nothing like a cold bucket of misery thrown on you a Super Bore Sunday.  Hey, that’s why I’m here, to dampen the spirits of otherwise happy folk.  I feel for those I have spoken of who are gathered or separated in grief.  Time is not a cure in these cases.  Work and success is not a remedy, it is a temporary distraction.  There is a difference between damaged kids (we all are in some way) and broken kids – there’s one close by.

 

Vignettes

Duke

The crunching stopped.  The paranoia began.  You’re not paranoid if someone is really out to get you…but you don’t know that yet.  Where there are footsteps there are eyes.  What is watching you may mean you no harm, but it might.  Why was I being followed?  Why was there someone unauthorized on my property?  A wild animal I could understand.  Nothing to fear there.  Except that bobcat I was told about.  I can handle this, can’t I?

This could be an opportunity.  Looking to break the boredom.  Searching for adventure.  But I only want to stray from boredom so far.  I only want a child’s portion of adventure.  If I like the feeling of present moment consciousness, I’ll sign up for more but just a taste for now.

Maybe this is it.  Maybe I’ll have corralled all of my narcissism and naive beliefs into one event and they will be purified in reality’s…  Yikes, it’s moving again, towards me.  Where’s a branch or a rock or machete in the jungle when you need one?  I turn and crouch in my fighting stance.  Hands up.  Knees bent.  Ferocity.  Bruce Lee and Ninja Turtles taught me most of what I know about mortal combat.  But I was already out maneuvered.

 

Just Evolveu