Lost Dogs

I woke up to a sharp feeling on the back of my bare shoulder the other morning. It was the sting from a senile old bee. I probably flicked him away in the immediate daze of my interrupted dream, but I saw him again later in the day.

I think he was making the same witless journey across my bed that my slumbering presence had obstructed earlier that morning. He was a fat orange specimen, and ancient I assume (much my distinguished elder in bee years), creeping awkwardly across the undulating folds of my comforter.

I prefer to call him senile because of another puzzling encounter with a bee I had had in that room while visiting home weeks earlier. I was sitting in my room when I began to hear a frantic buzzing sound, the recognizable noise of insect wings slamming into walls, of a bee attempting flight in confined quarters. It went on for several minutes above my head, probably inside some crack in the walls of my parents' log cabin. Eventually the creature emerged, its enormous (even larger than the old guy that stung me I think) body appearing to be weighed down by hanging dustballs, as if it has just sprung from bee prison. I flicked the lights on and off to trick the bee over to my bedroom windows, which I opened for the bee's release.

Maybe an hour later, however, I heard the same chainsaw-like buzzing from the same corner. And the same Jacob Marley bee began to careen around the room in its hindered phantom flight. I released it again, hoping it would finally learn its lesson.

I'm tempted to want to believe that the bastard that stung me was the same confused bee from before. When I was much younger I was playing with my older sister behind the old horse stable shed, an area of our property that we didn't often visit. I was underneath a mysterious tree. During the spring its bushy top blooms full in brilliant white flowers. But it's a gnarly skeleton of a tree, with these wicked dead vines hanging vertically from its own canopy like witch's hair.

I remember being under this tree when the scariest looking spider I have ever seen descended a branch. I remember it was the color of fossilized bone with pointy crab-like legs, probably as big in diameter as my young palm. I fled terrified. Years later I was near the same spot with our mutt of a dog. He was rustling like a good mutt in the tall grass. I remember seeing him squirm his head, his dog face in a grimace as if from an uncomfortable itch. I watched him scratch his ear, and would you believe it? Suddenly what had to be the same legendary white spider from years earlier was crawling across my poor dog's snout. I fled again, afraid for a few moments that the spider might sicken or kill the dog with a venomous bite.

I can't explain to you the strange respect I had for that curmudgeon of a bee. Something about watching it make its wearied rounds across its lifelong territory.

Later that night I went to a concert in an old theater building in Tacoma, Wash. The headlining band was an old Christian folk/country/alternative group, comprising three musicians who had begun their careers in separate musical groups long before this already ragtag trio. They are called The Lost Dogs, and what a fitting name. There were these three haggard men on stage, two of whom rested their old eyes behind sunglasses, singing their songs - none of which I recognized - telling old-fashioned stories of abandoned dreams and God knows what else. I'd noticed on their Web site the day before that they had just toured from some shows on the East Coast days earlier. They were an odd respectable presence, making the same rounds across the American landscape as they had probably been doing for decades.

We mourn the memory of lost dogs, but what does that mean to a dog? Have you ever noticed how even the tamest, most loyal of canines can wander away from home. The slightest whim or distraction - maybe a scent, perhaps the triggered dog thought of an old buried bone - and a dog wanders off. If you're lucky you or someone else finds the stinker strolling contentedly across a field on the other side of town, oblivious to the notion that it's actually "lost."

Who was anyone to tell these humble three gentlemen that their era had come and gone? That their legacy was a old tapestry, rapidly fading?

That bee was definitely senile, an ornery bumpkin with no reason or reasoning capacity to bother with the thought that it shouldn't sting me on its stubborn northern journey.

My parents began burning the wood of the old rotted tree house yesterday before I left, a cute little playhouse where my sister and I used to slide down from, where we played with plastic food toys. It was once a real tree house, with wallpaper, a flowerbed windowsill and fake domestic furnishing. What it was isn't really important anymore. It hasn't been an important place to me in probably close to 20 years. It's gone now. It collapsed this past winter during a windstorm, fell to the ground from between the two massive cedar trunks where it was once proudly perched.

I roasted two hot-dogs over the coals of the fire. Nothing ceremonial. I was too much in an frantic hurry to be on my way and get working on a piece of writing that was due this morning.

I suppose the memory of that little house will come back to me decades from now, maybe as some unrecognizable picture in my mind of a red mailbox in the middle of the woods, or a fraying tire swing. Perhaps I'll be wandering the trail of a park or going about my own rounds as a wizened old hermit. I'll come to those two cedar trees (which will outlast me no matter how long I live) and insist in some loony babble to my grandchildren or whoever is nearby about an old tree house that's missing from the spot or the picture in my mind.

Senility, I believe, may be the reward of old age. A transaction of our old ways for the new. Anxiety for blissful ignorance. Hurried commutes for meaningless wanderings. Repose. Long-deserved peace as a witless fool.

I wonder what became of that old spider. I'd like to interview him and write his life's story. That tree behind the old shed will always be its kingdom in my memory. A dark place of terrible knowledge for which I may have been the wiser to have experienced, had I been a brave little boy instead of a coward. Were I to venture there once more, would I find him again? Would he invite me to his lair for tea and crumpets? Or would he just spout some nonsense, bare his fangs and terrify me one last time?

Eyelashes

I have long eyelashes. The better to bat you with. It’s something I don’t get to appreciate as much as other people who can view my profile without the aide of mirrors. I think it’s supposed to make my eyes soft.

Close up, my eyelashes seem grotesquely insectoid, like centipede legs (or like the fraying of an 18th century English whore’s hairbrush). In the morning they split open like two crusty cocoons, my left eye slightly faster than my right. But every day my left eye squanders its birthright for a good rub. Thus it’s cursed with astigmatism. At least that’s the story passed around by the scholars.

During the summer the fleas slide down my eyelashes and plunge into my cereal. In the dead of winter my eyelashes form icicles that scratch the surface of my eyeballs when I sleep so that I wake up red-eyed and passersby think I’m strung out and homeless. I just let them wonder. Long eyelashes conceal my eyes as well as my mysterious intentions.

Green eyeballs and long eyelashes. They would have branded me a wizard were I born in medieval times.

David Bowie. Jack the Ripper. Merlin. The prophet Jonah. They all had long eyelashes and green eyes (so did Rip Van Winkle and possibly Rip Torn, but don’t quote me on that).

We see the world through a darker filter. The stars glow fainter. Fire appears to burn less dangerously. We share more traits with the feline than the ape and curl up when we sleep. And we’re selfish as hell (something only we would brag about).

Do you want to touch them? Did you know that touching my eyelashes grants you three wishes? Did you know that the Nazis destroyed long eyelashes in great organized bonfires?

The eyes are the windows to the soul, and my eyelashes are the blinds. Or the prison bars.

Or are they the tuft of wild brush at the edge of the watering hole? Peer through the tall grass. Gaze into the pool and ponder your own reflection. What do you see?

Puff

slow burn cancer stick
smoke blown cigarette
nicotine infected smile
yellow pearly marble wall

time dishonored sacred stone
feeble addict sitting home
lighted fuse in stoic mouth
dripping ashes all around

beautiful diffusing gas
incense rising past the trees
gray muzzled hoarsy throat
glossy aged eyes

front porch romantic night
moonbeams filtered light
moping full with sorrow songs
red orange burning spite

respite coming sleep or wake
pack of problems near
hold it in two fingers
and release the lungs

75th Post Tostitos Fiesta

We're living la vida loca here at JiVE, celebrating the wildest literary feat since the invention of MAD LIBS. It's the 75th Post TOSTITOS Fiesta. Why not join us with a big bag of Flour TOSTITOS Tortilla Chips and Creamy Southwestern Ranch Dip, perfect for any occasion?

Sorry, we legally had to say that.

My oh my! I do believe it's been even longer between the 50 and 75 than the fisrt prolific 25 posts, but this has become a serious artistic (and commercial) endeavor. F'er can remember when he was a mere "newbie" blogger, the digital world at his fingertips. He had a lot of big crazy ideas, his mind pregnant with what he thought were revolutionary notions that the world actually gave a hoot about his daily manifestos.

Hopefully, what you are reading today is the reflection of a more mature rhetorician. Doubtful. So what have we learned since Post #50 anyway? We must ask ourselves, "What does it all mean?"

Perhaps the end of the post on November 22, 2006, F'er's review of Fast Food Nation, sums it up best:

"But as with cattle, it sometimes takes some uncomfortable prodding to move us from our complacency."

Heck, does F'er really want to be sitting here doing this right now? Maybe not, but he knows that when all is said and done, he and his readers will understand more of this crazy mixed up world than they did before.

But enough sulking, it's time to party! Let's divy out the awards.

1. Best Tearjerker Post:

Where Have All the Birthday Balloons Gone? (June 28, 2006)

F'er's essay on the injustices of the corporate mechanism takes the cake here. A boy forced to work on his birthday! O the humanity!

2. F'er's Biggest Breakthrough Performance:

Amateur Backyard Wildlife Photography (April 23, 2006)

This amateru endeavor was a near breakthrough on the national scene. Please you to notice that the bona fide author of Digital Art Photography for Dummies gave me props for my work.

3. Best Titled Post

hE:ll, SE:ll, BE:ll (Dec. 11, 2005)

Well this shows how lazy F'er has been for the last 25 posts, all the way back to '05. Geez. Anyway, this is the best title. I'll have you know that hell, sell and bell correspond to three different upside-down times on a digital clock. Time passing. Let's appreciate that for a moment.

OK.

Let's continue. This next one's for all the cherries.

4. Best Post

Cops and Dogs (April 2, 2006)

I like it. What can I say? A nice work of short non-fiction if I do say so myself. It will be compiled in the 2007 Compendium of Human Thought, published by TOSTIDOS Printing Group, New York. Look for it, kids.

Well that's all she wrote. I don't know about you but my mouth is really watering for some chips and salsa after all that chips and salsa I just ate. I'm gonna go make another snack run. BRB.

Another Gray Day

The birds are out in numbers today, another gray morning. They scamper about as if at feeding, but what they are eating I cannot tell.

They seem to flee at my approach, constantly at a 10-foot radius from my gentle presence. Am I or they so unholy? What do they fear in me? What minds did God give these creatures that they fear me?

Somewhere above I begin to hear the wailing cries of an exodus of geese. I halt my steps and scan the featureless sky.

I spot the movement of the birds through the haze, and I wonder if anyone else has the sense to perceive them as well. A ‘V’ of unshapely phantoms crosses over the place where I stand. Another blurry cluster, and another, each of different number and organization. Swift black movements submerged in the fog above my head, barely visible. Gone.

Their departure reminds me of the sometimes desolation in my mind since you left, of the white blank that was once your photograph next to my bed.

The red brick road on which I walk is wide, lonely and I know where it goes. What I would pay to get back on that tour bus that travels through a foreign countryside, to watch the trees go by. To rest in other people’s homes. To be welcomed and to bring gifts. To make a new home in homelessness with whomever you are by my side.

Living in Gray

When I walk down to the bus stop on a winter morning, I hope that the gray sky won’t suddenly stick to the gray earth, like a cruddy eye in sickness.

Though our eyelids shut, our eyes still see. So does the sun shine beyond the haze.

In dreams we live for pleasure’s sake, but in waking we cannot.

Alcohol is agitation. Sexual sin? Merely violence in pretty colors.

When the bar closes, I hope I’ll have had my fill. I hope that sleep will come swiftly, that my mind will not notice the body’s reconfiguration. I hope that when our sin is taken and it drops from the body to the hardwood floor, there will be a hollow resonance to satisfy our ears.

But that is complacence. If we could examine our sin like the earwax at the end of a Q-tip, would we mind the ugliness? Would it compel us more?

The joy that fills my cup is pure. It does not come from within but from above, like rain, like energy. If only I could put a bucket outside my door to collect what has fallen overnight, and shower in it. That would sustain me for a few days.

If I could attune myself to the goodness in the air, would I feel it or just have to believe? I notice that when I hold the TV antennae the reception becomes clearer, but I feel no different.

This joy, this energy penetrates the vast expanse of space, the winter cloud cover, the bedroom walls and the layer of skin that conceals mine eyes. It’s there. It finds me. Like a flower that opens to the light, in my better moments, sitting exhausted on a sofa, I let go of control and receive the joy of Heaven. My lips form a smile that nobody sees.

Here's looking at you, looking at me, kid (on MySpace)

I’ve been sitting on a fairly vacant MySpace.com page for the past few weeks, unable to decide how I want to present myself to the Web-surfing masses. As of now my page has a picture of me — that deliberately obscures my face, mind you — and some information that gives away my age and geographical location. The rest is a big blank virtual canvas that I am hesitant to decorate. Should I even bother?

I look at the “about me” category on my profile, struggling to come up with something unique, honest and interesting to say. Maybe I should describe myself as an “over-analytical semi-conformist skeptic.” But then I would have to delete it. That’s pretty much how this Web site makes me feel.

If you find yourself scratching your head at this strange technological reference, then you probably don’t spend too much time around anyone who is currently enrolled in or dropped out of college or high school, or who works part time at the local mall or Dairy Queen. As far as I can tell, MySpace.com is the latest in a long series of controversial, cultural phenomena, such as rock ’n’ roll and violent video games, which has descended upon our youth much to the “naysaying” of politicians and concerned parents.

The premise of MySpace.com is this: you sign up with an e-mail login and password that gives you access to your very own digital space, where you basically use a template to create a personal profile page, complete with options to upload pictures, video and music.

What do you do with it? For many people, you spend lots and lots of time looking at it, updating it (most profiles will show that the user logged in sometime that day), and clicking thousands of underlined pictures and words to look at other people’s profiles, be they friend or total stranger. MySpace becomes your gateway to a new global community, through which you can chat with friends and make new ones. And sometimes sex predators use it to stalk people. But that’s enough information for the MySpace illiterate. Go online and see it for yourself.

The rest of you know that that’s the nice explanation. What actually results might be better described as something similar to MTV’s “Spring Break.” The fact of the matter is that I’m embarrassed to be looking at this Web site in public. Even now, I have to justify to myself that I am doing journalistic research.

I click to a random girl’s profile. She looks nice enough; I see that she’s a 27-year-old who lives in Berlin. So I click into her photo album and immediately see a picture of her showing off the polka dot panties underneath her skirt. Is that “hello” in German? I quickly backtrack and click to another link before somebody sees what I’m seeing. I’m now looking at some spiky-haired teenager giving me the middle finger. How wonderful.

This does not necessitate that every MySpace member is trying to direct my attention to their private parts, nor am I trying to argue in favor of my moral superiority. There are, in fact, plenty of profiles that don’t contain hard evidence of excessive (and/or underage) drinking. Nevertheless, what MySpace reveals to me is that, in one fashion or another, we are all voyeurs and exhibitionists. We all look at others, wanting a certain kind of attention for ourselves. Maybe I desire to be seen as one on the fringe, who watches and comments from the sidelines.

Certain trends and fads indicate that we are a rather self-absorbed generation, obsessed with our MySpaces, confined to our iPods (fitting product names). But we are also reaching out, obviously interested in connecting with other human beings, as this Web site demonstrates. While I worry that people are trying to forge their individuality from lists of their favorite music and movies, I must remember that I too take pride in my personal interests, as they are a reflection of my personality.

Perhaps the best thing that we can do is withhold judgment. So you like to watch “Stargate SG1,” huh? That’s um … cool.

I’m still not sure I want to join this bandwagon.

Jimmy's World

Jimmy sat constructing his virtual world. Day after day and long into the night, he moved his pale, bony hand this way and that across the red mouse pad, shaping a new creation of colorful polygons.

He was building a city on an island, and the island sat like a dinner plate balanced precariously on the pinnacle of a tall conical mountain, and underwater volcano.

The city was immense, a sprawling layout of streets and buildings, with an elevated train way that spiraled from the outskirts to the center. There were the slums, visible by the sections of gray, derelict buildings. There were the wealthy commercial districts as well, digitally painted in vibrant golden colors. All finished areas had been decorated in meticulous detail, but none so much as the grand palace, the nexus of the city.

There were antique rugs in each of the seventy-five bedrooms that were patterned individually. Every architectural decoration was smoothed to amazing virtual roundness, all thanks to the countless hours of Jimmy's laboring at the mouse and keyboard.

As he shaped new shops, new sewer passages, new train stations, his mind simmered with ideas pertaining to the history of his city, the struggles and triumphs of its generations of peoples. He flirted with notions of other islands beyond the one, of natural wonders beneath the surface of the virtual sea. Given time, perhaps he would expand his vision even more.

Meanwhile, Jimmy's mother stood unseen in the doorway behind him. Her vision scanned the material reality of a much neglected domestic space. She was alarmed at the number of empty pop cans that littered the desk, shelves and windowsills. How many gallons of soda had passed through his body in that room? She covered her mouth and cheek, her mind struggling to begin the process of solving the problem of such a mess. The stench in the room was unbearable. She walked away.

Jimmy awaited the day that he would finally populate his world with moving creatures. He longed to crawl through the rectangular portal of his computer screen and experience his handiwork without the hindrance of so many peripheral distractions.

He got up to go relieve himself. His mom stood outside the door and told him to remember to take out the garbage in the kitchen. Unresponsive, he left the bathroom, walked in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and retrieved a can of pop. He then returned to his bedroom and shut door behind him.

watching her

I have watched her many times, from many perspectives, with many reactionary feelings.

I once saw her enter a room where I was praying as she silently took a seat in the corner. I must have noticed her long brown hair, falling straight to each side of her face, the face to which I could not have been able to place a name, and which I would not have bothered to examine closely. I recognized her, but she was a stranger, there to pray in silent support.

I once watched her as I forcefully withdrew my company from an all-night party of three (a party to which I was more of an intrusion than I would have cared to know at the time). Her smile melted my fragile, yearning heart. I meditated on that smile as I prayed by a duck pond in the deserted, early-morning daylight, and later as I wrote to my journal about the night’s adventures.

I once watched her as she sat close between me and another boy on a crowded train rushing speedily through the Chinese countryside. Emotionally and physically exhausted, I sat in hopeful discomfort. With pressing tears I watched as she rested her tired head upon the shoulder of the other boy. It was the worst thing she could have done to me.

I once looked rapturously into her bright, brown eyes that were looking back upon me, as we lay parallel on my bed, our outstretched hands touching in a moment of simple, breathtaking intimacy. And the only thing that stole my joy in that moment was the conscious understanding that my desire to remain inert and alone with her until time immemorial tinged with the slightest sensation of danger, the recognition of a temptation likened to sin. Perhaps her beaming smile was eclipsing my view of God.

I sat a row behind her in a small auditorium and looked at the back of her head. I thought it profound to consider that that young woman was my girlfriend. I had waited so long before she came along. It was a pleasant thought that she was mine. That was all.

I have seen her cry. I have seen her turn away from me in hurt anger. From slanted angles I have seen her eyes search for my own when I was too ashamed to make direct contact. I have watched her turn a strange cold shoulder while cuddling together and pondered her intentions. Hurting and needy, I too have cried and watched her through my own watery, clouded orbs. How many times have I watched her, obsessed to know what she was thinking, or what was causing me to feel so certain that something was amiss? I have watched her as we approached each other, she moving toward me on the sidewalk or waiting at the doorway with that same lovely smile that I had come to take for granted. I have watched her watch me when I would leave her for the night. Sometimes she waited till I was nearly out of sight, while other times she did not linger.

I sat behind her in a very large stadium and watched her worship God, thinking that she was probably not nearly as distracted by our breakup as I was. For days straight I would sit in that same auditorium, meeting with little success to purge my mind of this distraction. I sat and stood in a room of 22,000 peers, not caring what any of them thought of me, all except for that same one. I have looked somewhat assertively at her face in an attempt to snare her back into loving me again. She looked back only to meet my devotion with sympathy, hardly what I wanted. She looked past me, through me. Am I so transparent? Is my aching heart so abandoned, so forgotten? I have wept for her, for me.

She was a stranger that became an intrigue, an intrigue that became a mystery. Somewhere early on she became a friend, a friend who became a romantic companion. But I think she will always be a mystery, one who, for a time, received my love. No longer. God bless her and keep her.