I am the clean up crew. Sort of. Torn away from the fundraiser that I was passionately supporting, I find myself at home. To be fair, I have eaten two more burritos than I had planned on this evening, and have embarrassed at least one more co-worker than planned. Employer levels of chagrin were as expected.

Now all I have to do is be at work on time tomorrow morning. In about 6 hours. This should work out okay. Sleep does not come easily. I have spent too many evenings frolicking with fading gods and dying demons. Now they all come to me on quiet weekday evenings. Their immortal hearts break when I tell them, I too, I must meet various daylight responsibilities that keep me alive. Alive and leached bleach white of mystery and wonder. A physics formula expresses the exact amount of inspiration.

Pain will bring you back, I tell them. That universal conduit is ever active. Stakes are raised and stakes are laid. The tears fall, but foolish boy I have many more all whetted on sharper stones than you.

Let's not get all artistic now. I am a dude. I weigh about 200 pounds. I am fairly strong. My speed is average. I can retain a great deal of information, but my ability to access it decreases inversely.

It is likely I did not use that mathematical expression correctly.

Dogs and years lie on the floor around me. Water laps the shores of places I've visited and will never be again. All that love is let go, swirling around in the Milky Way; a star or planet may catch it but if not, away it will go. Frozen.

Frozen, all this energy will be. All our love and hopes and dreams and all those things we wish we had done will end up the same. A frozen chunk of something, unusable. Will we stand around and point out all the things we wish we'd done? That was the time I almost told her I loved her. I kissed her then, but turned away before she could reply.

Regrets may be the secret of entropy. All the things we never wanted to happen will happen forever.

The snarl on my lips is difficult to argue with when the rest of me is frozen cold, so cold.

Watson and I have just returned from the pet store. Sometimes it seems I am only working to supply my dog habit. I picked up about 40 dollars worth of chew bones. It seems like a lot, but when I leave for work he's certain to chew up $40 worth of something, so I prefer springing for the dog bones. His most expensive chew toy to date has been my Nintendo DS. So in that outlook, I'm actually making money here.

This morning as I lay dreaming, I could swear I woke up to the sound and smell of the ocean. Perhaps an errant seagull had struck my window and flown away before I got my wits about me. But that explanation would just raise a slew of further questions.

I finished reading Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's a rollicking good time and is amazingly offensive towards Africans, women, and gorillas. The French receive some glowing praise.

Burroughs' views are fascinating to me. This is Racism with a capital R, and yet it is so different from the discrimination I observe today. While ignorant and offensive certainly, the stereotyping is almost devoid of malice. It's just the way he understands the world and is almost to be expected when people were so...far away from each other, I suppose. Today I imagine thinking abstractly is something of a given. The Gordian Knot is my preferred example for distinguishing kinds of thinking. There's a massive knot in the city of Gordium. Nobody can untie it. Alexander the Great comes by and just slices the thing in half. For the win.

So I think I can understand why these views were so tenacious at the time. What worries me now as I grow up is that we don't have that excuse anymore. People can learn about other cultures and beliefs and political systems without great effort. But they don't.

Something practical I learned from Tarzan: lassoing my prey. Tarzan was fond of climbing above his quarry and dropping a rope down over its neck. Then he would jump down and stab it or wrestle it or both. In my case I was attempting to bring in a frightened little dog from the exercise yard at work. Small dogs are tricky. They are extremely likely to bite out of fear. Being bitten by them is not pleasant and the injury often superficial, but that isn't the reason I try to be careful. My concern is that following a dog bite, any dog bite, certain protocol must be followed according to Arizona law. It usually doesn't end well for the dog.

This little dog was snarling and lunging as I approached it. I knew the dog; I had carried it out to the exercise yard in the first place. She had only been in the shelter a day and was still nervous about the whole thing. Having been outside for a bit, I think she developed a taste for it.

When she saw that her ferocious display was not causing me to run away in terror, she took the initiative and ran. She couldn't go far; it was a small side yard. There was an electrical utility meter, a waist-high faded green metal box, on a square of concrete next to the chain link fence. My little dog had wedged herself in the right angle formed between the fence and the box. In her little foxhole she could see me if I approached from either side. I considered rushing her, but in that narrow space her 15 pounds and four legs gave her the advantage over my 220 pounds of biped.

The dust kicked up from our merry chase glowed fiery red in the setting sunlight. I pondered my next approach as the dust settled lazily around me. The thin coat of sweat on my face felt gritty. The traffic noises of weary commuters almost drowned out the low growl from behind the utility box. I grinned. This was my concrete jungle.

I made a loop in the thin black nylon leash and I crawled onto the utility box. I peeked over the edge. The little white dog was growling fiercely at the spot she had last seen me. The very spot where I now wasn't. I took a moment to feel very clever. I dropped the loop neatly around her neck. The poor dog was utterly confused and it was a few seconds before she looked up and saw me grinning down at her. Like most people, she was not pleased.

I hopped down and gently tugged her out into the open. She squirmed and snapped. When this failed she became intent on gnawing through the leash. I picked her up, cradled her in my arms, and carried her inside.

When I was visiting Machu Picchu I wandered off from the tour group and found three small American-suburb style houses with no roofs. They were furnished with some simple furniture, but no beds. I told the guide but I never found that spot again.

That's a lie. I have never been to Machu Picchu. It was just a dream; how I knew it was Machu Picchu I do know. It was only when I looked up some pictures did I discover that the waking world's Machu Picchu does indeed have many ancient domiciles without roofs. (Rooves? Like hoof and hooves? Probably not, but why not?)

It seems I know much more about the world when I'm asleep than I do when I'm awake.

Cheebus, it's almost nine pm. But I still have so much to do. Need to finish the last half of my collection of Philip K. Dick short stories. Still have to listen to a podcast about Lovecraft. Oh, my laundry. I better do that now before I forget.

Done. Er, in the dryer.

I purchased Everything All The Time by Band of Horses and I still haven't listened to the whole thing while lying in the dark. Also Tegan and Sara The Con but I'll probably just dance around to that. In the dark, I guess? Does that still count as brooding? I hope so. Brooding requires practice and if I'm not careful I may end up going out and enjoying myself.

My bike is fixed. I've been meaning to ride that thing.

What else. I already made a strawberry-banana milkshake and discussed who holds the existing copyrights of Peter Pan with my sister.

What else. Play with the dog? Ongoing, technically. I usually read in bed, lying on my back holding the book up in the air. Despite being markedly out-of-shape, my arms and shoulders are still very strong and I credit this to my reading habits.

Watson and I play a sort of quick-draw game. He will jump on the bed and drop his Kong (the only toy that has survived for more than a month) onto the bed next to me. Then he waits. When I reach the end of a page I snap my hand down and try to grab the toy while he lunges for it. Watson usually reaches it first. He is closer to the toy and his level of concentration is well beyond mine. But sometimes I get it first. Sometimes we reach a draw, which is sort of a loss for me because I get bitten.



Something I was supposed to look up. Tick fever. That's it. A dog at work may have tick fever. He's an adult brown-and-white pointer mix and he's really sick. He's not eating or drinking much. I administered some subcutaneous fluids to him this morning. Usually, the fluids will make a large visible bubble under the skin that will slowly dissipate into the body. But not this guy. His body was sucking up the fluids as quickly as I could get them in. I worry about him.

I was headbutted by a mastiff yesterday. I was bending down to give him an oral de-worming treatment and he was jumping up to lick my face. Our heads are about the same size so it was almost an equal transfer of energy, like those little silver balls in a Newton's Cradle. Click.

So away I go to read and do those other things. Laundry should be dry by now. All my REI clothing dries very quickly.



Sometimes I feel like an empty suit laid out on a bed.

I woke up last night to find ants amassing in the kitchen so I dumped acid all around. Which is how I solve most of my problems.

Ender is ill and I am home watching him. He has a fever and he threw up a little but I suspect that's because he ate an entire bowl of popcorn. We've all done it.

Now he's passed out on the couch. It pleases me that he already has life pretty much figured out.

Have you ever been up all night drinking and then the next morning to discover that you've invited a bunch of people to be friends on Facebook?

Someday in the future, the world will be divided into two mega-corporation-nation-states: Lance-Corp and Ostrich-Abuv. These two massive entities control all of the Earth's resources and have decided that we, the consumer, will only need two things. Lances and flying ostriches.

There are some by-products. The Lance-Corp factories spew molten effluence. Behind your local Ostrich-Abuv is a pile of bad eggs, some of which will hatch into pterodactyls.

An entrepreneur from the past will awaken from cryogenic sleep into this world of fire and feathers. He (or she) will get a loan and purchase a flying ostrich and lance. Whatever is left over she will use to buy some clones. She will take to the skies and bring down both mega-corporations by killing them all in true capitalistic fashion.

At least that's how I think it will happen.



* * * *

I've been working a lot more at the animal shelter. Sometimes I take care of the cats and sometimes I take care of the dogs. I like them both. I have a stronger rapport with the dogs since I'm a big goofy idiot that likes water and will eat anything. Also I drool.

The cats tend to be more dignified. Felines have a cool, collected demeanor and grace of movement that I aspire to but am confident I will never achieve. They're also a lot pointier. Cats can't seriously injure me. Hmm...maybe if they went for the eyes. I've been bitten once so far but I felt bad for the cat because it bit my knuckle and its mouth was stuck on it like a little kid trying to eat a caramel apple. I have big knuckles. And sometimes they are covered in caramel.

My cats are my little tigers. Fierce, but incredibly vulnerable.

* * * * *

After a while, most of my Pandora stations begin to sound roughly the same.

Borges taught me that when undertaking any difficult task, it is best to imagine myself as having already have done it. I think he referred to it as imposing the future upon oneself. "Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures."

If the path is not fixed, a person can become lost among the forks, strolling down paths of a time not quite their own. This is not a literal thing, except as it occurs in a mind. The absent-minded, dreamers, artists, and the mad are resisting the Now. It is untenable; the Now demands much.

I think about good ideas and bad ideas and how, at first, they can indistinguishable. When the chosen course reaches its resolution, then we can sit back and say "Well that was a bad idea."

Supposedly making an attempt is always a good idea.

Sleep will find me soon. That is the proper time to explore the other forks. See what could have happened. Dreams are not prophetic. People have believed them so on occasions when the paths do not seem to differ. But they always differ, although it is not apparent. Every dream is of the way the Now didn't happen.

Difficult tasks lie ahead. So I will sleep and dream and prepare myself as best I can. I will push away fear because fear is not useful. I'm always afraid of the wrong thing anyway.

I knew Jenny Hanover a long time ago. We were young, or at least young enough that I didn't immediately think she was completely mad. Her hobby, as she put it, was "shadow walking." This slightly ominous name was her term for lucid dreaming, or being aware of dreaming while dreaming. That's how I understood it at first. Since her disappearance, I haven't been able to understand much of anything. All I can do is try to organize the events by the order in which they occurred and keep looking for a pattern; those cause-and-effect moments that let me convince myself I have any control over what happens to me.

And maybe learn enough to keep me out of the insane asylum.

Jenny explained to me that experienced shadow walkers (her term, sometimes just "walkers") mostly spend their sleeping hours dreaming like everyone else. Shadow walking is a controlled process that requires careful preparation and should never be attempted alone.

"Like scuba diving?"

"Not like scuba diving," Jenny snapped. "You can die scuba diving. If something goes wrong after we've crossed the shadows we'll just end up back here." She set her backpack on the floor of my bedroom and began placing its contents in a row.

"Well I feel a lot better," I smiled, leaning across the doorway with my arms crossed. I was trying to look cool. Having a girl stay the night in my apartment was a rare thing in itself, and her backpack full of unusual objects was both intriguing and frightening. I recalled urban myths about stolen kidneys and began to wish I had made my roommate Phil stay in tonight. Then my socks slid on the hardwood floor and I fell backwards into the hallway.

"Ow."

Jenny didn't look up. "Still not cool."

* * * *

I just finished reading China Mieville's The City and The City. There are no unicorns in it. Despite this glaring omission, it is still an intriguing noir tale of a city with unusual borders.

It is dangerous for me to read crime noir. In my head I start referring to women as "dames" and whiskey and cigarettes seem like part of a complete breakfast. The world outside seems full of mystery and sinister plots and unicorns. Maybe not unicorns. Not the nice ones, anyway. Everyone is up to something. Scheming. Brooding. Whinnying ominously.

But after that book I read The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick. Now I'm more worried about giant protozoan spores falling from space, and also of gaining the ability to see the future. This book was written well before Alan Moore's Watchmen, which also has a character who can see the future but cannot change it. Hmm...Slaughterhouse 5, too. These guys are just piling up.

So I don't want to be able to see into the future. I would only misuse the power, like predict a person's movements and make them step into a pie every time they are on their way to a formal event.

Time to start learning how to make pies.

Fiction

She is like the desert. Hauntingly beautiful with long stretches of an inhospitable sameness. She is water but it is best to bring your own. She has left me now to wander through sand and shale. Or perhaps I left her, slipping away under the cover of a monsoon storm. Red sky and thunder and fat drops of dusty rain. For a moment there are rivers carving a little deeper into the earth but pretty much the same for a long time.

The desert is a poor host and does not know how to treat the waters. Past the point of feeling spurned. Her dark eyes flash darkly than pass over me just as quickly back to the horizon. She loved me once. Her instincts know how to hurt me best by not seeing me at all. Not to be ignored. To ignore someone properly requires a great deal of attention. Time, the memory has been relegated to that sameness where she puts everything else.

My eyes now, which looked upon her with love and with love met, are grains of sand shifting against grains of sand. The water we shared baked into the clay. The crumbling tessellations formed by cracks could hardly hold a footprint.

Her instincts are right. I can't remember how long I've been here. Trying to find the last reflection of the way I was when I still loved her, and seeing nothing. Staring back when I look into the shrinking puddles. There is only the reflection of the sky with its wisp of cloud, and the gnarled trees, and the sand, and there is no place left for me.

So I'll go. I'll show her. I'll forget her too. If I cannot defeat a desert I will make my own. She in hers and me in mine, the forgotten and the forgetting. Perhaps all deserts start this way.

I've been going about this backwards. The last part was written first and the first part is being written last. The middle part is still the middle part.

This is a picture of a Space Princess. Democracy may be all the rage on this planet, but the rest of the galaxy consists predominantly of monarchies.


* * * *

Look what I found! I started a journal/letter/epistle to my friend methinks, as I knew her then and think of her still. Back when people still used Instant Messenger programs to chat online, our time zones synced up pretty well. I was always up at some ungodly hour of the night and methinks lives in India so for her it was usually mid-morning. I used to refer to her as a "Daywalker," my term for people who didn't stay up all night brooding for no apparent reason.

Yes, exactly. We would have conversations. We don't talk a great deal now, but our lives were so different then that simply still knowing each other now has taken on a slightly reverential quality. For me anyway. I try very hard not to inspire reverence in anyone and I am repelled and suspicious by anyone who views me any more than "somewhat tolerable."

So this is for her. There is more, but not all of it has reached the 3-year mark and as such, will not be disclosed here. But here's this.



7-30

Dear methinks,

This notebook is yours and I hope you like it as much as I do. The cover reminds me a tiny bit of a circus tent or maybe a telly struggling to get reception.

Odd. I never say "telly."

These composition notebooks usually have questionable color schemes. They are hardy and inexpensive. Perhaps Hemingway and Picasso shunned these in favor of their precious Moleskin(TM) Brand Notebooks but I will write on any portable surface including my hand, napkins, and dollhouse walls. Napkins instill the greatest camaraderie. Different colors, sizes, odd folds. They are better representations of my mind, scattered as it is with crumpled thoughts. And if the idea is no good or good enough to transfer to another home then voila! I still have a perfectly good napkin.

These notebooks used to have a larger space at the top of the page. These new editions have squozen in a couple more lines. Multiply that by 200 pages and that's 400 more lines! What a deal! This boon of space must be cherished. I shall try not to skip too many lines without the best of reasons.

My clock is glowing red midnight at me. I must try to rest and heal. I have many scratches from scrabbling about on rooftops. And a few from leaping from them. Goodnight!

7-31-07

Dear methinks,

Today is the first day of my torrid affair with Paxil. It is a common antidepressant that regulates seratonin [sic]. I've heard mixed reviews from friends who have used it but I'm going to do science and find out for myself. This journal, your journal, is part of the experiment. Have you read "Flowers For Algernon"? It's a short story told in journal format. The main character is of below-average mental capacity until an experiment makes him a genius...briefly. The author uses spelling and grammar to illustrate his rise and fall. So be sure to watch me for spelling errors. I'm usually pretty good about it.

My friend Tana sent me a text message about her day rafting on the river in Idaho, a state north of here. I warned her to alternate paddling on both sides of the raft or else only one arm will get all the exercise and she'll end up with one huge arm.

Tana and I are dating. We haven't discussed the details of our relationship. The conversation we're going to have drifts around us like a balloon someone has tied around my wrist so it won't blow away.

We've only been dating a week. We've been friends for over a year. She is younger than I am, 21 to my 25. When she begins school, she will do so at NAU, a university in northern Arizona. The North seems to be conspiring to keep her from me. The blame rests upon me, or it may, if I follow my plan to move to New York City. NAU is richly forested and gets snow in the winter. Its climate, so different from my dusty desert, belies its proximity. A couple hours of mildly reckless driving will bring me to her. And to the snow, in the winter. I don't care for snow. Interesting stuff, but I rather enjoy it only at a distance.

I've only known one Arizona to New York relationship attempt, and though they struggled mightily to connect across the country in the end it proved untenable. Middle America can be a formidable obstacle.

The rain came today. About this time of year the frail shell of the desert is ravaged by waters celestial as they're banished from the Heavens. Encrusted in concrete as our city is, the waters become violent commuters, ignoring speed limits, stop signs, and traffic lights. We put up with it because we know the waters are just tourists here picking up souvenirs from people's landscaping and going on their way.

It's hard to believe I've had this webjournal for seven years. It's changed a lot since 2003; I suppose it had to along with my own stubborn progress and our preferences in mass media.

The "mass" is the biggest difference. With so much information, it has to be compressed. Even Twitter pretty much proves that people want little delicious niblets of information, and lots of them. So there's that.

I've been reluctant to bring the blog around to meet my new Facebook account for that reason. I guess I don't want to be a brand. Or maybe I do want to be a brand but only if it's a cereal with fun marshmallow bits. "Guillermo: Part of Your Complete Breakfast-Oh-Damn-He-Is-Eating-Your-Breakfast." TM.

So right, be concise. But that's not why I'm here, is it? No, I come to the internet to waste time or maybe to look up the cast of the original A-Team. Shouldn't there be more stuff like this, shouldn't there be someone going against the grain and writing long-winded doubt-filled musings on how they're dissatisfied with themselves? I have a whole stack of notebooks filled with exactly that. Probably it's most interesting to me, but this is about connection, finding common ground and sharing experiences. How many times have I believed I was in love? How many friends have I raised a glass with who I never see anymore? Should I have used "whom" just then? Why are many of the questions I had when I was 18 the same as the questions I have now that I'm 28?

The biggest difference is the hopefulness. Oh, I have plenty of pages of terrible poetry, but the hope is still there. Ironically, my impulsiveness led to the more interesting episodes in my life. Now, with my diligent adherence to my brain medication, my impulsiveness is...not very.

I can already picture people who haven't known me as long thinking, "Wait, you were even more impulsive before?!"

Well, yes. Heh, check the blog archives. I couldn't go two weeks without doing something I horribly regretted and writing a bad poem about it which I also regretted.

It certainly wasn't boring.

Seven years and many scars ago.

I'm hardly unhappy. I can still get pretty moody now and then but I don't do anything drastic. The period of time following the death of Luis does not count, because, I think I was supposed to go a little crazy and be a little terrible. Also, driving 4,000 miles was surprisingly therapeutic. Not nearly enough, but it certainly helped.

That reminds me, I kept a video journal of that particular journey. I'll have to put them up on my Youtube channel and it will probably be in annoyingly small chunks since I don't have any video-editing software.

Many years ago, my friend Juliet worked the graveyard shift at a hotel and had read everything I had ever written because she had nothing better to do. So when I was writing, it felt like I was writing to her. Not just her, let's not get all romantic here (unless you're feeling...amorous). In my head, I could picture my friends as I tapped away at my little laptop keyboard. It felt personal, and it was personal.

It was a brave new world, and I knew people by their writing. Images used to be a pain in the ass, I'd have to find a site to host them, upload them, size them, all that nonsense. So writing reigned. And it will again.

In this glut of information and meta-information, looking inward is as vital as ever. The unexamined life is not worth living, or so I hear. I've been trying to understand this world and my place in it for so long that I've become complacent. Like checking the mailbox for epiphanies. Nope, nothing today, maybe tomorrow.

I'll try harder. Theoretically, I should be smarter now today than I was seven years ago. Maybe I'm close.

But now it is time to go to bed and fall asleep listening to H.P. Lovecraft stories on my ipod. I read a science article that explained it isn't possible to read in dreams (okay, it was an episode of Batman: The Animated Series) but I can. Last night I dreamed of a huge book of illustrations. One drawing spread across both pages, showing hooded monks working by candlelight in a huge cavern or monastery. Across the top was the word "Illuminate." It could have been a reference to the illuminated manuscripts from days of yore, but my dreams usually aren't that clever.

Then again, it is possible that I'm much more clever in my head than in the real world. This has also been suggested to me by more than a few people.

So, once more unto the breach, dear friends. Armed with a pen and an introspectiveness that borders on narcissism, here I go again.

The Care Bears shouldn't have stopped after adding the Care Bear Cousins. From there, they could have springboarded to even deeper, more complex feelings, like "Regrets Never Asking That Girl To The Prom" Bear or "This Isn't Where I Saw Myself In Ten Years" Giraffe.

Back when I had a Blackberry phone, I would send myself notes:

In Chicago, but not Chicago. Children on leashes are a sign of the end of civilization. Indigenous peoples and others who live with the seasons understand that in the event of being raised by fools, a child may be carried or gently bound to delay the onset of walking.

* * * *

War with angels and epic battles for heaven and hell and the role of humans in the universe. Warm beds, soft pop music, and electric fans humming seem the kinds of things that prevent epics from coming near, adventure is a skittish woodland creature that unnerves around comfort and bolts at the first sign of complacency.

* * * *

Weary legs and snappish mouth
Crinkling corners blurry eyes
High red rosy once now past
Bursus burstus grounded goo

Peeling down degloving handtips
Flaking phalanges rubbed leather black
Haste-cut nails lengthen into obtuse angles and lonely, open triangles

Fingerprints lifted and filed on file
Whorls sworls stored as timeless as the budget as forever as long as technology recognizes hands

"Well all the time you spend trying to get back what's been took from you, more is going out the door."
-No Country For Old Men

It has never been a secret, my being a nerd. This can be detrimental to my social life in surprising ways. For instance, tonight I was late for a party because I was dreaming I was attending Bladerunner Academy.

As I said, surprising ways. Of course, the next time anyone needs me to figure out if someone is a replicant or not, I'll be ready. At some parties, this happens a lot. So I hear. Or I think I may have heard.

Whatever it is, I'll be ready.

Learning about the world mainly through books, as I have, leaves me stuck with a geography of time along with space. Traveling becomes difficult. Kelly and I went to Monterey, California. We visited Cannery Row, but it wasn't Cannery Row, not the place Steinbeck told me about. This was no bustling, stinking, raucous port of fishy industry. This was mostly a series of shops and restaurants and a really cool aquarium.

So now my Cannery Row became everyone else's Cannery Row.

My Los Angeles suffered a similar fate. It is not Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles, where if they look like a lowlife they probably are, and if they look high class then they're probably worse. I walked those streets at night and I didn't get hit with a tire iron, not even once.

What's this world coming to.

Historically, historians have realized that anything a writer writes while drunk is crap. For instance:

"Sir, I will punch you."

"Yes, but I propose that in punching me, you are really punching yourself."

"I accept this risk."

PUNCH

End Scene.

The other day I walked in the living room and found Remy sitting on the floor reading The Necronomicon. I have to remember to quit leaving that thing lying around. He looked up at me. "Monsters?"

"Yes, monsters. But those monsters are a bit advanced for you. Those are a bit advanced for me."
I put it back with the DVDs and we went off to find something else to do.

My mother took them to church with her on Sunday. I'm not a huge fan of church, but one thing the Catholic Church does pretty well is monster hunting. The Old Testament is wild times; there are magical creatures, talking animals, curses, and there was magic, real magic all over the place. Any king worth his salt mine had a few soothsayers, a couple of magicians, and at least one ancient evil chained up in the dungeons.

Jesus hunted monsters too. Well, more demonic force types, not the corrupted nature monsters we deal with nowadays. Jesus cast demons out of people all the time. He makes it look easy, but ripping a multi-dimensional entity off without destroying the soul is hard. It's not like you just show the demon the door and out it goes.

Jesus was something of a contradiction as a monster hunter, since there is at least one documented case of him creating the undead. Maybe he trained it or something, but I can't say I approve.

The Catholic Church may prepare them for monsters conceptually, but their methods are obsolete. Demons and devils and fallen angels and all that died out a long time ago. They had their heyday, but humans have gotten pretty good at this evil stuff all on their own. No demand, no supply. Capitalism strikes on the spiritual level.

Maybe this is why the Catholic Church is so intent on retaining its own monsters.

So no Necronomicon for the twins. They're not yet four years old. Then again, this may be the time to focus on the transdimensional stuff because they're nowhere near ready to engage any physical monsters. Mostly I teach them identification and evasion. Like the kelpie, common to Scotland and Ireland but they can turn up in any body of water.

The foolish wikipedia page does not say how to escape when you are stuck to their glue-like skin (besides cutting off the body part). The solution isn't pleasant, but a far sight better than being drowned and eaten. If you are stuck on the back of a kelpie and it is heading for water, you must soil yourself. You should be pretty terrified; use this to your advantage. Vomiting will also work.

The kelpie responds pretty much the same way anyone else would. Once you are tossed from its back, get as far away from that body of water as possible. Most kelpie can't get too far from the water. The kelpie is vain and will be furiously cleaning itself so you should be fine.

Have I mentioned this before? I may have. I have been focusing on monsters that are particularly dangerous to children. You're next, Church.

One of the most difficult aspects of my relationship with writing is my inability to avoid the inevitable. Though I don't believe in Fate...well, I sort of have vague leanings towards reductionism and a clockwork universe. Though I don't believe in Fate in some romantic astrological way, writing feels like I'm moving along one linear timeline with a definite end. There is a finite amount (unknown, but finite) that I'm ever going to write (or live/laugh/love/what have you but here specifically "write") and I can only move forward on this line, writing along, a spider descending a single strand of silk towards the ravenous salmon of uncertainty.

What?

There are times, like this time, that I know what I want to write but I don't want to actually go through it. It reminds me of jumping off cliffs into water and I know I'll be fine hell I've already done it three times already that's why we drove all the way up here to Sedona...and there is always the moment of hesitation. Looking over the edge into murky green water, trying to remember to jump far enough to avoid the underwater rock, and hesitating, always hesitating. And the spiral of doubt because it is the hesitation that could make this all go horribly wrong this time.

I'm already up here, and climbing back down would be harder than jumping. I may be a coward, but I am a lazy coward.

Kelly and I had flown to Orange County to go to Disneyland with her mother and sister. It was Spring Break and many flights were full. As I fly on a space available basis, Kelly had gone ahead and I, as a single passenger, would be much more likely to snag an open seat. It worked out pretty well; I only had a couple of hours to wait before my flight. I enjoy the airport. I met people, we talked about spring training and the recent Paul McCartney show (which I did not attend but I would have gone with you if you'd asked), and local spots for drunken antics. I was an expert on exactly one of these things, but that did not stop me from giving my opinions and making claims about the way things were "back in my day".

A shiny metal counter with stools and electrical outlets was positioned awkwardly by an equally shiny metal pillar. It was designed for people with laptops, but as I am brown of skin and larger of bulk most people with laptops tend to let me sit where I want. It seemed like a good time to write. I pulled out an empty notebook and did so.

This is where it all ties in to what I mentioned in the beginning. All the things I'd only thought about writing queued up nicely and orderly, and then waited. They didn't have to wait long. Or it didn't seem long. I actually took a little over an hour for the few lines that follow and when I finished my hand hurt and my back hurt and everything seemed brighter in there.

Just two pages. Not even real pages but dinky little composition notebook pages. I snapped the thing shut and threw it back into my backpack.

We had a good time at Disneyland, as always. Kelly loves the childlike wonder, and I love pointing out the elitism, embedded racism, and anti-semitism sprinkled throughout the park. I didn't even look at the notebook until we were home and unpacking. I re-read it and sighed. Yes, this is what I had been avoiding. But now it is done and let's see if I cleared that underwater rock.

This is the content of those two pages:

When my little brother died, he left me alive with and with a sunburnt soul. Thirteen months have passed and still no tan. Sandpapered surfaces still surprise me in odd places. Bumps and brushes snag and smear. Dry, curling edges flake into my throat, suck into my lungs and take to the air again. Who I was falls like ash every time I use my new voice, the higher, huskier, revolution of a vinyl record left too long in the sun. Honeybee honey when the bees've all gone, pouring slowly with amber crackles. An over-aware voice finding its feet by coasting to subject to subject to subject. All the credible noises of interest belonged to the old voice.

Each day after his death, dawn finds a thousand archers stringing a thousand bows. At their feet are featherless arrows, straight as truth, with heads of rusting iron. Ever are they ready.

His death and my shrieking, blistered birth into an armorless world.

He would want you to be happy. It doesn't matter what he wants, he is dead.

Keep him in your heart. He is he is and there is no space for the blood.

Come to church to celebrate his spirit. Were I ever to meet your god, I would tear away his throat and stare as the blood soaked through his beard.

There is no balm here. The cure for the flesh calls for a poultice of bone.

My eyes see farther but no better. Death's passing smears a static blur to their edges and makes an abyss of their eyes. These are the traces of the oldest sadness. I still feel light enter my pupils but I do not feel it strike. Perhaps we are all sharing the same pupil, a massless dark that has enough for everyone.

It is harder now to be afraid. Fear still requires life, pain still requires nerves, screaming still takes so very much breath.

* * * * * * *

It was supposed to be about a pony.

So, yeah, that's out of the way and I can move along to the next bit of writing that awaits me. Not that it will necessarily be on a different subject or not use so many commas, but it won't be that. It's done, it is written, and now I can write the next thing.

What is written is always in the present, and this further confuses my timeline. Sliding along this path, turning everything into Nows before it can become Thens. These things I write pile up in my lap, in my arms, increasing my mass as I approach my ending. Well, wherever down the strand my ending is, I hope it is huge and maybe full of gasoline. If there isn't a kick-ass explosion that can be seen from space, know that I will be sorely disappointed and probably blame everyone but myself.

Come with me on this one.

Using only song names from one artist, please answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title.


Selected Artist:

Iron and Wine

Male or female:

Boy With a Coin

Describe Yourself:

He Lays in the Reins

How do you feel:

Fever Dream

Describe where you currently live:

My Lady's House

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:

House by the Sea

Your Favorite form of Transportation:

Carousel

Your Best Friend is:
Jezebel

You and your best friends are:

Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)


Favorite Time of Day:

Each Coming Night

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:

Flightless Bird, American Mouth

What is life to you:

Love and Some Verses

Your last relationship:

16, Maybe Less

Your fear:

Cinder and Smoke

What is the best advice you have to give:

The Devil Never Sleeps

How would you like to die?

Naked As We Came

My soul's present condition:

Resurrection Fern

My motto:

Free Until They Cut Me Down



This was an interesting exercise. I suggest trying it.

I've been playing with a widget that quizzes me on countries and their locations. Let us be thankful I was not in charge of World War Two. Kazakhstan would have been liberated like 15 times and the refugees would have ended up in the Republic of Macedonia instead of Switzerland. Oh, Europe. You have always been my Achilles' Heel.

Sibbitt and I continue our discussion on weapons and the role of the citizen.

I have indeed been discussing "Government" as a monolithic entity, and in the assumption that this imaginary Government would want to destroy me. In a scenario where a hostile force sought to control a population rather than destroy it entirely, personal firearms are absolutely would certainly prevent it, especially in the US.

I'm happy to hear about The Oathkeepers.

I should also point out that when I read the news, I am painfully aware of the gatekeepers of this information and that simply because it is not being reported does not mean it is not happening. I strongly suspected this to be the case with cases of self-defense; such instances would likely be reported in the local news precinct, but probably not nationally unless a bunch of disabled puppies were involved.

Many, many times I have come across news reports of horrible crimes perpetrated on those who wanted to defend themselves but were unable and I've wished they had just had one gun somewhere in the house. Or at least tear gas grenades.

Again, I tend to feel this way towards people I perceive to be less capable of defending themselves physically.

I'm also for the Dune Home Defense System: The gom jabbar, a little needle tipped with meta-cyanide. I wonder if those would be legal.

So thanks for the information, Sibbitt. As usual, I feel better about most things and worried about a whole slew of new things.

The role of firearms in my life is one I think about often. As with each and every amendment, the right to bear arms is a response to prevent a specific condition that would endanger the civil liberties of The People. In many cases, the amendment also seeks to uphold the virtues we want to see in our government as well as in ourselves as citizens and active participants.

Some are just disasters. Eighteenth Amendment, prohibition of alcohol? When I view the Amendments in context and as a continuing process of striving towards a unreachable ideal, the spirit of the law, if not the letter, begins to transcend the nightmarish technicalities and inevitable ironies of this very difficult process.

The right to bear arms seeks to allow citizens that are not part of government institution to protect themselves against force, physical force implemented by a government institution. In my apocalyptic view of things, I assume this means the Government wants to destroy or enslave me through armed conflict. I like this idea. Then the dang old irony again: How do you love something you are willing to destroy? The United States is like my parents, and maybe your parents. I love them and want them to love me, but man are they totally wrong about a lot of things.

Fear is not love. Should the Government with a capital "G" ever choose to destroy me, I don't think any firearm would protect me. Not anymore. Back in ye olde days, when it was all musket-to-musket and knives on sticks, maybe. Now that we have the deadliest, most bad-ass military ever, victory seems unlikely. Because the military is under control of the Government, and it is the most directly controlled. And the police. Pretend that a crazed police chief orders his officers to my house to arrest me because he didn't like my facial hair. The order is wrong, and I know it is wrong. Is it my duty as a citizen to take up arms against this tyranny, to battle men and women who are doing their duty? Is it my duty to surrender peacefully to avoid bloodshed? It's a tough choice, hanging on my strength of principle and amount of faith.

I have the right to defend myself. Do I have faith in the United States to not resist physically and hope the truth comes out in our judicial system? I think either decision would have to compromise something I believe in.

The right to bear arms is a good right, but I don't think a single person or even a militia would be able to withstand a government-led assault. In a scenario where every citizen is armed, the Government still controls our resources. If all of Phoenix started a revolution, shutting off our water would wipe most of us out before we could fire a shot. Sadly, we would probably tear each other apart fighting for the remaining resources. While I believe that people are not inclined to harm each other physically under normal circumstances, try not having a drink of water for a few days. You will not be yourself.

I believe in the right to bear arms. I believe there is no weapon I could acquire that would protect me from an organized assault by my state and federal government. Kinda hurts my pride.

I suppose a gun might be useful in self-defense. The effectiveness of such a defense plan kinda depends on me being prepared, and if so prepared, how I will actually know the proper course of action. I could see myself really fucking up a rescue attempt, I mean. I believe this now, even with my Army Basic Combat training. Mostly because I was trained how to fight on a battlefield, not in my kitchen or at the neighborhood grocery store.

As a bit of a side note, in Arizona I am allowed to carry handguns into bars and all kinds of places. The likelihood that I will be shot by a police officer due to a simple misunderstanding will skyrocket so I probably won't attempt this. Police have to make difficult decisions quickly in complex, high-pressure situations. If I am actually armed, the decision for an officer who is rightly concerned with protecting their own life becomes much more simple. I'm using firearms in this example but the same goes for knives, baseball bats, rocks.

In another irony of government, the onus is on me to behave appropriately during an encounter with law enforcement. Like my other example, do I believe I am right? Do I believe it enough to do battle with agents of law enforcement? What if I'm wrong? Even if I know for certain they are wrong, what is the proper role of dissent for a citizen in my situation? Another time when maybe there is no right thing to do.

Heh, I don't mean to sound indifferent towards the staggering difficulty in enforcing laws and maintaining public safety. But the irony abounds. Whenever someone I've never met with a gun walks up to me and starts telling me to do things, my natural instinct is not towards polite cooperation; it's more like RUN RUN SERPENTINE SERPENTINE. Biologically it's quite a conundrum.

Wait...I was saying something unrelated to dodging bullets. No, it is related; protecting myself against people who want to harm me. The tendency is to consider everyone who wants to kill someone a criminal, but not the person who kills that person. This is often the case, but it is a precarious assumption. Myself, I cannot think of any thing that would cause government agents to want to kill me, but I'm certain there are people who have considering doing me great harm for personal transgressions that weren't actually laws.

So should I kill them? "I'm just going to kill you; why are you taking it so personally?" Hmm.

This is more of a general musing; I lean towards pacifism but I am well aware that I am physically capable of killing without any actual weapon. A firearm would be most useful to me in the event that my opponent was using a firearm and had announced his arrival and intent in some way.

It is possible to train for such a situation, but all the anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that accurate simulations are impossible. I've heard stories and had actual police tell me about the mishaps that occur when drawing a firearm during a confrontation. Safetys will still be on, shots will miss from 10 feet away, weapons will discharge unintentionally. One police officer I spoke to had pulled his gun for the first time and had fired every single round before he had drawn it level. That time everyone was okay, the criminal had been terrified and given up immediately after.

I scour the news for stories about citizens protecting themselves and each other with their personal firearms. It doesn't seem to happen as often as I'd hope or expect. Police are by far the primary defenders of the population, even in states like mine which allows great liberty for carrying firearms.

If I were in a wishing mood, I would wish that along with our right to bear arms, we would take an active interest in taking care of each other in all the other, much more common ways.

I believe that weapons rights are important on principle, but I've come to accept that firearms are not really very useful at protecting me from the threats I expect to encounter in my beloved United States.

Also, I've come to love shooting watermelons with shotguns. Or pumpkins after Halloween when they're practically giving them away. Sometimes Nature is kind and bestows upon Mankind giant fruit with hard outer rinds and rich gooey innards.

Certainly Americans should embrace the responsibility of weapon ownership. And while we're at it, we should as vigorously defend all those other amendments that make this country worth fighting for.

Except that prohibition of alcohol one.

And you're dead.

This is how most monster hunters die. They enter some evil pit of dank horrors and then encounter something they didn't expect.

The two seconds that it takes to tilt your head and wonder "What the hell is that?" is long enough for most monsters. Preparation is the key to survival.

Which brings me to the wedding. Jared Sibbitt has long been my greatest ally and mentor in surviving the wilds of the world, from the Sierra Nevada to the Waffle Houses of the Carolinas. Sibbitt will probably deny this for modesty's sake, so to be fair it was the wilderness itself that taught me the lessons; Sibbitt just made sure I stayed alive long enough to learn them.

This June, Jared and his delightful love Risa will be getting married. I have the honor of being in the wedding party as the Grooms Gurg. Quite a synthesis for me, as I only Gurg informally, up to now. It's an odd feeling, kind of a grown-up feeling, to be Gurg in a somewhat official capacity.

I'm taking it very seriously.

I will have to straddle two traditions like a pirate might straddle two large marine creatures: the ancient role of the groomsman and, in anthropological terms, relatively new role of Gurg. Hmm...I think I'll use a geological time scale from now on. Makes everything human-related look like it happened practically simultaneously.

In ancient days, the groomsmen had the responsibility and honor of battling the bride's family and their warriors, thus buying the groom enough time to convince the bride to marry him, grab the dowry and run. During these brutal, misogynistic, and awesome times a groomsman could be lost forever, or be found days later in the woods stumbling around naked and covered in Sharpie.

These days, the duties are different. Assisting with minor complications, showing guests their seats, decorating the newlyweds' canoe or what-have-you. There is also the matter of the bachelor party. At the bachelor party, the possible fates of the groomsmen are still very similar to those of ancient times.

The role of Gurg is pretty malleable, and perhaps this is its curse. I have 109 days to regain my fighting form. I have 109 days to brush up on all the random skills I've picked up over the years: making bathtub whiskey, editing 5-paragraph essays, handling poisonous insects and large reptiles, cave exploration, identifying edible native flora, arson, harmonica playing, tax evasion, first aid, rabble-rousing, rabble-wrangling, rabble certifications and permits...

...dog whispering, alchemy, singing along with songs I never heard before, fighting small fires, repairing head-butt holes in drywall, science-fictioning, data analyses, deep sea diving, cliff jumping, tracking (human), urban exploration (also referred to as "trespassing"), tai chi, avoiding military service, driving (motorcycles through 2.5-ton trucks), shoe-shining, baggage handling, hallucinating, finding lost things, pitching woo, fending off woo, intercepting and redirecting woo, hand-to-hand combat, hand-to-foot combat, foot-to-ass combat, eskrima stick-fighting, Shakespearean acting, and processing insurance claims.

Preparation is survival. If I get to that wedding and something makes me say "What the hell is that?", I am dead. Or at least lost in the forest for a while.

Roughly every 45 minutes I am required to rant about the shortcomings of various works of fantasy. These tirades tend to veer towards Twilight and Harry Potter.

My latest complaint about Harry Potter is the lack of Americans. Get some Americans in there, I say! You have students popping out of the sea and flying in on polar bears from the Arctic or where-have-you, but no Americans? Because an American would have had everything wrapped up by Book 3. We Americans know how to handle dark peoples. And we solve our problems with guns. You don't need to go to school for 7 years learning elaborate magic to kill a dark wizard. Hell, a child can learn to use a gun to lethal effect in under a minute. Very simple point-and-click interface.

An American student, had he been teleported to some strange place with a bunch of guys in robes cavorting around talking about how they were going to kill him, well, Americans can't stand that stuff. Dirty Harry Potter would just blast Voldemort in his flat face. Big-ass snake coming at you? Similar solution. Some Ministry of Magic lady coming around to take over the school? Americans know who takes over a school, and it sure ain't administrators; it's kids with guns.

There are reports of "technology" not working in Hogwart's. So what, like a hammer or a crowbar wouldn't work? You need magic to do anything? Guns are pretty simple machines. A small explosion and then point the shrapnel in the right direction. End of dark wizard.

I would have also set up dark wizard-only drinking fountains. Then I would have poisoned those drinking fountains. Set up an area in the back of that Magic Bus where the Darks have to sit. Then, while they sit, just shoot them. The Side of Good wins again.

A rich elitist young classmate and his goons giving you a hard time? See how superior he feels when he wakes up and finds his familiar's decapitated head on the pillow next to him. American-style.

America's Razor: The simplest solution is often the most permanent.

Dirty Harry Potter would have gotten away with it, too. Plenty of magic-finding devices and trained wizard detectives, but no one knows what to do if someone is garroted. "All right guys, we're looking for someone who has access to piano wire, check and see which students own pianos."

I guess that's all for now. I'll be back in 45 minutes.

Experimenting with my drawring tablet. A lot of tinkering went into this whale. Much like all whales.

Taking apart a dryer is relatively easy, entertaining, and educational.

Now what to do with all this wet clothing.

Weekend night. Work tomorrow. Stomach hurts back hurts head hurts. Perfect time for writing.

Necessary conditions, I suppose. It's difficult for me to do even the things I enjoy doing without the nagging assurance that I have far more reasonable things to be doing.

Take that, Reason! You're next, Causality! Yeah you better run as well Grammer1!1!one

The glorious hole of being a writer is that dreaming counts as research hours. (The length of time dreaming, mind you, not the dream-length. Since dreamtime can seem like years and events may happen simultaneously or you may "remember" events while dreaming that never happened. The accountants, man, they just hate it. And never piss off your accountants, real or otherwise.)

In a food-poisoning-related fever-dream (which can count as time-and-a-half (but don't push it)) I visited a massive interactive zoo. The zoo was interactive, you see, because swaths of land were converted into vastly different climates and biomes and habitats and were all stuck up next to each other. A visitor, such as I, would essentially mount an expedition and travel about for weeks at a time observing creatures that might not be encountered in a lifetime of travel.

But it wasn't entirely safe. Most of the animals weren't life-threatening. Mostly.

The sun was setting over a soupy green lake and dense growth of giant ferns were rustling gently at the water's edge. The ground was reddish, dusty, and hard as clay. This was the Komodo Dragon area. I hadn't seen any of the massive lizards yet, but night was falling and I did not intend to take any chances hanging around.

Throughout the park were these odd little way stations, areas designed to appear as part of their particular environment. The Komodo Dragon way station was large and red. It gave to mind an uneven lump of clay thumped down and gouged at with a spoon. Not terribly stylish, but I guess it matched the overall color scheme. The important feature was the steep sides with handholds that could be climbed by a human, but presumably not a massive reptile. Night was falling as I made my way up.

In a cavern I met another group of people. I had gone for days without running into anyone else but in this territory everyone seemed to prefer the way station. It was like that in the Arctic biomes. I don't think polar bears have ever had a fear of humans, and if they had they sure didn't anymore.

The group had built a fire and invited me to join them and swap stories. I smiled, shook my head no, and continued climbing up.

At the top I ran into a woman that looked like my old biology professor. She was just beginning her climb down to join the main group. When she noticed me, she called to me, "Hi Guillermo."

I was so surprised to see her there that I just stared at her.

"Well, goodbye," she said, starting to pick her way down again. "You know, I didn't think I'd see you back here. After your brother died about a year ago."

I just shrugged my shoulders. Then she was gone. I found a small hollow and laid down my sleeping bag. It was completely night now. The sky was clear. I lay there in my hollow looking up at the stars. I felt like I could see every single one of them.

Some time ago I purchased a fancy writing/drawring tablet. I seldom use it because my handwriting is still atrocious. I'm still at about monkey-with-a-charred-stick level. And not one of those smart monkeys that make tools; I'm talking the ones that you can catch with a single piece of food because they panic and won't let go of it.

My drawring is improving. As I've shown, I am moving beyond my usual "green" slug and moving into the "reds". I'm not sure why I just used quotation marks; it just seemed the right thing to do as an artist. As if my greens and reds were magically different than everyone else's. Some philosophers may argue this possibility, but those are the kind that no one likes because they waste your time and never offer to pick up the check just as a nice gesture.

Those kind of philosophers.

While drawring my ""red"" slug I was reminded of my Otter of Despair. This otter is forever working up the determination to crack open a clam on his belly. Forever lifting up his rock, only to watch it fall back like Sisyphus, except unlike Sisyphus, not even Camus can argue that the otter is happy. I planned it that way; the despair is in his name.

Sometimes I feel like the otter. Sometimes I feel like the clam, or the rock. At this exact moment I feel like his tummy, which has as much hair on a square inch as we do on our entire heads. Zounds!

The despairing otter's tummy has a front-row seat to the drama that fails to unfold.

I still haven't found a publisher for my children's stories about him. See, the otter is so despair that he doesn't bother to wrap himself up with kelp to sleep. That night, he drifts away to have magical, horrible, magical adventures. He also learns the true meaning of something. The true, horrible meaning.

Otters were considered pests for a time in the history of America, and thus the Otterhound was invented. A dog bred for the sole purpose of hunting otter. A dog who woke up every day knowing exactly what it wanted to do. I envy the breed.

When I awake, I am obligated as an artist to ponder the true meaning of all things. Generally this results in my frequent tardiness. On occasion it may also result in
that tingly feeling in my hock, like I was supposed to do something or be somewhere (other than the thing I was actually supposed to be doing or being on a given morning).

Hunt otter? No, that was the otterhound. Break open clams with a rock and eat the fleshy innards? I suppose for a time, but I don't feel a particular passion for it. Besides, there is tons of competition now that otter hunting, with hound or otherwise, is quite illegal here in the lower 48.

The root of my suffering is my comfortable life. As an artist, there is a modicum of suffering hours that must be put in or I get kicked out. I am quite behind. A job I mostly enjoy, a nice home, a sweet family, and a belly full of clams.

It's all wrong.

Maybe not the clams.

After a stunning victory at the Battle of Chimay, the great hero, Lieutenant Raphael Clittorii was quoted as saying, "There is no higher act of patriotism than robbery."

Such a man. Sadly, his regiment did not participate in the last half of the war, after his troops followed him to hell. They have yet to come back.

As I am a man of Married Years, this Fat Tuesday I settled into my reclino-chair device to watch The Simpsons Season 4 on my teletronic-viewing device.

But Wo, even in this day of Civilized Peoples I decided to have a beer, a Keystone Light that some poor chap had brought to one of my sister's gathering. The traditional way of enjoying that particular brewer's waste is to drink enough to impair the taste-buds.

Thus my attempt to enjoy a quiet evening resulted in failure.

I woke the next morning with a splitting headache, a series of bruises on my arms, several strands of beads and blinking lights, and the word "UNST" shaved into the back of my head. It was later explained to me that "UNST" represents the bass beat peculiar to those technotronic ballads that are played in the clubs of yore.

So Lo! and be wary! friends, that the heathen masses and their unwashed liquors do not lure you to the very same demise I have met at their cunning hands! I can only hope.

The world is no vampire. There is no heart. All the blood festers in its limbs and the scabs crust over the peeling lips screaming freedom freedom and the gunfire pops barely up through the ignorance. Cain needed no arms. While men have hands freedom has a voice.

Holy Hell. He wasn't a counterfeit bear after all. Not that I would have loved him any less had he been; but I didn't know that.

Watson the dog mistook my ratty old bear for one of his ratty old chew toys. And thus my bear of 24 years was gone, save for a few sea-green scraps and his left ear. There was stuffing everywhere. It was horrible.

But there's nothing to be done. Watson the dog saw the bear as competition and acted like any dog in the wild would: he ate that fuzzy helpless thing.

The bear's coloring had puzzled me for years. Bedtime Bear is blue and mine was an odd green color. I thought perhaps his color had faded over time, but I had a nagging memory of a green lock of hair that I had pulled out, one by one, until it was gone.

Not that it matters now. The only color he is now is the color eaten. I suppose I can dust off my Squishable, Heath Leopard.

And the beat goes on.

It goes like this: Sign in, click on "new post", start writing.

The difference, I think, is the looking backward. This was such a forward-looking device. At the end of each day, my intellectual uprising of sorts, a chance to chide myself and the world. To remember the ones I loved or was trying not to. Forward-looking, buoyed by a delicate arrogance. No good days, no bad days, only my day and the pauses necessary to dream up new distractions.

Just vulnerable enough to keep things interesting.

The dichotomy of Then and Now has found me. Untimely ripped from my womb of ignorant bliss and dashed against the scenery. Cut-out trees with painted hollows falling with flat wooden slaps. Beads of sweat, bright lights and no audience.

There was a time before my brother but I do not remember it. I don't think it was like this.

Then there's this thing. I'm stuck with these things I've written here. Picking through the archives and finding my brother. Once written, a thing is always happening now. That's where I was and where I am trying to return. But the Then is getting farther from the Now. Soon, the day will be replaced. A new February 24th will be painted over the old one. Painted over before I've come back for everything. I am a bad tenant of that last day and all that stuff is still mine just give me a little more time to find a place for it, sheesh. I've been busy with other stuff, is all.

Routine makes my life possible but it fails me now.