Chapter 30 -- Dinosaur Religion

Were their congregations outdoors, under the solemn Banyan trees?

Did their pastors make impassioned pleas to each individual listener’s more charitable instincts (to drop donations in the collection basket)?

What, exactly, did the dinosaurs believe?

Were the dinosaur popes and Martin Luthers bucking the system of thought and control?

Did dinosaur fortune tellers sense deeply and did their prophets foresee the future? Like the family on the beach before a tsunami, did they notice with a small part of themselves smaller, flying dinosaurs leaving in the moments before an asteroid came roiling down? Will we notice the harbingers of our own ceasing? Culturally? Nationally? Personally?

In the tens of millions of years that dinosaurs spread out to cover their planet with their lives, did they evolve more practically? Pragmatically? Cynically? —than we have so far managed to become?

Were dinosaurs Taoists? Did they develop nature religions? Did they practice Yoga and insight meditation? Did they chant sutras and pay for a personal mantra? In what form were their collection baskets woven? A ceremonial half-egg? We believe they were illiterate because none of their books or bibles survived the sweeping cataclysm that ushered in their destruction. Their obliging ending was the harbinger of our own salvation from marginalized extinction.

What did the dinosaurs tell their children about God? What did their god look like? Isn’t that obvious? Did their Jesus walk on water or fly with wings?

Chapter 19 - "Eternal Burgers"

Bacon cheddar burgers grilling on aluminum foil in their own juices.

Sitting on a blue fabric chair, the kind that folds up and goes into a carrying case, I lean back and cross my left leg over my right knee. My non-smart prepaid Tracfone has a clock that I check. I have five minutes before I flip these six burgers. The lid is down.

Smoke pours from under the edges of the grill when the grease on the foil runs through a hole or out the corner of the foil to drip onto the coals below. This smell is heaven. My ancestors from a million years ago nod silently in agreement from around their own fires.

I’m sitting on the concrete driveway at the corner of my front porch where the grill sits. It’s summer.

A full glass of inexpensive Merlot sits on top of the rusted left side, metal-lidded burner pad, next to a wire brush that I don’t use anymore since I started using this aluminum foil. I take a sip, then a second. I lean this lawn chair back on two legs and inhale deeply through my nose and let it out with an Aaaaah.

I’ve backed our Pontiac Montana van ten feet closer to the road end of the driveway so that I have more room to sit in front of the grill. I’ve dragged the grill a foot or two away from the white vinyl siding-covered lower edge of this side of our open front porch.

Two Christmases ago, I hung those big bulb colored lights up there where they’re attached to the gutter along the front of our wide front porch, as well as along the guttered narrower sides of this covered porch.

Balanced on the back chair legs, I enjoy the humid night air and the smells—especially the smells—and I look at the faded colored bulbs. Some of them, most, are showing more white light than colored because the color has worn off and flaked away and dried away in the heat and cold and sunlight over these past two years. They’re still very nice. It’s a very, very nice feeling, right here.

Mike, our large and hairy white English Labrador, with the shape of a polar bear and the heart of a sensitive kitten, lies on the concrete in front of my feet, right in front of the grill. He’s always nearest the source of food smells.

Two minutes.

Smoke is really rolling out now from the edges and holes in the closed grill that we inherited when we bought this place. The thermostat is edging upward from “med” to “med-high.” I lean forward to turn the dials on both burners down.

This is the life. You’ll never hear me say differently.

Chapter 4 - "Another Run"

Situations of I

[Février]

I ran everywhere when I was a child. As an 18- to 20-year-old, I ran in the Army—in the mornings for PT (physical training) and a few times a year for our regular PT test 2-mile runs. I also ran daily for exercise, to counteract the fat-storing effect of drinking German beer. I was vain and appearance-conscious—unlike now….

In my late 20’s and early 30’s, I inline skated hundreds of miles on roads, sidewalks and parking lots in Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Memphis. Then I discovered skate parks and ramps in Stuttgart, Germany, Southern France and later, back in the U.S.

During my late 30’s, I began using my Nordic Track ski machine, the one that my first, practice, wife had given me for my birthday moments before telling me that she wanted a divorce. I’d kept the machine and took it with me wherever I moved because it seemed so potentially useful.

After that, for several years, until my mid-40’s, I didn’t do much running or skating or skiing.

Instead, I plodded along under loads of lumber, sheets of drywall, bags of concrete, sectioned railroad ties, old bathtubs, cans of paint, buckets of drywall mud, replacement toilets, rolls of tar paper, bundles of shingles and extension ladders. My steps were heavy and just as carefully-placed as an elephant or very large human walking on ice.

Does My Dog Like My Music?

Situations of I

Does My Dog Like My Music? 

(second edit) 

I say that music is reality; as real as my tabletop. Okay, stinging hand. Feel the burn—I hear the song and hit the table again. Real.

Songs are complete universes. I get lost in them each time. 

A performer grows older, or dies, and I still have that song, perfectly preserved, just like he and I used to be. Like we always have been.

I listen, and my feelings are carried higher, soaring, above long-ago reawakened days. Each time I remember. 

Again. 

Always like this.

Again. 

Only more so.

I always feel what I remember when my song plays. Every time, I remember it, and then I remember it more every time. Like this.

What would a world of silence be? Could it have nostalgia? Could it grow in me?

Silence.

Nothing.

No thing. 

With just silence, I’d hear just my silence looping over and over, right? Silence would be my favorite song.

From songs to me.

From too quiet, to too loud to tolerate.

Can’t I keep my songs when I go away forever? Maybe there’s music made of me. Could I be silence? Something tells me, “Yes.”

For now—push ‘play’ on that damned cassette player, CD player and iPhone. Turn on that turntable, and set the needle gently down in that outer groove. Gently.

And keep them ALL playing. Thank God. Thank God. Keep them all playing. 

Does my dog, Mike, like this music? Maybe he can’t hear it.

Maybe he’s listening to something else.

[- excerpt from "Situations of I," a collection of short stories & essays.]

#3 (second edit)

Situations of I

All I’ve got are.…

Maybe it has to.…

 “No,” he said.

Silence is the backdrop. No actor stands to deliver memorized lines. A man is lying in a reflective pool of his own blood. The blood has poured from his body like a vase of blood tipped over onto the wooden floor. The empty cup lays on its side, hands motionless, head resting on one arm, legs like two parallel logs.

The empty man laying on the stage. No audience witnesses his repose.

Here.

“The show must go on.”

But this is the show.

The body, cold now, used to be warm; he had lived his entire life warm.

This lighting is familiar. All of it is focused on the figure—stage front, mid. Bright spotlights converge on the body, causing the surface of the body to become slightly warmer than the darkened theater.

The congealing blood pool is confined by its hardening edges. Blood has sunk into and through gaps in the gritted black-painted hardwood flooring. Four smaller puddles contrast their rich, darkly-reflective, deepening color with the dim, dusty concrete subfloor. Wet-looking thimbles dangle motionless in this four-inch gap. The drops have ceased their falling.

On stage: a heavy crimson curtain hangs on both sides of the performance area. The folds are the dark color of dried blood. Another black curtain hangs behind the acting space on the last of four parallel lines.

Empty stage except the man lying in blood. Converged spotlights. Rows of empty seats in a darkened theater. Perfect.

And then the man sits up. Caked blood coats the left side of his head and face. It is utterly soundless. His hair is matted, especially over the saucer-shaped indent where his skull is crushed.

Lines of blood begin running along his jaw and drip from his chin onto the white pleated shirt beneath his dinner jacket. His arms remain locked at the elbows. His hands, on either side and slightly behind him, are propping him upright. He wouldn’t blink, even if he could. Perfect.

His legs, straight in front of him, end with polished black patent leather shoes over black silk socks covering his ankles and shins. The shoestrings are tied perfectly. He sits, and listens. He then blinks, very slowly. His left eyelid sticks and reopens with noticeable difficulty. His eyes are open again. He notices the empty theater. So. I am alone now ….

The sensation, a feeling of being still….

Ah….

The man’s eyes move in their sockets while his head remains still—left, then right. They track the silent rows of seats in the darkness. Then up, they look, at the brilliantly-lit spotlights. Then the unlit colored lenses and track lights.

His eyes track downward to focus on his nose. The left side of his face is clearly darker, dark with blood, he knows. His eyes roll downward as far as possible, taking in motionless legs, feet and a large region of pooled blood at his left hip. The two slowly-moving orbs return to staring straight forward.

The man’s eyelids slowly lower to cover his eyes. He takes his first breath. This is the first sound he has heard since sitting upright.

His left nostril remains clear. All of the inhaled air enters, and then exits, no warmer than it had been in the room.

This breathing continues, regularly.

It is impossible, he thinks.

Of course.

Staring, he wonders. Will I stand up, or lie back down? His heart is not beating.

This has always been the question.

[-excerpt from upcoming book, "Situations of I," a collection of short stories & essays.]

#3 (first edit) Upcoming Book Excerpt, "Situations of I"

All I’ve got.…

Maybe.…

“No.”

Silence is the backdrop. No actor stands to deliver memorized lines. A man is lying in a reflective pool of his own blood. The blood has poured from his body like a vase of blood tipped over onto the wooden floor. The empty cup lays on its side, hands motionless, head resting on one arm, legs like two parallel logs.

The empty man laying on the stage. No audience witnesses his repose.

Here.

“The show must go on.”

But this is the show.

The body, cold now, used to be warm; he had lived his entire life warm.

This lighting is familiar. All of it is focused on the figure—stage front, mid. Bright spotlights converge on the body, causing the surface of the body to become slightly warmer than the darkened theater.

The congealing blood pool is confined by its hardening edges. Blood has sunk into and through gaps in the gritted black-painted hardwood flooring. Four smaller puddles contrast their rich, darkly-reflective, deepening color with the dim, dusty concrete subfloor. Wet-looking thimbles dangle motionless in this four-inch gap. The drops have ceased their falling.

On stage: a heavy crimson curtain hangs on both sides of the performance area. The folds are the dark color of dried blood. Another black curtain hangs behind the acting space on the last of four parallel lines.

Empty stage except the man lying in blood. Converged spotlights. Rows of empty seats in a darkened theater. Perfect.

And then the man sits up. Caked blood coats the left side of his head and face. It is utterly soundless. His hair is matted, especially over the saucer-shaped indent where his skull is crushed.

Lines of blood begin running along his jaw and drip from his chin onto the white pleated shirt beneath his dinner jacket. His arms remain locked at the elbows. His hands, on either side and slightly behind him, are propping him upright. He wouldn’t blink, even if he could. Perfect.

His legs, straight in front of him, end with polished black patent leather shoes over black silk socks covering his ankles and shins. The shoestrings are tied perfectly. He sits, and listens. He then blinks, very slowly. His left eyelid sticks and reopens with noticeable difficulty. His eyes are open again. He notices the empty theater. So. I am alone now ….

The sensation, a feeling of being still….

Ah….

The man’s eyes move in their sockets while his head remains still—left, then right. They track the silent rows of seats in the darkness. Then up, they look, at the brilliantly-lit spotlights. Then the unlit colored lenses and track lights.

His eyes track downward to focus on his nose. The left side of his face is clearly darker, dark with blood, he knows. His eyes roll downward as far as possible, taking in motionless legs, feet and a large region of pooled blood at his left hip. The two slowly-moving orbs return to staring straight forward.

The man’s eyelids slowly lower to cover his eyes. He takes his first breath. This is the first sound he has heard since sitting upright.

His left nostril remains clear. All of the inhaled air enters, and then exits, no warmer than it had been in the room.

This breathing continues, regularly.

It is impossible, he thinks.

Of course.

Staring, he wonders. Will I stand up, or lie back down? His heart is not beating.

This has always been the question.