24: Funeral for a a Faithful Friend

We didn't get the chance to bury our dog. She ended her walk with our family in a humble, almost mean way, carted from the back of my truck into a foreign garage with a cremation room attached. There's a reason we bury loved ones. Or at least have a time of remembrance set aside to allow for the finality of life to wash over us and allow us peace.

I know some readers may think i'm making much over the death of a dog. And if you find yourself becoming one of those readers, I would encourage you to stop reading, because there isn't a fun little twist in the end, and you may not need to hear a man lament his friends passing. But this isn't necessarily for the reader, though if some truth is passed through these keystrokes, I won't belittle it. But this is for me. This is me burying my most faithful friend in the best way I know how.  This is my eulogy. More than that, this is my harsh night wind off the mountains that freezes the eyelashes shut, and yet opens eyes to the stark reality of the blurred events that recently subsided. A moment of clarity, a moment of solemnity, a moment of memory. And as I sat beside my dying dog, only a week ago now, slowly running my hand through her rusted and greyed fur, I fell backwards in time.

It's 1999. Its late, its frosted outside, and I am curled around my comforter as tightly as my 9 year old body can be. My orthodontist-inflicted headgear digs into my cheek as little beads of drool swing hand over hand down the rubber bands protruding from my upper jaw and connecting to the grotesque assortment of metal and plastic strapped to my face, giving me the appearance of some sort of prepubescent gargoyle with a bowl cut. After this sort of description, coupled with my mentioning that I was homeschooled, one would not have to make a large logical leap to conclude that this young boy did not have many, if any, friends outside of his family.

In the next room, my only real playmate sleeps. Jordan, recently turned 6 and not in much better social shape than I, nests in the middle of a pile of golden curled hair-turned pillow. We have each other, but outside of that brotherly company, next to no friends to speak of. Military family, constant in the change of location. Ready to uproot and be put in a pot for transport to the next post. After a few such moves, we find that it is simply easier to keep inside the pot, not letting roots out into the social soil of our surroundings, so that when the time comes to be relocated, the roots that tied us to that place and those people were simply non-existent.

Here we are, lying in a house we didn't know as home. Under unfamiliar stars, and on an unfamiliar street in the unfamiliar town of Eagle River, Alaska. Our parents had seen our need for a constant companion, and this night, they remedy that.

Pressure. Four soft points of it, starts on my legs, and quickly moves up to my torso. I don't feel any panic or fear from this unknown entity on my bed, possibly due to the grogginess still hanging on my eyelids, but when I break free from sleep, I find a pair of deep eyes staring into mine, followed by a barrage of wetness from the flat of a puppy tongue. A friend has been dropped into my brother and my life, and there will be no time from our meeting to our parting that she (shortly afterward named "Tobi") and I are anything less than best friends.

Last tuesday.It was early, It was frosted outside, and my mom had laced up her icebug running shoes and clipped the leash to Tobi's collar in preparation for the daily tradition of a pre-sun run on the icy streets of the neighborhood. Tobi's clouded eyes and grey muzzle hairs still quivered with excitement and joy at the thought of her favorite pastime, but when mother and dog returned from the excursion, long overdue, the old dogs legs were quivering, and her head was low to the ground. That day was the last time I saw my dog walk.


2000. The family is winding through the mountain passes and lakeside vistas of Resurrection Pass, packs full and backs bent, but eyes ever up and drinking in the views. Tobi travels twice the distance of any of us on her unalterable mission to ensure the safety of the group from the unknown ahead, while simultaneously scratching the itch in all dogs, that of exploration. We take occasional breaks to awe over some particularly breathtaking scenery, and  she sits beside my feet, panting from her scouting, but choosing to be company to us rather than indulge her favorite pastime.

I squeeze the tip of the rubber and plastic tube protruding from my backpack, and the reservoir hiding inside spew forth lukewarm water, which she happily laps out of midair. We seldom bring a bowl for her to drink from, and this method has become the preferred method of watering the dog, a method quickly learned and often applied.

Bending around a low turn in the trail, the trees fall away to reveal a shallow lake rimmed by tall grass and small beaches. We make a quick decision to pull lunch together from the deepest corners of our packs in this slightly breezy place, hoping to safeguard slightly from the unorganized hordes of mosquitos that have been plaguing us all morning. While a casual meal is prepared, Jordan and I lob sticks and rocks and all things not attached to Mother Earth (and some that we had to work quite laboriously to make unattached)  into the glass of the lake, delighting ourselves in the simple physics of it all.

A golden retriever, though a deep auburn one, Tobi feels compelled to bring back any items that splash close enough to the shore to not require swimming. Although her breeding and heritage marks her as a water dog with web between her toes, she has never attempted to push off from anything deeper than would touch her chest, an issue that might have given her the label of "defective" from the American Kennel Club.

But, braver today than others, and without much more prodding than usual. She tiptoes to the edge of the deeper water, hoping to snatch a floating stick that bobs just out of reach.

A slip.

A splashing attempt to regain footing.

And suddenly, the instincts that had been passed down by birth for untold years take over. A tottering slap of the water with each paw, rear weighed down like a ships anchor, and frantic eyes looking both everywhere and nowhere at once. She is swimming.

We cheer and rub her wet fur when she swam back to us. Covering our faces from the spray from her shaken back, but smiling and laughing through the unpleasantness. She draws confidence from our happiness, and by the end of our lunch, she swims circles around thrown sticks just for the sheer joy of a newfound skill. The slow, strong, measured push of air from her nostrils as she pulls through the water echo across the lake...
Thursday.

I heard shallow breathing behind the door. Harsh fluorescent light greeted me coldly as I opened the door to the garage. She has hardly moved from the reeking and lumpy dog bed that she hobbled to after a morning bathroom break, and still hasn't eaten a thing since her last run. I panicked when I saw her full muzzle drooped into the water dish beside her bed. Fearing her drowning, I quickly stepped to her side and put my hand under her chin, lifted it and held her....a minute, two minutes... I felt the slow breathing echoing off the cold concrete...




...She spends her days running and playing and hiking and loving everything that we do and everyone who comes through our door. And on cold winter nights, I lay by the woodstove and listen to the rolling of the fire. She mirrors the crescent of my body, with her chin in my hand and her tail swishing the seconds by. I end high school and make the leap to college, but we both know that when the snow falls and the alaskan days grow short, the woodstove will flame again and we will end our days adventures in front of it.

Her face becomes grayer with every trip home. And our hikes take longer every summer. But sleep near the woodstove never grows old...


Saturday Morning.

I had emptied my truck bed of all it's usual contents. There was only a reeking and lumpy bed back there now. And she lay on it.
I had tried to close her eyes, but the stiffening had already happened, and they would not be shut.

Blood dripped softly from her nose. I wanted to put it back.

My dad and I quietly shuffled out of the house. Trying not to disrupt and ruin my sister's overnight birthday party. She just turned nine.

The drive took much longer than it should have, I thought. But when it was over, it was incredibly quick. Animal control paperwork was quickly penned, and we were told to drive around to the back doors.


  A small young lady in a flower print shirt was waiting for us with a cart. She probably began this job because she wanted to love animals. I wondered if she realized this would be a part of that.

We made small jokes that fell to the frozen ground as we opened the hatch and door to the truck. I was glad she hadn't slid too much.

We lifted the filthy bed with it's cargo of gold easily. Too easily. Set it on the cart gently.

My dad and the lady talked, but i don't remember any of it.
I wound my fingers through the deep, rusted fur. Ran my fingers behind her cold ear, her favorite spot to be petted.

And then she was wheeling away.

A piece of flesh and fur receding into the darkened garage.
To the world, that was all.

But that's not what I saw.

I saw one of the last legacies of my childhood, my link to a simpler life, my truest friend fading away into the dim and hazy light of finality. And even though I saw this patch of my life's quilt slowly come loose for years, that final thread being severed, the even and measured tear of this piece of my life coming to a final tug, the hole was felt immediately.  

I don't believe that animals have a life after this. And I don't console myself with the illusion of Tobi being "in a better place". But as I paced heavily back to the door of my truck, I realized fully something that had always been in my head, but had never sifted down to my heart.

She lives through me.

She showed me through every aspect of her life what it really is to be loyal, what is it to love someone enough to pass over their faults and put your heart in their hands, knowing they could push you aside, drop your heart in the dirt at their feet, but to pick up that dirt-coated love and place it back in their hands because they need to know that someone sees them.
Cares for them unconditionally.
And she never said a word.

You may meet me, spend time with me, befriend me. And you may never have known Tobi. But every time I come alongside, go out of my way to just sit with you, not speaking, but being comfort to you, you meet the heart of my best friend echoing in my every kind action.

This is true for all of us. Any person who leaves their mark on your life, who leaves your life better than when they entered, they live in you and through you. We catch a glimpse of the Face of God in theirs, and heaven help us to be that face to the lives we enter, since the only other options are to be faceless, or a mask of evil, haunting life till death.



Tears untouched dried on my face as we drove. I see no shame in them. We stopped at a gas station to towel up the puddle of blood slowly streaming from the bed of my truck to the frozen street, I still remember the smell. But I would not have let anyone else take that chore from me.

We left, leaving behind rose-stained snow. And yet not leaving anything behind at all.

23: A short soliloquy by a fictitious nobody.

I recently got to thinking on the potential that lies behind human imagination and creativity. And instead of going about such a task in a way that any rational entity with a preexisting set of societal norms placed on them (i.e. A sane person), I created a fictional character to have a monologue with himself  that discusses the free-floating ideas that were surfacing in the muddled swamp of my mind as if he thought of them. Without any more ado or further psychological confusion, here is what I (as narrated by Marcus) came up with.


Everyone walks around on the pavement and they hear their footsteps and they see the light glinting off the glass windows and that's all that is there for them at that point. Do you see? They have what they're looking for because what they're looking for is already right in front of them.

But there are handfuls of people who are walking around in those crowds and on those streets or roads that hear something else when they walk, feel something. They look through the light reflecting on the glass and see something totally different. And it may not even exist, it may not even be possible.

Take about two thirds of those people away and discount them because the rest of the world convinces them that what they see isn't there and what they hear is just shuffling, and what you come away with are the people who find the unfindable.

Cause when it all comes down to it, there are two kinds of people in the world.
There are people who see the world for what it is. They will live in it.

There are people who see the world for what it could be. They will live in it. -Marcus Franz





Hope that train of thought wasn't too confusing.

Fish for...?

      In lieu of making an apology over the extended absence of new material on this webpage, (an apology that would most likely be directed at those three persons who consistently read whatever nonsense i spit forth, that is) I would instead like to simply eschew all surplusage and hasten to reveal the next grandiose and mind-tantalizing brain candy for all readers to gum on:

People are like fishermen.

        Now I can understand the quiet second you may have taken inside the workings of your already over-taxed mind as you quietly ponder this ball bearing of truth upon which the slow but ever quickening wheel of cultural revolution and enlightenment will turn, but before you all hand out the obligatory pitchforks and pitch-torches, let me go ahead and ask the question that, at one point, one of the less mob-frenzied members of our newly hatched academic coup will bring up. And that question is this:

So what? And as a rebuttal, most fisherman are already people.

       A very valid question. I'm glad you had me ask it. And now here is the part where I break the deal down in straight terms so y'all can feel what I'm dishing out, so to speak. I would like to reaffirm that, yes, fishermen and fisher women are already people and have been for most of their lives, but the more pointed point that I would like to point all readers towards is this: all of humanity can be broken down into the types of anglers that one could observe at their craft. Despite the probability that this may fail to affect any meaningful portion of the life of the reader, or change the perspective upon it, I will do my best to categorize the phenomenon of human life into three overarching and semi-pathetic archetypes: Those who wake up inhumanly early, those who wake at a reasonable time, and those who sleep in.

      Lets start first with those who start first. There are many subcategories that fall within the early risers, but I have neither the time nor the attention span to venture through the thickets that are composed of the myriad of personality types that are contained in this, the smallest category of all who fish, but let me paint a quick and boorish portrait for you. These are the people who truly love the idea of yanking slimy pieces of uncooked and uncooperative food out of streams and ocean coves that are remote enough to have been declined invitation to even the most detailed of maps.


   These folk are the ones behind the wheels of commercial fishing vessels, storming above and through the one place on earth that God did not design man to be, and pulling from its forbidden depths their livelihood and joy. This is no diversion for them, no escape from the tediums of daily living. This IS their daily living. And whether on rolling on boat or wading deep into the forgotten kingdom of an ancient stream, they know what it is they must do to succeed. And they do it deftly.


      The second group to arrive to the scene are those who had a long shift at work the day before and decided that they could catch a few more minutes of sleep before sliding on their fresh-smelling waders and tossing a line or two into the water. They know the knots and the baits, and they have a few favorite fishing holes that they can sneak a few friends to for a few iced drinks and some good sized trout. They don't have the nicest equipment, and they probably aren't using it all to its potential, but they are having the time of their lives for that one glorious weekend of friends, packaged food, and fishing.

       The lucky ones of this category know a friend to has a boat off the coast of Argentina, and they squirm out of the pressed-in walls of their grey colored cubicle like the alleged world record fish out of the hands of any given fisherman/bard. The sun reflecting off of the brine-burnished scales of a leaping sailfish will forever be engrained in their mind as a singular moment of truly living. And will soon become a fuzzy and half-focused picture on the screensaver of their office computer.

      And then we come to those who have waited until the sun is at its zenith to emerge from the tent. They didn't plan this trip. They're not even sure why they agreed to it. They slosh from campsite to creek bed in borrowed everything: mismatched muck boots, a friend-loaned fish pole with two eyelets missing, long john underwear which, at this point, are more nuisance than insulation. The loaner has been up since day break, and is most likely from the category directly above. They will attempt to jest mildly at the loanee's sleep lines which crisscross their cheek, but eventually these jokes cease as the unamused face of the newcomer fails to show mirth.


   And the attitude will usually maintain its course like a ship caught in whirlpool, the mind returning time after contemptuously contemplative time to the awkward feeling of the rod, the series of failed casts that end in trees or the near bank, the mute chuckles of the more experienced friend, and finally the utter futility of dangling a hook in the water in search of something they never really wanted in the first place. They pass the remainder of the experience sulking in the tent or complaining to the friend, who now has their trips intended magic taken rudely from them, much like the last bag of Cheetos   and the extra blanket.

     I had intended to delve more deeply into an explanation of each category, but as I put words to page, I found that even I with my wildly unfocused imagination and less than satisfactory marks in junior high study skills class could understand the kind of people that fall into file in the above paragraphs. So I will be brief in my summation.

    The first group has found what they want in life, and they have given all they have to net it and haul it into their arms. They risk greatly, but the sheer determination and the skill they learned from those like them turn the risks into fish, and fish abundantly.

   The second group has tasted the glory that can be found by sacrificing for something higher, but they are either tied down by outside forces or those from within. They find escape in the thing that they truly want in life, but they cannot bring themselves to abandon the familiar things and risk it all to pursue the truly big fish.

   The third group wants no part in any of the experience. They blame others when they try and fail. Or they decide that the entire endeavor is pointless as a balm to soothe the sting of disappointment. They don't wish to risk anything, and the comfort of home and headset (hearth isn't as applicable these days) outweigh any possibility of making anything happen on their own.


    Now as always, there are variations and exceptions to this scale. I've seen the dabbler decide he no longer desires safety of a desk job and hurl self headlong into an ambition repressed for a lifetime. I've seen an unbreakable sea captain get his nets shredded by a passing log and fall victim to the risk of his passion. I've seen a malcontent sit up from his preferred place in the sand and take pole in one hand and dedication in the other and break free from the melancholy of passionless passivity. And I've seen the over ambitious angler lose his fishing license from cheating.

   I urge the reader to find the rod and reel and cast the hook into the depths of the unknown. Opportunity may bite, or calamity may break your rod. Success come thrashing into your net, or misfortune puncture a hole in your waders. All I can say is that nothing bites the hook buried in the sand, and even if nothing bites, the sunrise is worth the waking. So wake up early, hang your nets, tie a fresh fly on your leader, and let it all down into the great unknown.

   Or maybe I'm telling you to just buy canned fish. I'm not quite sure.

 

On Pain and Perseverance

I was recently encouraged by a friend to write on a subject that I have previously avoided. Specifically, running in circles wearing tight fitting underwear while people scream at me. (A.K.A. Track and field.) I decided to focus on the idea of longer distances, because I have a tough time resonating with anything that doesn't involve physical discomfort and embarrassment. Either way, here it is in rough draft form.

Fall, fall, 

Footsteps fall

Through life and breath endure 

The strides of the faithless

Falter and halt

But the faithful few

Will conquer

All.

Breathe, breathe

Chest heave

Your pain is not for naught 

The limbs will grow heavy

Fire will flame

But through this hurt

Is a runner

 wrought.

Die, die

Soul fly

The body gropes for death

Fully, pain overwhelms

Strives to kill

But Christ breathes in 

a second

Breath.

Fall, fall 

Footsteps fall

Through strife and death endure

Give Glory to the creator 

Through strength of will

Who, in his dying 

Has conquered

All.

Wrote this on my phone at work today, so I have no idea how to change the font. Deal with it.

The Birds and the Trees

Disclaimer: This is neither a condemnation nor an exhortation. This is simply and observation that has been formed from a few years of living and more than one attempt at a proper analogy.

The heart of all men has long been divided into two camps
And both may have grounds to be called the wiser.

There is a man who lives as though the sky is born for him
that the road is aching to feel his feet on it
that all the world has been calling since its creation
to be explored
and to be known.

And so he sets out to set foot to that road
wing to that sky
eyes to that sight
and heart to that pulse.

And he gains much out in the blue
wisdom of many ages
stories of many men
lore of many cultures.

And he soaks and he strives
and he learns and he goes
but when he touches ground of homeland
he has far too much to tell.

So he chirps, on and long
about the things he has witnessed
of the words that he heard
and the ways of those not here.

But who will listen?

He speaks to like kind,
and the noise is a clutter
of Who, What and Where
and stories on the floor are strewn

The deafening roar
of the other man's Arabic fables
drowns out his sweet song
from the hills of Peru.

Home brings no drink
to the travelers thirst for knowledge
So he wings his way back
To the world's open arms.

But there is another sort of man
His home is the same
as it was and always will be
and his roots have dug deep

He works hard under sun
and his fruit is sweet and full
the hard on his hands
has brought his children up with love.

He swings the axe, sledge, or hammer
and his reward, he seldom speaks of
His shoes are hard and worn well
and respect of other men, he has more than won.

But when he goes home for supper
He tells the same old stories
and his children may dream of new ones
from exotic lands past the sunset.

So he works, on and long
On the labor of his skill
and he longs of telling new stories
that will make his children dream.

But who will tell him them?

The deafening roar
of the days work and projects
taxes his strong heart
and weighs on his mind.

The world is not for him
His roots would not allow it
So he sighs, raises hammer
And swings on till dusk.

There is a reason
for both birds and trees
one is the traveler
and the other works the ground.

For the bird has many stories
but no place to rest and tell them
and the tree has many branches
and roots which go deep.

They are meant to be companions
The bird needs the branches
and the trees life is richer
for the singing and color.

For if we were all birds
there would be no home to go to
and if we all were trees
who would want to go home?









Eh, It's a rough draft. 

Life Lived as Water

 This is a rough draft of a poem that I haven't attached a lot of meaning or sentiment to. But heck, someone might find it fun.

 __________________________________________

I sat and pondered a life lived as water

falling from heaven to the ground

and there plotting courses

to the sea, from our sources

And there, with frosted foam be crowned.

Some flakes fall on mountains and highlands as snow

bright, white, and lucid, clean and pure

melting, oh so slowly

a creek born so lowly

will flow from snow'd peaks, swift and sure.

Many fall on parched earth. in the dust and heat

in a languished land without life

to journey on, they try

but ultimately die

or live softly in the ground underneath feet

In the wild lands of jungle and humid life

Upon leaf, upon beast and bird

A hard tropical rain

Makes a loud, boastful claim

But now lays lost, in swamp, unheard

These raindrops I’ve seen, walking day to day paths

Dressed in suits, some in rags, some jeans

They move towards the ocean

Yet notice no motion

Or what life lived as water means.

Throwing it WAY back

Got nothing new for Ya'll, so I found this old thang in the darker corners of my hard drive.

_________________________________________________________________

There comes a time in a Man’s life where he begins to look backwards. He unrolls the old burlap cloth that covers the chest of past memories and slowly, almost reverently, undoes the lock and opens the lid. His breath is slow but excited as he runs his hands over long forgotten memories, chuckling a little at his former escapades and narratives.

But as he continues, his hands find more and more things that make him crinkle his brow and flare his nostrils slightly. After about five more minutes of rummaging through this treasure chest that is his past, he remembers the reason why he locked, covered, and hid this box somewhere deep in his subconscious garden shed.

It contains the most comprehensive compilation of evidence that points to his all-encompassing moronity. The lock is quickly snapped shut, the covering duct taped on, and a hasty expedition into the mental everglades is undertaken in the tradition of the age old pastime of Floridian crime lords wanting to dispose of “evidence”.

            I’m guessing that the average age of this is mid 30’s or so. But whether due to my unexplainable hunch that I’ll die young or the shoddy lock-smithing on my memory-box that allows my meddling imagination to find and break into the chest like an elementary school kid trying to find knives in his dad’s closet, I have reached this stage in my life prematurely.

            Regardless of how this point has been reached, I have recently been finding the stories from all of my 20-some years on this earth rushing into my mind. They come at whatever time they please, sometimes causing me to chuckle to myself as I walk to my college classes (Which sometimes catches some interesting looks from passer-bys) or causes me to cringe in embarrassment.  For sake of entertainment, the latter will probably be the most prolific of the narratives told in these pages.

           

            Through most of my elementary and middle school education, I was taught at home. My mother had been an English teacher at a few different venues, and my Father had done his fair share of teaching as well. This made for an excellent learning environment that my brother and I both flourished in.

 Learning from classical novels, streamlining mathematics in order to reach the higher levels in a shorter period of time, being able to visit writing workshops and field trips to whatever we pleased, and all before lunchtime.  I give a good deal of credit for the way I am today to the way that I was taught at home. And therein lies the problem.

I was socially backward. This might be an understatement, if you ask anyone who knows me. But the combined forces of home schooled sheltering and that lack of ability to adapt socially to a culture (which stemmed from our military family having moved 14 times before I turned 14) caused me to be unbearably shy, imaginatively obtuse, and generally awkward.

In my mind, the defining story of my entire home school experience began one autumn in the sleepy, bedroom community of Eagle River, Alaska. I was approximately 11, and I had recently become aware that children were sent AWAY from their homes to receive instruction. Apparently, a few blocks down the street, there was a mysterious building where children congregated each day in order to receive government issued knowledge in a place that they called “Alpenglow Elementary School”.

I was fascinated by the idea. The children spoke of things such as “cafeteria” and “Recess” and “School Plays” which in my mind were interpreted respectively as “word associated with processed foodstuffs”, “Time where one either plays games or gets shoved in the mud”, and “Something I hope my dad will show up to this time”.  Now the logical reader will begin to wonder how I even heard these words mentioned, as I have already mentioned that I was hermit-like and had little to no contact with normal children. The answer still makes me cringe slightly.

In my backyard there was a tree. This tree had been planted around the same time that the house had been constructed, and had survived the harsh winters and short summers of Alaska enough times to have grown branches that overhung the fence. The other side of this fence shared a strip of grass with a neighborhood road. And that strip of grass was daily used by the kids coming home from Alpenglow Elementary School. If that tree had contained any form of intelligence, I doubt it would have conceded to the purpose for which I used it.

I would sit in its branches and spy on the normal kids. Hidden in its thick leaves, I would peer down upon the upstanding children of suburbia and marvel at them. The peculiar plastic boxes with superheroes or princesses pictured on the side, the oddly shaped duffel bags that housed secret Alpenglow Elementary School documents that were carried on their backs (I saw one dropped and it’s precious secrets spilled on the ground once. I felt like a secret agent that day). Everything about them was foreign, mystical, almost as if I were an alien sent to observe a different species.

This is how I learned about the café of processed meats, and this is where I gathered my information on the social nuances of the human race. But unfortunately, my research was cut short.

One fall day, I was laying in my usual tree branch. Mind rehearsing the colloquialisms that I had learned from the previous week (things such as “Jump-rope”, “I got an F”, and “Lunch money”) when I saw the first group of the kids round the corner about a hundred yards from my position.

I repositioned myself, grasping a branch with my left hand in order to allow me to lean farther down and be able to pick up the quieter conversations that I had previously been missing out on. The children were closing the distance now. Only 15 meters left. I twisted my hips a little more, reaching with my ears, waiting to begin my daily research. They had just come under the shade of my tree.

I remember a popping sound, then an acceleration registered in my intestines, followed by a sudden stop coupled with a heavy and painful blow to the back of my ribcage and spine. The wind immediately rushed from my lungs and my brain scrambled to piece together what malfunction had just occurred.

I was lying on my back. I could see the branch that I had been perched on about 10 feet above me. I could feel the now-broken branch still clutched in my left hand, and I was making sounds similar to an ostrich that had a dozen golf balls stuck in its throat. And then I realized where I was.

I was at the feet of about sixteen of my research subjects. They were in a stunned silence with their mouths hanging slightly open and looks of complete confusion in their eyes. Being the suave young man that I was, I lurched to my knees and attempted to begin my explanation of myself. Only to find that I was still making the ostrich noises.

In hindsight, they may have been able to at least pity me, if they weren’t so frightened by the Hannibal Lecter-esque headgear that a local sadist with an orthodontic practice had insisted I wear for the duration of my elementary mental development. Coincidentally, I’m sure that I stunted or horribly disfigured the natural mental development of some of those in the impromptu audience gathered around.

I decided that the best course of action was to stumble to my feet and sprint in a dizzy path towards the nearby gate to my backyard, where I fumbled the lock open and fell upon my knees in the brittle, but safe, grass of my backyard. I pulled the door shut behind me, but not before I heard intermittent sobs of shock and several voices mumbling concern for the poor mute “whatever-that-was” that had fallen into their lives moments ago.

I discontinued my research, claiming that I had a much more important study in my basement concerning the native pill bugs of that region. This project seemed so much safer, both physically and psychologically.

I left that story behind me, letting catfish and alligator eggs accumulate on its waterlogged covering for almost a decade now. When one opens the box of memories past, only the blandest among us has nothing to be embarrassed of.

 ______________________________________________

 Whoa. That was a nice and easy Copy-Paste adventure.  Hope Ya'll enjoyed it.

           

Systematic Beauty.

                                                                            Frost.

Why do people take so many pictures of it? What makes frozen water particles that were suspended in the air and then deposited on a solid surface so visually arresting?

Why is anything able to grab our attention and draw the gaze of many, eventually garnering the title of "beautiful"? What makes that happen?

It's interesting how the idea of beauty is so universal, yet there is so little empirical evidence that gives us a reasonable explanation as to what is beautiful and what is (for lack of a better term) gross. What interests me most about this... this idea of "art", is that even though there is no way to scientifically test the human reaction to lines, shapes, colors and other assorted factors that go into making something beautiful, there is an exact and systematic process by which all of these factors are combined and applied and lighted, positioned, viewed, etc. that brings about the base components of "Art" in the first place.

Also, It interests me in a curious/frustrated way that all the necessary factors for "art" should occur routinely every time i park my car out side between September and March. ("Oh man, looks like nature art-ed all over my windshield again. And since i'm an idiot and never remember to buy a scraper, i'll have to use my pocket knife and fingernails to create a fist-sized hole which will be my sole visual cue until my defrost kicks in.)

But think about it. When an artist splashes pain on a canvas in a seemingly arbitrary and half-hazard attitude, the cohesion of the paint combined with the physical forces acting upon the globules (gravity, initial velocity, wind resistance, splatter effects, gunshot wounds) are what make the paint behave in the way that it does, resulting in a aethestically pleasing (to some, I suppose) display of artistic angst and possibly laziness that the artist was hoping to achieve.

I've always been of the mind that the aloof and socially inept mechanization processes that govern our universe, solar system, and a vast majority of thrown deli meats would not have an intimate relationship with the footloose and whimsical bird that is art. But not only do they have a relationship, they are even accepted, nay, sought after to grace the halls and dining rooms of the most illustrious dinner parties, be it in the form of canvas, marble, or a massive pile of feathers.

The seemingly incompatible and awkward couple that is science and beauty stride gracefully through the corridor of time. Leaving tokens of their appreciation in the minds of great artists of renown,

while sometimes maliciously depositing flaming bags of dog poop in the minds of other "Artists"

  

 

Respectively, a giant inflatable piece of poop, and a three legged dog created from the artists hair clippings and bubble gum. People actually set out to make these things. This is not an accident.

So the next time that you see your run out to your car, already late for some important meeting that will determine the fate of your job or unstable relationship, and you see that mother nature has painted a delicate and interwoven memoir to purity amidst the harshness of winter, take a moment to slow down and recognize it for the beauty and complexity and the marvel of science and grace that it is. Then go back inside, make some Jasmine Chun Hao tea, and reflect on the delicacy and interwoven painting that is life and the flow of the cosmos.


Or, furiously scribble a pear-sized viewing hole, inevitably located in such a way that the only position that will allow you to maintain visual contact with the outside world is one that the unaltered human body has no potential for, which will eventually lead you to kick out your entire front windshield at the first available stop sign.