Tag Archives: writing

The Dog and the Bird

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Growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, my friend Marc and I used to entertain ourselves by making up stories on the fly and recording them on a tape cassette recorder. We were seven or eight years old. On our less inspired but rambunctious days, the stories were simple and action packed, usually involving some indescribable yet inherently hideous and menacing beast chasing us through the neighborhood or our homes until we finally got away or killed it. We would dive to the floor, crash into the walls, or hurdle over the sofa to simulate our evasive maneuvers. Then, panting from our efforts, we’d whisper into the tape recorder how frightened we were as we pretended to hide. On other days we would attempt more intricate mystery stories—Scooby Doo type adventures—that routinely failed to reach a resolution before one of us was called home to dinner. When we’d meet up again, we never picked up where we left off because listening to the previous day’s recording always revealed some fatal flaw with our plotline. Before Marc moved away sometime around my third-grade year, we had compiled several cassette tapes worth of unfinished stories.

recorder

But the storytelling bug had bitten. For school, we had to write a story. Mine was called The Dog and the Bird. I don’t remember what it was about. It probably featured a dog and a bird working together to achieve some noble outcome. Whatever it was about, I just know I put a whole lot of effort into it and was really proud of the finished product. My teacher gave me some encouraging feedback which immediately inflated my writing aspirations. I asked her about getting it published.

She said, “Ok. But you’re going to have to type it up really nice.”

So I did. I typed it up, checking it multiple times for errors and letting my parents proofread it. I told them I had to get it ready for publication. The Dog and the Bird would be my breakthrough as an author. The story had to be flawless. I took it back to my teacher.

She read through it again and agreed that it was much better typed out. “But you’re going to need to bind it,” she said. “So people can read it like a book.”

amazoncover

That night I three-hole punched it and put the story in a report folder with a clear plastic cover. Now someone could read it like they were flipping the pages of a book. I gave it to my teacher.

Again she was impressed. “Now, you just need some cover art. Every book has a cover.”

I was stumped. I was an author, not an artist. I was also growing impatient. I wanted to be done with it. I knew drawing with crayons or pencils would look amateurish, so using the computer technology available before the days of clip art and the internet, I drew a rudimentary picture of a four-legged animal that might have resembled a dog, at least to the type of person gifted at locating constellations and finding images of animals in clouds. Next to my dog, I drew a faceless, two-stroke picture of a bird—essentially a ‘V’ with curved tips. I centered the title in big bold letters above the drawing and printed it out on my dot matrix printer which made the big letters and the drawing of the dog look hideously pixelated. It didn’t matter. I had completed a book. My book. The next day I presented it to my teacher who promised that she’d share it with all her future classes. I promised I’d work more on the artwork. I never did. But I was satisfied. I was as published as I needed to be. The project had taken all my energy for two weeks, and I needed a rest.

dogandbird

I owe so much to that teacher who recognized and cultivated that creative spark in me. She didn’t give me a cold dose of reality by informing me of the cruel world of publishing, or by telling me to expect a pile of rejections, or that being a published author is extremely difficult. This would have been the truth, of course, but at that age, if faced with these mountains of obstacles, I would have given up before even starting.

I think we forget sometimes that one of the primary goals of teaching is showing someone how to set a goal and complete a task. Everybody wants to achieve something. Guiding a student to find their true bliss is part of the process.

We should never forget this function of teaching. Performing well on a standardized test is an admirable goal for a school but falls way short of being inspirational for the student. If we simply grade teachers by how well they show someone where to place a comma or how to turn the remainder of a long division problem into a decimal, then we are truly selling ourselves short.

Because of my teacher, I experienced a wonderful sense of accomplishment. It was my first completed story. I’ve continued to write stories. Some have been published but most of them shared only amongst a small group of friends and fellow writers. I would have forgotten about The Dog and the Bird except that recently I was sifting through an old box of schoolwork and came across the cover art that had been hidden beneath the rubble of my life like a lost puzzle piece. I hadn’t thought of it in years. I honestly don’t recall which teacher was responsible for encouraging me to continue on the story; otherwise, I would gladly give her credit here. Until now, I didn’t recognize the value of that lesson in publishing.

The most profound moments in life are often not recognized until the moment is long gone. Insignificant and untethered memories reappear and unexpectedly reveal their importance upon distant reflection. But this, I’d argue, is where the true substance of living resides. In the end, when we sum up our histories, our purpose or meaning in life will not be perfectly articulated like a corporate mission statement but will instead be buried deep beneath the subtext of a thousand little moments and scattered memories.

Grill Euphoria

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As one fire ascends the jagged horizon of wooden fence

the nightly creatures, red-faced and salivating, converge toward the glow

carrying torches and tridents and thick slabs of raw meat.

 

A phosphorescent glow radiates from the coal,

the first smell—bitter and dry—billows from the pit

embers dance,

at the first sizzle, conversations cease.

 

The men grin their wet teeth

as the aroma summons hunger, curiosity, and unwanted advice.

 

Then comes the boy—naïve, untrained, and premature—with barbeque sauce

in a squeezable bottle

 

He is admonished and shamed.

This is the day he learns:

Never disrupt grill euphoria.

grill_euphoria

 

I Confess. I Cheated.

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cheat

You’re in school taking the most important and hardest class you’ll ever take.  There’s a lot of pressure because if you make an A you’ll be guaranteed a job.  A B might get you the job depending on how everyone else in the class does.  But you’re pretty confident because you’ve worked harder than your classmates.

First test you make a B.  A few of your classmates make Cs and Ds but the majority make As, and you wonder how they did that.  Soon, you hear that one of your classmates has a copy of all the semester’s tests, obtained perhaps by cleverly hacking into the professor’s computer.  The ones who are cheating ask if you’d like to come over and “study” with them for the next test.  You decline because you don’t want to be a cheater.

You study more than you did for the last test because you know you have to just to keep up.  You end up with a B plus.  They make As again.  They’re contacted by job recruiters.  You are not.  Even some of the ones who made Cs and Ds on the first test are now making As, moving you closer to the bottom of the pack.  You’d like to tell on them, but you have no proof.  Besides, that would really tick off the whole group, and they pretty much detest you anyway for your goody-two-shoes routine.

You do what you have to.  You join them.  You make your A.  You get the job.  You’re financially independent and so happy about that.  You get married and have kids, whose piano and tennis lessons you can pay for thanks to that good job.  Your family is happy.  No regrets.  You and your college buddies laugh about that class years later.

Now you’ve got this great job in a tight economy.  Again, you’re working your butt off, eating lunches at your desk, never taking sick days or personal days, yet the productivity of your co-workers is surpassing your own.  You know they’re cutting corners, backdating documents, shredding customer complaints and doing what they can to stay a step ahead of the curve.  One misstep and they could be fired.  They know that.  You know that.  At the same time, you know that management tacitly condones this behavior as long as they don’t make an obvious blunder that forces management’s hand.  You have a family and hate taking risks especially when it comes down to your livelihood.  However, you wonder that if you can’t keep up with the pack and their inflated numbers, you might lose your job.   You give up vacations, work on holidays, extend your work week to eighty hours just to do what your co-workers claim they do in a forty hour week.  You have your integrity.  You keep up this pace for twenty years, put your kids through college, watch them have families of their own, and finally you retire.

When you look back, you wonder what it would have been like to spend just a little more time with your kids?  You regret not spending more, because when it comes down to it, isn’t the family the most important thing?  You feel bitter at the rest of the world who seems happier than you with fewer wrinkles around the eyes.  They never faced the consequences of their misdeeds.  Or were they really misdeeds?  You wonder if making three follow up calls and fibbing on the required fourth would have made that much of a difference.

We face these kinds of tough decisions every day, sometimes without even considering the moral and ethical significance.  Cheating and getting ahead is the easy decision.  Choosing not to cheat is the tough one.  However, cheating does, after all, imply getting a competitive advantage.  What if you are at a competitive disadvantage if you don’t cheat because everybody else is?  It’s easy to justify it in our own heads when we are pursuing our goals to be successful and respected.

Let’s be honest.  What we all want is to be successful.  Society puts pressure on us to be successful.  In our culture, success is measured by the acquisition of things.  A businessman who nets one million dollars is more successful than one who nets a hundred thousand dollars.  No one asks to compare their bookkeeping or business practices.  An NBA superstar who has five championship rings is more successful than one who doesn’t have any.  Even successful parents are ones who produce successful children, children who are able to obtain a lot of things and money.  Sometimes we need to see ourselves as successful.

It’s time for me to come clean.  I am a Scrabble cheater when it comes to games played on my mobile device.  At first I just played against a friend at work against whom I racked up a record of twenty wins and no losses.  I branched out and began playing other players online.  I’d lose a few games here and there, but I was much more serious about the game than ninety-five percent of the other people that I played, so that in itself gave me an advantage.  There was one guy I liked to play.  We’d have close games but I’d win about eighty percent of the time.  Then his average score suddenly shot up by sixty points.  I’d been playing long enough to know the difference between making good use of the board and pulling insane words out of nowhere, and not just crazy two or three-letter goofy words like ZO and ZA that every Scrabble player with a hundred games under his belt begins to know.  These were words like ALUNITES or HODJAS or ORIGAN (no, not “origin” or “Oregon” but “origan”, in botany, another name for marjoram).  I didn’t want to directly accuse him of cheating but I sent him a message that said, “Are you a Muslim botanist and chemist?” to which he replied, “No.  Someone just played these words against me once, and I remembered them.”

Whatever.  I knew he was cheating.  It’s easy to hop onto the internet and use an anagram solver, and no one on the other side can ever prove it.  He started beating me.  It made me mad.  I watched my win/loss record fall below ninety percent, not that it really matters since no one but me ever looks at it.

So then, I started doing it, using the anagram solvers.  I started to beat him again.  And it felt good.   I didn’t feel guilty about it.  If that’s the way he wants to play, that’s the way I’ll play, I told myself.

The point of all this is not to suggest that cheating is the proper way to go but merely how easy it is to justify to ourselves that not only is cheating the better way but also the vital way.  There is an insane pressure placed on us from birth to succeed, and although many of us are brought up in the Christian tradition of humility and charity, we all know that piety and moral purity are not the main criteria society considers when labeling a person a success.

Since we are social beings, how others see us is so important to how we define and view ourselves.  We want others to like us and we naturally hide our flaws.

So now we come to Lance Armstrong.  Of course I had to watch his interview with Oprah.  I genuinely feel bad for him not because I sympathize with what he did but because I can only imagine how painful the fall from the top to the thorny pit of despair must be.  The truth is, we’ve all been in his situation.  You might say my Scrabble example is nothing like Lance Armstrong because there was nothing really at stake.  But really, that makes my actions even more preposterous.  The only thing at stake was my own vanity.

I’ve talked to some who might understand why he cheated, but cannot tolerate the way he viciously went after the people who accused him of cheating.  Anyone who has had an affair and is trying to hide it will scorch the earth before they reveal their lie.  It’s not noble or right.  It’s just a desperate attempt to stay above everything and scrape and claw at whatever might catch before the inevitable avalanche sends us tumbling down the mountain.  The deeper and more important the lie, the more people we are willing to hurt to protect it.  The way I see it, a man at his worst is usually no worse than most men.

To be clear, I’m not excusing Lance Armstrong’s behavior.  His titles should be stripped, a ban implemented, and his legend in the sport of racing tarnished.  But I don’t hate him either.  I’m just considering the reality that Lance Armstrong, like us all, is human.  Perhaps that is the biggest disappointment.

lance

Snitch

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secret

Dragging with her the gossip queen
She slips away to hidden space along the edge
Where whispers are suppressed by industrial woosh
And where webs are weaved
And transgressors trapped
And where ears sneak into seismic cracks
This is the real business
Salt and pepper to the filet of mundane
 Can you believe
    No way, no how
    It’s the truth
    Here’s the proof
    Maybe it’s something misunderstood
    But how can it be, how can it be
    It is, it is

The shame of secrets spilled
From voices
from voices I know
Nowhere better to follow the show
Than from behind a thin sheet of drywall

Let me tell you something…something about what they said
As I…As I heard it all.

The Rant of a Monster’s Protégé

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This guy walks into a bar

That guy is me

That guy doesn’t know what to say to this girl

So someone suggests with sincerity—

BE YOURSELF

Of all the hollow, uninspired, lame excrements of human thought

This advice is the worst

And might as well read

BE

because tell me, wise man,

Who is the “myself” I’m to be to you?

Myself is accustomed to customs

And I can never really be free to be me

 

Otherwise I’d

Scratch my ass, lick my plate, kiss the dog, sing off key

Run through halls, slap the queen (it’s just a game) but I’d slap your back just the same;

I’d say you’re fat (it’s likely true); thumb my nose at the men in blue.

Is this the me you want me to be?

Or is how I am determined by you?

I don’t know the many MEs of ME so how can you tell ME what to be?

Be myself

Is that really it?

Don’t you know you’re full of—

Wait!

Would the me you know say that?

You say no

Who’s this dude who speaks so crude

Maybe I am myself right now but you don’t know because

The you that’s me you thought you knew was just an imposter through and through. Maybe you want me to be a yester me

Simply because it favors you

 

When there’s so much MohammeDalaiLamaKrishnApostlePeterPandaExpressChineseFortuneCookieMonster wisdom

How can anyone know how to be?

Maybe it isn’t at all about “be this or be that.”

There is only

C

Which is for cookie

That’s good enough for me.

Meet the Author

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“The only way to get there is to pass through Griffin.  No one wants nothing to do with Griffin.”

Gabby arrived to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to get any help from the man in the orange hammock, but she felt it would be rude just to walk away.  The last customers of the day were loading their haul of junk into their pickup trucks.  She wondered how any of these items actually sold.  They weren’t really antiques as the sign advertised.  They were just unfinished, well-weathered pieces that had never seen better days.  “So once I get through Griffin, where do I go next?  Wait, Griffin’s a town, right?”

The man in the orange hammock sat up.  His face looked worn as if the sun had tattooed an old leather glove onto it.  He wore workman’s overalls and had an oval patch with “Dan” written on it in white, cursive letters.  “You ain’t curious why no one wants to go through Griffin?”

“I just assumed it was because it didn’t have a Dairy Queen.”

“Oh, it gots a Dairy Queen.  Fact, looks like any ordinary place.  But once you step outside, you’ll know you ain’t in just any ol’ town.”

“I don’t plan on staying.”

“Hah!”  His laugh was coarse and guttural.  “They ain’t gonna let you leave that quick, I promise you that!”

“Can you just tell me where he lives?”

“I can tell you, but you really need someone in town to show you.  It’s kinda complicated—a couple forks in the road, some landmarks that are tough to see.  That’s how it is in these neck of the woods.  Why you so bent on seein’ Mr. Salvador?  You an author, too?”

“Me?  No.  I’m a nobody.  At least for now.  But I’ve read some of his stuff.  Meet the Author was the one that did it for me.”  It was no exaggeration.  After reading that story she had to meet D.F. Salvador.  It was like her existence depended on it.  The story hadn’t answered any questions or exposed hidden truths, but it connected with her, like she knew exactly what the author had gone through in writing it.

“I read that one,” Dan said as he flicked a fire ant off his arm.  “There was a big to-do ‘bout that one ‘round here when it got published, you know, on account of the familiarity of it and all.”

Gabby thought about biting her tongue, but she couldn’t resist.  “I can’t help but notice, but in that story he had a guy in overalls on an orange hammock.  Did he base that character on you?”

“Nah.  I based me on that character.  Honestly, I don’t care for the man.  After the drought, he bought out my deeds forcin’ me out here to the fringes.”

“So you know where he lives?”

“Sure.  Right on the banks of the Oeeokee River.  If you can find it.”

Gabby pulled out her map and studied it.  “Now I know you’re messing with me.  There’s no Oeeokee River on the map.”

He tumbled out of the hammock and stretched his limbs.  “That’s cause it didn’t exist until Mr. Salvador moved in.”  Dan put his finger on the map, leaving an oily smudge where he dragged.  “He dug some trenches along here, moved some boulders around, redirected the flow of that other river you do see here on the map.  Made the old house riverfront property.  Suppose he wanted to make an oxbow, but I guess he didn’t have time to finish.  Problem is the Oeeokee ain’t got nothing to flow into, so it kinda bottles up and busts its banks whenever we get a good rain like we did last night.  Floods the place.  He’s always cleanin’ up the place, but the waters always comin’ in faster than he can clear it out.  That’s what happens when you fight nature’s course.”

“Does he live alone?”

“Yup.  He has some children in town, but he let go of them some time back.  You’ll probably run into them.  Griffin’s a small place.  Maybe they can tell you where to find him.”  He coughed out another laugh.  “You best be goin’.  Storm’s comin’ in.”

He seemed to be ushering her back to her car, now the only vehicle in the dirt parking lot, but Gabby felt somewhat compelled to buy something, at least for Dan’s time.

“How much for that Velasquez print?”

“Ma’am, that ain’t no print.  That is a genuine painting.  Lost Manyness, I think is what it’s called.  It reminds us of when we lost our many niceties.”

“It’s Las Meniñas.  It’s by Velasquez.  It’s like in every art book.”

“Then this Velasca fella’ must’ve copied this work here.”

“It was painted in Spain—”

“Still could’ve seen this one.”

“—like five hundred years ago.”

“How you know so much about art?  You an artist too?”

“Maybe I am.”

“Good luck findin’ your writer friend Mr. Diego Savador.”

Dan walked Gabby to her car, a shiny, new hybrid.  He held her door open as she got in.  She thanked him and said goodbye and tried to pull the door shut, but he held firm.  “They say he killed a man,” he said.

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

“The important thing is if you believe that.  You’re the one goin’ to see him.”  He finally let go of the door.  “But you can’t believe everything you read.”

Gabby pulled out of the dusty parking lot of the antique shop and followed the road north to Griffin.  When she rolled into town, she was struck by the familiarity of the places lining the main road—the pizzeria with the cartoonish pepperoni pizza missing one slice painted on the window, the coffee shop with the wrought iron cafe chairs on the patio—but they existed together like an impossible memory, incongruous with the reality she knew.  She had never been to Griffin before.

She stopped her car when she came to a red light.  She found it peculiar that there should be a stoplight at a point in the road where there was no intersection.  Minutes passed.  Was this what Dan had meant when he said the town wouldn’t let people go?  She was about to run the light when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled up behind her.  She waited longer.  He inched closer.  She didn’t know what to do.  The sheriff turned on the flashing red and blue lights, but she still had nowhere to go without running the light.   Finally, the sheriff pulled alongside her in the southbound lane where oncoming traffic would have been had there been any traffic.  He gestured for her to follow him to the Dairy Queen parking lot.  She followed.

She parked, rolled down her window, turned off her car, put her hands ten-and-two on the wheel, and waited.  The officer walked to her door and leaned in.

“You must be lost.  The road pretty much ends here, or a little ways down the road.  The only people who stop here at this light are people who are lost.  Everyone else just drives on through.  So, what exactly are you doing here?”

Gabby wasn’t sure if she’d done anything wrong.  “I don’t know exactly where I’m going.  I’m looking for a writer,” she said.  “D.F. Salvador.  Do you know him?”

“I sure do!  If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be sheriff!”

“Can you help me find him?”

The sheriff removed his cap and scratched his head.  “Well, you follow this road until it comes to a T-intersection.  Take a left…you know, it’s complicated.”  A few more cars pulled into the parking lot diverting the sheriff’s attention.  “I’m late for a town hall meeting, too.”

“At Dairy Queen?”

“You think we have a town hall?  Look, I’d help you, even drive you out there, if it wasn’t such a big meeting.  It’s our Third of May Celebration tonight.  You should stick around.  Bring your gun.”

“A gun?”

“Yeah.  Everyone fires off at midnight.”

“Wouldn’t that be the fourth of May?” she asked.  The sheriff began to slowly retreat toward the Dairy Queen, and Gabby wasn’t sure if he’d heard her snide question.              “Listen,” he said.  “If you’re looking for your author, just listen for water and head in that direction.  You’ll probably find him in the river.”  He backpedaled a little faster.  “Sorry, I can’t help you more—”

Gabby stepped out of her car and called out, “I heard he has family in town.  Do you know where I can find them?”

The sheriff laughed.  “Everyone in this town is related in one way or another.”  He pointed a finger pistol at Gabby and winked.  “But try to make it tonight.”  He disappeared inside the restaurant.

Suddenly, something prodded Gabby in the back.

She spun around and found a scraggy, one-legged man waving a crutch.  His other arm was in a sling, propped up at a 90 degree angle.  “You’re looking for Diego Salvador, aren’t you?” he said, falling hard back onto his crutch.  “Do not let him see you or he will use you.  He will, he will use you.  You know, he did this to me.”  His eyes were expressionless, but she quickly realized it was because he had no eyebrows.  He was painfully lacking.

“You know where to find him?” she asked.

“Last time I went looking for him, this happened to me,” he said, nodding to his limp arm.  “Here.  Take this.”  He held out the crutch.  “I need to give you something.  Hurry!  Take it!  Do you want me to help you or not!”

She put a hand on his shoulder and took the crutch.

He continued to hop around while he searched his pants.  He yanked out a gun.  Gabby recoiled, nearly making him fall in the process.  “Gimme my crutch,” he said.  He waved the gun wildly as he tried to balance himself.  “Here.  Take this,” he said, offering the gun.  “Trade.  Gimme my crutch.  Quick!  Before I fall and break my one good limb.”

She didn’t want it, but she she didn’t want to see him fall either.  And she certainly didn’t want the gun to go off accidentally, so she took it.  It felt warm and heavy in her hands.

“You seem like a nice girl.” the man said.  “You have a name?”

“Gabby.”

“You’re a lucky one, I can tell.  I just don’t want to see what happened to me happen to you.  It ain’t easy being half a man.”

She tried to hand the gun back to him.  “I’m sure he didn’t intentionally hurt you.”

He pushed it away.  “Are you his mouthpiece now?  He’s using you and you don’t even know it.”

“I don’t need a gun,” she said.

“Keep it.  I really have no reason for carrying it.  I guess I just had it for the celebration.”  He smile widely.  “But tonight, you’re the celebration.”

Gabby pulled the gun closer to her.  “I don’t know what you want me to do with this.”

“You’ll need it.  I’ll show you exactly how to get there, but first you have to promise to me to do something.”

She followed the directions, moving slowly down the path.  She had been warned not to startle him.  She had been warned not to step in his shadow or pass over his reflection.  The one-legged man had warned of many things, but the consequences of ignoring the warnings were vague.  As long as she beat the storm, which gathered strength at the edge of the tree line, she’d find him on the river, which would be the “safest place to confront him.”

It was when she felt the first twinge in her chest that she first turned around and assessed her progress, wondering if she’d be able to return the same way she came or if she’d even recognize the path from a flipped perspective.  Why had she trusted the one-legged man over her own instincts?  She closed her eyes and dampness closed in on her senses until it filled her body.  Thunder just beyond the tree line.  The natal smell of rain.  Water.  Water flowing.  She opened her eyes and followed the sound.  She hopped over prickly plants, trusting the stability of makeshift stepping stones.

Finally, a shallow stream swarmed around her ankles.  She’d reached the outer nerves of the Oeeokee River.  The little house was where she knew it would be, but she knew D.F. would not be inside.  Upriver, a cluster of boulders parted the river, unleashing rapids on one side and a calm flow on the other.  A small tree sprouted from the largest of the boulders.

She mapped her way there, choosing the flattest rocks and stones and imagining the occasional leaps and feats of balance that would be required to reach the cluster.  She knew she’d find him there on the other side of the largest boulder.

She moved quickly but quietly.  A few rays of sun broke through the clouds.  Her shadow danced along the boulders until her shape took form in the reflection of the river. She was aware of her pounding heart as she climbed atop the boulder.  She gave one final look at where she’d come from and she caught a glance of her reflection, full and colorful, in the river below.  She felt more resolute than ever as she pulled herself atop the boulder.

There he was under the shade of the tree, his back to her, his journal in his hands.  The rolling water obscured her footsteps as she crept up behind him.  Before she did anything else, she had to see what he had written.

On the page were two sentences and his hand hovered above, prepared to add more.  She moved closer to read what he had written.

The only way to get there is to pass through Griffin.  No one wants nothing to do with Griffin.”

            Then

Gabby arrived

Don’t Search My Bags

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Don’t search my bags
I don’t know
I don’t know
what is in there
yes I packed
yes I packed my bags

lemme pass
take a chance
lemme pass
I’m in a hurry
to move on
I’m movin’ on

I’m dyin’
yes I am
but not a drug
for this man
just need a wave and a nod
to get me goin’ on

do you really wanna see
all the baggage in the bag
all the crap
that I have
and listen to my story
of how I got what I packed?

ain’t got the time
or the tissue
or the drops for the eyes
threw away
all the tears
‘cause I knew they had to go

where I go is where I go
do you really wanna know?
if you’d seen where I’d been
you’d zip it up again
and let me through
and let me through

here it is
see it all
do you wanna hold me?
grab my wrist
check your list
did you miss
anything
anything at all?

what I say is who I am and
what I am is what you’d say
is a mess of a man
with a bundle in his bag.
not a threat
just a mess

did we really need to check it?

What Ayahuasca is Like

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The ayahuasca root

The ayahuasca looked like sludge.  I was afraid to smell it.  I’d never done any kind of mind-altering drugs, and I knew ayahuasca would be an intense initiation into hallucinogenics.  I felt somewhat comforted by the shaman’s presence.  He was experienced with this and there to guide me.  In Ecuador, despite the government’s harsh stance on drugs (ask any of the foreigners stuck in jail for a few years for possession of pot), ayahuasca is legal when taken with a shaman.

Don Alfonso scooped a larger bowl for himself.  “Be careful that you dream the right dream, or your dream may become a nightmare,” he said.  He studied me then began to laugh.  “Do you know why you’re here?”

I started to suspect that he, like myself, was a little drunk.  “Do you know why I’m here?” I asked.

“You are searching for something.  It was not chance that your aunt brought the picture of the Cayramashi.  Tonight, I’m going to find it.  We’ll find it together,” he said.  “The Cayramashi carries the wisdom of a hundred great shamans’ minds.  I always dreamed a visitor from far away would lead me to it.”  He drank his bowl.

Being alone with the shaman underneath his cabin amidst a chorus of a million singing insects inspired a faith in the mystical journey that’s hard to describe.  Perhaps it’s kind of like how listening to Mozart’s Mass in C minor in a Renaissance cathedral can draw spirituality out of the most hardened atheist.  I closed my eyes and gulped it as fast as I could, spilling some onto my Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville t-shirt.

“Ask the yaje a question.”

The only question I had at the moment was when am I going to vomit.  I knew that ayahuasca could be dangerous and that vomiting was necessary to clear the worst toxins from your system.  Immediately, the drink felt indigestible.  I slumped over.  Across from me, the shaman closed his eyes and leaned back, satisfied as if savoring a fine Cabernet.  I tried to stand and pace the room, but my legs felt wobbly.  I sat back down and waited.  After about fifteen minutes, the shaman strolled over to a bush, and vomited in fiery heaves.  But his bowl had been bigger than mine, so perhaps the sickness had come more quickly for him.  He returned to his seated position across from me and fixed his eyes on mine.

I relaxed and took in the sounds of the jungle and concentrated on controlling my breathing.  I wanted to be calm.  Upon closing my eyes, the blackness in my mind was filled with brilliant colors shooting off like fireworks.  Each sound blossomed into shapes of varying animals.  I saw the vibrant outlines of monkeys, snakes, insects, birds, and jaguars.  They would vanish almost as quickly as they appeared.  At times it was so overwhelming I grew dizzy and opened my eyes.  In the visible world outside my mind, the shadows around me came alive, nothing creepy or psychedelic, just alive.  When I closed my eyes again, the shapes reappeared, but I discovered if I narrowed my focus to just one sound in the jungle, everything would go black.

“Why have I not gotten sick?” I asked.

“Don’t fight it.  Let the ayahuasca escape your body.”

“I’m trying!”

“You can’t make it happen.  Let it happen.”

I returned to my images and let a lazy smile curl onto my face.  Everything was going to be okay if I surrendered myself to the jungle, to the ayahuasca, and to the world.  Soon after, the toxins began their flight from my body; I walked to a bush and vomited.  When I returned, the shaman was aglow, not literally, but aglow is the best way I can describe it.  It was as if I could see his emotions, his kindness, his curiosity.  It was an amazing feeling, being that connected.

“Fly with me,” Don Alfonso said when I returned.

Truth be told, I didn’t see the images the shaman saw when he departed on his journey, though I wanted to.  Besides the fireworks display in my mind, there was nothing else.  “Where are we going?” I asked, still playing along.

“Follow me down the river,” he said.  The shaman described the terrain on our travels, but I could only imagine navigating over the brown river and soaring over kapok trees.

I don’t remember when he put out the fire underneath the pot.  I don’t remember when I lay on my back.  The world’s transformation before my eyes was so gradual and seamless that I never suspected the departure from my former universe of precision and reality to the shaman’s world of spiritual fantasy.  Concentrating on his voice made the crude but colorful outlines of animals disappear.  But when he asked, “Do you see the great red tree below?” I opened my eyes and saw it below me.

“Sure,” I answered.  I was soaring high above the trees and darkness had turned to daylight.  I didn’t see my wings; I was more like a particle of air floating through space.  The shaman was a man yet a bird with his colorful feathers.  All of this seemed absolutely normal.  And I did see the red tree.  It seemed as if it had been transported from a New England autumn to the jungle.

He swooped down to the earth and I followed, but when I reached the ground, I had difficulty moving.  I found myself inching towards the red tree.  Now, the shaman was a leaping from tree to tree.  Without speaking, he urged me to follow him.

“Why can’t I move?” I asked.  “Why can’t I fly anymore?”  An incredible weight was stopping me.

“Hey!” a voice called out.

I looked to my side and saw a turtle next to me—not at my feet, but next to me.  His head seemed enormous.

“You can’t go that way,” it said.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t belong in there.  Our home is outside the jungle.  Besides, the anaconda blocks the only path.”

A giant anaconda was rolled up in a coil, apparently sleeping.  A swarm of vicious flies hovered over its muscular body.  I looked around for the shaman, but he was gone.

“Then I’ll go over it,” I said.

The turtle laughed.  “You can’t get over it.”

I crept up to the snake.  Just as I prepared to crawl over him, he whipped out his tongue and flicked it rapidly.  Then, with amazing quickness, he uncoiled his head and came at me with his fangs.  I pulled back and suddenly found myself in a cave.  I could hear the anaconda’s voice.

“You shouldn’t have gone down this path.  Why are you so foolish?” He waited for me to answer, but I didn’t want to give away my hiding spot by speaking. So I remained silent.  The anaconda laughed.  “You think you can hide safely under that shell?  I can flip you over, pull you out, and devour you.”

I felt his head start to burrow beside me.  I quickly dug myself into a hole making it impossible for him to get under me to flip me over.

“He laughed again.  “What a hole you’re in now!  You can’t stay there forever.  Eventually you’ll have to come out.”

A flash of light swept briefly before my eyes.  And then again.  First it was a flash of red.  Then a flash of green.  The colors were iridescent and beautiful.  Finally darkness was lifted completely and I was again face to face with the anaconda.  His gaze, however, was skyward.  I looked up at the brilliant colors blazing through the sky.  It was the Cayramashi.  My spirits were lifted and I wanted to be with its beauty.  My shell was in its talons.  It flew on into the jungle.  I had a surge of energy.  I rose to my feet and leapt over the anaconda before he could react.  I raced through the forest with amazing speed.  I was a jaguar.  I jumped over fallen trees and burst through dense foliage as easily as a bird flies through a cloud.  The Cayramashi was overhead, appearing and disappearing behind the leaves of the trees.

Finally, the Cayramashi came to a stop and perched itself high on a hill.  I tried to follow but the hill was slippery and steep.  I couldn’t gain enough traction to climb.  High above, the shaman sat next to the Cayramashi, but neither he nor the bird offered any help.  “Patience,” he said.

Then an explosion blasted through the forest.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Hunters.”

I heard another shot.  Closer.  I panicked.  “What are they hunting?”

“Probably jaguars.”

I looked for a place to run.  Another shot rang out, this one closer.  My eyes opened.  “What was that?”

The shaman was sitting across from me.  A candle lay burning between us.  “Hunters.  Don’t worry.  They’re on the other side of the river.”

“What are they hunting?”

“Jaguars, probably.”

“Did I already ask you that?”

“Don’t worry about it.  Sleep.”

I put my hands on my head and felt my hair, and my forehead, and my nose, and my ears.  I lay back down on the ground and closed my eyes.  The jungle noise once again filled my ears and fading glitters of light poked through the blackness in my mind until I fell asleep.

Dodgeballery

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(A sensical poem inspired by Jabberwocky)

‘Twas bleak and my slimy foes
Did gain throughout the game
So flimsy were my teammates’ throws
At last, only I remained.

“Beware the dodgeballs and run!
Don’t lose your fight and make the catch!
Watch out for Eric Anderson—
He’ll try to finish out the match!”

I took the red ball in hand
One against five I fought.
And while my ousted teammates cheered
One—two—three balls I caught.

One against two is how it stood
And Anderson with eyes of flame
Came charging over the shiny wood
And snarled, hissed, and aimed.

One-two, one-two I ducked and threw—
My red ball made a smack.
I had hit his head so hard and firm
He landed squarely on his back.

Finally, it was one on one
And my teammates cheered with joy:
“Way to play!  Hooray Hooray!
You’re the miracle dodgeball boy”

‘Twas bleak yet my slimy foes
Did fall before my aim.
But so flimsy was my final throw
It was caught —I’d lost the game.

Distracted Writing at a Coffee Shop

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I was working on a novel filled with shady characters when a guitar/piano duet entered the coffee shop followed by their adoring fan.

She comes to support the two guys who are playing background music at a coffee shop at a volume so low you can only hear it if you’re sitting within five feet of them.  The guitar player is lightly finger-strumming on a nylon guitar and bobs his head in syncopation with the beat as if he’s feelin’ it even as the customers are barely hearin’ it.  The piano player tickles the treble, white keys while ignoring the black ones.  His left hand is dead in his lap.  Bashful musicians.  She sits and eats a sandwich.  Taps her feet to the staggered rhythm.  Sways to the beat.  Smiles.  Silently snaps her fingers in approval when a song finishes.  She is the only one listening or paying attention.  But she doesn’t feel awkward about it.  She is completely invested.  The guitar player text messages someone between songs while the piano player plays arpeggios.  When there’s a lull, she texts as well.  The piano player falsettos some Richard Marx and she laughs a cozy laugh, the kind that causes the shoulders to scrunch inward and the eyes to squint.  Next song she sighs, looks down in reflection for just a moment as if to regather her enthusiasm, then resumes her swaying for a little bit.  After this song she snaps with only one finger.  She’s fading, staring off into nothing, but still engages the guys with supportive smiles.  They’re why she’s here.  But she is the brightest star in the coffee shop.