Archive for February, 2010

In my view, our founding fathers intended the filibuster as a sort of time out.  Procedural brakes.

Not an off switch.

In sports, the number of timeouts is limited.  Think about it.

The idea of unmitigated majority rule isn’t philosophically congruent with democracy.  I would argue it to be far more socialist than what which we claim to aspire to.  All for one and all.  I imagine the framers of our constitution intended to protect us from it.  Mob rule.  The meek of body versus the genetically inferior of brain.  See what I’m saying?  You never know.  Gorillas against Apes.

I’m not sure it should be messed with at all.  There are alternatives like reconciliation.  I would not change the majority number mandated for cloture.  The spirit of the filibuster has been machiavellianly tainted by teabaggers.  Abused, maligned and exploited.  It has been vulgarized.  Think of amphibious precipitation.  Imagine the smack and gore of it.  They live for this shit.  Think CPAC.  A carnival of the clueless lacking all but charisma.

These bastards are pricks.  I’m not gonna bother to look it up because I know they’ve been shameless in threatening and invoking the filibuster.  Off the charts historically.  Trust me.

I know it’s bad.  Maybe we should consider limiting the number of times it can be played.  Like in football or basketball.  I’m obstreperously enthusiastic about making them actually fucking filibuster.  It’s retarded to stand around swinging a bat all day if you never even have to hit a ball or run the bases.  It’s so stupid.  Do what you gotta do.  When they threaten to actually Ball, throw them a goddamn strike.  Throw it hard.  Make them take the conch and pontificate until they look like dicks.  Then take the conch away.

What is there to lose?

And so just walk around them.  Reconciliation.  My last count was 19 senators including Reid and 118 congressman getting all vocal and signing on to something about a Public Option via reconciliation.  Understand you fucks, when the mandate to buy in without a robust public option got by you, you lost me.  You fuckers, our fuckers, have been flirting with us too much.  You better goddamn be serious this time.  This is what we “progressives” expect.  Get it done.  Whatever means necessary.  Don’t fly a plane into Limbaugh’s ass or Hannity’s vag, try not to sew Palin up.  You just better not be kidding this time.

Remember that Civil Rights thing was dicey for a while………

Conservatives think liberals are anti-American.  We aren’t.  I’m not.  There’s only one other country I’d ever consider being born in.  Maybe two.  Liberals know that conservatives are stupid or at least willfully ignorant.  Their guns, a woman’s right to choose and fear of people with alternative skin tones blinds them to every other salient issue or policy.  Forgive my sweeping generalizations but they are nothing if not simple and predictable.  I know some.  Good people.  Generous, bright and funny but lack the prerequisite intellectual curiosity for the big picture.  Not the capacity but the curiosity.

They in fact, refuse it.  I like these people, I’m related to some of them.  They refuse to be informed.  With the exception of these men, all other self identified right wingers are fucktards.  Assholes.  A group that thinks they are smarter than they are while they equate knowledge with elitism.

I have no idea what to do about that and it’s not my job.

No matter what happens, we have the conch for ten more months at least.   Blow my skirt up.

Drinks for my friends.

I’m here for glucose.  I have a special tube that collects it.  Looks like a long horn.

I’m like a humming bird.

When you first lay eyes on me you’ll probably think about children’s books, like Dr. Seuss or maybe Sendak.  I’m odd.  I look like an aardvark kinda.  I’m very friendly and enjoy picnics and barbecues.  I eat anything and every thing but my tube gets clogged easily.  I turn blue.  I love cheese but it clogs my tube.  Beans, meat and pasta make me fart.  They also clog my tube.

It’s a small town so at first, people had no idea what to think or do.  I’m sure I looked a cartoon to them.  I did my best to be non threatening.  Non confrontational.  I learned to dance.  Trimmed my nails.  It sucks to be pastel purple.  I pack a blunderbuss.   I can pepper anyone inside of five or seven feet.  I wear lip gloss, mascara and perfume.  Giant hoop earrings.

I’m a tuber.  A root that grows in the ground.  You can eat me.  I’m nutritious.

Mom shops the sales.  The new bottle/dispenser of soap at the kitchen sink was a dollar.  On special post Christmas was this Christmas scented liquid.  Vanilla and fig, I think.  Took me a day to figure it out but it smells like strippers.  Eau De Titty Bar.  I tell my mother this and she’s the tiniest bit taken aback.  I’m all nostalgic.  Having enough money to hold court in a Vegas strip joint is royalness.

She needs a nickname.  Sean calls his mom “Bob”.  I like that.  I think I want to call my mother “Sweeney.”  I had other ideas but they were too many syllables.  Had to be one or two max.  Plus it rhymes with her real name.  I thought about “Jim” for a while.  Couldn’t get used to it.  My mother isn’t any kind of “Jim”.  What she is, is a Sweeney.

I confess, I’m not sure how I’ll do this.  I’ll be subtle and respectful.  I’ll drop it in.  It will take some time.  Patience.

At one point I’ll make her read this.  If I really want her to read something, I leave a post-it on the end of the kitchen faucet.

Sometimes I forget I did so and she has to ask if I want to know what she thinks after 4:30 during gin & tonics and cigarettes with at least one of two propane heaters blazing on the portico.  She is funny and doesn’t really know it.  She cracks me up.  She never stops moving.  I love her.  Oh man.

Kraut Dogs.

Ballparks sliced down the middle and fried in copious amounts of butter and granulated garlic.  Chop yellow onions.  The idea is to make the dogs  begin to curl a little as the butter browns and the garlic blackens.  Kick out the jams and toast the buns (endorsement of Ballpark buns) in the oven.  Then, slather them with mayonnaise and be generous with the mustard.  Best food mayo and anything other than some vanilla American mustard like French’s.  Guldens is good.  I once had a cognac mustard.  It made me weep.

Whatever.  By now you should’ve drained and nuked the Kraut and added celery salt to taste.  Be liberal with it.  The celery salt.

Immediately out of the oven, place a large store sliced square of authentic Swiss cheese on the bread at a right angle and follow up by spinning a smaller square of imitation smoked Swiss 45 degrees in any direction and placing it on top of the larger cheese.  It should look like a star.  Trust me.

Apply the greasy dogs immediately.  I like to cook with tongs and this whole operation goes smoother with tongs.

Onions generously and then the kraut.

Haven’t had it in a few years but maybe a Mondavi fume’ blanc?  I hate that it’s not in the frosted bottle anymore.

Open faced.  Fork and knife.

Macaroni salad.

Drinks for my friends.

By day I’m an excellent student of the fourth grade.  I turn in my homework.  I act the part.

Simultaneously, I am something else, an agent for an organization not unlike Starfleet.  We too have a General Order Number One.  A Prime Directive.  To interfere as little as possible in certain situations.  That’s all I can tell you.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to surveil.  In time I will study explosives.  I will blow shit up.  Then I will learn to play the drums.  I am here for your safety.

Just another day at the office until I notice our star, the sun, looks low in the sky.

A chilly willy.  My hairs are up.

Warm winter wind blows through the afternoon.  Before sundown it’s gray and still.  Then cold.  Nature begins it’s work slow and methodical.  Frozen drops and crystals appear in the air.  Flakes the size of my thumb in no time.  I’m rooting for it to pile up all night long.  I’m watching bone white cereal waft, lit by porches and cars.

Black & White TV and dinner and then a little more TV.

News.

Cronkite and Sevareid.

Get Smart or Hogan’s Heroes…………..

I’m in the bottom bunk thinking about snow and listening to the radio.

Morning comes.  Everything is different.  I saw it coming but had no idea.  It is grandiose.

A massive amount of snow has changed the world.  The desert seceded to the moon last night.  Wind bequeathed silence.  Cars and fences are now mounds exaggerated.  The sun blasts and hides behind cirrus smears.  I can’t believe it.  I step out onto the porch expecting the old cold to smart but it doesn’t.  The quiet roars.  I am hushed completely.  It sparkles all milky silica soapy snow cone and I get that the blanket is powdery and crunchy.

No school today.  An expedition is in order post haste.

Thick socks, heavy flannel shirt and a scarf.  I bundle and wrap in boots, new gloves and a shiny down coat. I put on my father’s full face motorcycle helmet with the smoked shield.  My sister lets me know right away she’ll be telling on me.  I don’t care for what.  I head out through the airlock.

The sibling I’ve been paired with is a pain in the ass.  She should piss up a rope.

“Giant steps are what you take, walkin’ on the moon.” -This song from the future

The chomp of my feet through the crust is self fulfilling.  The isolation of complete insulation afforded by my makeshift space suit is comforting.  The landscape is distorted so profoundly that is suspends my disbelief.  I’m on the moon, listening to my own breath.  I am on the moon and moving with the slow deliberation necessary for so little gravity.  I know that merely lifting the visor on my helmet will expose me to enough radiation to fry my eyeballs in seconds.

“I hope my leg don’t break, walkin’ on the moon”. -from the musical future

Without the protection of my air tight, state of the art, scientifically advanced astronaut suit, my fate would be horrible but instant.  I’d be baked to a cinder of carbon or quick frozen to a temperature where even oxygen is a liquid and just before either of those things, the air would be vacuumed from my torso like a gaping hole in the fuselage of an airliner at 37,000 feet.

Suction!

I must be careful. The environment is hostile.

All things are threatening.  The trees are festooned with ice.  The only sound is chunks of ice and snow thumping to the ground.  There are oil barrels outside other people’s trailers on makeshift scaffold.  Giant unstable Xs made with 2 x 4s.  “Tubafors”.  Smells like kerosene or diesel.  I’d never noticed them and now I’m upon them.  I crunch up to a tricycle; the only thing showing is a foil and cellophane streamer, flapping and glinting.  I feel that vague dread I get during Civil Defense and Fire drills or when we’re cooking something we caught or killed.

I can no longer afford to only look through the shield.  This is too much.  I understand that my powers allow for some exposure.

I’m so in awe of what I see that my entire premise dials all the way back left and down.  I flip up my visor the better to see.  No more fantasy.  I’m no longer from anywhere but here and what has happened is astounding.  All living things must now deal with ice and snow.  All inanimate objects and structures are under winter’s influence as well.  I worry about the load, the weight and the cold.

Breath is vapor.

Swords of ice a yardstick long dangling and sweating in shadows.  The day warms as the snow shrinks and turns barely blue. Water rushes everywhere.  There are tiny swift streams under the thick blanket of crusty white.  I hear them.  They flow toward the street.  I’m enchanted by the mystery of flows I can only hear.  Like wind.  At yard’s edge is a microcosm of what fields of glaciers must be like and it’s all the way down my block.

I’m off and down the road.  There are places I want to see.  I discover far more substantial flows.  Fast moving streams.  Gullies rushing.  I take off my gloves to try my hands at redirecting the water.  I use rocks and boards and broken brush.  Gravity.  I make a small lake in a desert field.  It drains to the south east and I realize that’s where it’s all going.

Clouds begin to gather and the snow turns barely green.  Blocks from home and carrying my father’s helmet under my arm like a fighter pilot.  Time to get back to the airlock.  I’m thinking about oatmeal and it’s warmth in my belly.  It’s begun to fall again.  Marvelous because the sun is still streaming from the west.  I walk a while in silence thinking and listening.  It’s really starting to dump.  I can’t see but a few feet in front of me.

I’m downhill from home.

Within minutes, all traces of movement are coated and disappearing.  It is quiet.

It is beautiful.  Spectacular.

I am in awe.

Getting cold.

I put my father’s helmet back on……….

The wind whips.

With the visor up, I can only look at the ground or the snow blows into my eyes.  With the visor down, I can barely see out of it and it fogs up in seconds.  I do the best I can to hang my head and look to the sides but I can’t see.  I don’t recognize anything and I don’t know where I am.

My bowels are percolating.

I need to go Northwest.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve let the nail on my left thumb grow.

It weighs an outrageous amount.

Subject to subtle surges of gravity.

It wedges and snags on things for days.

I can’t wait to clip it but I understand exactly why I’ve let it go this long.  It offends me.  I hate it.  I can’t help it.  My left arm tingles with the anticipation of eliminating it.  Sometimes at night, the left thumb aches from it’s weight.  It is ponderous.

I loathe it because it collects black grime and constantly informs me of it’s presence.  It disgusts me.  Even though I am able to help it, I can’t.  I just can’t.

I must do it now.  Right now.  I can’t stand it.  The need for relief from the mass I’ve allowed has reached past solvency.  I no longer understand it.  One compulsion usurps another.  This is crazy.  It won’t leave me alone.  It pulses like a sore tooth.  It digs at me.  I look at my hands and the symmetry is disrupted almost violently.  It’s a rogue tooth.

Why have I done this?  It’s an affront.  Yellow like corn at the end and clay from my everyday life embedded at it’s base.

Inside it.

It offends.

I want to scratch it against something filthy.

I consider smashing it with a hammer or making it pop like a grape in a vice.  My thumb.

Giant, pastel green grasshoppers suddenly suffer mass abdominal explosions, yielding orange flavored Tick Tacks of soft and sticky shrapnel.  Barely any sound.  I imagine my overgrown thumbnail digging at the giant tangerine rice grasshopper eggs ………

The time is now.  It is my Tell Tale Heart.  I rip up the floorboards.  A heart beats beneath.

I’ve done it.  I’m lighter.  Didn’t wait until I got outside.  Sheared it off over the kitchen sink with giant steel toe incisors.  Not sure it’s short enough but I’m relieved.  Relaxed.  It was a wet fish I stuffed into my pants on purpose.  Ocular organs of grasshoppers crisping and popping beneath my eye teeth.  Ants and mosquitos mingle in my gullet sharing heartburn.  They dance in my colon and I crap like a goose.

I need a shower.

My right thumbnail is still innocent.  Virginal.

Drinks for my friends.

45% of the world’s entire defense budget is spent by the U.S.  The top five health insurers profits are up 56% over last year.  About 18,000 people a year die for lack of health insurance.  Some 1,500 Americans lose their health insurance everyday.  Unemployment hovers around 10%.  60% percent of bankruptcies are prompted by medical bills, an increase of near 50% in the last six years.  Over 75% of those people actually had health insurance.  10 of the largest health insurance companies enjoyed a profit increase of 428% from 2000 to 2007.

We spend billions a month on two elective wars and hundreds of thousands have died.  Most of them had nothing to do with it.  There are more contractors than soldiers, but the former makes six times as much as the latter and we sign all the checks.  These contractors aren’t subject to the rule of law.  You think our military tortures?  Cake and ice cream anyone?

Keep war in context as we talk about the rest of it.

I just puked in my mouth a little.

Wanna know why?  Not only because of the avarice, not only because the health insurance industry spends in excess of a million dollars a day to maintain this most disgusting of status quos.  Not only because we are the only industrialized nation, as well as the richest, without health care for it’s citizens.  No, it’s not just that.  It’s that too many of our own citizens have succumbed to a fear of mere words they can’t be bothered to look up in the goddamn dictionary.  Words like socialism.  A word that many Americans believe to be synonymous with words like communism or even fascism.   I have little patience for stupidity.  I fucking loathe intellectual laziness and especially willful ignorance.  It’s not just that.  It’s that our own elected representatives foment such fear and vote against the best interests of the very people they are paid to protect from the onslaught of such wealth and evil.

It’s that a super majority of 60 democratic senators is unable to deliver a fair and equitable health care reform bill because of obstinance, obstruction and overwhelming plutocratic prerogative.  It’s that an actual movement, a titular “party”, has emerged to buttress any and all nonsense propagated by these assholes of industry, these pillars of piety who would take our money along with the filthy lucre of every corporation, interest group, grassroots or astroturf organization et. al. and behave as though they are beholding to no one save those that can buy or steal the next election.

The absurdity of the Tea Party makes my eyes water and my head ache like I’ve snorted wasabi.  Lowest common denominator.  “The 1/4 Paradigm”.  You can’t fix stupid.  Your best bet with these folks is to smile and wave.

The Republicans piss and moan about transparency in the health care process but as soon as they are afforded a public forum, they holler foul.  It must be a trap.  Jon Stewart so eloquently pointed out that a paper bag is only a trap if you can’t punch your way out of it.  It is to be a public discussion/debate on one of the most important policy issues of the day, not Little Bighorn.  What he’s saying is they’re afraid and the only reason is because they’ve got nothing.  They have precisely dick.  Fuck all.

Not only that, but we are pissing blood and crapping treasure.  Money and lives.  We should at least be on a gurney headed toward an emergency room.  We should probably be wondering,  just what the big dicked hooker happened?

We’re out of money and that doesn’t seem to be fazing anyone.  What happens when we run out of lives?

John Boehner’s office called this actual house yesterday.  House Republican Leader.  I answered.  The man on the other end asked for my father by name and said where he was from.  I asked him to repeat himself.  I heard right.  I told him politely that nobody in this house would want to talk to him.  He asked if I was a Democrat.  I said you fuckin’ A.  I told him that Boehner was an idiot and had a ridiculous spray on tan.  He thanked me and hung up.

Mother was disturbed they had our number.  I was thinking I coulda really milked that shit.

Drinks for my friends.

1. It won’t matter because according to the Mayan calendar, the world’s going to end anyway.

2. She’s  arguably HOT and definitely STUPID.

3. It’s unlikely the GOP will embrace her so she’ll “go rogue”,  run third party and split the mouthbreather vote.

4. Oh, the carnival.  Oh, the burlesque.  Sloganeering and jingoism will be the new vaudeville.  Late night television will crackle with the glut of comic opportunity.  I confess, this phenomena is much anticipated by yours truly.  It’s probably my guiltiest ulterior for hoping it all comes to pass.  Well, maybe not.

Somewhere in here McCain will fold in upon himself and blow away.

5.  The world will finally own the demarcation, previously a fine line, between the clever and the stupid America.  My very own “1/4 Paradigm”, will be accepted as an archetype by sociologists and political scientists across the globe.  The “1/4 Paradigm” posits that at least 25% of Americans are incorrigibly dumb.  Nixon’s approval rating was around 25% when forced to resign to avoid all out impeachment.  Dumbya’s was about the same when he left office.  These are the people who still believe Hussein was behind 9/11, Obama is a Muslim and not a citizen and that you might be queer if you don’t like steak or fail to objectify females and various ethnicities.  The Teabaggers who are still all obsequious for Reagan, despite that he raised taxes at least five times (mostly on the wealthy), tripled the deficit and expanded the federal government by some 61,000 employees.  The people who bring loaded firearms to peaceful political events when there own icon was felled by the bullet of some whackjob exactly like them.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The Great Unwashed.  The “1/4 Paradigm”.

6. Hunter S. Thompson said famously, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”.  I’m really hoping this little prophecy finds some purchase.  I understand this is congruous with reason number four but still, I can’t wait to see what the opposition affords us.  The neoliberal may finally emerge as some metaphorical anti-matter to the the neoconservative and we’ll finally enjoy the grace and promise of a reasonably sane and progressive society.  It could happen.  What would a neoliberal be like?  How would it manifest?  Discuss.

7. Millions of little girls will come to know that they too, can do anything……………as long as they don’t buy their own shit and believe they’re something they’re not.  Something they have no idea about.  Learn to recognize when they’re in over their heads.  Maybe they’ll teach it to little boys.  See, this could be good.

8. Honestly, the effect on men if she won would be fascinating.  If roughly the same number of bigots and he-man woman haters came out of the woodwork as did racists when Obama got elected, we’d have quite a show.  A lot of men would suddenly wear their inner asshole on the outside.  Trust me.  Lift kits will sell like guns.

9. I really want her loser ass to get plowed.  I want to see her humiliated.  I thought Dumbya was an empty suit.  I’d punch Dick Cheney if I had the chance.  I just don’t have much patience for people who think they’re smarter than they actually are.  I’ve dealt with them.  I want to push her face in.  Most of us understand she’s a two dimensional attention whore who’s never thought more than a few minutes into the immediate future.  I have no respect for her and I want to see her disrespected.  Politically and metaphorically, I want to see her taste her own blood.

I bet I just made somebody’s list.

10. See number nine.

Drinks for my friends.

I just can’t stand it.  Life always imitating art.  The way art endeavors to imitate life.  The circle closes rarely for reasons other than mere serendipity.  It’s never on purpose or for any reason we are able to divine.  We spend our lives looking to make sense of it and it refuses.  It walks away without a word. It could not care less what we think or what troubles us.

I’m sure of one thing.  It reveals nothing to no one.  There is no game and there is no fate.  Everyone you know who thinks they’ve got it figured out is lying to you and themselves.  It is random.  Despite prophecy, religion or dogma.  I’m not sure math owns the show at all.  I think the universe barely affords the concept of time for example.  At the very least, it does so in a way we won’t conceive or imagine for much longer than we’ll be able to conceive or imagine because our time here is at best a mote in the eye of a spectacular and incomprehensible cosmos.  This I believe at the end of the year of our lord, 2009.

Whatever.

That is not to say justice should not be pursued.  Philanthropy, yes.  Self educate by all means.  Aspire to kindness and compassion.  Eat right and exercise if you must.  People should strive to be as good as they can for a reason that is simultaneously as insignificant as it is fundamental; as far as we know we have but one shot.  In that one run at it, we only have ourselves.

I’m really beginning to own that.

The only magic is brains and the only miracle is will.

A train of thought that sounds like a bowling alley in my head.  Or a train.

My legs are killing me.  I seem to be gaining strength, but they go from sore to searing in seconds.  I’m glad I remembered my cane.

“Coffee on the veranda?” His head bobs while the car absorbs the road.  He strokes his beard without looking at me.

I lean forward to look him in the eye and to say things to him absolutely.  I tell Him I’m beyond scared.  I tell him I’m horrified.

I hold his gaze and thank him as sincerely as I can.   I tell him I have questions.

“We have time to talk today.  My villa is not far.”

This is the furthest south I’ve ever been, everything looks tropical. The grounds are lush and manicured.  Gravel and stone paths.  Palms and grasses.  Plump cactus and moss just a few feet away.  Desert flowers. I glimpse a robust stand of cannabis through some trees.  A handful of fountains and sculptures. The air is perfumed with an organic that is damp and sweet.

It’s humid and cool.

I’m happy to be here.   I feel better.

The driver opens my door and it’s the last I see of him.  He’s never looked at me.  Not once.

Carlo walks me to the door.  The house itself is fairly modest.  Like an early twentieth century LA bungalow.  Broad granite steps to a deck of thick hardwood trailing around both sides.  The entire roof, including the deck, is charcoal to gray or in the turquoise of oxidation.  There is copper everywhere.

Some of it glistens and some a myriad shade of greens.

It seems the whole house has a copper exoskeleton.

Must be a riot in a storm.  Maybe he has seances for Nikola Tesla.  I’m smiling.

The twin front doors are heavy and black. Carlo opens them with a little practiced effort.  Ceremonious but subtle.

I half expected a manservant.

Inside is rustic.   A river stone fireplace of water polished rocks with a heavy wooden mantle.   Silver candlesticks, pictures in elaborate frames and brightly colored glass.   A pot boils over a small flame from coals.  There must be a housekeeper at least.  The floors are dark slate and stone or hardwood.  Beautiful, thick rugs and sturdy furniture.  Blankets and pillows.  Plenty of sunlight through giant framed windows, diffused as the the deck wraps around the house excepting the north side.

The fog has not burned off completely.

On the right is the living area with a high ceiling, the fireplace with pot boiling and beyond that, what looks like a book lined den.  On the left is a small dining area and a large kitchen facing north.  The appliances are robust and sturdy but not new. The floor and counter tops are terra cotta.  There’s a pot rack suspended from chains over and island.  Copper and stainless steel vessels glisten.  Blenders, juicers, toasters and processors, none too modern, festoon the counters and gleam.

It smells of smoke and apples and good tobacco.

It feels cluttered but everything shines in an obvious place.

Carlo grinds coffee beans with some hand powered device I’ve never seen.  Wearing some kind of welding glove, he takes the black pot from the fireplace.  We sit on stools at a small but high iron table with a wooden top.  There’s an old glass French press, a small pitcher of cream and a small glass bowl filled with chunky unrefined brown sugar.  Two spoons, two heavy mugs.

My guess is someone forgot about the veranda.

From the device, he pours ground beans into the press and the boiling water over them.  The aroma makes me crave it. He seals the top with the plunger up and says, “Now we wait.”  He is smiling.

He retreats to the kitchen and returns with a small plate of fruit and bread.  Strawberries, melon, papaya, mango, grapes and what is definitely buttered cornbread.

The cornbread is stupid, buttered sweet and crumbly in my mouth.  Lascivious on my tongue and in my cheeks.  It is delicate cake that makes me anxious to swallow.  It’s color is it’s flavor.  I think there are raisins in it.

I ask.  He tells me no.  Dates.

He raises his eyebrows, rushes to the kitchen and returns with a shiny pile of caviar and creme fraiche on a small bone china dish and an actual silver and bone baby spoon.

He tells me he thought about taking the coffee outside but thought better of it.  He nods as he proclaims it, acknowledging his own wisdom.  That’s how he explains it.

I understand he means he’s not sure I’m safe outside the walls of his house.  I don’t know that I’m safe inside the house so his optimism is welcome.

He smiles and says, “Killer with the cornbread.”

He takes off his coat and he’s wearing suspenders.

“Let’s talk now.”  He plunges the coffee patiently.  Slowly.  “You already know, you are in mortal danger.  Beset by a hound.”  Grinning.  He forces the plunger down a little.  “He is mean as a snake.  A doppelganger of sorts.  He is not your double.  He is not your………contrary or inverse, either, as they say.  They’re all a fucking nightmare.”  He leans a little harder on the press.

Just then, he walks away for a few long minutes.  He comes back to stare into the glass of the press a couple times saying nothing.

He finally returns to push the plunger to the bottom.

“Pale and vicious poltergeists will harass and terrorize a man until his heart explodes in his chest like a fruit pie dropped on a stone floor. The good news is, it is not the worst. The bad news is, it is very bad. Almost as bad as I have seen.”  His hands are in front of his face and his eyes are a little wild.  I go cold.

“He is not supernatural.  He is insane and barely human, but he’s no demon.  He’s just as smart as you believe yourself to be and twice as strong.  But he is crazy, and you would do well to remember that.  It is all you can take advantage of.  You cannot out last him.”

He pours the coffee and generous cream into my mug. It’s sweet enough for me to wonder if I missed him adding sugar.  It’s the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life until I think about what he’s saying and what he may be about to say.  He looks at me like he’s gonna tell me I have colon cancer.  Like I’ll bleed from the ass for awhile and then die.

He’s getting real good at looking at me like that.

“He is about you.  He is of you.  You are entwined with this hound.  It cannot last.  One of you must go.  You cannot both occupy this time and place for very long.  I’m confident you understand that?  Do you see this?  Of course you do.  One of you must kill the other.  He will kill you.  He’s as afraid as you are, believe it or not.  But, he intends to kill you.  He’s afraid but he is hunting you.  He’s begun to toy with you.  He’s long since made up his mind.”

How do you know?  How did you find me?  Who are you?

He raises his hand. “You found me. I was not aware of you until I was but a block away.  Well, I was aware of you but didn’t know you were here until you were here.  Really, the rest is decades of me seeing and understanding these things.  You already know, we are not all the same.”

I nod without meaning to.

He offers me a slab of cornbread with caviar and creme.  The bread is still warm and sweet.  The caviar is salty with marvelous texture in the creaminess of creme.  There’s the tiniest bits of sweet red onion.  It’s so delicious, I need to replay what he’s said in my head.  Hash is to pot as caviar is to sushi, all on brilliant yellow cake.

He walks to the other end of the kitchen and returns with two chilled champagne flutes.

We sip a minute.  Blanc de blanc oh banana.

I’m confused.  I come up fighting.  I can’t help but ask what he does know.  I ask him who he is and despite myself I press him hard on just what the fuck is going on.  I realize I’m pleading.  I try to shut up.  But I’m angry and confused and this dude seems to know something I don’t.  Why am I here right now?

“Do not look at me like that.  I’m not some ‘facking’ wizard.  His accent betrays him occasionally.

Our mutual intensity has us sipping from our mugs and flutes and looking down at the table.  The champagne goes well with the caviar, fruit, bread and coffee.  It all works

“Your only chance is yourself, but I think I can help.”

I tell him I was hoping for a wizard.

He flips me off with a sour look.

I tell him I’m tired and I’m a pussy.

He doesn’t smile.  He tells me my humor is inappropriate.  He is angry.  He seems much older than me, but even in this light, his face is unlined.

He walks to the end of the kitchen and back again.  He does this to gather himself.

“Let me put this as simply as I can,” he says. “Do not doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we do not understand about the universe.  It is what we do know that confounds us. All the while, what we do not know blows us along.”

He pushes the plate of fruit at me with the rubied finger.  I reach and so does he.  We chew and look at each other.  We begin to talk like yesterday.  We laugh and point at each other.  At some point there’s not much coffee left and the bottle is empty.  He brings a single malt whiskey to the table in a strange old bottle.

We use our coffee mugs.

The champagne bottle is empty.  Check.

Now and then he alludes to the depth of my trouble.  I sober up some but he makes laugh again and peers inside my mug.

Next thing I know I’m asleep in front of the fire.

Dusk.

I’m on the couch under a thick quilt.  My shoes are off but my socks are on.  Carlo has left a carafe of water and a glass on the low table beside me.  I stare at it with fire on the other side and see that there are lemon slices in it.

His last words to me, “Sleep. You are safe here.”

I look past my feet and he’s in the den reading furiously, his fingers drumming on his forehead. He looks old from here.

I look up to a polished copper ceiling some twenty feet above me with the fire dancing across.

I head back to the party of what I’m dreaming.

There is the ambient noise of a gathering.  Shouts and laughter and the easy rumble of conversation among people comfortable with each other.  Twilight and the warmth of lanterns and candles.

I’m in a kitchen cracking eggs.  White on white and fluorescent lit.  The last one is discolored and it takes more effort to split, the shell is thicker and not so brittle, but leathery and moist.  Inside is thick and viscous.  Blood and short black curls of hair.  Even in the dream I understand this is my sin.  Dread drops my stomach and snatches my air.

Carlo is behind me in a top hat and cape.  A black dog, a hound in deceitful repose at his side.  I look at him over my shoulder as he slides an index finger under his nose.  A yellow to red orange rosebud on his lapel.  He says nothing while looking straight through me.  He flicks long nails through whiskers and I hear it.  With slow motion grace he reveals bird seed from his suit pocket and scatters it on the tile floor.  He blows on his hands and nails and admires them palms down.

He tells me to call him Charlie.

He said some shit.  An admonishment of the Supreme court and Alito mouthing not true.  The declaration to move forward on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Calling them on their obstructionist bullshit by pointing out tax cuts for 95% of us.  The allegedly pro tax cut prick champions.  Turns out they’re only in favor if the rich get a break.

I’m a little late with my sentiments but it was an excellent speech.  Comedy by the Republicans for merely sitting on their hands like a little league team, obstinate over a black guy being allowed to play.  Not all racists are Republicans but if you’re far right, you’re probably a racist.  I’m betting you’re a dick too.

Dad needs to do the patties on a grilly grill.  Give them to me rarer.  Moister.  He’s nailed the seasoning.  Mom needs to make that kick ass Thousand Island.  I’ll need a copy of that recipe.  I’ll do my white onion, garlic, mushroom, teriyaki, soy, worcestershire, butter and red wine reduction with a thick slice of sharp cheddar over it all, as glue, texture and flavor.  Toast those buns mom picked out or onion rolls.  No butter but slather them with the Thousand Island.  I don’t think lightly olive oiled and tossed with a ground pepper blend spinach leaves would hurt.  A little texture, a little zip.  See what I’m saying?

Serve with a big stupid California style Chardonnay.  Big oak and vanilla, smoke and butter.  Be sure it has a decent chill on it.  Everybody is making their chards leaner these days and that’s a shame.  There is a place for this style and otherwise we have pinot grigio, pinot gris, fume blanc…..all sorts of skinnier, zestier and maybe even sweeter.  The 7 Deadly Zins (’07) works because it’s so smokey and silky.  You might look into a  dry dose like Sofia.  Anything fruit forward is a good bet for the contrast.  We had a Bogle petit syrah the other night that caused my skirt to disregard gravity.

What we have here, is a burger.  I’m going to perfect this recipe and share it with you.  It’s the aforementioned reduction I have trouble quantifying into regular language.  It’s a process of cooking and tasting and adding.  I’m reminded of making and mixing songs and records.  The biggest difference with cooking is you can’t subtract things.  Once you add, you’re committed.  When building a song, there are many opportunities to put your left foot in and shake it all about while getting to take your left foot out.

I was a young boy and it had snowed at least two feet the night before.  No school.  I bundled up in my boots, new gloves and coat and put on my father’s motorcycle helmet with the full face shield.  My sister let me know right away she’d be telling on me.  I didn’t care for what.  I was on the moon, listening to my own breath.  The sun blasted and hid behind high altitude cloud smears.  “Giant steps are what you take, walkin’ on the moon.”

Did you hear that Sarah Palin’s political action committee has spent more money buying her own book than on campaign contributions?  Her last stint on Oprah garnered way less attention than her first one.  Still, she can command a $100k speaking fee.  Yet her show is tired, her sincerity has been in atrophia since she found out for herself how full of shit she really is.  Sadly, her incandescence is on the wane.  She really has been her very own burlesque.  You want reality television?

I’ll miss her and I’ve been thinking lately about the devil you know vs the devil you don’t.

Always, no, never…..underestimate the gratification in talking to and old friend.  Peppered or poppy seed crackers and brie with apricot preserves.  The easiest thing is they tell you the truth.  The best thing is they tell you what you need to know.

Most drummers never get to the point where they can keep time, much less fuck with it.

That may be all I have to say about everything.

Drinks for my friends.

Rain drips slow.  The faux brick pathways glisten because we shoveled and the rain drips slow.

Mother pounds on my door this morning at ten ’til nine and clearly under the influence of her best authority, she barks throaty my first name and that we’ll be shoveling snow.  Sheezus.  Same way she calls me to dinner.  She grew up with ten brothers and sisters.  She’s very funny and she doesn’t know it.

Still, I’m thinking there might be a punchline.  Like she’ll come back an hour later advertising cinnamon raisin toast and hot chocolate.  I am not yet awake.

I’m not a morning guy.  I’m not an outdoorsy guy.  I don’t ski or snowboard.  I am not about any of this in any way.  I don’t hike.  I loath the cold as much as I loath the heat.  I’m forty four years old and living at home.  Temporarily.  If it wasn’t for the brutal knock on the door, these would not have been my first thoughts upon waking.  This morning, they sting me.  It is, after all, my own mother beseeching me.

I roll over while I roll my eyes.  I pull on some boots and jeans.  A shirt and it’s time to piss.  Check my eyes and nose for boogers.  A coat, and hat and here I came.  Not gonna brush my teeth yet.

Billy Jean, The Tripod Lab, revels in our shoveling.  She is black, happy and has a short but powerful whip for a tail.  She misses the right front leg clean from the shoulder.  She doesn’t care.  There are no social stigma among pets.  She can run like hell.  All the power coming from the hindquarters.  She doesn’t always steer very well.  She wipes out a lot.  We have no problem laughing.

She is happy and dancing.  To her it is a game.

I adore animals for their almost incorruptible innocence.

I throw shovels full of snow on her and she bucks and huffs with glee.  She is the world’s happiest dog and an anchor for my parents that you would have to witness to understand.  They dote.

The sun is out and I’ve taken off my hat and coat.  The sky is The Big Nevada blue.  I begin to sweat.  Mother is snuffling and sniffing but tearing it up.  Our breathy fogs hang in the crisp bright air.  My heart swells and I’m  grateful she got me up to do this.  I revel in the sound of our shovels scraping the ground.  Heels clicking and sliding on a polished mall floor.  Rocks tumbling from a pile.  Clay roller skate wheels on a sidewalk.

The sweet old man next door appears at the end of our driveway with a clattering red midget in his grip.  He ends up doing more good than harm.  Imagine what happens when the blower only blows two feet in either direction on a twenty five foot wide, seventy foot long driveway.  He let me make a couple passes but kept asking me if I was tired.  Never got to run one of these before.  This is an excellent morning.

It pulls to the right.

We’re in the back now and I think about throwing snow on my mother.  That she is out shoveling with me and moving just as much snow as me informs my reluctance.  I want to but this is going well.  I’m sweating and feeling vigorous.  I wish I could.  I will if the opportunity arises again.  I see me dumping a load of powder on her head.  I don’t mess with my mother much but I’m really feeling it.  Everyone owns a little crazy and I like my mother’s.

I might fling some and act it’s an accident.  I might, but I’m chicken.

Instead we shovel and talk, and I think about how vulnerable but how simultaneously tough she is.  I know what she’s afraid of and she need not worry.

Gin & tonics and cigarettes  at 4:30 with mother on the patio.  Billy Jean attends.  She eats dinner and her treats while mom and I wrestle her toys from her to throw as we survey the day.  We take turns negotiating the toys away from the Tripod Lab.  Smart dog.  We have to do good cop bad cop and variations thereof.  Mom and I talk.  I’m pretty sure we tell each other just about everything.

I know I tell her everything.

She tells me “You’re all I have everyday.”

We both have big mouths.

I believe it to be inherent.

We come in, wash our hands and begin dinner, sometimes I cook.

Rain drips slow.  The faux brick pathways glisten because we shoveled them and the rain drips slow.