Lawn Boy's arrested development.
Maggie, the prior owner of this house, offered us her lawn mower when we closed. She said it was a commercial quality Lawn Boy worth about $300 - $400 new and that it was only five years old. I said if that was the case I would give her $150 for it.
My first few hours in the new house I was overwhelmed by the impressions, the needy parts and great views and neglected parts and great light inside and all the little glimpses of damaged door frames, missing molding, drawer pulls, dangling cables, odd dark patches in the ceiling paint, etc. One of the impressions was that the lawnmower had aged a few decades in the scant five years of its alleged youth. It was also evidently not used to having to work for a living. The oil and grass crust on it was dry as bone.
We had noticed the general neglect of the yard when we were going through the purchase process. The day before closing Maggie said she was having a lawn service over to spruce up the yard and landscaping, chores her able bodied teenagers had rebelled at before they hit puberty and weren't about to adopt now.
It was a dry summer. The neighbors had brown spots on their lawns. Neither immediate neighbor seemed particularly anal about their lawns, and I was glad for that.
So forgive me if a few weeks past closing I am just getting to the mowing part. Sara and I had a marriage to test against the ineluctable modalities of moving homes. Which, since you ask, we are doing quite well at.
Okay, so the Lawn Boy. Allow me to laugh. I don't know which five years Maggie was under the impression constituted the age of the mower, but one of them was probably 1989. I looked up the serial number on the web and there was a recall notice on the model from 1989, something about a gas tank that was likely to crack open and burst into flames, stealing a march on the poor mower's barbeque intentions for later in the day, no doubt.
My options were many, but they all boiled down to getting a new mower or trying to play out the string of inherited karma to its bitter frayed end and get the damn thing repaired. I am a karma gambling addict. You know who you are. If I have a choice between a clean break with the past or a visit to the abbatoir of intentions through salvage-laden memory, I choose to nose around in the old sleeping bag of lessons, debts, half-fulfilled promises, broken parts, kits and souveniers whose source is forgotten with the sweats and ecstasies of the trip they mementoed.
Why start fresh when you can start with a green grey crust of dried grass, insect parts and 40 weight oil baked into a death mask on your cooling fins and carbeurator? That's what I always say. And that is what Sara fears to hear the most, running from the room in frustration with my backward ways.
I had the tools out and the mower on its side on the driveway when some 12 watt light of reason came on in the brain. If I had to salvage the mower, at least let someone else do it somewhere else, and keep my time free for unpacking and organizing the things that really cried out for our attention.
Thus it was I discovered the Penn Lake TruValue hardware store, where an elderly gnome ran the cash register while his second and third generation DNA experiments chased each other with hose couplings and crescent wrenches in the back room. He allowed as they could look at it for the twenty dollar minimum, tune it up for $54, and fix it for a price to be determined on inspection. I agreed to that, to a new astro turf door mat, to cable tv accessories and the phone numbers of a hauling company and a yard aerating company. "Don't do this critical job yourself" the yard aerating company warned sternly. I was agreeable, and slightly saner than at any time in the last seven weeks as I signed the credit card chit, mused cheerfully with the woman behind me in line about the trees and rain and prospects for an early fall.
We might not survive the move, but we will move on from the selves who moved. And that is the ultimate karmic gamble.
You know who you are.
Addendum, Sept 2.
That same day....
Sara got off work early, and convinced me that I needed to visit Marshall's discount store with her for a good laugh and maybe a bargain. On the way I told her about the Lawn Boy. As I recounted the Lawn Boy saga, my gorge rose and spilled over just as we passed another hardware store with a sidewalk display of used mowers. I whipped into the parking slot in front of a bright orange Ariens autothatcher, 6 horsepower, its tread still distinguishable on the rubber tires, a hallmark of youth noticeably absent from the majority of used mowers. The affable hardware shill met us, hand out and eyes crinkled with humor at the thought of actually selling one of these moribund industrial lawn aids.
"There are two ends to the continuum of lawn mowers" he began...
"As there are two ends to most continuums" I suggested, helping him gather momentum.
"Ah! Right. Well, over here, " he indicated by wagging his soft, turnip-shaped left hand, "Here you have the lawn owners eager for a maincured look"
"Right down to the buffed clear coat and moon shaped cuticle!" I hollered in assent
He stared at me, and then proceeded to wag the right hand, which revealed a gentle lack of blemish or callous belying his authority among handtools and the rough gasoline fueled disciplines of do-it-yourself yards.
"Over here, then, you have those who just want to get off the sofa long enough to say they mowed the yard and don't care what things look like when they are finished."
I imagined myself on the sofa, my back to the yard, reading the Times editorials and raising my gorge to the level it might propel a Lawn Boy or Toro through the thatchifying abundance of my fescue and buffalo grass. Yes, the sofa.
"So which are you?" He inquired, twisting his head on his neck like an owl.
"Oh, the sofa. Definitely the sofa end of the continuum." I hastened to reply, lest he think I meant to spend real money on an upscale used machine.
"Which of these is the best of the lot?" Sara said, coming back to our show-and-tell from a quick survey of the green, orange, rust and sand colored retirees from the lawn wars.
"Well, " our Virgil, our guide through the purgatory of Home Ownership which begins at the front curb and ends before you get to siding and plumbing said, " Well" he allowed himself time to actually check his inventory at this point, something which seemed to take the starch out of his uniform shirt.
"Hmm, well its the end of the season, of course, not much left here."
"Hmmm. Yeah, you don't want those" he indicated the entire north limb of the l-shaped display, where, I noticed, the under - $100 workhorses patiently awaited their last owners.
"What about that one?" I asked, pointing to the bright orange Ariens. It seemed to stand at attention, its vital forces undimmed by a decade or two of abuse and bad lawn maintenance habits.
"Well, they sure have their own way of doing things" our guide insinuated sinisterly, taking me by the elbow and turning me toward the exceptionally long TORO with its rear bag, drop blade clutch, three speed self propelled variable throttle 5.5 horsepower and discernable tread on its tires. "I say this is the best deal on the bunch" he asserted. "This is one of the best. See this bar?" He wrestled with the large lawn appliance festooned with cables, levers, rubber flaps, kevlar bullet proof bags, sensors, struts, spars and a mizzen mast. Pushing it free of the pack of suburban disjecta, he put one foot on the cowling of the enormous motor and pulled the starter rope. It sputtered to life, then, as he pulled aforesaid bar up, amazingly, sputtered and roared into second life, as though there were two independant but symbiotic engines of vanquishment under his control. I noticed that the rear bag engorged with an almost mammalian enthusiasm for the task of deflowering the lawn when he in fact pulled what I came to think of as the man-bar. He shouted like a midshipman on the aircraft carrier deck as the f-18s came to land. "This is the clutch bar, it lets you engage the blade without stopping the motor."
What I heard was "Thib ikluus barrets jake jay wib wobbing wober"
I thought it was a magical incantation, similar to the Ghost Dancer's prayer to the Great Spirit to make them invisible to their enemies. I could see how a suburban lawn warrior might need such protection.
Without making him explain the other lanyards, jibs and fo'csles on the craft, I said I would take it.
We packed it into the van, and Sara sighed with the forebearance of a truly good woman. As we walked to Marshalls, which was a dozen doors down the mall, she began to perk up. I phoned the TruValu and explained that I had betrayed the tenuous trust established this morning in the act of surrendering my Lawn Boy to their repair ministry. "You want it what?" the hardware guardian yelled into the phone when I explained that I wanted to get the Lawn Boy back with no repair. It was beyond his scope of duty or insight as to why a person who had already paid the twenty dollar minimum for inspection would want to get the machine back untouched. I made up a lengthy, subtle lie concerning my arrangements with the previous owner of the machine, the career of those arrangements, the crisis point coming when she would not repay me for repairs, and as I blathered into the cell mouthpiece I sensed a gust of indifference emanate from the man.
"Its on the truck right now. He's driving it away. You want it off the truck?" he interrupted me, and I knew why there was no hope for great literature in a culture that insisted on the blunt contrast between "on the truck" and "off the truck" as the true hinge on which the door of discourse must swing open or shut.
"Yes" I conceded with my most monosyllabic effort to date.
Sara stood patiently. "You want a laugh?" she said, as though offering lemonade to Joan of Arc as the flames licked up around her calves.
She led me to the lamp display. "Now, tell me this is funny" she said, pointing to what at first glance looked like a vaguely victorian, ornate import bedside lamp. On closer inspection, I saw that tiers of bronze-colored plaster fronds wound up the lamp neck, barely concealing beneath them the three monkeys of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" fame.
"Is this a subtle critique of my handling of l'affair du lawnmower?" I asked.
She giggled and reassured me it was not meant as a critique of my hypocrisy, male obsessions, or poor taste in totem animals.
We bought the lamps, to her joy. I had paid off a few minutes of her hour's investment in my lawn crusade so far.
The story really continues...
Sara offered to drop me off and go pick up the Lawn Boy. I set up the Toro and started in with a fierce love of the land in my heart and white knuckles gripping the several safety and function bars which controlled the beast which in turn controlled my lawn. Up over the first turn, so far so good. First patch of real green grass after a long run of brown grass, pesky little fists of weeds and dirt, and the mower coughs, chugs down an extra shot of raw 30 weight, tries to rev up to a survival level of rpms but fails, falls out of gear and sits there idling, its blade surely still as the night before christmas. I drop the clutch bar, as instructed, raise it and see a linkage at the front of the cowling respond by engaging the clutch. Then it seems to change its mind, on its own, disengages the clutch and the motor happily prattles on like a golfer at a cocktail party telling of his latest battle with par to an empty couch.
I drop the clutch bar and slam it back up in a more manly fashion, pretending that this sort of thing happens and I am the sort of man who doesn't let it define the larger moment. In case anyone is watching the new neighbor through their picture windows: I imagine them martini in hand, their contracts with the professional lawn service proudly matted, framed and hung in the den.
Again the thingy does the whatchy and briefly engages, then drops out of gear. I roll the beast without benefit of self propulsion to the driveway, and turn it off. A brief examination of the several sets of numbers and numbered indents scattered throughout the superstructure reveals there to be about 8 basic places that settings can be set, and most of those range over 3 to 5 choices. A brief averaging and mental accounting yeilds my guess that there are 8 to the fifth or 5 to the eighth permutations of settings on what is beginning to appear as the Lawnship Enterprise to my timorous command. I resolutely drop it into neutral, disengage the clutch, engage the deadman throttle control to fast, but not full rabbit icon fast, and yank the starter rope as though I were decapitating several used lawn contraption salesmen with one dull garotte.
It brays back to life, and I drop the clutch bar and slam it home one more time. Sara has returned and is watching with deep affection for my masterful imitation of a slowly disintegrating lawn amateur among the pros. "Something smells like it is burning" she observes. I think it is my shirt collar as my rage at the still blade boils blood, but she is right, a thin line of blue smoke is coming from the cowling. I shut it all down. Now what to look at? Having looked at everything on top, I tip it over and there is the source of the problem: two small tufts of grass, the size of thimbles, have jammed between the tips of the blade and the housing. I start to pull the grass out by hand, but am stopped by visions of the feral mechanism coming to life and flinging my bloody hand into the neighbor's yard.
I use the stake of the sprinkler which I could never get to work to clear the jam. Upright, I start it up and drive up the first shoulder of the lawn. Toro takes the challenge in mighty gulps, until it hits the same patch of 7 straight inches of green grass again. Once again the blade comes to a halt, the clutch thingy flips me off. But I have Knowledge, this time. I push the machine quickly to the drive, declot, and then ponder. How can I mow a 75' by 35' front lawn in 6" increments? "Maybe it is set too low for the length of the grass" Sara suggests, her love and admiration for my heroic antics undiminished by the complete lack of progress or savvy I am demonstrating to the world beyond our lovenest's kerb.
Sara is not just smart. She is really smart, and observant. More punishingly, she is kind and patient as well, skills honed in front of a blackboard in front of senior high mutations of the human species. The entire 100 or so grams of my throbbing forebrain knows that she is right, she is helpful, she is loving in her choice of words and tone to convey to me an idea that might help me achieve my goal. It is the tiny, 2 or so gram weight of lizard brain remaining in my medulla that takes offense, not because she is wrong or evil, but because it is a lizard brain which has been highly aroused by the sight and smell of effort, however wasted so far. I sublimate my lizard's ire to taking the machine back to the drive one more time. A quick more intense inspection reveals that each wheel is capable of being set from "a" to "e" height. I have them all on "b" so I change them to "d", start up and et voila, the machine continues for a full 12 feet before once more bleching to a motorized but bladeless state of apathy, a violent but harmless turmoil in my hands.
I realize at this point that there is no setting, or combination of settings that will put me out my misery short of returning the mower to the store.
At mcDonalds, after giving up the promise of a Bull that turned out to prefer the smell of flowers, the Ferdinand of lawn champions, I am self-medicating with cheeseburger and lemonade guarenteed to contain 0% juice. Sara, swathed in the raiment of consoling silence that only a loving wife can wear so well, watches me confront the ebbing tide of confidence in my skills or desires to meet the Homeowner Survivor challenge of the moment. The very blades of grass are voting me off the island.
We return home and juggle the mystery boxes of the move, and I grow more morose. We both realize that I cannot suffer the unmanning of my dream by an aptly named Toro without once more donning the suit of Lights, taking up the red cape and entering the ring again before the discontents of the audience have become embedded in a Reputation. "Oh, him," I hear the smirking neighbor's say, " he couldn't even mow his own lawn the first week he moved in. Word has it he never left the house again...sits in the basement reading old Esquire magazine's and hasn't gotten out of his dressing gown in two years..."
Refusing to be bested by a machine, in the sight of neighbors, on the battlefield of my lawn, refusing to have my front yard become the Waterloo of my home ownership dreams, I stood up suddenly, a light in my eye and a new resolve in my voice. "Honey, the Sears in Eden Prairie is open for another hour. I am going to go get a new mower!"
Sara stood up, and backed up to the wall, seeking support as she trembled with pride in my rededication to our destiny, our suburb. "Don't you want to wait until tomorrow?" she offered, aware of the toll the days events had taken on my stamina, my judgment and our credit.
"A man has to do..." I summarized, and pushed past her to enter the green lists one more time.
Outside the Lawn Boy sat forlornly on the drive, the job ticket still stapled to its handle. After my dance with the demon Toro, the smaller, less complicated outlines of the LawnBoy had a certain appeal, a certain pathos with which I could relate. I stopped and looked at it. What if? I thought. What if the journey to the hardware store had somehow loosened some obstruction in the fuel line, or what if I had flooded it and it was now ready to run? WHat if the hardware grunts had looked it over before sending it off to the repair shop and set one of the knobs or levers differently, in the code known to men with flagstone fingernails and firebrick wrists?
Sara had come to the door to say one last thing of wisdom and love before I drove off in the Mercury, my new Rosinante, to joust at the 4-cycle windmills. She saw me touch the Lawn Boy and her eyes widened in concern. I had gone off the deep end, and now hallucinated a friendly machine among the massed spite of all the mowers that would never work for me. I grasped the pull cord, put my foot on the cowling in comradeship, not mastery, and pulled as though the centrifugal force of the green machine's magneto would spin love out to blanket a surly world.
It blurbled into life.
I whapped the throttle to its proper setting, on the rabbit icon's ass. I imagined its ears jerked up in surprise. I headed toward the large unmowed triangle of shame in the middle of my lawn, and did it justice with a few manly passes. On the last turn, I saw Sara standing on the drive, her eyes glistening with the pride of a woman who had seen her husband come back from the dead. She raised her hands and gave me a slow, heartfelt ovation.
It was the reason there are men and women. It was the reason women stay with men who stay with their pain. It was the reason there are homes and yards and the reason there are green things in the yards, where children play and old folks doze in sanctuary from their unfinished dreams.
It was home, and we had put our mark on it. And it was good.
28.8.03
Attraction and Albatrosses
You are helpless before your attractions. Whether the Earth or a gnat, you must approach your desires, and as you do so, you change them, and are changed by them.
We moved from a duplex to a single family home with a great back yard: split level deck and leafy back yard on the shore of a tiny duck pond in the midst of the city. Best of both worlds.
We couldn't start moving, however, until I had cleared out an attic filled with books. REALLY filled with books...seventy boxes, probably close to 2000 books. The attic had been struck by disaster: an immigrant roofing team had shoveled the roof shingles off without noticing that the plank roof has inch to two inch gaps open to the attic beneath. They filled the attic with dark, dry powder and greasy pitch shards, chunks of sharp asphalt and nails. They covered the books.
The boxes had all been opened prior to our going on vacation. I was going to create a database and enter the whole library, maybe sell some on the net. We came home and the landlord mentioned that the roofers had dropped shingles in the garage on Sara's year old Saturn. I immediately thought of the attic, and rushed up to find the mess there. It took several lawyers, insurance investigators and various unidentified flying gumshoes nine months to reach a settlement with me. In the meantime, not trusting anyone, I left the scene completely untouched, in case new rounds of skeptical settlers had to parade through the evidence and did not believe the digital photos I had collected. Of course, the settlement came a scant month before the move began, and I could only work on weekend mornings, by and large, due to the intense heat of the attic after 10 am or so and my work schedule.
Sara tried to help the first few days, but the sight of me wandering in a grim fog among the wrack and flotsam that had been my book collection was too much for her. She stayed at the ready, but stayed downstairs, knowing that I had to find some entry point to the trauma that I could use to collect, connect, reclaim.
After a few days, I finally imagined a staging area by a dormer window. I vacuumed a spot free of debris and the kind of volcanic drift that covered every square inch. I wondered if the people living near Mt. St. Helens or Vesuvius had similar feelings of loathing for the scene of their respective aftermaths.
My first step was to contact a local bookseller. Mary was in her twenties, and had worked in PR for a while before opening a neighborhood shop across the lake from us. She came over after I had a weekend to do some preliminary sorting, and was surprised to find a number of good classics and mid-list novels and non fiction in the boxes I set aside for her. She offered a few dollars a box, and carted off about 400 books in the course of an hour one hot morning. I felt positive about the disaster for the first time, because I had to come to terms with getting rid and getting over, and she had been enthusiastic about her "discoveries." I could have done better with a little more work sorting and checking at half.com or the equivalent source of buyer info on the web, but I was happy to see her get a break in her new business, and I was happy to see some books start to leave the dismal attic.
The books were an albatross around my neck. . And more than books, there were many boxes of bills and records from the divorce and after, souveniers of the many trips I had taken with the boys, photos and letters from various girlfriends I had between the divorce and remarriage. It was the scene of a symbolic murder, in a tangible and richly sense-laden way. A hell of memories and unresolved stuff, clinging to me, weighing me down, drowning me in the dense air of fears and postponed resignations.
You are helpless before your attractions. Whether the Earth or a gnat, you must approach your desires, and as you do so, you change them, and are changed by them.
We moved from a duplex to a single family home with a great back yard: split level deck and leafy back yard on the shore of a tiny duck pond in the midst of the city. Best of both worlds.
We couldn't start moving, however, until I had cleared out an attic filled with books. REALLY filled with books...seventy boxes, probably close to 2000 books. The attic had been struck by disaster: an immigrant roofing team had shoveled the roof shingles off without noticing that the plank roof has inch to two inch gaps open to the attic beneath. They filled the attic with dark, dry powder and greasy pitch shards, chunks of sharp asphalt and nails. They covered the books.
The boxes had all been opened prior to our going on vacation. I was going to create a database and enter the whole library, maybe sell some on the net. We came home and the landlord mentioned that the roofers had dropped shingles in the garage on Sara's year old Saturn. I immediately thought of the attic, and rushed up to find the mess there. It took several lawyers, insurance investigators and various unidentified flying gumshoes nine months to reach a settlement with me. In the meantime, not trusting anyone, I left the scene completely untouched, in case new rounds of skeptical settlers had to parade through the evidence and did not believe the digital photos I had collected. Of course, the settlement came a scant month before the move began, and I could only work on weekend mornings, by and large, due to the intense heat of the attic after 10 am or so and my work schedule.
Sara tried to help the first few days, but the sight of me wandering in a grim fog among the wrack and flotsam that had been my book collection was too much for her. She stayed at the ready, but stayed downstairs, knowing that I had to find some entry point to the trauma that I could use to collect, connect, reclaim.
After a few days, I finally imagined a staging area by a dormer window. I vacuumed a spot free of debris and the kind of volcanic drift that covered every square inch. I wondered if the people living near Mt. St. Helens or Vesuvius had similar feelings of loathing for the scene of their respective aftermaths.
My first step was to contact a local bookseller. Mary was in her twenties, and had worked in PR for a while before opening a neighborhood shop across the lake from us. She came over after I had a weekend to do some preliminary sorting, and was surprised to find a number of good classics and mid-list novels and non fiction in the boxes I set aside for her. She offered a few dollars a box, and carted off about 400 books in the course of an hour one hot morning. I felt positive about the disaster for the first time, because I had to come to terms with getting rid and getting over, and she had been enthusiastic about her "discoveries." I could have done better with a little more work sorting and checking at half.com or the equivalent source of buyer info on the web, but I was happy to see her get a break in her new business, and I was happy to see some books start to leave the dismal attic.
The books were an albatross around my neck. . And more than books, there were many boxes of bills and records from the divorce and after, souveniers of the many trips I had taken with the boys, photos and letters from various girlfriends I had between the divorce and remarriage. It was the scene of a symbolic murder, in a tangible and richly sense-laden way. A hell of memories and unresolved stuff, clinging to me, weighing me down, drowning me in the dense air of fears and postponed resignations.
Moving.
It is at the heart of the world's oldest philosophical problem and my newest philosophical dilemma.
(You might object that the problem is not the world's oldest, since it dates to the 6th century b.c., but versions of this paradox have been found in the vedas, which vastly predate the Greek.)
In a nutshell, if you move, who is moved to and who is moved from? Motion implies change, and who exists at the end of the change? Am I going to be a person significantly determined by my new surroundings, such that I am no longer the person of the old surroundings? How can I adapt or plan for this?
You can't of course.
When you move, you leap into the darkness. All your reserves of strength, faith, insight are called upon, drained and discarded in succession, leaving you still days out from the big push and in a hole so deep there is no word for darkness there.
During the move each nerve in your body is successively named, attached to a memory, boiled, misplaced, and discarded. At the end of the move you have only the connective tissues of your body, the ruin of digestive processes impelling you to crises by the hour, and no nerves left, no adrenalin left, no strength to regain the strength required to hide from the ongoing demands, and the renewed demands that start before you even shut the door in your house for the first night's sleep there.
Its moving.
Sara and I discovered that, hidden beneath the familiar layers of selves which we had become so enamored and successful with, mutually, there are layers of other untouched selves, or touched but unfathomed selves, whose masks and tones and poses scared away the intimate confidence we had so earnestly acquired, for months and years prior to the move.
Death, divorce, loss of jobs, major surgery, car accidents. And moving. All rank up on the top of the stress tote board. All dredge up personae we do not need nor want to wear for far the most days of our numbered days on this planet.
The 21st century is moving beyond psychology and psychoanalysis, even as it questions the other great truisms of the 20th century: gravity, speed of light, Marx, the Pope, and McDonalds. We are emerging from a culture that rationalizes the ineffable in the form of scientific jargon, to a culture that allows the return of the chthonic and mythical in the midst of the everyday.
Nothing is more everyday than moving house. And nothing releases stranger monsters into the midst of daily innocence. More on this later. For now, I am almost done shaking, and almost have my eyesight and nerves and digestion returned to a viable, if not normal, level.
If you want to hear the whole story, take my advice. Don't move.
It is at the heart of the world's oldest philosophical problem and my newest philosophical dilemma.
(You might object that the problem is not the world's oldest, since it dates to the 6th century b.c., but versions of this paradox have been found in the vedas, which vastly predate the Greek.)
In a nutshell, if you move, who is moved to and who is moved from? Motion implies change, and who exists at the end of the change? Am I going to be a person significantly determined by my new surroundings, such that I am no longer the person of the old surroundings? How can I adapt or plan for this?
You can't of course.
When you move, you leap into the darkness. All your reserves of strength, faith, insight are called upon, drained and discarded in succession, leaving you still days out from the big push and in a hole so deep there is no word for darkness there.
During the move each nerve in your body is successively named, attached to a memory, boiled, misplaced, and discarded. At the end of the move you have only the connective tissues of your body, the ruin of digestive processes impelling you to crises by the hour, and no nerves left, no adrenalin left, no strength to regain the strength required to hide from the ongoing demands, and the renewed demands that start before you even shut the door in your house for the first night's sleep there.
Its moving.
Sara and I discovered that, hidden beneath the familiar layers of selves which we had become so enamored and successful with, mutually, there are layers of other untouched selves, or touched but unfathomed selves, whose masks and tones and poses scared away the intimate confidence we had so earnestly acquired, for months and years prior to the move.
Death, divorce, loss of jobs, major surgery, car accidents. And moving. All rank up on the top of the stress tote board. All dredge up personae we do not need nor want to wear for far the most days of our numbered days on this planet.
The 21st century is moving beyond psychology and psychoanalysis, even as it questions the other great truisms of the 20th century: gravity, speed of light, Marx, the Pope, and McDonalds. We are emerging from a culture that rationalizes the ineffable in the form of scientific jargon, to a culture that allows the return of the chthonic and mythical in the midst of the everyday.
Nothing is more everyday than moving house. And nothing releases stranger monsters into the midst of daily innocence. More on this later. For now, I am almost done shaking, and almost have my eyesight and nerves and digestion returned to a viable, if not normal, level.
If you want to hear the whole story, take my advice. Don't move.
27.8.03
Bank Shot
Let's see if I got this straight.
When we decided to use a fairly dormant bank account recently, it turned out that Sara was not on the account. We decided to get her on the account. If you heard this one before, stop me.
She worked by a branch of the Famous Bank, and I worked by a branch, fairly far away. We cooked up a plan to save time and trouble.
She went into her branch with a paycheck and said she wanted to deposit it and get on the account. They took the check, and had her do some mysterious bank things. "Now Jeff just needs to go into his branch and sign an authorization, and you are all set" the charming woman told her.
I go to my branch. The manager is at the Personal Banking counter, and eager to help. I explain what the Other Branch Banker told Sara. He has no idea what I am talking about. He stares at me, thinking so hard that I can almost hear it happen.
"So do you have the form?" I ask, interrupting his furious cognitive gymnastics.
He looks startled to see me talk.
"There is no form like that" he asserts and transfers the intensity of his attention to the computer screen. After watching him click and drag and peck and point and click a few minutes, I interrupt again.
"Isn't there a form for adding your wife to your account?" I ask, innocent in perpetuity of Bank Process.
"That's not what Brie was doing here. She put some kind of code in, and I need to find out what it means." he said, pointing the to the screen as though I could see his dilemma.
"Doesn't someone here know the codes?" I ask, even more innocently, if that were possible.
"I'm the manager, I know the codes." he said, standing up straight and reassuringly after several minutes of confidence-draining keyboard meandering. "Let me put a call in to Brie."
Having been in government for almost a quarter of a century, all my alarms went off at the sound of "let me put a call in" but I kept my peace, smiling vaguely and unthreateningly, catching the Los Angeles car chase on the wall mounted television tuned to CNN.
Why was there a wall mounted tv tuned to CNN in the personal banking area, I wondered.
Before the thought could turn into an outloud provocation of the Manager, I squashed it. He was Putting A Call in, and I didn't want the odds stacked any more precariously against Brie answering in person by an idle question.
I watched him punch in a series of numbers and codes while still thinking faster than the speed of light in a dark pail. Finally he announced his name, purpose of his call, time of his call, number where he could be reached just as instructed by the voice mail coach who answered.
He leaned forward on the counter and started drumming his fingers, staring over my shoulder. But not at the tv, where the car chase continued.
Why wasn't the manager riveted on the car chase like all the other people in the Personal Banking area?
"Brie isn't in?" I inflected upwardly, indicating uncertainty despite the declarative form of the sentence.
"She will return my call" the manager smiled, drumming his fingers in a complex 7/5 time.
"Is there some way to fill out a form and have my wife added to my account without waiting for Brie to return the call?" I asked as innocent as the birth of baby Jesus, by any account.
"Oh, certainly, " the manager responded spilling a giant bag of reassurance at my feet, friendly as the owner of the winner of the Kentucky Derby.
I waited a few minutes, slightly distracted by the fact that the driver of the chased car had leapt into the freeway and was being chased by his hostage, a woman carrying a baby. There was something very wrong with the picture but I couldn't put my problem solving energy in its account.
"Could we just do that?"
"Oh, no, I need to find out what this code is" he smiled, rowing the boatload of his agreement across the canal of doubt that had opened between us.
"Could you call anyone in this branch for an explanation?" I asked, as innocent as baby Stalin at the age of conception.
His eyes clouded over, and I began to fear he was reminded of a Seinfeld episode where Jerry tries to rent a car in the single most sarcastic car rental exchange in sitcom history. Then they cleared and he again punched numbers and codes into the phone. A human answered, and the Manager rattled off the situation and a request to explain the code if the respondant would get to the appropriate computer screen. "Um hum." "Ah." "Ah hah." "MMmmmm" he punctuated the litany of the respondant with his ululative and fricative sounds of assent.
"It was the code for the business account of the company she works for." The manager said after putting the phone back.
A minute passed. "And...?"
"I guess there is no online form." He tendered, shoulders hunched and palms outward in the pose of a man eager to share his confoundment with his new found friend.
"So...?"
"Brie will call back, and she can fax us some forms." The manager had put the keystone in an arch of burnished Bank marble, an unshakeable edifice of process, order, and security.
"Isn't there a form here I can sign, give to my wife to sign, and then give to Brie?" I ask, innocent as the first hydrogen atom in the universe one femtosecond after the big bang.
His eyes widened at the simplicity of the notion. "Sure! We can do that!"
He went back to the computer. For a long time. Finally he said "What is the spelling on your name, Jeff?"
And for minutes we went like that, incising with a photon chisel the adamantine facts of my wife's and my names and middle initials in the obdurate phosphor surface of the computer screen.
In the meantime, there was a huge gasp as the woman running with the baby caught up with the gun waving driver in the middle of the freeway. Black and white squad cars executed flawless emergency brake assisted j-spin maneuvers to encircle the absurd couple, and one brushed by the perp, discharging a patrol officer who took the whole shebang of improbable bodies down in one bruising tackle. The mother, her baby intact, struggled to her feet and ran off, while dozens of other officers converged on the body of the hijacker.
"Okay," the manager said. "Just need to print this."
The printer worked. That was like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story. The whole point was the dog didn't bark. The whole point was the printer worked. Several employees wandered over to watch the forms emerge uneventfully. One pulled out the top sheet and passed it around to the others for their inspection.
"Printer's working." The manager nodded, champion of our intimate rondezvous with chance. Finally he collated the two pages of paper and stapled them. Then he set them in front of himself, while the other employees wandered off absently, a commercial for rage-suppressing serotonin-uptake inhibitors furling across the screen in pastel yellows.
He read every word on the form, coming at last to the two lines at the bottom of the second page. There were "x"s at the head of each line. He carefully drew "X"s in ink over the printed "x"s and slowly pivoted the page toward me.
"You sign here, Jeff." He looked up and met my glazed gaze. "Jeff, wasn't it?" He waited for me to sign, moving his head involuntarily as I added the last flourish to the date.
He took the form back, and carefully circled the "X" he had drawn over the "x" on the second line.
"Sara signs here." He said, pivoting it back to me like a Baron indicating to the king exactly where he was supposed to sign the Magna Carta.
At this point, I notice a woman employee on a stool two slots down the counter. She had been watching us for a while. She catches my eye and smiles. "May I see that?" she asks the manager as polite as a Dallas cotillion caterer catching a bus boy in the act of filching a shrimp.
He hands it over to her carefully, as though the laser printed letters were actually lead shot balanced on a teflon blade, likely to spill as not.
She read through it quickly, clicked a few keys on her keyboard, and pointed to the electronic signature device. "Would you please sign there, Mr. B?" she indicated solicitously.
I did. "All done." She stated, as though we were kids at a drinking fountain who had played enough in the water for the day.
The manager glanced over her shoulder, then beamed broadly at me. "IS there anything else we can do to help you, Jeff?" he asked, placing his palms together in the gesture of prayerful supplication. "We are here to help you if there is anything we can do for you let us know."
Let's see if I got this straight.
When we decided to use a fairly dormant bank account recently, it turned out that Sara was not on the account. We decided to get her on the account. If you heard this one before, stop me.
She worked by a branch of the Famous Bank, and I worked by a branch, fairly far away. We cooked up a plan to save time and trouble.
She went into her branch with a paycheck and said she wanted to deposit it and get on the account. They took the check, and had her do some mysterious bank things. "Now Jeff just needs to go into his branch and sign an authorization, and you are all set" the charming woman told her.
I go to my branch. The manager is at the Personal Banking counter, and eager to help. I explain what the Other Branch Banker told Sara. He has no idea what I am talking about. He stares at me, thinking so hard that I can almost hear it happen.
"So do you have the form?" I ask, interrupting his furious cognitive gymnastics.
He looks startled to see me talk.
"There is no form like that" he asserts and transfers the intensity of his attention to the computer screen. After watching him click and drag and peck and point and click a few minutes, I interrupt again.
"Isn't there a form for adding your wife to your account?" I ask, innocent in perpetuity of Bank Process.
"That's not what Brie was doing here. She put some kind of code in, and I need to find out what it means." he said, pointing the to the screen as though I could see his dilemma.
"Doesn't someone here know the codes?" I ask, even more innocently, if that were possible.
"I'm the manager, I know the codes." he said, standing up straight and reassuringly after several minutes of confidence-draining keyboard meandering. "Let me put a call in to Brie."
Having been in government for almost a quarter of a century, all my alarms went off at the sound of "let me put a call in" but I kept my peace, smiling vaguely and unthreateningly, catching the Los Angeles car chase on the wall mounted television tuned to CNN.
Why was there a wall mounted tv tuned to CNN in the personal banking area, I wondered.
Before the thought could turn into an outloud provocation of the Manager, I squashed it. He was Putting A Call in, and I didn't want the odds stacked any more precariously against Brie answering in person by an idle question.
I watched him punch in a series of numbers and codes while still thinking faster than the speed of light in a dark pail. Finally he announced his name, purpose of his call, time of his call, number where he could be reached just as instructed by the voice mail coach who answered.
He leaned forward on the counter and started drumming his fingers, staring over my shoulder. But not at the tv, where the car chase continued.
Why wasn't the manager riveted on the car chase like all the other people in the Personal Banking area?
"Brie isn't in?" I inflected upwardly, indicating uncertainty despite the declarative form of the sentence.
"She will return my call" the manager smiled, drumming his fingers in a complex 7/5 time.
"Is there some way to fill out a form and have my wife added to my account without waiting for Brie to return the call?" I asked as innocent as the birth of baby Jesus, by any account.
"Oh, certainly, " the manager responded spilling a giant bag of reassurance at my feet, friendly as the owner of the winner of the Kentucky Derby.
I waited a few minutes, slightly distracted by the fact that the driver of the chased car had leapt into the freeway and was being chased by his hostage, a woman carrying a baby. There was something very wrong with the picture but I couldn't put my problem solving energy in its account.
"Could we just do that?"
"Oh, no, I need to find out what this code is" he smiled, rowing the boatload of his agreement across the canal of doubt that had opened between us.
"Could you call anyone in this branch for an explanation?" I asked, as innocent as baby Stalin at the age of conception.
His eyes clouded over, and I began to fear he was reminded of a Seinfeld episode where Jerry tries to rent a car in the single most sarcastic car rental exchange in sitcom history. Then they cleared and he again punched numbers and codes into the phone. A human answered, and the Manager rattled off the situation and a request to explain the code if the respondant would get to the appropriate computer screen. "Um hum." "Ah." "Ah hah." "MMmmmm" he punctuated the litany of the respondant with his ululative and fricative sounds of assent.
"It was the code for the business account of the company she works for." The manager said after putting the phone back.
A minute passed. "And...?"
"I guess there is no online form." He tendered, shoulders hunched and palms outward in the pose of a man eager to share his confoundment with his new found friend.
"So...?"
"Brie will call back, and she can fax us some forms." The manager had put the keystone in an arch of burnished Bank marble, an unshakeable edifice of process, order, and security.
"Isn't there a form here I can sign, give to my wife to sign, and then give to Brie?" I ask, innocent as the first hydrogen atom in the universe one femtosecond after the big bang.
His eyes widened at the simplicity of the notion. "Sure! We can do that!"
He went back to the computer. For a long time. Finally he said "What is the spelling on your name, Jeff?"
And for minutes we went like that, incising with a photon chisel the adamantine facts of my wife's and my names and middle initials in the obdurate phosphor surface of the computer screen.
In the meantime, there was a huge gasp as the woman running with the baby caught up with the gun waving driver in the middle of the freeway. Black and white squad cars executed flawless emergency brake assisted j-spin maneuvers to encircle the absurd couple, and one brushed by the perp, discharging a patrol officer who took the whole shebang of improbable bodies down in one bruising tackle. The mother, her baby intact, struggled to her feet and ran off, while dozens of other officers converged on the body of the hijacker.
"Okay," the manager said. "Just need to print this."
The printer worked. That was like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story. The whole point was the dog didn't bark. The whole point was the printer worked. Several employees wandered over to watch the forms emerge uneventfully. One pulled out the top sheet and passed it around to the others for their inspection.
"Printer's working." The manager nodded, champion of our intimate rondezvous with chance. Finally he collated the two pages of paper and stapled them. Then he set them in front of himself, while the other employees wandered off absently, a commercial for rage-suppressing serotonin-uptake inhibitors furling across the screen in pastel yellows.
He read every word on the form, coming at last to the two lines at the bottom of the second page. There were "x"s at the head of each line. He carefully drew "X"s in ink over the printed "x"s and slowly pivoted the page toward me.
"You sign here, Jeff." He looked up and met my glazed gaze. "Jeff, wasn't it?" He waited for me to sign, moving his head involuntarily as I added the last flourish to the date.
He took the form back, and carefully circled the "X" he had drawn over the "x" on the second line.
"Sara signs here." He said, pivoting it back to me like a Baron indicating to the king exactly where he was supposed to sign the Magna Carta.
At this point, I notice a woman employee on a stool two slots down the counter. She had been watching us for a while. She catches my eye and smiles. "May I see that?" she asks the manager as polite as a Dallas cotillion caterer catching a bus boy in the act of filching a shrimp.
He hands it over to her carefully, as though the laser printed letters were actually lead shot balanced on a teflon blade, likely to spill as not.
She read through it quickly, clicked a few keys on her keyboard, and pointed to the electronic signature device. "Would you please sign there, Mr. B?" she indicated solicitously.
I did. "All done." She stated, as though we were kids at a drinking fountain who had played enough in the water for the day.
The manager glanced over her shoulder, then beamed broadly at me. "IS there anything else we can do to help you, Jeff?" he asked, placing his palms together in the gesture of prayerful supplication. "We are here to help you if there is anything we can do for you let us know."
Mars versus character defects
Mars is beautiful. I spent some time last fall reading the history of Mars as an idea, in a wonderful book by William Sheehan, who is a practicing psychologist here in Minnesota.
Mars is beautiful. I spent some time last fall reading the history of Mars as an idea, in a wonderful book by William Sheehan, who is a practicing psychologist here in Minnesota.
No feedback please, I am cyber-intolerant.
Interactivity is for vending machines. I have finally gone over the edge, after 23 years of computer intensity and 17 years of online existence, I am finding the idea of feedback to be anathema to civilized existence. Artists, Picasso said, paint because they want something interesting to look at. I write because I want something interesting to read.
Interactivity is for vending machines. I have finally gone over the edge, after 23 years of computer intensity and 17 years of online existence, I am finding the idea of feedback to be anathema to civilized existence. Artists, Picasso said, paint because they want something interesting to look at. I write because I want something interesting to read.
26.8.03
Moving In story 2
The birds.
When I moved out of Chateau Place in '92 I had two parakeets, Marge and Homer. They lived a number of years: Marge died because I went on vacation and the landlord forgot his promise to feed and water the pets. Homer lived for a while by himself, then Nick's friend Davis offered the cage and birds from his home, as his mom didn't want any birds any more. That brought the population up to three parakeets.
They provided a continuous cascade of musical interest from their perches, but they had become hyperaggressive physically. We couldn't put our hands in the cage after the two new birds moved in...one in particular had a nasty talent for getting its beak point directly under the cuticle of an approaching finger, causing an intensity and subtlety of pain that the Marquis de Sade himself would have appreciated.
But to me the music was worth the mechanical problem of cleaning the cage and keeping the food and water fresh. After a few years, as the grief of divorce subsided and I began finding new ways to measure myself against the rule of existence, I began to take pride in the simple act of changing the bird's water and keeping fresh food in their plastic bins.
When it came time to move to Bloomington, a few weeks ago, Sara pleaded with me to leave the birds with someone else. I was torn, because I love her and don't want to cause her pain, but I felt a Buddhist sense of obligation to the life energies of the parakeets.
Finally I decided to follow Sara's suggestion and offer them to a young woman who had carried out a dozen boxes of books from our attic to her new bookstore on Nokomis. Her name was Mary, and she was game to try having some birds in her bookstore.
I left them with her feeling good about the loss of my little song beasts, whose reptilian aloofness and constant quarrelling had animated my kitchen with the small similacrum of familial energy for the long days when I was alone. With Sara I was never alone and with the birds, Mary's little bookstore would have antic talismen, feathered tchotchkes worthy of comment by all and sundry.
Since Mary seemed a little apprehensive about the care required, I said she could call before two weeks were out and I would take them back, if they proved to be too much to care for.
I didn't hear a peep from her. Finally today I called her up and asked about the birds. There was a long silence, then she confessed that one had died within a few days of arrival at her store. She was distressed, too distressed to tell me on the phone.
I felt badly for her, and tried to say something, but it seemed awkward. What had I given her? Not a gift. I had given her death and loss.
Well, she decided to keep the one bird, the green one, and put some effort into its welfare and comfort. In the meantime several clients had taken a liking to the bird. I don't know what did the little beaky tyke in, allah rest its soul in budgie paradise. But it is evidence, if you need any, that all change is attended by loss, but you cannot predict what exactly the loss will be, and cannot be intimidated by its process as the wheel of life turns on.
The birds.
When I moved out of Chateau Place in '92 I had two parakeets, Marge and Homer. They lived a number of years: Marge died because I went on vacation and the landlord forgot his promise to feed and water the pets. Homer lived for a while by himself, then Nick's friend Davis offered the cage and birds from his home, as his mom didn't want any birds any more. That brought the population up to three parakeets.
They provided a continuous cascade of musical interest from their perches, but they had become hyperaggressive physically. We couldn't put our hands in the cage after the two new birds moved in...one in particular had a nasty talent for getting its beak point directly under the cuticle of an approaching finger, causing an intensity and subtlety of pain that the Marquis de Sade himself would have appreciated.
But to me the music was worth the mechanical problem of cleaning the cage and keeping the food and water fresh. After a few years, as the grief of divorce subsided and I began finding new ways to measure myself against the rule of existence, I began to take pride in the simple act of changing the bird's water and keeping fresh food in their plastic bins.
When it came time to move to Bloomington, a few weeks ago, Sara pleaded with me to leave the birds with someone else. I was torn, because I love her and don't want to cause her pain, but I felt a Buddhist sense of obligation to the life energies of the parakeets.
Finally I decided to follow Sara's suggestion and offer them to a young woman who had carried out a dozen boxes of books from our attic to her new bookstore on Nokomis. Her name was Mary, and she was game to try having some birds in her bookstore.
I left them with her feeling good about the loss of my little song beasts, whose reptilian aloofness and constant quarrelling had animated my kitchen with the small similacrum of familial energy for the long days when I was alone. With Sara I was never alone and with the birds, Mary's little bookstore would have antic talismen, feathered tchotchkes worthy of comment by all and sundry.
Since Mary seemed a little apprehensive about the care required, I said she could call before two weeks were out and I would take them back, if they proved to be too much to care for.
I didn't hear a peep from her. Finally today I called her up and asked about the birds. There was a long silence, then she confessed that one had died within a few days of arrival at her store. She was distressed, too distressed to tell me on the phone.
I felt badly for her, and tried to say something, but it seemed awkward. What had I given her? Not a gift. I had given her death and loss.
Well, she decided to keep the one bird, the green one, and put some effort into its welfare and comfort. In the meantime several clients had taken a liking to the bird. I don't know what did the little beaky tyke in, allah rest its soul in budgie paradise. But it is evidence, if you need any, that all change is attended by loss, but you cannot predict what exactly the loss will be, and cannot be intimidated by its process as the wheel of life turns on.
A narcoleptic in the chicken coop of history: notes of a passive aggressive philosopher, part 1
Is it possible to work locally and think globally as the old activist slogan exhorts us? What if we want to, but i our hands are tied, our brains are quietly liquifying in the solvent of information? What good does a glimpse of the blue marble do us anymore?
When did mankind begin to think of the globe as a factor in individual life? When Napolean III commissioned the massive renewal of Paris, beginning with the excavation of eight lane radial boulevards radiating from the center of the city, engineers and planners were amazed to discover families of Parisiens who had never ventured more than 4 blocks from their home in the course of several generations! Now that is parochial. But it stands for the vast majority of humanity who do not have global horizons projected onto the inner surface of their hi-tech augmented thought goggles.
For the record, I was one of the kids who came of age with a Saturn rocket lighting up the night skies, the lunar lander a metallic zygote touching the great egg/moon with an act of fertilization which promised to give birth to the New Man. It was a moment midwifed by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and consecrated by the martydom of a King and a Royal Pretender.
I am sobered by the failure of my generation to make the new man stand upright in any form except a wooden effigy, however soulful and cool it might be.
The New Man is supine, a horizontal figure that recalls the image of Marat in his bath, Gulliver wired by the Lilliputs, Siva sleeping despite the attentive entreaties of Shakti.
Shakti entreats. The active feminine is empowered to rouse the sleeping masculine spirit from its irresponsible slumber, to join the dance. It is a fraught dance, but it is life.
How does the globe, and global consciousness, help or hinder this romance?
Is it possible to work locally and think globally as the old activist slogan exhorts us? What if we want to, but i our hands are tied, our brains are quietly liquifying in the solvent of information? What good does a glimpse of the blue marble do us anymore?
When did mankind begin to think of the globe as a factor in individual life? When Napolean III commissioned the massive renewal of Paris, beginning with the excavation of eight lane radial boulevards radiating from the center of the city, engineers and planners were amazed to discover families of Parisiens who had never ventured more than 4 blocks from their home in the course of several generations! Now that is parochial. But it stands for the vast majority of humanity who do not have global horizons projected onto the inner surface of their hi-tech augmented thought goggles.
For the record, I was one of the kids who came of age with a Saturn rocket lighting up the night skies, the lunar lander a metallic zygote touching the great egg/moon with an act of fertilization which promised to give birth to the New Man. It was a moment midwifed by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and consecrated by the martydom of a King and a Royal Pretender.
I am sobered by the failure of my generation to make the new man stand upright in any form except a wooden effigy, however soulful and cool it might be.
The New Man is supine, a horizontal figure that recalls the image of Marat in his bath, Gulliver wired by the Lilliputs, Siva sleeping despite the attentive entreaties of Shakti.
Shakti entreats. The active feminine is empowered to rouse the sleeping masculine spirit from its irresponsible slumber, to join the dance. It is a fraught dance, but it is life.
How does the globe, and global consciousness, help or hinder this romance?
Buckminister Fuller started something called the World Game back in the sixties. It has become the spaceshipEARTH Presentation v1.0. In the early 70's Donella Meadows worked with Jay Forrester of MIT to produce a report called "Limits to Growth." this link downloads an abstract of the paper, while this one takes you to the page of the Club of Rome; the organization that commissioned the report. ( Not incidentally, Idries Shah was said to have been involved in that project.)
For me, and perhaps my generation, the globe was the framing conceit of all intentional philosophy.
For me, and perhaps my generation, the globe was the framing conceit of all intentional philosophy.
Moving In stories -- August 26, 2003
This morning Maggie, my cat, ran in from the deck with a small chipmunk in her teeth. I thought she had the alert, addled look of feral happiness, and I assumed the poor wildlife prize was dead.
I stood up to shoo her back toward the deck, and she ran into the den.
I immediately imagined Sara witnessing this and going into paroxysms of Giaian concern, alternating between her deep love for Maggie the cat and her profound aversion to eating baby chipmunks, particularly on our newly acquired hardwood floors.
When I darted after Maggie, she ran headfirst into the file cabinet and dropped the chipmunk. It dropped on all fours, shook off its reveries of chipmunk valhalla, and rocketed toward the uncovered heating vent.
My heart leapt through my coffee-bittered teeth as I vaulted the unpacked moving boxes and slammed the loose grate over the vent hole seconds before Chip found sanctuary there. Chip catapulted toward the desk again, and Maggie was on her impossibly cute but out-of-place tail. I grabbed Maggie, because I could. I stood there holding her, and she breathed like a 33 1/3 lp played at 78 rpm.
It occurred to me that I had once bagged a bat with a simple bag, and perhaps this would work on Chip. I took Maggie with me in search of a grocery bag in the kitchen. What I found had handles, but there was no time to MarthaStewart the improvised gamewarden tool by cutting off the handles...I just tossed Maggie toward the front room and pulled the door of the den closed on me and Chip.
Chip was very much not dead.
Heshe ran to a corner of the room, and, oddly enough, just sat there. Given the varous objects and boxes available to climb or hide behind, I realized I was not dealing with the Einstein of yard vermin here. I walked over to him and popped the bag over his head, easily.
On the count of "three" Chip tumbled to what was going on and started scrambling around inside the sack, but I had him secure, and walked the percolating bag out to the woodpile. I let Chip scamper, unbloodied or even bowed, back to safety.
A few minutes later, as I raced through the last vestige of the New York Times, Maggie came in and rubbed my socked foot and meowed plaintively. As I watched her looking around and crying for her toy, I realized why the chipmunk was still alive.
To Maggie, the tiny pocket plaything represented her own babies, not a furry poptart. She had awakened briefly to the maternal state now absent to her for over 8 years, and was bringing Chip into the house to nurture, not kebab.
The meowl she loosed was not the meowl of a foiled huntress. It was the plaintive haloo of a bereft mom, lost in new surroundings.
Maybe I was projecting a very local human dilemma on to Maggie. But I had seen her hunt, and when she hunted she did not play cat and mouse. She visited instant judgement day on her various prey, in all contexts. No, she was doing an interspecies freelance adoption, and I had stepped in like the good government agent I am, observing the letter of the law of tooth and claw, but ignoring the spirit of the mother.
Perhaps I can learn something from this. We'll see.
This morning Maggie, my cat, ran in from the deck with a small chipmunk in her teeth. I thought she had the alert, addled look of feral happiness, and I assumed the poor wildlife prize was dead.
I stood up to shoo her back toward the deck, and she ran into the den.
I immediately imagined Sara witnessing this and going into paroxysms of Giaian concern, alternating between her deep love for Maggie the cat and her profound aversion to eating baby chipmunks, particularly on our newly acquired hardwood floors.
When I darted after Maggie, she ran headfirst into the file cabinet and dropped the chipmunk. It dropped on all fours, shook off its reveries of chipmunk valhalla, and rocketed toward the uncovered heating vent.
My heart leapt through my coffee-bittered teeth as I vaulted the unpacked moving boxes and slammed the loose grate over the vent hole seconds before Chip found sanctuary there. Chip catapulted toward the desk again, and Maggie was on her impossibly cute but out-of-place tail. I grabbed Maggie, because I could. I stood there holding her, and she breathed like a 33 1/3 lp played at 78 rpm.
It occurred to me that I had once bagged a bat with a simple bag, and perhaps this would work on Chip. I took Maggie with me in search of a grocery bag in the kitchen. What I found had handles, but there was no time to MarthaStewart the improvised gamewarden tool by cutting off the handles...I just tossed Maggie toward the front room and pulled the door of the den closed on me and Chip.
Chip was very much not dead.
Heshe ran to a corner of the room, and, oddly enough, just sat there. Given the varous objects and boxes available to climb or hide behind, I realized I was not dealing with the Einstein of yard vermin here. I walked over to him and popped the bag over his head, easily.
On the count of "three" Chip tumbled to what was going on and started scrambling around inside the sack, but I had him secure, and walked the percolating bag out to the woodpile. I let Chip scamper, unbloodied or even bowed, back to safety.
A few minutes later, as I raced through the last vestige of the New York Times, Maggie came in and rubbed my socked foot and meowed plaintively. As I watched her looking around and crying for her toy, I realized why the chipmunk was still alive.
To Maggie, the tiny pocket plaything represented her own babies, not a furry poptart. She had awakened briefly to the maternal state now absent to her for over 8 years, and was bringing Chip into the house to nurture, not kebab.
The meowl she loosed was not the meowl of a foiled huntress. It was the plaintive haloo of a bereft mom, lost in new surroundings.
Maybe I was projecting a very local human dilemma on to Maggie. But I had seen her hunt, and when she hunted she did not play cat and mouse. She visited instant judgement day on her various prey, in all contexts. No, she was doing an interspecies freelance adoption, and I had stepped in like the good government agent I am, observing the letter of the law of tooth and claw, but ignoring the spirit of the mother.
Perhaps I can learn something from this. We'll see.
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