Sound Bite

I heard a mountain lion last Saturday.

At first I thought it was a drunken snowmobiler. Then I reminded myself there are no drunken snowmobilers up around The Cabin, due to stalagmites from the 4-billion-year-old Canadian Shield jutting up out of the bedrock like teeth, as if Mother Earth was just hankering to swallow some asshole on a Polaris 700 Dragon Switchback whole. Chomp, chomp, that's all she wrote.

The absence of drunken snowmobilers is one reason we continue to cling for dear life to our little neck of the woods. That, and the Wolf and the Raven and the Bear and the Deer and the Big Sea Water. And now the Mountain Lion.

Mountain lion, puma, cougar, panther, it's all puma concolor to you.

I didn't actually see the mountain lion, I heard it. Afterward I looked it up in Peterson's, the Bible of Pantheists Everywhere, and was told the voice of a mountain lion is "indescribable," followed by a few descriptions: a woman screaming, hysterical laughter, machinery vocalizing. Huh? The book went on to mention the myriad sounds a housecat makes by way of comparison.

Hold the phone. Whoever came up with the term housecat? Is that, like, the same category as housewife? houseboat? I don't think so. Cats only live in your house because there's no velvet upholstery out on the back forty, or to use your BlackBerry. Although the myriad sounds part is right on. A dog will follow you from room to room panting unintelligibly just to be in Your Holy Presence, while a cat will stand in the front hallway and, in the voice of your eighth grade gym teacher, command you to Quit Wandering Around Like An Asshole And Get Me A Sandwich Now!! If I had to translate what the mountain lion was saying on Saturday, it would be something along the lines of Quit Shitting Your Pants Like An Asshole And Get Me Some Venison Now!! 

Here's what happened:

The husky and I were at the cabin window, enjoying the thin February sun, watching a half dozen deer at the feeder in the clearing. Suddenly the deer stopped eating, raised their heads in unison, and stared into the woods. Then they turned en masse and bolted toward the lake and were gone. Just like that. You know how a deer will freeze, unmoving as a statue, all its senses riveted? Followed by a hasty departure, as if some All Powerful Deer Cop has commanded them to Get The Fuck Outta Dodge NOW I Mean NOW!! 

The husky and I stepped out onto the porch, and that's when we heard it. The drunken snowmobiler. The hysterical laughing mechanical woman. Loud, amplified, echoing. A voice which ricocheted so wildly I wasn't sure where it came from. Only that it came from a living being, and not one I had ever encountered.

The voice continued for maybe twenty seconds, then abruptly stopped. Complete stillness. An absence masking a presence. We stood for some time, unmoving as statues, all our senses riveted. Until something palpable in the air began to fade. And then once again it was cold, and the chickadees chattered, and a draft of woodsmoke from the chimney descended into the clearing like a mirage.

As the hours passed and the sun went down, doubt set in. What had I actually heard? Could I have been mistaken? But then I'd remember how the deer had disappeared, how the husky's fur had stood on end.

In the morning the deer were back. I filled the feeder, made coffee, stoked the fire. I was headed across the yard with the ash pan, when I saw them: there in the snow on the Dead End road that runs past our door, a fresh set of tracks leading down toward the lake. The tracks of an animal with enormous paws. An animal who, unlike a wolf, walks through snow with its claws retracted. Just like Peterson's said.

So how was your weekend?

 

Love and Counting

I finally took down the Christmas decorations.

One year I left them up until April. This was when we lived in the woods. When you live in the woods, anything goes. Usually the first thing is your sanity. If you're lucky. You start seeing animals everywhere, even when they're not. This is because animals are camouflaged to blend in with their environment. Is that a deer behind that tree? Nope, just a deerlike tree. In the same way people are made to blend in with their environment. Sometimes I've gone to The Mall and thought I was the only one there.

When we lived in the woods, I sometimes went for a hike and ran into a bear. Usually, a bearlike tree. The time I'm remembering, the tree grunted. My first clue. Then it watched as I walked backward down the path to the gate through the gate across the yard up the steps to the house. Try walking backward down a path through a gate up a set of stairs with a bear the size of a Buick watching. This event happened to coincide with A. my birthday, B. the Rodney King thing (remember that, class?), and 3. a gathering downtown at the Federal Building to protest the Rodney King thing. I called my husband to say I'd be late to the protest, having been waylaid by a bear the size of the Federal Building.

One winter I spent the better part of a sizable Arts Grant feeding the deer. A winter of record-breaking snowfall, deer dying by the boatload, immobilized by the ocean of snow. Every morning I donned my space suit and trudged out to the shed to load the toboggan with 100 lbs. of deer mix, which I hauled 100 yards up the path to the feed troughs. I repeated this at dusk, and on a daily basis for three months. By the time spring finally broke, I was, too, and my herd numbered more than five dozen. They'd made their Green Barn in the woods surrounding our property and spent the winter yarded up there, waiting in the shadows for my visits. I began to recognize individual animals and spoke to them as I moved through the woods. When the snow melted in June, I found antlers scattered around under the trees, like thank-you gifts.

I suppose many of their descendants are still there. Maybe even a couple of the old-timers. How long does a deer live? Not long enough.

My Christmas decorations deadline this year, proper little townie that I've become, is Valentines Day. I'm just under the wire. Although the red-and-gold of Christmas lends itself to Valentines Day as well. Also to a funeral parlor, which my normal non-holiday decor resembles. I remind myself of this whenever I'm considering purchasing yet another fringed velvet throw pillow. When guests arrive, I'm sometimes tempted to greet them in a hushed voice, "Are you with the Anderson party?"

With the spangles and bling of Christmas '07 relegated to memory, the wreaths and candles and lighted houses tucked away on the basement shelves, I sit in the sun under the piano window and tune my autoharp. A lengthy process, someone has to do it. Nothing worse than an out-of-tune stringed instrument, I always say.

...G-flat...G...A-flat...A...

I think about Christmas Past, about music, about The Past in general, all those years I fanatically tuned and retuned the Gibson, the Martin, how I changed strings weekly, sometimes daily, worshipped my calluses like they were battle scars.

...B-flat...B...C...D-flat...

Now the Gibson and the Martin and the Melody Maker and the 335 are tucked away in their cases, criminally out-of-tune, lined up like coffins beside the piano, and here I am, forging a new relationship with a vintage 1966 15-chord RBI Chrom-A-Harp, who knew.

...D...E-flat...E...F...

Which reminds me of Miss Hessler, the traveling music teacher in my old elementary school, who traveled between schools and around the room like Groucho Marx, mustache and all, with her autoharp and her pitch pipe and her sensible shoes, who spat when she sang so that you prayed for an umbrella, one of that old generation of unmarried female schoolteachers who died in the trenches.

After awhile I lay down the tuning wrench, press the chord bar, and a big ringing A-minor fills my living room. My funereal living room in town. I squint into the sun, clear my throat, and begin:

"The ants go marching one by one..."

The Preschoolers are going to love this. Valentines Day, the "Hearts and Numbers" unit, or, as Charlotte put it the other day, "Love and Counting." It's time something replaced "Jingle Bells" as their favorite song. And actually it is a rather dirge-like little tune. All these connections, isn't life a trip.

The Sus Domestica in the Room

I'm pretty much a hard-ass bitch. Ask anyone, and some of them are dead.

There's also my bleeding-heart skag side.

In the interests of Clarity (a good name for a cat), call me Schizzo (a good name for a hard-ass bleeding-heart).

Given my druthers, I'd druther live in a cave with a pack of wolves than in the midst of the Family of Man. This is why I'll never be a card-carrying Buddhist, though I lean in that direction like a drunkard toward a bottle. While I embrace the Buddhist tenets of compassion for all living things and the wisdom of the Middle Way, I struggle mightily with the idea of compassion toward all things human, misanthropic hermit that I am.

This means I pretty much despise the human race and would rather live in a cave with a pack of wolves. In case I wasn't clear enough on that point. I'm human by way of an accident of birth. It's not my fault.

Last week a front page headline in the morning paper read:

"Pork Plant Probe's Focus: Pig Brains"
"Experts theorize that workers struck by a mysterious illness at two plants
inhaled brain tissue sprayed into the air during its removal."

I gasped as I read this. Still trusting after all these years, what a sap. Then I noted a non-related headline beneath the first:

"Americans Struggle With Epidemic Obesity"

This was accompanied by a photo of some male human's gut cascading over his Dockers like a tsunami. And Good Morning To You, Too, Dickwad! I sat stunned, coffee cup...but not my disbelief...suspended. Is this a fucking intelligence test? What the fuck is wrong with this fucking picture? Are human fucking beings really this fucking retarded?

I'll say it again, for the sake of Clarity, my beloved cat: I do not want to be associated with a race of beings who would blithely suction the brains out of some animal, the better to stuff its remaining flesh into their own guts, and then complain when the above-described horror makes them sick and fat.

Questions? Dial 1-800-Rocket-Science.

All of which is to explain why I went online and ordered an Obama '08 button. $2.75 S&H, 2-3 weeks delivery. Deliver us from evil. From ourselves. From anyone with a name like Huckabee ("Let's play Rhyme Time, class!").

It's not that Mister Obama is a Buddhist, he's not. He probably eats pork, the asshole. And, unlike the genetic-experiments-gone-wrong which make up the vast majority of his fellow politicos, all signs point to his being human. But as much as I detest humanity, a large portion of which seems to be gravitating in Mister Obama's direction, he's managed single-handedly to tap some latent species memory deep in my battered psyche. Something having to do with...dare I say it?...hope. HOPE. I just dictionary-dot-commed that word and there are no synonyms listed. None. Nada. There's only HOPE. And I'm not talking about some two-bit town in Arkansas, stupid.

I know I know, what a sap. It's the bleeding-heart skag part rearing its overly-dyed-blonde head. I can just hear the comments, and I have one thing to say: Shut The Fuck Up. I don't want to hear it. I'm in my manic phase, let me enjoy it. Joy in any form is hard to come by these days.

Mr. O. has inspired me. Got a problem with that? Other than wine over $7.99 a bottle or the view from my cabin window, inspiration in any form is also hard to come by. He inspires me because of the off-chance that he might actually be The Real Thing. A human being with the potential to transcend being human. And even if this turns out not to be true, he's at least reacquainted some of us with the possibility of The Real Thing. Which in recent history seems to have gone the way of the buffalo. The pig. The cow. The whole fucking ark.

But don't get me wrong, I'm only talking politics here. In general the human race appears to be faltering at the starting gate. Too much brain tissue in the air, and not enough where it should be.

My name is Schizzo and I approve this message.

Junk Drawer

Duck tape, Scotch Tape, masking tape, glue,
postage stamps, radish seeds, paper clips, comb,
three pairs of sunglasses (all broken),
four strips of negatives (all faces),

pliers, kite string, pinecones, chalk,
coupons for pizza and flowers and gas,
two earrings (mismatched), thumb tacks, nails,
scissors, golf ball, flashlight, tees,

bubble wand, five packs sugarless gum,
dish full of pennies and nickels and buttons,
three ticket stubs from Johnny Winter,
dental floss, Nylabone, Norwegian matches,

rabies tags from the 1990s,
double A batteries, old driver's license,
alphabet stickers, indelible markers,
pipe cleaners, chopsticks, pencils, Chapstick,

postcards from Paris and Zihuatanejo,
phillips screwdriver, disposable camera,
postcards from Rome and California,
whistle, piece of 100-year-old sidewalk,

vitamins, wine corks, staples, Altoids,
hammer, tennis ball, incense, Barbie shoe,
aspirin, tape measure, WD-40,
ashtray, sunscreen, kaleidoscope, door knob.