Fullmoon of Peepers

Friday the 13th. You're lingering between the tikis, waiting for the full moon to pull itself up out of the brink, anticipating the show. In the meantime, you review.

Who needs "House of Cards"? "Breaking Bad"? "Mad Men"? Just root around in the cabin dresser for seeds and stems, amble down to the big sea water, light the lamps, conjure the moon.

This one, Strawberry. Don't forget the wine.

* * *

When you hear the first peep!, answer. Like you do with the ravens.

Remember that first raven, that time in the spruce by the outhouse? There you are, walking the path with your coffee in the sun, suddenly someone addresses you. Calls you out. From above, like a director. You look up — such astonishing blackness! — and forget yourself. Your tongue, your feet, your banality of coffee.

You talk for half an hour or so. Half a lifetime ago.

* * *

While waiting for the next peep!, you recite bird group names in your head, like running lines: siege of herons, wrench of warblers, cauldron of raptors, murder of crows, unkindness of ravens...

You follow this with a mental list of names for the namers: war of humans, murk of humans, unsteadiness of humans, suspect of humans, pestilence of humans...

When you hear the second peep!, answer again. Repeat. For as long as it takes.

Suddenly you're Don Draper, giving the presentation. Keep it short, focused. This isn't Shakespeare, it's advertising.

The pitch: you will never be unkind. You will never stage a siege, wrench anyone's body part off, throw anyone into a cauldron, murder anyone.

You're a good risk. There for the duration.

* * *

When the peeps! escalate — two, three in succession, brighter, louder — answer in kind. In kindness. You're finding it now, a rhythm, a voice.

When the conversation grows legs, keep it up, for as long as you can. For the rest of the night, the rest of your life.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for the moonpath. Coming soon to a body of water near you.

* * * 

It's Friday the 13th. You're lingering between the tikis, watching the full moon pull itself up out of the brink, talking to a tree frog.

Suddenly it occurs to you, as surely it must. This is the risk. This is the duration. Emphasis on the linking verb.

This is the show.

In Silence

(for my mother)

Death is silence, it is not sleep.
It circles, as the deer the house,
seeking shelter, browse in deepest
winter, and having found
a window lit, stays, circling,
its pattern set.

We return long months to find
the walls caught in a web of tracks,
where the spectral deer have passed
so precisely through the snow,
and light the fire, and the lamps,
await a glimpse.

Death is with the deer who hide,
wearing the forest like a cloak,
until that moment we turn aside
to tend the stove. Patient, still,
it never guesses, awaits its chance,
makes its entrance.

Somewhere in the dark beyond
there lies a snowy, dozing bear,
looking much like death as any
dreamer, but for waking. Yet
this is my experience — death is
not sleep, it's silence.

(the cabin / Winter 2000)

Deer bedding under the Daisy Tree
(the cabin / Winter 2014)

The Morning After

The Past, the Present, and the Future walk into a bar.

It was tense.

Werewolves of London Road

Late last night I looked in the mirror, my hair was perfect. My face looked like the surface of Mars, but my hair was perfect. I decided to go with it and stay up all night. Why ruin a lucky break from a random Universe with bedhead? The rest of my life is fucked to hell and back, my hair's perfect. Where's Warren Zevon when you need him? Fucking dead, that's where. I should've known.

Whenever my hair is perfect, the Universe gets pissed. The last time my hair was perfect — and the time before that and the time before that — one of a number of things happened, all of them variations on a theme of Death. Call it a weather event which made landfall in this neck of the woods some moons ago, and then stalled. This thang ain't goin' nowhere anytime soon, jim. The shit just keeps piling up. And it's a BIG pile.

My hair is perfect for about twelve hours every other month. Do the math.

Fuck the Universe and its random ass, last night I wasn't taking any chances. Whatever was slouching toward my little corner of the world — again — I would add it to that ever-growing pile, but I would meet it head on. With perfect hair on that head. I adjusted the Barcalounger to open-coffin-mode, unscrewed another jar of grappa, and cued up MobWives.

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water, another season of MobWives hits the stream. Talk about hair. And nails. And tits. And triple negatives. Having grown up on the Iron Range back in the day, I'm familiar with a watered-down version of doze girlz from Staten Island. Make that grappaed-down. I mean, who needs prescription meds? Doze douchebags calmed me right the fuck down. All night long.

Then the sun rose. Fuck.

I check the mirror — hair waning but still upright — and settle in for another day of gnawing of nails (mea culpa, girlz), smoting of breast, and gnashing of teeth. And collecting of unemployment. An entitlement from my government which I'm duty-bound to honor by agreeing to regularly look for work. Huh! I could easily replace my weekly unemployment compensation dollar-for-dollar by dumpster diving for pop cans on Tuesdays and Thursdays, weather permitting. Just saying.

Meanwhile, back at the good ol' computer, I swear off Free Cell for a few nanoseconds and open up MinnesotaWorks! to check out the job listings. 40,000!?! I need a drink. Hmmm. A pina colada might do the trick. But it's not even noon. A wee bit early, even for the likes of moi.

So I grab a cup of joe and glance at the local online paper to see if the Universe imploded or something while I was laid out in the Barcalounger. But looks like the good ol' Universe is alive and well, jim, and apparently still pissed as hell, because there they are, splashed across the screen like stray bocce balls, the mutilated bodies of a bunch of dead animals. Fucking November. Let's hear it for alla doze good ol' boyz with their wee dickz and big gunz still alive and kicking in dis necka da woodz! Which is more than youse can say for alla doze poor ol' bear and moose and deer and wolves. Huh! Add THAT to the pile.

Meanwhile, back at good ol' Facebook, the ads are running amuck.

Any fetus knows FB's ads are geared toward the demographic of the individual user. Which might explain why Calculate Your Life Expectancy websites have been filling all available space on my page these days. So I finally cave. I mean, WTF else do I have to do? On top of everything, I got canned from my job, remember? Just checking to see if my Faithful Readers are paying attention. And youse know who youse are, botha youse.

So I fill out questionnaires on fourteen websites and average the results. This takes three-and-a-half hours. By then it's almost Miller Time. Good news, I'm going to live to be 96! I'll drink to that! Bad news, I lied! I couldn't help it. There I am, some over-the-hill overeducated unemployed pierced and tattooed hasbeen from Palookaville whose face resembles the surface of Mars — perfect hair notwithstanding — I needed a pick-me-up. In addition to the usual.

Come to think of it, one of these days I should sit my over-the-hill ass down and calculate my future Social Security income. That oughtta be good. Using my method, I should be able to retire ... yesterday! Except looks like I did. Oh well.

So I'm headed back to the jobs website, honest officer, when WeatherUnderground starts flashing. It does this periodically, probably the ozone layer or something. But I have to check it out, maybe a tornado or a sinkhole or a comet or something is headed my way (given the SIZE of this pile, I'd make book on it). And sure as hell, there it is, flashing maniacally in a sidebar, plain as the nose on my Martian face: ISON! A fucking comet! A comet with a fucking name! I knew it! I just knew it!

Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter and threw up the sash, and howled into the darkening void,

"INCOMING!!"

which I repeated in that universal language,

"AHHH-WOOO!!"

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow reminds me it's Daylight Savings. Here it is, mid-afternoon, black as pitch. Hmmm. If I remember correctly, I made a commitment (as opposed to being committed) to my therapist to save my first drink until after dusk. Let the party begin!

Except looks like the party's over. For my hair at least. And my nails. Oh well. At least I made it through another fuck-youse from the Universe with only a comet to deal with this time. Piece of cake. Which is pretty much what my hair looks like. Half-eaten, the morning after, in the cold light of dawn.

This is the Air

This is the place, and your face
at this window, crazy with joy when
you saw me.

That was the way you would fill
the long hours, waiting
expectantly.

Those were the sounds in the hall
when I'd call you, back from some
dream country,

chasing some wildthing, far from
the hearthfire, beside some
sunlit sea.


There was the journey, the distance
we traveled, the end we didn't
foresee.

Taking the hard turn, caught
offguard, you struggled in vain
to get free.

That was the pulse of the promise
I whispered, deep in your ear
endlessly.

This is the air I will breathe now,
this vacuum, this void where you
used to be.

I'm half crazy...

...all for the love of you.

 

DAISY ASTRILA VALENTINE

December 9, 2002 ~ October 21, 2013

Brain Storm

My dog's a headcase.

Pretty much every female in my bloodline is a headcase. Starting with my great-great-great grandmother, whom my mother and my aunts (headcases all) swore on a stack of Bibles was a descendant of the Royal House of Norway, to which I always responded BFD, the population of Norway is 2,314, everybody's related, royal house or outhouse, what's the point.

So what I did was, a few years back (or maybe it was a century ago), I barricaded myself in the upstairs study with a weekend's supply of grog in a Vikings mug and conjured Ancestors.com. I was determined to prove/disprove this headcase/royalty thing once and for all. Seventy-two hours later, I had my answer: my female ancestors were in all likelihood headcases, and they were about as royal as a flush.

Which is pretty much what my aunts told me I could do with this ill-gotten info, any peasant could see how royal we all were, just look at our necks. My mother (Odin rest her soul) had already passed on to that great Castle in the Sky, and in agreement with her earthly sisters, was no doubt nodding her lovely head (perched on that royal neck) from some lofty turret beyond the clouds.

"You're a royal pain in the ass," is what my husband said, when I proudly announced my ancestral findings.

"But I'm not!" I said. "That's the point! My ancestors dumped out babies in the fields with the rest of 'em! I'm peasant stock down to my ankle bones!"

"And such lovely ankles they are," said my husband, who has this foot thing. He could care less about my neck.
 
Then there's my dog.

My dog's been a headcase from the get-go, and now she's in her sixties. Here's a small sample of things my dog's terrified of: thunder, fireworks, planes, pigeons, shrubbery, wood floors, garages, falling leaves, men, snow, doors, wind, the moon, magazines.

At our last appointment, the vet offered to write a prescription for valium. I perked right up.

"For whom?" I asked, ever the persnickety grammarian. I wonder, is that a sign of royalty?

But for once I eschewed drugs, and went shopping. For clothes. For my dog. Face it, she's spent her whole life running around buck naked, it was time for an upgrade.

What I did was, I got my dog a ThunderShirt.

For the uninitiated amongst you, rest assured this is no pussy-ass Paris Hilton doggie-in-a-teacup style tutu. Nosireebob. This is the canine equivalent of chain mail, my friend, and we're talking armor, here, not Saturday delivery. ThunderShirt: for the dog who has everything — and is scared shitless of all of it.

Do yourself a favor. Next time you're up for a chuckle, pour yourself a flagon of your favorite swill and sit your ass down and click here: ThunderShirt. What a trip. I never realized how many dog headcases are out there. It's a wonder any dog can manage to get out of bed in the morning, let alone hold down a job and raise a family.

The concept behind ThunderShirt is that it wraps snugly around the client and provides a gentle, constant pressure, producing a dramatic calming effect by giving the client the impression that he/she is being hugged. And being hugged is near the apex of every dog's top-ten list, second only to nosing genitals.

The ThunderWorks logo ("Taking the 'Pet' out of Petrified" is the tagline) offers a variety of ThunderProducts, including ThunderTreats, ThunderCaps, ThunderToys and ThunderLeashes. They also offer ThunderShit for cats, but any peasant knows that's just a marketing ploy. Cats question the very existence of existence, they never fall for hype. Dogs, on the other paw, believe anyfuckingthing they can see, smell or bury in the couch.

Setting that age old debate of cats. vs. dogs aside, the whole concept got me ... thinking. Stranger things have happened.

This is what comes of being unemployed, my friend. When the number of Free Cell games you've played is nearing the six-figure mark, you come to a stark and humbling realization: you need a hobby.

What I did was, I brainstormed. With myself. I sized up the choices, and after a minor period of adjustment (during which my brain had to be jump-started from a near-vegetative state), I took up ... thinking.

It was one day at a time in the beginning, but after awhile I started to get the hang of it. I persevered and my efforts paid off. I've been thinking nonstop for over a month now, which has resulted in some pretty great ideas (if I don't say so myself), one of them being the following:

How about a line of clothing for women with anxiety issues? Better yet, how about a line of clothing for women with anxiety issues designed to be worn underneath our normal attire? Call it ThunderWear ("Taking the 'Woe' out of Woman" is the tagline), and offer a variety of ThunderProducts, including ThunderCamis, ThunderBras, ThunderBriefs and ThunderThongs.

Trust me, ThunderWear would sell like a house afire. My female relatives alone would keep the line in business for generations. I can already picture it: me and my dog, in our respective ThunderDuds, calmly circling the block, smiling at passers-by and dreamily picking up shit. Paris Hilton and her teacup-pups would have nothing on us.

I'm telling you, there's something to be said for this thinking thing. It puts the "head" back in headcase. Who knew? I just keep coming up with this amazing shit out of nowhere.

Remind me to tell you about my surefire solution for ridding outdoor music fests of that ubiquitous menace, LSD WALA.* I'm also working on the prototype for a juju which specifically targets prepubescent former bosses who fire your ass just because it's a bit wrinkled.

But enough, my brain needs a break. Think I'll take the Stepford dog for a walk. To be cuntinued.

(*Loud Smoking Drunken Women Acting Like Assholes)

Bottom of the Pile

What's in a Name?

A few evenings back I extricated myself from "Breaking Bad" in the Barcalounger to answer the land mine, er, line. It was my daughter.

"Good evening, madam. Could I interest you in a demonstration of the new Kirby Series G10 Sentria?"

Did I mention my daughter recently dropped out of high school to become a telemarketer? Vacuum cleaners. She wants to get together enough money to buy a car. But as any telemarketer/dropout will tell you, you need more than a car to get outta Dodge.

I mean, she'd be better off selling pot. You can fail Algebra II six times and still figure that one out. What happened to all the blood, sweat and beers of parenting? I mean, you'd think she'd been locked in a closet for thirteen years.

To hear my daughter tell it, she was. A broom closet. Maybe that's where she acquired her affinity for vacuum cleaners. Turns out the closet wasn't big enough for the both of us, so she moved out, taking the vacuum bags with her. Which smelled suspiciously like pot.

Now she only stops by to eat, nap, shower, change clothes, re-do makeup, check messages, borrow money, watch a few hours of cable, and case the joint for anything not nailed down. I've started calling her Sentria.

But not to her face. It's the face that launched a thousand slips. Pretty much every one of them made by Yours Truly.

Dream On

My daughter was four-and-a-half when the angels dropped her on our doorstep, a note pinned to her prison blues:

"Keep away from sharp objects!!"

Which should've been our first clue. But I took one look at that adorable snarl and my natural maternal instinct kicked in. I started drinking. Thirteen years later my liver is trying to enter the Witness Protection Program, and my daughter is pushing vacuum cleaners. Except not around my house.

"That's why god made Housekeepers," she said, back in middle school, when in a moment of weakness I'd foolishly admitted to yet another failure on the parenting scale by not having taught her how to properly clean a house.

"Since when do you believe in god?" I said, privately racking up yet one more parenting failure, at which point she rolled her eyes, signalling the beginning of the Eye Roll Era, which remains ongoing. It's a wonder the kid hasn't needed corrective surgery.

Which is something I dream about. Corrective surgery. So does my husband, although he isn't willing to remortgage the house just to save my face.

"I'm just curious," he said the other day, after I accidentally looked in the hall mirror and screamed. "Can they, um, make you look like someone else? Like Julie Christie or something?"

"Julie Fucking Christie?!" I said. "What are you, ninety-seven? Is she even fucking still alive?"

"Does it matter?" he said.

"It matters to her!" I said.

Suddenly I was remembering "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," how Julie Christie sat around the Wild West all day in high-button boots and vintage clothing, smoking opium and staring at mid-air and Warren Beatty. Nice work if you can get it.

Dues and Dont's

The only time I smoked opium I was living in a cabin on a lake south of The City with a telephone repairman who drank Lambrusco and loved Chicago. The band, not the town. I loved Joni Mitchell and drank Blue Nun. The wine, not your sixth grade teacher. Obviously it was a mixed marriage. Although together we smoked enough pot to finance a small Central American country. It was the seventies, man.

The day we smoked opium, the repairman repaired to his Buick Skylark and cranked "Chicago II" on the eight-track. I cranked "Blue" on the stereo and cleaned the cabin from top to bottom. Then I cranked "Ladies of the Canyon" and cleaned it again.

Later that same day, in a moment of inspiration, the repairman and I repaired to the kitchen, where we emptied the vacuum bag onto a floor you could've eaten off of (although we didn't, not that time) and painstakingly sifted through its contents. Our efforts were rewarded with close to a half lid of some basically okay but rather dusty product. Nice work if you can get it.

Which brings us back to vacuum cleaners.

"This job sucks," said Sentria ironically.

We were still on the phone. Across the room Walter White stood frozen in his jockeys and apron, one hand held aloft as if hailing a cab. Or waiting for a falcon to land, whichever came first.

"You can say that again," I said, so she did.

"But, you know," I said, "everyone has their share of lowlife, sucky jobs, you have to pay your dues, you know, start at the bottom. I remember once I..."

"Whatever," she said, and hung up. I could hear her eyes rolling.

Learner's Permit

I myself drive a Hoover these days. Or rather, the Housekeeper does.

I'm referring to that heroic woman who shows up once a fortnight to fight the neverending battle, gas mask and Scrubbing Bubbles in hand, a modern day Sisyphus rolling the Hoover up the mountain that is our home, only to watch it roll back down again, repeatedly, for all eternity. Or until Social Security kicks in or we're all dead, whichever comes first.

Which reminds me of a story.
 
Awhile back (or maybe it was five years ago), the diamond fell out of my engagement ring, somewhere in the house. I put the Housekeeper on a leave of absence (she immediately hoofed it to a small Central American country) and started crawling around from room to room on all fours, something I hadn't done since the seventies.

It took me about six weeks to cover the distance. At which point, having come up empty-handed, I decided to Hoover the joint and then sift through the contents of the bag, as in days of yore. At which point I stepped barefoot into the broom closet to secure my weapon, and that's when I felt it: a little poke on my sole. And no, it wasn't my daughter.

It was, of course, the diamond. Applause, applause. Some people might call this a miracle. Or a sign. Or a gift from god or the universe. Whatever. I call it a diamond in the rough, ha ha. Which is what I used to call my daughter before I started calling her Sentria. But not to her face.

These days I wait for my daughter to call me. Let sleeping telemarketers/dropouts lie. Something Sentria was becoming quite adept at long before the vacuum cleaner thing.

Although to hear her tell it, it's not a bad thing, lying. It's a talent. It's what makes her a good salesperson. Apparently her commissions are piling up. She may not have enough for a car yet, but she could always take the G10 Series out for a test drive. Like around my house.

How Many Senior Moments
Does It Take to Make a Fortnight?

My relationship with my mother improved after she died. My relationship with my daughter improved after she ran away. Am I insane, or is this a step in the right direction? That's a rhetorical question, man.

I still haven't had my diamond reset. As the Wicked Witch of the West said, these things must be done delicately. Plus, having recently lost my job (Queen for a Day), I'm fucking broke. But rest assured the family jewel is in a safe place, somewhere Sentria would never think to look. Hint: what's rectangular, smaller than a breadbox, and full of many many pages full of many many words?

Being a card-carrying bibliophile, I have hundreds, nay thousands, of said items piled throughout this mountain of a house, one of which doubles as a hiding place. Problem is — and there's always a problem, man — I can't remember which one. Shakespeare? Hemingway? Charles Dickens? Jane Austen? Chelsea Handler? No clue. Which is what my husband always says whenever someone asks him why he got married in the first place.

I figure after all these years (but don't remind my husband), this diamond could cover the down payment on a basically okay but rather dusty used car. Or a busload of kickass pot, whichever comes first. At least I know the diamond's somewhere in the house. Which is more than I can say for my daughter.