NO KEYS TO THE GATE

WHAT IT IS

On a privately-owned, left-handed dirt track, some eight and a half furlongs long, just outside Greensburg Indiana was where the magic happened for a second time in as many races. On a hazy, lazy Sunday morning in August, eight thoroughbreds lined up at the starting gate, their owners mulling around the in-field in nervous anticipation. As soon as the last horse was gated, the starting pistol sounded, the gates flew open and five stallions, two geldings and one mare bolted down the track. Molly’s Turn was by far and away the favorite. The previous year she ran the Indiana Derby, coming in second behind the state champion by a quarter length and she had only grown stronger since then. The three-year old’s forte was to break early, run hard and let the other horses eat her dust. On this day the pattern did not deviate, but when the pack was coming out of the backstretch, the two nearly identical grey/white geldings, made their move. Molly’s Turn pounded the track hard, her head dropped slightly and she dug deep, but as the home stretch loomed before them, she could see the pair inching toward her, one on the outside the other a couple of feet to the inside. Down the home stretch the three warriors battled hard and with less than a furlong to go, no distance separated the three. Cheers and laughter erupted among the owners, as the finish line revealed the geldings’ neck and neck with one another and Molly’s Turn a close second. It would be the second neck and neck finish by the pair in the last two weeks. Perhaps more interesting than the race, was the peculiar behavior of one of the horses as he rounded the final turn heading into the home stretch.

Tenth Conspiracy was a late addition to the race, his job was to fill out the field, give a reasonable last place finish, all the while offering an air of authenticity to the race. As the pack mutated into a mob of predictability; hooves pounding, dust swirling and muscles straining, Tenth Conspiracy pulled up abruptly and watched the others disappear down the home stretch. Gestures of superiority, robust tail flapping and exaggerated nostril exhaling was not what he wanted to witness because this repeating posturing led to no new horizons, no tantalizing discoveries but laid bare a paralyzing gratefulness that winners extol and losers are confused by what they might be missing. This act of the grateful, is the one that corals the parameters of a prosperous and opulent life while perplexed by those who let gratefulness slip through their fingertips like some dying religion. They make no connection and they make no reflection because theirs is a soft dreamlike state where good deeds are done by good people and gratefulness flows through their veins and never spills on to the street. And if it should ever spill, the concoction might be misdiagnosed  as a form of  equality spoken from a preacher’s pulpit  or a CEO’s comfortable chair or an actor’s naïve world view. Tenth Conspiracy wondered if he should be grateful, he never won a race, never had a flowering wreath draped around his neck, and never entered the winner’s circle but there was still those who insisted that existence, no matter what shackles accompanied it, was firm ground for gratefulness. On this day, he decided the whole notion of gratefulness was for the lucky few and he would stroll through the countryside and leave this race for gratefulness behind.

WHAT IT IS NOT

A bored lunatic from a movie film crew near the south-eastern tip of Missouri raised his cross bow, in its sights a grazing Tenth Conspiracy was unaware of what was about to happen to him. A searing pain bolted through his neck, paralyzing his legs, causing  him to plummeted to the ground with such force that the arrow protruding from his neck snapped off leaving blood spewing in all directions. As adrenaline exploded throughout his body, he tried to get back on his feet, catching a glimpse of the carpenter’s assistant reloading his cross bow. For Tenth Conspiracy it was show time, an expression he loathed as it conjured up a banal tryst that was meant to be a surrogate to something genuine and tangible. This casualty of candor and this victim of cruelty was set upon by a moron, meaningless and distasteful, and placed in an absurd reality where no amount of supervision would find the keys to the gate. Perhaps he thought of himself as an extra in a movie, a Hollywood movie where tedious storytelling and bland narratives are the grease that keeps the theatre reels spinning. At any rate, the horse’s horse was about to muster that which no 2^nd or 3^rd or 4^th take could ever aspire to – that dash of realism floating in a sea of conviction where what matters is not bodies in seats but bodies of work well done. The dowdiness of this glamorous artform divulges its association to strength made trivial, as it applies its biases to be gobbled up by the masses who are offered up no alternatives and no alterations. Tenth Conspiracy’s alternative was to divorce this glamorous artform and summon enough herculean strength to get back on his feet and head for anywhere. The second arrow got haplessly entwined in the horse’s tail and the third malfunctioned, injuring the shooter. Tenth Conspiracy’s run was sloppy and jagged, ending when he got tangled up in a pile of barbed wire left carelessly at a field’s edge by a local farmer. Lying in a heap, he thought about the many races, the many losses and the certain circumstance that brought him to this place. His restfulness, though uneasy, cried out to place where he should have always been,  that being a place where the trappings of accolades served to potently twist the mind into believing what is served up is never enough, should never be settled for and the more is deserved and always attainable. As he drifted, this peacefulness we hear about, overcame him and he thought he heard soft voices whispering to him in his final moments.

Mrs. B. quickly ordered the translucent man to backtrack a quarter mile, pick up as many of the strange orange plants as he could carry and return immediately. She knew she could save this one.

NEW PAGES FOR OLD STORIES

WHAT IT IS

 It looked out of place, but what didn’t look out of place when the place was a promise of what might unfold into a harmony of acceptance, not just a charity on a whimsical holiday night with well-wishers and do-gooders embracing the excitement that is the everyday burden of those destitute. And just who will be the new destitute is a question that will never have to be asked because grist will always fall on the mill’s floor before being cheerfully swept away to an unseen corner after the festivities are over. This tradition fabricates an immense currency measured in endowments, in pleasures, in gratitudes, in fulfilments, and a host of other human traits but the currency flows only in one direction unless one considers the plight of the receivers on the other side to be some kind of a fulfilling fantasy. This is the fantasy that carries the donation dust, propagating an endless cycle that many will fight to preserve, a twist in the human condition not easily explained. This, and other observations, looked out of place to No.1 as he squinted at what appeared to be a piece of driftwood stuck vertically in the middle of the road. Peering at the object, No. 1 mused at that which was out of place or that which had no place or that whose place was precarious and should not have endured. He thought of the far-flung place of romance novels, where a slick sort of love held court, untortured by myths and messages of profane catastrophes and oblivious to the winds of demons swirling around in the tea cups held in the loving couple’s hands. It is also held in the loving eyes of astronauts and engineers and architects as they forge withdrawals of philosophy and sprinkle the tidbits like a cyanide extract to preserve and punish those in line for a handout, an apartment, a job or a vote to uphold those loving eyes. It is as if those who are doing what they love are lovingly doing nothing. Nearly sliced in two by a crop duster’s propeller, No.1 had little time to pass judgement on circumstances boiled in petulant behaviors, but instead wished to make his way toward the strange object and peer at his final sunset. His death crawl was not that of the mountain gorilla, nor would he want it to be, because that echelon had its fate tangled in old european money, pseudo environmentalism and that nugget of christianity that both elevates you and sickens you at the same time. As a simple pollinator, No.1’s life force was to give an answer to a redundant question and then explain the knowledge of his puny lifespan into inconsequential ramblings, then being screamed at, what have you done for me lately! Nothing you would understand, he thought, was what came to No.1 as inched closer to his destination. Tiny spits of gravel exasperated his wounds as he crawled along the road’s edge, his loving eyes closing forever.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The kind of tired she felt did not evoke sleep, it did not evoke restless limbs striking at strangulating blankets and it did not evoke a brain fog that permeated the morning and dissipated in the afternoon, but instead made her pensive about the weight that never ceased to weigh. It was not the albatross of certainty or the fashionable deniability that impeded her cause, but the dilettante distractors who peddled in pious poisons designed to trigger a reaction of persecution in a world where it’s not my fault has become all too common. Unable or unwilling to free herself from the shackles of a flawless utopia, Feather’s delusion was to snatch up the con men, arrest the politicians, apprehend the billionaires and bring then all to Desolation Row for a protracted look at what they wrought. Knowing that no good could come of this conviction, did not stop her from clutching at the virtual throats of the pollyannas in an attempt to shake something substantial from the dying tree. The dying tree; was it a love never unearthed, a passion spoken of, realized then discarded, a life lived in the boxes of predictability or was it a sliver of history forever repeated and folded into new pages of old stories. Being a prisoner of her own old story, Feather’s tenacity of purpose would begin where it always had, squashed between the thin morning light of hope and the convoluted conspiracies of midnight and madness.

Feather gazed at the reflection of the fiery sunrise as it hurled itself against the driver’s side window of an old ford pick up truck. The window, speckled in dry mud and opened a crack at the top, absorbed the morning light in a most peculiar way, reminding her of an abstract. Not having the ability to just walk away, she shuffled up to the window and looked inside: a frazzled guitar, its veneer cracked and blistered, was propped up on the passenger’s seat, the word MOLLY scribbled in black marker below the bridge. A handful of picks on the dash board, a few broken spark plugs  on the passenger side floor and a stained felt fedora on the driver’s seat, was some of what Feather could make out. The pull-down ashtray below the center console, overflowed with cigarette butts and grey ash, the surplus creating an ash mound on the truck’s grimy carpet. A potpourri garland of seemingly unrelated articles hung off the rear-view mirror, a no nukes symbol, a dream catcher, a make love not war umbrella, a cow, and some costume jewelry. Looking into the bed of the truck, Feather saw the spare tire leaning against the back of the box, a large knife embedded in the sidewall, along with a message painted in army green paint on the tire’s sidewall: Welcome-Plot 82. Startled by a noise behind her, the translucent man apologized for his interruption, explaining to her that he thought the truck belonged to someone from another time. The translucent man suggested that time was the bridge that spans a couple of generations and is a down payment borrowed from one to payoff the other. The entire loan can’t be paid off at once, so piecemeal portions are doled out in the form of economic handouts, deferred environmental initiatives, convoluted tax schemes and spectacular commitments to a future that will never be seen. The translucent man reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old photo of a man strumming a guitar called Molly, a faded Desolation Row street sign hung above him. Feather believed she should find this man and willfully left the translucent man at the side of the road and walked into the forest.

WHAT GETS DONE

  WHAT IT IS

A savage north west wind, determined to bully a crew of conifers, twisted the ancient branches into absurd gyrations until the hysteria halted as wind gusts falsely abandoned the harassment. A sea of rust- colored needles swirled through the air, slamming into one another before falling to the forest floor, forming a harsh bed for the others who would surely fall once a finicky wind gust roared back to life. As the weary trees entertained the domineering fury, a wisp of smoke danced a complicated waltz in the valley, a stone’s throw away. With no way to run, and with which no way to bargain, the mightiest of the pines explained the impending eradication.  Be it preachers of the prescribed burn or the lackadaisical lightning strike or the insidious industrial spark, the impending wild fires are a mere footnote to an age where the cement becomes quicksand, the steel turns molten and the mighty pines release seeds to the future. Looking out on this bleak terrain is like seeing a train wreck in slow motion with the miniscule characters scurrying about presenting solutions, their pockets overflowing with cash, credit and bitcoin while the blaze below them dictates where investments should be made and where realities should be ignored. With the tussle between individualism and collectivism pounded into a perverse doctrine outlining who gets ahead, where they might be going and what will be left when they get there, it  could be that the winners are the ones left on the train as it plunges into the darkness of what is next.

As the darkness outdistanced the light, a solitary gull drifted past the conifers, latching onto updrafts and downdrafts until skimming the surface of a river. If this gull was to assert the suspicion of the reactionaries, what gets done would be what never gets done and the weight of evolution would be another slow and complicated waltz. Even these mercantile machinations has not the necessary drag to cause the gull to plummet into a hideous tar sand, where a beauty from above is a horror down below. In the dance to the death, both the pines and the gull agree they are casualties in the moment and will be mourned as museum pieces and curiosities of fate. The translucent man followed the gull’s erratic flightpath and it reminded him of himself.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The pronouncement of it being an erratic flightpath might be just a case of not understanding the intricacies or a colossal underestimate of past and future, of forward and backward; one thing was for certain, the translucent man had his work cut out for himself. Being created as a metaphor for the doomsday clock with all its accompanying paraphernalia, the translucent man long acknowledged the potential benefits of allowing the losing side to loose, but having to muster such immense gumption as a prelude to broadcasting such a communique was something that twisted his linear way of thinking. Embarking on a simple path while carrying a cauldron of humanity was an enormous weight that the translucent man occasionally and awkwardly wished could be left at the side of the road. Abandoning his life’s work for what might be whimsy, was a cold temptation that fired up a dormant passion, firstly subdued and finally suppressed, until a simple flightpath of a worldly creature shone an inevitable light on what else the earth could become. Questions asking if kings could be lions, if presidents could be pythons, or if people could be human, seemed a bit rash and eccentric for the translucent man, but the gull seemed to be insisting he consider these as legitimate queries. Just as a bus is a bus, regardless if it has riders or not, what do we make of a world without marauders and gangsters who stifle life and fashion what is left into an economic bile.

The translucent man was loath to peak over the mud and boulder berm that detached Plot 82 from the rest of the world, as if it’s standing alone meant it was somehow special or unique. For a time, the translucent man laid on a patch of sod gazing up at light grey clouds rimmed in an odd orange light borrowed from the late afternoon sun. He fixated on those who might be doing the same thing and those who will never do this thing and those who never took the time. As the pain in his shoulders and the throbbing in his knees reminded him of his age, he watched the smoke from the valley fire conceal the clouds above him. Slowly rising to his feet, he could smell and taste the complicated waltz he had avoided dancing with most of his life.

A CLOTHESLINE OF CONSCIENCE

 WHAT IT IS

An enduring dust, fine and determined, hung in the air like a bride’s veil, unwilling and unwavering as it witnessed a solitary bee climb high up a white pine for a final look around, knowing all too well that nothing is ever final. To scrutinize this mishap of finality, the observer might ignore a tunnel vision of events that grew heavier by the decree or, on the other hand, rely on a reliable dexterity of the mind and of the form;  the solitary bee certainly could do this, as could Feather. Through the orangey haze, Feather stood, her sword’s tip resting in the dust, a zombie grip glued to the hilt and her eyes transfixed on the desecration of the entrance where the one hundred women once lived. Sentenced by supreme tribunals, misogynist messengers and assorted cave dwellers, their principles drooped off the clothesline of conscience and would remain until another battle cry of common sense hammered at the endless farce as it was reborn again and again and again. This circle of foreverness, with its chauvinistic capers and adolescent musings is a glue in the arsenal that drags us back to the good ole days when the color was white, the religion was travesty and freedom was bought and sold at the market. As it languishes in a stupor of its own creation, inebriated by loathe and mistrust, the supremacist’s edicts are scattered into the winds of the future where much heavier lifting will be required to set the record straight. To all of this, the cat in the window yawned, then chirped wildly as the solitary bee flew from the tree and landed on the window sill to get a final look around. 

WHAT IT IS NOT

With a death glare on what was ahead, No.1 crawled along the edge of the runway, his body coated in a brown gunk from the early morning dew and the fine dust. A million others followed, shaking the stubby crab grasses along the runway’s edge as the brown hordes inched toward their final objective. Unlike other conscripts whose soulless battle of misinformation and disinformation is the blueprint that keeps the trenches muddy and howitzers blaring, those behind No.1 knew their death was certain and were determined to save their enemy from the madhouse that became their everyday lives. No.1’s fight was not Putinistic; no infanticide, no debauchery, no mass murder, only a simple message to a complex problem, where the complexity was not found in the solution, was not found in the message and was not found inside the many who embodied a remedy but rested in that lazy part of the brain where something may or may not get done. To dither on what must be done to save a species, to save your own species might be considered one of the great wonders of the world, but here it was gawking at an insect army ready to save a species from itself. To all of this, the cat in the window yawned, in existence for ten million years and hopefully a few million more.

BED OF A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP

WHAT IT IS

Hobbson’s spirit horse,now tormented with arthritis and wracked with the pain of frequent neglect, slowly hobbled behind the man that would be both his executioner and liberator. The animal bristled at the thought of a stroll down memory lane where the pleasant memories of youth were an exaggerated plastering of delights for dimmer minds to behold half truths, false memories, and deliberately embellished exploits. His plan was to enlist the strategies of equality, those ancient pillars of consideration that lingered more heavily than the trivial proclamations of a mask, a mandate, a misunderstanding. It was not his wish to stand behind the myth of the self as the only true choice for freedom while the freedom of the other was trampled by the righteous, out for gluttonous revenge for perceived infringements. This avalanche of bourgeois entitlement, sending poor expendable slobs to do their bidding, is older and sadder than the ground the elites hold title to, title that started all this in the first place. In his dark sunken eyes, the spirit horse detected the depraved pleasure some receive from the anarchy, the lawlessness, the pathetically principled smoke eaters looking into frightened eyes to shore up themselves. When it was all said and done, it is the irreconcilable inmates that will walk in their own footsteps to the grandiose mirror reflecting a world a little less friendly, a little more fearful.

For his part, Hobbson knew the horse was a composite of sun and sky, of earth and rock and the sum of all it had witnessed and disavowed. He felt uncomfortable with it’s age, it’s fragility, it’s wisdom and most of all the image glistening back from the grandiose mirror. Their fate braided, Hobbson led the horse to their final resting place and waited for the others to come.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Hammer walked with purpose, his sabatons growling at the gravel beneath his feet, as he traversed the abandoned county roads of Missouri looking for Feather, looking for Revenge, looking for anything to relieve the gnarling doubt that infected his being. His doubt vacillated between what the other side saw and what his side knew, and all the infectious righteousness of conversing with the other side was not going to make the mountain easier to climb or soothe the dismantled families flung into the winds of torture and war. Growing tired of these partisanships, Hammer remembered simpler times, where denial and innocence was the bed of a good nights sleep and the morning breakfast dripped with ethically sourced coffee and the eggs were laid by free run chickens…and we smiled the smile of the contented, not knowing what any of it meant. Hammer would visit this state, bask in its delirium for a moment before returning to the hamster wheel that was his world.

Little Mr. Dickens studied the knight like a wizard might puzzle over an unfamiliar potion, cocking his curious head from side to side until an observant translucent man drew the line between bird and warrior. In the instant before greetings were sloshed around, the translucent man lifted the knight’s burden, restoring his right to exercise what was right and what was wrong. Stopping the hamster wheel, Hammer greeted Feather with gusto and drew an arrow in the gravel road, pointing in the direction of the other side.

DUTY FROM A TWISTED FABRIC

WHAT IT IS

As the morning sun shoved its way through the pines, long shadows blanketed the ferns and mosses where Little Mr. Deakins tip-toed about looking for small insects and other morsels to sustain him until the others woke up and a proper breakfast would be prepared by Mrs.B. Normally, Little Mr. Deakins would celebrate a new day with enthusiastic crowing, animated head shaking and aggressive dirt scratching, but with Feather convalescing, the translucent man asked the rooster for some much needed peace and quiet. It was in these early hours that the translucent man would ruminate about purpose, about duty, about destiny and exactly how a doomsday metaphor’s rebirth would be accepted in a world where recognized facts occupied the same equation as factless fictions. A teenage environmentalist who wanted to be a teenager and not carry the weight of the cause, chose duty, while destiny was a thick book of promises and probabilities that used invisible inks to chart the way forward into the teenager’s future. It was the translucent man who was teenager, who possessed the inks that wrote footnotes of hope and passages of anguish for anyone or everyone to experience. Like the war vet who couldn’t take the step up to the cenotaph, the translucent man couldn’t embrace his duty without spiralling into a destiny where consolation was where everyone sat together looking out at stoic decision makers, hands dripping with colonialism and eyes on fire with the thought of more. Kidnapped by these thoughts, the translucent man resisted the Stockholm syndrome by telling himself he was just the messenger, a messenger shot a thousand times, but a messenger just the same. He also knew that being crowned a messenger didn’t absolve him or remove him or obscure him from the duty of decision or the destiny of  the inevitable and that his place was woven from fabric twisted from the duty of others on a destiny not of their choosing.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The small horse was not fond of  the forest, with its creaking branches echoing a haunting agony that penetrated the stillness. Standing sentry, he surveyed the trees to discover which branches were responsible, but the sounds were everywhere, from every direction and vanishing to nowhere. A conspiracy, he thought, between the wind, the rain, the leaves, and creatures that inhabit these foreboding enclaves; his thoughts quickly turned to open fields of hey where the light was strong, and the swoosh of grasses was the democracy that worked for him. Despite his trepidation, the small horse knew much about the forest, the dominant mother trees, the messenger fungi that travelled and communicated between trees and the stories that trees told in the dying seconds of the setting sun. He often listened to the forest, trying to puzzle out what this colossus of confusion represented and over time, and with the help of the others, he slowly began to unfurl meaning and understanding. Forests were the record keepers where vaults of accounts illustrated what was done, what will be done, and what should never have been done. In the forest, as in all places, the small horse walked purposefully, taking care to avoid spoiling that which was below his hooves, allowing him to declare to a dystopian future that it was not he or his companions that caused their pain and suffering. Although this belief was strong in him, and he indeed carried it with him for many years, he wondered if he had done enough, said enough, believed enough. If he could trust the forest, overcome his fear, and learn more about this mighty ecosystem, then perhaps his own dystopian future would be a bit brighter.

RITUAL RETREAT

WHAT IT IS

Feather couldn’t decide if a daffodil represented the beginning or the end, or if there was much difference between the two. The middle takes up all the oxygen in the room with its futuristic plans, the assertions of forward paths and the division of resources allocated. It struck Feather as a lazy, almost comatose path that we stumble along, in our desire to make statements of matter or embrace principles to uplift when the allocated resources are squandered on the likes of space tourism that claims to be wrapped up in human ingenuity along with a savior complex that equates homelessness, starvation and malnutrition with projects not befitting the great wits of this immense middle. Sagging under the weight of this absurdity is the ticking time bomb that needs no revelation except the revelation that privilege is the trump card that spirals the middle down into complacency or fear or awe or perhaps a simple retreat to friends and family where denial if the only friendly face left. Kicking at this cat of industrial farming, of fearless air travel, of monolithic clear cutting gives rise to questions of who in the middle controls this or is control found around the edges where our heroes linger, taking flights of fancy before everything is grounded. We haven’t been around that long but eight billion of anything will have an impact on strength, on resilience, on what determines the difference between the beginning and the end.

The daffodil was out of sync with the season, but like many things associated with Mrs. B., what had to be done would get done. Feather’s convalescence was guided by fowl smelling poultices, aromatic root gum soups and mysterious groans and chants Mrs. B. delivered every morning, along with a single daffodil. Feather’s ancient armour held up surprisingly well against the onslaught of INSECT’s munitions, but it was Mrs. B.’s weeks long vigil that brought Feather back. Feather knew she eluded her end, which would now mutate into a new beginning and a fight for a middle of an ever shrinking slice of humanity.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Ritual wants to leave, it wants to be forgotten and thrown on the slag-heap that idiots and fools have created, nurtured, and honoured since crawling out of the ooze. That said, ritual is not about to don a tuxedo, grab a Burberry umbrella and stroll out of the fortress and mingle with the minions that prop up its existence and carry it to victory as if all is well that ends well. Ritual is in the fight of its life as marriage retreats, funerals fade, and friends and relatives give up the bore-fest of vacations together. Glib graduations are still in vogue, as are excruciating office parties. Indeed, many people still shuffle off to church, despite what we have come to learn about that cult. Legions honor the fallen, front line workers are celebrated and even the lowly movie star has a yearly night on the town. What does all this mean? It means this – the daffodil does not get a day off – it symbolizes a cancer fight or a spring festival or a hospital pick-me-up or what ever meaning we assign to it.

Ritual may want to leave but we have stolen its shoes, hid its jacket and cancelled the bus it was supposed to leave town on. Not only are we wired into our past, but we are warped and arrested by the what we perceive are unshakeable destinies of guidance and truth. Do we tote these rituals around forever, do we create new ones, do we unbind from social and economic practices and shove ritual out of our lives? Some will, some won’t, but the next time you see an empty bus rolling down the highway you may wonder what might have been.

LOVE TO HATE

WHAT IT IS

He was drifting deliberately, in a kind of hypnagogic state where he attempted to control the delirium in the hope that explanations of his state of mind might make sense in a world where pandemic messages flew over his head and landed on distant and foreign individuals. His grasp of social isolation lies not in discomfort but in embracement, his desire for community was twisted into strands of what-ifs…pre-pandemic…and his way out of the despair was to invent gratitude and display it as the farce and sound bite it had become. The need to document the trivialities of this era would be left to the participants climbing social media ladders as they cast their perforated nets on to diverse crowds who looked for simple truths during exhausting times. Waking up from this would see the carnival tents unfold and fashionable rides resurge, while the fringes stagnated and staggered to the finish line amidst announcements that the worst was over.

Jolted out of his dreamlike state, the translucent man was mesmerized by Little Mr. Deakins as he ran in circles, kicking up dust and flapping his silly little wings, all this while being observed by a goat standing on top of a woodshed. As Little Mr. Deakins became more animated, the translucent man decided further investigation was required and to that end he got up and found a severely wounded Feather next to the woodshed.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Mrs. B once saw a movie where a cow stood on top of a barn, making this goat standing on the woodshed roof seem sensible. Sensibilities is a walk in a minefield of compromised information, manipulated sincerities and commodified science doled out by mavericks whose love of hate is the contraption that turns the next page. The next page is important to keep chaos clear and continuing, to add to banter and to mimic the right of free speech. I think they call it,  the god given right of free speech. Mrs. B saw a lot of god givens in her time on this earth ,from the priestly pedophiles to paganist preachers whose agenda stole the civil out of civilization and attempted to replace it with a bitter stew of contempt and deceit. And it continues to vacillate, liberals & conservatives, democrats & republicans, science & lunacy until the birds in the middle just want to fly skyward to get away from it all.

Mrs. B knew there was no plane large enough, no avifauna fast enough or raptor strong enough to take us away from it all. The all of everyday was the responsibility not to flinch in the face of priestly pedophiles and their ilk and to offer what comforts could be commanded. Feather looked up, knowing she was in good hands.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Determined Resolve

WHAT IT IS

She checked them off her acquaintance list, her it-will-get-done list because a moth’s bucket list is full of the kind of holes that render such a register pointless. In fact, the whole concept of a bucket list seemed inane, as the pleasure resided in the arbitrariness of the performance not the  predictability of planning. These performances might be catching a warm updraft in her wings, bringing her to dizzying heights or tasting the first thistle flower of summer or presiding over the inevitable trials of life and death that is the moth’s world. Life was short for a moth with no time to waste on complexities of ecosystems defined by those scratching their heads to create the most profitable way to utilize that which belonged to no one.

But a moth to, must sometimes tow the line for the greater good and dispense of her carefree ways, giving up on arbitrary and follow the path of planning. To that end, and at the request of No.1, the moth was dispatched to aid Hammer in protecting the entrance to the land of one hundred women at the center of Plot 82. In the week that followed, copious amounts of spider silk were meticulously woven together and bound with the moth’s hair until an impenetrable wall protected the entrance way. Hammer, with the moth perched on a nearby rock, studied their work and hoped it would never be tested, believing it was Feather who possessed a far better chance of success.

WHAT IT IS NOT

A knight’s ritual before battle is varied and particular to each individual as they entomb themselves in chainmail, steel plating and other protectants they must believe will keep them alive. Feather fixated more than most with the condition of her horse, fussing over her barding, adjusting the chamfron and constantly checking the fit of her caparison. After checking her partner for the third time, Feather began her final preparations. She braided her long hair in two tight strands, then twisted the strands into one, curling the hair to sit atop her head, held in place firmly by a piece of silk given to her by the fairy from Ellesmere Island. Reaching into her tunic, she found Hammer’s straight razor, placed it carefully against her forehead until droplets of blood dripped onto her armor. With the middle finger of her right hand, she drew a half moon with her blood, she was ready. Feather had only one weapon, an ancient sword possessed with its own soul and driven by its own purpose and who chose Feather as its instrument to inflect and heal, to create balance and imbalance.

Wreckless, the horse, was the first to feel the unfamiliar rumblings beneath her hooves. She lifted her legs rapidly and swung herself around to face the unknown and as her ears twitched northward her nose scented what was about to come. She exhaled a mighty breath; she too was ready. A malicious M113 armoured personnel carrier roared across a fallow corn field and turned on to the road a quarter mile from where Feather and Wreckless were waiting. Time stood still as Feather mounted her partner and the twos fierce gallop brought them behind the lumbering menace. Unsheathing her sword, Feather hurled her weapon into the tracks of the vehicle believing it would cripple the monster, but the sword was merely ground up and spit out onto the gravel road. Feather tried the tactic three more times, but the beast lumbered on toward Plot 82.

At the request of that little voice which confuses justice with self interest, the one that nudges us to correct historical wrongs even when we plead our cases to judges who were absent and remain absent, that voice, through the chips and scares of the ancient sword, spoke to Feather and placed her in a space of determined resolve. It was not enough to be nudged to correct historical injustices, it was not enough to proclaim absence and innocence and it was not enough to put responsibility at the doorstep of the other.

Bolstered by the sword’s determination to redress, Feather and Wreckless found themselves face to face with the M113 in a headlong duel to an oblivion unknown. With a collision just meters apart, Feather held the sword above her head and hurled it at the turret, splitting the barrel in a fiery explosion and paralyzing the vehicle. Smoke and bodies scrambled on to the road and shots from the dislodged INSECT agents whizzed toward Feather…her armor no match for these modern injustices.

ICONS IN AN IMAGINARY WORLD

WHAT IT IS

Hammer and Feather marvelled at the simplicity and comfort of being back together again. Conversation, muted or stated, glances overt or concealed and whispers of appreciation penetrated the sphere of tranquility that was their gift, granted by the fairy of Ellesmere Island. Hammer wedged himself between a smooth chunk of granite and an ancient oak tree allowing him a good view of the two grazing horses while Feather stretched out on the prickly grass, looking up at the blue sky visualizing the dark explosive sky that persistently probed her thoughts of late. Feather’s blue was nurture, but nurture has a way of unraveling when the costs out muscle the benefits or when the costs were miscalculated by sincere bright eyes whose exuberance tipped the scales when the overseer still hadn’t shown up for work. This polite tug of war, when magnified, reveals unsettling ripples in the fabric of nurture leaving dangling conversations of who gets to wear the fabric and what to do with it when it wears out.

Feather’s participation in the tug of war was limited at best, never really knowing which side to line up on or how hard to pull once a side was tentatively chosen. Now, with her days dark, a foreboding  sting challenged her comprehension and delivery of nurture as she remained unsettled about what was ahead. What was ahead, finding the one hundred women haunting the interior of Plot 82 and planning their rescue.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Slim confidently navigated the luxurious Escalade, his index finger resting on the bottom of the steering wheel, performing occasional manoeuvres when potholes appeared, or racoons dashed across the road. Not a man to be burdened by a lopsided business deal, Slim couldn’t help but smile when he thought about the Jesus drive he now possessed, giving up a few barren Missouri acres in exchange. As he drove on into the night, Slim was spooked by a series of loud noises, followed by hot white lights filling the dark sky, Slowing down, Slim was mysteriously drawn to the lights, so he turned down a gravel road and chased the dancing glow for several miles.

Stories abound about the secrets and treasures the night brings as it unburdens the stark trappings of daylight, the big brother of the gong show. Everything is so precise when the big brother speaks, and the meaning of the words can’t be softened or changed or twisted into something unintended. Fortunately, when the brother sleeps pixie dust falls from the brother’s final photons and night is king again, even if only in illusion. Mingled throughout the particles of light, the long defunct Coyote Apples performed the show they were constantly denied, and the sound was sweeter then humanly possible. Countless fans pounded the stage with their fists, arms waved and swayed in the air, and a sea of bodies floated into the melodic stream of this imaginary event. Slim looked out the driver’s side window at the three performers, ghosts of what might have been in this world, icons in an imaginary world.

IMPEACHED SILENCE

WHAT IT IS

The flight above revealed unfamiliar terrain and uncertain depictions to a birds eye that had never ventured to this part of the continent before. The lust for adventure held court in human endeavours, its addiction never reaching the whiskey jack, the black bear or the immensely satisfied. Although granted buckets of suave de vie and crushed under the weight of the astonished stares of approval, the adventurist eventually finds a plane of existence where the laundry must get done and the sink’s dirty dishes discovers a cure for itself. It is too predictable to observe the adventurist as a preoccupied warrior on an expedition of exceptional achievements, but it might be said that the faster one can run from oneself, the better the adventurer might be. The coming, the going, the running, the walking are all a dress rehearsal for the main event which was accomplished yesterday and realized tomorrow.

Pickles, taking instructions from Ellie, who in turn was advised by No.1, suggested the whiskey jack might want to fly to Missouri to witness the great adventure of the translucent man, Little Mr. Deakins, the horse, the duck, and a growing parade of adventurers heading for Plot 82.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Graham stood in the middle of the airfield, squinting at the cracked crystal of his Seiko, trying to determine if it was 2 AM or 2:30 AM. A monotonous taping by his thumb on the watch along with a gentle circular motion of the hand and wrist convinced him the time was nearly 3 AM. He did not marvel at his presence, enveloped in the utter darkness, and surrounded by a perceptible silence because his sleeplessness became a companion to his soul, something to bear witness to new demons and old comforts.

Like everyone, the old comforts stood on sturdy foundations where the truths slew the lies and any fuzziness was dealt with in the early morning hours when no one was around. Regrettably, as the fuzziness was excommunicated, new demons peaked around the corner, competing for space and acknowledgment. Graham hated the new demons, detested what he believed they stood for and despised their attitude as he sat alone in the wee hours, but yet, there they were! Shards of doubt slopped around like impurities in a glass of water, a glass of drinkable water that when gulped down in great haste could still satisfy the thirst of confusion. The question with no answer, was would it truly and systematically satisfy the thirst or just put it off to another sleepless night. As Graham refused to think about it, he was flooded with thoughts about it.

Doubt was a sign of weakness, a misalignment of order, a whiskey jack off course.  A busy mind could render doubt inert, fix a cracked crystal and impeach perceptible silence.

BLUE LEAVES

WHAT IT IS

He was not always broken. His gimpy walk a sad reminder of an athletic adolescence and a strong adulthood where a leg up from his old man twisted him into a businessman in which risk and success were measured and secured by his father’s generosity. This entrepreneurial veil not only concealed the blemishes of his life but served to dislocate him from the realities of the business world, leaving dominance over others, disrespect of colleagues and a pathetic fantasy of superiority to occupy his path as he staggered from one marginal enterprise to the next. For Clive Clifford it was position within situation, a feeling of belonging where a measure of authority coupled with inconsequential freedoms gave rise to a satisfaction that only he had to recognize and only he could drive down the street or bring into a mall or gaze at blue leaves in a park.

A trinket retailer, a seller of knock off running shoes, an insurance broker, an ice cream vendor, used car salesman, and a host of other vocations dotted Clive’s resume. It was the last dot on his resume that proved most momentous. Missouri was enjoying an unusual warm spell as October days were pulled from the calendar and November’s fresh face awaited Veteran’s Day celebration on the eleventh. Clive didn’t pay much attention to his hot air balloon business; he had a high school buddy run the day to day and Clive pocketed a bit of cash at the end of the week. Two days before Veteran’s Day, eight war vets climbed aboard Clive’s balloon and before they reached sixty feet the propane tanks exploded, and all eight veterans and Clive’s high school buddy died in the tragedy. His entrepreneurial veil could not hide him from the lapsed insurance coverage and costly lawsuits which took down Clive and his father within a year. The father took off for the great beyond, the stain of humiliation being too much, and Clive took off to Pennsylvania to start over again.

WHAT IT IS NOT

On a privately owned left handed dirt track some eight and a half furlongs long, just outside Greensburg Indiana the red dragonfly examined the blue leaf the translucent man had told him about. It was the ordinariness, which was bypassed, leaving the extraordinary washed away to be trodden under hikers boots as they marveled at what the tour guide pointed out. To pursue and capture the meager, find out why and how it fits in, then shatter it into manageable pieces of observation and dissection will allow us to decide if we like what we see and if we don’t like what we see, rejection will always be a fall back position. The translucent man wanted a symbol  of simplicity, a symbol easily overlooked by confidence men, politicians, and captains of collateral with their repayment schemes of zero percent and zero interest. A symbol to brush up against them, scratch their armor plate and leave nothing more than a confused feeling rising from there own propaganda. The vision of a stance, its flag quivering  before the onslaught was the translucent man’s daily routine, and, truth be told, he took some pleasure when the captains looked but could not see what tangible was, when chaplains preached and moral misfits cheered for something else, anything else.

With great care, the red dragonfly rolled up the blue leaf and stashed it beneath his wing. As symbols go, you couldn’t get much more ordinary than this, even as its extraordinary gifts were transmitted to those simple enough to hear it.

FRAGMENTS OF FOREVER

WHAT IT IS

Hobbson looked past the trail of Missouri dust kicked up by Slim’s SUV to see his old friend Adnan sitting in the passenger seat. He wondered why this break with Adnan did not occur sooner, as their two worlds had been drifting apart over the past few months. The burden of unmeshed gears grinding on to a dystopia drained Adnan into a state where liberation from oneself had to be fought on a level of commonality, perhaps even triviality. Years of optimistic invention, exuberant aspiration, and architecturally exact schemes to provide pathways of enlightenment led to dingy hallways of race and rancor where battles, replayed over and over, are meant to cripple spirit, and eradicate hope. Adnan, and others, speculated the fragments of forever were born of dissatisfaction and that the grand scheme was to sow the seeds of discontent and then wait a few generations to see what rots on the vine, and what bears fruit. The road is forever, when the prod of racism is relentless, seamless, and abiding, striking its tentacles maniacally and sharpening its intent to ensure survival from one generation to the next…from one propped up pillar to the next. The busines of picking up the banner, holding it high for all to see has always been better suited for the young, but Adnan now felt a certain betrayal inside himself as his lights of enlightenment began to flicker and shadows of uncertain destines clouded his vision. He needed what no one could give and what he gave belonged to no one, just slivers of incoherent memories to a cause where fragments of forever just kept piling up.

Hobbson’s attempts to settle Adnan’s soul was a mis-firing canon, an alien rattling around in a brown man’s house where commonality and trivia described a drab day at the office. Hobbson simply could not reach to Adnan’s depth, as Adnan’s lifeline kept missing the mark it was intended for. Hobbson still possessed his mission and it was squeezed unconsciously into his fist and his fate, bring him forward to a place futile and fatal. As the last spec of dust disappeared, Hobbson turned to the west, looked at his watch and counted down the seconds until his spirit appeared at the road’s edge.

At first he didn’t recognize the horse, it was older, somewhat unkempt, and slow on its feet. But who among us, after twenty years, remains intact?

WHAT IT IS NOT

The gift, transformed into a curse, then rode on an indigent horse from tragic teenage trials through to early adulthood, never stopping long enough to see the cracked bricks below the feet or notice the domino effect of real possibilities collapsing around him, became a type of mantra that hung around his neck, like a medallion given to him by…a friend…a girl friend. Jack Sampson’s gift was music, and his curse was the highwire act the Coyote Apples lived on while on their way to shady tunnels where what you asked for was paid with promises unkept and dreams unfulfilled. The dream followed, is best pronounced by the accomplished so there can be no doubt to its authenticity, but the root of the dream escapes scrutiny, shuns publicity, and is pasted into the back ground as an afterthought, or no thought at all. The host, a sometimes hostile and negative conveyance of the dream, fails to mention the virtue of the common, those who build the roads or fix the plumbing. Sacrilegious to some, the daydream of unbridled environmentalism or global harmony or just enough food and shelter slapped on the TV tray as they watch Musk’s rocket reach for the stars, will mean singular dreams of individuals might be placed in jeopardy. If you can not dream a difficult dream, you can always run a marathon, launch a rocket, or hang a picture, so to speak.

Jack Sampson’s marathon was in its infancy when the other Coyote Apples exploded into a cauldron of drug abuse, laziness, and other forms of self destruction. Eventually lives were sorted out, dreams put on hold or altered or denied or laughed at. Jack joined the army and dreamt of a small farm, a few animals and was satisfied that Musk’s rockets would never touch him.

RANDOM IN LEGEND

WHAT IT IS

In some circles, in some very small circles, she had become some what of a legend after her dust up with INSECT’s prototype nano mechanical pollinator that left the robot at the bottom of a water filled mud hole at the edge of a Missouri corn field. The wasp did not ask for this random event to be thrust upon her and she did not relish in the retelling of the story. Those who are infused with courage when fear is the weight at the end of the outstretched arm are compelled to practice fulfillments to the fearful, so their courage towers as a statement to worthiness. That fear could overtake them, that randomness could collapse their world and dissolve a cloak of attained integrity, was not a realistic story line given the rarely mentioned reasons why some are chosen and why randomness is never the invited guest. Once we have given back, performed service, and laid out the appropriate illusion, we place the politics of the facts on a back burner so far from reality that even the likes of a Kelly Clarkson would never find it, or her way back.

The wasp can be anything if it fits into the confines of a contour where the dictates of the natural world are both predictable and trustworthy and randomness does not get to glance through the window where invited guests are not. This wasp, summoned by No.1, had greatness flowing from every body hair along her exoskeleton but her desire to exist among the wild plants was a randomness she could not control, and her fate was sealed by a chance encounter with a mechanical robot.

WHAT IT IS NOT

He was on the top rung of an eight foot ladder, both feet firmly covering the THIS IS NOT A STEP label meant to discourage such individuals from a debilitating fall. The object of his mission was a cracked fuel pump on his crop duster that dripped small amounts of the precious liquid whenever he reached heights greater than a thousand feet. A small crescent wrench in his back pocket, a #2 Philips screwdriver in his left hand, a tube of Hysol patch-all wedged between his teeth, and a soft rubber mallet were the initial weapons enlisted for this most critical assignment. As all reasonable generals will attest, the first attacks are often tweaked to accommodate circumstance, some things added, others taken away, and it was no different with the pilot/mechanic as the screwdriver was ditched, the rubber mallet replaced with a ball-peen hammer and more fortifying tubes of patching compound was hauled up the ladder. As the fifteen minute repair mutated into an afternoon ordeal, the top of the ladder and nearby engine compartment became infested with more and more tools, deemed necessary to effect the repair. Now on his third tube, the mechanic had to reach a particularly difficult spot at the bottom of the fuel pump, and to accomplish this, he braced himself along the edge of the engine compartment, rose up on his toes on the top rung of the ladder and reached deep inside the engine compartment to apply the patch on the precise spot on the fuel pump. Predictably, the strenuous pressure the toes placed on the top of the ladder caused it to topple over leaving the mechanic dangling off the side of the aircraft.

As he sized up his predicament and noodled scenarios of escape, a wasp landed on a spent tube of patching compound, then casually walked across the tools spread throughout the engine compartment. At some point the two locked eyes, the hunter, and the hunted and at some point the mechanic had to let go and fell to the ground. The wasp too, let go, but did not fall to the ground.

JUNGLE MISDIAGNOSED

WHAT IT IS

An affluent group of thugs occupied the best smoking spot, wore the coolest ripped jeans, and spoke with confident authority on all things sports and girls. Their obnoxious behavior and callous disregard were Brown’s microcosm into his future after high school, a future that dissected the mutilated memories of high school but failed to reconstruct the tragedy into anything resembling common sense. Brown was anointed The Turtle by this group of boys, mainly because he was slow and methodical, but also because quick and fast lived in a place of privilege and prestige, dogma passed on from fathers so their sons could meet the challenges of the jungle, the same jungle where they were scared witless, a generation before. That the foundation shook from machismo, was then misdiagnosed as a grand and purposeful orchestration, did led both generations to a place were analysis of anything was thought best to be avoided. This perpetuation was the mud caking the tires, causing them to spin wildly and making certain that forward was backward and backward was a constant state of incomprehension. Brown believed it was some crazy combination of knee-jerk reflexes, accommodating submissions, and polite coalesces that kept his jungle from swallowing him whole, then puking him back up for gawkers to examine. Would history have anything to say to Brown or the turtle he was named after? Not likely, as history is seldom read.

WHAT IT IS NOT

He was very much use it; the world rushing ahead of him in an excited fashion, proclaiming the significance of their task, the reasons for their decisions, and the triumph of their truth and grit. He knew ambition was the crutch that helped win the race of accomplishment by keeping mania locked away at a safe distance, and should mania appear at the edges, an afternoon at the gym or a fresh coat of paint or an evening of small talk would wrestle the beast to the ground. Distracted and determined is not an altered state into the window of our lives, it is a survival malaise that keeps us from asking the crazy questions of universe and quantum and quarks. Even if we were to ask the questions, the answer would float so far into the cosmos that most of us looking up would wonder why gravity could not keep these answers simpler…suited more to what’s in our simple toolbox.

The turtle was simple. He carried a simple message from Buck-jimmy to No.1 and on his five hundred and sixty first day of walking from Lake Tomiko to the state of Missouri, he was caught in a trap set by INSECT agent Brown. As Brown looked at the turtle he did not feel the machismo of a gifted trapper who orchestrated some grand event of cunning, nor did he feel apart of a superior species chosen by others to wreak a particular brand of havoc. Brown’s tools did not explain the cosmos and the turtle’s tools did not explain Brown.