THE MOSSY BOG

The young ladies moving to the city from the countryside were said, derisively, to be “straight out of the bog”. If that were true, then they could have been a thousand years old or so, given the bog’s ability, despite its moisture, to preserve ancient items intact without any rot or decay. Men working there with shovels and picks, tearing out the peat to dry and be burned for fuel, would often report uncovering shoes, urns, clothing, tools, even bodies that had been deposited there eons ago and looked like they just got dropped off yesterday. Out of the bog meant you come from the past, the wild, the slow, eternal patterns that were anathema to city life.

That’s how they put it in the city newspapers and magazines. I’m sure the country folk had equally derogatory terms for the asphalt and concrete crowd who might venture out into the countryside for a bit of fresh air. One more division among many, dividing us from each other in new ways we invent daily for just such purpose. Crows don’t care. They are happy to survive on corn and crops and warm, furry rodents in the countryside during the warmer months, and then move into the city during the winter to feast on garbage and city detritus. Hopefully, no one makes fun of them for it.

The young bog ladies moving into town were somehow all named Elizabeth. There was one Carol and a couple Nancys mixed in, but the rest were all called the same name. At least that’s how I saw it. But maybe it’s because that was my mother’s name, and in her absence, I craved more Elizabeths. I willed them forth, and they arrived. Some men married them and if things didn’t work out , they buggered off and married another one. It was almost like a royal succession, the men and their successive wives, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Elizabeth III.

In my case, the Governor granted me a tract of land on the outskirts of town, where the elevation starts to climb up the hillside. Why did I receive this tract from the Governor? Because I applied for it and seeing nothing came up as to prove I was not a good gentleman, and because my mother and wife were named Elizabeth, I was granted such and set to building a little house on that spot. I did not question why this was the way things worked, as others might who do not petition the governor for their land, and just merely set up where they wish. I suppose that I played by the rules, so to speak, and got a paper that said it was mine from now on, no matter who was there prior.

There we were, my Elizabeth and I, no matter which Elizabeth it might be. We dug up the spot and brought in the timbers. We cleared out the snakes and planted us rows of legumes and grains. Being on the outskirts of town as it were, gave us the best of both worlds. We were rural but had access to the bright lights and the dance halls, the haberdasher and the chemist. Until, gradually, those all disappeared and there was really no reason to be so ensconced in the gritty muck of the dirty diaper pile, especially when folks started spending their money on explosive devices and launching them across the way towards their neighbor’s homes.

So that’s when it came time to take a reckoning of things and consider pulling up the stakes and reconsider our position. It came to Elizabeth one evening, the thought of the bog, a return to the bog. It wasn’t just the thought of it, though. It was the sound of it, the smell of it, the feel of it. The whole boggy experience, a feeling of enrapture once one had been away from it for so long. It was beckoning to us, it seemed. But that is entirely untrue. The bog beckons not. It just is. It persists. It is we who imagine feeling the beckon. So we go, or we will rue the day we decided not to go, or didn’t decide as such but just never got around to it.

For us, going bogside was just another chapter in the storybook. We dug out the peat. We walked among the asters and the dragonflies. We sat on a log and talked of other places, other times. But the bog was welcoming and proved to be a good place for the children to play. They scattered beneath the branches and into the thicket, and sometimes one of them didn’t come back. But that’s OK because they will turn up sometime in the future, as the bog preserves everything. It provides a lifestyle, a connection, a comfort that suits us just fine.

 

 

 

Decay. The slow process toward ruin. Isn’t that a natural process? Perhaps, however, some structures don’t decay at all. You know the phrase, “They don’t build ’em like they used to.” Some things permeate, don’t they? I mean they just last without going bad. Maybe there was perfection in the design and in the build so that there are no flaws and thus nothing ever breaks or rots or comes loose or rips, or any of those things. Or perhaps it’s in the materials that are used. If you pick the best ones, parts that are strong, perfect in their measurements and sizes and angles, and of course have the best people or automated systems there to put it together, maybe that’s what creates permanence and non decay. Either way, we can’t actually prove that some things last forever. Even if they have been in existence for 10,000 years, they might not be there in another 10,000. Or if they do still exist way off in the future, perhaps they too, eventually, will start to decay.

Besides the design and content of something, another thing I try to think of is what makes things do what they do. What is the energy that moves or motivates things, whether they be living creatures, like a rabbit or a spider, or whether they be non-living entities such as a gasket or a spoon or a long piece of steel. What about if they are in-between type things, like trees. A tree is like a cross between a person and a building. It is alive but it is also stationary like a structure, a living structure. Trees grow until they are mature and then they stay there until they are cut down, or struck by lightning or eaten alive by a tiny insect that gets into its brain. Trees must have brains too, or do they just have veins and no brain? What if the tree was its own brain? The brain not being a distinct separate organ located in one section of the tree’s anatomy, but instead infused into the entire tree like a network; in the leaves and bark, the sap, the roots, the buds and flowers and each branch, all together one giant brain for the tree, which would mean that the tree is its own brain actually. Something like that.

There are a lot of trees lining the river below the Education Sciences Building. There is an old railroad bridge there that I once walked across. There is a nice little bend in the river below there with a small beach where people like to build fires and hang out at night, sometimes even until the sun comes up. I used to like to sit there, or maybe it was only one time, and watch the barges come up the river. At night, they would use spotlights to see where the hell they were going and figure out how to maneuver their load through the bends in the river. Now the barges won’t be coming up the river any more since they closed the lock and dam. No way to go further upriver and drop off stuff or pick up stuff, or both, drop off and pick up, Load and unload and load again.

Barges don’t last forever because they probably get rusty and banged up. Or maybe they do, but even if stuff would last forever they wouldn’t let it do so, because every so often they make you buy a new one. For no reason other than that it’s something to do, and that it keeps the economy moving and people can have jobs and make money and then spend the money on some other new thing that somebody else is selling. The trees that line that little stretch of the river are probably oaks and elms and maybe some birch trees or other things that i know the names of but can’t identify: hackberries, coffee trees, ash trees, They have maybe been there a long time but not forever and they will not be there forever I don’t think. But hopefully “trees” plural will be there forever but not necessarily individual trees, like the same ones as are there now.

There is a big crow’s roost down along the river, and driving along the river road at night and looking up into the trees you will see them full of crows, by the thousands. The crows fly there to roost at least during the winter months, at about 4 pm in the afternoon. You can see them heading over there from all parts of the city, like a big parade or commuter highway. When they get there they share information with each other, perhaps regarding where the best overflowing dumpsters are located. I don’t know if the crows prefer certain kinds of trees or not. During the last century, the river was a giant sewer for all the people. Now it’s not. It’s cleaned up and the decades of decay have been reversed. Will the river be there forever? Will the trees?

 

Roll out the barrel. Have yourself some fun. We set sail on Gitchy Gummee at the crack of dawn on an old makeshift raft made of driftwood and old rootbeer barrels. Our vessel featured one rinky-dink mast made from an old rusty flagpole and a sheet of glued together fish scales. You cranked the sail up or down depending on the wind, or maybe just for show since it didn’t seem to help with the direction of the ship at all. Luckily we had a couple of poles and oars to help out with the navigation just in case. There were about six of us on board I think. Tommy Pizza was the one who had mostly built the boat or maybe he just bought it from some guy in Herbster.

We called him Tommy Pizza because his favorite thing to say was, “You want a slice?” Also on board as part of the crew, the first mate as a matter of fact, was a fellow named haha. We called him that because he liked to play golf and every time he hit a good shot, he would say, “haha!”. So Haha was on board as well along with the rest of the fellas.

We called our little rig The Barrel of Fun. Some guys wanted it to be the Barrel of Laughs. While others preferred, just The Barrel, something more succinct and stately. This gave us some things to talk about, was one of our discussion topics as we rolled out on Gitchee Gumee on a beautiful clear Saturday morning. About six o clock as the sun was coming up. A few planes were flying overhead, but othr than that, there was not a sound other than the rolling drone of the water and the cackling from the gulls up above. But all that was about to change when a big ore barge appeared on the horizon moving right in our direction. One of those hundred footers.

Tommy Pizza was busy hacking away at a pile of shellfish with a sharp looking dagger. He had brought many sharp pointy things on board with him as a matter of fact. From little paring knives to a big saber. We were all hoping that they were being brought along for us to defend the ship against pirates and not for him to hack us all death, but we knew Tommy Pizza would never do anything like that. He just felt better with his swords by his side. As it was, the lake was calm and the sun was not too hot. We each picked our little spot on the Barrel of Fun and relaxed in the morning breeze.

 

Nary was there ever one like that one. No my friend. Not like her at all. Van Buren was a special one that’s for sure. This past Tuesday, in fact, was the anniversary of her passing. Van Buren had been the finest falcon I ever saw. We let her loose every morning on the golf course and watched her go. Them starlings never saw her coming, she just swooped out of the sky and snatched em up one by one, but then she got a taste of bunny in her and after that she wouldn’t chase no more starlings. Bunnies were all she wanted. Well the rabbit population went down considerably I can tell you that, but the starlings rebounded quite rapidly and then they was everywhere again. So we had to bring in another falcon. We thought that would be wise, so I called my falconer friend over in High Point. And the next weekend we went over and had a look, and that’s where we found Mr Patterson. Well, we haggled a bit over the price, and then the hood was out over his head and he went into the lorry and off we drove.

Mr Patterson came to get along just fine with Van Buren after a while but it wasn’t easy at first. There was confusion, you know what I mean. As certainly there would be. They were working things out, the relationships, the dynamics, the roles, see. Are we rivals, friends, mates, a couple? Do we hunt together or compete? Or just leave each other alone. I’ll take my area and you go to yours. And of course that’s the natural way things work out usually. I’ll take my spot and you can have yours, until something happens and then one or the other will pop their head up and turn to look, and say to themselves, what’s going on over there, then? Then their interest is peaked.

Then the other one will play it coy usually. “Nothing go on over here, just killed me a family of rats is all. What you got?”

“Who, me? You didn’t see? You don’t see this pile of bunny bones sittin’ in front of me here?”

And on they go, so and so, this and that, until they’re dining together every Sunday.

Van Buren put it out there at first. “Do you like gopher?”, she asked. “What, gopher? Meat is meat to me. Carrion flesh, it’s all the same”, replied Patterson. “Are you joking? All the same?” Van Buren was incensed or at least pretended to be, one could never be sure with a falcon like that, her personality especially, one had trouble discerning sometimes. Anyway, she put on like she couldn’t believe that another bird thought that prey of all kinds were all the same taste. What a dull life, she thought. All we really do, when we’re not sitting on a lamp post, staring out into the horizon contemplatively, all we really do is fly around in circles looking for things to kill and eat. There should at least be some joy in the eating part. Just because we don’t have access to sauces and herbs and spices doesn’t mean we can’t have a little enjoyment and take a little pleasure in the subtle differences in the taste of our victims when we are pecking at their bodies and ripping apart their muscles and organs. That’s the whole enjoyment of it.”

Anyway, turns out, they did share a gopher meal that Sunday back at the house. Smelled awful if you ask me. Pretty soon like, there they go flying around, hunting together, and they sure cleaned house on the golf course, that’s for sure. Those were lovely days.

“The corpse containers will be here momentarily.”

“Why does he keep saying that?” Hasn’t he ever heard the word casket?”

“Oh what difference does it make? As long as they come and we can get into one, I don’t care what word he uses.”
“Well, the fact is, they aren’t gonna come. He always says they will be here momentarily.”
“Hey mac!. Why you gotta say corpse container. Just say casket. It’s quicker.”
“Or how about coffin?”

“The fact of the matter is that corpse container is the proper descriptor for the object.” The other words are not.”
“Are not? Why are not? Everyone knows what a casket is.”

“Do they? How would you know?” Do you even know the provenance of the word?”
“Oh now he’s talkin’ about providences and stuff like that! When the coffins comin’?”

“Hey how about body baskets? That’s a good prescription.”

“You mean description. And it is not, since you are no longer bodies.”

“Now hold on a minute! What is we if we ain’t bodies no more?”
“yeah I mean we got no souls left I don’t think, but we’re still bodies.”
“You are no longer bodies. You are corpses.”

“What’s the difference?”
“Once you died, you became a corpse That is why we are waiting for the corpse containers.”

“Wait a minute. Are you a corpse too?”
“Of course I am. We all are.”
“Well, how’d you get this job? Why don’t you get buried or burnt like everybody else?”

“Yeah, who put you in charge? Haha.”
“The work needs to get done by someone. So some of us stay behind to manage that.”
“And the rest of us get put in the coffin and go six feet under. Ain’t that somethin’?”

“Fine with me! I need to get out of here and get some rest.”

“The corpse containers will be here momentarily.”

Quiet

Finally, the corpse containers did in fact arrive and the corpses all got very excited. Finally they could get some rest. Although some of the corpses exclaimed, “My casket!” or “Yay, my coffin?”, the manager, for some reason, insisted that everyone call them corpse containers and that no other term would be permitted.

“Oh really?”, said one corpse. “What are you going to do, kill us?”

and they all burst out laughing. The ones that could do so anyway, as some of the corpses sadly had no mouths, tongues, noses etc and laughing was difficult, but you could tell by the gleam in their otherwise empty gaze, that they appreciated the joke and thought it was funny like the others.

The manager tried to maintain some semblance of control but it was quite chaotic. Corpses were given a number and searched for their corresponding casket, or pardon me, corpse container. They jumped in and laid down, much as you might do upon arriving at the beach and setting up your chaise lounge, dipping your feet in the chilly salt water of the incoming waves. It was that same kind of joy and comfort that the corpses felt laying down in their containers.

Hey mac? How’s yours feel?
Fits me like a charm, Joey. How about the one you got?

And on and on it went as the corpses settled in to their new homes. For this was it, for the rest of eternity. Did that thought even dawn on them, for it seems more like they were strapping themselves in for a ride on a roller coaster which would be over in a few minutes. In fact, this was, as they say, their final resting place.

The graveyard is such a cold and lonely place

They put you in a hole and throw that dirt right in your face.

Joey was reminded of the joke about the serial killer who leads a young woman into the cemetery late night. She has no idea what’s about to befall her, and she shivers and says, “my I’m scared. The cemetery is so creepy. And the serial killer says, “How do you think I feel? I gotta walk outta here alone.”

As the corpses settled in, one problem became quite clear. Who was going to close the corpse containers and transport them from the morgue to the cemetery? Who was going to do all of that because the only one not lying in a casket at the moment was the manager and he looked to be a corpse him or herself. A few lifted what was left of their heads and peeked up over the edge of their corpse containers and looked around, kind of like you might imagine the scene to be of a bunch of prairie dogs peeking out of their holes in the ground.

But alas, the manager began to make the rounds and made swift work of the job at hand. You could tell the manager was very experienced as soon enough everyone was happily shut up in their box with the lid firmly attached and soon enough, the ground began to rumble beneath them as if they were traveling on a journey somewhere. The smell of hay and cow manure and wildflowers wafted through the air and even reached some of their olfactory nerves through the porous wood of the corpse containers. The wind was blowing. It seemed to be mid morning perhaps. A beautiful Spring morning, as the sky slowly darkened and the sound of dirt rained down upon them.

A collective sigh of comfort and relief spread throughout the corps, if we can call them that for it is but a slight difference between a corp and corpse, a body and its after effect. Much like a container of milk at the grocery store passed its expiration date, it still hasn’t gone bad, but it is still milk kind of. Maybe it will soon be cheese or cream or yogurt but that is the journey and our fate, one and all. The corpses wished each other a good night except for a few that wanted to stay up late and talk, which they did all day long and into the night.

The new year was welcomed with grand celebration and the hellions were driven back into the underworld. It had not been planned. It had just happened that way, due to the energy that was in the air. As you know, people breathe in the air, and thus if there is a certain quality to the air, though indiscernible until later, they breathe that in too. Thus it was that the right elements were in place for a swelling of the spirit and suddenly it was happening. An unquestionable victory. But as you know from the movies, there tends to linger the idea that the vanquished shall return someday. But, in this case, it was not an issue. They were banished and it was a good thing, and if you are going to equivocate about it, then up your arse and off you go.

Sometimes it just be like that. Not so long ago, people had their heads turned down, heavy with the grief of failure, of impotence and inertia. The skies were bright and sunny, the flowers bloomed and the birds did sing, but there was no doubt that the bad feelings of the few had somehow been given a toehold and had managed to promulgate and multiply throughout the land, touching everyone who lived and breathed beneath those bright blue skies. Once it has a chance to spread like that, there’s nothing you can do to hold it back.

So, how, inexplicably, had it so happened that the flow was turned away and the air got in between the atoms enough to shake things loose? One does not know because we do not have tools to measure such things. Wind speed? Humidity? Barometric pressure? Yes, of course, these all discern a great deal of what is happening with the air. But there are other forces at play of which we have no monitor. Until we do, there is no way to explain, other than to say that it just happens so. And thus it did. Without a great discernible signifying moment, like a torrent or a thunderclap or a tornado. No, it just happened and the change was felt immediately.

As the hellions were sucked back down below, the people all laid down as one, and took a nap. After an hour or two, they rose and got up with good feeling and an impulse to celebrate the day. A great feast was in order and the people got down to the tasks of making it happen. Whisking was heard. Boiling was felt. Chopping was smelled. A great fire was lit and the meal was at hand. Dancing ensued. Music was played, and the day ended with a poem read aloud by a youngster, a poem of worship and wonder. The people cheered, they cleaned up and then they went to bed, exhausted and happy.

Froggie went a courtin’. He did ride. But this was no oridinary courtin’. This was no ordinary ride. The new moon was rising as it signaled the coming of freeze up time. Froggie had the extraordinary idea to cure him of his loneliness. Having grown tired of finding a mate around the same old creeks and ponds, he dreamed of better things, a bigger hunting ground, so to speak. He was weary of poking around the same familiar rocks and pebbles and drainage pipes, seeing the same old ladies with their bulging eyes staring back at him, insect legs hanging out of their mouths. Froggie knew that there was a better way and it finally dawned on him what to do.

The entire clan always gathered after midnight around the Samhain fire, to recognize the thinning of the veil between the material world and the spirit world. It was a time to honor and remember fallen ancestors, and also a time to take caution that now malevolent spirits would hop their way back into the physical realm as a way to get revenge on beings that had previously wronged them, perhaps even leading to their victim’s ultimate demise. They might still be intent on settling some scores, so one most always be on guard during this time of year.

Froggie was keen on flipping the script. This was his secret idea. The one he had been harboring since the spring revival gave way to the rainy summer that had just passed. He would travel into the spirit realm, cross the threshold and enter a new world. There he would find his mate. No more just having to choose from the same set of ladies in the sewer pipe anymore. He was heading to a place that was the habitat of all the frogs who had ever lived. He was planning on finding the most transformative, most beautiful, most ethereal, sublime magical frog creature of all time. He was surprised nobody had thought of this previously. He was sure he was the first.

Once he had made his choice (could she say no? he briefly thought), Froggie would wait until the next piercing of the veil time and return with her to his hole in the mud at the south end of the pond. Or perhaps he would stay in the spirit world, cavorting with the other dead frogs for all eternity (would he, in fact, be dead too, once he crossed over, he briefly thought). In any case, he planned to check it out once he got there and then decide if he wanted to stay or not. Either way, he would have the most beautiful frog mate by his side, tadpoles just a swimming around them in delight.

The moon had risen and the fire was lit. The croaking intensified. The chanting of the names began. Froggie went into a meditative state and began to swirl. Faster and faster he went, as he prepared to breach the threshold and enter the spirit world. When he came to, the sun was just rising over the horizon. Mertle, a girl he knew from the sewer pipe, was staring at him. “That was weird.” She said. “You got dizzy and then passed out.” “Oh wow.” Froggie responded. “Mertle, do you want to go for a swim?”

Back to School

The palate of my high school years can most likely be reduced down to four flavors: a slice of pizza, a French fry, a beer and a bong. Every other tasting was either secondary or non-existent. My friend once got so high that he forgot that I was riding in the car with him. While stopped at a red light, he looked over at me and screamed. Of course it was the other way around on the day of graduation or thereabouts, when I was the one driving and he was in the passenger seat. He screamed again, only this time not because he was stoned, it was because I was about to run into the back of a schoolbus. Which I did. I had been looking at a dead rabbit on the road and didn’t notice the bus had come to a stop in front of me. After I crashed into it, the kids opened the emergency exit door at the back of the bus and jumped down onto the hood of my car, laughing.

Other memorable and symbolic sensations from that time concern the passion of romance. The taste of a girl’s tongue in your mouth. The shape of a breast beneath a jacket, a couple of shirts and a bra. Walking my girlfriend to her next class and giving a kiss when the bell rang. It was more like a perfunctory motion for me than a case of passionate attraction. It’s just what you were supposed to do. Same as driving over to the golf course and making out on prom night. Somewhere between novelty and a ritual that had to be learned and adapted to. But that’s what love is anyway, isn’t it? My grandmother once overheard me on the phone asking a girl out and she told me it sounded like I was arranging a business meeting.

Of course, back in those days, people weren’t “out” about being gay, and I’m sure I never thought bad about using words like fag or queer or whatever. My sister didn’t even come out until later when she was in college. I wonder how much pain it caused her to go to the prom with that dorky boy. I wonder if they went to the golf course to make out. Transgender? We wouldn’t have known how to even process that concept.

Racially, the school was predominately white, with some African American kids bussed in from the city. Once my parents got divorced, we moved to the city and I got bussed in too. A lot of those kids were my friends since they were in marching band with me. I guess this one African American girl had a crush on me. I found a note that said she wanted to fuck me dry. Too bad I wasn’t more sexually competent. She was gorgeous. Other than that, as far as racial diversity goes, there was one Arab, who we teased mercilessly, but no other ethnic representation as far as I remember.

We had secret rooms and places to congregate, both publicly and privately. The wall in the tech booth we climbed over to eat our lunch. The classroom where they stored the extra desks. The woods. Parking lots. A field. You name it. The spot on top of the walk in cooler at my job where I would climb up and take a nap. Did that really happen?

 

His mother’s words echoed in his head. Please don’t go to Wisconsin, she had told him. But here he was, heading north out of Trempeleau on Highway 35 going as fast as he could without being too reckless. The red sun began its descent in the western sky over the Mississippi and everything was lush and green. Hawks soared overhead and everything would have been beautiful but not for the dozens and dozens of dead deer littering the shoulder, making the hills and dales of the river valley look like the similar landscape at Glencoe after the Campbells went riding home with the fresh blood still dripping off of their broadsides. Racoons, badgers, bobcats and muskrats added their flattened carcasses to the trail of destruction. Even the mutilated remains of a dead housecat or two was seen from time to time, which, for some, added an extra tinge of sadness to the scene.

In addition, all of the joys of driving had been removed from the car, a rental purveyed in LaCrosse with a fake credit card. When he first got in, he didn’t even know how to start the thing. It was a new model, and he was an old model. Once the boy showed him what to do, he happily got going, but his joy was short lived, not only due to all the carnage that marked the path, but indeed also because of further difficulties in operating the vehicle. The windows did not seem to be able to go down. The radio had been removed. And in its place was some kind of Apple device which needed a password and enrollment in the rewards program. The heat and AC was all controlled remotely from a server in Idaho, and there was no override.

The dashboard display was dominated by a video monitor playing ads for products he would never in a million years be interested in. Again, no off switch could be located. He could feel his blood starting to boil and contemplated jumping out and sending the car down the embankment and into the river where it belonged.

He motored on and tried to relax, consciously turning his blood down to a simmer. Was there no one else who saw what was happening, he thought. Not a total collapse as some might predict or even wish for, but something more insipid and sinister, a slow but steady fracture. He could see the cracks in the walls, the blood stains slowly appearing on the floors and the ceiling. But no one else seemed to notice. The well paid prominent journalists of the time busied themselves with writing about what to do about things like stale bananas and how do you treat an ex at a child’s high school graduation. They went into great detail about new trends in brewing kombucha, and who tweeted what to who and what they tweeted back and how that tweet was responded too. Meanwhile the bodies piled up.

He had dealt with it the only way he knew how, with lots of whiskey. But now he was heading north on highway 35 and looking for some kind of a breakthrough, a way to rectify the situation or at least a better way of self survival until the robots and the plutocrats and the hollywood types had gotten their fill. A doe’s eyes stared up at him from the asphalt, dried blood stained her head, her legs twisted behind her. He wanted a smoke but was trying to quit and purposely didn’t bring any along, and thus started to visualize a convenience store up ahead, his willpower waning by the minute.

He was due in Billings the next morning for a business meeting. Actually, no. That wasn’t true. But he tried to imagine what his life would be like if that were true. A lot of downside, obviously, but the advantage of having a destination and purpose, however shallow and illusory, was somehow appealing, at least for an instant, and at other times in his life when he felt this way.

After cresting a hill, he saw a figure in the distance, standing on the side of the road. What’s this, a hitchhiker, in today’s day and age?, he thought. Well, he thought, I gotta stop, I guess. He pulled over and a man got in. At least that’s what he thought at first but upon further study, he wasn’t sure. Damned gender fluidity, he thought. How ya doin, he started, i aint seen a hitchhiker in quite…
I am a dog who knows how to get to the bone, the person responded. Oh, ok. He himself was not a dog who pursued a bone, but he stayed silent and instead said, oh ok where you going? Janesville, the person responded. oh, that’s back the other way, I’ll let you out, he said slowing down. No i meant Jamestown. I don’t know any Jamestown. I meant Williamsburg. Or Petersville, or Johnstown.

He drove on slowly and considered his options, not feeling very comfortable with his companion. Well, he finally said, I’m just going a little bit ahead up here to Alma, that’s as far as I’m going. I’ll go there too, the person said, and the car slowed down to 35 as they entered town at dusk. They were both smiling. The smell of ripening strawberries filled the air.

The new year was welcomed with grand celebration and the hellions were driven back into the underworld. It had not been planned. It had just happened that way, due to the energy that was in the air. As you know, people breathe in the air, and thus if there is a certain quality to the air, though indiscernible until later, they breathe that in too. Thus it was that the right elements were in place for a swelling of the spirit and suddenly it was happening. An unquestionable victory. But as you know from the movies, there tends to linger the idea that they shall return someday. But, in this case, it was not an issue. They were banished and it was a good thing, and if you are going to equivocate about it, then up your arse and off you go.

Sometimes it just be like that. Not so long ago, people had their heads turned down, heavy with the grief of failure, of impotence and inertia. The skies were bright and sunny, the flowers bloomed and the birds did sing, but there was no doubt that the bad feelings of the few had somehow been given a toehold and had managed to promulgate and multiply throughout the land, touching everyone who lived and breathed beneath those bright blue skies. Once it has a chance to spread like that, there’s nothing you
can do to hold it back.

So, how, inexplicably, had it so happened that the flow was turned away and the air got in between the atoms enough to shake things loose? One does not know because we do not have tools to measure such things. Wind speed? Humidity? Barometric pressure? Yes, of course, these all discern a great deal of what is happening with the air. But there are other forces at play of which we have no monitor. Until we do, there is no way to explain, other than to say that it just happens so. And thus it did. Without a great discernible signifying moment, like a torrent or a thunderclap or a tornado. No, it just happened and the change was felt immediately.

As the hellions were sucked back down below, the people all laid down as one, and took a nap. After an hour or two, they rose and got up with good feeling and an impulse to celebrate the day. A great feast was in order and the people got down to the tasks of making it happen.

Whisking was heard. Boiling, braising and simmering was underway. Chopping of plants was smelled. A great fire was lit and the meal was at hand. Dancing ensued. Music was played, and the day ended with a poem read aloud by a youngster, a poem of worship and wonder. The people cheered, they cleaned up and then they went to bed, exhausted and happy.