=pudgy!=

—being Betty Boop's dog.

=On Avoiding a Shallow Grave=

[image by HTC & Meeah Williams]

It's a dangerous thing to do but I'm in a bad situation and it's the lesser of two evils so I hitch a ride out of town with a complete stranger. The guy behind the wheel looks like an actor in a film about the gods and heroes of Norse mythology. Long golden locks, square-jawed, broad-shouldered, etc. Like Odin or Thor, via Ralph Lauren. He drives an expensive car; I don't know what kind, but you can tell it's expensive because it's like riding in one of those shiny high-end coffins and practically does all the important driving for you. Of course this doesn't mean he's not a serial killer. I decide to consider it a joke when he takes his eyes off the road for an uncomfortably long period of time in order to look straight through me, light a cigarette, and say, "What would you say if I told you I was a serial killer?" "I'd say, 'Cool. So am I.'" 

The miles pass in a sphinx-like silence, both of us attempting to solve the riddle of the other. 

We stop for gas at a station straight out of Edward Hopper. I don't jump out of the car the way you and I think I should. I stay put; I check my lipstick in the light-up mirror under the sun visor; if I have a death-wish, well, I'm hoping to look my best. I tell myself: "It's not officially an abduction until you actually try to get away." He climbs back into the car with a Dr. Pepper. "Ready?" I nod. We drive on.

More miles pass beneath us.

We stop at a roadside motel straight out of a David Lynch movie and have sex without blinking like two people well aware that in every movie of this kind this is where the knife comes out. When we're done, we lie side by side, staring at the ceiling, and share a cigarette even though it's a no-smoking room. We conclude that neither one of us is tired enough to sleep so we get back on the road and continue on our way. 

As we cross the Nevada state line we discover that neither one of us has a clear destination in mind. "I thought I'd go wherever you were going," we both blurt out at the same time and then dissolve into helpless laughter. "What a story we'll have to tell our grandkids," we agree.

We smile our beautiful sociopathic smiles at the light-splashed windshield and drive on for miles and miles and miles into the funnel of night. The moon, the stars, the great enigma of the horizon, it all lies before us. Dawn is somewhere another state away. One hand hidden, thrust down between the seat and the door, separately and together, we both finger the handles of our knives. 

"You know what would be best?" he says, eyes never leaving the vanishing point.

"A road that goes on forever," I say with an absolute certainty I seldom feel about anything. "That would be best."

=The World Without All of You=

I'm walking home from Starbucks when the Last Judgment is announced. The streets are suddenly filled with the living and the dead. The dead all look confused, like you do when you wake up in a strange bed after a one-night stand and for several moments you don't know where you are. For that matter, the living look very much the same. So this is it? The big event we've all been awaiting for over two-thousand years. To be perfectly honest, there's not much to it. I find it rather anti-climactic. Rumor has it that we're all to be sorted and then loaded accordingly onto one of two starships. One ship is going to a good place; the other to a place not-quite-as-good, but perfectly tolerable enough. As it turns out, after all the commotion, there wasn't as much difference between good and evil as we were led to believe. To be honest, I'm rather disappointed by the cheesy sci-fi nature of it all. I had always asserted that whatever happened after life it would be beyond our comprehension, something we could never have imagined in a million years, human imagination being fixed and limited as it is, a prisoner of its own paradigms, etc. Well I was wrong again ("Ha! No surprise there," I can hear you saying) as I was wrong about so many things. It was exactly as we imagined! 

Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm not taken by either ship. They both lift off without me, hovering in the clouds for a few dramatic seconds and then escaping the atmosphere with a whoosh! in a glowing streak of silver glimmer that eventually fades away. And here I am, back at the Starbucks, left behind to write this letter or story or parable or whatever it might be to you. Although it's not really to you—you are gone among the judged, the sorted, the vanished-forever, scattered among the stars and I'm still here roaming around in this suddenly empty world. But it's not so bad, really. Actually, it's quite nice. It's exactly the sort of world I was always best suited for, to tell you the truth.

So I guess you could say I am writing this to myself. Why bother, you might ask. For the same reason as always, I might answer. For the same reason I talk to myself or hum a tune with no one there to listen or dream for that matter. I do it to explain the situation to myself. To entertain myself. To keep myself company. That's how I can live without you, without anyone, beyond judgment. Just in case you wanted to know. Just in case you asked. Which, so far as I know, you haven't—and won't. 

=T.E. Lawrence=

=Why, we ain't no crows, we're magpies=

=abstracts=

=abstracts=

::some small abstracts inspired by the work of Claudia McGill (see post from August 5th):: 

=Family Programming=

One night watching TV after dinner, Dad grips the arms of his easy chair during a cat food commercial and announces, "I know what you all want. You want me to play this miserable role for the rest of my life." He stands up and pulls off the sweaty head he's been wearing for the last twelve seasons. "But I'm not interested in playing this part anymore.  What's more, I never was. You're typecasting me and I won't stand for it a moment longer. I'm a better, more versatile actor than this!  Find some other sucker to play the bad guy in your melodrama. I'm out of here!" He tosses the empty head on the chair. We don't recognize him anymore. He's taller, blonder, younger looking; he looks like he belongs in a surfer movie. In fact, he's wearing a pair of embarrassingly skimpy swimming trunks. He grabs his coat and car keys and leaves the house with a door slam and never comes back. There is no laugh-track, no applause. We sit there numb, staring at one another like faceless mannequins, our heads smooth plaster knobs. Then the test signal indicates the station is having technical difficulties. I'll say! Please stand by. 

Of course it's a shock and a trauma but we have to go on. I try the head on first; it's an absolute no-go. My brother gives it a fit—better, but no cigar. What could you expect? My mother grows bitter and disgusted before our eyes. She doesn't need a fortune teller to read the future. She'll have to find a real man now but she hasn't the stomach for it. Instead she sits by the window, gray and blank as a TV screen with the power off, and waits for her Prince Charming, her knight-in-shining-armor to come. She's too late. That show's been canceled. The last episode already aired and she missed it. The Knight came and went and took Dad with him. 

The wolf lived happily ever after.

=M. Woody Woodpecker=

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

=frank auerbach=