Yesterday I saw a cardinal, a beautiful and striking thing. It was lonely on the road, dying, its wings and back broken by a car. It lifted its head and chirped its orange beak and looked at me with expressionless eyes as I drove by. I watched it shrink in the rearview, watched it put its head back on the ground and begin to wait again. It was a violent red in the middle of all that gray, a violent red fading to gray. And I hoped a more compassionate someone came along after me to pick it up and comfort it, to make the end a little less lonely. But I know this isn’t so, know I was the one sent to comfort and instead drove away. Tonight, with the wind moving over the vast fields of wheat, I will dream of you, a beautiful and striking thing. It will be one of those strange dreams where everything is upside down and I won’t recognize your face, but you’ll be you and I’ll smile and you’ll be the dying cardinal chirping and watching me, your crest of feathers flattened on your head. And I will want to stop and hold you, help and save you. But I will drive away, watch you disappear, confused and lonely, in the rearview. I will wake shaking and sweating, lonely and confused. Angry at having to forget about you all over again.
Failing the Turing Test
Home again, he sits in the reclining chair and sets down the sweating beer, picks up the phone. Frowning, he puts it back down and picks up a book. The phone doesn’t blink with messages as often as it used to, but he is starting to think maybe that’s okay. The summer is coming and the moon is new and the night is buzzing and chirping. The tenacious bugs beat themselves to death against the reading lamp, the less tenacious drown themselves in the beer. He once read somewhere, the Internet probably, that all the bugs on earth weigh more than all the humans. He wonders if this is true. Probably not. But he takes the phone, types it out, and pushes the question into the ether towards you. He drinks the beer, heavy with dead mosquitoes and gnats, moths and flies, and reads the book. Thirty pages later, the beer empty, the phone vibrates on the table, the sound always jarring. He reads the message and sighs. Presses the phone off, gets up and goes into the kitchen for another beer. Staring out the window, the beer cold in his hand, he thinks maybe it isn’t even you answering anymore. Maybe some engineer at the Googles, annoyed with having to deal with people and all their endless queries, developed an algorithm to answer text messages without having to answering them. And, he thinks, maybe you are one of the early testers, hiding behind digital words on a digital screen. Tired now, he dumps the beer down the drain. A thunderstorm crashes into the sky overhead and he turns off the light, goes to bed. Hopes to dream a memory of you.
Impossible oceans
For weeks he had been trying to remember who his shampoo reminded him of. He is coming down out of the mountains and onto the plains again. A train heavy with coal and cars chugs towards California, its whistle as lonely as a fog horn. A wind farm rises on the horizon, massive white blades tearing at the sky like falling birds. And suddenly she is in the car smiling at him and then turning to stare out at the vast nothingness of Kansas. The smell isn’t unpleasant, he likes the smell, and he puts a strand of hair in his mouth to taste it. It tastes like salt and sand and untouched wind and he tries to remember why he can’t remember her. Somehow the sun has gone down and they’re in the middle of the wind farm, red lights blinking into the dark like lost ships looking for each other. And when he turns she’s gone again.
That night, stoned and drunk and finally asleep, he dreams of one of his possible lives. He is in Rome and wearing a tuxedo with three women in colorful gowns following him up a set of ancient stairs and into an ancient church. He tells them why he likes Georgian chants, how he likes the moodiness and the sadness of the lonely monks wandering over forgotten hills looking for their lost god. And how this wounded searching is put to a trance beat by a long-haired DJ and the beautiful people of Rome dance and drink RedBull vodkas all night to forget they live in a land of suffering. The throbbing music turns into an alarm when he finally kisses the blond in the red dress and he wakes up in a dark damp room. He takes a cold shower, brushes his teeth with his finger, puts on a green apron and goes down to the grocery store to stack apples and lettuce and celery in neat piles for five dollars an hour. And in the middle of so much land it is impossible to imagine an ocean, let alone five of them.
I guess I would discourage you from California
Beautiful and open and shiny. The sun high and bright, the world around them buzzing with heat. Attracted, he comes in for a closer look. Such a strange sight way out here in the middle of nothing. He hesitates. Far from home, he circles slowly above. She winks and smiles. He goes down for a drink and sighs. She laughs, closes tightly around him. Locked inside, all the air gone, he flails, feet and wings tearing away. It is warm and gooey. And okay. Life maybe wasn’t so great anyway. She swallows him gone, opens to the sun and air again. Begins to wait again.
It’s like living in nature living here
Three in the morning on a new moon night. The world gone dark and silent. I sit up waiting for sleep to find me. Who who. I feel all the unseen creatures of the night freeze, their heartbeats quicken. Who who. The soft swooshing of feathers, the creaking of wings gliding under weight. A suddenly screaming thing Dopplering away. And the world is dark and silent again.
Three in the morning on a full moon night. The world shadows and singing. I sit up waiting for sleep to find me. Who who. The creatures of the night scurry and hide. The killing owl is outside again. Making its strange hungry noises again. Who who. And they cringe in fear again. Wait for the end to land again. Who who.
You guest starred in our dreams last night
We were riding an N-Judah that went off the rails and flipped upside down onto a passenger platform. There was much screaming and bleeding and gnashing of teeth and the doors opened and a T-Third Street was waiting for us. We tried to send C a text message on paper to complain about our ordeals, but realized we’d forgotten her number and had left our phone at home. Then some ruffians harassed us and we sat down and two old women handed us a hundred dollar bill. The T-Third Street came up from underground and we looked at a city in ruins—buildings gutted and smoldering, bridges falling into the oily water. We got off the train at the park and found you amongst strangers and friends and veterans under a spinning tree. We played in the wind for a while and then boarded a strange RV and rode it out of town on empty roads. We were going camping. Or maybe to a music festival. You were packing a bowl of sticky greens and an annoying guy we knew once at Benning sat down next to us and smoked all your weed. We were heading smiling into the abyss.
12-28-10
An Open Letter to Xerox College Loan Corporation and Sallie Mae
Let us begin by apologizing.
For a long time we didn’t return your calls, didn’t open your mail, didn’t send you any checks. And for this we are sorry.
We were working hard for a dying bookstore and still not making enough money for beer and rent and weed. And food. And your messages were always so scary. So we ignored you, hoped you would stop calling, hoped you would forget about us. And then you did. And then you didn’t. The messages scarier than ever, you started harassing us at work and on facebook. So eventually we just stopped answering the phone. Stopped checking the mail. Our mother didn’t hear from us for many months.
The dying bookstore finally died and sent us off to whence we came and life suddenly became less complicated without the ocean and buses and customers always trying to kill us. And we called out to you, on our knees, begging your forgiveness, begging for the chance to start making it right. And like the benevolent gods you pretended to be during orientation, you granted us forgiveness. You gave us six months to breathe. We thanked you, promised to be a better citizen, and bowed ourselves away never once looking into your shining malevolent faces.
Now you send letters telling us we aren’t forgiven, that there will be no deferments, no forbearance. Letters commanding us to send several seven-hundred dollar checks or our wages will be garnished. We plead to you that we’re unemployed and you threaten to garnish even our unemployment. But we know you’re lying. The googles tell us so. We may be a deadbeat, but we’re not a deadbeat parent.
Such changeable gods you.
Maybe one day we’ll just walk away.
Come look for us in Ireland, land of fair haired maidens and violent drunken debtors. Come find us in Mexico, our finger heavy on the machine gun trigger. Come look for us deep in Russia where even the mail don’t go, where the only law is the cold. This world isn’t so small we can’t disappear even from you. You only trick us into thinking so.
Let us take back our apology.
Fuck you, Sallie Mae.
Fuck you, Xerox College Loan Corporation.
Your bubbles will burst one day soon and we’ll whistle a happy tune while sweeping your paper remains from our floor and out the door. Perhaps the squirrels will use them to build nests and you’ll finally become useful.
Very Sincerely,
The Angry Bookseller
9-15-10
Maybe she’s fucking with him.
The Oprah selected The Corrections for her book club too. But he expressed reservations about being picked by such a popular celebrity and she kicked him out of her club, dis-invited him from her dinner. That was nine years ago. We imagine she’s been anxiously waiting to pick his next book. We imagine her people calling Franzen’s people and Franzen’s people telling him, “You will sit down, you will smile, you will answer the questions she asks, and then you will shut your fucking mouth. Oh, and you’ll bring her a gift as well. Something big and golden.”
Maybe she’ll burn Franzen at the stake this Friday at 3:00 CDT.
Maybe we’ll watch that show.
9-12-10
Yesterday, on the train to work, so many Police.
TSA, SFPD, FBI, DHS, CHP, ATF, DEA, INS, IRS.
Big men wearing sunglasses underground. Some of them controlling languid working dogs. All of them sweating, all of them bearing weapons and heavy vests.
And now we remember the date. Remember exactly where we were then.
And we don’t mourn 3,000 killed.
We mourn that we answer 3,000 killed with 3,000 killed. And counting.
9-10-10
We’re closing second week of October. Because Borders lost $24,000,000 last quarter. We’re sure you are sorry to see us go, but where have you been these last five years? No, you can’t get a student discount. Or a damaged discount. Because the book is already discounted. No, you can’t return these books to another store. Says right there at the bottom of the receipt: All Sales Final. We’ve got dictionaries upstairs if you need to look up the word Final. We don’t know what, if anything, is taking over this massive, massive space in the middle of this dead neighborhood. We sometimes hear maybe a petting zoo, maybe a bowling alley, maybe only a great empty space. What are we going to do? Shit, lady, who knows. Probably sleep in the park, eat out of dumpsters. Now thanks and have a great day. And don’t forget your Rewards card.