Allister Cromley's Fairweather Belle (Bedtime Stories For Grownups To Tell)

The Ballad Of Sergeant Left

2012-01-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

Somewhere along the borderline of childhood and adulthood, Allister buried his favorite tin soldier. He had held onto him longer than most kids his age. But, the day finally came. The feeling was there. And Allister knew it was time.

The soldier bore the marks of many battles. Battles between opposing tin soldiers and evil stuffed animals. The color of his uniform had faded with time (and several campaigns where the solider was left outside in inclement weather for days on end). But, those were not the reasons for the burial. With each scar, with each mark, Allister had grown more fond of his tin comrade. Oh, he had received newer toys, newer soldiers. But, even after his tin soldier's right hand inexplicably fell off, Allister only looked on him with more pride. Sergeant Left was his soldier of choice.

And the reason for his eventual burial was not a forced decision. Allister's parents knew the subtle difference between a nudge and a step. And, so, they let Allister get there on his own. And he did. Taking Sergeant Left on missions, finding time for him, began to feel like a chore. Began to feel like a weight, like something Allister had to do. And it had never felt that way before. In his younger days, expeditions and battles and further heroics had just flowed out of Sergeant Left. He had been able to do anything.

But, the day had come. And Allister knew somewhere in his heart that the day had come mostly for himself and not Sergeant Left. The Sergeant could have fought more battles. He could have gone on. He had it in him. The Sergeant could have accompanied Allister. Sure. Sergeant Left would have served proudly and valiantly in the upcoming Allister mission which bore the cleverly clear name of Operation Growing Up (the objective: to understand who Allister was). Sergeant Left could have hid in the foxhole of one of Allister's many pockets and provided backup in the battles for jobs and rent and love and all the unnamed battles that led into the darkened forest of the future. But, it was Alliaster who felt the weight of Sergeant Left's metal. And, even though Allister knew tin was a rather light metal, it pulled him down. It was holding him back. Holding both of them back.

All the other soldiers of Sergeant Left's time were long gone. And Sergeant Left's sworn service to him was coming to a close.

So, Allister placed him in a tobacco tin, dug a hole behind his house (where the yard met the woods), and buried his comrade. He saluted the grave and did his best to whistle a respectable version of Taps.

He stifled a tear or two (goodbyes are never easy-even when one party or the other was an inanimate object) and he imagined Sergeant Left's future. Surely, there was a reason Allister had to move on without him. Greater things were to come. For both of them. But, it was up to Allister to take the first step. So, he did. Allister stepped from his tin comrade's grave and headed into the future.

And, just like that, Sergeant Left's story flowed forth in Allister.

Perhaps years from then, Allister thought, another kid would live in the Cromley family home and would stumble upon the tobacco tin and conjure up a new mission for Sergeant Left. Or, perhaps, time would hide Sergeant Left from human contact until the future had entirely forgotten him. And, if time hid him long enough, perhaps humans would evolve into a species that knew nothing of tiny tin soldiers or the tobacco tins they rested in. And, then (perhaps, of course), an archeologist would stumble upon Sergeant Left's grave and a whole new mythology would unfold. Maybe (yes, it could happen!), the future archeologist would theorize that Sergeant Left was the last of a tiny tin race of people and he would be revered and written about in history books! Tin monuments would be built to and for him. Yes, ideas and plotlines and a new life would unravel. It may seem ridiculous to some.

But, as Allister stepped away, he felt the ballad of Sergeant Left continue.

The 8 AM Train

2012-01-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

There were mornings on the elevated train, on the way to work, when it all seemed so clear to Allister. There was something that was not there the day before and may not have been the day after.

The train doors slid open and he stepped in and all around were the weathered faces, their bodies armored in down and layered in cotton. And he wondered if it was there. If on that morning they felt it, too. That they were, at once, so fragile (simple turns and twitches could destroy even the strongest among them) and yet so durable. That bodies bent and shaped into so many forms. That dreams and desires burst from hearts in as many varieties as the body could form. Some of them headed to work, some home, some smiled, some bowed heads in retreat, some stood, some sat, some old, some young, and so much in between.

And the train moved and shook. It jolted every so often to remind them that they were simply boxed in by sheets of steel held together by steel rivets. And they believed that the steel would hold and that, barring some inexplicable accident, they would all arrive at their destination-some so much earlier and some so much later than expected. And, knowing that there lay obstacles beyond their control, they still walked through the sliding doors.

And it was there. In those that sat and those that stood, in those that entered and those that left. In those that held in a robust laugh and those that held in a pained sob, waiting for the doors to part at their destination so that they could let forth their emotion in the open. Allister felt there were no words that accurately described the feeling. But, it penetrated their armor. It was a a vibe. It was a crescendo that rose from the depths of all that they had been given and all that they had lost. And Allister swore to me (and he would to you, too) that there were mornings on the train when he felt it beating so strongly-as if he and all the passengers were standing directly above the pulse. And, even as the train plummeted into the darkness below the streets, they pulsed.

How He Learned To Breathe Fire

2011-12-20T12:48:00.001-08:00

As a child, there was a year that Allister believed himself to be a dragon. Not pretended, mind you. Believed.

It was the first autumn that Allister could remember. And he awoke one cold morning and exhaled smoke. And, though there were certainly some precautions to be aware of (a practiced calm was needed to prevent accidental fires), the new gift brought with it a powerful swelling of self-assurance that Allister felt deep within his little soul. And he felt bigger than he was. And that was a needed change because Allister had always felt so small (you remember there was a time when Allister could fit inside a walnut shell).

In two days time, school would start. Allister's first day of school. And his parents had said, "Just look everyone in the eye and say hello. That is all you need to do to find your place in this world." But, up until he had discovered he could breathe fire, Allister could not do even that simple task. Allister would use all of his energy, all the muscle he could muster, to raise the weight of his head. So much energy and muscle that he would strain his neck. But, his head would not raise.

But, that day- oh, that very morning when he first breathed smoke- that all changed.

The weight of his own head suddenly seemed lighter. It all seemed lighter. Allister breathed in air and exhaled smoke and felt secure.

And the morning Allister set off for school, a morning that some find filled with apprehension and fear, his small feet left the proudest of imprints in the cold, hard ground. He could not wait to see others, to meet others. His chest swelled with wonder- wonder and fire- and his smoke came forth in white tufts.

When Allister finally saw someone, he was instantly struck by her beauty. She was much older than he was. (But, being the child that he was, "much older" was usually not as old as he thought.) Her skin was darker than his and delicately soft. And Allister remembered feeling lucky just to have had the good fortune to walk to school at that particular time on that particular day.

But, her head was bowed.

Allister, of course, knew how heavy a head could feel. (But, being the dragon that he was, "heavy" had become a word that was manageable.) And, from his low vantage point, he looked up to her bowed head and found her hazel eyes. And, because he did not want to scare her with his fierce dragon-ness, he simply nodded and let a trickle of smoke waft up from his nostrils. And, in the short time it took to pass her, Allister knew that he had gotten through the heaviness because she smiled. She even let out a trickle of smoke of her own and Allister realized that she, too, was a dragon.

And that was how it went for days and weeks on end. Allister would see her each and every morning on his way to school. And they would smile and nod at each other. And, as the time passed (winter kicked in with its snow), they both expected the other to be there. And, as they both expected each other to be there, their faces began to show more and more the marks of anticipated happiness- as if each and every morning they knew a surprise awaited. It was enough to keep both their heads from bowing, whether or not either of them believed they were dragons or not.

But, Allister (of course) did believe he was a dragon. He knew he was. And he knew she was, too. Their puffs of smoke were exhaled in billows.

And, though they never had a conversation, they left many a correspondingly parallel footprint in the snow.

Then, one day in the middle of winter, her head bowed again. And Allister, from his low vantage point, could see why. Her right eye was slightly bruised. Enough that you could tell, but not enough that you could tell if you did not look. And she smiled still. And Allister tried to smile back, but he could see that something had changed for her. It was not just the bowed head. Or even the bruise. Her smoke was barely visible as she hurried past Allister.

For two more days more, she hurried past. And, then, she wasn't there.

Two more days passed and Allister did not see her, only her footprints remained.

Then, the news trickled in. A young maid's body had been found and the picture in the paper revealed that it was her.

Allister had never known she was a maid.

Soon after, rumors trickled in. Words and phrases that Allister was too young to understand collected and wafted and billowed forth. She had denied advances made by her employer, a man whose estate was located in some secluded area far in the hills. And, one day, in a particularly angry rage, he hit her with a blunt object. The object was found. A trial was held. And, in the end, the murderer was let free. He had known the judge, had donated money to organizations, and it was decided that the death was an accident.

But, Allister knew it was not an accident. He had seen the bruised eye two days before and he saw her empty footprints in the snow. And he tried his best to protect them. But, though spring was still days away, the affects of its heated breathe could be seen melting the snow.

He should have done something, Allister thought. Allister believed. He should have saved her. But, what could he have done? The world was unfair and Allister began to feel his smallness again. So, he did what you do when you feel small. He did what you do when the world is unfair and it takes away something beautiful. Allister did what you do when the world wants to forget, but you know the importance of remembering.

Allister did what you do when you are a dragon.

He followed her footprints up into the hills and the secluded mansion of her employer. When he reached the enormous gates of the estate, he breathed in deep the all the pain and hurt and confusion and unfairness of the cold air. He sucked it down into his lungs, where he felt his furnace burning. And he believed whole-heartedly, whole-lung-edly, that the power of that furnace would consume those feelings, would create a raging fire that he could draw forth and shoot from his mouth to burn down the gates, the mansion, the estate, and the man who murdered his beautiful friend.

He huffed and puffed and heaved and exhaled and, with each new inhale, he breathed in deeper. But, there was no fire. There was some other force at play preventing him from doing his dragon-ly deed. Maybe the murderer was a dragon, too. An evil dragon. And the deeper Allister would send the pain down, the more he realized how empty his furnace was. His face turned blue with hyperventilation and, still, nothing. And Allister burst into tears. There was only so much pain and hurt one person could consume. And Allister fell to his knees and sobbed, his head in his hands.

He missed his friend.

And the gates opened. Servants, butlers, and cooks poured out. Allister would later learn that they had all quit that day when they heard the news of their employer's acquittal.

An elder butler picked up Allister and held him. "I know, I know," he soothed in a smoky, deep bass voice. And Allister felt that he really did know. He could see it in his eyes and he could see the whisp of smoke come out of his mouth. "Take care, my friend. And hold your head high. We need people like you."

And Allister took that to heart. People like him were needed. Big hearts were needed. And, when spring arrived some days later, he woke to find that her footprints were gone and he could no longer exhale smoke. But, he was not disheartened. He had cried for some time. It only made sense that his fire would have been extinguished. But, it would return. He knew it would. Just like the snow.

And it did. His breath and the snow. In, one year's time, they both came back.

And that year, in the middle of winter, the mansion caught fire. Most people said it was an accident.

But, Allister knew a different story.

Allister had remembered exactly where each and every one of her footprints had been. And, when the snow fell, he spent his mornings before and his evenings after school, retracing and recreating her steps because....well...because he knew he had to. He had to protect her memory. He had learned over the course of the year that there were two types of dragons and what set them apart was what they protected. Some protected only the shiny and beautiful things that were theirs. Those dragons always craved more. And the other dragons protected the shiny and beautiful things that belonged to no one (or rather to everyone). These dragons, too, always craved more.

And which one you were was a choice (perhaps the most important one) to be made because it was what kept your furnace burning.

And Allister knew that she had returned. He knew that beauty did not vanish. Try as anyone might to destroy it, it would spread. It would grow.

And she had become that powerful dragon that Allister always knew she was. And, although most said the cause was a creosote buildup in the estate's many chimneys left unattended by chimney sweeps who never returned to work, Allister knew that she had followed her tracks to her murderer's home.

And she had left the old man alive, surrounded by the ashes of what he had protected, cowering and quivering, "There's nothing left. It's all gone."

And that was when Allister chose, though he could not always see his smoke, what kind of dragon he was.

How Cliche It Was (To Be Cliche)

2011-12-06T07:39:00.001-08:00

Allister sat with his comrades in a dilapidated European pub. The Great War had just ended and they sipped beer from mugs and reminisced about all their experiences and their goals for the future until their mugs were empty. In mere hours they would board their respective ships and head to their respective homes respectively far away from each other.

And, as the reality of that soaked in, they looked at each other and vowed that, no matter where they were or what they were doing, in ten years, they would all meet back at that very same pub.

But, even as they were reciting (perhaps even before) their vow, they were well aware of the cliché. In fact, the very split of a second after the vow, someone even said out loud, "How cliché," which in itself seemed cliché.
And hearing the phrase out loud seemed to shine a new light on even their former memories.

The pictures of lovers or mothers in their pockets.
How cliché.
The letters written for family and handed to a trusted friend "just in case."
How cliché.
The one who had fallen in love with and written sonnets to a French girl.
How cliché.
The one who kept a journal the entire time.
How cliché.
The one who now questioned the validity of the war.
How cliché.
In fact, just sitting at the dilapidated pub, drinking beer, and reminiscing seemed cliche.
And, their goals...
The one who planned to propose to his girl the second he saw her.
How cliché.
The one who planned to eat home-cooked food until he burst.
How cliché.
The one who wanted to stay in France.
How cliché.
The one who wanted the world to know "what really happened."
How cliché.
The one who wanted to forget it all in the largest bottle of bourbon he could find.
How cliché.

Someone tried to tell a bawdy joke to disrupt the melancholy. But, even that seemed cliché.

And, as quickly as they had vowed to reunite in ten years, they cancelled it. No reunion. No nothing unless it was something absolutely original. They had not fought so long and hard to come through the other side and live a cliché.

So, they crossed their hearts and swore that, from that point on, at the mere scent of cliché, they would walk the other way. And Allister proposed that they burn all their clichéd mementos in a pyre the second they got home. But, even as the tail end of 'home' fell from his mouth, he knew that idea, too, was cliché. And further ideas of burying their mementos or casting them into the sea seemed just as cliché.

So, after abandoning the symbolic burning/burying/drowning and (to prevent any clichéd last-ditch attempts at a ten year reunion) refusing to exchange addresses, they sailed back to their respective homes to begin living their non-clichéd lives.

And, for a while, Allister felt like he was accomplishing this very unique and very original task. He lived as fully as he could and followed his heart and, when his heart would lead him down Cliché Avenue, he would take a right or a left onto Original Street. And, when he realized following his heart was cliché, he followed his brain. That, too, became cliché. And he just altogether stopped following.

He had begun to paint, but that seemed cliché-especially since his paintings were all reflections of the war. He switched to still-lives and, then, went abstract. But, to no avail. An army veteran painting battle scenes or an artist painting still-lives and, then, switching to the abstract all sang familiar clichéd tunes.

He began a business and started saving his money, followed the stock market, and started investing. He became a miser and, at the same time, became aware that a rich miser was a cliché. So, he donated money and built hospitals and orphanages and realized that, too, was a cliché.

And what wasn’t a cliché?

Whether he became a high-ranking general or a pacifist, either would be cliché. Whether he had a family or dogs, both were cliché.

There was nowhere to go anymore to be completely free of it. And he sincerely tried. He had gone into the mountains, into the woods, into the jungles. But, it had all been done. And the only places left to live were places we could only get to in the future. And, even so, it was pretty safe to say that Jules Verne and Georges Melies had long since dreamed up so much for those places that the main storylines for the future already felt stale.

It seemed the more Allister tried not to be cliché, the more cliché he became.

So, he finally sat down and said aloud, “Why am I here?”-which is, perhaps, the most ridiculously-clichéd question that humankind has ever known.

But, he felt a pang, a tug, a longing that he could not suppress. You could call it nostalgia. And you could, furthermore, call nostalgic moments cliché. But, you could not (with any honesty) claim that it was not there. There was a panging, a tugging, and a longing. Ten years had passed since he had seen his friends and he desperately wanted to see them again, no matter how cliché it was. But, no contact information had been exchanged.

He felt restless and, so, he took a walk. A very clichéd walk to a pier as the sun clichéd-ly set. And, of course, he saw something cliché.
But, something beautifully and majestically cliché.
An elderly couple held hands and smiled at each other as the sun dipped into the sea behind them.
And a gust of (perhaps clichéd) clarity swept over Allister.

Each one of us is a thread in a tapestry called Humankind. And you can, of course, call that cliché and of course you can. But, the farther down you come in on the tapestry, the harder it is to do something absolutely new. Of course, new things were bound to happen, still.

But, when Allister stumbled upon a well-worn plotpoint or an entire used storyline, he vowed to be ever so careful not to look upon them with the discontented glare of a spoiled child ever again. Clichés were gifts, too. They were markers that said "others have been here." They were reminders to pause and pull back to see the pattern he was weaving. He could see the finished pattern in the lessons of his ancestors. And, if he liked it, if it bettered the tapestry as a whole, he would continue. If it did not, he would change course.
Clichés were where Humankind meets.
And, with that, Allister made his peace with clichés.

To bathe in the beauty of a sunset so deep that it reached beyond the beating of his own present heart into the past beatings of his ancestors’ hearts and into the future beatings of his descendants’ hearts was to be fortunate enough to be part of something bigger than him.

And, so, Allister left the pier and set off to find his comrades.

How He Dealt With Frustration

2011-11-22T12:59:00.001-08:00

I will tell you what Allister would do when he was frustrated. And I do mean really frustrated. In fact, let us go ahead and say ‘when he was MOST FRUSTRATED.’
(Please make sure to say the capitalization of the phrase when re-telling.)

He would sit or stand wherever he was and that black cloud of frustration would sink down from his head and up from his heart, swelling and searching for a way out.

And it would collect and bubble and attempt to overflow in his chest until it shot down the tunnels of his arms.

At the end of the tunnels, of course, the frustration would be stopped at Allister’s clenched fists. Some would trickle down to his legs and make him pace. But, for the most part, the frustration would stay in his fists.

And Allister would hold his fists up to his face and look at the back of his hands-at the skin and the wrinkles and the lightest-green W shape that his veins made over his metacarpals. And he would trace through the cracks and the wrinkles with the dark frustrated light from his eyes. He would weave and wander and try to find a path up to the top of the mountain range that was his knuckles.

And it would take time, of course. It always took time. Air would come in and out as his eyes traced higher up the summit (more oxygen is always necessary at elevated heights).

But, he would get there. The path always led to the top of his knuckles.

And that was a very good thing.

When frustrated, one needed to continue moving, one needed to continue reaching.

And, if one never ventured over the top of one’s knuckles, how would one ever know that the fingers could extend to reach out even further?

.

His Parachute

2011-11-15T07:58:00.001-08:00

"So much is said," Allister said, "and, furthermore, so much happens and so much is done. How can we possibly remember it all?"

With so much already stored in his brain, Allister feared he would run out of grey matter for important things- the names of new friends or the location of buried treasure.

So, he took to wearing a parachute. The rip chord dangled loosely at his side, ready for a sudden pull should Allister come in contact with a piece of information that he did not need nor want to remember.

Here is just a sample of what Allister remembered:
(in no particular order (other than alpha-numeric))

-0 C or 32 F = water freezing.
-.367 = Ty Cobb's batting average.
-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc, etc, etc, infinity.
-3 leaves = poison ivy.
-4 leaves = four leaf clover.
-8 glasses of water and an apple a day.
-100 C or 212 F = water boiling.
-100 Years War =116 years.
-1215 = Magna Carta
-330-1453 = Byzantine Empire
-Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz
-Arbor Day (last Friday in April)
-Armistice Day (11/11/1918 at 11am)
-August 20th = Dad's Birthday.
-Banana Bread: Unsalted butter, 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for dusting), 1 teaspoon baking soda, pinch of salt, 2 large eggs, 1/2 cup canola oil, 1 cup sugar, 2 large very ripe bananas, confectioners' sugar (also for dusting).
-Bicycle (1839), Unicycle (Sometime Before), Tricycle (Sometime After).
-Cheetah accelerates from 0 to over 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3 seconds.
-Claude Joseph Vernet's Morning.
-Dog wagging tail = good
-George Eliot = Mary Evans
-Greenland = ice.
-Henry VIII had six wives.
-The Hunchback Of Notre Dame does not end happily.
-Iceland = green.
-Marianas Trench = Deepest Part of Ocean.
-Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
-Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown: St. Louis Cardinals (1903), Chicago Cubs (1904-1912), Cincinnati Reds (1913), St. Louis Terriers (1914), Brooklyn Tip-Tops (1914), Chicago Whales (1915), Chicago Cubs (1916)
-My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light.
-Nails on Chalkboard = painful. Chalk on Chalkboard = slightly less painful.
-North star is brightest.
-"Not all vampires are evil. Some are just thirsty." -Solomon Gates-
-Oxygen in, Carbon Dioxide out.
-Peregrien Falcon is fastest animal (325 km/h or 202 mph).
-Photosynthesis makes plants green. Photography makes people black and white (or sepia).
-Rattlesnake wagging tail = bad.
-Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
-Red litmus paper turns blue under basic conditions.
-September 8th = Mom's birthday.
-Step forward with the left foot + Right foot step sideways to the right + Bring your left foot next to your right foot + Step back with the right foot + Step back sideways with the left foot + Bring your right foot next to your left foot = Waltz
-Van Gogh's left ear.
-Vowels- a, e, i, o, u (sometimes y).
-Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, JQ Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, B Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F Roosevelt, Truman.
-What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
-"Whatsoever begins in your heart is always possible." -Uncle Tugboat-
-"Worthwhile resolutions quite often seem impossible. But, before discarding them, remember that to grow they must begin in the heart." -Mr. Row-
- ? = Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Allister's birthdays.

But, the mind is a funny thing (as is wind resistance) and why it selects what it retains is far beyond human understanding (which seems a very strange thought). It also memorizes far beyond the speed of a parachute. And, time and time again, Allister would find himself faced with a piece of information he wanted to store inside his crowded brain (the laugh of a new friend, the final goodbye of an old one, or (of course) a treasure map). And his brain would spring forth a clean piece of grey matter from some deep and dark and assumedly-forgotten place just in time to wrap itself around the memory and bring it into his vault of conscience.

So, Allister did not need to be afraid of random knowledge or trivia. Instead, he put faith in his brain to know its own limits and gave his parachute to some wandering pilot.

His How-To Book(s)

2011-11-08T15:46:00.000-08:00

With the popularity of Dale Carnegie's book, How To Win Friends And Influence People, came a wave of How-To Books.

These included (but were certainly not limited to):
How To Get A Promotion And Fire Your Boss
How To Be Nice To People And Make Them Believe You Are Being Nice To Them
How To Create A Cult And Gather Followers
How To Braid Your Hair And Climb A Ladder
How To Make Ships And/Or Sail Them
How To Make Up Facts And Truly Believe Them
How To Dye Paper And Make Money
How To Buy This Book And Read It
and
(the rather un-coincidentally named)
How To Win People And Influence Friends

Even Allister published a series of How-To books. But, he kept them much simper. There were only three.
The first, How To Dream, consisted of only one sentence:
"Close your eyes."
The second, How To See, also consisted of only one sentence:
"Open your eyes."
But, Allister's final book, How To Live, was much longer. It had two sentences:
"First, you close your eyes. Then, you open them."

Of course, you had to read the first two to completely understand the last one.

.

Three That Become One

2011-11-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

Today, I would like to tell you three stories that become one. And I ask for your patience and your steadfast belief (as impossibly inconceivable as it may get) that these plotlines will unite before the story ends.

The first part will not take very long. It is something we have spoken of before.
Allister liked to make eye contact as he walked. He liked to make eye contact and smile. There was something connective, something that needed to be found even in those that avoided his gaze. Quite often, there was a hurriednes happening. And Allister sought to break through. His eye contact and smiles led to many a different response (hugs, handshakes, friendships, enemies, phone numbers, cups of coffee, games of billiards, tears, and more than several punches to the gut). But, those are parts of other stories. For this one, we need only know that he did, indeed, feel that calling to look for open eyes.

The second part involves a calling of another sort.
Allister's friends, Tungsten and Regina, were chair-eaters. And that is meant in the most literal sense. Tungsten and Regina both ate chairs. What kind of chairs, you ask? Oh, any kind of chair, I answer. Eating chairs was one of the many things they had in common. And it led them to a happy marriage. And, of course, there were differences between them as there are between even the most compatible couples. Tungsten, you see began by eating the cushioning because it was the easiest part to chew. He nibbled on the stitches until the fabric parted and revealed the stuffing (be it cotton, feathers, straw, or what have you). Regina, however, saved the softest and easiest part for last. She would begin with the solid parts of the chair, gnawing through the resin and stains and teethily whittling the legs (be they wood, ivory, steel, or what have you) down to toothpicks-which she would use to dislodge any rogue splinters in her canines and bicuspids.

Once in a while, Tungsten and Regina would eat a stool. But, mostly, they ate chairs. When asked, "Why?" they merely answered in unison, "It just feels right." They craved chairs. Many chairs. They were not gluttonous, though. One chair a piece could take them an entire day or even an entire week, depending on the make and age of the chair. And some of the sturdiest feasts gave them leftovers for months.

Still, standing at Tungsten and Regina's kitchen table, an irrational worry (as many worries can be) built in Allister. His friends, indeed ate only what they needed to be satiated. But, even so, if there were already two people with this implausible desire, one could assume that there were three and four and perhaps more. And did the world have enough chairs to feed them all while still giving the non-chair eaters places to sit? And, if not, where would we sit? Would we revert back to rocks and logs? And would the chair-eaters evolve/de-evolve into eating those, too? Allister asked Tungsten and Regina those questions and they answered, "Everyone has their limits." But, when Allister asked them what there's were, they answered in their in-unison way, "We're not sure."

And, like many a conversation between friends, this one ended in an awkward silence that became soothing and gave birth to new conversations. And Allister moved on to another town from Tungsten and Regina. But, they left as good friends do, with their differences intact.

Now, the third part of this story is similar to the first part (in that it is about something we have talked about before) and the second part (in that it is about a calling of sorts).
Allister once worked in a coal mine. The pay was poor, but the living was honest. And all around Allister were men whose faces bore the marks and wear of years of tunneling (faces that had seemingly been smeared with dust in utero), whose shoulders and hands pushed through the rock and supported the walls even when the tunnels threatened to collapse. There was patience in all their sunken eyes. Each morning, they moved together as if a breathe had inhaled behind them and exhaled into them. Their picks, slung over their shoulders, shot beams of the sun back into the sky as the owners and coal barons were slowly getting out of bed.

Once inside the mine, the miners traded sunlight for lamplight and went to work. It was dangerous work. This we know now and knew then. And the conditions were atrocious as we know now and knew then. And the owners and coal barons knew now and knew then that the conditions and the pay could be better, but they knew it would require more money. And they were, then and now, unwilling to lose money. Poor, needy humans were easier to come by.

But, one particular day, the miners walked towards the mine and stopped at its entrance. They planted their feet in the ground and stayed there. They had decided the mine was theirs. They had paid for it in lost wages and lost lives-perhaps much more than it was worth. They had asked for better conditions, for better pay. Had even signed petitions. They had pleaded. And received no answer. There were many miners, too, who could not come down to the mine and had not been able to for some time-whose health had been compromised and whose racking, violently-loud coughs did not resonate beyond their modest shacks. And some would say that those words were just an exercise in melodramatic hyperbole. But, for the doubters, Allister had prepared a bluntly simple list of names. Pages and pages of names. All miners. All dead. Each cause of death a preventable condition.

Something needed to change.

And the news spread quick. The owners and coal barons sprang to their feet. They rushed to their conference rooms and jammed up each other's phonelines. They were already and always falling behind schedule, falling behind their estimations of what they could have. And this was not the first strike in the area. There was a pulse being felt across the entire country, in fact.

And, as the first day of the strike pressed into another day and another, the wives and children of the miners brought food and drink and chairs to sit on. And the owners and coal barons unleashed their usual arsenal and tried to hire strike breakers and scabs. But, the feeling in town had changed. The desperation and depravity of the down-on-their-luck people who would usually fill in as strike breakers and scabs was replaced with pride and a surge for something better. Unity was in the air and those that would be strike breakers and scabs, instead, stood guard over the miners.

Yes, the town was in full support of the strikers and their families. The bakery gave them free bread. The grocer gave them fruit and greens. And the butcher gave them his best cuts. The mine belonged to the miners’ and the miners belonged to the town.

So, the owners and coal barons called in the National Guard. And the National Guard confiscated all the miners’ chairs. When more chairs were brought by the families, the National Guard confiscated those as well. And, when the baker and grocer and butcher began to bring chairs, they were confiscated. The National Guard organized search parties throughout the town and any and all chairs were confiscated.

The chairs were taken into a small plank-board shed outside of town. The butcher (who had a tendency to snoop) saw this shed and claimed it was far too small to fit in more than a few chairs. And yet, time and time again, the town's chairs were collected and walked through the shed’s door.

But, the miners would not leave. They sat on large rocks, on tree stumps, and on the ground itself. And they locked arms behind the would-be striker breakers and scabs who had locked arms in front of them.

Rumors began to circulate that the owners and coal barons had hired a special force and there came the sound of marching in the distance.

The first to arrive at the mine was one of the coal barons, a gentleman named Mr. Stuyvessant. Mr. Stuyvessant walked up to the entrance and asked the miners if they would leave. He said he did not want to harm them and he only wanted what the miners wanted-for the silliness to end. The miners asked if their terms would be met and Mr. Stuyvessant would not give them a straight answer. So, the miners remained seated. And Mr. Stuyvessant said, “Have it your way.” He looked behind him and shouted, “Bring in the chair eaters!”

And, as implausible as this may seem (remember, I warned you implausibility would be a possibility), Allister watched as Tungsten and Regina led an army of uniformed chair-eaters marching towards the mine's entrance. Tungsten and Regina had been hired by Mr. Stuyvessant and his friends, paid to eat what they loved most. But, the workload had been far too much for two. And, when the National Guard had begun its rabid search for the town's rogue chairs, another search was started by Mr. Stuyvessant to find more chair-eaters. So, more were found and shed shifts were arranged and many a chair-eater's dream was realized. But, it became obvious on both Tungsten and Regina's faces that they did not know the context nor the reason for their never-ending meals.

They asked, in unison, “Where are the chairs?” And Mr. Stuyvessant pointed to the rocks the miners were sitting on. “We are out of actual chairs. But, people are now sitting on those.” And Tungsten, Regina, and the entire army of chair-eaters all responded in unison, “We will not eat those.”

When Mr. Stuyvessant asked, “Why?” they responded, “We have our limits.” And they did. The chair eaters would not eat any chair that was supporting someone.

And that was the end. Oh, not right away, of course. There were a few more days of striking. But, immediately after the chair-eaters refused, all present could see the tiniest crack in Mr. Stuyvessant’s stance. At that very moment, he was defeated.

Mr. Stuyvessant left the mine, followed by The National Guard and, retreated to his estate’s grounds. And the butcher (who had that tendency to snoop) peeked into a window and saw Mr. Stuyvessant fall back into a large and ornate chair and mouth the word, “How?”

And, back at the mine (because there were no chairs to sit on), all those who remained (the miners, their families, the would-be scabs and strike breakers, the townspeople, and the chair eaters) stayed on their feet and danced until the wee hours of the morning.

Unity should be a visceral thing. To place it in a heavenly body or a government building is to detach the most important element (in fact, the only necessary part)- the human part. If you do not know the feeling of unity, you will not know when it is gone. And, furthermore, you will not know that the ingredients are in inherent in you and need only be given to another to flourish.

From that day on, Allister made eye contact and smiled at everyone he passed because he felt the undercurrent. It was bubbling. And Allister was collecting. He was starting a union, a bigger one to fuel a bigger revolution. And those that would smile or nod or acknowledge Allister in any way were inducted.

And, to those that hurried by and avoided his glance with an upward turn of the collar, a targeted shove, or a purposeful glare back, Allister would smile even harder. And, once in a while, he would catch one of those people turning back to him with a little less malice, a little less ice. And Allister would know that their hardened shell had been given the tiniest of cracks.

The Song In His Head

2011-10-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Allister awoke one morning with some mysterious fragment of a song wafting through his mind's halls. It was a distant song, attached to some memory past, but held tight to the fabric of his current senses. It was only the chorus (he could not remember the verses). But, it clung to Allister and his conscious and massaged every nerve to a calm that pushed out a whistle from his lips.

And, throughout the day, he could not help but whistle. In between sips of his morning coffee, he whistled. Opening the front door, he whistled. Crossing the street, he whistled. Tripping and skinning his knee, he whistled. Dusting off his pants, he whistled. Tipping his hat, he whistled. On and on and throughout his day, he whistled until he fell asleep.

And the next morning it was still there.

And the next.

And the next, as well.

The song remained.

And Allister could not place it. It was so familiar that it felt very near, like some recent day. And, yet, it was so unfamiliar that the day could only have been the day before never.

He searched high and low. He taught himself how to read music just so he could locate the piece and learn the rest. But, he could not find the sheet music.

He would stop absolute friends, absolute strangers, and all the absolutes in between and whistle the tune in hopes that they would recognize the song. No one did. But, many walked away whistling the song.

Allister remembered one particularly stern and apparently busy fellow who answered Allister's question, "Do you know this song?" with, "Never heard it." And that answer stuck with Allister for a while (not as long as the song, of course) because Allister felt it was irrelevant. It was, after all, quite possible that Allister had never heard the song before either. But, he still knew it.

And this carried on for some time, as these things tend to do, until one day Allister was resting on his favorite arm chair and the radio played a familiar tune. His tune. His mysterious tune.

The man on the radio had introduced it as a brand-new smash sensation.

And Allister was, of course, satisfied. He did not recognize the name of the song nor the name of its composer. And, in all honesty, Allister was never really sure if that composer had written the song on their own, if the song was a traditional melody passed along, or if someone had passed along Allister's whistle until it found the composer.

But, whatever the song's journey, it had finally found its verses.

.

One Time He Drew A Picture

2011-10-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Allister exhibited an advanced artistic flare at a very young age. He had not been in school for even an entire year when his talent blossomed in the midst of hazy attempts at solving simple math and foggy attempts at memorizing grammar's basic rules. You will, of course, remember that Allister did not always speak very loud. And he did have a tendency to daydream. In fact, from the very moment he walked into the one-room schoolhouse, Allister seemed distracted. And those who knew him even before he walked into the one-room schoolhouse would say he had seemed distracted since they had known him (the date of which varied from person to person, of course (of course)).

And, to his teacher Mrs. Gadby's dismay, Allister quite often had to be dragged from cutting and carving through the punctuation and sentence structures of his thoughts. Mrs. Gadby attached a note to Allister's first report card. It was a subpar report card and the note was subpar to match. It said:

"I do feel as though Allister has much to say. But, he says none of it."

But, to Mrs. Gadby's credit, she was the first to take an interest in Allister's art. After weeks and weeks had passed with little enthusiasm and much apprehension from Allister, Mrs. Gadby assigned the class a simple excerise on a day with no pressing assignments. She distributed crayons and paints and asked the children to draw or paint whatever they thought of. Allister could think of only one thing. So, he went to work straight away. He wore brand new crayons down to nubs and dipped his fingers into the paint with a ferocity the class had never seen before-especially from Allister. In fact, the entire class had long stopped their creating and watched intently as Allister put the finishing touches on his piece. He backed away from his desk to give a full view to the class. And there was an instant chorus of enthusiasm.

It was a fairy. A beautiful, sweet-faced fairy with the delicate wings of a monarch butterfly. Her legs pointed and stretched in a ballerina's soft step. Her one hand held a pose of presentation while her other hand presented a silver server's tray. And on the tray was a heart. A human-sized heart.

Mrs. Gadby's eyes welled with tears. It was that beautiful. Several students followed suit (although two of those students were known to cry at even the mention of tears and those sort of slight inaccuracies are necessary in listing, of course (of course)).

Mrs. Gadby immediately notified Allister's parents of his artistic genius and, together, they vowed to ship Allister to the best art school they could find. Yes, it was that beautiful.
Some would say that Allister's eyes lit up with excitement when he felt that people finally understood, that they wanted to help him. And those same some would say that the light instantly vanished when Allister was accepted and shipped off to Paris and the Sorbonne Junior Academie D'Arts (in Anglified French of course).

At the Academie, the teachers welcomed him with open and exuberant arms. All had seen and were aware of the little genius and the picture he had made and they praised him from the moment he walked through the Sorbonne's junior doors. "Genius." "Exceptional." "It is only every other lifetime or so that a piece breaks through the mundanity of its medium and speaks to the reality of our present souls." I have seen much art and have never felt the way I felt when I viewed your piece. It transcends the mundanity of reality and puts the viewer in a place of consistent and dream-filled absurdity." "Your view of the sacrificial death of youth is nothing short of a revelation."

Allister had a hard time understanding many of the praises and the words flung at him. And he became more and more withdrawn as his junior time at the Sorbonne Junior Academie progressed.

Though he learned many new techniques, his piece remained the same with each and every new assignment. Sometimes Allister drew the fairy. Sometimes he painted the fairy. Sometimes he sculpted the fairy. And even in the general studies classes the fairy would manifest itself as an essay or as the answer to a math problem (1 + 1 = A Beautiful Sweet-Faced Monarch-Butterfly-Winged Fairy Presenting A Tray With A Human Heart On It, for example.). But, always, the image was as vivid as it was moving. And Allister could not get it out of his mind and his teachers grew tired of what they felt was either a refusal or an inability to move on. And, of course (and of course) Allister had learned much to perfect his fairy. The fairy's eyes became crafted with such perfection that even the smallest twink of menace was so obviously apparent. And, each time he drew or painted a heart, it was so subtely unique that you would swear it belonged to someone different each and every time.

But, still, Allister's teachers felt his junior future was dim. They felt he would not move any farther or, rather, that he would only move farther in small and barely noticeable increments. And, so (and of course), Allister was expelled from The Sorbonne's Junior Academy. The school had given up on him. To them, he seemed a hopeless case.

But, Allister was far from giving up hope. Because he had seen it each and every night. Yes, each and every night and, for that flash of a moment back in the one-room schoolhouse, he had thought Mrs. Gadby had seen it, too-that she knew. Maybe she had the same terrifying problem, he thought. Maybe she could help.

From the very earliest of Allister's memories, that fairy had visited him every night. The beautiful, sweet-faced, Monarch-butterfly winged fairy snuck into his room with the most silent of wings. She tip-toed up to his chest and tapped on his nose and presented yet another young boy's heart. And she taunted him. She knew Allister would not eat it. But, she would. Oh, she would eat it right in front of him, of course, and giggle the entire time. She boasted and bragged that she could go anywhere and tell anyone she pleased that, one by one, she would eat the hearts of humankind. And Allister could tell no one. Because "of course," she twinked, no one would believe him and, regardless, if anyone so much as uttered or wrote a word about her, she would find that person and eat their heart, too. That was a promise. A threat and a promise.

And Allister, of course (and of course) had known he could do nothing on his own. And he uttered not a word for fear of his life. But, from the moment Mrs. Gadby gave the assigment to draw what he was thinking, Allister knew he would find someone. He knew the trick, now. He did not need words. And he knew there had to be more. Maybe not Mrs. Gadby. Maybe not anyone in his class at the one-room schoolhouse or in the Sorbonne Junior Academie D'Arts. But, somewhere, there had to be more. And Allister painted and drew and crafted that fairy in whatever medium he could find on each and every day he lived until he found someone.

Oh, and he did (and, of course, he did).

A young and withdrawn and distracted boy Allister met on the playground named Solomon Gates (you will, I am sure (of course), remember Allister's trusted lifelong friend, Solomon Gates) recognized the terror-spun threat of the fairy. Solomon nodded knowingly to Allister with a tear sliding down his cheek (Solomon was not one of those who cried easily) and, in response to Allister's drawing, he drew the same fairy. And Allister and Solomon would find others-like Roosevelt O'Donavan, Frannie Wilkins, Mary Lloyd, and Zora Neale Hurston (yes, the Zora Neale Hurston). And, together, they made a pact to hunt that fairy down (and any others like it, of course) and put an end to her reign of sleepless nights.

To my knowledge, they succeeded. I know this because I have not seen another depiction of that horrid little monarch-butterfly-winged beast in quite some time. Also, though I have written about the fairy, she or any fairy like her has yet to eat my heart.

But, should I be wrong, now you know what to do. And I can guarantee that there will be at least one person who will believe you.You know where to find me (321 Bicuspid Lane, of course).

The Abandoned Shoe

2011-09-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Allister once saw an abandoned shoe on the side of a road. He had been walking for some time as he had a tendency to do (from time to time).

Laceless, the shoe's tongue fell to the side and begged for moisture. Its leather skin had gashes and scars and cracks and tears and wrinkles and weathering. Its sole's stitches were torn so that it was only half connected to the shoe. The front part of the sole hung down and seemed to form a mouth. The eyelets, without their laces, seemed to form, well, eyes.

And all of that made the shoe look so sad and worn and abandoned that Allister said aloud, "Who would do such a thing?"

Allister crossed the road and crouched down to the shoe. He meant to ask it his question. But, a thought sprang into his mind that stopped him short of speaking. A memory. He remembered that old addage, "Do not judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

So, Allister took off one of his shoes and set it down on the side of the road. And he set his foot in the abandoned one.

He took a moment to adjust his foot to the new surrounding and began walking.

And he continued walking. For a mile. And more. And more. Even more. And more.

Having lost track of time and distance (which he was apt to do), Allister walked over familiar and unfamiliar terrain. He kicked things and tapped things with his shoe. And he walked.

But, eventually, the sun went down (which it was apt to do) and Allister stopped. e had no idea of who the shoe's former owner was, what they looked like, or how he could possibly find them. But, Allister could certianly say that he knew how their feet must have felt. And, by the end of his walk, he had come to one definite conclusion: An addendum needed to be made to that old addage.

"Do not judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. And, once you have walked that mile, do not just leave the shoe/s. That's cruel and, in some places, even against the littering laws." It made the addage longer, no doubt. But, it also made it a complete system that cleaned up after itself.

And Allister set out that evening to tell everyone the new saying.

But, first, he walked miles back to retrieve his own abandoned shoe. .

An Accident Masquerading As A Deliberate Action

2011-09-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

One day, whilst a-walking, Allister was witness to a man planting his face into the sidewalk.

Allister was walking up 13th street. The man was crossing 13th in front of him (You know, at the cross street of 13th and Hudson). And it was one of those moments that happened so fast that it appeared to have happened so slow. Where each and every twitch of a movement are given their own lengthy monologue.

It seemed to last forever. But, in all the lengthy foreverness of the suddenness of the man’s fall, there was no time for someone to catch him or to warn him to use his arms to brace himself. There seemed to be no time even for his own instincts to tell him to use his arms, his hands to brace himself. And not his face. Dear God, not his face.

But he did, indeed, use his face. The right side of his face. There was that uncanny sound of face hitting something hard-a weirdly hollow splat. And there was a string of loud obscenities.

Allister got to him just after a bicycle rider stopped to assist. The biker asked, "Are you all right," as he and Allister both squatted down to help. The tripping man rolled over, saw the biker, grabbed his bicycle, and shouted a very direct obscenity. The tripping man clutched his face and launched into a tirade that lifted him to his feet and brought both hands in a vice-like grip on the bike (which meant the tripping man no longer held his broken face, leaving it to drip blood freely). He claimed the biker was coming at him and that he was dodging the bike and that was the meaning of the fall.

Now, it was true that the biker was riding on the sidewalk and that was certainly frowned upon (if not, an outright violation). But, it is also true that if the tripping man was "dodging" the biker, he was dodging him from so far away that it made no sense. And, from what Allister saw, the tripping man made no move that could even be remotely considered an attempt at "dodging" or "evading".

In fact, the single motion that Allister observed had all the earmarks of being a definite "trip on the curb".

But, the man (let's call him Trip) would not let go of the bike because of the misguided notion that the biker would flee the scene. That theory seemed to lack the memory that the biker had been the first on the scene to stop and help. And, once it became apparent that the end result of the fall was not quite as horrendous as the fall looked or sounded, the scene quickly spiraled into an intense display of irrational reasoning and blame. Trip shouted for a telelphone, shouted for someone to make an emergency phonecall-not for an ambulance to mend his busted face, mind you. His face rhythmically dripped little red drops from just above his right eye like a macabre timepiece as Trip shouted for someone to call the police.

All present offered to call for an ambulance because, “you never know with head injuries.” That, everyone understood. The other thing that everyone understood was that calling the police was an unnecessary waste of time. But, a call was made from an overlooking apartment for both the ambulance and the police.

While waiting, people from viewpoints of all angles of the accident came to make sure Trip was all right. And, then, when Trip inevitably said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just busted my face because of this bastard," each and every witness followed with a reply of, "No, no. I saw what happened and you fell well before." Trip would say, "You shouldn't ride a bike on the sidewalk!" And, sure, that was true. But, that really was not the issue. All the while the biker was calmly said, "Sir, please let go of my bike." And Allister tried to offer Trip back his glasses-which had leapt from Trip’s face at just the right time to avoid breaking. None of those requests were recognized. Trip was too busy being irate.

Allister felt particularly bad for a sweet older woman who came from across the street to check on Trip. Her accent was European, though Allister could not place from where exactly. And, when she calmly explained what she saw to Trip, he snapped, "This isn't an international summit. Shut it or leave." Now, it should be noted that Trip’s line was not said loudly. It was not shouted. It was said quite plainly. But, the nastiness that the line rode on was so direct that Allister could feel the sway turn away from anyone still feeling sorry for Trip, the tripping man who could not admit that he tripped.

Also, amid the hysteria, a guy in a tattered and faded army jacket arrived on the scene. He had been leaving his apartment building from across the street, had missed the accident, but now that hysteria was happening, he felt it only made sense to join in. He sided with Trip, for the most part. Not necessarily on what Trip said, but definitely on the hysteria that Trip spewed. Trip still yelled for someone to call the cops. And the tattered soldier offered his apartment’s phone across the street to call more cops onto the scene. Allister guessed for backup?

But, the tattered soldier would not place the call. “Oh, no,” he said, “I do not talk to the cops.” So, Trip crossed the street and placed the call.

Well…Trip crossed the street, dragging the bicycle with him with the biker still holding on. And Allister followed because the biker had looked at him early on and mouthed the pleaful words, "will you please stay?" So, he stayed and he followed the madness.

Throughout the two minute hysterical conversation with the operator at the police station, the tattered soldier managed to pepper in the phrase, "Tell them you're on someone else's phone," at least five times. And Trip, to his credit, peppered his two minute conversation with exactly as many of those as told. The bike rider calmly noted to the tattered solider that he did not try to hit Trip. And, then, the bike rider would calmly ask Trip to let go of his bike. That was when Allister could tell that the tattered soldier did not necessarily have a side (beyond siding with hysteria, in general) because he turned to the bike rider and said, very helpfully, "Calm down, sir. If you talk like that, the cops will throw you in jail. I know cops. I do. And It doesn't matter what the story is, you talk like that, they'll arrest you." Somehow the tattered soldier missed the calmness of the bike rider's request. The tattered soldier, then, turned to Trip still talking to the operator. “Hey, hey, I gotta go,” he told Trip, adding in one final request for trip Trip tell the operator he was on someone else's telephone. Trip obliged, even adding that the resident who had let him borrow the phone had to go and the conversation wrapped up as the tattered soldier walked them outside his building, locked his front door, walked down the street, and left the scene as randomly as he had arrived.

The ambulance finally arrived and Trip said that he would not let go of the bike until the police arrived. And they did. Some time later. By that time, the blood had stopped dripping from Trip's head. The ambulance driver had managed to convince Trip to let go of the bike and, instead, apply pressure to his head with a bandage.

The police explained to Trip that they could not file a report because they had not seen what had happened and that was a necessity. Trip tried to explain his version of the law and told both police officers that they did not know that law. The police officers admitted this and also told Trip that the reason they did not know Trip's law was that it was not a law. Well, not in the that city. They could issue a warning to the biker for riding on the sidewalk and that was it.

So, they took the biker's information down. Trip, meanwhile, asked Allister what he had seen. Allister told him that he had seen Trip fall and that it had nothing to do with the bike rider on the sidewalk, even if it was wrong for him to be riding on the sidewalk. All that was said very calmly. And Trip, to his credit, took a breath and it looked to have been a breath of clarity. He looked to have inhaled what was said and it looked as if he was going to exhale the understanding that he was wrong. That he could see that he had just tripped.

For a moment, it looked like it would all be fine. Trip even said, "Okay." And, then, promptly turned around and re-spewed his tale of being the victim of a homicidal bike rider.

In the end, the bike rider was let go and, so, Allister left, too. Trip, though, stayed to fight the fight of his life.

It was always Allister’s hope that Trip eventually got in the ambulance or at least sought some medical attention and that he calmed down enough to forgive the bike rider who did nothing wrong to him. Not for the bike rider's sake. But, for Trip’s own sake.

Allister, you see, understood that it had been a hard fall and an injury that resulted from a silly mistake and that was hard to digest. It was much easier to swallow if you had someone to blame. And, in Trip's case, he just wanted someone to blame beyond physics and gravity. Because, let's face it: though responsible and law-abiding, neither physics nor gravity are a person. Therefore, you can not grab their bike. You can not press charges against them. You have to suck it up and accept the accident as an accident. Accept the stumble as a stumble that turned into a face plant because you did not brace yourself with something other than your face and get your concussion looked at by medical professionals.

Etched In Stone

2011-09-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Etched in stone, carved so clean and neat, surrounded by marble, and alphabetically stacked on top of each other were the columns of soldiers’ names. They marched along all the walls of the mausoleum that Allister thought smelled like the bizarre marriage of sweat to stale cigar smoke.

And, perhaps more bizarre, was the feeling that the scent seemed fitting.

And that was what was left to remember all the men that lived and died in a great war fought between brother’s long before Allister was born.

Names. Lists. Allister found it odd to think of himself in terms of his name. Allister Cromley. It was weird to think of himself as words and that someday those words would come to represent him on a list. Maybe many lists, but just two words for Allister Cromley.

Those words did not even cover the obvious (height, weight, hair color, eye color, shoe size, wing span, style of stride, sound of laughter, sound of sobbing, grip of handshake, grip of hug)- much less the obscure (loves, fears, dreams).

And, of course, Allister did not go through life thinking of that. It would drive a person crazy to think of themselves as a name on a list. It would be listing yourself from the very start.

The young men and old men listed on the mausoleum’s marble had not thought of that. But, whether they enlisted with patriotic excitement or found themselves pushed into fighting, they automatically entered themselves into a list- Men serving in a war (that particular war in that particular year between those particular brothers long before Allister was born). The list would eventually turn into Veterans of that particular war in that particular year between those particular brothers long before Allister was born and would be divided into sub-categories of casualties and survivors of this particular side and casualties and survivors of that particular side of that particular war in that particular year between those particular brothers long before Allister was born. Further categories would list those who fought in particular battles, the number of particular years soldiers served, and the particular ranks of each soldier.

And what of that?

Those lists come later, Allister thought.

For that moment, all Allister could do was do. Was be. Was be there. He could not think of mausoleums, of marble, of tributes. For that moment, he was among those who made the lists. And the lists were the most tangible way to remember and honor those that passed on before us. That was and is true.
But, as always, the best way to honor the fallen was to fully live.

His Mason Jar

2011-08-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Allister had once lived in a city whose sky threatened rain, whose clouds swelled with moisture and drooped down to almost touch the ground. And, from that ground, it seemed almost painful for the sky. And, yet, it would rarely break into an all-out storm.

There were even times when the Earth itself would become so parched and cracked and dry, desperately begging for rain. And people would collect on the dry, parched, and cracked Earth and whisper raspy prayers through their dry, parched, and cracked lips. And, still, the sky would refuse.

Eventually, it would rain, of course. It always eventually did.

And, when it did rain, Allister would collect a single drop from each storm. And he would place it in a mason jar. And he would carry this jar wherever and whenever he could. As time went by, the raindrops would accumulate and their collected strength would climb a little higher up the mason jar's glass.

If Allister became thirsty, he would not drink from the jar. Oh, no. Not even if it was his only option. Those raindrops were not for drinking. Those raindrops were for saving.

He would save them for a time that would eventually happen. One of those moments where human emotion swelled to such extremes that no one knew what to do. Catastrophes of catastrophic natures would have occured. Tragedy in all its jagged tragedy. And people would swell. They would stand in place and swell. They would want to know what to do next. Where to go. How to recover. How to move on. They would, with their dry and parched and cracked lips, beg to cry.

But, instead, they would swell.

Inside, all the emotion that one normally felt on the outside built up to such extremes. And no one would cry. Not even Allister (and he had been known to cry at the mere thought of a fairy tale's end).

So, Allister would open his mason jar, dip his finger in and drop a raindrop.
Then, another.
And another.
And another.
And, eventually, the raindrops would be joined by teardrops.
And, eventually (some time after), they would move on.

A Steady Stream

2011-08-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Now, this is strange. And Allister never knew if what follows had/has ever happened to anyone else. But, it had happened to him enough to count as several.

He would be in a public bathroom (urinating, as it were) and some older fellow in the neighboring stall next to him would say, “I remember those days,” pining for the days when he could urinate with gusto.

As hard as that may be to believe, Allister swore it was true. And that it had happened more than once.

Now, Allister had never thought that he had some extra-strength pee-force.

And the neighboring tone was always so tinged with nostalgia and reminiscence that you could not mistake it for perversion. No, no. That guy was remembering moments he never would have imagined he would want to remember. Moments and streams at urinals across the country (and perhaps the world) that he had come in contact with throughout the tenure of his life.

It was not something Allister thought about when he thought about aging. That he would pee slower. Or even that, one day, he would miss his once-youthful stream. It made Allister wonder whether somewhere there was another guy, older than the first guy, who was pining for the days when he pined for the days when he could pee with more force.

And Allister never knew the proper response.

“Thank you,” would have been the easy way out. That would have shown that he was appreciative and it also tended to hide (perhaps) some of the uncomfortableness of the situation. But, there was always part of Allister that wanted to console the guy, too. To encourage him to keep at it because…well….because he had to.

Something in Allister that always wanted to say, “And you pee really good for your age.”

His Lyrebird's Lament

2011-08-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

Have I ever told you that Allister had a lyrebird?
I cannot remember.
And no matter really because, whether I have already told you or not, the fact remains true-Allister had a lyrebird. Or, rather, Allister knew a lyrebird. Or, rather, the lyrebird knew Allister.
Or...rather...both.

And, like all lyrebirds before and after, the lyrebird Allister knew was a gifted mimic and could impersonate everything from cuccaberras to the saws that cut through the trees of its forest home.

But, unlike all lyrebirds before and after, the lyrebird Allister knew was named Douglas Quibley. And that is because Allister named him Douglas Quibley.

Douglas Quibley and Allister were close. So close that Allister did not "keep" him. That is to say that, at the end of an evening, Douglas Quibley would go his own way and Allister would go his. There was trust. So much trust, in fact, that Douglas Quibley had even shown Allister where his own family lived.

And each and every evening, without doubt, Douglas Quibley would be back on Allister's porch for a night cap.

And Douglas Quibley would sing. Oh, how Douglas Quibley would sing. Each evening brought with it a new tune that Douglas Quibley had put together from the sounds he heard throughout the day.

Oh, he had wombat songs and new tractor engine songs and trees rustling in the wind songs and (once Allister had introduced him to the sport of cricket, of course) the play by play of Melbourne versus Victoria songs. Remnants and measures and beats from all of those would trickle into and mix with the old ancestral lyrebird melodies, forming what would one day be Douglas Quibley's magnum opus- the song he would pass on to his children.

And each and every night, Douglas Quibley would walk home (lyrebirds are not the most devoted practitioners of flight in the avian family) and Allister would put out his porch lantern and go to sleep.

That carried on, for some time. And, the detail and precision and pure innovation of sound from Douglas Quibley entertained and astounded Allister. And he would close his eyes and soak in the sounds of Douglas Quibley that brought forth the long lost memories of Allister Cromley.

Then, one evening, Douglas Quibley did not come to Allister's porch.

Something was wrong and Allister sprinted into brush to the home of Douglas Quibley.

And he was right. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

Feathers were strewn all about. The nest was torn to shreds. There was blood on the ground and wave marks in the dirt that disappeared deep into the brush.

And, somewhere nearby, Allister heard the snake's hiss.

He instantly jumped back. But, the hiss was followed by a sorrowful moan of song. And Allister cleared away the shrubbery to reveal his dear friend, Douglas Quibley- still alive, doing what he did best. Douglas Quibley sang a song of mourning.

And, as always, the sounds were so precise and succinct and so crystal clear that Allister could picture the whole incident. The snake had struck his son first. There had been no hiss. There had been a movement of branch and, then, a strike. The forest had erupted in a chorus of shrieks from koalas and sugar gliders and bandicoots and even the cuccaberras that blended together into a stunningly piercing harmony.

And Douglas Quibley and his wife had attacked, had tried to defend through scratches and pecking. But, the snake whipped its tail into Douglas Quibley and threw him to where Allister found him. And, as he lost consciousness, Douglas Quibley heard his wife shriek. But, then, it was black.

When Douglas Quibley came to, there was no sound. If a pin had dropped in that dense forest, Douglas Quibley would have heard and recited it crystal clear. But, the forest was pinless. And, so, Douglas Quibley instead recalled and recited with impeccable clarity the subtle somber tones of the silence.

And, then, he recalled the sounds of his son and wife. Happy chirps, they were.

Allister looked into Douglas Quibley's eyes and they were dark and deep and hollow and sad and lost.

So lost.

Allister had seen the look once before- in a young private who cradled the head of a friend killed in action in France and shouted, "What is this, what is this?"

And Allister did not know at that time to tell the young soldier and he had not learned enough to tell Douglas Quibley, either.

So, Allister let Douglas Quibley go. He let Douglas Quibley do what he needed to do.

And Douglas Quibley needed to walk. Douglas Quibley needed to echo the chirps of his family because he was afraid he would not remember them. And he needed to recall the venom of the snake's attack because he could not forget it.

And, as his lyrebird disappeared into the brush, Allister knew that it would be some time before he saw Douglas Quibley again. Allister knew, then, that Douglas Quibley would find the snake, that Douglas Quibley would kill the snake.

And he did.

Allister knew that (and you will, too) because, one evening many evenings later, Douglas Quibley stumbled back to Allister's porch. And Allister welcomed him and offered him a nightcap. Douglas Quibley was polite in his refusal. But, it was apparent and abundantly clear that Douglas Quibley had not come for a drink. He came to sing his song.

And, so, he did. He sang the sounds of his clawed feet on dirt and the rustle of the leaves and the sounds and noises of all the fauna guiding him. That particular snake was a most vicious and hated snake and many in the forest had suffered a loss from its venomous fangs. And Allister heard the support that Douglas Quibley must have felt. And he heard the long days and long nights. And, all throughout the song, the recollection of the snake’s hiss and his family’s chirps weaved in and out.

Even when he found the snake sleeping, even when he surprised the snake from behind, even when he had sunk his claws into the snake’s eyes the recollection of the hiss and his family’s chirps weaved in and out.

And when the snake shrieked in pain and the whole forest erupted in cheer, Douglas Quibley still weaved in and out the hiss and the happy chirps. And they seemed to blend at that point in the song until the happy chirps erupted over the hiss and broke free to form their own melody. And Douglas Quibley sang of the victorious celebration when the snake died. Loud and booming and all-encompassing. Koalas and sugar gliders and bandicoots and cuccaberras and wombats and animals that Allister had never seen. All cheering, until…until…until…the cheering stopped.

And it was quiet. The forest was still without pins.

And that was it.

But, even then, even the whole walk to Allister’s porch, Douglas Quibley sang the tune of the happy chirps of his family and sometimes, still, the hiss would come back and Douglas Quibley looked to Allister with that lost look.

And Allister said, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t. And I’m sorry.

But, Allister knew then something that he had not known before.

He took Douglas Quibley to a secret place hidden deep in the brush. A place only Allister knew. A small cove where water trickled and flowed from solid rock. And he held Douglas Quibley up to it.

Allister could not make Douglas Quibley forget the hiss. He could only teach him a new song.

.

An Explanation Of The Acceptance Of His Name

2011-08-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Every day, the newspaper man handed Allister a morning paper and called him "Guy." And it was not an ambiguous 'guy'. Make no mistake of that. It was a 'guy' of recognition.

Allister could see in the man’s eye (both of them even) that he knew who Allister was. Perhaps he thought, "Hey, here's that guy with the mustache who gets a paper from me every morning." Perhaps he thought simply, "Hey, here's that guy." Or even simpler, "Hey, here's guy."

Any way it was cut, though, it was fine by Allister. Call him what you would, as long as you called him the same name each time.

It was a motto he put together only after years of correctional fatigue. One would think, with a semi-original moniker like 'Allister Cromley', people would remember his name. Allister even thought that. And we all thought wrong. In fact, being named Allister Cromley guarantees you only one thing in your life:

On paper, you will constantly be mistaken for the English occultist, Aleister Crowley.

But, Allister Cromley was no more Aleister Crowley than Jeffrey Chancer was Geoffery Chaucer. And, thusly, you could no more accuse Allister Cromley of casting dark spells on classmates than you could praise Jeffrey Chancer for writing The Canterbury Tales on classmates. And once that simple sentence was agreed upon, if the Aleister Crowley name could not be shaken…well…okay. Allister could deal with that.
He was, after all, still himself (and one should not overlook the good fortune of having a friend named Carl Marx with whom to relate).

And, after that acceptance, the names Allister answered to ranged from Aleister Crowley to Albert to Foster McDavis. You could blame some of those mistakes (the Albert ones) on a lack of enunciation on Allister’s part. But, you would be wrong again. Allister tried over-enunciating and would still get Albert. And that was not even taking into account the Foster McDavis types of mistakes or the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people who had heard Allister’s introduction and correctly recognized his name as Allister, thereby proving that it was no fault of his own (or, at least, not always a fault of his own).

So, Allister thought, why even try to correct?

Now, that was not a defeatist attitude. Allister had not really given up. He had simply looked the problem in the eye and recognized the fact that the problem remembered him as Foster McDavis. And Allister simply stopped recognizing that as a problem.

After all, what was a name really, but a collection of letters and sounds agreed upon. And, though there was certainly validity to Allister knowing his birth name, what seemed more important was the recognition of his name by someone else (even if the name recognized was not Allister Cromley).

People countered that train of thought by saying that it was more embarrassing to find out, after months of calling someone “Foster McDavis,” that that person was really named “Allister Cromley.”

And, to some extent, Allister would agree. But, when you take into account the multiple embarrassments of multiple corrections and add into that the embarrassment that comes with the realization that you have already been corrected, you get an overall embarrassment that completely out-embarrasses someone letting you call them 'Foster McDavis' for a while.

And, in all truthful honesty, Allister himself hardly remembered names right away. So, chances were, if you had just met him, he would probably just refer to you as “you” (as in, “Hey there, you!”) until he had a firm grasp of your name. And it was not personal. Oh no. Not at all or in any of the least.

It was just that, at the precise moment when an introduction occurred, Allister would get lost in the constellations of rods and cones in that person’s eyes. He did not know why that was. And he would even concentrate extra hard, focusing in on the mouth and sounding out each and every word said. And he would stay with the words the entire way through, right up to the introduction and, still, his mind always managed to skip a beat and pick up the millisecond after the name was said.

With the recognition of his own malady, how could Allister possibly hold anyone to the responsibility of remembering his name?
Call him Allister Cromley, Aleister Crowley, Albert, Foster McDavis, or just Guy.
Allister simply liked the idea of being remembered at all.

It Begins And Ends With A Fall

2011-07-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

In the year of our (your and their) lord, 1929, the stock market crashed in New York City. Entire fortunes were wiped out with the fall. And the sky rained desperate men.

Allister thought it sounded so simple. So, the stock market crashed. So, the stock market fell. Things so often fall, he thought. And they did and do and have always and will always continue to do so. And someone, some thing, or some force will pick them back up again.

And yet this fall felt different. This fall was documented in all capital letters and exclamation points. This fall, in one sudden drop, aged young faces directly into their twilight years.

The stock market fell and there was nothing left to pick up.

And so men leapt from the tops of buildings.
Some picked their buildings with care- choosing one that held meaning, perhaps a place where they had first kissed their gal. Some made their choice in haste, sprinting to the roof of the building closest to them and hoping it was high enough. Some went feet first, some went head first. And so on and so forth.

The stock market fell and people fell with it.

Allister remembered the first jumper he saw. He been walking up 65th Street and turned on 5th Avenue. Directly in front of him and across the street was the oasis of green that was Central Park. But, to his right on 5th was a huddling of people. He had missed the initial jump, even the initial fall. But, the people had preserved the half-arc ring that was left for his landing. Some still screamed. Some whispered that the man had patted the gargoyle on its back before jumping. Some whispered that he had not.

Allister heard a particularly small gasp and looked down to see a squirrel, its hands still in the position of holding an acorn. But, the acorn had fallen. And the squirrel quivered. Its eyes were full of terror. It must have stumbled upon the gathering of people and stopped to watch, like someone captivated by a particularly intense foreign language film without subtitles. But, when the jumper jumped, the plot was suddenly filled in. The squirrel's tiny mouth with its tiny buck teeth opened and shut in little puffs, trying to find words in squirrel or human language. But, it could not. Now, it did not know any language.

The squirrel took a breath and filled its lungs with the air of desperation that, for all the squirrel knew, had been pure and clean just that morning. It had gulped down a heaping dose of despair, which would certainly have killed a smaller animal (a chipmunk or a common sootywing butterfly, for example). But, the squirrel was alive. It stood as still as a statue. And Allister saw the terror shoot through the squirrel, shoot through its eyes, its hands twitching, each and every single hair on its body standing straight up. Its mouth wide open and agape.

Sirens wailed so loudly that it felt as if each direction of the city was its own ambulance. But, to Allister, (whose eyes were still affixed on the squirrel), it looked as if the sirens could only have come from the squirrel's little lungs.

And the squirrel turned on its feet, tripped, ran two steps to outrun the trip, and ran back to grab its acorn with its teeth. That was all it had. That was it. And that was the exact moment that Allister was fully aware of what the squirrel was going to do.

The squirrel was going to jump, too.

Allister watched its tail bobbing madly as the squirrel sprinted into Central Park. And Allister followed. Yes, it was madness. No one would argue that. It was all madness. Horns honked at the squirrel and, then, Allister. The sirens blared louder and louder, getting closer and closer. And Allister's heart thumped with each pounding step.

He made it into the park just in time to see the squirrel dashing up the largest oak, still clutching the acorn in its teeth. The oak poked at the sky as high as nature could. And the squirrel ran to the top and out across a branch, balancing on two feet, acorn in mouth.

And Allister shouted as loud as he could, over the sounds of the city, over the walls of its sirens. Allister shouted, “Wait!”

The squirrel twitched nervously and the branch shook.The squirrel teetered on its feet, barely steadying itself. But, there was something in Allister’s voice that shook the squirrel awake and back to sanity for a moment. It opened its mouth to gulp some clarity and dropped its acorn. And, as quickly as the clarity came, it disappeared again, falling with the acorn. And, in one sudden motion, the squirrel hurled itself off the branch after the acorn.

Allister screamed, “Noooo,” as if the force of this command could push the squirrel back to the branch. But, it did not. For a split second, Allister felt the urge to catch the acorn. He could not help it. But, he did not. He…well…

It all happened so fast.

Allister moved.

The squirrel fell through the air, its legs were wide open and ready to smash into the ground.

But, when the time came to land, Allister was there to catch the squirrel. And he held the squirrel tight as the squirrel shook and shivered and mumbled and sputtered.

Allister patted the squirrel's back and whispered, "Sh, sh, sh, no, no, no. What can we do, what can we do? Sh, sh, sh." He whispered as if the squirrel could understand the human vocabulary. And the squirrel attempted to say, "I don't know," perhaps in answer to Allister's question. But, more likely, in answer to its own unanswerable question. But, no words of any language would come out of the squirrel's mouth. And, in the end, none were needed. A whimper translated clear and succinct throughout all the languages of the globe.

Moments later, Allister and the squirrel sat on a Central Park bench. The squirrel had calmed. And Allister had purchased a beer to split with his bewildered friend, Allister drinking from the bottle and the squirrel drinking from the cap. Allister tried to tell the squirrel that all would be well. That they would find the pieces to pick up. He even tried to tell his new friend about the time he had lived on nothing but lint for days, maybe even weeks on end. "You'd be surprised what we're capable of surviving," Allister said.
But, the squirrel did not know what he was saying.

And, as each siren faded into one of New York City's compass points, Allister and the squirrel sighed and Allister held his bottle up to the squirrel for a toast. The squirrel raised his capful to Allister's bottle and Allister said something the squirrel understood quite clearly.
"We can only start small, my friend. We can only start small."

To Fall In Love With A Tomato

2011-07-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

One sleepless night, after a slew of restless tosses and turns, Allister climbed out of his bed, walked to his kitchen, sat in a chair, and looked at the tomato sitting at the center of the table.

The day before, Allister decided to fall in love with that tomato.

Well, in the very least, he would try to fall in love with that tomato.

Now, before you huff and puff or guffaw or guff and huff or puffaw (or any other combination), let me state for the record that if there ever was a tomato that a human could fall in love with, the tomato that sat on Allister’s kitchen table would have been it.

It was a very beautiful tomato. And some would say, “Oh yes, it is certainly beautiful- for a tomato.” But, this is not what I mean and certainly not what Allister thought. The tomato on his kitchen table was beautiful- not for a tomato, not for a fruit or vegetable, not for any particular thing at all. The tomato was very beautiful because it was beautiful and that was it.

It was lush and plump. Savory and smooth. And subtly glowed a fervent red warmth.

And Allister lit a candle on the table and sat with the tomato. He gazed into its skin, traced the soft ridges with his index finger, and tried to transfer the love and desire he wanted to feel in his heart into the tomato’s flesh.

But, the tomato did not change. And, Allister too, felt no change in him. There was no love, no desire for the tomato. There was only the desire to make himself love the tomato. It was a task, a mission. And, even after the morning had melted the night’s candlewax down, Allister sat at the table and waited to fall in love with the tomato.

The candle flame flicked one last flick and disappeared and there remained no love.

Allister felt he could not give up just yet. After all, having had only a single night together, they barely knew each other. So, over breakfast, Allister recounted his life to the tomato. He chewed his eggs and bacon and poured forth all that was inside him to his tomato. He told the tomato how his mother often smelled like lavender and his father like pipe smoke and how they would hold hands when they walked down a street. And the nostalgia wafted so viscerally and pure that Allister felt the need to look to the tomato and stroke the prickly soft down of its green stem.

And, before the moment became awkward, he brought his hand back to his coffee mug’s waiting handle. And he laughed slight enough to notion towards the awkward of the previous moment, but confident enough to keep the room from falling into deafening silence. Quickly, Allister moved to another story from his past. He told his tomato about the first girl he ever had feelings for. He was seven and her first name was Minnie. Allister could no longer remember her last name. But, he remembered that seeing her for the first time birthed butterflies and sent them swirling throughout his stomach. And he remembered quite clearly that when Minnie introduced herself, Allister could not remember his own name so he punched her in the stomach. And he remembered they both burst into tears at the same time and that they never spoke again.

Allister sipped his coffee and giggled. How funny it was. Allister looked to the tomato for a response and, then, sipped his coffee and giggled again. And each draining sip built Allister’s giggle to a laugh and, then, to a roar. He pounded his fist, his face turned tomato red, his back arched, and his eyes watered with tears. The tears came from the laughter, but Allister was also suddenly aware that he was saddened that he could no longer remember Minnie’s last name. And the tears built for laughter became weighted with somber undertones so heavy that his ducts could no longer hold them. So, Allister folded over from his abdomen and cried onto the table. When his eyes had dried, he looked at the tomato and apologized. He was not usually like that- well, he was not always like that, he said.

And Allister asked the tomato, “And how about your family?”

He had heard the tomato’s family, the Solanacea, was from Peru. And Allister mentioned how he had been to Peru and had even ridden an alpaca. Had the tomato ever ridden an alpaca? Allister had much to say about Peru. He loved Peru, very much, in fact. But, as the day pressed on further, he was well aware that he did not love the tomato.

He tried harder. He wrote sweet poetry and prose and odes and songs to the tomato's beauty and it's lycopenic scent. Some of these were sweet pieces of longing. Some of them leant towards the dirty (in the literal sense, of course). And, the harder he tried, the more disappointed and upset he was that there was nothing there. He began to blame the tomato for withholding, for being a tease.

And the day turned to night once more and then another day and another night and so on and so forth and so forth and so on.

And the tomato began to turn a different hue and wrinkle and lose some of its firmness- all signs that their time together was nearing an end. But, what end? Allister wanted marriage, wanted little cherry tomato children, and a life together. Not because he loved the tomato- because he did not want to believe that we do not choose who we love. He did not want to give into the idea that there was a mysterious strand that pulled and held things together.

But, eventually, there was no choice. The tomato became nothing more than a mushy pile in the center of his table and Allister had never (not even for a second) fallen in love with it.

Of course, Allister moved on and even found love elsewhere (on its own terms). And the tomato pile moved on, too (to a spectacular sauce that Allister could even describe as beautiful).

The Invention Of The Siren

2011-07-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Now seems as good a time as any for us to talk about sirens.

The first siren was invented just before the 18th gave way to the 19th century. It was invented by a Scotsman, John Robison, with the thought that it would be a musical instrument. It consisted of a pneumatic tube that was opened and closed with the use of a plug. Sound was created when the flow of air was interrupted. In 1819, the siren was improved by using two perforated disks in place of the plug. One disk was stationary and the other rotated, interrupted the flow of air, and produced a tone. That tone could even be made underwater.

And, soon, the siren became much more than a musical instrument.

And what does that have to do with you or me or Allister?

Well…

Allister learned to be a siren at a young age. It had not been planned. It had merely been necessary. The local fire department’s engine siren had broken. And Allister, being a young local fireman, was present when the break was discovered. All the local firemen, those that were younger and elder and those that were still unsure of how old they were, crowded together to discuss what could be done. The siren could be taken apart. A large and loud brass bell could be affixed to the engine like it had been in the past.

And either of those plans could have worked if there had been time to accomplish them. But, there was not. A fire was raging at the home of the McDermott family. There was no time to repair the old siren and no time to acquire a new bell. The local fire engine, its local water, and its local firemen were needed.

And if you have already been in a situation such as that, you will know the feeling that Allister and the other local firemen had. The feeling of not knowing how to properly do what needed to be done, but knowing that it needed to be done. There is the idea of a shocked pause in those situations. But, what you will realize after those moments are done is that there was never a pause at all. The idea of the pause came from the fact that your mind was catching up to what the rest of your body was already doing. And what the rest of your body was doing was taking action.

When Allister’s mind caught up to his body, it found him stepping to the passenger-side runner board as the local fire engine roared out of the garage. And Allister breathed in all the air his lungs could possibly hold, threw his head back, opened and closed his throat, interrupted the flow of breath, and shrieked a siren as loud as he possibly could.

Now, I say ‘siren’ because that is what it was- a siren. But, Allister had not thought about the sound, had not practiced what he would belt, had not even tried to mimic the memory of the local fire engine’s broken siren. The sound that he bellowed forth was solely Allister’s siren. And, as the local fire engine charged through the town, his siren was a beacon to all the people who could help and a warning to all those that could not to clear out of the way.

And, after each and every McDermott had been safely saved, all the local firemen crowded around Allister and shook his hand and patted him on the back and begged him to be their permanent siren.

Allister blushed just a hue lighter than the local fire engine’s red. And he pictured himself proudly hanging off the local fire engine, perfecting the tone of his siren until it was so loud that it could be used to warn local fire departments hundreds of miles away and so beautiful that it could proudly lead any parade.

It was a nice thought. But, instead of taking on the new job, Allister taught each and every local fireman how to belt out their own siren. And, in an attempt to respond to emergencies as soon as they erupted, the local firemen taught the local people to belt their own sirens. Soon enough, all emergencies (be it a burning fire or a searing loneliness) were being attended to before they even had the chance to be emergencies.

And what does that have to do with you or me?

Well, somewhere along the line, perhaps through aging or perhaps through complacency, the town stopped teaching everyone to be a siren. And, perhaps that was quite fine for a while.

But, there comes a time when something feels quite wrong, when all seems like a whirling storm of madness, and we do not know what to do or how to help. We only know that the situation is dire. It is an emergency. And it is important to remember that we do not need to know the right words or the right action. We do not need permission and we certainly do not need to wait.

We are our own sirens.

We need only throw our heads back and let our sirens loose. And I promise, if you do, you will find others who feel the same and those that cannot (or will not) help will know to clear out of our way.

Somewhere between apathy and the apocalypse are voices waiting to be heard.

And now is the time for sirens, my friends.

His Note (To Himself)

2011-07-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Allister wrote to himself each night.

And that is not to say that he wrote in a diary or a journal.
Sometimes he wrote on overturned stones. Sometimes he wrote into the bark of a tree, on the back of a sleeping friend, or the back of a babbling brook. He left the message all about, to be found again the next morning.
And the message was this:

Dear Today Allister,
This is Yesterday Allister. We met in passing.
I bequeath to you this new day. It is yours. All this is yours.
Do as you will.

In the wake of my day, I ask that you not feel indebted to any gifts I may have left and that you also forgive me for any of my shortcomings. It was, after all, a different time.
Please follow our heart.
Think not of Tomorrow Allister. He will have his day.

And, if you are worried that I will be angry with any of your choices, please know that I will not. I am much too far away to see what is necessary for you today. And there is much to do. I do know that.
So, feel free to change as you will.
And you must change.
Each new day calls for it.
Each new day needs for it.
I remain,
Yesterday

The Tree On His Back

2011-06-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

One dark morning when Allister was no longer a child, he walked up the steps to the home where he had been a child and stood on the then-leaning porch.

The paint was chipped, the windows were cracked, and the interior was dusty and hollow. Gone were the giggles and the games and the questions about growing and sharing and being an adult.

Soon it would all be razed and concrete would cover the grass and his childhood steps. And that was life and progress and Allister had settled his heart to move on and give in to what was inevitable.

Because that was evolution and there was parking that needed to be done.

Allister looked out at the oak that had always stood so tall and so strong in his family’s front yard. He stepped down from the porch and stood beneath the oak’s many arms, high above him. And the old oak welcomed Allister as if he had never left. Because the oak had never left.

Allister climbed up a large bough, curled himself against the trunk high above the ground, and pondered. It was all too impossible to fight. The opposing forces were so strong and Allister felt so weak. So alone. He traced the carved initials of a pair of secret lovers whom the oak had carried high above and kept secret. And Allister thought how strange it was that the oak had once let both swings and nooses dangle from its branches. But, in the end, the oak had never learned to tie. It only knew how to hold.

And, so, the oak cradled Allister and sighed a warm and bark-y sigh so slight that it could have been mistaken for breeze. And the oak breathed in what Allister did not need and breathed out what Allister needed most.

And Allister did what he came to do.

He climbed back down to the oak’s base and grabbed hold of the largest root that poked a branchy knuckle above the ground. And Allister pulled until the root uprooted. He slung the uprooted arm over his shoulder and, with both hands, uprooted the next biggest root and draped it over the opposite shoulder.

Allister pulled with all his might and the tree loosened its grip on the ground and uprooted.

And some will say that this is impossible (as some tend to do), but when people are pushed to extremes, the impossible is more than possible.

The impossible is necessary.

(And, for those who fixate on the impossible, I ask you kindly to please stop reading here. There is a multitude of text to read, some proven and some contrived, that will reinforce your opinion of our limits and our predetermined ends. And you are most welcome to it. But, that is elsewhere. Beyond this paragraph is an openness that you are not welcome to tamper with. And some will say that we are dreamers, that we are not living in reality. But, beyond this paragraph is the understanding that the only difference in dreams and reality is the position of the eyelids. Beyond this paragraph, is a collective widening of the heart and opening of the eyes to what is more. What we have been given and what we are to protect. The opening of fourteen billion eyelids will make the dream real. But, it takes only the opening of two to begin. And you are not welcome to close the eyes of a dreamer. We are dreaming for you, too.)

And Allister, with the oak’s two strongest roots over his shoulders, pulled the tree away from the land of their youth, all the long and short and thin and thick wooden root tentacles dragging miles behind him.

Where did he take the oak? I do not know. I keep looking, believe me. And I will know it when I find it. You will, too. It’s that towering oak with a swing dangling from each and every branch.

Oops, He Burned His Hands

2011-06-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

Allister found himself constantly testing his hands and their tolerance for pain. Usually, it involved heat- a challenge to a frying pan that sat on a lit stove top, for instance. "No oven mitts here. Just you and me, frying pan. Mono y pan," he would say. And, not to sound arrogant, but he usually won.

That trait could not be traced to any specific reasoning.

For example, though he did like fires, Allister could not be mistaken for a pyromaniac. In fact, as much as he did enjoy a healthy fire, he also found that he could spend days, weeks, and months even without it. And, even so, he would twitch not a twitch. Thus, one can assume, no pyromania.

And it was not a call to masochism. No, Allister did not need the physical to release pain or pleasure. Allister did not need an excuse to make him feel. He could cry quite easily on his own.

He cried when he was happy. He cried when he was sad. He cried when he was crying and he cried when he was laughing. He cried at weddings. He cried at funerals. He cried at his high school graduation and his university graduation. He once cried at a sequence in Gertie The Dinosaur, a Winsor McCary cartoon where a man scolds a joyful brontosaurus and causes her to cry for a fraction of a second. He felt a little of his heart break for her.

It was a trait his parents gave him. Sure, they cried together when they were sad. But, when his family was at their happiest, tears poured down their faces into puddles on their kitchen table. Their faces contorted, wrinkled, and red. And passersby could easily assume that horrible things had happened to them-an insane man with a hatchet, a pack of rabid dogs, or insane rabid dogs with hatchets, perhaps. But, they were simply loving life, laughing and crying about one of those "you just had to have been there" moments.

So no, Allister was not a masochist.

Allister liked to think that his extreme heat challenges were just one of the last visceral links he had to his earliest ancestors, Grandma and Grandpa Caveman Cromley. The heat challenges were a direct and deliberate snub to reason given to him from his monkey family of yester-millenium. They were all he had left of those hairy, poor-groomed relatives. And, in Allister’s time, it translated into a snub to pre-determined outcomes. One hundred and sixty-eight degrees kills skin cells? Well, here's a fact for you. Allister had calluses more retardant than asbestos. Bring on the frying pan handles! Go ahead. Dip them in lava. Allister was ready. And, if he was indeed crying, how could you be so quick to assume that the tears only came by way of pain?

Who’s to say that he was not just amused by it all?

Shadebekistan

2011-06-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

I suppose young people have always gone through a period of rebellion. I know Allister did, anyway. At the time, he had just felt like the whole world was against him. He felt like an outcast, like he did not belong. So, he started slacking off in class. He was only five, but he simply had other places he wanted to be. So, when it was his turn, he made the decision not to bring anything to show and tell. He only memorized the letters of the alphabet that he liked: E, G, H, N, P, Q, V, X, and Z. he started sniffing glue, eating paste, and only colored with the black crayon. After school was over, he took that attitude home. He became antisocial, refusing to talk to any kid too immature to understand the injustices that went on in the world.

One day, after much stewing, he found a place of shade under a tree behind his family's home and decided to secede from the United States. He wrote a letter to the President that stated how he did not (and I quote) "want to be a part of his stupid country." With that letter he; along with a colony of ants, three grubs, and a couple of worms; claimed their place of shade for their own personal country, free of the tyranny of the United States government and his kindergarten class. The president never got back to Allister.

Their country stretched from one side of the tree trunk to the other and they were all filled with excitement. A delegation was assembled of their finest representatives and, together, they decided to name the country Shadebekistan. It was quickly discovered during that convention, however, that there was a language barrier to overcome. So, Allister decided to just speak for everyone. He/they settled on a dictatorship as their form of government, with the tallest one of them as dictator. And, after much measuring, Allister humbly accepted the position. One of the worms came in at a close second.

Allister immediately began ruling with an iron fist, in hopes that Shadebekistan could become as powerful and prosperous as any other country in the world. He ordered the ants to build a statue of himself and waited in anticipation for its finish. Then, he sent the worms to mine their resources (early on, they were surprised to find that Shadebekistan contained a virtual goldmine of mud and dirt). Allister could not think of anything to do with the grubs. So, he just let the ants eat them. While the ants ate, Allister began to realize that they were not building his statue. They had just built a mound and spent the rest of the time mindlessly carrying leaves around. “Not on my time,” Allister shouted at them and demanded his statue. But, they just kept carrying leaves. He became so frustrated that he cried and thought that, with a bucket of water, he could drown all of the defectors. That did not work and only accomplished making the ants angry enough to attack him. Rioting broke out all over Shadebekistan.

So, Allister quit.

He was too young to be a dictator, anyway. And his mother had called him in for dinner.

Allister ate a big meal and, then, abandoned Shadebekistan.

A Pick Me Up (The Devil's Breakfast)

2011-06-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

Allister, one morning (like many other mornings), walked out his front door and found himself in need of breakfast. (Often, in fact, he found himself in need of a breakfast. But, today, we will focus on this one particular morning.) So, he set off to find a café- a new café for the new morning. And he found one whose name was as simple as it was descriptive, This Cafe.

The owners of This Café were a kindly couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Troublefield. It could be said that their kindly demeanor came from the desire to prove that they were anything but trouble. But, it could also be said that some people, regardless of their given or taken surname, are trouble and some are not. Somewhere in us is our conditioning and how we were raised and somewhere in us are our choices and what we wanted to be in spite of given circumstance. And, though the Troublefields never changed their name to NoTroubleAtAtllFields, they did often answer requests with, “Oh, no trouble at all. No trouble at all.”

This Café was their café. But, as soon as Allister walked into This Café- their café- they made him feel it, too, was his café. His order was, at first, as simple as the café’s name. Coffee- thick and black. No milk. No sugar. And a muffin (Because, no matter the circumstance or the location, if a muffin was present, Allister needed a muffin). And, that particular day, Allister felt hungrier than usual. So, he added a large breakfast to his order. The Troublefields exchanged smiles with each other and, then, with Allister.

Mrs. Troublefield went to make the breakfast while Mr. Troublefield punched the prices into the register. And there it was. The total. Punched out and added together in a very precise and accurate manner: One 6. Two 6. Three 6. Three 6s. 666. $6.66. The devil's number. The devil's breakfast.

Allister caught the total before Mr. Troublefield and a warning blared ever so slightly in his skull. But, louder still, was a voice in his skull that reassured him that he was not superstitious. That the mark of the beast loses its meaning when it's not connected to a beast. But...how do you define a beast? Was it as simple as not plain coffee? Not muffin? Not egg, bacon, or toast? Could it be that simple? That a beast was simply something fangier? Something more rabid? Something less breakfast-y?

Allister decided to set aside biblical fanaticism for a moment and watched as Mr. Troublefield registered what his register had already registered. And Mr. Troublefield remained there, frozen with panic. His face ashen. A tear welled. Mrs. Troublefield arrived soon after with Allister’s breakfast. Being astute, she realized quickly that something was awry. And, when her eye caught the register, it was all she could do to keep from screaming into a faint. But, there were other customers to worry about. In fact, there was Allister and his demise to consider.

And, so, Mrs. Troublefield’s leftist of hands made the firstest of moves, shakily she reached towards a basket of oranges. An offering. Ten cents to throw into the total and tip Allister away from Satan's bleary-eyed early morning clutch. And it was there that Allister realized, as much as he wanted to not be superstitious, he could not put superstition completely past himself.

If three numbers put together equal instant apocalypse, then rationally speaking, anything connected to those numbers, be it evil registers or early morning people in need of a boost of caffeinated sunshine, muffin, egg, bacon, or toast should instantly get a one way ticket to the deepest depths of Hell.

Allister knew his was not the first purchase of its kind. It was merely a link in a chain of $6.66 happenstance purchases that stretched back for generations. But, while equivalent total prices can happen an infinite amount of times, it only takes one beast to ruin the whole party. And the only way to know for sure whether Satan had been pacing for centuries, waiting for Allister and the day he needed a larger breakfast at This Café, would be to complete the transaction and swallow it all and see if he instantly incinerated and set off a chain reaction whereby the whole of the world incinerated in a fiery game of dominos (perhaps quickly or perhaps a slow fiery game of dominos that no one realized until too late).

And, in Allister’s defense, how could you not be even a little scared? You would have to be ready to burn right then and also to burn everyone you knew and loved. For an extra egg, bacon, and toast? That was too much.

Mrs. Troublefield’s hand hovered. "Would you like an orange?" Her voice cracked. Allister could avoid the possible apocalypse that awaited for an extra ten cents. He could afford it easily. But...he just did not want an orange.

He shook his head to indicate "no" and said what he wanted to believe, "I'm not supersticious." And a funny thing happened. The second after he finished the sentence, Allister actually believed it. To hell with superstition. He just wanted a plain coffee, a muffin, and eggs, bacon, and toast. No god-damned oranges. No disrespect to the Troublefields (who were anything but), of course. But, Allister felt you had to live your life free or die your life imprisoned. And he was always for the living free (and not just because it was more grammatically correct).

Allister thanked the Troublefields and, as an extra kindness towards the Troublefields, asked if he could take his meal to go. The Troublefields answered together with a, “Oh, no trouble at all. No trouble at all.” And, though, they tried to cover it up, there was certainly an air of uncertainty in their voices. But, there was some relief that Allister would not eat the devil's meal in their cafe, This Cafe.

And Allister opened the door and walked into the beams of the day. A changed man. More confident. More pep, perhaps? Yes. Certainly more pep. He sipped his coffee. He bit into his muffin. And he did so with chin raised and with a smile on his face. Everything around him felt warm. Was it the coffee or This Café unexpectedly bursting into flames?

Allister never turned back around to see.

One Ticket To Somewhere

2011-06-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Allister took his seat on a train (bound for somewhere) and rested his head against the window. And, as the train (bound for somewhere) began to chug, Allister watched the scenery smear into a steady stream that ran past his face. Trees, houses, grass, people, plants, animals, rocks, clouds, sky, dirt, and thoughts smeared into each other.

When the window became cold, he rested his head in his hand and felt its weight. Eight and a half pounds.

The stream flowed from somewhere. And Allister was headed there.

He would do this from time to time. And, if you followed him, you would eventually see that. Whether strolling along the sidewalk or sprinting from dogs (he had short stints with both the postal office and cat burglary), Allister would make sure his thoughts weighed the same. And always, whether his head a was a bank filled of thoughts or whether his head felt as empty as his penny jar, it was eight and a half pounds.

There was something inspirational about that. That so much could have come from eight and a half pounds. After all, vaccines, buttons, engines, ink pens, and equations were all created with just eight and a half pounds.

But, there was some discouragement in this, as well. Because one could not get more room for more thought. Allister sometimes was afraid of all that was crammed in already. He feared, at times, that if he thought too much he would have to give up another thought or a memory to make room. And, when it came to thoughts and memories, Allister was most certainly a pack rat. Indeed, there was one occasion where Allister was positive that his thoughts had gained a half pound. He felt nine pounds in his hand and was positive that that meant his brain would explode. After all, what other outcome was possible?

But, a simple procedure (involving a scale and Allister laying his head on it) revealed that he was, in reality, still at eight and a half.

Sooner or later, though, he would always come back to the point where a ticket to somewhere was needed. Somewhere new. So, he would purchase a ticket, he would lean on a window, watch the world smear, marvel at the stream of color, weigh his thoughts in his hand, and try to make out where the world’s curve began.

Sometime Before Winter (Above And Below)

2011-05-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

One of Allister's favorite places was in New York City. Central Park, if we are to be exact.

There was (and is still) a stone bridge there that reached over a creek. A bridge that one had to assume had been there for as long as the creek had. Or, at the very least, not long after. And one could easily mistake (well, one with poorer vision, could easily mistake) the bridge as being a natural wonder. The rocks were stacked so perfectly, so eloquently, that it seemed as though the bridge simply emerged from the ground on its own. Long ago, it had been a seed of gravel and it rose above the Earth and over the creek.

The carve marks of the blocks and the little ornate fixture on top gave it away that it was manmade. But, by whom, had been lost with time. Or, at least, lost under a pile of names and numbers and stacks of pages in a library among libraries. There also remained (and still remains) the possibility that a description of the bridge's origin and the name of its creator lay somewhere so obvious that Allister had not seen it. Perhaps, even right there in Central Park. But, Allister hoped not.

Allister liked for things so perfectly placed to be a mystery. It left more and also left less to so many. Some would see the bridge and be transfixed (as Allister was), would be lost in its presence and would look for answers. And some would see it and simply cross it or walk beneath it (for you could then, and can still now, also walk beneath it) and the bridge would merge so seamlessly into the park that there was no difference. And, either way, the bridge would pass along, over, and into history.

The stream beneath the bridge ran (and still runs), small and clear. And, when Allister came at the right time of day (and if you did the same now), the stream that ran on top of the bridge was large, parasoled, and fedora-ed. Made of people strolling (Perhaps, today the stream on top of the bridge would be more fluorescent and spandex-ed. Made of joggers and bikers).

And Allister breathed there.

He took in the two streams (the strolling and walking stream above the the trickling stream below), took in the bridge (that, though manmade, grew from the Earth), took in the park (that grew large and green in the middle of a giant city). By that bridge, over that trickling stream, even in the heart of a bustling and always-busy metropolis, there was (and still is) clarity.

We get lost so easily. We build such enormous structures and we want our names permanently engraved on such tiny things. We boil things down so small that we cannot see the meaning anymore. And we make our own meaning and want our name on that. We make heaven ours and we make it tiny and far away.

And Allister breathed out and thought that he did not want his heaven to be so far away.

In fact, he had one more favorite place in New York City.

It was a small place between the downtown and uptown subway tracks. There was a little pond or puddle of water there. And a dusted, hazy beam of light that fell from above. All around that little pond in that small place between the downtown and uptown tracks, fallen leaves had found there way past the sidewalk grates and scattered. And they scattered in the truest sense of the word-where there was no pattern and the mix was so intricate that you could not tell if the leaves had taken the shape of the ground or the ground had taken the shape of the leaves or whether they had gone and made their own form altogether. A new form. An amber form. A form that absorbed what warmth it got from the sun and spread it just a little further.

And a thought had occurred to Allister there, too.

He wanted to live there. And not in the homeless, vagabond sense. But, he wanted to live there. And he wanted to find and be near people who would hear him say, “I want to live here,” and not ask why, not want to know more, not think that he was joking, not think that he wanted to start a charmingly playful conversation. But, people who would hear him say, “I want to live here,” and who would take the time to look and see the little pond between the tracks and the scattered ground of leaves; and simply understand.
People who would simply say, “Me too.”

A Career Aptitude Test

2011-04-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

Before graduation from high school, Allister's class was required to take a career aptitude test.

And so they did.

Allister's entire class sat at their desks with their pencils and their papers and their thoughts about who they were now and their ideas about who they would be in the future. And, one by one, they finished their tests, turned them into their teacher, and waited patiently for the results which would come the following day.

One by one, each student walked into the principal's office (a most official act). And, one by one, each student walked out with confirmation of their future (ie: a dreamer of dentistry was told they were most suited for dentistry), with brand new aspirations for their future (ie: a dreamer of dentistry was told they were most suited for surgeon general), or with yet another obstacle to overcome to get to their future (ie: a dreamer of dentistry was told they were most suited for the after-hours cleaning of dentist offices).

When Allister was called in, he stepped with weighted feet. Each step was a confirmation. And each other step was a rescinding of that confirmation. And what dreams, what thoughts of the future, what career choices were Allister's feet confirming and rescinding?

Allister did not know. He did not know what he wanted to be.

Or shall we say he knew what he wanted to be, but he did not know what it was. And, that is to say, that he did not know exactly what he wanted to be, but he did not want anyone to tell him that he could not be that. Does that make sense?

Allister wanted to fill his future with the stuff of his dreams. And I think we all can relate to the stuff of our dreams- how much of it is made of haze and fluff and vagaries. But, some objects shine there like nothing on Earth and some objects in a dream leave us warm with even just the vague memory of their glow. And Allister wanted to build a castle with those. Was that a career? Could that be confirmed with an aptitude test given to seventeen-year olds?

One by one, he followed his feet. He followed his steps, that seemed to lead to the principal's office.

And Allister thought of how far science and reason and life, in its full heart-pounding force, had come. How much was possible. The last century had only recently rolled over into the new one, the twentieth one (that we had officially recorded). The 1800s were the past now. There were automobiles and even airplanes, advances in medicine, advances in exploration, advances in thought, advances in social freedoms, advances in advances. What wasn't possible?

And one foot fell. And the next foot followed.

Allister thought of all history's great voices and how they chanted their thoughts from centuries long gone. How many there were, like a large and ever-growing chorus. And who, in the chorus, was told their part and who found out on their own? And Allister thought about how many had sung so loud in their time and were now muffled by the years that had engulfed them.

And, one by one, he took a step. And the principal's door, too, seemed to be walking toward Allister.

How could we possibly remember all that was said and all that was possible? Allister did think, at one time, that he could record them all. He could devote his whole life to remembering all that had passed. But, that had changed. When? Allister was not certain, but it was certainly a long time before his aptitude test had been taken.

And Allister reached for the principal's doorknob with the chorus of history's voices bellowing the lessons and lifestyles and pathways and challenges of the past for the future. It was a silent and deafening dirge. And Allister turned the doorknob because he suddenly felt there was no other choice.
How futile it all was. What did it matter who Allister was and what Allister wanted to do in life? It would be silenced eventually, anyway.

And Allister pushed the principal's door open and heard the purr of just the quietest whisper in his ear. So quiet that he almost mistook it for the creaking of the door. But, the whisper cut through all of history's loudest belting sopranos and booming basses. It was a mysterious voice, a voice whose identity was lost in time. But, the whisper was far from silent. And, as Allister stepped through the door, all he could hear was the whisper. It replaced the paralyzing dirge of the impossibilities of what needed to be overcome. The soft melody of the whisper echoed through Allister and bounced off the principal's floor, ceiling, walls, and perhaps even into the principal himself. Because, as Allister stood there and listened to the principal tell him what he was to become, all he could hear for certain was the principal say, "an astronaut."

For a few solid moments, all Allister and the principal did was stare at each other because neither one knew what that meant. In fact, no one in the world would know what the job entailed until Allister was far into his twilight years.

In the meantime, though, there were castles to be built- if not in that town, than somewhere far away.

How To Remember Someone

2011-03-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

Allister’s father was a tall man (at least, from Allister’s stance) with a ruddy face that creased, wrinkled, turned red, and shook when he laughed.

It was a face that had seen much and still remained kind. His beard was bushy, fiery red, and constant. And Allister remembered his knuckles. They were roughened. His hands seemed so small in contrast, but his knuckles must have been transplanted from a giant. And he always called Allister, ‘Guy.” In earlier days, he had called him, “Little Guy.” But, as Allister grew older and taller, the “Little” was dropped and replaced by a tone of voice which expressed the familiarity that only comes with raising a child and marveling at how new they have become right before your eyes.

But, the rest of his father was not so clear anymore.

Remembering your father from a distance was not always easy.

Sure, there were scents (pipe smoke, coffee, shaving cream, autumn air) and memories (a Christmas, a dinner, a toss of the baseball, an autumn day). And so many of those things were still there and visceral that it was hard to separate what was simply the smell of pipe smoke and what was the memory of his father’s pipe smoke. It all seemed connected. It all seemed the same. And Allister knew it wasn’t. But, it was.

There was a place between what was happening now and what had happened before and who was there now and who had trod there before, who had stamped a memory into your memories. And his father lived there. And many, many times Allister would sit back and visit that place- sometimes content on the idea of staying there forever.

Allister would distort certain memories and he knew they were being distorted. He would forget certain memories and he was strangely aware that he was forgetting. But, always, there was pipe smoke and coffee and shaving cream and Christmas and family dinners and tosses of baseballs and autumn days with their autumn air to remind Allister that they were there. That they were real.

And Allister remembered that autumn day so clearly. And, yet, it seemed so distant. But, distant in the way that the day before yesterday seems so distant. And, in looking back, Allister often thought about how crystal clear and specific that last goodbye was and how, in contrast, he had no recollection of their first hello. And that was strange.

All around him had been the sights and scents and sounds of the hospital. And, as overpowering as they were, they became a vague hum in the background. Allister’s hand was in his father’s roughened, big-knuckled hand. There was a firmness in the hold. A safety in the hold. And Allister remembered the leaves of a giant oak just outside the window of his father’s room. The autumn air had blown its chill into them and they released from the tree and floated down towards the ground.

And Allister felt himself let go of his father’s hand and reach for the leaf. He wanted to stand on top of a branch and hold the leaf there. It was not time for a goodbye. It could not be because Allister remembered all that they had done and, nowhere in those experiences, had they ever decided on a time to say goodbye. He remembered all that they were still supposed to do. There were more Christmases and family dinners and autumn days.

And Allister’s father was aware of the absence of Allister’s hand and he whispered, “Hey Guy, are you there?” And, when Allister answered, “Yes,” his father said, “So am I.” And, in his mind, Allister let go of the leaf. His father was not the leaf. Likewise, Allister was not the leaf. Allister was the tree. And, to live, there are things we need to release. But, his father did not live in a part that falls away. His father lived in the roots. So, Allister placed his hand back in his father’s.

And his mother came back in the room and, together, they relived their lives (carefully and recklessly retracing). There was much in the way of creasing and wrinkling and reddening faces and laughter. So much that it felt like entire days and weeks and months and years and lifetimes and eternities and…

And, when the time for goodbye came, it was met with a complete and whole silence. The most appropriate phrases tend to be, “I love you,” and, “I will miss you,” and, “I will not forget you.” But, none of those needed to be said. The atmosphere had swallowed the words and turned them into a mist that permeated the whole day and stayed with Allister, nourishing him as he continued to grow.

When His Heart Broke (A Glue Story)

2011-02-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

It was a spring day, that day. That day that Allister sat heartbroken. It was not the first time. It would not be the last. But, it was that day. A spring day. And Allister sat heartbroken.

The sun poked at him from its vantage point above an open field. And Allister plucked petals from a lavender coneflower still rooted in the ground. With each pluck came a, “She loves me,” or a, “She loves me not.” And after all the coneflower’s petals had fallen, the last words spoken were, “She loves me not.” And Allister knew this was so. Something had changed. Something was gone. And it was not coming back anytime soon.

But, Allister glued the petals back on his coneflower and he plucked again.

And, again, he ended on, “She loves me not.”

And Allister knew it was time to move on. Many family, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers had told him so. So, Allister did. He moved on to the next flower. A daisy. He tugged each petal cleanly and left them on the ground and came up with the same answer. She loved him not.

And Allister knew it was time to move on. You may remember from the paragraph preceding this one. But, he remembered from the constant advice given and he knew inside him that there were things that could not be mended. Not now. Maybe not ever. And, though he should (he knew he should), he could not move on. Not until he had plucked the petals, the possibilities, the feelings, the thoughts, the lost futures from each and every flower in that field.

So he did.

It took the whole day and more. It took whole lifetimes. And, strewn across the field, like the remains of a battle, were hundreds upon thousands upon millions of petals. With each petal came a, “She loves me” or a “She loves me not” that always ended with, “She loves me not.”

And Allister had moved on, had moved beyond that initial lost love, had moved on to the idea of others. Of the possibility of finding someone else and, in his head- in the petals he plucked- it always came up, “She loves me not.” Flower upon flower- tulips and sunflowers and lilies and irises and this one and that one loved him not. Some stems Allister plucked from the Earth to lay with the petals and some stems Allister left rooted in the ground, their bald heads reaching to the sun for help.

And Allister looked to the sky and wanted to scream at the sun to…just…stop…poking him. But, instead, he plucked another flower’s petals. And another and another until each and every flower in that field, each and every possibility for love in his life, was bare and bald.

And Allister wept. He wept for endings to beginnings he had and never had.

And, still, he was not ready to leave the field. He needed to know why. He needed to know who and what was wrong with him. In a haze, he glued petals back on the heads of the flowers with stems still rooted in the Earth. He picked up the stems he had torn from the ground and, with them, picked up memories of relationships long past. Early ones with early mistakes. He wanted a resolution. The stems with roots still clinging, Allister planted back into the ground and the stems torn away from their roots, Allister glued back to their bases (and, in cases where the bases could not be found, Allister glued the stems directly into the Earth). And he glued petals back on their flower heads. He wanted to plant a better ending that had never been there. They had all been, “She loves you not.”

They loved him not. But, Allister left them all standing- reaching to the sun.

And Allister sat at the edge of the field at the exact same place that he had started. He sat there, bowed his head, and let the sun poke him. Let himself feel each and every loss. With each poke, Allister felt himself being pushed, being planted into the ground. Nothing had been left.

And, so, he wept. And wept. And the sun poked and poked. And the flowers reached and reached. And, when Allister lifted his head, he saw that, in his haze, he had transformed the field.

Sunflowers had dandelion petals. The petals of Black-Eyed Susans had met the stems of Queen Anne’s Lace. And Allister’s original lavender coneflower now had scarlet poppy petals. All over the field were hybrids, new creations. Some flowers even wore the petals of multiple flowers. Annuals meshed with perennials and biennials. Some beautiful, some strange. Some would be gone by the next spring and some would remain. But, all were unique and all were his.

And, with the sun drying the tears on his face, Allister suddenly felt no need to apologize for the strange anymore than he felt the need to brag about the beautiful.
There was a release.
There was a forgiveness.
There was a hum.
There were bees all about.
And they were carrying Allister to brand new fields.

Louis De Frontenanc (I Presume)

2010-11-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

Allister (at least) once passed a homeless man lying in an alley, sleeping. Well, Allister assumed he was sleeping. They all did. All of the people who passed the alley and passed the man lying there. They all assumed he was sleeping. Or, rather, Allister assumed that they all assumed the man was sleeping. And, at the very least, Allister hoped that they all assumed the man was sleeping.

Still, there was a flash of a pinch of a fraction of a notion that maybe he was not sleeping. Maybe the man without a home had passed away without even a prayer from a stranger to carry him there, though many passed by.

And Allister passed, too. But, he came back.

He crouched down beside the man and listened to see if he could hear him dream. And, when he could not, he went to the next step. He shook the man. He shook the man twice, grabbed his shoulders, and said, "Wake up!" And, like Lazarus before him, the homeless man awoke. But, unlike Lazarus before him, the homeless man had not been dead.

The man asked expected questions. "What is going on? Who are you? Where am I?"

But, he also asked an unexpected one. "Who am I?"

Whether his amnesia was knew (born of that particular alley-cradled nap) or old (born of another nap long ago) was uncertain. But, the man had lost his memory. All of it. He stared blankly ahead. His eyes and brain knew the word for 'wall', but they did not know how it applied to his life. He had retained a vocabulary, but had no memories to wrap it around.

And what do you give the man who has nothing? Something, of course. So, Allister gave the man in the alley memories.
And, to be specific, he gave the man in the alley the memories of Louis de Frontenanc, the French saviour of Quebec during King William's War.

Allister looked the man in his frightened eyes and said, "Who are you? Why, you are the son of a French colonel from a family of distinction. Beyond that, your early life is a mystery. But, I can tell you what you have done since, sir. You followed your father's footsteps and entered the military. You fought with valor for Holland's Prince of Orange in the lowlands of Italy. For your bravery in the siege of Orbitello, you were promoted to the rank of colonel."

"I was?"

"You were," Allister answered. Now, why Allister knew so much about Louis de Frontenanc, is a long and rather pointless story (suffice it to say, he just did). But, Louis had passed away long ago and left only his memories (and perhaps some miscellaneous non-biodegradable memorabilia). And, what other way was there to put memories to use than for someone to remember them?

The man in the alley (who was now Louis de Frontenanc) rubbed his eyes and blinked. He could now feel the beginning of memories (that were not his). But, he had not completely submerged into them. So, Allister continued.

"And there's more, Louis. Oh yes, much more! You set sail for Quebec to lead the city through a time of great peril. The English were digging their talons into Quebec and the situation seemed hopeless. The French army was greatly outnumbered. And, when the British General Phips sent Major Savage to the city gates with a summons for surrender, what did you do? You blindfolded him so that he could not see your inferior number of soldiers. And you paraded him through the city as mobs ferociously roared through their inferiority with such strength, that it became quite apparent to the blindfolded Major that you had the upper hand. And you took him into the great Château Saint-Louis, where all your finest men sat in their finest clothes, as if this Major of a superior army threatening your city was no more than a strange oddity for all men of distinction to gawk at. And, when you took off the blindfold, he stood before all your leaders and shakily delivered his terms of surrender. And, do you remember what you said to him?"

"I remember the feeling. But, the words seemed to have slipped my mind," answered the man in the alley.

So, Allister told him, "You said, 'I have no reply to make to your general other than from the mouth of my cannons and muskets."

"Ha! I did? What a character I am! And it worked! I remember it worked! I tricked them! And we won the battle! Ha!"

And the man in the alley, who had once been thought dead, leapt to his feet and relived the miraculous victory he never had. And he asked Allister for more- more memories, more experiences, more thoughts, more solid reinforcement of his worthwhile life.

And Allister, thoroughly caught up in the act of transferring one life to another, wanted to give more. But, his bizarrely-gained knowledage of Louis de Frontenanc ended with the Battle of Quebec. So, he acted quickly, surveyed his memorized knowledge, and pulled out another nugget of early colonial American history. And, using some creative license, he hacked it apart to fit (perhaps even summarize) the life of the new Louis de Frontenanc.

"Immediately after that great victory, you left the city, 'to think,' you said. You camped in the forest alone for months with little to eat or drink and told no one to come to your aid until the first snowfall. And, when snow came, your friends and comrades in arms ran to find you at the exact coordinates you had given them. And you were not there. Nothing was. Only a message carved into a tree. It was only one word- 'Croatoan.' What it meant, we do not know. I cannot even tell you its meaning now, sir. It seemed a summary to a part of your life, lived-through and over. And, you moved on. We searched high and low for you for many years, thinking we'd never find you. But, still we searched. We had to. We wanted to thank you and give you a message."

"Well, here I am," said Louis de Frontenanc.

"And here is your message. You are relieved of your duties and we give you our blessing to move on freely as you please. You are free to begin anew."

"But, what do I do now?" Louis de Fontenbanc was scared again. And, so, Allister answered:

"What do you do now? Well, sir, it is entirely up to you. But, if you want my advice, I say collect all that you can. Gather up everything- memories and experiences and pour them out from everywhere. You, Louis de Frontenanc, should be a man of many spouts."

Einstein's Bagel (Crumbs)

2010-10-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

“He ate a bagel just like anyone else.”

That was the first thing Allister told me about Albert Einstein. That, and the fact that he had magical, fantastic, crazy hair- which we all know from countless photographs and documentation.

Einstein's words were magical, too. Allister remembered that, as well. He remembered the genius in them and the German/Swiss tingle in them.

But mostly, Allister remembered that on the day he met Einstein, bagel crumbs had covertly collected in Einstein’s mustache and clung to the ends of the hairs; dangling and dancing with every German/Swiss genius-of-a-syllable.

And Allister found himself with that familiar dilemma in meals with people you've just met. Do you say something or do you pretend there are no crumbs? And, of course, when the mustache in question is the mustache of a genius, you have no choice. You do not interrupt. You cannot. There are genius thoughts being thought and said and shared. And, to interrupt, is to run the risk of halting the flow of genius. And, if it should stop, who knows when it would start again?

And, so, Allister sat and listened and said nothing. And 'listened' is, perhaps, a poor choice in words. Allister sat and watched Einstein's lips move. That much was true. But, he could not listen. He saw the mouth of Einstein move, but could not hear the words. He could not. As Einstein’s mouth formed genius, the bagel crumbs danced and chanted equations and theories from the tips of his mustache just in front of his lips, in the silent but distracting language of crumbs.

Allister knew that he should be abosorbing and wondering about Einstein’s words. But, he could not. The bagel crumbs had collected in a chorus and forced him to wonder about and absorb them. They forced him to accept them as genius bagel crumbs who planned to climb from Einstein's mustache and colonize the tips of his eyebrows and, then- yes, oh yes- the coveted and wily genius hair on top and flaring from Einstein's genius head. It was all Allister could do to keep himself from shouting at them, “Clinging to the hair of a genius, does not make you a genius!” But, he did not. Instead, Allister held his tongue and nodded his head and pretended that he was listening to Albert Einstein.

And, oh, how those pretentious crumbs taunted. Oh, how they said nothing, but dangled so loudly.

To ignore the crumbs, all Allister could do was focus on Einstein's mouth and the shapes it made when words came out. And, rather quikcly, this degraded to the simple process of the lower jaw flapping up and down. Allister was hypnotised or transfixed and perhaps both at the same time. He could feel himself being drawn in so close, so seemlessly fast, that the genius would not notice and his jaws would continue mechanically chomping until Allister was being swallowed. And, though Allister deeply admired Einstein, he had no intention of living in his stomach. That was where the crumbs belonged. Not Allister.

And, what was worse, Allister knew he was missing genius. World hunger was being resolved right in front of him. Equations for world peace and how it could be spread were being created (also how time travel and trips to Mars could be accomplished). So, he grabbed the first words he recognized from Einstein's flapping genius jaws: “Isaac Newton.”

“Newton- Isaac Newton, I mean, he just sat under an apple tree and was hit on the head and wrote the obvious. Apples fall from trees. What goes up, must fall down. And the world changed. The world changed for a statement of the obvious! And add centuries later and here you are pulling out equations and theories for things we cannot even see! Right? Am I right? What’s so hard is that the world is so old and we came around so damn late! You know? Where do we go, now? What is left for us?"

There was a slight pause before Allister apologized for saying 'damn'.

And there was a longer pause as Einstein digested. He digested Allister's madness which, unbeknownst to him, his mustache crumbs had induced. And, then, the genius answered (in his characteristic German/Swiss-tinged way).

“From our lofty place here in this cafe, it is very easy to see the obvious. But, you have to remember how many people sat under trees and were hit by apples and any number of other fruits before Mr. Isaac Newton. And no one thought twice about it. They simply sat there. Perhaps they ate the apple, perhaps they walked away. But, they never thought twice about the reason for the fall. There is always room for a question, Allister. Always. And, when we have- as an entire species or simply as a single soul- hit a solid wall of impossibility with nowhere to go, well, what is there left to do but carve your channel through the impossible?”

And Allister sat for some time. So did Einstein. They sat still. They sat quiet. For some time.

Then, Allister said, “Mr. Einstein, you still have bagel crumbs in your mustache.”

The Race To Awkward

2010-08-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

When I first met Allister (oh, so long ago), we launched into one of those conversations of the 'first met,' where every new topic merits excitement.

You introduce yourself or are introduced, the starting gate is lifted, and you are off:

"So nice to meet you. You, too! How about this weather? It's great! Isn't it, though? It is! Makes me want to go fishing. I love fishing! Me too! Angling or fly? Yes! Do you have siblings? I do! And you? No! Families are great! They are! Except when they're not. So true! But, this weather is really great. It is! Makes me think of baseball. And I know things about that!"

And on it went, at full gallop. We circled around the track of profound chat. We surged forward in conversational reckless abandon, brushed against meaningfulness only enough to fill in the blanks with vagaries, and hurled out whatever we knew or had within arms reach.

Then, as suddenly as the conversation started, it fell apart. We reached all that we had in common or wanted to know. The day's quota for exclamation points was met. I sifted in vain through other punctation and words and letters (and, yes, even some numbers) for an appropriate end. But, there did not seem to be one. The track had disappeared and our horses had plummeted into oblivion.

So, we sat in the drudge of mundanity and tried to pretend it was interesting. Well, I tried, anyway. I searched for conversation in an empty tea cup. I traced the rim of the saucer and thought there must be something worthwhile in that. I talked about the spoon I was holding. "It feels heavier than a spoon," I said. And Allister nodded. He said nothing. He nodded.

And I thought, "Do I just go? Do I go out the front door? Do I crawl under the table until he goes? Or do I just sit here and wait until I completely disappear? What is the polite thing to do in these matters?"
And Allister said nothing.

I mentioned the weather again. We both seemed to think it was nice. Didn't we? We did. Right? Remember? Oh, that was so long ago. The conversation had aged so. I suppose it's hard to say, now (or then, as it is (or were)).
And Allister said nothing.

He nodded again and smiled. And, then, looked out the window to confirm what we had already discussed ad nauseum. And, when he had confirmed what we had long ago decided (the weather was still great!), he turned back to our lack of conversation and said nothing. Nothing. I even thought he thought nothing. Nothing nothing. And nothing.
Also, nothing.

And I thought, at that point, we were dead. We had to be. Our life had been drained out and emptied into whatever container also held all the contents of our conversation. Later in our lives when the ratio of gaps filled to gaps unfilled leaned far towards the former, I told Allister that thought.
And he finally said something.

He said he thoroughly enjoyed the awkwardness.

The Root Of A Word

2010-03-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

Allister sat next to Carl Marx in the first grade. Carl with a "C" not a "K". And there was a bigger difference. Karl with a K, of course, was the outspoken godfather of communism. While Carl with a C, a diminutive little six-year-old with brittle glasses and an even more fragile ego, was still undecided on his political leanings.

But, those facts put together were still not enough to deter assumptions that he was, in fact, Karl with a K.

Their teacher, a Mrs. Shuster, when reviewing colors with the class, would inevitably get to red and glare most obviously at Carl Marx. But, Carl's favorite color was blue. So, he glared right back at her. The class would watch them glare, some assuming it was a struggle representing democracy and communism and some assuming it was a struggle representing oppressive authority figures and children. Allister always assumed it was a staring game. Carl Marx, when asked, had no idea what was going on. The bell would ring and the lesson in colors and political prejudice would be over for the day.

Carl Marx could always be found in detention at the end of the day. Usually, this punishment was given to him for defiantly writing his name. The defiance was questionable, of course. But, between teacher and assumed communist leader, the lean went to the teacher.

This is how it went, day in and day out…

Then, the spelling bee happened.

One by one, students were given a word and, one by one, they sat down defeated. In the fight between the English language and Mrs. Shuster's first grade class, English was winning in an almost embarrassing fashion. Carl Marx, however, was one of the only bright lights. Red as it may have been assumed, Carl's light knocked down words like bolshevik, Motherland, and Leninism.

By the end of twenty minutes, the English language had triumphed over all the class but two, Allister Cromley and Carl Marx. The final round was all that a final round should be. Seat neighbor against seat neighbor.

And Allister could feel the competitive clutch of…well…of competition.

But, that was all.

He did not feel a struggle for political supremacy. He felt no pressure to save democracy from a rabid and hungry red terror. He felt only the need to crush Carl Marx in spelling. And, he assumed that Carl Marx felt the same. In fact, it seemed the only one who injected the spelling bee with anything beyond sincere spelling bee thoughts was Mrs. Shuster.

And the words were fired like bullets from Mrs. Shuster and deflected back by Allister and Carl:

Apple
Hammer
Car
Sickle
Freedom
Politburo

Allister and Carl were so engrained in the world of letters and how they connected to form sounds and words that they did not notice for some time that the words selected for them seem to come with a message.

To Allister, the words seemed to be handed gently-passed by way of whisper. To Carl, the words were shouted and thrown like a molotov cocktail. And, again, this took time for Allister to see. So engrained in competition was he. In fact, the first awkward moment of awareness that he felt was not in the manner that the words were presented to the boys. No, what Allister noticed first was that the words were beginning to come with a drastic difference in level of difficulty.

And, so, Allister halted the bee for a moment to present Mrs. Shuster with the issue. He said they should be presented with words of the same level. Mrs. Shuster claimed that this was already being done and Allister responded that she was mistaken. Mrs. Shuster told Allister that she was the teacher, that she was in charge, and that Allister was wrong. And Allister, in a standard six-year-old defense, said, “Nu-uh, you’re wrong.”

To which Mrs. Shuster said, “Allister, your next word is ‘wrong’.”

And Allister, dutifully spelled ‘wrong’. “Wrong,” he said, “R…O…N…G”-which is wrong-which Mrs. Shuster said. “Allister, you are wrong.”

Now, I do not know (because Allister never told me) whether or not Allister knew how to spell wrong, whether or not it was a six-year-old stance or if it was, indeed a six-year-old’s mistake. But, Allister sat down, leaving Carl Marx with the final word of the spelling bee.

And Mrs. Shuster said, “Carl Marx…”

“Your word is perestroika.”

Carl plainly repeated, “Perestroika.”

“P…”

And Carl stared blankly. He was six, remember. He stared blankly with his six year-old eyes that were brown, not red. He stared into Mrs. Shuster’s eyes and tried to say that he was six. That he did not understand why. But, Mrs. Shuster had decided long ago who was wrong (and that she was right).

“E?”

Carl did not know where to go. The eyes of the entire class were upon him. Brown, green, blue, hazel. No one knew the meaning of the word Carl was faced with. They knew only that it was a hard one. That it was meant to hurt Carl.

And, so, Allister stood up from his seat. He walked over to Carl. Mrs. Shuster commanded him to sit down. He did not. He whispered something into Carl’s ear. And Carl nodded and said, “R.”

Caroline stood up next and Alice and Rose and Leon and Ricky and Toby. Soon, the entire class stood around Carl and conferred. This was a hard word and it had gone beyond a simple spelling bee round. Mrs. Shuster was turning the words against her class. And, though they were only mostly six-year-olds (some were seven), they understood that this was not good.

And so they spelled as best they could. And, when the conferring was done and a decision was decided upon, Carl spoke clearly, “Perestroika.”

P,E,R,E,S,T,R,O,Y,K,A.

The class stood with their chests swelled with pride.

And, Mrs. Shuster told them that they were wrong and that the spelling bee was now over.

But, the children knew that they were right. Maybe not in the spelling. But, they knew they were right in something. It was only years later that Allister discovered that they were right in the definition.

Busby Berkeley Dreams

2009-12-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

Allister rarely dreamt in normal life. And, when he did, his dreams lacked panache. No dragons, no princesses, no talking rocking chairs, no adventure or bizarre convolution. His dreams were merely a continuation of the day before.

But there was one day that came before another day and after another day, where Allister found himself in a park on a hill looking to see if he could find the curve of the world. Per usual, he could not find it.

Moments before, though, the sky had opened and relentlessly poured water. Someone up high had been hell-bent on drowning all-people, puppies, pebbles, and park benches. Luckily for people and puppies, the sky realized that pebbles and park benches would survive a drowning. So it was, in a matter of minutes, the storm pulled back.

But, the flash pour had caught Allister with nowhere to go. For, by the time he reached shelter, the storm would have ended. And, so it was, that in the moments after the clouds had wrung out their last drops, Allister’s fingertips rained the last rain that had rained from his sleeves that had rained from the sky onto the grassy hill.

And there he stood.

There he stood with the idea (no, the lack of idea that left him immobile) and hoped to dry. And let’s not say hoped because Allister knew he would be dry. Let’s say waited because Allister did not know when. So, Allister stood and listened to the tweets of the birds and felt the pokings of the sun and gargled the remaining moisture in the air.

He felt cleansed.

He thought about what it would be like if everyone suddenly rotated around him. Him standing still and sturdy. A monument like the sun. And people walking away would be drawn back, would find a place in the collective circling that had begun around him.

And the birds would come back, swirling overhead of the orbiting people that had now collected puppies and squirrels and rats and cats and rabbits and deer and maybe the occasional park bear. All swirling, all orbiting.

And, though the spectacle did not need it, he thought how nice it would be if the tweet of the birds trickled down and inspired the orbiting creatures below to contribute to the song until it burst forth like a full-blown Busby Berkeley musical number.

And the cool, damp air from the rainstorm would dry. The tempo of the number would pick up to that point where Busby would have everyone kicking high and still higher. And the air would become warm with the high kicks.

Swirling warm air.

And, in the center, Allister closed his eyes for but a moment and opened them to find himself dry.

Yep, though Allister did not usually dream, he was always dreaming.

Hansel And Gretel-ish

2009-10-31T07:12:00.000-07:00

Allister learned very early to learn from his mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, be they non or most fictional.

To that end, he liked to tell the story of how he once ventured off into the woods alone. He was a very young boy then and the forest was, then (and now), a very old and dark and unfamiliar forest. And this was why he ventured off into it-to become familiar with it, that is. Not to get as old as it. Because the forest had a headstart and was far out of reach.

Having read Hansel and Gretel, Allister knew that adventures made by children into old, dark, unfamiliar forests required planning, required leaving a trail behind you to follow on your return home. But, having made sure to read to the end of the story, Allister knew that the old, unfamiliar forest's unfamiliar birds would swallow your trail if it were made of breadcrumbs- or crumbs of any kind.

And, so, Allister left a trail of cyanide capsules.

Allister chose cyanide capsules for two simple reasons. One, they were solid and would not wastefully seep into the ground like so many other liquid poisons. And two, he lived in a place where cyanide capsules were readily available-his father being a chemist specializing in cyanide capsules.

Of course, most children do not have access to cyanide capsules. But, there is a myriad of poisons you can use-everything from bleaches (but do take note of liquid poison query mentioned earlier) to, the more obviously named, rat poison. And much in between and around the house and forest (also, in chemist labs)-hemlock, topical anesthetics, deadly nightshade, battery acid, beans of the castor bean plant, lead paint, strychnine, arsenic, paint thinner, and furniture polish, etc, etc.

In these times of convenience, in fact, most poisons can easily be found by locating a "Mr. Yuck" sticker.

But, it should be stressed at this point (as well as various other points throughout this story and after), especially for any children presently reading this story (stress this doubly for them), that children should never ever never play with poison...

...unless they are going on a trip into an unfamiliar forest.

This is the one place where children carrying poison should be absolutely encouraged. Because, unlike Hansel and Gretel who were almost eaten by a witch when their trail of bread crumbs disappeared, Allister returned home safely by following the trail of dead birds that lay before him-as well as a few larger animals who had tried to eat the dead birds.

Stories Around A Campfire

2009-10-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Though Allister had long ago lost the badges to prove it, he was once a boy scout. All throughout his life, he could even tie many of the knots with the grace and ease that came with the now-missing badge (including the alpine coil, the hangman’s knot, the ring hitch, the versatackle knot, the klemheist knot, and a modern Gordian knot (which wasn’t necessarily part of the scout’s knotting curriculum)).

But, make no mistake Allister was a scout.

To prove it, he had the memories. And the knots. But, oh, the memories.

There were all-day hikes through towering woods. In the summer and into the spring, the canopy of leaves shading him for a few blessed moments from the poking rays of the heated sun. And from the fall into the winter, the weather growing colder, becoming an all-encompassing shade of cold, leaving the leaves jobless. Nothing to do but wilt and fall to the ground. And the scouts would weave through the trees and their carpets of leaves. Following the snow-set tracks of the person in front of them. All the while, following Allister’s tracks, came the dark which brought with it it’s own special cold. A cold the likes of which could only be felt when there was no light.

And camp would be set. A fire started-or was started. Either way, there was a campfire. The scoutmaster had long since bundled and rolled himself in blankets, trapping himself into a cocoon of warmth that brought with it sleep.

And when scouts add night and a campfire together and subtract their scoutmaster, they are left with mischief-with that odd feeling of being afraid and wanting to be more afraid but not wanting to be more afraid. That teetering feeling that leaves you giddily, but shakily checking behind you at every second. And each one, in their own way, wanting it to be over. But, each one, in their own way, wanting it to go on. Each one, feeling the excitement.

Allister, though there were no merit badges to prove it, could still remember all the others and where and how they sat. There was Gabe on a fallen tree all his own, Mickey, Brady who would rather stand than sit, Gus, Ahab Franklin Worthington XXVI whose name was older than him, Soloman Gates, and Ziegfield whom everyone called Ziggy.

Gabe began it all from the fallen tree all his own. Crouched into the frozen bark, his voice hushed and eerie rose from his throat to meet the brisk air in a cold smoke. He spoke of a man and a hatchet and a love of blood and a meeting with Satan and a promise to chop apart children in their family’s basements.

Giggles punctuated the climactic moments. Giggles intended to mask shrieks, but doing little but changing the sound.

Mickey, then Brady who would rather stand than sit, told their tales after. And the darkness was suddenly filled with more than cold. Now, there were hatchet men and fanged and rabid creatures and children who did not know that they were dead lurking around corners and whispering behind each shoulder.

Then, there whispered Gus and Ahab Franklin Worthington XXVI whose name was older than he was and Soloman Gates, adding demons and a mist that rises to choke you and send your mind into hysterics and a bride-to-be who would always be so-who cried and cried in a corner of your room watching you while sleep.

And, after each story, the boys sat in eerie quiet. In eerie darkness. The campfire fought hard to keep them warm and illuminated, their last line of defense against the evil spirits of the night. The boys, tied the most secure of knots-that had earned them their badges- and threw out lines to pull in the courage to go on. Even so, when it came Ziegfield whom everyone called Ziggy’s turn, he could scarcely whisper.

He gulped and said he had, “heard something.” And, though they all knew there was nothing, everyone knew there was something out there and that it wanted them.

Allister's turn brought with it the challenge of topping all those stories. Of shocking even Ziegfield whom everyone called Ziggy’s encompassing present and ongoing tale of their own ends. So, Allister dug deep. Dug beyond what he wanted to share, dug into fears he never knew he had. Dug into the cold, the dark around him. Sunk his teeth into the dark, into the cold around him.

And, when his pause hit the beginning of unbearable silence, Allister said quietly, “What if we all live our lives, these fantastic lives. Perfect lives. All that we’ve wanted, earning all these merit badges and just doing really great things for the world. Then, one day, we get hit by a train and we find that there's no afterlife We just become dirt. Worms eat us and it’s darkness. What if ghosts and spirits aren’t there because there’s nothing after this? There’s just darkness. And I won’t be able to tell you and you won’t be able to tell me before we die because we’ll be nothing anymore. What about that?”.

And nothing else was said. Nothing needed to be. The scouts had long ago froze. Had long ago gave up the knot tying. Had surrendered their courage when their longest rope with the their most secure knot had simply vanished. Allister felt the cold from his thoughts. Felt it in his bones. Felt his marrow chilling. Felt his fingers and toes congealing. Time lost purpose. Somewhere in there, the campfire froze, too. Or the flame died. Darkness filled the silence and, because no one had a lamp, one could see nothing.

And perhaps there’s a limit. Allister thought this later. Perhaps one should only go so far into one’s deepest fears. But, why? If there was more, it should hold up to the questions. Shouldn’t it? If the darkness is so encompassing, why resist it? Why pretend? Is it pretending? If there is a real connection, what’s the fear in asking a question? Allister asked the question not because he believed it. But, because he wanted to delve into that perspective. Set foot in the dark. Because, even there, one wants to believe in the impossible.

The idea of not wanting to believe in magic is an illusion. And to truly know the feeling of light, one must experience the feeling of the dark.

Allister threw his line out as far as he could with a knot so secure that he had earned a merit badge for it. And, though the badge was lost in this toss into darkness, the rope did not disappear. It was too dark to see, of course. But, it was there.

When you are alone, completely alone, the dark and the cold are company. Allister made sure not to forget that. The dark tended to be a perfect backdrop for thoughts. And the cold was a, perhaps not always pleasant, reminder of what kind of company one’s own self can be.

And Allister waited for the tug from out of the darkness that seemed to never arrive, but did arrive. He drew in the line as his comrades surrendered deep into their fears. Allister drew in his line until he could see the end.

The rope had lassoed around a firefly. And Allister cupped his hands around the firefly, blew warmth into his hands, and brought his hands down to the memorial of their onetime campfire. He blew a little harder and the glow on the firefly caught wind of the warmth and grew brighter and brighter until the smaller twigs understood the idea and torched the bigger branches.

A fire was born for Allister as the firefly narrowly escaped an end and flew off into the darkness. And from the birth of the glow, Ahab Franklin Worthington XXVI whose name was older than he was, asked a question that had disappeared from their minds when the darkness had crept in. But, there is was again now that they were back. And, so, Ahab Franklin Worthington XXVI whose name was older than he was asked:

“You guys wanna stick Scoutmaster Abrams finger in warm water?"

A Constant Mining

2009-10-18T08:12:00.001-07:00

Allister had worked in a mine once, deep inside a mountain in northern Colorado. His reasoning was by all accounts practical (a need for wages), idealistic (to take part in honest work), and fanciful (a desire to see what lay in the heart of the planet).

And, when the initial dynamite blast of the day had turned a wall of rock to dust, exposed a path hidden (a path, in fact, that had never been there before), Allister's eyes lit with the excitement that comes only in those fleeting moments that begin a journey-when all lays in front and thoughts of danger and victory merge. He could feel his body flinch and had to catch himself before he surged forward, before he plunged excitedly ahead and exposed just how green he was. There were, after all, a few more explosions to be made before one could set foot inside.

The tunneling began. And soon after, the mining began. Each continued until the tunneling was finished. The mining completed. Nothing left.

Allister wiped the dust from his brow, rubbed his eyes, and walked out from the mountain’s stomach and realized it was done. So often this happened. Beginnings that turned to endings. And some would go on to mine more. But, Allister felt a loss.

So, he went home, and with a tiny blade, began to burrow into the palm of his hand.

Which palm, was not important. One hand burrowed. The other let itself be burrowed.

When it began to hurt, Allister pressed on. Pressed in. He had been hurt before and wanted more. So, he went past hurt. He was not afraid. Not of the blood. It was his, after all. His own. Why be afraid of what is yours? Red, salty. It was like a sea, but more like a river. More like a stream. For the tunnel was not big enough for a river. Just a stream. A creek. The Red Sea Creek that trickled from his palm.

Allister paddled through past ideas and aspirations that were past. Past ideas and aspirations that were now (which is now-we should remember-then). Past the past and into the present.

What was the purpose? Someone intelligent had said that it laid ahead. Whom? Allister was unsure. He would say Abraham Lincoln, for Abraham Lincoln was a good response to the question of, “Whom?” But, he did not know. He did not know whom or what or why or where or, more importantly, how and when.

The only question Allister knew the answer to was, “How deep?”

Til he could feel the pulse.

A Conversation

2009-10-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Allister was once beckoned off the street by an incomprehensible conversation. The hollow echoes of the words floated through the air and tugged on his ear. And he followed, led to a cafe table bubbling with conversation and the punctutional bursts of laughter.

And, wouldn't you know it, there was a chair open and waiting. So, though Allister knew no one there and (what's more) knew nothing of their conversation, he accepted the invite of the open chair.

He ordered a coffee and smiled and not an eye was batted. Just nods and smiles in return. And, following the melody of the conversation, Allister spoke when it was time for his verse and laughed with everyone when it was time to crescendo.

And, oh the places the conversation took them, fists pounding the wood of the table to emphasize importance and hands open and flailed back in the air on arms with whimsical glee (sometimes followed by tea or coffee shooting out of nostrils).

There were colors and shapes and wrinkles and lines and smiles and frowns and vice versas multiplied by forty and then some. And, when coffee and tea (multiplied by seconds and thirds) were finished and the conversation reached it's climax, Allister arose from his chair and exited the cafe. And, smiling, he walked into the warmth of the sunrays that were called to him for that very moment.

Not once during and not once after did Allister have any idea what language they were speaking. It was questionable whether anyone there knew, though Allister knew that was far from the point.

The Baby In The Basket

2009-10-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

If one asked Allister if he had any children, Allister would pause for a moment to put together a proper answer. He had a child. But, it was not his. That is to say, biologically, the child was not his. Allister would also say that the child was no longer a child and that, as long as Allister, had known him, the child was never really a child.

The child had been a child at one time, most certainly. But, when Allister answered the door knock and discovered the mysterious basket, the swaddling-clothed bundle was not a baby. It had been passed from doorstep to doorstep and had aged with each new knock. A new mother and/or a new father for every answer of every new door. Sometimes gifts were given. Milk, new clothes, a name written on a dated postcard that aged and wrinkled with him (him being named Nicholas), and eventually even solid foods. Nicholas was not kept. He was constantly given to others by others.

And when he arrived on Allister’s doorstep, he did so with perfectly white hair sitting calmly under a wool cap, another gift given by a giver. And bifocals with small wire frames. Another gift from another giver. The lenses rested on Nicholas’ nose, which was porous in the sense of a roman pillar. Thick and rounded. It was a knowing nose. A nose that had smelled much. It lay in between two blue eyes. They sat wisely. Rested snug in two pouches of skin. Pockets for the precious irises. Wrinkles traced so simply and sweetly. All the laughlines and frownlines, tiny fissures, reminders of the scope of emotion that face was capable of. The mouth was simple. The top lip rested on the bottom lip with the comfiest of patience. The tips where the lips meet both pointed in the slightest upward angles. Barely a smirk. The face sagged in an elegant way. More a droopiness than a sag. Kind. It was the expression, the look, that only came with years. Years of wind and warmth. Years of tears and smiles. Years of coming and going. Years of seeing it all and realizing how little and how large that was. An understanding that was simple in its complexity.

And, though Allister was very easily Nicholas’ junior in terms of years, Allister raised Nicholas for that was all that was left to give him. And, as time does, Nicholas grew older still. Allister was still much younger than his son. But, Allister was not immune to the chimes of the clock that painted hair white and gray (and, in Nicholas' case, white-er and gray-er) and carved the lines of laughs and frowns deeper. And, before Nicholas left the world, Allister told him that he was sorry he could not have given him more. And Nicholas said, with a smile, that there was no reason to be sorry. That, from the time that he could understand his thoughts, when he grew up, all he had ever wanted to be was someone’s son.

When Debt Said Hello

2009-10-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

One fine summer eve, going broke, Allister spent his final nickel on a single package of chewing gum. He told no one of this purchase until he told me years later. It frustrated him that logic should play such a heavy hand in decisions. And whose logic was it? For, Allister's tastes craved chewing gum. So, should it not be, that logic would give Allister permission to purchase chewing gum? Rent was due. This was true. This was in the midst of The Great Depression when the skies rained unhappy businessmen. This was also true. But, in an obvious attempt to shun a logic that was not his, Allister had long ago buried a month's rent deep below the ground to never be touched again.

And why? Well, why boil everything down? Logically, the properties of boiling should hold true for everything, that when you boil anything down too far, it will lose its taste.

Instead, Allister chewed. One by one, chewing each piece together, until the gum bent in its elastic breakdown, and thought of what the one month of rent really was, paper and metal. And when the gum was at its most pliable, Allister wadded it into the front of his mouth and blew into it. And he thought of the paper and the metal and the yellowing and the corroding, and wondered, "where is the logic in wealth?"

He let his breathe fill the gummy skin of the bubble, let it carry him up and away, let him float in the sky. And he sang a lullaby to himself that he vaguely remembered hearing. He could not remember from whom, but he could logically assume it was from the voice of his mother or father:

Rest my dear.
Close your eyes.
And know,
That if the night should
Take all the stars,
We'd still have the moon.
For-
Some who are given lemons,
Will make lemonade.
But, you and I,
We'll learn to juggle.
And we'll juggle lemons
Until it all makes sense.

Three Wishes

2009-09-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

Of stories in times when stories were needed, Allister often told this one:

That once upon a time there lived a young man. An angry young man. A man whose beard grew dark and thick (though, it should be noted that not all angry men have dark, thick beards. some have light, thick beards and some have no beards at all).

And, one day, whilst a-traipsing about, this man stumbled onto a genie's lamp. And, as so many have done, he looked confusedly at the find. There seems often to be this glance in stories of genie's lamps, as if any other lamps besides genie's lamps can be stumbled upon whilst a-traipsing.

And once this angry young man had paid the genie's lamp his confused look, once he had stroked his dark beard, he finally rubbed the lamp. Smoke leaked out and, soon enough, the genie followed. With arms crossed over each other, the genie bellowed forth his memorized script. "What do you wish of me?"

The angry young man took no thought and said simply, "I wish for darkness." The genie snapped his fingers and the angry young man found himself (or lost himself) in complete darkness. With a yelp of fear, the angry young man instantly understood how vast complete darkness is. It engulfed everything and left nothing. The young man yelled to the genie, whom he could only assume was still near, "I wish for light." The angry young man heard the genie's fingers snap and, then, when light returned, he saw the genie again, and breathed a sigh.

The young man took a moment to catch his breath. He looked at the genie and smiled the smile that only old friends share and said with relief, "I wish I never wished for darkness."

And the genie snapped his fingers.

An Attempt At Ending Fear

2009-09-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

When the chills of the past would creep up to Allister, crawl up his back on fingernails long unclipped, he did what we all do. He shuddered. He felt his skin produce goosebumps. And, though he should run, he stayed perfectly still.

There was always that feeling. That urge. That hunch. That curiosity. For, perhaps it was just the wind's way of blowing the door open and perhaps it was just the rusty hinge's way to creak so eerily. But, there also lay the possibility that some spirit had pushed its way back in to find a living soul. Perhaps whisper something into that soul’s ear. Perhaps flash appear in some hazy form in the corner of a mirror. And there is some doubt in all that. There is little, if any, proof to the idea that ghosts do, in fact, exist. And, what’s more, that if they do, that some would spend their time climbing the dusty spiraling staircases of long-forgotten mansions. But, with all the skepticism, why is it that not a single human can admit to never having felt the chill of goosebumps in times like these?

Allister felt the duality. Understood and listened to the points made by either side of debates on the afterlife. Listened, even, to my thoughts and fears on a particularly shadowy home at the end of my street that seemed to beckon and cackle at all who stepped to its gate. But, when push came to shove, or shall we say before push came to shove-just before the tension of a moment urged towards a push-Allister would push first. Allister would shove with all his might at what might have wanted to push. This, he explained to me in vague terms until I finally pointed out their vagueness.

And, in answer, he simply took hold of my arm with such purpose, such force, that goosebumps shot throughout my body-inside and out-with such fervor that I feared the bumps would fire off my body and into the eye of some innocent passerby. They did not. They remained attached and rising, but never fleeing, from my skin. And Allister dragged me to the house in question. The house that cackled and beckoned. The house that bled through its windows. The house where shadowy spirits did shadowy things, screamed shadowy shrieks.

And here is what Allister did. He kicked the iron gate open and pulled me through. He looked into my eyes, smiled, gripped harder, and charged forward with me in tow. From deep below some hidden dark passage of Allister’s lungs arose a howl more maniacal than anything I had ever heard before. It was a warning for impending evil-be it spirit, ghost, ghoul, banshee, or demon-that we were coming. And not on the defensive. No sir, make no mistake. Like thousands of seemingly defeated armies before, whose forces had been cornered and defeat arose imminent, we fed on massive doses of adrenaline and surged forward to rip apart all that we could. Allister threw open doors and cackled. He sprinted through darkened hallways where dark paintings should have come alive and begged them to do so. He ran up spiral staircases where the caretaker’s spirit should have hung from a noose, giggling. And Allister giggled the whole way up to the top to find that if the caretaker was, in fact, there, he had since untied the noose and collected the rope, and left.

The top floor was empty. No murdered wives in bathtubs. No sleeping spirits in beds. No Victorian clothing floating without a human wearer. He hurriedly lunged for the clothes in the closet, overcoats and undercoats, and wear them first. He dressed me in the same. And, then, he tossed the sheets from all the covered furniture. The sheets floating down in the dust, Allister had conjured up memories of long forgotten slumber parties and left the room in that spirit. He howled with glee. So deep the howl, so deep the glee, that it walked the fine line where glee and fear must meet. He confronted all mirrors-be they broken, dusty, or whole-to show him any other reflection besides his own. And, when they did not, he howled harder.

He finally stopped for a moment. Looked down at the floor below. Breathed in deep the dust, the fear that stillness bathed in, and smiled again. He looked at my eyes, gripped harder, and sprinted down the stairs, me still in tow, shouting like a stark raving mad general galloping happily to impending doom. For, we were heading down the basement stairs, the stairs of the wine cellar, the stairs that led to buried bodies and screaming voiceless victims, the stairs that led to children’s ghosts kneeling in corners and smiling up at us with hollow eye sockets. I pulled, but Allister held fast and howled. We met the dirt floor, were introduced to each and every corner. And when it seemed as though I had somewhat calmed to the dark stillness that was a basement, that was an abandoned house, Allister grabbed a shovel and dug up the dirt floor until it became quite apparent that no one was buried there.

And we sat there, in the dirt of a long-abandoned home, wearing long-abandoned clothing, catching our breathes. And Allister said, “This is what I do when I am scared.”

Boredom

2009-09-07T09:35:00.000-07:00

One particular Sunday, Allister found himself staring at the wall. His wall. To his house. There seemed to be boredom in the room. A boredom that may very well have been born that morning, a morning that was still in full effect. The morning has that habit of leaving the mind bewildered and wondering whether it is actually bored or still waking up.

And, so, staring many times seemed not only necessary but also the only option (which, in its redundancy, makes it necessary). The only thoughts bouncing up and down tended to be the question of bored or tired. Allister’s eyes felt tired. But, his saliva seemed bored and proved its point by collecting in the corner of his lips and dribbling down in a puddle of drool. Allister’s eyelids would counter by flittering up and down in attempts to doze.

And the wall seemed so stable. Allister wondered what would happen first. Would he decide between boredom or tiredom or would the wall change in any way, perhaps crack a bit or fade a tad? Or, would Allister go without an answer? Would he stand and begin a new day just to begin a new day?

Allister’s saliva puddled. His eyelids flittered. And Allister, not ready to begin his day just yet and seeing the sturdiness of his counterpart, placed his money on the wall.

Inanimate Objects

2009-08-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Allister held respect for all members of the genus inanimate long after the youthful tendencies of speaking to toy soldiers should have dissipated. He would, for instance, recognize the nod of the rocking chair and the hiccup of the empty bottle. These recognitions are bizarre in the grasping once one has moved beyond the open eyes of one's youth. And, so too, Allister may have graduated past this had he not been present on the day that the eighteen-year-old William Spire took the hardest drag from a cigarette.

To understand the story, some background is needed for the eighteen-year-old William Spire. He was, from his very beginnings, an angry fellow-a continuous practitioner of the sneer. He sneered at everyone and everything-be they animate (like everyone) or inanimate (like everything). Casting sneers at cracks in the sidewalk and leafless branches, William Spire was one who tended to believe that the chill of winter sunk its teeth into only his skin. And, in retaliation for this, he did not wear a hat nor did he wear gloves. Instead, he left his skin exposed. A dare for the cold to bite-which the cold did. And, so, William Spire sneered. Perhaps harder even.

And, with that knowledge intact, we can now relive the day that William Spire took the hardest drag from a cigarette. He had just turned eighteen the day before the event. And it may have been this that made him so angry that day. But, as we have noted, William Spire sneered always. So, to blame a particular day or a particular event was ludicrous. William Spire, for whatever and every reason that he sneered, took his anger out that day on a freshly rolled cigarette. With all the breath and sneer he could muster, he inhaled as hard as humanly-as William Spirely-possible, dragging so hard that the cigarette should have reduced completely to ash. And it did not. It resisted.

The cigarette remained lit at the end. The red bud of flame barely burning through the very opening of the cigarette even as William Spire's eighteen-year-old face turned bright red and he neared an eighteen-year-old hyperventilation. Then, the cigarette retaliated. The red bud turned brighter, matching Willliam Spire's hue and the cigarette inhaled back. Inhaling so hard that, in a matter of seconds, William Spire was sucked into its tobaccoey insides. The cigarette fell from the space that was once William Spire and landed on the floor. The red bud extinguished.

The cigarette's paper was cut open and inside was a collection of ash and tobacco, any part of which could be William Spire. This collection was swept into a dust pan, placed in a mason jar, and stored in a dry cupboard to wait for the day technology could bring back a man turned to ash and tobacco.

It is for this reason that Allister appreciated each and every inanimate object's place. And, it is for this reason that one may have seen Allister nod back to the rocking chair and hiccup back to the empty bottle even if one had not seen or heard either object initiate the dialogue.

Madeup Philosophies

2009-08-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

When in confusion or doubt (which can, no doubt, be confusing), Allister tended to find himself in a seedy pub called Deke's. And it was not necessarily the call of scotch that brought him. And it was not necessarily the strong service qualities of the one-eyed bartender whose range of politeness leaped from savage glares at strangers to a lack of savage glares at regulars. No, those qualities-though intriguing-were not what drew Allister to Deke's.   

When Allister's mind was a mess, he would push open the beaten wooden front door of Deke's and walk past the one-eyed bartender who politely held back a glare. The bartender would hand him a tumbler of scotch and Allister would reach back for it in mid-stride and continue walking. He would open the skeleton of a door, whose panels had mostly been punched or kicked out (or had chosen to leave for more peaceful settings on park benches and beach chairs). Three slats were all that remained and clung to the baseboards for all time. And, collectively, this communion held the doorknob.   

Allister would walk down the steps to the basement where two lanterns made vague attempts to light the room. The smoke of cigars and pipes would twirl and climb and escape rather easily past the skeleton of a door. And Allister would submerge into the smoke, into the mustiness of the dim basement. And, here, he would find a collective of philosophers and idealists whose theories and hypotheses could not be found in any library.   

There was Professor Faylag, still attempting to prove to anyone who would listen that perpetual motion machines could be made of any three objects. And Doctor Hale who, in his studies, was now on two years of forced insomnia in an attempt to prove that, with less sleep comes more life. And, of course, Leonard Who Has No Last Name whose bar tab, if printed would reach above the smoky depths of the basement and curl around the bar and past the glaring one-eyed bartender and out the door of Deke's, unrolling for miles and miles and perhaps miles more.   

The tab was an example of Leonard's theory in a newly conjured field of study, evolutionomics. The main idea being that it was one's responsibility in life and for the universe to acquire as much debt as possible. For, when that large comet called The End hits the planet or when the planet gags forth all its magma insides, the only thing that will not be pulverized and/or magma-ized will be this debt. The debt will collect in the cosmos, a lasting memory to what we and the earth were. Eventually, what we have owed will swirl, will combine with each other and with space dust. And what was once debt will, then, wait patiently for the acquisition, for the nudge towards becoming a galaxy. This could be space dust, this could be floating single-celled organisms, this could be hydrogen or nitrogen or oxygen. But, something. Something to add to this negative collection of numbers and even it all out again-to form oceans and valleys and mountains that drip rivers. And, life would begin anew.   

Allister would bake in this oven of cigar and pipe smoke and absurd ideas. And he would breathe in deep. He would absorb it all or as much of it as possible. He would sprout wings where his arms were and remove the top of his head, tilt it over, and let his brain spill out like yolk and sit. There was too much to think about. One needs to escape. One needs and must tip thoughts over. Like one of those glass globes filled with water and flakes. Where you turn the globe over and the flakes collect at the top. You set the globe back on its base, so that the city once again sits upright. And, just like that, it is snowing underwater.

Finding The Thought

2009-08-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

When in times of amnesia, Allister felt compelled to stare blankly. Of course, these cases tended to be along the minor as opposed to the major. That is to say that these cases were usually examples of the sudden loss of a simple idea, not the sudden loss of memories all together.

And so it was that Allister would stare, would let his coffee grow cold and your patience grow tired. And he would stare. But, you would not be so impatient and his coffee would not be so cold if you and it could see what Allister was doing behind the stare.

For, there, he was chasing the idea that had so clearly stood on the tip of his tongue and, whose shadow so clearly remained. But, the rest (the content, shall we say) had retreated somewhere far behind some deep, dark neurological corner. With the idea of a machete, Allister would hack through the thick ingrowths of gray and white matter as if they did not matter at all. Nothing mattered. In fact, it all anti-mattered.

What mattered only was the thought that had disappeared. And Allister could almost hear it. Not enough to grab it. Barely hearing, but still knowing it was there, he chased the idea. Like the boing of some pogo sticked runaway whose speed was just enough to round the corner before you could catch a glimpse.

Allister would follow the boinging through the trails and paths of the former conversation, whose terrain was suddenly barren. Nothing was alive, nothing was as he remembered it. Sentences and trees had lined the path. And, now, all seemed to have been chopped down. Not just chopped either. For, things that were chopped can still be read. No, these were chopped and shredded. And, the sawdust and letters were swept into a dustpan and dumped out his ears.

Yet, Allister still chased. In some cases, he would eventually catch the idea-who may have had a sudden cramp or perhaps the spring of their pogo stick sprung. In other cases, he would remain chasing far after you had left and his coffee had froze.

A Giggle Is A Giggle

2009-07-31T16:07:00.000-07:00

Allister loved, more than almost anything, to look at a baby's wise and curious gaze. Their eyes wide and searching. For it was all so new.  

That hands open. That these hands are attached to you even is funny. That you make them open and close. That sound can come from a mouth. That you can feel the noise in your throat. And one day soon, the sound will come out and someone will understand what you said. That they will laugh and you will laugh and you will keep saying "ball" in literally hundreds of sentences and phrases that contain a mix of "ball" and nonsensical syllables and sounds. That a giggle will have, as yet, no name. But, that it will make you giggle-will make others giggle.  

And you will giggle. And, at a certain point of surprise, your mouth will drop open and a yawn will most suddenly be born. And what is that? And you will have no time to answer this because just as suddenly you will send a jab of pudge-padded baby fist to each eye. And when you wake, it will all be new again. Each time, there will be something more familiar. Is it your crib? Is it your hand? Is it your mother?  

That some dance in music and some dance in numbers. That faces contort, wrinkle, and yawn. That hands cover a face and then open for it to reappear. And, it only makes sense, that as we grow, we want to know more. We look for the answers in all that. We struggle to understand, to gain a grip. And how much of that comes at the expense of the dancing? The vastness?  

Mere months ago you were not here and now you are. That you were, at one point, swimming in placenta and now you breathe air. The placenta is clear and seemingly invisible now. But, still you're swimming. And perhaps a year ago you were nothing. You were a zygote. And this is not to be confused for an argument about when human life begins. That is, as they say, an argument for others. This is merely a plea that life should continue. Life should press through. That, in our searches, we should continue to see the giggle in everything-living, dead, animate, and inanimate.   

For, how funny would it be if this were all a joke? That once we were not and now we are and perhaps we will not be soon. And there is more that we just do not understand. Oh, we will divide an atom into its millions of tiny baby atomic particles-and still they divide. Still there is more to find. And, of course, we search. Of course, we open and close our hands and grasp. But, is that not funny as well? That we do that?  

That a giggle is a giggle and this world is where we live.

A Violin Story

2009-07-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

Allister was not necessarily the most talented musician. This he never claimed to be. He knew enough though. Enough to play many a song on the violin and follow many a person. For that is what Allister did. He followed people with a violin. Why? Well, why does one where a tie? It was just something that he wanted to do. He learned the violin. He learned the bow. And then, he followed.

He would follow no one in particular and no one for too long. Just long enough to, for example, get them to the library by way of Stravinsky. He would, then, fade away behind a shelf of periodicals. Allister could be drawn to someone by the slightest tilt in their hat that drew the bow to play Tchaikovsky. Or two young lovers, walking hand in hand under the moon whose sweetness silently called for Allister to emerge from behind a tree or spring from a pot and pour Viotti from his instrument. And a person did not have to be mobile. Oh no. Allister would find people sitting. People sleeping. Anything could spark Allister to play for them-and stay with them (for a moment).

And he would improvise. Oh, how he would improvise. He would find a knife fight that fit neither Brahms nor Bruch nor composers who did not fit in this example of alliteration. And what was he to do? He would have to punctuate each stab, each movement with his own movements. There was no time to pray that no one died, for Allister was now part of it. The knives swung and jabbed with the melody. And perhaps it was for the best that Allister improvised during knife fights. For, if someone were to know the song, they would know where the decisive blow would come.

Allister would, of course, play for the more mundane, less daring moments in a day as well. There was fruit to be selected with the help of Mendelssohn and morning papers to be read with Schoenberg-though it is important to remember that Mendelssohn and Schoenberg were not, in themselves, mundane.

And, though many remained pleased, there too, were those who sprinted down dark alleys and dove into uncovered sewers whilst pursued by Allister playing Shostakovich. This became more common when Allister had reached a certain older age. Arthritis kept him less mobile. And, though, his sprint had lost its speed, Allister still felt the need to underscore. And so he did-in his wheelchair. An afghan over his lap and pushed by his nurse, Allister still followed.

And there were many who were still pleased. Though there were, still, those that ran in fear. And to see Allister deliberately following (and, at times, chasing) you in his wheelchair picking and plucking Shostakovich while pushed by his nurse was more than eerie. It was sinister. And, Allister knew this. Do not mistake for a moment that his mind had gone. Oh no Allister reveled in these moments, as he did all, as if an entire orchestra was supporting him.

Boots (Something Shiny)

2009-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

Allister, one day, found himself leafing through garbage cans. This was not impulsive. This was not instinctual-that is to say, out of necessity. Allister had eaten fine that day and even the day before. But, he had seen a man rummaging furiously all alone. A man whom he would only come to know as Boots. Boots wore boots. As simple as it sounded is as simple as it was.

Allister never assumed Boots was anything more than he was. A man who wore Boots. A man who wore a tattered shirt and pants and a remarkably clean cravat. A man whose beard had long ago tangled. A man whose eyes beamed and whose teeth had been left behind in a trail throughout the city's many alleys. If followed the discarded molars and incisors would lead to Boots and his tangled beard and his boots, a poor hygienic version of Hansel and Gretel.

And, if you followed the teeth, you would be led to the determination of Boots' foraging as Allister was. You would probably find yourself digging furiously, as well, without first even knowing what you were digging for. After a time (no doubt after you had touched various fruits in various stages of rot and stench and various objects of indescribable nature save their mutual mushy repulsiveness), you would ask Boots for what he was searching. And Boots would, no doubt, answer toothless, "something shiny."

And the search would continue. Perhaps the sun would set and perhaps it would not-though it would eventually. And perhaps you would do as Allister did. You would go home after a long day of foraging and find something shiny for Boots in your home. Perhaps you would also tuck this into a trash can in Boots' current alley for him to find. And, no doubt, Boots would find it and, no doubt once more, he would toss it aside. Be the shiny object a gleamingly polished hinge or a gleamingly polished diamond, it was not what Boots was looking for. And you would continue.

And perhaps you would find, as Allister found, that Boots was a smart man. That he had always been a smart man. That Boots had scoured through books and research and touched thoughts that no one dared to think. He had wanted to gather it all. Understand the blanks. And he came close. He saw the end. He saw the answer. And what it exactly it was that made Boots snap, is not known anymore. Not even to Boots. Not anymore.

But, perhaps we are not meant to dwell so long in an answer. Not a final one anyway. It seemed simple that one should always want to know more, but that in learning more, one should always see more that one does not know. The threat for a genius is that they see the end, that they-in their tangled strands of wisdom-see the answer without avenues. And Boots saw this. And he closed his eyes and wanted it back. To know how far one can go, where the fault line between wanting it and losing it is, is something perhaps we will never know. And to say that is to underestimate the human spirit. So, perhaps, someone will someday know. But, even then, one should pray for the avenues, for the branches to the side. If one could see where it ends, it would be an end.

And one could, no doubt, look at Boots as someone who lost something too great. Someone who stepped too close. But, one should come, too, to understand the fine and blurry line that separates tragedy and comedy. The fine and blurry line of the start and the finish. And one would understand (though, hopefully, not fully), as Allister eventually did, that once Boots opened his eyelids after shutting them so tightly, he smiled wide and began a search for which the end he would never find.

Seven Years For The Pieces Of A Mirror

2009-07-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Allister rolled over in his bed one morning, massaged his eyes awake, and stepped into a Rube Goldberg masterpiece. Allister lifted his leg to place his foot on the floor and found the skate (as so many of these events start), waiting so stealthily, storing it’s anxiousness so cleverly in the inert energy of wanting to slide. And so it did, sliding from the push of Allister’s unsuspecting foot and sending Allister head over heals to fall on his back and ending his step in the folly.

But, the skate was only just beginning. For, it found the stairway waiting at the end of the hall. And, through the vane attempts of socks and buttons and various members of the genus inanimate with lack of muscle and appendage to halt the rolling menace’s inevitable fate, the skate tumbled down first the first step. Second, the second. Third, the third. And so forth. And so fifth, with each step more speed, more reckless purpose. And with the final, came a tumbling that hurled the skate high into the air into a half-filled book shelf, lacking in book ends.

The skate collided with the first book and resulted in an alphabetical chain reaction of literature-Aesop into Alcott into Ambrus into Babits into Bronte into Carroll into Cather into Conrad into Dickens into Dostoyevsky into Dreiser into Eliot (first George, then T.S.) into Forster. Then-Gibran, Goethe, Gogol, Hemingway. Hugo into Joyce into Kliest into Lawrence into Maugham into Remarque into Shelley, Stein, Tagore, Thurber, Tolstoy, Twain, Wells, Wharton, and Woolf. And, finally, To The Lighthouse took a dive off the shelf and into a stand far below. The book opened and hit a candlestick whose candle’s wick had long ago drowned and been preserved in wax.

Without flame, all the candle could do was leap from it’s brass stick and roll. And so it did with the brass stick chasing in roll-form after it. The candle first ran directly into the arm of Allister’s phonograph, sending it to rest on a Tchaikovsky record. The brass stick took a detour provided by niches in the stand’s wood that sent it, first, into the phonograph’s on switch-bringing forth the booms of the 1812 Overture. And then, the brass stick plunged further down to the floor where a mouse trap had been set for other purposes. The candle, too, had not stopped with its first obstacle. And it dove further towards the mouse trap, landing on the bar just as the brass stick hit the release. And the inner-wicked candle flew through the air with Tchaikovsky’s notes punctuating the shot that destroyed Allister’s mirror.

Allister had only just recovered, had only just picked himself up to his feet, and had only just sprinted down the stairs after the skate and the books and the candle and it’s brass stick. And had only just arrived on the scene as Tchaikovsky faded away and Allister’s mirror shattered into thousands of pieces. And Allister stared, mouth wide open. He brought his palms to his eyes and tried to convince them to go back to sleep. But, the lids stayed open and the eyes stayed staring even at his palms. They focused on the wrinkles and cracks in his skin and reminded him of all that lay broken in front of him, the bad luck that had befallen him and would surely continue to befall him for seven more years.

And, without music, he stared in silence. For seven days he stared. Alternately switching from a view of his hands and a view of the broken mirror. The days passed in silence and fear and a slight feeling of hatred towards Rube Goldberg. And Allister waited for an anvil to drop for no reason or for termites to eat his house or for his house to suddenly burst into flames or for all three. And nothing happened. Nothing but staring. And Allister looked at the shattered mirror in front of him and wondered where the idea of this bad luck came from.

Perhaps it was the idea that, in pieces, you saw what you were and what you could be. Where you could have gone. All those places. And you realized the choices you had. Perhaps they made you question what you had and what you could have had. What you chose to have and what was merely a piece of what you once wanted, what you once could have had. Put together and sealed into one sheet they were you. But, put together in one sheet after you had seen all the pieces, perhaps made you regret your choices. Not Allister. not many people, he mused. For, even if one had seen a choice in a piece that they wished for, the lesson lay on the floor that choices could be made at any time. That we are, we could always be countless people in one. So, though, in some degree, this could explain why someone may believe in the bad luck of broken mirrors, Allister felt this more thoroughly proved how tales like these are told by those who have never had the experience of breaking a mirror.

Lunar Eclipse

2009-07-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Allister grew in a time when the moon pulled and released the tides (as we all did and most still do). And at night, it would hover, its craters and pock marks blanketed by the white light that enveloped it.

And on clear nights, that is to say nights where the darkness was so pure that even the tiniest of celestial specs gleamed their little pokes of light in full, Allister would lay on his back in a field and gaze up at all that he knew so little about but was so comfortable under. On some clear nights, he would be alone. On others he would have company.

One particular night brought Allister together with his cousins. Mandy, whom was close to Allister in age and resembled him in Cromleyian fashion, saving the distinct mustache (which at the time, Allister himself, who was barely scraping his early adulthood, showed only the vaguest of shadows), and little Benny-who was little and held the full name of Benjamin.

The three gazed directly up and, on the grass blanket beneath them, they talked of all things lunar-what they knew and what they assumed. Drawing in breathes of absolute night, scented with the pureness of the dew that would soon come and underscored by a subtle but charming symphony of talented crickets, they spoke of the craters. Of the tides and how exactly they assumed the moon conducted the oceans. And Benny talked of the Man in the Moon and how he assumed he played the banjo.

And they wondered what that man ate and what he drank. It was Allister who assumed he ate from the contents of the craters. And it was Mandy who assumed he drank the light and that this made him glow in the dark. And Benny asked, as young ones with shortened names tend to do, why-if the man on the moon glowed in the dark-one could not see him. And Allister answered, as one must do when young ones ask, that it was because everything around the man was glowing as well. If the man wanted to be seen, he would have to adhere from sipping the light and this would kill him.

Why one would answer someone so young in such dramatic fashion is still in question. The answer is lost somewhere in that darkness, in a chasm too deep and unchanneled that even a night filled with all the universe's shining stars sheds far too little light. And Benny, to his young heart's credit, did not cry. Did not even sniffle. Instead, he partook in the awkward pause that all three were now quietly breathing.

And who tossed first is anyone's guess. For, not one of them had the same answer. But someone threw first. Someone threw a stone for no other reason than the pause was all-encompassing and threatened to swallow them in eternal awkwardness. And the stone collided with the wall of silence, cracking its hardening shell. And, quite suddenly, as though the crickets had worked them into a frenzy through premeditated crescendo, they were all throwing rocks with all their might at the moon. Not at the man and not at the light. At the moon. And, though it was never said aloud, they all mused inside their heads that their throws made craters and that their craters erupted in additional brightness and that they were responsible for the moon changing hue.

Not one of them, giggling loudly, thought of the glowing man who most certainly had dropped his banjo and was frantically seeking cover in a land lacking trees and ledges, but raining rocks.

And, though no one would ever know the first throw, all would forever remember the last one. It was Benny's. His little face beaming, his little arm winding back and releasing a small stone in a toss just barely strong enough to clear the length of his body, but lost in the night. And, if either Mandy or Allister knew enough at the time they would have had the proper answer. But, neither did know that, as that small stone left Benny's tiny hand, a lunar eclipse was underway. And if there were some light to shine on this night, one could see that the stone landed mere inches from Benny's feet. But, there was no light and the stone, instead, disappeared into night and destroyed the moon.

Benny screeched in a pitch that killed crickets.

The moon was deduced to barely a sliver. A sliver that turned blood red. No one knew what to do. In moments like these, two things can happen. Shock sets in and one can scream bloody murder or one can stare straight ahead with mouth agape. Benny continued in the former whilst Allister and Mandy partook freely in the latter. How do you explain such feats? How do you tell a child that they did not destroy a bright new world when that world floats broken before you and the stone that last flew towards it was released from that child’s own tiny hand?

The sliver bled and barely hung on its own. And you will have to pardon Allister and Mandy for they did not think of the glowing man. Nor of his banjo. For they were more concerned with the loss of the moon. Of the tides, they knew very little in retrospect. But, what they knew was enough to know that the tides were important, that the moon conducted these. And, thusly, if by only tidal standards, the moon was important, too. And, so, their concern lay in the moon. Here, Benny differed from them, as well. For, when someone finally spoke, it was Benny. And what he said was a question. The words collected to form this: "Do you think he is all right?"

And, in their barely adult knowledge, Allister and Mandy lacked a believable answer. But, there remained a sliver. And it was possible that the glowing man (and, yes, even his banjo) were on that sliver. And this they said to Benny. And, though he wanted so badly to believe, he could not for certain do so. And the elders of the moment could not properly support a sway to certainty either.

So, what they did next was follow Benny's lead.

He knelt in earnest. So, too, did Mandy and Allister. He folded his hands. So, too, did they. And he prayed. He begged. And they prayed and they begged. For safety. For the man and his banjo. And if it be a choice of one or the other, to please spare the man and help him, one day, find a new banjo. Benny closed his eyes. And so, too, did Mandy and Allister.

And when they opened their eyes (in what is true for both cause and effect and question and answer-that they, many times, just come to you), the moon beamed forth in full once more.

Voodoo Dolls

2009-07-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

Though the tufts of hair that lay on Allister's pillow were most certainly a surprise, to have called the whole affair premature, would be to ignore his age and his candor which were noticeably mature, though not so mature that one could say he was beyond mature. In terms of degrees, he was goldilocks' third bear mature-that is to say, "just enough".

And, no matter where you stand in the maturity chain, your hair should not naturally fall out in tufts. Allister knew this to be true and was told this to be true by all those who knew just as well. But, there were patches of naked nothing that remained lacking in clarification. Stress seemed a common reason given to Allister. Though, in all honesty, the only stress in his life at the time came as a result of losing hair for no reason.

If it crept up on him, the balding slowly receding like some hairy tide, Allister could get acquainted with it. But, it did not. It lay in tresses and tufts on pillows and chairs. Patches of skin peppered his head.

In passing, a particular friend of Allister's (whose nose hooked down) made a comment that should have been taken as a joke-that perhaps someone had crafted an Allister Cromley voo-doo doll. This was not taken as a joke. Not by Allister. Questions abounded as questions tend to do when one's scalplihood is being threatened. Who would do such a thing? Why would they do such a thing? Oh, and how would they do such a thing?

The friend of the hooked nose was not prepared for more than a giggled response. Still, being a friend, he pushed his glasses back to their resting place and snagged some answers. They were, "Anyone could do such a thing," "Perhaps they were mad," and "You simply acquire a voo-doll and pull out it's hair."

Allister left the hooked nosed friend to wonder where his joke went wrong. There was thinking to be done. Contemplation of the deepest order. But, Allister could produce no immediate enemies. Perhaps someone was merely annoyed that Allister was without stress for the moment. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps so. And, though the theory was simple, it had taken him hours to get to the idea. He was exhausted. And, so Allister slept and awoke to find half his mustache gone.

And this is what Allister did next. He acquired a voo-doo doll and began pulling out it's hair. He directed his thoughts towards a friend of friend whom he knew as Benson (but whom was not named Benson). For Benson (who was not Benson) had smiled too knowingly when seeing Allister's calamity of a head. And when Allister met Benson (who was not Benson) again he smiled too knowingly back at Benson (who was not Benson), but now certainly lacked hair in patches as well.

And still it came that the night would darken the day and the day would brighten the night and Allister would wake with less hair and Benson (who was not Benson) would wake with less hair. And, though Allister did not know this until later, Benson (who was not Benson), did not pull the initial hair. But, once his hair fell victim, he too, acquired a voo-doo doll and began pulling. His balding rage was misguidedly directed at the only person whom he could surmise would do this to him and Allister-for it had to be an acquaintance of both of them. It had to be their hooked-nosed friend. And, thus, the hooked-nosed friend awoke to face piles of his own hair set free.

It was the hooked-nosed friend who finally brought the three men together as a triumvirate of irregular balding-to talk, to apologize, to sob, and to understand that not a single one of them had begun the mad pulling. Who it was was still a mystery. And when they came to a truce of pulling, a day later found not only Allister still balding in tufts, but also Benson (who was not Benson) and their hooked-nosed friend with less hair.

So, at a table in a tavern where the dust collected in a mist, the three conjured a plan. The possibilities were narrowed down to two. Both leaned towards the mystical. Someone initially had it in for Allister. Allister tugged at the present half of his mustache and longed for the absent half. It could, indeed, be someone pulling tufts free from a voo-doo doll. Or it could be a higher power. But, whom or what ever it was, was now viciously toying with all of them. With the uncertainty collecting in the haze around them, there seemed only three ways to save sanity and hair. And it was fortunate for them that, together, they were three.

These decisions were drastic. Not one of the men would deny that. But, they had been pushed to extremes by forces beyond their understanding. And that very night, as the trinity left the tavern; they buttoned their coats, pulled their collars up, and set the plan into action.

Allister stopped believing in voo-doo,
Benson (who was not Benson) stopped believing in God,
And their hooked-nosed friend acquired as many voo-doo dolls as needed and pulled the hair (and eventually the arms) free from anyone within a fifty mile radius of them until their grew back in full.

One Time His Watch Stopped

2009-07-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

One hapless day, the second hand of Allister's pocket watch choked. It seemed merely a simple cough, just a sniffle. But, is it not true that simple coughs can also simply turn to more complicated death rattles? (This question should be read in equal parts literal and rhetorical and answers to the question should, of course, be given in equal doses of both.)

One does not always notice these changes, the stutters that turn to coughs that turn to chokes that turn to rattles that turn to complete stoption (For lack of a or in place of a better word.). There is no one to fault in these moments that happen in the darkness of a pocket when the lid is clasped shut. It is hard enough to hear a cough from behind a brass lid, much less a rattle. And so it was, that Allister tugged the chain and pulled the watch from his pocket to unclasp the brass lid and reveal the time that had long since expired.

Now, there are moments that are born of necessity and there are moments that are born of inspiration. And one can not forget that there are also moments that are simply born. And, as Allister looked at the watch (though there were causes to reason-namely, but not limited to a lack of money to fix or replace the watch), a moment was simply born.

He would walk the world not on a mission, but simply as one walks the world throughout one's time. And when asked or when wondering himself, Allister would tug the chain, pull the watch from his pocket, unclasp the brass lid, and consult it's face for the answer. And the answer was always the same. To people late for a meeting, to children late for curfew, to people searching for conversation, to people waiting for trains, to people up and down the prime meridian and left and right of the equator. People would awake and people would sleep. The sun would set, the sun would rise, the sun would sit at angles of forty-five and thirty-two.

But, to Allister and to everyone who happened to ask him, from that last tick onward, it would always be three fifteen.

His Bit Of Espionage

2009-06-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

As far as the annals of espionage go, Allister's chapter is but a speck in a thick, encoded book. It would seem, however, that some of the best spies were but specks to most.

From the tips of his toes to the tips of mustache, all of Allister seemed to whisper, "Shh." And this was, of course, before the second of the great wars. But, after the first of the great wars. One could almost feel the tension rising. And, if one could not feel it, well, all one had to do was open a newspaper to read about it. Anarchists and communists. Fascists and socialists. All seemed to be decked head to toe in uniforms of the deepest darkest black. And all seemed to be hurling home-made bombs.

And it was somehow and somewhere (though, the dates, times, location, and transcripts of said somehow and somewhere were in some way lost forever) in all this mess of hurled bombs and assumed hurled bombs that Allister caught the eye of a bureau of secrets-as he would refer to them in the most hushed of whispers.

The beginning was simple and brief. The eye blinked the signal to dark hunched shoulders that followed Allister as he, one evening, stepped into the night. The shoulders' sentences were precise. About a selection, about a mission, about notes left for him in classified ads and plates of ravioli.

And so, Allister found himself guided by coded job offers and doughy pasta filled with ricotta cheese that tasted of clarification.

His missions were simple in a sense and complicated in another (as much in espionage tends to be). He would read the classifieds to see the name and eat the ravioli to taste the address. Then, it was only a matter of slipping unnoticed into the home of an assumed threat-be they assumedly anarchist, assumedly communist, assumedly fascist, or assumedly socialist. There was no poisoning. No strangling. No smuggling of documents. Allister's mission was one of simple confusion.

He would, say in the case of an assumed fascist, search through their literature for Mein Kampf. He would then (assuming that they possessed Mein Kampf) simply and carefully, with specialized tools-pens, scissors, paints, pastes, and erasers-perform a clinical surgery in titles.

For Mein Kampf, he would replace each and every Mein with a Kampf so that the title would read Kampf Kampf. This was to confuse, to arouse suspicion (and perhaps a most subtle fear), to prevent the sharing of clear propaganda, and to prevent the assumed fascist from reading his fascist book in peace.*

And so it was that an assumed communist of this era could come to read The Manifesto Manifesto and The Transitional Transitional. This is also how an assumed socialist of this era could come to read The Soul of Man Under the Soul of Man and The Accumulation of Accumulation and an assumed anarchist of this era could come to read The Its Own and Its Own and God and the God.

It is not known how many assumed fascists, communists, socialists, and anarchists were dissuaded from assumedly being so and it can certainly be assumed in two directions-that they all were changed or that it affected no one. There are many other directions one can assume towards, of course. But, it is of a special importance to know the poles on either side.

One should be careful not to fault Allister too much. Perhaps there was a taste of right in what he did-or the idea of doing some right. But, eventually, Allister would see the wrong in his slice of espionage. Allister eventually saw very much, in fact. But, one can not-as the paraphrasing of the old maxim goes-become enlightened over night. And one can assume, for the most part even, that one can never truly be enlightened. One can only get enlighteneder.

*It should be duly noted that the choice to eradicate Mein from the title was to take away the idea of sole possession of Kampf. This turned the title from My Battle to Battle Battle, the likes of which certainly still carried some negative energy.

Winston Churchill

2009-06-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

Though Allister never smoked cigarettes; he did, on occasion, smoke cigars. That occasion would arrive any time Allister found himself with Winston Churchill. This, of course, would not be the Winston Churchill you think of-if, indeed, you think of Winston Churchill. No, this was before Winston Churchill was Winston Churchill. Or at least before Winston Churchill knew he was Winston Churchill. Or, rather, before Winston Churchill knew he was the Winston Churchill that we remember.  

There were similarities, to be sure. Eyes, noses, hands, feet, shoulders, hips, those cigars. Both walked behind the lead of a polished cane. And neither Winston could be remembered for selling themselves short in conversation. In fact, it was reasonable and valid and vice versa to say that, on many occasions, both Winstons sold themselves much too long.   

But there were differences, to be just as sure. For, Allister's Winston tended to wear high heels, tended to redden his lips, and tended to prefer the comfort of a skirt to the comfort of pants. As to why this was, one found it hard to question Winston. One found one's self, as Allister found himself, sitting across from Winston-drawn in by the largeness, by the character, by the person. And, in lieu of questions, Allister found himself imitating Winston-who inhaled so deeply until all that was once cigar became but ash. And in the most proper and polite manner, Winston would lower what was once cigar and tap from its nubby butt.   

On command, the ash would rain down over the ashtray and collect into a puddle of itself. And Winston would look down with his painted eyes and make the slightest noise of surprise to insinuate that he had not expected this.   

And Allister always smiled. For, where was the surprise when this scene occurred with the smoking of every cigar? Winston would smile back at Allister. And, with the flick of two pudged fingers, Winston would swallow the cigar nub as if it were a candy. And if Allister's attempts at mimicry were not identical, they were at least dramatic. In place of breathe plus cigar equals ash, came the reaction of smoke plus breathe equals cough. And instead of the sweet simplicity of Winston’s swallowing of cigar nub candy came Allister’s gagging and almost-suffocation caused by cigar nub. This would leave Allister staring forward with bloodshot eyes- stunned, surprised, and speechless. And Winston would smile for Allister's surprise, too, should have come with no surprise.  

And perhaps, Winston would redden his lips. Or perhaps he would be happy with how red his lips already were. And they would sit and smile. And Allister never knew if Winston would wonder. But, Allister would. He would wonder why and what drew Winston to be. Was it a search? Was it a calling? Was it none of the above? Was it just what it was that led Winston to write with the softened nub of lipstick on bridges and sculptures and park benches and lamp posts slowly dimming, the simple (and later, the somewhat but not entirely misleading) claim:  "Winston Churchill was here."

The Staring Contest

2009-06-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

A sane man and most insane men could have told him. And on any other day, Allister could have just told himself. But, those eyes pulled him. Painted perfectly and set so perfectly imperfectly on the face that they were real. And it was more than the perfectly imperfect placing. It was the coloring. It was the way paint had become rods and cones and the pupils seemed to tunnel down. It was the glint that flickered without flickering. 

And Allister could not look away. Allister wanted to touch the hair. Wanted to reach to the wall and feel the hair. He did not, of course. That would be rude in both worlds. But, if the painting reached for his hair, Allister would not think poorly. He would understand. And he would touch the painting's hair to demonstrate the mutual attraction. And when saying attraction; one, of course, must explain away many things and explain towards many others. But, this was not necessary with Allister and the painting. They stared. They waited for someone to twitch. For someone to smile. And no one would.   

It was not a contest, per say. It was an understanding that even a blink would end it, would severe whatever it was that tunneled from the jelly of an eye into the paint of an eye and made it real. There stood the chance that no one, not Allister nor the painting, would ever move. And there would be fear in that, in standing forever, if the rational mind played any part in it. But, this was no place for the rational mind.   

Allister would learn soon enough, though. That if you stand in the right place and at the right time (that is to say, in the right museum), the artist will eventually arrive, see the dilemma, and paint eyelids-though you may remain standing quite a long time before this happens.*  

*Of course, it is important to remember that this will not happen if the artist, too, is not in the right place at the right time or if the artist is dead-and both cases are, of course, possible. In fact, in the latter case, one will often find the former case.

Resolutions

2009-06-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

Allister carried little resolutions inside his head. Sometimes these were attached to a new year and sometimes they were not. Sometimes they were spoken and sometimes they were silent. Sometimes they made sense and many times they made nothing. But, still, it seemed a worthwhile investment and so he kept on making them.  

One such resolution involved panhandlers, beggars, and vagabonds (and one should not say just one resolution, for many of Allister's resolutions involved panhandlers, beggars, and vagabonds. what one should say in all correctness is, "This particular resolution involved panhandlers, beggars, and vagabonds.).  

It was simple as many of the finer things are. If Allister had anything in his pockets that he did not need, he gave it to the person shaking the cup. Quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies, and paper clips. If Allister did not need it at that moment, or some other moment in the foreseeable future, he tossed it.   
This went on for some time as good resolutions will. Allister would nod to the panhandler, beggar, or/and vagabond and carry on his way-until, one day, when Allister happened to be with a companion. There was the shake of the cup. There was the discovery of unnecessary change. And there was the toss and the nod. And even the carry on his way. But, once he was on his way, his companion stopped him. Not near the soul who shook the cup. Heaven's no. This would have been in poor taste. It was, though, just around the corner from the soul who shook the cup.  

Allister's companion asked for an explanation. When it was given, Allister's companion asked for an explanation beyond a resolution. Allister did not have one. So, his companion pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles up and proceeded to lecture in sociological conditioning that bled into the psychological and revealed shadows of the personal. How these people were drunkards, that it was a nice gesture, but it would not help them or their condition. When Allister asked his companion what would, his companion did not know. And both could think of nothing more to say.  

Eventually, Allister, left his companion somewhere between the sidewalk and his front door and eventually Allister had a late night snack and, after that, eventually he went to sleep. And his dreams were much like dreams tend to be, that wonderful mix of reflections and nonsense-which sometimes are reflections, too. Reflections of nonsense. There were floating quarters and dimes. And nickels and pennies. And some had wings and some had horns and some had nothing but simply coin qualities. And there was the shaking of the cups and there were eight armed fencing banjos for ridiculous measure. And to grasp the full scope of his dream, one must remember that eight-armed fencing banjos carry more than one picture. One can think of at least two, in fact. And one should. And think of these two pictures happening at once and combined with other unknown versions of what eight-armed fencing banjos mean. Then, one would have a glimpse of what Allister saw. To have the full impact, though, one would need to close one's eyes and sleep.  

When Allister rose the next morning, he knew very little. He knew only that he would continue with his resolution. If there were nothing that could be done to make it better for panhandlers, beggars, and vagabonds and, in turn, Allister had change laying unused, where was the harm? Until Allister knew what could be done for permanent, he would acknowledge the request. It was ridiculous. True. But it, too, seems ridiculous to simply not answer.

The Goose's Nip (A Tale Of Revenge)

2009-06-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

Allister remembered the day quite clearly, though he would forget about it, from time to time. He was four. He was happy. He was excited, even. The air was fresh. The trees rustled with the spring's breeze. And Allister saw the goose. Perhaps it was not the first time he had seen a goose. That he could not proclaim with any certainty. But, it was the first time he could remember seeing a goose. It kicked it's feet along the pond. His grandfather's pond. So content it seemed. It's black neck craning up and down. It's wings lost somewhere into it's feathered body. Like it was all one piece. No wings. Legs, body, neck, and head. That was it. A ridiculous beast that was so proud of itself. And Allister wanted to touch it.

Where his grandparents were, he never knew. And it mattered little at the time or before that time even, for those types of questions only occur after an accident. And, whether or not that matters or not, seems to only matter whether or not there is an accident. Nevertheless, Allister wanted to touch the goose. And so he did.

He tip-toed ever so lightly. Four year old tip toes. He could see the wings now. It was more than legs, body, neck, and head. It, too, was wings. And Allister reached and touched it's back. And the neck snapped back. The wings were thrown up. And the beast lurched forward, gnashing it's goose teeth, flaring it's demon eyes. Allister turned to run. But, there was nowhere to go. The beast, goose-stepped, goose-ran at Allister and swung it's mad, ugly head until it threw forward and bit Allister's calf with all it's goose might. Allister screamed as if the goose had actually drawn blood, as if it actually possessed fangs and not goose teeth. And his grandparents suddenly appeared as the goose fled the seen. And he was held in that way that grandmother's do, that knowing warmth that eventually eases away tears.

And the day ended like the day before-with night. And Allister awoke and awoke and awoke and, one day, found himself much older. This day came after Allister had fought in the Great War. After Allister had hurt and was hurt, in turn. After Allister had gone to school and after he had learned to tie his shoes. These things were done in no particular order and certainly not in the order they have now been recorded.

Nevertheless, he found himself at a pond's edge, once again. And before him stood a goose, once again. It's wings camouflaged, but not enough. Allister knew now. And Allister ran. He felt the bite in his calf and he surged forward, fueled by the rage of a goose's nip. A mad man with a mad mission. The goose never knew what was coming. Not until it turned around, that is. And just like that, the goose snapped around, snapped back, stumbled forward, tripped over it's own webbing, screamed a honk, and flew off before Allister could touch it. And Allister stood at the pond's edge and wondered, "Where's the logic?"

Allister had no more won a victory for humankind than had he forced a loss for goosekind. The goose would come back. Geese tended to come back. And, it could be rationalized, even without thorough proof that the goose that flew away was not the goose that had nipped Allister at four. And, if the goose had lived that long much less found Allister, than it most certainly deserved it's immortal belligerence.

But, it would not be the last time Allister wondered the thought. And, funny enough, the logic always seemed to lie somewhere between being bitten and not being bitten-which was, in itself, a most illogical place.

Conserving Words

2009-06-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

As Allister catapulted through the air, he looked back to the catapult from whence he catapulted and thought simply, "this makes sense."  

And when he had landed or when he had bounced off of his skull, blacked out, heaped over, and finally regained consciousness, Allister made a decision. Years later, many would say that his action came as a symptom of the slight damage delivered to his brain from the landing. But, Allister always declared his decision to be of the most conscious variety, one made in a clear and functional head.  

It was simple. It had made so much sense, the catapult catapulting him. Allister became a conservationist of words. Not necessarily for the sake of saving words for future generations, but because it could be so easy.  

And, so, he penned. For, what else was a pen to do? He nosed. For what else was a nose to do? And when he needed to be somewhere, he biked, trained, or cared for the same question asked earlier but applied to different modes of transportation.  

You may think hearing someone talk in this manner would be confusing. And you would be right eventually. But, at the start, oh, the joy in it all. How telephones telephoned and water watered and the wind winded and horses horsed and cows cowed and birds birded. It was so easy. So free and with such purpose. And think of all the words saved for the future (though Allister did not necessarily)! All wrapped and papered in wrapping paper and boxed in boxes and bowed with bows! For children to children with!  

But, soon enough, the bubble bubbled for complications complicated things-as they tend to do. For a shoe can shoe, but so much more, too. And feet and legs and hands and fingers and toes and lips and even ears. Oh, they can shoe and feet and leg and hand and finger and toe and lip and ear. But, there was more. So much more and just not enough verbs. Not that way, anyway.  

And, so it was, that Allister found himself unwrapping the wrapping and unboxing the boxes. Taking the words out, letting them free to do what they may do. To fill the air and roll in and out of mouths and ears.

Cracks In The Sidewalk

2009-06-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

Allister avoided the cracks in a sidewalk with the most premeditative of steps. Studied and deliberate, they fell just to the side of even the tiniest of fissures. These were not steps harried with superstition. These were steps dipped in science. For, it seemed the way of the world from its earliest Pangean days, even the biggest of continents crack and separat.   

Even the tiniest of fissures were suspect. After all, a fissure is a crack. You can look this up, if you like, in almost any reference book-saving atlases and perhaps almanacs. Allister had attempted a thoroughly misguided step towards a crack several times in order to build character. But, the fear was palpable. Allister could feel the Earth twitch, could hear the awful cracking of land severing, could see the lava crawling up into the widening veins-separating the sidewalk into floating cement squares.  

And, for a moment, let us divert, shall we?

Because the first time Allister had ever seen a picture of Ghandi was in a newspaper somewhere. The article that accompanied had remained unread and Allister had clipped the man free of the paper, with the idea that this paper doll's skinny legs would be amusing to watch dance. And they were. The orchestra in Allister’s head striking up a tune that swung, the paper legs bobbing and bouncing on the table. Allister conducting the orchestra-smiling, giggling at the paper left and the paper right kicking at random with simple pushes of air.   

And Allister saw that that the paper feet were nearly bare. That this man who had walked so far wore only the thinnest of shoes. Sandals. How had this man walked so far with skinny legs and no shoes? And how does one not feel guilty? When one has clipped a sage from paper and jiggled the man to dance?   

Allister looked the man in his eyes and knew two things. They were paper, yes. But, they twinkled. There was a spark-a spark so bright and subtle that it could have burned the entire paper body but chose not to. And Allister looked to the picture from where the paper man had been clipped and saw from where he came. And, whether what Allister saw came as the result of one these man's sandaled steps that caused the chain reaction that destroyed many a man’s careful cementing or whether it was how it had always been where this man was born, Allister did not know. But, in the picture from where the paper man had come, there were no sidewalks.

His Toe Had Left And Gone

2009-06-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

One damp and dark morning the wind whistled and Allister awoke from his slumber and found a note at the foot of his bed. It read*:

Dear Guy With The Body,

I figured I would write to you before you took a bath and discovered for yourself. I have left. If you already took a bath or happened to notice in some other way that I have left, before you read this, well then, I am sorry. I just want you to know that it is not your fault. It is not you. It is me. You have never treated me with malice and, for that, I must thank you. You have even clipped my nail time and time again and, for that, I owe you. Lord knows, I could not do that myself. So, do not think of this as a slight towards you. That is not the case at all.

It's just that there's a whole world out there and I want to see it all or as much of it as possible. Please do not take this personally, I beg you. Some big toes would be perfectly happy living on your foot and spending their entire life with you. And you deserve one of those. Take your other big toe, for example. He seems content and satisfied with life on your left foot. It's just not for me. I am a dreamer. I've got to see things, go places, meet other toes. And I know I will not be happy with a life in that sock of yours.

Do not worry about me. I will be fine. I have a cousin who lives in a sandal in Guatemala. One of the middle toes passed away recently-gangrene, frostbite, smallpox, or something. But, regardless, now they've got some extra room. And she has been gracious enough to offer me a place on her foot. I am not sure how long I will be there or where I will go next. I suppose I will just see where the wind blows me.

I sincerely wish you the best and hope this does not leave you unbalanced.

My Best,
Your Big Right Toe

*In actuality, Allister read. The letter more or less was read.

The Difference In One From Another

2009-06-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

Allister often had a hard time deciphering good from evil. Sitting in a small cafe tucked into the corner of a bustling city, he would look at the files and ranks of people passing by the window. They that passed by tall and they that passed by small and they that passed by in the most average of heights.  

 To him, there seemed little to be found to pick those that carried or desired evil from those that did not. Though they walked fast, Allister was well aware that none of them had the red enflamed eyes that seemed signs of a demon's presence. Though some clenched fists while some let their fingers flop open, Allister knew this was not a question of who wanted to pet someone's head and who wanted to send a punch to the place behind someone's head where the skull meets the spine. The tension of someone's hand was more a question of where and how soon someone needed to be somewhere.  

And yet, he knew that some would walk by and do unspeakable deeds. All that passed, of course, would commit some minor evil-which could barely pass as evil. These would become all the more minor when Joe Smith or Eleanor Tutt's names were compared with the names of, say, Vlad the Impaler or Jack the Ripper.  

But, beyond moniker, where was the kernel of the evil? Some, of course, provided short answers whose brisk response settled the souls of only those that wished so desperately to hide behind a settlement. The validity of the answer, in these cases of people, was an afterthought of an afterthought-which was not a thought at all. These answers were grabbed from the darkest corners of places that we have never been-that evil grew from a foreign country, that evil grew from a foreign belief, that evil grew from the shape of one's mustache.   

Did it grow from birth? Did it rest beside the good? Is it, then, a question of nurturing? Is it the difference between a hug and a slap? Is it the difference between rich and poor? Is it the difference between having enough and needing more?   

Or is it something inherent? Are there those whom a hug can not save, whose eyes may not reflect the darkness, but whose hearts were born tarnished? Are there those who, though given all in the ways of love and kindness, desire destruction?   

These answers could not be obtained through monocled scientists or monocled doctors or monocled philosophers or any of their monocled manuals and tomes. They could only be obtained by attempts made in the dark. Attempts to hold all those that one would call evil, to look them in their eyes and search. To find your way back to their beginning and see if you could untangle what, if anything, chokes them.

Drunken Boxing

2009-05-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

When Allister came to, came to enough to realize that he was indeed standing on the canvas and roped in by the raw ropes of a boxing ring, he was still unsure of the reason. He was standing, this much he knew. He had not been knocked out. One could accredit the absent lapse of time between when he was consciously aware that he was not in a boxing ring and when he was consciously aware that he was in a boxing ring to the merry cheer and black humor of friends and beer and wine and whiskey and bourbon and gin. Also vodka-though just the sound of the name gurgled in his ear, whaffed and twisted and clogged his nostrils, and oozed down his throat to turn his stomach. But, when enough alcohol had been accepted, vodka, of course, would be invited.  

And so, Allister swayed and pondered-gathered information from the haze. Gathered the smells and sights and sounds. It sounded of thunder, it looked of smeared colors and shapes, and it smelled of the fermented juice of the potato.  

And Allister could never really remember seeing the fist-for there were no gloves (Allister, of course, did not know of this fact. But, this little tidbit was received years later by an old, aged friend of Allister's who had been only slightly more sober.). He only remembered periods of sudden darkness in one eye. And then the other. It was as if the sun was rising and setting at various times for both of them. It was also as if Allister’s stomach-his cheeks, his stomach-were inflating and deflating rapidly.   

So, it was that the sun set and rose in each eye and his cheeks and stomach exhaled and inhaled. And the rain fell ivory and solid. Allister cupped his hand and threw a palmful of rain down his throat to quench his thirst-realizing only too late (when sober), of course, that one can not quench one's thirst with one's teeth. But, then, he knew nothing more than there was rain. There was a sun rise in one eye and a sunset in the other. His cheeks heaved along with his stomach.  

And Allister giggled. Giggled and bowed. And popped back up again. And bowed as a fist forced him back down. But, the world was moving so quickly, days, years leaped by. Allister was afraid for a moment-only a moment, though. Afraid that his eyes were speeding ahead at different speeds-that his right eye would finally come to a stop, sunrising and sunsetting fifty years in twenty seconds and his left eye would finally come to a stop, sunrising and sunsetting five hundred years in twenty seconds-a different time for each eye. But, even this made him giggle (after some delirious thought). Two eyes in two different eras. Ha! Think of it! Allister bowed again. And popped back up.   

He could feel his face becoming other faces-friends, Romans, and countrymen. He wondered if they could feel him becoming them. He wondered if they would collect his face because he could feel it dripping down. He imagined they would. He imagined their bucket-the friend, Roman, and countryman bucket. He imagined that he would dip his hands in the bucket and wash his skull anew with his face. And this made him smile. A sweet, sincere smile for all those friends, all those Romans, and all those countrymen. He felt safe with them near. So safe.  So safe, in fact, that he laid down and took a long nap.

New Beginnings

2009-05-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

When Allister walked onto a train, a bus, a trolley, a ship, a submarine, a zeppelin, an elevator he always did the same thing. His eyes searched throughout the other eyes. He looked at hair and shoulders and height and feet. For, no matter how confident Allister was in the driver of this vehicle (or in cases such as the elevator, the man in the pillbox hat who pushed the buttons and said, "Going up" or "Going Down"), there always itched the possibility-however slight-that one could get stuck in the capsule. The train could veer off track, the zeppelin unexpectedly drop into the Alps, the submarine sink to the depths, the ship sink down on top of the submarine. This was somewhat reality. A slight somewhat reality, to be sure. But, a somewhat reality just the same.   

Allister did not revel in catastrophe. He did not choose to think this way. He would merely catch this feeling midway through his scan, as if this fear of a crash were the common cold or typhus (where and when typhus was a common illness). And immediately, Allister would prepare the only way someone could.

Searching for the sweet eyes of the one he would fall in love with, would marry and raise a family with in this train car, this deflated zeppelin. Searching for the patch-covered eye, pointed dark mustache, and evil glare of the man with the dark gentleman's cane who would most certainly become his arch nemesis-who would somehow find ways to prosper and abuse the rest of the population of this elevator car, this trolley. Searching for the calm, wide shoulders and the simple, honest smile of Allister's newest life-long best friend-whom he would surely have to protect from this arch-nemesis who most certainly preyed on those simple, honest souls. Searching, too, for the doctor, the nurse, the farmer (cultivating corn and tomatoes from leather seats and steel bars), the philosopher, the mayor, the judge, the sheriff, the scientist, the tailor, and the man whose nervous twitch and cross-eyed glare betrayed all too clearly that he was all too eager to leap to cannibalism much earlier than necessary.   

And, in one place, Allister would see the general store stocked with gum and hard candy scraped from the bottom of seats. And, in another the restaurant where at first all would feast on leather strips and then nothing at all-everyone sitting at the long table and imagining they were eating filet mignon on imaginary plates with imaginary forks and knives. And then, perhaps, if necessary (but, and this should be stressed for the man with the twitch: only when absolutely necessary), a person.
And there were the tailor and the cobbler shops and hardware store and the office of the newspaper editor. All in this train car, this bus, this trolley, this ship, this submarine, this zeppelin, this elevator. No one understanding how or why the entrances and exits will not work and why no one has come to save them. Everyone just moving on, adapting to Allister's fantasy.  

And this whole life Allister would work his way through as the vessel traveled along, carrying Allister, his new companions, and their new lives to their desired destinations. And when the doors did open, when the ramps were let down, and people made their exits, Allister would mark them off as though they had just forfeited their place-until the doors opened, the ramps were let down for Allister, too. And he would find himself exiting.

Waxing Nostalgic

2009-05-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

I remember clearly one of the days when Allister had swallowed half of his body weight in brandy. And, as he lay there, he waxed nostalgic-which, in his latter years, he had a tendency to do even when sober. But, when brandy picked up half the dialogue, well, this was no longer a tendency; but, quite simply, a given.   

And it was not the initial waxing that makes the moment shine in my memory like a beacon. Not the honey-dripping memories of brighter sunshine and cleaner streets and greener greens and bluer blues and older olds and newer news. Not the recollection of simple games that needed no explanation beyond the name ("beat with sticks", for instance)-whose simpleness bore an undertone more obvious in malice than under but so subtle in the minds of children who simply giggled while chasing and swinging sticks at each other.

No, these I had heard before. How everyone shook your hand and everyone shook your hand with the firm clutch of someone who was actually glad to meet you, actually glad to see you. The literature was better, the movies were better, the art was better. Everything was cheaper and everything lasted longer. And everyone knew God on a first name basis. That, to have missed these-even if by no fault of your own (that you were naturally born fifty, sixty, or three hundred years after, for instance), was to have missed everything. And, though it was by no fault of your own (in most cases), you somehow still felt responsible for the loss of those memories you never had.  

No, it was not those memories. Those stories Allister had told me many times before and would tell me many times after. No, it was the second coming of the waxing-the waxing that came as a reply to my observations about my thoughts about the hardships found in the present.

To these, Allister replied that no time was tougher than his. There was no money. No food. Dinner was simply the broth of boiled rawhide. And breakfast and lunch-if you indeed had the opportunity to eat another meal-were the leftovers of dinner. Thanksgiving and Christmas meals shared the same turkey skeleton for generations. There was no education. Everyone died. Everyone was desperate. There was no medicine. All politicians were corrupt. No one was paid what they were deserved and, if you whispered doubt, you were shot or blacklisted (or vice versa). Black men were lynched for no reason beyond being black somewhere. Women could not vote. War lurched around every corner. Families starved and no one cared. And no one could ever know how deep it burned unless you had lived it.   

And it was these memories, the way the honey-drip had turned to tar, that made the waxing different.

It dawned on me so suddenly how it all made sense.

For, no one will ever find memories as happy as those that have made us happy. And no one will ever find memories that cut so deep as those that have cut us so deep. I know someone has said once before, though I do not think it was Allister, that all original storylines have already been used. That there may be only six or seven. And, so, it may be even less. There may be only one story in the end for every living thing. It is born and it will die.   

But, how did the number of stories become the most notable observation? Is it, not the number of stories, but the number of voices that have told them that is most important? It is the coloring of the stories. That some have told them blind and some deaf and some mute and some with no arms and some with no legs. That some have been women and some men. That some have looked death in the eye and lived. That some have not. That love and honor and laughter permeate through even the smallest of wrinkles. That our names are left on trees and concrete bridges. Our good and our bad are ours, our lives a tangle of our pain and our love. And, looking with a wide enough lens, should make us realize that we are all telling the same incredible story.

Folding

2009-05-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

If one found Allister with his hand tucked inside his pocket, one could assume that between his fingers was the piece of paper Allister had been folding for perhaps all his life. It had started as a single fold, the most common of folds-right through the middle, and had turned into another and another. The reason for even the first fold was lost somewhere along the way. And now the reasoning had become simply to fold. To bend the paper into its self in such a way that it was smaller and, perhaps one day, that it would disappear altogether into nothing.  

Allister had always been fascinated with nothing-that something was something and nothing was nothing and in between was no other step. Yet, the line where one leaped so completely into the other was so miniscule, so impossibly invisible to all senses that it baffled. How did something become something in the first place? From nothing? And where did something return into nothing?   

Allister, at times, wondered if he had been here before. He could, for instance, sometimes picture himself near Socrates when he made the decision to peacefully swallow the hemlock-not, of course, in human form. For, that moment was for that man alone. But, Allister could feel himself there, perhaps as bench or some long-forgotten brick. And without, eyes to see, Allister could feel the moment the man’s eyes shut. The moment Socrates decided to turn his powerful mind off, to adhere simply to the jury, to make his thoughts/his breath disappear. For good? For bad? He was gone.  

And Allister would fold the paper in his pocket-so small already-and yet, not gone. It was still there-so tiny. In latter years, the paper was so tiny that one could scarcely see it on Allister’s finger tip-the folds so precise, the paper compressed into itself so tight that it still carried the weight, but lacked the size to prove it. And, if you put this speck of seeming nothing under a microscope, you would see that it was indeed something.  

In those simple folds, those compressions and creases of a single piece of paper, Allister attempted to find the place where the two met-where something faded into nothing. And he wondered if it ever did. Did Socrates disappear with his breath? Did his breath disappear at all? Was it still coasting through the breeze, whispering in listening ears? Was something, in itself, nothing? Was nothing, in itself, something?   

And yet, one could-as a human-understand the birth of an idea and the loss of an idea. How it springs from nowhere, how inspiration rises from not ashes but from absences. And how it seemingly disappears just as quickly-only to rise again when least expected. The questions come with answers and the answers with questions. And sometimes one’s contribution to a new idea is just the thought that that idea is possible. Sometimes we will see no more than that in our lifetime.  

Allister folded so small, so tiny, that it seemed as though the piece of paper did, indeed, truly disappear into nothing. Allister could feel it on his finger tip and he would show us all. He would put his finger underneath a light so close and we would squint and look so hard that migraines were born. And we would see nothing. But, of course, we did not always have a microscope at hand.

Insomnia

2009-05-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

When insomnia struck, it would find Allister kicking and punching in bed as if there were something to punch at. As if he could knock out his conscious. He would send hard rights and lefts, uppercuts and undercuts, jabs and hooks, and knees and elbows and connect with only the air-the air which had seemingly blackened and fallen asleep like the rest of the world.   

And Allister would wrestle with the thoughts in his head as if he were thinking anything. His synapses were firing and misfiring all over. But, to say that he was thinking of anything in particular was a mistake. There were no philosophies he was mulling over. No algorithm to unfinished algorithm to complete. It simply seemed as if his brain just was not tired, just did not want to go to sleep-like some spoiled five-year-old child.   

He would attempt to calm his brain by reading. But, the words would bore him. This was not to say that the author was not skilled. The author could have been Dostoevsky, Dickens. Poe or Shelley. Melville, Tolstoy. Twain or Verne. The words could have been written in neon and they would bore Allister. And not bore in the good sense-the sense of bore that Allister wanted. The one that would droop his eyelids down like solid weights. No, it was boredom in its purest form. Boredom not with the story, but with the pages, paragraphs, sentences, words, letters, and punctuation that made up the story. Boredom in the idea of reading, the idea of doing anything. A boredom so pure that Allister was even too bored to sleep.  

There were times when warm milk or ginger tea or a little whiskey would do the trick. But, when the insomnia was strong, it paused for no remedy. Under these circumstances, Allister would resort to solitaire-for most other card games relied on others and all Allister's friends would have long since met with their slumber, shaking hands and dancing with their dreams. Allister would shuffle the cards, while his mind ran in circles. Solitaire had always been something Allister could do even if his brain was mush-which, at times, Allister was sure it was. And so, Allister would play. He would play until lifting the cards felt as though he were lifting rocks and he would push past. He would play until the mug of warm milk or warm ginger tea or warm whiskey was empty or the shot of cold whiskey or cold ginger milk or cold warm tea was mug. And still, he would push past. He had to. Because he could do nothing more at the time. Not read. Not speak. Not sleep.   

Allister would shuffle and place the cards in rows and flip the cards in the front and play solitaire. Place the cards in rows and flip the cards until the cards were rocks until the rocks lost their suits, their numbers, their faces, until the rocks were plain and the rows were jagged and out of order and not rows at all. And Allister would play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and play solitaire and asolitartiare and aplayt aialskashglas and apjdalagiuay solgaihataire and plappjgayelk ngmitaire ,asngjkasnkgga sjkljgapjkgpa[ojsknjg[akp odampklaiuatlya[lkatylda[ajsna dan[gakja[jktpak jgnmansjkhadgpajdgklmnsaldk gnapksjkfpadjgkl;a jslgkaps[gkaspla spaklspgasjgpa.pakjsg mpajsgp japsjgaps [gapsf[ap sgk; lakspgkask pkgopasgkposfs ok;alsgo;lsgal;kasg k;las[gpak s[gk[apsfgp[aslg' ;aslg[';aslg[p;a'slg,;a splaspfkaspflapsjgkala jspklasplfkaspldapslfpa lskfpaslfkplasfkpalsfkpa lsfkplasf plaksfplsfp lagkm,smmnmpsolisssssssssssssstaire.

Where He Went When He Lost A Dream

2009-05-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

When Allister lost his dream, he would search for it in the eyes of others-as if he could find it there. It was the deep gazes that intrigued him most, the ones that dipped in and seemed like they could go on forever. Seemed like, through those orbs, one could touch the Earth's center. Or one could touch the beginning of heaven. And perhaps one could touch both at the same time. In those eyes he would swim, lost in a sea of rods and cones.

Allister would walk along the street, his boots kicking stones, his eyes searching for a knowing glance, the kind resting in a knowing face, where the wrinkles tell a story equal in eagerness and sadness. The eagerness coming from the desire to know more, the sadness coming from the knowledge of knowing so little about how to know more. These gazes tended to hide beneath woolen caps, tended to duck behind heavy eyelids, as if the constant philosophical tugging had worn away the youth.

But, there was something wise, there was something subversive, in the smirk that twitched at their lips. In their deep wells rested the youthful fountains, deep and pure. And though there was a danger in searching too long, too hard; one could after all come too close to the answer-just as one swimming in another's eyes could find the eyelids shutting, trapping you, leaving you pressing from the inside of the jelly glass to get out; there was something magical in it, too, in the small sparks found in the eyes and the wrinkles and footprints of dreamers.

Ice Fishing

2009-05-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

All who knew Allister or his friend, Soloman Gates (and we must not forget all those who knew them both), knew that for the better part of twenty-five years they held true to a tradition. Once the frozen world of winter began to surrender its drops to spring, Allister and Soloman would set stools atop Culver Lake and fish beneath the ice.  

Now, this tradition, as is usual with most tradition, came about by pure happenstance (and some would say complete accident). For, Allister and Soloman began, as is usual with most beginnings, knowing nothing of ice fishing. The two were, after all, only boys. And their choice in time of year, came not by way of weather, but by way of inspiration. This inspiration, as is usual with most inspiration, was birthed most suddenly from a boggy spell of boredom.   

The winter had been a most unforgiving one. Snow had pelted the homes and streets, signs and mailboxes, so that it looked and felt more like a new crust than a blanket. A new skin. The frigid temperatures had made it harder to stay outside for more than ten minutes. And thus, children's half-finished wintery projects decorated yards and fields. Snow angels with one wing, the solid bottoms of snowmen standing without chest or head (the more fortunate ones given the attempt at recognition of twig arms or button eyes), tracks that led halfway down hills and then swerved dramatically to the side (sometimes these side-bound tracks led to an unmanned toboggan, whose desperate owner had long since abandoned it for the warmth of home).   

Allister and Soloman, once safe and warm inside, found themselves pressed against the windows, gazing at a world they wanted so badly to be a part of, but which would not compromise. They dreamed of Admiral Peary and his trips across the frozen north and imagined his dog sled mushing through the front yard. And when the skin began to melt, when streams began to trickle through the crust, when the sun finally overpowered the clouds, Allister and Soloman sprang to their feet. It was an instant leap that brought boots and mittens and hats and scarves with it.   

They bound for the door and, once outside, they felt the boredom melt away. For a moment, their minds burst into the wide open that comes with inspiration, a care-free free for all, that led the two running and rolling in circles through the layers of snow around them. Then, at once, as if on cue, they focused. Their view honed on their grail. A light flared in their pupils that each one recognized and, without a word, they knew. Allister ran to his backyard shed and Soloman ran to his home across the street. When they met again, they both carried their fishing rods and a stool. It was simple. Before the winter melted away, they would find comfort in it, would be one with it, like Admiral Peary. They set out to do a most common spring-time activity, that of fishing, to prove their adaptability, to make themselves perhaps immune for next year and the years to come so that snowmen and snow angels could be finished. And, of course, fishing was also common in the winter. But, remember they were just boys at the time.  

And thus, they found themselves on Culver Lake. Their pupils still a-glow, they tiptoed across the ice to the very middle. All around the snow seemed to be retreating like a cowardly avalanche. Soloman had realized halfway there that they had forgotten bait and had managed to find two acorns softened and weighted by the dampness. These they baited on their hooks and without so much as a "what now?" they both took their mittened fists and punched a hole in the ice (this should give some early cautionary sign). They dropped their lines into the tiny watery voids, sat on their respective stools, and waited.   

Now, Allister would always say it was Soloman and Soloman would always say it was Allister. But, someone made a wager that they could catch a fish first. And having not much else to do but wait, the other accepted. And so engaged in this friendly wager were they, that they did not notice the ice begin to separate, did not notice that they were pulling away from each other, that they were now admirals of tiny icebergs with a water-logged acorn as their only anchor.   

Such is the mystery of time, that neither Allister nor Soloman could recall how they managed to stay so focused even as they drifted farther and farther away and Culver Lake melted more and more. But, whence they felt the tug on their lines (Allister would say his tug came first and Soloman, of course, would claim the opposite), they snapped back. They pulled on their rods to reign the fish in and realized how far away they were. The sun mirrored mightily in the water. The lake had all but melted clear. A small army of tiny icebergs held fast, courageously standing their ground. And Allister and Soloman were trapped. All around them lay hypothermia. And knowing not what to do, they were boys remember, they simply sat on their stools and attempted to reel in their catches.   

And this is when the miraculous kicked in. For the fishes pulled with all their might back. Pulled so hard that the blocks of ice, from opposite ends of the lake, began to budge. Both boys tugged back and the fish tugged harder. Another yank from Allister and Soloman and their fish burst forth as if out of the starting gate of some great derby. And the icebergs followed the lines which followed the fish, who swam straight towards the middle, towards each other. Allister and Soloman screamed and yelled with equal burst of fear and excitement. And, when their fish seemed like they would collide in the middle sending the icebergs crashing into each other soon after, they must have caught the other's fishy eye and saw the challenge, saw the light in the fishy pupil. For, instead of colliding, they took simultaneous and sudden turns away from each other and towards the shore. A race had begun. Allister and Soloman's icebergs coasted past remains of melting icebergs. And, even as their own chariots began to melt, the fish pulled them closer and closer to shore, neck and neck, and berg to berg they were.   

If there were a camera propped, perhaps someone could have named a winner. Allister and Soloman would, of course, argue in favor of their own catch. But, this can be said. When the fish touched the shore with unparalleled aquatic speed, they swerved around so quickly that what was left of Allister and Soloman's chariots slammed into land and threw the boys and their stools into the air to land on the ground at precisely the same moment. They dusted themselves off and giggled and remained giggling as they watched the fish drag their rods deep beneath Culver Lake.   

For some twenty-five years, Allister and Soloman met at Culver Lake as winter dripped away, to relive their experience. To feel the spirit that Admiral Peary must surely have felt as his dogs mushed through the impossible. And it never ended the same. They would catch nothing or the ice would hold all day or the ice would melt right away and they would find themselves having to swim back. Twice, they were too stubborn to do so, staying long enough in the frigid waters to catch hypothermia and frostbite in three toes apiece-which had to be amputated (very much in the spirit of Admiral Peary). And, after twenty-five years, they finally stopped.

Magic is something that cannot be recreated.

Swallowing A Walnut

2009-04-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

Lacking in equal doses of sense and thought, Allister one day tried to swallow a walnut that was in equal doses of uncracked and whole. It was one of those flashes of reactions that happen before the mind can protest, a child running across a busy street in chase of a ball. It was one of those flashes of reactions that become lodged in your windpipe and suffocate. Allister had been alone and knew little of the Heimlich (as the Heimlich had yet to be born) and little of any other means of dislodging. He simply clutched his throat and wrestled to breathe past the walnut.

When lightness of the head took over, Allister succumbed to reason, that his passing would come as the result of the stupidest of knee jerk reactions. He sat in his favorite chair, closed his eyes, and let the glaze of suffocation take over. And there was, at first, darkness of the purest variety and then a sudden shot of light. A flare that opened Allister's mind and took him through images of his life, a flip book of memories. His first cry, his first laugh, his first job, his first love, his first child, his second child, his second job, and so on so forth in thirds, fourths, and fifths. There were hugs and handshakes and walks and jogs and yards and pastures and friends and families and birthdays and funerals and houses and apartments and the feel of felt hats and leather briefcase handles and all flashing so fast, yet so full, and leading up to the ultimate climax of death by walnut.

Each and every memory was given due thought and due flash. And as they raced by, as seconds ticked by, Allister's breath grew weaker. His body grew limp, until that last possible moment when the body should have, by all reason, given up entirely. At that moment, when all else relaxed, there was a pulse, a tremor that rushed through a channel of nerves and sent his fist clenched first above his head and then into his gut hard enough to manually push a burst of air up his windpipe and pop the walnut like it were a champagne cork on New Years, sailing free and into the air. Allister lurched forward, frantically sucking in new air. And when he had been respiratorally satiated, he sat still, as still as he ever remembered sitting and looked at his clenched fist. It was the first time he ever really thought about having a fist, having an arm, having two of both in fact. He stared in the silent and soft look that only comes in the most gracious of moments when words fall flat.

When Allister regained thought, regained word, he thought of the flashes of memory and asked, "What," with utmost sincerity and confusion. For, the only memory that actually belonged to him was the choking of the walnut.

A Whisper To No One In Particular

2009-04-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

Allister awoke one day to let the breeze tug a whisper from his lips and carry it away. The day previous had found Allister at a loss, as if a void had filled the space once occupied by thought and tissue. There was no pain. Instead, there was the absence of feeling altogether, which hurt more than any pain-a hurt that could not even register. How this loss had born was not easily understood. For, it was possible that his schedule had gotten the better of him, that he was needed in too many places at the same time. It was possible that the constant motion of the world had once again thrown him back into himself. It was also possible that his conscience had filled with too many questions-of life, of death, of clouds, of dirt, of dreams, of chance, of direction, of fear- and had become water-logged. And, of course, there lay the possibility that all of these tied together into knots and strangled his thoughts.

On days like that, it was not uncommon to find Allister staring fixedly at a gutter streaming melted snow water from the edge of a roof, tears running down his face. It was also not uncommon for Allister to be unable to explain why he was crying, his tear ducts reacting to something in between the subtle sadnesses of the loss of snow and the subtle happinesses of the coming spring. And this theory comes only as an outsider's observation and analysis. For, it was just as likely that the tears came first for no apparent reason, that embarrassment had filled his eyes after the initial mystery tears dropped so suddenly. That frustration over the inability to control his emotions pushed the tears over the sides of his lower lids to stream down his cheeks. And that he, then, jerked his head up to make gravity work for him and send the streams to flow back into his tear ducts and that this just so accidentally brought him to look at the gutter's streaming flow.

But, to muse for more than a paragraph on the cause of his tears in times as those is a most sincere waste. For, what is known is that Allister felt hollow. Felt disattached. And to state that takes merely a sentence or two. And in some cases, one and a half sentences.

When Allister found himself able to pull away from the gutter, he would walk home and sit in his study. Indeed, in times like these Allister found sanctuary in his study. Oftentimes, he believed himself more bookshelf than man. He would set pen to paper and follow. It was easy in times of hardship to lose yourself inside of yourself, to withdraw, to follow the lines that looped and swirled, to hold the pen and let it drip ink that surely came from a pulmonary well-the pen conducting just as much as the tiny twitches in the hand and wrist that led the pen to swirl and tumble along.

And Allister would get lost in a paragraph, a sentence, a word. He would slide down the slopes of an s and cradle himself in the lower curvature of the e. And what he had written seemed like nonsense at times. But, when verbal tactics could not explain the loss, the disattachment, it was calming to see them drip, even if nonsensical, from a pen.

And it was easy. It was necessary-to be lost. How else could you be found? The tide must recede in order to flow back. And so on and so forth. And though it is necessary and though one must find a calmness in this to regain the strength, one must be certain not to get lost in the uncertainty. One must not remain disattached. We must not get lost in our thought. For this, too, was easy to do. To sleep in the curvature of the e alone in your study.

But, we must wake, as Allister did. We must whisper something (however nonsensical) to the wind so that it will know we are here, that we are ready to wake. And we must believe that it will catch the understanding of another-that in the very least it will shake the branches of some tree or prick up the alert ears of some hibernating rabbit. For, we all hibernate a bit from time to time. And knowing that, we must whisper ever so gently until we have regained our full voice. It is as much to awaken our own spirit as it is to awaken the silent spirits of our friends.

Mashed Potatoes (A Love Story?)

2009-04-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

When thinking about holidays and when thinking about love, there often arose in Allister the memory of December 1916. Though peace would seem more likely and lights would gleam brighter in future holiday memories, it was this one that rested so simply in a permanent place in his mind.   

Allister was a younger man, then. The United States was younger then, too, and months away from entering the Great War. In recollection, the war seemed to be the only elder element, having waged on for two years without a hint as to when it might stop. And though peace temporarily dangled, the unrest was felt in the Carolinas as pure and strong as the heat of that unusually humid December. Soon, there would be a move made. But, for that moment, that December, all was still. And Allister peeled potatos in the sweat of Camp Jackson's mess hall.   

He peeled in supposed punishment. But Allister, having volunteered to help early on in the mess hall and having demonstrated his expertise in fine peeling and mashing (of which General Gregory was said to have praised as, "a divine culinary perfection"), had so impressed the commanding officers that Allister speculated that this order to peel and mash was less punishment and more Christmas gift to the commanding officers. And so, he peeled and sliced. He sliced smaller, finer, turning the slices to flakes. Allister mashed the flakes in butter and milk, wiped the sweat from his brow, and repeated the process. Allister worked passionately, furiously to fill the large metal vats. And his thoughts were filled not with potato, but with Catherine.  

Theirs was a relationship that never materialized passed giggly conversation. But, to discard this as simply friendship would be to ignore the connection that sailed simply from iris to iris. The connection that pulled up the corners of the mouth to smile without fail. It was to misunderstand the words that Allister tried to say, the words that seemed to turn to soup and kept Allister's mouth shut for fear of leaving the soupy mess on the floor. And so, their conversation was simple, was giggly. It had sparked in appropriate simple and giggly fashion at a Camp Jackson dance. The simpleness came of the cliche of chance meetings at dances and the giggliness came of Allister's feet colliding with Catherine's feet and shins as if he were not dancing, but playing soccer.   

Allister's duties kept them from more than a few meetings, the last being a discussion of what each wanted for Christmas. Allister could think of nothing and Catherine could think of only snow. Their talk turned to the stories of the town, of the heat, of how streams of salty water trickled down the street, formed by and still collecting the drops of citizens' perspiration. There was more giggling. There was an invitation from Catherine to her Christmas eve party. There was a smile from Allister. There was a hug and a goodbye.  

Two days would pass, an order would be given, and Allister would find himself in the unfortunate position of mashing heavenly potatos on Christmas eve instead of attending Catherine's party. And, as he mashed, the vats slowly filling, the sweat slowly beading, the evening slowly nearing, Allister felt as though fate had kicked him in the abdomen. Allister knew multiple vats were not needed, that one would have served the entire company with room for second and third helpings. His teeth gritted. His hands clenched. And Allister suddenly realized that, that even in this furious clenching, he was not sweating. Not a drop. The temperature had dipped.  

Soldiers who had been serving with Allister recalled the smile that appeared on his face at this point, that he even volunteered to clean the extra vats on his own. Similarly, the over-night guests who had chosen to stay at Catherine's recalled fondly that when they awoke on Christmas morning, Catherine was at the front window beaming as the snow fell in flakes.   

And, as Allister walked home to his bunk that Christmas eve, he saw his breath puff out in front of him. He saw the first tiny flake fall from the sky. And he knew that Catherine would never know that beneath the layer of snow around her home, lay a layer of the finest mashed potato.   

Allister would always admit that he knew little of fate. That he and Catherine would have no other meetings before his battalion was moved from Camp Jackson and then, eventually, sent overseas. That when the war had tired and passed on, it would age all that were involved. That when he arrived back he and Catherine would be on different paths that did not cross again. To some, this could be felt as a cruel joke. A jab at love and happy endings.  

Allister, though, always wondered who had the idea to snow for Catherine first-himself or the sky. And, though Allister never did see Catherine's smile on the morning of the snow, it was the thought of it that would carry Allister through many long nights and dark battles to come and to simply say that it "was not meant to be" would be to rob Allister of a miracle.

The Memory Of Shaving

2009-04-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

Allister did not remember when he first learned to shave. He knew what he was doing, of course. In fact, he was an apt shaver-could pull the razor in straight lines of the most productive qualities along his jawline with nary a slice in the skin. But, how did he get there? He could remember days when he did not shave. He just could not remember the divide, the Mason-Dixon Line, the exact point where it all changed. He had no photographs, no daguerreotypes, no tintypes of a four year old Allister looking into a mirror next to his father, both faces displaying creamy white beards, both with razors (the guard on Allister's blade so cleverly left in place by his father).

And yet, there must have been some tutorials. He just could not recall them. Like one of those thick science tomes whose actual worded contents remain vague, but whose lessons are used in reference constantly-acids, bases, photosynthesis, carbonization. There, of course, remained the possibility that Allister was simply born with the ability to shave. Like Einstein, no teacher was needed. Einstein, you will recall, was a poor student of math. Likewise, Allister was poor student in terms of hygiene-until the fateful day that he picked up a razor and met his muse. Carving paths through hair, like a modern-day (now past-day) Daniel Boone chopping away roughage, leaving the skin smooth and bare for the building of factories and housing developments. So long, Allister had lulled in a la-di-da world of personal hygiene. But, with the razor, he just knew how to make it glide like a condor-a condor with bladed wings, barely above the ground, whisking away reeds and weeds, clearing the way for other birds.

Yes, that was how he felt he may have been-a modern-day (now past-day) Daniel Boone condor. And his skin seemed to agree. No bumps. No red rash. His skin respected the artistry, the perfection of each stroke, as if nothing was cut at all-no, no, no such violence. But, instead, the hair was lifted away-dandelion fluff carried away by the breeze. A born genius. His place of relevance, in front of a washroom mirror.

And one day, in looking around the washroom-his studio where his art was made (on the outer edge of the sink, in the medicines cabinet), Allister was aware that this recent (now past) realization of perfection was botched. For, he was surrounded by objects and tools whose mentoring he, too, had long ago forgotten. Combs, toothbrushes, soaps, clippers, scissors, shampoos. Whom did he have to thank and why could he not remember those fateful days? The first time he removed tartar from an incisor, the first time he freed strands of hair from snarls. He imagined that most of these lessons came from his parents. But, where was the memory? Faded behind the knowledge? Allister must have been so proud to do it on his own, to finally grip the handle and shave.

Were they all slight memories of nature? The passing of the razor from wise father to the ready hand of his maturing son? Was it a rebellious moment? One of the moments in the, "No, I can do it on my own Dad," vein? Where Allister grabbed the razor from his father's hand and shaved his face in defiance? His father realizing his son had grown, would leave soon, would shave on his own now so someday he, too, could have a family, children he would show how to shave and brush, and who would leave him and find their way.

And Allister did not know. He knew he could shave. He knew that he had learned how. But, he could not recall the story behind it. Time had transcribed the memory in such a way the words of the story were lost in the action of doing. And, try as he might to get those words back, he could not. So, every morning he shaved. He shaved so perfectly. Just like he had always remembered doing.