Eve, A Literary Fable

The Rainy Day

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

            The rain has been incessant today, and as James Joyce would say, “falling generally all across” the Pacific Northwest.  This dark and dreary weather gives me pause to reconsider the relevance of Longfellow’s line, “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.”

            This story begins when I had just completed my degree in journalism from U. C. Sacramento and was still filled with the zealous ambition to tell the truth as I saw it, and with that truth, change the world.  Needing a place to ply my supposed life’s purpose, I took a job at a relatively young news magazine, The Gate, in San Francisco as a “staff reporter.”  A staff reporter meant I was the low man on the totem pole: no By Lines, no Pulitzers, no fame, only a lowly writer of content fill.  I was told that I needed to “cut my teeth” in the real world of journalism, and that meant surviving at least a full year of local political races, inconsequential city council and school board meetings, and the requisite “pet-saves-the-day” feel good fluff.  I was seriously considering a professional change when I was finally offered what was proposed as a primo assignment.  It would be, as it turned out, my last assignment as a journalist, but the story would challenge me in ways I still do not fully understand, and stick with me through all the frustrating years and rejections of my career as a starving writer.

            It would be those unending, disquieting thoughts that led me to the research of the probabilities of impossibility, Faith as it were.  As to my conclusions and suppositions, I guess you could call me agnostic.  I don’t know what I believe.  I am writing this because it is the logical thing to do.  I know there will be some who will use this as some sort of dissertation on a definitive truth, and others who will laugh at my ludicrous premise and unscholarly connection of seemingly incongruous events.  

            I found Eve amid scores of yellowed missing persons reports in the archives of the Seattle police department.  Her first name was my only “hit” in hundreds of hours of searching.  The police report led me to a few surviving newspaper articles to supplement the scant investigative interviews.  Unfortunately, her few friends have scattered over the years, and her parents are long deceased.  So with the little I had, I began to piece together what I uncovered and compare it to the “facts” I knew, and thus this incredible story was compiled. 

Granted, my conclusions are not without flaws, and wholly dependent on a certain number of leaps-of-faith.  In the end, I still don’t know if I believe what I think, or even think what I believe, but this is my thesis of Faith.

            Eve Sternum was born March 13, 1948, in Wenatchee, Washington.  Her father was an economics professor at Central Washington University and her mother a high school science teacher.  Her Scandinavian heritage blessed her with fine blond hair and (according to reports) striking blue eyes; however, it denied her the stereotypical flawless beauty inherent of the people of that region.  She was, instead, reportedly plain by most accounts, but also known as an intellect without equal.  Eve excelled in her studies and graduated high school in her 16^th year.  Due to her youth, her parents kept her home for the first two years of college, studying psychology at Wenatchee Valley College.  As her 18^th birthday neared, she applied to, and was accepted at, the University of Washington in Seattle.  Emancipated and on her own, she redoubled her academic prowess, and earned her bachelor’s in less than 10 months.  At that point she switched majors and began to pursue studies in biologic pharmaceuticals for her graduate degree.  She was awarded her Masters of Science almost six months early, on March 13, 1969.  She apparently failed to recognize the significance of the date so carefully orchestrated by her parents.

            Eve was a particularly non-social person.  According to the surviving interviews of her classmates, she was not anti-social, but preferred quiet, uninterrupted study in her dorm over the din of campus life.  Abstaining from the political and social unrest of the era, and refusing to engage in debate or even the expression of opinions on Nixon and the Viet Nam War, she was considered by many to be a collegiate pariah, and shunned as such.  Her recreation was therefore, not found in the company of the co-ed males, nor was it dancing, parties, raucous rallies or partaking in the varied intoxicants prevalent in the mid to late 1960s.  She instead found her recreational pleasures in solo, exploratory hikes and backwoods kayaking in the Cascades Mountains.  It is there where her story begins and ends.

            Her 22^nd birthday had passed during a particularly late cold snap.  Eve had spent the winter and early spring working in a post-graduate fellowship on a derivative of a protein found only in the furled frons a rare species of fern.  It was her belief, according to several people who assisted her, that by splitting this protein she had identified, and combining it with an inherent human amino acid, she could produce a biologic receptor that would inhibit the growth of metastatic melanoma.  Her ultimate goal was to find a bridge that would correlate this receptor with other cancers.  She carefully documented her discoveries in copious detail, bound in notebooks that were never found outside her guarded possession.

            By early April, the air had warmed and the snow had receded enough for her to pack a three-day supply of food and water, some necessary sterile vials, her carefully annotated lab notes and a jar of the refined solvent necessary for the protein extraction.  It was a Saturday when she headed into the high bush country in search of the tender spouts that promised a medical breakthrough. 

            But as I said, this is both the beginning and the end of her story.  Eve never returned from her hike.  Air and ground searches continued for three weeks without any positive results.  By the end of the summer of 1970, Eve Sternum and all of her potential, was relegated to the annals of the lost hikers of the Pacific Northwest.

            And then came the infamous “Fastiff video.”

            When I was assigned to interview Charlie Fastiff, trust me, I did everything possible to weasel my way out of it.  It may have been offered as a primo assignment, but the topic was not of particular interest to me and I had no desire to indelibly tie my virginal reputation to such a fiasco.  Even in light of the remarkable story that eventually unfolded, this is still a case where I believe the mystery would have been better off left a mystery; my life certainly would have had a different outcome. 

The magazine wanted to cover the popular, quote, Bigfoot phenomenon, end quote, from every conceivable angle.  The magazine wanted interviews from every kook and every official, from witnesses and hoaxers, from biologists and cryptozoologists; my editor wanted every piece of tangible evidence, and of course, he wanted Charlie Fastiff’s video.

            I met Charlie at his house, a tiny ramshackle clapboard trailer surrounded by a yard full of discarded appliances, toilets and rusting car bodies.  He resides just off Highway #7 in British Columbia on the outskirts of Hope.  Oh, I was so tempted to make a joke about his circumstances and the nearby town’s name, but out of social etiquette, I kept quiet.  I guess I’ll leave it to each of you to devise an appropriate punchline for yourself.

            Charlie was not someone I would categorize as a typical North Woods mountain man.  He was short, rotund and had a ruddy complexion betoken of the hypertension that he likely garnered from his poor diet, abusive beer consumption, and evident lack of exercise. 

We met and shook hands at the base of the weather-worn wood steps that led into the trailer.  I asked if he knew who I was, and what I was there for.  He acknowledged the scheduled interview, but demanded his negotiated stipend before he would allow me inside.  I counted the U.S. currency as I laid it out on a rusted washing machine; he refused to help me retrieve my equipment from the car, but did graciously hold the door open as I toted my tripods, recorders and cameras into the mobile home.

Inside, his home was dingy and dark with an odiferous air of mildew, stale beer and urine, but mixed with a sweetness that knew, but failed at first to identify.  I placed a voice recorder atop a stack of moisture stained Field and Stream magazines.  I glanced around hoping to spot one of our titles, but from the age of the periodicals I saw, I doubt my esteemed employer was even being published when Charlie had bought his last subscription.  With the recorder on, I set about placing the video cameras and lights for the main part of the interview.  While I busied myself, I began the “soft stroke” questions designed to promote confidence and ease of conversation.

I learned that Charlie was collecting disability from a short military stint, and made other money trading junk metal and doing odd jobs.  He had been married once and had a child; neither his ex-wife nor his son had spoken to him in over 15 years.  His life, he claimed, was pretty much solitary since his best friend, Steve, had been recently killed in prison.  He boasted that he and Steve used to enjoy bird watching and hiking in the mountains; my cursory inspection of the miniscule hovel proved there wasn’t anything that could possibly substantiate those as active hobbies.  When I asked about the dangers of being alone in the woods, he produced a 44 caliber handgun, saying he was not stupid, no bear or mountain lion was going to get him.  He said, “This here might not kill a bear, but it sure as hell will scare ‘em off.”  I simply smiled as if I agreed.

I rearranged the room so that there were two chairs directly in front of the old Zenith 27” console TV with its RCA VCR on top.  In the corner, I noticed several plastic milk crates full of cassettes.  I commented about the number of movies to which he replied, he didn’t get television out here, it was too expensive, but those, indicating the cache of tapes, were mostly, “You know, adult stuff.  Fuck films.”  His admission made me reconsider sitting on the soiled upholstered chair, but I had made it this far, and I figured, a new pair of jeans would not kill my budget.

I placed his now infamous video into my high speed tape-to-tape duplicator so I would have the negotiated full copy to bring back to San Francisco, and while that spun, I checked the camera angles in order to have face shots of both him and me to edit together.  Plus, the two mic sources would assure the best possible audio recording.

Charlie went to the kitchen and returned with a cold can of Natty; he didn’t offer one to me.  We began the interview talking about why he went up on the mountain alone.  He again offered the same lies about bird watching and hiking; I was not there to judge, so I allowed him to prattle his overly detailed and extensive fabrications without interruption or challenge.  

With the suspect prologue recorded, I asked if we could start the video.  He offered to cue it up to the exciting stuff, but I insisted that I needed to see the entire film.  Almost from the beginning, where there was an obvious edit, I could detect two whispering voices and an occasional shadow that could not have come from Charlie, who was holding the camera. 

I allowed the farce to continue making notes based on the blue timer readout of the VCR.  At 18 minutes 52 seconds, Charlie indicated in a voice that sounded like over-emoted fear, that this is where it happened.  The progress of the “hike” slowed considerably as if Charlie, while shooting the video was either setting something up or awaiting some off-camera cue.

The view on the tape panned around a large boulder where three creatures  jumped to their feet; two very large males, and one significantly smaller and lighter colored female.  This was the image of the supposed Sasquatches I was sent to collect.

Charlie stood and stated, “I don’t want to watch this part.”  He hobbled towards the kitchen with the probable purpose of fetching another Natural Light.

The video image shuttered like the camera was being held in unstable hands.  The motion caused the auto-focus to drift in and out without capturing a clear image of the Bigfoot creatures.  The audio, as I am sure you have seen and heard numerous times, was unblemished by the Blair Witch-type cinematography.  Charlie’s voice is heard stammering, “Oh my God.  Oh, my God!  It’s okay.  It’s okay.  We won’t hurt you.  Really, it’s okay.”

There were guttural grunts and hisses from the two larger “animals,” but the smaller female remained silent, tilting her head like a curious child.  In a very human-like fashion, she took four steps toward the camera, paused, and pointed an index finger at Charlie.  He spoke again, more calmly than I would have expected, “It’s okay; I won’t hurt you.  My name is Charlie.”

The female pointed her finger at her own chest and vocalized some sounds that many proclaim sound like, “Me - Eve - Momma.”

As if by some prearranged cue, the two large males screamed in a high-pitched coyote-like howl and ran in the direction of the camera.  Charlie and his undisclosed companion also screamed, and that is where, as you know, the video ends.

“That’s where I dropped the camera and broke it.”  Charlie was standing behind me, emptying another blue and silver can.  “I went back two days later; they must’ve fucked with it, because it was a good ten yards from where I dropped it.  I’m just glad the tape was still there.”

I shook my head in disbelief.  I smiled, “You have always claimed you were up there alone.  You weren’t.  Who was with you, Charlie?”  The question seemed to catch him off guard.  “Come on, it’s obvious, man, there were two of you there.”

Charlie’s shoulders slunk, “It was Steve.  Me and him were together, but don’t write that, okay?  I ain’t be sharing no money with his damned low-life kids.  I ain’t got nothing, nothing but this tape.  So if you don’t mind, you just say it was only me up there, okay?”

It was about then that my sensory memories kicked in and I finally identified the other odor that hung in the air.  “You had a grove out there, didn’t you?”

“What the fuck do you mean?  A grove?”

“You and Steve were growing pot out there, weren’t you?   You aren’t bird watchers; you don’t take a video camera bird watching.  You aren’t hikers either; look at you, man.  And I can smell the weed, Charlie.  That’s what you were doing, right?”

Charlie looked genuinely nervous, even scared this time.

“Look, Charlie, I’m not the cops; I don’t give a damn about the marijuana.  I am only here about the video and how you came to shoot it.  The rest can stay your dirty little secret, honest.”

Charlie sat defeatedly into his chair.  He dropped his face into his hands and whispered, “Someone was fucking with our plants.  We were going to get them on film; maybe kill ‘em.  I don’t know.  It was all Steve’s idea.”

“Was the whole Bigfoot stunt staged?”

“Hell, no!  Those fucking things scared the shit out of us.”  Charlie stood up and switched the VCR off, killing the static.  “Anyone that goes out there alone is just plain fucking nuts.” 

He sat hard again into the chair.  He appeared lost in thoughts for several minutes, and finally added, “Steve went back up there to harvest the plants.  He’s the one that got the camera.  I ain’t never going back up there.  He got caught coming back down; that’s where they busted him.  The camera was in his PBs at the jail.  I guess he listed me as the emergency contact, ‘cause they gave me all his shit after he got hisself shanked and died.  I did give his watch and money to his kids, but I ain’t never told them about the camera.”

When I got back to San Francisco, I ran another copy of the tape to keep as a souvenir.   With that done, I gathered the interview tapes and the magazine’s equipment and headed downtown to meet with my editor.  The meeting didn’t go as well as I might have expected.  He was seriously agog over the video, ranting about it being the first definitive evidence that Sasquatches exist.  I attempted to get him to listen to the “other” facts, but he wasn’t interested in Charlie’s confessions.  I argued that the truth behind the Bigfoot encounter was nothing more than a preposterous hoax perpetrated by a couple of marijuana growers to deter people from hiking near their crops.  I beseeched him that the video could injure the magazine’s reputation if we were to propound it as anything other than just another fraud.  In the end, I was politely, yet sternly, admonished that as long as I worked for The Gate, I would have no say and offer no opinion as to what the magazine would or wouldn’t do with its content; furthermore, it was his job, not mine, to decide what was truth and what was farce. 

Truth, as it turns out, whether it is broadcast as news, printed in books and magazines, preached from a pulpit, or posted on the Internet, is nothing more than an editorial decision.  No definitive paradigm exists.  To paraphrase an old saying, one man’s truth is another man’s folly.  I sadly discovered that journalism is a sham unless you are willing to accept the truth as it is interpreted by the powers that be. 

  I did agree with him about my obligations as a magazine employee.  But I was tired, I was disheartened, and I was disappointed by the realities of my chosen profession.  I quit.

Later that evening, alone in my darkened apartment, I contemplated this new and unplanned slant on my future.  My copy of the Fastiff video lay on the counter where I had left it; I decided to watch it again.  I hoped to reassure myself as to the conclusions that ended my short and quite un-illustrious journalism career.  But as the video ended, I was left as empty as I was at the beginning.  I stared, mesmerized at the static and snow of the empty tape, wishing I could find some small solace for my actions.  Life changing events are rarely fraught with joy and confidence; this was no exception. 

Depression sat heavy on my chest, and I decided to self-medicate the pain and lubricate the “I quit” words still lodged in my throat.  Pouring a straight four fingers of Kentucky Gentleman, I started towards to the TV to quiet the white noise when at 28 minutes, 51 seconds, I heard something else.

I rewound and listened, and rewound and listened, over and over until I was certain that there was something more than just blank tape noise.

For more than a week, my mind twisted in turmoil as I considered the possible consequences of this discovery.  I vacillated between going public and the destruction of the evidence.  Truth had again morphed in my conceptual mind.  If what I had heard turns out to be “true,” it could, in fact, change the world.  Now I was the editor.

I set about recruiting help.  I would need substantive and verifiable tests done by reliable and creditable authorities.  And all of this needed to be accomplished with a bank account that held little promise of a replenishing paycheck in any foreseeable future.  I cashed in every favor I ever amassed until at last, one of my professors from the University called with a possible lead.  She had an associate who was currently engaged in audio reconstruction and analysis for the government.  Apparently he and she once had something more than a casual friendship, and she thought she could entice him to study the tape without charge. 

For security purposes, I was not allowed to enter the secretive lab, but after four days, he called late at night and asked for a meeting.  The next morning at a downtown coffee shop, he presented me with a filtered version of my tape where he had segregated the subject noises from the background interference.  His linguist had agreed to analyze the sounds and had concluded that it was, indeed, some sort of vocalized communication.  To his surprise, although the source was undoubtedly animal in origin, there were syllables that appeared to be constructed in English. 

He provided a short transcript for me to compare to the sounds on the filtered tape.

Female voice:  (unintelligible) No (unintelligible) Momma

First male voice:  (unintelligible)

Second male voice:  (unintelligible)

Female voice:  Together -- Eve (unintelligible)

Second male voice:  (unintelligible)

Female voice:  No hurt (unintelligible)

First male voice:  (loud, but unintelligible)

Female voice:  No - Please (unintelligible)

Then the female voice is then heard crying and fading away from the damaged microphone.

Could this all be part of the same hoax?  Yes, sure it could.  But then why doesn’t Charlie make everyone listen to that part of the tape too?  Like I said, I’m agnostic; I don’t know what I believe, I don’t even know what I think.  My guess is that this is where Faith has to enter the picture.

I once heard it argued that George Lucas successfully suggested the existence of God by writing the prequel to the Star Wars Trilogy twenty-five years after the original movie’s premier.  The argument goes that an omnipotent God who presents Himself in Faith, and then challenges mortals to maintain that Faith in the face of free-will and cold reason, could, and in fact, would write the known geologic, paleontologic and archeologic evidence as tests of our Faith.  And therein lies the conundrum of vindication.  It was proffered that should one man trust his Faith over reason, and Faith is never vindicated, the consequences are minimal; however, should another man choose empirical evidence over Faith, and Faith is vindicated, the consequences are beyond comprehension.  Logic defies logic.

There are many who have a faith that Bigfoot exists, but their faith is not as yet provable.  Is Faith truth?  Is truth Faith?  Or are Faith and truth irreconcilable?

No one has ever found a Sasquatch body, nor has anyone captured a live specimen.  And as many as there are, every picture of the beasts is either grainy or out of focus.  Does this lack of evidence prove they do not exist?  I really don’t know; I have no truth other than Eve.  She is not much of a truth other than my aforementioned ludicrous premise and unscholarly connection of seemingly incongruous events, but there also is the Fastiff video and the noises at the end.  I keep telling myself that only a fool would believe.  This is where unvindicated Faith and undiscovered evidence must be reconciled.  I still attempt to say I am agnostic, that I don’t believe what I think, or think what I believe, but then I did hear that voice, and I felt the Spirit.

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…

Eve.

A few thoughts on writing and immortality

            Drop a pebble into still water and the energy of displacement radiates out in concentric waves of increasing circumference and proportionately decreasing intensity.  That sounds so scientific, doesn’t it?  That image occurred to me while lying in bed with my dog pressed against my chest.  We live alone now, just “Bubba” and me, and although we have friends, relatives, business and social acquaintances, I began to wonder who might miss us when the inevitable time comes.  The ripples my life has generated in the continuum of space and time, as explicated by the waves in the gentle pool, are spreading wider and wider, and are decreasing in their crest and trough.  At some point their significance will likely diminish to the point of imperceptibility.  Will anyone remember?

            As a writer, I go through those same ebbs and flows of confidence that all writers suffer.  (Did I just use another water metaphor?)  I have stared at blinking cursors without knowing where to go; I have penned loquacious pages of mediocrity; and written more than few things that earned kudos, appreciation and publication, but I have yet to finish any work of significance. 

I do not write to boast that I am a writer, or to gain fame and celebrity.  I politely refuse the incessant invitations of circles and groups; I decline “author” interviews and requests for guest posts on other writers’ blogs.  I write because I believe I have something to say.  An audience is the end game for everyone who writes, without an audience, a writer ceases to exist.  But I don’t want to capture an audience for the sake of having them listen; I want the audience to come willingly and engage in the dialogue of my prose with the culture of society.

            I am a literary writer of practiced discipline.  I doubt that the complexity of my style will ever result in a huge splash of popularity.  (Sorry, I had to throw that water balloon in.)  But I do aspire to the dream that long after my ripples have faded, that a student will pick up a piece of my work and analyze its craftsmanship of the words on the paper and the words beneath.

            I have loved and lost, and I’ve been lost in love.  I have built and run successful businesses and failed at one or two.  I’ve been rich a couple of times and broke a couple of more.  I’ve taught young malleable minds and learned from them, too.  I have even pulled a drowning child from a pool as her inattentive parents busied themselves with a rung on an inconsequential corporate ladder.  With the passing of time, none of these things will be remembered for they are insignificant to society at large.

            It is reported that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick did not achieve acclaim until nearly 50 years after his death.  Many writers I know would consider that a failure; I would view that as an ultimate success.  His masterful discourse on the hypocrisy of adopting Christendom not out of Faith, but to achieve social stature, trumpeting the attributes while ignoring the tenets for personal gain, juxtaposed against the genuine reverence and adherence to belief of the pagan Queequeg is as an important a lesson today was it was in 1851.  Unfortunately, society has de-evolved to the point where reading (including the video “reads” of television and cinema) has become mere escapism instead of a tool of acculturation.  I fear that the vast majority of students studying the classics today probably view Moby Dick as a tedious story of whaling and miss the significance of its lessons.  (Yes, I know that Moby Dick is a water allusion, must be the theme of the day.)

            I doubt I will ever write that kind of masterpiece, as long as I write something significant enough to stand the test of time.  In the 1979 Soviet movie, Stalker, Anatoliy Solonitsyn plays a writer who, when the characters arrive at the mythical room that grants wishes, posits that, “Books are a writer’s immortality.”

            I don’t plan to live forever, but I would like to achieve a little immortality before my ripples fade and disappear.

Sweet Nectar and Hummingbirds

     Last year, in my first spring season on this particular mountain, I installed some decorative hangers around the decks and dutifully set my hummingbird feeders out to attract my diminutive avian friends over for a sugary free meal.  I have a long history of feeding these gentle birds, so I was disheartened by the scarce numbers of my friends-in-flight that came and visited.  During that first season of warm temperatures, the need to frequently discard soured and/or ant infested nectar tested my determination, but each week I continued to wash, sanitize and refill the bottles in desperate anticipation of the absent flocks with which I had become accustomed to since living in North Carolina.

     This year, fearing a similar disappointment, I was tempted to forego my annual spring tradition, but in an attempt to stave off the depression of my solitary life, I once again revived the practice of wash, fill, and wait.

     To my delight, the word must have gone out via the avian social networks (Eggbook, Tweeter, Beakerest, and Feathers +), because by my count, I have more than two dozen tiny friends dining and dancing each day on all sides of my home.

     The handsome and dapper ruby-throated males,

From my deck, this male is pausing between courses.

along with their minions of drab-dressed hens, swoop and flit between the dense forestation and my half-dozen bottles of calorie laden, sweet liquid.  In the frantic chases between shelter and food, the incessant buzzing of their impossibly fast wings is frequently accompanied by the soft staccato chirps of tiny vocalizations.  Yes, hummingbirds do sing!  Their soft chirp-chirp-chirp belies the widely held belief that they, as a species, had in mass, forgotten all the bird-words and were condemned to a forlorn life of sadly humming their tunes.  

     Their presence around my house has become as accepted to me as my presence in their secluded woodland has become to them.  They are so accustomed to me being outside that they often hover within mere inches of my face to say hello and investigate the friendly giant that keeps their plastic flowers full of energy juice.  I talk to them; I know that sounds crazy, but each day I acknowledge them in a quiet voice, assuring them of their safety and my delight at their presence.  They have abandoned their instinctive fears, and in turn, answer me back in tiny voices of acceptance, gaining more confidence each day, approaching nearer and nearer, and staying a little longer with each visit. 

     These are the gentlest of creatures, each weighing not much more than a tenth of an ounce (or for my European friends, about 3.4 grams).  The rapid drumming of the Archilochus Colubris’ wings foretells their approach, flapping their 3 - 4inch wingspan about 55 times per second.  Everything is dynamically quick in the world of Apodiformes: Mating takes only 2 - 3 seconds, but that is 110 - 160 wing-flaps.  I don’t know about you, but I would be exhausted.  Their tiny hearts beat about 1260 times per minute and they breathe approximately 250 times per minute.  If that alone is not testament to their incredible athleticism, perhaps knowing that during flight, their oxygen consumption per gram of muscle is more than ten times that of our most well-trained human athletes.  But with that I am left to wonder how those biologists were able to strap a miniscule oxygen mask over those tiny needle-like beaks and take measurements.  And where did they get a stethoscope small enough to listen to a hummingbird’s heart?  I’m not one to question science, but…?

     Anyways, the darts and dashes around and across my porches are so ordinary, that I rarely take notice any more.  I still speak to my friends when they come right up to my face, but their flights to and from the feeders are no longer novel enough to capture my attention.  There are however, infrequent times where I am forced to duck and cover.  Apparently, in the world hummingbird courting, it is common that two or more females will violently fight over access to their desired male.  Now I am used to these shenanigans in my own life, but I found it interesting to see that behavior in another species of females.  The sex-craved hens fan their tails wide, swooping, dive-bombing  and engaging  in spectacular midair dogfights (cat-fights?) that would make the best of our Top Gun pilots jealous.  The speed and chaotic paths of their catty competitions endanger anyone or anything in their proximity.  Twice, my instinctively spastic recoil brought the fighting hens back to hover close in an investigative apology; their argument momentarily suspended due to the inadvertent vexation of their giant benefactor.  Once they were confident that I was unharmed and not annoyed, their frantic wing-chase resumed with renewed death defying aerial acrobatics.

There is an abundant and diverse population of animals in the Great Smoky Mountains, but there are only a few that I enjoy and welcome as much as my hummingbird friends.  Sure the bears, wolves, fox and cougars are neat to watch, but I don’t want them as close neighbors.  The deer, elk, turkeys, eagles, and hawks I fear would be difficult and messy in close environs.  The smaller critters like rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and raccoons would be ill-fitted at the house with my dog.  So while I enjoy the outdoors and all that nature affords me in these Edenic mountains; I will leave the animal life to the wilds, but continue to cultivate friendships with my dear acquaintances, the hummingbirds.

As a side note, I am finishing this little muse in a motel room on the outskirts of Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  My friend Sandra, my dog Sebastian and I took the rare opportunity afforded by a momentary lapse in my workload to cross the state line and explore this country’s most visited national park from the Tennessee side.  We are going to spend the day driving / hiking / photographing our way through Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I hope to have some fun tales and spectacular pictures to share with you in the coming days.  Until then, does anyone know where I can get a cup of coffee?  This motel sucks, but everything else was booked solid.  Spur of the moment has its disadvantages.

An American Alone

     The pain was intense, almost blinding, and it swept over him in undulating waves of increasing agony.  There was no time to savor the experience, the warm wet sensation on his back made it clear that the wound was through-and-through.  The shot was in his upper chest, just below his right shoulder.  He had escaped death, but not the danger of his situation.  Coursing adrenaline kept him moving in spite of the onset of the symptoms of shock.  He knew if he stopped, he would die alone in this foreign city.

    The streets were deserted, the Cassock leader, Ivanovitz, had taken his wallet, passport and phone.  He did not speak or understand the local Ukrainian dialect and with no means of contacting his team, he was as alone as one could be. The only comfort he found was in the ankle holster of the one Crimean he took out before the rebels overpowered him.  The Makarov only had four cartridges in the clip, and with his right arm incapacitated, the odds were not in his favor.

     Sevastopol was too far from Yalta to travel while wounded and without papers; there would be no backup, no extraction team to save Nastya; it was him and him alone.  Necessity was his only plan.

     Three blocks in from the water, the streets were dark and quiet.  The bars and whore houses crowded the harbor, but here, working class families slept in tightly clustered stucco homes, their whitewashed paint corroded and pealing from the sea air.  At each corner, one single, dim yellow streetlamp threatened to reveal his presence.  Even with the leather jacket he borrowed from his gun donor hiding the blood from his wounds, his labored gait would arouse the suspicion of any passing patrol of Berkut, the Special Forces in charge of curbing the anti-Russian revolt. 

     The six blocks sapped his energy.  Twice he held his back tight against doorways as headlights intersected the dark street.  At one corner, he was forced to lie a dog littered shrub as two police cars, with their two toned sirens blaring, responded to a drunken raucous near the waterfront.  Every minute spent hiding meant more blood loss and lessened the chances for Nastya.  He needed sleep and he needed a doctor; neither was a luxury he could afford.

     The concrete stairway of a warehouse offered an elevated view of the Cassock safe house at the corner Shcherbaka Street.  Inside he counted five guards, two asleep on the sofa and three playing cards in the kitchen.  In the center of the room was Nastya, tied to the fourth kitchen chair, bloodied and seemingly unconscious.  His only hope was that her motionless state was a result of her training and not from the beating she must have taken. 

     He counted his four rounds again, gripped the pistol in his only usable hand and started across the street.  It was a mere four meters from the shadows to the front door.  The adrenaline once again masked his pain as he started his sprint. 

My Festive Fourth of July on the Mountain

     Most of you know I live high on a mountainside, and I love it.  The views are incredible, I am surrounded by nature, I almost never need to turn on air conditioning, my house is ideally set up for a work-at-home writer, and the relative isolation provides the kind of undisturbed quiet that is conducive to my work.

     The things often referred to as disadvantages by people who visit, are not really difficult to endure as long as you are prepared and plan for the necessities.   My driveway is 800 feet long, has a 180 degree switchback near the top and drops over 110 feet from the garage to the one-lane road coming up the mountain, so in the event of a heavy snowfall, there is no practical way to shovel or maneuver a vehicle down the grade.  No big deal as long as I keep plenty of food in the house; it’s a small price to pay for living where I want.

      My mailbox is a half mile away and approximately 1,000 feet below the house.  Since the vast majority of my revenue arrives by mail, it gives me a daily excuse to get off my bum and treat my dog to his favorite activity: a ride in the truck.

      The house is only two stories, but it sits atop an above ground basement and garage.  The builder elected to construct the whole structure with ten-foot ceilings, so from my cozy office on the second floor to the truck is two flights of 18 stairs.  I admit that shortly after moving in here, my legs would occasionally file a grievance with Body Parts Union, but after a year-and-a-half in residence, they have accustomed themselves to the working conditions and no longer complain if I make the climb forgetting something and have to retrace my steps more than once.

     Like I said, the disadvantages are not difficult as long as I stay prepared.

     As the end of the month of June neared, money became scarce as it does most every month and Sebastian (my dog) and I set out for our routine trip down to retrieve the mail.  I had preplanned that if there was not a significant amount of money in the box, I would forego the trip into town until the next day: there was one pitiful check of no consequence.  To give both Bubba (the dog’s nickname) and me a break, I did stop at one of the village stores to pick something up and left the truck’s A/C running to keep him cool in the lower altitude heat.  When we returned to the house and climbed the outside steps to the front deck, I heard a strange and disheartening noise.  It was the coolant rapidly escaping the overheated radiator in my truck.  You guessed it; I hadn’t planned on that.

     I sat isolated and stranded until the 2^nd, knowing that some money I had lent would be returned on the 3^rd.  I had a friend come collect me and drive me to town where I rented a car and arranged to have the truck towed and repaired.  The estimate for the repair was going to strip me clean of all available money, so I cancelled my nonexistent plans for the holiday weekend and returned to the mountain to await the tow truck.

     The next day, even though my loan remained unpaid, I returned the rental, picked up my truck and some needed provisions and returned to the manse with the intention of a quiet weekend of writing and editing.

     On the Fourth of July, I slept late anticipating an evening of watching the fireworks down in the valley from the front deck supping on a juicy cheeseburger, some crispy fries, a dish of summer cucumber salad and enjoying a glass (or two) of my favorite Merlot.  All was well until the sun slipped behind the Tennessee Smokys and my all-American dog reminded me in no uncertain terms that the rocket’s red glare, bombs bursting in air was not something he enjoyed, and he gave me proof through the night that the “fright” was still there.

     I worked and piddled all weekend; did some laundry and some housekeeping, feeling secure in my little corner of Eden with the knowledge my truck was back running and although I had no aspiration of leaving, it was comforting to know that I could if I wanted. 

      Now, if that loan would only get repaid, everything would be just great.

Gabriella

Our First Meeting

The storm rolled in from the southwest; I watched it with studied disinterest, numbed by the day’s events.  Not much luck had visited my mountain in more than a few years; the chilled updraft from the approaching thunderhead was a welcomed change from the stagnant humid air, but it was hardly fortuitous for anything other than the freshened scent of my perspiration.  It would be another long night of hopeless pondering and aimless planning.

The once gentle roll of the thunder now became punctuated with infrequent snaps like angry cannon fire; the dog whimpered and shook.  In a storm, I was less comforting to him than he was for me in my isolated, wearisome existence.  In some ways I like living like this and in others, I hated life and the obligation I had to continue. 

The dog and I listened as a worn transmission pushed an aged pickup up the steep grade of the access road.  We both knew it would not make the turn into my drive, all of the neighbors had learned from experience that my cabin, in spite of its staging and décor, no longer contained the warmth of invitation and friendship.  Although the words had never been shared with me, the town’s people feared my hermitage and the grizzled man and dog that resided there.  The once flirtatious cashier at the grocer now turned her head when I shopped for provisions.  The jovial crowds at the cafes and taverns disavowed our former friendships, and I graciously left them to their dishonesty by eating at home and buying my whiskey from the package store.  They would argue that it was I who changed, but if I were ever so disposed to engage in such a polemic dispute, I could remind them of what once was, and how that affected everyone, not me alone.  What once was is no longer, and that is only a part of the story, but all of the truth.

There would be no dispute that in the years before the scandal, things were different.  You must forgive me for using such a provincial term as scandal for something that had such wide sweeping effects.  The money that once flowed so easily from my coffers to the local merchants and charities, the support I lent to the now defunct banks and businesses, the gala community celebrations, my stature as an elected official, and most significant, the angel under whose halo I was shaded, are all gone now.  What is left of what I once had is unimportant; what is left of the town, scarred and deformed, is the legacy of my beloved Gabriella.

She arrived in town as a member of a South American dance troupe here for an international festival hosted by the small town of Waynesville.  I would learn later that her lilting accent, although rooted in Columbia, was from her upbringing in New Mexico.  Her English was as near perfect as her Spanish, the result of a valedictorian high school education and two years at Dona Ana Community College.

The first time I saw her was in the opening grand parade.  She appeared to be somewhat older and certainly less graceful than her troupe mates, but her smile and her beauty captured the attention of all who watched.  Some people say I was immediately smitten; I don’t remember it that way.  Oh, I noticed her; there is no heterosexual male that would not have noticed her, but smitten, no.  She was half my age, and at best, a temporary tourist; the most I could hope for is to collect a memory full of exotic smiles to ponder when the festival ended.

Gabriella was the only dancer among the hundreds that attended the annual event that traveled with an entourage.  She was, by festival rules, confined to the gender segregated dormitories in the Folkmoot Center, while her companions, later introduced as brothers and cousins, took rooms at a nearby bed and breakfast inn.  Her protectors walked her to the dorm entrance each night at lights out, and were waiting for her when she left each day.  She was kept isolated from the throngs of tourists and locals at all times.  That is why the evening we met was so unexpected.

I was enjoying some oak aged spirits and the camaraderie of the members of our Arts Council at the Frog Leap Public House.  We sat at the bar and occupied ourselves with the minutia of the community theater season of performances and the details of my expected financial support, when Gabriella, still wearing the vibrant colors of her dance costume, arrived with a party of nine companions and four of her ever-present body guards.  Frog Leap is never a quiet place, but the din of their rapid syllables and the hasty rearrangement of tables, brought the noise level to near raucous. 

The party attracted the eyes of every patron in the eatery, including my own, so when she made eye contact and raised her glass to acknowledge me, my involuntary reaction was to wink and raise my own glass to her.  Looking back, it is likely that that sophomoric act of flirtation was what set the wheels in motion that would end in my disgrace and incarceration.

I suffered in vein to stay attuned to the theater business and ignore the clamor from the dining room at my back.  The few stolen, opportunistic glances over my shoulder were never met with returned looks, so when a felt a soft hand on my shoulder and turned to face my beloved angel for the first time, I was dumbstruck.

“Excuse me.  Hi, my name is Gabriella.  I hate impose, but I suspect you may know which wine on here would be best for both steak and pasta.”  She handed me Chef Whelan’s all-too-familiar wine list.

I swallowed hard and attempted to look relaxed, “The chef has a nice selection of reds, any of which would work.”  I smiled and felt an unexpected intimidation by the inquiry into one of my favorite subjects.  Looking up from the triptych of varietals, I told her, “My favorite is his Barolo Chinato, but I am afraid it is quite pricy.  As an alternative, there is a very nice Merlot from Columbia that is somewhat more affordable.”

“But if the Barolo is your favorite, then I am sure it will be mine also.  Thank you.”  She started to turn and asked, “I did not get your name.”

“Herm, Herm Sutton.  You said Gabriella?”

She held out her hand, “Gabriella De Oro.  I am so happy to meet you.  You are quite well-known in this town.”

“Well-known?  I don’t know about that, but I have friends and I keep myself busy, if that equates to being well-known and well-known is enough to earn me the right to make your acquaintance, then I am most fortunate.”  I hesitated long enough for her to notice before I released her hand, “Enjoy the wine Ms. De Oro.”

Her smile pierced me like an arrow, “I am sure we will.  Thank you, Herm.”

As Gabriella returned to her table with a deliberate gait, I summoned Marc from behind the bar for another glass of bourbon and a request to see the dining room captain.  Before the words finished leaving my lips I felt a firm backhand across my left shoulder.  I turned to see the disappointment in the faces of my friends and realized that in my awed state I had committed the social faux pas of not making formal introductions.  My stammering apologies were met with tacit acceptance until I was rescued by the approach of the Maitre ’D.  

My instructions were simple; Ms. De Oro’s party’s check was to be charged against my account and she was not to be informed until I had left the premises.  I requested a piece of stationary to write a note to convey my wishes to her.  I told him I would leave the note with him upon my departure.

I then instructed Marc, in the presence of my friends and as an act of atonement, to charge all of their tabs to me also, and should anyone decide to stay for dinner, that too was to be included.  As the paper was brought to me, I called my driver and ordered one more Wild Turkey.

                Gabriella,

                I hope the wine was satisfactory.  I realized at your departure that I had committed the unforgivable mistake of failing to introduce my friends, some of Waynesville’s cultural elite.  I hope to redeem myself in your eyes and assure you that I do possess some degree of social etiquette; I have instructed the house to charge your party’s entire dinner bill to my account.  The few dollars that it will cost me is a small price to pay for your forgiveness and the honor of your acquaintance.

                Please enjoy your stay in our friendly, little town.

                Herm 

And then there was a single large caliber rifle shot.

     When you live high on a mountain and deep in the woods, you experience a diversity of sight and sound like no place else.  Whether it is watching an Eastern Screech Owl and her baby roosting just feet away from my deck, listening as the moonshiners ply their illegal trade deep into the night, the rhythm of a Pileated Woodpecker rocking out to some unheard heavy-metal song, the rustle of leaves as chipmunks and snakes scurry off to their daily chores, the staccato reports of the yahoos up above me who target practice each weekend, or the screams of some birds that sound reminiscent of old Tarzan movies, there is always something to grab and hold your attention.

     Oh, and then there is the occasional bear that wanders through the neighborhood.

     Sandra Lynn was sitting out on the front deck one sleepless night a week or two ago, when she heard heavy footsteps on the slope to the east of my house.  She scrambled to turn on the lights in time to see a moderate sized black bear step from the woods and meander down the driveway.  As it crossed the gate line, it set off my driveway alarm and awakened me.  We laughed and talked about the inevitability of a visit from an Ursus americanus; we do live in the Great Smoky Mountains.

     We have repeatedly heard the alarm sound in the nights since then.  I have elected to keep the outside garage lights on at night to deter our nocturnal neighbor from investigating the house and its surrounds.  I do have some trepidation for the dogs that run free on the mountainside, especially my beloved Angel (see old blog post), but from the size and the time of year, it is probably a juvenile exploring the area, and it will fear the dogs too much to attempt an attack or make this a permanent territory.

    That brings me to the events of today, well, today and the last several days.  For a few days now, about mid-afternoon the dogs up and down the mountain have been going crazy with excited barks and anxious yelps.  Several have taken to chasing something through the woods down below my home.  I can’t see them, but from the sounds, I can track their movement as they drive their prey along the fence lines.

     Sandra and I have speculated that it was, in fact, our neighborhood bear being tormented by the dogs.  So today as I worked on a couple of expedites, the dogs took up the chase again.  Their agitated calls summoned my big, brave Sebastian to go out front and interpret the language of his brothers.

     And then there was a single large caliber rifle shot.

     Sebastian ran to cower under my chair, and the other dogs went silent.

     I can’t say for sure what was shot, but I will be listening intently for my driveway alarm in the days that follow.

Boojum, the Monster of Eagle Nest Mountain

The day Tank McDonald died, no one was surprised.  He was a pain-in-the-ass bully as a kid, and grew into a major pain-in-the-ass as an adult.  He took his talent for extorting lunch money from school mates to a whole new level in his chosen career as an unemployed beer-a-holic; borrowing money from anyone and everyone who might be intimidated by his brute size.  He relied on that fear, knowing that they would not expect to be repaid.  Tank was smart enough to never accept anything that wasn’t readily offered to him, so except for a couple of minor public intoxication charges, he had no official police record.  But officially, there wasn’t a deputy in Haywood County that didn’t want to see him gone, and gone can have so many connotations.

Tank, whose given name was Jedidiah, was found face down in the Pigeon River out in Bethel.  He had been beaten to the point of mutilation.  There was not much of an investigation; everyone assumed it was a case of redneck justice, and no one seemed particularly upset at his violent demise.  But that was before they knew all the facts.

As a young man, I used to go camping a lot.  Friends often ask me why I have never been camping since moving up here in these mountains.  The easy excuse would be the black bears, the occasional, almost extinct, catamount, poisonous snakes, venomous spiders, or the usually friendly hill folk who after a couple of beers or a mason jar of shine might take offense at a flatlander like me trespassing on their ancestral land.  But like I said, that would be the easy excuse; the real reason I stay away from the woods at night lies deep in that ultra-perceptive part of the human soul where a societal paranoia can be birthed from happenstance too rare and too unlikely to be believed, and every individual needs a rational alibi.

A week before Tank disappeared, three young couples had set up camp in the DuPont forest for a weekend of heavy partying.  It was on the second night that an argument broke out between two of the campers.  Fueled and fortified by alcohol and stolen prescription narcotics, one of the young women grabbed a flashlight and her keys, vowing to drive herself home.  She had apparently made it to her car because the 2004 CRV was gone, but no one has seen or heard from the camper since.  Over near Brevard, even after all this time, there are still missing person posters in store front windows and each weekend, informal search parties comb the woods for the missing girl.  But everyone in the region, knowing what we all know now, is sure that there isn’t any chance they are going to find her.

The next three incidents reported were equally as odd and as seemingly unrelated to both Tank and the missing camper.  There was a farmer working late in his fields who vanished; his tractor was found abandoned and still running.  Only his prepubescent niece was secretly relieved by his disappearance.  A mechanic and his three pit bull fighting dogs were found hacked to death in a makeshift garage of a secluded country barn.  The third was an 81-year-old grandmother sitting on her porch enjoying a cigarette and a glass of bourbon.  Her husband, daughter and two grandbabies were just feet away watching television inside the family trailer; not one of them heard a sound, but the old lady was found dead, her neck twisted all the way around so that she faced backwards.  The family was devastated by the loss of the social security income from their four long-deceased neighbors.

It wasn’t until a married 26-year-old Canton police officer and a 17-year-old high school cheerleader were found naked and mutilated in the trooper’s patrol car that rumors started up about Boojum, the area’s native Bigfoot.  The speculation began as the fantastical rationalizations of a group of schoolboys trying to literally “scare the pants off” their girlfriends, but like dowsing a campfire with grain alcohol, the story inflamed the community and spread like flames through the dry underbrush of the rural society.

Within the next three weeks, there were seven new cases of people being killed or inexplicably disappearing; each victim with their own unsavory secret.  Boojum was blamed.  Our quiet community was suddenly overrun by television crews, news media, cryptozoologists, self-important cynics and naysayers, and scores of professional and amateur Bigfoot hunters.  It was entertaining to watch the panic and excitement spread.  Of course there were dozens and dozens of unsubstantiated sightings, a few blurry iPhone videos, plenty of audio recordings of howls, whistles and grunts, and many more stories of close encounters than there were factual incidents.  The legend of Boojum, the Monster of Eagle Nest Mountain was alive and well with all of its history, lore, fear and tourism garnering insatiability.

Of the outsiders here to document the details, only one had the misfortune of succumbing to the monster.  His name was Jared Spence, I know his name because he interviewed me three times.  He was a particularly good investigative reporter who was boasting of the discovery of evidence indicating that a human was the perpetrator and not some unknown species of bipedal primate.  Spence was found face down in a field off Crabtree Mountain Road.  His arms, legs and head had been severed from his torso, but carefully positioned in their proper place to give the appearance of an intact body.  Interestingly, his camera, voice recorders and notebooks were missing and never found.

I personally do not find it hard to believe that a monster of this sort could live so close in proximity to a population and stay hidden from view.  Whether it be man-like or some other type of beast, unseen monsters live.  They reside in the unexplored backwoods of the imagination, and are sheltered in that incongruous amalgam of factual misinterpretation and our fear of the unknown.  The one thing that I am certain of is that these incredulous tales that arise from time to time in secluded communities throughout the world bring a color, vibrancy and a communal cleansing to the lives of the inhabitants.  It is most unfortunate that there has to be the occasional death attributed to these fables, but without verifiable facts, no one would be tempted to believe in the unbelievable.

I think now is the time to give Western North Carolina a rest.  Boojum needs to be gone, and gone can have so many connotations.  The mystery of the Eagle Nest Mountain Monster should be boxed up, stowed in the archives of backwoods folklore and relegated to ghost stories told around campfires.  The mountain people must resume their quiet rural lives, but preserve the excitement of what once terrorized their community as a mythology whispered to the grateful, visiting tourists and adventure hunters. 

For me, I think it is time I was gone, too.  I’m considering a move up into the remote Appalachian region of West Virginia and to see what kind of stories I can scare up from those people.  I think I have gleaned enough real-life experience from these hills to pepper my true-crime fiction with the goriest of details and first-hand descriptions to keep my readers happy.  Who knows, if things get a little too quiet here in Haywood County, maybe I’ll come back, but then again, there are so many places I have yet to visit and too many legends left locked away.

Birthdays? Seriously?

I woke up yesterday older than I was the day before.  Not a day older, a whole year older!  Now when I fill out some dumb form or an on-line survey, I have to remember to check the box below the one I was just getting used to.  Why?  Really was this Monday any different from the one last week?  Oh, I get it; it was my birthday, but that is such a ruse perpetrated by card makers and jewelry hungry women.  Yes, it was the anniversary of the date recorded on some hospital record in a city that I never lived in (except that one day), but that date is nothing more than random, and birthdays (well, my birthday) should not be considered so significant, and certainly not important.

June 2^nd, my birthday, that is the day that my mother and her Air Force obstetrician decided to schedule her cesarian section.  Totally random.  Why not June 1^st or the 7^th?  It is technically elective surgery, you can do it whenever you want.  Seriously, everyone knows you can’t win one of those baby-store pools with a cesarian; the mother gets to pick her delivery date and she will always be exactly right.  

In a way, even those more traditional "dilate-and-push" deliveries are pretty random, too.  On average, how many women actually give birth on their “due date”?  Everyone’s body reacts differently; sometimes the babies come early; sometimes they come late.  So what’s the big deal about the arrival date?  (Other than the obvious relief of an empty womb.)  Are birthdays really all that important?  My business partner, Adriana Joleigh’s twins were born premature, so does that mean they are actually younger than their age reveal?  Their scheduled birthday would have been much later.

There are some people that think we should base our age on the date of conception.  That is one date that is not very random.  But that brings in a whole other set of complexities.  I have known women that in order to calculate their date of gestation, they would have to first have paternity DNA tests done and then compare it to a contemporaneously written diary.  Even that might have a flaw, what if the little swimming guy is having so much fun (at the expense of that Friday night bottle of wine Daddy drank) that he decides to hang around the water park riding the tubes and splashing in the pools before doing a leisurely back stroke up to Lady Egg’s place and doing the nasty?  It might not be until Saturday afternoon before Baby Embryo is conceived.  And what if Mommy suddenly remembers all of that inappropriate attention Daddy was showing the visiting college babe at the party last night and throws Daddy Donor out of the house Saturday morning?  Nine months later her diary is still going to be off by one whole day.  See, even conception age is random.

I guess we do have to measure age somehow.  And of course, we use the Gregorian calendar, not the Jewish calendar, not the Zodiac calendar; no we use the calendar with the biggest flaw in the history of time keeping.  The Gregorian calendar is roughly approximated on the Earth’s solar orbit and measured by the Atomic clock that is so accurate that every four years we have to sneak a 29^th day into the month of February.  Yes, our age is measured by the great Monk-devised system that managed to skip an entire year!  It went from 1 BCE to 1 AD.  What happened to year ZERO?  Hey, maybe we should do that each millennium.  Think about it, we would never have had that horrific Y2K scare if we had only followed the precedent and gone from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2001.  If was good enough back then, why not now?

Oh, and about those so-called leap years, do people who are born on February 29^th really age slower that the rest of us?  See what I mean about the randomness of birthdays?  Leap-babies go through life like the polar opposites of dogs.  Think about it, I turned 14 ½ yesterday that sounds much better than the box I have to check on those surveys.  Geez, here’s an idea: we could measure our birthdays in months instead of years.  Yup, yesterday I turned the ripe old age of 696.  That would make me feel almost Biblical.  Oh, wait a second, that would really mess up my budget if everyone had a birthday every month, never mind.

Numerical age is a number, nothing more.  The great author Zora Neal Hurston went her entire adult life telling people she was ten years younger than the records actually indicate.  And once while growing up, our entire family had to renew our military IDs due to a change in my father’s assignment.  My ID came back with my older brother’s birthdate.  The whole time we lived in Puerto Rico, I was four years older than all my friends in school.  Believe me, when you are on the up-side of the hill, being a little older is not so bad.  Once you top the crest and start down the other side, being older is not a preference.  No, at this point I think I would rather be a few years younger (especially when I see all those beautiful women still making their way up the hill).

Don’t get me wrong, as dumb as the idea of birthdays is, I still celebrate them.  Gifts, cards, flowers, dinners, I do it all.  Well, most of the time I do it all.  I was born with the defect of a Y chromosome, so I tend to miss a few.  It is a little known fact that Bill Gates wrote the code for Outlook long before he wrote his famous (or is it infamous) operating system.  He realized that he needed something to help him remember his wife’s birthday.  Every time he forgot, the lovely Melinda would throw all of his stuff out of the windows.  Yup, that’s where the name comes from.

For my lady friends out there, please don’t follow in Melinda Gates’ footsteps, if your male significant other messes up, it is not really his fault.  If you check chapter 12 of the Male Handbook and Users Guide, third edition, volume II, you will note that it is required that men forget at least 35% of all important dates, including birthdays, anniversaries, first kisses, and your mother’s visit.  Please go easy on him, the last thing this world needs is another Windows operating system.

Seriously, thank you to all of my friends, from all over the globe, for your wishes on my 14 ½ birthday.  It meant a lot to me to hear from every one of you.  I even got a text message from my ex-wife (she spelled 4 out of 6 words right; she either had help or was using a dictionary).  I guess we are all happy I'm still alive and made it through another year (okay, maybe not the ex-wife).  So until next time, may you all feel as young as your best deluded self-image. 

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: The Death of a Literary Writer

     Yesterday, I think it was yesterday, or last week, last year, whatever, I woke up feeling really low and decided I didn’t care anymore.  I reached for that mythical tether, that thread of sanity so important to steady one’s feet near that perilous edge of the intellectual and emotional abyss called depression; my tether was gone.  Think about it, there are ten thousand reasons to feel hopeless in your God forsaken world, but as I once believed, it takes only one pseudo-sapient purpose to maintain that inane delusion that your life, your talent, your avocation might be a worthwhile pursuit.  I reached and my tether was no longer there.  The curser blinked on a blank screen: no words, no ideas, no meaning, not a single syllable gleaned from all the words of my studied vocabulary would follow my fingers to paper.  I had nothing left to say, and no one seemed willing to listen.  So I quit!

     Yes, I know this alley smells like urine, well, maybe that and rancid garbage; I don’t really care.  I didn’t invite you, if you want to go, go.  I got two bottles and enough change to buy a third if I need it.  This smell isn’t uncomfortable to me.  People, now they are the great offense to my senses.  I hate what I call, regular people.  I hate it when I see them with their shallow laughs and empty smiles.  No depth, no comprehension, no intuition; nothing is worse than an empty skull.  I am talking about illiterate people who think they know about life, but everything they know is external and there is nothing on the inside.  Most people are like poorly written books:  A pretty cover luring your wallet while remunerated blurbs distract the eyes from the vulgar excuse for language inside.  Twain called himself a misanthrope; now that would be a book club I could join.

   

     I bought this wine at Kenny’s Mart across the way; I didn’t even have to speak to that ugly, pierced, tattooed cashier.  I doubt Mary would remember me; she once was a brief $20.00 date when I needed one.  Now she collects soiled money from soiled bodies that shun orthodox society and bide our time in drunken shadows while our meager insignificance fades to nothing.  This is the caliginous part of town where the morose, cabalistic people come and spend our nights in the sanctity of darkened alleyways.  We are not a lost people; we know where we are and why we are here.  When I handed the cashier my crumpled money, I watched a lucid thought roll across the dimmed horizons of my mind:  Would these two bottles give me any more satisfaction than the old whore’s mouth once did?  I almost smiled.  I collected my change without eye contact and retreated from the harsh light of my reality.

     It’s okay, we can sit here.  This doorway is safe; it’s deserted.  It was once the kitchen entrance to some Italian ristorante or bistro or something, back when this was a better part of town.  I ate here once.  There are no restaurants in this neighborhood anymore.  If your stomach can hold food, there’s a mission up that way about two blocks.  They’ll make you pray for dinner.  I don’t remember how to pray, or who to pray to, so when I get hungry, I just buy more wine.   

     You want some of this?  I don’t mind; I’ll share, but then you are going to have to walk over and get some more from Mother Mary, or whatever she is calling herself these days.  Do me a favor though, don’t shop by price.  Get something with a little palate.  There are some things I miss about my old life.

     What are you doing here anyway?  Are you another writer doing one of those “Where Are They Now” series?  Investigating to see if I’m following in the footsteps of the 20^th century masters?  Yeah, well I did; I’m a sot, too, okay? 

     There was a time when people called me an intellectual, but you knew that already.  Did you know there were some who called me professor?  A few even called me a great writer once, but only a few.  Believe me I worked hard at writing.  I wrote stuff that I thought would matter; apparently, it didn’t.  I argued with publishers and the literati that the universal interest in the written word was not dead.  I crusaded for years on campuses and in libraries to start a renaissance of culture and education through literature.  I even tried to pen a new version of The Confidence Man, just to thumb my nose at the snooty readers of pulp.  It worked for me almost as well as it worked for Melville.  I couldn’t bring myself to write the sophomoric crap the public wanted, not for the sake of a paycheck.  I languished in mediocre toils to write while refusing to compromise my education and talent for something as unredeeming as currency.  My riches, I wanted to believe, were banked in the words I wrote. 

     I blame a lot on our television society.  Give the public twenty-two minutes of meaningless dialogue and keep their attention long enough to get to the next commercial break.  No complex plot, no instructive tutelage, no metaphoric allusion, just instant distraction; no mind required.  A pathetic brain-washing, which billions of people are willing to subject themselves to nightly.  And can we blame the emerging writer?  Why spend time honing a craft, studying the greats, embedding thought, acculturation, and morals into a script when a thousand actors and directors, barely competent enough for a community theater, are willing to take anything and put it on film so that advertisers can defile the sensibilities of their mind-numbed consumers.  Who cares if the script is without flavor or substance, the writer has earned a byline.  Some might call that fame, but fame and pride are rarely compatible.

     Please don’t tell me you write for some cheesy e-zine. 

     Yes, then came the web.  The Internet ruined literature.  In the old days, you could walk into any brick-and-mortar book store and find a thousand horribly written books, but at least you could be confident that some talentless editor and desperate publisher read the damn thing before subjecting the public to its content.  Now, any hack with half an imagination can string a few sentences together and quote unquote, publish their tripe to an e-book.  They are today’s published elite.  Ha, some even call themselves authors. 

Jaded?  Yes, I’m jaded.  I’ve lived long enough to have earned that title.  I once had a shoebox with eighteen rejection letters to every piece I ever published.  What do these new writers have?

     Yes, I am sure there are some well written e-books floating around out there, but I would bet you another bottle of wine that you would have better luck winning a million dollars with a scratch-off lottery ticket than finding a masterpiece in the dollar section of e-book titles. 

     There is no intentional mastery anymore.  No one writes in depth and then rereads, revises, edits and rewrites anymore.  In today’s publishing world all that is needed is a cursory spellcheck, format and upload.  I have had the misfortune of reading some that even skipped the spellcheck.  Most of the billions of books out there contain no suggestion of the discipline of writing.  How can an author be an author when they know nothing about syntax, punctuation, allusion, continuity, complementary word choice, symbolism or plot structure?  Conflict, crisis, resolution?  Hell, they would think I was talking about the six o’clock news.  They claim their readers want Middle Earth and sorcery or sex charged characters bent on overly descriptive orgasms and violently jealous passions, but what they really mean is that is what they know how to write and everything else takes too much effort.  Ask today’s writer about man’s inhumanity to man, the consequence of actions, and internal tumult?  You know what they would say, how is it in internet lingo, WTF?  Why struggle with the technical aspects when the goal is to show something written to other people?  Like I said, fame and pride are inherently opposite.

     It’s a shame, but as I have grown old, my world has gone the way of The Langoliers, and it isn’t even Four Past Midnight yet.  Flaubert, Nabokov, and Kafka: they are no longer great teachers or the quintessential paradigm.  Their names are now obscure references in the SparkNotes needed to pass the requisite high school English courses.  It is unfortunate, but if you attempted to strike up a conversation with one of today’s authors on Queequeg’s juxtaposition to Christian hypocrisy, or von Aschenbach’s struggle with gender identity, or Edna Pontellier’s ill-timed advancement of female sexual liberation, you would draw vacuous responses from all but the fewest of those who consider themselves writers.  But ask that same aggregation about The Bachelorette or The Big Bang Theory and you would likely get a diatribe of worthless, non-humanizing episodic recounts.  Television is the new art of storytelling, and that my friend, is sad.

     You are making me sober.  Open another bottle, would you?

     We’ve lost so much since William Faulkner’s time.  How did he so elegantly phrase it back in 1950?  “The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself, which alone can make good writing, because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”  Nothing has changed since the mid-century, it has only gotten worse.

     The world of literature has faded like yesterday’s sunset.  Today, writers get criticized for symbolism, multifarious vocabulary and allusions of every ilk.  I once had a student complain that my writing was too complex; it made him have to think!  Oh, my God, what have those study guides done to the classics.  I feel nothing but pity for those who wish to read and write without using their minds.

      A story is not just a story.  There is so much more than a beginning, middle, and an end.  A story is the writer’s antidote to mortality; his chance to exist in perpetuity.  But for a writer to live on, the story must leave the reader with something to ponder after the book is closed, something the reader wishes to share with others, something to learn about himself and about society.  That takes work, that takes discipline, and that takes time.  No one wants to work at writing when they can easily point to their bibliography of unread, self-published titles and proclaim a legacy.

     Yesterday is now a distant past.  I have too much pride to live in this world, to count myself among the self-chosen throngs of penmen.  I don’t know if I will be read after I am gone; I am content to know that while the opportunities still existed, I wrote with the discipline I learned from the masters.  I guess that will be my eulogy.  These young kids today, I don’t know what they’re going to say when it’s time for them to lie in their alleyways. 

     Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday…  The world has changed, my purpose is fading, and I am so very tired from my unappreciated pursuit.  My dying wish is that somewhere, huddled over a desk, there is another young, strong, writer who has learned that writing is more than putting words on paper.  It is building the foundations of society, behavior and truth.  I am spent, but I still have faith.  I let you come here with me tonight because my chase is over.  Maybe this thing you are doing will inspire some scribe to avail themselves of a college course.  Maybe they will be tempted by the glorious words of those who preceded him.  I hope so; just because I have given up, it does not mean society has to lose.

     I never asked you if you read.  Do you?  It will make you a better writer, hell, it will make you a better person.  The world needs more readers.

     If in your travels, you come across some wayward writer full of learned ambition, please don’t let him read your “Where Are They Now” piece.  Let him find his own way, mine didn’t work.

     I’m so tired.  I wish you the best young man.  Find something to believe in and never compromise.  Even now, as the stars begin to alight on my soul, I am proud I never gave in.  For what it is worth, I still believe and I guess I still care after all.

     You should leave now. 

     If you don’t mind, leave that other bottle. 

     It’s going to be cold tonight.