report card

What do you say when called upon to defend a paper you didn't write, conjugate a verb in a tense you do not know, demonstrate a technique you didn't know existed, review a book you haven't read, discuss a movie you never saw, defend a crime you didn't commit, ask forgiveness for a fault unacted, destroy a being that doesn't exist, create a phenomenon that is a physical impossibility, draw a picture of the inconceivable, play the piano blindfolded, perform in theatricals having never read the script, fight a fire without water?

Do you gaze blankly into space, willing yourself into a state of non-being so complete that the very question of your existence, much less your participation in the urgent demands of the moment, cease to bear any consideration or weight whatsoever, as the others lose a sense of your presence so complete as to represent total annihilation?
Do you whistle, tunelessly, ceaselessly, bearing the burden of ignorance with a veneer of idiotic nonchalance, bordering on incomprehension?
Do you rise to stand, slowly, carefully, and declare in somber tones that you are afraid you have been mistaken for quite another person, and, while you hate to be the bearer of such disappointing news, you are not the person they thought they were addressing, and so you will be unable to participate or assist further at this time?
Do you walk to the front of the room, a commanding presence, and proceed to lead a lecture of some hours duration discussing the semantic and thematic distinctions between the Geneva Bible, the King James Bible, the Mormon Gospels, and the Scientology texts, complete with references to the Greek and helpful illustrations of pertinent Holy Sites?
Do you remain seated and mumble unintelligibly into your hand, grunting dismissively then returning to staring out the window?
Do you offer a vague stock phrase full of the top news catchwords and carefully devoid of any meaning at all?
Do you start hyperventilating and run screaming from the room, to collapse in a distraught heap by the water fountain?

Perhaps none of these solutions has presented itself to you. Perhaps you have always finished your homework, done your reading, prepared for the assignment, followed the instructions, listened to the lesson; in short, paid attention, conscientiously anticipated outcomes, and were never caught unawares in the wrong classroom, at the incorrect family reunion, boarded flight 1732 instead of 1273, read someone else's mail, misdialed the phone, forgotten a promise, fallen asleep at an inopportune moment, neglected to open a letter, misread a map of Vermont for a map of Virginia, deposited a check into a stranger's bank account, used your keys in a car of the same color if not make and model, arrived at the wrong house, miscalculated a table of figures, or mistyped a name.

Perhaps you find forms in triplicate to present transparent opportunities to provide clear and concise information in a factual format blissfully free of detailed entanglements, a haiku of bureaucracy; perhaps your gas tank is always full and you've never broken a wineglass, perhaps your bags are packed and your bills are paid and the plants are watered and the mailman is holding all deliveries, and you are leaving on a trip with a lovingly researched map with clearly marked exits and driving time approximations in a car that is freshly washed and an itinerary that, while detailed, is not prohibitive from lingering over coffee and pie at an especially charming diner. Perhaps you have a spare tire and a membership in triple A and every aspect of where and how are a dot with an arrow.

This is before carsickness, an unseasonal heatwave, a labor strike, a fuel oil embargo, a mysteriously declined credit card, a poor decision leading to food poisoning, an ingrown toenail, a lost set of keys, a road construction project, a sudden and improbable disclosure from a previously dependable parent, a forgotten suitcase and a hangover from cheap chardonnay. The theater tickets were for yesterday, not today; the interview was at ten and not two; the pencil lead was cracked; all of the lights were red, a bridge flooded, a parade and road race closed off the streets, the wrong book was bought, the blood tests were mis-labeled, a storm came out of nowhere, the path was obscured, and the socks didn't match.

Through all this was the skeleton of a plan, to be a different person in a different place at a different time, a time when benevolent circumstances aligned with proper preparations and a good time was had by all, when no infants had colic or men had heart attacks, when no bones were broken, the correct theater at the cinema was entered for the desired film, when the breeze was gentle and everyone played at cards around the table without keeping too strict a tally of the score.

For this other person that you were absolutely certain you were just a moment ago, pens never run dry, pipes do not freeze, cheese doesn't grow mold, eyesight doesn't fail, phone numbers are remembered, and the world goes ticking along like clockwork, tomorrow following today and today following yesterday, until here we are, grown gray and stooped with age, with memories of the dates of engagements of Revolutionary war battles, the parts of a cell, the process for how a bill becomes law, mathematical formulae for the volume of a sphere and the angle of a triangle, the speed of sound and the force of gravity all neatly inscribed on the ridges of the mind, watching the sun rise through the woods and thinking of lemonade and scones.

The alternative is too stark to consider, a post-Einsteinian life where time is merely a construct stretched and warped by gravity and light so that all experience is only the perception of experience, all memory the half-grasped vision of an idea that percolated through a universe crowded with randomly juxtaposed expectations and preparations where goldfish live among the leaves of ferns until we trap them in fishbowls, where as we age we lose our hearing but gain vision across a broader and broader spectrum of light, where our pens run out of ink but still write letters of great beauty whose words can be illuminated by the smoke of a candle, where newspapers may be misdelivered by several hundred years and printed in Cyrillic and you can never complete the crossword, because none of the questions put forth and none of the tasks you are being asked to perform actually make any sense at all, for they are in a foreign language and intended for a different recipient: but, there, the sun shifts again in the space-time fabric of the Milky Way and in all of the multiverses that may or may not exists -- there, you pause, and glance out the window, and see the reflection of the setting sun against the snow, and everything aligns for a perfect moment of being in an irrational world.

---

reading
well, I was going to read a book by a mathematician about physics, until I heard an interview with the author and he sounded like a space cadet. So a nix on that idea.

weather
Indeed! Every record broken (back to when records began, c. 1905) for the most amount of snowfall in a calendar month. Vindication, not bitterness.

words as they go by

It's hard to remember exactly why we were there, or what we were meant to be doing. Everything had started with the best of intentions and the most logical of plans, the sense of purpose overriding any underlying consideration of vague, prosaic responsibilities that would each eventually have to be discovered and discussed and solved in their turn.

Like the situation with the tent. We knew, academically, that a tent would be one of those useful pieces of equipment to possess, as, if someone had questioned us pointedly and deliberately, we may have come to the conclusion that the inclusion of a Coleman stove would not go amiss. At that time, though, when on an expedition, one did not boil coffee or steep tea: rather, one would drink water which presumably would be provided as manna from heaven, the nectar of the gods somehow available on demand for any who sought its restorative properties.

Food, food we understood would require a certain amount of forethought, for although novels may be full of ancient apple orchards growing in forests, we did not fancy a diet of found fruit, nor were we particularly clear on the details associated with the growing season. And so we had harvested fruits, nuts, and berries from the aisles of a well-stocked grocery store; after a certain amount of searching and no small element of trial and error we located a vehicle, and we were off, off to set the world to rights and to pursue truth and justice wherever it needed a bit of assistance to prevail.

Things began well enough. There was a map. There were companions. There were clear skies and high hopes and books of poetry and theories of intentional living and creating communities, how out of inhospitable earth we could build an epicenter of escape from the constraints of society, a place for thinkers to gather and for artists to dream and for those who knew what they didn't desire to dedicate a week, a month, a year, a lifetime to living deliberately.

We found the parcel of land that had belonged to an uncle's ex-girlfriend's sister, and when we arrived we saw clearings and streams and thought longingly of what it would grow to become, in the architectural meanderings of our minds. We had no tools. We had no tent. We had no way of generating power, no telephone connection. It wouldn't matter: they would find us.

And they did. By the end of the first week our ranks had swelled to ten, and to thirty by the end of the month. We were faced with toilet shortages, if one can have a shortage of that which simply does not exist. We were faced with the plentiful bounty of refuse, which we were uncertain how to compost, burn, or bury. We tried composting it all at first, but compost carries with it a burden of oversight, and the camp was divided over the issue of whether paper was compost or whether paper was burn, and whether meat was compost or whether meat was bury.

We didn't think there was supposed to be any meat, regardless, for we had forsaken the products of animals and had written as much on the invitations. But meat there was, and bourbon, and then fire, and coyotes which were tame enough or foolhardy enough or aggressive enough to ignore the bourbon and the fire and eat the meat, which had, in point of fact, been disposed of in the compost pile.

When we needed electricity we used our car as a generator, but the only adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter and only worked intermittently, and gas was expensive in the back country. Everything was expensive in the back country: the groceries we had to buy, especially the organic vegetables, for we would not compromise on our principles and our garden had only just been dug, with a shovel we had been forced to purchase, and we lived in the tent which had cost too much, but was preferable to sleeping in the car. We had to buy hammers, saws, a propane stove, batteries for cameras and buckets for water.

Somehow, though, it all worked. We were kids without any practical real world experience, and we didn't know how many ways there were to fail. We fell in love and fell out of love and were joined by friends and lost friends to the allures of the outside world, but for all intents and purposes it was what summer camp had never quite managed to become.

The garden was planted, a mixture of seeds arranged in a technical pattern determined by a mandala and the path of the moon and the i-ching, and we mostly stayed on top of the weeding, and assumed that most weeds were of some nutritious benefit regardless. We swam in the streams instead of showering, we built great bonfires to warm the night air, we recited epics and told stories and danced.

The pile of rubbish that was neither burned nor buried continued to grow, and somehow, even with all the hours in a day and the world at our feet, our concrete plans never solidified into concrete action; our tents never became cabins, although summer waned into autumn. We had never lived in this climate before, we were too inexperienced to know how to read the change of the seasons ahead of their actual arrival.

Alliances were formed and broken, credit cards whose lenient policies had provided a certain economic stability were declined as bills went unpaid, for we had no forwarding address: we received no mail. We resolutely declined to participate in the capitalist economy while relying on it for bread and milk and gas for the cars, and as our creditors diminished we relied more heavily on the fruits of our garden. We did not can, we did not know how to can, although we fermented and sun-dried as much as we were able.

The nights grew colder, and longer, and our bonfires grew larger, and warmer, and we slept more people to a tent to share body heat. One of us fell pregnant, quite unintentionally, and both potential fathers quickly hitchhiked away, without giving notice or mentioning where they might be headed, and the fledgeling mother decided that a millennium of evolution was more valuable that prenatal care or a hospital birth. She grew larger as winter approached, as the coyotes become either more tame or more aggressive, it was hard to tell, as they continued to ransack the compost pile and started nosing about the tents and cars after dark.

With the advent of autumn those who had been professors with summers free from external requirements began to drift away from an applied life of the theories they taught their students and towards the confines of a clockwork life they claimed to abhor, a life they would be leaving to join our more focused community as soon as an academic press of some distinction accepted their manuscript, for then they could thumb their noses at the ivory tower and live the life they craved. In the meantime, though, they had seminars to conduct and syllabi to hand out, and we wept at their departures.

Slowly, slowly our ranks thinned, to ten, to six, morning sickness driving the expectant mother to an incredulous soon to be grandmother, unhealed logging injuries sending our primary member of the construction crew to the emergency ward of the state hospital, one of us overdosing on mushrooms and wandering inconsolably into the forest, returning a week later gaunt and psychologically traumatized, until, there in the sharp frosts of early November, it was only the two of us, although now with a tent and a propane stove and a car that usually ran, with a compromised compost pile and a pack of coyotes that was either very, very tame, or very, very aggressive, but in either case showed no sign of imminent departure.

We wrote in our journals by day, pressing flowers or perfecting the meter of a poem or polishing an argument of philosophical inquiry, and at night we made up names for the hundreds of constellations we could never hope to identify, and told tales of those who lived on distant stars. We rummaged for what grew in nature, we ate our pickled vegetables, whose fermentation had quickly turned slightly intoxicating, and when the third snow storm fell and our food stores ran out, we left it all there, in the clearing, and used the final bills folded under the insoles of our shoes for emergencies to buy bus tickets away from our created community, and back into the world of man.

---

weather
It's midwinter! Save the date : February 8 : for the second annual candlepin bowling extravaganza!

reading
The industry of souls / Martin Booth

névé

When something was stolen from me, I knew just what to do.

It's not that this happens so frequently that I have the chief detective on speed dial or anything like that, but towns all have their secret conduits of how business transactions are actually conducted, and I had actually been on the editorial board and research committee for the new resident's manual that the Chamber of Commerce puts out, and I was bound and determined that this new citizen's welcome guide would actually provide useful information, rather than the puff pieces that most Chambers of Commerce publish.

I mean, anyone can find a bank or an ice cream store, but who really knows how to choose a dry cleaner, or what a city's snow policies are, or when a building permit is required, or the best circuits for walks, with or without strollers, or which roads to take to avoid congestion at certain key times of the day, and which neighborhoods were downwind from the sewage treatment plant; and as an appendix, we listed all of the planned roadwork projects for the next ten years, the expansion schedule of the school district, and a map overlay of all property parcels that were in the sights of developers. It was a gold mine of useful information, if I do say so myself, and the star rating system that we applied to bars, pizza parlors, and funeral homes was a hit with the population.

The standard advertisers weren't so happy about their fluff pieces about serving the community through small business and house loans all being cut from the publication, but they didn't have editorial power, and my masterpiece of civic information was published as written.

Anyway, so when something was stolen from me, I knew just what to do. There were calls to the insurance company and an official police report that was filled out in triplicate, and eventually I was even able to bring in media coverage and convince the owners of the regional pawn shops to lend a hand. It wasn't so much the value of the thing, or even the sentiment: to be honest, I didn't care that it was missing.

I was more interested in seeing how much local agitation could be raised to try and start a hunt, and perhaps the news cycle was going through a dry spell or perhaps I had amassed more local favors than I had thought, because by the second day it was in the paper, and by the third day it was front page. There were signs on telephone poles all around town, thoughtfully designed, printed, and posted by the high school art class; there were letters to the editor, letters of condolence arrived from members of the city council, and strangers would come up to me in the grocery store and ask how they could be of assistance.

The contacts I had published in the local guidebook obviously knew how to spread information, and as the story spread out from the town to the region, I was amazed at the ability of bridge groups, scout troops, grocery store cashiers, and preschool teachers to effectively raise the rallying cry. When philosophers complain that we the people have become passive consumers of news instead of agitators, they are obviously writing about the wrong crowds, because for two weeks the theft remained the top news story, beating out politics on the national and local scene.

What finally knocked it first to page 5, then to the "local" section, then to a sidebar, where it dropped quietly into the archives of local agitation was the discovery of certain criminal underworld links controlling every aspect of the school day at the regional high school, from a biology class project of growing pot to a chemistry class brewing meth to a car shop class teaching stripping down a chassis to a locksmithing class that was heavily involved in onsite practicals. The university track classes were no less twisted, math and economics courses teaching market manipulation and English and political science classes emphasizing beating the legal profession at its own game.

For years there had been whispers that the principal being the brother in law of a rumored mob boss might not be a good idea, but the school had a high level of alumni involvement, that effectively campaigned in support of their alma mater. When the ATF sting finally happened, it blew my story well out of the news, as parents panicked and emergency local elections were called and a federal lockdown of the school system sought to absorb the wayward curricula into the federal standards.

I contented myself that the petty thievery that had touched my life had received as much attention as could ever be expected under the best of circumstances, and accepted the insurance settlement knowing that whomever had done the deed was undoubtedly lying low until the fuss blew over. I didn't give up hope, though, or stop looking and questioning folks who could be in the right place at the right time, and life settled right back into its predictable patterns.

The Chamber of Commerce guide the next year went right back to its template of local banks and landscaper advertisements, the school came out of federal oversight, town council meetings focused on the trivialities of watering day assignments during droughts, a new parking garage was built, and the old minister finally retired and went to live near his son in Florida. In my life, too, time passed, a promotion at work, and a new house with a second bathroom and a larger yard, but I never really let go of the theft, it was such a random, pointed occurrence, and I had scrapbooks covering the entire search and media frenzy.

The town's Fourth of July parade commemorated the retirement of the police chief, and while shaking his hand I caught sight of the detective who had been helpful in my quest so many years ago, now retired himself. He wouldn't meet my eye at first, but I approached him after he'd had a couple of beers, and finally found out the official story of what had happened from a police perspective.

They had had a good laugh around the station when I had stormed in, declaring my utter condemnation of residential theft and my conviction to take this story as far up the communication ladder as the region could provide, and they had just planned on a one-line entry in the police blotter to the effect of residential burglary on Primrose Ave, when the chief of police let out a guffaw at a staff meeting, and realized this mission could provide the cover they needed for a clandestine operation having something to do with the Mann Act and the local college study abroad program.

Their operation was apparently a bit too close to being ferreted out by an eager reporter, and it needed to stay underground for a few months longer, but they could spin the human interest side of my case, and with the high school exposé scheduled to break soon, their bigger ambition, working with the FBI to close some passport and visa violations, would never have to come to light: nor did a whisper of it ever reach my ears, as foreign language programs at liberal arts colleges rarely make headlines.

The police didn't care about the sting operation at the high school, either, since they saw the alternative curricula that was operating doing a pretty respectable job at preparing students for the new economy, and figured that at least they would know whom to file search warrants for when the kids got ambitious and started forming collectives. My story was the perfect puff piece for their air time needs, and I blithely walked into their plans of fanning trivial flames while the coals of other fires were banked elsewhere.

This wasn't exactly a welcome revelation. The police hadn't even investigated my case, had in fact seen me and all I stood for as a figure of fun; they didn't care about the small needs of their citizens, just the glamorous and pet projects of a chief of police who sought to find the criminal operations behind the calm facade of a community.

I was disgusted and horrified, yet when I filed paperwork under the Freedom of Information Act, my applications were always returned as incomplete, and when I wrote and called the newspaper and television reporters, they chuckled sympathetically and then hung up. People started crossing the street to avoid me, and soon even the grocery store clerks wouldn't make eye contact or ask a social how-are-you. I was a pariah in my own town, and all because of an unsolved burglary from a warm spring night.

---

reading
Cosmicomics / Italo Calvino

weather

And verily, did the forces of heaven descend, and thereto blanket the routes of the citizenry under a cubit of frozen rains, from under which the loyal and faithful were unable to escape. Until, lo, didst the great munificent one send unto his people a truck, and bearing before the great mechanized beast with the power of two hundred steeds was a magnificent plough, a plough with which the awesome strength of the almighty was demonstrated by decimating the suffocating powder.

However, as man was full of his own self worth and became aloof in the presence of his creator, thus was the driver of the plough stricken with gross incompetence, for he was unable to clear the lesser steeds which awaited release into the worldly asphalt pastures. The wickedness of the people was punished through hard labor with shovels and scrapers, until the freedom of their mechanical dependents was won through honest toil.

Yea, though the slings and arrows of frozen snow have thus been conquered, thereat a state of emergency was declared, whereby all worthy citizens were ordered to stay snug in their beds, and not venture forth into the temptations of the land.

exodus

To get there, follow the county road, oh, I don't know, say twenty miles, although now that I come to think of it, it might be closer to thirty miles. You'll be driving and driving way out past those new subdivisions and almost to the state line. Not to the state line, mind you: if you see a thank you for visiting sign you've definitely passed the turn-off, and, what with some of the things they're doin' over there, well, you're safest on this side of the border. Trust me on this one.

So you go up somewhere between twenty or thirty miles and you'll pass the gas station that used to be one of those destination truck stops, what with a restaurant and showers and there were even some dancing girls for a few years, although now all of those extraneous buildings have been boarded up and listed as for lease please call, but the gas pumps are still being operated, they're overpriced but if you forget to fill up before you go, that's gonna be your best bet.

So anyways -- what, why'd they drop the dancing girls? Oh, it wasn't so much the girls, or even the dancing for that matter, the county commissioner was a broad-minded fellow, but the problem was the chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. That sure was some gravy, got the place quite a reputation, but some smart ass kid reporter for a travel magazine decided to do a write up of the area, except he thought it would be even better to take some samples of the offerings and have them analyzed by his brother, who's some biochemist or such like at one of them food lab places in New Jersey that does those artificial flavors that make McDonald's french fries so goddammed addictive, and his know it all brother analyzes that chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, and after the article came out there wasn't anyone within five or six states who was ever willing to eat at that restaurant again, then the SPCA people started picketing and bought the billboards on the highway by the exit ramp, and the local tax office decided to shuffle their paperwork in that direction, and before you can fill the tank of that SUV of yours, they were out of business and serving 25 to 50 with the chance of parole.

No, I am not going to tell you what the article revealed. If you care that much go look it up on your own time. Turns my stomach just thinking about it. The pumps are now run by the nephew of the guy who owned the place, the kid's only a half-wit, but he keeps the place up well enough.

Anyway, so just after you pass the gas station, there's a turn off for some forgettable little road, and that's the exit you want. It will feel like you're driving even further into nowhere, which you are, but this is your wild goose chase and not mine and that's the best way to get there. Take a left and cross over the county road, then keep going through the fields another ten miles or so, pretty much due west.

Those roads aren't so well traveled anymore, and there are stories of bands of robbers who pose as lone hitchhikers and then when you pull over to offer a lift a pack of thugs descends upon you, loaded guns and all that, so don't try to be a good Samaritan or what have you, let the hitchhikers hike to their heart's content, and don't try to change a tire or help a stranded motorist. On that stretch of road, it's just a bad idea.

Things didn't use to be so bad, there was one of them Baptist retreat centers out that way and a Boy Scout camp, so there was lots of god abiding helpful traffic and nary a hitchhiker, but its funny how things change, land becomes all valuable and church membership levels drop and soon even the Boy Scouts have to do their recruiting at the shopping mall, but after the scandal involving the head of the Boy Scout camp and the minister's wife and all the lawsuits that suddenly aired some very dirty laundry in court: what, you missed all that? You aren't from around here, are you, son?

Well, there were some home videos that they showed carefully edited clips from on the local news when all this was in court, and even with all the special effects and editing, the news station was still fined by the FCC for breaking federal guidelines of decency during the prime time slot. Bunch of Washington sissies, if you ask me, a small town finally shows a bit of spice and the television station has to hold bake sales to make things okie dokey with the government. Well, since all that, the road's gone all to hell, and you'd best not let your guard down while you're driving down it.

Yeah, the old camp and retreat centers are still out there, I think some hippies are trying to turn the scout camp into a yoga destination center, and I wish them all the best in their efforts. Things with the Baptist retreat haven't gone so smoothly, because there's some ambiguous paperwork about mineral rights, but someone owns something and that's all there is to it.

Eventually the road will dead end in a T junction with the state highway, which you can follow north -- that's a right turn -- and the land will get hillier, more trees, fewer fields. You'll be about half-way there, so be sure to get an early start, because the rest of the roads are harder to find after it gets dark, and there's no easy way to get oriented if you go too far. Keep a sharp lookout on the right, down below the road will be an old farmhouse, where they still have goats and chickens. Last I recall there was a red tractor out in front, been parked there for years.

Just after you drive past the farmhouse, take the dirt road on the left. There used to be a gate that kept livestock from wandering onto the state highway, but that land hasn't had any animals on it in a good twenty years, and I reckon ten years ago or so a drunk driver crashed one of them heavy Ford trucks straight into the gate. Must've been driving fair to beat the devil himself; those gates can take some battering, even when they're badly installed and the fittings are rusted out. That road will turn into a bit of a rocky path for a few miles, but after a while the county takes over maintenance again, the road smooths out, and you'll see some houses.

I'm not sure how those folks make a living, or why they live so far from any where, but I'm sure they have their reasons and I don't need to ask impertinent questions and find out. After the road improves you'll cross the railroad tracks, which don't have lights or gates or anything, so pay attention and turn down the radio, then there's a post office / convenience store where you can buy a Coke, then there's a road that doesn't look like much of anything there on your right, and that's the road you want.

If you follow it for an hour or so, the hills will flatten out on the left of the road, then there will be some barbed wire fencing that starts up on both sides of the road. Watch carefully for patrols, it isn't something that happens all that often, but when you're sitting on what they're sitting on, it's wise to pay attention to who's looking for you.

The road is absolutely public access, though; anybody with a mind to can go driving up and down it, day and night, without needing to say please and fill out a form with the assholes in charge, so if anyone tries to give you any grief, don't you take it. That's your road as much as it's anyone's, and they can string up as much barbed wire as they want but you can keep on driving.

From there, though, you're on your own.

Sure, I've been there, years ago; yeah, I know how things look, but that's what they looked like to me, and you have a map and what it all looks like to you may be totally different. That's as far as I can get you, but you'll find your way, figure out which road is actually the one to take, and then find your way back out. It's not so hard, if you know how to keep your eyes open and read the landscape, and if you don't manage on this trip, it will still be there for you next time you make it out here, it's not going anywhere, so you just enjoy the hunt and see what you can find. It'll be just as you expected, more or less, and you'll recognize it when the time is right.

You'd best be starting off now -- don't want to let the day get ahead of you already. And watch out for those hitchhikers, son.

---

weather
bleh

reading