How many laughers make up a laugh track? How are laugh tracks engineered?
Is there a laugh track company? With its own building/parking lot/cafeteria? Does the laugh track company have its own stable of laughers and highly trained technicians? Are laugh track companies union shops? With shop stewards and an annual general meeting? With negotiated contracts covering such items as sick leave for laryngitis and with the right to strike for better working conditions?
Do laughers laugh at anything? At nothing? Is the mark of a good laugher one who can laugh for no reason at all, as if a switch were turned on?
Do laughers practice laughing? Sitting or standing in their living rooms/kitchens/bedrooms or on public transportation systems, do they suddenly ring out with laughter, practising the same laugh over and over until they get it right? Do professional laughers, therefore, have to carry identification on their persons at all times which will reassure startled or frightened passersby that they are indeed just practising their trade and not, in fact, mad or deranged or both?
Is there a pay scale for laughers? Are guffawers, hooters, roarers and howlers paid more for their work than are gigglers, twitters, cacklers and snigglers? Do belly laughers and shriekers command the highest fees, enough to make a decent wage? Enough to claim, in real life, the equivalent of the humorous, middle-class counterpart presented in many of the TV sitcoms they perform for?
What is real life? Is it that state of being which exists other than what is presented on television and in movies and videos? Something other than performance and posture?
Are there child laughers in special demand for childhood laugh track events such as cartoons/birthdays/tooth extractions? And what of amateur laughers? Are there how-to-laugh books developed especially for them which can be purchased at airport magazine shops/drugstores which encourage them to embrace laughing as a hobby? Are there night school courses that amateur laughers can attend in January/February/March? Tricks of the trade they can learn from practitioners who are slightly more skilled at laughing than they are? Techniques such as breath control/crescendo/decrescendo as in the training of singers and musicians? Are there laughing forms to master?
And what of those sad/abnormal souls who stubbornly refuse all merriment, all lampshade and lewd joke activity? What of them? Should there not be places/institutions/homes where they can receive treatment for their affliction? From which they can emerge, restored to rapture, and armed with tanks of nitrous oxide to declare that it is not better to sorrow than to laugh, it is not better to die than be born?
Is it true that the aging process kills off dopamine cells in the brain, that as we get older euphoria declines, and our capacity to have fun diminishes? Why there is no fool like an old fool, young fools being a dime a dozen?
Is there a market, therefore, for personal, portable laugh tracks? Small, special recording devices that we can all carry around? Attach to our persons? To enable us to laugh at our families/governments/worlds? Would illness/despaihopelessness/anguish finally vanish as some people have suggested? Would we then all be prodded into states of chronically good moods, becoming perpetually pleased, and not tormented to death as we are now with the what-fors and whys of an absurd existence?
Would the boundaries, then, melt away between what is laughable and what is not? With everyone wearing their portable laugh tracks and laughing at everything/nothing, even in their dreams, even in love, would not the world as we know it become like one enormous California, as smooth and mild as a grapefruit? A heaven on earth? A bright gymnasium of fun?
On the other hand, in a world of stunned, uniform laughers, would there not emerge a deviant subclass, a deliberately unfunny, underground movement of anti-laughers declaring their right to misery/ bleakness/doom? Intent on the destruction of stand-up comics and gameshow hosts? Would not the cry of dadaist ecstasy be heard again, this time as “Assasinate the Laughers!” in an updated attempt to startle/ shock the smiling millions who, poised before their television screens, are laughing on cue as if possessed by some grand/homeric/universal tic?
Should not television laugh tracks be scrutinized? Do they not control the quality/frequency/duration of our laughter? Do they not disallow transcendence by rendering all experience cute? Do they not tranquilize us by rendering our laughter thin and meaningless until death do us part?
What if all the laugh track laughers went on strike? How would any of us know what is funny?
I heard about this cute Christmas gift idea that you can make at home—your own Kraft nativity scene, colourful too, and mmmmmm yummy.
First hollow out a three pound brick of your favourite luncheon meat so that it resembles a stable and so that you, looking down through its roof, look like an angel. Then put your stable onto a cookie sheet and surround it with shredded coconut. This is the hay. Next stick four tooth picks into four wieners and stand them up. Top each wiener with a Kraft green olive. These are the cattle. For Mary, top an upright cocktail wiener with a Mini-Mallow and use strands of coconut for her hair. A hollowed out Maxi-Mallow will do for the manger and the infant Jesus will be a cocktail wiener wrapped in a Kraft Cheese single. Surround the table and the hay with Miracle Whip and shredded Velveeta Cheese.
Take a picture.
Then place your Kraft nativity scene in a three hundred and seventy-five degree oven for forty-five minutes. Serve when friends drop over on Boxing Day or use as a festive centrepiece, a Merry Christmas gift from Mom in the kitchen, that happy lady, that wise shopper.
Our children are larger than us. They carry us about on their huge backs like packsacks, you on the boy, I on the girl. Riding them through the city streets in search of playmates it’s evident that other parents are being carried about in a similar way; some are even slung on their children’s hips like bags of groceries, some ride anxiously on fat shoulders. Then we are set down in designated areas for drink and conversation, dozens of parents gathered together for worried viewing of the park across the way; the children are playing their fearsome games there with baseballs the size of pumpkins, and bats sturdy enough to support a house. Grandparents, no bigger than dolls, sit amongst us nodding quietly to one another: Ah, the wisdom of the world!
At night it’s back to the hotel room. You and I in a corner of the room sharing a single mattress on the floor. The children each with a king-sized bed arranged before the TV set where they watch game shows and eat peanuts—the shells rising in mountains from the floor. The room growing smaller by the minute. The children growing larger and larger.
During the night the room heats up like an incubator. But the children don’t notice. They sleep with massive fists thrust in their pink gaping mouths. When our daughter laughs and tosses in her sleep her roundness bruises the hotel walls. At three A.M. our son cries out in a man’s voice: Barricade the door, the troops are coming! His size twelve feet flailing against the hotel quilt.
We, on the floor, sweat and lose moisture, shrivel a little more, dry out. Our lotions of little help. Our lovemaking of little help. We keep reducing in volume. Peanut shells spill onto our mattress. On the way to the bathroom we wade through a clutter of pop cans and pizza cartons, track shoes, comics.
Regarding these sleeping giants, we realize it’s too late not to have had them. The die has been cast. Inexplicably, our pride in them remains.
Each summer during the two weeks of vacation time goldfish flee their bowls to build dazzling orange nests in trees. Monkeys, lions and snakes trade places with accountants, lawyers, and priests, holidaying in another kind of zoo. Free birds fly voluntarily into cages allowing their rarer brothers a two-week dose of the sky. All the hard-working ants, red and black, get two weeks off to loaf on the beach. Worms crawl out of their dirty holes to hang like brown tinsel from the eaves of churches.
During the two weeks of vacation time every wronged animal is avenged: gangs of domestic cats and kamikaze budgies rampage the streets in search of juvenile delinquents; a committee of gerbils and hamsters makes plans for the eradication of small boys; angry butterflies work round the clock sharpening their specimen daggers; pet turtles grow temporarily huge commanding their owners to languish in slimy tanks on the front lawn—two weeks go by and they don’t feed them or change the water.
During vacation time, old women watch in horror as their pet terriers turn into porcelain dogs, as their china figurines come leeringly alive—girls with parasols, boys with fishing poles—to run off for two weeks of fragile sex in a place far away from glass cabinets.
SLAP
First there was a slap. Two slaps, one on either cheek. Don’t interrupt me when I’m on the phone! Slaps you’d see a princess give a nobody in a movie, or a maid, or a workman. Smack, smack. Like that. Quick. With the hand that fed, that washed the body, that brushed the hair. Slaps like the sound of sudden gunfire, unpredictable. And the war zone: the living room, the narrow hallway where the telephone rang.
She must have placed the phone under her chin, must have positioned it carefully so she could slap with ease. Come here while I slap you. No, it was the pulling at her skirt, at the long slim high-heeled legs that did it. Close enough for her to whirl around, one hand free. And a dummy child in place to receive it, not figuring it out in time, always too close, always surprised and shocked. A sudden slap like the slap of birth, or of insight.
ANGELS
There’s a house at the foot of a steep hill, a rented house with dusty passageways and hidden rooms, with balconies overlooking a large wood-panelled living room, a castle of a house. In an upstairs bedroom there are angels. Yes, angels, you’re sure of it. Three in white gowns, two in blue, with thick, waxy wings. Hovering at the end of your bed; one is floating near the ceiling, its golden hair brushing the overhead light. Angels living—if that’s what angels do—in your room. They don’t speak but their presence is so claustrophobic you scream. Scream and scream. Their presence is sucking the air from the room, but they’re smiling at you warmly, like Bible drawings of Jesus, and their smiles never change. Smiling while they eat your air.
Quit imagining things, you’re later told. Come down to earth.
HANDLESS
This woman who slaps. What of her? Oh, you keep away from her, at least you try, keep her at arm’s length, refused. Because a nightmare is having your arms cut off below the elbows. There’s so much blood when you push her away. But still she grabs, still she slaps.
Why won’t you call her Mother? Because the word sticks hard in your throat like a growl and won’t form into music?
Instead, you call her the slapping woman.
BROWN
What does the slapping woman look like? Is she beautiful? Is she a beautiful, wicked Queen? No, not beautiful though she has a certain grace, like the cold stiffness of a China figurine.
But everything about her is brown. Like dirt? Yes, like dirt. From her thin hair to her dull-brown eyes, from her tailored suits and her alligator high-heeled shoes to the fox-fur she wears when going out, draped around her shoulders like a live thing. Two tiny fox heads with yellow glass eyes staring at you from either side of her neck.
MUD PIES
In the back yard you mould the slapping woman out of mud and twigs, a whole family of mud-pie women, some larger and more fierce than the others, some small and helpless. When the mud is powdery dry, you have wars with them, smashing them together until they crumble, until armies of perishing slapping women are strewn in broken clumps about the ground.
You use twigs for their arms and legs because her bones are so sharp they hurt you when you’re held. Twigs that snap easily in half, then snap in half again.
LAPS
Tea in the living room. She pulls you onto her lap in front of a neighbour woman. Her knees are sharp through her brown skirt; it’s difficult to balance, to sit still without falling off.
She’s being careful with you, formal, slow. No, you couldn’t call it kindness, but her voice is even, a silky veil, a kind of song. She’s talking to the woman about her home, far away, across the ocean. The sun shines all the time in Australia. Just shines and shines. Not like here where there’s nothing but rain.
Warily you let her hold you, soothed by the delicious sound of her newly soft voice.
Her slapping hands for the moment lying still.
MUSIC
A crowd of strangers with drinks in their hands have gathered around the piano at the far end of the living room. The slapping woman is playing “Kitten on the Keys,” “The Twelfth Street Rag,” “Hernando’s Hide-Away.” Everyone is singing. You’re sitting on the piano bench beside her plunking at the high end of the keyboard, at those shrill notes that are never used. Miraculously you’re at the heart of things, ignored.
Once during these times she calls you Darling and strokes your hair. Darling!
Play us another one! Something we can get our teeth into. Play “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra.” Play “My Heart Is Like A Red, Red Rose.”
Darling! The music of that rare caress.
THE FATHER
She’s given him your plate with the cut-up meat. Then laughs and laughs. Standing at his side, she’s feeding him the meat, one piece at a time. Be a good boy and eat your supper! And he’s laughing too, his head’s thrown back, his wide mouth open. Oh, the bells of that private laughter! His paper napkin at his throat like a bib. He’s holding his mouth like a hungry bird, she’s teasing him with the meat. Don’t be a naughty boy! Making him bend after it, further and further, until he falls off the chair.
PRISON
The slapping woman is shouting. Throwing plates of food against the kitchen cupboards, a bowl of stewed prunes, a gravy boat against the kitchen door after the father’s retreating back. A white door, brown gravy.
Once again she’s crying. I want to go home. I hate this country, and all this rain. It’s a prison. I hate everything about it.
SAILORS
Dressed in a night-gown, you’re running circles around the edge of the living room rug, jumping on the armchairs, keeping time to “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” Play the record again! And again! The Father’s on the floor beneath a lamp holding a needle and pink thread, sewing doll’s underpants. And a cape! And a doll’s skirt made from a piece of cut-up pillowcase. Threading elastic with a safety pin through a crude waistband. I learned how to sew at sea, on the ships at night. We had to do our own mending.
You’re sitting on the living room rug with the Father eating toast and jam. Then the floor’s a heaving black ocean with orange circle islands made from the light of table lamps and you’re a sailor hopping from one circle to the next. Yo ho ho. The Father’s clapping his hands. And a bottle of rum.
GONE
Where is the slapping woman?
She’s gone.
Gone like a drifting fog because her departure is so quiet. She’s slipped out at night, floated through the bedroom ceiling with the angels.
You’ve looked up from your playing, turned around at the supper table and she’s not there. You weren’t watching and she stole away. You weren’t watching and she’s slapped you again.
BOAT
Why won’t you eat? The Father’s given you all your favourite foods: chocolate cake and ice cream, fish and chips, orange pop, jelly beans, marshmallows. You should be happy; this should be a celebration, she’s gone away. Why won’t you speak? Cat got your tongue?
But there are no words for this emptiness, it’s too large to name. You long for her slippery legs, for the hands that once stroked your hair. Without her presence you feel eerily alone.
The Father rocks you on his lap. He reads to you: Winnie-the-Pooh, The Owl and the Pussycat. You cry and cry, adrift in your sadness. You’re clinging to a ball that’s too wide for your grasp. Hold onto the Father, he’s a sailor, he won’t let you drown. Listen he’s telling you a story: She’s gone away on a boat, maybe never to return.
She’s sailed in a boat, in a pea-green boat, she’s slapping the ocean blue.
BOOK
In the living room of the castle house. You’re helping the Father put toys into a large cardboard box.
And where will I love?
You mean live?
Yes, where will I live?
With your Grandma on the Island. And I’ll visit every weekend. You can make me toast and jam, and we’ll take rides in the car and go to the beach.
And stand on the shore, and wave at the waves, and stare at the boats in the distance.
And what about your tricycle? Do you want to take that?
Oh yes. And the doll and the doll’s clothes and all the books. Hans Christian Andersen. The Princess and the Pea. The Snow Queen. The Snow Queen! There once was a child who lived frozen inside …
Pushing aside the toys you take hold of the Father’s hand.
A large poster in the bedroom where I sleep is titled “How To Be An Artist.” The poster lists several things I can do to become one: invite someone dangerous to tea; make friends with freedom; swing as high as you can on a swingset in moonlight; give money away; believe in magic; laugh a lot; take moon baths; draw on walls; giggle with children; play with stuffed toys; build a fort with blankets; hug trees.
- A man asks if he can pray before I begin a reading, kneeling in the cafe and asking for God’s protection. This was in a dream. The same dream in which my reading was sabotaged by a young Jehovah’s Witness poet who flung my books into a bank of blackberry vines.
- I give a reading on a B.C. ferry. Over a hundred Japanese tourists are in attendance. All of them are asleep except for one who is manning a video camera. It occurs to me that I often see Japanese tourists sleeping en route—heads slumped against bus windows, bodies leaning into each other in airport lounges. But there are always one or two taking pictures. Perhaps they draw straws to pick who will stay awake and do the filming. Perhaps they gather, later on at home, on their day off from the corporation, to view these slides and videos. All of them amazed and delighted by what they slept through. In this way having a kind of second vacation.
- A literary agent writes to say he’s interested in representing my work. He wants to tell me about his clients, most of whom, he says, are professionals in one field or another. “There are medical doctors,” he writes, “Ph.Ds, an Indian author who used to be a movie star, a lady veterinarian pilot who has spread her wings into adult mysteries, an eighty-five-year-young medical missionary with a wooden prosthesis leg (lost to gas gangrene in her early thirties) who has worked for over fifty years as a nurse in the remote regions of Northern India. There’s a … ”
- An organizer who has a German accent gives me details about an upcoming reading: “You will catch the three-thirty ferry. Dinner is served promptly at five-thirty. The reading begins at seven-thirty. You will read for forty-five minutes. Then there will be a lengthy coffee break after which you will read for another forty-five minutes. You will sleep on my couch. If you bring your husband he will sleep on the floor.”
- Driving to the town in southern Saskatchewan which has become famous as the home of junior hockey coach-pedophiles, the reading organizer tells me that there is one word I cannot say during my reading. “It’s the four-letter word beginning with ‘c’ and ending with ‘t,’” he says. “They just cannot abide that word.” I ask him if the four-letter word beginning with “f” and ending with “k” is all right. Also the seven-letter word beginning in “a” and ending in “e” which is used for rear end. “Are these words okay?” I wonder. These words, the organizer assures me, are fine: “There’s no problem with them. But they’ll walk out if you use the ‘c’ word.”
- After seeing me on a cable interview a woman acquaintance telephones. “You did very well,” she tells me, “but I noticed that you used a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs.’ I can help you with that. I’d like to invite you, as my guest, to the next meeting of Toastmasters International. It’s at the Silver Threads. You go in the front door. But don’t turn right. That’s Bingo. Turn left.” I instantly decide I love my “ums” and “ahs.” I’ll keep them. It’s what saves me from sounding like I’m in sales.
- After a reading I sleep in the home of a woman who is enamoured with angels. Small, glittery angel forms appear on tables, floors, countertops. They’re everywhere like air freshener. There are also angel sayings placed here and there. On the sewing machine: Every blade of grass has its own angel. On the typewriter: If everyone only listened to their angel. On the bathroom mirror: Make angel wings ten times.
The poster is colourful; there’s an angel blowing a golden trumpet in each corner and the how-to instructions are printed against a large rainbow. A Care Bears ambiance hovers in the room. In the morning I flee. As I’m getting in my car, the woman calls gaily from the front steps, “You never know when you’ll be touched by an angel!”
- A book reviewer creates a prize. It’s made out of an empty cereal box. He calls it the “Wet Salami.” I am one of seven winners. It’s possible I dreamt this. The winners are required to perform a musical number on stage; all of us wear identical blonde wigs. One of the winners plays the piano, the rest attempt a chorus line. I then step forward to deliver a speech of thanks. Looking back at the other winners I notice that they are all idiots, drooling sub-normals happy to be fêted. Each of us is holding a wet salami. One of the idiots is eating hers.
- I give a reading before twenty-four empty black chairs. The reading goes well. There is nothing dreamlike about this occurrence. The reading goes well because I’ve given up all hope of an audience ever arriving; it’s become clear that the twenty-four chairs have become my audience. I therefore conjure up significance: There is something exquisite about the way this double semicircle of chairs have hurled me into the moment, something … er, wonderful … about the way I’ve crashed into where I am. Which, on this rain lashed Wednesday evening in mid-December, is exactly nowhere, or as Donald Barthelme would say: nowhere—the exact centre.
- At the last minute, my publisher changes the title of my new book to All Chickens Are Sucks and puts me in charge of promotion. This may or may not be a dream. I take my duties seriously. At the book launch I wear a chicken outfit and sing in a chicken squawk the theme song from Saturday Night Fever: “Stayin’ Alive.” Then I read excerpts from the book. Every so often I let out a terrible chicken screech. For my finale I settle myself on the floor, grunt several times, and lay an egg. Everyone rushes for the book table. The publisher immediately begins a second printing.
For five weeks we watched the video feed of the eagle’s nest. A man had placed a video camera in the nest and we along with several million people sat transfixed before computer screens and watched as a nesting pair took turns sitting on two eggs. It was exciting. Soon we would witness the birth. But mysteriously one of the eggs disappeared. It was explained via the newspaper and TV coverage that this often happens with eagles—an egg may be empty. We consoled ourselves: this was raw nature, after all. Then holes were seen in the second egg and we became excited once again—a chick was about to peck its way out of the egg. But it soon became evident that this egg was also empty. There was great sadness among the several million people. But we continued watching to see what might happen next, if anything, and were not disappointed. Three days after the second egg was discarded a new form appeared in the nest—a miniature dachshund wearing a rhinestone collar. We think—and hope—that the dog is a replacement for the failed eggs. You hear about these things, about the compassionate side of nature. For example, mother ducks adopting abandoned kittens, and so on. Perhaps it is the same situation here. The parent eagles at present seem attentive to the dog; they feed it and have in no way harmed it. And they appear mesmerized by the rhinestone collar, staring at it for minutes on end then tapping at it to see what it might be. During sunrise the collar glints spectacularly. But we fear for the dog. What will happen when the eagles decide it’s time for it to fly? Will they push it from the nest to its certain death? A rescue operation has been mounted. The world watches as firefighters, who have a well-deserved reputation for rescuing cats from trees, confer with wildlife experts. The great worry is that the eagles will be spooked by human intervention and fly off with the dachshund in a bid to protect it from predators. The dog’s name is Bismarck. His owners, an elderly couple who live in a cottage nearby, are receiving trauma counselling. Meanwhile scores of grief workers are on standby should the story end badly.
They are clearing out old theories, their no-longer-fruitful theories: the theory of possible; the theory of want; the theory of restlessness; the theory of wandering; the theory of lizards; the theory of coffee mugs; the theory of figure skating lessons; the theory of clocks.
They’ve shoved the old theories into garbage bags and set the bags at the end of the driveway. A propped sign says: Free.
Behind the living room curtain they watch who stops by.
A boy on a bike takes the theory of lizards.
Predictable, says the son.
A woman with a dog drags off the theory of clocks.
She’s old, says the mother.
A woman pushing a stroller grabs the theory of want.
Makes sense, says the father.
The daughter lets out a scream. You threw out the theory of want? While I was still using it?
We thought, says the father.
How could you? It goes with the theory of desire!
We got rid of desire last summer, says the father.
You what? screams the daughter.
Oh dear, says the mother.
We’ve still got the theory of open, says the son.
Open? shouts the daughter. That old thing? I wouldn’t be caught dead.
Dead? says the father. We threw out dead when you were born.
Oh dear, says the mother.
Now I’ll never, cries the daughter.
Never? says the father.
Shut up! screams the daughter.
Didn’t we give never to your cousin Shirley? says the mother.
Shut up! Shut up!
Fifty thousand vaginas were sent through the mail. Free samples. Part of an ad campaign for a revived play. We couldn’t get ours open. It was shut tighter than a bivalve. “Useless!” My husband cried. “You call that a talking vagina?” I knew how he felt. Last week, a shriveled penis was left on the doorstep. Another free sample. It came with a card: “A little something from the Goddess.” Goddess is a line of lubricants. The penis was supposed to enlarge and chase you around the house and call you baby when rubbed with the cream. No dice. I couldn’t even get it to squeak. The cream’s a fraud. The penis lay on the dining room table like an old carrot. Then the cat dragged it off but gave up trying to chew it because the skin was so tough.
We’ve buried the vagina and the penis together in the back garden. Perhaps a little something might erupt through the dirt this spring.
January. Outside, the everlasting wheezes and falters. The dog poses on the community picnic table then vanishes. The town is flabby and grey. At home there is a tight limit on table language.
February. Mother’s mind goes missing on a drive for soft ice-cream. A return to the picnic table turns up a bird’s skull. Grandma wears work boots and lime-green stretch pants to Grandpa’s funeral. The language on the fridge magnet says You Are Loved.
March. At home Mother’s mind is found buried beneath the laundry. Sister writes a poem in praise of emotion. A new dog is bought and named Odysseus. Outside, the everlasting is crackling and green.
April. It rains on the town for thirty straight days. For thirty days Brother watches TV. Father unplugs the sink, the toilet and the storm drains. Mother’s mind scurries off in a torrent of ditch water.
May. Brother gets a prize for taking a bath. Grandma wears a black sarong and bare feet to Old Age Bingo. Sister writes a hymn about dread. The planet tilts nearer the sun.
June. Outside, the everlasting bubbles and bursts. Mother’s mind returns inside a yellow helium balloon. The balloon settles in a backyard tree and glows at night like a lamp. Father lies on the living room rug laughing hysterically.
July. Odysseus begins his wanderings through the blue and silver town. The balloon bursts when a robin lands on its surface. Grandma breaks her arm climbing the tree to gather pieces of Mother’s mind. The robin is taken to the vet.
August. The car breaks down on a trip for Krazy Glue. For two weeks, the glue keeps Mother’s mind attached to her brain. One evening the everlasting, the town and Mother’s mind are cast in a lovely bronze light. The car breaks down on a trip for pizza.
September. Brother wins a prize for taking out the garbage. Mother gets a new broom to commemorate renewed effort. Grandma gets a new pot to bang on because she’s not dead yet. Brother wins new love—the vet’s comely assistant.
October. Mother’s mind hitches a ride on her broom and soars towards the moon. Father says the trick in life is to keep your eyes averted. Grandma says the treat is hardly worth the effort. Grandma runs off with the bingo caller.
November. Outside, the everlasting is ragged and brown. Odysseus returns with Mother’s mind on a leash. Father lies on the kitchen floor laughing and laughing. The planet tilts away from the sun.
December. Sister writes a poem about renewal. Brother wins a prize for leaving home. Mother’s mind is housed with the budgie. The car breaks down on a trip for birdseed.
We turned off the lights to see through screens into other worlds. To absolutely lose ourselves in madness, passion, abandon, sublimity. To fully fucking wreak shit with our puny conscious minds. Because each of these new worlds has its own physics, its own creator. Because after everything the screens were so lovely, glowing, casting a deeper spell, allowing multiple universes, allowing ecstasy. “Because after something comes nothing. No enemy armada. No music. No score.” Just us and our control of the unseen. Plus the satisfying wasteland at the end of rapture. Our only requirement is to have a kick drum knocking at all times, occasionally wind chimes.
Still, the old deities hover nearby like a cloud of gnats. Some burrow beneath our eyelids and blur our vision. This has happened more often than we liked. One such gnat was especially persistent. This was the blind seer Jorge Luis Borges. Suddenly our eyes would feel scratchy, as if a handful of dust had been thrown at them, and then, when we’d try to rub them clean, there he’d be trailing his entourage of former selves, multiples of Borges.
“Every man runs the risk of being the first immortal,” he and his younger selves would intone, their hawk-like profiles flickering across our screens.
“Every man runs the risk of disconnecting his subconscious.”
We’d fiddle with the controls.
“Every puny ecstasy rushes toward its own demise. Not even a bird’s trill can save you.”
We’d shrug him off, having no time for the prophesy of dead seers. Having time only to execute our parts as the kings and queens of the graceful glide. For the engine running mankind’s ambitious extinction.
Our eyes glow like abalone swans in a pool of glare.
We have washed the house in morning rain. Bathed the children with words plucked from the lips of poets. Bathed ourselves with the music that inhabits the end of dreams, three descending notes of rapturous birdsong.
We have swept the pathway of ashes, tethered our farm animals to oak trees, chopped wood at sunrise, sprinkled salt and milk across our doorsteps, lit outdoor fires for the morning feast where eggs boiled with pig’s snouts and magical words have been offered and consumed. We have re-told the death anecdotes and the tales of narrative luck that allow us to take heart in this world.
We do these things every morning to ensure the enduring presence of the god in our lives. The god of the everyday—soothing, predictable, common to all—a singing hologram that lives in dust.
I want to be the play button that sends out laughing songs. Thereby reprising the merry view. Where its folk reign. Sacred champagne. An endless ticker tape parade.
I’ll even project pictures of the world’s dumb work. What we do, the mush of things, the clinking animosities, the wondrous starving in the wondrous world.
If I can stay the old form, thoughtful and sweet from the history store.
If I can be a slot machine for Chekhov. A one-armed bandit winning a jackpot of sight. Though I’ll settle for a sly aside of knowing why. And how and when. A merry-go-round as to words, tra la …
A handler. A hand up. A hand-hold. A Han(d)sel and Gretel. A handstand. Handlebars. Handball. A handbook. Handwriting. A handicap. A handgun. A hand grenade. Handcuffs. Hands wringing. A handle on it. A hand out. A handmaiden. A handyman. A hand job. A handbag. A hand mirror. A handout.
A good hand. A hand over a fist. A hand over a hand. A handsome thank you.
A hearty handshake. A handful of good luck. The sound of one hand clapping.
A handspring. Another handspring …
I’m drinking alone this Christmas.
I’ve hired a wino to decorate my home.
I’ve put a bar in the back of my car so I can drive myself to drink.
Jesus, will you be drinking with me this Christmas?
Will you be thinking of me if you do?
My head hurts and my feet stink.
I don’t know whether to kill myself or go bowling.
* Compiled from C&W song titles.
The timeline is shrinking. We are entering the risk zone. Consumers are in the dump, victims of financial advisors, psychopaths, corrupt CEOs, their own greed. We wonder: should we stay in the dump or should we go? Cut our losses or take a wait and see approach? Spend what’s left on Christmas or cut back, hunker down? It’s a rich mystery. It’s feared the crisis could get much worse. Surplus has been scaled back by billions. What does this mean? Falling prices in a broad range of categories have created a nightmare scenario that worries the top cop. He’s pledged to end disorder. We’re not in the best place on earth any more. This much is clear. This much has been repeatedly stated. The homeless are no longer docile or whacked out but angry. Their numbers have swollen to include former haves. Now everyone’s in danger of slipping into the red. It’s feared the bloodbath’s about to begin. We are in deeply negative territory. We are plunging hard and fast into meltdown. It is feared we are headed beyond what is known.
* Compiled from newspaper headlines, late 2008.
- Thank you.
- Sure. Appears to be. But isn’t.
- Five of us, actually. Though everyone’s left. Except us.
- School. Work. One to a nursing home.
- That’s right. Two of us in this big house.
- Not bad. I write. He cycles. We visit the others.
- Oh, every few weeks.
Last night we returned to the beach to see the massed gulls. So many were circling the sky overhead as we walked that we were certain we’d find them perched on the rocks as before. There was a strong wind and the sun had broken through the heavily overcast sky so that the underbellies of the gulls were illuminated, flashing white as they rode the wind. But the beach was empty of birds. The herring must have moved farther down the inlet. The strong wind, cold on our faces, pushed at the sea with such force that whitecaps had formed. The light on the small surf, on the overhanging arbutus trees lining the beach, and on the larger firs and cedars beyond them was green and yellow. The scene was hectic, exciting, with the cawing birds overhead. We climbed the rocks and stood looking out, the dog beside us. The wind blew our hair back and the dog’s fur was blown flat against her body; she angled her nose and sniffed the windy air. When we returned to the path along the shore we saw uneven lines of grey and brown herring roe spread along the beach. They were woven amongst the seaweed, and together they glistened in the yellow and green light like a living veil.
There are times when the experience of living in this world is rapturous. And there are times when it curls us crying in our beds. Between these extremes we tell one another what we know …
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