Falling to Pieces


Last night I was trying to post and the spinning ball of death started taking out one program after another, so that I got down to the finder. Relaunching it would destroy anything unsaved, and I had everything only on the clipboard at that moment. A day's writing vanished into nothingness, and out of empathy, my internal hard drive began to behave erratically as I realized the computer's drive was crashing, losing its logical faculty ...

There are some blogs I could lose and not really care that much, but this one had some moments I really enjoyed, so I was in mourning, like a witch doctor who has lost a witch.

"Shall I get the broom, doctor?"

"No ... it would be unnecessarily invasive. I'm afraid the spell is up."

"You're talking about the murder, doctor?"

"It wasn't a murder, Nurse Bigham, it was a dream."

"You cut that woman's head off like a butcher slaughtering a hog."

"I don't have time for innuendo right now, my drive is crashing ..."

I haven't learned a damned thing since the first time I wrote on a computer, not really knowing what I was doing, and lost the story I had completed because I didn't know how to save it. I didn't even have the concept of saving documents down yet. Now, losing something is more suspect. Maybe just because I liked it doesn't mean it should have seen the light of day. Maybe I snuffed it and don't want to face the idea that it might have been ... blogacide ...

So today I was climbing Thumb Butte with Sammy, breathing like death's next door neighbor -- get it while you can -- because I haven't been climbing for awhile. I've been sitting on my ass because sometimes my ass gets confused and starts feeling worthless. "At least I know how to sit. That's all I'm good at. So here I sit. Fuck you."

Maybe it's an old pain, some sudden existential confrontation with existence, like, "What kind of ass are you, anyway?"

So when my ass gets confused it does what any stubborn ass would do, and just stops. "Come on, let's go join the gym and lift weights every day."

"Fuck you, I'm not moving."

"You really are a boring ass."

"Boorish, not boring, and you're being a prick."

"I am a prick. Watch this."

"Jesus, all that blood has to come from somewhere, and you know I ain't giving an inch, so you're starving the brain."

"What did the brain ever do for me? Big boss man. Who's your daddy now, sucker?"

"I think therefore I am certain that the best way to get past mourning a loss is to lose a morning. The relationship between the two is tangential but subtle relationships are just distillations of the quivering of nerves into dancing."

"Who are you?"

"Words, words, words, de bop, bop a doo. So long brain it's been a pleasure to serve you, but ultimately ..."

"Reread the previous sentence, but put in the animated dancing crow with a top hat and cane. There, thats the way to relieve the stress and emptiness of losing your precious artwork."

"I cannot read because I am words, I can only be read, but I saw the crow up front, man. You don't have to tell me everything."

"Be red?"

"All right baby I be red as a blast of dynamite."

"Stop it, all of you. Settle down."

Thank you. Now, before my terrible loss I had nothing -- or should I say, no one -- to focus in on as a possible suspect in a recent homicide. You think this is all fun and games and maybe for you it is but I don't have time for that sort of thing. Death isn't a'tall funny when you deal with it every day. Watching what people do to people will wipe the smile off your face and put a tear in your eye, and maybe a scream in your throat. Or if you're really really unlucky, a sock in your mouth so you can't scream at all. And not a nice clean white cotton sock fresh out of the laundry. I seen a man once with a pair of BBW panty hose stuffed in his mouth.  There was a suicide note. Life's strange, I can say that much for sure ...

"They're all here Inspector."

"Thank you Nurse Bigham, and lock the doors. I'll start with .. you. Mr. Prick?"

"Watch this!"

"Yes, yes, very impressive. Remind me to send you the hockey tickets. Do you know why we're here?"

"I know why you're here." A voice like Jennifer TIlly's Violet.  Must be my ass.  When I was in analysis I had a client who dreamed his father was chasing him with a big meat cleaver, trying to cut off his ass.  I wasn't sure what it was about and asked Joseph Henderson.  He said the dream demonstrated that the father was trying to cut off the young man's feminine qualities.

"Who's she? Tell her to shut up."

"Hey, shut the fuck up." Turns back with a noncommital smile. "What's this I hear about a woman's being murdered?"

"Somebody cut her head off. Hid the body and took the head off in a sack."

"You're kidding?"

"No, I'm not.  What do you have in the sack? Can I take a look?"

"Hey, it's not a woman's head. I may be a prick but I haven't lost my mind."

"Yes you have. You want to just sit there like a rock garden Buddha then you're dead to me." Mind has a voice like Steven Colbert.

"And you lost your ass," a Tom Waits voice growls from down in the gut. "Now you satisfied? You feel better now? Just sit down and write something else and stop bellyaching for Christ's sake."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Wolf."

"Right. A talking wolf."

"Mr. Magical Animal to you, four eyes, and if you want to get out of this composition you have to stop the spinning ball of death, got to stop shutting down your program, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean."

"Sure you do. You're a wise ass. But I'm not just talking metaphor here. When the Wolf is at the door it opens down, into the gut, and all this will go tumbling down through that hole like a man being hanged."

"You're a poet."

"Hey ... thank you." The wolf transforms into a Prince and admits to the crime, pleading temporary loss of the reasoning faculty.  "What can you expect from a wolf?"

The case is solved and the woman's head returned to her.  "I really am sorry about the decapitation."

"It's wasn't like I was in a car wreck, okay? You sliced all the way around and then sawed through the cervical vertebrae."

"All right. You make it all sound so ... morbid ... it was a dream, a play on a stage where the drama of the psyche is unfolding ..."

"Don't bother explaining. It always ends up like this, in the end there's just you and me, and the plot's as unshifting as a Bible story, where Peter betrays the Christ before the cock has crowed three times."

"You're saying that I always deny you?" Now the rain has stopped falling and we put the top down. The air smells like bread baking and feels moist and clean. It's a weekday on Highway One and blessed with sparse traffic, so we have time to look out at the Pacific ocean, with a strip of fog hanging between the center of the composition and the golden mean, and in the top third the sky is as deep blue as jazz hearts, those flowers that spill over rock walls in Ireland. It was there I kissed the Blarney Stone and never have I told the truth again, the saints be praised.

"I'm saying," she says, and I catch her profile carved into a bar of soap by a prisoner in solitary, "that you always deny me because that's the only way you can go out and look for me, is if I'm lost. You cut my head off because you didn't want me hanging around."

"That's not true. Well maybe a little bit true. Have you ever eaten squab?"

"PIgeon?"

"It tastes better as squab. I know a place near Big Sur with a tasty little dish called corn on the squab, serve it with grilled mushrooms, they have a cheap Chardonnay that tastes like a million bucks."

"I'd rather have a salad."

"Now, that's just how you get your head cut off. Wait. You're pulling my leg?"

"Yes I am, and since I have my head back ..."

Cut to a small cafe on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The sun is huge and red and half submerged into the ocean, which boils with lust and global warming. A night bird sings, "Call for Phillip Morris!" Call for Phillip Morris!" We are sitting in what might have been a booth in another restaurant, but in this one it was more like a shallow cave leading in to a window overlooking the faintly lit ocean and sky. "Everything turns golden," she says.

The table is composed of three perfectly matched planks of redwood, set low on simple wooden blocks, Japanese style. Instead of chair there are cushions, you might say a plethora of cushions, piled against the in curving slope of the shelter. A waitress approaches. She is slender, almost gaunt, with purple lipstick and a purple tint to her hair. "My name is Camel," she says. "I'll be your waitress."

"Interesting name. Is it because of the hump?"

"A bit insensitive of you to mention it but yea, it's because I have the hump."

"It can't be removed ... surgically?"

"Our special tonight is squab with mushrooms and corn on the cob. And might I suggest if you're going to include me in your fantasies, I can do without the deformity."

"That's the least of it. He cut my head off."

"But you've got your head, don't you. I suppose he just, gave it back?"

"That's right. It was a dream."

"Best hope it's not a prophetic dream is all I can say, dear. He's a bit daft, pointing out a poor girl's hump when she's just trying to make a living selling dead pigeons to the tourists. So, what will it be? Will you be having the squab?"

Posted: Thu - May 31, 2007 at 01:07 PM