So. It’s a lovely quiet, calm morning. No wind. Glassy ocean. No surf. July 10, 2018. Went out early to scout for cucumber beetles in the curry squash patch. Found two young bucks with nice fuzzy little racks, not just sprouts, waiting for me.
Dad would have shot them. Well. Maybe not my dad. Not hunting season, yet.
Where were we? Where are we going?
I guess we were making our first cautious steps toward… the far distant strands of rapturous rapprochement. Attempting to broach the towering, monumental subject of indoor rocks.
Wtf!?!
Remember those “paper weight” rocks that Henry David Thoreau dragged back into his lean to by the shores of Walden Pond… back in the sweet, musical… Whitmanesque age… drenched with thundering Emersonian silence… those romantic, transcendental days… before the traffic jams on Route 66… before the egregious onslaught of all these obstreperous, infuriating electronic gadgets?
“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience
Those sinister “pieces of limestone” that just kept stockpiling dust. Day and night. Night and day, upon his writing desk. Apparently they began to drive him mad. He just couldn’t justify their new location in his already crowded mind. His willful, ego-centric action of relocating those perfectly contented rocks. Hauling them selfishly from the second growth forest where they had lain undisturbed for weeks, if not untold aeons, perhaps. To his spartan escritoire where they collected mountains of tedious dust. And therefore accrued sandpits in the hourglass of unnecessary work. The arduous, time-consuming task of dusting those infernal rocks. Just imagine! The Sisyphean labor of continually being forced. Like a slave in
bondage! To move those ridiculous rocks. Not once. Not twice. But. Again and again! Just to dust around them!
The absolute inhumanity, the unreasonableness, the wastefulness of it all!!
It was just too much. Really too much, darling.
And then, the gnawing philosophical questions. The overwhelming task of trying to understand the immense, contentious subtleties. The avalanche of hair-splitting, hand-wringing dichotomies, unsettling, cluttering, his nascent house of reason. The wicked wolf tempest of moral dilemma unleashed by an unconscious, ill-considered… “blowin in the wind”… moment of altering the natural, godly landscape for such a petty purpose…
To weight down the penniless papers of a dubious manuscript?!
Really. It was just so much simpler… more peaceful, more lucrative, more to the point… grinding pencils in his father’s attic!
Here, here!
And eventually. After many untold hours of toilsome soul searching, taxing mental self-reflection… chronic, sweaty beard-pulling introspection. Henry did what had to be done. He manned up. He made the difficult decision. With single-minded determination. Henry tossed the rabble rousers back outside to the forest where he had found them. Where they belonged!
He unceremoniously dumped them. Broke camp. And went for a long walk in the dunes on Cape Cod. Near the sweet, sultry sound and healing aroma of the mother ocean. Where he kept on trucking into history.
Good boy! Henry David.
Perhaps he should have gone to UC Davis to study. Become a viticulturist like his brother, Michael. Surely he would have enjoyed a petite petit on the veranda while pondering the eye-puzzling penumbra of late afternoon autumnal shadows cast by all those neatly organized rows of organically fertilized, hand-cultivated grape vines.
Ah well. But then. I wouldn’t think of him as often as I do. Henry David. Had he not become a best-selling “transcendental realist” author taught in all major American universities. Like the University of Virginia. Where I first read his immortal, life-altering words at the impressionable young age of 18. I must say. I surely would not be the “beachcomber extraordinaire” that I am today, without the rascally, inspiring words of this Lord Shiva Lord Krishna Lord Rama hari hari hari worshipping, early hippie, crank baba, environmentalist back to the lander, anarchist naturalist, tax evading, dope smoking, greens eating, peace loving, political protester, hermit mystic, yoga freak, crazy wise master, philosopher king—
GOOD OLD HDT. A real genuine ’70’s dude. A mythic, romantic true American anti-hero! Not unlike the celebrated author of the Declaration of Independence. That other eccentric, reclusive “aspie”… oh, now we say, “introvert”… of fine upstanding moral intelligence whose marvelous university I have mentioned multiple times in these Confessions.
I might actually have a lucrative job. Money in the bank. A retirement account to fall back on. 401K’s, stock portfolios, IRA’s… a real estate empire worth billions, gold and silver mines in burning jungles all over the planet, a really sweet deal with the Russian mafia to launder money through numerous off shore accounts in non-existent shell companies, my own immensely popular television show, a front row seat on stage at the Miss Universe pageant… a lap dance maybe, instead of a laptop
Hell, I might have been the best, smartest, most amazing, good looking, most talented, famous president that the United States has ever had!!
If only I hadn’t read that book about the rocks. Dang.
So. About Jessica’s river stones. Well?
I told her to bequeath them as gift ornaments to our beloved landlords. To will them freely to the next fortunate tenants. To feng shui them in the yard of our G Street rental. To abandon them willy nilly along with a curious tangerine striped tomcat. Sporting a chewed… raw naked ugly… ring tail. Whom she had discovered gone stray under the same said rental abode. Apparently abandoned by the last lucky house renters… or, rather, owners. We, Jessica and I, were the first actual renters. The battle-scarred, slender young tom just barely holding his own against a vicious, homicidal thirty-
five pound bull raccoon who was convinced that he was the sole owner and rightful exploiter of the property. Who broke my right big toe by the way. When I kicked a metal garbage can. Improvising. Spur of the moment. Trying to make a loud BANG!! in the middle of the night. To scare off the burly masked bandit who was holed up in an ivy-and-wysteria-infested high rise condo above a rotten, crumpled heap… once a horse and buggy shed out back. And—
The damn, brand new shiny metal 30-40 gallon can. Without a single dent or scrape, with no rust, with a tight-fitting lid. Which I had never seen before in daylight. In the glimmer of moonlight, then. It appeared just perfect for making a frightening BIG BANG!!
But. Guess what?
It made a dull, unimpressive, meager thud. In combination with the distinctive crab-claw-cracking sound of my toe. And, my ear-splitting holler of pain—
Turned out to be. Chock full of. Dang, that smarts! A freshly delivered load of red volcanic rocks that our dear. Ex-HSU professor landlords. Bless their kind hearts and thoughtful minds. Had collected that very day. For free!! To scatter artfully around the yard for landscaping.
Damn that hurt! How the hell was I to know it was filled to the brim with bloody heavy decorative vesuvian rocks!?
And, the sadistic bully raccoon? He just laughed at me from his vine-ridden redoubt on the full moon. But. Like I said before. No one listens to me. Except, of course, all my dear imaginary cyber-readers on-line!!
Bless you, one and all.
Anyway. She heaved the magic boulders into the back of the 1994 Toyota Previa van with 189,674 miles on it. And then, she said. With defiant glee. And a rye twinkle in her eye. I’m going to hold Schnookieputz. The raccoon bait. The tom cat. Her beloved ginger tom, who she had named, Schnookieputz. I’m going to put Schnookieputz in my lap. And if he jumps out of the van. Then he stays here on G. But, if he stays in my lap. He goes with us to Upper Bay.
Well. She sort of phrased it like… almost a question. A twist of fate. We’ll see what happens? Right. Like a roll of loaded dice, a flip of a two-tailed coin. Like it was a genuine test of some kind. Maybe, a fair and rational scientific experiment. As though, she and I, in all fairness… were leaving it up to him… Mr. Schnookieputz. The Baron, I called him. Baron von Schnookieputz. Like we were giving him a choice. And he was going to decide… to become the captain of his own destiny—
The Baron was either going to stand firm his ground. To stay put defending his ancestral land with, or against, all-comers until death by raccoon… Or, run for dear life as it were… by digging his claws into the soft lap of this mysterious, kindly, strange lass in the van!!
And I… as a mere onlooker, an inconsequential bystander to the breath-taking live action… had no right to stand in the way of fate.
Oh, brother. Like all children of equally tyrannical, and neglectful, parents. She was superbly skillful at both subterfuge and make believe. She knew how to amuse herself while manipulating others. Is my point.
I mean to say. She was very adept at distracting the rigid authoritarian in me. While at the same time, pulling my puppet strings with well-practiced mastery.
Jessica was a master manipulator. I was silly putty in her agile, nubile fingers.
What’s a poor fifty-one year old, hopeless Romeo… or, is it… a Pinocchio in late midlife crisis, with something wooden that keeps growing? With little or no interest in stray tom cats suppose to do? Buckled tightly into the van hotseat. In the glistering heat of the primordial, last-split-second… “decisive moment”. When the number one and only pussycat in his life is smiling at him coyly with a rapscallion lioness in her lap?! And she knows it!
Alright, he’s shedding red blankets on her lap now. I’ve cleared the starship for take-off with fleet command. Her passenger door is still open. I’m putting the van into gear. I’m thinking…
JUMP, YOU PLUCKY BASTARD!! RUN UNDER THE HOUSE WHERE YOU BELONG!!
Last chance for the free and easy… noble nobody… poetic, tomcattin… yowlin the blues beneath the mad raccoon moon in June… bachelor’s life.
Don’t do it, you foolish feline
