he, part one

his life seemed so cyclical. in fact, probably the number one thing that was so frustrating about his life was that he could predict his thoughts, his feelings, what he would become, months from now.

in high school, he spent most of his time playing nintendo and reading stephen king novels. although he enjoyed reading shakespeare in school, he never found time for it during his independent time. even then, he knew his friends, like most people, were obsessed with entertainment and other people’s lives. ironic, he thought, that the same people who neglect the very mechanisms that cause beauty in a frustrating world were also obsessed with so-and-so’s car accident or hip operation or football injury. what was the point, he thought.

but he was the same. his brain was polluted with gossip and friday the thirteenth flicks, and he would spend hours walking around town with his headphones plugged into his walkman, listening to anthrax. during high school, he felt a pervasive sense of waste, of something passing him by, but dismissed such feelings as the faint paranoia all teens seemed to feel.

in some ways, he was completely alone. he struggled with feelings, then guilt over the feelings, and this froze him, moved him to inaction, chained him to a wall, closed him in behind cold bricks and mortar. he hung there from his metaphorical wall waiting for things to change, feeling that things had been quiet for so long that ultimately things were building up toward some big change, a real turning point in his existence.

when he was nineteen, he got drunk for the first time. his younger brother procured a bottle of everclear. he mixed it with orange juice, then coke, then water, and then took several shots straight out of the bottle before demolishing a potted plant and passing out on the bathroom floor. the next day, he felt as if all the pain, all the guilt, all the bitterness and loneliness of the years before had reached their climax in this one miserable day. of course, how was he to know then that this was very wrong, that this was but a small complication in a much larger plot.

college was like high school without the friends. he worked at a fast food restaurant and started smoking cigarettes. he would smoke several on break. he took classes and passed them with little effort, but lost or forgot much of what he could have learned during this time. he felt poetry, but did not pursue it, did not live it.

after college, he moved to a small town and started teaching. he quit drinking and smoking and found god. he became involved with a church run by the parents of some of the students he taught. besides becoming involved in outreach projects with the church, he began to define for himself behavior that he would consider acceptable and biblical. however, these expectations extended beyond himself, and he became obsessed with spreading his enlightened message to others.

a blessing

he steps out of the shower and steps in front of the mirror to shave. using a brush, he just gets the shave cream on his face, when a movement catches his eye. this is a split-level house, and the bathroom window is at ground level. there are no blinds on the window because he is miles from town.

close to the window, a rabbit is sitting in the snow. the rabbit is eating the pieces of strawberry thrown out the day before. his little gray mouth moves as he munches the tiny bits of berry.

suddenly, from behind a tree, another rabbit dashes in bounds toward the one eating. both hop playfully about the yard in the april snow.

as the rabbits play, a rooster pheasant strides, head bobbing, from behind the silver propane tank in the yard. the rabbits don't seem to notice him as they stop in an exposed patch of grass to nibble some more. the pheasant begins to peck at the ground.

the man looks at the clock, finishes shaving. while driving to work, he feels very blessed.

the two roosters

last night, two pheasant roosters were fighting in the field at the end of the road. they leaped at each other for a little bit, but mostly there was just a lot of head bobbing and posturing.

this morning, when i looked out the south window, i saw two pheasant roosters eating grain in the field across the road. i wondered if they were the same pheasants i had seen the night before. they seemed to be eating peacefully, neither one getting in the other's way. had one come out dominant? did the one rely on the other? just how solitary are pheasants, anyway?

having grown up in south dakota, you would think i would know a lot about pheasants. turns out, there is not much knowledge out there about the pheasants themselves -- only how to successfully hunt and kill them. i do know they are not native to south dakota.

the rain, part two

i don't know how long i stood there, completely lost inside my head, but by the time i came to my senses and decided to close the door, my front right side, the side facing the rain, was completely soaked. it was the silence, or maybe the sound of the rain in the midst of a thick silence, that brought me back. it was then i realized i was being watched by a boy standing out in the rain. it was a boy who i had seen around the apartment complex, and who sometimes pet my dog. he stood as silent and invisible as the air.

honestly, i was a startled and a little embarrassed to be caught in my reverie. the boy was soaked, arms crossed, shivering in the rain. what the hell was he doing out here in the rain?

"where's your dog?" he asked.

i caught my eyes automatically shifting to the ground, scanning. i didn't say anything for a minute. just stood there. the boy had seen her, had pet her when she had three legs. for some reason it didn't bother me that he had asked, i had to talk about it, if only for a second. "she died," i said, "remember she was sick? she died."

he stood in the rain. neither one of us spoke. i was starting to shiver myself. was it the rain?

the conversation must have ended somehow. i don't remember him saying, "i'm sorry." i don't even remember closing the door and going back inside. i just remember sitting on the floor of my apartment, reading my richard adams novel, and feeling better.

looking back, when i try to remember that moment, i always remember the boy saying something about the rain washing things away, making them new again. but he was a little boy, and lacked that kind of insight. i remembered thinking about something c.s. lewis had written. we may never meet those we love again, but if we don't, it is because we no longer need them. at that moment, for example, i didn't even need a friend. i just needed someone to whom i could say, "my dog is dead; i killed my dog."

the rain went on until morning.

the rain, part one

that's when i saw the black clouds coming over the mountains. they were like a child hiding in the closet, ready to jump out and startle the first person who walks by. when i first noticed the clouds, the wind immediately began to blow. i stood stupidly in the middle of the parking lot for a couple of seconds, holding my little walmart sacks filled with the daily refuse of my existence, just watching the clouds, my thinning hair and the garbage sacks being blown hectically from all sides. finally, i tossed the two bags into the dumpster and walked home.

when the sun went down, it started to rain, and it rained all night. i was reading in my bedroom with the window cracked so i could smell the ozone and wet earth. for once, i could not hear the neighbors talking. for once, there were no kids playing on the sidewalk in front of my apartment; just the calming hush of millions of gallons of water being diffused over the surface of the mohave desert.

i stepped outside just once, for no good reason at all. watching the rain didn't particularly interest me at the time. i was not one to go for walks in it. to be honest, i just stood with the door open and my arms crossed, looking down at the wet rocky ground, to where the trunks of the trees met the earth, meditating on nothing. on the rain. if i was a smoker, i thought, i'd have a cigarette right now.

falling completely to pieces

i woke up on the floor of my apartment, all tangled up in a sleeping bag. i vaguely recalled waking up at 4:00 and starting a movie. i looked at the clock. it was 7:30. i looked at the tv. it said, "sony dvd" with a blue background that faded to white. must have stopped the movie.

i lay there for a few minutes, reflecting on the implications of watching a movie at four in the morning, thankful i could do something like that without the awkward scrutiny others would experience from spouse, roommate. it's one of those funny things about people that they tend to think only the people around them have idiosyncracies. obviously, these people have never worked in a hospital, or taught in a school, or experienced anything tragic or unexpected in their ordinary lives.

untwisting myself from the sleeping bag, i pulled on a worn beastie boys t-shirt and walked to the bathroom. my reflection was pale, ghostly, but somehow serene. my hair was a staticky mess. i ran some water into my palm and patted it down, then shaved. it's a funny peculiarity about me that no matter what happens, i feel compelled to shave. it's not just that it makes me feel better -- it makes me get in touch with myself, as if my whiskers somehow blurred the real me, like some kind of interference with the reception of my being. not that i haven't gone without shaving, but i've always felt on-edge, anxious, like i'm one step from falling completely to pieces.

i did thirty crunches and thirty push-ups, then rinsed off in the shower, promising myself i'd do yoga later on. i juiced two grapefruits with one lime and downed it in one shot. i walked to the mailbox, opened it with the key, fully knowing that the mail did not come until early afternoon. i sat in the community hot tub while the maintenance man cleaned the pool. i started reading a book, richard adams' the plague dogs, for the third time. i kept checking the fridge for something to eat, unable to bring myself to touch the leftover baked beans.

sometime in the afternoon, i turned on the tv and started watching animal precinct, the show about people who abuse or neglect their animals and the people who prosecute them and bring them to justice. every time an animal had to be put down, i wept, and i became indignant at the mild sentences most of the violators received. after a couple hours, i turned off the tv and decided to take the garbage out.

today st. francis, tomorrow the world

today the snow is blowing and school has been called off. the snow has buried the pineapple scraps i put out for the rabbits; it has buried st. francis up to his knees, and much more is yet to come.

yesterday, i helped my brother push his car out after he got stuck in his own driveway. in spite of all the snow, it was a rather mild day for a winter in south dakota. i would take this any day, i thought as i watched my brother driving his car back and forth, trying to work his car out of the ruts, over those cold, merciless days when the thermometer drops far below zero.

i made spaghetti and opened up a myspace account, which was probably a bad idea, read a little bit. if only i could start going for a morning run, i know i would feel so much better. running here is a "weather permitting" type of activity, and the weather is certainly not permitting.

st. francis looks down at the spot where i buried tiger. i consider a story i once read about st. francis taming a wild wolf who had been eating the children of a certain village for his dinner. francis spoke softly to the wolf, and then informed the villagers that the wolf had repented of its sins and promised to take Child off its menu. francis also instructed the villagers to keep the wolf well-fed, probably good advice. the villagers co-existed with the wolf until he died of natural causes.

st. francis could save a wolf, i think, but i was not able to save a dog named tiger.