I meant to say, Quick Hits.
“But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.
“It could bark,” said the Rose.
From Through The Looking-Glass, 1871, Lewis Carroll
Quick hits:
We write for joy. We write for fun. That’s why we write, ultimately. It is for joy.
Sometimes to convey information. Sometimes to persuade. But the best writing is that which comes from an act of love. It is play. That’s the best. So says Stephen King.
I have sat down to do this and found that I don’t really want to do this. So it goes.
“So it goes.”
– Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut.
I went on a run today. A wild run. I ended up in the middle of the woods running on deer trails. I stopped one centimeter before running through an enormous spider web, complete with large, scary black spider in the middle, at face height. It was like meeting a tripwire. I stopped just in time. I felt out around the edge, not wanting to just destroy the poor beast’s hard work and livelihood, but having to pass through this way, being in dense woodland forest, and I felt around the edges of the web, the invisible space, to see if there was some way I could pass without entangling myself in threads. I did find a large patch of open space, and I contorted myself through it, hoping very much to not bring the spider down upon me. I then resumed my running.
I could not believe that I had absolutely no ticks on me after this wild run. Through long grass, for a mile or more, I had mud, some scratches, various other debris, but surely, thought I, there must be a tick or twenty on my body. And there were NONE. Moving too fast? Too much sweat? No ticks in that grass? I couldn’t believe it.
It’s good to run hard through the woods. Makes you feel alive. I ran through about twenty deer, ten different pairs of two or three deer, on that run.
Tragedy struck this morning. Or, it struck last night. I discovered the tragedy this morning. My sunflowers had been ravaged. They had been doing so great, too. Well, they were ravaged. Not even a trace of three of them, only craters left in the ground from where they had been savagely ripped from the earth. The second largest, uprooted and mangled, left a carcass on the soil. If sunflowers had blood, there would have been blood everywhere. The largest, my prize bonnet, or whatever people said in the old days, my prize pig, bit clean off from three inches up. Three measly leaves and a smidgen of stem left. Well, at least they gave me that. Can it rise from the ashes?
Mysteriously, the two that have made it out of my second planting were left untouched. Perhaps they are being saved for later? Allowed to fatten before the slaughter?
Who was the culprit? We will never know. I suspect a rogue deer that haunts our neighborhood.
I’ve seen her.
I have had a growing history of reading people things from books, offering personal heartfelt readings, generally when in the comfort of my abode. I have read or attempted to read many a story to my living mates. Two nights ago, at a party, before heading out into the night, we sat around in the living room, eight of us young modern American people, and my roommate Smosh said something that I will never forget. I remembered it just now, I was reflecting on the significance of this event just moments before I started to write this piece, because it was truly extraordinary, and has put him in my good graces forever. He said, in the midst of the revelry, the group now gathered around the couch and table, all conversing, he said to me: “You should read us some poetry.”
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it first. Smosh, you wonderful man. I ran the three steps from the living room into my bedroom and grabbed my book of Poems of Fun and Fancy. And I read the poems.
Some of them.
I first chose to go out on a limb and try a new one. That was as an experiment. But it was not a great success. Everyone (my sister) just wanted to hear A Letter To Evelyn Baring.
Smosh then said, “I thought you would read us a Japanese poem.”
I went and got my Japanese poems.
I read the first poem I came across, which happened to be from The Exile Of Godaigo, about an exiled emperor of Japan in the late 1200’s.
tsui ni kaku
shizumihatsubeki
mukui araba
ue naki mi to wa
nani umarekemu
If it is my fate
To terminate thus my days,
In the depths of ruin,
Why was I ever born
Sovereign supreme of men?
After only one week, possibly ten days of avoiding all artificial light bar fire in the evenings, my circadian rhythm has completely reset. I have woken up at the crack of dawn on nearly all of these days. And now, the sun goes down, and I am sleepy. I am still often having surges of energy and late night mental wanderings, but I resist the urge to indulge them. I think it takes some time to fully adjust. This morning I woke up at 5:30 am, and for the first time, I felt like I was waking up regularly, as in, I did not feel that I wanted to go back to bed.
Parker came into my room last night to show me something on his phone. He had been working on some art for his Spotify. I allowed him to show me, he said, in an attempt to persuade me to evaluate his art, “I’ll show you on the lowest light settings.” Well, to my fully adjusted nighttime eyes, that “lowest” setting was still blinding, and when he flashed that screen in my face, I immediately recoiled, and I felt my eyes rapidly contract in my head. It was like I had just looked into the sun. I felt like I had just been doused with cold water.
I talked to a girl at the barcade, the night of the party. It was towards the end of the night. I had gone over to the machine to play Q-Bert. I got the second highest score, that night. Someday I will claim the first.
There was a girl standing alone at Burgertime. She was pretty. I had the urge to talk to her. I walked over to the machine next to her, and said, “Are you winning?” She said, “Oh, I’m just waiting for my friends, they abandoned me.” I said, “Oh.” (Or something like that.) She said, “I don’t even know what this is,” gesturing to the game in front of her. I looked at the title, saw that it was Burgertime. I said, “It’s Burgertime!”
She said something about how her friends were always going outside to talk to the bouncer or something. I said, “What do you think they’re talking about?”
She thought for a moment.
“Drugs.”
I laughed. She said, something about how they’re always talking about a “plug”, and she put emphasis on that word, somewhat mockingly, lighthearted mocking. I think she rolled her eyes.
She then asked me, “Are you winning? Tonight?”
I said, “Eh. I’m not losing.”
She was really looking at me now.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
I could tell she meant where I was really from.
“Elkhart Indiana… Northern Indiana.”
I don’t remember if she had any real response to that or just acknowledged it.
(Actually, I remember. She asked what brought me to Nashville.)
“How about you?”
She was from Nashville. She said, “right down the street” and she made a gesture suggesting that she really was talking about right down the street.
I said, “You can tell I’m not from Nashville?”
She said, “Mhm.”
“How could you tell?”
“Your stature.”
That was not what I expected to hear. I didn’t really know what that even meant.
“My stature?”
“Yep. And the way you talk.”
I ain’t no southern boy. That’s for sure.
Somehow, then, for whatever reason she told me that she had broken up with her ex that night. I don’t remember why she was telling me that. It was pretty matter-of-fact. She didn’t seem too devastated about it. But I remember that she phrased it as, “My ex and I broke up tonight.”
I said, “You’re already calling him your ex?”
She nodded.
I thought that was interesting. Can you say, “My ex and I broke up?” Not really, right. Because you can’t break up with your ex. You’re not dating them anymore.
I didn’t go into that right then. I said, for some reason, I guess I just had the feeling, “Have you broken up before?”
She nodded.
This was about at the end of the conversation. I’m wondering why I didn’t offer any words of solace or comfort. She might have asked me right after that what brought me to Nashville, but that doesn’t seem like it would have been the follow-up question. I think that came earlier in the conversation. There wasn’t much more said though, before she said, “I’m so sorry, but I really have to go now, my friends are waiting for me. It was nice talking with you, though.”
And she touched my arm.
I said, “Go on!”
Not in a way that suggested I wanted her to go. But it was time for her to go.
Maybe I was supposed to say, “It was nice talking with you too.” I don’t think it mattered too much what I said, then.
I now had permission to go ham on Q-Bert.
I had an epic run. In the very first game, I lost two lives like they were… pieces of candy… that you don’t… want, on Halloween. (I want to come up with an original and unique simile here. I don’t have it.)
I lost my first two lives like they were tadpoles… in a pond. Because frogs have so many babies…. they’re disposable… do you know what I mean?
Oh my god.
I lost those first two lives, and then I was on the ropes. I had one life left. And somehow, on that one life, I ended up going so far. It was all I needed. I was rolling hot on that one life.
I was in the perfect place, mentally, for crushing Q-Bert. I was the right level of invested. I didn’t care too much. I wasn’t too drunk. I was just a little buzzed, a little desirous of doing my best. The alcohol was unlocking some Q-Bert skill in me.
Then, my sister came over. She started talking to me. Something happened. I got riled up, I got distracted. And I made my one, final life Q-Bert jump off the cliff.
What a tragic ending!
I watched as my Q-Bert fell into the abyss. There went my final life. And for the night, that was my attempt at the top score. I did no better than that.
HAKUMUSU 