Pirandello Zombie Crossing

There, inscribed on the top rim of my desk, is the indecipherable scripture of my cat Toby, who liked to scratch there. The desk is old. It belonged to my paternal grandmother. If I remember correctly, she ordered it from a Sears catalogue, circa the 1920s. My grandmother kept a diary there, mentioning the major events on the farm that she and my grandfather managed for decades: births, deaths, storms, visitors, elections, celebrations, accidents, prizes, harvests. I’ve been in possession of the desk for 51 years, though I remember writing an essay about Joyce’s Ulyssess for a class at San José State in 1973 when I was visiting my parents in Seattle for Christmas. I hitchhiked part of the way. I got as far as Redding. My last ride was a middle-aged man driving an enormous station wagon. This was in Ukiah. There was a long line of hitch-hikers. I stood at the head of the line. After the man had stopped for me, and I got in, I assumed he was going to pick up a few more people. But he didn’t. And this worried me. I kept a close eye on the doorhandle the entire way to Arcata. He asked if I wanted some amphetamine. I said no, but thanked him. I like amphetamines, but I didn’t want to hitchhike at night. He was a nice guy. He took me to the bus station in Arcata, but it was closed. He dropped me off on Highway 299 to Redding. I spent the night in a sleeping bag a few feet from the road. In the morning I got a ride with a truckdriver carrying a big load of logs. He dropped me off on I-5, headed north. I walked across the Sacramento River into Redding. A load of teenage kids threw a beer can at me. I took that as an act of mischievous ill will against hippies. But years later I realized that beer can was full. They were giving me a beer. Unfortunately, I’d tossed it into the Sacramento.

53 years later I sit at the desk writing this sentence on a laptop. I very rarely write in longhand. I do a lot of French exercises. My wife and I subscribe to an online computer-assisted language learning company featuring interactive videos of various difficulty levels and genres called Yabla. Today I’m doing an exercise on La Forêt de Fontainebleau. When people speak clearly and pronounce each syllable of each word, I can understand what they're saying. But the French have a tendency to speak at breakneck speed, often without fully vocalizing vowels and consonants, or skipping over words entirely, in which case I have extreme difficulty in understanding what they're saying. It's really frustrating. The one I’m doing today isn’t too bad. Two elderly people taking care of the trails in La Forêt de Fontainebleau. Au mois de décembre (in the month of December) y aura des nèfles (there will be medlars) et y en a beaucoup ici (and there’s a lot of them here) en attendant (meanwhile) ce sont les châtaignes (it’s chestnuts) et la récolte est bonne (and the harvest is good).

R interrupts me to tell me that she discovered a robin that appeared to be dead. She wants me to come and look at it. It’s resting on the milkbox on the porch, wrapped in a plaid, fur-lined coat. Sadly, it was immediately apparent that the bird was dead. Its one visible eye was wide open. If it were dead, the eye would be partially covered by an eyelid. Nor was it breathing, or any sign of a heartbeat. There was no sign of attack. We guessed that the bird froze. The temperatures have been below freezing, which is unusual for February. R buried the bird in the park, and hung two birdfeeders from the branches of some nearby trees.

I ran alone today. R went with a friend to attend the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival. When I got home, R — who had arrived a second or two ahead of me — told me she had a good time. I asked her how the lecture went. It was fascinating, she said. It was given by a professor of horticulture at Washington State University on the subject of soil science named Linda Chalker-Scott. R is enamored with dirt. Obsessed with it. Bewitched by its intricacies and contradictions. If a plant shows signs of disease, and a subsequent autopsy reveals significant root loss, or root damage, the first suspect in this sad scenario is dirt. Dirty dirt. Polluted dirt. Extremely compacted dirt. Dry dirt. Soaked dirt. Sticky dirt. Sandy dirt. Poorly structured dirt. Hydrophobic dirt. Really angry dirt. Lunatic dirt. Unhinged dirt. Imbalanced pH dirt. Anaerobic dirt. Claustrophobic dirt. Necrophobic dirt. Overly skeptical dirt. When dirt goes bad, R goes into emergency mode. It’s a situation that calls for an immediate search, a pilgrimage of nurseries in a quest for the Holy Grail of Dirt. Things to look for are chunks of dirt that are dark and crumbly and moist. There have been many disappointments. Dirt that looked good at the nursery and seemed like a good purchase but upon closer analysis betrayed a suspicious lack of merit. Dirt can be tricky. Dirt is the Pinot Noir of soils. It requires a good eye, a good sense of smell, and the eager curiosity of horticultural fingers. Because dirt, like wine, always feels good upon introduction. But further involvement can prove trying, and the consequences notoriously unpredictable.   

R asked me how my run went. I said fine. There were far fewer people than usual, probably because of the cold. I did see something intriguing. I saw a woman with long black hair walk down the steps of the Lake Union Building wearing a black jacket embroidered with the rib cage and spine of a human skeleton, rendered in a thick brilliant white fabric. She had just lit a cigarette and was probably on her way to her break. I wondered if she worked for a chiropractor. Maybe she was a chiropractor. Whatever she was she looked bad ass.

Tonight I’m looser than a hothouse twang. I feel as if I could decipher a dulcimer with a musical enema and a little judo. There are some things that should never be mentioned, which is itself unmentionable, and implies a tropical fever. But this isn’t one of them. This is a confession to the rain. This is a confession that splatters on the sidewalk. That things are disjointed and weird on planet Earth. It’s a tough place to adapt, much less adopt. Adaptation is for the prudent. What is called for is dissonance. Diffidence is a form of betrayal. It’s a syphilis of the conscience. It’s where you go when you’ve been fucked. But can’t talk about it, lest one be accused of being necromancer, a megalomaniac, a horrendous narcissist and horrible poet, worse than Percy Dovetonsils, antimatter with halitosis, a mimesis of murk, a nemesis of creepy crawly Mississippi things, a semiotic abscissa, a blurt, a belch, a bubble of methane rising to the surface of a Danish bog. Conspiracy theorist. Pleurisy realist. Geometric irregularity. Hypercellular coiffeuse. Pirandello zombie crossing. And what is called for is unmentionable. Because it would alter reality. And show it for what it really is. And more importantly what it’s really not.

Earlier today, I heard a France Culture radio program about winter, specifically, human adaptation to winter. Gaston Bachelard was quoted with regards to the deep pleasure of sitting by a fire, either out on the open on a beach or forest glade or feeding on a few logs in a fireplace. Let’s say a stone, rather than brick, fireplace. I may be embellishing here a little. My apologies to Monsieur Bachelard. I’m paraphrasing badly. I’m paraphrasing so badly that I may be in danger of making everything up. Let’s just say, I got his point. It was hot, and crackled, and vomited sparks that whirled up the chimney in a wild delirium. "Contemplating a flame,” says Monsieur Bachelard, “perpetuates a primordial reverie. It separates us from the world and enlarges our world as dreamers." I can testify to that. Add a big glass globe of brandy and you’ve got some terrific alchemy going on. You may nod into a leaden sleep, and awaken transmuted to gold.