Life: Scene 1, Take 31
On the edge of the deep woods he bent forward at the waist and crushed with his palm the swollen mosquito feeding on his shinbone. Then he ran a dirty fingernail across the bone, etching a white line in his freckled, marginally tan skin. There was a bite on his right index finger as well, and one on his calf and one on the other shinbone and... the itching seemed to spread, he was after-all on the edge of the deep woods. From the recently cleaned kitchen window these woods looked so enticingly green and cool and inviting but up close the garbage still peeked out from under dry leaves and the bugs bit and the snakes alerted by his rake slowly slithered under twigs and leaves. The finely woven spider webs stretched across impossible distances, visible only when the sun hit them just so, and these he swiped away when they limited his progress, wondering to which part of his body the spider escaped while he picked the webbing from his eyelashes.
It was not wrong what some said, that he could have cleaned up this property in a day, surely he could have with more money and manpower and tow trucks and blow torches. And a burn pile four stories high. And a work ethic not so limited as was his by daydreaming. No, he took his own time about things and now, a year after beginning, with a good bit of progress made, he still saw things not exactly as he wished them to be. This was not the first shithole he had cleaned up and he knew that over time hidden garbage seeped up from the ground and leaves decomposed exposing that which one had missed the first time around. His attention to the detail was borne less from a fastidious nature and more from a desire to lead by example. If the future renters saw even remnants of the past renter's momentous garbage, they might be tempted to be less than tidy their own-selves. This theory was flawed of course by the fact that the past renter had been given a pretty clean property to begin with and had over the course of many years just added a junk car here, a bass boat full of beer cans there.
Well, he was going to be more careful and attentive this time around. He would not go 14 years without taking so much as a peek at the property. Fourteen years, my God, what had he been doing that was so important he couldn't glance in once in awhile? He started thinking about it and it seemed that past happy times were getting squashed by the unhappy ones and that apparently he was even judging as premium the harsher experiences, possibly based on the simple fact that he had survived them and survival was something deemed universally good. Or was he just distrustful of happiness? Anyhow, it seemed a tricky business this judging the value of days spent and this defining of happiness, so he just stopped thinking about it. There had to be a limit to introspection, didn't there? But he couldn't just shut it off entirely so he imagined one last thing on the subject and that was an imaginary tombstone (although he had just sold off to a brother for $500 dollars his rights to a family burial plot) which read--I cried, I laughed, I cried again, and then I died. But that had his life summed up by crying twice as much as he laughed and that seemed wrong, and he began remembering his laughter, and it seemed more than sufficient. So he made in his mind a new tombstone which read--My laughter was sufficient, my crying necessary, may I now please rest in peace. Or--I cried until I laughed and some years later I died. As for my accomplishments, think of me when you dust.
He had come inside to do all this thinking. After putting into the blender a half cup of frozen blueberries, and slicing into pieces one frozen banana, and 4 large frozen strawberries and adding some apple juice and blending it all up. He looked back out that window, which was so clean now after having been for so long coated with oily cooking grime, and looking back out to that spot where he had been working it looked, again, cool and clean and green. But he knew that only the green part was accurate and just as surely he knew that he wouldn't go back out there until later, when the sun was getting very low in the sky and casting beams through the trees, which would make his life seem more like a well directed film than a haphazardly shot home movie. He would against his will spray his body with chemical repellant and make another go at it and be happy about the lighting if not the chore and the smell of his skin. He would accomplish this one little thing today while spying all about him so many other things that needed doing. He would treat the chores as equals until they were done and then he would find something else to do, somewhere else.
...more recent posts
The Ballad Of Timmy Meecum
Said Jolene, "no silly, while that dog vomit may be disgusting, it's no fungus."
"Is it physarum polycephalum?" exploded Ramen with querulous excitement.
"And yet 'fungus-like' surely you must admit," asserted Bill Macy, ignoring the patently absurd Ramen.
Squinting, with one eye closed and the other looking sideways at Bill Macy, Ramen shot back, "I think it's physarum polycephalum, don't you Jolene?"
"More likely fuligo septica. I mean texturally speaking it's not really a question, although I will grant to an untrained casual observer it might be mistaken for a polycephalum." For Bill Macy, taunting Ramen was not so much a sport but a child's game. Tiddlywinks if he were forced to put a name to it.
"Heh, she said 'dog vomit,'" snorted Timmy Meecum from the back row.
Said Jolene, "no silly, while that dog vomit may be disgusting, it's no fungus."
"Is it physarum polycephalum?" exploded Ramen with querulous excitement.
"And yet 'fungus-like' surely you must admit," asserted Bill Macy, ignoring the patently absurd Ramen.
Squinting, with one eye closed and the other looking sideways at Bill Macy, Ramen shot back, "I think it's physarum polycephalum, don't you Jolene?"
"More likely fuligo septica. I mean texturally speaking it's not really a question, although I will grant to an untrained casual observer it might be mistaken for a polycephalum." For Bill Macy, taunting Ramen was not so much a sport but a child's game. Tiddlywinks if he were forced to put a name to it.
"Heh, she said 'dog vomit,'" snorted Timmy Meecum from the back row.
