The Indignant Pine
(It seems that this post from yesterday got deleted by mistake while posting today which puts today's post actually below this)
The cat came in through the window carrying a baby bunny, but not cradled gently, rather in her jaws clamped piercingly tight on the bunny's neck. The cat laid the bunny down gently on the wood floor and galloped happily to the kitchen where the food and water was always fresh and plentiful.
The man stared out the window at birds on the lawn below the freely swaying boughs of pine. The birds and the boughs described for him a movement that otherwise he would question, as the mountains in the background were dauntingly still. How could something be so still? Could a man become a mountain? The sun imprinted versions of itself across the walls of the room and by its color he could guess the time of day and even the temperature outside. This could be a skill. If for example he ever lost some primary connection to the outside world this guessing acumen might prove useful.
The cat was galloping again. It seemed her loud high stepping was an exaggeration. A prideful “look at me I've got blood on my tongue” noisemaking. She was taking her time with the beheading. The wound slowly grew during the day to become something to which the man could offer no more tolerance. I cannot tolerate this beheading was a sudden emotion that came out of nowhere. It was the wound. The wound was offensive.
The man was outside now. He had approached the pine (table nine, bunny rare), and on his cardboard tray the bunny still sufficiently dead, rested. Excuse me he interrupted the raucous pine, but who ordered the bunny? Before the pine at table nine could glean his meaning he flung the bunny, at the same time turning away so he could not see its trajectory. He was a coward in this respect. The bunny flew like it never had in life, an inexperience that ended badly, an ignominy beyond death, and it crashed with a thwap, the sound as best the man could describe it was thwap. To this day whenever the man hears that noise he is reminded of bad endings. The pine had complained to management and the man, blackballed, never worked in restaurants again.
...more recent posts
An Ecological Perspective
Alex Carp considered the laundry. With pinpoint imaginative precision and without moving from the bed he could see every article of dirty clothing in the house, and determine by what was lacking on his bedside table what remained in the pockets of those articles. He was certain the dirty laundry existed in only four rooms. In his mind he sorted the laundry. He approached a state bordering titillation as he imagined the hot soapy suds and the swirling mechanics of the machine as it went to work on the red clay and chainsaw oil staining his work pants on the floor of bathroom number one. Those pants were so dirty he wondered if they should not be a pile unto themselves. But when he considered the quality of most of the clothing littering the four rooms he realized it would not matter so much what got washed with what.
From days past in laundromats observing the cleanliness of others he could see how getting white clothes really white could be a matter of pride for some, a job well done and he was on board with that, jobs well done, yet for him and his things white it was a bit too late and he therefore took his own measure of pride as he realized how much water he was saving by simply reducing his loads to one hot and one cold. White things, if you could really call his white things white, could comfortably coexist inside the machine with darker things.
Goodness, this would be quite a day indeed. Oh the things he would get done now that he had the laundry all sorted out. A task so long put off he could not remember when his clothing had last been clean.
Alex looked across the room at the dresser. There could be some clean clothes in there. If he sorted through all the girly things he could perhaps find another day's worth of clean clothing. Or better yet if he wore for another day his dirty clothing how much more ecologically sound would that be? He could, as he saw it, if he really put his mind to it, save the world, at least in a measure commensurate to his negative affect on it. But then when he started adding up his negative contributions to the world ecology he began to doubt that simply wearing dirty clothes would be enough. He had after all just recently sprayed gasoline on the driveway to kill weeds growing through the gravel. Alex, admittedly not a scientist, could still postulate that gasoline leaching into the soil was probably not a good thing, and that just wearing dirty clothes for another day might not be enough to counterbalance that.
If however, he did not bathe for a week, did not do laundry for another week, did not leave the property in search of groceries but subsisted on every edible can and box in the cupboards, he could then possibly earn enough ecological credit to counterbalance the gasoline leaching.
Alex felt the lifting of a burden from his shoulders. Oh how much he would get done today now that he could reasonably justify not doing so many of the things he had first considered doing.
Alex Carp considered the laundry. With pinpoint imaginative precision and without moving from the bed he could see every article of dirty clothing in the house, and determine by what was lacking on his bedside table what remained in the pockets of those articles. He was certain the dirty laundry existed in only four rooms. In his mind he sorted the laundry. He approached a state bordering titillation as he imagined the hot soapy suds and the swirling mechanics of the machine as it went to work on the red clay and chainsaw oil staining his work pants on the floor of bathroom number one. Those pants were so dirty he wondered if they should not be a pile unto themselves. But when he considered the quality of most of the clothing littering the four rooms he realized it would not matter so much what got washed with what.
From days past in laundromats observing the cleanliness of others he could see how getting white clothes really white could be a matter of pride for some, a job well done and he was on board with that, jobs well done, yet for him and his things white it was a bit too late and he therefore took his own measure of pride as he realized how much water he was saving by simply reducing his loads to one hot and one cold. White things, if you could really call his white things white, could comfortably coexist inside the machine with darker things.
Goodness, this would be quite a day indeed. Oh the things he would get done now that he had the laundry all sorted out. A task so long put off he could not remember when his clothing had last been clean.
Alex looked across the room at the dresser. There could be some clean clothes in there. If he sorted through all the girly things he could perhaps find another day's worth of clean clothing. Or better yet if he wore for another day his dirty clothing how much more ecologically sound would that be? He could, as he saw it, if he really put his mind to it, save the world, at least in a measure commensurate to his negative affect on it. But then when he started adding up his negative contributions to the world ecology he began to doubt that simply wearing dirty clothes would be enough. He had after all just recently sprayed gasoline on the driveway to kill weeds growing through the gravel. Alex, admittedly not a scientist, could still postulate that gasoline leaching into the soil was probably not a good thing, and that just wearing dirty clothes for another day might not be enough to counterbalance that.
If however, he did not bathe for a week, did not do laundry for another week, did not leave the property in search of groceries but subsisted on every edible can and box in the cupboards, he could then possibly earn enough ecological credit to counterbalance the gasoline leaching.
Alex felt the lifting of a burden from his shoulders. Oh how much he would get done today now that he could reasonably justify not doing so many of the things he had first considered doing.