Dear diary,
This entry will contain nothing but the same old thoughts. The same old thoughts keep coming to me because I keep going through the same old experiences. Life, for me, is a long string of repeat lessons, like a correctional course that I continue to flunk.
The most recent example of the above, which I now introduce to my nonexistent court, is this stupid task that I had to do yestermorn: I had to hang up a gutter system in our courtyard. (Gutter: not a sewer, no; I’m talking about a channel installed around the top edge of a house, that collects rain as it drops from the surface of the roof and redistributes the water so that it doesn’t all land directly in front of the foundation of your master bedroom and seep in and flood the place, thus drowning you while you dream of falling off ladders.) It’s something that other souls may find commonplace, but the first of fourteen reasons this job terrifies me is that the gutters I must affix are on the upper story of our apartment complex, twelve feet off the ground. And the ground is hard; so if you lose your cool, you’re a goner.
Demise was on my mind, not only from the risk of plummeting off the ladder, but because, during the whole time I was up there, the wildlife overhead was engaged in violent conflict: a murder of crows was attempting to murder a hawk: they were dive-bombing and squawking squawks that sounded both savage and agonized – and I think the hawk was trying to eat the crow’s babies; so the crows would repeatedly gang up and bully the hawk, which seemed to be about twenty times their size, by chasing him for distances and swarming at him, surrounding him like a thundercloud, and lunging at his flesh with their sharp beaks: I saw them do this again and again; then they’d all return to the same two trees and squawkingly rage; while the hawk kept scheming for a path at that nest, so as to eat all their fledglings.
And on Sunday there was a dead baby mouse on our doorstep, as if it had been placed there by The Mob to send us a message. My guess as to what might have led to this spectacle is as follows.
Either a squirrel got in a brawl and vanquished her foeman, and was planning to carry the kill back to her cave as a gift for her wife, but, just then, we humans—my sweetheart and I—returned from our trip to the local hardware store (holding a bag that contained our purchase of a hacksaw, a miter box, and a ten-piece set of hole-saw bits), and this unexpected entry into the warzone by beings more than a thousand times her size caused the squirrel to drop the mouse and scramble away in fright.
Or it could be that one of the above-mentioned crows that routinely circle our home managed to catch a baby mouse for her fledglings’ dinner; and this mouse was still alive and thrashing, trying to escape from the talons of its enemy, and its enemy (the crow) kept willfully dropping the mouse onto the concrete of our courtyard, so as to T.K.O. it (Technically Knock it Out – that is: bash it unconscious); this way, it’d be harder for the mouse to escape from the platter, once it is served to the squawking fledglings up in the trees (in the nest that is haunted by the hawk)—but the last impact did more than simply T.K.O. the mouse: it killed it dead; and just when the crow was nosediving to retrieve its treasure, the LORD God caused a human couple to appear at the gate of the house where the mouse had lately landed, thus rattling the nerves of the crow and causing it to (wisely) avoid the place where its cuisine lay prepared. (Is it lay or lied, in this instance? I’ll stick with lay, since God can only lie in the future tense.) So when my sweetheart exclaimed “Eek a mouse,” I employed a dustpan to lift his cadaver, and, with the tip of my shoe, I displaced some of the dirt near the prettiest plant in our garden:
Thus I gave the unfortunate squeaker a Christian burial.
Now I imagine the mouse’s body is decaying under the dirt, and his molecules and atoms are working their way into the root system of the nearby verdure, so, very soon, it’ll bloom more radiantly than ever; because decomposing rodents are a delicacy to plant life. But what’ll probably happen is that the flower will be so surcharged with happiness that it’ll transmogrify into a cornstalk; because corn is the chef-d’œuvre of the flower kingdom; that’s why they advertise Iowan cornfields as The Most GLORIOUS Vacation Resort: Hands Down, the BEST Escape for Runaway Royals!
Anyway, so yesterday I wake up petrified about an impending event (the gutter install) & then the day passes. Now, tomorrow (today), I awake in the aftermath of anxiety. It’s like a worry-hangover, which is not fair: for the substance that caused it (fear) was neither wanted nor enjoyable—why should I have to suffer for having suffered? If you don’t drink enough wine during an evening in the heavens with your fellow librarians (nowadays, you can rocket to outer space for a single night with your co-workers, so as to imbibe Fendant de Sion and enjoy a soft orgy), you might wake up with a vague feeling of sadness the following noon; and the zero-gravity environment leaves its accent on your gait; but these consequences are adequate: they’re priced according to their value. The only thing that’s vexatious about the results of an evening out with professional colleagues is the unwanted pregnancies, which now must be carton’d like eggs and shipped off to Sparta. But if you install gutters on the two-story roof of your residence, you get adrenaline pumping thru your veins instead of alcohol, thus the hangover consists of hair-trigger angst and righteous indignation. (What if the upshot of drunkenness were that you’d wake up a little naturally drunker than usual? I think the world was installed incorrectly.)
So I ascended the ladder up into the clouds of the sky, and it left me dizzified (slang for dizz’d) just like Scottie, played by James Stewart, in the movie Vertigo (1958). As I think I mentioned earlier, we rented a vast triangular folding stepladder; and I had to climb on its rungs to measure lengths and screw holders into the fascia. Two stories up. That’s twelve full feet. So if you’re six feet tall, as I am in my dreams, it’s like standing on your own two shoulders. Now, nothing should occupy the space of your right and left shoulders other than one angel and one devil. That place is sacred. It’s not for amateur homewreckers.
Anyway, my sweetheart noticed that I was quaking in all my limbs and likely to faint, so she shouted, “Don’t try to ‘tough this out’ and ‘power through’ like a superman, like Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or like Jesus on a good day – you’ll only be taunting the same God that assassinated those heroes. Consider that Zarathustra came DOWN from the mountain, because of his love for humankind. So descend the staircase, like Duchamp’s famous Nude #2. Think of Jacob’s Ladder; don’t imitate Finnegan. In Genesis (28:12), it says ‘Jacob dreamed, and behold: a double helix spiraling up from the earth, and its top reached to heaven’ (just like the Tower of Babel, by the way) ‘and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.’ Hear that?—ascending AND descending; whereas the hod carrier Finnegan, from Joyce’s masterwork, slips and tumbles from a ladder while drunkenly hanging up gutters. Now look at yourself: you’re tipsy before the sun has even arisen. I know you’re always quoting Melville’s Ahab, ‘I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!’ and also Whitman, ‘Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.’ But look, now you’re all atremble; so listen to wisdom. You beat the sun, OK? What more can you ask! You beat the fucking sun to his top position, you’re up there with the crows and the Giant Hawk, squawking and flailing. Yet your legs are wobbly; you’ve bequeathed your tremor to the tape measure: you’re liable to swoon! Make up your mind: are you trying to steal the chicks from a nearby nest, or spawn your own, a baker’s dozen, and ship them to Sparta, with a note reading ‘TO: My Spartan rivals / FROM: Thine Ancient Athenian Astronaut, also Secretary of Anti-Novels at the upcoming Library of Neo-Alexandria (P.S. pardon the cracked extra shell and christen it BURNSVILLE)’! Now therefore descend from your stairway to heaven, drop the electric screwdriver, and let ME handle this. I’ll climb the ladder because I’m not scared of anything. I, even I, will drill all the starter holes and install the gutter hangers; and I won’t strip a single screw; and you will thank me when it’s over.”
So my sweetheart saved the day, and now I thank her cuz it’s over. And, tomorrow, it’s scheduled to rain on our parade, so we’ll get to see if our contraption works. It will earn a passing judgment, if each raindrop hastens into the gutter chambers, splashes around gleefully for about seventy years, then dies of some hideous disease and gets shot from the downspout, into the communal parking lot. Out by the curb, where the garbage cans wait for the trash truck to ravish them.
And note that, while I write this, people are setting off fireworks for the Fourth of July, which is currently considered a holiday by us United Statesians, for we believe that this continent was founded by Titus Andronicus. The fireworks go bang, in emulation of bombs and guns that blast and kill. Cuz we’re against terrorism.
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