For this entry's obligatory image, I tore a picture from the cover of a magazine: There were words that had been superimposed on it, but I replaced them with fragments of photos that seemed to correspond to the surrounding details; that's why it looks glitchy.
Dear diary,
What would the perfect man do, this morning? I just woke up; it’s 4 a.m. I’m definitely not the perfect man, but I don’t want to let reality get me down, so I try to pick up my spirits by imagining the perfect man: this gives me something to aspire towards.
I think the perfect man would be a police man. Or rather a police woman. The perfect morning would consist of me getting a call at 3:30 a.m. from my supervisor. He wakes me, because there’s an emergency. I was in a deep sleep; then I heard my phone ring. My phone is one of those old wireless handsets that’s like a block of rectangular plastic with a big silver antenna. I answer the phone while rubbing my eyes: “What’s up?” I say. “Oh, I’m glad I reached you, Hal! This is Dave, your supervisor from the police station. You’ve gotta get over to the lumber mill on 33rd street immediately. There’s been a crime. The other members of your investigation squad are already there, at the crime scene, doing their duties. Meet them over there, as soon as you can. I’ll catch up with you in a little while. I gotta run an errand. I gotta pick up a gift for my wife. It’s our anniversary tonight. I gotta get her some roses...”
I chose the names Dave and Hal because the former is the human scientist and the latter is the supercomputer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I thought it would be fun to imagine my boss as having a normal human attitude, whereas I, the cop, have an unnervingly perfect way of speaking & acting, like if HAL 9000 became a female policeman. And she should be pregnant as well, like Marge Gunderson, the character played by Frances McDormand in the movie Fargo (1996). Moreover, I stationed the crime at the lumber mill, because that reminds me of the TV show Twin Peaks (1990); and I placed the mill on 33rd street, because that’s how many aeons there are in the pleroma (thirty-three), according to ancient gnosticism, which is my preferred religion, although I only pretend to believe in it. Actually most people will tell you that there are only thirty aeons, but my sect says otherwise. I even arranged it so that my total chapters match that number, when I composed my very first Holy Book Save the Lord. And I think the cordless phone comes from Lost Highway (1997).
So, to recap: On awaking, I began to contemplate the perfect man. Via a system of philosophical deduction, I arrived at the conclusion that the perfect man would be a policewoman named Hal, and that the perfect day would consist of being awakened from deep sleep at 3:30 a.m. by a call from my supervisor, Dave, who tells me to hurry up and meet my team of investigators at the scene of a crime. This is a fun and easy story to dream, because we’ve all watched so many Cop Operas (or Coperas, as they’ve come to be known) that we can pull from our memory the details of what shall occur next, without having had to experience such pleasures in reality.
For instance, I can say that I arrive on the scene and duck under the yellow tape that reads “CAUTION” which is sectioning off the area where the crime was committed; and my fellow squad-members are wearing white hazmat suits to handle the evidence; and there’s blood spattered everywhere; and all the furniture is overturned. I’ve never actually encountered any of these details in real life, but I’ve seen them in various productions on Broadway; but what’s nice is the aforesaid productions aren’t too specific, so I don’t have to reference any particular show or feel like I’m stealing from superior authors or playwrights, as I did for some of the ideas in the earlier paragraph, which led to me citing the sources that I felt I had ransacked; & yet, compared to how I feel about my decision to include such dashes of color in my tale, those words “steal” and “ransack” sound too harsh: I’d prefer to call my acts homages.
Anyway, to set one’s dream in the forensic aftermath of a massacre feels freely generic: it’s part of the public domain, like a well-worn myth. Not all of us United Statesians agree about, say, whether or not Jesus (allegedly the final Christ) actually existed, and, if so, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy (let alone what he looked like; the color & length of his hairstyle, etc.); but we’re all on the same page when it comes to investigative crime units and the formal procedures thereof.
So my Perfect Day as the Perfect Man would consist of me showing up outside the lumber mill at 4:00 a.m. I double-park my tan 1976 Buick Riviera and enter the building through an enormous glass door that glides open noiselessly when its silver handle is pulled. I’m wearing a worn leather jacket over my law-enforcement uniform. I’m also wearing an ushanka. An ushanka is a fur cap with ear flaps that can be fastened at the chin to protect one’s ears. The word ushanka in fact derives from the Russian word for “ears”, so it literally means “ear flap hat”. This is the hat that I wear everywhere, because I live in Minnesota, and it’s really cold out here.
“Hello Sue. Hello Goldie.” I greet my colleagues.
“Good morning, Hal,” they reply.
“Well, what do we got here, today?” I say, yawning; “I sure hope this was worth waking me up in the middle of the night for. I was having the nicest dream: it was about panhandling. Here, I’ll tell you about my dream: In my dream, I was this enormous computer, which was dreaming that it was this giant country, and I was holding this huge plastic gun – you know how, in dreams, you can exist as something that isn’t normally alive, or at least it’s not considered (by the gatekeepers of empirical science) to be a coherent, organic being; however, in the dream-world, it’s like, you ARE that thing? ['Tat tvam asi', in Sanskrit] – well that’s what it was: I WAS this big country with a hollow black gun; and I kept shuffling from continent to continent, holding my panhandler sign on which was scrawled the slogan 'PITY THIS' and below that phrase was a drawing of a human hand performing, like a trained ballerina, the most obscene gesture; and, as I’d approach each new continent with my fake firearm, they would straightway hand me a treasure chest filled with gems: there was neither argument nor struggle; I didn’t even have to kick them! But then Dave calls me and wakes me up out of my reverie, and he’s like ‘Get your butt over to the lumber mill, NOW!’ So here I am. What do we got, this time? Looks like a lot of blood and overturned furniture.”
“Yeah,” says Goldie.
Then Sue tosses me some semi-transparent rubber gloves and says, “Here, put these on. Now come over here and help me hold this item of evidence under the electron microscope. The reason for the handwear is that I don’t want you getting any fingerprints on it.”
So I don the gloves, and she carefully hands me a walking stick that has a sharp knife jutting like a switchblade from the end opposite its handle. I recognize this item as the cane used by Ballin Mundson in the movie Gilda (1946).
*
Now I’m going to permit myself to stop imagining this terrifying crime drama, cuz I don’t want to proceed by having my character say, in her too-proper “Hal voice”, after eyeing the walking stick with recognition: “Do you think that Mr. Mundson could be behind this?” Cuz that’s just stupid. I already feel that I’ve wasted too much time on this dull gag. I’d rather talk about things that matter, like electoral politics:
Well, around the year 2016, I began to study current events. Before that, I mostly ignored whatever was going on outside my apartment. I would stay inside and just write weird texts all day. How did I support myself, you ask? By performing slave-wage labor, of course; there is no other option. Plus I knew a wealthy neighbor, and he’d stop by my place once per day & slide a bowl of freshly microwaved kidney beans thru a slot under my door. So I always had something to eat. It was less than pleasant-tasting, but it kept me alive; & that’s all that matters: Stay alive, otherwise the suffering might stop!
So anyway, I’d spend all my days writing solipsistic texts, and when any presidential race would begin, I would never even know it; and then when that presidential race would end, I would miss that as well: the whole event would simply pass me by. And so would all the other pageants and contests: the Super Bowl; the World Series; the Miss Universe Tournament; the Second Coming of Rome…
But then one day I decided to leave off from writing texts: I joined the Internet culture & got an account on The Social Network. Then I started paying attention to politics. This was in 2016. Then that particular race came to an end, and I forgot who won.
Now it’s THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND & TWENTY (2020), or thereabouts (it’s actually only 2019, as I write this), which means that another Democratic primary season is underhand. Or underway, rather. The primary season is where you choose the candidate from your clan that shall run for president. Then the general election is where you choose the legitimate president. The Republican side also has their primary season, but I side with the Democrats, so I don’t pay attention to the enemy: I just let the enemy clobber me: I just walk right into the enemy’s traps unawares.
So all my Democrat friends are now hyping about the exciting new prospects. Every day, someone new throws their hat into the race. I’m even thinking of running, myself! Bryan Ray 2020: my slogan shall be “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
To be clear, I stole that slogan – here’s my reasoning: If the current president can steal all his routines from Hitler and Mussolini, and his first lady can steal her speech from the former first lady, then I can steal my campaign slogan from Groucho Marx. And the current Prez nudges me and advises me in a raspy loud whisper: “It’s not stealing anyway, it’s an act of homage.” I like that line; I think I’ll use it again, somewhere in the text above.
*
Now you’re gonna think I’m kidding when I tell you the following anecdote about my neighbor, because this entry has gone a little loopy here at the end, but this is the truth:
During the coldest portion of the day, after the recent blizzard, when all of us fools who own homes in this Minnesota cul-de-sac were clearing our driveways, my next-door neighbor walked over and began to chat with me while I was shoveling snow. He said, “Hey! did you hear that your senator just announced a presidential bid?” And I said, “MY senator? Do I really own my very own senator!? Oh, I see: you mean, becuz I live in Minnesota, all the senators of the state are, in a certain sense, mine, since they are supposed to represent my interests. (What ARE my interests, I wonder.) No, I didn’t know that any of our senators were running for Prez in 2020. But, if that’s true, then my guess would be that it’s Amy Klobuchar?” (I only knew of Klobuchar because she did a town hall with Bernie Sanders a few months ago which I watched.)
“You’re right!” said my neighbor. Then he told me that his family has known Ms. Klobuchar for years, so they’re really excited that she’s now decided to run for president. I wanted, for the sake of social harmony, to say that I enthusiastically support Ms. Klobuchar’s campaign, but the truth is that I’m more of a “Bernie Bro” (that’s the nickname that, as far as I can tell, the opponents of the downtrodden have given unto the pro-Bernie mob that gnashes and weeps), even tho I’m disappointed with much of his foreign policy ideas, which seem too closely to mimic the U.S. intelligence agencies’ official spiel; plus – & again, I’m not joking when I say this – Bernie is way too right-wing for my tastes. Also I don’t believe in representative democracy. (I believe in direct democracy.) And lastly, I’m running for president myself, so it’s hard to support more than two or more other adversaries when you’re in the same race, and I like a couple other names after Bernie more than Ms. K. But I do genuinely desire to show team spirit, & to act in solidarity with my local community; so, after my neighbor told me this news about his familiarity with the Klobuchars, later that night I made a point of tuning in to watch Ms. K.’s announcement. And it turned out that she had planned an outdoor event; but, being Minnesota, the temp fell past sub-zero, and it began to precipitate. But Ms. K. was a trooper: she stood behind her podium and delivered the whole speech that she had prepared for this occasion, despite the huge flakes of snow that amassed on her head. The sight of Ms. K. resolutely continuing her lecture bedecked with that bright white icy helmet so strongly struck me that I attempted to memorialize the image, purely as an act of homage, in the final paragraph from my Valentine’s Day post; that’s why that entry concludes with me proclaiming so stentoriously: “how could you not vote for me, after I stood out here in the freezing cold to make this political announcement, and got snow in my hair.”
AFTER ROOFSHOVELING
Everything that precedes the above title was written aimlessly on the morning before I shoveled my roof for the second time. Note that key phrase “second time”: this was time number two. The first time I shoveled my roof, the act got memorialized in the post-postscript (P.P.S.) for an entry whose title I can’t remember. As I explained there, my kind neighbor let me borrow his roof rake (they call it a roof rake, although it’s really more of a shovel than a rake; this is further proof that wordsmiths prefer style over substance: alliteration over accuracy), and the tool worked like a charm; yet I didn’t own a pair of waterproof boots, so my feet got soaked from standing in the knee-deep snowbank: for I was wearing tennis shoes, which are lightweight and breathable. Then, on account of the wetness of my feet and the coldness of the temperature, I came down with pneumonia, and this illness, complicated by alcoholism, slew me; thus depriving Russia of her liberator. For, had I lived, I’d have liberated Russia, without a doubt. Of course I’m kidding about this Russian liberation business; that topic was only on my mind because I’m nearing the end of Emma Goldman’s memoirs – I spent a good portion of last evening reading her life’s story – and she explains in detail her experience of being deported to Russia: the people have very little to eat, and what scant fare they do have is unappetizing; nevertheless their spirit is indomitable; so, while learning about them, I can’t help but want to dive right into the text of history and become these people’s savior. That’s why I patterned my 1917 campaign (“Czar Bryan for Liberator”) after my 2020 U.S. presidential bid, since the latter was such a success. But I ended up dying (as I explained) for lack of adequate footwear, during an afternoon of roofshoveling; and my loss was bitterly mourned. This reminds me of the 1945 film A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – here’s a quote from Wikipedia (swapping the phrase “find paying work” for “rake the roof”, and changing “being in school” to “liberation”; also rendering “his daughter” as “the Russian people”; and lastly replacing the protagonist’s name “Johnny” with my own):
Since the blogger Bryan Ray understands how much liberation means to the Russian people, he feels desperate to rise to the occasion. Despite the fact that it’s snowing hard, Bryan marches outside determined to rake the snow from the Capitol’s onion dome, but he fails to return.
After Bryan has been missing for a week, Officer McShane comes to his apartment to deliver the bad news that Bryan died of pneumonia complicated by alcoholism while out in the blizzard.
So anyway, after that first episode of roof-raking, it snowed so much that the act of liberation needed to be performed again. Huge ice dams formed above the front and rear gutters of my home, and icicles actually started fanging thru the joint between the fascia and the soffits, which indicates that the water has seeped under the shingles and is preparing to infiltrate the abode’s interior ceiling: no doubt it will soon creep all the way into your bedroom and drip you awake by kissing your forehead repeatedly. When you try to escape, you’ll notice you’ve been frozen to the bed with icy manacles. This is such a stressful realization that your body involuntarily discontinues lactating; thus you have no choice but to call the F.B.I. and request that they deliver a few bottles of milk, lest your children starve. [See the miniseries Waco (2018).]
So, needless to say, I was scared to let this problem get any worse; but, as I keep explaining, the roof rake that I employed the first time around belonged to my neighbor, and I wasn’t comfortable asking to borrow his tool again – initially it was he who approached me, offering to lend the thingamabob gratis, so I accepted; but I was too nervous to ask if I could borrow it a second time: for, even if I were to attempt to do so, I could never get past the question of how to approach him:
Do I physically walk up to his door and ring the bell? No, that seems too intrusive: for what if he and his wife are making passionate love at exactly that moment, like the couple in that one movie that I once watched: they were naked and grunting and humping in their house’s entryway: the wife’s back kept slamming with every thrust against the front door. So that would be awkward if I were standing on the outside, poised to ask to borrow a simple tool, while these two unclad sweaty taxpayers are less than one single meter away, and we’re separated only by a slab of wood. So the dull repetitive thudding that I hear sends me tiptoeing away in bemusement.
Then I wonder instead if I should call my neighbor on the phone. But that’ll be equally interrupting: it’ll probably be like that one scene where the wife of the protagonist is just about to reach her long-sought climax, when the land-line rings, cuz Bryan from next door is calling to see if he can borrow a roof rake, so the woman gives up in frustration and says “God damn phone.”
Therefore I fix upon sending an instant text message; but soon decide against doing so, cuz I imagine that after I send it, I’ll have to wait for a response, and the minutes will tick by like hours, because my neighbor’s portable device was left underneath the pile of discarded clothing near the bed, thus he misses when it flashes and vibrates in indication that a message is incoming; and the scene is being shot from a low angle, with the camera positioned so that the device under the clothes occupies the foreground at the side of the shot, and the bare bodies are in soft-focus dominating the mid-ground, bumping and grinding.
Long story short, I ended up buying my own roof rake: mine all mine. Then we waited till Monday morning to go out & shovel; cuz then there was less chance of us being confronted by any rake-owning neighbors. Usually people are at work on Monday morning.
So it took me an hour and a half to get all the snow cleared away. It was really heavy stuff. My arms are aching now, from the workout. But at least I don’t have to worry about the ice dams getting bigger.
And, in case I forget to mention it in the following diversions, my boss gave me a pair of waterproof boots: he just gifted them to me! What happened is that he bought them for himself, but he purposely selected a size that is too big, because he intended on wearing triple pairs of sox upon his booties (that is to say: his feet); but then he discovered that discount retail outlets nowadays sell super-thermal undergarments, and, since sox are considered a type of negligee ("a winter dressing gown for the lower extremities of female bosses, typically made of a filmy, soft fabric like black silk"), Dave just ordered a whole package of super-thermal footwear, as well as a matching pair of replacement boots in his own darn size, to replace his original purchase. And he bequeathed the oversize boots to me, which worked quite well, as my feet are naturally yuge. So now I have boots; thus I'm no longer required to get my feet wet when shoveling and die of pneumonia. Instead I can successfully liberate the people of my country and sip vodka to celebrate.
And it was great fun to pay attention to the state of all the other house’s roofs in our neighborhood, when, on Tuesday, we drove our car to the hardware store (this trip was not to purchase a roof rake: we already own a roof rake now—didn’t I just get done telling you that? you need to listen more carefully—; no, instead, we were looking to buy new baseboards for our bathroom, and possibly a faucet): I looked at each and every house, as we passed them, and I noticed that almost everyone shares my predicament; that is to say: almost ALL the houses had huge ice dams around their perimeter, festooned with giant glistening transparent icicles. I felt relieved, upon seeing this. I said to myself “Ah, at least I’m not the only one who has ice dams.” For some reason, it’s not as bad when you know that other people share your struggle. But then I began to feel pity for my fellow local homeowners, for I noted that a lot of their houses are two-stories or even three-stories high; and I myself own only a single-story rambler or so-called “ranch home”, so it’s easy for me to reach up there with my trusty new rake and scrape down the snow; whereas these vast mansions have tops that reach up unto heaven, where Yahweh lives, near Mount Olympus; so if you try to poke around up there with a plastic roof rake, you’re liable to agitate your Maker. And the LORD will came down to see your three-story house, which your contractors builded; and the LORD will exclaim [Genesis 11:1-9]:
Behold, the Klobuchar family have found a tower in the land of Minnesota, and they have dwelt there; and their roof has received much snow, according to my plan to plague their city with ice damns; yet this they begin to do: they have purchased a lengthy shovel, and are now outside in their lawn, with Bryan the Blogger and Bathsheba, endeavoring to remove the snow from their roof! Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Therefore, let us go down, and there confound their mores — the conventions and customs of their community — that they may not understand how to deal with one another. Thus they shall cease to work together as one, in neighborly cooperation, like evil communists, which party I hate. America will NEVER be a socialist nation. Not on my watch.
Then the LORD will scatter us abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and we will leave off from shoveling our roofs. Therefore the name of our hometown shall be changed: no more shall it be called Babel, MN, but Thief River Falls; because the LORD did there confound the manners of our suburb: he stole away our ancient tradition of tool-sharing and caused our ice dams to cascade upon us like waterfalls. And from thence shall the LORD scatter us abroad to Siberia; as it is written [Isaiah 19:20]:
It shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Russia: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, a great liberator, and he shall deliver them. And they shall call his name Bryan.
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