Tag: life

Flight

Bruce learned he could fly when he scared his family with his first lift-off at his second birthday party. General excitement and amazement, with shadows of fears, greeted his brief zooms over the picnic table, tomato plants, and aging white back yard fence.

He didn’t remember the flight. He remembered Granny McCune taking him by the hand and speaking to him. No words were recalled but her face, white and softly folded, small — one of the reasons he enjoyed her so much was her small stature, like an flowery elf, he’d decided, something he’d never shared with anyone — remained sharply focused in his mind.

Flying, itself, though, he forgot all about that. He was a little boy in America, he was growing, going to school and learning a lot. Nobody else flew and no one encouraged him to fly, so he forgot. Granny McCune, may she rest in peace, died when he was five. He didn’t know why. Then, there’s a memory gap, it seemed like, between her death and funeral when he was five, until he was living in Chicago when he was eight.

Even as an adult, he didn’t understand why they were living in Chicago. They were staying with aunts and uncles but he didn’t know why. By then, he had a little sister, as he always called her, instead of younger sister, to go along with his big, older sister. He was the only boy and a middle child. Dad was away often. He didn’t know what his Dad did then.

While in Chicago, he shared a bedroom with a cousin, Clarence, who was fourteen. The room was small, and he slept on a little cot beside Clarence’s twin bed. Keeping his curiosity to himself, he wondered where Clarence’s other twin bed was, because, he figured, if it was a twin, there must be two, right? Yes, that’s what he thought.

Clarence was a big baseball fan, a big fan. Wearing a Cubs hat and a pitcher’s mitt and holding a baseball, he listened to the games on a large Philco transistor radio in his room whenever he could. He wanted to be a major league pitcher, like Don Cardwell, who’d just pitched a no-hitter for the Cubs, but even then, while pitching for a Little League team (who were unfortunately, the Pirates), he knew he didn’t have it. He tried, and was better than most, but something inside him told him that he couldn’t do it, he told his little nephew without rancor or sadness, but rather the casual, matter-of-fact peculiarity with which the family processed victories, defeats, deaths, weddings and holidays.

Being an older American male and encouraged by his Mom, and Bruce’s mother, his Aunt Linda (who, shockingly, Clarence found attractive, which disturbed him because she was Mom’s sister), Clarence became a mentor to his little cousin, teaching him to play catch. Bruce showed a remarkable natural ability for catching the ball. Throwing was another matter, but throw that ball anywhere and he’d race and jump for it.

Naturally, doing one running and jumping effort, Bruce took off.

He’d not really noticed that he’d done it. To him, it was about getting the ball. Clarence would have put it down to an amazing jump, except Bruce continued hovering, pleased with his catch and then focusing on throwing the ball accurately to Clarence.

Catching the ball, Clarence watched Bruce land and then walked to him. “How’d you do that?”

Not understanding the object of the question, Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was his stock answer. Other children wanted to know how he remembered things so easily and effortlessly. He didn’t know and didn’t want to explain. He felt the same about whatever it was that Clarence was asking him about.

“Do you know what you just did?” Clarence asked.

Certainly, Bruce understood what he’d just did, he caught the ball. That seemed so obvious, he shrugged. He was beginning to wonder if he was in trouble.

Looking around the yard like he was worried about a wild animal getting him — something Bruce understood because his Mom always warned him to be careful, “And don’t let the wild animals get you,” — Clarence said, “We’d better go inside.”

Clearly, he’d done something wrong. Bruce said. “Can’t we catch a little longer?” Why couldn’t that be done? Only darkness, the threat of wild animals, and an adult’s summons or admonition curtailed his activities. This seemed very arbitrary of Clarence, a word Bruce had just learned. He hoped he was using it correctly.

“No, I’m just thirsty,” Clarence said vaguely in what Bruce recognized was a lie. However, if Clarence was going to lie, that’s the way it was going to be, because Clarence was older than him. So, shrug, oh, well.

That night, there was an intense meeting in the dining room involving Clarence and all the adults. After that, Bruce’s Mom and Aunt Jean sat Bruce down and sat opposite him in a way that told him, This Is Serious. “Honey,” his Mom said, touching his cheek in the manner that she did, which irritated him. Pulling back and grimacing, he pushed her hand away and said, “Stop it. You’re always touching me.”

Aunt Jean and his Mom looked at each other. “He doesn’t like being touched,” his Mom said. Aunt Jean nodded. His Mom explained to Bruce, with interruptions and assistance from his Aunt Jean, that he should not fly, because others couldn’t fly, and that would scare them. He didn’t understand why they’d be scared of that, because he wouldn’t do anything to anyone, and pestered her about that point with impatient questions, until she finally said, “I know, I know, Bruce. Just promise me that you’ll never fly again, okay?”

“I promise,” Bruce answered. He wasn’t happy. In bed later, he thought it all over. He understood he’d flown without trying. That’s why Clarence stopped playing catch, he figured. Clarence did have a look on his face. He didn’t look afraid, but that must have been it. He thought he’d apologize to Clarence the next day but a family emergency interrupted.

It took some time for him to understand what had happened, years, really, but his Dad had been killed in a car accident in Indianapolis. His flight and his cousin’s reaction fused with his promise to his Mom, and his Dad’s death into a defining core of his future behavior.

For a long time, Bruce didn’t fly. He didn’t tell anyone he could fly. He went to college, met girls, had sex, was drunk a few times, and sick sometimes, and smoked joints five or six times, but he never told anyone he could fly, and he never flew. He pursued a normal, flightless life of graduating college, finding employment, marrying, becoming a father, divorcing, marrying again, divorcing again, and settling into ruts that dissatisfied him more and more as he aged. He thought life would have been different than it was, and it disappointed him that it wasn’t.

It was at a party one evening when this reached a natural point. Fifty-two years old, he was the oldest person at the party by a few years. He thought the others, his co-workers, had invited him because they were being polite. It was a tight group of people, and even if he thought little of the others’ intelligence and talents, he liked them as individuals. The party sounded fun, too, and he was in a funk, as he noted to himself, an abysmal black mood that he didn’t think was ever going to end. He’d endured other funks but this one seemed worse. He was thinking about going to a therapist about it, although, he tacitly informed himself, his problem was that he didn’t feel like he fit, and he felt lonely. He didn’t believe anyone particularly cared about him, not even his children, sisters or Mom. So he had no outlets for his complaints. That’s why he needed a therapist, just to have someone to talk to about what bothered him.

The party wasn’t working out. Held at Michele’s house on the coast, he was a little jealous of everyone else. They seemed happier, more satisfied and better engaged. They laughed a lot. As they did, he slipped to the edges. Drink didn’t entice him. He thought that if he left, nobody would notice, so he tested that theory by slipping out.

A misty sea breeze regaled him outside. He heard the ocean but didn’t see it. Sunset was imminent, so he walked down a street in the beach’s general direction. Seeing a sign marked, “Beaches”, he followed a trail through some grass into a sharper, damper sea breeze. The trail went up, away from the beach, which disappointed him. He thought he’d walk along the beach at sunset, but after a while, he found himself on a bluff. Tule fog dominated the ocean’s horizon. The sun was just eating into it.

His ongoing internal treatise about who he was, what he wanted, and why he was dissatisfied, was resumed, and then he remembered how he’d flown. The memory burped up out of the nothing of thought in such stark clarity that he was certain he was thinking of a book he’d read, or a movie that he’d seen. But then, with still introspection, he recalled his flight when he was eight years old and his promise to his mother not to fly. He took out his cell phone with a thought that maybe he should call Mom and ask him if he was remembering that right, or not. But then, he thought, why hadn’t it been mentioned all these years? Also, he remembered it with more intimate details that whispered, “It’s true,” to him. And although he loved his Mom, she really was about herself, her health, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren these days. She rarely actually asked him, “How are you?”

Instead he thought, why? I will just fly. Others were on the beach and the bluff, but he didn’t care. So, as the tule fog swallowed the setting sun’s dulling tangerine presence, he stepped forward, off the ground and into flight.

Others always argued about what was seen and what had happened. He would not know that. Flying felt so beautiful and natural that he immediately felt released. The sun’s last rays were warmer, and the breeze was less. Without thinking much about it, he kicked off his shoes and let them plummet to the ground. The rest of his clothes followed, piece by piece, even his cargo shorts with his wallet, and his boxer shorts, until all that he wore were his expensive sunglasses. So attired, he rose into the sky above the tule fog, into the space where the sun was still over the horizon, and continued flying toward it. Small craft were underneath. Swooping and laughing, he waved to their occupants, pleased with their reactions.

Why hadn’t he flown all these years, he asked himself. He’d been missing out an a powerful element of himself.

He continued on, climbing higher, until his sunglasses slipped off his face and he rose into the ether like a happy, unencumbered two-year old, leaving behind a huge mystery about what had happened to him. His BMW was still at Michele’s house, and they had the reports of what others had seen. There was one video of the flying man incident on someone’s cell phone but everyone thought that was faked. His shoes washed up on shore at different locations and were collected as unremarkable trash, as was his other clothing, and his wallet was found years later, hundreds of miles north of where he’d disappeared. Some claimed that was evidence that he’d been alive, hiding under a different name.

Only his mother, on hearing the news that her son was gone, understood, and accepted.

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Sporadic Update

An organized compilation of random subjects plaguing me that I may have posted about, but which I think I should update readers about.

  • The Trial. A plea bargain was accepted so I don’t need to testify about the break-in. The saddest aspect (besides tangible evidence that strange, sick people are out there) is that our beloved neighbor, Barb, has moved out. She’s just too frightened in her house any longer. That’s troubling. Barb and Walt were two of the best things about our location. Walt’s passed away and Barb has moved away, moving me to sigh about change and life.
  • The close call. I survived one close call in April, when I endured one of the worst haircuts I’ve ever received. This young ‘stylist’ was clearly a novice and took to my head with the same sense of style that military barbers employed when I entered basic training. Fortunately, my hair has grown out into something that looks reasonable again.
  • Tucker. Tucker suffers from conjunctive gingivitis. We submitted him to some oral surgery in April. It went terrific. Several teeth were removed, including one of his big lower front fangs, if you will, but he’s not having any swelling, bad breath, pain or drooling, so hooray! On the coin’s flip side, he’s feeling so much better that he’s very energetic and wants to assert his position as the alpha beast.
  • Other cats. Peace has been brokered between Meep (a.k.a. Popi) and Boo Radley. Boo’s PTSD also seems to be diminishing. The big bedroom bagheera without a tail has become more trusting of us. Quinn, of course, remains Quinn, a sweet, charming cat who prefers to avoid conflict.
  • Neighbor cats. Pepper, Princess and Buddy continue their visits and begging. Pepper remains the worse. That’s a little surprising. We always believed Wade’s corgi, Bella, annoyed Pepper, driving her toward us. Sadly, Bella passed away from cancer last month. She’ll be missed but with her absence, we thought that Pepper’s daily visits would taper off. They still could, with time. It could be that what was once refuge is now habit, though. Buddy is a sweet little black character. He’s clearly well-fed, but enjoys being petted and presented kibble, which, being a sucker for cats, I do.
  • The cats’ activities interfere with yard work. Here they come when I make an appearance, pop, pop, pop, Pepper, Buddy and Princess, pop, pop, pop, Boo, Meep and Quinn. (I keep Tucker away for the safety of the rest.) Boo likes to settle right beside me, instructing me about what I’m doing wrong as I weed and mulch while the rest visit each other and observe me. All flee to safe distances when the edger and mower come out.
  • Fitbit. I took some Fitbit hits with the travel last month. Daily mileage on average dropped to five and a quarter miles per day while the average of steps per day dipped to about twelve thousand for the year to date. But summer is here, so I have hope I can raise those averages.
  • Reading. Just read four books in April: ‘Ordinary Grace’ (which I loved), ‘I Am Pilgrim’ (a quick, fast read that had some flaws but remained compelling), ‘The Passenger’ (although interesting, a disappointment), and ‘The Devil’s Star’ (a Jo Nesbo Harry Hole novel). Just started ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ at my other’s insistence.
  • Writing. Really hope to finish ‘Long Summer’ soon and get it out there. Its complications absorb a lot of limited brain power keeping it all straight and then trying to present it in a manner that won’t cause insanity among readers. Still *ahem* haven’t leaped back into publishing like I wanted/planned/expected but I remain determined to do so. ‘Peerless’, ‘Everything in Black and White’, the Spider City’ trilogy, and ‘Fix Everything’ all need to undergo the editing and publishing process. Meanwhile, I’m really eager to write the third book in the Lessons with Savanna mystery series.

There are other things to write about, of course, particularly on the family fronts, but I shield them and their activities, so I post very little about that. Politics, technology and economics remain passions that deserve posts but I end up diverting too much energy to write much about them. Dreams are experienced every night, so I could write about those, too, like last night, when I didn’t like how the dream was going, and changed it in the middle, astonishing everyone in the dream. We’re also undergoing the annual raccoon invasion, and dealing with yard work. My wife’s health continues to be a concern while I remain stupidly healthy. Trips and adventures are planned, and we’re hopeful we can pull some of them off this year and not get sucked back into the black hole of family issues.

Overall, I’m excited, optimistic and hopeful, a great way to live. The writer is pestering me to get on to it with Brett, Philea, Handley and the rest, so it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Personal

Some days, you know?

You feel like asking all the gods of time and existence, when the hell will this all end? When will lasting change come?

You think of the fights you’ve been in and the efforts you’ve made. You think about the deeper, darker, harsher sacrifices that others endured to achieve their dreams.

You wonder, what needs to be done differently? You examine your life, actions and motives and question yourself about your direction and activities.

Questions bubble up again through the stew of thoughts, emotions, time and observation about who you are, what you’re done and what you’re trying to achieve. You seek your vision and wonder if you’ll ever accomplish anything close to what you see.

Doubts cause you to think, maybe this isn’t working. Maybe I need to change what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.

Because there doesn’t seem to be progress. No light at the tunnel’s end is starting to become noticeable. There’s no sign of dawn. Despite efforts to be confident and hopeful, you feel like you’re wilting under the pressure. Despair becomes your regular companion.

You look for signs and omens, and search for the keys to success and victory. You think, God, others have made it. What does it take? What does it take? 

Intellectually, emotionally, physically, you understand what it takes.

Some days, it seems like the reservoirs are empty. There’s nothing left in the tank. Sucking on fumes, you vow to stop and change, because this sure as hell ain’t working.

But you know no other way and grasp the conundrum of your existence. And you sort of smile because these thoughts are so familiar, they have their own place in your brain. And you know there’s so many others exactly like you. Somehow, there should be a measure of solace in that, but this is always so personal.

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The Curmudgeon’s Stream

My age is showing. As opinions and expectations calcify with age, I complain and whine about the changes, irritated with myself for doing it but unable to stem the tide. Writing about them might help ameliorate their frequency.

  • Why the hell do smoke alarm batteries chirp and squeal at night to tell us we need to replace the battery? We need a smart detector that does not awake us at dark AM to tell us the batteries need replaced. I’m fortunate that I had a new one on hand and could immediately hunt down the offending detector and mollify the device.
  • Reminder: stop by the store and buy a nine volt battery to have on hand. Just in case.
  • Does anyone curb their wheels any longer? My information guesstimate puts the percentage of those curbing their wheels at less than ten percent. The observation and math process is simple, basically the product of scanning a line of ten cars and noting that none or one is curbed. Most have pulled over to one side and are rarely within two feet of the curb. It’s like they just pulled to one side, stopped, and left, and are not ‘parked’. That really annoys the curmudgeon.
  • Sling TV irks the curmudgeon. I pay the most for it, twenty dollars a month. It’s by far the most expensive of my streaming subscriptions. Yet, its controls and layouts smack me as the worse, and it’s the one most likely to freeze and fail to stream. When I press the button to do something on Sling, I count to ten while waiting for it to respond. That doesn’t happen with Fandango, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and didn’t happen with HBO or Showtime. The second worse behind Sling is Acorn, but its reaction time is half of Sling’s. Sling easily wins the ‘worst of’ award.
  • BBC America on Sling is really strange. It’s all about Star Trek. Seriously.
  • Snow has found us again in southern Oregon. A winter storm warning has been issued. It’s a fly on my nose kind of problem for me. I worry about the homeless and poor. Churches have formed an alliance to provide shelter on cold nights. Shelter is just a fraction of the problem. Food, hygiene, health, employment…sigh. Some I meet seem violently, defiantly insane. Others are struggling against poor decisions or fates’ whims. So many roam the streets, sit on benches and huddle beside buildings, and we keep asking, “What can we do? What can we do?”
  • Why can’t our cats get along? Meep and Boo both seem territorial and leery of each other, like the other is the instigator, and they’re only protecting themselves. Tucker is another matter, a cat bred by the stars to fight. He doesn’t posture; he stalks, ambushes and attacks. It’s exhausting dealing with separating and segregating them. The situation does not seem to be improving.
  • I’m pleased that our neighbors adopted Princess. A young gray and white cat, Princess began keeping on eye out for me. Whenever I left the house, she raced to me and begged for food. This, I was told, was because of her experiences as a kitten. I didn’t see her for most of the winter and wondered about her status. But when it warmed and dried, here she was again, alive and healthy, begging for food.
  • Our neighbors have now adopted Princess. They had a dog and cat when we moved in ten years ago. Each died. They replaced the cat, and when a car hit and killed him within six months, they swore, enough. And even though I’m a curmudgeon, I understand. Enduring the emotional loss is daunting. But I’m pleased that they decided Princess should move in with them, and that Princess’ original people agreed.
  • Princess certainly seemed happy. On the day I was told of her new arrangement, Princess was sitting in the neighbor’s yard a short distance from the neighbor. Princess didn’t race to me this day. After a few minutes, she wandered over for a visit but didn’t beg to eat. And when the neighbor retreated to her house, Princess headed in there with her. Seems like a good match, which pleases the curmudgeon.
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On the Other Hand

The question rattling around during my walk was, “Do you need to understand love to understand hate?”

It was strictly a writing question but properly prompted by St. Valentine’s Day posts. I’d reach my own satisfying answer but desired another’s input.

Shannon was the barista working at the coffee shop. A bubbling avowed Christian, her dress today startled me, partially because she wore a crown of roses in her hair. “Hello, flower girl,” I greeted her.

Shannon bubbled as she does. “I love Valentine’s Day. It’s my favorite holiday.”

“You like all holidays, don’t you? I know you love Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. I love love. I don’t have a boyfriend so I bought flowers and gifts for my room mates to celebrate.”

“So…do you need to understand hate in order to understand love?”

Shannon considered the question. “I grew up in a very loving, Christian family. I didn’t really encounter hate until I was a little older. Then…it helped me…appreciate love more. I don’t think you need to understand hate to understand love but encountering hate makes you appreciate love more.”

I thanked her, understanding her take. It’s like loving life more and appreciating it more after near-death experiences or personal losses, or being thankful for what you have after having nothing or almost nothing.

Not all will react the same, of course. I know some people who avow they’re thankful for what they have because they had nothing. But they’re so angry and bitter that they once had nothing, that in many ways, they strike me as still having nothing, because they can’t let go of how they once lived.

There’s always the one hand, and the other, on how these things can affect us. That’s what I go through with my characters, thinking through and feeling their reactions in response to their past and present, understanding where they’re at and why, and then telling their story.

 

Note: my conversation with Shannon is presented in abridged form here. She spoke, and I listened. I hope I correctly portrayed her point.

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Personal Windows

Friends, prompted by curious, started grilling me about some of my past life the other night. Those were my super-secret military days.

Since their questioning, I’ve drifted along currents of wonder about living amidst change and how small our windows of knowledge truly seem. Change is fast and constant. The military commands I worked in thirty years ago no longer exist; the weapons systems introduced during my career are being retired. Bases have been shuttered. They’re trying to retire the nukes I once controlled (a good thing, in my mind). God knows what’s going on in space.

I ended up in a medical start-up after my military career, first in sales operations, running customer service and spewing out reports about sales trends. We were part of a nascent business, per-cutaneous transvascular coronary angioplasty, moving into stent delivering systems for coronary applications and radiation therapy to cope with re-stenosis. After that, I moved on to another company in search of ways to cope with chronic total occlusions.

Life found me in Internet and computer security in my next phase, and then onto analytics. Whatever. I drifted through choices, jumping through windows when the opportunities arose, and was fortunate to have someone on the other side of those windows to pull me in and show me around.

The windows in our lives are always so small. They open and close so quickly. Technology accelerates the speed with which the windows open and close. For examples, consider how we now conduct war versus how it was conducted in decades and centuries past. Consider how we make, experience and enjoy music, and how we entertain ourselves. Yet, each window and moment is treated as though this is a permanent solution. Consider the plight of the coal industry, for example. They think it can be legislated back but technology and market forces have moved past them.

We, as humans, can only see and understand so far, and we argue and debate about what we see, what it means and what we need to do about it. Yet, each person’s life is defined by their personal windows. These are shaped by their culture, heritage, education, genetics and personal experiences, yes, but they’re also shaped by much larger forces. We often barely glimpse the shadow of such forces.

Sometimes – no, hell, often – I think we’re going around understanding the world backward; we believe reality shapes us, and we investigate how we shape it.

Maybe we shape reality. Maybe there is no past or future, there is only the window into Now.

Jump through it and keep on going.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Well, hello. Here we are. At the end, the beginning, a break, a start, a finale.

This is New Year’s Eve day. Tonight we’ll count down to a new year.

I mean, most of the western world will count down. Others use different calendars and count down at another time of the year. And we’re only counting down to the end of the Julian calendar year, and not, say, the fiscal year, although some use the calendar year and the fiscal year as the same year. It’s not likely to be your natal year, though. So you won’t be celebrating that new year, nor a wedding anniversary, which is another new beginning that’s often celebrated.

But here we are, celebrating this day that doesn’t quite align with the seasons,businesses, or our lives, but here we are, the masters of our domain.

For this day, I selected a soft, questioning song. ‘The Freshman’ by the Verve Pipe from 1996. It encapsulates a lot of thinking about human nature IMO. Perhaps I’m generalizing by my circle of relationships but this is what I’ll testify that I saw. We began by thinking we knew so much. Then later, we question, what did we really know?

How did we miss the signs?

How could we end up so wrong?

We end up marveling about how we came to be the relationship that we are or were, conducting forensics on our behavior and running audit trails on what was said and who said it. We look for clarity in the murk about what was meant by tone and meaning in the context of gestures that happened before and after.

Some are content to never question. “It is what it is,” they answer with tautological finality. “Ours is not to question why; ours is but to do and die.”

“That’s just the way it goes.”

Perhaps they question but never admit that they question, or limit the circle of who knows about their questioning. Some consider that questioning is a sign of weakness.

They don’t want to be seen as weak.

I’ve always been the questioning sort. I guess that makes me weak. I’m envious of those who find a trajectory of ignorance and remain true to its path, never veering or questioning but riding that comet with the certainty that they have the golden truth, convinced that nothing else other than what they believe can be true or correct.

But I remain a freshman.

 

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The Boom: the Sequel

To recap part one of The Boom, my wife was making smoothies when the beverage somehow became animated, escaped all containers and spread its raspberry-pomegranate hues over appliances, hardwood floors and walls. Clean-up wasn’t difficult. We thought the incident was over.

But now…here is ‘the rest of the story’….

I left the master suite’s hallway late Christmas day and headed for the kitchen. The weak winter sun had already abandoned us. Lights were required. I went to the switch plate. Four lighting systems were controlled from that location. I clicked two and glanced up to assess, was this enough light?

The sight that I saw left me gawking. “Oh, my, God.”

Our kitchen has a vaulted ceiling. It rises from about seven feet up past fourteen. A pattern of dried smoothie resembling Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island chains was spread across the ivory ceiling at about the twelve foot altitude.

I regarded it for a number of minutes, considering what we’d initially seen, trying to reconcile the two scenes. The distances…the quantity….

Something like this needed company. I  hunted down my wife. She was in the snug. “Hey,” I said in Mister Casual’s voice. “We missed some of the smoothie spill.”

“Where?”

“You need to come see this.”

She went into the kitchen. I lagged behind her. She searched the floor and appliances. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look up.”

My wife did. She gasped. “Oh. My. God.”

“Yep. What the hell happened in here?”

Staring at the mess, my wife shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t explain.” Bewilderment glistened in her eyes. “We might need to paint that.”

“We’ll see. Let’s try cleaning it first.”

It would need to be me cleaning it, or painting it, should it be required. My wife would never be able to reach it. She’s too short. With cats warily inspecting my activities, I got out the ten foot step ladder to begin the cleaning process and set it up in the kitchen. Climbing up to the third rung from the top, I surveyed the mess.

It was worse than we thought. From here, I could see that another wall – ten feet away and fifteen feet up – displayed the Aleutians. Smoothie was on the walls above the cabinets and above the small artwork over the window. Smoothie speckled the dining room ceiling another eight feet away in the opposite direction.

Unbelievable. Studying it all, I wished again for Dexter to come in and analyze this mess. Turning on the Denver and KC football game for companionship, I began cleaning. Soap and water was tried.

The mess chortled at my puny efforts.

I doused a section with Windex and scrubbed.

The mess sniffed. “Is that the best you got?”

I conducted an Internet search. Magic Erasers were tried.

Magic Erasers failed.

I returned to the Internet. Another cleaner was recommended.

I tried it. “No,” the smoothie mess cried. “I’m disappearing…oh, what a world, what a world.”

By the third quarter, I had it all cleaned. A slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream was consumed to celebrate.

If you ever need to clean a berry stain from paint, I highly recommend OxiClean.

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The Boom

My dressing was just completed. I was visiting with the tailless black panther, Boo Radley , in the master suite. He was enjoying the attention. Just as I presented him a catnip offering on his favorite toy, a loud boom interrupted from another part of the house.

“Oh, fuck,” I heard from my wife.

Not good omens.

I went out. “What’s the word out he — ”

No more was needed. She’d been blending the day’s smoothie. Something had gone awry. Raspberry-pomegranate smoothie decorated the kitchen’s hardware floor. Spatters continued up the walls and wooden cabinets. The stainless steel refrigerator had taken a large hit. More hits were found on its stainless steel brethren, the dishwasher and stove. A puddle had settled on the dark granite top.

I wondered, what would Dexter tell me about this spatter pattern?

My wife, looking forlorn, was in the middle of the mess. Smoothie rolled down her jean legs. “What’s the best way to clean this up?” she asked without looking at me.

Cleaning wasn’t hard with a methodical approach, cleaner, some paper towels and rags. It took but ten minutes. The worse of it: the day’s smoothie rations were gone. Enough remained for her breakfast smoothie but there was naught for our lunches.

The best part: a raspberry-pomegranate smoothie explosion leaves the house with a great fragrance.

 

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Big Data Spoke

A far future science-fiction exercise.

Collecting, collating and compiling data from Human databases and streams – government, social, medical, financial, historic, personal, personnel, death, birth and health records – revealed startling evidence.

Humans were dying less. Even those who could be resurrected, cloned, recovered, re-invigorated or re-born, were dying far less often. Fewer still were dying and remaining dead. Suicides were recorded with four zeroes after a decimal point. The population median age, already well over one hundred, was rising sharply, with less people deciding to even be reborn as a younger age with their adult memories intact. It seemed like that fad had fast faded.

Okay. But birth rates had also plummeted, falling like the temperatures on Castle Frozen when an Arctic front roared over the mountains and down across the plains. Less than two children were being born for every hundred people. Most of those children were not being permitted to age into maturity and adulthood but were kept as children for their parents’ entertainment.

The Council for Peace and Prosperity met on Castle Prime’s equatorial climate-controlled island to discuss general trends and concerns. The big data study on birth and death was a minor agenda item on the third day.

Most weren’t worried, arguing this was a burp, a blip. Yes, all were part of longer, greater trends, but the sharp drop-off was new. Those in the business of helping the dead return to life weren’t concerned; their business reviews were based on subscriptions and not a per use basis. Subscription rates were remaining steady. No losses were being recognized but the resurrection was a mature technology and had developed into a commodity. Profit margins were smaller. That was a concern.

Analysts also had deep dive data to present. Wars, warfare and violence remained at high levels but more people were avoiding killing one another. That unnerved attendees. It pointed to a training issue to many. Soldiers and officers needed encouragement to kill more quickly and readily. Perhaps studies were needed to understand what kept them from killing others when engaging them.

Such suggestions were quickly shot down. Studies like that were for the weak-willed or when appearances were needed that something was being done to mollify investors and voters until their attention wandered or other matters distracted them. No, studies weren’t needed in this situation; investors and voters didn’t know about these big data reveals. They would remain corporate secrets.

Second: population growth was required. Cloning was the natural solution. Adult clones were a ready market. Children had smaller and well-defined needs that were already being fulfilled. Adults were big children who eagerly embraced new toys and trends. Adults were willing to spend more on their toys, too, especially if said toys could be positioned as status symbols about wealth, power or influence. Most adults were sufficiently weak-willed and insecure or had such low self-esteem that they would be swayed by such bland and routine practices.

However…archaic laws remained in place against cloning a person to live more than one life at a time. Right now, cloning was permitted for only very small population segments and narrowly defined pre-existing conditions. Even that cloning was done well outside of the public eye.

Those laws needed to be changed. Immediate potential campaigns inspired the Council attendees. Contract pop and sports stars to headline campaigns. Say, they could be doing different activities on different planets, like skiing, surfing, fucking, dancing, performing, interviewing, whatever, marketing could work out those details. The point would be that doing these things simultaneously enriched the individual experiences and compounded their impact. The key behind the campaigns – there would naturally need to be several because to cover all the pop-culture segments – was to encourage envy about living a fuller life by living multiple simultaneous lives and fertilizing your life base. Having it done illegally by someone(s) popular and successful was the natural launching point. People loved lawbreakers.

Likewise, clone the best of the service members. Offer small bonuses for permitting the cloning. Simultaneously, initiate campaigns to overturn the cloning laws. Analysis would reveal which planets and societies could be open to such change and which would be the greatest influencers. New interpretations of founding documents and religious works could be published that seemed to encourage cloning as a religious right and even an expectation by whatever deities people worshiped these days.

Third, begin a whisper campaign. Stir up the rabble: birth rates were down because governments were encouraging certain races, ages, classes, corporations and planets to give birth less as part of a greater conspiracy to reduce those populations, thereby undermining their impact and participation. People always hated and distrusted governments and were easily inspired to rise up against them. Blame regulations, too. That always fired up the fringes, and then the flames would spread.

Beautiful. It was all coming together. Off the record, they agreed that more wars could be initiated. Step up the activity against pirates, rebels, independent planets, and smaller corporations and systems. That would increase the death rate and probably the birth rate.

Sure, this wasn’t a problem; it was an opportunity. Open the floodgates and rake in the wealth.

 

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