Reptile Romance: Part 1-Loveless in Lizard Skin

Harcken and be glad; the gospeble of Henry Rollins. My daughter is convinced this would be me if I hadn't gotten together with Sabina...

Perhaps the best place to start would be the winter of my twenty-fourth year. A week or two before Saint Valentine’s Day, to precise. A few days after the year had shed its chronological skin, I’d broken up with a girl, whom one of my closest friends took to referring to as my fucking psycho x. My divorce had been official for almost a year, and I was living in, what felt like exile, back at my parent’s house out in the badlands of eastern Colorado.

I remember days of feeling angry and defeated. There had been the thought of reenrolling in school for archeology, but somehow, life kept getting in the way. I was trying to have a relationship with my then two year old daughter, but often felt like little more than a glorified babysitter. Living back with my parents felt like a gigantic step backward and my father and I were not getting along terribly well at the time. Of course, the fact I was into far, far eastern philosophy, the works of Freddy Nietzsche, Henry Rollins, and industrial music might not have helped.

There was the documentary I watched about the science of romance and sex. I remember thinking its timing was so ironically appropriate, what with being in spitting distance of Saint Valentine’s Day. It went through to describe how everything from holding hands to the drunkenness of infatuation hormones to the proclamations of amore to foreplay was all for one express purpose; breeding. The perpetuation of one’s genetics. The act of an animal in heat.

In reducing it to such clinical terms, making romance so reptilian, it seems little wonder that I was able to go for five years without romantic companionship and not really have a problem with it. Perhaps all that far, far eastern philosophy, Freddy Nietzsche, and Henry Rollins helped. That, and a discussion Jezebel and I had once regarding romance and codependency.

We discussed how relationships were something of a social expectation. If one was alone, they were broken somehow. But, in truth, it was more of an act of strength to go it alone. To, if that type of relationship did present itself and was pursued, it was done, not on the whims of primal biologics, but because it was freely chosen. If there was one even more hardcore anti-romantic than I, it was Jezzy.

We were in our twenties. Shy, but angsty. The two of us would go monkey watching, and she would delight in my psychic dissections of our subjects.

Although it was my fault she asked her husband out on their first date. When I caught the scent of infatuation hormones on her, I was more than a little merciless with her. Even though I helped those two get together, maybe I felt betrayed that one of my best friends, my monkey watching partner, was leaving me for a boy.

“Are you going to start wearing pink by choice and carrying a fucking purse?” I asked her at one point. When I did catch her with a purse the taunting was legendary, even for Hell.

Jezebel and her husband had been dating about a year when I ran into Lee again. After I helped him up, we engaged in a bit of ketchup. He was tattooing for money and hanging around the vampire caste. As always, he was quite the playboy. Man-whore is probably the better description. If anyone seemed to personify an almost junkie need for the first kiss, first passion, first fuck that made infatuation hormones oh so intoxicating, it was Lee.

On occasion, Jezebel and I would go out for coffee or a spot of monkey watching along the Sixteenth Street Mall. For the most part, though, I kept to myself. I monkey watched and wandered around used bookstores. Drank coffee and scribbled in notebooks. That was my life, and had been for the last three and three quarters years with very little variation.

“Are you seeing anyone these days?” He asked me.

“Naw. I don’t need that sort of brain damage,” I told him.

“How long has it been since you’ve been involved with anyone?” He inquired.

“It’ll be four years in two weeks,” I said.

“And…um? Since you got laid?”

Along with Jezzy, Lee was one of my best friends. So, I told him how long it had been since I had copulated. He was shocked.

It wasn’t that the sex was horrific. I just wasn’t interested. After the novelty of the physical wore off, about halfway through, I found myself kind of bored. To this day, I feel bad for that girl. I made out with her one other time, and I could not find myself interested enough in her to do much else, which was too bad, because she was pleasant to talk to and hang around with and not stupid by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, to Lee’s mind, this would not do. These solitary tendencies of mine were ultimately self-destructive, probably driving me slowly insane, and would one day swallow me whole. I needed to go out and interact. I needed to get laid sometime before I turned thirty.

He didn’t believe me when I told him I was completely fine being on my own. Oh, sure, sometimes I got a little lonely. There were thoughts or observations in those notebooks that might’ve been neat to share with another biped. The occasional moment of observed everyday simple humanity or a tender moment between young lovers could pull at my heartstrings, but it was not something I required.

Besides, women seemed to either have a problem with the fact I lived with my female best friend or that I was a divorced single parent. The few times my interest started to be sparked, this somehow came up. With a growl and shrug and slink away into the shadows again to watch those half-bald primates called man.

But Lee was persistent. That was just part of how he was. The friend who didn’t like to take no for an answer, which I know all too well from my years of friendship with him.

“If I do this, will it shut you up?” I asked him finally. An old question I’d put to him more than once.

“Yes,” he said triumphantly.

And there’s where the trouble starts...

November's Neurosis

I have often mentioned that time is an abstract. Dig on some quantum physics or Buddhist philosophy, and you'll probably spot on to what I'm talking about. I prefer to measure time by the stars and songs playing on the stereo. The lunar calendar and Chinese years call me more to the western ones, and I'm sure that would invite one of those baseless contrary accusations, but worse things have been said about me by better beings. So it goes.

Be that as it may, I was born, grew up, and continue to live in a western society, even if, in some dysfunctional way, a little more along its tattered ledges. Upon the Gregorian timescale, and the modern American idiom, I know what time it is. Time might be this abstract concept to me, which moves simultaneously like glaciers and liquid mercury, but paradoxically, I have an uncanny recollection of dates and times, and am almost always punctual down to the nanosecond.

The month on the Gregorian calendar is one I have been trying to ignore. Perhaps because I want it to go away. When it comes to brass tacks and bedposts, it is but a set of days, but the auspice of those days have weighed heavily upon my mind.

My daughter will be forfuckssake!sixteen in but a few days. I am both looking forward to this and dreading it. She will be able to drive. Drive to see me. To see her grandfather, aunt, uncle, their spouses, and her cousin. I am thrilled she can get to know my side of the family on her own time and we can hang out whenever it works out, not so much having to be dependent upon the whims and whiles of her mother.

But, of course, she is my little girl. It's horrific enough that she's already had two boyfriends, despite me expressly forbidding her to date. She has flat-out told me she doesn't want me to meet a boyfriend, stating I'd kill him out of hand. Slowly. But kill is such a friendly word.

My father's birthday is four days after my daughter's. He'll be sixty-three. In my mind's eye, he'll always be thirty-seven. Two months and a few days ago, I became older than that mental construct. But that's okay, thirty-eight is the new eighteen, and eighteen was an interesting orbit around the sun.

It's the rest of the set of days I try not to contemplate...

The gypsy reminded me Jibril's birthday was at the end of the month. He would have been forty. She remarked she wanted to have a drink or a few on the date. I can own up I was a bit of a cunt about it, but I also think the backfist of perspective was necessary.

"If we drink, will it bring him back? I stayed sober last year and that didn't work."

Make no mistake, to have my friend back, in good health with functioning kidneys, even if it was just for a single conversation, I'd race the world to the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I'd become a shave-head monk in saffron robes. If I thought it would work, there'd be no question.

But we done discussed my views upon the waving of a magic wand...

Then there's the holiday. Yeh, that one. The one dedicated to gluttony and 'Merica's excuse for footies. I always liked Bill Maher's remark on the subject;

"Thanksgiving is holiday we celebrate the one time we were nice to the Native Americans. Sort of like a date-rapist saying; 'let's just focus on the dinner we had...'"

Last year, we supped at my brother's house. He was excited about this, because we were not eating turkey. I brought jazz for the dinner music.

"Mom and Dad aren't coming," he said when we arrived.

"What's up?" I inquired.

"Dad just said 'cancer'," my brother replied. I remember the feeling in my belly made the feast my brother had worked so hard on suddenly very unappetizing.

My daughter, brother, sister outlaw, Sabina and I were sitting out on his veranda drinking beer and enjoying an unseasonably warm day. I was barefoot. We heard the door open into the kitchen, and all stopped mid-conversation.

"Hello?" A croaky voice called out. My brother and I went in to see my mother and father standing by the counter.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!?" I was too shocked to be polite.

"And it's good to see you too," my mother said as she reached out to give me a hug.

They only stayed an hour. My brother sent my parents home with a to-go of holiday dinner. Months later, my father would say how my mother tried so hard to eat, and keep down, my brother's effort.

"She's in remission, she ain't going to die just yet," I said to my father that day.

"She's not going to die!" He snapped, the air between us turning to tigers and cobras.

Two days after New Years'...which one of us was the bigger liar?

That was the last holiday. The last embraces of greetings and goodbyes. The last time my daughter ever saw her grandmother. None of us knew it at the time. There was no way of knowing. It depends upon the day whether or not I think that's a good thing.

This month...the coming holiday season...fuck!

I find myself filled with a sense of fear and loathing normally reserved for the characters in the penny dreadfuls of Eddie Poe and Howie Lovecraft. My mother has been dead for almost a year and I find myself still feeling walking wounded, carrying a bag of broken glass in my gut. If there was such a thing as fair, I would mention the searing unfairness of this.

In days like this and times likes these, I find my temper shorter than it's been in years. Oh, I could lash out. Scream, growl, roar, punch, and break things. I could drink until, like some of the older hominids at the Cantina, sobriety would be this mythological destination like the Happy Hunting Grounds.

It would accomplish nothing. My voice would be hoarse and my hands would hurt. Liver sprain is never fun, and drinking to excess fucks with my tea drinking regiment, which just will not do. I have a maelstrom of emotions I've been dealing with for nearly a year-getting close to three if I want to go back to when she was first diagnosed-and I meditate upon the reptilian to maintain my sanity. Some days are better than others.

We had the memorial. There was the scattering of her ashes on that mountain pass. I wrote and spoke the requiem for that. She's gone. Done and over.

The harsh and painful lesson I am constantly reacquainted with; when thinking of my grandmother or Jibril, and now my mother, is it's not that simple. You never really get over this. It's cobwebs and talons and razorblades and maggots and it will spring upon you out of nowhere, like an ambush predator from primordial times along some nameless African river. So it goes.

Mei fei tsu. It's the time of the season. This year, that bag of broken glass in my gut threatens to cut and bleed through. I meditate upon the reptilian in order to maintain my relative sanity. As to whether or not I can pull it off...ask me a couple days after the Gregorian calendar sheds its chronological skin, and we'll all be surprised.

Magikal Mystery Tour

I was somewhere between six and seven when my father introduced me to The Hobbit. First, reading me bits from the book himself, then later, playing records from the BBC broadcast with Anthony Jackson. My father told me it was about dragons and wizards, and to a whelp somewhere between six and seven with a fertile, and perhaps somewhat overactive, imagination, such a prospect was nothing short of tantalizing.

The wizard, Gandalf, was an intriguing, but sort of unreliable cat. He seemed to just up and disappear at the most inopportune times. Trolls? Well, he was apparently looking ahead and behind. Captured by goblins? Probably off to get a quart of milk or something. Mirkwood? Forget about it.

Gandalf did seem to have something of a superhero complex. Maybe that comes with being a wizard. He would show up just when things started to get a little two bleak. Becoming troll food? Keep them talking until they all got stoned, and not in that interesting way that prompts one to think jam bands are on-par with Mozart and eat crap that would make a jonesing pregnant woman cross her legs and blush. The goblins? Right there in the nick of time with sword and spells. The Battle of Five Armies? He gets everybody to band against the baddies, because, the social construct of reality dictates, good always triumphs in the end.

The thing that impressed me was the bit with the pine cones. Pretty-colored incendiary napalm-esque grenades being lobbed at a pack of wargs. It bought time before those eagles showed up. For all his fucking off, that bit with the pine cones taught me you did not fuck with Gandalf.

An old song posed the question; do you believe in magic? After my experience with The Hobbit, I was inclined to say yes. Reading the mythologies of ancient Egypt and Greece reinforced this notion. Even my father's mother's stories of the Christian god, turning a woman into salt, as an example, hinted at the possibility of bending, if not outright breaking, the laws of physics.

Perhaps it was because of the brutalities of the si li nan jen that such a things held appeal. It wasn't until my adolescence that I learned how to defend myself, often better with a few quick and confusing words, than with my fists and balisong. The idea of being able to conjure a fireball out of the very atmosphere around me and lob it at my antagonists, or turn them into cockroaches held infinite appeal.

Sometimes, I think that was one of the more crushing realizations I dealt with. Moreso than finding out that Homo sapiens are brutal, hateful, deceptive creatures, even and especially in groups of two or more. Deeper than the discovery that good and evil were these monkey-made concepts of trying to maintain the pack order and make sense out of a universe that, for all its beauty and paradoxical symmetry, is inherently chaotic. The revelation that magic...well, the magic found in fairy-stories like The Hobbit and games like Dungeons and Dragons was not real.

My dealings with Pagans, seeing them cast spells, helped prove what I had come to observe empirically. Their rites and getting their mojo working was really no different than what my father's mother was doing once a week in a building with a cross affixed to the roof. An interesting, and amusing, observation to pull on the proselytizing zealots, you know the ones; those who say Harry Potter and the lyrics of Marilyn Manson, and classically, Motley Crue-though I'd be more inclined to say Coldplay-will lead to child-sacrificing Devil worship, is to bring up to those cats that the only real difference between a prayer and a spell is, in fact, the spelling. Oh, and which deity that the favors are being asked of.

Perhaps I am cynical, but I can no more believe in the fairy-story style magic that can bend, if not break to the point of shattering, the laws of physics. Not anymore than I can believe in an anthropomorphic being who keeps tally on naughty and nice in the monkey-made construct like fucking Santa Claus in a world filled with unremitting horror, but, who is, in fact, like that psychotic relative who might give you a chocolate bar for the hell of it, or just might smash your skull open with a hammer to see the expression on your face as the blows come. Both seem equally absurd, and yet I have encountered cats who cling to one, or both, notion with savage tenacity.

Yet, because my hypocrisy knows no bounds, I do believe in magic. Perhaps not the magik of the Pagans I've known over the years and lifetimes. Sometimes, a lot of times, that's almost too flakie for my tastes. Maybe it's more a combination of Clarke's Third Law; "[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and the everyday beauty of the paradoxical symmetry and inherent chaos of the universe around us. Sort of like I can give credence to the Divine being but a force of nature that does not terry with the concepts and constructs of humans.

Here is where language fails me. For all of my purported talent with the manipulation and stringing together of words, my supposed eloquence, I find myself tongue-tied. It all gets garbled up, either when trying to articulate verbally or in the conduits between my mind and fingertips. Here is where I fear I stop making sense.

Perhaps that's what happens when glimpsing that kind of mystical. Words fail. I find myself reminded of a sci-fi I once watched in which an alien and human were speaking over some freaky shit they saw and the alien picks up an ant and moves it to a flower.

"How do you suppose it will explain what just happened to the other ants?" The alien asked in rhetorical tones.

That's where I am; the ant and trying to explain my perception of things greater than myself. Here and now, it seems I lack the language. Well, other than to say it just is and leave the understanding of that statement up to you.

Limitations

I meditate upon frustration. Being picked last. Limbo and limitations. The Machiavellian auspice of schoolyard pettiness and the movements of powerful creatures. Wuwei, the rhythms and rhymes of the cosmos, and the whims and whiles of the roll of the bones of chaos.

My mother and grandmother used to tell me I was a genius. Gifted. Two of my oldest and dearest friends have accused me of being too smart for my own good. Seeing too deep and too much. So it goes.

My mother used to tell me if my spine was straight, I'd be over seven feet tall, instead of only being nearly six and a half feet. She used to joke I should play basketball. As an adolescent, I hated her for that joke, but, over the years and lifetimes, I grew to hate most sports with a pink and purple passion.

I was an awkward youth; uncoordinated and unable to run very fast. Any physical strength I had, that I've ever had, has manifested in my lower body. I was always picked last. This might explain my apathy toward the athletic competitions others-males especially-masturbate over.

So, I had limitations? Both Clint Eastwood and Dave Mustaine have spoken the wisdom of knowing one's limitations. One, whilst singing hymnals and prophecy to a speed metal soundtrack. The other whilst finding happiness being a warm gun.

The severity of my learning disability would've gotten me thrown into an institution a generation before, if my grandmother was to be believed. As it stands, supposedly, I see things backward and otherwise catawampus, but, let's face it, views of reality are subjective. Reality, it is suggested, is a phantasm. Billy Corgan said once that the world is a vampire, but perhaps that's because his view of it sucked.

I was further limited by the fact I cannot see in the dark like a cat or an owl. I lack the wings to fly like a bird or a bat. Without gills, it is more than a little difficult to breathe underwater. I am unable to spin webs like a spider.

Amazingly enough, despite such horrific limitations, I've gotten by. Perhaps I'm just obstinate like that. Maybe that's just me; refusing to be broken beneath the blade. I have yet to encounter the force that can break me, so I tend to take umbrage when I perceive I am being treated like an invalid because of my trivial limitations.

Fuck you. I will not be mollycoddled. End of chat.

By my own admission; I catch myself feeling a bit upset. Taking umbrage. I spend the day hissing and growling about it. Upon the rising of the next sun, whilst the reason might still be there, I'll be moving beyond it. To do anything less would be to admit defeat, and, as I have said; I have yet to encounter the force that can break me.

Winter's Precipice

Maybe three or four inches of snow have fallen. Official looking government orange snowplows have zipped by, attempting to clear off the roadways. Or, at the very least, make them a little more passable. The moguls in ski resorts rub their greasy hands together, crack-visions of paper and coins filling their coffers from the good season they'd sacrifice a virgin to, if they could find one. Snowbums perform their own rites, preying for plentiful powder days. Such is the way of things.

Flakes, some the size of small coins, float softly down along imperceptible air currents in the manner of down feathers and will-o'-the-wisp. Low gray-white clouds obscure the summits of the tall peaks. Fog intertwines between the evergreens and the skeletons of aspens. The world fades into phantasm at few hundred yards. Sometimes, the ghost light of an early winter sun tries to peak through, but it's more out of cosmic expectation and worldly rotation than any effort to warm this narrow rift-like valley on a snowy day.

Context demands a fire and hot drinks. Contrary or defiance might explain the African rhythms, which play as a backbeat. Sweaters and boots. Hats and scarves. Slippers and blankets. The paradigm of the season.

I have mentioned how I do not believe a particular season should be subject to whims and whiles of a species half-bald monkeys that try oh so desperately to compartmentalize, label, and control everything. They happen when they happen. Celestial events, like the solstices and equinox, can make convenient frames of reference, but should be seen more as guidelines than a hard and fast rule. After all, there are no rules, only rhythms. Rules go against one of the few constants, which is change.

This year, as an example, autumn took a full two weeks to catch up after the Autumnal Equinox. The year before, autumn happened shortly after my birthday, a week or so before the same equinox. Thus, I find my point validated and uncover further proof of the abstractness and elasticity of time.

Within a week, by virtue of the world's tilt along its axis, the sun will no longer rise above Mount Pendelton, casting a shadow of long dark across this part of the valley for roughly six weeks. Somewhere in that period will be the snowfall that acts as a base-coat, sticking around until the thawing times close to the Vernal Equinox. Maybe, here at ninety-one sixty, that should be called the start of winter.

Then again, a day such as this certainly whispers of the encroaching season. And perhaps somewhere, someone declares this the first day of High Country winter. Whether the weather is that of the winter's precipice or early winter is conjecture probably best reserved for more insightful and philosophical minds than my own. I tend to think the markers for seasons, be it monkey-made or based upon the movements of celestial bodies are more guidelines than anything. The molting of seasonal skins often happens when no one is looking. Just one day, quite imperceptibly, the cyclic wheel has turned ever so slightly once more.

Theological Sellouts

A couple of months before my mother died, I found myself being interested in Pantheism-http://www.pantheism.net/index.htm-one of the many different theologies I least researched back in the day. I also blame reading John Muir and more science-y stuff on this. It seemed like a nice addition to my practice of Buddhism, which, at its heart, is more of philosophy than a religion.

I've only been to a few Dharma talks, a few guided meditations, and one or two ceremonies in the Buddhist context. My practice of Buddhism has always been rather heretical, idiosyncratic, solitary, and internal. Besides, I sincerely believe you do not have to hang out in a crowd or go to a building to experience one's spirituality. Those things are stage props. Anytime I question my take on that, I run into this sort of thing;

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/10/i-like-your-buddha-i-do-not-like-your-buddhists--marissa-faye/?utm_source=Elephant+Journal+News&utm_campaign=November+2%2C+2010&utm_medium=email

It does bother me how anyone can cheapen something so beautiful so. Be it art, science, philosophy, or religion. Such things, after all, are not fashion. They transcend that. Perhaps an aspect of enlightenment is to understand that little fact.

Harvest Lessons

The sun had ducked behind the southern ridge line, casting Mount Pendelton's massive shadow across the House of Owls and Bats when Sabina and I met out back to dig up the 'tater sprouts. Within an hour, we had excavated five potatoes. All told, the yield fit within the palm of my hand, not even weighing an ounce. I could've popped them into my mouth all at once as a snack, hardly noticing the starchiness. Sabina was a little cynical about the circumstance.

"I'm getting full just looking at them," she said with a smirk. "Not another bite for me, I'm stuffed!"

I know she was being cute, but part of me did contemplate, quite seriously, stabbing her with my hori'hori. In the neck, and twice. The whole time humming the old Johnny Mercer tune Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive. I have a difficult time seeing how that might have been wrong of me.

Logically, this was our first garden. More to the point, our first garden at altitude. Things do not grow as easily up here. It would've been hubris to expect a bumper crop that would would keep us in fresh veggies through the winter. The fact we got something is a victory. Albeit a small one. Literally.

Raised beds will obviously be the way to go for the next gardening season. With the root vegetables, such as potatoes and carrots, perhaps planting a bit earlier outside. The tire stacks we used for our 'tater sprouts did work for insulation and accessibility.

Eventually, of course, we want to do the insulated greenhouse. That's part of our whole scheme to opt out eventually. Here and now, we just look at the next season. I already have an idea of how I want the garden to look and what I want to plant. The theory is sound. Hopefully, we can make it work in practice.

The Name Game

"'A rose by any other name...?'

'Would still prick you with its thorns...'"-Joseph Michael Linser

"My name is not me. Not who I am..."-Articulate Lotus Flowing From the Source, or Ed

Next to John or maybe Adam, I have perhaps one of the more common male English language names. And yet, it is disturbingly amazing how many times I have to be re-asked for it, or I am called something else. Well, I mean aside from bastard or mutherfucker. The most common of these being Art, Trevor, Charles, and, my personal favorite, Richard. I mean, do I look like a dick?

Then again, perhaps some questions are best left unanswered...

Most often, Sabina calls me by my middle name of Grey. And there are so many variations of my first name, it borders on comical. I answer to most of them. Well, except for maybe Bob...unless Dirty Old Uncle is put in front of it, but that's another story. Bob was my grandfather's name. My grandfather has a park named after him. Perhaps, when and if I am ever cool enough to have a stretch of open space named after me, I'll consider going by my grandfather's name with a little more sincerity.

I once joked that like the Devil, I've been known by many names. Although, it's not like I've gone about making demonic deals at witching hour crossroads. Besides, I once fucked the Devil's wife, but that's another story.

In some ancient cultures, it was believed that all the power in all the world resided in one's name. Without a name, one did not exist. One friend of mine used to say to summon a demon, one must know its true name, which I'm sure, since he was fond of cliches, and liked quotes perhaps more than myself, was from one of the many books he'd read. There was this one cat, sleazy in nature, whom many of my friends and acquaintances at the the time believed quite sincerely would show up if you said his name three times, al-la Beetlejuice. Another friend of mine was convinced it was a good thing to know someone's full name, seeing it as a magical sign when star-crossed lovers actually knew one another's surnames.

And yet, perhaps because my first name is so bloody fucking common, maybe because of my borderline pathological hatred of labels of any kind, I find the whole power supposedly ascribed to a name to be a bunch of who shot john. After all, it has been observed that whether it's a broken heart or a broken sword, things have only the power one gives them. I do my best not to have much of anything have that kind of power. Then again, there are those who say, like my mother, I am just plumb contrary, which is also a bunch of who shot john. I haven't a contrary bone in my body.

Not too long ago, I had occasion to speak to my benefactor's partner. Just trivial banter. Nothing overly profound. In a roundabout way, the name game got brought up.

"You're Ron, right?" She asked me. Ron was a new one, but I had to let her down by correcting her. To her credit, she did apologize.

"Don't trip," I said. "I used to think I have a really common name, but I figure since it's so often mistaken and misunderstood, it must be one of the most exotic and esoteric monikers out there."

"Actually, I think it's because you're an exotic looking guy, but have such a common name," my benefactor's partner offered. I almost spewed tea from my nostrils repressing the chuckle.

"Bravo for life's little ironies," I said. We parted ways shortly after that.

The memory of the conversation provided me with mental amusement for a bit afterward. It's been awhile since I've been accused of being exotic, and I think she meant it. Of course, I figure by exotic what she really meant to say was aberration; what with being too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face.

The Belly of Terror

I confess to getting a little excited when the latest issue of National Geographic shows up in the post. Yes, I am geeky like that. Despite not being a joiner, I am, indeed, a card carrying member of the National Geographic Society. Once a month, no matter how tragic, with that little periodical, it seems, I am guaranteed a story from Africa. Sometimes even sharks.

I bought my subscription because it was cheaper than picking it up month-to-month at the stands. It satisfies my scientific bents and curiosities as well as my armchair travels. And the photos...damn. A friend of mine used to say there are but a few photographers in the world; amateurs, professionals, those who want to work for the Nation Geographic Society, and those who really do.

There was the photograph of the sand tiger shark, and a notation how its young will cannibalize one another whilst inutero. Only the strong survive. A fascinating animal. These are beings of one of the oldest orders. Like reptiles and spiders.

Sabina shrinks at the sight of a spider. I know her intolerable hatred comes from a widow bite when she was very young. One friend told a story of a camp-mate dying from spider bites. Others I know are terrified by those creatures' movements. Those many legs moving all at once in some alien fashion, just like those many eyes staring up at you.

And yet, try and grasp the fear some of Grandmother Spider's children see with eight eyes, beholding a half-bald primate, hundreds of times bigger, trying to kill them for no real reason other than alien-ness...

Yes, some species of spiders have potent neurotoxins within their fangs. Venom, which can drop a monkey. Some, more quickly than others. So do some species of snakes, creatures that scare the fuck out my brother and father. A bee sting could maybe have the same effect on me because of an allergy, and yet Sabina fears a stinging insect around me more than I. Odd.

A bee, spider, or snake has poison. Fine. It can't eat you. A shark can.

As much as they fascinate me, sharks terrify me. The knowledge that creature could eat me; millions of years of perfect evolution crunching painfully down, and still being alive to watch. Preying...begging...for death before seeing the belly of the beast. There are other predators of the same capability; crocodiles, great cats, bears, and none of them can bring to bear the same abject terror I feel watching a shark documentary with rapt attention.

There is only one other order of creature, removed from the kingdoms of animals or even plants, capable of the beautifully efficient torture of a shark's bite. It is far, far smaller than a creepy-crawly spider. That would be a virus.

It is something I picked up from back when I screened thousands upon thousands of potential organ and tissue donors. This being, invisible to human eyes, can ravage a body; devouring from within, destroying flesh, bone, and tissue. Turning one's blood to poison. A level of torture that'd get Dante, Spanish inquisitors, witch hunters, and Nazi death-doctors to cross their legs and blush.

These are things I have learned. Both from experience and reading National Geographic. I can view my fears and fascinations once a month for the fee of a subscription. And I cannot...I will not...look away.

I realize my shark fear is not exactly rational. After all, I live nine-thousand one-hundred sixty feet above the surface of the world's oceans. It would take me at least a day to reach a coastline, depending on how I traveled. That doesn't make it go away. Be that as it may, I realize it for what it is, and do not allow myself to be in its thrall. As much as they terrify me, I am fascinated by sharks.

For that reason, in the end, I cannot begrudge anyone who fears spiders, despite the size difference. Still, I hold out hope that those, like Sabina or some of my other friends, can at least realize their fear is not rational and let it go. That perhaps, in not being in the thrall of that terror, they can, like me, learn a respect, if not fascination, for that, which scares them so.

Man of Confusion

I made the hop down to the library to return Cry of the Kalahari and see if perhaps there were any other tomes available by the same authors, despite the other books I've committed myself to reading. There was also the auspice of perhaps renting a film or two to watch on the 'puter, and maybe something interesting at the book sale, held daily in the library's basement. Only the film aspect came to fruition. Flights of fancy for when my daughter comes for her next visit.

One of the librarians, who is also a neighbor, has traveled to Africa. She's told me stories. Several, for I do get curious, and I'm sucker for a good story. Even the occasional bad one. One of those tales involves the fact her daughter considers Ethiopian cuisine her comfort food since they were living in that nation-state during the majority of her childhood. Once, I bought both the librarian and her daughter small bags of berbere, in exchange for some Ethiopian recipes I didn't have. A few months later, I gave the librarian some of my first batch of homemade berbere.

She had borrowed my big spiral notebook of recipes I have acquired over the years. It had been in her possession over the summer. Were it not for the many other fine cookbooks I have, this might have bordered upon travesty. But, in all fairness, Sabina has been holding one of her books hostage since late spring. Thus, it could be argued, the balance of the universe has been maintained.

The librarian was very excited to see me returning the book and checking out films. She had my notebook with her and was oh so eager to return it. To the woman she was helping as I walked in the door, she gushed about all the wonderful and otherwise amazing recipes I had collected from all over the world.

"So, you're a cook?" The woman inquired.

"I sometimes dabble in the kitchen," I said. She was the third biped over the course of the day I had said that to, and I still haven't decided if that's strange.

"It sounds like you do some exotic stuff," she said.

"Only when I do American," I shrugged. Which is true. In my peculiar perceptions, American is when I was doing something ethnic. Otherwise, I pretty well stick good old down-home country cooking. Of course, the country in question could be Morocco or Spain or Cambodia or Brazil.

There was a nervous chuckle and a confused look. I set down the book I was returning and mentioned something about being back around for the notebook. Having just been thrust into a conversation with a stranger, I hoped by then she'd have checked out her acquisitions and finished her banter with the librarian. When I returned with my films, she made some remark along the lines of happy cooking, although the perplexed look remained as she walked out the door.

The confused looks and nervous chuckles are something I've just come to accept. Whether speaking in jest or seriousness, it seems to happen. Lately, with a little more frequency. I blame that on the gig.

"I really shouldn't, what with my diet," I told my benefactor when she was offering candy to the strawboss and I the other day. He was speaking to me in a language of power tools and mechanics, hoping I'd eventually gain a working vocabulary. She shook her head and, with a slight smile, walked on to deliver her offerings elsewhere.

"Diet?" The strawboss scoffed. "How much do you weigh?"

"I fluctuate between one-nineteen and one-fifty-five," I said.

"And you think you need to diet? Riiiiiiiiiiight..."

The strawboss walked off. I was sort of gobsmacked by his reaction. So much so I never got a chance to tell him that gullible was no longer in English dictionaries or the words of wisdom from P. T. Barnum.

There is a reason I don't talk much to strangers. Well, aside from old wives tales warnings, being more than a little shy, and there being conjecture as to whether they come much stranger than I. Were I to want to wax poetically arrogant, I could say my tongue is that of ambrosia and acid. The more honest, and humble, assessment is my words, no matter how trivial or profound, seem to trigger migraines at worst, or, at the very least, a moment of kangaroo? from the one unlucky enough to be caught in the oral shrapnel.

I've tried to explain this briefly before. A warning, but it was not heeded. Of course, at the time, I was in Red Hot Chili Peppers drag of wearing but one sock, and not on my foot. As well as smirk, perhaps a little impish in its nature. In the temple.

Really now, would I lie about something like that?