On Being The Clouds

There I am.  See me?

Over the six years that have passed since my Warranty Expired, if Prednisone became the controlling, hatefully-loving, less-than-sane Mistress I Never Wanted, then Hydrocodone was my new BFF.  Through almost a dozen adventures together, my chemical buddy and I had some memorable times.  He taught me to sleep again when pain tried to stop me.  He made me chatty and nice.  He even got me to start working out again. 

But mostly what we did... is fly.

I know that the effects of narcotic painkillers can vary widely from patient to patient, so I was relieved that I wasn't one of those people who simply cannot stomach them.  I'm also glad that the experience for me wasn't so perfect as to lead me straight into addiction - not that I've ever taken them long enough for that to be a problem, but still - yay!  In fact, I remember learning early on that Hydrocodone does not numb my intense pains; it mostly just makes me stop caring and fly away.

Taking my first flight with Hydrocodone was a lot like taking off in a real airplane for the first time.  My guts all lurched downward for a moment, as if they had failed to receive the memo.  Then, the nose of the plane went up and the world fell away in an instant.  There was a strong temptation to panic.  "DON'T PANIC" bounced through my brain, and I'm glad it did, because the next urge was the one that felt like WHEEEEEE...

Wheeeeeeeeee...

When I next closed my eyes, I saw Water Island (USVI) morph into a magical green horse and gallop and cavort around me for hours.  Wait - maybe it was a dragon.  I opened my eyes to find that I was not hallucinating; I was in flight, and the island was simply flying with me.  I was weightless.  I knew the pain was still there, but somehow I was free of it.  I was not merely in the clouds.  I was the clouds.

The second time was just as good.  Later, when my lung was out to get me, I was introduced to a cough syrup with my pal Hydrocodone in it, and the effect was somehow even better.  A couple of years later, a pair of root canals reunited me and The Stuff.  A sprained knee brought another prescription, and a big dose.  By then, I had my Hydrocodone Frequent Flyer card, and I really knew what I was doing.  The urge to panic, or to go all "wheeeeeee" all over the place, was replaced by calm, confident climbs into the sky.

Smooth sailing

In 2012, we picked up right where we had left off on the last go 'round.  I know we'll always be best friends, and I love becoming the clouds and flying high above the planet together, but I have to admit, there has been a little falling-out.  In 2013 my buddy, my best pal, my trusted friend... was NO help when faced with the pain of kidney stones.

We're going to have a little chat about that.

This was written in response to yet another writing prompt from my friends at  STUDIO 30 PLUS.  This one was "Frequent Flyer."



 

The Story Of Balloonpopper Chillingsworth, As Told By All-but-Dissertation Tucker Dummychuck

Since I started writing about the men and women on John Hodgman's list of 700 hoboes, I am constantly being asked by no one about my sources.  While I won't divulge all my secrets, I can share one.  

His name was All-but-Dissertation Tucker Dummychuck, and he completed all but his dissertation on the subject of American vagrancy in the 1930's.  In fact, he had signed a deal to write a series of articles for the New Yorker on the inner workings of Hobo Nation, but his subject so enveloped him that he failed to provide anything beyond his first submission, before disappearing forever.  

Here is what the magazine ran in July of 1938:

Balloonpopper Chillingsworth

       Never ask a cruel man his motivation, for you may not like his answer.  I first heard about Balloonpopper Chillingsworth in 1934, and three long years would pass before I would finally track the man down and meet him face to face.  He was the first drifter I had studied who had created a name for himself outside of the world of the dusty vagrant.  [Mr. Dummychuck refused to use the word "hobo" in any of his papers or articles.]

Simply put, the man was known for popping balloons.   

From Boston to Boca Raton to Burbank, he has spent years lurking in the shadows and springing upon unsuspecting passersby - mostly children - to burst their balloons without warning, and with, it seems, no shortage of mal intent. He often takes it a step further, pricking the owners of said balloons with pins, tacks, nails and bits of broken glass.  He bellows at his victims a short, profane speech, the upshot of which is that no one will ever enjoy a balloon again if he has anything to say about it.

I had heard the stories.  By last year, many of them had made it into the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.  Chillingsworth has been described as a menace to society, a creeping night terror, a public health hazard, and a very mean bad man who ruins birthday parties and childhood visits to the city zoo and the circus.  Having lived with the wandering poor for several years already, I was not afraid of him; I was intrigued.

When I finally met him, it was a cold December morning in the CA&E rail yard outside of Elgin, Illinois.  He emerged from behind a cattle pen, his arm across his face, most of which was becloaked 'neath his ratty black cape.  He shot furtive glances this way and that, then fixed me in his steely gaze.

I knew better than to jump straight in and ask the only question to which I truly wanted an answer, so I ran through my customary script of queries.

• He wasn't certain, but he thought his given name had been Reginald Chillingsworth, of the Manhattan Chillingsworths.
• He had been riding and walking the rails since before The Great Crash, although he did not recall the year of his departure from civilized society.
• He had received training in the clown arts from P.T. Barnum's school, but had never performed.
• He could name and create 114 distinct balloon animals and other shapes, but he'd be damned if he ever would - at least, not for "some damn-fool reporter from New Holland."
• He was six foot, six inches and wore a size 9 3/8 hat. [That's a very large hat.]

I quickly grew bored of the same old stories of rail yard living, destitution and scrapes with the law.  I asked him the question.  The Question.  

"Why must you pop everyone's balloons?"  

First, he congratulated me on my restraint.  It seems other reporters, including one from the Trib and one from RKO Radio, had posed the same question, and then promptly fed him answers.  They posited that the balloons were symbols of life's joy, and that if he was to live a life devoid of joy, then so would everyone else.  They said the same of love.  No love for him, they said, no love for anyone else.  One interviewer suggested that his soul had been stolen by the devil and was last seen drifting off in a balloon, and that young Chillingsworth was on a mission to recover it.  

He rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, then told me what it was that compelled him to pop everyone's balloons.   It was heavy in its simplicity, like a child's conception of Love.

"Balloons killed my parents when I was nine, and since that day I have dedicated my life to ensuring that they never kill again."

Indeed.  

My research confirmed the strange circumstances that surrounded the deaths of his parents.  They had owned and operated an extremely lucrative business, supplying balloons and decorations to the most sought-after party planners and event operators in New York City throughout the 1920s.  The senior Chillingsworth was known as "The Balloon Man," and his wife was called "Mrs. Hydrogen."  On the night of September 4th, 1928, they were riding home along Park Avenue when a large and rather unruly costume party released some forty-five hundred of the Chillingsworth's balloons from the balcony of one of the new hi-rise apartment buildings on the upper east side.  The balloons were to have been filled with hydrogen, which would have lifted them playfully to the sky, but the Chillingworths' apprentice had mistakenly used plain oxygen.  The balloons sank en masse to the street below.  The couple's driver, momentarily blinded and terrified by the balloons, veered into a tree.  He and the Chillingsworths were ejected and promptly trampled by a pair of horses who had been spooked by the crash - and by the popping.

That apprentice was Billy "Balloonpopper" Chillingsworth, and he had watched in horror from the 21st floor as his parents died Lat the hands of the family balloons.

I can hardly blame him for his obsession.  As he turned to walk away, his last words to me were,

"Never again shall the death cries of innocents fill these ears.  At least, not at the whim of those wicked bags of air.  Not while I draw breath." 

An Incomplete Principle To Call My Own - Even Though It Is Not - At All

Objects in mirror... are gone.

It probably started as reflex.  Passed with ease through the compulsion phase.  Now, it's a disease.  I cannot stop looking back.

When it began - who can say?  Oh wait - I can.  For most people I know, it started around puberty - maybe sixth or seventh grade.  For once, I was ahead of the curve on this one.  For me, standing, staring backward and second-guessing myself started as early as the fourth grade.  I knew - I knew I should have said something other than what I said to my teacher, but it was too late, and I was duly and justly punished as a result.

A couple of years later, I found myself delivered home by the police, to a disbelieving mother, after failing to heed the advice of the tiny voice inside me that had tried in vain to prevent me from helping my friends break into the school to fetch their skateboards, which had been trapped inside a storage room in a manner so spectacularly stupid as to defy description.  I had only needed to say no, I didn't have any ideas, but instead I became the mastermind of the whole ridiculous enterprise.

It spirals on from there.  Things I said, things I didn't say but should have.  Opportunities missed for what appeared at the time to be No Good Reason.  And girls.  Time wasted on girls who wanted nothing to do with me and never would, and time that could have been better spent with the (admittedly few) girls who did want me around, but whose interest and appeal inexplicably eluded me.  

But there's more to this backwards-looking addiction than things unsaid, arguments lost and girls not kissed.  It extends to major life decisions - threads in the fabric of my personal space-time.  Also, it's not exclusively about the negative results of life's decision points.  Happy nostalgia is just as fraught with futility as is regret.  

I call it my Completion Backwards Principal, and no - it has nothing to do with the 1981 album of the same name by the Tubes.  Just as it can be a waste of time and energy to stare too hard at an uncertain and ever-changing future, looking back is a risky business.  History is the best teacher, they say, but wallowing in one's personal past in the hopes of altering it - of fixing it - is downright destructive.  No matter how long and hard you stand there and stare at the path behind you, it CANNOT be completed.  No closure will come. 

The more a person longs to go backwards and complete that which he or she has left incomplete, the less whole that past will become, until eventually it disintegrates into chaos.

I'm not saying don't do it.  A fondness for days gone by, a healthy historical perspective, an awareness and acceptance of one's past missteps - all perfectly useful things.  Just don't live there.  

I'm also saying, do as I say, not as I do.  I have a lot of work to do, here.  

It should also be noted that any tinkering with the past, were it even possible, would derail our lives.  If I could go back and "fix" one blown job interview in 1994, I would never have worked at that genetics company, met [Maris] and found my way to true completion - and what good would THAT be?  None.  It'd be none good.

Behind us, there are storms which never stop brewing.

This post was written to the prompt "Backwards," from the good and clever folks at STUDIO THIRTY PLUS.



 

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (from 46) - What Have I Done?

"'Cause your mornings will be brighter

Break the line, tear up rules

Make the most of a million times none."

- Bauhaus  

It's been over six years since I Turned Forty, so I think it's time to wrap up my look back at the (non)event.  At the time, I was  disintegrating, attempting to get back into some semblance of shape, questioning many of my career choices and still being grilled about my child-free lifestyle.  But I did have a few moments of reflection.  I can't remember any of them, so here are some I made up...

No, no, no.  I remember.  I thought what most slackers* think, especially at their milestone moments.  

I poured a ridiculous - like "Risky Business" ridiculous - rum and Coke, swallowed a teaspoon of narcotic cough syrup and asked myself "What have I done?"

The answer came entirely too quickly.  Like, Mike Damone in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" quickly (poor Stacy).  But I digress. 

Not very much.  At forty, I had done not very much.

Most of my friends had children, as did two of my three siblings.  I worked for a woman six years my junior who was a CPA, a respected VP in a growing company, a mother of two and squarely on a CFO track.  I had meandered my way to a job which, to be fair, wasn't much more advanced than my first non-retail gig from thirteen years earlier - and which had about the same limited future.  I knew a handful of world travelers and a fistful of published writers.  I knew a man who had been awarded a Bronze Star, had a hospital named for him and who had served as Governor of a US territory. 

My inventory of accomplishments looked bleak, by comparison.

1. Came home in a police car when I was in the sixth grade.  I was only the lookout for the breaking and entering operation, but there you go.  Lesson learned - schools have silent alarms.
2. Went from curtain-puller for the school play one year, to title character the next.  Signing autographs for little kids is great for a young ego.
3. Saw Elvis working on the Chessie System Railroad over a year after his "death."
4. Convinced the guy at Montgomery Donuts to give me a huge trash bag full of 12-hour old donuts, which I inexplicably dumped on the lawn of the head cheerleader at my high school - a girl who did not know my name, and a girl who was out of town at the time.
5. Drove alone through the "Storm of the Century" in 1993 - from Maryland to Key Largo without stopping for more than gas.  Heavy snow until I was well into North Carolina, then the hardest cats-and-dogs-style rain I'd ever seen - hours and hours of it - all the way to Jacksonville.  Next came insane, 18-wheeler-punching wind, flying debris and reports of over 15 tornadoes across Florida.  That was followed by hundreds of miles of gas stations without electricity, downed power lines all over the place and a state of emergency.  When I reached Miami, it was pretty much just me, the power company trucks and the police, on the roads.  It's a longer story than that, but let's just end this with... Worth It.
6. Invented a time machine using yarn, butter and algae.  Can't remember where (when) I left it.
7. Witnessed, in-person, an NFC championship, Cal Ripken's last game, Darrell Green's last game.  Wait.  That's kind of sad.  Saw a Daytona 500 once, but Jeff Gordon won, so that sucked a little, too.
8. Got doused with Heineken at the ORIGINAL 9:30 Club in DC, courtesy of the not-yet-licensed-to-ill Beastie Boys.  Yeah, I'm not young.
9. Was an invited guest at the inauguration of one of my heroes as he became the Governor of the US Virgin Islands.
10. Proved that soul mates exist - by finding mine.  I know!  Weird!
11. Wrote "Zombieland" and "Warm Bodies" and "The Walking Dead."  In my mind.
12. Ran for the US Senate as a founding member of the Egalitarian Party.  Lost, primarily due to the fact that no one knows what egalitarian means.
13. Stepped on a pop top.
14. Survived.  So far.
15. Managed to have a reasonably good time.

Yeah.  I could go on, but why?  I hadn't compiled a rock star's diary of cool stuff, but as I digested my 40th birthday cake, along with some rum, cola and hydrocodone, a warm blanket of contentment wrapped around my aching, not so young body - twice.

I had [Maris].  We had jobs where we were indispensable, well-paid and beloved.  I had good doctors and drugs and the promise of a long-awaited diagnosis and treatment for whatever the hell was wrong with me.  We clung tightly to each other, and to the promise of better days ahead.  We could, indeed, survive.  And more.  We could thrive on this silly - but pretty - little planet.  Good things were still within our reach.  Big things, even.

We would make the most of a million times none.

* Still not really a slacker.  Just ask my boss!    
By the way - this one was inspired by my good friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS, and their weekly writing prompts of "OLD" and "HOPE."                   

Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short vs. Texas Emil

When a couple of hoboes met for the first time, there were several different greetings that could be offered.  The most common approach was for both of them to throw fistfuls of dirt at each other without a word and walk on.  If one wanted a fight, he would show the stranger his lint ball.  If the stranger's lint ball was larger, it was up to him to decide whether or not fisticuffs would ensue.  If the challenger held more lint, the fight was on.  Some of the most lint-rich hoboes met their doom in this way.  

On the rare occasion when hoboes enjoyed civil first-encounters, they generally engaged in games of one-upmanship.  Since these tended to focus on how bad each of the two tramps had it, Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short usually came out on top.  That is, of course, until one early spring day in 1934, when he met Texas Emil, walking along the L&N mainline outside of Montgomery, Alabama.

Poor, Poor, Poor Charlie Short:  I see that your lint far surpasses mine, stranger.  We fightin' or not?  It's your call.

Texas Emil:  I ain't much for violence, pardner.  My life is hard enough as it is.

Charlie:  You think you got it bad?  I don't know a man who has it worse than me.

Emil:  I doubt that.  I know we're all poor as dirt, out here on the road, but I was born poor, back in Texas.

Charlie:  Ha!  When I was born, I was a twin, but my parents were so poor, they sold my brother to pay the hospital bill and bring me home.

Emil:  Oh yeah?  Well, back in Texas I was a twin, too, but I was the one my parents sold.  I grew up in an orphanage next-door to my parents, forced to watch my sister grow up in the Texas home that should have been mine.

Charlie:  You think that's rough?  My parents worked triple-shifts at the Wrigley factory in Chicago, and we still had to eat stolen cabbage for dinner every night.

Emil:  That's nothing.  When I was a five-year old Texan, my so-called parents at the orphanage died in a fire - along with all of my friends.  I didn't do it, but since I was the only survivor, I got the blame, and they locked me up in a Texas Juvenile Hall, where I stayed until I turned eighteen.  In Texas.

Charlie:  Oh, boo hoo!  My parents were killed, too.  My ma was was accidentally sprayed in the face with pure spearmint extract, which blinded her.  She started screaming, and when my dad came running to see what was wrong, he tripped over a crate and crashed into her, and they both tumbled into a vat of corn syrup.  She lost consciousness and drowned, as did he - trying to save her.

Emil:  Yeah, that's bad, but there ain't nobody in Texas or anywhere else poorer than me.  I left Texas without a nickel in my pocket, and I been wandering and missing Texas ever since.  I loved Texas, but now I can't afford to keep Texas in my life.

Charlie:  You call that poor?  I'm so poor, I can't even afford pockets.  I keep my lint in an old piece of burlap I stole from a dead hobo.  I haven't even seen a nickel in three years - and that one was wooden!

Emil:  If I could afford stolen burlap, I'd still be living in Texas!  I carry my Texas-size ball of lint in my bare hand, and truth be told can't even afford lint.  I'm so Texas that I can't buy a spare Texas for my Texas.

Charlie:  That's nothing.  I'm so poor-- wait.  What?

Emil:  I'm just sayin' - There's no way in Texas that you're poorer than Texas.  You live like a Texas on the throne compared to my Texas.  I haven't Texased a hot Texas in at least three Texases.  Don't try to tell me you're so Texas.

Charlie:  Are you okay?  You're not making any sense.

Emil:  I'm Texas.  They call my Texas Emil.  I'm making perfect Texas.  I think it is you who is not Texasing any Texas.

Charlie:  You know this was supposed to be about whose life is rougher, right?  Not about who is crazier.

Emil:  Texas is the Texas who's Texaser!  You Texas-damned Texas!  I'll Texas your Texas!  Get the Texas away from Texas, you big Texas!

Charlie:  Okay.  I'm gonna just keep walking.  That way.  You know - toward Texas.

Emil:  Texas.  Texas, Texas and Texas.  Texas.       

Drifting Luxury Tomb

In response to another writing prompt from my friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS...

It's a photograph, this time!  By Marie of my cyber house rules!

[For this one, I'm going to allow a peek into the still-very-rough first draft of one of my NaNoWriMo zombie novels.  There aren't any zombies in this scene, but whatever.  My protagonist and his dog still don't quite know what's going on, at this point...]

He tried the satellite phone a few times, once actually connecting (more or less) with Bart.  Apart from proving to each that the other was alive, the conversation provided little more than frustration, with Bill yelling "what's going on?" and Bart yelling "where are you?" simultaneously, until after a minute the connection was lost.  By just after dark, Bill had reached St. Kitts, which put him maybe a day or two from the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.   

Here, his exhausted little psyche took another hit.  As they approached Basseterre's Port Zante, with its cruise ship terminal and mega-yacht marina, Bill eased past a massive Royal Caribbean liner, apparently adrift, about two miles offshore.  No fire or passengers were visible, but he thought for a moment that he could hear distant screaming and yelling.  Also, smoke was pouring from the ship.  It was beyond acrid.  Bill gagged and choked and pulled his shirt over his face.  It smelled like burnt hair and raw sewage and body odor all went swimming in vomit together, then wrapped themselves in Styrofoam and lit the whole thing on fire.  Doug threw up a little at his master's feet, then hid in the cabin until the smoke thinned.

Closer to the Basseterre waterfront, Bill spotted what looked like a big red and white sail ahead of him.  As he got closer, he saw that it, too, was smoking a little.  As he made the turn into the biggest, most brightly-lit marina he could find (none of them had answered his radio calls), he saw that the sail wasn't a sail; it was the tail section of a Delta Airlines jet, and the water around it was littered with floating debris and what appeared to be bodies - or parts thereof.  The smell of jet fuel soon overtook the stench of the cruise ship's smoke, and it burned Bill's eyes.  He closed the hatch to try to keep it away from Doug.

He slowed the Sedna to a crawl and approached a pair of gas pumps at the end of the marina's pier.  A powerful hand-held spotlight beam blasted his eyes, zipped around the boat and settled on the bow.  Rubbing his eyes, Bill made out two dark figures between the pumps.  One of them appeared to have a large rifle - maybe a shotgun - aimed at Bill.  Reflexively, he slowly raised his hands, eventually putting them on top of his head.  "I don't want any trouble," he said. "I just want to buy some gas."

"Put your hands back on your wheel, you dumb American!" one of the figures yelled with an odd and very menacing accent. "But first let me see you take the cartridge out of that 9-millimeter you're carrying - and don't do anything stupid or I will blow your head halfway across the harbor."

Bill complied, quickly and a lot more smoothly than he thought he could have.  "I'm cool, I'm cool.  Look, I can just turn around and never look back.  No problem." he said.

"How close you get to that ship?" the other, apparently unarmed figure asked.

"Maybe within five hundred yards.  Meters?  Not that close." Bill felt as though he had wandered onto the set of a disaster movie.

"You pick anyone up?"

"What?  Out there?  No.  I didn't see anyone to pick up.  But I wasn't really close enough to see anything." Bill's internal fight-or-flight debate was over, and he fully expected wings to spring forth from his back at any moment.  He had swung the Sedna around, almost in-place, and now had the port side of the boat up against the pier.  Great, he thought. I'm going to be robbed and murdered, and I'll never get to find out what the hell is going on.

"You stay away from that boat, bro.  You know what's good for you.  You got cash?"

Bill surrendered the sizable roll of bills from his pocket - probably $1,500 dollars, then stood with his hands on his head while the men topped off the Sedna's tank.  Just as the flow of gasoline shut off, from out of the shadows at the far end of the dock, another pair of men charged toward them, cursing and shouting and brandishing a shotgun of their own.  "Hey!  Get away from my pumps!"   

The two guys who had just taken Bill's money and given him someone else's gasoline leapt from the pier into a small skiff, ripped its motor to life and buzzed away.  Bill was right behind them, gunning his boat's big inboards and nearly taking a gas pump with him.  He thought he heard at least one shotgun blast over the roar of the engines, but he didn't look back to see.  A few seconds later, he caught a glimpse of the robbers' skiff, zipping across his bow about two hundred feet ahead in the darkness.  "Good.  Go that way.  I'll go northwest.  Good luck, dudes," he said.

He cut a wide arc around the smoking luxury liner, and when he'd put a few miles between the Sedna's stern and Basseterre, he opened the cabin hatch and let the dog out.  Doug was not amused, as he hated hearing conversations he couldn't sit in on - and utterly despised being closed in the cabin when the boat was moving.  He didn't mind at all being in there, even on rough seas, but only if the hatch was open.  He was not having fun anymore, and stayed very close to his best friend for the rest of the night...