LOST THINGS
Living Beyond the Bubbles
©10/7/2009
A story of sorts by Theo Matthews
THE PROBLEM IS THE PREMISE
“Yeah...sounds good. I’ll be down in a few,” he said, then he paused to listen to his friend's voice crackling through ear-piece. “No, I don't need to shovel the car out. I'm gonna walk.” Stu lived only a few blocks away. Although the night was star-free and blustery cold, this was a welcomed chance to get out and move a bit. The winter had seemed much longer than the four months which had already passed. He had spent too little time outdoors since the glacier’s breath began wheezing in October. The sidewalks were nearly visible in a few places and, for once, nothing else fell on the town but a dark silence.
Lacing his boots tightly, he wondered if he had forgotten anything. No. Nothing.
Reaching for his coat, he pulled up a thin, grey jacket instead. He’d always hated the bulkiness of winter coats - and designer ski jackets just did not suit him. Somehow the lightweight, tattered fleece pullover with the cigarette burn just above the ass was far more comfortable. He planned to move at a pace as brisk as the air and assumed that he would be dressed more than warmly enough for the short walk.
Closing the door behind him, the outside air froze his nostrils almost instantly as he pulled his first breath of unheated air. He would be mouth-breathing for awhile, he knew, as he resignedly set off down the steps – huffing clouds of icy breaths. It was a crunchy, crusty snow he found himself walking atop. He left only an occasional, vague boot print in some places, and yet no trace as he passed over most others. Even the prints weren’t really prints so much as they were merely slight depressions in the icy covering – offering little more in their relief than the winter had granted to this town.
His home was at the very center of a small mountain town in Pennsylvania. Houtzdale is a remote place found on most maps, but not along any roads which led to anywhere people would actually want to go. Should you ever find yourself in Houtzdale, you will see the traffic light. There is only one traffic light in Houtzdale, dutifully metering bits of time and meting out lawful control, whether or not anyone was actually waiting for it to give them the green light. At that intersection, find a small, dingy convenience store. Should you need anything more than gas and directions, you will find what you need at the store. Soft drinks and hot dogs. Popsicles and coffee. Chips, clean restrooms and all the amenities one might expect of an outpost of civilization – but surprisingly also found here. In Houtzdale..
Within this tiny valley, the Americanized version of the English language has taken advantage of its isolation and slowly mutated into an independent dialect. He has often sought comfort in the idea that there was no pretension here. Everyone in Houtzdale is in the process of just making it through, but few ever seem to come out on some other side. It has been said that hard times come and go, but in Houtzdale, hard times have come to stay - buying homes, having kids and paying taxes.
Turning the first corner, he was almost directly under one of the two street lights of Hannah Street. The only other light was conveniently placed ahead of him, three blocks away. Neither ever glowed brightly. Instead, both emitted a strange peachy (peachish, peach-like, peach-esque?) glow that was more like a cloud of “not dark” than rays of illumination. His mind turned to considering his strategy for the night’s game of chess.
SPACE
Our worlds may seem insulated - self-contained - at times. While we live our lives in our place and our time, we are best to remember that other things are happening in other places at all times. This time is no different.
High above, and unknown to nearly everyone, something was very much happening. Something known to but a privileged few was going on. These few who had paid it attention had, in fact, paid it great attention for nearly a month and it delighted them. Most paid no attention because no one had even an inkling that it was happening. Most paid attention to their daily lives and had little energy or interest beyond the overwhelming task of living, anyway. Those who had been paying attention to anything beyond their lives, were captivated by the war du ‘jour – the one that had been the most spectacular of late. People died. Land changed hands. So common was this that it seemed somehow normal. Only a few were paying any attention to the mysterious meteor which seemingly appeared from out of the blackness of a nearly-starless piece of the sky one month ago. It was hurtling in the direction of the earth faster than any rocket-propelled grenade toward any Red Cross ambulance.
Lost further in thought than he had intended, he walked much slower than he had intended. Feeling much colder than he had intended, this produced an unannounced, compelling urge to urinate – which he had never intended. Scarcely able to focus on chess strategy now, all thought was diverted to retaining the water which, if left unguarded, would warm his legs only momentarily, and worsen his chill quickly thereafter. The remainder of the walk would pass in tight, short steps as he gave little regard to the sights of a small town settling in and riding out a welcome lull in the lake-effect storms born almost daily on Lake Erie and maturing on this side of the mountains.
Stepping onto Stu’s porch, his bladder shuddered instinctively for a moment – awakening impatiently to the fact that it was nearly time to release. Additional effort was briefly required to quell the hydraulic welling within. After knocking on the door with three sharp raps, he paused and let himself into the warmth and brightness of the house. He called out to Stu that he had arrived, had let himself in and was heading for the bathroom just as soon as the frozen laces let him out of his boots.
Stu had been in the living room separated from the foyer behind glass doors, making it comfortable for a good game of chess. He had recently refinished the old hardwood floors of the room – applying the topcoat just a few days before. The polyurethane had hardened and they were christening his newly-remodeled room with a game of chess. They shared a deep reverence for the game and spent endless hours discussing the slatted wooden floors of their ancient homes. Of late, they had often discussed finishing techniques, opening moves, stains, historic games played by Franciscan monks, horse-hair bristles, the rarely-used en passant move, patching techniques and every permutation on those subjects one could envision. Stu’s guest had refinished the floors of his own foyer not long before Stu had begun this latest room.
Fifteen years the senior, Stu would be best described as an interesting character. He had the rare gift of seeing the world for what it was, acknowledging it for what it was but ignoring such cumbersome reality in favor of dancing off to the music which played endlessly in his head. In his mid-fifties, and thin, Stu was an avid runner. Stu ran. Stu ran often. It was a classic case of a man’s hobby suiting him perfectly. More compulsion than hobby, Stu ran in everything he did. In Stu’s world, candles burned faster and brighter. He careens through life as a bespectacled hummingbird whose thoughts, words and deeds maintain a precarious, yet controlled, balance with one another.
They arranged the last of the furniture, bringing in the sofa from the neighboring room. No pictures adorned the walls. No bric-a-brac filled the nooks, crannies or shelves. Still, it was furnished with some seating, and this - along with a television - was all two guys really needed anyway. So long as there was a place to sit and the television worked, who cared that Lydia’s figurines were not displayed, or even that they remained at the bottom of several boxes stored in the hallway upstairs?
Inside one of those boxes, a small, glossy faerie – perhaps she was a wood nymph – found herself dressed in bubble-wrap pajamas and resting uncomfortably close to a hand-carved bulldog with a chipped foot. She had seen him day in and day out – sitting across the room atop the television. She had never seen a chip in his foot, though. “That can’t make him any happier,” she thought to herself. She’d had very few exchanges with the injured dog in the past. Most centered on the gossip and commentary of Stu and Lydia’s lives. The lives lived behind closed doors when we think no one can see us.
Faeries, as you know, are the most Venutian of all the world’s female species. Seeing the world through the happiest eyes ever sculpted, this faerie saw beautiful joy in sadness. Undeniably, she brightened any room despite her diminutive size - so cleverly had she been crafted. She was a warm bubble-bath in a sea of cold mud-puddles.
As the Yin to Venus’ Yan, when bulldogs are represented in sculpture, they almost always grimace and scowl with exaggerated “Mars-ness.” The faerie had assumed that the bulldog’s dour worldview was natural –even predictable - considering the sexually ambiguous representation of him. Whereas real dogs had the option to “cleanse” themselves frequently and with gusto, our bulldog was fully rigid…well, almost fully…as his carver had provided – in a nod to social modesty - nothing in the smooth lower belly of his carving for him to “cleanse” or to snag dust from the air. This bulldog would scowl, even if the scowl had not already been carved. He felt incomplete. He knew he was not alone in this plight, but it didn't matter what other statue or ornament was unfinished. He was not whole, but he was wholly unhappy. With such opposite viewpoints and backgrounds, none of his previous exchanges with the little princess were truly pleasant.
Still, there they were - lying next to one another. For nearly a week, they had each maintained a fragile silence. They were the only figurines in the box, accompanied by a threesome of place-mats beneath them and a tablecloth above them. Beneath the tablecloth, their box-mates were unknown to them. Whatever lay above the tablecloth was lightweigth, silent and unthreatening to them. That much they both knew. This was all that they shared and, so, it was not much of a conversation starter – and they both knew it.
So it was that they had lain silent as statues for all that time. The little daughter of Venus, though, was now at the frazzled end-point of her patience and thoroughly unable to contain herself. It simply went against her nature to not try to be friendly. Smiles and happiness gurgled and stirred within her cauldron of pleasantry. Her nature demanded to be released and whenever nature calls, it must be answered. “What do you think the room will be like when we get back?” she asked, blurting and spitting out the words uncontrollably as if they were made of cod liver oil. The light of her voice had entered as randomly as a shooting star streaking then disappearing through the night of their silence. “What?” Bulldog responded, hoping that she would smell the hint of his indifference and not attempt another intrusion into his meditation.
She smelled it. It was acrid and thick. Still, the silence had been broken and nature’s call had cleared its throat. “What do you think the room will be like when we get back?” she asked again, this time a little more firm in tone. Bulldog let out a long, beleaguered sigh – followed by a much-longer silence - acknowledging that he would entertain this little flirtation with intercourse, but reserved the right to withdraw at any time. Finally, he muttered, “I think Stu won the right to make it into a “guy” room and there’s no place for faeries in a “guy” room.” Faerie was flabbergasted. And scared. The sting of the insult gave way to the worry that he may be right.
They had both overheard the discussions regarding the room’s refurbishing. Lydia wanted bright colors, warm lighting and room to do her yoga. Stu wanted dark tones, low lighting and a TV. Lydia was away on a spiritual retreat near Pittsburgh for two weeks which had given Stu the opportunity to get the room done. Faerie knew this. With Lydia gone, Faerie also knew that the room may indeed now be darkly-colored, darkly lit and TV-hosting.
Bulldog snickered silently to himself, not wanting to break Faeire’s quiet contemplation. He enjoyed her silence. The mere idea that Bulldog may be right and that she would not return to her place on the shelf near the little cactus had overwhelmed her. “Oh I don’t think so, dog,” said Faerie returning a salvo in her own defense. “Lydia told him that she left the paint list on the end table. If she wrote the list, she picked the colors.” Her tone was now defiant, impressing Bulldog enough that he now felt obliged to respond. Obligation or not, he wasn’t going to let that pass so easily. “I heard them talking though, and they worked out a compromise. They went with Stu’s plan, but she got to pick the colors of the trims and mouldings.” He hadn’t heard this, of course, but she didn’t know that – and he knew it.
Faerie tremored with despair upon hearing Bulldog’s revelation. “You really think I’m not going to be put back next to the cactus? Really?” A tiny pang of guilt now formed a tinier bubble in the wooden innards of the bulldog. “I’m pretty sure,” he said, the pang being far too small to be noticed. “At least this is a nice comfortable box to rest in for an eternity or however long it takes for your porcelain to degrade or the box to be tossed into a trash compactor. Until that day, though, you can lie here in silence and safety.” He was really pleased with himself now. Had the tablecloth and place-mats been able, they would have groaned in displeasure at him. Of course they couldn’t. Linens don’t speak. They hear and they think, of course, but they cannot speak.
LOVE AND HATE
In a tiny, lonely, gray building somewhere high on a Hawaiian mountaintop, a small group of scientists were video-conferencing with similar groupings of scientists from around the world and discussing why, despite their incessant pleadings, none of the news media wanted anything to do with their story. It had everything. The meteor was massive, and though it was nearly certain that it would not collide with the earth, it represented a rare opportunity to observe this type of phenomenon which had come from nowhere. Perhaps an entirely new understanding of the cosmos may result – the implications of which were certain to be profound. The media cared not that this astronomical anomaly also promised to put on a fairly decent light show above Asia as it passed through and then bounced from the furthest reaches of earth’s atmosphere. “What does it mean when the reporters say, it won’t play in Peoria?” wondered one of the researchers in a remote astronomical outpost in Sri Lanka to one of his colleagues Utah.
Back in Houtzdale, a wooden bulldog’s words terrorized a porcelain princess. The tips of her white and silver wings would have drooped a little and her eyes would have been wide with horror had they not been porcelain and completely unable to stretch. Believing that he may have pushed her a bit too far, he struggled for a way to console her without appearing to soften. Bulldog didn’t have any particular dislike for Faerie, but his fondness was equally ambivalent. Still, she was a being with feelings and she had only tried to be nice to him. “Maybe Lydia will put you in some other room….maybe even her nightstand,” he offered. He hadn’t said it very convincingly, but she was looking for any vine of hope to latch onto, as her wings were of no use in this particular pit of despair she had fallen into.
The thought brightened her a bit. Figurines, statues, stuffed animals, and other such trinkets all covet a place on the nightstands of their owners. Yours do too. Nightstands are often cluttered. Nearly all have the prerequisite clock radio, lamp, and coins. Some also feature earrings, business cards, candles, phone-numbers jotted on paper scraps, pens, pencils and photos. You may even find grooming tools, condom wrappers (the scandal!), lighters, photos, aspirin bottles and, perhaps, an empty, snack-sized bag of Doritos. No statue could understand why their humans would need all these things to ensure their sleep. On other nightstands, you may have chanced to see necklaces, salves, wallets, checkbooks, and things we all wish we’d never seen on a nightstand or anywhere else. Still, our anthropomorphic trinkets regard this as a place of honor – prime real estate on the eighteenth hole. Faerie was no different. She had always pined for a place of honor on the nightstand.
The chess board which Stu had made – and which they always used when he hosted - was two feet square and wooden. All sixty-four squares were hand painted - alternately, neon yellow and neon green with an ivory background. The first time Stu had presented the board, he had removed it from underneath the sofa with all the ceremony of an election for the papacy. In fact, it was a relatively mild surprise by Stu’s standards. It had taken some time for his eyes to adjust to the contrast, but our guest had to admit that he’d grown accustomed to the colors. The larger playing surface provided a better view of the battle and the eye-numbing hues lent a strong contrast to the traditional black-and-white, Staunton-style playing pieces – although the rods and cones of the eyes are forced to make a few emergency adjustments at the beginning of each night's play..
Randomly snatching up a white bishop and a black queen, the guest hid them in his hands beneath the table - shuffling the pieces back and forth. Hidden within these hands, the bishop and queen silently consumated a forbidden love. Withdrawing his arms, he extended closed fists to Stu. “Right,” Stu chose. He chose black. The plastic lovers could only hope to be near to one another when stored away after the game.
None of the news outlets had yet mentioned the meteor, although it was only a scant few minutes from contacting earth’s atmosphere. “Too far away,” said the media, “You’ll need a telescope to even see the thing in the major markets.” But the scientists desperately wanted everyone to know about it. “Joe Six-Pack doesn’t own a telescope,” the networks would say. This particular astronomical event did, in fact, matter to everyone. The scientists knew it, but no one else did. And matter it did. Matter, in fact, was the matter. It was the matter at hand in a manner of speaking. It was matter that mattered and the matter was that this thing that mattered lacked it. The matter was anti-matter. More common than matter, anti-matter composes most of the universe. The problem is…anti-matter does not usually matter to us. Now, though, it did. And no one knew it mattered but the few.
BATTLES
From a casual audience’s viewpoint, chess can be the most painfully boring game conceived by man. From a spectator’s view, it probably is. Players seldom, if ever, talk. A quiet pall is cast like a wet, grey blanket across any room in which a game is played. Outwardly, it may appear to be the most anti-social game there can be. Watch closely, though, and you can see that the players are grappling mentally - swimming throughout the other’s pyche – diving for mental oysters which might reveal a gameplan or upcoming move. To those who play, chess was not created as a spectator sport, and it certainly wasn’t created by man. Or woman. Or hermaphrodite. To the chess player, chess is not a game. To play chess is to invoke the divine. It is access to the spiritual. From the lowliest pawn to the most powerful queen, the pieces are the totems of the faith. Certainly there have been many competitive games in which at least one player has felt the bloodlust to slash and burn their opponent’s battle lines, decimate his enemy’s army, rape the queen, burn down the castle and make glue of the knight’s horse - but those are the exceptions to the norm. Zen is in everything, but in chess, zen is everything. Sixty-four squares, thirty-two pieces and infinite possibilities. The greater the swath of infinity a player can grasp, the better the player. An opponent may make a fierce move endangering any hope of victory. A chess player finds an appreciation for the move – regardless of the implications to his own self-interest. Unlike the players of rugby or football who react to threats with force and anger, most chess players genuinely respect the skill and strategy of an opponent. Instead of trying to sideline an adversary with injury, the chess player simply says, “Nice move.” After two hours of meditation on a game, anger is a difficult emotion to muster, anyway.
“You know, I was thinking about your house today,” Stu began. “You were?” his guest asked, unsurprised. “Yeah, I was,” Stu continued, “I was wondering what you were gonna do with the outside of it. Because I was thinking that it might be tough to paint. I don't know where you can get boards to replace some of them. And reproducing some of those carvings in the eaves! Mercy.” The house was over one-hundred and forty years old and badly in need of a face-lift. “I think it might be a lot cheaper to use vinyl siding instead,” he added. The remodeling work was not really on Stu’s mind. He was pushing a button – throwing a switch - and trying to divert the tracks of the other’s thoughts away from the wide-open spaces of the Serengeti where his ideas could stretch and grow. Instead, Stu had hoped to send his opponent’s train of thought straight into a brick wall – or at least to head aimlessly into a twisting mountain pass of confusion. “I’ll have to get a contractor to do the work”, he responded, casually pointing to a very short, broken piece of bristle from a staining brush which had hardened into the topcoat of Stu’s newly-finished floor near the French doors. Check!
Finally turning attention to the board, Stu’s guest opened with a simple move of his pawn to king’s pawn four. It’s the classic opening – trite, clichéd, hackneyed, overused and completely effective. It’s the first move any player learns at the very beginning of a first chess lesson. Stu countered with his queen-pawn advancing only one space. The opening moves in a chess game set the table for the feast to follow. Style and intent arise and – many contend – the outcome of the game is determined. On his fifth move, the guest brought his queen’s knight into the fray. Obviously, Stu’s home-made wine which he had been quaffing had successfully hijacked his train and was looking for that brick wall with suicidal abandon. As Stu grasped the knight for his next move, the knight cried out, In the service of my king and my Lord! as he charged to certain death. Neither man heard it, nor did they hear that brave knight’s kindly king mutter, he will be missed in the voice of the unheard statuary among us. Imperceptible. Mostly.
A few moves later, Stu lost his advantage after being pressed into a discovered check - losing a pawn and a bishop as a result. The tide had, for the moment, reversed its flow and was promising to carry Stu to sea. “Hey,” Stu interrupted as he advanced a pawn, “guess what I did this week!”
Stu was not waiting for any sign of interest from his friend. “I was in traffic court this week, ‘cause I got a ticket,” he began. “You did?’ asked the guest politely – as guests are apt to do - mildly interested, but otherwise occupied.
After playing Stu for so long he knew that this was a diversionary aspect of the old boy’s game. “Yeah, I did. And I won,” his grin grew wide and genuine, as if the first blow of the new revolution had been struck. “I was coming up this one street, heading home. I go that way every day. Anyways, there’s a light there at the intersection and there’s a left-turn-only lane that’s maybe…oh…something like three cars long….that breaks off the main lane. Well, there’s no cars in that left-turn lane, and that’s where I needed to go. So anyway, there’s nothing coming my way, so I just shot up past a couple cars to get in that empty lane.” He was hitting his full stride, now, and was churning out the story with a disco rhythm. “Well, as I passed the van ahead of me, I saw that the car ahead of the van was a cop! So I knew I was in trouble, but I just pulled right up by the light like nothing was up. Sure enough, the cop turns on his lights and his siren and he’s all serious and pulls right behind me. The light turned green for my lane and so I just yelled out my window to him, ‘Follow me!’ and I turned and pulled over against the curb halfway down the next block.”
With no way to consider the game, the chess pieces and his distracted player tuned into Stu’s tale; a few pawns mentally stood down in an “at-ease” posture, some leaning on their lances. Stu visibly repositioned himself into the sofa for the long haul as his friend held the rocking chair in a little balancing game. “So I’m there waiting in the van and he comes up to my window, looking me over really good. He was looking for a gun! I don’t have a gun! So he starts asking me if I knew why he pulled me over. I said, ‘Yes I do, sir.’ I apologized to him and everything, but he gave me the ticket. I mean, he had to.” His friend nodded in agreement. “But I was still pissed off ‘cause it wasn’t cheap. I told him that the lane was open and there was nothing coming. I tried that and a few other things, but I still got the ticket. Right as he handed it to me though, he started telling me my rights, and one of’em was that I could appeal the citation in court. That got me thinkin’ afterwards that the cops never show up for their court dates, so if I showed up, I’d win. So on Thursday, I took a vacation day, and went to the courthouse and there were all these people waiting in the hallway. I was talking to this one guy and I asked him who the officer was that gave him his ticket, and it was the same as mine! Everybody was there because of that cop! What are the chances? I didn’t have a case and the cop was there! So I had to make up a plan. It turns out I’m the fifth case to be heard, so I only had a half hour or so to think of something before they called my name.” A large chair began rocking slightly without a creak from the sturdy floor.
“I can’t believe that you actually went into the courtroom,” stammered his friend. “Well I was there already, and I had the day off…,” Stu explained, “…so I stood up when they called my name and I still had no idea what to say.” Stu was grinning a toothy grin of pride as he said this. “The judge asked me if I was Stu Robbins and all that stuff, then he asked me to sit down at the chair up front. So after I took my seat, he asked the cop to explain what happened. So the cop went through his whole thing and sat back down. I was screwed! He had me. I mean, there was no getting around it. He had me. And then the judge gave me a chance to give my side of the story. So, I just stood there for a few seconds and thought about it. ‘I only have two things that I can say, Your Honor. First, I’d like to say that during the entire time that he was giving me the ticket, that officer there was a complete professional. Polite and a gentleman. I was angry, upset and had done something dangerous and wrong, but that officer never behaved in any way other than the way he was trained.’ That really got the judge’s attention!” he said, adding a self-pleased chuckle.
His story continued, “Then I said, ‘My second point, Your Honor, is that everything that officer just told you is absolutely correct. It happened just like he said,’ and now the cop was starting to give me the eye, like he was trying to figure out where I was going with this.”
“Where are you going with this?” his friend asked. “I’ll tell ya,” Stu continued. “I was just standing there for a second, and I got an idea. So I said, ‘Everything he said is true, but with a qualification.’ I asked the judge if I could use the chalkboard that was over on the side of the room, and he said that I could. So I dragged the chalkboard over for the judge and the cop and I started drawing the intersection and the lanes. But then I drew a house that would have been on the right side of me. The judge asked me what it was and I told him it was the reason that we were having the conversation. He just glared at me, and pointed his finger and said, ‘YOU.’ He just kept pointing at me so I just kept talking. See, there was this house and there was construction going on at the house. They had the ground all torn up and there was a mix of mud and leaves that was running from their yard out onto the streets, because it had rained so much there in the days just before. So I told the judge that I had been sitting in the lane and the sun was setting in the distance past the intersection causing a glare on the wet road. I also told him that the mud and leaves had washed onto the streets and the cars had picked it up and smeared it all over the road so that I couldn’t see the lines for the traffic lanes. I was lying, but it was all I could think of. Then I told him that since I had never been there before, I didn’t know that the left-turn lane was as short as it was. I told him that I didn’t know that I was doing anything wrong and had seen the police car two cars ahead of me, but since I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, I just pulled right up to the light.”
Knowing Stu as well as he did, the younger man envisioned the entire proceeding of Stu’s tale as a movie. Everything was quintessential “Stu.” I should apologize to you, the reader, right now, for you are being short-changed. Only Stu can tell his own stories and your storyteller does not pretend to relate them with the skill and subtlety which he would provide. Still, I am here to tell you, and he isn’t, so I will try my best to be accurate, if not eloquent.
The drama continued, “The judge was just looking at me. He wasn’t buying any of it, but I was in with both feet, so I had to stick to my story. He pointed at me again, and just said, ‘YOU.’ So I kept saying, ‘That’s what happened, your honor. It was the glare and the mud.’ I must have said that like eight times. ‘It was the glare and the mud. It was the glare and the mud.’ I was listening to every word I was saying, and I knew that I wouldn’t buy it!”
“And with that kind of defense, you won?” asked his friend, genuinely wondering how such could be the case. “Yeah, I won. Isn’t that great? I mean, it saves me from paying a hundred forty dollar ticket!”
“So what did the judge say when he told you that you had won?” his friend asked - realizing that he’d completely lost track of any game-plan he might have once had.
“Well that’s the interesting part,” Stu explained, “because he told me to erase the chalkboard. So I did that really well, and got it all wiped off. I even beat the erasers clean. Then the judge said, ‘Come here’ and called me to the bench. ‘How do you feel about traffic school and no points on your record?’ he asked me, and I said, ‘I think that’s a very fine idea Your Honor,’ and he said, ‘Done.’ And that was it.”
“That’s it?” asked the one-man audience.
“That’s it,” said Stu, “six weeks of traffic school, once a week and I only pay twenty-five bucks!” He considered this a victory. Perhaps there was a moral victory in there somewhere, his friend thought. To Stu, though, his reality was what he believed it to be.
CHIP OFF THE BLOCK
Faerie had never thought of traffic school. Like all of us, she had more pressing issues on her mind. Would it be a future of relative status and luxury atop the nightstand or maybe the comfort and familiarity of her old home near the cactus? Or would it (could it?) really be an eternity at the bottom of a box floating in a dark, quiet and mind-numbing nothingness? Right now she was at the bottom of a box and, based upon Bulldog’s claims, her situation was unlikely to change. Although no tears ran down her cheeks, in a sense, they still did. Bulldog stared silently ahead, eyes unblinking, as he pretended to ignore her.
The game played on - each occasionally moving a piece with hesitation.
It should be noted that, while all this was going on, the earth had rotated through fifteen percent of it’s daily allowance and moved fantastic distances through the space-time of the universe. Additionally, billions of people were experiencing the dynamics of their lives in billions of ways. While no two experiences were exactly the same - quite a few were nervously discussing the strange, heavenly lights high above. Some thought it to be the end of days. Others thought it to be an omen of something worse. Of course, there were those who paid it no mind - and it was not just those in Peoria. Still, a few calm souls looked long into the light pf the phenomenon. With no real answers for its existence yet available, they simply admired the iridescence for its beauty - the way one would look at a piece of art. Or a statue.
“What happened to your foot?” asked Faerie. “Stu bumped me into the candleholder when he was trying to put me away,” replied Bulldog. “He wanted to fit me into that other carton with the trinket box, glass vases, shot glasses and such. I’d much rather be there, let me tell you. Quiet crowd over there,” he spat, placing another course of bricks on the wall of solitude he had been attempting to build between them. Faerie limbered up, not waiting for the mortar to harden, readied herself for another leap, and vaulted high over that wall – metaphorically knocking one brick from the top course. “Does it hurt?” she persisted.
Bulldog was growing tired of this game. She was unrelenting. He began to believe that his only hope for peace was in conceding some time for detestable chit-chat. He’d make it unpleasant, at the very least, he decided. “Hurt?” he asked in disbelief. “I’m made of wood – of course it hurt! I don’t have the luxury that you porcelains enjoy. If you chipped a wing, you’d scarcely know it! But me, I came from the heartwood of a small tree in Malaysia and inside me still lives the soul of that tree. I am organic, not some cheap mineral poured into a mold. A part of me is still inside every piece taken from that tree. I was carved into several bulldogs, an elephant, at least one tigress that I know of and some larger parts were also used for firewood. A piece of me has already been released in fire. All that was burned has already begun the journey between here and heaven. It hurt like hell to be carved and the pain we all felt when a part of us was burned – that is something I still haven’t been able to describe. So, if you’re asking if I feel pain, the answer is ‘yes.’ If you’re asking whether it hurt to chip my toe, the answer again is ‘yes, but not that much all things considered.’”
Faeire was taken aback insofar as unmoving objects are moved. She hadn’t really considered that pain – physical pain – was foreign to her and her porcelain, ceramic, bisque, glass and stone brothers and sisters. What did pain feel like, she wondered? Emotionally, she felt pain. Some might say, she enjoyed it in a masochistic way. She might have been one of them, if pressed to admit it. But physical pain was a vegetable oil concept which she was unable to dissolve into the watery fruit punch of her experience. Emotionally, she felt his pain, and sympathized with the added burden that Bulldog must endure, but she had no frame of reference to sympathize with him physically. Still, the wash of emotional pain she derived from the sympathy offered a bit of reward and strange comfort.
“Where is it?” Faerie asked, referring to the severed appendage. “In the box,” Bulldog replied, “Somewhere at the bottom I’d imagine, but it really doesn’t matter. May as well have evaporated into nothing, because I’ll never see it again.” Oh, Bulldog! Such a pessimist, you are! All the current thinking on such matters tells us that the toe could not have evaporated into nothingness, because of the basic laws of physics. Matter can neither be created, nor destroyed. Perhaps Bulldog was referring to the obliteration of matter, such as if the foot collided at very high speeds with an anti-matter wooden foot and all of the molecules in both were reduced to the basic energy waves that compose all matter. Even, then, however, there still remains something – the energy. Bulldog, of course, probably didn’t realize this before he misspoke about “nothingness.”
The sense of loss, the ‘pain’, the moribund depression that swam in his voice like a lost school of tuna , was not lost on Faerie. Normally, Venus’ daughter could not help but want to console him, to clasp him tightly to her shiny maternal bumps and sing to him soothing songs. Recalling the recent barbs and insults hurled toward her though, she sensed an opening for revenge. “You’re probably right,” she agreed, her tone not completely hiding the fact that she had actually enjoyed inflicting emotional pain on him. So against her nature was it to be insensitive, and very nearly cruel, that no one could have been more surprised than her at how easily the words had rolled from her tongue -figuratively. Nor could one have been more surprised than her at what followed. “Either that, or it’s already broken into too many pieces to fix with glue, anyway,” she added, relishing her newfound dark side.
“I’ll be fine…don’t you worry about me. What do I need with a foot, anyway,” he barked, “It’s not like I’m going to chase the hubcaps of a car anytime soon! I’m a figurine!” The volume of your denial cannot hide your pain, Mr. Bulldog.
This disruption created quite the ruckus in terms of inanimate objects creating ruckuses. The four soft pads of four soft feet attached to four short legs moved quietly outside the box.
CHUCK
Chuck had lived a hard life in his early days, yet had easily adapted to the quiet, predictable life he had found with Stu and Lydia. Born a street cat in a small town, he was the only kitten from his litter of five to have a birthday. Even now – when in the soupy, fuzzy state between sleep and wakefulness - he could clearly see one of his sisters – the runt of the litter - being pulled away by a German Shepard puppy not much older than the litter. At other times, he remembered hearing his mother’s heartbreak at the disappearance of another sister who had simply crawled away while their mother slept, never returning. And so it went for yet another sister and a brother. Aside from some trouble sleeping and a bit of recurrent indigestion though, Chuck now lived the simple life. A life he had never even dreamed to exist not so many years ago.
Being of indiscernible genetic construction, he was a hefty result of generations of breeding and inbreeding. A medium-length coat of orange, yellow and white covered a solidly-built feline of the domestic sort. His face was broad and flat – as if lifted by Silly Putty from a photo of a cat in the funny pages, then stretched a little more horizontally. His tail featured a distinct crook about halfway down its length. His ears were a tattered eighty percent of their former selves and the corners of his mouth appeared to droop from each corner. Chuck was a happy cat now, but his face always conveyed to the world a deep sense of something he remebered against his will.
He was a rags to riches story – the stuff of so many inspirations and affirmations for constantly being told that there is a reward for all the suffering. Chuck appreciated his good fortune, of course, but he never understood what reward his siblings got. Something good, he hoped. But his sufferings. Woe his sufferings. His sufferings had been many, but he was alive and in comfort now, and all those bad memories seemed far away. And, it seemed, this is how it would stay. No more want. No more need.
Still, those memories which Chuck wished to avoid were the very experiences that had been stirred into the stew of his life - rendering the warm, friendly, loving cat that he was.
Experiences shape us. Chuck had been sleeping near a garbage bin not far from where he was born. The warm spotlight of the sun had been filling his little hiding place, but had slowly traced further up along the alley as he slept. Nearly waking, but not yet ready to open his eyes, he was jostled with a painful sharpness in his left, rear leg. His eyes opened to see two small human boys poking him with a stick. Human boys! He had grown to fear nothing more than human boys. All his life he had heard stories and borne witness to the unspeakable cruelties inflicted on his kind by human boys. Now, two of them had him cornered and were packing weapons. The stick poked at him again, as the smaller boy squealed with delight at the pain his friend had engineered. Chuck had not made it this far by backing down from a fight, and this fight, he knew, was for his dignity, if not his life.
Chuck bared his teeth drawing deeply from within himself on the primal, ancestral instincts of lions, tigers, saber-tooths and cougars. A guttural threat froze the boys in surprise just long enough for Chuck to dart between the boys and make his escape, but the larger boy reacted quickly and stepped down hard on his tail with a painful, snapping halt to his full stride. Chuck whipped around and laid his claws into the thin flesh covering the boy’s ankle bone, tearing through the denim pants and drawing five rows of blood on each side. The boy involuntarily lifted his foot and Chuck was off again, yet with a permanently altered tail – painful, but still there.
Eventually, Chuck began staying near Stu’s home. At the time, Stu was married to Susan, a kind but troubled young woman. Over time, he was granted entry to the home on cold nights yet free to roam the world outside as he chose. A year passed and Chuck matured. He began to stay in the house for longer periods of time, and accepted the title of “housecat” without much complaint. In time, Stu and Susan divorced. Susan retained Chuck and the house. Stu moved on.
One day, Stu’s phone rang. Susan had committed suicide. Chuck had watched her do it. With his eyes, he had pleaded with her. She had heard him, but was too far down the troubled road to make sense of it. Even today, he can smell the sulfurous smoke of the air and the warm blood which had pooled on the floor and sprayed on just about everything else. Chuck stayed near Susan until she was found, days later. Stu carried Chuck from the sofa she had laid upon, and vomited in the front yard moments later.
THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC
Science is that part of magic which we have explained through reason. Still unknown, however, is just how much magic is left to uncover and process into quantified science. The world we know, that in which we live our lives, holds many more dimensions than the heighth, width, depth and time which define our sense of reality. Curled up tightly within our world like cosmic doughnuts, several more dimensions exist. Imagine, if you will, that we are living our lives on the skin of a balloon, and these additional dimensional rings are the helium inflating it. Even more, within these incomprehensible bagels, we “exist”. Our lives on the skin of the balloon are merely the holographic images of the activity within. On the skin of the balloon, certain natural, physical laws apply. Inside, however, these rules fall far short of describing the total world. New laws, wholly foreign to our experience are the rule of the land laid down by the bagel kings. These laws are the movers, the shakers, and the sheriffs of their town. But there is still so much magic left to be understood and harnessed. If we are on a “bubble,” what is the liquid we float within? Are there other bubbles, and, if so, how many? Are there still smaller bubbles floating within ours?
More magic exists in the very reality of our existence than has ever been written of witches, sorcerers and gods. The tomes of good versus evil - lightness and darkness - pale before the miracles of physics and quantum mechanics. In this world, imagine that you were to somehow paint a red dot on an ultra-tiny ping pong ball a million times smaller than an electron. Imagine then that you spun that ping pong ball one revolution. You might expect that you would see the dot coming back to where it started before you spun the ball. You might expect that, but here, science is magic. Here, in the unimaginably-small world where microscopes cannot see, that dot would not reappear until the ping pong ball is spun yet another time. This is how things are at the very smallest levels of our world. The magic is presumably vast and far beyond anything the most creative or insane of us could dream. Though many will claim to explain it, the truth is, that we, as humans, understand so little. Our science shows us a little more of this world each day, but we don't know enough about it to question these quantum laws which rule our lives completely.
Magic churns and spits within our bubble. In unfathomable ways it creates, destroys and maintains things seen and unseen. Things dreamt and undreamt. It is magic, not yet understood, that allows our carved and molded heroes to communicate. Our little statuary subjects are imbued by their creators with the outward appearance of life, but it is magic alone which gives them a form of consciousness. Once conscious – once self-aware – it is the will to communicate which gives them speech, though far different than the speech used by people and infomercial hosts. It is the energy of their thoughts which is passed between them. Faerie and Bulldog hear the meanings of the other's thoughts.
Seldom will the inanimate communicate with man, but all rules have exceptions. Those who heard the magical voices were the unfortunate few. Some have been sentenced to living their lives in sanitariums for the simple offense of hearing and listening to what a doll had said to them. How many have been driven insane by prankish figurines claiming to be the voices of god, or lost loved ones. Could it have been a ceramic duck who compelled someone who later claimed 'the devil made him do it'? For this reason, magic has established a set of rules governing this interaction – forbidding it in nearly all cases. Nearly, but not all.
Padding along the hardwood floor hallway of the upstairs hallway, Chuck paused in his tracks – his left foreleg hanging mid-air and in mid-stride. Unsure of whether he had just heard a heated discussion or only thought of one, Chuck paused in his tracks – freezing all movement like a feline statue, in the way that only cats and statues can. Involuntarily, he went into that primal mode in which his heart-rate raced, his eyes narrowed and all focus was placed on his acute senses. His sense of smell detected nothing that should be talking, but he still “heard” something.
Unaware that they were being overheard, Faerie and Bulldog allowed their exchange to escalate. In a state of disbelief, Chuck “listened in,” still trying to smell or see any explanation for what he was “hearing.” The reason for the argument had become irrelevant as the attacks became more personal and moved further from any resolution. “Box-fill!” decried Bulldog. “Broken garbage!” retorted Faerie. “Porcelain Virgin!” accused Bulldog. “Dickless bitch!” spewed Faerie.
Faerie! What has gotten into you? This isn’t the Faerie known to peacefully pass her time as a proud symbol of purity and goodness. Silence fell quickly inside the box. The linens were thankful. As if it weren’t enough to have to feel jealousy for the communicative abilities of their boxmates, they were now annoyed by them. Had she gone too far, wondered Faerie. Bulldog had been nothing but hostile and antagonistic toward her since their first words. If only I had never spoken to him, she thought to herself. Now, she was behaving at least as badly as he had. Bulldog sat silently. Her words had found a soft spot in his hardened heartwood. He is a dickless bitch, she decided. Figuratively, Bulldog silently licked his wounds.
Faerie had found his Achilles heel, but it wasn’t on his foot. It was non-located where it should have been – in the lower part of his belly. That is where it not was. He had nothing to volley back at her. One more mention of his non-appendage and he would surely be reduced to nothing. It was the chink in his armor – his softest soft spot – the raison-d’etre for his gruff exterior. She had the upper hand now and they both knew it. Holy shit! thought Chuck.
The box which had attracted Chuck’s focus was rather small and sat upon a much larger one. Chuck leapt to the larger box for a better view. As graceful as cats are, and Chuck being particularly so, Faerie and Bulldog still felt the large cat landing just outside their cardboard bedding. This broke the awkward tension for them. Chuck looked into the box, finding that all four sides of the lid had been folded down before the box had been filled. This left a straw mat covering a tablecloth and, Chuck assumed, two somethings beneath the tablecloth which argued and called each other names.
Faeire and Bulldog realized that it was the cat, but they had no real basis to fear Chuck. As cat-toys, neither were particularly interesting. Bulldog had slightly more reason to fear that Chuck might act out any residual aggressions he harbored toward dogs. Chuck had never really paid him any attention while he sat out in plain sight all that time, though. They were both aware of the cat’s natural grace as they had seen him slinking in and out of any number of breakable items many times on televisions, shelves and tables. Certainly, he was not an aggressive type, despite his troubled past.
Chuck knew that there were two beings somewhere in that box and he was pretty sure who at least one of them was. Unconsciously, but with great intensity, his curiosity assembled itself into one clear thought – “Is that you, wood-nymph?” “I’m a faerie!” replied Faerie.
Tattered ears stood up on ends and vertically-slitted, green/brown eyes widened at the announcement. “Who…uh, umm…who…are….uh…whom are you in there…uh…with?” Chuck asked, not completely convinced that he should be expecting a response. Something similar to this happened to him once before after eating some old tuna, but he had felt much worse then. There was no need to convulse this time, and he hadn’t eaten anything other than the same, dehydrated-fishgut-tasting dry cat food that he always had. Not too tasty, but nothing unusual.
“I’m with the bulldog from atop the television.” Faerie told him, straining not to add, “unfortunately!” Chuck sat back on his haunches, confused, dazed but intensely focused on the box – his crooked tail nervously swishing and swashing. “I have to ask two questions,” said Chuck, “What are you two fighting about, and why can I hear you doing it? Wait…reverse that…second question, first.”
As to the first question, Faerie explained what she knew of the magic of the universe. She, in fact, knew more than she thought. Chuck understood it well. Being a cat with no hardened, preconceived ideas of the universe, he grasped the concept as gracefully as cats do. As to why they were fighting, she attempted to explain the particular things important to statuary figures and how that had led to such an exchange as he had overheard. “So, you’re both driving yourselves and each other crazy over your fears of being stuck in that box indefinitely?” offered the cat. “Yes,” said Bulldog, finally entering into the discourse. “Even if you were stuck there in that box, is that so bad?” countered the cat, “I don’t hear anyone else in there complaining.”
“It’s a worse fate to us than death is to you,” continued Bulldog, “…and you don’t hear the mats or tablecloth complain because; “A” – they can’t talk and “B” – they are made for lying down! They’re completely content.” The mats and tablecloth collectively would have groaned that they would be content if they had shared the box with two less-noisy roommates. Alas, they couldn’t say it, but they wanted to. Unaware of the sarcasm from above and below, Bulldog continued, “But we are made to be upright… in fact, we are ordained to sit or stand…on top of other things! It is the very reason we exist. Right now we are lying down underneath things! She is on her back, not for the last time I’m sure, and I am lying faced down into a filthy place-mat!” “Fuck off,” thought the place-mat.
This being by a wide margin the most interesting thing to happen to him that day, Chuck was feeling the need to get involved. “What if I pulled each of you out and set you upright in the box on top of the straw mat and the tablecloth?” asked the cat. “Yes!” exclaimed Bulldog. Faerie noted the release of tension in Bulldog’s voice and realized that he was at least as scared of a fate in storage as she. “We cannot!” she interjected, “For one thing we will be drawing attention to ourselves. That could really create some confusion for the humans, and besides, we wouldn’t be very stable sitting on the support of all these fabrics. It’s just too risky.”
“So what do you want to do?” asked the wooden dog with a characteristic air of condescension, “You wanna just stay here until we both get box-rot?”
“Of course not…no one wants out of here more than me, except for you perhaps,” she jibed, “but we need a plan.”
“A plan?”
“A plan.”
“A plan,” agreed Chuck. Of the three, Chuck knew the lay of the house best. He had personally crawled into nearly every nook and cranny of it at one time or another. Mentally, he ran through some of his favorite places quickly, assessing each location’s unique positives when the subject turns to hiding figurines. “I know a nice, safe place where you could each spend some time upright. At times, you’ll even see the sun.” This intrigued the two figures and they asked for details. They agreed that they would place their fates in the mouth of the cat.
Chuck pressed a paw down past the straw mat and tablecloth to the smooth wooden dog. The cat then worked the dog out of his bedding and along the wall of the box – rolling and lifting him upward. Eventually, Bulldog popped out. Chuck opened his jaws wide as Bulldog studied the teeth bearing down on him – ironic even to a statue of a dog. He soon developed a new appreciation for just how fearsome this new friend could be, were he to set his mind to it. The cat carried him down the stairway which led to a sitting room just inside the front door. Chuck had to make his way through the French doors which led to the living room and two humans playing chess who would surely remove the little wooden dog from his mouth after remarking at how cute it was for a cat to be playing with a little wooden dog.
Cats can enter a room unnoticed and leave it just as easily. Actually, it isn’t easy for them at all, but cats are just so innately proficient at it, that they make it look far more effortless than it actually is. A cat can go into “invisible” mode. Birds can fly and mammals can lay eggs – such as the platypus whose mere existence runs contrary to any rational explanation. Male seahorses give birth. Whales can communicate across oceans and hummingbirds fly in the face of aerodynamic laws. (Hummingbirds, it seems, fly because no one ever told them that they can’t, or at least no one ever told them that they can’t fly in a convincing way.) Insects by the thousands conduct sophisticated engineering projects in precise unison as if guided by a single consciousness. Many animals possess strange abilities. Cats can become invisible. Chuck became “invisible” and passed through the room, adhering to the wall furthest from the humans. There was little in the room to hide behind aside from feline invisibility.
Chuck entered the kitchen with a sense of relief. Bulldog felt the sigh pass over him – a warm wind emanating from somewhere further down the throat of the cat than he wanted to see. Chuck lightly leapt to the countertops and moved to the far left, past the dish drainer as Bulldog caught a rarely glimpsed self-reflection in the chrome, fun-house mirror of the toaster. Abutting the counter was the refrigerator – a goldenrod-colored Kenmore, which stood in front of and partially covered the lower-right corner of a window. Chuck hopped up to the sill and deposited the injured dog upright; facing the window. “Relax,” said Chuck growing more comfortable with the whole business of exchanging thoughts, “I’ll go get her and be right back. You’ll be fine here for quite awhile.”
“It would be fone to leave her there, I'm sure,” offered Bulldog. Chuck just gave Bulldog a look and turned away. The cat maneuvered to turn – skillfully,even by feline standards in such a narrow spot – to retrace his steps. Bulldog never heard the big cat jump back down to the floor. “Invisibilty and silent stealth,” thought Bulldog, “quite a useful combination if you’ve got something to hide.”
BULLDOG
A tiny golden oval of a sticker is still affixed to Bulldog’s underside where he had hoped for something else. “Made in Malaysia” is all that it says, telling only a small part of the story. He was carved from a bintangor tree – a type of rubber tree with poisonous sap which had recently passed its last latex. An experienced craftsman from the Dyak tribe had harvested the tree from a local swamp for the purpose of carving trinkets which he would sell to a nearby merchant. Each item he carved rendered only pennies to feed his family, but he made a good living by community standards. Although, he may not have created the highest of art, his skill was in creating lower art quickly and in relatively large numbers. It was in this that he took his pride. Given the time, he knew himself to be capable of sculpting the highest of art. One day he would prove that, but, for now, there were expenses to be met. The merchant who purchased these hastily-crafted décor items then acted as broker, buying trinkets from many of the locals, selling some to the tourist trade along Borneo’s coasts and the rest to an Asian corporation which exported all types of these things to the many places in the world in need of crap. Taib Bujang was making things to be loved and cherished in places he would never see by people who lived in ways he could not fathom. Just as well, he thought to himself often, for he could not comprehend why anyone would want to visit a culture cluttered with sectarian idolatry. The Allah he knew would certainly not approve.
Bulldog was the third such dog Taib had carved. Never having actually seen a live bulldog, Taib skillfully produced five reasonably realistic figurines from a newspaper photo he had been given. Filtered through the eyes of an experienced artisan who possessed the instinct for adding a third dimension, Taib had produced a quintet of charming products he could be proud of. Taib intentionally neglected to add the male anatomy to his art, in part because of his personal convictions and sensibilities, but also because it was more commercially appealing to do so. Bulldog being his third, Taib saw our little statue as his best of the five – the first two being of sufficient quality to sell, but the errors in his trials glared at him accusingly; the final pair being excellent examples of his skill, but lacking a certain “living” quality imbued only on the third. While making our bulldog, Taib’s thoughts were focused on his daughter who had recently completed schooling at the nunnery in town. Happy thoughts. She would soon be leaving for Universiti Malaysia Sarawak on full scholarship. His pride was larger than any container such a humble man could possess to hold it in. Taib’s knife was old and given to him by his uncle and mentor, Sayed. Sharpened and re-sharpened countless times, the blade had only a few months steady use remaining but, in a moment of such pride and happiness, Taib’s skillful hands had danced away upon the wooden block that day and created a masterpiece of trinketry.
Eventually finding himself to be a commodity item in one of those “everything for a dollar” stores, bulldog had been purchased as a gift for an enthusiast of his breed who had furnished her home in bulldog-themed blankets, rugs, calendars, photos, magazines, trinkets, doorstops, bookends, place-mats, coffee mugs, jewelry, paintings, stationery and so on. There were also six very-real bulldogs. From them, he learned the ways of his breed.
The bulldog lover passed on one fragrant summer day wearing a time-worn bulldog watch on her withered wrist. It featured a smiling, cartoonish bulldog face with moving whiskers which continued to smile and count away the minutes she no longer had. Upon her passing, the “estate” was yard-saled by her two sons and our little dog was purchased by Lydia, who had been drawn to him as he sat inconspicuously on a folding table. Smaller than many of the other figurines on the table that day, he was barely visible. Even so, she saw him distinctly. This bulldog was the only piece she bought that day. She felt a positive energy in the tiny marks etched into his skin by some skilled, yet anonymous craftsman. He had been a fixture atop her television ever since.
“Hello there, winter night,” thought Bulldog to himself as he took in sites beyond the window he had never seen before. From his old perch, he had always faced the middle of the room, no windows in view save for the tiny glimpse he could occasionally catch through intense concentration on his peripheral vision. But now he could see the alley clearly, as well as the house across the alley and several others sprinkled throughout the neighborhood. The occasional car made its way in one direction or another. It was a buffet of new sights and sounds and it beat the hell out of having his face pressed into a place-mat.
Bulldog silently thanked Chuck for intervening and finding this wonderful spot. “Stu will never notice us, and Lydia won’t be home for quite awhile. Even so, she may not find anything amiss for days, at least,” he delighted - the thought nearly swelling into an uncontrollably gleeful giggle. Nearly.
FAERIE
Faire entered into the world much differently than her boxmate. While Bulldog was a hand-crafted item, Faerie’s origins lie in a Taiwanese ceramics factory over thirty years ago. Poured into a mold and pressed into shape, she was only one of thousands just like her. From her mold was released a hollow figurine with a porcelain shell. After cooling, she was quickly detailed in traces of paint by a young girl in only her second week at this duty. Though this was the only part of her creation employing the human hand, she still took solace that she was indeed unique, though, admittedly, in the subtlest of ways. Barely had her paint dried before she was packed in bubble-wrap and boxed for shipping. It was an abrupt way to enter the world. She would not escape the box again for several months.
It was in a greeting card store that she found herself on the glass middle-shelf of a brightly-lit display alongside figurines and statues of every kind. Elephants and mice. Hobos and Bozos. Santas and snakes. Brightly-colored, charismatic and often whimsical, the characters which surrounded her passed away the time in joyful banter. When one of their clan was purchased and removed, the whole group simultaneously felt sadness for their loss and happiness for their friend’s fortune. When a new member was introduced to their happy display, he or she was always greeted warmly and with acceptance.
This was a happy time for her. Friendly friends shared experiences with her as curious customers of all shapes and colors paraded before her as they looked long at her every detail. Some would pick her up and rub their thumbs along her glossy-smooth porcelain back. She enjoyed her role in bringing smiles to so many people as the smiles she gifted to others were returned to her ten-fold. She was a member of a wildly entertaining, eye-catching circus troupe whose best acts centered on remaining so colorfully wonderful, yet silently still.
As nearly all of her friends and family from the display who were purchased before her, Faerie was a gift of happy thoughts. In this case, she was a token of friendship for Lydia from a prayer-group friend. A new chapter had begun for the little princess with the silver wings.
With Bulldog gone, Faerie had lain in the box, waiting as patiently as her impetuous heart would allow for Chuck’s return. Although it had been only a few minutes since the cat and dog had left her, she thought she had xensed the sun set at least once.
A reassuring thud shook the large box outside her own. Her heart, had she possessed one, would have skipped a beat and for all intents and purposes it did just that. “Okay, Faerie, let’s take a stroll,” said Chuck. At that moment, the sheer lunacy of the situation gelled into a reality Chuck could not quite wrap his feline brain around. Unexpectedly silent, he sat in place outside of Faeire’s box. Not even his broken tail moved. His brain had frozen him into a state which was somewhere beyond shock, but falling just short of being a seizure. On a certain level he understood Faerie’s explanations, but he still felt that he should question his grip on reality to be carrying figurines around the house and hiding them in an attempt to help them to live their dreams? Fifteen minutes ago, he had no idea that figurines had feelings; or dreams; or even lives. Now he was in some kind of undercover scheme with porcelain and wood. “Chuck, are you still there?” Faerie asked, trying to stem the sense of dread which was slowly dripping into her system from some unseen intravenous bag of anxiety.
At this time, and unknown to everyone – even the scientists who had been so closely following the events- a small rock was mere seconds from colliding with our meteor. To call it a rock may be an exaggeration, but to call it a pebble may be to underestimate its size. To call it a pebble would also be to imply that this stone (?) was smooth and shiny…perhaps even colorful. This was none of those. It was rough and barely gray. Having nearly no color whatsoever, it was a tintless stone featured in a black and white film and viewed on an RCA Victor television circa 1957. This was, most importantly, a tiny bit of matter, being pulled by earth’s gravity, on a collision course with an anti-matter meteor which had crossed into our universe as a victim of the laws of probability – improbable as that may be. Seconds later a violent collision obliterates the rock/pebble/stone/colorless thing as well as a larger bit of the meteor. It was an unexpected, but highly interesting, unforeseen event. The resultant energy released from such an encounter of matter and anti-matter is indescribable; therefore your narrator will not even attempt a description. Suffice it to say that the explosion converted a great deal of matter and anti-matter into pure energy as it sent what dust remained of the meteor on a trajectory far from earth. The lightshow was an explosion far greater than anything the men of science could have anticipated or hoped for. At that moment, a few dozen astronomers scattered across the planet collectively shouted an “I told you so!” to a global media which was now suddenly ready to listen.
Thanks to the wisdom of natural law, gravity attracts wandering energy as easily as it attracts meteors and stones, guaranteeing that this will not be the last relevance of the meteor within the context of this story. Television cameras whirled to the sky to record the lightshow which appeared from out of nowhere so far as anyone knew. It hung high in a small piece of the sky like a distant, glowing rainbow. Television news anchors, some with low-cut blouses, appeared earnestly in “Special Report” fashion - interrupting many popular shows and irritating nearly everyone who had been consumed by their favorite comedies and game-shows. Understanding little of what they said, they reported that a large explosion of unknown origin had occurred high in the sky and that what it meant was uncertain. On nearly every radio and television channel, expert analysts leveled accusations at the scientific community for allowing such a thing to go unnoticed for so long so near to the earth.
Outside a small box – far beneath this astronomical oddity - a large cat was restoring his faculties. “Yep, you talk…I thought you did,” Chuck replied, accepting that the “here and now” of things was a world where figurine faeries talked and table linens were content, so long as they were laid flat. Chuck scooped his leg deep into the box, this time more conscious of the feelings of the straw mat and the others. He felt the sharp tip of Faerie’s wing poke at his soft pad despite the bubble wrap sleeping bag. Hooking one claw into a bubble, a tiny puff of air released, mixing and diluting into the air outside. The other bubbles mourned the loss of a brother as Chuck pulled her to the edge of the box. From there, it was a simple matter to recover Faerie and even easier to hold her within his teeth. Faerie, though, wanted the wrap to be removed. Chuck promised to accommodate her once they had reached the sill.
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