Hergest Ridge

“… uncle bill will never leave a will, and the tumor is as big as an egg. he has a mistress, she’s puerto rican, and I heard she has a wooden leg.”

Thank you, Mr. Tom Waits.

Out in the dark the creaking tree sways in the wind, the window beside open – fresh air coming in, Chris and I sucking on green and blue straws struck into snowcones of equally vibrant colours, playing games. A hundred such nights passed, and many others too. All good times.

The house was a doorway to things new, like music I’ve never heard before – in particular that one disc with the health warning “could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops.” Before then, I really was a cloth-eared nincompoop – most people today are. I’m fortunate to have been immunised at a young age.

Some years later at the same house with the red trimming and the creaking tree out front, a gathering was in progress. A hundred such gatherings took place there over time – some special others quite plain, both kinds enjoyed equally. (That house has different people living in it now, all making their own memories. So does the one just down the street, the plain, aged blue one that never should have been blue; the one where I dreamt when I wasn’t making memories or cutting class.)

I moved back into the area a few years ago, sometimes I think doing so only for the convenience of walking down the same street when on the daily walk without the dog. A dog would be happy with me – I’d be happy with a dog – but the landlord is a scrooge. They tend to be.

On occasion I pass the two homes without noticing, but most of the time I look in through the windows and experience something akin to Mr. Vonnegut’s Timequake. I know the people I see, and look – there I am, too!

The house is full to the brim – people old, young, pretty, and those shunned by God. Smart people, and the stupid ones too, those that found the address despite their handicap. You may think me not nice for saying such things, but to be nice I’d have to lie.

With so many folks on the scene, it would be boring and confusing to go into detail about all. Most likely talked about the weather, and how much they hate their boss. “How about them Jets?”

(God, I hate professional sports! The city wants to use my tax money to build a new stadium – I just want kids to worry less about student loans. The stadium of course brings more votes at election time, and fares much better at the penis envy like competition in which municipalities engage. The added bonus of easier control over those with IQs matching the temperature in Celsius makes the choice a no-brainer, leaving but one question: all season, or a seasonal venue? That’s what the choices are down to.)

One of the people that came by once, and then always after that was Heather. She kept coming around until I left town in protest, and was gone for a year. Heather was Chris’ girlfriend. Chris was the only one that liked Heather, and I suppose he probably made up with his affection the disdain we all felt, so she stuck around

Heather did a lot of awful things, like give mothers of grown children parenting advice, after working at the Tiny Tots daycare for eighteen days. She told them everything about kids, the stages they go through, their needs, wants, and signals they give that parents miss. She was fucking brilliant – there was nothing she didn’t know about!

Heather repelled all, including children. Chris was immune. Everyone likes Chris, and most did their best to tolerate his companion. (“If it makes him happy, I’m happy for him.”) One of the several children she repelled was Rebecca – the Hydra pushed the girl so far, she ended up in my lap seeking distance and a measure of protection. Earlier that night Heather took the scrambling girl under her wing, pulled the game controller from the child’s hands, and imposed a Jetmoto racing crash course on the trapped girl. With honourable politeness, Rebecca suffered through the experience while I suffered for her. With the lesson over, Heather forgot to return the controller to the rightful owner and the victim knew to let sleeping dogs lie. She also knew that a timequake was right around the corner – that the whole episode would turn into a painful rerun unless she broke the cycle by quickly making use of her newly found freewill. That’s how things ended that night – with Rebecca and me sharing the second game controller, blowing Heather out of the water over and over again. I remained seated long after my legs fell asleep, and if I had the formula to create my own universe contraction, we’d all have relived that hour from ten years ago many a times.

Many things play themselves out when I look through the windows of the homes on my walk without a dog. I tend to narrate them under my breath in a mix of languages. No one’s around to hear and try to make sense of it. If I had a dog, I suppose it would get used to the strange sounding monologue. It’d smile the way dogs tend to, put another snowy paw forward, and think “I love it when he makes those strange sounds. I don’t know what he’s on about, but it sure makes him happy. Treats make me happy. But what ever rocks his boat I’m glad he’s found it.”

“Good dog – good girl.”

Since the entire office staff converted to Apple supporters at the Christmas dinner that no one was to call a Christmas dinner (I choose to rebel in petty ways), my equals have asked for assistance in the day to day operation of the device known as iPod Touch. Each time I’m assured that the media to be transfered is legit, and each time I wonder why anyone would think I care.

As my financial records would prove beyond doubt, I support more artists of many a type than I can reasonably afford to. Most of what I take, I pay for in one form or another: late fees on library book returns, concert tickets purchased and not attended, and yes, even hard cover books and shiny dics with music.

Here’s the nugget at the centre of the music case: I’ve paid for and own well in excess of a hundred compact dics – a lot more than most folks I know. It’s safe to say that most music artists would prefer people like me over those that legally paid for everything they listen to, and own a handful of CDs. If you’re trying to argue my ethics or make an accusation that I lack some, think how many artists you’ve supported in your lifetime – in this regard, chances are I’ve put more loaves of bread on the table than you have.

Anyway, it’s not a binary world as so many insist, and many studies have shown that unlawful downloading ends up helping many artists. Sure, you probably didn’t hear of these in the tabloids or the daily news, but you owe it to yourself reading up about it, and stepping into the often misunderstood and loathed world of gray. Black and white are simple ideas seldom available in reality, but fondly imagined and insisted upon by many.

Southern Cone, last quarter of the 20th century

Prisoners in Uruguay’s Libertad prison were sent to la isla, the island: tiny windowless cells in which one bare bulb was illuminated at all times. High-value prisoners were kept in absolute isolation for more than a decade. “We were beginning to think we were dead, that our cells weren’t cells but rather graves, that the outside world didn’t exist, that the sun was a myth,” one of these prisoners, Mauricio Rosencof, recalled. He saw the sun for a total of eight hours over eleven and a half years. So deprived were his senses during this time that he “forgot colors – there were no colors.”

Excerpt, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

“In the beginning there was absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing,” he said. “But nothing implies something, just as up implies down and sweet implies sour, as man implies woman and drunk implies sober and happy implies sad. I hate to tell you this, friends and neighbors, but we are teensy-weensy implications in an enormous implication. If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to where you came from?

“The first something to be implied by all the nothing,” he said, “was in fact two somethings, who were God and Satan. God was male. Satan was female. They implied each other, and hence were peers in the emerging power structure, which was itself nothing but an implication. Power was implied by weakness.”

“God created the heaven and the earth,” the old, long-out-of-print science fiction writer went on. “And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Satan could have done this herself, but she thought it was stupid, action for the sake of action. What was the point? She didn’t say anything at first.

“But Satan began to worry about God when He said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. She had to wonder, ‘What the heck does He think He’s doing? How far does He intend to go, and does He expect me to help Him take care of all this crazy stuff?’

“And then the shit really hit the fan. God made man and woman, beautiful little miniatures of Him and her, and turned them loose to see what might become of them. The Garden of Eden,” said Trout, “might be considered the prototype for the Colosseum and the Roman Games.”

“Satan,” he said, “couldn’t undo anything God had done. She could at least try to make existence for His little toys less painful. She could see what He couldn’t: To be alive was to be either bored or scared stiff. So she filled an apple with all sorts of ideas that might at least relieve the boredom, such as rules for games with cards and dice, and how to fuck, and recipes for beer and wine and whiskey, and pictures of different plants that were smokable, and so on. And instructions on how to make music and sing and dance real crazy, real sexy. And how to spout blasphemy when they stubbed their toes.

“Satan had a serpent give Eve the apple. Eve took a bite and handed it to Adam. He took a bite, and then they fucked.”

“I grant you,” said Trout, “that some of the ideas in the apple had catastrophic side effects for a minority of those who tried them.” Let it be noted here that Trout himself was not an alcoholic, a junkie, a gambler, or a sex fiend. He just wrote.

“All Satan wanted to do was help, and she did in many cases,” he concluded. “And her record for promoting nostrums with occasionally dreadful side effects is no worse than that of the most reputable pharmaceutical houses of present day.”

Excerpt, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut