Pumpkins and Chickens are Orange, Aren't They?

Note: More flotsam.

I

I had the book draped open in front of me though I wasn't reading It, or paying much attention to the discussion about the story we were supposed to have read. I propped my head up with mg hands, One elbow rested on the narrow, grainy desk top; the other on the spine of the book, causing its pages to strain at the bindings, I grabbed a bag of Skittles from the desk. My other elbow slipped, brushing the book, with a crash, to the floor. The jolt caused four Skittles--a red one, two orange ones and a purple one--to jump out. of the bag and hit the tiled floor of the classroom with high pitched 'snaks' as they bounced.

I glanced quickly at. the two sitting In the corner opposite me, inwardly sure that they were laughing at me. My legs tensed up while mg face flushed red, I stared at the floor, at the two orange Skittles on the ground. I squished them with mg foot.

The two in the corner were Indeed laughing; my paranoid mind assumed at me. University housing services never matched up two characters as perfectly as they had those two. One, a head taller than his dark companion, radiated orange to a-nyone who cared to look at him, Orange hair. Orange skin. Even the frames of his thick bottle-bottomed glasses were orange. He looked like a cock, ever alert, turning his head quickly from side to side, but never looking up or down. His companion resembled a Jack o' lantern in November, its shriveled face caving In on itself.

I didn't know their names, though I shared a classroom with them for two hours every Tuesday night. I could have learned their names easily enough, but I didn't want to. Their nicknames sufficed.

The cock as I called the first one, was obnoxious and pompous In a loud wag, always trying to draw attention to himself. He did not merely speak, (this he did often enough to get on my nerves) he enunciated. Each word carefully pronounced and accented as If he was talking down to a roomful of kindergartners. VAC--uum. Thank YOU. There was no denying he was intelligent, but his annoying personality ruled him out as a reliable friend.

Jack O', as I called the Cock's ever-present companion, was obnoxious and pompous in a quiet way- He was the Cock's one true vassal; a servant to do his every bidding. He laughed at all the Cock's jokes, and paid rampant attention to him every time he spoke, which as I said before, was often.

They were both talking quitely as the teacher lectured, gesticulating with their faces and waving their ;hands about highly annoying fashion. When there was a break in class, they resumed their normal, exceedingly loud babble in the inflated vernacular popular among those who enjoy playing themselves up in front of others. They had a maddening habit that frankly drove me crazy. Every week, the Cock would come to class with a new word added to his vast vocabulary. He and Jack O' would inject it into every conversation they entered, whenever possible (and sometimes when it was impossible). The word this week was 'purge.' The sound of that word, rolling of the Cock's pompous tongue, irritated me to my very soul, (After class I would find it hard to use that word in my own conversations, even when it was proper to do so.) Every other sentence he uttered had that word in it. He's the type of person who, on an extended camping trip, would annoy his fellow campers by describing a calm lake using wilder and wilder metaphors as the trip went on, until they were ready to break the lake's surface by throwing him in it.

II

Everything around me was mud and dead leaves. The few grassy patches, hemmed in by strips of wet, muddy concrete, were crisscrossed with bicycle tracks and footprints. The center of the square, between the classroom complex and the library, looked like a pig wallow. The water oozed out of the ground as if someone had stepped on a soggy sponge. The single emaciated tree in the canter of the square had but one orange leaf clinging for life to the bare branches.

I walked up the equally dismal steps of the library, and stood looking at the relief sculpture of the state mortared into the side of the building. Even that. was streaked with mud.

The woman in front of me was walking maddeningly slow, I stepped through the door she opened, then sped around her and into the library. I walked quickly to the newspaper section, hoping to find the Sunday edition of my hometown paper, which had been absent from the other campus library I frequented more often. The shelf next to the paper's label was empty. I pouted, and grabbed a magazine. The lounge couch, upholstered with a sickly orange vinyl, squeaked when I sat dawn on It. The few Skittles left over from class that were In my pocket rolled out into a crack in between the cushions, along with at least ninety cents in small change. I knew none of this, but roundly cursed my luck when I later searched my pocket for my keys, and missed the money, and the Skittles.

My feet squashed in the mud and standing water in the soggy field I had to cross to get home. I put my foot down in a puddle that was deeper than it looked. The water soaked In through my shoes, and began climbing up my sock.

The gunning of an engine caught my attention. The source of the noise was an ugly orange Volvo chugging along behind my dorm. I quickly drew my eyes away from it, and did not look up from the ground again until I stood outside my door, fumbling for my keys.

I yanked the door open and walked into the small room that I shared. My roommate was always gone when I came home. I think the jerk had a girlfriend or something I like that. The room was dark and smelled of garlic. That was better than the normal odors of herbal throat gargles or the cheap Brut cologne my roommate used. My hand slammed down on the light switch, nearly bringing the phone off the wall with it. The lamp sent a pitiful yellow-orange glow through the room. I cursed to myself as I dropped my books onto the desk. I whipped the curtains open and wrenched the windows, hoping a breeze would come by and suck the garlic smell out of the room. I emptied the contents of my pockets onto the orange desktop, muttering. My eyes bulged. Sitting there alongside my wallet, a scrap of paper, two ticket stubs and my room key, was a single orange Skittle that the couch at the library had not claimed. I picked it up and threw it out the window.

III

My history class was bound to be boring today. I was taking it just for the fact that it was a core requirement, nothing more. My major was communications, and, in my view, that had nothing to do with studying Rome or Greece. I highly disliked going to that class, partly because of my disinterest in the subject, but mostly because Jack O' sat next to me.

Most of the time, I got to class a little earlier than he, to give myself a few moment's peace. My hand covered my mouth to stifle an evil chuckle, for when I glanced at his hopefully permanently vacant desk, I noticed it was a seat for left-handers Poetic justice. That would put a burr up his tailpipe. Jack O' picked that time to come sauntering In the door, I concentrated on the paper I was reading while he fussed about, exchanging the lefty desk for a righty one from the vacant back row. He Infuriated me.

He never took notes on the lectures, though the amount of information given by the professor was copious, as well as complex. What really burned me up was that he always got A's an the tests, while I, an avid note-taker, barely scraped B's. He was a math major on top of that. I hate math.

Though I tried hard enough, I could not find a single redeeming quality in Jack O', or his friend. That fact Incessantly burned in my mind because I have always been taught to love my neighbors. Trying to 'love' these two would annoy me more than if I continued to loathe them. I admit I'm crazy; my loathing for them building up Insurmountable guilt deep in my soul. I was letting two idiots drive me insane . . . but I was having fun every step of the way.

I knew I had three choices to follow, choices that would lead to permanent Insanity, or an ugly, festering ulcer. The first was to continue in my present loathsome ways, breaking them down and destroying myself with harbored guilt. I could try to strike a happy medium, tolerating their presence only, since I had already rendered loving them academic. An evil smile crossed my face as fantasized about my third choice: bump them off. Kidnap them. Tie them up. A little Chinese water torture, perhaps. Make a finger necklace. I favored strangulation for them, since I felt strangled every time I saw them, together or apart.

A loud noise, the professor clearing his throat, pulled me out of my dark daydreaming. That was the first time I really took a close look at him that. day. He was wearing a hideous orange tie. I wanted to tighten that tie until he turned blue (it irritated me so), but certain facts (30 witnesses to the crime, for one), restrained me. I laughed, silently to myself, as I imagined their shock and surprise as I murdered the teacher. I had to do something though.

Suddenly, It was all so clear. I realized that I had but one choice, not three. Reason said simply: go mad, Why not? It could I lots of fur. Maybe I could be like that guy in Arsenic and Old Lace. Being Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't be that bad. Charging up the stairs like they were San Juan Hill could be a barrel of laughs, if I tried hard enough.

So, I resigned to insanity, but in the best way possible. No, not the best way. I couldn't kill them. My conscious would weigh down on me too heavily, I would continue to loathe them. It would be fun, while it lasted. Only one thing worried me. With my luck, the padded room they assign to me at the asylum would be decorated in orange.

Just A Thought

What I find most interesting in the debate over and protests against the passing of California's Proposition 8, which forbids same-sex marriage, is that those who oppose the law want to have their cake and eat it too.

Same-sex marriage came to California after the California Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriages were legal.

Opponents of the court decision opted to take California's proposition process to bring the decision to the voters, which they did.

With the passage of the proposition, three groups who filed suit to stop the proposition from becoming law now say (from CNN.com) "'such radical changes'" as outlawing gay marriage cannot be made by ballot initiative, but must, "'at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.'"

So, they were okay when the state supreme court -- bypassing the state legislature and legislating from the bench -- said same-sex marriage was okay, but now are upset because the majority of California voters decided that what the court decided is wrong? IN this effort, they express a logical fallacy that reveals their motivation is not listening to the will of the people -- who voted in favor of Proposition 8 -- but rather prefer throwing a legal fit until they can convince someone to get their way again.

There's also umbrage, in California and locally, against the Mormon Church for urging its members to campaign in favor of the proposition. Some point out that a significant amount of money raised by the organization opposing same-sex marriage came from Utah, not California.

Why is this a problem? It's a fair bet that a lot of the money the Barack Obama campaign used in successfully convincing voters to elect Barack Obama (whom I voted for) came from outside California, and nodoby seems to be complaining about that, at least among the liberals. Now, if Utahns had moved en masse to California, gained residency and then cast votes in favor of Proposition 8, I'd agree that there was undue influence. But because it was Californians who voted in favor of Proposition 8, I don't see that it matters where the money came from.

What this basically comes down to is a hissy fit. They did not get what they wanted. And rather than look at what they could have done better to convince California voters to vote their way, they choose instead to take the issue again to a narrower interest (the legislature) than the people and take potshots as those who backed the successful campaign (both the Caltholic and LDS churches).

Worst. Sour Grapes. Ever.

I'm always fascinated listening to election concession speeches, those given by the candidates who valiantly fought the battle but eneded upin second (or third) place. WHile some of them are truly sincere (like I believe John McCain's was), many are, obviously, filled with horse neers.

Then there's Rex Rammell.

Rex, an independent Republican bitter at coming in a distant third to Republican Jim Risch in the race for Idaho's open Senate seat, had this to say in The Standard Journal about his loss to Risch:

"Time will prove that everyone who voted for Jim Risch made a mistake. It is obvious to me that Risch supporters simply haven't suffered enough. When Jim Risch has turned the state upside down voters are going to look at themselvees in the mirror and kick themselves."

Heartfelt? Yes. Honest? Absolutely. I love a politician who will speak his mind. But -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- insinuating that voters are stupid because they voted for your opponent, is that the way politicians ought to kiss butt, especially politicians who might consider running for ze public office again? No.

Voters have loooooooong memories, Mr. Rammell. Just because you had a snit with Mr. Risch when, as acting governor, he ordered the elk that escaped from your elk ranch shot because of the chance they'd spread chronic wasting disease to the wild elk population is no reason to tell every person who voted for Risch in this contest that they're stupid. Yeah, you didn't directly say that. But you may as well have.

I didn't vote for Risch, by the way. I voted for Larry LaRocco. So you probably think I'm stupid, too.

We also have a runner-up in the worst election performance ever, this time from Rep. Mike Simpson, who won handily over his Democratic opponent. His radio commercials, however, never mentioned his opponent -- instead he took potshots at LaRocco, running against Risch. Childish.

Motivation and Misdemeanors

Ah, the election is over. Aside from the full-bore linear smugness now emanating from the louder Democrats, the world has gone silent. Two more months of Dubya and, or so they say, the new Peace in Our Time will reign. I certainly hope so. I’m excited – and distressed for – any administration to be going in after the current one. There are certainly a lot of broken dishes and empty pizza boxes to clean up.

It’s kind of entertaining to see the local die-hard Republicans wearing their sackcloth and ashes. Well, if their national party had done a better job at picking a candidate, and if that candidate had done a better job at picking a running mate, perhaps things would be different. But I doubt it.

Just realized something: Berkeley Breathed was wrong. Way back in the 1980s, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, consoling a disconsolate Mr. Binkley for his loathing of Jesse Jackson, said “The first black in the White House will be a conservative,” and admitted that he had himself voted for Al Haig in that primary season. Well, now we have a liberal African-American headed to the White House. And I’m fine with that. I voted the party, not the man.

I know of three family members who voted for Obama, including myself. An older sister voted for him “because he only owns four pairs of shoes,” she told another sister, who also cast her vote in the Democratic fashion. For pairs of shoes versus an unverified number of houses. That makes sense in a weird, Trivial Pursuit kind of way.

Clan Davidson, you should understand, with a few exceptions, has traditionally leaned Democratic. That comes in two parts: First, Dad was a Democrat, liked to say that this was a great country to live in if you have money, but if you don’t it’s one of the worst places to live. Also, there’s a streak of contrarianism that gallops through the family. Tell us to vote Republican because that’s what’s done in this area of the world and we’re going to march right into that booth and darken that circle for the other guy. Most of the time.

My wife, from a rather Republican family, voted for Ralph Nader. She wasn’t pleased with either candidate from the major parties. Nor was I. I suppose I wanted to vote for Obama to say I’d voted for him. Not because he’s black. Not necessarily because he’s a Democrat. But because I wanted to. Because a lot of people around me said I shouldn’t because he’ll bring the world down around his shoulders. After looking at the last Republican administration, I figure why not give a Democrat the same chance to screw things up? And maybe he’ll do better.

But it all comes down to what P.J. O’Rourke says. All these politicians go to Washington with an eye on making the town over in their name, and few succeed. Because few, once they’re there, can overcome this beast that swallows them up with the all-consuming troubles that are inherent in the office. Richard Nixon said misdemeanors were inherent to the office. That’s nothing compared to what’s inherent to the office these days. Good luck, Mr. Obama – you’ll need it.

Twin Bridges to Uncharted

The video for this one is here. It's the second one. Now you may read the story if you wish.

Aaand an update: Beta testing is now underway at Uncharted, which is exciting stuff. Soon, you'll be able to read these stories on Uncharted, as intended. Can't wait for that to happen.

Twin Bridges -- A Fishing Spot for non-Fisher Folk

We are not fisher folk.

Dad, born in the Netherlands in 1928, did not have to fish. Just about any time he wanted fish – herring, mostly, pickled, raw, with a bit of onion sprinkled on top – his mother went to the market and got it. Fresh. Always fresh fish in the Netherlands, so close to the sea.

So when he moved from the village of Santpoort to the state of Idaho, it was not with fresh fish in mind. Fresh fish could be found in his new hometown – trout, mostly fried, occasionally with a slice of lemon, but most often ungarnished. But he did not fish. Instead, got his fish from local fishermen, including our neighbor of at least 30 years.

Dad never fished, and passed that on to his sons.

I still don’t fish. But because my oldest son is in Cub Scouts, and because they learned how to fish and because he was one of only two Scouts to catch a fish – a tiny, eight-inch trout pulled out of a stocked pond in the city of Rexburg – he caught the fishing bug.

So this summer, we went fishing. Of a sort.

We chose to fish at Twin Bridges, a campground built on an island in the South Fork of the Snake River, fifteen minutes south of Rexburg, about 30 minutes northeast of Idaho Falls. Fishing there, I’d heard people say, was fair. More importantly, it had shallow, placid water where three youngsters and their inexperienced parents could practice the art of fishing without getting in the way of serious fishermen or risking a swim in the Snake’s cold, swift currents.

Our children fished with poles the Scouts made – mere tree branches to which their leaders had attached a bit of fishing line, a bobber, a sinker and a barbless brass fishhook. With that pole and a kernel of corn as bait, our oldest caught his first fish, beaming, with the Scouts.

The campground and fishing grounds at Twin Bridges are old school. The island is covered with a twist of cottonwood forest and brambles of underbrush, ranging from bachelor buttons to dandelions to box elders and foxgloves, all sprouting out of dusty soil washed onto the island when the river is high. The island that splits the river into two threads also divides the waters – the main, swift fork of the river flows to the north, the quieter, shallower and more meandering fork to the south. In the shallows among the reeds, our kids watched entranced as innumerable tiny fish swam, swarms of commas paddling and darting over the muddy bottom that oozed bubbles from decaying vegetable matter beneath the surface. Further out into the water, clear to the bottom, the river scoured away the dirt, leaving rocks. Larks and cranes and one solitary bald eagle looped and twirled above the water, above the forest to the south.

We fished along a graveled bank of the river, getting there by walking along the shore and underneath one of the highway bridges that gives the island its name. The only sound, that of gently trickling water.

Until the rooster crowed.

While there are houses nearby, the rooster’s call was close. Somewhere, in this tangled forest, a rooster lives. We were not the only fishermen who heard it – maybe, the others said, the animal was washed down to the island when the river flooded in 1997, knocking out the bridge we’d walked under to fish.

We saw no fish, but fed the river plenty of pastel marshmallows, which bloated with water and slipped off the barbless hooks as the hapless fisherkids watched. Our youngest boy chased a water snake, wriggling through the water on the shore. The sun, gentle in August, shined on the rocks and the water, turning them to gold. The rooster crowed.

I grew up in a town that straddles the Snake, taming its shores with conifers, green grass, Canadian geese and modest park benches. This was my first visit to the wild Snake, disorganized, brambled, muddy, and altogether twisted and meandering and looped as I imagine the Mississippi to be. Here a person could walk on the shore and have the only sounds be the gravel underfoot and the trickling water. Here a person could sit on the shore, silently, and wait for the animals to emerge – deer, voles, badgers, skunks, perhaps the elusive rooster – just to watch, until the startled animal sees the person sitting on the shore and flees.

Dad would have enjoyed that. Though, like me, he would have hoped not to catch any fish, because neither one of us know how to clean them. You don’t have to clean herring from the market. You just eat it, with onions. So tasty.

Getting there: From Idaho Falls, travel northeast on US Highway 26 to Ririe. Follow the signs in Ririe directing you to Rexburg. Travel north on county roads from Ririe about three miles. Cross the first bridge over the Snake River, and you’ll see the Twin Bridges campground to the left.

From Rexburg, travel south on Old Highway 191 to the Archer Highway, following signs directing you to Archer/Heise Hot Springs. Travel on this curvy farm-to-market road for about 15 minutes until you cross the first bridge over the Snake River. Watch for the Twin Bridges campground on the right.

Things to know: The campground is divided into two areas. The first area, set aside for camping, is maintained by Madison County, and is free. The campsites are very dusty. The second area, at the far end of the island, is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management and features a picnic area, restrooms and a boat ramp. This is a fee area.

To walk along the river, drive or walk south on the main (paved) road from the campground to the next turnoff, then follow the gravel road to the shoreline. From there, you’ll see one of the bridges to walk under along the river. From there, enjoy exploring. It’s common to find people camping in tents along the river; just be respectful and quiet as you walk through. Remember you’re on an island, so there’s little chance of wandering too far, but be aware enough of your surroundings to find your way back.

Lewdly Sing Cuckoo

I started reading Elizabeth Janet Gray’s “Adam of the Road,” today. It’s a story of a minstrel’s son who wanders the south of England looking for his missing dog and father (apparently, in that order). It’s an okay book, a Newbery Medal-winner. But a passage from the second chapter really made me spew my chocolate milk out my nose this morning, because it reminded me of something Ridcully said in Terry Pratchett’s “Soul Music.” He was talking about music and expressed his views that it should all be folk music, “proper music with real words... 'Summer is icumen in, lewdly sing cuckoo,' that sort of thing,” he said. Then the first song from the minstrel boy’s lips in Gray’s book is that same line. Just about died laughing.

Little Help

Because my Internet searches have totally failed me, I'm turning to humans for help on this one: I'm trying to find lyrics for a song written or at least popular in 1918-1919 that contains the following phrase: "What shall we be when we aren't what we are?" It's mentioned in one of the closing chapters of Leon Wolff's book, In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign. I need it as part of a small constellation of mish-mash I want to include in the repertoire of a character in a novel I'm writing. Any help will be appreciated.

To the one who helps me find what I'm seeking will go an authentic, hand-crafted entry on this blog, suitable for being ignored by the vast, vast majority of this world's inhabitants.

Sesame Street: V For VACUUM

Life is not complete without V for Vacuum on this blog.

Ol’ Town Tonight

Blogger's Note: Another bit of flotsam I thought lost forever. Not sure whether it's good or not. Won't you please tell me?

I saw the happy man again. This time, down by the canal behind K-Mart. He was sitting there idly chucking pebbles into the water and watching the ripples crash and bounce off the sides of the channel. I know not because I asked him but because he was me watching and told me what he was “up to.” He tells me what he’s doing every time I see him. I don’t know what he does when he sees me.

He probably laughs.

He looks like a sailor. A sailor of the era of whalers. I don’t think he’s bad of nature, because people who are that way typically don’t volunteer what they’re doing and why they’re doing it to perfect strangers. A trim brown beard. A thin wool cap. Clothes clean, but well-worn. He slings a back pack and walks in thick boots maybe someone gave him three or four towns back.

Don’t pity me, he said once, when I came out of Dairy Queen guilty with a sack of greasy burgers.

I didn’t pity him.

The burgers were terrible.

Always smiling! Always smiling. In the cold, the heat, the rain, the wind. Sailors have their oilskins, he said once, their jargon and oaths. Taboos and legends and safeguards. He smiles.

Smiles are his life belt, he says.

And I am his Queequeg.

He won’t tell me who he is. "Nobody important, and I’m not bragging," he always said. I think I believed him when he said that.

He doesn’t believe much what I say. Maybe I don’t blame him. What I do and why I do it is much more incomprehensible, he says, that what he does: throwing rocks into a canal, following a crow across a field, walking between the warehouses near the Greyhound depot where the trees grow and grasshoppers snap in the heat as they leap against the sides of the buildings, or talking to a stranger and not being embarrassed that he does these things and calls them good.

Why should I be embarrassed, he asked me once, as he stood on the busy street corner waving at people driving by in their cars. I crouched behind a hedge, and he talked to me as if I were a kitten stuck in the branches.

His name is not Ishmael, and he does not allow me to call him such. Names are pegs people hang you on. I, he said, don’t want to be hung up on anything. Queequeg.

Queequeg, the Strong Follower.

I think he pitied me.

"You went to school for four years to write stories about literal sewers," he says as he tosses rocks into the water. "That boggles my mind."

"These ripples, he says, seem useless to you. You can’t collect them, put them in a scrapbook and take them out to look them over when you want an emotional boost." He tossed another rock. "But I can always make more ripples."

I began to hate him.

He didn’t follow me, but he always knew where I was. Walk to work, go to work. Answer that phone. Maybe you take a picture today, but maybe you’ll just sit at your desk rifling through those files you rifle through every day just to look busy. I can understand that.

"I don’t understand this," he said. "You daydream and wish you were somewhere else. You’re sitting in a field of wildflowers and wish you were home watching television. You go home and watch a documentary on flowers. Then," he laughed, "you have lunch because that’s your time and nobody but yourself is going to waste it by taking it away from you."

I hated his editorials.

Now it’s either you’re dead and can’t do anything that you want or you’re still alive and there’s nothing you want to do. He sang that a lot, smiling at me. He taught me the song, and I sang it, too.

But I didn’t smile.

"Ever want to run away from home when you were a kid?"

Yes, I said. We were sitting on a useless bus bench. Useless because this town does not have buses. He waved idly at passers by, and more waved now than had in the past. He ate a chocolate cone. My strawberry melted on the ground where I dropped it.

"Ever do it?"

Huh?

"No, you never did. You’d be smiling right now." He smiled.

I, I miss a lot of the things I did, I did when I was a kid.

He laughed, leaped from the bench and shouted loud enough a man filling his car at the gas station across the street turned to look.

"So that’s what’s wrong with you!"

He hollered. The man at the gas station gave him the finger.

He sat back down, patting me ever so gently on the head. "Because you miss them, you don’t do them any longer, I suppose."

I stared at my melted cone, ice cream muddied by black asphalt dust.

"You don’t," he said. "That’s clear. You’ve become a full-fledged adult. Congratulations." He picked a bottle cap up off the ground, put it on my lapel and squeezed a nickel into it from the back. The cap stayed on my lapel like a medal. "Congratulations, I say. You’re the most miserable creature on the face of the earth, adult!"

A school bus went by. Kids shrieked and waved their arms out the windows, tossed paper airplanes. Waved at the man. Who waved back.

"You hate it, don’t you."

He didn’t hate work. He didn’t hate society. He didn’t mind making contributions, doing worthwhile things or even helping people out.

"I resent," he says, "that others oblige me to participate when all they really want to do is go away and never come back. You hate obligations. Rake those leaves, then we’ll think about taking your bicycle off the roof. Eat your peas. What happened at that meeting you went to last night? You did go, didn’t you? Stop all that whining or we’ll sell you to the gypsies."

"Best thing my parents told me," he laughed, "was when I was nine and my mother told me she wouldn’t care if I ran away. So I did. When I was 37."

He also resented people who pitied him.

Old ladies wouldn’t let him help carry their groceries just because he didn’t have a name, or an address, and had a beard and was probably only helping her out so he could break into the house later or at least abscond with a bag filled with apples and uncookced macaroni.

"I am naked to the world," he shouted, once again at the bench. He stood on it; I leaned against a phone booth with my back to him. "And the world is not appalled at me," he said. "The world is appalled at its own jealousy."

I could not be jealous. I told him that.

He called me a liar.

"What do you miss most about being a kid, and I want specifics."

I thought a while.

I used to build cities out of cardboard boxes.

"Is that all," he asked. Not mocking.

I made streets. And windows. And cut out little doors. And at night I put candles inside the boxes and squinted my eyes so the lights looked like they were shining out of the windows and through the doors.

"And?"

And then I burned the buildings to the ground.

We walked behind K-Mart, where he began pulling cardboard boxes from a Dumpster. "Lucky lucky," he shouted. He pulled a black marker out of the trash. Here.

He handed me his pocket knife and a cardboard box.

"Make your windows."

Two freight workers stared at us from the dock. It was hot behind the building; the sun reflected off the asphalt and bounced off the walls and oozed out of the Dumpster like a radiator.

"Make your windows."

The freight workers brought the dock manager.

"Make your windows," he said the third time. He showed me his back and addressed our curious audience. "Good evening, gentlemen. Queequeg and I need a few cardboard boxes. I hope you don’t mind. We won’t toss litter about."

The dock manager nodded.

I’d already left the knife where I dropped it and hid in the tall weeds near the street until the happy man left, whistling “Mack the Knife.”

He found me later.

"You found me again, I see. No offense, but I’d like my knife back." He didn’t seem disappointed. Just smiled.

I don't have it, I said.

"But you do," he said. Patted my shoulder, balanced the closed knife on my collarbone.

He led me to his city.

"There are candles inside every box, he said. The dock manager gave them to me. Melted during shipment. He was going to throw them away anyway. I saved him the trouble."

I stared at the boxes, arranged in clusters, squares, rows, lines. "Squint your eyes."

He’d made streets in the dirt.

"Are you squinting?"

I squinted.

City alive with light. I smelled the candle wax burning; occasional flames flickering through the tiny windows. Imagined the squeak, squeak of a worn steak knife through cardboard; the swift strokes with the grain of the waffled fibers, the satisfying saw-saw going across the grain. Dad never had sharp steak knives.

He didn’t need them, Queequeg. He didn’t.

"By the way, here’s a match."

A crumpled wad of newspaper next to a shoebox, on which he’d pasted the name of a grocery store from an advertisement.

"Burn it."

I took the match.

But the police will come.

"Huh," he laughed. "They’re already here."

I dropped the unlit match. A city police cruiser was indeed driving slowly towards us, windows down, headlights on in the orange dusk.

What are you up to this time, Floyd?

The happy man looked sideways at me. Winked.

"We’ve built a town, you see, and Queequeg is going to burn it."

Who?

I waved, feebly. The cops stopped and got out of their car.

The happy man approached them. Smiling.

The older cop shook his head and leaned against the hood of the cruiser. You’re never without a disciple, are you Floyd?

"I hate even the thought, Henry," he said. The officers laughed. "Queequeg is, well, Queequeg, and," he added solemnly, "he is going to burn this city to the ground."

He whistled “Mack the Knife” as the officers’ eyes wandered through his city. The older officer twirled the end of his mustache. The younger one uneasily shuffled his feet.

"You don’t mind, do you?"

I almost choked.

"The weeds here are still green," the happy man said in explanation,"and I’ve a couple of buckets here handy for dipping water out of the canal if the need arises."

My lips were too dry to whistle anything. The happy man offered me another match.

The older officer reached into the car and pulled out a mike. Dispatch , this is 321. We’re going to monitor a controlled burn off Second East.

Dispatch replied in a crackly, far away voice: OK, 321. Have at.

I took the match.

The officers stood by almost eagerly; surveying the cardboard metropolis I was to put aflame. The younger one, no longer nervous, took off his hat and spun it quickly yet idly on his index finger, swiftly, swiftly until it spun off and rolled and lolloped in the dust.

Are you going to burn it?

That was the older officer. He grinned at me. Used to do the same thing when I was a kid. Burned down half the barn, too.

Both chuckled.

I struck the match on the side of my shoe, touched the dancing flame to a wad of paper and stuffed it through a sagging flap of a box the happy man had labeled City Hall. Flames leaped from the roof as three men stood watching in the cooling summer light; orange flames to match the hues smeared on the clouds on the western sky. City Hall burned and ashes fell on the business district, soon aflame. The library. Post office. Restaurants. Schools. Then houses.

Reflections of flames danced on the side of the patrol car as eager officers nudged cardboard boxes closer to the firestorm with their black shoes. Glorious flames and wobbly heat; welcome in odd comparison to the day’s waning heat.

Oh late at night, when we were all in bed.

Ol’ Miss O’Leary left the lantern in the shed.

And when the cow kicked it over, she looked around and said. . .

And from somewhere in the dark near the canal, a familiar but distant voice sang out: "Gonna be a hot time in the ol’ town tonight."

Guy Fawkes is in My Head

My brain -- and perhaps here I should say the brain, meaning the brains of humans in general, not my specific "the brain," lest I sound pompous and arrogant . . . now where was I?

Oh yeah.

The Internet.

The Internet, I believe, is much like the human brain. While we talk about taking trips down memory lane or "visiting" a web site, we haven't indeed gone anywhere except for the collection of neurons inside the skull or the collection of silicon and other elements inside that beige box on the desk. BUt within those carapaces (or at least connected to them via wireless internet) we have a vast world, a Sargasso sea of information, trivia, still shots, video, sound bites and other random bits of flotsam that, when consulted, can become part of a blog entry, a memory, a song. And, as on the Internet, once we get searching in the brain we often stumble upon some other word or image or sound that triggers additional searches until we've been sitting there, staring for hours, not really remembering why we started to remember in the first place but happy, in an odd sense, that the searches and tagging and such worked effectively for dredging up useless but fascinating pieces of information.

Why do I bring this up?

The Fifth of November.

All morning, thinking about the turning of the calendar, I had a snatch of a rhyme going through my head: "Remember, remember, the something of November." My brain kept repeating it over and over as if it were something very, very important. BUt because that's all my brain had on its EZ-Recall Memory Circuit this morning, I had to go to that backup brain -- the Internet -- to find the solution. Here it is:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent

To blow up King and Parli'ment.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England's overthrow;

By God's providence he was catch'd

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

I have no idea why this was so important to my brain this morning. But it was. And thanks to Wikipedia (which, at best, should be regarded as an adolescent brain, meaning it does contain a lot of information but most of it is likely inaccurate, misspelled, slanted or otherwise, in some fundamental sense, untrustworthy) I found the answer. And thanks to that long parenthetical phrase, I also had a sentence fragment. But I've fixed that. And a few other typos.

So the turning of the calendar brought to the surface memories of a rhyme made up about Guy Fawkes. I don't know why. I'm not English. I have friends in England, and we may well have discussed Guy Fawkes in some capacity or other, but why the rhyme, or at least the garbled first stanza, should stick in my head today and pop up like a hangnail demanding attention I have no idea. But the itch is now cured.

What I learned today: How to spell carapace.