198. Crimes

We were fishing, C.W. and I. That man. Uh, that thing. That … whatever … loves to fish. He says they have nothing like it on Falloonia. He tends to take on the appearance of a character straight out of a Steinbeck novel when we go, slouch hat, grizzled beard, patched work clothes—the full image. He once even tried to smoke a cigarette, with disastrous results.

On this day, he was ecstatic. “Just read,” he said as he watched his bobber intensely, “that a state in your country is doing something extremely wise.”

“Oh really,” I said. “Which one?”

“The one just south of here. The one where they like to party so much and make hot sauce. Loo, Loozi …”

“Louisiana?”

“That’s the one.”

I said, “They did something wise?”

“Yes. Real sensible, in my rough calculation of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something.”

“Just what, in your estimation, did they do that was so wise?”

“They voted on a law to prohibit crimes against nature.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Seems I read something about that.”

“That’s one of the first sensible things I’ve seen in a long time.” He raised his line, checked the bait, and swung it to a new location.

I was intrigued. “Why do you say that?

He looked at me as if I had just asked him if the sun came up that morning. “Your species spends so much time enacting laws protecting things like the wealthy, fertilized eggs, and mythology cults, don’t you think it is time nature deserved some protection?”

“Uh ...”

He interrupted. “Just think,” he said. “No more clear cutting of forests, removal of mountaintops, polluting of rivers, exhaustion of sea life, … it could be the start of what you call ‘governing by the rational model.’”

“Uh, C.W.”

“No more extinction of other species.”

“C.W.,” I said forcefully.

“Burning of fossil fuels …” He stopped. “What?”

“That’s not what they meant.”

“What who meant?”

“The legislators in Louisiana.”

“What they meant by what?”

“Crimes against nature.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Of course it is.”

“No. Afraid not.”

“What then?”

I told him. At least I began to tell him before he broke in. “You mean like they do in those …, I mean like I’ve heard they do on those internet videos?”

“Yes. Afraid so.

Your methods of governing are best considered
during moments of peace and solitude. - C.W.

I now know what is meant by the description “stunned disbelief.”

“That’s insane,” he said. “completely contrary to nature, reason, or common sense.”

“I think you mean ‘preposterous,’” I said, “and I suspect the folks in Louisiana would be quite proud to hear you say it.”

He looked me in the eyes. “How on earth,” he said, “would you enforce such law?”

“That, my friend, is something you will have to talk to them about,” I said.

“I’d rather talk to a mountain goat,” he said as his bobber began to bounce.

 

 

Also see: www.wattensawpress.com

186. Myths

I found C.W. in my favorite chair surrounded by piles of paper. He was in his “college professor” form, complete with corduroy pants, sweater, and bow tie. He was frantically scribbling notes.

“What’s up, Galactic Wonder?” I said.

“Shut up. I’m busy.”

“My,” I said. “Aren’t we being a good example of interstellar love today?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I have a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.”

“Hmmm.” I said. “Sounds like you have a problem.”

“Why do you repeat what I say so often?” He wrote furiously and then looked up.

I said, “So what’s your problem?”

“I’m in trouble with the Elders.”

“The Falloonian Elders?”

“Who else?”

“So,” I said. “Did they find out about your experiments with the ‘wacky weed’ and your secret stash of Twinkies?” (Sweets make him as silly as martinis make me).

“No,” he said. “They have accused me of confusing facts with allegories.”

“They found out that I really can’t walk on water?”

He sighed. “It all started with this,” he said. He rummaged in the stack of papers and retrieved a newspaper clipping. He held it before me and I read that 60 percent of Americans believe the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark and the universal flood is literally true.

“And?”

“They say I must learn that, with your species, statistics like this are meant as allegories.”

“Allegories?”

“Yes, their purpose is to present universal lessons, in this case the tendency of your species to prove points with mythical statistics.”

“And the point here is?”

“They think it has something to do with your love of the printed word and its almost magical effect on your sense of homeostasis.”

“So the statistics are not meant to illustrate actual occurrences?”

“Give me an interrupt,” he said.

“Uh, you mean ‘give me a ‘break,’” I said.

“There you go again.”

“So you don’t really think anyone believes that two of every species of life on the planet, with the necessary food and water for more than a month’s captivity, fit on a wooden vessel 400 feet long?”

“Don’t you have something to do?” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “my job today is to have fun and I’m doing it.”

He groaned. “Well, at least help me.” He thrust a pile of papers into my hands. “Find me something that I can use in my report to show them that they may be correct in assuming you, that is your species, uses statistical references in a purely allegorical sense.”

It seems to me that you view statistics as a
 bunch of monkeys in a tree. Get them down and
treat them right, they'll do anything you want. - C.W.

“Doesn’t that go against your position?”

“One never wants to urinate the Falloonian Elders off.”

“Quite right,” I said as I began rummage. It only took a second. “Here’s something. You know of course that there are more than 350,000 separate species of beetles on earth.”

He grabbed if from my hand and read. His entire face brightened. “Thanks,” he said. And then he began to copy the following.

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”

152. Selections

“It always amazes me,” C.W. said looking up with a confused look. He likes to assume the shape of an elderly woman in the morning when he reads the news. “Doesn’t it you?”

I was working on the computer and had no clue as to what she was referring.

“I’ve tried to figure it from several angles,” she said. “It never makes sense.”

 

I gave up. “What’s troubling you, my child?” I said. That kind of tone aggravates him when he has assumed this particular shape.

“This,” she said, thrusting a newspaper in front of me and pointing a long slender feeling at a front-page article.

It was a report of a massive storm in the Midwest. A photo featured a family huddled together amidst a field of debris. The caption identified them as among the survivors and quoted one as saying, “Someone was watching over us, for sure. He saw that our home was spared.”

She tapped the photo. “Who was that someone?”

It was not a question that sought information. It was an attempt to start an argument.

“I dunno. One of the ‘American Idol’ judges?”

“You are so cute,” she said. “How many people died in this storm?”

“Several dozen.”

“And how many homes were destroyed?”

“Several hundred.”

“And someone chose this family to be spared?”

“Your words, not mine.”

“So how was the selection process determined?”

“C.W.?”

“Yes.”

“Shut up.”

“Not much of an explanation, young man.”

“It’s the best I can do this early in the morning.”

“So let me get this straight.”

“Pray do.”

She folded the newspaper. “Your species has selected a worship figure that sends storms across a neighborhood, destroying homes and killing men, women, and children.”

“It happens. Weather can be a cruel partner.”

“But in midst of all this,” she said. “This omnipotent deity suddenly picks one family and preserves it among all the carnage?”

“According to the newspaper.”

She sighed. “If you were doing the selecting, would you choose me?”

“For what?”

“As the one to be saved.”

Oh dear friends, you can only imagine the effort with which I bit my tongue.

“I don’t think I would want to be put in that position,” I said.

“So you would allow nature to take its course?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then the survivors couldn’t credit you with saving them.”

Disasters can bring out the best in your species. On some
of the dying planets I visit, the community-at-large,
what you call 'Government,' isn't willing to
help the victims of Nature's fury. - C.W.

“Oh, I suppose they could if they wished.”

“Then the victims’ families could blame you with equal justification?”

“Go to hell,” I explained as I rose to get another cup of coffee.

“I am so fortunate,” she said as she looked wistfully out the window.

“Why?”

“I could have been selected to observe a less fascinating species. What a tragedy that would have been.”

127. Remnants

This morning, I didn’t really feel like talking. Of course that is when C.W. is most likely to show. And of course he did.

Our country was suffering in shock from another mass murder by a gun-wielding lunatic. No use to go into the numbers and methodology. It is all too painfully familiar by now.

Anyway, as I say, C.W. never misses a chance. I looked up from my computer screen into a dark room to see him standing in the form of a six year old child, pale but emitting a slight white glow. He stood staring at me without speaking for several seconds. Then he spoke in a soft child’s voice that floated around the room like a smoky whisper.

“Do you know why they killed me?”

I studied the figure. C.W., despite his often comic and cynical approaches to our society, chooses very carefully when he will be serious.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Then you seem to be the only one of your species that doesn’t, from what I observed on the social networking websites this morning.”

“You’ve been on my computer?”

“Oh please,” he said. “So you don’t know?”

“I can’t begin to fathom.”

“Someone blamed it on a god.”

“I’m sure they did.”

“Some think your species needs fewer guns.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“Others think you need more guns.”

I didn’t answer him. So he kept talking.

“The ones who seem the most positive are the ones who don’t have a clue.”

“That is usually the case,” I said.

“You know I went through considerable training before the Falloonian Elders sent me to your planet.”

“I would assume as much.”

“You want to know their short take on your species?”

“Why not?” I was glad to escape my own thoughts.

“That you had managed to overcome, to a remarkable degree, your prehistoric reliance on violence as a survival strategy.”

“That’s good, right?”

“But,” he continued. “It never left the DNA strand and it will surface from time to time, often most tragically.”

“Ask your classmates,” I said.

“Ask the families of the children of Baghdad the morning your country started raining bombs on them,” he said.

“You are not being very comforting,” I said.

“One of your country’s founders—I forget which one—said ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’”

“It is attributed to Thomas Jefferson,” I said. “But I’m not sure it was he.”
 

“It makes no difference, don’t you see. What is important is the cosmic truth of it. Your species must remain vigilant over those primordial instincts that have existed, and still exist, since your ancestors crawled from the oceans.”

“So you mean …?”

“Sorry, but I have to go now,” he said, looking past me to a point far away. “One of the things I planned to do when I learned to write good was to keep a diary.” He paused. “But of course I never got to do it.”

It is hard, some mornings,
to continue believing in the
acquired goodness of people.
But you must keep trying. - C.W.

I must have looked confused.

“Oh,” he said. “I met a friend who kept a very good one before the violence took her and she has promised to read it to me.”

And he faded away, leaving me more confused than ever.

57. The Sporting Life

C.W. promised to come by the condo last evening so when he called, I buzzed him right up. Glad I did. I wouldn’t want him hanging around the front door in the appearance he had chosen for this visit.


Let’s just say he looked like a walking advertisement for “The American Hunter.” He wore camouflage from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Even his hands sported “camo gloves.” His face was marked up like a D-Day paratrooper and his eyes rested behind a dulled set of aviator sunglasses.

It reminded me of how the reporters used to “garb-up” during the Iraq Invasion.

“What do you think?” he said as he banged his gun case into my most expensive piece of furniture.

“You wouldn’t even begin to want to know,” I said.

“Can’t wait for opening day,” he said. “If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m taking up hunting as a sport.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Let me show you this neat stuff,” he said, opening a bag—a camouflaged one of course.

“See here,” he opened a large sack. “This here is called ‘Deer Corn.’ I can put it in my kill-zone everyday for few weeks and the deer will be coming straight to it come opening day.”

I tried not to retch.

“And this here is female deer scent. Know what it does?” He started to open the bottle but I stopped him.

“Oh, they won’t come in up here,” he said.

“That’s okay, I get the picture,” I said.

He pulled out a small recorder and flipped it on. There was a sound of repeated clanging.

“That’s a recording of two buck deer fighting over a gal.” He leaned back, evidently enjoying the sound. “That ought to raise a crowd.”

I motioned for him to turn it off.

“Now look here,” he said. He laid the bag aside and opened his gun case. “I prefer the most manly and primitive approach to hunting. Nothing but a muzzle-loader for me.”

I just stared at him as he unlimbered the gun from its case. Of course, it too was coated in camouflage.

“This here is a 50-caliber beauty build to the most exacting standards available,” he said. “And check out this telescope, 3-9x40 baby with a duplex reticle—waterproof, fog proof, and shockproof. What’ya think?”

“I’m simply overwhelmed.”

“Thought you would be,” he said, apparently missing the irony completely. “What an experience, just man against beast in a primal contest of inter-species confrontation played out in nature’s neutral battleground on an equal footing.”

My mouth dropped open.

He removed his glasses. It was the actual C.W. again.

“It’s not really, is it?”

“No,” I said.

“Tell me something,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Aren’t there enough wars going on at any one time to provide relief for your species’ blood-lust?”

“One thing to consider,” I said.

“I’m all ears,” he said.

“The deer don’t shoot back.”

37. Dancing

Received the strangest invitation this morning I’ve had in a long time. C.W. knocked on the door well before daylight while I was enjoying coffee alone. Of all things, he was dressed as a modern dancer and looked a lot like, as I remember, Rudolph Nureyev. Yes, it was a bit of a strong sight for 5:30 a.m.

“Come go with me,” he said. “I’m going to welcome the sunrise with a special dance in Riverfront Park. I call it ‘Sprites in the Garden.’”

I stood there.

“Well, come on,” he said. “Daylight defers to no mortal plans.”

I think I must have looked a little confused.

“May I come in?”

“Please do.” The last thing on earth I wanted was for a neighbor to see him standing in the hall.

“Oh thanks,” he said, lighting in a chair with a flourish and graceful hand gesture.

“Oh Christ,” I said, returning to the coffee pot and wishing I had some brandy to stiffen it with.

“Know what?” he said.

I just looked at him.

“The concept of dancing on your planet is simply marvelous.” He made another sweep of his hand as if my living room encompassed the entire store of humankind’s accomplishments over the 150,000 or so years of its existence.

“It is a little all-encompassing, though,” he said, lowering his chin to his head and peering up at me. “I mean it includes everything from the most sublime movements imaginable to what appears, to me, to be young boys lying on their backs and wiggling their legs.” He sighed. “But, overall—fascinating. Simply fascinating.”

“C.W.” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Celebrating the joy of life through dance,” he said. “Hurry up and let us go then, you and I.”

I groaned.

“Come on,” he said. “The fecund stirrings of Mother Earth shall spread exaltation through the very soles of your feet. In short, you shall be unafraid and happy.”

“I have never socked an alien—or a ballet dancer—in my life, but I am very close.” I said.

“Oh, you who spurn the soothing catalyst of dance are the saddest of souls,” he said.

“You’re probably not going to leave until I agree to go with you, are you?”

“You got that right,” he said, settling back in this chair with a gesture of finality. “How did all this dancing stuff get started anyway?”

“I dunno. Maybe it was some effort at imitative magic, as Frazier phrased it: efforts to make the earth bloom again in the spring.”

“Well then,” he said. Seeming to think it over for a minute, he looked up. “It certainly seems to work. Hmm. Let’s see. ‘April is the happiest month, filling life into slumbering feet.’ Hey, maybe I’ll take up poetry next.”

“Oh Christ,” I said, heading, back to get dressed.

14. Extinctions

C. W. came to me in a dream last night. At least I think it was a dream. You never know about him. I was sitting on a fallen tree by a well-worn path in a tropical rain forest. I knew the place from the slightly sweet rotting smell of fecundity and the bright colors of the forest flowers flashing against the dark background of the giant trees. I remembered it all from a trip to a similar place in Puerto Rico taken long years ago courtesy of the United States Navy.

A group of children came along the path laughing and singing. One split from the group and came to me. She was six or seven years old and a throwback to a time around the end of the 19th Century. Rope-like ringlets dangled from each side of her head in blond profusion and she wore a white dress adorned with lace and embroidery. She could easily have been Carroll’s Alice.

She walked silently up to me and then spoke. “Want to see something interesting, Mister?” Then she shook the front of her dress and looked down. The small green head of a snake appeared from beneath her bodice and looked around with interest. It nuzzled her cheek, looked at me with what appeared to be a grin, and slid back into hiding.

“You do know, don’t you Jimmie,” she said. “That in the Victorian era young girls used to keep green tree-snakes in their dresses for sport and to keep cool?”

“I have read that, C. W.” I said.

“It must have kept the snakes warm as well,” he said. “You don’t see such co-dependency among the two species these days. You know that don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must also know that Homo Sapiens are one of the most destructive forces on the planet.”

“True that.”

“Why, do you suppose?”

“It may be that we are evolutionarily disposed to have a short-term perspective on life.”

“Hmm,” she said. “You know it means your ultimate destruction.”

“I suspect so.”

“Want to know the saddest image I will take from your planet when I leave?”

“I would hate to guess.”

Martha - The last Passenger Pigeon

“The image of Martha.”

“Martha Washington?”

“No, Martha the last Passenger Pigeon. The one who lived out a long, lonely life in a Cincinnati zoo without a mate to save her species. Just sat on a perch, staring into space and, we may hope, not thinking about being the last. I think they stuffed her when she finally died.”

The young lady straightened her blouse and felt to make sure her pet was safe and then brushed her hair from her shoulder with her hand.

“I have to leave now,” she said. “Enjoy the forest.”

She turned to leave, but then said over her shoulder: “Next year it will be a golf course.”