Some days.

Some days just ain't so easy.

Every day people do things they know better than to do. Whether they lie, fib, omit the truth, forget to clean the bathroom, drive on an empty tank and get stranded on the road, stay up until 3 AM on a workday because they were at a casino....

I'm fascinated by gray. That shade that isn't black and white, but that horrible real-life mixture of both that is everywhere and everything. I envy people that can see in monochrome. To be on the Hitchcock end of the television spectrum. I really, really wish that things were so easy. In Star Wars, there were characters that I found far more interesting than the others. Though Occam wants his razor to help us, the reality is that life is never so simple.

What's equally interesting is how much the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" holds true and still manages to piss you off. It doesn't matter if you should have known better, it still happened. Smug fuckers like me walk around with their heads in they air, pretending like they're helping you by being superior and telling you how you could have worked it out. Lots of people have better relationships than anyone they know, and are healthier than their friends. Opinions are like assholes - they spike their hair and drink jagerbombs. (That's how that goes, right?)


Cryptic emo bullshit. God, I'm everything I hate in the world. You know what, little blog? Let's try being honest instead of stupid. I have friends that read these and laugh, so let's just tell the truth. Someone I cared for hurt me today, and I knew it was going to happen. I'd say something jaded like "it usually does", but that's not true. I manage to stumble through life really easily sometimes, to the point where I've been told that I only succeed because I'm lucky. If this is luck, you can have it. I'm sick to death of it.

What's worse is that I can already tell that it's going to make me bitter, which is what I really need right now. I have a new job that I feel like leaving to go vomit, and I'm lying to my boss about having a migraine because it's easier than explaining things in reality. What am I, 12? (there's suddenly a conveniently placed kleenex box here. I am immediately suspicious of angelic intervention, but don't say that out loud.)

I love that I get to pretend to be adult about this, while she gets to post sad things on facebook and watch all the little boys who want to screw her try to make her feel better. If it works, great, a douchebag thinking with his penis and who lives and breathes ulterior motives are your real friends.

If I didn't have a coffee appointment after work I'd go home and get shitfaced until I had to wake up tomorrow morning. You know what? Fuck this. No one reads the blog, no one cares, and I'm a baby. I'm going to shut my trap, get back to work, and go home like a normal fucking adult. If I swear more it makes me feel better, so I'll just drop f-bombs under my breath all day, like that guy who pushes a cart down Grand Ave. full of junk.


At least I won money at Mystic Lake last night. I've never won money at a casino before. Always end on a positive note, right? That's how this works. I'm a cynical optimist, after all. Look on the sunny side of the compost heap. The glass is half empty, but that's because it's full of maggots, and no one likes maggots. Well, no one who hasn't got gangrene.

Fuck.

Islands in a Sea of Time

FILE 10012: Playback

I watch listlessly as the ships pass me by, riding the sea of Time. Graceful ladies, gliding across a dance floor that no man can touch, lest he wither and die.

Look at me. This is what happens when any sense of how normal time passes disappears. You wax poetic and weepy like some lovesick teenager. I'm not a poet, I'm a sailor of Time's Ocean who got marooned for something that wasn't his fault.

My island isn't that remarkable, considering the wonders I saw in my time as a sailor. At first the broken-down skyscrapers fascinated me, the crashed airship amazed me. A rusted geschunterlofter (whatever the hell that is) sticks its jagged "fingers" up into the sky, sheltering me from the wind when the skinny palms on my beach are too weak to. I took wonder with me into my exile, and for a few months (years, decades, seconds) it was my armor against insanity. Now I stare at the husks of a forgotten age, the remnants of tomorrow's yesterdays, and all I can think of is how cruel it was that they left me food and water to last a lifetime (week, day, epoch).

"You've brought this on yourself," the captain said. "You have only yourself to blame," the engineer told me. "It's a mercy, and one you don't deserve at that," spat the helmsman. You'd think I'd killed their mothers rather than rid them of the vicious carbuncle that was that boatswain, the way they stood in judgment of me. He'd stripped the flesh off of us in stripes that would shame a tiger, and stolen our food to boot. He'd sassed the captain, struck the engineer, and spit on the helmsman, and they were leaving me on my island in the Sea of Time to thank me.

Time's Ocean is not as beautiful as you are told. The colors that are written about do not do it justice, truly. They are colors you have never seen before, and they are terrible. You cannot describe them properly to someone who has not seen them, either. How would I describe to you the color of the distant past? The colored band that flows at the top of Time that could be either futures yet to come or futures that never will is a violent shade, an eyesore to bake your retinas and scratch your lenses. It's not a green, a red, a violet or a fuschia. It's..... monstrous.

Occasionally I hear voices pass in the night. Chronoships, cruising by, their crews giddy with excitement or heady with drink, thinking of plunder or discovery. My crew was kind enough to maroon me on the Island Closest to the Nexus, but we all know what it really is. This little prison of mine is the junk heap to the Ages, and it gets far more traffic than it should.

Every day (hour, minute, millions of years), more flotsam and refuse from Time washes ashore. On one occasion, I found an outdated portable toilet. On another, a wallet-sized computer that told me how many neurons were firing in my brain at once. Two bodies washed up (yesterday) a while ago, sailors that fell overboard. One of them had the head of a small child, the arm of a crone, and the breasts of a young woman. She must have fallen from a great height to be caught in so many Time currents at once. The other was clearly a Floater, uniformly aged beyond his years into a mummified husk by drifting on a current made solely of one timestream. He must have chosen.... poorly.

I can see the second island nearer to the Nexus from the top of the airship's crumbling frame. It's little more than a zit on Time's watery ass from here, but it still makes me giddy. It's South of my island and perhaps a bit East. Were there nighttime in this abyss I could tell for sure, but there is no sun here. Only the pulsating light of the Nexus. If my words confuse you, whoever finds this, North is any direction leading straight away from the Nexus. To find East and West, you must simply put your back to the Nexus and hold out your arms. West is clockwise from the nexus, and East counter-clockwise. Still, the island looms, tantalizingly close. If I can see it, I might be able to get there.

No, no, mustn't say it, mustn't think it. Shouldn't write it. No man, no woman, no creature can survive Time's flow unshielded. Even the great chronophobic ships that I used to sail could only protect themselves for so long. Time wounds all heels, they say, and every ship's chronofield will wear and fade if not tended to. Still, I can feel the rat that is madness gnawing its way into my heart, and the pull of Time is growing stronger. How easy it would be to leap off the cliff overlooking the condemned skyscrapers, to dive into Time as if it were merely a salty sea. I suppose I could even enjoy the experience, my body aging faster or slower by degrees depending on which currents were ravaging my frame. Who knows - I could find the legendary Static Stream and be preserved for eternity (until I reached the Nexus), a testament to the barbarism that rules a chronoship's crew.

I have no idea how long the power will last on this little device. I cannot read the glyphs on its surface, but a likely symbol seems to be half full. Of course, that could just be an indication that I'm half dead, for all I know. If it dies, it won't be my fault. No more than that bastard boatswain's death was my fault. I never meant to kill him. If I had, I would have made it clean. Not..... not like it was. No man deserves that fate.

Gasp! No, no, nonononono! How am I to survive?

Oh, wonderful. Thank you, tiny machine, for recording EVERYTHING that comes out of my mouth, rather than just what I want you to show. Too late now to make me sound less of a craven fool. As is clearly indicated by what I assume is a language scrolling across the screen of my companion (that's what I call this device now, it's the only thing here that gives a semblance of intelligence), it wrote down my panicked cries.

There's a Time Storm brewing to the North. I can see the bands raising up and outward, spiraling out of the Sea like a hand grasping at the sky. I don't even know if my little island is made of Rock - it might just be stone. If it is, I'm doomed for sure. I could be swept away and swallowed, island exile and all. If it is Rock, I may just have a chance...

Of course. The geschunterlofter. I knew I had recognized some of the plating on its "fingers". Bear with me, little companion. I may be able to build us a 'phobic shelter.

file corrupt, processing
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resuming playback
-ays to me. So I kicked her down the stairs, and she never brought it up again.

Wait. Hold still, companion. Can you hear it? I think the storm is over. Yes, it is. Gods..... our island home has been torn asunder. Apparently there was some Rock to our exile after all, but not enough. We ourselves are safe, but I fear that the island has too little to sustain us. It's a good thing you reminded me to bring in the food and water (are you truly learning my language? remarkable!) when you did.

Still, most of the flotsam is gone. No more tools at easy access, no more alien devices and ancient writings to occupy my time. Not that I despise you, dear device, but I fear that if it were just you and I you would bore of me and deactivate.

My island is shredded. The sands and stone have vanished, replaced with the ravages of Time's Sea. We have but a small space left, and I'm afraid it's not enough. Look, little device, do you see? The Time Storm has left our neighbor island untouched. And this shelter of ours was malleable enough to be made into a hut, and has proven chronophobic after all. Perhaps...

... steel yourself, little pilot of the palm. Soon we shall attempt to craft a skiff to brave the currents. Our time on this little island has come to an end.

END PLAYBACK

Sisyphus had an attitude problem

Let's stop and think about this one for a moment. Sisyphus was doomed to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. The minute the boulder reached the top, it would roll back down again immediately, and he would have to start over. He could not cease his torment, nor could the boulder ever reach the top.

Zeus punished him thus for his hubris in tricking the gods. Sisyphus died not once, or twice, but THREE times because he was so sneaky. When Thanatos, the god of death, tried to chain him, he convinced Thanatos to show him how the chains worked. This resulted in the god of death being imprisoned, and no one dying for a good long while. "Consequences will be dire."

I'll bet he got pretty cut after a while, eh? Low caloric intake, constant use of stabilizer muscles, etc.

It was on my way into work today that I realized that I hate the treadmill. Run as fast as you can, just to stay in place. I don't mean a physical treadmill that you use at the gym - even that has a point. The metaphorical, sisyphean treadmill that is the job market. Everyone is scrambling to get low-income jobs to get experience in a field. The field you want requires experience, so you can't get a low-income job on the ground floor until you have experience. You go to school to get experience and a good knowledge base for your field - and by the time you're done, you have so much debt it's hard to get a place to live, let alone a career you want. Somewhere along the line, you're expected to find a partner with which to limp along with, and do it all over again with your kids.

Something is missing. Something isn't right. Life is consistently giving us lemons, and we're not doing anything about it but flooding a saturated market with lemonade. We need to break out of the mold, Cave Johnson-style.

Can the myth of Sisyphus give us perspective on this? Definitely. King Sisyphus was punished for being clever by being doomed to repeat the same action for eternity. He was literally too clever for his own good, and was stuck in monotony for all time.

If this is the outcome to be avoided, then we have to try at all costs to break out of these ruts. Change what's happening in our lives.

Viktor Frankl spoke of logos, the meaning to life. When people told him they were suicidal, he would ask "what do you have to live for?" Not in a cruel or derisive way, but in a way meant to provoke thought. It turned out that the people who were suicidal could not see reason to live. They had, in essence, become Sisyphus. Locked into the same actions, the same cycle, with no reason to break out.

Evidence of this type of psychology at work can be seen in the program in Federal prisons that gives inmates puppies to train. Inmates almost universally reported a change in demeanor, and felt that their prison time had changed in aspect during the program. Cell Dogs, giving meaning to someone without it.

Where is the meaning in your life? Does it have one? I'm still looking for a good one, but that in itself can be a logos. Something that Frankl tried to get his patients to understand was that for mankind, searching for meaning could be meaning enough to move on.

Maybe I just need to find something to do with those damn lemons. Where are my eggheads?

On beauty

There is a very famous argument between Socrates and another man, in which Socrates challenges the man to define piety. I think it was Crito, but I'm not sure. Regardless of the title, the dialogue consists of Socrates showing his opponent that merely referencing other subjects and objects is not sufficient for definition.

Which is why the beautiful is so difficult to relate if you have no common ground. What is it, anyway?

Ask an artist what "beauty" is, and you're likely to get an earful. If you ask Jackson Pollock, he might say that beauty is an event, an action that expresses something. If you were to ask Claude Monet, you might hear of a sunrise over the water. Were you to ask Louis Armstrong, you would get an entire songful. Old Satchmo made a lot of people happy just by singing about the very subject.

These days, all you need is the internet to access what others find beautiful. Regardless of the form of the content, be it audio, visual, some amalgamation of both, even written word, you can find forms of the joy people find in the world around us everywhere. Tumblr in particular is a common form of expression, as is DeviantArt.

Still, it's the curse of the writer to see beauty in places that others usually don't. The film American Beauty was based on such a book, and sticks in the minds of many a moviegoer because of the images that it evoked. Even a plastic bag, dancing in the wind. (I think this one is a bit blah, but I'm just jaded.)

A good question might as well be where isn't there beauty? I'd answer, but good questions make for depressing blogs. Socrates was executed for being a dick, after all, and all he did was ask lots of annoying questions. Since I don't want to drink hemlock any time soon, I think I'll stick to the positive.

What then, is beauty? There are some examples above, but is there more? Of course. Ask yourself what you see, hear, touch, taste, and love in the world around you. What makes it beautiful? Plato thought that the things we find beautiful were that way because they mimicked the real form of capital B Beauty off in la-la-land somewhere. In most cases, I think that Plato's idea of Forms was a bit off, but here he might have something. When put to it, I find beauty in too many things.

A little kid's evil laugh as he uses his Ninja Turtles to give G.I. Joe a beatdown, for example. When someone strange on the internet knows exactly what you do in the shower. 120 dogs howling in unison because all they want to do is run, and their brothers are out doing it while the sun is high and the wind is cold. Landscapes, canyons, caves, birds, life, and cute girls.

One of the lines from Lord of the Rings is also quite true - there are things beautiful and terrible at the same time. Tsunami, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes.... not just natural disasters. Lions hunting prey, space seen from the hubble, the cell structure of a killer virus.

There are a few people in this world uniquely acquainted with the beautiful, and we call them artists, entertainers, and the talented. Seers, oracles, and prophets, sometimes. Sometimes they are leaders, like his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Sometimes they are merely pedestrian, a strangely hirsute man who could be anyone else on the street, but writes like a god (Patrick Rothfuss, choff choff).

To Aristotle, capital V Virtue was beautiful. He believed that by aspiring and living towards Virtue itself, we would in turn be virtuous people, inside and out. The self-examined life, is how he phrased it.

Unless you find beauty in death (and sometimes there is), and insist on making things more beautiful by killing (shudder), pursue it. The more people who strive to find the extraordinary in ordinary life in this world, the better. Our lives could all use a little picking up sometimes, couldn't they? All to the better if we can do so in a way that others can see and recognize.

If you read this, I'm glad you're OK, and it was good to hear from you.

Assorted cliches

"Why do we fall down, Master Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up again."

"One step at a time."

"Take care of the outside and the inside will follow."

"Speak out, don't keep quiet."

"Time heals all wounds, or wounds all heels."

"No man is an island."

"You can do this."

"When you can't run

I hate these. I really hate them. Nothing is more condescending than a platitude given glibly to a genuine problem or hurt, with the exception of when said platitude is right.

Someone I care about is hurting, and had the courage to say something. I did my best, but does it help? I think so. I think that anything can help when people really need you. People everywhere need help every day, myself included. The human is a social animal, we can't live on bread alone, and I'm spewing out trite sayings like a broken record. How do you help? How can anyone help with problems so deep they seem like a black hole you'll never get out of?

Not even Stephen Hawking is positive what happens at the center of a black hole, take comfort in that. Some physicists theorize it could lead to different worlds, different universes. Though a black hole's gravity swallows visible light, energy can escape the accretion disk in the form of x-rays and gamma rays. The same spectrum and base energy form as visible light - it just has to change first.

Cliche's and bad metaphors aside, people need you. They need each other. Sometimes all it takes is one person listening to another because they care. One small gesture of trust can be enough to make a difference. When we're in pain, we don't just hide it. Things slip out of the cracks - all you have to do is pay attention to see it.

Something that stuck with me (I know I'm a cult nerd, get off of it) was the second-to-last episode of Firefly. It's an old saying in a new jacket but still. "If you can't run, you walk, and if you can't walk, you crawl, and if you can't crawl, well..."

"You find someone to carry you."

I know that you're brave. Orlando Jones would be proud of you.


If you read this, I know you can make it. Trust me, I was a salesman.

Swinging at things

like a bad ballplayer who never got the praise, "good eye!" when he let a ball go by.

I'm back in Minnesota, in the cities (or abouts) and in what some people call a "groove". It's strange, my grooves look vaguely like ruts.

I've just started temp work at a law office in the cities, helping out until they complete the laborious process of finding a new office manager. This means I'm in a job where I have a handful of experience, working eight hours a day, and handling extremely sensitive material. I'd never witnessed a will signing before as an official until last weekend. Weird experience.

The lights above the desk are NOT energy friendly, and they're hot as hell. 95% of all energy put into a normal incandescent bulb is wasted as heat, by the way. It's all beating down on my head, even though it's in the sixties outside.

I still work at a restaurant, which is...... well, it's actually fun as hell. I love the staff, and sometimes breaking up a 20 lb slab of home-ground sausage with your fingers feels satisfying. Sometimes you just get greasy, but whatever.

Still, I almost feel as if I'm flailing about in a dark cave while someone ahead of me has a flashlight, but their body is blocking most of the light. It's like those dreams where you're driving a car, only from the back seat, and you can't see over the seat in front of you and you know you're going to hit some helpless baby in the road, doing god knows what on the pavement in his spare time.

Things are bizarre. I help my parents almost daily with a workload that steadily seems to be way too large for a couple nearing their retirement. Five acres, 2-ton branches of oak, entire pine trees falling, and a god-awful amount of yard care is just the beginning. They've redone the bath, the kitchen, and are thinking of new appliances and cars. All this is going to add up to a set of things that need to be done that neither of them want to do, and you can guess how eager I am about it.

Every morning seems cold and foggy (thank you, Minnesota, for this wonderful tribute to feeling happy) except when it's cold and the sun streaks into my window to blind me awake. That's a fun feeling, waking up completely stark blind, afterimages filling your vision for half an hour while you shower and pretend like it wasn't freezing for the first five minutes.

I've been seeing some old friends lately, and it's all kind of surreal. I remember jokes they forgot about years ago, stories that we shared at the time that they think I'm making up. Only one of them, Drew, actually picked up on anything while we were visiting. He makes a great homebrew, by the way. Many different varieties. We've told him to start a business.

Top that off with incredibly warped family problems, a splash of girl trouble, and a not inconsiderable amount of debt accruing from student loans, and all my wonderful direction has been lost. Someone stepped on my sextant when I wasn't looking, and I'm hissy about it. I hope they get scurvy and lose their teeth, and have to walk around with Norm Coleman-ish smiles for the rest of their life, scaring little children with pearly white dentures.

A very good friend is starting a security company. I want to get in on the ground floor, and I have the opportunity, but it's not a joke. You need training, you need dedication, and you have to take it seriously. Because I'm so good at serious, right? If I help out and it becomes a career, what happens to my doctorate? What happens to these tiny plans I love to make? Who knows.

In the meantime, I'm applying for jobs like a down-and-out boxer trying to make a comeback. See my new resume muscles? Manly! I can't lose to these snot-nosed kids who have bigger degrees and more wins under their Gucci belts, I'm the champ. Check me out, I have real-life experience - I don't need to practice my stamina.

Remember my drunk roommate from the two blogs ago? His ghost is chasing me down. Recently I've had to cover for two people (on the same day, ironically) by bending the truth, and I don't like it. Enabling was something I was supposed to get RID of, not recognize more easily and then cave to.

Not to mention some of the weirdest dreams I've had to date have started cropping up. I had a dream that started like 2001: a Space Odyssey. Instead of the monolith towering over monkeys, it was my fridge, towering monolithian over my bed. Same creepy music, but it was my fridge. When I opened the fridge, lights spilled out around the edge in too many colors, a seizure-inducing display worthy of Stanley Kubrik. Just last night I had a dream where the frogs in my window well started to talk in normal tones of voice, explaining that they were tired of being exploited. One finally called a vote, and to my shock and terror, produced a sign reading "First National Union of Pissed Off Frogs". NUPOF. They then proceeded to picket my underground window, banging their little signs against it and shouting in tinny voices that hell no, mos-qui-to.

WHAT?

And nice guys still finish last. Doesn't that just suck. Someone I've been seeing a lot more often suddenly loves to turn that into a pun. Pun or not, it's still true.

I told myself two years ago that I wasn't going to stop swinging for the fences. It's hard not to want to swing at faces sometimes, but I promised myself the fence was the goal. That promise is one I intend to keep. Weird is not that unusual to me (still weird, mind you, just expected at this point) and I've got plenty more chances at bat before the game is over. I proved on that damn mountain that I could move anywhere, make friends, and be a success, and I'm going to beat this if I strike out 20 more times.

Time to nut up or shut up.

Charlie: a short story

It wasn't until my seven-year old grandson Nicky was using the leaf blower to puff out my cheeks that I decided to make the jump.

Three hours of monkeying with the damn thing, and I was just about to put the finishing touches on it. The blower, not my grandson. He was my cheerleader. To some old farts like me, a kid of seven yelling "Yay Grampa! You fix that! Fix that like a boss!" might have driven them batshit. It was music to my ears, and it made me all sorts of Hallmark-lifetime special on the inside.
Each time he'd come up with a new cheer, I'd put on what May always calls my "super serious face". I'd furrow my brow deep, so the wrinkles in my forehead grew cavernous. My eyes would narrow, and my mouth would compress to a tiny line beneath my slightly sagging cheeks. I ain't gonna tell ya how old I am, because there's a few things a man can keep to himself. I'd been to the war, and I wasn't no spring chicken - I can say that much. Anyway, I had to put on a good show of things. Nicky's always looked up to me, the little snotball, and I loved him to death. I couldn't let something like a dad-blasted leaf blower get the better of me with him around. So I took him seriously as I could, and pretended like he was the one driving me on. That damn blower had to be fixed.

In my defense, I hadn't been the one to break it, either. Katrina did it. People always say "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and it's true. I'd just hate to see the sonofabitch that pissed off that hurricane. That damn leaf blower was the only thing left of the garage where my son had caught my addiction to engine grease. May said I was nuts to try to pull it out of that wreck, let alone put it back together. Just move on, she said. How're you supposed to tell your wife that a leaf blower means more to you than money, time, and effort? You'd sound like a proper nutjob, if you ask me. I just told her it had to be done, put on my "serious face", and told her it had to be done. She threw her hands in the air as if tossing confetti onto some poor bloke behind her and walked away. She was mad a bit, I was mad a bit, then we went for one of our long walks and everything was ok again.
"Grampa?"
I looked over from the blower to see Nicky making what he must have thought was a proper "serious face". Don't laugh, Charlie, I thought, if you do, it'll crush the boy. "What is it, kiddo?"
Nicky took a deep breath and held it. When he started to turn red, I figured he'd just about pop. Sure enough, what he said came out all in a rush, like someone had pushed fast-forward on my old VCR. "Thatblower'sspecialtoyouisn'titcauseyouspentsolongonitandIwannaknowwhysitsospecial?"
I blinked, then started guffawing. Not laughing, not chuckling, but letting loose fit to bust a gut. That boy is just too damn sharp for his own good. My own wife of 40 years can't pick up on something that gets me riled up, but that boy knew right away. Wiping tears from my eyes, I set the blower down and picked him up with my grease-stained hands. I set him on my knee, thinking that I'd catch holy hell from his ma about it, then looked him in the eye.
"You bet it is, slugger. You want to know why?" The look he gave me clearly said, Duh Grampa, I already asked that. I shrugged. "This leaf blower's the last thing left of our old house where your daddy grew up. I figure if I fix it, maybe I can fix him and me."
This made Nicky's eyes go all misty, and I had to bite my tongue from doing the same. Damned if little kids don't hit that spot right in my gut that just makes me turn into a blubbering idiot.
"B... but Grampa... why is Daddy so mad at you?"

I thought back. I couldn't tell him the truth, not at this age. How can you explain to a child what terminal cancer is? "Sick" don't cover it, no sir not at all. "Sick" isn't waking up every morning thinking that you're on borrowed time every moment you spend next to your wife. "Sick" isn't having your skin a perpetual shade of green from all the gosh-darn chemicals and radiations that are floating around in your beat up old hide. "Sick" you get better from. Worse, "Sick" doesn't make your only boy avoid you because he's scared to death of death and can't tell an old man he loves him.
"I don't think even he knows that, kiddo. Don't worry about it too much, son. Daddy still loves Grampa, and things will work out all right in the end." He looked at his shoes, a picture-perfect little sad boy right out of Norman Rockwell.
Damned if I don't hate sad silence. That's what gets me the most about this damn cancer. People don't yell, "Hey Charlie!" anymore, or offer to buy me beers on Vet's day. The cancer had turned it all into sour-smelling pity. You really can smell it on people. All the "How are you feeling, Charlie?" and "Are the treatments going well, Charlie?" stink to high heaven of sympathy, and I can't stand it. Smelling something like that come off of my little Nicky was just too much. I had to do something, so I pulled an old trick out of my hat.
"Hey slugger," I said as my hand found his mop of blond hair, "how's about we fire this thing up and you make Grampa look funny?"
His head snapped up immediately. Nothing like the promise of mischief to put a fire in a boy's eyes. "Whatcha mean, Grampa? How can the blower make you look funny?"
I grinned in spite of myself. "I'll show ya. Let me start up the blower, and then we'll go over yonder so your Gramma don't see us being straight-up fools, kay?"
Nicky nodded furiously. He was as eager as me to get his mind off his father. Not that his father was mean, or bad to him. I'd have striped that bastard raw if he hurt my grandson - police badge or not. No, Sam was just stubborn and macho to the core (much like his old man), so he didn't want to admit that I was dying. I was just playing at it to piss him off, he said. Couldn't stop thinking about myself, he said.

Picking up the blower and walking out the garage door, I motioned for Nicky to follow me. I hoped he didn't see the way I clenched my dentures at the pain in my gut, but I couldn't help it. Cancer can be like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants, only it's my gut instead of ants, and a hot poker instead of a magnifying glass. Bad as it was, walking outside took the pain out of me right quick.
It was the one of those storybook days, the kind where the princess has found the prince and they ride off into the sunset. The sun had gone all gatorade orange and was shimmery around the edges, like the end of one of those old westerns I like so much. Scept I was no Clint Eastwood, and that damn blower was no six-shooter. Still, it was the kind of summer evening that I hadn't known the Midwest was capable of till after the hurricane.
We worked our way around the back of the garage, where the roof and deck blocked the windows from the house. May'd probably have burst my eardrums if she caught me teaching Nicky the kind of shenanigans I had in mind. I set the blower on the ground butt-first once we were out of sight of the house, and commenced pulling at the cord.
Not pulling the cord, mind you. Pulling AT it. Pulling the cord implies a measure of success. For a good five minutes I yanked that sucker up and down with not so much as a sputter. I was about to swear up a storm and kick the damn thing to hell, grandson or no grandson, when Nicky reminded me I was a dumbass with a simple question.
"Grampa, does it have gas?"
Does it have gas. I'd seen more in my lifetime than probably you or your family has, let me tell you, but that boy was still sharper than me in seven years than all of mine. All that work on the damn thing and I hadn't bothered to fill it up.
Ten minutes later (I'd had a bit of a spell hoofing it back into the garage and getting the gas can down) and the damn thing was finally puttering out behind the house again. Nicky was crouched on his haunches, tilting the thing up towards my bent-over face. I looked him squarely in the eye.
"No matter what Grampa looks like, you can't laugh, understand?" He nodded. I was born with an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic, so I counted down with my fingers. One. Two. ....... One. This drew a giggle from Nicky, but he quickly stifled it. It was now or never.
Three.
Nicky pulled the handle, and a gust of dirty, smelly air caught me full in the face. After thirty-seven years, I heard Lt. Michael's voice again. Let's go you apes! You want to live forever? My cheeks flattened against my aging head, flapping around like the jowls on Droopy Dog. I heard Nicky gasp, then watched the fascinating process of how he tried to stifle a laugh. He won somehow, his tiny eyebrows clenched in concentration, but I could see the smile beating at his defenses. Acting purely on instinct, I opened my mouth as wide as I could, letting my whole gob blow open like a parachute. I moved my head from side to side, flattening one cheek while the other puffed out obscenely, my teeth standing out like the false things they already were. May always said that the treatments could take my teeth, but not my smile from me.
It was too much for poor Nicky. He collapsed, laughing fit to burst, and the blower died. For a moment I still felt the wind through my
(uniform)
hair, and then it hit me. I had to take one more jump.

* * *

Two days later, May was cooking dinner, and I asked her the question.
"Dear heart," I said in as simple a tone as I could, "Love of my life, are you going to burn my steak again?"
That wasn't the question, but I felt it had to be asked. One old-fashioned slap later, and May and I were sitting at our oak dinner table with our old silverware and settling into a steak that any chef would consider a travesty, but what May called "decently cooked."
"Charlie Johnson, I don't know who taught you to talk to a lady like that, but I'll have you sleeping on that couch if you sass me one more time before we're done eating." May is older than me by a bit, but that didn't keep those gorgeous grey eyes of hers from lighting up like a firestorm when she got her dander up. Even though her hair was mostly gray and thin now, she still tossed it over her shoulder in that frustrated gesture I liked so much. Gray and thin it might be, but that woman will be beautiful till the day I die.
"May, when was the last time you felt free? I mean really free, as if nothing else in the world mattered just then."
She blinked, nonplussed. "Charlie, what an odd question. What do you mean by all that?"
I shrugged. "Just tell me, if you can. It's something I was wondering about the other day."
"We-ell.... I suppose it was that last trip we took up north to ride those snow machines. I felt like I could go anywhere and do anything on that thing, loud beast that it was."
Smiling, I shook my head. "You always had the grease gene as much as I did, May. I love you for it."
She smiled the kind of smile a young girl smiles when asked if she likes you back, but said nothing for a while. She appeared to be enjoying her ribeye, but I wasn't really sure how a woman would enjoy the taste of leather. When she finally spoke up, she asked what I thought she would.
"How about you, Charlie? When was the last time your worries just flew away?"
I thought for a bit even though the answer had come to me while my grandson flapped my face about with a leaf blower. It wouldn't do to let May think I was brooding, or she'd try to poke me one in the ribs. God, how that got me going sometimes. After what felt like the right amount of time, I pointed towards the ceiling.
"You remember when Sammy graduated his police academy, May?"
Her eyes widened a bit, but she smiled. "You always said you felt best when you were jumping out of a plane. God's mercy, but you're crazy as a bedbug if that's what you're referring to."
Laughing, I pushed my plate back. My appetite wasn't what it once was with all the treatments, and leather made my gut give an angry turn sometimes. "You know me better than anything, sweetheart. You can blame the 101st for getting me to like it. Once someone yells at me to do something, I'm either gonna hate it or love it. Jumping out of a plane just happened to be something I grew to love."
Smiling with her eyes, May looked out the window into the evening. Summer nights round here are pretty as can be, especially when the fireflies are out on our porch like they were that night. Little horny lightbugs, flashing their come-ons into the darkness. Mating displays can be pretty sometimes, I guess. It was another while before she spoke up again.
"Charlie... what brought this up? You can't seriously be thinking of taking another jump. We haven't got the money, and you're in no shape to fly anywhere, let alone jump out of a plane at tens of thousands of feet."
I stood up, feeling something in me bend the wrong way as I did so, and grimaced. The pain never leaves you be, you know. It's worse than a shark with the scent of blood. Sharks will bump you a few times, then get you in their teeth and finish things. Pain is a kitten. A vicious, body-tearing kitten, playing with you between its paws. It'll bat you around, throw you in the air, and wreck you wholesale just for the hell of it before it ends you. And when it takes you down, you'll still feel every damn thing. I hissed a bit through my teeth, seeing the concern on my wife's face, and that only made things worse.
Perhaps I mentioned that my sense of the dramatic gets me in trouble. It did this time, too.
"May Parker Johnson, I have a right to do what I please. I'm dying, and if I say that I want to jump out of a plane like I used to back in the war, I will jump out of a plane like I used to back in the war. You don't know what it's like, May. To leap out into that big open sky with a grin on your face and get your laugh stolen by the wind. To have that wind puff out your cheeks like... like your grandson is hosing your face with a leaf blower. For those few seconds while I fall I could do anything, and nothing scares me. Not those damn Nazis, not cancer, and not the fact that my only boy is too stupid to tell me he loves me before I keel over and die.
"For those few seconds, I could be God Himself."
May hates it when I blaspheme, and normally she would have scolded me. Instead she burst into tears, and my rant died deader than a doornail in no time at all. I walked around the table, wincing as I did so, and pulled her into my arms. She cried like that for a while, holding me as close as she used to before the cancer, and I didn't care that it hurt like a bitch. If a man can't hold his wife when she's crying, he ain't no kind of man.
Finally she wiped her eyes and looked at me. "Where will we get the money? Who the hell would take a patient with cancer up in a plane for a jump anyway?"
I held her close for a bit more, biting my lip against my gut. She couldn't see it, so I could do it. I finally let her go back a ways, and held her face between my dry old leathery palms. I kissed her forehead, then slowly eased back into my chair at the table. Knife and fork in shaky hands, I tried to choke down a few more bites of burnt cow for her sake.
Mumbling through the ruined beef, I said, "You know who would, and you know how I'd do it. Just like the old days."

Later that night, we slept in the same bed for the first time in two years. I'd insisted on my own bed once the night sweats and vomiting fits hit, because I couldn't bear to see what it did to the woman I loved. I still think it's a gift from god that the night before I jumped those were absent, and I was able to hold my wife close one more time. Told her I loved her, and that I would always miss her. Told her to take care of my boy and my grandson, and that she'd do well to find someone else to pass the time with, since she still had those killer thighs and that laugh to drive a man crazy. She didn't say a word, just snuggled up against me. I think she cried.

* * *

My attic is a gosh-darn nightmare. Not only do I hate spiders, but the dust plays hell with my lungs. Still, I knew that if May saw what I was looking for, she'd call the cops on me, or worse, my son. Before dawn broke (she's always been an early riser), I woke myself up and slipped into some old rags. That attic staircase is unbelievably loud, but somehow I managed to pull it down from the ceiling outside our bedroom without waking her.
Ten minutes later and I was killing myself trying to stifle the sneezes. Each time I pushed one down I felt a piece of me protest, like a sack filled with too many things. I could swear parts of me bulged out. Where was that damn....
There. It was under a stack of photo albums, which didn't make any sense. They should have rolled off the crazy thing, but there they were, perched and wobbly as if they were about to drop and just didn't want to. I felt like it could have been me on that old army pack.
Forty years, and it still fit. I'd grown a belly after the war, too much beer and baseball, but it had gone the way of the dodo after my second round of chemo. Couldn't keep anything down. As the straps came over my shoulders, I could hear my lieutenant again.
Come on, maggots! You think Jerry's gonna wait for you to grow a pair? Out the door, and don't get dead! Even under fire, Lt. Michael had called us names. Goddam it, get some fire on those Krauts! Useless turds, I'll shoot you myself if you don't get a heave-ho! When he died, the unit broke up. We weren't sent to new positions or anything like that, but he was the glue that kept us together. We'd been through hell and back a few times already, so command decided we were done anyhow, and that was that. Most of my old mates were dead these days, but there were a few left. Men who would just laugh to see me wearing my old fatigues, or offer to buy me a beer. Men who wouldn't ask, "How do you feel, Charlie?"
A few I could count on like in the old days.
* * *

"Well if it isn't old double-ugly hisself. Charlie Johnson, back from the dead and looking like he could just whup my wrinkled old ass!"
Laughing so hard it hurt, I grabbed the bald, skinny man in front of me by the forearm. "Chuck Finley, you son of a gun, you look younger than the Devil! I still hate you for being the one of us who got to be Chuck and not Charlie."
There we were, two old men wheezing at each other in an aircraft hanger like a couple of kids with asthma problems. Grinning like idiots, the lot of us. Chuck truly didn't look that old to me, you know. He may have had a few more liver spots on his skin than me, and a lot more flesh around the middle, but he didn't look old. He looked like I didn't feel - alive. Finley was the squad clown before I was transferred in, always cracking wise and pushing insubordination with Lt. Michael. After I showed up, it seemed to make him more of himself. The two of us would spout dirty jokes before every practice drop, scream or laugh on the way down (he did the screaming, I swear to you), and keep everyone's spirits up in the mud.
Right now he was pulling me over to a little desk in front of his beat up old Piper aircraft. It was right in the way of the props, so I guessed he hadn't done any flying lately.
"What brings you round these parts, Charlie? Your place is what, a hundred miles away? Not that I was eager to see your ugly mug again, but spill - why you here?"
I lifted up my battered old pack and slammed it on the table. There was a silence as Finley digested what I'd fed him, and his eyes narrowed.
"I don't know what you mean by bringing your old chute into my shop old man, but you best not be thinking what I think you're thinking."
Lifting my hand up, I held it in front of his face. I had the shakes pretty bad from the walk to the hangar, and he could see it. I set my hand down on the table with a dull thud, and grimaced. "I'm dying, Chuck. You must have heard."
He shook his head. "Yeah, I heard, but I didn't believe it. You were our good luck charm, Charlie. Old double-ugly could never die, and would laugh the Devil hisself in the face when the time came. Why you bringing that old chute out here now?"
It didn't take me any time at all to reply. "So I could laugh the Devil hisself in the face, friend. I ain't going out like no cripple, no sir. I intend to go out of this world the way I want, the time I want, and that's now. You remember what Donner used to say?"
Chuck hung his head a bit, then said, "Yeah, I remember. Black bastard used to say it every damn day in the war. 'I ain't gonna be a slave to no man.' What's that got to do with your old ass?"
My hand was still shaking. I grabbed it with its twin to still the shakes, then spat, "This pain is making me a slave, Chuck. Donner and me, we think the same way. I have to do something, I have to be free again. When I'm jumping, I am."
Chuck was still mad. "That old chute may not even open, do you realize that? I'll probably be arrested for just taking you up in the freaking plane, let alone letting you jump with a chtue that old!"
"So you'll get arrested. What are they going to do, put an old vet like you in the pen? I highly doubt that. Hell, old Frank worked for the damn DA for a few years, he'd bail you out. I have to do this."
"The hell you do. That pretty wife of yours is going to be heartbroken. She'll die alone, your boy will be right about you, and those beautiful grandkids of yours you always send me pictures of will cry their little eyes out."
"You don't know that. For all you know, the chute could open and I could be fine. I could die in a bed of this damn cancer, cursing you the whole time."
"Charlie.... Charles, this is crazy. You can't do it. I won't do it."
"Charles Finley, this is the last request a dying man will ever make of you. If you won't do it for me, just think of that time when I took a bullet for you. I didn't hesitate then, and damn you if you hesitate now. I need this."
Sometimes when two men talk, things get too close to the way women do it, and we know it, and that makes us stupid. So for a moment, we didn't say nothing at all. That silence stretched, and stretched, and stretched, but didn't break. After a while, Finley looked me in the eye, and I saw his old piss and vinegar at work.
"If I do this for you - if I take you up one last time and let you jump out my plane with that old chute, I get first dibs on your wife."
I still had the tears in my eyes from laughing when we boarded the Piper.
* * *
Chuck is yelling to me over the radio. "We're at ten thousand, Charlie! Before you jump, I want to check your chute!"
I'm about to shake my head, but I realize he can't see me. "No way, old man! I packed this thing myself when we got home."
He laughs at me, loud and long. "I remember camp, you old fart. The way you pack a chute you're lucky that thing fits you." Finley rambles on a bit more, but my mind is elsewhere. I always get like this before a drop. Spacey, out to lunch, whatever they call it. I'm thinking about how good it will feel to be free again.
Finally I snap back to reality. Chuck is yelling, "Hey! Dumbass! Get that door open before I change my mind!" There should be some dramatic speech, I think. He should try to stop me at the last minute. Instead, I see that he's laughing. His eyes are all bright and shiny, the way they were when he'd curse nonsense at the Krauts, calling them sausage-lovers and stop-sign stealers. He's his old self, and so am I. I'm back, and he can see it too, so he gives me a thumbs up, just like we did in the old days, and I'm out the door.

It's called "free falling" for a reason. The laugh builds in my ruined gut, bubbles up to my scarred and irradiated lungs, and spills out of me like a kid busting through a gate at an amusement park. I can see the ground, but it's so far away... it's miles and miles down, and I'm flying like people only dream about. Old bones or not, I twist and flip, spreading my arms and legs so I can face up and look at the sky for a moment. The sun is bright, the clouds are puffy, and all I can think about is that God must have it pretty nice if he can see what I can see. Still laughing, I flip back over to see the ground getting bigger, but I don't care. All my motions are automatic, and I don't feel them. My legs are gone, my hands are gone, my pain is gone. My worries don't exist. No man but me is in control of my destiny right now, and I'm drunk on it, reeling back and forth in the wind. For these few seconds, I'm myself again, and, I'm free.

I'm still laughing as I pull the cord.