Backyard Thinking

.5:25 pm

Yes. My sandals and socks are caked with earth. My arms and face and hair are holding a little skin to themselves of dust and everything else that comes out of the ground. The bones of my feet and knees and the muscles of my back and shoulders and arms can claim a degree of exhaustion and soreness. My exposed skin is a little more cooked and hardened than it was yesterday. My worries are taking a break behind 36 ounces of beer and my soul has been digesting some Steinbeck. It is is fine evening.

The stray Siamese that we have adopted is wrestling with some pigeon feathers in her favored patch of tall grass. Imagines herself some lioness, I suppose. She looks over to me on occasion to make sure that I am sufficiently impressed with her great lioness impersonation.

The magnificent palm next to me has a fair crowd of eager birds shuffling around taking turns trying to show me the impressive things their little assholes are capable of producing.

The lioness rises and approaches me now doing her impersonation of a Las Vegas showgirl. I get a noserub on my leg and a little murmeow but I am "busy" reading some novel or scribbling in my notebook and I do not look up. She curves and twists away - her body waving like a frustrated trout aiming for the other side of the pond. She moves to the other side of the yard and harumphes undelicately into more tall grass and gallares at me.

.6:25 pm

Igor Sapien is obviously thirsty. He likes a pint of dark beer - porters or stouts. He craves tall pitchers of Jamieson. He likes shots of Faulkner and Joyce. He's been known to guzzle long draughts of Steinbeck and Robbins and Vonnegut. He likes to spice himself with Garcia Marquez and Kundera and Calvino. Ever looking for new vegetables for his recipes, he gladly welcomes Kesey and Leary and R.A. Wilson.

Once, when asked what his favorite flavor was - he almost said pussy, he almost said curry, he almost said pesto - he answered instead, "I like the flavor of true love." At which point he began to beat at his face enthusiastically with a very large and pointy stone and through rivulets of blood and shattered bone he grinned and repeated, "yeah, love - that's the cake."

On an evening when the landscape ran out of wind and the grasshoppers were getting restless and the frogs just held their breath, Igor closed his mouth and opened his eyes and watched the Belt of Orion inch proudly across the sky. He felt a stirring in his loins and a tickle in his heart and an emptiness in his arms and a secret, whispering voice just out of range. He blinked again and it was the same. Far off he heard the train bellowing its approach. Nearby he felt the chaos and rumble of little souls trying to connect with other little souls. He coughed from deep within and produced a tasty nugget that landed right in the nearby dust.