Dramatis Personae

Quite a few voices have spoken on the virtual pages of this blog, and I figured that it was time I introduced them all.

So far we've heard from Winston, Martin, Simon, Alex, Edward, Clive and Simon.

Rather than talk about them all at once, I really think each of them deserves his own post. So, my task is to think about how best to capture the personality of each of them for you, gentle reader.

This shall be pursued in future entries.

Shouting Down a Barrel

OK. Haven't check the old blog for a few weeks, so tonight I check in. After each entry, the same message - "0 comments." So I begin to wonder - is no one reading, or are the entries too bland to generate any reaction?

Hello?

Anyone out there?

Autumn Walk

With The Wounded

Thwack!
A chunk of firewood jumps a few inches off the chopping block. It parts down the middle with a tearing sound. The two halves fall on either side of the block.
Thock!
Another piece, stove-length, splits in two. The pieces fly across the yard in opposite directions.
Crick!
The axe misses the center of this piece and merely shaves a slice off bark off the edge. The piece wobbles a little, then falls sideways off the chopping block. I set my axe down, pick up the piece, and put it back on the block. I pick up the axe again and raise it high over my right shoulder. Its blade shines in the steely sun. The axe falls with single-mindedness of purpose and cleaves the waiting piece of wood.
I set the axe down for a moment. My arm is just beginning to ache. It feels like there is a steel band running the length of my upper arm, buried deep beneath the muscles and sinews, slowly getting tighter. I miss my other arm. They talk about people experiencing phantom pain, but I think there's more to it than that. I feel my missing arm all the time. I feel it working beside me, silently tightening its grip on the handle of my axe. But the help it offers is only imaginary; my good arm tires quickly. Looking at the pile of wood that remains to be split, I figure I have a good three hours of work ahead of me. In a half hour or so the pain will begin. The steel band will tighten and extend, across my shoulders, down my arm, down my back.
All the same, I've gotten pretty good at chopping wood one-handed. It's almost twice as slow as doing it two-handed. It can be dangerous, too. Without that second, steadying hand on its handle, an axe can often turn treacherous and slip as it bites into the wood you are splitting. Often as not, it ends up trying to split you. The toes of my boots have several notches and nicks that were taken out by a hungry axe. Fortunately, the axe hasn't reached my own toes yet.
Despite the frustrations and dangers, the work has its own pleasant rhythm. Stand a piece of wood on the block, pointing it upright as it grew when it was part of a tree. Pick up the axe that you left leaning against the chopping block. Slide your hand along the smooth wood of the handle to that critical point where you will have maximum control and power. Raise the axe over your shoulder. Bring it down, letting the strength of your arm, the weight of the axe head, and the pull of gravity come together to deliver an irresistible force. Feel the axe bite into the wood. Feel the impact punch the breath out of you. Watch the pieces tumble across the yard with the musical rattle of well-seasoned wood. Stand the axe against the chopping block, pick up another piece, and start again.
The cycle is soothing, almost hypnotic. I become a chopping machine, full of power,. My arm bulges inside its shirt sleeve. Below the elbow, where I have rolled up the sleeve--no mean trick for a one-armed man-the veins swell under the skin like serpents.
It's getting warm out here in the yard. Warm, but not hot and ugly, as it often gets on the other side. It never gets very hot here. It never really gets cold, either. Here you might think it was always the middle of October. Air as cool as water, sky the blue of an aster. The sun burns yellow and kind overhead. You almost expect to see a face on its glowing disk, crayoned by a little kid's fat hand. Every evening is cool and purple and quiet. Every night is black and star-spangled, with a peace that is scarcely broken by the sound of waves on the shore, an owl in the woods, the bark of a fox in the meadow. The weather here is truly perfect.
Still, here in the dooryard of the parsonage where I have been sent to split wood, standing in front of the gray pine siding of the woodshed, just beyond the hollyhocks which buzz with lazy bees, it is a little too warm for splitting wood. I pull off my shirt and hang it on a rusty nail that is stuck in the door frame of the wood shed.
My right arm is brown and hard, and it looks like it has been carved out of oak. The stump of my left arm is round and smooth, a hard cylinder that projects from my shoulder. The skin at the end has healed in a curious point that I like to touch.
I offer my back to the sun, stretching and working out the kinks in my back, shoulder, and arm. The sun embraces me as it embraces the whole town, gently warming its entire length. Our town is spread across a long, narrow island that is some ten miles long and no more than one mile wide. We are about eight miles from the mainland. That explains the weather, at least to some extent. Here we are well away from the stuffy, muggy summers and frigid, damp winters of the mainland. Most of the time we can't even see the other side. It is usually obscured by vast banks of fog which smoke and roil above the water. The fog never touches us. It hugs the opposite shore. When the ferry comes through it on one of its infrequent trips it appears to be cutting through a palpable gray wall. Very rarely, when the wind is from the right direction, the fog rolls back for a few hours. Then we can see some houses on the green, enfolding hills, and a lonely white tower. A low pier juts out into the water over there. Nine or ten sailboats are tied up in the harbor. Sway-back lobster boats chug from trap to trap. The horizon is spiky with pine trees. Then the wind suddenly swings around and the fog snaps shut with a clang we can almost hear.
Though we rarely see the other side, no one ever longs for it.
We on the island are content. When the ferry comes it might be carrying seven, eight, or even ten people. It always leaves empty. No one ever leaves. Leaving is forbidden, of course, but that doesn't bother any of us. No one wants to leave. We have everything we want right here. Everything is clean and trig, spruce and trim. The island is beautiful. We have hills wooded with oak, pine, and hemlock, and cool marshes where we can hear the great blue heron utter his low, prehistoric croak. We can go from the waters of a quiet pond to the cold, hissing sea. We have quiet, rock-strewn coves and tremendous sandy beaches where the surf pounds and the spray flies higher than a man's head.
Our houses are well-kept and pleasing to the eye--steep-roofed Capes, saltboxes with gray, weathered clapboards and leaded windows, Victorians with gingerbread molding. Every house, from the sea captains' mansions to the sturdy fishermen's huts, has a well-tended garden and a lawn that is rich and green and never needs mowing. Our roads are narrow and winding, but always smooth and quiet and safe to travel. There are no cars here. We travel by foot or on horseback. Our blacksmith is a genial fellow and does a thriving business.
There is no crime on our island. No one ever locks his door. Everyone feels safe here.
Everything that we need is provided for us. Our clothing comes from the general store, where we can pick out whatever we want at no charge. If we leave our soiled laundry outside the door when we go to bed at night, we find it washed and pressed and neatly folded on the doorstep the next morning. Meals are served in the Town Hall three times a day, but those who choose to cook at home can find tempting fare at Lawson's grocery store, all of it free. Our medical care is excellent and costs us nothing. Our library is open on Tuesdays and Fridays. There are concerts, dances, and discussion groups in town every week. Without exception, everyone is cheerful and friendly. It's no wonder that no one ever wants to leave. And as long as each person satisfactorily performs the job he has been assigned, his place here is guaranteed indefinitely.
Everyone works here. Everyone is a productive member of our quaint preindustrial society. Job satisfaction is high, for we have all been assigned jobs that are uniquely suited to our needs. Butcher, baker, or candlestick maker, each does the job that is best for him. If each person does his job to the best of his ability, all is well.
An ell is attached to the back of the parsonage. It leads to the woodshed. With the parsonage it forms a sheltered corner, open to the south. A barn and a white picket fence comprise the other two sides of the square that is the back yard of the parsonage. Beyond the fence is four acres of pasture, giving way to the harbor where the ferry lands. In the ell there is a door and four windows. A face appears in one of those windows. It is a frowning, disapproving face. Its features are distorted by the wavy, old-fashioned glass; I can make out its expression and nothing more. I must get back to work.
I reach for another chunk of wood. Maple this time. It splits easily and cleanly. The newly exposed surfaces are white and almost shine in the sun. The next piece my hand falls on is elm. I've been avoiding this piece. Elm is difficult to split. But it has to be done, so I grab the large piece with my one hand and set it on the chopping block. I raise the axe.
Before I let it fall I glance at the window. The face is gone. That is good. I don't think we are watched constantly, but they always seem to know when one of us is shirking or slacking off. I've learned that it's best not to attract their attention.
I let the axe fall. It sticks in the elm, buried in a nest of tangled elm strings that smells like old cheese. I tug at the handle of the axe, then try to lift the whole thing, axe and log, to pound them both on the chopping block. My arm stump flails wildly in the air beside me, trying to help. The elm chunk crashes down on the block with a thud and sprays open into three or four pieces. My body is pulled forward by the momentum of the falling axe and log. I lose my balance and tumble toward the block. Now free of the elm, the axe continues downward. My right arm, still obeying an order my panicking brain can not countermand, buries the head of the axe in the dirt where my right foot was before I fell,., Continuing my fall, I hit the chopping block with both shins, then roll over onto the heap of already-split wood.
I sit up and slowly raise my pant legs. Blood is oozing like oil from both legs, but the scrapes are shallow and not serious,. I pull my bandana out of my back pocket and mop up the blood.
I look at my axe, buried deep in the earth and wood chips in front of the chopping block like the sword in the stone. Excalibur. I know I should be feeling frightened or upset, but I am not. I merely get up and pull the axe out of the ground. With my bandana I wipe the black, sour smelling earth from the blade. Luckily, there were no nicks. I would surely catch hell if there were. I run my thumb along the blade and find that it is nearly as sharp as ever. Certainly sharp enough to cut off the end of my foot if I hadn't fallen first. Not that cutting my foot off would have mattered.
You see, part of me is already missing. That's why I am here. Here, in this town, with its white houses, neat lawns, village green, town hall, well-attended church, tree-lined roads--here in this town which could pass for almost any quaint New England island town peacefully going about its business under a placid October sky, every single one of us is maimed, disfigured, or wounded. That is why we came here, and that is why we will stay.
That may be hard to imagine. Let me show you. Take the house next door, the one with the big barn--much bigger than the one attached to the parsonage--and the large fields. That's the most prosperous farm on the island. It is run by a man with no hands.
Across the green, in the small brown saltbox beside the general store lives a man who lost both feet in an accident. He's the town postman. His wife, who was born with a twisted arm, raises everlasting flowers and sells dried arrangements.
Two houses down from them, in the red Cape with eye dormers, lives a strange case. This woman has no apparent defects, yet her wound is probably one of the most grievous of any who are allowed to walk about freely in town. One day, back on the other side, she was in the dentist's chair. The dentist had just drilled out a cavity in one of her six year molars and was preparing to fill the hole. Without warning, the woman suddenly decided that she had had enough and got out of the chair. She tore off the little blue paper bib the dental assistant had fastened around her neck, threw it on the floor, and walked calmly out of the office. The dentist chased her into the street, ordering and then begging her to return. The three men sitting in the waiting room took one look at what was going on and left. Two of them never came back. The dentist was distraught. He searched for the woman for weeks, calling her apartment several times a day and even running ads in the local paper. Nothing worked. He never found her. In a fit of depression he closed his office for a week. When he reopened he found that he could no longer work. He moped around for a few months, then suffered a nervous breakdown and retired to Florida.
The woman, on the other hand, found a new apartment in a nearby town. The hole in her tooth felt like a cavern when she probed it with her quivering, delighted tongue. It was actually only an eighth of an inch in diameter. It became her secret joy. She carried it around inside her mouth like a treasure. She lived this way for three or four months until she was found and brought here. They gave her a comfortable house to live in and found her the perfect job. She runs the Island Candy Shoppe. The spelling was her idea. She makes the most delicious nougats and cremes on either side of the water. Of course, she is required to sample all of her wares before they can be sold. Each piece of candy she tastes melts in her mouth, flooding the hole in her tooth with sweet syrup. The pain it causes her is excruciating. She tells me so every time I visit her shop. "I am that hole in my tooth," she says.
Notice the long white building on the west side of the green, the one with the green shutters and the horse chestnut tree on the lawn. We call it the Inn, though it has never been used as such, at least since I've been here. The Inn is reserved for other uses. It is in the Inn that they keep the special cases, the ones who should not be seen. In the Inn there is a woman who has plucked out every hair on her entire body and lies naked on a cot, as white and soft as a larva. There is a man who will eat nothing but the skin from the bottoms of his feet. There is a girl who hides under her blankets every night and digs at the palms of her hands with the point of a rusty safety pin. They're not pretty, the residents of the Inn. That is why they are kept out of sight. Out of sight, but not quite out of earshot. If you go by the Inn on a quiet evening you can hear them all inside, moaning in the sweet ecstasy of their pain.
The windows of the Inn look out, but no one may look in. The curtains are always drawn. The doors are always kept locked. Even the massive chimney with its four flues is screened at the top to prevent escapes. Once you go into the Inn, you never come out. But even in the Inn you may lead a productive life. The woman with no hair weaves wigs. The man with the peculiar appetite prepares the menu for the meals that are served in the Town Hall. The girl with the safety pin works in the laundry, plunging her torn, infected hands into hot soapy water every day.
The demand for places in town is quite high on the other side, I hear. It is easy to understand why. The food is good, the accommodations comfortable, the weather perfect. Once you are here you are assured of an appropriate job. It's no wonder that people are anxious to get a place here. It's like the joke about cemeteries and fences. People are dying to get in. That is why the town was built on an island, accessible only by ferry. Guess who runs the ferry,.
Still, people keep trying to get in. Some of them will try anything to get a place here. Just yesterday the ferryman told me about a woman who claimed her pierced ears made her eligible for admission. Of course, she was turned away.
So how did I get here, I hear you asking. You're hoping that I will shed some light on the true nature of this place by giving my side of the story. Let it suffice to say that I was one of the first to arrive here, when the town was built, and the town has been here a long, long time. I've seen them all come in, all maimed, all wounded. I've heard all their stories. I've felt all their pains.
You think, perhaps, that I might be one of them, the overseers of this place. Because I seem to know so much about the place and seem to know everyone's story, you suspect I know more than I am telling. That is very funny. Ha ha ha ha ha. Unfortunately, you are wrong. I am one of their favorites, and therefore have a little more mobility than most of us here, but I am not one of them. I may be, one day, but not now.
As for the story of how I got here, I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. Dear reader, I remember nothing before the moment I stepped off the ferry, bewildered, with the left sleeve of my shirt pinned up over the stump of an arm that shed not one drop of blood.
Even though I've been here for years and years and years, I remember very little. It's even difficult to remember what happened yesterday. You see, the longer you stay here, the less you remember. Each day is good. You labor each day under the clear autumn sky and go to bed every night feeling tired and satisfied. But every day is the same. Nothing changes. No one gets older. Everything stays the same. It feels like I've been here forever. Maybe I have.
Rap! Rap! Rap!
A sharp motion at the window brings me quickly to my feet. The blurry face appeared behind the curtains again, indistinct except for its angry expression. I nodd nervously in the direction of the window. I know I am in trouble now. Quickly, I set another chunk of wood on the chopping block, pick up my axe and get back to work.
The sun is lower now, a bright gold ball touching the spiky tops of the dark pines. The water in the bay beyond the house has settled into a deeper blue. A light breeze, scented with the clean tang of salt and balsam ruffles my shirt where it hangs on the nail outside the woodshed door. I begin to feel cold, but I don't dare stop to put my shirt on again. I work with a fury. The split pieces form a large jumbled stack beside the chopping block. Yet, with every piece I take the pile of unsplit wood seems to grow larger, not smaller, until unsplit wood fills the yard and spills over the back fence into the pasture.
Thwack!
Chunk!
Thock!

After Dark

You are walking after dark.

The moon and Venus hang brilliant, just above the tops of the pines.

The owl sounds its peculiar call from deep in the woods

And you know that it is right.

The Tyranny of Email

Winston wishes to address the group:

"Hello. This is the first time I've written, and I hope that what I write won't lead anyone to make assumptions about my character or temperament.

I used to be an avid emailer. I kept up correspondence with relatives, friends, and people I "met" on email lists and groups. I don't know how I did it, but somehow I manged to crank out emails week after week.

Well, as the song goes, the thrill is gone. I don't think I write anything now that's not work related - or if I do write it's but once or twice a week.

The immediacy of email has established a new set of expectations. Because you CAN send a message to someone in what seems to be a blink of the eye, people have come to expect that you WILL reply to their emails as soon as they come in. As if you didn't already have a million other things to do. Or the desire to have some time of your own that is not subject to the needs and wants of others.

It gets really annoying when someone emails you, you don't reply right away, and the arch comment comes slithering into your "In" box from the impatient correspondent. The twit assumes that he/she is foremost in your attention and deserves your full consideration.

My place of business uses an intranet email client, and one of its features is a sort of "Classifieds" section. I put up a few items for sale, and have sold nearly all of them. Most people have been reasonable about delivery time, method of payment, etc., but the one person I wasn't able to answer right away sent a snotty little message the next morning. Its subject heading was "?" and the gist of the message was "well, how would you like me to take this thing off your hands?" I really wanted to write back with "Have you thought about working on those hostility issues?" but my better nature prevailed.

Call me a grump or a curmudgeon or whatever, but email has assumed for me the same status as the phone call that comes when you're in the middle of dinner. I'll show it who is master."

Well Winston. That was quite a debut. You may have a few hostility issues of your own to work on. But what do I know?

Emotional

Gordon has a complaint to make. It has to do with a word that has found its way into every day use, and it's got him quite emotional . . . er, upset.

The word is "emotional." People use the word all the time. "It was an emotional reunion." "I got emotional at the end of that movie." "When I told her I wanted to end our relationship, she became emotional."

A quick Google search finds the word used in these contexts:

"Ira Hayes definitely was an emotional fellow,"

[he] “was emotional, absolutely and he was from the time that he found out"

[the] "photographer's journey was emotional"

Ok. So, which emotion are we talking about? Here are a few from which we can choose, listed alphabetically:

Acceptance, Agitation, Alarm, Amusement, Anger, Angst, Annoyance, Anticipation, Apprehension, Apathy, Awe, Bitterness, Boredom Betrayal, Calmness, Cautiousness, Comfort, Contentment, Confidence, Courage, Depression, Disappointment, Discontentment, Disgust, Desire, Delight. Determination, Elation or Euphoria, Embarrassment, Ennui, Envy, Ecstasy, Fear, Friendship, Frustration, Glee, Gladness, Gratitude, Grief, Guilt, Hate, Happiness, Homesickness, Honor, Hope, Horror, Humility, Impatience, Inadequacy, Irritability, Joy, Jealousy, Kindness, Loneliness, Love, Lust, Melancholy, Modesty, Nervousness, Negativity, Nostalgia, Pain, Patience, Peace, Phobia, Pity, Pride, Rage, Regret, Remorse, Resentment, Sadness, Schadenfreude, Self-pity, Shame, Shyness, Sorrow, Shock,Suffering, Surprise, Suspense, Unhappiness, Vulnerability, Worry, Yearning, Zest

So . . . which one is it?

******************************

Alright - Gordon's dictionary lists a few synonyms for emotional which blow his argument out of the water: "during the speech we all became a little emotional tearful, teary-eyed, sad, choked up, weepy; formal literary lachrymose. antonym dry-eyed." But Gordon wants more precision. If there's a word for it, then use the word, he says. Don't settle for an approximation. That's what Gordon says.

Bottled Water - Bad for the Earth and Your Wallet?

The habit of buying bottled water is now firmly ingrained in the US and in many other countries. The feeling is that bottled water is safer and better for one's health than the water that comes from the tap.

Unfortunately, that almost always isn't so, and the bottled water habit is producing mountains of unneccesary trash and consuming vast amounts of energy.

At $10.00 (U.S.) per gallon, bottled water is about 10,000 times more expensive than the water that comes from the tap. Add to that the cost to the environment from the transportation of bottled water (sometimes as far as 2,700 miles from source to buyer) and bottled water becomes an even worse deal for us all.

It's easy to buy a safe, reusable bottle and fill it with your own tap water. And simple, inexpensive filters that attach to your faucet or sit on your countertop can easily remove any off smell or taste your tap water might have.

Is Your Coffee Killing Birds?

Coffee drinkers - are you enjoying your daily java at the expense of the habitat of millions of song birds?

Coffee growers in Central and South America are destroying forests to plant a new variety of coffee bush. This is leaving migratory birds without a southern home, and possibly contributing to their demise.

A trend toward growing a new variety of coffee bush, called Robusta, rather than the traditionally grown Arabica variety is to blame. Arabica coffee is grown in shade, beneath the canopy of established forests. The new Robusta variety requires full sunlight, which means that in order to grow it, the forests that migratory song birds call home must be destroyed.

Those who are concerned about this should look for - and start requesting - "bird friendly, shade-grown" coffee.

See this site for more information about the many bird species that are affected. http://www.camacdonald.com/birding/shadecoffee.html

Blah Blah Blah

Friend Alex was in a right chord the last time I saw him. He was going on about blogs, and bloggers in particular. "It's all blah, blah, blah, innit? A bunch of wankers who think that what they have to say is so important that they have to broadcast it to the world. It's all shite, innit? These bloggers, they're all mouth and no trousers. Everybody's talking and no one's listening."

I pointed out to him that I was going to write what he had to say in my blog. All he had to say was "Don't lumber me with your problems."

Thanks, mate.

Vacation's End

At the airport they wait for their flight home.

The sadness he has been holding inside all morning can no longer be contained. As he thinks of the loss of the fleeting, happy moments of the last few days he is overcome with emotion. The thought of leaving his son is too much. He can not hold back the tears any longer. He goes to the men's room, sits in a stall, and sobs.

As he sits there, he wonders what the man in the adjacent stall with his pants around his ankles must be thinking.

After a while he decides that it is time to stop crying. He takes in a few long, shuddering breaths, then blows his nose on a folded length of toilet paper. He washes his face with cold water and leaves the men's room.

He buys a newspaper and returns to his seat at the gate, waiting for their flight to be called.

It snows

Winter solitude -
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

- Basho


Just being here,
I am here,
And the snow falls.

- Issa


Loneliness, my everyday life.
The sweeping winds pass on the night-bell sound.

- Ching An

So, it's not all just been smoke and mirrors

Alex here.

So the US, in all its wisdom, has decided that global warming is a reality. Pinch me and tell me that I'm not asleep (sorry, Clive.)

The arrogance of that place and the people who run it never ceases to amaze me. For years global warming was just a "theory," or better yet, a hoax being perpetrated on the American people. (And you call yourself a scientist, Michael Crichton.) Now, at last, the world's last super power will admit what the rest of the world has known for years.

Perhaps there should be term limits for empires, as there are for some elected positions in the US. Hmm . . . how many centuries should an empire be allowed before it has to step aside and let the next one take over? That's a question that will require some thought.

Worth Saving?

I had a chance to sit down with Edward for a pint this evening, and he got to telling me about some troubling thoughts he's had lately. He's beginning to feel like mankind is not worth saving. For a long time he's been unhappy about the state of things - the wars, the way governments manipulate us, the way global warming is overtaking us but no one seems to be willing to do anything about it. But he's always thought, "Well, that's the politicians who are thinking that way (or not thinking, you may well argue.)" The people he knows personally feel quite differently. But today he took that line of reasoning a bit further. Who elects these politicians and allows them to have such fearsome powers over us? Why, we do. It's like that bumper sticker says, "We deserve the politicians we get." And then there's the other one, the one that says "If you're not outraged, you haven't been paying attention." OK, Edward wonders - where's the outrage? Too bad for the few of us who are trying to solve the problems of the world. The rest of the lot is perfectly happy to drive their SUVs, eat their high fructose corn syrup laden foods, get fat and watch telly. They'd fiddle while Rome burns, only learning to play the fiddle is too much work. They deserve what's coming, Edward said tonight with a mournful shake of his head.

Cheer up, I told him. Have you had your medications checked recently? Or maybe what you need is another pint. This one's on me.

Clive's Sleep Study, Pt. 2

So Clive goes to hospital, and they wire him up from head to toe, and tell him to go to sleep. He's a bit disquieted by the video camera that's mounted on the wall opposite his bed, but to his surprise he dozes off and sleeps surprisingly well.

A few weeks later he returns to the doctor. The results are strange: all night long Clive spent only 3% of his time in REM sleep. Twenty-five percent is considered the norm. Most of the night he spent in either Stage One or Stage Two sleep - what the doctor called "useless sleep." It's no wonder he's been feeling so dragged out.

The doctor says come back for another sleep study, and we'll follow that up with a Multiple Sleep Latency Test. That's when you stay in hospital all day and take 4 or 5 naps.

Clive wishes he could go for the next sleep exam tonight, but the soonest they can get him in is Sept. 12, nearly a month from now. So the story slowly goes on. Meanwhile, Clive says he feels like he's in a fog, sleeping his life away.

On the irrelevance of classical music

Friend Alex called the other night, and we got to talking about music, and classical music in general. Alex, who is classically trained and owns an extensive CD collection - who has been know to be moved to tears by a Beethoven adagio or a Brahms symphony - tells me that he is tired of classical music. It's all noise, he says. It's all noise and emotion, and he's reached a point in his life at which he can no longer tolerate such excesses. "Why rub raw all the hurt and loss you've been trying to keep inside by willingly listening to a piece that will tear your heart out?" he asks.

Besides, he says, all that classical music, all those symphonies and sonatas and that lot, have become museum pieces. To go to a concert of classical music is to be surrounded by Q-Tips - skinny old people with white hair. Name the last piece of classical music that has amounted to anything, he challenged me. To find anything that will pass the test of time you have to go back to Bela Bleeding Bartok, and that's going back more than half a century. No, he says, the old stuff is all noise and emotion, and the new stuff is rubbish and will be relegated to the dust bin soon enough.

So Alex now tunes his iPod to the Polar Chimps, Emperor Rudolph and The Little Prince. I commented that classical music can hardly be called irrelevant if it can engender such a strong response from him, but Alex won't listen. He's funny that way.

Simon goes missing

It has happened to him often enough. In the early morning half-state between waking and opening his eyes Simon often finds himself not knowing where he is. His sense of disorientation is centered mainly on the relationship of his bed to the door. Because he doesn't know where he is, he can't remember where the door is. Then, as he rises to the surface of consciousness he feels the room realigning itself around him, until things snap into place with an almost audible click and he knows that he is in his own bedroom.

But this morning the feeling of disorientation went further than that. This morning Simon woke up not knowing who he was. There was none of that "oh, today's Saturday . . . I need to get to the post office before noon . . . I'll stop at the library . . . and there's a party this evening" that usually runs through his head when he wakes up. There was no thought but "who am I?" He seemed to be in a bare white room, and there was no question of finding the door because this room had no door at all. He lay in bed in the white room for seconds . . . maybe minutes. Then the white walls slowly took on color; the familiar objects of his bedroom slowly appeared, and Simon remembered that he was Simon.

And the strangest part of it all is that never during the experience did he feel at all alarmed.

Simon goes to a concert

Late Monday afternoon Simon got in his little silver car and drove to The City to attend a concert by his favorite band, The Little Prince. He went alone, as he does so many things. Although Simon has been a fan for almost ten years, and owns many of their albums, like "When You Are Feeling Naughty" and "The Disastrous Hostess," he had never seen the band live, and he was quite excited.

Simon arrived in The City early enough to get a place at the front of the queue, and when the doors opened he was able to take a spot only several feet from the stage. As there was no seating, Simon stood and waited forty-five minutes for the concert to begin. As he waited, he listened to the people around him talking. Simon saw that he was easily the oldest person there, but because of his age and the fact that he had chosen to dress all in black, he was invisible. All around him he heard people talking about songs and podcasts he liked to listen to, but since he was invisible he decided not to try to join a conversation.

The concert began with a performance by a group called Twin Photographers. Simon didn't know much about them, but when they started to play he decided that he did not like them. Every song sounded the same, with over-amplified drums and guitars. Simon saw the singers' mouths moving, but he heard their voices only occasionally above the din.

Mercifully, Twin Photographers stopped playing at nine o'clock, and the stage crew began setting up the stage for The Little Prince. The band took the stage at nine-thirty to a swell of applause and cheers from the crowd. Simon felt his spirits rise as each band member took his or her place at the microphones. They felt like old friends.

The concert was wonderful. Simon lost himself in every song. From time to time he caught himself locking gazes with members of the band. It was a strange sensation, but Simon imagined that the band members were thinking, "who's that guy who looks like someone's dad?" Simon was not invisible to the band.

The experience left Simon feeling elated for several days. However, by the third or fourth day he began to realize that the world of kinship he felt with the band members and their fans didn't really exist at all, because Simon was the only one who knew about it. He began to feel like the narrator in The Little Prince's newest song, "Little Hop Toad," whose best friend is a picture on the wall. Pictures are good listeners, but in the end they make poor friends.

gone

empty room.
empty walls.
empty windows.
empty shelves.

all gone;
nothing left.

close the door before the echoes get out.

Hiving the Bees

To the bee yard I go, garbed in white for the sacred ritual;
Like a priest I bear the box of humming bees before me.
I don my vestments: the helmet, veil, and gloves.
From their casket the bees drone their ancient chant.
Incense from the smoker drifts in lazy curls.

The box is struck upon the ground;
The voice of the choir swells.
Now the syrup can is withdrawn,
Now the queen and blessed attendants,
Couched in royal palanquin.
Now the hive is opened wide to receive them;
Ancient odors of beeswax and resin rise.

The queen is ensconced in the Holy of Holies;
Her buzzing minions are released to follow.
The devoted rise to swarm in dervish dances;
The pious crawl on the landing board,
Entering the temple in patient procession.

The lid is replaced, the hive is sealed.
For seven days and seven nights
It shall be left untouched,
The new queen and her subjects
Their mysteries to perform.