They're both still here, but that's probably only because they have roots instead of feet. I can't really say they're thriving - certainly not the bamboo - but I did give them the only window that catches the sun.
I dreamed of an emaciated wolf with a long hook-shaped lower jaw this morning stalking deer twice its size in my backyard. It had a single pup howling in the grass right outside my door, tipping over backwards as it raised it's head in full howl. The deer weren't overly concerned.
I got a haircut yesterday in sort of a tough guy barbershop in a small city I don't know very well. It was dank with weed smell, and three of the five barbers talked incessantly, and not to each other, or to anyone else I could identify. Cocaine or meth or some other variety of amphetamine, I'm guessing. The one that spent half an hour cutting my hair had a single ear bud in his ear. He answered a phone call. Told me it was someone telling him it was his turn in Scrabble.
I didn't make any conversation.
A few minute later my barber says to no one, "Yeah, a bungalow. I want one. I don't know what one is, but I want it."
I couldn't help but lol.
"I'm 45," he said to me. "I can't workout like I used to and I'm losing weight. People keep asking me if I'm sick. I'm not sick! Just let me get old by myself. Fuck."
"Do I look sick to you?" he asks.
He's looking me square in the face pulling one lower eyelid down low. His eye looks both wild and burned out. His cheeks are hollow.
"Nothing a bungalow won't fix," I answer.
We laugh.
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Spring requires the sacrifice of its frontline fanatics. Maniacs and their super-charged circuitry, psychotic breakers in the first year of medical school, kamikaze-drug-eaters and speakers of the primary process, pummeled idealists, those who self-crucify for their screaming taboo desires, and so many more.
Call it the careening of progress, the bloody fangs of nature, an apocalypse in full bloom. We are just a swirl of blowing leaves with ideas. We are a bloody fucking parasitic mess. A planetary skin disease. Often contemptible, frequently loathsome, sometimes endearing.
Always worthy of love and in need of mercy.
Redeemable?
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You've had many names. Einstein said something about intelligence being the ability to adapt. Remembering your intelligence, your energy and your strength now.
I felt you around here last night - in the atmosphere.
What if I say to you that I feel your true name but cannot speak it? The name god gave you - Nature, the Universe - before your parents and this human form.
What if I told you I saw you running with horses?
Or shining in the sky?
Spring requires the sacrifice of its frontline fanatics.
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The past month has been sedentary and it's made me fatter and weaker. I walked in the sun today for a couple of hours through the bare silent kingdom of oaks. I heard the startled chirp of a chipmunk. I saw the tail end of a porcupine who hid from me under a pine bough thinking, if I can't see you, you can't see me. So I pretended not to. It was nearly silent out there and restorative. I felt sane when I walked out of the woods and into the field. There were two teenagers there. One was operating a metal detector, and both looked a little alarmed to see me there. They call this area Treasure Valley.
"We're looking for the treasure," one boy said.
"It's a big valley, " I said.
The valley is the treasure, boys. That's what I should have said.
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