BIG BLACK EYED DOG

He yawns mid-sleep and then he opens his eyes. He wipes them with his hands and when he brings his hands down, they automatically come together like a man’s would in prayer. He is my best friend. I haven’t much to offer him but a smile. He doesn’t even ask for this much. If you have ever seen a man and his dog, the sort of dog that doesn’t need to be on a leash or ordered around, this is how I wanted it to be with him. It didn’t really matter to me who was the man and who was the dog. I guess it mattered to him though. For the fidelity of man’s best friend is something no man could even touch, he always said. He chose to become a dog. But, like he said, the fidelity of mere man is fleeting and I lost interest in him after a while. I saw him wandering the streets of the neighborhood from time to time. He always paused when he saw my car racing through. If there was a stop sign, his sad eyes may have lingered in mine for a moment. Sometimes I half expected him to cross in front of me, just so I would hit him with my car and then I would have to go to him; but he never did. He just sat there with his big black eyes, gazing up at me. He hoped, perhaps, I would eventually come back on my own. And then again, perhaps he did not hope for anything, just like he never asked for as much as a smile. I don’t think he changed a bit. He probably still wiped his eyes with his paws in the morning and then brought them down as if in prayer. Oh, how funny it would be to see a dog do that! Sometimes I miss him, especially those little antidotes of his. And when there is no one there in the morning but the cold floor, I miss him dearly. I felt the same way one morning when I took my car out and started looking for him to bring him home. I was so anxious that I drove straight through a stop sign and hit that big black eyed dog. I ran to him just as I had imagined doing all those times before when I thought he may walk out in front of my car. But he was already dead. I guess I’ll never know if he walked in front of my car on purpose that day, expecting me to come to a rolling stop, or if he was just wandering as I saw him doing often, searching for something he could not find. I guess it really doesn’t matter. For I was so hurt by my own lack of compassion for the creature, I decided to become a dog myself, you know, the sort that doesn’t need a leash or to be ordered around, and the sort that yawns mid-sleep and then opens his eyes, wipes them with his paws and brings them back down again like he is praying. So I guess I am looking for someone who will treat me much the opposite way as I treated my own best friend. I have been wandering the streets for a long while now; I wouldn’t pretend that I deserve any better. But if he taught me anything, that big black eyed dog, he taught me how to be a best friend and love dearly even when I’m not loved back. Most people, they haven’t got much to offer but a smile. I don’t even ask for this much.

NAKED WALK

There is a clown who is painted blue and red. His outfit is blue, his hair and nose and smile are red, of course, and his face is white. Some days, also, he has painted tears down his face, three black traced droplets under each eye. Like yesterday. Yesterday he had the tears traced under each eye, and he still had that big smile painted on, too. He walked the streets like he always does, and smiled at everyone with that big smile of his. Most people, they are too busy to notice him. Some people smile. No one is afraid (he is not the type of clown that scares people). There are people he talks to, too, other clowns who walk the streets much like he does. There is one, dressed in pink and yellow with a red nose and white face. He talks to her often, rather taken. She also has a big smile, and tears some days, painted down her face. She walks down the same streets he does, where no one really knows them under all that makeup. I think that is why some people, they are afraid of clowns, because you can’t really see who they are. Are they human? Who knows. But these are not the same type of clowns, as those. No, not at all. These are the type most people don’t even notice as anything special or lovely or scary at all, stop to smile at or run away from crying, depending on the clown. These are the type that are happy even when they are the sad type of clown. And when they go home and wipe off their makeup, they are just boys and girls who wouldn’t recognize each other anywhere but on those streets where they are clowns surrounded by human creatures, talking about such things as the past and the future and never really discussing or seeming to notice that they are both clowns. Today, he went without his makeup, that boy, and he was just a regular boy walking down the regular streets. More people took notice of him actually, him being completely naked like that and all and looking so different from them and everyone else. More people stopped and smiled at him, and even still, more people were afraid. He didn’t have this or that on to cover up his face or his tears or his smile; he didn’t have this or that on to cover up his body or his heart. And when he met the clown, pink and yellow with a red nose and white face, he introduced himself, but she didn’t recognize him without his makeup and she was afraid and she ran away. So then he had tears painted under each eye again, imagine that, but they weren’t the kind one paints on in the morning with a bit of black chalk; no, they were the kind that fall to the ground and make a big splash; they were the kind that cleaned his face of any residue makeup and made his eyes look more lovely than ever—his heart and his soul. And he sat there so naked, right where she had left him, waiting for her to come back; the girl, not the clown.

HOW MANY CHAIRS YOU NEED TO STAND ON TO SEE THE MOON

“I wonder how many chairs I need to stand on to see the moon?”

“It all depends on how high your window is.”

“Or how high the sky is?”

“Precisely, how high the sky is.”

“And how high the moon is in relation to the sky?”

“Precisely.”

“But wait, what if the moon is very low and the sky very high?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I would imagine if the moon is very low, and the sky very high, the moon would not be in the sky at all.”

“Where would it be, if not in the sky?”

“Well, depending on the height of the window, as you said, and the sky, depends on whether the moon would be in the sky, or in the window.”

“But what if it is in neither?”

“Then why would you need chairs to stand on in the first place?”

“Could it be on my finger?”

“The moon?”

“Yes.”

“The moon on your finger?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I suppose all things are possible.”

“All things?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Wow!”

“It is an exciting thing, isn’t it?”

“Could I be a moon on its finger?”

“A moon on the moon’s finger?”

“Yes.”

“The way I see it, you can never have too many moons.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because everyone, at one time or another, should be able to stand on as many chairs as they want, look out their window and see the moon; and there are a lot of windows in this world.”

“Then I better get to work.”

“Get to work on what?”

“Becoming a moon.”

“But what about the chairs?”

“Chairs?”

“I thought you were going to stack chairs and stand on them so that you could see the moon outside your window?”

“I was.”

“And now?”

“I figure they need a moon more than me, so I will become a moon in their window.”

“They?”

“Yes, the ones I love.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

“Including the moon?”

“Why, of course, she is my moon and most beautiful to me, and I love her so dearly now I will become a moon with her.”

“Why?”

“Because we all need a nightlight in this world, so we won’t get scared.”

“Or lonely?”

“Or lonely.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Why do you think we all love the moon and the way it fits on our finger?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dear me, how sad.”

“Why is that sad?”

“Well, how can you sleep at night without a nightlight that you love?”

“I don’t need a nightlight.”

“We all need a friend.”

“A friend?”

“Yes, someone you love so much you’d become a moon for them.”

“You have a friend?”

“Could I sleep, had I not?”

“But you don’t sleep.”

“Because I am a moon.”

TO MORE THAN HALF THE WORLD IT IS STILL DAYTIME

She told me, ‘You cannot sleepwalk unless you are asleep.’ ‘How do you know I am not asleep?’ I asked her. ‘You have been awake all this time I have been with you, and nothing has changed.’ ‘Perhaps I have been asleep the whole time,’ I said. ‘I think I would know that,’ she assured me, for she was a doctor after all and she had all those medical degrees on her wall. ‘How sure are you?’ I asked. ‘As sure as I can be without doing a few tests.’ ‘Test away,’ I said. And she got out her fancy equipment and did her tests and she had an even less resolute look on her face than when we started. ‘What do they tell you that you didn’t know already,’ I asked. And she said, ‘They are inconclusive.’ ‘Are you convinced now?’ I said. ‘Convinced of what—that you are awake or that you are asleep?’ ‘That no test in this world will tell you more than I have already told you.’ ‘Are you still insisting that you are asleep?’ she asked me, unbelieving. ‘I am sleepwalking,’ I said. ‘If you insist that you are sleepwalking then you must believe you are asleep.’ I offered no answer. And she looked at me in wonderment, and said, ‘What makes you so sure you are sleepwalking?’ ‘I have seen people do many good things in the daytime, and then at night I have seen them undo them all,’ I said. ‘What good did you do earlier today?’ ‘Oh, but the day is not over yet,’ I said; ‘to more than half the world it is still daytime and I don’t want to undo the good I have done, but there is more good to do.’ ‘You are here, now, and now it is late evening and the day is over.’ ‘How do you know?’ I asked her. And she said of this she was sure, without any tests. But I said that there was one test for all of it, which would finally reveal the truth. And I pointed to the window and we were looking out of it and watching the fish fly in amongst the clouds toward the sea and then they swam away as birds when they touched the water. She said, ‘There is nothing unusual about that.’ And I said, ‘No, not for a sleepwalker.’ And then I left, for it was still day and the hungry needed fed and the thirsty needed drink less the night should come and like a demon sweep it all away. So I stay awake, keeping vigil like a sleepwalker.

A BIG BALL OF PEOPLE ROLLING UP A HILL

‘God will never quit a beating heart,’ that’s what they told him before they left him all alone. And as he lay there he laughed as he always did. In some way everyone who came in and out of his life reminded him of the day he had stopped at the gas station and was waiting for the tank to fill, sitting on the back bumper of his car. When a couple of young men pulled up at the adjacent pump and one of them in the passenger seat asked him kindly for some help. And he said, what can I do for you? And the man asked for a couple bucks for his gas. And he felt bad because he had no money or even any change at all, and he told the man so. And the man did not believe him and he turned away, wanting nothing else. And that was that. He waited for his tank to be full and he drove away. It made everything so simple really, for life, he thought, is just one long stop at a gas station. Some people have cars full of people and others come in and out alone; some come in alone but leave with others; some come in with others and leave alone. Some have great big cars so that they will trade anything for the latest gadget, and some have not enough money for the cars they have or they run out of gas and they have to stop for a while or forever. But more than anything everyone is a stranger just stopping for a while at the gas station until their tank is full and it is time to leave. What made him laugh though was this picture he always had in his head of this tiny car with a thousand people trying to fit in, so that once they were all in they got stuck. Even so they invited in more people. Until there were so many people that the car got lost in the shuffle of all the legs and arms and everyone driving by had to step out of their cars on the middle of the road to look and see. And having seen nothing else as amazing in all their travels, what could they do but jump into that big ball of people? And you see, no one would need to stop for gas anymore or need any money of any kind, but there would just be this big ball of people rolling around. And the thing that intrigued him the most was when he thought about the man at the gas station who had asked him for money, and he wondered when he met him in that big ball of people, knowing now they would not be going their separate ways in a moment or two when the tank was full—what intrigued him the most was what the man would ask him for then, when the things that really mattered, really mattered. And he laughed still as everyone he met and loved, loved their cars the way they had them whether they be full of people or full of stuff or full of nothing in particular at all, and when the gas tank was full, it was time. For he thought, what use are cars when we are all trying to get to the same place? And that place to him was a big ball of people rolling up the hill like the heart beats and pumps blood up the vein.

WAITING FOR A BEAUTIFUL GOD

Today I watched him dance around the four corners of the globe. And when all the different people of all the different cultures and all the different colors walked by and asked him what he was doing, many in languages he could not understand, he said to them all, ‘I am waiting for a beautiful God.’ And they understood. Amazingly, the longest conversation he had along the way was with the birds. Sometimes they dropped like leaves from the sky all around him and he had to keep picking them up and throwing them back into the wind. ‘Fly away, fly away,’ he said. And they understood. And when they came back fluttering overhead, they said to him, ‘Fly away, fly away.’ And he understood. And from each man and from each bird he collected a feather and he made himself a pair of wings, but when he put every man and every bird on his back they were too heavy to fly. Until he put each man and he put each bird under his wings, and together they flew away to a beautiful God.

THE WATER SPRITE

Did I ever tell you about the water sprite?…

She could be found on the edge of any body of water, for anyone who was looking, that is, or anyone who knew her face. And of course there was a man who guarded her day and night and stood on a log with his walking stick, but did no more walking. The shepherd looked after his beautiful sprite, and the sun looked after him, and then the moon in the nights. The shepherd always faced the road whence he came and where he expected the other human creatures may follow, and the trees and the animals who came for a drink and were greeted adoringly by the sprite. So there he stood with his back to the sprite, afraid he may lose her to those whom approached, and to try to get his attention the sprite walked up and down the outstretches of water pretending it was a tide ebbing in and out; for she missed the ocean. She walked with a seashell in between each toe and shouted words of love when she reached the other side. Everyone responded who could hear her; except him, the one whom she loved. For the shepherd must remain just where he is, a statue on a log with a solemn walking stick, never moving, waiting for his water sprite to come lightly from the water and listening to the words ‘I love you’ echo across the surface from many years ago. For the sprite went out in search of the ocean.

AN OLD MAN AND A TEN POUND CATFISH

I was climbing trees for a living when I met him. I did not at first see him and he did not at first see me being so high as I was up in that tree. He was an older man covered in fishing gear from head to toe (the fishing gear was far older than the man himself to be sure). He had a puzzled look as he rambled with a pole in one hand and a net in the other before he finally found his spot and settled down, resolute. He cast. A half an hour later he reeled his line back in and started to walk toward me; and as he was walking he casually looked up at me in my tree as though he had known I was there all along, and he asked me, ‘How’s your day?’ ‘Good. Very good,’ I said. ‘How is your day?’ ‘Not good at all,’ he said. ‘All I need to catch is one ten pound catfish. Have you seen any around here?’ ‘No, I haven’t,’ I told him sorrowfully, looking out over the murky sewage water. ‘All I need is just one catfish,’ he said, and then he kept walking by. For about ten minutes after he left I didn’t think much of it really. And I was up in my tree looking out over everything when clear out of the center of the water, like a witches brew, jumped an enormous catfish. Hell, I thought, who would’ve guessed.

PATCHWORK

One day I decided that I would knit scarves for all the homeless people in my town. So I went out and I bought everything I needed and I spread it all out on my kitchen table and I got ready to work. It was only then that I realized I did not know how to knit. So then I had all this yarn and several needles of various colors and sizes and types, and nothing to do with it all. With not much else to do having put all that time and effort and money into it already, I signed up for an old widows knitting class. When I got there they hardly noticed I wasn’t just like them; some squinted at me and that was about all. I sat down next to a woman with gray hair and thin as a twig and she asked me if I was cold. She asked me if I was cold when she was shivering in her seat, or should have been was she not. Of course I said no, but she covered me with half the quilt she was making anyway. There were many holes in it, as you can imagine, and many uneven stitches; nonetheless, it was warm. Finally after I had been there a few times, mostly just sitting there under a holey quilt, I said to the ladies, ‘I would like to learn how to knit scarves.’ ‘Knit scarves?’ asked the ladies, for it was far too easy a skill for them. ‘Why ever do you want to knit scarves, my dear?’ they asked me. ‘For the homeless,’ I said. And they were so touched they put down what they were doing and began to knit scarves right away. And within a few weeks we had two hundred scarves of which I had made three. The ladies gathered them for me and blessed me as I went out to give them to the homeless. And when I stepped outside it was suddenly warm and the sun was out and it was the middle of summer. Disheartened, I sat on the doorstep for quite some time, and then I put the scarves in my car and went back inside. Not knowing how much time had passed, the ladies greeted me like I had been gone a thousand years, and they asked me if we had made the homeless warm. I said they were very warm. And they were happy and told me they would teach me patchwork now. They said, ‘No one patch is good without its neighbors.’ I agreed and I sat down with them around the quilt.

ELEVEN ELEVEN

He had more than 20 clocks in his room. I am not sure how many exactly; he didn’t give me time to count them all. But his room was quite quiet, you see, because not a single clock worked. I asked him, why have so many clocks that don’t work. He said something about the time always ticking away on his life. One of his clocks amused me. It was yellow with colored numbers and crayons for hands. I asked him if I could have it. He said, what did he care, time would tick away regardless. So I took it. I put it up in my room. My room is pretty empty, other than the windows, and the white walls, and the angel I made out of pipe cleaners and a clothes pin; and now, the clock. As far as I can tell, the clock says it is 11:11. I don’t know if it said this originally, or if things got moved and adjusted themselves in the transportation, but I find this very humorous, as it is my favorite time. The time with the most repeated numbers and the most syllables, too. I was actually going to put batteries in it so that it would work, but I am rather enjoying the fact that it is set to my favorite time. So I still don’t know what time it is and I don’t know how old I would be if I didn’t know how old I was. I figure the time being eleven eleven every day is a pretty nice place to be; and I figure the sun will rise and set and I will keep breathing; the birds will sing their praises and wake me up in the morning even when I haven’t gotten to sleep; they will teach me to fly, if I wish, but not before I am ready; then in the sunrise I will sing my praises and fly away, too; I already have, it’s just hard to know how far I’ve flown when I still have so much further to fly; most of all, I figure the crickets grave tune would have broken my heart anyway, even if it wasn’t already broken. So, when I went back to see my brother with all the clocks again, I was going to set them to his favorite time, thinking this had something to do with anything, but when I got there every one of the clocks was ticking away. I asked him what happened. He didn’t understand. I asked him again, asking why all his clocks were working now. He still didn’t understand. He said they were always working, and ticking away his life. I said, no, for it is the sunrise and sunset that make each day come and go, and the days of your life pass you by, and you can do as much or as little with them as you wish to do.