October 2019: That Time of Year

 

10/19/2019: Up at about 5 AM. Prayers, catechism, Bible. Wrote up to page 30 on BB2 [Bob’s Book 2]. Dressed, ate some ramen, and left for The Texas Cooler about 7:10 AM; got there and waited a bit while the lady finished filling the ice machine, then got a Powerball. Walked back (a little warm, as I'd worn my vest) and got back at the stroke of 8 AM. About 9 AM laid down on the couch and awoke at 11 AM. Caught up diary. Watched some Simpson Halloween. Ramen about 1 PM.

2:30 PM: soaked feet in pool. Head much licked by Rotts [Rottweilers]. 3:PM: Prayed Rosary. Watched some House.

In the evening, Andy brought me out the leftover chicken salad, some grapes, and bananas.

 
I watched some Ripping Yarns while I ate, and when I took the bowl in, I saw what I had rather suspected, that they had gone to Eckman's Toy and Comic show. Kameron had about six bags full of toys and Susan had at least 4 new cookie jars. I really didn't mind not going because 1) I had no money and 2) there hadn't been - and really isn't much anymore - stuff that I had wanted. And me legs are shit. So they could have told me what they were doing without any fear that I'd want to go along.

Looking at all the shows - Sherlock Holmes, Michael Palin stuff - from the 80's keeps reminding me of a world that was gone, a moderate world both conservative and progressive. The scales swing too wildly now.

Turned the AC on after having it off for a couple of days. Getting ready to sleep by 10 PM, I think.

 

10/20/2019: Up at 5:30 AM. Showered, dressed, straightened house. Prayers, catechism, Bible. 6:38 AM caught up diary. Ready to leave by 7 AM; it will be a rather dark walk, as the sun won't rise till about 7:30 AM.

So, church today seemed rather flat; Father Greg made a lot of mis-reads, as if he were distracted. Good thing that doesn't affect the efficacy of the Mass. Came home, made my last 2 ramen for breakfast (and a couple of bananas). Did nothing but putter around (read some Poe). At lunch finished off the other two bananas.

Watched an episode of Saints and Scoundrels (Kolbe v. Goebbels). In the evening I found I still had half a package of chocolate grahams that I had forgotten. To show how bored I am I actually watched the Fox animation block (The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 30 - Episode 666. Sigh). Afterwards I found by scrabbling around I actually had a dollar worth of change (mostly pennies), so I could have bought some more ramen if I wanted to. Too late now.

I started reading my 2018 Diary and found to my dismay that about the last 1/3 of it was missing. Was able to recover it by going to my e-mail archives, where I had thankfully banked it.

 

10/21/2019: It is impressed on me how little of the year is left, and how soon it will be 2020. May we all see clearer then.

Woke up about 5:30. Wrote down Grizzly Bear and Terminator dream. Hear (I think) drips or rain outside. Now 6:30 AM. Must pray and write. End of Chapter 1 of BB2 in sight.

Wrote up to where Pa comes in. Looked out about 8:25 AM and saw that Susan was already gone, so went ahead and started wash, made chicken salad, made my morning ramen, ate it, then started broccoli salad. S and Kam came back about 9:45 AM; he had gone to the dentist. S left; I changed loads; K and I went out about 10:22 AM; I was way ahead of schedule. Then the bus doesn't get here until 11:03 AM. That's 40 MINUTES of my life I won't ever get back, most of it standing because the bench is too wet, in fact two of the seats have standing puddles. K a bundle of nerves. When I can finally go in and finish the salad my legs are a mess of twangling tendons. Finish up, change loads, go in to fold and listen to GGACP, and the connection gets knocked off in 3 minutes. I console myself that I am still ahead of schedule, as I usually don't make the broccoli salad before 1 PM anyway, and the wash is almost done. It's 11:55 AM; I just heard what I assume is the pool guy go through the gate.

Little before 4 PM went the usual schedule. Watched "The Devil and Daniel Webster" on TMC.

Afterwards about 7 PM finished BB2 Chapter One and sent it off to John. Went in to wash up and found that Andy hadn't been back yet and was in fact not expected until later. I said call me and I'd clean up, but it's almost midnight so I don't think that's gonna happen. Kam came in and we read riddles to each other for a bit, and I got the mini-pecan pie recipe from Amy as per Susan's request and sent it to her in an e-mail. And now I've suddenly remembered the Rosary and have to be sure I stay up long enough to do that.

 

10/22/2019: Got up about 8 AM. Got dressed, straightened up house. Prayed, catechism, Bible. Went in at 9 AM and got the stuff to make Kam bacon and eggs. Took him breakfast, then made my ramen. We went out about 10:20 AM (a little early because of yesterday) and waited till about 10:35 AM. There were a ton of monarch butterflies flying around. Went in about 1 PM to get lunch.

John called me; he congratulated me on the chapter, then reminded me that yesterday was the 13th anniversary of Mike's passing, and today was the 20th of Mom's. Now I understand the butterflies. He's going to bring me the pay tomorrow afternoon. Rosary. At 3 PM Kenny called, and we talked a while about the remembrances. Made supper and grassed and fed the pets; sausages, cabbage and taters. Marx Brothers movies on all day that I dipped in and out of. Connectivity for the computer very poor.

Watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" at 7 PM. Went in to wash up at 8 PM and found the back door screen mysteriously on the hook; no one claims to have done it. Made Kameron some TX Toast.

Notes

Father Greg had been doing rather poorly (strokes and falls) and has since retired. The anniversary of Mike's and Mom's passing is often marked by vast clouds of butterflies (and sometimes dragonflies). Perhaps it's just that time of year, but natural coincidences are often signs too, I oftensometimes think.

Long Thoughts

 

It is odd to think that today a child born on the day my brother Mike passed away would be eighteen years old.

'Tis Here! 'Tis There! 'Tis Gone!

 

Where HAVE All The Flowers Gone?

               https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5S_FrupCjE

This is from Glenn Campbell's Musical West (1974). I saw this one evening when we were over at Uncle Monroe's and Aunt Melva's. It caught my attention at the time because it was by Burl Ives and we listened to his Little White Duck album all the time. Fifty years ago. >sigh<

The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Four)

 

He hadn't gone three steps when he became aware that his feet were sopping in cold water. Apparently the rains from outside were trickling into the passage. He instinctively turned back to get his boots and found the way back had indeed vanished. A rough featureless stone wall blocked his retreat. He reached out in panic and touched its immovable surface, then pounded on it to no effect.

          He looked forward again. The pale light continued to withdraw, growing ever fainter.  In despair of any alternative, he hurried after it.

          He put his hand out to the uneven sides of the tunnel to steady himself then pulled back in disgust. The passageway must have been habitually damp, because the walls were coated with a spongy wet mass that sank under his touch, and oozed a light amber mucus where it was pressed. He almost wiped it on his coat, but then tried to simply shake it off. He never paused, but followed the dimming light.

          The tunnel debauched into a wider cave. Abernathy examined it for an instant in the fading iridescence. It seemed to be paved in huge cobblestones, domed like eggs covering the cavern floor. He stepped onto them, trying to tread as lightly as possible from step to step so as not to slip, and had made it halfway through when one crumbled under his foot, throwing him headlong onto the floor with a cracking fall.

          He raised himself up on his palms and looked down. He was not laying on stones, but on a crushed and collapsing bed of skulls. Bony eye-sockets glared up at him angrily. In the fading light, they seemed somehow strange, even to his untrained eye. He reached out tremulously and picked one up that was more or less intact to examine it. The dome was smaller than a typical man's, the teeth pointier. With a shudder he threw it aside and scrambled to his feet, bone fragments flying as he stood, and ran after the fleeing phosphorescence with crackling steps.

          As he stumbled along, he gave some thought to his lost case, of the candles in it that could be lighting his way, of the rum he could be swigging against the chilly cavern air, of the variety of weapons that could be snuggling comfortably in his hand as he plunged into the unknown depths of the earth. But mostly he thought of his bruised and now bleeding feet as he slapped along the damp passage, and how he should have gone to sleep in his boots.

          He figured he had passed through about three more caverns, largely unseen, but each somehow feeling smaller than the last, before the light passed completely from his sight. Whether it had fled beyond him into the depths or simply faded out, he could not tell. Dark red and purple dazzles played against the blackness of his gaze. He staggered on, heedlessly chasing the vanished light, until suddenly he staggered over a soft mound and fell headlong, barking the heels of his palms and jostling his jaws into the wet floor. His teeth rattled together in his head. He only had a second to register the pain, however, as the mound scrabbled out from under him, tumbling him onto his back, and a sudden voice in the darkness growled out "Here! Who you?"

          Abernathy sat in a stunned silence, the wind knocked out of him, body ringing with pain. There was a sharp crack, and a light flared up from a blue crystal, held in a clawed hand. For a moment its light seared across the agent's eyeballs, and he squinted hard, trying to make out the hunched figure behind it. Then either the gleam settled down or his sight adjusted, and he rather wished it hadn't.

          "Who you? Who you?" the figure asked, bringing its slobbering face closer, almost right into Abernathy's, and smelling hard and urgently with a wet, snuffling nose.

          The agent gazed at the creature, stunned. It was shorter even than he, but powerfully built, standing on crooked bandy legs. It reached out and gripped Abernathy's shoulder with a hand tipped with blunt black claws.

          "You lost?" it queried, looking at him quizzically.

          Abernathy simply stared, mouth agape. The bejowled mouth, walleyes, and under-slung teeth made a face that didn't seem fit to produce human speech. The sloping skull certainly didn't argue for complicated thought, and the creature's brow creased as it seemed to work on what seemed an unprecedented circumstance in its existence.

          Abernathy had almost gathered his wits enough to say something when the creature's face broke into a smile, as if it had suddenly remembered a solution.

          "Okay," it grinned happily. "I take Momma. Momma fix. Come with, this way. Come with."

          It began pulling the little agent forward into the dark, its glowing shard held high. Abernathy stumbled after him and got another shock when he put his hand on the creature to steady himself. What he had thought was pale skin turned out to be rough cream-colored fur.

          He was pulled along for yards of tunnels, kinking ever downward. After a bit he noticed that the phosphorescence was getting brighter, and then the strange gangrel creature had tossed its glowing chip away. In the growing light it looked at Abernathy with sidelong admiration.

          "You got nice clothes," it snaffled. "Like Poppa. Poppa give you clothes? Poppa got clothes. Poppa give nobody nuttin'." It looked downhearted and cringed a bit. "Poppa give me nuttin', bonk on head."

          "I'm sorry," Abernathy said, and he really was. The creature, for all its unnatural looks, seemed good-natured enough, and being just slightly smaller than he, not too alarming. "Have you a name?" he queried as they walked along.

          At the sound of the agent's voice the creature had flinched, as if hearing unfamiliar harmonics. It looked up into Abernathy's face with wincing, darting eyes, but seeing encouragement there, it suddenly broke out in a smile that seemed to split its face.

          "Trey Honore Goodboy," it said, tongue slurping around the syllables. "The Third. Poppa gimme name. Yup. That one thing Poppa gimme."

          "It is nice to meet you, Trey," he said, in the most assuring manner he could, though his voice quavered a little. "My name is Ambrose Abernathy."

          "Am... Amber...Natty," the other gobbled, trying to get the name past his floppy cheeks. Abernathy noticed with some apprehension his pointed, canine teeth. He smiled back nervously at him.

          "Tell me, er, Trey, where did you say we were going?"

          "We gonna see Momma. Momma help you, Momma knows everyt'ing. She help you, brudder. Lost brudder Natty. But we got to be quiet, see?" The creature's voice dropped down low, conspiratorially. "We go through Poppa's room, don' wake him up mebbe. Or he bonk us on the head, bonk bonk!"

          "Oh, yes, yes, shhh!" said the agent. "We don't want any trouble!" He wondered what sort of dread beast this Poppa might be. Visions of some kind of demogorgon danced in his brain, making him tread ever softer and shrink into himself as he followed the goblin figure deeper into the subterranean maze.

          He gasped, startled, when they entered a chamber and came upon a bulky lump of breathing flesh, puddled into one corner of the room. Three snorting, snoring heads protruded from the pile, limbs that were more or less legs and arms were curled under oozing layers of fat.

          His gasp must have been louder than he had hoped, because all the eyes sprang open, and the legs began to scramble under the heaving mass. Then he saw it break apart and squirm, and it stood revealed as three more of the gangrel creatures, each subtly different but all obviously of the same kin.

          "Who dis? Who dis?" said the largest of the three, sticking its long, quivering nose into Abernathy's face. It was taller than the little agent, but its limbs were thin and stick-like. Its splayed legs looked like they could barely hold it up.

          "Dis lost brudder Natty," said Trey earnestly. "Him gonna see Momma."

          This set the others huffing "Momma, Momma," enthusiastically. It was quite a while before they settled down. Another squat grey one, that looked like it could have been Trey's cousin, asked "We go with?"

          "Sure, sure," said Trey. "But sh, sh, sh! Don' wake Poppa, 'kay?"

          "Nope, nope, nope," the others yelped, and Abernathy soon found himself scuttling along in the center of an enthusiastic pack, drawing new members as more of the things joined as they scuttled along, which, for all their constant admonitions to each other of sh, sh, sh, seemed to the agent to be making an ungodly amount of noise.

          There must have been about fifty of the creatures around him, jostling through the tunnels, when Abernathy began noticing a change in their behavior. From a jovial, milling pack they started to grow subdued, not really quieter, but more worried. At last, after many winding ways, they reached a low, well-worn cave entrance.

Notes

"Bonk bonk, on the head!" might well qualify as a bit of Babelese, extracted from the Star Trek episode, "Miri." On re-reading I note a bit of analogous situation, with Abernathy and Trey somewhat echoing Bilbo and Gollum in the caves. The above is a sculpture by Patricia Piccinini.

Friday Fiction:The Case of Ambrose Abernathy (Part Three)

 

          First, he sat down on the shrouded bed for a few moments to calm his breathing and tried to make his mind as clear as still water. Not an easy task after the agitating presence of Miss Kindermass, and his dangling feet barely touched the floor once he had obtained his precarious perch on the mattress. It made him feel unstable, not grounded. When he had recovered his balance somewhat, he drew out his watcher and popped it open.

          The wooden needle floated on its bed of mercury with barely a quiver, no more than you would expect in any other old family house. He was disappointed. If there had ever been a presence in this room, it must not have been recently.

          "Should have asked," he muttered aloud as he put the little silver device away. He took up his pad and made a note to enquire about the time of the last disturbance, then hopped down to the floor. He pulled a magnifying ocular from the inner pocket of his jacket, bent wheezily down on his knees, and began examining the jointure of the wainscoting.

          The visual investigation revealed nothing, nor did tapping along the walls and floorboards. Drawing the cover from the bed showed it to be a simple cotton mattress on a carved walnut frame. The headboard was rivetted in place to the wall and immovable, but he took off his jacket and slid himself under the bed to get a look at the floor and the wall behind. He found nothing worse than a few dust mice, rolling disconsolately in the sudden air.

          He pulled himself out and stood, dusting his hands together and brushing his waistcoat down. Before he put the dustcover back in place he reached out, pressing and pulling the rosettes and scrolling on the headboard, just in case. It was all one solid piece of wood.

          This left only the wardrobe. This is it, he thought. The jiggery-pokery. This is probably the secret entrance to where the fat sister brews her home-made hootch, away from her disapproving siblings. That's why she's so daffy. That's what the smelling and rumbling is about. He walked over, boots clocking on the bare floorboards, and put his hand on the door-catch, ready to pull the closet open. There was a tap at the darkened window.

          He turned with a jerk. There, in the inky black glass, a pale puffy face looked back at him, appalled, eyes wide, mouth agape. For a second, his heart stopped with his breath.

          There was a flash of lightning that washed the image out, and he realized that it was his own face that looked back at him, underlit in the flickering lamp. There were more taps, and it became obvious they were heavy, driven drops of rain on the pane of glass. He exhaled, shakily, and his heart started again with a gallop. He giggled nervously at his foolishness, then stopped as the wind whipped the rain into lashing, pounding waves against the house.

          He turned back to the wardrobe and opened the door.

          Nothing sprang out at him. It was empty, and solid, and built into the wall. Knocking and pounding revealed no loose panels or echoing cavity behind the back, and the thin blade of his pocketknife found no entrance in crack or join. It simply smelled of dust and age. He sat back on his knees.

          So much for my last case, he thought bitterly. There was nothing more to do. He listened vacantly to the wind and rain howling beyond the window.

          The lock suddenly clanked and the bedroom door squawked open. Miss Kindermass stood looking down at the little man kneeling on the floor, the candle in her hand throwing shadows that emphasized her disapproving stare. She sniffed.

          "Supper's ready," she said. "Bring the lantern with you. We don't want any fires, now do we?" She gestured with the candle at the window. "And it looks like you'll be staying here tonight, I suppose. This storm isn't letting up any time soon."

          Supper proved to be a tasteless mash of turnips, not quite a soup and not quite a stew, and boiled beyond flavor and texture. While Abernathy toyed with his portion, Miss Kindermass tried to persuade her miniature sibling to eat more and the larger to at least go slower. The rain settled to a steady bucketing down, with the occasional crash of lightning. After the meal was done and her sisters settled again with fire and dog, she prepared the mystery chamber for his occupancy. This consisted of throwing an ancient horse-blanket on top of the bed and an old thunder-mug underneath.

          "Your last chance to find out anything useful, I suppose," she said, hand on the door. "Breakfast is at seven, and then you'll be on your way. We can't have a man hanging around here forever, especially after spending the night. What would the neighbors say? Good night, Mr. Abernathy." She was gone, taking the light, while his mind was still reeling with the implications of her words. The lock clicked. He was alone in the dark.

          More or less by feel, he removed his boots and crawled, otherwise fully clothed, under the covers. Despite his weariness, he stayed awake for what seemed forever, staring out into the darkness, thinking about his circumstances. Every now and then the room was lit by stabs of lightning. Eventually, somehow, he slept.

          Sometime in the night, he woke up. He couldn't tell quite when, for his watch had run down. The storm had settled and there was absolute quiet in the room. There was a pale, watery light, dimly blue, burning lowly, outlining the cracks in the wardrobe door. A strange faint chemical odor filled the room and tickled his nose.

          He sneezed and for a few seconds was afraid to open his eyes again, in case the eruption had blown the phenomenon away with its violence. A cautious peek showed the light still glimmering. As quietly as he could, he tossed the blanket off, got down from the bed, and tiptoed in his stocking feet to the wardrobe. He put a trembling hand to the pull, hesitated, then yanked it open in a flash.

          The back of the wall was just gone, disappeared. No door hanging open, no slot where it could have slid. In its place was a gap, a rough stone tunnel, illuminated by the phosphorescence, leading downward. He paused for just a second, thinking about going back for his boots, then steeled himself, and plunged forward into the passage.

          The little man felt rather than saw the wall close behind him. He almost turned, but then the light started to withdraw down the tunnel, as if it were being carried away. Rather than be left in darkness, he began following it. His teeth started to chatter. The floor was cold, damp, and uneven to his stockinged feet.

 

          "I must say, that was rather brave of you," Williams broke in. "Going through a mysterious portal, down a tunnel, without any of the usual precautions. I don't know that I would have done it."

          "I wish I hadn't," Abernathy moaned. "I wish I hadn't! The things I saw --"

          "Will be gotten to in their proper place," Frobisher said sternly. "Mr. Williams, please don't interrupt." He leaned forward on his cane, gestured. "Please go on, Abernathy."

Present Concerns

 

Illegal Immigration

Abortion

Government Spending