Hillcrest Lane

She finally had to be taken away.  Distant relatives had arrived and found her and the House in such a state of decay and squalor that their was no other choice but to institutionalize her and place the house for sale in the hopes of getting something out of it…if only a few thousand just for the land.

She had been slowly going insane, inside that old majestic farmhouse, for over a decade since her husband had died.  They said she had spent her days rambling aimlessly about the dark halls of the house.  The neighbors stayed away and the only time people saw her was when she came outside to feed the many stray cats that had taken up residence in the large over grown yard.  After she was gone and the house closed up, still filled with her lifetime… boxed and stacked inside, the house sat silent for six months—until it found me.

The house had been built in 1896 by a German immigrant—one with big dreams and a farmer’s budget.  It had a wrap around porch that had once been grand but had now fallen into sad disrepair.  As it is often in the south, each room of the house opened out onto the porch so that its inhabitants could partake of the night air on those hot and humid Texas evenings.  The whole house was leaning somewhat and looked askew unless you cocked your head.

I needed a home.  I had been given a full ride scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin and was set to start school in September-I just wanted to buy a place and as soon as school was out-- relocate.   I found the house on the Internet and from the moment I saw it I was fascinated with it.   It took some convincing, but I got my realtor to take me to see it.  She was very concerned for me, as the house was in a rural area and away from the hustle and bustle of Austin proper, where I was going to be attending school.  But I would not be swayed –I had to see the house.

We turned down a dirt road, the faded street sign read Hillcrest Lane.  On the left, an expansive meadow and on the right an overgrown  parcel of land… where  you could see this immense Angular roof jutting out of the trees.  It appeared, as if a spacecraft had landed in the trees, as you saw very little of the house itself.  A large tree stood in the front yard--spilt into two halves, one alive and one dead, the victim of a fiery bolt of lightening in a summer thunderstorm.    

When I got out of the car and got closer, I could see vines were growing up the side of the empty house.  As I walked toward the front porch steps, to my left I saw movement and two small kittens (about 8 or 9 weeks old) went running into the brush (one black kitten and one Tuxedo).  I saw this as a good sign, and when I looked down there was an odd object at my feet.  I picked it up and knew instantly what it was-a femur (not human!).  While this would probably freak most people out, I love bones and the femur was one of my favorites for anthropological reasons of course-another good sign. 

The steps were in very bad repair but I managed—my real estate agent would not come in with me.  The front door was lovely under the layers of grime and dirt I could see the etched glass in the door and the 100-year old hardware.  I opened the door and it was like walking into mad confusion.  Bright orange shag carpet covered the hardwood floors, the original 100 year old moldings were all there and there was even a stained glass window-but everything was dirty and covered in years of grime and worn from use.  The house was stuffed with relics- from many different decades. 

As I walked around,  I noticed every cabinet had a nail holding the door shut and there was a band of black grime that was at arm level throughout the house-obviously many years of the same small hand rambling round and round inside this dark sanctuary had left its mark.  The back door was wide open and I made my way into the back yard.  Small plastic bowls and plates littered the ground everywhere and a majestic pecan tree that spiraled up 30 feet into the air was the centerpiece of the yard.  Dark alien looking pecan pods littered the ground below the leaves.  Everything was overgrown and foreboding and I did not want to go very far into unaccompanied. 

I stood there alone and just listened.  I knew I had found my house.  The realtor told me I was crazy and she had some cute little condos near campus for me to look at.  I told her to write up an offer.  I never hesitated.   Of course the offer was accepted … unconditionally. 

When I drove up, after my long trip from Los Angeles with  the U-haul loaded to the brim behind my Jeep, I was so excited.  I opened the door of the house and went in and realized immediately that I was in for some serious work.  It was so bad I knew I could not sleep there till I reclaimed at least one room (I did not want my Cat’s paws to touch the filth so in his carrier he stayed awhile longer). 

I picked the room in the center of the house.  I got to work ripping out the filthy shag carpeting and was rewarded with well –worn,  but beautiful wood floors.  I scrubbed walls and doors and cleaned that one room till my hands were raw.  Finally by midnight,  I had sanitized room with a bed set up, a small table, and an area for my cat J.   Alone in my bed that first night, I realized that this house was different.  As I laid in bed with J curled up on my hip, almost asleep, I was certain I could hear faint music coming from the front of the house.  It was old music… melodies that would have been the rage in the thirties and forties.  I was too tired to do anything and just drifted to sleep—thinking I was just overtired. 

The next night (after another long day of reclaiming tiny parts of this house of squalor) I once again laid down in my bed.  Almost at the instant of sleep, I heard the music again.   This time I made my way to the front room.  I did find an old radio buried in the corner and thought maybe it was coming on-no luck it was no even plugged in.  With nothing else to give me a rational answer I went back to bed. 

Soon asleep, my dreams were vivid .  The same music from before was playing, but louder this time.  It was definitely from the forties and the music was faintly familiar.   I was still in the house, but all the dirt and clutter were gone.  I went into the front parlor and there was a woman probably in her thirties standing by the window looking out at a garden that no longer existed in the present time.  She was swaying with the music and seemed lost in her own revelry.   The furnishings of the house were all old as well and the room had an amber and slightly translucent glow.  When I awoke from the dream I was startled by its intensity.

Night after night the music would play just before I fell asleep.  It was not scary and soon it actually was kind of comforting.  Sometimes,  if I came around the corner just right I thought I could catch a glimpse of the lady at the window.    J would even sit and stare up at the spot quite often.  I began to buy up old big bang and swing records at the Goodwill and play them in the front room.  The house liked it.  The Lady would appear in my dreams several  more times over the three years I lived in the house--always the same scene watching out the window.  I came to really believe that it was just a imprint, an energy loop.  Up until the last night there,  I would hear the faint music as I drifted to sleep.   There were other energies and presences at this property as well and I wish I could say they were all as benign as my lady at the window—especially the Old Man who inhabited my back garage in Texas…but that is another story.

Shadow Art

Irish Rose

As her cigarette burned down into oblivion and the ice in her glass melted into a watery underworld of stale acerbic hootch, Irish glanced over at the unconscious man in her bed and sighed.  With his wrinkled pants haphazardly wrapped around his ankles and his body torpid in a drunken stupor, she wondered what she was thinking bringing him home from the bar.  He had looked so much better in the smoky daze of last call.

Irish was a beautiful woman.   Even at 38, she still turned heads in the smoky pub where she served up tumblers of viscous hope to irascible customers.  Clad in her short ruffled uniform and with a red pout, compliments of Max Factor, she was as close to 1950’s Hollywood glamor as could be expected in this working class neighborhood in South Philly.  Yet in the harsh light of morning the ravages of too many shots of whiskey chased down with more men than she remembered were etched deep into her face.

"Hey wake-up you lout!"  She screeched out as she kicked the man's feet with her crimson painted toes

She took a swig of whiskey and set the glass down on her vanity.  It was three-thirty in the morning and she knew John would be home soon from his night-shift at the ball bearing plant.

The man rolled onto his side, a loud snore emanating from deep in his throat, and she had the uncomfortable image come to mind of a beached whale left to die on the sand.

Fear began to overtake her.  John, her husband, was a jealous man.

Looking out into the gray haze of the living room, she saw her child John Jr. on the couch, his head deep in a book. He, the only child she could carry to term--the one that had finally stuck in her battered womb after seven miscarriages had ravaged her mind.   Looking out from her perch, a warm glow of amber light surrounded him.  While the sight of this child,  with his symmetrical features, blue eyes, and sandy blond hair, would be one of joy to most mothers to Irish he was sight of remorse.  

The fact that he looked nothing like John Sr. was always an issue and reminded Irish of things she wanted to forget--and the whiskey only helped so much.

John Jr. had long ago gotten accustomed to his mother’s nightly parade of men through their cramped apartment-in fact he had never known any different.  What he feared more than the strangers passing through was his mother’s unpredictable rages.  Irish was a woman who showed only the extremes of emotion and was flat-line the rest of the time.  She either loved you passionately or hated with you an equal intensity.

It was during the dark hours of her whiskey-fueled anger that John Jr. had suffered the most.

This night was not the first time that John Jr. would help his mother get rid of a lover in the wee small hours of the morning, but it would be the last.

With John Jr.’s help, Irish got the bloated man dressed and out of the apartment before John Sr. got home. The piercing screech of her beloved parakeets echoed through young John’s mind as they fumbled and dragged the man beyond the confines of the apartment.

John Jr. would come to violently hate the sight and sound of caged birds for the rest of his life.

Night Flight

Workday

Silence is shattered at dawn.

Slim fingers of red reach across the dark sky-

Metal beasts rumble loudly on their way.

Small chirps make a chorus of angry horns

Overshadowed by a siren which deafens in the midst.

Tucked away in warmth… I wonder

At the motion that lay before the threshold

So mindless in its ferocity.

Do they know of the small spaces of wonder in the labyrinth?

Lamppost at First Light

World in a Puddle

10 Feet Tall

Wash Day

You’re Just Cheap Chocolate (NOT DONE)

By Gigi Irvine

Prologue:

Michael could reach out and touch all the sides of his world and that was just how he liked it.

Ever since his mind overheated and burnt to a crisp when he was ten, sick with fever, Michael felt the need to be enclosed.   Unable to tolerate open spaces, beyond his capsule, he resided in his closet.  While it was a large closet, it was quite a tiny space in which to live out a life.

At first the parents would drag him outside into the light.  He would scream, beg, and bite.  Once outside he would cry uncontrollably and refuse to open his eyes.

After awhile the parents no longer came to take him.  Soon, the only time he saw them was when food was delivered to his room and waste taken away.  Once in a rare while his Mother would peek into his closet and stand there watching him.  Michael always pretended that he did not see her and continued reading on his bedroll with his legs tucked tight beneath him Indian style.

When Michael turned nineteen the most amazing thing happened--his father brought him a box from Apple.  Inside was a laptop with wireless abilities.  Now, the whole world was open to him.   

That is how he found her…

Meet Dalia:

Just earlier this week, I discovered much to my utter horror, that I was responsible for the nearly 60 earthquakes that have struck Arkansas since Feb. 15, 2011; it was all over the news.

 I did not eat for days.

In the light of this development, on the verge of desolation, I am unable to leave my bed.  I am certain that there is some inexplicable fissure ripping across my brain.  I spend days in too much agony to move, yet in too much pain to stay still.

I think about death without pause, and without being necessarily suicidal.

Unable to sleep, I watch myself shatter.  The voices assault on my synapses—abusive and critical— and more often than not bizarre.

“We are all unopened cans”

“Crazy as a pig’s foot”

“You’re just cheap chocolate”

The thoughts are my running commentary. Never leaving me and always taking me away from the strands of sanity.  At night they become more insistent.

“Slash your wrist”

“Worthless rotting orange”

“End it”

The medicines no longer work and I have long outlived the patience of my parents.

At nine it began.

I could no longer tolerate the sound and sight of people eating.  Each bite an assault on my senses.  It was as if my ears could hear at 1000 times the normal decibel level and my eyes could see every tiny crumb fastened to their lips like ants harvesting aphids.

I would plug my ears and close my eyes, but I could still hear the chewing.  I took flight to my room and refused to ever come back to the dinner table.

To this day, I have not had another meal with family and have never eaten in a restaurant.  The sheer terror of all of those endless open mouths chewing and swallowing threatens to rip my fragile neurons asunder.

“You’re such a fool, a loser, an idiot!”

“They are watching you now”

“You are the eraser”

At first they called it depression.  Told my parents that I just needed to grow up and out of these bizarre behaviors.  Perhaps some friends, a new school, more socialization would help me.

By twelve, I stopped talking to my family.  I took to using the tactics of dogs to get my messages across. I would growl when angry and whine when I needed something.  By that summer I was openly suicidal and spending my days and nights at the Resnick Facility in Los Angeles.

It is interesting to be a teen and an inpatient.  I tried to think of it as some sort of vacation.  I spent much of the time alone.  The staff did not talk to me much and only one nurse made an effort to befriend me in order to save my soul…as we all know suicide is a one way ticket to Hell.  The nurse thought me a coward.

“We are all stop signs”

“They know you did it”

“Its all underwater now”

They released me with little improvement noted.  Home once again to the four corners of my tiny room--trapped inside by endless fears.  There are no locks, no mechanized devices to keep out the intruders of the mind.  They constantly pursue me, friends turn to enemies and family into demons.

My skull is the dome of the heavens.    I feel the stars, like insects beneath my skin.

It is not all bad.

There are such moments of clarity and joy.  I am artist with lightening as my pen. Sometimes when the mania hits, I don’t sleep for days just to create. During these times I don’t eat at all and sustain myself by just feasting on my thoughts for energy. I spend endless hours drawing and writing in my journal crafting line after line. A cherry becomes a world and an orange a galaxy. 

Then in an instant, the clarity is gone and it all turns—soon someone else is wearing my skin, taking me over, controlling my every emotion and vomiting thoughts out onto my sweater.

Welcome to my world.

I am Dalia.

Point of Convergence:

It was quite unexpected really: a meeting that should have meant nothing, but meant everything.

I was riding high with jodhpurs on and my laptop in gear when I posted my latest entry:

Redcoats, wall louses, mahogany flats, crimson ramblers, and heavy dragoons you fascinate me.  Feeding on us warm -blooded victims under the covers of our personal oblivion!  Gestating in sheets of our forefathers and living on in the linen creases of rest stops.  You resurge into our lives in the motels of the weary and catapult into the beds of the wise. Scourge of a 1000 years and still going strong!

His comment came across my blog (the first comment ever) at 11:11 am and I knew.

They are most active in those minutes before dawn when we sleep the fittest (or most people do-I rarely sleep).  They are also sweet smelling, a pleasant musky odor.  M

“Sick ships of pilgrims!” my mind reeled.

Wound up tighter and tighter.

“M…M…MMMMMMM?????”

“Who is he?

“Is it a He?”

How long has he been in my blog?  Did he read it all?

“Orange haze and jello shake!”

I did not know what it was, or if it was?  My keyboard aflame I set to another entry.

Polymorphously perverse we are.  Jutting out of the mouths of babes, lollipops of abandon, our wanton and decadent words linger on ears too willing to imbibe. Guilt ridden and angst driven our eager selves ready for the sublimation.

His comment posted minutes after…hmmm was he waiting????

Object, object of the stage who you be?  Will I love you and you me?  M

Breath held alight in my chest, I was still.  Who was this M?

“Hot butter melts it all”

Awareness:

Michael did not think his heart could beat any faster.  His mind was taken with her.  Dalia repeated over and over in his neuronal folds.

He scoured the web to find any little scrap that she had posted across the vast network and had her blog open at all times in a tab on his laptop.  It was like he could sense when she was on and writing.  He could feel her darkness and anticipate her manic light. And always her words found a way to pierce him.

It touched him that she lived right on the edge of desolation.  Her only hope the sprinkles of sublime awareness that gifted her world at times.

But what he found most fascinating was that he felt hard when he read her words. He did not know her age, the color of her eyes or the weight of her breasts--it did not matter she was his.

Waves Crash:

"Dalia."

"Dalia."

"Dalia."

"Dalia…die. "

Why even lift my head from my pillow…why even try and live through it.  Bloated bodies washing ashore off Sendai, destruction takes its toll, 10,000 more dead because of me… once again.  The horrible trembling that my mind causes! 

Magnitude ten of guilt makes me reach for the jagged edge of my demise and hold it steely in my sweaty hands.

I must submerge.

"Lousy with it"

"No more than a broken screw"

Migraines threaten, blood sugar drops into abysmal recesses. Retreat from myself to stay alive and not throw myself into oblivion.

No escape from it.  No turning my head.

“Bend over and take it”

“Worthless sponge”

Buzzing and tweaking.  The pop that threatens.  I can’t hold the thoughts inside. They leak out across my dirty floor like plasma from a shattered skull.

Spic and span no more.

Cranium clippers and pruners needed to purge this addled neuron from my mind.  Thousands of souls all screaming my name into the depths of Hell.

M forgive me.

Silence:

Dalia's sudden silence chilled Michael.

He thirsted for her words--as each of her written characters served as a languid droplet working to defrost his heart.

Yet nothing came.

Her voice was now only a short circuit, a blown fuse, a lost message in an electronic world.  No matter how many times he hit the refresh button on her blog....nothing.

He had spent the majority of his life alone in his safe oblivion and had never been lonely.  Yet now for the first time in his life...Michael missed another.

Dalia had become his obsession.  She was his air.  His only need.

He feared her dead.

He feared her lost to him.

Perhaps even worse, he feared that her mind had finally won and crossed over, taken her prisoner and forever trapped her in the folds of a consciousness with too many cracks and jagged pieces.

One Swallow:

Smooth.  So, smooth.

The pills went down without resistance.  I was surprised.  It seems I have been blessed with above-average epiglottal function.

 Light spiraling away from me.  Watching my neurons pop and dim-stars burning out in the night one by one.

"Catchphrase complete"

Beautiful really, the last light of a neuron.  Just like a sparkler, only without the powdery residue.

Shaky now.

So cold. The voices leave me.

Now, I am alone.

Antiseptic:

Walking the line of death.  Teetering between. Mother found me.

Flashing lights.

Pump...one, two, three.

Back in hospital once again. Saddle sores. Antiseptic world, given to making one worse before better.

"Drugged like a lollipop"

"Hole in one"

"Cue ball without a stick"

They try and convince me that its not my fault.  I am not a murderer-- a maker of waves, a destroyer.  I can't believe them, I know better.  New meds to try.  More tweaking with my shattered connections.

Just want to go home.  Find M.  I need to shoot electricity out of my fingertips and write this all down.

SOS:

Michael was startled by the news. He checked her blog, with really no hope of finding anything.

Oblivion retreats.  Popped and tweaked till raw and liquid.  My soul  streams in videos from the afterlife still.  Can't they let me go?  A  coward's way out and all. Mystics had it when they  said that the mind's eye is clear and that life is the cloudy way. Still in the big house. Oh, well Day-O and wanna go  home.

He read her words and tried to reason what happened.  Had she really gotten that close to dying?  He felt icy.

Michael posted his comment at 12:01 am

Perhaps it is the living that is the real oblivion and the rest is just imagination.  We can never really know what is real.  Perhaps you are just a dream I am having here.  Was worried about you. M.

Home Again, Home Again:

Home again, home again...jiggidy jig.  Pills flushed and laptop out I am high to write. Had to put the guilt in the gunny sack for now.   The wheel on the upward spiral. 

“Sprinklers full throttle”

Ruinous the state of things…soon we to be replaced by the synthetic brothers of Geminoid.  These A.I. dreamwalkers, born of Japanese and Danish fathers who tinkered them into existence. To act as God…. can never justify the angle.  There is no golden mean for the future when we don’t follow the plan.    Will they be what we want or will they bring our demise? Will they dream?  Will they think?  Will they hear the voices as well?   But most of all I wonder, will they love?

Michael's comment posted at 7:38pm  

It is coming, this replacement or at least cohabitation with the A.I. brethren.  Whether it sends us to Hell or not.   Already there are machines which discover mathematical hypotheses, paint pictures and compose poems. And I dare say, if they were to read your words Love may be possible. M

I could not reply fast enough to him.  Posted 7:49 pm

 

Who be you, M? Are you always there or do I dream you? You ambled along  into my life--a life with voices asunder and thoughts like daggers...  all leaving my spirit  to bleed out by the side of the river.

His reply posted at 7:49pm.  No hesitation.

           

I am Michael and I am always here.  I never leave.

“Hot diggedly damm”

Dentin and the Devil:

Decayed and radial, pulsating with fiery anger, nerve inflamed beyond repair… it was clear the molar needed annihilation.

Michael knew it had to come out.   No other choice was an option.

He also knew he was going to do it himself.

Pain like violent stabs of a hot knife deep into his skull was driving him out of his mind.  It radiated from his jaw up towards his ear and into his very soul. Sobbing was not even an option; he was well beyond any hope of reprieve.  He needed to be able to read Dalia’s words.  And right now the pain kept him so jacked that he could not even look at the computer screen.

He could not tell his parents, he feared they would drug him and take him out of the house to have it removed.  He could not leave—under any circumstances—he had to manage it on his own.

With needle nose vice grips at the ready, cotton balls, and antiseptic mouthwash he readied himself.

Propping the shaving mirror on the shelf he angled it so he could see the offending prong.  Right side, an evil and uneven premolar, blackened with decay and not long for this life now that the pliers were readied.   With a deep breath, Michael put pliers to tooth.

“One….two…three.”

Michael yanked at that enamel crusted fiend with everything he had.   A sound, more like a crunch than a pop echoed in his cranium, as the molar began to let go from its mandibular resting place.

Fire shot through his whole being. 

On the verge of passing out, Michael understood suicide for the first time now.   It was such searing pain that Michael was shocked he was still sentient.  Finally, with one last turn and yank of the red-handled pliers, the tooth broke free. Michael stood looking at the pulpy mess, as blood dribbled down his chin.

A swig of mouthwash, and he spit out the remnants of his undertaking into an old shoe box ready to be duck taped up smuggled out in the trash.  He packed the gapping hole in his head with wads of cotton.  All the while thinking to himself that he would begin crafting the new crown with the Friendly Plastic that he had ordered at an online craft store.

With nothing left in him, he sunk to his knees on his bed roll and passed out.

Through the Glass:

Michael listened to the song over and over as he laid on his bedroll. Face swollen and his mind beyond redemption.   The pain in his mouth wracking him, twisting him, and holding him trapped in purgatory.  It was the song for them.   Only thoughts of Dalia kept him holding on.

I'm looking at you through the glass

Don't know how much time has passed

Oh God it feels like forever

But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home

Sitting all alone inside your head

How do you feel? That is the question

But I forget you don't expect an easy answer

When something like a soul becomes initialized

And folded up like paper dolls and little notes

You can't expect a bit of folks

So while you're outside looking in

Describing what you see

Remember what you're staring at is me

How much is real? So much to question

An epidemic of the mannequins, contaminating everything

We thought came from the heart

But never did right from the start

Just listen to the noises

(Null and void instead of voices)

Before you tell yourself

It's just a different scene

Remember it's just different from what you've seen

I'm looking at you through the glass

Don't know how much time has passed

And all I know is that it feels like forever

But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home

Sitting all alone inside your head--by Stone Sour

Paradise

Pandora's Box

The Touch

It was beautiful to look at… in a way.

Row after row of objects arranged in precise lines filled the front room of her tidy bungalow. Similar objects grouped, lined up with care and exactness, a mathematician’s play land.

When she began to have that feeling, like a bolt of bees in her belly, getting everything straight helped her cope. It took hours to set the objects just right with the exactness that the compulsion demanded. She knew that it was in the difficulty, in the need for absolutes, that her relief was to be found.

For endless hours, sometimes days she sat almost completely still—her mind chaos in the midst of precise order—and counted. Focusing every ounce of her reserve on forming the numbers in her addled mind —a mind that was fighting her at every turn and taking her thoughts and wrapping them around her like an eel around a pole.

“one hundred and twenty thousand, one hundred and twenty thousand and two….”

For some reason she found that counting by evens better, somehow the numbers smoother and rounder…calmer.

”one hundred and twenty thousand and four…”

Today, it had all began by accident.

She had forgotten to put her gloves on before she left for work. Riding the bus in, the driver had hit his brakes hard. She was thrown forward losing her balance and she had been forced to grab onto the overhead pole to keep from falling.

As soon as she touched it she knew…like insects crawling up her flesh, the skin began to tingle. She began to rub her hands furiously … as if she could rub off the contamination. She could feel her mind gearing up and the bees beginning their angry dance inside of her.

“Are you ok?” A teenage boy to her right asked her more out of odd fascination with her actions than any real compassion.

She just ignored him, her mind too focused on the overwhelming dread that was beginning.

She was sure to have caught something; it was right now crossing into her bloodstream perhaps from some small cut in her hand that she could not even see. All the usual suspects filled her mind—she was well versed in every disease that could be caught or transmitted from the smallest amount of bodily fluid.

Looking at that pole, she saw in her mind’s eye the bodily secretions of the hundreds, no thousands of people who had touched it.

Her mind was a pit of snakes now.

She could not go to work. She got off the bus at the next stop and made her way on foot back to her bungalow.

Afraid to even take the keys out of her purse, as the mere touch of her contaminated fingers would spread its insidiousness to the keys, she pulled out a plastic bag, one of many that she always had tucked in her pocket. She adeptly used it to fish the keys out of her purse.

Once inside, she removed all of her clothes while standing on the cold tile floor of the entry. Shivering and naked she made her way down the hall to the bathroom. For the next hour, long after the hot water had turned cold, she scrubbed…her hands becoming raw and sore. When as her final act, she poured the rubbing alcohol over her shredded palms, the pain was so intense it brought tears to eyes.

Even with the scrubbing the thoughts would not back down. Taking a stand against her, they surrounded her.

“You saw it…that homeless man on the bus touched just where you did…he had those sores, he picked at… he has to have something.”

“One hundred and twenty thousand and six…”

“Stop it!”

“One hundred and twenty thousand and eight…”

“Or that boy in the back with the soft walk and long hair, you know he touched it too..he looked almost skeletal”

Her rational mind knew it was all a farce that she was fine, but the thoughts would not stop.

So, into the front room she went.

By midnight another line of objects had been placed with intense care and in her focused precision the thoughts took a break…for awhile.

That brief touch on the bus had caused her brain to begin the journey into the worm hole of her mind. It always started off with the same fears…then turned and twisted into a descent into the inferno.

So much her time and life was lost in these endless compulsions, actions that drove her fingers until they were weary and raw. There was no stopping the images, thoughts, and visions. Ghastly visuals that twisted all who she loved into contaminated demons—and it was always brought on by the touch.

So, she continued to sit alone in her house of rows…and wonder just how high she could count…

In Just Four Quartets

Warm updrafts from the heater lifted the window shade upwards like a bird’s wing…gliding lithely in the dusty room. Julia sat alone and unaware of the delicate flicking of the shade, deep in thought, with her hand gripping the pen with too much intensity.

The rumble of the old furnace made the table shake ever so slightly and the water in her glass trembled as if being swept up in a summer squall. It had been a long time since Julia had noticed the little things around her and an eternity since she had been aware of much beyond the dogma of her life devoted to the tangible and the reasonable.

That all was about to change…

Rubber burning on asphalt, too much too late, and soon the ambulance arrived.
The driver of the car had never seen her, never glanced once at the intensity of her light blonde brow furrowed or her firm and steady dark eyes.

Now, lying in the street—crumpled— she looked little more like a child asleep. With her pink hoodie (a shade too bright for her against her pale skin) and her one shoeless foot exposing her bright lime sock, she was a tragic figure—a lost doll.

They packaged her up quickly, secured her head and neck to a stationary board, and began the trip to the ER. Just a few scant minutes into the ride, Julia died. Her heart stopped cold in her chest and refused to be coaxed back into alignment. For breathless minutes, the crew worked on her—nothing. They were ready to call a time of death.

It was just at this exact moment, only a brief hesitation really between her being and becoming finished flesh, that Julia opened her eyes.

Lying on the gurney in the Emergency room, Julia looked around and felt lost. Where was Jim she wondered? He should be here. He would have sensed her being in trouble she was sure. They always did that with each other, knew when the other was having a tough time, a bad day, or an injury. Like twins, born of separate mothers, they had been inseparable since they met. It was hard to imagine him not here. Hours passed and still she was alone, she did not understand. Finally, she got a nurse to call home. The nurse was back shortly and had an odd look on her face.

“Sorry dear, that number is no longer in service…do you have his Cell Number?”

“His Cell?” Julia could not make sense of what the nurse was saying…

“Dear, you really did take a hit to the head didn’t you?” The nurse cooed.

Julia was uncertain. What was going on? She made her way to the restroom and threw water on her red cheeks and then looked in the mirror and screamed.

Her face, when she had last seen it was unlined and freckled. Her lips overly full as only a twenty-year old’s can truly be. Now, she looked at her face and it was not a girl’s—it was a woman’s. While she could still see herself, it was a self she did not recognize.

Faint lines lived under her large dark eyes and her freckles were gone. Her once long hair now shorter—not bad—just different. She looked…older. Her hands went to her body, same hips-curvy and full, and her legs still felt strong. But, her breasts had changed. Gone the girlish peaks from days spent lifting weights and running endless miles. Now, full round breasts met her hands as strangers. Something had happened, she had lost a lot of time.

Back in the hospital room she looked at a stack of clothes that she did not recognize and a purse she had never seen. Cautiously, she opened the purse searching for a wallet or ID. It was then, looking at her drivers license, that she realized—she had just lost twenty-two years of her life.

Her mind reeled-she could remember everything that had happened to her this morning…well a morning twenty-two years ago. She had woken up in the bed she shared with Jim. The bedclothes tangled and everywhere. They had made love in the urgent way that they did, when it felt as if they could not get enough of each other fast enough, which was often. She had rushed off to work the morning shift at the coffee shop and he had gone back to sleep. She had even tripped over the cat on her way out the door and he went screeching indignantly into the hall. Next thing she knew she was laying on the gurney in the hospital hallway.

Released from the hospital, with little hint on her physical self that she had been dead for six minutes just a few hours ago, Julia stood at the exit and wondered where to go now. She had a driver’s license with an unfamiliar address and a set of keys. Searching the strange bag for money she found a twenty and hoped it was enough for a cab ride to the address.

The cab let her off in front of a non-descript brown apartment house. Julia made her way up the stone stairs to the front door. She scanned the mailboxes for her name and found nothing—no Julia Davidson. Her driver’s license read apartment #312, and on the mailbox someone named J. Andrews lived there. Trying the small key from her ring on the mailbox lock on #312 she heard a click and the little metal door popped open to reveal a stack of bills.

She stood there staring at the envelopes when a large ruddy-faced woman came barreling out of the building and rammed right into her. The mail scattered on the pavement.

“Oh shit, honey I hope I didn’t nail you with my umbrella to hard.” The flustered woman moaned.

“No...I’m fine.” Julia recovered and picked up the scattered envelopes.

Julia looked up at the older woman, then thought again if that was even true anymore—she may be the older one now, and wondered if they knew each other.

“Honey you look a little dazed…are you lost?” There was a look of genuine concern on the woman’s face.

“No, I don’t think so. I am looking for apartment #312.” Julia said faintly and a little disappointed that the woman did not know her.

“Third floor all the way at the end…here I got the door for you. But I doubt you’ll have much luck, no one has seen that hermit once since she moved in-like she’s a ghost or something.” And with that she was off bounding down the stairs, her large brightly colored housedress swinging behind her like a superhero’s flamboyant cape.

Julia moved into the hallway and up the stairs. She made it to the third floor and to the end of the hall. She tried one of the keys in the lock and the click told her she had hit pay dirt. Slowly she opened the door and looked into the dark and dusty room. It was one large room with a single twin bed with a faded yellow bedspread. The shades were drawn and the air still. A table with a pad of paper and a glass of water stood in the far left corner. There was no artwork, personal touches, nothing that said “she” had lived here. It was just a dark empty room. Julia went to the table and found that the pad was filled with calculations. Page after page of complex work-she did not think she could do such a thing she was just a waitress with no formal mathematical training.

There was a small closet to the right. She opened it and found five pink hoodies exactly like the one she was wearing and five pairs of dark blue jeans lined up perfectly in the closet. It was eerie. Julia was getting very concerned and could not believe this was her life. She was vibrant-an artist. She painted all the time, loved big bold color. She loved to act and be involved with the world—how could this sad life be hers. Where was Jim? There was no way that they would have broken up. He was sure to be famous by this time in life, his novel should have sold many times over by now-they should be living the good life.

Julia turned on a light and sat down on the bed. The bedside table had a drawer and she opened it up. There was a single leather volume inside. She opened it up and a photograph fell to the floor. It was one of her and Jim on stage. They had been both performing in a comedy show when they met their first month at school. The worn photo showed Jim, always the clown, wearing a hat and trying to order “Dog-Foo Young” in a Korean BBQ joint from Julia who was the horrified cashier. Julia laughed sadly recalling the moment and a new wave of missing Jim washed over her.

The leather volume was TS Elliot’s Four Quartets, a gift from her father on her 18th birthday. She opened it up randomly:

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

How dark the words were-she had forgotten that about this little book, which she had treasured more as a gift than as art. She now felt like a flower, motionless and with petals falling. The book slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor. A tiny yellowed piece of paper found its way out and onto the floor. Julia stared down at it. It had a small picture of Jim. Her heart nearly stopped once again. It was an obituary and it was dated the very day that she remembered. He had been hit by a car that afternoon at noontime, after they had made love and she had rushed off to work. Julia felt the hot tears running down her cheeks.

This life, this now, was unbearable. It could not be. The sheer loneliness of the dark little room threatened to quash her soul-it was a room where even the sane would contemplate dark acts.

She laid back on the narrow twin bed and could feel the metal springs gnaw into her spine. Tears rolled down her cheeks for a life lost, a life unlived. She cried for the paintings she would not make, the adventures she would not have, and for the man who was lost forever to her.

She fell into an exhausted sleep. When she awoke, it was fuzzy and her eyes could not focus. Someone was leaning over her, shaking her shoulders ever so lightly.

“Juila..., come on wake up.” She bolted up, still believing herself to be trapped in that lifeless little desolate room. Jim was looking at her, with that crazy cat grin and his bright mischievous eyes.

“We still have time before your shift” his arms were around her and pulling her to him.

He began to kiss her neck, and for the first time ever, she did not respond. She was shaking.

She was afraid. She was right back to where she started and there was no way she was going to let this happen. She grabbed Jim around the neck and kissed him hard.

“Lets spend the day in bed.” She said a bit too urgently.

“You have work and I have to get the manuscript to the publisher by noon.” He said, though he hated to be the voice of reason.

Juila, just kissed him and knew that what it ever it took… he was not leaving that bed till far later than noon.

Phi

"The good, of course, is always beautiful, and the beautiful never lacks proportion."
--Plato

Out of two Whirling Triangles, a logarithmic spiral can be drawn that will converge at the intersection of two perfect lines and at this point one can find the Golden Mean. In the doctrine of the Golden Mean, someone who runs away from challenge becomes a coward, while someone who fears nothing and barges on ahead heedlessly is rash. Thus bravery can only really been seen as the result of a “mean” between two extremes. It is the creation of something better through the union or merger of opposites.

I am more than a bit anxious about what I am contemplating—and the closer I get to the idea, the more I cling to the behavior in question. How can I do this thing-this cessation of a lifetime of running? In the running I have found the medication, the salve, and the irritant itself-quite a vicious circle. Running provided a fresh start (or so I told myself)… new job, a new place, a new life-a chance for a do over. Yet the same old problems and emptiness eventually fill me again (am I doomed to repeat relational mistakes over and over….ugh?).

While the gaps between the runs has gotten longer… the desire to recreate remains. Yet I think my error has been on the recreating of the physical world at the expense of my mental construct. I also don’t think I ever made a deliberate choice about the process—impulsivity has ruled the day. Like a child or an animal my choices have been driven by desire and spirit and have not been made as true choice.

Perhaps, its increasing age or the realization of some key truths of late, but I think it is time in my life to focus on deliberate choice to find the Golden Mean of my life. This proairesis, I believe can help to determine the character I know is within me…I want to be brave.

This process of deliberateness of choice is unknown to me and though my brain is forged strong in other areas that are valued in the larger world, in this particular area I am but a child. How to proceed? How to learn to pause, reflect and not be a reactionary nerve ready to fire the neurotransmitter of temporary desire across the synapse of my life?

Juxtaposition

Madness in a match
Misery of another kind
No longer able to latch
The detriments of the mind

Eerie synaptic mystery
Confluence-the weight of it all
Convoluted history
Makes mockery of the fall

Boundaries left to raze
Time after and before
Jagged swirling haze
Wanting for more

Connections, the saving grace
Space between a hindrance
Soon to outpace
One’s bemused brilliance

Oh to hold such reticence
Damn this penitence!

A Reasonable Woman Parts I and II

I. Quietly Flowing Along

Mia Rogers was to him, a rigid approximation of perfection, and thus their romance started badly. His own talent, to see everything and focus in on the flaws, was itself a misfortune.

No one ever knew where he came from or much about his past. His parents and family agreed to keep the matter quiet.

He had showed up on the scene, born of himself really, with little doubt, at twenty-five. He had made himself quite a dashing—albeit tragic figure. He claimed that his mother was a brilliant woman who died in childbirth and his father a celebrated scientist, who being remarkably elusive, shunned contact with the world. He told stories of his unique childhood growing up amid the stacks of his father’s library and relying on the kindness of servants. His own self-given name, Malik, revealed his driving need to be sovereign.

Malik went further. He announced with firm conviction, that only a man who is capable of absolute reason could be trusted—and that he was one such man. He proclaimed that no woman could be, by sheer force of nature, trusted… as he found all of them unreasonable.

Malik, a slender, arrogant bottle blonde with fierce black eyes, stated that he would avoid the nonsense of marriage all together and would seek only to marry his promising career in Theoretical Physics.

This unyielding position had made his romantic life quite hectic and littered with the carcasses of impossible romances.

Mia Rogers on the other hand was nothing if she was not real. Born to adversity she never hid behind her low start. Her mother, an Australian prostitute known for her unique talents, kept life interesting for young Mia. Her mother called herself Magdalene (good for those tortured religious clients), but was really named Kitty. Mia always knew her father was one of many, and her mother joked that she had been “collectively” conceived.

Mia was an odd child. She lost herself in books about the stars and the Universe, just as her mother was losing herself in the carnality of man in the next room. This intermingling of mind and flesh was not lost on the young child, who found that men tended to really be simple beings driven by the oddest needs and desires—a waste of time to her mind.

That was just the beginning. Mia was gifted with a knack for calculation. She could spend hours carrying out the long division of irrational numbers into the hundreds of places… even after Pi had been discovered out to the ten-thousandth place, Mia still wanted to prove it to herself. Her mother pointed to the child's perfections to all who would listen and though flamboyant and wanton herself, she still demonstrated all the foolish fondness of a doting mother.

Mia took all of her experiences and sense of her “collective” genetics and grew to become a curvaceous—yet deadly serious icy blonde. Challenged by her past, haunted by her desire to never be like her mother, she became careful and reserved about friendships and desperately staunch about not getting involved in the affairs of men.

When Mia was fourteen her mother came to a bad end. Kitty had taken on one of the religious fanatics who so adored (and abhorred) her and lost. She had been the one crucified. Mia, sadden by the death of her unconventional, yet loving, mother was soon shuffled off to boarding school—and very much alone.

To say that Mia and Malik’s backgrounds were different would be an understatement.

The fact that these two actually fell in love was a wonderful example of the power of raw human emotion triumphing over reason—on both their parts.


II. Slowly Rocking

It was the age of the Journey Walkers. With the colonization of Europa’s interior underway the need for the brave souls to make the trip was ever apparent. The Drillers had long finished Phase I of the colonization, boring the long shuttle tunnels into the interior of the moon. The Oxygenation plant had already been completed and was generating enough breathable air now to support a thousand pilgrims. These pilgrims or Journey Walkers, as they were coined in the digital press, were like reality stars of the early Millennium. Of the very numerous applicants, who returned submissions— eager for to become the next Journey Walkers, only a few select were chosen.

The first Journey Walkers had gone out twenty years before. They had started by building a small compound and relied on carried in oxygen generators. Gradually the size of the compounds increased. The technique of generating oxygen from the ice on the surface and from the liquid water of Europa’s inner layers became more advanced and the colony began to be able to sustain more life.

It was great news when an announcement came over the digital airways that a new crop of Journey Walkers had been chosen. Forty brave souls were to be trained and prepared for the voyage and among them were Mia and Malik.

The recruits were to spend a month preparing their bodies and minds for the long trip. Mia was unfazed at the process. Long days and even longer nights had made her used to the solitude. She was not a fearful sort and one who needed little human company. Malik on the other hand had trouble with long silences and often would speak out loud to himself when alone as a comfort.

Malik had an odd way about him. He would put his body on the ground almost as if it was a question. There was a mechanical swing to his neck, almost like he was trying to see both directions at once. While only 30 at the time of the Journey walk, he appeared neither young nor old. He lived life like he had been awake and conscious for thirty years straight—there was a far off look in his eyes.

By the time the psychologists interrogated him, to check his sanity for the voyage, it was plain enough that he held an inflated sense of self and was certain he was superior to all. But his IQ put him in the genius range and this pushed the Doctors over the line and they allowed him his peculiarities.

At the time of the Journey Walk, Mia was only twenty-two. She had already completed her doctorate and been doing research into the Peptide Theory of Astral Travel. In the early millennium, the theory had held that it was the very peptides in the human cell that held the key to memory and emotion and using this foundation Mia and her research team were attempting to show that Astral Projection could be accomplished by having one’s cells in two locations and the “mind” could travel from one to the other. She had come up with the idea while reading a cheesy romance novel where the two lovers were star crossed twin flames living across the Galaxy from each other and were able to project themselves to where the other was in their dreams and they could even give specific details about the events that they otherwise could not have known.

Mia and Malik met innocently enough. They were in the debriefing room and when asked if there were any questions, Malik proceeded to undertake a monologue of pedantic proportions. She, more reserved and definitely less loquacious, looked at him in horrific fascination. While her mind reeled at his audacity, her heart beat faster and she noticed a dewy drop of sweat forming on her upper lip. Ever the scientist, she checked her pulse—and it definitely quickened when she gazed at him.

III. Nearly Stationary
To be continued…
IV. Simultaneous Quodlibet
To be continued…

Agnes

Kneeling in the hall I put my ear up to the closed bathroom door and heard sobbing— of a terrifying proportion… chest wracking-soul bearing cries. I did not know what to do. This woman, girl really, had just burst into our little bungalow on Peabody Street and taken one look at my mother (eight and a half months pregnant, uncomfortable in her own skin, but still amazingly beautiful) and burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom. Mom just slowly walked down the hall to the room she shared with my father and closed the door, leaving me standing alone and confused in the middle of the living room.

I stood there looking down at my red keds and with the crisp white laces (oh how I loved those sneakers) and thought about what I should do. Maybe the lady was sick? Maybe she was lost? So, I crept down the hallway to the bathroom and began to listen. She was crying and mumbling and banging her fists against the sink. I was scared. I pressed my eye up to the crack in the door to get a glimpse of what this dangerous and mysterious creature was doing in my pink bathroom with the little flowered rug and the Snoopy the Red Barron towel hanging on the back of the door.

Her sobs had slowed down a bit and through the crack in the door I saw her open the medicine cabinet. She took out my father’s razor (at this point I became nervous my own heart threatening to jump out of my chest). She slowly twisted it till the blade popped free. I was frozen in fear and before I could even think to call out the blade had slashed at her wrist. On instinct alone my hand turned the knob on the door and it flew open startling her at her grisly task.

All I could think in my five-year old child’s mind to say was ….”Don’t!” Her face studied mine and I watched as drops of blood from her mangled wrist spread onto that little flowered rug--the one that I always stepped on after I got out, warm and clean, from the tub.

“You look just like him” she sad sadly…still more drops of blood. I thought maybe I should hand her a tissue.

I did not know who “he” was, but the only “he” I could think of was Daddy.

She kept the blade against the skin, gently moving it back and forth. I stood paralyzed and uncertain. She went on and on about running on the beach, being in love, how he had promised…I did not know what to think of anything she said.

I just watched that blade.

“Do you like ice cream?” I inquired. It always made me feel better. She began to sob uncontrollably again and now the gentle rubbing of the blade was more like gnawing at the skin. The blood really began to run down onto the floor.

I rushed down the hall to find my mother. She was lying on the bed breathing hard. I was crying, uncertain as how to even tell her about the crazy lady in the bathroom. She took my hand and told me as gently as she could that she needed to go to the hospital that the baby was coming and now. I ran to the phone in the yellow kitchen and dialed for help. I rambled on to the operator about bleeding ladies and babies and begged for help.

Moving through the living room once more and into the dark hall, I was strangely not afraid anymore. I found the lady, who was now sitting on the floor of the bathroom crying softly, bleeding, and hugging herself. I moved towards her and grabbed my Snoopy towel and knelt down by her. I wrapped it around her bleeding wrists. She looked at me and smiled through the tears and said. “My name is Agnes, what’s yours?” I could not answer, I just sat there on the floor next to her.

After what seemed like hours, but was actually minutes, the police and ambulance arrived. They took Agnes away. She did not resist and now was no longer even crying. Mom was wheeled into the back of the ambulance in full labor and in great pain. I stood back, uncertain as to what to do till a policeman lifted me into the back of the ambulance. I took Mom’s hand.

My sister was delivered, in the hospital parking lot, in the back of the ambulance by the paramedics. As I stood outside, waiting to hear the baby’s first cry, I noticed the three tiny drops of almost black blood on my little red keds... and did not feel five years old at all any longer.

Its All About the Dura Matter

Dr. Austin handed me the Styker saw—it was long and cold in my double-gloved latex clad fingers. I was in my lab coat and so proud of those four letters… UCLA (their blue and gold fibers so professionally embroidered on my coat above my left breast). I had been a homeless high school dropout waiting tables not too long ago…now here I was on the cusp of becoming a doctor and a graduate with honors braids on my black graduation gown.

Holding the highest average in the class, out of nearly ninety overachievers, made me the easy choice to lead the first full gross dissection. But, I was not so sure, as book learning, memorization, and test taking is one thing—hands on brain removal in front of a crowd another!

I was sweating and felt more than a bit sick—but I never let on to anyone watching.

The room was a chilly 40 degrees (to keep the body fresh and keep the mold on the tissues down). Students circled around me and also in the theatre above the dissection table. With my waist length hair tightly wound away and covered, lab coat on, and goggles secure, there was little to suggest that I was a twenty-four year old woman. Watching me, the picture of professionalism, one would never know I used to love to show off my figure in tight and skimpy outfits in days past—now I was all about getting attention using only my mind and resolute drive to be the best. I set the curve in this class and I loved it.

I had already removed all tissue down to the bone with my fresh and incredibly sharp scalpel (with a precision that earned me quick approval from my professor). I then in a very casual (and alarming in retrospect) way drew a circle on the skull in black sharpie. I can clearly remember recapping the sharpie and hearing the little click—the room was that quiet.

Students were watching my every move. I, with more confidence than I inwardly felt, turned on the Styker Saw (fancy way of saying hand held circular saw) lined up the blade on the black line and began to drill into periosteum (the outer layer of the skull). Being an anthropologist at heart, images of early trepanations filled my head—and those were done on live patients!

The trick with using the Stryker is to not go all the way through the bone. The bones of the skull are really two hard layers with a spongy lattice of material in the middle. The plan was to get right to the point of breaking through and stop—the mission was to not injure the dura matter.

I made my way around the black line…first you bore in --reach the sweet spot – then pull up and move on till you have what looks like a jagged line around the head. I finished with the anterior and soon was working on the posterior side. Next came the part, that I really found challenging, using a small ball hammer and a wedge I hammered gently through the last fragment of bone all the way around—gently touching the delicate dura matter around the brain.

It was an amazing feeling to pop the calvaria cap off and hold it in my hands and see my first brain up close lay my fingers on its wondrous folds.

I next had to take the brain out of the body—perfect with all structures in tact (easier said than done). I reached in with my gloved hands—fingers moving gently and separating the tiny bloodless vessels, and moved my hands within the cavity. The plan was to get below the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum to the brain stem—then cut and then gently remove the brain and stem from the cavity.

Success! And in a matter of minutes I held my first human brain in my hands.

This was the easy part.

In the coming weeks, I spent every day weighing, measuring, identifying and studying every structure of that precious specimen. I would repeat this process numerous other times—but each time still was miraculous for me.

Plus, its pretty cool ice breaker to talk about taking out human brains (muhaha…)—what a weirdo I was (am).

Hexenringe

On moonlight nights they emerge
Decayed and radial-- a sacrosanct purge

Miraculous in dark symbolism of malevolence
Round joining of Mycelium semblance

Lush green interior invites within
Necrotic border hints at ethereal kin

Sprung from withered regions
Gibberellins awry in legion

Tethered or Free they grow
Saprotrophic or Commensally in tow

Dancing visions in the dim light-
Belies, the viewers impending plight

Do not cross their uneven border of ilk
Or you chance to spill the Devil’s milk

Your very soul is at chance
If to pass you happenstance

Thermo Man Part I

Standing at the base of the World’s Largest Thermometer (at the gateway to Death Valley) with my hair pulled up tight like a pixie and wearing a faded yellow teeshirt which read Fast Gas on it, I stared down at with my signature red Keds—and thought I must be insane.

It was only nine in the morning, but I was dripping sweat and could not remember a time when I had felt so hot. The thermometer read 110 degrees—not even considered hot for this place—the last outpost before miles of endless desert. I surveyed where I was going to be working and was sure I had blown a gasket in that thing I once called a machine of a mind. All I could see were fast food joints and gas stations—and not an abundance of either. It was desolate-it was dry-it was breathtaking in its open expanse of nothingness.

The dig was to take place three miles outside of Baker, California—home of the “world famous” gyros at the Mad Greek (but better known as the last pit stop before the long stretch of desert taking you into Vegas). One of the local boys, out four wheeling, had discovered what appeared to be early human remains. The boy Jake, an overgrown goofy kid who wore a huge wooden cross around his neck, was so excited to be able to describe the bone in great detail. Seems he had an over zealous 6th grade teacher who spent much of her first year of teaching talking about all the hominids and shared with her students her passion about bones and the femur in particular. This bone that Jake found was indeed a femur and a pretty unique one at that.

So, here I was melting under the unrelenting gaze of the desert sun waiting for him-my sophistic and chronically late Professor. He was always lost in his head, unaware of the passing minutes on the clock. I was just hoping he had the wherewithal to have packed his extra set of spectacles, he was always laying them down at the dig and they would go missing—he was a mess without them.

If this would have been four years ago we would have driven up together to the dig. At that time, I was fresh into the graduate program. I met him one Fall night after sitting in on one of his famous over the top lectures on the origin and meaning of life, and was completely taken by him. I had one of those, all the sound escapes from the room and time seems to slow moments, and I was convinced I was in love. Looking back, perhaps, it was more his brilliant mind and ability to carry on a whole dynamic conversation all by himself that was intriguing. Once I introduced myself to him it was already too late for me, he was at once deceptively inviting and impossibly elusive-I was the fly ensnared-and had to escape before I was consumed. It would take me several long months, after it was over, to even be able to think about working with him again…he was that dangerous to me.

Waiting, less than patiently, I surveyed all the equipment I had brought from the Lab and wished I had brought more sunscreen-I was going to be a lobster when this finished. Just then he drove up in his embattled and beleaguered ancient import. He refused to get himself a proper car and was going to drive that damn thing into the ground. I was surprised the poor thing hadn’t overheated in this intense heat. He got out and I purposely averted my eyes. With him, the first moment of seeing him was the only one that I could not control. I counted silently to five in my head and let the fear roll over me (hey it worked for Jack on LOST, perhaps it would for me as well). Deep breath, soon enough I was steel again and all business.

We gassed up at the Chevron and hopped into my Jeep (I wasn’t going to let him risk going to the site in his car which he bought back when Tears for Fears was new on the radio). While my Jeep had seen a lot of action and had over 240,000 miles on it, it was a solid four-wheel drive and we were going to need it to get out to the site.

My mind worked overtime on the drive out. This find could be a career maker for me. My dissertation was stalled and I needed something to get me back in the game. The femur that Jake had found was remarkable. The bone was thick-much more so than is typical of an early sapien--its thickness hinted at a Neanderthalis while its short length pointed at something much older. The thing is, nothing other than fairly modern sapien had ever been found in North America…so this had the possibility of being big find.

Once at the site, all scorched earth and blowing dust, we set up shop. Between the sweat and the sunscreen, I was coated with a thin layer of grit. My astute professor was far more ready for the desert than me with his loose white explorer garb and hat—I did not know how he managed to make it all look so easy! I lugged the transit out of the Jeep and we laid down the grid over the area and then with trowel s in hand we both got down in the dirt and began to dig. This is not fun work by any stretch of the imagination, especially when its 110 degrees.

We really should have had all the first year grad students out there doing this, but he had thought it better to keep this too ourselves. Buckets and buckets of the dry dusty soil were collected and fenestrated and nothing. I had little hope we would find anything else other than a bad sunburn. Then I saw it, faint and almost gray in that iris withering light. With picks and brushes, we excitedly worked to expose its triangular dimensions. It was a perfectly formed patella-but heavy with an extra thick layer of compact outer osseous tissue. And the chances were good that with a little further digging that more of this odd fellow was to be found below. I finally understood how Donald Johnson had felt when he made his breakthrough discovery of a nearly complete hominid skeleton in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia back in 1973.

Looking at that perfect little triangle of a bone, I was so excited I could have grabbed him and kissed him, but I knew where that would get me …

To be continued--

The glare off his mirrored sunglasses was blinding me as I sat there in my Jeep with my window down…waiting. It was beyond hot…and I was getting more annoyed by the second. This officer, was doing everything…but writing me that ticket. His eyes roughly wandered up and down my body in a nauseating fashion and his doughy red face, black eyes, and cruel thin-lipped mouth, made it clear that he was not the kind of man you wanted to find yourself with on a lonely stretch of road. I could read the crazy in his face and watched him as he weighed his options about what he could get away with.

I tried to remember where I had stashed that pepper spray and fumbled at remembering that old hyoid bone crushing move from karate. With heart racing, I looked up into the rear view mirror and was never so happy to seen that ancient beat-up import coming to a stop directly behind my Jeep. My pedantic hero of the desert had arrived—this was going to only make him more insufferable. In a flash, he was out of his car and moving towards us.

Physically, My Professor, was around six feet, a slender build, and when he walked straight towards you with his long back and slightly rounded shoulders, a head alight on a long almost graceful neck, you would be quite disarmed…that is till you see the light and large eyes with a fixed gaze which made you think of a panther caged but not broken. It was definitely that presence I was counting on to throw off the now distracted officer. You could almost smell the confidence coming off the brilliant man (who I had once maddeningly loved) and equally perceive the stench of carnal corruption coming off the sweaty officer. It is fascinating--how men can sum each other up in seconds--some sort of evolutionary hard wiring I suppose and I knew which one would supersede the other.

My Professor had the man quickly confused…and within a minute, I was warned not to speed with a curt abruptness and the officer was back in his cruiser and gone in a cloud of desert dust. He then leaned in my window and with the most Cheshire Cat grin I had even seen asked me how I was going to thank him. I told him he could carry all the equipment from the dig into the lab (but inside I was not feeling so cool).

We had finished the dig that afternoon and were headed back to UCLA (when that carnally challenged officer had stopped me). More successful than we even dreamed, we had discovered, in addition to the femur, several pieces of the pelvis including the sacrum, a partial radius, the maxillary bone, and what I believed were the parietal and occipital bones. It was enough to make some pretty serious speculations about our new friend. I could not wait to get back and do the measurements.

Once in the lab we got to work cleaning and getting the bones ready. I was overwhelmed by the thickness of the bones. These bones made the erectus samples look light by comparison. It was some serious ossification and I knew we were not looking at a Neanderthalsis-unless we had a deviant specimen. The curvature of the two pieces of the skull that I found hinted at a brain of 1500cc—this would place it on the high end of modern sapiens. So, here I am holding a leg bone that hints to being of the erectus linage (homo erectus just out of out of Africa 1.5 million years ago) and a brain comparable to a modern human! What to make of this…..

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