Light Bulbs Cultivated in the Garden, Illuminating Us Where We Are

The lightbulb in my garage went out on the same day as one of the lights in the ceiling fan, atop the 35 foot vaulted ceiling AND the corner 3-way lamp. I said 3-way. Oh, memories. Anyway, The tallest standing structure in the house I could stand on was a swiveling bar-stool in the living room. I waited until yesterday to change the bulb so I'd have a roomie to steady the chair for me. I was on my way to the Bear's Tooth to meet Mary and Jen. I was in a hurry. Hillary stopped me and asked if I'd change it out. I did, but put my wallet down on top of my car. Foreboding. Forshadowing. We finished the bulb buisiness and I drove down Northern Lights to the Bear's Tooth where I fought for parking on the wet icey spaces. Walked inside, stood in line, and ordered my ticket. When I reached for my wallet, and it was gone, I said, "Oh Cwap!" I didn't see Mary or Jen anywhere. I thought I had time to race home and search. I raced home and searched. Hillary was on the phone with Kalimah, but helped me look around the house and garage. No wally. I called everyone I could think of. Decided they'd never be able to help. I took to the icey roads to search with high-beams. I backed into the circle at the end of this road, drove around in circles, chasing two moose who ran opposite my car in the circle, slipping on hooves. Saturn/Moose marry-go-round. No wallet. I drove to the end of Romanzof, got out, saw MORE moose eating trees, kicked the slush and water around in the puddles on the intersection, and found no wallet. I drove out to Northern Lights, no wallet. SHIT! Everything was in there. My last $18. My ID. My ATM card. Library card. Phone numbers for amazing friends. SMF notes. Highway 9 notes. The wallet's velcrow for God's sakes, how could I lose it! So cool a thing! I turned east down Northern Lights with my brights on, pissing off passing cars, driving slow, pissing off drivers behind me. A quarter mile down the road I quit. I pulled over, and let the backed up traffic over take me. I clicked off my brights and slammed my head into the door window. SHIT! Time was clicking away, I had been watching the clock so closely that the minutes would change every 10th or 12th time I looked at it. It was 7:36 p.m. The movie would be STARTING in nine minutes. I looked up, resigned myself to standing up the ladies at the theater. They would just have to see the show without me. I was fucked.

"I'm fucked," I said. "Shit!" I was cussing way too much. I looked over at the cars passing me, there was a lot of traffic that night. Strange. I looked out into the road, and there, open, wet, and being run over, was my red velcrow wallet. "No way." I opened my car door without checking for the oncoming traffic, almost got side-swiped. I ran out to the side of the road and waited for all the traffic to pass by before I darted to the middle of the lane to grab it up. The cars and trucks and SUV's ka-chunk ba-dun dun-kunking my wallet in the wide-birth they gave me, shifted over, right side tires in the middle of the lane. Pulverizations. Hip hip, hooray. "Appreciate the gesture, guys, but stay off my junk!" I yelled. I ran to my wounded friend, slowly picked his flattened body off the battle field, folded him kindly, whipped the sweat from his brow, and said comforting things. Jumped back in the car and sped to the Bear's Tooth where I bought my ticket, ordered a Turkey and Bacon wrap and looked for Mary and Jen downstairs, then upstairs, and finally left a message with the big bouncer checking tickets that I was meeting Mary (who works in the kitchen) and I'd be up stairs.

Jen came up later, scaring me out of my skin, yelling "ERIK!" while the previews were rocking. We went downstairs and drank apple beer brewed in house. It was okay. The movie was "Friday Night Lights" starring Billy Bob Thorton and the kid from Sling Blade. That was neat. Halfway through the movie, the film got caught up on the projector, and BURNED THROUGH! At the time I thought to myself, "Funny place for special effects," but the weren't special, or effects, it really happened. That looked really cool. But the got the movie rocking and rolling again. After the movie the two girls and I went to Leroy's for coffee.

Even though we were all having a wonderful time, great laughs and nuts-o stories, I left. Out of nowhere I announced, "Here's some Mike -N- Ikes, I'm talkin off," and I left. I don't know why I did that. I wasn't feeling left out, intimidated, embarrassed, or uneasy in any way. I was having fun, I was active in the conversation. I cannot explain to you why I left the two girls at the coffee shop.

I got home and Hillary was gone. I was bummed out about that because I knew she had a few bottles of wine and I thought we'd get drunk, watch movies, and company. All that. No Hillary. Even though it was almost midnight, I called her and she said she was on her way to Pioneer Bar to meet Kalimah. I joined them immediately. Fun right? But here's the dealy-o. These two women had not seen each other in three months. Women talk a lot as it is, it's a FACT, not judging, but friends in the Long-Time-No-See category go doubley so. I had heard all the stories they were sharing (having hung out with Kalimah several times and friggin' living with Hillary) so I stuck my nose in the ESPN re-run Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl. Minnesota vs. Alabama. On my left were three men talking about amazing things. Lineages, history, middle English studies, all of that stuff. So, I made myself part of their group, telling them my own family story. I'm 2nd generation USA and all that Cherry Picker stuff. Very good. Then Hillary goes to the bathroom and Kalimah asks me, over the growing noise of the crowd and my own deafness, "Have you ever eaten red candied apples?"
I said, "Yes."
She asked, "What was his tudor's motto, it was the thesis of the whole book."
I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"
She said, "Candide's tudor said something to him at the beginning and it ---"
I realized, "Oh oh oh oh..... 'Candide,' not 'candied.' No, I've never READ CANDIDE AT ALL."

RED CANDIED APPLE
READ CANDIDE AT ALL
ya'll understand.

One of the men sitting next to us, wearing long curly blonde hair, a goat, and a fur coat, who said earlier, "My momma was a Yankee and my father was from the south," had read Candide. I had never even heard of this book, and here, all the men in his group, plus Hillary, plus Kalimah, and Jeffrey (a slight gay black man with crazy cool clothes), AND the bartender, had all read this amazing political satire from the mid 1700's. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140440046/qid=1104993595/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-6064101-9383840?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). I was out numbered in one hell of a way. I felt like I was drowning. The moral turned out to have something to do with cultivating our gardens. I'm sure Voltaire meant something truely inspiring and humanistic by that. But it was over my head if there was a meaning there.

This put me in an even stranger mood. I couldn't compete with these over-educated nit-wits, but I very badly wanted to. They were all so brilliant. To my relief, we decided to go to Darwin's Theory around the corner. We walked there and I began to lighten up. But it didn't last long, after we ordered drinks (Hillary had a Jamesons and an IPA, Kalimah just had the IPA, and I ordered an ice water) I went over the far wall and served up a bowl of stale popcorn. Too much cheese salt, but somehow addictive. On my way back to the table I see him there. He had Marlene (Marly) in some sort of slow motion headlock. If I didn't see Kalimah and Hillary smiling, I would have tried to save the waitress from our fur-coat goatee-ed Candide fan. But instead, I ate popcorn, stood behind them and waited for them to finish. Marly, our server, was almost in tears, but she said she'd never felt so "light." I was amazed. I sat down and munched and sipped. Colin, the adjuster, started laughing and at that very moment I realized he was gay. Nobody had told me so, but I knew it. To look at the man, this man of Russian logger size, nothing would indicate that he had a poo poo pee pee, but his laugh, and the way he held his cigarette, I knew. When Hillary's back rub and stretches and un-asked for adjustments were finished, she sat up straight and smiled, almost orgasmically. I was impressed. He sat down at our round table by the bayglass window at the front of the bar, and I asked him, "Where did you learn how to do that?"

"Well," he said, "being trained in hand-to-hand combat, you pick up moves and positions that feel good. It takes remarkable muscle control, I have to flex my arms and legs very hard to control how slightly I move a person. If I were to slip, I could break your neck because I'm pulling back on my arms so hard, and that's the key."

And without another word, he got up, stood behind me and began to rub my shoulders. I was about to say, "Get off me!" But it felt really good. Really good. He did all the knee-in-the-back things, weird things with my arms and shoulders, twisted my neck, and then some weird punching technique I had not seen him use on Marly or Hillary, probably because he figured a guy wouldn't mind being punched as much. When he did it, it hurt, but after he was done, I felt weightless. I was freaked out by his deep breathing and his homosexuality, and I was nervous because he was drunk and he had said, "If I were to slip, I could break your neck..."

I leaned my back against the window, put my face in the white hanging Christmas lights and watched people slipping and sliding out on the ice. Some people were falling in cross walks, there was a boy giving a girl a piggiback ride, and Whamo. Down the went. I stayed in that moment for a long time. Thinking about my book, Highway 9, a lot. I was surrounded by crazy people. Crazy. Crazy crazy crazy! But I had nothing to say, not really. I couldn't come up with a damn thing to say. Colin said to me as I was looking out the window, "You, sir, look very bored." I was surprised to hear him speak, he was sweating quite a lot and was having trouble staying seated steadily on his seat.

I said, "I'm not bored. I'm not sad, depressed, or upset about anything. I'm in a different place though, that's what you're seeing. I'm making, like, a film in my head, looking through these lights, to: out there. I feel like I'm making something, a novel, from the brown cup."

He said, "It's good to start from the ground up."

Gentleman, I realized it then. I've been working so much on my book, and I've thought back on it so heavily, that I almost feel like I'm back with Jill. That we're friends again, she's alive and we're sneaking around on weekends when her parents are out of town. I'm remembering her more than in memories, but in emotions. This is very strange. And wonderful, so wonderful and strong that I half expect to see her everytime I walk around a corner. And that's why I left Leroy's. That's why I tuned out so much at the bars. That's why I don't feel like I exist tonight.

We closed the bar that night. I drove Kalimah home, Hillary drove back to the Romanzof Half. After resisting Kalimah's offer to "come up for a drink" I drove home as well. A block away from Kalimah's, I saw Colin walking down the hill, sliding. I stopped and said, "Colin, it's Erik. Do you need a ride?"

He said, "No, I'm here. But you, Sir, are welcome to stay with me for the night."

I told him I had some gardening to do, but that I appreciated his offer. He smiled and said, "right on." Colin bumbled on in his fur coat, his hulking mass, and talking to himself, quoting The Canterbury Tales in it's origional Middle-English. A language hardly recogniziable as the one I speak myself.

Peace and Love,
Mungo

Song of the day: "Universal Hall" - The Waterboys

NO PROOF-READS WERE DONE. IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS TO WRITE THIS, OVER A DINER OF CORNBREAD, SALAD, THIS CRAZY CUSTARD-KIWI-MANDERINE ORANGE DESSERT. I'M GOING TO GET ON WITH MY LIFE NOW, IF YOU DON'T MIND.