Motherwaiter

 Lemme talk about the food issue.

I had two friends who came to stay this summer. This summer of dementia mom, I'm two years in on my Dementia project, post production, and no end in sight. So I am spending my days with this underlying anxiety issheokay  isshehot  isshehungry  isherdiaperfull  amistealingallhermoney doeseveryonehateme howdidthishappen whyisthishappening whydontwehaveairconditioning

Okay so ALSO aside from the verysick MOTHER, everyminute, I have this family, I have a son home who is finished college and applying to grad schools to become a therapist because aside from being a masseuse, we all really need a therapist so good plan right on time

I also have a 15 year old who hasn't said a kind word in three years let alone a kind gesture. there have been other gestures. Not so many words, but I'm pretty sure you can guess the gesture.

I also have a NASA daughter who blazes into town every now and then on her path to extraordinary. She comes here to have someone to lay on, to fall over, to laugh and yell gleefully and try on tiny tshirts and then she blows back out she's got stuff to do man. She is not into the summer of nothingness, the dissolving into the warmth and sandy beach watery summer. 

and finally I have a small jew coparenting superpartner who is in the garage full time in a tiny refrigerated box office who comes out to drive people places, make tuna or watch sports every now and then.

And I have a five horse, 20 chicken, two bunny farm and pool maintenance. 

And still, loneliness?

SO

since it's summer

I have two friends come, both with kids. One has a huge 13 year old high energy boy. One had two mellow nordic teens. All boys. Both women are slightly round wobbles, one is an actual balloon. The other one is just a love monkey.

The first one says ohh I will do the cooking and she made eggs the first day and washed one dish the next day and by the last days she was just lying flat on the couch and barely even getting up ever. Our house does do that to people, I get it. 

The other one is more entertaining, she is still excited about the world and about her place in it, she's lively and joins things, she questions things and loves things. She sees.

But neither of them, for the LIFE of them, can feed their own children. Even though I have SAID. PLEEEEASE. DON'T LEAVE IT TO ME. How have these children managed to keep ANY WEIGHT ON AT ALL. They have essentially no food functioning mother.

It is not fair for them to say ohhh you do it all so well. Ooooh but I was in the pool. Oooooh fuck you you fucking fat whores get your asses up and get in the fucking kitchen!! I don't love the kitchen!! I love NOT BEING IN THE KITCHEN! I TOLD YOU  BEFORE YOU CAME I WOULD NOT LIKE TO BE DOING THE FOOD 

Okay so things didn't work out that way. I know my house is a vacation vortex. I am a really good mother. I get hungry, my kids get mean when they don't eat, I have to make food, I do the food and then I can sit down.

YOU MUST FOLLOW THIS PLAN!!! YOU MUST DO THE FOOD. TOO. 

These people will never do the food. I know that. When the last one left I said to Barry, I think it's better to be lonely than to have company. 

But then when we were waving goodbye to the last friend, my little daughter who has never touched me since three years ago when she was 12, she put her arm around me. Like a little friendly arm snake, an arm who has been a stranger to me, slipped around my waist and stayed there. Right in the front yard, in front of god and everyone. And she kissed me on the cheek. Cause she loves me somehow, 3 years later. I was frozen in stunned awe. She didn't forget.

I think she felt happy, having friends over that she loved. She gave me some of that, from my favorite person, her.

So goddammit, food be damned. I will have to have them over and fucking cook again.

I am the Boat

I saw myself at the beach. Bobbing there in the mist. So freezing I came here for the sun and respite and there were raging black waves and wind chill minus 40 not really and that pirate ship floating there.

The dogs and I took a walk to the rocks like we do in summer and this is definitely not summer tho I am desperately trying to make it keep it so

My body aches so tired I lift wipe feed

I lay down on the dog sandy blanket and there's that ship out there just a rugged old fashioned sailboat like a boat from another time, sails down, anchored there nothing holding it up just a solid base

The dogs and I do nothing we lay here and the fog tries to clear a little and my daughter is just up the beach at college and my son is just up the beach at another college and I hear a train whistle and I'm not going anywhere

I haven't gone anywhere in 15 months

I've just been the face for my mom so she could see a face as she dies a face she knows and loves and trusts. I'm trying to be that face 

The waves disappear they turn green the kind you can see through

they aren't as mad

The boat has stayed the same just bobbing there like nothing is happening like the world isn't turbulent then soft then freezing then hot now flat

The dogs dig and bark at people unfriendlyish even though they're the most friendly dogs ever

I cry into the sand not because I'm sad but because I am not even consulted in this life I'm just doing this life for her and the everydayness is overwhelming. And I'm good, I take myself here and I go to the creek and I care for horses which are the quietest form of nurture nature

I am doing things best for all involved to survive maybe not thrive but if you're the 14 year old at my house, you're at least learn that love is work and care

The waves are whipped cream turbulent, fake busy now, just icing on a sunny sea

Sun brings back sparkle and I forget to be sad or helpful and just be ears hearing seagulls laughing it's so hot where we live I never meant to like it but now I can't imagine liking anything else

The boat doesn't need a solid sea because it has a solid base

It's not afraid of anything

Lucky

I remember being a kid in Santa Monica and being on the yellow couch on my knees looking out the window because my mom was late. I remember thinking what if she doesn't come home. What if she never comes home.

I pictured all these tragic things happening to her. I thought about never seeing her again.

A mom is like the clock of your life, you can't not have the mom. Your life would be a watch dropped into the toilet. A watch, because there were no cell phones back then, in the 70's. 

I thought about this the other day when I was still here, taking care of my mom. If I had known then that I would be here, almost 50 years later, my mom is still here, still ticking. She never disappeared. She never got hit by a car or ran off or was trampled by ostriches or threw herself off a 10 story building or drowned in a swimming pool. She never wasn't, in my life.

She slowly isn't, right now, because of her brain eating disease. She isn't the nurturer or the back scratcher or the lofty laugher, or the busy nurse, or the maker of creamed chipped beef or Cream of Wheat. She's filed all those situations for me to remember and recreate for my own kids or grandkids eventually. 

So even though my hair is getting see through from stress, I do what she would do which is think about palm readers, or take the callouses off my feet, or investigate a baby chicken, or contemplate travel. I do what she programmed me to do, which is care for others, and eat pizza. Don't wear shoes. Go to the beach. 

I might've added the beach. We lived near the beach when I was small, I suppose I am still gathering it. It's only an hour away now. My dad took us to the beach. He was good at imagining sandcastles and patient enough to handle it when the sides would slide off. He was good at holding all the stuff and our hands, and picking us up. Getting sand off tiny legs before getting into a station wagon, in the 1970's. 

I think what I'm saying is, lucky. 

I still have them.

Kiss of Death

My daughter has decided she doesn't want to kiss on the lips hello and goodbye. 

She says it's weird.

I don't have alot of rules. I say look, my mom always said you have to kiss hello and goodbye cause you never know when it will be your last time. So let's have this one rule, it's a good rule.

I would go to kiss her and she will shrink, look sideways, and twist her mouth sideways.

I finally got mad enough that I took her phone and wouldn't give it back til she kissed me. 

Then it got weird. Like we were making small talk and all she wanted was her phone and THEN waiting for a kiss is weird. So I told her look man, this is how we do it in our family. I still kiss my dad on the lips. He kisses my brothers. It's OKAY.

I know I'm HIDEOUS, I say. But I'm not asking you to KILL JEWS. 

It's just a kiss.

So I got my kiss. Each time is incredibly awkward, this idiot who I have kissed her whole life since she came out at that hospital from INSIDE MY BODY.

Let's just get through this year, I told B. Let's just survive 14 years old. With this, our flower in hiding, Bess.

Love is a Dumb Waiter

I posted a pretty angry post a few days ago and I think reading it over that it was more mean than accurate. It was accurate in how mean I felt but as a writer, the core of the post was about love, and how it wrecks you or disarms you or confuses you, and so I will hone it to honor that feeling and make it less about a dumb girl.

What the fuck happened to her man.

Or maybe who was I that I liked this person who has come through my door. In a summer where I am managing a used to be normal and now dying mother, while trying to go to the beach with my living family, like we used to in a normal summer. Trying to understand where I fit and how I fit and who am I

But I am not HER.

I LOVED HER, man. I loved her for maybe all these 30 years since I met her. I gave my heart to this person! Like stupidly, because I thought, when I was 25, all those years ago, that she was what love was.

She never loved me.

She never nurtured me.

She never did anything but somewhat entice me and then leave me hanging. I guess I thought that was what love was. It was supposed to be pain and longing.

I am older now. I have all these kids, and a few horses and dogs, and there’s Barry over there.

I’m pretty sure, I’m not all the way sure, but I’m pretty sure that love is way dirtier than that purity of longing. That longing is a game I’m playing with myself, and should maybe be an app.

If you’re longing for someone that someone most certainly doesn’t live with you and disappoint you. Disappointment might be the first step to real love. Maybe disappointment is right before laughter.

She’s been gone two days now and the laughter is starting to kick in. In her case, this is not because I realize that she is my true love or a true love. This is because:

In the hardest year of my life she came into my house to use my pool.

She came into my house to not take care of me.

She came to escape her own house.

She came to leave her kid and go eat lunch.

She came so I would take care of her.

I learned:

I do not like this.

I do not like her.

I do not want a non nurturing person in my life ever again.

I am so grateful

I am so lucky

I work so hard for my good life

I used my time on this planet well

I grew my heart bigger than my intellect

I am bigger than I thought, inside

I give up, in some cases

And this is good

I am saddest about the young Jules who sat on that hill and looked at that girl and thought I had found deep love, all those years ago. I maybe knew it wasn’t deep, but I thought it was the beginning of something so amazing. She must know more than me, I thought, she was 5 years older. She was funny. She was  - no, she was not me. I thought she was me. I INFUSED all my me-ness on her and heck that was good enough for me! I’m a writer, better to create the person in my head and forget the actual person!!

Well the actual person walked through my door a week ago, the SAME exact person, just bigger, and for some reason, because I am stripped bare emotionally perhaps, this same exact person was just a horrible horrible NOT ME. Not like me AT ALL. It was real, real life.

I feel like the best part of me backed backwards into my kitchen, into a hole in the wall, down the dumb waiter and got out somewhere so much cleaner, more cementy, without all the stacks of shit that I accumulate so as not to feel the real core of my life. In actuality, the real core of me is pretty clean, and there's ice cream here. Even near the dementia booth. There's also always a wet dog, and sandy feet. For some reason. I think because that means I'm home, and a little bit of mess - there's comfort there.

It is very very funny to me now. I feel like I have amputated a part of my body, like an extra leg, that was grown just for her, and it fell off and I wrapped it up and it’s tied with this big pink bow and I threw it gleefully off the Golden Gate Bridge because this is NOT ME. 

Don’t fall in love with people in the art department. I knew it then. Grips, ok, ADs even, they will be too organized, but so what, that’s ok. Fall in love with people’s hearts, and make sure they are open and bleeding. Love the big hearted. You will never be sorry.

Security Guard

There are a few random times in my life where I felt like everything was right. Like everyone important was there and I could float rest die happy.

Once when I was driving in Jason's car and I was maybe 22 and my dog Jed was in the car and we were driving past those yellow umbrellas that artist had decorated the hills with. I remember feeling the security of a moment on that grey road with him and that car and that dog thinking 

everyone is here

Everything is alright

everything is right

Today I felt that looking at the pool after exercising after feeding her and everyone is either in the house sleeping or doing school in bed and it's almost summer and dogs are lying around and I was floating in the pool reading an amazing open hearted writer who speaks from years ago the same feelings this very person me here in modern times feels 

This security

I don't always get that we aren't on a first name basis 

And my mom can't make sentences and she cries but I fixed her toes she has healing toenails because of me and even if she isn't rich she's still mine. She would be spending time crying anyway if she were in a nursing home just without her perfect toes and me next to her

Her toes aren't perfect

They're just better than they were. Medicine on them every day for almost a year, meticulous caring to small things

works

anyway I had that moment. 

The Jason car moment.

Here

I have it in the woods when Kurt is ahead and disappears in the jungle and all we hear are the horses and the dogs trustily exploring along. The path we know so well it's different every time and there is always peace in water

standing in creeks in Canada

In the ocean in Ventura with my little dots of kids and dogs on shore

Never far away

Near a cabin on a lake in New Hamsphire with my loving dad

Catching a fish with Lilly and Nathan and Uncle David and Chris

On the smooth kayak water flat as frosting with Emma

I don't always breathe I forget to breathe because life takes alot of organizing and you should see my garage

But being there and security and being wrong every day about something

why are we not all reaching for that

that's where the joy is

I am listening

I love you mom

I know you do

I know you do, she says.

When I put her in bed she says I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

It's okay, I say. Fixing her necklace that she's always worn and doesn't care about anymore. I just watched the Oscars. No awards for this.

I care about her necklace. I'm glad it's only me that she only had one daughter. You have to be strong and not want to share with anyone and so I have that. She belongs to me like only she and I know.

I regret not wedding dress shopping with her. She said you have only one daughter you see how that feels. Otherwise I guess I've made up.

I was feeling her bony chest and thinking I can't cut in there and find where she is. What makes her her isn't in there.

Walking from her place, the moon is covered in clouds, dim. I see why they do funerals. To honor the ones you love, you need to celebrate them.

I said to my mom whatcha thinking about

She said whatever you are

Sitting in the kitchen with my mom:

Mom: is your mom here

me: yes my mom is here

Mom: right here in the kitchen?

me: right here in the kitchen!

My friend Rebecca said "I think they are sending others in to check where she is"

I am listening

Just now I bring her a drink out in the sun and I give her a kiss and she says

I love you

and smiles.

I love you

Don't worry. Don't worry.

I shouldn't worry? I say

No. She says.

immensity

 I'm seeing that my love is a massive infinite individual. Like maybe my thing is not writing after all, writing is the blue collar version of me, my real version is recognizing love, feeling love, giving love, and taking love.

I see it with my mom, I see it with that guy, I see it with my kids, I see it with the one friend at a time I have occasionally. I am much bigger and much less able to control or understand myself and my immense capacity to love. I am huge that way. Huge and airy like the world's biggest soap bubble. I can pop at any minute but so far no way man. I am way too strong to pop.

I have been having trouble because I have wanted to be what I needed to be and haven't been sure how to do it. Everyone else needs something so I'm filling all those roles but there is something else there is this ME in there.

I spend so much time running because it is much bigger than I have the envelope for. I cannot contain it all. I have tried to be Tee ball mom and Van mom and snack mom and beach mom and dog mom and rational mom.

Now I'm dementia mom, and damn I am actually good at that too. I am kindergarten mom. I have this immensity. 

My mom and I are now this other glob of thing, this half person this mongoloid of two. All mixed up. We were always that. She's a broken typewriter and I'm all her keys. I understand her, and I still love her even though she can't love me like she used to. I fill in all the blanks with my huge fucking heart that will not stop. I think I'm scared of myself. I don't want to hurt anybody of course.

But I have needed to feel things so badly.

I don't understand how to love things in a traditional way because love doesn't come at me in a traditional way. Or I reject it so it can't hurt me so I can't be like everyone else doing the same old things but maybe great painters felt this agony, their art blended with life and none of it was good it was just glaring because the art takes on its own life and the artist is all banged up in there and makes a huge mess but this is glory (which I just started watching on tv)

Loving greatly is loving. B is not mad at me for not loving him. He's wanting what we all want, which is the love we deserve to be there and easy to access (hollywood). I hate love because love makes you vulnerable. So I can only love in compartments. I'm afraid I'd be blown apart. Like I was on Halloween all those years ago when I felt like all my love was safe in a family and contained and now I realize it was just me all along. Me seen by b

I Know Nothing

 I'm not going to lose anything.

I always think I'm going to lose everything, I kind of expect it. 

But in the last two months I have taken on a dementia mom, and zoom kindergarten, both with none not even ONE of the skills I needed to accomplish even a TINY portion of these things successfully.

I took them on faith.

I thought well. Well I can try.

The mom needed loving, tending, listening, touch, reassurance. She needed someone outside to keep things safe, and to remember where things were. So she could relax and try and change slowly and quietly back into clouds. While I watch and try not to disintegrate from the immensity of watching your mom change into this horrible sweet and terrible new thing involving so much loss. All made of loss. Loss and I are not friends. We are at opposite sides of the gym. We are rivals. More I am the rival and it is oblivious and cares not one bit how I feel.

I took on this.

Then I got the job with a class I didn't know in a school I didn't know using a technology I don't know while watching a mom I don't know. At the same time.

I said yes.

It's been 31 days not counting weekends.

It is unfolding. It is refolding every day. It is wrinkled. There are some of the same songs everyday. Music is teaching us. I am learning that learning is curiosity and that's all. Not answers. Not at all getting it right or doing anything perfectly.

It's curiosity that is the whole path.

I have let this mom relationship morph into whatever it is. I have some rules and some frustration but there is a whole new relationship here that is mostly baffling, comforting, vulnerable, heartbreaking, full. It is love without words, with all the wrong words because of dementia. It is wordless, labeled wrong. That is good for me, the one who has all the words right all the time, I have the bags of words, I know everything and say it better funnier smarter lovinger than anyone.

I don't know anything. I know less everyday. I learn from 5 year olds that I see on a zoom class while I teach in boxers without a bra in my living room with the dog at my feet.

I learn from my mom who can't function cerebrally, but who is still teaching me that love is all there is. Love, touch, connection, family. 

Say yes even when it seems impossible. Allow loss. Lose everything.  

You won't break. 

That is a Great Shirt

I'm at school in a 1st grade classroom and this is my third different class of the week. The first day was a juvie 5th grade class that has maybe never seen the light inside a flower, or known a freshly baked good, or known the love from hugging someone all clean just out of the shower. This was the kick the ball into the street and then say we have no ball now group. Then I did 3 hours in a preschool class where all their hands felt like the backs of baby deer, and the little boys held hands on the way to the bathroom, and we all dressed up like veterinarians and checked the heartbeats on stuffed animals.

But now, 3rd day, this little 1st grade class where the kids are writing a sentence about the book we read, and drawing a picture. And I'm so tired and it's only like 9 am, and I'm walking around to help "inspire" the ones not doing anything to get to work, and I pass one little person who looks up at me all shiny. "I'm so happy," she whispers, "Because I finally drew my first perfect shirt."

I instantly know this will be the best part of my day. I look at her little drawing and there's a funny little guy and another person, and she's showing me the shirt and it's terrible, she's 6, but I love that moment when you feel like for ONE second you did something right. And she musta been trying for at least TWO YEARS.

That is a great shirt, I tell her. Her eyes are so incredibly gleamy proud I say, I'm gonna draw a star on your paper, for your perfect shirt.

I draw the star lopsided, messily, the best I can and she holds her breath like she's getting a million dollars.

And I'm not even her real teacher, just the fake one. I don't know her name either, she's just one of the faces I meet, in the sea of babies. It made me feel like it doesn't matter, who sees your shirt you made, or if it even is perfect. It's knowing how you feel, and telling someone else about it.

Error Budget

So in the same week that I'm subbing long term alone in a class with 18 rapscallion 8 year olds, I also went with Emma to meet an astrophysicist in Monrovia.

A lot of the time I don't know where I'm going because I'm just the driver on someone else's journey. There was alot of laundry, but it was Saturday and the Monrovia trip sounded better than teaching 3rd grade. Monrovia, as my brother told me years ago, "Not the end of the world, but if you stand on a box, you can see it from here."

Emma likee da math, especially the star kind, so we go meet the guy and the guy zoomed in to park next to us at what to me looked like an unmarked abandoned warehouse and then jumped out with his Australian (although he was British) accent and told us to come on in.

Inside the "lab," we waited for a handful of other star junkie people and he showed us what looked like the world's most boring objects in this lofty high ceilinged lab. There was like a giant metal plate. A round scaffolding type thing. Some stacked up metal boxes with some neatly wrapped wires coming out of it. A humming machine inside of a refrigerator. It's like if you shrunk down and could walk around ankle deep inside the mushy mechanical workings of your brain and its functional, no nonsense wiring. It's like backstage at a magic show if there was no magic invented yet. Like if you went to Magic Mountain and none of the rides were there. In fact all the magic is erased and it's just a parking lot in Valencia.

But as the people straggled in (the whitest teenager who ever lived with his parents - his sharp shoulder blades sticking out the back of him, the biggest things on him; a star trek nerd child molester whose teeth aimed down into his mouth like he'd been gulping fish in a strong current; a fat English astronomer for whom the word mirth was invented) into this dry white room full of haphazard metal leftover from a Chrysler Assembly Line Christmas Party, I realized that the magic of the stars wasn't the junk you had to build to see the stars. As we talked to Hank the guy we had come to meet, who loved science and the stars so much he bounced in his tennis shoes as he talked,  I realized that the magic of the stars is in all the questions.

Hank explained happily that for the last 14 years he's been working on the biggest telescope ever, a thirty meter one they're hoping to set up in Hawaii. The biggest ones we have now are 8 meters. He said you'd be able to point the laser and take a picture of a dot of space the size of-- well a dot, like a period - and inside that dot there are 400,000 galaxies. (pause. 4. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. In that period right there.) This telescope would help us be able to see layers of space we can't see now. We are blind. If all goes well it's only ten more years until the thing will be working and he will be dead just kidding. Except the people of Hawaii juuuust decided they don't want the world's biggest camera on their volcano so now unless you own a tall mountain it might end up strapped to Hank's car but at least it will be built. So they're gonna keep building it. Hope for the best.

It works with 400 mirrors, and all the mirrors are being built by us and Canada and Japan and India, and then polished in Rochester NY at the Canon lab (because who needs cameras anymore) and he said there they have to polish it mechanically until the concavity is exactly right because otherwise the pictures won't be clear. He said they can make them almost perfectly smooth but that on the project as a whole there is an Error Budget. Every piece of the telescope will still work even if in each piece there are tiny defects, as long as all the errors accumulated are contained within the error budget.

I'm thinking dammit I didn't know we could have an error budget. 

Here I am walking around the lab looking at the pieces of what looks like King Kong's handcuffs, or somebody's robotic team project suddenly abandoned for pizza at Shakey's, and he's talking about all the bunches of people who are figuring out the rivets and the weights and the dynamics of things and all I'm thinking about is man I want to spill my water all over these wires.

Also, I got a free bagel sandwich on the way in because the lady at the bagel place knows my family and I'm thinking, YES, I want to know all about the stars and feel confounded by the immensity of all we don't know but YES I also think a free bagel is its own kind of miracle.

My error budget is so high.

So I took back all my questions to my little class of 8 year olds where they are asteroids whizzing around me and crashing into me and just getting them to OPEN A BOOK IN A TIMELY MANNER is every bit as difficult as the little guy making the metal plate that holds the telescope at the precise angle and earthquake resistant springiness - YES but have you ever tried to get 8 year olds to STAND IN A QUIET LINE

For some reason I am in this life that is sloshing around me and over me and there is Emma leading me down this what is this science math path and the telescope warehouse had such high ceilings and why do high ceilings make you feel better

And the guy said if aliens were looking down at our earth they'd see that something was weird there because the atmosphere is unique and that is because we have so much oxygen here and that is not normal and all the other planets we have found don't have oxygen and I said but Hank why do we have oxygen and he said because we have trees

But why don't they have trees. Hank.

Why are we alone

So I let the kids in my class read in the closet and under the tables. Because in 5th grade when I was a kid I had a teacher who said reading should be fun, and comfortable, and she let us do that. So I prayed the principal didn't walk in and I let them do what I got to do, which is read with someone's head on their lap or against the bookshelf, lounging like cats on a rainy day. Because maybe someone, one of these kids, will grow up and remember to encourage another kid to think bigger or differently or sideways. We can get to the same place on a crooked path. It just takes longer.

Nothin to See

You guys should look at my Momish post. That's usually where I write about horses and farm related stuff.  It's at www.gomomish.blogspot.com

Really all I'm trying to do these days is what all of us are trying to do. Stay in shape. Play. Stay ahead.

I did have a colonoscopy and jury duty all in the same week. Once you've sprayed watery green jello out of you, you have a certain respect for the work your intestines quietly do every day for your whole life.

I feel sort of the same way about jury duty, where I had to wear closed toed shoes in summer, and luckily didn't have to serve and got to leave after an hour.

The most important thing right now is how much granola and celery I can eat.

Writers and Water and Summer Still

When the moon is out sometimes I forget who I am and I just become the shape.

At this yoga class Emma and I have been trying, she sort of reminds us to forgive everything, and let everything sink into the earth, like the earth can take it. The earth is holding up everyone we know. I am not very bendy.

This summer I never really felt like it started and now it's ending and I'm not good with the endings of things, because I like everything so much.  I don't even like to go in at night until it's too dark to see because have you seen the light on the trees and there's still moonlight, we can still stay out

Just don't want anything to be over. Each day longer I get to live, the more I love everything.

I was reading Mark Twain in the pool, floating around, between all the talking people in my house, and the kids playing on the raft, Mark Twain said to let yourself wander like a brook, even if you curve around and end up sort of where you started, it doesn't matter, isn't that funny even, you thought you were getting somewhere. Definitely not the where to, just the babbling that makes sense.

I guess I'm seeing that as a writer you walk in the creek, and you write about what you feel. All that feeling isn't just hippie, it's important cause if you feel it you can tell it. Not everyone can tell it, which I don't understand. Maybe that's how the pro surfer feels, like just get on a board man. Anyone can do it.

Mark Twain isn't even a guy, just like maybe Shakespeare wasn't. Mark Twain is a measurement for steamboats, a certain depth of water. He named himself after something he just heard, every day, working on the boats. Because it came into his ears, and he recognized himself, and the water is romantic, and the measuring of water- ridiculous?

The creek bends back to where it started, and that's funny.

Sometimes I see the shapes in my life as image without the sound, like looking in the window and seeing Barry talking to the people he gathered today to talk about the theater they used to run and travel with - just the outline of him standing and gesturing, while I'm out in a wet towel from the pool. Or watching the girls frolic in the pool and not picking up my phone or a book just watching them wrestle each other off the steps and fall into the water and do it over and over and laugh, like the way summer is unending like that, with nothing else to do, and there's popsicles and you're 12.

I'm in bed and my toes are not asleep. The moon is making me laugh.

Paradise

  (a new short story by Juliet Johnson)

I drove up to Napa and stopped at Harris Ranch because of the grass fed beef steak, delicious. It's the halfway mark. I didn't want to drive the rest of the way because I'm heading into the funeral, into the family that is the closest I have to family and the little one is dead because of alcohol and drugs.

I don't have to charge the car anymore because I got a new one at Galpin Ford, Jesse gets me a new deal everytime, this is an upgrade, but I can afford it and the gas mileage savings wasn't that great anyway with a hybrid so I'm back to this car for awhile and it's functional, it's a good deal, it's new and I like it.

He wasn't a baby, wasn't really little actually, he was 47. It's just when it's your godson, or the brother of your godson, and you've seen him born and grow up, he's still the baby of the family. Even though he's caused his parents and everyone heartache for years, with his addictions and his rehabs and his promises of quitting and his starting over and his stealing and his car accidents, and then his mother finding him dead sitting in a chair dressed for work after being fired from one job for being constantly late, and somehow miraculously three days later finding another job, a new one that would give him a chance and then coffee sitting cold in the mug and he's sitting at the apartment kitchen table dead. And sweet Sarah says oh it must have been a heart attack, and he was peaceful, because as a mom finding a son like that who has tortured himself and herself, even though she did everything for him, she was president of the PTA, she fed him organic food. No he had a heart attack. He's all done fighting the demons now. She felt relief, on top of her complete, bitter and annihilating depression, devastation. And disappointment.

I get to their house and there are tears, this is the journey with all the tears, I know it will be that because there is no way around it. But I'm in WINE country, and there is joy in the long cool bottles and oh my god, that is a 1963 cabernet and the cork slides out and I feel the wine's breath on the inside of my cheeks and I smile at Nick and Sarah and feel the gloss in my throat and it doesn't matter, the wealth, I become a better man for them.

It's three days of crying, a large group of us, only one day where we have to put his urn in the ground and the daughter of my godson is standing under a tree in her sixteenth year, reading a poem of a Bob Dylan song and then reading Goodnight Moon like he used to read to her when he wasn't loaded and this makes me choke far into the fat back of my head because this is not how it's supposed to be, out under the tree with the spiky oak leaves that poke through your shoes and make your feet bleed, out in this bleached California valley where everything's supposed to grow on vines. Where a few months ago there was a huge fire up the hill that completely wiped out an old town called Paradise. Wiped out, like gone. The vineyards, the old folks home, the trailer park. The little houses in the woods. People burned to death. People were staggering out covered in white ashes as their town disappeared, burning up the empty road behind them, all on a Saturday.

Back in the twilight kitchen there's a woman laughing so hard, everyone is dressed in casual formal wear, we are on a ranch but we put a child in the ground. Celebrating the life of he, as they say, when really mourning the death of or it's a swirl, the deadliest emotional swirl. She's laughing and I see the wine jolly, the glugging as it's poured like elves coming out of the mines with diamonds, fill my glass up, there's no counting. The colors are so bright, so deep, so red, so expensive, so rare. The connaisseurs all around me are vapid or insipid and rich and I've known these same scattered friends for years, on and off, and they annoy me but we are laughing because there's wine and then we're crying because there's death of death of the family, and then there's cognac, square thick bottle and the room in me stills.

I have wrecked cars. I have woken up in airports in cities I didn't know I was going to. I have lost lovers. I have tried to go forward but this place always gets me, it's that liquid.  My brain is functioning overboard, washed by tumultuous expensive wine and the storm of the boy in the ground, but the wine whipped ocean is steering the ship.

A part of me is hushed silent, there's a place I can't feel because that stuff kills the place in me, all the places in me. It is rare because they are rich and I am not, I used to be but those days are for fuzzy pictures on my Instagram, my prized stag I tote back on the roof of my car and display on Throwback Thursday. Cognac is still happening here, and I better stay away from that stuff. Cognac is poured for them. And then me.

The woman is still laughing and she throws her head back and thinks her bar stool has a back to catch her but it doesn't and she tips off and breaks her arm. There's much scuffling and shouting and I turn to look too quickly and slip and I'm falling and crack my head on the counter and my tooth goes into my lip and my face is covered in blood.

The hubbub of the hobnob still seems to be around the woman and her arm although someone helps me up, I think it's Nick because he is looking at me that way that I don't like, the one where his eyebrows are angry and mixed and it looks like pain, I made more pain, than he already had on his plentiful pained face. On this pained lacking rain lacking one son all these well meaning but sad friends weekend in viney vineyard Napa.

I hobble off to the quaint motor home near the vines where I'm sleeping on the ranch, the sky touches the land here like a wide universe umbrella, a limitless white cover and not comforting. I climb the metal step and get inside and it's only 6 o'clock on my apple watch and put one leg on the couch and I'm gone. There's pounding at the door and are you allright. Mark Fitzpatrick are you allright. He's using my two names so I know he's worried. Sarah is really  mad at you, he's yelling. I hear his feet kicking gravel. Sarah's been mad at me for 30 years, my loud growls back, noticing the blood flakes on the back of my hand. I put my hand to my face. There's blood on my face somehow.

When I get back to L.A., I text my girlfriend and I don't understand what she's talking about, why do I disappear. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, I text back. That must've been really difficult, she says, I know it was a funeral but why do you drink. Why do you do that.

Nobody got out of control, I write back.

Here's the Problem Right Here

My pool was turning green so Nathan said he'd help me take the huge heavy hulking filter out to clean it out and we did it and the filter got all cleaned out, hosed off by me, and we put it back in. The next day my pool was better but still cloudy and arrgh, so I had to take the filter out again which requires unscrewing a tiny bolt which takes FOREVER  and then emptying like titanic amounts of water and lifting heavy paneled, keg sized, dirt filled filter, hefting it out. But I do it. I hose it again. I decide it is time to take it to the pool store to make sure nothing is broken on it, because after 14 years as the lone pool man here at my house, I know that it is the filter that isn't working, why the pool is green.

So I take Nathan and his friend Dylan who are always up for lifting heavy things and going to boring places like pool stores, and I take Lilly who is 10 and can't be left home alone (much), and we go to the pool store.

There are two dudes in there, one sort of fattish one and one sorta blackish one. There is also a pool basketball hoop and no one else in the store.

The dudes take the filter to the back, and Nathan and I follow while Lilly and Dylan immediately begin to ravage the store with a cutthroat game of display centered basketball.

"Oh here's your problem right here," the fattish one says, pointing out what looks like a rip in the filter. We touch it with fingers and the rip turns out to be just some pool dirt. He keeps looking, turning the filter over. "Oh, this is loose," he says, showing where a part of the filter may or may not have come out of alignment. He starts getting a wrench to loosen the one bolt on the filter, to fix this problem.

Nathan and I have been to this pool store before, a year ago, where a girl took apart the filter, brought out new panels that it needed, and then for an HOUR could not for the LIFE of her figure out how to put it back together.

Nathan looked over at me as they two dudes took the long bolt out of the filter, and began taking all the panels apart, peeling it apart like a giant artichoke Chinese puzzle.

At this point, a flash of panic is rising in both Nathan and I. And because Nathan is 17 and doesn't care that much about panic, and because I have decided not to jump in and direct and manage this oncoming disaster, we both decide to just see what these guys can do. Maybe it ISN'T going to end like the last time we were here, with that girl.

I sit down on a few giant white sacks of diatomaceous earth, shockingly comfortable when you decide you aren't going to put out this fire. Giving up is so easy. Look, there's even a soft place to sit.
"Here's your problem right here," the guy points out, as a chunk of DE dirt plops onto the ground as they take another leaf of panel off. Nope, I'm thinking. That's just dirt. But the clump is reassuringly large. Hey man. Maybe they know what they're talking about.

The guys take all the panels off. Now the filter is completely taken apart. It did resemble a complicated, cylindrical flower. Now its petals are all these curvy rectangles, strewn around on the floor haphazardly, disorganized, in a situation Nathan and I know too well. Getting the flower reassembled, bro, this is a bitch.

They examine every panel. There are no rips or tears. There is no broken stem, as they say. Good news, since this filter cost about $400 to fix last summer. It should last, and apparently it has.

Now the good boys of the pool store have decided it's time to put the thing back together.

Nathan wanders over standing exactly like he used to stand as a 2 year old, and stare at inept people. His arms limp at his sides, his chin out, silent. People working are interesting to Nathan. Except now, at 17, he knows something. He knows they're idiots.

I still do not move from my pile of DE. I hear the other two kids throwing the basketball and screaming happily. I wait for them to break something. The guys have put the panels back on and are wrestling it like an 80 pound trout to get the bolt back on. They have put it together wrong. They take it apart again.

Nathan and I watch. They put it together again. They turn it upside down. They take parts off. They put it on a table. They can't get it to line up. The flower petals seem longer. Why isn't this working. I sense the basketball game is becoming sweaty and on the verge of disintegrating. That feeling I'd get when my kids were toddlers and the ultimate breakdown was coming after 20 minutes of perfect behavior. We're skating on the edge of everything ending badly. I wait and wait some more. Then the  time is up. Doing nothing has not worked. It has just stolen time, I've done death row at the pool store. Not doing everything yourself? It's amusing, but it isn't worth it.

Nathan and I quietly step in to right this filter ballet, mangled by morons. We glide in, pool mentors, with hands brave and uncomplicated by matching khaki pants that must be where the brain stopped functioning with the two dudes. They LOOK like professionals. They have the PANTS.

But no.

Nathan and I quietly take apart the filter they have assembled wrongly. Nathan finds a video on youtube. A video of someone else who also can't put together his filter. We know the pool, and the filter. It is in our blood. We slowly put the panels back on, fitting them into the holes, and the gaps. We feather the panels straight. We fumble slightly, but then we're back on track, just like the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled Team. We fit on the little top, which also has to be weaved carefully with the panel tops. Everything in its little grooves. We put the bolt back in, and Nathan tips the whole filter carefully so we can line it up with the bottom cap. The blackish guy is a believer, and he has an open mind. He helps. The other guy, he just stands helplessly, washed away in the pool store universe where he'd be best hands off, answering the phone.

Nathan is laying on the floor with the filter on his face, finishing tightening the bolt while the helpful guy holds the top.

"Now I see why they pay $100 to clean these out," the helpless dude says from off to the side, puffily.

I blink at him, from the floor of the store. You should be paying ME $100 bucks.

The sweaty basketballers come check to see if we can leave yet. Since it's been a long hour.

We are done. We heft the filter out the door, cheerfully thanking them.

At the car, Nathan and I heave it back in the backseat. Those guys were idiots, we grin.

We weren't sure we did it right. There seemed no other way to do it. I stuck the filter back in the tank at home. The filter works great now. The pool is clear. 

Next year, I know what the problem is.

All Your Lives in One Basket

Four years subbing and I am now itching for something new. It was challenging, it's now just a job, and inside of me things are rewiring. Where am I going? I'm itching.

Everything is running ahead of me - kids getting old and running off soon. I'm having feelings of running off. I think it is me inside, ballooning to a bigger self. I shall take the noon balloon and see where I land.

I'm Dorothy and there's the basket, and I have the dog and I got in the balloon basket and all I have to do is let go. Of course, where does she go? She goes home.

Maybe you can't outrun yourself when you're trapped in a life that has never let you down. But there are all those other lives. I want all the lives, in my basket.

Fork in the Toaster

In the art room with Ms Alice, we had the class I was subbing doing clay. The art room is a new thing, a whole room dedicated to getting messy, all the regular school day stuff cleared away to make room for only creative, open, living mess. Finally a room I understand.

Dubious, though, because twenty five 6 year olds with lumps of wet clay… It would be dubious with one 6 year old with a lump of clay. The amount of squish, and disaster and tragedy if it goes wrong and mess.

But Miss Alice is in charge, and she’s from Kentucky, all that blue grass, and she is artistic and yet strong, if she says we can do it, so I can merge into her and we can play these kids like our band, lopsided maybe, but clay can always be lumped back together and started over.

So we’re flattening clay into a little rectangle, there’s a paper with a large rectangle drawn on and they get to try and flatten their piece to the shape of the rectangle. There’s a clean paper for everyone. There’s water you can dip your fingers into to soften your clay. There’s a little wooden tool at each place for cutting, soft, light wooden knife like the kind Indians would carve carefully.

Most of the kids flatten their clay and try and reach the edges of the rectangle. Two of the kids just keep putting on water until they have a soggy lump and they just keep squeezing it and squeezing it. Keith does this. Of course he does this, he is the smallest kid in the class, he is smart but his youth is busy, the wiring zapping his body around to do things and say things and be all things at once. He is the most annoying, and perhaps the most still growing directly from the ground, zinging upwards. Annoying because he requires the most tending, fencing, reining in.  Fork in the light socket, because what would happen if?

We get the rectangles flattened, and then we press an insect mold into it, push hard, make fossil type impressions. They will become butterfly feeders, to hang on the fence, to collect dew for butterflies to land on and drink. It doesn’t matter what they are, or if they are perfect, or what is perfect with lumps of clunky clay hanging on a fence. What matters is, is the making fun, does it feel good, are you seeing yourself in the result, are you part of something bigger, creation.

I’m cleaning off little clay covered hands, and looking over at Keith who has to have his redone because he made the biggest mess. The majority of kids are getting their pieces to hang on the fence, lining up, chattering, like normal kids do. I hear Ms Alice saying Keith, I know you used the most water and added it to your clay and we made a little bit of a mess, but what that means to me is maybe you are an artist. Artists like to feel things. The free thinking Ms Alice, she can name things and see things others can’t. My heart breaks a little, because Ms Alice says the one thing that has flowered, and burdened my life forever. The feeling of things.

I don’t have to look at Keith to know he is up to his elbows in white clay, and that his clay is still a ball of complete goo in his hands and that he is squishing it. He is six and he won’t remember this day or this mess or the details of this room. He doesn’t have to worry about the 24 other kids or the fence waiting for us to put the clay on, or dinner to make, or working on his marriage. He is feeling the clay, because that feels good, and that is it.

The most annoying kid because he’s the one fully invested. I take them out to the fence, try to funnel them to the next step and they are all fairly responsible, some squabbles. But we are all these firings of thought and feeling and daylight and planes flying overhead and butterflies lofting past at random moments. Groups of children are impossible, unless they are singing.

I go to bed that night thinking about what Ms Alice said, in the middle of her work day. We aren’t getting paid that much, and there is so much chaos, and the neatness of the art room became the mess of the art room, but her thought was pure, and our art came out the way art comes out, okay, smashed, lumpy, funny, twisted. Occasionally we get the pure moment, in the midst of the chaos, of the most difficult person, with his arms wet with white mud, and his clay slobby and nowhere near successful or finished, and yet that’s what we’re doing it for, not the result. The experience.

Fork in the toaster. What would happen if. Maybe we don’t need death, exactly. But curiosity. Curiosity is science, and art, and thought, and living.

Trick or Treat

Seems like Halloween rolls around and my life spirals out of control. It must be the rolling round orange pumpkin takes all my inhibitions for the year and pops them and pumpkin juice gets everywhere. Seeds, pulp, goo.

My specialty seems to be terrible relationships, or maybe not terrible, just passionate, undirected, explosive, loving, well intentioned, alive.

One year I had to take a tv in to get fixed right after Halloween because it broke. The TV guy said what happened when I dropped it off. He had to put something on the fixit paper. I said you’ll never believe it. He said try me. He’d heard it all. I said a pumpkin melted on it.

His pen hovered over the page. He hadn’t heard that one.

My boyfriend at the time and I had a tumultuous thing because he was organized and had a walkie talkie and was used to ordering things up and around, and I was kind of relieved to be ordered up and around, and liked it for awhile until I had my own ideas that couldn’t be ordered or around anymore, and then I went off with someone else. It had been close to Halloween, and we had a fight, and a week or so after Halloween I was back in his apartment in West Hollywood, a little nook of somewhat straight on super gay Harper street, and we’re back together for the moment and he comes out of the tiny strip of kitchen with this frozen pumpkin, steaming in the regular-degreed air.

When our fight had happened, we had carved a pumpkin, but I had missed Halloween, so he had put the pumpkin in the freezer to save it, just in case we worked things out, sweetly, so we wouldn’t actually miss Halloween. And now here was the pumpkin like the undead (not unlike our relationship, derailing into over) – the idea of the pumpkin was so sweet – he saved it for us, it was still possible, but the reality of the pumpkin was it was freezing, and had icicles, and it smelled weird and it was like preserving something dead. When he carried it out to me, I thought Ohhhh, in that sweet way, and the closer it got, the more scared I felt because it was a cold pumpkin, it was like an old body part, and Halloween was over.

You can’t freeze and then retry the relationship.

We did anyway, of course, because people do, because he had hope, and since he had a walkie talkie and seemed to know what he was doing all the time, and his apartment was cute, and I was 22, and I loved him, in the best version of love I had at the time, I had hope, so we put a candle in the pumpkin, put it on the tv, ate some candy (trick or treat), laughed and rolled around in the bed, watched a movie probably or went out with our little group of friends, and then went to bed.

The next day I woke up and the pumpkin had deflated, mashed down like a melted orange clown mask, disgusting, old, lumpy, and runny, right into and through the tv. He had to go to work on some show called China Beach where he sat in a lonely road all day and stopped cars from going when they were shooting, for 14 hours. Copy that. Hold traffic. Copy that. Release traffic. So he said can you take in the tv.  As he removed what was left of the pumpkin, in chunks, into the trash. Can you drop it off to get fixed.

I told all this to the fixit guy.

That is a new one, he said.

I never watched another movie on that tv. I don’t know if he ever got it back. The pumpkin was stronger than the tv could handle, even when it was off.

Probably some other girlfriend picked it up. I think her name was Heather. I think they were sitting on the road together, with the walkie talkies.  Sitting in their beginning, while I was in the middle of cleaning up the ending.

Then there was the famous Halloween 26 years ago when I fell in love with my friends. That’s been documented, explored, ruined, resurrected, and never quite lost.  We didn’t mean for that to happen either, it was a love match gone awry, and then I married one of them. Then I spent the next 26 years wondering how I could make that happen again . Trying to fill in the holes that relationship left, trying valiantly, like I’m a farm peasant trying to be Joan of Arc but no queen is knighting me. Then I’m not actually an heroic saint, turns out, just actually a farm boy with only voices in only my head.

And then this Halloween, and I’m demanding more from my life, I’m exploded open again. I’m searching around for how to gather the rest of me, all of me, and unite my one person, using the people that know me, my best audience from over the years. I have my tall leggy ex boyfriend who will play any  physical game with me – Frisbee, darts, surfing, bagel eating, writing, moviemaking but there is not the level I am looking for, it is one level and it’s satisfying, and maybe we’ll have a career. And then there’s the other old boyfriend, the poet nudging me – don't worry, it's just soul, listen to it talking to you. I listen to the poetry, that voice, and that is a strong force – have you listened to ee cummings? There’s not much else you can do, when you listen to ee cummings, except unfold yourself and offer yourself to God, to nature, to beauty. ee’s poems are recipes, but all of it is made by me, all of it is scripted, produced and acted in by me. And these are just the people I could remember best. And of course, none of it matters because aren’t I pretty much gay anyway?

I know where this is heading because I’m the producer. I’m trying like hell to run away from my life in increments, because the kids are running away, like they’re supposed to do. I’m trying what I always did, which was GET OUT FIRST, before the pain comes. There isn’t any sure way to outrun pain, there’s only different ways to be hit by it. If I disrupt my family because I need more, then my family suffers. I wrote to my friend, from one of the Halloweens,  I said I feel like I’ve been stuffing my life into all these holes and it keeps pouring out like sorry wrong number.

In reality, I have this thick and serious life, and everything is so important that it scares me.  Also I know I have more to me, and I know my time is ticking away, and I want to do it all, and I want to be able to afford it. I want ALL the love, and I want ALL the power, and I want ALL the beauty. I’m trying to slam on the brakes of my life, and accelerate at the same time. Good for writing, not good for all the good people surrounding me.

Halloween opened me up 26 years ago, and I have never recovered. Or maybe that’s what I’m here to do, which is write about why. Feel it all, and tell people what happened.

The point is, it doesn’t matter who you love, or how many ways you try, or if the great pumpkin flattens you, or melts, or tricks you into staying up all night with your two friends and feeling tangled with them forever.  It’s just Halloween, and we are all just kids dressing up and wandering in the dark, with some kind parents doing their best guiding us a little bit up the road. Sometimes the parents have whiskey in their coffee. Sometimes they can’t make the trip cause they’re too fat or they have diabetic feet. Sometimes there’s a massive leak at the house and someone has to stay and fix it instead of getting candy. Sometimes you get to walk in the dark in the clump of kids and community you created, walking those same three streets, getting to hold the neighbor’s dog, scooping out the candy in handfuls, the one weird night a year where everyone on the street cares about the same world series game because we’re in it, and everyone’s dressed the way they aren’t normally, or the way they want to be, and sometimes it’s scary, but it’s all just for fun, and if it isn’t exactly the way you planned it, you might as well love it.

No matter what you do, or who you are, it will always roll around again next year.

Play Dough

I have a friend reading poetry to me when I feel city trapped, and desperate for beauty. This is a kind thing. The poetry, and the laughter. The poetry makes me love words, and the words weave together in my brain like a hot towel, sunlit. I feel steadied, a cat on a couch, curled up strong and content.

I have another friend who is playing Frisbee with me. We meet in a park and we are like Labradors. We are serious Frisbee-ers. Perfecting our throws. Far apart. Concise. Lofty. Straight and level. I like to play until I'm so thirsty I have to stop. We cuss and say stupid stuff, and the grass is always wet on my bare feet. I like especially running for the Frisbee, it's the only time I think of running. It's spinning and flying and I have to get it and I turn into a deer.

I've been needing to play. I spend so much time tending, and trying to keep up, I got a little lost. I'm rebalancing.

The playing has helped me write, which is also playing.  I hope the writing will turn into money. This is my goal. Play=dough.

In the meantime, I gather all the poetry and playing that I can stuff into myself.

Home on the Range

Home on the Range
a short play by Juliet Myfanwy Johnson

(Dark. The Old West, 1880. A rooster
crows. A bare wooden room with a
fireplace and a loft. HATTIE and
KENNETH, 28, modern thinkers in an old
time, sleep under a quilt below the
loft.)
KENNETH
Oh my God.
HATTIE
It's not that bad.
KENNETH
Fuck it isn't.
HATTIE
Kenneth. The children.
KENNETH
Ughhh.
(Rooster crows again)
KENNETH
(continuing)
Can't we just eat that thing? Then we could sleep
longer. No one would know.
HATTIE
It's God's alarm clock.
KENNETH
Oh my God, why'd we have to come here?
HATTIE
Was it better in Boston?
KENNETH
Hell yeah it was better in Boston. You know what
they were building right before we left? Walkways.
By the side of main street. Sidewalks, they were
calling them. To keep your feet out of the dirt.
(A cow MOOS)
HATTIE
Oh fucking hell.
KENNETH
I told you.
HATTIE
There's gotta be an easier way.
(Kenneth grabs a broomstick and bangs
on the ceiling)
KENNETH
Helen! Helen wake up and milk that cow!
2.
HATTIE
Kenny, she's four.
KENNETH
You had her fixing the roof yesterday!
HATTIE
That was Clark.
(bangs on ceiling)
Helen! Clark! All you kids! You heard your father!
(He sits up as some light is cracking
in the window. He acts like the light
is burning him)
KENNETH
Ahhhk! I'm the undead!
HATTIE
The pastor wouldn't approve of that talk, Kenny!
KENNETH
The pastor has been in the outhouse with the postal
lady. I saw them.
HATTIE
I think she's been in the outhouse with everyone.
(Kenneth contemplates his feet)
KENNETH
There just has to be an easier way.
HATTIE
This is the easy way. Out here without family
interference. The open road.
KENNETH
The open road?? See, now that I'm late, I'm gonna be
the 3rd wagon on the road. I'll be coated in dirt by
the time we get to town. Billingsly first, Evans
second, me last. Billingsly plans it that way.
Billingsly is always first in and could be dressed
in white and never a mark on him.
HATTIE
He lives with that brother of his.
KENNETH
I don't think that's his brother.
HATTIE
I don't either!
KENNETH
I think that's a woman. Except I saw him naked. In
the creek.
3.
HATTIE
Everyone's seen him naked. He prefers to be naked.
It does get really hot here.
KENNETH
I'm just sayin. There's something un-biblical about
that relationship.
HATTIE
What?
(thinking about it)
Oh my God.
KENNETH
Right?
HATTIE
He's so pretty.
KENNETH
Right.
HATTIE
That would never happen in Boston.
KENNETH
Fuck if it wouldn't. And I think it's required in
Pennsylvania. Sheep can be pretty too. I'm not
speaking from experience.
HATTIE
Where are they from?
KENNETH
Who cares, we're all in hell now. We're going to
boil here and die at 35 if I can make it that long.
HATTIE
Maybe we shoulda kept going. Maybe Oregon's nicer.
KENNETH
Oregon's FARTHER.
HATTIE
I just couldn't cross one more river. The wagon
floating off, the kids drowning.
KENNETH
It's a good thing we had a few more right away.
HATTIE
God smiled on us.
KENNETH
Yeah, I guess.
HATTIE
It's beautiful here, too.
4.
KENNETH
I have to take a pee and I don't wanna go outside.
HATTIE
Well you can't pee in the house!
KENNETH
I don't wanna get my shoes on. Cause going outside
means work. I would like a job where I get up, and
the work is all right here. The food is already
made, a few of my friends are here that I like, and
we make stuff that doesn't hurt my back, like --
HATTIE
Like what?
KENNETH
I don't know, like future things. Light things. Like
things made out of paper, paper products. Paper --
towels, or something.
HATTIE
Paper towels??
KENNETH
Yeah.
HATTIE
They would just crumble!
KENNETH
Yeah, but maybe you throw it away and have a fresh
one.
HATTIE
That would take FOREVER!! We have rags.
KENNETH
I don't think it's good to use the same rag for
everything. I think there's a way to make things
simpler.
HATTIE
This is pretty simple.
KENNETH
In the future I bet you can just sit around and
there isn't even a cow to milk. There's just milk.
HATTIE
That's impossible. There has to be a cow.
KENNETH
I bet someday people would think it would be weird
to keep a cow.
5.
HATTIE
And they pee in the house, and their food is already
made. And they don't have to wear shoes. And they
use paper towels.
KENNETH
You married me cause I was a forward thinker.
HATTIE
I married you cause you had a wagon and a nice dog.
And you were leaving, and I wanted to get the hell
out of Boston.
KENNETH
I did have a nice dog.
HATTIE
Yeah. I'm sorry about that bear.
KENNETH
I don't know why it had to eat Maryann.
HATTIE
You did hunt it down. We ate well that month.
KENNETH
I guess technically, then, we were eating Maryann.
HATTIE
She was a good dog.
KENNETH
Better than some of these kids.
HATTIE
We can get another dog.
(Crash at the front door)
Ahhk!
KENNETH
Shit! Get the shotgun.
(He leaps forward to get the shotgun)
HATTIE
Maybe it's the family of that bear!
(He's wrestling the shotgun down)
KENNETH
Shit, I hate this thing, it's all rusty.
HATTIE
Fell in the water during that flood. I didn't want
the kids to clean it anymore after Feldus got his
foot shot off.
6.
KENNETH
Shut up, it's okay, God, I don't wanna think about
that -
(crash again)
RUPERT (O.S.)
Ahhhk! HELP!
KENNETH
Was that a human?
HATTIE
It's the undead.
KENNETH
Jesus, Hattie!
HATTIE
I knew you shouldn't a made that joke!
RUPERT (O.S.)
Help! Help! Kenneth!
HATTIE
It knows your name!
KENNETH
It's a guy!
HATTIE
Maybe it's a guy getting eaten by an angry bear.
KENNETH
Jesus, is this what you do all day when I'm not
around?? I think it's just a guy!
(He throws open the door. RUPERT falls
in, 18, gorgeous, and naked)
HATTIE
Ahhk!
KENNETH
He's naked.
HATTIE
It's him!
KENNETH
Huh?
HATTIE
The cute one.
KENNETH
Oh my god, get some clothes on, man.
7.
RUPERT
Help! You gotta help!
(Hattie throws a blanket around him.)
KENNETH
Are you allright??
RUPERT
It's Boo Boo.
KENNETH
Huh?
HATTIE
He has a boo boo.
RUPERT
It's Billingsly. Billingsly!
(starts crying)
KENNETH
Did you run here?
RUPERT
I don't know how to ride. I'm scared of the horses!
He does all the horse stuff.
KENNETH
You ran 10 miles naked?
(impressed)
RUPERT
He was up in the barn rafters I guess getting the
hay and the pitchfork fell down and he tried to
catch it and he fell between the cows and they
trampled him! The cow was just sitting on his face!
(Kids gather at the top of the loft)
CLARK
Daddy?
KENNETH
Clark, go milk the cow. Deke, get on your chores.
(Kids start climbing down and
scattering)
HATTIE
Clark can't even hold a bucket.
KENNETH
He was on the roof with a hammer.
8.
HATTIE
I'm just saying.
RUPERT
What am I gonna do. What am I gonna do??
KENNETH
You might start with getting some clothes.
(yelling)
Adeline, get him some clothes off the line.
RUPERT
He died! He died between cows!
KENNETH
I'll have to go over and check it out.
RUPERT
Oh it's awful. I left him there! Those cows are
really heavy! I couldn't move it! There was shit
everywhere!
(clutching him)
What am I gonna do? I'm out on the frontier alone!
Boo Boo was the only person I knew!
(They look at him. He starts crying.)
KENNETH
I'll hitch up the wagon. Guess I'm not going in to
work.
HATTIE
Guess you're not 3rd in line on the road anymore.
You just got bumped up.
KENNETH
That's sick!
HATTIE
That's success.
(Kenneth leaves.)
RUPERT
I don't know what to do. I didn't know what to do.
HATTIE
Well. Clearly you need clothes.
RUPERT
He was teaching me everything. I was sort of going
to do all the - house stuff. I just don't like the
animals! Unless they're the cute ones, like the
kittens.
HATTIE
Where's your family?
9.
RUPERT
No one's here. Boo Boo was all I had.
HATTIE
...Is Boo Boo a kitten?
RUPERT
Boo Boo. My...my...
(Hattie looks at him like
"your..your...?")
RUPERT
(continuing)
My...my...
(chokes)
My...my...
(She's still waiting)
RUPERT
(continuing)
My brother!
HATTIE
Billingsly.
RUPERT
(crying)
My dead brother.
HATTIE
This is kind of a problem.
(clothes get thrown in from the front door;
yells at kid)
Hey! Bring it in next time!
(under her breath)
Next time. There's a naked guy. In the kitchen. Why
are you always naked?
RUPERT
I was running. I was running so fast, and I kicked
off my boots, I tore off my shirt, I couldn't run
with everything on. I wanted to be the wind, I
thought if I got here faster, it would turn back
time, I would save his life, it wouldn't be true.
HATTIE
But you're always naked. You're like, famous.
RUPERT
I know, I'm so hot! Working outdoors is really hot!
HATTIE
Yeah.
10.
RUPERT
I mean, how do you wear this? This is like WOOL.
(feeling her dress)
And then you have a petticoat under that, and some
bloomers and some stockings and a corset, I mean,
Jesus, why don't you just shoot yourself.
HATTIE
In winter it keeps you from freezing to death. In
summer it is sort of like walking around wrapped in
a sweaty armoire.
RUPERT
I was making a new outfit for Boo. So he didn't have
to wear the same thing everyday, those hard work
clothes. I was making something silky, that he could
lounge at home, on the porch with. I think he was
wearing it in the hay loft. I think the satin - the
fabric - I think he slipped on it!
(sobs)
I think fashion killed him!
HATTIE
Sounds like YOU killed him. Accidentally. We ate a
dog, accidentally. It seems to sort of happen. We're
not bad people.
RUPERT
Right?
HATTIE
I mean, so you're naked. You were born that way. Why
do we have to wear clothes anyway? Except to keep
the bugs off.
RUPERT
My name's Rupert.
HATTIE
I'm Hattie.
RUPERT
You've got a million kids.
HATTIE
Some drowned in the river. On the way here.
RUPERT
I wish I had never left New York.
HATTIE
I wish you hadn't either.
RUPERT
It just seemed like an adventure. The wild west. You
know. Where anything is possible.
11.
(They sit and listen to the outdoor
sounds)
HATTIE
Well anything is still possible. Except for
Billingsly. He's done. Like that whole thing that
was your whole life? That's all finished. I guess
you want some food.
RUPERT
I should probably go back with him.
HATTIE
Kenneth?
RUPERT
I should help him with Boo Boo. I should be there
for Boo Boo.
HATTIE
Okay. You could go help with the horses.
RUPERT
I can't do the horses. I can help pack a snack.
HATTIE
It's just old cornbread. Maybe I'll wrap it in a
paper towel. That's what my husband wants to do.
RUPERT
A paper TOWEL? That would take forever, to make. And
just to be a towel?
HATTIE
My husband says he's thinking of the future. He's a
forward thinker. My father thought he was just an
ass.
(She's helping Rupert on with some
clothes)
HATTIE
(continuing)
Chased us down the road with a shotgun. He was
screaming. It was the most I heard him say since I
was born.
RUPERT
What was he saying?
HATTIE
Not "goodbye Hattie," "safe journey," no. It was
mostly "no daughter of mine," I think. And "if you
think you're coming back here," and "good riddance."
Stuff like that.
12.
RUPERT
(eyes tearing)
I miss the east.
(Hattie's standing him up, as they hear
the wagon scraping up out front)
RUPERT
(continuing)
Seriously, things were right out there. They were so
right I thought they were boring. I thought it was
the same everywhere. That's why when I saw
Billingsly, when he came into the tavern, and he had
that white cowboy hat on, and all that leather, his
gloves were the softest, softest leather, and he
made them, himself, he said. Out of LOVE. And out of
a little three legged calf with the gentlest brown
eyes. Beautiful, he said. But a dead one. He said.
I thought for the first time, the west. The west
will be like here, but so much more. It will be
space and time and new. East, but new. We'd bring
the east with us. I brought all my fabric.
HATTIE
That's how you met him?
(Rupert nods, eyes shining)
HATTIE
(continuing)
Your brother? That's how you met your brother? In a
tavern?
(Rupert's eyes dull slightly with a
tremor. His voice cracks)
RUPERT
Our family was... separated at birth. We had
different fathers.
HATTIE
Different mothers maybe too huh.
(He pales)
HATTIE
(continuing)
You didn't look much alike.
(remembering)
You probably don't look alike much at all, now.
(Rupert's hand flies to his mouth)
RUPERT
(whispering)
What am I going to do?
13.
(The door bangs back open, and Kenneth
is outlined by sunlight. A man of the
soil. Covered in soil, covered in
manliness. Rupert looks at him like a
god. Hattie looks at him like she's
tired.)
HATTIE
Kenneth! You're crapping up my floor.
KENNETH
Oh jeez. Sorry mother.
HATTIE
Scoot now. Go clean up the murder. I got him all
ready.
(She shoves Rupert a little on the butt)
HATTIE
(continuing)
Bring something back shot. If any of those cow
pieces are good once you heft em off what's left of
Boo Boo! Shovel em into the wagon!
KENNETH
I hear you Hattie, of course I'm not going to waste
good dead cow.
CUT TO:
(Out front, Kenneth is setting to pull
himself into the wagon. A tiny little
kid is standing holding the horses. )
(Rupert fritters around like he
dooesn't know how he's going to get up.
Kenneth pauses)
KENNETH
What's the matter, son.
RUPERT
Where do you want me.
(He giggles freakily, distraught and
girlish)
KENNETH
You never got in the wagon with -- with Boo Boo?
RUPERT
He gave me his hand.
(Kenneth stares at him. Adjusts his
hat. Pulls his thick leg down off the
wheel, goes around, over to the other
side of the wagon.
14.
Holds a hand out to help Rupert up.
Shoves Rupert's whole body up while
Rupert giggles)
KENNETH
You aint weigh nothing.
RUPERT
I'm a vegetarian.
(Kenneth gets up on the wagon right
behind Rupert, climbing over him
roughly to get to his seat. Rupert
likes the manhandling.)
KENNETH
What the heck, is that a new fangled religion? Keeps
you off the food?
RUPERT
I don't eat animals.
KENNETH
Well that's crazy.
(gathering reins)
Out the WAY, Curtis!!
(The little boy scoots out the way of
the big horses.)
(They drive out)
KENNETH
(continuing)
What do you eat then?
RUPERT
Everything else. Oh God. What am I going to eat.
Billingsly did everything. The shucking, the
boiling, the hoeing.
KENNETH
Talk in town is that you was just mostly naked.
RUPERT
In the east that's fairly normal.
KENNETH
Gets a might cold there in winter too.
RUPERT
The Chinese use silk to keep warm, and protected.
KENNETH
Well then the Chinese have never run into a hornet's
nest on a plow.
(more)
15.
KENNETH (cont'd)
(clucks to horses)
No, I aint been much on being naked myself. Like to
keep a sheet between me and missus, like God
intended.
RUPERT
You never take evertying off.
KENNETH
Just move it aside, mostly. Temporarily. Then when
it needs a washing, straight in the creek. Splash
around, climb out and dry on the bank. Good as new.
RUPERT
That's why the whole town smells like cheese.
KENNETH
Well shoot, actually, that's the Swansons from
Wisconsin. They're all into the cheese. They got all
the kinds, the yellow ones, and even the one that's
mostly holes which I don't care fer. I like cheese
in my cheese. But on a sweaty day, I don't like a
sweaty cheese.
RUPERT
I feel better with you up here now.
(Kenneth clucks the horses)
RUPERT
(continuing)
I'm high up. I can see everything. You're strong and
capable. The horses are cute.
KENNETH
Well that one there's called Badger, cause he killed
a goat that got into his pen that looked like a
badger. We called him Badger Killer, but shorten it
to just Badger. He's territorial. The other one is
Little Bit, because she aint in no hurry, wherever
she's goin she's gonna get there in a little bit.
Call her Bitsy. My one daughter, the fourth one we
lost in the creek, she loved her to bitsy.
(he straightens up)
Can't get too attached. Specially in a overfull
wagon in a strong current. That little bitsy lover,
though, she was cute. Can't remember her name. Only
had her a short spell.
RUPERT
Do you think it will be awful.
KENNETH
What's that now.
RUPERT
The... the... Inside the barn.
16.
KENNETH
Your brother you mean?
(Rupert covers his mouth, stifling
cries)
KENNETH
(continuing)
I reckon it will be mostly flat. Some loose innards
you might want to step clear of. I figure the cows
have done their work, they're not an intelligent
creature, they'll lay, sit and spread around
anything.
RUPERT
Do you think I did it. Do you think it was my fault.
KENNETH
Now I think that's between you, Boo and the Chinese.
CUT TO:
(Inside the barn. Kenneth stands over
the mooing cows. A hand on one's butt.)
(Rupert hovers by the door, with a fine
shawl draped over his shoulders, the
fringe gathered in his hand which
hovers near his mouth)
(Kenneth is looking down between cows)
RUPERT
Kenny?
KENNETH
What?
RUPERT
Kenny, is it bad?
KENNETH
Well now, you're talking to someone who saw a
buzzard eating the eyes out of one his children.
(looking around, seeing the pitchfork, wading
over to get it through cows)
Nobody calls me Kenny.
RUPERT
Oh but you look like a Kenny.
(sees him with pitchfork)
That's what he was going to get. When he fell.
KENNETH
(taking some gunny sacks off the stall door)
Well I'll just shovel him up. If that's okay Hubert.
17.
RUPERT
Rupert.
KENNETH
(shoveling)
RUPERT
Oh my god.
KENNETH
Kinda a name is Rupert.
RUPERT
It's a family name. It's English.
KENNETH
You and Billingsly English?
RUPERT
Rupert Billingsly.
(chokes)
He was American.
KENNETH
Well ashes to ashes. That's kinda what you guys did.
And now he's mostly dust to dust. With some
hoofprints in him.
RUPERT
We had some plans.
KENNETH
Well the frontier is no place for a couple of
..brothers. Hell, it's no place for anybody. Turns
you savage, or kills you from exhaustion. We built
that home we have too damn far from town, because
the wife wanted the view. Now the view is all gone
cause we stuffed the house with kids. Can't see over
em.
(shovel hits something hard)
Oh there's his head.
(takes his hat off)
RUPERT
(reverently, also taking his scarf off his head)
Oh do you think we should say a few words?
KENNETH
Oh.
(leaning down)
Sure. I was just gonna try on his hat. It's a damn
fine one.
(Kenneth gets the blood stained hat and
fits it on his head. It fits smooth
like butter)
18.
KENNETH
(continuing)
Whew. Now that is a nice hat.
(a cow bumps him)
Now get along now Bessie.
(holding a hand to the hat, to Rupert)
Unless you wanted it -
RUPERT
Please.
(shakes his head)
No.
(Kenneth seems happy about this. Leans
on the shovel, looking up at the
rafters.)
KENNETH
You see the problem is right there. No guard rail on
the loft there. I'm thinking in the future, there
will be a machine that takes the hay down like a
pitchfork, a giant pitchfork, with big prongs on it.
Brings it straight down. So a man doesn't have to
get up there and get himself all killed and whatnot.
RUPERT
A machine.
KENNETH
Yes, that might run on oil and some kind of
explosive element to give it energy.
RUPERT
Wouldn't that be dangerous, and explode?
KENNETH
Oh sure there'll be that kind of thing too. Why stop
at the hay when you could explode other things. Well
back to work. I got a million ideas.
(He's shoveling scraps of Billingsly
into the gunny sacks. Grunting
occasionally from the weight of it)
KENNETH
(continuing)
He was a big man.
RUPERT
Yes.
KENNETH
He covers quite an area down here.
RUPERT
Oh god.
19.
KENNETH
Well at least in his last few moments, he was flying.
(Rupert breathes; Kenneth takes a minute,
pushes the bloody hat back to scratch)
I mean it starts over here... but then he's really
just smeared all over the place. Cows can really
track a person up.
(he picks up a piece of bloody white material)
RUPERT
Oh god, that's it.
KENNETH
This is the Chinese, huh.
RUPERT
He did slip on it.
KENNETH
These look like damn fine jammies.
RUPERT
I made them! They fit him so well.
KENNETH
Well not too well, cause they killed him.
(investigating the pants leg)
Maybe shorten the cuff here.
RUPERT
(averting his eyes)
Point taken.
KENNETH
You know, next time.
RUPERT
No one will have me. There's no next time.
KENNETH
It's just a design flaw.
RUPERT
I killed my lover
(corrects, loud)
my BROTHER. My home on the range.
KENNETH
My other idea is in the outhouse, it just isn't
economical to use corn cobs every time after a
bowel. There should be a little bar to hang a
material you can use, to wipe.
RUPERT
That would be terrible.
20.
KENNETH
No you throw it away down the hole.
RUPERT
That's just dumb. What will you do with all your old
corn cobs then. Just throw them away, I guess?
KENNETH
I think so.
RUPERT
That's crazy. No one's gonna waste corncobs. Now
you're just being crazy.
(Kenneth looks at him like he's a
narrow thinker. Finishes the shoveling)
KENNETH
Someday when people die, they won't be shoveled into
feed bags all jumbled up with their guts exposed.
Someday they might be wrapped in something fancy -
RUPERT
Like sillk -
KENNETH
And taken away proper like, in a formal vehicle.
(Rupert nods.)
KENNETH
(continuing)
You want me to throw him in the gulley behind the
creek?
RUPERT
That would be fine.
CUT TO:
(Back home at night, Hattie and Kenneth
in bed. The moon in the window.)
KENNETH
I can't get it out of my mind.
HATTIE
What.
KENNETH
Well I SAW most of his mind, all over the floor. And
the rest was in his hat.
HATTIE
I soaked the stains out, it's a fine hat.
KENNETH
Aint it though.
21.
HATTIE
Yes sir.
KENNETH
Worth the effort. Can't unsee the pieces though. Of
my day.
HATTIE
Did you give him a proper burial.
KENNETH
No. My arms were aching from shoveling. We threw him
in the ditch. Those sacks were heavy. Had to hitch
the horses to drag the sacks over there. Filled up
three sacks with Boo Boo.
HATTIE
Boo Boo sacks.
(He starts giggling)
HATTIE
(continuing)
That sounds funny.
KENNETH
Boo Boo sacks. Sounds like a friend of Santy Claus.
(They're laughing and Hattie's shushing
him. She cuddles up)
HATTIE
I don't want any of them to wake up. I only have hot
broth cause you didn't bring any cow home.
KENNETH
I brought that crow I ran over with the wagon.
HATTIE
I like when it's just us under the blankets.
KENNETH
(torn)
I like it too, but then it always ends up later with
someone new under the blankets, like exactly 10
months from now.
HATTIE
I know.
KENNETH
Someday there will be a easy way to keep the woman
from giving birth to more young uns.
HATTIE
You mean like cutting her parts out.
22.
KENNETH
No I picture a magic pill. You can eat it, or put it
just right here, in her arm. And then no more babies.
HATTIE
In her arm. Maybe they'll just use paper towels to
fix everything.
KENNETH
(listening to the quiet)
Do you like it out here Hattie?
HATTIE
(snuggling in)
Sure. Sure I do. That Boston was a pile of Boo Boo.
(they giggle uncontrollably)
KENNETH
Do you think he'll be allright.
HATTIE
I'll go and check on him tomorrow. Get the preacher
out, and put some flowers on the shallow grave.
KENNETH
First I better dig a shallow grave. I was just too
tired.
HATTIE
Well there's only so much shoveling a man can do.
KENNETH
He wouldn't help me. He made some kind of tea, he
said.
HATTIE
Tea?
KENNETH
Tasted like balls.
(She giggles)
HATTIE
I think someday, after my lady parts are all cut
out, or I use a magic arm pill, you and I might have
us a good time. Just because.
KENNETH
(looking at her thoughtfully)
Heck, let's have us a good time anyway.
(arms around her)
FADE OUT