Here Chick...

A few days ago one of our chickens started to die. She was the one who'd been granted many lifetime transformations. Very, very beautiful starting out, she figured she could get away with being a poor layer. And she could—she stopped cold after her first year and never put down another egg. Then, this June, she began to crow* and she kept it up all summer.

But last week, the hen stopped crowing. Overnight, her utterly rosy, fat comb and wattle shrank and blackened as if blighted. She lost her balance and her eyes got squinty and flat-looking. She could hop/flop to the bottom of our yard, but couldn’t make the climb back to the coop. She stank.

This whole time, she never stopped looking around—up, down, sideways—to see what was interesting or dangerous. She picked the dirt for bugs and seeds, tried to catch flies on the wing, combed her feathers, stumbled patiently after her sisters.

I’m guessing that not once in that time did she think, Jeez, I was feeling pretty good last week—what happened? She played the pieces that were in front of her, then settled on the ground and put her head under her wing. Like a fine glove, her death was a perfect fit.

*see "there' is somethng about a chicken" below--read some other ones, too.

Smooth Brain
Wrinkled Face

Here’s how it works. First we get this really smooth velvety skin, ever so slightly suffused with the subtle glow of blood passing beneath. Further up we have the brain, which better be deeply, deeply ridged and rippling with the impulses that enable us to sing, dance, stand on our heads and pick our noses clean.

That’s how we begin. But eventually things turn inside-out. Synapses still fire but spark-out sometimes in mid arc, spilling ash into the brain canyons which fill up like the grooves in a worn-out LP.

Meanwhile the face starts to look more like a young brain. In a prehistoric turn, ridges and valleys start up from the shimmering veldt. The once deep pools of our eyes begin to dry up from the edges, their shores now ringed with multiple water marks. Underground streams have carried all our dewy moisture down, down, where it rests in a heavy swaying puddle right under the chin.

More than all the facial wrinkles and grooves (which can suggest an athleticism of character) I despise this catch-all condition of the chin. I am considering a procedure. Yep—I’m really almost ready to do a chin lift.

Maybe we can’t recognize our own mortality, but I do worry about it all the time. A woman might think a good facelift, ever-dazzling hair and body reshaping make her look nineteen, but she recognizes and mocks that same deceit in someone else. Sixty never looks like nineteen. So I’d like to accept this and not kid around about what’s really down the road. We change, grind down and die. I need a strong chin to deal with this.

I go to Tower, choose a leg of lamb and ask the ever-sullen butcher to bone it.

He does, and I say, “Thanks.” Turning away, he says, “No problem.”

What does this mean? And what was the problem he’d escaped? It’s true, there is a knife involved in boning and that does suggest risk; however, for an alleged professional this should be far less perilous than walking across any intersection.

Should I share his relief that nothing bad happened, perhaps congratulate him and inquire about his family? Or should I feel guilty, which is what I almost always feel when I hear, “no problem.”

You’re welcome—it’s the demise of that small grace note that bothers me. No problem, feels like a slap for some mysterious offence, and it makes me walk away unhappy.

Is this strange and alienating remark ever called for? Well, if I caught a baby as it fell from an open window, wheeled around at the moment the terrified parent crashes from the door, then tenderly lay the intact child into his trembling arms, then I could say it,—"Hey bro, no prob!"

Paint

Here’s what happened when we decided to paint our bedroom and living room.

First, we realized we’d never thought much about designing a home together. For the past 35 years, all the places we’ve lived have been furnished with the same old stuff, mostly hand-me-downs, and these pieces now float incoherently between the cream colored walls of this house.

Once we really looked at this haphazard creation, just tidying up surfaces seemed like a cover up. We had to do a garage sale. This revealed the true condition of the basement--it was a dank rabbit hole reeking of deep disorder and sucking neglect. We’d have to sheet rock over that.

Meantime, we'd also been collecting paint swatches and samples. In six months we'd accumlated dozens of 3”x 4” swatches and forty little jars of color from Benjamin Moore. Every choice had been wrong. I thought--if we can’t even choose paint, we can’t stay married. We could decide to do nothing, simply recognize that we'd tried to get off the couch and couldn't, then flopped back for another download of Roku. At that point, weak confused and frightened, I saw the mess we were sitting on and felt helpless to take action.

Fortunately, at just that moment,a lucky breeze sallied by freshening our reason—we decided to re-sod the backyard! And all it took was a phone call. The lawn was rolled out in just five hours and looks like a miniature golf course. We’ve sat outside and admired it, most often when the splintering universe sets to howling inside the house

This Paint Project has come with some big roots and it feels like doing therapy—risky and at some point inevitable because, as my great-grandmother used to say, the deeper you dig, the worse it smells. But we’re doing it. And we’re old. I think we’re courageous because neither of us knows what this will be when all the pieces settle.

Take Me To Your Meter

I read in last Sunday’s New York Times that some new robots can anticipate their own fading power, sense the end is near and stagger to the nearest electrical outlet for a recharge.

The accompanying photo shows a machine that looks like a big upright vacuum cleaner. It has arms and hands and can open doors. We see it deftly inserting its own plug into an electrical faceplate. So, something I thought uniquely human—knowing we’re going to die and having a sense that time is running out—has been installed in a mechanical servant, and unlike us, it can do something about it.

No doubt, the robot’s signal to recharge is pre-set, but once we had a biologically-set signal that told us to eat just enough to survive. Not anymore. What if an electric car feels a little run down one evening, maybe just wants a taste of feeling like a Mazarati—off it goes silently sniffing out power ports, greedily sucking up juice until the PG& E meter blasts off its post.

The Times’ story was more thoughtful than this little ramble—it suggests that if we make artificial intelligence mimic human thought and action too well, we will relinquish those traits and abilities in ourselves. But the part of the story that still startles me are those pincher-fingers sticking that plug into the socket—a machine deciding to tap into the source of its own life to get some more.

Atoms are the big idea,
but molecules explain

Lets start with ideas—fruit flies and house flies. The big idea about each is that they are a nuisance. My Venus flytrap, Vagigi, sits under a light near the kitchen sink. The idea about her is that she is useful because she catches flies and eats them.

The other day I left a half lemon facedown on the counter near Vagigi. In just minutes, fruit flies began to assemble. Checking back several hours later, I saw they had made little doorways in the lemon which had turned into a Quonset hut.

In the evening the insects lay scattered around the hut. I first thought they were dead, but soon detected movement. Some of them were pairing up and walking off together while others ambled around the building or just approached each other and bumped heads in what was surely a greeting. Twenty or so lay on their bellies atop the hut, legs and wings spread to the lamp heat. The entire thing looked like an aerial shot of a Mash unit on an easy afternoon.

In this same day, I watched a house fly land on a table, another lit on top of it, and they began to have intercourse. I had expected a quick union, but after 30 seconds they were still glued to the task. Five minutes went by, then ten; apparently Bolero was not on their headsets. Is it possible those minutes of enjoyment inside bodies this small translate into eons of sexual pleasure in fly time?

I want to know more about atoms and molecules, so next time we’ll take on the topics of trees and forests.

Weed

The Hi Lo Café in Weed, California, has an immense menu and they make their own Bear Claws. Like the town itself though, the food has wandered far from its original source and purpose, leaving a flat taste in the mouth. Many of Weed’s 19th century buildings are empty, and the few occupied include crystal shops, thrift stores and a surprising number of animal rescue groups.

The entire area of Siskiyou County, including the city of Shasta, seems especially dedicated to rescuing or capturing, rehabilitating and neutering abandoned and neglected animals. The placement rate for these saved pups is proportionately high. In fact, some dogs are transported from San Francisco to Siskiyou because their chances of adoption are much better here. A friend told me that these orphans are even more popular in Portland where potential adopters sign up to take the overflow shipped from Shasta.

So a pretty high consciousness about responsible pet stewardship flavors the area, but towns like Weed have their share of underemployed, drug-stunned and nearly homeless people who keep some of these dogs. And most of them are pit bulls, many bred hard and for money.

I was watching a man with three pit bulls walk past the picture window in the café. Whether I ignored him or looked hard at him—either way—would signify the expected contempt. But I wanted to see this man, see his dogs.

Walking wearily, he let the dogs amble along at their own pace. They all looked a little confused—the dogs only a little more disoriented. Later, at the corner, we met up. We said hi and he looked at us, wary at first. His expression relaxed as we stayed and talked—How old were his dogs? Were they related? Though middle-aged, his face seemed young and bland. What seemed truer, though, as I looked, was that his expression seemed more abraded, smoothed into acceptance. It made him look wistful.

“They’re friendly,” he told us as the big, soft muscled pits sniffed us. Two looked up and they each had a blue and brown eye.

“Thems his last two sons,” he said, pointing to the older, lumpier fellow, as they wove through their leashes with ordinary doggie eagerness, glad for a scratch and used to kindness.

“I got eighty-eight pups out of him before he quit. I kept these last two.” He looked proud and sad. As if he, too, was finally finished after all the work.