Some trees are greener than others, so he discovered; some so green they almost appear oceanic. True, the man in the hat has never seen a moraine lake, one so blue-green that it appears inanimate, but he has seen snapshots and pixilated images on TV, and once overheard two men talking about one in a laundry mat, perhaps a café. He once thought that the life of a roughneck, heaving massive chains round drilling bores, would be to his liking, but decided against it when he realized that he would need to be around other men, some with roily skin and stale breath, wearing coveralls soiled through with machinist’s oil. Being around others was especially troubling, even if they stood a good distance away from him, which, so it seemed, they seldom did. Everywhere he went he felt like he was bumping into crowds of people, people with little respect for his wellbeing and general health. Some with breath so rancid he could smell the rottenness of their stomachs, others with such horrid skin diseases he feared contracting some incurable rash or callus ailment. Green is the sign of a gangrenous infection, or simply an indication, one seldom mistaken, that a person has lousy washing and grooming habits. Blue and brown are the signs of a robust and hearty life, gestures of proper grooming and respect for others that may find too much green troublesomely indecent. But the unwashed have neither the patience nor job training for such delicacies, both of which require a middling degree of self-awareness and education, or at least a scant desire to obtain them should the opportunity present itself, which, of course, it seldom does. The man in the hat sees no reason why one should be pressured or cajoled into investigating one’s life, even should it be done in the privacy of one’s home and the results decidedly positive, or at most less troubling. He has no difficulties filling up his time, pursuing his love for tightrope walking or riding buses, or simply trying to conserve what little energy he has, stockpiling it for some new venture or yet to be determined avocation, which, of course, never happens. People, who have an individualism for wearing hats, seldom do anything that would in anyway compromise or increase the risk of loosing their hat. The hat, of course, being the reason why they shake themselves from sleep each morning, in anticipation of either choosing a different or alternative hat, or dusting off the one worn the previous day. Personal style and elan in such matters are essential, as are proper hygiene and choice of footwear. What a man wears at either end of his body is significant, as it allows one to make the observation that the two polarities match and are in accordance with proper style and grooming. These two seemingly divergent opposites have a logic and soundness all their own, one that carries with it a significant degree of responsibility and prestige. Suffice it to say, what one chooses to crown one’s head with, should never be taken lightly, subjected to mockery, or made into some burlesque sideshow. The hat is a sign of individualism, not the topic of cajolery or trifling bad manners.
He knew of people, the man in the hat, who used coffee filters as toilet paper, unscented and with tiny anabolic perforations for distilling pulverized coffee beans. These same people, he assumed, ate nothing but prepackaged food and candies, drinking liter upon liter of sugary colas, orange Fanta and grape-aide. Their children, should they, the children, be so unfortunate, were probably infested with head lice and other festers’. Their skin raw and scalloped with nit bites, itchy with grubs and maggots laid in soft tissue and muscle. He recalled stopping once to drop a coin in a almsman’s cap, thinking as he did, that his choice of hat was far superincumbent to the almsman’s, who’s cap was used as an offering plate, not to shield the sun or to add to one’s general appearance. In some ways he, too, was a beggar, but his baksheesh were thoughts and ideas, not coins and cigarettes, charity of mind, not hand me downs and castoffs. He also knew of a man, someone from his distant past, a past all but forgotten, who was forced into beggary when he lost his position as a postal clerk, a job he’d held for twenty years, perhaps longer. The man, the one he once knew, had a nervous tick that caused the left side of his face, the prepuce of his lips, to twitch violently whenever he felt unduly stressed or out of sorts. After his fellow clerks in the postal office made a litany of complaints, he was let go without a pension, severance or a shake of the hand. After struggling for a year or so, living off what little savings he had hidden in a pillowcase stowed away at the bottom of his closet, he bought a cap, one too big for his head, and took to begging for spare change and cigarettes. Hunched in a doorway across from the public library, a place he never visited, he placed his too big hat with the brim upside down in front of him, his legs folded on top of the other, and waited. If he were lucky, he might count out fifteen dollars from his cap, but, sad to say, this was the exception, as more days than not he was lucky to count out five or six dollars, enough for a loaf of day-old bread and a dented tin of sardines. After five years of this, day in and day out, he took to selling off what possessions he deemed were unnecessary, secondary to his life, until all that was left was his bed, a broken chair and a radio that only picked up static, a black cicadic noise. Half-smoked cigarettes, filters buttery with drool, and coffee, someone’s unwanted dregs left at the bottom of a Styrofoam cup, were a luxury, things he coveted with an eye to proper sustenance. He is dead now, this man from the past, rotting in an unmarked hole in the ground in some nondescript graveyard, backhoe dirt dumped and tramped down with gravedigger’s boots, hobnailed soles worn down to steel tacking. No one will visit him or remember he existed at all. The day he read the other man’s obituary in the morning paper, the man in the hat went to the graveside and placed a hat, brim upside down, where he thought his head would be, the grave dirt stomped with boot prints.
A late spring breeze, a concerto of birds, some blue and red, others dun brown and yellow, trilling and chirping like hellcats. A squall of blue sky, fleece white clouds, sheep hobbled to the slaughter, life is unnecessary. A bird perched on a branch in a tree, the branch breaks, the bird plunges to its death. The chirping and trilling stops, birds are surplus, not worth the bother. The man in the hat thinks to himself, to no one, a bird, a cat, a hellcat, all surplus, superabundant, inessential, whether blue, red, dun brown or yellow, not one iota. Birds, he suggests to himself, alone, are devilfish, devilfish with wings and tiny clawed feet. Not even worth the bother of eating, broiling, skillet fried with bacon fat and the green, greenest shallots. A Styrofoam white moon, a fat yellow jaundice whore with fencepost teeth and tiny misshapen feet. Life is unnecessary, a waste of all that energy and good manners.
When out walking one day, something the man in the hat did sparingly, he saw a three-legged dog striking its way along the pavement. He let it be, feeling that it was an alms-dog, and should be left to its own discommode and beggary. Some dogs are just not worth the bother. Perhaps, he thought, if I were to catch it a bird, trampling it with the soles of my boots until dead, I could offer it up to the dog, a small benefaction of my own sympathy and selfsameness. The three-legged dog, so he felt, would eat the bird with great relish, teeth clacking, a white slaver frothing its snout.
He knew of people, the man in the hat, who used coffee filters as toilet paper, unscented and with tiny anabolic perforations for distilling pulverized coffee beans. These same people, he assumed, ate nothing but prepackaged food and candies, drinking liter upon liter of sugary colas, orange Fanta and grape-aide. Their children, should they, the children, be so unfortunate, were probably infested with head lice and other festers’. Their skin raw and scalloped with nit bites, itchy with grubs and maggots laid in soft tissue and muscle. He recalled stopping once to drop a coin in a almsman’s cap, thinking as he did, that his choice of hat was far superincumbent to the almsman’s, who’s cap was used as an offering plate, not to shield the sun or to add to one’s general appearance. In some ways he, too, was a beggar, but his baksheesh were thoughts and ideas, not coins and cigarettes, charity of mind, not hand me downs and castoffs. He also knew of a man, someone from his distant past, a past all but forgotten, who was forced into beggary when he lost his position as a postal clerk, a job he’d held for twenty years, perhaps longer. The man, the one he once knew, had a nervous tick that caused the left side of his face, the prepuce of his lips, to twitch violently whenever he felt unduly stressed or out of sorts. After his fellow clerks in the postal office made a litany of complaints, he was let go without a pension, severance or a shake of the hand. After struggling for a year or so, living off what little savings he had hidden in a pillowcase stowed away at the bottom of his closet, he bought a cap, one too big for his head, and took to begging for spare change and cigarettes. Hunched in a doorway across from the public library, a place he never visited, he placed his too big hat with the brim upside down in front of him, his legs folded on top of the other, and waited. If he were lucky, he might count out fifteen dollars from his cap, but, sad to say, this was the exception, as more days than not he was lucky to count out five or six dollars, enough for a loaf of day-old bread and a dented tin of sardines. After five years of this, day in and day out, he took to selling off what possessions he deemed were unnecessary, secondary to his life, until all that was left was his bed, a broken chair and a radio that only picked up static, a black cicadic noise. Half-smoked cigarettes, filters buttery with drool, and coffee, someone’s unwanted dregs left at the bottom of a Styrofoam cup, were a luxury, things he coveted with an eye to proper sustenance. He is dead now, this man from the past, rotting in an unmarked hole in the ground in some nondescript graveyard, backhoe dirt dumped and tramped down with gravedigger’s boots, hobnailed soles worn down to steel tacking. No one will visit him or remember he existed at all. The day he read the other man’s obituary in the morning paper, the man in the hat went to the graveside and placed a hat, brim upside down, where he thought his head would be, the grave dirt stomped with boot prints.
A late spring breeze, a concerto of birds, some blue and red, others dun brown and yellow, trilling and chirping like hellcats. A squall of blue sky, fleece white clouds, sheep hobbled to the slaughter, life is unnecessary. A bird perched on a branch in a tree, the branch breaks, the bird plunges to its death. The chirping and trilling stops, birds are surplus, not worth the bother. The man in the hat thinks to himself, to no one, a bird, a cat, a hellcat, all surplus, superabundant, inessential, whether blue, red, dun brown or yellow, not one iota. Birds, he suggests to himself, alone, are devilfish, devilfish with wings and tiny clawed feet. Not even worth the bother of eating, broiling, skillet fried with bacon fat and the green, greenest shallots. A Styrofoam white moon, a fat yellow jaundice whore with fencepost teeth and tiny misshapen feet. Life is unnecessary, a waste of all that energy and good manners.
When out walking one day, something the man in the hat did sparingly, he saw a three-legged dog striking its way along the pavement. He let it be, feeling that it was an alms-dog, and should be left to its own discommode and beggary. Some dogs are just not worth the bother. Perhaps, he thought, if I were to catch it a bird, trampling it with the soles of my boots until dead, I could offer it up to the dog, a small benefaction of my own sympathy and selfsameness. The three-legged dog, so he felt, would eat the bird with great relish, teeth clacking, a white slaver frothing its snout.
1 comment:
What a great site, how do you build such a cool site, its excellent.
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