The Homebound Investigative Curmudgeon Knockout
Syndrome.
Last week, my fellow Marchers, we set the cadence. What to do
alone in the boonies when my Sweetie goes off on a family
sabbatical for the week, and I intentionally shut down all avenues of
news from the outside world.
I took the advice of a TV doc...powering down computer,
squelching radio and TV, muting my answering machine, and not
retrieving the mail. This was done in an effort to purify, placate
and re-invent my introspective resources. With no worldly stream
of consciousness hammering at my temples, I’d be free to roam and
discover and mix the depths of my inner business with the
immediate surroundings of my outer pleasure. Right.
Then came the HICKS. With a vengeance....
Day One: Severe withdrawal.
No e-mail or on-line incoming. No five-day weather outlook,
stock quotes or editorial opinions. No news from the war fronts,
peace talks, space walks or rundown on the updates. No
Presidential scandals, industrial vandals or bus plunges. No double
overtimes or extra innings. No discount computer magazines,
supermarket flyers or overdue Internet bills. Nothing coming at me
containing the words: "grim, mad, harass, Rodman, conceptual,
innovative, lengthy, trial, or process."
I spent this entire day chain-smoking, munching pretzels, and
taking a detailed track inventory of my old long-playing record
collection. I learned that Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, a Sixties
signature anthem written by Arlo Guthrie, runs exactly eighteen
minutes and twenty seconds.
I told myself this was vital information, nostalgic minutiae or
not.
I went to bed staring out at the distant mountain, hoping some
skywriting bush pilot would have pity of me and spell out the day’s
headlines over the summit in phosphorescent font.
Day Two: I slept, smoked, ate, drank and excreted. I watched
my dog sleep, eat, drink and excrete. He doesn’t smoke.
That’s all I remember.
Day Three: I took a chance and drove down to the village store
to stock up on a few staples. I was almost out of cigarettes,
pretzels and dog food. Knowing the magazine and newspaper rack sat
unavoidably just inside the entrance, I entered squinting and
turning my head away, aching for a peek, but determined to
maintain my worldly isolation and remain unwise to the words.
This maneuver resulted in my crashing into the revolving
bargain music caddy on the counter, and raining cassette tapes
down on an unsuspecting toddler, into whom I no doubt instilled a
Post Traumatic Overhead Syndrome. He will now wet the bed and
insist on being carried in public places by his mother until he’s
thirty-five.
And, if this climate of frivolous litigation goes on unchecked, I’ll
be sued in 2030 by a 36 year-old recovering enuretic malcontent for
having caused his pathological fear of ceiling fixtures, and for the
pain and suffering of a 33 year-long diaper rash.
Attempting an apology, I discovered that not using one’s voice
for two days and nights had taken its toll. I told the child’s mother
I was sorry. But, it came out sounding like:"Ark, sotty." She
hustled/carried the inflamed youngster away, and outside had a
long look at my license plate.
I made an oath that if I was going to spend the week talking to
myself, I would do it out loud. I bought enough human and canine
tobacco, munchies and rawhide chewies to last a month. Couldn’t
risk another outing like that.
Day Four: I was losing my grip.
I imagined that the woodpecker tapping on my backyard maple
was really a camouflaged carrier pigeon trying to send me the Morse
code version of Dow Jones.
When a National Guard helicopter flew over the mountain, I
waited for it to swoop in and drop a team of rappelling Press Corp
commandos on my porch with the straight poop on the latest dope.
By the time the propane delivery guy arrived, I felt like a
hardened Alcratazian jailbird just out of solitary incommunicado. I
wanted to hold him at hose-point and demand the skinny from the
real world: "Okay, listen new fish, either gimme the weather report
for the weekend, or I’ll pump this gas up your nose."
Later that evening I came close to dabbing a cigarette butt in the
onion dip and lighting up a pretzel. The dog, sensing I was
scrambling for orientation, slept on his chewies.
Day Five: One day to go. Sweetie would be home the next day,
and I could go back on-line.
Then, it happened.
Without my choosing to or even being aware of it, unchained
from the world in my life, I retreated to the frontlines of the life
in my world.
I began feeling like a composite of Bill Nye The Science Guy,
Salvador Dali, Dennis The Menace, and the ghost of Ewell
Gibbons.
Hey, this was alright....
I used the fencepost and flower garden for a sundial.
Delphiniums at 8 a.m. Peonies at 2 p.m. At a quarter past
Rhododendrons, I made dinner---an exotic, Medicine Man stir-fry
that I swear blew out my sinus tracts.
I found a sweaty, range-of-motion harmony while stacking
cordwood, and stood back admiring the symmetry in the interlacing
stack.
I was soulfully entertained by squirrel birdfeeder acrobatics,
garden toad antics, and the precision slapstick of hummingbird hit
and runs.
I made a compost teepee pole bean trellis.
I weeded, planted, fertilized and not only talked out loud to
myself...I listened to every word.
By day’s end, I’d become a backwoods empirical kook,
wondering how I could incorporate perpetual motion,
metamorphosis and the phases of the moon into a three-bean salad,
pretzels on the side. Beyond the treeline, the rest of the world
could just cools its jets.
I slept like yesterday’s news....
Day Six: Sweetie came home early, and we spent the day
counting the stars in broad daylight.
