Here! · is · my · story

If you can't remember your left and right,
A good mnemonic device is to
Make ninety-degree angles
With your index fingers
&
The corresponding thumbs.
Hold up your hands with
Your knuckles horizontal
&
Facing toward you.  The hand
That forms an L is your left hand.
If you cant' remember which is the L,
It's the one where your thumb points to the right.

Farts has been in the garage for two weeks now.  Hardhands knows what he's been eating.  He nailed the pivoting doors shut and painted a Pulfrichish Polyphemus on all the windows.  I banged and hollered for the first few days to no answer.  So now I wait, petulantly.  I have a right to know...

He's been barefooted, I'm sure of that much, since I sold his shoes to feed the bird and myself.  They were hole-filled enough to have lost the little change I got for them (if you're the type to keep your bones in your boots), and our bank's been bowing low.  I think the bird knows this.  He's been eyeing me, hungry, just like I've him.  I suspect it's our wary ire that's kept either of us out of the fire.

I woke up today and played air-skillet in the kitchen (with two encores).  The cupboards are as bare as before.

I've sold my shoes and most of my shirts and even my bed.  I'm holding on to my hat for now because of the drafts.  I haven't been able to buck off any of Fart's other things, though I would in a hatdrop.  I can't find his room, something I didn't realize I didn't know until last week.  The upperhouse is a hallway holding just my room, the bathroom and a tall, inlaid shelfcase at the end, which I had always taken to be his appropriately shadowy doorframe.  It's bare save for a small box with a lipless, cheerless grin ahinged.  Despite the lack of a lock, the thing doesn't open, but something definitely rattles in it when I give it a shake.  I shake it a lot.
I don't want to hock it without seeing if there's something more valuable inside, which must be the case because what could one get for a worthless cube?

Farts has been gone for over a month.  I'd think he was dead if I couldn't hear him talking to [himself?].

There has to be something in there I can sell for food.  There has to be food in there.  Bastard.  He's been sawing all day, non-stop.  I haven't eaten in three days and the bird is losing feathers.  I'm down to my pants and my last shirt and my head is cold.  I tried to sell the box but no-one wants a box they can't put anything into.  If I hadn't sold the shoes I might've been able to pry it open with one of the aglets.  I laughed and told the bird this.  It dropped more feathers.  Farts has a saw and he has food and he's a bastard.  Bastard bastard.

Ate the bird today. 

Choked a little.

Farts is back.  I heard him cranking out the nails from the garage doors and ran outside to yell inquisitions and inform him that the bird had flown away because of what an ass he'd been.  I could hear his bonechuckle as he pried out the nails.  I kicked one of doors and stubbed my toe.  He stopped working at that.  Then the portals pivoted and he rode out on a thing.

It was the size of a cramped, craggy building, or a sharp cart.  Big enough to ride, but small enough to fit inside a gymnasium.  It sort of leaned upward as it came out of the garage, like it'd ducked to get through.  It was around the height of a whale's tooth, in fact, if the whale was really enormous.  Such as, if there was a whale whose tooth was the size of a  smaller whale that was the size of this thing, it would be the size of the larger whale's tooth, naturally.  It had wheels made of straight lines and soft angles, hundreds of them, most not even touching the ground but still spinning.
On the front he had fastened the glaire from an egg so you could see him coming (how had he kept an egg‽  I became suspect of the bird).  Lofted above the whole damn thing, dangling plugwires and held with a handfold of beams and rebar, was what could only've been the engine: a clear globe at least three messieurembonpoints big and filled with tasty-looking crawfish who were yanking levery and pullstrings.
Farts was cupped in its gullet, arms antikimbo'd behind his head like a bent trident, legs double-crossing.  He had on his Sunday grin.
I named it after you, he galluped hoarsely.

Was watcshing the linen today and a-sinnin' on bagfulla dogofthehair
Some lady camein to the laundry-mat then and she started to washuppapair
Of stuff'd faunaffair: off-white polar bear and tatter'd, no-matter seaotter
She open'd-the-lid and, before slidthemin, she pour'd in her own home-brought water
And toothbrush'd bleach lines and it took her sweetime to rub in bright ribbons near-raw
Woredownwhiter hank-kerchiefs I everthank (or I think, rather) I've neversaw
She took forth an oar (swear I'd seen-it-be-fore) to stir her iceblues all withthreads
She launder'd 'nd cooked and saw that I looked and link'daline at me and said:
"I know folks like you, suit suresucker in-shoe for an unkindapart gent 'n' tella
"A-hammerin'ail 'til you get to the pail-end then find the how-low a dilemma
"Iceblock in the crick like a muddin'-the-stick, getup quick and creak-crack your spyin'
"Come down from the stares and step offa the Theirs and the Ours and HisHers and the My'n
"Don't wait 'til it's dryin', getcarpin', getdie'n, and damn, ifitissn'asin
"Drop change, bank-a-shore, buck a soreback n'more, just go cycle yerself with the spin"

My window swings and lacks a latch.  Every time I go in or out of the room it opens.  I need to either drill some holes in the door or go back in time and prevent Archimedes from inventing displacement.

Darlin', it's deader than coffinnail doors.
How've yours been hangin'?
Fringe-hinged and hammered?
Or gamboling around like you got all the right angles?

I'm tripping over everything these days, but only on one side.
Young-looking and shade-cut, you freckle and flail, but only on one side.

?: Fashionhands was a tossed time.  We had moves here long before that.

!: I never learned and yearned.  You walked up special and slow.  We went, wordless, soft downtown and scraped up at the hard shop, wordless.

?: There are lengths and legs for days and miles about what you never said.  What you never said almost put us under the wagon's wheel.  Everyone's rain now, you've made quick work of that.

!: I lifted a pane and held trees and broke my back in places for you to glue with milkmarrow.

?:That was a sharp night.

I came to, breathing heavily and bunched in sweat.  I checked to make sure all of my clothes were still around and tried like trees to remember my name.  I was supine on what felt like the ground‘s eyebrow.  I tasted my tongue, it was like sugar and holes so I rolled over and licked the ground, which was grainy and loose and a little salty.  You’re in a sandbox, someone put in my head, Sorry about the licking thing, it seemed like a good idea.  I stood up and wiped sand off my tongue and my jacket and pants, all of which were, in fact, still with me.  Such luck, as I’ve become so accustom to attire and being able to speak.  The sandbox was enormous, too wide by all sides for the naked eye to see the borderplanks.  And someone had put an ocean right next to it.  Bad idea, got dropped in my brain, Gonna flood in and mudmakeup, first rain that comes.  I began to walk (away from the water) and chatted with the firmament about the first rain, how it must’ve really scared the bones out of everybody.  They must’ve been running around, trying to get back to their caves or yurts or whatever.  Probably, they ran to roofless homes, as the sky had not yet barraged them with aggression (unless early man was a late sleeper, eye-shot and apolled by arrows of the midday sun.  Terrified, they would’ve cursed with every phone of the language they may or may not have had,  tossing tears of fright from their eyes and tearing at the sky with brand-new names for Whateverthefuck was pissing down on them.  Saucer-eyed, with hands pushing up frantically, trying to convince the precipitation to return to the clouds and stop making the ground sink.  I imagined my great-greats scurrying for cover.  Ha ha, suckers.
This exchange distracted me sufficiently from my unfavorable trek for a while, until talk about cave drawings brought me to bring up graffiti-mustachioed Mona Lisas and chipping the dick of Michelangelo’s uncut David.  The sky shut up, which I took to be entirely rude as I could clearly see that it hadn‘t left.  To be frank, I was mostly bitter about being so briskly cut off before I could relate my reasons for bringing the conversation toward the subject of famous penises.  But then I realized that I actually had no follow-up and was somewhat relieved to circumvent further explanation.  Foreboding suddenly docked upon the beach and I decided that it was time to get gone quick.
I hustled unapologetically for hands and feet of miles.  My spit started to taste like a bad nail.  I was hammering down drysoil until I got to the street and ran, very literally, into the Mayor.  I didn’t immediately recognize him, which is unsurprising since, while I am an avid fan of mayorology, such a field of study rarely puts any gravity into the specific visages of its subjects.  He was a large and sturdy man and came down like a water balloon made of very thick and durable rubber that was filled with frozen jelly.  The both of us instantly became brothers in surprise, of the shockingly abrupt encounter, the hardness of the ground, and the delight of meeting someone as famous as the other.  As we clasped hands to aid our rise back into proper, gentlemanly positions.  I shook so vigorously that it caused the both of us to loose our grips and meet the ground once again.  After regaining our footholds and going through the formality of pant-brushing (the second time in a day for me!) we cordially exchanged greetings, apologies, and business cards (I wrote my name on the back of his and handed it back) and were on our ways.  My way, however, had become his, as I had just then decided to alter my itinerary.  His pace was astonishingly swift (as one would imagine, I suppose, of a perpetually preoccupied servant to the people) and his conversation was pithier than a sunrise, as he responded to my suggestions about a new stamp design and the emancipation of postal addresses from the stodgy base-ten system.  Surely, my beachfront awakening that day had been a portent to tides of grand luck and strong pull in the current political community.  I thought upon my good fortune for but a moment and suddenly the mayor was nowhere in sight.  I ran up and down the street, gawking down alleyways and peering with cupped hands into store windows, but he was nowhere to be found.  I imagined him just around a corner somewhere, doing the same and began to shout his name, which I suddenly realized (pathetic scholar that I am, and having ignored the face of his business card while searching for a pen) I had not learned.  Thus, I cried out every first name I could fathom, augmented with HEYs, OH DEARs and I’M JUST IN FRONT OF SALMON’S PHARMACYs, and so on.  After some time, dismayed and dismayored, I gave up and decided to try navigating myself home.
It was dark by the time I’d found my way back.  I entered the house without bothering to switch on the light, guessing that I was familiar enough with the arrangement of the furniture (there being none) to maneuver around the place.  It hadn’t yet struck me that I’d unwittingly dismissed my original intention of procuring employment, but I had bigger fish to flip, now.

That night I’ll have a dream wherein I’m walking a tightrope to Howard Spain, which is what Spain is called in my dream.  During the stretch I’ll be cheered on (via a tin can tied to the rope) by the Chippewa Dam.  To be honest, I’m going to feel more pressured to impress rather than soothed by the dam’s words of  encouragement.  Nevertheless, I shall press on.  Succeed, even!  Upon reaching the end of the rope I will awaken and realize that waking up is still simpler than tightrope-walking, just as I’ve always suspected.  I am going to make a note to pursue the former regularly, while disregarding impulses toward the latter.
I’ll have a light breakfast, since the house is still barren of food.  I’ll down the capful of orange juice that I’ve been hiding from Farts and think about bagels and wine.  A heartier breakfast I’ll have had, sure, but never before a more recent one.  The crumbs from the breadbag I’ll pour onto the one plate we have but never use.  This will be for the bird, who I am going to be sure is hungry and at least a little confused (if birds can get confused, I forget how the saying goes).  By that time, Farts’ll have gotten up and will be cooing at the bird with pointless questions about politics and sickertsticks and less pointless questions about rent and the faint orange juice smell and here I will realize that we need some money.  I’m going to decide, at this point, that one of us three had better enough get a job.  I will hope that it can be the bird, as he is the quickest  and the only one of us, besides myself, who hasn’t beaten me in an argument.  At a point, I shall casually state, with a so-it-has-struck-me wave of the hand, that I had always envied both the employed and the flighted.  I will begin a story (half-false) about a twin brother who worked as an airballoon at a prestigious law firm,* only to be interrupted by the bird coughing (coughing?) and hopping up and down.  It will glare at me, daring me to come clean.  I am proud to say that I will never fess up.  What I will do is tell Farts that the bird was a mistake and we will spend a silent morning pondering whether I meant that bringing it home was erroneous or that the bird itself was a blunder of nature.  We will not, the both of us, reach a concurrence.  I will become discouraged and opt to search for employment myself, mostly to get away from the damned bird.


*Here I would like to clarify that the twin (who did not, in fact, exist) wasn’t a mere airballoonist (not only because I made him up).  Rather, he was the balloon himself, a task which is deceptively simple and not unlike hanging oneself, in that the only necessary materials are a ladder and some rope.

Let's brush (no rush) your teeth.  You do the top, I'll do the bottom.  Up-&-down from 'namel to 'neath.  We'll have your smilin' shinin' by autumn.

The sun's piping out from behind the clouds just every now and then like it's coming up for air
And the wind's got more change than a gumball machine
The clouds are quivering, topped off and tank-full
All ready to spill lazy fireworks down onto the trees
Fill up the ground like a grimy sink
Tear down something heavy like forest fires don't stand a chance heavy
It smells like an empty box outside
And there's a toss-up between the haze and the in-between
As the brume sweeps over the hills

Birds are building their nests upside-down
The flowers are setting the table and the earthworms
Are tossing up newspapers over their heads
And the river's already got growing pains
Umbrella's in the green room
Galosh is open wide
And the windows are panting like shy legs

Cloud shadows sail around like soft ships
Loading cannons
Dead leaves and trash are dancing like drainwater
Lightning's stretching its legs and clearing its throat
And the thunder took its whip off the hook
And parched gutters are water-mouthing and smack-lipped
The ants are pretty much fucked
And the temperature can't make up its mind
The trees've dropped anchor and're leaning like they're looking for the lee
But the bricks haven't noticed a thing
The grass is bending over backward
And I'm gonna lay low until this whole thing blows over

Like a masked ghost on a ship through the place, she horded
Uncaught, dry & alive but well-known to the bone
Sorta
Hustlebustling our carts around, we'd been giving out cardless shatters and dinnerplate sounds
Missing the AM and the AR and the Am & the Are, and whatever matters gets found
Hoist your petards and mince your words before they both go off, we scoffed
So she moonbreezed right through it
It was like a huddled hand of dunes we'd shoved off and dug out and buried, browbeat, then blow-by-blow blew it
And she knew it
Chomping on sugarcane like a bit
(There's no smoking and no lifeguard and no shit)
She walks hot and crooked like a wounded gun
Passerby-knocking over the whole city, bullying buildings down to tombstone-teeth corpses
With see-through, sheet-thin, forced & divorced remorses
Stovepipe-steamy and strange
Pray for range
Fist-fat drops like beats down allover town
Well-wishery redound on the glad pavement
Getting scuffed and scraped and saved by it
Dirtkissed and bolted-up scumsandals shambling
Hot-butt trailing slow and wonderin', like it forgot to turn off the oven
Flagflutter scarf wound 'round and licking and spitting the bagasse
Making snakes with the shade
Time-bade and waving all, 'Ayluvaparade'
With one hand strolling over the cane as she stalked
Man, if looks could talk
Bouche sashaying like Hey-Where-Ya-Been
Teeth straight and sharp as a pre-break pane
When the sun's shining and blinding and you can't see in
We were goners for sure
Still, we stood by the stoop a little longer
Keeping tabs open on the light that adorned her
'Til she took it off 'round the corner like a blur

We took off a day from being away and then shipped back out to the north because we could and felt that we should and Sunday evenings ought to be spent staying up late somewhere else if Monday's empty.
The night was clear this time and we could see where the forest had tried to escape the dunes.
We told each other mishistories and falsery and lots of true things, too, and I had a running & shouting match against the wind.
I won, of course( but I tripped over a tree-top ).

Time for a break.
Went up north with Kyle and Aaron to Evelyn's someone's cottage.
There were
dunes, dunes, dunes!
Plateau-peaked and tremendous as tundras.
It was mist-kissed and grayscaled, the horizon just once-removed from the land, footfalls looking like protruding plantlife, distant tree valleys masking as tumbleback, rumble-black, emboldened underlines for the sky.
And depth perception can take a fuckin' hike.
A morose night sky stole the stars and the only unnatural light was lost by the hill's height.
So there was a lot of ( this )
But, bright in the morning we went to the world and there was a town and a road and we were fast back at home.( but not before )

This is a picture of me in a borrowed hat.  It's from some time ago (the photo and the hat).
Ignore the grinning dork below-chapeau.  The important thing here is the hat.
I'd borrowed it from Evelyn, who is Kyle's fiancée.
Kyle & Ev sure
have been good friends for a
while & ever.
Their house is like a costume shop/old-timey poster museum.  It's pretty great and one day we were over there having pizza and soda and drawing pictures about our day (we had gone to a roller skating party earlier).  But that was some time back (two, two-and-a-half years ago). 
Anyway, the hat:
Kyle has a similar hat, but his is the kind that collapses and stays flat like the photo-negative of a short boater until you give it a flick and its tip-top pops up.
Evelyn's is old and felt-soft and serious.  I got to wear it and even though it didn't quite fit my over-inflated dirigible dome it perched jauntily to the side and I love it.  It was worn by Evelyn's grandfather on the day he was married in a hot-air balloon and I am not lying.
You can ask them.
You can also ask them why they are not doing the same.
I mean, they have the hat.

And it is a very, very nice hat.

edit: It was her parents and her mom wore the hat, she thinks.*

ALL THE BETTER

*This still counts as me not lying.

I WAS SIMPLY MISTAKEN

Where‽
Never there from the start‽
( NO. )
I've never seen this place open before, but it's evidently unabandoned by its cerulean-wielding caretaker & his betrayed antagonist.

I don't know what it is, but I do know what detour I'm taking everywhere from now on.