bigfoot

The Light on the Hill, Part 1

by
severnspoon
on Saturday

Penance of the Gates

Bigfoot walked the train tracks behind my house. That's how we met.

(We moved way out to a small town about three hours outside the city. It was a writer’s retreat after the success of my first novel. I was tired of how social I was expected to be. It didn’t seem worth the trouble of charming anyone any longer. I had written a book that mattered enough to get published. After the book tour, I was ready for a nervous breakdown.

My wife took us away. She made all the arrangements. Not quite out of reach of Walmart, but far enough not to be a concern to anyone. The book rack at the gas station has only a few stripped mass markets someone must have smuggled out of a bookstore, wrapped in saran wrap, three for a dollar. Thankfully, I’m not yet among them. Famous somewhere else for a brief time, enough to make a living.

People were turning away already, as if we stood in an endless receiving line, never sure who was host and who was guest and who was waiting tables. Everyone was telling me to go write somewhere, come back with something. I was ecstatic and exhausted. I was very frightened.)

We happened to live beside a field on a plot of land beside a farm. The farm had sold some of the near field in order to keep running and we lived on a parcel of land between the far field and the farm house. The tractors drive by our house every morning before dawn. There are all sorts of reasons to stay awake: the cows milling about the grass, the banging of a gate.

A train track runs diagonally across what remains of the near field. At a certain time of the night, the train would stop and a conductor would jump down and open the gate. The farmer could have replaced the gate with a cow guard. That would have let the train pass without difficulty, but Tom the farmer was unwilling to spend a dime solving the problem. He thinks it’s the railroad’s responsibility.

The field is his on both sides of the tracks. This had been going on for a long time. In the deep darkness, the conductor gets out and bangs the gate fiercely, really just hammers and tears it to the ground. He might have made his life easier and driven straight through, but he wanted no evidence on the train. He’d tear down the gate and drive into the field and stop a while to tear down the other gate.

When the train was stopped in this position, sometimes the herd got bisected as they quietly grazed in the moonlight. They would start mooing. One night I was awakened by the sound.

I stood in my house coat on the front porch, still in my slippers, with a cup of coffee, trying to steady my impressions. I hadn’t quite mastered the way country folk abandon sleep when the time comes, the reason they are always tired, always active.

I watched the conductor get back on the train, having trounced the other gate yet again. As the train pulled away, it nagged its horn as if to say: “Fuck you and your gates and your cows.”

I watched the tired farmers come awake, not so disappointed. Some of the men set out to carry the pieces that could be salvaged and repaired, while others guarded against the frightened cattle stampeding through the gaps in the fence. I put on my boots and rushed out to help.

It was Tom and his two sons and one grandson. They all strode like versions of each other and set to the various tasks without saying a word. They worked with great competence while I stood holding my flashlight so they could see.

I had a nice flashlight and anyone who could be of any use was always welcome. I was gradually expressing my way into the life of the farm.

I wanted the fresh air, the vigorous ingenuity of it all. I thought I might write a book about it. I was never essential. I played no important role in any operation. I held things for people and I ran errands. Mostly I stood around, especially at night. I was usually up anyway, writing. I thought I might call the book: “The Light on the Hill.”

That night I volunteered, without fail, to get up and open the gate at 3:30 AM precisely. I would stand there till the train passed and then close the gates behind it. The very next night, I explained this new plan to the conductor who was much obliged to me.

The train passed at top speed after that. The driver bipped the horn to say hello to me but would not stop for anything. It was a dangerous sight to see every night at such an hour, mesmerizing with its constancy. The messages of the world flew past in graffiti on coal cars, flat beds loaded with behemoth slabs of die-cast metal, cars stacked into trays overtop of each other, rushing past in my flashlight, sometimes for a full hour. They were bigger loads now since they didn’t have to stop. Eventually everything would fade into a deep silence and I’d sheepishly close the gates.

It was also my job to ensure that none of the herd were on the far side of the tracks when the train came through. I was so useful! But this task proved to be quite difficult over time. The more I shooed the cows away, the more curious they became of the grass on the other side, as if it were somehow better than that in the field at large. Perhaps it was. It was clearly much safer on the near side. On the far side, they would be cut off from the safety of the barn, exposed to wild animals.

The most dangerous animals around were stray dogs, sometimes a badger or a rabid raccoon, a spooked buck. Wildcats and wolves are just legends around here. No one has seen a bear in 50 years of recollection.

One night most of the cows were huddled, packed tight in the thin wedge of grass beyond the tracks. They stood on the tracks as well, dinging the rails like bells with their hooves.

The herd moves like water. Where ever you push offers some resistance. You can only do so much to convince it of one way or another.

I couldn’t seem to move them at all. I couldn’t circle beyond them into the corner, so I couldn’t drive them back across. They had trapped me, restrained me amongst themselves. I could only yell at their infuriating indifference.

The plain truth of the situation dawned on me, namely that I would not be able to move them and the train was coming at full speed and would not stop for anything and there were at least a dozen cows standing on the tracks now, trying to crowd into the little wedge of good grass.

The train would derail and perhaps explode or spill toxic chemicals into the earth killing everything and everyone in a 50 mile radius of the very spot where I was running around madly, in an absolute panic, incapable of inflicting my will to elicit the smallest change. Helpless, in fact, impotent, weak, unworthy of my responsibilities, lacking all credibility as a man. Those great gluttons would not swear off a bit of good grass to save their lives.

At that moment, a great peaked whistling sound cut the air.

At first, I thought it was the train whistle blowing from far off. But there was something else to the sound, something expressive and plasticine, something like a voice speaking in a sort of ruptured scream. It was also like a machine sound, as if some great mechanism were being cold started and revved up to speed. Truly terrifying, like the world being ripped in half in the bare hands of something awesome. The air resonated with micro-tremors that seemed to pierce right into my body and shake the base of my brain.

The cry was a true command. The sense it managed to express to me was that some entity was allowing me to bear witness to it commanding, with the utmost authority, that the cows leave this side of the track and clear the tracks altogether. It was pronouncing a territorial claim to that corner of the field as if the tracks represented a boundary between nations. An eloquent speech in every way, and yet not really speech at all, but some glottal snarl that worked just the same, saying everything with nothing, so perfectly, so convincing.

I raced to open the gates as the panicked cows ran from the corner toward the far field, defecating as they went, sliding on the shit-covered tracks and tumbling down the opposite embankment. Some were injured along the way. I stood at the second gate, my nerves in a frazzle.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 2

by
severnspoon
on Monday

Anthropology, Part 1

Bigfoots have a religion of sorts if you want to think of it that way. It's odd to hear him talk about it. They don't tell stories generally, because they are too adept at shifting their context. The act of speaking is enough to fill them with fresh insight. Each move leaps them ten steps ahead.

They can't seem to slow themselves down long enough to think about what they're doing. It is a very vital sort of cultural awakening they are going through. I think the encounter with man has really inspired them to reach beyond themselves. They have so much catching up to do.

When they talk, they are stuck with a modern conundrum: everything can be spoken of in terms of everything else.

We have to deal with this as well even though we are veteran speakers. But we are well practiced at ignorance. We are gifted at hiding the truth from ourselves. We are often deceived into thinking less of others as a form of defense. We stave off obscure influences with skepticism.

Not only do they have to resolve myriad difficult intellectual problems all at once, but they also have to prioritize them, evaluate them in the stream of things while new insights are blossoming all around. It's a lot to handle.

And yet, it's all oddly uniform. There is no contrast. Everything dissolves back into a stew before their eyes. Nothing is real and anything could be anything at all. They are quite easily lied to. They can be easily manipulated into any form one might choose. They are like silly putty.

They are well equipped to solve whatever challenges oppose them. They are destined for great success, reacting always to what is immediately before them, guided by many human hands into the depths of society.

And yet there is this strange religion, that amounts to a sort of incantation, a simple phrase repeated over and again:

Mushamoo fraymud, mushamoo fraymud.

Which means, best as I can tell:

Everything is fascinating.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 3

by
severnspoon
on Wednesday

Cloud-writing

In the silent aftermath of the train, I scurried with my flashlight and closed the gates. I thought I would have to go to the house and wake them, but by the time I had closed both gates, the men, with their coats over their robes, were checking the cows for injuries. It seemed they all knew what that sound had been.

They told me some stories about bigfoot that seemed wildly circumstantial and not very well substantiated. Farmers don't concern themselves too much with things beyond their fences, but sometimes their fences cross other lines and they get to know some strange things. I was strange as well, a man who asked too many questions, doing my penance at the gates.

I paid closer attention as I approached the gates. The work went on as before. Nothing had changed but the attitude of the cows toward the far corner of the field. They never went there again. This greatly simplified my job. I kept a close eye on the tree line with a thousand lumen spotlight I picked up at Walmart. It was a truly remarkable device: It was handheld like a giant flashlight and had a series of tiny LED bulbs you could throttle with a dial on the handle. At full power, I could pierce low clouds and create an ethereal glow in their depths.

The forest grew quiet again and the cows posed no more difficulties. I took to a kind of cloud writing, shining my light up into the rain.

The rain sizzled on the lens. I spun my wand through the air. Before I knew it, I was writing a story (perhaps the first inklings of this story) by etching letters into the clouds themselves. If a good wind pushed them along, then I wrote faster, feverishly into the night, gates closed, no good reason to be there. Sometimes I wrote for hours until the battery ran dry.

(Later, I heard a tale about myself on those nights. Some young wife had awoken with a start when my light cut directly into her window and struck the mirror. It turned the entire room to daylight for an instant and tore her from a dream.

She looked out the window after it had passed. She was unsure of what had happened. She thought an angel had visited her, as if she had seen an angel somewhere between dream and wakefulness. She stared out the window and watched the angel dance in the clouds, waiting for the train to come. After the train had passed, the angel descended and slowly disappeared across the field. She’d always wondered where it was going.

Perhaps I was a crazy to stand there with my light down by the tracks. My life was in fragments. This was the only thing that felt right at the time: writing words on the clouds until someone thinks an angel is dancing.)

I heard him standing behind me in the woods, watching as I drew on the sky, trying to make sense of me. Perhaps he thought I was some kind of wizard from another world, some unknowable spectacle creating some foreign art whose aesthetics were graspable even if their meaning evades. Bigfoot stood behind me and watched me work my craft.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 4

by
severnspoon
on Friday

Anthropology, Part 2

It is my understanding that greatness goes to those who distinguish themselves. It is true of the bigfoots as well. They do nothing but try to distinguish themselves, whichever way the world twists them. That is their nature.

They are each a separate tribe unto themselves. They do not know each other, even within their family units and their loose clan affiliations. They rush off to endear themselves to every gleaming treasure. They want only to not be tricked into believing themselves monsters.

I've watched them collide as they backpedal into the trees, disappearing so quickly into some hillock or other.

I've watched them eat so warily and pained. They all have bad stomachs and hopeless livers. It is the price of their bulky form. It is no fault of their own, just evolution releasing another old idea to find its way.

They are no stranger than we are with our weak lower backs and our neck pains, our silent saucers of secrets. Every man is as interesting as they are after all. Though perhaps a privileged few, who manage their own absurdities better than I, abide a life of boredom not worth the telling.

I can't imagine that though.

The storied heroes and spirits of the bigfoots can transform themselves into anything in the forest. They only abide a form when someone notices them and then they are locked into whatever they were just that moment, be it rock or tree or leaf or dirt. Whatever it is, that is what they are until no one notices them again, then they are free to embody the general sense of things.

It is like they don't exist at all. The world swims vaguely beyond our vision and that is just how it is, no more can be grasped. Our tendrils of consciousness only snake so far into reality. The rest... who knows?

The bigfoots encounter spirits all the time. They'll stop in their tracks, let their hands fall and say:

Wichita brobig.

Which means:

Thank you.

They are continually elevated by injections of fresh insight from these sources.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 5

by
bigfoot
on Sunday

The Night Shepherd

  • So far as I know, there was only ever the woods. I knew about the road and not to go near it. I knew about the tracks and the late night train. I knew about the beasts in the field and the men who worked among them. Mostly I knew about nuts and berries, good grasses. It seemed like I was always eating, growing bigger and bigger, taller and taller. It seemed a long and wonderful while before I came into my urges and had to leave home.
  • Where was I to go? Should I go live among the men? I thought I might do some service to endear myself. I knew how to bend the tree branches till they sang. I knew how to make the forest music. I watched the man come paint the clouds with light. It gave me a good deal of courage to think there were such cool things in the world.
  • A sensation came over me while I watched him make his light. I can only call it a particularization. All those things that had seemed for all time were suddenly of the now, this moment here. Details blossomed in my eyes. I saw how the bark chipped in my hand. I heard the wind as if for the first time, so full of information. I felt it through my hair.
  • It was no different than it had always been, but somehow I noticed how things were organized on a greater scale than I had previously assumed. I had millions of assumptions that guided me through the world, but recently I had had doubts as well.
  • I heard the train rolling past as a whole thunderous rain storm of sounds, lights and sensations. I stood, dumb with awe, as things grew more localized and precise. I grew sure of what I saw: the wheel, the working of metal, the boiling of water, the nature of electricity, weather, the purpose of the gates and the field and the beasts upon it.
  • I could even begin to understand this man and the train and the reasons the light grew from his hand as if he held a fragment of the sun (electricity!) The whole electromagnetic spectrum lay down before me and gave expression to all things.
  • I stood there caught up in a gigantic shrug I could not shake off. The world seemed to collapse and rise again at the same time. New realms of insight revealed ever deeper truths to me about the nature of these strange beings who guarded the field from the advance of the machines and yet make a sort of sacrifice to the rail in homage to some greater intent. I came night after night to learn more from these sights.
  • The strange worshipfulness of men. I never believed that before. I never saw such a thing from them. Mainly the men I saw were working at something to enrich themselves. They were great encroachers is all, to be dealt with one day.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 6

by
bigfoot
on Tuesday

A Trip to the Barber

Each night was as particular to me as if it were an entire phase of my existence. I was metamorphosing. I grew completely tame with all the fascinating possibilities of the present.

I was in control of myself, disciplined and sure. I was a man perhaps. Perhaps I had been a man all along, despite my hirsute tendencies. A strong man, a big man, with a preposterous destiny. I was not the first to make my way in the world.

Looking back now, I think I would have been happier had I stayed in the forest, but then there are other interests to hold the mind than happiness. I would say it has been an inspired life, raised up by a man shining a light into the sky.

A great man, a man who owned much electricity and tossed it into the sky to write truths that are like metal in the bellies of the clouds, in my belly as well.

What I had not learned as yet, and could not have guessed, was the value of a dollar. It was struggle enough to keep up with why the big trucks ran at night through the trees on the roads, why the towers blinked their lights over everything, why the streets were paved and why there were curbs and sidewalks and even what a street light was or the language of signs the people of the road spoke.

I did not know yet that the people of the road and the people of the houses were not the same people, but sometimes people who had come from far away for no good reason, just to visit from other equally plentiful places.

It was a long while before I learned of the law and that I had no legal rights to the corner of the field, no capital at all. I became very concerned with money, what it looked like, where it came from, how to receive some in payment for services.

The farmers paid me to move heavy things and to watch over the cattle at night. I was the night shepherd. They paid me with money left beneath a rock on the fence post. They gave me whatever they had at hand. Sometimes they gave me apples. (I wept from their kindness, I couldn't stop myself. Just to have a message sing out for me alone...)

With the few dollars I'd gathered, I walked right off the street in a pair of jeans I'd found in the woods and a plastic wind breaker from the trash. I went to the barber shop and gestured frantically at my face, trying to make clear how important it was that they shave me before anyone noticed.

The barber stood chagrined at the counter, saddled with impossible duties but up to the task. He gestured towards a chair, then tossed a towel easily on his shoulder.

He covered me with a sheet and I fell asleep almost at once. I had never been swaddled before. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see myself in the mirror, couldn't bear the horrible presence of my own gaze. When I awoke, the barber was buttoning a shirt over my chest. My friend from the field stood by smiling. My skin itched all over.

I was pink and raw like a newborn rat.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 7

by
bigfoot
on Wednesday

The Long Otter

Once upon a time there was a long otter that ruled a great lake. Whatever he wanted was his. All made offerings to him except for the men who rowed their canoes away from shore to cast nets into the deep. They pulled a great bounty of fish up but left nothing for the long otter.

The otter watched these men work and wished he had such powers as well, so he took a bride from among their people.

She washed clothes at the lakeside where he was always bathing. She carried a big basket on her head when she came down the beach.

She was very pretty in her way, but there was something wrong with her that the other men did not enjoy and so she was alone.

He would watch her as she scrubbed old shirts among the rocks. Eventually he decided to ask her on a date and she agreed.

They had two sons, one who looked more like an otter and one who looked more like a man. When they came into their urges, it was decided that the otterish son would stay with his father while the mannish son would go with his mother. They said their goodbyes and made off into the world.

We descended from the mannish son. I've always wanted to visit the great lake.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 8

by
severnspoon
on Thursday

Anthropology, Part 3

Some creatures make sense of the world with their noses. To them go the smells that issue from all things. Some creatures will only know by taste, those mealy ends we face. We ourselves make sure of things with eyes. We look for correspondences and contrasts, explanations, any will do. Great spirits are better at this than weaker spirits. They can hold a form of great character for a long time.

When I first began to study bigfoot, he did a lot of things that confused me. We had many unusual confrontations before we came to understand one another. I am happy to say that our friendship flourishes to this day, though we haven't seen each other in years. He is a dear friend to my heart and I will not let anyone speak poorly of him.

His senses are stronger in just the way color makes it easier to distinguish the spectacle of light. It is no surprise that people paint. In my own way I've tried to express the beacons of shadow that coat the fields as the clouds dapple the Spring corn. How the brindle cow is figured so marvelously that we consider there is some plan to everything.

Strapped and clattering, we spent many days in close conference with each other. We were both on the edge of madness with our fire to communicate. We invented our own language just to be heard.

Madg melaan gosse tongue.

which means:

Take heed, my friend.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 9

by
bigfoot
on Thursday

All the times I've looked at my foot.

They're not so big. I remember long days in a sunny piece of sand, sitting, my leg pulled to my face, just looking at them. It was on just such an occasion that the man with the electricity came upon me, crossing a field. Nowhere really, off all the paths for some reason, probably that it was my pasture. It was my sunning spot and everyone else just steered clear.

There were no deer trails laden with scat. There was only the peace of the trees and myself lying there soaking up all those great rays, protected by fur, glorious fur that warmed in that sun, those marvelous beams of glory raining down. All of us green with it. Letting the bugs crawl all over us, letting the flies swarm. It was worth it just to be, so living all over. Just feeling it.

I was in a trance, just staring at the bottom of my feet, letting them warm as well in that hard light, from all they endure over roots and through bushes. All that they suffer as I tromp around. It's a lot of work. But my people have big feet. That's all. Big feet. No different than any man.

In human terms I suppose you'd think us a kind of radical hillbilly, some hippy love child gone astray. But who cares about that. It doesn't matter. What matters is to see always such beauty everywhere. No matter what it is. And so I chose to look at man. I wanted to know what this electricity was all about. It seemed like the sun.

The truth is, that day, he electrocuted me. He'd brought a stun gun and some rope. I didn't mind. I wanted to know. And the sensation of all that power running through me, jolted me awake from my slumber and I wanted to learn.

He stood across from me in that field and all I had was smiles, wasn't it glorious? I threw open my arms to him, "brother otter" I cried, at last returned to me.

We stood that way a long while, like stunned and stalking cats, creeping so slow, so slow, testing each other's memories, trying to feel how strong the other might really be. The man slowly, so slowly lifted his hand and reached it inside himself and drew out this weapon.

I wanted only good things for him. I wanted him to forget. I thought I might hypnotize him into forgetting he had seen me. I was already retrieving those memories from him, but he was very clever, that electric man.

He had something in his hand when he pulled it from inside himself. I stared at it a long while. I thought it might be feces and that he was going to throw it at me. To stun me. To curse me. I thought for a second that he was a magician like they said men were. That he was never to be trusted. That's what I was told. That once, long ago, a crime was committed and that we had run away from man. We hated man. But nobody had bothered to worry about man for a very long time.

I thought I might help them. Might lift them over their assumptions about certain things. That we might exchange art and poetry. That we might sing to each other. How interesting that would be.

I reached out my hand to clutch a nearby pine. I intended to rattle it really hard and scare the man away. I thought, I was convinced already, that this exchange was likely not to happen and that if man stayed his side and we ours, all would be best. I would shake the trees till the needles rained down all around me. And then in the silent aftermath, I would grunt like a bore.

I had seen a boar once. They are not just lessons from a far gone age. Though they are not that at all. They have such strange feet! They are cloven like a deer, and when they canter, it is in comic little spasms. They are funny creatures! But then the big one, the bull with his tusks and his black spines like a porcupine. A hideous beast and rude to boot. Never a dull moment, I tell you. Never any peace when a pig's around.

So I grunt, real foul and phlegmy like a boar, real nasty, like someone snorting up the world.

The man reaches his hand like he wants to show me something. Something a little frightening, because I am so curious, I am completely entranced.

The next thing I recall, I was tied to a tree with thick heavy strong vines. He's making funny lip motions at me, as if he were somehow making fun of me. He was making me very angry, I'm afraid to say. I wanted to uproot the tree and bash him with it until I was free. What arrogance!

When I could stand it no more, I fell into a kind of catatonia. I couldn't think anymore. I couldn't see or hear. I had overloaded my mind. We have weak minds after all. Too much stimulation, too many events acting upon things all around was just too much for us to deal with.

Play dead. That's what it was. One of our strategies for invisibility. Become immobile. Awake with renewed energy, new fire stoked, ready to deal with adversity if it hasn't already wandered off.

During that dank slumber, there are only thoughts of blood and derangement. We are berserkers after all. We give one last heroic, ecstatic blood frenzy to save ourselves. Nothing can stop us.

And to die in battle. What an honor.

Little did the man know what he was bringing out in me. When I awoke I threw off his vines in one small flex of my pectorals. I took all my great expanse of chest, that lets me run, far and wide, where I choose, invisible.

I stood with great decorum. I was going to crush this man. But first I would taste his fear. I would soak it all in like some exotic beverage. I would terrorize him with great cruelty. Tie me with a rope!

But when the time came, he was not afraid. He stood there, no longer moving his lips. The electric man. He zapped me again with that horrible, beautiful power! I can't begin to express what it meant to me. That second jolt was the one that showed me, that shocked me into new reason. That second one and things began to come clear. I was his prisoner, if that was how it needed to be.

When I awoke a second time, I was in a more reasonable frame of mind. Going berserker can take a lot out of you. It is a sort of explosion. Electricity of my own crackles in my fur and it stands on end. I am entranced by a frantic star above the tree line, I am falling to the ground again and rising up as well. I am caught very much in between things.

The third jolt and all of those that came after, during our whole long friendship, were at my pleading. I would do anything for another sizzle, another halo of smoke above my head. I wanted all of it. Teach me! Teach ME!

The man became very patient with me. We negotiated a series of signals at first. I could ask for food and just what kind from my place beneath the great oak tree I was again roped to. It was a long time before I left that tree. Its energy became a part of my own as well. I grew so strong tied to that tree, basking in its glow.

I hear tell that the old people of long ago, the vicious ones who made us flee to our father otter, would hang small men by their flesh and spin them round until they tore free. It was like that. I had beaten a track around the tree and broke my bonds many, many times. I had a place to shit and a place to eat.

It was good enough to survive on. My people are great survivors. If a cave-in traps us, we can last many moons if we have to. There are times when our fathers had to gnaw off their own limbs to save their lives. We can survive anything. We grow right back. We are full of life!

We hear stories about the great mother who they keep sequestered in their great ideas. The one who loves them all and keeps them happy and strong. Father is just an idea perhaps as well, but his visage is grim and he sits in a dank room at the bottom of the world and just sort of broods over everything. He's not a happy man. We miss our mother's love.

As fast as I could make the symbols and gestures, I asked the electric man about the great mother. I'm not sure if he understood me. I suppose it doesn't matter. Given everything else that happened.

When I felt I had made myself plain enough, I gave him silence to try to explain.

He took up a rock that was too heavy for such a little one as he. Men are weak after all. They are like ants and must invent great monsters of metal to help them with everything. It is silly to think that anyone decides his fate. But man seems convinced he can rewrite the world however he likes. How fascinating!

He shuffled this rock, inch by inch, over into the clearing.

Then he took another one such as he, with his present resources, could manage. He pushed it up onto the other and scrubbed his hands clean of dirt.

Then he took a third one in one hand. He tossed it into the air a couple times and caught it. He turned his head to the left and to the right until his neck popped. I did the same. My people have big necks. Too big perhaps. They are for swinging into trees when it's called for.

He placed the third stone on top of the second with an air of finality. He did another cursory brush of his hands and ran them through the hair on his head as if he were waving his scent all about.

Then he made some funny lip movements again. It took me no time to realize what the strange charm of those sounds was called. The word was there in my head, though to my knowledge, I had never heard it. It was as if the strange warble of his voice were a sort of bird noise. He was working his magic on me. I could feel it. It was like the electricity again only more vivid. Music.

I learned this song from him, though it took me many years to decipher the full range of its meaning. I can only tell you of it. I can't sing it to you. I can't talk and sing at the same time like the great poets. I can only make these sounds.

The song was about a woman who seemed very happy to be free with herself. Who lived in a very perfect place and spread her legs wide for many men and everyone was happy and drunk. A country song he called it. Hillbilly music.

I tell myself I shouldn't be talking about all this. They can't know about this. But then, I don't understand it myself. Maybe if I tell it, it'll come plain to me along the way.

He sang me this song and then his face split open very wide and pulled apart. I thought for a second he was transforming, turning into some other creature all together. My people never look at each other. We don't really think about faces. We have our other senses. We don't see real well, except in the dark. In the dark, everything is different.

Later he explained to me that he had been smiling and laughing, because I was crying. I was heaving with sobs and moaning helplessly like a small child. I was completely crushed with emotion I could not express. I wanted to just die. Such beauty! Such beauty!

What saved me at last was sitting there in my tears and my snot and my piss. I stared down at my foot. It just lay there, forgotten. I'd been tied to a tree so long already. What could I do? I thought of all the times I'd stared at the foot, all the times I could recall.

And I had never thought about the passage of time like that before. How things change. They had always just been what they were. If things changed every few minutes, well, so what? It hardly mattered. Everything is beautiful after all.

I'm tired of all this talking just now. How the tears well up even now. That this thing was also that thing and that thing from back then. How it all was connected. At last! The great wisdom the elders had spoke of. The great wisdom that came from the sky with the rays of the sun. Only here it was again like an electric shock, ravaging my mind with fresh ponderance.

Oh, I can not bring the memory to the forefront. I have no words for it.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 10

by
severnspoon
on Saturday

Christopher Columbus

He wanted to make money. He said he needed money so he could learn things. It was understandable. He was extremely clever. For a bigfoot, he was probably short and thin, but for a man it was hard to mask his monstrous qualities. But the hardest of scrutiny only saw a large homely man. Who could imagine an alternative? It wasn't long before he was asking questions about the nature of luck and the strange reasoning of prophets.

He had done it right I suppose. If you are going to toss yourself into a thing, you might as well go right for it. I felt privileged to have a purpose at last, something real, some genuine need for me beyond the page. It was foolish to think I could just go on and be a farm hand. At least I could be bigfoot's cohort and biographer. That was worth something. This is, I think.

I can sense his propensity for insight. It's as if he can only understand things in leaps and bounds, can only proceed into the world at a run. He thinks, I suspect, he is trying to catch up to us somehow. I envy him. What I wouldn't give to live in his world, fully integrated into the environment, the king of the forest. He has the character of his own gods like all great men, chest wide open to the world like a great sail, an explorer. He is the Christopher Columbus of bigfoots.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 11

by
bigfoot
on Monday

Inspiration

Everything I touched spat out its memories to me. I kept some. These few objects here on the table. Each is imbued with a story that is not really a story, just a flash, a moment dense with emotion.

I collected them to make them a part of a new life. If I was to be a man, then I must have memories of manhood to inform me. I needed sign posts, I needed answers. They are like a mythology within whose bounds the character of a man is inspired. I will be that man.

A round piece of metal. A handful of nails in a glass jar. A thick wire, that has carried much electricity. A broken ring. A marble. The words on thin wood. The little shapes and pictures that are the key to the signs. The sign that reads "No campfires." With the bear in the hat.

I have a great affinity for bears. They are always searching, good spirited hulks, scenting life where it leaps from the element, finding treasure on brutal raids. Victims of their bellies, cruel at times, afraid of nothing.

I also keep these fragments of bone and bark, a dead beetle. These are ancient things I can't forget no matter how I try.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 12

by
severnspoon
on Tuesday

Anthropology, Part 4

Men seem to him the greatest spirits of all. Man's dream of perfection is to be exactly what he is becoming, that is, having anticipated everything to the letter. No other creature cares so much for appearances. We want visions to purify the eye. What is ugly, corrupts. What is simple, gingerly singular in its intention, that is beauty.

In some ways, bigfoot is beautiful. In other ways he is the purest vision of ugliness. Insupportably hideous. He is disorganized to the extreme. He is constantly tripping over himself making new plans and spinning his wheels considering other possibilities. He is indecisive finally. His desire to learn is insatiable. He soaks into the ground like water. He is torn on a breeze like smoke. He is ragged and dirty always.

He can't help it I suppose. He was born into a world of simple interlocking systems, driven more by biology than morality. He didn't even have to consider survival so much, sitting at the top of the food chain in the deep forests. He was like the great whales of the ocean, who only need fear man.

He had hidden so long from man, one might say he'd been hiding from manhood. A flawed innocence. Cocksure certainty. And yet the call of civilization, the first glimmers of a broader organization, the first taste of processed food, combine to irresistible temptation. A real sense of what Adam endured when Eve brought the apple into view. Serpent or no, who could refuse?

This is only to say he was clever enough to get himself hanged. Clever enough to fall prey to everyone. Just smart enough to fail miserably. But dumb enough not to realize it, stupid enough to smile the whole way, ignorant, lacking the common sense to save himself.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 13

by
bigfoot
on Thursday

Future Perfect

The feast of sensation. The many curves and evidences. Everywhere is evidence of some action no more empowered, or less, than any other. All things dissolve into a stasis of motion. Shuffling, impermanent, heaped onto all the rest to form this world.

The great genesis of now tossed on the pile of all time. No important past. No more to the future than what the moment demands. Curves and lines and movement causing nothing, affecting nothing and yet birthing everything. Abstractions meet and make each other's acquaintance.

All magic is possible, if reins of potential can be grasped and held long enough to break bread with ambivalence. A child granted tantrums rages with all the heart to become.

There are edges everywhere, between the grains of sand muscled by wind and water, between the living soon to die and the dead forgetting life. There are the waves hardening dunes, the vast cup of sand holding back with the most forgivable obstructions. Everything is easy. Everything is violated by everything else. Everything forgives and rises again.

Orange men travel up the beach towards me. Men again. What of this? I feel my solitariness. I am alone. They carry their boomsticks and I have none. I should be a bird on the wind. I should bury myself in the dune’s thigh. I should drown in the water to hide my shame.

They walk the beach. They keep walking, growing larger. Their heavy boots won’t stop.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 14

by
severnspoon
on Friday

Anthropology, Part 5

Bigfoots tend to just let things happen. They have a great propensity for insight, but poor memories. They must rely on certain triggers to remember things. They have a kind of magic related to certain objects. They can 'read' them in the sense of how we would read a book. They study all the lines and contours and ferret from them the details of a story the object holds.

This period of reflection constitutes a sort of daily ritual. Time in the corner with the rocks and the sticks, sometimes imagining the millennia pilfering the air from a crystal, sometimes contemplating a bit of grass from between the teeth.

It is a useful evolutionary trait, probably born of many easy days idle in hidden forest vales. They are great observers and pick up more from us than we should likely be comfortable with. But not just us, from the birds, from the trees. We lack the words for such knowledge and it doesn't translate well to civilization.

We have agreements. The forest does not agree to anything. Things make do with their situation. If there are thieves, then things become less precious. If there are murders, well then death was inevitable.

But bigfoot is a little different than the forest. He is a sort of king, but not a regulator. He walks the deer trails, unchallenged, unopposed. The whole forest bows to him. He can beat the great trees till they moan, but not for mercy. He can play with the squirrels, but not for joy. All these formulations add up to something all the same.

I would say he is the forest's hero if I could narrow its definition to just those mysteries of will that govern expedience. He is a great problem solver as long as the ground is level.

Our hierarchies and inconsistencies are difficult for him to grasp. He often talks of this. He says it is like we are each our own species, without constancy. Fluid. We are the great lake lapping the shoreline of ourselves, devouring our own potentials. He compares us to termites. And yet as well to porcupines. And yet again, blue jays. And at last he throws up his hands. The forest lacks such creatures as we are.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 15

by
severnspoon
on Monday

The letters are keys that lock together into greater keys that form tumblers inside even greater mechanisms that fall into the form of the lock I am trying to open.

The writer fumble with his monocle and his tiny tools, to calibrate the mechanisms of his mind. Thus do I sit at my desk and compile this story that is half about me and half about some other halfling and on down the spiral of Zeno's paradox. To what end?

I bailed bigfoot out of jail this morning. He's been venturing into the city. There is so much to learn. He shoved money at a vendor at the farmer's market and grabbed a great ripe watermelon and ran off, pushing and shoving as he went.

Normally he passes well if he keeps his ears shaved. That's the giveaway. If you ever need to know if you're dealing with a bigfoot, look for the hairy ears.

I talked with him for a while tonight, befuddled as I was by words. We stayed up most of the night talking. He had many questions. Purchasing that melon, that thing, that mythical thing, mere legend among his kind. When the police arrested him, they had the courtesy to wait for him to finish.

He questioned all the rest: the humiliation of the transaction, shame mingled with greed, the tight knots of people so tolerant of each other. He was afraid someone might try to steal it.

The sugar rush after his feast convinced the police that he was drunk. In fact, he was likely making the most inhuman sounds as he gorged himself. It must have been comic.

So he spent the night in the drunk tank, sloshed on rinds. It was all perfectly innocent.

They let him out in the morning, into my custody, though they were perplexed by his lack of identification. I made a mental note to get him an ID card of some kind.

I'll teach him to sign his name with some consistency. He is eager to master this trick of mine: making the key to fit the lock.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 16

by
bigfoot
on Wednesday

The strange bud, Part 1

There was an old man who lived in a shelter deep in the woods. He was all alone. He hunted with his boomstick and cut the meat apart where it fell.

He had a rancid bag he'd carry the parts home in. Now, I recognize it was a child's backpack perhaps he'd found somewhere, the way I found these faded jeans to hide my hairy scrotum.

The bag was rank and stained with many trips. He'd wash it down in the river and great gobs of gore bled into the water. I would wait for him to do this when I was a child. Those tendrils of red spread into the ripples and I would try to catch them in my hands. I would drink the sweet juice until my belly was bloated.

I watched the strange old man, having traced his gift to its source. Often I'd creep onto his porch to discover the mystery. I would watch him while he sat making small lip movements like a chattering squirrel, staring at the thin leaves of some strange bud.

It lay flat on the table and sometimes he moved the leaves, always in one direction, as if he were a tiny puff of wind coming in fits and starts.

When he was not cooking, he was at this. When he was not just sleeping in a chair, he would do this. I could not understand the reason.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 17

by
bigfoot
on Friday

The strange bud, Part 2

A trailer I guess you'd call it. A place to keep clear of the world. A safe place, easy to defend. Many places to hide, tucked inside a box. A silence in the air. Peace and quiet, like my forest glade.

When I first stepped in that old man's shelter, it was because he had stopped moving. I'd gone to see him every so often when I found myself in his area.

The other way to stay safe is to keep moving. No one can find any more than a glimpse of you. We bigfoots range on with our parents a while and then start to make our own paths through the woods, exploring what interests us, coming upon strangers. Eventually we have created our own circuit, overlapping the others periodically to exchange courtesies.

Men sit in shelters all the time staring at things, not moving, as if they had no need of bodies, signing to each other and making little mouth movements.

The old man had been sitting for too long. Raccoons had stolen his meat bag. I hadn't seen him make his tiny wind in a long time.

My people eat their dead so that the trail holds nothing. Nothing is ever done moving. We gnaw their bones and drink the marrow. We carry them with us until nothing is left. We keep moving with our dead inside us.

The old man had been dead a long time and the ants had found him. The flies had found him. The rats had found him. The raccoons had knocked loose a board and ransacked the place.

I stood inside and stared at the strange bud on the table. I tore loose its leaves one by one, studied the tiny signs there and ate them.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 18

by
bigfoot
on Sunday

No sympathy

The problem with things is you have to put them somewhere. But I need them now more than ever as I try to recall all the pieces that brought me here to this spot right now, doing this, aware of doing. I have to have this bit of bark to remember my mother.

She pushed me away from her breast and broke a great piece of bark from a tree for me to suckle. I wanted to be close to her. I was easy prey: a weakling, a runt, half-hairless. I was a foundling left by a long bird. I never fit in with my family and I ran away from them as quick as I could. It was how things are done with my people.

I could not bear the taste of bitter bark, though it soothed my fresh-hatched teeth. Whenever I pass those trees, I take a piece of bark to remind me of my mother. I grind it like a cruel candy until my jaw is numb.

Sometimes I weep and can not stop weeping until pained sounds come from me. That is how I met a wildcat once:

The wildcat is always ready to pounce on a wounded thing. His claws were in my shoulders and his teeth were buried in my neck. We bigfoots have big hairy shoulders and strong hairy necks. I shook him free at once.

We stared at each other, both realizing our mistakes. It's all too easy to forget your defenses, all too easy to recall them. He crept away so slowly that I started crying again. I motioned for him to pounce on me: "Tear my chest apart, eat my guts till you're full."

He moved away, slow and sure, into the bushes. Then something unlatched in him and he turned and ran away.

There is no sympathy in the forest.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 19

by
bigfoot
on Tuesday

The Cave, Part 1
We shit on the world. We piss and flake our scabs on the world. Sometimes we cry tears into the ground. Sometimes we spill our blood on the ground. Sometimes our hair falls out and flies on the breeze till birds find it for their nests.

Sometimes someone might lose a finger, crushed in some way, lose an arm perhaps, having gnawed it loose from the shoulder. It is best to eat them yourself should it happen. Preserve the last of your strength. Be whole is the key. Be whole. If something comes off you, put it back on if you can, however you can.

I had an uncle who had fallen down into a cave. There was no way for him to climb out again. He paced the darkness at its depths. He crawled on his hands, banging his head on the rocks.

There were bones everywhere and everywhere were the signs of gnawing. He stood in the dim morning light and watched a beam crawl down the cavern wall, singling out details on the rocks.

Something had been made with colors on the wall, made of blood and feces, made of ground metals soaked in urine. Something gnawed all the bones and scratched on the walls.

My uncle was not afraid. He was not particularly injured, a few scrapes and bruises. But he was tired of the sound of his own breathing. He was sick of the stench of himself fighting against the stench of the place. He was sick of the darkness and the dripping. He was concerned that he was not frightened. He was becoming increasing concerned with what he might do next.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 20

by
severnspoon
on Thursday

The Girl with the Goose Egg, Part 1

He doesn't come to see me as often as he used to. I've begun to turn my attention to other things. It's been over a week since his last circuit brought him round to me.

He pulled out his bag of bits and told me a story:

It was a good story, though the differences in viewpoint were often hard to follow. He showed me some old chewing gum from the mouth of some woman who had engaged him on the street, asking directions.

They drank coffee at a diner. He stared at her breasts. He couldn't help it, they were quite nice. He wanted her to know how beautiful he thought they were.

They sipped their coffee and ate bacon and eggs and she told him a story about herself:

She had been walking a long time. She had discovered that her boyfriend had been stealing money from her purse, as if the privileges of the bedroom translated so easily. She slapped his face and pounded his arm until he pulled the car over.

She smoked cigarettes while she talked and even while she ate. The smoke rolled in and out like a cloud building to a thunderhead, then she'd force it out into the air between them and it would rush over him until he closed his eyes.

Her boyfriend had pushed her head against the window until she stopped wriggling, then he let her go.

She got out.

She started walking.

He drove away.

Bigfoot put the chewing gum in his mouth and chewed it till it grew soft again. Until all its travails were loosened once more. He would chew fiercely and then slow again and seem to forget himself. Then he would speak.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 21

by
bigfoot
on Saturday

The Cave, Part 2

My uncle thought of his own portion in all this. All the bones were gnawed. He thought of his own shit drying in the corner, how easily the flies cruised in and out of the hole in the ceiling, how easily the rain fell down and pooled in the bitter dust.

After he'd exhausted all his pacing, he crouched against the wall. Bigfoots can walk in their sleep. We are always moving while we can. Very rarely (well, rarely enough), do we stop for very long. We can walk through many suns without stopping.

My own route stretches from the big waters to the tall mountains and back again. I mark my familiar trees as I go, taking scraps and snapping loose dead branches. As I sleep, I replay the very steps I am walking. I only wake up if thirst strikes or something has changed and must be observed.

My uncle had been asleep when he fell into the cavern. He awoke in midair, in time to fall less sharply. He walked for many days. He paced inside the cave learning a new route, falling asleep going nowhere.

He had stopped walking after awhile. He just crouched and stared at nothing in particular. He was like this when a boar squealed and came crashing down through the hole in the ceiling.

It was a big boar and burst its guts when it hit the rocks. It split open like a melon, he said, but still dragged itself around, trailing entrails and screaming to tear the air.

The noise was so contentious that it painted a map of the contours of the cavern into my uncle's mind. It echoed through the forest above. It scattered most, but drew the attention of others.

My father's route was very near my uncle's and on that day he happened to be quite near. He came closer to investigate.

My uncle was rescued. They split what remained of the boar. They left nothing behind but piss and shit, a few scabs and the bits of inedible gristle. Some hair perhaps.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 22

by
severnspoon
on Monday

The Girl with the Goose Egg, Part 2

Bigfoot talked on about the girl with the goose egg on the side of her head. Sometimes she grimaced and changed the subject, flitting like a butterfly from theme to theme, pushing him away, pulling him close, calling him a man, saying he was just like all the rest. Things he'd secretly longed to hear.

She was trying to keep from falling asleep. She was waiting for something to happen. She wanted him to talk and then she wanted him to listen. He couldn't help himself, he stared at her breasts. She gripped her head. She wanted the cops. She wanted an ambulance. Her phone wouldn't work. She threw it down on the table and pieces scattered onto the seat beside him.

He was no help to her at all. He sat and stared at her breasts. She liked him and she didn't like him at the same time. He was paralyzed by her. She talked. He listened.

She kept talking:

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The Light on the Hill, Part 23

by
bigfoot
on Wednesday

The strange bud, Part 3

The old man's trailer is still on my route, though I wander more often into the cities. I pick up work loading things. I once worked for the Salvation Army.

I waited for people to drop off things and I took them inside. I was very good at this. I grew familiar with the many things people have: everything a little ugly, a little scratched, a little broken, impure in one too many ways but not yet useless. I liked moving these things around, holding them upside down and sideways, trying to ferret their purpose.

Here were many things that could be brought to life with the juice in the wall holes: lamps, toasters, curling irons, sewing machines. I had no idea what most of it was for. I learned the names so I could talk about them: typewriters and printers and console televisions, things that could hold lightning inside.

I've seen lightning strike many things as it comes out of the belly of a storm. There is a crack that comes with the light and belts its little belching stab, enough to hear where it hit. If you are close, you can hear the first pop before the roar.

It is the first cry of alarm that awakens you. The blue jay calls and all the forest stops and listens. Where is it? What information does it hold? Everything in the forest knows there is nothing to be done about lightning. You can't run from it. You can't hide from it. It strikes where it will and something is turned to liquid, something becomes a gas, trees crystalize into smoldering towers.

If you are struck by lightning, it is the spark of everything zapping itself alive, the gift of pure life. A moment of chance chooses to rearrange one spot only, just to twist things another way from where they were headed. You never can tell what will result. Strange butterflies might gather, ones that have never been before.

If a bigfoot is caught in the lightning and lives, he will live another 500 years. He might learn a strange new tongue and speak of the future.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the electric man not shocked me.

Behind the lightning spark is a giant train of sound. An engine of clouds whips the air. Everything has changed already: the colors are wrong, the air is wrong, the trees seem stunned. But still that great bowl of sound races down its dark path and punches the earth as hard as it can, to shake things loose from their shells. A broad BLAM slaps.

Broad torrents of rain cool and sizzle, boil and season. Something is born that may not live another instant. Something dies while its brothers watch. Something sometimes scrambles away.

Man has run the lightning down a wire. He uses it to curl his hair, to cool his food, to listen to voices sing, to see a smile.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 24

by
bigfoot
on Thursday


Glowing things, warm things with hard flesh and intricate guts. Radios, CD players, 8 tracks, platters made of songs.

Books. Always books. But mostly clothing: shirts, pants, tiny shoes. I learned what all these things are called, what they are for as near as I can tell. We washed everything, repaired what we could, threw the rest in great bins which huge machines came and hauled away.

I got to smash worthless things. I got to shatter glass bulbs in the cavernous maw of a dumpster. I got to stomp and mangle old chairs and desks.

I got too carried away with this once and they made me go away with many small mouth movements. I was sad to leave that place.

I went to the old man's trailer. I knew what everything was. I took everything out of the trailer and scrubbed it. I used cleansers and clean water. I scrubbed everything until its color returned.

I buried the old man like a man does. I planted him in the earth the way a tree is. Perhaps the old man is a seed the lightning will awaken one day. Good dirt otherwise. They are his chances, not mine.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 25

by
severnspoon
on Sunday

The girl with the goose egg, Part 3

Once she started, she would not stop talking. She wept into her coffee. She thought of her mother, how they'd parted ways over harsh words. She recalled a pet frog she'd kept in a shoe box all those many years ago:

She couldn't wait for school to end so she could be with her pet, her best friend. She would carry it so its long legs dangled like a funny man's. She made it wear funny hats of felt. She washed him once in the dish water and her mother got so mad that she took the frog outside and did something with it.

Silence followed. She could not recall a tantrum, just the inkling of madness that came first, the tears that could not stop until she was a different thing altogether, like someone who had been struck by lightning. The stab that was at first the loss of her dear friend, the only one she ever trusted, then that her mother had done this, her mother who did not love her, her mother who hadn't time for kid's things.

She wanted her phone so she could call someone. She tossed it down again. The waitress asked if she was okay while glancing skeptically at bigfoot. The girl asked for the bathroom. She never came back.

She left behind her chewing gum, stuck to the back of her broken cellphone. Some nights he chewed the gum and spoke into the mouthpiece all the things he was doing just then.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 26

by
bigfoot
on Tuesday

The strange bud, Part 4

I felt much renewed, sitting in the mended chair, having evacuated all other residents. I sat and stared the way that humans do. I tried to decipher why such a thing is preferable to walking.

There were power lines nearby. I stood beneath the wires and heard their hum. I knew they were full of lightning. I found a great coil of wire in a railroad shack.

I gave myself a mighty jolt and would have fallen from the pole had my pant leg not hooked on a bolt. My spine popped down the line like a shot. I dangled for a long while, upside down, exploring these new sensations.

After I recovered myself and spliced my wires more delicately, I climbed back down.

I ran the coil through the woods to the old man's trailer. The wall holes had no lightning there, but I'd seen where the wires connect.

I wish I had my job still so I might gather many useful boxes around me and watch them work. Take them apart and study all their diodes and capacitors.

I stared at the wall holes and felt the strange flow there, ready to run to some purpose, lapping like a shoreline, unable to race beyond.

I had an old set of keys I'd found while cleaning the trailer. I put them in the wall hole and sat shaking, holding it, feeling all the world race through me, all the juice of creation finding it's way into me again.

The holes stopped working and smoke came from inside the wall. The smell of singed hair was all over me.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 27

by
bigfoot
on Thursday

The strange bud, Part 5

I've been practicing my small lip movements. Most people think I am hard of hearing, a mute. In fact, my hearing is quite keen. Whenever I hear a piece of music, I go into hysterics. But it helps me immensely when people speak slowly and clearly.

I visit the electric man whenever I need to express myself. He is teaching me to write. He thinks I will be able to say important things if I can only learn to juggle these funny boxes that mean sounds. He thinks the little leaves are the best place to speak. He things moving your hand over the strange bud is better than small lip movements.

I am not sure yet. I would like to have more friends than just him. I would like to be able to do and understand more in the cities. I would like to know what there is to see in farther places. I'd like to fly through the air in a great bird box. I would like to drive down the road in a motor box. I am very curious about the desert and what is beyond the big water.

The electric man is not interested in these things. He is like everyone else and wants to sit comfortably and stare at a little box and make small hand dances that are a sort of talking. He says he likes most of all to make the strange bud blossom.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 28

by
bigfoot
on Saturday

The strange bud, Part 6

There are other things in the wires, other juices. One of them is like a flock of birds that each take a kernel of sound and race down through the wire in a jumble to rest again somewhere else, just as they were before. No one can explain it to me. The little birds sing in little boxes and I am told they are born of the air, that sometimes the wires are not needed.

One of the wires carries the vision from the eyes and scatters it to everyone at the same time. There are many fascinating things beneath the ground that carry water, that carry the noxious gases into metal tanks like great boils full of poison.

Sometimes, the sky whirls around so fast it becomes alive. Sky creatures are very strong but rage themselves out quickly. Sky tantrums that come with storms sometimes, crackling, electric, spinning down from the clouds.

Sometimes the metal boils explode and great flames of death race out like vicious ancestors tired of neglect. Sometimes the earth itself shakes inside and everything gets shuffled on its back.

Sometimes a house burns down to the ground, just gives up all its ghosts at once in great conflagrations. A gaping maw breathes from the rooftop. Hoses are connected to pipes. Water is shot in great arcs into the coals while the pipes underground creak and complain. Other wires are cut loose. The house burns alone like a great mouth eating itself.

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The Light on the Hill, Part 29

by
severnspoon
on Monday