Seductive Spices

Posted on August 4, 2017 by John Swinburn

“What the hell are we going to do with three pounds of goat shoulder?” Geneva’s tone revealed her doubts about the gift from Jacob’s friend, Katrina.

Jacob flashed a conciliatory grin at her. “You needn’t worry about it, darling. I’ll figure something out. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.”

Geneva scowled at the package Jacob had placed on the counter, then at Jacob. “Fine. But if I don’t like it, I’ll expect you to buy me dinner out. I’m not going to pretend to like it just because she’s your friend. Katrina is a little weird, if you ask me. Anybody who raises goats just to kill them and eat their corpses is a little ‘off.’ And it’s even more bizarre when they give pieces of the dead animal to their friends.”

Jacob smiled as he said, “You’d think you were a vegetarian from the way you talk. I’ve seen you greedily rip the meat off baby back ribs like you’d been trained by a hyena.”

His smile was not returned. Geneva stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Jacob in peace to figure out what to do with the unexpected gift.

“Well,” he said to himself, aloud, “I know she likes Vietnamese goat curry. But we’ve got no lemongrass and there’s not enough coriander seeds. Hmm.”

Jacob pawed through the spice cabinet, then rummaged through the pantry and the dry vegetable drawers, pulling items out of each. Then, he foraged the refrigerator. When he’d finished, the counter was littered with ingredients: cooking oil, the salt container, a large can of curry powder, a jar of allspice, a tin of thyme, two onions, two habanero peppers, a piece of ginger root, a can of coconut milk, a can of crushed tomatoes, and five Yukon Gold potatoes.

After all the ingredients he wanted were on the counter, Jacob turned his attention back to the goat. He cut it into two-inch chunks, spread it out on the cutting board, and sprinkled it liberally with salt. All righty, then, that’s ready to go. On to the next step of the battle.

He chopped the onions, cubed the potatoes, peeled and minced a two-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and chopped the head of garlic, and diced the habanero peppers. Then, Jacob mixed the spices in a white soup bowl: eight tablespoons of curry powder and one tablespoon of allspice seed. He pulled a large pot from the rack that hung over the kitchen island, put it on the stove, and turned the burner to medium high. He measured a quarter cup of corn oil into a cup and poured it into the pot.

While the oil was heating, Jacob patted the pieces of goat dry with a paper towel and then he measured two tablespoons of the spice mixture into the hot oil. Almost immediately, the sweet fragrance of curry powder and ginger and hot oil permeated the kitchen.  During the next thirty minutes, he carefully browned the pieces of goat in the oil. When a few pieces were brown, he set them aside in a glass bowl and started another set. By the time they had all browned, the kitchen was awash in the odors of allspice and seared goat, along with the pungent aroma created when curry powder meets hot oil.

Geneva peeked her head into the kitchen from time to time during this process, sniffing the air but saying nothing.

When all the goat meat had browned, Jacob turned his attention to the onions and habanero peppers, browning the onions in the same pan in which he’d browned the goat meat. The aroma of cooking onions, coupled with the odor of curry and allspice, filled Jacob’s nostrils. Oh my god, this is wonderful.  I hope she likes it. I think she will.

The addition of the minced ginger and garlic to the pot resulted in another burst of aromas, the melding of which seemed to act as a magnet for Geneva. “What are you doing in here? It smells like you’re emptying our spice cabinet into that pot.”

Jacob turned toward the door when he hear the sound of her voice. “Leave me be, woman. I’m making something you won’t like so I can eat it all by myself. You’ll get your dinner at McDonald’s just as soon as I’m done.”

“The hell I will! You’ll take me to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse if I can’t tolerate that swill.”

“You won’t have to tolerate this swill for awhile. It won’t be ready for another two or three hours.”

Geneva spun around in the doorway and, in her trademark stalk, left the room.

Jacob poured the meat and bones back into the pot, along with the coconut milk, tomatoes, four cups of water, the remainder of the curry powder mixture, and a tablespoon of thyme. He stirred the mixture, inhaling deeply of the fragrance from the pot.

“Okay, I’m done for awhile.  The last thing I’ve got to do is add the potatoes after the meat’s done. Then it will take about half an hour or so for the potatoes to cook.”

He got no response. He stepped out of the kitchen and into the front room. On the coffee table, Geneva had left a note. “I’m going shopping with Maggie. I’ll be back in about four hours.”

***

By the time Geneva returned home with Maggie, the neighbor who unbeknownst to Geneva was infatuated with her husband, the meal was ready to eat.

“Care to join us for some Jamaican goat curry, Maggie? I’d love to know what you think of my cooking skills.” Jacob, fully aware of Maggie’s infatuation, did all he could to encourage it.

“Thanks, Jacob. I’d love to,” Maggie answered, a look of regret immediately registering on her face as if to apologize for accepting the invitation without Geneva’s concurrence.

“Yes, please do join us,” Geneva said. “You might have to come back and help Jacob finish this stuff off, too. He always makes stuff too hot for me. I know you and Jacob both have an affinity for making things hot.”

Jacob snickered under his breath at his wife’s response. She has no idea how true that double non-entendre is!

The three of them, sitting at the dining table, tasted the finished dish.

Maggie’s eyes grew wide. “Wow, this is really great! I love it! My compliments to the chef.”

“Actually, the stuff is supposed to get better over a day or two so that the flavors have time to layer and blend just right. The recipe made enough for eight servings, so you might want to come back day after tomorrow to have it again, just to compare.” Jacob glanced at his wife.

Geneva nodded. “Just as I thought, it’s too spicy for me. I’ll eat this serving, but I think you owe me a trip to Ruth’s Chris when I get back from visiting my sister in Cambridge, Jacob. Maggie, you should plan on coming back to finish this off with Jacob.

Jacob noticed Maggie’s face flush. My hope has been fulfilled. She likes it.

 

 

 

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Distrustful Sky

Posted on August 3, 2017 by John Swinburn

The sky remained almost dark, distrustful that my appearance on the deck was a good sign. As I hung hummingbird feeders in their assigned places, replenished with fresh nectar, the sky brightened a bit, satisfied that my presence was not a bad sign. Hummingbirds buzzed nearby, zipping by my ear as if to send a message.  I took their strafing to mean they were pleased to see me, though I suspect they may have been cursing me the way birds sometimes do when their food sources have been withheld for hours.

I have a moderately full day planned, starting with giving a friend a ride to an appointment and back, followed by an afternoon program by an author, and then a late afternoon presentation and screening of a film about the life of D.T. Suzuki, the man credited with introducing an understanding of Zen Buddhism to the western world. During the interstitial moments, I’ll try to fit in writing more on my still-young novel and eating breakfast and lunch and an early dinner. These activities, coupled with my slothful nature, will preclude me from doing any much-needed work on the “yard” today. I need to blow leaves, buy and spread bark mulch, buy some lumber for an outdoor project, try to lessen the displeasing appearance of a large, ancient dent on my old beater pickup, and perform literally dozens of other tasks in need of attention.

According to the weather forecast, today would be a good day to do outdoor work, save for the temperatures, which are expected to reach the mid eighties. The forecast for the next several days calls for rain. So, I might be saved from my intentions again by those distrustful skies.

 

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Fresh Joys and Unending Tears

Posted on August 1, 2017 by John Swinburn

I love sitting outside on the screen porch at the intersection of dusk and darkness. I sit listening to the frogs and toads and insects and who-knows-what make a cacophonous racket in the trees and hillside just beyond the deck. If I needed to concentrate, the noise would be deafening, too loud to allow me to focus. But I recognize that, when I sit there, I have no power to control the noise, so my options are to go inside to the television or radio or music or to sit outside in self-silence, experiencing the exceptional volume of nature. Nature has a reputation for quietude. The reputation is undeserved; she is a howling beast, replete with screeches and screams and rumbles and roars that earn their Hollywood reputations for instilling fear and admiration.

When I sit outside, I become part of the cacophony. I’m a piece of the noise. And that’s perfectly okay; I like serving as a silent instrument in an orchestra.

In an ideal world—a world that mirrors my dreams and expectations—I’d sit there and listen to the music of the earth while sipping a glass of cold sauvignon blanc or cabernet sauvignon or Jim Beam whisky. Last night, though, the sauvignon blanc fairy failed to deliver and other wines did not find their way into my house, in spite of the directions I left for them. So, instead, I sipped cold gin, enhanced with a touch of fresh lime juice. There’s nothing wrong or immoral or even offensive about drinking gin. I’m in favor of it.

Aside from the absence of complete darkness—or, if you prefer, the presence of  incomplete light—the early morning differs from night in another way. The discordant orchestral cacophony gives way over night to a gentler, much more quiet, harmonic hum, interrupted on occasion by a bird  call or a dog’s bark or cattle lowing from the pastures below.  Morning beverages differ, too, from those of the evening. I can’t remember the first or the last time I had gin or bourbon or wine of any kind early in the morning, for it has never happened. My beverage of choice in the morning is, usually, strong French roast coffee. When I’m feeling especially energetic (and if I also happen to have the right fresh espresso-grind coffee in the house), I’ll have an espresso or three. But that’s rare. Normally, it’s just coffee.

I was waxing philosophical about sitting outdoors in the evening, listening to the sounds of nature. Somehow, that morphed into an exposition of my evening and morning drinking preferences and habits. Recently, I spoke to someone about how my writing tends to drift from rabbit hole to rabbit hole. That’s not the case (usually) when I’m writing fiction for which I’ve predetermined the story’s general direction or know specifically where it will wander. But when I produce my stream-of-consciousness, journaling-style word dumps, I tend to wander. I think my thoughts ricochet off one another, causing new ones to form and releasing others held captive by others. There’s value to be gained by writing such deviance; somewhere among the millions of pieces of crushed and worthless stone may be found a gem. The effort to unearth it from its rocky grave and then polish it so that it at least reflects light may be enormous. But, I hope, worth the expenditure of mental and physical energy.

The following quote is widely attributed to Franz Kafka, but they actually are the words of Anne Rice, from the preface to a collection of Kafka’s works:

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather,  follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Those words move me beyond my ability to explain why. Some words, experiences, or even images feel like messages from a kindred spirit, or God, which I think is the same thing. No, of course I don’t believe that literally. But figuratively, I’ll take that belief to my grave.

That thought reminds me of an experience I had this afternoon. Among an otherwise decadent day of sight-seeing in the Arkansas capitol and eating lunch at an expensive restaurant, we experienced something that moved me. We went to the Butler Center Galleries in downtown Little Rock, simply to see what was on exhibit; we went to be entertained, I suppose. And we were. And we were delighted by incredible art. And I was crushed by an exhibition called, “The American Dream Deferred: Japanese American Incarceration in WWII Arkansas.” The exhibition featured art of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in Arkansas during World War II, as well as objects from the Arkansas internment camps. My reaction to the exhibition was the same as my reaction to the Border Cantos exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, though not as intense; this was a smaller exhibit. My eyes could not help but fill with tears as I read about and thought about the people who—only because of their ancestry— were imprisoned. This situation is not new of course; it has gone on for centuries. But the idea of this sort of thing happening in the United States rips me apart inside.  Slavery. Japanese-American internment. Mexican and Hispanic mass deportation. Muslim demonization. Shit. Where do I live?

The reason sitting outside, listening to nature’s noise, is so appealing is that it deadens the noise I hear when I hear humans being humans.

One day, when I attempt to expose my writing to the world, I’ll have to have a thicker skin than I have tonight. My skin tonight is as thin as a whisper; a rumor of brutality draws blood.

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Lost Among Serpents and other Reptiles

Posted on July 31, 2017 by John Swinburn

A bizarre merger of odd dreams into a nightmare

A young woman from Australia, who worked for my company years ago, was visiting. We were in someone else’s house. I remember windows looking down on a street below. And I remember strange stairs leading up to an area of the house where I was staying; each step was split in two, so that each tread of each step was at two different levels.

Someone, I don’t know who, was missing and we could not reach them. The young woman and two or three guys (I knew who they were, but do not recall) wanted to go somewhere, but needed the other guy who they could not reach. I agreed to let them use my car to try to find where he might be. They were in a hurry and I needed to get something out of the trunk. I threw my winter coat in the trunk for a moment so I could look for whatever I was seeking, but forgot it.

They drove away and just as a heavy snow began failing. Interspersed within the snow were balls of hail. I heard peels of thunder and flashes of lightning. I decided to walk home; I thought I wasn’t far and I needed to get there so I could prepare to go pick up paintings at Garvin Woodland Gardens. I started off and got completely lost in an enormous high-rise complex. I knew the complex was part of a university connected to several large businesses. Anyone in this area must be rich, I remembered thinking; they were part of what some would call “the upper crust.” The business people around me had a demeanor that said they were rich, rich, rich and they were proud of it. I went through various office building doors that led me to more areas in which I knew I did not belong.

I walked outside one of the buildings into a large, grassy area. It suddenly occurred to me that I could use my phone to see where I was. Just as I pulled it out and opened the map app, a guy rushed past me, chasing after a snack slithering along the ground (there were a lot of snakes visible on this stretch of open ground, full of green grass). He started tormenting the snake he was chasing, using one of the sticks that snake hunters use to snag their prey. This snake was a rattle snake, I could  tell by the tiny couple of rattles at the end of its tail. Suddenly, the snake struck at him and got him. He started screaming “it got me,” and pried it off, using his stick, which he waved around with the snake writhing at the end. This commotion riled up an alligator that was in a shallow pond nearby; it came at me, fast. I tried to kick at it, but it got hold of the bottom of my shoe and started shaking it. Someone else came up to try to help me, but just as he tried to put something on top of the alligator, the alligator released its grip. I thought it was going to lunge at me, so I jumped down on it with my elbow on the top of its upper jaw and pushed with all my might down on it, locking its mouth shut. I was expressing fear, frustration, appreciation all at once. That’s when I woke up. My wife started shaking me at the same time; I guess I was making noise.

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Mi Escritura Estraña

Posted on July 30, 2017 by John Swinburn

When I took the hummingbird feeders out this morning, I was surprised at how cool it felt to walk outside. The indoor/outdoor thermometer read 67 degrees, a much more civilized morning temperature than recent morning lows of 76 or more.

The temperatures in the mountain village of Mexico, south of Guadalajara, where my brother lives, are only a few degrees cooler this morning than we have here. But the daytime highs there reach only the high seventies, occasionally topping 80. By the time we visit in a few months, the average daytime highs will have dropped to the mid-seventies and the nighttime lows to the low sixties or below. The hottest month there is May, when the highs reach the mid-eighties and the average lows stay in the low sixties. That’s a climate I could learn to love.

According to an online language instruction website, duolingo, I am thirteen percent fluent in Spanish. While I wish it were true, I think my level of fluency is considerably less. My ability to understand and communicate in Spanish, though, actually is far better than the speed with which I can do it. I can force myself to understand and make myself understood to a limited extent, but it’ a slow process. I imagine the speed of my Spanish communication is akin to the speed of swimming—with boat anchors tied to both arms and both legs—across a large lake filled with blackstrap molassess.

I am sure I have the intellectual capacity and lingual flexibility to learn to be conversant in Spanish, though I am less certain today than I was ten or twenty years ago. But what I possess in capability I’m afraid I lack in discipline. I’m undisciplined in so very many ways. And on top of that, I’m more than occasionally contumacious. Now there’s an adjective that, unfortunately, describes me. It’s defined as “stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.” Surprisingly, to me, Google Translate offers a Spanish translation: contumaz.  Perhaps before I engage in a serious attempt to learn Spanish, I should become fluent in English. Most English-Spanish translation resources refer to terms like subjective, indicative, imperative, perfect, perfect continuous, preterite, etc., etc. Even though  my mother was an English teacher who worshiped at the altar of grammar and insisted on diagramming sentences, I resisted learning the terms. I remember saying to someone (not her), “there is no reason to call a word a gerund; just call it an ‘ing’ word.” I think, now, a more thorough understanding of the structure of the English language and the terms used to describe verb conjugation might have served me well.

But I’m not writing about a lifetime devoid of English verb conjugation, am I? Probably not. Yet I cannot say with certainty what I am writing about. The weather? A trip to Mexico? Learning languages? It could be any or all of the above. It’s just my strange writing, mi escritura extraña.

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Lion

Posted on July 28, 2017 by John Swinburn

I do not follow film. I do not wait with anticipation for announcements of Oscar nominations, nor do I track predictions about which new films will be the latest and greatest contributions to filmdom. I guess that’s the reason I’d not heard of Lion until quite recently. It was the film screened tonight at the monthly Film Night at the Unitarian Universalist Village Church. I was more than impressed; I was stunned by the film. The writing, the cinematography, the story, the whole damn thing! What an astonishing story! What a heart-breaking story that both rips one’s soul to shreds, and then offers an opportunity to believe in the uplifting power of perseverance coupled with good luck!

I am so glad I watched the film. In a sense, it was deeply depressing and heart-breaking, but it injected bits of hope into that ugliness. I left feeling embarrassed for my recent ennui and hopeful, knowing that only by trying will we learn whether our efforts will be successful.

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The Last Cold Front

Posted on July 28, 2017 by John Swinburn

“Man, the weather is changing a hell of a lot faster than the models predicted. Two years ago, I was among those saying we wouldn’t see a sea level increase by three feet until 2100.” Angus McCutcheon’s leathery face was the picture of worry. His mop of red hair, streaked with ample amounts of grey, clung to his sweaty scalp. He glanced at the mirror on the wall and saw a much older man than he thought he’d see.  His blue eyes, almost buried behind massive brown wrinkles of skin, turned and squinted at the computer screen.

Shelly Thumb nodded. “It’s gettin’ damn near scary, Angus. Crops are the shits.  And I don’t know where we’re gonna get our water if the reservoirs keep on like they’re doin’ of late. Priest Lake has gone totally dry. Did you know that?”

Just as Angus started to acknowledge Shelly’s bleak assessment, an alert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration popped on his computer screen. A cold front over central Alberta, Canada, has begun to move south. Expect it to bring cooler temperatures to eastern Washington state and western Montana over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Temperatures behind the front could drop to the middle seventies briefly. Nighttime lows will return to the mid-eighties after the front’s passage. Daytime highs could return to near one hundred by Tuesday.

Angus sighed as he read the alert. “I’d hate to own land on the coast and watch it disappear beneath the waves. But it’s really not much better here, is it? I mean, we’re seeing the collapse of farming right before our eyes. What are you and Jack gonna do if we don’t get rain?”

“We’re gonna do what everybody else is gonna do. We’re gonna die. People around here say  “at least folks on the coast have water,” like it’s some kind of salvation. But for cripe’s sake, it’s salt water. We’re all up shit creek. Do the NOAA predictions give you any hope, Angus?”

“I’m afraid not. But I’m excited that this alert talks about a ‘cold front.’ I haven’t seen them use those words in weeks. Maybe that’s a sign.”

The following Tuesday, NOAA issued another alert. In the absence of atmospheric evidence suggesting the development of future cold fronts, NOAA has suspended announcements about cold fronts moving south from Canada. Henceforth, NOAA announcements will focus on the effects of waves of warmer air moving northward.

 

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing | 4 Comments

Envision

Posted on July 27, 2017 by John Swinburn

Constraints exist only in one’s imagination.
Possibilities have limits only in the mind.
If a person can conceive of time travel,
he can travel forward in time, carrying
a notebook in which to record his reality.
Circumstances impose boundaries only when
we let them bind doubts to our dreams.
Stories I tell myself shape the future
in ways impossible to measure without
tools I create in my imaginations.
Even old men build bridges to infinity,
using ideas to form structures clad with words.
Accomplishments rest on visions fed by wishes.
Hope is the calculus of fantasy, scrubbed
clean of impossibility and polished with
inspiration and unbridled ingenuity.
Envision a future and it is yours.

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Venezuelans and Their Food

Posted on July 26, 2017 by John Swinburn

Earlier today, an article on the National Public Radio website about a food common in Venezuela, called arepas, launched my exploration of the dish. Several recipes later, my interest grew beyond food as I became increasingly intrigued about the current state of affairs in the deeply divided country. I tried to find reliable, unbiased information about the recent plebiscite and the Maduro government’s response to it. Regardless where I looked, I questioned the legitimacy or the veracity of the news. from BBC to NPR to a couple of English language “news” websites dedicated to Venezuelan politics, nothing was sufficiently comprehensive, nor sufficiently absent judgmental language, for me to feel I was learning what’s really going on in the country.

Much of what the major international news organizations write about the country seems to be fed to them by the governments of the countries within which they operate. BBC reports on what the British government says. NPR (one of the news outlets I’ve come to trust almost completely) reports on what the U.S. government says. I have absolutely no confidence in a word that comes from the present U.S. administration; it is steeped in blatant lies. And when I read Venezuelan media, the claims that effectively say “we report only facts and do not allow bias to enter our reporting” are immediately crushed by blatantly biased reporting, both pro-Maduro and anti-Maduro. Despite my inability to find news I can trust (or my inability to trust news I can find), I think the days of Nicholás Maduro as President of Venezuela are numbered. Of course, I’ve thought the days of Donald Trump’s presidency were numbered in the low single digits since his inauguration and I was wrong about that.

The upshot of all this is that I wish I knew more about Venezuela and its immediate future. And I wish I had more confidence in the news media. I am not about to start calling every media outlet “fake news,” but I think many media outlets are allowing themselves to be manipulated into becoming just that. Part of the reason can be traced to people like me, people who choose to get their news “free” online, as opposed to paying the very reasonable (and very expensive) prices of newspapers. And, for that matter, television news. We ask advertisers to pay for news; we feel they should pay for our access to information.

This little side-show has gone in an altogether different direction that I envisioned when I started. I’d really like to find a source for the pre-cooked white corn flour necessary to make arepas. I suspect that won’t be hard. And I’d like to assemble a collection of recipes for several fillings I can use for arepas. I suspect that, too, won’t be hard. And I wish I could share some of the arepas I make with the hungry people of Venezuela. Because I think they are in far greater need of arepas than I.

Posted in Compassion, Food, Justice, Politics | Leave a comment

An Artificial Benchmark

Posted on July 26, 2017 by John Swinburn

This is post number 2400. And ninety-one more await as drafts, though most of them will eventually be erased without ever realizing the potential of being seen by human eyes other than my own. If each of my published posts embodied a day of my life, this blog would represent more than six and one-half years of my existence, more than ten percent of my time on earth thus far. That’s either a sad critique on the impact I’ve had on the universe or a commentary about my ability to talk to myself at length. In reality, I’ve been writing this blog for just shy of five years,  having written my first post here on August 10, 2012. In that first post, buried among the introductory garble, I said this:

This site was conceived as a place for me to record my confusion, thoughts, beliefs, frustrations, wishes, dreams, desires, and what little wisdom I have had the good fortune to acquire through the years. Reflecting back on my life, I have many regrets, almost all based on my failure to be the kind of person I know I want to and should be.

It has turned into a place where I do all the above, as well as labor over writing fiction that simulates my confusion, thoughts, beliefs, frustrations, wishes, dreams, desires, and a modicum of wisdom. The characters about whom I write, the ones whose inexcusable flaws exist in parallel with short-lived outbursts of decency, are modeled in one way or another after the person I know better than anyone: me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been unable to finish—satisfactorily—writing about any of them. Neither their worst flaws nor best attributes, after the flaws have been sanded and polished, have a finished model in life.  It’s quite possible that the characters in my writing would have scant appeal to most readers, given their flaws.

I continue the slow process of attempting to compile a collection of what I’ve written, both here on the blog and in other places, into a collection with some semblance of order and connectedness. I’m finding chaos in what I’ve written, with occasional pockets of smoother, less disturbing environments. I suppose all human lives are chaotic disturbances into which sufficient serenity is introduced to make them bearable. So, in that sense, my writing is like life. And therein rests the eternal question: what is the meaning of life (and, by extension, my writing)? None of my diatribes answer that question, not even the ones that assert, “there is no meaning to life, life just is.”

Why these matters are on my mind today, not on the anniversary of the blog but, instead, at the achievement of a meaningless number of posts, I do not know. I did not stop to ask before I wrote what I’ve written. And now it’s too late. I’d have to go back and start over, and that’s not on my agenda this morning. This morning, my agenda calls for delivering my wife’s car to the dealer for its 30,000 mile service, which will drain our bank account to the tune of well over $300. Perhaps I’ll write about greed in the automotive sales and service industry in a future post.

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Distant Broden

Posted on July 25, 2017 by John Swinburn

Lina waited for Broden to continue.

“Oh, he was just so totally in love with life. Why would a man buy a two million dollar car and then kill himself a week later? I mean, it just doesn’t make sense.”

“That puzzles me, as well,” Lina said. “But I was part of the forensics team that looked into the car. We found nothing mechanically wrong with the car.”

A vein rose on Broden’s forehad as she spoke. “I don’t doubt you found nothing wrong with the car. But how can that lead to a pronouncement that the cause of death was suicide?”

“I can’t answer that. I was not the one who made that determination. Tell me, does the pronouncement that your husband’s death was a suicide have any effect on your insurance settlement? I assume he had a life insurance policy.”

Broden’s eyes bore into Lina as she responded. “I can’t answer that. I haven’t even thought about life insurance. Fortunately for us—for me—money has not been an issue. If you’d like to check, though, feel free.  I imagine you already have. We both have policies issued by Länsförsäkringar. I don’t recall the amounts, but I doubt they were significant, at least not compared to our net worth.”

Lina had checked into insurance before the investigation had concluded. There was nothing to suggest murder for insurance money. But she had run out of ideas. She was, to use one of Eklund’s favorite sayings, “poking the bear.”

Weaving, again. Just weaving. I hope to open my blog one day to find a tapestry.

Okay, but now I have to explore that statement. What am I waiting for? What magical potion will string together for me all these disjointed snippets, vignettes that struggle to find relevance on their own? I’m not happy with myself tonight. I’m disappointed that I’ve not published anything, I’ve not even finished anything worth publishing, and I’ve allowed Donald Trump to keep breathing. Not that I have any control over that last item, though if I were a praying man I’d pray I did. I need to either find someone to guide my prolific, stream-of-consciousness writing or give it up and devote my attention to learning how to do body work on my newly-reacquired 1997 Ford Ranger XLT Extended Cab. I’m probably better suited to the truck. I can buy a new headliner for $260 plus shipping, install it, and feel like I’ve accomplished something. Or I can write snippets unrelated to anything else I’ve written, give myself a passing grade for literary accomplishment, and wish, unsuccessfully, I would accomplish something. The truck wins. It’s more expensive, but what’s money for except to spend?

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Ophira

Posted on July 25, 2017 by John Swinburn

“If you look long enough and hard enough, you can find things to dislike about almost anyone. But you’d be looking for the wrong things. Instead, you ought to be looking for those shreds of likability hidden among the overgrowth of noxious weeds.”

That’s what Ophira Strunk said to me before she boarded a small freighter in Baltimore Harbor, bound for Norway. Ophira had an unhealthy attraction to Norway. At least that’s what I thought at the time. In fact, her attraction was not to Norway but to Stefan Ruud, a married man who had just left his wife, Elise, and son, Kennet. I learned later that Stefan, an oceanographer by training and a writer-philosopher by avocation, did not really expect Ophira to come to him. But he wished she would. He wished so hard she would that he took the extraordinary risk of leaving his family in anticipation of Ophira’s arrival. I, of course, felt deeply wounded when Ophira told me later she had left me for a married man she’d never actually talked to before she disembarked from the freighter in Stavanger. Later, though, when I learned more about what drove the two of them away from their respective spouses and toward one another, I was touched that they took risks the rest of us would never dream of taking.

Ophira was not my wife. Not formally or officially. We’d lived together as if we were married since 1975, though, so perhaps the state would recognize us as having a common-law relationship. When she told me she wanted to travel, alone, to Norway on a freighter, I tried to dissuade her from such an odd undertaking. She would have none of it, though. She was determined that she would take the trip, as she told me, “to explore parts of me I did not even know where there until just recently.”

Weaving. That’s what I may be doing. I may be weaving strips of story, thread by thread, into a tapestry. Or whole cloth. Or a tangle so utterly chaotic that it will become suitable for nothing but stuffing pillows.

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Damn the Grills, and All They Stand For!

Posted on July 24, 2017 by John Swinburn

The intense loathing I feel for the man who sold me my cheap grill is intensifying. It is morphing into abject hatred, coupled with hatred steeped in molten rock and liquid steel so thin that it could be sprayed from a hypodermic needle. I do not know the man’s name. It’s probably better that way, lest I search Saline County property records for him, get his address, and cause him to vaporize in the white-hot heat of my rage.

You may wonder what caused such an outburst? Glad you asked. I just burned the sh** out of my fingers, courtesy of the grill. And the jerk chicken I was grilling was not even close to done. So I had to open the inadequate grill lid (difficult, as a bolt disappeared on the first try), retrieve the chicken from the inadequate grates, try (but fail) to protect my eyebrows and hair from intersecting with the heat of the sun (on the wrong bloody side of the grill), and move the chicken corpses to a cooker suitable for oven cookery.

Tonight, I’m in the mood to capture and force hummingbirds to listen to my complaints, kill chickens that exhibit even the least bit of scorn for my eating habits, skin grill-sellers, vaporize gas grills and their progeny, and set fire to the Milky Way for its willingness to host bad actors.

If my finger didn’t hurt the way it does (thanks to the goddamn grill and its expulsion of a bolt holding the lid on at the most inopportune time), I would go to bed early and sulk. Instead, I’ll drink whiskey and plan an insurrection. Grrrrrr!

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A Short Treatise on Reconstructive Transplantation

Posted on July 24, 2017 by John Swinburn

The first experiments with what was once called “teleportation” involved enormous machinery into which a person’s body was inserted. This occurred long after the whimsical “teleportation” of characters in Star Trek brought the idea into the popular consciousness. Unlike the Star Trek characterization, the real process was much more involved and, in the early days, extremely dangerous. Estimates of the number of unsuccessful teleportations have ranged as high as two hundred thousand. To this day, no one is quite clear on what happened to the physical bodies of those who disappeared, never to appear in their intended relocations.

The term “relocation” is not, and never was, accurate. The proper term, reincarnation, was avoided because of its religious overtones, but that’s precisely what it was. Yet someone, no one knows just who, started using the term “transplant” to describe the process. It caught on, despite summoning chilling visions of organ removal and replacement. Regardless of its history of lost souls and erroneous linguistic identification, the process we now call “reconstructive transplantation” is as common as marriage and automobiles were in times past.

Today, reconstructive transplantation has reached an almost one hundred percent success rate. It is rare, indeed, to learn of a person disappearing during the initiation of the process and failing to reappear at the conclusion. It happens, but in the old days, people died in automobile accidents or wedding violence with greater frequency; the risks are deemed to be within acceptable limits.

Reconstructive transplantation (RT), in its simplest form, involves replicating every aspect of a person, including every single physical, mental, emotional, and experiential attribute. That includes memories (which, as we know, are bio-electrical). The data that record these attributes are transferred, instantaneously, from the reconstructive transplantation initiation equipment (RTIE) to the reconstructive transplantation receptor equipment (RTRE). Simultaneously, the RTIE’s laser essentially erases the individual who has been replicated at the same movement the RTRE replicates (like the old-style 3-D printers, but far faster and more elegant) the subject in his or her new location. As I describe this process, I hope you can see that it’s not a physical movement of the individual from one place to the next, but the actual elimination of the individual in one place and the recreation of the person in another.

One especially pernicious aspect of RT involves the occasional hiccup, in which the RTRE creates more than one copy of the subject. Because they are absolutely identical and their creation occurs simultaneously, there is no way to know which is the “original” and which is the “copy.” The legal system is still sorting out how to handle claims between the “dupes,” as we call them, for the rights to live the lives they both assert are theirs. At present, the admittedly unpleasant method is to allow each dupe a fifty percent share; one dupe lives the normal life for a week while the other is kept in a dupe suppression facility (kept in what amounts to a medically induced coma), and then the two switch places. The obvious problem with that is that the two accumulate vastly different experiences from week to week, making them different from one another. Eventually, the legal system will determine how to handle this. RT specialists have long called for immediate euthanasia in such situations, in which one of the two dupes would be selected at random and put to sleep, thereby eliminating the problem of experiential divergence. The ethicists are still working on that one.

The converse problem occurs when the RTIE eliminates data and the subject but the RTRE fails, for one reason or another, to capture the data. That may well be what happened to the missing two hundred thousand.

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Shielded from the Real World

Posted on July 23, 2017 by John Swinburn

A word of warning: This is macabre and unsettling. Maybe quite advanced on the madness scale. It’s just me, practicing for something yet to be written, I suppose.

“Mrs. Griffin, may I go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“But I need to go, Mrs. Griffin.”

“Tough. You had your chance fifteen minutes ago. Wait another fifteen minutes.”

“I can’t, Mrs. Griffin. I need to go bad.”

“Did you need to go fifteen minutes ago?”

“Yes ma’am, but not so bad.”

“Well, then, you’ll just have to wait. And next time, don’t put it off.”

“But Mrs. Griffin, I’m afraid I’ll soil my pants.”

“You better not. If you do, I will tan your hide. Is that clear?”

Tears suddenly flooded the boy’s face as Tanksley Trevemore began to cry, his sobs deep and effusive. A sickening stench flooded the air. The rear of the boy’s khaki trousers darkened from beige to dark brown.

Hope Griffin smelled the mistake and grabbed the wooden paddle hanging from the side of her desk. She marched over to Tanskley, yanked him out of his chair, and bent him over the desk, his face and chest against the desk and his brown butt facing upward.

“Maybe this will teach you a lesson,” she screamed as she slammed the paddle, drilled with dozens of tiny holes, against the brown backside. The instant the wood hit the cloth, brown streams sprayed up from those tiny holes, drenching Hope.

“Goddamn it, Tanksley, you did this on purpose!” The paddle again tore through the air, landing hard on Tanksley’s brown bottom. Another mist of youthful diarrhea engulfed the woman, whose convulsive shrieks caused the other children in the room to wince and turn away.

Cagley Smale, the acting principal, entered the room just before the first paddle hit Tanskley’s behind. He witnessed both the first and the second incidents of hard wood against soft, wet fabric. And he heard Hope’s enraged howls. He had no other choice, he thought, than to put an end to the beating. Raising his 45 calibre pistol in front of him, at eye level, he pulled the trigger. The report was deafening. Little Tanksley’s body went limp.

“Thank you, Mr. Smale! I thought the boy was going to kill me.”

Smale, seeming surprised by the response, tipped his hat at the teacher and spun around toward the door. “It was nothing, ma’am. It was nothing. I’m just sorry I missed.”

He stopped, turned around again, and aimed the pistol at the smiling teacher. The explosive sound of gunfire filled the air as Hope Griffin’s eyes grew wide and she clutched her chest. The bullet entered her chest just below the sternum, missing the heart by only a few inches.

“How could you?” Her words, shallow and weak, barely escaped her mouth.

“It was easy,” Smale replied.

The remaining children in the room looked confused and frightened.  “Children, don’t you fret, that poor boy is no longer suffering the indignities of dealing with Mrs. Griffin. And you won’t have to deal with her anymore, either.” Smale’s toothy smile filled his face with ivory pickets as long as his lips were wide.

The class erupted in spontaneous applause. Karen Clockman, subbing for Eleanor Corely, who Smale had gunned down only a week earlier, peeked in the door. “Is everything all right?”

“Peachy,” Smale replied. “Do you have anything that will remove blood stains from a white shirt?”

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Citizenshifting

Posted on July 23, 2017 by John Swinburn

For reasons beyond my capacity to understand and explain as I begin to write this, I crave fish this morning. I’d like a filet of fresh cod, heavily salted, grilled over some smoky mesquite shavings and drizzled with lemon juice. The fish would pair well with a baked potato dressed with Greek yoghurt mixed with fresh-ground black pepper, horseradish, and a touch of vinegar. Slices of ripe tomato and cucumber spears would almost finish the meal, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the absolute requisite: slices of peaches so ripe they’re nearly over-ripe.

I do not know why, but this menu takes me a hundred years into the future, when I am a middle-aged Canadian man living alone in a small but comfortable home in Vermilion Bay on Eagle Lake in the township of Machin, Kenora District in northwestern Ontario. I suppose that’s the reason the menu is on my mind. See, it didn’t take long for me to understand the genesis of my hunger, did it?

This is a typical breakfast meal for me in my future incarnation. It’s not a common breakfast for other Vermilion Bay residents, mind you. Most of my neighbors enjoy breakfast cereals before heading out to guide visitors from Duluth and Thunder Bay on fishing and hunting expeditions. I, though, relish my fish and potatoes and so forth. When I have visitors, a rarity, I surprise them with my breakfasts. Perhaps that’s why visitors are so rare for me.

I’m as much of an oddity a hundred years hence as I am today. It’s not just my appetite, it’s my attitude. Unlike my very pleasant neighbors, I’m more interested in the evolution of Canadian English than I am in hunting and fishing. I’ve just completed a dictionary of Canadian lingo, defining and recording for posterity, terms like chesterfield and pogey and all-dressed and give’r and parkade and hoser. They’re all terms my neighbors use, but they are unaware they’re uniquely Canadian. Ever since I was a boy, in that other life, I’ve coveted the state of Canadianship. In spite of the growing number of incidents in which Canadians behave like their southern neighbors, Canadian decency still courses through my veins. I’m afraid the coarseness of the Dakotas and Texas and the rest of the fifty U.S. states is flooding northward, though. One day, and it won’t be long, Canada will be just another notch in the belt of swashbuckling indecency and arrogance. That’s when I’ll have to leave, bound for the outskirts of Kvaløyvågen, Norway. I’ve always admired Norwegian decency, too. Would that I would have been born Norwegian. My parents would have lived a far better life than they did as struggling Americans, two hundred years earlier. I might write a book about the benefits of citizenshifting. But, then again, I might not. But I’ll coin the word, by God. I will coin the word and claim it as my own. Citizenshift. Citizenshifting. I am a Citizenshifter. That’s not to be confused with being Citizenshiftless, which is not to be coveted in any sense of the word.

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Time in Motion

Posted on July 22, 2017 by John Swinburn

I woke up tomorrow, refreshed. And I will wake up yesterday, equally as spent as the day after tomorrow.

Time is cylindrical most days, spherical in others. Its texture mimics the odor of bravery or the taste of sullen defeat. We treat time as if it were invisible, like the concept some call God, but its shape and size and countenance are as clear to us as that decaying face in the mirror, if only we allow ourselves to see it. We encase the passage of time in photographs, capturing babies growing into homeless alcoholics and greed-drenched politicians. We nurture it as we mold idealists into administrators—whose sole purpose is to bring mindless order to circumstances in which the potential beauty of chaos is ripe and ready. Time twists us into stone pretzels, deformed fossils of unrealized dreams and broken promises unwilling to bend or yield to concepts outside our parochial experience. Time is an allegory for pain, an illusion of meaning, when meaning never existed. Clothed in robes of memory and draped in hollow wishes, we claw our way from the womb to the mortuary, seeking satisfaction in a world in which there is no reason to be satisfied. The only satisfaction is time gone by, that worn and weary remnant of struggles and mistakes and those temporary victories swept away by losses too enormous to comprehend.

Sadness, as deep as the vault within which the Milky Way was buried at the end of its pointless reign, will wash around the remnants of time, flushing the rubble of existence into the drain from which nothing can emerge. Black holes are harbingers of time expunged. When the gravity of our mistakes and our dangerous folly tilt the scale of celestial justice, black holes and their hidden progeny will swallow time and its accouterments. Even dreams cannot break the bonds of the end of time.

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Skeptic

Posted on July 22, 2017 by John Swinburn

When people you value ignore things important to you, you begin to wonder how important you are to the people you think matter. You start to withdraw into your shell and you question the depth of others’ investment in your happiness, just as you begin to question the merit of your investment in theirs. When it reaches that point, you reach for the switch and you turn it off. As nakedly self-serving as it sounds, you cannot afford to invest your emotions in people who don’t reciprocate. Happiness is not a commodity readily available on the open market. It is a rare thing, requiring nurture and tenderness. You may think a quid pro quo is an ugly, commercial element unsuited to friendship. You may think it, but you’d be naive. We all want to be the personification of altruism, but we’re not suited to the task.

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Famine is to Family as Murder is to Mother

Posted on July 21, 2017 by John Swinburn

Allen Sherman loved his mother. Her maiden name was Achtung. She was of Prussian ancestry, though she was loathe to admit it. She preferred to tell lies, claiming Scottish lineage on her mother’s side, with a direct line to nobility that predated the Viking invasions. No one believed her, of course, not even Allen Sherman. But he never confronted  Jameestaqueezia Sherman with his doubts about her heritage because there was no reason to do so. Not until rumors of a new cleansing started to circulate. But by then, Jameestaqueezia had manufactured enough fake genealogical evidence of her ancestry to make its denial highly suspect.

Allen tried to persuade her to stop the charade, even before the authorities began their inquiries. “Mother, something’s afoot. I’m afraid this anti-Scottish sentiment is getting out of hand. I’m concerned your assertions about your Scottish ancestry will get you in trouble.”

“Assertions? They’re not assertions. They’re statements of fact! And, anyway, this anti-Scottish nonsense will pass quickly. These things always do.”

“Not always, Mother. Look at what happened to the Argentinians. They rounded them up and put them in camps and deported them. It was just like World War II and the Japanese. Except it was worse. There’s not a soul of Argentinian ancestry in this entire country now.”

“Well, that was different. Scottish ancestry is not like Argentinian ancestry. With the likes of Perón and Videla in that country, it’s a wonder they didn’t deport them all much earlier.”

“Mother, that is such a bigoted attitude! And I’m serious about talking about your Scottish ancestry. If you keep up with your proclamations about how proud you are to have pre-Viking Scottish ancestors, they’re going to show up at the door one day and cart you off!”

Jameestaqueezia Sherman, nee Achtung, was having none of Allen’s fear-mongering. She continued to proudly announce her noble lineage to anyone who would listen. But two weeks after Allen’s entreaty, she responded to a knock at the door.

A tall uniformed man, his face dull and emotionless, stood at the door. “Are you Jameestaqueezia Sherman?”

“I am. Who wants to know?”

“I am Captain Enrique Squalor with the U.S. Genealogical Cleansing Service. I’m here to escort you to the deportation barge.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“We have evidence that you are of Scottish ancestry and, furthermore, that you have expressed pride in your scurrilous connection to that land whose only claim to fame is the Highland Potato Famine of the middle nineteenth century. You’re being taken to the Scottish deportation barge, which will be escorted to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and released.”

“There must be a mistake. My maiden name is Achtung. Actually, I am of Prussian stock.”

“That’s not what you’ve been telling your neighbors, Mrs. Sherman. And that’s not what the documents you’ve filed with the Orleans Parish Genealogical Authority say. Come with me.”

The Scottish deportation barge was a large, flat, open-air vessel with no railings. Sixty-four hundred eye-hooks, thick and  eighteen inches apart, were affixed to the deck. Jameestaqueezia and sixty-three hundred and ninety-nine other Scottish deportees, rounded up from as far away as Port Arthur, Texas and Springfield, Missouri, were chained to the eye-hooks. When the barge was fully loaded with its human cargo, an enormous tugboat pushed it away from dockside and steered it down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the open Gulf, the tug pulled around the front of the barge. Captain Enrique Squalor, aided by his newly-hired Lieutenant, Allen Sherman, attached thick cables to the barge. When the cables were firmly affixed, the Captain steered the monstrous tug southeast.

As the pair of vessels slipped around the southern coast of Florida a day and a half later, the coastline was visible in the distance. It was the last time the deportees would see land. Four days later, drenched with salt water and burned by the sun, the deportees watched Captain Squalor and his Lieutenant disconnect the cables.

“You’re just going to leave us out here?!” Jameestaqueezia, shouting at her son, shook her fist in his direction.

Allen Sherman stared at her and nodded.

“It takes guts, boy, to do your duty when it’s family.” Captain Squalor put his hand on Allen’s shoulder.

“If only she’d have stopped the charade of Scottish ancestry long ago, Captain, this whole thing could have been avoided.”

“Yeah, son, this could have been a much brighter day. But she made her bed. The lot of them did.”

Ten years later, almost to the day, both the Argentinian and the Scottish deportations were ruled unconstitutional. And a year after that, Captain Enrique Squalor and Lieutenant Allen Sherman were hanged after being convicted of sixty-four hundred counts of the crime of mass murder by neglect. The U.S. Attorney General had opted not to pursue charges against them for their subsequent involvement in the Peruvian and French deportations.

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More World of Wine

Posted on July 20, 2017 by John Swinburn

Tonight was the fifth (I think…France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Australia…were there more?) “World of Wine” dinner and wine tasting we’ve attended at Coronado Center. Tonight’s meal and wine assortment were Australian. Upon entering, we were given a glass of Andove Zibibbo Sparkling Moscato. If I never drink the wine again it will be too soon; far too sweet and syrupy for my taste. The meal began with a truly tasty Australian meat pie, which was paired with a 19 Crimes Red blend. The wine was pretty good. Next up, the second meal course was Australian “Rack of Lamb” chop (Lollipop Chop) with red wine sauce. I think it was to have been paired with with Greg Normal Cabernet/Merlot, but the wine was delivered early. The lamb was good, though it’s hard to keep such a dish warm with banquet service. The wine was pretty good, as well, but very tannic (which I like). Next up was Sticky Toffee Date Pudding, paired with Jacobs Creek Dry Reisling; I liked both, though Janine was not fond of the wine. I bought a bottle of the wine, only $9 with tax. The final course was a cheese and fruit plate, paired with D’Arenberg Stump Jump Chardonnay.

We ended up taking home another bottle of wine, in addition to the dry reisling, thanks to my commitment to the venue manager to sponsor him in the upcoming BikeMS ride from Little Rock to Hot Springs Village and back. The wine that came as part of that commitment is one he made; it should age until at least December (and not much longer). He enjoys making wine and was the driving force behind the wine-making class we attended (and in which he participated as a teacher) a month or two (or three) ago.

The next two World of Wine events will feature Argentina (in September) and Chile (in October). Unless our plans change, we’ll attend those events, too. I really can’t say either the wine or the food is particularly appealing, but the events are interesting. It’s hard to say just why I enjoy them; perhaps it’s the company and the entertainment value of the environment.  And maybe it’s because I enjoy seeing the efforts of a creative guy turn in to something that engenders support from throughout the Village. I’m glad we attend. It’s an enjoyable evening.

To top it off, our table-mates offers suggestions of good, cheap wines: Crane Lake and Foxbrook wines, said to be alternatively-branded “Two Buck Chuck” wines and “Big Smooth,” said to be cheap and quite appealing. We suggested Slate Dry Reisling, a South African wine, to another table-mate who’s into reislings.

And there you have it.

 

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In Favor of Cheese

Posted on July 20, 2017 by John Swinburn

We have the very good fortune to have some very generous neighbors. A woman with whom Janine plays cards one night a week most weeks gave us three cheeses earlier this week. Because I want to remember them for future reference (if I can find them—these were sent to her by distant progeny), I am writing about them here.

Abondance: A semi-hard raw milk cheese made in France. It is aged for a minimum of ninety days on specially produced spruce boards. According to cheese.com: “It has a strong smell and an intensely fruity, buttery and hazelnut flavour, with balance of acidity and sweetness, followed by a lingering aftertaste. Unearth an aroma of nutty vegetation as you slice the cheese. However, remember the crust including the gray layer beneath, should be removed before eating.”  Though I agree with the description, I did not remove the crust; I like the crust as much as the cheese.

Cabra la Prudenciana: This Spanish cheese is a stronger, more powerful cheese than the Abondance, but I like it as much. Janine is not as fond of it as I; this is good, as I get to eat the rest of it. According to Zuercher Cheese on Tumblr, “Cabra La Prudenciana has a compact paste with tiny eye formation. Although slightly granular at first, it warms up nicely on the palate. Unexpectedly buttery for a goat’s milk cheese, Cabra La Prudenciana reminds one of its sheepy cousins. We are especially delighted that this cheese remains unpasteurized. The flavor begins with a fresh, tangy, salty bite, then lingers and mellows into a goaty, herbal finish.”


 Shepherd’s Blend: This cheese, from Carr Valley Cheese Company in Wisconsin, is a sheep, goat and cow milk cheese cured for 10 weeks, so says the Carr Valley Cheese website. They go on to say “it has a soft body and a subtle, complex flavor. Excellent melting cheese and great in any recipe!”

I had samples of each this afternoon, along with a few large green olives stuffed with garlic and jalapeño. It was the appropriate snack for the day, for me, and for this century. It just worked.

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In Twenty-Five Years, Give or Take a Year, I’ll Be Canadian

Posted on July 20, 2017 by John Swinburn

Twenty-five years ago, I had no assurances I would live to reach sixty-three years of age. Nor did I have such assurances five years ago or even one year ago. The absence of assurances notwithstanding, I had expectations. And they’ve been met, albeit with some adjustments and difficulties. I have no assurances I’ll reach sixty-four, though if I’m alive come the end of October, that expectation will have been met.

A lot can change in twenty-five years.  George H.W. Bush was President in 1992. Bill Clinton was running for the job. In the years since, Clinton won the election and then repeated his victory. And he was impeached, thanks to his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it. George W. Bush stumbled into office, twice, and then Barrack Obama twice won the office. The twin towers fell to terrorism. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, then was found guilty of, among other things, armed robbery. Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and paid for his crime with his life. North Korea tested its first nuclear device. NASA revealed evidence of water on Mars. The American Episcopal Church became the first church to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages. One hundred ninety-five nations signed the Paris Agreement on climate change. I took a short sabbatical that turned into a longer sabbatical that turned into retirement. The last original “Peanuts” cartoon appeared in newspapers after the death of the creator, Charles Schultz. China ended its one-child policy. The Columbine high school massacre took place. The first smartphone was sold. Saturn Corporation sold its last car and went out of business. Oldsmobile went out of business. Corporations, granted personhood by the Supreme Court, stole elections.

Now, I consider whether, twenty-five years hence, I will be in a position to write about my lack of assurances and my expectations. In twenty-five years, I would be approaching my eighty-ninth birthday. Considering that my father died at eighty-one and my mother died at seventy-eight, the odds are not in my favor. But if I were to be alive then, in 2042, I would have witnessed the discovery of intelligent life on multiple planets in nearby galaxies. I would have seen the creation of new forms of collectivism, in which large groups of people opt out of society as we know it today in favor of self-rule without the encumbrances of structured society. Cars would have long-since been abandoned in favor of transportation cyborgs, hybrids between horses and gyroscopes with comfortable seating. Chiggers would have been eradicated, replaced in the insect food chain by harmless creatures whose only desire and only purpose is to be food. Euthanasia, adopted worldwide as the only means of human death following the advent of drugs that induce self-healing of all injuries and ailments, would be mandatory. Crime would have been eliminated by making almost all behaviors legal; without the prohibitions on behaviors we deem criminal today, the incentive to break the rules would have disappeared, thereby reducing such behaviors to negligible levels. Cutting in line in grocery stores would be the only criminal act, punishable by permanent paralysis and periodic public floggings. Certain sea creatures—including dolphins, starfish, and shrimp—would have evolved to the extent that they live on land.

A few years short of 2042, on my eighty-sixth birthday, I will share a bottle of New Zealand wine with two dolphins and a shrimp; this gathering will take place in The Canadian Brewhouse in Timberlea, Alberta (incredibly, it will still be there), a suburb of Fort McMurray. We will, of course, enjoy an order of Montreal smoked meat poutine with our wine. Because bigotry has no expiration date, a burly tourist from the lower forty-eight, a guy named Scud Portman, will shout to my companions, “Hey, get out of here and go back where you came from! I don’t want no seafood where I eat my steak!” With one quick slip of her tail, Swoop Westerman (she’s the female of the dolphin pair) will send Scud Portman to his early demise (he didn’t take the self-healing drug). His corpse will be disposed of with the rest of the refuse from the kitchen and we will continue enjoying our repast. An African eel, watching the engagement from a corner booth, will approach us. “Hello, I’m Slither Cone and I just wanted to say I was impressed with the way you handled that jerk. Can I buy your dinner?” We will decline, of course, but will invite her to join us, which she will. The bartender, a retired lumberjack named Brandon Sawman, will send over another bottle of wine with a note attached; it will say ‘This bottle of wine is on me. Here’s to brotherly love.’ Soon, the entire place will be alive with joyous expressions of decency and kindness, wine and hard liquor serving as the lubricants to said environment. Suddenly, a Royal Canadian Mounty, Dutch Boyle, will run into the place and yell, “There’s a party on the highway! Everyone’s invited!” Naturally, the place will empty quickly as we jump on our transportation cyborgs and head for the highway. A week later, upon returning to  The Canadian Brewhouse, I will be asked to settle the bill that I inadvertently walked the week before. And I will. Because it was never my intent to steal from the owners of such a happy place. Of course, this entire scenario depends on my survival . It sounds like so much fun I feel I have an added incentive to live to see it.

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Echoes

Posted on July 19, 2017 by John Swinburn

Another vignette that may find its way into something I write.

Surely you remember those kisses. Those hundreds upon hundreds of kisses. We were shy, at least I was, but we shattered that obstacle somehow. We broke every rule. Yet rules seemed so utterly empty to us, didn’t they? Rules were simply the articulation of fears, fears that human nature, unchecked by onerous boundaries, would explode into chaotic expressions of lust or hatred or love or, perhaps, innocence. We knew the rules but we broke them anyway. We crossed those lines, stepping from strident fidelity into minefields littered with erogenous zones. Your marriage had collapsed. Mine hadn’t begun. It was in that miasma of anger and anticipation that something blossomed, albeit briefly, that brought us together in a fire that burned too bright, too fast. It was so impossibly short that it could not have hoped to satisfy our cravings. And then it was over. Except for the longing and the questions over all these years. “What if?” “What might have happened if fear hadn’t intervened?” And still, today, when I see you, I wonder whether the universe would have spun a little sweeter, a little faster, with a little more energy, if I hadn’t been so immature, so young, and so damned afraid.

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The Way to Riches

Posted on July 19, 2017 by John Swinburn

The switch that controls the left rear burner on our KitchenAid Architect Series II electric range costs $131.69. I know this because I managed to break said switch last night. I carelessly grabbed for a heavy wood cutting board, swinging it at just the right speed and arc of movement so that it hit the knob with sufficient force to snap the end of the switch off inside the knob. After much online effort, I found the part necessary to repair the range. I did not, though, find information about how to remove and replace the broken part. I suppose I’ll just have to monkey with the range, taking it apart bit by bit until I can remove the front panel so I can get behind the switch. Two screws hidden behind the knob suggest it will be easy to remove the switch, but first I must be able to get behind the panel. Alternatively, I could hire someone else to do the exploratory work. But I figure my $131.69 mistake should be enough of an investment, without paying someone $80 an hour to learn the workings of my range.

While searching for the replacement part, I discovered all sorts of other replacement parts for the range. Though I did no calculations, my guess is that I could replace all replaceable parts of the range and the oven below it at a cost of roughly $231,000. That being the case, I think we got an incredibly good deal when we bought this house. Most of the purchase price went toward buying the range. The rest of the house was thrown in for just a few thousand dollars more. So, it occurs to me that, once I’ve repaired the range, I might just sell it at a significantly discounted price—say $130,000—and buy a replacement range for considerably less. Even if I went upscale, I doubt I’d need to spend more than $5,000. So, I’d put $125,000 in my pocket. Considering the selling price of comparable homes in the area, I could then offer the house for sale at a price that would guarantee multiple offers. I’d come out ahead by well over $100,000, which we could use to purchase a smaller home here and another one in a friendlier summer climate.

Now that I know the secret to house prices, I think I’ll start flipping houses nearby. I’ll just break the knobs off their stoves, repair them, sell the ranges at a staggering profit, buy replacements, then sell the houses at steep discounts. In no time, I’ll be awash in money with which to buy seasonal homes worldwide. With the flood of money, I’ll easily be able to buy first class airline tickets to visit my homes in Croatia, Italy, France, Bolivia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and other such places. I’ll have ample cash to spend time at my summer homes in Nova Scotia and British Columbia. Once I’ve proven the concept, I’ll offer free, limited-seating seminars in cities worldwide, describing in overview style what I’ve done. For specific details of how the process works, seminar participants can buy sure-fire money-making kits with step-by-step instructions for the low, low price of $5,000 per kit. Hundreds of thousands of people will line up to buy my remarkable kits (cash only, please, no checks or credit cards). After I’ve sold 1,000,000 kits, I’ll retire in luxury. But, because I will not want to be called greedy, I will become a philanthropist, donating 75% of my money toward peace and ending world hunger. Who knew one simple, careless motion with a heavy cutting board could lead to such a fairy tale ending?

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Wabi-sabi

Posted on July 18, 2017 by John Swinburn

Two years ago today, I read an article entitled The Art of the Mistake, by Alice Driver. The article moved me to tears. I doubt others would be moved to tears the way I was. But the ideas offered in the article—ideas that suggested to me the immeasurable value of viewing the world from a peculiar but utterly wonderful perspective—struck a chord so deep within me that I could not help myself. I sobbed. I remember thinking: There must be something wrong with me; this article should not summon such a powerful emotional response. But it did. And, today, as I read the article again for the first time in two years, it had the same effect. As I mull over the strange reaction I have to the article, I am slowly beginning to conclude that the Wabi-sabi world view is a powerful framework upon which emotions may be strung like lights on a Christmas tree.  And that concept is one I need to explore. Not for knowledge, but for enlightenment.

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