Haiku to an empty theater seat

Luke Skywalker says:
"No one's ever really gone."
I reach for your hand.

2019 Hogswatch Letter

December, 2019

Dear friends and family,

2019 has been a rough year for the Payton clan.  After struggling with a recurring infection, Robin succumbed to congestive heart failure on July 5th.  For some reading, this is the first you're hearing of it, and I apologize for that.  Kyrie did the best she could to notify people, with very little help from me.  None of us are completely recovered.  

In a frantic burst of obsessive energy, I gathered what I could find of Robin's creative writing and had it published.  If you don't yet have a copy, please inform me of my oversight.  It was a promise I'd made, and I couldn't rest until it was fulfilled.

We hosted a dinner in October in her memory.  It reminded me of the dinner we held for our 30th anniversary, and I wish we could have repeated for our 40th.  I tried to speak with everyone, but know that I failed – I hope we get more chances.  Some people even brought owl-themed gifts, which made me cry.  Some of them are on my Christmas tree.  

In an eerie stroke of serendipity, the manager of the venue (the Starlight Chateau) wants to retire, and there is a possibility that Arthur will take over the business.  We've spent a few hours in meetings, and it's all very tentative.  Still, one can almost feel a bit of spiritual intervention in how this has come about.

I put the books out again this Halloween, as I will do every year.  There were more visitors this year than I can recall ever having before, and I was ill-prepared for them.  Later I learned that a nearby neighbor, who runs a daycare and a community garden, had sent them over.  Robin has made small donations to that garden.  I may never know how many lives she's influenced.  

Arthur and Anita took me along with them on their Disney cruise.  They'd planned it a year beforehand, and by the time we lost Robin, nothing was refundable, so instead they expanded the package.  We wanted Kyrie and Rick to come too, but they couldn't take the time off.  Overall, it was a healing experience, though I did think a lot about those not present.  I appreciated the time spent surrounded by family.  We visited three countries, and I left a Bookcrossing book in each one.  Ellie petted a sea turtle.  We nearly got eaten by mosquitoes at a Mayan ruin.  I bought some Jamaican rum, and some touristy junk.  I also spent quite a bit of time watching the ocean.  It reminded me of the time spent fishing off the docks at Rockaway.

As it turns out Kyrie might have had time to go, if she had known.  She changed jobs this year, and now works at Nebraska Medicine.  It was a good move, professionally speaking, and puts her in a position for advancement.  She and Rick are happy together, and would be happier still if they had similar schedules.  

Kyrie had some trouble with a neighbor who built a fence right up against her house.  We finally got them to move it, but they sure weren't happy about it.  The expensive lawyer we retained didn't do any of that; all it took was a land surveyor and a complaint to the zoning dept.

Arthur is still substitute teaching and working front desk at a local motel in Missouri, accumulating just enough hours that he can't be classified as full-time.  He couldn't perform the Renaissance Faire circuit as usual this year, due to helping out so much here, but I did get to see him in October.  Performed with him, actually.  I hope to do more of that.  

As for my own career, I'm one of the UP survivors.  Or perhaps the term “hostage” might fit better.  The company's version of “precision scheduled railroading” seems to mostly consist of doing the same work with a third of the workforce.  I'm working second shift, and will do so for one more year – just to minimize change.  There has been too much change in my life lately, and I need it to settle down.  After that year, though, I will move to another shift.  The reason is simple:  I can't let myself turn into a hermit.  If I have not become more social after a year, then I will have to force myself out of the house.

Early this year, I entered a writing contract to adapt a webcomic to novel form.  I finished four chapters before July.  Hopefully I can get back into a regular writing schedule before he gives up on me completely.

I have two more cats now, thanks to Kyrie.  She rescued a kitten this year, who turned out to be a mama.  Too young for the role, but she performed flawlessly.  The kittens I agreed to adopt are already bigger than the original.  Orange troublemakers.  I spoil them shamelessly.  

I opened this letter with the worst news, and I'm sorry if I rained on your holiday.  The fact is, I wish everyone unbounded joy, this and every year.  Hug your loved ones.  Take all the time off work that you can.  Make happy memories.

I love you all,

John

Frozen

One of the things that I apparently can't deal with: the freezer.

I thought I still had some frozen pumpkin and went to look for it. Instead found some low-carb baked goods that we'd prepared together and stored for later.

Now I'm eating ice cream, because, fuck it.

Summer Memory - A Bully in Tulsa

"Johnny, come out here!"

Karen was agitated -- more so than usual, anyway.  I was just irritated.  I was on my summer vacation, too.  I was right in the middle of doing nothing in particular, and didn't appreciate the interruption.

"What?" I demanded of my kid sister.  I was eight years old, and had no time for her five-year-old nonsense.

"Sharon and me are our riding bikes and there's a kid that won't let us ride past his house."

I got to my feet.  Probably another little snarky kid bugging my sister and cousin.  I followed them down the street.

Less than a block away stood a monster.  He had to be at least ten years old, and was holding a broom handle, minus the broom.  I had severe second thoughts.

"What do you want?" he sneered.

"You won't let my sister and cousin ride their bikes here."

I don't know where I got the courage to follow through with this confrontation.  I didn't care whether Karen could ride past this bit of road.  But, I saw cousin Sharon only once a year at best, and harbored a sort of crush on her.  A bit inbred and creepy maybe, but we were kids, and Jeff Foxworthy was still in diapers.

Back to the behemoth, who was saying,  "What are you gonna do about it?"

"You're gonna let 'em ride," I challenged.  "I'll make you."

His sneer grew wider, and he stepped forward, swinging his makeshift staff at me.

I caught the it in mid-arc and wrested it from his grip.  Then I laughed defiantly.  "There!" I gloated.  "You ain't got your stick!"

"So what?"  The bully yelled.  "You won't do nothin' with it!"  And once again he advanced, this time raising a threatening fist.

Without thinking, I swung the broom handle like a broadsword, connecting with the ogre's head with a resounding THWACK!

He yelled!  Oh, how he shouted, clutching his temple and swearing, dancing in a little circle.  The three of us stood, transfixed by the performance.

The boy stopped shouting long enough to give me a hateful glare.  "You won't do that again!  I dare you to do that again!"

I carefully parsed his words and decided that they formed an invitation to take another whack at it.  That's exactly what I did, repeating the first swing precisely, since it had worked so well.

The youthful roadblock, unfortunately, hadn't learned to duck, and so was soon repeating his Indian Pain Dance.  Possibly with even more volume and vehemence than before.

At this point, Karen -- always alert for authority figures -- shouted, "Someone's coming!"

Emerging from the nearest house was a weather-worn giant of a woman who could only be the kid's mother.

All my courage fled.  I dropped the broom handle and together we sprinted down the street, heedless of sharp rocks on bare feet, toward the sanctuary of Sharon's house.

Though I fled from the larger foe, I still considered myself the hero of thge day.  Sister Karen and cousin Sharon rode their bicycles peacefully for the rest of the day, while I heroically picked gravel from the soles of my feet.

My Haiku Attempts

Another day, more cleanup.

Trying to straighten things around here.  Am easily distracted.  I found an old writing exercise notebook, which I'll hang onto, at least until I get everything in there transcribed.  

It contains the haiku I tried to write when Robin encouraged me to try my hand.

Honestly, I only remembered one of them -- the one that Robin preserved in her own poetry book:

Puppy in the grass

Bites my fingers gently, then

I capture her snout.

She liked that one. 

I already published the raccoon one.  The rest are below the cut.

He who steals my trash, steals trash

Black-maskéd bandit
Boldly invades sanctity
Of my garbage can.

Unpacking

I finished unpacking a box today.

One of the things I have decided to do is to (finally) get stuff straightened up around here.  Because, if I don't do this, then when my time comes to go, I will leave this unbelievably distressing task to my kids. 

There's just so much stuff.  And a lot of it is still in boxes, from one, two, or even three moves ago.

One of those boxes has been in the corner of the kitchen, for fifteen years.

You read that right.  And it's not the only one, sitting out in plain sight, waiting for me to set aside time for it, all the time we lived in this house.

The top layer was mostly mementos from our china cabinet.  Boy, was that layer hard to get through.

The middle layer, and most of the bottom, was a set of stoneware dishes.  Our first set, if I recall correctly.  Unused for all those years, while we collected thrift shop Corel. I also found a huge ceramic stein that Robin painted for me for my birthday in 1981. 

And, inexplicably, a business sized envelope that contained...an owl pellet.

That one threw me for a loop.  It took several minutes just to figure out what the hell it was -- a few tiny bones, a small lump of fur, and unidentifiable clumps of...dried gunk.

Why an owl pellet?  Why would she save...

And then it hit me.  This was also from the early 80s.

We had been going to George Sarratt's house for D&D games for a while, and he'd told us about how he'd found his totem animal (Raccoon).  This was different from his chosen totem image, the Thunderbird, which he always wore around his neck.  He saw Raccoon looking back at him from the mirror one day.  Totem animals, he told us, choose you.  And that got Robin wondering what hers might be. 

One night, when we were visiting Natalie and illicitly spending the night in a reserved common room at her dormitory,  Robin awoke in the wee hours.  Where a lamp was sitting on an end table, she saw instead a large great horned owl.  Only for a few seconds.  When the vision passed, she managed to convince herself that it was a dream, or an hallucination.  Surely not a totem animal.  She couldn't possibly be associated with the Owl.  She'd done her reading; owls were stupid animals.

While we were driving back to Omaha from that visit, she noticed something and asked me to pull over.  When I did, and backed up to the right place, we found a dead owl by the side of the road.

I've been on a lot of roads, and seen a lot of roadkill.  Not once before, nor since, has any of it been an owl.

Robin still rejected this message.  I teased her, asking if she needed a live owl to come to her.  She acknowledged that, maybe, that would be a strong enough message.

Only a couple of weeks after that, I was walking home from collecting an unemployment check (at this time I was not very far from enlisting in the Army), when I saw a small owl in the snow.  It was alive, but did not seem well.  At least, it didn't attempt to fly away.  Other people were around; none of them knew anything about owls.  One of them did have a cardboard box, though.  I took it home. 

Once in the warmth of our house, the owl seemed to perk up a bit.  I learned to wear gloves when handling it.  We tried to identify its species, but with only an old encyclopedia set to work with (this was before the Internet), we didn't get very far.  We surmised that it could have been a very young great horned, but that was completely the wrong season for that.  Of course, with our lack of experience, and lack of complete resources, we were probably completely off the mark.

Of course, I did tease Robin about this whole thing.  She had to acknowledge that Owl had come to her.

We kept that bird in our house for about a week.  It got better, but it refused to eat anything I offered it.  Everything, that is, except for one dead mouse that George trapped and saved for us, assuring us that he had no poisons in his house.  The bird snapped that tidbit right up. 

And, not long afterward, yakked up an owl pellet.  Like they do.

And Robin saved the pellet. 

I wanted so badly to tease her about this tonight. 

Instead, I poured some scotch, and wrote about it. 

We released the owl that night, for a couple of reasons.  Mostly because it seemed to be doing much better, having warmed up and eaten, and the weather outside was warmer too.  And secondarily, we had learned that, as a raptor bird, the state required a license to keep them.  We didn't have the money nor the training to get a raptor license.  Kind of a pity.  We'd gotten used to each other.  It never tried to attack us, it would perch on my gloved hand when approached.  Robin held it a couple of times, too. 

But it did hang around our house.  We heard it, often. 

She collected owl imagery ever since that day.

I'd really like to hear owls around here.