Sharing the World with the Undead

 

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Subbing — Kids Behave Better when You Write Random Stuff Down as You Walk

We got this! I say.
I make circles with clipboard
Many of them work.

Glossaries abound
Translating Don Quijote –
El Polvo the dust.
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Almost done subbing I think. I let that last period slip off the chain and I should have done better by the more responsible kids in the classroom. I should have called the office and sent someone to the purgatory of the Dean’s office. But my miscreants did not seem worth the effort.

Not well done.
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Zombie phrase for the day: We will attack at the airport on Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end. They will be helpless.

Eeelll uhhhdahhgg duhh ehhhrorrhhhnnn uhhhnayyyvv dayynnnnggihhbbinnn eeegeehhhn. Dayylll bee ehllbusss.

Going to the airport on Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end

Desperate people
Fighting hordes to reach exits
Slog toward O’Hare.

We drive in the dark
Thanksgiving plane clusterfuck
Cargo road again.

The year is 2015. Shasta and Mommy are returning from Condell Hospital in Libertyville where they dropped off various books for Gabby, who is a mass of plaster and bandages. Gabby is recovering from a life-changing accident, but she is recovering. Mommy is casually dressed in sweats, a soft, blue Walmart sweatshirt over navy pants with gray athletic shoes so she and Jamie can walk later. Shasta wishes mommy would not dress so casually. Shasta is wearing a purple fur robe with a multicolored, iridescent scarf, a black top hat with two black ostrich feathers and a pair of rhinestone lunettes that are attached to the hat. While she can create arms, she prefers her soft brown slug’s body to remain smooth and limbless unless necessary, preferring to be authentically slug-like. Large as medium-sized dog, she hovers invisible near the tall brown table in the corner of Starbucks.

Mommy: (Sipping her pumpkin steamer) Can the riddle of consciousness be solved by quantum physics, neuroscience, and a new theory of information, Shasta?

Shasta: What?

Mommy: Can the riddle of consciousness be solved by quantum physics, neuroscience, and a new theory of information?

Shasta: I thought that’s what you said. Weren’t we going to discuss trying to make money from art? I thought we were going to be practical and talk about what you wanted to do next. Now that you are leaving teaching.

Mommy: I don’t know what I want to do next. That’s why I thought we might go straight for the philosophical jugular. The riddle of consciousness, man’s inhumanity to man, that kind of stuff.

Shasta: Shit, mommy. Why don’t you just go ask a barista how many hours they work? This place is filled with baristas. Maybe you want to be a barista.

Mommy: Well, I want to be a barista more than I want to be a teacher. Teachers work too hard. I don’t think I want to work that hard anymore. I think I would rather create original art in the basement. Or sell bits of the house away on Ebay. Of course, subbing might not be that bad. Tutoring might be OK, too.

Shasta: (Doubtfully) Maybe.

Mommy: If I were faster, I might take up vampire slaying.

Shasta: That’s a good idea. We don’t have to slay the nice vampires, do we?

Mommy: Honey, one of the great things about being an invisible slug is you don’t have to slay anything. But like I said, I’m not fast enough. Bypassing the question of whether or not slayers are born or made, let’s be clear. My facility with a blade just about qualifies me to carve pumpkins. Vampires and moving targets are out of the question. Pumpkins are tricky enough.

Shasta: I like the way the one in front of the house rotted.

Mommy: Me, too. Lost in that pile of leaves, flat as it is, daddy never even notices it. The pumpkin molecules are freeing themselves rapidly now. Our pumpkin is returning its essence to the Earth.

(Shasta and mommy pause for a minute or two, resting in comfortable silence. Mommy sips her pumpkin latte. Shasta watches the barista make lattes. He is a young man with a dark beard.)

Shasta: I think you would look spiffy in a green apron, mommy.

Mommy: Is consciousness really a riddle? It seems more like the ultimate source of stand-up comedy to me.

Shasta: That’s the one problem with Starbucks. I would not want to stand up. I would want a stool.

Mommy: (She thinks about explaining stand-up comedy to Shasta and decides to let it go.) Do you know I found an article on Web MD today about people who were giving themselves at-home fecal transplants? They use a blender and an old enema thingy.

Shasta: Your stream of consciousness needs to be stuck back in the riverbed, mommy. I’m serious. Come January, why not apply to learn to make excessively expensive, delicious drinks?

Mommy: Baristas get free pounds of weekly coffee.

Shasta: They don’t have to grade homework, either. They don’t have to turn in grades.

Mommy: You’ve been seduced by the caffeinated side of the force.

Shasta: (Giggles) You do what you want. You want to start hammering wooden stakes into former people, I’ll be happy to watch. You want to write zombie novels, that’s good too. Art. Whatever. But I honestly don’t think you should find a job that includes homework. Sub yes, maternity leave no. We have a lot of TV to catch up on. We need to go sit in Judge Mathis’s audience. We need to get back to Edinburgh. Or we need to lay in bed and read about the vampire wereworf menage a trois. We have important stuff to do.

Mommy: Too true. Before I join the pumpkin, I’d like to finish rewatching Alien Nation.

Shasta: Exactly.

Conversation with Shasta in Tacoma in June of 2015:

Cast of characters:
Mommy: Otherwise known as Jocelyn, a retired teacher helping out her elderly parents.
Shasta: A visiting alien from a planet of huge slugs, invisible to most people
Grandma and Grandpa: The elderly parents

Mommy is sitting on a lawn chair of sorts. The chair seat has its old blue and white striped, plastic mesh, but a yellow-green (too dark to be called chartreuse) cushion from the defunct living room couch serves as back support. The back porch has three chairs now, thanks to a ferocious effort to get paper junk to recycling. Grandma sits, half-dressed, on a bare, white plastic lawn chair to mommy’s right. She wears an extra long t-shirt, a short mini-dress on a five-foot, 165 pound, 86 year-old woman. Grandma would put more clothes on if asked, but grandpa could care less. Mommy will manage the clothing question after breakfast. Grandpa sits across from mommy in another of the blue and white striped lawn chairs, this one with the old blue and white back but an extra brown, blue and cream floral fabric cushion from a defunct set of dining room chairs. Waste not-want not, mommy thinks.

Shasta is hovering on an iridescent, violet carpet a few feet above the EdenPURE heater, a big, black box with mottled, brown trim. She is dressed in a black, Star Wars Millennium Falcon t-shirt, which looks odd since she is an invisible, brown slug who weighs about 45 pounds and has no arms, legs, hands or feet. She wears gold-rimmed lunettes with mirrored lenses attached to her favorite, black-velvet, Minerva McGonagall witches hat.

Mommy notes people should eat some fruit and cereal. Grandpa agrees, but observes grandma has had part of a cookie.

Grandma: (Corrects grandpa.) “I had a whole cookie.”

Those red velvet cookies with their white chips squick mommy. Mommy thinks that a baked cookie that comes out in such an intensely red-brown shade requires more red dye than mommy wants to eat. Mommy’s fussy, though. She is having trouble with meal plans in Tacoma. Fast food coupons are everywhere, not all of them expired. She managed to avoid Arbys yesterday in favor of the Mexican restaurant that makes the good ham, eggs and pancakes. Grandpa and grandma ate American breakfasts while mommy ate her veggie burrito. At home, chocolate muffins, red velvet cookies, and chocolate cereals cover the counter near the refrigerator. Nobody would starve here, but malnutrition seems almost inevitable. Mommy is grateful for the Jamba Juice at the mall.

Conservative talk radio drones on in the background. Rush Limbaugh talks. Mommy mostly does not listen.

Mommy studies the hanging wind chimes, especially the one above her head with the gnarled wood and mushrooms. She pauses to feel sorry for the starfish above grandma, lending prickly, preserved arms to five strands of mauve and white hanging sea shells tied below. A remarkably courageous bluebird eats bread crumbs in the backyard, only about 12 feet from the porch. Squirrels and little, brown birds come for the rice and bread all morning. Grandpa buys bread to crumble for the birds.

Shasta (telepathically): Mommy, you are starting to listen to Rush.

Mommy: Rush on evolution might be interesting. He sounds like he’s against the idea. Teaching evolution is a “left-wing, mandatory requirement” according to Rush, ironically teaching that we are evolving from dark to light skin. Ummm… I don’t think we can call this a straw-man argument. How about an invisible-boggart argument? I grant that Rush might be right about our hearing too much apocalyptic news.

Shasta: I wish grandpa would change the station to that guy Carlson he likes.

Mommy: So how’s my favorite slug today? I like the big starship and black velvet hat. The mirrored glasses go perfectly.

Shasta: Thanks. I was going to try for subtle today, but I think I missed.

Mommy: Don’t worry. I miss all the time. Subtle is overrated. The world needs more velvet.

Grandma: (Aloud to grandpa) Look how pretty your daughter is.

Grandpa: That’s because she’s my daughter. That’s heredity. Albert’s the luckiest guy in Northbrook.

Mommy: Thanks, dad.

Here in Tacoma, mommy can do no wrong. Grandpa and grandma even think mommy dresses well. In Tacoma, no t-shirt or hat is too weird. Mommy would have to put on a garbage bag to cause grandpa concern. Grandma would probably just say, “Well, that looks interesting.”

Rush drones on. Soon mommy will walk to the Safeway with the Starbucks kiosk. Those red cookies and dry muffins are more healthful than they seem; they inspire regular morning walks. Rush is equally inspiring.

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Zombie phrase for the day: Watch out for maternity leaves.

Ahhhhddd owwwvvv ahhhdddehhhrdeee eeevzzzzz.

(Yet the newly retired Jocelyn took that maternity leave because she never learns. And it would have been fine except for fourth period. She loved a few of those groups. One Fourth Period can lead a woman to emigrate to the outer colonies, though. As she drove across the country with Sam the Eldest that summer, only her husband and dog kept her from trying to find a Moon shuttle or even the express rocket to Titan.)

From a bygone trip to Mineral…

The Little Park Cafe

Hot turkey sandwich in yellow-gray gravy
Chunks of dry meat, thin potatoes
Mashed or melted, oozing into
Lumpy, white-bread hills as
I diplomatically support dad’s
Passion for large, salty servings
Delivered at small-small prices, with
Big spheres of strawberry-covered vanilla ice cream.
Mystery-meat loaf, the stuff of happiness.
Sam stuffs pressed chicken into Styrofoam.
Fortunately, we have deliciousness,
Blueberry tartes waiting in the car.

Zombie phrase for the day: I love mystery meat loaf.
Ahhhh wuuhhb bihbihree beeohhhhhh.

November blew in with a blast of frigid air, following a quick frozen attack on Halloween that dropped crimson, chestnut, amber and lemon-yellow leaves lifelessly to the ground. Only the heartiest trick-or-treaters made the rounds. I praised their stamina while offering them handfuls of candy. The small children all stayed inside their caves.

Winter is coming. Only technicalities allow this season to be called autumn. The snow on the pumpkins is slowly disappearing, but I don’t know that the snow’s melting. I think it’s sublimating instead.

Yet I am sitting in my short-sleeved, Dr. Who t-shirt above thinner cotton jeans and gray, athletic shoes. The world may be spinning on, but my spouse puts up a formidable resistance to weather shifts. His own circulation does not allow him to tolerate cold well, even with blankets. So heating zones go up to seventy-four degrees and at least a few zones are inescapably warm. The interior climate of Starbase Turner is welcoming to cats, sloths and reptiles, among other creatures. The dinosaurs might have survived if they could only have taken shelter here. Sometimes it’s a bit warm for Jocelyn.

But somehow Amanda and Sarek managed.

Zombie phrase for the day: It’s like living in a space station.
IIhhhhxzzz ayggg ihhhingnnn uhhh bayyy dihhh.

Sub! Bump, crash, giggle, whisper, talk, whisper, talk, talk, talk, bathroom, push, bump, pout, bathroom, bathroom, giggle, kick, scatter, color, tear, line-up, dawdle, noisy, run, shriek, stairs, art, fall words, anaranjado, leaves, hojas, Halloween, paleta, amarillo, handout-scarecrow-haystack-October, spelling, scissors, paper scraps, some work, anti-work, work? giggle, push, scraps, scrapes, words, two good efforts, independent read. Hah! Book? No! Loud, louder. Hide sharpener I. Loudest. Untidiness · disorder · disarray · clutter · heap · shambles · rumpled · rumbled · litter · tangle · jumble · muddle · mishmash · chaos · litter · confusion · disorganization · turmoil · sight · [more]

Recess! Alone. Lunchtime.

Two hours to go. Sigh. No. More. Elementary. School. 2nd. Grade. Goodbye.

(And somebody kicks one girl hard enough to trigger an incident report. Fortunately, I am not responsible for the lunch line. Recess monitors handle that while teachers eat lunch.)

Zombie phrase for the day: Put the scissors down.
Buhhhh duhhhihhhdurr dowww.

P.S. Here we see the one big whammy in subbing. So you sign up to cover meetings. But then two teachers call out sick. Suddenly you have a full day with one group plus a number of extra kids from the second teacher’s class who have been dispersed to different teachers throughout the building. And the alleged lesson plan mostly does not match the materials you are given. Worksheets in the plan do not exist.

Jocelyn. Not. Happy.

KINDRED SPIRIT

Soft walk, low tones
Fading, gray-blond quiet
Sun-soaked truthstillness
The orbit shifts in time
half notes falling into
emptying wine glasses.
Later we drink green tea frappucinos
or passion tea.
Questions unasked.

MAN AND CHILD
Boys across the table
I like the simplicity of boys.
Old boys, young boys.
Eating chicken and cornbread.
Sam has a point.
Boys don’t do drama
(ordinarily).
I like the quiet of boys,
Who are quiet
Even when screaming
From the sidelines
As the ball rockets
Past the goalie.

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PAPERS ON THE BACK PORCH
Papers in trash baskets
Papers in boxes
Papers on boxes
Papers in buckets
Papers on tables
Papers under tables
Papers behind chairs
Papers behind bricks
Papers in laps.
Papers on books.
Papers under books.
Papers inside books.
Papers disguised as phonebooks,
When I came
One-by-one, I moved papers.
Recycle overflowed.
But the papers reclaimed
My new hole for a chair.
I say to my elderly parents,
Who are watching me as
I study the porch.
“Papers are everywhere.”
Mom says,
“Aren’t they supposed to be?”

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ZOO2
Tapirs, meerkats, emus, bears, giraffes,
no-zebras, gone-elephants, bored-gorillas
walk sprawl inside rugged display cages
boulders, pools, streams, ledges,
shrubbery disguises nappers, lurkers
Hiding, sleeping, ambling, staring,
Playing, climbing, diving, oblivious.
Where is the fish?
Where are the leaves?
They ask a few times each day.

ZOO 1
Toddler taps, bored-gorilla taps back.
Man, the Gorilla’s Videogame.
Stone barriers form the edges of his screen.
He must be frustrated at his lack of a joystick.

ZOMBIE PHRASE FOR THE DAY:

dUHHH BAHHBUMMM IHH GU-IWAH IHZZZ AHHHH AAHAHHAA EHHDD HAAWRWN MAAHHH DEEE.

The problem with gorillas is I always get hair in my teeth.

Fiona the Aging Acura is either failing or trying to kill me. Her coolant was quietly slithering out onto the pavement, leaving Ben the Mechanic to add fluid and scratch his head at the sneakiness of it all. Her seams seemed intact, but… nevertheless, the check engine light was on and that coolant had gone… somewhere. Yet I continued to drive Fiona, the light off for a brief while after my visit to Ben.

Flash forward a few weeks: I am headed to Mundelein, into the North Country. The check engine light had come on the day before, but I was going to keep my promise to be a science teacher, and it’s not like I never ignored a check engine light. Shortly into my journey, I get a VSA light. I look this up at the stoplight and am left to consider the meaning of a “Vehicle Stability Assist” light. Stability could be considered a sobering word. I know it’s my damn “Vehicle” — it’s not like the dashboard lights are going to warn me about someone else’s vehicle — Fiona’s too old for those tricks — or the state of the Impeachment process. And who is assisting whom? All four tires seem to be on the ground and behaving properly, so I persevere. A few miles later, I will get the exclamation mark in a triangle light. The car is now saying, “Will you listen to me, bitch!?” My temperature gauge is beginning a small creep above the middle, nothing that looks catastrophic but that needle has my attention. Only a few miles to go.

I make it to West Oak Middle School. I then Yelp auto repair and find Apex Auto Repair, only 1.1 miles away in Mundelein. I wish to give Alex at Apex five stars. In a previous adventure, I found Akin’s Auto Repair in San Jose this way, and I also give Akin’s five stars.*

Alex replaced a valve and I went on my way. Was Fiona grateful for my attempt to keep her in coolant? Hardly! This weekend she staged a Honk-In!

My next adventure:

I innocently emerge from the library, enter my car and suddenly the horn begins blasting. And blasting. I try a number of the alarm-gone-wrong fixes without luck. I drive away from the library, honking loudly as I make the slow circle to the exit. I am now driving around town honking with my lights flashing. A couple of people flash lights back at me. In sympathy? To tell me car is broken? Umm… thanks for the support guys, but I have the situation nicely out-of-control without wondering about the strange responses of other drivers. The car quiets itself and I manage to get to a Starbucks drive-thru. It’s past two and I haven’t had lunch. Opening the windows seems to be safe. Then I open the sunroof a few minutes later and Honk! Honk! Honk! I make my way home, horn blaring at decibels that jangle my poor nerves raw.

Current status: Fiona is fine as long as I don’t try to lock her doors. I played with the key and the lock and she seems to have settled down. The Red Light of Screaming Doom by the driver’s side door lock has gone off. I am afraid to lock the girl, though. The Master Plan has us car shopping in November. Was Fiona listening when Albert and I discussed the prospective new car during one drive? Is this her revenge? Or an attempt to get us to put so much money into her that we will keep the aging Acura awhile longer? I can’t say, but my current strategy involves sticking ear plugs in the glove box. November is only a month away.

Not that I don’t plan to keep Fiona. I can’t imagine she is worth much and I have always been fond of her.

*Great daughter moment: We are driving to her school and I am listening to a grinding noise. I say, “How long has that noise been there?” She says: “You think it’s a bad noise, don’t you? (My fiancé) thinks so too.” I claimed the car and went to Yelp.

I hate rugs. I hate big rugs, little rugs, rugs that match Pepto-Bismol pink and rugs that don’t match Pepto-Bismol pink. I prefer short pile to the still mysteriously available shag — I mean why not just inhale from the vacuum cleaner bag if you like dust that much? — and I prefer new looking rugs to “vintage” or “distressed” rugs that look as if twenty years of feet have already stomped over their sad surfaces. Did distressed jeans and jean jackets unleash this silly trend? I don’t know but I would like my rug to start brand new. We don’t buy pre-rusted cars.

Except it’s not my rug. It’s my dad’s rug, a rug that is supposed to cover the old carpets which admittedly need replacement. They looked brighter and less threadbare fifty years ago :-). If the three rugs in question were only equally distressed maybe we could pass them off as a modern attempt at pre-aged carpets. But the dining room has taken the brunt of the damage.

So I am on a quest for rugs. But they seem to come in the weirdest dimensions. I want to cover a simple 9 x 12, and I could use two 8 x 10s. What maniac in the marketing department decided 12′ 2″ x 9′ 7″ was a good plan? No wonder some of these slabs of cloth have made their way to Overstock.com and the like. Why is the “traditional oriental medallion design” 7’10” x 10’2″? I guess that’s kinda-sorta 8 x 10. It would do if I could find a larger counterpart. Papa had matching rugs before and he wants matching rugs now. I want to make him happy.

I priced making rugs of the right size rather than finding them premade. That did not make him happy. Multiple people have been measuring floors and walls since then. Vents and fireplaces complicate life. I just keep exploring websites.

Tonight when I talk to dad I think I’ll discuss the grass plan. Not only will he have more oxygen, he can be in the front of a whole new environmental movement. I hope he laughs. I could use a laugh right now.

Scotty, please beam down new linoleum. The whole problem stems from the fact that fifty-year-exposed linoleum is a radically different color than fifty-year-covered linoleum. But he does not want to replace the entirely functional vinyl/linoleum/whatever-indestructible-material-that-stuff-is. He just wants new rugs.

No linoleum, Scotty? Then please beam me up. I need a vacation. I don’t care if you put me down on the Klingon homeworld of Kronos. Just so long as Kronos has no Home Depot, Amazon, Wayfair, Overstock, rugs-direct, rugsusa.com, bedbathbeyond.com, rugsblah.com, blah, blah, blah…

P.S. And in one of those great ironies of our time, my computer now works pictures of random rugs into almost any search I do.

Why not treat yourself to a practice problem or two? Forget crushing candy, playing poker, or laying down letters in fake scrabble. How about giving your brain a real challenge today?