Made Up

The bear and I made up. We sat together on the dock overlooking the lake.

I said, "It's nice not fighting. I feel like I can breathe again."

The bear said, "I know. I was so angry at you that I found myself constantly thinking of ways to eat you."

I said, "Really? Like what?"

The bear said, "I imagined you pointing your finger at me the way you do, and I open my mouth and eat you whole in one bite, finger first."

I said, "...I thought of calling animal services and telling them that you had foam coming out of your mouth, and you were waving a gun."

We sat in silence for a while. The bear put its paw in my palm. I squeezed its paw. We watched the sun come down.

Spring

I went outside and found the snow melting and receding into the earth. I put on my swim trunks and ran out and into to the lake. The water was cold. It made my mind and heart slow down.

I floated on my back in the water. A whale came by. The whale said, "It's good to see you again."

I said, "It's good to see you too."

We floated together for a while.

I said, "What did you do for winter?"

The whale said, "I was down in the waters of South America for five months."

I said, "How come you don't stay down there?"

The whale said, "I like hanging out with you."

I said, "Me too."

A school of shrimp came by.

The whale said, "LUNCH!"

The whale ate half of them. He saved the other half for me. I collected them together and sat on the whale's back and ate them. It felt good to let the sun warm me.

You Never Know Who's Going to Show Up

Last night I went to a local open mic to tell my stories. What a night! The ghost of musician Buddy Holly showed up and signed up to perform. Everyone was so excited. It was going to be his first performance since he died in 1959. I was thrilled. One of my favorite songs is, That'll Be The Day." Buddy Holly got up on stage and people got out their cell phones to take pictures.

The thing is, there’s something about dead people on stage. It turns out they forgot the words to their songs. They also keep falling over. We knew he was dead so we overlooked an understandable handicap. But then his left arm fell off. I jumped up on stage and tried putting his arm back on. I think it was from my years of playing with G.I. Joes and snapping their arms back on. But his arm wouldn't stay. It was awkward. I ended up setting it down next to him on a chair. And then there was the smell...

It turns out his guitar was dead too. I mean, I guess that makes sense. Why wouldn't he have a dead guitar? The wood was rotten which made it out of tune.

I think a lot of us felt badly for him. But there was nothing we could do. It was too hard to watch so we went outside to smoke. I don't smoke. But I was feeling so out of sorts from it all that I smoked a pack and a half of camels.

Clouds

I wrote a book about clutter that came out last year. I just finished writing my second book. It's about clouds. I interviewed them. It turns out they’re depressed. They feel badly that people get upset when they block the sun. The clouds take it personally. They are just doing their job. If they didn't do what they did, famine would spread over all the lands. I think it's going to be a bestseller!

Flow

When I was six I visited the circus for the first time with my family. It was so exciting for me to see the elephants, acrobats and tigers. I loved the circus music. I stuffed myself on cotton candy.

But then tragedy struck. My dad went to get some popcorn. A few minutes later there was a big commotion. Someone said there was a terrible accident out by the concession stand. I ran out to see. That's when I saw that my dad had been run over by the clown car.

The clown car's door opened. One by one the clowns got out. Eventually there were 16 clowns standing around and looking down at my dad's unconscious body.

I walked over and pushed my way through the clowns. I cried. One of the clowns gave me a flower. I held it in my hands. Water squirted out of the flower and sprayed my dad's face. My dad woke up. He looked up at the clown's faces and then mine. He smiled.

I said, "Oh, my God, I love the circus!"

The Early Days

I went to my first open mic when I was 5. My parents gave me a ride and dropped me off at the Village Green Tavern in Boston. Back then there were a lot less writers in the world. So the people who came were often well known writers. That night there was J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and Kurt Vonnegut. They read excerpts from their latest works. They smoked and drank and swore onstage. They made jokes about grammar. They said really mean things about their publishers.

I got onstage and nervously read a story about my dog. It was called “Rover’s Revenge”. I wrote it for my kindergarten fiction writing class. It was about how my dog Rover was very kind and friendly, but then he would fall apart when squirrels taunted him from the trees as I took him out for his walks. He would shake, and foam at the mouth. One time he went nuts and ran up a tree. I hung onto his leash and got pulled up with him. Rover ran through the branches eating one squirrel after another.

When I was done with this story, I got off stage and sat in a corner booth and cried. Earnest Hemingway came over and joined me. He gave me a mug of cherry coke. I said, “That was horrible, I can’t believe how much I sucked.” He said, “Kid, I feel the same way every Goddamn time I get offstage. Welcome to the world of being a writer.”

I said, “Then why do it?” Hemingway said, “When you realize you feel that way about everything you do, then why not?”

I smiled and then threw up on Hemingway's lap. He had me kicked out and I was told to never come back. I’ve been writing ever since.

Taking a Break

I own a space ship. I like to take it out for drives in the solar system when I feel like I need a break from the Earth.

Last weekend I ventured out to Callisto. This is one of the moons around Jupiter. It's kind of ugly and desolate, but the nice thing about visiting Callisto is its privacy, you're guaranteed to not run into anyone else. Europa is the most colorful and beautiful of Jupiter's 63 moons, and because of this you can't go anywhere without running into noisy tourists. I feel, if you're going to get away, get away.

I set up my plastic airtight tent in the Syntex crater on the northside of Callisto. I got out my feather bed and a desk and a chair. I did some writing and then I retired to my bed for a nap. Whenever I sleep on Callisto, it's all deep sleep, I never have any dreams. Because of this, I only need to sleep two hours. Then I got in my space suit and went for a walk with my dog. He wore his suit too.

The really nice thing about space travel is you can't go online or check email. I say this because it doesn't matter. There's something about being on Earth that makes being online seem necessary. But then there I was walking my dog on Callisto, feeling so peaceful, and having a vague thought about the internet and thinking, "Yeah, whatever."

Interchange

I stopped at a rest stop on the 5 Freeway going north in California. I sat down at a picnic table to have lunch.

I looked up and was surprised to see a squirrel in one of the trees.

I said to the squirrel, "I can’t figure out how you got to this place. They're just five trees at this rest stop. They're no other trees for miles, just crops and the freeway. It doesn't make sense."

The squirrel said, "I have no recollection how I got here. I guess for some unknown reason life puts us in strange places that end up becoming our homes."

Today's Guest Blogger: Bessie the Kangaroo

My name is Bessie the Kangaroo. I'm today's guest blogger on Better Late Than Dead!

I wanted to share a poem I wrote:

Life is short and brutal,
most things don't make sense
and those things that do just make me sad -
except grazing!

Sometimes I think that I would like to start my bread company. I really like bread. The smell of bread baking excites me. But I have no self-control and I'm certain I would eat everything I baked.

I wish I could wear a hat. It's difficult though because of my ears.

Sometimes I look up at the sun and think, "It's so small, I think I could pop it in my mouth and suck on it all day."

Making New Friends

I went on animalmeetup.com. It's a website that helps different species to meet up in situations that they normally wouldn't. I was so tired of having to go to the zoo to meet different species. I think it was an uncomfortable experience because the animals were behind bars and this made them more tense and distracted than normal.

Yesterday I had coffee with a deer. She asked me about the clutter busting work that I do. She said that it's next to impossible to have clutter when you live in the woods. I said that I've wanted to live in the woods for years, but was worried that I would miss cooked food.

The Mailman

My mailman is a bear. He's an actual bear that works for the U.S. Postal Service. He wears the uniform. Just the shirt and hat. When you're a hairy animal there's no point in pants.

Sometimes in the winter when I get my mail, it smells like bear. Do you know the smell of a wet dog? Well, I think because my mailman walks on all fours, his paws are constantly wet from the snow and he handles the mail and, oh well.

For Christmas I left him six trout wrapped in newspaper. For a week my lobby smelled like fish and bear.

You Never Know What's Next

Life seems to change all the time. Nothing stays the same. I expect one thing, something else happens.

Last night I thought I would have a quiet night at home to myself. I made some popcorn and sat down to watch Amarcord. It's a movie by Federico Fellini. I'd been wanting to see it for years. Then the ghost of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, came by.

It was awkward because my couch is big so there was extra room for someone to sit down. Plus I had made two big bowls of popcorn. I always over make the popcorn. I'm enthusiastic. But I never eat all the popcorn. And the movie was just starting. Not to mention that Stalin is gregarious, and he plopped right down on the couch, grabbed a handful of popcorn and said, "What are we watching?!"

I told him, "Amarcord." He looked so unhappy and said, "What else have you got?" I said, "Laurel and Hardy?" He got excited and started laughing, so of course I got out and put in the Laurel and Hardy movie. He had so much fun watching the movie that I forgot about my disappointment of not seeing Amarcord or having alone time.

Afterwards we talked. I told him that I'd been feeling depressed by the Chicago winter. He told me that he felt the cruelty he inflicted on many of his countrymen while he was in office was due to his own seasonal affective disorder. He said the relentless snows in St. Petersberg drove him to despair and madness. This culminated in his ordering the assassination of his own doctor, Miron Vovs. He said, "This act of insanity bit me in the ass two months later when I was poisoned and there was no doctor around to save me, and I died...Oh, well, you live and learn."

Insight by Accident

I was walking in my backyard when I fell into a hole that took me to the center of the earth. At least I think it was the center. I fell for a very long time. But sometimes things seem long because of the resistance to what's happening.

So, there I was, sitting on dirt, overlooking an ocean of lava. I remembered a geology class I was required to take in high school where the teacher called this magma. I thought the word had more meaning to me now since I was actually seeing the thing itself.

I felt so tiny amidst this tumultuous sea of fire. It was a good experience because lately I'd been thinking a lot about my problems and this put things in perspective.

Interlude

I was playing guitar in my kitchen. A squirrel came to the ledge by my kitchen window. She tapped on the glass to the time of the rhythm of my playing. I was excited to have a fan, and played the chords more strongly. She began to dance. I was amazed because I'd heard that humans are the only animals that dance to music.

When I finished the song, I opened the window and she came in. I got out some almond butter and put it on a plate and set it on the kitchen table. She helped herself.

While she ate, I made up a song about her:

"She laps up the day, with her tiny bites,
I think of her leaping from tree branches under the pale moon light,
She's Sheila McSquirrely, she lives in a penthouse leafy nest,
and she's my lunch time guest."

Sheila said, "That's amazing that you can make up songs so easily.

I said, "I'm in awe of your ability to climb up and down a tree with just your spiky finger nails."

What Passed By

I sat out on top the hill with my goat, Mr Terrance Strump. I ate a roast beef sandwich. He ate a tin can and a light bulb.

I said, "Today seems like a week. Not in a never ending kind of way. But like it's stretched out with separate rooms without doors."

Mr Strump said, "I've never seen time with divisions except that sometimes its darker than at other times."

Suddenly a storm cloud appeared in the valley below. There were flashes of light and some thunder bellowing inside. A bolt of lightening shot out of the cloud and hit the apple tree. The tree went up in flames.

I said, "I really want some apple pie."

Mr Strump said, "My life is easy because everything is edible."

Daisy Seize came walking by. I said, "Hi, Daisy." Mr Strump bayed.

Daisy Seize said, "Well, what do you know. Evanston's two most handsome men, I knew it was going to be my lucky day." She kept on her way and soon disappeared over the hill.

I said, "Goddamn, she drives me crazy!"

Mr Strump said, "I want to eat her shoes."