Maria Renate's Blog

Gosh, I haven’t touched this thing in ages.  The log, I mean.  Part of the territory that comes with having an aesthetic for a computer.  Two Lents ago, the computer decided to join me in giving up messing around on the internet for Lent.  The computer liked the new sense of quiet and peace so much, it stayed offline for a forgotten number of months.   It bothered me at first.  I get used to listening to Youtube music while I write.  However, along with easy listening comes easy distractions, and I know that more often than not, I wasn’t bringing my writing up to its fullest potential, but my procrastination skills went stratospheric.  Best of all, it never felt like I was wasting time, until the end of an afternoon, when I’d discover I hadn’t done much.  That’s why I gave it up for Lent, except for occasional emails.  I keep thinking that I’ll give up my old beast, this ancient (for a computer) Windows fossil that refuses to connect online except at the most unexpected moments for an unknown amount of time.  I keep thinking that I’ll go out computer shopping, find some fine, slick masterpiece of efficiency that will never do me wrong, will connect online whenever I ask it, and when I’m writing a document, won’t ever playfully hop the space-bar into the middle of an unrelated paragraph and continue my thought there until I “control-z” it back again.  Except that, just when I think that I’m really going to, the little globe image blinks into existence down in the lower right, telling me that my curmudgeonly machine is open for business with the rest of the world, and so I get online, check Schlock Mercenary, watch a Youtube, let my Norton security go to town and install all the updates it pesters me about, and once in a while remember that I have a blog and since I paid for the thing I should write in it.  And thoughts of a new computer fade, because this old cantankerous, 2009 beast, which I acquired as a hand-me-down (albeit unused) for my first year of college, still more or less serves me.  I’ve got a few miscellaneous stickers on it.  I’ve got photographs of trees and a butterfly from when I took it to Barry’s Bay, Ontario.  I’ve got two pencil illustrations I drew on scrap paper from even earlier years, when I worked in a convenience store with my second oldest brother, and during our downtime, out of view of the security camera, we talked endlessly about the story I write to this day, about the adventures of Galdir the elf soldier and Tal Alonspike, and Ashkin the ranger.   This computer I write on is old, cranky, quirky, slow, and it fits my fingers.  I have literally never written the story on anything else, and I feel like my hands might mutiny if I forced them to type on an unfamiliar keyboard.  And I appreciate not being able to go online.  When the beast does connect, I appreciate that too, and try not to waste the opportunity (although, of course, I do a little.  The internet is fun, after all) because I literally never know when the dreaded red “X” is going to take the place of the tiny globe, and I am cut off from the universe!  Except, of course, I am not.  And the less I am online, the less cut off from the universe I actually am.  Because while our lives are online these days, it’s good to remember that our lives are not the universe.  If the internet broke forever tomorrow, we would all be heartily inconvenienced, and I hope and pray that does not happen, because people will most certainly die.  But we wouldn’t all die, and maybe even fewer people will die than estimated, because God runs the world, whether or not it’s online.  God is often inscrutable, but never cruel.

I appreciate this computer’s foibles.  It is imperfect, like me, and it doesn’t work the way I want it to, like the rest of the world.  If it gained an AI intelligence, I don’t think I’d even mind it at all.  Because I think it would be a good person, even if it was a grumpy, old person that wouldn’t oblige my every whim.  It is good to be denied.  It took me only a little while to appreciate it’s inverted gift, although I’ve never tried to put it into words.  But this computer gave me back some time.  Time that I would have used online, except I couldn’t go online.  So I read books, I watched documentaries, I went for bike rides and walks, I saw the sky, I saw roads and fields and forested streams.  I saw hummingbirds and ravens.  I met people.  I saw mountains and the sea.  I watched angels Open the Flower over a desert.  I watched the sandhill cranes of Earth flying with the dawnlight turning their wings to gold, and heard their music.

I treasure this old computer, for relics are meant to be treasured, because the irony is that, if it could have told me only one thing over it’s years of service and thousands of miles I’ve carried it thither and yon, is that the internet, while wonderful, is not everything.  That everything is far more wonderful and that’s why I write this small tribute to it, in gratitude for it’s service, in this uncertain moment of internet connection.  Because connection is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I should know.  My computer became a monk to prove it.

Come Holy Ghost, be an ax in my hand

Break the ice, snap it asunder with

Report like thunder, gunfire in No Man’s land

A hundred years ago between the trenches

Eating tear channels down Europe’s old face;

Worm tunnels bored under skins of dying

Forests chewed by beetles into dust dry

Orange pine needles strewn beneath grey branches.

Awaiting a single spark, careless cigarette tossed

By a road, and ignite a mountain to

Fire entire range into one ruby spire

So high the pinions of seraphim smoke.

“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord,” they roar,

‘Tween sky pillars; blue angels, six-winged, soar.

The policeman saw the unicorn on a Tuesday.  He would remember that.

It had not been an exceptional Tuesday.  It was like Monday, only a little harder.  A little harder to force himself out of bed and hit the incessant, urgent command of his alarm, buzzing angrily in his ear.  A little harder, but not by much.  Coffee helped.  A second cup, no breakfast, saw him out the door and onto the dim orange-lit streets…

[…M-1.  11-99…]

…Sky eastwards behind street lights winking out was the barest gray, a few of the brighter late stars hung visible in its zenith even through the light pollution.  He drove with the window down.  The air was fresh and cool, scented by night rain and wet lawns.  A dog barked from behind a dark fence at his passing car, startling him.

The station was awake, as always.  Maybe not as populated as it would be in a few hours, but all the same, wakeful, its florescent hall lights murmuring electrical songs to themselves.  Its narrow back halls, carpeted and close, muffled even the heaviest boots.  He wore his civvy clothes to work, and his shoes were just his sneakers.  Slightly stale air exhaled into his face as he opened the door.  His sneakers made no sound at all and drifted him downstairs like a ghost.

“God damn!”

“Hey.”

“I almost had a heart attack, D.  How do you walk so goddamn quiet?”

“Sorry.”

“Seriously.  You spook.”

D. brushed past the officer from graveyard shift and entered the locker room; the door swung shut on the other’s mutters. A small silver missile bounced off his head.

“Ow.”  He blinked at the candy by his shoes.

“Fore!”

“Barry, didn’t your mom teach you it’s not polite to throw stuff?”

“Don’t you like Snickers?”

“Not at that range.”

“You had coffee for breakfast again.  Snickers give strength.  Says so on the commercial.”

“I’ve only had two cups.  I’m not even awake.”

“I can tell.  Eat the Snickers.”

D. ate it.  Barry rambled on companionably, alternatively cursing his long boots as he struggled to get them fitting right.

It was a regular morning ritual:  the chocolate melted on D.’s tongue and the caramel gummed enjoyably between his molars while he put on his own uniform with its boots, and belt with its share of paraphernalia.  The gun was just one thing to remember to include.  There was a lot to forget.  Taser, spare ammo clips, radio, cellphone, baton, etc., etc.  Fully loaded, his belt weighed thirty pounds alone.  That was not even counting the bulletproof vest and his other bits of gear he stashed everywhere else.  Last of all to go on was the shirt.  It was not as easy as it had been to meet the monthly quota of speeding tickets, since the new safety shirts had been issued.

Silently, Barry donned his, squinting just a fraction.  Enough convey the worn-out gag:  if an Arvada motorcycle cop stood in too bright a light, he’d stop traffic by blinding drivers.  The shirts were a green-yellow shade of painfully eye-catching neon.  They almost glowed in the dark.  The color clashed angrily against the black of the rest of their uniforms.  Suited up finally, all their respective bells and whistles in place, they clumped out as the rest of graveyard shift came drifting in.  The locker rooms grew heavy with the smell of sweaty socks, the rattle of showers, and the murmur of low conversations made loud by tile and metal surfaces.

In the hall, the close, wooly walls drew in and the two officers strode down to the meeting room.  The two officers unconsciously going quicker despite each having grown heavier by their equipment, because the halls did that: forcing the building’s inhabitants to go briskly, like liquids forced through narrow tubes.

“Hamster maze,” mumbled Barry.

D. gave a brief nod in agreement, but there was nothing to say. In the meeting room there was a table set up with coffee and a selection of teas. He felt hungry, so he had another cup.  He made a face.

“When was this made?  Last week?”

“Some people eat breakfast.  It’s considered a normal thing.  You know, like what normal people do.  You ever consider trying out for the normalcy test?  Eating actual food when you wake up would a good start.”

“Snickers aren’t food.”

“Neither is coffee.”

“We don’t allow drugs, but that doesn’t mean we don’t allow addicts.” He sipped the lousy coffee cheerfully.

“Boy, don’t we ever.” Barry shook his head. “I don’t know how you got to be such a big guy.  Did your mom duct tape you to a wall and force-funnel feed you pureed veggies?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything except brown liquid.”

“Now I’m just ashamed of you.”

The captain and the rest of day shift rambled in by twos and threes.  The hourly morning meeting went by much as Monday’s had.  There was a notice out from Broomfield Police for a white male in his late twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, who was a suspect regarding a stolen black ’98 Honda.

Captain Chatfield gave his daily pep talk.

D. listened with half an ear. Chatfield, hailing from NYPD’s Finest in days of yore, still had a distinct Lower Manhattan accent in a voice that sounded like rocks rolling off a dump truck into a gravel pit; a taxi driver in an action flick. The kind that drove around like a nut, talking like a TV, playing rap too loud and being eternally chased off set by overworked motorcycle cops…

[…Unit M-1…11-99…]

“Smith!”

D. jumped.

“Wake up, I’m talking to you.  Not you Pat, the other Smith.  The Smith with that D. in front on his name tag.  The Smith that is visibly not paying attention to my dulcet voice.  The Smith that’s gone to sleep with his eyes open.  That Smith.”

D. Smith grinned sheepishly under a chorus of snickers.

“Didn’t anyone put at least five cups of coffee in this guy before they let him in?  Come on, people.  At least try and pretend to be professional when you’re right in front of me.   Now sir, the M1, the only, Dante Smith, you are going to work Wadsworth and 72nd Avenue today, all day.  What?  No hug?  I thought you chuckleheads loved 72nd, but maybe I’m thinking of our resident kangaroo.”

More snickers.  Gary “Cherrybomb” Shericomb, a rangy officer who seemed to consist entirely of long arms and huge ropy legs, gave a short bark of laughter.  He was Arvada’s quasi-official bicycle cop and rode in triathlons.

Chatfield continued.  “All right, that wraps it up everybody.  Get out and play.  Remember, be Positive Police People, and all the rest of that crap I didn’t bother to read off the memo and will sum up for you here: Respectful, Caring, and Careful.  Friendly smiles, not scary shark-teeth ones, no cussing in front of kids or grandmas and no throwing sand or running over little yap-dogs.  I’m looking at you, Baker.”

Barry spread his hands and tried out an innocently wounded expression.

The morning went on.  Eventually, D. Smith did get a breakfast at McDonald’s, ate it too fast, and went back to “working” Wadsworth Boulevard, the largest north-south artery of the city of Arvada.

This went as far north as Wyoming and between cities was Highway 285.  It continued south only forty or so miles, through the townships of Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Littleton…until finally the Rockies crept out into the prairie and ensnared it among red sandstone and hogback hills west of Chatfield Reservoir and travelers were forced to disembark for other roads creeping along the knobby boulder-strewn skirts of the mountains.  Wadsworth ended its life at the doors of Lockheed Martin, which were not open for drop-in visitors. Wadsworth was the busiest road in Arvada after Interstate 70, which rolled through the south end of town going east-west.

D. Smith actually liked working it. He always got off working it feeling like exhaust fumes were coated to his tongue like plaque. But he was, as Chatfield had pointed out, the M1.  Motorcycle One.  Wadsworth was the most happening street in town.  His job was to catch the inattentive, drunk, and/or lousy drivers, and be the best at it.  So he was.  He made four peoples’ bad day even worse before noon.

Afternoon, he went to 72nd Avenue.  There was a lot of 72nd.  It went east a huge amount of miles, and ended west out near in developments under Arvada Reservoir, under the foothills.  But the part of 72nd on his beat was the newest stretch, between Wadsworth and Kipling, in the middle of town where it sliced through farmland.  The farmland was being developed, but there was still a wildlife refuge and park on the south side.  On the north side was a farm with gigantic horses between the two canals, Croke and Farmers Highline.  There would always be wilderness around those two waterways.  They were brought water down from Clear Creek in the mountains to farmlands far out east on the prairie.  They also brought coyotes, deer, coons, and foxes.  An occasional bear would wander through and remind a staid civilization the true mountains were a bare seven miles away, rising in blue waves of evergreen above tawny gold hills, and grey housing developments that ate golden grass like mold.

D. Smith had parked his silver Harley at a favored spot, a bit of road that would, some point in the near future, unroll down through a small horse property. It wasn’t yet. Down below were trees and horses.  After Wadsworth, it was sweet along 72nd, even on this blue fire August day.  The air smelled faintly of hay and horses with the wind was right…

[…11-99…I’ve been…]

…The numbers on his laser gun kept dropping radically as drivers coming east spotted him glowing.  Nobody was driving with their head in the clouds enough to miss him.  He could, technically, pull any one of these ones over, for toeing forty-five in a forty mile per hour zone.  But it was grown into such a pretty day…besides which he was hungry.  He’d skipped out on a lunch break earlier, which he was beginning to regret.  If he caught somebody, he’d be out here for at least another half an hour.

It was so hot.  His head, in his white helmet, felt like it was boiling his brain.  It occurred to him that B. Baker might be on to something in his morning rants against D. Smith’s coffee-for-breakfast routine.  Drinking so much caffeine lately was doing him no favors in Colorado’s dry altitude.  The sky was neon blue and pristine, without a cloud.  Usually big thunderheads would begin building anvil-head monsters about now, but not today.  The sun beamed down on the city of Arvada unfiltered.

The wind died.  The glossy leaves of the cottonwoods hung motionless in green and silver.  The cars disappeared.  In D. Smith’s headset, the soft whisper of Dispatch and the murmurs of fellow officers grew fuzzy and indistinct.  Behind his black sunglasses his lids blinked away sweat.  His hands dropped the laser gun into his lap while he waited for the next batch of cars.  The wait grew longer.  He felt himself growing warmer.  A dangerous warmth.  Sparks began to fly over his vision.

“Oh God,” he whispered.

He was getting too hot.  He could get heat stroke out here if he didn’t cool off.  The sparks intensified, and it occurred to him that was a stupid conclusion to come to, now.  He already had heat stroke, or heat exhaustion at least.  He felt the laser gun slide out of his fingers, and vaguely heard its impact on the concrete.  But the sound was indistinct, and he could no longer hear anybody in his headset.  How would anybody know he was in trouble if they couldn’t hear him?

[…this is…Unit M-1…can anyone hear me…?]

He reached up to touch his headset, call someone, but his hands instead grabbed his helmet and pulled it off.  The sweat adhered his skull to its padding, but it finally came off, and he clutched it, sucking in air that suddenly felt a whole lot cooler.

But the pulsing sparks didn’t leave.  He stared at them.  Distractedly feeling they were pretty, even though his brain was screaming at him to get off his motorcycle before he passed out.  Another part of his brain was making a note that there still weren’t any cars on 72nd.  No cars at all, going either direction.  No bicyclists, no pedestrians.  Just him, Officer D. Smith, alone on his motorcycle, and when he followed the laser gun to the concrete nobody was going to know.

[…he-help…I’m…]

His brain told him this, but now even his brain’s voice was grown muffled and he couldn’t muster himself to try and sort out its commands.

D. Smith stared ahead, a sharp sting of vomit in his mouth. The lady stared back. It was a scruffy lady.  It stood straight on two legs, in big battered boots, dressed in scruffy patched jeans and a t-shirt dark with sweat under the armpits and around the neck.  Over the t-shirt it wore a faded safety vest.  It carried a clipboard in one thin brown arm.  It was possibly a lady, from the look of the hand gripping the board; the clothes were unflattering.  But it had a graceful long brown neck rising from its thin square shoulders, ridged with a tawny trailing mane.  Its head was like a deer’s, or a very delicate horse’s, with huge brown eyes examining him with a wise but cryptic gaze.  And of course, it had the horn, a slender spiraled spear like polished chrome jutting at least sixteen inches from its head, so shiny it reflected the blue of the sky and caught the sun along each of its dazzling whorls.

“Are you all right?”

[…I’m shot…]

…The lady was talking to him.  It made as much sense as anything.  Since there was a lady, it might as well talk.

“Yes.  I’m fine,” he heard his mouth say, on autopilot.  His brain recanted and said, “Idiot,” meaning himself, or his mouth.  Unfortunately he said it aloud.  He was too hot.  He knew he was too hot.  All the same, he was aware of ice hitting him in the face as he watched his reflection in her liquid eyes.

However the lady only flicked her ears.  “Are you all right?”

“No.” the admission of weakness slipped past his line of sanity.

Something that must never be done to a citizen.  He was big and strong, or must appear so.  He was the shield.  To which his brain pointed out, “She’s a lady, not a citizen.  What are you shielding her from?” She’s not a lady, he argued.  She’s a girl and I’m hallucinating.  “If you are hallucinating a girl as a lady, you need help.”

The lady reached out and plucked his sunglasses off his face.  Unfiltered sunlight stabbed his corneas as the world lost its customary dark tint and became washed out.  The sparks intensified.

“Hey!”

She was still there, still a lady.  She tucked the clipboard under her arm, and with her other hand, pulled out a small bottle of water from a pocket.  She unscrewed the cap, and stepped closer.  Unconsciously, he tried to draw away, but he was still on his motorcycle and it tipped.  He grabbed at the handlebars, and his helmet flew off into the grass.  He got it under control, trying to decide what he should do first, go after his helmet, use his handheld to call in, or yell at the lady-girl, when he realized she was standing right next to him, her soft nose an inch from his.  Her breath smelled like mint.

“Get away—

But she tipped the bottle over her shining horn and its drops shattered and broke off its tip and spattered over his head.  It had to be two degrees above freezing.  It rolled down under his safety vest, bulletproof vest, t-shirt and spine, and numbed him to his bone marrow in creeping Arctic shock.  It was felt like pure Winter, bottled and liquefied and poured down his head in a chilly baptism.  He couldn’t remember ever becoming so cold so fast in his life.

“Yow!  Jesus God, lady!  What the hell?”

While he glared at her, shivering, she walked around to his other side, went searching in the grass, and retrieved his helmet.  She handed it to him.  Dumbly he took it.  She turned around and walked away, leaving him sitting there on his motorcycle, his teeth rattling from adrenaline and cold…

[…11-99…oh God…help me…where are…]

…He watched her amble across 72nd, climb the bank, overgrown with alfalfa, up onto the canal path, and disappear over the rim.  The cars began to come back, and several buzzed by doing fifty, slamming on the brakes belatedly as they saw him.  But he didn’t see them.  He sat exactly where he was, staring vacantly at the spot where it, she, the lady, had disappeared.

[…Dispatch…11-99…where is…?]

He sat there for twelve minutes without moving, and finally reached up and put his helmet on.  The comforting voices of his people were in his ear again.

[…I’m fucking shot!  Oh my God I’m shot help me help…somebody…]

He touched a finger to his head set, his voice sounding distant and tinny in his ears.

“Unit M-1, Charley One,”

The Harley under his legs snarled into life and he pulled out onto 72nd Avenue, and revved up.

The day passed him by.  He spoke and was spoken to.  He pulled people over and wrote them tickets.  He filed his reports and filed out paperwork.  He listened to B. Baker’s jokes and even laughed.  He changed in the locker room, unpeeling all his gear, showering, dressing, and walked out the door of the station, one more anonymous citizen on his way home from work.

It wasn’t till evening, lying in bed with the screen window open wide, he turned his head on the pillow and stared out at a few flecks of stars hung in the cobalt sky above the black trees.  He blinked once.  Twice.  And looked around his room.  He studied his furniture as if it was someone else’s, and he had awoken in a stranger’s house.  How had he come here?  Hadn’t he fainted in the road?  Had someone brought him home?

He couldn’t remember anything after that moment when the lady had walked away from him.  But he thought about it, and after some rummaging, his brain brought out a few gray out-of-focus pictures that said that the rest of the day had passed much as Monday had.

[…Help me…I’m….11-99…]

He had done the same things, said the same things, heard the same things.  Tuesday had been exactly the same as Monday.  So exactly alike it scared him.  Monday, and the entirety of his Tuesday floated before his eyes like a reflection of gray sky in water, filled with indistinct shapes.  In comparison was that inexplicable encounter on 72nd Avenue he had no name for.  So bewildering.  So strange.  So enigmatic.  So utterly beyond his ken, something had come and gone, but glanced into his eyes at it flew by.

He had looked after her, feeling the lady’s strange gift seep through his skin, snake down his veins and arteries into his muscles and internal organs, crystallizing every nerve ending, coating his bones, until finally it went creeping under his ribs and constricted around his heart, causing every beat to become more labored and painful.  Even as his brain refused to name her, and his mouth refused to call her, his heart slammed rebelliously into the bars of his ribs with such force it felt like he had taken a 9mm slug to the chest at point blank.  His lungs sucked at air through a painfully tightened throat, and his eyes stung.  He had sat there on his motorcycle after she left, stunned and stricken.  Feeling as if his life was pumping out of his chest, dark and red, flowing down and staining his godawful green glowshirt, dribbling down his pants and into his tall boots…

[…Unit…M-1…p-please…oh my…God…officer down…I…]

…Gone.  Gone like Monday.  Gone, and he had been unable to comprehend what she was, explaining away the evidence of his eyes even as they saw what his heart already knew:  he should have followed her.  To the edge of the road.  Or the edge of the canal.  Or the edge of the town.  Or the edge of the world.  The destination, or the journey, were irrelevant, when the only thing that mattered was to keep her in his sights.  Gone.  Like every other Tuesday before which he had let slip by him.  Gone like the daylight.  Gone like the torch blue sky.  Gone like the scent of clover and summer grass.  Gone like childhood and every other beginning.  Gone like a comet, come briefly to drag its fiery tail across barren skies, already swinging out again on a ten-thousand year orbit.  There would never come another Tuesday in his lifetime in which she would return.

Gone like his first unicorn.

Abruptly he kicked off the blanket and after sitting on the edge of his bed in thought, he got up and wrapped up in a robe.  He made a cup of coffee and went and sat outside on his patio.  The savory sweet aroma filled his nostrils, complimenting pleasantly evening smells of mowed lawn and sprinklers.  Beyond his backyard was the bike trail, and he could hear the creek mumbling to itself around the tangled roots of its shadowing trees.  The cottonwoods clattered softly and the dusk breeze was heavy green with the delicious earth reeks of mossy water and willow.

Dante sat outside for a long time, sipping his coffee and looking up at the stars, winking like dim conspirators.

He laughed softly, once.

[…I’m…sh-shot…]

Again, I don’t really know anything.  It’s just my usual fog, out of which occasionally some missile hurtles, and smacks me into writing about it.  I shall probably make sweeping generalizations of the sort that had my professors crawling the walls, back in the day, when other people had standards I was supposed to make an effort of meeting.  I usually did make the effort; the alternative was facing down some Literature professor foaming at the mouth over some general thing I had blithely written as if it was 24 karat truth, instead of being what it usually was: a general swathe of buffalo turds dotting something I expected to get an A on.

That being said, some stuff I was taught in school did stick.  I would like to say that my brain was like fly-paper, which I know from a head-on experience is very sticky.  Except that would be a more than flattering definition of my brain (the same brain that was responsible for keeping the skull it was sitting in from colliding with unpleasant dangling objects like fly-paper, and not being all that amazing at it.) The truth is, my brain was more like the flies:  I was generally everywhere, blindly bumping into things, humming happily, a nail-gnawing distraction to all that knew me, scattered, until I landed upon the Fly-Paper of Knowledge, and was somewhat stuck. I’m not saying all the flies got there, but the fly-paper did, after a while, accumulate a collection of writhing bugs.  To take a good metaphor even farther down a bad road, my Lit. profs chased me around with a rolled up wad of fly-paper, and smacked my scatterbrain into submission, or at least, got most of it largely clumped into one place.  Which I guess is about the best that can be hoped for from an education.

One thing I did stick to is a profound respect for words.  It was something I might have had instinctively before I went to school.  I certainly liked words, playing with them, creating with them.  But what words are in themselves?  Language?  That wasn’t something I thought about.  I’ve been taught one thing and another about words, by different teachers who hailed from different modes of thought.  One side focused on the Logos of words, the Divine Word, Who became flesh and was named Jesus.  The Word of words.  The Catholic teaching is that the truth is everyone’s right, because all truth eventually must lead back to God, its source.  It’s a right that can be revoked, under certain circumstances, but it’s why lying, even so-called “white” lies, are serious.  Lying, and calumny (telling a truth with the intention of harm), have another effect.  The language itself is corrupted, because language is the conveyor of truth.  The other side of the Literature fence focuses upon words themselves, any words, and the way we draw meaning from them.  The biggest rule of thumb (on this side, which is why these two schools of thought have been waging a Cold War against each other at least since the invention of the printing press) is that language is arbitrary.  A word, in and of itself, any word, is absolutely one hundred percent meaningless in and of itself.  We attach meaning to words, but that meaning only sticks to that word in one language.  In any other language, they can have similar, but often quite different words for “horse,” “pig,” “cow,” or “serendipitous.”  Often, there is no exact translation, especially for more subtle meanings, hence the old saw: “poetry is lost in translation.” It really is.   Words do not mean what we think we mean, unless we think we mean them.  Like that sentence, if you just put one word one too many times in the same sentence, it’s hard to keep track of what it’s saying. Because it’s all in our heads.  Which leads up to the final interesting thing I stuck to: the power of language to change things.  Moreover, the more something is subjected to language (discussion: yakking or writing), the more powerful that thing becomes.   Words in themselves have no objective reality.  But they shape it, because they shape the thoughts in our heads.

So finally I might be rolling around to the point and the title of this article.  What does it mean to de-personalize a person?  How do you do it?  Well, it’s very simple, really.  You say that that person, is not a person.  Like lying, it gets easier with practice.  Until after a while, you don’t even think it’s lying anymore, and you look at somebody who says it is as if they were bonkers.  Because from where you’re standing, it’s only Gospel truth.  The language, see, has become corrupted.  Lie about anything long enough and hard enough, and eventually the language will shape itself along crooked lines, and it becomes not only easy to speak lies, it becomes almost impossible to speak truth, words that used to mean one thing have come to mean something else entirely.

Take the word “cop.” A shortening of the Brit’s word “copper,” in referral to old style officer’s copper something or others.  Copper toed boots, maybe, or buttons, or badges, or decorative ballistas for all I know.  Not sure what sort of stuff they wear across the Pond these days.  Just take the word “cop.” It can be used affectionately, but except in certain situations, it is more often used disparagingly, as a term of dislike and distrust.  It’s short and easy to remember, so it will probably be in fashion for as long as English is spoken.  It is a shorter and more precise word than “enemy,” and is most preferred by persons of certain character who desire to de-personalize cops.  It’s a very tribal thing, this of distrust anything that is Other than the tribe.  Very ingrained into the human psyche, because on the bone marrow level it means survival.   But I’m going to out and make a broad sweeping generalization right here though: tribal instincts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  There will always come a certain point where what you’re told and what you do becomes a choice, and what you say and what you are becomes either one thing, or another thing, because that is how language works.   Someone can choose to call Police good, or evil, not because the police are either, but because the someone speaking is trying to change the language into a certain shape.  Remember how arbitrary language is.   The police are good.  That is truth.  But if it is said that the police are bad, if it is said often enough, then the language gets bent and looking at truth is like looking at a warped mirror at a carnival.   It’s a reflection, but not a true one.   An instinct, or upbringing, or culture, cannot in the end excuse an evil choice, even if the choice was only to start calling a certain type of person a certain word.   Not because that word was accurate of the person, but because that is the first step toward making hate stick to him, until all that people can see is the hate, and nothing else.  Like flies on fly paper.

It is always easier to bring battle against things, rather than people.  Badges, rather than Boys.  Droids and robots and aliens and everything that is other, different, stranger-danger than the status quo of a certain group.  As one thinker liked to spin it, it is unfamiliarity that breeds contempt.  Especially if you don’t want it to become familiar.

It isn’t murder to kill an it.

Book 3 went somewhere else on me.  It happens.  I’m just happily typing away, and then suddenly, BAM, something happens that I did not plan or foresee or expect or have any inkling of, yet, it makes a weird kind of sense.  Ashkin, of course.  Because it’s always Ashkin.  This is deep in the bowels of Book 3, but I like to operate this blog under the assumption that nobody reads it, it’s just a writing exercise for me. Since nobody has read Book 2, I don’t know how much of a “spoiler” this could be anyway.  Everything in here that could be called a spoiler is just common knowledge to me that I’ve known for absolute years, just haven’t got around to mentioning, because it’s such obvious stuff.

HWAET.  Here’s what I scribbled in a notebook today, and am transcribing onto the computer, albeit, hopefully with better spelling.

There’s also this new development in Ashkin: did not see that coming.  But Ashkin is not a ranger anymore.  He’s now wholly the person whom he never could fully subdue: his shadow that is part of his blood and bone. The assassn who never trusted the elves even though he loved them, the dangerous, friendless lone wolf, going his own way from the Silent House, not because he is good, but because he is wild, and not even they could tame him.  The anti-hero has entered the Story.  And yet, I’m seeing what Tal sees: that there is a necissity for the assassin.  THough this part of Ashkin is also Ashkin, and in a curious way it would be murder if the Ranger had succeeded in killing him, and the Ranger, in order to remain a ranger, must not commit murder.  Not even of his darkest self.  So Tal saw the alternative.  That for now, the Ranger must lose to his shaodw, because when his shadow, the assassin, kills the ranger, he is only fulfilling his own nature.

Tal sees also, as in a glass darkly, that the road will indeed get crooked and said and the end may not be what is expected.  So sad and dark that the Ranger will get lost.  But the Assassin cannot lose himself in shadows that thick.  So in a counter-intuitive way, by slaying his better half, Ashkin is saving himself.  Perhaps the Ranger will be able to come back, once the Assassin has completed his task.

And what task would that be?  No less than the slaying of Twist, who is arguably also Mikado Dragon Father, for the two are now so closely tangled together there is no hope of killing one without ending the other.  Ashkin the Ranger could not do it, in the end, because in the end he will learn that Mikado is his tragic father, who lost his wife and baby son to a vengeful demon-witch, long years earlier.  The Ranger could not do it.  Yet in a way I do not foresee the only one who will is Ashkin.  So the Ranger had to die and give way to a more ruthless aspect of himself.  The Assassin, who will without hesitation or remorse, do what needs to be done.

And so Xixor’s promise to Mikado regarding the vision of Ashkin in the looking crystal will also become true, as well as the slifkin king’s explanation that Ash is not Mikado’s son.  That is also true.  Son is Mikado’s son.  Ashkin the Ranger is Galdir’s son.  Ashkin the Assassin, however, is nobody’s son.  Derran was only his foster-father.

It’s iffy morality stuff like this that I absolutely hate in fantasy novels.  Gah!  The long slippery slide down to mediocrity has begun.

He’s always been a bit of a mystery to me, that lonely knight.  The traitor who allowed Twist into the world.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I forget that I’ve never told anybody about the Forsaken, and that his story is the background for all the others, but only now, literally, am I finding out who he actually is.  The answer surprised me, which it shouldn’t have, because it makes perfect sense.  His story begins several thousand years ago, or possibly longer, in the desert called unimaginatively by me the “Sandlands.”  It probably has a better, more archaic and dignified name in some made-up language, but I just haven’t the energy to waste time on that, or remember what I chose if I did.  I have a horrible habit of making up words for nouns and pronouns, and then forgetting what I decided.  Sandland is the first one that stuck, and obviously, it’s a sandy land.  Why not?  It was also the borders of Feyla land, which stretched north from the desert over the Grass west of the Nur River, and the moorlands on the east banks.  Feyla preferred open country for the riding of their dragons, and their floating cities, and they were lovers of sunlight and storms without trees or mountains to hem them in.  By contrast the Elves, their close kin, preferred woody forests and lonely peaks, and loved best to be under moonlight and stars.  Elves were healers, Feyla were craftsmen.

So.  Into the Sandland one day some Men went.  New arrivals, they had not yet met Feyla or Elves, and as it happened, Feyla were the first ones these particular men encountered.  The encounter did not end well, and one of the Feyla was shot off his mount.  There are probably lots of good reasons why the knight’s dragon, Golden Delver, could have come to the rescue of his master.  Perhaps because he was astonished to find creatures so similar to feyla, yet unlike, because they were terribly afraid of him, and their fear disturbed him, for he was a gentle dragon.  Perhaps he thought that by leaving them alone for a bit, they would get over their fear.  They did, but not in the way he, or any of the feyla patrol, could have imagined.  For they took the knight they had captured, and brought him into their small temple, where they had an image of their god painted on the wall.  There, they bound him to a post, and hewed off his beautiful wings, and nailed them to the wall under the image, as an offering to their god.  Then they brought him back out to his dragon and fellow knights.   After an act like that, the village could have been easily flattened, for it was only a cluster of mud houses, and the people in them were not much better.  But the captain of the patrol, when he saw how his knight was brought forth, stayed the others, and even Golden Delver did not stir to damage even a rickety fence.  For the people of the village had put the knight upon their best animal, a white donkey brushed until he shone, and be-decked with red tassels and golden bells.  The children and young maids ran before him, singing and strewing flowers and leaves before the donkey’s hooves, and in front of them walked a papery ancient priest, the very same who had wielded the ax, who was shouting hosannas at the top of his cracked voice.  Behind the donkey came the entire village, similarly singing and shouting.  They brought the knight to Golden Delver and gently helped him dismount, though he was in such pain and loss of blood he fainted and they laid him on a bed of their own cloaks spread on the ground.  And then the priest went to Golden Delver, bent on his knees, and kissed the huge claws, blessing the dragon and his rider.  Men and women came forward and did likewise, weeping and laughing, and they brought forth for the dragon to see several beautiful young girls.  It was explained very seriously that one of these maids would have surely been sacrificed to their god, so that he would bring back the sun for another year, except the old priest had, several months earlier, been praying for some sign of the god’s favor that perhaps this year a child would not have to be given up.  He had sacrificed six doves, and about to sacrifice the seventh, it spoke to him in a human voice, telling him to lead those as wished to a desert oasis, and there the god would provide a sacrifice that would save the people forever.  Since their god was reputed to often speak through the mouths of birds or snakes, the priest took the dove at its word, and went though the town spreading the good news, until he got thrown out for heresy, but a large handful of people followed him.  In the desert, the months had crept by, and hope was dwindling, until sadly the priest had decided that very day to sacrifice the seventh dove, which he had spared and grown fond of.  But in the act of wielding the knife, he had seen the sparkle of dragon scales and feyla armor, and knew the god had provided, and rejoicing, he had let the bird fly free.  That very dove, which now sat cozily on the tip of Golden Delver’s ear, had flown into his knight’s face, startling him so that he grew unbalanced, and the arrow had tipped him from his saddle.   Out of pity, and because the patrol didn’t know how to dissuade these poor people from such simple, good faith in a cruel god, the feyla went home, taking the injured knight with them.

Well this should be interesting.  Tal and Ashkin are actually on their way down to the Netherworld and the edge of the Void, just like I had hoped long ago, but had had no notion of how they’d accomplish it.  Magic is so handy.  It’s the cure-all of every problem in fantasy…yet, I don’t like using it.  It doesn’t allow for any “why?” So I couldn’t just toss Tal and Ash down to the depths higgledy-piggledy.  Fantasy is like the real world: you can use magic, but there’s got to be reasons for it, and a place where it came from, and something which makes it what it is.  In their case, I guess it could be called “grace,” because that’s the closest equivalent I have.  Grace is magic.  It’s the life of God at work in the world.  If that isn’t the definition of real magic, magic has no definition, and what cannot be defined does not exist.  Even angels can be defined.  The only one who escapes definition to this law is God, because He made the law.  So, if you want to write about grace in a fantasy world, you call it magic, because God lives there too.  I’ve never liked the whole notion of wizards spewing “magic” out of their wands, fingertips, beards, etc.  The closest I’ve come is Oonaleena (or Oonala.  Whatever) and her bowl of water and Ashkin’s blood, and her father’s inchwalla, a soul-stone.  That was an exception, I think, because of Oonaleena’s background and her witchy grandmothers, and even then, she prayed.  I don’t think she was praying to a demon.

But the notion that magic is a quantifiable stuff has always repulsed me, except when it’s in an obviously hilarious setting, like one of Pratchett’s escapades.  On the opposite side of the spectrum, I’ve never cared for fantasy books that take it for absolute granted: like it was dirt, (which is not common, we just think it is).  Unicorns are magic, elves are magic…etc.  Overall, when I have something obviously magic, like Mikado’s armor, it’s in a negative sense.  The armor makes him strong, undying, unkillable.  But magic in that sense extracts an ugly price.  The armor, so far as magic goes, is like a parody, a corrupted reflection of grace.  In short, it’s sin.  And sin is death and a tragedy.  Always.

I would like to save Mikado, because I created him, and what creator does not love their creations?  There are scraps of useless writing I still save in hopes that it may prove useful, but actually only proves that I am a hoarder at heart.  Mikado, if I am to remain true to who he is, may not get a happy ending.  I know that Tolkien, which I haplessly and hopelessly emulate, wrote about the Eucatastrophe as the pinnacle of what true fantasy must always attempt to achieve.  The happily ever after is a more serious thing than it sounds.  But to achieve that eucatastrophe, not everybody in the story gets to ride off into the sunset.  The dragon has to be slain.  Mikado knew that before I did.

What happens next?  I’ve no idea.  The last chapter is as far as I’ve written, literally.  Whatever’s waiting down at the edge of the Void is as much a mystery to me as them.  I’ve a notion, but only what I’ve been told.  I’ve never been there myself. What is actually there will be a surprise.  Possibly good, probably not.

The edge of the Void is the edge of the world.  Beyond it, is not void, but that’s the closest word I could come to for outer space.  It’s area, but so huge, so borderless, so apparently empty, cold and unfriendly, lifeless and hostile.  Twist came from there?  It’s hard to say.  He certainly came from that direction, but whether the Void spawned him is up for debate.  The void is so vast it might not even have noticed a worm as small as Twist.  Twist perhaps attacked the living world of elves and men not because he is big and evil, but because in comparison to the universe, he’s an unremarkable bug.  Because he is not the ultimate source of all evil, evil doesn’t have a source except in the human heart choosing lesser goods over greater.  Twist is, in his lowly essence, a germ.  And not a very interesting germ at that.

So enter the unicorns.  My personal totems for the sacraments.  Christ’s healing for a stricken-sick world, be it fantastical or no.

Well, since I’m more or less living here, I should probably mention something about it.  Especially since the blurb at the very end of the book says I’m in Colorado buried in chickens and guinea pigs and relatives.  Or something.  Well, I’m not in Colorado buried in anything.  I got tired of the place and left.  I’m in Sequim, pronounced like “squid” to the uninitiated, Washington, largely buried in cats.  The cats came with the house that the room is in, and they are neighborly and affectionate creatures, and since I have no allergies to raise Cain, I am happy with them.  Not in my room.  I’ve declared that off limits, just because their hair is venturesome.

As far as inhabitants go, I’ve rather liking Sequim.  I didn’t know I’d end up here.  Port Angeles was the initial dot on the map where I decided that my trip would end, but wouldn’t you know it, my very first night at the end of the road I actually spent in Sequim.  Port Angeles is a fun town, but after weeks on my own on the road, I found it a tad overwhelming, and gravitated out back to farmland where I was more comfortable.  As usual, I didn’t have any exact notion of where I’d be spending the night.  I aimed for a state park, but ended up in an RV park near the John Wayne marina.  If you’re in a tent, it’s pricey, but it was getting too dark and the folks were nice, so I stayed.  In the morning I was up before dawn and found that state park, where I had breakfast and wrote a letter which I never ended up sending because of an interesting phone conversation with my mother.  I should mention Marlyn Nelson before I go on.  He is, I believe, the very first person to welcome me.  Only nineteen years old, and a sailor, so I was very honored.  I cooked my dinner with him and watched the sunset over Sequim Bay.  He’s a quiet sort, being dead for seventy-two years will do that to a person, but a good listener.  He died at Pearl Harbor, and there’s a black and white photo of him on a stone with the words FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.  Then I went off again.  I drove around Sequim Bay, admiring the water, following likely roads, feeling the usual dismay well up and trying to trust in God.  I didn’t have any sort of map for figuring out where I was.  It is the oddest thing, but the mountains are in the south, and the water, the Strait, is in the north.  Which makes direction finding a bit of a bear, if you’re from Colorado, where mountains are traditionally in the west, especially if you’re east of them.

Well, since I’m more or less living here, I should probably mention something about it.  Especially since the blurb at the very end of the book says I’m in Colorado buried in chickens and guinea pigs and relatives.  Or something.  Well, I’m not in Colorado buried in anything.  I got tired of the place and left.  I’m in Sequim, pronounced like “squid” to the uninitiated, Washington, largely buried in cats.  The cats came with the house that the room is in, and they are neighborly and affectionate creatures, and since I have no allergies to raise Cain, I am happy with them.  Not in my room.  I’ve declared that off limits, just because their hair is venturesome.

As far as inhabitants go, I’ve rather liking Sequim.  I didn’t know I’d end up here.  Port Angeles was the initial dot on the map where I decided that my trip would end, but wouldn’t you know it, my very first night at the end of the road I actually spent in Sequim.  Port Angeles is a fun town, but after weeks on my own on the road, I found it a tad overwhelming, and gravitated out back to farmland where I was more comfortable.  As usual, I didn’t have any exact notion of where I’d be spending the night.  I aimed for a state park, but ended up in an RV park near the John Wayne marina.  If you’re in a tent, it’s pricey, but it was getting too dark and the folks were nice, so I stayed.  In the morning I was up before dawn and found that state park, where I had breakfast and wrote a letter which I never ended up sending because of an interesting phone conversation with my mother.  I should mention Marlyn Nelson before I go on.  He is, I believe, the very first person to welcome me.  Only nineteen years old, and a sailor, so I was very honored.  I cooked my dinner with him and watched the sunset over Sequim Bay.  He’s a quiet sort, being dead for seventy-two years will do that to a person, but a good listener.  He died at Pearl Harbor, and there’s a black and white photo of him on a stone with the words FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.  Then I went off again.  I drove around Sequim Bay, admiring the water, following likely roads, feeling the usual dismay well up and trying to trust in God.  I didn’t have any sort of map for figuring out where I was.  It is the oddest thing, but the mountains are in the south, and the water, the Strait, is in the north.  Which makes direction finding a bit of a bear, if you’re from Colorado, where mountains are traditionally in the west, especially if you’re east of them.

Regarding the interesting phone conversation with Mum, well, nothing for it I guess except just copy down the letter I wrote that day.  Maybe the addressee will see it some time.  It might clear up a few things.  All I know is that it’s intolerable for a letter to remain un-read, and I’ve a good mind to send it off anyway just so I haven’t wasted the stamp.  But I went and opened it, to see if there was anything objectionable.  Overall, it probably is very objectionable.  I think that I have since clarified what I was more or less thinking that day, delved into it deeper, but this letter does touch all the main points.  It might be argued that it’s weird to put a personal letter I wrote long hand for a single private reader onto the internet for the universe to ogle like the hyperactive-thyroidistic bunny it is.  It’s the last letter I wrote for this certain reader, and it wouldn’t be right if he didn’t get it.

10.6.16

——–,

It is 9:15 a.m., and I am cooking breakfast on the hood of my car.  First time I’ve done it, actually.  Breakfast isn’t fancy, but I’ve been eating grits every morning so I thought I’d go all oatmeal, just to shake the routine.  I’m at the empty boat launch of Sequim Bay S.P.  The bay is like a great calm gray mirror.  It’s overcast, and mist sits on the hilltops.  I arrived in Port Angeles yesterday, after camping at Lyre River.  Pretty place, and cheap since I bought a Discovery Pass, I might go back.  Talk about interesting coincidence!  I had just called home, to let Mom know where I was, and then she called me back to say that immediately after two policeman had showed up at the front door.  It seems that a couple of things need clearing up.  I’ll start with the emails.  I’m going to write a book some day about a policeman in Arvada, and sent a couple of inquiries with questions.  I don’t even remember who I emailed, or what I asked.  The thing is, when I got no response at all to a few simple questions, just for fun I probably wrote a longer, involved, emotional spiel, to see if that would get a reaction.  It didn’t, so I dropped the emails.  Let’s see, other odd thing I did.  Yes, I “blessed” the door of the Westwoods Station.  I hadn’t expected there to be such an audience—-poor timing on my part.  The trouble with doing anything like that is you have to expect word to get around eventually back to your parents.  Then, of course, something that made perfect sense at the time just seems weird from their perspective.  But I won’t take it back.  It wasn’t something I had planned.  That was a Sunday, I went to Mass and during which I prayed for policemen in my town, and it occured to me that no one had ever given them a blessing.  That seemed a neglect, and I didn’t see anyone else, a priest or preacher or rabbi, lining up to bless you.  So I did it.  I was terrified.  BUt I still did it, because it ought to have been done by somebody a long time ago.  The dirt I used had been blessed by a priest at a very holy place, but it is just dirt and will not harm you.  I chose dirt, and holy water, to make mud and I put it on the doorposts and lintel and step so that God will bless you as you go in and out, and His blessing will dust your shoes wherever you go in Arvada, and bless the places you frequent. 

The last thing, the letters, I am told make you uncomfortable.  That makes me uncomfortable, and gives my parents yet one more thing to fret about.  I guess from one angle, it does look like I am stalking, which is very creepy.  Except I am over a thousand miles away, and don’t intend to return to Arvada to live ever again.  My secret phobia is I will go back anyway, when I am very old, and be buried there.

I guess the only reassurance I can give you, and it’s not much, more like a half-baked excuse, is that I am a writer.  I play with words, rather like a kid isn’t supposed to play with guns.  In a way, I guess I am a gun, with the safety permanently off, and always loaded.  I make words dance and sing, in love with the sound of them and the powerful way they express some subtle dream, and I am very bad at remembering that to most people words are harsh realities with serious consequences.  When to me, they are tools, baubles, bubbles I blow to watch them catch the light, and float, and disappear.  Unless it’s an ongoing project, I barely remember things that I write because once they’re written, they’re finished and static and stop being new.  I am in love with the words as they are written, and unfortunately I often write any old thing that’s in my head at the moment, curious to see if I can make it real.  Without thinking that most folks don’t want to see a raw human brain spilled over a page, even though it’s technically harmless.  Oh well.  This will be my last letter, because I try to stop injuring people when my attention is drawn to the fact that I am doing so.  I’m working at being a decent human being.  It’s an on-going project.  Sometimes though, and this is just my two cents, when a writer starts writing to a total stranger, policeman, movie director, friend, she isn’t doing it because she wants anything from them, even a reply.  She just wants to hone her skill, to keep her blades sharp and her aim true, so that when she knuckles down to her real work, she can do it well.

Don’t read so much into words.  I shouldn’t have to tell you how slippery they are. You can read all sorts of things into the letters I sent you, but they will never be much more than what they are: letters from a lonely girl far from home, but still, words are her tools and will always only mean as much as they are given value.  That was complicated.  A simpler way is maybe to say words are like money: only as much meaning as we give it, and worthless if you stare too closely. 

Damn it.  I’d meant to keep this letter short.  It’s hard for me to stop talking when I get going on words.  Guess I’d better wrap it all up with another apology: sorry, again, for shooting you in the foot.  I was trying to return a favor, but my aim was off.

Sometimes there is no hidden motive.  Sometimes it’s just somebody telling the truth, but you hear it too rarely to know it.  Sometimes it’s just a writer shooting the breeze, and you’re the ear she’s aiming at.  It was fun while it lasted.

All the best anyway, ————-,

That was hard.  Not putting a private piece of correspondence onto the world’s stage, but not altering it.   Does anyone understand what a torture that is?  Does anybody understand?  I could have improved that thing on so many levels.  What an embarrassing scribble, it’s so amateur I could die.  To think I almost mailed it. I used “that” way too many times, I know I did.   Could have added so many other layers, refined those clunky sentences, and in short, could have done such a better job in every way.  But I let it alone, because self-flagellation is fun, if you do it with one eye squinted.

Gah.

A couple of weeks went by after that.  The funny little incident that definitely didn’t happen did not go around the block.  Nobody back at the station said anything.  The chief didn’t say anything.  The sergeants didn’t say anything.  In fact, nobody was so not saying anything that the policeman got suspicious.  It didn’t seem reasonable that his little episode with a tree had somehow been missed by the radar.  But apparently, it had.  It was slipping off his radar too.  Every time he thought back to it, to that sensation of falling, that strangely stirring tree, it felt less real.  He began to wonder if anything had, in fact, actually happened.  Or if the reality was, that he had suffered a mild case of heat exhaustion and had been “seeing things.” His patrol took him on that street often, though he had avoided it for a few days.  The first time he drove by that elm, he carefully didn’t look at it.  Each time he had any reason to drive along that stretch of burg, he avoided looking at the tree.  Until as the week went along, and then another week, and another, it began to become a habit.  He would just turn his head to the side, pass the elm tree, and everything was fine.  It only took him three weeks to turn the elm invisible.  He could drive by, looking straight ahead, and it was like the elm entered his blind spot.  His brain just made a filler for where the tree was, and he didn’t see it at all.  Being a policeman helped.  That very same day of the elm tree episode, a few minutes after he had pulled himself together, he had to go out on a call.  Somebody had stuck a knife into somebody else’s thigh.  That took up a large part of his, and a lot of other officers’ day.  It was perfect for getting his mind off of weird trees.  So the days had pattered by, he learned to not look at the tree, and fairly soon, he didn’t even have to think about it because his daily routine was filled the usual things that have to end up on a policeman’s plate.  The tree, you see, hadn’t actually done him a violence.  It had just scared him, and getting scared was part of the daily grind, it happened so often.  So it wasn’t so odd that on another sizzling hot day, he pulled over under the exact same tree, and didn’t remember at all what had happened there.

He took a pull from his waterbottle, and heard Dispatch say over his helmet com, “Red pick-up truck, possible stolen vehicle matching plate number DQE-864, sighted at Ralston Road and Renessalear.  Driver white male brown suite.”

The policeman reached up to respond with his call sign, and the tree rustled.  Recollection awoke with an unexpected lurch.  He heard another officer take the call.  But he remained sitting, wondering if he was going to look up.  The tree rustled again, a wild seething, and green leaves twirled down to the sidewalk, as if it was being shaken.  He still didn’t look up.  But he sensed it, right then, from years of being a cop, that something was staring at him.  It’s impossible to describe unless you are a cop, or a soldier, then you know what it is.  A sense of eyes fixed on you, watching your every move, waiting for you to make the wrong one.  Something was up in that elm tree today.  It was big enough that it was shaking one of the big trailing boughs that trailed into the street.  He could see the leaves and twigs dance and quiver as it shifted its weight.  It was directly above him.

What would happen if he looked up?

Would it be so startling if he left without looking up?  If he just revved it and got the heck out of there.  Left weird trees with their mysterious inhabitants.  The branches above creaked.  It was just a kid, some goofy highschooler was up there and was now thinking, oh s***, there’s a cop right below me how am I going to get down without him noticing?  But the policeman didn’t move.  Because in the same way that he knew the tree had a pair of eyes on him, he knew it was not a highschooler, or anything so harmless.  But also he had another funny feeling.  Something in his gut told him that as long as he didn’t look, didn’t identify it, it was not going to be a problem.  It wasn’t going to become a problem, either.  It was part of the elm tree’s realm, and as long as he didn’t look, it was going to stay there.  If he looked, put his policeman’s eyes on it, it was going to come down out of that tree and get into his world.  The question really was, did he want it to?

The policeman stared straight ahead through his sunglasses at the street.  Trying to see it.  To his right was the creek, chuckling and gurgling around its boulders like a baby with blocks.  Ahead was a footbridge.  A very old lady in a pink bathrobe was walking slowly across it from the park on the other side.  She wore a wide straw hat with a pink ribbon.  She was walking a tiny, hairy dog on a pink leash.  She looked kind of familiar.

She saw him, and waved.  Slowly, he unclenched one hand from his handlebars and waved back.  Slowly, jaw clenched so hard his teeth creaked, he revved his motorcycle back up.  He rolled out of the shade and drove down the street.  He didn’t look back, but kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.  Every single inch of him screamed LOOK BACK, but he did not.  He drove past the old lady, drove down the street, turned a corner, and disappeared.  The rattle-throb of his Harley died out in the distance.

The old, old lady watched him go.  Her tiny dog lay down next to her slippers and panted softly.   The elm tree stood in the heat, every leaf in total stillness.

The next morning the policeman drove down the same street, and saw the tree.  He really saw it.  It shocked him all over, how much he saw it, and how little of it there was left.  The city’s Parks and Recreation management had been up bright and early too.  One man was roped up in the tree’s branches, chainsawing off a branch.  Another man was down next to the wood chipper, feeding its ravenous mouth pieces of elm.  The policeman stared at that last branch, waving madly under the bite of the saw, its leaves thrashing like a desperate hand.  With a final triumphant shrill snarl, the chainsaw tore through it, and it fell down, down, to join the heap of greenery at the bottom.  He sat, watching, while the elm tree was cut down.  It was so big, and because this was a city, the tree trimmers cut it down in chunks.  It took several hours.  Each time the policeman drove by, there was less tree and more sky.  Each time he drove by, he grew more uncomfortable.  Finally the trunk, bare and crooked, rose, spindly and naked against a wall of unfamiliar sky.  Over the tang of exhaust from his motorcycle, the policeman smelled a new scent he wasn’t familiar with: the juicy green sweetness of tree sap.

The policeman drove back to the station, feeling that lonesome trunk behind him pointing like an accusing finger.  It was just a tree, right?  It was just a tree.  Just a damn tree.  It had been cut down because it was a big, messy elm and was dropping too many leaves and branches all over the sidewalk.  It was just a tree.

So why was he ending his shift feeling like he had witnessed a slow torturous murder through mutilation and dismemberment?  Why, for God’s sake, why, was he driving his motorcycle back to the station when he could barely see?   He slowed and blinked hard behind his sunglasses, to clear his eyes of water.  That would be a stupid way to crash.