Where Are You? 

Where are you?  Where are you reading this? 

Not you, or you...but you.  I can see you clearly now, you're lying on 
a bed on a summer afternoon, a fan whirring in the distance.  Just 
then, a portion of your mind, a portion of your body, experiences the past. 
It is 1952, late on a hot afternoon; you can feel the turbid air, smell 
the sidewalks.  You don't remember it, you feel it; only, you're not 
there.  Your mother is.  She's lying on a bed on a hot afternoon in 
1952, a fan whirring in the distance.  There's the taste of a cigarette 
on the roof of her mouth.  There's a taste of cigarette on the roof of 
your mouth.  Suddenly, in a way you can't explain, you realize you are 
leading her life, or some portion of her life that needed to be 
completed.  That's why the scents, the sensations are so strong here in 
1952, so absent from your present world where life has been reduced to a 
source of anecdotes for office meetings..."That reminds me of a funny 
incident that occurred when we were driving through Kentucky..." 

Your mother gets up, breaking the skein of your thought, and walks out 
into the hall.  You can't see the end of the hall...  Where is your 
father, the man who drives a bus for the Detroit Street Railway?  Off at 
the Blackhawk Club, most likely.  You see your mother brandishing a 
knife, threatening him...but you probably never saw that, you just heard 
about it. 

The word Germinal floats into your thoughts though you've never read 
the book, and your are with the Beatles.  No, you aren't with the 
Beatles, you are reading a magazine about the Beatles.  It's a fan 
magazine.  You are young.  Notice the clarity of the light.  And the 
wind...it rubs up against you, playful as a puppy.  You see your hand 
moving, it writes in the margin 

This pen is skipping 

and the scene dissolves to the accompaniment of music..."Für Elise." 
And then a large camper is standing over you.  A Winnebago.  It clutches 
a bank book and it wants the spot on which you are lying.  Its air 
conditioner is blowing right in your face and it's not working right. 
Instead of cold air it's blowing hot air right off the engine.  Right in 
your face.  It forces you to open your eyes.  You reach for the book at 
your side, you open it to this story, and you read: 

 "Time is running backwards.  It is searching for you." 

 
 Observations on Mice 

It's hard for us to understand mice.  Mice are the humble memory of 
nature, by turns kind, long suffering, sad, playful.  Mischievous. 
That's why children respond to their image.  Mice understand this. 

The mice don't live in precisely the same physical dimension that we 
do.  This is hard to believe when they are viewed within the prison of 
the laboratory, but prisons and understanding don't often mix.  In the 
laboratory, for instance, it's impossible to see that time and death are 
not the same for mice as they are for us.  As they are for the 
scientists and the lab technicians.  Mice are aware, at least to some 
extent, of living several lives simultaneously.  Their present life is 
influencing their past lives, and vice versa.  All this they are aware 
of. 

Needless to say we never see them in parliament assembled when we watch 
them in the laboratory.  The intervals between these gatherings are 
seemingly irregular, but they always take place under a full moon.  The 
rhythm of speech and motion which characterize their parliaments are 
complex and grave, for the mice know their role in maintaining the 
fundamental order of things.  Still, that doesn't keep them from singing 
while the deliberations are taking place, sometimes singly and sometimes 
in small groups.  Because of the effortless politeness of mice no one is 
offended; besides, in an odd way the singing comments on and amplifies 
the deliberations.  Sometimes they sing their songs and sometimes they 
sing ours.  "A Fine Romance" is sung frequently.  The Marseillaise has 
been heard on occasion.  No one has ever heard them sing The Star 
Spangled Banner. 

How do I know all these things about mice?  At the present time 
explaining my methodology would take too long and would prove too 
difficult.  Now, about the squirrels. 
 

Evil Loosed Upon the World 

Captain Jolly was badgering the kids. Couldn't let us watch our 
cartoons in peace.  What kind of cartoon host rags on the kids?  My 
aunt, who got around, said she'd see him sometimes at the race track. 
She said he was involved in one of those shady land schemes down in 
Arizona. 

Gangsters; Romans; GI Joe; Vikings; the Rough Riders...(one of my 
grandmother's relations fought in the Spanish American War it seemed); 
Magellan; we played them all. Jerry Russell and me. 
Stories. Three spacemen land on an alien planet....Carib-bean 
islands.... an old shop with an old mirror.... a monastery in central 
Europe right after the First World War. I'm on a walking tour, he tells 
the stern looking figure, I've lost my way it's a stormy night... OK, 
come in, but ignore the man in the cell. 

The cell?  You're keeping a man in a cell? 
It's not a man says the monk.  Why do you think there's peace in the 
world, peace after all that war?  Peace and -- at long last -- 
happiness.  Think of it...a time of peace and of innocence.  Why?  Why, 
with all that you know about the world and its history, should there be 
peace and innocence now.  Can you explain it?  We can.  There has been 
peace and innocence every since we captured him and locked him up. 
Rest my son, he says as hands grasp a brow fevered with confusion; rest 
now and I will bring you a glass of wine.  Sandaled footsteps fade down 
the long stone hall, and then a low rustling sound, a whisper... 

These monks are mad I'm as normal as you are let me out creaking door 
hurry hurry fearsome laughter the Devil once again loosed upon the 
world. 

You'll scare yourself watching that stuff said Jerry's parents. No I 
won't. I ran all the way home down the dirt road through the darkness. 

Jerry and his family left the next year. The dirt road is now 
paved. The houses are smaller. The aunt is long since dead. Captain 
Jolly long ago vanished from the airwaves; moved, they said, to Arizona.