Day 18: Still fucking doing it

Two hours a day of whatever comes out.  Just go with it.  Maybe at some point it will all start making sense.  This one obviously is much longer than anything before, and yeah, just took two hours.  It has some of my best moments by far to this point.  I've gotta step up my game.  Of course, the problem still is that I don't understand human interactions.  I'm thinking of pretending that I'm reading a good book while I'm writing from now on, so that the characters present themselves rather than me having to introduce them.  Yeah, good luck with that.  Gotta finish 1984 by the time Murakami's 1Q84 comes out.


            The elevator stopped on two and an elderly little man and his wife got on. He was up to his neck in groceries and she walked with a cane.  Now it was packed in here like sardines.  I had to turn my coffee table sideways to allow the lady standing space, much to the chagrin of all those crammed in around me.

            I hadn’t been in this new building for long, and with the neighborhood it was a welcome change to see that old people lived in my building.  As long as no one suspected that I had stolen the coffee table from the lounge downstairs, that is.

            The elevator door dinged and the girl with the hoop earrings got off.  Her cellphone rang as the doors closed again.  The faint sound of a baby crying was also shut off by the doors.

            Picking the table up with one hand I opened the door and it bumped into the armchair.  I had better rearrange all of this stuff. 

            But not tonight!  In the morning I started my big lumberjack trade job.  I knew it wasn’t as good as it could sound, but the pay was pretty good, and I thought of myself as prepared.  There was no way I was actually prepared for chopping trees down, I hadn’t acquired the hand calluses for it yet, but I did read a book about lumberjacking.  Oh, right, logger, they preferred to be called loggers.

            I plugged the TV in and was surprised it picked up a signal.  Not the cable signal I would be getting later on, but all of the auxiliary channels.  Across the room, my fireman’s axe sat on the couch like one of those bugs that runs on top of the lake.  It was in direct contrast to all of my wooden furniture.

            Across the hall, they were huffing paint again.  I’d hear a long silence followed by a thud and then some coughing, along with an older gentleman’s voice going on about how everything was alright.  It smelled like paint in the hallway, maybe that was a coincidence.

            On this rerun of Frasier they were all attempting to buy Frasier a Christmas tree without him noticing.  Niles had decided on the biggest one at the store, so if Frasier didn’t like it there was no way they could get it back out of the dining room.  It was wrapped up tightly but when they took the plastic off it flung up in the air like Marge Simpson’s hair.  The dog wouldn’t stop barking, even though it was normally a great actor, but the director wouldn’t cut the scene.

            The next morning, there was ants in my cereal.  I stopped by the bagel store on the corner for a quick sausage sandwich before hopping the city bus wearing my flannel, suspenders, and bright red hat.  Little children looked at me like I was a superhero.  I was pretty sure this bus was going the right direction. 

I thumbed through the latest issue of National Geographic.  They had taken a picture of that lady again.  You know, the lady who was famous for having pictures of her taken.  This time, she looked a little more relaxed, and her eyes didn’t have that same intensity.  They might have brought in a more commercial photographer.

The bus zoomed out of the city and on the last stop, at the little strip mall, everyone but me and the driver got off.  I went to the front to sit and talk with him, but in all actuality I was a little nervous about my first big gig and it was hard to tell whether or not I was on the right bus.  If it hadn’t been moving on a rigidly straight path, I could have sworn I was in a waiting room. 

No, I wasn’t going to a costume party.  Are you going to a standup comedy convention?  Are you going to park your bus in an alley somewhere and insult the midday crowd of business types stopping in just to get their coffee?  Or was your distinctive style of man on the street comedy going to bring people in from outside so they wouldn’t be afraid of what you might say if they remained on the street?

He knew I was just kidding.  He was the quiet kind of bus driver.  After his line about the costume party, he wouldn’t take his eyes off the road.

“So where is Montemarte Woods from here?”  I inquired, leaning over the chalk line.

“Woods?”  He asked, pulling up to another stop.  “End of the line!”

I exited the vehicle and noticed my big mistake.  I had taken the bus 41U instead of 41T.  I should have known based on the fact the area was growing more urban the further the bus went along.

I rode the bus back the opposite way, fiddling with my axe by the inside window.

At home, there was a number of angry messages from my new lumberjack boss.  Apparently they were counting on me to cut down atleast 30 trees on my own that day.  Other than the costume, I wasn’t uniquely qualified for the job.

This time, I caught the right bus.  Arriving on the scene, the rest of the lumberjacks let out a sigh of relief, and a particularly surly one had been awaiting my arrival so he could go on his lunch break.  The rest of the crew looked like blue collar rookies not unlike myself.

“Great to have you here,”  A short man with a low center of balance said, placing his hand on my shoulder.  He had to reach up a ways to get his hand onto my shoulder, but I got the idea.  “You’re going to start in quadrant B.”

He pointed me to a section of woods which had been untouched by my fellow workers.  The deciduous forest provided its own shade, which even at this point of the day was darkness.  I joked about needing a flashlight to do this work and he glared a serious look in my direction.  “No flashlights, not now, not ever.”  He gently nudged me into this section of trees, and I could see the other men stare on in inquiry from the ridge line which was now out of view.  Pulling me back over for a second he handed me a picture and said “You’re looking for this guy.”

Nah, I don’t need training.  That’s ok boss.  I looked at the picture, it displayed a tree which was as wide as it was tall, and if I didn’t know better I’d say it had a face on one side.  In the picture, it was frozen in static like the image I’m left with from my continuous nightmares.  I can only picture that hand reaching out and through my face, tampering with my eyes and brain behind my eyes.  Yup, those were tree tentacles.

My eyes adjusted slowly, but until they did I walked with one hand in front of me.  I’m game for any kind of hazing ritual you guys can hit me with, I thought to myself.  I wondered if Gulliver felt this way on his way to discover the new lands.

There were no birds in this portion of the woods, and the small animals preferred to peak out of their homes as I passed by.  It felt like being on candid camera, and at that point I don’t think I was taking things as seriously as I should have been.  I brandished the axe like I knew what to do with it, although at that moment I wasn’t sure whether a horizontal or vertical slice would be more effective when faced with this mighty tree warrior.

There was a creek which looked like it flowed with prune juice.  The darkly colored liquid make a carbonated gurgling sound against the deep cut of forest it was eroding.  A smell like burnt rubber stimulated my olfactory senses like sandpaper polishing a rock collection.

A collection of trees which could only have rearranged themselves into a proscenium appeared around me like they had moved.  It felt like I was walking against a blue screen, wearing 3D glasses and in a false third dimension.

A stage made of rock presented itself in an overhanging diorama.  The stage lights dimmed and a shrubbery appeared, with a single spotlight hanging above it.  The shrub sang a song about its tired hands working to the bone (it didn’t change the analogy), being stuck on the chain gang, and soon a tough looking big grumpy toad came out and belched in a way which could only mean “get back to work.”  The scene shifted to the inside of a house, the stage hands invisible to me provided a window.  An elderly couple talked about the evil tree and what they were going to have to sacrifice to him this time.

“He’s already taken it all!”  The husband bush said, taking his wife in one arm and the bridge of his nose between the forefinger and thumb on the other hand.

The wife sobbed uncontrollably, and as she did so the ghosts of her sacrifices floated past.  There was a bundle of acorns, a smaller tree inside a baby carriage, her eldest son wearing an army T-Shirt, and a fellow lumberjack waving and smiling.

The husband stood, casting his wife off onto the stage with limbs akimbo, and screamed in agony into the night sky.  He proceeded to continue cursing to himself under his breath, saying:  “You know what?  This time I’m going to… yeah this is it this time.”  He stomped up the stairs (offstage), and the stage went dark.

At intermission, I bought some popcorn and met quite a few interesting people from the tree community.  They were used to lumberjacks coming out this way, they said.  They thought I’d enjoy the second act, but to be prepared for the audience participation segment.

An anteater couldn’t stop sneezing, and the concourse which extended beyond the reign of the central forest was full of smoking reeds and mushrooms.  The theater lights flashed on and off, and presently an usher was doing his best to force everyone back to their seats.

As the second act began, the tree from my picture emerged with limbs flailing and strobe lights flashing.  Some of the children who were too young to be at this show in the first place cried, and you could tell he was trying his best to keep his composure.  Accidentally making eye contact with a woman in the first row, he shot into a monologue with the boom of lightning in his voice.

 Hey you stupid Russians, come back!  It's getting more interesting.  My subconscious has difficulty making sense!  it'll be absurd and fun!