Little Ado About Nothing

Nice day on the links yesterday. Woowoo Charly shot a 35 on the front nine, a score that included a long putt from the fringe on the last hole that gave her the win over Yers Truly by a stroke. Our playing partner, the Old Redneck, started the morning playing badly and his pet phrase "Goddamn it Larry!" was heard so often that before the day was out both Woowoo Chuck and I were using it after our own bad shots. "Goddamn it Larry!" He did, however, recover his swing by our third trek around the course and managed to shoot a nifty 33, the day's best. By then "Goddamn it Larry" was coming from me more often than he.

Today's blog is its own form of procrastination. I've embarked (woof woof) on a couple of long writing projects and my writer's group has just added a 1500 word autobiography to the list. 1500 words? I can do that on my birth alone. How am I going to squeeze in my 157 actual years and why would anyone want to read such tripe? I suppose I could just touch on the highlights like when Judy Cole let me touch her breasts UNDER her bra. Hey, c'mon, that was a big deal! Then, of course, there was the time I drove in the winning run with a last inning double. Well sure it was a slow pitch, co-ed, drinking during playing, softball game, but hey, it was a good hit. Other than those key moments though, I'm at a loss for what to say.

Doldrums is a good word. I wonder why no one uses it anymore. "I'm in the doldrums." Or is it, "I've got the doldrums." I've neither got nor am I in the doldrums, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. It's a Monkeymind thing to do.

Goddamn it Larry!

Sports on the Brain

Alrighty then! Son T is okay. See his comment on the last blog.

I'm still in limbo though. The NFL season looms on the horizon but it's a far horizon.(Good title for a book or movie, that) Yeah, I know, the Olympics are coming up shortly to bridge to that FH, but the Olys have not been the same since the networks determined that more women watch them than men. Now instead of boxing, wrestling, judo, hoops and the like, primetime is more likely to be airing 60 pound girls somersaulting and synchronized ribbon waving. The last two weeks are still reserved for track and field though, which, to my way of thinking,(if what the Monkeymind does can be called thinking)is the essence of the Olympics and always the best part. I'll be dialed in for those. Compounding the countdown to kickoff this year is a notice I have just received that Direct TV has been purchased here in Panama by Sky TV and someone will be along soon to change out our satellite dish. Hmmmm. Will the programming be the same? Will it cost the same? Does Sky TV have an NFL package and will Troy dump Judy and live happily ever after with Gail? I need to know these things. Until I do it's more limbo.

And speaking of sports Sport, I have a few personal observations that need to see the light of day to determine if it is just me or if it is me AND you. For instance, I am tired of Bret Favre. He needs to go to a far away land and never be heard from again. I am also over the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Pacman Jones, Manny Ramirez (yes that's right, I'm sick of Manny being Manny) John Daly, Shack and Koby, Mike Tyson and, well, any other sports figure who is in the news for any reason other than playing their sport. I am also sick of the media dragging these off-the-field stories endlessly out. Are you with me? Do I hear an amen? (Read this paragraph as a whine and you will actually sense me morphing into Andy Rooney who is not nearly as funny as his brother Mickey or as talented as his other brother, Wayne, who plays for Manchester United.)

Well sure I watched The Espys last night. Why do you think I have sports on the brain this morning? Football head injury? Okay, besides that? I thought it was a terrific show and Justin Timberlake was the best host the Espys have had so far. I mean the guy was funny and his big production number featuring a cast of a whole lot was truly memorable. I picked the winner from the choices given of every category but the last one, Best Team of '08. Their voters went with The Celtics. I had the University of Kansas for their NCAA hoops championship. Best male athlete was Tiger, best female was hoopster Candace Parker. After the televised portion of the show was over, the lesser awards were handed out. I finished runner up to a guy who marks his Titleists LJ as the best old, broken down, clueless, still looking for a golf swing, retired, amateur golfer. I'll get him next year.

In Limbo

Woowoo Charly and I keep a NY Times Crossword Puzzle book next to our computer to occupy our minds as the computer tries to find its own. Today's offering is called "Bundle of Nerves" which exactly describes my condition as son T goes to the hospital this morning for diagnosis and possible treatment - depending on the diagnosis - of a lung problem. Prayers have been said, fingers have been crossed and lucky charms will be employed as we await news of T's condition. I suspect this will be a long day - waiting always makes it so - but I remain optomistic.

That's all I have for now.

Toothache Remedies

I've had third degree burns, broken bones - back, leg, fingers, toes, nose - cuts needing multiple stitches and assorted other wounds, but none of those disasters hurt as much as several of the toothaches I have experienced periodically throughout my life. Last weekend's was the most recent example. It began sometime Friday evening and evolved rapidly into oral carnage by mid morning Saturday. I was by then in Agony which is not as some might think, a mythical Greek village, but rather a condition similar to that place where Christians and others suggest we will all go if we have been bad boys. I'm talking pain of the if you can't make it stop lop off my head and put it aside so the rest of me can get on with my life variety, which left me popping aspirin like cocktail peanuts when dinner is late to absolutely, positively, I'm talking not a whit of avail. It was then by chance and desperation that I opted to eschew the flakey white pills and chose instead Woowoo Charly's personal stash of Advil. In somewhat less than an hour after taking three of the candy coated M&M looking tablets, my pain was reduced from hysteria to I can live with that. Amazing. From that almost pain free moment until Monday morning at eight when I set forth for Doctor Arrosmena's dental office in Daveed, I merely scarfed two Advils every three hours and got on with all the important things I do which in this case consisted mostly of watching The British Open on the telly. Woowoo Charly, though sympathetic and supportive throughout my ordeal, quietly bemoaned her diminishing supply of Advil. Ibuprofin, the ingredieant that Advil consists of, is not readily available in these here parts.

The Advil commercial now over, I will get on with the story. There I was Monday morning rolling down the one and only highway to Daveed happily pain reduced with a plan to announce my emergencia to the dentist the moment he walked into his office. Well the best laid plans oft get gang banged and that was the case this day. Something was awry up ahead and the heretofore smooth flowing traffic abruptly stopped. I waited in this dead zone for most of an hour before realizing that the few cars coming from the opposite direction were simply people far ahead who had turned around and were going back. Forward movement in my direction was simply filling in the gaps they had created. I never did find out the exact cause of the stoppage but learned from an indian couple who were walking by that it had something to do with "agua", that being the only word from their explanation that I understood. So, the road is washed out, the bridge is gone, a biblical flood is rising from sea level or the indians wondered if I had a canteen, whatever, I decided to go back to Boquete. My Advil was wearing off.

I went to two clincs before being directed to one not ten minutes from our house. There I met Doctor Monica Sanjur, a women of perhaps thirty, whose wall plaque read "Cirujano Dentista (Dental Surgeon) and who smilingly announced, "no problem." Which it turned out, was the complete truth unless you consider having two teeth pried, pulled and yanked out with inadequate novacaine a problem. I was then given a prescription for an antibiotic to treat the infection the bad teeth had caused and was sent on my way drooling from numb lips, but a happy camper nevertheless. I could now stop taking Advil which, I have learned, could be harmful to one's liver and return to damaging it by drinking alcohol, the method God intended.

The cost of this dental adventure, apart from the Cumberland Gap in my denture which will have to be addressed later, was $45. I'll save that much in the popcorn that I can no longer eat. Well, not for awhile anyway.

Novel or Blog?

Maybe I should write a novel. A novel novel. One that includes great universal themes, biblical allegory, symbolism, mythic quests, Shakespearean drama, thinly disguised celebrities as protagonists, humor, tragedy and a happy ending. Yeah, maybe I should do that.

Nah. Too easy. I'm sticking with real literature, the blog.

Besides, the blog has all that stuff. Universal theme? Life its own self. Biblical Allegory? What, you think I'm just writing about wine? Symbolism? I'm getting a meaningful tattoo. One with a whale spouting a peace sign enveloped in a mushroom shaped cloud. That should do it. Shakespearean drama? Easy. One round of golf. On any given day suicide is considered more than once. Thinly disguised celebs? By now everyone knows we are the retired Nick and Nora Charles and their dog Asta, right?
Humor? Have you seen my uncut for seven months hair lately? Tragedy? Have you seen my uncut for seven months hair lately? And a happy ending? Well, I'll let you know when I write the last blog. It's looking good so far.

The hard part about writing a novel is getting that first sentence right. I am reminded of "Moby Dick" in which the first line reads, "Call me Ishmael". Someone once pointed out that this was a really good opening because as it turned out that was in fact the guy's name.

After that, the first sentence of a novel, you get to the part that says The End. Between the two there is just a lot of filler so really, how hard can it be? The blog, on the other hand, requires a new topic almost every day. This is a true test of creativity. Well, that or one's bullshit staying power. Either way, a challenge to the writer.

That being said, nevertheless, albeit, someday...someday...I will write a novel. I just need a really good first sentence.

July's Creation

Our writing group's July assignment was to take this story's start and finish it. My contribution follows the text. The only other thing you need to know, because I reference him in my version, is that Bob Applegate, our group's creator, wrote the first part. So here goes. (Whoops, one other thing. After I cut and pasted, the blog decided to print my version with its own ideas of paragraph breaks and such. I edited and fixed it, but when I asked it to "publish" it put every thing back where it was the first time. It still reads okay though.)

The church bell began to toll on Sunday morning at no exact time. You could tell it was a real bell, not some recording or carillon, as it squeaked from obvious lack of lubrication with each pull of the rope. The clapper hit the side of the old bell exactly ten times, the strength of the pull on the rope waning towards the last three peels of the bell. The second tolling was very nearly half an hour later.
School kids, not in their daily school uniforms, and large ladies in homemade dresses and hats lumbered slowly up the slight hill to the one room pioneers chapel, the oldest church in the valley. Men, already sweating in pressed long sleeve white shirts with too tight collars, hurried to the open doors where they were waved in by the smiling pastor.
Kids chased and laughed in the churchyard until the stern looks and crisp one word barks of mothers called them into the already sweltering block building.
The first church had been of wood but regrettably burned and was replaced on the original foundation by the block structure that had stood up to the tropical weather for the last 30 or so years. Cars were parked helter skelter on the sparse grass of the churchyard. The old horse trough had been pushed off into the tall weeds years ago to accommodate the cars as they replaced horses.
A tall, very blond, very white man, dressed in a white guayabera shirt, stood in the weeds just past the trough slowly smoking a cigarette. His head was cocked back and to one side slightly, he did not smile. One woman briefly cast a suspicious eye on him as she herded her kids thru the church doors. He returned her gaze and did not change his expression.
The General’s car arrived after everyone was in the block church, everyone except the tall stranger in the weeds who stood unnoticed to the driver and guard who emerged from the car first. The General then wrestled his supremely rotund self from the back seat, stood and pulled at his clothes in a vain attempt to straighten what was supposed to be a smart, waist length jacket, over his girth. His medals on his jacket, most of which he had created, jingled lightly, sparkling in the near noon sun.
In less than an hour the kids were back out in the yard, all colorful in their once a week, Sunday best shirts and dresses. Whenever their play took them too close to the ominous black car the driver shooed them away. Some of the bolder boys laughed and taunted him. “hey driver mon, what you tink you do? You be da beeg fahtie’s spayshall boy wit da beeg fahtie car?.” The tall man in the bushes smirked and stubbed out his cigarette in the dry grass and moved over to the shade of a strangler ficus tree.

Sunday At The Pioneer Chapel
By Doc Walton

The church bell begins to toll on Sunday morning at no exact time, unless you consider 9:12 a.m. an exact time. I mean it works for me and it works for the Hunchback. Close enough is our motto. You can tell it’s a real bell because you can see it up there in the tower swinging back and forth like a bell is supposed to and also because it squeaks from lack of lubrication. I mentioned this squeaking to the Hunchback just the other day and he handed me an oil can and pointed up the rickety old ladder. The Hunchback is a big kidder. I decided right then that they are not so bad really, the squeaks, and besides, you can’t hear them outside the church. So anyway, the clapper hits the side of the ancient bell exactly ten times, if by ten times I mean eleven, and the tolling wanes a bit towards the last three peels. We cut the old Huncher some slack here as he’s not as young as he used to be and, c’mon, that thing weighs a ton! We have a second tolling about a half hour later to remind the villagers this is Sunday and they need to get a move on.
I watch from a window in the lower part of the tower as a rowdy bunch of school kids freed from their orange jumpsuit school uniforms – uniforms, I suspect, that are preparations for their futures - and their large – nary a svelty in the group - mothers and aunts and sisters in homemade dresses and hats - somebody needs to send these ladies an Elle or a Cosmo – come lumbering up the slight hill to our one room Pioneer Chapel, the oldest church in the valley. Of course it’s not a big valley and there’s only one other church, the Catholic one, which we like to call Our Lady Of Michelob Consumption, but hey, ours IS older. Sweaty men in long sleeved white shirts with too tight collars, God what idiots, it must be ninety out there, lead this motley contingent to the church doors which I swing open to let them in.
The brats stay outside and continue laughing and chasing each other in the churchyard until stern looks and crisp barks from their mothers drag them reluctantly in. “Get in here you little puta, it’s time for church” was my favorite of those. Actually, I feel kind of sorry for the tykes. I mean be serious, how much did you like church when you were a kid?
I’m told the first Pioneer Chapel was made of wood, but it had been eaten by bugs or burned or carried off by natives needing lumber for rafts to get the hell off the island - there are lots of stories – but the Hunchback and I weren’t here then, so I can’t say for sure which is true. The latest model, a cement block puppy, was put on the original foundation and it has held up to the tropical weather for the last 30 years. Nice, but damned hot inside. (Sorry about that “damned” God, but we could use some AC.) We have a parking lot out back, but the parishioners who arrive in cars usually park them helter skelter on the sparse grass of the churchyard in front. My theory is most church goers like to be poised for quick getaways. There used to be an old horse trough out there as well - I’m guessing for old horses- but the Hunch and I had to shove it off to the side and into the weeds to make room for more cars.
As I close the doors after the last of the arrivals have arrived – it’s good when arrivals do that - at their usual time of precisely nine something, I notice a tall, very blonde, very pale man dressed in a white guayabera shirt standing in the weeds just past the trough. He’s smoking a cigarette and his head is cocked to one side like it has a crick or something. He isn’t smiling, but then neither would I if I had a crick or something. One of our church ladies briefly casts a suspicious eye his way, either that or a wink, I’m not sure which, she has a kind of a reputation, as she herds her kids into a back pew. He returns her gaze, but does not change his expression. The crick might have something to do with that.
I have the doors just about closed when I see through the last crack the general’s car pull into the front yard. I reopen the doors to give him time to enter. What the hell, (sorry again God) he’s a good tither. Besides, there is no late in my church, there is only really early for the next sermon. I hear some shuffling of feet and watch necks craning as everyone turns to see who’s coming. Everyone except the tall, blonde white guy standing in the weeds. What IS his problem anyway? The driver emerges first from the General’s car. The General, that’s the only name he goes by, then wrestles his supremely rotund self from the back seat. I say supremely rotund because this is a guy that John Goodman would stand next to if he wanted to appear thin. He rises and pulls at his clothes in a vain attempt to straighten what was supposed to be a smart, waist length jacket over his girth. A band of white shirt as wide as a sash remains visible at his middle. The General is wearing a row of medals on his jacket, all of which he had made for himself, and they jiggle as he lumbers towards the church. I want to say these are the Undistinguished Service Cross, the Medal of Dishonor and a couple of Purple Livers given to those wounded in late night revelries, but then I remember it’s Sunday and I have to be nice even if the General is a putz. When he is at last seated, I climb the few steps to the podium and begin my sermon.
“Today’s lesson is from the book of St. Ludicrous, chapter 12, verses 9 thru 10 in which the Lord sayeth ‘suffer unto me the little children, but not for long because I’m real busy today’ and the book of Acts Out in which He further says, ‘Let he who casts the first stone have a good arm and not throw like a girl.”’
In less than an hour I get to the part where the grown-ups start drinking the wine and the kids are released back into the yard to screw up all their Sunday best clothes. I am wondering around out there myself with my third plastic tumbler full of Concha y Toro’s 2005 vintage Sangre De Dios, you know giving thanks here and there, when I over hear one of the kids talking to the General’s driver. He’s saying, “Hey driver mon, what you tink you do? You be da beeg fahtie’s spayshall boy wit da beeg fahtie car?” To which the driver looks confused and says “What?” Kid just walks away shaking his head and mumbling that nobody listens to Bob Marley anymore.
I catch a glimpse of the tall, blonde, white guy in the bushes smirking and stubbing out his latest cigarette. I wander over his way and introduce myself. He makes no effort to say who he is, so I ask him and also why he’s here, what’s he doing and like that. He hesitates a while, looking confused and then says to me like an amnesia victim just realizing his plight, “I …I…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?” I ask. “You must know something. There’s a law against church lurkers” I tell him. “You can be put away until you can say church lurkers five times fast without screwing it up.
“Well, it’s like this,” he says. “Some guy named Applegate, if you can believe a name like that, I mean it sounds like a political fruit scandal to me, put me here for no reason and said don’t move until I order you to, or unless some other people give you further instructions. That’s all I can tell you. I’ve been standing here ever since, chain smoking and getting a mean sunburn.”
I thought about this a minute and considered the poor guy’s fate if it was left up to some of the weird strangers with laptops and notepads I saw visiting the church that day. It might not be good. Dude could be in for a rough ride. “Come on inside,” I say to him. “Get out of the sun for awhile. I’ve got a Hunchback pal you’ve got to meet might be able to help you with that crick. And besides that, there’s wine… I mean blood.”

The tall, pale, blonde guy looks tentatively around like he’s considering options, then nods and follows me into the church. Truth is, he has no choice.

Goddesses Past and Wines Future

The sky this morning is...up there where it is supposed to be. The temperature is in the seventies as always and the sun, though not visible from my office windows, is lighting up our part of the world nicely. It's a useful thing, the sun. Fact is, if I was starting my own religion, the sun would play a major role. And so would golf. Those two entwine neatly. I would also have a Goddess-of-the Month club because, frankly, I don't worship guys. I am one. Here are a few of the goddesses I have worshiped in the past: The actress girl who goes down the hole in the movie Alice in Wonderland and promptly turns into a cartoon character. I don't know her name. Now that I think of it, I kind of liked the cartoon girl too. The ice skaters Barbra Ann Britton when I was a teen and later on, Peggy Fleming. This list does not include goddesses I got to know personally as like Groucho Marx who wouldn't join a club that had him as a member, goddesses all lost their stature by having contact with me. The only exception to that rule being Woowoo Charly the most beautiful woman I have ever seen up close and who has now been hanging around with me for 32 years. Silver Screen goddesses include Bridgit Bardot, Janet Leigh, Jane Russell, Maureen OHara, who is possibly the most beautiful woman I've never seen up close, a preteen and teen Elizabeth Taylor, she was never tall enough for me after that and most recently Haile Berry and Jennifer Garner. I also dug the models Twiggy and Sheryl Tiegs. Memory fails in my middle years but there must have been several others between that sort of 1950's,60's list and now, but they failed to register lastingly. Bond girls maybe. In my religion all deemed goddesses would be granted audience with me the high priest...when I wasn't playing golf...in the sunshine.

And there would be wine, which is what I was originally going to write about, but got carried away; a thing as you know, the Monkeymind is wont to do. We have recently been given as gifts for favors tendered some 15 or 16 bottles of wine of a quality far superior to that we are accustomed to drinking. As I decant (there's a word I've never written before) each bottle I look it up on my Funk and Internetals to learn about what we are about to imbibe. Last night we had a Zaccardi Tempranilla 2002 from Argentina. Sometimes when reading descriptions of wine they sound like descriptions of goddesses. This was not one of those times. "Big bouquet of berries and vanilla on the nose." (plastic surgery would surely be required to alleviate that) "Smooth and round core. (I prefer flat with lumpy highlights to round. Smooth though, is good.) "Soft luxurious finish with raisin notes." (Raisin notes? Don't they have creams for that?)The wine was excellent with a potent flavor that required sipping versus the swig it down over ice wine we usually buy. I'm looking forward to decanting the rest.

Dream Blogging

"Psycho" bird much in evidence this morning. I can here it screeching above all the other morning sounds. Yeeeeep yeeeep yeeeep yeeeep. Norman Bates must be prowling about. And this on the same day that I read a great white shark was seen in the water off the beach where Jaws was filmed. "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." And here it is! "Candygram. Candygram."

Pause a moment while I sit back and stare into the middle distance in search of my dream space.

Found it. Desafortunado, it's empty. Must have used up all the good ideas in last night's orizons. (I say orizons because it is a word Shakespeare occassionally employed for dreams. "But soft you now, the fair Ophelia. Nymph in thy orizons be all my sins remembered." You remember that? No? Okay how about this: "I have a dream." Still no? Okay, "I Dream of Jeanie." Alrighty then, I've found my audience.) Dreamboat. (Now there's an old word.) Dreamweaver. Dreamscape. Dream a little dream of me. The gorilla my dreams. I like dreaming,'cause dreaming can make you mine. Daydreaming. I'll see you in my dreams. Dream lover. Dreamsicles. (Those are good.)Dare to dream. Dreamland and dreamworld. (You take it I'm all dreamed out.)

I've mentioned before that I use Tylenol PM as a sleep aid. I break two of them in half prior to hitting the sack and I leave them on a counter for later use. Whenever I wake up, for whatever reason, I pop a half and go back to sleep. This is, of course, born of impatience. I don't believe in just lying there waiting for sleep to return when help is at hand. My impatience is not solely for the sleep per se, (okay per se is snooty, but c'mon, I've already quoted Shakespeare twice, so I must be on a snooty roll) but rather a return to dreaming. I LOVE dreaming! Dreams are like free movies I get to star in! Even the occasional nightmare turns me on. I wake up thinking, whoa that was cool and the sad dreams where I wake up sobbing give some kind of emotional release that leaves me feeling better afterwards. Dreams provide the drama that my psyche seems to need but definitely doesn't want in my waking life. And they are cheap! Five bucks worth of Tylenol PM lasts for weeks. I had a terriffic dream just a few hours ago.

Wish I could remember what it was.

I Could Use A Doughnut Right Now.

I miss doughnuts. Even when they are available I don't always, well, avail. Truth is, I miss eating foods containing sugar or fat without that nagging voice that says shame shame. Don't misunderstand, I still eat those things upon occasion - occasion being defined as those foods within arm's reach - but what I miss is eating them guiltless. Just eating whatever you felt like was such a joy back in the day before science, evil, devil inspired science, told the world that good things to eat were bad things to eat. Now I have to hold the noble cookie at arm's length and paraphrase a troubled Hamlet before I pop it into my mouth. To eat or not to eat, that is the question. Part of the fun of growing-up was looking forward to the day when your parents no longer dispensed cookies, candies and pastries at their own discretion. That magical day, when with money in your pocket you could sit in a Dunkin Doughnut shop and say I'll have that one and that one and that one. Oh and also that one. And, ah, I need more sugar for my coffee. That day never really came though. Not for my generation anyway. By the time we hit twenty-one we all knew that excessive sugar led to obesity which led to medical problems and no dates and that excessive fat intake led to clogged arteries which led to death, a problem not as serious as no dates, but still a problem. The fun was gone from feasting. And now I read - the true origin of all my problems as reading dispels ignorance and ignorance is bliss - that a further list of nagging concerns has been added to the ammunition of my conscience. A list this time not of don't do's but rather of do's. A list of foods we should eat every day. To wit, green leafy vegetables, whole grains, nuts or seeds, green tea and low or no fat milk. Where, I ask you is the Snickers, the napolean, the big batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies that come out of the oven smelling like heaven itself? Oh well there are other good things in life. Like smoking. What! I can't smoke either! Next thing you know someone will say that booze is bad for you.

The Fourth

Scruple is a fun word to say. Scruple Scruple Scruple. It's hard to say fast. Makes your lips go all funny. Also, if you say it a lot you can find your own definition. "After touching the forbidden plant, Allison's arms broke out in angry red scruples." "Ah go scruple yourself." "The scruple lay under the rock, quietly awaiting its turn." Or perhaps a scruple is just a pupil learning how to use a screwdriver. Scruple.

However, I am not here to... WAIT! However. How Ever. What the heck does that mean? How is a method or a way and ever is short for forever. So a method forever? English is a very strange language.

What was I saying? I'm not here to talk about scruples. I'm here to talk about something else, something different, something that hasn't quite arrived yet. An idea perhaps, a concept, a formerly unrevealed bit of information that only I, the Monkeymind, am privy to. WAIT! Isn't a privy an outhouse? Yes, faithful reader, it is once again true, I am here to talk about NOTHING IN PARTICULAR.

And the first nothing was yesterday's Fourth of July fiesta. Well of course it rained. It is the rainy season after all. Nevertheless...never the less? (Don't get me started.) A good time was had by all except the wait staff who, if our tips were any indication, made out like Panamanian bandits. We got in two plus hours before la lluvia (that's rain in espanol but it sounds like a body part to me)came down in earnest and also on Earnest. By then I had had some cerveza and also some tequila and chatted with many gringos I knew and few I didn't. There was music emanating from somewhere on the wrap around patio and the gringos there were moving about in an odd fashion, herking and jerking and I wondered if perhaps the food was tainted. I was about to call for help when someone told me they were dancing. Astaire, Kelly, and even Travolta were rolling in their graves. Yeah,I know Travolta's still alive, but he has some peculiar late night habits. I was tempted to give a lesson or two but then I remembered that "guilty feet have got no rhythm" and I know my feet are guilty of something, so I eschewed that along with some potato salad. We got home early enough to sit on our patio and watch the rain while sipping a bit more tequila - well I did anyway, Woowoo Charly had a glass of vino and RTGFKAR had a vodka pineapple, oj concoction and we talked politics because it was, you know, the Fourth of July. Just after dark we heard, far in the distance, a firework. One.

Today, the fifth of Julio (I don't know how to say fifth in Spanish) is RTGFKAR's birthday, his cumpleanos. Happy Birthday RTGFKAR, feliz cumpleanos a ti, There will be more festivities.

Fourth of July Musing

I just looked at my calendar trying to determine the day's date and stood there confused until I realized I was looking at June. So today is the Fourth eh? That means we will be off to Los Molinas to party with dozens of other gringos who will be there to take advantage of the all-you-can-eat and all you can drink, including beer and wine, for $7.50 a head. (Last year it was $5.00. I blame Bush.)

Los Molinas is an upscale housing development on the flats a few miles south of Boquete. There is a nifty hotel/restaurant/bar there where today's fiesta will be held. The bar is in a separate building apart from the hotel and it is perched over a steep canyon with a river at its bottom that is fed by a long drop waterfall. Nice. There are well tended grounds and gardens surrounding the hotel and bar and most of the activity will be out there unless it rains which seems unlikely now what with powder blue skies in abundance so far this morning.

Alrighty then. The Fourth Of July. Independence Day. Time to celebrate the U.S. separation from my homeland in my heart, England. (Long time blog followers know I am an anglophile.) I did grow up there in the colonies though, so I do have an excuse to party down with the natives. The U.S. is a great country despite all those dreary statistics that show it is like 50th in the world in math and 50th in science, and 50th in life expectancy and 50th in poverty and 150th in health care and 1st in violent crime and, well, you get the idea. (Those rankings are approximations. The actual numbers in some cases are worse.) I am reminded of David Sedaris' comment that "when I was a child I was taught over and over that the U.S. was the greatest country in the world. When I grew up I learned that other countries also had slogans and none of them included we're number two!" Nevertheless I will toast my homeland because I am an optimist and I have hope that it will one day be viewed again as a force for good in the world as it was, oh say, before Kennedy's assassination. (That is roughly where I pinpoint the beginning of the U.S.'s decline) For the first time in a long time two men are running for the presidency and neither is an idiot. I find that a hopeful sign. So God Bless America, bring on the burgers and get us the fuck out of Iraq.

Keely- Revised Version

KEELY THE KID AND THE KDW-2030
OR
How Keely Invented TimeTravel And Saved The World
By Doc Walton

My granddaughter can explain the whole thing in precise technical terms; how we can go back through her life and watch it from the beginning to now. Time travel was what we called it back in my day, but of course in my day it was just science fiction. And it makes sense that we would visit her life first, considering that without it the world would be far worse off and maybe not exist at all. They named the contraption of tubes and wires and what-not that takes you back the KDW 2030. Those are my granddaughter’s initials and that’s the year she made her breakthrough. I don’t know why she picked me to go with her after all the testing and checking proved it safe - maybe because I’m older than dirt – but I was surely honored to go along. Truth is I’d mostly missed her life the first “time” around.
We started at her birth, naturally, and I had been there for that. Being born was every bit the miracle then as it is today; maybe even more so, since Painaway hadn’t even been thought of at that point and birthing mom’s suffered a good deal more than they do now. Keely Dawn Walton, now you get it, I’m talking about that KDW, popped out right on time all rosy pink and perfect. I got a kick out of watching all the relatives, including myself, grinning and glowing with pride. Turned out we’d be doing that pride thing throughout Keely’s life, but we couldn’t know that then and I’m getting ahead of the story.
First, I suppose, I ought to explain a few things. This bubble of nothing that Keely invented or maybe I should say discovered, because in a way it was there all the “time,” is something that can be seen through, but not escaped. It gives “travelers” a kind of fly-on-the-wall perspective. They can see and move through the past, but not interact with it. At least that’s what I was told. “Don’t worry,” the robo-techies said to me, “there is no danger of changing anything back there and altering the future, so you can forget all those old movie and cine-implants that have “travelers” screwing up the Present.” Little did they know! I’ve put the word “travelers” in quotations, because that’s what the public has decided to call us, but really there is no sense of movement. What actually happens is more like a theatre experience where all you do is sit and watch. Each bubble can only move backwards in time within its host’s life span because of links to his or her genetic codes. Travel passengers can only witness what their host experienced during their life. When a “traveler” goes back in “time” he also goes forward. By this I mean that if he is gone to the Past for a day, a day forward will have occurred in the Present. Should the “traveler” upon his return decide to go back to the Past, he would then be able to see himself entering the “time” bubble and disappearing. Trips of longer than a day are seldom undertaken, because there is no way to transport sustenance. Keely will have to explain what really occurs as it’s beyond my ken, but the little I do know is that our physical selves stay seated while some odd chemical rearrangement occurs and then, as a great comedian from my day used to say, “away we go.”



There is a kind of fast-forward a “traveler” needs to employ to watch the highlights of a person’s life. Viewing in real time expends that amount of time from the traveler’s own life and even the most ardent of our historians are not willing to give up more chunks of their lives than is minimally necessary.
On my journey of reacquaintance with Keely, we jumped from her birth to a cold Halloween evening when she, her dad and I, Trick-or-Treated around their Denver neighborhood. I had asked to visit that moment because it was the last I would have with Keely for many years. I was impressed both “times” by her stubborn refusal to give in to the cold and go home. Her dad and I were freezing. This toughness would serve her well in the Future.
We next jumped? Skid? Slid? I don’t really know, to a fourth grade piano recital. Keely had resisted the teacher’s urging to play any of the more traditional pieces and opted instead for a composition of her own. From our bubble, we recognized the composition as one that would be a feature in the repertoire of Keely and her cousin Jacksons’s band some years down the road. We could tell by the scowl on her face that the teacher’s ear was not attuned to the blues/jazz fusion that Keely was putting down, but we could also tell that Keely didn’t care. She knew she was good and Mom and Pop were there to support her.
From the bubble I waved to them as well, but of course, they couldn’t see me. The grown Keely, in the bubble with me, was laughing hysterically at her little self bowing and leaving the stage. “I never realized I was so confident as a kid” she said. “I must have got that from my Grandpop.” I laughed with her then. “Right,” I said. “Your other Grandpop.” Then hop, skip, jump? We were in a chemistry lab, Keely with test tubes in hand.
When Keely was just a little kid, her favorite movie was Frankenstein, the Boris Karloff version. Her dad had a collection on VHS – no Instascreen in those primitive days – of all the old black and white Universal Studio horror movies and Keely just loved Karloff’s flat headed monster. She had his lock kneed walk down pat and would try to frighten the grown-ups with snarls in her little girl voice. They would feign fear and cry “scary scary” while running away. But it wasn’t just the monster that captivated her. She would light up and pay rapt attention during the scenes in Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory when wheels spun, sparks flew and test tubes foamed up and spilled over. To her it was all magic and I guess it is not surprising that by adolescence she was drawn to science, chemistry and labs of her own.
As I watched her recite some impossible formula while mixing ingredients in her high school chemistry lab, it was hard to believe that this kid, this pretty little teenager would grow up to change the world. But, of course, I knew it was so, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that under her white lab coat she was wearing her gymnastic uniform. Practice was coming up right after Lab and this was a kid who knew how to manage her “time.”
We did some sort of fast forward through Keely’s college years, stopping for five minute intervals that she deemed worthy of look-sees. There were boys in most of those, or rather young men, and Keely was rummaging through them like my generation would
go through old snap shots. There was one boy in particular that Keely fancied enough to visit a half dozen times. “This is Theo” she said. “He and I were almost engaged.” We
watched them kissing late one night in front of her dorm room until I cleared my throat loudly and Keely broke free of a small trance with “alrighty then” and moved us further up her life line. There really wasn’t that much to see in the two years Keely spent at MIT. She studied, she went to classes and she tested out early. There were the boys - I think I counted four besides Theo - but they didn’t seem to matter as Keely only stopped to look at them briefly. There were also a couple of professors she paused us to admire as they lectured and demonstrated concepts far beyond my understanding.
So there you have it, the general sense of how this going back in time works. I had the hang of it myself at that point and was just loving it; skimming through the highlights of my granddaughter’s charmed life. Of course, if that’s all there was I wouldn’t be bothering you with these details, they’d be just for the family. What happened next though, was so frightening my ancient ticker nearly jumped from my chest. No one had warned me or even hinted at Keely’s role in this chapter of history, not even Keely. And the reason was… no one knew! The world, in fact, was never to know and I can’t prove a thing, but it did happen… every bit of it.
We are somewhere in, I think, Germany or maybe Austria. We can see Keely standing alone at bridge rail looking out over a fast flowing river. She is quiet, very still and appears to be lost in her thoughts or perhaps just meditating. In the bubble we mirror her stillness. A tall, dark woman in a long coat approaches Keely and begins to speak. Her voice is soft and my ears are old, so I can’t quite hear what she is saying. Keely, though, is getting visibly upset in both the Present and the Past. She turns to me in the former and says, “This is Stella Scarnn. You probably don’t recognize her, she was so much younger then.”
But as she speaks, Scarnn turns and stares right at us as if she can see us there in the Future and I know her immediately. The curiously mismatched sides of her face are evident even in her youth. One side is placid, blue eyed and almost without expression while the other is somehow twisted into a fixed smile that appears as a gruesome leer. This disparity will grow worse as she ages and become an icon of evil the equal of any in history; or it would have, if not for Keely.
There is suddenly then, a flurry of activity on the bridge and I feel my fragile old body flush with adrenaline. Scarnn has moved towards Keely who stands still as stone. She extends an arm and taps Keely tentatively with one finger in the center of her chest. She smiles at the contact and both she and Keely realize they are substance, they are mass. Scarnn, a taller, thicker woman than Keely, reaches out abruptly and grabs her by the shoulders. She begins to drag her toward the bridge rail. It’s clear she want s to throw her over the edge. Keely is resisting, fighting back. Inside the bubble I am helpless, unable to move. I’m shouting No! No! when I become aware that Keely is at my ear. She’s saying, “It’s okay Grandpa, it’s okay.” At the bridge she quite suddenly disappears. Scarnn stands there, bewildered, holding nothing.
Keely messes with a few gadgets and then does something mental and we are returned to the Present. I am still visibly upset, but Keely has calmed and seems thoughtful. “C’mon Grandpa” she says, “I’ll buy you lunch.”
We sat quietly for awhile over our fifty-five dollar plankton burgers. I was trying to absorb and make sense of what had happened when Keely took a long sip of her Pura-agua and said, “what’s really disturbing, Grandpa, is that when I was at the bridge the first time, the “time” we were visiting, Stella Scarnn wasn’t there. In fact I stopped at the bridge because that was the moment when I first realized that although I loved playing music, science was where I could be the most useful. When Scarnn showed up, I was as you saw, quite startled both there and in the Present. Her appearance at the bridge means she has learned how to move through the Past not only in her own life stream, but mine as well. Now I have to…now I must…learn to do the same…slide from one stream to another. Scarnn has to be stopped before she can find a way to alter the Past. As you know, she wants to do away with all of us and, well, everything. Eliminating me would be a good start to that end. As the only other time traveler I’m the single person who can catch her; if, that is, I can get into her life stream. And one other thing Grandpa, just before I moved back from the bridge to the bubble, I felt her strength waning, fading. This tells me that the physicality she had achieved was a temporary condition, something, for now, she can’t sustain.”
You seem to know a lot about Scarnn,” I said, “do you know her from somewhere?”
“Yes. She and I were at MIT together, freshman year. She was a brilliant but unstable student. She suffered from depression and when she was in one of her black moods, she hated everybody including herself. We had similar curriculum, so we were in several classes together and I rarely saw her as anything other than an angry, hateful person. She was argumentative and seemed to ooze violence. Most of the kids were afraid of her and avoided contact with her. She would sit in class with nobody closer than three desks away and just glower. You could almost see the hate rising off her. When she attacked our Physics professor near the end of the year, she was expelled and would have been arrested if she hadn’t just vanished. That was the last time I saw her until now. Of course, like everyone, I’ve heard about her End World cult and all the terror and havoc they take credit for. I’ve even read her manifesto “Oblivion.” I can’t imagine a worse mixture than hers of brilliance, hate and insanity. And something else you should know Grandpa, at the Institute we are working on a project beyond Time Travel that I can’t talk about just yet. With Scarnn having access to my Past, especially my recent Past, it’s not unlikely that she will uncover this project. If that happens then not just this world, but all worlds will be in danger.”
Keely and I make a date to return to the Time Bubble two weeks hence. I’m calling it a Time Bubble because it gives you something to visualize even if what you are imagining is not very accurate. In reality it’s a matter of tubes and chemicals and a sort of hypnotic state. Keely runs the whole show and as I’ve said earlier, we never actually leave the room. At least, I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell. Ask Keely.
I spend the next two weeks in a state of eager, but also frightened anticipation. I try to keep up my usual routine of journal writing in the ether zone and tele-reading in Spanish. (I love that I can hologram any book ever written) but my mind keeps racing to the idea of going back in time. Even the Denver Broncos’ second consecutive undefeated season can’t hold my attention. I’m nervous as a teenager about to get his first aerocar license. When Keely finally calls and tells me to go to the Pick-up Port, I set a sprint record for ninety somethings in getting there.
We take our places at The Institute, hook up all the folderol ourselves – Keely is afraid one of the robo-techs might be compromised by Scarnn, and as I’ve said before and hopefully will again, away we go.
This time we stop first at one of Keely and Jackson’s early concerts. K and J are on stage doing their fusion thing and their music is, well, timeless. I can see Keely’s brother Carson in a backstage booth turning knobs and pushing buttons on a console to record the performance. He’s on leave from the Avalanche to rehab a torn ACL he received against the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals. The Avs weren’t the same without their “enforcer” and lost 4 games to 2. Carson still has that big brother attitude towards Keely and when he’s not with his team, he travels with her as a personal body guard. He can be, as you might expect from a hockey player, quite intimidating.
We drop in on a number of concerts as Keely’s career develops. The venues get larger and the audiences more enthusiastic as she and Jackson build on their series of number one hits. We stay at each “time” spot just long enough to see their closing, bring-the-house-down numbers and then we move along. We are in London in some sort of amphitheater when Scarnn reappears. She is suddenly just there, on the stage, a few short feet from the performers. As she materializes into full reality, Keely, in the bubble, says to me, “don’t worry Grandpa, I’m going to try something.” And then, like snap your fingers, she disappears. That is, one moment she is gone and in the next she reappears standing beside Scarnn who is clearly startled. She says something to Keely and then reaches for her, but Keely steps quickly away. Before Scarnn can try again, Keely vanishes for a second time and then, not quite instantaneously but close, she reappears behind her keyboards playing as before.
The audience in the theater thinks it is all part of the show and erupts in a spontaneous and noisy ovation. This is a special effect they had never seen before. Their applause drowns out whatever Scarnn says next, but her menacingly pointing finger directed at Keely speaks loudly enough and then she too disappears.
“Let me explain.” Keely says in the bubble, looking at my completely puzzled expression. “For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to discover how Scarnn got into my life stream and I finally figured it out. It’s not that hard to do actually, just a matter of applying some old DNA technology to what we have already been working with. Once I uncovered the method, I tweaked it a bit and now I can move through Scarnn’s Past just as she does through mine. The difference is, I can do it faster. Now, whenever she appears, I can slide out of my moment like I just did and then slip into hers. I can also stay longer than she can. Since she can only alter my life while in my life stream, I can avoid her by jumping to hers. She has to flee back to the Present, because wherever she goes in her Past, I can follow. In other words, I have to stay one “jump” ahead.
“Okay,” I say. “So you are not in danger for the moment, but you know Scarnn has to be working at catching up or worse…something worse.”
“Yes, I do, Grandpa. And that’s why I have formulated a plan. But to make it work I’m going to need a lot of help. I’ll need Dad, maybe Mom if her back’s not bothering her, both my brothers and Uncle Todd. These are my closest genetic relatives. I’d use you and Grandpa Fox, but, well, no offense, you are both too old. How fast can you round them up?”
“Me?” I ask, startled. “Why me? Can’t you do it?”
“I have to stay here traveling. If I can get Scarnn to chase me in the Past, her stream or mine, I’ll know she’s in a bubble and not working her lab in the Present. I’ll stall for time while you get the family ready. Can you do it?
“But Keely they don’t know about any of this. They’ll think I’ve gone bonkers. How am I going to explain it?”
“I don’t know for sure, Grandpa, but I know you’ll find a way.”
It wasn’t as hard as I had imagined. Keely’s dad, Don, called Ace by his friends for having 4 holes-in-one in his lifetime – two in one round – was adjusting to new knees and just hanging around the house blowing blues on his harmonica.
“Hey Dad, what’s up?” he asked when I picto called. I explained as clearly as I could what Keely was into and after the expected “Dad, are you taking your meds?” he listened as I elaborated and then agreed to meet at the Institute.
“How come she didn’t call me?” and “None of the kids call enough,” were his last words before clicking off. I laughed at that, said “tell me about it” and turned off the picto.
Heather was baby sitting the twins, but she wanted in on the action, so she took them back to Cody’s third wife, Alicia. Alicia, citing nerves, took them to an All Care facility.
This freed up Cody as well. He turned over the day to day routine at his Boeing Nissan Aerocar dealership to Abigail, his first wife and business partner who still carried a torch for him and wanted him back, unlike his second wife Amanda, who wanted him eviscerated, but those are stories for another day. He grabbed a demo and flew to the Institute the morning after I called him.
“Hey, Hockey Puck how’s it going?” I said to Carson when I got him on the Picto. “It’s Hockey Star Grandpa, Hockey Star.” We’ve been doing this routine since he was a player in the juvie leagues. I quickly explained Keely’s dilemma and he was damn near at the Institute before I signed off.
Todd was the problem. He and his wife Ziza were sailing off the coast of Indonesia on their ancient Catamaran. Todd hated modern boats that could sail unmanned and whose sailors were really just passengers, so he kept his vintage 2002 Cat repaired and sailed the old fashioned way, hands on. Well, one hand anyway. The other usually held a beer. “Hey,” he’d announce to anyone complaining, “I’m retired.” I think he got that from me.
“It will take me three days to get to land Dad, and that’s with good winds” he said after I had explained why he was needed.
“No time for that” I said, we need you now. I’ll have the Institute helojet you out in the morning. Can Ziza handle the boat alone or should I send crew?”
“She’ll be fine. The sea is quiet and the weather reports are good for the foreseeable future. I’ll be ready at daylight.
Two days later they were all assembled in the Travel Room at the institute and after they had quit gawking, gaping and having their minds blown by everything around them, they each had the same question, what do we do now?
“We wait for Keely to return” I told them even though there she was, reclined in a chair, tubes and wires and what-not attached, less than ten feet from us. When her eyes suddenly opened a short while later, we restrained ourselves while she recovered her bearings and then engulfed her in a pile of hugs.
“I’m sure Grandpa has filled you in on what has occurred,” Keely said to us when we had all quieted. “Stella Scarnn is the worst terrorist this planet has ever known. She has only one agenda and that is the complete annihilation of mankind. She must be stopped and only we can do it. It would take months to program the DNA of others into the system and by then it would probably be too late. Scarnn, if left alone, will eventually find her way here to the Institute through my life stream. This cannot be allowed to happen. We have been working on a second project here at the Institute that will enable me to move through vast distances in a manner similar to how I now move through time. I’m talking interplanetary travel. If Scarnn should learn our methods we will never find her and she will wreak havoc wherever she goes.” Keely paused a moment looking at all our horrified expressions and then added “Now I will tell you what we are going to do to stop her.”
When she had finished explaining her plan, we were all suited up in some sort of silvery material that made us look like characters from one of her dad’s old UFO flicks. I was not exempted from this costuming even though I wouldn’t be “traveling.” The suit had some special characteristics that Keely had devised for our safety but to the serious detriment of anyone else who came too close. It was an intricate part of her plan.
As soon as Keely’s mom, dad, brothers and uncle were ready – each had gotten a pep talk – they were tubed and wired and tranced and who knows what else on their way to the Past. I watched them all, one by one, drift into what seemed a deep sleep. Keely went first. She was to lead the others through Scarnn’s life stream and post them at sites
throughout her history. There were not too many places in her adult life that she could slide to where she would be far enough away from Keely’s clan that she couldn’t be reached by one or the other very quickly. To paraphrase an ancient fighter from my day, she could run but she could not hide.
Keely’s family would have their journey to the Past, but first I must tell you what happened here…in the Present.
The Trip Room at the Institute is a rectangle about half the size of a basketball court. There are glass room dividers separating several sections from the main floor. Behind those dividers are banks of three dimensional compuscreens, levers, switches, buttons, lights, and enough beeping and blipping noises to appease Star Trek fans the world over; all six versions of it. None of them, I thought while watching the light show, had humankind planet hopping without a spacecraft. I grabbed an Orthochair, adjusted it to fit my ancient frame and dialed up Steven King’s 74th and latest creepy thriller. The old guy still had it. He was back to vampires in this one, a familiar theme, but now they were cosmic time travelers looking for exotic blood sources on distant planets. I wondered, with all I now knew, if he was being prescient, as he had so often been in the latter stages of his career.
I was on chapter four, perhaps an hour later, when I sensed something different about the room. I switched off my Holobook, looked around, and there she was, all six foot of her ugliness, standing at the far side of the room. She was looking directly at me and smiling, if you could call that hideous arrangement of features a smile. I mean she displayed a lot of teeth, but there was a serious lack of joy in the effort. I rose from the Ortho and slid a little to my right. I did this kind of casually, making old man groans and grunts as if it was causing me pain to make these small movements. In truth I didn’t feel a thing but excitement. I moved a little further right niftily putting myself between Scarnn and the only unbolted exit door from the Trip Room. She could run back to the Past if she chose, but she would have to go through me in the Present to find the Future.
Scarnn thought I was trying to get away. She laughed. “Go for it old man” she said as she began to cross the room towards me. “Let’ see what you got.” This from a woman who could time travel, I thought? Let’s see what you got? I was less than impressed.
I wanted to take a fighter’s stance, get on the balls of my feet, put my hands up, maybe bob and weave a little, but I knew those days were long gone. Instead, I just crossed my arms and stared at this, the most dangerous person in the world. I was completely confident that Keely had me properly prepared.
I also wanted to say something clever, something erudite and memorable, a verbal one up or in your face or skomp as we called it when I was a kid. Let her know I might be old, but I was still all there. Story of my life, nothing came to mind. I went with the predictably macho and just said, “No Freakface, show me what YOU got.”
She walked right up to me and stopped a pace away. We did a stare down thing for awhile that was going nowhere until she finally graced me with another of her charming smiles. She was going to say out of my way as she grinned, but all she managed was “out of” before she got the shock of her life. Literally. She had reached out to shove me and touched the silver suit. I’m not real conversant about watts and volts and currents and such, but whatever that suit was geared to deliver was more than enough. Scarnn was writhing on the ground in a split second, smoke and a nasty smell emanating from her twitchy self. I looked around for something to bind her with and found a roll of duct tape on a nearby counter. Stuff was still the same fix-all in the twenty-first century that it had been in the twentieth. I got her hands wrapped and was working on her feet when, damn, she disappeared. “Shit,” I said aloud, “shit.” I was still not able to think of something clever.
I moved my Orthochair directly in front of the exit door and resumed my vigil. I was too hyped to continue reading, so I just sat and thought about the events that had occurred so far and what might be going on in the Past at this very moment. I was eager for this to be over and my family members safely back. There was a second when they all stirred briefly in their chairs, but they returned quickly to stillness. They were gone for several hours more. When at last they did come back or come to or whatever it is that happens, I was completely unprepared for what I was told.
“That was awesome” was essentially what everyone had to say. They had been through Keely’s life hitting all the high points and were babbling about it like they had just seen a great holoflick. Keely’s mom, Heather, said it was like Keely’s whole life had been filmed and now she could watch whatever part she wanted to. Keely’s dad, looked in shock. He was shaking his head and babbling “amazing, amazing” over and over. Todd was just laughing, making jokes, teasing Keely about different parts of her life and the two brothers were swapping jibes in a did you see when I did this and that kind of way.
I stood there and watched them somewhat dumbfounded. Were they putting me on? Finally I just had to ask. “What about Scarnn” I said, “Doesn’t Stella Scarnn ring a bell?
The hubbub quickly quieted and they all looked at me quizzically, like I was doing something old man weird that they couldn’t quite follow. They were sporting expressions that ranged from I’m sorry did I hear you right to what the hell are you talking about as with one voice they jointly chorused, “who?”
“Stella Scarnn” I repeated, and they all looked even stranger.
Fortunately, that’s when Keely jumped in. “Don’t worry Gramps” she said. “I can explain everything.”
When everyone one had calmed and promises of further trips were extracted from Keely, we gathered for dinner at an Instadine where it was possible to order any food you had ever heard of. Of course it was all pseudo, but it tasted like the real thing. Being both old and old fashioned, I had the fried chicken from Nelvis Café in Boquete, Panama where I live. Following the meal, everyone went their separate way with Keely promising to see me safely to my home. On the way there, in the Institute’s private Whisper jet, she told me what had happened.
“I put them all into Scarnn’s life stream,” she began, “just like we planned. I waited in my own, knowing that at some point Scarnn would have to go there. I guessed that when she entered the Past and encountered our people poking about, she would want to return to the Present to figure it out, but wouldn’t go through her lifeline because
she could then be followed and we would learn the whereabouts of her laboratory.
She did what I expected and slipped into my life stream. Instead of going to the Past to find me, she returned to the Present and encountered you and your silver suit. Nice work there Grandpa. If she returned to her own Past she knew that everyone waiting was similarly suited and I doubt if she wanted to go through that agony again. She slid back into my stream and I could feel her presence immediately. Might have had something to do with the added charge her body was carrying around. I wasn’t sure if what I was about to do would work, but I had to try. I showed myself, briefly, in the near Past, just enough that she could see I wasn’t silver wrapped, and then I fled. I ran further and further back into my Past pausing here and there to be sure she was still on my track. I returned eventually to MIT. I was there the day Scarnn attacked Doctor Winters our Physics professor. In fact, my boyfriend Theo and I had heard the professor’s shouts for help and were headed to the lab when Scarnn came bolting down the hallway and ran right by us. You will remember Grandpa, that at the bridge there was no one there to help when Scarnn grabbed me and I had to use my own wits to escape. This time I stopped next to Theo and waited. Scarnn was now moving backwards in time when she got to me and not forward through it as she had been after attacking Doctor Winter. She didn’t realize that at the exact moment in her own life stream she would be running by me.
In her anger she appeared next to me and grabbed me for a second time. Theo, bless his heart, went ape and as you saw earlier, Grandpa, Theo is a big boy. Scarnn could not escape from her Past self, that is, the self that existed before she learned time travel. I started screaming and pretty soon campus security guards were dragging her away. What happened next baffled me for awhile until I picked up the thread of her life stream that ended the day after that encounter. Scarnn, depressed and now facing prison, hung herself in jail. Stella Scarnn the terrorist and the atrocities she committed never happened. She and they were gone for good. How this will affect us in the Future I can’t really say. There are a lot of people alive who wouldn’t be, that’s for certain, but whether they will change the world for good or bad remains to be seen. So far, you would have to say… so good.
“What about your Mom and Dad and brothers and Todd?” I asked. “I don’t understand what happened with them.”
“The moment Scarnn died they were gone from her life stream and returned back to the Time Room in the Present. Before they could awake I put them into my life
stream and gave them the tour. To them and to everyone else, Scarnn, if remembered at all, was only an annoying child. It was you and I Grandpa, you and I. We saved the world.”
We flew along in silence for a little while after that until I remembered where this had all started. “Keely” I said. “You haven’t finished showing me your life. I want to see it all, every bit.”
“I’ll clear my schedule and in a few weeks you can come back for another ‘trip’” she said. “We can start in the second grade when I won the high jump at field day. Right now though, I’m going to enjoy the Present. How’s that artificial liver of yours holding up.?”
“Just like the real thing.”
“Alrighty then,” said Keely, “let’s break out the scotch.”

Inward Bound

I've been spending a lot of time in my head lately. Yeah, I know, that's a rundown neighborhood, but I go there anyway. Call it slumming. While I'm there, strolling the boulevard of broken dreams and digging through the trash piled about in darkened alleys, I have noticed a certain quieting has occurred. It is as if the traffic has thinned and the kids have left the playground. In place of the usual noise, I detect a sense of ennui. (Ennui go into the night.)(Okay, it's not completely hushed in the monkeymind, but...) Ennui, I'm told by my Webster's New World, is weariness and dissatisfaction resulting from inactivity or lack of interest:boredom. Hmmm. I don't understand boredom except when I am caught in a long line without a book and I'm active enough for a guy who if he had started kindergarten at age fifty would be graduating high school this year, but, still, the feeling persists. In my mind I'm walking down a dirt road aimlessly kicking a can in front of me. I sense change. Change that is either needed or is coming whether I need it or not. Change, alteration, a reshuffling of the deck that is me. Will it be subtle or serious? Sudden or sneaky? I guess I will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Roy and Dale are stuffing Trigger while biting Bullet and the Lone Ranger enters the mine and says "Hi ho! Silver!"

The writer sits still and stares out the window unfazed by the day's beauty. His thoughts turn further and further inward until he finds at last the epicenter. It's gooey there, mushy and slimy. It's all kidneys and livers and pancreas floating around in blood and guts. Bleck, the writer thinks. I'm getting the hell out of here.

So much for introspection.