Wildflower Blues

I once pulled up a dying man’s flowers and lied about it. I was living in Tigard, Oregon (which is not too far from Beaverton and the Nike’s headquarters), and working for a landscape maintenance company. Actually, it was a company that took care of the grounds of low-income properties. There was really not much landscaping to it. Pretty much you just cut miles of grass and walked around with a backpack blower all day long. Oh yes, and there was lots of raking and filling trash cans with the result. Funny, I can’t even remember the name of that fucking place, which is poetic in it’s own way. Anyway, the day I pulled up the flowers was my last day at the job and three days away from my flight out of the great, rainy, shitty North West. My work crew had been assigned to cleanup the construction debris at a new apartment complex. The grass was knee high and the land swampy in places as well as there being lots of dirt every fucking where. I was the leader of my crew… after all I was highly qualified: I could speak English and had a valid drivers license. I also had managed to get certified in tree identification and I prided myself in being learn-ed of plant knowledge in general. Notice the word pride in the last sentence…we all know what comes next. Well, my band of vagabond bushwhackers and I were sentenced to walk the grounds and whack the tall weeds that infested the place. My crew followed me obediently and sentenced to death any and all living things to which I pointed my boney Grim Reaper like finger. All was going along swimmingly until I came to a small front porch stoop and a patch of what I assumed looked like weeds. Notice the word assumed in the last sentence. Now really, there is no such thing as a weed. A weed is in the eye of the beholder. I reached down and gave one a tug but it held more firmly than its predecessors that day. I searched my plant lexicon for the appropriate name and species but came up empty. I had to make a decision…to deal death and destruction to this little patch of greenery or pass it by on my way out of Oregon. I made the call…not my best. My crew descended upon those wildflowers like Spartans against Persians. In no time flat, what must have taken months to grow was withering in a cheap plastic garbage can. Luckily for the other innocent flowers in the neighborhood, the owner of the newly renovated dirt patch called my boss and dispatched what we used to call the straw boss to the property. I lied, my men lied and we hid the corpses of not yet bloomed flowers on a truck loaded with dirt and trash. I can still remember that poor mans face when he looked me in the face and asked me, “Why did you do it”. As if that was not bad enough, I found out later that the man was ill and planted that flowerbed as part of his healing process. If my life is every reviewed upon its completion, I will have to look away when the record of that day is read back to me. The truth is that I know why I did it. I had been trained to bust ass and leave the thinking up to my boss. To me the repercussions of not pulling those weeds was more severe than pulling them. Me working man…you give me task…me finish…real simple…no too much talky-talky. I was 23 years old. Three days after I killed a dying mans flowers I was on a plane back Georgia and hoping that three thousand miles was far enough to put my shame behind me. Evidentially, not.

There are no bad dogs...just bad dog owners

It is funny how you can understand something intellectually but that it does not mean anything until you experience it. Kinda like being told the stove is hot verses putting your hand on it. Burning the fuck outta your hand is real knowledge, being told that the stove is hot is mearly information.

I am a walking hunk of heart meat. I cry until my eyes sting and I can't see the road. I reveal all of my secrets and bare my soul in the hopes that it will have some effect on whatever is happening to me. I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and sweat under the covers. I sneak shots of tequila in the middle of the night. I write emails that I can not even remember. I stare out my bedroom window onto the rainy streets and into windy nights. I will do anything to distract myself from what the pain wants... It begs me to acknowledge it. And of course, I do...I want it take over management. The pain awakens some kind of primitive force within me and it is so glad to get out... the primordial monster I keep locked tight in my medula oblongata. It wants to break out and howl and the moon, and chase gazelles and eat them with its face buried in the bloody meat.

It is no puffer fish. It wants to protect the outer,softer me from the world and even myself. Sometimes I will let it bark a few times and then with all my might kick it's snarling drooling mouth back into it's spongy cage. It feels good to hurt people when you hurt, just like it feels good to listen to sad sounds when you are sad...but the joy is sour, short and totally sick. How quickly remorse and sense take back control of the brain reigns and the boys at corporate are back in charge of things. If there is one rule about being a human, it is to keep that inner dog under control. One of the few arguments that help me to believe in God is that we seem to be the only animal that is unhappy being himself. A dog loves being a dog, and if you want to see contentment look at a cat basking in the heat of a summer's day. Humans, however...no way, no how. For some wonderful reason we want to rise above our animal. I have no doubt that the inner dog would consume us if we give it an inch. But we are not evolved enough to let it go either. Your dog is there to save your ass. I wonder which half is the greater: the dog or the person holding the lease. And I wonder if there is no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad dog owner.