FireVaney

Swear to God, last night, the bats fluttering low across the Chicago Botanic Garden’s entrance-way, all those bats, they wanted me for dinner. They were honing in, lower and lower, until I reached the white-bright and rear-red Ravinia traffic stopped at the intersecting light—stopped there idling at County Line road. See, these were Cook County bats, and they knew better than to cross into Lake County. That's just how smart bats are...

No love is greater than the love of consuming a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.

You only notice it when it’s there. Clearly there. That is, you rarely note the absence of dust. Unless, of course, it’s an allergic thing…

For years and years we couldn’t have a dog. But then, when we moved further north, into a house, we could . Years and years before that, the pets were all lizards and goldfish. Step Dad, you see, he’s allergic to cats. Only, Step Dad ultimately left a sour taste in my mouth for the furrier of pets. The first dog we ever got — a white, gold-spotted cocker spaniel Mom named “Kurbbie” — Step Dad elevated him to royalty. That dog could do no wrong; that dog, only the best for him. In turn, Step Dad reduced his estimation of Mom and me — but more so me — to rank with the common toilet-licker — a rank less than peasantry. My schedule was worked around that dog’s schedule. My curfew: 10:30 — most every night. Because coming home later meant waking that dog, meant waking Step Dad, meant the dog had to be taken out, and only Step Dad, apparently, could do that; could, with appropriate pomp and circumstance, lead that dog outside, to piss the tree.

Shortly before Pop was released from the hospital his internist prescribed five tablets of Seroquel. This was to treat the “floating” hallucinations Pop was experiencing in his hospital room. But, once home, Pop had no need for the Seroquel because he experienced no further hallucinations—as had been predicted by one of the nurses. So here’s five tablets of Seroquel sitting in my top desk drawer along with the tablets of Meclizine I avoided during my week-long vertigo trip in late June. I avoided the Meclizine because it only worked occasionally, and I feared constipation. I still fear constipation. Seroquel, on the other hand, interests me, because it is commonly used to treat acute bipolar mania and schizophrenia. The white label on the candy-orange, white-capped bottle says, “SEROQUEL 25 MG TABLET ZEN.” What’s that “ZEN” supposed to mean? The bottle also instructs the patient to “Discard After 07-11-2006.” The Meclizine, it’s good until 06-23-06. Since Pop was released from the hosp...

Nothing is more sanity-stabilizing than being amongst good friends.

And that friend's response... "Keroauc liked to pretend that he didn't revise his writing, just like Cassavetes liked to pretend that his films' dialogue was improvised, but neither was true. Kerouac's writing may have been less revised than might have been the norm, but he spent months, for example, revising On the Road after the two-week (he claimed) marathon writing session which produced it. After all, the original draft was far longer and different--it's a scroll, as you might know, pages all taped together, and it travels the country on its own now, not unlike Elvis's Cadillac. (Maybe it's driven around the country in the Cadillac. Now that would be cool.)" "Anyway, you're probably right, if Jack were here today he might very well blow his genius prose through the trumpet of the Internet. But if I were friends with him, I wouldn't have to read it, 'cause he'd tell me what he had to say himself."

This is for that friend of mine who refuses to read (or listen to) any of my blogs—because the entries may be lacking in some necessary perspective, or they are simply too unrefined. He is a friend who is a fan of the man that coined the term: “Beat Generation.” The following evidence supports the argument that, if Jack Kerouac was a young man living today, he might have been a compulsive blogger… “All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with On The Road and The Dharma Bums , I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse. When Malcolm Cowley made endless revisions and inserted thousands of needless commas like, say, Cheyenne, Wyoming (why not just say Cheyenne Wyoming and let it go at that, for instance), why, I spent $500 making the complete restitution of the Bums manuscript and got a bill from Viking Press called “Revisions.” Ha ho ho. And so you asked about how do I work with a...

He doesn’t like her. But he doesn’t like her for the wrong reasons.

Then he asked this: “ Can one be oblivious and in denial at the exact same time?” She considered it briefly. “No,” she said. “At least, not about any one particular thing.” He said, “How about death?” “No, even with regard to that,” she said. “After all, how possibly can you be in denial of something you are oblivious to? That would be a neat trick. You cannot be oblivious to something you have knowledge of. Nor can you be in denial of knowledge you do not have.” After a long moment with nothing but the train wheels clicking over the tracks, he said, “This is the sort of conversation two people have only when it is long after midnight, and still long before dawn.”

This is God’s honest Truth: I had a non-sexual crush on Peter Jennings. Not simply ABC’s, he was my anchor, too. What’s more, throughout most of my formative years, my hair-style very closely matched his. At the end of each broadcast, when he’d wish us all a goodnight, I’d shout right back at my TV screen, “‘Night, Pete!” And that’s God’s honest Truth.

Through countless pitchers of beer, shots of whisky, through margaritas and White Russians, I was her wooden dummy, perched there on her thigh, there at the end of the red-puffed, half-mooned booth...

For me, and perhaps for all men, there is some difficulty in pissing while standing—as it is customary for my gender—while also brushing my teeth. Then again, I was a “Special-Ed” kid.