The human heart beats 100,000 times a day, moving six quarts of blood through 60,000 miles of vessels, twenty times the distance from one edge of America to the other, and for what?

            Last Tuesday, while on a hike, a very close friend told me the world could end in the year 2012. According to him the Aztecs and Nostradamus made this prediction. This means we could be pressed for time, but I doubt it.

            I have to say the last thing I worry about is the end of the world. I would much rather see a fantastic armageddon type performance than die a regular death. And that’s exactly what it would be too, an enormous drama, not a Shakespearian drama, but rather the High School Musical type. I mean. Wouldn’t it have to be?

And furthermore what about the collective experience of seeing everything we took so seriously disappear probably by some kind of nuclear disaster? Wouldn’t be fantastic to just run down every street screaming, “I told you so.”

Nietzsche said that even love is a selfish emotion in that we love so that we might be loved, but he died of syphilis, which he contracted in a brothel. The man accused of murdering god himself, influencing Hitler, and hinting at ideas that would later become the fad we know as existentialism, could not to literally save his sanity or life, be loved by a woman.

“If you love without being loved in return,” Said Marx, “then your love is impotent and a misfortune.”

Jesus said that a man could gain the world but lose his soul.

Is anything worth doing if you are not loved?  

Today’s front page head line reads, “300 dead”. Beneath it there is a picture of a basketball player. It seems to bother no one. Stalin said that one death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic. I suppose we would have to agree.

Max Euwe described Bobby Fischer’s approach to chess as follows:

            “Fischer thinks in systems, not moves. With him, it’s not good enough to say a player has made a good move. You must know the system he is playing and what fits into the system.” He may have been on to something.

            The same might be said for life. In choosing a course of action, it’s not enough to be familiar with the immediate consequences.

It was an upstairs two bedroom apartment with a fenced in back yard in East Hollywood. The neighborhood was named Silver Lake and it was like a Rothko color study. Even the homeless people had gardens. It was such a hip and vibrant place. And one of my favorite features of my neighborhood was that you could walk a mile or two up any hill and see what seemed like all of Los Angeles: buildings on top of buildings with no real distinguishing features, and cars, everyone in LA drives three cars at once, a lot of hybrids though, but at night it was nothing but lights and space between lights, and from some streets on a starry night it was hard to tell where the sky began and ended.

Originally I had planned on moving to Los Angeles. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when your girlfriend’s overly eccentric musician sister calls you at one o’clock in the morning because her roommate is moving out and she needs help with the rent? Though I had never been west of Texas, and knew very well Woody Allen’s thoughts on the city, the idea of shaking the dust of this crumby little town still seemed like a fantastic idea at the time.

We packed everything we could fit and two dogs into a Jeep Cherokee and Mercury Sable, and like a terribly disorganized circus, Beth, myself, and her father began to “get into character.” My mom has cut stories, pictures, and especially cartoons out of the newspaper for me since I was old enough to read. We had already said our painful goodbyes and gotten into the car when she waved her hand. I rolled down the window, and she handed me a Ziggy cartoon. It had a picture of Ziggy in his car, and was titled “Going to Hollywood.” Inside the bubble it read, “Getting into character.”

We made it to L.A. in three days. Beth drove the entire way. I was at the time in a phase where I couldn’t drive. I would have terrible panic attacks and have to stop breathing when I got behind the wheel. Our pace made it difficult to really take in the experience of driving coast to coast. We stopped mainly to eat, walk the dogs, and sleep. We did pull over to view the largest cross in the world. It was ridiculous. If I remember correctly you can see it from space. And I remember seeing the biggest mountain I’ve ever seen. Humphrey’s peak was 12,633 feet high.

 If I’m really nostalgic about any part of the trip it would have to be the way the landscapes slowly became less familiar. People are a lot the same anywhere you go. I can always feel at home around people, but I felt 2,000 miles away from anywhere when I first viewed a desert. The total absence of grass was far more overwhelming than Grand Central Station. And the plateaus were so weird! It was one of the few times in life I can remember feeling completely new. I didn’t know these places, and they didn’t know me.

I don’t think you’re so common.

I have watched the way you eat.

You know? If you were human

you would be better off, common.

This is my life:

A girl that loves me

in the next room

dialing wrong telephone numbers.

She desperately needs to get in touch with me,

or god, or some body.

A finger hunting for the right disease

in a moon lit room full of monkeys

does not scare me.

A life on the tracks is ok

as long as you don’t believe in anything.

I would touch Jesus

if he promised not to touch me back.

So why does she believe in me?

I’m a monster,

minus the tail,

killing the wind.

His face was a museum.

With eyes cold since Korea,

he sat at his computer and played solitaire.

His brain, growing old in his head

sent mixed messages to his jittery hand.

It could never be still,

and he was only at peace

when he slept.

It was the digestion of food

and dreams of playing in the mud.

It was there that the contrast between

inches

and bad sin

disappeared into him.

He referred to me as,

“Mr. Robinette”

This was important because I learned

condescension is only effective if you allow it to be.

He had a picture, not a poster, a real picture

of an ostrich with its head in the ground,

and he would point to it and say,

“That’s you Mr. Robinette. That’s how you go through life.”

There is an alternative,

a secret passage

that leads down two roads,

six, and then a thousand.

I used to think none of this had anything to do with history.

I was too busy thinking about girls to make the connection,

to see how we slowly entered back into the dark ages

feeling nothing and feeling it comfortably.

We began somehow, like a switch,

and ran like hell to now, and then for no reason

sat down.

“That’s how you go through life.”

A tree wasn’t a tree,

and a bird wasn’t a bird,

and a window certainly wasn’t a window.

There were trains and raindrops;

always some sound bending its wings with the curve of the wind

flying everywhere like life.

They were images.

They were metaphors.

They meant something else was going on,

and I was lucky to write them down,

to pick up the remnants of their strange wilderness

in a city that desperately needed Batman or Pablo Neruda.

And now the world is cold hard facts;

fast food restaurants, car dealerships, and churches,

and a tree is just a tree.

            Zooey has flees, and I can’t help but wonder if these monstrous little creatures are the equivalent of a really bad case of chicken pox. I wonder if she lays there biting her ass thinking, “This asshole can splurge on a copy of Tropic of Cancer but not some flea medicine?!”

            Today the weather was like a funeral. Grayness penetrated everything all afternoon. It generated this positive feeling of hopelessness. The entire day seemed to be telling me to throw up my hands and say, “I quit!” So what if everyone is moving to New York, or getting married, or just having a good time in general. It’s no big deal because on days like this when the sun isn’t blinding you, and it’s not too hot to go outside, you can see the world in all its little fragments. The meaninglessness is a refuge.

            But I have this friend, and it’s strange because from the beginning of our friendship and everyday hence he has seemed the most unlikely of candidates. He is uniquely southern but still southern. There is that twang in certain words he says that suggests if Robert E. Lee were still alive he might drop everything to work for him, but he’s interesting as hell because he never stops changing his mind. Never!. I suppose that’s what we have in common, and that must be why I’m unusually drawn to his company. Also he constantly contradicts himself, and I enjoy that about him too. People that are always contradicting themselves are a real hoot but human. And why shouldn’t everyone have at least two opinions on every subject? One ought to side differently everyday on at least one issue in their lives or nothing is changing, and if you don’t change you end up staying in one place your whole life with taste limited to Maxwell House coffee and microwave dinners.

The year was 1955. The United States was in between wars, and it was a good time. It was the year of the Thunderbird, Ginsberg’s Howl, desegregation, and the beginning of teenage angst. Progressive thinking and rebellion were growing trends.

Jack Robinette had no interest in trends. If he had to choose which would destroy the greatest minds of his generation, capitalism and politics or sex and drugs, he would have chosen the latter. So at age sixteen, in response to what he considered perilous times, he decided to join the Navy.

As he strolled down to his local enlisting office, he imagined himself being called onto some grand stage with a bigger than life American flag draped behind him and Glen Miller playing wildly in the background. He pictured his mother clapping on the front row with hysterical pride.

“What is your name son?” The man in uniform screamed at Jack just as he walked in the door.

He was stunned as he walked off stage in such an abrupt manner and couldn’t coordinate a satisfactory response.

“It doesn’t matter. Can you write?”

This time Jack managed to nod his head so that it suggested yes. The man in uniform tossed a large unstapled stack of papers at him which landed more in the floor than in his hands.

“Fill those out carefully. If there is something you don’t understand leave it blank.”

“Yes sir.” Jack mustered his first words.

 It was very simple. He provided his name, social security number, and lied abut his age as there was no proof of anything required. But then he came to one particular blank next to one certain word that for some reason combined made Jack stupid. To this day, no one can explain why he couldn’t just leave it blank. It’s as if any faculty of reason that existed in him flew away like a bird for the first time and ran into a tree leaving it momentarily paralyzed. Best guess is, in the interest of being thorough he wanted to leave nothing blank. If he were going to lie he thought it would have to be something made up. This way he believed it would never come up. He wrote down clooch maker. The rest was easy, as they wanted to know his height, weight, favorite foods, hat size, and other useful information of this nature.

?!?!?!

A few years passed and Jack did exceptionally well. In fact it wasn’t until several years later on the Gulf of Thailand during a routine patrolling mission in the beginning stages of the Vietnam War that he encountered his first serious problem.

It was exactly 2:00 p.m. eastern civilian time on a Monday when Jack was for the first time in his illustrious career summoned to the Admiral’s quarters. As he stood outside the door of the Admiral’s office it felt like there was an alligator wrestling the world’s strongest man in his stomach. He did the thing he could not do and knocked on the door.

“Come in Lieutenant.” The admiral said in a raspy but rigid voice, like the Godfather if he had been born in the Midwest.

There was an enormous picture of the Three Stooges framed on the wall. It appeared to be signed, but Jack couldn’t tell for sure. The desk was small and neat, mainly because there was nothing on it except for a phone and lamp. There was a neatly made bed in the corner. Wagner played from an unknown source softly in the background. Jack was instructed to have a seat in the wooden fold out chair that had sand all over it across from the Admiral..

“Lieutenant you have served your country and the Navy well, and we have been reviewing your records for a promotion.”

Suddenly everything going on in his stomach seemed to have taken sleeping pills with a bottle of red wine, and he relaxed.

“There’s just one thing son. For a promotion of this nature you have to complete a special task.”

“Anything sir!”

The admiral looked down at his crossed legs and folded hands and then directly at Jack.

“Well Lieutenant, your file says you used to be a clooch maker. We need you to produce for us in 24 hours a clooch.”

The admiral stood up and so did jack. They saluted.

“Tell the Captain what you need. I’ll see you in 24 hours. You’re excused.”

The joy and enthusiasm that Jack experienced were again replaced by fear and anxiety. He was up the creek and thrown off the boat. If he told the truth he risked losing his promotion but, “What is a clooch?” He muttered to himself, and some how the same overwhelming stupidity that overcame him the day he wrote it down encompassed him again. So he went to the Captain.

“Captain I will need the following to complete the clooch task: several sheets of steel, at least 10, an electric saw, a welding machine, a mask, a drill, about 1,000 screws, and an appropriate screwdriver.”

The Captain was a bit confused by these requests. In an earlier meeting with the Admiral, they thought it may be some kind of raincoat. Curiosity was killing this captain.

“You will work in storage closet 49b. These provisions will be ready for you within the hour. You will have 24 hours from the moment they arrive to complete your task. Understood?”

“Yes sir!” They saluted.

After acquiring his equipment Jack sat everything on one side of the room. He had just under 24 hours to create a clooch. He decided first to write down a list of questions that if answered might lead to a better knowledge and even construction of a clooch. The list looked something like this.

1.      What are the properties of a clooch?

2.      What does a clooch look like?

3.      What does a clooch do?

4.      Who invented the clooch?

5.      Does the clooch make a sound?

The heavy cerebral activity jogged a memory of Jack catching his first fish. He recalled perfectly the way he and his father sat in the boat mouths open like the sky was raining skittles and vanilla ice cream as he pulled that giant bull mastiff size catfish out of the water. Humility was pointless, but before he could pull it in over the boat, that mean old catfish wrestled himself free from Jack’s line. It was something else though that Jack remembered, something that had something to do with the formation of the world’s very first clooch! Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, Bill Gates, Jack Robinette!

            He forgot abut the Admiral and the promotion. He forgot he was in the Navy. He was Zen and the Art of Clooch Making! He worked arduously. Bang! Bang! Bang! Then he would drill some and weld some. Bang! Bang! This went on for 23 hours straight, and with just five minutes to spare he sent the word to the Admiral to be on the deck of the ship in four minutes.

            Before running his invention up to the top of the ship to be released upon the eyes of the world he took a moment to reflect on the process of his creation. As it was four times his weight and twice his size, getting the object to the deck proved to be quite a chore. Worse than flossing! He spotted the Captain and Admiral at the front edge of the ship. Just in time, he set the object down in front of his superiors and saluted them. Then he momentarily looked up at the sky and then deep into the water as if he could see to the bottom. He then motioned for the other men to walk with him and the object closest to the edge of the ship, and he did it. He threw it into the water. It fell into the water the same way that fish did, and it made the same heart wrenching sound. CLOOCH!