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to say that?” “It was quite the favorite at parties.” Being Jesus I had to test the walkability of the swamps. Springy! The water tasted all right as wine, but I have to tell you, it made much better gin. The people had heard of me, sort of. I healed a few sick, just to show them how it worked, and it wasn’t as hard as last time. On my first visit to earth a smidgen of healing took it right out of me! I had to scold some of the suffering for being so selfish. Raising the dead is

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twelve easy lessons. There were audiotapes that asked me to repeat things like, ‘My name is Imelda. What is your name?’ and ‘Where is the bathroom?’” “Did you learn how to say, ‘What is the name of your God?’” “No. But I did learn to say, ‘My God is the only God there is. If you insist on pretending that there is any other God you will be nailed to a wall with red hot iron spikes, your eyeballs scooped out with an ice cream scoop, and probing worms introduced into the open sockets.’” “How many opportunities did you get

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to eat, don’t you?” “Hey, he’s the Jesus. He can do fish.” “And wine! We’ve got plenty of water. It’s kind of brackish and there are bugs in it.” “We need a miracle.” “I have a bible for that. It’s called The Bible for Miracles. It shows you exactly how to make a miracle.” Eventually I start to wonder where the religion of this strange land came from. “Missionaries! You know they planted that thorny shrub because they thought it was indecent we went around all the time without shoes? Can you imagine!” “I tried to learn their language in

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trickling?” “I like those. Very dramatic.” “Like stripes! I bet that’s where stripes came from. For authority.” “I’ve never seen God. How do you know he looks like that?” “A brown robe.” “A cape.” “A cape? Really?” “Why would God wear clothes? That’s ridiculous. God wouldn’t hide his body.” “Is anybody else thirsty? I have some nog back at the hut.” “I’ve never been into nog.” “Nog makes me nod!” “If you’re God, could you make it rain?” “Isn’t it wet enough for you?” “It’s for the fish.” “What? They’re in water already. They need to get wet?” “You want

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inquire. “I am the God, a Lord, Your Jesus Christ.” They look at me, uncomprehending. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I am the Lord, Your God, Jesus Christ. Did I get it right that time?” “Where’s your costume?” “I’m supposed to have a costume?” “The Messiah has a costume.” “What’s it look like?” “It’s sort of red, a dark color,” says a native. “More brown,” another interjects. “Silver stripes on the sleeve?” “The shoulder.” “Isn’t the shoulder the sleeve?” “A hat.” “I thought it was a crown.” “Thorns? You know, like a crown of thorns.” “Those aren’t done.” “With the blood

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of my godfather. I sometimes doubted it was anything special. But I would use my imagination and the pinch I’d snort would be a way to new dimensions. Right past the gate I’d go, snubbing the guards, waggling my ass like I just didn’t care. And then I’d be in the new universe, with the unfamiliar objects (which were pieced together from the old familiar objects), and the strange customs (which were exaggerated versions of what I grew up with). Another pinch and I would forget what universe I’d started from, or pretend I had. “Who are you?” the natives

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Too many organs act like everything’s their business. Last night, lying in bed, I imagined I knew the very next act of the guardians of the gate. We left the scene bloody and scummy with lymph. The heart had skipped a beat and was trying to catch up. The liver was working on a fifth of scotch, and in the lungs a sweet and oily smoke swirled from bronchiole to bronchiole. Deep in the marrow a new generation of whites was being born, preparing, no doubt, to battle the dread pathogens. I dipped into the transdimensional snuff box, a gift

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nincompoops to dawdle overlong at the sunset buffet. They aren’t the only ones who ever have. You may, in fact, find them less objectionable than the dedicated people with admirable ideals who also eat more than their share of the breaded shrimp and soft serve. The hungry we shall always have holding fresh plates at the back of the line. Still, the nice thing about the world changing is it will go about it without you. Do Not Get Involved, the slogan of the pancreas. We should all have a business as discrete and essential as the secretion of glucagon.

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from the skulls of heroes of old. This sort of thing grants surprising new powers, like laser beams from the eyes and the ability to multiply computations per second in the latest generation of supercomputers. You’d never guess, right? On the other hand, there are powers granted the wearer of a cloak sewn from the skins of leprechauns that are shockingly mild considering the ickiness of the source, like being able to make thistles more thorny and causing dark-skinned people to sunburn as fast as blonds. People have conquered the world with less! Never underestimate the power of a few

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agonies of the saved, although it is given that those are fun. What had to be factored in was first set aside in jars, the ingredients preserving gracefully toward the fine fizz connoisseurs grade on scales of confection and label with descriptors alternately floral, glandular, and tidal. No one ultimately has responsibility. A few seek it in vain. The wealth flows to the top where it is transmuted into perfumed waters; only urine trickles down. The bubbles were effervescent and maintained a flavor distinct from the background. Animals strike curious poses. Future heroes wait in the wings wearing garments hand-crafted

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the requisite number can be achieved, although sacrifice cannot be avoided. In order to climb the highest mountain, breast the turbulent waves, walk the longest road, or bear the heaviest burden, touch bases with your habits of avoidance, making sure you are well acquainted with them. Knowledge is the best aphrodisiac. Assumption of the throne confirms the altitude. Ripening ears of corn freshen the lifestyle of the jungle oriented. Water begets water. Ice from the far north costs a pretty penny. Friends often confer on ulterior motives. A loud remonstration calls attention to the varieties of injustice. Laments cool the

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operant conditioner, needs rest between the august freight of an intonation and the fizz of such sillier insinuations as are known in girls’ schools and golf academies. Recovery remains inevitable, but expect instantaneous results to be retarded when implemented by unskilled etiquette. Testimony in favor of prayer delights the glossy inner regions of publications catering to a self-selecting audience. It is largely unequivocal. Scheduled weeping may be postponed but not indefinitely. A limited number of violent misapprehensions has been budgeted for, there having been no fiscal year in which such were avoided successfully. Expecting to get by with less than

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abstract, frosted bulbs in the frame, a fright shimmering in the periphery? It takes time times two plus fours, two fives, and a single, the suicide king, the double-faced savior. You can see there are cats. And cats have, with pigeons, the fortitude necessary for one more efflorescence. By one, I do not mean a thing with easily defined borders. One in this case could mean two, or even three, depending. Yet a continuous progression from one ill-defined end to the other cannot be counted out. It is unlikely. That’s all. No one pays you to listen. Your ear, an

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been interrupted, if only temporarily, by fiat, if not by decree, decree also being suspended. If we were to talk only about what we know we would also remain silent, settled in our convictions. If we were to talk about the mysteries our mouths would be operative 24/7, though not always active, the unexplained making its many sounds in unpin-downable ways via culture and artifacts of nature. The environment provides links between what we grow and what we don’t manage to grow into, one foot or another with cramped toe. What does it take to perform sorrow in the

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paradigm which, significantly, had been a well settled matter among implements, those used in the production of august condiments and complementary seasonings, and those used year to year. What occurred was rectified, it’s true, first by alleviation, then by the ultimate atmospheres of the upper layers of contrition, a naked drawing of fire to the tear duct. If you were a missing person, would you have to miss everything? Or could your missing be sufficiently notable held to two or one? The little noises of everyday motion haven’t eclipsed the mouth yet, though, as mentioned previously, the communicative regime has

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to be horrible! Everybody thinks I’m horrible. I AM horrible! Why shouldn’t I be horrible! It is necessary!” “Achieving horrible, it’s a cinch?” This seems to quiet the voice. And, for awhile, all voices go quiet. Hard to say that, I know. Harder than being horrible, could be. The hardest part having no voice to say it with? An obstacle, indeed. An arrogant figure of speech erect among the downtrodden, boots mucked up with the mud of the rash emphatic? A sly silver mention continues what action, commenced by the twelfth absolute, contributed to the growth of a new family

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song plays well along several continuua. This is the beginning of the reach across worlds, one fish banging out a melody another learns the water carries. “Is it telling you something, you can tell me?” says the voice to Butternut. Butternut notes the tentative tone. “It is telling me all sorts of things,” Butternut says. “It is telling me, for instance, that you are sweeter than bitter, that you are handsomer than rude, that to be adorable is easier far for you than horrible.” “That’s not true!” the voice squeaks. “That last one. I can be horrible! It’s not hard

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like a leprechaun drummer beating a tattoo on a hollow mushroom three doors down from the sobbing singer whose lover has left her on the altar which alteration finds a bit bony, scrawny, skinny, down to its last, fading away, and so on. You think you hear the fish song until you realize the public address system has given up the ghost, the ghost of many squeezed into one, the secondary duty of the public address system having been to store this concentrated ghost, the land of the dead being already overbooked. It’s safe to say, then, that the fish

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shadow. It sounds like the barking of a dog on a street corner in Kathmandu to a man in orbit. It sounds like an idea you’ve had, been obsessed by, then completely forgotten until one night you dream about something unrelated, losing a button on a cuff, say, and you suddenly remember there was an idea that almost drove you nuts, and now you have no clue what it was, thank god. It sounds like a jackhammer tearing up concrete in a documentary playing on a channel the TV hasn’t received since the dispute with the cable company. It sounds

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There is some resistance. Maybe not broken, then. She holds it to her ear again. “What is it telling you!” comes the voice, all anxious. “Shh,” says Butternut. “If you talk I can’t hear the crystal!” The ticking of the watch is so quiet she has to close her eyes to hear it. It sounds like sheets wrinkling while they dry. It sounds like a hair tapping against a hair as a lover breathes over a shoulder. It sounds like muscular contractions of the iris as the train crosses a bridge, the metal beams of the bridge flickering shadow shadow

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as it falls. “Oh!” says Butternut, this time sharply, putting a hand to her tummy where it hit her. It seems however, to have slid right off, and she runs her fingers over the pad alongside to find it. A lady’s watch. Slim and gold. its narrow black face numberless. One slender gold hand points just to the left of a tiny inset jewel, the one less slender gestures just to the right as though the two, when they come together, will pluck the sparkle out. Butternut touches the watch to her ear. No ticking. So she twists the fob.

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Butternut. “It is possible that I have information, you know. To trade. Not living in a tree, I might know a thing or two.” The pause before the response is so long Butternut has a chance to prod about more thoroughly. Indeed, the pad seems firm enough to have been woven. You can never be too sure, considering. But Butternut is feeling snoozy. A nap, even under the eye of an unfriendly talking squirrel, is the sort of activity Butternut could indulge in just about now. Likelihoods. Dear, dear. “Tell me about this,” comes the voice, and an object flashes

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earth you would pass over many a trail and wonder. “If you think you are going to stay here, you will have to reformulate the thought with the likelihood of coming to an alternate conclusion.” The voice sounds like a jay, although the wordiness of the challenge suggests not. “To come to a conclusion one way or another I’d have to have a little more information,” Butternut says. She looks around the sheltered pad but when the voice comes again she doesn’t see who is using it. “Information is dear! Why should I give such a thing away?” “Oh,” says

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a person. At a place where three limbs grow close together debris of leaves and twigs and evergreen needles have gathered to make a cushy mat. Butternut steps across it cautiously; it holds her weight. She’s been circling this tree for some time, she realizes. She pokes her nose over the far side of the mat and for the first time really looks down. Down has a lot to it. There are treetops below and they are looking rather more like kale or broccoli than like trees. Which is to say, if you were to take a gliding way to

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of floods, fires, ages of wind and rain, lightning strikes to number in the hundreds. Or more, perhaps. Who can have counted them? Hafta to get a new palette, too bad. Butternut figures she will catch up with the fisher gnome to get her paints. Or she doesn’t think about it. Butternut is used to things coming and going, mostly going. You know the old saw about they can’t take away your education? Butternut figures she might as well learn what she can about what’s in front of her. Like as not it won’t be there tomorrow, especially if it’s

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a run and swings up. The next higher is offset enough to seem a step in a staircase and a third limb confirms the resemblance. She spirals around the massive trunk, its clothing of bark red and soft. Each step up is easy or not so difficult she can’t make it, adding some lunge. When the flood smacks into the tree the tree doesn’t shudder, though the waft of cold wet air dragged along behind the water brushes at Butternut and she leans into the tree to wait it out. The tree has been through this sort of thing, ages

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The palette spins off Butternut’s head and does a little glide, thumping into a tree. As the girl leans over to get it, she hears a rushing of wind in the trees. The gnome and leprechaun have moved out of sight. That wind rush, she notices, is not heralding a breeze. A breeze? She feels silly. Wasn’t she the one who pointed it out? Most the trees are not easily climbed, full of prickly needles and close-set branches. But she spots one that has potential. A firm and barkless limb juts out just at chin height. Butternut hits it at

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the party is breaking up, and walking off with her things. In no hurry, it looks easy enough to catch up, Butternut puts another slice of apple in her mouth, draws the string of the pouch and drops it into the pocket of her skirt. She recaps the remaining paints, slides them into her other pocket, then, laying the palette on her head, she steps, stone by polished stone, out of the creek bed. Twice she squats delicately to keep the palette balanced while picking up a promising portrait holder. The leaf-strewn grass of the bank squishes under her hop.

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This bends the leprechaun forward, but he struggles with the weight and manages to lift his head, his eyelids fluttering. The fisher gnome adds to the basket the stones that have been drying on the log, then he scoops Butternut’s unopened tubes of paint into her satchel and hangs that over the leprechaun’s left shoulder. The leprechaun leans to the left, sways a moment, then regains his balance. A moan, low and deep. The fisher gnome takes the leprechaun’s right hand and begins leading him away from the creek. Butternut has been munching dried apple slices, but now she sees

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of moss and grunts at feeling bare stone. He nods and picks up a stone with a red centipede curled on its damp underside. He tickles the centipede’s back. All stone and paint. The fish in the gnome’s head nibbles on a nerve and the gnome flinches. “Are you all right?” Butternut asks. “Fish,” says the fisher gnome. “There’s a storm on the mountain.” The girl is looking up toward a dark cloud that seems to be squeezed around the middle of the slope. The gnome picks up the girl’s basket and hangs it around the neck of the leprechaun.

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gnome licks from his wrist. The girl waves off the bota with a rueful smile. The fisher gnome sniffs the painted stone, then holds it up. “Careful, you’ll smudge the paint.” “Ain’t,” says the fisher gnome. He puts the fresh one aside and looks down the portraits lined up along the soft log. Two are of the leprechaun’s face only, three of the fisher gnome’s, one profile, one all nose, the third cartoonish. He points at that one. “Disney,” the girl acknowledges. He plucks the top stone from the ones in her basket, runs his finger over its lush pad

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grasses, perhaps. Uneven. She thinks about it. Walked on. Yup. Pretty much walked all over. She turns the stone in her hand to make sure she’s incorporated its dent into the slouch of the leprechaun. “OK!” she says. The leprechaun yawns, or just lets his jaw hang, it’s hard to tell. The fisher gnome raises an iguana leather bota and squirts an eye-wateringly powerful jolt of a fermented fish and algae brew into his mouth. Taking advantage of the leprechaun’s slack maw, he squirts some into it and pushes the jaw back in place. The drops that spill out the fisher

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to a palette of pigments, stirring a little black together with much white, then dabbing at the stone to fix the fisher gnome’s beard. Butternut, a name she chose from among the dishes served in the art school cafeteria, nibbles on the tip of the brush handle and thinks about the path her life has taken. A path rubbled with stone like the one to which she applies colors, serving up a simulacrum of life. Some life. Not hers. Her life is concrete, too concrete to be pumiced down to a picture. Broken and dusty and shot through with disobedient

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contract and, perhaps, the employer. It is the middle of the night somewhere. Years have elapsed. Then contracted into a tight spiral. At one end is the revenant leprechaun wearing lederhosen. His cold limp hand is being clutched by the fisher gnome whose smile is rigid as a clock. Their portrait, stroke by stroke, is being applied to the face of a stone by the soft bristles of a paintbrush. The artist, a girl with a pronounceable name, one like “Emily,” say, though when she is doing portraits she responds only to her nom de arte, “Butternut,” touches the brush

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obedience differ in each universe; it may be, however, that when the results are collated, differences cancel themselves out. In one universe the garden gnome is more closely related to snails than to crows so eats at night. In another universe the garden gnome is a girl with an unpronounceable name wearing spikes in her hair. In a universe in which the earth is made of gold the garden gnome is also made of gold and is working with gold, which, you might note, is an unusually obedient metal. In a universe without garden gnomes a badger has eaten the

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producer, a uniform product. He had several promising herbs going in the garden. Under the house where the fungi flourished, fruiting bodies would erupt that offered great potential. And in the pond there were frogs that secreted will-sapping compounds and tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that, when dried and mixed with fermented algae, stank deliciously of submission. The goal wasn’t near, true, but it doesn’t pay to be in a hurry if you want to be thorough. Besides, the garden gnome’s employer had the same garden gnome in several alternate universes working on the problem. You may object that the nuances of

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to apply it to things that needed to grow far from the literal garden. What was the garden gnome to grow? A characteristic, one already well rooted in man but which the gnome’s employer wished to see burgeon like a vine, curling around and clinging, to grow stout like a tree trunk, impassive, inflexible, to grow leafy like a bush, every spot the sun reaches for reaching back, to blossom, heady aroma that banishes sense, to fruit. Obedience. The gnome had been hired to coax obedience from its present hardy but weedy natural state to a commercial form, a reliable

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the plans for the final conquest. The moon looked in at the window and saw the gnome biting his lip as he drew a line here, an angle there, as he slid the T-square along. Now, you may think the garden gnome not very bright, judging by what we’ve seen of him so far, and in this you would be largely correct. However, he had certain capacities that employers could use to their advantage. The garden gnome could arrange things so they grew. This skill came in handy in the garden, as you’d expect. It took a leap of imagination

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the soft light of the river of heaven stretched upon the gleaming grains of the stars. Slowly the fisher gnome’s scowl unknitted. This is really a good likeness of the night sky, he allowed. A streak of spark. Then another far off at the edge of the room near the door. Then a flurry. The fisher gnome smiled. A meteor shower to put me to sleep, sweet. And so he did. And dreamed of ravenous dogs gnawing on his knees. But that was toward morning. Mostly, he slept well. The garden gnome worked at his drafting table all night, redrawing

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the book at the garden gnome so vigorously it went wubba wubba and wubba wubba. “Wubba wubba,” repeated the garden gnome. “Wubba wubba wubba.” He mimicked so perfectly the sound the text made as it flexed that the fisher gnome thought he’d shaken the book three more times than he had. “I have the future,” said the fisher gnome again, limply. “The future.” The garden gnome sighed, a cozy murmur that made a nap seem inevitable. That night, lying in the guest bedroom, after such adventures as would make an infant chortle, the fisher gnome glared at the ceiling where

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“All gone,” he sang. He turned the pot upside down and shook it and a spider dropped from a web woven inside. A wind blew down from the mountains carrying the scent of parsnips and rutabagas. The brook that ran by the garden burbled its suicidal ideation, fire or ice, fire or ice. A butterfly dipped down to the daisy the bumblebee had lately abandoned and rolled out its great curl of tongue, probing for deep sweetness the bee hadn’t delved. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” the fisher gnome asked. “I have the future right here. Right here!” He shook

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hurrying! In order to what? I must release the fish from the fish cages before the garden gnome can stop me. The garden gnome will then resort to a fishing line, needing fish, who doesn’t need fish? The “last words” are at the garden gnome’s end of the line, not the fish end, the end with that questing hook, the hook with the promise on it. A promise, the fisher gnome reflects, with betrayal built right in. “Would you like some more tea? Madeleines?” The fisher gnome narrowed his eyes. “What are you asking?” The garden gnome tapped the teapot.

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the “too late” part, except, now that the fisher gnome is having his first sit-down with the garden gnome for many inches of the glacier, rings of the tree, layers of the alluvial fan, and, oy. The fisher gnome gobbles the madeleines and they don’t remind him of anything. Of course! The garden gnome is slow, but he must be slowed further yet, else even in his ponderousness he is as lightning to the unfavorable goal. Yes, that was what he’d thought the future meant when he came upon it in the book. The garden gnome must be prevented from

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light, or perhaps it’s the flashing scales of the trapped fish. Fish certainly have lovely, that is, “fetching” skins with those overlapping little rainbow-infused scales. And the fish trapped are for the fetching, aren’t they? This garden gnome is sure a dunderhead, the fisher gnome thinks. Nothing he could do would be on time. Unless somebody offered him some help, a hand, so to speak, a gentle hand, perhaps, so “gloved.” A tendency is a “character or quality that tends toward some result” or “gradual progress.” So, a “gloved tendency” would be gradualized gradualness. That does seem at odds with

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a fisher gnome could suit up a fishing line? And I do have a way with words, if I do so say myself, the fisher gnome said to himself several times, rolling the words about on his tongue, spitting them, snorting them, yelling them to make the hills resound. If! I! Oo! Ay! Oh! I! Elf! came back the hills. I make words that last. And I’m always ready for the end of the world. I’m prepared. The “silver cages” must be fish traps. The fisher gnome didn’t know of any silver ones, but they could look silvered in dawn

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but what did it mean? The fisher gnome had, however, been delighted upon coming upon another entry. A garden gnome’s last words are worn at the end of a line fishing. That which waits is readiest when comes the collapse. The subject must release from silver cages the fetching surfaces. The garden gnome hurries, but it is too late unless the subject offers a gloved tendency. Clearly, the fisher gnome said to himself upon reading this, I am “the subject” and it is to me my little garden gnome will have to turn else be out of luck. Who but

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many many entries. Under “garden gnome” there were only three. And the fisher gnome had pored over each of these before coming on this visit. The subject, living under the sway of mountains, shall eat of the sea. Another cloud will succumb to the blandishments of a solitary pass, the caresses of old verses oceans have long traded over the beaten body of earth. A garden gnome, bearing witness, will delight in flame. Nothing, however, may emerge from the cold pot but fences. The care required to maintain a field must be put aside. That was all well and good,

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something with jelly pooled in the center, what looked like a brittle humped up with nuts from nine continents, and a sugar-dusted mushroom. The fisher gnome nicked a sliver from the mushroom and popped it in his mouth. He hoped it was angelic. It tasted vaguely angelic, the kind he’d seen buried after one of those fests from which angels fall, stoned on ambrosia and charged particles. Like snow. Or like neon plumes. What future would fit it? He flipped to the index. Under “angel” there were 84 entries. Under “mushroom” there were 34. Under “eat” there were. There were

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dipping it. And its head. Its head fall off! Where’s the head now? I push around with the spoon but the head doesn’t come up. Mush!” The garden gnome’s chin quivered and tears swam in his eyes. Not at all wanting to observe it, the fisher gnome saw the octopus tentacles made of shortbread on the garden gnome’s plate and the damp line where the octopus’ head must have attached. He looked at his own plate with its partly nibbled madeleine. Other cookies waited on the tray, including a shortbread giraffe, a shortbread sunfish, a shortbread palm tree, more madeleines,

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asps? The dogs? Which? Could it have been the Achilles tendon? That part was in the book, after all. “But that’s why I’m here!” the fisher gnome protested. “I have come to help head it off, if at all possible, or, if no can do on that, to help reconcile you. Fate is fate.” The garden gnome was trolling the bottom of his teacup with a spoon. Looking for something? It was the fisher gnome’s turn to lean forward and peer into the other’s cup. “’Snot there!” wailed the garden gnome. The fisher gnome felt queasy. “I was just dipping,

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fisher gnome added, “And it’s terrible! The heavens will open and dirt will rain down instead of water. Asps will snap out of petunias. Dogs will bark backwards. But the worst of it will come to roost on your clever little cottage. A swamp monster tall as a mizzen mast, breathing green gas, will squat over your chimney and.” And what? Why was he making things up? He had the book right there. Hurriedly the fisher gnome pawed through the whisper-thin pages. “And the Achilles tendon will ache,” he finished lamely. His host moaned. That did the trick then. The

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teacup, he craned his neck to see. Hot tea had slopped over into the saucer, but that was all. The garden gnome yawned. Hah ho hum. A zephyr rattled the roses. “I was saying,” the fisher gnome continued, trying to find where he’d left off, “your future you have to look forward to, it’s coming up, and, lucky you, I have right here,” he tapped the tome of futures with a round knuckle, “thumbnail sketches of the ones possible, including your very own own.” Seeing he was about to lose the garden gnome’s attention to an octopus-shaped shortbread cookie, the

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de dum,” burbled the garden gnome, driving a shortbread in the shape of an octopus around his plate. The fisher gnome blinked. He remembered where he was with distaste. God and his dangers! The fisher gnome dropped three lumps of sugar into his tea, to follow the four he’d already stirred in. He clattered the spoon around so furiously the garden gnome looked up from his octopus, he’d nibbled off two of its arms and was planning to see how it got along with just six before he nibbled two more, but something was going on in the fisher gnome’s

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do you think will become of you?” He gazed out upon a bumblebee grazing in a daisy that swayed and bobbed, as the bumblebee shifted its great body from foot to foot. The world once was young; a beautiful thing it was. But God was ever so easily disappointed. His anger flashed and in a fit, he battered the world with his fists. He splashed water on it from a boiling sea, melting its face. He kicked it, stomped all over it with boots of a leather of shame stitched with the stout thread of fear. “Dum de dum. Dum

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though the way the garden gnome was carrying on, you’d think a dormouse had been stuffed in it. “A lump of sugar?” the fisher gnome inquired, holding one out with a pair of tongs. “Yes, please,” said the garden gnome, and stirred it into his tea with the clink clink clink of a pewter spoon with a hanged leprechaun handle. The leprechaun cast on the fisher gnome’s spoon had been crucified, he noted with a peculiar twinge. There was something familiar about it. “My dear boy,” said the fisher gnome, tapping the green bound volume under his right hand, “what

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returned to the gazebo and his guest who had already poured the tea and was dunking a madeleine. “This reminds me of something,” said the fisher gnome, gazing into the distance where the Andes sawed away at the sky. The garden gnome squinted at his teacup. “There’s,” he began then gave a yelp which made the fisher gnome tremble. “There’s the milk!” the garden gnome shouted, pointing a finger around which a loose thread of dusty web swirled. The fisher gnome patted his forehead with a blue linen napkin, not bothering to look where he had placed the milk, even

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down he gazed at it, puzzled, put his hands on his hips, tapped his foot, then raised the tray and looked under it. Not seeing what he was looking for there, he put the tray back and ducked his head under the table. Remaining stooped he nosed around the floor of the gazebo until he got to the stairs. Under each step with pudgy fingers he groped. He sniffed the cobwebs he dragged out, but they gave no clues. Glancing from side to side he worked his way up the path toward the main house, then shrugged, sighed, and, muttering,

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author of a well-thumbed, gilt-edged, green leather bound volume of futures the fisher gnome had laid out on the little round gazebo table, a yellow silk ribbon marking the page he most wanted to show his host. The fisher gnome snatched from the tea tray as it wobbled a pitcher of milk that threatened to spill, thus catching a few freed drops with his fluffy beard, and preventing a lamentable situation that might have involved tears, the garden gnome being, the fisher gnome seemed to recall, one of the sensitive multiply removed cousins. When the garden gnome set the tray

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-Six

of suspense. I think we’re not in the same war zone.” “So you’d prefer I dragged my cart right over you than get out of the way?” “That’s what I’m saying, yeah.” The test was conducted, the evidence gathered, and a conclusion reached. In a garden in the southern hemisphere a gnome carried a tea tray down the path to the gazebo. He got some help carrying it up the steps of the gazebo for the fisher gnome, a cousin of the gnome’s sister, had stopped by on his way to the next exceptional event, an event limned by the

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-Five

just walk through me with your pushcart anyway?” The girl shook her head. “Your body is too lumpy and the cart too heavy for me to get it over you. But, if you like, I can deflate you, roll you up, and stow you against the wall over there.” She nodded toward a boarded up storefront. “Have the sirens stopped?” “Only the ones that have been taken out. What impresses me are the shudders in the earth from the explosions of the bombs.” “That’s evidence then, isn’t it? As far as my ear is concerned there’s nothing but the silence

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-Four

continuum, could you take advantage of one of the many others?” “I’m on a mission,” Samuel says firmly. “So is a sperm,” says the girl. “Uh. Ed is around here somewhere. Ed Rumiere. The Mayor.” “Of what?” “I forget. But he’s the mayor of this. Place. Town. City. And he’s the one who sent me on the mission.” “Which is to lie in the way on the sidewalk?” “No.” Samuel glares at her shadowed face. “It involved drinking a lot of coffee.” “Does this mean you have to pee?” “Do you have to pee in the spirit world? Can’t you

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you still using that?” Her face is hard to make out, the street lamp creating a glow behind her head that Samuel doesn’t find mystical. “Sorry,” Samuel says, “just wondering if I’m supposed to know what ‘that’ is.” The girl nods. “It can be difficult to separate,” she agrees. “I did, in fact, mean the totality, the gestalt, as it were. But we can bring it down to the more immediate problem. I have a hand cart, which is too wide to get around you stretched out like that. If you aren’t needing to use these coordinates of the space-time

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-Two

put her house in order, Rhea finished for him. My house is not in order. Won’t you help me? Did I help her? The spiritual rain doesn’t bother the pigeon blinking sleepily, nestled on Samuel’s chest where he lies under the crossing shadows of a parking meter, each shadow from a different street lamp. The spiritual rain doesn’t bother Samuel either. The nausea has passed, though he still feels a bit wired. All this duplication of realities is more trouble than existence ought to go to, it seems to me. “Excuse me, sir?” A little girl leans over him. “Are

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-One

a plane all by herself when she was nine! Her daddy was copilot, she said, but he took his hands off the controls and she brought the twin engine on down to a landing “smooth as any ten-year-old would make.” Why is it, Rhea, that you came to me? Samuel pushed his teacup and saucer away and leaned his elbows on the desk. I know I’m your father’s friend. And, as you say, I consider myself your friend, even though, till now, I can’t say as I knew you. But all this sounds beyond my ken. I help a client

Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety

her that Jesus would return with extra-terrestrials because they are the 21st century version of angels, and a former methamphetamine user transitioning from her biological givens toward spiritual and physical realness would be an obvious choice for prophet. Brenda knows how to sum things up, Samuel observed. OMG! Rhea agreed. Girl can see! She’s top pilot in her father’s space venture. She’s already flown to the edge of space four times. She says you don’t believe in gravity up there. You look down on Earth and it’s a pretty bubble that could pop at any time. J.E. let her land

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charge them more. It was called “the organization” because we didn’t want anybody to know what we were really talking about, you know. Inside we called it Jesus’ Extra-Terrestrials or J.E.T. I didn’t like that name very much. But Jesus’ Ear or J.E. (that was his code name) was the CEO of a leading Fortune 500 company and paid for the secret hideaways, some of which were pretty nice. How did he join? Um. I think it was his daughter who was one of my classmates at Smith. Yes. That was it. Brenda said it all made perfect sense to

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kinda hot that way. I could have gone for him, I guess. But his dad found out he was sneaking out to see me. I was in hiding, didn’t I say, and we were taking lots of precautions, but he found out. Now Joey’s in Eastern Europe or somewhere farther. Meanwhile Banana Li, our attorney, was honing her sixth sense, she joined the organization because when she met me she developed a sixth sense, which she’d never had before, it made her see auras around people’s eyeballs and she could tell whether somebody was lying to her, if so she’d

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financier, I can’t mention his name, was kidnapped from one of our compounds and ransomed for twenty-three million dollars. His father wasn’t going to pay a thing. You don’t negotiate with terrorists! he said. But then he started getting. Started getting. Rhea’s lip trembles. Body. Body. He started getting body parts. In the mail. They were cutting pieces off him and mailing the pieces to his father. And he paid up. He paid the whole thing. He was able to replace his son’s body parts with superior technology, which was pretty neat. Joey showed me his um things. He looked

Searching for Thousand

I title each “Thousand” post its number in the sequence. Today’s was “Thousand: Two Hundred Eighty-Six,” right? “Thousand” is the title; today’s is the 286th 100-word piece of “Thousand.”

Titles of posts, it seems, rate pretty high in search engine results, more than the main text of the post, at any rate. In the last year most of the titles of LuvSet posts have been numbers. The numbers tell you virtually nothing about what you are going to be reading in the posts themselves. Many of the Google searches that lead people to the blog lately have been searches for numbers, “two hundred fifteen thousand thirty,” being one of the searches that resulted in a visitor two days ago. The visitor stuck around one minute and thirteen seconds, according to my stats service. What could they have been searching for?

It does seem odd that LuvSet turns up in the first page of Google results when one plugs in that (written out) number. Do any of you numbers-searching visitors find what you’re looking for?

Thousand: Two Hundred Eighty-Six

And that’s where I am today. Didn’t you come about a cult? Samuel asked, refilling Rhea’s teacup with Constant Comment. Oh. That’s a sad story. It’s also scary. A rival cult is hunting me. They’ve already taken out James and four others. I know the news programs say that that was a mass suicide, that James recorded a video for distribution over the internet saying he was going to meet the aliens under Jesus’ command but I know for a fact that it was the Tralfamadurians. The Tralfamadurians have been tracking us for months. The son of a very powerful

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I owned. It was a lost thing; whosever it was, she needed it back. Someone with sense could save it, could make it work for them. I wasn’t shocked, looking at that meth-ravaged thing. My artist’s eye saw it; it was like Daddy’d handed over a photo of an ugly room, and I could see immediately how the elements already there could be rearranged to make a good place. A little care, a little attention, a little presence of mind. That’s what was missing. I handed the mirror back. The next day I found a 12-step group for meth fiends.

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not tragic. I mean, my father sat me down one day and say, “Rhea, I need you to look at something for me. A consultation, as it were.” And he gave me a hand mirror. You know my father. That is why I came to you about this matter, Sammy. She laughed. We are old friends, Sammy! Where was I? I looked in the mirror. I felt silly doing it. What was I going to see? My own face! What a trick Daddy was playing on me. But it wasn’t my face. No. He was right. It wasn’t the face

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he said. It was Jesus! He has risen and returned. He came to you in that flying saucer, didn’t he? James was so pressing, so certain. Everyone had tuned into his energy, as though what I’d brought with me was no mystery, it was clear. James knew what it was. It was Jesus! It couldn’t be anything else! He began to weep. Right there! Of course, it wasn’t unusual to cry in the group. People had such sad stories. They’d lost so many things to the drugs. Divorce, children, their parents disowned them. I almost felt bad, my story was

Thousand: Two Hundred Eighty-Two

When I told my story at group, I held the lily to my breast, and when when I when I got to that point in the story where that amazing man touched me, I extended the lily and I could see everybody’s eyes were fixed on the lily. It was like my heart was coming out of me again, like they were seeing the real me. One of the men, his name was James, he asked, Was it Jesus? And I said, I don’t know. But I could see he was so eager, he didn’t hear me. It was Jesus,

Thousand: Two Hundred Eighty-One

him for that. For giving me that. You know. It almost shattered the wall. But, you know, it didn’t. It was just a chink. A little more light came through. You see the light, you know. But it doesn’t always light up the whole. You start to see something but it’s not. It seems totally obvious now. But it wasn’t then. I was able to pretend I couldn’t see what was looking me in the face. For a long time. When I told about what happened, you know. The aliens. I stopped at the florist first and got a lily.

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a wall I tried to make man-shaped. But I knew people saw through it. They called me names. You know, when a boy in gym class in high school, thinking to insult me, maybe it was the worst thing he could think of to say, called me Woman. Called me woman. I remember. I was puzzled that he thought that was a bad thing. But what I remember most was the feeling, how right it was. Woman. That was what I was. Would be someday. If I was luckier than I’d ever been up to that point. I almost loved

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the lovely Rhea gazed pensively at the Des Moines skyline. Yes, she said, slowly. She blinked, then rummaged through her bag for a tissue, which used to catch a tear Samuel didn’t see. She drew a deep breath. I told my story. As I told it to you just now. That’s all. That’s all I meant to do. I was in rehab. Yes, I. I got into meth. I thought it agreed with me. I thought it made me real, the woman I’d never been allowed to be. The feminine finally broke through. I’d built up a wall against it,

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beckoned. I felt it rise from my chest and burst open in his hand, a white white lily. The visitors must then have returned me to my bed, for I remember watching the digits on the clock radio slowly count toward dawn, my body aching as though fevered, but weighted down. I could hardly move. When at last I stumbled from my bed, I found on the floor of the bathroom a broken vase and in a pool of water a lily, whole and undamaged. So this led to your starting a cult? Samuel asked, after a pause in which

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two of the beings moved aside and, bathed in glory, a man stepped between my feet, my legs being too long for the table, and he looked down at me with the most piercing eyes such that I felt shot through with a bolt of blue, which was secured at one end to the foundations of heaven, at the other to the holy mother herself who was using it to climb out of the catacombs. He reached an incredibly long arm out and touched my chest, which made my heart, I had forgotten about my heart, my heart his touch

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only without the wires making little tents on my nightgown, and I was borne by unseen hands into the light which totally blinded me. I was on a table, cold and hard, like stainless steel, and these strange beings with swimming pool eyes, mouths that looked like they’d been dug out of a potato with a butter knife, completely hairless, no color at all, with pulsing bulbs and throbbing rods probed every one of my orifices. They were trying to make sure of something they knew already. I screamed but not even my ears could hear my screams. Just then

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on the door WHOMP on the door, my whole body quivering with the impact. Why don’t you come in already, I remember thinking, it’s not like I ever lock anything. My life is an open book, you know. It’s like a diary with one of those little locks on it but there’s no key to it because it’s never locked. I have no secrets. If anybody wants to know anything, they can just ask me. But the aliens, maybe they didn’t understand that, or maybe they just don’t understand human language, because I levitated, like Linda Blair in The Exorcist,

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my eyes, even the mirror agreed they were finer, more desirable. It was a flying saucer. That’s what started it. A UFO. It abducted me. I didn’t actually see it. I was asleep at the time. But in the middle of the night I awoke and there was this bright light shining right in my face. I was rigid, frozen, not from fright, no, I wasn’t quite frightened, I could feel my heart thumping in my chest, not fast, each thump like a fist pounding on a door, like there was a big man on the far side of me, raising his big fist and going WHOMP with it

Thousand: Two Hundred Seventy-Three

with a sparse moustache and a pedigree, I did not know her. I introduced myself and when she smiled I saw a flash of the duchess. I was startled. Yes, I was. Sammy, she said softly. I am in trouble. I am in ever so much trouble. I. You see. I started a cult. I did not mean it to be a cult! No! I. I only wanted to be worshipped. Is that so bad? But it was! At first the adoration was like a spa. I soaked in it and felt more beautiful every moment. My hair, my lips,

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knocked off its rings. I get a lot of calls after celestial incidents. My calendar filled up after the comet Xuxek. But the more interesting coincidence was Rhea’s call. The girl in the magazine, the daughter of my benefactor. I’d met her before, when she was, I must admit I recognized, quite a girly sort of boy, Ray, her boy name. The voice on the phone purred the way Ray’s had, husky for a woman, warm for a boy. When she showed up at my office, though I had seen her naked, though I’d seen her as a long-haired youth

Thousand: Two Hundred Seventy-One

the house is immaterial, you taught me that. If you’ve got to have it renovated so you can really live in it, so you can call it home, that’s what you’ve got to do. We are all made in God’s image, you know, but do we all look the same? I wanted to ask if she approved, not of the body adjustment, but of the baring of it all. She probably saw it in my face, for she smiled and kissed me softly and fluttered her eyelashes and swept away. That was the day before the comet slammed Saturn, and

Thousand: Two Hundred Seventy

baroness begged me to right it for her (him), got down on her knees and after that begged me. She gave me the start-up capital and her connections. She bragged to all her friends about me. And slagged me to those she knew did not respect her opinion. The years go by I’m flipping through a girly magazine and there is the duchess’ daughter with a staple in her navel. Used to be her son, or so she thought. When I asked the duchess how’d she felt, had it been a surprise, she arched a painted brow, and said, Darling,

Thousand: Two Hundred Sixty-Nine

desperado with a six-shooter and the sun in my eyes. How could I forget our first instant communication across planets when you were lonesome on Enceladus and I was lonesome on the floor of the disco, poppers up my nose, the high energy rhythm of the ages pulsing in my sinews. If not for you, my dove, I wouldn’t have written the mash note to the baroness at the opera. It was you who gave me that courage. And when she (he, rather) heard from my midnight lips that I could see his spiritual house was not in order, the

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a condescending manner. You were the only one who believed in me when most were convinced I was merely a myth. It was you for whom I built the pyramids, the smaller pyramids, yes, but they were ready a lot faster. Why? Because I knew you knew that I knew nothing really about you but you pretended it was the perfect gift, thus salving the hurt I felt once I clued in to your aversion to slanted surfaces. I remember that night, dressing for the prom, you taught me to knot my very first bowtie, and how to outdraw the

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chair! If this is the Titanic, and icy water will soon be slopping over my knees, I want to go down in a deck chair! The sidewalk is rather hard. Coo, says the pigeon into Samuel’s ear, having hopped down from the Maserati roof. We should go somewhere, you and me, Samuel says. You are the only one who understands me. When I was a child, for example, you knew exactly what kind of cheese I preferred on my macaroni. When I was first learning computer programming, you were the only one who pecked through my code without clucking in

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spiritual rain. The rain soothes everything, even the noises of the night, even the bumps in the night, even the murders and the rapes and the slow succumbing to decades of wrongs. The spiritual rain comes softly down to the world, filling open sores, smoothing out scars, pooling in the open mouths of the dead. Samuel closes his mouth. His mouth tastes awful. Where is all this music coming from? It’s like he’s lying under an orchestra that’s being strafed by jumbo jets and bombed by daft leprechauns in spangled blimps. And the band plays on. Where is my deck

Thousand: Two Hunded Sixty-Five

It actually sounds pretty good but one of them stops and says, “Guys! Guys! Hold on. I think we’re singing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to the tune of ‘Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines Nellie.’” But the others roll their eyes and an argument starts up about the real lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” as opposed to the secret initiate lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” which are probably sung backwards. That they can hear themselves over the klaxon of the submarine’s dive warning just proves the amazing strengths of the youthful ear. None of this disturbs the pigeon sleepily blinking in the

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starts up its cycle: woop woop reedle reedle reedle woop woop reedle reedle reedle woop de woop de woop a doop-doop reedle reedle reedle a ruddle de ruddle de roo. The tower bell bongs some aged hour. The air raid siren commences its rising tone, which will continue to rise until it tickles the underbellies of the bombers with its dreamy vibration. A woman screams. A child, at a higher pitch, whines, tugging on her purse. A lion roars. A mouse shrieks. Four boys gather in a doorway, snap their fingers, and launch into “Wait ‘Til The Sun Shines Nellie.”

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whispers. The pigeon blinks, turns its head one way then other, then settles down on the roof of the Maserati, while Samuel rages up and down the block punching parking meters. A soft spiritual rain begins to fall. Samuel drops to his knees again, gasping. Then he jumps up and rushes over to the coffee bar and demands a triple cap latte. The barista holds up his hands, shakes his head. No, senhor, no. An alarm goes off. It’s one of those old fashioned bank alarms, isn’t it? The insistent tapping of metal hammer against metal bowl. A car alarm

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he can muster Samuel hurls the doughnut into the air. It steaks upward with a fierce zizz. Ed shakes his head. A krizzlekroo, he says softly, having come up behind Samuel, and lowered his lips to Samuel’s ear. Yearragagrugg!!! Lasers blast from Samuel’s eyes as the doughnut punches out of the stratosphere, burning into the mesosphere. The lasers intercept the doughnut and blow it smithereens. Samuel sinks to his knees, spent, his jaw quivering, his skin pale and blotchy. He bites at a breath, as though the air were too large to get his mouth around. Remember to breathe, Ed

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glop, mission, and expectation. What kind of fucking doughnut is that? A krizzlekroo. Samuel snatches the cream-stuffed confection from Ed’s hand. Hah! he says and squeezes it. It is, he discovers, rock hard. He tries not to flinch as his hand cramps around it. Arg! He bites it but his teeth can’t pierce the doughnut’s skin, and only leave trails in the powdered sugar as they drag across the surface. He pounds the doughnut with a fist, smacks it against his forehead, which action staggers him, then bangs it against the flagstone sidewalk. Whang! Whang! Finally, with all the strength

Talking about Thousand

25% of the way through this thing. 26%, actually. It takes ten days to achieve a single percentage point.

The transcendental butler first showed up in segment 185, which means he’s been around for about 30% of the … story … or whatever it is. He got a name in segment 195.

Without doing any other analysis than trying to remember I calculate that his is the longest stretch of anything approaching a narrative. Good for you, Samuel!

I’ve gotten some encouraging comments along the way – thanks, Elisabeth, Dave King, and the others of you who have left a few words. Although, as I’ve said in previous “Thousand process” posts, this project is a practice as much as a result, it’s still heartening when I’m told I’m not totally wasting your time, dear readers. I would like “Thousand” to be some kind of fun.

There are things we have to do every day. Eat. Piss. Wake up and get out of bed. Basic stuff. There are things we do every day because we have decided it’s important to do them. Brush teeth. Wash hands frequently. There are things we don’t do every day but keep on a semi-regular schedule. Vacuuming. Scrubbing the toilet.

“Thousand” is an every day activity. Despite various resolutions over the years I’m thinking “Thousand” has now surpassed any other creative assignment in terms of keeping to a schedule. I’ve missed two, maybe three days, since I started, just over 260 days ago. Almost 9 months of 100-word-a-day additions. Is that discipline? Am I driving myself nuts?

Kent is undergoing his final chemo treatment this week. He’s still hooked up to the chemical so won’t feel the full effects until it’s completely dumped into his system. Then he’ll feel lousy. The tenth of ten treatments in his prescribed regimen. After this treatment he gets to heal from the treatment. All heal! Kent’s ordeal was a major reason for my choosing to do “Thousand.” I can foresee a time I will skip doing “Thousand” for a few days because we are on vacation …

Thousand: Two Hundred Sixty

and teeth grind. An eyelid twitches. He gulps the coffee now, heedless of the damage it will do to the sensitive skin of his mouth and throat. Mission, Samuel hisses. Ed reaches out and squeezes Samuel’s shoulder but Samuel shrugs off the touch. What mission! What mission! In this doughnut, Ed says, picking one up so full of cream it oozes white goo from its injection hole at the pressure of Ed’s fingers, in this doughnut is a secret hidden esoteric message that will explain it all. Samuel casts a withering gaze upon the doughy shell and its cargo of

Thousand: Two Hundred Fifty-Nine

he eats them, as though ravenous, spilling flakes of glaze and doughnut crumbs, powdered sugar and jam filling flecking his lips. The pigeon hops down to peck away at the pretzels Ed has crumbled and spread on the soft top of the Mazerati convertible they are using as a table. I have a mission for you, Ed says. Samuel crams three doughnut holes in his mouth. I need you to find something. Something that will affect the harmony of the universe. Samuel slurps latte, burns his tongue, which makes his eyes water and his jaws tense up. His eyes blaze

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since. Since. Since he got up this morning? Samuel doesn’t look up again. If that is him, a statue for birds to rest and shit on, then it’s a version of him he feels no loyalty to. Ed’s hand steadies him. Samuel runs his free hand through his hair. It’s clean. The pigeon opens its wings again to balance itself, not apparently disturbed to find its inanimate roost walking about. When they get to street level Ed stops at a sidewalk coffee bar and picks up doughnuts, two tall lattes, and a packet of pretzels. Samuel doesn’t like doughnuts. But

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It’s okay whatever happens. Samuel doesn’t know why he feels so secure, so looked after. Hasn’t he just learned that for years he was alone, frozen in some purgatory of pigeons, unseen, it seemed, by anyone who might have decided it was dangerous to have a statue hovering above the city? Maybe he had been spotted, after all, had become a tourist attraction even, everyone fascinated by the trick but assuming a billionaire had the resources to place a man firmly in ether. Maybe there were souvenir postcards taken in various lights. This was the first thing that amused him