A rainbow in Wisconsin from inside a moving car / A.A. Cinder
Some say they only fall, but I say they walk among us. She walks among me even now. She would never admit to being an angel – I don’t think she believes in them. I would call her a guardian of the heart, if nothing else. She’s taught me to cast out the enemy love once was and replace it with the real spirit of it. And like angels usually do, she came out of nowhere one night when I was alone. She fell from the sky like a derailed comet and exploded everything that was already blown to bits – and what I mean by everything is everything in a good way. I’ve often wondered if I died and she was just helping me along down Heaven or Hell Boulevard – she has carved a soulscape of wonder, my wonder, her wonder, our wonder, two wondering wanderers standing still and cracking until they run into each other, from out of the air just like that – there was Gwenhwyfar.
She came down from the sky on a glowing escalator and I waited for her in the parking lot. But sometimes I think she was maybe there all along, maybe my entire life and I just didn’t see her because they can be invisible. She looks human. She has all the right parts in the right places. A great ass. There is a glow about her though, like sun coming up out of her guts at times. I would call her a beautiful angel. What else could I call her? She helps me when I have problems with life. She’s a pretty decent angel.
I asked her about Jesus, and she said he was a pretty nice guy – just a bit upset about what we do in his name. Gwenhwyfar told me she was an angel of words – the one who corrected the language of the universe. She’s beautiful like that. I’m surprised she eats actual food because I didn’t think angels needed it. She makes me a lot of frozen pizzas because she doesn’t like to cook much. She’s afraid she’ll burn the tips of her wings on the stovetop and that’s not something easily fixed. She watches over me like they say they do – a love never wavering. She can make it not so bad of a day when I am in mental Hades, roasting and getting stabbed, mentally and emotionally. She lifts me up and out of the ashes and shows me the true meaning of love. She is love. She is real faith.
And when the duties of our earthly days are done, she sits with me in the lamplit room of red, and I hold her in the stillness, an episode of House Hunters humming in the distance. I hold her face and tilt her head to kiss her lips… And in that last taste of her before she sleeps, I am fed love, and bow to the mending of a broken heart.
Stars lie still in their pitchy silt and listlessly swim
The ground is crusted over in white
And the way the day death light falls
It looks like blue frosting on a Christmas cookie.
There was me sitting on a bench in this Christmas blue park in London and I was wearing red socks. I heard the ice skate blades grind against the glass pond they had there, and I watched small people glide awkwardly, trip, then fall. Their tears added to the slickness, and it was a comical chain of events — the ballerinas in plaid wool coats and the shining knights in silver boots skimmed across the pond on their bellies like a stone skipped over the ocean.
I unwrapped the white paper and rubbed my hands together in anticipation. Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips was the best damn chippy place I’ve found after coming over here. I was eating painfully delicious deep-fried cold-water haddock and thick cut potatoes with the traditional salt and vinegar. It was kind of cold outside. I took another bite of the fish and shoved in a chip after it. I washed it down with sweet, milky tea from an on-the-run cup.
I looked around at the beautiful, peaceful world, and I thought about life and was wondering what it really was all about, and wondering why we are here on Earth and… Just where the hell is Earth? Seriously. Have you ever really thought about it? Where is the Earth? Maybe that question is just too much for our primitive brains to comprehend, and we probably shouldn’t attempt to.
And so there I was, sitting on a bench in a park and eating fish n chips, oblivious to the ways of the universe. Then the joy of the glowing and ponderous day was suddenly shattered with screaming. A young girl had fallen through the ice.
I got up and ran over to look, leaving my food on the bench for the birds or a wanderer to eat. There was a thin man stretched out on the ice and he was thrusting his arm out in an effort to reach the girl who was bobbing and struggling in the water. I hurried to the edge of the pond and gathered there with the others, looking over at the struggling child.
“Has anyone called for an ambulance!?” I yelled, frantically searching for an answer from anyone.
One man put his phone in the air, pointed and looked over at me.
“Yes! I’m doing it now.”
“Tell them to hurry or she’ll be dead!” one woman cried out.
It seemed like forever before I heard the sirens and saw the flashing red and blues splashing against the bruised cotton candy sky. The emergency vehicles came to a screeching halt and the men jumped down and pushed through the crowd. They pulled the dad in quick to get him off the ice and out of the way; then they sent out the smallest rescuer with a rope tied around his waist and he snatched the girl out of the hole, and he passed her to another, and she was limp in his arms as they rushed her to the waiting ambulance. She was carried to a gurney near the ambulance and she was soon smothered with blankets while the mom and dad wept over her and kissed her on the head. The gurney went up and into the ambulance and the doors shut with a rude thud and the tires spun and they tore off toward the hospital.
I read about the girl being dead in the newspaper. It was that cold and creamy Sunday afternoon when everything was still and quiet except the floors creaking as I gently walked about the old flat in a t-shirt and boxer shorts and a pair of reading glasses slipping on my face. The fireplace crackled with fire. I sighed at the table. I sighed about the dead girl. I glanced out the window. Not much was moving. The mists of winter crawled up out of the streets, over brown rooftops, and floated into the forests like gray syrup. I tapped at my teacup and then got up to throw another log on the fire. Somewhere far off I could hear the ringing of a handbell. Then I heard the caroling. It was nearly Christmas.
I sat in the chair near the hearth and watched the orange tongues of the fire lap at the sooty brick. An ember popped. The old clock on the mantel struck seven and chimed. My wayward mind drifted and I wondered about the ghost of Santa Claus steering his sleigh through another dimension. The carolers drew closer to my building and so I went to the frosty window, rubbed on it, and looked down at the old street. I looked at the faces there — bright eyes lit up by candlelight, steaming mouths moving open and shut as they sang. I could smell the bones of autumn’s leaves through the glass. Then there was the clop clop of the horses as the old-time carriage rolled by all lathered in garland and bells and shiny glass balls of red. The people inside were laughing and waving and crying out — “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”
I drew the curtains, but the bells still rang, and the voices still floated upward. But soon they got quieter and quieter until drifting away completely. I sat back down in my chair near the hearth. I opened a book all about Christmas in the past and started reading it. The doorbell rang and then there was a knock. I had nearly forgotten.
The young man at the door wore a coat over his uniform and a wool cap on his head. His shoes were covered in slush. He handed me the white bag from Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips.
“I’m going to give you 12 quid tonight… Since you’re having to work so close to Christmas.”
He tipped his hat at me and smiled.
“Thank you, sir. Enjoy your fish n chips… oh, and Merry Christmas.”
I closed the door and it clicked. I turned a knob and the deadbolt snapped in place and kept me safe from the outside world. I dropped the white paper bag on the table and reached inside. It wasn’t the fish n chips I had ordered. But what I pulled out was magical and amazing nonetheless — a little stuffed black bear about the size of a half-loaf of bread with a rubber face and a red plastic collar around its neck and a silver chain leash.
“How did they know? … This has always been my favorite.”
I had gotten one as a child in the gift shop at the place where the high bridge gapped the canyon in some western American place under the sun. It was right after when a cable broke and the bridge went smashing down into the canyon and there was so much dust and screaming — and I had stayed behind so I could set my bear on a rock and just look at him in peace. None of my family — father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, two cousins — came back through the dust. They all got smashed against rock and then were dropped nearly 1,000 feet, down into the raging Arkansas River at the bottom. I waited and waited and waited through the chaos until a policeman finally took me away in his patrol car, and then I had a long and challenging life.
I sat the bear on the mantel over the fire and stood back and looked at him. I thought about the fact that Chucky’s Super Fresh Fish N Chips really knew how to deliver. The clock struck eight and chimed. I rummaged around in the refrigerator and made myself a different sandwich. I turned on some soft lights in the living room and plopped down on the couch and began to eat. The carolers were drifting by again. Santa’s magical dead sleigh swooped by on stardust, right near my window. I settled back, powered on the television, and watched all about the latest godless war for sale.
There was a beheading in Moore, Oklahoma. That’s all the message said. I questioned if this was becoming a common practice, for just the other night someone down the hall in my shoddy apartment complex was beheaded, and the night before that, right down on my shoddy street, a hot dog vendor was beheaded just as he was slathering someone’s steaming wiener with relish — I don’t like relish. Then there was that incident down at the public library just about a week ago when a circulation clerk was beheaded after telling a patron he owed $1.25 in overdue book fines.
Machetes and firearms line every rubber raincoat now — as does madness in the minds of men.
“Thank God someone had a gun.” Someone said, in the Land of Violence.
And violence stirs violence until the only solution is more violence — more guns, more bombs, more tanks, more jets, more ships, more drones, more senseless destruction.
And the money we spend to kill and maim and rape countless cultures, could cure illness and starvation and homelessness ten million times over and more. We could actually nurture humanity.
On my way back the other day from the ice cream shoppe, I saw a campaign sign for a death cult touting the joys of the Space Force. Why!? Why do we have to militarize space? And to think we would have any chance against them up there. Dimwitted buffoonery.
And the Annunaki looked down from Orion and wondered what they had done.
Lord Femfatuntin turned to his lead galactic centurion and ordered, “Send down the chariots of fire, these idiots are destroying all my hard work… And Tome, if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind bringing me back a box of Count Chocula? On second thought, you better make it two.”
Tome the galactic centurion bowed with respect. “As you wish, my lord.”
I was sitting alone in my shoddy apartment eating a bowl of cereal and watching COPS when there was a knock at the door. I stuck my eye in the peephole but all I saw was a thick neck, some broad shoulders and a name patch that read TOME across the breast portion of a shiny space uniform.
I pressed my face to the door. “Who’s there? What do you want?”
“It’s Tome. I come to you from the planet Placitas.”
“I don’t know any Tomes and there’s no planet named Placitas. Away with you!”
“Please, Phil Paradise. It’s very important that I speak with you.”
“How did you know my name?”
“You are the spawn of my history — a child of Femfatuntin,” the stranger said.
I looked through the peephole again and shook my head.
“Look,” I said. “I think you may be on drugs, and I don’t want to talk to you. Please go away.”
“I can’t do that, Phil. The future of your very own existence and possibly that of the universe depends entirely on me speaking with you.”
“I don’t open the door to strangers.”
“I’m a lot bigger than you and I can break this door down,” Tome from Placitas threatened.
“Go away or I’ll call the police.”
The aliens in the hallway began to laugh among themselves.
“Oh no! Are they going to come arrest me for possessing a medicinal herb that comes from the ground?!” one of them said.
“They’ll arrest you for harassment and trespassing! That’s what they’ll do. You can count on it!” I called out.
“Your laws are pathetic and ludicrous,” Tome from Placitas said.
There was more laughter in the hallway and then the door opened, and they just walked in — Tome and his two alien sidekicks.
“How did you do that?”
“I’m an advanced being, Phil. It’s pretty easy.”
“You guys are very tall and shiny, but you look absolutely human,” I said in utter amazement as I looked them over.
“And you are very short and dull. We made you that way so you could never be a threat while you work, work, work.”
“I must be dreaming. Did I eat acid?” I wondered.
“Let’s sit down and talk,” Tome said.
“I thought you might smell bad, but you don’t,” I quickly pointed out.
Tome sighed an alien sigh. “Why is it that you Earth people always consider yourselves as the most superior creatures in the universe? You just assume that surely every other living thing out there must smell worse — I don’t understand where you get this false ego. I mean, you haven’t even mastered intergalactic space travel yet. The truth of the matter is… You’re just an animal who requires the use of hand sanitizer in a world that has gone horribly wrong.”
“Well, if I’m just a filthy animal why did you come to me?”
Tome quickly looked over his shoulder at his comrades and then back at me.
“You’re one of the few reasonable individuals we’ve been able to locate down here.” He put a large hand on my shoulder and awkwardly smiled. “Phil, we’re destroying the planet, and we want you to come back with us before we do.”
“Why!?” I yelled in defiance. “There’s no need for that! You’re talking about billions of lives!”
“You mean billions of morons, Phil! Absolute dashboard bobbleheads on the road to self annihalation.”
“You can’t do this! I won’t let you!”
“There’s nothing you can do about it Phil Paradise. Nothing,” Tome said to me with authority.
I scratched at my head and looked about my shoddy apartment.
“What about my things?”
“You won’t need any of it.”
“But, I have asthma. What about my asthma medication?”
“You won’t have asthma anymore where we’re going, Phil. Just close the door and come along,” Tome ordered.
There were some nice people on the spaceship, and I was well fed at a mile-long buffet. When the total annihilation of Earth came it was quick and clean, like laser surgery. They let me join them to watch on a huge monitor as Earth was vaporized — one second it was there and then it was not. There was some low-key clapping and some cheers and whistles, and then we all ate some delicious cake and drank the best milk I ever had.
Awhile later, I was sitting on a spaceship bench and was looking out a window as the galaxy rushed by. Tome came over and stood tall beside me and we looked at space together.
“You’re doing pretty well for your first intergalactic flight,” he said.
“How fast are we going?”
“Faster than you can even comprehend.”
I looked up at him. “There are others like me — sensible like you say — what about them? Why did you leave them behind?”
“We didn’t. We already have them, Phil Paradise. We’ve been collecting them for a long time — babies to octogenarians and beyond. I’m sure you have heard of alien abduction?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’ve always enjoyed stuff about aliens and space. I used to be Catholic but once the priests started ass-grabbing kids, I kind of settled on the idea that organized religion was a bunch of bullshit. Now I subscribe to ancient alien theology.”
Tome nodded his head, seemingly satisfied with my personal confession. “That’s good, Phil, and just so you know, you won’t be alone on planet Placitas, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I was wondering what it will be like,” I said.
Then something shifted in him, and Tome suddenly clamped his big hands to his head and groaned with agitation and stomped a foot.
“Oh shit! I forgot my lord’s Count Chocula!”
“He likes Count Chocula? The cereal?”
“Yes! It’s his favorite thing for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. Damn it! And Earth is already destroyed. That’s just great! Bad shit like this always happens to me.”
“Calm down, Tome. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Oh, but you don’t know Lord Femfatuntin. He has anger issues.”
“But, can’t you just make your own Count Chocula here on the spaceship?” I suggested.
“We’ve tried that, but it just came out tasting like generic Count Chocula and he knew right away it wasn’t the real deal. He’ll only eat real Count Chocula made on Earth.”
“I guess you’re screwed then, Tome.”
“Thanks, Phil.”
“When will I get to meet him?”
“Maybe in about 400 years.”
After that, I didn’t see Tome the Galactic Centurion for a very long time.
They gave me a very nice apartment overlooking a tranquil sea of clouds. Maybe I was dead and there really was a Heaven, but I didn’t know for sure.
I felt alive enough when I went to the market on Tuesdays, and they gave me food. For free. Everyone got as much food as they wanted any time they wanted it. No one on the entire planet ever went hungry.
I had no soul-sucking job in the sense of having a job. I was merely allowed to have a satisfying task of my choosing, and that task was to read to wayward dogs and cats at Space Kennel No. 99. They enjoyed it immensely, evidenced by the plethora of wagging tails and gentle purrs every time I cracked open a new book. Dr. Seuss was their absolute favorite. I asked the animal handler, the odd Susan O’Neil, about it one day.
“How did you get Dr. Seuss books?”
She looked at me and smiled a tight-lipped smile and adjusted her spectacles.
“He’s here.”
“He’s here? Dr. Seuss is here?”
“He prefers to be called Theodor.”
“Well, where is he? I’d like to meet him.”
“He’s incredibly reclusive, but I do think he plays squash at the Stellar Sports Open Air Plaza every other Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m., but only if it’s cloudy outside and there’s a chance for rain.”
“He plays squash in the rain?”
“So the story goes.”
“I wonder if he really eats green eggs and ham.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Hey Susan O’Neil, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course. You can ask me anything, former Earthling.”
“Does anyone ever get beheaded up here?”
“Beheaded? Do you mean like …” And she rolled her eyes and made a hand motion across her throat like it was getting sliced.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Of course not. We’re not bloody asinine savages like they were!” she wickedly asserted, shakily pointing the tip of her finger toward that spot in the universe where Earth used to be. “This is Shangri-La compared to your own little version of a spinning blue hell. How on — what used to be Earth — could a species allow its own offspring to be cut down by a gutless murder machine, and accept it repeatedly?” She shook her bookish head in disgust. I must admit that Susan O’Neil was quite attractive for a Placitan. That’s what the originals were called — Placitans. And I suddenly was taken over by the desire to ask her out on a date.
But just as I was about to speak, we heard the haunting sound of the great gongs of Placitas reverberate all around us followed by the heavy march of the centurions and their steeds. I rushed out into the path lined by rubber trees and there I saw Tome the galactic centurion leading his troops to whatever trouble there was. I ran beside him as hard and as fast as I could.
“Tome! What on Placitas is happening!?”
He reached his arm down, snatched me up and threw me behind him on the horse.
“I couldn’t hear a word you were saying!”
“I wanted to know what the situation is. What’s with all the menacing war stuff?”
“They’ve come. We didn’t think their ship could make such a long journey. Somehow, they escaped before the annihilation, and now they’ve finally arrived, and we must stop them.”
“Is it something terrible? I don’t want it to be something terrible,” I cried out.
“Of course it’s terrible. Why else would we be going to war?” Tome answered.
“But you hate war. You’ve learned to put it away and live in peace.”
“Some things are worth fighting for when the enemy decides to impose its beliefs. Hold on Phil Paradise.”
“What is it!?”
“They’re trying to open a WalMart here!”
And that’s when the dusts of war raged, and Tome lit a fire beneath his troops, and I could barely hold on.
“But… Tome… Wait!”
“What is it, Phil!? I’m trying to lead the charge.”
Most days of the week, I watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants with my 20-year-old stepson. It’s his favorite show, and he’s loved it since he was a child. I think he knows the title of every episode and what season it first aired.
He usually will come knock on my bedroom/office door and ask: “Hey Aaron, are you ready to watch another episode of SpongeBob?” And that could be 8 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening. I don’t think it makes any difference for him. In some ways he’s very in-tune to time, in other ways he has no need for time.
“Sure,” I say, and he gets very excited about it and claps and laughs and runs downstairs to his room to set the show up on his television or DVD player or X-Box. I’m not always sure what method of technology he uses, but he has it down to a science regardless. Once everything is set, he’ll come back up and let me know, “It’s ready.”
Once downstairs I take my seat in the wooden desk chair. It’s the one he always slides into place for me in the very front row. It’s the best seat in the house. But even on my way down the stairs, he prefaces every episode with some sort of introductory statement. Today it was: “I bet you won’t believe how crazy THIS episode is going to be.”
And it was pretty crazy. SpongeBob and Patrick decided they wanted to go to the Bikini Bottom prankster store to purchase some new pranking merchandise. The store owner convinces them to buy a can of Invisible Spray and all hell breaks loose after that. Since the Invisible Spray can stain clothes, Patrick and SpongeBob get naked and start spraying different parts of each other into invisibility. They also come up with the idea of spraying a park bench and then sit on it to give off the impression that they are just floating in the air.
With their invisibility powers in full force, the duo goes around pretending to be ghosts and scare nearly everyone in Bikini Bottom – except Mr. Krabs – and there is even a newspaper article about it all. Well, Mr. Krabs isn’t scared of any ghosts, yet goes to great lengths to ward off any potential ghosts coming to scare him. It was all pretty entertaining.
But it’s Mr. Krabs who gets the last laugh in the end when SpongeBob and Patrick’s Invisible Spray washes off in an incident at the Krusty Krab and they find themselves suddenly in the spotlight. Naked. And in front of a laughing crowd. It was a good one.
During the show, I always try to make comments that let him know I am enjoying the show – which I truly do. But if I show him that I am completely invested in the 23 minutes we spend together nearly every day, it brings him great joy. The more I comment or laugh about what is going on in the episode, the more he laughs, the more he jumps and claps, the happier he becomes.
If you haven’t figured it out already, my stepson is autistic. And one of his favorite ways of socializing with people is to watch some sort of video with them. It could be SpongeBob; it could be an animated movie like Cars or Cars 2 or Cars 3… Or it could very likely be a video about construction equipment, or John Deere tractors, or snow moving machines in downtown Toronto. Now, some of these videos are old, and often the writing, acting, and overall production values are a tad cheesy and amateurish, but that doesn’t really matter because those things do not matter to him. The reality of it, at least in my mind, is that it’s a very important way for him to share what he loves with those he loves.
Before I met my wife eight and a half years ago, I had had no interaction with anyone who was autistic. I knew nothing about it. The only experience with autism I had was the 1988 movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise (Insert my wife making puking noises because she detests Tom Cruise, but that’s another story).
Anyway, I always enjoyed the movie and would even get a little verklempt at the end when Cruise says goodbye to Hoffman at the train station. Now, is the film’s portrayal of autism accurate? From what I have experienced with my stepson, I’d have to say yes and no. There are some characteristics of Hoffman’s Ray that are familiar to me, but some of his other behaviors are not. But then that should be expected, because people who are autistic are just that – people. Everyone is unique, everyone is different. No two autistic people could ever be exactly the same just like no two “normal” people could ever be exactly the same. It just isn’t like that and why on Earth would it be? But then again, I’m just speaking from my own perspective based on my own experiences.
But back to what I was saying about never having experienced autism before meeting my wife and what that was like for me when I first did.
I have to admit, I was a bit uncomfortable at first, but I suppose that would be true for anyone who had never experienced autism before. It took me time to learn about and experience his behaviors. It took me time to understand his anxieties and triggers. It took me time to fully immerse myself in a life that includes, and will forever include, an autistic person.
One of his greatest triggers and fears is storms. I don’t think it’s so much the storm itself, but its potential to knock out our power. That’s a biggie and causes him great discomfort. Another one of his greatest fears is a kitchen fire. God forbid if we ever have a storm that knocks out our power that somehow in turn causes a kitchen fire that then leads to the smoke alarm blaring.
I’ve learned that one must have a sense of humor and a great deal of patience, empathy, and understanding. My wife is very good at all that because she’s been his mother for 20 years. I’m continually learning and adapting and even though I still struggle at times, I feel I am gaining ground.
But anyway, I don’t mind watching SpongeBob with him. I think it gives us both a break from our individual struggles in this life. Sometimes I am concerned about any isolation he may feel, and so if I can alleviate that in even a small way, then that can only be a good thing.
And truthfully, SpongeBob SquarePants is a pretty good show, and at least it’s not Danny Phantom.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 