'here & Know'

if you think i will u r wrong --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support

“The writer as reader,” my editor was trying to make a point. “The reader, as, umm, listener. You know the drill. The money’s all in podcasts and audiobooks and audiobook podcasts. That ilk. Hmm?” “I really don’t know what you want me to say,” I told him. I continued reading the words on the page. The words that I, umm, definitely wrote…. “I should say, Margaret, that if I grew a mustache without knowing it, then that is a pretty big deal,” I told my wife. “It took me nearly forty minutes convincing Ken that the sheen on my upper lip was nothing more than chicken glaze. I’ve been taking so much overtime lately. I don’t think he–” “No.” “No what?” “That isn’t the edit. Let me see that page.” My editor fumbled with some pages. “I mean, Mer, chicken glaze? What even is–” “It’s like the airborne residue that gets on you when you work at a chicken factory. I looked into it.” “Here. Here we go. Take this.” He handed me a page. “There is no question about the mustache, my friend. I don’t know where you thought you w

I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought. My suit was starting to stick to my skin. Mostly because of the hot chicken air on the line, and also the fact that I hadn’t taken it off in some six weeks…. They rebranded. Chicken Fillet E factory number sixteen was now Chicken Depot Supreme or C.D.S. and Ken came in beaming the day they got new uniforms delivered. “I’m not taking off this suit,” I told him. “Can’t really get into the specifics of the thing, but please understand it’s a non-negotiable position on my end.” Well, he wasn’t having any of it. Apparently his niece was involved in some way with the rebrand and aided in the design of the new logo which was an interlocking “C” and backwards “S” crisscrossing through a “D”–the “D” was a garish yellow and the “C-S” a sky blue. I, having some experience on the subject, felt it was an incredibly bad job if not completely botched. I thought, we’ll be lucky to sell a single cutlet, folks thinking this is some shitty amateur sports team with that mark and not a

I left my editor’s office as unsure of myself as I’d ever felt. He didn’t care about the words. Only how the words sounded on the podcast. It was absurd to write this way. This wasn’t even “writing.” Even as I say these words into the microphone, I know how futile the whole the enterprise really is. All I ever wanted to do was write a book that would make Alpie, my prized alpaca, proud. Alpie, if you’re up in heaven, listening, I love you, good boy. They put me in touch with the guy who owns the podcast, or who is renting us the podcast feed? The whole thing is very confusing to me. Anyway, the guy is a goddam nutjob. Jeff. He immediately started talking about some conspiracy theories that I absolutely don’t want to be associated with. You know the ones. In the end, we seemed to come to an agreement about it since we’re now intertwined in such a way. I know my editor doesn’t like when I get off subject and so I can only imagine what he’s gonna think about this chapter. It’s really none of my concern. I can’t

"I'm just gonna say this one time, Mer. I love you and I respect you. You know this. But I am not at all liking this chicken thing. I really got to say... feels like a dead end." I was getting fed up with my editor. Every meeting about the book was worse than the last. I couldn't think of the last time he offered any helpful feedback... "I was thinking the other day. Doing a little brainstorming. Now, I'm no writer. I leave the writing up to you guys, the writers. You know this, Mer. But if we could leave the chicken thing alone for a second and just hear me out. Okay?" I sat there, speechless, which was my way of saying, "go on." I couldn't fight him any longer. "Alright then... So what's seems hot right, what really has people into the books getting hot is, like, a disaster or terrorist attack or genocidal thing or some kind of real evil thing, event–could be real, could be imagined, but probably better real–and then giving at twist of levity. People are saying this to me all the damn time, Mer. Okay, so he

I was positioned between two twin teenage girls name Shirley and Shirlay on the poultry line. My manager, Ken, told me that he had been looking for the right person to separate them for quite some time. "Not cuz they ain't good at pulling chickens apart," he told me. "Cuz, frankly, they're too good.... frankly speaking." I was confused. "Listen bud," he continued. "We're a class E depot, and not one of the more popular ones at that. We pull apart too many chickens, we get a backlog of chickens. And what does that mean?" He wasn't really looking for an answer. "Dead chicken meat as far as the eye can see...." I could see what Ken meant. Shirley and Shirlay were a sympatico whirling dervish of chicken ripping. Their bodies flowed as one being and they did the work of a dozen or so men with ease. There was eight of on that line. Apparently, I replaced a guy named Roger who left under suspicious circumstances. In the beginning, my entire day was spent trying to avoid get poked by the sisters as their natural moti

I began my journey as a junior line poultry puller at Chicken Fillet E factory number sixteen not knowing it would change my life. The deep, meditative motion of ripping dead chickens apart over the course of eight to sometimes as many as ten straight hours, led my mind to a pool of clarity I didn't know existed. I thought about my old job in the city.... For thirty-seven years I worked in the Pelican Building as a marketing man. I came up with the ideas for commercials back when there were still commercials for things, back when their were, you know, things. Of course, after the riots calmed down and the eternal fires were strategically lit in honor of the nearly 50% of the population who perished in them, we entered into the period of time which came to be known as The Great Relocalizing. The writing had, probably, been on the wall for sometime before then, but the dissolution of national media, national travel, and national life as we once knew it, meant a big ole "thank you, see you later" for folks of my

The next morning I woke up determined to get a job at Chicken Fillet A. "Chicken Fillet D through M is more your speed, dear," Margaret said with a smile. I didn't appreciate that, even if she was probably right.... After the food riots–what feels like a hundred years ago now–the government instituted  the Chicken Fillet factory strategy. The goal being: if you wanted a hot plate of bird you could get always get one, free of charge, from one of a thousand or more full-service chicken factory and restaurant combos. Their motto was "From hatchin' to digestin' these squabblers ain't restin'!" It was a confused motto to say the least. Of course, you could still hunt and gather any other means of sustenance you liked. The shots of a rifle taking down a bear, a squirrel or an aardvark became just as common as music coming from a radio once had. People couldn't be expected to survive on chicken alone. But still, the Chicken Fillet factory strategy was how most people got their meals and it was divided by class.

My sudden bout of clearheadedness did not come with a reprieve of fatigue, much to my chagrin. But I found an energy in that frustration, somehow, and I suspected it to be the source of my awakening, if I could dare to call it such.... It had something to do with the new suit Margaret had laid out for me. I didn't even realize it was new when I first put it on. And I still didn't realize it when I left Josef by the fire, kicking dirt upon it, screaming, trying in vain to extinguish it, such as he did after every night which we concluded there. "I swear to god," he said. "That this fire was on my side of the creek when we moved in. And now it won't ever go out!" That was my cue to my leave. It was as if our encounters by the fire were playing out on a loop. The same conversation, over and over again, however many times we had it. The only thing different on this occasion was my suit. I never wore a suit. Or at least I hadn't since I quit my job and moved out of the city. When I got back inside the house that n

The dinner had been a delight, much to my wondrous surprise. I didn't know what to chalk it up to. My personality was not one apt to sudden, positive change. It was as if The Cravendorfs were never really there. Obviously, the deafening squalor of aardvarks in heat had something to do with it... Had my birthday always corresponded with the aardvark mating season? It certainly didn't feel like– "Ya gotta lose the aardvarks, Mer. You're killing me with these aardvarks. It's bad enough you're not developing these characters, my man, but these... what is the obsession with these–" "Not developing my characters?" I said to my editor. "How... Where do you get that idea? Henry is the unreliable narrator, unsure of himself, on a quest but only he doesn't know he's on a quest. Margaret is the wildcard wife, ceaselessly and needlessly adventurous. Marjorie is quiet, pensive, a potential victim, a seeker of truth, the shadow to Margaret's feminine light. And Josef is the lurking evil, your classic antagonist. Or is he."

"Every year," Josef started. "Every year it seems like this fire is getting bigger." He paused and sticked the fire. Was this the same stick he always used? How had it not burnt down into a nub by now? "Don't you... agree.... Henry?" The fire was getting bigger. I imagined the fire would one day form a wall on this side of the creek and then a tiny fireball would leap across the water and start the process anew on the other side. Who's to say what would happen to the creek in between two walls of fire. We wouldn't be able to see it through the fire. But it would just take one side worth of a firewall to burn the tiny bridge connecting the two properties. So the fireball wouldn't be necessary. One wall would be sufficient to fuck this fucker out of my life forever. The sound of mating aardvarks grew unbearably loud and I don't think that Josef heard what I had to say about the fire. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support

"My connection to Erwin? I don't... I don't have a connection to Erwin, I don't believe" I told Marjorie, who had popped over to borrow a cup of flour in the middle of the day. The timing and framing of her question was suspicious to say the least.... "Josef tells me your'e interested in buying our old cottage, which I... I found that odd. The young couple who lives there now just seem so happy, and I called Elise, she's our agent, and she said the house isn't even on the market. So I just..." Marjorie trailed off. Margaret was off running errands and it felt odd to be alone in the home with Josef Cravendorf's wife. I don't believe we had directly conversed like this before. "Hmm," I tried to gather my thoughts. "Where... You know... I'm not sure how Josef... Could have gotten that idea from.... So... Yes.... Where is Josef right now?" I asked. "Perhaps I should have a quick word with–" "No!" Marjorie shouted. "We mustn't wake him. I mean, he is asleep. He, uh, he sleeps." "Well, yes, certainly. I didn't mean

"I still own that cottage out past Erwin, but heaven knows don't say anything to Marjorie about it." I was out to lunch at the local deli with Joseph, well before he killed my dog. We were hand-feeding each other reuben sandwiches as had become the custom in that time.... "Why would you keep that a secret?" I grumbled through a bite of corned beef, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing covered in melted Swiss cheese on toasted rye bread. Josef's fingers lingered in my mouth after presenting me the bite. It was difficult to speak and even more difficult to discern what exactly he was up to. He settled on one of my back teeth. "Ah, here we go," he said. "This one's rotted to the core." Not long after that lunch my teeth did, in fact, start to fall out, one by one. And on the day I lost my last tooth, I found Jude's dead body in the creek. "I thought you were a doctor, not a dentist?" I asked, annoyed, when Josef finally removed his hand from my mouth. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support

It was sometime in the second grade when I stopped sleeping well. And sometime in my early twenties when I fixed the issue, temporarily. But I can't seem to discern when it got bad again. I would occasionally find some peace in the night. On occasion, it would be a week or two at a time. But in the scheme of a life, fleeting is not the right word for a week or two. What is an appropriate amount of time? I do not know.... "Seven years," I said to Margaret. "Seven years, what?" "Seven years of sleep." "You want to sleep for seven straight years?" "No. Well... no. I don't want to be asleep for seven years. Not for the duration. I think I need seven years' worth of good sleep to feel good again." "Henry, dear..." Margaret paused. "You're an old man as it is. What is this talk about seven years, how do you even come up with a number like that." Margaret resumed her knitting of a pot holder embroidered with a swastika. She knit one swastika pot holder every single day. At the end of every month, she would take the

"I'm ill," I said, defeated. The Cravendorfs were due over in about an hour for my birthday feast. "I'm too ill for company." "Hogwash," Margaret said. "I have your suit hanging in the bathroom. It's all ready." I closed my eyes so hard that it hurt.... "Henry! They'll be here in about fifteen minutes. Get out of that bed now," Margaret yelled from the dining room downstairs, between humming what sounded like a funeral march as she set the table. I could hear the clink of the fine china. It had a different tone than the normal plates. I eventually did get up and go into the bathroom. I put on the suit and looked at myself in the mirror. "Just like you've done a thousand times before, I told my reflection," I said. And I sat down on the toilet, lid up, pants on. None of this was real. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support

"Only dolts live in the city for life," I told Margaret. She shrugged. I'll never forget the day we moved out to Red Sparrow Falls. Something changed then, and I'm still uncovering the mystery of what, these so many, so many years later.... "I have to go out to the dentures repair shop," I lied to Margaret. "Molar's on the fritz again." I hopped in the station wagon and zoomed the some ninety minutes, over the majestic bridge and into the cloudy, rough and tumble hubbub of the big city, a different world. It had been a decade at least since I'd been here, but it mostly looked the same. The world seemed to hit a point of stagnation, culturally, at some point, and it became one of the great unspoken things: not questioning how or why that was. I made my way over to the Hall of Records. I had pinpointed the time and general location of what I believed to be when and where a Dr. Joe Cravendorf Sr. worked as a psychiatrist. His office was in the same building I had worked in, and though I don't believe I ever met

I often pondered what the landmark ruling that outlawed religion in this country really meant to our everyday lives. Perhaps, in some roundabout way, it was the reason men took to burning themselves on purpose, or drowning their neighbors' pets.... My father had been one of the last real religious men. He was a devout Catholic and feared hell above all else. He acted as both priest and daddy, making us take confession with him in secret in the dark, empty closet next to the attic stairs. "You're lying, Henry," he would say, slowly, over and over again. It got to be that I didn't know when I was actually lying. I assumed I was lying all of the time, and so my truth became a sort of lie. It led me to see life and live it in slow motion. Every action was deliberate to the point of my wanting to know if it was truly happening or not. If I lifted my fork to eat, I did it in such a way that my mother would shriek nine or ten times before it reached my mouth. The same with my paper to pen to write words or draw pict

"I said, I think I might have known your father. Did he go by Joe?" The Cravendorf name was always oddly familiar to me, a splinter in the back of my mind. I was sure I knew someone by that name, though Margaret told me it was only old age getting the best of me. Needless to say, Josef Cravendorf didn't appreciate the question and took it, suspiciously, as an accusation.... "You definitely don't know my dad, Henry," he told me. "No. Not a chance in the world." He laughed his gruff, painful laugh. Josef had the laugh of a much older man, a terrorized snicker or one meant to signify terror. "He's dead anyhow," he said bluntly. "Sorry to hear that." "Don't be. He was a horrible person." Josef returned to probing the fire with a stick. Later in the evening I caught him grasping the glowing fire-end on purpose. His facial expression did not change as he burnt his own palm. I could relate. I also had a horrible dad, who was also, obviously, dead. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support

The smell of aardvark cooking in a bath of butter, carrots, onion and god knows what else was, I had to admit, better than the smell of it decaying on my kitchen counter. Though I still didn't want to eat the thing... I was hellbent on canceling this little impromptu dinner party my wife had arranged, and after breakfast and a long, hot shower, I stiffened myself for confrontation. I found Margaret doing snow angels out on the lawn. It never snowed in Red Sparrow Falls, but Margaret hailed from a cold climate and she missed the snow dearly. "I'll eat the damn anteater, but I will not share a table with those puppy killers," I demanded. I had broken her concentration. But she could destress and let loose of annoyance with the blink of an eye. "The sky is bigger than the sea," she told me–one of her metaphorical quips I never appreciated–and she resumed doing her snowless snow angels. "I wish I could drown every aardvark in these woods. Feed them to the sharks," I said. --- Support this podcast: https://anch

R --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/myspace/support