the voices dying with a dying fall

        Song of the Hour: Run by Snow Patrol

The latest in animal control news at the Bridgers household, is that we have now have a bird of unknown variety, appropriately named "Twickle".  Where did we get this bird you say? Why, I’m glad you asked. Mr. Joss, of course, found the little thing lying helpless on the sidewalk, with its little pink body practically naked of feathers, and promptly brought it home and put it in a tupperware bowl. By the time I got home, it was named and loved with his whole little heart– also know as, "adopted".

I don’t know shit about birds. The little critter has managed to survive on bread dipped in water, living in a tupperware bowl lined with torn-up t-shirt bits. His feathers are filling out, he seems alert and relatively content, and obviously Joss’ soulmate in that it consumes twice its body weight in food every day. We have a cage now that it just seems too small for– but goddamn. What the hell do you do with a baby bird? I really didn’t expect it to last the night when he brought it home, but its been a week and its still going strong. It’s not that I don’t want an animal, it’s that I wake up a few times in the middle of the night to check on it and make sure its little heart is still beating (which, sickeningly, you can kind of see) and it isn’t starving for either food or attention. I worry constantly about it. 1) it’s adorable 2) it’s insanely fragile and 3) if it dies, Joss will go ape-shit; and frankly I have no idea how to insure its survival- so all around, makes me uncomfortable.

Joss had a good birthday party– held at Anne’s, where he wanted it.
we have him with the neighbor’s prarie dog; and joss with cohort josh trying and failing to wrestle reggie to the ground. How cute is that? In the end, Joss got a bike (given to me by a coworker) and a snowcone maker for his birthday, along with an assortment of action figures, DVDs, and a book from everyone else. He seemed, to say the least, happy.

I saw "A Scanner Darkly" which I think could have been great, but well, wasn’t . But as far as I’m concerned, it was pretty enough to distract me from the plot holes and indelicate balance of unexplained & predictability. I love that vector business– don’t know why, I just do.

On the Nihilist battlefront, I had an interesting night last week. Some of you know my friend Tom, or "Crazy Tom" as you may likely remember him. He’s the guy we all met at Waffle House, or Mr. B’s, or Cupa’ Joe. You know, often talking loudly to himself or repeating Buddhist chants or yelling at people no one else can see? The insanely smart sixty-something schitzophrenic vietnam vet, kinda heavy, with the gray hair and beard? You know who I’m talking about. Anyway. He called me the other night making even less sense than usual, mumbling something about medicine and  kool-aid and come help.  After an hour of trying to figure out where he lives (thanks for the help) I finally found him (it was "Beckanna" apartments" not "McKinnon"  apartments)  and got him his Kool aid and picked up the lit cigarette off the floor that he couldn’t reach and anything else I could figure out he needed.

Oh. My. God. He was soooooo out of it he just mumbled and mumbled god knows what while I stared at how amazingly swollen his legs and feet were while he couldn’t breath and yet couldn’t stop coughing and yet chain smoked. He could barely move and when he did it was sooooo slowly… I chattered on trying to make him feel less lonely, assuming that his mind was at least somewhat more functional then his body could allow him to express. I guess I was there about an hour, sitting on the floor watching him. And where my mind went… so nihilist. It was like a zoo exhibit of an organism struggling for survival to some unknown, impossible end. Everything is wrong with his body- heart surgery complications, emphysema, obesity, possibly diabetic; he’s clinically schitzophrenic, and usually depressed if not  bi-polar- he’s certainly had manic episodes. Watching him, trying to get unlaced shoes off feet tripled by swelling, the meaninglessness of life and all its suffering ganged up on me at once. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met (when he’s lucid, obviously) has lived this fucked up life of battling one addiction after another, has practically ruined himself in the failing, and just. keeps. going. Miserable, most of the time. Picking at scabs, humming every jazz song ever recorded, going to diners at odd hours just to be around people and get out of his bare apartment. Sweet hearted, yet pissing others off by talking too loudly– having to deal with policeman after policeman— what’s the goddamn point, you know?  So much suffering, struggling,  with so little reward.

An organism. That is exactly what I am. He is. You are. Trying to survive. We are organisms with unique, convoluted  intentions.
I think this is why baby Twickle makes me so nervous, uncomfortable. He wants to eat, and be warm, and his every sound and movement serves those goals. [what goals do mine serve? yours?] And it’s so easy to interpret feeling, to humanize, to suspect he’s lonely when he fusses when alone. I can’t stand the thought of it suffering; and yet, sitting and watching Tom suffer, struggle to survive… I don’t know what I’m saying.

that went to a dark place, didn’t it?

Tune in next time, for more meaningless of life.

love.