this will be an earthworm in 1000 years: January 2006

A message from Leonardo DiCaprio about protecting bears

Of course I opened it. It is not every day that Leonardo DiCaprio sends you an email about bears. The following is his letter to me and my response. This really happened.

>===== Original Message From "Leonardo DiCaprio, NRDC Trustee" =====
>Dear Friend,
>
>I am writing to ask for your help protecting the grizzly bears that live in and
>around Yellowstone National Park. We need to stop the Bush administration from
>implementing a disastrous plan to revoke the bears' protection under the
>Endangered Species Act.
>
>Yellowstone's grizzlies have only recently begun to recover from the brink of
>extinction. It's too soon to remove the safety net that has prevented these
>bears from disappearing. That's why it's so important for Americans all across
>the country to tell the government that we oppose this risky plan.
>
>To take action, go to the Natural Resources Defense Council's BioGems website at
>http://www.savebiogems.org/bears/takeaction.asp
>
>The grizzly is an icon of the American West and the great wilderness that once
>covered most of this rugged land. Grizzlies are also a barometer of the
>region's health. Healthy bear populations mean a healthy landscape.
>
>But so many of these magnificent animals have been killed off and so much of
>their habitat destroyed that today they live on less than one percent of their
>former range. Now there are only between 500 and 600 grizzly bears in and
>around Yellowstone. That's a tiny number when you consider that as many as
>100,000 grizzlies roamed the West just a few hundred years ago.
>
>Stripping endangered species protection from Yellowstone's bears would open
>their habitat -- vast wild forests around the park -- to large-scale real
>estate and energy development. It also would allow hunters to kill bears that
>roam outside the park. The state of Wyoming has already announced plans to
>allow grizzly bear hunting as soon as the bears are off the endangered species
>list.
>
>We all hope for a day when grizzly bears truly are recovered and can be removed
>from the endangered species list. But first we need to make sure that their
>habitat is protected.
>
>I'm working with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is leading the
>campaign to protect and restore the grizzly bear in the lower 48 states. As the
>bears sleep through the coldest and darkest months of the year, please join us
>to ensure that grizzly bears have a healthy landscape to wake up to -- this
>spring and for many years to come.
>
>Go to NRDC's BioGems website to send a message telling the U.S. Fish and
>Wildlife Service to leave Yellowstone's grizzlies on the endangered species
>list:
>http://www.savebiogems.org/bears/takeaction.asp
>
>Then I hope you will also forward my message to your friends and family.
>
>Thank you!
>
>Leonardo DiCaprio
>Board of Trustees
>Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
>

And my reply:

Dear Leonardo DiCaprio,
I think it's great that you are protecting the bears. Someone should. Do you realize how insane it is to see in your inbox "A message from Leonardo DiCaprio about protecting bears?" I was like "Huh?" and then I laughed. Did you see Grizzly Man? He got eaten for protecting the bears.

You know what would be cool? I have this really great bear gun. It's one of those trumpet-ended numbers. (Don't worry. It only shoots blanks. I love bears too.) Anyway, you should take that gun out in the woods during bear hunting season and jump around firing it into the sky and screaming like a crazy person.

This is the best way to protect the bears for several reasons:

1. the bears would be scared by the noise and stay in. This would make hunters unable to kill them.

2. Other hunters would be like "What's up with that guy?" and this one old hunter would tilt his chair back in the corner of the bullet shop and go "Awww, he been that way since aught six." and then the other hunters would go "Mm." or "Hm" or maybe even "Yep." Actually, that would not help at all, but maybe all the noise you make would scare them off too.

Or maybe once they got close enough to see it was Leonardo DiCaprio, they'd be like "Oh he has this star quality that is making me want to not kill/develop around the habitats of bears anymore. I want to save them all." But I guess that's pretty much what you're dong with these emails. Sorry. Carry on.

Cara Francis
Temp Worker
Personal Nonsense Campaign

Simity Sam and Period Stain

Who?

somebody got herpes here

the scrollwork on the windows was peeling back like curled burnt eyelashes, but they were dusted and could have passed for polished...

Hey if you haven't looked out your window this morning, if you're under stale sheets praying the day will pass...like me, here's what it looks like outside. Actually, what it really looks like is if you froze this picture in the dog's bowl, thawed it out and taped it to the front of a high powered fan. (electrical tape, of course)

And I have to "run errands" That's something mom's do. Mom's run errands. I lost my coat by getting drunk in a bar on Monday. Thank you MLK for that. Now I have no coat and it's cold. I should write a Russian novel.

Thank you,

thank you, thank you tenement city, blotting up the water with your concrete shoulders, the cataracts of blue-curtained windows mysterious and blind.

Thank you for the life constantly peering out from behind your edges, the beetles of people, the ringed tails of arguments crawling up curtains, I'm certain I'll never press against a window simply for the cold. The trust is that you'll always be cruel. The truth is that I never bought binoculars, I've spent hours fucking over the side of a cliff in San Francisco, and I have never thrown a penny into the Grand Canyon, and I have never heard the faint puff of it jacknifing to rest upon a thousand others, the pile of millions, copper dinosaur bones. We'll call it an Indian savings account when we find it.

How much money is buried and slowly becoming fuel, or diamonds, or worm food, or worms? This city is worms standing still, worms at attention, worm soldiers, waiting a thousand years and folding slowly so as not to attract...attention? Birds? What kind of bird descends screaming on a city of worms?

Wings are red engines, the hard hungry beaks of falcons for eyes, the instincts of an electric bat, moving blind, dropping patterns of shadow on the city. Are these eggs bombs, is this bird some movie-written war? When can we stop predicting? How vicious would a bluejay be with a hundred foot wingspan? Can instinct be vicious? There are three different types of murder.

Prediction is the source of fear.

I have no thought but thank you worms, thank you birds for waiting. And keep traveling. You'll be harder to catch.

Thank you San Diego, for being something I haven't seen.

cara

caught in the crosshairs of a make-believe woman (and biscuits for breakfast)

Nutella, what the fuck? Why do you mock? Why do you pamper so, only to disregard my erection? That is a tattoo of your label. That is not a mole. I told you I got it at Icon, yeah, with Brad. I know, he is really good...well I can't get the rest of the colors done until I get the money, can I? Did you call your brother? Well then it looks like you must be a selfish bitch who doesn't want me to succeed. IS that right? Are you a...oh shit. Don't fucking cry. Don't...okay, okay, look. Look, let's just have breakfast, okay? You gonna open your lid? No? You want me to-STOP FUCKING CRYING! You want me to do it? Okay, here we-well what the FUCK then? Huh? You just wanna get fucked up again and starve? You wanna get tweaked and wind up puking at the BP again? I can't DEAL with you! See what I'm doing? I'm peeling back the cardboard, I'm pressing on the dark line with this- GODDAMMIT where are the spoons? I'm gonna wash this spoon and as soon as I get done I'm gonna dump those biscuits on the sheet and I'm not gonna TOUCH you, but by the time those biscuits come out, you better be open...okay? okay. GODDAMMIT will you at least preheat the oven? Okay.

If you tell anyone this I'll smash you with a mallet.

Sick secret number one:

I used to drop bugs into milk caps of hydrogen peroxide, watch their bodies bubble and hiss and then build them coffins out of cardboard I cut from Castner Knott boxes and Scotch tape. Sometimes (if I was feeling kind) I'd line the box with a square of material from one of my dresses. (I wore home-made clothes.)Then I buried them in the backyard under this evil looking tree, don't know what kind, all twisted and cocked to the side...Supposedly it grew that way because it was right on the wall of an old schoolhouse, long torn down and a hundred years with it. The best kinds of ghosts come with a spot that used to be a schoolhouse. The ghosts of children, the ghosts of bugs, the ghosts of outdated farming equipment haunting the barns, diseased with rust, hearing the yawning of metal over the lake and pretending not to.

I buried two Daddy Long Legs alive. I hated those things. I picked them up by the legs, dropped them in a dark box and covered it in wrapping paper. Pink, yellow and white with balloons. I buried it six inches down. I hope they fought to the death.

Problems with my graveyard:

1. The rain would drown the cardboard headstones away and muddle the dates. So as the project continued, there began to be some of those white washed out headstones...unidentified bodies crowned with blank expensive marble and moss. I liked that a little, though, because it gave the cemetary some age. Made it seem like a family plot instead of the dumping ground for a flypaper massacre.

2. Sometimes the neighbor's dog (Alice who is long dead) would get so excited by my progress that she would shit right in the middle...but really, I kind of thought it added a nice touch, like a naked giant with thick pale legs leapfrogging over the stones, relieving himself without thought as he hit the ground crouching.

3. There were no problems with the graveyard. It was perfect.

Sick secret number two:

Yawn. Goosh. I really don't feel like writing right now.

That's the secret, sick secret number two. I really don't feel like writing. Isn't that queery? Isn't that sideshow? Please don't get all discerning...I'm drinking tea. I'm weary. I must go out and find sex.

evolution of the poor

There was the unapologetically ambitious laborers son who was built like a plank, who everyone hammered a dream into, who began buying property at sixteen with a settlement from a foot run over by a horsecart that would never work right again.

So he learned to make his land work for him and owned half the town at thirty-five, trapping a beautiful young singer with few options by making her pregnant and offering her ease. Their son with his mothers face and his father's ambition would be a successful actor and become involved in philanthropy. He would start a foundation for his children to run who in turn became involved in politics: the daughter an advocate of the people, the son a shrewd, ruthless capitalist.

There followed a succession of upward moving marriages, the children becoming progressively more attractive and connected, the mixing with some ancient royal bloodline (ruined save its pedigree), the acceptance of political office, the denial of charges...it's only called a scandal if the family is fortunate.

The family is fortunate and no one gets hurt when the market crashes, when the torches dance up the hill dangling ropes, when it is suddenly discovered everyone's speaking the wrong language...again. There are no shamed uncles or cousins, everyone has a publicist and will climb out of the wrecked Mercedes with the gin-soaped windshield and get veneers and falsies for the ones that got knocked out and then being scratchless laugh off the ambulance and burn a small brown puppy alive (totally random, totally wandering by) with a tossed post-disaster ash into a trail of leaking gas. Everyone will poison their employees with cheap heat in tract homes accidentally and never have to ponder why the carpet is still red when everybody's feet are covered in dirt. They'll go first.

Some son will become a zealot. The family splits in theory, in obvious practice but stays a business, reckless gears of telephone wire, the germ of power having grown to heavy, falling out of his face like a plan.

The course of history changes in millions of bits of minutes. How tortured is a student sitting under a clock? (hands on his desk, hole in his pants letting the cold red seat seep in, eyes strapped by their veins to the minute hand making it's elderly rounds)

True ambition scoffs at becoming a star and waits to crown itself an ancestor.

We don't really need grass.

You want to hear crickets chirping in the city? Stand in the concrete hallway of your building's basement at three-twenty-four on a Wednesday morning and listen to every apartment's refrigerator at once, the cool mechanical constant, the chords of chirping like a roomful of mirrors. You realize there's as many crickets as there are bricks.

The Pear Sequence

Spotted this little foxy in the produce section of the WalMart in Harrison County, Kentucky. Oh, she'd been genetically altered. That you could tell by her bumpy explosive skin...she'd grown in spurts alright. Like a pubescent weed, like a twelve-year-old innocent gone plump and booby. A beautiful lemony-green skin I could not argue with...Of course, I said nothing of her augmentation. Botox? Bovine Growth Hormone? Pesticides? Why offend? Did it matter? No. No the point is she was for sale, and my mom had sixty-five cents.

I got her back to the car via my warm coat pocket. It was raining and I felt a protective affection for my new muse. Once she realized a couple a pics was what I was after, she did get a little skittish. I promised not to show her face, but she still tried to fucking run. That's why the picture's a little blurry.

It was so cute when she realized she didn't have legs and just fell right onto her stem. She wasn't hurt or anything but she got knocked out for a few seconds so I snapped a quick one before she came to. I named her Meredith because of that beautiful birthmark near her red spot.

Man, I felt kind of bad when she woke up right as I was taking the last picture. I guess I would have felt pretty exposed, too. But I wouldn't have started crying like a stupid immature cunt just because somebody snapped a picture of me. It's not like I showed her face or anything and I knew when she said she was only a few weeks old that she was just trying to be clever. Just like I knew that when I reminded her about the sixty five cents and who it was exactly that she belonged to now and she was like "My brother in Arkansas can get you the money!" that she was fucking lying.

But I did believe her when she said her head hurt because I could see she had a split that was kind of leaking some from the fall. But I didn't tell her that. I just let her rest a little and gave her a little pill for the pain. After she took it she seemed to be getting relaxed which made me happy.

Oh, so here's where I really got to hold her. She fell asleep real good and she was so quiet and...good. Even her freckles were sleeping. Her sweet little freckles just slept and I rubbed her skin so she would feel loved while she slept, you know? Just like a baby with that little dimple. Like a fat little golden-green baby.

This was all I wantedfrom Meredith. Just the money shot. Just this picture. Just a little something to remember her by and she was asleep and it's not like I showed her fucking face. It's just all I wanted. So I could remember her.

I didn't eat her right then. I actually prefer my pears more...natural, you know? Meredith was sweet though. I put some bandaids on her split from when she fell and stuck her back in my pocket. I shared her with my friend Marcey a few hours later cause we got really hungry and we were out and no one wanted to go to the store. Marcey was a little spooked by the bandaids but we were really, really hungry...otherwise we wouldn't have really...Meredith didn't cry or anything. I think she was just too tired.

abandoned panties

Who abandoned these panties? Was it a victim? Or a sinner? Were these panties stripped off in defiance or fear or disgrace...or passion? Does an underfoot undergarment belong on the rain soaked pavement? Like the bit of blood in an old scar.

the yellow-white color of fear

Unslump the hump. Do it.

what will happen...

...when someone makes an anonymous donation and they buy a brand new cross? The church I went to was always doing that...new altar crosses and communion plates, new robes for the choir.

There was a four story high stained glass window covered by a thin beige curtain. It was donated by a rich man who lost his wife when she was old but not ancient (to cancer). His name was J. R. Mudshadow. There was a plaque on the wall with tiny gold screws. I always wanted to steal those screws.

The window shone at the front of the balcony-laced chapel, right behind the baptismal so when I got baptised and my eyes blinked out of the water, the first things I saw were shards of colored glass. It was a vibrant window depicting the cross in purple, blue, gold, silver...must have been six inches thick. When the sun came through it the muted beauty of that glass, that light, that thin beige curtain...every week we got a new gleeful flower arrangement that sat directly in front of the baptismal and the four story high stained glass window. These arrangements could be best expressed in square footage and were donated by members of the congregation who had lost a loved one to dying. They often complained that you could not see the flowers with that damn window up there and with all that church light coming through in every which direction.

The curtain was never pulled back so as not to overshadow the flowers. J.R. Mudshadow's gift cast a big one.

The flowers were announced at the beginning of each service. It went like this: "The flowers today are given in loving memory of Janice Swinton." or "...by the family of Earl Youtly." Old people names. The flowers must be noticed. The window must be aknowledged. The curtain must be fitted to the full size of the window, allowing a modest level of light through and of course the basic design and shape of the cross must be visible, as J.R. would have wanted it. This is what one man who served as a church board member must have said at the weekly church board meeting, or perhaps even a special meeting called to specifically discuss the window and its dear giver.

I never met Mr. Mudshadow. I think he died right before I was born but there's a good chance that window will never be bombed out like one of those beautiful European churches with it's wall bark rising in ruin from the wet black ground. I do not think that will ever happen to this church because it is built on a pillow. The corner the iced building sits on is part of a very affluent, very white section of town where nothing, nithing, nathing save a pumpkin sale or a shoe sale or the sale of a rare book/keepsake/picture ever happens.

What about this corner here in this picture? What about when somebody donates something bigger, better or golden with working lightbulbs? Cause this cross is burnt out. How much better would it look crushing a coffee ground-drowned Arby's cup? How ar-tis-tic would it be if there was a small slice of tomato or a chunk of dried lipstick or the ultimate in simple, simple irony: a condom bruising "Salvo" on the nose? Busted radiator heavy in the mud next to it like a brother. Anonymous paper and everything underfoot...a boot. A piece of fascinating trash.

I love you Turner

I do not know if you are a virgin, Turner, but if you are I hope every rope-armed tanning bed college blather boy gets Hepatitis in a pink stucco hotel on Panama City beach at the exact same time. I hope blue water New York women get their rubbing alcohol and jasmine pussies forcibly eaten by the ghost of a coal miner with a burning chunk of opium on his tongue. Because someone should be fucking you and kissing your face. All the time.