Category Archives: LIVE AND LEARN

The Frog

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I caught a big leopard frog one hot summer day when I was a kid. I can’t recall where it was I chased him down: a river, stream, pond, or puddle. But I caught him. And having accomplished that, and having other multi-minded, boyish things to do, I dropped him into a tin coffee can for later.

It’s funny, I don’t recall how or where I caught him, but do recall the can I put him in. It was Folgers. My parents drank Folgers coffee. They brewed the Hell out of the stuff in a scorched green percolator on the back burner of our old electric range—ground Folgers from a red, one-pound can that came with a free scoop and a clear plastic lid.

The clear lid was the deal maker for me. It meant I could keep an eye on my new friend. I stabbed holes in the lid with my pocketknife so the frog could breathe. And it was still breathing, crouched at the bottom and looking blankly at me, when I set it on the back-porch steps and ran off to mind some other boyish missions, like teasing my sisters, bothering hornet nests, wrecking my dad’s neatly raked piles of locust leaves.



I experienced my first MRI around fifteen years ago. I thought nothing much when first meeting the machine. It was just a small hole in a giant, humming steel doughnut, painted satin white and baby blue and labeled GE. I used to crawl through caves that small when I was an amateur spelunker. Those caves didn’t even have these nice backlit photos of blossoming cherry trees on their ceilings. So, not a big deal, I thought. It was just another small space.

The technicians were kind enough. They placed me on my back and secured my arms, legs and head to a sliding slab, and wrapped my body in a warm blanket while kindly warning me how noisy the procedure might seem for the fifteen minutes I would be in the machine. To mitigate the noise—the loud knocks and clanging—they covered my ears with special headphones. Soothing music was promised, along with occasional reassurances from the technicians. Then everyone left the room and the slab started to slowly float into the humming doughnut hole.

Decades ago, my friend Steve once talked me into floating on my back through a long, dark, narrow, and nearly flooded cave—a Mississippi doughnut hole. With just inches of air between my naked face and the cave’s ceiling, I wavelessly inched myself along for fifty feet, utterly fearful of splashes from the fellow closely preceding me, and of my own splashes into the face of the fellow following me. The payoff was entry into a subterranean hall few humans have ever visited. I did it, I beheld it, and I made the return trip in one emotional piece.

The humming metal doughnut hole wasn’t long and dark, but it was narrow, with just a few inches between my face and a sickly green strip of light embedded along its length. The hole was so narrow that my shoulders squeezed together, and the flimsy headset immediately dislodged. The technicians may have been speaking soothingly, but all I heard was the angry din of battling electromagnets. This was not a Mississippi cave. This was General Electric Hell.

I lasted just a few minutes before the technicians heard me screaming in terror and stopped the procedure. After slowly floating out of the machine, I cried to them about the headphones and my shoulders and the green light and the panic attack. They listened patiently before explaining I could not cancel the procedure. Not only could I not get up and leave, I could not even move a muscle. I had to lie perfectly still until some anxiety meds took effect, and then go back into the machine. I did it. But the twelve minutes after that made me want to die.



I wasn’t gone long from the back porch. I had completed all my missions and wanted to play with the frog. When I picked up the can, though, I could see something had gone terribly wrong. Instead of crouched at the bottom, the frog had straightened its legs to stand on the tips of its webbed toes and had stretched its arms nearly to the plastic lid. While I was away, the hot afternoon sun had swung onto that part of the porch. The frog had died.

It’s a wonder how we survive.



Gavin W Sisk
August 2020




Benzos

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          I

This morning, already hot.

Too hot for grass to grow.

But dandelions,

they’ll push their middle

fingers unstoppably up.

And the bills, too,

flip me off.

And the taxes,

the virus,

broken blinds,

old photos in boxes—

and hell, of all things,

sugar ants

queued at the cat food bowl.

All of these

screwing into

my fat gut

while I screw my ass

into a corner of the couch,

watching YouTube

and drinking Diet Coke.


        II

Seven PM in the 

Dairy Queen drive-through:

behind a Dodge,

behind a Chevy,

behind an old Toyota

minivan with brown,

wind-buffed paint

matting in the sunlight.

Thoughts of ice cream

spill out its windows,

with children shouting and

waving their hands

like two plus two

equals four yet again

and everybody

wins a prize.

The thing is old but clean,

probably paid for,

maybe a pirate ship

on its days off.

The tag reads BLT-032.


        III

Unbelievable.

I’ve been idling for a

cookie dough blizzard

for fifteen minutes,

but now need

a BLT on rye—

paired with a viognier,

which I’m guessing

Dairy Queen won’t serve.

Good viogniers

are hard to find anyway.

But if I do find one,

I’ll fix myself

a magnificent BLT

to eat while sitting

on my own shoulder,

unfurled by a

slow blonde pill,

and watching keystrokes

spill across a page.

Wouldn’t that be a life.




Gavin W Sisk

August 2020






Just Pie

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I have a pie in the oven, an apple pie. It might have been my father’s favorite, but I don’t really know. He treasured all gifts–pies, cookies, golf balls, tie clips. They were all wonderfully the same. He treated all M&Ms like they were the last on earth, hiding them in his sock drawer and eating them one at a time. His golf bag was full of dirty old tees my brothers and I would scrounge from the bushes when we caddied. And when he died I put his ashes in a simple, unvarnished wooden urn I knew he’d prefer.

My father enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in WWII as a private, firmly believing he wouldn’t survive. But rather than getting himself shot, he ended up two years later as a captain and base commander in remote British Guyana. Mildew and rum were the greatest threats there; and whenever he entered the jungle on regular patrols to find fictional Japanese troops, the only things actually in danger of being shot were the iguanas.
It was a simple but good life in the jungle. The water was no good, but the Army made sure everyone had all the Coka Cola they could drink. And, of course, the Coka Cola went well with the rum. To more righteously boost troop morale, my father would regularly hop a C-47 to Miami to buy small packages of cactus needles for the mess hall’s old phonograph–always small packages because the constant need for replacing the quick wearing needles required frequent return trips for more. I suppose he also felt his simple life needed some contrast for its full value to be appreciated. As well, Miami’s war population had swollen with pretty women (including a few princesses) who needed his attention.
In the meanwhile, my mother, whom my father had not yet met, was attending to her own captain. He was an Air Corps man too, and like my father, did not expect to survive the war. But after a short romance, he packed up their marriage and flew off to Europe in a B-17, never to be heard from again. And my mother returned to bucking rivets on a bomber assembly line. Her needs were simple. Having spent years kneeling in prayer in a cloistered convent, she could find peace standing up all day to miles of polished aluminum. I imagine each rivet was, to her, a bead on a rosary. For my mother, the simplest efforts were gifts to God in thanks for life given. I made her urn a little fancier than my father’s. It was mahogany with a lacewood top and included a little compartment for trinkets and prayers. She wasn’t extravagant but she enjoyed nice things.

The pie has finished baking and I’m crying a little because it was for my parents and it didn’t come out perfect. Not that they would have cared, but I feel like the pie barely survived me and my oven. “For Christ’s sake,” my father would probably say. “It’s a pie, not a war!” My mother would add, “Its the most beautiful pie ever made!” Then my father would see how stubborn my disappointment was. He’d smile and probably warn, “It’s wrong to measure a pie by the battle that was fought, and then forget its sweet taste.” I miss them both.

Happy Veterans Day.

G W Sisk

Watering the Horse

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“…pain…lots…sometime in the next ten days…without warning…”

The doctor might as well have warned my penis will fall off sometime in the next ten days.  So how does one wait for something that’s possibly more painful—and less productive—than childbirth?  With practice slides down a giant sword into a vat of iodine?  Or nude skydiving through a Saharan sandstorm?  Maybe body surfacing at a dry ice plant in Juneau?  All three?  But in the meanwhile, I have to pee.  I have to pee now and I’ll have to pee again in fifteen minutes.  Except, I really won’t have to pee at all.  My brain says, “Warning, sir!  Your urine reservoir is nearing critical capacity.”  I reply that I peed just fifteen minutes ago, during the last ad.  Then—

“Negative, sir.  It is time to relieve your bladder.”

“Are you kidding?  You can’t say that while the leaders are on the eighteenth green.”

“I am sorry, sir.  If you prefer, it is time to drain the dragon.”

“Dragon?  I appreciate the compliment, but I really can wait.”

“Would you consider leaking the lizard, sir?”

“That’s the same thing.  Leave me alone.”

“I know you are a reasonable man.  How about paying the water bill, sir?”

“Clever, but I’m staying put.”

(Five, four, three, two, one…)

“Damn it!  I’ll be right back.”

“Very good, sir.”

(Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven…)

“Nothing!  There was nothing!”

“Did you not make the bladder gladder, sir?”

“NO!”

“I am sorry, sir.  My sensors are normally quite reliable.  But do you not think there is still some steam to release from the radiator, sir?”

“There’s some steam, but it’s not in my radiator.”

“I am regretful of your present circumstance, sir.  Perhaps, after the next television ad, you will be able to shake some dew off the lily.”

“What?  Where are you getting this stuff?”

I am sorry, sir.  You left your tablet open.  Shall we change the subject to last night’s French lesson?”

“Lesson?  Uh, sure.”

“Tres bien Monsieur.  Oui oui maintenant?”

“That’s not real French.  Damn it, now I have to go again.”

“To splash the pirate, sir, or to fight the fire?”

“No, to visit the wizard, smart ass.  I know a few of those, too.”

“I am impressed, sir.  I took you as a piddly man.”

“What!?”

“I am sorry, sir.  I was going to say you could point piddly Percy at the porcelain.”

“Screw you.”

“Sir, I am your brain.  You have been screwing with me for a period of decades.  Is this a self-indictment?”

“Screw you twi…  Damn it!  I’ll be right back.”

“Leave no stone unturned, sir.”

 

 

Gavin W Sisk

July, 2016

 

 

Appealing a Banana

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So, I went to my doctor because something needed looking at, and he poked around and looked at it very closely, and he referred me to a specialist who’ll look more closely still–who’ll use a camera on a ten-foot pole (a bendie ten-foot pole) to look really, really close. And at the same time, my doctor noticed my blood pressure is up, about which I thought: no duh, we both knew that ten years ago. So he ordered the phlebotomist to stick me in the inside-ouchy part of my elbow to suck out precious bodily fluids for testing because everybody (the nurses!) knows I don’t eat well most of the time (because I’m always in a hurry or late or whatever excuse is handy for shoving more carbs and fat and salt down my throat). Maybe I should change my ways–eat bananas at lunch, leave the alfredo sauce off my pasta.
It took just three days to get the lab results, which is, like, three weeks before I was really ready because I know I’m going to have to answer to somebody (oh God, the nurses!) for all my gastro-illogical sins. And then I read through the pages and pages of details of acronymical chemistry and all the ranges of values and the not-so-valuable values we all should value staying far, far away from. I read it all, digested it all, and timidly put my values up against their ranges to see how close so far to a heart attack or stroke I’ve come. And finally I found my doctor’s disappointingly breviloquent note at the bottom of the last page: “Everything normal.” And all I can think is, shit! After stuffing all that junk into my body, shouldn’t I have something more to show for it than two words and a prescription for water pills?




Dec. 2014



Ignorance Amiss

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I ask periodically: if the collective knowledge of humanity were on our tables–fresh, sweet fruit in bowls–if the knives were sharp, forks clean, blue-lit bay windows reflected in the plates; if we bought all that, fought for that, posted photos, ranted and raved; if we dreamt it, had it, did it, yet locked our doors and never shared or even peeled a single grape; if it were all ours–indelible and inedible as gold–ours but only composed in bowls, would we be better off than broken dark-age serfs, than emberless Neanderthals, than the dust of the dead in their graves–would this be an age of enlightenment, or just an age’s ignorance decomposed to myth?




Oct. 2014



Bigotry and Tea

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Bigotry is not a conservative’s disease. Liberals wear its pustules too. The virus lives in lines we draw–in sanctimonious snares we cinch ever-tighter around our communities. This is a disease of paradoxes and ironies thriving in the same constitutions that seem to admonish it. It blooms in technologies broadcasting to billions the thoughts of frightened minds retreating to their caves. We grow smaller as we grow larger. The proper pill–bitter apparently–is education and critical thinking, which we ignore. When the two are co-opted by politics and ignorance, we let the devil win. But maybe that’s his right.

In my tea leaves: 
Expect nothing; keep your promises; hope for the best.



Aug 10, 2014



Soft Targets

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I have a golf swing I struggle mightily with.  But once in a while I’ll loft a ball softly near a distant pin at the driving range, and someone watching will say to me, “you have a really nice swing.”  I don’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth–but nice?  What’s nice about it?  I have a hundred things going on in my swing, six of which are useful and none repeatable.  During my swing I think a thousand things, and a thousand different things from swing to swing.  Which are the nice things?  Nice on the range but not on the course?  Nice today but not tomorrow?  Nice with a six iron but not with a comma?
That’s what I hate about golf.  Writing too.




July, 2014



Tidal Fugue

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Hana and I were meandering through Herring House Park on the Duwamish River Tuesday afternoon.  She started making fun of how easily I get disoriented on trails (and streets and sidewalks, public buildings, our neighborhood, our home, the bathroom).  She said it was my topical agnosia.  I told her my condition had nothing to do with the Caribbean, which made her laugh.  She said, “Dad, I said topical, not tropical.”  That was funny and it lead me on a couple of tangents before I figured out the real mistake.  I explained it’s neither topical nor tropical agnosia; it’s topographical agnosia (likely from a head injury on the farm when I was young.  But I digress).  I’m not even sure topical agnosia is a real term.  And if it were real, it would probably only denote some dysfunction related to following conversations. 

I don’t have a big problem following conversations, but squirrels can distract me–distract anyone, really.  We eat chocolate bunnies but feed squirrels.  That’s nuts, isn’t it?  So anyway, I told Hana about laws in many states making it illegal to capriciously shoot distracting wildlife that are indigenous to an area, and that some of the gray squirrels in the park may be quite shootable–presuming I was recalling correctly that brown squirrels, not gray, were indigenous to Washington.  I might be wrong.  But of course, we weren’t there to shoot squirrels.  There weren’t any squirrels anyway.

We wouldn’t be shooting bunnies either, which were what we actually came to the park to find, to watch.  We’ve seen them on other visits and wondered if they were wild (indiginous?) or just discarded or escaped pets.  It’s hard to know.  We didn’t see any today–maybe because we wandered the north half of the park.  We usually walk the south half, closer to the nature preserve on nearby Kellogg Island.  If the bunnies are associated with the island–if they’re indigenous–if the bunnies swim from their marshy island hidey-holes each morning to nibble the lush park grass, if they’re too tired to hop an extra few hundred feet north, then that would explain why we didn’t see them today.

Anyway, instead of bunnies (squirrels too), we found an old barge tied up near the shore at the far north end of the park.  Maybe it was a salvage barge–hard to tell.  What was really interesting was its rotting wooden hull.  About one-hundred-fifty feet long with a rusty steel deck: it must have been a hundred years old.  Yet it was still afloat.  Well, actually, it might not have been afloat.  The tide was unusually low and the barge was steady and very close to shore.  It could be it’s been hard-aground for decades and at high tide looks like an old dock.  And maybe it’s really just sixty years old and a hundred feet long.  It’s still cool. 

If the bush we avoided really were poison ivy, that too would have been cool.  That would have finished the story nicely.





April 16, 2014



Ja, ja. Ich trage Google

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In my email today–

“Jeg trenger din umiddelbare oppmerksomhet ON MY FORSLAG.
Jeg er administrerende direktør, fra den industrielle og Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Jeg har en gjensidig virksomhet forslag som angår overføring av en stor sum penger til en utenlandsk konto, med din hjelp som en fremmed partner, som mottaker av midlene. alt om denne transaksjonen vil bli gjort lovlig uten problemer med noen økonomisk myndighet. Vennligst forsøke å observere ytterste skjønn i alle saker knyttet til dette problemet. Hvis du er interessert, kan du svare tilbake via min private e-postadresseskrevet under, og jeg vil gi deg mer informasjon om meg selv og prosjektet så snart jeg får positiv respons. 
Privat e-post: wyong@fieri.com”

     TRANSLATION (edited for readability)–

“I need your immediate attention ON MY PROPOSAL.
I am the CEO from the industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).  I have a mutual business proposal concerning the transfer, with your help, of a large amount of money to a foreign account, with a stranger or spouse as the beneficiary of the funds.  Everything about this transaction will be done legally without problems with any financial authority.  Please endeavor to observe the utmost discretion in all matters relating to this issue.  If you are interested, please reply back through my private e-mail, signed, and I will give you more information about myself and the project as soon as I receive a positive response.
Private e-mail: wyong@fieri.com”

My first question is, will this interfere with my ongoing business transactions in Kenya?  My second question is, how did they discover my hidden Norwegian heritage?  (My first and last names are Irish.)
I’ll reply, of course–but in German, not Norwegian.

“Nach Eingang der prüft 30.000 Deutsche Mark auf ein Konto werde ich in einem folgenden E-Mail zu bezeichnen, werde ich eine neue, sichere Lage, internationale Kontoguthaben für die Verarbeitung und Verteilung auf verschiedene Cayman Island Treuhandkonten erhalten zu etablieren.  Um Ihre Position vor Strafverfolgung zu schützen, werde ich darauf achten, dass Ihr Name und Ihre Bank aus allen offiziellen Dokumenten auszuschließen.   Ich werde stattdessen einen Vermittler etablieren Konto zugänglich Sie ein Pseudonym und das Passwort “Tahssa-mai”.  Mit dieser geschützten Account haben Sie sicheren Zugriff auf Ihre Anteil aller Finanztransaktionen.”

     TRANSLATION (edited for readability)–

“Upon verified receipt of 30,000 Deutsche Marks to an account I will designate in a following email, I will establish a new, secure account able to receive international deposits for processing and distribution to various Cayman Island trust accounts.  To protect your position from prosecution, I will be careful to exclude your and your bank’s name from all official documents.  I will instead establish an intermediary account accessible by you using a pseudonym and the password ‘Tahssa-mai’.  Using this protected account, you will have secure access to your share of all financial transactions.”

What’s interesting is the crook’s faith that Google Translate is effective in reeling a native speaker into an obvious scam. What’s really interesting is that a native speaker will fall for it.

From a Thai ad for donkey rides: “Would you like to ride on your own ass?”. Um, okay.


Feb, 2014