Fiction – Page 11

Bug Nuts

Today marks the first [and very overdue] public eulogy for Bug Nuts Bogdanovich, our champion in countless conspiracies to take over the world at large.

His first name was actually Larry (Lawrence Milton), but nobody bothered to call him that once he’d begun his studies in undergrad. You see, he was constantly running around from place to place, appearing to be perpetually late for an appointment, while in reality he was always early. His main concern was to make sure that he didn’t get distracted along the way.

It’s a sad sight when a person who’s perpetually early is always rushing around in addition to that particular quirk. They can’t stop to smell the roses or anything. They’re just frenetic, losing small pieces of their humanity along the way, as achievement after achievement just whizzes by, a parade of accolades that really mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. I see it as his way of compensating for validations that he may not have received earlier in life. Or perhaps he’d gotten too much recognition and it developed a pattern of addictive behavior to continue seeking that high.

Who knows… he never let anyone into his inner life [enough] to see what really made him tick, so it’s all conjecture now. What his cohorts and loved ones do know is just how much work he took on all the time. People were naturally drawn to him, even though he kept everyone at arm’s length. That’s precisely what gave him an alluring aura. “If only he would take the time to get to know us better, maybe we could see what kind of a person he truly is! As it stands, he could be a really nice guy, a serial killer, both, neither… frustrating.”

The moniker “Bug Nuts” stemmed from the one time he actually let his hair down (metaphorically–he would never allow himself to get bogged down in matters of extreme grooming, it would be such a waste of time in his eyes). He went to his dearest friend Beatrice’s little birthday gathering for a couple hours, actually imbibing spirits and taking down his defenses for once. If there had been more people gathered there at that time, he more than likely would have withdrawn into his introvert’s shell and waited it out while occasionally making pained eye contact with Bea.

But since he did feel comfortable enough to be more of himself around these people (he got a “Goldilocks Zone” vibe off of them), he found himself embroiled in an entertaining conversation about insects. He fancied himself an amateur entomologist (among his other passions), and he was really getting fired up about dung beetles of all species. Bea, having witnessed several minutes of unbroken bug talk, exclaimed “hey wow, look at Bug Nuts Bogdanovich over here!”, and the rest is history.

I don’t claim to have known this man very well at all, but from the few fleeting moments we spent with one another, I felt it was my duty and privilege to give him a respectable send-off into the great blue yonder with a laugh or two.

So here’s to you, Mr. Bogdanovich. Beetles love you more than you will know. Whoa whoa whoa.

Consideration

I have come to more thoroughly understand
being a man in the context of the great
regret machinations of our time
[a sensation not unlike finishing
the stinking shawarma you left out
that one time then decided to eat
because your fatigue caused a lack of interest
in unwritten expiration date consideration],
and have chosen to fish away my days
in lakes, rivers, ponds and streams, where

you absorb
the skeletons all around you,

croon
to the bluegills
while they inspect your lure

[the sun
grinning at your little boat],

your red
ears naturally aglow.

Water
striders dot the scene,
checking for proper surface tension
(it’s like they don’t know about physics
and the evolution that specifically adapted them
to traveling in a manner that will never not be useful
in our particular iteration of the universe).

Magnum Opus

Well, seeing as I dumped the chicken wire for some crumb pastries, you can understand why my rumbling tum-tum began composing a symphony of sorts (an “ode to shortcrust” or some such), bewildering all sentient beings within a 50-foot radius.

Once I’d managed to trudge my way to the dreaded (oft-forgotten) lion cage, I immediately began questioning why I got rid of that infernal chicken wire in the first place. Clearly these lions would have had a perfectly good use for it (as far as I could see). In attempting to save face, I apologized to the few lions I saw. They didn’t know why I was apologizing. I began to explain the whole chicken wire predicament to them, but decided against insinuating that something designed for puny domestic fowl would be suitable for the kings of the jungle. Dejected, I tossed them my crumb pastries and walked away, my stomach continuing its magnum opus unopposed.

Levity

Levity slices through to the heart of an artichoke much more effectively than any knife.

That’s at least what my uncle Gilfroy told me one time over whiskey sours. I couldn’t partake with him, seeing as I was just a wee lad at the time, but he certainly enjoyed at least a handful of those particular beverages that afternoon. I couldn’t be sure if he was yanking my chain or just drunk enough to start seeing metaphors as literal occurrences. He had a funny way of abandoning our family’s sensibilities from time to time (usually with the aid of drink), and we still haven’t pieced together whether or not we should have ever been taking him seriously.

I for one enjoyed his antics, all the way up until his disappearance.

Now, the grey-hairs in my family clan have all unequivocally declared that he died at sea promptly after concocting a hair-brained scheme to sail around the world. I think they were just coming up with a convenient excuse to bookend his misunderstood life and wrap it up neatly with a cute little (morbid) bow. Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s alive and well, coming up with different vegetable-related remarks every time he meets a new person he likes.

Wink Wink

Don’t allow the accomplishments of the more senior members of the artistic community frighten you into stagnation, young man (i.e. the type of artist who thinks that he’s probably getting a bit older these days [as one would naturally experience while living some kind of existence as we currently know it] but wouldn’t care to complain about it to anybody in his age group, because [after all] we’re all experiencing our own contemporary struggles that leave very little room for any kind of self-actualizing, let alone exploration of forms that connect our consciousnesses to one another in the form of communal expression).

Just continue to do what you’re going to do (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more), and the self-prescribed purpose of your toiling will eventually unveil itself. The purpose may have actually [indubitably] been there from the start, and you (the recipient of a lifetime’s worries and schematics) are only just awakening to the possibility of its interconnectedness and unbounded potential when merged with the human psyche.

Then [and only then] will you uncover the true nature of our fictitious narrative centered around the cultivation of blue cheese cultures (and please don’t ask a tedious question as to why it’s cheese over every other possible culture, we’ve heard them all, trust us).

Ducksnort

Why do we always gravitate toward senseless tragedy when we should already know how that train wreck’s going to play out? Seems like quite the schematic for failure, and I want no part in it unless you’re wrapping something in bacon on my behalf.
You’ve known my price for some time, okay? Don’t act so surprised.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah!
So Captain Chilango gave me his cure-all recipe once he’d heard my ducksnort of a chili cook-off success story. He looked me right in the eye and said
“kid, you’ve got potential, but you need to set your sights a little higher than some two-bit cook-off in a two horse town. Go see a movie or two–you’ll get to see the world through a different lens, and maybe learn a thing or two while you’re at it.”
Well, he was certainly right about that. I went and saw my first moving picture, and haven’t looked back ever since. Now I get all my valuable worldly information from the silver screen, to which my wife can attest.

Another Question

Considering how rampant–and frequent–they are elsewhere throughout the universe, I know you’re not really surprised that the chance for any number of phantasmagoric happenstances to play out at this pediatric-leaning syndrome symposium would remain slim to none (as one might say when pressed), right? As we usually observe, the only guarantee at one of these gatherings would be that at least one poor soul is coming away with a scraped knee (left or right is another question).

Hey, haven’t you been here just as long as I have?! I’m having a hard time getting over the bald complacency responsible for such a critical misinterpretation of our most sacred pemmican rulebook! It’s been nigh on six years since that last grand gesture in semantics peppered our idealized fields of vision, and I won’t have this unqualified jabber jockey over here just go on and on about 21st Century-specific chesterfield modulation practices (his favorite spotlight-stealing topic) more than once per full moon, no matter how persuasive he happens to be when the stars come alignin’.