Nature Abhors a Vacuum
Don’t make Mother angry.
Now, I know your mother felt that cleanliness was next to inhabiting the spirit of the diety of your choice. However, your mother wasn’t Mother. And Mother knows best.
“How could anyone be against vacuuming?” you ask. “Isn’t a nice tidy workplace in all our interests? What’s Mother Nature’s problem?”
Here it is in a nutshell: A vacuum, any vacuum that works, sucks out all the juicy, good stuff of which life is made. The troublesome dust and dirt of which your mother was so anxious to be rid—that’s the genuine article so far as Nature is concerned. There are bacteria and other microbes in there by the thousands, nay millions.
Mother doesn’t want all those little bits of life trapped in the vacuum cleaner bag. Well, she does, but not only there. What good are the cracks in your floor, the crevice between pillows of your couch, even the surface of your draperies, if not to harbor colonies of submicroscopic critters? A veritable mob calls your house home, and you have a hell of a nerve trying to suck them out.
The good news, such as it is, is that Mother doesn’t focus her abhorrence on you. She hates that vacuum with a burning passion. Which is why it breaks down so often, choking on dog hair, or a spoon, or those Sacajawea dollars that fell out of your pants pocket last Thursday. You felt them fall, but didn’t bother reaching into the couch to retrieve them; it’s not like you lost real money, with presidential faces on it, or anything.
Mother Nature doesn’t stay mad. She gets even. If you succeed in creating a niche vacant of life in your house, no matter how small, she’ll waste no time rectifying your success. Eggs, amoebas, single-celled things scarier looking than your worst nightmare all come flooding in. Mother’s shock troops give no quarter. Nor Sacajawea dollar.
When the aliens finally arrive, they’ll not even notice that you made any attempt to tidy up for them. Outwardly, they’ll be as polite as creatures that speak by regurgitating can be. But they’ll be thinking. Thinking your mother didn’t raise you right. Having recently traversed the near-vacuum of space, they’ll have forgotten how intolerant Mother is of similar voids upon her planetary surfaces.
All roads lead to Rome
I set out to go to Denver once. Before I knew the way of things. It didn’t work, of course. Should have gone off-road.
I stopped before reaching Rome or Roman times. I think I might have been in seventh century Carthage, a land so thoroughly destroyed by the compassionate Romans that there were not yet even weeds to upset its stark simplicity.
It was a lovely place for a picnic. I highly recommend it. And if your food is bland, never fear. There’s plenty of salt to hand.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
There stood a blind man in the middle of his land. Polink was his name. After raising his head to bask in the morning sun’s warm heat, he realized he had work to do. He called his dog and, with her faithful assistance, made his way to his shop. He sold soap. The blind have an accentuated sense of smell. Soap was a big seller in the land of the blind.
“Stop,” Came the bellowed cry from ahead. Being a generally agreeable sort, Polink did. He waved a buzzing fly away from his eyelid.
“What is it?” he asked. The dog barked in response.
Polink could hear a procession go by. Men and dogs, dogs and men. Quite a flurry of activity. Suddenly, it all stopped.
A man with a high-pitched voice called out, “I have one eye, as prophesied. I am your King. All bow down before me.”
Polink wasn’t that agreeable. “Excuse me, your highness,” he called out, “that was a child’s fable. Our democracy still stands.” Gasps and sharp intakes of breath erupted around him. Several of the other blind pulled away from him.
“Who dares question the one-eyed man?”
“I do,” Polink responded in a trembling voice, realizing that none of his fellow citizens would stand with him. Soap sales were sure to suffer.
The King approached him, as did two guards and two—no three—dogs. “But think,” he said conversationally, “what vision I can bring to the land. Your council has no perception to match my insight. In my view, the land will be lost to the sighted barbarian hordes without my oversight.”
The man constructed a good argument. Yet, something didn’t quite hang together. Polink lifted a hand casually. “Tell me, good King, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Warm flesh grabbed his hand, then just as quickly let it go. The King knew his reign was cut short.
“The King has no clothes. The King has no clothes.” Polink chanted. Others followed along, not understanding but enjoying themselves, anyway. Most people, even blind people, are followers most of the time. Much like sheep, sighted or otherwise. “I’m sorry, your highness. You won’t be leading us, after all.”
The warm hand brailled Polink’s face. Then came the high-pitched whine. “Just as I thought. Everyone else in the land has two as well?”
“I assume as much. Haven’t seen for myself.”
“I didn’t lie. I have one eye, as the fable demands.”
“Fables are no way to govern a land.” Polink shrugged, for his benefit alone. “Not when sighted hordes mass at our borders.”
“You are wise, “ the deposed ruler said quietly, beneath the continuing chants. “Your wisdom might guide us to safety.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“I, too, am sorry.”
Polink screamed as the sharp fingernails scraped into his eye and scooped it out.
All's well that ends well
Let me tell you about Davy Yinda.
Yinda was made of blood, spit and fury. You didn’t want to cross his path. Nor were you likely to last long if you did. He strung a man up by the tendons in his hands, once, for the crime of giving him a sidelong glance. He kicked a lizard’s tail off for having stinky breath. Don't ask how Yinda knew the lizard had stinky breath; Raton already asked. He has to walk backwards to see now. Raton's one of the lucky ones.
No one could lie to Yinda. If they tried, and many have, he'd just give you that heavy-lidded, eye gleaming look of his. Before you knew it, you'd be telling him everything he wanted to know, and lots more besides.
So, Yinda was moseying down main street one day, when he saw Miz Beatrice Benchley. Now, ever since the second grade, Yinda's had a thing for Miz Benchley. He'd look in through the window of that second grade classroom—you didn't think Yinda was the book learning type, did you?—and see her bent over her ciphers, blonde ringlets obscuring her face. It about made Davy Yinda cry.
Anyhow, back to main street. Yinda saw Miz Beatrice, and this time it was she who had tear stains on her cheeks. He doffed his cap, "Whatever could be wrong with the most lovely lady this side of the Mississip?" he asked.
She favored him with a smile, which made her face look like one of those rare sunstorms that everyone stopped whatever they were doing to admire. "It's nothing. Nothing at all."
Well, Yinda was cruel and illiterate, but he wasn't stupid. "You tell me, Miz Beatrice, or I'll find out, and whoever did this to you, they'll suffer something terrible, like no one in this town could even imagine. I swear it."
"I…can't." She choked back a sob. "Leave me be."
Yinda might have walked away right then and there, but he didn't. "I insist," he said, his boring stare compelling her to obey.
As I've said, no one could resist. "It was you," she whispered.
"Me?" Yinda was taken aback. He'd never touch a hair on Miz Beatrice's head. "How could it possibly be me?"
"Well," she spoke through her tears. "Raton asked for my hand. I told him I couldn't because my heart belonged to another."
Yinda hardly dared hope. "And that would be me?"
"No…Yes." She sighed. "How could a decent, respectable lady like myself join with the lowliest, most despicable ruffian in three counties? You see my dilemma?"
"I do," Yinda said slowly. "I've made you miserable, then."
She nodded, biting her nether lip. Yinda envied that lip more than you could know.
He resolved to clean up, fly right, and be a better man, all for love of Miz Beatrice. His spirits lifted one thousandfold. "I'll fix it, Miz Beatrice. You'll see."
"You swore you would," she whispered.
Yinda's face fell. "That's not what I swore. I swore I'd make the person responsible suffer something terrible." So saying, he felt the warm familiar rage come over him. He started by tearing off the skin on his arm, inch by terrible inch.
"No!" Miz Beatrice screamed.
He stuffed his arm skin into his ears. He ripped the bones free of his legs, devised a club of them, and beat himself bloody. He bit off his fingernails and shoved them in his eyes, disconnected and crosswired his internal organs, shoved his nose up into his brain, spasmed, and was silent.
Miz Beatrice and Raton lived happily ever after.
