By Nous

                      December 7, 2002


I woke up with the usual heaviness in my stomach, but it was quickly
effaced by remembering that it was Saturday; so I got up out of bed,
turned on the radio, and decided that a good hour of video games was
in order.  
Having exhausted my mind and body playing for the designated hour, I
turned on my computer, having in mind a musical experimentation with
the help of either the Fruity Loops program or Cool Edit.  After a
minute of fumbling with the dilemma, I opened Fruity Loops and 
remembered that I had planned to record something from Fruity Loops
onto Cool Edit, so I opened them both.  
Then I decided to do nothing instead.
Then I remembered that all the cartoons are terrible now.
Then I listened to the Fruity Loops song to determine whether or not
it was worthy of being recorded;  it was not.
Then I recorded it anyway.
Then, for some reason or other, Fox entered my mind, "materializing"
slowly before my mind's eye.  
He was quite a dog.  Not in the usual sense (i.e. the dog that 
fetches the paper.  What dog does that anyway?), but in an incredib-
ly important sense nonetheless.
I remember once when I felt terribly alone, I looked at Fox while he
slept on my bed and thought that there is nothing more lonely than a
dog.  Of course, their time is taken up playing with other dogs, but
they are ultimately our pets, and they belong to us.  So while they
have canine companions, their best friends can only be their owners,
who most of the time pay no real attention to them.
I thought then, staring at him, that it was Fox and me against the 
world.
I then wondered if I was the only one in the house who had thought
this; and, if not, then Fox was lonelier than I thought.  
Imagine being the pillar of strength for a group of people who would
only need you as their pillar so long as they felt alone.  Everyone 
in my house is wholly lonely at one time or other, and Fox was the 
one that took that loneliness and turned it to strength, and then he 
was once again just a dog, whereas moments before, he was the only 
one in the world who really cared.
Fox always looked attentive, but tired, and I wonder now if it was
not due to such an energy-transfer occurring in my house.  Dogs are 
far more perceptive than humans, and maybe he was as aware of this 
as myself.  Moreso, assuredly.
And since Fox was the pillar, he was not necessarily the house, as I
or my brothers or parents were.  In this case, he knew us all more
than we knew each other, and even now it is easily said that I do
not know my family.
It may be true that no man is an island, that all are part of a larg-
er working body, but even then, one cog in a machine does not have 
to touch the spring in another; and if this is how it works, then 
there are a million inner-relationships within a relationship.  A
family could be a million families that hold one together, but that
really do not work this way to hold the one together, but the
million within it are just a cause of such an occurrence - an in-
advertant happenstance.
Then my mother interrupted my thinking.
Stepping out of my room, the energy was surprisingly strong.
There are not many ways to determine when my mother is irritated or
depressed or tired, but the energy in a room is one.
I was not too hungry, but this energy seemed ready to erupt, so I
sat down and ate my Subway sandwich.  I asked my mother if there
was anything to drink and immediately felt the energy simmer with
a hundred tiny bubbles ready to break the surface.
I looked down at my sandwich and pretend not to notice anything. 
She walked to where I was sitting at the table and handed me a glass
with ice and an unopened Coke, innocently sneering, "Here, because 
you know how to pour it."
I opened up the Coke to pour it into the glass and wondered what
the correct way to pour a drink was, and even when I had accepted
that maybe I had a correct method for doing so, wondered why she had
found it necessary to remind me.
She was grabbing her purse and my brother followed close behind her.
They were going out carolling with the church, an annual ritual of
supposed joy that I was not joining.  
"I'm taking my cell with me, so call me if you need anything or if
you're going out."
After a pause, I said, "I don't even know your phone number."
Pop.  There went a bubble.
And to prove to me that the break in energy was nothing personal,
she took the napkin I was using to wipe my mouth and wrote in large
numbers her cell phone number.
I wondered if she woke up this way.
I wondered if perhaps this was what she was and I had never noticed.
"An outline of the one you love/in a life that was/that you'll no 
longer be/stands above/as you sleep."
I hurried in my room to my sleep.