Memories

Pac-Man was about a hungry circle that lived in a haunted square.

Pong was about two lines negotiating the joint-custody of their dot.

Frogger was about drivers ignoring the world's most polluted river.

But I can't remember who started WWI.

Hi(gh)

Several times a week, a generous pot-head (or glaucoma patient) gives the homeless woman who lives in my subway station a free joint. She then sits on her bench, burning it down, filling the cave with sticky sweet smoke.

I wonder if the pot-head thinks he's funny, giving a homeless woman an unbearable case of munchies she can't afford to cure.

Ellen's Island

Several years ago my friends and I embarked on a campaign to abandon our lives, move to a tropical island, and adopt lives of Gilligan-esque simplicity and equality.

At the time, Ellen Degeneres - whose talk show I watched every day during lunch - was in the habit of answering viewer mail by granting wishes. I started writing Ellen, asking if she would like to escape with my friends and I to a tropical island where she would serve as our Queen. While the flattery was sincere, the letters were (in truth) really a thinly-veiled ploy for Ellen to finance the adventure.

Sadly, I am no longer self-employed. I am no longer able to watch Ellen during my lunch break. But as summer approaches and I desperately miss the three-month bliss a year of multiplication tables and spelling tests once earned, I am thinking of re-visiting my campaign for Ellen's Island...

(originally sent 8.20.07)

Dear Ellen,

You may not be aware of it, but you and I eat lunch together almost every day. Because I work from home, most afternoons you dance into my living room and chat while I enjoy my lunch. You usually bring friends, and I enjoy the company. Sometimes you talk on the phone for a few minutes, but I don't mind the interruption. In fact, you've so generously shared your time with me that I'd like to return the favor with an invitation.

Would you like to be the Queen of my island?

I know... it's quite an offer. And so, I suppose it's only fair to disclose that I live in a small condo that is desperately landlocked. To be honest, I am not yet an island-owner. My friends and I have decided, however, that an island will be our next (and first) group purchase. We plan to quit our jobs, sell our stuff, and move to a tropical paradise where money isn't allowed and there are no bills (we'll make an exception for the occasional William if you know one you'd like to bring). We're ready to run away, but we don't want to leave you behind.

I know this might sound a bit like a failed social experiment one of the Marx brothers dreamed up a few years ago, but in my opinion his communist vision was never fully realized because...

1. Lenin had virtually no sense of humor.
2. The guest list was all wrong.
3. Nobody in Siberia makes a decent Mai Tai.

We think our island remedies these flaws because...

1. You are much funnier than Lenin.
2. Our island is invitation only.
3. The Mai Tai will be our state bird.

As we chose our monarchy, the candidates were narrowed to either you or Jimmy Buffet. We eliminated Jimmy because we were afraid he would just spend his time wasting away again. But you're so funny, energetic, sincere, and kind that we feel you'd be the perfect Queen. We love your show and know that you must be as wonderful in person as you are on syndicated television. You're obviously the piece we need to make our island paradise complete.

It won't be big or fancy, but our island will be surrounded by clear water and warm, white sand. We're fun people, Ellen. You'll like us. Will you please come and be our Queen?

Of course, we're all very poor and could never afford an actual island. We'll probably have to settle for sharing an inflatable raft at the public pool – but you're invited to that too.

Don't forget to pack your crown and some sunscreen.

Your humble servant,

Bryan Currie

Survival of the Fittest

When they ate the herbs out of her herb garden, my mom was irritated. When they dug up her daffodil bulbs, she was upset. But when the chipmunks chewed through the wires in my step-dad’s car, my mom declared war.*

For the past two months her tactic has been to lure the chipmunks into a wading-pool trap where the rodents drown while trying to eat floating sunflower seeds. The "Salem Witch Trap," as I've come to think of it, may be barbaric... but it's also brilliant. (a similar version can be seen here.)

To celebrate both my mother’s birthday (which was Sunday) and her apparent victory over the chipmunks (she’s drowned at least 10), my sister and I bought flower bulbs to replace the ones the rodents have eaten. For the card I composed the following series of chipmunk limericks/memorials.

Feel fee to add a few verses of your own, but please remember... chipmunks seldom live on Nantucket.

There once was a chipmunk named Pete
who thought your backyard was a treat.
While he was digestin'
you taught him a lesson.
"You shouldn't swim after you eat!"

There once was a chipmunk named Mills
who feasted on your daffodils.
He got a surprise
when he realized
He should have spent time growing gills.

There once was a chipmunk named Jay
who thought your yard was a buffet.
But lunch isn't free
as he would soon see.
Too bad he's now floated away.

A chipmunk was named Alowishus
who thought your backyard looked delicious.
But eating a car
was going too far!
you sent him to sleep with the fishes.

*for more on my mom's war against small, seeminly defenseless animals, click here.

grounded?

Today I found myself outside the Chrysler Building (which, by the way, is tall enough it might block God’s view of Brooklyn) where a small church sits snugged between the skyscrapers.

This morning the cross outside the church was still wearing its Easter outfit; a shroud draped across its shoulders… and a chain securing it to the street.

I know what the chain says about my city, where bicycles and icons (apparently) need the same pad-locked protection. But if this is what the last two millennia have been leading us to, I think someone deserves an apology.


O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
(traditional Hindu invocation)

Too Many Lives

There’s something great about being complicated, but it’s terribly complicated as well. The truth, therefore, should be faced with courage. We cannot be fully known. By anyone.

We have simply lived too many lives.

The good news is that this shadow of lonely will always haunt us. It must.
Without it, our lives would be too brightly lit and we would always long for the privacy of some dark.

Two in the Bush

I like to run, even when dogs and the police aren’t involved. A few years ago I trained for a marathon. On the big day, however, I only ran half the distance. Running a half marathon is like being pregnant with twins but only giving birth to one baby. It's both painful and rewarding . . . and when you finish, you always wonder if you should have pushed harder.

I watch the sidewalk when I run. Even on the prettiest spring days I ignore the sky and search the ground, hoping some other runner might have dropped his second wind. Once, during the final push of a 10 mile trot, I was counting cracks when a flash of movement caught my eye.

did I just see a *breathe* over near the *breathe* is that a . . .

I looked up from the sidewalk to see a small spark of a bird dart out of a ditch and fly a few feet from my sweating face.

This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except for one small detail – the bird’s color. Instead of camouflaging its feathers to blend with a earth toned environment, the bird was bright green, like a crayon or piece of construction paper. Crossing the street, its wings flashed neon in a cardboard world.

Of course, I hold no prejudice against green birds. I believe all of God’s creatures should be proud of their heritage and display their colors without fear of drawing undue attention to themselves. It’s just that in most neighborhoods outside the Amazon, birds tend to be less flashy. Less exotic. Less green.

In Nashville, where I was running, we had many lovely blue birds, brown birds, red birds, and gray birds. We even enjoyed a few spectacular yellow finches. The only place in the Music City where you might find green birds, however, was at the zoo and on the Discovery Channel.

That’s why it was surprising, as I ran up a hill and into what I feared might be the beginning of cardiac arrest, when a wad of emerald feathers flashed across the sidewalk and into the great suburban wild of Nashville. I was certain the bird – a small fist-sized parrot – must have been an illusion, a figment of my sweating imagination. Had I suddenly tasted pennies or felt a tingling sensation in my left arm, the hallucination would have made much more sense and I might have expected to turn the corner and find myself running into a warm, white light.

But instead of a glowing end to my suffering, all I saw on the street was a rust red pick-up truck approaching on my right.

When you’re running and a truck passes going the opposite direction, you don’t have long to look through the windshield. Dolly Parton could drive past and you probably wouldn’t notice. But because the rust red truck was moving slower than it should have been, I had a few extra seconds to see the driver. Sitting behind the wheel was a sixty year old man, rough and unshaven, with gray hair, a red shirt, and a large green parrot perched on his right shoulder – the second parrot I had seen in the past two minutes.

With the exception of Jimmy Buffet – who lived in Nashville before he moved to Margaritaville – men in the Music City don’t generally wear parrots to work. In fact, the average Nashvillian knows as much about parrots as he does about recording contracts. Both are rumored to be real, but few have seen either in person.

After ten feet of careful consideration, I decided that the pirate trucker must have been driving through my neighborhood not because he wanted to spoil and plunder, but because he had a pet problem. It’s only a hunch based on unbelievable coincidence, but I think the pirate was the proud owner of not one, but two parrots - one lost, the other riding shotgun on his shoulder.

The parrot in the truck wasn’t simply along for the ride, tagging along to tell stories when the eight-track went out. It was being used as a zoological GPS to find the lost bird that crossed my path only moments before. The pick up pirate must have hoped that if birds of a feather really do flock together, he might be able to use this instinct to his advantage.

(I think it’s worth questioning whether a grown man should really trust directions squawked by an animal that has a vocabulary of only eight words, three of which are “cracker” and “pretty bird.” Personally, I wouldn’t. Of course, I don’t usually talk to anything that doesn’t have two external ears.)

It will forever remain a mystery as to why the little green spark flew away from home. Maybe he was tired of being served corn-nuts and Budweiser for breakfast. And while I will probably never know if the pick-up pirate was ultimately successful in his quest for the lost bird, I continue to be impressed by his effort. Finding a lost pet is never easy. At least when rounding up a runaway dog or searching for a lost cat, your pet’s hiding places are limited geographically by things like fences and streats. And gravity.

But when tracking a runaway parrot, there’s a tremendous amount of up to consider. The bird might be enjoying a bath in your neighbor’s backyard, or he might be eating french-fries with the parking-lot pigeons at Sonic. Or, if it hasn’t been fond of your brand of crackers, your bird might be on his way back to South America to teach a flock of its Brazilian cousins how to read the sports page in English. The sky is literally the limit.

As I rounded the corner, I glanced back to see the pirate’s truck turn left into a neighborhood filled with towering oaks and bushy maples. The Captain and his parrot sailed into the suburban jungle and I never saw them again. But on sunny days when the sidewalk calls, I still lace up my shoes and run. And I still sometimes wonder if the little green bird ever found its way home.

**

As a child I went through a stage of wanting to keep a bird as a pet. I was told, however, that it is both inhumane and inconvenient to keep a bird in a cage. Birds are born to fly free and cages are meant for naughty children who disobey their parents. Plus, depending on your political bias and opinion of the popular media, newspapers are intended to be read, not pooped upon. That’s why, in the redneck south, birds aren’t pets. Birds are target practice. Or dinner. Or both.

In Asian cultures a proverb says love is like a bird in a cage. If you love something, you set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.

In the Christian tradition, the bird is replaced with a sheep. The sheep is free to wander off – which it does – and is lost in the wilderness. Fortunately, in the traditional story, the shepherd is smarter than Little Bo Peep who lost her sheep and didn’t know where to find them. The shepherd knows his sheep and is convinced they are worth more than grilled kabobs and warm winter sweaters . . . so he leaves his flock to rescue the one who is lost.

And when he finds it, he joyfully carries it home where his friends and neighbors rejoice because the lost sheep is found.

During this season of Lent, I celebrate the shepherd Jesus. I am thankful that he is wise enough to know that love isn’t like a bird in a cage. If something you love runs away, you go after it no matter the cost.