.Friday Firesmith

friday firesmith – hair today, gone tomorrow

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When I was a young teen my first real facial hair was a single black hair that looked like an eyelash that grew on the front of my chin. It’s was my entire beard. Later in life, I grew my hair out long but facial hair grew like weeds on a rock. Finally, in my mid twenties my beard filled out, specked with grey, but my forehead started to grow about the same time.

In 1998, I was working in a town whose grocery store had a Deli and a guy working there had spiked up the hair on his forehead to make it look fuller. I shaved my head that weekend. Nothing looks worse than a balding man trying not to look like he’s lost his hair.  Everyone freaked out, but now it’s normal because most people have never seen me with hair.

But nature is cruel.

I dated a woman who asked me to grow my hair out, just to see how it looked. During the process I was sitting outside a coffee shoppe and a woman dropped some change into my cup. I have to admit my hair, growing out like drunken dandelions. The hair on my forehead was still a no go, but in other places it grew in, and other did not. I looked mangy. I looked like a drug addict whose family had kicked him out for stealing the good silverware.

She brushed my hair one night and was going to trim it and the brush got more than it left. She sighed. The realization was clear: If she wanted a boyfriend with a lot of hair she was going to have to find another one.

That was years ago, and she is, like my hair, long since gone. This morning, however, I found a hair, long, thick, and black, but it was growing out of my ear. The daily shaving and trimming of the ears missed this one, and I could have used it as a flyswatter it was so long. Why? Why is there hair growing in places I have no need for hair yet my head refuses? Worse, how long had I missed executing it, and it was waving around in public like one of those cobras charmed by a flute player?

In the end, I am of an age where people expect me to lose control of some of my grooming habits. I wear mismatched socks, but so far, not shoes. I did show up for six in the morning Pilates with my shirt inside out, but at least it wasn’t backwards. And one day I forgot my underwear and so the whole trip was wasted. You can’t hang out at the gym if you’re hanging out.

            As we age, we lose our hearing, our eyesight, our ability to bend and get up off the floor. In return we get a shiny new head, hair that grows in places it’s not needed, and stories about forgetfulness.

But we are also still alive. The teachers and cops who told me I would never survive myself are all dead now. Life, no matter what form it takes, is victory.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – the zombie

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“I want to be a cocaine dealer,” Greg said. It’s not that I asked Greg what he wanted to be when he grew up, but we were both in our twenties, and we were both working as kitchen help at Shoney’s. I had my doubts about Greg’s ideas towards career change, but I didn’t say anything to him.

The next day he didn’t show up for work. I did not attribute his disappearance to his new life as a wealthy drug dealer who was living on the beach with supermodels.

Greg did buy some cocaine, and he sold cocaine, so yeah, somehow he got his toe in the door, but he started doing more cocaine than he sold, and then he started doing crack.

He was behind on rent, bills, and he started stealing from his roommates so they kicked him out. Greg set his bed up in the yard and slept there for a few days. It was surreal to see a man in a bed in a yard but that was how it happened. Then it rained hard one day, and Greg started living under the overpass at Exit 16.

Greg would haunt the people he once knew, but he would steal anything he could. And ex-girlfriend named Susan let him stay in her parents garage, and it wasn’t a bad set up. He had a cot and access to hot and cold water, and a bathroom. Someone called Susan’s mother the next day and asked her if she was having a yard sale, and Greg had taken Susan’s mom’s belongings and was selling them in the front yard. They got there before any of the good jewelry was sold but they lost a toaster over and some smaller stuff.

So Greg was officially not living anywhere after that. None of us had anything to do with him, and he drifted away. He would come back to Valdosta, and I would see him at one of the Exits, but until I saw Susan at the Y one day, and told her I had seen him, I didn’t think twice about it. Susan sent me with her husband, Jim, who hated me and Greg both to look for Greg. We didn’t find him, but a man who will go out looking for his wife’s ex boyfriend to help him get off drugs is a damn hero in my book. That was ten years ago.

So yesterday I thought I saw Greg. No. I am sure it was him. He was at Exit 16, just like he always was.

But a few years ago his bones were found in a wooded area near I-75 and returned to his parents. Id-ed via dental.

I’m not sure what to do with this one.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – trumpty dumpty

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Trump comes home from China, blithely unaware how deeply he, and America, have been insulted by the Chinese, and immediately warns Taiwan about declaring independence. Trump went to China to plea for help with Iran, and we have no evidence any such thing has happened. The art of the deal may be, in this case, Trump surrenders something bigly and hopes for the best.

Considering the low regard he holds little girls, the bombing of the school in Iran that killed 168 children is no surprise. Betraying Taiwan shouldn’t surprise anyone, either. Trump has systematically alienated all of America’s allies and he’s creating generational hate among those enemies we might establish ties with later.

Russia, who firmly holds the leash attached to Trump’s neck, now realizes Trump could have, but did not deliver Ukraine, as he promised. The speed at which Europe reacted in boosting Ukraine’s drone expertise was stunning to some, but those paying attention to Trump realize he tips his hand before the cards are dealt.

Flatly put, Europe has no need of a bumbling boy-king who wrecks more than he can repair. Russia is learning the hard way that what Trump could accomplish is never anywhere near what he does.

China is not in a war, and has avoided military conflict on a large scale for decades now. They cannot be extorted by a threat to their energy needs, nor do they owe anyone large amounts of money. Their economy is stable and other than their never ending food supply chain issues, China is unlike many countries willing to bend to Trump’s will.

And as Trump betrays and dismays one ally after another, the exit is filled with former friends of America fleeing the unpredictable and unstable force that an aging Trump represents. Trump’s tariffs shocked and destabilized allies we had cultivated for decades. And now, as Trump stands alone against Iran/China/Russia in the War of the Strait, we see how vulnerable and weak Trump has made America.

Midterms must cause a sea change in American politics. Trump must be tried for his many crimes, including all the Epstein Files hold. He must go to prison for his crimes. America must return to unity and to justice. American must not live and die by slogans and reactionary politics.

Trumpism must end and it must end forever.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday firesmith – in memory of trees: the fallen

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On April the 12th of 2023, a freak rainstorm dropped nearly a foot of water in six hours. The sound on the metal roof was surreal. A dull roar that simply did not end, the rain began with a vengeance at midnight and I dozed off and on until five then got up. There was no chance of getting the dogs out until the rain stopped. At six it was a slow drizzle and my little piece of the world had flooded.

The house was okay. We were safe. But the pond spilled over into the yard in a big way. Two more hurricanes followed that year. Most of the back of my property was underwater for two and a half years.

The Big Pine Tree near the pond died slow. The Leaning Live Oak fell over on Day One. A host of smaller trees fell or simply drowned in time.

The Slingshot Tree, a small water oak with two main branches died first. One of the last to die was the leaning tree where Sam, Sam, the Happy Hound dug under the roots to make a den. Sam would hunker down there, and Bert would try to drag him out. They would play like this for hours.

Lucas and Lilith played this game, too, much younger animals than Bert and Sam, they used the same toy in the same way. I remember a Black Racer making his way under those roots and stopping Sam from going after him.

Tuesday night I heard a thump and went back to sleep. The next morning the tree was on the ground.

I knew it would be. It had died late in the flooding, but was still dead. The trees surrounding the pond, so many of them are dead now, so many still standing, a feast for woodpeckers, but so many dead.

You can try to dictate terms to nature but then you are no longer living within nature. The drought lasted for eight months after the pond finally dried up. Now, rain has returned and we’ve gotten three inches of rain this week, which seems to be a lot but the fires in Georgia still burn east of here.

Homes destroyed, lives disrupted, smoke covers the eastern part of Georgia like the dire mists of Mordor. The sun rises red over in that part of the world. Their trees have burned, and mine have drowned.

I know most of the trees on my property. None fall within notice. I have been here long enough to see a place where no tree stood to have a tree, and the first bird nest. I have seen giants die and fall. I have seen small trees grow beyond my own height and reach for starlight.

But this day, I say to you this: A tree that holds memories of my pack has fallen.

These words are a memorial, and they are grief.

Take Care,

Mike

The tree broken, not yet fallen over. I still wonder how its root system held

Here it’s landed on the pile I started when I was able to start moving stuff out of the yard, and away from the fences. It landed with its kin. All the bushy looking stuff was once so shaded nothing grew there. The loss of tree has triggered a population explosion of smaller plants.

friday firesmith – the fate of america

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Trump basically showed up with a couple of aircraft carriers, murdered some school girls then looked around for help.

No one was joining his gang rape of the Middle East.

Worse, infinitely worse, Trump, having declared victory after the first day, didn’t seem to have a plan for Day Two. Or Day Three. Or Day 68.

In the most terrifying moments that were sublimely comical, Trump tossed deadlines around like covfefe, TACOed beautifully, got banned from allied airspace, had meaningful negotiations with himself, and at the end of the day had was over four bucks a gallon and MAGAdom began collapsing around Trump like an overfilled diaper.

At this juncture, with midterms six months away and Trump relying on SCOTUS to gerrymander away minority voters, things look decidedly grim for Republicans.

And worse for Trump.

If he disengages with Iran after all the “unconditional surrender” talk it’s going to look a like Trump lost the war with Iran. But that was clear on Day One, wasn’t it?

Trump Lost the War With Iran is going to be the only headline coming out of this other than a ruined economy.

Worse, for Trump, the Epstein Files have not gone away.

Every day there’s new news, new horror, new victims and there’s New Mexico, where the bodies are buried.

Trump doesn’t have any cards left to play in the Middle East. Neither his bombs nor his bluster impresses the Iranians.

The traditional allies have abandoned him in favor of more stable and less violent regimes, like Iran.

China is backing Iran and destroying the American navy in the process. Taiwan is there’s for the taking. Trump won’t be able to start another war.

Basically, Trump is wishing for the end to look like the world did before the war talk and bombs fell. He wants a do over. Trump wants America to be respected by their allies and foes alike.

And, perhaps, sooner than Trump suspects, the damage will begin to be repaired.

But Americans have to vote Trump’s lackeys out of the government and elected people who will do right by the Constitution.

Trump has to be tried, and if convicted, be imprisoned.

Justice must be sought with vigor. You have to ask yourself, I would hope, what would Trump do to those who he had such a preponderance of evidence against? Rape, murder, corruption without end, and a war that eliminated any ally we might have really had in the Middle East? What should be the punishment for the dead little girls, the raped little girls, and the things Trump has done to hide his part in all of this?

America can still awaken from the cult nightmare and take the country back from Big Money.

It will not be easy.

I fear it will not be without bloodshed.

But without the reckoning of how Trump was able to do what he did, and without the Justice Department and Congress putting Trump on trial, we lay open for the next con man.

We must never allow this to happen again, or we have done nothing.

The Fate of America, now hangs in the balance.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – from the woods

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The subdivision I lived in before I moved into the woods wasn’t bad. My neighbors were all good people and for the most part minded their own business. Church going was a thing with most folk and I was openly not going to church and hostile to any suggestions I might need to do so.

I moved to a place where the odds of seeing someone up close depended entirely on me going looking.

About three years ago the pond beside my house flooded, and then hurricanes came in. Seems odd, but in just a few days, I had alligators popping in from all directions. Most of them were small, and I think they came from a larger lake about a half mile away.

Alligators are pretty cool to have as neighbors. They’re fun to watch and they don’t really get involved in human activities. In the two and a half years my property was flooded I had one five footer get into the back yard, and he didn’t stay long.

We all know Alligators will go after dogs, this is true, but the fiver haunting the flooded area never acted interested in the residents. They were wary of him.

In twenty-five years, I’ve had two dogs zapped by cottonmouths and both lived. One of them, Tyger Linn, hunted Cottonmouth but no other snake. She was bitten four times in two years, including a day it was 40 degrees. She dug a Cottonmouth out of a stump hole and got popped. She lived. Tyger also didn’t learn from experience, clearly.

In twenty-five years I haven’t killed any animal out here. I didn’t move into the woods to declare war on nature. I assumed me and mine could, and would, accept the risks associated with the environment and our non human neighbors and we would live in peace.

I’ve been told I’ll regret this.

I regret watching a dog die because he was hit by a car when I was a kid. I regret not ever seeing pond birds up close until I moved out here. I regret one of my neighbors losing her sense of security when her house was robbed in town.

I don’t regret seeing the Milky Way at night out here or listening to owls hunt in the darkness. I don’t regret the deer feeding in the yard or the sight of a fawn following its mom across the yard at down. I don’t the silence, the solitude, or the peace. I don’t regret the mindset of the people who live near me, who never bother me, but will check in with me after a hurricane.

Living within the realm of nature isn’t without sorrow or loss but being alive means you’re going to experience both. Hiding from it or killing creatures to avoid loss is cowardice.

It takes a certain sense of acceptance a lot of people simply won’t commit to living.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – drowning

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I haven’t seen my friend Tracy in over a decade, but I know he’s still alive out there, somewhere. Or maybe he isn’t. It’s hard to know, really.

The first time I knew his drinking problem had gotten to the point it was going to be a real problem was the time we went out to eat Mexican and he passed out in the bathroom with a cigarette in his hand, his pants down around his knees, and the door locked.

The manager asked me if my friend had heart problems, and we finally pounded on the door hard enough to wake him up.

I paid our tab, slipped waitstaff a twenty, and we got the hell out of there.
College educated and good with people, he invariably ruined each and every friendship by borrowing something and destroying it, losing a job due to not showing up, or by showing up, or even stealing money to buy booze. He drank a marriage to death.

He came over a long time ago, we drank for a while, I quit drinking so much, and he passed out on the porch. I left him there. The next day I had to go to work and I think he got his feelings hurt because I wouldn’t let him hang out at my house while I was gone to work.

Recently, a friend of mine in Florida I haven’t heard from in a while called me and wanted to know if I had seen Tracy. I hadn’t, and this guy, Bart, was livid. I saw it coming before he told me. Bart and his wife were friends with Tracy from way back, and they were trying to talk him into getting help. They let him have the spare bedroom, but they weren’t giving him any money or alcohol. What could go wrong?

Tracy rummaged around their house while they went out, and found a can with change in it on the dryer, and a couple of bucks here and there in the house. He took Tracy’s truck, went to the liquor store, and bought a pint but also stuck another in his boot. The clerk saw him so Tracy bolted without paying for the bootleg pint, so to speak.

So Tracy leaves and starts drinking from one of the pints. Tracy has nearly made it back but he sees a cop car do a U turn and does something bizarre. He stops the truck, parks it, and then walks off into somebody’s yard and keeps walking.

After that, no one knows what happened.

The cops got the truck, called Bart, showed up at his house, and Tracy was nowhere to be found. It cost Bart five hundred to get the truck back. An empty pint was on the floorboard. Bart called me and I assumed sooner or later Tracy would appear but he didn’t.

No one has seen him since.

Or at least no one has called me. I don’t think he will now. Not because I’ve stopped drinking but because I think those of us who knew Tracy, and really cared, are exhausted. We’re tapped out. And we’ve all tried.

Eventually, if you were once a party animal, you drift away from drinking, or you sink deeper into it. Or maybe not. I can’t speak for anyone else.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – Candy

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One day in 1979 my Senior Year in high school, I woke up in the driveway of my father’s home, in my father’s car. I yawned, looked around, and realized it was in the afternoon.

I gathered my books and stuff and went inside, and tried to remember what happened, and how I came to me in the car in the driveway. I had no clue. It was not time for school to be out yet, so how did I get home?

In a glorious mix of illicit drugs and alcohol, I had passed out in class. A semi-liquid in human form, I simply slipped out of my desk during math class and puddled on the floor. Two guys carried all one hundred and ten pounds of me to the car, a girl named Candy drove the car to my father’s house, and someone picked her up.

No one ever said a thing to me. Not a teacher, not a cop, not a coach, and coaches were like the Border Collies of high school, they got involved in things they shouldn’t because they could.

By that time, I think most adults in the school system realized there was a problem, but they also realized it was beyond their ability to solve the problem. I have no idea, really.

Over two decades later, because of the power of the internet, I reconnected with Candy who was stunned to discover I was still alive. She told me the first time I passed out in class there was a lot of debate as to what to do. Calling my father didn’t seem like a good idea because everyone knew he was part of the problem. Most of the alcohol I drank before I turned eighteen, which was the legal age for drinking back then, was stolen from my father. I was eighteen at the time, so legally I could drink, but not at school. They knew if I was expelled, I would just return the next year. I had served nearly four years in that prison, and they were as tired of me as I was of them.

So, Candy was my designated driver when either drugs or alcohol laid me low. The school’s solution was to allow me to self-medicate to the point of unconsciousness and graduate me out into a world where I would no longer be their problem.

Most people who I’ve seen since high school are surprised, I’m still alive. But I’m at an age now I’m beginning to outlive a lot of the straight A students who chose a life of follow the path of those who came before.

At the moment, this is being written, I haven’t had any alcohol in over five months. I haven’t missed it. I haven’t craved it. I haven’t been tempted.

Candy went on to marry an abusive man who beat the dream of being an attorney out of her. She got jobs as waitstaff and never resumed her college career. He was a serious drinker, as all men of that generation were told it was okay, and so drinking was passed on like farmland inheritance or the ugly chair no one really wanted.

At sixty-five, I can no longer afford the health costs of drinking. I can no longer afford the time it takes to stop functioning and the aftereffects of the hangover.

Right now, I belong to a social action group and no one in that group has ever seen me drunk and has never seen me drink. I can socialize and not be anaesthetized.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is in his forties and he quit drinking last year. His wife had quit a while back. Socially, younger people are more choosing to step away from alcohol now, and when they talk to people like me, they realize drinking is a lifelong commitment to doing things you’ll regret in the morning.

This, all of this I have written isn’t supposed to be a condemnation of those who drink, but rather a warning. Heed it or not, it is your choice, just as this is mine. And maybe you need to hear it. Maybe not. But the choice of staying or going is yours, too. Stay sober, go on drinking. I left five months ago.

Cheers,

Mike

friday firesmith – the birth of a demon 1994

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Back in 1994, I was living in Tifton, broke, just started a new job, and knew no one there at all. I did have a desktop computer, and I had a lot of time on my hands. I remember the day was cold and wet. I turned my heat on when I started seeing my breath inside.

Anne Rice had done amazingly well reinventing vampires, so I decided to reinvent a monster. Which? Werewolves? I thought about it. Zombies? No. Vampires again? No, please. Mummies? For the love of Anubis, no, no, no!

Demons?

I watched the sleet pound the windows and turned up the heat. Okay, supposed Demons possessed people, but exorcism doesn’t do anything to them, and never did. Demons know there are no gods or goddesses. So far so good.

Can they die? Kinda. If they aren’t inside of a host they black out into a super cold and totally dark place. How long? Every time feels like forever, but then they are reincarnated back to earth, and they are weaker than when they left. They have to find a host, and soon, or they get black zapped again.

I needed a name. I looked around my tiny apartment and saw the box some cookware came in.

“Regal.” The Demon Regal was born.

Regal is old, over eight thousand years old. He was there in the beginning of Demons, and was there when Atlantis fell. His host was murdered, and he got zapped, but returned in good order and found a host.

He killed the Demon Barbos, who had killed him, and now the two are enemies.

Demons possess people by getting them to surrender control of their bodies and mind to the Demon. They can manipulate memories. They can control parts of the mind through memories. All humans can resist minor Demons. Some can resist stronger minor Demons, but Regal can possess any human at will and nothing can stop him.

Some Demons, like Regal are kind to their hosts, and try to make their lives better. The Demon Vodun has a team of hosts that run a Yoga studio. The most they have to do is eight hours a day of possession, or Yoga, like a regular job with full benefits. Vodun punishes disrespect harshly and ruins the lives of humans who do not hold up their end of the bargain.

The Demon Isere is the most liked Demon as far as humans go. Much younger than Regal or even Vodun, she helps her hosts live a much better life.

This is how stories are invented and evolve.

Questions?

Take Care,

Mike

Epic Fails and Charles Darwin

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For reasons that escape reason, young people began eating Tide detergent pods and posting videos online of them eating the pods. It became a thing. Eating Tide won’t kill you outright, but it was a lot like watching the two cute chicks eating Carolina Reapers.

People do stupid things because they believe that the stupidity somehow lends them an aura of bravery or indifference to consequences.

The two women in the Carolina Reaper video suggests that this is not only untrue, but catastrophically false.

One of the first terrible things I saw online was the video of a young man on top of a three story building with a skateboard. His plan was to jump off the building, land with the skateboard on a rail below, then slide down the rail while the video was being made.

He jumped. He landed perfectly. But instead of going down the rail he went face down into the concrete. His friend behind the camera laughed then stopped. The would be skateboarder was not moving at all.

“Dude?” is the last word you hear from the cameraman before the video ends.

I think he was dead when he hit the concrete.

It’s difficult to believe people do things that are either embarrassing or painful or lethal, and have someone making a public record of it. Yet the internet has tens of thousands of videos like these. Those clips of people using a chainsaw to cut down trees that then fall on houses or cars are legion. Anyone can walk into a hardware store and buy a chainsaw, and they kill and maim more people every year than do rattlesnakes. Most people who drown can swim but they put themselves in positions where their skill comes up lacking.

The video of a man talking his girlfriend into shooting him with a .357 at short range is stunning in its idiocy. He tested a bullet proof vest at one hundred feet and it withstood the bullet. At twenty-five feet it killed him.

All of these example of otherwise functional human beings hurting themselves, maiming themselves, or others, and all of it live and on camera, is a stunning testament to the power of evolution fueled by downright stupidity. The young man launching himself off a three story building to concrete below displays an extraordinary ignorance of basic physics. His friend behind the camera laughs at the sight of a friend lying still after impact. He simply does not comprehend the danger, either. He will go to his grave replaying that day in his mind, over and over.

None of this, not one example I’ve given to you today comes anywhere close to the sheer magnitude of stupidity, or lack of understanding, or outright indifference to the lethality of what has happened when people voted for Trump.

Take Care,

Mike