Yogi and Bogey
The Race
1.
It’s me against a tree, a dog and an ant one lap around each in our own lane of time When the gun sounds I take off with the dog running easily beside me though he soon starts wandering out of his lane to smell things and lift his leg over them which should be disqualifying in my humble opinion The dog is not worried about falling behind He can catch up to me any time he wants and every once in a while at a trot up on his toes he lopes ahead and looks back with a question over his shoulder about why I am trying so hard when I have no chance The ant meanwhile is joined by millions of ants with the strategy of making a chain around the track one wins and they all win one loses and they all lose as they sing their belief in each other according to their kind The tree stays put naturally because it can’t move according to me at least but at the finish line the tree is announced as the winner because it is said at the medal ceremony that fast is slow and slow is fast and the judges were certain the tree had completed the lap in the blink of an eye
2.
I am not unhappy about being unhappy It seems only right and just and worth it that it should be this way at this point I embrace my unhappiness with open eyes No big deal The losses in waiting to be tallied Not going to fight it like a man in a riptide and make things worse The trick is not to panic Am I really going to dispute with myself over my own calm
A moment sitting on the deck is a moment not being in any of the horrible places in the news these days A moment of incomprehensible birdsong and incomprehensible peace
That cloud off by itself looks lonely but is it really It’s never going to rain It’s alone and not that kind of cloud floating by at liberty without a thought in its head going nowhere fast like someone I know
I admire those weeds that save themselves by resembling raspberry leaves that shriek mightily when they are recognized as weeds and pulled from the ground What are they shrieking “What about art What about art”
I always imagined a fly was distressed and confused buzzing against the window but now I think it is in a state of inquiry because flies were used to millions of years of no windows Light was just something you flew through and didn’t land on and now you are one of the pioneers trying to figure this new thing out to be the Einstein of flies and declare that it is not reality just perception worth buzzing over
If you can’t escape you escape into the mind like a plant to the light and the photosynthesis of dreaming
3.
The way I go about things these days is so indefinite so meandering like water going lazily around rocks I might as well be four years old on the floor of my bedroom surrounded by what happens to be at hand without intention a mess according to some falling into a daydream or a story taking place where the sky meets the sea I create my own sound effects free from striving and achievement nothing to show for it no need to prove anything to anyone no idea even that I was wasting time I was nothing but time looking to spend itself Amazing how I don’t feel bad about it unmoored and adrift about not grabbing hold of the years I have left or providing proof I have lived I am the lucky one washed up on an island examining the wreckage surrounded by broken things before he seeks shelter never to tell about it That there is no proof is proof enough to get through the night
Steven Schutzman is a fiction writer, poet and playwright whose work has appeared in such places as Gargoyle, The Pushcart Prize, Alaska Quarterly Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Night Picnic among many others. He’s a seven-time winner of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Award. Website – steveschutzman.com