-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

September 22, 2014

“Show me a word.” I used to start my writing classes with that declaration, kids or adults. One can’t, in fact, show a word. The things on the page are symbols FOR words, and the symbols are open to interpretation, alteration, perturbation.

Words have weight, yet no corporeal existence. As for the audio tips of words, our brains think much faster than we can speak. There is no, “I didn’t mean it,” because we did mean it, sometimes literally, more often deliberately for the perverse pleasure of the hurt. Words hurt, yet do not have corporeal existence. One cannot take back what was never real. But the scars of the words, the psychic wounds run as deep as the roots of prairie flowers.

He (happily): Yes. She (flatly): No. He (begging): Yes! She: No. He (tearfully): Yes! She (menacing): No. He (kidding): Yesssss. She (laughing): Nooooo.

“No,” often means “yes.” “Yes,” often means “no.”

This is the innovation, the advancement that makes humans superior? Eek. Continue reading →

September 20, 2014

Halfway down Clifton Terrace Road, I saw legions of shadows moving east to west. Eighty American white pelicans were a hundred feet in the air, floating counterclockwise in their signature tornado shape, across the greengoldorangeleaf bluffs. And as I neared the river, more tornadoes formed and glided in the air currents.

Earth is the cake, of course. There is the outer layer of iridescent white icing, and the middle layer of licorice, the turkey vultures, and the innermost orange layer, monarch butterflies, all gliding on fixed wings.

The river and the sky ran currents and purple wind. Thin ribbons of clouds, like lines of cocaine, moved as waves, and the birds swam upsky. And on the water itself, perhaps five hundred pelicans were massed on the north shore of Scotch JimmyIsland. They rose up in groups for a dress rehearsal, swimming the sky, forming spoke wheels and merry-go-rounds inches above the water.

Today or tomorrow, the pelicans will lift off and form six to ten tornadoes and float down the river to the Gulf of Mexico, joined at each confluence of rivers by other tornadoes, until the sky will be filled with snow.

A man and his wife were a feet away from me. They were watching and pointing. The man said, “I never saw white hawks before. They are beautiful.” “They’re pelicans,” I told him. “Nah, pelicans live in the ocean.” How can a person live here and not be cognizant of the wildlife? Continue reading →

September 18, 2014

And I took off again, me and my stent in my fractured heart, on the Genehouse walk, taking ninety minutes for what normally takes fifty. At the bottom, on the river, were over a hundred American white pelicans gleaming in the warm sun, working and circling as a team, to net fish.

There is no describing a pelican migration, the vast electric white tornado that swirls its way east and south, the small end of the funnel rising and falling over dams and barges and driftwood, like a movie visual of a slow motion dream.

Let the painter tone down the deep green of the forest, fade it, yellow it, wash it out, catch the falling leaves that become sails, wipe away the empty nests. Stripe the roads with woolly caterpillars and etch the globe-shaped webs along the high tree tops and the lime green Osage oranges as they roll downhill. Continue reading →

September 12, 2014

“Hi, I’m Amber,” the young woman said, smiling and showing big teeth and holding an electric razor in her right hand, pushing up her eyeglasses with her left.

“What is that for,” I asked.

“I’m here to shave your groin.”

She might as well have said, “I’m here to dip your ‘boys’ in ice water,” for it had the same effect. My boys retreated in fear. Amber the groin shaver pulled up my hospital gown, put one gloved hand on the boys, to keep them from getting nicked, and shaved me until I looked like a porn star.

How do I know what a porn star looks like? Wikipedia. Continue reading →

September 10, 2014

I’m writing to you from heaven, as I died this morning at St. Anthony’s Hospital, at 8:30 am, central daylight time. The cardiac catheter was mistakenly inserted up my ass. My head was discovered up there, but no heart.

Also discovered were a ticket stub from a Fleetwood Mac concert in 1970, my divorce papers, Season 2 of “Sex and the City,” the Mormon Tabernacle choir, the muffler off a 1967 Corvair, and a “I Heart New York” sticker, which was repaired, not be confused with my real heart which has been found in San Francisco.

I was pronounced dead and Farmer Orville buried me in his compost pile, with all the rest of the shit, and Reba the dog wallowed in me. If you’re going to buy some of Orville’s tomatoes, don’t pet the dog.

What is heaven like? Continue reading →