Chase It

I used to think it was disruptive to exert agency upon any object.  I tried to sit still until the mud settled, like Lao Tzu recommended.  Things usually worked out, which proved that Lao Tzu was right.  That’s why I refused to apply for any job. 

Like Fish, the homeless Cherokee man said in Austin, Texas: be like water; water always finds its way.  Then two cops came around the corner and Fish was forced to swallow a burning joint so as to avoid arrest.  Then they arrested him and told me and Cockroach to scram.  

Anyway, I tried to not try, like Fish and Lao Tzu.  Things usually worked out.  Sometimes God even told people to give me money so I could pay for food and smokes.  They told me straight out, “God told me to give this to you.”  Who was I to argue?  Once, when my buddy, Fred, and I were completely broke except for a buck and a quarter between us, we won twelve dollars with a scratch-off lottery ticket and bought two value meals at Burger King.  I felt like Han-Shan on Cold Mountain, biting into that Quarter-Pounder-With-Cheese.

I didn’t consider it wrong to accept when somebody offered me a job, as long as I didn’t apply for it.  It wasn’t exertion that was wrong, but agency.  It was the application for the job that was cacophonic.  So when my dad’s friend offered me a job planting trees in upstate New York, I said yes please.

“We’ll see bears,” he told me, as we drove.

“That’s cool,” I said.

“We’ll probably see a lot of them.  Maybe four.”

I popped my Bob Dylan tape in the deck.  “All I really wanna do, is baby be friends with you,” Bob Dylan sang.

“He’s lying,” my dad’s friend said.  “You can’t trust a man with a voice like that.” 

But I could tell that he was digging the music.  He kept on asking me to tell him the lyrics when he couldn’t understand the words.

When we pulled up to the trailer at the end of a dirt mountain road in the woods, he kept the headlights on while we shuttled back and forth between the truck and the trailer, taking things inside.

Then before we went to sleep he told me the rules.  Rule 1: Don’t go outside at night without the gun.  Rule 2: No smoking in the trailer.

So we spent four days planting trees, driving around on the four-wheeler with soil and saplings and tools.  We dug and planted and watered from dawn til dusk.

The last day I was outside smoking in the morning.  It had rained that night so everything was fresh and green.  He was in the kitchen making coffee and pancakes and bacon for breakfast.

“Psst,” he said.  He had a big grin on his face.  He pointed behind me.

I turned my head and looked and saw that he was pointing at a bear.  The bear was poking around, probably eating some berries or something, minding its own business.

Then he grinned even bigger.  “Chase it!” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Chase it!” he said again.

That was against everything I believed in.  But I chased it.  I ran straight at that bear.  It seemed surprised to se me running straight at it, waving my arms the way I was.  It turned and took off, hurtling down the hill and I ran after it.  I kept on running after it, hopping over logs and ducking under vines, until I was deep in the valley, and the bear was nowhere to be seen.