HAPPY NEW YEAR!

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

He is standing in a spot where many others once stood, as well as many other things: a structure built by beings who looked like him, a tree that did not, a brackish marsh filled with tiny creatures that darted from side to side in search of food that would propel them into the future. Before that it was a deep, wide hole into which an unseen hand poured time, filling it up but not too far, not quite to the lip, not even near enough to it to pose a threat. He is standing there, not thinking about any of that. He is thinking about the day to come, and how he will find something to eat, and then after that how he will find his wife and daughter, who are standing in another spot, maybe far away, maybe nearby, maybe calling his name, maybe incapable of doing so. He knows he needs to move but his feet are so heavy that they drive him into the earth. He abandons that plan and instead stands and listens to the brag of his own heart. He exists, which is all he can say for now, though he can also say that he understands enough about existence to know that he will end in nothing, that the time poured into the hole will not stay down, not at safe levels, not forever, that it will rise, spill over, pool around his feet, dissolve him, just as it will dissolve the rest, the structures built by beings who looked like him, the stores and schools and movie theaters and hospitals and restaurants and train stations and homes. So many homes. There were not the thoughts he wanted. He calls for his wife and daughter but his words are so light they blow away through the windless afternoon.

HELLO, WEEK

By Ben Greenman

@2020 (obviously)

The first day that you’re stuck at home

It’s nice to wake up first and roam

Around the house all by yourself

And get the cookies from the shelf

And go back to your bed before

Your parents open up your door.

The second day that you’re inside

You act like you’re a nature guide.

“Come with me,” you say to Dad

“Here’s a giant lily pad.”

Then you burp loud, like a croak.

(You and Mom made up this joke.)

The third day that the door stays shut

You want to see your best friend, but

Mom and Dad explain to you

That she is safe in her house, too.

Instead, you call her on the phone

Her voice helps you feel less alone.

The fourth day of no going out

Is getting harder—there’s no doubt.

Kids aren’t in playgrounds or in schools.

They’re not fair, these stay-home rules!

Though after dinner’s not so bad

A board game with your mom and dad.

The fifth day everyone’s together

Is hard because there’s nasty weather.

Thunder! Lightning! Hours of rain.

You get to eat a candy cane

And after Mom works and Dad cooks

You read not one but two whole books.

The sixth day feels like the first—

You wake up early with a burst

Of spirit and imagination.

You play Bank Teller, then Gas Station,

Then Drive-Thru, then Shopping Cart.

The trick’s to stay six feet apart.

The seventh day of quarantine

You’re getting used to the routine:

Wake up, breakfast, nature walk,

When work time comes, try not to talk,

Lunch, games, dinner, bed, and then

Start over with day one again.

SOCIAL DISTANCING TOUR SHIRT

SOCIAL DISTANCING CHANGES THINGS WE HAVE SEEN

By Ben Greenman
©2020 / Stupid Ideas

NOTE: These are all things I made during quarantine from the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020. Some are funny but almost all are, once you think about them, sad.

1. American Gothic, now with social distancing.



2. The Creation of Adam, now with social distancing.



3. Wish You Were Here, now with social distancing.



4. Meet the Beatles!, now with social distancing.



5. Abbey Road, now with social distancing.



6. Forrest Gump, now with social distancing.



7. E.T., now with social distancing.




8. The Wonder Twins, now with social distancing.



9. Pulp Fiction, now with social distancing.



10. Run the Jewels, now with social distancing.



11. 1999, now with social distancing.



12. The Shining, now with social distancing.



13. Remain in Light, now with social distancing.



14. Lady and the Tramp, now with social distancing.



15. Follow the Leader, now with social distancing.



16. Psychocandy, now with social distancing.



17. Mount Rushmore, now with social distancing.



18. Easter Island, now with social distancing.



19. Where's Waldo, now with social distancing.

WAIT FOR SURPRISE ENDING

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Last month more than a dozen people were summoned to Clorkenwelt Street, to the Medical Court, where they stood against charges for refusing to comply with orders to administer the vaccine to themselves, their children, or their parents, also being without exemption certificates that would have permitted a two-month extension for reasons of faith, illiteracy, or mental illness.  Mr. Robert “Duke” Anderson, the Vaccination Enforcement Officer for Slice Province, acknowledged that some of the defendants did in fact possess exemptions but that they were obtained from local Justices of the Peace who did not possess the right under law to contravene provincial law. The judge who heard the case agreed with Mr. Anderson that the practice was highly irregular, and then launched into a long and perhaps not pertinent story of a boy he once knew at summer camp who had contracted polio but still managed to “court one of the prettiest girls in the entire state.” The surprise ending was that the boy was him.

ONE MORNING AT THE DESK

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

One morning he sat down at his desk and made a list of all the things that were inconsequential. It was long—longer, he imagined, than the list of the things that were consequential. He obtained a mental picture of himself composing the consequential list. In it, he was still sitting at his desk. It was still morning. A red bird was perched on a tree outside the window; he turned his head and saw the same bird on the same tree. He focused in on the center of the mental picture, which was occupied by his face, and paid special attention to his expression, to the way the muscles around his mouth were set, to the cast of his eyes and the nature of the light in them. He was searching for signs of happiness. He found none.

FUTURE MAYOR JEREMY

Speaking yesterday at Town Hall, Jeremy Hantford, a candidate for mayor, said that there was a danger of people growing increasingly fatigued by the current crisis, and admitted that after two hundred and forty nine days of what he called “assaultive news and circumstance” he has begun to suffer from a variety of aches, pains, nausea-type sensations, and occasional ideations of self-harm. “If this should continue to happen,” he said, “I can see the possibility of going into a dark room, turning up music as loud as I can stand—maybe it’ll be Public Enemy, maybe Baroness, maybe Diamanda Galas, maybe the African Broken Glass Orchestra, maybe Scott Walker, maybe L7, maybe Iodine Face Freddy, maybe Arturo Roll, maybe Horse Leathers, maybe MC Barbara Anne Harris, maybe Season's Best, maybe Deafheaven—and feeling all of the spirits, both good and bad, both benevolent and malign, flow out of my body. When I’m fully empty, dead in life, I can start to breathe again, with an eye to inhaling only that which sustains.” Several people in the crowd clapped fervently. “He has my vote!” said one man.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

SUMMER SUNLIGHT

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Once (this was in the part of town that has now detached and called itself Siggertsville, which the rest of town calls “Cigarettesville,” and it was in the year of the unexplained fires) there were two young people sitting on a wall. One of them was a boy, about eighteen, tall, thin, with light brown hair that had been bleached lighter by the summer sun and surprisingly dark eyes—they gave up nothing about his mood and only one thing about his character, which is that he was the kind of person who gave up nothing about his mood—and a frown that he thought of as recent but which would turn out to be permanent, since the forces that placed it there, the unjust forces represented by parents and teachers, pastors and teammates, would only harden around him as he aged (and he would harden, too, faster than he could predict or even imagine, and by the time he was thirty he would look forty, and by the time he was forty he would look fifty-five, and that would only be the halfway point of his life, and for the rest of it, his look would continue to run away from his actual span on the earth) and he would respond to those forces by putting his head down and making money, which he converted to power, which he converted to more money, and then more power; there would be times when he had so much of both that he would hardly know what to do with it, and so he would give some of either away, as a game he was playing with only himself as adversary (no one else was powerful enough to truly oppose him) and as a result a game in which he would, even as he lost, win. The other was the boy who would become his husband. He opened a can of beer and passed it over and declared the town deader then a cat smashed flat by a pickup truck and just then a pickup truck sped by and the two boys laughed and kicked their legs like kids.

STRESS CESSATION

We sat and watched the cars pass. Dozens and dozens went by in a rush, and then there were none. The highway filled with silence, embolism-like. It was peaceful at first and then I noticed my own leg juddering. “Maybe it’s just that some were going faster than others,” Kelly said. “What I mean is that maybe the fast ones whizzed by first — they would, you know – and then the slightly slower ones, and now we’re in a position of waiting for the slowest ones.” Kelly had studied speed and cars and the overlap between the two, so I gave the statement weight. I shifted in my chair and prepared for the resumption of...I do not know how to express what I was prepared for the resumption of, exactly...of things, it is perhaps most accurate to say. I went forward to the edge, sharpened how I was seeing what I saw. But no more cars came, not slow ones, not any, and it was just the road there for us to look at, black tending gray, scabbed dashes of yellow going right up the middle as far as we could see. “Still, much can be done with the open road, space interleaved with space,” Kelly said. “We are at our best when we are not at the throat of a problem. Open the floodgates and let ideas come on through.” I had forgotten that the brain was another thing that Kelly had studied. I did what he said: gates, flow. Theta waves climbed back over betas. It is not surprising to be influenced by an expert.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

RIGHT AWAY KNOWING SOMETHING’S WRONG

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

A young-un (that’s what the sheriff calls her—that’s what he calls any of the town’s residents aged under twenty—though to be fair to him he’s said that same thing since he was twenty—it’s not discriminatory—it’s affectionate—there were times that the town would have agreed) comes to the microphone. She unfolds a piece of paper and slowly reads the essay she has written in school on the subject of “Moderate to Severe Views Of The World In Which We Are Trapped.” The school principal and an English teacher beam in seats onstage as the young-un speaks:

Not everyone is Nostradamus. Not every present is branches in a box. Not every episode is cardiac. Not every explanation is either valid or invalid. Not every invalid is reading. Not every reader understands Nostradamus, especially the quatrain where he wrote “branches in a box” but meant our modern world, crisscrossed through with possibility, with hope, with life, but sealed into darkness, wood dragooning wood. It is thick sadness. It stops the heart.

WE TRADE SO MUCH FOR PEACE OF MIND

It was nearly nine o’clock when Gershner got back with the Lonely Climber in the back seat of his car. They had already dragged barrels from where Mon-Jay found them upside-down, coils of rope inside, about a quarter-mile from the house, in what seemed like the dead center of a scrubby meadow none of them knew very well, or was at least enough of a center that no edge was visible from where they stood. Anything more precise did not bear upon the situation. The Lonely Climber was tied to the rack. The barrels were loaded up into the bed of Mon-Jay's truck, which took the lead in the caravan, a second truck behind it, and then nine cars, identical, black. Gershner and his wife  were in the eighth, and they drove miles upon miles, talking happily of the kids, of the news, of parkland, of their favorite new songs (his was "Rice," barely a month old, hers "Tricked-Out Rivals," from a year or so ago, but there were no rules in love), finally permitting one another nostalgia via reminiscence about their wedding. "Whose idea was the brass band?" said Gershner's wife. "Someone in New Orleans, I'm guessing," said Gershner. She laughed. What a laugh. She stopped laughing, clutched her throat. A bolt of ice broke into Gershner's brain. He was about to scream. How could he lose this wonderful woman, this connoisseur of parks and newish music? But it was no malady. Gershner’s wife has spotted the Lonely Climber flapping loose. The present is upon us like a guard dog. She points with the crabbed hand. Gershner puts his foot fully into the brake pedal, hopes there is a shoulder (there is), and shudders to a stop. He runs back for the Lonely Climber, who is humiliated on the roadway, and restores him to his rightful place atop the car. Then he signals to his wife, who signals to Mon-Jay, and off they go, through the nearly purpling evening.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

IMPRACTICAL SHOES

It was not long after dinner. I had just taken a beer from the refrigerator and was rummaging through my mind to think of where I kept the opener—since Penny left I had been buying cans for convenience, pop-top or pull tab; the six-pack of bottles was a mistake, or an aspiration—when I heard Allan’s feet on the mat outside the front door, the telltale way he shuffled and pressed his toes right up against the weatherstrip, producing a click when it contacted the loose right edge of the door. I should have gone right to the door to open it. But there was the matter of the beer, and the long day that had come before it, and my mind had almost arrived at to an answer regarding the location of the opener. I figured he’d stay there and wait while I followed my hunch. I was right. The opener lay like a sardine between sets of chopsticks. I leveraged the cap off the beer bottle, left it on the counter, and walked across the house. That was my version of hurrying. I didn’t see his shape through the frosted window. I turned the lock and then the knob. He was no longer darkening my door. He was off to the side, on the ground, knees buckled, arms loose, hands open as if imploring. His eyes were wide open but he was not in them any longer. He was dead. I should have known that it would happen. Or rather: I knew that it would happen eventually. I should have known when. But it was Allan. Who cares about Allan? I went back inside, swept the bottlecap into my palm, deposited it in the garbage, and fired up the stereo: Gardening Crew, second record. "Impractical Shoes" was first. After "She Moved Her Hair So I Could See Her Face," I called the police.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

FRAGMENTS FROM SARS! THE MUSICAL (SLIGHT RETURN)

By Ben Greenman

Originally Composed August 2003

[A respiratory health problem crops up in Toronto.]

MAN:

The Hong Kong flight was long

And I knew something was wrong

The minute that I woke up from my nap

I've had colds, and stopped-up ears,

A sinus thing that stayed for years.

Once in the lavatory I think I caught the clap.

But this is something else, I'm sure

There's a feeling in my lungs that resists any cure.

WOMAN:

At my mom's condo in downtown Toronto

I felt a strange twinge in my chest

By Davenport and Dovercourt,

I leaned on a pole for some rest

Now it's headache, stiffness, loss of appetite

To put the matter plainly, I don't feel right

Fever, a dry cough, and shortness of breath

Plus the worst symptom yet: I'm scared half to death!

[Ordinary citizens, first in one Toronto apartment building but then in widening circles, start reporting symptoms. The government responds, some say too slowly, and subsequent redefinitions of the syndrome only increase the numbers. Amid increasing criticism from the PEOPLE OF TORONTO, Prime Minister JEAN CHRETIEN assures Toronto's residents that the crisis is being managed properly.]

PEOPLE OF TORONTO:

Our wonderful city

Has been brought to its knees

By a strange inexplicable--

Did that guy just sneeze?

CHRETIEN:

There's nothing to worry about

Nothing to fear

Canada's safe

It's wonderful here.

I'll go to Toronto

To end all this whining

Here is my photo op

Fine Chinese dining

PEOPLE OF TORONTO:

Panic at Pearson,

Strict quarantine.

We've even got masks

But it's not Halloween

CHRETIEN:

Hu Jintao and I

Will sit down at a table

And work out this problem

As best as we're able

They say "epidemic"

But that's just baloney

It's under control

Here's a fastball, Mulroney!

PEOPLE OF TORONTO:

While you explore options

Outside the hot zone

Our grandmas at St. Mike's

Spend evenings alone

[While some citizens clamor for more funding and safety measures, others complain that the government is devoting too much attention to SARS at the exclusion of the nation's other problems: softwood lumber, the declining fishing industry, border security, and the discovery of mad cow disease in an Alberta herd.]

COW:

What's my beef? Let me tell you.

Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo!

[Scientists identify SARS as a coronavirus and investigate the cause.]

SCIENTIST:

The habitat

Of the civet cat

Is not of course Canadian

These cats obey

The edges of the day.

In short, they're quite circadian.

Over there in China, and Hong Kong, and parts east

The civet cat is sometimes used as the entree in a feast.

I'm not one to judge--my tastes run more to chips and beer--

But the epidemiology of this virus is clear.

[Toronto's mayor, MEL LASTMAN, expresses his frustration with the slow pace of science.]

MEL LASTMAN:

Waitresses are unemployed

My citizens are paranoid

It's time for action now, not time for study!

We ain't too proud to beg

J. Lo, don't film in Winnipeg.

Who's better than Bad Boy? Nobody!

[Canadian music stars organize a concert to demonstrate that the city is safe.]

CONCERT ORGANIZER:

First there was Avril, still uncomplicated.

Our Lady Peace then joined in, elated.

Now the lineup includes everyone and their mother

Remy Shand on one hand, Sum 41 on the other

Neil Young, maybe, and maybe Jim Carrey

Ninety million for Almighty Bruce? Now that's scary.

SARS! SARS!

It's the night of a thousand stars!

SARS! SARS!

Canada fights back with its guitars!

Sing along and you'll stay strong

We'll do it right, you'll see

SARS and gripes forever

That's not the way we'll be!

Oh...that's...not...the...way...we'll...be!

Big finish!

GET THE GHOSTS OUT

Warren Warmer carries in a newspaper, balancing it flat on his forearm, and in the the opposite hand holding a mug filled with what he says is “Turbo Coffee.” His face is a flat mask. His eyes are alert. Within them everyone can see his father but especially his mother, who back in the day founded the club that they all sit in now, who convinced the previous owners of the land that change was not only preferable but inevitable. “Get the ghosts out,” she used to say, by way of explaining that time waited for no one but that if you played your cards right time could wait on you. Warren Warmer welcomes everyone. Warren Warmer wants everyone in the room to know that even when the clubhouse is demolished, even when he erects in its place a multi-function community center that will include office space, a self-sufficient graphic design business, a gymnasium, and a podcasting studio, that the spirit of the place will persist. Everyone feels something round when he speaks. His tone gives off a spherical quality in the process of shaping the air around it. There is, if not a straightforward honesty, an absence of stable facets that can serve as sites of attack. Howard Warmer was a trustworthy man but not a man who inspired trust. What Warren Warmer is doing now is all his mother, all the time.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas

“HALL CALL”

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The boy ran down the hall, talking to himself, then talking to no one, then not talking at all but screaming, his voice growing louder and louder, the noise at first bouncing off on the tile, then buckling the walls with the vehemence of the sound, until the doors along the corridor either closed to block the clamor or opened to discover its source. A man emerged from one of them. He squared up, planting his feet, and held up a hand, palm out, to arrest the boy’s progress. It did not achieve its aim, and the boy, still yelling, plowed directly through him, knocking the man’s bowler hat onto the tile, where it fell still and then began to vibrate from the reverberations of the boy’s voice, still echoing.

REAL-ESTATE MINUTE

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

I question whether any home can show so intimate a relation between its outward appearance and the principles expounded from its hearth and heart, as that which exists between Moorblood Manse and Baron von Moorblood. No haunted house is the work of one man alone, especially not one whose name is so comically terrifying. But it is equally true that no haunted house has been more potent than Moorblood Manse during the hundred years that it has been the domicile of its sole inhabitant. The move toward establishing the home as a place of murder was almost instant, as Baron von Moorblood took a woman’s life during his first week in residence in 1919 — to say he lived there would be a misnomer, as Moorblood is undead and has been since he was turned vampire by the famed Count Ivankov in 1877 — and has taken thousands of lives since, including a record 41 in 1973, when young locals seemed to flock to the house with an idea that a night there would furnish some sort of perverse thrill. It is worth noting that Baron von Moorblood is not the birth name of the master of Moorblood Manse. He was born Eugene Anderson in Columbus, Ohio, in 1846, and spent the first thirty years of his life as a stage actor and part-time firearms designer. It was not until he was left in a state of sanguinary deficit by the aforementioned Count Ivankov that he adopted his new moniker, despite dithyrambic objection from Laura, his wife at the time, who called the choice (among other things)  “loony,” “foolish,” “thick-witted,” “featherheaded,” “cuckoo,” “loco,” and “numb as a hake.”

RELATIVE BENEFITS

Life was a platform, and he had everything he needed there: a phone, food, companionship. He was happy. Then he looked to his right and saw a platform that was slightly higher, maybe three feet or so. He thought to himself that he might be happier on the other platform. The second platform also had a telephone, food, a companion. But he felt certain that the telephone was of a superior design and color, that the food was prepared better, that the companion would entertain and enrich him in ways that his companion could not. After all, the other platform was higher. He was consumed by the thought of jumping to it. He wasn’t sure if he could make the jump. He needed to make the jump. He agonized over it. He lost sleep, and when he did sleep, he dreamed about the slightly higher platform. Then one day he woke with the courage to jump. He knew that it was the day. He placed a final call on the telephone on the platform. He ate a final meal. He told his companion that he would be only one platform away, and that since it was higher, he would be able to jump back whenever he wanted. Then he took a running start and jumped, pushing off as powerfully as he could, certain that he would need all his effort to reach the higher platform. In the air he worried about falling into the void between platforms. What would that be? Death? Solitude? Neither was a thought that comforted him. Somehow, miraculously, his foot found the edge of the other platform. He landed there in a heap. He looked around. The phone looked about the same. The food looked about the same. The companion looked about the same. But at least he was higher. Then, as he was commending himself for having the courage to jump, the platform started to sink down, imperceptibly at first but then enough that he could see it move. It came to him in a flash: he had forgotten to figure in the effect of his own weight. He looked across at his former platform and it was rising. He closed his eyes. He opened them. He was standing on a platform. He had everything he needed there: a phone, food, companionship. Then he looked to his right and he saw a platform that was slightly higher, maybe three feet or so.

©1981 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas