Passing the Night

Slow rain fell through the early night, then turned to a fine mist, which continues to fall even now. Though the moon never appeared, it is yet bright enough to fill the clouds with its glow, casting a pale, shadowless light over town and forest. I stepped out the front door shortly after the rain stopped. The mist was sufficient to keep the trees wet, and to allow water to collect on the roof and run down the drainpipes, and fall from the eaves, and so the music of dripping water was everywhere, filling the night with varied tones and complex rhythms. Nearby, I heard an owl hooting, and another bird whose call I've heard before but can't name- a call of eight or ten close and accelerating repetitions of the same woodwind-like note. Further away, and somewhat incongruously, a rooster crowed.

Aside from the bird calls and the dripping water, no sound broke the stillness until I heard a rustling of leaves at the end of the yard, and the clop of a hoof on wood. It was a deer, treading on the wooden border of the flower bed next to the wild plum bushes. Gazing through the dim light, I saw the grey form moving onto the lawn, followed by another, then one more. I stood still as they crossed the lawn with slow steps, pausing now and then. They crossed the driveway with faint clops of their hooves, and went into the flower bed where, amazingly, a few pansies are still blooming. A few minutes later, they went around the low fence along the north edge of my yard and onto the lawn of the neighboring house.

There, the first of them triggered the motion sensor that turns on a light. Suddenly the deer were clearly revealed. It was a buck and two does who had crossed my lawn. The light was bright enough to illuminate another doe and a half-grown fawn across the street, who had passed unnoticed by me.

The deer were startled by the light, at first. They stood perfectly still, heads up, looking at the sudden brightness. Seeing no danger, after a moment they continued on their way. I watched them walking up the street until the light went off, and they were lost in the darkness. After that, there was once again only the sound of dripping water, and the calls of the birds.

Goodbye, Columbia House

I just hung up the telephone on a guy from Columbia House. He had time to say "Hi, this is Chester Irritation with Columbia House..." and I said "I'm not buying anything" and hung up. For years, I have endured the barrage of calls from sellers of everything from siding for the house I don't own to magazines (themselves a mass of advertising wrapped around a tiny bit of low-value content) for fanciers of pregnant budgies. I have listened politely to endless spiels for insurance and satellite dishes and cell phones, and politely refused each offer with "No, thank you." Sometimes I've even apologized: "I'm sorry, I don't need an above-ground pool with electronic security system and whirlpool attachment." If I added up the minutes I've spent not buying things offered me by telephone solicitors, those minutes would stretch into hours, or probably days of my life, all sacrificed to the oddball American notion that commerce should be allowed to invade our lives when and where and how it pleases, for the benefit those businesses which find themselves with an overstock of air mattresses or roofing materials.

But now, at last, the years of intrusive telephone solicitation has cured me of a lifetime of patience and politeness. It has become so relentlessly annoying that I have learned not only to be rude, but to be quite pleased with myself for being rude. My congratulations to yet another short-sighted, self-destructive element of our collapsing economy. True, that economy will now be plunged into ruin as a result of my vile, un-consumerlike behavior, but I consider the opprobrium I must endure for that fact a small price to pay for the pleasure I feel when I hear that blessed click as I push the button that ends the intrusion. A soft word may turn away wrath, but only rudeness can turn away telephone solicitors. May rudeness reign throughout the land!