Star   “Well, it looks like we’re beaming nowhere again.” 

Sun   “Is that what you really think?” 

Star  “Yeah well... all I can see is the sky and the lake and a picnic table, kind of a rotten old  thing, the table, that is, way down there, but as always those damn’ed clouds are in the way.” 

Sun   “But you’re not looking at the bright side, just past the clouds, or.maybe you’re just a bit too far off, to really know how far you beam?” 

Star   “Well, that may be very easy for you to say. After all they depend on you down there.. even on cloudy days, so I suppose you always look on the bright side, don’t you?’ 

Sun   “Cloudy Days, my eye!” “My corona will tell me if I need glasses, but who’s to say that the clouds don’t get in the way, even for me. I have been known on occasion to see through to a  breakthrough, though,  you know.” 

Star “You and your will. Me, I’m just a star to wish upon, no smiley face here, all jagged edges.” “Wish upon a swingin’star, wish upon a swingin’star.” 

Sun  “Ah, cut out the song and dance. I’ve got my share of trouble just as well as you vaudeville. Just think, when I’m up there, on stage, centre of attention, predictable as pie, totally exposed. Yes siree... If I’m not right there every moment you’d think the earth was coming to an end. 
 “But sure enough, if I hang around, just a little too long, like count one...premeditated,  I’m liable to get accused of roasting, roasting them right up...oh benevolent me.” 

   “Then of course out comes the special lotion. Factors 40 or 60, protection against me, they say, you murdersome sun. Like I could help it, hey,I beam here all the time. They say the world smiles with you....Ha!...and that’s what I get for smiling along....as they slather away. Oh but you'd think they’d be prepared to give up a little warmth....ooh no, not too likely now is it...lying there on the beach with the cute little umbrellas and their pina coladas. 

Star   “But that’s just my point, you are most certainly recognized. The only time I merit a second glance is when some chubby 4th grade nerd spots me on his telescope or maybe some “starstruck” lover thinks I’m falling out of the sky at night and wants to make a wish on my back.” 

Sun  “Well that’s a laugh. Every time I see them drawing clouds on the nightly weather, well then I just know that we’re in for trouble, and that’s both of us. That’s a capital W. W for we and W for whether, whether you believe me or not, oh shiny one. But do you think I can do a danged’ thing about it, myself?” Whether you think it is or not, the whether isn’t really our department. 

Star “But look at where you shine best. Hey, you’ve got a chance at the big time every day.  Recognition from that bunch at the picnic table below, for me...No...not for this star. Those characters won’t show up, looking at the clouds today, they won’t show unless you show up. I swear that , on a stack of asteroids. They, they...well they depend upon you. Me, well, I’m just too far away to count. Far too small, in this galaxy of wonders, I know it.” 

Sun   “Oh, such confidence my star friend. My goodness if I could only give up that easily, let go of all of that nuclear tension building up, a fiery explosion, and to think of all my solar flairs and spurts, but somehow I just seem to keep some of these explosive tendencies under the surface. 

  “And what about the famous ballad... the famous song they wrote after you. “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder how you are...” And how do I wonder?  Imagine there, in the multitude of darkness, a billion stars to choose and they choose you. Imagine in the starry cold middle of night, no sleep, no sight, none other than say, a single pair of binoculars trained to the night sky and ...out you are plucked, like a pearl from the sea. And what do you say, Oh some chubby fourth grader or some star struck lover was looking for me. And you get no recognition....nonsense!’ 

Star  “Ok ,Ok but I am still all so all alone. I know, I shouldn’t try to out shine you sun, 
but I still, well ...I still seem to long for your place, despite your scorching light, I envy the comfort you give.” You just seem so, well...so important!” 

Sun  “ Despite all the comfort I give, despite what you think is important, do you not bring wonder to the universe my little star friend?” 

Star “Wonder, why I never thought of it that way” 

 “You mean, if I, if I will stay here, far and away, but maybe, just maybe, some night, some starry night, amongst the billions of stars there will be a family.  A family, at that picnic table who will look up to the sky with marshmallows in hand and hot dogs on sticks and a campfire besides...and they will call for me. And I...I will have a chance, a chance to draw a little nearer, in their eyes, and I, I too, will shine brilliantly in the darkness!” 

Sun “Yes, you are right, my star friend, you are a star!” 

Star  “I am a star! A star I am! ...I am!... I am in the night, like none other, a star to behold!” 

Sun “Yes, my young sun, you are a star and some day you may be a Sun like me, with planets of your own, to behold, and a universe to unfold.” 
© 

 Being close to bears can be outright dangerous. Out in the back country there is always a tale or two of a close encounter. Then again, likewise for television bears, the fate dealt celebrity is none too kind. For the bear that is in the spotlight, is a sure candidate for an even meaner Hollywood human.

 Take for instance Granny with the straw broom, who bats the bear from the kitchen porch, (The Beverly Hillbillies). Maybe your Granny does that too, I don’t know...and then we have Yogi’s friend at Jellystone, Ranger Smith, ranger psychologist. Yes, “poor Yogi.” Now I know you‘re going to say, “wait a minute, that’s the way it is, a stolen pie gets a broom on the head and to get even for the picnic basket we get an odd shrink.” Perhaps a bit of behavior modification may work for these pie lovers, you say? Why a bang or two on the head may change this distinct instinct. Now we’re talking real food for thought! 

 But hey, let me introduce the Cleavers, my favorite family.  No we’re not switching  channels from celebrity bears to “Leave it to Beaver” but we are interested in the cleavers so just hang on a bit so as I can tell you the story.

 To explain, as any good cook knows, the cook by nature, out in the backcountry lodge, is no June Cleaver.  And this is all well and fine.... Because this is where the cleavers do fit into the story. It’s not suburbia, it’s not TV land and it is the land of lodges and camp lore. The cook out here is the one with the butcher cleaver in hand. The cook here must make do with the help and food available and as a consequence, things kind of follow a few rules of their own, you might say...

  My personal experience with the cleavers and my close view of backcountry cooking, then, as naturally follows, was in the summer of 77’.  It was on one of those work apprenticeship things, you know ...the one where the poor sap in the country backwoods of Minnesota gets to hire college students for half price for the summer work known as cook a la’ trainee.  Sometimes the trainee doesn’t last the summer, that is, if the food begins to suddenly evaporate, coincidental with the appearance of the trainee or the trainee shows too many signs of the catchy camp disease, l’amour de la camp. Fortunately I made it through the summer, strangely avoiding a few near death encounters.
 

 The symptoms of the common l’amour de la camp are starry eyed appetites in the evening and a hopeless bleary eyed trance worn during the morning or afternoon cook shift, mysteriously mirrored by other starry eyed personnel about the camp. By the end of the short turbulent season the zombies in love are usually coaxed back to a life of cooking and serving. But while the disease is out and about the scrambled eggs become fried, a salmon is mistaken for a lake trout and a rare juicy steak dances to the orders of “well done.” 

 But for the surviving trainees, it is now, the cleaver that comes to mind.  And when I think of lodge at Naniboujou, I would have to say it is Susie’s giant cleaver that most often comes specifically to mind.  Susie was a large woman, a very large, pretty woman, with very quiet brown eyes, just like a big ol’ moose, you might say. A pretty moose,  Susie was married to Luther, and Luther was my boss.  Luther was my boss and the owner of the lodge and Susie was my boss and the owner of the lodge. My closest at hand boss was the head cook, (the one with the cleaver in hand).  Now as I was hired as a cook as well, that kind of made us a family of cleavers.... Well except for Luther of course. Luther, though he was boss, was in charge of window maintenance and official tabulator of dinners sold in the club dining room...and Susie, well Susie of course, held the largest cleaver, and was closest at hand, so she was the official head of the cleavers. 

 Just before church one Sunday, Luther beamed, “I sure like to sing, ya know,” in that Indiana born drawl of his, “an you can have that “crazy city of Los Angeles, that smog,” Luther feigned a nasty growl of a cough.  “Do you remember the Shell No Pest Strip... well I co-invented that!”  Luther’s face turned red as cherry. “After, Los Angeles went completely crazy, and Shell, well they took all the credit for my invention that is... why  that’s  when I quit the chemical fields’ and Susie and I and the boys headed for the Minnesota lake and forest.” Luther looked proud, wiping his shiny head with an old blue and silver starred hankie.

 It was good enough for me that if Luther liked to sing he would, and a pleasant baritone he was. The notes reverberated very nicely through his large nose, as long as he didn’t snarkle and snort too much on the uptake for air. And as I say, I didn’t mind his humming about the camp, though his night snore could rattle the shutters up and down the lodge. Then again I didn‘t much like smog , nor Shell, for that matter, for taking credit for Luther’s no pest strip. I guess Luther liked everybody to know where and why he stood, here, as lodge proprietor of the Naniboujou on the Great Lake... Superior, that is, oh...and inventor of the no pest strip, I might add.  Luther was now well ahead of Shell and Los Angeles, or at least I thought so.

 Chief Luther we would all call him, probably inspired by all those paintings that flew above his head each day at the dining hall, a whole eighty by thirty foot mass of Indian spirit and colour to contemplate by just looking up... at the ceiling.  And that proud baritone nose of his, born in Indiana and forever now given to command the lodge at Naniboujou, with an occasional hum and snort as he went along.

 But it was Susie who was the most gracious of our instructors at the Lodge.  If something was bothering Susie, she would raise her cleaver ever so slightly in the air, shaking it up and down a little at us each morning for minor inconsistencies shown in our sauce or salad preparation. Hide your knuckles and we would happily then chop chop chop away, slicing ham julienne and tomatoes for breakfast and salad fixings fresh for lunch.  Communication being ever so delicate matter with Susie, still it was the way Susie held that cleaver in her hand, that, quite honestly, we all knew and expected something...

  A fired cook once stopped by and warned us that, nice as she was, we never wanted to see Susie “brew to blow,” the cook looking nervously about in the air, as if he had seen a ghost. If Luther’s in trouble for somethin’ or another, it’s not so bad”, he reminded us.   We had all noticed, in fact, that after a spat with Luther, Susie would march up to the house on the hill, where ostensibly she would spend two or three days vacuuming and curtain rearranging.  The cook jumped to attention... “thar’ you have her...It takes precisely that bit a’ time to jes’ begin ta’ steam the belly off the brew! But I warn ya,’ its jest’ the start of the rampaging.... Best look out for your head, you know if that there’Angry Susie’s about ta’ blow, if y’all know what’s best for you.”  With that the cook scattered off into the afternoon.

 Later that starry clear evening in August the dishwasher, from Minneapolis and I snuck out of our lodge quarters. Self appointed awards were in order for surviving a particularly busy week.  We chose a   filet mignon, a cordon bleu, and a simple lemon cream pie for desert. . In the still dark of the kitchen, we didn’t want to wake Luther or Susie. As rich thieves in the night,  we inhaled  salty cheese scents of the cordon, and the rich barbequed sauces generously laid over the filets wafted through the kitchen as the microwave churned them round and round.  This being a microwaved feast, we slapped a thick towel over the microwave dinger listening, dangerously, for the finishing “ding” as to not expose our covert activity.

 We gulped our sly meal back and  ‘black Eddie’ who was only seventeen, and me, all of twenty one were headed  to town for the night, for entertainment, you might say.  Luther and Susie were deep asleep, Luther shaking the shutters and Susie moaning a little in symphony. Out back sat Luther’s 58’ Ford and as “black Eddie,” (his real name was “Conrad”) pushed, I steered until the truck was where,we were sure was ...out of range of being heard to start.  The truck started and we were off, lemon cream pie laid in the back seat, a snack for later, that late Friday night. 

 Next morning, Saturday, both Eddie and I arrived back on shift.  I poked my aching head out the swinging double doors between the kitchen and the dining room for a look through the morning sun streaming inside. I thought I’d heard drums coming from the length of  chamber that was the dining room. I was careful as not to have a waitress catch the door on my head, as I was still a bit unaware of my morning surroundings. I could hardly stand up and the last thing I needed was an amplification of the drums that were beating  my coursing blood to morning attention, drums from everywhere, by now, I guessed. 

 Luther stood at the other end of the Naniboujou Hall banquet room, at his station, ready to collect the morning breakfast receipts. The Lake fog eased along the shuffleboard walks outside the windows.  It was almost as though I could see some of the old club members, Jack Dempsey, even Babe Ruth sauntering about, maybe waiting for a midmorning bite of buffet or in between a game of shuffleboard. Babe lights a cigar, a little 20’s jazz playing on the side and Jack lifts a bit of bootleg in a snifter.... and the morning fog begins to move slowly in columns building cloud life over the lake. 

     Then, I noticed Luther, again...or rather the shine of Luther‘s head, more the white shine of his fully balded form, bowing into a ritual bowl of pineapple and cottage cheese as he bent forward at what looked like a podium.  Luther took a bite of pineapple. As Luther bowed forward I gazed more upwards and at the lights. European chandeliers shrined against the lead paint and Indian designs, which swept the length and engulfed the full ceiling.  Chandelier light now flooded together a rush of psychedelic colour, meshing gold and crystal and white with the brilliant sun coming off the fog outside and into the long tiers of windows that flanked the dining room. I wondered, myself,  what stirred up the massive spirit that these native paintings evoked in me every time I looked in. Was it the mighty lake? Or was it the sun bouncing off the lake fog and into the hall? Or was it something else?

 Luther looked on, and I knew he was daydreaming as well, glad to be out of Los Angeles.

    I could sense a change in the weather from the clear full moon night before us. The fogs were beginning to sift out the sun, a little more each morning and the mid August heat was beckoning autumn’s cooler drafts closer inland off the lake each day. Outside the front windows we could see the three “Bunyan boys,” as we called them, all in checkered shirts tumbling up the walk for their weekly feast. Each of the boys would pack away a dozen sausages, a half dozen to a dozen eggs, five or six huge flapjacks, a pound of bacon each, jam and jelly and a couple of jugs of juice and  coffee.

 As they sauntered up the road, I wondered what in God’s name they were capable of doing, that is, except for dining.  Each of them couldn’t have weighed less than four hundred and quarter pounds. I think in metric that’s might be a couple of tons. They wore the lumberjack suspenders, so maybe they operated some heavy equipment or something.

 As these thoughts came to mind out of the corner of my eye other thoughts came to mind, as well, like Susie and Luther knew every single minute, what Eddie and I were up to, the night before.  I consoled myself that Eddie and I knew and respected Susie and Luther enough to not make it a habit. Just then, I begin to watch two simultaneous appearances.  What appeared at the far northeast end of the hall, was the emergence of a strange creature, seemingly camouflaged by a large flowered dressing gown, then a thick whoosh.  Then came the dim cold shine of a huge cleaver flying silently from behind and now past Luther’s head.  Past the reflection of the Bunyan boys, looking now inside from the outside windows and full through the eighty feet of dangerously gasping air the cleaver penetrated the length of the lodge.   Landing above the double doors above my head, leading to the kitchen.... the giant cleaver embedded itself into the heavy wood frame forming the portal into the kitchen.. 

 In the far northwest corner of the room, opposite where I had first seen the strange flowery beast...Susie reappeared.  In her trembling left hand she held a lemon cream pie. Luther looked timidly up, from his pineapple and cottage cheese, at the northeast podium.  “I warned you about leaving the keys in the truck, Luther.” Susie, murmured, in a strange almost whispered voice.  And with that prescription she turned around, pie still in hand, her huge flower dressing gown seeming to rotate in slow motion...and like a huge moose having emerged from the marsh she then disappeared again into the shimmering silence.

 Yes I learned a lesson in 77’ a mysterious lesson into the nature and persuasion of the cleaver.  That is.... or you might say....nature and persuasion as held in the hands of the head cook.
 And of the lemon meringue pie? Why that’s a story only Susie of Naniboujou could tell you.
 
 
 
 

©DRL 10/01

I watched and watched for definition.

I looked for the high in high definition.

I looked for the size of the image, and the definition of the image and 

I wanted and wondered, if it was really large enough for me to fall into, this image, this plot.

I wondered if the acid colours and movements and hues and the speed of light could ever move me as those inside of me, moved me and…then, this plot…

I thought of myself, Myself, the projector, projector of mere emotion, my own emotion now, mind you, mixed in air, thrown as a stream, moving through darkness, seeking… 

Now digital thought, its glimmer, a rapid ascent of light and the light rises and but touches the surface, hits the screen and then,
the digital night in motion, the quiet stills, the stop, with a shudder…
and stop… the light, and the dark.

how even can this entertainment last, the more and more pixels,  
This aura, long, this era, long, this epic, long,
Long enough, this me, and then there was the plot… 
I thought of how many pixels to project, and how many more, how clear, how perfect,

And so I thought of a rendition of intrigue, or splendor, or sport, or envy, or, shock or mystery, would it be enough, or given the illusion, or even realization, a marker perhaps, would it be enough, in preparation for this most humourous and wicked plot? 

And would I share this, would a theatre away and apart, with a few close friends
Be enough.

Or would I be but the image... the projection, the inevitable being, 
Inevitably to fill the void, I thought, as I whirred on…

Silently in moving pictures… running quietly through the night in
the stillness, this theatre, emptied of light and now,

A million cubed pixels, this dance of light,
A few more later, a little faster now,

This digital dream, this big Screen, and me. 

©DL2001