Run at the Bunnies

I’ve been writing folk songs and recording them. I have no pretensions about my voice, my musicianship, and songwriting talent, and I rarely perform in public. I enjoy being an amateur. 

A recent song called, “Run at the Bunnies”, recalls an incident with my father. He took me squirrel hunting when I was about twelve. I got lost in the woods, scared off game by tromping over dead leaves, and came down with poison oak.

Dad and Mom decided that I wouldn’t go hunting again. I felt relief as I hadn’t enjoyed the prospect of shooting squirrels and gutting them. (On hot days, a hunter had to cut open the belly, insert a thumb, and scoop out the intestines. The game would go bad if this disgusting job was neglected.)

A few years later, Dad approached me and offered to take me rabbit hunting. Except I wouldn’t shoot at anything. I asked him what I would be doing instead. After some hemming and hawing, he finally revealed that I would act as a beater. I would scare the rabbits into the open so that Dad and a few of his brothers could take aim with their shotguns. In effect, he was politely asking me to be his hound dog. I politely said no.

I made a video this morning featuring photos of my dad from back when. As I worked, I started to miss him. He died in 2021, and there are times when I’d like to take a car trip with him one more time. We wouldn’t say much, maybe swap a few stories, but would mostly enjoy each other’s silent company. And a song intended to be funny became sad.

It’s odd how memories cut in all directions.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiUuQNh-6ss&ab_channel=DennisSchmalstiig

Lyrics with guitar chords:

Chorus.

(C) Last time you…scared off the game, (D7) got dirt on your (G) gun, made me question if you’re (C) really (G) my (C) son.

(C) Won’t you run at the bunnies, (D7) it’ll be (G) fun. Make tails skipper-scamper and (C) don’t (G) worry (C) none.

Verse 1. We meet in the stubble–used to be corn. The land’s in trouble, the farm’s outworn…Won’t you run at the bunnies…

2. There’s coneys in the bushes, rabbits in the brush. If you run right at ’em they’ll come out in a rush.

3. Buckshot doesn’t hurt ’em. They don’t scream long. We eat what we kill, ain’t doing nothing wrong.

4. Yeah, Eddy likes whiskey, takes nips from a flask. His hands stay steady, so why did you ask?

5. The beagle got cancer. Old Bowser dropped dead. So, what’s you answer? Stop shaking your head, and run at the bunnies…

Soft-shelled Crab

Kafka wrote about a man who woke up to find that he had become a cockroach. Lately, I’ve gone through a transformation of my own: I’m half-human, half soft-shelled crab.

I feel like an exposed bundle of nerves. Irritability, mild panic, and anxiety visit frequently. Things that used to mildly annoy now inspire dread. The ability to stuff emotions has atrophied significantly. I find myself blurting out my thoughts and reactions at odd moments like a man suffering from Tourette’s. I’ve never mastered the John Wayne/Robert Mitchum model for taciturn, emotionless men. But recently, I’ve lost the ability to fake it.

Therapy may have allowed me to break out of a safe but constricting exoskeleton. Now, I can move more freely through a sea of emotions (whether I want to or not). The waters, however, are stormy.

A friend of mine once described his deteriorating relationship with his ex-wife. They had amicably separated and divided possessions. But during post-divorce therapy, she began to fully experience formerly repressed emotions. My friend told me, “She’s gotten in touch with her anger.”

I apparently have begun to do the same, though none of my ire is directed at my wife. I’ve noticed that I’ve lost all toleration for folks who treat me with a lack of respect or even contempt. I used to be able to consider the source and dismiss put downs and slights as minor nuisances. Now, I go from 0 to 60 in milliseconds. Then I struggle to regain self-control. The aftermath can be embarrassing and draining. 

Two options present themselves: I could regrow my exoskeleton by immersing myself in 1940s war movies; I could watch myself carefully during stressful encounters, monitor my second-by-second responses, and withdraw when I sense an outburst building up inside.

The second approach seems like an iffy project for a soft-shelled crab.

I’ve discussed my situation with my therapist. She assures me that my reactions are part of a natural healing process. When someone stops repressing emotions, outbursts will occur. But just as a person can be forced to stuff anger and outrage until the practice becomes an accustomed habit, they can also learn how respond in a controlled way when feelings are allowed to be what they are.

Dinosaurs in the Ditch

Hurricane Ian turned the drainage canal running along the backyard fence into a fast-moving river. The six-foot deep, twenty-foot wide channel overflowed into the grass and weeds at the edge of our property. 

We thought that water pouring south from neighborhood side streets had filled the canal to the brim but recently discovered that Winter Park shunts water from an area three miles away into our zone. Our drainage ditch would have easily dealt with Ian’s deluge if additional water hadn’t been dumped into it.

                    Streets flood the morning after Hurricane Ian passed.

A contractor began working on a remedy this summer. We saw power shovels, bull dozers, and bobcats shuttling up and down the ditch. They dug, moved dirt, unearthed and pounded old concrete pipes (BAM! BAM! BAM!). They pressed heavy metal plates flat into the ground. A pump constantly drained the ground water beneath the canal so that the new pipes didn’t sink or shift position. My bathroom window rattled in time with the rough rhythms of the pump’s motor.

We grew used to ground-shaking thumps, back-up beeps, and occasional swearing from the workers in the ditch. But we would occasionally startle when looking out the back window. A power shovel would slowly parade past looking like a dinosaur wading in a muddy stream. Primordial power on display!

Six months have passed, and the end might be near. Bull dozers still aimlessly push dirt back and forth, but an over muscled forklift has started to extract the giant metal plates. Piles of debris have been hauled out in heavy dump trucks. Stacks of concrete pipes no longer wait at the street end of the ditch for burial. Crews are working faster and for longer hours as if the deadline has long passed. 

We still see an occasional mechanical behemoth power by, but their herd strength has dwindled rapidly in recent days. The ditch dinosaurs may be going extinct.

3 Bags Full

I sat in the hall outside my therapist’s office waiting for a session to begin. A middle-aged woman and a masseuse stood nearby talking. The woman whinged, “We had a Viking cruise to the Mediterranean. We were supposed to stop in Israel, but now that won’t happen! Couldn’t Hamas have waited a couple of weeks before they attacked? Now the cruise line is going to reset the itinerary, but I don’t know if I’ll get a refund for that portion of the trip.” I gave silent thanks when the woman took her complaints behind a closed door.

The next day, I vaguely heard a rumbling garbage truck pull up in front followed by the muffled thumps of yard waste cans being emptied. An ear infection made me dizzy and tired, so I didn’t run out to haul the cans away from the road. When I retrieved them that evening, I found three bright blue bags of dog crap dumped in one of the cans. I tipped it up and deposited the crap bags at the curb. I didn’t want the contents fermenting at the bottom of a can meant to hold leaves, trimmed branches, and magnolia seed pods.

As I stood glaring down at the blue bags bulging at the seams, I plotted acts of revenge against dogwalkers who decide that others are responsible for dealing with their messes. None of the plans seemed practical. Most would have led to unpleasant confrontations.

Later that evening, I rounded up the kitchen and household garbage, took the bag to the curb, and put the dog crap into it. I dropped the bag into my regular garbage can. Now the doggie deposits could grow rudely aromatic among chicken bones, vegetable peelings, and a container full of yogurt gone bad.

My earache subsided over the next few days, but my throat started to feel scratchy. I spent a night coughing and choking in my sleep and couldn’t talk above a hoarse croak the next morning. I took a Covid test on Sunday and Monday to make sure that my recent infection hadn’t returned. They came up negative.

When I taught class on Monday, I sipped from a huge coffee-filled thermos to keep my throat clear. I managed to cover proportions and anatomy for portrait drawing but noticed that I had to work hard to remain kind and polite. I got brusque and blunt on a few occasions and shout-whispered a general apology at the end of class.

As I drove home, I realized that human decency, on my part at least, requires energy, patience, and persistence. When I run short, my attitude festers like three bright blue bags steaming at the bottom of a trash can.

Rogue’s Gallery

I leafed through some drawings on Thursday while getting ready for class. The five portraits above jumped out and demanded attention. I noticed that I found little to like about them. Some looked like they belonged in a rogue’s gallery. And I would approach even the least threatening with caution.

I drew these five portraits from memory and imagination. They started out with someone in mind, a person from my past. But none of them became accurate renderings of an individual’s features or character. Associations and selective memories interfered with unbiased portrayals. And the gradually developing personalities resisted efforts to force fit them into preconceived ideas. I bent to accommodate their needs and individual quirks and became more like a parent of strong-willed children than a god dictating fate.

After I gave up control over outcomes, I shifted my goal. I decided to attempt to give the portraits strong presences. I wanted viewers to sense that they had entered into a bit of a confrontation when they looked at these drawings. I wanted folks to feel the energy each character projected.

Otto Dix said, “All art is exorcism.” When I draw these bad actors, I hope to evict them. Two questions remain: “How many of these are still hiding inside my head?” and “Are they breeding?”

A Bad Roommate

I couldn’t clear my throat, and my packed sinuses gave me a headache. I took a rapid antigen Covid test early the next day (4 a.m., couldn’t sleep anyway). It came up negative. Continued to feel worse with fatigue, body aches and a low-grade fever. I tried the test again the next day, and the T line turned an angry dark red. Positive.

Fifteen days later, I feel much better. I sound less like a cigar-smoking bullfrog. I sleep better at night and haven’t felt feverish in two weeks. I’m starting to cook, wash dishes, mow, and trim. The only symptom that lingers is fatigue.

This kind of energy shortage doesn’t feel normal. I don’t feel exhausted like I would after taking a long hike or working outside on a hot day in Florida. This feels like I’m driving uphill in the wrong gear. I’m in fourth but need to downshift into second or third. I can move forward, but the power is missing.

My stamina has improved somewhat over the last ten days. When I had to mow the lawn about two weeks ago, I slow-zombie cut it in two twenty-minute intervals spread over two days. Yesterday, I did the whole yard in forty minutes. No breaks. Afterward, I managed to run to a hardware store, work on the wooden awning I’ve been building for the studio door and cook a stir fry for supper. However, my dimmer switch turned down to half-power right after we ate. I trudged through washing dishes and putting a final layer of paint on the awning. When I sat down to spend time with Judy, I wanted instead to retreat to a quiet place where I could stare at a wall and perhaps fall asleep.

My daughter told me her Omicron version of Covid left her with a cough lasting three weeks. My brother’s Delta infection affected him for a month. I’ll hit the three-week mark this coming Tuesday and hope that I can return to normal by then. My mild dose hasn’t completely shut me down, but I’m beginning to feel like I’m living with a dead-beat roommate who steals and never cleans. I want to get the back rent and kick him to the curb.

Misremembered People (Unplanned Encounters)

My wife’s and my memories have started to diverge. We remember incidents differently. We sometimes debate the sequence of events, and on a few occasions, can’t agree on which participants attended. Searching through sixty-plus years of memories gets trickier and trickier as material keeps piling up.

My mind is starting to resemble a used bookstore where the backrooms have fallen into neglect. The books used to be filed alphabetically on sturdy shelves. But now, tattered volumes gather dust, and they’re shelved in an increasingly capricious order. Some have tumbled into dark corners. I’ve jumbled some willy nilly in sagging cardboard boxes. “Archy and Mehitabel” is still retrievable but requires great effort to find.

I recently began to work on portraits drawn from memory. My ability to visually recall things has never been eidetic, so, odd things happened. If I began to draw an image of a relative, someone else emerged. Several attempts at drawing one target produced a group of vaguely related individuals. And even more strangely, when I began to draw with no one in mind, I’d still see glimpses of friends and former enemies in the bulge of a nose and the curve of a chin.

Expression and attitude morphed repeatedly as I continued to develop an image. Altering eyebrows and changing the center line of the lips, of course, brought obvious changes in mood. But adding a bit of heftiness to a nose or neck set off subtle waves of influence. So many intangible cues! My ability to represent character and personality seemed as iffy as my memories of appearances.

I found this failure to determine and fix my images of these people more stimulating than disturbing. In an odd way, it felt like unplanned encounters with acquaintances who had changed a great deal since we last met. Carried assumptions no longer applied. A portrait reached completion when these shapeshifters suddenly acquired stubbornly independent identities. When I felt an imposing presence in the room, I quit.

One of my grade school nuns unexpectedly emerged as I worked on the painting above. The middle frame captures the woman’s concentrated malice. She softened a bit as she approached her final state, but my wife still refuses to let “Sister” hang on a living room wall.

Personality Disorders

My therapist told me that she specializes in working with folks suffering from schizoid, narcissistic, and borderline personality disorders. She said that narcissists are particularly difficult clients, that she has to tread carefully when it comes to their fragile egos. If she inadvertently bruises their self-esteem, they react by questioning her credentials. They study her diplomas and deride the schools she attended: “So, you graduated from University X. Do you think that you’re qualified to treat me? Do you know what you’re doing?”

My therapist added that narcissists usually come to her unwillingly via court orders, that they seldom last long. Below the surface of narcissism lies an ocean of pain. Narcissists work hard to deny and contain anguish. Few want to further explore the depths of their misery after their dams spring a few leaks.

I looked down at the floor. A silence fell. She frowned with concern. (Did Dennis think that he was being treated for one of her specializations?) She reassured me: “You’re not a narcissist.”

I said, “No, I was thinking of a joke.”

“What joke?”

I said, “I suffer from MGCPD.

“What’s that?”

“Morose German Catholic Personality Disorder.”

She smiled and said, “That you do, that you do.”

Make Better Choices

Alan and Marcy

Marcy, my son and daughter-in-law’s dog, barks at family members who move faster than a sedated sloth, yips at folks who reenter a room after a short absence, growls and barks at anyone who accidentally raises a voice while telling a joke, etc. Her anxious reactions to noise and movement make me wonder if she had been a contemplative nun in a former life, if she had spent the majority of her time silently praying alone in candlelit chapels.

Alan’s taken her to several trainers to help Marcy learn to bark solely at squirrels and realistic threats to her loved ones. One doggy behavioral expert advised Alan and his wife Amy to tell Marcy to “make better choices.” So, Alan followed that suggestion ironically. He laughingly said, “Now Marcy, make better choices,” when the dog growled at his mother, when she tore around the room madly sniffing out the trail of a long-gone visitor, when she barked at walkers passing by the living room window.

Judy and I began to use the phrase when we encountered difficult people on a trip from Durham to Orlando. When a driver cut across lanes causing motorists to swerve and brake violently, we told him to make better choices. Another driver crept along at 60 mph in the middle lane of I95. Traffic piled up in the fast and slow lanes creating a hazard that lasted for miles. We told Mr. Pokey to, “make better choices.” Cars streaked by us as we drove in narrow-laned construction zones. The worst offenders must have been speeding at 30 mph or more above the limit. I winced whenever they blasted past and pleaded, “make better choices.”

Once we returned home, I began to apply the phrase while watching television. I advised red-faced, shouting politicians to make better choices. Performers wearing garish, revealing costumes, earned the same recommendation. I looked at a PBS fundraising schedule that featured oldies music festivals, doctors selling diet plans, and self-help gurus shilling 5-step methods for finding happiness. I wondered whether the programmers thought that their audiences actually enjoyed dreck, or whether it was a matter of blackmail. “Either pay up, or we’ll force you to watch an eighty-year-old croon ‘Sixteen Candles’. Again!” In either case, I thought that the station manager should make better choices.

Anxious Is as Anxious Does

I went to my GP for an annual physical. The doc and an aide ran through a series of questions about my health and mental outlook. I reported that anxiety and mild depression frequently visit. The doctor offered drugs to alleviate my symptoms. I countered by describing four or five issues that currently weigh down my mood. I cannot resolve any of these issues, hence my distress. Wouldn’t anyone enduring similar problems feel a bit glum?

The doctor acknowledged, “You do have a lot going on.” Then he offered Zoloft as a remedy.

I told him that I was in therapy and that part of the work involved experiencing my emotions fully. “I don’t want to blunt my feelings,” I said.

I went further: “I don’t spend my days sitting in a corner staring at a wall. I work and take care of things around the house.” While feeling a bit edgy and sad a times, I lead a full life.

And I told him that therapy had made me aware of feelings I had suppressed for sixty plus years, that I now realize that childhood abuse has made anxiety a steady undercurrent in my mental state. He said, “It’s good to be able to put terms on what you’re feeling.”

I thought that I had cajoled him out of his compulsion to medicate me. But to seal the deal, I added that my wife reports that my outlook has improved over the course of a year’s therapy. In other words, if I’ve been getting better without pharmaceutical intervention, why start now?

The doctor said, “You’re doing the best you can.” Then he offered drugs.

I asked my therapist that afternoon whether I needed mood altering drugs. She assured me that I’m fully functional. The therapist asked whether I had told the doctor about going to therapy. She was astonished that he hadn’t taken that into account before tempting me with happy pills…

As long as my wife and therapist think that I’m okay, I’m staying off meds. As long as I can see a few sunbeams of peace and contentment breaking through the clouds, I’m going to look forward to a positive future.

To misquote Forrest Gump’s mother, “Anxious is as anxious does.”