A couple of days after realizing a very noticeable fault in the sonar system of bats and rapidly moving, reinforced steel frames (and the odd thought that only batshit got an acceptable synonym other than scat {which I always found insulting to the truly American invention of Jazz}) I had a young cat apply for an open position in my store.  I noticed that this guy was born in 1990.  After removing my shoes and socks for a quick calculation on his age (thank the gods he wasn’t twenty-one) I realized that this “kid” was old enough to legally kill someone in a foreign land (given that he was properly trained to do so, of course) or to even order a beer with little official hassle at a given distance from the American coastline.

Holy Christ and jumping Jesus Lizards, I thought to myself.  I’d be middle aged if we didn’t live so long now.  I’m certainly older than that goofy bastard that I was for so much of my life ever envisioned himself being.  Thank the gods again that I knew so much when I was younger as every day I age now the world grows more and more alien and incomprehensible to me.  Thanks and libations to all those other gods that xenophobia is not listed among my many faults and short-comings.  (Note to anyone that thinks that I just might have picked something up in thirty-plus years and is willing to entertain the thought that it could be reasonably argued that I do really know anything about anything: a healthy interest in something new will prolong your life or, at least, make the shorter and shorter stay more enjoyable.  You may quote me if you can make any sense of the previous sentence.)

This guy applying for the job reiterated at least four times that if he didn’t have a job (even part-time, which is what we’re shooting for) by the seemingly erroneous and rather exact date of the seventeenth of this month that he would lose his house, be unable to stay with his fiancé and her child, and pretty much cause a near total dissolution of his very existence as he knew it.  Pogo sticks and other veiled hints at blasphemies, I thought.  What the hell is this all about?  Despite my ever-present and, I think, oddly mature and definitively youthful sense of curiosity, I just couldn’t bring myself to ask him.  This enigma’s too rich, I told myself; wallow in it, hold tight to it, appreciate it and don’t be too hasty in crushing it, of solving and absolving it.  I’ve relished it, but I may still have to interview him solely for the fact of seeing why a mere twenty hours a week might save his house, fiance, someone else’s baby (a tidbit slid in during our brief encounter), and his very sense of the macrocosmic view of his reality. 

Bathsheba, Job, and other age-old put-upons, am I this young man’s keeper?  Do I wash Pilate’s hands in not hiring this veritable puppy, new to Georgia, who came with a backpack and a change of clothes to a fiance who may or may not have been dating him when the impregnation occured? 

Oddly, I think of the bat.

Fleeing homeward from the store where I spend the vast majority of my waking life lately, in the pre-dark dusk, at a comfortable speed of a mile a minute (my apologies to the metric folks reading this- I majored in theatre and literature) a small, swooping figure purposefully dove in front of my fast traveling (everything’s relative, of course) company truck, presumably intricately and exactly tracking some variety of a bug the size of a dime or maybe a quarter (although certainly not a Susan B. Anthony dollar) while completely negating the very real possibility of a two ton measure of death traversing an intersecting line of a possibly avoidable bad choice.  It was a dull, seemingly unechoing ‘thwock’ that confirmed that the movement to my right hadn’t cleared the bumper.  Arguments of soul notwithstanding, the lifeless form rebounded and fell behind me as I continued to the comforts of my favourite haunt, home.  I say bat now as I saw no feathers.  No swallow or titmouse this.  (And why do birds get all the funny names?  A search on guano proves that I was pre-emptive in my thoughts that bats get special names for scat; birds, bats, and even seals {honking, horking bastards, they} all seem to seep guano; bat shit, however, seems to be particular useful as sunlight doesn’t taint it by making it less shit-like.  No matter, the guano-thought invaded my mind and remained specifically centered on the bats.  While I may not show the tell-tale signs of xenophobia, I may well still be guilty of specieism or some taxonomic bias.  We can’t all be perfect.)

As it is,liking someone else for the apparently coveted twenty hours a week to schlep shit, clean, answer phones, and all the ad infinitum, I still wonder if I’m missing the feathers.

Holy Ghosts and Talk Show Hosts, how much life do we really hold in our hands?  How much are we accountable in all our decisions and deeds?  How much, in the zen-like addiction to non-duality, are we the featherless bat, the jobless, tatooed cat, the presumably fatherless brat?  While, I'll not take the world's weight on my shoulders, four thousand pounds (sorry again, metric users) is my responsibility and with it I kill things unknowingly.  My witlessness, my very knowledge of suitability may (okay, will) be the undoings of some small, un-, or poorly, vocalized living being.

Avoiding all allusions here, you have to be older to realize just how vitally important and how vastly inconsequential you really are, even in the day to day scheme of things.

I hope that "kid" has feathers to spare; by bastard standards, I'm an alright guy.