Illustration: Andew DeGraff

It is late at night when the call comes, well past midnight, but I’ve been waiting for this call for some time, and so I’ve left the phone on the table beside my bed.

Hello? I say. Yes?

Though I haven’t spoken to him in years, I recognize my brother’s voice on the other end of the line.

It’s Mom, he says. She’s dead.

Sometimes it goes like this:

It is late. I am walking down a busy Manhattan street when I hear someone call out my name. I turn, and though I haven’t seen him in years, I recognize my brother’s face. I have been waiting for this meeting for some time.

It’s Mom, he says. She’s dead.

I’ve been thinking about death lately. I’m not sure why. Violent death, specifically. I suspect it might be the change of seasons. The last of the roses have fallen off their stems. The daises have browned and withered. The leaves on the trees, depressed about the approach of winter, jump to their deaths on the forest floor below.

The shorter days.

The longer shadows.

The change of seasons.

Yes.

Yes, that must be it.

The change of seasons.

It is Saturday, or maybe it is Sunday, and so I am surprised to find an email from my editor in my inbox. I am even more surprised to find it marked “Urgent.”

It’s gone, he writes. Brooklyn.

What do you mean, gone? I reply.

Gone, he responds. Sank. No warning, no one knows why. But it’s gone. Dead. All of them.

I take a moment to process the news.

The publishers? I finally ask.

Dead, he replies.

The agents?

Dead, he replies.

I compose the next email with trembling hands.

The writers? I ask.

It takes him some time to respond, and so I know the answer before I read it:

Dead, he replies.

You know, on second thought, I don’t really think it’s the change of seasons. I like the change of seasons, and it never made me think of death before. Autumn makes me think of sleep, hibernation, dormancy; it makes me think of hot soup and drifting snow and fires crackling in the old wood stove.

Maybe it’s the hunters. It’s already bow-hunting season, and muzzle-loading season is only a few weeks away. I can hear the sounds of gunfire in the hills behind our home, and when I see the deer in the woods, I want to tell them to run, to hunker down, to find an attic they can hide in until the season is over.

The does seem wary.

The fawns seem frightened.

Yes.

Yes, that must be it.

The hunting season.

The presidential debate wraps up, and MSNBC cuts back to the talking heads in the studio, who begin to chatter their terrible chatter, arguing about who won and who lost, who lied and who lied more, the whole pathetic spectacle of modern democracy at its most juvenile and pornographic. Suddenly, Bill O’Reilly bursts onto the set brandishing a hunting rifle and shoots Chris Matthews in the face. Al Sharpton runs for the door and takes one in the back. Maddow leaps across the table to tackle Bill, but she is too slow; he turns and fires, hitting her in the abdomen and she falls to the floor, dead. Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Slowly, O’Reilly stands, puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth, and blows his fucking head off.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s due to hunting season. I like the hunting season, because I hate deer. They’re the rural equivalent of subway rats, riddled with ticks and vermin, voracious eaters of everything I plant. I don’t care if Bambi gets shot; I just hope it’s in front of her goddamned mother, the one who destroyed my front beds and chewed up all the hostas.

So what the hell is it, then?

It has been a long day, and on the top floor of Fox News headquarters, Roger Ailes lies on a bed of pillows on the floor, wearing nothing but a small golden crown and a white toga. That woman from Fox and Friends, I can’t recall her name, enters wearing a black leather catsuit and a strap-on dildo, holding a long whip. Roger smiles, and pulls a succulent leg from the barbecued liberal child on the tray beside him. The woman smiles, and cracks her whip; Roger takes a hearty bite from the child’s leg, but it is too much, his frame simply cannot handle it anymore, and he explodes, sending blood and bone and bile in every direction, shattering the windows and killing the Fox and Friends woman and everyone else within a five-block radius.

It is worrying me, this fixation. I can think of almost nothing else. Is it too much caffeine? Not enough caffeine? Too much sugar? Not enough sugar? I try to bury myself in work, but it is no use: my mind keeps drifting to scenes of murder and death. I have a rule about not checking email past 8 p.m., but I am desperate for a distraction from my furious visions of rage and destruction, and so I open my laptop, and there it is.

The answer.

“Horserace!” shout the Yahoo headlines.

“Polls Indicate Tightening Race!”

“What to Look for on Tuesday Night!”

“Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers!”

It’s not the change of season.

It’s not the hunting season.

It’s the election season.

Frank Luntz takes a bite out of his Cinnabon and turns to the focus group behind him. He opens his mouth to speak—“Muslim,” he is about to say, or maybe it’s “Muslims,” but a chunk of the Cinnabon lodges in his throat, cutting off his air supply. He signals for help, but nobody moves; Luntz turns red, then blue, then falls over on the floor, dead. The focus group sits still for a moment before standing up and running to grab the remaining Cinnabons, trampling his corpse beneath them.

Yeah, that’s it.

It’s the election season.

Phew.

Illustration by Peter Oumanski

1. 

Having recently gated my garden to keep out the deer, I decide to plant something just beyond the gate so the landscape doesn’t look so bare.

Liven it up a bit, I say to myself. Give it some color.

I go to the nursery. The tag on a large purple astilbe has a picture of a deer with a red circle/slash across it.

“Deer don’t like these?” I ask the nursery employee.

He looks at the tag.

“Nope,” he says, pointing to the picture of a deer with a red circle/slash across it.

I take three of them, along with a bottle of Critter-Ridder deer repellent, just to be safe. I plant the astilbes that afternoon and give them a good dousing.

“Those look good, Dad,” says my son.

“They do,” I reply.

2.

I learn that I am going to Italy on business. It will require a week’s stay, and so we decide to make a family trip of it.

“Guess what, kids?” I tell my kids that night at dinner. “We’re going to Italy!”

They cheer.

“We,” I say, “are going to have so much fun.”

3.

I get an email from Michelle Obama.

Hello, Shalom, she writes.

Michelle doesn’t seem her usual upbeat self.

Do I know, she asks, that Barack is being outspent?

I do.

Do I want Barack, she inquires, to continue to advance his progressive agenda?

I do.

Do I want the Republicans, she begs, to undo all the hard work we have accomplished?

I do not.

Will I donate $75 right now, she wonders, to help us achieve victory?

I will.

Click here, she says.

I do.

4. 

I am a believer. I believe. It is the thing I hate most about myself, second only to my stubborn post-40 abdominal fat (but I believe these new fat burners I bought will get rid of that).

I drink SuperGreens in the morning because I believe it will protect me from death.

I take fish oil because I believe it will do whatever it is fish oil is supposed to do.

I bought a Penis Master because I believed it would make my penis bigger.

I wonder if maybe this tendency toward irrational belief is a vestige of my religious upbringing; having been raised to believe in An Answer, I can’t, even now, even as an adult, give up on the idea of one. Or perhaps it is just reaction against that upbringing—not just a rejection of the Savior I was promised, but a replacement of Him with innumerable quasi-substitutes. Or maybe—yes, this is probably it: maybe it’s just a weakness in me, a character flaw, an inability to face the reality that life is brutal and short, a gauntlet we have no choice but to walk through, unsaved, one day at a time?

I call my shrink to discuss it.

He can see me next Wednesday.

I believe he will help.

5.

Michelle emails me to thank me for my contribution.

Thanks, Shalom, she writes. She seems happy again.

Will I take a moment and sign the President’s birthday card?

I will.

And will I donate another $75 to help us win in November?

Goddamn it.

6.

We leave for Italy the following Wednesday afternoon. That morning, before heading off to JFK, I notice that the astilbes have been chewed.

It may have been deer. It may have been rabbits. It may have been something else.

“Those flowers don’t look so good,” says my son.

“No,” I reply. “They do not.”

Apply to dry foliage, says the Critter-Ridder bottle.

The foliage is dry.

Apply until saturated, it continues.

I apply until saturated.

“That spray,” says my son, “smells like pee-pee.”

“It does,” I reply.

7.

The flight to Venice, announces the gate attendant, is delayed.

Goddamn it, I think.

Minor delays like this don’t usually annoy me so much, but what makes this delay so unbearable are the airport TV screens—they are everywhere, inescapable, and they are all tuned to CNN. And so for another interminable, suicide-inducing sixty minutes, I will be subjected, against my will, to the Republican National Convention. It’s almost as if they want me to blow up a plane.

I spend the next hour watching the convention, and watching the people around me watching the convention.

Fools, I think. Pawns. They’re buying it, buying all the promises, bowing down before their new lords and masters, hoping for the slightest bit of mercy and blessing.

At last the plane is ready for boarding. I find our seats, fasten my safety belt, listen to the cheerful directions in the event of a horrific crash, look down at my two wide-eyed children seated beside me, and silently pray to God.

Please let us land safely, Oh Lord, I pray.

I’ll do whatever You want.

8. 

Italy. La Penisola. La bel Paese.

The kids are jet-lagged and cranky. The streets here are impossible to navigate. Nobody in this whole damned country knows how to make a decent fucking martini. There’s nothing to eat but bread and pasta and I’m severely gluten intolerant; I packed two boxes of Immodium, and I’m already through both of them. My colon hates me. My rectum will never be the same.

“I want to go home,” says my son.

Me, too, says my asshole.

9.

We get home a week later, and the astilbes are no more. The flowering stems have been completely chewed off, and the remaining flowers have dried up and turned brown.

“Those flowers,” says my son, “look dead.”

“They are,” I reply.

10.

Barack emails me.

Hey Shalom, he writes.

We’re beyond Michelle now. Michelle can no longer help. Let’s leave Michelle out of this. It must be serious.

Do I know, Barack wonders, that the recent Citizens United ruling has opened up the floodgates of anonymous corporate contributions?

I do.

Am I aware, he asks, that the other side is planning on spending over a billion dollars to defeat him?

I do.

Do I want my children, he inquires, to grow up in a better America, a fairer America, a stronger America?

I do.

Will I, he wonders, contribute $169 before midnight to make sure that happens?

I will.

Click here, he says.

And I do.

Illo: Peter Arkle.

The other day, driving to the local home center for some mulch and fertilizer, I absolutely solved the problem of gun proliferation in America once and for all. This was the morning after the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colo., and so I guess the subject was on my mind. When the traffic light turned green, I stepped on the gas and was nearly broadsided by a speeding Cockasaurus, running the red light going the other way.

For all the benefits of living in the countryside—nature, sunrises, the singing of birds—the greatest drawback is the dreaded Cockasaurus. I’m certain you’ve run into a few of them yourself; the roads lately are filled with them—Chevys, Fords, GMCs, pickups mostly, with oversized off-road tires, raised suspensions and open exhausts, driven by abject failures who attempt to soothe the degradation of their every waking moment by feeling “bigger” than everyone else on the road. The Cockasaurus, like many of nature’s creatures, has some common markings: vaguely-racist anti-Obama decals, one praising Jesus Christ, a hilarious picture of Calvin urinating on something and, more often than not, a bumper sticker proudly declaring the driver’s love for guns: I Heart Guns, or I Heart Assault Rifles, or My Other Auto is a 9MM, or If You Can Read This, You’re in Range! This particular Cockasaurus, the one that nearly ended my life, sported the following message etched beneath a black silhouette of an automatic rifle in a sort of Comic Sans typeface:

Gun control means using two hands!

I should state at the outset, before absolutely solving the problem of gun proliferation in America, that I have nothing against guns. Nobody distrusts the human animal more than I, so you don’t have to convince me of the need for personal protection. This is a somber reality, however: man’s inhumanity to man and our concomitant need to defend ourselves from one another is a wretched, depressing fact of life, not one to be celebrated or enjoyed. And that’s my problem with gun people: they seem rather thrilled to be having guns. To be Gun Owners. To have more guns, bigger guns, guns in their cars, guns in their homes, guns in their pants. It isn’t about the unfortunate reality that men prey upon other men—it’s about … something else. But what?

I leaned on my horn as the Cockasaurus went by, and in response, his engine grunted, his tires thrust forward and his tailpipe ejaculated a thick load of exhaust.

That’s when I realized—this swaggering, Dirty Harry–esque gun ownership isn’t about safety or protection or hunting or freedom or the Second Amendment. It’s about cock. More specifically, it’s about little cock.

Gun control means using two hands? That’s about cock.

I don’t retreat, I just reload? Cock.

They can have my gun when they pry it out of some liberal’s cold puckered ass?

Way cock.

And so it occurred to me, driving behind this particular Cockasaurus the morning after 12 people were killed and 58 injured in a movie theater in Colorado, that maybe the answer wasn’t more gun laws, but some other law. Because that’s what I’d been reading all morning: that while most everyone agreed we needed new gun laws, they also agreed it was politically impossible to get any new gun laws passed.

So here’s my idea: if we can’t federally mandate new gun laws, I say we pass a federal law that all American males over 18, without prejudice or exception, be required to shave the base of their cocks. Shaving the base of one’s cock is a time-honored, porno-tested method of making one’s penis appear larger than it really is. Will this rid the country of guns? No. And it shouldn’t. But I am convinced it will rid gun-owners of the need for ever bigger, more powerful “weapons,” and their insistence on shoving those compensatory bigger guns down our gagging, metaphoric throats.

Listen, I’m no Pollyanna; as bipartisan a concept as I believe this is, I know that it’s an election year, and passing my Cock-Shaving Bill isn’t politically feasible just yet, but I’d like to at least get the idea out there, perhaps start an online petition. The bumper stickers write themselves:

You can have my gun when I stop using it to overcompensate for my inadequate penis.

Guns don’t kill people; I have a small dick.

Don’t disarm the dicks; shave them.

It’s a start. Come up with your own. Get organized.

The Cockasaurus pulled into the home center and parked, and the driver jumped out. He pulled his jeans up over his beer belly and waddled over to look at one of the mowers on display outside the door.

The biggest mower there.

The biggest mower I had ever seen.

It was bigger than my car.

“Morning,” he said to me as I walked by.

It was nearly 1,000 dollars more than any other mower there, and for a moment, just for a moment, I felt bad for him.

How much money will he waste, I wondered, before he just shells out for a Mach Three razor? How many people have to die before this man shaves his cock?

“Morning,” I replied.

editorial@observer.com

Illustration: Andrew DeGraff

I’m planning a trip to my local nursery next week, just me and the nine sitting United States Supreme Court justices. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, frankly, because I have a smallish car, but Ginsburg can sit on Kagan’s lap, Sotomayor can sit on Roberts’s lap, and Thomas will ride shotgun where I can keep an eye on him. Otherwise, he’ll plow through the Doritos before we’re even out of the driveway. If they’re good, we’ll hit Five Guys on the way back—if they’re good. Still, despite the hassle, I think it will be worth it, because the nursery is a wonderful place to teach the judges about the reality of life on earth.

Outside, of course, are the plants, all happy and bright and alive. “Blooms all summer!” cheers one plant card. “Endless color!” proclaims another. “Deer-resistant!” adds a third.

Inside, though, is harsh, bitter reality. Nothing is deer-resistant. The place is filled with bug repellents, deer repellents, snake repellents, weed killers, insect killers, mole killers, ant killers. This is, of course, as it should be, because nature is ugly; there are no greater cynics than successful gardeners.

About plants, anyway.

Concerning mankind, God was the ultimate cynic.

“Tree of Knowledge?” he said. “I don’t think so. You’re not even handling ignorance all that well. You know what? Just…just go. Leave.” It was, after all, mankind that led to God’s famous declaration about the world he had created: Behold, it was good.

Not great.

Good.

Middling.

Average.

“Nice planet,” sayeth the Lord. “Shame about the people.”

I thought of this when the Supreme Court determined, in its infamous Citizens United ruling, that unlimited money will not lead to a “rise in corruption” in politics. And when it reiterated that belief not long ago in its ruling against Montana, I thought, again, of God. I thought of him looking down at all he had created and thinking,

“Uh-oh.”

This is how little God thought of our better instincts: Exodus 20:13. “People, people: don’t kill. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that.”

But he did have to tell us that. Not just tell us—command us. God knew whom he was dealing with here. God was no fool.

“And don’t steal, for Christ’s sake,” he continued, “or fuck someone else’s spouse. What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?”

Running a close second to God in cynicism about mankind, it seems to me, were the founding fathers of our nation. That they felt compelled to write down that we are all created equal shows how little they expected us to arrive at that conclusion on our own.

“Right to life and liberty?” asked Jefferson. “Do we really have to include that?”

“Tom,” said Franklin. “Look around. Better also throw in pursuit of happiness; these idiots will probably forget that one too.”

They mistrusted the government, they doubted the courts, they kept a wary eye on the leaders. “Checks and balances” is 1787-speak for “cut the shit.”

And it worked.

All that cynicism led to a pretty good country.

But we seem now to be under the spell of optimism. If there are more guns, we say, there will be fewer shootings. If we let the market decide, we say, it will all work itself out. And, recently, unbelievably, we say that money won’t give rise to corruption.

Maybe we should look to God for answers. Maybe we should look to our founding fathers. Each understood that it is the job of our leaders to see mankind for who we are, and to cynically, pessimistically expect us to do the worst.

In this critical responsibility, it seems to me, the Supreme Court has failed, and failed miserably.

As God, Ben and Thomas, I am certain, knew that they would.

And so off to the nursery I and the justices go. Alito will stay in the car and sulk that he couldn’t ride up front, and Breyer will head off to look at the water fountains. Roberts, meanwhile, will run to the outdoor plants section, stop at the bright, colorful astilbes, lift one up, look at the card and call to me.

“Shalom, look!” he’ll shout with excitement, his eyes wide with wonder. “And it’s deer-resistant!”

Jackass.

editorial@observer.com

(Peter Oumanski)

I was working in the garden the other day when I remembered how much I hate working in the garden. I’d rather go to a concert, for God’s sake, and there are people at concerts, hundreds of them. I hate the dirt, I hate the smells, I hate the bugs, I hate the plants—holy fuck, do I hate the plants. Full sun, part sun, shade, more acid, less acid, trim, don’t trim, too much water, not enough water. They’re like old Jews at a deli. “So why do I bother?” I wondered that morning as I dug yet another hole for yet another whiny bitch of a plant that would no doubt be dead in a week. And then, that afternoon, I went to a neighbor’s pool party.

You hear “pool party,” of course, and you picture a bacchanalian, orgiastic beer commercial: wanton voluptuous women in tight bikinis, devil-may-care men doing canonballs off the diving board, a muscular black man (black men in commercials are always muscular) doing that dance where you hold your beer overhead and swivel your hips around in some sort of a swivelly way, perhaps there’s even a dog … an ugly dog so ugly that, aww, wait: it’s cute!

That’s not what a pool party is, though.

Not when you’re over 40.

When you’re over 40, it’s more of a Standing Awkwardly Around the Pool Party. It’s a Why Can’t Someone Throw a Non-Pool Party For Once. Don’t bring a swimsuit. Just your self-respect. It’s a Party in the Nearby Vicinity of a Pool Which is Making Everyone Nervous Because They Think They’re Expected to Go In Party.

And nobody, ever, wants to go in.

“Come on!” shouts the party thrower. “Isn’t anyone going in?”

No, asshole, we’re not. You know why? Because we’re ugly. Me, particularly, but humans in general. The most beautiful human in the world is uglier than the ugliest weed; that’s why weeds don’t tan, or go to the gym, or get breast implants. They don’t have to. Human beings, particularly me, are, far and away, the most unattractive creatures on the face of the earth. Men are repulsive—flabby, misshapen and foul-smelling, with utterly ridiculous genitals—but even women are no great shakes, and shakes is what they do a little too much of, to be honest, particularly at 40. If it weren’t for a mega-dose of testosterone pumped into them by their ludicrous testicles, even 20-year-old males wouldn’t be into women. It goes without saying that no women, ever, should be into men. Particularly me.

“Oh come on!” shouts the party thrower. “What are you, chickens?”

No, asshole. We’re honest. If we were chickens, we’d be less ashamed of ourselves. We’re humans. Even God knows we’re gruesome:

… she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons (Genesis 3:6-7).

“Eww,” said Adam.

“Ugh,” said Eve.

“Here,” said God, turning away in disgust. “I’ve created pants.”

Eventually, of course, someone dives in—usually a female, usually after she’s ingested enough alcohol to deleteriously affect her judgment—and for a moment, everyone begins to wonder if they too should go in. Perhaps we’re not all pale, lumpen sludgepiles? Perhaps, in fact, we are quite beautiful? And then she comes up from under water, this vision, this wonder, her eyeliner smeared across her cheeks, her hair splayed mop-like over her sputtering face as she’s wiping, hurriedly, some sort of snot/spit thing off her mouth and chin.

“I should go help with the barbeque,” the others standing around think to themselves.

“Maybe someone needs me in the kitchen.”

“I’m going to go play with the dog. Where’s the goddamned dog, goddamn it?”

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

Which is why, I think, I garden. Because gardening is a lie. Nature doesn’t come with landscape paper. Plants aren’t arranged in groups of three, with the tallest perennials to the back, shrubs in the middle and shorter annuals in the front. Nature is weeds and brush fires and mudslides and carrion and maggots and vultures. There are no container plants occurring naturally in the wild. On a hike the other day to the top of a tall mountain, I passed a group of mountain laurels, their flowers radiant in the summer sun. “Wow,” I thought, “how beautiful.” But was my amazement at the beauty of the laurel, or was it at finding, after hiking for hours through dusty, barren logging roads and across forbidding rock ledges, anything beautiful up here at all?

And so I garden. Because maybe if I spray enough chemicals, and add enough peat moss, and arrange the plants with an eye to both color and season, maybe, maybe this place won’t seem so hideous. Maybe I can fix it. Maybe I can create it in my not-image. Maybe I can start to believe it’s beautiful. And maybe, if I can keep my shirt on, I start to believe the same thing about myself.

JUNE TIP OF THE MONTH:

One thing I never understood about the dog runs in the city were the proud owners of the moronic retrieving dogs, the dogs who chased with frantic enthusiasm after every ball and brought it right back, anxious for another throw.

“He brings it back every time!” the owner would beam.

“What a little bitch,” I would think. “What’s wrong with that stupid dog?”

I always preferred the dogs with some dignity, some self-respect, the dogs that looked at you after you threw the ball as it to say, “Well, you threw it, dick. You go get it.”

Good for you, I always thought about the stubborn non-fetcher. Good for you.

June, of course, is the season of summer camp and Little League and soccer. “Henry,” says the proud father of a small boy in my son’s class, “is doing soccer, baseball, karate; he’s even doing swimming!”

“What a little bitch,” I think.

My son wants to stay home this summer.

“I don’t feel like chasing balls all day,” he says. “It’s stupid.”

Good for you, Buddy. Good for you.

(Illo: Chris Gash)

It is May, and time to spray the doors and windows of my home. I trudge, unhappily, out to the garden shed. The insect repellent waits for me, but by the time I carry it back to the house, I’ve already decided I’m not going to spray the fucking doors or the fucking windows. It’s a beautiful day.

And yesterday, goddamn it, was City Day.

City Day is the day, every couple of weeks or so, that I take the train to New York City and wonder what God is waiting for. He promised destruction. He promised vengeance. Big talker. I don’t know what it is about the city that so infuriates me. It isn’t the usual city complaints; it isn’t the filth (I sort of wish there was more). It isn’t the noise or the stench or rush.

What is it, I wonder?

It isn’t a physical quality. It’s something else. It’s something intangible.  And it bothers me that I can’t identify it.

Over breakfast at Scotty’s on Sixth Avenue, Phil talks to me about his new girlfriend. She’s great, but a little old, and she has kids, and Phil’s not sure if he wants kids at this point or if he wants kids at all or if he wants to take on someone else’s kids and he’s starting a new company, it’s an online aggregator of something that culls data from somewhere and sells it to someplace else and he really feels he should be focusing on that right now and it wouldn’t be fair to her not to mention her kids and it wouldn’t really be fair to him, either, when you stop and think about it.

At lunch at a diner on Lexington Jen orders the soup and salad. She’s cutting out meat as best she can, but not eggs yet, or fish, and dairy is probably next but she loves cheese and is a big coffee drinker and can’t stand cream but then one teaspoon a day probably isn’t going to kill her, and the truth is that she’s not doing it for humane animal rights reasons but for personal health reasons (she’s forty-two now and the fat doesn’t come off as quickly as it used to, God, she feels old even though she knows forty-two isn’t old) and it bothers her because that seems selfish of her but why should she care what other people think about her anyway, she’s doing the best she can.

I sit on the train headed back upstate, unable to write because my few hours in the city have made me doubt everything I’ve ever thought about everything. I’m very suggestible (until I become enraged and reject everything), and I stare at my laptop screen questioning everything I’ve ever written. Should I be writing a vampire novel? A sitcom? A Ben Stiller vehicle? Also, should my jeans be skinnier? Should my sneakers be lighter? Fortunately, Amtrak now has wireless internet access, so there is no risk of thought, no chance of self-examination, no possibility of reflection and self-appraisal. You are safe here from the horror of yourself, and, thus free, I logged on.

I don’t know what it is about the Huffington Post that so infuriates me. It isn’t a political thing, that much I know, because I don’t particularly care about politics; if there’s one thing we can thank the internet for, it’s revealing how utterly stupid and ridiculous the whole game is: take any left-wing website, change all the adjectives and nouns to their closest opposites (smart to stupid, hero to socialist, Rethuglican to Demo-Rat) and you have yourself a right-wing site. So what is it? Is it Arianna? It could be. Maybe it’s Arianna?

What is it, I wonder?

It bothers me that I can’t identify it.

Soon, though, the brown brick buildings outside my window give way to mountains and trees, and I look out over the Hudson River and I am somehow, for some reason, relieved.

I don’t know why.

And it bothers me.

***

“For use outside the home,” read the directions on the pest spray, “to control home invading pests such as ants, cockroaches, crickets, earwigs, fleas, house flies, millipedes, mosquitoes, spiders, and ticks including American, deer tick, brown dog tick. Do not treat firewood. Do not spray in enclosed area. Do not…”

I decide to go for a hike.

I call for my dog, and walk into the woods behind my home, up the old logging trail that leads to the mountaintop. It is a steep climb, and at the small stream that crosses the trail at the head of the next mountain, my dog stops for a drink of water. Some trees have fallen over the winter, others have grown; the boulders and stones, though, never change, and they help mark the way as the trail begins to fade. When I was a child, my rabbi taught me that King Solomon could talk to the animals, to all of nature, in fact, and the calm I feel filling me makes me imagine I can do the same. I send silent greetings of joy and thanks to the squirrels, the trees, the breeze around me.

None reply. If anything, the forest quiets, as if waiting for me to go, to be gone, to just leave already. If I could refrain from killing something, or paving something over before I go, that would be most appreciated.

And that’s when it hits me. What it is I hate about the city and Arianna and the fucking Huffington Post; or rather, what it is I love about the woods.

“I go to nature,” wrote John Burroughs, “to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”

Not me.

“A morning-glory at my window,” wrote Walt Whitman, “satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”

Nope. For me, it isn’t the beauty or the majesty or the oneness with nature. It’s our twoness with nature. I like nature because nature doesn’t care. Nature doesn’t need us, or give a damn about us either way. Here, says the forest, is how much you matter: not at all. The world was here before man, it will be here after, and nothing in it—not the trees, not the animals, not the stones or the moss or the frogs or the streams—will give a flying fuck about us when we’re gone. Something about the city makes people think they matter, think this world is theirs, think the only history that counts is the history of man.

ANDERSON COOPER CALLS OUT OBAMA OVER GAY MARRIAGE!

Shut up, Arianna.

STEWART SLAMS GOP WAR ON WOMEN!

Seriously – shut the fuck up.

CHRISTIE GOES ROGUE ON SOME DAMN THING!

Go for a walk, Huffy. In the woods. Alone. Embrace your meaninglessness. If there’s any happiness possible in this world—if—that’s likely the way to it.

I call for my dog, and head back down the mountain, feeling small and vanishing and utterly, wonderfully insignificant. I get home, grab the insect repellent and begin spraying it, as directed, around the windows and doors.

“I hope,” the spider says to the ant, “that stuff keeps the humans in there.”

“It’s worth a shot,” says the ant. “They’re fucking everywhere.”

Illo: Andrew DeGraff

I’m not much of a gardener, but I’m an obsessive anthropomorphizer, and so I garden primarily out of guilt. In the autumn, I shudder to hear the leaves scream as they fall to their deaths; in winter, my heart breaks for the trees, trembling in the cold and wind.

Why? the trees ask. Why?

But I have no answer.

Which brings me to my houseplant—I’ll call her Flannery—a corn plant. I’ve never liked houseplants, I don’t know why. They make me angry. I am, however, a man of much irrational hatred, and only realized why houseplants infuriate me so much this past weekend, when Flannery died.

I took her in a year ago. I was in my local nursery when I saw Flannery there, in a corner beside the door, in a pathetic plastic pot, and she called out to me:

I’m young, Mister, and frightened; please don’t leave me here …

I felt bad for Flannery—she seemed small and broken and needful—and so I picked her up and put her in my cart, and I bought for her a hand-painted Indonesian pot, and a bag of premium indoor potting soil, and I came home, and I gave there to Flannery the sunniest corner of the house, by a window overlooking the yard and mountains in the distance.

Thank you, Mister, said Flannery. You truly have saved me.

I had. That was true.

After a few months, though, I noticed Flannery’s stalk beginning to bend toward the window, giving her something of a hunched-over appearance. I figured Flannery was simply leaning toward the sun, and so I turned the pot around so that in reaching for the sun yet again, she would thereby straighten up. Though she didn’t straighten, I noticed after a few months that she once again began growing in the direction of the window; her stalk now had a strange S bend in it, and made her look aged, sickly. My hatred for houseplants began to return.

What? I asked her. What the fuck do you want? I’ve given you everything a corn plant could want!

And then, a month ago, the strangely warm Northeast winter became a disconcertingly hot Northeast spring, and I woke one morning with a stretch and a smile as the sun streamed into the bedroom.

“Let’s go kids!” I said. “It’s a beautiful day, we should be outside!”

We played a little football, had a picnic at a nearby park, and tossed a stick around the yard with our young pup, Natasha. We came inside, our knees scuffed, our cheeks rosy, the kids loud and boisterous—and that’s when I saw Flannery, at the window, and my heart broke, for I immediately knew what she needed. Her stalk, twisted in desperation for the outdoors, cried out to me loud and clear:

Oh, Mister, said Flannery, I do only want to be outside (she had taken on the persona of a Southern belle, sort of a Tennessee Williams character), like you and your adorable children.

Was she, after all, any different from me? Was this why I hated houseplants so much—not because I hated them personally (that would be crazy), but because I sensed their confinement and desperation?

Last year, we took our kids to a beach vacation in the Caribbean, where every morning, the hotel staff would wheel out a tremendous birdcage, inside which perched a stunning blue-and-green parrot. Whom I hated. She sat there all day long, bashing her head against the bars again and again.

“Why is the bird doing that, Dad?” my son asked.

“Do you know what suicide is?” I answered.

“What’s suicide?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think he’s very happy in there. I think he wants to get out.”

I didn’t hate the parrot at this point; I felt bad for her, in fact. The hotel employee overheard our conversation, though, and quickly corrected me.

“Oh no, no, no,” he said with a laugh. “She thinks she wants out, but she wouldn’t last five minutes out there.”

That’s when I starting hating her.

Which brings me back to Flannery. I told my family to start dinner without me, and hurriedly carried Flannery outside, where I planted her in a sunny spot near the rear of the house. Free.

That night, as I lay in bed, I swear I heard her singing. And then, like I do every year, I began to sneeze. My eyes began to itch. My throat began to burn, and I began to cough. I don’t so much have seasonal allergies, as I do have one season—winter—where I don’t have any allergies. The rest of the year, I itch. I sneeze. I double over in violent expectoration. My head pounds from the congestion within it, and I medicate—heavily: one 24-hour Zyrtec pill at night, two 12-hour Claritin Non-Drowsy pills during the day (one upon waking, one at noon), Visine Maximum Strength Soothing Eye Drops, a pocket full of tissues, three Advil for the headaches and a stiff Benadryl chaser as needed.

And so this past weekend, as the sun crept like a criminal into my bedroom, I woke one morning with a stretch and a sneeze and a cough.

Fuck this fucking planet, I thought.

“Let’s go, Dad!” my kids said. “It’s a beautiful day, we should be outside!”

I took my Claritin, filled my eyes with Visine, blew my nose, took a Benadryl and went outside to play. Three hours later, the medication began to wear off, and I stumbled, blinded, sneezing, coughing, in failure and agony, to the house.

“Where you going, Dad?” my son called.

“Inside,” I said.

And that was when I saw her.

Flannery.

Her leaves had fallen, her stalk was black. She was dead.

I looked at her there, and I sneezed. And I coughed. And this is what I thought:

Fuck you.

And that’s when I realized, at last, why I hate houseplants:

Because I am one.

I’m a fucking houseplant. I’m that asshole of a parrot. I like to think I want to go outside, but I clearly don’t belong there. The air is trying to kill me. I can’t last more then 10 minutes without a handful of pills and medication. Even when I do manage to control my physical symptoms, even when I can get past the relentless attack of nature—there are people out there. Other people. And these people do this thing, with their mouths, where they blow air out as they make shapes with their lips and they make sounds, as they walk down the sidewalk and they say things, things like I friended you on Facebook and He’s a secret Muslim and Did you read Ashton Kutcher’s tweet about Whatever-the-Fuck?

Inside is the place for me. Where the air is filtered, the window blinds block out the sun, and the locks on the doors can keep the people away.

I’m a houseplant.

And the lesson of Flannery shall not be forgotten.

editorial@observer.com

Illo: Peter Arkle

You know what I hate? Flowers. I was at a dinner party recently when the conversation turned to gardening; the warm winter has people anxious to begin planting, and with spring, the beloved “Season of Birth,” just around the corner, my friend Allison (she’s not really my friend) expressed concern that the petunias around her home’s foundation would once again fail to thrive.

“Do you think,” she asked me, “it might be a soil-preparation issue?”

Well, I said to her, yes and no. Some years ago, I explained, my wife and I moved to the country, full of hope and joy at the prospect of returning to the land, of filling ourselves with that which was pure and good and natural. Of course, the very first thing we did was to get a dog. She was a beautiful Rhodesian Ridgeback pup, with dark brown eyes and adorable white feet. We named her Harley, and watched with amazement as she bonded with our young son, playing in the yard with him or just curling up, a boy and his dog, on the couch in front of the crackling fire.

The second thing we did was to get a bird feeder. I was at the local nursery with my son, and the pictures on the bird-feeder boxes made his eyes grow wide with wonder: the white-throated sparrows, the yellow-chested warblers, the red cardinals, the purple martins, the blue jays, all gaily sharing the life-giving bounty of mankind’s selfless generosity. Watch the joys of nature, read one of the packages, from your very own living room window! My son looked up at me, eyes full of hope: could we? I smiled and ruffled his hair. Of course we could. We bought a five-pound bag of premium Wild Bird Seed and the most expensive bird feeder in the place, constructed of real cherry wood and built to resemble a small white gazebo.

“That’s my favorite,” said the saleswoman as she rang us up.

My son smiled.

For the first few days, very little happened. Had I filled it too much, I wondered? Perhaps I had left my scent on it, inadvertently frightening the poor birds away? And then, one morning, I woke up, stumbled into the living room, and there they were—a pair of delicate little sparrows, perched on the ledge of the tiny gazebo, nibbling gently at the seeds and nuts. I went to fetch my son from his bedroom, and held his hand as we crept quietly back into the living room.

“Look, son!” I whispered.

But the sparrows had gone. In their place, like Nazis invading Poland, sat a pair of shrieking squirrels, their sharp little claws digging into the wooden roof and walls of the feeder. The sparrows hid in the nearby trees, flitting about helplessly as the squirrels plundered their precious store of food.

“Those squirrels,” said my son after a while, “are mean.”

Harley stood beside us, watching the squirrels, a low growl in her throat.

“Well, son,” I tried, “they need to survive, too.”

I returned to the nursery that afternoon.

What we needed, the saleswoman explained, was a squirrel baffle, a bowl of sorts that hung over the feeder and kept the squirrels from getting at the seeds. I chose the Aspects 182 Super Dome for $34.99, and went home, anxious to test it out.

I watched as the squirrels jumped onto the baffle, reached for the food, and slid down to the deck below, shrieking in frustration. At last they gave up, and went away, and a few mornings later, the sparrows reappeared. They were cautious at first. But soon they dared to come to the feeder again, and I watched in amazement and joy as they fed there in safety and comfort. I went to fetch my son from his bedroom, and held his hand as we crept quietly back into the living room.

“Look, son,” I whispered.

But the sparrows were gone. In their place sat a large blue jay, who was plowing through the seeds—my seeds, the sparrows’ seeds—with a selfish gluttony I had until then thought reserved for the human animal alone, spilling more on the ground than it actually ate. The sparrows tried to return, but when they did, the jay screamed and flapped its wings, and the sparrows ran away.

“That bird,” said my son, “is a bully.”

Harley stood beside us, watching the jay, a low growl in her throat. I reached down and stroked her head, trying to calm her.

“Well,” I said unconvincingly, “he needs to survive, too.”

“But he’s not even eating it,” my son replied. “He’s just knocking it to the ground.”

“He’ll probably come back later,” I offered.

But it never did. I hoped the sparrows would return and at least feed off the paltry remains of seed that lay on the deck below, but it was the squirrels that returned instead.

I went back to the nursery.

What I needed, the saleswoman explained, was something called a song bird cage, which slipped over the feeder, under the squirrel baffle, and prevented large birds from getting to the feeder while allowing the smaller birds to eat in peace. She recommended the Duncraft 19901 Create-a-Haven Cage for $27.99.

I bought the cage, took it home, installed it and watched as the squirrels slid from the baffle, the blue jays failed to reach the feeder, and the sparrows, which finally returned, were chased away by a trio of blood-thirsty cardinals.

I didn’t fetch my son from his bedroom.

Soon after, Harley died. Pancreas. We buried her in the woods at the side of the house, and placed a small pile of rocks above her to mark her grave.

“What’s your point?” asked Allison.

“My point,” I replied, “is this: grow up. Your petunias are dying because petunias fucking die. All plants die, like I’m going to die, like Harley died and like you, Allison, are one day going to die.”

This is why we’re not friends. She’s naive. She’s wilfully ignorant.

It is the Season of Birth, yes, I know, which means the other three seasons—three-quarters of the year, Allison—are seasons of death. Do the math. I can’t feed the sparrows if the sparrows are going to be pussies; only the strong survive, and they survive only until something stronger comes along and murders them.

I used to feel badly when I went to the nursery to choose plants that I knew were doomed to certain death in my yard. I wasn’t planting them so much as burying them a little early. Petunias, daylilies, hostas—I could almost hear the seedlings begging for their lives as I made my way down the aisles of the doomed. Then I realized, Hey, wait a minute—I’m not the asshole who created this world. I’m stuck here like everyone else. You were right, Allison, it is a soil-preparation issue: the soil you and I and everyone we love will eventually be buried in. It’s a cruel world, Allison; stop being such a fucking baby.

And that’s why I hate flowers.

March’s Outdoor Tip: Aren’t the bears hibernating? you wonder to yourself as you pick up all the strewn garbage at the end of your driveway. How did this trash get everywhere? The answer is: garbage men. They’re assholes, and they hate their jobs, and so they take it out on you and leave shit everywhere they possibly can. A bear? You wish. At least you can shoot a bear.