rat + pet writeology

Well, New Mexico it may be, but I figure out pretty quickly that this is not PIE TOWN. There is a sweetness to the air, a spirituality to the atmosphere, a quietude. Things are vast without being empty. I turn questioningly to the girl, who is already puzzling through her notes. She points to a diagram, says We must’ve taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

I say There are no accidents. We decide to explore for a few minutes before we recalculate and head back to tunnel underground again.

The landscape is wide and seems to stretch forever. There are small brushlike desert plants, animal burrows, and over to the left an arroyo, which I feel like following. I turn to the girl and gesture with my thumb: How about it?

Of course she’s game.

This is Day Eighteen.

We are very close to surfacing today. We think it’s pure magic how the words PIE TOWN came to us, and it’s exciting to think that there may be a why as well as a how. We’ll find out soon enough. I’m figuring there’ll be something we’ll learn about digging our way to China. (I know I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, but I can’t help it.)

The girl breaks soil aboveground first. We’ve calculated as accurately as possible, and have intuited the rest. She’s dug a small circle of light, and is widening it with the sharp edge of her spoon. The bright circle becomes brighter, then becomes daylight, and then fills our tunnel. The air smells sweet.

Quickly I dig small footholds for us to use to climb out. It takes less than half an hour and when we emerge the daylight is as strong as ever. I squint at the sun, calculate it is around 3:45 p.m., and try to get my bearings. I look left and right for the first time in awhile. This is New Mexico, alright. Miles and miles of New Mexico, as far as I can see.
This is Day Seventeen.

We’re up early, maybe noon. I can tell we’re close to the continental divide. I tell the girl You spit on one side, and I’ll spit on the other, and first she nods, thinking me serious, then realises: Oh! and laughs, cuffs me with her spoon.
I hear the words (PIE TOWN) jingling in my pocket when I start digging. It’s a pleasant sound, and it gets me thinking. The girl digs and thinks too. We are silent for awhile except for the scraping noise of our spoons against soil and the jingling. Then she puts down her spoon. She makes a few notes and a drawing, and taps me on the arm. She shows me some of her logic. I read:

moisture+minerals+endorphins-(pheremone)²
x(aldehyde)@telepathic/velocity(condensation)
+kilowatt/hour÷sucralose= alchemy

(and there’s this picture she’s drawn of a coke bottle)

So this is what happened! I had wondered! When we were aboveground and I placed the coke-bottle on my forehead, condensation mixed with perspiration and a droplet must have fallen, touched the grass where the quicksilver words had dried and disintegrated. And then there was, says the girl, poetically, some kind of wonderful.

I agree. Alchemy. So that’s how the words became whole again; that’s how they came to life.
I trust her logic. I like it when nonsense makes sense.

This is Day Sixteen.

I’ve figured something out. I explain it to the girl today over grilled-cheese sandwiches that someone drops down the hole for us. (I don’t ask questions, and the cheese turns out to be a very good Gruyère.)
It’s a simple thing: If we dig our side-tunnel (to PIE TOWN, NM – a whim) on a slight and gradual incline rather than on a perfect horizontal (then abrupt vertical) path, we can enjoy a carefree slide down on our trip back to the main tunnel. This is the kind of childlike diversion I like, the stuff of memories.

The girl is smart. She saves the waxed paper wrappings from the sandwiches so we can use them as coasters for sliding back down the PIE TOWN side-tunnel. I touch my left back jeans pocket to make sure I still feel the quicksilver words there and then begin digging the new tunnel. Both of us dig tirelessly. I don’t think we’ll be coming up to the surface until we reach New Mexico. I feel a new heat within the earth as we head southwest, digging closer to the surface again. It’s hard for me to get my bearings, but the girl says she’s got good directional instinct and that it should not be long. We’re turning up some odd animal bones, too. I’m going to keep a cow’s skull to hang up as a place-marker for the entrance of this side-tunnel.
Lord of the Flies! shrieks the girl, laughing. (I laugh with her.)
Suddenly, we are both tired and curl up for a night’s rest.
This is Day Fifteen.

PIE TOWN.

The girl makes a note of this immediately in the decorative carving on the second newel post. She says that if we had a small portable library tied to us like the tail of a kite, we could carry information with us for whenever we need it. She wants an ephemeris, an atlas, a thesaurus and a bible to start. She also wants to hear what I know about PIE TOWN, what it means.
I tell her I know it’s a small place, a town in New Mexico. A friendly place. She asks if I think the words are a clue or a direction for us. I shrug. I say it hardly matters; I think we are meant to go there first and then find out what it brings to our journey.
An atlas would be good, she says.
We’ll have to rely on guesswork, I say.
Do you trust the words? she asks.
I trust everything, I say.

So as we carve and dig the staircase (it is bigger than we thought and has an impressive heft) we figure we will make an educated guess several miles down the right-hand secret corridor and head toward PIE TOWN. We’ll come up to the surface there and see what’s what. Then we’ll head back to the main tunnel and go back to digging straight through the middle and onward to China. We have a lot of diversions already, but I admit I can’t resist this one.

I slipped the words back into my pocket, too. I like them.
This is Day Fourteen.

Hard work.
Seamless joinery takes time and effort, and let’s face it, though we are meticulous the girl and I are novices when it comes to construction. We are serious in our work, though, and we’ve accomplished much more than we expected: four risers and treads, a newel, and two passageways.

We build from the heart, she says to me when I sigh and wipe my brow, energy flagging. I like that, and take two colas out of one of the secret compartments in the first secret passageway we built.
We climb up and out (it is now a longer trip) to sit on the grass while it’s still bright outside.

The girl drinks mightily, and in no time she is blowing hollow tunes across the top of her bottle. I laugh, lie back on the grass, recork my bottle and balance it on my forehead. I’m still hot and damp, and the wet glass feels pleasantly cool.
Then something happens.

I hear words again, but this time they are clearer. They’re not voices. These are the same words as before, the quicksilver words, the ones that disintegrated. I am sure of it. The girl hears too, but she is puzzled. She furrows her brow, sits straighter. She traces the letters of what she hears into her palm. She says: PIE TOWN.

I know what it means, I say.

This is Day Thirteen.

I really wasn’t going to say anything about this, but when I took the words out and spread them under the sun today, they disintegrated. Just like that. I was watching close to see if they were forming a message, and I think I was coaxing too hard. I keep telling myself not to be pushy. This feels like a tragedy, like the loss of a signpost. Perhaps the words were too fragile for the aboveground.

The girl and I are getting started on the staircase. I thought up half the plans, quickly, and wrote them in a small sonnet. The girl wrote the other half. She’s gone to get wood, Sturdy wood! I told her, something beautiful like bird’s eye maple, or better yet, quarter-sawn oak. I want the staircase to last forever.
While I wait for the wood to arrive, I carve niches out of the tunnel to accommodate secret passages. I’m completely taken with this idea, and I can hardly wait to make everything fit.

I’m shaky with excitement. First there’s the tunnel, and that’s great. Then, a spiral staircase, and that’s even better. But putting in secret passageways is almost too much excitement. I’m thinking we’ll be able to course the staircase as part of our journey, and spring out at each other from hidden spots. Tunnels within tunnels. That should keep us on our toes.
This is Day Twelve.

Today I am aboveground roasting a chicken for supper (I am hungrier than I thought) and writing down some ideas for building the staircase. I’m making a list of musts. It looks like this:

1) It must be built in a week or less
2) It must lead somewhere
3) It must have sturdy joinery
4) It must contain poetry, either concealed or obvious
5) It must be illuminated in some way (think!)

I don’t say this because it’s fanciful, but there’s another must. It must be an adventure in itself, which would delight me and and make me happy. I’m not conceited, only hopeful. I wonder if the girl has any ideas?

I just remembered something: I forgot to take the mercury words out of my pocket and lay them in the daylight today. I think I got caught up in the idea of realising the staircase and I simply forgot. Tomorrow, then, they will go out into the sun and I am sure I will learn something new. I hear a soft knock at the door. I will invite the girl in and share my supper with her. This is Day Eleven.

I haven’t been up to the surface for a few days. Here in the tunnel I find myself wanting want more than thoughts and plans and digging. I’m slightly embarrassed that I want fresh water, I want a good night’s sleep in a bed, I want clean clothes. I’ve spent a long time with my body in the dirt. I ask the girl if she’d like to take a break for a day, perhaps the last one in a long time; she nods yes and tells me she’d like a coke and a cigarette before we go any farther. I grin at her. My own wants seem virtuous suddenly: cleanliness and purification sound righteous, ascetic even.

Lifting the mercury and slipping it into my pocket was a good idea; I can see that now. The words that seem to float in it sit quietly in their darkness until I can take them up into the day and arrange them under the sunlight. I know that’s part of the reason for my desire to break from digging and planning and climb outside for a spell. If the words are going to influence me in any way, it’s better I should know what they mean and not try to interpret illucidly. I know they could change color and stiffen once they’re above ground and sunlit, but then I’ll be sure.

Before I go on up, I get another idea, a small one. I decide to go ahead with the staircase when the girl and I return, even though the planning will be arduous and most of it we may have to make up along the way. I know nothing of things like the Coreolis effect, or even basic structural engineering. I think instead of embedding lines of the girl’s poetry in each riser of each step, of fashioning newels that are complete stanzas. I have new vigor. This is Day Ten.

I am unsure about everything.
There are beads of something wet near my feet. They feel heavy when I stir them around with my foot. I want to press forward with digging, but I am tired and still distracted. I haven’t got clear thinking and I don’t hear the words any more. I am confused about that.
The girl is humming to herself. At least we’ve pushed the tunnel walls solid, and I can breathe easier about it.

I realize the spiral staircase is a symbol of art and beauty and adventure and that’s why it’s taking me so long to decide how to go about building it. No pressure or anything! I tell myself, and laugh out loud. It breaks the tension. I decide to look closely at whatever the wet and silvery beads are that have appeared on the tunnel floor.
I kneel down and touch. It’s mercury. I stir the droplets around with my fingertip. I begin to hear the words rise up from around my fingers. I’m glad it wasn’t my imagination. I can pick up information if I am careful. I lift up some of it and put it in a dry pocket for later. Right now I feel like getting back to work. I must decide: tunnel or staircase? This is Day Nine.