Larry Brody's "Live! From Paradise!"

Here on The Mountain, we’re used to strange events.

Spirit voices and music.

Apparitions.

Impossible sights, sounds, even aromas of all kinds.

Today, though, I’m trying to get a handle on something that’s happened to me all my life, wherever I’ve been.

It’s a difficult subject to talk about because I don’t have a word for the phenomenon. There are plenty of names for failing to recall something that’s happened.

If we’re being charitable, we say someone’s “forgetful.” Or “absentminded.”

If we’re being harsh we say, “He’s got Alzheimer’s.” Or, “She’s got dementia.”

But what should we say about the opposite of forgetfulness? What should we call it when we remember things that haven’t happened?

I’m not talking about déja vu, that fascinating feeling of being in a situation or place that feels so familiar you must’ve been there before. I’m talking about full-blown memories of things that seem never to have happened.

Recent cases in point:

Last night, during the Internet screen- and TV-writing class I teach, I read the first 10 pages of a student’s script and didn’t think it was very good.

“Why’d you rewrite it this way?” I said, via the Web cam and mic link in our online classroom. “The first version was much better.”

“First version?” the student said.

“You know, the one you turned in a couple of weeks ago.”

The student looked puzzled. “Um… Mr. Brody, this is the first draft.”

But I distinctly remembered reading another. And loving it.

This morning, something similar occurred. A few weeks ago, I read an article about ceiling fans and learned something I hadn’t known before: that all ceiling fans are built with a switch that enables them to turn either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on the whim of the owner. And that clockwise is better for cooling purposes while counterclockwise wins if you’re trying to spread around heat.

Because of that, I went around the main house and made sure all the ceiling fans were going clockwise. I distinctly remembered doing it. But this morning, when I switched on the downstairs fans, all of them were going in the opposite direction.

Hurrying upstairs, I woke up Gwen the Beautiful. “I’ve got to know if I’m nuts or not,” I said.

“Waking me up this early? You’re definitely nuts,” she said, and turned over to go back to sleep.

“No, hear me out. Remember when we were talking about the ceiling fans? You saw me check out the way they turn, right?”

Gwen sighed. “Yes. And I saw that they all were going clockwise, just like you wanted.”

“Well, honey,” I said, “guess what?”

But, secretly, I was smiling because for this one I had verification. I wasn’t the only one remembering something that didn’t seem to have happened. Gwen remembered it, too.

These are small occurrences, I know. But my life is full of such events.

I make it a habit to always put things away exactly where they came from because otherwise they aren’t there when I go looking again.

But guess what? About half the time they’re not there anyway. Even though I distinctly remember their location.

Similarly, I’ve always made myself aware of where the light switches are in a room. Since childhood.
So I’ll be able to find them easily in the dark. But I can’t count the times when I’ve reached over to the left or right of a doorway in the middle of the night, confident that the switch would be there — and come up against a bare wall because the switch is on the other side.

Now I’m sitting at my desk, trying to figure out what’s going on. Comparing my thoughts to those of various friends and readers of this space. And what I come up with is this:

The universe isn’t what we think it is. There’s no fixed reality. Everything changes. Reality ebbs and flows, altering for reasons as yet unknown. But altering. Definitely.

Some people are more aware of this than others. Kids seem to catch on. Older folks, too.

Those of us near the beginning or end of life are more open, less reliant on so-called rules.

I think it’s because the kids aren’t yet in the habit of just going along, and we more mature types are so close to the end there’s no point in being anything but honest with ourselves.

I mean, whole generations can’t be crazy.

Right?

Larry Brody is an author, veteran television writer and producer and creative director of Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts. He, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination, however, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Originally published August 28, 2008

Yesterday, when I went into the henhouse to collect our usual three or four eggs, I found no eggs at all.

Instead, I discovered a couple of blacksnakes coiled in two nest boxes.

One of the snakes was clearly a black rat snake. They’ve lived just about everywhere I have and are helpful to have around because they eat rats, mice, and squirrels. But our hens get upset when anything that’s not a chicken (or me) comes into their home, so the rat snake had to go.

I poked it with the handle of an old mop I keep for this purpose, and the snake slithered down to the ground, left through a hole in the wall and continued out of the chicken yard.

No muss. No fuss. No problem.

The other snake was another story.

It was longer than the first one, and its blackness was mottled. Not only did the second snake not like being prodded, it kept raising its head and showing the inside of its white mouth — and striking at me.

The mop handle kept me out range, and the snake moved slowly, probably because it was digesting whatever had made the bulge I saw about a third of the way down its length, so I felt pretty safe. I tried to explain to the irritated invader that I didn’t want to kill it, but the snake didn’t answer except to strike a couple more times.

“All right, then,” I said finally. “If that’s how it is …”

I got a long metal shovel from the hay shed. Returned to the hen house and poked to see if maybe the snake had changed its mind.

Nope. All it did was bare its fangs.

“Sorry,” I said, and with a sigh I whacked the snake on the head so hard that the handle of the shovel snapped in two.

But the snake just reared up and struck yet again.

I got closer than I wanted to and whacked it once more with the newly shortened shovel. The job appeared to be finished, but to make sure I used the edge of the shovel to try and cut off the snake’s head. I couldn’t get all the way through but came close enough.

Gwen the Beautiful, my wife and best friend, watched all this activity from outside the fence. Snakes — and spiders, too, for that matter — creep her out.

“They just don’t feel like they belong here,” Gwen once told me. “It’s like they’re aliens, visiting from space. Or, worse than visitors, invaders.”

Seeing me with the snake yesterday, Gwen pointed to Dixie, our six-month-old golden lab puppy. The puppy who’d become part of our family because, well, because she’d called out to me in a way only I could hear one fine spring morning.

“Hmm,” Gwen mused, “think Dixie might’ve called the snakes?”

I couldn’t say no. Although we’ve seen many snakes in our woods we’d never had any this close to the house before. And Dixie was hanging close to the chicken run, watching the action with bright eyes. I brought the dead snake out. Showed it to her.

“Meh,” Dixie said. “It’s not moving. Can’t play with a snake that doesn’t move.”

And off she ran.

Throughout the day my thoughts kept going back to the second snake. I felt angrier and angrier about the fact that it’d made me kill it instead of leaving peacefully, like the first one.

Looking for a reason, I called my old friend Roy the Reptile Wrangler, an expert who supplies deadly reptiles to film and TV companies and told him what’d happened. He asked for more details and then sent me to a Web site where I found an answer.

The snake I’d killed wasn’t a rat snake. It was a western cottonmouth, aka a water moccasin. Right up there on the poison scale with rattlers and copperheads. Why would it even think of giving ground?

A cottonmouth. Striking at me. Again and again.

I’m thinking that next time a situation like this arises I ought to play it smart and check out what I’m messing with before I start messing. Then go straight for the 12-gauge. At the least I should play it safe by bringing in someone like Roy right away and staying outside the danger zone like Gwen.

Smart? Safe?

Nah, can’t do that. No way.

Life without danger — what fun is that?

Larry Brody is an author, veteran television writer and producer and creative director of Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts. He, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination, however, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Originally published August 21, 2008

The Old Billionaire has been in a pickle, as country folks say.

He and Nettie, his wife, have been married for almost 50 years. But at a time when they should be planning a big anniversary shindig together they’re barely even speaking.

“She thinks I’ve been unfaithful,” the Old Billionaire told me. And no, he didn’t say it just the last time we talked. He’s said it the time before that, and the time before that, and the one before that, too.

“Have you?” I said. And no, I didn’t say it just the last time we talked. I’ve said it every time the subject has come up. Not that I think I’ve got a right to know, because I don’t. But because it seems to me that a man doesn’t start talking about such a thing unless he’s looking to dig down deep and express his soul.

Of course, you don’t get to be a billionaire, young or old, by revealing yourself, do you? You become as rich as Croesus, Henry Ford and the whole Rockefeller family by holding your cards close to the vest and playing them with intelligence and courage.

In other words, the O.B. never answers that particular question. He just gets a pained look and moves on.

The last time he mentioned his situation was when the O.B. called to invite Gwen the Beautiful and me over to his house in the neighboring county the following Sunday for “some fine home-cooked food and good company. In other words,” he went on confidentially, “Nettie’s a much more sociable person than I am, and I’m hoping to make her happy by bringing in her favorite folks.”

How could anyone refuse such an invitation?

Last weekend was the big night. Gwen and I drove to the Old Billionaire’s sprawling old place and found only two other cars there that didn’t belong to the O.B. (We knew they weren’t his because they were in the driveway and not up on blocks. The Old Billionaire loves tinkering with machinery. “My purpose in life is to fix everything till it breaks,” he once confessed.)

Nettie greeted us graciously, and together she and the O.B. introduced us to the other two couples: Nettie’s childhood friends and their spouses. Refusing all help, Nettie went back into the big, remodeled kitchen to finish up dinner. The rest of us gathered in the den to sit before the Old Billionaire’s newest acquisition.

“Watch this,” he said, and pushed a button on a Bill Gates-style electronic panel that looked more than a little out of place on the knotty pine-paneled wall.

The double doors of a cabinet at the other end of the room opened, and a six-foot television screen swung out.

“NASCAR time!” the Old Billionaire called out. “On the best HDTV money can buy. And this better be some mighty fine signal ’cause bringin’ it in wasn’t any picnic. I had to pull long strings at the satellite company to get the installation boys to set the connection up this morning so it’d be ready for y’all tonight.

“They were grousing the whole time they were here,” he continued, “about missing church and all. I gave each boy a crisp new hundred-dollar bill to say thanks, and they sniffed at ‘em like the devil’d personally printed each one.”

The O.B.’s attitude was so different from the way he usually spoke that none of us knew how to respond. In the silence, Gwen whispered to me. “Has he gone insane?”

I looked at the lanky, grizzled man standing there at his tomorrow-tech box and watching our reactions with increasingly angry eyes.

I whispered back. “Just desperate, I think. His world’s slipping away. He’s looking for something to replace it.”

“So I shouldn’t tell him that the same satellite company put in our dish on Memorial Day with no finagling and no extra charge?”

“Shh. Want to break the old boy’s heart?”

“His heart’s already broken,” Gwen said.

Across the room, the Old Billionaire’s eyes narrowed to slits. He picked up a couple of remotes, pointed them in random directions, and pushed just as randomly. Still nothing happened.

We sat motionless. Not wanting to look but unable to turn away.

“I want my wife back!” the O.B. roared. “I want my life!”

He kept pushing. At last, the big screen came to life. Maybe things would work out?

Eight letters appeared:

NO SIGNAL.

Larry Brody is an author, veteran television writer and producer and creative director of Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts. He, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination, however, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Originally published August 14, 2008

Older Son Jeb and his wife Sarah the Fantastic New Mother made me a grandfather again a couple of months ago.

Franny Owl Brody, who’s way too young to be embarrassed by all the attention she’s getting just for being herself, is my fourth grandchild. The other three — Isabel, Anna, and Sky Rewick — were born in London, England, to Oldest Daughter Jen and Mad Scotsman Husband Glenn.

I haven’t gotten to see Isabel, Anna, and Sky very much because of the logistics involved in such long trips, but that’s going to change. Oldest Daughter and her family have moved to Northern California, making visits just a mite more affordable and convenient now.

Franny Owl, meanwhile, was born and is being raised in my old stomping ground, L.A.

Now most people might consider that good news. “Oh, wow, Larry B,” Brannigan the Contractor said when I told him about Franny’s birth, “you get to go see her plus your old friends plus hang in all the great places you left behind when you came to Paradise.”

I understand Brannigan’s point, and probably would say the same thing to him if our positions were reversed. But the truth is that at the time the thought of going to L.A. filled me with dread.

On the one hand, it was the scene of my greatest personal successes.

On the other, it also was the scene of my biggest personal failures.

Two bad marriages. Two alienated children who — unlike Jeb and Jen — haven’t spoken to me in almost 10 years.

For me, the Lala Land of Los Angeles is nothing more than a reminder of promises broken.

Promises I made to people who loved me … and also to myself.

Promises I was too young and/or ignorant and/or selfish and/or foolish to be able to keep.

Since I left L.A. six and a half years ago, it’s existed as a dark, troubled sea on my mental map of the world. A sea covered by the old cartographer’s phrase, “Here There Be Dragons.”

The closest I’ve come to going back to L.A. since Gwen the Beautiful and I settled on The Mountain was when Gwen’s mother died and we went to her memorial service in Riverside, California, 60 miles from the epicenter of the ground I was convinced was waiting to stomp me.

When you get down to it, living in fear of the past really is living in fear of yourself. Of who you were. Of what you did. Of attitudes and deeds that are over. Gone. Nothing but ghosts. And living on a haunted mountain has taught me that ghosts can’t hurt you. They don’t even want to hurt you. Any pain you get from them is pain you’ve caused yourself.

So I had to face the past.

And see the future — my beautiful new granddaughter.

Blow off my self-indulgent self-torment and be free.

Carpe diem. I made myself seize the moment, and Gwen and I flew to L.A.

Drove the freeways we once drove everyday.

Ate in the neighborhoods where we once ate everyday.

Felt the pulse of the city. Its arrogant indolence. Its laid-back ambition. Its anything for a price combination of sexuality and commerce.

“Psst … wanna make a deal? Sell your soul for 15 minutes of fame? For the chance to walk behind Lindsay Lohan while the paparazzi click her way?”

And — wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! — the pressure I thought I’d find wasn’t there.

The pain I’d tried to hide from didn’t hurt.

The demons I’d braced myself for never showed.

L.A. was just another city. Sprawling. Crowded. Obsessed.

And something else:

“I love you,” Los Angeles said to me as I drove from the airport to my son’s house. “Do you love me?”

I looked around.

Sighed.

Waited to see what I felt.

“Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

And then came another surprise. “I forgive you,” said the city. “Do you forgive me?”

This time I didn’t need to wait. I knew the answer. “I forgive you,” I said.

Our week with Franny Owl and family was wonderful. Her mother welcomed Gwen and me to their world. Her father treated us lovingly. I followed him everywhere, as once he’d followed me.

The biggest moment was the first time I held the baby. “How does it feel?” my son said.

“It feels wonderful,” I said. And I thought, at last without regret:

“It makes me wish I still could hold you.”

Larry Brody is an author, veteran television writer and producer and creative director of Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts. He, his wife and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County. The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination, however, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Originally published August 7, 2008