1978 – Betamax vs. VHS is in full swing. Pa places his chips on the former. This is promptly verified as unwise.
Early 1980s – Flux and financial disarray. As his company transitions to VHS, Pa is fiscally compelled to relocate to a lesser domicile.
Late 1980s/Early 1990s – Yours truly secures a senior position at KetMax Tapes through sheer dedication and donkeywork and if you think nepotism constituted any slice of that pie, you don’t know nothing about nothing.
2002 – Pa expires. I ascend.
2003/2004 – The market suggests VHS is on the brink of obsolescence. I shirk these bodements and double-down on analogue. I am man enough to own the fallout, but I ascribe at least 80% of the responsibility to cocaine.
2005 – KetMax Tapes is dissolved. I “go on the dole” – ugly in language and deed.
2009 – The nadir. Sloshed on rum and lemonade and craving an Egg McMuffin, I crash my car into what I later determine to be a sign for a bird sanctuary. More than a sign, I surmise it is a SIGN. I heed the universe and insist on procuring the first feathered creature to cross my eyeline. It is a raven. I name him Bassett, for my father’s fondness for liquorice.
2010s/2020 – As promises materialise and evaporate, as dreams dither ‘tween improbable and unlikely, as vulgar women come and go, Bassett is a consoling invariable. This is mediated by his being an emblem of death, the knowledge that I am, in his spine-chilling eyes, merely carrion in a temporarily sub-optimal state of breathing and the impossibility of trust therefore. As I negotiate loving and loathing this creature, he comes to embody the complexity of being.
I have provided historical context. So please read the following whilst performing mental keep-ups with the football that is Bassett’s importance in my life.
We remain in quarantine at the Hope High Castle. Mr. Angelou is a co-habitant, an elderly Greek gentleman who has succumbed to diabetic blindness. He cracks on with the assistance of Baldr, his Golden Retriever guide dog.
Two nights ago, I was slaving over some prose, Bassett’s cage alongside the work space. It was midnight. Reasonably expecting solitude, I released the bird from his enclosure (flirts with peril rev my creative motor plus he needed the exercise).
How was I to know that the witless (but very brave) Mr. Angelou had elected to take a dusky constitutional with his hound? Moreover, that he would violate the perimeters of my cloistered foundry by extending an invitation? I am not an oracle.
So Bassett pecked out Baldr’s left eye.
Look, I’ve been struggling. And I admit to a certain laxness in the acquisition of ample nourishment for my winged complement. I’ve inured him to a debaucherous diet. He’s accustomed to mice.
As luck would have it, Mrs. Absolam is a retired vet. So Baldr is hale and sturdy, if less chipper.
It’s fair to say I’m in the doghouse (somewhat ironically). Marje is giving me the cold shoulder. Bart fucking Joyles is lapping it up. Mrs. Absolam is refusing to make eye contact with me, as is Mr. Angelou, though it’s unclear whether that’s disgust or the cataracts.
They want Bassett gone. I’ll leave it to your discretion whether that’s fair or an egregious overreaction to ONE sour episode. The dog’s fine, for God’s sake.
But yes, the time may soon come when I am forced to personify the George to Bassett’s Lennie. If that day comes, this particular Kettle will be a Kettle whose steam hath depleted. Whose whistling hath ceased.
“A guy needs somebody-to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.” - John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
