Hibernation Resolution December 30, 2004 Jack lay in bed propped up by pillows, "propped up to die," he thinks, a Bukowski line coming to mind. He's got his Himalayan expedition jacket on, all goose down and puffed out like a marshmallow. It's December in Houston, the temperature outside a mellow 65 compared to subzero in New England, in Maine, he thinks. Maine where he topped out the Appalachian world, gave up the girl, climbed down and unfurled the flag of his heart for all the people to read. Jack with his fan club of six or eight readers. In 48 hours it'll be a new year. Jack's in bed trying not to think about it. Jack remembers back to grade school and his teacher talking about 7-7-77 and how neat that was, which led to thoughts of the unimaginably far-off year 2000. Jack was gonna be famous by then, though for what he couldn't say. An actor maybe, the standard American dream cliche. He would be married and have children as old as he was then. "Tomorrow night it'll be 2005," he thinks to himself, "and I'm famous all right and married, too! Married to a fuckin' laptop. And children? I got bottles of em, one for every day of the week." Cannibal Jack had just eaten one of his children for breakfast. Well, he'd eaten an egg and potato burrito, but the sharp pain of chewing with an abscessed molar had made him jump. So he rummaged through his nursery of pill bottles, popped the top off the appropriate one, and knocked back a codeine. "I'll call you Sweetie Pie," he said, and he swallowed Sweetie Pie whole, knocked her back with a swig of tap water then crawled in bed. "To die!" he saluted to the dark and empty room. Outside the incessant grind of suburban lawnmowers drove Jack slowly insane. At ten in the morning, people were working at their JOBS and retirees were out mowing their LAWNS. Jack was pretty confident he'd years ago worked and quit the last JOB he would ever have, and as the mowers purred like over-friendly cats who walk over your sleeping head at night droning in low gear, Jack swore (and not for the first time) that he would never, ever have a LAWN. Walking the Appalachian Trail from end to end had changed him, this he knew. In two days, it would be another year and he would be the same but then again he'd never be the same. He stared hard at 500 or so of the 175,000 words he'd written in the woods and struggled for a thesis statement. What had he been trying to say out there? Thesis statements, like a five-year-plan, were generally hammered out in advance of a project. "As usual," growled Jack in a Tom Waits gravel-tone, "old Jack is ass over tea kettle again." Then it him. Not a thesis statement, but another eyeball-rolling realization. He had no New Year's Resolution. "What in the hell am I gonna resolve to do? To be?" he asked himself. Then he heard Mary in his mind, Mary telling him he was doing just fine. He was making progress, and "Go easy on yourself. You've already done so much. Rest." "Yes, rest," graveled Jack. He'd been off the trail for ten weeks and all the while flopping around the west like a recently-beheaded snake. But when had he really rested? "I think for New Year's, I'll be a bear." And with that he resolved to hibernate, to rest without guilt or any other human association with the word but really rest in the animal sense. "I'll write now, and starting New Year's Day, I'll hibernate." Yet despite his best efforts to keep his eyes open and focused on his laptop bride, Insomniac Jack, up since four, cascaded quickly into Napland. And his bride, as though in cyber-solidarity, went dim at first and then, minutes later, blinked out and into sleep mode beside her man. Her bear. -RSM   Copyright 2005 Richard McKinney All Rights Reserved (Just ask & I'll likely let you reprint anything!)