Magic Moments

By Charles Barnett

Magic Moments is an eclectic assortment of short pieces tha examine life and love. Most are taken from moments with one of two little poodles. Sometimes they are silent. Sometimes they talk back.

Other pieces explore science and tracel to faraway places like the Arctic and the Amazon without poodles - just people. Take your pick.

If there's romance and wonder in your heart you'll find something to warm the silent moments as you drift off to sleep.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475983111

Charles Barnett

Charles Barnett has travelled widely, preferring to visit the jungles and deserts of the so-called, Third World Countries. He prefers the hermit life, with one exception. For the past fourteen years he has lived with a seven pound, red poodle. Her recent departure, to live in Heaven, has left Charles with a gaping emptiness. He will never stop loving Gnuf-Gnuf, but she taught him that he can no longer bear to live alone. By the time you read this, hopefully he has found a tiny, red, girl poodle to share his hermit life as he takes the scholars of the Chalice Corporation to the Caribbean, and the mysterious pitch lakes and mud volcanoes of Trinidad, where a lanky, black man lives in the jungle and talks to the Mot-Mot birds.

Book preview

Let There Be Light

(2006)

Today is Gnuf-Gnuf’s birthday. Around 1 AM she turned Five. I have never lived with anyone that long. She is a joy and a torment. Last night she kissed me goodnight. This morning she kissed me good morning. No one has ever done that, either. I guess we’re a team. God knows, I’ve gotten into more squabbles over her—people who try to tell me no dogs allowed. It’s a long, ugly list of events. I try to put it in perspective, this old man yelling defiance at idiot people who would never try to throw out an objectionable human for fear of the law. But wurg Gnuf, they feel empowered by authority. After all, she’s JUST a dog. Wrong! She’s the person who kisses me goodnight and good morning. I must seem a bit deranged to them and they don’t seem very bright to me. I understand their lack of perspective in the matter. I understand. That doesn’t make it any better.

Enough of that. Today is Gnuf-Gnuf’s birthday and I’m giving her a birthday present she hates. I’m taking her in to see Jacqui, the Groomer. These events are more traumatic for me than for Gnuf. but she makes it seem worse than it probably is. She is a control freak and suddenly she is placed in the hands of someone who treats her gently but takes no guff. As I leave I try not to look back. On the occasions I have, I see the pathetic sight of her looking over Jacqui’s shoulder with huge, imploring eyes. I have all I can do to keep from running back and grabbing her and telling her I love her.

I hear that some dogs love to go to the groomer. I suspect they’re not very bright. It’s probably the cage where they’re kept between grooming events. After all, Gnuf-Gnuf is a little girl. What girl doesn’t like to get a shampoo, trim, have her nails done and be blow-dried until her hair is fluffy and fragrant? I wish I could put it into perspective for my Little Gnuffle.

This morning I tried to act as though nothing was different—no special birthday treatment, but also no indication that the morning would involve the groomer. We got up early. I was sleepless by 3:30 AM. Not unusual. One of the plagues of advanced age. Gnuf-Gnuf came into the bathroom staggering from interrupted slumber, to give my leg a quick smooch before returning to bed for a slower entry into consciousness. The regular morning kisses always come a bit later as I sit on the bed and put on my socks and shoes.

It was still black outside when we went out the door, the stars bright overhead. There was a vague scent of rebellious skunk in the air. Not objectionable at all. Just a hint of it. In tiny doses I find the smell of skunk almost pleasant, like the aroma of gasoline near a filling station. Each scent is objectionable if stronger.

After a few moments the scent of the invisible skunk disappeared entirely while Gnuf-Gnuf and I moved slowly through the blackness. Actually, it was not completely black. There were the stars, of course, but also some garden lights in front of the local residences.

As we passed one home, we heard a low, insistent tick-tick-tick-tick. The sound suddenly struck me funny and I laughed out loud. It was an invisible bug, not to be intimidated by the dark, saying, I’m here, tick-tick-tick-tick, me-me-me-me.

Gnuf-Gnuf looked up at me for a moment, confused by my laughter, before we moved on.

Light, I thought, what a miracle. We are surrounded by miracles but have become so used to them that we usually pay them no attention. There were the stars overhead, the garden lights drawing power from some invisible source below ground and glowing brightly. Edison was not only a genius but a saint, I thought. I suppose, among the usual iconoclasts of our ungrateful time, someone has said, or will say, he stole the whole idea or that it was really a woman he was diddling who did it and never got credit. Well, someone was a genius and a saint.

For a reason too obscure to explain here, I tried in vain then, to see if I might see a glowworm beneath the vegetation near our roadside stroll. I knew it was a hopeless quest. I don’t think there are any glowworms in New Mexico. They seem to prefer moist climates. I started to think about the miracle of bioluminescence. I had once made a film about it. But that’s another story (maybe boring).

Judeo/Christian Scripture says that everything was black before God said, Let there be light! Popol Vuh, the Maya Book of Creation, says more or less the same thing. I have no reason to dispute either. The iconoclasts probably do but so what? Rather, the thing that strikes me is the question.—did all the light come on at once? How about glow worms and fireflies? What about glowing fungi? What about bioluminescence in general?

If God, or the gods, created light, then the Earth, then the creatures—what about creatures that generate their own light. They must have come first, before man and Earth (the Firmament) and everything. God must have had a problem trying to figure out which were more important, the stars or the fireflies. It was a marvelous moment whatever the time sequence. Imagine a Universe swarming with blinking, winking fireflies!

I could have gone on in this thread for some time if Gnuf-Gnuf had not given me an impatient tug on her leash.

I could hear her thinking, Does this dummy realize it’s my birthday? My treat is waiting inside, and don’t go into a thing about the miracle of central heating and microwaves and ready to eat treats from the deli. Just cough one up and put it in my dish. And don’t forget some fresh water. Those treats are salty.

As we headed back, I remembered one spectacular bioluminescence display I had experienced almost a half-century before in a place two-thousand miles from here. More of that later. We had come to our front door and entered to experience the miracle of central heating. OK, OK. I’ll drop it.

Happy Birthday, Gnuf, I said.

Where’s my treat? she answered.

Did God also say, Let there be sound?" What about that bug going tick-tick-tick? There’d be lots to think about during tomorrow’s walk in the dark."

"Yes, tomorrow. Right now, think of MY TREAT!"

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Gnuf-Gnuf gets a hug from Cinder Bear in Chama, NM

Many Years Later

(this is the priest one)

A cold tear ran down the old priest’s cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. He was not crying. It was the cold wind. His tears made it difficult to see. He knew he was a pathetic sight walking up the narrow, tree-lined road, a small, reddish-brown poodle on a leash matching his slow pace. They both had diabetes and poor eyesight. But it was the cold, not that image, that brought tears to his eyes.

Once he had walked this same road with the vigor of youth—a young boy in search of childish delights and adventure in the pine forests of this wondrous place. Since he first heard Beethoven’s 6th Symphony he had identified it with his own childhood here. He felt a special kinship with the great master who said he felt renewed when he arrived in the country. The deaf, old master-musician had titled the joyous first movement of his Sixth Symphony, Upon arriving in the country. Now the old priest only wished for the pain of arthritis to let up a bit and his little dog to be able to find her treats without being carefully led to them. He wondered how Beethoven stood the silence of his eventual deafness when music was still struggling to be set free from the prison of his silent skull.

As the priest thought of these things he licked the salty tear from the back of his hand as he might have when he was a little boy. Then he put his fore finger inside his Roman collar and gave it a tug.

He stopped. It was partly to catch his breath, partly to allow his mind to wander more freely. The little dog stopped too. She looked up with half-blind eyes, a reflex action, to see if the old priest expected something of her.

It’s OK, Gnuf. Do you want up?

There was no answer, but it was a well-worn routine. The old priest bent down with a little gasp of pain and scooped her up. There was no one to hear him except the little dog and she had heard him make that sound a thousand times. It meant nothing. Once, though, when he had fallen in the snow, he had lain there for a few minutes gathering the determination to rise. She had come over, confused by this strange situation and licked his ear furiously until he responded and struggled to his feet.

This time, safely in his arms, she nestled against his chest, happy to be shielded from the wind. They walked that way for a while.

The poodle had no idea where they were headed but rarely did. She loved to be on the move. The destination was irrelevant. Being carried was better than walking. There was sure to be food and a warm bed at the end of this pointless battle with the wind and cold.

The old priest’s attitude was only a little more complex than that of his companion. They would walk slowly in the wind, the dark trees dissolving behind them as they passed from sight and therefore, from reality. They would materialize again should he turn and retrace their steps. The old priest was as sure of that as the poodle was of the belief that a meal would materialize at the end of their walk.

Reality is what we believe, he thought—much like God. The heretic thought popped into his head unbidden. He chased it away as he had for years. The poodle helped. He gave her a squeeze and she looked up and licked his nose. Was it love or did she just like the salty tear she found there? Cynical but not heretical, he chuckled to himself. Today is a day for nostalgia and perhaps a bit of self-pity—not deep thought, he went on, but then, few realize that I am never really capable of truly deep thought—just the appearance of wisdom as a performance for the edification of others.

"But, you already knew that, didn’t you, Gnuf," he whispered to the little dog.

She ignored his confession, content with the fact that the old priest’s puffy, down-filled sleeves kept her wrapped in her own body warmth.

The pair, joined at the heart, slowly approached an old farmhouse. It stood cold and deserted behind an ancient picket fence. Gray windows peered vacantly from the empty interior behind them. Silence lay over everything. There was just the light scrape-scrape of the old priest’s black shoes on the gray pavement when he failed to lift them high enough. Once his stride was automatic. Now a clean gait required special attention

The old priest’s mind drifted back to a warm summer evening many years ago at this very spot. Filled with the wonder of the night sky a young boy had lain on the warm hood of the family’s 1936 Ford and stared up into star-speckled eternity. His eyelids had grown pleasantly heavy with warm content by the time he heard the dear sound of his mother’s voice. She was standing on the porch of this now cold, vacant house. She called to him from beneath a bare light bulb that had drawn a halo of circling, insects.

Come on in, Charlie. It’s time for bed, she called.

It was dark so she could not see the dreamy child just across the road lying on the hood of the old Ford

The old priest stopped for a moment to look at the cold, deserted porch where his mother had stood that night. He comforted himself in the thought that supposedly sound waves radiate into the universe forever like ripples from pebbles dropped into a still pond. As he looked up into the gray sky, he thought, my mom’s voice must still be out in space calling me to bed. I’m coming, Mom. Just a few more minutes, then as an afterthought, I’m sorry you never got to meet Gnuf-Gnuf, Mom. He gave the little dog a squeeze. She responded with a contented half chirp—the one she gives to express her desire for another treat.

The old priest’s grandfather had bought this silent house over a hundred years ago. For almost a century it had been filled with sights, sounds and aromas of life—cries of infants, giggles of babies being bathed in dishpans, the aroma of the kerosene cook stove, the mouth watering aroma of frying bacon and bubbling spaghetti sauces. There were the many sounds of too many people crowded into a small house—laughter, cries of pain, growls of anger, sighs of love, calls to dinner, then the clink of knives and forks as meals were reduced to empty platters that were then washed in pans filled from kettles of hot water. Later there were the sounds of radios, crackling with static, and record players that sometimes poured forth operas as grumbly autos gave way to smoother sounding engines that whooshed past to climb the mountain. All of this where the old priest now walked in silence. The house was empty now—everyone either left the earth or moved to places far away. There had been feeble efforts by some to maintain the house but everyone finally gave up.

The sight of this house’s lonely deterioration is almost a physical pain in my heart, he thought. As often before, he comforted himself with the realization that all things eventually crumble and disappear. Why should anything in my life be any different? Someday the Sistine Chapel will come crashing down and someone will build a restaurant or gas station on the rubble. He had expressed this point of view to others. It offered him both comfort and pain. Those to whom he offered this austere take on reality were sometimes offended. They said that unique examples of human art and architecture would be maintained forever. He had not argued the point but thought of mountains worn flat by wind and rain, valleys filled with rising torrents from melting glaciers, the probability that the earth will someday wobble itself to pieces and the solar system lose its delicate balance and set its planets free to go flying into one another or off into space. With a precognitive wisdom they were named planets, Greek for wanderers. Even galaxies will someday swallow one another like ravening beasts. The order of the universe is chaos.

These were depressing thoughts but comforting in a way. They put the personal aches and pains of body and soul into perspective. Be thankful for the here and now, he thought, and tried to make the sign of the cross as he was taught in his youth, but could not with his doggie nestled in his arms. For now he would be thankful for this moment and this little dog with its cold nose and warm body. She was only eleven but diabetic and half-blind. And yet her spirit was alive and well.

I wonder, he thought, if little dogs were given to us by God so we would understand how lonely He must be? We watch a little dog grow from feisty handful of attitude to stumbling little bundle of fur with gray muzzle, lame leg, and white, semi-blind eyes—all while we seem relatively unchanged.

Does God watch humans come and go on earth and feel the agony of their disintegration as we do when we watch the plight of our little friends? Did He create Heaven because he couldn’t bear the pain of losing us forever? Or did we conjure up the whole, complex scenario?

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Gnuf-Gnuf on Easter in the Chapel of

Christ in the Desert Monastery, Abiquiu, NM

Careful, thought the priest. You’re getting close to heresy again. Think about something else. You’re old, getting too close to the end of the road to wander off alone. The poodle in his arms wriggled to find a more comfortable position

"Cut it out, Gnuf. You’re starting to get heavy. I’m not a pickup truck. Here,"

He bent down and placed the little doggie on the road to walk for herself. She didn’t mind. She knew he’d pick her up again after a while—just as she knew there’d be dinner, a warm bed and treats later. Like God, he was there for her and always would be as long as she lived.

The two walked on slowly. The old priest thought about the days when he was a little boy and she thought about nothing in particular. They passed a twisted cedar tree where the little boy had built a tree house, then past a noisy stream where he had set tiny, wooden, ferry boats adrift on sun-dappled water to dodge rocks and careen through rapids.

When she felt she’d walked far enough, Gnuf-Gnuf stopped, put one paw on the old priest’s pant leg, and looked up into his face. He saw the whiteness of her half-blind eyes and asked gently,

I guess you want up again, right? OK.

He bent painfully and scooped her up. She nestled again into his protective embrace. It will be supper time soon, she thought.

It will be supper time soon, he whispered to her. Better than most