Agent

Pronunciation:

\ˈā-jənt\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Medieval Latin agent-, agens, from Latin, present participle of agere to drive, lead, act, do; akin to Old Norse aka to travel in a vehicle, Greek agein to drive, lead

Date:

15th century

1: one that acts or exerts power

2 a: something that produces or is capable of producing an effect : an active or efficient cause b: a chemically, physically, or biologically active principle

3: a means or instrument by which a guiding intelligence achieves a result

4: one who is authorized to act for or in the place of another: as a: a representative, emissary, or official of a government agent> agent> b: one engaged in undercover activities (as espionage) : spy agent> c: a business representative (as of an athlete or entertainer) agent>

At Randy & Cindy's Place

They found this in the closet when they moved in and decided to leave it up.

Last Paragraph, Last Chapter

Somewhere in the grey wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls of this world. Fly them.


--Cormac McCarthey, Suttree

Charioteering

Three days before the solstice, I chase my father down a nameless pissant north Florida road, on my mother’s black 883. He’s riding the red FXR that started all this, the bike I learned on, always wanting to run out from under me. It is the red chariot of Helios and back then I was Phaeton clutching the reins.

It is not warm but cool out, there are the unnatural pines, un-harvested rows of them, lining the fast periphery. There is the bend in the road, over the slow creek, where the air is still and unsafe, the guard rail scarred and black from years of impact, conflict, there at the point of apex where shit breaks loose.

I joked once that the reason this works is that there’s no way for us to talk. On the four-lane back home I get up to his four o’clock and listen to the pipes, let them obliterate all sound. They become a song at that point. It sounds like a chorus.

Ten miles out I can smell the ocean, and wish I had taken the windshield off so that cold air could hit me, full on the chest, and that I could let go and embrace it.

Chattanooga Hell Cats

My father and his cousin, Buzz, Daytona 1965

Fig.2-Ajax

Grove Job

Restlessness

Anthem III

I no longer need my own punk band. I can fill a cold room in an old house with noise and violence for weeks on end. Movement and sawdust and punkrock and that is enough. My political statement, my pine manifesto. I am the first one in to unlock the gang-box, to break out the tools each cold and blessed morning. I can set eight jambs in this antique house, hang each door to its jamb, rework each transom window above. The smell of pine left hanging in a room, pungent enough to hurt your eyes. I can survive and not sell out, I am convinced of it. I am the last one out, the one to run the chains and locks each night. I am much stronger now.

Last Night,

Driving May in the truck down Riverside Drive to try and get her to go to sleep, I spotted a red fox crossing the road heading into the woods just above the river. As I have spent a fair amount of time in the woods over the course of my life and never come across a fox before, I am taking this as an omen, of what I have no idea. Something good. I thought at first it was a cat crossing the road but with a bushy, pipe-cleaner tail. Once it was in the grass it turned and grinned at me.