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10 minutes. What’s up?

Changing things up: Los Chalchaleros. What is a Chalchaleros?

I don’t know. BUt I am trying another group that my mom listened to. I have a few minutes to warm up my brain right now. Soon, I will make calls to Ashley, to a Catha Fire person, and then, a break to the bank and then, a call with Barhynn.

We will see how it goes. HOw does it go?

I have noticed that sometimes I struggle harnessing my brain, and that is what this is: hournal worirtng is a kind of harness. But it helps.

I don’t have a lot to write today. Just here. Thinking and warming up the mind for more thinking. I might need to do this again before i get to write my story.

I also am having a nice time working on my novel. That sounds great! Doesn’t it?

I am not upset or nervous. Just a little in search of some ideas. I am without ideas, and I guerss I need to be forgiving of myself. Important!

OK. This is nonsensocal, and that is great. There is no need to always make sense. Tgis is a testament to my nonsense. And one day, if my kids read this or if some weirdo comes across this blog, he will think the same. This is nonsense.

I am going to look up what a Chalchalero is.

4:28PM–I loked it up. It is a song bird, and the group took its name from that. BUT, it is also a tyoe of rat that is found in Argentina that was discovered by a scientist in OK, whose team was always singing their songs.

As always: These questions are mine to tackle in this story:

1. how did this house come to be? It was built by memories. One brick at a time.
2. who are these ballerinas? why are they in this house? They are guardians of the storoes of each person who lives.
3. are they mean or nice? do they work for good or bad? They are neither. They are guardians of secrets. Do they work for the government? Not sure. Do they work for God? No. But they arise somehow out of memory.
4. I think they were angry. Why are these ballerinas angry? They are not angry. Just serious. Bur then why are they women? Maybe this should change. Are they all thin? I think if I make this about men and women, then I can leave out the thin part.
5. who is this story about? the ballerinas or the stand-in for me? The guardians of secrets are not who the story is abojut. Rather, the story is about secrets. What they are? Why do they exist? These people in blue arise when a secret is buried in a person’s mind/heart.

The Story:

The House sat on a hill. It was part of a modern set of houses that shared nothing in terms of style but whose owners/designers/architects all shared one characteristic: the overriding ambition to impress by creating something that would stand out in this small part of the country in Maryland, not far from the capital.

And stand out these homes certainly did.

These houses were certainly not beautiful, nor were they even appropriate for the land they stood on, as we will see shortly.

Surrounded by farms, the large tract of land that these 5 homes were built on replaced 10 family farms that stood until a developer decided there was a market for farm living minus the trouble of farming.

The result: a patch of teleported Disneyland for the recent rich in the middle of suburban farmland.

The first home to be built there looked like a Tuscan villa, all stone with a bell tower in the corner. Its owner had made money creating IBM clones in the 80s and then, through investments in web brosers in the 90s. As a way of thankiong the digital world for her success, she refused to have her home wired for anythng more modrn a telel[hone. Next to it, was the owner of a structre that looked like a French chateau, three stories of grand white brick with Round tower with conical roof and four chimneys with decorative caps at each corner like four witch’s caps.

The height ofthe chateau’s peaks was the complete opposite of the squat outcropping of the subterranean bunker that one retired politician, now gun activist–liked to think of as his protective shield from “them.” He never really defined who “them” was, but the entrance could hold up against an attack from who ever that enemy was, that much he knew.

The four remaining homes were as unique in their own right: the modern glass structure, owned by a transplanted Evangelical from LA who liked the Crystal Cathedral and who wanted that “vibe”, but in a more modest format so as to align with his Savior’s “righteous views” about the wealthy. That home ran up against the land owned by the Ghanaian diplomat who liked to poke fun at the colonizers of his home country by building a windmill, in perfect Dutch style.

And then there was the lighthouse-style structure built by a hedge fund manager who had studied literature as a college student, with a focus on the work of Philip Roth. His goal was to have enough money to be a character in a Roth novel. His latest attempt: building a lighthouse without an ocean. Why? Why not?

But what it the Lighthpise lacked in ocean, it certainly made up for in the way of interesting landmarks. And this brings us to the Sigler house, the seventh and smallest house in the development, which truly stood out because it did not stand out.

Its large, white wooden structure and the accompanying red grain silo made it look ordinary among the extraordinary, which as a result, made it extraordinarily interesting to its neighbors.

But the Siker was not curouus for being ordinary. It had its own mysteries, For one, its owner was not named Siker. No one knew who Sigler was or who the current owner was, but they were not the same person. That mich we csn be sure of.

There was also the fact that its inhabitants were all young, seemingly not related, and they all wore the same shade of blue. Thogh differing style and in types of clothing, so one could not say they weere wearing uniforms, one could say they wore clothese made from the same shade of baby blue. They also, as far as anyone knew, never said anything to anyone, and hardly ever left their compound, having groceries and supplies delivered every other week.

This is a lot of detail, and ironially, or not, because there was so little known about the residents of the Siker, more was observed and recorded by the neighboring housholders than could be said about any other household. What could the Ghanaian diplomat say about his neighbor with the lighthgous apart from the fact that the man obciously did not mind heights and had a thinkg for the sea? Could the ex-politician, from his well-protected view of the family with the chateau, say anything more than a comment about how Americans should not live in foreign-looking structures?

In truth, none of the other residents of this odd development could say anything more about any of the rest because they did not care to know more.

But the Siker was different.

Still, things would have stayed this way: these young people living in the Siker would have kept to themselves and received their supplies and their neighbors would have looked through their binoculars looking for clues about who they were and wondered why they wore blue, and why they never spoke to anyone. Still, these neighbors would have lft it there had it not been for Tyler Fallows.

Tyler was the agent of change. He was the perfect candidate. Not only was he young and unsupervised since his father was often traveling for business, he also had enough discretionary money that he could purchase the proper equipment for spying to keep up with his imagination. He had taken to buying gear from an online store that seemed to cater to ex-CIA agents–an idea he got while in a rare conversation with the ex-politician when the latter was out on his evening run.

Tyler’s latest purchase: a high-powered parabolic microphone was now almost permanenetly aimed towards the Siker home. The microphone, as powerful as it was, as good at that it did as it was, returnd nothing. Not a sound. Ever. Other houses, he could pickl up no problem, as in when he Heard the diplomat engaged with something he called “Tender Time”, or when he heard the ex-politician sobbing and telling himself he had to be stronger, harder, better.

These were accidents, and they bothered Tyler. He tried never to repat them again. The mic was for the Siker. Why it was that he did not feel guilty is not for us to know. He never thought about it, though. The house was a challenge. It was a question that no one could answer, and Tyler liked the idea of being able to answer the question.

After a week of failure, Tyler did the obvious thing that no one else thought to do or was willing to do: he left his home and walked through his land, avoiding the castle and towards the plot of land that the Siker home stood on.

There was no one he could see on the outside to engage, so he waited on the side of the castl’ land and just watched. It was warm, humid, and there were no trees in this [art of the field, so he was exposed and his fair skin was turning a shade of pink that he did not like and that his father would have scoffed at. But Tyler was determined. He stood, and then he sat, yoga style, in his spot and waited for someone from the Sigler to step out. No one did.

Tyler was determined, if that was it. The house in front of him was a question he could not answer by looking it up online. This was an analogue mystery, and like those of his generation who discoveer baking bread with their hands or vinyl records, understanding who was in this house provided a respite from immediate gratification. He would work for this with his body. After 30 minutes in the heat and humidity, he asked himself what the hell he was oing, but he wantd to know whay these folks were about. He needed to know this.

The path leading to the Siker’s front door was immacuate. Red, pink and yellow zinnias lined the walkway on both sides. The lawn was a deep green, and the smell of recently mown grass filled the air. It reminded Tyler of when he was little, watching his father push a lawnmower in front of thir old house before his father moved him to this odd lighthouse thing.

The smell always made him happy, though he wasn’t sure why. The sound of the doorbell brought him back to the site. There was no sound, actually, only the rumble and fizz of what seemed tpo be a broken doorbell. If it were not for the sounds rumbling footsteps that seemed to be naring the door, he would have knowcked. But as quickly as they started, the footsteps stopped, and he was left standing and sweating and turning pink.

“hey,” he said, sounding a bit unsure of himself. “I live in the lighthouse thing next door. Just coming by to say hey.”

He waited, but there was nothing. “Hey Dude, is someone going to open the door? I heard you.”

He decided to go around the house and see if he could see anyon looking on. All of the windows were covered by drapes, and apart from those footsteps, he would hav thought the house was not inhabited. But those steps belonged to someone, and that someone was proably looking out of some window at him, who was not a deep, Peptobismal shade of pink–a glistening, sweaty botthe of Peptobismal.

Tyler cut his losses, retunrng to his homw where he took a shower and covered himself in the expensive aloe face and body creams that his father had bought and never used.

The next day, skipping the online classes that he was supposedly taking, Tyler went back to the Siker, but this time, he took a large micrphone that allowed him to pick up sounds through walls at long distances. He started by knocking on the front door once more, thinking to give the residnts fair warning. Once more, there were footsteps, and then, silence as he stood there.

He backed away down to the edge of the property that butted against a small road thatr hardly anyone ever drove on and set up his micorphone. It did not take long, but after some trials with difernt frequencies, he picked up on sme voices that he assumed were those of the Siker’s residents, excep[t that there were men’s voices, and ther were differnt languages that he did not understnd. he voices changed and sometimes he heard English, but then, the voice would change as woild the language. It waslike listening to so,meone change the radio station.

He was about to go home, but before he turned off his microphine, he heard a strained man’s voice that caught his attention.

“I know you can’t, but have you thought aboyt Tyler/ Can you stopu thinking about yourself–for once? How abut our son?”

Like the Siker, these words stood out precisely because they were familiar to him. This was the conversation that he had overheard his father having with his mother before she left to go back to California. He had not forgotten that conversation, nor would he. The familiar aspect of these words, not so much at the level of memory but rather at the level of muscle and bone. He felt the same as he felt when herd them as a 5 year-old. Like going into a kitchn smelling a food he loved or passing through the perfume department on his way inth the mall where his nose picked up a whiff of the brand of Chanel that his mother used to wear, like th smell of the grass that now seemed to have grown even stronger.

He took off the headphones and looked around. He had been released now. And he realized that his eyes were moist, and that he had forgotten himself. Like waking up from a nap and not knowing where he was.

Now, he knew where he was. No one was around. He was still there in that hot afternoon, turinig pink to red. He put on his headphones again and pointed hs microphone towards the house. Like jabbing his tongue at a tooth that ached, he could not resist, and he was both relieved and disappointed to hear nothing.

He went to sleep that night with the idea that he would sleep outside on the deck, but the mosquitoes and the humidity ere more than he could manage. It took him most of the night to look away from the Sigler, but he eventually did and drifted off.

The next morning, he woke up and the idea of not going back did not dawn on him. He slathered on the sun block and he grabbed his microphone, though he had told himself that he might not want to use it. He needed to see who was in there, and he might need to be more assertive. Not creeper assertive, not exactly. By the time he walked up o the door, he had convinced himself that he had tricked himself the day before. Because unless his mother was back from her “extnded” trip to LA and his father had come back frm New York, and they were relving a painful moment in both their lives in front of these blue people, there was no way he really heard what he heard.

By the time he walked up to the Sigler’s front door, he had convinced himself that the day before had been some kind of weirdness that he had invented. Maybe the heat? It didn’t matter.

He knocked on the door again. And as was the case the days before, he heard footsteps that came towards the door, and then, they stopped just short of the door without any other sound.

“Hey. Uh, it’s your your neighbor again. Nort tuying to be a creeper or anything.” He waited. “Can you open the door, dude? Come on, man.”

But there was nothing. He grabbed his mcirophone and pointed it at th door. At first there was some static and feedback, but through tge haze of sound, he heard a woman’s voice, and that souned like his mom.

“What the fuck?” he screamed to the door. “How are you doing this shit?”

“I don’t want a baby, Tom. I told you that when we got married.”

He caught this on his headphones right as he put them on. But he could not hear the voice that followed. It was quiet and low. Even his microphone could not pick this up. He imagined that the Tom in question was his father.

He ripped the headphones off his head and went around to one of the windows and knocked on it. “Hey. How are you doing that?” But the house did not respond.

“You ok there, Tyler?” he thought it was someone from the house, but realized that it was the ex-Politicoian. Tyler couldn’t remember his name, but lijked to call him The Dude. His father had put the idea to him after they watched The Big Leboweski. The ex-Poloyician, actally, looked more like the other guy, in thtat move, the blow-hard with the camos and the gut.

“I heard the screaming, and I came over. You ok there, kiddo?”

“I don’t know,. It’s something funky in that house.”

“I see you bought that microphone I told you about. That working?,” the ex-politician said. He paused, and walked closer to where Tyler was standing. “You aren’t pointing that thing at my house, right?”

Tyler didn’t look over. “My mom isn’t in there. And my dad isn’t either.”

“OK,” the ex-politician said. I am sure my mom isn’t in there, either. But you might want to get away from the window. Because whoever is in there might be calling the cops.”

The ex-politician looked away from Tyler and noticed that the microphone and headphones were on the ground. “You know these things are kind of sensitive.” He bent down to pick up the headphones and mic, and he heard a voice coming through.

“It’s me or the job, Harris. Do you hear me?”

The ex-politician, like Tyler before, did not understand what he was hearing. The woman speaking was his wife, and he heard himself, a younger version of himself, answering. He pulled the headphones away from his head, as if they were burning his ears.

“What is this?”

Tyler looked over for the first time. “What did you hear?”

Harris gave the headphones back, and when Tyler too them back, he heard what sounded like his mother yelling at his father. “You heard this?”

“I heard me talking to my wife.”

“No, these are my parents.”

“I shojld know what my ex-wife sounds like. And me, I know whst I sound like.”

Tyler and the ex-poltician looked at each other. They were both trying to figuree out how it was that they were hering different things. The question took up so much of their attention that for those few minutes, they did not ask themselves the more fundamental question: how it was that these conversations, private conversations from years ago could be coming out of this home.

Harris handed the headphones back to Tyler and walked up to the door. “Thats not cool. That is a breach. Hello!” He knocled on the door.

“When he got no response, he turned back on Tyler. “Did you do this? I mean, did you somehow tape this or get access? Is this you, Tyler?”

“Dude. I don’t knpw you. I know you like this gear shit, but…” his voice tapered off.

“Yeah, sure, right.” Harris looked like he’d deflated a little. The possibility of an answer, even an implausible one, had filed him with some hope. Now, he was left with the deflating impossibility.

“I am going to do some digging into this place tonight. You come over if you want, and you can help. But I am going to find out who these jokesr are. I can’t prove it, but obviously, there is something illegal here.” Harris turned back and started back towards his house leaving Tyler with his headphones and microphone and his pink skin.

Later that night, when Tyler did as Harris said and showed up at the older man’s Bunker, Tyler found him wearing an ACDC shirt, camouflage cargo pants and flip flops that showed what looked like a bad case of toe fungus.

“I found out some stuff about that place. Looks like it’s an old house. I don’t know how those young people are and what that blue color represents, but the house seems to be paid off, and the taxes are all paid. I was thinking of pulling a favor with an old buddy of mine. He has these drones that carry infra-red cameras on them.”

Tyler nodded his head, but he didn’t follow. He was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt, and under that, he had slathered more of his father’s aloe lotion because he was starting to orry about how the pink was now transforoning into something darker. His arms felt like they had a fever, but only his arms. And the fact that the bunker, though operfectly normal looking on the inside with what looked like furniture from a West Elm cataloue that ame for his father, the room was warm.

“I don’t get it. What’s the infrared camera going to do?”

“We want to see what they are up to in there. How many? Thy must have some kind of surveilance machines in there and God knows what else.” He was speaking fast. He was like the fat guy in the Big Lebowski, Tyler thought.

“you get what I mean, right?”

“I don’t know, man. I mean, what did you hear wxacrly? Because I heard my parents tallimng about stuff–one of the converations I remember from when I was a kid. We didn’t even loive here–nowhere close. And the other…I don’t know, Dude.”

The house was not lit well, only some Tungsten lighting, yellow aand dim. “You want some tea?”

“No, thanks.” Harris got up and sarted moving around the space. The twitchiness and speed that was overtaking the way he spoke now was translating into some elaborate ritual of tea making that seemed to require peeling roots and elaborate scales and thermomenters.

“OK. Forhet about the infra-red cameras. That ws stupid. You’re right. But we need some help on this. That much you agree, right? Because we gotta find out what is going on here.”

“What did you hear?” Tyler asked, though he wasn’t sure he cared about the what as much as the who.

For the second time that day, the pumped quality of Harris’ barrel chest gave way to something more concave and smaller. “A talk. Me and my ex.” He poured himself a cup of a pale tea that smelled like flowers mixed with wet wool. “Something that they had no business knowing about.”

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