Where in the World Is OUR Carmen Santiago?

photo by TGW

Email From thegrowlingwolf
"'How many nuts/Make a tree house/Full of nuts...' I saw a ballpoint pen. It looked inviting. I picked it up and immediately desired blank paper... I found a notebook. I opened it to a clean page and I started writing with this ballpoint... '...The wind-whipped day/The wind-spanked night/The tree bends/The house spills its nuts...' My hand holds this ballpoint possessively. I used to write everything I wrote with a pen, fountain pen, then ballpoint pens, though never with a pencil. I've hated pencils since elementary school--fuck pencils. And I haven't seen or touched a typewriter in at least what? nearly twenty years? I do not miss typewriters. Fuck typewriters. 'The house rolls/Off east while/The rest rolls west...' I once owned a word processor, too. I damn sure don't miss those. Fuck word processors. 'The nuts fly/The tree falls/The house collapses/On a nude world.'"

There you go, fans. An email from thegrowlingwolf. We haven't a clue where he is--he could be in any of the following places--of course his precious Davenport, though we doubt that since he hates the smell of swollen rivers; or he could be with any of a bunch of very close friends, like in Silver City, New Mexico (no, we just remembered, that friend is in Antarctica--now, hell, the Wolf-Man loves the cold so he could be down at the South Pole!); in Bakersfield, California; in Sacramento, California (he hates the smell of burning wood so we doubt that he's in either Bakersfield or Sacramento); in Seattle, Washington--or that Seattle friend also spends some months in Phoenix, though we know the Wolf-Man hates Phoenix. He could be in several secret places--he could be in the next god-damn room for all we thestaff know--he could be up at thedailygrowlerhousepianist's house in duh Bronx--he could be sleeping on the floor of theryefarmerfromqueens's place of business--there's a chance he could be anywhere--you can't tell by an email, though that means he's got access to a computer, but then that's not much of a clue since access to computers is a pretty easy to achieve these days. Did you know US Chinese dudes are making small fortunes opening Internet cafes in Beijing and Shanghai? Did you know that a lot of these superInternet companies that have sprung up over the past twenty years were started by teenaged Chinese kids here in the US--they create like gaming software or systems software and sell their creations for hundreds of millions of dollars. Remember Wang computers? Yahoo was invented by a Chinese California teenager. Google was invented by a bunch of kids. Bill Gates uses kids to create all his operating system changes! Kids may be ruling us one day--hell, they seem to be ruling us today.

We do not have a crystal ball. None of us believe in crystal balls anyway...oops, sorry, looks like Franny and Zoe believe in crystal balls, a gypsy woman's ability to shake the most cautious believer out of their money, hell, out of their houses, out of their minds, "I see a great change com'ink in your future. I see a gray building; a corner building. This gray building carries on its north side a sign, a handpainted sign...why! it is just now being painted--surely it is the Gypsy King handpainting the sign--wait, I can now make the sign clearly out--it says, 'Give the poor little Gypsy lady all your cash and your ATM pin number--if you have a safety deposit box, she'll need the key and password to that--oh, and she needs a car--not just any car, Gypsy will not ride in just any car; she will tell you what kind of car she need.' Ah what a beautiful sign; it is so beautiful, it must have been painted by God himself--won't you do as God says?"

A Hairy Baby Is Born
thegrowlingwolf was an incubator baby. Born blue. He didn't cry when the doctor slapped him on his back. He did growl. The doctor looked at Mrs. Wolf laid out panting still in the stirrups and shook his head. Mrs. Wolf choked out, "What the hell is that head-shaking you're doing supposed to mean, Doc?" "A tragedy. At first I thought he was a new breed, I mean he's as hairy as a Polish girl's...excuse me, are you Polish, Mrs. Wolf?" "Good God, no, man. I'm, as my father the fiddler used to say, 'Half-a-pint'a Scotch 'nd half-a-pint'a Irish--and in me back pocket is a full mickey of American rye.'" "Anyway, Mrs. Wolf," the doctor continued, "your son, this baby I'm thinking of pickling, is so weirdly hairy--and that growl, did you hear that growl?" "So what, don't all babies gurgle...or growl if you wish?" "Jesus, Mrs. Wolf, your baby just bit my ass...he has teeth already--canine teeth." "All humans have canine teeth, Doc. What the hell you sayin' is wrong with my boy?" "Well, humans don't have teeth when they're born, come on, what planet you livin' on?" "My mother said I had teeth when I was born." "My God, it's in the poor little bugger's genes--Mrs. Wolf, I'm afraid your hairy dog-boy-like son is suffering from a case of full-blown lycanthropy--I wouldn't take him out in the moonlight much if I were his bitch, I mean, his mama. Anyway, I'd either better throw his little hairy ass in an incubator or else pickle him like I intended when I thought he was a goner."

Once home, Mr. and Mrs. Wolf decided to name their newborn son, Growling. It was the grandmother who suggested they name him "The Growling Wolf," the grandmother quickwitted though she was already gnarly at 59, a pioneer women with leathery skin from toiling under that high-sky West Texas prairie sun--and who wrote poetry in her isolated room on a 1924 L.C. Smith typewriter to which she gave her most tender loving care. She certainly loved that typewriter more than she loved her daughter, The Growling Wolf's mother.

Mrs. Wolf had been a Wolf when she met Mr. Wolf.

thestaff (we ain't paid to write--we write with love of writing)
for The Daily Growler