This Week's Laughter #4

An archive of substance and form

It’s a bit like how rain comes on in places not known for being rainy. You know, the wind picks up then goes still, then the clouds sweep through and immediately after sheets of rain across the land like someone’s gone and put a film over it all.

First healthy laugh of the week was during dungeons and dragons. One of the other players tracked — it’s been literal months of real time since the last time he rolled an attack that hit an enemy. For those that don’t play, don’t care, at least get behind the math with me. Most things will have around a 15 difficulty to being hit. As a player, you tend to receive a bonus for attacking of +6 to +8. This means on a 20-sided dice, all you’d have to roll is around a 7 to 9 or greater to hit. I don’t really count, but I’d wager an average game that takes around three hours will have you rolling around twenty to thirty times. We play weekly. This means he’s had some hundred to hundred-and-fifty attempts to roll something that’s statistically around a 70% chance and has failed. It was a slow burn of realization this one. End of the session as we’re all chatting, my slow mind was working through the numbers. Of course, obnoxiously, I pointed out how statistically improbable that should be. He was sympathetically amused. Talk about kicking someone while they’re down. This was more like rocks being ground into dust, the laugh.

A flower planted in a bed next to a house in Seattle with a tag next to it. The tag read, “Glamis Castle 1992.” Couldn’t tell you why. The word Glamis, maybe. Feels like a beautifully funny combination. Why 1992? Where are the castles? Each question made me laugh a little harder.

Heather and I turned on the stream for the bears at Katmai falls. They were fishing. There must have been some twenty or thirty grizzlies and cubs. Honestly they were looking pretty lazy. Some salmon were literally jumping and hitting the bears in the face, and the bears were dropping them. Of course, Heather and I were chattering and narrating and pointing like birds on a telephone wire. Like ducks in a dried out pool.

My therapist has a running list of “Cody-isms” over the course of seeing her off-on for six years. I added to the list this week with “Hate-running,” which was such an evocative concept for her that she just had to let the laughs out before she could move on. I love running around like a silly little guy. I hate running as a fitness regiment. I’ll do it if I have to but it will be with extraordinary levels of pettiness and stubbornness. Laugh with us together.

Spending a day with a dear friend just bitching. Just everything and everyone and everywhere subject to my ire and my pettiness. I don’t want to let it out all the time, I’d rather inhabit joy with my loved ones. Yet I still laugh trying to explain the fact that we spent almost a consecutive four hours just complaining and talking shit about anything that came to mind. And of course some good things. Some wonderful things even. Astonishment. There’s such a profound satisfaction in letting those types of energies out once in a while that it has to make you laugh. Villain laughing at the near-guaranteed success of their evil plan.

Finding a book of poetry in a warehouse sale by someone with the same name as my childhood best friend. Here’s one of the poems from the book:

It’s now common to find what you’re looking for. What could have been found only be digression lies at the end of some rather attractive person’s inquiry. The two of you never meet, but there are some close calls.

Odd, unsettling providence. A laugh like an arrow of air.

Playing soccer, I moved myself to goal out of wanting to care for my still-recovering body post-Covid, post-ankle sprain. I am not a large man, nor am I particularly intimidating. But while I’m in the goal? A yapping chihuahua. Could not shut me up for anything. At one point after an opposing forward did some particular skill with his feet to dribble past a defender I yelled out, “They might have the fancy skills, but we’ve got the heart.” I did not let a goal in and even had a fairly impressive save. Athleticism isn’t what made me laugh though. Truly, it was the fact that over some thirty-forty minutes or so, with no impetus to run around or chase after things, left to my own devices, my brain decided it was time to simply yell-talk all the time. I was encouraging! So supportive. But just nonstop chatter. A gibbering gabber. Not even embarrassed about it, laughing out of the joy of being able to yap.

I hope you’ve had a lovely week, and that this may greet you with some warmth and ease.