Why I Pulled Zucky’s Nostril

It seemed stupid, although the point was there. I was peeved that I had to join Facebook to make a comment and it all seemed too rigged for me. One thing that people need to understand about other people when they design these internet highways is that people don’t like to go down a dead end road and having to join a network of a few billion people in order to make a comment on a well laid out site that now goes directly to the google page, well, it seems stupid. So, it all seemed stupid. They say that if you don’t like it then don’t do it. That’s what I did. Those feelings I wrote about in But a Glimmer in the Eye were pretty much mine. I don’t not join Facebook because I’m a coward in the public sphere, but because it made me lonely. Plain and simple. The other thing was just something to rant about that is also true. I like life the other way, simple. Since quitting Facebook i have tried to reach out to a few people via other internet methods and realize that Facebook was keeping me from doing this for several years. I don’t know what it is about talking on Facebook. Each one of these people I just want to sit down and talk to. I don’t want to throw a snide or clever comment around someone I haven’t seen in years. I just want to hug them. So, I had an idea. I’m going back to journalism. Freelance writing, if anybody has a job. I was thinking of visiting every Facebook friend I know and talk about us. I’ll keep you updated on whether or not I even do this or not. The second “not” possible.

Anyway, I’m told I should push myself. Make myself bigger. Been reading HST and am getting a feeling that I should get out there again. As a social being, career wise, I have to be among people. Freelance writing is the only thing that pays money, and I’m tired.

I’m tired of the editing process. I have a novel called Thy Soul’s Immensity which is immensely in need of a professional editor, preferably tied to a publishing house, but I don’t know how to brag about myself well. I like it too much, I think. I’m like gravy, but the meatloaf is too covered. You can’t find the beef. Where’s the beef?

I still want people to read my stories, I guess. It’s my art just like you have yours. I first wanted to write about pictures. I was once highly impressed by the depiction of, I believe, destroying a scorpion in my favorite painter of words of my youth, John Steinbeck. The Pearl. What a painter. I know other painters of words. I wish them all the best. But I need to get out there again. I will write and the better worded word will win. Better.

Congrats to Andrew Kiraly and the publication of his first “rock and roll” novel, Crit. A guy named Coolican, a writer in Vegas, stopped short at saying that it was the great Las Vegas novel. It turns out that Kiraly was a reporter, and he wrote a long feature article on the subject of the Great Las Vegas novel. I’ll have to say that it is definitely a Las Vegas novel, and Andrew’s got that going for him, but only time will tell if Andrew Kiraly had written the Great Las Vegas novel.

Joey C. Kantor
founder of The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite

Published in: on January 28, 2012 at 3:41 am  Leave a Comment  
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But a Glimmer in the Eye

Under Alex’s skin was the dullness again. The sound came from outside. Kids playing their tunes probably, little nothing sounds unaware of themselves that ruled anyway. He went to the window. Not kids, he realized, but the neighbors, people he didn’t like because he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him. By now, after seeing one another for two years, no one cared to bridge this gap.
He closed the window. There was that man who always walked his dog, talking to a woman with blue veins on her temple, a talker, her, one who spoke of things like friends and who gave little notices via her eyes about real meanings that had no importance whatsoever in the world of thought, of ideas, the things that Alex prided himself as having embraced like a lover. He had closed the window so as not to hear the tinny music that the lady always carried with her when she walked. The man never walked, but stood and watched his dog. He was old, too. There was no way to know about them, except that he was not a talker and she was. Did he put up with her as Alex had put up with her briefly before closing the window and going back to his computer? He had 134 Facebook friends. Yet nobody ever called.
He remembered the laughter of the woman. Over the many years laughter seems to lose its luster. It seemed fake to Alex, too loud, too loud to be real, for very few things caused so much laughter to occur unless the person wanted laughter to occur. You could not have real laughter through mere want, he knew. He looked at the happy people on Facebook, hoping that they were not as happy as they seemed. He hadn’t posted in several months and had considered getting off, but his computer was too old now and it wouldn’t let him. He was a slave to Facebook and friends who didn’t write to him, formerly good friends, friends that mattered. All avoided him and his only solace was in thinking that they avoided everybody else, too, that they were philosophically against Facebook so were off doing something else. They probably hoped the same thing concerning him, if they remembered him at all.
Alex had recently quit reading the newspaper in hope of gaining a little bit of solace. He had taken up reading again, novels: J.M. Coetzee, David Mitchell, Russell Banks, only the best of modern writers. He was going to inject the best of thought into his overly worked brain from now on. Everything else had somehow failed him. He had been like those Indians whose sole purpose is to make sure the sun goes from East to West every day. By reading the news he was a watchdog. Nothing too horrible could happen if he was on the job. In the end, he realized, this was a false notion. He had written letters to editors and politicians and had never gotten a response. He had protested the Iraq war. They killed anyway. Everybody does everything anyway, he realized. He had zero impact upon the world by fretting over it. Besides, now that he had let the world go, there would be more of a chance that it would hasten its own destruction and he would be forced to move on, to Argentina or Ecuador or the southern tip of Spain. The nuclear bombs probably wouldn’t go off in these places.
Alex could no longer hear the tinny music of the woman who laughed like she didn’t want to. Janie Frieberg was doing lunch with her sister and she was really excited. He couldn’t put Facebook away just yet. He kept going back to it. Janie was the only girl he had ever dated who remained his friend afterward. She seemed so dull to Alex, viewing her life on Facebook, so much so that he wondered what he had ever seen in her. When she left him, she had been talking about spirituality and politics and religion and sex. When she walked she would sometimes twirl. She was bright-eyed and ambitious, but when she saw him it always seemed like she was looking around him, like she was looking to see if there was something better than Alex. This eventually led to the inevitable breakup. One knows when one is not loved.
Now Janie was married to a man named Styrong. Alex couldn’t place the nationality of that name. Perhaps he was Asian or Scandinavian. It would have fit Janie to go after an international type. She was a romantic. That’s why they originally clicked. She went by Janie Frieberg Styrong on Facebook, proud of herself and her marriage. She was a regular gal now, wasn’t straying that far, was capable of being married and having kids while keeping her individuality which was always very important for she and Alex way back when. She looked better now than she did then, but Alex figured that was just because he still missed her. He loved her then and he loved her still, but now he had to face, everyday, that it was an illusion, that their relationship was a brittle husk at best while it was going on and now was a visible memory anytime he went to the computer. She was making vegetarian tacos for the kids. She got a new shawl that was wonderful. Does anybody else care that meat is murder?
Everybody on Facebook had become a caricature of who they really were, but that was all that he had of them anymore. He had no way of going back to them. He was a failure in this world, living on food stamps, nursing a painful tooth badly in need of a root canal, working at a job that had no interest in his Bachelors in English Literature with an emphasis in Poetry. Poetry. It had failed him. The words had not been enough. The world didn’t want them. After awhile the bitterness seeped into him like the rot into his tooth. More than once he cursed the gods of poetry, those same gods that he saw in the eyes of Janie, that he heard in the music of her voice. He knew what mattered and he was forced to question himself and his choices. Had he majored in poetry because he was lazy? Was he a failure in the world because the inner world really was not as important as the outer world? Had that been a lie? Why did the guys who never bothered going to school do better than he did in the minute intricacies of life? They all got married. All had children. All made upwards of 50 to 100,000 dollars per year. Alex realized that it was willful ignorance and lack of introspection that had saved them. They had not tried to trace the intricacies of God’s grand design and the universe rewarded them for it, like a bunch of Adams before the original thought.
Alex went down the row: Stan Villon, now a professor in South Carolina. Stan was a friend during his post-college days in Chicago. A guy who reminded Alex of Gandhi, Stan had been a student at the University of Chicago. Of course he would now be a professor. Alex sat with these University of Chicago students in old houses while snow fell outside, drinking coffee while reading to each other. They were equals there. Nobody cared that Alex had graduated from a small state school in California of little significance. He sat and listened mostly, always somewhat in awe of the intelligence of his fellows. They liked his poetry, but he always wondered whether he could ever be an intellectual peer to them. They had been vetted by the system and they could take that with them anywhere they went. He had gotten into college easily, for all that had been needed was a C average in high school. Everybody got into his school.
He had watched as these diverse human satellites in the world of the University of Chicago pulled in close just briefly and then veered away into their proper orbits. These orbits were distinctly different from his. Their orbits allowed them to be paid for subtle thought simply because they had also been practical. Many had been groomed. Now he felt that he had simply been allowed to view the subject matter. Nobody ever had any intention, he felt, of letting him also thrive by concentrating on the barely visible truths, pulling them up further and revealing them for the good of all man-kind. He thought of going back to school, a graduate school where he could study philosophy and psychology and poetry and fiction and write essays and treatises and be listened to. Perhaps that was what was needed, to be allowed to be one of the vetted ones, to push it forward, get the title behind his name and just go to work, get paid, get a family, a home, a life. But the brain was dulled by now, at 38, too dulled to forget the pain that he had experienced holding on to a dream made of vespers and silence. He had come to know the realm of poetry, but by this time, the sadness of getting there had chased him away. Half of him no longer respected something that could keep someone from having a family through its virtual insistence upon poverty in order to stay true. This rebellion pushed him back to Facebook. He scrolled down.
A slew of faces, some of them from his time attempting to solidify a weekly poetry reading that fell through. Once again, the real world trumped the inner world. He found that there was petty competition even in the realm of high spirituality. Life always seemed a balance between the animal and the spiritual and the animal always won. God Sex ruled, of course, perhaps because of the spirituality involved on some deeper level, but with it always came the baser power structures, the evil little victories, the savoring of the defeat of others. Once again, the poetic ideal was corrupted by two little things called hope and belief. There was Roger Milens and Fay Disiwala. They were good poets and went on to be in a theater company. He never really knew what they did with the rest of their lives, but they drove nice cars, had mates, were nice people, but aloof. Everybody was aloof. Poetry was about intimacy with others. You could play it, but Alex found that few wanted to live it. God Fun was really the key here. Fun was the ideal once people got together. The urge to laugh became a sort of religion. Perhaps if people couldn’t laugh after every sentence then everybody would have to cry. Everybody would just break down and cry. As people age, the idea of tears became the enemy. No matter what everybody was doing, no matter what a group believed in, the idea of fun always reigned supreme. It was the same on Facebook. Everybody was putting on their perfect face. In the meantime, nobody communicated anymore. Nobody cared anymore. They had all virtually laughed themselves to death.
Brent Helow, Slim Fawaskawa, a Japanese dude who was really funny. Another one Alex didn’t really know. Slim was one of those guys who was in and out. He had an invisible wall around his head, a perpetually smiling head, a mouth of perpetual wit and glee, but a wall nonetheless. He was just another who came out and then went back in where Alex could not go. The death of intimacy, Alex thought. Facebook was becoming a symbol to him of the death of ever being able to connect on a true level with somebody ever again. All of his friends were on it. Every friend that was listed he now knew did not want to know him anymore. It would have been better had he not initiated contact at all. They would have been better off left in the warmer clouds of memory. If left there, there would have been a hope of contact once again, real contact, and it would have held surprise and the memory of the more authentic moments of the past, the true laughter that had simply had to stop. Alex understood having to move on, but he couldn’t quite understand coming back in such an impersonal way. All reunions had been wasted. He would never have a reason to really see these people ever again. They were Facebook friends after all.
Julie Lowe, a model and actress, a stranger; Giselle Luidi, an intellectual from college who laughed like a hyena but behind her glasses possessed one of the finest noses he had ever seen. She was a beauty that didn’t know it who became a business-type, he thought, wasn’t sure, stocks and bonds. Smart girl. He had re-united with her without a word, a simple acceptance of the other’s existence, an acknowledgement that the one is happy that the other is not dead. They had once found themselves alone together for four hours, and talked about everything from politics to the Miami Dolphins. There had even been a chance at love, but it fizzled. Both held back. Both had a feeling about the other, that it just wasn’t that way. They were right. A hello without a hello was in order. Strike Giselle. Tom Julienne, Ty Uflado, a true laugher, a big smile, outdoorsy, probably not at the computer that much. Alex envied him. Jim Lowry, Hillel Lowenberg, Gail Stormer, the list went on and on. All happy. All knowledgeable of him, always would be, none of whom really cared. He hadn’t gotten a personal message by any of them in over eight months.
Alex closed the lid of the computer. Perhaps he could go to the library and use one of their computers to cancel Facebook. He would do it soon, but there was always a waiting list at the library. Outside he heard more laughter. He went to the window and a couple of middle-aged women had joined the dog watching, radio-listening group, whiling away the hours with innocent banter. The middle-aged ladies were loud. They were big lunged laughers who found everything funny and yet had nothing at all to really say. This was the way of the world. People as they aged had gone back to the placid non-thinking of who they really were after all of the bravado of having to be the hero to insure themselves food for their gullets in their old age. At a certain point the hero is let go and the simple, gurgling stream is taken back into their hearts and minds; simplicity and laughter and mere feeling of presence without any impulse to dream forward a finer existence, a more poetic existence, one that magically transforms others while transforming oneself. The idea of a spiritual utopia had been replaced with a toaster and cream cheese reality.
Alex watched the group talk below him for a little while and then went over to the dresser and opened his book. He had picked up, once again, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. After only a moment he closed it and picked up a pen and a small personal journal. In it he wrote:

Ever long the day
Not knowing then
That I would never know
Having sought solace
Where solace dare not dwell
I roam still ever inward
All the people gone
A few old faces
Remembering me -
A flicker
Before all – we fly

#

Published in: on December 16, 2011 at 11:38 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Eastside All-Star

I lost the game. I lost the fucking game for ‘em. Jim Buckley came up to me and said it best: You lost the fucking game, Chatworth, and he was right. I lost our team the championship.
Five years later I was walking around the high school hallways all stoned like I usually was and I ran into this kid named Ripley Knox, a bigger stoner than me. He showed me what he had in his bag and I told him I had two bucks and he said that was enough to get a little buzz anyway so we went to the park, just ditched school like we did all the time anyway and sat under a tree and he lit up a joint and we passed it back and forth and when I tried to give him the two bucks he said fuck it so we enjoyed the joint together on this the first sunny day of three weeks when I finally said to him,
“Ripley, you remember that game I lost for our team back in the majors?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Well, it just don’t seem right that one person can lose a game for a whole team does it?”
He looked at me all stoned and shit and just nodded and then said,
“Yeah, why not?”

I agreed enough with him, but I was suddenly angry that he would believe something could be so, then thought again of it, and remembered that day and how it was all my fault. There was no question about it. But I wanted to ask Ripley now that we were more grown up and shit. Ripley played right field more than me back then so he would be honest with me. His mother grew his pot. So I say to Ripley,
“Yeah, I guess so.”

I know so, but I say it that way. Sometimes one guy can screw it all up for everybody. He had me at second base because Ricky Tynesdale was out with the flu. Ricky was good, consistent, but he wasn’t the star of the team. Right off this kid hits me a grounder. It goes through my legs. That’s cool. Shake it off they tell me. But I could see that the coach was pissed. That kid finally made it in on a triple hit by another kid. 1-0.

Then we got a rally and tied the score. We were doing good when I get up to the plate and take a walk. That’s good. That loads the bases and this kid named Kenny was up who wasn’t too bad, but batted seventh. There were two outs and I was leading off a little bit when I see Cindy Miller. I’ll never forget the moment. Because just as I stepped off that base there was Cindy in her little junior high cheerleading suit bopping up to the stands. I think her brother played on the other team. I just got a real quick look at her tits when all of a sudden I hear “bam!” and this kid playing first base just smacks me right in the chest with his glove and then sticks his hands up in the air and gives out the biggest “yeaaaah!” I’ve ever heard. He was like some sort of Viking warrior or something. We all trotted in and I sat down on the bench. Nobody said anything to me except for one kid. Vincent Trollo. I think his family was in the mob. I don’t remember what he said except that it included the fictitious name “Wackworth”and it was a direct allusion to my own name of Chatworth.
I went back to second base and prayed nothing else bad would happen. But God had taken a little vacation for those two hours I would soon learn. Another ball did come to me which I fumbled. That man on base did score so that we lost our lead. The next kid up hit it to center field and he got on first. The next kid hit it to the shortstop who lobbed it directly at second base because he was unable to call it back after it left his hand. He had just assumed I would be there.

For some reason and to this day I still don’t know why, when he hit it to our shortstop, Randy Valasquez, I knew, I mean, I really knew where I was supposed to be at, but the trouble was that I was right in the running path of this kid going to second and I jumped back because I was scared and he passed me. The next thing I knew I was trying to beat this kid who had been running hard for a good three seconds. There was no way. When Randy threw that ball to me I wasn’t even close to the bag yet and it bounced on the ground and this kid just kept running. I couldn’t believe it. He must have thought he was like the big running guy on that team so he just kept running and finally I threw the ball to our third baseman, Vic Green, but the goddamned ball just twisted or something and I threw that thing about ten feet over his head and this kid just kept running all the way home. The kid who hit the ball made it to third and then someone knocked him in. When we got back to the bench I sat down like usual and didn’t say anything. Vincent Trollo was all belligerant then.
“You oughtta take that glove, Wackworth, and whack with it because it ain’t doing none of us any good out here.”
Then the coach cut in and told Trollo to shut up and sit down. I wasn’t afraid of Trollo. He could kick my ass, but first he’d have to kiss it. It didn’t matter much. The coach took me out for a few innings. The score was five to three. I was involved in every one of their runs and every one of their runs shouldn’t have been a run. I was ready to give up sports. I was twelve and soon to be thirteen. My big brother smoked cigarettes and I would too. He told me about this girl who he made out with in the back of his Blazer. How her tits just popped out of her shirt and then just sat there bouncing around and around like a couple of water balloons. That’s what I’d do. So I sat there and waited for the game to be over and for me to be thirteen and then fourteen and then maybe fifteen and by then I’d have watched more water balloons bounce around than Trollo or anybody on my team. But sitting there thinking those thoughts, trying to rescue myself from my low opinion of myself, I knew I’d just about lost the game for us and I prayed the coach wouldn’t put me back in. Then came the fifth inning of a game of seven.
“Chatworth, right field.”

I was back. I was back in right field. Nobody hit the ball to right field. They took out little Jimmy Grove, a kid whose hand was backwards so after he caught a ball he would take it off, place it on his backwards hand and throw it. His good hand was his left one, but I think he was a natural righty because where Jimmy would throw nobody would feign to know. He once threw a ball behind himself, over the right field fence. Before anybody could tell him not to climb over to get it he had already done so, failing miserably yet in an original fashion because on the fall to the other side his belt got caught on the chainlink and the umpire had to unhook him. The kid who hit it to him got a home run. Our coach protested, but he lost the argument. It was just not worth pursuing really. It’s one of those arguments that because it had to become an argument at all we all stopped and thought about what we were doing out there in the first place. It was the most absurd thing we’d ever seen, any of us, except perhaps for the day when I lost the championship for us.
So I was in right field. The fifth went by. No problem. Then came the sixth. We got a run. They didn’t. Then came the seventh and we score two on a home run by Vincent Trollo. I was closer to being able to go home. It’s six to five. Us. We get up again but we don’t score. It’s the last at bat for the other Tigers. My team, the Giants, hadn’t won the championship ever as far as anybody can remember. And that’s how it was, but then I saw Ripley lighting the roach and thought to myself even if it was my fault it couldn’t have been completely. We were a team. The other guys could have hit more or done more of something good but they didn’t. They just didn’t make as many errors as me.
“You believe that, Rip?”
“Yeah. You lost the game for us, man.”

“And you didn’t? You only played two innings before your dad came and got you.”
“So. At least I didn’t make any errors.”
“You didn’t play, man!”
“I played.”
“Right field.”
“Yeah, but I played.”
“I just don’t know anymore, Ripley.”

It’s not that I wanted to vindicate myself to Rip. Rip was always a bigger loser than I was. I was ten times better than him and there he was sitting all smug smoking the last of his joint like he was Mark McGuire or something. This little runt made me sick. But, you know, I couldn’t shake it. He was right. I made too many errors and therefore I had to take blame for the loss. I remember it differently now than it actually was. After so many years you turn events into happenings. It’s like your first kiss. You remember every moment. Every sensation. Unfortunately, that ball was like that. That ball was like a big sailboat floating over my head. I remember my hand reaching out for it and then suddenly realizing it was easily ten feet away from me. Why I reached for it I don’t know. I can imagine what I looked like as if my memory of the situation included a camera angle from the benches. I saw that thing up in the air so high and I started running in. I was running in because I was going to catch it. It was hit so high and I would get that thing so I ran and ran until I started feeling this weird something in my limbs. It was like my limbs were calling me stupid or something. I didn’t feel right. I felt like I was being torn in two because I’d run way too far in and I was suddenly aware of this ball coming back down to earth behind me. I know I should have run sideways, but I didn’t. I started running backwards as fast as I could. By this time Tim Rowe had started running for it and he was calling me off but I couldn’t tell where he was so I just kept running backwards as fast as my waddling little legs would take me until I plowed right into Tim and our heads knocked together and I knocked him out. Swear to God.
I remember seeing that ball rolling away from Tim and Tim’s eyes sort of rolling up in his head a little bit. I remember turning around and looking at that kid running those bases, heading for home and then back at Tim and then back at the ball which had stopped. Vincent Trollo was running out to right field from first base so I knew I was going to be in deep shit, but I still didn’t go for the ball. All I could see was Tim’s little white boy face, the nose all upturned and red and a little snotty with those eyes half open and his arms spread out to his sides and suddenly I didn’t care about that little ball standing there in the grass like it was. I understood better the absurdity of the game, why God would make a child like Grove, with that one arm, want to be equal to the Vincent Trollo’s of the world and I thought just for that moment that if that ball never moved again then the world would be a better place.

Then David Rice got it from left field and threw it to Vincent Trollo who was about two feet from me and he threw it way high over the catcher. The kid had gotten his home run already. It was a waste of time. We’d already lost. I remember Vincent Trollo then. It was like he wasn’t even aware that Tim was knocked out cold. He comes up to me and pulls me up by my shirt and looks in my face and calls me the worst thing a person can call another which I won’t repeat here. And I look at his ugly face and the next thing I know I’ve spat in it and he’s on top of me hitting me and me looking over there at Tim all knocked out as I tried to block the punches from my face and then the coach stopping Vincent Trollo and a bunch of people trying to revive Tim, including Ripley.

“You were there,” I told Ripley.

“I know.”

“You know what happened.”

“Yeah. Tim got knocked out and you got beat up and you lost the game for us.”

“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did.”

But I was through arguing with Ripley. He’s just like everybody else in this world who thinks that winning is the only thing in the world that matters.

Published in: on December 1, 2011 at 5:29 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In The Smokies

You ever wonder what the world would be like if you or mama weren’t ever born? Jed asked his father while they sat up by the campfire.
–”Sure, You wouldn’t be asking me that question.” Tom strums his guitar
I guess not. How come you play guitar, daddy?
“I play guitar because it sounds good.”
That’s all?
“There’s something we got inside each and everyone of us, Jed, and it’s called your soul. You ever heard of the soul?”
Yeah.
“Well, good then. You got it. Your mama has got it. Even your baby brother Albert has got it. Some people even think that the trees got it. Well, in people sometimes it feels good to feel your soul, and I’m able to feel my soul through the playing of my guitar.”
So the soul ain’t real, is it, daddy! It’s invisible!
“Not real? Invisible? God, Jed, I didn’t realize how much you don’t know. The soul is the most real thing in the world. If somebody has no soul then you know it immediately.”
But I thought you said everybody has a soul.
“They do, but sometimes, if you do a bad thing, you can lose your soul. But I don’t think you lose it really. It just sort of goes underground. It goes into hiding. But no matter how far down it goes, with right living, and doing the right thing, you can bring it back up to the open air. That’s called forgiveness. That’s what Jesus talked ’bout, and your mother. No matter what bad you’ve done, if you ask Jesus to forgive you for it your sins will be washed away.”
How Jesus do that? Jed said.

“Jed, I’m not really sure, to be honest. I’ve always done pretty good at doing the right thing in this life. I’m sure your mother could tell you or if you listen up in church on Sunday they might throw you a hint. It’s a good question though…hmmm, wait, I think I know. That’s a damned good question, Jed. I guess, in some ways, Jesus sends his spirit down to watch over us when we don’t hardly believe we’re worth anything anymore. Maybe that’s what his angels are for. I guess the important thing, if you’re in a predicament of having lost your soul, is being open to those heavenly messengers. Now, they may not look like an angel or they may not seem like Jesus, but maybe they’re something that He does for you in some little way. Maybe he will send you a little bird to sit on your shoulder and tell you what to do. It happens in stories.”
Yeah, but those are stories. Let me play, daddy, Jed said.
“Are you big enough?”
Give me the guitar, dad.
“Here, I’ll teach you. This is how you play…you got your soul? “
Yeah, daddy, I got my soul. Gimme the guitar…

(He hands Jed the guitar and teaches him how to play.)

Published in: on May 15, 2011 at 6:36 pm  Leave a Comment  

Bus Route 270

Bus Route 270

The mind is a vast sea, her turbulent waters formless, yet there is form. The road there, his hands there on the huge bus steering wheel, the twelve people sitting behind him on this lonely-ever ride from East Taylor Avenue all the way to Stearns Mall and back. Clive was only 33, but he felt 40. He was too fat for 33. He had found solace in food, and the sitting, of course, led to 150 pounds too many. The solace he sometimes found was a gift, seeping in from the edges of life. Then there were his nightly bus dreams, so random. Half the time he was at ease but then he would flit into a tense and shaky world.
Had there not been a barrier between he and those four million people he knew that he would have lost it long ago. He wouldn’t have been able to control yelling at the masses that do the stupidest things: bring cigarettes on to the bus, become belligerent, or do things like talk uncontrollably while hordes wait to board. Stupidity was so prevalent among his riders that he gave thanks to the Almighty for the barrier. The payment system was automatic and flawless. The only ones he had to worry about were those who didn’t pay, but most paid. Few feel that they can scam a city bus and get away with it. The bus driver was always right there.
But Clive wasn’t right there, not really, for he was too much aware of life. His thoughts were his burden. He could not pull himself from feeling the wracking yet silent storm that doctors call the unconscious. While others go through their lives in basic, outward ways, Clive lived as a true introvert. He made friends with moments, friends or enemies, that is. Unlike others who looked forward to the future while holding tightly to the present moment, those heroes, Clive’s present moments were always things that grabbed him, or perhaps he them, and he was whirled upwards, this way or that, or even all the way down.
Perhaps he was bi-polar, an ex-girlfriend had told him that, but she had been angry with him. He didn’t think so. He was a man who felt as deeply as any woman. He just couldn’t stop feeling the show, the movement of the inner realms. He never made a show of his inward confusions or expansions. Never rambled or raised an eyebrow. He betrayed nothing, but he traced and remembered every colored mood, often perplexed by how things he didn’t even know he was thinking about made him feel.
“You’re too sensitive, Clive. Why don’t you be a man about it,” once said Nancy. Nobody had ever taught him about this unseen ocean inside. He had never sought help. He was simply its chained perceiver, living in an unlikely way, dismissed by most as emotionally void, as day traded day. He didn’t like it, didn’t like living in what he once thought to himself, driving the bus down 12th, a “poetic” fashion. If he could communicate what he felt people might sympathize with the death of his upward mobility, his petrified potential, but they wouldn’t understand him. No way would they understand him. It would be like a foreign language to them, nothing but symbol and fateful, invisible causes; hurts and answers all wrapped up in a cloud.
He couldn’t help attempting to follow the logic of his personal chaos. Sometimes the unconscious river would rise and he would feel a certain emotion that would provide an explanation pointing at actual forms, reasons for his existence and state, like a bottle suddenly visible bobbing on top of the placid movement of the water. These realizations could carry him if only briefly. It would perhaps be a discovery concerning something somebody had said; a relative in the past, perhaps an injustice recently survived that would give him peace and a sense of forward movement that he felt might possibly lead him away from hopelessness, which was the number one thing that kept him driving the bus and not taking chances.
The flow went on and on as he drove these manic streets and he knew about it mainly through his moods which he studied like a scientist, hoping that some final redeeming, life-giving truth would be released and end the process once and for all. He hoped, and there was a lot of hoping, that he would be allowed in on the true story of the process of what he was, because it held secret promises of safe and happy dreamworlds into which to escape and rest.
To live in dream, to bathe in fantasy, with its smooth edges and lifting truths, was the only thing that would budge him out of his chair into a better future. Non-interruption of the dreaming flow could provide the initiative to find more practical truths, things you can take to the bank, like finding that first bit of gold in a giant unseen vein beneath you. To live in dream would be to live easily without first having to wade through those fetid emotions that Clive ducked like incoming fire.
He turned on 7th again and then scratched himself under his thigh ferociously. The itch was a spike, as though his body were revolting suddenly. When he turned he noticed the woman sitting there. She sat on the side seat reserved for the elderly, of which there were none, and when he turned he found that she was staring at him. He smiled faintly and then turned back to his job. The feeling of the woman stayed with him. She was also an African-American, 30-ish just like he was, and pretty, much too pretty for him, but plain enough that he entertained the idea of halving the window down and speaking with her, just for the hell of it.
He felt her while he avoided looking at her. Once again the feeling led him directly to all things past and present, the whole morass, necessary to deal with first in order to attain some better future. The process, so only his, frustrated him. He hated himself. He thought of Nancy and her way of being that was so other than his, then the way that she looked when he first met her at the bar on Tally Way back in Swiss Township, Maryland, where he grew up. Always Nancy, at first, then at last, for Nancy loved him and then ceased to love him.
Already this woman was painted with the color of Nancy so that she was really only half woman to Clive, half stranger and half Nancy, and therefore the mere idea of her was already polluted by the million thoughts that he knew he would have to endure if he were to actually pursue her. He pushed the dream of a new beginning away by snorting out through his nose, a push of air that he tried to cover up by wiping his nose as though he had had a natural impulse, a little sneeze. Aware of his odd reaction, his head naturally turned to the side and back at the woman. He was already tagged when their eyes met. She was still staring directly at him.
Perhaps she wasn’t staring at him but was only looking in his direction. Of course this could be the case. He turned nonchalantly and looked, this time straight on, just to answer the question for himself. She smiled at him and then lowered her eyes. My god, he thought, she likes me. She likes Me! But then he clammed up. The engine roared as ever. Of course, she doesn’t like Me! He quickly reasoned it away. When he looked again, she was no longer looking, but staring out the window just like all the others, watching the city go by, probably feeling what he felt every hour of his day. Of course she had disappeared. He wasn’t sure, but he had perhaps furrowed his brow. Or it would have been the distance that he could put between himself and another in a millisecond without knowing he was doing it. She was probably just like him, he thought. Life was here and now and if we cannot get away from the ugly and dull realities by making our lives better, then we are simply left with ourselves. But he doubted that she had ever gone as far as he could. He couldn’t conceive of such a thing by another, for Clive felt that we are left hanging by an unexplainably strong thread over a million-foot drop. What skill can keep you safe from the unseen world that wants to take you as its own, use you as its sustenance, yet lives unmolested inside in the guise of a perpetual flow of questions, beliefs and fears? We fear the silent monster of who we are behind our eyes, under our skins. In that space that made up Clive’s monster there were too many variable truths swirling and floating and begging for release. We humans, Clive felt, were here to provide that release, but the release is not for us, it is for it, the monster, the sleeping monster whose body is thought buried and pain unrealized yet fully anticipated. It is a ghastly thing, but Clive danced with it anyway, like dancing with a skeleton even while he knew that a woman would be a better dancing partner.
He had no other choice but to abandon her immediately. Nobody but he knew about the battle and, to be honest, he didn’t either, for he didn’t have the words, but he felt it, always felt it, and his belly grew fat in an attempt to appease it, his belief in it ever going away diminished with each passing day. For this reason, Clive had the feeling that he was on the way down. Although still relatively young, he was going down and away from the sweet oblivion of innocence and would soon be saddled with a knowledge that was not knowledge, but only ferocious reality, pointing only to the death of things, the end of things, the reality of hard social stratifications, the idea that there truly is nowhere to lay your head. He could not do harm to such a pretty woman and he knew he wouldn’t talk to her.
The woman got off of the bus without looking at Clive. She hadn’t liked him. He knew he had made sure of that. He did not have the energy to take on such a thing. Why would you go out there and find someone else not down here, the monster inside seemed to ask. Why would you try and escape the world that is more real than any other real because it is a part of you and the other is not? Why do you think that you could escape my knowledge ever? You must come back down and rest. All of everything inside of you will float you forever, take you from here to there. You will be pleased to be with me because I am what you would call “no more.”
More added complexity and confusion. No more gave hope that things would simplify, that Clive’s sensitivities would shrink. He would man up. It was this shrinking that he actually sought, but to go there just fed the monster in that it was also the reason he had put on the pounds. With the daily giving over of himself to the monster he had tried to replace himself with food. Unconsciousness seemed too much like death and he filled in this gap by eating as much as he could.
The incidence of food was perpetual. He ate a big breakfast, a bigger lunch and, of course, a huge dinner, a buffet if possible; The King’s Corner or Madame LaWang’s on 17th street. In food there was once again color, lightness and substance that seemed to bring on forgetting. It was a tangible act that reminded him that there was more inside than just a dark, swirling cloud of need. Hopelessness was briefly stayed. It was a clear marker of where the future actually lay, a real truth, physical. The future became the moment the food hit his tongue. The chewing sent the pleasurable real form into a pleasant real place that allowed him to revel in his body. He ate fast, he ate hard, like a man. He ate with style. It was always good form. But he also only ate alone, ever.
The thought of Madame LaWangs was pulsating inside of him now. It was 4:53 in the evening. In seven minutes he would wrap up this day’s work and someone else would get on the bus and take over for him. There was 9th to 15th left and he had a pretty full bus. The thought of Madame LaWangs eased him. He always got a little bit anxious towards the end of the day as the bus filled with people going home from their long days of work. There was more stupidity on the other side of the barrier toward the end of the day too, maybe because he had less tolerance for it, but still he believed it to be true. He would hold the angst inside of him and try to contain it at this late hour, but he knew it would only exit once his feet hit the pavement and he was on his way to Madame LaWang’s Buffet.
This day was like most others. There had been a few problems where he had to open the window and speak to someone in a tone he despised. He would slam the window shut and it would be gone, but it would have been an extra something to add to the swirling world inside that owned him. Clive knew that he would have a heart attack after awhile if he kept on this job. He understood about stress and its deleterious effects on the human body, but he had no choice. He was a bus driver, fat and too old to do much else anymore. There was 13th Street. Eight off, six on. Of course, he wasn’t too old, but he had accepted the notion that he was.
Nobody knew how much Clive felt relegated to what he did, how he himself insisted upon his career without wanting to, how the monster inside insisted upon it. Nobody was going to cut him a break anymore. He had lost his beauty and his personality, given them up willingly for a paycheck until he perceived himself as everybody else did who got on the bus, as one of the unfortunates in the world, someone whose existence was relegated to going round and round and round on the same track day in and day out not unlike a rat in a cage.
Clive knew he was an object of pity, not scorn, he didn’t warrant that, but pity was just as bad as scorn. It is something that you cannot address with your fellow man. It is one of those things that people live with silently until they break down and cry silently to themselves, usually for other reasons. Tears are for when the monster gets too big and in order not to kill its host allows a venting of steam. A dead host equaled a dead monster. The pity of others was one of the things that made Clive want to melt.
He saw the last stop. He would get off here and take the system to the restaurant and then back home. He didn’t have to pay, of course. He just got on across the street, transferred once, and the next thing he knew he would be outside Madame LaWang’s, and then, after that, his apartment complex at 28th and Fairfield.
He pulled up to the last stop and there was Rachel, also African-American, who once opened her window and threw her shoe at somebody. She was aiming for someone far at the back of the bus, but instead hit an old man sitting in the third row. She had lost it, gone crazy, been suspended for six months, but returned because she was really a charmer, a really nice girl, and the bosses liked her. That’s Rachel, they all said, but that man in the third row wasn’t thinking that when that shoe hit him in the face. Clive made the stop, but did not open the door. He then motioned to the customers who wanted to get on that there would be a change of drivers. When Rachel was at the front of the row Clive opened the door and she got on. He quickly closed it.

Hey, Clive, the demon-children out today for ya?
Nah, not too bad today. How you doin’ Rachel?
I’d rather be on the French Riviera right about now, but I think I’ll do this instead. God, I hope they’re nice tonight.
They’re okay today. The full moon of the last few days not got them riled up about anything too much.
The moon don’t know how to act during the day. You got the sun. Them people sing songs to themselves in the daytime. That moon you talking about is on my shift, the moon and a bottle of Jack.
You deserve a medal then. Remind me to get you one for tomorrow.
A medal? Shit, I need a shrink. Once Robert’s settlement comes in I’m cutting back. Waaay back.
Maybe I should try and get a settlement.
You wanna have a bad back for the rest of your life? Shit, I’d still take this crummy job. He cries out in the night sometimes. He’s earned that money coming to him.
Keep her light, Rachel.
You too, Clive.

Clive stepped out of the bus and waded through the people all the while saying “excuse me.” There was only one thing on his mind and that was Madame LaWang’s. Being on a bus all day is like living in a rolling cage. Once Clive got on the ground things changed. The monster inside of the cage with him shrank a little bit, disappeared a little bit with the power of its host suddenly surging forth. That’s why they named these buffets fancy names about Kings and Madams, because when you’ve decided to go there you are in a position of power, you are tossing caution to the wind since too many instances of eating at buffets can kill you, and you, for a brief moment in time, stand up for what you want and go out and get it anyway. After a hard days work there was no hesitation. It’s the poor man’s simulation of a rags to riches story.
He got on Route 62 and made it to Madame LaWang’s in fifteen minutes. It was different as a passenger on the bus even though he was still in his uniform. People see you more as a person than an unfortunate automaton. There was a nice elderly couple sitting side by side in the elderly seats in front of him. They smiled at Clive briefly. A quick smile to someone on the bus was like a pot of gold. You would think that it would happen more, but it was really a rarity. Most smiles on the bus were defensive, but then again, you never know who you’re smiling at and Clive was no different than anybody else. This was a different plane and Clive relished it. To sit in the drivers seat is to sink into a vortex and do all that you can from going all the way down. Here was calm flight that made him know that the day’s battle was over. He had won another day’s pay. It was a small victory, the only kind he knew.
He got off of the bus a block from the restaurant and walked the rest of the way, passing a motel and a Circle K. The place was hopping. Clive forgot it was a Saturday evening, which brought him down a notch, because he used to plan every Saturday night by the middle of the week. Now Saturday had all the panache of a Tuesday. He went inside and the young girl just inside the door, Chinese, smiled and took him to a table. He didn’t wait. He went to the buffet line and grabbed a plate. First it was a little salad, a little thousand island, egg. Beside it was the Jello, which seemed wrong, but he knew he would come back for it. He moved on and went straight for the meats: chicken and noodles, beef and broccoli, chicken on a spear, beef on a spear. He piled it up on his plate beside some rice and then smothered the entire plate with sweet and sour sauce until he had to wipe the edges with his fingers and then embarrassedly lick them there in line.
He went back to his table and ordered a soda from the waiter. The waiter was good and quick and Clive drank a good portion of his soda before digging in to his food. It felt good. It was right and good. There was a God. When he finished the first plate he went back and got some of the things he had neglected the first time, the pot stickers, a little cheap sushi and some more barbecued pork, chow mein and rice. This would be it except for the Jello. He devoured the second plate almost as fast as the first. By the time it was clean he knew that he was done. He wouldn’t go back for more although he felt like he wanted to. The eyes are bigger than the stomach they say. After sitting there silently for a while, nursing his soda, he got up and went for the Jello. They had green and red, as always, and he grabbed the red for the hell of it, no other reason. He went back to the table and sat down and that’s when he felt the first pain.
He thought it was from sitting down too hard, but there was a dull yet distinct pain just underneath the rib cage on the right side of his body. He pressed his fingers into his belly right there and tried to relieve the pain by diverting his attention from it more than anything, but it did not go away. It was dull, but it was real. He couldn’t figure it out. He’d never gotten food poisoning before, ever. He put the Jello aside. He wouldn’t eat it. He’d had enough. He stared down at the remnants of his feast. Both plates still lay on the table. He studied the outlines of the plates and even the knit weave of the white tablecloth, something, anything, because this pain was growing stronger and stronger. After ten minutes he knew he was in trouble and he got up and paid the check and left. Outside, he went to the bus stop again and waited for the 270 to come and take him home. He would get in bed or take a bath and then watch TV in bed.
“Goddamn,” he said to himself, pressing down into his side, feeling for what was going wrong inside of him, but not knowing what he was feeling for, not knowing anything, but that he also sort of wanted to vomit now, too. Two minutes later after making this realization he did just that, sending a healthy Chinese dinner into a monstrosity that somebody working for the city would have to clean up with curses on their breath. Nobody was at the bus stop but Clive. For this he was grateful, but soon a young girl, about seventeen, white, walked up to the bus stop, also waiting for 270. Clive was in obvious pain now, but the girl said nothing. They stood there for a few minutes when she spoke up.

“Are you alright?” she asked him.
“No, yes, well, no, I’ve got the worst side-ache of my life. I just ate Chinese at Madame LaWang’s and I think they were trying to kill me.”
“Where is it at? Your stomach?”
“Yeah, sort of right here,” he pointed at the spot.
“Yeah, that’s your gallbladder. You got gallstones. My dad’s got gallstones and when he has an attack he’s curled up on the couch for hours. He says that taking a hot shower sort of helps, but really the only thing that works for him is pot. You got any pot?”
“No, I can’t smoke pot because they test me. I drive a bus.”
“Oh. Then take a hot shower. I don’t know if the gallbladder can bust or anything. I don’t think so. I think it’s your gallbladder.”
“Okay, thanks, my gallbladder. Jesus…”

They stood there quietly for a while as Clive moved from here to there, anything to keep the pain away. The girl said nothing more, fully comprehending the severity of the pain, her father after all. All Clive could think as he looked for places to press on his body that he hoped would trigger some sort of pain relief was “why?” Why me? Why now? Why not some other way that wouldn’t have led to a defective gallbladder, gallstones, whatever this girl thought it was? Why would God put all this fat on my body? Why wouldn’t God just tell me to stop it all, to stop the torture, the permanent ruminating over things that are real only if you allow them to be so? Why would God be invisible so that we all think that invisible things are good things, powerful things, things worth listening to? Why? Why? Why?
The bus came for the crowd. There were eight or nine of them. Clive got on last, gave a brief hello to Shari who was driving, but nothing more, and went and got a seat in the back to be alone with his pain. Everything was luckier than him. All of these people lived their day to day lives so sweetly. They lived in another world because they did not have the pain that he felt. They were rich and didn’t know it. The pain had escalated to twice what it was when he first felt it. It grew steadily, getting worse and worse even when he thought that it could get no worse. He considered going to the hospital, but he hated hospitals. It didn’t sound like it was life-threatening according to the girl whose dad gets rid of it with hot water and a bong hit or two. He’d ride it out. Besides, something inside of him was taking a whipping and the feeling, akin to anger, was actually somewhat delicious.
The monster that lived inside of him, lived on him, feasted on him, was screaming in pain just as Clive wanted to but didn’t because of the people on the bus. Lost questions were instantaneously asked, sudden deeply embedded angers were thought of and expressed through quick movements disguised as pain. His hatred of the inner world that had come to control him was gaining an upper hand through this painful episode and if he could, he would have killed it completely. He would have made it so that he never thought about his thoughts ever again. Then he would walk through the world proud and strong, and do only things that he was called upon to do, things that only had their place in the outside world, and he would gain traction and be bolstered where it counted and he would be a hero because his enemy would not be inside of him anymore, but out there, a simple place really, a place where the eye can see the situation and the brain can tackle it. No more full-body angst, wordless questioning, wordless answering, eye movements that are furtive because totally uninformed. He was sensing just how he was controlled by a million past experiences that had all sunk down deep into him and formed a coalition to resist ever facing the open day ever again. These were Clive’s failures. Clive’s. And Clive knew it now.
The dialogue within was a one-sided conversation about every failure that Clive had ever known. School, where he dropped out. He was going to be a doctor, yeah right; Nancy, a failure, because she loved him and yet he wanted to go out on Saturday night and bag a few blondes while he was still filled with his youthful vim and vigor; work, where he was afraid that the corporations he could have joined at one or two junctures would never let him become what he wanted to be, one, because he was black, and two, because he was uneducated, although everybody told him that he showed real aptitude at what it was that he had the opportunity to do; to be a psychological aide. Who knows, he might have become a psychologist. Instead he called it poetry and it almost killed him, but no more.
This poetry was being confronted with a steely gaze now by Clive as he sat in the back of the bus quietly boiling over with anger. It was all self-directed, an acknowledgement of his pitiful state, the monster he was realizing that he just perceived as “God.” He had never really done that before. Had he been wrestling with God every day in his cage of the bus? Could it have been that it was God that hated him so much, needed him so much, that he had lost any semblance of his former self? Once again, why? Why would God do that to me? What did I do? Then, where will I go? He knew it now. There was no way for him to stay. The pain was getting unbearable. He decided that he would go to the hospital. He screamed out.
“Hurry up! Hurry the fuck up!”
Shari looked crossly at him through her mirror.
“I’m not going to hurry up and you, of all people, should not be yelling at me from way back there. I’ll come back there and kick you off the bus and report you. You’re an asshole, Clive, I never liked you!”
“Yeah, why don’t you shut the hell up, man. Leave the lady alone.”
It was a long-haired hippie type sitting just in front of him wearing ear buds and reading a book. He was standing up for something. Here he was, in pain, dying possibly, not really, but it might as well have been since he had been dying slowly these last six years anyway, and this college kid was telling him to shut the hell up.
“You don’t know who I fucking am, do you?” said Clive.
He relished the way he said it. It was unlike any way that he had ever spoken anything before.
“No, I don’t know who the fuck you are and I don’t care. That lady didn’t deserve your shit. You’re just drunk anyway.”
Clive stood up and immediately started hitting the kid on the back of the head with his fist, just his right fist, over and over, a clumsy punch from an overweight man who wasn’t anything near to being a fighter.
“You don’t know nothing! You don’t know nothing! You don’t know what I got in me! You got nothing! With your book and your white lucky skin! You know what I got in me! I got God in me! God! God!”
Upon this realization, coupled with the fact that he was watching his hand hit the curled up young man’s covered head over and over, Clive began to melt. He sat back down. The pain was just about gone or he’d forgotten about it. He knew he was crying in front of everybody now.
“I got God in me. That’s what it is.”

#

Published in: on May 6, 2011 at 10:23 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Barky Concept

The barky concept

This is the story about my dog, Barky, Felix, Barky, Barky never shutups. Barky barks 24 hours a day and we, get this, we Keep him! Keep Him! My mom loves Barky. So this is the story. This is the way that it’s gotta go. Barky’s got to get famous. This is the only way. Barky must be famous so that my mom can be rich and I can get my own room on the other side of the mansion that Barky is going to buy us. Because, trust me on this, Barky can never be quiet. Barky can never Shut up.

This was the plan. Make sure that my mom didn’t find out, but sneak barky out of the house between two and 6 oclock when she got home everyday. I would have to buy my own carrying case. I’ll take Barky to all of the agencies. Everything. He’s real tame. He’ll let me hold him, which is a plus. A plus so far. So Here we go. Get that perpetual barking on command harnessed into a few dog food commercials and we’ll be set. I’ll keep the money quiet until Barky’s really famous and we can get that house and then I won’t have to listen anymore to that dog!

2.

this is the plan. 3:30 got an appointment with Alpo. I know, I know, Alpo. What’s the odds of Alpo wanting Barky, but they need Barkies and I got one. Put out a few fliers and some other things and got a nibble from Alpo. So I take Barky in and they put him on the floor and first look to see how he is around people and he’s good on a leash too. My mom trained him, she wouldn’t take no shit. And here was my mom on the end of the leash right now, going through all the best motions to impress these people and wouldn’t you know it, through her dog of all things, all of my mom’s stuff, right here.

Anyway, we got through that one. That tall guy was the one in charge, I know it. You can never be sure though. Barky did alright. He barked of course, little son of a bitch, on cue, but that’s what he was supposed to do and it didn’t sound so bad once it was put on full form for the cameras. It’s like putting nickels in a slot machine, each bark a nickel, a chance at the big jackpot on a national Alpo commercial. Christ, they need new dogs all the time!

3
get in get out. That’s it. You make sure that you get in fast get the sound guy and the camera going. In the mood, barky! Rawf! Trademark! Another 2 grand in my pocket. Fifteen thousand short of getting the house and this dog out of my life forever!

4.

Barky did it. A Lil’ Nibbler’s Chunky Treat gig with two other dogs, not the best scenario, the one of the lap and the smile, but I’ll take it, $1,800 to the broker tomorrow and we’re in and that dog can go to hell.

5.
Been in the house five months. Can’t hear Barky anymore. Thanks God. People tell me to use Barky as my money making scheme in life instead of doing what I do. I tell them look, I could be living the high life with that dog there. We could easily pull down another five or six hundred thou together, but you know what? Fuck that dog.

End.

Published in: on April 24, 2011 at 7:22 pm  Leave a Comment  

I Dream of Mountains

I dream of mountains.
Perhaps, this mountain or mountains are
the mountains of true dreams or
just another dream by day,
non-distant dreams like dreams
that have been dreamed a hundred times before
by others, and better.
No, these mountains are the mountains of wishes as well.
Wishes are the winds in these hills that whisper
they are not mine to judge.
They are wishes and winds,
whisperers of tomorrow today.

Published in: on April 22, 2011 at 11:34 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Dink

Dink Merrick was always bouncing, even at the tender age of five. He would pound his hands on things. Anything could be a drum. Then he would lose interest and move on, jump on, really, run down the stairs, run up the stairs, find his mother, Rhonda, who was always tired, and tackle her from behind and wrap his arms around her before being shooed and chastised. But nothing would stop him from his ever present need to move. His attention span was zero. Any toy he played with ended up broken, usually thrown against a wall or stomped on. It could be anything, a large truck going by outside of his window, a telephone call from downstairs. His imagination would take hold of any and everything and his body would follow with a totally incomprehensible action, usually destructive, that eventually led Rhonda to take Dink, whose real name was Robert (Dink was given to him by his father) to a doctor who called him hyperactive and put him on little red pills that worked for a little while, but still couldn’t quash his ferocious restlessness. The doctor asked Rhonda if everything was alright at home and she said yes. A lie. Steve Merrick hit Rhonda everywhere except her face.
Dink’s best friend was Richie who lived two doors away. His mother often asked Richie’s mother, Ann, to watch him while she was at work at the little diner on the highway, the first diner on the road that would take you on up into the Smoky Mountains, a favorite vacationing spot for anybody from Millsville, with it’s expansive beauty, rivers, streams and massive hardwood forests. One day he found a dime inside of Richie’s couch. His mother was upstairs at her sewing machine. Richie saw the dime and immediately claimed it for his own since it was in his couch. Dink disagreed vehemently and said “finders keepers losers weepers” and the two tussled for it until Dink broke away, ran out the front door and continued on until he got to his house, the precious dime still in his little palm. He went to his room upstairs and dropped the dime into his little yellow piggy bank. He then shook it back and forth and listened closely for an accurate accounting of his individual wealth. Not too bad, not too good. He placed it back on his shelf and looked around. He wouldn’t talk to Richie for a long while, he figured, now that he knew how unfair and spoiled his former friend really was. He went to his train set on the floor and turned it on, watching the little Union Cargo train with four cars go round and round. He quickly tired of this and then went downstairs and opened the refrigerator. He made himself a bowl of cereal and ate it and looked at the clock. Although he couldn’t tell time he sensed that his mother wouldn’t be home for a long while. On his way home he had first carefully checked, looking through the neighbors bushes, to see if his father was home still working on the truck. Had he been home he would have gone back to Richie’s and given back the dime. The old Ford was in the driveway, its hood open, tools scattered alongside on the old cracking cement, but his father wasn’t there. The little, rickety Datsun that his father hated with gusto and that he shared with his mother was also gone. Freedom.
But now there was nothing left to do but watch television. He missed Richie’s friendship and was lonely there without his mother. Being an adult wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He turned on the television. He watched old cartoons on the old cartoon station since it wasn’t Saturday and there were no new cartoons to watch. They were funny anyway and at one point he stood up and bounced up and down on the couch as he watched the show. He was in the air when his father walked in and stopped and just stared at him. Jumping on the couch was strictly prohibited. Jumping at all was strictly prohibited anymore. His father said nothing, but just looked at him. There was something in his eye. His mouth was open like he was a stupid man. Dink knew he was in trouble, but there was something more. His father looked at him in such a way that he knew that he would get it good this time. His eyes were hollow, almost dead. His face was twisted around and contorted making him look like a monster that he once saw on t.v before his mother made him turn it off. His first thought was a question. Is he going to kill me? He thought that his father would kill him, not just beat him as he occasionally did when he was bad, not one of those hard hand beatings on his rear and his back and the back of his head hard until he was dizzy or belt beatings that would last it seemed an hour until he was purple and blue under his clothes. Dink, upon looking at his father, believed with all of his heart that the end of his life had finally arrived.
He ran for his life, darted up the stairs, directly into the hall closet where he closed the door behind him, opened the clothes hamper lid in the pitch black, forgetting about the light bulb on the string, and climbed in. He felt himself shaking, shivering at the thought of the look in the eye of his father. Never had he seen such a look. He began to put the few clothes and towels in the hamper over him in case his father searched it and relaxed his body so that he would sink as far down as he could possibly go. There was suddenly a crash downstairs. Then another. His father was kicking things over again searching for him. Then there was a thud and a scream. Then another thud and then another scream. He was punching the wall. Then another thud and then another scream until his father let out a high, piercing wail that sent a sharp shiver down Dink’s spine which made the lower part of his back physically hurt. He listened intently inside of the silence after the wail. Where was he? Dink couldn’t tell. Then he heard the footsteps. His father was walking up the stairs. Then silence again until he heard the door of his mother and father’s room open. The door did not close and he heard some drawers opening and then closing as though his father thought he was in the drawers inside the sliding closet. Then silence again. Nothing. He remained inside of the clothes hamper, shivering, his teeth chattering together. But still there was no more noise from his father. He hadn’t even left his room. Dink was too scared to cry.
Dink stayed in the hamper. How long he did not know. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. He had no idea, but he knew that he wasn’t ready to make a break. His fear of the dark was gone. The dark was the last thing that he had to be afraid of anymore. The dark was now his only friend. The phone rang inside of his father’s room. His father answered it. He couldn’t hear what his father was saying, but he could hear his voice. He was talking to somebody in a grown up manner. His voice was low and steady. He seemed calm now, as though the earlier destruction was for fun and now he was bored again. His father stopped talking and once again there was total silence in the house. After a couple of minutes, the phone rang again. His father answered it and once more there was that voice, a new, calm voice that spoke once again in a grown up manner. Far in the distance Dink could hear the blare of sirens. There was a fire somewhere. Had his father set the house on fire? Was he going to burn to a crisp? He smelled no smoke, but he wondered. The sirens got louder and louder and then suddenly stopped. He then heard the sound of feet on the carpet downstairs. He thought he heard a window break as well. Then another. They were fighting the fire downstairs. He had to go. He heard voices and movement up the stairs. His father still talked on the phone in that same calm voice. There were other people in his house, but none of them spoke. His father’s voice was the only voice when suddenly he heard another man’s voice.
“It’s okay, Steve. Don’t bother with it, old friend. C’mon, there, pal. Let’s just end this thing, okay?”
End what thing? Who was this man? He was not the only one in the house this was for sure. He heard the fireman radios static and electric downstairs, the serious sound of people doing serious things. The man spoke again.
“John, let’s do this my way now. Give me a little bit of time. I know Steve. Right, old buddy? We got you covered, right? We’re going to be alright. They’re going to step away for a bit.”
He heard footsteps moving away from his father’s doorway, but they did not move back down the stairs. How many firemen were in the house he couldn’t tell, but he could sense the buzzing. He could sense the danger and it made him sink lower into the hamper, even if the house was on fire he was not going to move. He was undiscovered.
The silence returned. He could hear the man and his father talk as though they were having a conversation, but he could not make out what they were saying. After awhile the fear subsided somewhat. His heart stopped beating a million miles an hour. He was tired, so tired and he felt his eyes close. Just a moment after he felt this weariness he fell asleep. It was a hazy sleep, a soft sleep, the kind that children were supposed to sleep. He awoke with a start thirty minutes later after remembering that his father was in trouble and he needed to help him. He had not burned to a crisp. His father was in trouble. Something had happened to his father. Although he did not know how long he had been asleep and because of the silence in the house he climbed out of the clothes hamper and pulled the string on the light bulb. The light hurt his eyes, but it allowed him to find the doorknob which he turned slowly and silently before peering into the hallway through the tiny crack of the door that he had opened like a spy. Nobody was in the hallway. His father’s door was open, but there were no more voices. He opened it further and searched the hallway to the end. There was nobody at the top of the stairway. Everybody must have left. He opened the door just enough to get through it and slowly made his way to his father’s door. When he was fully in the door frame he saw his father sitting on the floor, his back against a dresser. His legs were spread out in front of him and his head was resting upon a shotgun, the barrel keeping his head up like a crutch. His finger was on the trigger and a police officer crouched next to him. His father then moved his eyes slowly towards Dink and the sadness in the look immediately made Dink cry.
“Oh, God,” his father said, and the police officer said. “It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay.” But then Dink briefly lost consciousness, just for a split second, for he had suddenly accelerated at an unreal speed. He flew forward and hit his head on the wall as someone ran past him, pushing him over as though he were a rag doll. He turned over and saw that an older boy had run him over and was now beating his father mercilessly. He curled over on his side, closed his eyes and plugged his ears to drown out the horrible screams, like a girls, that were coming out of his father’s mouth as the room filled with police officers trying to get the boy off of his father who could do nothing to protect himself from the viciousness of this other child. After a moment they were able to pull the boy off of his father and held him like he was a dangerous full-grown man. He was breathing hard. He wore no shirt or shoes and had shampoo in his hair. This boy’s eyes were like the eyes of a scary monster too and they would not leave the form of his father who was now in the hands of two police officers. Another police office hurriedly removed the shotgun from the room. His father’s body wilted in the prison of the two police officer’s firm grips and he watched his father cry too, just like him, as if they were agreed that the world had finally come to an end.

Published in: on April 16, 2011 at 6:12 pm  Leave a Comment  
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They Were Found Righteous – Albert

The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite’z

They Were Found Righteous
a breakfast surreal by Albert Jones

Chapter 1

The Unintelligible Wrath of God

Usually the blank space, the vacuous middle, the unholy whole of what I am is like a secret passageway to a new place. Horses cavort then die then disappear, but then re-appear running thigh long and whispery in their cloudy passage. What hard place do their hooves scratch? None, for the horse is in dream, a lone representation of a thought not reached by me nor anybody else. It drifts away, does not run, for it cannot run. It can only drift, disperse. This is the mode of normalcy for me. For you? Maybe for you too. If a horse why not a llama? A lemur? A disc? An obelisk? Why not a centipede or just the legs of a centipede? This is how much the eyeball world knows when belief in a something further inside is, not forgotten, but accepted as sad, decrepit and scary. The inner world teems and it is better that these horse half-thoughts do not arise again. Trilobites. Why not trilobites? An image, any image, where you can dig in like a fat man at a crab feast for something new, something about you? A crocodile? A soft day to replace a sudden feeling imageless that you must face. Why? Why?

Job was told there was something bad that he must have done to have brought upon him such wrath from God. Job sat there and watched everything fall apart. What must he have done? He could not think of what it could have been. Nothing. He had done nothing wrong. He never left this sentiment because he couldn’t see anything but the truth. This fact is what made him a noble man in God’s eyes. He did not make himself believe something that wasn’t true so that he could gain favor with his oppressor. He couldn’t. His nature was simple. This nature is what got him into trouble in the first place. How could he have changed? The Devil made a sorry bet. Watery worlds. Deep far down worlds like in an ocean, cold, salty with beasts inside. All symbolic. All symbolic for you, but not you, not anymore, not since the pain came along and made all such visages fearful. A trilobite. Or a crab like the zodiac sign. Each could make you something more than you are, but you lose it in the thinking and the analytic isn’t so good anymore and why would you want to go there anyway, this world that possesses you and feeds you tiny morsels of meaninglessness, no context, just tiny morsels of meaninglessness. Dodgers at 4 o’clock. You read it in the paper. You’ve got to go to work now.

I’m a scuttly now, a bog, bugged, scuttly upon the floor. Found out about my outer limbs and feels the crackle of the box. No way to get a message through my back. That’s where the light comes in. Angels. You slowly lift your eyes and you see the dawn or is a wasteland come to haunt you? A past? There must be a past or a whole bunch of built up futures that never materialized, all in all, though, you can bet that it will look like a city on a hill, but you won’t bet on it, because, although white, it is crumbling, slowly crumbling and the sand is becoming chalky and split and you know that yesterday is today and you cannot catch up. It will not let you catch up. A sloth. A lemur. A sense of well-being barely remembered. At least you have a car.

A downward slope, a slide of sorts at the tip is the leap. The lip of the tip is a leap into sky and from there perhaps down. Who am I to guess. Perhaps up. The eyeball world tells you nothing that’s why we turn, why the eyeball looks away towards something new. The two are unconnected, this thing inside, the tip thing, the lip thing into sky and the eyeball thing, tomorrow, today, the why’s, the where’s, the how’s. You think you’ve found color? Mind you, you have not. This thing that you have found is as wordless as yesterday. You watch for your next thoughts and hope that it will come for words may form upon your lips. Then you will know. But that is the eyeball world, the turned away world where hope is all that you’ve got because there is nothing else. You need a mirror, you know, but also know that the mirror is a mirror and where is the where? The there? Here, you hope, it is here, somewhere, because if not then all you’ve got is today. Not a place to get an eyeball in.

But there are buckets and in these buckets lie piles and piles of cash and that’s where you’re supposed to go. Go to the buckets of cold, hard cash. Cold? No, not cold. Warm and pliable and love-producing, these buckets will bring you warm flesh with heart attached. It will bring you children and home and hearth and hope and expectation and quiet knowledge of life’s realities, but stalwart faith, too, and hope. Did I mention hope? Let the exercise continue upon the Lord. Green and smelly, good and faithful. Cash is the God of the world and the only God the world will let you worship. Choose another God, go ahead I dare you, you will see that the world will not allow it for very long. Christianity? Hell, you’d be in the streets. The eyes will look away. Muslim? Well, I wouldn’t really know, but money seems better than this too. Hinduism. Well, there, everyone is poor. Anyway, green and good and smelly and hard and there and present and heartbeat bringing, life affirming. I worship you. I worship you. I worship you. If I don’t I’ll be kicked out I know.

Out from the out in to the inside and then back out, strung, this path together by course thread marked. Still no sign of land. You don’t want feats. You want truth and love. This is all and tomorrow, when the eyeball is back, you will have to make do. Another day is what it brings, no mirror, yet the day. Tomorrow, but no today. Past loves are gone and you are here and your eyeball is dead, or if not dead, un-seeing enough to seem dead. Unseeing enough to make you want to sleep. You attached to the eyeball by tether and synapse to heart and body where fat is becoming who you are and bags are spilling under your eyes because You Can’t See Yourself.

Oh, well. Money is there (although it’s not). Money is there and you had better believe it. Respect it. Money? Money? Money? Money? What does this mean? It means warm cars and heat. Mountain roads yet safety. Sleeping children and a warm smile and true love beside you. It means family appreciation and your rightful place. It limits doubt, no, kills it. Your smile seems like something meant to be. God was good to you and all because of money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

Slip sided because the memory of sex is gone, you are in four rooms, between four walls rather, where these rooms, or walls rather, wait beside you. At least they are there although they are much like the hoofless horse and then they are gone and you don’t know why you would see them in your Mind’s Eye. For if a hoofless horse can run and a four-walled room (s) can be then the inner space, the gasping space, gurgling space can be filled more, but not with feeling, this you know, not with feeling anymore because when feeling comes then you will know that you are something beyond the other thing. Money will become something again and you will raise your mouth to the skyh to try and capture some with a smile, a moneyrainy smile that catches rainmoney smile and you will be happy because the cragspace of nothing brown where walls and horses non-eyeball placeness beckons you will know. Simply, then, you will know…perhaps.

Well then back to the box. Slow down and take heed because back to the box you go when memory, good stuff, the stuff that is good for you to remember not bad, hints at itself again like a vague whisper a mountain lion stepping soft in snow memory asking for you again by name. and you remember that you remember that you remember that you remember that you remember. Memory of old days return again and you know that if this memory is here that another can be formed but boxes and horses, dead horses, I might add and eyeballs and you and me and us and we and money and this and that and the other thing and the thing beyonjd that that you didn’t want to talk about and thw whirl and the world and the now and the then and the how and the when and hen and the chipmunk and back to you and me and us and we and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes…

Remember when the monkey wrench was thrown into the plan? Remember when the surf carried me away and I didn’t come back for ten years? Remember how I thought that I wasn’t human and therefore couldn’t have relationship because relationship was between two humans and I was not human, but something else? Remember how the sky turned dark because that is what it was said it must do to denote the feeling that was being bandying about, and it stayed dark for two years? Remember when we had sex in the rain? Remember how we thought that this mattered, before the period when I thought I wasn’t real and that maybe I could live in a box and ask questions of a God that didn’t seem to be there and when the day ended, as it always did for you because you were real, then all things would end and a little less light would slip into the picture so that the picture was of rain and steep hills and everywhere you looked you didn’t see. That much you knew by now, that as a not human you did not see and you wanted back (me) membership in the club because not being human is not all that it’s cracked up to be thank you very much.

And then it happened anyway and you saw that you did not see and after years and years of trying to see anyway, that is, become human again anyway, you saw that you did not see, that sight was a something that was no longer allowed to you because of the goddamned way that everything goes down until you don’t want to see, the eyeball is closed to the other world. The eyeball knows better than to see and you guess from then on it. Your days continue, of course, but it is all of the guess. Guess the color of that, the temperature of that, the mood of this, the meaning of that until all dead horses and celestial boxes become solidified in a someplace that is not meant to be deciphered. No more answers for you, he who tried to leave the human race but found that he had no other race in which to go. Pity though the teller of the tales of woe for such persons are unwanted, usurpers and much done before. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, Hence one of the reasons for “ending it all.” But not.
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As for the soliloquy. Who asked? Nobody that’s who. That’s why that is that. That which is not the other that that. Word play. Meaningless. But is. It. Then. When all is then. Now. Belly far heaven go wherever cloud be roam. That that. Or vortex, something more to go for, go far for when you don’t even know which thread is here, what world connected. Far into the unknown then while butterfy capillaries and caterpillars green greet you again, notice you are on the periphery and your words are letters first, before thought, and thought, hidden, dances unnoticed, single and solitary, so that you can beep alone where code is duke.

Even the –less can be mapped out like a mountain craggy image up then down and hidden by clouds-even that. Just because all eyes are gone doesn’t mean that there is not seeing. You have the vortex, again, the mountain hole wind trees dirt deer swirling down into the maelstrom. That too can be mapped. Shown. Even though eyes are still closed by all, no seeing yet sight. Whose? Whose?

Those who did rock and the hard block hope and the dyke role is the one with the suit the one with the sack, guns in backs, movie live in. wicked. It’s a wicked where we live in.

B;oblip Industries. Clipping now. Hicking now. Wicked sound, six pack I’m sipping now. It’s cool. It’s cool. It’s cool. Whoo hoo. Whoo. Hoo.
Whoo. Hoo!

Ya’ll 2002 transplant. One! Hzhzhzhz .

They used the beat from garnier’s fruictese and got national radio play…but they’re drinking beer!

Righteous! Dude!
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Published in: on March 30, 2011 at 2:50 am  Leave a Comment  

I Am Worthy – Albert

I’ve sat on this for a long time, the lost days, the moments of wanting what I had and no longer being able to feel the entering place. It really is like wandering dark hallways. All memory is lost because it cannot be seen. It can only be felt. There is nothing not askew. If color could be placed upon my mind, enough to outline those forms still brewing in my soul I would be a happy man, but it is only the acts of others that seem to be able to place me there. Those acts seem to be unimportant anymore. I could trace anything in my day. I don’t mean draw, but trace the outlines of feelings enough to be able to look back at it and proclaim its verity.
And I was proud. That was a good feeling. Although when you are at any particular place in your life you doubt that it is real and verifiable there was a time when final results occurred, final notions, things that made you breathe out and walk on sturdy in your step like a man who knows where he is going and determined to get there. Too many people have placed me aside or, to be more truthful, I have set myself aside for other people to shine. I have always been one who steps aside for the new and whole in others. I surround myself with those who do not consider these questions, those with minds that put forth what they know as if it were true and all that there is to know. This has caused me some despair over the years because my altruism overrides my selfishness and it is only in selfishness that you can assert yourself as those who are also asserting themselves mindlessly do.

I am working on this. It is my weakness, this capitulation to all who appear and assert themselves. If you listen enough to others you will forget that your truth must be gathered for yourself. What is this truth? It is a million footed thing. A monster or a saint that asks for less discussion, asks for an end to discussion so that it may be felt deeply. Study, something formerly sought after in my youth, in its disappearance leaves me hollow for then there is no more pondering. There is only scattershot thought, winged solutions, uncolored wandering darkened rooms. At least I lost my ego. But that was not what I truly wanted. There is the selfishness. This selfishness, this healthy selfishness, asks for more color, more light, assertion and proclamation all the while knowing that it may be shot down by another’s proclamation and yet, if so, this should be considered a good thing for the lion, at least, has been let out of its cage. No place for a lion to be.
I believe that the mind, in forsaking knowing, retracts, becomes emaciated and if left too long in an unattended state, dies. I have attempted this soulical suicide. It has been what I have wanted, to find truth in an unadorned state. But truth unadorned is not truth for it cannot be seen. Vision is desired because it streaks across the mind in a flash, with flash, and does so because life is proud and viable and seeks beauty in every step of it’s formation. We cannot be a dunce, asking for nothing for hatred of human pride which we may believe lurks around the next corner ready to devour us. We are meant to shine. Our proclamations are meant to be daring and our lives so fulfilled proclaim back to ourselves our goodness. We become beacons of light that move us forward because it has taken away our choice. When you see an open path you must take it. When you do you bump once again against darkness, but beside you are visions of truth that edify. It is this picking of the fruit right where we are that allows us to grow. Growth is our ability to feel secure in our knowledge. Knowledge allows us to feel secure in our steps. Darkness is only darkness and can be penetrated by simple light until we finally reach the reality that we seek be it what we expected or not. We seek knowledge of ourselves. If we become too wrapped up in mind games of others concerning us we will become stilted, but once we awaken again we are more than able to continue the fight, to pick up the sword and cut once again at those black chimera’s just ahead. We kill fear.

To have true victory over fear we must have true acceptance of love. Love is the result of our having tried. Our having tried reminds us that we are worthy. Success is that which allows us room to stand back and smell the flower, to love the flower and all those around us. It is and is not the opposite of hate. Hate makes us want to hurt. Love, it’s opposite, makes us want to continue the path in which we are on. It is our payment for we do nothing for free. We all must be paid and when we play in the garden of such thought it is nothing but this love that reminds us that we are good and right and worthy. Love goes hand in hand also with change. If we are to love we must embrace the entry into the realm of love. Without this entering into the darkness with bright flame we are nothing. Fear, the first thing we encounter on our journey, is only fear. We must not back from it. We must edify ourselves with that which will remind us of this. Some would call this positive thinking, but I hate such terms. It is more poetic than that. This beauty, this senseful beauty which occurs when we dare to love, is all and all ultimately, for if we are to give our lives over to the process, a process which may at times decapacitate us, we must reach for the lifeline and love is the lifeline. In it is beauty and joy and delicate artistry. This goes for thought and spreads into things that thought produces: art, literature and such. We are meant to explore the good and great things in our lives and in other people’s lives. It is not our responsibility to hold it down as the greatest of thoughts, for all things die as well as the opportune moment for the release of a beautiful thought, but while we are with it we should be with it completely. In this way the love spreads through you and you are able to share the thought poetically, shiningly, daringly and lovingly and the end result is that whatever kernel of existence was hiding inside of you is now released into the wider world, injected into other souls who can use it for their own sustenance. If it falls flat then we must remember that the process is true, but not always true for others. Opportunity knocks to those who can hear it. For those who can’t it doesn’t mean it won’t. It may just mean that it is not time.
I have gathered a hatred of poetry over the last few years because of hatred for myself. This must change or else I will die. Literally die. The body cannot live in a world where love is kept out voluntarily because you feel unworthy. I am worthy.

Published in: on February 13, 2011 at 6:46 pm  Leave a Comment  
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