The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

There are people reserved for the people who come to the place where they can’t take another step. Moxy is one of those people. So is Albert. Me and my mama are those people, I guess, for people who are truly those people, me for Moxy, mama for Albert. Me for Albert, too, I guess. I guess when you think about what a family is and what it’s for there is no one person designated for any other. You’re all thrown in together like some family stew. If one dream you have concerns one particular family member you can rest assured that you’ll have another one about a different one. I think that’s where Albert is wrong with his rock opera. He thinks that one person deserves all the glory for having loved- Diana. But that’s not true at all if you look at Diana’s family. Look at William and Harry. These are two lovable kids. Each one of them deserves a rock opera too, but Albert only wrote one and I’m not about to make him write another one for William and another one after that for Harry. Knowing Albert’s salvation complex he would probably try to do it too.

Starting off on this journey of an account of my life I thought the power behind my story would go on forever, but I’m just about out of words to describe a story that doesn’t have much of a plot. I can’t trace the places that I’ve been because like I said those fifteen years are just as good as gone for me. I don’t want to dwell on them because they went by without me really there except in some strange, dream-like way. I’m not bitter at myself for having done what I’ve done, but I am a little bit disturbed over the time I’ve wasted. If it could have been possible that I would have met Moxy and had Minnie fifteen years ago I would have done it, would have stayed at the supermarket like Albert did. But I can’t go on thinking like that. Lost years can’t be made up. If I miss the story that was never written about them I can’t cry. I’ve got a story that is just as good, but sadder concerning where I went. Mine is a history of the needle.
But if this is such a history then I must use the language of mythology to describe it. As my mind wanders over the people in my pantheon I divine the depths of my drug addicted sorrow only from what they have to say to me now. If I were to go back to some of the faces that I stared at while high and let them be my storytellers then I would just as soon as die. For I’m away from there now. I don’t play rock and roll anymore except occasionally and for what I’m doing for Albert. I’m not mad at it. I’m not bitter that it took me into dope harder than I’d ever thought I could go when I first started experimenting. But I’m not one out to gather pain. No reason could there be for me to recount the scum that I became to you, to purge something in my soul as though my families prayers had not been enough.

So let me tell you more about my family. I know there’s no real story here, but I think there’s some meaning that could get through, something that might relate a thought to you that will remind you of a story that will take the place of my inability to remember things well about how things happened, their order in the universe and all that. You do that. I will concentrate now on what I want to, namely, the look in Minnie’s eye the other day when she got so mad at me for lying to her. We were talking about heaven. I don’t know why. Minnie said to me,”Daddy, if angels ain’t got no wings like Albert says, then how come they can fly?” I wasn’t sure if this was a Minnieism or not. I thought about it, wondered what it was exactly that Albert told my child, gathered that it went much deeper than I could ever imagine therefore giving Minnie the upper hand already. I thought about calling Moxy in, but Moxy would have been in the same boat I was if she chose to be. She wouldn’t. I take everything that Minnie says as important and it’s not because I’m a new age dad either. I just do. So I sat there with the girl on the ground where she played with her little toy of sticks of some sort out on the sand and I thought about it. I thought about it. I thought about it. And I thought about it. Then I said, “Angels are spirits, baby, they fly because God didn’t give them a body like you or I got.” Minnie says, “Then they don’t fly. They more kind of float.” I say, “Okay.” Then she looks at me, looks me in the eye real hard the way she does and she twists up her face and puts her little wrist on her thigh, the palm facing up. She’s suddenly this little Marilyn Monroe but with an attitude much saltier. She looks at me and says, “Daddy, you never seen God have you?” I said, “No.” She says, “Albert has.” Now I’d thought a lot about God by then. I thought I’d seen him a couple times too, I mean, really seen him. I knew I shouldn’t have taken it on, the challenge of showing my little girl the truth as I know it, but I was tired by then of being a hero and I thought that maybe some day my daughter would love me more for not being one by, at least, attempting to tell her the truth even if it wasn’t within my power to do so. So I thought about Albert and what he might have said, again. I thought of my brother Albert, working in the market, writing his stories now that I’ve taken on the work of doing his music for Petals and waiting for me to finish. And I thought that if I never finished he would keep waiting for me as long as I promised that I would finish. Taking into account this and the fact he came for me and the fact that, well, somehow, the fact that Minnie’d seen Teardrop lowered into the ground and I had yet to understand completely the look on her face as we done it to her. Taking all this into account, I thought the best thing to say to my baby was that I’d seen God and God’s angels all have wings and even though I didn’t lie, that they are spirit, spirit is just a powerful as flesh when it comes to being real. So, yes, I told her. Angels fly on wings of spirit, flapping away, making sure little kids don’t fall off mountains. But I shouldn’t a told her that. “Annnabelle fell off the mountain,” she said. “I know, baby.” And she didn’t say anything to me, but she looked down and away the way you don’t want your baby to look ever because it seems like her mind is too close to a truth and inwardly she might be dying a little bit or, maybe worse, growing up which is, I guess, both.
I don’t think she was angry at me, but she didn’t want to play anymore so I went into the house and talked to Moxy. Moxy was always busy doing this or that. She still had dealings in New York. She was a producer now and sometimes when she could get me to we’d go into town and to Vincennes Pizza and they’d let us set up and she’d sing and I’d play and a guy named Rick would play the drums for us and a kid named Ian would play bass and we had a little band and we’d draw a crowd without any advertising except for Albert who was good enough to be his own public relations firm if he chose to be, because, I guess, people remember Moxy Priestess. And now and then someone comes up to me and shakes my hand and looks me in the eye, usually someone about my own age who played guitar once. I never deny a soul an autograph. Somehow its like denying them a breath. I know that sounds egotistical, but you don’t want to say no to someone whose heart is still beating. It’s like saying no to the idea of their heart beating and since mine almost stopped a couple of times I respect it just like I respect Minnie’s looking away, there being that something in her head that made her think of something, know something, rather, even though I didn’t want her to.