Bus Route 270

                                                 

            The mind is a vast sea, her turbulent waters formless, yet there is form. The road passing by, Clive’s large brown 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 and then he would flit into a tense and shaky world.

            Had there not been a plastic barrier between he and those four million people he knew that he would have lost it long ago. No way would he have been able to control yelling at the masses that do the stupidest things: bring lighted cigarettes on to the bus, become the essence of belligerence or exhibit the utterly inane, 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.

        Clive was just too much aware of his interior life to take on any sort of closeness with his riders. 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, gladly outward ways, Clive lived as a true introvert there behind his partition. He made friends with moments. 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 all the way down. Grappling with moments was exhausting.

            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 instructed him on navigating 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 what he once thought to himself, driving the bus down 12th, as in a “poetic” fashion. If he could communicate what he felt people might sympathize with him for 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 hint at an explanation, one pointing at actual forms, reasons for his existence and state, like a bottle suddenly visible bobbing on top of the placid movement of a lake.  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. He chased down these threads because they appeared to have the potential to give him peace, a sense of forward movement, anything that might possibly lead him away from the black hole of hopelessness, which was the main thing that kept him driving the bus and not taking chances.

            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 previously undiscovered 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. This state meant putting the past behind him.

            He turned on 7th again and then scratched himself ferociously under his thigh. The itch was a spike, as though his body had suddenly revolted. When he turned he noticed the woman sitting there. She sat on the side seat reserved for the elderly. 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, but pretty, much too pretty for him, although 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 presence almost painfully even while he avoided her gaze.  Once again the notions of choice were too many, questions pertaining to the known past and the unseen future. The feeling led him directly to all of his issues, the whole morass, neccessary to deal with first in order to attain some better present. 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 he thought of 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 but not before giving him one child who was born completely dead, a failed conception.

            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 the same dullness that he felt every hour of his day. Of course she had disappeared. He wasn’t sure, but he had perhaps furrowed his brow. Or she had adopted the same type of distance that he could put between himself and another in a millisecond without even wanting to.   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 with this notion. He couldn’t conceive of such a thing by another, for Clive felt that he alone was left hanging by an unexplainably strong thread over a million-foot drop. What act 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 like a monster in a hole? 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 and expected to show. It is a ghastly thing, but Clive danced with it anyway, like dancing with a smiling skeleton.

            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. 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 through his presence and he bided his time, knowing that he would never 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 your interaction with me? You must come back down and rest. 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 its effect was to feed the monster and why he had packed 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 and relief, lightness and substance that seemed to foster 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 last source of bodily pleasure. 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, the end of another long day.  In seven minutes he would wrap up his work and someone else would get on the bus and drive the world in circles. 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.

            Two well-dressed couples around his own age hopped lightly on to the bus laughing. Confronted by the sight of Clive they tamped their humor down to match something they saw in his eyes. 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 doomed to going round and round and round on the same track day in and day out.  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 with different excuses. 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 disappear.

            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 nights 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 didn’t wait for it before digging in to his pile. 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 wished he could.  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, not knowing anything really except 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 that had accumulated. 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 entirely 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 proffered, 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 having to face the open day ever again. These were Clive’s failures. Clive’s alone. 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 nights 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.”

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Published in: on December 8, 2025 at 12:31 am  Leave a Comment  
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the 734th the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite

This is the 734th the fargo Kantrowitz’z literary campsite. Today I would like to talk about the “outer” world. The outer world is there for you to embrace, to enjoy, to love with, to seek out its solitudes. There is no way in there to embrace the outer world. It is only too much in there. We are all psychological beings. We are all monsters and writers and potheads and drunks and lost causes and you named it from Bukowski all on the way down to Jim E. Brown. We’re all sunk costs, too lates, also rans, verklempt (I’m trying to illustrate my time to the world, how I could consider verklempt a word to use to describe it, like I was a product, also, of the 90s. We called ourselves the Grunge Generation and, since a literati (f*ck yo(methemountainrange)and in the cutoff on the Boomer Sided which makes me a wise soul even if I could be sold to. Our generations didn’t die. We just matured and we can tell the younger people what to do: don’t follow the junk that you see going on on the internet. You have to think for yourself. You can do it. You’ve got good brains. Burt it is time to know that it wasn’t your fault when you were brainwashed by the internet. There are ways to do the internet and one of them is to use it for organizing fun things to do in the world, making it so that people get to know their neighbors, especially Americans right now since they have been so brainwashed by well-monied men and women who don’t necesarrily want the world to end, but don’t know how to stop it. The corporation must grow. Really? This man made entity, the corporation must always grow? Well, I beg to differ.

So, anyway, there are a few of us left old enough to remember when we didn’tall have to be our own James Bonds or Blaze. We are all in it together. We are all members of the human race. It is okay to not be manic if you are not manic. That shouldn’t kick you out of the humans club. You should be able to put other people first even as you provide for yourself for your company. Companies can be kind too.

So, the outer world. What to do when there is no outer world. How much “outer world” do you or people in general really want? How much? Don’t we all just want to go to the inner world and that is what the computer gords are all about, replacing human thought with synthetic thought even if it confuses us. No problem. Leave their domain. Let them nave it. Invent a new internet somewhere else that they would have to act decent at and not suck every penny from the populace and give none of it back, none of it, ever, except for the former wife of Bill Gates.

It is time that billionaires build funds that help communities and make them major makers and shakers of local economy, wny? You were just the collectors! You had your money spout out there catching all of the money from the talent of those who reached for the golden stars, the golden rings, hope, the stars and landing on the moon. You are the ones that matter, people, not the ones who catch all of the falling golden matter as it sifts through their internet machines. Smart boy. Good lad. Learned to catch all the money, but, but, but, you remove all the best gold for yourself. Sounds like a good plan, but you, for instance, need a yach that they will have to disassemble a bridge to remove from it’s alcove. I forget what they had to do. Amazon’s founder, I forget his name.

That’ doesn’t make me stupid, forgetting his name, maybe I just don’t want to say it and I have that right. Garrison Keillor said to find the words, just keep going and that is what I think that I have to do. I have to start thinking for myself again so I get my personality back, mingle and who knows, maybe I could put out a book and not have to sit in the existential aisle with Camus and Sartre and Bukowski and others, no, I could live for me, not like some cartoon character like Fargo Kantrowitz, he’s at the Literary Campsite, you see, always marketing: here at the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite, it’s the best in the land, bak bak bak!

Anyway, I’ll interview this mess later. I am trying to loosen up again towards expression since I have been away from the actual expression dealing with the outer world, wondering if the outer world is worth it, sitting with the existentialist philosophers in the bookstore and Steinbeck is there, and Campbell.

I like thinking about the angels too. Like Gabriel. Michael, some say, was the greatest of them all. My best friend from childhood, Mike Skurow, was named Michael. I think it helped him get through his life unscathed. His archangel was Michael. A very wise mother and father there.

I had a professor at myth school who I remember as David more so than his last name. I’m so weird. Miller. Famous mythologist from the east, He said about teaching “you just have to look at it, you don’t have to marry it” about esoteric subject matter, about things that American evangelical Christians find difficult to do, to have permission to study Hinduism and Buddhism and even Judaism, the angel stories are some of the best and !Moloch! Give me a break.

But still, the outer world. It doesn’t matter in the end if the poetry was worthwhile. True things don’t need a lot of words. We all have short words, short thoughts, finished things within us and if we call it poetry maybe we can break a mould among our peoples, let them know and manifest poetic thought, not showboat although that’s true too but art, real art and poetry and plays and the like, expression, the outer world. That’s my outer world as the owner of the Katherine gianaclis park for the arts in las vegas Nevada, who wants to do something called mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. The outer world. Takes me away from the inner world. Hiding out. Wanting to be alone.

So, I went and wrote a sign on another page so I’m back. This is the 932nd the fklc as far as I know, never mind the prior number. Anyway, I wrote a sign: mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. Donate. Mouseiongianaclis.fracturedatlas.com , thekgpa.com.

That was it. The outer world over which I sit and sit and wait and wait and ponder and give up for weeks and months, sometimes years. I’ve had mouseion gianaclis in the old pouch for a eight years now. I have it down as a concept and now, suddenly, it is a part of the real world? Suppose so: mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. There you have it. The real world. Donate. Doesn’t get any realer than that. Welcome me back to the where, the somewhere, that going back inward is. Who knows? Maybe the real world is everything. Ah, people start to think that hedonism and pleasure at the greatest end all and be alls and they lose respect for themselves and make us all pay as they forget to cry on National Cry Day January 4th every year. They all just need a good cry day because they bought into the notion that getting ahead in life is a game and anything goes, including make it so that other people feel pain and pressure on a daily level. They don’t care, they got theirs. Get yours, was the NBC motto during the Trump years historically and miraculously.

I think that the world needs to be good right now, it is simple, like Chief Joseph said, the truth is simple, doesn’t need a lot of words, but just think, what if you got so simple that you started again around the hemisphere, in another sort of cylindrical and spherical rotation. What world would you know again if you became a part of yourself, became a think for yourself person again, if steeped in American evangelical culture, then step off of the game show ride, it may feel like you’re going too fast, but sometimes you go too fast, there you go, one foot two foot three and stop, the ride is over. Burp, you saved the day. It is okay to stop doing something that may be harmful to others in its tracks. If your people are behaving badly, you don’t have to stand by idly. You can speak up, but even better, act up. Cultivate all of your talents and muster up a good smile and a hearty laugh and hint, mind you, hint if you must, that love is better than any of this old sort of being mean to our brothers and sisters thing no matter what the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or whether you like to wear a shoe on head, who cares! We all deserve to be dummies. Maybe then life will once again become a little more fun, like back in the day, back in the good old days. That all comes on insisting that your brothers and sisters are being nice to the “least of us.” At least that. At least that.

Published in: on November 24, 2025 at 12:39 am  Leave a Comment  
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The 9th the Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite

there ain’t no reason to go there no more. thereain’t no reason to got there no more. there ain’t no reason to go their no more. it seems all it’s a ruse, the whole question the question of where we are to lay our heads.  In Christianity, Jesus said that man will have no place to rest their heads but upon the stones. A question? Does that symbolize equally the notion that we all blah, blah, blah…

welcome to the fourth or fifth fklc. the fifth, i think, or the sixth. I don’t remember. Anyway, I think that there are problems in the world, but these problems if taken in the right way by the victims can turn into something greater. We are all a bunch of asteroids trying to cancel one another out. sometimes we succeed and we cause great harm for our own petty, selfish gains. what if we, the victims of these games, chose to turn the other cheek, to hand over our cloaks as well. What would that do to our opponent. Nothing of this world matters. Materiality does not matter except for in the pride of the individual. we all need help and we all can help. if we need help it does not mean that we can’t help, too. Man is circuitous, realm-like.  I think if we are to take action against the evils in this world it should be an action that would spread a bit of joy amongst the crowds previously hellbent upon destroying one another. I would not like to make this a cry for freedom, but a cry for release, the release from a tyranny that would not make haste toward understanding, but rush into, headlong, the mire of giving more than stolen from by choice and to make a point.

this does not mean I will not protect my family and drop all argument if need be. it does however mean that I will retain my senses and not shoot from the hip and ask questions later. sorry, cowboy, fargo don’t play that.  You can’t mention their names. They are MacBeth-like. But the reasons for their plays are complex as well and perhaps, at this point in the game, the most  complex game of all, the game for the actual preservation of our very planet.  We have more than enough resources now to give food, clothing, shelter and an allowance if necessary all in the name of helping our worldwide brothers refrain from the sins of stealing and the very real and harmful realm of anger.  Both sides are guilty of these sins. That is why they had to put down their stones when Jesus asked them to. Stones, where you lay your head and what they throw at you to make a point that cancels itself immediately.

Published in: on July 25, 2025 at 5:47 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite -2005

The world is alright today a fictive reservoir by Fargo Kantrowitz

so i was sitting on tweetle dumb way, way….then the words trailed off and up and upwards this trolling for blue among the falling stars down glowing. Neil Diamond called it the Heartlight in that song. The heartlight.

Since when did ya become a poet, Jack? Glory fame and all that. Blip*. Quick what form then this that gives such arbitrary light to darkened reasons not wanting the shine. Blip*. What form this then that gives us light? This heartlight? Plick away the soul starting from the sleeve one two three. The people are getting scared and are going to fight to the death if they have to and they’re going to start right here in my neighborhood. No matter how hard they try they will never be able to fight off the scourge that is the drug war. My neighbors are inside of the drug war grounds and because of it, yes, I live in a “war zone.” Great. Just call the whole goddamned thing off, get these people on their feet and ask God to forgive you. Then maybe your soul will be alright. The sixties dream was swept off into a corner called daily monthly weekly where it could be properly policed. But what would you do? If the drug takes all your money and you have to steal and kill ever after to attain that privelege of having continued to live at all. By this time they can’t think of anything but drugs. So we’ve got the jails for them. The jails. Now, me, being a victim of crime recently have been thinking of the jails and how I want my particular criminal to go there for a long time so I can at least have peace of mind that he isn’t going to keep robbing me blind like he has all this week. They busted him after he stole my friend’s car. They busted the idiot at a 7 eleven and took him in. In the car was a home stereo receiver and a red taped hand axe. A professional.

No, I’m not blaming Mr. Bush. No, I’m not blaming anybody in high office. There is too much at stake, however, we the people of the lower echelons of America have a right to a say as well. People need to be taken care of a lot of times. They didn’t have good parental examples, for example, and never really learned how to fend for themselves in this complex society. We are perhaps the only species that has made its society too complex for its members to participate. It is part of the industrial revolution. it is the cold hearted way of capitalism. Taking care of people is socialist, but socialism is not communism. The amount of money that could be made by people allowing a socialist attitude to prevail when it comes to social issues instead of a capitalistic attitude, would change little under either system. But the people will be saved. The victims of crimes will be saved, the crimes not even happening because somebody is being taken care of who otherwise wouldn’t be. And this idea that we are to do it among ourselves through churches and the like. A church is about as big a group as you need to accept one bad man because individuals are locking their doors and finding it solemn to keep a gun for protection. This isn’t Christianity. This is some sort of armed uprising against the people who cause you harm. But what choice do they have? What choice is there? It is either arm yourself or be eaten alive by the madmen of the world.

A woman doesn’t want a man who is not grown up in this respect. She will, in fact, spurn him for it goes against her natural reaction as a beast to fight if necessary. So men easily step up and it is tied to their manhood. The woman is always there to glare lovingly and longingly over the shoulder of the man who is going to protect her children. It is natural. Peacemakers die off.

But we have to lose that whole spectrum. There are thousands of beautiful young ladies in the west who see the larger picture and wouldn’t fuck you If you stood up like those others. But these are different centuries. The red states are living in right about 1979 and those other girls are testing the future or bobbing peaceful upon the lulling memories of the 1960s. Either way somebody’s getting laid. But then we’re talking about a war. The cowboys are married to the hippies and will always be. Now the hippies are called “liberal” but none of those people who hate liberals would be acting that way at a Dead show. And they’re not all that old so they don’t know if they like the Dead or not. All these fucking people my age and younger who are acting like they are their own grandfathers, as if bands like the Dead or the Beatles were just a Bl*p in time, and an immature bl*p at that. Their pants are full of toothpicks. Their trousers are befuddled with mud piles bulking, They are eating pudding with a spoon.

Peace was introduced as a concept and was introduced as something meant to be practiced on a larger level. Ideas sprouted up and took hold and gained adherents until technology finally caught up with them and are ready to be put into place. Theories for the structuring of the world has taken place and could be implemented if only we did not fear the choices we already made. Bending the beast is what’s needed. Taking stresses off of her breaking points. These are Americans too! The poor and downtrodden, the drug addicted and alcoholic, the slow, the weak, the fragile. Can’t we look up and away from our own misery for a moment? Can’t we be allowed to insist that our governmental entities which control these large social structures be more responsive to the poor.

It is obvious what is going on. Americans are obsessed with safety and protection. The defense budget gets bigger and bigger. An entire industry is sucking on the tit of the country going the opposite direction of helping all Americans. It is oil based. It needs weapons this war for oil. The rest of us are starting to starve while the other half starts to get fat. it’s what caused the civil war partly. The big money goes beyond north and south now. It’s all good. America is truly bonded in its love for the money that is brought to it by oil. The car industry could stop the whole show by stopping the manufacture of non hybrid engines. The government should help. This is an example where Government Can Help. It is supposed to. It is why we pledge allegiance to the flag every morning because she has promised to help. This is the view of America that I want to teach my children someday. I want them to know that America is a great and responsive country that will not allow her children to go hungry or make people so mad that they commit horrendous crimes against one another. This is the America that I insist upon.

But then I have to remember what is currently considered “proper American thinking.” This is the flip side of radical right’s “creative” propaganda play concerning the term “politically incorrect.” They ran with that one and made it politically incorrect to do the following things: you can vote democratic, but only because you’re an American and the Democratic party is older than they are. You can’t vote for abortion or same sex marriage because that’s going against God and let’s get that out of the way right now here and for all (end of conversation is a favorite tactic of the criminal), when there is discussion and you make your points all who see you are to remember that you are probably a pinko, commie, faggot and (yes, next question please).

The whole bloody mess gets mean until it is like the cowboys are crooks and the hippies are high. Suddenly there is no more common ground. The stereotypes have gotten in the way. But, the question begs, do you placate to Hitler? Gasp? A war where perhaps one hundred thousand people have died so that we can bring “democracy” (not a Republic?) to the world. Oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil…

Placate? What does that mean? Giving in. No, can’t do that? But you must give concessions? No, i can’t do that. Then They have issues: no, we can’t do that? You are killers? No we’re not? Yes, you are. Every nation at the gut level most fearful of all of civil war. What point are we trying to force. If you kill that person will this philosophical notion somehow become truer? War is payment in stupidity for a people’s greed and fear. That greed and fear wouldn’t even be there if we set up the system truer, kinder, more socially understanding. Then, if we are to spread something, it is not police brutality but keen understanding of the fact that all people are different and each nation has deep cultural methods of doing things that we as outsiders could never really understand, especially making the decision by watching the news from our easy chair just before turning to entertainment tonight, a bong hit and that book that you keep by your bed. The people know how to take care of themselves. Ideas can be put into place that will replace pain with salve. Perhaps I would not have been a victim of crime at all had we put a few dollars where is needed instead of into bombs to back up our message that we’re the greatest country on earth. Is that right…

Published in: on July 23, 2025 at 12:45 am  Leave a Comment  
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After the Fall – from Thy Soul’s Immensity

Sometimes your daddy’s just an alcoholic Jed. It don’t make no sense nohow how you’re daddy is an alcoholic and you don’t know where you gonna go next or nothing and you think it’s all gonna be over soon, but it never does, Jed, it never does. It never does go over like a good summer storm does, no, it don’t go over like it’s no great white buffallo over the hidden plains like you sing about, Jed, no, it don’t go. It don’t go. It just don’t go!

There’s a million reasons not to cry, Jed. Ones your daddy. You shouldn’t cry over your daddy anymore, Jed. I know it must have been hard and all having all that happen to you when you was a kid, but still, you can’t take it with you forever, Jed. If you do then you end up old and mean and maybe dead because you take heroin or drink too much like my daddy did. You don’t want to end up like that, Jed. That’s not the way to be.

Dink’s right, Jed. Dink’s daddy beat him real bad and then he went and did to our daddy what he did and Dink had to pay for it too. Both our families been paying for it all these years and you would have known too if you hadn’t of left like you did, I know you had to go…

Yeah. I had to go, I guess. It was too hard growing up in that house with mama. I figured I could make it better on my own. And I did. But I also took a lot of drugs and fried my brain up. Took a long time to get it back. Then Moxy took me back. That’s what saved me. I thought she would never take me back in a million years so I just started walking. I figured if I fell down cold dead all the better. But then something started happening to me, know what?

What?

I started feeling better. All those drugs had been poisoning my body and now that I was getting off them I had no choice but to try and feel better so I run.

You run?

Yeah, I run. I run through them woods like a wildman, faster than anybody you know. I would jump for tree limbs and they would break off and I would fall into the water. I did that for a good two states almost, well, maybe it was only one, but by then I couldn’t do it anymore because winter was coming on. I needed to save my heat. All the animals I caught with a special slingshot I made, I’ll show you sometime, I used to cover my body. So when the time come for me to have found Mars I was already good and covered up. I don’t know, maybe it was October by this time. I’m not sure. You lose track of time when you wander like I did.

So what happened?

What do you mean what happened?

What happened…next.

I met Tom.

Tom?

Tom ____ .   I met Tom inside Ohio and he took me in and I worked in his woodshop making desks and stuff for him and he taught me how to make my very own guitar and that’s the one I give to Moxy.

You made that fuckin’ thing?

Hell yeah I made it. Made it with my own two hands. Tom had someone paint Moxy’s name on it though because I can’t draw very good.

No, Jed can’t draw good.

So you made the guitar and you left.

Over three months.

Oh.

I left in the springtime. There was still snow on the ground, but I didn’t care. I realized that I had to go get that chair.

What chair?

Kirby’s chair.

Whose Kirby?

Kirby?

Yeah, Kirby. Who’s Kirby?

Kirby is Ken and Rose’s dad. And he’s got this chair. God, did I really do that? Jeezus H. Christ. I must have been nuts. Albert, I was nuts. Jesus. I was simply, certifiably nuts.

You’re not necessarily nuts if you think getting something will help you, Jed, no matter how stupid it might seem to other people.

A chair.

Don’t matter. I once had a marble that was so big that it fucking almost qualified for a clacker, man, this mother was the biggest actual puree you’ve ever seen. Only kid who ever challenged me had a cannon ball. What I wouldn’t have done for that cannonball, so I said, fuck it, I called him on his cannonball and he got first shot and you know what? He missed. It was my turn. I shot my shot and I missed. Then he missed and then I missed and then he missed and then it was my turn and I aimed that puree as well as a boy can humanly attempt such an aim and I said to myself that I”m getting that cannonball and I threw that puree perfect and it hit just on top of the cannonball, it went way up in the air and when it came down it hit a rock and went out on to the sidewalk and we both watched that thing fall right down into the manhole grate and down into the water that was moving. What I’m trying to say is that I got that cannonball and it was heavy and it didn’t look anything like my puree and I was sorry I ever wanted it and I never got another one again.

Published in: on May 30, 2025 at 2:18 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Eastside All-Star – from The World is Alright Today

      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 off his glove, 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 Trollos 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 February 28, 2025 at 12:34 am  Leave a Comment  
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What Trump Said For Himself Today at the United States Capitol- Abbreviated with Commentary by Sol Lebinowitz of www.fludthezone.com.

(This is an encapsulation of Trump’s second inaugural address with brief commentary

   by Sol Lebinowitz, Managing Editor of http://www.fludthezone.com.) 

Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Address Abbreviated

Donald Trump January 20, 2025

The golden age of America begins right now. 

 Be respected again. Envy of every nation. 

Not taken advantage of. 

(Every day P*ggi will put America first. Yeah right).

 Sovereignty, safety, scales of justice rebalanced. 

Believes he is a victim of the weaponization of justice department 

(Which means future weaponization of Justice Dept…)

Nation proud, prosperous and free. 

America will be greater, stronger and far more exceptional 

than ever before. Optimistic thrilling new era of national success.

Sunlight over world. America seize opportunity like never before. 

Challenges will be annihilated by the momentum all are witnessing in us. 

Confronts crisis of trust. Radical establishment. 

Pillars broken and in disrepair.  Can’t manage simple crisis. 

Continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad. 

Sanitation and protection for criminals. Illegals by govt. 

(Biden’s) Govt. unlimited defense of foreign borders

 but not America borders or its own people. 

No basic services. North Carolina. Treated badly. 

(The Don gets claps.)

Hurricane sufferers. L.A. watching fires burn. 

Wealthiest and powerful. Some sitting there. No home. 

That’s interesting. Can’t let this happen. No change.

 Public health doesn’t deliver but more spent on it than anywhere.

 Education. To be ashamed of themselves to hate our country 

despite the love we try to provide to them. 

All change starting today and it will change very quickly. 

Reverse a betrayal from many, give people back 

faith wealth democracy and their freedom. 

From this moment on America’s decline is over.

(Clapping for the frickin’ papaya)

Glorious destiny will not be denied. Loyalty. Competency of govt. 

 Most challenged prez. Learned a lot along the way. 

The journey to reclaim our republic has not  been an easy one. 

Those who wish to stop my cause, to take my freedom, and my life.

 Assassins bullet. My life was saved for a reason. 

I was saved by God to make America great again.

 (Felonious Trump gets applause. Standing ovation. Audience shames itself. By long clapping.)

Under admin of America patriots, 

purpose and speed, hope, prosperity

all races religion color and creed. 

Jan 20 is liberation day. 

(Applause by saps for the ballerina) 

Hope that election remembered as greatest 

and most consequential. Nation unifying behind our agenda. 

Increases in support from all. Win all seven swing states.

 Popular vote millions of people win.

 Thanks Black and Hispanic communities. Love and trust for vote. 

Will not forget. Heard voices. Look forward to work with them.

 MLK mention. In his honor will strive to make his dream come true. 

(Lie before Don? Standing ovation. 

Just give the people what they want 

so they don’t have to go home and 

tell their children to kill themselves.)

Confidence and pride soaring. Administration, inspired excellence and unrelenting success.

 Not forget country, constitution, and not forget our God.

(Who is our God again? The Don! that’s right.)

Sign executive orders. Complete restoration of America and common sense. 

First, national emergency at southern border. 

(Clapping by the rubes who don’t remember history or understand economics. Dumbf*ck America.) 

All illegal entry will be halted. Returning millions of criminal aliens back. 

Reinstate Remain in Mexico policy, end Catch and Release.

 Troops to go to southern border. 

To repel disastrous invasion 

(They can play cards.) 

 Under orders, designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations 

Invoking alien enemies act of 1798 

use full and immense power of state law enforcement.

 All gangs. Going to war against cartels. 

(The Twee One is going to get me killed.) 

At a level we have never seen before. Defeat inflation. 

Rapidly bring down costs and prices. 

Inflation crisis by massive overspending and energy prices.

 National energy emergency. 

We will drill baby drill. 

(Clapping) 

Manufacturing nation. Largest amount of oil and gas. 

We are going to use it. Bring prices down. Fill strategic reserves up again. 

Export American energy all over the world. 

Be a rich nation again. Liquid gold under our feet. 

End Green New Deal. Revoke electric vehicle mandate. 

For auto workers. 

(Bye earth. Is it hot in here?)

Buy car of your choice. Build cars again. 

Thanks auto workers for inspiring vote of confidence.

(The dummies voted for him.)

 Overhaul of trade system to protect American workers.

 Instead of taxing citizens, tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens. 

Establishing the external revenue service. Collect tariffs duties and revenues. 

(Is this how he kills the dollar for Putin?)

 Department of Government Efficiency. 

(This is how they pick our bones clean.)

 Free expression. Stop all government censorship 

and bring back free speech to America. 

(This is where we need laws against provable psychological  operations on Americans during elections)

Restore fair equal and impartial justice under constitutional rule of law.

 We will bring law and order back to our cities.

 End govt. socially engineering race and gender 

into every aspect of public and private life. 

Forge society as colorblind and merit based. 

Two genders male and female. 

Reinstate service members expelled for objecting to covid mandate with full back pay. 

Stop warriors exposed to radical social experiments while on duty. 

Armed forces free to focus on defeating America’s enemies. 

Like in 2017, build strongest military. 

Measure success by battles and wars we end and wars we never get into. 

(Don’t blame us for your party’s ever wars. None of them were ours, you lying freak.)

Peacemaker and unifier. Hostages in Middle East. 

Released one day before taking office (taking credit for it) coming home. 

Reclaim place as most powerful nation on earth. 

Changing the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. 

Restoration of a great prez.  Going back to “Mt. McKinley”again. 

(F*ck the “injuns”.) McKinley through tariffs made country rich. 

Gave Roosevelt money for Panama Canal. Spent money on Panama Canal. 

38,000 lives lost building it. 

America treated badly. Panama promise has been broken. 

Spirit of treaty violated. American ships overcharged. 

Not treated fairly. Us navy. And China is operating the Panama Canal.

 We are taking it back.

( War? Probably.)

Act with courage vigor and vitality, great civilization.

 As liberate it, will lead to new heights of victory, not deterred.

 End chronic disease epidemic. Growing nation. 

Expands territory increase wealth. Flag in new horizons. 

Manifest destiny into stars. To plant Stars and Stripes on Mars. 

(This make-up school model should go to Mars.)

Ambition is life blood of great nation. Now more ambitious. 

No nation has more ambition. Spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.

 Call of next great adventure resounds within souls. 

Ancestors turned colonies into mighty republic. 

Americans conquered west. Ended slavery (did a lot of shit).

 Humans are great. Work together and no dream we cannot achieve. 

Many thought impossible to come back 

and here he is. American people have spoken. 

(Right. You lying, psy-op bastard) 

Stand before as proof that something is impossible.

 In America, the impossible is what we do best. 

From New York  to Los Angeles.  All over. 

Forged by patriots who gave everything they had. 

Farmers and soldiers, factory (bla blah)

No obstacle defeated them. Laid down railroads. Skyscrapers. Highways.Won two world wars. Defeated fascism and communism. 

After all, together stand on verge of greatest four years in American history. One people, one family and one glorious nation under God. 

Parent dreams of child. I am with you, fight for you, and will win for you. 

Going to win like never before. 

(Yeah. Don’t win for me, pal.)

Make it greater than ever before. Compassion courage and exceptionalism. 

America will be respected again and admired by people of religion faith and goodwill.

 Prosperous proud and strong and win like never before. 

Not conquered, intimated broken, and will not fall. 

Will be free sovereign and independent nation.

 Nothing will stand in way. Americans.

 Future ours. 

The golden age has just begun. 

Thank you. 

(The O Factor glurps to a close) 

Published in: on January 20, 2025 at 8:25 pm  Comments (1)  
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Red Pumps

      She moaned that the coffee had stained, as she put it, the “shit” out of her blouse, then without saying another word except for a sort of pigletty grunt, went to the window, opened it, and simply tossed the shirt out and walked away.  I couldn’t believe it.

      “Jen!”  I screamed while bolting to the window.

      There was this pink blouse floating like Forrest Gump’s feather to the pavement below.  I watched and wondered in amazement at the miracle of timing when it hit.  Plop!  Right on top of this old guy riding a funky bike with flowers on the handlebars.

      “It landed on somebody!”  I screamed at Jen.

      He stopped his bike, but to my surprise, he didn’t take the shirt off his head.  Instead, he honked his horn like a flipped out circus seal until people started to gather around him to find out what the commotion was about.  Then Jennifer went back to the window, clearly freaking at what she had done, groaning “Oh my god!”  I couldn’t believe it much either.  This guy just stood there and honked his horn with Jen’s shirt on his head.  A few seconds later people started pointing up to us.  They’d figured it out somehow.  My being shy, I instinctually stepped away from the window not wanting to be associated with the crime.  It was a mob pinpointing us as the culprits of this sin.  But it was in standing back that I noticed that my wife’s bare breasts were pressed up against the window.  The sin!

      “Honey, they’re not angry with you.  They’re turned on for Christ’s sake!”

      “Oh my God!” she shrieked.

      She quickly stepped out of view to the whoops, hollers and whistles of the stimulated members of the crowd below who wanted more.

      “Geez!” she said and sat down on a chair.

      Ah, memories of yesterday morning.  I breathe out a sigh that that day is over.  I’ll tell this story the rest of my life and maybe even laugh about it someday, but for now it’s too serious as all comedies are to those who play in them.  They say all the world’s a stage, and it’s true.  Other players include Tina and Tanner.  We had had them over for dinner the night before.  We had coffee, some of which was on a man’s head three stories below, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

      I have to tell you about our friends because somehow they matter in this thing, whatever this thing really is that happened.  Tina and Tanner are the kind of couple who found each other at difficult periods in their lives and made the mistake of thinking it real and marrying.  But everything has changed since strawberry shortcake night.  Everything.  Even for Tina and Tanner somehow.  It’s different because they have always been the couple who you knew wouldn’t make it.  They seem to want to be alone while together, and of course, that never works.  It seems they were always continuing their quest for the freedom in their single years, the bliss of former solitude, therefore they only got in each other’s way.  Because they’re married, it sometimes makes people wonder about the institution of marriage itself.  Tina’s dreams, if realized, would place her at Lincoln Center as an opera singer.  She is actually a programs analyst for a computer software firm.  Tanner never made it out of his first occupation: waiting tables.

      I’m not sure why I go into their lives when I’ve got so much legal shit to think about right now.  It’s beyond me.  I chalk it up as part of some absurd story that God wrote us into as characters on a boring Tuesday afternoon in heaven.  Why would He give me friends like Tina and Tanner when I could use better friends, rich friends, intelligent friends, friends like Jen’s friends who are artsy and fun, back in, ironically enough, Illinois.  The friends we hung out with briefly before moving to New York.  Jesus winked as well as wept, I guess.  I don’t blame Tina or Tanner.  It’s just that their shitty marriage has always been there somehow to remind us of the places in our own marriage that aren’t so great.  I always said to myself to forget about them, but somehow we couldn’t, Jen and I.  That is until yesterday.

      Anyway, this guy has this blouse on his head and I suddenly remember that I paid $48 to Macy’s for it for Jen’s 24th birthday.  I remember she put it on the evening I gave it to her.  She had a little smudge of cherry frosting on her upper lip which she had eaten just before opening the  compact, hard little box with its red bow and pink hearts which I felt proud for picking out myself.  When she kissed me, I tasted the frosting and it tasted good; I don’t even like frosting.  Now that same blouse was on some guy’s head and I wanted it back.  Looking down from our third floor loft, I for the life of me couldn’t figure out what he was doing.  It seemed he was having trouble getting it off his head.  When he finally did, he didn’t hesitate to stuff it into his basket with the plastic flowers connected with twisty wire to the handlebars.

      “He’s taking it!”  I yelled.

      “What?”

      “What did you think would happen if you threw it out the window?”

      “Bobby!”

      I bolted out our door, down the stairs and into the street.  I caught up to him, slowing him by grabbing the bar between his legs.  He stopped.  Of course he thought I was mugging him.  What else would you think in New York if someone touches you?  He was an ugly son of a bitch,  clearly an eater of only mush for the number of teeth he had left, and Italian or Hispanic, maybe Greek.  He had this quirky stare that I couldn’t figure out.  It made me feel weird because it didn’t seem penetrable.  What I mean is that it seemed like he couldn’t see me even though he was looking right at me.  Politely, I explained to him that the blouse belonged to my wife.  He moved away, trying to get on his bike and pedal, but I wouldn’t let him.  I was getting angry.

      “I said that this shirt belongs to my wife!”

      “You want the shirt?”

      “I would like that, yes!”

      “Twenty bucks.”

      “What!  I already paid $50!”

      “Twenty-five bucks.”

      That’s when I knew what hate is.  It’s different than you would expect it to be.  It’s sort of meek and sickly and you feel it in the pit of your stomach, but your face gets hot and you can feel your heart beat.  It’s really quite an odd feeling and even odder to recognize it for what it is while it is actually going on.  I felt it for a moment just staring at the man who went silently back into his gaze of nothingness again.  He couldn’t see me.  I was this whacked out something that oozed upwards out of the city bowels that he had been avoiding his entire old life.  He had defended himself in the only way that he knew how: to drive a hard bargain.  I guess I could respect at least that about the old man and found the strength to begin my next action without smacking him, but with civility.

      “Sir, this is my shirt.  My wife dropped it accidentally out of our window which is just above you.  You may have seen her.  She was the one there just a minute ago with no shirt on.  That’s because her shirt was on your head.” She hadn’t actually been wearing it, but I said it anyway.

      “Your wife shouldn’t be parading around in the nude.”

      Somehow I didn’t punch him.  Instead, I grabbed the shirt from out of his basket of ugly, dusty, torn and dirty flowers and walkingly made my way back to my apartment.  That’s when he blew his whistle.  I felt my forehead collapse onto the tops of my jaws.  My eyeballs free-floated in their gooey pools not seeing much of anything.

      “Thief!  Thief!”

      I kept walking, felt my legs weaken, found them again and continued on.  I’d just about reached the door when my legs went out on me for a different reason.  I had to put my hand up to protect my head from hitting the corner of the building.  Some guy had tackled me from behind.  The whistle was still blowing so I knew it wasn’t the old man.  Suddenly I’m a human smudge on the sidewalk of life…literally!  I should be having breakfast with my wife, eggs and sausages, but instead I’m staring at the feet of a nameless horde of curious onlookers to my existentialist, highly individualized woe.  I’m staring at countless pairs of shoes, red ones, black ones, brown ones and thongs.  I saw no faces, only shoes and toes.  Shoes and toes of bankers, bakers, artists, muggers, hippies and computer analysts like Tina.  In the early morning summer heat, all the open-toed shoes revealed to me that toes are nothing more really than miniature Ballpark franks.  I wondered if, perhaps, left to their own they would grill then plump upon the pavement as my cheek seemed as though it was beginning to do.

      Just to keep you updated about the shirt.  The moment I hit the ground, a little kid ripped it out of my hand and ran away.  I saw his little butt almost get run over by a car as he ran across the street, and I asked God why he hadn’t given me at least that.  I realized I should have paid the kid ten dollars to steal it back for me in the first place.  It would like a fine on Jen’s part for her nuttiness in throwing it out the window because of a coffee stain.  I could feel my partner’s hand heavy on my ear.  I couldn’t figure out why he kept pressing my head into the sidewalk.  Wasn’t the knee in my back a sufficient point to be made considering the really non-severe nature of my crime which was, in actuality, no crime at all?  I guessed not.  He was screaming, “Get the cops!  Get the cops!”  I couldn’t tell whether I wanted the cops or not.  Who would they choose more fitting to beat?  Surely me.  I wondered where Jen was.  Would she plead my case before the officers?  I certainly hoped she would.  I didn’t want to spend any time in jail.  My thoughts were getting slower and slower as my breath began failing.  The man’s thumb was on my right eyeball so when I tried to blink, we joined together in keeping my right eye dry.

      “You son of a bitch!”  It was Jen.

      She was screaming that this man was a son of a bitch over and over.  Each time she said it, she swung the heel of a red ladies shoe right upside the guy’s head.  I think the first one really dazed him because he didn’t move after he got that one.  She hit him a good seven or eight times before he turned and I saw these big, hairy arms reaching for my wife.

      “Jen!”  I screamed.

      I desperately wanted her to stop.  He was lunging for her now, pushing up off of me to get to her.  He wore no shirt.  He had enough hair on his back to keep Sy Sperling’s wig production division happily in business for months.  Then, between the moment of his reaching for Jen and the moment I knew he would never reach her, I had a moment of calm unlike I’d ever known before.  The look in Jen’s eyes told me that she was out for blood.  She was tasting it, letting it wash down her chin.  I felt real bliss.  It overcame me.  It placed me in a room of pink clouds.  I was totally in love with her.  All my insecurities over the years about her and my own desirability failed suddenly and I had no more doubt.  No more petty jealousy.  All the stupidity that gets shoved into the cracks of a relationship was washed through.  It was stupid.  It dawned on me that Jen married me because she thought it was stupid too.

      Trog lifted up off of me.  I knew I had only a moment to stop him.  Jen kept wailing on his head.  Blood was everywhere.  As we did our dance, the three of us, I noticed the sounds of the man’s beating.  Jen swung her shoe like Aaron Judge.  The sound was like the plucking of a dampened piano wire from the inside of the box.  Puhhh.  Puhhh.  Puhhh.  She got him a few more times, and I could see he was swaying.  As his body rose off of me, I lost my breath for a second, but it didn’t stop me from getting him.  I got to this guy’s legs so fast he didn’t know what hit him.  It was his turn to taste the pavement.  Those hairy, local, New York City limbs were being held so tight they had as much chance of getting away as a strung duck in Chinatown.  In the meantime, Jen kept swinging on the guy, screaming these filthy words that I didn’t know she knew, and I don’t need to repeat.

      “Jen!  Jen!  Stop!”

      But I couldn’t get her to stop.  The guy was clearly dazed at this point, and I knew that we were in control, but Jen didn’t seem to think so.  She kept hitting and hitting him until I thought she would kill him.  I had to stop her so I began literally climbing the guy while keeping my weight on him in case he responded to the change of positioning.  I climbed all the way up the guy until I could put my hand up to block Jen’s blows.  She hit me two times before she realized what she was doing, and then someone grabbed her.  I watched her watch me as they pulled her away.  It was like she was disappearing into a void and I would never see her again.  My heart ached for her, was lonely for her.  Then I was pulled away by two uniformed officers who saw fit to place a baton so tightly against my throat that I thought surely I was going to die.  They put both me and Jen into handcuffs, and the old man who I hated so much that I no longer hated him, stood there alternating his gaze from us to the bike for some goddamned reason.  I think it was in explanation to the cop who had probably gotten the story right five minutes before.

      “It’s his fault,” I said, but it only produced a tightening on the baton.

      The old man raised his hand in exasperation and told the officer one more time about my stealing of the shirt he believed he had found fair and square.  Then to make his point, he squeezed his horn once really loud and burst out, “Crazy!  He’s crazy!”  And that’s how I felt as they placed me in a squad car separate from that of my wife.  Crazy as hell.

      We went to jail, an altogether new experience for both of us.  I called Tanner since my mom and dad live in Hawaii, and Jen called Tina since her parents live in Evanston, Illinois.  They both came and talked to the police for us and posted our bail, which was $1,000 apiece.  We went home in Tina’s car.  It was a good car, a Genesis with fine leather seats, dual airbags, highly computerized.  Tina drove and was very quiet, I imagined out of respect and maybe a little embarrassment for having to be put in such a situation.  Tanner sat in the passenger seat and asked me if my face was alright over and over again.  I had a purple scrape on my cheek, but it didn’t hurt.  Jen told me that the shoe belonged to Mrs. Fulbright of the first-floor Fulbrights.  She couldn’t find anything to beat the man with in our apartment so she just ran downstairs unarmed.  Mrs. Fulbright had stepped out to see what the ruckus was when Jen ran into her apartment and grabbed one of her shoes laying about, because that was the only weapon, my wife said, that would work.  For some it’s a stiletto, for others a 9 mm handgun, for Jen a size 8 red pump bought on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.

      More than anything, I just wanted to get back home.  We were going to have to hire a lawyer.  Forget about our savings account.  Cabo San Lucas was immediately nixed in favor of more time out of prison.  We would plead self-defense, and I thought we would have a good chance, except that the hairy, ape-like man who tackled me in the name of protecting an elder of the community, had sustained far greater injuries by the use of one red shoe that it seems the self-defense plea may allow.  To the crowd and therefore the courts, my and Jen’s struggle together had all the romance of watching a thug kick an old lady in the teeth.  If Jen had stopped when I had wanted her to, things might be looking better for us now, but she didn’t, and I didn’t have the heart to be mad at such a woman as Jen was as she swung that shoe.

      “You, you guys,” Tanner stammered slowly, as we drove home in the Tesla.  As though his stutter foreshadowed vision, this was Tanner and no wisdom was expected.  Any fool could see that Jen and I were stewing.  “You were charged with some pretty violent charges … and you stole that man’s shirt?”

      “Christ,” I said.

      “Tanner, he stole Jen’s shirt,” Tina whined in, “Bobby was only trying to get it back.”

      “Oh.”  Tanner searched for something else he wanted to say but didn’t find it.  “Oh,” he said again as if he had, but he was so utterly discovered by us all in his slow wittedness that Jen and I looked at each other briefly in pity for Tina.

      “We’re okay, Tanner.  If that’s what you’re wondering, ” Jen said.

      “No, that’s not it.  I mean, you beat that guy on the head like crazy, I heard.  He ended up in the hospital, and it just seems … it just seems kind of, I don’t know if this is right to say or not, well, kind of cool.  Sorry, I didn’t mean cool, but like good in a way.”

      Jen and I looked at each other then, and for the first time relayed to each other that which we already knew, how utterly right Tanner was.  I realized that looking helplessly on at my Jen fight like a lioness for me was one of the greatest feelings I have ever known, if not the greatest.

      “Tanner, you’re insane,” Tina said sourly, dispensing these words in his direction with an ugly, I thought totally unfair, eye.  I wanted her to shut up.  Tanner was somehow initiating that change I referred to earlier.

      Jen then leaned forward and looked at me.  She was seeing something but it wasn’t me exactly.  Then she turned to Tanner, and he turned to her, and it was as if they were alone in the car.

      “Tanner, you’re right somehow.  When I was on top of that guy, I was crazy with rage, and I just hit and hit and hit, and I was trying to kill him.  I know that sounds bad, but as I hit him it wasn’t bad.  And you know why?  Because I had to look through this guy, past him, ya know, to see Bobby.  This guy was blocking Bobby from my view, hurting him, killing him for all I knew.  I think it made me stronger knowing that I have a say in whether Bobby stays with me.  I will fight those who try to take what is mine.”

      “You Tarzan, me Jane,” I say and laugh a little bit.

      “No, Honey, not like that.”

      And I know it’s not like that.  I reach for her hand and she touches me back.  We are quiet as she falls into my arms, and while there, I smell her hair and skin, and I kiss her lightly on the forehead.  Then I look up and see, for the very first time, Tanner’s arm resting on the seatback of his own wife, his hand caressing her hair, her neck and her head falling softly into his touch like a hot air balloon that had been up in the air and around the world for eighty days, but probably longer.

Published in: on December 26, 2024 at 4:43 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Most Important Thing

The most important thing is to be willing

To fail at the most important thing of all

Which is thinking itself- forging life from ether-

Formed within your inner house- your soul-

Placed into reality through word- for knowing

Words pointed to real things- absolution

Those thoughts that invisible stayed

And asked for your acknowledgment

As they were born of formless feeling

Are nothings- just as all things are scenarios

Whirlwinds of blood and sinew within

Rise up, rise up, rise up form of airy insides

Give the world the belief that existence exists

Do anything and everything you can- to stand

For the others are out there- roaming the night

Feats of anger seeking those professing truth

Are dreamed about by those who hate kindness

And want to destroy all that is sensitive in others

For fear of the sensitive worlds within themselves

But don’t you let that play down what you’ve got

A seeable tornado. A readable storm. Essence.

All within the glob of the inner invisible and cloud

That is you daily- vision blackened and desperate

And ever straining toward seas you still imagine

To be beauty blue, skies imagined to be white and love

The next step is the best-  A bird of vision taking flight.

As you rise from the black murk of the deadly deep

Published in: on November 26, 2024 at 2:05 am  Leave a Comment  

Commentary by Flud the Zone dot Com’s Managing Editor Sol Lebinowitz

You know, I’m not supposed to be like this. I was a good kid. I had good friends, some of whom I abandoned after I went on my wild ride through the contours of the mind. How many of my friends went on to get a Masters in Mythological Studies like me? Zero. Of course they wouldn’t. Most people wouldn’t even deign think about the world of the myths in a concerted way. I don’t feel stupid for that, but I do know that I am stupid for that, for while I was thinking about dreaming, dreams and the mythology that helped spur them and were spurred by them, everybody else was out making a living, becoming something that would make them a living, while me? I’m sitting around here editing fludthezone.com like some shmuck, but you know, we’re not all that of a nothing anymore.

 I’ve been using Guy Fusted now for a while as an interviewer and he’s brought us some real notoriety. His interview with George Santos was the first one after that blowhard started blowing hard, cornered him in a booth in an Italian dive in Brooklyn. Guy’s from Brooklyn, but he’s old school Brooklyn. He said he doesn’t even know what avocado toast is even though I’ve seen him trying it off the plate of our stringer, Susie Henderson. Susie is all business, but she is a bit of a foodie and me and her and Guy and Randy, my business partner who does the hard stuff, deals with money, while I act circumspect about a world gone mad but in public, God save me, were dining at Dino’s and what the fuh, guy eating Susie’s avocado toast.

Yeah, Guy liked the avocado toast even though he said he didn’t know what it is. I wouldn’t say Guy lies, but he’s honest in a way. If he said he didn’t know what avocado toast is then he probably forgot that day with Susie and how he just dipped it into his mouth in one fell swoop. Probably didn’t even realize he was eating avocado toast, the stupid fuck.

But Guy is ready for anything. Guy is going to have a regular feature for his interviews on the Flud the Zone channel on Youtube. Gonna talk about his foray into Russian society, pulled from the street in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, getting the interview of the year all while under the banner fludthezone.com m*th#rf*ck#r! That one really put Flud the Zone on the map, that one, Putin, can you imagine, although the one about Guy’s fart while sitting in the reporter’s pool at a Ron DeSantis presser got international coverage, including a full write up by Joel Steinberg, formerly of LOOK Magazine. Big time. So, I’ve got a say, somehow, too. Me. Can you imagine.

 A guy who gets a degree in mythology. A guy who worked as a reporter and then a novelist without getting published and then this Flud the Zone dot com, if you know what I mean. Why would providence unleash me on to the world? Can’t figure it out.  I’m sure you don’t get it. You’re clueless about my workings, as Alaina, Guy’s wife, once said about him. You’re clueless, Guy! Yeah, he was clueless, but then he got used to his wife doing rounds over at the English department of the community college, hey, boy, can you buy me a muffin, and that Alaina, she always got her muffin, and so did the sophomore future English major, oh boy, did he ever. Everyone is clueless, really. Nobody really knows what’s going on.

 But Guy is good with it all, easygoing. Thinks it’s all his fault Alaina cheats because he’s a bad provider. Before doing Flud the Zone interviews, which is making him and me some good clank, finally, he was sending out pieces to Rolling Stone and ___Boy Magazine (I should know, my brother, a real fuckup, is the editor in chief of ___Boy Magazine and he’s a ___Boy just like me! What the fuh?

Nobody will ever know or understand the mysteries of people’s minds, and I always  choose to go into them, especially after they proclaim things to be super stupid and therefore reach for succor from something even more stupid because they figure it all must be like reverse psychology, so if you let the stupider stupid person take charge then somehow stupidity will grind to a halt and we will all be thrown out of the wagon so at least we will have our bearings, at least we will know up from down, but Goddammit, that’s wrong.

 All that does is overthrow the bones of the governmental mechanism. Thieves do this to come back as the re-ordererer and it won’t be Democracy, but this shtick: EVERYTHING IS MINE AND I WILL ____ YOU IF YOU CONSIDER THINGS ANY DIFFERENT. THIS IS AN _______ NOTICE TO ANYBODY WHO STANDS IN MY WAY. In other words: F*scism. Trump toots about arresting his enemies all of the time. That’s nearly the definition of fascism. He’s laying it all out in the open in full golden majesty.

Okay, fascism, everybody is talking about fascism. This is the sort of thing us English majors will think about when we grow up because we realize that fascism is the natural result of the stupidest of the stupidest of the stupidest stupidity and that is what we are facing now:     THEY ARE EATING DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!

Get it? Good. Don’t vote Trump. Not a good idea. The man isn’t well. I wouldn’t say that he is a monster in the typical sense, but he is the more likely purrerrer, the one who silkily mewls into your ear about his beauty, him, golly, him.

Remember his notion about how beautiful he looks in a bathing suit on the beach? Remember that picture he painted for us about his beautiful body? I like that. I like that a lot. I like to think of Donald Trump as that beautiful man rolling around in the waves wearing nothing but his speedos, the sunset behind him, not a beautiful girl around to complement his male majesty, just him, just his beautiful body there in the twilight. God, that would be great, wouldn’t it?

That’s what I would do if I were a MAGA. I would allow myself to love every other MAGA to my fullest extent, give myself sexually to their women who were willing so as procreation can be expanded, anything for Trump. I will fuh my way to Donald J. Trump, I will fuh my way into the world of great and all-encompassing love. Be gone excess people! Be gone ye poor and downtrodden and shithole people, be gone! For I, Donald John Drumpf, am here and you may rest, but, er, just not around me, for one thing I do hate and despise are simple flies that go round and round your head, simple flies, and I look around and I look for the person who could have been responsible for these purple flies and I see nobody but myself and up above me, God, it was God, it was God who hated my guts, and I knew that he had every right to send that fly to stand on my head as though I were not an animal, but a God as well, a God to that fly. But I could never be. To God I was unworthy as a fly. And He was right.

Poor Trump. He doesn’t know that to be unworthy before your personal God (an old-fashioned notion I know) is what Christianity is! Christianity is knowing that you are not worthy and bowing down to God’s wisdom and when Jesus came along, presto, Love was added to the mix!  That’s why all of these MAGA Christians may be straying from Christianity, perhaps without even knowing it, for they are hollow gongs, because they do not have love.

How do you get love? According to Jesus Christ, anybody can get love simply by bowing down before it, just as God would have you do instead of simply worshipping Him with awe. He wanted you to worship Love, so much so that he gave his only begotten Son, so when you see the Love offering made by his Son for you, you bow down to it to receive it, you don’t try to get around it and say that this type of person or those types of people are not included in who we are because to do so would be to distrust love and if you distrust love then you distrust God and therefore are a sinner. This is actually the process of being born again, not not a big deal in American Christianity, and it’s good that people start remembering it a little bit more. Maybe there is a reason for it and maybe it is in order to enact Love. Love can save your life, keep your spirit from spiraling down into a black hole.

 Jesus even said to love your enemy, and that is why Israel right now, currently and often increasing militaristic bets, has effectively nixed considering the notion of love at all, and we Americans are not used to it so blatantly paraded before our faces; the sheer horror wrought by our own American-made bombs. The sheer un-love of it all.

 When you see numbers like 16,000 children dead, 16,000 orphaned teddy bears, you have to wonder about how all of the talk about bombing civilians, as we always did in the past, somehow is not supposed to matter now. What’s up?

 This is knocking love out of the game altogether. It is Old Testament destruction sh*t and we’re in 2024, 2024 years after Jesus Christ commanded us to love. It’s stupid that grown-ups are doing this. For the price of the bombs, I could build all of the housing needed in Gaza so that it could become more of a civilized place by looking up how to do it on Google.

 What if Israel could meet the issue with love? Just think about the money that could be saved if we just helped the Palestinians and abolished the Israeli version of apartheid so that Palestinians themselves could easily stare down their own bulldogs.

 And with that, the lullaby for the evening is complete.

CORRECTION:

 Apparently, my reference to the relationship between Guy and Alaina Fusted was in error. Flud the Zone dot com in no way proposes that the Fusted’s marriage is on the rocks. Fludthezone.com apologizes for the error and has removed said commentary from all future European media distributions although those here in the United States cannot be taken down, for which we apologize once again.  Sol Lebinowitz– Managing Editor

Published in: on October 24, 2024 at 3:20 am  Leave a Comment  
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