In general, researchers and listeners are more interested in the answers than the questions (since the answers are usually more varied than the questions, and may go into related topics not directly mentioned in the question). A good rule of thumb is the more detailed and descriptive the indexing is, the better researchers are able to access the tape content. For example, writing “describes fears about not surviving and prayers he wrote in his diary” is more helpful than “fears in battle.” For examples of some excellent logs the Veterans History Project has received from participants, please see sample Audio and Video Recording Logs listed on our forms page.
The Other Side – Dink
The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite
(An important message.)- the other side
We interrupt this sage. Yes. The other side is ridiculous. There is no other side. I repeat there is no repeat, wait, you can’t do tha…wait. Crunch. We interruput your air space with Albert Jones: People of the novel. The world is false. There is no here and there is no there, so, put down the novel and go outside and turn off the sprinklers. See if you can see that blonde who likes to undress by her swimming pool in plain sight of everybody around and it is everybody, Hank, Johnny, even over there on third street with his binoculars and all. Stan, Gus, Joe, Frank, Sam, Don, Bud, and Ron, Eli over from his roof on fourth street. The entire Clavicord family, whose last name I don’t know, but do know that sometimes he likes to play her when she plays it if you know what I mean. I can’t help it. It’s either never enjoy the stars or miss out on when the Mrs. leaves the shade open for ya. )
Jes kiddin, shit, she’d slap the taste out of your mouth and then you still gotta see her on Sunday. I’ve figgered it were more me to do what I do and that’s play bass. Ain’t got time for that kind of stuff. Leave it for daytime t.v. The world’s just not that bad that you gotta go there like a bunch of sniffy dogs in a neighborhood. My only real dream is to go on the road, go on tour. With somebody. Fuck it. So far we got Albert and…me. Oh well. We’ll get it going. The inner world society is doing pretty well, I guess. I’m getting the internet up since Albert is a moron when it comes to that stuff. Not a moron. No, I guess not, he’s not a moron. I[m more the moron really with me all I wanna do is play bass…
We got the stellar breeze inner world society going now, when stellar can make it into the Magi. He llives up in the hills collecting the milk of goats. They live happily and then one day Stellar will throw this email over to the gang and they’d read one of the mountain goat man’s poems for him since it was too hard for him to come down from the hills. But he would send ‘em and that was the stellar breeze inner world society, that name was Stellar’s, and he had the best poetry reading pretty much anywhere, really, that good. Anyway, Time magazine did a piece on him and then he was like, oh, now they think I think I’m something I’m not blah blah, but Stellar finally made it out of his cage on special occasions and it turned out one of these reasons was where he could see some of his poems performed at Albert’s The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Cajmpsite. That was the best poetry reading ever done, one of the best with Stellar’s bathtub sit poetry reading, pink shower curtain, or the Porn Night! We were supposed to bring out mothers. Fucked up shit like that. Shows that nobody would ever go to, but they were packed. We saved Stellar, who was sort of like a non-lethal bullfighter and maneuvering round most any town since he was gay. Stellar was happy all the time. He was joyous! He had found something in his life and it made him light up almost as bright as Jesus but not quite. That kind of guy. Really can write too. He’s a serious poet, even does academic blah blah, but what I’m saying is this “character” was out there. He was the ken kesey of the east Appalachians, from New York City, of course…
Dink Merrick on living in Millsville 2010
Dream
The children were smaller, on a carousel facing inward, but not moving. It’s just where they liked to stand if they hadn’t “fallen off” and begun taunting each other, posing at each other, fists outstretched, legs bent down like superheroes, their crew-cuts, mother given, ugly as your knowledge of their predicaments locked inside their tiny white heads. I had gone to sit on a bench close to the street. You could see the cars going by and it was a relief, but then it hit me, I was a prisoner there. I would leave when they said so and no sooner. Even though I was 41, I was in no better situation than those children. We were all being kept.
It started when we were about to leave. Me and Christopher, but Christopher was fiddling with his camera. I saw the frightened faces of the Mexican workers and looked around and saw the man with the crossbow. I didn’t know it was a crossbow, but thought it was a rifle with a scope on it. He was about a hundred yards away and he was definitely beginning the task of pointing it at me, or my general area, as I crouched behind the car, behind the tire. I felt like the eyepiece was following me. Christopher seemed unaware of everything.
I sat in a white room with others. I don’t remember why I was there. Christopher would attack me at times. Run up behind me and grab me and hold on with all his strength. I tried to get through to him. One time I yelled into his deranged eyes “Christopher! Christopher!” and as they dragged him away I knew I had gotten through. A man looked closely at me and told me that I had fought back or something to that extent and I didn’t know if he was upset or pleased.
I was then called in for therapy. I am a large man, close to 270, but soon found myself being balanced on the legs of an average sized black woman who was probably about the age of 30. Somehow she could hold me using the weight of her body, her arms and her legs. I fell into it and enjoyed it. Then she let me fall forward and then would catch me. I was asked to relax and fall naturally, but I was almost too much for her. I noticed there were paintings on the wall, pastoral works and I saw prices written under the wooden frames. I don’t remember the paintings well, but they were of summer light in sad places, English hills, barns, non-descript browns and blues.
There was talking too, I remember now, but as she questioned me (it seemed as though the questions came when I was put into positions by the woman)…I can’t remember too well the questions, but the answers seemed to be about my life and my novel. I remember thinking about my mother, but do not remember the context. This seemed and still seems important. Progress was made, but no final answers given. The woman dropped away and then all I remember is being dismissed from the session by a different worker, this time a man and when he walked away I could see that I had just been another therapy session. That was the sadness. To feel as though you were being healed, but it was all a ruse in that you were just another therapy session. That’s when I walked away to the bench and saw the children on the carousel and knew the extent of the problem.
One other thing I remember is the therapists themselves, or rather, what appeared to be interns or something. They were young and they wore white coats and they walked in the glass door from the street on their way to work. I felt like they were giving me intelligent people to talk to finally. One of them had eyes that were very piercing, but I knew that it was in the service of knowledge and not me specifically which made me think of him a little bit like a robot. They all wanted to be therapists and were just learning. But their intelligence seemed like what I needed if I were to finally understand what had put me into this place where I could not leave even if I wanted to, but I didn’t know that. For now, I was just another kid on the carousel.
The Second Literary Campsite
Welcome to the second literary campsite. I promise that it won’t be any better than the first, but I never promised anything about the first either. I get tired of competition and I’m not about to introduce it to myself as these damned missives to the world continue. You can go screw yourselves if that’s what you want.
Some time ago I got sick of being slick. I tried so hard to be slick for the sake of selling my words that I started hating myself. Now I just want to write and if it comes out as appearing slick (of quality) then that’s a good by product, but I won’t chase it anymore. It’s putting the cart before the horse when you do. That carrot ain’t so tasty anyway.
A lot of people know I’m a writer and they ask me how I can do what I do. Well, I would like to address that question here on the campsite today. First of all, for all of you who don’t consider me a writer, I welcome you to the campsite. Please stop reading now. For those of you who consider me a writer because I am writing now and you are a writer because you write I also offer you a hearty welcome, but writers are few. So for that one percent of you who are still reading because you are a manic word gobbler I will say this: I don’t know.
John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors, said he had learned a lot of technical tricks on how to be a writer, but once he sat down at that blank page was as lost as anybody else as to how to do it. The process begs questions, unanswerable questions, to produce answers. What part of our minds actually does the writing? That’s a biggie because it asks you to look at your very process of thinking. That’s one that makes us lose fifteen years to the study of ourselves. If you pick up an addictive habit add five to ten years. To get out of it I went and got a graduate degree in a subject called “Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology.” That added five years to my dumbfoundedness in addressing this question.
Now, having failed miserably in answering the basic question of how do we write, $30,000 poorer for asking, too, I come up with the same thing that your high school teacher came up with who didn’t get lost in the world of reality questioning, got a good stable degree, made 30,000 the same year I lost it: Writing itself is the answer. Put the seat of the pants on the chair. The answer comes in the process, the feelings you discover during the process, the uncovering of the mysteries.
The question cannot be addressed empirically unless you want to enter James Hillman Hell. This is a place where seeking types try to become scholars and yet the scholarship consists of believing that unreality has in its kernel, its core, the notion that it is just as real as the real. God is as real as Bread. The inner is as real as the outer. This is exactly what I believed as a child of an artist and spiritualist type mother. But you can’t just take it in. You have to forget you know it in order to know it. It’s all confusing and barely worth your time that Buddhist monks must say over and over for twenty years before they kick aside a pebble and for some reason gain enlightenment. In our society this is not practical. Trust me I’ve lost many very marketable years chasing after the answer.
In sum all I have to say about this particular question is “don’t ask.” Get a business degree, soup up your Chevy, get laid and please, find a pot to piss in.
But a Glimmer in the Eye
Under Alex’s skin was the dullness again. The sound came from outside. Kids playing their tunes probably, little nothing sounds unaware of themselves that ruled anyway. He went to the window. Not kids, he realized, but the neighbors, people he didn’t like because he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him. By now, after seeing one another for two years, no one cared to bridge this gap.
He closed the window. There was that man who always walked his dog, talking to a woman with blue veins on her temple, a talker, her, one who spoke of things like friends and who gave little notices via her eyes about real meanings that had no importance whatsoever in the world of thought, of ideas, the things that Alex prided himself as having embraced like a lover. He had closed the window so as not to hear the tinny music that the lady always carried with her when she walked. The man never walked, but stood and watched his dog. He was old, too. There was no way to know about them, except that he was not a talker and she was. Did he put up with her as Alex had put up with her briefly before closing the window and going back to his computer? He had 134 Facebook friends. Yet nobody ever called.
He remembered the laughter of the woman. Over the many years laughter seems to lose its luster. It seemed fake to Alex, too loud, too loud to be real, for very few things caused so much laughter to occur unless the person wanted laughter to occur. You could not have real laughter through mere want, he knew. He looked at the happy people on Facebook, hoping that they were not as happy as they seemed. He hadn’t posted in several months and had considered getting off, but his computer was too old now and it wouldn’t let him. He was a slave to Facebook and friends who didn’t write to him, formerly good friends, friends that mattered. All avoided him and his only solace was in thinking that they avoided everybody else, too, that they were philosophically against Facebook so were off doing something else. They probably hoped the same thing concerning him, if they remembered him at all.
Alex had recently quit reading the newspaper in hope of gaining a little bit of solace. He had taken up reading again, novels: J.M. Coetzee, David Mitchell, Russell Banks, only the best of modern writers. He was going to inject the best of thought into his overly worked brain from now on. Everything else had somehow failed him. He had been like those Indians whose sole purpose is to make sure the sun goes from East to West every day. By reading the news he was a watchdog. Nothing too horrible could happen if he was on the job. In the end, he realized, this was a false notion. He had written letters to editors and politicians and had never gotten a response. He had protested the Iraq war. They killed anyway. Everybody does everything anyway, he realized. He had zero impact upon the world by fretting over it. Besides, now that he had let the world go, there would be more of a chance that it would hasten its own destruction and he would be forced to move on, to Argentina or Ecuador or the southern tip of Spain. The nuclear bombs probably wouldn’t go off in these places.
Alex could no longer hear the tinny music of the woman who laughed like she didn’t want to. Janie Frieberg was doing lunch with her sister and she was really excited. He couldn’t put Facebook away just yet. He kept going back to it. Janie was the only girl he had ever dated who remained his friend afterward. She seemed so dull to Alex, viewing her life on Facebook, so much so that he wondered what he had ever seen in her. When she left him, she had been talking about spirituality and politics and religion and sex. When she walked she would sometimes twirl. She was bright-eyed and ambitious, but when she saw him it always seemed like she was looking around him, like she was looking to see if there was something better than Alex. This eventually led to the inevitable breakup. One knows when one is not loved.
Now Janie was married to a man named Styrong. Alex couldn’t place the nationality of that name. Perhaps he was Asian or Scandinavian. It would have fit Janie to go after an international type. She was a romantic. That’s why they originally clicked. She went by Janie Frieberg Styrong on Facebook, proud of herself and her marriage. She was a regular gal now, wasn’t straying that far, was capable of being married and having kids while keeping her individuality which was always very important for she and Alex way back when. She looked better now than she did then, but Alex figured that was just because he still missed her. He loved her then and he loved her still, but now he had to face, everyday, that it was an illusion, that their relationship was a brittle husk at best while it was going on and now was a visible memory anytime he went to the computer. She was making vegetarian tacos for the kids. She got a new shawl that was wonderful. Does anybody else care that meat is murder?
Everybody on Facebook had become a caricature of who they really were, but that was all that he had of them anymore. He had no way of going back to them. He was a failure in this world, living on food stamps, nursing a painful tooth badly in need of a root canal, working at a job that had no interest in his Bachelors in English Literature with an emphasis in Poetry. Poetry. It had failed him. The words had not been enough. The world didn’t want them. After awhile the bitterness seeped into him like the rot into his tooth. More than once he cursed the gods of poetry, those same gods that he saw in the eyes of Janie, that he heard in the music of her voice. He knew what mattered and he was forced to question himself and his choices. Had he majored in poetry because he was lazy? Was he a failure in the world because the inner world really was not as important as the outer world? Had that been a lie? Why did the guys who never bothered going to school do better than he did in the minute intricacies of life? They all got married. All had children. All made upwards of 50 to 100,000 dollars per year. Alex realized that it was willful ignorance and lack of introspection that had saved them. They had not tried to trace the intricacies of God’s grand design and the universe rewarded them for it, like a bunch of Adams before the original thought.
Alex went down the row: Stan Villon, now a professor in South Carolina. Stan was a friend during his post-college days in Chicago. A guy who reminded Alex of Gandhi, Stan had been a student at the University of Chicago. Of course he would now be a professor. Alex sat with these University of Chicago students in old houses while snow fell outside, drinking coffee while reading to each other. They were equals there. Nobody cared that Alex had graduated from a small state school in California of little significance. He sat and listened mostly, always somewhat in awe of the intelligence of his fellows. They liked his poetry, but he always wondered whether he could ever be an intellectual peer to them. They had been vetted by the system and they could take that with them anywhere they went. He had gotten into college easily, for all that had been needed was a C average in high school. Everybody got into his school.
He had watched as these diverse human satellites in the world of the University of Chicago pulled in close just briefly and then veered away into their proper orbits. These orbits were distinctly different from his. Their orbits allowed them to be paid for subtle thought simply because they had also been practical. Many had been groomed. Now he felt that he had simply been allowed to view the subject matter. Nobody ever had any intention, he felt, of letting him also thrive by concentrating on the barely visible truths, pulling them up further and revealing them for the good of all man-kind. He thought of going back to school, a graduate school where he could study philosophy and psychology and poetry and fiction and write essays and treatises and be listened to. Perhaps that was what was needed, to be allowed to be one of the vetted ones, to push it forward, get the title behind his name and just go to work, get paid, get a family, a home, a life. But the brain was dulled by now, at 38, too dulled to forget the pain that he had experienced holding on to a dream made of vespers and silence. He had come to know the realm of poetry, but by this time, the sadness of getting there had chased him away. Half of him no longer respected something that could keep someone from having a family through its virtual insistence upon poverty in order to stay true. This rebellion pushed him back to Facebook. He scrolled down.
A slew of faces, some of them from his time attempting to solidify a weekly poetry reading that fell through. Once again, the real world trumped the inner world. He found that there was petty competition even in the realm of high spirituality. Life always seemed a balance between the animal and the spiritual and the animal always won. God Sex ruled, of course, perhaps because of the spirituality involved on some deeper level, but with it always came the baser power structures, the evil little victories, the savoring of the defeat of others. Once again, the poetic ideal was corrupted by two little things called hope and belief. There was Roger Milens and Fay Disiwala. They were good poets and went on to be in a theater company. He never really knew what they did with the rest of their lives, but they drove nice cars, had mates, were nice people, but aloof. Everybody was aloof. Poetry was about intimacy with others. You could play it, but Alex found that few wanted to live it. God Fun was really the key here. Fun was the ideal once people got together. The urge to laugh became a sort of religion. Perhaps if people couldn’t laugh after every sentence then everybody would have to cry. Everybody would just break down and cry. As people age, the idea of tears became the enemy. No matter what everybody was doing, no matter what a group believed in, the idea of fun always reigned supreme. It was the same on Facebook. Everybody was putting on their perfect face. In the meantime, nobody communicated anymore. Nobody cared anymore. They had all virtually laughed themselves to death.
Brent Helow, Slim Fawaskawa, a Japanese dude who was really funny. Another one Alex didn’t really know. Slim was one of those guys who was in and out. He had an invisible wall around his head, a perpetually smiling head, a mouth of perpetual wit and glee, but a wall nonetheless. He was just another who came out and then went back in where Alex could not go. The death of intimacy, Alex thought. Facebook was becoming a symbol to him of the death of ever being able to connect on a true level with somebody ever again. All of his friends were on it. Every friend that was listed he now knew did not want to know him anymore. It would have been better had he not initiated contact at all. They would have been better off left in the warmer clouds of memory. If left there, there would have been a hope of contact once again, real contact, and it would have held surprise and the memory of the more authentic moments of the past, the true laughter that had simply had to stop. Alex understood having to move on, but he couldn’t quite understand coming back in such an impersonal way. All reunions had been wasted. He would never have a reason to really see these people ever again. They were Facebook friends after all.
Julie Lowe, a model and actress, a stranger; Giselle Luidi, an intellectual from college who laughed like a hyena but behind her glasses possessed one of the finest noses he had ever seen. She was a beauty that didn’t know it who became a business-type, he thought, wasn’t sure, stocks and bonds. Smart girl. He had re-united with her without a word, a simple acceptance of the other’s existence, an acknowledgement that the one is happy that the other is not dead. They had once found themselves alone together for four hours, and talked about everything from politics to the Miami Dolphins. There had even been a chance at love, but it fizzled. Both held back. Both had a feeling about the other, that it just wasn’t that way. They were right. A hello without a hello was in order. Strike Giselle. Tom Julienne, Ty Uflado, a true laugher, a big smile, outdoorsy, probably not at the computer that much. Alex envied him. Jim Lowry, Hillel Lowenberg, Gail Stormer, the list went on and on. All happy. All knowledgeable of him, always would be, none of whom really cared. He hadn’t gotten a personal message by any of them in over eight months.
Alex closed the lid of the computer. Perhaps he could go to the library and use one of their computers to cancel Facebook. He would do it soon, but there was always a waiting list at the library. Outside he heard more laughter. He went to the window and a couple of middle-aged women had joined the dog watching, radio-listening group, whiling away the hours with innocent banter. The middle-aged ladies were loud. They were big lunged laughers who found everything funny and yet had nothing at all to really say. This was the way of the world. People as they aged had gone back to the placid non-thinking of who they really were after all of the bravado of having to be the hero to insure themselves food for their gullets in their old age. At a certain point the hero is let go and the simple, gurgling stream is taken back into their hearts and minds; simplicity and laughter and mere feeling of presence without any impulse to dream forward a finer existence, a more poetic existence, one that magically transforms others while transforming oneself. The idea of a spiritual utopia had been replaced with a toaster and cream cheese reality.
Alex watched the group talk below him for a little while and then went over to the dresser and opened his book. He had picked up, once again, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. After only a moment he closed it and picked up a pen and a small personal journal. In it he wrote:
Ever long the day
Not knowing then
That I would never know
Having sought solace
Where solace dare not dwell
I roam still ever inward
All the people gone
A few old faces
Remembering me –
A flicker
Before all – we fly
#
In The Smokies
You ever wonder what the world would be like if you or mama weren’t ever born? Jed asked his father while they sat up by the campfire.
–“Sure, You wouldn’t be asking me that question.” Tom strums his guitar
I guess not. How come you play guitar, daddy?
“I play guitar because it sounds good.”
That’s all?
“There’s something we got inside each and everyone of us, Jed, and it’s called your soul. You ever heard of the soul?”
Yeah.
“Well, good then. You got it. Your mama has got it. Even your baby brother Albert has got it. Some people even think that the trees got it. Well, in people sometimes it feels good to feel your soul, and I’m able to feel my soul through the playing of my guitar.”
So the soul ain’t real, is it, daddy! It’s invisible!
“Not real? Invisible? God, Jed, I didn’t realize how much you don’t know. The soul is the most real thing in the world. If somebody has no soul then you know it immediately.”
But I thought you said everybody has a soul.
“They do, but sometimes, if you do a bad thing, you can lose your soul. But I don’t think you lose it really. It just sort of goes underground. It goes into hiding. But no matter how far down it goes, with right living, and doing the right thing, you can bring it back up to the open air. That’s called forgiveness. That’s what Jesus talked ’bout, and your mother. No matter what bad you’ve done, if you ask Jesus to forgive you for it your sins will be washed away.”
How Jesus do that? Jed said.
“Jed, I’m not really sure, to be honest. I’ve always done pretty good at doing the right thing in this life. I’m sure your mother could tell you or if you listen up in church on Sunday they might throw you a hint. It’s a good question though…hmmm, wait, I think I know. That’s a damned good question, Jed. I guess, in some ways, Jesus sends his spirit down to watch over us when we don’t hardly believe we’re worth anything anymore. Maybe that’s what his angels are for. I guess the important thing, if you’re in a predicament of having lost your soul, is being open to those heavenly messengers. Now, they may not look like an angel or they may not seem like Jesus, but maybe they’re something that He does for you in some little way. Maybe he will send you a little bird to sit on your shoulder and tell you what to do. It happens in stories.”
Yeah, but those are stories. Let me play, daddy, Jed said.
“Are you big enough?”
Give me the guitar, dad.
“Here, I’ll teach you. This is how you play…you got your soul? ”
Yeah, daddy, I got my soul. Gimme the guitar…
(He hands Jed the guitar and teaches him how to play.)
The Barky Concept
The barky concept
This is the story about my dog, Barky, Felix, Barky, Barky never shutups. Barky barks 24 hours a day and we, get this, we Keep him! Keep Him! My mom loves Barky. So this is the story. This is the way that it’s gotta go. Barky’s got to get famous. This is the only way. Barky must be famous so that my mom can be rich and I can get my own room on the other side of the mansion that Barky is going to buy us. Because, trust me on this, Barky can never be quiet. Barky can never Shut up.
This was the plan. Make sure that my mom didn’t find out, but sneak barky out of the house between two and 6 oclock when she got home everyday. I would have to buy my own carrying case. I’ll take Barky to all of the agencies. Everything. He’s real tame. He’ll let me hold him, which is a plus. A plus so far. So Here we go. Get that perpetual barking on command harnessed into a few dog food commercials and we’ll be set. I’ll keep the money quiet until Barky’s really famous and we can get that house and then I won’t have to listen anymore to that dog!
2.
this is the plan. 3:30 got an appointment with Alpo. I know, I know, Alpo. What’s the odds of Alpo wanting Barky, but they need Barkies and I got one. Put out a few fliers and some other things and got a nibble from Alpo. So I take Barky in and they put him on the floor and first look to see how he is around people and he’s good on a leash too. My mom trained him, she wouldn’t take no shit. And here was my mom on the end of the leash right now, going through all the best motions to impress these people and wouldn’t you know it, through her dog of all things, all of my mom’s stuff, right here.
Anyway, we got through that one. That tall guy was the one in charge, I know it. You can never be sure though. Barky did alright. He barked of course, little son of a bitch, on cue, but that’s what he was supposed to do and it didn’t sound so bad once it was put on full form for the cameras. It’s like putting nickels in a slot machine, each bark a nickel, a chance at the big jackpot on a national Alpo commercial. Christ, they need new dogs all the time!
3
get in get out. That’s it. You make sure that you get in fast get the sound guy and the camera going. In the mood, barky! Rawf! Trademark! Another 2 grand in my pocket. Fifteen thousand short of getting the house and this dog out of my life forever!
4.
Barky did it. A Lil’ Nibbler’s Chunky Treat gig with two other dogs, not the best scenario, the one of the lap and the smile, but I’ll take it, $1,800 to the broker tomorrow and we’re in and that dog can go to hell.
5.
Been in the house five months. Can’t hear Barky anymore. Thanks God. People tell me to use Barky as my money making scheme in life instead of doing what I do. I tell them look, I could be living the high life with that dog there. We could easily pull down another five or six hundred thou together, but you know what? Fuck that dog.
End.
I Dream of Mountains
I dream of mountains.
Perhaps, this mountain or mountains are
the mountains of true dreams or
just another dream by day,
non-distant dreams like dreams
that have been dreamed a hundred times before
by others, and better.
No, these mountains are the mountains of wishes as well.
Wishes are the winds in these hills that whisper
they are not mine to judge.
They are wishes and winds,
whisperers of tomorrow today.
Dink
Dink Merrick was always bouncing, even at the tender age of five. He would pound his hands on things. Anything could be a drum. Then he would lose interest and move on, jump on, really, run down the stairs, run up the stairs, find his mother, Rhonda, who was always tired, and tackle her from behind and wrap his arms around her before being shooed and chastised. But nothing would stop him from his ever present need to move. His attention span was zero. Any toy he played with ended up broken, usually thrown against a wall or stomped on. It could be anything, a large truck going by outside of his window, a telephone call from downstairs. His imagination would take hold of any and everything and his body would follow with a totally incomprehensible action, usually destructive, that eventually led Rhonda to take Dink, whose real name was Robert (Dink was given to him by his father) to a doctor who called him hyperactive and put him on little red pills that worked for a little while, but still couldn’t quash his ferocious restlessness. The doctor asked Rhonda if everything was alright at home and she said yes. A lie. Steve Merrick hit Rhonda everywhere except her face.
Dink’s best friend was Richie who lived two doors away. His mother often asked Richie’s mother, Ann, to watch him while she was at work at the little diner on the highway, the first diner on the road that would take you on up into the Smoky Mountains, a favorite vacationing spot for anybody from Millsville, with it’s expansive beauty, rivers, streams and massive hardwood forests. One day he found a dime inside of Richie’s couch. His mother was upstairs at her sewing machine. Richie saw the dime and immediately claimed it for his own since it was in his couch. Dink disagreed vehemently and said “finders keepers losers weepers” and the two tussled for it until Dink broke away, ran out the front door and continued on until he got to his house, the precious dime still in his little palm. He went to his room upstairs and dropped the dime into his little yellow piggy bank. He then shook it back and forth and listened closely for an accurate accounting of his individual wealth. Not too bad, not too good. He placed it back on his shelf and looked around. He wouldn’t talk to Richie for a long while, he figured, now that he knew how unfair and spoiled his former friend really was. He went to his train set on the floor and turned it on, watching the little Union Cargo train with four cars go round and round. He quickly tired of this and then went downstairs and opened the refrigerator. He made himself a bowl of cereal and ate it and looked at the clock. Although he couldn’t tell time he sensed that his mother wouldn’t be home for a long while. On his way home he had first carefully checked, looking through the neighbors bushes, to see if his father was home still working on the truck. Had he been home he would have gone back to Richie’s and given back the dime. The old Ford was in the driveway, its hood open, tools scattered alongside on the old cracking cement, but his father wasn’t there. The little, rickety Datsun that his father hated with gusto and that he shared with his mother was also gone. Freedom.
But now there was nothing left to do but watch television. He missed Richie’s friendship and was lonely there without his mother. Being an adult wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He turned on the television. He watched old cartoons on the old cartoon station since it wasn’t Saturday and there were no new cartoons to watch. They were funny anyway and at one point he stood up and bounced up and down on the couch as he watched the show. He was in the air when his father walked in and stopped and just stared at him. Jumping on the couch was strictly prohibited. Jumping at all was strictly prohibited anymore. His father said nothing, but just looked at him. There was something in his eye. His mouth was open like he was a stupid man. Dink knew he was in trouble, but there was something more. His father looked at him in such a way that he knew that he would get it good this time. His eyes were hollow, almost dead. His face was twisted around and contorted making him look like a monster that he once saw on t.v before his mother made him turn it off. His first thought was a question. Is he going to kill me? He thought that his father would kill him, not just beat him as he occasionally did when he was bad, not one of those hard hand beatings on his rear and his back and the back of his head hard until he was dizzy or belt beatings that would last it seemed an hour until he was purple and blue under his clothes. Dink, upon looking at his father, believed with all of his heart that the end of his life had finally arrived.
He ran for his life, darted up the stairs, directly into the hall closet where he closed the door behind him, opened the clothes hamper lid in the pitch black, forgetting about the light bulb on the string, and climbed in. He felt himself shaking, shivering at the thought of the look in the eye of his father. Never had he seen such a look. He began to put the few clothes and towels in the hamper over him in case his father searched it and relaxed his body so that he would sink as far down as he could possibly go. There was suddenly a crash downstairs. Then another. His father was kicking things over again searching for him. Then there was a thud and a scream. Then another thud and then another scream. He was punching the wall. Then another thud and then another scream until his father let out a high, piercing wail that sent a sharp shiver down Dink’s spine which made the lower part of his back physically hurt. He listened intently inside of the silence after the wail. Where was he? Dink couldn’t tell. Then he heard the footsteps. His father was walking up the stairs. Then silence again until he heard the door of his mother and father’s room open. The door did not close and he heard some drawers opening and then closing as though his father thought he was in the drawers inside the sliding closet. Then silence again. Nothing. He remained inside of the clothes hamper, shivering, his teeth chattering together. But still there was no more noise from his father. He hadn’t even left his room. Dink was too scared to cry.
Dink stayed in the hamper. How long he did not know. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. He had no idea, but he knew that he wasn’t ready to make a break. His fear of the dark was gone. The dark was the last thing that he had to be afraid of anymore. The dark was now his only friend. The phone rang inside of his father’s room. His father answered it. He couldn’t hear what his father was saying, but he could hear his voice. He was talking to somebody in a grown up manner. His voice was low and steady. He seemed calm now, as though the earlier destruction was for fun and now he was bored again. His father stopped talking and once again there was total silence in the house. After a couple of minutes, the phone rang again. His father answered it and once more there was that voice, a new, calm voice that spoke once again in a grown up manner. Far in the distance Dink could hear the blare of sirens. There was a fire somewhere. Had his father set the house on fire? Was he going to burn to a crisp? He smelled no smoke, but he wondered. The sirens got louder and louder and then suddenly stopped. He then heard the sound of feet on the carpet downstairs. He thought he heard a window break as well. Then another. They were fighting the fire downstairs. He had to go. He heard voices and movement up the stairs. His father still talked on the phone in that same calm voice. There were other people in his house, but none of them spoke. His father’s voice was the only voice when suddenly he heard another man’s voice.
“It’s okay, Steve. Don’t bother with it, old friend. C’mon, there, pal. Let’s just end this thing, okay?”
End what thing? Who was this man? He was not the only one in the house this was for sure. He heard the fireman radios static and electric downstairs, the serious sound of people doing serious things. The man spoke again.
“John, let’s do this my way now. Give me a little bit of time. I know Steve. Right, old buddy? We got you covered, right? We’re going to be alright. They’re going to step away for a bit.”
He heard footsteps moving away from his father’s doorway, but they did not move back down the stairs. How many firemen were in the house he couldn’t tell, but he could sense the buzzing. He could sense the danger and it made him sink lower into the hamper, even if the house was on fire he was not going to move. He was undiscovered.
The silence returned. He could hear the man and his father talk as though they were having a conversation, but he could not make out what they were saying. After awhile the fear subsided somewhat. His heart stopped beating a million miles an hour. He was tired, so tired and he felt his eyes close. Just a moment after he felt this weariness he fell asleep. It was a hazy sleep, a soft sleep, the kind that children were supposed to sleep. He awoke with a start thirty minutes later after remembering that his father was in trouble and he needed to help him. He had not burned to a crisp. His father was in trouble. Something had happened to his father. Although he did not know how long he had been asleep and because of the silence in the house he climbed out of the clothes hamper and pulled the string on the light bulb. The light hurt his eyes, but it allowed him to find the doorknob which he turned slowly and silently before peering into the hallway through the tiny crack of the door that he had opened like a spy. Nobody was in the hallway. His father’s door was open, but there were no more voices. He opened it further and searched the hallway to the end. There was nobody at the top of the stairway. Everybody must have left. He opened the door just enough to get through it and slowly made his way to his father’s door. When he was fully in the door frame he saw his father sitting on the floor, his back against a dresser. His legs were spread out in front of him and his head was resting upon a shotgun, the barrel keeping his head up like a crutch. His finger was on the trigger and a police officer crouched next to him. His father then moved his eyes slowly towards Dink and the sadness in the look immediately made Dink cry.
“Oh, God,” his father said, and the police officer said. “It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay.” But then Dink briefly lost consciousness, just for a split second, for he had suddenly accelerated at an unreal speed. He flew forward and hit his head on the wall as someone ran past him, pushing him over as though he were a rag doll. He turned over and saw that an older boy had run him over and was now beating his father mercilessly. He curled over on his side, closed his eyes and plugged his ears to drown out the horrible screams, like a girls, that were coming out of his father’s mouth as the room filled with police officers trying to get the boy off of his father who could do nothing to protect himself from the viciousness of this other child. After a moment they were able to pull the boy off of his father and held him like he was a dangerous full-grown man. He was breathing hard. He wore no shirt or shoes and had shampoo in his hair. This boy’s eyes were like the eyes of a scary monster too and they would not leave the form of his father who was now in the hands of two police officers. Another police office hurriedly removed the shotgun from the room. His father’s body wilted in the prison of the two police officer’s firm grips and he watched his father cry too, just like him, as if they were agreed that the world had finally come to an end.
They Were Found Righteous – Albert
The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite’z
They Were Found Righteous
a breakfast surreal by Albert Jones
Chapter 1
The Unintelligible Wrath of God
Usually the blank space, the vacuous middle, the unholy whole of what I am is like a secret passageway to a new place. Horses cavort then die then disappear, but then re-appear running thigh long and whispery in their cloudy passage. What hard place do their hooves scratch? None, for the horse is in dream, a lone representation of a thought not reached by me nor anybody else. It drifts away, does not run, for it cannot run. It can only drift, disperse. This is the mode of normalcy for me. For you? Maybe for you too. If a horse why not a llama? A lemur? A disc? An obelisk? Why not a centipede or just the legs of a centipede? This is how much the eyeball world knows when belief in a something further inside is, not forgotten, but accepted as sad, decrepit and scary. The inner world teems and it is better that these horse half-thoughts do not arise again. Trilobites. Why not trilobites? An image, any image, where you can dig in like a fat man at a crab feast for something new, something about you? A crocodile? A soft day to replace a sudden feeling imageless that you must face. Why? Why?
Job was told there was something bad that he must have done to have brought upon him such wrath from God. Job sat there and watched everything fall apart. What must he have done? He could not think of what it could have been. Nothing. He had done nothing wrong. He never left this sentiment because he couldn’t see anything but the truth. This fact is what made him a noble man in God’s eyes. He did not make himself believe something that wasn’t true so that he could gain favor with his oppressor. He couldn’t. His nature was simple. This nature is what got him into trouble in the first place. How could he have changed? The Devil made a sorry bet. Watery worlds. Deep far down worlds like in an ocean, cold, salty with beasts inside. All symbolic. All symbolic for you, but not you, not anymore, not since the pain came along and made all such visages fearful. A trilobite. Or a crab like the zodiac sign. Each could make you something more than you are, but you lose it in the thinking and the analytic isn’t so good anymore and why would you want to go there anyway, this world that possesses you and feeds you tiny morsels of meaninglessness, no context, just tiny morsels of meaninglessness. Dodgers at 4 o’clock. You read it in the paper. You’ve got to go to work now.
I’m a scuttly now, a bog, bugged, scuttly upon the floor. Found out about my outer limbs and feels the crackle of the box. No way to get a message through my back. That’s where the light comes in. Angels. You slowly lift your eyes and you see the dawn or is a wasteland come to haunt you? A past? There must be a past or a whole bunch of built up futures that never materialized, all in all, though, you can bet that it will look like a city on a hill, but you won’t bet on it, because, although white, it is crumbling, slowly crumbling and the sand is becoming chalky and split and you know that yesterday is today and you cannot catch up. It will not let you catch up. A sloth. A lemur. A sense of well-being barely remembered. At least you have a car.
A downward slope, a slide of sorts at the tip is the leap. The lip of the tip is a leap into sky and from there perhaps down. Who am I to guess. Perhaps up. The eyeball world tells you nothing that’s why we turn, why the eyeball looks away towards something new. The two are unconnected, this thing inside, the tip thing, the lip thing into sky and the eyeball thing, tomorrow, today, the why’s, the where’s, the how’s. You think you’ve found color? Mind you, you have not. This thing that you have found is as wordless as yesterday. You watch for your next thoughts and hope that it will come for words may form upon your lips. Then you will know. But that is the eyeball world, the turned away world where hope is all that you’ve got because there is nothing else. You need a mirror, you know, but also know that the mirror is a mirror and where is the where? The there? Here, you hope, it is here, somewhere, because if not then all you’ve got is today. Not a place to get an eyeball in.
But there are buckets and in these buckets lie piles and piles of cash and that’s where you’re supposed to go. Go to the buckets of cold, hard cash. Cold? No, not cold. Warm and pliable and love-producing, these buckets will bring you warm flesh with heart attached. It will bring you children and home and hearth and hope and expectation and quiet knowledge of life’s realities, but stalwart faith, too, and hope. Did I mention hope? Let the exercise continue upon the Lord. Green and smelly, good and faithful. Cash is the God of the world and the only God the world will let you worship. Choose another God, go ahead I dare you, you will see that the world will not allow it for very long. Christianity? Hell, you’d be in the streets. The eyes will look away. Muslim? Well, I wouldn’t really know, but money seems better than this too. Hinduism. Well, there, everyone is poor. Anyway, green and good and smelly and hard and there and present and heartbeat bringing, life affirming. I worship you. I worship you. I worship you. If I don’t I’ll be kicked out I know.
Out from the out in to the inside and then back out, strung, this path together by course thread marked. Still no sign of land. You don’t want feats. You want truth and love. This is all and tomorrow, when the eyeball is back, you will have to make do. Another day is what it brings, no mirror, yet the day. Tomorrow, but no today. Past loves are gone and you are here and your eyeball is dead, or if not dead, un-seeing enough to seem dead. Unseeing enough to make you want to sleep. You attached to the eyeball by tether and synapse to heart and body where fat is becoming who you are and bags are spilling under your eyes because You Can’t See Yourself.
Oh, well. Money is there (although it’s not). Money is there and you had better believe it. Respect it. Money? Money? Money? Money? What does this mean? It means warm cars and heat. Mountain roads yet safety. Sleeping children and a warm smile and true love beside you. It means family appreciation and your rightful place. It limits doubt, no, kills it. Your smile seems like something meant to be. God was good to you and all because of money, money, money, money, money, money, money.
Slip sided because the memory of sex is gone, you are in four rooms, between four walls rather, where these rooms, or walls rather, wait beside you. At least they are there although they are much like the hoofless horse and then they are gone and you don’t know why you would see them in your Mind’s Eye. For if a hoofless horse can run and a four-walled room (s) can be then the inner space, the gasping space, gurgling space can be filled more, but not with feeling, this you know, not with feeling anymore because when feeling comes then you will know that you are something beyond the other thing. Money will become something again and you will raise your mouth to the skyh to try and capture some with a smile, a moneyrainy smile that catches rainmoney smile and you will be happy because the cragspace of nothing brown where walls and horses non-eyeball placeness beckons you will know. Simply, then, you will know…perhaps.
Well then back to the box. Slow down and take heed because back to the box you go when memory, good stuff, the stuff that is good for you to remember not bad, hints at itself again like a vague whisper a mountain lion stepping soft in snow memory asking for you again by name. and you remember that you remember that you remember that you remember that you remember. Memory of old days return again and you know that if this memory is here that another can be formed but boxes and horses, dead horses, I might add and eyeballs and you and me and us and we and money and this and that and the other thing and the thing beyonjd that that you didn’t want to talk about and thw whirl and the world and the now and the then and the how and the when and hen and the chipmunk and back to you and me and us and we and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes…
Remember when the monkey wrench was thrown into the plan? Remember when the surf carried me away and I didn’t come back for ten years? Remember how I thought that I wasn’t human and therefore couldn’t have relationship because relationship was between two humans and I was not human, but something else? Remember how the sky turned dark because that is what it was said it must do to denote the feeling that was being bandying about, and it stayed dark for two years? Remember when we had sex in the rain? Remember how we thought that this mattered, before the period when I thought I wasn’t real and that maybe I could live in a box and ask questions of a God that didn’t seem to be there and when the day ended, as it always did for you because you were real, then all things would end and a little less light would slip into the picture so that the picture was of rain and steep hills and everywhere you looked you didn’t see. That much you knew by now, that as a not human you did not see and you wanted back (me) membership in the club because not being human is not all that it’s cracked up to be thank you very much.
And then it happened anyway and you saw that you did not see and after years and years of trying to see anyway, that is, become human again anyway, you saw that you did not see, that sight was a something that was no longer allowed to you because of the goddamned way that everything goes down until you don’t want to see, the eyeball is closed to the other world. The eyeball knows better than to see and you guess from then on it. Your days continue, of course, but it is all of the guess. Guess the color of that, the temperature of that, the mood of this, the meaning of that until all dead horses and celestial boxes become solidified in a someplace that is not meant to be deciphered. No more answers for you, he who tried to leave the human race but found that he had no other race in which to go. Pity though the teller of the tales of woe for such persons are unwanted, usurpers and much done before. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, sanitize, Hence one of the reasons for “ending it all.” But not.
e
As for the soliloquy. Who asked? Nobody that’s who. That’s why that is that. That which is not the other that that. Word play. Meaningless. But is. It. Then. When all is then. Now. Belly far heaven go wherever cloud be roam. That that. Or vortex, something more to go for, go far for when you don’t even know which thread is here, what world connected. Far into the unknown then while butterfy capillaries and caterpillars green greet you again, notice you are on the periphery and your words are letters first, before thought, and thought, hidden, dances unnoticed, single and solitary, so that you can beep alone where code is duke.
Even the –less can be mapped out like a mountain craggy image up then down and hidden by clouds-even that. Just because all eyes are gone doesn’t mean that there is not seeing. You have the vortex, again, the mountain hole wind trees dirt deer swirling down into the maelstrom. That too can be mapped. Shown. Even though eyes are still closed by all, no seeing yet sight. Whose? Whose?
Those who did rock and the hard block hope and the dyke role is the one with the suit the one with the sack, guns in backs, movie live in. wicked. It’s a wicked where we live in.
B;oblip Industries. Clipping now. Hicking now. Wicked sound, six pack I’m sipping now. It’s cool. It’s cool. It’s cool. Whoo hoo. Whoo. Hoo.
Whoo. Hoo!
Ya’ll 2002 transplant. One! Hzhzhzhz .
They used the beat from garnier’s fruictese and got national radio play…but they’re drinking beer!
Righteous! Dude!
Published in:
* the fklc
on October 25, 2009 at 5:21 pm Leave a Comment Edit This
Like
Be the first to like this post.
The URI to Track
The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite 