Mythological Sketch of Dodi

Mythological Sketch of Dodi

Believed to be the son of either Horus or Re, the sun god. These two gods were often indistinguishable, especially when Horus wore the sun disc.
In the new kingdom 1567-1069 bc the pharoah was believed to be the son of Amun, the then ascendant God. In the temples of Luxor, reliefs show how Amun assumed the form of the reigning pharoah and united with his queen, giving rise to the new pharoah’s birth. To avoid any rivalry between ram-headed Amun and Re, both gods were assimilated in the form of the composite deity, Amun-Re. Luxor and Karnak were raised in honour of amun-Re.

The harmony of the universe was believed to depend on the well being of the pharoah. He was the chief priest of the Egyptian nation, although for practical reasons his office and duties were delegated to high-ranking priests.

In ancient Egypt there was a deeply held belief that chaotic forces had existed before the world was created. In the act of creation, these powerful forces had been banished to the outer edges of the world, but they still continued to encroach upon the society of gods and men. The priests assisted the gods in sustaining the fabric of universal order through the performance of religious rites. (The gods protect the people from ever encroaching, chaotic forces.)
Mans (?) annexed Egypt as a province in 30 bc. Then the next 200 years was replaced with a new belief, Christianity.

Horus: the falcon headed sun god of Memphis in Egypt. After death Egyptian rulers were said to become Horus’s father, the underworld god Osiris.

Horus’ mother was Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris. He was conceived by magical means. According to one myth, after Seth killed his brother Osiris, Isis went to look for Osiris’ body and found it in the delta marshes. She sat on him.

Horus was raised in the marshes in secrecy. When he became a man he determined to avenge his father’s death by Seth. by the gods to have won an…

Isis; daughter of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Sister and wife to Osiris, mother to Horus, sister to donkey-headed Seth. taught her subjects how to grind flour, spin, weave and cure illnesses. She also introduced the custom of marriage. She … (?) some of his power and her unmatched skill in the magic arts.
The Greeks identified her with Demeter, Hera and Aphrodite.

Osiris was depicted as a bearded man, wearing the crown of upper Egypt and swaddled like a mummy. He holds a crook and flail, symbol of his power insignia also comprised sheaves of corn, placed one above the other.

Because the ancient Egyptians were so concerned about the afterlife, Osiris was the object of intense reverence. He was addressed as the king of… (?) His first task as a ruler was to civilize his subjects; he abolished cannibalism, taught them how to make agricultural tools and cultivate grapes and wheat, and showed them how to make wine and bread. He also instructed them in the arts of weaving and making music; and he instituted religious worship and a legal system.

Having civilized Egypt, Osiris decided. (?)
Seth threw a party and presented a beautiful coffin. He said whoever can fit into the coffin can have it. Osiris was presented the option first. Seth slammed it shut and closed it shut with lead. He then took it to the river and threw it in. The coffin floated out to sea and came to rest at the base of a tamarisk tree at Byblos in Phoenicia. Then She (Isis) took the coffin to the swamp of the nile delta. Er and Nut gathered up the pieces and resurrected Osiris.

According to one version of the myth, Osiris could have stayed and ruled Egypt. Instead he chose to become lord of the dead in the infertile, subterranean land that the Egyptians believed existed beyond the western horizon.

The dead were believed to visit Osiris in order to seek permission to enter his underground kingdom and to ensure the continued sustenance of their souls. The heart of each supplicant was weighed on the scales of judgment against the feather of truth, in front of Osiris and his forty two assessors. Anubis weighed the heart and the divine scribe Thoth recorded the result.

Published in: on December 5, 2010 at 7:49 pm  Leave a Comment  

When I was 17 – Joey Kantor

When I was 17 i broke up a fight between two kids I knew. Another kid I knew pushed me hard back, mad that I’d broke up the fight. I could see my friends were just being used so i said enough. I guess I was supposed to turn around and attack my friend who pushed me in hopes of a mass riot which would be a lot of fun for the tough kids, but not for the rest of us. So I didn’t. I didn’t give them the pleasure. But the fight was broken up and all my other friend was was disappointed and not really mad. He wanted to see a good fight. Me too! I love to see a good fight even though I act like I don’t. Love it. But I never instigated them because I could see what kind of ugly things they really were. That’s what people have to realize about any sort of battle, its ugliness. On that thought I present to you an excerpt out of a school textbook from the 60s. It simply consists of important literary documents and speeches over our history. I present one of those here to you today.

Fargo Kantrowitz

John F. Kennedy

Our Disarmament Doctrine

“Mankind must put an end to war – or war will put an end to mankind.”

Partial text of President Kennedy’s address to the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 26 1961.

We meet in an hour of grief and challenge, Dag Hammarskjold is dead. But the United Nations lives on. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda.

A noble servant of peace is gone. But the quest for peace lies before us.

The problem is not death of one man-the problem is the life of this organization. It will either grow to meet the challenge of our age-or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect.

Were we to let it die-to enfeeble its vigor-to cripple its powers-we would condemn the future.

For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war-and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, would well engulf the great and small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war-or war will put an end to mankind.

So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live-or die-in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace.

And, as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.

This will require new strength and new roles for a new United Nations. For disarmament without checks is but a shadow-and a community without law is but a shell.

Already the United Nations has become both the measure and the vehicle of man’s most generous impulses. Already it has provided-in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia-a means of holding violence within bounds.

But the great question which confronted this body in 1945 is still before us-whether man’s cherished hopes for progress and freedom are to be destroyed by tactics of terror and disruption-whether the “foul winds of war” can be tamed in time to free the cooling winds of reason-and whether the pledges of our charter are to be fulfilled or defied: pledges to secure peace, progress, human rights and respect for world law.

In this hall there are not three forces, but only two. One is composed of those wsho are trying to build the kind of world described in Articles I and II of the charter. The other, seeking a different world, would undermine this organization in the process.

Today of all days our dedication to that charter must be strengthened.

It must be strengthened first of all, by the selection of an outstanding civil servant to carry forward the responsibilities of the secretary general-a man endowed with both the wisdom and the power to make meaningful the moral force of the world community.

The late secreatary general nurtured and sharpened the United Nations’ obligations to act. But the did not invent it. It was there in the charter. It is still here in the charter.

The secretary general, in a very real sense, is the servant of this Assembly. Diminish his authority and you diminish the authority of the only body where all nations, regardless of power, are equal and sovereign.

The United Nations protects the weak

Until all the powerful are just, the weak will be secure only in the strength of this Assembly.

Effective and independent executive action is not the same question as balanced representation.

In view of the enormous change in the membership of this body since its founding, the American delegation will join in any effort for the prompt review and revision of the composition of United Nations bodies.

But to give this organization three drivers-to permit each great power in effect to decide its own case-would entrench the Cold War in the headquarters of peace.

Whatever advantages such a plan holds out to my country, as one of the great powers, we reject it. For we prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination.

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when it may no longer be habitable.

Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of b eing cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or cause of tension.

The mere existence of modern weapons-10,000,000 times more destructive than anything the world has ever known, and only minutes away from any target on earth-is a source of horro, of discord and distrust.

Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes-for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement.

And men no longer pretend tht the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness-for in a spiraling arms race, a nation’s security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.

A matter of life – or death

For 15 years this organization has sought the reduction and destruction of arms. Now that goal is no longer a dream-it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an 8unlimited arms race.

It is in this spirit that the recent Belgrade conference-recognizing that this is no longer a Soviet problem or an American problem, but a human problem-endorsed a program of “general, complete and strictly and internationally controlled disarmament.”

It is in this same spirit that we in the United States have labored this year, with a new urgency, and with a new, now-statutory agency fully endorsed by the Congress, to find an approach to disarmament which would be so far-reaching yet realistic, so mutually balanced and beneficial, that it could be accepted by every nation.

And it is in this spirit that we have presented to the Soviet Union-under the label both nations now accept of “general and complete disarmament.” -a statement of newly agreed principles for negotiation.

But we are well aware that all issues of principle are not settled-and that principles alone are not enough.

Our intention is complete disarmament

It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to arms race, but to a peace race-to advance with us step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has actually been achieved.

We invite them now to go beyond agreement in principle to reach agreement on actual plans.

The program to be presented to this Assembly-for general and complete disarmament under effective international control-moves to bridge the gap between those who insist on a gradual approach and those who talk only of the final and total achievement.

It would create machinery to keep the peace as it destroys the machines of war. It would proceed through balanced and safeguarded stages designed to give no state a military advantage over another.

It would place the final responsibility for verification and control where it belongs-not with the big powers alone, not with one’s adversary or one’s self-but in an international organization within the framework of the United Nations itself.

It would assure that indispensable condition of disarmament organization, a steady reduction in forces, both nuclear and conventional, until it has abolished all armies and all weapons except those needed for internal order and a new United Nations peace force.

And it starts that process now, today, even as the talks begins.

Our disarmament proposals

But to halt the spread of these terrible weapons, to halt the contamination of the air, to halt the spiraling nuclear arms race, we remain ready to seek new avenues of agreement. Our new disarmament program thus includes the following proposals:

-First, signing the test-ban treaty, by all nations, This can be done now. Test ban negotiations need not and should not await general disarmament talks.

-Second, stopping the production of fissionable materials for use in weapons and preventing their transfer to any nation now lacking nuclear weapons.

-Third, prohibiting the transfer of control over nuclear weapons to states that do not now own them.

-Fourth, keeping nuclear weapons from seeding new battlegrounds in outer space.

-Fifth, gradually destroying existing nuclear weapons and converting their materials to peaceful uses; and…

-Finally, halting the unlimited testing and production of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, and gradually destroying them as well.

To destroy arms, however, is not enough, we must create even as we destroy-creating worldwide law and law enforcement as we outlaw worldwide war and weapons.

In the world we seek, United Nations emergency forces which have been hastily assembled, uncertainly supplied and inadequately financed will never be enough.

Therefore, the United States recommends that all member nations earmark special peace-keeping units in their armed forces-to be on call to the United Nations-to be specially trained and quickly available-and with advance provision for financial and logistic support.

In addition, the American delegation will suggest a series of steps to improve the United Nations machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes-for on-the-spot fact-finding, mediation and adjudication-for extending the rule of international law.

For peace is not solely a military or technical problem-it is primarily a problem of politics and people.

And unless man can match his strides in weaponry and technology with equal strides in social and political development, our great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper control-and man, like the dinosaur, will decline and disappear.

Man’s new domain: outer space

As we extend the rule of law on earth, so must we also extend it to man’s new domain: outer space.

All of us salute the brave cosmonauts of the Soviet Union. The new horizons of outer space must not be riven by the old bitter concepts of imperialism and sovereign claims. The cold reaches of the universe must not become the new arena of an even colder war.

To this end, we shall urge proposals extending the United Nations charter to the limits of man’s exploration in the universe, reserving outer space for peaceful use, prohibiting weapons of mass destruction in space or on celestial bodies and opening the mysteries and benefits of space to every nation.

We shall propose cooperative efforts in weather prediction and eventually weather control.

We shall propose, finally, a global system of communications satellites linking the whole world in telegraph, telephone, radio and television.

The day need not be far away when such a system will televise the proceedings of this body to every corner of the world.

But the mysteries of outer space must not divert our eyes or our energies from the harsh realities that face our own fellow men.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means to meet poverty, illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

That is why my nation-which has freely shared its capital and its technology to help others help themselves-now proposes officially designating this decade of the 1960s as the UN Decade of Development.

Published in: on December 4, 2010 at 8:32 pm  Leave a Comment  

The FKLC – Albert

The fklc

Poster

The Brighter Side of Existentialism

A short story by Albert Jones to be read on Thursday night at the Riverpark Theatre on the river.
7 p.m.Picnic lunch, bring the kids. Then watch the moon come up while listening to the rocking and fun sounds of Texa till midnight.

As always, absolutely free.

Everything ever almost sent

Everything ever almost sent
by Albert Jones
-stories-

Albert

First of all, I’m tired of thinking about the art of writing as important. It is not important. It is pain. It is not to be striven after.
I am not a good writer and no longer wish to be one. I do however desire to be a truthful writer. Therefore, from this moment, the aspiring writer in me dies. I am re-born as a man with a different mission, other than the one who puts down for others the best combination of words.
The trouble with writing is that I never have anybody to write towards or to. This makes the act too solitary and slightly ridiculous if you think about it since at an acorn level I already know the entire unwritten story. It is in my latent emotions. Perhaps my very genes.
Bringing it to fruition is for you, gentle reader, and I’ve lived long enough to know that most don’t read anymore. I don’t know you and if I did I don’t think our communication gulf would be bridged by any attempt at words. I won’t slave for you and if I want money I’ll get a job. So why does my desire to write continue?
I sit without an audience wearing a label I placed upon myself years ago: writer. I am, by all accounts, a failed one at that. And yet I find there is some reason to write each next word. As if the words will take me to where I want to go. As if I know where there is to go. I think I know now that each next word is there only for itself. Each one is a particular designation, a pointing finger, a chalice holding truth. Each encapsulates in some way the untouchable essence of often distant emotions. Words en masse form landscapes of soul, thousands upon thousands of symbols forming mood and sometimes knowledge. The landscape is of the inner world. I am a child crying to be allowed to cry.
In the solitary place of writing, the inner moonscape where neighbors don’t exist, friendless is taken for given, cognizance of death is as common as that of life. All moments are as if listening to themselves. I sit waiting for realization, no longer expecting the almighty dollar for my efforts, believing that if there is a God he pays the writer in full at the time of creation.

And there is nothing to hold and say “Here It Is!” All attempts at grasping fade. Each emotive high an illusion. The words down, but the eyes again ever wandering for more of something not yet named. The bane of the writer: always wanting more. No outside world sways me. No inside world is believed in by a “single other human being.” We saddle our minds to ride, but are bucked. Our unities fall away dismembered and we see no reason to piece them back together again since we’d already seen them and taken note. That is what we do best: take note. But then the pain becomes real again because we didn’t “know” what we’d “seen.” The emptiness, the “void” becomes real again. We begin to write around everything that we thought we’d attempted to write about before. We write around everything which we believe is not yet born. With words whose meanings we barely know and we hope or we pray. Some believe writing is prayer. Maybe.
Some believe writing is a hope for dreams to become reality. This is obviously true. But we shouldn’t hope too hard for then we break into the worlds where we do not belong. Imagine a ship leaving a harbor with nobody aboard but never stopping. We can ride that ship in our imagination, lose ourselves to the swaying of the seas until when land appears again we do not know how to use our feet to walk upon it. We write, instead, in order to leave that ship, in order to grow up. We need out of the prisons of our hopes. We don’t want words. We want keys to open doors. We only use words. We seek to understand each word, but we want even more to know the world which the word suggests to us. We want golden palaces in the ether. We want blue air beneath us. We want dolphins and adventure and the forgetting of needing to use words as surrogates for our lives.

Published in: on December 3, 2010 at 4:24 am  Leave a Comment  

The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite – Albert – Blogpost #16

There is a song for everybody. I don’t care the beat. It just follows us along, accompanies our days like some metronome angel. Dylan’s song was of unpredictability, brokenness, like an asteroid going a million miles an hour and never really getting anywhere. He listened to others like he was a radio, but heard nothing, almost seeing the soundless radio waves instead, mocking him as though he could not know reality just because he perceived it differently, not wrongly. – From Dylan’s War by Albert Jones.

this is a short story of desperation
by

Albert Jones

a guy is born. Later he dies. It doesn’t matter to him because the way he feels he could care less. That’s the way of life. Death. Simple. Not that he wanted it, to die, no, he wanted to live, but it felt better to him to consider being alone in a warm grave for the rest of his life, or death, whatever it became. He couldn’t consider which was real. Life or death. The christians say that death is more like life than life is more like life. They call life death and call death new life. It’s odd. This is what all the presidents tell us and Billy Graham and the senate when they say a Christian prayer. Death is better than life, so don’t have too much fun I guess. I guess that’s what it means. Look forward to death after which you will have fun. What is fun then? I guess fun is being warm in a grave for the rest of your life or death, whichever it is like I said. So I guess I’m pretty straight on target, middle of the road for my views. I’ve never been much of a non conformist. Most christians would call me dour though. I guess I’m dour then. Isn’t that what they want us to be? Makes you think if maybe there isn’t money involved in this ludicrous argument. Fuck it. I believe in God, but I’m not going to freak out about it. The entire system of our Christian faith is wrong. We don’t worship Christ anymore but the devil. We watch television and go to church on Sunday. I’m not criticizing the television except its the most flagrant advertising scheme ever put out in front of the world and called by some “art.” it’s not art. It’s shit and an addictive behavior. The networks are enablers. Some will say that there are some good programs on television and its up to you to choose the ones you watch wisely. Well, they don’t live at my house where my dad sits around and drinks beer and farts his life away all the while watching Jerry Springer. We’ve become a potential case for the Jerry Springer show just by watching Jerry Springer what seems about four times a day. Is that possible? It sure seems like we see it four times a day. Fuck Jerry Springer and my dad. Fuck em all.

My mother’s cool though. She gave me four hundred dollars to get me by last month. She’s cool. Gotta buy weed and shit, but she don’t know about that and she thinks it all goes to my rent. I don’t say my mom is stupid, but she does give me a lot of money when I don’t really deserve it because I admit it that I’m a fuck up to some degree just like my old man is. I get stoned too much and I eat out a lot and I’m getting fat like my dad. I don’t work and that sucks, but I don’t give a shit. It’s what I want to do. When I get stoned it feels alright. I know, it’s an artificial high, but what else am I going to do? I got a dog that doesn’t stop barking. Barks at everything. It’s winter, got bronchitis. What the fuck else is new? Why not just get stoned and wait for better days to come in the mail. And they will. Sent out a rock musical and hope it will catch on. Created the tunes at home stoned of course. Everything stoned. Nothing held back and that’s my claim to literature like henry miller did, but, well, you can’t say better. Henry Miller wrote exactly what was on his mind. No messing around. Good writer. I try and look for ways to claim that the shit that I write is a short story or something so maybe I can sell it and get some money so I don’t die of starvation or consumption or stupidity or something or just die of being plain just stoned, scared and uncared for like most people do, I think.

But what are these paths in the mind that take us places we don’t really want to go. I know that everybody must think exactly like me in the solitude of their own minds. I just happen to sometimes put it down on paper. What are they going to do to me after I’m dead for writing these pages, admitting I was stoned and lonely and a loser and lost? Everybody will just relate. It’s as simple as that and I’ll be called a great writer because it will be as if I gave my very existence for their sakes since they never had the balls to write down what they felt which was just as fucked up as what I’m writing and often write. And I hope to sell this shit because I think it might make me a few bucks because people don’t know what short stories are and sometimes pick up a magazine and see something that looks like a story, but reads like a true to life narrative, but it ain’t it’s a short story, like this one, but you don’t know your role in it. After all, if this isn’t true then there’s no need for you to read further, but if it is true and yet false, I mean, made up, then you can read on because it won’t hurt you, it won’t relate to you in a preachy way. So I propose that this is a short story about what you would write if you could write short stories and had become a writer like you probably a couple of times wished that you could become, but didn’t. I write for you. Write the shit in my mind, because you thought that you would want to get out of your mind more than you did when you were alive, but you didn’t. You died silent. But don’t worry, Christians say that is the only way to die, silent and solemn. Then you dream well. Do you believe them? I don’t. I don’t think I do anymore. My father eats and shits and watches Springer. I get stoned and write short stories that I think maybe if i’m lucky might come to me in the form of an actual short story and not pure shit of my mind and it always comes out a little bit of both and all I can do is hope that the future will look at my work as valuable so that maybe while i’m alive I can actually get a little money so I can buy some shit for my bronchitis so I don’t hack to death, so I can sell my motorcycle and get a little car so I can go out on a date and chicks won’t think i’m a total loser and maybe my life won’t be a total waste. In the meantime, it is. And I write. I write a short story for you because I think that maybe you would want it that way. You would want a short story about the process of not really knowing how to harness all of your energy to write a short story and yet having the short story called a short story anyway. Then you get the money and you can get out of your shit situation like I can get out of mine, you can turn your heat up in the winter. You can work less. You can ache less. You can deal with stupid people less and just be by yourself more and maybe get stoned in a relaxing way or sit there with a drink because you not only gave yourself a mental enema, but you got paid for it and you knew the whole thing was shit and yet you didn’t care because they all bought it. They bought that all the mental puking you did on the page was somehow worthwhile and that you showed them a little bit about the imagination, free association, the nature of literature itself and you know it’s impossible that it really is shit and only by a stroke of luck, luck such as comes only once in a lifetime, some idiot reviewer might see your piece you got lucky to place in a stupid student literary review and say that you have a style and that you’re trying to say something but he is not sure what it is although he’s willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that somehow it is meaningful. But you know that if it isn’t meaningful in a way that has meaning, or at least words to describe some aspect of the feeling which poses as meaningfulness then it is all bullshit. It’s all a scenar. It’s all a fade out. None of it matters and you’re left sitting there knowing that your game is almost up and you will be homeless soon and all the talk about how you’re a writer will be out the window to the rest of the world as soon as they see you pulling out of its garbage cans. Such is the love of the world for artists and truthtellers.
So. Points of reference become important. Some are very close to you like the scratchiness in your throat which has turned into a fever because you fell asleep on a bed and your insistence that you still get stoned and try to write because you’re so confused about what the hell you’re going to do with the rest of your life that you don’t even want to think about it anymore. Forget about larger questions, those concerning the possibility that a big hand might come out of the sky and pluck you with it’s fingernail through your chest into another dimension which you won’t ever actually see because you will already be dead by the giant fingernail through your heart just like the movie Starship Troopers. Why not admit in our movies that we are all doomed to laugh and cry and die according to the straightness of our chins and noses? The young are praised and the lucky ones, like I’m not, make a lot of money early on chins and noses. The rest of us die unseemly deaths after many years of losing faith gradually by watching ours and our loved ones bodies fall apart. We see the girls who we thought pure die slowly through alcohol or drugs or just a bad marriage. We consider how many days we actually have after we have lost the best days of our lives to time. And sometimes we smell the roses, look at the mountains and try to remember that we still must have some good days left even though we can’t pay the bills on the table and we live in Santa Barbara where the millionaires live and don’t really give a shit about the poor folk and that’s almost a fact, I can’t say a complete fact, but they sure don’t open their doors wide around here for people without a lot of money. Let’s just say the Okies wouldn’t have been warmly received in Santa Barbara. They’ll arrest you for sitting down on State Street in Quackersville. Can’t even sit on a planter waiting for a bus. Fuck them. But that is the way it is.
Fuck Clacknersberg. And I’m trying to consider this a requiem for a fantasy. As I slowly sputter out I cry out like a leper without love ever and ask for somebody to notice me as I fall slowly down, spiral down, like a boy drowning in a whirlpool or falling over the falls of Niagara unnoticed, calm one moment and down and drowned the next in a violence unheard or unconceived until as yet that point that only the boy could have ever really known until he woke up or woke up dead. I think I’m dead. No, I can’t think anymore. I think I’m dead. Where is the short story in this statement? Where’s the monetary benefits? Where the benefits for a dead man? So I’m trying to be a good Christian and pretend that I’m dead when I’m really not because the Christians say that if you’re dead you are happy and if you are alive then you are sad. They don’t need to tell me that because I already know. I just can’t get myself to kill myself and I guess I never won’t.

Published in: on November 28, 2010 at 10:47 pm  Leave a Comment  

The Product – a short play

Dave, Jenny, Marta, Johnny, Peter, Brenner and Janey sit together in a storefront.

Dave:

Okay. You, Brenner, you’ve got the existentialist shit, you know, the cloud of unknowing, we’re all going to die, but don’t worry be happy.

Brenner
Why do I have to be happy dying and you guys…

Peter
Because Peter will be handling that.

Brenner
You know I asked that before Peter even came along.

Peter
Look, Dave, I can give up hedonism. I could go with Epicurianism or something.

Dave
No, no, you’re covering hedonism. How the hell else are we going to…

Peter
Be bad?

Dave
Exactly. Look, some of the coolest cats in the world have tackled existentialism and come out okay: Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard…

Brenner
I know, I know, okay.

Dave
Jenny, you’re the rationalist.

Jenny
Are there a lot of numbers?

Dave
Sometimes, but you can bring to it what you got.

Jenny
Can I make my beads?

Dave
Ask yourself.

Jenny
No.

Dave

Good. It’ll work then. Marta, you’ll be covering the darkest night thing, way beyond existentialism. This will make you ultra cool, though. Can you handle it?

Marta

I’m not sure how my mother will feel about Nihilism.

Dave
She’ll love it. Rather, don’t tell her about it. It will be okay.

Marta
Okay. I feel depressed.

Dave
Good. Johnny…

Johnny
I know. Idealism.

Dave
That’s right. It’s a sunny day. Everything is going to shit, but it’s a sunny day. We’re all going to be okay. The meteor isn’t going to hit. Cows will eventually talk to us and tell us that they like us.

Johnny
Do I have to smile.

Dave
Yes.

Johnny
I’m going to end up wearing a nametag a lot, aren’t I?

Dave
I’m afraid so, but we need you. We have to smile when Marta pipes in.

Johnny
Okay, I can see the importance in that.

Dave
What are we missing?

Jenny
What about Janey?

Dave
Janey, you’ve got all religious ecstatic motivation, got that? You got the ear of God, that sort of thing. Totally effulsive, mind blowing God exists type thing.

Janey
I feel like I’m getting bigger.

Dave
Don’t talk in tongues. At least not yet. This thing could blow out of control, but you will exist in this form. You know that you know that you know. Got it?

Janey
Hallowed be thy…

Dave
Keep it. Now. Everybody. Go!

They all sit silently not knowing what to say.

Dave:
Jenny?

Jenny:
Oh

(Jenny runs to the window and turns the open sign around. She returns and all sit once more in silence. Then the door opens. A man, Robert, walks in.)

Robert:
Hello?

Dave:
Come in. Come in. How can we help you.

Robert:
I was walking around outside and I saw your sign.

Dave:
We have no sign.

Robert:
It says “open.”

Dave:
You’re right. We have a sign.

Marta:
We can’t really help you.

Robert:
Why not?

Johnny:
(stands) Of course we can help him. Come in. What’s your name?

Robert: Robert Mayhew.

Johnny:
(Shaking his hand) Gosh, it’s good to see you, Mr. Mayhew. Isn’t it wondrous how things work out? Here you are. Here we are? The world is out there. The world is in here. But, in here, (he points to his heart) all things are possible. Wouldn’t you agree?

Marta:
That is if you believe that this turning world is not a diseased soon to be corpse patiently awaiting self styled annihilation. You see, Mr. Mayhew, we are on a downward spiral and it’s going all the way down this time. Corruption, sin, evil ways produce enough ugly corroding acid to assure that this world, including the one in your heart, will not last the millennium. Have a nice day.

Robert:
Perhaps I should go.

Dave:
Go? No, how could you go? You came in, did you not? IN has nothing to do with out and…

Robert:
Just what do you do here?
(they all just stare at him with blank looks)

Dave:
Do?

Robert:
Yes, do, what do you do here. Why am I here?

(they all look at each other)

Brenner:
May I respond?

Robert:
Of course.

Brenner: Look, I can see you came in here looking for something. I’m afraid that you’re not going to find it. There’s too much to find. Ultimately,and I know because it is a universal thing, you’re probably looking for answers, meaning, maybe even “God,” universality, foreverness, whatever. Look, how do I say this…

Robert:

Do you have a product? Maybe I’ll take one. Sure. I’ll take one. Give me one of your product.

(silence again)

Brenner:
Okay…Look, as I was saying, maybe you came in here looking for something. Maybe a “product” or something. Something to hold on to. Something tangible that will let you look at your life and feel good inside, some lasting promise about something good, some sense, maybe, that this life is not the only life we’ve got.

(janey starts to speak, but stays quiet)

Now, Janey may have a different opinion on the matter and I can respect that, but in forming the business we, I think, and I don’t know how it could be refuted, it is evident that the product that you seek would not make you happy because attached to every product is the promise of that product’s demise. Do you see? You are really, I’m sorry, wasting your time here because, really, nothing lasts. But that’s okay! That’s okay!

Robert:
Then I guess I’ll go then.

Peter:
Wait!

Robert:
You have no business, you have no product, yet the product I would have purchased here had you had one would not have satisfied me anyway. So I guess I’ll go…

Peter:
Wait. Wait. You can’t take his word for it. You cast aside something that does not work, namely, buying a non-existent product and what do you have left? That’s right…a reason to totally party!

(Dave, Brenner and Peter break out in guttural laughter. Janey, Jenny, Johnny and Marta remain silent)

Robert:
Right. I gotta go.

Dave:
Wait. Wait. We’ve got something for you.

(he scans the people in the room and then nods nervously to Janey.

Janey:

Thank you (relieved). Hello, Robert.

Robert:

Hello.

Janey:
Robert?

Robert:
Yes.

Janey:
I love you.

Dave:
There’s something. We’ll find it guys. We’ll find it. There’s gotta be a product somewhere that we have. Something.

Marta:
Prostitution is as good a way to go as any, I guess.

Janey: I love you with my width. I love you with my height. I love you with my morning. I love you with my night. I love you when all love seems withered. I love you if you don’t love yourself. Imagine a universe of holy love. By being here you are inside of this universe. Your soul floats on the starwagon hitched to eternity.

Marta:
Oh, Christ. You think, guys? You think? What are the odds…wait for it…

Janey: oh lalabadanallallapoalapolafolawalaoshkalasa…(speaking in tongues)

Marta: (singing) and we all go down together…

Dave:
Janey….Janey!

(Janey wakes up from her trance)

Janey:
Do you see, Robert? Perhaps you can call almighty, universal Love the only “product” that you need. I can.

Peter: Here here, as long as you share it with your friends.

Marta: You holdin?

Peter: Hell yeah!

(Peter goes for his stash, but notices the stern disapproving look of Jenny. Instead, he and Marta run offstage together)

Robert:
Why do I feel…

Jenny:
Confused?

Robert:
Yeah, confused. That’s it.

Jenny:
That’s normal. If you think of the amount of confusion that you deal with on a daily basis you will soon come to realize and see the threads that if you follow will lead you out of your confusion. Regardless of what some people think, there are things to know. The basic process of living is enough to keep your mind occupied happily throughout a typical day. You really don’t need much more than this: Life, Love and Happiness. But you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve first got to get your ducks in a row. Make sure everything you do is going to get you somewhere. If you don’t you’re going to get stuck and then if what Janey says or anybody else is true then you will have come to it on your own. Just keep your eyes open, Robert.

Robert:
Miss…

Jenny:
Jenny.

Robert:
Jenny, you make sense. Can I ask you then, what exactly can I buy here?

(Jenny looks at him with a blank stare in her eye)

Dave:
That’s not important right now, Robert. There is something to buy, I’m sure of it.

(Peter and Marta return. Stoned)

Peter: Sure we’ve got something to buy.

Dave:
We’re selling, Peter.

Peter:
Selling now? Oh. We’ve got something to sell. Imagine it, Robert. Starting with a nice 1972 rieseling to compliment the Oyster Marmaduke in a slightly reversed onion and tangerine sauce. Beef Wellington and asparagus tips sautéed or braised, your choice, in an eastern Ethiopian frame of which I could speak all day followed by a port so influenced by the French that the Italians after years and years of trying finally outdid it. Of course I’m talking about Dell’callabrezia, oh 1982, possibly 1983, followed by hand rolled spliffs from seeds imported from Holland and grown in cat feces, I know, I know, it sounds horrible, but the high…

Marta:
I can attest to that.

Dave:
Robert, of course we aren’t selling drugs.

Robert:
You’re a restaurant then?

Dave:
No.

Robert:
He’s high, right.

Dave:
You got it.

Robert:
Then what? What! What am I doing here? I’ve gotta go.

Dave:
Wait!

(Dave jumps up and does a quick dance number before sitting back down.)

Dave:
You like? You like?

(Robert says nothing)

Johnny:
God, Robert, it’s all right here! The future starts now as they say and the heights that you can climb if you only start when the world wants you to start! Instead of doing this or that, battling that thought against that thought and always spinning your wheels, just accept that life is Good. Got it! Life is there for you. It’s as high as the sky and this future does not need a nice meal or a good joint to make it a real fact as long as you embark. Take off! Go! Be with You and all things will come. Your loves will appear to you and the next step will always be followed by another and one day, one day, Robert, you will quite simply, be sitting on a cloud.

Marta:
Or in burning embers.

Janey:
And his Eyes will behold you and His demeanor will state to all that you are worthy for the entering of the light and once the light is shining upon you the world will bow to the goodness of your soul until you disappear into the light and all questions will have been answered. Nothing else will ever be needed again.

(she closes her eyes and is about to speak in tongues again.)

Dave:
Janey.

(Janey opens her eyes, smiles, and acquiesces to the request not to speak in tongues.)

Marta:
So your sitting on a cloud, right? Robert, listen. So you’re sitting on a cloud and God comes up to you and sees you. You maybe masturbated earlier that day and maybe cursed your neighbor because your neighbor is brain dead and deserves to be cursed and then suddenly it’s like wham! Off you go. No more. Sayonara. No more high rise cloud living for you. Down you go. Falling. Falling. Seven, eight, nine miles until you land flat on your back in the land of the doomed. It was nice to think that you could make it to the cloud planet but ultimately you’re just like the rest of us imperfect specimens avoiding points from a pitchfork and watching full time the type of things that got you in hell in the first place.

Brenner:
Hell is other people.

Marta:
Not for Robert it won’t be. For Robert it will be full time anguish. Gnashing of teeth. Ticks, electric shocks, abject fear, blackness, death fucking death fucking death. It’s not going to be nice.

Brenner:
Robert, at least you don’t have to believe in fairy tales while you’re here. We may not have a product.

Dave:
We have a product!

Brenner:
Okay, maybe we don’t know if we have a product.

Dave:
We have a product!

Jenny:
Well, technically, Dave, while we have a lot of desire to have a product we don’t really, as of this moment, anyway…

Dave:
Sssh!

Brenner:
Okay, we have a product, but right now…anyway, if you want to listen to Nihilist Nancy over there I can go get you a rope from the store right now and you can answer all of your questions yourself.

Janey:
Go on, Brenner, testify.

Brenner:
Or if you go to Saint Janey’s school of perpetual elation you’ll end up being as dumb as an ox. No, listen. There is a product, but it isn’t what you think. The product is…Now. Eat, drink and be merry la la la for tomorrow we die.

Peter:
That’s what I’m talkin’ about. But it’s a science, man. A goddamned science!

Marta:
I need a new rat.

Robert:
I see. I see. Well, thank you. I really must be going.

Dave:
Wait!

(Dave jumps up and goes off stage. He comes back with a dirty rag)

Dave:
Here. Here it is. Here’s our product, Robert. Thank you for your patience with my salespeople. It’s a rather new staff that I’m still mostly training.

Robert:
You’re joking, right?

Dave:
No, no, not at all. This isn’t what you think it is.

Robert:
It’s not a rag with oil stains on it?

Dave:
No, not at all.

Johnny:
It is an emblem of all that you can be when you wipe clean your past and start anew.

Brenner:
It is a testimony to the fact that you will not be a victim to nothingness after you have asserted yourself into the truth about life, that you are born to die, but that shouldn’t put a damper on things now should it? You will still have this as soon as your personal assertion is made. There are really very few, if any, products like this one.

Janey:
It is what you will use to wipe the feet of the Universal One when your time comes. It is the flag of surrender that you will need more than anything else when all spiritual embodiment comes to compliment your hereafter. It is a valuable lifeline.

Marta:
It could sop up your blood when I kill you.

Dave:
Marta!

Marta:
Oh, never mind.

Jenny:
It’s a rag…

(Dave gives her a stern look)

A very nice rag if you ask me.

Peter:
It’s a start, you see, when you harvest there needs to be a certain amount of moisture held within the soil and by placing this over the cat mixture essential nutrients will remain. This is how it is done in the casino districts of Somalia.

Dave:
There you have it. It’s only a dollar.

Robert:
You sold me. I’ll take it.

(Dave hands Robert the rag)

Robert:
Thank you, Thank you. I’ve so wanted a rag just like this. Well, gotta be going. Appointment at four. Thanks again. Bye bye.

(Robert exits. The group sits around and says nothing)

Dave:
(to Marta disgusted) I need a new rat…

Published in: on November 21, 2010 at 5:21 pm  Leave a Comment  

Fear

nothing does man fear
more than fear
he loathes
no other contaminant
half as much
for it leaves
the birther
and child,
one and the same
deeper in sadness
yet grimly
thereby justified
for having given
vacant gazes
unasked for
to the fearer
of his own fear
he gives plea to a mercy
he’s never believed in
pushing false energies
as if paying homage
to ghosts
yet he is ever
unbelieving
in such a task
as escaping
the hollowed hole
his eyes
balled tight,
never quite rolled
away from the one
just met
and fed
less than well
who, truly
having then met fear
faceless
becomes fear
blackened brothers
then they are
shamed
for having joined
a stranger’s moment
of buried nothingness
facing each
they fear
their own de-facing
desirous
of a better face
to coddle demise
believed in
only in shrouds
as if each believed
their own face
too unhandsome
to blink with
to part the dirt
on the way down
before introductions
even whisperless,
each separate each
fear-free
finally and cold
holes away
non-faced
from each
tombs
graves
ends.

Published in: on September 29, 2010 at 5:03 am  Leave a Comment  

The Overshoot

Ronald Kranski sat a table at his coffee house next to an outlet where he could plug in his computer. He had his book open to the Pequot Massacre. His hair was rumpled up from his hand running through it over a hundred times that night. He was tired. He had studied for this test for three days already and wasn’t nearly done. It was the most important test of the semester.

As he read, a man came down the aisle toward him. Ronald quickly glanced up and then back down. You may pass, he thought. The man was disheveled, a grey sport coat that was soiled. A tie, checkered. Perhaps he was a professor, but in all probability he was one of the crazies that roamed the streets around the university. He pulled in tighter as the dark ship passed. But it didn’t.

“It’s the overshoot.” The man had just stopped right there. Ronald looked up and saw a scraggly philosopher. He knew he was a philosopher. He called them philosophers. The last philosopher he spoke to had admitted that the CIA was hot on his trail. Another philosopher. Oh, God.

“It’s the times when you go over the end of the tunnel or the end of the cliff or whatever and it happens. It’s the overshoot, man, when you’ve got nothing inside of you but you go over anyway. You must think I’m crazy, like I know what “it” is, this thing, this thing that is always there, the moments. Then you’re alone, man, but you’re in the world, but not in the world, the way that we all are, really, that stuff we try and drown out, the invisible swirling oceans we’ve got inside of us, the unknown and unnamed seas that we think that if we could only name we could float upon and not fall over and out and down.”
“Hey, man, please, I really need to study, “ Ronald said.
“You need to study?”

The man actually looked a little angry. It confused Ronald. Ronald didn’t know why the man was talking to him. He was grungy, dirty, his face marked with lines like a wooden cutting board or a crumpled lunch bag, his hair thick as strings, gray and black, a hooked nose, black glasses that covered only slightly an earnestness that exasperated Ronald from the moment the man opened his mouth. His test was in two days and he had no time to spare. Could you ever find peace?

“You know what I mean? Over and out. But nobody is telling us nothing about what it is that we’ve got going on inside of us. How could anybody? If they do they’re making money or they’re trying to figure it out for themselves. They get fast cars and their wieners grow large and they think that’s it. So they tell us, get your souped up Chevy and take it for a joyride and you’ll know what “its” all about. Or they’ve got a big book binge going on and they’re going to let you know that Freud said this or Freud said that, but you know they can only tell you that because their belly is full of Chardonnay and raw French steak. They can’t tell you nothing.”

Ronald definitely didn’t need this. Ahmadinejad was screwing shit up again. Sarah Palin was ever calling her soccer moms to arms and their men were following because they didn’t want to lose the sex. In the 1630s the Puritans slaughtered the Pequots of Connecticut and almost wiped them out for good. People hadn’t changed and now this, this guy, sitting there telling him this same old shit from the same old store of used up loser thoughts that Ronald ever tried to escape. Everywhere he went there was another and another and another. Always another wordy answer man waiting to take up his precious airspace. This exam was huge, Colonial history in America. It would be a bitch and he didn’t need this. He didn’t Need this.

“Yeah, so what’s your point?” said Ronald, kicking himself instantly. It was 9:25 and he only had 35 minutes left before they kicked him out of the damned coffee shop.
“Well, this, young man.” The man took the response as an invitation to sit in the chair across from Ronald. “You don’t know shit! Excuse my French.”

The French. The French! Ronald thought. He would have to get back to the French too.

“That….book, you got there. What’s in there? Let me see…
He tried to turn Ronald’s book around.
“Hey, hey!
“Well, whatever you got in that book, look, it’s not going to stay in there.” The man, about sixty, pointed to his temple. “It’s in here and then it’s out here.” He pointed to his ass.
“Look Mr. I don’t think you’re right about that. I’ve put so much of this in my mind over the last few years that they’re going to give me a piece of paper proving that it’s in there. They’re going to stand me up on a platform and a genius in a robe is going to hand it to me and it’s going to be my proof. Then employers are going to look at it and it’s going to prove it to them too. Everybody’s going to know that it’s still in there. Please, will you just go back over there?”

The man just stared at Ronald. It wasn’t a hurt stare as much as a stare of disbelief that somebody would question his wisdom. His crooked, grey teeth poked out at him from a tilted smile that Ronald could see was definitely going to let him hold on to this thing that he was trying to do to him. Ronald didn’t feel like being mad.

“Look, I’ll let you go. I’m just passing through here anyway. I’ve got me a business in Lisbon, Spain and it’s going through the roof. It’s in the mental arts. You don’t know what that is. Well, it’s not that.” He points at the book. “It’s not in your words, your knowledge that you think you’re getting from it. It’s from the all-knowing wisdom factory that you’ve got up here. “ He points to his head. “That’s connected to this here.” He points to his heart. “ And comes from everywhere.” He runs his hands around his whole body as if outlining his aura.
“New Age,” Ronald said simply. “And Lisbon is in Portugal.” Christ! Even he couldn’t let this just die.
“Not new age. Not exactly.”

He moves in a little closer. The snake in the man was getting closer and Ronald wasn’t going to push him away just yet for fear of getting bit.

“It’s New Mind.”

Ronald involuntarily rolled his eyes. Great. The snake recoiled. The man leaned back a little bit. He’d thrown his pitch. A ball.

“You’ve got a mind,” the man continued. “ In that mind is a lot of stuff. In that stuff is everything you ever experienced. I’m not talking about actions. I’m talking about emotions: love, hate, envy, greed, goodness, love.
“You said that.”
“Yeah, I’ll say it again because it’s a big one. Love is a big one because we think that it has to come from outside of ourselves, from a pretty little thing, and that’s where we get lost. We don’t need to have love from others to feel love for ourselves.”
“Not new age,” Ronald said.
“No! What’s new age? Look, there is you and there is me and…
“No you look, I’ve got to study.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m studying the massacre of the Pequot by the Puritans in the 1600s.”
“The Pequots?”
“Indians. They killed all the Indians because….” He stopped. He really didn’t know why, not really. That’s what Ronald was really thinking about before the man interrupted him.
“They killed the Pequots because it’s in their nature to do so, “ the crazy man said.
“Yeah, I guess so. It’s in man’s nature to take what he wants.”
“And you say that it don’t matter what’s in here all swirling around all nameless like I’m saying? You say that it doesn’t matter that you are going toward the outer region every day of your life and when you come to that cliff that you better be able to fly or else you will flail all the way down to the bottom and will grab anything (or anybody) you can to break your fall. You’d take your own mother down with you if you thought it was going to keep you from hitting the bottom. That’s what they did, isn’t it? They picked on people easily picked on to get further ahead. Great warriors for God, I imagine. You’re talking about the Puritans.”

The man lowered his eyes and searched the table for something, some formerly forgotten roadblock to his understanding from the past.

“Yeah, sure, the Puritans,” the man continued. “The Goddamn Puritans. Not so pure the Puritans. Still got ‘em today for sure. Still on their rampage in the name of God. Christian Puritans. Muslim Puritans. Doesn’t matter. They’re the holy ones, but really they’re the most afraid. They’re the ones who won’t listen to what I have to say. They won’t listen to me when I tell them that they’ve got a wild storm going on inside of them that they got to ride through or they will go over the edge of everything and take everybody with them. Then there’s people like you who don’t believe in the invisible and you stuff everything in your head for God knows what reason, but it doesn’t help you. You’re not strong enough to do anything about what the dummies of the world are working for night and day, even in their dreams. You’ve got nothing but a few dumb words on the page about some Indians and Puritans and that’s all. You got nothing at all about the fact that you’re a monster and you don’t even know it!
“I’m a monster?”
“You’re a monster.”
“A monster monster?
“A monster monster. If you’re unconscious. It’ll suck you down the moment you get weak. Then you’ll take others down with you and then those others will take others down and then you’ll have your history, all the history that you need from any book. All these history books are documents of the ways that people were so unconscious that they chain- reacted their lost-ness all the way across society. The blind leading the blind…and we’ll all go down together…”

He actually sang this last bit loudly and an old couple just across the way looked up from their meal and stared. Ronald smiled at them embarrassedly.

True, true, true, Ronald thought, true all of that. But you can’t leave out the particulars. Got to keep moving with the facts. He felt an uneasiness, that same uneasiness he felt when he thought in class that he was missing something, missing some crucial point that mattered. This old man was going there, but it made him feel weak. If he gave in to the man’s ideas he would be the man’s victim somehow, that really the man was just shrewder than he was and that he’d better be careful on these craggy peaks.

“You’re still not saying anything, Mr., You’ve got nothing to give me here. I know that man is shit to man, always has been, but you’re pointing me to some nebulous shit and I don’t need it, okay? I can’t see me and you can’t see you. Nobody sees themselves yet we all stand up for who we are. True. That’s true. We can only guess about the reasons we’re making our decisions or what we believe in and all that. But we can be on top of things. We’re not all lost in a cloud of unknowing like you say and sometimes what we see is what there is. A lot of times it is what it is and that’s it.”

Ronald already felt defeated just by falling into the discussion. He had been on a track and he needed to circle the truth ten thousand more times to eventually get to a morsel and know it as truth. He was prepared to stay on that track until he had all the sustenance that he needed. He wasn’t just going to jump off the rails and stand firm that everything was bullshit because everything was bullshit.

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying,” said the man.

Oh, Christ. Great. Complete failure of understanding. Now, daddy, tell me what it is I need to know.

“Dude…” Ronald said.
“Okay, okay, I’ll leave you alone. I can see that I’m upsetting you, but let me finish. There is an answer. No, listen to me, don’t huffaw like that, listen to me, son, listen to me!”

He grabbed Ronald’s arm forcefully. Ronald pulled back from his rebellious stance. The man was serious. Saliva dripped from the side of this maniac’s mouth.

“Now, listen to me! You are going to face great trials. One day something will go wrong. Things won’t ever be the same after some of these things and you’re going to have to deal with them. You’re young yet, you don’t know, but I do. Something will happen. Something major. Major things happen to all of us and they have happened to me and I want to tell you what you’re in for, but you’ve got to take me seriously for just a minute. Okay?”

Ronald nodded unintentionally, nodded to the angst in the man’s eyes if nothing else.

“Now, you’ve got an ocean inside of you as do I. You’ve got no way of ever knowing the breadth of that ocean. It’s too big. It’s you. Do you see? Don’t ever think that you can know the scope of who and what you are. It’s too vast. It’s too deep. But you’ve got to make it anyway. You can drown at anytime.
Now listen, when you feel that you know something remember, just remember, that you don’t know all of it. You don’t know what you think you know because you’re just coming at it from one angle. There’s a million angles and not all of them are coming from you. A lot of them are coming from others or others before them or others before them. Society, belief systems, everything, but at some point you’ve got to know about something that you got inside of you and it’s this: you’ve got a core. That’s right. You’ve got a middle, a center, a place where you can’t be pushed any further, where even confusion can’t go. You’ll have been through too much by the time you find this core of yours. It’s really something that we don’t want to have to know about. We all wish that we could always just live right from this core like we did when we were children, but we can’t, not when the world has taken a hold of you and taught you a few things about human nature and this goddamned world. You’ll be sent sailing on that stormy sea and you’ll be looking for a port and it’s your core that you’re looking for. Dry land. And it’s in you. It’s always there, it’s just that, well, we’re all lost at sea sometimes and you can test the winds and all that (he points at the book), you can throw Jonah over the side and have an argument with God or whatever, but you’re not on dry land until you’re on dry land and you can get to that because its there, right now, its right there, there!”

At that the old man leaned forward and slapped Ronald hard on the chest. Ronald was in shock so said nothing. He wondered whether he’d been assaulted. The man got up from the chair he had never been invited to sit in and walked to the exit without as much as a nod of goodbye.

Ronald watched him go through the glass door and saw that the man had kept a shopping cart outside and it was filled with odds and ends. He was your average bum. Ronald put his index finger to his lip and looked down at the book. Word after word after word. Each word pointed toward something else, some other fact, some other monstrous fact which led to a monstrous idea, each large enough for its own book. It seemed the more that he learned the more there was to learn. It grew exponentially this thing. It was an ocean, just like the man said, and he was on it, but the waters were as yet serene and he was as yet able to believe that he would sail smoothly through it for the rest of his life, pick up his treasure where he may, and live happily forever after and onward.

But there was the idea still of the ending point, the end of the world, the place where the waters fell down the sides of a flat earth into an eternal void where nothing could rescue him. It was what he didn’t know, and was he fooling himself in thinking he ever could?

Ronald closed the book and found himself staring at the old couple sitting in front of him. Neither of them spoke. They just sat there, one looking a little this way and the other looking a little that. Their eyes were flat and peaceful in a way, but blind too, as though something had been cut off from the inside. He wondered if they had fallen off the side of the world, had overshot their boundaries and didn’t know how to get back. This time he did not dismiss it. He did not retreat into the luxury of his youth. This time he held inside their vacant gazes and allowed them to teach him something, something, something utterly nebulous that perhaps a book, he realized, would never be able to do.

Published in: on September 26, 2010 at 6:06 pm  Leave a Comment  

Henry Mills Diary – Book One

First Entry – September 1876

The sun is over the valley below. We here on the mountain have it better than the rest of them, I think. Being up here all the time in the cool fall air of Tennessee. Got me a real-live town building up down there. Built that school and the store and the restaurant and the hotel. Got all kinds of people coming in now and buying up what’s left of the land. Letting it go where I think it’s a good thing to be let go. I like a lot of the people. After the war people needed new and good and they were happy that I’d paved the way. They saw what I saw, that the madness didn’t have to be here forever. Named the place Millsville at the urging of Mary who says she is so proud of me and that she couldn’t have done better in a husband than she’s done in me. God, I love that girl. Why she said yes I’ll never know. She wasn’t after my money. She loves me. It’s in her eyes when she looks at me. She is the dream I’ve always dreamed after and now all the working and saving and being smart in the business world has paid off and we’re well off, got a town named after my family starting down there and we live up here on this mountain with our chickens and our mules and sheep and garden and Mary takes care of them most and she paints and sews and cooks and cleans even though I could hire someone right out to take care of everything. Our livelihood isn’t gotten from up here, but down there. I’m pulling in more from that restaurant alone than I need to live on. I tell Mary I’m taking her to Paris, France and London, England and she tells me to be silent, that she doesn’t need that fancy sort of life, that she’s got her morning walks in the woods and her artistic endeavors and, I can see it, she’s got that gleam in her eye. She wants to have a baby. God it feels good. Everything’s turned out right. And I never stole anything to get us where we are today. Right living and good, sound business practices and everybody trusted me. Now they love me, love us, love Mary. Everybody loves Mary, the way she walks and how beautiful she is. I can’t help but thinking that we’re the king and queen of the whole valley. We’re everything two married people dream of being, except that one thing about having a baby, but that won’t be too long. Mary is simply the love of my life and I am the happiest man on the planet. Mary said I should write this diary like a book so that people in the future can understand the context. She’s also a literary genius and has a book of her own full of poems. I do feel a little stupid writing it like that since I know everything all the time, but I’ll try not to forget about the future people and tell this like a story that I don’t know. Maybe me and the future will learn a few things about what I think I know, but didn’t really know, by following this process of Mary’s. She calls me Nathaniel Hawthorne. She calls me smart. She says I’m a man of importance. God, I love that girl. Don’t laugh people of the future. I’m just a man in love. Goodbye for now, Diary.

Published in: on September 19, 2010 at 8:52 pm  Leave a Comment  

Nobody Hit Harry

Harry Blankenfeld sat on the ground in the middle of the street and waited for the cars to come and run him over. The light had turned green and one by one they went around him. Jerry had come out of his office just a moment after Harry sat down in the road. He saw Harry and went to the side of the road and motioned for his attention.

-Hey, Harry, what are you doing?
-I’m sitting in the road waiting for a car to run over me.
-Why are you doing that?
-Well, you know what, Jerry, it’s not all that easy to say, but I can tell you this: life sucks.
-Fair enough. Why does it suck? Hey, Harry, some more cars are coming.
-Excuse me.

They stayed silent as the cars roared toward Harry. One by one the cars swerved around him. None of them stopped.

-Anyway, Harry said.
-Yeah, anyway. Look, Harry, why don’t you come to the side of the road. You don’t want to do this.
-No, I do. I do.
-But why?
-You really want me to explain?
-Yeah, Harry, I’m the guy whose gonna have to scrape you up.
-Okay, then if you’re the guy whose gonna have to do that then I may as well tell you my story.
-Thanks. Hey, Harry, the light has turned green.
-Excuse me.

The cars once more swerved around Harry one by one. A couple of people honked this time, but nobody stopped.

-See, Harry, nobody is going to run you over anyway. It’s easy to avoid somebody in the road. I do it all the time. It’s easy.
-I’ll keep trying, anyway.
-The police are going to come for you.
-Then I better be quick, I guess.
Jerry nodded and gulped. He was getting really nervous as this situation truly sunk into him.
-Jerry, you’re an alright guy. You’ve always been good to me, but the rest of you…are shit! Shit! You see, I’ve got it all figured out. It goes like this. You’re born, right? You’re born and then you’re a kid. Everything is good so far, right? Then you’re a teenager and a young adult and then a real adult and then this portion of the show goes on a little longer and a little longer and then a little longer until you run out of portions of the show. You’re always an adult. In the meantime everybody is either new to the process or just like you, in it for a while. It’s when they’ve been in it for a while that it starts to hurt. People don’t care, Jerry! People don’t give a shit! So you always have to be on your guard. You say the slightest thing wrong and everybody is suddenly Steven fucking Seagal. They’re samurai! They’re suddenly out to prove something because, oh, you expressed your opinion or you asked for something. They’re fucking samurai! That’s because they’re so little. They’re peas. Little peas that don’t know that they’re peas. They’ve been shit on too. Everybody has been shit on and they don’t know that they’ve been shit on. So what they do is this, they take that pain of having been shit on, remember it real good, and then when they get the opportunity, you know, someone doesn’t do something they want, anything, any tiny little thing, they shit on you. Get it? Since everybody has been shit on they all go on to shit on everybody else and the ones they shit on are the ones easiest to shit on, the nice guys, the guys who don’t ask much out of life, but when they do, oh boy, watch out. Fucking Hitler is in the room for these guys and let the shitting begin boy. Wonderful way to steal shit. Believe that you are being attacked over some tiny detail and go all the way. Fuck like a fucking Mongol. Well, I’m tired of it, Jerry. I’m not going back to the office to let those people shit on me. Those people. These people in the cars, they can have me. Just take me once and for all. So I quit.
-You quit? You can’t quit. You only have a few years left till retirement.
-Jesus Christ.
-Harry, the light turned green.
-Excuse me.

The cars once more roared by Harry. A couple of more honks, but nobody hit him.

-This isn’t going to work out for you, Harry. Nobody wants to run over a guy in the street.
-Oh, yeah, they do. I’ll get one. Maybe one out of ten would see this as the opportunity of a lifetime. You see, they shit on all the little things. Get all the little perks from shitting on little people for little things all the time, you know, save money here, save money there. They’re always looking for ways to steal a little bit more to maybe get a little more ahead in this RATRACE we call life. It’s the perfect opportunity for someone. He’ll come along. Or she. Doesn’t matter. At least one in ten are looking for the perfect opportunity to take that all encompassing shit.

Jerry didn’t know much what to say so he said nothing and just tried to look sympathetic. Harry got the look and almost stood up, but instead, his arms and torso just sunk deeper into the road.

-Look, Jerry, I know. I know. This is stupid. I should get up and just go back to the office. But you know what? I kind of like it out here.
-You’re getting your clothes dirty.
-Let me have this, okay Jerry? Just let me have this.
-Alright…the light just turned green.
-Excuse me.

Once again, nobody hit Harry.

-It’s competition, do you see? It’s all of the competition. Everybody is screaming about socialism because it is against the American way, the human way. Human nature tells us to kill each other so that we don’t have any competition for our food and women and all that. Jerry, we’re dealing with animals here. Do you see? Look at me. I’m wearing this fucking suit. Look at this tie. And I’m a FUCKING ANIMAL! An animal. I defy you to prove me wrong. But we’re not honest animals. We’re fake, pseudo animals that like to kill each other slowly for the most part. We’re evil animals. We fuck each other strategically. The end result is the same: to destroy the competition. And us guys, us nice guys who thought that we weren’t animals, who are we? Well, we’re the food. We’re the fucking prey, Jerry. We’re very accommodating. We seek peace and solutions and the liars toy with us until we’ve given them everything they wanted to steal and once they have that they let us go. If we don’t give it they attack. It’s the American way, Jerry, and I’m done. Fuck America.

Suddenly Harry got to his feet.

-Fuck America.

He had a strange look in his eyes. Suddenly both hands shot out like flagpoles. Intensely true fuck you birds extended with every ounce of Harry’s strength. He started turning in circles as he fucked off the world.

-Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America!
-Harry, just come back to the side of the road.

The cars were coming. Harry had gone mad.

-Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America! Fuck America!

The cars whizzed past him. Nobody hit him. Jerry went to Harry and first touched one arm and brought it down and then the other. Harry let him, slowly waking up. Jerry gave Harry the only real hug he had received in 12 years.

-C’mon, man, let’s go. Fuck America. Let’s just go down to C.J. Murphy’s and get a beer. I’ll call in and tell them you got sick. Fuck work. Fuck America, man. Let’s go.

Jerry led him by the arm and Harry let him. He would let somebody control his life this one more time.

Published in: on September 8, 2010 at 5:18 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Ping

ken talley, fort worth, TX–22 years for being a drug addict

failing flip flopper, just human, I guess, after all.

We’re all just human. Get over it.

Home

human center of time and life

mixed messages

juxtaposed

and if the night runs over

and if the day won’t waaa

and if the wave should falter
along the stony

and if the night runs over

and if the day won’t last

and if your way should falter

on that stony path

it’s time to pass

ping

Published in: on September 7, 2010 at 3:40 pm  Leave a Comment  
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