LIPID DREAMS OF FAME

I think I became tired right around number 29. No particular reason behind it. At the number 29 I just found myself to be indifferent and listless so I figured, “That’s it.” There was a certain relaxing feeling that accompanied my realization and I lounged around with this relaxing feeling for a few days before I asked myself the question, “Now what?” The relaxing feeling evaporated and I plunged into a state of nervous dysphoria that persisted and grew more intense by the day. I had never before lived in this particular state of mind. I found that I could no longer make decisions or drive properly. I started buying all sorts of junk and piling it up at my house. I purchased a large flat screen TV and turned it on permanently. I began gaining weight and accumulating debt. I took to wearing clothing that had been fastidiously picked out for the sole purpose of attracting the maximum amount of attention. As I approached the proportions of a whale I decided to purchase a scooter cart so that I wouldn’t have to walk at all. I smoked like a fiend and within six months I was able to obtain a prescription for oxygen so that I could strap the tank onto my scooter and ride around parking lots obstructing traffic and eliciting sorrowful looks. It took about a year before I realized that I was purposely working my way to a point that I perceived as the very bottom of society. I just wanted to see what it was like to be such a creature and on a fine spring morning I had an incident happen that confirmed my arrival at rock bottom. I was trying to get my scooter cart to go over the curb in front of Whole Foods but it wasn’t working because there were some leaves under the wheels which were causing them to slip. I started cussing with my wheezy breath and rocking my fat corpse back and forth trying to get the cart to move when suddenly the whole thing tipped over and I rolled out onto the macadam followed by my oxygen tank which rang as it rolled in front of a car. The car slammed on its brakes and a woman who was dressed very smartly got out and said, “Oh my God! Are you all right?” I thought to myself, “This is it. The absolute rock bottom of human life! I made it!” I rolled over onto my back and said to the lady, “It’s all right. I can start clawing my way back up now.” The woman put her hands to her mouth and shook her head. “My God,” she said, “Should I call an ambulance?”

“No.” I said. “I’m going to work my way back up.”

“Don’t try to move! I’m going to get some help.”

“No lady, I’m going to make it on my own.”

The lady went into the store and came back out a minute later with several people. “There he is.” She said as she pointed to me. I had tried to turn over onto my stomach thinking that I could then push myself up but I seemed to be stuck on my side with my arms flailing uselessly in the air. I really felt like a bug that had been turned over on its back and suddenly I felt a deep sense of shame. I hadn’t felt shame for so long that I hardly knew what it was but as I looked around at all the people pointing at me and putting their hands over their mouths I could feel the blood flooding my face. Some little kids looked up at their mom and asked if I was a fat retard which caused the mother to “shhh…” them and smack one on the head. “You don’t call people retards!” She said as she hustled them along. The woman who’d stopped her car directed three men and a woman to help me up onto the cart. But as they tried to grab hold of me I swatted at them and kicked which caused me to roll over onto my stomach. And then I rolled over onto my back and then over again. The concerned woman from the car started shouting. “Stop him! He’s going to roll away!” One of the guys from Whole Foods who was pushing a cart back to the store let the cart go and ran in front of me with his arms out in front of him like he was going to stop me with his hands. As I went over him you could hear his bones breaking and his head pop. Everyone in the parking lot started screaming because the kid I’d run over was so clearly dead and flattened. “Look mom!” said the little kid who’d called me a fat retard, “It’s like a cartoon with a steam roller! He’s flat as a board!” The mother tried to put her hands over the eyes of her children but it was a lost cause. Someone shouted, “Call the fire department!” and someone else said “Get some rope.” I just couldn’t imagine what they were thinking since I wasn’t on fire and I couldn’t imagine how they would be able to lasso me. As I rolled down the parking lot cars skidded and grocery carts were let go as people held their hands to their mouths. There was a lot of screaming and running around but there was no one who could possibly stop me as I rolled over a small grassy area and out onto the highway. Of all things, I slammed into the side of an ambulance which was transporting a heart attack victim from the mall. The ambulance tipped over in slow motion as I came to a stop in the south bound outer lane. Within a few minutes there were cops and fire trucks followed by more ambulances and then, of course, the news vehicles. Satellites shot up their poles and cables were stretched from point to point. News personnel climbed on top of me and gesticulated as they explained the situation. National news companies showed up and before I knew it I was being transported via military helicopter to a NYC studio where I was to tell my story to the nation. In a nutshell, I was a hero. But the logic behind my heroism was beyond me. I thought I was a giant fat looser. I told the producer that I thought I was a giant fat looser and he said, “No, you’re an American. You’ve reached the top. You’re on every television in every kitchen around the country. You’ll be a spokesman for Little Debbie. You’ll be huge!” I wondered,   “How much more huge could I be?” I was to learn you could never be too huge as long as you were in the right place. Unfortunately, I eventually lost weight and became healthy. I lost all my talk show circuitry and thus my income. Soon I was crawling around in alleys, thin, broke, and feckless. Was I on the bottom or the top? I never figured it out.

CONFEDERATE POODLES

Sometimes you don’t realize you know something until a small event precipitates a chain of logic and evidence that blooms into a revelation.  Through such an event it became clear to me that there was a connection between the confederacy and poodles. I know several ostensibly bad ass, big, construction type men who ride around in monster trucks from site to site cussing and cajoling their workers into action while exhibiting every quality associated with redneckism. But they also have in tow, within their cabs, each, a pair of poodles or some other equally repugnant small dogs that one associates with the creatures who might be owned by ladies who swoon at the sight of course things. When I see these guys and their dainty canines I wonder how or why they choose animals of diminutive stature to accompany them on their rounds. It seemed to me that they should be more partial to hound dogs or beagles because of the southern penchant for hunting and making noise. So I did some research. I looked in my DSM IV TR where on page 483 I found the following diagnostic observation: Owners of small dogs or poodles can often be found to have been the victims of prenatal divergence of the dorsal grove followed by a dilapidated re-convergence that renders a subhuman primate phenotype often associated with significant mental retardation. That whet my appetite and so I checked out numerous books on the civil war where I found, first of all, that general Beauregard, who initiated the war of the states by ordering the first shot on Fort Sumner, owned a miniature black poodle which he kept by his side during even the most violent exchanges between the North and the South. General Lee owned a miniature collie named “Sckootchie.” Sckootchie required a retinue of six soldiers to tend to her needs and like Beauregard’s dog “Fluffy,” accompanied Mr. Lee in all battles. Another confederate army captain, by the name of Calhounstein, a rare Jewish reb, was known for riding on a wagon that contained six small poodle mutts that yipped and yapped so much that his regiment often, according to Midge’s compendium of the Civil War,  “complained about nocturnal annoyances of such intensity that they oft inclined to retire their own lives rather than confront the captain about his companions.” Everywhere I looked I found more evidence of the confederate–poodle nexus. And then buried in the UVA stacks among the dusty paper and the marine architecture of hatches and stanchions I found a truly remarkable story. Evidently just west of Charlottesville and slightly south of Ivy there was small but important battle between the Clinchfield Martin guards, a northern unit and the Royal Roosters, a southern contingent of riflemen who had strayed from their regiment due to a problem concerning a card game called Spanish Train. It wouldn’t have been a battle worth recording except that it was within this small exchange that a powerful new weapon was discovered. A weapon that was employed with great success and by which the north and south were able to come to terms postbellum due to the astonishing implications of its efficacy. The northerners had a small brass cannon and a bag full of petit poodles. Such cannon fodder was absolutely devastating to the Rebels who screamed and cried like children when they wiped off the curly white hairs and plucked small teeth out of their arms having realized that the little dogs of their forefathers were being sacrificed brutally and, worse, with glee by the heartless Yankees. When news of this weapon spread there was a sort of deflation below the Mason Dixon as the Rebs realized their predicament. They couldn’t stand having the poodles blown to pieces and raining down on them in the battle field but they also couldn’t stand the idea of having to admit their love for such animals to the remainder of the nation. So things went downhill from there for the south. At Appomattox a small and secret provision was penned in making the north promise not to mention the confederate–poodle connection in exchange for good behavior by the south as reconstruction proceeded. I don’t plan on advertising my discovery due to the nature of southern passions but I can’t help telling people that they should look upon rednecks with small dogs in their vehicles as flecks of living history instead of something worse.

MORTMAIN FRAME

As the various jurors look on with glassy eyes Mr. Talbot takes up the microphone and addresses them in a stern voice. “Once again you have chosen the winner based on circumstantial evidence. I will ask you one last time, can any of you describe the work within the frame?”

“It’s a beautiful mountain of some sort with some fog around it.” said a box shaped woman “But,” she added “The frame is outstanding. I think it’s supposed to be a tree branch or something.”

“You’ve essentially all given that exact same description of the work. You are all supposed to be the preeminent judges of Lashburg and you’ve been invited to this event in order to demonstrate something I have been concerned with for some time now. I want you to think very carefully about what I am about to tell you. I want you to think about your credentials and your status as art connoisseurs because in a few seconds you’re going to perhaps have shocking new views of yourselves. What you have all described as a ‘pretty mountain with fog’ is in fact a steaming pile of cattle dung photographed by my six year old and stuck inside a shitty frame I found in our attic… Now I wonder… what do you think about that?”

A soft looking man with deeply emotional eyes spoke up. “I think that now that we have some background we can look at the work with a more critical eye. I think that it is a wonderful piece of work and the fact that it was done by your child is even more enticing. This is art at it’s best.”

“So,” replied Mr. Talbot, “You’re saying that this is a work of art even though my intention was specifically to show you how pure crap passes for art?”

“Your entire effort is a stupendous work of art in itself.” Said a lanky Spanish woman with golden fingernails. “How did you think it up?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Said Mr. Talbot “I saw a pile of cattle crap sitting out in the yard and thought my daughter could take a photo of it and that I could frame it in a chunk of garbage and present it to you for your wily eyes to contemplate. I wanted to demonstrate how meaningless your appreciation of art was.”

A short brutal looking man with giant green glasses stood up and said, “Well the joke’s on you then Mr. Talbot. There is no such thing as bad art. I agree with Miss Menoza. The fact that you delegated the work to your daughter in the same manner as Andy Warhol would delegate his work to the doorman, and the fact that you picked your subject in such a degage manner, also your choice of a repurposed frame, all excellent examples of the artistic mien. I commend you for your artistic brilliance.”

“So,” responded Mr. Talbot with his head canted at an unusual angle, “you would be happy with headlines in tomorrow’s art section which read, ‘Art experts swoon over pile of steaming shit crammed into crappy frame.’ and would accept that as a reasonable summation of the afternoon’s events?”

The brutal man with green glasses spoke again and said, “I think it would be important for you to mention the way in which you presented it. That is very important. Your presentation was very arty.”

“Very Arty. Well,” replied Mr. Talbot, “I’m having a problem with this. My intention, as an artist if you please, was  to show an example of atrocious art. You have reinterpreted my work in a manner inconsistent with my intentions. Is there not something fundamentally wrong with that?”

“No.” Replied a pair of twins in perfect unison. “Your intentions as an artist are completely separate from the actual work. The art, now that it has been placed into the public domain is open to interpretation. We think it is beautiful and very artsy!”

“But, what if I, as the creator of the work and therefor as the most knowledgeable source of information concerning the meaning of the work, tell you, unequivocally, that the intent of the art has been mussed up in a most disturbing fashion and that’s that. I mean who are you to tell me something different?”

Miss Minoza rose again. “This art…, this little mountain with fog coming down the sides, which is what I interpret…, this little mountain is lovely and you have no right as an artist or a human being to tell me that I shouldn’t see what I see.”

Mr. Talbot scratched his head and coughed into his hand which he then waved at the audience. “I understand that everyone has a perfect right to see what they want to see. But, Miss Minoza, just for arguments sake let’s say you see a green light and I see a red light. I stop but you and your right to interpret careen through the intersection and mow down some toddlers in the crosswalk. You could say that you saw green when in fact it was red. But red it would be not only in the court room but in the world of common sense as well. My point is, you can see what ever you want but that doesn’t change what is actually in existence. Your mountain with fog coming down the side, regardless of your rights as a free interpreter, remains, in reality, a pile of steaming shit photographed by a child. Now, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, if you think this is such fine art, just what are you willing to pay for it?”

“I don’t think that I have to pay for art in order to ascribe value to it.” Said Miss Minoza. “I think this work is extremely valuable but there are units of value other than money.”

“I appreciate that Miss Minoza. Just how many “other units” of value would you place on this picture?”

The green glasses brute stood up again. This time he stood akimbo and stuck his chest out in an aggressive manner. “You are trying to arbitrarily quantify a gesture of beauty. A work of art does not have to fall into the schemes of commerce or accounting. You’re degrading a deep human effort.”

Mr. Talbot looked straight over the head of the audience and spoke. “You are looking at a pile of poop. It has NO value. It is not art. It was simply a mistake and an ugly one at that. It is not only worthless in every way but it has an actual negative value in that it would require a garbage man to take it to the appropriate venue where it would occupy valuable space among the banana peels and coffee cans. I am going to take this to the dump and bury it.”

Miss Menoza stood up and walked to the podium. She turned to the audience and said, “We will follow him to the dump. We are witnessing a genuine ground breaking moment. The artist as garbage man! The life cycle of a great piece of art from cradle to grave. This work has had an effect on all of us and we are participating in the process not as a hum drum crowd of onlookers but as ancillary artists. Let us march to the dump and take this little part of life by the antlers, wrestle it into our memory, interpret it, bond with it, and then reflect upon it!”

Mr. Talbot turned an odd color and said, “Quick! Someone get a frame. I feel some art coming up!”

The entire audience started breaking apart chairs trying to find material for a frame but Mr. Talbot simply took the opportunity to escape with his art. His point was lost in the fray of artistic endeavor before his eyes.

THE ARCHIVE OF BURNED LIGHT

I tried to save light in a perfect ball made of mirrored glass. I got it to go inside and ricochet for a small eternity and I was able to hear what it sounded like when it expired at the end of some trillions of miles. I took the object and showed it to the smartest person I know and she told me that the whole thing was not working like I thought it was and that I was deluding myself. Then she reminded me of a question I had asked her several years ago. I wanted to know exactly where gravity stopped at some distance from an object. She really bitched me out for that one saying, “You can’t just ask stupid questions that you know no one can answer.” I replied, “I just DID ask that question, so don’t tell me I can’t do it.” We then got into a huge argument about epistemology which I promptly turned into an argument about alcohol and the human brain. We fought until the light went out of the house and down the hill. We fought while the light went roaring across the green land and the emerald oceans. We fought while it climbed cold barren mountains on the other side of the planet. We fought and fought until the light came crawling, exhausted, over the hill and into the frosty windows to illuminate the room. We were beat. Nothing was solved. I took the ball made of mirrored glass and spent the rest of the morning catching light and listening to it wear itself out while my breath lit up like bright white puffs of wordless thought.

FALAFEL MOUSE

There are places to eat an emergency brunch post a drunken, cold virus, inflicted, evening. And then there’s waffle house in Staunton. Good god what a place. The first thing I noticed was the fingerprints covering every surface and in particular the silverware. The dishwasher’s nose was dripping into the dish sink which is strategically located right in front of the bar so that a thoughtful customer could simply push everything right over the edge into the water thus saving bus work and cutting to the quick in a perfect expression of the opinion one might attach to the food. I will say, though, that it was an eclectic group in the place. There were lilly white punk rockers, dirt brown leathery farmers, 400 pound cattle with two feeble legs, old decrepit hippies, truck drivers with the DTs, bizarre couples with no semblance of commonality, chain smokers, coffee swillers, many gravely voices which had been ground rough with cigarettes and booze, cackling laughers, noisy talkers, pointers, pickers, clappers, singers, babblers, etc,. All I wanted was some fast grub before I made my way onward and outward to the next pain in the ass appointment. There was a big fight over the construction and dispensation of my waffle. I would have been mad had not the main antagonist been a fetching high yellar with buck teeth and funny eyes. My first waffle fell on the floor. My second waffle was stolen. My third waffle burned to charcoal. By my forth waffle one of the wait women who was a big matronly type announced that I would now be able to finish all my “good food” before I got my dessert food. “But there is no good food.” I wanted to say. Everything was slathered in butter which gave things some sort of taste but all of the different foodstuffs could have been the same essential substance. Some crazy woman kept looking over my shoulder as I drew little doodles of hanging waitpeople and miniature guillotines lopping off tiny heads from waffle house staff. “Ohhh, that’s nice.” She would mumble and then go back to singing a really different song than what was playing on the juke box. “Why are the insane allowed in here?” I wanted to ask. But the thing about being starving is that once you are shoveling food into your mouth you can look back and forth at things with relative indifference. I looked back and forth and occasionally, over my shoulder. They couldn’t break me though. All I wanted was the food or at least the thought of food, going down my trap. I ate and ate. I had a total dining experience. I didn’t see any bugs though. I think they all died from something.

WESTERN REACHES

Well at two or three this afternoon I was walking down the main street of Covington Va. What a deserted hole! I could walk right down the middle of the main drag with no fear of a car running me down. I saw one kid and his girlfriend standing in front of a shuttered shop. The kid was holding a football along with his girlfriend and that’s all there was. The only living entity of note was the Westvaco factory which had easily a thousand times the energy of the entire town. I don’t know what I was looking for but I did look and look. There was cement and weeds and I just wondered what it was like when people were building things in the town, when there was some purpose to it all. A dead town is  a sad thing. But I really like going to them in order to inspect all the artifacts left behind. I like looking at the shops and businesses that people deemed suitable for their success when they had it. Jewelry, fingernail highlighting, trophy shops, frame shops, etc. Interestingly there always seems to be a plethora of shops which specialize in things of appearance rather than substance in the towns which have burned themselves up. The Westvaco factory reeks to high heaven, first with the smell of skinned trees and then with the odor of chemicals to convert the thousands of tons of mulch into something that may be pressed into cheap furniture on the China mainland. From the raked out woods to the still brownish-green water of the Jackson river I can see nothing but hollowed out life. Ironically, I once met Chip Mead whose family owns Mead paper which now owns Westvaco. He was just a kid like us but now I wonder how many years the cash from all this industry in the middle of nowhere has been funneled back to some mansion in Dayton. I don’t really care about the rich poor dichotomy. But I am fascinated when ever I find some weed eaten stretch of railroad or some busted down factory and I realize that some rich family owned it, may still own it, but has never seen it and will never see it. I don’t expect them to care for the poor any more than I care for the rich. But son of a bitch! I just can’t stand seeing all of this heavy industry falling to rust around such sad towns. I actually feel sorry for the machinery and structures and the people who built them.

STAY QUIET

Well I awoke at about four in the morning realizing that I had nurtured a truly ass kicking cold. Who knows where it came from. I was out in the rain working on a bon fire that was doomed to destruction because of the heaven’s over supply of water that poured down hour after hour while I cursed the sky. Talk about pissed off! But I used the event to change the way I was thinking about cause and effect. I tried to realize that it was just the way it was for no reason at all. Just because it is now a beautiful day and it is a good parenthetical close to the dreaded day of the bon fire I can’t convince myself that the powers that be are barking down at me. It’s just bad luck. But not really. I once ran into an old girlfriend on the mall. It was a cool winter afternoon and the sun was hardly doing its job as weak light slid down the bricks and empty trees. She looked really upset and so I sat down with her and asked what was wrong. She just burst into tears and said, “I’m just so unhappy.” She was really crying which was the only genuine emotion I had ever seen her express. It effected me to see that something had finally gotten to her and I wondered what had happened to precipitate such distress. I got her to come to the other side of the street with me so that we could sit up against a building where the last threads of sunlight created the illusion of warmth. She rolled up this piece of paper that she had and pretended that it was a telescope which she held up to the side of my head and then proceeded to tell me what I was thinking.  She said, “You’re thinking that you would like to get your hands on me again but that I’m too whacked out for you to deal with.” I said, “That’s not all that complicated to figure out is it?” But I was slightly nervous since that was precisely what I had been thinking. Then she said, “You just thought that there is nothing else what so ever that you can think about me. That there’s nothing else there.” Now that scared me because that was exactly what I was thinking. But I focused and said, “Maybe you believe that is true yourself? Do you think that there is anything else to you?” She unrolled her piece of paper and looked like she was going to cry again. “What do you want me to say?” I asked. “I just can’t think of a single worthwhile thing to say to you. And I’m not saying you’re not worthwhile, I’m just saying I can’t think of anything to say.” She leaned back to the wall and rested her forearms on her knees with her hands limply hanging onto the paper. “I don’t know what to think.” She said. “I have simply run out of things to think. I feel empty.” A few leaves bounced by us under the chill sweep of winter air. A bum shuffled by and asked us if we believed in Jesus and I told him no. She looked at him and then also said no. “You just say whatever you think that people expect you to say. If you were alone I’ll bet you would have told that guy you do believe in Jesus.” Now she really started crying. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to act.” I really didn’t know what to say to her. She was right. She didn’t know how to act. Her whole world view was formed by an oppressively religious family who had kept her from normal child’s play.  She learned life from soap operas and low grade office politics along with a constant supply of self help books. I wanted to tell her that most of us pretend that we know what we’re doing within the context of societal restraints. But I knew that it just wouldn’t wash. She could only believe what was happening at any given moment which is to say, she would be lost in a rough sea for a long time. I always had this image of her parents letting her out of a car by a field. I saw her running and laughing. She went chasing after some geese thinking that her parents were so nice for bringing her to a happy place. But of course they had left. When bad things happen to the body it can be a tragedy. When bad things happen to the mind it absolutely is a tragedy. But when NOTHING happens to the mind, when it just facilitates breathing and blinking and simple acts of imitation, then what is that? I could never figure out how to feel sorry for ghostly things. But there is definitely an urge to do so regardless of cause, effect, self, or other. It’s dizzyingly disorienting.

REL 101 & my first F- @UVA

I think it was a the disaster of the year 2008 that set the stage for what was to be a wonderful era in the American history. It started between Ohio and Kentucky when both states decided to build the most monumental machine to ever exist on earth. Using the facilities of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the machine shops and factories of Dayton, Lexington, and Cincinnati the consortium built a 900 foot tall robot in the form a Savior. It was a terrifying machine with hundreds of thousands of horsepower and an on board computer that was designed to execute the desire of what was agreed through long deliberation to be the will of the Lord. On the day it was to be unveiled there were nearly four million people on the north and south banks of the Ohio river. A huge parachute cloth covered the machine and at the appointed time of 12 noon Easter day several small charges exploded releasing the cover which floated away into the sky while the throngs howled and clapped like lunatics. Exactly one minute after the cover flew away the giant man opened its eyes and turned its head toward Kentucky which, of course lead several million people to decide, on the spot, that Kentucky was blessed. But that didn’t last long because a few seconds later the machine scooped about a thousand people off the southern shore of the mighty Ohio and threw them into its mouth. At the same time it rose it’s left foot and stomped down on the northern shore squashing another thousand or so people. Right then, the remaining several million people decided that the people who were squished and eaten were sinners. The giant then turned around and jumped into the air and landed on its belly causing a wave to wash a million and a half people off the shore and into the muddy water. People were generally stunned and could not imagine how anything, be it man or machine, could heap such a dastardly deed upon the populace. As the water flowed off the shores carrying limp humans, frantic rodents, stinking dogs, and a million candy wrappers, the giant Jesus stood up in the middle of the river and held his hand up to his mouth as he executed a monumental yawn. He then said the magical words that redeemed him on the spot. He said, “The ex-prisident, Bill Clinton, will have a wild sexual romp with two wayward reporters on an airplane that is transporting the reporters from North Korea to Los Angles in the year of the Lord 2009.” Who knew if it would be true. It just made such perfect sense to the onlookers that they disregarded their compatriots who were floating down the river like dead fish and the living decided to worship the giant Jesus without reservation or adverse judgement. But the giant Jesus was in a foul mood due to a Chinese cable that was shorting out against a forty five foot long metal penis which was added by the scientifically inclined baptists of Lexington who were obsessed with putting their foot print on the technological achievement in the only way they could imagine…, that is biological realism. So there, right in front of a group of truly horrified women, children, men, and even cats and dogs, the giant wang stood up at attention. Preachers and priests dropped to their knees in shock and embarrassment as the men and women turned away and children pointed and giggled with glee. The giant Jesus looked down at his pecker and shouted, “What the fuck!? WHO put THAT there?!” so loudly that trees vibrated and leaves fell. Somewhere within the Microsoft shell within a shell there was the essence of puritanism as envisioned by some devout programmer. It was a program that simply had to be executed and so it was. The giant Jesus reached down and tore off his thing causing about five hundred thousand men to reach down to their crotches in an atavistic attempt to protect an idea of profound importance. The women shrieked and the children ran around in circles laughing and hollering to beat the band. Dogs jumped into the air and plucked birds from flight. Fish jumped out of the river and landed on shore where they flopped in little silver arcs among the flies and bottle caps. Trees all leaned away from the river as if some invisible storm were pushing them down and the leaves, which were falling out by the billions floated down in peaceful groups of various colors. It was complete mayhem and the activity was so confusing to all involved that they hardly noticed when the big Jesus launched his pecker, like a spear, towards the north with such force that it actually left the atmosphere and went into a low earth orbit. Fighter jets were called in fully stocked with pragmatic men and women who had no reservations about pressing the buttons which picked the malevolent giant to pieces as it ran down route 52 smashing everything in sight. The final bill reached into the billions and the entire country was plunged into despair as the rest of the planet blamed the U.S. for its new satellite. The right honorable Jefferson Rigby who represented the U.S. at the United Nations had to stand with his head hung low as he was excoriated by member after member of that august body. “You have put a penis into orbit! What if we have visitors from another galaxy for God’s sake?” to which the American representative would say, “It was a private endeavor. It doesn’t represent the United States of America.” Smiling Africans and dowdy Russians would say things like, “You’re a pecker nation! You’ve embarrassed us all you dick heads! Our entire planet is in disgrace! Why don’t you shoot that thing down?” Rigby told story after story about technological problems with bringing down the orbiter but the fact was that there had been a heated discussion within the States. Regardless of the facts, a huge segment of the American population believed the mechanical Jesus was in fact the real Lord because of his willingness to de-man himself rather than offend his flock with a display of sexual pride. In less than two months there was a religious party devoted to preserving the last remnant of the giant Jesus. After three months that party split into the following heretic protestant groups: The Pecker party, The Schlong party, The Wang party, The Tool party, The party of Dick, The party of Johnson, The party of Peter, The Flying Woodies, The Bones, and the irreverent Astro Mega Dong party. President Cheney was rolled out of his hospital at least once a day to inform the nation that we would get through this come hell or high water. If his medications were just so he would grab his crotch and lash out at the U.N. whom he called a bunch of ball-less pussies. He loved to turn back as he was being rolled away, look right into the cameras, and say, “Let’s keep our pecker up!” which would elicit audible groans from the press. There’s no doubt about it, we were about to seal our fate as a pariah nation when the beatific force of gravity came to the rescue and pulled the giant offender into the stratosphere where it burned with  incandescent fury before scattering into a thousand pieces and raining down near California’s coast. The powerful BOTKINS computer predicted that in precisely 890 years all steeples would be adorned with “harry missiles,” the logic being that if Jesus had been executed in an electric chair there would be electric chairs atop every church right now. It was more than questionable logic but it was also enough to initiate another fight between social constructivists, theologians, and various political, social, and religious activists. The fight would continue until Tennessee and Virginia conspired to build the giant Virgin Mary which opened a whole new can of worms and brought up issues beyond the scope of this paper.

ELLA ETAL

I was working at my loser job as a gallery overseer where I pretty much spent my days dusting paintings and keeping people’s paws out of the fountain where they were incessantly trying to fetch the fake gold coins pasted to the bottom. I had a degree in loserizm which is to say, Art History, where I managed to decelerate with astonishing speed so that by the time I graduated I was on numerous forms of probation and just barely got out with papers. I didn’t care. I was lazy beyond description.

Well one morning I was sitting there at the end of the main hall as far away from the door as I could possible be when I saw a little girl come in. She had a stalk of hair sticking straight up with a rubber band around the bottom like she was prepared for God to pluck her from this earthly slog. She immediately began looking at the paintings on her right and after going by three of them she started putting some little thing on the floor in front of them as she looked at each one. They looked like little cans of bug poison or something with a little antenna sticking out from each one. When she got to where I was sitting she looked at me like I was a thermostat or a federal wage poster and then continued on down the other side. I was too lazy to ask her what she was doing and anyway, she was pleasant to watch because she exuded so much energy without effort which was something I couldn’t ever experience for some reason and therefore was jealous of. When she got back to the front door she began her circuit again this time lighting each canister with a Zippo lighter that made a satisfying click and clack. Again, when she got to me she gave me a blank look and moved on. I folded my arms and watched. When she got back to the front door the canisters blew into flames and there was suddenly a colonnade of fire burning down the hall. The paintings began to burn and slough down the walls giving rise to some very colorful smoke which rose and looped around the lights and drifted down the crown mold in an incredible display of chrome. As I sat there I wondered why the fire alarms weren’t going off and the water system wasn’t working but again, lazy, lazy, lazy! The girl came about half way down the hall and looked at the ceiling where the smoke had begun to dissipate. When it was all clear there was a painting on the ceiling which took my breath away. It was better than the Sistine Chapel with tormented souls clawing their way out of some hell toward a paradise complete with lush green trees and beckoning women who stood by low tables piled with succulent fruits and pitchers of wine. Frets of golden clouds seemed to be actually burning through the plaster and there were legions of happy looking animals marching along the horizon toward a lovely silent river that flowed into what could only be described as a happy land. The little girl came up to me and said, “OK, what’s it going to be?”

“What?” I replied.

“What’s it going to be? She repeated.

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?”

“There’s the best art you’ve ever seen. It’s right there and it’s as real as the day light. Now what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest I have no idea what to do about it. Furthermore I have no idea what has just happened or why.”

“Right there on the ceiling is the best thing you could have ever thought up. True paradise. No pain, no worries, nothing but women, wine, food, and eternal pampering.”

“Is it supposed to be heaven?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Well, I’m afraid I just don’t get it.”

“What’s the best thing you could think of?”

“Uhh, well that up there looks pretty good…I mean I guess I would be happy somewhere like that…but, I mean, it’s just a painting on the ceiling.”

“Don’t you want to be there?”

“Yeah, I would like to be there but, like I said, it’s just a painting on the ceiling.”

“It’s as much a real place as anywhere else is.” She said and then she turned away from me for a moment with her hand to her chin. When she turned back she asked, “Would you like to be there?” and pointed up to the ceiling.

“I’d like to be somewhere like that, yes.”

“What do you mean somewhere like that. Why not right there?”

“I’m not following you. That’s very beautiful but it’s just a painting. I’m three dimensional. It’s two.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not even two dimensional. You’re not here at all.”

“Well little girl, you’ve got some mouth on you but I’m afraid I just don’t follow what you are about or what you mean by all of this.”

“OK, you’ve studied art all of your adult life and you’re now standing in front of the greatest piece of artifice to ever appear on earth. It’s very simple. Art is not an idea of something unattainable. Real art is getting into the picture so to speak. You can brush up against this crap for the rest of your life but if you don’t get into the picture you’ve wasted it all.” And with that, the precocious little creature, through some means beyond me, swept me off my feet and out of this earthly world. I was bound to the painting as a serf of some sort, forever looking down on the gallery and still wondering about the point. Worst of all the new overseer took to reading Proust out loud day in and day out which just made my paint peel with boredom of an indescribable depth.

BAILING WAVES

So last night I was at a party for a friend who was continuing to celebrate her birthday in the contemporary tradition of really celebrated what seems like a birth month. I am so entirely out of it that some times I will suddenly shake my head and wonder where about 2o years went down without my noticing. Last night was one such moment. I was sitting there contemplating the numerous desserts being passed around while listening to a group of young hipsters discuss urban foraging and book club activities. Earlier in the day I had been working with a group of construction workers from the depths of society’s swamplands. It was impossible not to feel the teetering of the bridge between the two groups as I tried to reconcile what I was seeing and hearing to what I had seen and heard. The profound question the kept arising was, “Which is worse?” There was M. who just spent four years in prison. His arms are covered with tattoos and crawling with muscles that are distinctly prison muscles as opposed to fitness center muscles. That is, muscles of necessity as opposed to muscles of fashion. M. was in a state all morning because of a fight he was having with his girl friend. He said that he’d already been cussed out four times over the phone for some undefined reason and when the song, “Hey Joe,” by Jimi Hendrix was playing on the radio M. would yell “Kill her dead!” or “Knock her down to the ground.” after similar lyrics of the song were sung. I kept wondering, “What manner of resolution will M. and his girlfriend employ to resolve their differences?” I couldn’t even imagine. Then T. B. and his girlfriend Daisy (I have to use her name because I love it so) came in with their betting tickets and proceeded to figure out point spreads and various gambling voo doo tricks while I worked in the next room listening raptly to their conflicting ideas. After they had their betting figured out, they began planning their weekend which started with going to the Embassy hotel in Richmond where one could rent a room that came with a ticket to the “Manager’s Hour,” which was the magical two hours where you could drink as much booze as you could hold for free. After that you could participate in “Adult Swimming” in the indoor pool from 11 to midnight. The thought of that trio “Adult” swimming while drunk out of their minds is too much for my imagination. Usually, late Monday morning, they will come in late and Daisy will have a partially broken arm or a black eye and the boys will be subdued. Their traumas arise and dissipate all week with a steady creeping toward the happy end of the spectrum as Friday approaches where they can do it all again. What can you say about it? I’m usually very entertained but not all that impressed. Now at the dinner parties I know that there will be no broken arms or black eyes. Everyone has their teeth and even more. There is much talk of food and foreign places. Everyone is shooting a film or shopping like a barracuda during the day and then having soft candle lit discussions over fine wine in the evening. I am not entertained or impressed but instead bored to tears. But I really don’t blame anybody but myself. There is definitely something I’m missing and I really want to figure out what it is. In the meantime all I can say with certainty is that I shouldn’t have eaten the fig ice cream, the marzipan, the bomb cake, the cupcake, and the grits.