Luck and Slack

The town has finally dealt a truly devastating blow and I dodged another bullet. I feel the guilt of being passed-over whilst others get the axe, and wonder how I managed to fake it this long. The strange thing is that I am more optimistic now than during the most manic of lusty booze fueled rages, whence I bounded higher than Falkor with no regard for the ground below. The page I have turned is a blank one, and I still have not fully burned the previous chapters, but things are looking up. My routine is simple and needs to be tweaked a bit in order to account for creativity as well as self-improvement. I need to make these repairs before I can be of any use to others. Ah, first world problems, how you blind me to the suffering of anyone but myself. I will now be off to the thrift stores to find my slack. Maybe I will find the next love-of-my-life digging trough the dusty boxes of Xmas albums. I hope she doesn't smell like an ashtray.

poor dog.

You know her's a sad specimen, but she depends upon you. Her also don't ever smile, but to laugh she needs you. You can never hold Gracie too tight. Her will squish the wurms out. She just wants a mother's warmth and some ants or beetles. Everyone will declare their love, But she won't do it. She can't even reach for a hug. Being quite the shortest. Gracie wont give up her trust, And who can blame her.

Smoke Pony

Twister return this house that hill without pony she swills outside the chamber in the crowd. They smite her house-fire to the foundation with red scabbed finger-bones, helmet gleam above that house-fire or finger-bones, higher above her velveteen widow moan. Else a wind-chime ain't breezy, An acrid chimney brick then twists slightly crumbly. Trolls toll that bell outside a bellows erect under a cape, her jagged fallen aerials spanning through faint smog- disavowed bowstrings will spring from anger or her pony from her hill.

Food

Elaborate flavors are created by a broad range of ingredients in exotic ways around the world. Many things that my culture would never consider eating are thought of as food elsewhere. Lizards, insects, amphibians, and even waste products like nests and dung are used as staples or delicacies. In China they love their bird-nest soup and harvest it from limestone caves. The peasants who climb the walls must be oblivious to the dangers they face. The nests are made of spit, and whatever debris exists in the stomach of these creatures. One would think it would be a good way to catch SARS or bird-flu or something. Another danger could be the half naked peasant grappling the cave walls without a harness, oblivious that in the US, OSHA would be cracking down; also the FDA, because birds nests as food seems like a good target. The climber' foot slips on some slick guano, and the hand that grasped for the delicate nest involuntarily crushes it to powder. Tumbling midair, he hits the bottom, 40 feet down without a scream. Only his legs and some ribs are broken. He came alone today.

Memorial Day Weekend

I was tasked with the honer to dispose of my nation's banners in the proscribed method. I dug a shallow grave and attempted immolation But the fabric was not cotton, nor linen or hemp; Some artificial fabric made of plasticine fibers, They smoldered like Gary, Indiana, and melted like American cheese, Ronnie Wax, it was called in the 1980's. But a government job was a boon for us now, in the 90's, If only seasonal. Hoarse mewling caught my attention, and I tracked the source next door, to Vector Control. The deformed creature, was barely a mouse, What should have been kitten, Perversely wounded with opaque, matter framed eyes. It squawked between the most hollow and hopeless Drone of the summer. Chain crusted with precious, unfortunate detritus Was wrapped round it's neck and bolted to the dog house Outside of that Dachau for meaty cast-offs. The guards had gone home for long Independence weekend, And I, on the night shift, was alone with my duty. I closed off the part that nurtures the sick, and switched to the role: The firing squad loner, the hooded axe-wielder, My shovel, a stand-in for swift tang and chop; The hopeless little wretch was buried with honers befitting a hero.

8 Lives

Filthy city tried to put a rope around my neck; But I loosed the noose, I cheated death. Evil spirits tried to grab the wheel and make my car and me a wreck; So I split the tree, and I cheated death. Silas Cool shot the driver and my bus flew off the bridge; But I called in sick, and I cheated death. Depression sent me out to throw my body off a ridge, Then I stubbed my toe, and I cheated death. Freshwater sharks were stalking, flipped my little boat, But I held my breath and I cheated death. CO2 filled up my room and made me really choke; Next, sirens woke me up and I cheated death. Wheel snakebit by pothole, on my skull, potential scars. I cracked my clavicle, but I cheated death. Saw my fate in crackled faces of the buddies at the bars, But I sobered up and I cheated death. And I could not find a reason why; No Devils, grinning, pulled me down, No gods chucked rocks from on-high.

Roaches

Nearer swept the voice, croaking down the hall, Coco roaches waved, his wind shoved them to the cracks; And closer in the dark, thump creak on tread and wall: Lumens snake under door, as the switch clicks! And spark behind eyes with no cypher from him, Inside grizzled drummer breaths the rhythm. (Wishing me back to my sleep, the flying swim). He shouted my name! Though not without kindness, “Did ya find a job?”, half joint pinch-pushed to sleepy hand; He passes it off and “no” I must confess; I drag on the short, “things didn't go as planned”; He turns on heals whilst he speaks, I hoarsely thank him for the sluggish treat. “You need to move out within two weeks.” Freshly clouded mind, makes crooked sense of this mess: Flophouse door slams and I retreat to unearned sleep; He was not cruel, he was not kidding, and he meant the best; Thudding, knocking on the stairs that he built too steep; My scumbag squat since before last Fall, I'm asthmatic and spotty and built too small, Choked by skunk, and puzzling paint upon the wall. I'm fading fast at nineteen, and twenty-seven is all I hope: Looking forward to fuck-all, far too young for these regrets; Ain't switched to whiskey, still counting on the dope; Decades later he's still there, with his pets. Like rats like roaches, how've we survived? I've fallen to pieces, Still I'm revived: (Knowing so much less than at twenty-five).

Sleepaway Cramp

Sometimes the microwave wind of a nacho supreme is a comfort. It drowns out the wistful stench of booze right outside the kitchen door. The night bartenders stopped offering me a shift drink after Dylan, my non-drinking buddy, and their boss, gave them a dressing down concerning their tendency to over-pour or give away drinks. He never mentioned that I could be inches away from falling into an Irish haze that I spent 25 of my 40 years in. I am sure they already know. They can smell a drunk from a mile away. It was their bread and butter. Dylan kept me straight and I trusted him as much as I could; as much as someone who has been turned on or rejected by every family member and confidante. He was the only one in this Winter-dead resort town who knew my story. With him I enjoyed the confessional privilege that I rejected as a youth. My shriving pew was in a moldy church basement 40 miles away from here. The others at the group did not comment or judge, but they thanked me for sharing, as is custom, and went on to the next sad sack with a tale of woe and tequila. There were at least two AA groups right here in Glen Arbor, behind the Sleeping Bear, but their 12 steps, I could not stomach. Higher powers, letting go, and atonement put a repulsive taste in my mouth. That religious style hokum was partially responsible for my hugging of the bottle for so long. This group was a lot different from the “I am powerless”, maxim chanting, Saint Francis spewing, state mandated violation of the establishment clause that is Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of us were fuck-ups, but we didn't let the booze define us. I had had enough misplaced blame in my life and I was not going to beat myself up for what the world did to me and what I did to myself. Dylan was the perfect sponsor. There is nothing like a former drunk and current bar manager to inspire one to keep one's promises to himself. It had honestly never even occurred to me that he might have a problem in the two years I had worked with him. Dylan picked me out of the line-up at my first meeting. I know him as a stoic, no-bullshit guy who was surprisingly well read for the country fried hoss. Dylan was only a couple years older than me, but hard traveling and harder drinking had turned his face as gray, pitted and rut filled as the back-roads, out here in God's country. His face was as gravelly as an unimproved two-track. The very same two-tracks that contrasted the ones in our town, which were pristine blacktop for the benefit of rich invaders who acted the fool, vomited, and fought in our authentic little country bar and grill every Memorial Day. The story that I told the group was not the usual, “I got drunk and beat the wife, crashed the truck and got in jail,” variety. Mine was a little weirder and a lot more uncomfortable to retell, I imagined. Unlike the other hard luck stories that drove many of the others to drink, mine was hardly my fault. Maybe sleep-away camp was different two decades ago, with less state regulation. I am pretty sure mine was quite atypical. Our small throwback denomination rented cabins and kitchen space from a much larger Presbyterian summer camp. There was very little resemblance to the typical Meatballs or even Camp Crystal Lake. At 14 I hated it all, from volleyball to capture-the-flag. I hated 7 AM mass and 11:30 bible study. There were none of the silly camp songs or even a respectable Kumbaya. All of our music came from 19th century hymnals. We had two priests to look after our souls, who while in their robes, had the cruel eyes of angry money-changer-in-the-temple Jesus. For Contrast, In their T-shirts and shorts (or speedos at the pool, for Christ sake!) they told inappropriate jokes and gave and enjoyed back-rubs from the more eager to please, naively pious kids. And if you thought being an alter boy was embarrassing at your home congregation, being one here, although a so-called privilege, was 19 times more embarrassing. Instead of old people and extended family as parishioners, you had fifty of your peers from the extended diocese, from 9 to 19, staring at you over folded hands. Funny thing is, there was no giggling or monkey business. This was a brand of Catholicism that held the modernization of Vatican II as heresy. To say it was old fashioned is not nearly descriptive enough. The Priests faced the alter with their back to an unworthy and shameful congregation while incense, pleased God and masked the sweat of mere humans. Latin was the only language pleasing to God's ears. When I got the call I was miffed. That part of my life was so far removed from who I was now. I thought I had finally lived it down, drowned it and filed it so permanently away that I could scarcely remember the people involved, or how out of the ordinary it all seemed. But she had a kind voice and said her name was Sharon Quincy. I vaguely remembered the name as someone I had crushed on hard at camp in my unsteady, fourteen year old way. “Hi, Marshall, you probably don't..remember me?” Everything she said sounded like a question. “We met at Man-I-Too by the River...when we were kids...my little brother was the one that went missing..?” ...Long pause. The words faded in and out. My face began to burn and neck got prickly. I thought I would remember it as the best night of camp. We were free from the priests disproving, yet creepily interested gaze, with just the 18 year old counselors for guides. All of us hiked a quarter mile into the woods, to the flat by the river. The clearing was wide and tree lined. It felt a million miles from civilization, even though there was a road a hundred paces north. There was a berm in the center, piled with field stones from some abandoned farmer's field. It looked like a druid cairn or something out of Stonehenge. When the moon rose there was an otherworldly aura from mist and fireflies. I don't remember much that makes sense anymore. I was made to retell the story under duress so many times by police, and family and church officials that it seemed like someone else' memory, overheard, with the juicy parts left out. I was feeling smiling eyes on me from my peers for the first time. I swore that it was just a campfire spook story. When I acted out the ritual that I made up in my head, some kids played along and elaborated. I don't remember at all how it went. It was silly playacting and I was coming out of my shell, enjoying the attention that usually took the form of ridicule. It the goof became deflated of fun when a couple of the younger ones started crying. One of them tripped over a log and cracked his skull in all of the mayhem and silliness. A counselor helped him back to the infirmary building. It was not until morning that anyone noticed Scotty Quincy was no longer accounted for. “You remember my brother...right?” It took no seconds. The prickly feeling came back. The unearned guilt taught by Father Sagg. It was the guilt of a 14 year old who has earned eternal torment for putting his hands inside his pj's. The guilt of a 14 year old accused of being a pagan devil worshiper; someone who has called upon Azula-Whateva, from Hell. Someone who must have gifted an innocent to the demon, and who must have spirited the body away with no trace. The Devil evaded the forensics team because no one ever found a trace of her little brother. The only after effect was the inquisition that I endured, and the shunning. I was grilled by police, church officials and my own mother. I was sent North to live with my father because my Christ haunted mother saw a Diablo consorting heathen every time she looked at me. The Church officials fittingly performed the inquisition, alongside the small town cops. The torture, however, was from the other children, who may or may not have believed that I did anything to or with little Scotty, but were still willing to be righteous tormenters for this demon spawn. “Whatever happened to you?..do you remember anything?..the case reopened...no one's interested...I've made phone calls to everyone I can find, and you are the last...? please help find what's his name...Rod...? You probably don't want to hear any of this...?” I didn't and I hung up as politely as I could. Nauseous and detached, I walked into work. Dylan must have noticed how spooked I was and blockaded me in the walk-in cooler. He must have thought I was an excellent prospect for a wagon dive because he wore the look of quizzical concern he reserved for 2AM. hold-outs at his bar. “Hey Devil-boy, let me buy you a cup of coffee.” I did not want to talk about it, and would not for another week. I told the story update to my drunkie support group, and Dylan piped up that maybe I could call Shannon back. Besides, he reasoned, she might be single. When I next spoke to her, I made an uneasy promise that I would track down the last one on her list. Rodrigo had hung up on her when she tried. Rodrigo was the “son” of Father Sagg. In our form of Catholicism priests may marry, and it is conceivable for them to adopt children. Father Sagg never seemed the marrying kind, and Rodrigo, a slender olive skinned Puerto Rican, did appear to interact or respect Father as a “dad”. Roddy did not mix with the other campers, and he projected an air of entitlement with Father. He did not become a counselor like the other seventeen and eighteen-year-olds who had been attending the camp for several years, and he slept in Father's cabin, not with the rest of the boys in their two bunkhouses. When I knocked on his door, downstate, in East Lansing, he did not answer. It appeared that he had adopted his own bleach blond 18 year old Adonis”. To say that they were not happy to see me was an understatement. When Roddy slapped my face it stung just like my mother's blows. When he collapsed on the divan, head in hands, Adonis fled to the unseen rear of the smart little condominium. Roddy tearfully confirmed everything that everyone with eyes suspected about Father Sagg's relationship with him. When I mentioned the missing child, he blanched, and leaped from seat to sideboard which hid a small safe. He extracted a stack of leather bound journals, tied with golden string and wax sealed with the mark, Fr. S., above the impression of an inexplicably smiling lambs face. Roddy put them in my hand. He had sworn to never read them, and to turn them over to the Church, upon Father's death. That would not be long as it turned out. When I went to see that miserable specimen in the old clergy's home, Father was now Bishop, and Bishop was incoherent. Dementia had taken a lot of old drunks that warmed stools next to mine during my quarter decade lost weekend. Bishop Sagg showed all of the signs. He was confined to a reclining wheelchair. Cataract inflicted eyes filled with sparks when I imagined that he recognized me. Next Bishop started shrieking when I mentioned Roddy. The orderlies, two linebacker shaped nuns, hustled me out within 30 seconds. I went to my motel and broke the seal on the stack of journals. Shortly after I stopped sobbing, I found myself at the Green-n-White In-n-Out party store, eyeballing the amber bottle behind the counter. Back at the motel, I kept reading, with the bottle still sealed. I stared at the revelation. I stared at the bottle. I saw the confession. The bottle stared back. I read the description of the old sand trap in an abandoned golf course, 20 minutes from Man-I-Too-By-the-River, with a youthful eternal visitor, rudely buried. The bottle cooled my hot sweaty palms. I picked up the phone and called Sharon Quincy, after emptying my hand of the bottle, across the room, against the wall, seeping into the dirty beige carpet. When the Diocese Synod characterized the evidence in the Bishop's journals as an attempted frame-up by a debouched and disinherited son, I could not leave it alone. The police from Michigan City reluctantly opened the cold case. They only found a jawbone, but nothing more. By that time Bishop Sagg was dead anyway. He slipped in the shower. How he got there, no one knows. His legs hadn't moved in three years. A few weeks later, I received a Christmas card from my mother. A picture of a sleepy lamb with a shepherd's crook propped under it's front hoof. There was no note, but it was signed, “Many Blessings From Our Lord and Savior, Love Mom.” I crumpled it up and threw it and the addressed envelope in the fireplace.

Book Lover

Mrs. Farwig is a retired spinster cleaning lady with no friends, and no pets. She is dying of cancer in a dingy mid-western hospital after ignoring the pain too long. She has been a life long catholic and her only real contact with others, other than mass two times a week is the weekly trips she makes to the library. She is very worried about returning the library books that she still has out. Her legs felt week and the breeze from behind chilled her. She did not care that she had not paid the gas bill because her Super was a bastard that wouldn't turn up the heat to a reasonable level. It was probably his fault she caught the pneumonia anyway, which put her in this filth hole. She could not make the vapid teenage intern or the penguin RN that doped her understand that the book on the tray-table was due TODAY! There was so much bustle and weeping that she slipped right out the door with her walker and her caddy. She knew the Chester Arthur Public Library was only three blocks from St Jude Thaddeus Memorial, because she had worked in both buildings for forty years, on the graveyard shift, cleaning up after sticky children, perverts and the sloppy-dead, of which she was almost one. (Summery) The policeman who found the blue-grey lady in the ally behind the library assumed that the creature with the blanket around her shoulders was a homeless tramp trying to fish freebies out of the drop box her arm dangled from. He called the coroner and they took her to Mercy General: the morgue that all the transient corpses end up.

It's A Firesale

I am unofficially bankrupt, financially and spiritually. What a bunch of lucky ducks that get to petition a lord with prayer to get them out of any self-imposed mess. They do not have to be remorseful because of course they are already forgiven. If they really screw up, the other American god, the State, will get them out of the jam comfortably, with absolutely no shame, and present them with their very own Obama-phone. I ain't no Casanova as my recent performances have proved. I ain't no Picasso, and haven't twitched a paintbrush in 10 years. My high-school fame cache ran out sometime in the mid 90's. As No one can now see from this example, I never was a Ginsberg or Thompson (Hunter or Jim). Lance Armstrong, I will never be. I am too timid to ride with the pack and could not keep up if I tried. What I am is someone who squandered the best, and potentially most productive years of his life sprinting from reality and wallowing in self delusion. I am a cartoon that got banned for being mildly offensive. I am the band that got signed, opened for the opening band in two cities, and was unceremoniously dropped while somewhere in Wyoming, with an exploded radiator and crabs. All my eclectic collections need to find a new home with dusted shelves and protective glass. I am a lousy papa for my inanimate babies. It is a steal. Cheap enough at twice the price, as I am told my Grandfather used to say between sips of hooch and glances at dirty postcards (two things I also love).

Fun Stung Dung

What a whirlwind of a weekend, interrupted by stints on the couch that would make Roseanne Conner proud. There was music, and cars and booze galore. There were people everywhere, and I walked, peddled, and stumbled through them like a particularly noisy and irritating poltergeist. I tripped the lights with a pretty ginger (stress on the tripped) who ditched me like the unsteady, socially awkward slob that I am. I made a pal (who I am not sure I would ever have let into my house, were I not shit-faced.) I saw three ex-somethings. One brought me flowers for my pathetic little garden. One was charming with her husband, my old running dog. The most recent let me know what a handsome, athletic, and cultured gentleman she had taken up with immediately after moving out of my home. She planted a big wet tongued smooch in my mouth and left to go pick him up at his awesome job. These things do not happen to real people. They are the stuff of a soiled and tipsy imagination. I can barely believe that this is my life at almost 40. Back at work, the green visions attacked me like a particularly strong case of food poisoning coupled with the blackest thoughts possible. It did not help that I spent the day working on the roof, four stories up. I did not want the crowds in the office to see the darkness in my face, and I did not want to once again struggle to answer pleasantly when they asked, "How ya doing?" I have no right to these thoughts, because "Rwanda!", or something. I have no call to question the activities of people I drove away, and I have no right to be jealous. I screwed myself, and the whole world knows it. None of it gets any better. I keep making the same damned mistakes, year after year. I am the most interesting person I know, and yet no one wants anything to do with me. Maybe tomorrow It will be not as nauseating. Maybe I will actually sleep.

This is getting raw. My vision is clear but my traction is for shit. You made me dance and I attempted to. Your hands touched mine and it was nice. I have no reason to think I will ever see you again, but if I do, I would like to dance with you one more time.

Drunk at TAM9 (from outerspace)

Thursday morning I wrecked a cold buffet and attended some Ok workshops. I played some pinball and saw a sasquatch on Friday. I forgot why I was there after Friday night and began drinking heavily. Saturday I left the magic show early because I could no longer focus on the stage. Sunday I do not remember. I think I got a free vaccination and my picture taken with a Teddy bear by a beautiful activist.

why bother?

Been a long time , my lil' ones. Are we really caring that we are still talking to ourselves? Check ya later, sunshine!

The feather I used t'wear in m'cap is morphing to a load-a-crap

This week I am spending time not doing the things I want to. I am also not doing the things I need to.

If I get off my duff, will it be worth reaping the imagined rewards, or should I just entertain myself with mindless smarty-pants activities? I could read one of a hundred books I have not finished, including the four in my work locker that I ambitiously borrowed from the library on Monday. There is slim chance of finishing one of them, and I am bogged down with endless chores that I need to do to keep a clean and orderly home, which will help please my special lady, and keep her on my side.

I could blow it all off and play one of 20 or so video games that looked like fun, but I have merely played the first half hour of, only to get frustrated and start looking up cheats on the net, which almost always sucks me back into the rabbit hole of link clicking nirvana. I am so bogged down in information by this thing that I cannot decipher bona-fide truth from paranoid ranting or slick hucksterism. (It is truly a struggle to not look up a word in the last sentence on the tubes, only to get sucked back in. I had I minor fit 20 minutes ago because there was something wrong with the connection or my settings which would not let me hook up to the wi-fi.)

Just stopping to create what I love is getting hard, and I have barely started. Seriously, distraction is now the enemy. I could spend some more time eating peanut butter, or I could drink so much more coffee that I cannot sit still. Or I could drink some whiskey and beer and for several hours I can bounce of the floors and walls, only to find myself doing nothing but sitting still for the next three days. Time to make a plan. Create structure in the chaos. Funnel the distraction into a hodge podge of cacophony so as to show anyone who is interested what it is like to be in this skin, and with this brain throbbing with self imposed chains for which the warden chucked the key into the vast freshwater sea. It used to be a vague notion that I was floundering and wasting my ability to scrawl and scribe, but now it is a panic that I feel. Something looms that threatens to stifle it forever.

I read once that Anthony Burgess, author of “Sometimes a Great Notion” and “A Clockwork Orange” found out in his forties that he had some kind of terminal illness, and only had a very short time to live. In that time he was supposed to have penned dozens of novels, all brilliant, only to not die at all. Is that what it is going to take for me to find a reason to organize the mess swimming around in my skull or like Travis Bickle, will I wait until it is too late “...to get myself organazized”.(sic)

So here I am letting it stew and fester online with no filter, wondering if it will cost me something socially or professionally, because I offer it to anyone afflicted with clickadextria. So far there have been no takers and I don't know if I am relieved or disappointed; Probably both. It really does not matter. Thousands of people are doing the same thing and the difference is that many of them have an opinion that others want to point and stare at.

TAM8 Hookie

I thought I wanted to go to that skeptic conference again, in Vegas, last week, although I would have felt at least as much an outsider as I do walking around, hometown-wise. I imagine I would have heard the word "credulous" about a hundred times and I could have made it a drinking game. That is what it would have been, too. A drinking game where I sit in my hotel room flipping past 9 channels of horse-races, listening to conferences with a notepad and trying really hard to not appear to be the only person without at least a bachelor's degree, let alone the doctorate it is assumed most of the attendees carry around tucked inside their baggy twill blazer pocket. Last year it was a humbling experience to sit shoulder to shoulder with genuinely smart people and feel like the dumbest person in the room.

So that meant that I drank my vodka in my room and thought about why I even spent the money. I was wildly interested in the speakers, was in on many of the less technical jokes, and was familiar with many of the rock-stars of nerddom from reading the magazines, and listening to the podcasts and downloading the films. I was unable to muster the courage to talk to anyone of note, except once to introduce myself to James Randi. This went badly because I had left the talent show party minutes before, whence I silently sipped my Vod-cran and brooded about bespectacled nerd-girls that I was petrified to speak to. Mr. Randi was wheeling himself down the long open conference hall and a approached and clumsily asked permission to say hello. The great man asked me what I did in the world ,and I barely choked out my unimpressive blue-collar occupation. I mus t have looked terribly embarrassed to have to admit to such a job in a a conference full of professors, scientists and celebrities because Mr. Randi replied through white beard and mustache that the world needs XXXXX too. This did not sooth me in any way and before I could politely thank him, two handlers trotted swiftly up and rolled his chair away, leaving me feeling small and more out of place than I ever have been, in the deserted upper atrium of this massive golden casino

Circumstances did not let me go to the conference this year and it was mostly because I did not make an effort to go. I stayed home and drank and avoided painting the house. Maybe I will buy the DVD set, and while I am watching it, pretend I am an incredulously wise gentleman with so many valid arguments and articulate criticisms to add to the debate.

Hello! Hooray! Its A. Cooper in Wax

...figures seen at Wierd Michigan Wax Museum outside of St. Ignace, gateway to the Superior State,

A re-purposed Alice cooper figure plays the part of a frightened teenager running from a spook in some southern Michigan cemetary.
The Michigan Dogman
James Strang, King of Beaver Island, with one of his many wives.
Or is this Alice Cooper!?!?
Hirsute gentlemen ballplayers of the Israelite House of David Sect in Benton Harbor.
Some Indian Snake princess woman...

Porcupine Pie Pt 1

The ride up the 3 and a half miles was less muddy this time, as if peddling through this sand were much better. He finally built his own bike from scratch and was fighting the cognitive dissonance that nagged concerning the choice to go single speed on an MTB, and his legs quit halfway up every incline steeper than 15 degrees. Stupid aging hipster,getting old and feeling it a month after his fortieth revolution around the sun. He was arguably more in shape than the last ride he took up these “mountains” but ex-smoker's lung and a knee surgery were a screaming reminder of his drunken married 6 year bacchanalia. Of course the ride wasn't all bad, but he was never one to smell roses, except in retrospect. His friends considered him a constant downer and had not invited him to their parties in years.

He thought about the chickie in the ranger station. He thought about her eyes and how he avoided contact with them, lest she detect the lusty intent behind his morbid unbuttoning of her all-business ranger browns. He figured that she gets the hairy eyeball from every Cabela's flannel dad, dragging Chick-Jeans-mom and here Game-Boy Dallas and Bedazzled Madison through the tree tree tree empty motel tree tree Upper Peninsula of the Great State of Michigan. This made him feel typical and flaccid, and reminded him of a twenty-four month stint of twenties tail he sincerely regretted not savoring at the time when he was also twentyish.

He confirmed his reservation for the old warming cabin on the trail to Lake-of-the-Clouds, which he was too hung over to hike to last time he stayed there, and hoped she would SEE him as he described the tracks that he thought he saw in the mud the day before, on another trail which he imagined looked just like the paw of the stuffed cougar that guarded the door of her earth-tone visitor center. He noted with sadness that she did not look up from her database with admiration and awe of he who showed no fear and almost got a glimpse of the animal that the DNR claims no longer lives in these parts, gone the way of the wolverine, the placard below the unfortunate creature assures Madison and Dallas. She did not SEE him and she was unimpressed with his nonchalant bravery at finding the intestinal fortitude not to flee her beloved wilderness, top-speed, for the safety of his preppy apartment down in Grand Rapids, where the only predators are homeless drunken panhandlers and Christian Reformed politicians.

Now he climbed what he hoped was the last hill, pushing the muddy bike up the furrow, and wishing the gallon milk-jug was supplemented by the pint of Johnny Walker that whistled like a familiar forgiving slut to him at Kamper's Kozies Gas and Fudge, back in Nagauney. The cabin was there, finally and he pushed his overloaded bike past the fire ring and complimentary wood pile, designed to keep less courteous visitors from raping the standing dead wood in the picked over and oft visited Porcupine Mountains State Park and Recreation Area.

Un-total recall pt.2

Time has come and I shod myself for battle. I won't find a deeper meaning if I try; I just have to spout until the fountain of vomit turns into a life affirming seed of acknowledgment of the violence and purposelessness of my former and present life. The markers I wishfully plant on the soil of this well trod moon are kicked over and rusty, despite the lack of gravity and moisture on these craters of the missing chunks of my brain, which I so willingly mined for their semi-precious contents during the gold rush years of the late nineties. These excavations were exacerbated by many blows to the head, some self inflicted and some gifted by others, but all well deserved, truth be told. There was no beating I could take that I could not give better to myself.
Being that this character that I played was so closed up in himself that he could only pretend to communicate with the outside, every conversation with others was really a monologue with himself. A quest to be a good guy was always trumped by self preservation and many secret shames that caused loathsome thoughts to be projected on others, after they were thoroughly tested on himself. This is not a fun thing to write about, nor to read, for him or others, and it is not evidently therapeutic. Eventually I hope that he can get it all out of his system and start focusing on something but navel gazing, but until then, he must spout into this void of a forum.

A story seems like a good place to start, so let us imagine a blue-grey sky of a curly photo with jagged borders, as if made by pinking shears. The writing on the back says something like Norfolk, VA, 1973. There is a woman with darkish pony-tale tied at the bottom of her neck that holds hair covering most of her forehead in a V. Narrow and horizontally wide dark framed oval glasses hide most of her eyes. One cannot tell if they are kind or dull or malignant eyes. Unremarkable pale skin contains thin lips and a nose that is stuck right in the usual place. A more dark than light flower pattern one piece mini-dress falls just at the crest of her decency, held to a slightly scandalous height above stick legs by a 8.5 month pregnant belly under flattish breasts. The photo girl of 19 or 22 is barefoot in sand that looks equally cold and hot. The horizon appears to belong to the Atlantic with distant moody clouds, but could as easily be Lake Superior on a particularly overcast early September evening. The angles of one or three uniform little cottages pike up to the left distance behind the puzzling young lady. She does not smile or frown. She is just not looking at anything, and certainly not the camera. What a mistake, her blankness seems to project, and one wonders if this lady should have done the smart thing 8 months before, and kept her legs shut, or saw a discrete doctor, or refused the cheap diamond chip ring that does not show up in the photo.

Un-Total Recall

Today I was hit square in the clunker, or is that the thinker? I was also reminded today that I have a purpose. I have had a good dinner with a bad condiment, and now it is time to renegotiate the terms of this existence. Time is now to make mistakes, and time is now to regurgitate. The failure of 37 years immediately transformed into something tangible and and slightly coherent. I am allowed to suck and may continue to suck, but I forgive myself and press on. Fitting the contents of my head on paper should be a simple task of recall, but neurons all got snapped and crackled through many years of substance induced boredom relief.

I will now turn that into an asset, if not a minor speed-bump. I went into that devil's bargain 20 years ago with a mystical starry-eyed teenage plan to find the Big Answer to the Big Question. I did not find either one and found myself scrambled and distorted even more than I was made screwy by my so-called protectors, mentors, and friends. But I will return to that mole-hill eventually. For now I concern myself with the quester's journey through the doors of perception, and the bitter foyer it left me standing in for two decades. One should have heeded the warnings of Nancy and Mr. T, and just said no, and stayed in school, but one was mildly creative with technicolor dreams and starry eyed hopes of communal living off the land, in a bus, an autonomous collective, or an artist's colony, hence older, bearded and flowing dress wearing mentors clamored to show a young rapscallion seeker the way to righteous brotherhood and higher understanding of the Universe.

The Young Seeker had shot his brain through a candy coated cannon, paused to pick up the pieces that he could, and scraping what could be salvaged off of the walls and gates of the imagined garden that was an ideal that died a hundred thousand times in the hopes of far more capable, articulate, and resourceful holy wanderers than himself. Even then he did not learn his lesson, repent, and go sin no more. Instead he found his true calling in the dizzy joys of liquid obliteration. He traded in his garish swirls for loud, dark and scabby bacchanalia. Organic gut twisting made way for sloshing angularity. Chaos reigned and the scales were picked up out of the dirt and put back in, septic real and tragic. Instead wringing out the visions of the subconscious, they were vomited and shat with an impatient velocity.

The left-overs of the hip-sixties and seventies are often tritely quoted as considering the whole era a blur, and that their badge of authenticity is the fact that they can't remember shit about the particulars of the time. I think perhaps that much like me and my nineties, they feel the acute shame and dread of being found out for the sad hypocritical wastes that they are and feign ignorance of their inaction and blissful apathy. The truth, however, is that I could not have had the dangerous, ludicrous and reckless joys without breaking a lot of ethical laws, and also watching many of my comrades fall out, some forever into the trash heap of a graveyard or worse, being reviled by the people who once shared the absurd joys that we cherished more than our self-respect and dignity.

Don't misunderstand me; I refuse to regret the tragicomedy I shared with neglected family, indifferent friends and laughable enemies, but it is just a little regrettable that something more noble did not come out of our wreckage. I don't know if my story is worth the price of the light on this video-screen, but I don't write this for you anyway. I am still just as selfish now as when I was when I was a crazy substance chugging nutkins, but I am just a little less destructive.