THE BEST THING ABOUT A MAN IS HIS DOG.
I DID NOT write this..... found it on a calender and forget who said it
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
what to do? what to do?
Trying to be funny? One might as well try to be in love. So I think as I mull over the quandry of 'what should I write about next?' This is probably one of the most boring topics in the world to write about. Who cares about my obscure habit with words? Not even me... certainly not the Dog, or you, dear reader.
I think I am going to end up going back to the book I was working on this fall, The Psycho Killers Hit List. This is the story of a group of stoner artists who discover that in the hip urban neighborhood that they have moved into, there is a gang holding vicious dog fights. This knowledge makes the artists decide to report them to the police--who tell them that unless they had evidence of a dog fight in progress or evidence, that there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do. The dog fight locations are kept secret by the gangs, always on the move. They basically, with the aide of a couple cops, stay one step ahead of Chicago's cops.
The artists and a kid they have taken in decide to take matters into their own hands when a neighbor's dog is seen being shoved into a car by a gang. One of the artists tries to intervene and is shot. A few days later, after the cops have failed to make an arrest in the unwitnessed crime, the other artists decide to take matters into their own hands. At the next dog fight, a few days later, they show up with shotguns. They end up being out gunned and are basically just shot to hell.
How I will write this story is another matter. I have tried all kinds of different narrative voices, and yet none seem to fit quite right. I suppose in the end I need to just write the story down in third person and see what happens? Anyways, I am not committed enough to this story to feel confident in the project. The comedy I have been writing in the blog seemed more exciting than the book, and so my talents, such as they are, have been engaged in trying to be funny. I did make myself laugh, and other people at the readings, so it felt very real and exciting to me. My work was finally being brought out into the light of day, and people really liked me. This surprised me. I don't know why it should, since I have been writing forever and people have often liked the way I arranged words? I guess that's just my crippled ego or something else too engrained inside of me to ever expect to change in therapy or even with mood? Whatever!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, like I was getting at, I am unsure of where to use my craft? I want to write stories that have the basic -- people are created by a society, and that society has to change before the individual can hope to. No matter how alone we feel, we all think similarly in things like dress and haircuts, as any few years of pictures of oneself in various fashions shows, of course. The cloak I will put over this thought, the way that I use fiction to convey these thoughts, is not something that comes intuitevly to me. Poems and Short stories come up intuitely, when inspired. The novels are different. They require following a map, just as much as writing fancy words that have meanings deeper than just moving along the plot. I relish the writing itself more than the planning.
Without planning, the prose is free to go where ever my whimsy wants. A good thing for a disorganized stoner. Not that I have been getting stoned lately, actually, because of a tight budget. The break is fine with me. I like it, not need it. Tonight I am toasted though, after spending the afternoon watching Spike the dealer play on line poker--black jack, mostly. Some five card stud, texas hold em and whatever. I thought about writing about on line poker while I was over there, and a way of doing a new painting came to me as we puffed on 120 an eighth kind, kind bud. The thought about writing about on line poker had me wondering how the hell I could make that funny? This is what lead me to write in this entry, actually.... after I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't bother writing until I knew what to write about? I decided to write about not having anything to write about. How is that for self-absorbed?
At times like this, I remember all the cab experiences and think that maybe I should write them out. There are plenty of heart stirring moments, danger, sex, drugs and fast cars and crazy tempers and fights with junkies in the middle of the night, whores begging me to fuck them for the ride (as well as a lot of other people who came on to me). But I have no context for all of these images. No way to make them into a tale that might help the world a bit. They are all like burning buildings in my mind -- gorgeous yet deadly; interesting pictures without context. I saw no god out there, or rythmn of life, or any of the noble myths I read myself into believing at some time or another in my mystically addled youth.
At times like this, I also think of the writer business things I should be doing, like researching places to send my words that pay a few bucks. I have a manuscropt that just may find a publisher one day, but I sent it off just once and got a bad response. Not my audience, I guess. Other people like what I did. WHo do you trust?
Instead of writing, I have of late been reading with the intensity of a man trying to leave the world for awhile and crawl into a tale that makes perfect sense of all mystery.
Why the hell would you care about a few words that hold no laughs or thrills or kills? I need to write roller coaster rides...
A breif review of my habits as a writer is needed to make this text stand alone for those readers who don't know me.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
I think I am going to end up going back to the book I was working on this fall, The Psycho Killers Hit List. This is the story of a group of stoner artists who discover that in the hip urban neighborhood that they have moved into, there is a gang holding vicious dog fights. This knowledge makes the artists decide to report them to the police--who tell them that unless they had evidence of a dog fight in progress or evidence, that there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do. The dog fight locations are kept secret by the gangs, always on the move. They basically, with the aide of a couple cops, stay one step ahead of Chicago's cops.
The artists and a kid they have taken in decide to take matters into their own hands when a neighbor's dog is seen being shoved into a car by a gang. One of the artists tries to intervene and is shot. A few days later, after the cops have failed to make an arrest in the unwitnessed crime, the other artists decide to take matters into their own hands. At the next dog fight, a few days later, they show up with shotguns. They end up being out gunned and are basically just shot to hell.
How I will write this story is another matter. I have tried all kinds of different narrative voices, and yet none seem to fit quite right. I suppose in the end I need to just write the story down in third person and see what happens? Anyways, I am not committed enough to this story to feel confident in the project. The comedy I have been writing in the blog seemed more exciting than the book, and so my talents, such as they are, have been engaged in trying to be funny. I did make myself laugh, and other people at the readings, so it felt very real and exciting to me. My work was finally being brought out into the light of day, and people really liked me. This surprised me. I don't know why it should, since I have been writing forever and people have often liked the way I arranged words? I guess that's just my crippled ego or something else too engrained inside of me to ever expect to change in therapy or even with mood? Whatever!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, like I was getting at, I am unsure of where to use my craft? I want to write stories that have the basic -- people are created by a society, and that society has to change before the individual can hope to. No matter how alone we feel, we all think similarly in things like dress and haircuts, as any few years of pictures of oneself in various fashions shows, of course. The cloak I will put over this thought, the way that I use fiction to convey these thoughts, is not something that comes intuitevly to me. Poems and Short stories come up intuitely, when inspired. The novels are different. They require following a map, just as much as writing fancy words that have meanings deeper than just moving along the plot. I relish the writing itself more than the planning.
Without planning, the prose is free to go where ever my whimsy wants. A good thing for a disorganized stoner. Not that I have been getting stoned lately, actually, because of a tight budget. The break is fine with me. I like it, not need it. Tonight I am toasted though, after spending the afternoon watching Spike the dealer play on line poker--black jack, mostly. Some five card stud, texas hold em and whatever. I thought about writing about on line poker while I was over there, and a way of doing a new painting came to me as we puffed on 120 an eighth kind, kind bud. The thought about writing about on line poker had me wondering how the hell I could make that funny? This is what lead me to write in this entry, actually.... after I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't bother writing until I knew what to write about? I decided to write about not having anything to write about. How is that for self-absorbed?
At times like this, I remember all the cab experiences and think that maybe I should write them out. There are plenty of heart stirring moments, danger, sex, drugs and fast cars and crazy tempers and fights with junkies in the middle of the night, whores begging me to fuck them for the ride (as well as a lot of other people who came on to me). But I have no context for all of these images. No way to make them into a tale that might help the world a bit. They are all like burning buildings in my mind -- gorgeous yet deadly; interesting pictures without context. I saw no god out there, or rythmn of life, or any of the noble myths I read myself into believing at some time or another in my mystically addled youth.
At times like this, I also think of the writer business things I should be doing, like researching places to send my words that pay a few bucks. I have a manuscropt that just may find a publisher one day, but I sent it off just once and got a bad response. Not my audience, I guess. Other people like what I did. WHo do you trust?
Instead of writing, I have of late been reading with the intensity of a man trying to leave the world for awhile and crawl into a tale that makes perfect sense of all mystery.
Why the hell would you care about a few words that hold no laughs or thrills or kills? I need to write roller coaster rides...
A breif review of my habits as a writer is needed to make this text stand alone for those readers who don't know me.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
another environmental rant slamming religion....
My faithfilled buddy Jack asked if I knew any environmentalists who got rid of their cars, and I responded....
Funny you should ask... I drove cab for years, and feel like it was an environmental sin. Yes, there is always room for improvement in humanities ways. To see you come out against environmental issues surprises me. I know you are a jokester, but come on... even today the news spoke of the coming greenhouse effect.
I started out working in politics, back in the early eighties, and again in the nineties for a few months, and the last cause that I ended up working for was Citizens For A Better Environment. They did good work, stuck to the issues, etc... THey lobbied and got laws passed for the better of all. Here in chicago, the mob has been illegally dumping chemicals on the predominantly black south side for forty or fifty years; CBE helped get these spots evaluated and cleaned up.
Until humans are perfect, there will always be some who will work for the good of their own selfish self over the good of others. The present state of flux in religious beliefs has literally sent millions searching for other answers; one of the easiest is to believe in nothing but ones feelings. If we encourage people to fight over the environment by using generalities rather the specifics of case by case stuidies that we can all evaluate objectively, we will continue to perpetuate the myth that there are two sets of people--those who see the effects of pollution, and those who choose not to care for the effects of pollution unless it hits their home. We are all in the same boat on this stormy sea.
The SUV issue is one of denial. Denial funded by a few powerful few invested in oil and gas and all. And the fears of average men and women who think that they can't live in ways that don't involve the destruction of the earth. Our standard of living is killing us. We need to find ways to live in harmony with the planet, or we'll all die. That is the true situation, unfortunatly.
I don't have any illusions on this issue. We have already basically killed off all the other animals. We are so much less for this, I would die to stop the killing if there were some way to make my doing so have a real effect. I can't do much, though, and I am not going to become some radical rebel without a real cause. I think those who would take the law into their own hands are criminals. I am totally against any use of anything even remotely like that. I am like socrates, too enamoured of the workings of the state to think my rebellion is greater itself than the state.
I think this also points to one of the fundamental problems with religion, which has a big effect on how the world is reacting to environmental issues. I mean, if one believes that only human souls matter, and that some after life exists, then the world itself is dimmer for the heavenly visions. Think of the muslims and their virgins, how much denial of life they hide behind their visions of heavenly joy? I met a woman while I was out canvassing for money, a black women who was some kind of fundamentalist christian of the speaking in toungues variety, who told me that the environemnt was dying because the end of the world was coming, as prophesied in the bible. To her, this was inevitable. It isn't, unless we don't anything to stop the worsening of the greenhouse effect.
I know that religion is a tool with many uses, and that a respect for the world and others can be found in the good book, but the contradictory messages in the text make the narrator untrustworty, in my book... as untrustworthy as anyone who says they have a definitive answer.
If you would like to read more of Jack, you can find him at his blog, which is always good for a thought or two, beleive me... thank you Jack.
Jack Mercer jack@newssnipet.com
Funny you should ask... I drove cab for years, and feel like it was an environmental sin. Yes, there is always room for improvement in humanities ways. To see you come out against environmental issues surprises me. I know you are a jokester, but come on... even today the news spoke of the coming greenhouse effect.
I started out working in politics, back in the early eighties, and again in the nineties for a few months, and the last cause that I ended up working for was Citizens For A Better Environment. They did good work, stuck to the issues, etc... THey lobbied and got laws passed for the better of all. Here in chicago, the mob has been illegally dumping chemicals on the predominantly black south side for forty or fifty years; CBE helped get these spots evaluated and cleaned up.
Until humans are perfect, there will always be some who will work for the good of their own selfish self over the good of others. The present state of flux in religious beliefs has literally sent millions searching for other answers; one of the easiest is to believe in nothing but ones feelings. If we encourage people to fight over the environment by using generalities rather the specifics of case by case stuidies that we can all evaluate objectively, we will continue to perpetuate the myth that there are two sets of people--those who see the effects of pollution, and those who choose not to care for the effects of pollution unless it hits their home. We are all in the same boat on this stormy sea.
The SUV issue is one of denial. Denial funded by a few powerful few invested in oil and gas and all. And the fears of average men and women who think that they can't live in ways that don't involve the destruction of the earth. Our standard of living is killing us. We need to find ways to live in harmony with the planet, or we'll all die. That is the true situation, unfortunatly.
I don't have any illusions on this issue. We have already basically killed off all the other animals. We are so much less for this, I would die to stop the killing if there were some way to make my doing so have a real effect. I can't do much, though, and I am not going to become some radical rebel without a real cause. I think those who would take the law into their own hands are criminals. I am totally against any use of anything even remotely like that. I am like socrates, too enamoured of the workings of the state to think my rebellion is greater itself than the state.
I think this also points to one of the fundamental problems with religion, which has a big effect on how the world is reacting to environmental issues. I mean, if one believes that only human souls matter, and that some after life exists, then the world itself is dimmer for the heavenly visions. Think of the muslims and their virgins, how much denial of life they hide behind their visions of heavenly joy? I met a woman while I was out canvassing for money, a black women who was some kind of fundamentalist christian of the speaking in toungues variety, who told me that the environemnt was dying because the end of the world was coming, as prophesied in the bible. To her, this was inevitable. It isn't, unless we don't anything to stop the worsening of the greenhouse effect.
I know that religion is a tool with many uses, and that a respect for the world and others can be found in the good book, but the contradictory messages in the text make the narrator untrustworty, in my book... as untrustworthy as anyone who says they have a definitive answer.
If you would like to read more of Jack, you can find him at his blog, which is always good for a thought or two, beleive me... thank you Jack.
Jack Mercer jack@newssnipet.com
THE CHEERY VISION... A CONVERSATION...
B.�
“I’m thinking about becoming a priest.�
“I thought that you were holding out for a church that requires initiates to take a vow to fuck everyone?�
“I mean when I find that church, of course. Although in light of certain events, I may have to amend my vow to say that child molestation is not part of my cheery little vision – I’m talking Stranger In A Strange Land, not some freak-priest. Until I do indeed find the church of my dreams, all I have is my own personal religion. At least I think I do . . . damn it, I better look. I hate having so many pockets. Jesus could be in any of them, of course.�
“Of course, of course. Is this my lover?�
“Your own personal Bonobo, calling to prove that lovers always talk in tongues.�
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?�
“I’m going in a few minutes, though I’d rather stay here and paint. Dam.�
“What?�
“I’ve lost my religion, again.�
“Did you check all of your pockets?�
“Yeah, but I can remember laying it down somewhere and thinking, ‘You better not leave it here, or you’ll never find it again.’�
“Uh, oh.�
“I know, this could be bad. Damnation isn’t anything to fuck around with.�
“I’ll bet you left it in your ‘pussy-addled adolescence.’ Did you check there yet?
“Hold on a minute. Yea, you were right. I left it back when I used to jack off whenever no one was looking ‘directly’ at me. I was moving into a period of testosterone hyper-drive, just starting to surf out on my hormonal wave. A startling time of rapid changes in body and mind – the scary possession of a kid by a sex obsessed adolescent. It was startling. I mean, before that, I was very concerned about my soul. As a kid, I felt guilty squirming in Sunday school. I’m telling you, Bea, seriously, there was a time when a Dixie cup of grape juice hit my gut like the burning blood of Jesus. Boom! Up to that point, I pretty much assumed that I would spend my life doing whatever it took to travel from the squalor of my parents house to the Pearly gates, to some unimaginably gorgeous realm where I would learn the whys of the universe directly from the gentle voice of a long-haired god. And feel happy all the time, too. My plan of course was dealt a deathblow when I started sinning all the time . . . after I discovered that touching myself was a way to feel much more than better. I liked it a lot, though even then I knew that getting laid would be palm times one thousand. I couldn’t wait. In fact, deep in my heart, I knew that I would make a pact with a devil if it would in any way move my penis closer to this neighbor girl’s pussy.�
“I didn’t know that we could do this.�
“Oh, sure. I think the world is going to be a much nicer place when the soccer crowds start breaking out into unstoppable orgies, don’t you?
“The vender’s can hawk dildos and various flavored lubricants.�
“David, I just looked at the clock -- you better not be blowing off work.�
“Do you know that you can’t make it through an entire conversation without nagging me?�
“That should tell you something about the way you live.�
“I’m going to keep you on the phone until the exact second that I have to make a mad rush for the door. I have the time that I have to leave marked with a skull and cross bones.�
“On that nice clock that I bought you?�
“I’m just kidding. I seriously do need you to grant me a wish, though.�
�Okay, I’m summoning my fairy powers. My fingers are beginning to glow, my belly is warm, my pussy is juicy. Okay, go ahead.�
“I want to be born in a tribe that lives in a forest filled with tasty fruits and vegetables--all of which grow wild and within easy reach of any spot where we decide to lay about and loll. Our genes have no bloody history. No one on our planet has ever even conceived of violence, our brains simply don’t know how to make us fight. All we care about is sex, food, laughter, and heavenly worship.�
“You want to be reborn into a tribe of jolly, obese perverts who sit around all day talking about religion?�
“Well . . . I guess that is basically correct. But make sure that we have no negative connotations for obesity, or perversion either, okay? In fact, I guess that we shouldn’t have inner repulsion toward any pleasurable acts what so ever. Like catholic priests. We also have to be a people who have evolved a consciousness that believes our each and every physical movement requires the finesse of a priest carrying out High Mass. Everything is sacred to us. Every movement of our hands, every . . .�
“Even thumb twiddling?�
“I think it almost goes without saying that we should have a branch of scholarship entirely devoted to Thumb Twiddling.�
“Alright, I got it. There, your wish is granted.�
“Are you sure?�
“Yes, I am.�
“Nothing seems to have changed.�
“Well, of course, it wouldn’t, not to you.�
“What do you mean?�
“It’s your basic split-universe theory, Bub. You’re the consciousness that was left behind when I sent the real David to The Land of Word Drunk Jolly Fat Fuckers. Your existence started when I sent the other David away, so your consciousness is obviously based on his last memory. Duh. You seem to have lost a few I.Q. points this time.�
“Somehow, when you grant me a wish, I always end up doing something for you, and my wish is granted in someway where I don’t get what I thought I asked for.�
“It only seems that way to you because you’re a leftover. I’ve been through this with enough David’s to know a cure for your abandonment ennui.�
“Gee, after your cure for the common cold, I don’t know?�
“Didn’t you feel better after licking my pussy?�
“Yea, but the cold was still there.�
“You weren’t thinking about that cold when your come was shooting down my throat. C’mon, I always know the cure for your psychic woes, don’t I?�
“Somehow, they always work.�
“Okay, I’ll come out to Coopers during your first break and wait for you in your car. Don’t be alarmed, this sounds worse than it is . . . what I’m going to have to do is suck your dick with wild abandon.�
“I don’t think I’m going to bother getting a second opinion.�
“I’m going to get your little sperms all riled up into a frenzy, and then just when you feel like you’re back in the Big-Bang . . . I’ll have to stop, so that you don’t you come without pleasuring me, of course.�
“Of course.�
“I’m going to send those frantic sperm back into the plant with you, where they will remain, trapped and aching for freedom, until you can drive over here after your shift and pound them into my pussy. I’ll make even make you a sandwich . . . though, of course, I’ll only let you eat it after and if I am entirely satisfied with your performance.�
“Of course. You and your ‘make-the-best-of-it’ attitude, it makes me so fucking world-weary, I can’t tell you. I really do hate fucking work. If a penguin were forced to go through my average day, there would be hue and cry from all across the globe! People would be saying. “How can you do that to a penguin? Let him go free, so he can frolic.’ Congress might even pass a law against forcing aquatic waterfowl into slavery.�“You’re like one of those Salinger characters who sound deep because all they can talk about is angst.�
“Bea, all I ever asked was that you never, ever, under any circumstances, including torture unto death, criticize, J. D. Salinger.�
“You did make me sign quite a formal document . . . okay, I’m sorry.�
“Now, with this blow-job-I suppose there will be licking, too, eh? You’re always at it with the licking, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Answer me, Dammit!�
“I think you already should have left for work. You’re really going, right? You aren’t going to just keep painting, right? I can’t loan you anymore money.�
“I’m watching the clock with maximum paranoia. Right now I have two minutes and ten seconds. And now I have two minutes nine seconds. Now it’s two minutes . . .�
“Want to hear how I lost my religion?�
“Like you ever had a religion, Bea. You’re a re-known feral child.�
“No, this is true-as reported in The Enquirer, The Star and . . . I had a religion until all vestiges of my personal god were destroyed by satanic messages on Sesame Street.�
“It’s pathetic of you to make up a religion, just so you can appear hip enough to lose it. I guess that’s what comes from being raised by a loose knit community of garden-variety moles. Oh, Bea, why can’t you just embrace the culture of your feral roots? Someday, you’re going to just have to forgive those Moles for the mistakes they made . . . I tell ya Bea, those moles did the best they could do for you, under the circumstances. There were a lot pups in your brood. You should just forgive them and celebrate what was good about growing up in a mole hole, instead of hiding behind all your high-falutin’, pseudo-Freudian constructs.“
“I will let all this pass, for I know, sooner or later, you will understand, my dear fucker, that you are entirely mistaken. I did have a religion once, and Sesame Street is part of Hell’s advertising department, and they are indeed responsible for stripping me of my religion. I know all this for a fact. Actually, the show was even being protested by a group called the Madcap Christians. They wore these orange construction cones on their head, which they pasted pictures of Jesus on them, these cheap magazine shots. You could read the type from the other side through the glue. They had a web site and everything.�
“I would have heard about something like this, Bea . . . unless this has something to do with your beloved Zionist conspiracy?�
“I could be chastised for talking about that with a lowly gentile. You and your family would be killed, of course.�
“You never told me that talking about this would get me killed?�
“I was too worried about being chastised to think about anybody else. Now, really, there was a group called the Madcap Christians, and they did protest the presence of Satan on Sesame Street. You didn’t hear about them because before they could warn the people about the Dark Prince’s plan to destroy the religions of little kids, the Madcap Christians were all tracked down and medicated.�
“I’m sorry that I doubted you. This obviously makes too much sense to a lie.�
“I discovered Satan was snatching souls through Sesame Street all on my own, though. I found out about the Madcaps later.�
“Really?�
“Satan was hiding behind his usual cloak of clever. It was almost purely by chance that I saw him. He was on an episode about the differences between cartoon animals and real ones, which basically said that if you try to pet a wild animal, you stand a good chance of getting your finger bitten. I watched the episode just before I went to temple, where the teacher pulled out a big poster of a cartoon Noah petting all these wild animals. Well, I wasn’t buying the biblical version of truth that morning- -not after being mesmerized by the dark prince, anyway. No matter what our teacher said, I thought Noah was a lie. Later, I tested Satan’s words and I was bitten by a particularly vicious gray squirrel, a disgruntled ex-marine who never got over that his best buddy was killed by a little girl in Nam.�
“You chose a bunch of hippies singing it up about lilacs over the holy institution of the church?�
“I pledged allegiance to the television and that for which it stands. You should have already left for work.�
“I’m leaving now.�
“I’ll see you during your next break from the drudgery. I love you.�
“I love you. Bye-bye, baby.�
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
“I’m thinking about becoming a priest.�
“I thought that you were holding out for a church that requires initiates to take a vow to fuck everyone?�
“I mean when I find that church, of course. Although in light of certain events, I may have to amend my vow to say that child molestation is not part of my cheery little vision – I’m talking Stranger In A Strange Land, not some freak-priest. Until I do indeed find the church of my dreams, all I have is my own personal religion. At least I think I do . . . damn it, I better look. I hate having so many pockets. Jesus could be in any of them, of course.�
“Of course, of course. Is this my lover?�
“Your own personal Bonobo, calling to prove that lovers always talk in tongues.�
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?�
“I’m going in a few minutes, though I’d rather stay here and paint. Dam.�
“What?�
“I’ve lost my religion, again.�
“Did you check all of your pockets?�
“Yeah, but I can remember laying it down somewhere and thinking, ‘You better not leave it here, or you’ll never find it again.’�
“Uh, oh.�
“I know, this could be bad. Damnation isn’t anything to fuck around with.�
“I’ll bet you left it in your ‘pussy-addled adolescence.’ Did you check there yet?
“Hold on a minute. Yea, you were right. I left it back when I used to jack off whenever no one was looking ‘directly’ at me. I was moving into a period of testosterone hyper-drive, just starting to surf out on my hormonal wave. A startling time of rapid changes in body and mind – the scary possession of a kid by a sex obsessed adolescent. It was startling. I mean, before that, I was very concerned about my soul. As a kid, I felt guilty squirming in Sunday school. I’m telling you, Bea, seriously, there was a time when a Dixie cup of grape juice hit my gut like the burning blood of Jesus. Boom! Up to that point, I pretty much assumed that I would spend my life doing whatever it took to travel from the squalor of my parents house to the Pearly gates, to some unimaginably gorgeous realm where I would learn the whys of the universe directly from the gentle voice of a long-haired god. And feel happy all the time, too. My plan of course was dealt a deathblow when I started sinning all the time . . . after I discovered that touching myself was a way to feel much more than better. I liked it a lot, though even then I knew that getting laid would be palm times one thousand. I couldn’t wait. In fact, deep in my heart, I knew that I would make a pact with a devil if it would in any way move my penis closer to this neighbor girl’s pussy.�
“I didn’t know that we could do this.�
“Oh, sure. I think the world is going to be a much nicer place when the soccer crowds start breaking out into unstoppable orgies, don’t you?
“The vender’s can hawk dildos and various flavored lubricants.�
“David, I just looked at the clock -- you better not be blowing off work.�
“Do you know that you can’t make it through an entire conversation without nagging me?�
“That should tell you something about the way you live.�
“I’m going to keep you on the phone until the exact second that I have to make a mad rush for the door. I have the time that I have to leave marked with a skull and cross bones.�
“On that nice clock that I bought you?�
“I’m just kidding. I seriously do need you to grant me a wish, though.�
�Okay, I’m summoning my fairy powers. My fingers are beginning to glow, my belly is warm, my pussy is juicy. Okay, go ahead.�
“I want to be born in a tribe that lives in a forest filled with tasty fruits and vegetables--all of which grow wild and within easy reach of any spot where we decide to lay about and loll. Our genes have no bloody history. No one on our planet has ever even conceived of violence, our brains simply don’t know how to make us fight. All we care about is sex, food, laughter, and heavenly worship.�
“You want to be reborn into a tribe of jolly, obese perverts who sit around all day talking about religion?�
“Well . . . I guess that is basically correct. But make sure that we have no negative connotations for obesity, or perversion either, okay? In fact, I guess that we shouldn’t have inner repulsion toward any pleasurable acts what so ever. Like catholic priests. We also have to be a people who have evolved a consciousness that believes our each and every physical movement requires the finesse of a priest carrying out High Mass. Everything is sacred to us. Every movement of our hands, every . . .�
“Even thumb twiddling?�
“I think it almost goes without saying that we should have a branch of scholarship entirely devoted to Thumb Twiddling.�
“Alright, I got it. There, your wish is granted.�
“Are you sure?�
“Yes, I am.�
“Nothing seems to have changed.�
“Well, of course, it wouldn’t, not to you.�
“What do you mean?�
“It’s your basic split-universe theory, Bub. You’re the consciousness that was left behind when I sent the real David to The Land of Word Drunk Jolly Fat Fuckers. Your existence started when I sent the other David away, so your consciousness is obviously based on his last memory. Duh. You seem to have lost a few I.Q. points this time.�
“Somehow, when you grant me a wish, I always end up doing something for you, and my wish is granted in someway where I don’t get what I thought I asked for.�
“It only seems that way to you because you’re a leftover. I’ve been through this with enough David’s to know a cure for your abandonment ennui.�
“Gee, after your cure for the common cold, I don’t know?�
“Didn’t you feel better after licking my pussy?�
“Yea, but the cold was still there.�
“You weren’t thinking about that cold when your come was shooting down my throat. C’mon, I always know the cure for your psychic woes, don’t I?�
“Somehow, they always work.�
“Okay, I’ll come out to Coopers during your first break and wait for you in your car. Don’t be alarmed, this sounds worse than it is . . . what I’m going to have to do is suck your dick with wild abandon.�
“I don’t think I’m going to bother getting a second opinion.�
“I’m going to get your little sperms all riled up into a frenzy, and then just when you feel like you’re back in the Big-Bang . . . I’ll have to stop, so that you don’t you come without pleasuring me, of course.�
“Of course.�
“I’m going to send those frantic sperm back into the plant with you, where they will remain, trapped and aching for freedom, until you can drive over here after your shift and pound them into my pussy. I’ll make even make you a sandwich . . . though, of course, I’ll only let you eat it after and if I am entirely satisfied with your performance.�
“Of course. You and your ‘make-the-best-of-it’ attitude, it makes me so fucking world-weary, I can’t tell you. I really do hate fucking work. If a penguin were forced to go through my average day, there would be hue and cry from all across the globe! People would be saying. “How can you do that to a penguin? Let him go free, so he can frolic.’ Congress might even pass a law against forcing aquatic waterfowl into slavery.�“You’re like one of those Salinger characters who sound deep because all they can talk about is angst.�
“Bea, all I ever asked was that you never, ever, under any circumstances, including torture unto death, criticize, J. D. Salinger.�
“You did make me sign quite a formal document . . . okay, I’m sorry.�
“Now, with this blow-job-I suppose there will be licking, too, eh? You’re always at it with the licking, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Answer me, Dammit!�
“I think you already should have left for work. You’re really going, right? You aren’t going to just keep painting, right? I can’t loan you anymore money.�
“I’m watching the clock with maximum paranoia. Right now I have two minutes and ten seconds. And now I have two minutes nine seconds. Now it’s two minutes . . .�
“Want to hear how I lost my religion?�
“Like you ever had a religion, Bea. You’re a re-known feral child.�
“No, this is true-as reported in The Enquirer, The Star and . . . I had a religion until all vestiges of my personal god were destroyed by satanic messages on Sesame Street.�
“It’s pathetic of you to make up a religion, just so you can appear hip enough to lose it. I guess that’s what comes from being raised by a loose knit community of garden-variety moles. Oh, Bea, why can’t you just embrace the culture of your feral roots? Someday, you’re going to just have to forgive those Moles for the mistakes they made . . . I tell ya Bea, those moles did the best they could do for you, under the circumstances. There were a lot pups in your brood. You should just forgive them and celebrate what was good about growing up in a mole hole, instead of hiding behind all your high-falutin’, pseudo-Freudian constructs.“
“I will let all this pass, for I know, sooner or later, you will understand, my dear fucker, that you are entirely mistaken. I did have a religion once, and Sesame Street is part of Hell’s advertising department, and they are indeed responsible for stripping me of my religion. I know all this for a fact. Actually, the show was even being protested by a group called the Madcap Christians. They wore these orange construction cones on their head, which they pasted pictures of Jesus on them, these cheap magazine shots. You could read the type from the other side through the glue. They had a web site and everything.�
“I would have heard about something like this, Bea . . . unless this has something to do with your beloved Zionist conspiracy?�
“I could be chastised for talking about that with a lowly gentile. You and your family would be killed, of course.�
“You never told me that talking about this would get me killed?�
“I was too worried about being chastised to think about anybody else. Now, really, there was a group called the Madcap Christians, and they did protest the presence of Satan on Sesame Street. You didn’t hear about them because before they could warn the people about the Dark Prince’s plan to destroy the religions of little kids, the Madcap Christians were all tracked down and medicated.�
“I’m sorry that I doubted you. This obviously makes too much sense to a lie.�
“I discovered Satan was snatching souls through Sesame Street all on my own, though. I found out about the Madcaps later.�
“Really?�
“Satan was hiding behind his usual cloak of clever. It was almost purely by chance that I saw him. He was on an episode about the differences between cartoon animals and real ones, which basically said that if you try to pet a wild animal, you stand a good chance of getting your finger bitten. I watched the episode just before I went to temple, where the teacher pulled out a big poster of a cartoon Noah petting all these wild animals. Well, I wasn’t buying the biblical version of truth that morning- -not after being mesmerized by the dark prince, anyway. No matter what our teacher said, I thought Noah was a lie. Later, I tested Satan’s words and I was bitten by a particularly vicious gray squirrel, a disgruntled ex-marine who never got over that his best buddy was killed by a little girl in Nam.�
“You chose a bunch of hippies singing it up about lilacs over the holy institution of the church?�
“I pledged allegiance to the television and that for which it stands. You should have already left for work.�
“I’m leaving now.�
“I’ll see you during your next break from the drudgery. I love you.�
“I love you. Bye-bye, baby.�
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
THE GOOD FIGHT
Toothpaste
the television just told me
I am toothpaste
told me
girl's fall in love with a smile
I don't want no girl
that falls in love with a smile
I ain't no smile
I distrust smiles
in these days of icons
encrusted in stock options
They --the great they
drive around in brand new 280Z's
got a blonde perched in compact leather seats
look at that woman
see two hours spent falsifying
she's out weaving a web of deception
gonna snag a phd
she got eye lashes long
nails in full shine
tits looking like an advertisement for a good time
I cruised that woman
wearing the smile of a child
a sympatico
with the nights brand of wild
Now I feel I gotta scream
gotta be some alarm
that woman looked at me
as if I were a car
I awake to a fuck or fight world
or so it strikes me now
without the burden of reflection
or the preist's solemn vow
an issue here
an issue there
we at war
because that woman looked at me
as if I were a car
and a door opened
a door closed by cash & crosses & psychiatry
opened
souls lose delineation
associations block no beliefs
black becomes white
woman becomes man
& the war in china
becomes my war
& the war in el salvador
becomes my war
and They -- the great they
are putting electrodes on my balls
in uraguy
and They-- the great they
trade my tracked and amputated arm
to support black clad cops
slouching into bethelehem
bayonets drawn
inspired and jagged
I have smoked my teeth yellow
my bills are unpaid
my heart is free
for a moment
from they -- the great they
I sit between molecules
in contemplation of all they -- the great they
have told me is unintelligbile
were I reckless man without choices
I would learn to live this soldier's life without one regret
I'm not
when the poem withers within
I will know I'm alone
and though these eyes will not be vacant
this one regret will exact its cost
I will miss her
In this war
the false ones will call themselves poets too
they-- the great they
would have you believe
battles are won with scorn
as if the lyre alone
were ever a sheild
They -- great they
would have us believe
stroking our egos
is the only function of the word
this writing just went crazy
two blocks away
a crack dealers screaming
junkie can't pay
& from accross town I still feel a woman
three months with child
she took her four year old along for the buy
had sores on her face
and asked this cabbie if he'dl fuck her for the ride
businessmen will call themselves poets too
in a strictly cocktail party sense
all it takes is memorization
of the liberal pseudo-stance
and the hypocrisy of an atheist
who still buys christ's crap
to hell with the singularity of thier sulphurous breath
released under the cover of laughing gas
spewed from the mouth of some babe
who buys all the press
and still clings to a belief
there is some god coming around
after the toys all grow rusty
and plastic surgery fails
just like those kids in china
whose mouth filled with blood
as they-- the great they
whispered ghandi's cry
those kids died from a history class
which missed the crucial years
when ghandi's wife
had to beat them indians
to reacquaint them with their fears
there just ain't no god coming round
wishing won't make it be
so ya just can't be
what they want ya to be
just to be
what they -- the great they
want ya to be
no more
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
the television just told me
I am toothpaste
told me
girl's fall in love with a smile
I don't want no girl
that falls in love with a smile
I ain't no smile
I distrust smiles
in these days of icons
encrusted in stock options
They --the great they
drive around in brand new 280Z's
got a blonde perched in compact leather seats
look at that woman
see two hours spent falsifying
she's out weaving a web of deception
gonna snag a phd
she got eye lashes long
nails in full shine
tits looking like an advertisement for a good time
I cruised that woman
wearing the smile of a child
a sympatico
with the nights brand of wild
Now I feel I gotta scream
gotta be some alarm
that woman looked at me
as if I were a car
I awake to a fuck or fight world
or so it strikes me now
without the burden of reflection
or the preist's solemn vow
an issue here
an issue there
we at war
because that woman looked at me
as if I were a car
and a door opened
a door closed by cash & crosses & psychiatry
opened
souls lose delineation
associations block no beliefs
black becomes white
woman becomes man
& the war in china
becomes my war
& the war in el salvador
becomes my war
and They -- the great they
are putting electrodes on my balls
in uraguy
and They-- the great they
trade my tracked and amputated arm
to support black clad cops
slouching into bethelehem
bayonets drawn
inspired and jagged
I have smoked my teeth yellow
my bills are unpaid
my heart is free
for a moment
from they -- the great they
I sit between molecules
in contemplation of all they -- the great they
have told me is unintelligbile
were I reckless man without choices
I would learn to live this soldier's life without one regret
I'm not
when the poem withers within
I will know I'm alone
and though these eyes will not be vacant
this one regret will exact its cost
I will miss her
In this war
the false ones will call themselves poets too
they-- the great they
would have you believe
battles are won with scorn
as if the lyre alone
were ever a sheild
They -- great they
would have us believe
stroking our egos
is the only function of the word
this writing just went crazy
two blocks away
a crack dealers screaming
junkie can't pay
& from accross town I still feel a woman
three months with child
she took her four year old along for the buy
had sores on her face
and asked this cabbie if he'dl fuck her for the ride
businessmen will call themselves poets too
in a strictly cocktail party sense
all it takes is memorization
of the liberal pseudo-stance
and the hypocrisy of an atheist
who still buys christ's crap
to hell with the singularity of thier sulphurous breath
released under the cover of laughing gas
spewed from the mouth of some babe
who buys all the press
and still clings to a belief
there is some god coming around
after the toys all grow rusty
and plastic surgery fails
just like those kids in china
whose mouth filled with blood
as they-- the great they
whispered ghandi's cry
those kids died from a history class
which missed the crucial years
when ghandi's wife
had to beat them indians
to reacquaint them with their fears
there just ain't no god coming round
wishing won't make it be
so ya just can't be
what they want ya to be
just to be
what they -- the great they
want ya to be
no more
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
A new show.... this friday at 8
Friday will be my return to the stage after a month or so. I haven't been going to any readings or what not, just hanging around my house reading a lot. I have been bouncing back and forth between the Tolkein books and on line reading on serial killers, mostly at the crime library at court tv. I am still kind of at a loss as to what my next writing project will be. My confidence is way low. I haven't even been smoking weed, actually. Just reading and going to a few movies. I saw sideways and attack on precinct thirteen, both very worthy movies. I can't say that either were masterpieces or anything, but they were fun.
M. has been sick for like seven weeks, though this week she is better. As a result she is skinnier than I've ever seen her and looking very, very good. We went through a rough patch when I was doing too many drugs last month. They were prescribed valiums, but I still acted like an idiot on them and had, suprisingly enough, serious black outs.
We are advertising the reading for the first time this week, and expect a bigger crowd than normal. I am going to be reading all of my george bush stuff. I haven't written any comedy since my great depression last month. In fact, I haven't laughed really in weeks.
I did buy a few small canvases over the weekend, and will be starting some new paintings this week. Other than this, I am trying to put the Ridgway book together to send to this guy, Brock, and will have that done this week (it has been bothering the hell out of me that I haven't done so so far; there is nothing worse to me, internally, than not keeping my word).
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
M. has been sick for like seven weeks, though this week she is better. As a result she is skinnier than I've ever seen her and looking very, very good. We went through a rough patch when I was doing too many drugs last month. They were prescribed valiums, but I still acted like an idiot on them and had, suprisingly enough, serious black outs.
We are advertising the reading for the first time this week, and expect a bigger crowd than normal. I am going to be reading all of my george bush stuff. I haven't written any comedy since my great depression last month. In fact, I haven't laughed really in weeks.
I did buy a few small canvases over the weekend, and will be starting some new paintings this week. Other than this, I am trying to put the Ridgway book together to send to this guy, Brock, and will have that done this week (it has been bothering the hell out of me that I haven't done so so far; there is nothing worse to me, internally, than not keeping my word).
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
SHE
SHE
Always dressed in faded black jeans with the knees torn out and sleeveless T-shirts emblazoned across the chest with the logos of famous rock bands (who inevitably, mother said, seemed to have the word ‘death’ in their names). Basically, She was a good girl, who did all of the things that good little girls in her land did. Like worrying about problem-things.
Indeed, on the day that our story takes place, She was very embroiled in a problem-thing. She had just come from a lecture about a problem-thing that was altogether new to her and was having quite a struggle wrapping her thoughts around it. New words were all floating around in her mind like a bunch of little problem things that she could not make into the very big problem thing that the lecture had actually been about. It was all very confusing, but she was sure that if she concentrated real, real hard, she eventually would understand. And concentrate real hard, she did!
Why, she was concentrating so very hard on the problem-thing that when she got home she ran in the front door and right through the living room, moving so fast and thinking so hard that she didn't even notice her family waving at her from their very favorite spots in front of the television. She just ran into her bedroom, slammed the door shut, put on her favorite CD, The Dead Lovers In Potato Crates, pulled out a cigarette, lit up with her unicorn lighter and started smoking furiously--like she always did when things needed thinking about.
Now, though She did not notice her family when She passed through the living room, they most certainly had noticed her. And when She turned up the CD as loud as it would go, they noticed her even more. The strange music pounded out of She's bedroom right in the middle of Father's very most favorite part of the whole game -- the important half-time talk, where famous sportscaster’s express views of interest to sports fans everywhere. Father was none-too-pleased with the development.
He cast a stern look down the hall when a creepy, screechy voice screamed, "Death is a cool old fool, a kinda’, sorta’ thing, baby. Baby, baby, baby, my little baby thing."
This was not the first time that She had turned the stereo up so loud that weird noises drowned out the television. Normally, father would just cluck his tongue a few times and use his bemused voice to tell little Skipper-Do that he should go into his sister’s room and tell her that ‘She better turn that music down if she knows what’s good for her;’ but not that day. That day Father was very, very angry and he jerked his very favorite hat off his head -- the one with his very favorite team written across the brim -- and just threw that prized possession right down into the middle of the living room floor.
Mother looked down at father's favorite hat laying on the mint-green shag carpeting and said, "I guess that it's time to teach that little girl some respect for other people's feeling." Then she reached down into the bottom of her knitting bag and pulled out a long, nasty, old, gray chain.
‘Yes,’ father nodded, as he pulled a lasso of scratchy looking twine out of his pants pocket and said through gritted teeth in a hissing voice, "I'd say its well past time."
Mother got up from her chair, straightened the lace doilies on the armrests, then looked down at where little Skipper was laying in front of the television with his face just inches from the screen.
"Come on, little Skipper-doo. "
"Oh, all right," Skipper said, but as he got up from the floor and followed his Mother and Father down the hall, a dour expression showed his continued displeasure. As they came up on She's door, the creepy voice fell silent.
Suddenly from the living room, they could hear a sportscaster's excited voice saying, "Now, Herb, that is the craziest thing that I have seen in my twenty fond years of being associated with this wonderful, wonderful game. Let me send this back over to you, Herb, as I ask, in your four years of proud association with this game, isn't that the craziest thing that you have ever seen?"
At the sound of sportscasters, Father smiled and turned around and started walking back toward the living room . . . but then, before the sportscaster Herb could even answer the important half-time question, the weird music started up all over again! This time it was louder than ever and sounded like metal rods crashing and screeching against each other in some terrible, industrial machine. Father stopped in mid-step and grew all still, his face and neck became fire engine red and his eyebrows shot way, way up on his forehead.
Skipper watched father closely, because he thought steam was going to shoot of Father's ears like in all the cartoons, but it didn't
Father pushed mother and Skipper away from the door, grabbed the handle and said, “I’ll take care of that little missy!"
When he threw that door open, right then and there, three jaws dropped to the ground! She was waving around a cancer-causing cigarette and bouncing up and down like a satanic pogo stick. She had her eyes closed, so she just kept bouncing around, even though everyone else was mortified by her aberrant behavior.
Mother covered her eyes with one arm, threw the other hand behind her head and stumbled backwards in a near faint. Skipper jumped behind Mother to stop her from falling, but mother was so very much bigger that he was knocked back against the wall, where head bumped into Father's most very favorite painting in the whole world; the one that he bought at the Starving Artists sale at the Ramada Inn, after going to all of the trouble of scrapping a chip of paint off of the hallway to compare to the browns in all the various landscapes. The painting swung this way and that, this way and that . . . then came crashing to the floor! They all three watched aghast as the corner of the Genuine Maple Frame hit the shag carpet and broke into two pieces. Father looked down at that sad sight and said, "You know, and this is a fact, mind you-it's cheaper to buy a whole new painting at the Starving Artists sale than it is to go to Sears and buy a Genuine Maple Frame."
All the while, She had no idea that she was causing any mayhem, let alone that her very fate was being decided as she danced around, smoked and listened to The Dead Lovers in Potato Crates.
When Mother pulled herself back together, the first thing she did was pat little Skipper on the head, then she turned to her enraged husband and offered him a perky smile as she said, "Tie her up, boys! Go on and get to it."
Father rushed into the bedroom and reached for his bouncing daughter just as she shot up, impaling her throat on his long, sharp nails and tearing bright, red gashes in her pale, white flesh.
"Ouch," She cried.
Father used the scratchy twine to tie her hands behind her back, and then he forced her down onto her knees. Mother came into the bedroom happily strutting like she did just before her and father went to bed early for noisy intercourse, pulled that CD out of the stereo, got a grip on each side of it, and start smashing the disc over her daughter’s spiky orange hair. And she kept up that smashing until The D.L.I.P.C. ‘s second album, Monkey Vomit on a Leper’s Little Toe, broke into pieces that flew all over the room! Skipper could not believe how cool things were going! All he could say as he watched his mother was, "Cool. This is so cool."
When Mother was done pummeling, she threw what was left of the CD into the wall,
crossed her forearms over her pert breasts, threw back her head and laughed like a Jackal,
for a long, long time. Skipper was more than a little creeped by the time Mother stopped,
put her index fingers on her daughter's temple and said, "Let us all silently pray."
She had just stayed quiet up until then, because everyone in her family was acting so weird, but things seemed to be calming down, so she said in her nicest, politest little girl voice, "Hey, I'm sorry about the cigarettes, alright? I've been meaning to bring it up with you, but you're all so weird about everything. I mean, it would be like the tattoos and weed all over again, and I don't need it, alright? When you guys quit trying to drag me back in time, then we can talk, okay? Aren't you guys about done praying? And why can’t you just see it’s a waste of time, for god’s own sake."
No one paid any mind to She, as they were all deeply embroiled in their own individual discussions with the Lord. Skipper felt particularly driven to seek the comfort of a deity, because he wanted to be forgiven for the sin of breaking father’s very favorite piece of art as soon as possible, so that if something happened like a meteor hitting their house and he died, he could still get into heaven without any serious hassles.
When Mother was done praying for the lord and all his grace to fill the vessel of her child, she cleared her throat to signal everyone that they should finish up, or, in father’s case, quit pretending, then she looked down at her daughter, smiled and said, "This hair! Lord help us, but that is the first problem we are going to have to sort out." Mother spit into the palms of her hands and began rubbing them down the sides of the spiky orange head.
Now, She liked her hair just like it was, so she started tossing her head from side to side and going all crazy. Mother tried to keep straightening the spiky hair into something more flat and normal, but it was darn near impossible with She squirming and trying to fling her head from side to side. After a few moments of struggling with her daughter and heavily moussed spikes, Mother finally stepped away from the struggling She, put her hands on her hips and said in a very, very angry voice, "You will have normal hair."
Mother looked at Skipper and Father, put a smile back on her face and said in a much, much nicer voice, "Keep a firm grip on her, boys. I'll be right back."
As soon as mother was gone, She tried pleading with father and Skipper, but they both just held her tight and stared straight ahead, acting like nothing she said mattered at all. No matter what she said, they just kept staring straight ahead at the wall and pretending like she wasn't even there. It seemed like Father and Skipper had been replaced by people She didn't even know and that made her very, very scared.
Mother returned to the room carrying the re-chargeable curling iron that Father had bought her for Mother's Day, reached down and grabbed a handful of the orange spikes, jerked back She’s head to expose her throat, then clamped a thin fold of flesh with the searing, red hot metal.
"Ouch," She cried.
The skin in the curling iron sizzled and sputtered. She was struggling very hard indeed but Father and Skipper held her tight. They could see by the look on Mother's face that she was bound and determined to keep burning that neck until she was darn good and ready to stop.
"This hurts me more than it hurts you," Mother told her.
After what seemed like forever to She, Mother finally had enough of that curling iron, but when she tried to pull it away the red metal stuck to the black skin. Mother had to jerk and pull and twist and jerk some more, until finally, with a look of sheer determination on her face that warmed Father's heart, she gave a very strong tug that ripped the curling iron right off. A big patch of flesh tore free, as well. Before mother could do anything about it, the bloody flap of flesh dripped red gunk on the white shag carpet. Mother looked down at the mess and said in her frustrated voice, "Oh, now look what you made me do."
"Ouch," She cried again.
"Are you going to mind me, young lady?"
She had not liked being scarred for life one little bit, so she tried to say just what she thought Mother wanted to hear, "Oh, yes, Mother. Now, please, can I get up?"
"Well, first we have to do something about these bumps of hair on your head, then we'll see." Mother began clamping orange spikes of hair into the curling iron and twisting and jerking, until one after another they became perfect curls. When She's entire head was transformed, Mother stepped back and got a smug look on her face and she said in her tough-gal voice, "Well, at least I managed to get a little bit of that orange mess under control." Then her voice became very, very nice as she looked her daughter right in the eye and said, "Oh, really, that's so much better, dear. You'll like this new look. Especially once you get used to it. I'll bet the boys are going to like you a lot better, too. Why, we have two boys right here, so we can ask them what they think? Say, boys, is this some juicy trim, or what?"
Father made a show of looking into She's face and smiling, then he gave her a peck on the cheek and said, "I forgot how pretty you are."
Mother turned to Skipper, "And what about you, Mr. Skipper-doo, don't you have something that you want to say to your sister?"
Without even looking, Skipper just kind of muttered, "Okay, yeah, it looks better. You're some juicy trim, Sis."
That wasn't good enough for Mother. She looked down at Skipper and shook her finger right in his face, "Now, Skipper, you go on and take a really good look at your sister."
Skipper was not about to disobey Mother when she was shaking her finger right in his face, so he looked at his sister, and when he did, boy was he surprised -- She really did look better. Skipper sounded all excited as he told her, "Gosh, you look great. Mom, she is some juicy trim! From now on you can come to all my games, okay? You and mom and dad! We’ll eat hot dogs."
She had never cared for the games and had been a vegetarian since her cat died in August, but everyone was just being so weird that She went ahead and told Skipper that she'd love to go to his game and eat hot dogs. Then She looked up at Mother and asked, "Can I get up, please?"
"After that little display?� Mother shook her head, ‘No.’ “I'm afraid that you've done nothing to show me that you know how to behave around your elders. You know, we do all this for your own good. So you'll be happy, dear. You're always moping around here, whining all the time about all these mopey things.�
“I am happy."
"Happy is as happy does, dear. Listening to songs about death is not a sign of happy. And protesting all this stuff, it just makes you so sad.�
Mother turned away and started walking out of the room; over her shoulder she called out in her tough-gal voice, "Boys, you go ahead and chain her to the bed, and bind that little thing down tight. She's not going to like it when we shove it in."
She thought about trying to fight as father and Skipper chained her to the bed, but the last time she had disobeyed her parents she had been scarred for life, so she didn't do anything. Even though the chains were so tight that they cut into her skin and made her fingers start to turn purple.
"Ouch, " She cried, “The chains are cutting me? Why must they be so tight?�
Father came out of his daze, or whatever, and answered in a voice that She had never heard before; it was a strange and breathy sound, "You just lay there and take it."
She couldn't believe that her Father was going to let chains cut her wrists. That day was so weird. Blood was seeping out around the nasty chain, bright red and glistening, flowing in thin tendrils down into the cracks between her fingers. She was ready to try to say something else, but just then a loud whirring sound blasted into the room and startled her to no end. The whirring came from the blades of the Cuisenart, as Mother placed things into the clear container and hit the Puree button.
Mother spread a white dishtowel on the kitchen table and began laying out on top of it all of the ingredients for a very special batter. There was a handy calorie counter, no bigger than the palm of your hand, just the right size for a purse, yellowed copies of Dear Abby columns that Mother had always thought were just so right, pictures of models cute enough to make her melt, and lots of other stuff -- even a few things that her own mother had given to her on a day that had been a lot like the day of our story, though a lot different.
After listening to the rise and fall of the whirring Cuisenart for a few minutes, Father got such a hankering to out into the kitchen to see what was going on, that he did just that. When Skipper saw Father get up and start silently creeping out into the kitchen, he just had to follow, because he liked to do everything that Father did. Mother had her back to the door when father entered, so he snuck up behind her and gave her a big hug. Mother snuggled back into Father, rubbing her ample buttocks back and forth over his bulging crotch, before turning around so that they could embrace properly.
Father reached around behind her back and tried to slip something into the Cusinart, and though Mother did not even look like she knew what was happening, just as father's hand neared the batter, her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. She pulled his hand out into the open and they all looked down into his palm at the little blue and white Madonna from the dashboard of the Buick. When mother saw that little blessed virgin, she just broke out laughing, let go of Father’s hand, pointed at the batter, and gave father the old ‘thumbs up!’
Skipper watched the Madonna fall down onto the chopping blades and get pureed, and he wanted to put something in that batter so bad that it felt like he might pee. He grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a big mop with a wooden handle that was a good two feet taller than Skipper. He held that mop up in front of his parents and asked them, "Can I put this in? Please, can I? Please?"
Mother looked at the size of that mop and she just had to laugh, and that laugh was still in her voice as she said, " I think it would be pretty hard to get that in the Cusinart, honey."
"I can make it fit, Mom. Remember, the puppy, mom? He was bigger than this mop."
Father had to say something about then, because someone had to change the subject. “You know, honey, I think you're underestimating the men in this family. Skipper, you go ahead and give it a try." Then with a wink to Mother, he added, "I might have something else for you to do before you have time to finish the job, though. Go ahead, Skipper, show your Mom that you can get that thing in there."
Skipper climbed up on top of the counter, put his feet on either side of the Cusinart, shoved the gray, swirly mop head down into the batter and used the toe of his sneaker to hit the ON button. The silver blades began slamming into the wooden handle, hitting so hard that it was all Skipper could do to hold on. Twice he lost his grip and the mop went all crazy, banging into his thighs and the cabinet (but not his peter, which is what Skipper was kind of worried might happen).
As Mother and Father watched Skipper struggle with the mop, they exchanged proud and amused smiles, but it was obvious to both of them that the job was too much for the little boy, so finally father stepped up to Skipper and gave him a friendly punch on the arm as he said,
"Son, I have something more important for you to do.�
Skipper knew that Father didn't think that he could get the mop into the batter, but he was determined to do just that. He used his most confident voice to tell Father, "No, I'm big enough! I am! I am!"
"I know you are," Father told Skipper, "but I have something more important. Go out into the garage and get the funnel that I use to put transmission fluid in the Buick, then take it out in the back yard and rinse it out real good with the hose, okay? This is important, every speck of oil has to be gone - we don’t want rogue lubricants getting into the batter, by god no. Rinse it out real good, alright?"
"Dad, first I want to do this. I can do it!"
Father's voice became sad, "Oh, I know that you can, son . . . it's just that, well, I guess that I can try to get that funnel clean . . . I don't know if I can, not with these eyes of mine. Getting that mop in there is a lot easier than cleaning a funnel, so I guess you should just do the little boy work."
Skipper thought that Father was being honest. He jumped down off the counter and started running for the garage. "You go ahead and take care of that stupid mop. I'll make that funnel so clean it'll look just like new."
"Son, I know you will." Father called out after the disappearing Skipper.
Mother turned to father and said, "He's going to grow up to be just like you.� Father's face just beamed when he heard that.
By the time Skipper came back in and proudly displayed a clean, red, plastic funnel, the batter was done. Skipper had meant to tell his parents about getting tangled up in the hose and how the wet spot on his pants wasn't what it looked like, but when he saw the batter he forgot everything and his face filled with a look of wonder. "It's like green snot, but it smells great! Like a fish stick shake, or something! Can I have a taste?"
Mother picked up the bowl and held it out to him, "Go ahead and take a little dab on your finger." Then she turned to Father, saying, "I know you're just dying for a little taste."
And Father was.
Both put the green slime between their lips at the same time and then let out long moans of satisfaction. Skipper liked the batter so much that he even stuck the tip of his tongue under his fingernail to get at a tiny green glob.
"Oh, that's good, dear," Father told mother.
"I could eat this stuff everyday!" Skipper added.
SHE THE END (edit - delete)
Mother blushed warm at the compliments. She took a certain pride in her cooking and commenting on it was a sure fire way to just make her melt. She looked down right delighted as she picked up the bowl of batter, held it over her head and began a little dance out of the kitchen and down the hall. Skipper and father joined in the little dance, though Skipper quit pretty quick, because he was sure that he looked nerdy.
While her family was in the kitchen, She had been laying in her bed, her wrists and neck wracked with agony from the cutting chains. She had no idea what was really going on, but she had seen lots of movies about weirdo’s doing really sick things and could imagine all sorts of stuff that she didn't want to happen to her. She was so scared that she started shaking like she was cold and making a sound like a mouse, "Errrrk, errrrrk."
When She heard her family come back into the room, she opened her eyes and started to ask to be let up. But before she could talk Skipper and Father jumped on the bed, grabbed her by her hair and twisted her head until her ear was pointing up toward the ceiling. Then Father pulled the funnel out of the waist of his pants, took a firm grip on the red plastic with both hands, and, with all his might, slammed the thin nozzle down into her ear. Red and yellow gunk squirted out, covering father’s arms all the way up to the elbows. She’s eyes shot wide open and her mouth started opening and closing real fast, her lips making a circle that grew big and small, big and small--like a goldfish gasping for air in a filthy bowl. Mother poured the lime green batter into the bright red funnel, and it flowed inside She’s head.
The green gunk seeped through her brain dissolving all of the problem things that she had fretted over, and sometimes even cried about; suddenly they didn’t seem so important, like they had lost some obscure power over her. They were almost gross. Like they were bad things to even think about. She could finally see them for what they were -- buzz killers, to be avoided by looking at pretty things and being pretty and making things pretty.
The old gray chains somehow melted into thin air, and the bloody wounds on her wrists and neck were all gone. Why, even her clothes were changed! She was suddenly wearing an outfit that She was pretty sure came from the Gap or their bastard child Old Navy, but right then she didn’t even want think about child labor. What did it matter where her clothes came from, anyways?
Laughing and carefree, she jumped up from the bed, bounced her head from side to side in a parakeet manner that everyone recognized as mothers, then turned from one face to another, and offered one and all as cheery a smile as they had ever seen. Then to father, She said, "Gosh, I guess it's time to dye this crazy hair back to brown. Will you take a chip of paint off the wall in my room, so that I can make sure that I match?" After She explained that she explained that this was a joke, they all laughed, and there were big old bear hugs all around, too.
They bridged the generation gaps and all that stuff, and then they all lived happily ever after.
-----------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
Always dressed in faded black jeans with the knees torn out and sleeveless T-shirts emblazoned across the chest with the logos of famous rock bands (who inevitably, mother said, seemed to have the word ‘death’ in their names). Basically, She was a good girl, who did all of the things that good little girls in her land did. Like worrying about problem-things.
Indeed, on the day that our story takes place, She was very embroiled in a problem-thing. She had just come from a lecture about a problem-thing that was altogether new to her and was having quite a struggle wrapping her thoughts around it. New words were all floating around in her mind like a bunch of little problem things that she could not make into the very big problem thing that the lecture had actually been about. It was all very confusing, but she was sure that if she concentrated real, real hard, she eventually would understand. And concentrate real hard, she did!
Why, she was concentrating so very hard on the problem-thing that when she got home she ran in the front door and right through the living room, moving so fast and thinking so hard that she didn't even notice her family waving at her from their very favorite spots in front of the television. She just ran into her bedroom, slammed the door shut, put on her favorite CD, The Dead Lovers In Potato Crates, pulled out a cigarette, lit up with her unicorn lighter and started smoking furiously--like she always did when things needed thinking about.
Now, though She did not notice her family when She passed through the living room, they most certainly had noticed her. And when She turned up the CD as loud as it would go, they noticed her even more. The strange music pounded out of She's bedroom right in the middle of Father's very most favorite part of the whole game -- the important half-time talk, where famous sportscaster’s express views of interest to sports fans everywhere. Father was none-too-pleased with the development.
He cast a stern look down the hall when a creepy, screechy voice screamed, "Death is a cool old fool, a kinda’, sorta’ thing, baby. Baby, baby, baby, my little baby thing."
This was not the first time that She had turned the stereo up so loud that weird noises drowned out the television. Normally, father would just cluck his tongue a few times and use his bemused voice to tell little Skipper-Do that he should go into his sister’s room and tell her that ‘She better turn that music down if she knows what’s good for her;’ but not that day. That day Father was very, very angry and he jerked his very favorite hat off his head -- the one with his very favorite team written across the brim -- and just threw that prized possession right down into the middle of the living room floor.
Mother looked down at father's favorite hat laying on the mint-green shag carpeting and said, "I guess that it's time to teach that little girl some respect for other people's feeling." Then she reached down into the bottom of her knitting bag and pulled out a long, nasty, old, gray chain.
‘Yes,’ father nodded, as he pulled a lasso of scratchy looking twine out of his pants pocket and said through gritted teeth in a hissing voice, "I'd say its well past time."
Mother got up from her chair, straightened the lace doilies on the armrests, then looked down at where little Skipper was laying in front of the television with his face just inches from the screen.
"Come on, little Skipper-doo. "
"Oh, all right," Skipper said, but as he got up from the floor and followed his Mother and Father down the hall, a dour expression showed his continued displeasure. As they came up on She's door, the creepy voice fell silent.
Suddenly from the living room, they could hear a sportscaster's excited voice saying, "Now, Herb, that is the craziest thing that I have seen in my twenty fond years of being associated with this wonderful, wonderful game. Let me send this back over to you, Herb, as I ask, in your four years of proud association with this game, isn't that the craziest thing that you have ever seen?"
At the sound of sportscasters, Father smiled and turned around and started walking back toward the living room . . . but then, before the sportscaster Herb could even answer the important half-time question, the weird music started up all over again! This time it was louder than ever and sounded like metal rods crashing and screeching against each other in some terrible, industrial machine. Father stopped in mid-step and grew all still, his face and neck became fire engine red and his eyebrows shot way, way up on his forehead.
Skipper watched father closely, because he thought steam was going to shoot of Father's ears like in all the cartoons, but it didn't
Father pushed mother and Skipper away from the door, grabbed the handle and said, “I’ll take care of that little missy!"
When he threw that door open, right then and there, three jaws dropped to the ground! She was waving around a cancer-causing cigarette and bouncing up and down like a satanic pogo stick. She had her eyes closed, so she just kept bouncing around, even though everyone else was mortified by her aberrant behavior.
Mother covered her eyes with one arm, threw the other hand behind her head and stumbled backwards in a near faint. Skipper jumped behind Mother to stop her from falling, but mother was so very much bigger that he was knocked back against the wall, where head bumped into Father's most very favorite painting in the whole world; the one that he bought at the Starving Artists sale at the Ramada Inn, after going to all of the trouble of scrapping a chip of paint off of the hallway to compare to the browns in all the various landscapes. The painting swung this way and that, this way and that . . . then came crashing to the floor! They all three watched aghast as the corner of the Genuine Maple Frame hit the shag carpet and broke into two pieces. Father looked down at that sad sight and said, "You know, and this is a fact, mind you-it's cheaper to buy a whole new painting at the Starving Artists sale than it is to go to Sears and buy a Genuine Maple Frame."
All the while, She had no idea that she was causing any mayhem, let alone that her very fate was being decided as she danced around, smoked and listened to The Dead Lovers in Potato Crates.
When Mother pulled herself back together, the first thing she did was pat little Skipper on the head, then she turned to her enraged husband and offered him a perky smile as she said, "Tie her up, boys! Go on and get to it."
Father rushed into the bedroom and reached for his bouncing daughter just as she shot up, impaling her throat on his long, sharp nails and tearing bright, red gashes in her pale, white flesh.
"Ouch," She cried.
Father used the scratchy twine to tie her hands behind her back, and then he forced her down onto her knees. Mother came into the bedroom happily strutting like she did just before her and father went to bed early for noisy intercourse, pulled that CD out of the stereo, got a grip on each side of it, and start smashing the disc over her daughter’s spiky orange hair. And she kept up that smashing until The D.L.I.P.C. ‘s second album, Monkey Vomit on a Leper’s Little Toe, broke into pieces that flew all over the room! Skipper could not believe how cool things were going! All he could say as he watched his mother was, "Cool. This is so cool."
When Mother was done pummeling, she threw what was left of the CD into the wall,
crossed her forearms over her pert breasts, threw back her head and laughed like a Jackal,
for a long, long time. Skipper was more than a little creeped by the time Mother stopped,
put her index fingers on her daughter's temple and said, "Let us all silently pray."
She had just stayed quiet up until then, because everyone in her family was acting so weird, but things seemed to be calming down, so she said in her nicest, politest little girl voice, "Hey, I'm sorry about the cigarettes, alright? I've been meaning to bring it up with you, but you're all so weird about everything. I mean, it would be like the tattoos and weed all over again, and I don't need it, alright? When you guys quit trying to drag me back in time, then we can talk, okay? Aren't you guys about done praying? And why can’t you just see it’s a waste of time, for god’s own sake."
No one paid any mind to She, as they were all deeply embroiled in their own individual discussions with the Lord. Skipper felt particularly driven to seek the comfort of a deity, because he wanted to be forgiven for the sin of breaking father’s very favorite piece of art as soon as possible, so that if something happened like a meteor hitting their house and he died, he could still get into heaven without any serious hassles.
When Mother was done praying for the lord and all his grace to fill the vessel of her child, she cleared her throat to signal everyone that they should finish up, or, in father’s case, quit pretending, then she looked down at her daughter, smiled and said, "This hair! Lord help us, but that is the first problem we are going to have to sort out." Mother spit into the palms of her hands and began rubbing them down the sides of the spiky orange head.
Now, She liked her hair just like it was, so she started tossing her head from side to side and going all crazy. Mother tried to keep straightening the spiky hair into something more flat and normal, but it was darn near impossible with She squirming and trying to fling her head from side to side. After a few moments of struggling with her daughter and heavily moussed spikes, Mother finally stepped away from the struggling She, put her hands on her hips and said in a very, very angry voice, "You will have normal hair."
Mother looked at Skipper and Father, put a smile back on her face and said in a much, much nicer voice, "Keep a firm grip on her, boys. I'll be right back."
As soon as mother was gone, She tried pleading with father and Skipper, but they both just held her tight and stared straight ahead, acting like nothing she said mattered at all. No matter what she said, they just kept staring straight ahead at the wall and pretending like she wasn't even there. It seemed like Father and Skipper had been replaced by people She didn't even know and that made her very, very scared.
Mother returned to the room carrying the re-chargeable curling iron that Father had bought her for Mother's Day, reached down and grabbed a handful of the orange spikes, jerked back She’s head to expose her throat, then clamped a thin fold of flesh with the searing, red hot metal.
"Ouch," She cried.
The skin in the curling iron sizzled and sputtered. She was struggling very hard indeed but Father and Skipper held her tight. They could see by the look on Mother's face that she was bound and determined to keep burning that neck until she was darn good and ready to stop.
"This hurts me more than it hurts you," Mother told her.
After what seemed like forever to She, Mother finally had enough of that curling iron, but when she tried to pull it away the red metal stuck to the black skin. Mother had to jerk and pull and twist and jerk some more, until finally, with a look of sheer determination on her face that warmed Father's heart, she gave a very strong tug that ripped the curling iron right off. A big patch of flesh tore free, as well. Before mother could do anything about it, the bloody flap of flesh dripped red gunk on the white shag carpet. Mother looked down at the mess and said in her frustrated voice, "Oh, now look what you made me do."
"Ouch," She cried again.
"Are you going to mind me, young lady?"
She had not liked being scarred for life one little bit, so she tried to say just what she thought Mother wanted to hear, "Oh, yes, Mother. Now, please, can I get up?"
"Well, first we have to do something about these bumps of hair on your head, then we'll see." Mother began clamping orange spikes of hair into the curling iron and twisting and jerking, until one after another they became perfect curls. When She's entire head was transformed, Mother stepped back and got a smug look on her face and she said in her tough-gal voice, "Well, at least I managed to get a little bit of that orange mess under control." Then her voice became very, very nice as she looked her daughter right in the eye and said, "Oh, really, that's so much better, dear. You'll like this new look. Especially once you get used to it. I'll bet the boys are going to like you a lot better, too. Why, we have two boys right here, so we can ask them what they think? Say, boys, is this some juicy trim, or what?"
Father made a show of looking into She's face and smiling, then he gave her a peck on the cheek and said, "I forgot how pretty you are."
Mother turned to Skipper, "And what about you, Mr. Skipper-doo, don't you have something that you want to say to your sister?"
Without even looking, Skipper just kind of muttered, "Okay, yeah, it looks better. You're some juicy trim, Sis."
That wasn't good enough for Mother. She looked down at Skipper and shook her finger right in his face, "Now, Skipper, you go on and take a really good look at your sister."
Skipper was not about to disobey Mother when she was shaking her finger right in his face, so he looked at his sister, and when he did, boy was he surprised -- She really did look better. Skipper sounded all excited as he told her, "Gosh, you look great. Mom, she is some juicy trim! From now on you can come to all my games, okay? You and mom and dad! We’ll eat hot dogs."
She had never cared for the games and had been a vegetarian since her cat died in August, but everyone was just being so weird that She went ahead and told Skipper that she'd love to go to his game and eat hot dogs. Then She looked up at Mother and asked, "Can I get up, please?"
"After that little display?� Mother shook her head, ‘No.’ “I'm afraid that you've done nothing to show me that you know how to behave around your elders. You know, we do all this for your own good. So you'll be happy, dear. You're always moping around here, whining all the time about all these mopey things.�
“I am happy."
"Happy is as happy does, dear. Listening to songs about death is not a sign of happy. And protesting all this stuff, it just makes you so sad.�
Mother turned away and started walking out of the room; over her shoulder she called out in her tough-gal voice, "Boys, you go ahead and chain her to the bed, and bind that little thing down tight. She's not going to like it when we shove it in."
She thought about trying to fight as father and Skipper chained her to the bed, but the last time she had disobeyed her parents she had been scarred for life, so she didn't do anything. Even though the chains were so tight that they cut into her skin and made her fingers start to turn purple.
"Ouch, " She cried, “The chains are cutting me? Why must they be so tight?�
Father came out of his daze, or whatever, and answered in a voice that She had never heard before; it was a strange and breathy sound, "You just lay there and take it."
She couldn't believe that her Father was going to let chains cut her wrists. That day was so weird. Blood was seeping out around the nasty chain, bright red and glistening, flowing in thin tendrils down into the cracks between her fingers. She was ready to try to say something else, but just then a loud whirring sound blasted into the room and startled her to no end. The whirring came from the blades of the Cuisenart, as Mother placed things into the clear container and hit the Puree button.
Mother spread a white dishtowel on the kitchen table and began laying out on top of it all of the ingredients for a very special batter. There was a handy calorie counter, no bigger than the palm of your hand, just the right size for a purse, yellowed copies of Dear Abby columns that Mother had always thought were just so right, pictures of models cute enough to make her melt, and lots of other stuff -- even a few things that her own mother had given to her on a day that had been a lot like the day of our story, though a lot different.
After listening to the rise and fall of the whirring Cuisenart for a few minutes, Father got such a hankering to out into the kitchen to see what was going on, that he did just that. When Skipper saw Father get up and start silently creeping out into the kitchen, he just had to follow, because he liked to do everything that Father did. Mother had her back to the door when father entered, so he snuck up behind her and gave her a big hug. Mother snuggled back into Father, rubbing her ample buttocks back and forth over his bulging crotch, before turning around so that they could embrace properly.
Father reached around behind her back and tried to slip something into the Cusinart, and though Mother did not even look like she knew what was happening, just as father's hand neared the batter, her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. She pulled his hand out into the open and they all looked down into his palm at the little blue and white Madonna from the dashboard of the Buick. When mother saw that little blessed virgin, she just broke out laughing, let go of Father’s hand, pointed at the batter, and gave father the old ‘thumbs up!’
Skipper watched the Madonna fall down onto the chopping blades and get pureed, and he wanted to put something in that batter so bad that it felt like he might pee. He grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a big mop with a wooden handle that was a good two feet taller than Skipper. He held that mop up in front of his parents and asked them, "Can I put this in? Please, can I? Please?"
Mother looked at the size of that mop and she just had to laugh, and that laugh was still in her voice as she said, " I think it would be pretty hard to get that in the Cusinart, honey."
"I can make it fit, Mom. Remember, the puppy, mom? He was bigger than this mop."
Father had to say something about then, because someone had to change the subject. “You know, honey, I think you're underestimating the men in this family. Skipper, you go ahead and give it a try." Then with a wink to Mother, he added, "I might have something else for you to do before you have time to finish the job, though. Go ahead, Skipper, show your Mom that you can get that thing in there."
Skipper climbed up on top of the counter, put his feet on either side of the Cusinart, shoved the gray, swirly mop head down into the batter and used the toe of his sneaker to hit the ON button. The silver blades began slamming into the wooden handle, hitting so hard that it was all Skipper could do to hold on. Twice he lost his grip and the mop went all crazy, banging into his thighs and the cabinet (but not his peter, which is what Skipper was kind of worried might happen).
As Mother and Father watched Skipper struggle with the mop, they exchanged proud and amused smiles, but it was obvious to both of them that the job was too much for the little boy, so finally father stepped up to Skipper and gave him a friendly punch on the arm as he said,
"Son, I have something more important for you to do.�
Skipper knew that Father didn't think that he could get the mop into the batter, but he was determined to do just that. He used his most confident voice to tell Father, "No, I'm big enough! I am! I am!"
"I know you are," Father told Skipper, "but I have something more important. Go out into the garage and get the funnel that I use to put transmission fluid in the Buick, then take it out in the back yard and rinse it out real good with the hose, okay? This is important, every speck of oil has to be gone - we don’t want rogue lubricants getting into the batter, by god no. Rinse it out real good, alright?"
"Dad, first I want to do this. I can do it!"
Father's voice became sad, "Oh, I know that you can, son . . . it's just that, well, I guess that I can try to get that funnel clean . . . I don't know if I can, not with these eyes of mine. Getting that mop in there is a lot easier than cleaning a funnel, so I guess you should just do the little boy work."
Skipper thought that Father was being honest. He jumped down off the counter and started running for the garage. "You go ahead and take care of that stupid mop. I'll make that funnel so clean it'll look just like new."
"Son, I know you will." Father called out after the disappearing Skipper.
Mother turned to father and said, "He's going to grow up to be just like you.� Father's face just beamed when he heard that.
By the time Skipper came back in and proudly displayed a clean, red, plastic funnel, the batter was done. Skipper had meant to tell his parents about getting tangled up in the hose and how the wet spot on his pants wasn't what it looked like, but when he saw the batter he forgot everything and his face filled with a look of wonder. "It's like green snot, but it smells great! Like a fish stick shake, or something! Can I have a taste?"
Mother picked up the bowl and held it out to him, "Go ahead and take a little dab on your finger." Then she turned to Father, saying, "I know you're just dying for a little taste."
And Father was.
Both put the green slime between their lips at the same time and then let out long moans of satisfaction. Skipper liked the batter so much that he even stuck the tip of his tongue under his fingernail to get at a tiny green glob.
"Oh, that's good, dear," Father told mother.
"I could eat this stuff everyday!" Skipper added.
SHE THE END (edit - delete)
Mother blushed warm at the compliments. She took a certain pride in her cooking and commenting on it was a sure fire way to just make her melt. She looked down right delighted as she picked up the bowl of batter, held it over her head and began a little dance out of the kitchen and down the hall. Skipper and father joined in the little dance, though Skipper quit pretty quick, because he was sure that he looked nerdy.
While her family was in the kitchen, She had been laying in her bed, her wrists and neck wracked with agony from the cutting chains. She had no idea what was really going on, but she had seen lots of movies about weirdo’s doing really sick things and could imagine all sorts of stuff that she didn't want to happen to her. She was so scared that she started shaking like she was cold and making a sound like a mouse, "Errrrk, errrrrk."
When She heard her family come back into the room, she opened her eyes and started to ask to be let up. But before she could talk Skipper and Father jumped on the bed, grabbed her by her hair and twisted her head until her ear was pointing up toward the ceiling. Then Father pulled the funnel out of the waist of his pants, took a firm grip on the red plastic with both hands, and, with all his might, slammed the thin nozzle down into her ear. Red and yellow gunk squirted out, covering father’s arms all the way up to the elbows. She’s eyes shot wide open and her mouth started opening and closing real fast, her lips making a circle that grew big and small, big and small--like a goldfish gasping for air in a filthy bowl. Mother poured the lime green batter into the bright red funnel, and it flowed inside She’s head.
The green gunk seeped through her brain dissolving all of the problem things that she had fretted over, and sometimes even cried about; suddenly they didn’t seem so important, like they had lost some obscure power over her. They were almost gross. Like they were bad things to even think about. She could finally see them for what they were -- buzz killers, to be avoided by looking at pretty things and being pretty and making things pretty.
The old gray chains somehow melted into thin air, and the bloody wounds on her wrists and neck were all gone. Why, even her clothes were changed! She was suddenly wearing an outfit that She was pretty sure came from the Gap or their bastard child Old Navy, but right then she didn’t even want think about child labor. What did it matter where her clothes came from, anyways?
Laughing and carefree, she jumped up from the bed, bounced her head from side to side in a parakeet manner that everyone recognized as mothers, then turned from one face to another, and offered one and all as cheery a smile as they had ever seen. Then to father, She said, "Gosh, I guess it's time to dye this crazy hair back to brown. Will you take a chip of paint off the wall in my room, so that I can make sure that I match?" After She explained that she explained that this was a joke, they all laughed, and there were big old bear hugs all around, too.
They bridged the generation gaps and all that stuff, and then they all lived happily ever after.
-----------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
DO YOU EXIST?
-this sounds like one of those questions that are too stupid to care about, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (which those knucklehead catholics wasted millions of words and hours and thoughts on). Yet, in a time when culture controls our dress, phrases used, hair style, brand of toothpaste, body type, etc... the question begins to make a bit more sense.
Foucolt, a french philosopher who I won't claim to understand too well, says that the Self that you think of as You, is barely there. He uses the example that if a person were to stand in river of culture, only their fingertips would be above water--just a tiny little bit of the brain that is really, truly, ours. That little bitty pea of space is filled with a relatively few number of templates, running from saint to sadist, etc...
This is why, when I ask if you exist, you might want to ask yourself where you do think independantly. As any intellectual knows who follows democratic politics, the masses can be manipulated into thinking whatever the propogandists wish them to. Look at other countries, where people are less media savvy, and they are saying in Pravda that aleins are landing and other yellow journalism. America went through a period like this at the turn of the century. Poe wrote during this period, publishing novels in serial form in newspapers that were taken, by the masses, as the truth. The Voyages of Arthur Gordon Pym is the example I always give.
So, if you do exist, are you a combination of the thoughts that you have been exposed to? If yes, then what thoughts are your culture cramming down your throat. Do you easily go with the flow, making your skin change into whatever color the political season demands?
There is also the sociolbiological factor, that a lot of your thoughts about the other sex are merely the echos of the cries of your genes.
In fact, I think that genes are in control of everything. They are in a war for survival and will do anything, however cruel, to keep moving up into the future. Aleins live in them, and they are using us for eternal life, skipping form generation to generation through our seed.... oh, wait, no that is a dream I had..... but, our behavior is kind of like that, hard wired in, and we all think the same thoughts, basically, from generation to generation. Hedonism and drugs and such isn't new -- it is older than culture, the first way we were, what culture tries to distant us from, take us to some other word created place where we are not chimps, but near gods.
But only words can take you to such a place, because only in words does such a place exist. Here on earth, we are chimps, barely in control of our base impulses, growling at each other in traffic all day, hating the weak for needing us, etc... all things eo wilson found the apes doing (without a countless number of libraries full of ever changing reasons, mind you.
So, try just believing what can be proven for awhile. There is more than one person can ever know that we already do know... so why not start there when building your own personal Cosmology (which is your world view, or the ethics that ground your behavior; a killer would have one seeing blood, a sex addict would be in one surrounded by fucks, etc.... everyone's cosmology is slightinly different. Even those who claim, like in a church, to share the same cosmology, they really can't. Environment and genes and education, etc... shape this cosmology.
That cosmology is the you that feels like you when you think of you. It is also the ape that takes over when you lose control and have to save face to keep your place in the tribe (though it seems like you are just yelling at the dog at the time, or being snide with your partner).
So, do you exist? Or are you just a puzzle of peices put together by your time?-----------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
Foucolt, a french philosopher who I won't claim to understand too well, says that the Self that you think of as You, is barely there. He uses the example that if a person were to stand in river of culture, only their fingertips would be above water--just a tiny little bit of the brain that is really, truly, ours. That little bitty pea of space is filled with a relatively few number of templates, running from saint to sadist, etc...
This is why, when I ask if you exist, you might want to ask yourself where you do think independantly. As any intellectual knows who follows democratic politics, the masses can be manipulated into thinking whatever the propogandists wish them to. Look at other countries, where people are less media savvy, and they are saying in Pravda that aleins are landing and other yellow journalism. America went through a period like this at the turn of the century. Poe wrote during this period, publishing novels in serial form in newspapers that were taken, by the masses, as the truth. The Voyages of Arthur Gordon Pym is the example I always give.
So, if you do exist, are you a combination of the thoughts that you have been exposed to? If yes, then what thoughts are your culture cramming down your throat. Do you easily go with the flow, making your skin change into whatever color the political season demands?
There is also the sociolbiological factor, that a lot of your thoughts about the other sex are merely the echos of the cries of your genes.
In fact, I think that genes are in control of everything. They are in a war for survival and will do anything, however cruel, to keep moving up into the future. Aleins live in them, and they are using us for eternal life, skipping form generation to generation through our seed.... oh, wait, no that is a dream I had..... but, our behavior is kind of like that, hard wired in, and we all think the same thoughts, basically, from generation to generation. Hedonism and drugs and such isn't new -- it is older than culture, the first way we were, what culture tries to distant us from, take us to some other word created place where we are not chimps, but near gods.
But only words can take you to such a place, because only in words does such a place exist. Here on earth, we are chimps, barely in control of our base impulses, growling at each other in traffic all day, hating the weak for needing us, etc... all things eo wilson found the apes doing (without a countless number of libraries full of ever changing reasons, mind you.
So, try just believing what can be proven for awhile. There is more than one person can ever know that we already do know... so why not start there when building your own personal Cosmology (which is your world view, or the ethics that ground your behavior; a killer would have one seeing blood, a sex addict would be in one surrounded by fucks, etc.... everyone's cosmology is slightinly different. Even those who claim, like in a church, to share the same cosmology, they really can't. Environment and genes and education, etc... shape this cosmology.
That cosmology is the you that feels like you when you think of you. It is also the ape that takes over when you lose control and have to save face to keep your place in the tribe (though it seems like you are just yelling at the dog at the time, or being snide with your partner).
So, do you exist? Or are you just a puzzle of peices put together by your time?-----------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
IRON
IRON
Her arm aches from the weight of the iron as she pulls it down from the top shelf of the closet. Most mornings it was light enough, but John had grabbed her arm last night and threw her out of the truck, after she missed his tone when he told her that he didn’t want to ‘sit and watch no trees turnin’ autumn shades.’ She was out the driver’s side door and spinning up the walk before either of them knew what was happening. He was in a hurry, was all. And he tried to make things better, too.
After going into the bar and having a few with his work buddies, he came in where she was sitting at a table with some of the other wives, kissed the purple finger marks on her arm, and said he sure as hell hadn’t meant to play that rough with his baby. After he went back to the bar, those women couldn't say enough about how sweet John was, and how handsome he always dressed. It was nice having all of them other women seeing her and John like that.
She untangles his blue shirt from a pile on the floor and positions it on the ironing board so the arms hang down over the sides and the back is flat and curved, then she just stands there stock-still, waiting for some feeling to come over her and make the iron move across the cloth.
She looks down at the rest of the shirts. They cover the carpet between John's recliner and the console TV.
She had only counted six when she pulled them out of the dryer but it seems like there are a lot more and her heart starts pounding and a wild airlessness comes over her, makes her sit down the iron and she close her eyes and lean on the board. She had been getting that feeling lately. Tiny things suddenly blew up all out of proportion and she was panicking and couldn’t breathe. . . She never bothered telling John about the feeling, because she could just hear his bored, ‘Whatever.’
She remembers when they were engaged, how she used to drive over to his apartment while he was at work, gather up his laundry, take it back to her parents and wash, dry and fold . . . have it back in his closet when he got off at three. Without even thinking. Like it was nothing.
She licks her finger and draws spit across the shiny metal surface she of the iron, hears steam snap and sizzle. It’s hot enough . . . still, she sits it back down on the board, takes a long drag off her cigarette and shakes her head over just thinking about how things used to be. Her daddy had once told her, 'Thinking about how things was is a waste of time, you got to be thinking about how things are and how they ought a’ be.� She never could see how any of his little sayings made that much difference in the day to day.
He wasn't like John at all. Her dad had one outfit of factory gray clothes that he wore all week. By Friday his pants were black with the rubber dust from the plant, the arms of his shirts stained stiff and dark. She was sure that if he had been left to his own way of doing things, he would have worn his clothes until they were tattered rags.
Once when he left his shirt on the bathroom floor, she picked up the rough cloth and held it over her face, breathing in cigarettes and sweat and rubber dust. She thought that was how a man smelled, until she was sixteen and got to dating John-who always smelled strong of Old Spice.
When she first told her dad that she was going out with John, he asked her, "Now, why the hell would you want to go and do that?" Remembering him saying that still made her smile. He knew John from the plant and never had liked him. That first night, he started in with comments on John’s fancy-ass dressing, and he kept up the smart-mouthing, right up until he saw that she had her heart set on that ring. After that he didn’t want to talk about the wedding at all, just up and left the room whenever she went to discussing decorations and such with her mom. Come the day of the wedding, he was quiet and standoffish, kept going out onto the steps of the church, sitting down and staring into nothing chain-smoke cigarettes. He sat off by himself at the reception, too, and ended up getting drunk as hell
There were so many people there that she hardly ever got to visit with that she almost forgot he was there. He came out on the dance floor and put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her right away from the best man, led her off into a hallway of the church basement that smelled of ammonia and old ladies, pushed three hundred dollar bills into her hand and said, "This is something I got to do. You know what happened with him and hitting that girl he was living with and all. The jailin’ . . . I know you’re a’ thinkin’ that this don’t mean anything, alright? I told you all this before, but . . . . you just put this back, hon, in case something happens. Don't you tell him about this money, hear me?"
At first she was scared, half believed him. Then she got angry, started yelling at him for spoiling her 'special moment.' Right away he started apologizing for upsetting her at the wedding, saying he was sorry he got so drunk, and he guessed that she should do whatever she wanted with that money.
The clock reads 2:40. John will be getting up in another fifteen minutes. She hasn't even started ironing. She pulls three shirts out of the pile and scoots the others behind the sofa with her foot. She doesn’t want John to see the pile and say something about her lying around all day doing nothing. He knew she didn't lie around all day, and she knew he knew it. Sometimes he added, “Hell, you're practically good for nothing,�' in a way that emphasized 'practically' enough to imply she was good for one thing. When they first met, he’d say that same thing when she did something tiny, like walking past a window that filled her hair with golden sun. She didn’t mind it then. Sometimes he’d pull her down into his lap and they’d kiss, maybe make love. That line was all changed now. Sometimes he said ‘practically’ in a way that he knew hurt her feelings. Once he said it when he came home drunk and woke her up and made her . . .
The words had somehow come to mean the opposite --to her, at least. John didn’t seem to notice the change.
Through the picture window, she can see the two brothers from next-door out on the corner waiting for the school bus, kicking a hackey-sak into the air with their ankles, trying to keep the toy afloat in the crisp, autumn air. She used to bake them cookies, before John said she had to quit, ‘feeding the whole goddamned neighborhood.’ They didn’t cost nothing, really. John just got sick of hearing them knock on the door.
The burning smell seems to come from outside, at first, because the trees are orange and yellow and brown and there were bonfires when she was kid. She knows it’s the iron on the shirt before she looks down into the tendrils of white smoke rising. She pulls the scorched shirt off the ironing board, shoves it into the pile under the couch and lights a cigarette to hide the smell.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
Her arm aches from the weight of the iron as she pulls it down from the top shelf of the closet. Most mornings it was light enough, but John had grabbed her arm last night and threw her out of the truck, after she missed his tone when he told her that he didn’t want to ‘sit and watch no trees turnin’ autumn shades.’ She was out the driver’s side door and spinning up the walk before either of them knew what was happening. He was in a hurry, was all. And he tried to make things better, too.
After going into the bar and having a few with his work buddies, he came in where she was sitting at a table with some of the other wives, kissed the purple finger marks on her arm, and said he sure as hell hadn’t meant to play that rough with his baby. After he went back to the bar, those women couldn't say enough about how sweet John was, and how handsome he always dressed. It was nice having all of them other women seeing her and John like that.
She untangles his blue shirt from a pile on the floor and positions it on the ironing board so the arms hang down over the sides and the back is flat and curved, then she just stands there stock-still, waiting for some feeling to come over her and make the iron move across the cloth.
She looks down at the rest of the shirts. They cover the carpet between John's recliner and the console TV.
She had only counted six when she pulled them out of the dryer but it seems like there are a lot more and her heart starts pounding and a wild airlessness comes over her, makes her sit down the iron and she close her eyes and lean on the board. She had been getting that feeling lately. Tiny things suddenly blew up all out of proportion and she was panicking and couldn’t breathe. . . She never bothered telling John about the feeling, because she could just hear his bored, ‘Whatever.’
She remembers when they were engaged, how she used to drive over to his apartment while he was at work, gather up his laundry, take it back to her parents and wash, dry and fold . . . have it back in his closet when he got off at three. Without even thinking. Like it was nothing.
She licks her finger and draws spit across the shiny metal surface she of the iron, hears steam snap and sizzle. It’s hot enough . . . still, she sits it back down on the board, takes a long drag off her cigarette and shakes her head over just thinking about how things used to be. Her daddy had once told her, 'Thinking about how things was is a waste of time, you got to be thinking about how things are and how they ought a’ be.� She never could see how any of his little sayings made that much difference in the day to day.
He wasn't like John at all. Her dad had one outfit of factory gray clothes that he wore all week. By Friday his pants were black with the rubber dust from the plant, the arms of his shirts stained stiff and dark. She was sure that if he had been left to his own way of doing things, he would have worn his clothes until they were tattered rags.
Once when he left his shirt on the bathroom floor, she picked up the rough cloth and held it over her face, breathing in cigarettes and sweat and rubber dust. She thought that was how a man smelled, until she was sixteen and got to dating John-who always smelled strong of Old Spice.
When she first told her dad that she was going out with John, he asked her, "Now, why the hell would you want to go and do that?" Remembering him saying that still made her smile. He knew John from the plant and never had liked him. That first night, he started in with comments on John’s fancy-ass dressing, and he kept up the smart-mouthing, right up until he saw that she had her heart set on that ring. After that he didn’t want to talk about the wedding at all, just up and left the room whenever she went to discussing decorations and such with her mom. Come the day of the wedding, he was quiet and standoffish, kept going out onto the steps of the church, sitting down and staring into nothing chain-smoke cigarettes. He sat off by himself at the reception, too, and ended up getting drunk as hell
There were so many people there that she hardly ever got to visit with that she almost forgot he was there. He came out on the dance floor and put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her right away from the best man, led her off into a hallway of the church basement that smelled of ammonia and old ladies, pushed three hundred dollar bills into her hand and said, "This is something I got to do. You know what happened with him and hitting that girl he was living with and all. The jailin’ . . . I know you’re a’ thinkin’ that this don’t mean anything, alright? I told you all this before, but . . . . you just put this back, hon, in case something happens. Don't you tell him about this money, hear me?"
At first she was scared, half believed him. Then she got angry, started yelling at him for spoiling her 'special moment.' Right away he started apologizing for upsetting her at the wedding, saying he was sorry he got so drunk, and he guessed that she should do whatever she wanted with that money.
The clock reads 2:40. John will be getting up in another fifteen minutes. She hasn't even started ironing. She pulls three shirts out of the pile and scoots the others behind the sofa with her foot. She doesn’t want John to see the pile and say something about her lying around all day doing nothing. He knew she didn't lie around all day, and she knew he knew it. Sometimes he added, “Hell, you're practically good for nothing,�' in a way that emphasized 'practically' enough to imply she was good for one thing. When they first met, he’d say that same thing when she did something tiny, like walking past a window that filled her hair with golden sun. She didn’t mind it then. Sometimes he’d pull her down into his lap and they’d kiss, maybe make love. That line was all changed now. Sometimes he said ‘practically’ in a way that he knew hurt her feelings. Once he said it when he came home drunk and woke her up and made her . . .
The words had somehow come to mean the opposite --to her, at least. John didn’t seem to notice the change.
Through the picture window, she can see the two brothers from next-door out on the corner waiting for the school bus, kicking a hackey-sak into the air with their ankles, trying to keep the toy afloat in the crisp, autumn air. She used to bake them cookies, before John said she had to quit, ‘feeding the whole goddamned neighborhood.’ They didn’t cost nothing, really. John just got sick of hearing them knock on the door.
The burning smell seems to come from outside, at first, because the trees are orange and yellow and brown and there were bonfires when she was kid. She knows it’s the iron on the shirt before she looks down into the tendrils of white smoke rising. She pulls the scorched shirt off the ironing board, shoves it into the pile under the couch and lights a cigarette to hide the smell.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
a stoned artist pretends to talk to a cat..novel excerpt
Round and round the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot see the falconer. . .
William Butler Yeats
He lights up a joint, steps in close to the canvas, fills his eyes with stark white, inhales a harsh cloud and holds it in his lungs until he can feel the first electric tingles of an on-coming obsession. The rectangle of nothingness is a head taller than he is and twice as wide. The music is loud, a force in the room. Nugent’s guitar screams Stranglehold, blasts of power cords pound out of the speakers. The bass shakes the dining room table and sends minute waves quivering across the top of a glass of water . . . the disturbance draws him into a circular universe of trembling water, then through the clear glass to a wooden pallet filled with glistening dollops of paint -- red, yellow, black, white . . . cerulean blue fascinates him.
He pushes the soft white bristles of a brush into a droplet of night; steps back and slashes darkness across white canvas. The stroke is unthinking, half-surprises him. A paranoid voice in his mind tells him: ‘Way to go, David, you’ve already fucked up the painting.’
The canvas is filled with a pencil drawing, two purple giraffes wearing monocle sitting in yellow wing chairs in. a clearing in a dense jungle, their heads seemingly bent down to fit on the canvas as they poke silver tipped canes at a line of small pink pigs marching by in full nazi regalia. He takes blue onto his brush, roughs out tropical plants receding from the extreme foreground into the horizon, smears canary yellow into the blue to create leaves. His field of vision fills with a yellow-green line running through shining black. The contrast of colors reminds him of abstract letters in an ornate bible, a history class on a monastic period . . . He tries to think of which monks embellished the text that he's thinking of? Bits of history lectures fill his mind. None have the words that he’s looking for.
“I concede. I’m not sure of the name of the isolated rock that contained whichever religiosity addled monks who spent their lives creating art in these bibles. And further more, the only reason I would ever care to know that would be to impress other people, or make my words seem to have more weight than whoever I am speaking to wishes to give them -- a sincere waste of the facts. The scientific method is the best way to find truth . . . A real pope, people actually getting orders from the mysteries of the universe on how to proceed with their lives.� He imagines himself draped in a scratchy wool cowl, feet and fingers chilled by a draft flowing through a castle tower, writing with a feather pen in the half-light of a flickering candle. He assumes that he would be an ecstatic sort of monk. "Expelling my passions into a bible, inscribing words in what might as well have been stone. Words that the people – and more importantly, me -- thought were coming directly from god. I would have believed that I was conduit for the truth."
Images subsume the castle scenario in bits of a history lecture on Irish monks hiding out on a barren rock in the sea, remnants of the rules of St. Benedict, a haunted faced Christ staring down from a bloody crucifix in an elaborate cathedral, pages of well organized notes on the middle ages.
A gray tiger cat leaps up from the floor, appears on the edge of the table, green eyes locked on the moving brush as he strains up into the air and his tail whips back and forth
“Mr. Buk, pray-tell, I hope that you will see fit to repress your primal impulse to attack. No! “
Buk jumps off the table.
“One healthy dose of cultural conditioning and there you are, cringing off away from me. Don’t look at me like this is some pleasure that I’m denying you. This isn’t like going outside, or getting laid -- I’m sparing you a bath in paint thinner. I’m glad that you’ve come to chat, though, because I’ve been meaning to inform you that Monks were, and most likely still are, trapped in church stories. Word mazes with no exits. Without someone coming along and writing Atheist tracts, I wouldn’t have access to anything except church stories, as well. Essentially, I would be inside the maze with no idea that an outside world even existed. I want to write words that we can use to talk ourselves out of the mazes and into mindscapes that don’t originate with our physical geographies dominant myths - be it church, politics, use of war, nationalism or any of the other oh-so-banal, petty delusion . . . yet, here I am, trapped in Saint Augustine’s Ass --as he loathing called anything associated with his bodies urges -- hormonally/genetically/culturally vacillating on whether there is even any way out the maze. I don’t know if I’m effecting consciousness, or merely entertaining a narcissistic delusion? I can’t even find my own path out. I eat, breath, and think lies; like a fish swimming uncertainly through in a vast ocean of dark black. Monks didn’t worry about how to get a message across, or what to say. They had the truth like I will never know a truth, not in the age of coming up in front of a box that tells beautiful lies. Monks had words of clear glass; their tales were open windows on scenes of suffering and redemption, forgiveness and rejoicing -- the unraveling ball of yarn of it all. They could count on their readers to understand their references. That’s not possible now. Everyone has a different story now.�
“ Buk, please don’t interrupt . . . yes, I am stating the obvious, but sometimes one must do so to track down a bigger thought. Now, as I was saying, until someone came along and wrote the text -- a room of words for our consciousness to enter, if you will - we couldn’t even conceive of anything other than a religious explanation. The same thing happens in all sorts of areas - it’s easiest to see in some of the places where we seem to have progressed the most, like on the idea of humans enslaving one another on a regular basis, which was originally sanctioned by the bible. The anti-slavery text’s that now exist between humans and that kind of behavior dissuades all but the most heartless . . . though once, a few hundred years ago, those same humans would have been vessels of pure and sanctioned racism. Yes, I am stating the obvious, but sometimes .... but sometimes that's what it takes to track down the truth.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
The falcon cannot see the falconer. . .
William Butler Yeats
He lights up a joint, steps in close to the canvas, fills his eyes with stark white, inhales a harsh cloud and holds it in his lungs until he can feel the first electric tingles of an on-coming obsession. The rectangle of nothingness is a head taller than he is and twice as wide. The music is loud, a force in the room. Nugent’s guitar screams Stranglehold, blasts of power cords pound out of the speakers. The bass shakes the dining room table and sends minute waves quivering across the top of a glass of water . . . the disturbance draws him into a circular universe of trembling water, then through the clear glass to a wooden pallet filled with glistening dollops of paint -- red, yellow, black, white . . . cerulean blue fascinates him.
He pushes the soft white bristles of a brush into a droplet of night; steps back and slashes darkness across white canvas. The stroke is unthinking, half-surprises him. A paranoid voice in his mind tells him: ‘Way to go, David, you’ve already fucked up the painting.’
The canvas is filled with a pencil drawing, two purple giraffes wearing monocle sitting in yellow wing chairs in. a clearing in a dense jungle, their heads seemingly bent down to fit on the canvas as they poke silver tipped canes at a line of small pink pigs marching by in full nazi regalia. He takes blue onto his brush, roughs out tropical plants receding from the extreme foreground into the horizon, smears canary yellow into the blue to create leaves. His field of vision fills with a yellow-green line running through shining black. The contrast of colors reminds him of abstract letters in an ornate bible, a history class on a monastic period . . . He tries to think of which monks embellished the text that he's thinking of? Bits of history lectures fill his mind. None have the words that he’s looking for.
“I concede. I’m not sure of the name of the isolated rock that contained whichever religiosity addled monks who spent their lives creating art in these bibles. And further more, the only reason I would ever care to know that would be to impress other people, or make my words seem to have more weight than whoever I am speaking to wishes to give them -- a sincere waste of the facts. The scientific method is the best way to find truth . . . A real pope, people actually getting orders from the mysteries of the universe on how to proceed with their lives.� He imagines himself draped in a scratchy wool cowl, feet and fingers chilled by a draft flowing through a castle tower, writing with a feather pen in the half-light of a flickering candle. He assumes that he would be an ecstatic sort of monk. "Expelling my passions into a bible, inscribing words in what might as well have been stone. Words that the people – and more importantly, me -- thought were coming directly from god. I would have believed that I was conduit for the truth."
Images subsume the castle scenario in bits of a history lecture on Irish monks hiding out on a barren rock in the sea, remnants of the rules of St. Benedict, a haunted faced Christ staring down from a bloody crucifix in an elaborate cathedral, pages of well organized notes on the middle ages.
A gray tiger cat leaps up from the floor, appears on the edge of the table, green eyes locked on the moving brush as he strains up into the air and his tail whips back and forth
“Mr. Buk, pray-tell, I hope that you will see fit to repress your primal impulse to attack. No! “
Buk jumps off the table.
“One healthy dose of cultural conditioning and there you are, cringing off away from me. Don’t look at me like this is some pleasure that I’m denying you. This isn’t like going outside, or getting laid -- I’m sparing you a bath in paint thinner. I’m glad that you’ve come to chat, though, because I’ve been meaning to inform you that Monks were, and most likely still are, trapped in church stories. Word mazes with no exits. Without someone coming along and writing Atheist tracts, I wouldn’t have access to anything except church stories, as well. Essentially, I would be inside the maze with no idea that an outside world even existed. I want to write words that we can use to talk ourselves out of the mazes and into mindscapes that don’t originate with our physical geographies dominant myths - be it church, politics, use of war, nationalism or any of the other oh-so-banal, petty delusion . . . yet, here I am, trapped in Saint Augustine’s Ass --as he loathing called anything associated with his bodies urges -- hormonally/genetically/culturally vacillating on whether there is even any way out the maze. I don’t know if I’m effecting consciousness, or merely entertaining a narcissistic delusion? I can’t even find my own path out. I eat, breath, and think lies; like a fish swimming uncertainly through in a vast ocean of dark black. Monks didn’t worry about how to get a message across, or what to say. They had the truth like I will never know a truth, not in the age of coming up in front of a box that tells beautiful lies. Monks had words of clear glass; their tales were open windows on scenes of suffering and redemption, forgiveness and rejoicing -- the unraveling ball of yarn of it all. They could count on their readers to understand their references. That’s not possible now. Everyone has a different story now.�
“ Buk, please don’t interrupt . . . yes, I am stating the obvious, but sometimes one must do so to track down a bigger thought. Now, as I was saying, until someone came along and wrote the text -- a room of words for our consciousness to enter, if you will - we couldn’t even conceive of anything other than a religious explanation. The same thing happens in all sorts of areas - it’s easiest to see in some of the places where we seem to have progressed the most, like on the idea of humans enslaving one another on a regular basis, which was originally sanctioned by the bible. The anti-slavery text’s that now exist between humans and that kind of behavior dissuades all but the most heartless . . . though once, a few hundred years ago, those same humans would have been vessels of pure and sanctioned racism. Yes, I am stating the obvious, but sometimes .... but sometimes that's what it takes to track down the truth.
------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
A NEVER TO BE FINISHED DRAWING
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------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.
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