SOME DISSOLVE AWAY

I made a student movie at Columbia College, based on my story She, black and white, twistedly funny, with a few soul-trembles.

I wrote and directed, though the guy who did most of the camera work added a great deal of his own 'Taxi Driver' kind of style. We had two great women involved in the shoot, one an actress, and the other a junkie film maker, who played the junkie in the movie.

The heroin addict was a petite russian jew with dark hair and innocent brown eyes; I came on to her during the period when she was new in school and off the drugs, and she was obviously into the idea, asking me to spend the night and what not... but we never had sex, and the rejection involved caused me to just move on. I wondered about this no sex policy of hers even more when I found out she had taken up with a junkie who called himself an artist -- much to the dismay of everyone in my life, who reacted to my buying a 60 dollar drawing from him like I was an idiot... all through this, I didn't know anything about her past junkie life and she never once said the word AIDS.

The last time I saw her, she was covered in horrible brown sores, weighed maybe seventy five pounds of jagged jutting bones. That is when she told me that she had always wanted to have sex with me, but she was afraid that she would give me aids. Her fears led her to fall under the spell of the first decent enough guy she meant who had the disease.

As far as that film went, unfortunatly, when we showed the thing in the last class, which was where it would be decided if our film could go into the larger show Columbia hosts, which is scouted by smart directors and producers, our film broke and the prof. was so mad that we never did show anyone... this is my fault, since I was the director. I kind of let this other guy, a soon to be cineamatographer/editor, do all the actual cutting and pasting of film. Mostly because I was starting a relationship with the actress and was too busy with her and my other girlfriend...


The kicker is... Reuben, who's last name eludes me or I would still be trying to find him (he lived on the far south side), took off with the film and never did give me a copy. I only saw the rushes, never the finished product all together at once...

IN THE SURE THAT WILL HAPPEN FILE, ...


Should you find this film, I will make giving me a copy worth your while... you know, pay you three hundred bucks, trade a small painting, blow you (girls only, now... and subject to M.'s approval), or whatever.... would sure be nice to see that cool little woman who played the junkie again, even if on a silly student film.

LET THE METAPHORS COMMENCE....

Metaphors are tricky little slippery slivers of soap, falling out of your hand in a prison shower.... you put them in your writing and poetry in the hope that a few folks will go, "Now, that did he mean by that black crow?" A few other folks, like me, will think, "Hmmm... I know this metaphor of black is supposed to be depression, but this writer doesn't seem to use metaphors, and if she does they are her subjective interpretations of reality. A crow in Poe does not mean the same as a crow in Don Juan's novels based on native american spirituality (which fools and youngsters think is true to life stuff).

So what does Johnny Pain think of metaphors? He tries to be funny or understood much too much to worry about a lot of metaphors. This is why hamsters in here have been a little nebulous in their meaning. Mostly, the furry little hussies and hosses have represented americans who will not be lead by a liberal, though somewhat Nazi, Johnny Pain. I am now going to take the blog a little darker. Like my early poetry and short stories.

My fiction, should you ever care to read it, is at the bottom of this blog. There are the stories and excerpts from my unpublished novel; a disturbed darkness runs through, like a a polluted black creek bubbling with some mystery chemicals. Angels and She and Iron are good examples.

So, since I have not always been playing by the rules of fiction in here, let alone keeping track of my metaphors, seeems only fair to you folk that now that I am going to write a longer narrative in here that will involved an on going use of metaphors, I want to give you all due warning.

The hamsters are going to become the troops at war.

M. is going to be the voice of reason that is hopefully, underneath all the partisan talk and heated debate, whispering in our ears.

Spike is going to become the unthinking flag waver, who just goes along with Bush.

Rick is going to be the religous guy, into crystals as the portals into different dimensions when he believes that he experiences god, who barely cares about the planet at all. He does all the little recycling things, but he doesn't botherr with the depressing aspects of the environmental crises because he expects to get his rewards on 'another dimension.' He lives across from Johnny Pain, and they share the same balcony, and certain likes and dislikes in movies and what not, that leads to an unlikely freindship (which is the basis of a hell of a lot of comedy).


I think adding this entry will make the story line accessible to readers in a way that is seldom offered in new fiction. With older, more established works, the prolouge is often a great source of what is going to happen metaphorically, and what some of the themes are about. I prefer to have as much information in my head as possible about what to look for in literature. I discovered as much about myself when I was reading Shakespeare (and let's face it, you don't get a lot of surprise endings in the better literature).

So, let me know what you think, if you are one of those hand full of people who leave messages in here.