Adventure

The Quiet Life of Paul Rudolph, Pages 6-10

It may be hard to understand pages 6-10 out of context with 1-5. The first 5 pages are up here in two separate entries. Leave a comment, even if it’s a critique. My skin is thick. No, literally, it’s like a rhino’s.

Paul closed his eyes for much of the last few songs. The white circle with the secant line. Words mostly absent from his thoughts. Synesthesia: beats turned into shapes. The final chords of the final song were played, and Skip and Paul coordinated the big ending.

Two hours passed like a thought. Sweat. Blister on right index.

If I could stick a knife in my heart—suicide right on stage. Would it be enough for your teenaged lust? Would it help to ease the pain? Ease the pain..

Paul loaded his green Mercury. Tahyler came out carrying a vintage, wooden guitar case. Yellow and blue jogging pants with a red sweatshirt—
“That was pretty rocking,” Tahyler said to him. Maloccluded grin. Long, dark brown hair dangling around the stubble on his face and chin.

”I know it’s only rock n roll, but I like it,” P.R. said.

Tahyler tittered.

“You ready to rock next Friday?”

“Yeah, man. Nice playing today,” Paul said.

“Thanks. You, too.”

“We sounded better than we did on Thursday night.”

“Yeah. ‘Reckless Masturbation’ really sounded good today.”

“True. We played it a little faster; I think it needs it.”

“I hit a wrong note in ‘Torture the Robot’.”

“Oh yea? I didn’t notice.” And P.R. didn’t notice; he was a drummer.

“Yea, in the bridge. I’ll listen to it this week, though. It’ll be good. See you Friday, Paulie. Gonna kill those motherfuckers!”

Anathemising the audience? Tahyler toddled to his brand new Civic. What a gait! A takahe with a central nervous system injury.

“See ya, man,” Paul called out after him.

Tahyler drove off. Paul lit a cigarette. Musical chairs. Third guitar player in as many months. Consistently inconsistent. Bands as brittle as rods of pure iridium…or is osmium the most brittle? Most dense, I think. Ten years. Playing in groups of all sorts. A few years ago—The Conniving Hermit Crabs. Still the longest lasting band. Toured almost the whole country. Bus. Colleges. Living with Cynthia back then. Expected to stay faithful on the road? Knew my fidelity would be determined by the appeal of my opportunities.

Twenty-Seven years and nothing but failures and promises that I couldn’t keep, Oh Lord.

The studio door opened and slammed.

”Paul!” It was Skip.

“Yo.”

“Can I bum a smoke?”

Paul handed one over and stared at him squarely: inquisitively.

“We’ll use him Friday and then probably find someone else. Don’t you think?” Skip said.

Kevin and Keith came out. Skip had something to say to Keith.

“What’d you get into last night?” Kevin asked Paul.

“Inflamed my liver. We went to NorthBeach and then R-Bar.”

“You need a new one?”

“New liver? Yea, I probably do. My cytokine levels are increasing. What about you?”

Kevin laughed and said, “No, you know, I haven’t been drinking all that much lately.”

P.R. grinned, “I mean what did you do last night?”

“Ah. Just hung with the old lady. I don’t like going out to bars anymore unless I’m playing.”

“I know what you mean, but I still do it.”

Skip and Keith approached and the parting niceties took place. Less fumbled were the fist bumps. The musicians entered their cars. They crept toward the exit.

Another release. Paul called Rose. She didn’t answer. Leave a message? No. He dialed for Olivia while driving again on Mansell Street. Think she said something about today. Before whatever I did. Was flirting with Tonya in front of her? Glad Rose did not come? Or is it genuine apathy? The debaucher dialed.
“Hello?” Olivia said, as if she hadn’t looked to see who was calling.

“Hello?” he mocked her questioning voice.

“Hi.” A small giggle escaped.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just watching TV. I just took a run.”

“Oh yea? So, did you have fun last night?” he asked, fishing.

“Not as much fun as you had.”

“What do you mean? I thought it was kind of boring.”

“You were a mess last night.”

“Nah, I was fine.”

“You were so drunk.”

“Just blowing off some steam.” Echoing cliché for excessive englutting.

“Right. So what are you doing?” She asked.

“Trafficking rocks to the community.”

“What?”

“Plating tanzanite with rhodium.”

“Uh huh.”

“Just finished rehearsal. I’m going for a quesadilla from El Faralito. Are you hungry?”

“No. I ate a huge breakfast with Tonya. She stayed here last night, just left.”

“Well at least somebody took care of you last night. Why didn’t you take me home with you?”

“You were too busy with that blonde.”

Blonde? Blonde Russian? Another visage in his mind: Svetlana? Got her number?

“Whatever,” he said glibly. “Well, do you want to come over and watch me eat? I’ll swing by. I have the Maltese Falcon at my place. Have you seen it?”

Olivia giggled again. “No. What time?”

“Be there in fifteen minutes.”

Tonya was there all night? Tittle-tattle of little lasses. Menu. Contacts. S, Svetlana. There it is. She was cute, I think. Check the camera. Call Randall.

Paul stopped by the taqueria and proceeded to Olivia’s. He double-parked in front of her three-story building while trying to gluttonize his overstuffed quesadilla. He texted, I’m here, with Linus’ Blanket, for the second time that day. He wiped sour cream from his chin.

The busy intersection of 23^rd and Valencia served as a place to watch passersby. Tall dark man with white sweatshirt and blue jeans: rare raiment: pink stitching around the pockets. Asian woman. Loving lovers. Hands lovingly clasped. Little, short, white dress. Mild weather for such apparel. Decent figure. Skinny ankles. Laughing. Their eyes met his simultaneously. They passed his parked car.

Plant in the window. Shrub? Short with blue flowers. Shrubby sage? Cadger, don’t come over here. Won’t give you fifty–five cents or whatever random amount you want. Always asking for some small specific sum. Given enough to the impecunious.

And I worked hard for every little bit I got, the things I got are gonna stay.

He looked down at his phone to avoid the panhandler’s eyes. He dialed Randall. Randall reassured him. They spoke briefly about the upcoming evening, Paul explaining he needed a quiet night at home.

Olivia: fell for her fast and thought it would last. Thought I could thwart off temptations. I can resist anything but temptation. Thought it wouldn’t even matter in ten or twenty years, when the wrinkles came, when the sagging began. The sparkle in her eyes doesn’t mean that much anymore. The kisses have lost their tingle. Already after a couple months…already pining for others and lying to her and worrying and feeling guilty. Not as if I killed Alyona Ivanovna.

Where did it go? Was there ever it? Many infatuations, many romances. Never empty love? Never consummate love? Can fly, do the loopty loop, but can’t land.

Olivia came to the car and climbed inside, tossing a small bag in the backseat. Little five foot five frame coming toward me, sitting by me, smiling at me. Light brown hair swathed round to make her face appear heart-shaped, like her posterior. Paul shifted the automatic transmission into drive and pulled onto Valencia. The car approached Cesar Chavez. He looked at Olivia’s pale blue eyes. The Triangular Theory of Love.

“Who’s the greater Renaissance man: Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin?”

“Franklin wasn’t in the Renaissance,” Olivia said.

“Right, but who achieved more great things in more fields?”

“Da Vinci, definitely.”

“But what about the lightning rod? The…”

“Well, da Vinci was a great artist,” she said. “You know he’s my favorite.”

“Yes, that’s why I said him. But Franklin was a diplomat, inventor, philosopher, scientist and…”

“da Vinci was an inventor. And, I mean, the Mona Lisa! Come on!” Olivia interrupted, “And the Last Supper; he drew the Virtri…, ah, Vit…”

“The Vitruvian Man.” Paul completed.

“Yea, VitruvianMan. And those flying machines he came up with, those were way ahead of his time.”

“Franklin was sort of famous as an inventor. He invented bifocals and the Franklin Stove: both still used today.” Count Rumford. Massachusetts. Franklin and Thompson. Fireplace innovators. Different sides. Two Benjamins.

“So you want to argue about Ben Franklin today?”

Her little nose wrinkled, and her large eyes squinted.

Devil’s defender. Dialectics, darling. Octavian and Mark dueling over power after the break in the Triumvirate.

“No, but we can arm wrestle at my place.”

“I’d kick your ass,” she said, smiling widely and caressing his right leg.

Rudolph grinned insincerely.

The car made a slight right and went down Mission St.

can_we_possibly_be_friends_again_or_conflicted_codependent

Being male, I wander

Mom dares not wonder

What kind of monsters she birthed

She brought her own equipment

I was aggressive but shy

Her womb is the most magnificent

Temple I’ve ever visited

There is nowhere else I want to be

Sister insisted

I stiffened then gave in

Children tease, squeal, scamper

Adults know unspeakable reality

Dizziness of first love

Mayhem, murder

Solemn whisper of infinity

After an uncertain age,

No one wants you anymore

Old women bond

Confer their anger

Old men tread alone

She knew from moment he laid eyes on her, she had him. She wore no make-up, anemic complexion, chin and jawline slightly broken out with red spots, cobalt blue irises, aquiline nose, hair dyed dark, fuzz-balled scarf, light blue fluffy sweater, big buttons, canvas shoulder bag, skinny jeans, leather boots, little boney black dog with ashen appointments. Instantly he fell in love. He confessed, “Your Chinese Crested pup stole my heart.”

In doggie-style position, neither lover sees other’s face. The top sees backside. The bottom sees what? He didn’t know.

She unlocks the door. He enters room. She tells him what to do, making demands. He follows her orders. She questions, “Why do we dance to these tunes?” He answers, “I want to smell your smells, suck, drink your darkest juices.” She articulates, “Stay,” then kisses him goodbye. She wakes wearing his ring, around her neck. They are each other’s slaves. Ceiling leaks, floor creaks, light beams through window as they waltz arm in arm.

She demands, “I want roast rack of lamb, or thinly sliced Serrano ham on buttered toast for dinner. And then I want to go home alone. I need some down time, away from you. I don’t belong to you, god-damn-it!” Deep in financial debt, he hands the waiter his debit card.

Dark Angel. Prologue

The world conquered by two races, Angels and Demons. They always waged war against each other. The King of Angels, Angelo and King of Demons, Kromeus make a deal then. They given a set of territory across the world to maintain so that no war will rise again. But, Kromeus has better plan. He will kill Angelo when no one aware and take control as the World God.

Messenger of Angels, Inor, foresee a child that will bring the end to the conflict and joined all the races. The child will be Savior for both Angels and Demons. Angelo happy to hear this and waiting for the child. The child will born under the blood of Angelo and his wife, Mikarna.

This news reach the demons and also their king, Kromeus. Kromeus decided to make a arrangement of sort to lure Angelo and Mikarna and when they are not aware, Kromeus will kill them both.

Kromeus sent a letter of invitation to Angelo and Mikarna. Angelo and Mikarna then prepare themselves for the arrangement. But, when the day before the arrangement come, Mikarna give birth to the Savior. He named the Savior with human name so that Savior can socialize and make friends in the world. Mikarna and Angelo decided to name it Donny Saviolus.

The day of arrangement come and Kromeus prepare all the traps. Unknown to him that Savior already born to this world. In the meeting, Kromeus succeeded at killing them both. The Angels race destroyed and demons ruled the world. Only Donny is able to fight against Kromeus. The remaining survivor, Mandorga will train Donny to become a true Angel and fight against Kromeus. Donny will be the next Angel King and the Uniter.

The Quiet Life of Paul Rudolph, Chapter 1, Pages 3-5

The next installment: taking up where we left off. In the first two pages, Paul has walked from his bedroom to his garage, back to his bedroom and into the bathroom. See what he might do next…a journey into innerspace, a trip through cortexes and lobes and chambers. Action and dialogue give way to the gears and cranks of thought. Can lists and language outdo shoot-outs and back-alley fights in a battle for attention?

The Quiet Life of Paul Rudolph (pages 3-5)

The hangover peaked. Reality was disarranged with flashbacks. Faces from the night before materialized and vanished. His head pounded. Maybe a smoke? Cure with a disease. Delay the pain. Pay Peter to rape Paul. Blackouts surely stealing some fond or humorous memories. Better bad than none. Those who don’t forget are doomed to remember. Remember when you could drink? Could be completely drunk but still there. A code hero? Impertinent intemperance. Pain, anxiety, nausea, guilt. P.A.N.G. of the alcoholic.

All I wanna do is get down, is get down, is get down, in the evening, in the evening and not wanna die tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

What can honestly be extrapolated from these cloudy apparitions of last night? Call Randall. Chipping away at the archives of the hippocampus with each time traveling voyage? The short term must be weakening. What about Miller’s Magic Number? Shereshevskii’s eidetic memory. Kim Peek: Hoffman’s best role.

He went to the living room with a cup of strong coffee and blazed the coals of his marijuana bowl. His concerns turned to smoke and filled the air. He added some water to the bong from a bottle on the coffee table. Fuzzy feelings from a few tokes blanket cold crapulence. Was not born on the wrong side of the blanket but conceived there. On a chair, sofa, or table? Perhaps! Conceived out of bed-lock, out of wed-lock.

Time passed quickly as he read some from Meditations on First Philosophy, by Descartes, and smoked. He drank coffee. He walked back to his bedroom and into the other room with so many names.

Paul dressed. Brush the lengthening teeth. Wash the wrinkling face. Slick the cowlicks and duck-tails. Trim the soul patch. Squeeze blackheads and whiteheads; the sebum exits like snakes from their lairs. Pluck hair from the concha and vicinity, some as low as the lobe.

He looked hard into the mirror. Limpid gray eyes stolen from Athena. Pallas Athena. Andrea Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericati. Palladium…Any relation between an owl and William Hyde Wollaston? Red vessels of the sclera. The iris and pupil. The gray iris: a cold chromosphere housing coronal loops and spicules. The dilator muscle. The convection zone. Maybe palladium…Put some money into…Inflation. The conundrum of corundum.

Where does the answer lie? Living from day to day. If it’s something we can’t buy. There must be another way.

Paul Rudolph was ready for rehearsal. His memory jogged. Flirted conspicuously in front of Olivia. Ah. Ambulation of abode. Not forgetting…After several laps of the apartment, he went to the garage for the second time that day. Aftermath of aqua vitae.

The garage door opened. Laggard growl—making a kind of whistling sound—rising and folding to its highest resting place—ready for its inhabitant’s exit, slightly trembling, like a woman’s legs after orgasm.

P.R. conceived a vision of his childhood:

Next to the window. Ten years old? The neighbors in their yard. Parents downstairs. Fred and Sarah with some of their progeny. Whistled at them, and they all turned to face the back of their house. Recommenced their confabulation and disport. Whistled again. Still they turned and looked at the back of their house. Whistled again, after which they stood and leaned to look alongside the house.

He laughed while pulling out of his driveway and tapping eighth notes on the steering wheel. Funny they didn’t look up. Most people hardly ever look up—look up to think that we’re revolving around a yellow star, twenty-five thousand light years from the center of the galaxy, one hundred six thousand two hundred seventeen kilometers per hour, metrically speaking.

Rudolph tapped with terminal members the beat from the radio and admonished himself some for his drunkenness. Forget it. Malleate the membranes of cylindrical bodies. Sweat.

On this particular trip, he drove through his Excelsior neighborhood to the Bay View Area. Avoiding highways, he used Mansell Street and Third Street. Children played here and there on sidewalks and among shady individuals, with some of whom he may have dealt under other, previous circumstances. He heard some whistling and yelling and laughing. That’s the chair, Titi; that’s god. The radio blasted. Trite, meandering lyrics accompanied by an uninventive guitar riff. He passed Egbert Street while driving on Third. P. R. Egbert: the ophthalmologist. Studied the Onchocerca Volvulus at Stanford. An argument against god. Blindness. His report that maternal LSD ingestion may cause some ocular malformations for the offspring. Who’d take LSD while pregnant?

He thought of Chris from the night before, telling him they should go camping on Angel Island and take LSD. The modality of the visible not ineluctable. The world as an impressionistic painting. Colors and sparks and the breathing of inanimate objects. Synesthesia. Alan Watts’ assiduously fostered descriptions. Seeing things almost on a molecular level. Maybe should experiment scientifically, not recreationally. Hofmann’s bike ride.

Thoughts whirled; he arrived at the business park housing the studio and waited at the gate. He texted, I’m here. Cell phone: Linus’ blanket, as Eco says, though I don’t think he coined it. Lysergic acid diethylamide. Wonder how I managed it so well. Knew nothing of how to prepare. Now I know. Use as entheogen. Did it open something? Knew some dolts who did it. They didn’t change. Some were scared. I was…

THUD!

Paul jumped in his seat and looked in the rearview to see Skip laughing through the windshield of his Civic. He’d bumped the rear of Paul’s car softly, jarred and startled him. From the opposite direction, Kevin’s Chrysler was decelerating.

”Paulie!” Skip yelled out the window. He opened the gate with the remote.

The three cars pulled in and parked. The men exited their vehicles. Typical niceties ensued: fumbled fist bumps, half shakes and half slaps. They talked briefly of whether or not the guitar player, arriving shortly, would be permanent. They walked inside carrying their burdens of amps, bags, cables, cases, speakers, and stands.

A music studio: an anodyne for Paul, an analgesic with no negative side effects. He entered one as one might enter a church, mosque, or synagogue: not as a priest, imam, or rabbi might enter those respective edifices, but as one might. At the trap set he dropped his equipment, closed his eyes, and stretched. Staring at the blackness through the conjunctiva, a white circle with a secant line formed in his vision. He fell into a modified form of meditation. Tahyler and Keith arrived. Skip tuned his guitar and Kevin his bass guitar in discord.

”Yo, Rudolph. Hey, Paulie! PAUL!”

Rudolph opened his eyes and the circle and line disappeared. He looked at Keith cradling his saxophone while sliding the reed into the mouthpiece. Chick with that birth-control device that felt like the mouthpiece of a brass horn.

”Keith,” Paul said in long monotone.

They shook hands. After one show at the Red Devil Lounge, Paul and Keith had drank and conversed with the female lead singer of another band for far too long after last call. They resisted and were rude when asked to leave. This had angered the bar staff and infuriated Skip; he fell out of favor with the bar for some time, but had regained it after a few stellar shows.

Paul went back to stretching. The circle with the secant line was not there. Keith was now talking to Kevin. Tuning continued. Paul sat at the drum throne twirling his sticks, warming his wrists. He greeted Tahyler with a nod.

Practice began in earnest. The songs played ranged from andante to presto. Time signatures of four/four were most common. Odd times, mainly threes, were used sparingly. Bars of supreme cohesion provoked twinkles of rapture. Paul occasionally felt the tempo push and pull, each musician imposing his perspective of space. P.R. despised any waver in time, and he educed all his vanity in these moments. No, Accelerando Ritardando. No!

Tahyler’s eyes…Skip…syllabic singing. Kevin. Listen. Fingers. Thumb and index. Keith’s solo. Sixteenth note triplets. Snare drum, bass drum, paradiddle fill. Tempo Giusto.

The Quiet Life of Paul Rudolph, Chapter One, Page One and Two

I hope to deliver this as literary greats such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy once delivered their novels: periodically. This is a bit of the first chapter. The novel is a combination of a linear narrative and stream of consciousness from the main characters’ POV. It will also, I hope, be a guided tour through one of America’s greatest cities. Lyrics of some popular songs are used to emphasize emotions of the character(s). The novel is set in 2007. I hope to publish this and become the next big thing, but for now I only want to let my friends at MyMorningStory take a peak and possibly share some thoughts. Here are the first two pages, unedited.

The Quiet Life of Paul Randolph

Paul Rudolph awoke from forgotten dreams to find himself, surprisingly, in his own bed. He had a headache and an inkling that he was transforming into a monstrous pedant; he knew he was a drunk. He hurried to his garage. It was there. He knew he had been out the previous night but could not remember much else. He’d driven home in the depths of a terrible blackout. His car was safe again, though. Lucky lush. Foggy scenes from the night before began to take shape.

Someone angry? Maybe I was embarrassed. In front of…who was there? Olivia? Tonya? Chris? Justin? Not Rose. Randall. Said something off-putting to Olivia? Tonya? Said what I was thinking earlier—before intoxicated. Something I knew not to reveal. Someone’s upset.

Woke up in the morning and all my friends hate me……… What Happened?

Started in NorthBeach: The International and La Rocca’s. Then where?

He came from the garage to the landing, walked up the steps, and entered his apartment. Laborious chores for this languorous state. He took the hall to his bedroom, stepped inside and looked in the mirror. Shirtless man-child wearing rhinoceros-cartooned boxer shorts. Short, brown hair inert on ellipsoidal head. Itching—left arm. Scar still tactile. More ink? Why? Two koi fish scarred in red and yellow swimming in the foliage of a Japanese Rush across my right calf. What about this medieval etching on my back? What’s the use? What does it mean? Wanting some identity? What identity? A person is the Ship of Theseus. Rummaging the Internet for some symbol or emblem or image or sign or crest or mandala which represents my beliefs or interests or ideas or fancies or principles or essence or nature or something. Clear your mind.

He recalled the drinks from the previous night: beer at home and a shot of cognac before driving to NorthBeach. More beer at The International and a shot of something blue and free from the L.A. 7 behind the bar. Then La Rocca’s for Fernet shots with gingerbacks. After that? Downtown? Yes.

Paul Rudolph remembered, vaguely, standing outside of Vertigo. Least favorite bar in that section, six blocks from Nob Hill. Only end up there in a blackout. Time traveling. Not in my body. Completely unaware but still functioning. Talking…Thought I was there. They didn’t know I had anterograde amnesia. That I had a two-minute-memory. How many people have conversed with me in that state? How many dialogues have been forgotten while fluttering in the deep dark space of lost time? Should at least finish Swann’s Way. Not able to find everything in my memory. Must memorize more mnemonic methods. Myriads of them. Mnemonics will do no good. Time travelling, it’s like.

Had shots at Vertigo. Shots of what? Fernet? Tequila? Whiskey? Yes. Suddenly, his mind sculpted the interior of the R-Bar. The cherry wood and long, narrow frame. The mid 20′s to mid 30′s crowd trying hard not to care. The barmen feigning attentiveness to each evenly but attending to females of particular beauty, face and figure, ever so cordially.

He wobbled to the bedroom doorway wondering if the phantasm was from the night before. Corroborate gray matter. Yes, R-Bar. Last night. He took the corridor to the kitchen. That was where Randall and I ran into the others. Last night. The Fernet bottles on the wall. Glasses of beer on the bar. Two girls sitting close by. Randall taking a photo of the girls and me. Only Randall had not taken a photo. The camera was set to video mode or something. Said something droll. Made them laugh. They were interested. I didn’t care. Overwrought laughter indicated lubricious inclinations. What did I say? Why so bewitching when obliterated by booze? Could charm Nefertiti after a shot and a beer. Could dethrone her romantic, monotheistic diplomat with some combination of sword, hand, and a seated man doing something with his mouth. Everyone is like that. No one is like that.

Earlier last night: Randall, Rose and her girlfriend (Jessica?), at my place for drinks and a smoke of the nuthastuff. I forced philosophy into the conversation somehow: an obscure reference like Avicenna. Dropped his name casually like he’s a modern-day celebrity. Trying to impress. Brought up his thoughts on motion? Medicorum Principes. Large, powerful, enduring canon. Dietitian. Sad we don’t study him or Al-Farabi much in the west. Translated Aristotle far before Europe’s Renaissance. Discredited alchemy and astrology a thousand years ago. Was perturbing. Impressing? Drunken wit. Then later: a stupor similar to senility. The stages of drunkenness are like the stages of life. Peak somewhere in the middle. Never discussed Averroes and monopsychism or the ‘ud tuning of the peripatetic, musical Arab: Al-Kindi.

Went to the R-Bar after Vertigo. Rose was supposed to come but didn’t. Then homeways? Yes. Maybe. How did I drive? Can’t remember the…Glad to be not in jail, safe, alive.

I broke every single traffic rule………

What happened? He put on the coffee. It was Saturday, July eighteenth, the year two thousand seven. What to do? Ah, yes, practice. Less than two hours off. Why think practice but say rehearsal? Only when talking to someone. It sounds more professional. Commode sounds better than toilet, but nobody says commode. Nobody says toilet either. Everyone says bathroom or restroom. I need to go to the bathroom or restroom. I have to use the bathhouse, the outhouse, the lavatory, the john, the head, the pot, the potty, the privy, the latrine, the loo, the sandbox, the throne, the washroom, the water closet… need to void excrement. Need to take a leak, drain the lizard, piss, pee, wiz, urinate, defecate, shit, crap, shit or get off the pot, drop the kids off at the pool, conduct a fetid experiment in the scientific lavatory.

The Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoat-Pamphlet -

The Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoat-Pamphlet and her Intrepid Spaniel Stig amongst the Giant Pygmies of Beccles, Volume Eight

Chapter Two

Once Terry had opened the invitation, it read

“To whom it may concern (and We hope that it only concerns Terry);

This is your official invitation to the Grand Royal Ball of Yorkshirehamptontown. Attendance is compulsory- tardiness will be met with the swift and sure annihilation of all that you have loved, known and forgotten (unless, of course, you have forgotten us).

Formal dress (or undress if that is your preference).

Please bring cookies and cupcakes.

The Royal Commiserate High Lawyers and Other People of Importance,

Smith, Farkle, Bludgeon and He Who Shall Not Be Named”

in a very high, tinny voice. This was a surprise to Terry since, up until that point, he had no idea that invitations could actually read themselves out loud. Terry was happy that it read itself since he had no idea what some of the words meant. “Compulsory” gave him trouble as did “Yorkshirehamptontown” (although he was sort of sure that this last one was a place, which, of course it sort of was. It was a place in the same way that licorice was an entree- through no means of its own and only because somebody insisted that it was against all evidence to the contrary.) Terry checked compulsory in his thesaurus and it read “Compulsory- mandatory, necessary, because Wednesday is booked at the restaurant, yadda, yadda, yadda. I hate my job, why does everything I say show up on this screen? I need more sleep- it’s been days; I hate deadlines. Who told the printer that we would have this whole book ready in a week? I mean, really! Where was I? We can edit this later, right? Good. O.k…. Congo Line-”.

“Come on,” said Spot, “or we’ll be late.” Spot then pulled a motorcycle with a side car out of his dog house. The motorcycle was lime green with blue polka-dots and purple elephants painted on the side of it. Terry had a sub-conscious insight that, if he had been wiser, this would have scared him in a way that would have been hard to describe. However, since he was unknowingly and unwittingly taking the “ignorance is bliss” route, he was quite unaware of what should have frightened him and only mildly aware that he was unaware of something that should have been frightening. (The “ignorance is bliss” route, by the way, is never, ever a bad route to take if you want to truly be happy. I mean, irreverent governmental jokes aside, the happiest people in the world seem to be the most ignorant. Watch ten adults who read the papers and watch the news. Then, watch ten adults who do not. You will find that the happiest of them all are the ones who ignore the world outside of what they come into contact with on a day to day basis. They only worry about their little section of the world and they try to make it a happier place. Then again, I’m happy, so what in the world do I know?)

Terry climbed into the side-car of the lime green with blue polka-dots and purple elephants painted on the side of it motorcycle and looked around for a helmet. Terry was quite sure that he was supposed to be wearing a helmet. However, he could not find one. (Well, to be more precise, he couldn’t find one at this time since there was not one to be found; to be sure, if there had been a helmet to be found, then he would have found it since his locative abilities would have found one if one would have been able to be found. In other words, he was not lacking in the ability to find a helmet, just in a helmet to find.)

“Here, put this on,” said Spot and he handed Terry a five pound chicken to stick onto his head. Terry looked at Spot who was already sporting a live pink flamingo tied to his head with ribbon. Terry tied on his chicken with ribbon as Spot had done, and feeling quite like the fool (much like most people who ride in the side car of a lime green motorcycle with blue polka-dots and purple elephants painted on the side of it with a chicken tied to their heads do; he should have had a pink flamingo like Spot as they do have a much, much higher crash test rating) he settled in for the journey to wherever it was that they were going. In fact, he thought that he should ask.

“I think that I should ask where it is that we are going” queried Terry.

“Well then, ask” replied Spot.

“Um… o.k… Where are we going?”

“What?”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, are you talking to me?” said Spot.

“Yes, you are the only one here.”

“Actually, you should ask the motorcycle; he is the only one who knows.”

“The motorcycle?”

“Yes, the motorcycle”

“Motorcycle, where are we going?” asked Terry.

“You don’t have to call me motorcycle,” said the motorcycle. “I have a name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Terry, very much surprised to receive an answer from the machine at all. (It should suffice it to say that, at this point, Terry’s surprise meter had run empty and he was completely running on fumes when it came to surprises. From here on out in the story, he is hardly dazed anymore by anything that happens, much less truly surprised. Sort of like when you come home and, for the 333rd day in a row, a new and different cat is in your living room protesting your treatment of the cottage cheese with picket signs and the local union; you might be dazed at a new and previously non-sentient life-form communicating with you in a way that seems utterly amazing, but you would have absolutely no amazement or surprise left you, just a little bit of haggard and tired daze.) “What is your name?”

“My name is Dennis. Thank you very much for asking, not that it ever occurred to you to ask before. I could have been called Martha or Oswald or Phillip, but you would have never known or cared if I hadn’t told you to ask, if I hadn’t put up a fight. Where’s the dignity, I ask you? Where’s the common courtesy? Where’s the humanity? It’s enough these days for a motorcycle to quit working and hang up his gaskets for want of some civilized treatment and respect. Just because I’m the hired help doesn’t mean that I have to be treated like an underling. ‘Oh, thank you for hauling me for six thousand miles, Motorcycle; I just wanted to get some food in Paris. Thanks for driving over water with no gasoline.’ Right! The nerve of some drivers,” said the motorcycle Dennis “And do you think that they would ever consider a new coat of paint on me? I mean, what’s the deal with the polka-dots. The elephants I understand, but polka-dots? I’ve never polka-ed or dotted in my life!”

“Dennis?” Terry asked very hesitatingly.

“Well, how many things are exactly eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long?” replied Dennis the motorcycle.

“What?” replied Terry, nonplussed, nonminused and non-everything else that would have made a difference in his current level of understanding the situation.

“Never mind. Now what was your question?”

“Where are we going?” asked Terry, who suddenly noticed that the chicken on his head had changed into a giant egg. It was at this moment that he also noticed that the pink flamingo on Spot’s head had changed into a tortoise and the fact that Spot had fallen asleep at the wheel. If any of these facts could have unsettled him at this point, he would have had a very hard time choosing between them which was the most unsettling.

“It’s where and when. Look at my meter. We’re travelling at the rate of two days an hour.”

Terry looked at the meter on the handlebars and it did indeed say “Two days per hour”. Terry, having given up on the impossible being impossible frame of mind and settling into the impossible must not only be likely but inevitable today frame of mind (which is funny, because, as far as frames go, the former is more conventional, but the latter looks better hung on the wall around an art print), took all of this in stride. “O.k.,” said Terry, “where and when are we going?”

“We are going to the Grand Royal Ball, which took place last week. Thus, we are going to last Thursday and Yorkshirehamptontown, which would have been a suburb of Albuquerque if Albuquerque would have been formed in an outer time loop instead of in a time stilted desert. However, if there is one place that comes close to transcending time and space like Yorkshirehamptontown does on a what-will-come-to-be-as-soon-as-their-full-daytimeness-comes-into-existence daily basis, it’s Albuquerque. I love Albuquerque.”

Terry noticed a stamp on the side of Dennis which said “Made in Albuquerque” and he thought that he might have made the connection. Then, he noticed that his egg was a chicken again. Despite the fact that the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is an old question for most of us, it was a very new question for Terry. He contemplated this while Dennis whizzed along the road. Finally, Terry fell asleep comfortably in the side-car with the thesaurus as a pillow. (While most thesauruses don’t make good pillows, the deluxe edition didn’t either. Thus, Terry’s comfort had as much to do with the fact that he was exhausted as it did with the fact that the thesaurus made a good pillow- because it didn’t.)

Dennis continued to speed along back in time at a rate measured in time in exactly the way that most physicists believe that they can travel in time at a rate measured in time but can’t since it is utterly impossible unless you have a lime green motorcycle with blue polka-dots and purple elephants painted on the side named Dennis. (Actually, the purple elephants are named Phyllis, Frank and Bob; the motorcycle is named Dennis.)

The Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoat-Pamphlet

The Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoat-Pamphlet and her Intrepid Spaniel Stig amongst the Giant Pygmies of Beccles, Volume Eight

Chapter One

Terry woke up one morning in February, which seemed strange to him.

“Wasn’t it March yesterday?” he thought. The calendar however had other ideas. It most distinctly said February 14th.

“Ah, Valentine’s Day” thought Terry. Although he remembered Valentine’s Day happening just a few weeks ago, he was glad that it had come again as quickly as he had not received any Valentine’s whatsoever on the first go around. “Maybe I’ll have some this time!” thought Terry and he jumped out of bed with his pajamas on and ran straight to the mailbox outside. (For the sake of clarification here, I will note that it was Terry and not his bed that had his pajamas on. For a bed to wear pajamas would be very, very silly and, as Terry did not like silliness he would most definitely not have allowed it to happen in his bedroom.) Now, back to the story:

By this point, Terry had made it to the mailbox. Luckily for Terry, the pajamas that he was wearing (and that his bed wasn’t) had feet soles built in. They were the all-in-one pajamas that are so suited and fashionable amongst 7 year old boys (which, by a mere coincidence of timing, age and birth is what Terry’s age exactly happened to be (give or take a couple of weeks as we will see shortly)). Once at the mailbox, Terry peeked in and found that he had not only seven Valentine’s, but an invitation marked with the Royal Seal of the Queen herself. Terry found this last bit the most surprising since he lived in a country that had no Queen, or at least no Queen that he knew about.

“When did we become a Queendom?” Terry thought to himself, not knowing the proper word still would have been Kingdom. “This must have happened during the last three weeks when time was evidently moving backwards and I was completely unaware of it. I wonder what other changes have occurred in the world?” While he was busy thinking this, he decided that breakfast was in order. He then went inside the house to fix him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk. While he was eating his sandwich which, for some reason he could not fathom, tasted to him like a chocolate milkshake doused in cornflakes (a taste which he did not find unpleasant and so he continued eating it anyways) he went through his Valentines. He did not recognize a single person who had sent him any of them.

One Valentine said “Please be my Valentine or I will bomb your entire country, Love Magdalena the Envious”. “How rude!” thought Terry and he very much wondered who this Magdalena lady could be. He could never remember meeting her. “Unless it was during the backward three weeks” he thought as he had no memory of this reverse time. Another Valentine said “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Bugbears are Brown, and Goblins are Green. Who cares? Apathetically yours, Lady Whatever”. “How strange!” thought Terry. However, he was glad that this Valentine did not propose to bomb his country. He was very fond of his country and he didn’t want to see it bombed on any account, most especially because he had not been somebody’s Valentine.

At this point, he was finished with breakfast and he decided that he would read the rest of his mail later. He decided to get dressed and to see what other strange things seemed to be happening on this non-event-repeating-but-yet-a-re-run of a day.

He dressed and put on his backpack so that he could go to school. On his way out of his room, however, he noticed that his calendar said that today was a Saturday and not the Tuesday that he had expected it to be. “Wow,” he thought, “I am to relive this weekend again! And the next and the next! And the best part is that it is to be my Birthday in two weeks! Again!” Terry had turned seven years old a week ago, on what was and what will again, apparently, be the 28th of February. His birthday was kind of disappointing last time, so he hoped that it would be much, much better this time. Terry always enjoyed birthdays. He could only remember a couple, but he seemed to remember cake and balloons and presents. He remembered being happy and his parents being happy. He could not quite remember this year’s birthday, however. It was like a vague painting in his mind. “Strange,” he thought, “that I can’t remember my own birthday. Maybe it’s because it hasn’t happened quite yet. But it did happen a week ago, I remember that. How strange.” Terry, being seven (or almost seven depending on which version of the calendar turned record-with-a-skipping-needle you believed) was simply running out of adjectives to describe the situation. Although a thesaurus would have been very, very handy at the moment it did not in the slightest occur to him to look for one. In fact, he wasn’t 100% sure what a thesaurus was (in his mind, it was some kind of dinosaur, maybe related to the stegosaurus) and he was always wondering why the library seemed to have so many volumes on this one animal. This all seemed queer (a good word that he could have used in the situation instead of strange, but one that he would be very unlikely to use considering he didn’t know how to use a thesaurus) to him.

What he did know was that, since it was Saturday, he would go play in the backyard. He grabbed his baseball glove, his baseball cap, and his baseball (since a basketball would have been entirely unwieldy in a baseball glove and since a WWI German pointy-helmet would not have worked in any sport (well, maybe rugby, but not baseball) and he went into the backyard to play catch. Now, luckily for him, he had forgotten that he had his backpack still on, which he had filled with his schoolbooks, his lunch and his letters while he was thinking that he was going to school. Why was it lucky for him you say? I will get to that in due time. If you keep on interrupting me with questions, then I will never finish the story. Are you done? Good.

When he entered the backyard, he saw that the backyard was much, much bigger than he could ever remember it being. “How odd,” he thought (amazingly without the use of the thesaurus). “I simply do not remember the backyard being anywhere near this big.”

“Well,” he said out loud, “I have heard people say that the world gets bigger as you get older, or is that smaller? I don’t know. And, since I am now older, or maybe younger today if time is still going backwards, my world is finally getting bigger. It all seems so funny and I don’t understand it at all.”

“What are you attempting to stand under?” said his dog Spot from his place in the dog house, which was probably more amazing than anything else Terry could think of this morning because he never knew, up until that moment, that his dog could talk. He knew his dog all of his life, and, up until then, the dog had never spoken a word in English to him. What was even more amazing than that was, when he took a closer look at Spot, the fact that Spot was dressed in a black tuxedo with tails, a top hat, a cane and a white bow tie. He had most certainly never seen spot wear anything besides some sweaters that his aunt Ethel had made. He didn’t even know that Spot had a tuxedo. Terry wondered if it was a rental and how much it cost per day as it was a terribly good fit if it was a rental.

“What you are attempting to stand under, I said” asked Spot again, breaking Terry’s reverie.

“I am not attempting to stand under anything.”

“Well, then you shouldn’t say that you are” quipped Spot.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Terry, nonplussed. “I was simply commenting on how much bigger the back yard has become this morning.”

“Well, yes. It’s been like that since we were annexed by the Kingdom of Smith, Farkle and Bludgeon.”

Terry thought for a minute. He was only in the second grade and he hadn’t been taught too much geography as of yet, but he thought that he would have remembered any country with such a ridiculous name. “The Kingdom of what?” he queried.

“Not the Kingdom of what, the Kingdom of whom. The Kingdom of Smith, Farkle and Bludgeon” sighed Spot.

“When did this happen?” wondered Terry out loud.

“Next Wednesday. Didn’t you read tomorrow’s paper?” replied Spot.

“No, but I am sure that I will yesterday,” said Terry, thinking that he was finally beginning to understand how this was working.

“What a ridiculous thing to say,” replied Spot. “How can you read tomorrow’s paper yesterday when it will not be printed until next month?”

“I don’t understand” said Terry, feeling completely lost now. (More accurately, he had the feeling that you do when you complete the calculus logarithm and arrive at what you believe to be the correct answer only to then realize that you are taking a spelling test.)

“You keep saying that and, yet, I see nothing that you are attempting to stand under.”

After a pregnant pause, which was strange because the pause never so much as had ever kissed a boy, much less had ever been married, and, thus could never have to her knowledge become pregnant, Terry finally composed himself enough to talk. “How strange” he finally was able to mutter.

“Take this” said Spot and he handed Terry a thesaurus which he pulled out of his dog house. Strangely enough, it had a picture of a dinosaur on it with reading glasses and a graduation cap.

“Thanks” said Terry and he put the book in his backpack along with the others.

“I have been meaning to give that to you for quite some time” said Spot. “I advise that you utilize it whenever your words seem to fail you.”

“O.k.” said Terry, who was more used to his dog giving him bones than books and advice. Much to Terry’s credit, however, he was able to take this more or less in stride as he ignored both the book and the advice much in the same manner as he ignored books and advice given to him by people.

“Well, we should be off” said Spot.

“Off of what?”

“We should be going, heading out, making way, etc. etc.” said Spot. And, when Terry simply stared at him the way that most house cats look at you when you try to explain the loopholes in section 304.25g of the Income Tax code, Spot added “open up your invitation. It should have come in the mail tomorrow.”

Finally having something to grasp onto, Terry reached into his backpack and opened up the invitation with the royal seal upon it.

SoulMate-New World Chapter 1

WishFull thinking

Wash up in sorrows,
My sink has bad drainage,
We all aim for the top with different landing spots
Always the same plane;
Red moon red sky red storm red night,
Nocturnal force their eyes closed,
Force my eyes closed;
To never see an end read this relive moments again,
But everything collects dust, over and over turns into on occasion friends you were cool with become friends who are nameless, faces mixed into the crowd of things clouded from my 3rd eyes sight, so I’m blind to the emotions and rollercoasters of waves in the ocean that we call life, and when they hit im drowning not from lack of oxygen but an abundance of fear, even though this is just a metaphor things just seem so real, surreal, is it abnormal to think that if I do good, good things will come to me? That one day I can be apart of a world where nobodys judging me, wishful thinking, prying eyes disguised with fake smiles and hollow congrats secretly plot and devise ways to pull you down so they can float cause we all drowning no matter how hard you kick eventually you goin down and when that happens in a moment of weakness can anyone truly say that they won’t? I know I can’t but I wish I could,
WishFull thinking.

Fracking Zombie’s?

It wasn’t much of a night, but it was a night nonetheless. The streets were empty, the bars were closed & not even the drug dealers seemed to be out. I was all by myself walking the streets, looking out at the sea. With each swell my heart would beat. I contemplated jumping over the railing and into the water, but I felt that wouldn’t solve America’s political issues. I decided to stop, sit down and think about the world, as we knew it.

This space was the only place I was meant to be.

I sat down and waited for an answer on the cold block of concrete edged between the street and the iron railing. I could tell the rain storm was over but the effects were far from as the water rushed down the sides of the road carrying the fall leaves. There I counted the leaves as they passed, hoping & praying things would turn out fine.

Then it happened!

The nation for the first time saw what it could not see. Something so unimaginable that just doesn’t make sense. Not even Sarah Palin would have figured this stuff out!

The Zombie Apocalypse!

That’s when I first saw them & that’s when I realized the election no longer mattered.

Part 1 of X

*Matt’s none allowed submission for the Halloween Contest*

The Demise of Abigail Adams

The Problem with Madness

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