(Today we welcome Diane Webster, a poet you will seeing more of on this site in the future, as in this Thursday!-LA )
On the lake’s shore
the bare tree looks like
a naked woman — her hair
tangles around her head
as wind shifts east to north,
back again in circling
rage of imprecise journey.
Her arms flail
dance moves forgotten
after execution, after elbows
jab the wind for space.
Diane Webster
“But you knifed me in my dirty filthy basement…”
– The Rolling Stones, “Let It Bleed”
She was “just a friend” but she was a very good friend and he’d made this commitment to help so he wasn’t going to back out of it now, even though if he’d been able to find a way he would’ve backed out of it now if at all possible.
But she had to be out of her old apartment by tomorrow morning latest and right now it was already nine or so PM of a mid-summer’s eve in the Year of Our Lord 2000 in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Her boyfriend was in Thailand for three months and the main character of this story was also taking care of the boyfriend’s apartment for the summer.
The main thing that duty entailed was being the caretaker for a seven and a half foot long, yellow python named Snake Eyes.
Yes, the snake was literally seven and a half feet long. He lived in a huge plywood cage the front of which was covered with chicken wire so you could sit there and look in at the snake and the snake could look out, which is what the main character and the snake were both doing right now.
The main character had initially planned on staying at his friend’s (her boyfriend’s) apartment for the summer while taking care of the snake, until he realized how small the apartment was and how large the snake was.
The apartment was a dumpy run-down studio on the third floor in an especially ragged corner of the Wicker Park neighborhood (before Wicker Park was gentrified) and so, when one slept here on the futon, one was actually sleeping in the exact same room as a seven and a half foot long and yellow constrictor snake whose cage was locked but whom the hero of the story kept dreaming about as he slept on the futon in the tiny rundown studio apartment.
For example, he dreamed that the snake grew hands which were tiny enough to reach through the chicken wire and unlock the cage. Next, the seven and a half foot long and yellow snake opened the cage without a single sound and quietly slithered over to where the main character was peacefully sleeping on the futon. Next, the giant constrictor pounced on the main character’s chest just to wake him up to see the terror in his eyes right before he pressed the main character down and wrapped all of his impossible-to-resist, supernatural power around the main character’s throat and began to squeeze…
Such dreams had haunted the main character every single time he’d tried to sleep in this dumpy apartment with Snake Eyes in the same room.
So he’d had to patch together other sleeping arrangements for the summer, which ended up being a combination of staying part-time with his aging parents, part-time with his brother, part-time with his estranged wife (but not so estranged that she wouldn’t let him stay at her place some of the time), and part-time with his friend who is the other main character (other than Snake Eyes) of this story, who he was supposed to be helping move right now.
She was over there in the Pilsen neighborhood (before it got gentrified) waiting for him right now.
There wouldn’t be much furniture but there would be a lot of boxes and the main character had a very small car.
He felt sorry, very, very sorry, for Snake Eyes who had to stay in his cage for three months.
When Snake Eyes’ owner was in town, he took the snake out of the cage every day or two at the very least and he even wrapped the snake around his shoulders and body and went wandering around the scruffy neighborhood with Snake Eyes, letting neighborhood kids come up and visit the snake and letting the snake get fresh air and see the world a little bit.
The main character wasn’t sure if snakes liked to be visited or not but he was pretty sure the snake must’ve at least appreciated being taken out of the cage and taken for a ride around the neighborhood on the shoulders of his owner.
But this was Chicago so in the wintertime the owner of Snake Eyes just let Snake Eyes out to explore the tiny apartment every day or two.
The owner of Snake Eyes fed Snake Eyes live mice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (which didn’t happen every day) as well as frozen chicken legs.
The main character of this story was too sensitive to the plight of the mouse to feed Snake Eyes live mice, but he knew the snake enjoyed toying with the mouse before he ate it so he did feel sorry that all the snake was getting for three months were frozen chicken legs.
…
The phone rang again and he got up from where he was sitting on the floor in front of the snake’s cage, looking at the snake, feeling sorry for it and drinking another beer. Just as the main character wasn’t sure whether the snake actually enjoyed being visited by neighborhood kids, so he wasn’t sure whether the snake actually enjoyed it when he sat there communing with the snake, looking into its eyes and talking to it a little bit, saying things like, “I’m sure you’d rather be in the jungle than here but we are all stronger at the broken places if we only know it.” It was a lame attempt to console the snake even though he didn’t know how much the snake actually cared, but the snake’s owner had told him he could take the snake out of the cage if he wanted to and didn’t have to if he did not want to. He’d said the cage was large enough for the snake to be okay for three months as long as he was fed properly. “Just make sure he gets fed properly and he’ll be okay until I get back – but feel free to take him out whenever you want to.” He smiled.
The main character walked over to where the phone was still ringing, and he set his beer down next to the window, lit a cigarette, and picked up the phone.
It was another friend of his who lived in Florida. They’d almost gotten married at one point except that he already was (even though he didn’t live with his wife full time), but now she was down in Florida with another guy so why is she calling me? But there wasn’t a reason, except that her boyfriend was out right now and she missed him, i.e. the main character of this story. He sat down to have a brief conversation with her before heading out the door to go help his other friend move all of her precious stuff to the new apartment.
But the conversation turned out to be a longer one than he had initially planned on. Talking on the phone with anyone, anyone at all, made him nervous, so he began to drink and smoke even faster than he already had been. She was going on and on now about how she missed him and couldn’t stand her Florida boyfriend and at some point, without his even realizing it was doing so, the conversation took a fresh turn. It took a fresh turn into a new territory that can only be described as a kind of phone sex where, again, she did almost all the talking and he played along in other ways. This part of the phone conversation was not something he’d planned on, even more so than the conversation itself, and by the time it was all over he looked up with a startled surprise to see that at least another hour, and maybe more, had passed by.
As soon as the conversation was over he hung up the phone then picked it up again and dialed the number of his other friend, the one who was waiting for him to help her move her stuff because she had to be out of her old apartment tonight and her boyfriend was in Thailand. The main character thought to himself: if he were here there would be three of us moving her crap instead of just two but that a’hole has a way of leaving me holding the bag, doesn’t he. He glanced at Snake Eyes, who right at that moment struck the chicken wire of the cage with his yellow-and-white, hard-as-a-rock head with such force that the chicken wire bulged out a little. It was a habit he had. This snake could be as scary as a great white shark almost. The difference was that he wasn’t always that scary.
She was not happy about having to sit around waiting while she was so stressed about getting all her stuff out of her old apartment. The landlord had made threats earlier in the week and she didn’t have a car so there was nothing she could do on her own, since the new apartment was three miles down the road from the old one and all the boxes were heavy. It took him about ten minutes on the phone to get her calmed down but she finally did calm down.
He finished his beer, grabbed a fresh pack of cig’s from the carton, reached into the freezer for the flask of vodka, popped it into his back pocket, made sure he had his wallet and keys, said goodbye to Snake Eyes (“I’ll be back to see you later”), locked the locks on the door, and ran down the three flights of stairs, so fast that he almost felt like he was flying.
Then he burst out into one of the most beautiful mid-summer eves he’d ever been in, or that was what it felt like. He was a moody individual and often, very often, the moods were made up almost entirely of profound JOY for a reason, or reasons, that he himself didn’t even understand.
He walked so fast to his car that it was much faster than some people can run. She (the car) started up right away without any problems and as he turned the radio on he heard to his utter JOY that the radio station the radio was already on was playing “Let It Bleed” by the Rolling Stones, Chicago’s favorite band.
He turned the volume up LOUD and headed across town.
…
His joy, which had already cooled off a little as he approached her place, cooled off even more when he saw her sitting there in the summer’s late evening on the steps of her ex-apartment building smoking a cigarette, because he could already tell from here how upset she was. As he approached her on foot on the sidewalk she looked over at him and he gave her a big smile trying to somehow wordlessly apologize for his after-all-not-that-unusual lateness, and she turned her head away from him toward the other direction down the sidewalk and took a hard drag of her cigarette. As it turned out, she was in a foul mood because, while she was waiting for him, she’d gone to the drugstore for a pack of cigarettes. As she waited in line to buy the cig’s, a huge, naked man had entered the store dripping with sweat and holding a pistol in his hand. Without further ado, the man had jumped up onto the counter next to the cash register wearing nothing but tennis shoes, waved the pistol around at the half dozen people there in the front of the store and informed them all that they were about to die now. As it turned out, when another man in the store came around the corner of the aisle and yelled at the man to shut the hell up, get down off the counter and put the pistol down, the man did exactly as he was told to. The main character of this story’s friend had heard the man telling them all that he was sorry, he was just high and had lost his head for a moment, as she hightailed it out of the store without a new pack of cigarettes.
The main character of this story couldn’t believe, and by that I mean that he literally could not believe, how many boxes she had all packed up and ranged up and down the stairs behind her when she unlocked the triple locks of her soon-to-be-ex-apartment and showed him.
It was only the main character’s desire to get to the bar before the sun came up that made the work go so fast. They knew of several bars both in the city and outside it which stayed open 24-7 but he’d recently realized that when he stayed up all night drinking and swapping yarns on into the morning hour, as the sun rose his spirits sank so very low that nearly suicidal depressions were starting to descend upon him at that time, a thing that had never happened before until recently, when he was in his early thirties. As a younger man, he’d stayed up well past the dawn on many and many an occasion with no ill effects, but such was the case no longer. Last year, a good friend had put a loaded pistol to his head when the cocaine ran out at sunrise and pulled the trigger in another town. Somehow he didn’t die, but he would never walk or talk again most likely. When the main character visited him, his friend had scrawled on a piece of paper that he didn’t mind, at all, not talking or being a member of the rat race any more; and the main character had (almost) understood that very well.
So the work of moving a million boxes off the stairs and three miles across town in his small car went off rather quickly in the scheme of things because of his desire to get to the bar before that lucky ol’ sun started rising. Using all of the car’s trunk and back seat and moving fast like a maniac in between swigs of vodka is what did the trick. They were only pulled over by the cops once and the main character was able to instantly sober up and talk his way out of it just as he’d been able to do every single time he’d ever been pulled over while intoxicated, sometimes he himself didn’t even know why or how. As he placed the last box on the top of the last pile of boxes in her brand-new one-room studio apartment, she stepped over and gave him a huge kiss on the cheek. Wow and whoa, that had never happened before.
They made it to the bar by perhaps two in the morning which, for this bar, was not really all that late at all. The bar was filled with men dressed as women and women dressed as men and other so-called “hipster”-like figures who all looked around themselves out of their cool eyes as if they were snakes trapped in a cage that they loved. The main character and his great, beautiful friend found themselves a spot at the bar and ordered tequila. At some point he noticed that she now was wearing a bright red, silky scarf drawn tightly around her beautiful throat. He realized then, again, for the millionth time just how beautiful she was, with her long, thick, flowing, black-as-night hair and her gigantic, long-lashed, oval-shaped dark eyes that sometimes seemed to see everything and the very, very, very short polka-dotted skirt she was wearing. To this day he doesn’t know how it happened but suddenly he realized that she and he were holding hands underneath the bar, and then on top of the bar. Her boyfriend, who was in Thailand for the summer, had several friends who were in this bar right now.
Somehow, without either of them knowing quite how exactly, they very soon found themselves back in her new apartment rolling around on the floor amongst the boxes, pressing each other, devouring each other’s mouths with kisses, hugging, holding, feeling, touching in all the privates places you can possibly imagine – almost. It wasn’t full-on sex exactly but it was enough to qualify as “cheating” almost certainly, at least in the minds of some people, like the guy in Thailand who was, after all anyway, probably returning the favor over there in Thailand right now.
She fell asleep right in the middle of another kiss and that was when the main character looked up at the windows to see the gray light of dawn starting to peek in.
He hurried away, and as he stepped out into the street that just kept on growing lighter he realized that there was something he still needed to do, that if he didn’t do this thing, he would somehow not be fulfilling his duty to the Universe.
So now he was back in the other apartment, sitting on the floor with a fresh beer beside him, staring at Snake Eyes right in the eyes as the seven and a half foot long yellow python stared straight back at him.
The main character undid the lock of the cage and raised the chicken wire.
He gently leaned the whole top half of his body into the dark cage toward the snake who just turned his head away.
He had held the snake once before when his friend was in town, but right now he simply could not believe how heavy Snake Eyes was as he pulled the snake from the cage and somehow, with the snake’s help, got it up and wrapped it around his shoulders – and around his neck.
He felt the snake’s massive body tighten a little around his neck.
But only a little.
And he took the snake for a long, long walk around the block and out into the park and back so he could breathe the fresh air and feel the warmth of the morning summer sun in all its beauty.
As he did so, he was absolutely positive that Snake Eyes was enjoying himself.
They made it back to the apartment and the main character of this story passed out drunk on his friend’s futon with Snake Eyes curled up right next to him, believe it or not.
And he had a dream.
In the dream, he dreamed that Snake Eyes and he were in the Garden of Eden rolling dice with the Devil, and they had rolled double sixes, and they had won the pot. The Devil disappeared – that is, he vanished in front of their eyes – permanently.
No more failure, no more humiliation, no more confusion, no more self-hatred, no more temptation, no more being put down – no more coming out on the losing end. In a town full of losers, they were pulling out of there to win.
The Drifter
(Images by The Drifter)
(First published by Literally Stories UK)
Brief introduction:
Today is an American Holiday, the most American holiday. On this 250th Birthday we celebrate the meaning of freedom by showing the world how pointless it can be.
But I remind the doomsayers that if you live in America, homosexuality is not illegal as it is in much of the world. Women are not required to wear certain head dresses in the USA; you can say anything you want about the fool in charge and not worry about suffering a fall from a high place as it often happens in Russia (the gravity appears to have stronger pull there). When you complain, please, once in a while acknowledge that you live somewhere where that is not against the law. I am far far away from the John Wayne P.O.V., but I can appreciate it without being a jerk about it. I do not attend church, but Christians, Jews, Muslims are usually good people and not the wild-eyed cunts you see depicted on screen. Moreover, if you are young and truly committed to improving things, then join the fucking peace corps. Grow up and lay off breaking shit at Starbucks. Do positive things that can actually matter. As it goes in America, Good Bless You and Up Yours! All at once.
Now on with the show–Leila
Auntie Bellum
Every society must schedule at least one civil war during its existence. It appears to be an unwritten cosmic law. Far be it from Saragun Springs to scoff at unwritten cosmic laws by continuously living in peace when such is considered abnormal.
So we took advantage of a little dust up between two residents of the realm and staged a Civil War last Tuesday. It began at 9 AM sharp (which, around here, seldom arrives before noon) and was scheduled to end before Happy Hour (which arrives earlier every day). But when nobody came back after lunch (scheduled for two, but taken at “9:15”) the affair was scrubbed and it became the sort of non result that both sides claimed as victory. Although “suppose we gave a war and nobody came back after lunch” doesn’t quite measure up to the profundity of the Sandberg line, we proudly claim to have come the closest to making the grade.
In a twisted, acidy way our Civil War was a reenactment of a conflict that never really took place (except for Big Talk). Some people might say that a reenactment of a non-event boggles the mind. But we of the Springs must ask how can a species that has never enjoyed a day without war in its entire existence be boggled by anyone or thing but itself?
Anyway, our little Civil (both tiff and spat, are more accurate) War began because talking herbivores are quick to lose their tempers and resorted to name calling and writing Big Checks with their mouths.
Witness:
The Haggisly Incident
Our Civil War began idiotically enough. Daisy Kloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess was playing in a Scrabble Tourney against a Lamb named Shaytan Shotten (the Grand Poobah of the Saragun Springs’ state of “Lambystan”). There is a bit of a tense rivalry between the closely related herbivores and it often raises its head during so-called friendly competitions. Soon enough insults got into the tiles, and when Daisy coined the adverb “haggisly,” it caused Shaytan to flip the board. I wasn’t there but I heard that both parties reared menacingly on their back hooves until the Second in Command of the Springs, and Tourney Judge, Renfield, got them to calm down.
Renfield informed me that there were a lot of “this ain’t over” flavored comments issued as the two trotted off in separate directions. Renfield declared the match a “mistrial” and that it would be rescheduled as soon as everyone “got her undies out of a bunch.”
Unknowingly the seeds of War were sown.
The Declaration of Sex Session
A couple of days down the line, Renfield entered the office, carrying a document.
“The Lambs have faxed another article of ‘sex session.’”
“Fax? Why not smoke signals?”
“They say they want Daisy’s head on a Pike–the fish, or an apology. They also want to re-renegotiate their bedtime.”
“Not again,” I said. Still, I was in a rare mood in which I promised myself I wouldn’t drink before noon unless I had a good reason. That was a good enough reason.
“Bring that pitcher and glasses over, would ya?” I asked as I pulled jugs of vermouth, gin and olives from my desk. For the next twenty minutes, Renfield and I contributed to the long, ongoing history of the martini.
We were both getting into our third when I asked her what the Woollie’s new complaint was all about. At the time I knew nothing about the dust up at the tourney (or I was told and chose not to listen). But as Renfield told me it all made sense in the usual twisted way. As you probably have deduced, “sex session” is their mature way of declaring secession. They had done so before when they objected to their mandatory bedtime of nine on school nights. I shouldn’t have caved in so easily.
As if on cue, Daisy trotted into the office wearing a military cap (which sported seven stars), a pair of aviator shades and white ascot. She was missing a pipe, but since that would have made speaking difficult and is not an object easily manipulated by hooves, Daisy had omitted it from her Douglas MacArthur ensemble (which was for the best because she doesn’t smoke anyway). She was apparently “attended by her attache” Pie-Eyed Peety, the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon (a living cartoon beer mascot), who wore an enlisted Pigeon’s cap that had three stripes on it.
Peety drunkenly flew onto my desk, as always perpetually blasted as hell, and stuck his beak in my martini and then washed that down from the bottomless can of PDQ Pilsner he totes wherever he goes. Peety is “drawn” on the surface of reality. He’s a two-dimensional, limned toon, but he does change colors in keeping with his mood. After sucking down the extra booze, he turned seaweed green.
“Don’t you dare yark on my desk, you little skid mark,” I told him. He ignored me and lay down for a nap on top of the dictionary I keep on my desk for old times’ sake.
Daisy climbed the ramp that gives small, flightless realm citizens access to my desk. There she stood, in all her military majesty.
“I see your generalship already knows about the ‘sex session,’” I said.
“I have not yet begun to fight!” Daisy stated proudly.
“You’re dressed like MacArthur and quote John Paul Jones,” I said.
“Wasn’t he in Led Zeppelin?” Renfield, ever her useful self, chimed in, even though everyone who knows anything about classic rock could see that yuk coming from a full thirty fathoms.
“Um, Daisy, I just heard about you getting into it with a Woollie at the Scrabble Tourney,” I said, examining my drink for Pigeon backwash. “Something about name calling creeping into the tiles–mainly your tiles.”
“The spoilly spoil sport flippingly flipped the boardly board–that means warly war,” Daisy, being an adverb addict, was especially eloquent while ignoring her role as the chief cause of the problem.
“War is a triple-score helly hell,” said Renfield, “best decided at the scrabble table.”
“‘And out of here faster than shit through a Goose’–Dean Vernon Wormer, Animal House,” Peety said in his sleep.
“That sounds like a great idea–what Renny said, not, well whatever he just spouted,” I said. “And before you object oh mighty Hooved One, you may choose what the spoils are if you should win.”
“Iffly if?” Daisy snorted. “Thatly will be the dayly day.”
And it was so decided that the match that had ended in that “mistrial” would decide the outcome of the Civil War. Faxes were sent and the terms were thrashed out and the battle was set to appear in a field in the Enchanted Woods. Still, maybe a backstory is in order. If Daisy won, haggisly would become an official word, if it went the other way, Daisy would have to express her support for Critical Graze theory, in which Goats systematically (and erroneously) consider themselves superior to Sheep (who say it is the other way around).
Why are the Lambs such little entitled monsters instead of sweet cuddly creatures, you might ask? Well, the Anita Know Function (Saragun Springs’ Virtual Assistant, a for real ghost in the machine, not a metaphorical one, either) will explain:
“In 2024, several thousand Scottish Blackface Sheep entered Saragun Springs via an accidental opening of the interdimensional vortex that connects us to Earth and other realms. There is no such thing as an illegal alien in the Springs, so they were welcomed aboard. We have extended a standing offer to return any Sheep to Scotland at any time, but to date none have elected to return to the Old Country, possibly due to the fact that they are not on the menu in the Springs nor are they harassed by Dogs.
“The Sheep have remained normal Sheep after crossing over, but ever since any Lamb born in the Springs is a Talking Lamb. The Lambs are intelligent, precocious and obnoxious little brats of the highest order, these are not mild mannered Lambs. Thus we established a Rock and Roll Lamb School run by our resident Witch HeXopatha.
“Even though there are no other school age creatures in the realm, a faction at the school has introduced Critical Graze Theory to the students. The proponents say that the school is a thinly disguised Lamb reservation.”
Sigh.
Someday They Will Give a War and Everyone Will Go to Lunch
Further faxes determined that the Civil War would be a team resumption of the Scrabble match that ended with the infamous “haggisly” incident, and no longer a one on one affair. Daisy chose her drunken au de camp Peety, while Shaytan first enlisted the aid of the recently born Buckfast the Geep–who despite being half Goat, half Sheep is the Lambystan’s Chosen One. But she changed her mind because A.) Buckfast is Daisy’s half brother; B.) Bucky is gleefully illiterate and wishes to remain so.
A further complication involved the fact that Peety, though not completely illiterate, has a vocabulary limited to quotes from 80’s slobcoms and action films. In fact, you have to look long and hard throughout Saragun Springs to find individuals who have the basic skills necessary for scrabble. And even the ones who can will pretend they can’t because they find life to be easier that way.
Since Lambystan is really the Lamb School campus, nearly all of its citizens are literate (save for Buckfast), but it was decided (by me, for I too can be unreasonable) that two of the same species cannot be teams (“diversity” is often the soul of unreasonableness). Shaytan selected a Black Rat named Melanie, who is one of the Great HeXopatha’s minions. Any positive number in the Rat literacy rate is a stunner, yet Melanie can read, having learned the skill in service of her Master.
Juan Gee, a human-sized Allosaurus who gained Saragun Springs sanctuary after being rescued from a science fiction movie on earth, was Daisy’s choice. Juan is a Mexican-American-Jurassic actor, and learned to read even though his lines were usually limited to various roars and grunts. Juan is a sweet person, although he is currently under the delusion that he is “Kathy” in Kate Bush’s various Wuthering Heights’ videos. Hey, if it makes him happy, right? Besides, maybe it is true. Anyway, Juan arrived at the war in the red dress. Quite fetching, actually.
The table was set as there were the three chairs (Juan’s tail serves as his “chair”–he curves it “in” and rests on it).
Naturally this is when and where new bullshit dropped.
“He can’t sit like that,” Shaytan kvetched, pointing at Juan.
“How come?” Judge Renfield asked. “He can’t sit any other way, nor could you if you had a big tail.”
“I dunno,” Shaytan said craftily. “He might be able to see what I’m going to play.”
“That’s the objectively object of the game, you dunderly dunderhead,” Daisy said.
Then both she and Shaytan raised onto their back hooves, like before. Fortunately, the board had yet to be laid, or someone would have flipped it.
“Ah, Jesus,” I said, watching from my office. I muted the volume and gazed out my window. A Butterfly zipped past, and there were little Sparrows and Finches and Ladybugs. It was all pretty zippity-do-dah, out my window.
On the tablet that held the Civil War, however, when I finally looked back at it, both Daisy and Saytan were seated again. But this time both of them were seated with their backs facing each other. Melanie the Rat and Juna Gee were away from the table, on which the board had yet to be placed, chatting and laughing. It was a time for decisive action.
“Tell you what, gang,” I said into my microphone, which connected to speakers Penrose the Flying Weasel had placed in the trees. “Why don’t you break for lunch–pizza all around, on me,” I said. That cleared the area in no time.
I spent the rest of the day drinking martinis, smoking, gazing at verdant nature and occasionally glancing at the War tablet. But no one came back to the table.
Daisy and Renfield finally wandered in after a while; neither said anything about the War and I certainly did not bring it up.
So, here we are, stuck for a wow ending. Over two-thousand words spent on something that almost happened twice should say something. Could use that as a cheap literary symbol against war. But symbols against wars are almost as annoying as the wars are themselves. So, I closed the file. And placed it under “Ugsome stuff that goes nowhere.”
Through the open window, toward Lambystan, I heard a large rumbling, like thunder. I went to the window and saw what appeared to be a giant geyser of caramel colored foam in the distance. This was accompanied by the combined cheers of many Lamb voices.
Daisy and Renfield paid no attention. They were setting up the Monopoly board.
“Um, do either of you know what happened to the mentos and diet coke the Boss sent through the vortex last month?” (The stuff “she” sends greatly enlarges upon passing through the vortex. Two litre bottles become the size of torpedoes.)
“I think that should be obvious to you by nowly now,” Daisy said, pretending to choose between the game tokens, before selecting, as always, “The Boot.”
“Right?” Renfield added. “You really need to know how to let things go.” (For the record, she picked “The Hat.”)
There was a second instance of rumbling, a geyser and cheers coming from Lambystan.
“All righty,” I said. I was sitting at a crossroad of the soul. I could continue the pointless war or I could just let it go.
I closed the window and chose “The Iron.”
(image by CJA unless it is DWB, nah, pretty sure it is CJA, unless, of course it is…; header by Leila, I know that much)
“I’ve been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down.” – Bob Dylan
They were sitting on the steps of William Faulkner’s grand old mansion, just the two of them. No one else was around.
William Faulkner himself definitely wasn’t around, at least not in the flesh, since he’d passed out of this mortal coil about twenty-eight years earlier. The mansion, Rowan Oak, was now owned and operated by the University of Mississippi, not too far away.
If you don’t know who William Faulkner is, it’s okay. For the purposes of this story, all one needs to know is that he lived in and wrote about the U.S. South across the first half of the twentieth century and beyond, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949/’50 for doing so, AND HE RICHLY DESERVED that prize and any other prizes you can think of.
Local wags who knew Faulkner in Faulkner’s own day had dubbed him Count No ’Count. It meant Count No-Account and it was intended as a slur against Faulkner because he generally ignored everyone else in the town both before, and after, he became “famous.”
There were some people in the town that he liked.
But he was a sensitive soul (you would have to be in order to produce all the great writing which he produced, up to and including getting yourself awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years before Hemingway himself did, which really pissed off Hemmie even though he rarely admitted it, although he did admit it sometimes, especially when he was in his cups).
Faulkner was a sensitive soul, and he had discovered that most people, one way or another, insulted his writing, even when they were trying to compliment it.
And that is a hard fate to bear. Even for the guy who wrote “The Bear,” one of the greatest novellas in English of all time.
In France right now, William Faulkner is as popular as France’s own Marcel Proust and as Edgar Allan Poe is. Even in the South, on his own home turf, Faulkner’s fame cannot come anywhere near to touching what he has achieved in a separate nation far across the seas.
Although I’ve never been there in person and never will be there in person, most likely, I still say (because of Faulkner, and Poe) long live France! (Sometimes I feel like I must’ve lived there in a former life, and now I’m just an exile; both of my grandfathers were French Canadians recently transplanted to the USA.)
…
The main character in this story was twenty-two years old at the time this story takes place; and the other main character was twenty-three.
It, or they, were a he and a she, or a her and a him, and though they both thought they were completely “grown up” at the time (of course), neither one of them had any idea how young they still were.
The year was 1990. No one on the Planet, and by that I mean no one on the Planet at all, had any idea how much the world was about to change in the next few decades.
But only young people of any era would’ve ever done what these two did next.
They went around to the back side of Faulkner’s house, broke in through a window, and climbed into the old mansion that still had most of the original furnishings in it from decades and decades ago when Faulkner and his family had lived here together.
The act of breaking into a decaying plantation mansion that had once been an utter ruin which Faulkner purchased for five hundred bucks in the 1920s and then refurbished, over decades, all by himself, did something to the young man and the young woman who are this story’s heroes.
Before they knew what was what they were rolling around all over the floor in Faulkner’s former dining room and then they rolled under the dining room table together, there on the thick carpet, luxuriously glued to one another, making out.
Back then they still loved “making out,” which meant kissing, hugging, holding, and exploring each other for hours on end without even going “all the way” sometimes.
When they burst forth from Faulkner’s house again a few hours later, both of them were so full of health and life and youth and happiness that they literally were glowing (people had told them more than once in the bars that they literally had a visible aura) with strength, joy, confidence, fearlessness, and a full-on open-hearted appetite for whatever the world had in store for them.
…
Which is not to say that they were always perfectly happy with one another, at all.
For instance, she had been far from perfectly happy with him a few days ago when he almost drove the car straight off a dock into the ocean and killed both of them. Accidentally.
They had driven all the way down to Mississippi from Chicago because they wanted to see William Faulkner’s famous haunted mansion. But once they got to Oxford, Mississippi, they realized that the ocean itself was only a few hundred more miles away, after all.
So without discussing it for more than five minutes, they made the impulsive decision to skip over Faulkner’s famous haunted mansion for now, drive down to the ocean and check it out, then swing around and head back to the mansion tomorrow or whenever.
In 1990, everything they needed for this road trip was inexpensive and affordable, including gasoline for the small, fuel-efficient car they were driving, diner food, cheap motels, cigarettes, music tapes purchased at truck stops for the cassette player and, of course, alcohol.
But he’d been driving too much at this point. She had helped out with the driving periodically, but he did ninety percent of it. And he had been driving for so many hours now without a real break, that he suddenly realized he couldn’t even figure out how many hours it had been. She was sleeping in the passenger seat. He rubbed his bleary eyes and lit another cigarette and continued to drive. He took a swig of the cold, stale coffee he had at his side and stubbed the cig’ out in the ashtray, accidentally burning his index finger. As he was doing so, he looked up to notice that THE OCEAN WAS RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF THEM AND THEY WERE ABOUT TO DRIVE OFF AN INDUSTRIAL DOCK STRAIGHT INTO IT, meaning the dark, pounding waves of the ocean. He had been circling around trying to find a better road and he’d known they were in the ocean’s vicinity because he could smell it but there were no towns around and it was blackest-night cloud-dark and he was a Northerner who’d never even been to Mississippi or any other Deep South state except Georgia and Florida for that matter.
He SLAMMED on the brakes and the car stopped with its nose right over a thirty-foot drop straight down into the black ocean water, the salt waves nailing the sides of the drop and spraying up over the hood of the car.
She was jerked forward and stopped by both the seatbelt but first his arm which flung out rightward to protect her. Yes: his arm was faster than the seatbelt.
After she almost murdered him about seventy different ways, she finally snuggled into his shoulder and let him continue driving on into the night in the other direction.
…
On the way back north to Faulkner’s haunted mansion the next day, they took another detour and went through the Delta so they could see the place where Muddy Waters and all the other Delta blues greats like Mississippi John Hurt and hundreds or thousands of others are from. And they saw that the Delta now looks much like the Delta did then, and that every time two roads cross one really does think of Robert Johnson who made a deal with the devil at the crossroads so he could play so good. Homeric Mississippi is, by far, the poorest state in the Union and it is also, far and away, the place (if you had to choose one place) which has produced American music itself. Not only Muddy Waters but also Elvis Presley are from Mississippi. Without Muddy and Elvis, no rock and roll as we know it, without rock and roll as we know it no Beatles, without the Beatles no ’60s, without the ’60s no world as we know it now. Mississippi is the underdog, the lowliest one, the slave state of slave states, the most insulted and injured of all the states, the one place that looks more like Africa than any other state, too. And from here has come the one and only art form America ever truly invented other than the cinema and the short story (Poe again), rock and roll, of which rap and hip hop are only developments, extensions. As so often in life, it turns out the lowliest one is in many ways the greatest one of all, by far.
They rolled out of the Delta and back into Oxford, Mississippi, just as the sun was going down. Their mission now was to locate another cheap motel but first they spent a few hours that turned into a few more hours drinking, smoking, and telling tales to each other and others in the bars with the jukebox always being fed.
All the cheap motels seemed to have NO VACANCY signs a-glowing as they went out looking for a place to bed down for the night. It was past midnight by now, and she was worried he’d do something stupid like almost drive off the edge of the world into the abyss of night and chaos again. As they drove out toward the edge of town, both of them noticed a large, bright, white hotel lit up like something out of The Great Gatsby and with the bright-red VACANCY sign on.
They both walked into the lobby and literally were blown back in their tracks, stunned and terrified, when they saw what it was they saw, standing there in the lobby.
The four things they saw standing there in the lobby at first seemed like four creatures straight out of the Book of Revelation come to life out of nowhere. They almost looked like they could move, and like they were about to move, to pounce, that is.
It was four African lions, two males and two females, stuffed and kept in huge, massive, glinting glass cases.
The lions’ unexpected presence here made them so uncanny that both the main characters in this story suddenly felt like they’d entered Neverland and Wonderland simultaneously with their spirits jerked around into the sixth dimension.
Their paws were beyond massive. Their legs were so powerful it chilled your soul. Their bodies were so lean, huge and muscular that it was unbelievable. Their incredibly long tails stuck straight out behind them. The manes of the men were more impressive than anything humans have ever built and the faces of the ladies were so serious and serene that it was like being doused in holy water thrown in your face and eyes just looking at them.
The young man and the young woman who are the main characters of this story were crushed by the utter horror of the tragedy of these four lions killed and stuffed and stuck in glittering cases in the lobby of this Mississippi-Gatsby hotel. At the same time, the beauty of these creatures, even in death, even in this condition, was so profound that it was like entering a green primeval forest filled with sunlight to be in their presence, maybe even the Garden of Eden. And then they realized that the lions were in heaven. And then they knew that the four lions were angels.
The boy and girl, because they both had been transformed back into their even more youthful selves right now, both went around and around and around the four lions, again and again and again: studying the lions, talking to the lions, being terrified of the lions, being in awe of the lions, consoling the lions, asking forgiveness of the lions, reaching out as if to pet the lions, laughing with them, thanking them, praising them, then standing there silently holding hands and staring at the four lions. The sleepy desk clerk had disappeared somewhere when he realized these two were in their own little world and he didn’t care.
But then the desk clerk re-emerged and the two of them grew up again and were twenty-two and twenty-three again as they got a room, floated up three flights of stairs, floated down the hallway, found their white room, unlocked the white door, floated into the white room, and peacefully attacked each other. She fell down onto the gigantic bed with all the pillows behind her head while stripping off her shirt and he fell down gently into her arms after peeling off his own shirt and the waves came and the private magic started all over again, a private magic that cannot be described and will not be described and could never be described and shall never, ever be described and that would result in the birth of healthy, glowing twins when she was thirty-nine years old sixteen years later at which time the private magic, that kind of magic anyway, disappeared from the earth forever, gradually and then suddenly.
Let me repeat that: it disappeared from the earth (from their world) forever. Amor fati, Nietzsche’s great concept, means (in English) love of fate and one real thing it means is that we must love it when good things go away from us as much as we loved it when good things arrived, whether we like it or not. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what anyone supposed, said Walt Whitman. And luckier.
There are very many kinds of death in this world and one of those kinds is the death of your former self, and former selves, uncountable; but the ghosts of the past still live on in Mississippi.
The Drifter (Images by The Drifter)
(Dedicated to the useless gentrificationers of genuine pain)
Nobody wants to admit it
But we are ashamed of our past
‘I did not grow up poor in deep shit
And my fun parents made me laugh’
My happy childhood is the death of me
How dare my parents mock my artistry
Goddam daddy who didn’t drink
And mom who didn’t fuck the town
What was I supposed to think
When they failed to let me down
My happy childhood is the death of me
How dare my parents mock my artistry
Gramps didn’t stick his hands down my pants
Ain’t no hood profit in picket fence life
Credible people don’t stand a chance
Only the damned know how to bleed right
My happy childhood is the death of me
How dare my parents mock my artistry
(Artifacts of a past well remembered–both establishments these came from have been replaced by parking garages. The fuckers.)
(This is a neighbor whom I call “Da Blues.” He is a gregarious Russian Blue, his owner is very nice–but, for the love of God–do not dress your pets!)
(Pieces of the Twin Towers at The Evergreen Park 9-11 Memorial, Bremerton, WA)
“Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc.” – Leonard Cohen
Intro Note: The Reader does not need to know anything beforehand about the historical personages discussed in this text. Everything the Reader needs to know (for the purposes of this) is explained within the text.
When I die, if I ever do, I would like it to be, somewhat at least, in the manner of Susy Clemens and Jack Donne. I shall explain who I mean and what I mean in a moment.
First I want to say, for the record, that perhaps I would rather go more like Arthur Schopenhauer, the great German hermit philosopher, at least as I imagine it (based on the facts).
He sat down for breakfast in his mid-70s, which back then would’ve been like late 80s, at least, today. When his housekeeper came back in with his coffee (he lived alone, except for his housekeeper and poodle) s/he saw the great philosopher sitting there calmly in his chair, at the breakfast table, eyes closed, a smile upon his lips. The philosopher loved his coffee and the aroma of it always perked him up. The caretaker knew that the lonely, solitary and proud Schopenhauer had passed on when he didn’t reach for his coffee. “They” now call him the most pessimistic philosopher who ever lived. In truth, despite all his solitude and struggles, or because of them, the man had at some point turned into one of the happiest people who ever walked the planet, even though he was blatantly rejected by his own mother in front of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe himself. Schopenhauer could even compete with Buddha and Lao Tzu in that way. You can tell it from his late writings.
Suzy Clemens was Mark Twain’s oldest daughter. She was the one “most like him,” and the one he consequently fought with the most. She wrote a biography of her father when she was in her teens. She inspired some of his most memorable literary creations, if not some of his best work, such as his novel about Joan of Arc. He often compared Suzy to Joan and he almost felt like she was Joan reincarnated, and sometimes he even believed that literally (almost) she really was Joan, reincarnated. And she acted as a literary critic and editor for her father’s and for other’s works. She also wanted to be, and studied to be, an opera singer, which was like wanting to be a rock, pop, or rap singer today. She was often highly competitive with her father, believing that he could be (and often was) a windbag who took up too much air and too much space in the room. While everyone else was in awe of his overwhelming presence, she thought he was acting like a jackass at least half the time.
When the family left for Europe in 1896 (dad was big-time broke again and needed to make $ on a lecture tour), Suzy-Joan stayed behind, at the age of twenty-four. She contracted spinal meningitis. She spent her last days in a literal writing fever, creating a 46-page prose poem by hand that is terrifying, brilliant, and prophetic, by turns, and, with its stream-of-consciousness form, sometimes sounds like an early version of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, which wouldn’t even be written for another two decades. She wrote so hard and so fiercely during her final days here on Planet Earth that her caretaker (even lots of poor people had “caretakers” back then) did not think Suzy was even aware of how sick she was. She wandered around the rooms of her parents’ mansion and she hung out in their gigantic bed, the bed posts of which were angels. She remembered playing in this bed with her younger siblings when they were kids. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more, until her feverish fingers were worn out, the disease she was suffering from literally driving her on. She was possessed, driven, totally focused, a laser beam of the heightened writing mind, lost in her own written world. Eventually, after a few days, she collapsed into a stupor, then into a coma. She passed out of this mortal coil while sleeping. She was gone before her family was able to return to her across the Atlantic. Mark Twain had many good times from then on until he himself passed away in 1910. But he was never the same. No: he was never the same.
It was often said at the time (and has often been said in the centuries since) that there were two John Donnes. The first one was Jack Donne, the young rebel, satirist, lover, partier, drinker, soldier, practical joker, scholar, wanderer, sometimes ragged “man-about-town,” and poet. The second was Dr. Donne, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a center of London, great metropolis, largest city in the world at that time. Jack Donne did not want to become Dr. Donne, the Dean of St. Paul’s. But back then, when the King wanted you to do something, you did not say no. You could resist, if the King was fond of you, as this King was fond of John Donne. But in the end, you gave in to the wishes of the King or you had your head on a pike eventually instead. Donne was a survivalist, and he gave in to the King’s wishes eventually (after plenty of resistance). He didn’t want to end up like Sir Walter Raleigh or Christopher Marlowe, i.e. head removed or stabbed in the brain through the eye.
Later Donne realized that the King had been right about himself, and he himself had been wrong (about himself). Sometimes other people know us better than we know ourselves, even the King in some cases. Because Dr. Donne became famous in his own day as one of the greatest preachers not just England but all of Europe had ever produced. His sermons were hours-long, dramatic, driven, riveting affairs. Many men and some women gave hours-long, dramatic, driven sermons back then, but few were riveting like Donne’s were. He had attended the original productions of Shakespeare’s plays on a regular basis when Shakespeare still lived. Let me repeat that: Donne regularly attended the original productions of Shakespeare’s plays (such info as that requires pausing and brooding and marveling over, not glancing at it once, nodding the head, and back to scrolling the phone). Donne had learned the value and the techniques of the dramatic monologue and the now-famous soliloquy. His sermons became modern-day religious soliloquys that grappled with God as if God were not in the next room, but right there in front of him and everyone.
And everyone could tell, and knew, that Dr. Donne was dying as he climbed into the pulpit for the last time to deliver his final sermon. The fact that he was paler than a ghost, emaciated, and with hands trembling were just a few things that gave it away. This was also a man who’d recently posed for his own effigy, a statue that later disappeared into the basement of St. Paul’s before being returned to its pride of place a couple of centuries later. That is a cautionary tale about the reputations of great writers.
His last sermon was called “Death’s Duel.” In it, he ultimately extolled the figure of Jesus Christ, and said that if Christ could show us how to die, then the least we could do was die like he did, which meant (for Donne) bravely, fearlessly, or staring down the fear, conquering it. In certain gnostic texts, Jesus says, “It wasn’t ‘the real me myself’ who was crucified.” By this, he meant that there was something more in his spirit that rose above the mere body, far, far above the body. Socrates and Plato also believed the same thing.
Suzy Clemens and Dr. Donne both believed their illnesses were visitations from the Supreme Creator. Neither of them wanted to die, and they both struggled against it until their last breaths.
But also, for them, to them, and within them (this was what they believed), HE had finally arrived to take them home.
HER POEM: Suzy Clemens’ final, long, modernistic (before modernism existed) prose poem was partly addressed to a famous Spanish opera singer of the day, Maria Malibran, a figure who was very much akin to Lady Gaga, the best of Taylor Swift, and/or Amy Winehouse in our own day.
Here are seven sentences from Suzy’s (quite literally) death poem, a death poem that is riveting and even liberating, but not depressing. She wrote herself straight into the next life (or the eternal silence, whichever one prefers), literally; the lethal illness had been like an inspiriting drug:
“Greatness has no need of shunning.”
“She must give ear to these things not reluctantly but gladly.”
“They will inherit the greater darkness to come for this is retribution not vengeance.”
“She is a queen of God’s light but I am a queen of his darkness.”
“You cannot escape his creations.”
“The universe is united.”
“Love governs all thereby.”
Dale Barrigar
The following poem was composed by an old-man mystic with long white hair and a long white beard just before he disappeared into the mountains, for good:
“When the Tao prevails in the land /
The horses leisurely graze and fertilize the ground. /
When the Tao is lacking in the land /
War horses are bred outside the city. /
Natural disasters are not as bad as not knowing what is enough. /
Loss is not as bad as wanting more. //
Therefore the sufficiency that comes from knowing /
What is enough is an eternal sufficiency.”
This poem (#46 from the Tao Te Ching, see End Note re: the translator) was written 2,400 years or so ago, and it is as urgent and relevant now as the crumbling, fumbling, brutal, half-assed empire we see all around us right now in late June, 2026, when it will soon be the 250th b-day of the good ol’ United States of America. For the record, over two million people are currently incarcerated in the USA right now, the largest prison population of any nation on the Planet.
I reside in the middle of the country, which is to say the center of the nation, in more ways than one and to say I have an ambivalent relationship with Uncle Sam (personally) is the understatement of the century so far.
When it comes to the dreaded subject of politics these days, in many ways I follow one of my lifelong idols and heroes, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who railed against figures like Tricky Dick, Ronnie Rayguns, and the lethally boring George Bush/es from his well-known hide-out in the mountains of Colorado.
Anything but “politically correct,” Dr. Thompson was also anything but a Republican and he often saw the white man as the pure demon that is depicted in Moby Dick, Heart of Darkness, and The Great Gatsby, among other books penned by white men who were not afraid to critique and even attack (in writing) their so-called own kind.
My own hide-out is in an urban adjunct of Chicago on the second floor so I can see them coming. I don’t have a gun in here but I do have a large, wolf-like dog who knows karate and his two best friends. You will have to take all four of us out at once if you’re gonna get us.
Our current president is Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the George Bush Squad all mushed together and inflated to legendary proportions and with generous helpings of Nero and Mussolini thrown in. He is all that and more and he is even bigger than that in many ways, in truth. America has built him all on its own and he is utterly gigantic, like a hulking skyscraper, or like the Incredible Hulk who has somehow turned inexplicably orange instead of green (it can’t only be the make-up). You can also visit (no joke) the (online) Trump Store, which has made many, many millions of dollars during his presidencies selling things like gold sneakers, fake Bibles, three-thousand-dollar watches that were made for three bucks in China, and other wonderful items, like a guitar with bald eagles on it – also made in China. Many presidents have been lying pieces of shit, but never before have we had the privilege of having an actual snake oil salesman in the White House, until now.
You get what you deserve, that is, what you vote for. Profound ignorance rules the day as well as a certain FUCK-THIS (and fuck-you) attitude that comes from being treated like shit for so many years. (I admire his energy even as I am made nauseous by his motives and motivations.)
All I can say right now is that giving Donnie, aka the Fat Don, all the attention is everything of what he wants and nothing of what he deserves.
That goes for those who hate his guts as well as all those who love him to pieces.
END NOTE: Thank you to Charles Muller for his wonderful translation of the Tao Te Ching, 2005.
Dale Barrigar
They say Sappho may have been a kind of prostitute, at least some of the time. They say the same thing about Mary Magdalen. I can believe it, although I can’t say that I know it. If they were prostitutes, I know they did it with the same flair for originality with which they did everything else. ’Nuff said on that topic.
Because I don’t know if Sappho was a prostitute; but I do know that she said this:
“It is the Muses //
Who have caused me /
to be honored: they /
taught me their craft.”
Survival is the first art. You can’t create art when you’re dead, at least not here. Many artists have not created any real art because they have died inside. They have let the world kill them; or they have handed the world the sword it needed to do the deed. Survival is the first art, the hardest art, the longest art, and the last art of all. Without it, you simply cannot get anything done.
Learning the craft is the second art. Reading and writing must be mixed with equal parts real experience or it ain’t worth (and it won’t ever be worth) shit.
The third art is doing it. You find out that you thought you were doing it all along but you were not doing it all along, and far from it. You were doing what can be called “getting ready to do it.” Which is just as crucial, because you can’t do it eventually without the proper preparation.
Staying alive; learning how to; and doing it right when the right time arrives.
Never question The Muses, even in those moments when you know (somehow) they’re full of it. They are holy, and that’s all you need to know to keep you going, even if you enter the phase of “afterglow,” which is the fourth phase (if it ever comes) in which you can’t exactly do it any more but now you can bask in it. Many who think they are “going” are really just stuck down in the herd muck; running very successfully on the hamster wheel, as it were and is. It takes balance to stay on the hamster wheel, but it isn’t going anywhere. And that is nothing against hamsters; it is only to point out that they aren’t lionesses and lions. And it is absurd to pretend that they are. Even in a fake mane – he’s still a hamster. Even at the highest rungs. Even in the White House (or anywhere else they tell you is important, like the end of the hall where your boss resides).
END NOTE: Endless thank you/s to Mary Barnard (1909 – 2001), who made the translation of Sappho used in this commentary. Her translations possess an Emily Dickinson-like intimacy and idiosyncrasy which must also be contained, in a different way, in the fragments of Sappho.
Dale Barrigar
Sappho says this:
“Now, while we dance //
Come here to us, /
gentle Gaiety, /
Revelry, Radiance, //
and you, Muses /
with lovely hair”
The MOVEMENT in all sections of the poem is always to something new, from something that is fully defined. Progression, development, fulfillment, all in eighteen words.
The “dance” can be likened to what Nietzsche said about his hero Zarathustra, that his walk was a dance, that his walk was so lively that it recalled a dance and could be likened to a dance and that he danced that dance and walked that walk whether he was in town or out of it, once he had become himself, that is.
“Gentle Gaiety, Revelry, Radiance,” recalls Charles Baudelaire’s command to “Always be drunk! On wine, poetry, virtue, or what you will, but be drunk!” The wine itself isn’t important; the drunkenness is, an injunction which has inspired many august souls from Rimbaud to Dylan Thomas to William S. Burroughs and Bob Dylan. The wine itself (or the drugs, or the love) is never more than a means to an end.
And the end is THE MUSES, who are the ones with lovely hair.
Sappho and her cohorts all believed in the literal existence of “The Muses,” that is, they believed them to be gods, i.e. transcendent forces worthy of worship, eminently and ultimately worthy of worship, and therefore worthy of dying for, too, if that’s what it took.
They were only humans like us but because of what they believed and how they lived it, they may have been (among) the best of us.
END NOTE: Endless thank you/s to Mary Barnard (1909 – 2001), who made the translation of Sappho used in this commentary. Her translations possess an Emily Dickinson-like intimacy and idiosyncrasy which must also be contained, in a different way, in the fragments of Sappho.
Dale Barrigar
(Note: Whether he be DWB, Dale Williams Barrigar, Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar or never seen at the same time as the Drifter, we are pleased to show work by Dale Barrigar!)
Hello! The Tao Te Ching says this:
“Greatness entails transcendence. /
Transcendence entails going-far. /
Going-far entails return.”
“Greatness” here is a you-choose type of situation.
Whether it be in dispensing the milk of human kindness, creating art that will outlive your own time, becoming the most passionate football or Taylor Swift fan who ever looked out over fields or stage, or any other area of endeavor, greatness is up to the one who wishes to become great, entirely. When the definition of “great” is in the right ballpark, then the wishing-to-become-great becomes already-in-itself an aspect of greatness. Not all of us, and probably not even most of us, will truly be able to reach our so-called goal/s here in this life. That is as it has been, as it should be, and as it ever shall be, too.
The important thing is to have a goal that is NOT an end-point destination. The important thing is to want greatness, and to live like it. And to not let them tell you otherwise. Or if they do tell you otherwise (and they will), not to believe them. Giving someone a silent stare and then turning around and walking away is the greatest rebuff I can ever imagine.
“Transcendence” here means to rise above your worst self here in this world (and all that entails). If you’re looking to get to heaven in the afterlife, it should console you to know that all the major religions say (in one way or another) that the way to get to heaven in the afterlife is to transcend your worst self here, in this life. It’s akin to what the great psychologist Carl Jung meant in a mostly secular sense when he talked about confronting, and mastering, your own dark side. And for Jung, such behavior also led to modern spiritual enlightenment.
“Going-far” can be seen in the phrase “going the distance,” which means finishing the fight, finishing the journey, NOT BEING A QUITTER. No Quitters Allowed. And there is nothing to quit from when you realize that your goal is the way you live your life every day, NOT a specific destination like winning a prize, making a million bucks, becoming “famous,” or any of the other ephemeral and illusory trappings that are pushed so hard by our Consumer/ist Society, where the Almighty Dollar is the one and only real religion. It simply isn’t true, at all, that only the rich and famous are worth anything.
What it means to “return” is up to you to decide. And the decision, once made, should never be final.
The word entail = that it has to be there, that it cannot not be there, and that if it is not there, the whole thing falls apart. And at that point, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world – your world, that is. Your own private world, which is where it all begins, and ends, now, yesterday, tomorrow, and forever. Never let The Algorithm tell you otherwise!
END NOTE: Thank you to Charles Muller for his wonderful translation of the Tao Te Ching (2005).
Dale Barrigar
Saragun Springs 