Good luck, and thanks for all the fish!

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The Bunker* is one of the major sites of Beat History, the downtown NYC lair of William Burroughs. Two others I can think of: The Six Gallery** where Howl was first read aloud by Allen Ginsberg. The third is the Beat Hotel in the Latin quarter of Paris,***, where Gregory Corso lived in the attic, Burroughs & Brion Gysin discovered the cut-up method with an accidental slice of newsprint, and Allen Ginsberg passed through at the end of the 1950s.

photograph by James Grauerholz

With only Gary Snyder remaining among us, we now must rely on younger friends of the Beats for any direct history. Stewart Meyer hung out at the Bunker quite a bit from 1978 to 1983. This was New York City’s hey-day of punk bands — as well a wide wave of heroin use. Elsewhere in NYC, photographer Nan Goldin’s polaroids capture the baked eyes of cool kids, some on their way to the grave. Junk packets traveled with different colored tape throughout Alphabet City, with names like Black Sunday or Toilet.

Meyer kept good notes, so that much of his recorded (untaped) comments of Burroughs have the stamp of authenticity. The Bunker was a nexus of the who’s who of hip when Meyer spent time there. Meyer gives a vivid account of this converted YMCA, a windowless white-painted concrete, well, bunker, replete with a leftover urinal. The way in was through a steel-plated door; once inside, one felt safe from the scuzzy urban decay of the Bowery.

According to Meyer, Burroughs had returned to opiates after more than 15 years of abstinence. Bill’s books of the sixties describe a successful apomorphine junk cure (a “metabolic regulator”). While reading him on the West Coast at the time, I thought he was still clean, at least of opioids. The new truth slowly leaked out, just as James Grauerholz (RIP), his assistant and editor, whisked Bill away to Lawrence, Kansas before something really serious happened. Meyer’s recollections show that the Kansas move was more drawn out than I had thought, with Grauerholz moving there first, setting up camp, and enticing Burroughs to follow.

Given junk’s prevalence in and out of the Bunker, it is of no surprise that Meyer himself developed a junk habit (he claims from eating opium, not shooting up). Early on, Meyer describes himself as straight. His comfort among so many exclusively homosexual men (Bill, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno and Grauerholz among others) never comes up in the book. Nobody asked Burroughs about his sex life. Grauerholz was Burroughs’ former lover, unmentioned. Other lovers of record, (such as Cabell McLean and Marcus Ewert) probably passed through the Bunker at this time, but discreetly. Bill first comes across as simply enjoying Meyer’s company. However, Brion Gysin, Bill’s co-creator of the Cut-up Method (and also gay), treats Meyer with haughty disinterest, a predictable response. Frequent guest Allen Ginsberg might have given a more objective read on the Burroughs/Meyer relationship.
Ginsberg, had surprisingly little to say of his forays through the Bunker, but the description of his relationship as student to Bill’s teacher is spot-on.

Meyer had zero interest in Buddhism, (which Ginsberg and Giorno studied seriously at this point) and neither did Burroughs. But Ginsberg always felt Burroughs was a fellow traveler in Buddhism with his “homemade yankee tantra.” Burroughs himself admits a similarity when describing his Do Nothing technique, which allows writing to spontaneously arise. Burroughs later describes John Giorno rushing about, getting ready for his teacher, “the Dalai Lama.” In fact, this would have been Dudjom Rinpoche. Burroughs’ audience with Dudjom Rinpoche on the other half of 222 Bowery (eventually called Yeshe Nyingpo) is described in Matthew Levi Stevens’ Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs. Burroughs was interested in the magical powers lamas such as Ginsberg’s teachers, Rinpoches Chogyam Trungpa and Gelek, supposedly have. Burroughs had a real relationship with Trungpa because of the time he spent teaching at Naropa Institute (later University).

Meyer gives a great sketch of Herbert Huncke, the world’s most famous junkie, when enters the Bunker. Huncke’s original connection with the Beats was through Burroughs; Huncke gave Burroughs his first shot of morphine. Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg were fascinated by Huncke and his tales of the criminal underworld. The three of them often hung out drinking coffee in a number Times Square automats (self-service restaurants with giant banks of vending machines dispensing sandwiches and such, open 24 hours), all long gone. As the story goes, Huncks arrived one night to meet them, sat down and declared,”Man, am I beat.” Kerouac replied, it is said, “I guess we’re a beat generation.” The rest is history.

Huncke, amazingly, lived to the ripe old age of 81; Billy Burroughs Junior’s life was unfortunately a short one. He drank his liver into oblivion, had a liver transplant, and continued to drink until he destroyed that one too. It killed him in 1981, only 34 years old. Billy was the son of Burroughs and Joan Volmer, who died (supposedly) in a William Tell stunt with Burroughs and pistol in Mexico City in 1951, aged 28. Billy’s death was felt all through the Bunker. He had shown some real promise as a writer, completing three novels and two memoirs; my favorite is the posthumously published Cursed At Birth.

During the five year run covered in The Bunker Diaries, Meyer gets divorced and meets his future second wife, Jenny. By the end of the half decade, the book is dominated by his efforts to complete his novel, eventually published as The Lotus Crew, which I found to be very good, not merely Burroughs-derivative, but 100% a reflection of Meyer’s personality. Besides the similarity in subject matter (dope), I enjoyed the precise, often metaphorical imagery. It also suggests that Burroughs intuited Meyer’s talent from the beginning, which gives a better understanding of what Bill liked about him.

The Diaries ends with Burroughs permanently ensconced in Lawrence. He was done with NYC and didn’t like being separated from his cats. I know the feeling.

William S. Burroughs very much admired
(Black’s name likely inspired the current comic actor). Burroughs’ wisdom is in line with the stoicism of Jack Black’s 1926 criminal memoir You Can’t Win, equanimity born from confronting the “algebra of need.” Situation hopeless, but workable. Stewart Meyer has not published another novel after his good luck run. The ups and downs, “the slings and arrows” of good fortune and good drugs, are possibly still his demons.

Good luck with them, sir.

*222 Bowery, NYC
**3115 Fillmore St. San Francisco, original space gone.
***9 Rue Git-le-Coer

Marc Olmsted

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Around an hour later, at the classic lunch counter in town, they began knowing each other. The conversation was rich, lively. Out of this world. Almost supernaturally easy. Before this counter lunch, all the girls in the world had gone out of their way to avoid him––treated him like the worst disease available.

He was fifteen years old. He’d unfortunately long ago resorted to pornography, softcore and hardcore. What! For he had no choice!

See, he’d always struggled with his weight, and that was such the crux of the issue. She’d always struggled with kids her own age. They were useless imbeciles. They were beyond insufferable.

She didn’t mind his overweightedness––yeah, she was mature; she had character; she saw his character. She liked all of him all at once. It was really so very one hundred percent.

He could not believe his good fortune—oh, the supernatural out-of-this-worldness!

Her childhood was a pretty good time. She grew up in a fun-loving classic rock environment. Things were soft and simple in a groovy and understanding way. It was easy peaceful niceness.

His childhood was a disappointing disaster. He grew up in a satanic heavy metal environment. Things were sinister, then diabolical. Ultimately though, it was quite boring.

But the day after the lunch counter, he went to fat camp. His parents woke him in the night. You’re fucking going, his father whispered as he pecked his son’s forehead. It was all paid for.

They forced him into the trunk for the ride up to the fat camp. This was only for fun. His parents loved forcing things into the trunk. On the way into the trunk he begged and pleaded and begged some more.

Oh, and he screamed, as hard as he could. He screamed.

With him in the trunk––not there to bother them––his parents actually laughed like parents laugh.

That summer, she went to rock camp. Her parents hadn’t forced her. Her parents hadn’t laughed at her. And no trunk, of course. Her older brother came along for fun. In the backseat, she saw the hills and valleys. Ducklings were paddling in ponds. The circumstances were perfectly lovely.

Their relationship had been cut short. And he was devastated.

And she was devastated, too, but in a somewhat curious, slightly funny way she couldn’t even begin to articulate, like she’d hit her funny bone, or something like that.

That summer, she pounded the skins, and he put the weight behind him.

And then! Home and together again. The relationship survived the intermission.

Her rock camp had allowed her all the contact with the outside world she wanted. Contact with the outside world was verboden at fat camp. They knew to pick up right where they left off––the classic lunch counter. It was magic, pure instinct.

And of course, he didn’t tell his sick fuck parents about her. He swore not to. They’d surely interfere. They’d refuse to not interfere. They’d find a way to ruin things. It’d be too easy and fun for them.

Right right right—that bad bad weight: gone.

Still. The girl did not care. Really. Like at all. Because she was a saint.

Back at the lunch counter, they got around to getting to know each other all over again.

And so after some painless and delightful small talk and some painless and delightful large talk, they got around to taking each other’s virginities.

Goodness. Gracious. He was a natural in bed. She could not help but take notice. Or, rather, wonder at it. Had the weight loss paid off in this way? Physics and such? The law of gravity? Skinny people must be better at sex? She was thinking. She loved thinking dearly.

He enjoyed her nudity very much. He wanted her nudity to be his future. How could he not? She was a good looking girl. Great body. Terrific personality. Full blown go-getter. And she loved him. Made him feel acceptable, gave him the feeling of family. It was fair to say they were absolutely besotted with each other.

They were happy. They were happy. They were happy. They were happy.

Well, until she wasn’t. Four years later, when she resolved to break up with him, she was practically furious. It was spring, and she remembered that women are future directed. More than men––much more than them. She had wasted the last four years. She’d only just realized. It had occurred to her like that. He was the source. Her boredom, her frustration. The waste of space.

He had nothing going on. He wasn’t even a college dropout. He hadn’t even made it to trade school. Had the thinness gone to his head? His bong collection certainly had. Nothing new had happened. He’d just suddenly driven her to the edge in less than sixty seconds: degeneration, accelerated.

Sure, the sex had gotten better and better through the years.

Sexually speaking, they were still putting each other in the hospital, night after night after night. She couldn’t care less about her sex life at this moment, though. That was how she’d felt about his weight problem, remember? The sex wasn’t worth it. What a hardcore bore. What a lazy… motherfucker!

She called him up after her neuropsychology class. She couldn’t even wait until after his birthday. She screamed and screamed and screamed. She felt out of control. She felt exhilarated.

And she broke up with him, and broke up with him, and broke up with him, and broke up with him. She even brought up a lunch date he’d been late to a year ago. She even hung up on him. She wasn’t some dumb dyslexic blonde. She was a talented warrior. She possessed the most special potential.

They were now very badly broken up. It took him a few minutes to register what had happened. It was too late in the spring to be this badly broken up.

Terribly alone in his apartment, he stared out the window. He saw litter, cans and bottles on the street. He saw worse.

He pounded his chest. He loved these useless battle cries.

What an asshole! he cried to himself.

Except that doesn’t make sense because a woman cannot be an asshole.

He even stuck a knife in the TV.

That knife had been seen on TV.

That was another thing that bothered her so much: his anger management strategies were extremely poor.

God. Jesus. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck it all to murderous death.

He wanted to burn money. There was no money to burn.

He wanted to slip through grasps. There were no grasps to slip through.

He wanted to pinch his sex organ. Okay! There certainly was a sex organ to pinch! Ow!

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to shake the pain. The loneliness and lovelessness were already spreading aggressively.

And then! He pocket dialed her! Straight to voicemail! How terribly embarrassing!

And then. She died. Later that day. After she broke up with him. Seriously.

Her brother was the one to call him. Her parents couldn’t come to the phone. Her family wasn’t aware of the breakup. They’d always loved and accepted him because their daughter did.

It was one of those deeply regrettable freak accidents. It happened in student parking. The vintage tan sports car belonged to a reflexologist. She was blonde, dyslexic, and a very recovered alcoholic.

It was too much for the boy to take.

Had she registered his pocket dial?

He had mostly no idea what to make of anything… He couldn’t even believe she wasn’t breathing somewhere.

His eyes landed on a destroyed copy of The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell by Oren Harari resting on the kitchen floor.

The kitchen was filthy. Disgusting. You know the way boys get. His kitchen was worse than his family, almost.

Then: At Home Dementia Care: Real Life Strategies from One Caregiver to Another To Create a Safe, Meaningful and Loving Home Environment for Everyone by M.E Roberts.

Why was he living with these books? Where had they come from? Her?

Goddamn. He wanted to complain. He couldn’t begin to complain. He wanted to take his last breath. He couldn’t take it. He wanted to press her ghost up against the wall and then fall apart all over it.

She’d fucked his head. She’d sucked his soul. Back to back, by way of tornado. What in the living hell was her problem?

Down on the kitchen floor, his back against the cabinets: his eyes found a framed picture of her with him.

He was dizzy with shame. He’d wasted her time. He’d devoured her final years. He’d ruined her.

He was breathing like a bitch. He started talking suicide to himself.

He wanted to drive to the bridge. He wanted to get out of his car. He wanted to jump. He wanted to hit the water. He wanted to break every bone in his body.

Wait.

Hold on.

Maybe this was one of those turn-your-life-around situations? Maybe it could be?

Like, that’s life, right? He was thinking again. He was ghastly at thinking. You take the information, and you use it, she would tell him.

Okay.

He remembered the sixer in the fridge.

Those ice cold boys.

Okay!

Maybe everything would be okay… Basically, he thought, after a difficult childhood, this is what happens…?

His father was an evil dictator.

The teenage babysitters had flirted with his father, and his father had flirted back. After sufficient flirting, his father had sex with the babysitters. His father always used to say that the father next door, the one who’d gone faggot a while back, was jealous of his babysitters.

His mother was completely useless, idle. All she did was laugh, laughing was all she did.

He was not seeing his parents these days. And that was progress. And! Hey! At least he’d gotten laid! At least he’d ditched the weight!

This guy he’d found online was coming over to remove his eyebrow piercing––soon and for free, too.

He cracked his knuckles and did nine push-ups.

Oh, look! Standing in the doorway! The ghost he knew! She said, “Come on! Feel the family!” She was pounding her chest above the breasts.

He would be attending her funeral, without a doubt, no problem there, and that would be the beginning of a clean, fresh start. And nobody would know what she screamed on the phone––nobody would ever have to know. He was making promises now. Everything would be fine. Just fine.

–Myles Zavelo

The post After the Lunch Counter appeared first on My Site.

again I thought I would hear your prayer before we ate – I don’t miss the terrible food you made me eat at that shitty place you liked and yep you wouldn’t like that I said shitty but well there it is – I it’s not a curse word—shitteeee- I did not – still don’t like the place but thinking about how much I miss you you almost had me walking back through the doors one day just to sit in memory of you. miiiissss you————Yeoh I almost drove up, parked and then my better senses got hold of me and and I couldn’t bring myself to do it – like I know I would sit and cry and cry and cry cry all the tears I did not cry at your funeral – blue-blues

I still haven’t worn the blue sweater you gave me – keep waiting for a special time – guess I won’t wear it now – I miss you, pretty laughter, honesty soft integrity, intelligence – sad eyes missing – You the the person who got me I needed blues, jazz, you got to hum off-key – that stuff I did not say a word off-key – I miss you more than I miss my favorite saxophone player – E-Flat!!! that’s saying something…

you got my jazz
I miss your walk

walking slow like you used to

I miss our music

I am glad the birds

still sing outside my window- glad—–

[I need music- you gone-]

–Edna Lyons

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In general, Matt’s thoughts send me back to many earlier interests including particle physics and information theory, as well as various spiritualist and occult thinkers I have encountered, some of them coming out of the theosophical tradition that includes Madama Blavatsky. Books like Annie Besant’s Thought Forms, and Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, address ideas about vibration, thought and manifestation that are similar to those Matt speaks about. He also references Taoism and there are even echoes of Alan Watts’ esoteric writings on Christian Mysticism. So there’s a lot to think about in this slim volume.

The Mystery School

The book’s title, Black Mystery School Pianists, points us toward both historical and esoteric reflections on African-American piano playing, jazz, and improvisation. The title essay establishes a category which, like all categories, is somewhat porous, or as Matt says “illusionary.” He focuses on Black musicians but adds that non-Black musicians can be entered this category. However, he is following a specific lineage here, one that is very important to him personally, and he uses the metaphor of a branching tree to illustrate the pathways this coded mystery school language takes across the field of influence and the generations: “…there is a definitive tree-like formation that has seemed more often than not to go down a certain path.”

The common bond between these Black Mystery School musicians is their defiance of standard jazz tropes, academic or otherwise. The names will be familiar to most: Thelonious Monk (the father of the Mystery School), Mal Waldron, Randy Weston, Hassan Ibn Ali, Horace Silver, Andrew Hill, Horace Tapscott, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor. The title essay discusses why these players in particular belong to the Mystery School, but the book also discusses players who are not necessarily of this school, such as David Ware, Roscoe Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, Paul Bley, Dennis Sandole.

The Mystery of the Mystery School

For the purposes of this review, I will differentiate “mystery” from “mysticism,” only because it helps me organize my thoughts concerning the ideas presented in this book. Mystery, for me, implies the maintenance of a secret (intended or otherwise), while Mysticism is an active process, or to put it another way, mystery is an occultation of knowledge while mysticism is a process of spiritual and psychic integration. In most cases, they serve one another, as when mystery protects the mystical process from the unserious or uninitiated.

Why Mystery? Matt writes that the word ‘mystery’:

“implies a secret code, passed through an underground way of passage, a language outside the mainstream of jazz….” (21)

and which is resistant to “academic codification.” This coded language includes both phrasing and notation, but also the construction of a form of expression that fulfills the musician himself, but also communicates non-verbally to the uninitiated, or at least those willing to open themselves up to what is being transmitted. Unlike the languages of secret societies these codes are highly individual, iconoclastic, and they are transmitted via the player’s own invented techniques.

The audience for this music does not need to have technical knowledge or even understand the symbolism, such as it is, in order to be affected or to appreciate the artistry. I would call attention to when you hear a language that you do not understand—you can appreciate the musicality and the emotion of it without knowing the grammar or syntax or even exactly what is being said. This type of experience might even feel superior to one that is burdened with specific technical knowledge or meaning.

As a personal example, a lot of Western opera is sung in Italian, French or German and there are well-known Eastern forms such as Chinese and Natya Sangeet of the Indian tradition. I don’t understand what is being said when I hear these, but in some way that lack of understanding enhances my appreciation. In fact, I never liked opera that was sung in English, it took away the “mystery” of the experience and even distracted from the dynamism of the work. I also find opera lyrics to be cliched and corny. Another example might be the art of Alchemy, which is highly symbolic. I can appreciate its strangeness as an aesthetic value without needing to know what the symbolism means. In fact, it might be better not to know. The same goes for music, you don’t need to know the names of the notes played or the key signature in order to feel its emotional power.

Zero, Tao and the Void

More than half of the book discusses particular musicians, but quite a bit of it gets into Matt’s esoteric thoughts about his own playing and improvisation. And here we move from the “mystery” of the coded transmission to the “mysticism” of practice, which for Matt, has much to do with the duality of the void. In the chapter “Zero Lecture,” Matt writes about the void in Taoist terms:

“When I talk about zero, I am talking about my relationship to the void.”

Later, he says:

“Well, I like the void. I like Lao Tzu. Voidness is emptiness. Emptiness is fullness. Improvisation, to me, is voidness.” (77)

How does this relate to his playing? He immerses himself in the dialectic between form and formlessness, which has a generative nature. The universe is vibrational and vibration generates form. “Vibration in a vacuum generates an eternal pulse.” He adds that for such a pulse to communicate, it must be shaped into phrases.

“For the pulse is a continuum and must be broken (into) phrases if it will transmit a discursive meaning to listeners.” (77)

He adds that, despite the psychic fulfillment this can give, it can also produce a sense of religious dread, and he wonders as to the cause of this feeling. Here he takes the interesting additional step of extending this analogy, by relating Taoism to Christian Mysticism: The Word is vibration within the Void. The Word made Flesh results in the Incarnation of Christ.

“The logos. Greek word, for word. I assume some of you have a Christian background, so you are familiar with the phrase in John 1 about the incarnation of Christ, and the word was made flesh, and the word dwelled among us. Is that communicating a very similar feeling that the Tao Te Ching does? Vibration to form, non-form to form”

Sounds like it to me. And the word was made flesh.

In a similar transitional process, the vibrational universe is made physical in the act of playing the piano. Matt describes himself as both a conduit for these vibrations and an interpreter of them, facilitating the move from void to vibration to the physical act of pushing down piano keys to produce his “language.” He believes all pianists, and all improvisational musicians in general, are drawing from this same cosmic pool of vibrations, generating their own language from this primordial meta-language.

Void and Improvisation

If we define mystical practice as that by which one finds a path of merging with a greater truth, we can include various spiritual processes—e.g., Qawwali singing, Gregorian or Tibetan chanting, ecstatic Sufi dancing, or any other physical activity specifically meant to lift the mind out of the physical. For Matt Shipp this activity is “pressing the keys on the piano,” specifically improvisation, where he feels not only that he is channeling the LOGOS, and vibrational language of the universe, but he becomes it — he leaves his limited human self and becomes an agent for something outside and beyond himself.

For Matt, opposites are interdependent — the duality of silence and sound, vibration and stillness. Without Void as a contrast there can be no music, and without music there can be no Void. Thus, improvisation implies Voidness. For the silence of the Void is always there, behind the music. He even speaks of the notes he plays as building a temple for silence. As an improvisor he plays the oppositions inherent in creation, building a sacred architecture that shelters the highest form of music, which is silence.

Esoteric Origins

Here it is worth looking at the mythological origins of Matt Shipp as a piano player. He writes that, when he was a kid, he was instructed by an angel who taught him a complete system of mathematics, on which he would base his musical language, allowing him to improvise to infinity. This angel implants itself in his brain generating the rhythm and the notes he will play. When this happens, he becomes, effectively, one with an alternate 4th dimensional personality whom he calls Mr. Chromosome. This Mr. Chromosome, his muse and guardian angel grows inside him like a musical cancer, creating a pressure to be expressed in music. This all may sound a little far-out, (or as Yuko Otomo writes: Sci-Fi); the point being that he is drawing from a deeper source than logic or reason, something beyond or before our staid notions of cause and effect.

Another reference to his personal spiritual origins occurs in a short essay titled, “I Have No Influences,” in which Matt describes his relationship with God and the piano as beginning before time.

“I have no influences — I existed together with god and the piano before time began—my piano playing is the direct result of the fact that my mind and the cosmic mind that sustains the universe are in harmony ….” (41)

There he becomes attuned to the pool of vibrations whereby, in his human manifestation, he is able to intercept frequencies directly from the mind of God. In some sense all improvising pianists are resonating with this cosmic brain in their effort to construct who they are or want to be. Improvisation is prayer and meditation, a form of trance, wherein the LOGOS is made flesh through the process of playing, it is how the player finds or makes himself.

Jazz and Boxing

Throughout the book Matt emphasizes the physicality of playing, and how the impulse to push down the keys comes from a confrontation with the vibrational energy of the universe and the need to channel, it, to shape it. Nowhere is this physicality more explicit than in the comparison between jazz improvisation and boxing, a comparison that seemed at first, incongruous to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense as both activities are extremely physical improvisations.

“A kinetic chess game—signals being translated at the speed of light—what is the essence of jazz and what is the essence of the killer instinct as defined in Boxing? A text of the manipulation of signals in a dance of gestures, can both boxing and jazz be seen as a dance?” (27)

Fighting and playing a musical instrument are both a dance of gestures involving reflexes and rhythm, action and reaction, the ability to shape and reshape and explore new possibilities.

“The body becomes poetry in motion whether through the keyboard or in the ring.”

The esoteric meets the physicality of the nervous system and the motion of the body acting and reacting.

In jazz, this dialogue, this dance is most obvious in the jazz duet, but it is also apparent in the solo improvisation. You can hear it in the music—the delicacy mixed with the rumble, a base line stomping about beneath the often delicate flights of notes, the dialogue of action and reaction, approach and flight, offer and refusal or acceptance, but the fight, or dialogue if you will, is with his various selves, his own ideas.

Another thing that I think relates to boxing, although this is not expressly stated, is that there can no rest in the fight itself. Once in the thick of it, falling into a pattern or predictable cliché leaves the fighter vulnerable. The improvisor also has to keep the dance going until the bell ends the round, or the improvisation is ended. by the player. Predictable patterns or familiar cliches can be seen as a form of musical rope-a-dope, which can signal submission or even defeat of creativity.

Conclusion

A subject that comes up throughout the book is the question of what exactly is “jazz” and what is Matt Shipp’s relation to it. The concept itself is questionable. At one point he claims he has mutated out of jazz. At another time he says: “Jazz does not exist.” Elsewhere he writes:

“As far as jazz is, I personally don’t give a fuck about it. Jazz means nothing to me. It’s a word. It’s an alphabet. A set of symbols. A symbol system used to explore the psyche to get at something.” (76)

What the something is just might be the silence and eternity of the Void.

“I would not push one note down on the instrument if I could portray my position in the void in my head space without playing. When playing, I am aiming for that silence. I am aiming for that meditational space where formlessness becomes form, where nothingness becomes something.” (83)

In the essay, “The Algebra of Non Jazz,” he writes:

“I am an actor doing what universal energy calls me to do—pushing down certain vectors of piano poetics on the keyboard. It—(the act and process) and I exist for no reason, we do what we do because there seems to be a desire for it to be done.” (71)

Where does that desire come from? I don’t know. But I’ll end with a quote the Tao Te Ching:

(Lao Tzu, trans. Steven Mitchell)

–Carl Watson

The post Black Mystery School Pianists (and other writings) by Matt Shipp – reviewed appeared first on My Site.

Ishmael Reed: My mother, Thelma V. Reed, wrote a book called Black Girl From Tannery Flats. The book is about her growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and how she became part of the migration to the North. Though her book was praised, she saw her greatest achievement as that of organizing two strikes, single-handedly, that benefited her fellow Black women workers. That’s why it was disappointing to see her slandered by Alice Walker, leader of an anti-Semitic womanist cult in a book called Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, published by Simon & Schuster. My late mother wrote as well as Walker, but she didn’t have a powerful patron like Gloria Steinem to promote her book. Toni Morrison said Gloria Steinem was responsible for the success of The Color Purple.

Regarding what inspired my writing, I found that for Black people, it’s one way we can express ourselves in a society where others tell our stories and define us. The late Bill Moyers said that the opinion industry was dominated by “straight white men.” He’s right.

I was sixteen when I was published by the great A.J. Smitherman, a leader in a revolt against lynching in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921. I was a printer’s devil at his Buffalo newspaper, The Empire Star.

JW: Are there any authors who have influenced you?

IR: I’ve been influenced by authors, musicians, and painters. My novel, Flight To Canada, was influenced by two Black writers, Henry Bibb and William Wells Brown. They were former slaves who escaped from the plantation. The book, for which I coined the term “Neo Slave Narrative,” was seen as a commercial failure when it was published. Scribner’s will publish the 50th anniversary edition of the book in 2026.

JW: You are also a musician playing what you called “Conjure” music. Have you always liked Jazz music?

IR: Kip Hanrahan, head of the recording company American Clavé, asked leading Jazz musicians to compose music based on poetry and songs found in my book of poetry, Conjure, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1972. In 1982, there was a concert at the Public Theater in New York. Three CDs (“Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed, 1984 &1995,” was made by the musicians who participated in the Public Theater concert; followed by “Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon, 1988 & 1995”; and “Conjure Bad Mouth, 2005”) were produced by American Clavé as a result of the collaboration, and there have been concerts in Europe, England and Japan. The last performance was at the Sardinia Jazz Festival in 2012.

At the age of 60, I began studying Jazz piano. In 2005, I produced my first Jazz album, “For All We Know” (Konch Records, 2007) with The Ishmael Reed Quintet consisting of Roger Glenn, flutist, Carla Blank on violin, Chris Planas on guitar, myself on piano, and featuring David Murray, the tenor saxophonist. Since then, I have produced my own compositions on “The Hands of Grace,” (Konch Records, 2022) again featuring flutist Roger Glen, Carla Blank, with poet Tennessee Reed. The title piece was inspired by designer Grace Wales Bonner. “The Jazz Martyrs” is about to be released to Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Michael Enchaniz performs my original composition on piano. David Murray performs on the saxophone as I read the poem “The Jazz Martyrs.” I was inspired to write this poem upon learning that some of our great Jazz musicians didn’t reach the age of 40.

I also produced the CD “Blues Lyrics by Ishmael Reed,” (Konch Records, 2023) accompanied by the West Coast Caravan of All Stars, featuring Ronnie Stewart and David Murray. I’m composing more music. Through David, I have had Gregory Porter, Cassandra Wilson, Macy Gray, and Bobby Womack perform my songs.

JW: What was the reaction to Mumbo Jumbo, your first book?

IR: Mumbo Jumbo was also considered a commercial failure when it was published in 1972. Its 50th anniversary was observed in 2022 with a special edition published by Scribner Books. The headline of the book is that there is something about Black culture that causes mass hysteria, whether it be Rock and Roll, a term used by Zora Neale Hurston in 1934, or Woke. William Melvin Kelley, the Black novelist, defined “Woke” as the inability of outsiders to keep abreast of Jazz jargon and idioms, such as “Can you dig it?” The concept has been twisted by people like right-wing Christopher Rufo to mean that anything Black, D.E.I., or Critical Race Theory is Willie Horton with a cap and gown, and the reason that the Republican party will become extinct is because running against Blacks and Browns will eventually become an exhausted political strategy.

JW: Have race relations changed in the age of technology?

IR: I’ve learned a lot from Facebook, where Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American scholars, writers, and historians present views that are absent from the mainstream media. Now there are more virtual outlets, like Substack. At the same time, racists have been provided with more space to malign minorities. AI can be used to reduce the cost of filmmaking, allowing minorities to define themselves without relying on intermediaries. Also, cyberspace has provided me with the opportunity to publish a zine, Konch, that’s competitive with the mainstream media. It can be found at ishmaelreedpub.com.

I think that white supremacy is probably permanent among those who follow a white nationalist leader like Donald Trump. If these followers cared about future generations, they wouldn’t have elected a climate denier. Instead, their current Health Secretary threatens the health of their children, and the lax gun laws have led to guns becoming the leading cause of their children’s deaths. I termed the Trump followers a cult probably before anybody else. Members of cults will make any sacrifice to please the charismatic leader. So as not to offend their MAGA customers, the corporate media line has been that MAGAs voted for Trump out of economic concerns. This has been refuted by a study I cite in my CounterPunch article entitled “Calling Kamala Harris a Whore Won the Election for Trump.”

JW: Do you consider creating your music and art different than your writing? Is writing a different experience?

IR: Audiences are more receptive to music than to reading, which can be hard work. I’ve written over 10 plays, which have provided Black actors with roles that differ from those available to them from film and television. My plays are ignored by the mainstream media because they make 72 percent of theater goers who can afford to buy tickets uncomfortable. At the end of 2025, four plays of mine will have been mounted in New York, Chattanooga, Berkeley, and San Francisco. About 100 people, performers, crew, etc. were employed. My novels are published by a Canadian publisher. This was after hatchet jobs sponsored by feminists at The New York Times, who felt that I was encroaching upon territory they had preserved for Toni Morrison, who was my friend. New York publishers stopped publishing my novels. Fortunately, the Late John O’Brien stepped in and published two. He said he’d publish my works, regardless of sales. I still can get my poetry published in places like The New Yorker magazine and The Academy of American Poetry.

JW: What was your greatest moment like?

IR: Having a great partner, Carla Blank, and two daughters, both of whom had to overcome obstacles. My oldest daughter, Timothy Reed, died at 60. She published one novel, Showing Out, which was produced off-Broadway as a play, and left two unpublished novels, which we are editing. Tennessee, my other daughter, has a thriving literary career. She published her first book at the age of 11. She’s president of PEN Oakland and managing editor of Tar Baby, published by the Toni Morrison Foundation. Her most recent book of poetry was called Califia Burning (Dalkey Archive, 2020). Carla Blank has not only directed my plays in the United States and China, but has a distinguished career as an essayist, having been nominated twice for awards from The Los Angeles Press Club. Her latest book is A Jew In Ramallah, about her directing a play in Ramallah that included Syrian and Palestinian actors.

I am also pleased with my international receptions. I’ve received good receptions from audiences after studying Japanese, Hindi, and Yoruba. I learn enough of these languages to apply them to my work, but then I forget them. At an appearance at the Blue Note in Tokyo, I couldn’t reach the fourth line of a song I wrote in Japanese without applause from the audience. When I read a poem I’d written in Yoruba, an audience of Nigerian writers showed their enthusiasm. My novel, Japanese By Spring, was adopted as a National Project in China, which meant the government paid for its research. My partner, Carla Blank, directed one of my plays in Hunan, China. If I had not studied Hindi, I wouldn’t have been able to cast South Asian actors in my play, “The Conductor.”

My global strategy has paid off. I was presented with the Alberto Dubito award in Venice and an award in Japan. White critic Paul Devlin shows how much Black writers are restricted in the United States. He did a hatchet job on my novel, Juice!, which has the O.J. Simpson trial as a background. Devlin said I’d gone “too far,” which is what patrollers used to say about fugitive slaves. A professor at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, Devlin posted that he was not working for the government. I asked whether the subject had come up. He sent me a cease-and-desist letter. I showed it to one of my lawyers. He asked, “Cease and desist, what?”. He now has one of the plush jobs in Black letters. He’s the book editor at the African American Review, which had to print the disclaimer (“Paul Devlin’s communications and decisions are not on behalf of the United States Government.”) Before he died, the great critic Jerry Ward complained about Devlin’s policy of no unsolicited book reviews.

JW: Are there any new African American writers that you like?

IR: Though often overlooked, this is the Golden Age of Black writing. No longer is the breadth of Black writing confined to the South and the East; now, a flourishing Black writing scene has emerged on the Pacific rim, from Hawaii to Los Angeles and Seattle. If you check out the lists of winners of American Book Awards on the website of the Before Columbus Foundation, you can find many Black writers among the fine writers who have received awards since 1978.

–John Wisniewski

The post An Interview with Ishmael Reed appeared first on My Site.

The news of my death was greatly exaggerated. Because, as is obvious, here I am, dictating this to my master, who I know types fast and hopes to make a “killing” off my story [pun intended]. The “news” of my passing was but a pawnote in the history of the world of humans. Bottom line: dogs don’t matter unless we’re being slavishly affectionate, can do tricks, earn our keep, sniff out bombs, help guide the blind, serve as lapdog or psychiatric assistance dog. But one bark, bite and your condemned to the unheated doghouse or the back garden come rain or shine.

I had been very apprehensive about becoming Herr H.’s dog. I’d been given to Herr H. by Martin Bormann to take his mind off a host of problems. I’m a blond pedigree Alsatian bitch bred for courage, vigilance, and loyalty. Harmoniously proportioned with uniformly graceful lines and a chest of white fur that contrasted smartly with my dark coat, giving me the dignified elegance of evening wear.

But I don’t think the term “lucky dog” was invented for me. I certainly knew that 3 of his 4 previous canine companions had been pedigrees as well. And they all wound up with one-way tickets to the boneyard via the Augsburg labs where scientists were busy with such experiments as grafting dog fur to human skin, injecting mutt sperm into women’s uteruses.

And the 4th? Somehow officers in the opposition managed to tie explosives to his collar. And he was blown to smithereens near the München Hofbrauhaus, missing Herr H. by mere minutes. Tufts of fur, bright viscera and entrails rained down, draping across ornate railings like wet socks.

Dogs, as you know, are not particularly endowed with free will. But then, neither are soldiers. Oh yes, we’re “very intelligent” when we obey commands, leap into a lake, fetch a stick. But is that really intelligence? Pavlov knew better. So did Napoleon.

From time to time you will notice a dog tugging on his leash in a direction quite contrary to that of his master’s. That’s not free will. That’s enslavement to scent.

The portion of a dog’s brain devoted to the olfactory system is by far the most sprawling. And since the nose is regarded as the most primitive of the senses, the least muddled by philosophic distraction, it is often the most accurate accountant of phenomena.

Most dogs fall weak to scents. Their lives slavishly shackled to the whims of their noses. Endlessly tagging territory with their scent, a kind of “scentual graffiti,” if you will, or mentally cataloguing vintages from street corners and fireplugs just as a man might collect butterflies or vintage firearms.

You’d never catch me high on street scents or jumping crazily into human crotches to gather and analyze their mysterious acrid odors. Call it breeding. But then again, I wouldn’t have minded a quick snort on occasion, or “muff dive,” as mutts of no breeding refer to them.

Our visual horizon includes many regions forgotten and unpainted, table legs and kneecaps. Much can be learned from the kneecap. Their shape informs us about diet during adolescence. Swollen, bruised knees almost certainly means a housekeeper. Perspiration offers hints of particular diets and anxiety levels. A scented kneecap is always nice and reveals a person well attuned to life’s more sensual realms. The nose of an exemplary dog – like the eye of a hawk or scope of a rifle – becomes a sensory extension, an extrapolation of man’s incessant desire to control not only his own destiny but the destiny of others as well.

Herr H.’s odd scent was a potential portal into the fate of an entire continent. During WWI, Herr H. was blinded by mustard gas. During convalescence, sitting in petulant darkness – his blindness diagnosed as hysteria-induced – he heard far too much news of Germany’s betrayal. Circumstance managed to turn his trench visions into something far grander. Herr H. thought the return of his vision, via hypnosis, was a miracle; a miracle Herr H. felt compelled to act upon.

My nose, after some basic training, became quite capable of sniffing out explosive devices or contraband, be it packed in sardine tin or lead. This left more than a few officers, including Herr H. himself, awestruck. Here, they thought, was their überhund, my nose as symbol for Truth.

Herr H.’s annual birthday party meant me entertaining guests. Everyone drank champagne. Except Herr H., who drank tea. He directed me to perform my begging routine. Which I did to general delight. Also did my “school girl” routine and even “sang” – a kind of yodeled howl that resembled a song only because Herr H. insisted it did. The yodel, of course, fits in nicely with the core image of Aryanism – a Blond German Alsatian who can yodel – you can’t get more Aryan than that as a 4-legged beast. Herr H. liked me most when he could be proud of me.

I was the perfect embodiment of his tenderness and good sense. He rewarded me amply for my performance, feeding me morsels under the dinner table and stroking my chin for, what seemed like, days on end. This kind of caressing knew no border nor ism. Pleasure knows no affiliation. Heaven is not a political entity. I’d do most anything for his caresses. And Herr H. knew that better than anyone.

Most of my “nose scanning” performances, the infamous ferreting out of “Joden Vermin” based on “typical” Jewish odors (using blood, hair, saliva, gefilte fish samples), were reserved mainly for photo ops. Here I looked ever the canine symbol of the Reich, emblem of rectitude and racial superiority. Leni Riefenstahl filmed me, fussed with my fur, posed me on hills with magnificent backdrop sunsets. I looked quite noble and mythic.

But I never engaged in the infamous canine attack tests. Dogs, like the one named “Mensch”, had been trained to leap, upon the command of “MENSCH! GRAB A DOG!,” and gnarl off the genitalia of naked, cowering men, the breasts of women prisoners, and the facial features of the defiant. The amount of time it took victims to bleed to death was duly noted by Reich eugenicists.

I knew that the sight of blood was always too much for Herr H. He was an intellectual and death was his calculus. He never reveled in the spectacle of execution; a bit squeamish, a delicate constitution. I know. Whenever he was around, my meals got overcooked so there was never a hint of bloody raw meat. For these bloody testimonies might easily have unhinged his rhetoric, all the bravado of the Big Lie, a lie so large and all encompassing that its sheer audacity and magnitude of conception would lead to mass confusion. It maintained a hypnotic quality that would allow the Big Lie to be mistaken for fundamental truth — be it Biblical or biological.

The whole notion of sniffing out the enemy was, of course, totally preposterous. It just can’t be done. Each individual has his/her own unique blood, sweat – specific olfactory print. Nothing racial about it.

But I gave the whole charade a go because my purpose was to serve, not question. And in no time I had gained the trust of the innermost circles of the SS. But I was a fake with a Pinocchio shnoz! But ironcially I often had the final word. My snout became Truth on 4 legs. No passport, no official letter stood in the way of my nose. Thus, ironically, I managed to condemn some “real” Nazis – and, on the other hand, save the lives of some Jews because fear is fear and I could actually smell fear. Instead of no chance, Jews basically had a 50-50 chance with me.

Otherwise, I did not suffer from ticks, ringworm, halitosis or mange. I did not howl or whine like muttmate “Wulf.” I was obedient, graceful, athletic. Smart – if obedience marked intelligence. Herr H. often showed me off at the Berghof obstacle course. I darted in and out of mazes, jumped barrels, through hoops. Leaps of 2 meters over a wooden wall. Routine. And at the end of my Olympian rounds I was made to beg Herr H. for my yummy doggie treats. Which I snatched mid-air time and time again.

Henry Ford, mutual admirer of Herr H. [Herr H. had portraits of both Frederick The Great and Henry Ford, while Ford had a framed photo of Herr H. on his desk. Herr H. admired not only Ford’s assemblyline innovations but the way his private army of goons and capos was so effective against labor agitators and Bolsheviks. Ford was so impressed he wanted to use me in his automobile ads. “Audiences like dogs” I heard him say over tea on the veranda with Herr H.

And who were all these guests? I did not care. I remembered them mostly by their scents and the treats they bore. And I learned to flatter them with my affections and I did not care that this was their way of trying to butter up Herr H. Some of them were just curious to meet the man the German people had come to call their supernatural Christ. “Hitler is victory itself,” I heard some loyalist declare. Many more came to do business, wearing nice suits like the ones you see in Esquire. Some had big vocabularies, others big wallets. Still others smelled a little too good to trust.

The American visitors were chummy, garrulous, informal. They usually smelled very fresh. Like men without history. Their aftershaves meant not to heighten or accent who it was they were. Instead, it was assigned to mask the notion of what it was they were afraid they weren’t.

Americans love dogs. Not the ornamental chachka lap dogs Parisians are so fond of. Or Braun’s 2 black Scotch Terriers, Stasi and Negus, who were nothing more than “scampering handsweepers,” to Herr H. I really resented these mutts because anytime they entered into our midst, I’d be banished to the lonely corridor or outside rain or shine because Braun had Herr H. pussy-whipped as I heard staff say in hushed tones. And I soon understood why the other wives and most of the staff despised Braun.

Anyway, I was a real dog. I fetched, leapt, hunted, rolled over. And since real men love real dogs the Americans loved me. One well-connected Englishman in particular, used to visit with little wax sacks of lamb kidney. MMMmm. And boot polish, that great English kind, for Herr H., compliments of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 2 great admirers of Herr H.

I was privy to top secret meetings, laid out under the table, positioned so that Herr H. could stroke me to calm his nerves and temporarily take the edge off his tantrums. I was more than companion. I was therapy.

I loved the rich scent of the polish. Rich enough to trigger sweet reveries under the table and olfactory leaps into former lives.

One chubby American ITT rep always wore a fruity cologne that was not particularly becoming to anyone who wasn’t a fruit fly. He brought boxes of YumYums, special bonbons for dogs which made me drool. I’d perhaps have killed for them. And we dogs are easily made to be fanatical and loyal. And thus we become easy spiritual prostheses for the esteem-deprived.

This chunky cherub represented a consortium of banks and firms – Ford, GM, Dupont, Standard Oil, RCA and the Chase and Morgan banks – who were interested in financing Herr H. “Business is like a penis; it knows no conscience,” I’d heard him chortle. The consortium had been very impressed by how Herr H. had handled wildcat strikes and economic crises. And dispensed with both Socialists and Communists. He came offering materiel, a tele-communications system nonpareil — phones, intercoms, new compact mimeograph machines – and, of course, military hardware. In exchange, these companies (their tankers and overseas HQs) were to receive safe haven from the ravages of war. Their investments protected for the mutual benefit of all.

All this rather bored me. But I knew humans got all worked up over this kind of thing. And I let them. I preferred more sublime preoccupations. Example: although dressed to the hilt, this ITT man farted like crazy. To me a fart is a fart – except Herr H.’s. But also something else — a rich bouquet. An olfactory print revealing dining habits, in his case, a pre-occupation with aphrodisiacs — oysters, ginger, cognac, chocolate-covered strawberries — as well as hints of A-level anxiety. All from farts!

He’d once made light of his gregarious flatulence by joking “when people fart they are all equal.” To which Herr H., a troubled flatulator himself, responded, “But some are more equal than others.” and in amongst the uproarious laughter a deal was struck. The “fat flatulator” was, it turns out, a letch with a weakness for women and drink. Herr H. gained industrial assistance and numerous perquisites for the Reich by offering concubines chosen from the Joy Division, a unique concentration camp branch employed to accommodate the amorous demands of the Reich and their guests. “Jew-cy Conc-Jew-bines!” The ITT man was heard to bellow ingratiatingly.

During the day I played with Himmler’s daughter, Gudrun. She knew nothing of history and business. She liked to dance, often taking up my forepaws to do our special jitterbug. I loved her flapping pigtails, pleated skirts, girly smells, clean white socks on which I’d tug to tease her. I was versatile. Tough but tender.

I remember the stiff cut of Herr H.’s uniform, the kind of sartorial precision that beckoned images of control and probity. This illusion of prowess was already so ironically betrayed by the ever encroaching realities that it rendered Herr H. pitiable to all but the most faithful. His right arm was, by now, almost totally devoid of function, his erectile dysfunction was an open secret. He received regular injections of bovine testosterone in attempts to boost his sexual prowess. Meanwhile, Braun suppressed her periods – the nose knows – in an attempt to make things happen.

Yet, on the day Greta Garbo came to visit, his uniform or him in it, with a colorful rearrangement of medals, an upturned collar, looked quite dashing. A smart Napoleonic curl sat on his forehead like a serpent’s tail. He looked rakish, mischievous even — like a boy. Although devoted to Herr H., his generous affections and geography of intriguing odors, I had much difficulty imagining him as a child full of snot and glee. Anyway, there was, indeed, more to life than just order and discipline.

When Garbo, glam-eyed, sultry Salomé, arrived (She’d already been there in Herr H.’s schemes and blood throbbing reveries for days.) she was not required to submit to the usual intense search of person. Her person was some ultra-entity beyond mere mortal suspicion. Nor did I get to sniff-search her. You just don’t with a goddess. Simple as that.

He was so polite, charming, bashful, giddy – not himself. He even managed to make his right arm come alive long enough to take her hand and kiss it.

He offered her tea (as neither drank), apple cake, chocolate. He showed her huge sprawling maps with bold sweeping arrows. Grand adventures skirting the fabled Maginot Line. How Czechoslovakia was his little puzzle piece. She sipped her tea. Hid behind the cup, decidedly disinterested in his maps. His hand thrusts into deep misunderstood territory. She asked nothing of Herr H. She spoke only when spoken to, did not smile and her eyes remained intense as a blue flame.

When I licked her hand she responded appropriately by stroking my ears, petting my hindquarters — which is certainly a top 5 G-spot. But ultimately she stroked me hesitantly, perfunctorily as if preoccupied. It just never got beyond mutual respect. She smelled great though. Great is not the word. Not loud or ostentatious. Simply a scent primed to accent the confidence, further cultivate the mystique that oozed from her pores. Images of North Africa, balsam, myrrh, an autumn forest bed, a bed of pine needles and silk and fur, the velvet curtain at the opera. Like her scent, she was impossible to pin down.

It was only some time after the war, that I heard she had had good reason for her hesitancy. She’d been packing. Packing a cheap pearl-handled single shot pistol (only good at short range but perfect for concealing in stocking tops). She had intended to shoot Herr H., my provider – shocking! Gertrude Traubl, Herr H.’s young and prettiest secretary yet, was absolutely devastated by the deception. She could not imagine why anyone would want to harm Herr H. Neither could I. The apparent scheme: Garbo would offer Herr H. “a very intimate gift.” She’d reach under her dress as if to offer him her garter. Instead, in the stocking top, sat the tiny pistol. But somehow the occasion never arose. (I like to think it was my presence.)

But even me, to tell you the truth, with my vaunted nose, just had no idea! But what do you want? I was off duty. And I may have a great nose but that doesn’t mean I have X-ray vision. I can’t read minds, you know.

July 16, 1944: Me listening outside his bedroom door, medical staff disccussing Herr H. who apparently suffered from a condition called hypospadias – a condition where the opening of the urethra is located on the underside of the penis. They also discussed his undescended testicle, confirming the scandalous rumors heard in the song “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball.” But, perhaps most importantly, when discussing his emerging sociopathy, was that he possessed an abnormally small manhood, called a micropenis. Did this deformity, this body shame, sufficiently explain his ideological take on a global realpolitik rooted in vengeful authoritarianism? Honestly, I’m not the one to ask.

August 19: At a dinner with men in uniform and their wives, Herr H. wanted to show off some of my tricks. But when my leap over the hedge failed this one time, he berated me in front of the ladies, who giggled as if he was a charming master of ceremonies. Followed by a few whacks with the baton to my backside to impress them with a display of discipline. “You’re a traitor like all the rest of my staff, Blondi. Disappointment is so unnecessary, don’t you think?”

September 22: “That mutt is the only living creature,” Albert Speer at dinner, jealous remarked to the other guests, “who can arouse a hint of menschlicher Zärtlichkeit [human tenderness] in him.”

October 1: Dr. Giesing discovered Herr H. empty-eyed, yellowish skin, on his Spartan bed. Herr H. dismissed Giesing’s diagnosis of eardrum puncture and possible inner ear damage. Giesing suggested pain is deforming some of Herr H.’s critical acumen, but complained of headaches and intestinal pain. Giesing’s prognosis: “hi-strychnine-toxicity from excessive intake of little black anti-gas pills.” Complete physical revealed jaundice. Herr H. requested “more of that cocaine stuff.” Giesing, in talking to Herr H., discovered the horrific “intellectual inadequacy and petty subjectiveness” informing Herr H.’s Master Plan. Disgusted, Giesing decided to murder Herr H. with a double dose of cocaine rubbed into the interior of his nostrils. But his plan was aborted when valet, Heinz Linge, barged into bedroom unexpectedly.

January 17, 1945: By now Herr H. and Family – and me – are living in decidedly less splendid quarters in and under the Reich’s Chancellery, 2 meters down, behind 11 reassuring feet of concrete. Windows covered with cardboard. Corridors flooded and offices devoid of paintings, tapestries, carpet. Herr H. is progressively more absent-minded, which is to my advantage because now I got fed 4 times a day!

February 15: I nuzzled up under Eva’s skirt into her crotch, she pulled hard on my ear and kicked me over and over under the table with her fave 2-tone pumps. She was jealous because I got to sleep in his bed, or was it just her generally prickly, spiteful nature? Pretty much everyone in the bunker liked me more than Braun. Reichschancellery Nurse Erna Flegel affectionately called me “almost human” – more later!

A week later she kicked me for chewing on a plastic weiner, a Strapon-Dildo, made of a rubber of a special manufacture, express delivered to Braun. But she never needed a reason to kick me

Anyway, the kicking was pretty much a daily occurence like whenever she thought no one was looking. And if I let out so much as a half-yodel I’d get an extra boot and Herr H.’s disappointed glare as if my outburst was about to ruin his international PR strategy to humanize him as a tender baby-and-dog-loving world leader.

February 20: Hitler’s elite guests caught hell from Herr H. for petting me, or “arousing any feeling of companionship” with me – instead of HIM. Albert Speer instructed others to “pet Blondi but then quickly praise Herr H. for his unforgettable bond with his mate.” His displeasure could instantly lead to a conniption fit and forever banishment.

March 1: 3 flights under the Chancellery lies the Family bunker, reached by traversing duck boards across a meter wide channel to the first floor. Another long soggy-carpeted stairway curved down to the 2nd floor consisting of 12 rooms and general messhall, to the Führer bunker, 50 feet below, consisting of 18 cubicles – the low 2-meter ceilings made everyone appear bigger or other than who they were – separated by a hall, conference and waitingrooms. To the left of the conference room was the maproom and the 6-room Herr H. and Braun suite.

March 8: Linge parked the Volkswagen along a hilly road, where Herr H. rubbed cocaine along his gums and the lining of his nostrils. Here he dreamed of his secret weapon — the atom bomb.

March 16: Sunshine crashed through the remaining Chancellery windows while Herr H. paced nervously, listening to a phonograph playing “Gotterdamerung.” He spent hours staring at the Frederick The Great portrait, left hand trembling noticeably. Right arm stiff as a stick. Braun spent the day fidgeting with her hair, trying on clothes in front of the mirror. She wrapped her naked body in a silver fox fur coat. Imagined the glamour of the Reich was Hollywood. Herr H.’s trembling hand stroked me absentmindedly. Face pale. Voice weak and hoarse. No more frolicking.

March 27: I feel abandoned, banished to the garden outdoors to follow longings and instincts. I never knew that banishment and freedom were so much alike. In some ways this was good.

April 6: Braun gave herself a manicure and pedicure, wearing open-toed shoes to dinner to show off her red-tipped toes. Few noticed. I did. But I was not about to fawn over the toes of an adversary. Herr H. threw a few tantrums. But about what? Everyone’s confused. Embarrassed. For all of Germany? Hmm.
April 20: Last photo of Herr H. revealed a man, a sooty shadow, drained, featureless, being sucked into the quicksand of nonexistence.

April 22: Berlin almost totally surrounded now. “The war is lost,” Herr H. in a trembling voice declared. His eyes blank, Braun taking his hand in hers, smiling like a mother might at her frightened son, saying “I shall stay with you.” His eyes sparkled ever so slightly as he reached up to kiss her on the lips. The guests shocked by the realization that their celibate Christ and Braun had been living out of wedlock!

April 23: Braun has quit humming her boring ditties. Her cheerfulness has evaporated. In a resigned voice declaring: “It’s all enough to lose one’s faith in God.” She composed a letter to her sister Instructing her to bury Herr H.’s letters in a watertight chest in her backyard. Braun’s mind so muddled she had to speak aloud to hear herself think. Corpses of former humans litter the streets. I know no amount of licking their faces could bring them back. Many are run over, pressed further into the mud by various retreating vehicles.

April 24: Himmler tried convincing the Allies to join forces and fight the Russians together. Some Berliners claim they saw Herr H., saber drawn, lit hackle atop his shiny helmet, slaying the foe, fighting the noble battle to the last. Herr H.’s personal adjutant, burned sensitive communiques. Braun refused to get out of bed for lunch. Spent the day examining blemishes and rummaging through her wardrobe. Young Werewolves, Nazi youth partisans, prowled the Berlin streets for traitors to shoot or hang from lampposts with bold signs hung around their necks declaring their “crimes.”

April 25: Berghof partly demolished by Allied bombs. Blasted tin roof flutters noisily in a breeze as eerie twisted testimony to a likely demise. Herr H. detailed a dream of having the Army hold out until May 5 to effectively “enlarge the misery of the desperately loyal” so that he can die on the same day Napoleon died. Did I hear someone in a whisper call Herr H. a “self-absorbed narcissist?”

April 26: Herr H.’s arms were twitching nonstop now, raving, weeping inconsolably as his noble destiny shriveled to nothing more than that of a miserable loser with painful hemmorhoids, constipation and uncontrollable flatulence. Eyes glassy like the windows of an abandoned building. Felt betrayed by one and all – even me. Braun altered a formal dress to make it more modern. Herr H. pinned the Iron Cross on a young boy in shorts for blowing up an advancing Russian tank. As the young boy turned to leave he collapsed from exhaustion. I licked the boy’s legs but my magic was no longer magical.

April 27: News of Mussolini and his mistress being gunned down by partisans near Dongo reached the Bunker. Herr H. was determined he’d not be taken alive “to be put in some Russian cage and I will gladly take all of you with me.” Bent over me — bloated face covered in red splotches — he chided me; “Look me in the eye Blondi, have you betrayed me like my generals?” Not sure what to do. I lick his lifeless hand but to no avail. Herr H. suddenly wondering if the ceiling will hold. If the sky will hold. In reprisal for Himmler’s betrayal, he has Himmler’s liaison officer, Fegelein, executed at the bunker entrance. He cannot bare to watch but felt better knowing it had been carried out. I had lost him. A dog without a bone, a dog without a stick to fetch. Oh, how I yearned for a leash that would tug me this way or that. Women on the street fight over hunks of rancid butter.

April 28: “A world without Herr H.,” Magda Goebbels declared, “will not be worth living in.” Herr H. ordered women, even young girls to the front lines. Goebbels was shouting “Pure Hysteria!” over and over in the Bunker. The ventilators sucked in brown dusty hot air, dense with the acrid spice of spent explosives. Herr H. brooding, head in hands, in the sanctity of maproom, pushed around nonexistent armies on a map of a world that no longer existed. Braun emerged from her bedroom, wearing a black silk taffeta gown for the wedding. Everyone surprised. Herr H. looked painfully awkward like a splintering toy soldier in uniform. Berlin was bright, not with jubilation but with buildings ablaze. In those fires Botticelli’s “Madonna and Angels,” Van Dyck’s “Diana Surprised By Saturn,” Goya’s “The Monk,” and hundreds are burnt to a crisp.

April 29: The Family unsure about the propriety of Braun’s diamond-studded watch. To everyone’s surprise she offered her prized fox fur to her adversary, private secretary Gertrude Traudl, quipping: “I always like to have well-dressed people around me.”

At midnight, Herr H. told an old joke; everyone laughed. He has 2 sips of a sweet wine from his hometown of Braunau, a souvenir from a more promising time with everyone pretending to love it. The phonograph played “Red Roses.” The Family giddy, drunk on gallows humor. There’s furious smoking and Schnapps and spirits spilled down chins and dress fronts. Prussian generals cast off their tunics and danced wildly with stenographers. One major tore down a huge velvet curtain and draped it around his midsection, transforming himself into a campy countess. Herr H. ceremoniously handed out capsules of cyanide to all except loyal valet Linge (11 years of impeccable service). He apologized for not having nicer “going-away presents.” Was that a gurgling giggle I heard emerge from Braun’s lips? “It’s so simple,” Braun declared. “You just bite into this,” showing the capsule in the pinch of her well-groomed fingers, “and poof! It’s all glory thereafter.”

Goebbels wondered if the cyanide was still effective. Herr H. noted that they’d been a gift from Himmler, someone he no longer trusted. Dr. Werner Hasse suggested one be tried on me! Herr H. agreed! Shock! Hasse forced the capsule into my mouth with a pair of tongs, then cracked the capsule. Although I collapsed I did not die. In the final act of my admirably faked death I overheard Braun say something about being glad to see me “perish for the greater good.” I’m left behind to be buried by staff. My dying scene was definitely worthy of Shakespeare – award-winning AND life saving.

Russians infiltrated the Berlin Zoo. Herr H. ate a lunch of grey, vegetable gruel with his 2 secretaries and cook. He tried to disguise the lameness of his arms, his stooped back and the morphological fact that he had become the crumbling embodiment of his own Reich – the despair of death in the guise of composure. Herr H. gave orders regarding the disposal of the Family corpses. “Where’s the woolen blankets?! We need 20!” Herr H. shouted.

Braun emerged from nowhere in her favorite black dress, sashaying mock Hollywood style. “You’ll be a most beautiful corpse,” Herr H. observed, “but glorious devastation is what I want to illuminate my finish.” He then demanded 200 liters of gasoline. His adjutants informed him that 200 liters just can’t be found. Herr H. fumed; “Then siphon it from wrecked vehicles if necessary. Because I do not want to end up exhibited in a Russian Wax Museum!”

April 30: Herr H. has finally decided the moment has arrived; he emerged from the side-bedroom, shook everyone’s hand, bid farewell with glazed, faraway eyes. Individually shook Flegel’s hand, mumbled a few nice words. “And that was it.”

He then commanded canine caretaker, Fritz Tornow, to execute my pups – yes, I had had pups, no comment! – along with the rest of the dogs in the garden before my very eyes. Tornow was also ordered to put me down. With cyanide, a gun? But did he?

No, because I’m hidden in a closet. And Flegel has argued that eliminating me doesn’t make any sense. I can’t spill any beans anyway. Folly informing outrage, outrage informed insanity. Tornow shook his head meekly “yes.” Thank you!

News filtered in: The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress have been strung up by their feet in a Milan gas station lot. Citizens were invited to kick them in the head. Meanwhile, boisterous dancing broke out in adjacent rooms. Bormann pleading for calm. Fat greasy smoke envelopedBerlin. Extra tobacco rations issued to placate citizens.

Flegel also tried persuading Magda to spare her six children. Magda just shouted: “The children belong to me to do with what I want” and eventually fed them the cyanide capsules anyway.

Linge held open the door to the cramped quarters. After Braun was gone, Herr H. turned to Linge saying: “You must live for the sake of my successor.” Linge is stunned.

Herr H. joined Braun on the couch. She gazed at Herr H. He gripped her knee as she cracked the capsule of potassium cyanide between her teeth. In minutes she was dead. The brass hull of the capsule fell to carpeted floor. She slumped away from Herr H. (so his death could be the glorious centerpiece?) over the chair arm, lips closed tight, nostrils discolored by cyanide.

3:36 pm: He stroked his dead wife’s hair, picked up his old 7.65 caliber Walther he had carried since his Beerhall Putsch days to protect himself from Bolsheviks and garner attention in crowds. He fondled the finely-crafted handle, staring at the framed photo of his mother as a young woman. Placed the barrel to his right temple and pulled the trigger. His body pitched forward, into the right corner, down across the coffee table, left arm knocking over a pitcher of water, some of which soaked into Braun’s black dress. The bang rang in my ears for days afterward.

I emerged cautiously from the closet. Sit by my master’s side. This man who had fed me so well. Even in these last difficult days. I licked his hand and noticed a gaping exit wound in his right temple oozing dura and brain matter. A small puddle of thick dark blood gathered on the carpet. And here was I, dumb dog, trying to lick Herr H. awake, unable to comprehend the philosophic or historical magnitude of his death — or ANY death, for that matter.

It’s much simpler for me. His scent had grown so familiar and even in death he smelled like the Herr H. of old. Plus, I liked blood. I am, after all, first cousin to the wild canis lupus, an animal susceptible to ancient instincts.

When Bormann and Linge burst into the suite they’re totally spooked. Unsure of what their eyes are seeing. Me, Blondi, supposedly dead Blondi, still alive, licking the bullethole clean. At first I didn’t budge. But Goebbels’ voice ws filled with the kind of anger that usually emerges from the maw of panic.

They carried Herr H. out, wrapped in a grey Army blanket. I watched from the Bunker entranceway as Russian artillery sent dust and rubble from the crumbling Chancellery walls raining over us. Red hot embers arced across my view like shooting stars.

They laid him and Braun down in a trench 10 meters from the Bunker entrance. Adjutant Kempke adjusted Herr H.’s trousers, then laid Braun down to his left. Kempke fixed her hair as if preparing her for a photo shoot. He moved Herr H.’s arm to his side for a more dignified pose. Debris continued to rain down over us. They poured cans of gasoline over their bodies. Kempke lit a rag and tossed it onto the bodies. Ball of flame so intense it warmed my snout. They stood mesmerized, speechless. Braun’s dentures melted out of her grimace.

That night they scraped the charred remains into a canvas sack with the cardboard that had covered a Chancellery window. Dropped the burial shroud of the newlyweds into a shellhole, covered the hole with dirt and rubble, jumping on it to pound it down. And not long thereafter Berlin surrendered.

May 1: 1 AM, Magda, ignoring Flegel’s plea, drugged her 6 children with spirits then placed crushed ampoules of potassium cyanide in their mouths as if performing communion.

I sat on the burial site of Herr H., watched an SS officer shoot the Goebbels in the garden at dawn. The officer stared at his own hand attached to the gun and the gun to death and death to fate. They quickly doused the Goebbels with gasoline, lit the pyre, then torched the Bunker. Remaining uncaptured ragtag members of the Family were seen fleeing. Traudl in silver fox and several officers in formal evening wear.

Undeterred, I remained behind on the tamped earth where underneath lay Herr H. until Russian troops arrived. I watch a young soldier of 16 take aim at me. I see the squint eye through the aimsight just as he sees me – face to snout. They want to shoot me. I don’t blame them. Me with mouth caked in dried blood, looking dazed, rabid, as if guarding some secret Nazi underground haunt.

If you had been with members of SMERSH, the special Soviet counter-intelligence agency tasked with salvaging the charred remains of Herr H. and other Family members you would have noticed what they did. They saw something suddenly coming over me, I don’t know what. My ears went soft. Proud shoulders in a slouch.

A keen-eyed SMERSH member suddenly yelled: “NE DVIGAYSYA!” [Don’t move!]. He noticed my distinctive Urhunde features including classic paintbrush tail, which was wagging in true Academy-Award-style. In fact, it’s as if my tail was wagging my entire hindquarters, as if my very life depended on it. And it probably did.

SMERSH members had been well-briefed and had seen the propaganda film of Herr H. petting me on the snow covered Berghof terrace, 1940. They noticed my distinctive blond pedigree Alsatian hide, with dark details on my back, perfect symmetrical, pointed ears, luxurious scruff, and very clear, deep eyes signaling extraordinary intelligence.

The young soldier with the aimsight in his eye suddenly loosened up, went soft, squatted down, rifle in the dust, and lured me over.

He had the petting gift, knew immediately what I liked, even offered a tin of pork paté. I licked the tin, his hands and the hands of his friends as a sign of submission – and my craving for salt. In no time, I became their mascot. An indispensable tool of the Allies with a keen nose for Nazis. Which really meant I knew where many of them were hiding. Which, once again, lent credence to the supposed power of my mythic nose. Of course, I was cheating.

In the days that followed I helped root out many Nazis, including a few Bunker Family members. I recognized them as they were marched — hande hoche! — along the rubble-covered streets. And they undoubtedly recognized me. Burning houses lit up the rubble-filled streets. Perhaps some of them became enlightened at the moment they recognized me, me being petted by my new friends. We witness a woman with 2 shopping bags full of bricks tied to her wrists, holding a baby under each arm as she leaped into the Havel River. Meanwhile, countless dead Herr H.’s were being discovered daily.

I heard the abrupt burp of machine gun fire – the clean pop-pop-pop and then the captives were no longer among the living. Dead with their several minutes of enlightenment — that short span of time between when they’d spotted me and realized I was unaligned, loyal only to my next meal as the lead entered their chests.

I smelled the wall, the wall against which their shoulder blades had rested, that odd sulphurous smell of when bullets hit brick and cement.

So, yes, Nurse Flegel had liked me and that ultimately saved me.

–bart plantenga

The post Hitler’s Dog appeared first on My Site.

Tony wasn’t particularly tearful over the break-up. He’d been cheating on Melany since prom night, twice with her freshman roommate. He happened to be on a date when Melandy called to end things. Tony claims he started smoking weed at thirteen and has puffed daily ever since. Sufficient anecdotal supports evidence the first claim and very little disputes the latter. His life is a hazy Dorian Grey time warp. Still lives in his mother’s basement, listens to the same music, wears the same clothes. Even has his prom tux which he never returned to Mr. Hays’ Tux Me Up Rentals.

A smalltown tuxedo rental shop sounds like a guaranteed way to go broke. You have a prom once a year and, in a good year, a couple of weddings. But Mr. Hayes rocked it and that shop gave him everything: money, respect, even a secret affair with Tony’s mom that everyone knew about but pretended they didn’t. Then his sons wanted in it. They convinced the old man to underwrite their video rental empire. Mr. H. lost it all, even Tony’s mom. He did walk away with tons of video tapes, DVDs and enough microwave popcorn to last a lifetime.

Tony’s mom is over eighty and doesn’t plan on dying anytime soon. What would be the fun in that? she says. Who’d you complain to then? I dunno, Tony’s mom, but you’d probably find someone. She plays mahjong, at the library and the senior center. She hates mahjong but sometimes you need something to hate. She used to hate the parties Tony had in the basement while she was out with Mr. Hayes but that stopped after whatever happened to that girl happened to her. No one comes around anymore now, except some of the guys when they’re in town.

Some of the guys drop by Tony’s when they’re visiting family because on every trip home there’s a moment when you just hate being back. These days millennial pouches outnumber dadbods to the same proportion that orthopedic walking shoes outnumber DCs and Vans so ditching the family for the annual Turkey Bowl or three-on-three b-ball is unlikely. However, if you don’t mind grappling with Tony’s life-like phallic-themed bong you can revisit a time before mortgages and crabgrass and checking out assisted living facilities for your parents and reminisce about parties, except the one nobody mentions, and raze Tony about Anita.

Anita was two grades behind us and super brainy. AP everything: calc, physics, Latin. Devon teases her, saying that even the Church dropped Latin. Anita had a long crush on Tony that almost everyone in the school knew about. Everyone but Tony. Anita’s grades tanked for a while one year, but she rebounded and got her Ivy League PhD. The guidance counselors and teachers touted the benefits of proper medication, but we knew that wasn’t it. These days she runs the library for a buck over minimum wage plus whatever she pockets helping lazy high school seniors rewrite term papers.

Devon was it-girl hot back then; a perennial all-county wrestler, good grades, scholarship to Wake Forrest. He had a great pick-up line: he’d take off his shirt. He took Anita to the prom after promising her brother, Oxymoron Fred, there’d be no sex. A couple of freshman-year failed drug tests got him kicked out of school. Barely goes anywhere now, except the library for lamer-than-the-original Sam and Diane flirtation with Anita. “You’re a PhD and you file Kerouac, Jan before Kerouac, Jack?” he taunts. “Lady’s first,” she says without looking up. It’s as close as they’ll ever get to fucking.

Oxymoron Fred’s brief life was not without etymologically robust nicknaming. His teammates called him Ox in honor of his impressive athletic prowess. We changed that to Oxymoron Fred because he was academically smart (1600 SATs) but elsewhere naïve, including, but not limited to, occasionally totaling his car to sustain injuries severe enough to be given Oxycodone, the resulting addiction to which was precipitated by post-surgical prescriptions which predictably turned out to be little more than a free trial. Sometimes we called him Oxycodone Fred during that period but decided to stop after the accident that killed him and not-black Troy.
Maybe there’s comfort in knowing that Not-black Troy believed in God. Fervently. And liked to spread his word. Annoyingly. Even if, painfully, his God was Old Testament God, the wrathful, angry Karen God who showed Adam the apple and said, “OMG, this is so good. Eat not of it.” Maybe he was trying to save Owen’s and Fred’s souls that night. And maybe he did. Of course, maybe Fred wouldn’t have driven into that tree if nbT was spreading the word of God 2.0, the one with Berkenstock sandals who selectively cured, although never eliminated, leprosy, blindness and wine shortages.

The news kept reporting that Owen’s friends feared also losing him from the accident but that was bogus because after he brought those pills to that party at Tony’s mother’s house Owen didn’t have any friends and no one liked him. People bought from Owen out of desperation, when their regular dealer, usually Si, was away, like you might use a mall dentist for emergency root canal on a Sunday. Fred was a customer, maybe, not nbT and they weren’t friends. And it’s total bs how people let themselves believe that helping people with survivor guilt is Owen’s new high.

Pipa arrived in fifth or sixth grade, shy, poor and socially invisible. By junior year she’d managed to shed her accent, was co-captaining the soccer team with Diane, Diane St. Claire and was Psilocybin-Si, mushroom queen. Since the aggregated pharmacological contents of student lockers dwarfed the drug closet at Seattle Grace, Si saw natural psychedelics as a niche market. With terms like “micro-dosing” and with nostalgic images of hippie users in their heads, even parents thought shrooms were safe. Except, quantify “micro” and try playing DII soccer while flashbacking. After losing her scholarship Si came home and started providing not-so-naturals.

It was probably Charlie and his nerdy little friends who started calling Diane “Diane, Diane St. Claire.” Charlie had a huge crush on Diane and why not? So did everyone else. She was pretty, friendly, smart and U of Tampa scholarship good at soccer. She stayed in Florida for a graduate fellowship and seemed destined to become “Dr. Diane, Diane St. Claire.” Then suddenly her career GPS seemed to lose connectivity. Rumor had it she’d left grad school and was tending bar in Jackson Hole, then waitressing in Kennebunkport. Whatever she’s gone looking for should have turned up by now.

Charlie was the most normal of all his nerdy little friends. Yes, he worked in IT like them, but he seemed capable of grander things than resetting user passwords after holiday weekends. He was a support desk director when he decided to hit the career pause button to focus on his artistic endeavors, the pursuit of which apparently derived from an art therapy workshop suggested by his traditional therapist after two decades of therapy without meaningful progress. The creative workshops and the art supplies were expensive, and his art wasn’t particularly coveted, so Charlie went back to delivering Penny’s Pizza.

Penny’s provides thin crusted pizza with a purist’s menu of acceptable toppings: peperoni, sausage or both. It’s not fancy but it is delish. You get a good slice quickly and, thanks to voluntary compliance with the Pizza Principal which pegs the slice price to NYC transit rates, it’s reasonably affordable. It’s where your parents order from after the long Good Friday service or for impromptu festivities when more than one child comes home for the weekend. It’s where Tony’s mother ordered from whenever Tony’s friends were over, including that party, and it’s where Jeffrey came for lunch every other Friday.

You could be simultaneously quirky and popular if you were good at something socially important. Thanks to the perfectionist in Jeffrey, that was basketball. Freshman year he couldn’t shoot, next year he couldn’t miss and suddenly nobody cared that he counted the lockers between classrooms. Unfortunately, that year he was diagnosed with OCD. It wasn’t surprising to us; in kindergarten he won best handwasher and shoe lacer. But his devastated parents insisted on starting medication. He stopped worrying if both socks were the same height. Within a year his shooting average plummeted and short Larry was starting ahead of Jeffrey.

We used to joke that short Larry was always overreaching, oh wait he’s not quite reaching. Maybe he brought it on himself by always overcompensating, trying to come in first at everything. We called it Napoleon Dynamite Syndrome because, in a significant overassessment of his class standing he campaigned for most popular student. Along with football and basketball he was perpetually trying to validate his manliness, including probably instigating the events at that party at Tony’s mother’s house. He later hooked up with Cynthia Wheeler at “Last Night,” the traditional end-of-summer seniors-only party and then boasted about it to everyone.

Cynthia delivered in the spring semester at a hospital near her college. With her mother’s help she graduated on time, not with honors or anything but still, impressive single-momming. Larry hasn’t seen the baby, doesn’t know the sex. He brags incorrectly about winning the parenthood race. But hey, if it’s any consolation, Larry, you did win first deadbeat-dad. The group chat tea is that Cindy’s been mostly happy but recently the wee one started asking to meet Daddy-o who, they’ve been given to believe is Big Dave, the tall, handsome guy who won Most Popular in Momma’s high school yearbook.

You can’t blame Cindy. If you asked who most girls want contributing half their baby’s chromos Big Dave would still be most popular. He was handsome, smart, and athletic. Things came easily to him. In his mind, too easily, as if everything he’d achieved was a mistake and one day he’d find out that his whole life really belonged to someone else, someone like Charles Garrigan. Dave’s therapist suggested he practice constructing virtual accomplishment quilts in his mind, with each panel representing some kind of personal success. But Dave, for all he’s achieved, just couldn’t think of anything quilt worthy.

We all felt the opposite about Charles. Nobody wanted his DNA and we were amazed that he amounted to anything. He’d somehow gone from conning his way out of detention to highly-sought-after defense attorney representing worse versions of his younger self. Steady work, if your cojones were Brunswick bowling balls and you had no conscious about who you defended, which was true of Charlie until a certain client reminded him of Mr. Phillips, a young teacher known to frequent Tony’s parties. In retrospect, Mr. Phillips’ presence at those parties didn’t feel right and Charlie started questioning his choice of clients.

Mr. Phillips was less a teacher than kind of a cool older cousin who kept a lookout for the parents while you sampled adult drinks at family gatherings. This was BC MeToo so the adults didn’t notice but it did seem odd that a teacher was hanging with us in Tony’s mother’s basement. Especially her teacher. When you’re young you don’t always notice things but when you have kids you suddenly wonder whether anyone was paying attention. Maybe someone was because suddenly there were a string of loser substitutes arriving on random Mondays while poor old Mr. P was unperson-ed.

The string of loser substitutes arriving on random Mondays weren’t even out of work teachers, they were losers out of work at other things; print-media editors who hadn’t predicted the web, journalists with AOL accounts and myspace pages, marketing copyeditors with red pens, pencil-holstered hipsters dragging themselves through the freshman halls at dawn looking for stale teachers-lounge coffee terrified of slipping down another career rung, swallowed whole into the career abyss of Home Depot, Home Depot that shining anchor to the mall in Rockland. But for now, they were with us and Mr. Johannson introduced them on their random Mondays.

We sometimes wondered what kind of child dreamed of becoming a principal but then, at some point, we realized that nobody wanted to do whatever their job is. There’s like six things kids want to be: soccer player, astronaut, teacher, fireman, doctor, influencer. And half of those are just shortcuts to becoming an influencer. The rest of us settle, becoming things like farmers; state senators; tax accountants; baseball players and principals. Mr. Johannson was different; as a child he dreamed about becoming a principal, which is what made his ineptitude so tragic. But also, as Lydia pointed out, so comic.

A paralyzingly shy child, Lydia’s doctors encouraged her parents to incrementally increase her exposure to anxiety-inducing environments to help build confidence. Soon enough the child who was nervous coloring found herself hyperventilating at swimming lessons, trembling at ballet classes and panicking at tennis instruction as she realized life was little more than an unending stream of crippling social interactions. She found an outlet in writing, specifically facetiously composed letters from real people, including one from Mr. Johannson apologizing for his administrative faults as our principal. We all knew these were fake, except apparently Megan, who was just trying to help.

Megan was always just trying to help. We called her a pathological meddler, Mother Theresa with a jinx. It’s not that she wasn’t well intentioned. She just naively thought good would win out for her in her goody two, goody two, goody goody two shoes. Quite predictably, things always went south for someone and when she shared Lydia’s blog with the Board and select parents we all expected there to be fallout. And there was. Except it ended up a different teacher, and all we could was grin and bear it and write it on a pound note, pound note.

Amazingly, we said sarcastically, the Board and select parents recognized that Lydia’s blog was little more than sophomoric attempts at humor. They didn’t believe that the cafeteria team used leftover Biology class specimens in the chili or that the shop teachers were supplementing their income by offering detention-student staffed repairs. They were surprisingly only modestly concerned about Mr. Phillips showing up at the parties at Tony’s mother’s house amid the corresponding drug use but curiously they did want to hear a little more Ms. Larson, the algebra and trig teacher, and her continuing propensity to practice multiplication outside the classroom.

Ms. Larson didn’t just teach math; she made it seem relevant and interesting even if you were not a budding Archimedes. But that’s not what got the attention of the Board and select parents. They focused on entries alluding to connections between the early spring delivery of several wee Larsonettes and members of the Summer Paint Team. They knew that the rest of the stories were fake so it’s anybody’s guess why the Ms. Larson multiplication table warranted detailed scrutiny. Unfortunately, these days Ms. Larson, now Dr. Larson, heads up the math department in a different district now. Thanks, Megan.

The first thing to know about the Summer Paint Team is that they were losers. The school described it as a great opportunity to make a little money and get practical on-the-job experience. We called it janitorial reserve training and custodial boot camp. No one wanted jobs, least of all jobs painting classrooms. The Summer Paint Team were the saddest kind of losers; losers who didn’t know they were losers. The idea that Dr. Larson, nee Ms. Larson, was going to make whole numbers with those guys was ludicrous. Except for Tyler. Tyler was totally greater than or equal to.

Tyler Taylor was a dumb name and, to be honest, Tyler Taylor wasn’t joining Mensa anytime soon, but he was a hottie, if you didn’t mind the smell of dirt. The summer painting gig was a no-brainer for him. He’d work with friends and put some money into his budding lawn business. The rest of us were barely cutting our own lawns, let alone other peoples’ but that was Tyler. Currently he owns a nursery, runs a successful landscaping company, and lives in a big house with Stephanie and their three kids. Of course, regrettably he still smells like dirt.

Stephanie and Tyler barely even spoke in high school. Her control freak parents, mainly her dad, forbade her from staying out late and going to parties. She made up for lost time at college though, parties, weed, boys, even a rumor of a junior year pregnancy, which explains why she senior-yeared locally. She was home one day when Tyler was doing some landscaping for her parents. He looked familiar, more importantly, he looked like the kind of boy her father would dislike. But, Pops was shrewd; he enjoyed doing the gardening and only hired Tylere after Franklyn started coming around.

Everybody’s goal was to not live anyplace near home after graduation. NYC was a cool; Boston or Philly were acceptable if you went to school there. Anywhere but here. Franklyn went to business school in Chicago so, because of the frigid winters, he was allowed to come home but only for a year. Or two. But he’s still here, playing catch regularly with X-man. We get it; he was an all-county centerfielder twice; the baseball team went to three state championships, winning twice. This is where he had the best years of life; it’s where he’ll probably have the worst.

Baldwin, we didn’t get the name either, although it did come in handy later, was Franklyn’s best friend on the team and off. He was the smallest guy on the team, possibly the toughest too. He took Nicole to the prom, all 5’ 11” of her. In his late twenties, he had an announcement for Nicole and Franklyn. He had decided to initiate hormone therapy to transition. It was all kind of new to us then and we made some stupid comments and gave him that horrible nickname but for the most part, people were happy for him. Her. Baldwin.

We weren’t sure how to react to Baldwin’s news but we didn’t want to seem unsupportive, so we focused on gossiping about Nicole. They had dated for ten years, we’d say. How could she not know? Or did she know? We did hear she was blindsided but then they confused us by staying close. They even went to Kyle’s wedding together, which was suddenly the one event we all wanted to attend. Later, we’d find out just how lost Nicole felt. And confused. How love didn’t die because of a sex change and how being happy for Baldwin didn’t help.

It was kind of amazing that Kyle’s wedding took place without incident. Kyle had always had a thing for Nicole, but he and Baldwin were both jocks, and he was therefore technically forbidden from pursuing Nicole, even if he disliked Baldwin. He watched them date throughout high school and saw them on school breaks when were we all home together. His therapist encouraged him to move on, to explore dating sites. It didn’t take too long before he started dating Kayla. They quickly moved to being exclusive and he proposed to her just as Nicole suddenly became single and available.

Kayla hadn’t met many of Kyle’s friends prior to the wedding. She sensed some weird vibes at the reception but blamed them on the recency of Baldwin’s announcement. She couldn’t help but feel compassion for Nicole and she was touched to see Kyle giving the poor thing some extra comfort. She felt a little differently a few weeks later when Nicole was still indulging in so much attention. That’s when she remembered overhearing someone named Claire saying something in the women’s room at the reception about everyone wondering if Nicole and Kyle would ever get the chance to get together.

Claire was just planting seeds when she accidentally on purpose let Kayla overhear her restroom comments. At the time it seemed like Claire had a good thing going with Michael and she never seemed to want for male companionship but sometimes a girl needs to plan for rainy days even when the sun’s out. She wasn’t the only one who used old classmates as a kind of practice squad that she could turn to in a pinch but as time’s gone by there’s been a slow attrition of eligible guys since one by one they’ve all married-up over the years.

Michael was five years or six younger than Claire, a little too close in age for her to qualify as a cougar but good enough for bragging rights amongst the girls. She didn’t mention how they met so the assumption was obviously Tinder. They seemed compatible, danced a lot, got caught necking once or twice but the word was they didn’t stay together too long after the wedding. We’re a tough group and the kid probably felt like he was watching a scared-straight video. Although, that didn’t stop him from asking about Amber. To be fair, though, everyone loves Amber.

We all assumed that we’d each end up doing well. After all, we had been told since t-ball that we were winners. But Amber did well quickly. She’s a veterinarian with a thriving practice, mostly small animals; cats, dogs, birds but occasionally a house call for a llama, the only one in the county. She’s married happily, she says, and finds motherhood fulfilling, she says. Work is rewarding, she says. But at her Thursday night therapy sessions she sounds like someone with a case of burnout, wondering, what’s the point of saving Timothy the Turtle when the oceans are dying?

Timothy is an Eastern Box turtle who has lived most of his twenty-plus years in a 30-gallon fish tank. He doesn’t care about existential threats to the oceans like chemical pollutants and plastic straws. He’s seen his owner, Jordan, with a straw up his nose and he’s usually fine by the next day. Timothy was a Confirmation gift. Jordan chose the same name for each of them to honor St. Timothy, patron saint gastrointestinal ailments because young Jordan suffered from chronic stomach aches. Two years later Jordan felt cheated after his younger brother received a new bike for his Confirmation.

Patick Timothy O’Hara was the kind of kid you’d expect to have a turtle, maybe a stamp collection too. He was mainly memorable for being forgettable. And moody. His best friend Dave nicknamed him The Pendulum. Pharmaceuticals provided little stability, so his behavioral therapist suggested putting twenty nickels in each front pocket. For every bad thought, he moves a one from the right pocket to the left; does the opposite for good thoughts. The goal is to fill the right pocket. Patrick says that either way if he falls overboard, he’d better start swimming, or he’ll sink like a stone.

Dave and Patrick were friends even before Patrick and Timothy. They met in middle school and chummed their way through high school and college. Patrick had his moods; Dave had everything but. Or so it seemed. Somewhat paranoid, he couldn’t hear about a disease without gradually displaying symptoms. In retrospect, becoming a doctor was a terrible idea. He wasn’t always like that; not before Paulie brought them to that party at Tony’s house. He died of colorectal cancer in his thirties. “I told you I was sick,” he said. Even when he was dying, he thought he had something else.

Paulie was a straddler, a chameleon. He could fit in with multiple groups. He played soccer so he meshed with sports guys, he was a decent student so he got along with the brainiacs and he was a moderate user so he didn’t make the druggies paranoid. He could just show up and everyone assumed he came with some other group. He had a permanent free pass. It did always hurt that no one, Claire in particular, ever noticed his absence. He used to say he didn’t have a Claire in the world because she never noticed. But Jenn did.

Jenn had a way of noticing things; lots of things, odd things, like who favored punch-buggies (women) compared to Mini Coopers (guys and couples) or how many people used the drive-thru but ate in the parking lot (more than half at McDonalds, zilch at Starbucks.) She took a job in retail planning after graduation and got promoted just as the chain began downsizing, surprising only because she more than anyone, certainly more than Michaela, should have seen that trend coming. Suddenly Jenn had two kids and the normal loan trifecta, college/car/house, while the corporate ladder she was climbing was disintegrating.

Michaela never plans anything. Every day is like a snow day, a gift, an ellipsis between important things that could probably have waited anyway. The universe typically thanks her for her faith and looks out for her, sometimes in small ways, like catching designer footwear on closeout, sometimes in big ways, like falling into a pre-IPO dream job. But the years of her therapist telling her to plan, to have a strategy, have started to inspire fits of worry and lately she’s been reevaluating a lifetime of haphazard decisions good and bad, starting with attending the prom with Male Stacey.

Going to the prom with Machaela wasn’t a decision that Male Stacey ever spent a lot of time questioning, nor was sleeping her that night. It was the highlight of his tender years and taught him an important life lesson that served reasonably him well: always ask. He applied this strategy widely, to dating, getting himself raises, requesting discounts. The problem was he was still asking for dates after fifteen years of marriage. Never very discriminating, he was an equal opportunity adulterer who rarely let an opportunity pass, once even somewhat incestuously asking out Female Stacy at the ten-year reunion.

The two Stacey’s weren’t really brother and sister, we just treated them like they were because they looked alike and had the same name. One big difference was pot because Female Stacey was a stoner. We sometimes called her Ibid because if you asked where to find her it was usually the same place: behind the tennis courts. Pot was probably her most important relationship through her twenties when she suddenly discovered yoga and decided to have an unhealthy relationship with something healthy. Two things healthy, if we count Max, who was the first to notice her vastly improved flexibility.

Max went from second place behind weed to second place behind yoga but, as a healthy living advocate he viewed it as Female Stacey taking a step in the right direction, by which he meant becoming more like him. Max was our dietary pioneer, in second grade when half the class was glutton free, he was already pescatarian. He’s proudly played the trendy diet field over the years, from vegan to paleo. He only cheated once, buying a cupcake from Ashely at a bake sale for cancer research. Lately he’s tried singing to his microbiome to improve his gut health.

Ashley doesn’t cook much anymore, which is a shame because along with making delicious treats she was always happy to volunteer with event planning. Well, maybe not happy, because over the years she realized that most of her efforts went unnoticed. She recently left therapist, who, it dawned on her one day never thanked her for the apple cakes, Mandelbrot cookies and hamantaschen she made for him around the holidays, was essentially repeating exactly what Cassandra had said for years: if you surround yourself with people who don’t appreciate your value, soon you won’t either. Cassandra’s advice came for free.

Over the years, Cassandra offered lots of us free advice. Although it was usually wise counsel, we rarely followed it, which was too bad because when you spoke to her you knew that she really understood your problem. There was just always an adjacency about her, like she knew us but wasn’t quite one of us and the lunchroom and our later lives were her own version of Gombe Stream Park where she kept hoping to see us using the human behavior tools we studied in sociology, only to be crushed by our persistent failure and our allegiance to Noah.

When you reach a certain age, you look back at your life in blocks of time. Noah recognized those blocks while they were happening: this kindergarten, where we color and play, this is middle school where we learn, this is high school where make dumb decisions. He was the left-shoulder devil counterpart of Cassandra’s right-shoulder good angel, recommending risky behaviors like going to parties, like that last one at Tony’s mother’s house where the thing that happened happened to her. It’s those memories, good and bad, we value now that we’ve reached adulthood, where we die a little every day.

Looking back, we should have been more supportive of her than we were. It wasn’t her fault that what happened happened or later that Mr. Phillips got unwas-ed or the school cancelled our remaining field trips. We never bullied her or talked about her behind her back. We were much crueler. We ignored her. We walked by her locker in the hallway, sat next to her in assembly, saw her in library but barely ever spoke to her and, other than Melany, we sat quietly as she walked across the stage at graduation, collected her diploma and walked off stage.

–T. Francis Curran

The post Nothing Helps Anyone appeared first on My Site.

She gazed up into the night sky. Without streetlights, stars appeared all over, brighter, and reminded her that she not only belonged to this world but also the entire existence beyond it. She held the thought until the universe seemed impossible; a thought too big to be held. She stared into a dark spot, knowing that beyond her sight were billions of stars shining through the universe. Maybe, out there, another being was going through their daily life. Maybe they contemplated the existence of others, too. Maybe they were dealing with problems she’d never understand. In the brief belief of their existence, she felt connected to them, who or whatever they were.

In that briefest of moments, there was another being, and in that tiniest minutest undetectable moment, they had unknowingly locked eyes from a distance so far neither were capable of comprehending. Maybe in another life or universe they would have been friends and shared the same interests. Maybe they would have contemplated the universe together and the beings that may exist out there.

That being — with a name in a language so alien with a long, living history of changing sounds and words and phrases and grammar that an Earth-based human would never grasp it — contemplated the possibility of another somewhere in the universe.

The being sat on the roof of his home, watching the night sky. In a rare moment of both moons not being up at night, the sky was much darker than he’d ever seen before. He followed the lines of stars creating the images that read their origin story, a story told over thousands and thousands of year. He sat under the same stars with the same wondering about where they were and why. Was there someone out there looking back at him? Were they all lost souls soaring through the universe, never likely to meet, never likely to communicate but somehow, belonging to the same reality, same existence, enough to connect them all? A connection they could only feel without knowing if it was real or imagined.

For a second, there was a connection, but now it was lost and floating through the dark, empty, cold space of the universe. The loss unknown, yet the connection still felt deep inside.

–Rachel Speed

The post Floating Moments in Space appeared first on My Site.

As I waited for my ride to be assigned, I watched the coming and goings of the other riders. We were all at varying stages but all you had to do was see the signs that spoke volumes as to the destinations ahead. Each rider progressed at whatever speed moved them, as long as it moved them forward. But there was this one particular rider, that once I caught wind of her, I felt unusually connected to. So slight she was in stature, I didn’t think it was possible to be so emaciated and remain upright. She lassoed my attention just like a cowboy would, didn’t even see it coming. I was never quite sure as to who connected with whom or why. But what I did know was the force that propelled her did it with a deliberate purpose, I just never saw her feet move. I had imagined some intricate pulley system, manipulated by some AI virtual software that provided her brain with the necessary impulse that she could not. She moved so slowly, albeit steadily down a corridor that led to the very last place she wanted to be but had little choice in the matter. She reminded me of a scene from a B-horror movie, with a limited budget for special effects. Perhaps smoke and mirrors were at hand, doesn’t matter cause the pain she wore was visibly etched on her face. Common courtesy should have told me not to stare but I did, nonetheless. It appeared porcelain in texture, a face so smooth and lifeless, not a crease, winkle, or blemish, I doubt a bug could’ve held its ground on that surface. I wanted to touch her face, to feel it’s coolness, so I would know what to expect. The urge to reach out was strong but not proper at any point. There was this sort of supple iridescent glow to her skin, not so much from a healthy lifestyle and fun in the sun. Still it attracted me but I couldn’t say why. More like marble, a face sculptured by a life overrun by a thing she couldn’t repel. Her skin appeared drawn so tight, like a drum having played too many solos or too many facelifts having been pulled too far back. All those character lines that depicted stories of a life, gone on a stretched-out canvas void of any tales to tell. You could call it alabaster if you like but it was a paleness that compelled you to look away, don’t stare and go about your business. The tone and texture outlined both a struggle and prognosis of last-ditch efforts, usually found within the providence of St. Jude Thaddeus. Her lack of skin tone became her war paint, that was forged into a death mask; and hers was fierce. It illustrated a pattern of continuous struggle, having fought for life, liberty, and pursuit of more of the same. She had to have sensed me, as she immediately turned and made eye contact. I sensed she was pissed and insisted without words just gestures that she was the warrior princess in an epic struggle. So she kept walking, if you wanted to call it that. Fueled by fear, or love, or both in tandem. The two emotions although more polarized, came together against a common foe; the enemy of my enemy scenario. The fear of losing everything she worked for, motivated her to move those bony limbs, despite an insatiable urge to fetus up and give herself to the Mist. She knew everybody she loved, was watching and paying attention, hoping she had what it takes or all was lost. And I knew then our paths had crossed for a reason.

…It felt so otherworldly, more terrorizing than complicated, strange brewing of which I couldn’t fathom. I knew it was me but a shadow of a former self. I knew I wasn’t home or in Kansas and hadn’t a clue. I was adrift, alone in a small skiff, lifeless and rudderless with no sense of direction, whatsoever. Zero visibility, and I couldn’t feel shit. But what scared me the most was that I couldn’t hear either, was it because I went deaf or there’s nothing to hear? I experienced some sort of movement, like I was swimming in embryonic ooze. A sense of floating forward, into that ooze, only there was no current. But I felt buoyant enough to had sailed the seven seas, or so I thought. Why didn’t I smell diesel waste or decaying fish, not a scent. Wherever north and south used to be, it was lost in this madness for now. There was a mist that surrounded everything, couldn’t have been any thicker without being solid, and I was neither wet nor cold. Didn’t understand much but what I did know was that I should’ve been more concerned. The only answer that made any sense was that I wasn’t much of anything, anymore. So I must be something else, something between, what was between life and death? I tried to maintain the acceptance of my predicament, that it was just me and me alone out here. Stranded in a mist that isolated me from the vertical world. It sounded the least bit sensational or delirium or a glimpse of bleak future. So, what was left of me was more of a caricature of a man who danced outside the mist. I morphed from flesh and fiber, to something more soluble, capable of a new fluidity, but all the madness in the middle of this mess could kiss my pituitary glands. It seemed too surreal, too abstract even for Dali and I was done with it all…

Being processed into the Guild was both expedient and equally uncomfortable, but not without its own initiation. I was put through a regiment of obstacle courses and evaluations, while some of those procedures were not for the faint of heart. Initiation I, Talk about a no access place and still they ventured where no probe manmade or otherwise should ever, on any human being but that didn’t stop them. I laid prone and helpless watching as a snake-like prod penetrated me, in a way I never imagined. Now that was something my father should’ve warned me about, every father should. That bit of information needed to be in the forefront, bolded out, in caps, on the first page of the Mans’ Manual, section III on how to survive Urology in your golden years. I was never sure what caused me the most harm, the moment my second favorite organ was so violated or when I allowed them to do it again. You would’ve had to be sitting next to me to fully appreciate the moment, and to have understood my motives. Either way, there was no consultation that could’ve prepared me for what laid ahead and being forewarned would’ve convinced any sane man to flee, don’t turn around no matter what you hear! I had a front row seat for this intrusion, which appeared at first to be anatomically impossible but to my dismay proved otherwise. A TV monitor was rendered for my viewing pleasure, so I could witness the carnage as it unfolded within. My focus kept flitting from the thing on the screen, which had a striking resemblance to the Blob. Another B-horror movie that launched a stellar career for a young actor, as it barreled down my urethra or was it up? Excellent theatre until I realized that I was the unsuspecting victim, who was the first to fall. I kept trying to squirm out my chair, but too many hands kept me in check and all I could do was bare down as if I was in childbirth. Eventually, I came eyeball to eyeball with the cause of all my grief. I had been occupied by a life draining mass that believed to be empowered and the infidel was me. I stopped shaking for a moment, long enough to take in the view and I saw more than I cared to. I would own that image forever, as did all the riders before had. Certain fragments of knowledge are like tattoos, leaving an inedible impression on each of your temporal lobes as well as other sore spots. I’ve viewed and screamed well into the night from many a delightfully frightening horror flick, enjoying every blood-curdling frame but never in the lead role.

Having wasted no time, acknowledging none to spare, she articulated the sentence into words for us. Those same words were shots fired, then reverberated off the walls directly into my wife’s heart and ricochet again before they exploded in my brain. Sending shrapnel-like particles covered with my aspirations everywhere. She having uttered those words, stuck in our memories like Velcro on a tot’s shoe, so it never becomes undone. They took hold and set up shop inside, fused with every fiber of me. I couldn’t separate those words from my vocabulary anymore and they became the rest of my story. Her prognosis opened a window with a limited horizon and nothing short of x-ray vision could sway that view. So, all that was left for me was to prepare for the ride ahead.

I mean really, my DNA, like my families DNA was far from pure but apparently perfect for foreign cells to migrate, everything desires upgrades. We had lost so many members, so many descendants over so many decades that it appeared personal. Again, knowing what I knew, I still indulged myself without any respect for the life I was given. Then poked the bear until I got its undivided attention. I surely deserved some of pushback for my irresponsible behavior but that’s all it was. And when the moment arrives, I’ll respect it for what it is, real skin in the game of life and death when it was no longer a game. I held it off for a while, in a display of mad grit and resolve. Fought the fight that needed to be fought, but I was still a bet against. In the many battles my tribe had waged, none hit closer to home than in my sister’s, the last time I saw her alive. Her eyes, her body lifeless but her life force blazed in her eyes and I heard them plead to me in a desperate tone. “You gotta me help, little brother, I cannot help myself.” Her once formidable frame, failed her, leaving her powerless to rally for her life. The woman who swore to protect me, I could not do in kind. I was powerless to help her and myself as well. I looked into her eyes, as her energy slipped through my fingers like so much water from a leaky faucet. Those same eyes implored me to do something, anything but all I could do was accept her fate as our loss, then my knees buckled for the second time. I imagined her, being a prisoner of herself, her mind actively seeking solutions to a life support system gone awry. But confined to a vessel that has taken on too much water…woman overbroad! And in that precise moment, I discovered there were far worse things in life than death. As I replaced fear with a healthy resolve, the club accepted me and I it, for better or worse, until the road ends.

…My eyes, riveted shut as I dangled precariously once more, perhaps for the last time, deep into the mist. Reluctant to give a shit about this, that, or anything anymore, I came to accept that there was no longer yesterday, or now, and definitely not tomorrow. Left with no choice, that there was only this, lost, alone and disenfranchised. Maybe it was as it was meant to be, when you arrive at the end of days. Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe the best thing but anything was better than that nightmarish road leading next to nowhere. But I had chosen my fate, of my own free will, and just when I had, I gave myself to the mist…I chose, to wander in the nothingness of the ethereal. I mutated into the Flying Dutchmen of the Abyss. Having been there before I had a sense of ownership, it fit like OJ’s glove. Every moment that seemed like forever, I intuited my cells detaching, disconnecting from the Mother ship and dissolved effortlessly into the mist. Merging as part of the whole, every particle of me, quit in a steady and fluid deconstruction. No form, no fucking fooling. Then stopped just as aggressively as it started, as a sharp intrusion blasted into the mist, followed by a massive displacement of fluid. Someone or something grabbed hold of me and yanked. Like being stuck in a plunger, while the suction kept me at bay and all I could do was go with the flow. Until I was thrown free, all the while something melodic caressed my ear. A voice? Or images selectively embossed in my memory? More than likely just a dark noise, humming in the mist. As I commenced to come together, no longer splitting like an atom. I was moved by a secular cognizance that surfaced when I surrendered myself. I smiled, as the Abyss revealed some of its secrets to me, in verse and spectacular imagery.

The caretakers of the guild, for lack of a better term, were the heart and soul of the operation. They were like farmers who tilled the land, whether it bared a yield or not. They worked us for all we was worth, with a sense of urgency that never seemed to waiver. If not for their presence, their commitment to the riders more of us would’ve been waylaid by the roadside to the Abyss. Their numbers belied both their strength and dedication; too thin they were to handle their ever-increasing flock. It rang true that death and dying were too big a business to let fail. Inside The Guild, its process was in full swing, where all prepared for the next phase. It was in fact the only phase that mattered, the one that led back to the life. It being a risky proposition at best, requiring the skills and nerves of a professional gambler. So, when confronted with a seemingly losing hand, any savvy gambler would account for all the variables, all the contingencies at play before he renders a wager. He acknowledges there will always be things he can’t predict or control, so he speculates and when no one is looking he hedges his bet like a mother. Then prays after placing himself all in, that said prays don’t fall on deaf ears. Such prayers led me to one concern, okay, make that one concern and one rub. The first being if the receiver of such prayers existed, then I had been grossly misinformed for far too many years. But in spite of which, I stilled played the smart percentages as any gambler would. But the rub being far more disturbing to me, why a God with no name was mad and why was She so mad with me? Unfortunately, I took it personal, which was an overreach on me, assuming she knew me from Adam. Most had trouble with my use of pronouns but she made more sense to me under the circumstances. So, being compelled to accept any deity’s existence, then having no choice, I converted He to a She and in all matters of religion, it’s between me and her? Blasphemy they say? Whatever the truth was or wasn’t, it didn’t brood well for me. In the course of my religious instruction, the only take away that made any sense was that She, was one vengeful son-of-a-deity and not to be trifled with or cheated upon. As with any supreme entity, It was usually their way, which was the only way or be smite, you Pagan!

What I had hoped for once I entered the Guild, was the fear that I suppressed along with my broken spirit, would no longer be a factor, that closure was imminent. I was gravely mistaken, instead an expiration date was extended to me, having added a new concern to an ever-expanding inventory. For that moment time froze and I froze with it, something stupefied me from the neck up and in that split second, nothing was more important to me than that second at hand. I was left with a slither of time, give or take a moment or two, to find peace and some solace in the life I led. The way I counted it, there was 1,440 minutes in a day and I needed to use them all, wisely. I stopped looking at time the same way, and sliced it as I would a pie, and then created subsets and sliced them up some more. Until it looked like I had time to spare.

Had I abandoned this receiver of all prayers, what would’ve been left for the likes of me. I remember reading Sartre in school and wincing in horror at the possibilities he presented. The nothingness of it, I wondered in retrospect had he also meandered in the mist? But at the time, as most Frenchmen should understand my preoccupation was with the smarter gender not an afterlife. “Please, don’t let it be so.” I would sob under my breath to any divinity in earshot. I needed to believe that there was something more benign out there other than heaven or hell, and for fuck’s sake not another Cecil B. DeMille production. Which ultimately led me to deaths door, being the key that unlocks all the veils to all the answers. I was at full throttle with sessions well into my journey, when it truly started to matter for me. The dawn of my ride was at hand and I was ready to roll. The changes were so slight at first, hardly distinguishable like the first few pounds you gained right before obesity smacked you upside your midriff. Over time it built into a crescendo that I could no longer ignore or control. It changed me in all ways imaginable. My descent into decay was the beginning of the end. That was when the Palerider emerged, in all his unsightly splendor. Not one fiber of me was exempt, I was in, with a hand that reeked fold. As a result, I abandoned most of the good stuff that comprised me, I abandoned life, in order to accept my death. A shell of myself was left behind, in lieu a keepsake, It masqueraded as me only to keep up appearances. I was left in a somber state of slumber perpetually, where unconsciousness was the norm. I slept instead of lived and in so doing, found myself awash along the bank of the mist, and that was when I began to feel the burn.

…I was deep into the mist now, almost like I belong. I got close enough to have caught a scent of something and it vibrated from an unlimited flow of energy. This presence surrounded me, it was sweet and pleasant and comforted me. My senses were in session again, a delectable scent was evident and it was both masculine/feminine. I smelled, I sensed but I couldn’t explain why. Images were indelibly fused into my old DNA and became part of me. Everything within the mist had its own timeline, etched in stone and nothing short of a solar blast can alter it. Carved in the annals of time, I was freed on my own recognizance, allowed to finish what I started. I couldn’t say how long it was before I found my way, but it was love for sure, that dragged me back to my senses. I heard her voice call out to me, I sensed her despair and concern and it served as a beacon. To which I could navigate my way back, that was when her love held me tight and ripped me from the Abyss. My God, my mind, whatever it was or wasn’t turned energy into mass, sprouted tentacles and saved me from perdition. I was gone from this place and that was all that mattered, for now…

Love, had to have been, no force stronger than, not even close. What other hypothesis could move matter the way it moved me. Out of the fire, over the pan and into loving arms. Still not convinced of any one thing pulled me from the brink, it was in truth a concoction events. That created wonderful alchemy, when it was needed the most. The smart money’s on, well you know, but first things first.

The burn is to a rider what a fix is to an addict, a means to an end. Where the day-to-day could resume without any of the restraints that bog them down, as we underappreciate our day to day. The ride for me had no reverse in its gear box, there was only forward. Going forward required weekly sessions, to achieve such an end. It required several years of indoctrination to corral the beast and send it packing. I hadn’t a clue about the road to my salvation until, at the same time a global killer swept the planet. When I walked through the guilds’ conclave, I swore that it was the last time. Groucho had said it best, “I won’t be part of any club that would have me as a member.” I noticed, I wasn’t the only one with that in mind but it looked like I was the last to leave the dance. The chamber, emptied except for the remnants of debris, left by a panicked herd of crazed octogenarians. A once booming venue, standing room only had lost its captive audience. With a new menace taking root and diminishing an already reduced town folk. I laid low amongst my fellow riders and tried to wait out the storm. My body began a slow and steady decline that seemed to coincide with the world around it. I had no doubt the two weren’t related but at the time it appeared to be more than just a coincidence. I called it as I saw it, random chaos at its most costly. As the world withdrew, to lessen the spread, so did I. We were both losing ground simultaneously, me and humanity but mine was a greater degree of difficulty. One loss and I was out but the world could handle a little thinning and still continue to thrive, just without me. All the while, I wasn’t paying attention, I started to change, gradually morphing into, and completely fusion with the Palerider. While so many around me suffered in concert. Suddenly, the world and I became as one, we suffered as one and were lessened as one. There was no other choice for me but to withdraw from the ranks, in order to protect the file. Somehow, I managed to stay clear of the other shoe dropping, caught my second wind and somehow allowed continue this life. That was the exact moment I notice what love happened to look like when a notion takes form, and became animated. A USG (Unidentified Saving Grace) for lack of a better explanation, reached out and saved me, again. But the jury was still out on the world.

The cost of my patch, can only be measured in increments of time and the depth of my journey. After many months of riding the road to ruin, I looked the look and walked the walk. And I saw the Palerider, every morning when I was forced to save his face. I knew as soon as I opened my eyes come break of day that I wasn’t the same man who had closed them. I recognized that I pulled the wool over deaths eyes for now, but it wasn’t lost on me either that it had my scent. I wasn’t sure how I got from there to here until the love that grabbed hold, explained it to me in detail. That I had stopped treatment in time with the height of global madness. That I was a new shiny piece of porcelain, akin to the warrior princess, as we sprinted down the road to perdition. I was long past dehydration and fluids left me quicker than constituents fled California to a place called Idaho? The very last time the mist engulfed me, was when I heard her speak my name. She always told me she loved me but I had it confused with learned behavior, until I felt its touch. It became an extension of her and It took hold of me when I needed to be held most and brought me back to the land of the Verticals. That’s what love does, that was how I recognized it and her love showed up in time, just like the Marines. She thought she lost me and was right but I didn’t have the wherewithal to mention it. I tried to explain that she saved me but she wouldn’t buy in. That a warmth cocooned me in a way that both shielded and comforted me and I knew, like I knew the tide would change, the sun would rise and that man would leave this place in ruin. That it still wasn’t my time yet, that I had shit to do.

And so I did. I worked both body and mind back to where I left off, in a mad dash to put some distance between me and the Palerider’s road. I knew this battle was far from over, won’t be till I cried uncle. From that cocoon emerged a believer, someone who knew better or thought so. In lieu of a good therapist, or a cop never around when you needed one; I found faith. The kind of faith that finds you first, when you’re backed up against a wall, where you and rock had hit bottom, together in one massive thump. I had thought the truth would set me free, it had not. But I was back amongst my tribe, and believed it a good restart. So in the end, after facing the ins and outs of both life and death, repeatedly, I came away with more of that precious time, courtesy of a perfect blend of science and theology. Well, I always envisioned a deity akin to a mad scientist, capable of almost anything. Perhaps at the very least, I’ve garnished a couple more tomorrows or maybe a month of Sundays wouldn’t suck either. Still, I had to come to terms with myself, being in conflict with reason and flight of fantasy, born from necessity. I never took sides before, I lived an agnostic life on the hedge cause I couldn’t commit, not then. But in a nano-second of doubt, I decided to balk at logic and trip the light fantastic; embrace what I assumed to be was just an extraordinary gift. Then came that feeling of awe again that I use to feel as a kid playing joyously in the summer, experiencing a peace that was the residual of contentment. All that produced a smile on a face that had no business smiling, until then. It made me feel warm and fuzzy and very much alive. I plan on wearing it as best I can for as long as I can, until the mist consumes me.

–Alan Schwartz

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