Penguino Redux

1980

Diary of a Madman:
The doctor says the worst thing for me is to think about my disease. It is a disease you know. They think it's a condition, but I know it has a pathology. It comes from as of yet undiscovered gases in cigarette smoke. That's why I'm sick--from smoking. The bars here are suicidal--bludgeoning the negative space unmercifully, sacrificing themselves willingly to the space they displace.

The smell of institutional green is sweet--an aromatic vision of brave despair. No wonder the children hate it. According to Dr. Marcia, I have no pain. He feels nothing, and that satisfies him. There is a place above the urinal where the peeled off paint suggests a perfectly formed map of Czechoslovakia. But it often turns into the pupa of a Tobacco Horned Worm; viciously wriggling as if trying to writhe out of its sentence. Its absurd escape attempts are embarrassing. Up and down the steel screen it crawls as its sad, unblinking eyes fix me with envy.

But that's not the worst, there's something else--the smell! It permeates the wing; menaces the chow-line, lurks in the bedpan, hides in the mattress, lying in wait for my unguarded thoughts. I perspire its aroma. A sickly, lime-green smell. What a smell. How I've dissected it. It feels like uncooked tripe and sometimes smells more yellowish than green. I often see people through the holes where the paint is missing.

The ballerina is there, pirouetting very fast, and her spinning often wakes up the dead n****r. They try, oh how they try. They cluck their thick tongues and plot and plot....Sometimes Leslie Franklin joins their silly game. The edges are amazingly strong; but they still claw and tear at them; their fingers' static scuttle looking like a vengeful anemone's frantic search for food. The edges eventually strangle and sever the fingers at the knuckle, producing a pile of bloody weisworst that crawl atop the radiator and disappear.

“Sumer is a cumin in, lud sing cuckoo.”

-- Anonymous, and considered to be one of the oldest lyrics in the English language.

Last night I did something I’ve never done. I skimmed back through my blog. And in doing so I came across some interesting comments I had never seen.

Regarding the “Penguino” story, R.J. wrote, “Odd, oftentimes cute birds that swim but cannot fly; or blubbery, long in the tooth mammals that swim but cannot walk—oddballs of the animal kingdom either way. Too bad they couldn’t just keep it fun.”

Bonnie Q. (thank you Bonnie for your latest musical cure package and astrological healing kit) writes, “Bad timing, late notice, I have missed them [Walrus reunions] all. A loyal follower from the past anticipates the next reunion! Don’t let us down!
-- Peace

Anonymous said…
“Buddy calling, foot in mouth is one of my curious quirks, thank you very much. If I couldn’t let bygones be bygones I would be holding grudges against people dating back to childhood over perceived transgressions. I would hope that the characters in your story could rise above their perceived insults and go on for the group of friends who’ve always supported the band. Who gives a shit where they perform or under what circumstances? People just want to get together and celebrate our past, our accomplishments, our new-found loves, our various recoveries, our hopes and dreams, our foot in mouth.”

Well said, Buddy, and put quite eloquently. I think I know from whence that rhetorical flourish comes. I detect a Beantown banter in that ghost writer from Xmas past. Ah yes, that voice can skirt around the blog, but it can’t hide. Miss Julie “she’s so fine” Fine has left her scriptural, and always thoughtfully subtle, trace elsewhere in this pathography. What, you say, is a “pathography.” Pathography is the name given that literary genre that concerns memoirs of illness and disease. I too have foot in mouth disease, a horrid malady that invariably strikes when I least expect it.