“Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.”
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1972
People are out of work, like that fella on the right. I guess the dignity of death is not having your shoes stolen when you been dead for a month. No narcotics for a year. It’s my anniversary. I found religion, I came back to booze and boo! Praise God. We’ve always known alcohol is a healing agent, now we’re about to bestow that exalted status on pot.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1972
People are out of work, like that fella on the right. I guess the dignity of death is not having your shoes stolen when you been dead for a month. No narcotics for a year. It’s my anniversary. I found religion, I came back to booze and boo! Praise God. We’ve always known alcohol is a healing agent, now we’re about to bestow that exalted status on pot.
Friends, we live in a time of profound decadence, a time when humans are exhibiting hedonistic practices beyond the pale. Tea-bagging, blokens, and other depravities are all the rage. You must choose, brothers and sisters, whether you’re gonna be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution.
The new, technological revolution -- ain’t it grand! The new, cool job status is “outta work.” Rosie the riveter gave way to Kent the data entry dork. War requires goods and services. People with skills? Titan, CACI, Halliburton, and KBR, (google ‘em). Got enough typewriters, then let me apply these electrodes to your tits. CACI started out as a clerical service and ended up as a surrogate torture training camp for the American government (google ‘em). Need your clothes washed soldier? Only $99 a load? Pat Tillman must be rolling in his grave. Such a sanitized send-up in the NYT article the Saturday before the “big game.” Never a mention of how the Bush administration posthumously prostituted him on the altar of Western righteousness. And how about brave, General Petraeus’ appearance, and the two, I think, patriotic anthems, and big Super Bowl flyover by the jets? My heart was aflutter. Why? Because I knew those birds were hybrids! But more than that, I knew they represented my freedom. Just knowing they’ve got my back gives hope to me and Shadow (or is that, Shadow and I?). Praise God!
Speaking of the big game, did you know that steel dick ring that’s irritating the hell out of me right now is called a Prince Albert. It’s been so cold down here, and there, I’ve had to wear a catheter to warm it up. Errrr…maybe that was Herb Alpert, you know, and all that gism…I mean jazz…whipped cream and other delights…a taste of honey. What the fuck does that have to do with the “big game,” Me? Wait a minute, I’m Me again! ‘Obamas in charge now, it’s official. I went on his facebook and he said, “it’s complicated.” Did you know the Michigan budget allots more to our prison system than it does to education?
Furthermore…
Since he had never considered it before, bleeding to death seemed absurd. Pluto was frozen in the present, disconnected from the past by the thought of his mortality, or, if you prefer, deprived of the future by a severed artery. He could only damn nature's complicity in his fate.
The sheer sandstone face loomed before him, an inscrutable, alien thing, representing his every uncertainty. Amidst the icy spray of the waves he suddenly realized the gravity of his predicament. The dizzying rock precipice before him confirmed his utter desolation.
By one of those tricks of the eye wherein nature taunts the mind, Pluto's eyes beheld an overhanging scrub. Prostrating itself to the impending gale, its piney hands beckoned him. The signs were clear; this was his place of death. He gestured toward the tree while crawling up the steep rock face. His legs betrayed him.
Tranquilized, eyes plastered shut, and hooded in black, Zeke Pluto was taken to the public square in Belmopan, Belize, on July 4, 2010. The police carefully unfolded a thick blue plastic sheet about 16 feet by 16 feet on the blistering asphalt. Pluto, delirious, barefoot, feet shackled and hands cuffed behind his back, knelt quietly as the Procurator read his crimes to an angry crowd.
The executioner beckoned the soldier to hand him the long, curved sword. Approaching the condemned from behind he lightly placed the tip of the sword on Pluto's neck, causing him to instinctively raise his head.
In spite of the blazing sun and buzz of the picnickers, he became vaguely aware of a slow, swooshing sound. This otherworldly whine was a sound he could neither ignore nor understand. Like the release of an arrow from a powerful compound bow.
He paused, quizzically, was it near or far away--he couldn't tell. He perceived the soft whistle as having always been there. But now its pitch was, almost imperceptibly, rising. He feared this new ability to perceive the ancient hiss. He began to scream at the shriek.
As the awful sound subsided, Pluto lost consciousness and seemed suspended by the light, as one who is already dead. He was resurrected years later -- or so it seemed to him -- by an unbearable lightness of mind, followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of suffocation.
Galvanic sorrows tormented his limbs; throbbing with a heart-squeezing intensity. Slices of thin pain pressured his hands and feet. As to his head, he could feel a growing pressure, a drowning congestion.
These reactions were purely limbic, reptilian responses to that grossest of stimuli. All possibility of thought removed from the moment was negated; biological dynamics governed his behaviors, and these were agonizing. He was in a world unmoored, in motion, topsy-turvy. Down that tunnel, of which he was the sole occupant, without embodiment, the world swung in camera spin.
Suddenly, the culvert-like opening widened, and he could see shadowy figures beckoning him towards a door. He rejoiced, as if rescued by divine guerillas. Hallelujah. He ran toward their welcoming arms. Free. He followed the widening gyre.
At nightfall he paused, empty, unhappy, and alone. Sheer will drove him on. Finally he found a road he knew he had traveled before. It seemed familiar, the right direction; a twilight zone where being revealed itself as the illusion he himself had once prophesied. It offered comfort, yet appeared uninhabited. No dogs barked, no birds sang. No sign of animal presence. The angular, crepuscular sky shaded the dusk in mood indigo, like a Turner landscape engulfed in thick coal smoke. Above him the stars offered a measure of inevitability. Their configuration providing a cryptic significance: offering the possibility of new lands. The space of this strange place was defined by alien whispers that dissolved the distinction between sound and image.
Gingerly touching his neck, his hands felt the cold wet slash of ragged flesh he new to be the work of the executioner. His eyes bulged grotesquely from the sad, excruciating pressure. His tongue, black and swollen in its supplicant protrusion, made his baleful moan unintelligible.
Furthermore…
Since he had never considered it before, bleeding to death seemed absurd. Pluto was frozen in the present, disconnected from the past by the thought of his mortality, or, if you prefer, deprived of the future by a severed artery. He could only damn nature's complicity in his fate.
The sheer sandstone face loomed before him, an inscrutable, alien thing, representing his every uncertainty. Amidst the icy spray of the waves he suddenly realized the gravity of his predicament. The dizzying rock precipice before him confirmed his utter desolation.
By one of those tricks of the eye wherein nature taunts the mind, Pluto's eyes beheld an overhanging scrub. Prostrating itself to the impending gale, its piney hands beckoned him. The signs were clear; this was his place of death. He gestured toward the tree while crawling up the steep rock face. His legs betrayed him.
Tranquilized, eyes plastered shut, and hooded in black, Zeke Pluto was taken to the public square in Belmopan, Belize, on July 4, 2010. The police carefully unfolded a thick blue plastic sheet about 16 feet by 16 feet on the blistering asphalt. Pluto, delirious, barefoot, feet shackled and hands cuffed behind his back, knelt quietly as the Procurator read his crimes to an angry crowd.
The executioner beckoned the soldier to hand him the long, curved sword. Approaching the condemned from behind he lightly placed the tip of the sword on Pluto's neck, causing him to instinctively raise his head.
In spite of the blazing sun and buzz of the picnickers, he became vaguely aware of a slow, swooshing sound. This otherworldly whine was a sound he could neither ignore nor understand. Like the release of an arrow from a powerful compound bow.
He paused, quizzically, was it near or far away--he couldn't tell. He perceived the soft whistle as having always been there. But now its pitch was, almost imperceptibly, rising. He feared this new ability to perceive the ancient hiss. He began to scream at the shriek.
As the awful sound subsided, Pluto lost consciousness and seemed suspended by the light, as one who is already dead. He was resurrected years later -- or so it seemed to him -- by an unbearable lightness of mind, followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of suffocation.
Galvanic sorrows tormented his limbs; throbbing with a heart-squeezing intensity. Slices of thin pain pressured his hands and feet. As to his head, he could feel a growing pressure, a drowning congestion.
These reactions were purely limbic, reptilian responses to that grossest of stimuli. All possibility of thought removed from the moment was negated; biological dynamics governed his behaviors, and these were agonizing. He was in a world unmoored, in motion, topsy-turvy. Down that tunnel, of which he was the sole occupant, without embodiment, the world swung in camera spin.
Suddenly, the culvert-like opening widened, and he could see shadowy figures beckoning him towards a door. He rejoiced, as if rescued by divine guerillas. Hallelujah. He ran toward their welcoming arms. Free. He followed the widening gyre.
At nightfall he paused, empty, unhappy, and alone. Sheer will drove him on. Finally he found a road he knew he had traveled before. It seemed familiar, the right direction; a twilight zone where being revealed itself as the illusion he himself had once prophesied. It offered comfort, yet appeared uninhabited. No dogs barked, no birds sang. No sign of animal presence. The angular, crepuscular sky shaded the dusk in mood indigo, like a Turner landscape engulfed in thick coal smoke. Above him the stars offered a measure of inevitability. Their configuration providing a cryptic significance: offering the possibility of new lands. The space of this strange place was defined by alien whispers that dissolved the distinction between sound and image.
Gingerly touching his neck, his hands felt the cold wet slash of ragged flesh he new to be the work of the executioner. His eyes bulged grotesquely from the sad, excruciating pressure. His tongue, black and swollen in its supplicant protrusion, made his baleful moan unintelligible.
Blessed relief came in a vision, a scene from his sad past, a brief reverie on his short happy time with Zelda at Dandelion Cottage. All that he ever loved was crystallized in the image before him. The darkness before the dawn passed. Pail and shovel in hand they met in slow motion, a memory portrait of a fleeting happiness; light, lovely, and kind in the morning sunshine. At last, Zeke found the comfort of sheltering arms, the cool, sweet solace, and the joy of her touch. He loves her so much, too much, pathetically. Her caress, the end of the shrieking, that lifelong icy sound, brings a draining of all energy, of his self; all is light, all is darkness and quiet nothingness.
The violent swing of the saber sent the severed head flying about 4 feet from the prostate trunk. The paramedics then presented the head to the doctor who staunched the geyser of blood spurting from the gaping maw.
At sunset the doctor sewed Pluto's head onto his trunk. The body was wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in a private ambulance.
The violent swing of the saber sent the severed head flying about 4 feet from the prostate trunk. The paramedics then presented the head to the doctor who staunched the geyser of blood spurting from the gaping maw.
At sunset the doctor sewed Pluto's head onto his trunk. The body was wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in a private ambulance.
1 comment:
"...the geyser of blood spurting from the gaping maw."
Lovecraft would be proud.
Yr. most obt. srvnt.
Richard Upton Pickman
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