Chapter Five
The Fig, the Bee, the Elephant
And the Cow…who is now a Bull. How about that; fascinating gayville.
Maybe we will go to Heaven when you die. All y’all. Maybe not?
--Quote from the Fruitarian Readers Digest
Selected Output From
“The Beau Hooter,” wrote books with Artie, duh and Sara-genie
Caza does books, remember? Income|expenses. Taxation without reparation…
WHEN GABE RETURNED Home, he shakily composed his reply letter, trying to put all his fear, hatred and longing into squeamish written words on a page. He finished Phoebe’s address out of the Trash eroded on and Envelope. He said from the Floor, a not Unfitting position for his temporary state of sexless Misery. For otherwise he would have had to sit on his Bed. All of his Chairs were full of Magazines.
What would Phoebe want to Hear? He Began to Write:
“Anybody remember the Queen Mary’s "Crumpets are delicious" ad promo campaign? They used this jingle that went, "Let's all go, hand-in-hand, on the Queen Mary out to the delicious crumpets land," etc. Reflecting inwardly about it now, I am filled with a profound sense of Timeless nausea as I picture a fat lot of neighborhood kids, all grinning like overwrought, unknown Morons, all from my old suburban neighborhood, charging like Crack-the-Whip across a sunset plain… as in the end of "Seventh Seal," where they head into and antidisestablishmentarianistic valley (you understand) from which there is No Return… I'm digressing wildly from the subject at hand, because it's a difficult subject to deal with.
First off, thanks for your Letter; it puts everything into perspective. Meaning, is certainly opened my eyes. Yeah. Saragina was over a few days after your letter arrived, and me being me I had to ask her to read it. Spent the rest of our time together figuring I had to apologize, and picking out nice apology gifts to give you when I did apologize. Perhaps a nice subpoena? Nah, I'm only kidding. I never showed her your letter. She can't read!
I don't deserve any friends, but I still have a few left. And right. There’s some bitterness loose in my head, the memory of resentment, from the days when I went around cursing myself because I was DAMNED to always be a loner, always the outcast pariah… always insecure… figures that when I do manage to succeed a little, I go and sabotage it… perhaps I'm secretly a heartless, vicious all-white creep … people would KILL to have the pals I have, and I go back and fuck it all up…
…I start to have to tell myself, "Shut up! Stop! Put a sock in that there dryer!"
Remember, you once told me he was discovering how much you didn't know about yourself?
I recall, at the time, thinking "knowing your very own mind, it's not that hard."
I lied to myself. I don't know!
When I do something, it's impulsive, which is why I'm so broke all the time. I can't visualize the future: I don't have any solid hopes for it. I don't know if I’ll even finish this letter; the written notes just gave out, with so much left unsaid.
Was it something you put in your letter… a week ago… if I could think of it now, I’d have the solution to this whole muddle. I could say the right thing, and all the typing would come straight of errors. I can go to sleep without the goddamned "guilts" keeping me awake… for now I risk saying the wrong thing.
I don't think I'm the one you need, the one you're looking for. Don't hate me completely yet. I don't like the looks of your letter; it reads like a suicide note, and one for me, yet. Please, don't take things too seriously. It's useless. I'd only come to resent you after a while.
Please keep the lines open…”
Writing the letter got the "Beau" going on a writing stint. He grabbed up all the spare paper he had and, after dropping the stamped letter in a mailbox located on the same street he was shot at on, Guild Street, he wrote up a Blue Streak.
Following shortly are some representative samples of this and other productivity spates, reaching into the foreseeable Past, altering the invisible Present and encapsulating the improbable Future; and Endless, limitless Future made entirely by crushing exquisite, priceless, oceanic shoreline gemstones, pulverizing them into bits of colored broken glass, turning them into billions of grains of ordinary brown beach sand, but never around when seen close-up, filtered through your hands. Hold it in those hands. They’re full of tiny miraculous gemstones, separate beauties, together a whole. Look at them.
Your future…is not in your past, Mentos. Manana. Mexican for tomorrow, which for “morons” meant putting stuff off, and for campesinos means pacing yourselves in order to conserve energy in bright sunlight. Gotcha? Global warming in the American Southwest, so you better eat that juicy cactus. And join the Mexican Olympics, climbing over a barbed wire fence and exhaling.
The workers of Rama keep entering town, with the air of superiority underpriced young people sport when they are looking for work and will do anything.
“The People of the Book ask you to bring down for them…a book from heaven.”
--The Koran, translated by N. J. Dawood
"Those that devour the property of orphans unjustly, swallow fire into their bellies; they shall burn in the flames of Hell…you are also forbidden to take in marriage married women, except captives whom you own as slaves… but if they said, "We hear and obey: and undhurna,” it would be better and more proper for them…if you avoid the enormities you are forbidden."
--“Women,” same source, Dawood
YES, I’VE ALWAYS been a great one for undhurnaing. It’s not dissimilar to hulaing. It will drive you insane! "For, “they have no faith, except a few of them.” Ibid. You get the idea.
Every day, Gabe promised, he was gonna read a snippet of the Koran (and practise his undhurnaing, spearmint variety) until he was finished. That's how he got through the Bhagavad-Gita, the Talmud, and Hawaii by Michener. When he was done, he planned on plowing through all of his accumulated "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine" "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." His room was buried a goodly foot deep in dime magazines and fifty-cent paperbacks. They all had garish, yellowing, torn and/or lost covers. But were still quite readable.
Quoth he: “I read everything, by ever jinee I can find, and perhaps I should try my unfair young hand at writing, but I've ne’er been published, nor ne’er have tried. EQMM takes first stories, or they used to. I'd write a short story and send it in to EQMM (plug, plug, and plug) but…” Gabe is in his filthy room.
“Sweater!” His lady love calls, as she sweepingly sweeps into his one-bed coffin, withall an Egyptian tomb, carrying a complex broom, a long white straw dustburp with a most elegant, 14K silver handle, hand-carven by Marvin, which she carted with a snow-white candle to light her way by night and day candle on th’ handle on th’ top o th’ dry mop. Which was wet.
“I’ve come to deliver all scum from the dust, as I must, you trust. I charge over twenty kisses an hour, satisfying and miring the highest power, screwing roses and straws for your funeral bower, an’ après I ski your sloping furniture, you’ll take me out to a coffee ballgame and crumpets befitting a lady of my immense and concrete statue, which is Three Miles of Island heatwave smiles, and still, Lust in Space, you are tryin’ cryin’ and smilin’. Alors, Lars! And upon completion of that most arduous of tasks, namely housekeeping, they didst set oudt, storming down the street, screaming “Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the Ho, Ivan the Ho! In a most bloodcurdling way.
No, actually they placidly and yawningly and serenely began the next story. For you! Here it is, freely translated from the original Algonguin:
An Obscene, Hideous, Pathetic, Twisted Fantasy Invoking Hillbillies
By “Crazy” Eddie Hoffstrauss, Carmen Glonk, Janet / Bob Wibble, and the students of Mrs. Fender’s ninth grade class, Horlock Junior High, Autism, Texas
I WAS AN intruder in a vast, yet nevertheless hideously small territory, in which the denizens of that place all remotely resembled cloisonné pinbacks of Daffy Duck. I often glimpsed them quacking on the horizon, just out of
sharp focus, as they carried their foul-smelling sides of beef to the unendingly deep wishing-well, which had a cute little bucket. The pinbacks tried to wedge several of the beef sides in at once, but they wouldn't all fit. So they roasted them and ate them ON THE SPOT.
However, suddenly gushing out of the deep well was zwiebeck… a solid wall of it, gnashing and rattling. Within minutes the pinbacks were inundated by layers of the bland, soggy crackers; they lay in sad heaps around the well, sobbing to themselves. This happened twice a day.
I never went near enough to see it, but I heard of a giant song of desolation, consisting of old Marilyn Monroe movies which have been cut and pasted back together to form a tower which cast a 667-foot shadow over the land and dashed all hopes of sunning oneself anywhere near the beached whales, which roared in rage as they righteously blew spumes of four-leafed clovers. These planted themselves in fields where they lay, play keeping their sheep, on a cold winter’s night that--I forget the rest, I talked to a lot of people who said they'd gone there, but I never went.
My time was taken up chiefly with the misery goats. Communist frogs, varicolored but smoky, mostly, in humongous leaps froze solid over broiling Dick's burgers, landed on them, ate down, threw them up again. This delicious portion of your order comes with the torso of Larry Flynt attached to a staple-gun and served on a bed overhung with exquisite Middle Eastern tapeworms which fall off of trees and eat away your face. Extinguish all smoking materials when the "No Smoking" light is on. Stuffing instead of potatoes? Any time!
What? Yes…that’s right. The goats…hey, heh, the goats…the goats stood on the burning deck, whence all about had fled…treacherous Maori…big double handfuls of coins, living, breathing coins, dancing around like they ruled the world. Suddenly, a giant foot came down--too Python--a giant python came down, it had lips, it kissed all over the coins (they stood in line) and left the abortion story seal of approval on each one. But! From out of nowhere there came a battalion of, of, of CHAIRS, these big wicker CHAIRS my God, striding across the bleeding landscape like the fucking furniture of the Apocalypse! CHAIRS! And END TABLES! And…God preserve us…THE CHROME DINETTE!
Another coffee? Yes, that would be nice.
Anyway. We were both wearing lobster claws--I recall Arlene had hers clipped to her left ear. Then across the beach I saw one of the tortoises of Heil! He lumbered menacingly instantly across the horizon--no, it was the ground. And its shell spread softly over us, becoming the sky.
The cracks in the shell allowed starlight to beam through, caressing us as we stood there on the manta ray, which swooped up into the sky, I mean the tortoise shell, no, I mean the crescent hot rolls from Pittsburgh which devoured us in our sleep. And then they shat us into reality, which had assumed the appearance of Sluggo’s house--you remember! There were always cracks in the walls, big ones you could see the support beams through. Only in the mountains.
So Arlene then had to put her hand in the holes, just to see what would happen. I caution her, but she did it… just then the mountain spoke. "Are you of such a doubtful nature that you do not believe what you see with your own eyes?" It rumbled.
Arleen said, "Yup. Well, they done tol’ me all my friggin’ life thet alls ah kin see yout of is ma ass an’ I got so snickered thet ah caved into mah own haid. So here ah sit, twidlin’ mah Hostess Cupcakes aroun’ an’ aroun’…besides hit keep switchin’ on me. Does hit switch on you too?” And then the crack closed up and Arlene’s arm was stuck. She said, “Ouch.”
Riding through the woods, galumph, galumph, galumph, came the Rescue Rangers, signifying nothing. NOTHING. They were too late. Arlene’s arm was permanently severed. She had to go see Doc Severinson.
Eventually, our story, which we alternated writing between the two of them, chronicling the cloisonné pinbacks of Daffy Duck, the hideously small territory, the foul-smelling sides of beef, the wishing well with the cute little bucket, the zwieback, the giant zone of desolation, the unhappy homeless presidents, the mincemeat homosexuals, the cold winters night, the misery goats and all Communist frogs, the bravest of all rape victims, the broiling Dick's burgers, the torso of Larry Flynt, the whining Tigers, the bed overhung with nude portraits of Dolly Parton, the giant trees, your ugly face, the legal smoking materials, the Holocaust, the burning deck, treacherous Maoris, the double handfuls of living breathing coins, the shadow of your smile, the giant fart, the abortion story seal of approval, nowhere, the battalion of wicker woven BASKETS thrown at you, the bleeding landscape, the MATH TABLES, the CHROME DINETTE, the second coffee, your aging urine, the lobster claws, Arlene's left ear, the H-Bomb, one of the scarlet tortoises of Hell, nobody’s Fool, the cracks in its shell, the starlight, us, the white manta ray, the crescent hot rolls from Pittsburgh, our sleep, reality, Sluggo’s house, Jews, the cracks in every wall, God, the support beams, the mountains, Arlene’s doubtful nature, her own eyes, her ass, her haid, her cream-filled Hostess Cupcakes, “hit,” Arlene's arm, the woods, the Rescue Rangers, nothing, and Doc Severinson all inspired other useless, narcissistic and boring cribbage stories. So, we quit!
Fantasy:
HAIKU
THE
Moment
After the Moment came, it was followed by a long silence.
Then, another Moment came and went;
It too was followed by a long silence.
And then, another Moment came, more than two and so,
It exploded and split into six short TV commercials
About electric razors that shave close to your face.
GABE’S POETRY RAN to the realm of non-traditional haiku, sonneteering, and suchlike; an attempt to capture a quick, short image in a few Romantic lines, with or without rhyme or mitre Involved. He possessed a Blank Book with approximately 200 poems filling it, pieces he'd written over the course of fourteen years. He wrote whenever he spent substantive time alone, hiding away during his parents more obnoxious and irrelevant superiority quarrels, when he'd slither under his bed, having shut his bedroom door (even back then he had his own little and already messy room), and compose the most beautiful poetry and prose that he himself had ever seen, bar None.
His. Hers. Ours, no theirs. Well, some of it had to be Saragina’s!
RULE OF ORDER #11, United States Naval Regulations, Blue Rule Book:
“Be especially watchful at night; during the time for challenging, challenge all persons on or near your post, and allow no one to pass without proper authority."
I Blew Off Hitler’s Face (he Went Tee-Hoe) and we Threw Up!
That's what the little square mustache was for; it was something to aim at. It was solely to match his polished teeth, and the pouting lips. They lined up perfectly. This way, the guy had hair on five separate sections of his body. No kidding; that wildlife looked too rotten on camera. When he was brave, he was senseless. When he was earnest and angry, he was from the planet Pluto. I never could kiss without crossing my eyes. Open wide!
What - there is No Jewish Race (It’s On TV), Pain So Good?
And they don't say so. Truth is fiction, fiction is truth. Go sit in a booth with Babe Ruth. They all run way too slow. Like in the movies? The New York Marathon says it's open to everyone. But, who wants one? There's no competition for Space. “They” already own the place.
Bill Clinton and Joan Rivers would win the election if Liz Taylor started chasing about with the desired chunky peanut butter meat and potato cleavers. Primitive Nike shoes, we ALL want to see Chopped! Everybody wins on that modern reality TV show, but this book is set in the rather belated 1980s. So what? Yeah, I'm a tired radio receiver. Madonna should marry Steve Martian. They could compare lymph gland high notes. They could! YOU would. Dye, you hugs!
Motorcycles ‘r okay, but Boy George is gettin’ far verse. Did jay notice he wasn’t gay? A tall drink of water, with chicks on either arm, but where else did he get the idea from? A lesbo, that’s it, and now there is one in the book. Nobody else is her…she’s…not your mother, is a Mom,
and can’t begin to understand how to snore properly. No lesbians, except for whoever’s reading this and every other female character who isn’t married.
How to Note Urban Surroundings with Me
In the future I should:
a) become a rich black or white baseball players; b) catch as only 10 can; c) slink lonely in defeat through the woods; d) eliminate all lethargy in my life; e) spin spurious webs of black deceit; f) comfort some other people in troublesome times; g) ignore certain kinds of requests, and certain people who make them; h) rip the bill off and wear my hat on backwards; i) take an interest in welding and soldering; j) ride high, ride low; k) be reasonably dumbbell chaotic; l) storm thru the murkiness; m) learn to be a leader all by myself; n) find out who Iggy Pop is; o) turn the tables on you; p) release the latch and let fly; q) become someone's permanent toy; r) relay messages back and forth; s) be a huge, overwhelming success; t) turn a rinky-tink profit; u) dispose of vast sums of money; v) recycle all cowardly waste materials; w) await her with inhuman patients, but not forever; x) pull the plug on the radio; y) be young at heart, and socially immature; z) stop making so many lists
Can Y, the woman from the organization department - she sent an email to stop that one issue revealed to the end for 90 day supply which was supposed to, does it show the 90 day supply processed - Take It Some More? Do you tell the customer to take it every day, day in and day out? For life?
TECHNICAL CONFUSION POETRY – Sara and Gabe’s doodle-bugs:
If I Was Not Really Here
…then, I would be over thereunless I can love thoroughly.
In the chair, Acting SquareHere’s a penny for your thoughts;
Never-ever drinking beerdo you have a matching penny?
Never-ever thinking queerIf so, I’ve hidden nickels, dimes and
I’d be climbing rational stairsquarters
With penetrating, vacant airsin my shoebox, where I keep the shoes
Banking on my being the peerI’ll buy,
(Counting on His drinking the beer)when I trade in for some dollars
If I was not really herethey’ll be made of patent leather,
24an absurd and strange invention.
…I was, this year, and so I sworeit is No Secret
There’s likely to be 25,when I find you, if I find you
And very little moreI will love you for ever and ever and
For me, unless I see that 25ever and ever and ever and ever and
Is one long year past 24,ever, because?
As I’m still poor,I am a dog and nothing else
Yet, thrive. What, do you love me?(Until I make a book that sells)
Can You Take It?So I’m loyal to you forever. And ever.
I love, but I don’t love
Jumbo Realty
I think that I shall never seethe end of this reality;
Indeed, unless reality failsI’ll think I’m merely trading jails
UPBEAT
Phooey! What care mere I for an endless life
Of book-marks midst our painless misery, and strife?
When, by acting madly slowness, solely on my own behest,
I can grab up several hours, taking money for the rest.
As the clock ticks time’s passage gone by, my sole solution
To ambition is to count all of my days of restitution
For the fun I have begun having when I turn my back to college
And absconded from the mighty swells of trivial useless knowledge.
For the dawn of each new day brings second chances at adventure;
My youth continues forward, waiting, disallowed to wrench her.
I had not time to queue to pay too dear for tiny chances
For classes, textbooks, tickets, pens, and overcrowded dances.
Instead, I've got fair work, straight daily manual page labor,
Involving soil, asphalt, concrete, wood, plastic, and water vapor.
With hardy invention, with lines of work that deliver me to the right reason,
When entering open air, I’ll tend to soak up rain, in season.
I’m usually paid by the hour, an honest and rising rate’s too preferable;
Puts heat in my hearth, your roof over my head, breakfast food upon my table.
Though someday I might take on a more occupational true profession,
This life is certainly not bad. That's my teacher’s true confession!
A Later Second ThoughtHe Didn’t Know
Eight hundred dollarsI once read how Childe Harolde
Is all I madeto the Dark Tower came. I guess he had a
Last month.Girlfriend enough to grant my Thing
I made one thousand in September,a name. That’s what she did, told him
One thousand three hundred in true, I am the one who knew
November.The terrible Dark Tower
But in DecemberOf me and you.
I only made
Enough for frozen lemonade!
Good Question
If I couldn't tolerate another day of being
Late, say, if I accidentally shouldst happen
To Hire myself, and myself was late for
The job, being a good fellow, but weary, and not regular yet,
Would I become a one-man advice squad?
Or would I myself take their rancid opportunity?
Often this came to him as he'd forgotten
The invisible future, help pitiless it was, even next
To the regrettable past it resembled, to the ideas that he’d bend;
When I hired myself, how I virtually trembled! Yes,
To open and run your own business, what you need Is
A License, a shop and an Attitude
Of exhibiting to your customers unadulterated Gratitude.
Well, let that be the Last Word in this here Omnipotent Platitude.
MaryLater
I’ll never get to give birthout by a thinly wooded, fern-shaded
And I might get to cause deatharea of this city, they found the rotting
But, for as longbody of a boy …and I found several
As I’m on this Earth…praying mantises, hopping grasshoppers,
I AMtwo butterflies, some sparkly rocks a nest
I host every show thatof angered Scarlet Tanagers, and a cute
I’ve seen on TV,little green toad, when we went Exploring
And I wrote every linein there.
Ever written I’ve read.
I came to a Sign, there
On the road, by a tree;
Read the sign Once Again--
It was written for me.
There were always two of us
There were always two of you
I always wanted to be alone
I always needed to be with you
“I didn’t,” said to police at a party
Alright, weed WAS involved, you too.
There were three of us, two of them,
One of her.
The police came;
I became a fancier.
She hid in a room. She talked to me, later.
She must have said my thing contained a most peculiar power.
But later, as I reposed asleep in my lovely quiet bower,
I dream-recalled the original poem, after a late and tiring hour,
As writ, by the perversely original lovely author-fellow, who
Must actually have been pretty virginal in figuring out what he know, about
My type of thing, as opposing his own, regarding
How it normally grew. Oh, how madly I love you!
I'm getting fat, it is wet outside
My need for exertion can’t be easily denied.
But while I am stuck indoors, swallowing my glass of beer,
I believe I’ll research prospects for advancing my career.
And while I'm at i
t, tragic-stricken, bereft, ‘tis possible I
Will phone up Saragina, and break down at ‘er an’ cry.
Is not that Jesu wept one time that's causing me to weep?
It is just that, without her, I cannot seem to go to sleep.
Siiigghhhhh!
And so I will her phone, feeling thus much less alone,
And I'll hold back all the moan; I will ever try to close
My long, deep-seated groan, drowning out all of my morose,
And await the blessed day she marries me, and we are betrothed.
Then, she’ll be my Prose.
AT THE NORTH Hall bus stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, across from The Doughnut Shoppe, on a pleasantly unhurried but messed-up morning--due to my poor but honest scheduling--I was able to observe a group of pigeons feeding on a bunch of grain someone had casually bestowed on the oily rainbow pavement near a small car.
Fascinating. As I watched them pecking, I began to attempt to tell them apart and to recognize individual pigeons. Nothin’ better ta do. I was also mildly nervous, as were others at the stop, from the traffic noise and pollution.
Duration-wise, I was in town for the week. I was scouting future possibilities for a Career in the Field of Lithographic. Didn't pan out for Pan, here.
Watching the birdies, I saw one pigeon suddenly, for no reason I could see, attack another pigeon, one that resembled it strongly in its intricate markings, patterns and colorations. The other pigeon seemed to be bodily larger, but was being sharply attacked. It tried to stay there but was driven away several times by the smaller pigeon, which seemed to be getting steadily angrier each time the other bird (whom I nicknamed Walter) closely resembling it stood up for itself. Finally, Walter fled with a companion of the same identical pattern and design. The mean bird had one. Walter was gone.
After that, there were more little outbreaks of erratic violence. The one dominant pigeon, the small and aggressive one, fluffed up all over and strutted, boldly, but didn't protest at all when a small flock of chickadees momentarily joined the pidgies and ate with them.
They ate lots of the food up. Mr. Aggressive really didn't care. They eventually left, completely unmolested.
Then I noticed there were two kinds of pigeons. The dominant one and his two fellows were the same--dark grey backs--but there were three others with lighter grey backs and less markings. More solid-shaped patterns to ‘em. The three lighter ones were attacked by the dominant one, and they amassed as a group, but only vaguely, and attacked him back. This time they held their own against him. Eventually they drove them off, and eerily left right after him. Why? To take revenge? Pigeon vengeance?
Next, a Story Gabe wrote while killing time in a motel room in New Orleans, taking a break while looking for work. The desk had a nice Bible on top.
The Rebel Lion
A love craft’s a story in itself…
I WAS WALKING the parapet wall, where the sides rise up and you can see over them. There is a stepladder going down on one side, and there is a single way up, on the other side, but no one ever takes them… that I saw.
And so I tread the wall back and forth for years, lonely, as though on a paid guard, but I was no use as a guard. For although I thought there was something to watch, after much walking to and fro, up and down, back and forth, this delirium naturally occurred.
And this delirium seemed to settle on those below me, below the wall, especially on one side of the wall. And the people there called our deprecations on me. As I looked over to the other side of the wall, the deprecations were being called out.
After many years of walking the wall, back-and-forth, I climbed down the stepladder and descended to one side of the wall. There I was much reviled… and then I was much loved. And then, I rescinded and went back to walking back and forth along the wall, in my lofty way.
Eventually, feeling an odd, almost unspeakable (for I cannot put it into words) physical pull, I glanced to the wall’s other side from whence I had not recently come, and hearing the same deprecation's, descended down the step ladder on the opposing side of the wall. There I was much beloved, and then I was much abuse, once more. And so I had to once again the pitiless wall.
As I walked the wall, left and right, back-and-forth, too and fro, as I looked down to either side there were the same deprecations being hurled up, but now they were very loud, near twice as loud as they had ever been. And now I knew my life as utter nonsense and stark raving madness. Finally I awoke to the others on the wall with me… saw their hollow eyes open, the tears flowing as would the sea in sunlight; the shaggy and darkened in remorseless heads raised, their bulbous arms shooting like erupting seaweed into the night air as bitterly they threatened to HURL ME DOWN, to where I HAD ALREADY BEEN…but NONE moved to withdraw the fateful stepladders. I was left to choose my immediate fate.
This was the absolute soul of madness. I was surrounded by descending arms, ready to lift me up, willing to cast me down to either side. Why? Nearby, suddenly, I saw that there was a guard on the wall, a real one after all, and yet this I could not flee, as the wall is very narrow and I could not pass…I saw that the guard was out of his place. And I despaired, for I was not good, neither were they, and wall seemed to be dissolving.
Yet I sensed a firmness to the wall that went beyond madness and dissolution, even as they raised me to cast me down. I knew the wall was not good, yet I was sensing goodness in it, the goodness of a confirmed place.
And… There was a…wideness to the wall that went beyond even the two sides of it… stretching beyond all the boundaries of infinity. And all was embraced within the boundaries of the wall. I was even embraced deeply within the horrible arms of my strange, haunted tormentors. And this did calm me in part…
With no warning, I was free once more. As I once again walked the wall, I felt a presence and new I was not alone. I welcome the presence which informed me that it is freed me from the strangers. But still there was the wall, so meaningless and dear, and the two opposing sides. It was trying to take one other forms, dissolving and rearranging. The presence vanished. An even more frightening and silent aspect of Ground, with equal value and chilling horror to the last, filled the useless space fled by the wall… and I was bitterly clothed in total emptiness, save for my own naked body, which was all I had left.
All of a sudden, I was again on the parapet, knowing that I have paced around a genuine medieval castle, the stony outer wall of which I recently had been condemned to walking. Owning inmostly a spirit of Rejection and complete Rebellion against this reality, I had been caused to mentally translate the castle into a purest separation, a partition instead of a building. For I was not truly on a solid wall, even in my deepest madness, but was enclosed sans escape within the tighter boundaries of a belovedly builded fortressed castle…I was WITHIN this castle… it was over a mile long, and equally wide, and the stepladders were still in their place. But they both descended now into an UNKNOWN, fathomless, boundaryless coldness and Darkness, having no visible Bottom… and fed with an infinitude of rank, bilious, grey, streaming cloudy mists that issued from yawning caverns, canyon-sized open pits looming scarce visible in they are Vast unplummability, filling the miles and miles of space Below, and softly illuminated with nothing more than flickering, intangible, vulnerable dots of suspended candlelight, hovering starkly above my insanity-clouded.
The reassuring but threatening Presence returned, abiding with me, though I was blankly naked and all alone. And the Presence made there two of us, I and It.
Unnatural cacophony resulted. I could not stand the noise, nor comprehend its deafening message. Then a Sign of Horrifying obscenity and terrifying, blasted make appeared, hovering perversely in the middle of the air, white as frozen snow and equally as bitterly cold, was indiscernible fiendish Writing back BLACKLY presaged my Unceasing psychotic, monstrous, Hellish DOOM, writ in unspeakable runes seemingly sketched in blood, blood from my own newly opened veins outlined upon it. Indeed, the blood was fl
owing in torrential streaks down my violated arms! I unknowingly have a hideous razor, and had wielded it!
The sign was undeniably of my own generation, I unbelievingly Saw, so it claimed, and so I reached up to DESTROY it with my pitifully bare, burned, torn, screaming and bloody Broken hands. My bones and sinews were bursting to the surface.
RAUCOUS, LIVEROUS CROWS!!!
I am my own life and death, I cried, leave me now!
Straining beyond all conceivable limits, I reached upwards to obliterate the Sign, but as I touched it, it began to burn, rushing into my hands and face; and so I desperately Grasped it, and all its meanings, screaming with a ripped-opened and dying bloody torn throat, the unwithstandable PAIN taking me completely out of human consciousness but leaving me there with no possible human relief, and at last in undying gratitude I was cast down to my death, screaming and screaming in all parts of Me, through billowing oceanic rivers of pure whooshing air and bottomless reeking Nothingness, for a suspended infinitude of catastrophic time, before their limitless, unyielding cruel ROCK that was the coldly remorseless flattened plate of impossible solid Ground rushed up, slamming my entire soul hard AGAINST it, breaking Me, mercilessly smashing Me bodily oblivious, or making me grotesquely forever broken in unamendable shrieking pieces, only in order to be placed trapped for always on the most remote BOTTOM of one of the two sides of the unholy, blessed, trandsgressably immortal wall…
--Thanks to H. P. Lovecraft
Batman’s the Joker’s Arkham Asylum is from mythical Arkham, New England, invented by H Poo Feedcraft. You should swim in the ocean there, where you meet the ugly ol’ Ancient Ones and go C’thonian. Seriously!
The Reasons Why Orthodox Jews Dress Like That
In their black frock coats, stove-pipe flat hats, and lengthy braided dreadlocks, with uncut beards….does that Talmud tell them to overdress? It's kinda of hot in Israel for all those clothes.
Methinks they are exhibiting a group apology for a death. No, no, not THAT death. Another one. (Failing back, they are simply being rather conservative. See "the Amish,” “the Quakers,” “the Marines,” etc.)
In the Old Testament, otherwise known as the Torah, there's a little story having to do with the ancient Judaic (other tribes back then also so indulged, but the Jews are the tribe most associated with it), now-outlawed practise of stoning people to death. For sex crimes. With big rocks. Boulders.
In this story, a Jewish widow is caught selling her body to make ends meet. This is illegal under Judaic laws, and the death sentence for anyone female and also otherwise rendered unimportant by law having unusual sex is immediately carried out, on the spot. No trial or anything. She mounts no legal defense, feels her only soul getting battered to death by big rocks, and dies very horribly. At least she is counted as having died.
It was done, in this cited case, to a poor, starving, broke, (apparently!) and otherwise respectable Jewish lady, a grass widow who might not have survived without selling herself. This was of course very unfair and happened an extremely long time ago. Such rotten people…dear, dear.
So the real reason, I feel, that Orthodox Jews (isn’t the very thought scary, after that? They seem to be rather big on executions) are dressed in permanent mourning coats like that, there, is because earlier Jews heartlessly, according to the Torah, slew that nice lady in a macabre and painful manner. So that they are stuck mourning her death, even though they don't do that anymore.
And what a hideous death it was. First, to be a widow, full of despair over her husband's loss, then to have been forced to commit obtuse sexual acts with peculiar male strippers (who presumably were never-ever punished) in order to save her nearly expended life, the only one she had left and which she was responsible for the upkeep of, and finally, to be stoned to death by a bunch of idiotic, morally self-righteous, strange Jewish men who were supposed to be her kindred and help her, or something, sheesh! With luck, they killed her all the way.
Apparently those guys were so paranoid about social diseases, stoning people right and left as in other accounts, and weeding every potential victim of leprosy out of their population, or driving people with freckles insane, that none of them would even have considered marrying her to save her from the shameful blasphemy of prostitution. Maybe she had no other way. What a weird story! S’pose it didn't happen? That’d be nice.
No wonder that Jewish widow was turned into Mary, the virtuous, virginal Mother God in the New Testament. They also kept her hooker self around as Mary Magdalene, and had Jesus stop the stoning and rescue her, from death and hooking. Such a guy. That way it turned into a much nicer story. But, who was God, her “Son,” originally?
Well, in a later story relating a similar stoning, also found in the Torah/Old Testament, it seems there was this Egyptian (not a Jew) who was in on a tribal council of the Jews. They must have had some respect for his opinions, or he wouldn't have been allowed in on it. They must have had respect for his opinions, or he wouldn’t have been allowed in on it. They never let women into those meetings at all, I guess. That's what it seems to say, in the King James OT. Perhaps he was really there on trial for a crime; it doesn't say.
They (the Jewish tribune) were discussing an important matter, and this Egyptian fellow simply had to speak up and discussed some other matter, that counted to him alone. Kinda like Daedulus; he spoke out of turn. For simply being brave enough to try and get his two cents in, according to the story, they took him outside and gave him the same heart-luck treatment they’d given the poor Jewish widow.
These two stories, which of the widow and the Egyptian are treated as unrelated and are spaced well apart in the OT. They stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, however.
It would be illogical to fail to conclude that those two Torah-based characters were transmogrified into the Christ and Mary of the New Testament, at least as a partial source for the newer stories. That way they both got names and became relatives, in a much clearer manner of relatedness than forcing the readers to put one and one together. The NT’s book authors split the widow into her “good” and “bad” self, but revealed the trick by giving her the same name in both cases.
The Egyptian, separated out from the rest of his “fellows,” was changed into the non-Jewish, sacred entity known as Jesus Christ, and was assigned the Jewish widow as a mother.
That way, she had a son. Or two. Or three, or four, or more. Good mornin’…
That made her real important.
God only knows what they used to do to lepers. Well, it’s not important now, nahhhh…not anymore.
Because they are leaving. But, who are they? Canadians?
New York City? Nahhhh.
GIROLAMO FRASCASTORO, OR Hieronymous Fracastorius—Bosch? Do wash!
He was a physician, astronomer, and a poet of Verona, as well as the infamous author of the famous “medical poem” entitled:
“Syphilis Sive Morbus Gallicus,” or in English, “The French Disease”; or, as it’s loosely referred to, again in English, at times, "Syphilis the Shepherd." It's about a young and handsome shepherd named Syphilis, who spurns the love of a comely fair rustic girl.
The poem’s name freely translate to: Syphilis gave (us) syphilis. It purports to assign the origin of the disease to that particular French shepherd. If so, as he must have gotten it from somewhere, he is implied to have been with, well uh,… you know. Sheep? He’s strictly a fictional character.
Morbus gallicus is the original Latin name for the disease called syphilis in the poem. Syphilis is merely a term popularized by Fracastoro, otherwise known as Fracastorius, as in the poem. The disease's name was markedly changed by the popularity of this point. This was in the 16th century, the year 1530.
Francastoro recommended treatment of this disease with mercurials. These are still around and are used for other illnesses currently. He also was one of the people who suggested the germ theory regarding infection, and is considered to be a founder of scientific epidemiology--the stu
dy of skin conditions.
There’s an English translation of "Syphilis," done in 1686 by Nahume Tate, with the title: “Syphilis: Or a Poetical History of the French Disease,” also translated by Wynne-Finch in1935. The Library of Congress call letters are 616.951, F841sEW1530.
Syphilis is purportedly caused by a specific bacterium called ‘treponema pallidum. The tertiary, or final, stage of the disease is rather fearsome, and the patient can seem to be rotting as though dead while still alive.
Traditionally, of late, syphilis has been treated with penicillin, the tetracyclines class of drugs, or erythromycin, especially in cases where the patient has been found to be allergic to penicillin.
Syphilis is called "the Great Imitator" because it shares symptoms with many other illnesses, ranging from simple acne to "full-blown AIDS”—whatever that is. In fact, many people diagnosed with HIV may actually have undiagnosed syphilis, also or instead of AIDS. What's in a name? Almost all of the treatments for this class of illness destroy the human immune system anyway. The term “AIDS” is a reference in itself to this effect, meaning “acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”” The treatment for syphilis is sometimes a means for acquiring an immune deficiency, after several re-treatments or even only a few.
Some medical journals say that people often last longer without treatment of syphilis than with. People have lived for thirty or forty years before definite signs of tertiary (full-blown) syphilis have occurred. Milder symptoms were suffered by untreated people until the tertiary stage was reached.
Loss of vision, and insanity from the disease between the brain and spinal column, are major symptoms of tertiary syphilis, along with the usual minor and major skin breakdowns. And eventual sign of the illness in the skin is tiny “gummas”—small sores that resemble scabbed-over pimples and which are often “benign,” meaning that the disease is not presently severe. They are potentially contagious. The open sores spread the disease through physical contact. The disease can be acquired through the hands, and care should be exercised in treating or touching the patients.
A piece of advice: if you suspect you're a victim of "the Shepherd," and that you've had a bite of his "pie," don't have a spinal tap done. It might be recommended, but it hurts like the dickens, and it can expose your spinal fluid to the illness, making matters worse. Try not to rub your eyes, pick your nose, or pick at any scabs on your body. That spreads it, too.
I submit humbly that alternative medicine is a good use, rather than the usual radical drug treatments that are typical of modern medicine. Those kinds of treatments can break down and destroy the patient's immune system, leaving the patient vulnerable to any opportunistic infections whatsoever. That's why many treated people have been saying to die faster. But you should shop around for desirable treatments. Exercise is the greatest thing you can do. Go for the Olympics! Or, barring that, walk around the block as frequently as you think of it.
Do not get pregnant if you think you’ve got syphilis, if you don't think there's a major risk. It is kind of impossible to tell, sometimes. It is because you may have to be treated while pregnant, as the doctors at the hospital will possibly cause you to treat the infant. Maybe, maybe not. It comes like a shepherd herding sheep. Babies get angry if our enemies die quickly. You could get checked for syphilis, but watch out for being over-tested or pushed around by know-it-alls.
Read about "the Great Imitator" and see what you think. I feel like I've discovered the secret origins of AIDS. Nevertheless, I'm not happy. For after all, does it even begin to matter? Probably not. As of this date, “they” list syphilis in medical journals as treatable, incurable, rare, and monetizable.
Do not die trying!
--Gabrielloa Hooter, Class of 1979
Chthonian Lake High School, Gahanna, Ohio
*
**
**
**
**
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* *
* *
* *
* *
This symbol is the sign of studied chaos.
You need to learn to appreciate it.
If you don’t, you get one of those mass mailings
Where you have to send a copy each to ten friends;
In other words, avoid a subhuman nightmare,
And believe in wisdom. Instead,
Write your Mother right now, every day,
Letting her know where you are.
The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos Page 12