Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
The Annihilation Fountain Issue 12
_________ _______ ______
/___ ___\ / __ \ / ____\
/ / / /__\ / / /
/ / / __ / / __\
/ / / / \ / / /
/__/ /__/ /__/ /__/
THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN
A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ON THE EDGE...
TEXT ONLY - ISSUE #12
The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-2000 Neil MacKay
ISSN 1480-9206
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
CONTENTS:
---------
*SIDEKICK'S PHILOSOPHY
*THE CRAVE
*VALENTIN BUCUR'S DIVINE ART CREDO
*5 POEMS
*A PROLETARIAT LOVESONG
***********************************************************************
SIDEKICK'S PHILOSOPHY #2: THEY CREATED CREATION, MAN, BUT OTHER THAN
THAT...
by Paul Laurendeau
***********************************************************************
PHILONOUS:: Does the reality of sensible things consist in
being perceived? Or, is it something distinct from their
being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?
HYLAS: To exist is one thing, and to be perceived is
another.
PHILONOUS: I speak with regard to sensible things only: and
of these I ask, whether by their real existence you mean a
subsistence exterior to the mind, and distinct from their
being perceived?
HYLAS: I mean a real absolute being, distinct from, and
without any relation to, their being perceived.
PHILONOUS: Heat therefore, if it be allowed a real thing,
must exist without the mind.
HYLAS: It must.
(Berkeley, G. (1979), Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, p. 11)
We are in 1958 in some venue somewhere. The conditions are always
about the same as in Sidekick's Philosophy #1. In four years from now,
the conditions will still be about the same also. The marvelous
orchestra in which Paul GONSALVES and Russell PROCOPE have the honor
to play will then (1962) have the opportunity to perform in a
semi-promotional motion picture titled GOODYEAR JAZZ CONCERT: DUKE
ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA. A certain number of shots will then be
extracted from that movie and circulated for advertising. One of these
shots shows the orchestra on the film set-up, in the mist of a
performance. Everybody is very elegantly dressed in white suits
(except the Duke, who is in black). The attention is quickly caught by
that enumerative listing of the musicians present, one usually sees
underneath such group photographs. Under that specific picture, it
reads as follows:
Above: Ellington, Jimmy Hamilton (cl), and Harold Baker (tp) in front.
In the back (l.-r.): Sam Woodyard (dm), Aaron Bell (b), Paul Gonsalves
(obscured), Ed Mullen (tp), Johnny Hodges (as), Chuck Connors (tb),
Bill Berry (tp), Lawrence Brown (tb), Russell Procope (obscured), Cat
Anderson, Ray Nance (tp), Leon Cox (tb), Harry Carney (bar)
In other words, on that crucial picture, Paul GONSALVES and Russell
PROCOPE, the two protagonists of the current philosophical dialogues,
are obscured. Of course it could simply mean that the shot was
considered good, was kept, and was edited despite the fact that these
two sidemen where not visible on it, being hidden by the other
musicians. But one could also argue that that (quite minor) fact has a
more universal significance. What if Paul GONSALVES and Russell
PROCOPE are obscured per se, i.e. simply because they are the lowly
successors and/or accompanists of more renowned musicians, such as Ben
WEBSTER, Barney BIGARD, Johnny HODGES?. What if these more renowned
musicians are themselves nothing other than the modest, dependent, and
transitory creatures of an eminent director who is the major figure of
so-called Mainstream Jazz? What if that eminent director himself,
despite his importance and originality, eventually lost the vivid
elements of his creativity by 1947, but continued to pile up
compositions and concerts until his death in 1974? Consequently, what
if this musical genius, Duke ELLINGTON, is unavoidably considered
today as just one figure in one of the multiple streams of that
complex style of music called Jazz? And what if Jazz itself is a
strictly 20th century faded musical mode of expression, slowly dying
out, just as the millennium itself, and already totally outdated in
the raging furry of the cascade of contemporary music? What if Music
itself is just one among the countless fields of activities in which
human existence is engaged? What if human existence is just a limited,
tiny and minuscule feature of the polymorphic movement of the totality
of the Cosmos? What if the number of cosmos is infinite, in that huge
Universe? Wouldn't we have here some very serious reasons for
infinitesimal sidekicks such as Paul GONSALVES and Russell PROCOPE to
end up obscured in, let say, the broader picture? Whatever the answer,
that does not stop them, back on that evening of 1958 somewhere on a
stage of the Western World, from philosophizing freely and casually as
they usually do, at what they ironically call ragtime, namely that
precious and transcendent moment when they ostentatiously rag their
instruments before the beginning of the gig.
GONSALVES (shining his saxophone): Hey, Russell, I have been thinking.
PROCOPE: It's always a good thing to do, cat.
GONSALVES: Remember the other night when we were talking about the reality
of an object in our mind or in the world.
PROCOPE: Yeah.
GONSALVES: There's a fourth possibility, my friend.
PROCOPE: If you say so, Paul. What where these three possibilities again?
GONSALVES: One: a reality can be in my mind alone. The beautiful unknown
hip chick I dreamed about, and whom I never met. Two: a reality can be in
the world alone. The hidden face of the moon, the heat at the center of the
earth. Nobody saw or felt them, but they are there.
PROCOPE: Yes, yes. I see you.
GONSALVES: Three: a reality can be in the world first, and enter my mind
afterward. My saxophone, which existed before I open its case and see or
touch it, and continues to exist when I place it back in its case.
PROCOPE: Yes, yes. Good memory, man.
GONSALVES: And we forgot a fourth possibility.
PROCOPE: Which is?
GONSALVES: A reality can be in my mind first and enter the world afterward.
A good improvised solo takes shape in my head, I feel it taking form in my
mind a couple of seconds, sometimes a couple of minutes before I blow it in
the reed, man. It fully exists in my mind first.
PROCOPE: You say that with the purpose of humiliating me, cruel beast?
GONSALVES: Not a minute, where did you get that idea?
PROCOPE: Please remember, with your brilliant solos existing in advance in
your mind, that you're having this conversation with one of the less
creative elements of that line-up.
GONSALVES: That is not true! That is not fair, Russell! You're very
creative. You're far more organized, and more documented than I am. You're
very reliable. Solid as a rock. You're just a little less... less...
PROCOPE: innovative.
GONSALVES: Well, yes. What is wrong with being less innovative a bit, when
one is as knowledgeable as you are. Look at Bigard when he was with the All
Stars, Look even at Pops himself. They played night after night. They
couldn't re-invent music at every single gig. It's simply not possible.
PROCOPE: That's exactly the problem, cat.
GONSALVES: The problem?
PROCOPE: The problem. The problem is not with my music, but with your idea
here. And it's not a musical problem, cat, but a problem about existence
itself. So let's inquiry into your aphorism four: a reality can be in our
mind first, and enter the world afterward, did you say?
GONSALVES: Yeah. In good symmetry that fourth possibility has to exist..
Our locus for a reality are then: One: mind alone, Two: world alone, Three:
slipping from the world to the mind. And then we need four: slipping from
the mind to the world. Doesn't it make perfect sense. (Looks at Procope) I
see from your strained grin that it doesn't make perfect sense...
somewhat...
PROCOPE: I'm the living incarnation of the inaccuracy of that little
symmetric system, my Paul. That bird is pretty, nicely feathered, but it
can't fly.
GONSALVES: OK. How come?
PROCOPE: Well, my violin teacher used to say: Any musician is nothing but a
songster. And that piece of wisdom governed my life all the way through.
GONSALVES: Did I ever mention to you that your violin teacher makes me feel
very lucky that you became a clarinetist... A songster, frankly...What can
I say... Maybe he was saying that just to cover up his own lack of
creativity. Didn't you consider that hypothesis?
PROCOPE: By all means I did. But facts are there.
GONSALVES: Which facts?
PROCOPE: The facts of my life, Paul. I have played composed and improvised
music for decades. The elements of improvisation I introduce in it are
preconfigurated patterns. Everything I combine with my instrument
pre-existed in the world. I don't create. I know it.
GONSALVES: Russell...
PROCOPE: No Paul. Relax, my man. This is not about my music specifically.
It's about any music. It's a claim on your so-called aphorism four. You do
not create either. Nobody does.
GONSALVES: What? Nobody creates?I mean... Not even major artists?
PROCOPE: No. There is no creativity in any arts.
GONSALVES: I don't get it (shakes his head and whips the air with the rag).
I don't get it.
PROCOPE: Look my friend. Do you want to understand what I suggest here? Or
are you completely fanatic about that creativity stuff?
GONSALVES: Russell, You're an inventive and imaginative thinker. I admire
your capacity to open me to new and unexpected deep stuff, cat. You're a
beautiful mind-stormer to me. If you say that... enormity. No creativity.
As crazy as it may seem at first sight, I want to hear you develop on it,
my brother. I am open to your vision of the world and you know it. So hit
me, cat. I listen.
PROCOPE: Please, follow me carefully.
GONSALVES: I'm all ears.
PROCOPE: The Duke is a superb artist. We agree on that.
GONSALVES: He's a genius. He's so hip, so beautiful. He's my man. We can
assume that as an axiom, my friend.
PROCOPE: Fine. The year is 1940 or so. The Duke is back from a trip in
Oregon or something. He was very impressed by the immensity, and the
majesty, and the giganticness, and whatever, of the mountains and landscape
over there. It was like if he had driven through some gargantuesque
postcard. His mind is full of perceptive impressions. He is stuffed with
it. That makes emotions flow in all his being.Down to the tip of the
fingers. Do you see that.
GONSALVES: I see that. Crystal clear.
PROCOPE: Then that day, he sits at the piano. With plain music sheets and a
fountain pen not too far away. Did he scribble first? Did he plunk first?
Beat me.
GONSALVES: The maestro's mystery recipe.
PROCOPE: Exactly. And at the end, a new composition is crafted. In
reminiscence of his late trip, the maestro titles it WARM VALLEY.
GONSALVES: (Hums the first notes of Warm Valley and smiles). I see that.
PROCOPE: Now tell me Paul. Where is the eighth note in WARM VALLEY?
GONSALVES: What do you mean the eighth note?... the eighth note in the
melody?
PROCOPE: No! No!Listen. You, the champion of creativity have to admit that
there is no creativity without creation. Do you admit that?
GONSALVES: (Hesitant) I... suppose so.
PROCOPE: So, are you ready to entertain a couple of questions on the act of
creation?
GONSALVES: Sure.
PROCOPE: How many notes in the scale, Paul?
GONSALVES: Seven.
PROCOPE: And you're telling me that the Duke used only seven notes to write
something as superb as WARM VALLEY.
GONSALVES: Sure... he...
PROCOPE: (interrupts him) So there are no new notes in that composition.
The Duke did not create an eighth or ninth note in order to write it. That
miracle did not happen. Agreed? Now, how many white keys on a piano.
GONSALVES: About fifty I suppose.
PROCOPE: Exactly fifty two. And the Duke composed WARM VALLEY without even
adding a fifty third key to his old piano keyboard! Is that possible? How
many black keys?.
GONSALVES: Just a minute. I think I'm beginning to see where you're
attempting to bring me here. The same old piano keyboard, the same old set
of seven notes. And why not: the same old fingers of his...
PROCOPE: The same old car ride. The same ancient valleys of Oregon...
GONSALVES: This is bogus man. Totally phony. You're being very weak here.
Of course he is using the old bag of musical and emotional tricks. But the
result is totally new, different, innovative. Hmm... what's that word
again? Idiosyncratic.
PROCOPE: Not Idiot-shite-hectic! Oh wow! What a major jazz critic you make
here, Paul. But you know what? I'm totally ready to admit the effectiveness
of that I do-shake-crazy, that beloved baby of all the heralds of so-called
creativity, who make such a career of reiterating with a pen...
GONSALVES: Oh! Well, I close my eyes on the crudeness of its formulation,
and I express my sincere and genuine appreciation for such a generous
acknowledgement of the reality of idiosyncrasy by a free-thinker like you
Russell. May I ostensibly thank you for it...
PROCOPE: You're totally welcome. But now please consider this, Paul. With
your usual free mind, as a matter of course... All you're proving me here
with that jazz critic buzz-word of yours is that WARM VALLEY is new. But in
no way does that testify that this new object was created, was produced ex
nihilo.
GONSALVES: Ex nihilo!
PROCOPE: Yeah. Because de nihilo nihil, my good brother.
GONSALVES: So you can jargon too, hey! We'll go back to that jargon in a
minute. I think I begin to see where you're coming from here. WARM VALLEY
is a new combination of piano notes. Hmm... like a new tulip growing in the
garden. Or an extraordinarily idiosyncratic snowflake.
PROCOPE: Nicely said. If idiosyncratic snowflake means that there is no
snowflake totally identical to another one, I am with you all the way.
GONSALVES: But, if I still follow your piece of reasoning here, that does
not make the new tulip, the snowflake, or WARM VALLEY a creation. I am not
convinced at all. But I see how your logic is unfolding here. After all,
the tulip and the snowflake are also brand new and equal to none, but they
come necessarily from somewhere.
PROCOPE: Good. From a grain of tulip, and of no other flower. From a
specific combination of microscopic ice slivers, in a specific spot in the
sky. From whatever, but not from nothing. Very good. Now, do you accept to
entertain some more question, then?
GONSALVES: Sure, but just before. What's that Nihilo Mambo Jambo?
PROCOPE: DE NIHILO NIHIL. A Latin motto. It means Nothing comes from
nothing. There is always a departure point, an origin, a source.
GONSALVES: An origin to everything. A source, even to nothingness. All is
an annihilation fountain. Is that what you're telling me?
PROCOPE: In a sense yes. Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. There
are only transformations. Some French chemist said that long ago too...
Ready for my other set of questions.
GONSALVES: Sure.
PROCOPE: Let's toss aside for a moment the problem of trying to know if the
Duke created WARM VALLEY. Let's focus for a minute on its newness.
GONSALVES: It is totally new, my brother. Fresh as a rose.
PROCOPE: Or a tulip, or a snowflake... Well let's talk about that for a
minute. Take three of the Duke's major piano standards: IN A SENTIMENTAL
MOOD, PRELUDE TO A KISS, and, say, SOLITUDE.
GONSALVES: I hear them in my head, good boy. Great music.
PROCOPE: Genuine Duke Ellington stuff, hey...
GONSALVES: At its best. He really got the touch for capturing that type of
melody.
PROCOPE: These three other tunes are really from the author of WARM VALLEY.
Aren't they.
GONSALVES: Absolutely, cat. One would recognize that touch among millions.
PROCOPE: So these four melodies have something in common, don't they?
GONSALVES: Sure. Absolutely. They are carved in the same pure and precious
delicate metal.
PROCOPE: That element they have in common, what is it?
GONSALVES: (meditates) I don't know exactly... Its the touch. The twist in
them. The texture. The languor too. The... well the Duke Ellington style of
composition is what it is. Russell. You know that better than I do.
PROCOPE: So you admit that IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD, PRELUDE TO A KISS,
SOLITUDE and our current object of investigation WARM VALLEY have a lot in
common.
GONSALVES: I do, my friend. Heart and soul.
PROCOPE: This leads you directly to admit that WARM VALLEY is not
completely new. That it is part of a set of lookalikes, which constitutes,
say, a style, a mode.
GONSALVES: (meditating the argument) I hear what you're saying.
PROCOPE: See?
GONSALVES: But wait. This is about Duke Ellington's creativity. If the
notion of creativity applies to four of his tunes rather than only one, it
remains creativity nevertheless.
PROCOPE: OK. Let's go to the next question now then. Ready?
GONSALVES: By all means.
PROCOPE: It's an aphorism followed by a question. That aphorism, I
overheard a couple of years ago from a conversation between two jazz
critics, among the aficionados who were crowding the wing, after the gig,
in Worcester, Massachusetts.
GONSALVES: Oh, jazz critics, you know...
PROCOPE: I know, but wait, wait. Listen to this. It goes: Ellington's solo
piano compositions are usually written in a mode which is a minimalist
version of the stride piano idiom. Sounds cool hey?
GONSALVES: Superb. You really have a fantastic memory for quotes, my man.
And it means?
PROCOPE: Simply that the Duke writes for piano in the idiom, the style, the
tradition, the heritage of the stride pianists. Willy the Lion Smith, James
P. Johnson and others less renowned ones influenced him. But he is less
lavish than them, more sober, more minimal, more personal.
GONSALVES: That is my interpretation of that statement too...
PROCOPE: And what do you make of it?
GONSALVES: I tend to agree with it. Even the Duke admits it. Then what?
Every artist experiences influences. No music is just there in the middle
of the air, hanging.
PROCOPE: That is exactly my point, cat. And through the Lion and James P.,
and the Duke himself, it all goes back to Negroes singing on the streets of
Washington, and wherever else. A crowd of anonymous songsters transmitting
sounds and emotions to each others, and to the future senior artists of
their tomorrow.
GONSALVES: OK, just a minute. Creativity would not exist because...
PROCOPE: Creativity does not mean a lot to me, to put it flatly. It is
supposed to simply be the aptitude to creation existing in a person.
Creation is what I am after. I deny the existence of any form of creation.
GONSALVES: Creation... OK, OK, creation...
PROCOPE: WARM VALLEY is not a creation de nihilo. It was inspired by the
Oregon landscape. It was captured on a specifically crafted musical
instrument, with a certain system of scales coming from a tradition, and
written in an idiom, a style resulting from the influence of previous
musicians, the majority of them mere unknown citizens, street singers. That
WARM VALLEY is the point of convergence of several complex and tangled
streams. And there is a beautiful musical term to describe what I mean
here.
GONSALVES: And it is?
PROCOPE: Composition.
GONSALVES: Composition.
PROCOPE: Yes, Paul, composition. As in musical composition and also as in
composition of pre-existing elements.
GONSALVES: I don't know, Russell. All that sounds very conservative to me.
I must say.
PROCOPE: Why conservative?
GONSALVES: Well you know. All comes from previous configurations. Nothing
is really new. I don't know...
PROCOPE: It's not a business of nothing really new. The tulip and the
snowflake are new indeed. That's not where the problem stands. It 's
rather: nothing independent.
GONSALVES: Nothing independent. So these solos I create in my mind a couple
of seconds before I play them...
PROCOPE: They're brilliant solos, cat. Your capacities as a musician are
not in question here. They're quite new too. You're far more innovative
than me, and several other cats in the reed section. Your talent is not the
issue here, my man. Only your independence, your capacity to create from
nothing, your freedom vis-a-vis the rest of composed music, of instrument
crafting, of Negro singing, of semi-improvised orchestration, of record
industry, of American civilization, of mere existence...
GONSALVES: No freedom to create?
PROCOPE: That goddam crap freedom is a hoax, man. Listen carefully to this:
men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of
consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which
they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their
ignorance of any cause for their action.
GONSALVES: No creativity resulting from the active will?
PROCOPE: Whoops... whoops!I'm not finished. (raises a finger in the air).
Ahhh... As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is
a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto. What the will is, and
how it moves the body, they none of them know...
GONSALVES: Who said that? Your babysitter, to stop you from climbing out of
your crib?
PROCOPE: No. Spinoza...
GONSALVES: Ah.. but of course.
PROCOPE: ...in his masterpiece THE ETHICS. But forgetfor a minute who said
it. Just think about the content of it. If you believe that you create
freely, it's because you don't know the determinations and connections that
make you pop things out of yourself. You know of your actions, but you
don't know of their deep causes, so you believe you create...
GONSALVES: I see the logic of it. But, I don't know, man...
PROCOPE: Of course you don't know.
GONSALVES: So if I follow you here: my little symmetric system is crooked.
Aphorism four doesn't fly.
PROCOPE: Let's bring your system back in symmetry. Aphorisms one and four
don't fly!
GONSALVES: What? The object in my mind only? That hip chick I dreamed
about... That pure fly-floating product of my imagination..
PROCOPE: Is wonderful, extraordinary, superb, lovely, and is not a creation
of your mind.
GONSALVES: What! She exists then!
PROCOPE: No.
GONSALVES: What? She is'nt a creation of my mind, and she does'nt exist
either.
PROCOPE: Exactly, cat. Sorry to break your heart abruptly like that, but
I'm not promoting premonition dreams and other garbage of that telepathic
nature here. I'm just telling you that despite the fact that she was
totally new, unmet, undiscovered, unidentified, that oniric love of yours
was not a creation of your tormented mind.
GONSALVES: (outloud) Well what was she then? (The musicians of the reeds
section make gestures in the direction of GONSALVES to make him be quiet.
The room is now filled with the audience. The gig is soon to begin)
PROCOPE: A synthesis, a rearrangement, a new combination, a reconfiguration
of all the physical and psychological features you met in several women of
the world, which you dreamingly blend together for your own oniric
jubilation. A very limited and fugitive synthesis.
GONSALVES: A synthesis...
PROCOPE: Oh yes. A Frankenstein of love, you mentally built from sparse
elements. An oniric mayonnaise you emotionally cooked from subtle
ingredients. A multicolored patchwork you sewed in an instantaneous flash..
A mental and emotional collage...
GONSALVES (after a moment): Thinking about it freely, calmly, without the
usual constraints of preconceived ideas...
PROCOPE: As you always do.
GONSALVES: Digging deep in that very moving memory. Yeah. Maybe that woman
in my dream had features of other women I actually met, or saw. Even of men
actually... If I may say... She had Alec Guinness' eyes, for instance. I'm
quite sure of that...Sounds strange, hey. Don't laugh at me, you dog.
PROCOPE: I wouldn't dare.Guinness is a superb actor, and a dream is a
dream, cat. But... do you see what I'm saying...
GONSALVES: OK OK. Let me see that new symmetry here. One and four are out.
So we stay with: reality is in the world alone, or in the world and grasped
by our mind.
PROCOPE: There you go. A thing exists alone, or exists and is being
grasped. No other option. Heat is either irradiating alone at the center of
the earth, or irradiating from these spotlights here and warming up your
fingers on that piece of brass. Consequently, nothing comes from the mind
independently, to go down to the world. No heat pops out of your mind. Just
the memory of it, or the hope for it to chill up or warm down. But the idea
of heat is no heat. All the mind can do is to grasp, and regurgitate what
it grasped. But your grasping mind is active, cat. Very intensely active,
and proactive. It jigjags and reshuffles everything it received from the
external world, and constitutes incredibly complex new combinations. At the
same time, it forgets several of the thousands of sources of inspiration
one encountered in one's lifetime. The mind does not know what the mind
does, you know. So it sincerely and genuinely believes it creates...
GONSALVES: (scratches his forefront with the mouthpiece of his instrument)
But to obtain new configurations with what is simply laying there... I
mean... how is that only possible?
PROCOPE: But very simply, my friend. Ever played cards? Ever played chess?
GONSALVES: Sure.
PROCOPE: Look at the player shuffling cards. He ends up with a brand new
combination of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades in his hands. Every
time. Nobody calls him a creator for that. Look at two cats playing chess.
After twenty minutes, the configuration of the game is totally...
idiosyncratic, as you would say. One game is different from any other game.
We don't label it a creation for that. Individually or collectively, our
minds produce the same type of action as the individual card shuffler and
the collective chess player of my examples here. But simply that action is
mental rather than material. And immensely more complex.
GONSALVES: I hear you, cat. I hear you. But it's terribly tough to admit.
PROCOPE: Just because it's new to you. You'll get used to it. What's so
tough to admit in this anyway?
GONSALVES: No creation, man. No freedom of will for that regurgitating mind
of ours... We are just like some drunk crooks shuffling cards. That is damn
tough on the ego, brother. It's like if we were denied a good part of the
control on our intellectual and artistic activity. Barely humiliating.
PROCOPE: Well, Paul. When you perform your famous series of successive
choruses. Would you dare to tell me that you fully control what blows out
of your instrument?
GONSALVES: No, no. I wouldn't dare to say that. Sometimes it seems to just
happen. But isn't that what creative inspiration is all about?
PROCOPE: Isn't that rather the confirmation of the existence of what
Spinoza called ignorance of the causes?
GONSALVES: Maybe. I'm forced to admit that a huge amount of whatever
artistry I may have the chance to possess is a major mystery to me. Maybe I
am presumptuous to believe that I create anything. Maybe we all are. Agree
with your shocking doctrine or not, it is a lesson of modesty you're
teaching me here my friend. And I owe to honesty to admit that I bitterly
relate to it, when I think of what the Duke said about me when he hired me
to join the boys in the line-up...
PROCOPE: What did he say again?
GONSALVES: He said, very genuinely and candidly, not to me directly, but to
another cat, to Quentin... Quentin Jackson. And it is strictly forbidden to
laugh... He said...
PROCOPE: Well...
GONSALVES: This so-and-so sounds just like Ben...
PROCOPE: See. Forget your sadness for a minute, Paul. Stick to the piece of
reasoning we are working on here. Ben Webster sounded just like others too,
you know. His synthesis was simply more complex, less straightforward than
yours or mine. So it looked superficially like creation to the bamboozled
audiences, you and me included. That filiation between Ben and you is very
accurate, good pal. You're raising an excellent example of my point here.
GONSALVES: (sighs) Yeah... your point about the non-existence of any form
of creation. Yes, I can partly understand that for individual activities.
Nothing out of nothing, hey... And... But... Hey wait a minute! What about
the creation of the universe?
PROCOPE: Oh, that mere nonsense...
GONSALVES: What?
PROCOPE: The universe was not created, Paul. How is that for a scoop?
GONSALVES: What? Impossible! Wow... Hey... What do you make of the
classical argument claiming that any cause needs a previous cause to
generate it, so we need an initial cause to all existence. For all the
shebang to start, it takes some form of cosmological creation, doesn't it?
PROCOPE: You're serving me the so-called law of the adequate cause, good
fellow. Well, I know it's tough, Paul, but let me give you another quote
here. The law of the adequate cause applies only to pictures made by the
human mind. In our logical pictures of the world everything must have its
adequate cause. But the original, the universal cosmos, has no cause, it is
its own cause and effect. To understand that all causes rest on the
causeless is an important dialectic knowledge which first throws the
requisite light on the law of the necessity of an adequate cause.
GONSALVES: Get out of here! Who is the dopey, this time?
PROCOPE: A modest German shoemaker, and amateur philosopher, by the
colorful name of Joseph Dietzgen,
GONSALVES: Shoemaking philosophy... Very amateur indeed... I don't buy
it... It's absurd.
PROCOPE: Well, you're the one who is being conservative now. If I may serve
you what you served me earlier. You don't buy it, you call it absurd, just
because it does not correspond to your preconceived ideas, and would force
you to face newness. Now,Paul, do you want to...
GONSALVES: (monkeying PROCOPE). Do you want to understand my argument on
this, or are you completely fanatic and conservative about... just about
the creation of the whole goddam universe. Piece of cake. Gnagnagna.Go
right ahead. Tell me.
PROCOPE: Well. First I want to tell you, you're a real prince.
GONSALVES: Oh thanks.
PROCOPE: No sincerely, Paul. You're a real open minded aristocrat.
GONSALVES: Oh it's too much. The sonofabitch reminds me cruelly that I'm
nothing other than Ben Webster's broken record, and he calls me a prince.
He is methodically destroying every single idea the simple existence of my
own intellect is grounded on, and he calls me an aristocrat. What a sweet
pie!
PROCOPE: No you are. You're really empathic. You're a real free-minded pal.
GONSALVES: So tell me.
PROCOPE: OK. Where did you get the idea of a created universe?
GONSALVES: Come on, cat. It's everywhere.
PROCOPE: Everywhere where?
GONSALVES: Well, for instance, at church they told us about the genesis.
And so on and so forth.
PROCOPE: Yes. At church. Did you hear that argument in other contexts than
the religious context.
GONSALVES: Well... Now that you're asking me. Probably not.. Cosmology does
not pop out in the day-to-day conversation as commonly as, say,
meteorology. Didn't you ever notice, Mister genius?
PROCOPE: Somewhat... So, let's suppose that the idea of a created universe
is an heritage of the religious tradition, and let toss this one aside for
a moment.
GONSALVES: If you wish. But I want you to know in advance that I do not
believe in the creation of the universe only because the preacher said so,
but also because it is logical to believe so.
PROCOPE: Fine, fine with me. But we agree to toss aside the religious
tradition, genesis, world created in six days, break taken on the seventh
day, and so on.
GONSALVES: Sure. Sure why not. It changes nothing to the problem, but sure.
Let's keep the Beardy Walker, Adam, Eve, the snake, and the apple for the
kids at bedtime.
PROCOPE: Excellent idea. Now, are you a sweet, generous, and empathic
enough prince to the point of accepting to remove any notion of God, and of
a supreme being of any form from the reflection also? Tossing it aside with
the rest of the religious heritage? Do you allow God to stay out of the
picture I will try to draw of the universe here?
GONSALVES: Yes. I accept that, for the purpose of the demonstration. And
since I know I am the very generous prince I am, don't reiterate it, and
please jump right in that picture itself. I'm waiting.
PROCOPE: Very good. A prosaic question about the universe for my excellent
friend Prince Paul.
GONSALVES: I listen.
PROCOPE: Is the universe finite or infinite?
GONSALVES: Infinite of course. (Hesitates a moment) You will not challenge
that, I hope.
PROCOPE: Not a minute. We totally agree here. The universe is with no limit
in space. It unfolds in all directions endlessly.
GONSALVES: I am happy to see that we agreed on something so...
cosmological, if I may dare to say. It gives me the hope that maybe our
previous disagreements are not so huge after all. And certainly smaller
than the infinite universal object of our agreement here.... Encouraging,
to say the least...
PROCOPE: So since we admit that the universe is with no end in space, are
we ready to admit that it's also infinite in time. Namely, that it will
last forever.
GONSALVES: I am totally comfortable with that.
PROCOPE: Now assuming that It will last forever, we apply the notion of
infinity in time forward. I mean by that that the line of time going in the
direction of the future is to unfold ad infinitum, i.e. forever.
GONSALVES: Correct.
PROCOPE: All I ask you here is to proceed in good logic, as you would say,
and to apply that same notion of infinity in time backward.
GONSALVES: (jumping) You mean?
PROCOPE: The universe has no limit in space, no end in the future, and no
beginning in the past...
GONSALVES: No... no... wait a minute here... I...
PROCOPE: (puts his instrument on his lap, and raises his two hands in the
air) Sorry my friend, but logic is logic, and infinity is infinity. You
can't fool around with infinity. If you try to limit it, you lose it. The
minute you admit the universe is infinite, you have to have it infinite on
all its features and facets, meaning, at least: space and time; and also in
all directions, meaning, unavoidably, as far as space is concerned: in the
three dimensions equally; and as far as time is concerned: forward and
backward. This means no end...
GONSALVES: Oh man...
PROCOPE: And no beginning.
GONSALVES: But how is it possible?
PROCOPE: The universe simply unfolds, my Paul. A gigantic metamorphosing
maelstrom... endlessly. No end, no start. And the only cause of the
universe is the universe itself. It is self-causative, if I may say.
GONSALVES: (rubs his forefront with the palm of his hand) Oh man... just
that...
PROCOPE: It's tough, Paul. But it's the only solution if you want to handle
the infinity of the universe logically. The same way it has to be infinite
in the three dimensions of space, it has to be infinite in the two
directions of the line of time. It's that, or scrap the infinity...
GONSALVES: Real tough. Merely mind-buggling.
PROCOPE: No beginning, no limit, no end. Only transformations. No
destruction, and... no creation. Forget the preconceived ideas on that
matter... Free yourself.... Think logically on the implication of being
infinite all the way, and you'll see it... Picture the universe as a mass
rather than as a strip. As a swamp rather than as road.
GONSALVES: A swamp indeed!... Oh Russell... But the concept of creation
itself exists, cat. We created the word, and the notion. It must correspond
to something... If it is neither the composition of a short piece of music,
nor the genesis of the whole universe, what in the hell is it?
PROCOPE: A picture made by the human mind...
GONSALVES: Dietzgen. The German shoemaker, hey...
PROCOPE: Himself, in person. Think, Paul. How many musicians do you believe
my violin teacher managed to discourage in his long career?
GONSALVES: Oh quite a lot, I would say! But what does this have to do with
the current issue?
PROCOPE: Well, why was my violin teacher such a talent choker? Mainly
because he was speaking the truth. Any musician is nothing but a songster,
did he dare to constantly say to his staring pupils. He dissipated a lot of
illusions, and consequently broke a lot of dreamful talents.
GONSALVES: I can imagine that.
PROCOPE: Of course! Musicians, as all human beings, are little sidekicking
prima donnas. They love to see what they crafted being valued, admired,
respected, lionized, pedestaled.
GONSALVES: I can imagine that too.
PROCOPE: So, to admit that they are simply reshuffling the same old cards
around the round table of existence, would shrink their ego to the side of
the one of a laborious ant. Lots of them would leave their instrument in
the case, if that idea of the non existence of creation was only to really
sink in. The legend of creation and creativity is far more encouraging,
inspiring, fluffing, buzzing... Think also about the powers. Primitive
powers, priests, tribe chiefs, leaders of all sorts. And modern leaders as
well. Politicians, teachers, factory bosses, chaplains...
GONSALVES: Orchestra directors...
PROCOPE: There you go. They all need their troops and followers to believe
in them. To believe that they incarnate the breakthrough of a new truth.
That they create something.
GONSALVES: Hmm...
PROCOPE: So the human mind wraps up, simplifies, eases things up, and gives
itself the short-sighted notion of creation. The human mind skips the
burden of understanding its own activity, while performing it. It can't do
everything at the same time, you see. So, it crafts itself a handy fetish,
and nails it everywhere on the walls of its obscure workshop. Creation,
creation, creation. There is no lie or slyness in this, Paul. Everybody is
sincere here. Sincere and sincerely misguided.
GONSALVES: We create creation in a sense. In order to cope, and for all the
other minds to bear with that global mystery.
PROCOPE: There you go, cat. They created creation, man. But other than
that...
(Duke Ellington enters on stage. The complete orchestra stands up, ready to
play. Applause)
GONSALVES (covered by the noise of the applause): But hey... you screwed up
somewhere, my friend. If de nihilo nihil, how can we end up with an
uncreated universe? (places the mouthpiece of his instrument in his mouth,
staring at his alter ego).
PROCOPE: It's a major contradiction, but nevertheless it's a fact. That's
what Dietzgen meant when he spoke of an important dialectic knowledge...
(places the mouthpiece of his instrument in his mouth. The applause fades
out. The line up starts to play slowly, and very low. Pure ellingtonian
languor).
ELLINGTON: (while the band is playing in background) Thank you, ladies and
gentlemen. You're very hip, and we love you madly. We would first like to
introduce, in world exclusivity tonight, our most recent creation...
TO BE CONTINUED
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTA BENE
I want to thank my colleague and friend Louise RIPLEY for her constant and
precious help.
The picture from the GOODYEAR JAZZ CONCERT mentioned in the epigram, on
which both Paul GONSALVES and Russel PROCOPE are present but obscured, can
be seen and meditated upon in a voluminous commented filmography of Duke
ELLINGTON published in Denmark at the beginning of the nineties of the
previous century. The enlightening photographic document is on page 454.
Stratemann, K. (1992), Duke ELLINGTON day by day and film by film,
Copenhagen, JazzMedia ApS, 781p. ISBN87-88043-34-7.
Russell PROCOPE quotes SPINOZA in the 1883 Bohn edition, reprinted three
years before his current gig. His quote on the illusion of freedom is on
pages 108 and 109.
Spinoza, B. de (1955), On the Improvement of the Understanding - The Ethics
- Correspondence, New York, Dover Publications, 420p. ISBN0-486-20250-X-
initially published in 1677, English edition of 1883.
He quotes Dietzgen from the original 1906 edition. The quote on the
universal cosmos with no cause is on page 391.
Dietzgen, J. (1906), The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago,
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 444p.
The quote from Duke Ellington: This so-and-so sounds just like Ben is
veracious. It is reported by Paul GONSALVES himself, in a 1961 interview
realized and edited by the eminent British historian of jazz Stanley DANCE.
The quote is on pages 171.
Dance, S. (1970),The world of Duke Ellington, New York, Da Capo Press,
311p. ISBN0-306-80136-1- initially published in 1970, reprint.
***********************************************************************
THE CRAVE
by Vasilis Afxentiou
***********************************************************************
(A short story from my anthology 'Potpourria')
( Available at: www.m-pro.demon.co.uk/bookstore.html )
I get this craving you see, a boner of an urge really, to get to tinkering
in my garage.
About eight last night the crave tore at my gut.
"Better get it out of your system," I said, and jimmied--quiet-like--out
of the easy-chair, then shimmied--quieter still--out the back door. Since
the old garage burned down I kinda kept a low profile.
Against the dusk the new garage favoured a stark Gothic bastion. My shield
from Maggie.
"Tonight'll be different." No sooner had I uttered it than my hand
recoiled from the garage door. But not before a bolt of charge crackled
across to my fingertips from the round brass knob.
"What a portent!"
At ten the house lights went out. Maggie was in bed.
I gave a husky twist on the screwdriver till metal creaked against metal.
Finished.
The transformer had been extracted from a junked WW2 navy vessel in Phili.
The bulk cost more to ship than to buy. It weighed twice what Maggie did.
Anyway, it looked hefty enough to take the voltage.
I cleared my throat, "Well, Thomas Ancrum, give it life!"
I slip-shod back. I couldn't afford another garage. And Maggie would....
But then There was a way to control ill fortune.
I wired a rheostat after the switch.
I set it to zero.
"Lordy, Lordy," I consoled the craving, and pushed the blades down.
A deep muffled whir.
"Give it juice," I whimpered.
I stepped the voltage up. The multivibrator next to the box with the
exotic circuits started buzzing while the transformer on the floor began
to roar.
Three thousand more volts left. The winding wasn't responding to the
Earth's magnetic flux--
Slammed it to ten thousand volts.
The concrete floor quivered. The light bulb on the wall undulated--
"It's happening," I shouted, "gravity is being nullified!"
I dared not breathe, lest it send the massive hunk bursting through the
roof.
I hung there by a hairspring, frozen. I dreamed. I lost myself. The
riches, the frill, the savoir faire....
Ebony Rollses, vast estates, and heaps of menservants scurried through my
head. Maggie, she'd stop her weird stares. She'd bow to a husband second
to none.
"Tommy!" Maggie's voice drilled the night, "Stop talking to yourself. I
wanna sleep!"
"Not for long, dear," I countered, "I'll be talking to the world
tomorrow!"
Last night the world was mine.
This morning I'm filthy, behind bars, and have a well in the garage.
The dumb move was to step the voltage up to eleven thousand volts all at
once. That oversized anvil dropped sparking through the floor--concrete,
reinforcement and all--like hell-fire through butter. The racket woke half
the neighbourhood.
If that wasn't enough, Maggie comes acharging in the garage door and drops
dead-bottom into a hole she never suspected. One of her nine lives must've
quit on her just then. She moaned a bit, then sobered grappled wild-cat
like to climb out, all two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of her.
I lowered a step-ladder and left. If anything was hurting it was the navy
transformer under Maggie.
It didn't make sense.
The set-up did nullify Earth's gravity. But in reverse. Instead of
pushing, it pulled itself into the Earth.
There go the Rollses, the estates, the menservants. The neighbors are
spooked. The garage's ready to cave in. My wife is...I don't know where.
And I'm covered in paint....
When I left the garage I went into the house. I was running a hot tub and
looking for clean clothes when the door bell caught me.
"Good evening, sir, Sgt. Dubinsky. This is patrolman Bowes."
As I eat my tasteless stew (or thick soup), sitting on the bare fiberglass
bunk in my cocoa-brown, canary-yellow, lizard-green shirt, and pants to
match, I get the urge.
Running a new feeder down the pit will be no problem.
These overnight city jails leave a lot to be desired. The light switch is
next to the bars. I take my slacks off and use the loose end of the zipper
to unscrew the cap. I jump on the bunk, twist the juiced line into a hook,
and hang my trousers by the old zip tossing a trouser leg through the
bars.
"You all through?" grunts the guard.
"Yeap."
"Well, hand me the tray."
"Alright,alright. Toss me my pants."
He spots the trouser leg and reaches for it, "Hey, buddy, you go swimming
in paint? Hold on, they're caught...."
A hundred and ten volts is seldom fatal. But it'll jar and juggle you
enough to remember it for the rest of you're life. The guard never knew
what hit'im.
In addition to all else, I'm now a wanted man.
Soon as I got to the garage I set to work. I climbed down to the
transformer, reversed the polarity on the exotic circuit's, straightened
the copper contacts Maggie fell on, and spot-welded a new feeder. The
cable I used was thick gauge wire; didn't want the thing to shoot up
without some kind of control line tied to it for quick adjustments. I left
ample slack too.
Now, the fine-graded rheostat is at ten point seven kilovolts. One more
click will raise the voltage to ten point eight.
"Click."
Nothing.
"Must be the impedance of the extra line," I tell myself. A few notches
up.
"Click, CLICK--"
Jupiter! Everything's starting to shake!
The place is rattling, plaster's falling, dust and grit's spraying out of
the pit!
Where's the rheostat?--I can't see a thing with all this smut in my eyes.
The rumble is God-awful. "Jesus!" The whole city'll be levelled--
The breakers trip. Silence and fog. The cable is almost all gone. It
must've bored a thousand feet down. Not an inch up.
"Tommy, oh To-o-ommy."
"Ugh."
"Tommy, dear, this is Mr. Bludodle, he's a lawyer."
"I'm not going to fight it."
"Fight what, Tommy hon?"
"You've got the divorce--just don't expect alimony with me behind bars."
"There's some kind of mis-uh-understanding, Mr. Ancrum. Why, Mrs. Ancrum
and I spent all last night trying to locate you. The Missing Persons
Bureau told us that you had been `detained' at the city's co-oh-rrectional
facilities."
"You mean Maggie didn't call the cops and have me nabbed?"
"Mr. Ancrum! Your wife had nothing but your best interests in mind. A
ne-eh-ighbor had called, certainly not your wife."
You know then by now half the county is looking for me."
"Tommy sugar, you underestimate Mr. Bludodle."
"All have been satisfactorily co-oh-mpensated and all cha-ah-rges dropped.
As well, thanks to Mrs. Ancrum, you, sir, are a potentially rich man."
For twenty-three years Maggie turned me over on a spit. Through and done
with her I am.
The lawyer peeks over the dark shaft.
"Mrs. Ancrum info-oh-rmed me that you have invented a device that digs
electrically without jigs."
"Well?"
"Mr. Ancrum, I am in patent law. Your invention will re-eh-volutionize the
country's--the world's i-ih-ndustries. Bring in riches beyond your
wi-ah-ldest dreams. You will lead lives of royalty--if you're prudent."
I eye the sputtering dude, "And that's where you come in."
He bows.
"The apparatus is kaput, Mr. Bluebottle--"
"Blu-uh-dodle."
"--Mr. Bludodle. I cannot duplicate it--"
"DESTROYED! CAN'T DUPLICATE IT! Couldn't you've drawn it on paper, on your
shirt-tails or something! Good for nothing--all that beautiful cash--all
down a well. I wann' a divorce this minute! To think I was right on top of
the thing last night...."
Mr. Bludodle places a consoling hand on Maggie's squat shoulders and both
exit through the back door of the garage.
I crouch over what used to be a hole. A joker's grin is splitting my face
in two as I observe the slick black-crude mosey right along behind them.
End
Copyright by Vasilis Afxentiou
All Rights Reserved
vafx@hol.gr
***********************************************************************
VALENTIN BUCUR'S DIVINE ART CREDO
by Daniel Pop
***********************************************************************
Valentin Bucur was born on August 24, 1957 in the town of Predeal, one of
Romania's most exclusive and picturesque winter-health-resorts. As a child,
Valentin Bucur was fascinated by the interesting forms of the trees and
tree-roots of the wonderful forests surrounding Predeal. He collected
tree-roots and, with the hands and eyes of a 10 years old, talented child,
modelled them to real sculptures by making only minor changes to Mother
Nature's original creations. One day he found a larger root which seemed to
represent a man and "changed some little details" to give his man a face
(very close to a real human face) and entitled his first real art-work "The
Forest Man".
As a young boy, Valentin Bucur passionately loved and admired abbeys, icons
and the profound religious athmosphere of churches. Not surprisingly, his
first painting represented an icon. On the other hand, Valentin Bucur was
impressed by the shining power of immaculate snow, (a light effect which
can be seen now in the microcristalline structure of his glass and mirror
engravings), and decided to study at the Experimental Skiing High School in
Predeal. After graduation he accepted a position - as a topometrist - at
the Institute of Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Cartography and Territory
Organisation in Bucharest and was promoted to work at the Laboratory of
Microfilms of the same institute. Bucur became an expert in Microfilms,
Photoreproducing and Gigantography. He also worked some years as a
watchmaker, which explaines his passion for miniatures, details, precission
and artistic perfection. The Constantin and Elena Church in Ialomita was
painted and decorated by the artist with passion and devotion.
At present Mr. Valentin Bucuris a highly respected and admired Iconograph
and Miniaturist. His icons are engraved in glass and/or mirror, and are
worldwide unique, from the viewpoint of the original technique employed by
the artist. The engravings were realized in/on glass and mirror with a
diamond-hardened file.
At his first two exhibitions opened in the town of Deva, Mr. Valentin Bucur
presented 25 glass and mirror engraved icons, all of them being inspired
from the Bible or bearing a profound religious message: Jesus With The
Children (Let The Children Come To Me ), Jesus Walking On The Water and
Saving the Ship, Jesus on Clouds (mirror), The Church (on mirror),
Celebration of the Sabbath, Mother Mary with Jesus, The Healing of the
Blind, Jesus Meeting Peter, Jesus Carrying His Cross, Saint Nicholas,
Lazarus' Ressurection, Jesus as a Child, Jesus' Head (on mirror), Jesus
Christening, Jesus Meeting the Romans, Maria Magdalena Washing Jesus Feet,
The Healing of the Leprosy, Healing of the Mad Man, Talida's Ressurection,
The Arrival of the Magi to Jesus, Maid Mary (on mirror) Bunavestire, The
Holy Trinity.
The white, immaculate, transparent and translucent shining icons were
selectly illuminated with white light and accompanied by contemporary
religious music ( ERA/ Ameno).
You could feel Your Soul entering a universe of mild light, purity, peace
of mind, reconciliation and gratitude, to encounter the sacred.
A very special effect comes from the mirror-engraved icons because anyone
can see his own face reflected near the engraved sacred faces in a
dimension called Divinity.
The public's reaction constituted a tremendous emotional surprise for the
author. Valentin Bucur's very select exhibition was visited especially by
teenagers and young adults. Almost all visitors were very impressed, some
of them leaving the exhibition with tears in the eyes and expressing
gratitude for what they were offered, love, peace of mind, beauty purity
and hope.
Even some of Valentin Bucur's miniatures have a religious theme: A 8 cm
high Church built from 5000 identical sugar granules which were carefully
selected (sometimes only 2 or 3 granules were selected from a table-spoon
full of sugar crystals) and "agglutinated" with a very special (and still
secret) material, employing an original technique developed by the artist.
A prayer-book 4mm/4mm in which the prayer " Pater Noster " is written on 14
"pages" with 889 hair segments having the same thickness, the same colour
and belonging to the Author.The other miniatures represent a 7mm/3mm
bycicle having all necessary components and even accessories and which was
created in 9 months of hard work, a split (sectionated) rice-grain hold
together by a hinge and decorated in/on one half with the word CHINA made
of rubins. (rice-grain engraving); A picture representing a rural landscape
(4mm/4mm and made of the author's hair) and having a wooden frame with
veneer, and finally a sculpture in a shell with a 89 rubins
"monture"(outfit), representing (and being entitled) The Ecological System.
His unique and very original miniatures will be presented for entry in The
Guiness Book of Records.
Valentin Bucur's exhibition was recorded on film by by all major Romanian
TV stations (PRO-TV, TVR-1, and Antena 1) and was presented to a very large
audience, nationwide. The exhibition was visited by tourists and
representatives from 24 nations.
The press was also highly impressed by Valentin Bucur, by his wonderful
icons and amazing miniatures, and praised him in a series of articles like:
"Bucur Valentin - The Art As Love" (1), "The Church in The Soul" (2), "A
Different Exhibition" (3),"A Rice Grain With....Hinge" (4), "An Exhibition
Which Should Be Seen" (5).
The photographs presented in this article were done by a young and but very
talented photographer, Mr. Zoltan F. Locsei.
The next Valentin Bucur art-exhibitions will be opened in Romania's capital
Bucharest (at the House of the Republic), in Romania's major cities
(Timisoara, Cluj, and Jassy),in the UK (London) and in the USA (New York);
The entire Valentin Bucur collection was evaluated to be worth 5 million US
$, and is kept in a bank from Hunedoara-county for safety reasons, and the
Author intends to sell his collection at this price.
---------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
(1)Anamaria Plesoianu, Touristic Romania, A Weekly National, August 26,
1999;
(2) Mihaela Oprea, The Hunedoara Telegraf, August31- September6, 1999;
(3)Viorica Roman, Cuvantul Liber, July16, 1999; (4)Paul Tota, Oglinda,
Nr.441, July1999;
(5)Alexandru Gruian, Lumina, Nr.67, 12-18 June 1999;
Acknowledgement:
Daniel Pop, the Author of this article wishes to thank Mr. Valentin Bucur
for a very special Interview, Mr. Zoltan F. Locsei for the photographs
presented in this article, Mr. Eugen Durdun and the Company Recep Plus for
many hours of access to the Internet.
***********************************************************************
5 POEMS
by Janet Buck
***********************************************************************
Painâs Parasite
Mink coat mantras of your grace
are sonnets on a page I hate.
Not in mean maneuvers--
just in envyâs evergreen.
I take a bath in pinecones
of your peach fuzz knees.
My legs are horses put through Hell.
Mind grows cabin fever wishful.
Cannibals with shiny teeth.
The cab fare of my thick disgust
seems at times like ticking clocks.
The grand collapse of rolling chairs:
canopies that rule summer,
urging muscle ukuleles just
to strum their meager music,
even in a rattled limp.
Your bones trade favors of a step,
live bloated by sweet fairy tales.
Paperback panache in tact.
I am queens of unmatched seams.
I stare in fevered crystal balls,
see the amethyst of age.
Tickles of a poetâs palette
almost always tied to grief.
Paintbrush thrusts of
empty silk pajama legs
become my ghosts in greasy alleys,
most of whom I canât control.
Painâs parasite I study hard--
a wretched class with high tuition
breaking broken steeples more.
I live like driftwood on a beach.
A tablet made of stone and grit.
Olive smiles in quick corrections
saving face from falling off dry canaps.
Effort grows so very old.
Art is hungry yellow jackets
hovering thick chicken wings.
======
Candorâs Hammer
Consider a bomb.
Cross it with fire.
Comb it with grief.
Burn it with ice.
Youâll be inside my urgency--
taste kidney stones
before they pass.
Know courtrooms filled
with phantom pain
that plead the Fifth
of wanting fifths.
My body cast will be
your stateroom floating
on a sinking yacht.
I order ill to take a nap.
Unruly children never listen.
Storms of fate act similar.
Cab fare of a fountain pen
spreading wings in cyber-space,
running all the yellow lights
before they turn to absolutes.
Driftwood bones I hate to own
leaking oil and losing gas,
but dead set on their pilgrimage:
pinching fingers in a door
of motion they can never have.
Tap candorâs hammer hard enough,
truth will follow chorus lines.
Nuns in habits; monks in cloisters;
rocks in rivers; skunks in ditches
comment on a life they missed
but worshipped like a bibleâs spine.
=====
The Bag Lady
Layers of her evening shroud
in twilight holes where stars belonged.
A crossword puzzle of my flaws
splattered thick on sticky tar.
Helpless seemed like cotton candy
running pink without a fair.
Brown paper sacks rolled in crepes.
All she had for self-defense--
bayonets of rainbow glass.
Arms in sleeves--
tamale husks of hurried fear.
Bottles sold for blessings
of their emptiness.
I saw her hug a jug of wine
as if it were a fountain splayed
with arteries to earned release.
Dropped one nickel of a poem
in pounding puddles of her blood.
A Chaucer on her pilgrimage--
a pigeon lost among our noise.
=====
Fake Lightbulbs
I followed your tracks.
Ignored the force of painâs eclipse.
Didnât speak of sufferâs dandruff.
Didnât dabble what remained
in cauldrons of self-pityâs womb.
I earned (but burned) the right to scream.
Listened hard to judgment owls
that ruled thick forests with their hoots.
PC art is in the trash; I take apart
confetti flags; I learned I leaned
on lousy sticks: depended on
glass fairy tales that didnât give
me room to breathe.
Reading dawn by 30 watts
of failureâs fear;
blind to rays of deeper suns.
Sorry roads of silence reigned
with riding crops of snappy pride.
I hid the gift I owned alone
beneath a tent of travesty.
The bible was my set apart:
mine, all mine in every step.
Never reeked of commonplace like
blackbirds on an evergreen.
One leg wrestled from the grave
by surgeries and magic shows.
The other was raped holidays--
bones removed--earwigs
brushed off normal skirts.
Money bought me rubber feet,
but didnât pierce
the underlying tragedy.
Shapes I learned to hate
and hide: I was turnips sliced
to pieces faking it in apple pies.
=====
Haunted Homes of Poetry
Cleaning up saliva mess
of forty drooling silent years,
I press my form against a mirror
like flies that hit unlucky slides
of natureâs bad biology.
A step ahead of funeral pyres,
I play an untuned violin--
sins that quiz their basis some
but never fathom hurricanes.
Leg of lamb I couldnât eat.
It was somethingâs motion crest.
And I was sure heâd want it back.
No one wants to hop on grass
even in a coffinâs arch.
It was cruel to eat nice dreams--
a save-the-whales mentality
in centers of a world war.
Hailstorms and hairpin turns
become a turret for release.
In haunted homes of poetry,
my shape is plates for Hellâs Buffet--
measures floods of urgent skill.
A sonnet in mint jelly plops--
decorates a serving tray.
Wisps of parsely sparsely farce--
it never does reverse the kill.
***********************************************************************
A PROLETARIAT LOVESONG
by Michael Jarrette-Kenny
***********************************************************************
Once upon a time, in the land of the hostess twinkie and the
energizer bunny....
"I can't stay..." She said to me lighting a cigarette
"Do you hear me?Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Photographing you..."I say.She just laughs.
Do you know those moments? I assume everybody has them, but hey I've
been wrong about a lot of things. I remember going to visit her at work, I
can't even remember where it was. It was summer, and the place, whatever it
was (does it really matter) was at the end of this old country road, along
this hilltop. At the edge you could see the tree lined landscape (in your
mind you probably see one of those Bob Ross paintings with the 'happy
little trees', but it wasn't like that at all). As I came up over the edge
of the hilltop in my beat up Toyota, I saw her standing out in front of the
place, and between that and that perfect blue sky, I was skating on the
edge of an almost perfect happiness. In the immortal words of Richard Hell,
"Love comes in spurts". The rest is heartache, blue balls, death threats
and restraining orders. You hold those three second bursts of bliss in your
mind to get through the millions of others that have you putting the barrel
in your mouth. Anyway, this, at least in my mind, was one of those moments.
I sit up next to her, placing the finishing touches on the image. The
wisps of bluish smoke impaled by the noonday sun. The torn fabric of the
concealing comforter. The distant sounds of passing traffic on the highway
a few miles north. The throbbing grind of industrial beats and blackened
growling guitar chords on the neighbors radio, accompanied by a groan of
exertion as he lifts this or that grease covered auto part. The play of
light from the crest of her forehead to her belly. The soft gold of her
hair splayed in haphazard patterns on the down pillow.
"There, your finished..."
Another laugh ·I open my eye's to a dubious questioning expression...she
doesn't ask and I am grateful...
"What are you thinking about ?"
"I'm not sure I can put it into words..."
She pulls on her white cotton panties, I help her fasten her bra ..she
pulls on the dress and says goodbye, disappearing out the door and into
memory.
Jimmy sits in my living room in my pilfered jeans and tee shirt munching
on cold pizza. dirty blond hair tied back
behind his head, scratching his
goatee with blackened finger nails...
"You don't have any beer left..."
"How the hell did you get in here...?"
He points to an open window...
"Who's the girl?"
Lascivious gleam in his eyes, licking a remnant of congealed sauce from his
lips.
"Nevermind her...you didn't say anything to her I hope?"
"She's you'res man...what the hell do you take me for..."
"I don't own her."I say
"O.K leasing with an option to buy."
"How long have you been here?"
He smiles, launching into a long series of mock spasms and orgasmic
moaning.
"Your a real fucking piece of work."
He folds the empty pizza box sticking it into the overflowing kitchen
garbage.
"You guys playing tonight...?" He fishes with dirty fingers through his
mouth extracting chunks of pepperoni.
"Not tonight."
He jumps up from the couch, escaping into my bedroom, and begins foraging
through the dresser drawers.
"You could at least wait until I'm not here to steal from me."
He looks as if I just produced photographs of his mother coupling with a
German shepherd. His hand reappeared , unearthing a small bag of white
powder.
"What the fuck is that?"
"My emergency stash..."
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Don't ever leave your shit in
my place...I'm not going down for you, you bastard."
"Would you fucking relax? You're a fine, upstanding citizen... No one's
going through your shit.. No one will ever know it's there."
He clears off a glass coffee table, fishing a half gram onto the dusty
surface, chopping it expertly into two long lines.
*******************
A half an hour later I'm at work, talking with a group of grimy
Australian nomads.
"Phil 'ere only 'as one kidney..."
The leader cackles. He has no front teeth. He explains that they travel the
world ...a month in Zurich...Berlin...six months partying in Amsterdam,
then London. It's their first time in the states...medical laws too strict
for their taste. The bunch lease themselves out for medical experiments of
an extremely questionable nature. The one called Phil sold his kidney for
twenty grand. The leader has had all of the fingers on his left hand
removed and reattached. Not a bad profession if you ask me. He adjusts his
glass eye in the reflection of a c.d. case. I look up some dance single in
the computer for them, gliding past the boss. He is dead man in almost
every respect. Vacant eyes and acne scars. Bad jokes always at the expense
of others. He seems just likable enough that he avoids being stabbed to
death by an irate employee, but beneath this almost likable faade lurks a
cynical scum bag who would sell his mother to the first one eyed,
Australian nomad off the boat for a dollar fifty in loose change and a used
piece of chewing gum (spearmint).
For all his idiosyncrasies, his shady past as coke dealer, his trailer
park upbringing, his elvis style shooting of his television, his penchant
for eating bugs for money during the tedious nightmare of inventory, he was
merely a type; The platonic form of Power records management. Beaten down
and cowardly, an advocate of the trickle down theory of stupidity, a grown
man who had made a tragic error in his youth and who was now forced to
cater to the whims of an eternally young and unfortunately deaf audience of
frenzied teenagers in perpetuity. I couldn't blame him, there were more
where he came from and they were probably worse. It was the job that did it
to you...You could struggle against the tide of mismanagement, but like
some world weary politician, sooner or later you'd go on the take. There
were worse jobs out there but who really wants to find them.
Besides, the employees aren't really much better. Record stores attract
three kinds of people; the clinically insane, professional slackers in
search of a cd collections or junkies who steal the c.d.s to support their
habits. A distorted play on urban drift theory yields a perfectly feasible
sociological law...the unemployable will either be found in fast food
restaurants or record stores...Power in a rather cynical play on apparent
tolerance attempts to keep itself young and hip by dragging from the dregs
of society. unlike the fast food restaurant, they don't care what you look
like...in fact the more deviant your appearance the better. For five
dollars an hour they lease your rebellious carcass and put you on parade as
the latest in avant garde performance artist, while you complain about the
customer's derisive laughter concerning your green hair and septum ring.
Who cares (so the cold clinical corporate rationale goes) the old farts
expire by the truck load at your appearance making more room for that
theoretical thirteen year old girl who really buys all the prepackaged
rebellion they're hawking.
I go in the back to avoid any future work that might be thrust upon me
by circumstance. Instead I'm intercepted by Power's resident Oscar Wilde,
Boodles...He assails me with his latest romantic failures; the weekly crush
on the latest irrefutably straight male who refuses to renounce his hetero
orientation in favor of more manly pleasures. This weeks special has gone
so far as to desert Power for the Irish Republican Army. I wipe away his
weak tears as he launches into his latest manic tirade; his life long dream
of realizing Das Boot as a Broadway musical. I suggest Fitzcaraldo as an
alternative, but alas Klaus Kinski is unavailable for the engagement. He
insists I behave more responsibly with the time clock...According to his
latest calculations I have worked fifteen minutes in the last year. He
giggles maniacally and escapes into the men's room singing "Somewhere Over
the Rainbow". I contemplate asphyxiating myself with a shopping bag but
change my mind, at least for the moment.
I can't tell you the feeling (maybe I don't have to tell you ...maybe
you would gleefully toss your entire life in the garbage to work for $5.05
an hour, maybe you already have ) of arriving in that parking lot day in
and day out. Like the post office, Power is open regardless if the snow
drifts in front necessitate the use of flamethrowers and steam shovels in
order to gain entrance. On Christmas day, New Years, Thanksgiving, All
hallows eve, the spring solstice, President's day, Judgement day...If the
earth swallowed New York, if the Archangel Gabriel was blowing a baroque
trumpet concerto up the boss's anus as Yahweh spewed volcanic ejaculations
of molten lava down aisle thirteen, there would still be some ass hole at
the front desk asking for the latest Spice Girls single; a trail of drool
defining a path down his slackened jaw, staring vacantly as the hounds of
hell clamp their jaws around his empty bulbous head. All cds 9.99 for an
extremely limited time...Please pardon our appearance were remodeling for
Armageddon. Legend has it that our illustrious head honcho once attempted
to purchase a cd (a cd? Why would a guy who owns a record store shop
somewhere else for a cd? Perhaps it wasn't a cd ,it could be anything , a
new hairpiece a lollipop for a hooker girlfriend..) on New Years day, and
he was outraged...OUTRAGED ... there was nothing open. From that moment on
he vowed that his store would be open 368 days a year till midnight (it
actually says this on the stationary).Of course...he gives himself the day
off whenever he damn well feels like it, an option the lowly proletariat
scum who work for him do not have, dragging their sorry selves to work
while their friends or family gather (actually now that I think about it,
maybe we're better off) I really shouldn't complain...In fact I'm not
really complaining about a record store...My theory is that Power is a
microcosm of the larger universe ,a miniature of a misruled creation. I
imagine the god of the Hebrews, the Christians, the Manicheans, the
Zorastorians, the dead god of Nietzche, the opiate god of Marx; not so much
as thundering titan or bearded patriarch, but as bureaucrat...as
administrator of the department of metaphysical affairs. The blind idiot
god of the gnostics, crouching behind the scarred plastic of some
otherworldly equivalent of the DMV counter...telling you've been waiting on
the wrong line, that your karmic punch card hasn't been initialed by the
right seraphic authorities, the lines running in a double helix stair well
winding through millions of miles other dimensional space, resembling
nothing so much as a traffic jam of the human spirit as filmed by Jean Luc
Godard. Heretics burning their persecutors in the Spanish Inquisition, the
roving bands of predatory lambs pouncing on the stray lion, Russian czars
criticizing their Bolshevik murderers haircuts, Protestants and Catholics
flipping coins to see which one's going to hell ,on off days flinging pork
chops at their Muslim line mate, all carrying on their disputes beyond the
grave in some magnificent orgy of destruction and chaos that makes their
earthly travails seem as a minor warm up for the chaos that follows. It's
no wonder the universe doesn't spontaneously collapse into non being ...who
knows it might any minute.
I'm called to the front by one of the clerks. A shirtless man in his mid
twenties discordantly strumming a battered acoustic guitar in a deranged
fashion has been inquiring where to get the best acid. The clerk(I can't
remember his name, in fact I don't ever remember seeing him before...turn
over is so frequent the applicants sometimes leave before the customers do,
if their smart)
"Well, do you know where to get good acid?"
The clerk looks at me and I can almost here the gears grinding in his head.
He's about nineteen and hasn't bathed in as many years. To make matters
worse, he's wearing as sweater in the middle of summer, and it smells like
week old road kill in a microwave oven. I repeat the question and he
eventually shakes his head.
"Sorry man...No acid here. Try the guys in the video section...Any
particular variety of acid?"
The guys expression brightens.
"Blotter or window pane..."
I point across the store and he wanders off. He stops before one of the
classical employees wandering back from break, a defrocked Russian orthodox
monk and part time pedophile by the name of Reger. He's wearing a Viking
helmet to commemorate Wagner's birthday though it's still three months
away. He stares at the bare chested man with a perplexed expression, after
a moment, directing him again toward the video department. He strolls past
me giving me the full nazi salute singing the Liebestod from Tristan &
Isolde in a choking raspy tenor.
I hear the boss's droll expressionless voice summon me to the back room
just in time for me to miss the food truck as it pulls into the front
parking lot. I pause before the front door, watching the ebb and flow of
traffic on route 80 clotting in chunks of glistening metal ,whirling
purposefully across the twisted arterial knots of the overpass at the next
exit. The whole world progressing towards some distant goal as if it knew
where it was going with unflinching certainty. It's not too late...the
doors only twenty feet away. I wouldn't even have to punch out. I could
just walk away, after all It's a free country. There are more fundamental
rules in operation here I realize heading back to the office...inertia for
instance.
He's reclining in his leather chair amidst a fractured pile of cd case's
and junk mail .I recognize the smile on his face, the I know you fucked up
look;the I know your not going to get a raise this year look; the why don't
you quit and get a job in telemarketing look.
"What's up?"
He gestures toward Kathy the A.A, and she escapes out the door, flashing a
sympathetic look my way. A pregnant pause. I glance at the cartoon tacked
on the wall behind him, a caricature of Jimi Hendrix at a job interview
with the caption"So are you experienced" below.
"Well you've been bugging me to give you your review...so here it is."
He hands me a peace of paper. On the top of the page is a legend with which
to interpret the score. A forty designates the rarified heights of
unattainable employee perfection. For a moment I mistake the circled number
at the bottom for that very number before I realize my mistake.
"A four ...a lousy four..."
Images flow through my mind in effusive violent torrents. Slasher movie
scenarios, describing with erotic precision the removal of my oppressors
epidermis with surgical instruments designed by mad men, unfamiliar with
the contours of the human body. Glistening steel, heated white hot by
acetylene fires. The boiling gelatinous fluid of the exploding eye ball
pouring in thin rivulets of pure pain down the veined crevices of freshly
inflicted brands on his scarred drooping cheeks. The numbers of my salary
screaming forth from the steaming stench of incinerating flesh. The
anguished screams supported on the comforting arpeggiated gurgle of urine
trailing down his leg. The light from the office neon refracting in the
growing pool at his feet, surrounding the desk as if it were a freshly
created island. The varnished mahogany streaked with the bright oxygen rich
scarlet of his life's blood liberated from the diverted track of a
streaming jugular.
"Frankly...your not cut out to work in retail...Why should we kid
ourselves about this...? Strictly between me and you...I don't like you...I
never liked you...If I had been manager when they hired you, you wouldn't
have lasted a week...As it stands, I'm just waiting for you to fuck up
enough so I can justify getting rid of you..."
"You'll never fire me...then you'll have to pay me unemployment and
Power doesn't like to pay.." And I'll never quit because that will mean I
let you win, I finish ...to myself.
"And I suppose you were born to work in retail?"
"If your born to work in retail, you might as well put a gun in your
mouth."
Ah the momentary resurfacing of the corpse of his idealistic youth..
nothing worse then a lapsed hippy. I start toward the door and he let's out
a chuckle.
"I'm glad my poverty amuses you."
"I didn't say I was done."
Fortunately the god's intervene. The distorted, fear filled voice of the
aforementioned clerk requesting a supervisor. Thankfully .I am the only
example of that particular sub species present in the building.
"There playing my song."
He grunts, dialing the phone, muttering something about finishing his tap
dance on my already bruised ego at a later date.
"And what did you say to him."
Jimmy lights a marlboro, his hand alighting on the moist crotch of his
adolescent girlfriend. His usual cronies are slumped in his couch watching
jeopardy, obscured by a translucent blanket of stale pot smoke, oblivious
to our conversation.
"What do you think I said? What can I say?"
"I'll tell you what I would have said. I would have said listen you
sperm burping ass faced excuse for an aborted fetus, your face looks like
somebody dragged it across 90 miles of asphalt ,poured gasoline on it, lit
a match and put the fire out with an ax."
"Well that's you...I'm not you..."
He climbs to his feet, disappearing up the stairs for a fresh libation. I'm
left to stare at the carpeting. His girlfriend asks me for a cigarette,
which I provide. She's a cute red head, who despite performing an ever
lengthening list of menial tasks for her less than attentive boyfriend, was
smarter than the scene would suggest. She yells at rat boy for blocking her
view of the t.v, a smiling auto lobotomized wretch who was two or three
grades behind us in high school, ready as a kamikazi pilot to immolate
himself in the service of jimmy's latest whim. He falls over scratching at
a submerged black head on his neck, his unwashed curly black hair clinging
to the gray shag carpeting like velcro.
"Give me your keys ..."
Jim fumbles down the last three steps cursing ,spilling the precious drops
of his freshly concocted mystery elixir along the floor behind him as if
leaving a trail to follow back later on in the evening.
"No fucking way man, it cost me four bills last time I let you drive."He
replies speaking more to the floor then anyone else.
"Rat...you know how I am when I don't get my way."
There's a long pregnant pause, punctuated by the rhythmic click of the
jeopardy theme in the back drop. Silently Rat boy's hand climbs into the
air swaying in the stoned breeze of his muttered protests like a broken
flagpole, the keys dangling between the upraised thumb and forefinger.
*********************************
The beige 83' Nova harrumphs, lets loose a few hesitant, sputtering farts
before spilling over the cub into the path of oncoming traffic. I bite my
tongue and close my eye's waiting for the impact that never comes, instead
I feel the soft spurt of beer foam soak through my coat sleeve as he cracks
open a pint can of lukewarm Guinness.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I'm glad you asked...I've come to the conclusion..."
He pauses for a second weaving momentarily into the other lane in
pursuit of a stray house cat that only narrowly evades certain death.
"Where was I...?Oh yeah...I've come to the conclusion that It's
impossible to go insane and that I am the only one to have managed it so
far..."
"Managed what..."
"To go insane."
"But you just said...?"
"I know what I said ...what I mean is an entirely different matter."
"Well what the hell do you mean?"
"I mean that it's Impossible to go insane in the traditional sense since
the world is insane.. therefore it follows that to be sane in an insane
world is to be insane in the eyes of the insane so I mean that in the eye's
of the world I'm insane but I'm really sane."
"According to whom?"
"The only sane person in the equation...myself."
"You know I've come to the same conclusion myself..."
"What do you mean?"
"Well I figure ,if I'm stupid enough to get into a car with a maniac
like you than I must be just as crazy."
His faces seems to throb with unexpressed emotion, but he says nothing to
me, instead sticking his head out the window and screaming
"I CAN'T GET NOOOOO .SATIISSSSFAAACTTTTTION.I CAAAAAAN'T GEEEEET
NOOOOO."
He sticks his head back in the car screaming along with the radio until the
bubbling chemicals in his brain subside for the moment anyway.
"I thought we were going for beer...the liquor stores the other way.?
He straightens his windblown hair in the rearview mirror.
"My friend...it's time for you to liberate yourself from your
oppressors..."
"My oppressors...what the hell are you talking about."
"That super bitch girlfriend of yours and that fucking dead end loser
job."
"Look...your not one to talk, at least I'm not a half crazed asshole who
sells hash to 8th graders for a living."
"I know you look down on me...I can see it in your eye's...look at you
man, they tell you what to do and when to do it...you sold you life away to
line the pockets of some fat cat...you bitch and complain about your boss
but one day soon you'll be that guy."
He pulls into a residential area off the highway, pulling with
uncharacteristic silence toward the curb motioning for me to be quiet. He
leads me over a fence and through a few backyards ,uniformly pristine and
boring as if the entire block was ordered from the sear's catalog and
shipped in one piece complete with lawn jockeys and optional dog house. A
pitbull terrier howls off in the distance awakening it's canine brother's
whimpers, like a chorus of angry car alarms, or some cacophonous aleatoric
opera..I feel absurdly drawn to follow him as if he were my guide through
the landscape of another planet or through the veils of a drug induced
nightmare. We stop at a the back window of a house which is of course the
exact duplicate of the one's that preceded it save that it is the color of
dried bile. In the drive sits a beat up old escort that mysteriously
resembles Kim's car. He drags me by my shirt collar to the window, Two
people are fucking in the darkness of the unlit room. At first I feel
ashamed and embarrassed, but it quickly melts away into a numb rage. From
beneath a pale stream of moonlight, a crumbled dress, and the contorted
features of her face ,distorted but recognizable even at this distance. I
cut back toward the street and climb into the car, not speaking, my teeth
clenched so tightly that I can feel the dull pink throb of my heart beat in
my temples. Jimmy climbs into the car, starting to speak in that apologetic
tone that he could never make sound sincere. I tell him to shut up.
"Why the fuck would you show me this...do you get some perverse thrill
out of it?"
He just shrugs.
"If I had told you, you would have called me an asshole...Now if I tell
you that I fucked her, I'm just one in a long series of guys..."
"WHAT!"
"Now don't look at me like that man..."
I get back out of the car looking for some large piece of metal that I can
bludgeon him to death with. Instead I keep walking out toward the
interstate.
He begins to shadow me with the car.
"Where the fuck are you going...?"
"Shopping for c.d's." I reply
***************************
"I've come for my pay."
He looks me over appraisingly.
"Your drunk..."
"Get that bottle of Jim Beam out the bottom drawer and pour us some
drinks, I have a proposition for you."
He doesn't know where this is going but he dutifully complies.
"Alright...let's hear it."
"You and me out in the parking lot...if you win you get my final pay,
and I walk out of here forever."
"And what do you get if you win...?"
"The satisfaction of kicking the living shit out of you."
He shakes his head.
"What's it going to take?"
I lay out all the money in my wallet...not much but enough.
"O.K. you're on..."
He nails me with a cheap shot to the gut and I hit the concrete. I don't
feel anything. Blood flows from my broken nose staining my white tee shirt.
He doesn't look much better, but he has the gloating look in his face...I
grab his balls and bunch him in the jaw. He wobbles a bit but he's still
standing. The employees are gathered around us in a circle. Money changes
hands, but they're too afraid to lose their jobs to cheer me on.
"Hey shit bag...I just want you to know...I've been pissing in your
coffee pot every day for the last five years..."
Simultaneously, in one last burst of energy, we come at each other, a
second later collapsing against the side of the building ,bloodied and
broken.
Jim, eyes agleam with mischief, collects the cash from my fellow
indentured servants as I climb to my feet.. I extend my hand to the boss but
he just grunts.
"Keep the money, it looks like you'll need it for reconstructive
surgery.
"Your still nothing but a loser."
"That may be...but I'm the loser who kicked your ass."
I turned around and started walking down the highway. Jim ran up behind
me gesticulating wildly but I don't think I said anything to him.
Eventually he gave up and I was alone, my gaze fixed on the fractured
pavement, on the dingy windblown billboards that blotted out the sun in the
day. I was alone without a woman or a job or any hopes to weigh me down. I
felt alive in the silence of mad universe.
***********************************************************************
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...
***********************************************************************
Michael Jarrette-Kenny is a social worker and graduate student at
Rutgers University. He has had fiction featured in Duct Tape Press,
Savoy Magazine, Aphelion, The Inditer and PBW and is at this very
moment working on his third (unpublished) novel. He has no plans of
ever working in retail again.
****
Amy Jarrell is a 20-year-old photographer and self-proclaimed digital
distortion artist AND scanning princess from Philadelphia who enjoys
defacing plastic dolls with sharpies and using them as her models in
her art work (the dolls, not the sharpies.) She scans everything from
body parts to bathrobes, and is deathly afraid of radiation. As the
founder of Unhappy Medium Productions & Unhappy Medium Design, she
spends her days wondering if anyone is listening. Her illustrations
will appear accompanying an article in the next issue of the online
zine SIGNUM (www.slm.net/signum). For praise and profanity please
e-mail her at mangogal@aol.com. Her new website (still under
construction) can be viewed at http://mangledoll.tripod.com/.
****
Janet Buck lives in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a Ph.D. in English
and teaches composition and literature at the university level. Her
latest collection of poetry entitled Bookmarks in a Hurricane was just
released by Mighty Words, a division of fatbrain.com. Many of the poems
are new and unavailable elsewhere on the internet. Bookmarks in a
Hurricane is in PDF format, 53 pages long, and sells for $4.95. The
thematic range includes love, family, grief, alcoholism, disability,
social consciousness, and catharsis. It can be ordered online from
http://www1.mightywords.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=EB00013670
In December 1999 she had her first print collection published by
Newton's Baby Press - an 80 page book entitled Calamity's Quilt.
In 1998 and 1999, she has received numerous creative writing awards and
been a featured poet for Seeker Magazine, Poetry Today Online, Vortex,
Conspire, Poetry Cafe, Dead Letters, the storyteller, Poetry Heaven,
Athens City Times, Poetik License, 3:00 AM e-zine, Poetry Superhighway,
Carved in Sand, and Avalon. Her poetry, poetics, and humor have appeared
in Perihelion, The Astrophysicistâs Tango Partner Speaks, Sapphire
Magazine, Gravity, A Writerâs Choice, Mind Fire, Southern Ocean Review,
Free Cuisinart, The Writerâs Quill, Pyrowords, Spokenwar, Illyaâs Honey,
Savoy, The Boa, Ygdrasil, Beaded Strand, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 2River
View, Kimera, Niederngasse, San Francisco Salvo, Apples & Oranges, Ceteris
Paribus, In Motion, Pogonip, Peshekee Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Suisun
Valley Review, The Red Booth Review, The Poetry Kit, Miserere, Tintern
Abbey, The Rose & Thorn, The Armâs Extent, Apollo, The Part-time
Post-modernist, GreenCross, Moonshade, Waterloo Review, Pif, Word Salad,
Recursive Angel, The Melic Review, A Country Rag, The Ethical Spectacle,
The Inditer, and hundreds of journals world-wide. Funky Dog Publishing
recently released an online chapbook of Janetâs poetry entitled Strawberry
Nipples, which focuses primarily on the role of writing in coping with a
disability. Barbara Benepe, editor and publisher of The Horsethiefâs
Journal and The Green Tricycle, comments on the poetâs work in a recent
review:
"Buck's strength is her perseverance and focused analysis of
human suffering--from the inside looking out. Everyone faces
a demon or two in the course of a life--but not everyone has
the skill to write about it in such an evocative way. Buck
draws the reader into her very soul and we experience her
suffering as if it were our own. Janet Buck's outstanding
talent succeeds where others stumble. She runs headlong into
her personal cauldron, screaming LIFE! and we're there, with
her--every step of the way."
****
Daniel Pop is a Library and Information Science Expert , a Chemical
Engineer , Research Scientist and Artist interested in all fields of
human endeavour. He can be contacted at the following address:
Str. Iuliu Maniu , Bloc I , Et 6,
Ap 84 , Deva -2700 , Romania.
A telephone message can be left for the Author at: 004-092-843444
****
Vasilis Afxentiou is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher. He
has been teaching English full-time for the last fourteen years. Prior
to that he worked as a Technical Specifications Writer for seven years
and as an Engineer for five years.
Vasilis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, went to university in the
United States where he received his degrees.
Vasilis' writing credits include published fiction and non-fiction
appearing both in Greece and in the USA. Stateside publications he has
written for are Greek Accent, National Herald (Proini), and
Crosscurrents. In Greece he's been published in 30-Days, Key Travel
News, Greece's Weekly, Athena Magazine and had a weekend travel column
in The Athens Star newspaper.
Some e-zines that have puplished Vasilis' stories are TAF#10, The Domain,
Ibn Quirtaiba, Cosmic Visions, ThinkB, Aphelion, Dark Planet, Basket
Case, BORNmagazine, Aspiring Writer, ThinkB, Appalachians, Newwords,
Zine in Time.
****
Paul Laurendeau is an associate professor in linguistics at the
department of French Studies, York University. Influenced by the thought
of Spinoza, Diderot, and Marx, he is currently working on a book titled
MATERIALISM AND RATIONALITY (PHILOSOPHY FOR THE SOCIAL ACTIVIST).
Describing himself as a materialist rationalist atheist, Laurendeau
formulates the religious debate in philosophical terms in the tradition
of the progressive struggle against the mystical and irrationalist
tendencies of philosophical idealism. His previous contributions to TAF
include:
Part one of the Sidekick's series;
On a Philosophical Implication of the Astronomical Big Bang Theory;
The Doom Of Religion;
I Stink, Therefore I Am;
An Email Debate;
and
An Inquiry into a Sample of Vernacular Philosophy: The Aphorisms of Yogi Berra
He recently cut all his hair off. His "brand-new-in-construction-wild-
wife-web-mastered web page" can be viewed at:
http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/paull/
***********************************************************************
As always, Thanks Gary 03/09/96 RIP
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright1997-2000 Neil MacKay
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/
the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com
