After venturing long through scars over the land left by imperial ambition, I have returned. I walked into work this morning for the first time in almost two years; the sunlight reflected the dust, gleaming like floating silver pollutants of joy, before settling on the finely stacked and displayed rows of fine haberdashery. Top hats to trilbies, fedora's to fez's, each one waiting as a wife at the depot, waiting for the right man to carry it to never ending hours of blissful intimacy. An astute observer of the human condition, Chuck Jones brilliantly conveyed the way the correct headwear not only enhances but transforms the man.

Oh, the things I did! I volunteered to nurse meerkats, learned how to convince children to hide grenades, and went on a very special 'Pretzel bender' in Germany. My, my wit is almost as delicious as my confectionery indulgences!

Most of all, I got to travel with Gumptha before she returned to India. Although she will always remain a most special woman to me, we both knew it was time to part when she refused to recognize the inherently vain nature of elephants. I love their majesty, but why do they insist on painting themselves?

I am indeed pleased to be back. My good friend Spurlock still performs his Cirque Du Jazz, though his debut television performance on the Craig Kilborn show was an unmitigated disaster as his blowing smoke through his trumpet set off the smoke alarms in the studio and angered the painting elephant. That's the thing with elephant painting-they fail to see the beauty in the abstractions of natural happenstance.

I'm already excited to explore my home town again. Apparently Rove Jambers opened a new house of sparrows! Oh, how I love to suckle from the peapod of life. And though I must clean the dust from the rows of fine gentlemen's hats, I am still enjoying the rays created by their somnambulant floating through the glare of light. I am a table top and the rays of sunlight are my legs.

The infinite in layers, a goodbye, someone new

So much of note has happened since last I addressed me to you. Just six days ago while glide-stepping as a way of simulating walking on water, I met an old friend; Reubrech, the boy from the boulangerie! "My dear boy," said I, "how good it is to see you. My confection as of late has been left unsprinkled with the sweet poetry of youthful yearning."



"Arvel, always pining like a tree for the love that evades thee, dangling in front of you like a carrot in a hare's race that never ends. Likeiwise have I remembered fondly our acquaintance. How have you been?"



"You already know the answer. You've just spoken it."



"My good friend, the meek shall indeed inherit the earth."



"But the earth is full of misery, pollution, and neighbor's dithering each other's promises. This gift I shall refuse for all of my existence."



"So shall I."



"Where are you heading?"



"Perhaps an oasis, perhaps under a porch. I am heading in one direction, and wherever I end, that's where I'll be."



"Wonderful."

_______________

I'm afraid to say it for fear of the slightest sound disturbing the fragily reconstructed pieces and shattering the glass again, but I have met a woman. It is a strange but wonderful situation as the very one who has hooked me like a bad performer at Carnegie is the sister of my next door neighbor Parphit.

Parphit was celebrating his newfound success in acting as he was just cast in a supporting role as a radical Islamic terrorist in a major Holywood film called "Those Who Kill Us." I arrived home one afternoon wishing only to sink into my couch as a ship sinks for having no hope to survive the damage when I was accosted by obnoxious Indian techno music. There Parphit danced with an awkward suggestiveness that suggested a hernia and loss of bodily function. I couldn't help but pause in disgust. I then noticed his parter. Dolores-that trollop, betrayer of man's last shred of decency. For a moment I felt rage and jealousy. Then I noticed her licking and running through her teeth Parphit's new gold dollar-sign necklace. At that moment I couldn't even feel rage, just regretful lament that I ever fell for this woman. That's when I saw her standing by the window, looking wistfully out the window. She emitted a heavy, defeated sigh. She was the most beautiful (and I mean that in the literal sense) woman I had ever seen. Her graceful clothing and elegant demeanor (yes, I could sense her elegance even as she stood motionless!) suggested she could walk on the very clouds and the angels would kiss her feet. Parphit noticed me and enthusiastically invited me to join the party. I barely noticed him. Dolores even protested slightly but she was too drunk to care for too long and I was too awestruck to care at all. I glided towards her as if hypnotized. She turned to me and our eyes locked like asteroids unable to break away from their gravitational pull, setting them on a certain collision course...of love.

I knew instantly that we felt the sadness of all creatures neglected and exploited. I knew we both felt the resurrection of the hunted from the table of the taxidermist preparing to stuff them for the decoration of the homes of the wicked. We were no longer on that table...

"I am Arvel."

"The feeling is mutual." She said in a thick Indian accent. Her expression never changed. I knew not whether she was Wordsworth or Groucho. Either way, I was enthralled. "I am Gumptha."

Gumptha.

I, The Mirror of Life

Disturbing dreams continue to plague me in bubonic proportions. How I long sometimes to don the robes of Torquemada and expel the heresy running rampant in the clothes of the humble sevants of my consciousness. One of particular note occurred a fortnight and three ago wherein I found myself wandering a maze of pits and crevices in a scathing, brittle landscape, overcome with the smell of a boulangerie in the midst of a kitchen fire. Then from the sky there rode the four horseman--the sky turned red and then black as I realized a sticky, sweet substance was smothering all the land. I then understood that I was trapped inside of a piece of toast being jellied for the consumption by a behemoth of Aesopian proportions.



To help relieve my anguish Spurlock gave me a free pass to his debut with his new musical performance group, Cirque Du Jazz. They performed in a small theater whose entrance accosted not the eyes of the passersby but stood humbly in the alley, existing much like Chinese wisdom; hidden from all but those who sincerely seek it. I sat in my seat enjoying some confectionery purchased from the concession stand near the entrance. I could not help be be entranced by the clerks spidery fingers and eyes sunken so far into his skull that I became jealous of his ability to only see directly in front of him. He delivered my change with morbidly graceful articulation of his fingertips until he dropped one coin on the counter. He stared at it for about five seconds and began heaving heavily. I said, "That's fine, sir. The world has taken more from you than it had any right to. I shall not do the same. Take it, and with it take my gratitude and the knowlege that we are kin." He looked up and nodded, wiping a tear from his cheek, and silently slipped the coin into his apron. There was something truly mystical about him. I turned for one more glance before entering the theater, and found he was gone...only to reemerge from below the counter, stock the napkins, and blow his nose into the trashcan nearby. He and God are the only ones who know if he aimed true. For his sake, I hope he did.



I entered the theater which was lit by a dull, blue light. Fifteen others sat scattered about the theater. A smashing turnout for a debut. I was proud to know such a man as Spurlock. The curtains rose to reveal the combo; Drums, bass, trumpet, and auxiliary percussion. Spurlock dazzled the me and the crowd with trick of circular breathing while smoking a cigarette (from his ivory cigarette holder, of course), thereby blowing smoke out of his trumpet while he played a string of melifluous and expressive lines; one could here the evolution of existential peace in every note played. Accompanying several pieces was an exquisite interpretive dancer named Kit who was portrayed the rise and fall of the universe, of every man, woman, creature, and idea existing in the center of the circle of time. For one moment she was the pole, the tether creating the radius the antenna equidistant from God and Nothing. She was the essence of things...The last two songs featured a singer whose voice reminded me of Central Park at dusk. She delivered a paralyzing, chilling reading of "Fishin' Blues" that conjured images of Conrad, of Marlow's quest for Kurtz, of the doppleganger, of Annabel Lee. Then Spurlock took the microphone and said, "I wish to dedicate this last song to my friend Arvel. We may never know the meaning of things, but beautiful is the creature who never ceases to seek it." The dancer returned and they began "The Contortionist." I was besided myself with gleeful embarassment. Throughout the song the dancer created new ways of bending herself in half--I never thought a human capable of bringing her straight legs to 90 degree angles across the opposite sides of her body. It was the most beautiful musical performance I have ever seen. The eleven remaining audience members gave the greatest gift a performer can receive in a standing ovation. All I could do was smile...

The Hidden, The Desperate, The Essence

It's only been two days since my last post yet so many thoughts swirl in my head like a plague of dandelion seeds thick enough to chill the earth. I witnessed a truly profound episode of dementia today; I was patronizing an antique store when a man who seemed perfectly calm tried exiting the shop through the right door of the two door entrance. It not being a busy time that door was latched. Instead of exiting through the left-hand door he started pushing harder, screaming maniacal inquiries as to why it wouldn't open. He began thrashing at the door. The lone shop clerk, a septuagenarian named Thomas bearing the cross of two false hips, was paralyzed with shock. He was shell-shocked from WWII and loud noises and sudden violent outbursts devastated him. Finally, the man fell to the ground weeping. No one understood him. They thought he was mad, but I felt I understood him. I approached him and set my hand gently upon his shoulder. He looked up, startled, eyes bloodshot looking like a young child whose favorite bicycle had been taken by the neighborhood bully.

"Why won't it open for me?" he wept with such aching yearning.

"Because, my friend, that door was not meant to open."

He gathered his wits some and replied, "but a door must open, otherwise it's just an extension of a wall."

"Why must it be this door? The other one works."

"That door is the entrance. I fear if I go through it I'd be entering this place again. Every time I try to leave I'd be reentering and I'd be trapped forever. I've always felt like this. I dream it almost every night, and I have for as long as I can remember."

"You trouble soul, my heart splits like a canyon after a great quake. Cannot a door go both ways? After all, would you actually be entering the outside. Every door is simultaneously an entrance and an exit. But I understand. Every time I go home, every time I go to work, every time I see...her...I feel as though I'm trapped in the same place no matter where I go or what I do. This door is safe. Venture, my friend, and you will find salvation."

He rose with trepidation and, combating hesitation and the memories of his dreams, he pushed through the door. Realizing he was outside, he leaped in unfettered joy and ran about gaily as a child in love for the first time. Unfortunately, before anyone could stop him, his celebration led him into the street where he was promptly run down by a bus. I still don't know whether to feel sorrow or envy, as he died at the pinnacle of his life, his great epiphany, his joy, his salvation, the feeling preserved forever. The timing seemed to indicate all lessons were learned and it was time to move beyond this world. In the meantime all of us living are in chains and our cells are decorated cruelly with millions of keys, all looking nearly identical, leaving us to find the proper one before we starve or go mad.

In such despondency I went home and started reading. I got on the internet and somehow my research led me to some strange unknown histories of WWI. I came across an anomaly wherein within a two week period, 274 German soldiers just returned from combat committed suicide. The case is particularly strange as they all displayed similar behavior. Their loved ones described how they stood looking at the ceiling, frozen as statues but with eyes darting about as though they were focused on hyperactive flies. They would speak gibberish and then come out of this trance as though it never happened. I read these soldiers would sometimes stand in these trances for upwards of two hours. Yet none of this is widely reported. I know this is a cliche many an author has used but it really makes me think we're merely pieces on a game board. Every map I see further reminds me of this. They all look like children's game or puzzles. It's not like we're even pawns in a chess game, a game of strategy. It's as if someone is rolling the dice and moving us where the dice mandates. Every road is ultimately a path to either the beginning or a fruitless end. We are but objects of chance and foolishness. That is the essence of things.

The nature of departure, returning without purpose

As all of you will no doubt note, this is my first post in over two months. I am not dead, nor have I ever been, but I will someday, and that is the most obvious statement emitted since Kennedy was pronounced dead. I have traveled far, called away to tutor Slovaks in English. They had had little training before me, and I think someone had a little Python-esque fun with a particular student named Vlad. For example, "Hello, my name is Vlad and in my country the weemen have hemorrhoids the size of golf balls." I have seen Slovakian women, and it isn't so. It took much work but I had made significant improvements and by the end of my duty it was more like, "Hallo, my name is Vlad and in my country the weemen DON'T have hemorrhoids at all unless they breed for the army." I was less than amused but at least it made more sense. I never caught the rabble-rouser.

I guess my readers are wondering why I would interject such vulgarity into my discourse. It's because no one seems to care anyway. A man could threaten suicide, massacre, and it would be neglected until someone actually died. Then they would find he was a loner, a hermit, a pariah, and the term loner is besmirched for years as it becomes synonymous with psychosis. Why are the loners the crazies? Couldn't one say that in their rejection of civilization they realize how against nature modern civilization is?

I don't advocate massacre, but we can't dismiss the destructive as crazy.

Parphit and Dolores continue their infernal affair and I have been looking for new living quarters as of late--Spurlock and I are considering bunking together like a couple of bachelors again. It almost seems fun, up all hours playing Dictionary like rapscallions tossing responsibility to the wind, listening to jazz music and ruffling the feathers of the square folk on either sides. Parphit has indeed landed a role in a now-airing Oscar Meyer commercial. Is there no end to hypocrisy? He left the beautiful culture of his country and it's not like he was an 'untouchable' (especially to that trollop--why does she plague me so?) I guess his hypocrisy makes sense if his mostly vegetarian country has nuclear weapons. All things are negotiable...

Life died (Spurlock's parrot, if I'm not insulting you). Someone poisoned his organic sprouted grain crackers. He started to fly and then dropped straight out of the air. Spurlock has been the perfect Taoist about it. "Better to not have any pets, I guess." But the sadness in his trumpet playing is all we need to know of his immense grief. This is the 42nd pet he's had since 1994, never owning more than one at a time.

He and I wrote a song about our life's troubles, called "The Contortionist." I will publish the lyrics hear and eagerly await feedback. Perhaps I will be able to post a recording somewhere, sometime.

I bend my back to look through my legs
I bend my legs back over my head
Hold my ground
Stiff like lead
All to win a scrap of bread
from your table
I'm able
to do things you never could
I'm the circus
at your service
I'm the ascetic
pathetic
emetic contortionist

I'm in half but to you
it isn't enough
Bed of nails
on top of pails
you wail and howl
I slip in a moment
of shattered grace
and you proceed
to throw the tomatoes
at my face yet
I'm able to do things
you never will
I'm the circus
at your service
ascetic
pathetic
emetic contortionist

Now I am tired.

Mother

In my last entry I mentioned my mother and I think I can address this subject now. I never in her entire life was she able to be captured on film with any articulation. It was almost divinely anomalous; her face would blur, shadows would suppress, and I remember a distinct series wherein the camera never captured her directly even though she had been facing the lens and vice versa, and when the pictures developed there was always this amazing white light as if the photographer were shooting directly into the afternoon sun and it always blinded the camera to all or part of her face. Her only visual document that ever existed was an oil portrait that melted in the attic, reminding one of one of De Kooning’s hideous women.

She was always fond of the Blue Jay to the point she maintained an aviary specifically for her collection of them. Consequently she always complained of blues music demeaning the color of sea and heaven. She spent a lot of time in her aviary. Father, when he was around, always thought it too much. One day he went in, drunk, with a Winchester, and shot every bird dead. She was in there at the time and some of the little bodies exploded all over her face. She could only sit in catatonic shock. Realizing what he’d done, father filed for divorce and promptly left. I haven’t seen him since. But in the weeks before he left I remember our house always being completely silent. They never played records and they never spoke. I was four years old at the time, and I remember my mother putting me to bed in complete silence, sometimes cradling my head and sometimes merely stroking my forehead. I was silent, too.

Before he left my father cleaned out the aviary, all the leaves and branches, and all the body remnants spread about like rotten tomatoes. He took it all in several bags to the front lawn to be collected by the garbage men. Before they were taken, I snuck into those bags and collected as many of the feathers as I could, many stained with blood and stuck together, and kept them in a treasure chest. When I was a twelve I took the feathers and made a collage of them, still soiled from that day in the aviary, and I have that, framed, still today.

I was 22 when she died. I had moved out on my own four years prior, and I was coming over to bring a cake one summer afternoon—carrot cake was her favorite—, and I saw her sitting in her chair with that same catatonic expression as the day father killed her birds. She wasn’t breathing, and I just sat there and stared into her eyes. I didn’t move for two hours.

The dreams and the dance

I have been having dreams most distressing lately. Four nights ago I dreamed I was a candy wrapper. Yes, not truly living and of no substance or purpose but to contain a saccharine piece of processed, flavored sugar--I believe it was strawberry. And it kept melting inside of me--I felt myself start to cave in, and it started seeping out of my top and bottom as I became untwisted. I tried with every muscle I thought I had (but didn't as all I was was a piece of cheap foil to be discarded amongst insufferable human filth.). I felt hotter and hotter still, like I was in a preheating oven, and I couldn't contain anything. When I woke up I had embraced my pillow with such force it had split at one end and the artificial dove's feathers with which I had them stuffed coated me and I thought I may have been trapped in an aviary. What cruel tricks one's mind plays on one's self when one is most vulnerable. Several philosophers argue that mind and body are connected but I think I disagree--I don't think the mind could be so masochistic. No, the mind must be separate from the body and the brain.

Two nights ago I dreamed I was sitting Indian style in a black room that seemed to have no defined ends of any kind--floor, ceiling, walls, even though I was sure I felt secured on a surface--and I was staring at myself! I was staring straight into the eyes of a figure sitting just as I was, who looked just like me. I knew it was me, and we just stared at each other as if our eyes were powerful magnets holding each other's in place. I thought, "something must happen soon. What are you DOING?!?! Move, damn you, move!" I couldn't divert my gaze and neither could he (I), until he tipped over. He tipped over like a wooden doll and made a hollow 'clunk' as his head hit the ground, frozen in his sitting position and still staring straight ahead, though no longer into my eyes. I swear he was alive just a moment before--I could feel his intensity, his challenge, his mocking and malevolence willing me to look away. His eyes were a threat, a threat to reveal to me perhaps images of (God, do forbid it) my/our dead mother, hanging from a leafless apple tree at dusk in the chiseling winter morning. And he enjoyed this thought and how he could use it to break me. But I didn't, and he just toppled. I should have felt victorious, but I felt as though I had a hot gun in my hands and the police were almost to my door (confound those hideous firemen!!!). I felt like Raskolnikov, as much as I tried to rationalize that my doppleganger's demise was both necessary and inevitable. But what did that mean for me? Did I overcome some heretofore unassailable obstacle, or did I kill an essential part of my being?

I mentioned my mother. The trauma of these recent dreams keeps me from being able to write about her at this time though I know I should...she was so tragically lovely.

I was in the park this morning feeding the ducks and trying to mimic their calls in an effort to understand them better when the most anomalous and miraculous display of earthly brilliance I had ever seen happened just two feet in front of me. I was holding out some bread, and one of the ducks approached a little too aggressively for my taste and I rescinded the gift, shaking my head, clicking my tongue and looking him directly in the eye so he knew I was serious. He opened his beak and flexed his throat slightly, then, while keeping his eyes fixated on me as though obsessed, almost like the eyes of my doppleganger, he opened his wings and beat them while turning his body to and fro like a tango of the avians. His rhythm was impeccable, and he called to me twice in precisely punctuated rhythms, paused, for some more turning, and the called again at the same relative moment in the same rhythm. Two more ducks joined in, passing behind him, facing each other, their heads bobbing in the same rhythm and movement as our little tango dancer's, pacing back and forth, crossing paths in the middle, always the same precise spot. And two more landed on far sides of all this, spread out as though on a stage choreographed to perfect symmetry with the lead taking center stage. The two bookends opened their wings and turned their heads towards each other. When someone else approached they scattered quickly as though it never happened. Fine, I said, it can be our secret (though I don't find anything wrong with sharing with you folks). I will hold that image with me until death or extreme dementia severs the limbs of rational thought. Of course, Spurlock will know, too. He knows everything.