I have no time. No time to properly update. Off to class. Off to be Oedipus. Then I’m driving to Eureka so that I can go to court tomorrow morning (stupid ticket!!!). If any of you other courthouse groupies want to shake your fists and curse the Goodfield police, I’ll be in Nick’s room sometime after midnight. I HATE having to get up in the morning…

Here’s another interlude chapter from my epic poem, Souls Unsure.  If memory serves…I wrote this chapter, by hand, last St. Patrick’s Day, in Chicago, after partying, at the hotel, while Steve, Torrie, and Jess slept and the sun was rising.  As you may have noticed (if you’ve kept up with some of them so far) – this first batch of interludes are little prose bits that I use to indirectly tell the tale of my ashen angel character (who has not yet had very much direct info…nor even been named).  There are aspects of this celestial creatures history and background that I would be hard pressed to do justice to, in telling directly.  Better to leave things to the readers imagination to go in spirals instead of lines.  So, instead, I tell more or less mundane stories that might get across some aspect of my sad little elohim’s story…in more down to earth ways that the reader can relate to.  Of course…those two realities tend to bleed into one another when I write…

 

 

Interlude:  Ghost of the Fly

 

“I pulled off your wings

Then I laughed

I watched a change

In you

It’s like you never

Had wings”

-Deftones, “Change (In the House of Flies)”

 

            Little Toby smiled, feeling a wickedness of such purity, it is only ever found in serial killers.

            And children.

            The fly, fat and slow, he had lured with some of his mother’s sugar cubes into his room.  He fed and played with the insect, letting it land on his hands, huge by comparison.  Toby was a giant.

            But all games grow tedious and Toby tired of being a giant.  He tied a string to the fly, forcing it to soar in the arcs that he decided.  And when this was not enough, Toby tore the wings off.  He felt the power of taking away the creature’s most valuable asset, of robbing its identity.  Its name had no meaning now.  Toby was a god.

            Then a match.  Then tweezers.  Toby does not know the word, but the word is SPARAGMOS.  And then the godling grew tired of his sport.  He opened the closet door to darkness, faint light touching the mangled remains of bygone action figures…heroes and demigods stripped of their dignity and molded-plastic flesh.

            Into the dark, the young deity tossed the creature with no name, no function, into a web, and awaited the predator and the primordial violence.  Then, he shut the door on his subject, out of light.

 

            That night, he awoke to the beat of broken wings.  The night light dimmed.  Shadows deepened.  Toby shivered in the angry darkness.  Staring, the boy whispered, “Are you…are you the ghost of the fly?”

 

            In the days to follow, Toby’s mother noticed, with some satisfaction, the subsiding of her little boy’s more destructive tendencies.  She was, however, more than a little concerned with his frequent night terrors and the little, white hairs sprouting on his head.

 

“All cruels else subscribe; but I shall see

The winged vengeance overtake such children.”

-William Shakespeare, King Lear, III.vii 65, 66

Very…tired…thoughts…hard…quick…before sweet torporous oblivion takes me…

 

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND

Ok…it looks like I’ll be spending the weekend in the Bloomington/Eureka.  Tentatively, I and Nick and Torrie (and perhaps others) will be hanging with the two coolest cats to breed a brood since Dee and her amazing keyboard typing infant…that is to say…Amy and Jeramie.  I imagine we’ll hit some haunted houses and watch some horror flicks and do whatever other macabre enterprises come to mind.  Anyone else interested?

 

I think Saturday I’ll see The Fantastics…and who knows what after that.

 

There’s still time in there for ghost stories, more movies, more haunted houses, and maybe wandering around (with a motley crew of friends) in full costumes.  Any takers?

 

I’ll have to better learn my Oedipus lines as well.

 

OEDIPUS RUN THROUGH TONIGHT

So tonight we had our first real run through.  I had to have my lines down…or at least well enough that I could wing it and not call for lines.  I thought my head was going to explode.  I pretty much rewrote a two page section (I’m sure Sophecles doesn’t mind) while on stage…and was a little pissed at myself of getting that (and some other areas) wrong.  But the director still seems impressed with what I’m doing, and having as much as I did memorized and he and the rest of the cast/crew gave me a little round of applause in the middle of giving his notes (which was nice of them…and might have stopped me from having an aneurism).  Afterwards, a couple of the guys in the cast invited me to go drink with them and their friends at a karaoke bar.  I sang “Zip Gun Bob” and some an Eagles song that I did not sign up for (the bastards filled out the card for me…without my knowing it).  I didn’t know the song…but they said I sounded like it…

 

BLACK DAYS

Another update in the epic of my friend, Mike Urnikis’s independent movie (which I helped as a PA, Nick and my Sister acted in, and I made a cameo as a drug dealer).  For those who have been keeping track (and those who haven’t) he had a couple of showings of it, in Chicago, over the last year and he’s been sending it around, trying to get it picked up by a studio.  The cast and crew will be getting the DVD of the movie very soon.  The website (http://blackdaysmovie.com/) is updated with all kinds of new features, including a journal of the production.  In which I found a little pic (below) of me and the lead actress (Maggie).  Among my many little duties and odd jobs on the flick, I sort of wordlessly inherited the duty of giving Maggie neck rubs, of which, neither of us complained.  Oh…and there’s another pic…apparently I’m getting release forms ready for extras.  Oh…and just for fun, there’s a pic of the main character (played by Steve Cinabro) after he’s had the crap kicked out of him (you should see the other guy).

 

 

 

So I went and got an outside, alternative student loan from another company, since the school didn’t seem to want to help me. I was approved by the company who sent the paperwork over to the school. Now the school won’t certify it, says that I can’t get ANY loans and no one I talk to seems to have any answers other than “policy.”

So tomorrow I have to go in and personally yell at them, and hopefully get sent to someone who does no.

But barring that, and depending on how they respond to screaming, I may have to pack up and head out as soon as this play is over.

I’ve decided to post another pit of my thesis…in progress.  I have posted the “Prologue” as well as one of the interlude chapters, “Ash Wednesday.”  Below is “Confessions.”  To give you a little bit of an idea of how it works, the prologue comes first (duh!) with the little girl and the ashen phantom with the broken wings.  Then comes “Book One:  Invoking the Muse” – the first main, poetic chapter (unposted) which deals with a voodoo priestess (Mama Nancy) summoning a strange, sort of dark muse named Crow…she tries and gets this spirit to tell her the story of this “ashen phantom” as she has some unspecified purpose for it.  Things don’t go quite as planned.  Then a series of “interludes” take place – little prose chapters between the poetry of Book One and Book Two.  “Ash Wednesday” (formerly posted) is one of those interludes, and “Confessions” is the last one before Book Two.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

Interlude:  Confessions

 

“I am ashes where I was once fire.”

-Lord Byron, To the Countess of Blessington

 

 

            Sometimes, my congregation confesses too much and, kneeling reverently, they purge their sins in battery-acid heaves.  All I can offer is forgiveness.  And handfuls of sawdust.  “Last call,” I shout to the lost souls.

            A beer, Father.

            Whiskey please, Father!

            Father, I am not worthy to receive, but put my booze on a tab and I’ll be grateful.

            They still call me “Father.”  I objected to it, at first.  It didn’t seem proper, not after the…not after.  Eventually, I stopped objecting; even found some comfort in the title, an old worn thing to wrap myself in on nights when comfort and pain aren’t all that distant.

            I pour the drinks, the libations – sacred things after the hollowing exhaustion of a day of labor or the humiliation of the welfare line.  I make small talk.  I make change.  I go through the motions, perform the ritual.

            The rituals are not that different.

            A lost soul wanders in, out of the dark, makes an offering, shows me his coin.  I say the pre-programmed greetings.  Then, they confess.  They confess their sins.  They confess their thoughts, their wants, their frustrations, their lost youth, their given-up dreams.  They confess more fully than they ever did when I sat in the booth, when I could still feel the strip of white around my neck.  My God, the things they confess…

            Then, I absolve them with a nod, prescribe sips of penance, and hand them liquid fire and they toss it back and burn it all away.  They forget.  There’s a river, in Greek mythology, called Lethe, which flows through Hades.  Anyone who drinks from the dead water forgets.  The myth has it mostly right.  You can drink and you can forget.  But it all comes back with the morning.  The sun won’t let us forget.  And so my congregation returns, night after night, and they buy their forgetfulness and their salvation in installments.

            And so, my place becomes sacred to them.  Their sacrament is whisky and beer.  Their incense smells of carcinogens.  Please open your hymnals and we shall sing a verse of “101 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” – repeat until oblivion.

            “Last call,” I shout to the souls lost in this lost-soul neighborhood.  You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here is implied – the unwritten clause.

            I make my way to the bathroom, under the muted glow of a neon cross.  While cleaning, I am greeted by the stall-wall litany of obscenities – phone numbers, limericks, and angry vandalism – it accumulates like sin.  There’s a new one.  Jagged scratches on the stall’s inner door read:

THROUGH ME YOU ENTER INTO THE CITY OF WOES,

THROUGH ME YOU ENTER INTO ETERNAL PAIN,

THROUGH ME YOU ENTER THE POPULATION OF LOSS…

…NO THINGS WERE

BEFORE ME NOT ETERNAL; ETERNAL I REMAIN.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

 

            I don’t know whether to be sad that some poor wretch felt the need to write this while on the john, or happy that I hosted such a literate drunk.  Writing on the stalls – writing on the stalls.

            Outside the bathroom, I can see the whole bar, the whole picture – lost souls and broken shadows meandering through the dim – blanketed in perpetual, nicotine mists – playing games of pool and perdition in dark corners.  And I realize this is my Purgatory, me and the confessing shades, now and forever.  This is my Hades, and the Lethe River flows dark from the tap.  This is my underworld and I have no way out.  You don’t have to stay here, but you can’t go home.  You know?

            It’s the kind of finality that makes me want to go mad.  But sanity always remains, like a sadistic demon who enjoys tickling scabs.

            A morbid part of me wanted to name the bar “Hades.”  But I didn’t.  I did, however, name the dog “Cerberus.”  An old Great Dane, he lays in one of the booths.  More mascot than guard dog, he normally hobbles about, on three creaky legs, accepting pretzels, petting, and the occasional beer from the regulars.

            They are all regulars.

            Cerberus was the first one to find me when I opened the bar.  The others soon followed, ever flowing, like a stream teaming with souls, as if this place were a beacon.

            I gather the cigarette ash, the stuff accumulates like sin.  Smells of burnt regrets.  On the way to the back door, hauling trash and ash, I pat Cerberus on the head.  He doesn’t lift his head, but I hear the thump-thump of his tail against the booth.

            Outside, in the alley, it’s dark and late and there are predators in this city, but few of them would bother a priest, even a former priest, and fewer still would bother a six foot-seven priest with a knuckle-busting right hook.

            At the old parish, after mass, I used to teach the inner-city kids boxing at the gym.  Some parents complained about teaching children such a violent sport, but I always found that if a person knows they can throw a mean punch, they walk a little taller, have less desire to prove it.

            The kids used to call me Father Joe and Giant Joe, and sometimes, I would carry the youngest of them on my shoulders across treacherous streets.  I don’t know what they call me now.  I’m not allowed in the vicinity of anyone under eighteen.

            I remember the accusation.  I remember the Bishop telling me he believed me, but they were paying the settlement and there was the insurance company to consider.  I recall the police detective who came to me when it was all over, apologies in his eyes, telling me it was the toughest sort of crime – hard to punish the guilty, easy to punish the innocent.  That was nice of him.  He didn’t have to do that.

            Something in the dumpster squeals when I dump the trash, and the memories assault me full-on – parish Halloween parties and child laughter, weddings and funerals and community, memories of happy and bright (the past is always brighter), and memories of place and purpose and function.  Phantom child laughter echoes off alley walls, then is swallowed by inner-city sounds.

            I slam the dumpster lid, hard, but angry muscles with no target soon melt to rubbery despair and I fold over the dumpster, resting my hands and face on the putrid metal, before the echo-clap dies.  Above, the sky threatens rain.  My eyes threaten…

            …someone’s here.

            He looks like he has a sad story.  He looks like a sad story.  Standing in the mouth of the alley, something in his posture feels unnatural.  A dingy coat and hat droop over his gaunt frame.  Judging by the rancid smell and the dropping maggots, both were a recent grab from the dumpster.  Soot stains his hands gray-black, as if he’s tried climbing through a chimney.  And maybe his face is covered too because I can’t make it out – his face seems to swallow light.  It doesn’t help that the blasted street lamp, behind him, flickers and sputters.

            I approach and this lost soul in the wormy coat fishes in the trash, pulling out a beer bottle, one quarter filled with flat, fetid fluid.  In the manner of a marionette controlled by a palsied child, the wormy coat caricature throws his head back and tips the contents of the bottle (one part alcohol, two parts garbage juice) down the hatch.  I don’t hear the sounds of swallowing, just the noise of water hitting desert sand.

            Then, with a sad puppet motion, he examines the bottle, drops it, disappointed.  It did not do what he wanted it to do.

            “Hey pal.”

            He looks up.  Then down.  Something in the alien body language suggests he’s embarrassed by the maggots writhing on the ground, like each one is a red mark on his record.  Wordlessly, I offer a cigarette.  He nods.  Or rather, he does a very bad impersonation of a nod, takes the gift and deposits it in his mouth, or where I assume the mouth is on that black patch of face.  A click, a flare, and I’m lighting the cigarette and damn it all but the flame fails to illumine his face – though it must be reflecting in his eyes as they appear to faintly glow like embers – like dying stars.

            I click the lighter shut and the eyes darken and there’s just the ember glow of the cigarette, floating in the darkness between hat and coat.  In that silent flight of seconds between us, I realize that the stranger is familiar to me.  Very familiar.  He is not one of my congregation.  He is all of them.

This platonic lost soul takes a long drag.  I don’t hear the sounds of inhaling, just the noise of wind down a lonely alley.  He takes it to the filter, a black hole swallowing light, and if he exhales, I don’t catch it.  Raising the glowing ember to his face, he stares with longing regret.  The eyes flare again, in heartbreaking contrast to the ashen exterior.  Are there recollections in that glow?  Brighter times?  A vain search for hope in the cooling embers of memory?

            I don’t know.

            The eyes darken.

“So what’s your story, friend?” I ask in bartenderly fashion.  The hat and head cock to the side, a little too far.  His answer, a finger-flick, sends the butt flying through the air in a burning, orange arc.  It falls.  It falls from the stranger’s loving hand.  It plummets out of the bounds of his gaze, tumbling away from the high place where it had form and function and meaning.  With the hiss of dying light, it lands on the dank, dirty pavement, now indistinguishable from all the gray, discarded things and the blackness below, and I find myself feeling far sorrier than I should for a discarded cigarette in an alley.

            How long do I stare?

            When I look up, the stranger is gone.  The cigarette butt, the tattered hat, the wormy coat, and a beer bottle with a sooty handprint remain.  Next to these, smeared into the blacktop, reposes a puddle of wet ash.  Something in the shape of the ash smear reminds me of something I saw in my youth.  At the museum, amidst the stationary march of towering skeletons and the bones of primordial sea monsters, was a tiny fossil of one of those feathered dinosaurs, the precursor to birds.  It always made me sad – something in the awkward angles of the limbs, the delicate imprint of the feathers, the smashed impression of this mythic creature of the sky, forever trapped in compressed earth.  Sad symmetry.  I don’t remember the name of the creature, but it meant “ancient wing.”  I remember that.

            I go back into the bar.  “Last call,” I shout.  Soon, I’ll lock up and try and make my way home, like all the other lost souls, wandering in the dark.

 

 

“Fallen, broken

Simply dissolved into an incomplete thought

An empty shell cracked and disfigured

With no remorse, I have been blinded by the darkness

With no distain, I have received my punishment

And with no haste, I await them”

-Ra, “Fear”

“…though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”

–Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

For those who might not know, I snagged the role of Oedipus in the UIS production of OEDIPUS REX here in Springfield.

 

Come one come all!

 

Details as follows:

 

OEDIPUS REX

 

Show Dates:  Nov. 4-6 & 11-13 (8pm for all performances, except Sundays at 2pm)

 

Tickets:  $10 general, $6 for UIS faculty/staff, $4 for UIS students (a student can get two tickets at that price, with their card).  To order – call 217-206-6160 or buy them on line at http://www.sangamonauditorium.org/or purchase them the night of (at the box office).

 

Spread the word.

 

 

OK…haven’t really given much of an update in a while…been busy…here it goes:

 

Weekend

Went back up north.  I needed the getaway.  Road trips, even a short one, with someone else in the car, are good.  Went to a haunted house that was a little disappointing…but still fun.  I finished all the episodes of Firefly (really enjoyed the show…postmortem, but hopefully, with the movie, we shall see it spurt back to life).  Also ingested  some Simpson’s Halloween specials (a must).

 

I came under the distinct, paranoid notion that my Grandmother’s worry, over my spiritual well-being (according to her Catholic notions), has spread to other members of my extended family and that now, underneath the normal smiles and laughs and jokes and good times, they are in turn worried about my running “astray” (what with the roleplaying games I’ve played, lack of recent church attendance, black clothing, and the “dark” things I tend to write about).  This saddens me a bit, that they might miss the forest for the trees, the good intentions for the skull necklaces – that they think they might need to save me…from being me.  It’s not a big deal now…but I have a feeling it’ll come to more of a head, somewhere not so far down the line (I dread when some of them ask to look at my epic, when its done, and miss the important things…not seeing past the evil “occult” [whatever that word really means] stuff).

 

I love them all and hope these things won’t get in the way…but their side of thinking carries the acrid scent of ultimatums and absolutes.  On reflection, I realize that none of this is going to stop me from doing what I do…so there’s little need to meditate on it further.  Full speed ahead.

 

Epic Poem Under Construction

I LOVE doing readings in class.  It always boosts my ego/confidence, to get through the nights of banging my head on my key-board and wondering why I’m not doing anything more important…like chair building.  The class has gotten to know me.  They like my stuff.  They’ve built up a sort of anticipation that hums on my readings days – says what is he going to unleash on us now? – and tickles me.  I read.  They pay attention.  I get to talking different voices.  They listen.  I get to elicit few laughs and a few shudders and I feel like a rockstar.  They’ve been my testing ground for this thesis.  I’ve read the prose stuff to them…but, more importantly, I’ve read the poetic.  I’ve been experimenting with the concepts and forms and conceits of the poetic part and had gotten to the point where I wasn’t sure if anyone else would understand or react to this strange, mutant thing…but they seem to be getting it and liking it and giving me feedback that helps me figure out what still needs to be done to it.  So I’ve gathered some of their more encouraging comments below.  This isn’t just an ego stroke (or maybe it is and I’m just trying to hide it under layers and layers of false humility) so much as a reminder for me later.  My moods, by nature, are not very bi-polar…but they are when it comes to writing.  The next time I feel like I’m not getting anywhere…I can look back up here.  So here goes:

 

-Great use of repetitions and consistent archetypes and alliteration.  You’re a very good writer.  Sort of like Neil Gaiman meets Samuel Colleridge.  [This guy did not know me or my auther preferences…so this comment got me excited…though I’ll have to start reading Colleridge and see if there’s a resemblance.]

-I love your unique style.

-Once again, very excellent prose.  It’s filled with language that is both philosophical and tense and a shockingly consistent tone.

-You are able to capture dark rather well.

-You captured Curly and Jack.  They are clearly described and defined.  There words make them come to life.

-This story slowly unfolds but it’s right on time.  Great job.  Why do you write so dark and spiritual?

-I enjoy the way you write a story and it also reads like poetry.  The ability you have to compare as well as intertwine words also brings your writing to life.

-Pure dark poetry!

-As always, your descriptions and attention to detail is outstanding, very realistic so readers are able to lose themselves in the story.

-I like the wordplay (alliteration + repetition), even though the interludes are prose, they do not lose the musical sound of “Book One.”

-I flippin’ LOVE this line!

-I love reading your stories…but especially hearing you read them out loud.

-The imagery and alliteration are awesome – it begs to be read again and again.

-Josh—This is incredibly original! You really do have a command of the language and the structure. It definitely has that ol’ Neil Gaiman feel to it.

 

I’ve also been told that I have a nice assonance 😉

 

And certainly the constructive bits of criticism and analysis are as important and have been digested, recorded, or utilized already.

 

Motherf*%#er!

Play practice is going well.  The director really likes what I’m doing.  I’ve always wanted to play Oedipus Rex.  I’m glad my friend Joanna (who thinks I have a nice assonance) convinced me to go try out.  I forgot how much I miss performing.  Since grad school started, I’ve mostly concentrated on writing.  Acting was just on the verge, I could feel it, of becoming one of those things that I might say, “Yeah…I used to do that…in college.”  Good save.  And good assist Joanna.

 

Tonight, I walked the girl in charge of costumes across campus, after rehearsal (because it was late and dark and there might have been nefarious folk out there…so all the better to walk with a nefarious looking guy).  She said she was really impressed with what she saw (she doesn’t see the practices on a day to day basis…so the progress gets to her in bursts).  She told me she thought I should be in movies as I had a very “intense and unique face” and that, if she had to pinpoint what it was, she’d have to say it was my nose.  So there you go Torrie…someone else shares your love of my nose.

 

I told her she should see my assonance.