Category: Writer’s Den

The singer begins playing a few chords on an acoustic guitar. Except for the flourishes in between, a seven-year-old could play the tune.

No child would want to, though. The notes are heavy, slow, and dark. Adult. Ancient, its ominous attraction led many artists to cover the ballad. 

The lyrics are a tango around the rim of a volcano.

An acoustic bass joins in. Listening closely may reveal the cello–enemy of whimsy–droning deep, long notes. Inside this aural chiaroscuro the percussionist keeps time; pride is a burden here and his performance goes down as one of the more reserved in rock history.

None of these background sounds offer the listener shelter from the words the singer is about to sing.

***

If an award existed for the cruelest person this week, Buxster O’Meeny might take home the golden trophy, though the competition would be fierce. He began his career before his first day of school, with the playful de-winging of a fly. In class and on the playground he fell in love with pulling pigtails, name-calling, and making faces, as well as more advanced methods of childish brutality: tripping, spitball target practice, wet willies, setting fire to someone’s clothes, setting fire to someone’s hair, (and well, OK, we’ve come this far) setting fire to someone, stuffing nerds into lockers, dunking wimps in the toilet, and plagiarism.

***

The song is a mash-up of two earlier songs, “In the Pines” and “The Longest Train.” As a result, the meaning of the lyrics stretches until holes appear. Why was the girl gone all night? Who is the singer? What does the girl have to do with the decapitation? Where is the body?

The young singer explains nothing. His silence hints at a more sinister idea…

***

As Buxster grew so did his ability to hurt. He practiced often. By revealing the weakness of others, he taught himself strength.

The day he punched Linus Kosine in the gut with all his might, he ran home and celebrated by smoking three of his mother’s cigarettes, blowing the smoke into the cat’s face and, maybe, singeing its fur twice.

When he made Mrs. Morrison cry, he took five cigarettes and a gulp from the Triple XXX in the liquor cabinet.

Buxster needed others to feel his strength, and to feel the might in his limbs, because his parents allowed him none at all.

***

Someone once counted 160 permutations of the song.

Some describe trains, others decapitations and pines, still others a woman caught doing something illicit: “Where did you get that dress/and those shoes that are so fine?””From a man in the mines/who sleeps in the pines.”

The train runs “on the Georgia line,” which reveals the geographical origin of the song: the lower Appalachians in the American Southeast. Mentions of “Joe Brown’s mines” may refer to Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, who leased criminals to work in coal  mines in the 1870’s.

The two most familiar, vastly different versions, Lead Belly’s from 1944 and Bill Monroe’s from 1941, represent two still lifes of America’s gory, grubby underbelly. The distance between Lead Belly’s Shreveport and Monroe’s western Kentucky, between either and the Upper Left, as well as the chronological time between Joseph Brown’s 1870’s Georgia and the early 1990’s are meaningless.

Darkness takes center stage, this daring singer our guide.

***

He grew up with his mother; if his father visited he either ignored or beat Buxster. He never understood how to get his old man to accept him, or tell him “Love you, son!”

One day he brought his father a can of beer and got a burning cigarette on his forearm. Buxster thought of running away but it was hard to run after his father whipped his calves with a coat hanger.

The teachers went too fast in school. Buxster also read but his comic books told tales of heroes swooping in to save victims at the last minute, and he was losing interest fast. To him those stories meant nothing.

***

The final verse is sung in a higher register, too challenging for his tinny, white-boy voice. Yet his vocal performance crowns him as a voice for all. So weak, so human, so lost. We strain and strive but remain forever condemned to revisit the pines “where the sun never shines” to “shiver the whole night through.”

Coincidentally, authority figures forced the left-handed singer as a child to write right-handed. Four of the many effects of such actions include bad handwriting (see suicide note), being withdrawn, defiant and provocative behavior, and a neurotic personality.

Making him write right-handed packed his bags. His parents divorce helped him choose directions. The drugs paid for his ticket.

***

Buxster came home to an empty house. His father’s absence surprised no one, but his missing mother terrified him. On the kitchen table lay a note written in his mother’s handwriting which he stuffed into his pocket. He wanted to spare himself.

He called child services. His old life vanished forever, and the knowledge kicked his insides with steel-tipped boots. Buxster choked back tears before telling the woman where he lived.

One day on the beach, Buxster snuck up behind a dweeb who stood on his towel. He yanked the towel out and laughed till his insides hurt when the boy fell on his face. Now as someone pulled the ground out from under his feet, the universe laughed. Worse, his guts collapsed with the knowledge that no one wanted or loved him.

He became his own pupil, out of which no light escaped.

***

The audience gapes like witnesses of a car crash on the highway. They marvel at the artist’s power to conjure this hideous underworld around them – one they lack the testicular fortitude to view. No one accuses the singer of timidity. Or inauthenticity.

He bravely sounds the depths of darkness, draws maps anyone can navigate. He names landmarks inside this bleak world children still repeat thirty years later. The vocalist, with this steady, dreary, and somber tune, grabs the listener by the ears and drags him or her through the gutters of his Hades.

A little over four and a half months later, he is gone, a victim of the eternity found in the long black smoking barrels of a shotgun.

***

Buxster O’Meeny was destitute. Sending lifelines out to connect with something out in the void remained the only way for the hurt little boy within to cry for help. He grew a beard, studied business when his foster parents had computers. He held jobs until those families gave up on him.

Buxster listened to no music, watched no TV. Kids on other planets enjoyed sports, games, and pets.

Nights he lay on his cot painting pictures of abundant futures in his head. People would kneel and bow, and he might step on their fingers sauntering by.

The higher the walls, the farther the mind does wander…

***

Another version mentions the train whose “engine passed at six o’clock and the cab passed by at nine.” A train that long is an idea. The idea of progress; it is civilization drilling through Nature’s glorious landscapes, cold, merciless. Only the most foolish travel crosswise to its path.

This train rides until the tracks run out.

This metal serpent cannot roll by itself, and needs men to lay tracks, feed the engine, build cars and wheels. Others must build the factories making the trains. These buildings need electricity and smelting furnaces. People must be educated to understand how to design and make the trains, build the factories, and educate those doing these jobs.

In short, the construction of this Black Death Train is a communal effort. We are all guilty of its construction, all desperate and despairing enough to lend our support, or to feed the darkness from which such ideas emanate.

What happens to people not interested in trains? Do we label them drugged-out loons because they find the concept sick, and kill themselves in light of the futility of resistance?

***

Buxster shuffled through the endless desert under a sickle moon, kicking up clouds of dust.

Sand coated his mouth and his throat, parched wallpaper in Satan’s den. Lack of water and food would soon be his undoing.

The moon neither rose nor set. Time stood still.

***

Pine forests are dark indeed. Southern Germany’s conifer-rich woodlands are known as the Black Forest. Here the evil witch tried to bake Hänsel.

Little light–or water–reaches the forest floor. The barrenness underneath these evergreens is telling. A wayward seed trying to grow under the arms of thick pines is forlorn. For clarity’s sake the word may be defined as:

pitifully sad and abandoned or lonely.

***

Buxster discovered guns in Erebus. A “friend” named Epialos brought him to a shooting range. Until then a dull buzzsaw carved his mind. Sitting still was impossible and a rash spread on his left arm. The itching made him scream and hit things.

Shooting a gun, he perceives the voice of god.

Later that evening drifting in and out of sleep, often with an erection, he finds himself in his usual desert. Towers of night arise along the horizon. They stretch from ground to stars, night sentinels marching forwards. Lone towers swallow trees, a mineral-rich mountain, a herd of buffalo.

One ingests Buxster and he falls. Sure his descent will drive him mad, he prays for something to break his fall, though crashing means certain death.

Buxster slows. Floating interminably, he grasps for things near him, things which might anchor him in the terrible, endless blackness without meaning or shelter. The door to a bank is locked.

A skimpily-clad young woman turns to ash as he grazes her.

At last he seizes a handle, and he reels himself to solid ground with it. His hand grips a pistol butt. His thumb, however, rests inside the trigger guard, and his fingers snake around the weapon’s back strap. The barrel points at his face.

Movement either rips him from his safe space or pulls the trigger. He tries not to breathe or move, but he is weary and cannot hold on forever…

***

At 3:51 of the song, after bleating out “shiver” with closed eyes, the singer’s voice cracks, fails. He gets “the whole” out before his eyes fly open with shock and surprise, as though convinced he is not where he thought. The final two words spill out.

The darkness is inside him, and he may, at any time, lose himself within its endless folds.

When the lights go out primal memory is activated. We peruse the wholesale destruction or enslavement of creatures and people weaker than us which accompanied every advancement in history, and, because we understand this fact, when the gloom washes over us we suspect we might be next on the list.

Why not?

***

The song is “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”–from Nirvana’s “Unplugged” album, recorded at a time when Kurt Cobain unavoidably hurtled toward eternal night.

Combatting this most potent darkness–the one inside–has made casualties of the best of us. Our smallest children sound the alarms in their cribs every night, but adults are conditioned to react only to the seen. Voluntary blindness is a prison, a pandemic, ubiquitous, and half-assed solutions like drugs and alcohol work no better than other ones. Sensitive people plug headphones in to quash the silence, and leave the TV on all night to hold the darkness at bay.

***

Buxster awakes feeling drained, goes outside at dawn. One of the peaks holds a torch over the mountains, chasing away night’s hindmost sentinels. Despite its position so far away in space, and so low in the sky, solar warmth still touches him.

Despite his mortal weaknesses, and being unable to love or be loved, despite his minuscule entry in the Big Book of Good Deeds, the sun still warms him. This golden light welcomes all.

Sunlight pierces the deepest oceans of Buxster’s dark places. Encouraged, he hurls his lowly doubts, fears and crooked ambitions at this Great Fireball. Its response, he thinks, shall judge whether they deserve the weight he attaches to them…

* * *

• 

Dear Dad,

I wish to inform you that I will be resigning from my position as your son, effective immediately, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. My last day of familial service will be the 8th of April, after which all ties to said family, the community, and society at large will be severed.

I have been offered a lack of lifestyle infinitely more appealing to any and all hitherto experienced. Carrying out this radical change will be a challenge unlike any other, and is one to which I have devoted much time and careful consideration. Further, the fact I considered this change at all may be seen as a testament to the forces propelling me in this direction, unbeknownst to you, Mother, or anyone content in their station and place.

It is time that I turned my focus to challenges beyond the horizon. Perhaps there, wherever “there” may be, I might live where acceptance, acknowledgement, and love are the rule, not the exception.

Please accept my eternal gratitude for the support and opportunities I have enjoyed in your organization. I have truly enjoyed being a member of your team and have toiled away many hours with excellent people, namely my brother Mike and Mother. I also appreciate the way you tried to support my personal and professional development the best way you knew how over the past fourteen years. 

At this point the days of the week, ages, months and years, and time itself have little meaning for me, but if they did please know I would gladly choose to spend my remaining moments with you and your family, for I was able to feel safe there – at least for a time.

I wish you great success, personal and financial, for the future. Although material goods also mean little, I truly hope you gain your fill of these, and of anything else you desire during your march through time.

Should you need a voice or an opinion from an unconventional position, do not hesitate to contact me. I, in turn, shall not hesitate to answer, no  matter which device you choose to communicate with. 

Yours sincerely,

J ––, your loving so

The plane was about a third of the way from Lanzarote to Tenerife when Vance “Goose” Gusecki glanced out the window and noticed the propeller not turning. 

“Umm,” he grunted, looking about. 

The stewardess was busy serving coffee and Vance did not want to be impolite.

When she finished, Vance opened his mouth and raised a finger, but the woman returned to the back of the plane for more sugar. He gave a frustrated nod, and leaned into the window to see if there were other “safety” propellers on the wing still turning. There were not.

Once again Vance turned and found the stewardess. He hailed her.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she spoke with a brilliant-toothed smile glued to her mouth. Her name tag read ‘Gail.’ “How can I help you?”

“I don’t mean to be a bother,” Vance said, almost in a whisper, “but the propeller outside has stopped turning.”

“Which propeller?” asked Gail, mutating into concerned mode. 

“On the wing,” Vance answered, pointing.

“Our wing?” 

“Y-es, of course. Which…?”

“Oh, you must the prankster among us!” Gail chuckled heartily. “You had me going there! Good one!”

She shook her head and moved forward, still chuckling.

“But…” Vance protested.

“Did I hear you right, buddy?” asked the passenger behind him, a somewhat older man with a Hawaiian shirt. “Did you say the professor outside stopped turning? I don’t see anyone out there…”

“No, the propeller,” explained Vance. “Right there, see?” He tapped on the window. 

“‘Propeller?’” the man asked. “This plane doesn’t have propellers. They are soo last millennium…”

“Yes we…just look out your window!”

Again he tapped on the window, staring at the propeller which refused to turn, but the airplane part surprised him. It fell off. The plane hitched noticeably, then flew steadily somehow. Vance’s tapping finger hung in the air.

“I only see the wing,” the man behind him said, straining. “As I should. Planes run on rocket fuel or something now, which is how they fly. Get with the program.”

The man’s voice shook him from his mini-state of petrification.

“This plane most certainly does not fly on rocket fuel,” argued Vance. “It’s too expensive for short flights like this one.”

“Are you saying I’m too stupid to know what a wing is?” his fellow passenger growled.

“Leave him, Jerry,” the woman next to him spoke. “He’s had too much to drink.”

“Wha..?” Vance gawked. “I don’t drink.”

“Sure you don’t!” she said, snorting. She sipped on her Rebujito while rolling her eyes.

“Are you bothering my companion?” Jerry called loudly.

Vance opened his mouth to say something, but the engines (engine?) began raising their voices. Again he froze, and his face paled.

The captain’s voice belted out over the intercom, droning something about altitude, air temperature, traveling speed, humidity, estimated time of arrival, drag coefficients, the wonderful items for sale in the onboard, duty-free shopping catalogue, the pilots’ names and favorite fútbol teams, etc., but Vance understood nothing. The engines (engine?) were too loud.

He picked up something about a fiesta, though.

Gail and the other stewardess emerged from the back of the plane in bright pink flamenco dresses with carnations in their hair. They pushed a serving cart with churros, roscón de reyes, fried milk, crepes, and cured sausage, which went well with the sweet stuff. Fireworks went off, and Vance almost wet himself.

What’s wrong with these people? he thought.

Someone trumpeted a paper party horn in his ear, and Vance turned to see the woman behind him winking his way. Which was his cue to remember his own companion, his wife, who had been in the bathroom for a really long time.

Gail shimmied through the aisles with a tequila bottle in one hand and shot glasses in the other. Ties were loosened. Women got frisky. Vance gaped.

Then the plane hit turbulence, slamming down on a pocket of air. The passengers stumbled and fell, and those remaining upright were stricken by the accompanying crashing noise, as if the plane had crash-landed on the ocean. There was a pause in the festivities.

“Whooooooooooo!!” one young man howled. “If that ain’t worth a toast I don’t know what is!”

“Stop!!!” Vance shouted, and once more the partygoers went quiet. “This plane is going down! I just watched the propeller fall off!”

As his eyes scanned the passengers from the front of the plane to the back, one of the bathroom doors opened, and his wife Faith came out, giggling with a younger man. 

“Shut up Chas!” she tittered playfully, wiping something from the corner of her mouth. She noticed the silence. Looking up, she saw Vance staring at her. Her face went blank and she scampered to his side.

“What’s up, hon,” she asked, a little too enthusiastically. Her eyes widened and they searched his warmly.

“Well, hon,” Vance said. “I was just telling our fellow passengers here that the plane is going down. I saw the propeller stop and then fall off.”

“Man, you’re killing the vibe!” someone cursed.

“Cretino!” a Spanish passenger added.

At the back of the plane sat a handful of Guanches, the original people of the Canary Islands. Most were very tall, with handsome features, but all suffered from a form of poverty so abject it was unthinkable how they afforded the flight’s tickets.

As Vance and the partygoers stared each other down, some of these downtrodden people used the distraction to dip into nearby pocketbooks. One slipped into the back to see if anyone was watching the food supplies, for they were starving.

In the midst of the commotion, an older, white-haired gentleman named Bell made his way back from the front of the plane. He wore a Huge-O Boss suit and a truly immense hat. Vance could not stop staring at his mitre; the fact it did not scrape the ceiling at every twitch of the head below was a testament to the man’s dinkiness.

“What seems to be the trouble here?” Bell spoke. His voice was silvery and deep, like moonlight upon the waters on a lake in summertime. The sound made others instantly want to be his friend, or at least be taken notice of by him.

“That guy there keeps saying the plane is crashing!” said a middle-aged man wearing only a silk robe that had a dragon on it. He glared at the party pooper.

“I did,” said Vance, after a pause. He suddenly bubbled with anger. Losing faith does that. “And it’s time someone did something about it.”

“I detest the pastimes you people in low class engage yourselves with,” said the old man, who reminded Vance of Uncle Sam. “All your conspiracy theories are so…tedious. So, I dare ask: what makes you so sure this plane is going down?”

“I saw the propeller stop and then fall off,” said Vance calmly, with arms crossed.

“Maybe it’s supposed to do that,” the gentleman answered. “Are you an expert in planar science? Do you really understand how they work?”

“Yeah,” said the man who had accused him of killing the vibe. He wore an oversized pair of sunglasses and a helmet with holders for cups of beer that fed a straw he could drink from, should the need arise. “Maybe they fall off like the back parts of a rocket ya dimwit!” 

Vance stood between two rows of seats and shook his head before sighing and looking down. When he raised his head again he stared out the window on the opposite side of the plane; specifically, at the propeller. It was not moving. The plane had gone eerily silent.

“Look!” he shouted, pointing with an open hand, “That one’s stopped too.”

Everyone turned in silence to look out towards the wing of the plane, where the propeller was preparing to fall off. With the wing.

Suddenly a large whooshing sound in the front of the plane was heard, and the passengers were forced to grab hold of either seats or each other. Vance saw the captain holding the door of the plane open. He stood there with a vintage leather bomber’s hat and goggles on, and also wore a parachute. The other passengers looked at each other and laughed like they were on a ride at the amusement park. After spotting Vance staring at him, the first officer touched the side of his nose, gave a wink, and leapt to his fate.

Vance watched Gail push the door closed again, and the large-sunglassed passenger used the ensuing pause to shout “PAAAAAAARRRRRTAAAAAYYYY!”

Everyone cheered except Vance and the older gentleman from the front, who stared back at him and mouthed the words “You’re on my list.” 

“Why don’t you just try to relax?” Faith said soothingly, patting his head twice.

“Relax?” Vance gagged. “This plane is going down and my wife fooled around with a stranger in the bathroom!”

“You’re such a gloomy Gus!” Faith complained. “Maybe I didn’t fu…ool around with Chas. Maybe he just…um…massaged my neck! Yeah! You know how my tri-axle back plate acts up. And I’ll bet you’re imagining this whole plane thing too! Maybe the exploding propellers were just a prank!”

“They didn’t explode, they…”

“These planes are built by professional dwarves in a secret mountain way underground so they can never crash.”

At that moment, the plane nose-dove and Vance, who had been listening with his eyes focussed on his shoes, now leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling. The old swallowing-the-stomach feeling he remembered from roller coasters washed over him.

“Do you hear that noise?”  he asked Faith, looking into her eyes. They both listened as the engines began to scream. “Those are the last sounds we’ll hear before we meet our maker. Our plane is in free fall.”

“Well I guess I don’t need to try perking you up anymore,” Faith uttered, getting up and storming to the front of the plane.

After a dreadful pause in which Vance drowned in the noise of the screaming engines, the older man from the front of the plane appeared, hatless, and headed directly towards Vance. His hair was unkempt and his fly unzipped, but his clapper hid.

Reaching his quarry, he let loose with a solid, tennis-trained backhander across the side of Vance’s head. 

“This plane will never crash,” he said firmly. “It has always flown. It will always remain aloft. Any arguments to the contrary are heretical and must be stamped out as swiftly as they are spoken.”

His voice rose to a crescendo, drowning out the riotous din of the engines. Partygoers turned their heads. Even the Guanches stopped eating hopefully unimportant parts of the plane to observe the situation.

“This man is an infidel! A deceiver!” Bell shouted, pointing. “He leads the sheep astray! He endangers our sacred and momentous mission of spreading our lifestyle everywhere! I excommunicate him from our company! There is only one fate this man may expect, and that is at the stake!”

A cheer went up amongst the passengers, and, for want of a stake, the mob fell upon Vance and held him to his seat while he protested. They collected belts and strips of cloth, tying his limbs tightly where he sat. He donned a confused, piqued expression while the other passengers lay onboard shopping magazines and their paperback books at his feet.

When they had finished, the old man gave a nod, and one in their number struck a match.

Vance raised his gaze to the heavens.

“Do you have any final thoughts?” 

“You may kill a weak goose,” Vance spoke in dramatic, “but far more powerful birds like eagles, falcons, and Rodan will come after me!”

The smoke from the fire got the passengers coughing, and their eyes did water. The scream of the engines was deafening. Faith dabbed her tears with a kerchief. 

The holiday of Thanksgiving reminds us to appreciate the immeasurable beauty and bounty Nature bestows upon us which, over the last 5,000 years, became a sort of reward for the creatures most magnificent–a given. It has its roots in the oldest of farming traditions, celebrated sometime between October and February, when there was little to do as farmers except to admire one’s harvest.

Back in the day the farmer used surplus grains and other products to brew and distill alcohol, get shit-faced and give thanks to whichever deity he deemed responsible for the harvest. The echoes of these festivals can still be heard in present-day Carnival celebrations around the world.

However, these festivities all celebrated (and celebrate) one culture, one specific lifestyle, one civilization whose wealth was attained at the expense of all others. Our Thanksgiving is also a celebration of this arrogant and destructive behavior, conscious or not, as the abundance we have has become proof of our deservedness, and others’ unworthiness.

Native Americans always celebrated their harvests and the abundance of Mother Nature, universally during the year and specifically in the fall. When the Europeans arrived in Massachusetts, however, several things changed.

From the start of the 17th century, European explorers visited the East coast and brought the Natives a most unwelcome gift: disease. In fact, the diseases that spread throughout the region devastated many tribes, leading many scholars to suggest that without these diseases, there would have been no room for the Pilgrims to land at all.

When they did finally arrive–six weeks before winter–they came utterly unprepared to deal with the harsh New England climate, and with nearly empty food stores. Many resorted to robbing Native American storehouses and graves in which, among other things, corn was buried, and many more did not make it through the first winter.

In addition, the once mighty Wampanoag nation, who had driven many Europeans like John Smith away in previous years, was now greatly weakened by the disease, while their hated rivals–the Narragansetts to the South–were less affected. In other words, without the disease the Wampanoags would probably not have made a peace treaty with the new settlers, and Thanksgiving as we know it would never have been celebrated.

Finally, the Pilgrims only made the event an annual occurrence in the 1660‘s. Before that relationships with the Natives grew increasingly strained, beginning in the late 1630’s. In 1637 Pequot natives believed an English trader to be guilty of kidnapping their children and murdered him. As they gathered for their Green Corn Dance ceremony to bless the growing harvest, settlers surrounded them and burnt them alive. Those who managed to escape the flames were cut down with swords. All told, about 700 Pequot men, women, and children died that day, and Governor Bradford decided to hold the first, so-named “Thanksgiving” to celebrate the event.

The Europeans’ true face lay exposed. Our Thanksgiving celebrates the annihilation of the Pequod nation, and, indirectly, the genocide we engineered upon Native Americans in our country.

In 1621, however, things looked different. Natives and settlers needed each other, and did their best to respect the other side. The gathering they organized marked the first time in history where civilized whites and uncivilized natives came together to celebrate one thing: gratitude.

The event should inspire us. If vastly different peoples living such dissimilar lifestyles can celebrate together for three days as these long-forgotten souls did, then it may be possible to live harmoniously together despite our differences. We should not leave this piece with images of civilized failure and destruction, but with one of unity. Let us all break bread together, and give thanks.

There was once, 5,122 years ago, a peaceful paradise in a part of the world dotted by volcanoes, and which from time to time shuddered when Mother Earth rolled over in her bed. The gifts she bestowed upon the people who lived there were too precious and abundant to reject and run from, however. These people took their chances living there instead of somewhere without the constant threat of a natural catastrophe.

Fruits and vegetables grew large and long there, there were precious stones and rocks with which they could both adorn themselves and make tools. Fish and game were everywhere, and the hillsides were covered with the herbs they so valued for their medicines.

The people lived tied happily to the ground beneath their feet and were thankful for the manna Nature granted them. They prayed to their thunder god and made offerings to him gladly.

When they weren’t busy farming the land.

It was sometimes so hard to say no to all that Nature offered them…

They lived high in the mountains where the air was pure and clean, and next to a crystal lake under the shadow of high mountain peaks. The valley was surrounded by these peaks and teemed with every kind of flora and fauna one could imagine.

Then one day one of the volcanoes awoke with a pain in its gut. It groaned and shook and sputtered smoke into the sky. Red fire seeped out of its crater, and the people grew fearful. What have we done to incur the volcano’s wrath? they asked themselves.

Their neighbors could have told them what they had done, but they were not talking to their neighbors anymore.
To their horror, they watched as fire serpents from the volcano stopped up the runoffs the mountain streams had followed to two immense rivers to the South. The lake began to rise in the bowl they called home, and soon their settlements were engulfed.

Explosions began to tear at the fabric of the sky. Fire rained down on them, and many perished. The animals they had kept were also destroyed.
As the eruption reached a cataclysmic peak, they saw the image that would haunt them all forever:

A figure rose from the crater.

The people were terrified. It was plainly visible even from great distances, and it was clear that the figure must be truly gargantuan.

Still it rose. Out of the crater and into the sky.

At night the stony cracks in its side revealed the same red fire coursing through its body as in the unholy crater. It lit the creature in crimsons and yellows and oranges, and steam rose from its snout, pointed ever heavenwards. It was made of stone, living stone, stone alive with fire.

Nothing could stop the forces of the exploding volcano, and this creature was its lord and master.

Over a short period of time, the Tower rose to a stupendous height. Its image dominated the horizon, and none could take their eyes from it.

What does it portend? they asked themselves. Are we doomed?

One by one people were smitten by the rage of this fierce volcano god. The survivors ran for their lives but distance meant nothing. Time meant nothing. Their prayers meant nothing. Their supposed innocence and superiority meant nothing. They asked what good their thunder god was, if even he had turned tail and was hiding.

The Tower had already reached the thunder god’s foyer. He was challenging the highest one directly! He threatened the thunder god’s wife! All of the gods seemed to be in hiding; none dared to challenge this menace from below.

Then the battle turned. The Beast was injured on a lower extremity, and threatened to crumble. Inspired, the thunder god rallied and hurled one lightning bolt after another at the dreaded creature. Finally, the Tower collapsed under its own weight, hurling a last hellacious death cry across the heavens. The thunder god buried it quickly under the mountainside and the people were again safe.

But were they?

Some doubted everything they had ever learned. Where had our god gone when we needed him most? they asked. Why had he let so many of our brothers and sisters perish? Why had he allowed our livelihoods to be destroyed? Did he really deserve to be top dog?
Maybe it was time to cast their lots with a different higher power? One from below and not from above…

They went back to tilling the fields, but much of the land was either scarred forever or under water. Plants barely grew because clouds from the eruption blacked out the sun for years afterwards.
They built new homes with thick walls to make them feel safe. Inside these walls, though, something was happening to these people. They began to feel as though they were privy to secret knowledge, and were therefore special. They spent hours upon hours, day and night, sleeplessly tossing and turning in their beds, racked by pangs of conscience and delusions of grandeur, endlessly asking themselves what they had done to deserve their fate and if they did not deserve better.

They could not put the Event behind them and wallowed in grief within the thick walls of their homes, out of the light of the sun. At some point the grief turned to rage, and these people lost. They lost their pasts, they lost most of their relatives, they lost their connection to a higher power, and, well:

It’s a simple, well-known and understood procedure in horticulture.

Because the eruption forever destroyed the lifestyle they had enjoyed for so long and forced them to move South down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, they lost touch with their roots.

Because of the lack of light both up in the sky and within the walls of their comfy homes, and because they no longer had to divert energy to their roots, thoughts exploded in their minds like the branches of an unhealthy tree; they had too many and they went beyond the borders of their own consciousness. They became tangled and knotted and they wasted so much energy trying to untie them they were always tired.

Some turned out to be productive: when they pondered how they could increase yields, for example, they invented irrigation and drainage. When they pondered how they could convince their neighbors to donate lands to grow these increased yields upon, they were visited by Prometheus, who taught them first to smelt metals, and then all about the miracles of tin-bronze. The weapons they made from this metal transformed them into invincible hordes. When they needed proof of their own supposed excellence, they invented precession and mathematics, as well as astronomy. They built towering pyramids that touched the sky like their Great Hero.

Some of these thoughts were less productive. Many of their women began to have some serious, paralyzing, terrible and fearful thoughts. Without solid ground beneath their feet where there roots could take hold and grow, and now with ample space within their own minds to stretch the branches of their imaginations, these women invented mental illness. Of course, their husbands were not immune either.

They would go on to believe that they were the most important beings on Earth, and never wasted a moment before trying to prove it.

They asked themselves:

How cool would it be if someone or something could really defeat the One Most High? The Tower had been so close…

And finally, because of the lack of light and their own lack of desire to let themselves be seen (and healed!) by the sun, their leaves paled. They lost the color of their skin.

Nigerians call them Oyinbo-the people with the peeled-off skin. Natives in California called them “half-human, half something else.”

They raised a dream from the Earth below their feet, one that shone as brightly (in their minds) as the sun. And one that, strangely, caused cancer almost as though it were a real, radioactive sun.

They built the first civilization this world has ever known, and we call these people “Caucasians.”

This piece does not have anything, directly, to do with the Olympics. As many of you are hopefully aware, the “Olympic” in “Olympic” refers to a religious place: Mt. Olympus in up top Greece, the seat of the gods.

The words you will find below were also inspired by a report I just watched on UTub about the Patriots 8th day of training camp. For those of you not interested in football, or sports in general, give this a chance–it’s not about either of those things. For those interested in the sport, keep reading, I’m reporting on some serious issues here that need to be heard.

The Pats 8th day of training camp gives us a good place to start, because it was reported that on this day, with the 1st, I’ll say it again, 1st game of the season still over a month away, 17 players missed practice because of one injury or another.

Fans familiar with the sport will dismiss this point. They argue that it is normal for this time of year, when the pads come on and people start hitting each other. They also mention the pesky COVID problem, which is an issue, yes. I have watched football and played ice hockey long enough, however, to say that this is total bull puckey–the injuries I’m talking about were there before COVID and are still there now. The fact that 17 players are unable to suit up for the 3rd or 4th day of padded practice should be taken at face value: it is an indication of a larger issue.

Anyone interested enough in football, especially fantasy football, has looked at an injury report at one time or another. Every goddamn week there is a mile long list of injuries to players of every team. Many of these are concussions, which is still a nagging issue in the NFL, but one I will refrain from discussing here, you’ll soon see why.

What does one see in these reports?

Plantar fasciitus. ACL. MCL. Strained/pulled/torn hamstring/quadriceps/calf. Sprained ankle. Knee issues. Turf toe. Hip issues. Stress fractures in the foot. And, of course, the ever-present Achilles injury.

Any fitness professional worthy of his talent will look at this plethora of lower extremity injuries and remember that before Nike invented running shoes with a padded sole, most of these injuries to these extremities were nearly unheard of. In my personal opinion, this revolves around the fact that we want to put as much distance as possible between us and the Earth, and nature will exact its revenge for this crime. However, as I say this is my opinion. Let’s stick to the facts…

Pride.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. It drove Lucifer out of Heaven. It also drove Lucifer to attack heaven.

For those of us who were not on a sports team in school, who among us can forget the feeling of sheer terror in the hallways, especially as freshmen or -women, when a sports team member came toward us in the hallway? They were never alone. They traveled in packs, like dogs, and even barked and yelped like canines at pep rallies. And yes, they bit.

All that testosterone had to go somewhere. I don’t think many of us can debate that athletes, from High School upwards, are a prideful lot. Are they all vain? Of course not. But a large mass of athletes, as soon as they put that jersey on, begin acting as if their association with this or that team elevates them in the school hierarchy, and many become bullies, in true warrior fashion, to prove their superiority.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. It drove Lucifer out of Heaven. It also drove Lucifer to attack heaven.

At this point I’d like to return to Achilles, for whom the dreaded and all-too-prevalent injury is named after. Achilles was the greatest of all Olympic warriors, and he brings us back to “Olympic.” He was killed when someone shot him with an arrow in the…heel. Strange that more people have not wondered about this. The hero was invulnerable everywhere else in his body because Mama dipped him in the river Styx, but she had to hold him somewhere–his heel–and this point became his only weakness.

Even if that were true, why should an arrow wound to the heel cause death?

The Greeks did not develop their stories in a vacuum. Most researchers now agree that their mythical realm was copied from those of earlier, Middle Eastern cultures. If one looks at the myths of these peoples, all of them, no matter how different these people were from each other, made reference to heroes with less than optimal leg health. The Greeks included others with this malady: Hephaestus, the first Smith (not his real name), also had a lame leg. His Roman counterpart as well.

Why?

All of these ancient religious systems owe their existence to the Hurrians, who were the first to mention lame heroes, as well as cosmic wars. They also told the tale of one mighty “hero” bold enough to attack Heaven; yes, the first known occurrence of this literary theme. I cannot say exactly how this lame-leg story originated, since a book discussing it is forthcoming, I can only say two things: 1), there is a perfectly logical, scientific explanation behind the phenomenon. And 2), this problem would not exist without toxic masculinity.

Because we love football, and the masculine, win-at-all-costs-mentality, AND we also consciously choose our footwear solutions instead of Nature’s, we will be permanently plagued with the same injuries every week.

And NOT just on a professional football team’s injury report.

What do you do with a problem child? You know the type: those who never seem to get it. They are the first to screw up and the last to apologize. They are incorrigible, self-absorbed, stubborn, rebellious, do not take to punishment well, and they are certainly not made to succeed in school or other structured formats.

Podrick himself is an Iberian hound, a breed infamous for not handling punitive measures well. He did not have a happy childhood. He grew up on the streets. He was mistreated wherever he went and only knew violence. Podrick fought for the scraps he found and somehow survived. If he was human his nickname would surely be “Shifty…”

Two wonderful people took him in and gave him a home and a structured life; he no longer had to fight for his meals. The owners had patience with him, something that must be noted for all of the reasons listed above and more.

It is easy to take someone out of the streets, a famous expression goes, but difficult to take the streets out of that person–or animal. When someone shows him attention or is about to give him a treat and another dog comes–he now lives with 5 others–he will get jealous and snap at the interloper. When I take the dogs for a walk he’s the first to cause problems: if you put a leash on him he will not walk. It’s either Podrick without a leash or no one walks.

Then, during the walk, if you pass anyone he’s the first to rush up and bark. If that person also has a dog-good luck. Podrick is always the first one ready to scrap. He’s like an Irish street urchin, a little Connor McGregor. At home he lives with two mastiffs, one of them has 100 pounds or more on him–does he care about his chances in a fight against Chewie? He does not. 

He is the first to dart into the forest to chase something and get lost. He once chased a cat up into a tree–he followed it up! When the cat jumped down, about 10 feet, he did too.

He will never heel. He will never heed your commands. He will never know respect or care for another creature. He trusts no one and, at least when he came to live here, was very aggressive because of the permanent fear that camped inside. 

So what does one do with such a creature? Send him to an expensive doggie boarding school, where dog psychologists and trainers can look after him 24/7? I’m sure many guys out there have also considered another possibility.

Someone who is, obviously, of little use to anyone or himself is best suited to take a long journey to the other side, if you get my meaning. Put him to sleep and let god sort ‘em out!

Before we go ahead and do that, let’s all remember one thing: Podrick is the way he is because of his environment. He grew up living this way, and no other, and has all these problems because of it. He sure as Hell did not create or help design this place to his liking. Further, how many of us “get it?” How many of us cruise through this life because it all makes such perfect sense?

How many of us are mistake-free? How many are ready to apologize for their mistakes (America certainly isn’t, see “Slavery” and the pesky Native American problem)? How many of us are always ready to change and better ourselves? How many of us are ready, for example, to do something with the information that sugar, red meat, and gluten are not good for you and WILL cause health issues at some point down the road?

How many are open to new ideas and do not quibble about using them to get through the day? How many of us understand that punishment can be for our own good, and that learning is so good for us that we should engage in this activity as often as possible? 

Finally: and be honest, how many of us are shining examples of physical, mental, and emotional health? I once knew a woman that always showered with the lights off because she couldn’t stand the way her naked body looked. I met another recently who cannot be alone in silence. She always listens to headphones and sleeps with the TV on. She is suicidal.

Agile readers will have already guessed what I am trying to say here: if you get rid of Podrick, because he is a danger to society and no good for himself or anyone else, you’ll have to keep those ovens stoked. Podrick won’t be the only one visiting the Happy Hunting Grounds today.

*Side note: this mentality of doing away with whatever doesn’t fit is motivated by greed. There is unlimited abundance out there to be had, the abundance a dog will fight over in the streets, but only if we all play the game. It is no more easy to refuse this abundance than it is to refuse anything that gives us great pleasure, WHICH MEANS…one day they’ll be coming for you…

Instead of ending this piece on a frown-face emoji depressing note, however, I will inform you that, in fact, there is something Podrick responds to very well (besides food).

Love.

With 5 other dogs to compete with, the small but wilful Podrick has to be firm to make sure he gets enough attention and doesn’t feel shortchanged with his morning massage.

Should one of these things happen, he is immediately thrust into the earlier version of himself. He bares his teeth and snaps, he is aggressive. He does his best but fails to mask his fear. Most of all, he doubts that his own personal Hell is ancient history and he is now in Paradise.

We should all be able to understand Podrick. We are all mistrustful, full of doubts, are afraid and confused, especially when we start something new. As soon as we leave our familiar little comfort zone–no matter how uncomfortable this zone may really be–make new decisions and make the leap: that’s when things get nerve-racking.

The best medicine for these situations is love. Sometimes little creatures need help standing on their own two (or four) legs, and love props us up. Showing people who are having trouble adjusting a little extra attention is a way to show that love and support; a way to build bridges. At times this action may seem difficult: why should Podrick be rewarded when the others are cheated because of him?

Our walks are the best example. Three of the dogs are well-behaved and always return whether they have a leash on or not. Podrick and the two mastiffs, however, is a crapshoot. After letting them run off the leash one day they took off and didn’t return until 6 hours later. Podrick is the first to lead the others astray.

But since he won’t move with a leash on, the two mastiffs are always forced to wear a leash.  They suffer for his faults.

But giving him the love he needs also comes back; he is grateful and shows in the way he accompanies us wherever we go. Yes, the little rebel inside shows its face every now and then, but he is much more at peace now, and we’re all grateful about that.

He lets himself fall into life with all of its wonderful possibilities.

I’m sure we can all learn something from Podrick.

#priorities #loverules #gettogether #helpdonthinder

This movie from 2010 may be familiar for many younger viewers; however, I shan’t be discussing this cash-grab because, as one reviewer said: “The film is a sham, with good actors going for the paycheck and using beards and heavy makeup to hide their shame.” It had good actors (Ralph! How could you do this to us!), most certainly special effects and, I’m guessing, someone with boobs. I will also not speak of the “original” from 1981, which I DESPERATELY wanted to see when it came out but it never happened and now the effects are…dated, to say the least. Not even Lawrence “of Arabia” Olivier can fix that.

Instead, I will remind readers that before this was filmed, the story was, like, a book. It had everything! Bloody battle scenes. Superpowered deities. A human side, pain and love experienced in wholesome, bite-sized morsels. Cool and horrifying creatures. And boobs. You know those Greeks..

The original story is known as the Titanomachy-or the War of the Titans. In it the evil Titans rise from the underworld and, despite Zeus being the most powerful member of the Greek pantheon, sure give the Olympians a run for their money.

Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or in later accounts, the island of Ischia.

One of the reasons the Titans were so fierce is because they have Typhon, or Typhoeus, fighting on their side. Typhon is known as the “father of all monsters,” and, if you are into that sort of thing, he could beat Godzilla like a dog. He is described as a “monstrous, serpentine giant,” a fire-breathing dragon, and “terrible, outrageous and lawless” (by Hesiod).

Further:

“Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed.”

Perhaps the most important description of this creature comes from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in which it is said the being is “like neither gods nor men.”

So what was he then?

Google tells us that the beast: “Typhon was … the personification of volcanic forces.”

Volcanic forces…Hmm-that doesn’t sound much like religion anymore. But let’s get back to it for now; I quote Wikipedia:

“Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna…

Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon’s story is also connected with that of Python (the serpent killed by Apollo), and both stories probably derived from several Near Eastern antecedents…”

These points are not only interesting, they contain hints which describe a handful of more relevant truths. Number one-there is nothing more cataclysmic than a volcanic eruption. Secondly many eruptions also include the phenomenon of lightning storms (see above*), which usually occur after the eruption has petered itself out. It would be very easy to assume that one’s own thunder god defeated the Titan with thunderbolts after seeing this.

I will not mention “Typhon being cast into Tartarus” or “buried beneath a mountain”–these mirror actual geological events which have been repeated at intervals throughout history (most recently in 2006 (Mt St Helens)–except to point out that although Greece has volcanoes, none have played a role in its cultural history, which explains why the Greeks desired to bury the giant under an active, Italian volcano.

Which leads is to the gist.

Why not under Mt. Olympus, where Zeus lived? And where the battle was fought, presumably? Others say it was fought in Anatolia–but that’s an even farther trip to lug a dead behemoth. Why schlepp the giant all the way to Italy to bury him? The only possible explanation here, which the last sentence of the quote above supports, is that these stories were not native to Greece.

Eastern Anatolia is home to a vast volcanic landscape, and the Bronze Age culture living there–the Hurrians–composed the original stories after one (or more) eruptions around 5,000 years ago. In fact, all of the people of the region told their own tales of a singular behemoth that attacked the heavens–“Titan” means to grow swiftly, and they are known as very naughty boys (and girls)–in earlier traditions. All of these stories had the same eerie similarities, and, in fact, there is really only one variant in these themes, one occasion where the plot does not play out like the others.

In the Greek version, as in all preceding Near Eastern versions, as well as the nearly identical Swedish AND Indian versions (!!); in all of these stories the thunder god was victorious, and the beast lay smote. The one exception?

Mesopotamia.

Here Ninurta kicked everyone’s ass.

For those who do not understand the significance of this, I’ll have you remember that western civilization were based on the Mesopotamian model. Which also means that we have all adopted a way of life based on that of a civilization who worshipped the very real, fiery, underworld demon who rose up and overthrew the gods of the heavens.

Well that’s not a comforting thought, is it?

*-Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash

I open my eyes.

All around me are closely-cropped lawns and guys with flattops.

Passersby in polyester and squeaky patent leather shoes and names like “Vern” and “Lois” greet each other with phrases like “Mornin, Vern!” and “How’s your husband’s carbuncle, Lois?”

Songs by prissy blond dimpled teenagers about the wonderful wholesomeness of shoe-fly pi blare out of speakers I can’t see.

Children-all white-take group pictures in the park displaying the same glow-in-the-dark tombstone teeth.

Someone mentions Bob Dylan and is propelled by glares instantly over the state line.

The last time anyone said anything original or interesting was 1947-a statue commemorates him in a corner of the park but it is only used as a pigeon toilet.

People wash their cars on Sundays, and then golf.

The women knit. And gossip.

Everyone knows everyone, which means no one has the balls to change, lest he or she be labeled an agitator.

The most popular music is by Francis Scott Key or something, and is played by people wearing porkpie hats. One musician might be holding a washboard.

The preacher raises fire and damnation every week. For a town so utterly boring and monotonous, you would think, by his sermons, that it was Sodom. Or Gomorrah. Or both?

The librarian loves to shush people.

The library is now empty. Nothing to see here.

Pleated skirts are still a thing.

So are chinos.

The Carpenters “Top of the World” is now blasting from the speakers I still can’t see, which is good, because if I could I would batter them down with a Louisville slugger. I realize I have entered the lowest rung of Hell.

A little boy with an arrow-straight part carved into the side of his skull stares at me from behind a table. A sign says “Lemonade 50 sents.” The only reason I don’t tell him to go fuck himself is because I know his parents made him this way. So I go ahead and take a dump in the middle of his parents’ lawn. They are not enthused.

With a start I wake up. Everything is broken and I sigh contentedly.

“It was only a dream,” I say to myself.