The Message Column

The Bardo of Macon Hasty

being a novelettic rant and a bardo story.

No one wants war.

I wrote this some years back, rewrote other parts. It includes a part about 'the festerbog' which is a federal perserve for people who have anthropomorphed into creatures of the pill-pot scrum. They go silthering off into the festerbog, near the paisley house. In the seat of governance of that fictional world.

But then one night, in the middle of the night, there was horrible news out of LA. A journalist who I had never known about consciously (but who I am now sure that I had encountered in Burlington, VT on Church street some festive evening, when he had a new book out, he was the only person there in a suit. I was there working my camera. He noticed me, wanted to know what was up with me, was interested, watched me (that is what journalists do). But it might have been someone else, couldn't it have been? So, but, then, you know. Here I am stammering and I don't edit the draft but publish and edit later. In any case Mr. H was a guy who had gone the route of trying to infiltrate the power establishments and become somehow important within that. But the story had holes. His whole story has some issues with it, including details that must be there for real people to be dead and gone. They had to have been there first. But who can tell? Change your identity? If you were a deep plant spy, third or forth generation?

I had already written a lengthy piece about the festerbog, and how a person who had been a journalist had been subvertted to being a press submissive. I hinted at 'lurid tails' (because some of them had become lizzards) lurid tales of lurid tails.

So he's blown up, and he has to make it back to his special whereever, a rule of bardo in this genre of story. I take my tradition from Saint John and from Dickens: there are spirits and angels who guide us with in the bardo, aren't there, in that kind of story. Do you ave them in your real life? Are we all within a Matrix? Santa knows, ho ho ho, he's been watching you . . . what you did last Summer.

His story compelled me. I became obcessed with the tale of him, and I did read and see a lot about him, on line, etc. And what I discovered is that answers weren't going to be coming. If he were really just a persona, and it had been exited from the stage, then he'd still be around somewhere, the real him. It seemed as though marriage is often an alliance in some sesen, just as a method to guarantee a certain kind of legacy. So we were never going to get at his notes, nor be able to read his journals, or to know in any real way what his real purpose here in this mortal plane is, and what he was trying to accomplish. What struck me is that he seemed to be all the way on the inside of an important hive of people, and suddenly thrown down from (a false) heaven and then so quickly reported to be dead on the street in a spectacular way that was really very hollywood, but inauthenic as an actual crash, because the car he was in has a very well known reputation for being safe, and also the way that the event occured is said by many experts in those kinds of crashes to be . . . in authentic. However, given the speed of the impact, and the giant things around there, ready to rip at an undercarriage, it's a road that is neglected in some sense in order to allow for a lower speed limit. Death was (alledged) to be sudden.

And so then, after having been close to certain power-mongers high in their positions, he became a sudden turncoat, as if he'd been a naive before and didn't know the kind of pool he'd be swimming in. From being a toad for power in one sense, to be an expose writer about spies (who don't like being put under examination) and always having a lurid tale or two to tell, and his book had some parts that were rather inauthentic. Sad about his first love. But some might say explotative to be writing about her like that unless . . . well they weren't married so he had no rights to her story, and her inside personal narrative. In any case there it was a person with very many flaws who had moved into the lifestyle of the flawed power structure, people who feel that the world is ready to condemn them because, well, clearly the life style is cringe-worthy. And it's the kind of sinful life that people who are there, deep in it, don't even think that it is sinning anymore. They have ceased, in some sense, to be human anymore in a meaningful way that works at the school and the market. They say things like "I'll destroy you . . . " like CC Babcock just before her breakdown (in The Nanny. We are supposed to know that such 'lines' are the indication of a deep and disturbed person who can be redeemed through love (which Max and Fran did for CC). But in the world of the festerbog . . . and I am clear that it's a fiction but . . . I couldn't go on with it because it's just so unfair, in one sense, to call people reptiles.

But they don't have to just be reptiles. And so I took the fiction to the place that it was a preserve because it was best to contain those kinds of strange creatures. And perhaps I'd inserted a Japonese word that means that, in loose translation.

The strange creatures of japanese literature, film, cartoon, anime, are often portrayed as origionally victims of technology misapplied in a grand tragedy. But even though these creature are huge and very different from what we expect, and seeming to be terrifying, we find out that they are usually very simple to understand and often work in unison for the greater good and against the evil of action as we see from misguided force of some other strange creature, just doing as instinct demands. It's a giant mutated creature being in type for the smaller versions of itself. All of this is accommpannied with stunning graphics, interesting sound effects, and pandering to archtypes of Japanese society. And all within the span of a motion picture.

The strange creatures of the fester bog? They get there by chemically being converted over to a submissive stance and being basically sycophantic in nature, they are willingly lead down into the bog, and it complete their anthropomorphic transformation into something other than fully human.

But not to be blamed, and can be changed back, still human but living within a subset of behaviors at the whim of . . . and the villain of the story? I guess I was lax on describing that. I was trying to treat it all like they were wild animals, their behaviors not fully understood, but the ones that we see in the light of day, that would be used as evidence as to how to behave around them. All of it still fiction.

Boom. Story explodes in the news. Someone dies too young. My story writing changed over to a bardo story of a spirit who might not be a spirit, coming back to Vermont (of bardo) to try and pick up the pieces of his life and get on to the next destination, where ever that is, maybe to meet his love who died in Bahgdad?

But on-message story, where truth and fiction are interchangible, and 'players' can be put into very many different roles, someone who was 'blown up' may have just had their identity changed. Or why, if he's a spirit doesn't he meet her as a spirit? Or why does he imagine such thoughts about his wife and his ex fiancee . . . he makes it up and then it seems to come true and everyone is looking for him but nobody sees him and he goes to all the cliche Vermont locations, but he never ever feels like he's arrived home. And then he has to cross the great water on the ferry in the fog, which is an allegory for the journey to the other life (the ferry man asks for a penny) and his host, the writer of the story, starts to get annoyed with him. he's not dead, he's just on a bad vacation.

Though that little memoir has about 260 pages worth of writing, I did loose interest in the story because it occured to me that . . . But explaining all that would probably be a spoiler. By the end of the piece I'd probably explain myself. And the outcome? that would be a spoiler. It is, after all, a fiction. I know nothing about Washington politics on the inside of the hive. I know nothing about the man who was M, I have no answers, I have a lot of questions that really don't need answers.

No one wants war.

11:26 AM EST

19 Oct 2016

The whole crowd
is getting 
jiggity-oh

ewe ah
ewe ah
ewe ah
ewe ah
  

Rock and Roll wins the Peace Prize
Praise the Lord for all Alive!

The humble poet plays his song astage,
a vain rockstar really.

vainity is the trait that makes him great
in his humility.

Contridictions don't make anysense at all
but it often seems to come out that way.

The thing about phrasing words,
is that the phrasing doesn't have to make sense,
and the statements, alided, might be contridictions,
but people figure it out.

Poetry
isn't a contract
no one says you have to
no one sends you to a prison
in real life by poem.

In this poetic moment
"you've been served!" slap!


At times
when it's raining
he feels poetically sad
and great gloom poems
drift down the river valley
on Jack's Birthday
I'd call to you
but I wouldn't want to bother you
in a solemn moment
or chase you
with your old art recordings,
the cover of a song
the way the sky looked
in 1963
not finding anything
in eyes (a concept not mine)



With the fading day
he's got his hum going on
no telling
what kind of night it's going to be.
This town 
at twilight
glows like a jack-o-lantern,
October
rain
poets walk the sidewalk
visiting the nostolgia
that we once held as dear.


When you rake leaves
if you don't put them in a barrol
or a bag
or a box
or wrap them up in a tarp
they'll blow away
all your work wasted
unless they are wet with rain,
stomped upon by rattling feet
school yard, 
play yard,
farmers field
old stone walls
waste places aside the orchard
where the foxes have holes
and the birds of the air
make temporary perches
huddled together by the storm.


My poetry is trapped
in some past dream of you,
a blanket,
some matches,
a roll of stamps.
He had them, she'd used some of them.
They were old.


If you trap your mind in a box
outside of process
and leave it there for atime
necessary meditation
the song might go on for a while.
You're not playing it in your mind anymore.
My poetyr is more like talking to myself,
or the crowd talking to itself.
A sudden distraction,
a big wind blowing in
thunder booming lightning
and no one remembers the words to the song
the spell is now broken
we can't expect the people to piece all the old potshards back together.

What I wanted from her
I got from the other one,
she was kinder,
more fragile,
but I never thought to be mean
and break her.
She wouldn't have been broken
elastic.

When you're mean to me
it's all just a reflection
of what you want for yourself,
what you think you really deserve,
no one really wants it,
don't treat anyone like that.


If the play had gone on
he wasn't going to be able to sit there for very much longer.
The band had some insturments out of tune.
He wanted to put his fingers in his ears.
If the sound had been louder
He'd have dashed off for the exits.

But listen to the sermon
that you don't agree with
and realize the grief,
follow along.
Soon the service will be over
you can dash off to your car
out of the 100 degree heat
and change out of these sticky clothes.
summer attire.


If the tire isn't full
it takes more gas to drive to Maine.
I don't drive to Maine anymore,
don't have any friends there anymore.
If I go for a driver
I'd like the car ready
I don't go for a drive
conserve my desires, 
rushing off to no where
doesn't lead me anywhere but home
so why go anywhere?

But we need to sometimes,
we all have our own pilgrimages,
keep it holy,
take a vacation
to the Vacation State.

Unmongering

 
 ewe ah
 it's a due dang diggy
 I know
 I know
 I know 
 I know
 
 

how about an excerpt?

Be your own Nememsis

Instead of trying to attack and destroy the people who you imagine have deep held fallacies that you loath, do that to yourself and attack the fallacy that you ahve the right or obligation to do such an attack on some other person. Be your own worst enemy in the sense that when you deserve to loose the debate, your own best interests will kick in and demand that you adhere to truth and reject fallacy and thus loose, in one sense, but win a much better future in every other sense. Be your own nemesis and demand that you adhere to the values that matter, and give truth and only truth as testimony with in the courts of great importance.

But even that inner skeptic needs his voice tamed. Sometimes overthinking things results in mission failure. Sometimes it really is time to launch and hesitation is mission failure. With some things, like nuclear weapons, any launch or use, or even testing or development of them is mission failure. It is societal failure of the gravest kind. The use of these devices is well known to be taboo. Even discussin their use or none use, like this here, can only be presented by the friendliest of expectations.

Replace Your Own Bad ideas

Instead of trying to replace the bad ideas of your readers for some fowl paid-for message, and being a shill, replace your own fallacies with truth and be of the future.

Sept 19, 2016

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If I could write 
show tunes
in the past
everybody'd be dancing
Even the band, with their
big drums
would be marching through


Hollywood songs
on a mobile stage
banging a gong
reciting a sage
Travelling show
where does it go?

everyone's singing along
come on home
she's tripping, 

The lights light up the whole scene
the train station,
the bus stop
the taxk stand
and the midnight
rock club.

If I could write show tunes
in the past
I'd have to invent
a time machine
I'd have to invent
a time machine
I'd have to invent
a time machine

Let Hollywood be
your time machine
Let Hollywood be
your time machine
Everybody'd be 
dancing

woo ewwe

Let Hollywood be
your time machine
Let Hollywood be
your time machine
Everybody'd be 
dancing

woo ewwe

Hollywood, Florida?

woo ewwe

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My tiny font thought
fills up the page
like anti-spam
saying nothing
but 
"here I am!"

  Praise     Praise     Praise
   the        the        the
   Lord       Lord       Lord!
  for    because    
 Easter  He's so awesome! 
  welcome to The Message Column!

      🖐♥♥Love♥♥🖑
      ♥♥🖑Cops🖐♥♥

      

repeat:
delete delete
 
 

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🖐♥♥Love♥♥🖑
♥♥🖑Cops🖐♥♥

      

     
Vote Once
One Vote
here is a fresh link, a new path to some older content:
   photo pile!
   
 

 
 Let's write this year
 where we don't have a war
 ewe ahh ewe ahh ewe ahh
 
 Let's write our story
 where we don't have a war
 ewe ahh ewe ahh ewe ahh
 
 Let's write the story
 where nations stay friends
 ewe ahh ewe ahh ewe ahh

 Let's write our story
 where we don't have a war
 ewe ahh ewe ahh ewe ahh
 
  

In Wicked Need of an Edit

🚛 🎓 🎔 🌀

Political and Media Inanity

Kafka wrote comedy. Orwell was a pessimist. Depends who you ask.

Truck-u-later

in this column Truck-u-later steps in deeper . . .

I'm weary of the election, so I'm not going to write about who to vote for. If you haven't figured it out by now, I don't want to addle you anymore than the season addles. The viciousness and slander of politics is a horror to behold. I canceled my cable to do away with the constant drone of fowl on-message parroting by the swacking-head press.

Let's not have a war.

Oct 17, 2016

Billion dollar car-ride, they are driving me too far!

Delete Kruft.

  Praise     Praise     Praise
   the        the        the
   Lord       Lord       Lord
  for his    for his    for his
 unfailing  unfailing  unfailing
   love!      love!      love!


the poet won the prize for literature!

  well, nothing more here today.