“The very instant I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides To make me slave to it.
― William Shakespeare
Shakespeare Sculpture, Dallas Arboretum
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, Tuesday, July 17, 2001 (exactly twenty years ago):
Stuff dreams are made on
I had a long couple days at work so I thought I’d reward myself with an evening of free Shakespeare. Candy was able to make arrangements to help her get all the kids to all the places they needed to go. So I was free to take off.
I stopped by the grocery store and bought a salad from the salad bar (make it yourself, 2.99 a pound, little black plastic bowl with clear lid, plastic silverware that I slipped into my pocket instead of the bowl – to save weight) some yogurt, a Mistic Zotics (Mozambique Marula Fruit), and finally – a bottle of Sobe (pink Lizard Fuel – Strawberry and Banana).
The preplay festivities had the clown-players embarrassing as many folks in the crowd as possible. The high point was when three of them were juggling and a member of the audience walked up, pulled three hackysacks from his pockets and joined in.
Tonight is the Tempest and it starts in a half hour or so. I’m full of food and drowsy now so I think I’ll stretch out on my Barney Blanket and nod off for awhile.
The play begins.
This production has the most important features for a successful Tempest – nasty-lookin’ babes and skimpy outfits.
I like how they do the storm – the chorus whips a green parachute into violent waves while the actors stand up in holes through the fabric.
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
When you pick a mudbug up – he’ll spread his claws out and try to look as big and as mean as he can. He still looks delicious – no matter how hard he tries.
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, September 9, 2002:
Woman in the Dunes
When I was a kid I was fascinated by ant lions. Those are the little bugs that dig pits in the fine, loose sand around the forgotten spots… maybe behind the garage or under the old tree.
They did these perfect conical traps, like a negative volcano, and wait hidden in the bottom ready to snap out with huge pincer jaws and gobble down their unfortunate meal. Dried husks sometimes litter the edges of their lair.
I’d watch an ant or gnat stumble down the slope, slide on the angle of repose, until the ant lion would attack, throwing bits of sand first to confuse and stun, then to grab and eat. I would take a piece of paper or index card and scoop up the sand, the entire area, and blow away the dust until I found the ant lion itself. It was a marvel of tiny death, all jaws and squat, powerful, flicking body.
I would always replace the insect unhurt and watch him begin to construct a new trap, digging the pit by bending and snapping his body – flicking bits of sand away.
I stopped by the video store and rented a Japanese film, Woman in the Dunes. I read the book (by Kobo Abe) decades ago. Actually, I rented the movie once before too, surprised to find in an otherwise pedestrian rental shop. It was a bad copy, though, so bad I could barely make out what was happening.
This time, it has been re-mastered and re-released, clear as a bell. The photography is stunning, incredible black, white, and gray images of sand and human bodies.
It tells the story of a lonely man, wandering the dunes of a forgotten province, looking for insects for his collection. Or maybe, his main purpose is to simply escape the bureaucracy, avoid the avalanche of paperwork, forms, and official stamps that flow across the movie’s credits.
At any rate, he bites off more than he can chew – ends up trapped with a widowed woman in a ramshackle house at the bottom of a wall of sand, trapped, forced to shovel to survive. There is sensuality in the sand, desperation, and resignation.
“But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window–maybe rearrange all the furniture.”
― Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories
Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, July 4, 1997:
The Fourth and Fireworks
We left the party early, just as the bar-b-que was being trundled out because we had tickets to the Ranger game. It was a great evening; cool weather, a record sellout crowd, and a good game (the home team won seven to six). The only problem was that Lee was a champion wiggleworm; I missed a lot of the game walking him around. He kept trying to kiss some teenage boys in the row in front of us.
After the game was a fireworks display. I knew from years past that the Rangers always put on a good fireworks show, and this one didn’t disappoint. It was a long, loud, impressive display, with the explosions timed to go along with the music played in the ballpark. We watched from the upper level promenade, an open area around the top of the stadium. It was a perfect vantage point.
Nick and Lee had never stuck it out through a fireworks display before. We’d taken them to a couple, but they cried at the noise and we’d had to leave. Now they are bigger, they were nervous before it started, holding their hands over their ears, but once it got going they really thought it was great.
After the game, the fireworks, and the massive traffic jam leaving the ballpark, it was after one when we finally reached home. That is very late for this particular family unit. Yardwork, pool party, baseball, fireworks – about as traditional a holiday as you’ll see. Not very cool , not very punk , not very postmodern . And I don’t care.
“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
Swallowed by Nostalgia
Craig was never very outgoing, never comfortable around lots of other people. He was surprised when he found himself married with two twin children. Then, all of a sudden, he was alone again, his ex-wife and kids out on the West coast, with a new husband and father.
Still, he had his friends. Not a lot of them, but the ones he had were close. He had his activities, his clubs, his scheduled events. Craig never felt like the center of the crowd, but he was there. He didn’t initiate a lot, but people would contact him, offer up events and activities, and he would go along.
As he grew older, he slowed down a bit, still not outgoing, but not a hermit by any means.
And then the pandemic hit… and it all went to shit.
One day, Craig realized he had not been out of his apartment in almost three weeks. His food was delivered, either cooked or groceries. Every day he’d collect his Amazon boxes – everything he needed and more. It was a reflex to search and click “buy now.” Craig felt like a cave man hunting woolly mammoths with a mouse, keyboard and credit card. After a while he turned the camera off on his work Zoom meetings and would usually nap during the long ones. Nobody seemed to notice.
He ordered blackout curtains for his windows and the highest rated noise-cancelling headphones. Sometimes he’d wear the phones without music, even though his place was quiet – simply to kill off any potential interruptions.
This went on, month after month and Craig began to go mad.
The present became more and more gray and blurred, but the past became crystal and colorful. Events from decades before floated up through his memory and wedged themselves into his consciousness. Especially things he regretted – not stuff that he did, but things that he didn’t do. These errors of omission, vacuums of courage, kept flashing in his mind.
The time a girl at a club gave him her number and he didn’t call… the job offer he turned down… the friends that went to an exotic location and he decided not to go with them…. All these and countless more kept coming back to him. In his mind, though, he went ahead and took the plunge. In his imagination he called the girl, took the job, went along. And reaped the reward.
But then, later, he would realize what had really happened, where he was, and who he had become. Sleep became something he feared, not because of nightmares but because of these triumphant dreams where he corrected the mistakes he had made. And this made the morning even more gray, even more useless.
His health provider kept sending him messages about the vaccine, but he ignored them. Why get the shot? He never left his apartment, was at no risk to himself or anyone else. He didn’t care anyway – if it killed him, it killed him.
Then one morning, after a long vivid dream of driving across the country in a sports car that he had decided not to buy once he woke up and scheduled his shot. It might stop the dreams. He left his place for the first time in months and was surprised at how easy it was to negotiate the paperwork and get the jab in the arm. He actually looked forward to the second, couldn’t wait until the three weeks were up.
It was a beautiful day when he got his second shot – the air with a bit of a chilly breeze but the sun out and hot – cutting through the cold. On a whim, he stopped in a park on the way back.
It was full of people, very few wearing masks. They were in groups, grilling, playing volleyball, kids running around, old folks walking, even a keg of beer next to a boom box (he guessed that the park rules were being bent after such a long time away).
He parked and walked the sidewalk on the circular drive looking at all the people. Live people. Noise. The chatter and music rose up. The smell of charcoal lighter and barbecue sauce. The feel of the cool breeze and hot sun.
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, July 7, 2001 (exactly 20 years ago):
Half Price Poetry
In keeping with my post-mountain-vacation theme of trying to do some fun big-city stuff I sneaked out last night to go to the monthly First Friday poetry reading at the big main Half-Price book store on Northwest Highway. The crowd was a bit smaller than they were the last time I went, maybe because now it’s summer. I was actually able to get a place to sit.
The poetry, as always, was pretty variable in quality. A lot of it is too traditional, too Moon-June for my tastes. I want to hear something wild, emotional, and witty. Still, though, I enjoy going to the readings.
As a matter of fact – I realize that I can’t even hear most of the poetry. I like to sit there and watch the reader and the crowd – the shuffling of papers, the popping of the microphone, the smell of old books, and the taste of coffee.
One thing I did enjoy was when someone came up and read the from the theme song from “Petticoat Junction.”
Come ride that little train that is rolling down the tracks to the Junction, Petticoat Junction! Forget about your cares, it is time to relax at the Junction, Petticoat Junction! Lots of curves, you bet, even more when you get to the Junction, Petticoat Junction!
….
Well, we’ll soon be leavin’ town There’s old Charley oilin’ round Can she make it up the hill At least to Hooterville The pressure’s on the rise Floyd is burning railroad ties Everybody get inside Doesn’t cost a cent to ride Come one and come all and we’ll take that Cannonball to the Junction, Petticoat Junction!
“One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it – water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Parking Day
Main Street
Dallas, Texas
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, August 14, 2000
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Triple digits deadly coughing air The full moon is a bloated orange colored by windblown dust I haven’t had a decent breath in weeks
The heat cracks the dried clay cracks the calluses on the bottom of my feet ’til they are bleeding and burn in the morning shower
My gardening – if I did it would consist of gluing brown desiccated leaves back onto stickly branches I finally watered my lawn it smelled of wet hay
I sweat at work so much I’ll change lab coats when it soaks through my shirt and coat the other day I went through four When I drove home I can lick my arm and taste the layer of salt I taste like a giant potato chip
““You’re the hunter, the warrior. You’re stronger than anyone else here, that’s your tragedy.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Sunset High School Cheerleaders
Aliens Abduct Cheerleaders
There are a few people in this world that everyone would consider to be a BADASS. Navy jet fighter pilots, gangsters, hitmen, boxers, bullies, Seal Team Six, high voltage repairmen… that sort of thing. Within that world of people that are badass there are a few that are REALLY BADASS. Think of a bell curve representing the amount of badass someone has – that right hand bit of tail and you have the badass people. Spread that out and you get another curve – to the right of it, the second derivative – and these are the most badass of the badass.
If you meet one of these people (and you better hope you never do) you probably would not even recognize their badassness – at least not right away. There is a saying among the super-badass, “They that do the mostest, talk the leastest.” They will never, never, ever talk about how badass they are. No tales of derring-do, no boastful bluster, no bombastic braggadocio. They are comfortable in their skin, confident in their abilities.
This is a small group, but among them are a handful of the most badass of the badass of the badass. These are the people that keep the badass of the badass up at night, send shivers down their spine. I’m not sure I know about all these people but I know six of them and I doubt there are very many more.
Who is more badass than these six? There is only one. He is not only the most badass person on the planet, he is an order of magnitude beyond; he is so badass that the word almost ceases to have meaning; he is made of pure badass.
He is Spencer Bowman.
Bowman carries an old fashioned pager. It only beeps – doesn’t even display the number calling. He may be the only person in a first-world country that still carries a pager like that.
One day, it beeped. Bowman stomped on the pager, shattering its plastic case, then dropped its remains off the first overwater bridge he came to. He drove his perfectly nondescript and average car to a working class suburb outside of DC and parked in front of a Speedometer Repair Shop in a run-down strip mall. He nodded at the middle aged receptionist and pressed a hidden button. A section of wall opened up and a stainless steel elevator appeared. The walls of the car had slits and Bowman nodded at them, knowing that an unseen man with a machine gun was behind each one.
At the bottom, deep underground, Bowman walked down a bare concrete corridor and pushed open a heavy steel blast door. Beyond was an ordinary drab government-issue office, with a bespectacled man at a desk. Not even Bowman knew what government agency ran this operation. It was so secret and dark it didn’t even have an acronym. Bowman suspected that not even the man behind the desk knew for sure who he worked for.
“Bowman, glad to see you again, have a seat,” said the man at the desk.
“What do you need me for?” was all Bowman said.
“You don’t waste much time, do you,” the man replied.
Bowman said nothing, not even a nod. It wasn’t really a question anyway.
“Well,” the man said, “aliens are stealing cheerleaders.”
“Really?”
“Really. Not just here, all over the world, though, of course the United States leads the world in Cheerleaders and most of the kidnappings are here. The total number isn’t huge, but it’s enough to worry… well, worry the people that know you.”
“And you want me to?”
“Find out why.”
“Maybe it is for breeding stock. There was a movie about that.”
“Probably not. They have mostly been taking female cheerleaders. But there have been a few male ones too. Actually, the ratio is pretty much the same as the total cheerleader population.”
“So, find out why. Anything else?”
“Well, it would be nice if you could get some back. If you can.”
The man handed Bowman a tiny, encrypted USB drive. Bowman already knew the password. And that was it.
There was a surprising amount of information on the drive. Enough for Bowman to figure out a couple of starting points. The government had a lot more data on the recent plague of UFO sightings than the public had been allowed to see. After a month of work, a series of educated guesses, and using some of his more exotic contacts, Bowman was able to figure out where the Alien’s base of operations was – an abandoned water pumping station in Dallas, Texas. The Aliens had a complex, subtle, and deep series of security measures protecting their base which Bowman was able to methodically and completely penetrate.
The Aliens resembled human beings in general, and their advance agents had established an odd cult of bizarre plastic surgery that made them able to… if not fit in, at least pass with their origins unguessed. Bowman reached the leader of the Alien mission with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of violence. They faced each other across an odd seven legged table lit by the unsettling greenish light of the Alien’s home planet.
“Spencer Bowman,” said the Alien mission leader.
“You know me,” said Bowman. Again, it was not a question.
“Of course, our knowledge of your society is more extensive than your own.”
“But why cheerleaders?”
“We need warriors.”
“Cheerleaders? Why not trained military? Or ninjas? Or snipers? Or at least gang bangers?”
“We are so very far advanced technologically that your crude killing methods are no longer relevant. Our weapons need a very specific and subtle mix of physical and mental capabilities and proclivities to operate efficiently. The Earth Cheerleading corps possess these qualities in greater accuracy than any other group we have found in any of the major galaxies.”
“But you can’t just kidnap people.”
“Kidnap? Oh you don’t understand. We present our proposal and they come along if they want.”
“But what if they refuse?”
“What if? Nothing. They return to their life.”
“What if they talk?”
“What if? Would any one believe them? Nope, they would end up a joke in the tabloids. And that’s the thing.”
“What?”
“Nobody has refused. No one. The call of destiny is strong. This is their purpose, they are perfect intergalactic warriors and when this is pointed out – the call is irresistible.”
Bowman knew he had the information he needed and it was time to escape. He turned away from the alien leader and fled out the door, taking every element of the situation in and avoiding the obvious traps. He was confident in his ability to get out of the alien headquarters unscathed and deliver his message to the government.
But Bowman was not prepared for what waited for him in the corridor beyond. There was Amber from the San Luis Obispo Wildcats in her red and blue uniform. She carried a Light Antimatter Laser Cannon and a Neutrino Shield. Next to her was Jeff from the Iowa City High School tumbling squad with a Quantum Saber glowing in his palms. Behind them stood their commander Crystal from The University of Virginia with a Superstring Grenade… just in case.
The fight didn’t last long. Withing a few seconds Bowman was reduced to a series of grotesque smears along a few feet of corridor. The Alien cleaning robot immediately emerged from a hidden closet and began scrubbing at the gore.
Spencer Bowman was without peer in the ranks of earth’s BADASS. But he was completely outclassed by Amber, Jeff, and Crystal, Intergalactic Warriors.
Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. He would wander around open-mouthed in this heaven of gadgets and commodities, provided only that there were ever more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that his neighbors were just a little less privileged than he.
—-Erich Fromm
Downtown Square, McKinney, Texas
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, June 26, 2001 (exactly 20 years ago):
Gadgets
I’m one of the last people in this best of all possible worlds to get a cell phone. I always resisted the idea – thinking it was too much or too far or too expensive. Now I have one and I really like it. It is pretty damn amazing, isn’t it – especially when I can remember when the phone company owned all the phones and only the richest of the rich could even have an extension. I was in college, in Lawrence, when we were one of the first cities to get the modular plugs. I remember when digital dialing seemed pretty cool.
I’ve even downloaded custom ringing songs to my phone from websites. Sometimes I use Dock of the Bay, but usually I use the theme song from Thunderbirds are Go.
Somewhere, I read an article about server farms that said the world was ruled by stocky men carrying cell phones and pagers. I guess that’s me. I have my pager on one pocket and my cell phone on the other. Ready for action, like a wild west gunfighter.
Driving too and from work has its own ritual. I have the little hook where I hang my phone after I remove the belt clip. I plug it into a cord that runs to my cigarette lighter socket. I haven’t seen anyone light a cigarette with one of those in years – now they are simply twelve-volt outlets. I wonder when they will change the name of them and supply them with a plug that doesn’t heat. Our MiniVan has an extra one by the back seat; the kids plug their game boys in to it.
The center console of my car has three different drink-holders. I remove my sunglasses from one and use it to hold the belt clip. My pager goes in the second cup-holder. The third holds my ID badge – which is a technological marvel in itself. Inside the badge is a slim chip. Automatic doors flanked by badge-swipers guard the complex corridors of my workplace. Some places allow me entrance, some don’t. Under the console is a space that barely holds the pack of cassette tapes I listen to on my commute. A British voice intones, “This is the end of cassette nine of The Robber Bride, please fast forward to the end before loading cassette ten.”
My cell phone hangs next to the tape player. The player pops whenever I move from one cell to the next and the phone broadcasts its new location.
Above all this, the crack in my windshield hasn’t been fixed yet. It gets longer and longer.
“I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
(click to enlarge)
Invasion car show
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, August 9, 1999:
Slip Slidin’ Away
Sometimes, when you least expect it, you discover a moment of… if not beauty or wonder, at least amusement.
Today I drove home fighting through the hot afternoon rush hour traffic. I stopped as a light snapped yellow then red. It was a new light, on a T-Shaped intersection right north of where the road arches up and over Interstate 30.
I bent forward and fooled with the radio buttons, settling on some Brahms, something relaxing to help me live through the drive. So I missed it. Some guy had come into the T at such a rate of speed, making his left turn, that he spun his car completely around, and was now sitting completely sideways across all three lanes of traffic.
He had a nondescript small black car, an amateur spraycan paint job, no gloss, small dents all along the fenders. Drunk dents we used to call these. His entire back seat was covered by a sheet of unfinished plywood pierced by giant speakers. I had a good look at him, his window was down, his A/C must have been busted. The guy looked to be in his late twenties, baseball cap on backwards, dirty unkempt long mullet hair, big cheap earring. His expression was somehow simultaneously sheepish, stupid, and cocky.
My light turned green but we had to wait while the idiot managed to maneuver his car back and forth until he was pointing in more or less the right direction.
The amusing part was that, in addition to nobody getting hurt, right when he had is straightened out, a cop shot around me on the shoulder, lights flashing, and nailed him. I grin a little thinking of the reckless driving citation Mr. Speed Racer now has to deal with.
Bill Chance 