The Desert Bride

for cl


In such hot dry weather, irritable to his skin and impossible to his temper, the merman's thoughts slip into the slow soft tides at night and his land-wife knows it well, his legs scissoring the cool splash of the sheets, he is already gone. Not really a year, but a season: she has grown much older and more serious, if by serious we mean believing less of love and expecting little from each day. All courage and imagination had been consumed in their defiant marriage, which every opinion and authority was universal in condemning as ill considered and proverbially foolish. But she had never met a man like him, so oddly featured from the sea, his nose like a conch and his skin patterned like shells, so smooth with a well-shaped swimming build and seal-like expression. It pleased her greatly just to look at him and when she could not be done looking, she wanted to have him some how and was sure he would make her happy. People thought her perverse and proud, and so she was to realize herself different from the farmer's sons, the dull fishing boys who fancied themselves masters of the sea for merely playing atop it and dampening themselves a little. His people practically only came to the surface in the worst of storms, to surf upon the breaks and play among the thunder.

For his part, he was possessed of an unusual curiosity for his race; the diet of land dwellers is usually enough to repel the children of the sea. His first taste of bread was softened in the water. He was fascinated by the smoke of pipes, and the smell of fruit, the way things on the land went about on wobbly legs. Life on land seemed to be a mighty struggle, people, trees and those buildings called churches, all heavily built to mount up against the sky. The sea too, was very fierce, but the land dwellers had to fight it out among themselves, with so little of anything and nowhere to go, trapped on the surface like crabs in a tide pool. Most alien to him was the virtue of work of any kind, which seemed to go on rather longer than it should, for his tastes, and roughened the hands and hurt the feet. In the sea, all gatherings are social gatherings and little more was asked of his leadership or fealty than a hunting party or sport -and in these everyone shared equally the boon. To labour for a coin seemed foolish and childlike to his mind, like the affection of children for shells. Beyond money and labour, the only thing more foreign and incredulous to him was the idea of God.

He was curious, but in a dull way, inquisitive in a way that penetrated not, that remained on the surface of things. She remembered once he had disappeared; she thought immediately that he had gone back to the sea, thought this was obvious, but upon coming to the shore could not bring herself to look or to ask. But what would she have seen or asked anyway? She cried and was miserable and though she knew it to be certainly futile and more miserable she could not help walking the town to see he were possibly there,perhaps in trouble, or distracted, or otherwise detained. Much to her surprise and relief,she had found him: in a stranger's yard staring at a spider web. His look of fascination was paradoxically equivocal: with his dark seal eyes and pleased distracted expression, it seemed childlike, yet concealing some knowing smirk, yet idiotically invariant: his whole head moving as he followed the object of his attentions. Another time she found him enraptured by a windmill. He had taken hours to approach it. Fortunately, a villager, kinder and more intelligent than most, had seen his approach and hospitably welcomed him inside, which was itself another revelation, to look up and see inside the creaking dark giant.

Perhaps his interests seemed so inscrutable because often she could not find their object. Often they were sounds or smells, though easily these were painful or oppressive to him. He looked to the approach of unseen wagons and heard the clap before the most distant thunder. He liked to listen to her heart and the viscous sounds her innards made. He scented her period days in advance. Mustard had made him ill, but afterward, he developed quite a taste for it. He liked to play at catching food in his mouth, rather more than she thought seemly, for to do so made her feel that the worst critics of her marriage had been right and what if someone were to see? It was only with some pleading that he could be dissuaded from throwing food to her, but this had been established early during their courtship.

He loved rain and snow storms, was fascinated by books, but mainly for the texture of the paper. She once showed him a map of the world and when she explained what it was to represent nothing could stop his uninhibited piping laughter, though later he would point and ask what each land was like and how it was that there were arbitrary lines everywhere. He liked stews and soups and was fascinated by all things sweet; sweets and pickles were all he could be persuaded to take at first. He found cooked fish and shellfish unbearable. If given wine, he tended to take off his clothes.

She was certain that she loved him, but less sure of what that meant, if anything other than tragedy. Complacent and shiftless, prone to wander (though clumsy on land) she knew eventually he should simply slip back into the sea, saying nothing before, nor returning ever. She consoled herself with the thought that he would, however, surely think of her as he dived; dived, dived, dived, well down to where only the foundered ships and unhappy sailors had gone and perhaps not even there, pushing himself downwards with a muscular stroke, out racing sad thoughts of her, alone and lonely on land. His people do not cry, but let out a sad and pathetic plaintful bleat. She had heard it, his head on her breast. He would live a long time, his people did, and never stop talking, pridefully (modesty not being a virtue among them) of his time in shoes and coats, his life in the strange desert.


TURN #78: WEEK 64; WORDS: 68,019
NEXT BY 13 SEPTEMBER 2006

Kinds of Hypnotized Horse Acts

The ordinary or simple hypnotized horse act is not very notable. It’s something of a time killer at best. Even for people familiar with horses the horse does nothing remarkable, nothing a un-hypnotized horse might do just as well, with the right training. Most acts begin with a few of these: some counting, nodding, neighing.

The next level of hypnotized horse act is a little more interesting and complicated, because the horse does something that takes a lot of training whether or not it is actually hypnotized. Advanced though it is, it still overlaps with the high end of well-trained horse acts and still begs the question of what it means to have hypnotized a horse. Typical: standing on hind legs, tightrope walking, using a knife and fork.

The genre of the hypnotized horse act really comes into its own with the advanced tricks. Here the horse is doing something that it is normally so disinclined to do, the audience readily assents that it must be, in fact, hypnotized. Typically this involves sitting in a chair, (silently) reading the paper, light acrobatics, playing more than one instrument.

Master hypnotized horse acts are usually saved for the finale of the best shows commonly seen, if that (actually, most acts proceed no further than the intermediate level at best, which leads to the general apathy about the acts as a whole). In these the horse does something generally regarded as impossible by those unfamiliar with hypnotized horses. These include such things as short improvised speeches in human languages on a subject of the audience’s choosing, crude magic tricks, climbing trees and short and very limited bursts of flight. This will immediately prompt the question for many in the audience as to who, really, has been hypnotized.

Hypnotized horse acts of the Grand Masters, are, in fact, hard to see and quite poorly documented. Nonetheless, in what accounts we have of them, they continue themes and acts of the Master Acts: the horse may answer more complicated questions, or debate a learned member of the audience on a subject of their particular expertise. The horse may cruelly follow on this by making some of it’s points in a precise mimicked impersonation of a person familiar to the speaker, or even their own voice. This mimicry, though often comedic, generally fills the audience with horror. Chess tournaments are rare, for, if accounts are to be believed, the horse acquit themselves only passably, always opening with N-KB3. Though in Master hypnotized horse acts, the points made by the horse can be light to quite specious, in Grand master acts the horses are diabolical advocates, often on controversial or unacceptable theses. This is only made worse by any kind of mathematical or logical act, in which the horses often “prove” illogical or incoherent propositions. This part of the act is generally characterized as a nightmare. If the horse has demonstrated a particularly impossible or unthinkable proposition, such as the possibility of division by zero or the non divinity of Christ, some audience members may object strenuously that they are dreaming or themselves hypnotized, to which the horse may reply mockingly in the voice of their father. It is about this time that calls upon the Grand Master himself to stop this outrage become universal. The Grand Master, it must be noted, has been stiff and wholly motionless for the duration of the act. Spirited theatre goers who further swarm the stage are advised that upon approaching the Grand Master they are likely to be surprised by his stiff and irregular appearance, only to discover upon closing, that the figure in a tuxedo is little more than a scarecrow and the gilded theatre, little more than an empty field at night. The wind blows. You are naked. The horse stands there. You have never seen one before. The horse regards you. It snorts and flicks its tail to ask: who are you? But you have no words at all to reply.

TURN #77: WEEK 63; WORDS: 66,933
NEXT BY 6 SEPTEMBER 2006

Stories I Wrote to Girls Who Never Wrote Back III: Ed Harris Won't Leave Me Alone

I awoke in an unfamiliar bed to Ed Harris tapping on the window. I put some shorts on and came out to the yard: it was bright out. Ed had a fistful of old GI Joe comic books and an open thing of cheap salsa. He was going on about something, about going somewhere to finish something. All I could think was: where are the chips? The thing about Ed is he has those eyes and his winning ways. You can never tell if he’s drunk or not. He’ll do something crazy and be sober as a lord. Or you’ll be driving with him or at the library or the courthouse and not realize a thing until you hear the -shhht of a beer opening. I can’t tell today. Why is Ed here? Suddenly Ed’s destination today becomes clearer; he’s talking about Switzerland, though for some reason, he wants/needs to make the journey by boat. “Ed,” I say “I gotta go to work today.” Which is a total lie because I’m not even really sure where I am. To make it seem realistic, I go over and pick up a newspaper lying in the driveway. It is an old shopping circular that is sopping wet, though I tuck it under my arm anyway to look like I am starting my day. Ed just laughs and gives me a half empty bucket of chicken, though instead of chicken there are the modified triggers and sears from a semi-automatic rifle, though it still smells like chicken. This makes me hungry. We say our goodbyes; Ed is still laughing, almost running in place. As I turn to go back in I remember: Ed and I did go partying. That was three days ago. I didn’t see him after the first night. I go back into the welcome dark of this messy home and notice, for the first time, a big guy sprawled out on the couch wearing what looks like Egyptian-themed maternity wear. I hope to go he’s not the reason I’m here. I go back to bed.

Later, I find the chips. They’re in my mailbox at home, long with a rubber boot and some sporty women’s underwear.

We are in a drugstore, ostensibly because Ed has a cold. Ed likes to try the remedies as he goes down the aisle. It is something of a tasting party. He dusts his tongue with Theraflu like it was Pixie Sticks. He keeps using the expression “worm”: “Worm up!”; “Worm to the Motherland”: “Where you at Worm?” My head is exploding from inhaling whatever gas Ed keeps in that mask and tank in the car. He spills a lot of Flintstones vitamins sorting through an economy sized jar of them looking for Dinos to bite the heads off. He slips and falls. He cries: “Willlll-mma! Get this cat offa me!” Eventually this leads to some intercession by the pharmacist. Ed pulls up to the window, like at a bar and says: “So, whatcha got?”

Ed is checking out some lingerie. “You know what I’m seeing?” he says “I’m seeing some itty bitty mosquitoes in that tent. You know what I mean.” He repeats this about five times. Until he finds a teddy and then starts saying: “This one, this one, this is for a big ol’ woman. This is for a bear woman. A big old woman with purple hair and a case of diet shasta sitting on top of a bean bag chair with is half-filled with weed from her mid-level dealer boyfriend who works at the Co-Op and makes banana bread but never cleans up.” Ed then sings an authentic Indian song he was taught at Columbia. “Hey pretty ladies,” calls Ed, “would you both like to model these for me?” “Ed,” I say, “we’re in Wal-Mart. That other woman is her mother.”

It is always a disaster going with Ed to a strip club, but the worst was the time he brought that snow shovel.

After we put out the fire in the car we had to sit there in the smoke and the piss because it was fucking freezing out with nothing but Drum to smoke and I wanted to cut my lips off. I tried to tell Ed: Ed I’m sick. Ed, I’m tired. Ed, I have grey hairs on my balls and I can’t do this anymore. I mean it’s been a scream, but I feel sick most of the time and I can’t keep the gyros down and I’m sick of Old Gold and brown phlegm and dirt and yelling and stealing so little and paying so much, and man, I love you man, but I’m dying, I’m dying and I just feel tired all the time and the shot of Jager isn’t making it and I don’t want to wake up in the morning; I hurt, I shake, only a little, but what the hell and Ed looks at me and he says do this, do this one shot with me: you are a Lord, feel your majesty, take your office and serve alongside me, robed in fleas and rags, blessed with vomit, stand alongside me, we, chosen for the blessing of mankind.


TURN #76: WEEK 62; WORDS: 66, 258
NEXT BY 30 AUGUST 2006

My Nietzsche

for Rs

Just the other day I was looking at Kaufmann’s introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I came across this fact: Nietzsche and I are the same height. In that instant I grasped it all: I am a giant.

I have a different perspective on human life because I gaze down upon it like an eagle from the towers of five foot eight. Does the thunder frighten you? It is merely our laughter, the laughter of we titans, we five foot eight Hyperboreans.

In all probability, I could walk in Nietzsche’s shoes; I weigh 66 kilos; I could wear his overcoat -the overcoat of the Father of the Overman. I could fit into his suits. I would wear them with no underwear in a Revaluation of All Values! Naked like a child!

Listen as I mock this Wagner CD! And kiss this horse!

Nietzsche was a lonely man; if you doubt this, read Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Zarathustra has disciples; he leaves them; he comes back; he leaves them; in the end he spends time in bed talking to his animals. I, too, spend time in bed talking to my stuffed animals.

We are lonely: because we stand at the five foot eight peaks of wisdom, a horizon from which we can see the coming of that which justifies Man, the Overman. We carried our ashes to the mountains. We return bringing our fire to the valley. This has met with mixed results.

In all of Zarathustra’s wanderings, in his questings, -no where does he find any hint of a girlfriend, unless that girlfriend be eternity herself, wedded with that nuptial ring of rings, the eternal return, which is really more of a personification and so there is really no hint of a girlfriend and everything will repeat itself exactly as it has happened, with fire-dogs, dwarves, hunchbacks, tarantulas but no girlfriend.

I, too, go everywhere in my student’s coat, and here and there slap somebody on the shoulder and say, Siamo contenti? Son dio ho fatto questa caricatura.

I, too, have had Caiphas put in fetters, Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all Anti-Semites abolished.

For in the end, I would much rather have been a Basel professor than God; but I have not dared push my private egoism so far as to desist for its sake from the creation of the world, You see, one must make sacrifices however and wherever one lives.

Tomorrow my son Umberto will come with the lovely Margharita, whom, however, I shall also receive here only in shirtsleeves. The rest is for Frau Cosima -Ariadne -from time to time there is magic.



You may make any use of this letter which will not degrade me in the eyes of those at Basel.



TURN #75: WEEK 61; WORDS: 65,396
NEXT BY 23 AUGUST 2006