From: mithryl@walrus.com (Mithryl)
Subject: CODY: FROSH Chap.2 Of Record
Date: 10 Nov 1996 18:17:26 GMT
Message-ID: <56567m$gsk@alice.walrus.com>
Chapter 2
Of Record
"Tinkle, tinkle, little Starr,
How I wonder where you are."
*
"How do you know you are at the end of your book? Did you decide
from the start how long it would be? Did you pick a number of chapters?
Or do you just feel like it's time to close out this particular
compilation of symbols, thoughts, and vomit stain s?" -- Thurber
Dear T.,
I know that I am at the end of a book the same way I know that I
am at the end of my rope. The walls begin to close in and I can no longer
breathe. I have a desperate sense of sinking into further containment.
And a voice inside me cries out, "Enough, already! Get out." On top of
that the apartment looks like Hurricane Andrew slept here, the bathtub
resembles a hog wallow, and usually I have two and sometimes three seats
on either side of me at the lunch counter. Somewhere in my files is the
name of an ancient tribe of oracles who were not permitted to wash their
feet. I apply the same principle to my excursions into deep space. I
have been wearing the same purple spandex dress and aqua panties since
August. Even Kelly was beginning to turn blue in my presence. The
problem, however, is not ending a book. It is surviving it. The day
after I finished "My Struggle: A Young Girl's Story", for instance, I
realized I no longer had an identity. I had ceased to exist. Or at
least, the vehicle by which I made known my existence, had vanished.
It is not that I can simply turn my stories, i.e. myself, on and
off like tap water. The novel, as I mentioned in the introduction to my
last book, is actually a device for "the exploration of self." In order
to begin anew, there must be at least an agreement of structure, a mold,
into which to pour the new vessel. There is also the matter of center. I
find that when I start to write a story, if it is true, the world begins
to curve around it. I don't have to do research. It just appears, I
believe the word is synchronistically. This is good, because I will
almost stick pins in my eyes before I will actually look something up.
Even in the dictionary. It's my contention if the way I spell a word
doesn't correspond with Webster, that's because it s meaning has changed
since then. Words, you know, are not dumb animals. They aren't rocks.
They are living entities, constantly deriving their nourishment from the
collective unconscious. It's only neurotic obsessionals like the French
who get so excited about trying to keep them frozen in some kind of
mental limbo the way you might lace up a lovely graceful woman in a tight
corset and force her to submit.
It is for this reason I have no compunction against using as
sources of divination the two most dysfunctional sybils of our
civilization. I mean, of course, television and the New York Times.
You mentioned that I seemed to like the Times. Even the hurt in
my beloved husband's eyes when she learned that I had betrayed her with
another person or persons unknown, could not impugn my integrity more.
Personally, I believe that the only excuse the Times to exist is that it
is far more funny than Punch ever was. As satire, it is the finest
available, which is to say the ugliest. Even Larry Flynt was not able to
rise to such greatness in his put down of Jerry Falwell as the Times
easily surpasses several times each morning.
The reason that I read it is, in the morning when I wake up, that
is, when I have my eyes open and am in a crouched position like that of a
person with three broken ribs hanging over the lunch counter across the
street, which in time is usually well after one o'clock, I like to have
something in front of my face that is totally meaningless. Something I
don't have to think about. Like a list of the most disgusting atrocities
that have occurred during the past 24 hours. Especially, if it is long,
gory, and seems to have been written by a Methodist minister without an
abdomen; a person who would never ever use a bad word, even from a
quotation to describe a situation where you know bad words were probably
being emitted as fast as dum dums from a Glock in the hands of a sex
crazed cop settling scores with his ex-wife.
My grandmother's paper, when I visit her in Florida, takes about
seven minutes to read, five if you skip the comics, and two if you don't
move your lips. Like all Florida papers, it's written -- I should say
extruded -- for those who's brains have been terminally poached in the
Florida sun. It doesn't last long enough to smoke a fucking joint, for
Christ's sake. The Times, on the other hand, is a luxurious quilt of
mendacity, strategic racism, and deceit that, depending on the state of
the planet, can take hours to get through, and thus avoid the pain of
anything remotely connected with thought or even physical awareness.
Besides, the idea that there are other sources of information based on
ignorance different from that which impels the Times and organized tv is,
I think, itself, fanciful.
Why I like to be told horror stories at 2 p.m. in the morning is
something I haven't quite figured out. I know it isn't good for me. I
mean, people are always telling you to avoid bad influences, negativity,
etc. So why do I do it? Am I primping mysef for stomach cancer? It
occurred to me that maybe it's like those people in the south, that
church, where Newt's constituents handle serpents and drink strychnine.
The Bible says, they said, that if you are living a clean, virtuous life,
anyone, they will be able to handle serpents and they will not bite, and
drink poison and it will not harm you. But it didn't say anything about
reading the Times. Maybe that's asking too much of God. Like pushing the
envelope a little too far. I know I should stop, but I can't. It's just
got ahold of me. And I can't stop myself. Because usually it's just
lying there on the counter when I come in in the morning. And I pick it
up and start to read, and Abdul brings me a hot cup of tea that I can hold
onto as if it were a liferope back to planet Earth.
I think there's something very sad -- and duplicious -- about a
newspaper, especially one that claims to be one "of record", writing
something that says that it was okay that this was a dull election as the
Times did Sunday. In the first place, this wasn't a dull election. This
was a boycotted one. The real vote, as always, was not registered. The
vast majority voted against Clinton and the majority voted against Clinton
and Dole and Nader and Perot and all the rest of the liars and scum who
signified a "choice." The choice between brown shit and black shit is
still shit. No one with the slightest bit of self respect and an
intelligence level above, say, 65, would have gone near a polling place on
Tuesday. The N.Y. Times is whistling in the dark if it thinks this is
the end of the matter.
I'm also waiting, by the way, to see if and when Clinton gets
indicted for crimes not unlike those for which the late beloved Agnew went
down in flames, whether the Times will raise itself to the same level of
shrieking hysteria, demanding he quit, as it harassed the pathetic
Packwood who's senior crimes against humanity seemed nothing more than
some clumsy groping in the cloakroom. It was the Times that rationalized
away Packwood's right to keep his personal journal unexamined by his
persecutors on the grounds that he had referred to it while mounting a
defense which turned out to be as inept as his love making. I am dying
for the time a judge uses the same argument to throw a Times reporter into
jail for withholding his notes because he used them to write some story
having to do with a trial proceeding -- that is, if you can actually find
a New York Times reporter with that kind of moral integrity.
Another thing, if I was Hillary, I would watch my back now that
the election is over. It doesn't take a Ted Koczinski to figure out that
she is not an asset to the second Ricky Rae Rector memorial presidency.
In fact, Hillary falls decidedly in the debit column, and her value would
be enhanced if she were upgraded to an icon rather than a living presence.
For one thing, there would be no need to pardon her. God, theoretically,
will have done that. We would also be spared endless hours of primetime
tabloid speculation on whether she would talk. And it would leave Bill
free, finally, to use the White House and Oval office for the purpose it
was best suited, a white trash bordello. Wall to wall special assistants.
Robin Byrd as Secretary of State. Wendy Whoppers wiggling where Reno
twitched. (Send this woman back to the swamp!) Clinton already has more
than a hundred murders notched on his guns, including the 86 who died in
the holocaust at Mount Carmel. One more is unlikely to matter. It would
n't take much. A parting of s.s. agents to accommodate some patriot from
the NRA or the Christian Coalition. A drive by shooting. Or a TWA
maintenance crew servicing Air Force One on her next good will trip, just
enough to get her out over the Atlantic rift.
The important thing to know about the Times, even while totally
unconscious, is how to read it. The editorials, of course, are worthless
mind garbage, and one should miss at all costs the frothings of the
demented Abe Rosenthal, who seems never to have recovered from being
defrocked as the paper's editor. The same warning applies to Safire,
although from time to time he comes up with something vaguely relevant.
It is not so much that Safire is wrong about Clinton, as he is exactly the
same.
Lewis and Rich are rarely able to transcend their pompous
infatuation with the heady knowledge that their mediocre writing is
actually appearing in the New York Times. Baker is tedious. About the
only thing that can be said in his defense is that he is not Art Buchwald.
Dowd does her best to live up to her name.
What I like to read are the fantasies of creationism that appear
each Tuesday under the heading of Science. This is where the paper rises
to its lunatic best as a purveyor of the occult. I wouldn't be surprised
if one day, I open the paper and read that we are not riding around on
the back of an enormously large turtle standing on top of an elephant
dressed in an orange tutu. But the stories I like best are those foraged
from the planet's Dogpatches. Little gems of aberration that indicate the
chaos that incessantly nibbles at the borders of human intelligence,
causing it to turn and devour itself like a flea ridden dog. For
instance, there was the story of the woman in Pennsylvania who was
convicted of helping a 13 year old girl get an abortion. O r the little
girl in Georgia who was busted for bringing a steak knife to school, she
said, to cut her chicken. That was the Borden girl's excuse, too. Not
this time, honey. By Dogpatch, however, I do not necessarily mean
backwaters of podunk like Gem County or Russell, Kansas. The behavior of
New York's mayor can be intensely enjoyable, at times, especially when it
involves genuflecting to the rich and powerful while at the same time
stepping on the faces of the weak and poverty stricken, which in Ne w York
City's case, means nine tenths of the population.
Another example, although of a slightly higher order, is one about
Vienna and it's attempts to honor the Holocaust. To be truthful, most
Holocaust stories bore me. But Vienna, where I have never been, is now
embroiled in controversy over a memorial to or about it -- it's hard to
say what the exact preposition should be.
It seems to be that some people thought there should be one, a
memorial, in case it might be forgotten. And with everything holocaustal,
no one had the courage to say no. Then there was the problem of what it
should look like. Considering what it was commemorating, it was decided
that it would be inappropriate for it to look, well, nice. The Holocaust
was not Miss America, you know. So what they came up with looks like one
of the comfort stations in Washington Square. A little square concrete
hut t hat just screams to have swastikas painted all over it. Then came
the question of location, i.e. where do we put it? I won't go into the
details, but you just know the response had to be, "Not in my
neighborhood!" Like who wants an ugly statue on their doorstep, no matter
what the symbolism? Especially considering the symbolism. Talk about
negativity.
In Austria, there is a law against not believing in the Holocaust.
Did you know that? This is the thing that interested me. Like it's one
thing to throw someone in jail for their beliefs, but arresting them for
what they don't believe, that's something else totally.
I could envision Joseph K. being taken away and told he had
committed a crime of not believing something, not necessarily the
Holocaust. Anything. Whatever. Perhaps like the unwed mothers of Gem
County and Emmett, Idaho, the authorities had been alerted to his state
of disbelief by "teachers, family members or social workers."
Then what?
What kind of trial would follow a charge of not believing?
Austria had once compelled William Tell to shoot an apple on his son's
head because had failed to salute somebody's hat. It had also once been
the only country in Europe to grant titles of nobi lity to Jews. Of
course, the Jews had been Rothchilds. But it was a start. I, personally,
do not believe in "the Holocaust". But before anyone goes ballistic, what
I actually know is that six million Jews, Polocks, homosexuals, gypsies
and various other people deemed illegitimate by a government as duly
constituted as the one in Idaho, died in Nazi death camps. The Holocaust,
on the other hand, is a label, a media gimmick devised to exploit those
murders for whatever reasons, political, financial, et c. But mostly to
sell books. The Holocaust did not exist before the 1970s.
The law in Austria that makes it a crime to not believe in the
holocaust preys on the same docility of the human spirit that led to the
holocaust in the first place. And also which permits the rounding up of
unwed mothers in Idaho. A pregnant 16-year-old girl is not in a position
to defend herself -- especially in a case which is being brought for the
sole purpose of shaming her in public -- no matter how unjust she may
believe the charge. After all, she has, so to speak, been caught with the
goods. Only one of the ten girls rounded up so far have opted for a
trial. It was before a judge, possibly since a jury of her piers would be
unlikely, jury duty being another adult entertainment disallowed to
children in Idaho.
I just know there is going to be some knee jerk who immediately
screams "trivialization"; like how awful to compare the fate of the Jews
to a bunch of sex-crazed harlots. The real trivialization of the
Holocaust, however, is to use the fate of the murde red to divert
attention from the holocaust that on goes at all levels right now under
our noses. For instance, the media all but ignored the fact that the FBI
attack on the religious community of Mount Carmel April 19, 1993, occurred
on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the same
week Bill Clinton dedicated the Holocaust museum in D.C.
Commemorating the Holocaust is like remembering you had stomach
cancer by stabbing yourself in the belly. If I were an actual person who
died in the Nazis' concentration camps, would I want my death to be
commemorated by something that looks like an outhouse? I don't think so.
And I wouldn't want to be remembered for puking out my guts in a
cremetorium either. That's like the poor bastard who's Times obit
headline said, "So & So, 82, Editor in Fake Hitler Diaries Scandal." 82
years, and that was his major claim to fame? Forget it.
But I am not comparing the Gem County strumpets to the Jews et.
al., Holocaust, etc. I am trying to figure out the mentality that created
the reasoning that governed both instances. In both, there was an
insidious understanding that laws and rules coul d be logically
manipulated to gain personal advantage at the expense of persons who were
weak or vulnerable. If Jews are people of the Book, Germans are people of
reason. The death camps were a reasonable outcome of a reasonable fuehrer
who happened to be quite mad. The same applies to Gem County. One can
only wonder at the state of Idaho in the early twenties that required the
passage of a law forbidding fornication forever, at least between men and
women. Besides homosexuals, it also seems to have left out pigs, goats
and sheep as possibilities for sexual enjoyment. Also, possibly the dead.
But in any case, until now, most authorities there seem to have had the
good sense not to enforce it. Gem County is the sole exception.
I forgot what I was talking about.
Oh yeah. Not believing. Of course, not believing is not the same
as being pregnant illegally, but being put on trial for it is just as
absurd. Kafka would have loved it.
Suppose it was a girl who did not believe she was pregnant. What
would they do to her? The being of non being. Were you the one who asked
me about Wittgenstein? Suppose it was a Jew who did not believe
someone... his girl friend... someone else was p regnant. And suppose the
Judge did not believe him. You can almost hear the bonfires being readied
in the town square. It is, of course, perfectly legal in Austria not to
believe in God. It is, after all, a civilized country. But the Holocaust
is a different story. To not believe in a Jewish folktale is a sin.
Which could cost you your life. Or maybe your soul. In Gem County, it is
the sin of life itself that is the crime. Of course, they don't burn
their women in the town square anymore, and I doubt if they even make them
wear a big red F. At least, not yet. But the archetype of the punishment
remains in place. Theoretically. Right or wrong, there is a stain. The
girl sinned in the eyes of her countymen. And to the extent that the
punishment is withheld, she remains in their power. The records may be
sealed, but they are not destroyed.
*
You probably wonder what all that's about, don't you? I think
it's what they call stating a theme. In this case, of being and non
being. Wittgenstein and Hester Prynne. Congress and power. Memory and
meaning. Staking a claim. Poker Flats. Ambrose ! What are you doing in
town?
The question betrayed concern. Seven against Tequilla. Robert Vaughn
played Maximus.
Hi.
They looked at each other.
Deadeye behind the mask
I'd recognize you anywhere.
But Holmes missed the postman.
Until the very end.
It was a sad case, but Holmes did not know the difference between makeup
and real skin. He was completely befuddled.
You mean three people died before you figured it out?
Yes.
What did he mean it was a fake?
it meant nothing
The Mad Hatter appeared and took the bailiff.
he walked over and sat down by the door.
one of childhood's beloved tales. My mother was arrested for having me.
How do you tell that to your daughter?
All the time I was growing up, people were pointing at me.
I had to be someone. Special.
Like not me.
I had to believe in me. There wasn't room for anything else. I had to
constantly think me me me. I was all that counted. I completely forgot
about the Holocaust. But that didn't mean I didn't believe in it. I did.
It's just I no longer paid it lip service. Maybe that's why they put it
there. Outside. It's outside my window. The bunker. I called, but I
got a busy signal. Who do you think I should call and complain. I don't
want it there. It completely absorbs the light. They said they'd move
it. But it's still there. Like a big bug outside my window. It looks
like a, whatda ya call it, a box. It looks like a big shoe box. What the
hell do I want a shoo box outside my window for? What am I? Jewish?
It's not my fault about the... Let' s talk about something nice. I tell
you I just can't think with all the fa-cac-ta-ing noise outside. What are
they? Like it's Lenin's tomb or something. They're all lined up to go
in. I tell you it's not right. God, I hate it. What the fuck are the
Jews putting that thing out there for God's sake? This is a decent
neighborhood. Nobody fights. Take it some place else. Give it to the
Israel-lites. Make them look at it. You got a light? Yeah. I'm on the
second floor. Two flights. The ground floor don't count. I'm two
flights up, and it still bothers me. I wouldn't mind except for the
noise. The hum drives me crazy. Yeah. It buzzes. It's something they
got in there, I think. Nobody will come here with that thing out there.
It's like a fucking whatdaya callit. A nazi. Yeah. It's like a Nazi.
Staring in my window, telling me what I can do and not do. Yeah. She's a
darling. I love her. She's all mine. I don't care what they think. I'm
going to keep her. I know what it's about. They want to take her away.
Give her to someone else. I won't let them. I'll hide her if I have to.
I hate that thing. What is it? How the hell should I know? It's a big
block of concrete. With a door in it. On the other side, I guess. I can
o nly see one. They go in. But no one comes out. I'm not going near it.
They have to come out somewhere don't they? I mean, it's not like...
Oh, I don't know. They're flaky. It's some sort of religious
holiday. Personally, I think it sucks. I want to write on it. I want to
make doodles on the face of the holocaust. I want to write FUCK YOU BILL
CLINTON in the flames. But David says tha t would be a sin. You have to
love those who persecute you. Even if it means forgiving them while you
burn. It's a heavy discipline, I can tell you. The bunker is in the
center of the compound, and most of us are going to go in there when the
tanks at tack, and hope that we will somehow be saved. I don't have to
tell you, I'm scared. Davoid sayus evaerwaug thing wiatlagtaeorga hber
a;l;l right
but oi dpmn
t mpwl
lmp
lkknow
faith is a heavy burden
I don't want to die
I read a book once about
don't want to get into that.
doesn't matter.
You ever notice how a bunkeer and a tank look almost alike. Tjhat thing
out there looks just like a tank. All it needs is a gun barrel.
I can almost imagine it pointing at me.
Got to stop fantasizing. Think about something else. No use thinking
aout what's going to happen. God's will. That's what it was. They came
to Cordoba.
Everyone who's ever seen the Seven Samurai knows what happened.
It was a magnificent shootout. Kelly was holding a censored
What are you doing?
Zeroing in. Bansai, Kelly-san.
You need me. Remember that.
All his life he had been moving around. Not thinking too much about it.
Now he was here. So?
At night, they sat around the fire, commerades on the trail. I
love this kind of life. Tad said he did, too. It was a cold night. The
others each had their own story of how they had got here. Or what had
happened somewhere else. But I was here. I knew I had to be. Did you
ever think of that? It was just natural. It was better than sleeping
with the pigs. You don't see much of that in the movie. They were
herding a herd of pigs through the sagebrush. Trying to pick up some
money on the side. The shootout was just an incident on the way to
Durango. So they made a big deal out of it. So what? It just happened.
What can I say? Shit happens. Yul loved pigs. He could hardly tell the
difference between pigs and girls. Of course, most of hi s girls were
pigs. I don't know why he insisted on bringing them along. There's a guy
at my grandmother's condo who wants to make something like that. With all
the names of the people who had lived there engraved on the walls. My
grandmother thinks it 's nuts. What do people want to see that for? It's
bad enough having to look at them while they're still alive. I don't want
my name on a plaque, she says. My grandmother is like a total nihilist.
She doesn't believe in anything. In Austria, she would be in chains. I
could just see the trial. God, would my grandmother have something to
tell a judge. It would be a real shootout.
I have to stop soon, because there's going to be another mystery
in a few minutes, and I want to watch. I'll tell you about it later.
Love,
Cody
P.S. I don't want to be Evita anymore.