Art is stranger than fiction. I can't say that's definitely true, but this is an election year so truth doesn't matter as long as it sounds good. And art is art whether it sounds good or not.
Or even looks good
Yes, art can be creepy
Maybe freaky
And full of mixed messages
And not just flat art. 3-D art describes life in few words.
lovely
Relaxing
refreshing
playful
Hip
Sometimes Art's just a matter of perspective.
I wouldn't walk under that bird.
Or near this tree
Or into this giant baby?
Sometimes I think our artistic sanity is hanging by a thread.
Dirk Destroyer, yada yada, Another post, yada yada. Read responsibly, yada yada.
Chapter 20
Knowing It
We didn’t play any music that night. We spent most of the night
talking about jousting, until the dawn was just beginning to break.
“So anyway,” said Dirk, “I haven’t been all that
straightforward with you for the last… oh say, five thousand
years.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s this whole thing about oblivion. I haven’t been going
there. Well, that’s not true; I went there the first time, just to
see how it was. I didn’t like it much.”
I wanted to say something like, “I knew it!” or even, “I
suspected as much,” but I didn’t like to lie to my brother when I
had actually been clueless.
“So they don’t have cigars in oblivion,” I asked.
“Not as far as I could tell, no.”
“That was probably a good choice then,” I said. “Is there any
reason you didn’t tell me before?”
“Yeah,” said Dirk. “You have this habit of obeying authority,
and I figured if a Light Bringer asked you, you might tell them I
haven’t been going there.”
I wanted to be furious. I had been furious with Dirk once a couple
of thousand years earlier. I don’t remember what it was about, but
I do remember that I really enjoyed it at the time. Unfortunately,
Dirk was probably right, so I gave up on the whole furious thing and
asked, “So… where you been?”
“Different places,” he said. “You know the trans-dimensional
dial at the school of amazing stuff is great for traveling.”
“You never mentioned the trans-dimensional dial.”
“Well, it just never came up.”
“So why are you telling me all this now?”
“’Cause Uriculous is right,” he said. “This time they’re
going to cast us both out, and it’ll be forever.”
“I finally have a girlfriend and…”
“I know,” said Dirk. “The timing sucks, but I have a nice
three-bedroom in a place called So-Ho. It’s a pleasant little
neighborhood in a den of iniquity called New York. I think you’ll
like it – at least until you get a place of your own.”
I signed heavily. “I haven’t known Ono that long, but I’ll ask
her if she wants to go to the planet So-Ho, orbiting New York with
me.”
“Sorry Brother,” said Dirk. “She can’t come. We can’t
even bring Swampy. It’s gotta be just you and me.”
“Why?”
“Stuff you wouldn’t understand.”
That was probably true. “Well then,” I said, “this is good-bye
then, Brother. I can’t go with you.”
Dirk shook his head. “You have to.”
“What do you mean, I have to. You aren’t the boss of me!”
“Two.” He motioned to the world around us as if I hadn’t
noticed what planet I was sitting on at the time. “It’s going to
be destroyed – well, most of it, anyway.”
“You’re going to destroy Two?”
“Not me,” he said, “the sheep. It’s called global swarming.”
“I knew it!” and I shouted that much louder than necessary. All
my life, and it was getting to be a pretty long life, I’d wanted to
say, ‘I knew it!’ I’d heard other people say it a million
times – maybe more, and not being able to say it myself starting
getting me down four or five thousand years ago, and it had just
gotten worse with each century.
Of course I could have said, ‘I knew it!’ any damn time I wanted.
I didn’t have any physical restrictions that prevented me from
uttering the words, but I wanted the first time to be special. I
wanted the occasion to mean something like… like I actually knew
what I was shouting, ‘I knew it!’ about.
Did I really know it, or did I just suspect it? I remembered in the
cave with All Bore that I guessed it. Was that the same as knowing?
When do you know it’s right? Was I just cheapening myself by
saying, ‘I knew it!’ when really I only kinda thought it?
You don’t stand up and shout triumphantly, ‘I kinda thought it!’
It’s not the same, and now that I was thinking about it, I felt a
little nauseous, considering that I’d wasted my first time when I
wasn’t really sure.
I felt cheap and used, and I wanted to blame Dirk, though I knew I
only had myself to blame.
Only had myself… I knew it…
No, that didn’t work.
“You might be worried about Ono,” said Dirk.
Oh my goodness! Ono!
“You can’t let the planet swarm with Ono on it!”
“Big Brother,” said Dirk. “You know better than anyone else
that I’m just a guy like everyone else. Sure I learned a few
interesting things in the school of amazing stuff, but nothing to
stop this.
“But there is hope.”
“Hope?” I said as if I’d never heard the word. Dirk knew I’d
heard it. I mean you don’t go living even a couple centuries
without hearing the word, hope.
“Phasia,” he said.
“The big continent with the polite hard-working people who are good
at math?”
“That’s the one,” Dirk confirmed. “Phasia won’t get
swarmed. As a matter of fact, Phasia would be having a sheep
shortage right now if Uriculous allowed any use for the beasts.”
“How, why?” I said, hoping the two answers were sufficiently
related so I wouldn’t have to guess which question he was answering
first.
“A long time ago,” Dirk said, “the Phasians figured out that
putting up fences didn’t bug the sheep. They started putting
fences around their homes, and then around their barns, then around
their villages and fields. Finally Phasia was just full of fenced,
sheep-free areas, and they started connecting them. Most of the
sheep wandered elsewhere.”
“But Ono’s not in Phasia.”
“But you have a Showr Rinn monk with you, right?”
“Yes.”
“They’re from Phasia. I’ll bet he’ll be willing to take Ono
with him.”
“So I’ll go too!”
“I don’t think so, Elmer. How good are you at math? But that
girl of yours looks bright. I bet she could add two and two. If you
ask the monk, he’ll take her back to Phasia.”
“But who will protect her from Lustavious?”
“Who?”
“The Light Bringer.”
“He’s a masher, is he?”
I had no idea what a masher was, and contrary to Dirk’s
implication, I could add two and two, but I was embarrassed that my
obsession over saying, ‘I knew it,’ had distracted me from Ono’s
welfare, so I let both pass. As it turns out, I didn’t need to
worry about letting it pass because Dirk was already moving on.
“So you’re defending her from the Light Bringer?” asked Dirk.
“Well… no,” I said. “But I was planning to, once we figured
out a way to stop them from casting us into oblivion.”
Dirk raised his eyebrow in the way he did when he thought I was being
particularly dense. “You know we can’t stop them from casting us
out,” he said, “and if you haven’t been defending her, who’s
been doing it so far?”
“Swampy mostly,” I said, “and Lip Ton Tease the one time.”
“I’m assuming Tease is your monk,” said Dirk. “It sounds
perfect to me. Once we’re gone, she’ll still have Swampy and
she’ll be off to Phasia with the monk. She doesn’t need you.”
Sometimes Dirk meant to be hurtful; sometimes it just came naturally.
“The important thing,” he said, “is that you hold onto that
scratchwing. You have to hold onto me with one hand, and the
scratchwing with the other.”
“What’s so important about the scratchwing?”
“You wouldn’t understand it.”
“I’m getting tired of hearing that! That’s what you said about
why we couldn’t take Ono!”
Dirk stepped up to me and gave me a man hug. It’s the kind of hug
where you wrap your arms around the other guy as much as you can
without bringing your torsos together. Dirk had very long arms and
like so many things, he was skilled at man hugging. “Ono would
probably die if we tried to bring her,” he said. “You and I are
very durable. That’s why we’ve been around so long.
Trans-dimensional travel is no picnic, Brother. Even if she
survived, she’d probably be missing legs, arms, an eyeball –
maybe half her nose. I don’t think she’d like it.”
I tried to get my brain to think of something to say – something
masterful and creative. As usual, my brain, which is very good about
keeping track of how many cigars I had in my fanny pack – none at
the moment, was not particularly functional when it came to things
that were masterful or creative. “You sure?” was all I could
come up with.
“It’s all for the best, Brother,” said Dirk. “I bet she
likes Phasia. There are lots of showers there.”
“So when does it all happen?”
“The casting out? It’ll happen when Uriculous and the Light
Bringer corner me. In other words, it’ll happen soon. I’ll try
to stay away so you can make arrangements with the monk. When you’re
done, wander off and find me.
“But make sure you have the scratchwing! It’s very important.”
“I understand,” I said, lying because I didn’t understand at
all, but not understanding had been a pretty common occurrence when
my brother was around.
“Alright Buddy,” said Dirk, slapping me on the arm. “It’ll
be good spending time together after all these millennia. I’ll
show you around New York. If you’re good, I’ll even introduce
you to the Stevens twins. I can’t tell them apart, so you can have
whichever one you want.”
“Are they women?” I asked.
He gave me that eyebrow thing again.
And now for no reason other than it's in the news - here's a song we've all heard too often.
Fellow Go Figure Reads writer, Stanley McFarland is working on a
project about hell. He writes on a blog a few times a year, and it’s
usually something long, churchy, and egg-heady. It’s pretty boring
stuff, but feel free to check it out. boring blog
Anyway, Stanley says he’s reworking the concept of hell, and he
asked me what I think of it. I wanted to say that hell was reading
long, churchy, egg-heady blog posts about stuff I don’t understand,
but seeing as he writes for Go Figure Reads, I decided I should be
more helpful.
So here are the top ten ways that I see hell.
1) An eternal presidential campaign.
1a) A campaign where the two major candidates are the worst people I
can think of. Wait! Are we in hell already?
2) Gnats.
3) Endless root canal session with about 50 trillion requests of,
“just a little wider, please,” from my polite demonic dentist.
4) Celine Dion tribute on steel guitars.
5) Being next in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles while the
person at the window refuses to leave until he can vent his complaint
one more time…
6a) I pay to go to France with friends and find I’m the only one in
my group that doesn’t speak French…
6b) And doesn’t understand art…
6c) And doesn’t like wine…
6d) And is allergic to stinky cheese.
7) All Award Shows, All the Time!
8) Lima bean Pop Tarts.
9a) To have that dream again where I’m back in school and I’m not
wearing pants
9b) And find out it’s not a dream.
10) Any given day in Caitlyn Jenner’s life.
Then again, some animated characters don't seem to mind hell.
I suppose it’s
a little late to mention it, but those chapters that are spelled out
(like Twenty,) are diversions from the story, while those that are
enumerated (thanks CL for giving me that cool word,) (like 21,) move
the story along.
Kinda cute,
right?
Well who asked
you?
I don’t care
if I did ask you – I thought it was cute even if nobody else did.
Remember, this entire magnum opus (‘nother cool word, but this time
I got it from Star Trek reruns,) is free of charge.
But back to the
beauty of these nonenumerated diversional chapters (wow am I cranking
out the cool words tonight!) You can take these chapters almost like
short stories and you might even understand what’s going on without
reading the previous 37 Dirk Destroyer posts.
Chapter Twenty
Fassentinker
The scratchwing and bellow had been such a fine combination for
instrumental duets that when I was born people in my village thought
they had been part of civilization forever. Two years later when
Dirk was born, most people still held the same opinion.
Though the scratchwing is a precision instrument and the bellow more
tonal and percussive, it was the fad of composers in my youth to ask
the direct opposite of each. The result was a musical product that
resembled a raptor swimming under water next to a leviathan farting.
It was unpleasant, but it was art, and to expect art to be pleasant
is common, base, uncultured, and ignorant. The annual art endowments
were thus awarded to the artists, composers, choreographers,
sculptors, and nose pickers who most made you wish that your head was
an internal organ.
Those were heady days for the arts.
Dutifully, Dirk and I studied music and practiced every day. Dirk
developed a sardonic sense of humor; I developed allergies; and our
mother went through three divorces.
I remember a particularly cruel punishment I received in middle
school after my rendition of V. D. Popengut’s ninth inversion was
greeted with applause by my classmates. I was forced to listen to
the correct interpretation repeatedly until I was light-headed from
loss of blood and mucus.
It was into this world of poignant artistic integrity that Captain
Kangar Fassentinker rose to prominence. Kangar Fassentinker was a
tug boat captain on the continent of Pogo where his primary trade was
to take tourists to the one toilet, or loo, as they were called down
there, that flowed in the correct direction. Captain Kangar –loo
as he was popularly known to the inhabitants of those parts, had very
little adult trade, as most people over the age of seven felt no need
to see a toilet flow the correct way more than once. Smaller
children however, could never get enough of it, and after some time,
parents began habitually leaving their children on his tugboat before
leaving for work, or to score drugs.
Kangar Fassentinker was not pleased with this turn of events. An
accomplished scratchwing player in his youth with four suicides to
his credit, Captain Kangar-loo began playing his scratchwing – not
properly, but in a contrarian fashion - in opposition to the accepted
artistical forms of the day.
Unfortunately, the children of his tugboat nursery had not yet
developed the sophistication necessary to understand that what they
were hearing was asinine, derivative crap, and so they loved and
adored the Captain almost as much as he loathed them. The Captain
lived in an increasingly unbearable world of happy children, swirling
water, and deplorably pleasant music.
After twenty-five years, and a dozen unexplained drownings, Luke
Gandolf, a writer of fantasies, and creator of toys that were
particularly harmful to children, remembered his dear Captain
Kangar-loo, and bailed him out of jail, in order to bring Kangar
Fassentinker’s music to the world.
Unfortunately, only a handful of Fassentinker’s pieces were
released to the world including his exquisite third duet for
scratchwing and bellow before Fassentinker slipped on a cube of ice
and accidentally impaled himself on an ice pick left carelessly
propped, point up, on the floor. This occurred at the apartment of
the aforementioned composer, Vladimir Draculo Popengut, who was the
only witness to the event.
Not sure if Danny Kaye was Fassentinker or Popengut, but I love his movies.
I don’t believe in crank calls. I never called a store to ask if
they had Prince Albert in a can. It’s not that I don’t like a
good joke – I just don’t like aggression, and there are few
things more aggressive (in my humble opinion) than to activate a
klaxon in someone’s home, place of business, pocket, or blue tooth
that demands immediate attention.
So I don’t believe in making phone calls of any description, not to
mention crank calls.
Transforming a call into a crank call when someone aggressively rings
a bell in my ear is another matter entirely.
Ring, ring
Headley: Beauchamp, ques-que-sais?
Caller: I’m very sorry; I was looking for Headley Hauser. I
seem to have called the wrong number.
Headley: De rien. (hangs up.)
Of course I’m counting on the caller having neither a knowledge of
French, nor an ability to distinguish that my accent comes from that
part of France that is just west of Greensboro, North Carolina.
Maybe that’s more properly in Quebec.
If the caller responds in French, I would probably say – uno
momento (completely ignoring the fact that that’s Spanish,) put the
phone receiver down and leave the room. They can wait all day if
they want – I don’t mind the phone staying off the hook. What’s
the worst that can happen – I miss a few phone calls?
As soon as email came around, the telephone was dead to me. I hear
that some folks say that as soon as texting came around, that email
was dead to them – but they’re barbarians and they don’t even
write out their words properly.
But still the phone hangs on the wall in my kitchen taking up space
like that slicer/dicer machine that does EVERYTHING… except I’ve
yet to use it out of fear that it will scoff at me for not properly
appreciating julienne fries.
Yes the phone is on the wall and NOT in my pocket. Why anyone would
want to carry around a device that can rip them out of the serenity
of driving in rush hour traffic, or the enjoyment of an ice cream
headache from sucking on a Friendlies Fribble, I’ll never know.
Once in a while that phone on the wall rings, and the routine begins
again – “Volkov, kak va?”
I’ve made a point to learn foreign-sounding names and terse
greetings in 15 different languages. I may not remember them all
correctly, but it’s not as if my goal is communication. That’s
why I had to stop using my Spanish greeting – too many people
understood what I was saying, or even corrected my gringo
pronunciation.
Those who know me well are not fooled. They just ignore whatever I
say.
Headley: Jer shrr Li.
Caller: Yeah, Headley, you need to tell Go Figure Reads to move your
books out of my store, nobody’s going to buy them.
Headley: War yaoww chyoo tser-swor.
Caller: Right, and soon, please. James Patterson is coming out with
a new book he had someone else write for him, and if I don’t
display 30 cases, a crack CIA strike team will burn my building down.
Headley: Wor ting boo-dong
Caller: Yeah, you too.
…
I know I had a point to make here.
If you can think of it, give me a ring.
But the master of phone humor will always be the beloved Bob Newhart.
The Fellowship of the Bring and their target, Dirk Destroyer (whose real last name is McFarland,) are in close proximity. Between them is Dirk's brother Elmer (who is narrating this story and is also named McFarland,) and Ono, a magical, confusing young woman who makes Elmer's 8000-year-old heart go pitter-patter.
Chapter 19
Showing Off
In hindsight, mentioning that Dirk was going to meet me was probably
not a good idea.
“Ah hah,” said Jonma Claim, now thoroughly possessed by
Uriculous.
“The inverted stewpot has shutdown for the day,” Mage-e-not
explained. “Now all the pols are out eating rubber chicken and
looking for Champagne money,” (or something like that.)
“Too shmuch shmoney in shpoliticsch,” said Jonma Claim who was
apparently not thoroughly possessed by Uriculous.
In spite of the occasional blurt, Jonma Claim was not about to let me
out to wander freely and meet with Dirk.
“Ish our Schance,” said Jonma Claim in an increasingly bothersome
lisp. “Wesh getsh shou botsh togesher.”
“Which we could have done where we were last night,” said
Mage-e-not.
“Doeschent schmatter,” sputtered Jonma Claim.
“The other place had better showers,” said Lip Ton Tease.
“And fewer pigs,” said Lustavious, who had mistaken a mound of
pig excrement for a mound of dirt to sit on.
“Doeschent schmatter!” repeated Jonma Claim around great gobs of
spit that found their way to the few remaining un-besmirched areas on
Lustavious’ bandage. “We wash shim, and we getsch boschhh.”
“We wash him?” asked Tease.
“Wash shim!” corrected Jonma Claim. “Wash shim, wash shim, wash
shim!” He was pointing to his eyes, until we all got the message.
“I don’t think you lisped this badly when we started out, High
Priest,” sang Lustavious.
“Wash shim!” Jonma Claim snapped.
So they washed… watched me – all of them, even Jonma Carry –
even Swampy. I started pacing, not because I felt like pacing, but
to see what they would do. Every pair of eyes watched me back and
forth. I started jumping. Whatever other skills I might lack, I
have always been a fine jumper. Every pair of eyes watched me up and
down.
I was about to start somersaults, when Tease said, “The sheep.”
“Washaboutem,” said Jonma Claim.
“Wash a bottom?” asked Tease.
“I think he means,” said Lustavious, “what about them.”
“They’re back.”
“Baaaaaaaaaack,” said Mage-e-not.
A phalanx of sheep, rams in front, ewes in back, and little lambs
eating ivy on the side, marched lock-step toward our position.
“Not sheep-like,” said Lustavious.
“Schut upsch!” said Jonma Claim.
They formed up twenty paces away, then their phalanx split.
“What are they doing?” asked Mage-e-not.
“Schut upsch!” said Jonma Claim.
“Should have stayed where we were,” muttered Mage-e-not.
Through the opening in the phalanx came eight sheep with branches
across their backs forming a crude platform. On the platform was a
large ram.
“Completely un-sheep-like,” said Lustavious.
Jonma Claim didn’t say ‘Schut upsch,’ or ‘quietsch,’ or ‘do
shnot dischturb,’ or even ‘no moleschte por favor.’ He, like
everyone else in our party but Ono and me, were focused on the ram
standing on the platform.
“Dirk?” mouthed Ono quietly, and I marveled that she could mouth
as difficult a name to mouth as Dirk, as perfectly as she did, with
such a subtle question mark inflection.
I clawed out of my marveling enough to grab the scratchwing that Dirk
had given me and nodded my head in the affirmative – (except in the
land of Pogo on the other side of the planet, where such movement of
the head meant a negative, or ‘hey, the water in the loo is moving
the wrong way,’ depending on the occasion.)
Apparently Ono was not from Pogo, because she understood my
affirmative nod – at least she didn’t go off to watch the water
in the loo, which was a good thing, because we were quite distant
from the nearest flush toilet which happened to be at the inverted
stew pot, where at that very moment, they were flushing the day’s
legislation to make certain that no voters ever read it.
I have to be honest. I had no idea if they were flushing the day’s
legislation at that very moment.
The ram opened its mouth and did not say Bah. It said instead,
“Uriculous Wisehind!” which is something I had rarely if ever,
heard a mammal other than human, or politician say.
“Uriculous Wisehind,” repeated the ram with a lovely little goat
vibrato through the hind part. I mean to say the vibrato vibrated
through the end part of Uriculous’ last name – or “hind.” As
far as I could tell the ram’s hind part was unaffected and remained
unvibrated – not that I habitually study the hind parts of rams or
other male mammals.
“Uriculous Wisehind… answer me!”
“Yesh?” said Jonma Claim.
“Ewe… Ewe… ewe… BUG ME!”
The words bug me were not capitalized in speech, of course, but they
were very loud, and on further reflection the ram might have been
saying “you” as opposed to “ewe.” Of course, it being a ram,
and rams having a fondness for ewes, it was a natural mistake on my
part, as I’m sure it might have been for many people – especially
those who were accustomed to the preferences of sheep, both sexually
and by association to think that the ram was speaking of the female
of his species, and not a short, bald, possessed human male.
Though Jonma Claim did not enunciate his reasoning, he chose that
moment to leave the area, as did all the party, even Ono, who mouthed
a rather lengthy message to me, which though I am certain must have
been mouthed perfectly, my inadequacies in lip reading left me with
only, “so long.”
“So long,” I said to all of them, including Ono, hoping that it
was a sufficient response to her mouthed message.
I walked up to the ram on the platform and said, “You know, I could
really use a cigar right now. Do you have any?”
“Eat me,” said the ram. Then he climbed down from his platform,
and moments after reaching the ground the phalanx became a much less
un-sheep-like flock.
“Come on now Brother,” said Dirk standing up from the back of the
flock. “That was some first rate work.”
I had to agree. No one can do simultaneous animal control,
telekinesis, and ventriloquism like Dirk. Each was a natural
ability, but it takes talent and thousands of years of practice to
make them work in concert so well.
“You have the scratchwing,” said Dirk, handing me a cigar and
match. “Good, come this way.”
So I went, which is the mirror reflection of come, which would make
Dirk the mirror…
I’m not sure what that last sentence meant, but I went with Dirk.
Of course we know that sheep never do stuff like they did in this chapter.
