Kyle Fitzsimmons

They used to play “Hotel California”

every night in the pool hall

                   like a ritual of conditional memory

 

Dave Parker’s latest attempt to quit smoking

          consisted of keeping a cigarette

dangling from his mouth

Until somebody offered him a light

 

And that somebody wasn’t me, it turned out

          as I slid my matches back into my pocket

Or anybody else at the pool hall this evening

Presuming I wasn’t the first to ask

          why he had that unlit smoke in his mouth

 

I wonder if he had a movie playing in his mind

          of a future time when a stranger walked in

                    and handed him a silver torch you could light in hurricane

 

I wonder if he was even with us in the pool hall

          as he moved around the room

lining up his shots with an eye to the leave,

                    that endless guitar solo fading gradually away

 

When he finally dropped the black ball

          He stood at the head of the table

                   like the patriarch of a failed clan

And we all turned and looked out the door

          into the cool quiet spring night outside.

 

admin Poetry

I built an empire of the mind

Without ever conquering a soul

And when the bones of history sang for the flesh that once clothed them

They brought a madman to this dry white shoal

Tyrannized by every law of every land he traversed

Without ever having committed a crime

His conscience and compassion found no reflection

In the outer world’s design

A failure to adapt, some would say

To the realities, to the demands, of life

And yet, he, as I, was successful in his way

In that most demanding profession, to write–

Worlds and dimensions for the sake of ideas

As though a man could conceive—

Bold strokes across the canvass of space

As could only be the naïve—

 

We will bring our warlike ways to the stars!

Schooled in the ethic of labour

Tortured by the Amazon women of Mars

To earn our father’s favour

Squirreling away scenarios

From their purple-fingered grasp

Something to take away from their beds

When they’ve been satisfied at last

 

Faithless dreams of a solitary life

Our names embossed, our words enshrined

Limitless the possiblities

Of an undeveloped mind

That sets about to penetrate

Reality with the the unreal

Believing it would manifest itself

To an ernestly moral appeal

Censors blindly bearing down

Against muses moving like torreadors 

Weilding the fabric of time and space

Rife with extra-terrestrial spores

 

He knew to find me in the one room

From which I could not see

Seeking inspiration in gloom

To switch the ephemeral gene

How can the primordial know of this

It informs the lies of kings I recall

Despairingly elusive to the solitary

While holding nations in it’s thrawl 

In earlier throes I described this domain

To my friend before it was erected

Drinking and talking better than the poets–

Whose passions were incestually whetted

Does anything spring from the heart fully formed

That has the life of war and wisdom?

Those who are stricken by desire

What need have they of invention?

My friend took a permanent air of confusion

Reflective of women’s malancholy

Frozen in the act of creation when they asked

“Why do you never write of me?”

Never recognising themselves

In heroines hued in alien green

He wrote of space, in Voltaires time,

How they wrote of the sea

Starstuff salting breasts and loins

Surging in the light of the moon

Discovering truth in untold words

To make the old salt swoon

They left him as lonely as an astronaut

Watching nations break apart

With no-one to retrieve him

From the vaccuum of the heart

 

We took solace in the city back then

When we found a madman in the square

“They’re framing me for molestation,

“For exposing their corrupt affair.”

We were enamoured of the insane

And moved to cure him of his state

The pain in his eyes was too evident

To make no attempt to alleviate

He told us of the evidence he’d collected

Reaching the highest levels of power

Until we tired of his dissertation

And pled the lateness of the hour

Struggling to escape his orbit

His life collapsing  under its weight

Drawing all without within

So that nothing could escape.

We always thought we were being watched

It gave us a certain joie de vivre

Akin to the genre we took up

Under no obligation to be believed

But we felt as we left the madman in the square

The press of the city’s eyes on our brow

A madness mixed with wherewithal

Like Ulysses at the plow

Wandering the streets together that night

Seeking the strands of a terminated dream

Veins of beauty in the dark like stone

Set alight by marijuana and caffeine

Working the madman into grandiose plans

How we bring about our personal hells

All those years railing at injustice–

Our mothers told us we should worry about ourselves

Is this the universe on which we speculate?

That has no consequence?

Are we deluded into morality

By a need for karmic recompense?

Devine justice the refuge of cowards

Who have no earthly charge to press

While those who’ve wronged them continue deaf

To the pantheon’s judicial behest

But when we forget our aspirations

Regret will burn with equal flame

Or so it would seem to youthful minds

With aspirations unnattained…

 

 

We talked of the potential of neuroleptics

While indulging in narcotics

We could have recorded those conversations

And deemed it philanthropic

Can a species reproduce by travelling through time?

Eradicated by missing a single leap

Would history remember the wars it waged?

Would the dead return to their feet?

How deep are our roots in the cosmos?

As deep as our knowledge, we presumed

Paradox, the universal jest

That dogs the fates of ambitious fools

Our unconscious playing the strings of time

Despite our determination

A consciousness revealing itself

In our own perverse narrations…

 

But it was our own fates that preoccupied us

As we mourned our friendship in the dawn

When I was finally given the words to a question

I’d unwittedly been dwelling on

“Is conscience contrary to nature?

The way it seems to drive us insane

Or is it a suppression of will

That upholds the willfuls’ reign?”

“And is progress itself contrary to nature?” 

“With the comfort it brings those fit to survive”

As the sun kept with the question I asked

Dimming to accede the cloud quilted sky

Ushering silence

All else a diversion

In comparison; simplicity

The most outrageous perversion.

That there may be a plan

We know but defy

To willingly collude

With a kingly lie…

 

I was to parse history for the keys

To codes as yet unbroken

He was to plumb the soul of man

For words as yet unspoken

While all the others retold myth

Futility of empire, epic and oft

We kept away from robots and aliens

So they called our science fiction soft

“There are places he has been before me!”

The psychologist said of the bard

Those concerned with the human soul

Came to call his science fiction hard

And though consigned to the fringe of a fringe

He garnered his awards

Longing for the American cannon

Ling’ring in convention doors

As we dovetailed into science fact–

We could walk the moon and wipe ourselves out–

We lingered in the door of civilization

Barred to us by the bargain of Faust

But seemingly ceaseless flourishings of hope

Came with each passing loss of faith

Though no enlightment could unhinge our souls

From the daily reports of life laid waste

All my theories reading as trivia

To what anyone could see with their two eyes

So I resigned myself to an encyclopia

Of conspiracies alphabetically itemized

Seeming now as if everybody

Knew everything about how it wasn’t as it seemed

At least from what they saw movies

And watched every night on TV

Perhaps my intention not being to reveal

But to return the arcane to it’s cradle of dust

Which wasn’t as I imagined so fertile

Our minds maybe having expanded enough…

 

Now he came to me in the agony

Of the perrenially polite

I pushed an ashtray on the table toward him

And handed him a light

“So I hear you got a movie deal

I said with a hint of derision

He said the willing suspension of disbelief

Is based on the persistence of vision”

But he did not join me in my laughter

Perhaps not meaning to joke

So I went to the bar and poured us a drink

As he ignited his smoke

Issuing white nebulae into the air

Shattered by diffuse exhalations

Orphaned strands crawling across the ceiling

Like cobwebs imbued with animation,

 

His skin flushed an unhealthy red

His eyes watery and pale

He wiped the whiskey from his mustache

And began to tell his tale…

 

…Do actors dream of celluloid sheep?

I wondered as I watched them behind the scenes

In their own worlds in an artificial world

Pausing over the script, “…what does it all mean?

Asking themselves, “What do I know?

How would this make me feel?”

For those are real tears she cries

When she discovers she isn’t real…

You see, I was fatigued by metaphor

I was exhausted by the profound

Morality issuing from every situation

And irony turning every moral around

It was a case of metaphilia

Taking every experience for grist

The price I had to pay for my art

Because I couldn’t live by my wits

Always turning on itself to invoke

My tired old habit of awe–

Was it that I created these situations

Or was it that I simply saw?

And I didn’t think either answer

Conceded to my piece of mind

A thousand times the problem posed

And stumped a thousand times

A thousand timely avenues

To the life this movie reflects

Never having evolved beyond

The capacity to regret

Was there truth in these juxtapositions

Between myself and all the rest

Were there any finer points to derive

Than simply being impressed?

Around me the shadows shawn their faces

Through the cracks in a simulated night

Thriving in darkness like mushroom caps

Bursting with psychedelic sight

Watching them choreograph the stunts

They had more concern for life than I

Reminding me of puppet strings

With their harnesses and safety lines

 

But I didn’t envy that they cared for each other

Nor their disciple or common sense

Rather that they didn’t live in fear

Of believing what they invent

And though I was standing on the ground

I suffered a vertigo of skepticism

That I clawed through symbols to get to souls

It wracked me with a paraxism—

 

A shift in all things with me at the crux—

Don’t ask for the door!  Find it yourself!

Stages as big as rocket hangars

I should have been thinking of something else

The mundane world larger somehow

Taking on an unlikely caste

Pretense falling away like a peel

People moving especially fast

Do we exist just for this?

And if not this then what?

The line twixt planes lies across my mind

And that line seems to be in flux

Making my way between realities

My logic was overwhelmed

They may not want to spoil the book with the film

But do they even read in this realm?

 

They were imbued with a kind of energy

I’ve never seen in people before

Bent to an indiscernable cause

Without an apparent reward

And I couldn’t tell the real evil

From the artificial good

Or that which requires explanation

From that which is understood

They took action for a sin

And idleness as well

Godless marching with the godly

That beauty be dispelled

Caught in a war of indulgences

Their own that damned their enemies’

Whoever damning desire itself

Damned themselves for blasphemy

One side pointing the finger

As another took the blame

For acts of god; madmen; nature

And all sides were insane

Stopping in their tracks to hear

–and stopping each other to share–

Wisdom tripping from the lips

Of those who don’t really care

 

It roused in me an objection

How their wars of words took casualties

But my thoughts were louder than intended

And caused them to take notice of me

My objections as old as the arguments themselves

Like speaking God’s forbidden name

I realized I’d spoken a truth

That was only intended for the page

So they said it was not for outsiders to judge

And I said I thought I’d always been here

Something in me demanding the charge

Be tested before my peers

Welcoming a charge of slander

The charge of hypocracy

Too long I’ve seen them hobble dissent

With draconian irony…

 

“It is not by thought or word or deed

That we will judge your soul

Rather by every part of your being

That lies beyond your control”

So said that curliqued cabal

Whose trials once brought I thought resolved

They’d say its not so and so would I

But even such as they evolve

As though not a sword but a gavel tethered

By a thread from my day of conception

Engaging in the mockery of mortals

With the robes of civilization

To this it seems we must adapt

Out of one ocean and into another

Surviving a war fought in the trenches

To end up dead in a gutter

 

Having spent my life chasing Muses

I’d all the while neglected the Graces

Who came upon me now as Furies

From behind all too familiar faces

 

 

 

 

Bringing the testimony of women

Who tried to tear me from my fantasies

There’s more to life than what is not

We have our responsibilities

But not even the promise of ecstacy

Could make me more than I am

Whatever it was they wanted me to me

–Non-existant Man—

Fossilized in bedroom ceilings

The missing link between God and us

One of Mother Nature’s Mistakes

One of Charles Darwin’s bluffs

They told me to get my head out of the clouds

There’s greater heights to met

Go out and make your dreams come true–

If it’s a nightmare for all the rest

There’s no profit in revealing the truth

If the ire of the masses is piqued

Nor is there profit in revealing yourself

It only angers the elite

So who was I to call conspirator

What reason must call opportunist

To meet the demands of the hungry horde

And the greater demands of the purist

Who nudges himself to impeccability

With an abhorrance of the masses

How much of myself tends that way

I ask as every judgement passes

I can’t align myself to the lies

To avoid the madness above

I’ve never found it in myself to believe

That it all boils down to love

They’ve after all been known to say

That love meant too much to me

I let the charlatans parse my heart

And assumed their notoriety.

 

But this was not the substance of my charge

As it came to be ruled

They found my aversion to cliché

Was in fact a fear of the truth

My obsession made an art of rage

At all of life we lived that defied

The poet’s words, the painter’s brush

Every tool the artists plied

To bring a light to the world’s confusion

As to the cave a fire

Yet by the same ambiguity

We found ourselves inspired

However much it plagued our lives

We plied it like pretenders

Abhorring strife, but if we couldn’t write

Would we then surrender?

How much of this awareness is fear

The illusions thrown up from a lizard brain

And how much of this madness is laziness

That gives itself reasons to be afraid…

 

There’s no conscience in this dimension

But there’s always consequence

Demons take Karma as agency

When justice metes no recompense

If imagination can mine no truth

Can the same be said for dreams?

There’s nothing to guide me through these streets

When I’m moved by selfish needs     

A life of comfort subverting me

Yielding from the struggle it provokes,

To a fitful slumber stirred by the news–       

More to die from historic hoax

And if the cosmic well has dispensed

More than I deserve or need to subsist

Than of this bounty wrought by words

None of it can truly exist…

 

Even space itself has limits

The celestial extant of lies

The imagination overtakes

The darkness it describes

The emptiness beyond takes after

The madnesses I’ve contrived

Fictions foreign to my own

Dictated and transcribed

And every thought and word and deed

Resulted in an open chasm

An unintended consequence

For every hope I could imagine

They bored their sentence through my soul

Imprinted in my DNA

The dreams that kept me up at night

Following me into the day

Every time lived not twice

But thrice in cubic dimension

A child’s fear seen but not soothed

By a grandfather’s apprehension

Tying the threads of fate so fast

As to defy the fingers of the plagued

Trapping beauty in a terrible not

So convolutedly stayed

That nothing will be able to come apart

And nothing will fall together

As I am given mastery

Of the tales they’ve told forever

Echoing back like a jester’s laugh

In my memory of fantastic lore

To see if it had already been done

And yes, indeed, it had been done before

My life and my inspiration

Now irrevocably etched

As the lines that cross a woman’s face

When she recognizes a lech

 

And they say The People would riot in the streets

If they were only to be made aware

But they already seem to know the truth

And it only incites despair

The beast of myself slouches ahead

Nurtured by the intractable

Succored by a font of hopelessness

An incestuous cannibal

Dogged by the delusion that nothing is real

A chimerical belief in the ignorance of others

That I could read between lines written in stone

Privy to the emptiness that lay between lovers

And finally it was revealed in a flash

Unperturbed by the vagaries of reason

That the charge against me was idealism

And that this was a form of treason

Leaving me with no place among the veterans

Who lived on the streets and searched in vein

With fingers over mirrored black marble

To see if the sculpter had carved out their names

And as the sirens fell silent, I came into view

Chuckling in a chitinous mask of scorn

Making light of the plight of all those sailers

Only suicides in uniform

 

Living as we are in that time

Of the Black Iron Prison

Tears tattoed on the faces of angels

Where they say great books have been written…

 

The more we drank the more he made sense

But with his clarity came resignation

Until I realized with a clarity of my own

That this was no longer speculation

There was nothing fanciful about his words

No Garden of Eden to introduce a snake

No apple to be eaten by a worm

No artifice only for it’s own sake

His mind like a jungle I could see behind my eyes

As we breathed our own second-hand smoke

A madness between us like a secret or a lie

A beam to one and the other a mote

Sprung from the seed that ends in dust

To record the movement of decanter and glass

They come not to speculate but rather appraise

And to clean this house after I pass

My thoughts now given weight that once had none

Inconsequential as my survival

Now rallying themselves in the face of pain

As though challenged by a rival

The imagination once I’d envied

Transmuted into insanity

And to my shame it occurred to me

It offended my sense of propriety

Impelling me to take action to correct the thoughts

A romantic would have coveted

Sublime in the world outside the mind

The mind’s eye unceasingly buffeted

False light making shadows of truer hearts

And true hearts of shadows false

Investing one’s self in groundless attacks

And defending against unreal assaults

His muse like a woman directing a man

Who moves without waiting for her to show him the path

Burdening himself with unwanted gifts

As she decries to him the unfinished task

Her feminine touch now departing this room

Rampant with the Imp of the Perverse

Ransacking eternally this unkempt room

As though it were the entire universe

 

Packed with secrets that could ruin a man

Who’s only vice is a hunger to learn

To die with a question on his lips

And decipher the inside of urn

So we drank all night for the comfort it gave

To see life go by like fish in a tank

Spending time like millionaires

Who’d stowed a fortune of time in a bank

Frittering it away with the gravitas

Of those times we had spent at our desks

Chipping away at the nothingness

To get at the something that’s left

And seeing the present as though a future

On which we still could dream

I awaited the morning like the end of the world

To hatch my benevolent scheme

 

I took the guilt I had as a sign

That this was the course of action to take

Duplicitousness inspiring me

Like a dream while fully awake

Reality becoming at last more governable

Than than the borderless ephemery I always knew

The impotence I felt unfailingly dispelled

When once to another’s assistance I  flew

Just as an idea come to fruition

From the lifetime of thoughts I’d cultivated

Alternate histories finding concordance

And to truth this madness accelerated

The chaos of creation has no place in this time

As beauty has no place in hell

Let it’s shadows trace themselves in the sky

We have more timely tales to tell

How many wisemen left in the ditch

Gripped by an invisible agony

As the rest march on and soon forget

The words that won us from tyranny

To question everything including ourselves

What we’re told to believe and assume

Regarding ourselves as above the frey

Even as by the frey we’re consumed

It was time for me now to put aside suspicion

And put my friend in the hands of those who could help

There are those I know who’d wish it weren’t so

But he came to me and nobody else.

 

Only history can tell if wisdom is achieved

Only Memory can present Enlightenment’s seal

If we can and and if we should help one another

Is a secret only action can reveal

 

In the morning we went to a greasy spoon

And had sausages and homefries and bacon and eggs

And when to the hospital I directed the cab

He acquiesced with the slightest nod of his head

That he was a danger to himself or others

And not just to the status quo

I availed to the nurse at the desk

And watched my friend down that hallway go

For 72 hours of observation

To determine an indefinite span

Which outcome I could not decide

To have prefered to have played a hand.

If having played a hand at all

In anyone’s life whom my words have reached

Strangers all, invisible to me

These masses to whom I propose to preach

Impotent in the face of one man’s pain

Armed with such knowledge as I’ve alledged

Or inferred from an expertise in lies

These lifeless waters I have dredged

Such silence now my state evokes

Transcending all dimension

Awaiting news, my friend to call

The result of this intervention

As though to prove my very worth

Moreso than my good friend’s life

As though a cab-ride’s worth of compassion

Could spare me from the scythe

This silence as stubborn and resolute

As the words upon these pages

Such as could divide a life

Or separate the ages

As though I was moved with a sympathy

For the state I had imposed

My conscience competing with the muse

For the knowledge it bestows

Though I didn’t recognise the number

When at last I got the call

From some anachronistic phone

Fixed to a hospital wall

 

His privileges such that he could receive

Visitors in the afternoon

I could join him at least though he could not leave

This island to which he was marooned

Where a special kind of loneliness would descend,

On these corridors, of which the world was unschooled

That challenged my own facility with words

That would exhaust a prolific poet’s pool

The skeleton crew succeeding the day

That cleared out to spend their evenings at home

Leaving patients whom you could smell and taste

The degree to which they were alone

A flavour that made you want to spit

Only to meekly swallow

That made you want to run away

Only to bleekly follow

As we contemplated the photographs

Of doctors and nurses from olden times

Like battlefield surgeons in sepia wars

As the generals move further behind the lines

 

“There is nothing to transcend in this place

My friend quietly observed

“You sleep and smoke and walk around

And wait for your meals to be served

With no small degree of apprehension

I regard my fellow boarders

Men and women lost in depression

And girls with eating disorders.

And every now and then I see a doctor

But can’t ascertain the relevance of his queries

Until it makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes

Trying his best to forget Copernican theory

Every inch of the mind a precious store

That somehow filled with chaff

All that I thought was meaningful

Not meaningful by half

Shrinking in the eyes of this man

With the embarrassment of poverty

Made in exchange for the riches I had

In tribute to my vanity.

Just as much in my ill treated mind

My craft had lain in my hands

But it is with difficulty now

That they obey my commands

 

And I wish I’d written about things people knew

A prospect, I admit, that makes my heart sink

They’ll tell you when you show them what they’ve never seen

It’s a confirmation of what they already think”

 

He smiled as the sun dipped down

From above the clouds quilted tight

A final solarly display

Before the fall of night…

 

…Which was the last of him I saw in the flesh

His heart weakened by amphetemines

Dying before he was to be released

I started seeing his image in my dreams

Cast in spasmodic hypnogognia

Midway between waking and sleep

Whereupon impressions dominate

And logic takes a backward leap

Did he want me to look away from the visions in my head?

That a fate of madness like his I be spared?

It seemed like he wanted me to look away from his pain

But when I opened my eyes, I saw it everywhere

As though by conscience and imagination

His spirit is twain, dimensionally astride

Or is this just a fancy of my own?

Perhaps not knowing keeps him alive.

 

 

 

 

 

FIN.

 

2001-2007

 

Dedicated to Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson.

 

 

admin Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

admin Larfs

Excerpt From an Episode of Star Trek(TOS) as Performed in the Cornerstone Café in Downtown Guelph, and Featuring Emily Shapiro in the Role of Captain Kirk.

 

(We join the crew of the USS Enterprise at Table Four.  Waiter CAMERON approaches the table to take everybody’s order.)

 

CAMERON

 

          Coffee everybody?  (Everybody nods.)  Did everybody have a good time last night?  (More assent)  I couldn’t make it out last night.  I was too tired.  I just went to bed.  (Stunned silence)  Okay…well…I’ll be back with your coffee.  (He leaves the table.)

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          Something’s wrong.  Cameron has never slept in his life.  He doesn’t even own a bed.  He serves at the Cornerstone all day and drinks all night with the Cornerstone staff.  Everybody knows that.  In fact, sleeping is a direct violation of Article 567, section 2, subsection ii of the City of Guelph Food Service Charter.  How deep does this go?

 

MCCOY

 

          Jim, you’re being paranoid.  You need rest.  You should listen to the ship’s doctor once in a while.  I could have you removed from duty.

 

SPOCK

 

          Captain, I took the liberty of making some scans and it would appear that the Doctor’s emotional outburst is once again completely unfounded.  That was not the real Cameron.  That was a robot–albeit a well-liked and popular robot.  Furthermore, I have reason to believe that robots have infiltrated the entire staff.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          How…how could they?  Amelia…Jeremy…Chloe…  Dara…Dayna… All the others… All of them…gone.  I served with them against the Shiny People.  And now they’re…no more…  We’ve got to do something…but what?

 

SPOCK

 

          We’re up against a formidable enemy, Captain.

 

MCCOY

 

          It sounds like you admire them, Spock, with your cold Vulcan Logic.

 

SPOCK

          I do not admire them, Doctor, I merely acknowledge their superior abilities.

 

MCCOY

 

          How can you say that, Spock!  They were your friends! 

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          Gentlemen, now is not the time.  They must have a weakness, and I think I know what it is.  If they are logical beings as Mr. Spock says, then that is how we will bring them down.  (Robot CAMERON approaches the table again.)

 

CAMERON

 

          Ready to order gang?

 

MCCOY

 

          Migas.

 

SPOCK

 

          Migas.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          I see today’s omelette is a western.

 

CAMERON

 

          Yes…

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          What does that consist of?

 

CAMERON

 

          Mushrooms and peppers.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          Does it have…cheese?

 

CAMERON

 

          Yes it does.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          Then I would like the western omelette…but without cheese.

 

CAMERON

 

          (Somewhat surprised)  Oh…well…okay…  I guess we can do that, if that’s what you want…

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

          It is.  (Cameron leaves the table.)

 

MCCOY

 

          If this is going where I think it is Jim, then it just might work.

 

SPOCK

 

          Indeed, the captain’s plan shows a great deal of potential.

 

MCKOY

 

          Spock, you’re a pointy-eared ass-kisser.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

Gentlemen, be quiet.  (Cameron returns with the order and distributes the plates to the shocked officers and departs.)

 

MCKOY

 

That cuts it, Jim.  Something is definitely wrong here.

 

SPOCK

 

I’m sure you’re aware, Captain, that we can’t afford to see this plan fail.  Otherwise the entire downtown core will deteriorate into confusion when people suddenly realize they have no idea how to spend their mornings.

 

MCKOY

 

(Screaming)  That can’t be allowed to happen Jim!!

 

EMILY

 

Be calm, men.  You’re my two best officers, and I need you to keep control.  Quiet.  (Cameron approaches the table again)

 

CAMERON

 

How’s your food, people?

 

MCKOY

 

Oh…good.

 

SPOCK

 

Indeed, it is more than satisfactory.

 

CAMERON

 

(To Emily/Kirk)  Do you like your omelette?

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

I do.  It’s delicious.

 

CAMERON

 

Good!

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

There’s just one thing…

 

CAMERON

 

And what’s that? 

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

(Music swells with tension.)  What this omelette could really use is…cheese.

 

CAMERON

 

Cheese?  But you said you—I mean, you didn’t want—I mean it already—you shouldn’t have said you—(A red light flashes on Cameron’s necklace.)  Error!  Error!  Awaiting instructions!  Awaiting instructions!

 

SPOCK

 

If I may be so bold as to point out, the only logical course of the waitstaff is to report the customer’s complaint to the kitchen staff.

 

CAMERON

 

Must comply!  Must comply!  (He marches stiffly back to the kitchen.  The crew watches as he interfaces with the rest of the staff who have gathered around to listen.)

 

SPOCK

 

I believe they are interfacing with the primary control right now.

 

MARK

 

Does not compute!  Does not compute!  (Picks up chit holder and shoves it in his eye.  Chloebot’s head begins to smoke.  Dara starts taking clean dishes off the shelf and loading them into the dishwasher.  Eric starts babbling nonsensical scientific data to anybody who will listen.  General chaos.  Ragged customers stand around surveying the destruction in horror)

 

CUSTOMERS

 

What will we do?  How will we ever survive?

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

(Standing on the table.)  It will be hard at first.  But you’ll make it.  You’ll persevere.  You’ll pull yourself up and learn to live without the tyranny of robotic hospitality professionals.  You’ll build a new world.  And we’ll be back to see you again.

 

(Back on the ship.  SPOCK and MCKOY are standing around EMILY/KIRK in the captain’s chair.  Their conversation is accompanied by a whimsical oboe.)

 

MCKOY

 

Well Spock, it turns out you were wrong about everything once again.  You’re such an asshole.

 

SPOCK

 

On the contrary, Doctor, your obvious mental infirmities are an embarrassment to sentient beings everywhere.

 

EMILY/KIRK

 

(Smiling and shaking her head.)  You two.  Why don’t you just fuck and get it over with.

 

(SPOCK cocks an eyebrow inquiringly.  MCKOY averts his eyes.)

 

END.

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I ended up raising $258.25 for the Princess Margaret Hospital Ride to Conquer Cancer from the show my friend Patrick MccAuley put on at his house on November 22, 2008.  Before the show that day, I put a few finishing touches on an essay I wrote entitled “A Most Tripping Vindication of Altruism”, a piece of writing that had my usual hidden meanings and ostensibly disparate connections between ideas.  After Barak Obama became President Elect, I thought the fashion had returned to talking up to people instead of down, to having their higher faculties appealed to, as opposed to their basest motivations and fears.  I had also decided that I wanted tie my writing in with my training and fundraising for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.

          So I laid the essay out into a zeen composed of a legal sized paper folded once in the middle—which I’ve done many times in my existence as a self-publishing writer.  I despaired of figuring out how to instruct MSWord to feed the columns to conform to this format, so that the title page would be printed on the back of the flat paper with the body of the essay on top and the last page also on the back opposite the cover page.  So I printed it off and simply cut the four quarters and glued them to another legal sized page in proper position with reference to the final product.  Then I made dinner and watched an episode of Family Guy I had already seen, where Peter blames Meg for destroying the cable signal for the whole town.  It was from very early in the first season before Mila Kunis was brought in to be the voice of Meg.  Not the best episode, but at least it wasn’t the one where Lois learns karate, which, like the Beatles’ “Yesterday”, seems to always be playing somewhere in the world, and usually whenever I turn on the TV.  I don’t even have cable.

          Looking at the printout, I noticed an error in the title, “A Most Tripping Vindication or Altruism” which wouldn’t have been picked up by the spell check but surprising was not picked up by the grammar checker either.  Cursing, I printed off another copy of the front page.  Or tried to.  I had hoped that if I selected just the first page that it would only print the first page and thus I would save myself the ink.  Sadly this was not to be and it printed the entire article, from which I cut the front page and glued it in place of the erroneous one, which I threw out. 

          I packed a bag for myself with the template folded over and pressed between the pages of my notebook, which was just big enough to accommodate it.  I also threw in my copy of Schulz and Peanuts, which I was taking every opportunity to read in time for the review deadline for Off the Shelf.  I looked forward to reading the book on the bus ride to Staples, and then spending the bus ride back stapling the Sportchek Family and Friends coupons to the zeen, so that I would have something to give back to all those who showed up at the party to donate to my cause.  I made it about half a block away from my house before I stopped in my tracks with the realization that though I had reprinted the front page, I had not done so before correcting the error!  And crystal clarity of this realization was paradoxically characteristic of the absolute certainty I had of having made this mistake despite the apparent fog within which I had made it.

          I have an acquaintance I met through a summertime afternoon on the Cornerstone Patio who, if it can be believed, is at least as absent-minded as I am.  Every time we meet we each have some new tale to tell of our epic stupidity.  When theorizing as to the cause of it, I have suggested that it is owing to the fact that we are preoccupied with complex and abstract ideas.  James simply thinks it’s because we’re stupid, and I fear that he may be right.  We have half-seriously joked about starting a support group called AA, for Absent-minded Anonymous.  We would address each other by our first names and our last initials, in keeping with the difficulty we have remembering other people’s names—and even this is being optimistic.

          But usually these epiphanies hit me when I’m halfway across the Heffernan Bridge, and not before, so I counted myself lucky when I about-faced and headed back home to reprint the article with the correction included.  Fortunately, I hadn’t turned off the computer when I left, preferring instead to let it shut down on it’s own should just such a thing as this happened, in which I needed to restart the computer to account for some unpredicted but inevitable oversight.  This time I made the correction before printing off the sheet, and I made sure there was only one piece of paper in the printer so that I wouldn’t waste quite so much ink this time.  For the second time, I removed the previous cover page, threw it out, and taped the new corrected version to the template, and at last walked downtown to catch the bus.  It usually takes me more than one attempt to leave the house at any given time.

          It must have been just after six o’clock when I got off the bus at Scottsdale.  The plan was (hopefully) to get the zeen printed off in time to make it back for the next bus downtown, as I hoped to arrive at Patrick’s by seven, so I could help ready the house for the show.  As I made my way across Stone Rd., I was happy to see that there were very few cars in the parking lot at Staples, which of course meant that it wouldn’t be too crowded and I would be in an out fairly quickly.

          There was an employee at the door talking to a customer.  The customer walked away.

          “No.”  I said.  “Are you guys closed?”

          “Yes we are.  We’re waxing the floor.”

          “You’re not serious.”

          “Uh…yes.”

          “But…but…I have to make copies…”

          “I’m sorry.”

          “Is this something you usually do?

          “No.  But we’re always closed at six on Saturday night.”

          I made him get a manager, and pleaded my case to her, that this was for a charity, for cancer research.  They suggested the UPS store.

          I walked to the UPS store and wondered what I was going to do.  Would it matter?  Should I just let it go?  Was I not really just obsessing over getting my writing out to the world?  But it seemed like a good thing to do, and it was hardly fair to myself to give up on the piece I had created for this evening while there might still be hope to get it “published”.  I had done all this work already.

          I 411ed Futureshop, but instead of patching me directly through like they usually do, they gave me two numbers and patched me through to neither, for whatever reason.  This meant I would have walk over there to determine if the Futureshop, like Staples, had a copy centre. I was doubtful, but it was worth a try.

          At the very least, it was open.  I went in and asked at customer service.  They didn’t have a copy centre.

          “I can’t believe this.”  I said.  They seemed willing to listen to my tragic tale, so I told them of my travails with the Staples hours of operation.

          “I would have made the same mistake.”  A young woman said.  “I can feel your stress.” 

          I felt apologetic for irresponsibly throwing off that energy.  And older employee, probably my age, said, “Look, it’s for a charity…I don’t have any problem with using our photocopier.”

          “Do you have legal-size paper?”  I asked hopefully.

          The young woman brought back a ream of paper from off the shelves.  “This is all we have.”  She said.  It was letter sized. 

          My template, as you know, was legal sized.  Not having foreseen the troubles I was currently having, I didn’t have a digital version of the file on either my phone or my keychain thumb-drive, and as I was complaining about this, it dawned on me.

          “I should just take what I can get, right?”

          “Right.”  The manager said.

          They fetched a paper cutter for me.  Laying out the template, I saw there was a great deal of excess margin space.  Making sure that all the columns were aligned on their reverse sides, I made significant cuts to the template, always aware that I couldn’t make a mistake as this hard copy was all I had of the document.  I tried to maintain at least a marginal margin for the sake of readability, and the outside columns were right up the edge of the letter sized page I was using as a guide.  Then I separated the columns and taped them to both sides of the guide sheet in their proper positions so the young woman behind the counter would understand how it worked.

          Her first task was to shrink the template so it would fit, then she would have to join the to sides together in proper alignment for the fold to work properly, and in this fashion, the copier would be able to automatically create the double sided pages.  The problem was, we kept losing a column of characters down the outside margins, and I was too stubborn to allow such a loss as it would greatly effect the clarity of the writing.  And this was hardly silly unimportant stuff I was writing about.  The writing, while highly philosophical, was also commemorative, with respect to an acquaintance I had in high school who later succumbed to brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and two little children.  While we were expecting a younger crowd at the party, for whom some of this essay might conceivably be over their heads, it was also my hope that they might take the zeen home with them and leave it out where older eyes would see it and read it, and maybe follow the url at the end of the article.

          In the past, and well into the present, I’ve been accused of being elitist with regard to my precocity as a writer.  I’ve always thought this was unfair.  Whenever I contemplate such remarks, which I frankly find hurtful, I think of that scene in the Hustler when Paul Newman, with two broken arms, is having a picnic with Piper Laurie.  He holds forth on what it means to be great at something, and while I don`t recall the exact words Newman spoke, the gist, the lesson I have always taken from that famous scene is that I`m not trying to show what I can do.  I`m trying to show what can be done.  I`m not here to impress.  I`m here to inspire.

          This is why I was making such a pest of myself that night at Futureshop.  I still hold to this idealism that a page of mine, like a drifting leaf, will carry itself on the wind and find itself in the hands of somebody who can make good use of it.

          The young woman behind the counter could still feel my stress, with the clock ticking away to the start of the show.  It seemed that whenever she had the article lined up properly, it didn’t co-ordinate with the top feeder on the printer.  At one point, we allowed probably thirty pages go through before I realized that we were once again losing a column of characters.  To make matters worse, the line up of customers was growing.  This poor woman was going back and forth between the customers and this project.  She repeated that she could still feel my stress, and probably with a dash of own.  I wanted to tear myself away, go to the movie section and read the backs of DVDs for a while while this mess was sorted out without me.  But I couldn’t leave.

          Above all, I was becoming angered with the situation, and it was because I felt so impotent.  Here these people were bending over backwards to help me, and I was becoming testy with them.  My own words galloped back to me as I remembered telling my last girlfriend, that she hated people who helped her, and she was always needing help.

          Maybe I was projecting.  Projecting her projections.

          But buried among the failed sheets, I found two pieces that were properly shrunk that had somehow fallen by the wayside.  I taped them together and called the clerk’s attention to what I had done.  For some reason, they still didn’t line up laterally—the bottom margin was thick on one side while the top margin was thick on the other—but none of the characters were lost, nor any clarity from the shrinkage.  Lines were visible between the columns where they had been sliced by the paper cutter, but the document didn’t look that bad all things considered.  It was reminiscent of an artsy volume from a small press–a little “ghetto”, as the kids call it.

          I  called a cab while the printer was still knocking off copies.  Once again, it was a tense situation as my call may have been premature.  I think my greatest difficulties in life result from always being in a hurry.  Before leaving, I gave the two clerks and the manager coupons for Sportchek, also promising to make a post on my Princess Margaret blog, and to donate twenty dollars of my own money in Futureshop’s name.  They said it wasn’t necessary to donate the money, but insisted on it as I probably would have ended up spending more on the copy run had Staples been open. 

The cab arrived shortly.  The stress of the situation was now taking it’s toll.  I felt like weeping or screaming.  I told the story to the driver in an attempt at therapy, in the hope that I could divest myself of these negative feeling before arriving at the show.  We stopped at my house to get my harmonica case and equipment, as well as the beer.  Even the tiny inconvenience of having to re-enter my debit information had me stressed, and the driver laughed at me before taking his leave. 

Patrick hadn’t made it out to the beer store, but I was happy to share mine.  He already had the attic cleaned up, as well as the sound system set up that was kindly donated by Mark Rodford of the Cornerstone.  I felt slightly alien as I always do, and as in fact most people in general do when they find themselves in a situation with other people who are more relaxed than themselves.  I ranted for a few minutes, but choosing my words carefully as I was aware of my current status as an ambassador to this cause.

At this point we were waiting for the first band to arrive.  We had put them on the bill after the previous weekend when a friend of mine said she was thinking of getting her brother a gig for Christmas.  I jumped on it right away, without having heard the band at all, perhaps trusting in Jess’s taste in music.  As it turned out, Bleet did not disappoint.  The were a duet of drums and bass, and they brought the house down.  I was thoroughly impressed with their nuanced arrangements within the framework of hard rock (I’m a little bit of yesterday’s man when it comes to the sub-genres of heavy metal.  I could be doing Bleet a grave injustice in my categorization.  Such is not intended.)

As expected, the crowd was young.  I wish I could say that I didn’t regard them with the suspicion of an older man, but I did, and would be surprised with this crop.

One young man who in any other instance I would have not given the time day owing to my own old prejudices impressed and embarrassed the hell out of me with his praise for what he was doing, and his knowledge of cancer and the odds we all stand of contracting it.  This kid half my age took me to school.  Another young man recognized a quote from Vonnegut I made use of in the essay, and expressed to me at length the effect that it had on his own way of seeing the world.  He was also a jazz guitarist who was a fan of Ed Bickert.  On the basis of this alone, I would have to say that those who say the youth of today aren’t worth much aren’t worth much themselves.  Dragging the rest of us down, they are.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to perform with Patrick at the end of the show as we had planned.  Peace officers had arrived to issue a warning, in the course of which involving themselves in an argument with one of the attendees that resulted in the issuing of a ticket for a noise complaint.  Tensions were high.  Threats were made of the issuing of assault charges for disrespecting the uniform.  I had been forced in the past under worse circumstances to talk to the police while under the influence when others didn’t want to.  In that previous instance, I had drawn on my training as an actor to get through an unpleasant and potentially dangerous situation.  In this case, I drew on my experience as a security guard to empathise with the position of the peace officers who were expected to be authoritative in a dearth of respect.  By the time a police cruiser arrived, we more or less saw eye to eye, agreeing that no challenge would be made by the peace officers to our future attempt to overturn the ticket.  I also spoke with the young man who initially argued with the peace officer, advising him that in the future he treat authority figures as he would expect to be treated by them; as a blank slate. 

We were all hanging around in the kitchen sharing our parts of the story.  I was confident everything would turn out okay.  Whatever my failings, I’m still gifted in some respects.  I can talk to the police.  I can listen to the young.  I can ride my bike from Toronto to Niagara Falls, though I haven’t done that yet.  What I’ve learned ultimately these days are the joys of living my life as an artist.  I’m quitting drinking and devoting myself to life in general and the life of the artist in particular.  I am mending he schism of my mind between what I want and what I can do to achieve it, in the course of helping others.  I am living the life I always though I should be living.  I made that invisible passage in the form of a simple realization while bent over a paper cutter at Futureshop.

Everything I hoped to be, I am.       

 

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I sometimes think of an acquaintance from High School, Mike MacArthur.  I wasn’t close friends with him, only having one conversation wit him when we were taking the same bus together from Toronto back home to Acton.  I don’t even remember what we talked about.  I remember him nonetheless as a sober fellow with a complementary and possibly sly sense of humour.   

          I was very open in those days about my medical condition in the way one is when their very livelihood is not directly threatened by stigma.  At that time I lived in public housing a few doors from Mike. He was married to his high school sweetheart with whom he had two children—a real life in contrast to the dreams on which I subsisted of literary fame and polemical notoriety.  I still have those dreams, and they are still unfulfilled but no less grandiose.  I firmly believe that while those dreams haven’t completely come true, I feel sometimes that I am successful beyond my wildest dreams for all the wonderful inspirations I’ve experienced.

          I’m very lucky.  Luckier than I deserve, considering the abuses I’ve laid on myself.  I smoked cigarettes for half my life, drank to excess throughout my teens and twenties, imbibed in a variety of street drugs, survived one suicide attempt in the course of generally suicidal behaviour, and remained even after my recovery from the consequences of this lifestyle somewhat rootless and noncommittal, even if my idealism remained undimmed.  This is not to mention other failings I’ve harboured, such as impatience, selfishness, aloofness, et al.

          So for one who has spent much of his time preoccupied with the way things should be as opposed to the way things are, how can I make sense of Mike MacArthur’s death from a brain tumour leaving behind a wife and two little children while I lived my less than exemplary life?

          Where is the sense?

          This is the kind of question which cannot be flatly answered but rather circled around in hopes of catching a glimpse of the truth.   

          Back in my heady days of teenage binge reading, I devoured Kurt Vonnegut, remembering to this day a quote from his brother Bernard that served as a guiding principle for the autobiographical fantacist.

          “We’re all here to help each other get through it.”

 

          This leaves us with a dilemma that would amuse Louis Carroll.  To borrow directly from Kurt this time, “Live so you can say to God, I was a good man, even if I didn’t believe in you.”  The Vonneguts apparently revelled in these mind-bending Escher-esque mobius concepts.  Bernard Vonnegut seems to be implying, rather convincingly, that there is no sense in altruism, and that senselessness is rather the natural state of altruism.  This needs to be emphasised strongly.  The entire reason I’m writing this is because over the years people of “good sense” have sought to vindicate the philosophy of pragmatism, and to a further extent, selfishness, arguing that these philosophies are grounded in common sense.  But the problem with common sense, as I’m always found of quoting from Descartes, is that those who possess it never wish more of it for themselves.

          Woody Allan once famously remarked that life is better than the alternative.  This is simply a hyper-condensation of Hamlet’s more famous “To be or not to be…” soliloquy.  Hamlet was often said to be lackadaisical in nature, caught up in abstractions, and the people who insist on this are somewhat troublingly dismissive of the great lengths to which Hamlet went to determine the veracity of the claims made by the ghost of his father, as well as the state of his own mind.  Purpose-driven people, or for the sake of argument, “materialists” would argue that Hamlet should have knocked off Claudius when he first got the chance.  But to do so while the usurper was praying would have ensured his entry into heaven, which would also have completely defeated the purpose.  This lends itself to the theory I’ve long held, contrary to that pillar of the law, that justice need not always be seen to be done in order to be done. In fact, as Steven Truscott or Guy Paul Morin will tell you, any extraneous effort that is made to render justice visible to us almost always results in injustice.  Therefore justice, or in the case of this tract, “sense” is relative to one’s plane of existence.

          This would come as a surprise to Mike MacArthur’s family, for whom there is no sense in his passing at such a young age and with so much in his life that is meaningful.  But I argue the point; I write this essay, because there are many who believe that there is sense in death if it leaves more room on the earth for the rest of us.  So they render justice out of senselessness in order to attribute meaning to tragedy moreover to exempt themselves from sympathy, empathy, and conscience.  Therefore it isn’t only the Malancholy Dane who is lackadaisical. 

          Furthermore, while we are all willing to acknowledge that idealism taken to extremes can be dangerous and self-defeating, we need to also recognise the danger of pragmatism taken to similar lengths.  I believe this is the case in our current day, when in the name of pragmatism, we diminish the flatly unknown and unimagined potential of the human heart, mind, and body.  If idealism is silent against death (with which cancer is essentially inter-changeable) then what good is idealism at all?  What then is the purpose of pragmatism if it has no idealism to reign in?  Would pragmatism not instead be a rationale for complacency and apathy?  It seems to me that we must be bold against death while we are still here on earth—rather than accept it as a means of population control—as we have no idea what sicknesses await us in our future that could threaten our survival as a species, as well as the future Bill Hicks optimistically spoke of in which we feed the world and then explore space forever.  

          “Helping each other get through it” is an unsatisfactory answer to materialists, and life being better than the alternative is unsatisfactory to idealists.  Ultimately, I’m playing with ideas in the course of penetrating ideological orthodoxies, and I’m playing with other people’s ideas as well, whether they like it or not.  But what I can conclude from all this, with respect to Bernard Vonnegut and Woody Allan, is this:

 

          “We’re all here to help each other get through it because doing so is better than the alternative.”

 

          And that should make everybody happy.

 

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