My Goodness

“My goodness, it’s Christmas time again,” said old Aunt Sallie. “Wonder what the Claus brought you this year?”

“Socks,” said little Agamemnon, disbelieving. “And turtle eggs.”

“Chinchilla coat,” Louise reported. “Again!”

“Got me a choo-choo,” Tarvis grinned and then chugged out of the room in the general direction of the kitchen where Maw was serving up breakfast—lots of biscuit, a little bit of gravy, and eggs on the side with a whiff o’ ham squeezins. The only day of the year they ate like this—or wanted to, really.

“Oh, give me a Rome where the buffalos home and the uhm-a-mm-mm-mm-mmm,” she never knew the words, who did?

“I’m going to the Mall tonight.”

“You can’t, stupid, it’s Christmas.”

“Awk. What am I going to do?”

“Come over here, honey, and help me set the table.”

“Do I gotta?”

“If you want some squeezins, honey.”

In one corner of the room, way down on the floor, was an area that didn’t get much attention. It was a place where dust settled despite everyone’s—well, Ma’s—best efforts. Most of this time the area sat behind a big old potato chip can, forgotten, collecting things: a twist-tie, a dried blade of grass, a ball of cat hair, pinhead sized clumps of dirt from who knows where, and hundreds—yes, hundreds—of tiny, almost invisible, dust-mite skulls. Above the ossuary, within an old and dusty web, sat the ruler of this corner of the world, a tiny yellow spider.

Most of the time she snoozed peacefully, waiting for a wayward gnat or some other critter to stumble into her web—it only had to happen once—but this morning was different. Someone finally took the potato chip can away.

“Ew,” cried little Davy. “That’s just gross!”

The cat headed immediately for the corner. “Diego, no!” they cried. “Stop him!”

Diego’s tail swished through the tiny skulls, dust, and webbing like a . . . well, a . . . dustmop. Anyway the next thing the little spider knew she was scurrying ass over teakettle into the middle of the floor. Ominous dark clouds rolled back and forth across her sky, emitting threatening bellows of fear and confusion that she couldn’t hear—but certainly could feel. She was almost trampled many times before reaching the far shore where she skittled beneath immense boxes, bows and ribbon, toys, clothing, fruitcake, and crumpled wrapping paper. Every once in awhile a huge pine needle crashed thundering down. There she found a soaring metallic framework, and realized with joy that the god of spiders had shown her the perfect place for a web.

Sure enough, in the spirit of Christmas, the spider found a little present of her own underneath that Christmas tree: a blue-spruce pox beetle, an invasive species that had hitched a ride in from the country. Cracking open its carapace, the little yellow spider sat down for a fine holiday feast, one that would finally allow her to fulfill her destiny by implanting her eggs in the beetle’s nourishing body before dying in peace, fulfilled. She smiled lovingly down upon the quivering beast beneath her. Sensuously, she impugned its integrity.

“Merry Christmas to all,” she whispered, “and to all a good night!”

WOMEN THROUGH THE AGES

This three-minute video created by EggMan consists of images from 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.

From: The Saatchi Gallery : London

Old Jack City

“Dang,” thought Banner Brummett as he listened to the sound of axes falling in the distance. It had been hardly a year since he and his family had built their cabin on the high point between Salt and Greasy Creeks and it was already getting crowded, the way it’d been up by Scarcity Fat before he’d left. Back there Fleenersburg was growing so fast they said that someday it might be bigger than Bloomington itself. As soon as the rumor about the new county had been confirmed he and his brother Pierson had lit out and bought land as near the middle of it as was reasonable. Now it was official. This was where the county seat would be.

“Goin’ over to Dawson’s now, Maw,” he called to his wife, Esther, who was working inside. Out in the yard he passed their tall, ungainly ash leach. Behind it an old hound lay in the shade. Banner stopped beside the yarb garden to bite off a chaw of ‘baccy from the well-gnawed plug he kept in his overalls. He tongued the wad deep into his jowl before ambling off again on his short journey.

It was going to be another hot August day and Brummett wanted to get over to Dawson’s before the shenanigans commenced. James Dawson had got himself appointed sheriff by his pal, the governor of Indiana. This meant he was the one who organized the elections for all the important county positions. Dawson had recently moved down here from his spread in Georgetown after they’d been turned down for the county seat. He’d hastily thrown up a cabin on the south bank of the Salt Creek and was handing out county offices to all of his pals. They’d thrown Banner a bone by making him county agent. It was the least they could do since Brummett had already given over fifty acres of his best land for the new town. He’d given them cash as well, which was hard to come by thanks to the Bank of the U.S., damn their eyes!

They’d actually followed his advice and named the new county seat Jacksonburg, for Old Hickory, the best danged president since George Washington! Nobody was fool enough to argue with that. Jacksonburg. He liked the sound of that name. Kinda rolled off the tongue.

Today we’ll commence the layin’ out, he thought as he passed by the limits of his own property, delineated by a row of dry, piled brush. He crossed the area where the town would soon be. He’d cleared many of the trees himself—beautiful, huge trees that were of no use. So they’d burned them in huge fires, leaving some of the nut trees and a persimmon or two. Once he’d cut the town into lots it’d be somebody else’s problem.

He tried to imagine a courthouse in the clearing and cabins, taverns, shops, a church or two. “Here’s a good place for a horseshoe pit,” he thought morosely. “Maybe set a bench up there for me and the other old boys to sit around and tell each other lies—a liars’ bench.”

Banner started walking again. It was hard to remember how wild this place had been a short year ago. It still was wild around the edges. The bears were pretty much gone but the wolves still prowled nearby in the hills and “pisonous snakes wuz everywhere to be found.” He followed the trail south and soon was at the cabin of his royal highness James Dawson. It wasn’t particularly well built, the logs had gaps big enough to let a skunk through and the joints were laughable—he’d like to see Dawson winter here. Any number of camps had been set up in the clearing near the cabin. Folks were arriving from all over the county to see what the commissioners were going to decide. Banner nodded to a couple of folks he knew from over the old county line. Sighing, he entered the cabin.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden cool dark. The commissioners sat around a thick puncheon table. There was James Alexander of Monroe, David Deitz and Hiram Wilson of Bartholomew County, and Stephen Parks of Jackson County. They’d returned recently from a visit to competing sites for the county seat but there never seemed to be much doubt about what they were going to decide. Georgetown had more settlers but was too far north and Hedgesville as county seat was laughable, the pipe dream of old L.M. Hedges and David Randolph, owner of the grocery there.

“Ah, Mr. Brummett, are you ready?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Come on over and take a look here at Mr. Dawson’s survey . . .”

Outside a crowd of fifty or sixty had gathered. A deer was roasting over a fire and a hastily constructed table was being filled with eats of all kinds. Some of the boys were swimming in the creek, swinging out over the water on a grape vine and dropping off with a loud shout. The men were drinking mash and shooting at a mark. Some were sitting around a stump playing cards, including Littleton Mathis who looked like he was winning. Even the folks up Harden Hollar were there, along with some Taggarts and a Hamblen or two from up county.

Inside the cabin the table had been moved into a corner. A jug, a tin cup, and a bucket of water sat upon it. Across the room, on a bed, a fiddler played as two barefoot men danced.

“Looks like somebody’s declared a holiday.”

As he left the cabin Brummett saw his son Josh and told him to go fetch his ma and tell her to bring the jug. “Tell her Rolla’s here with his fiddle, we’re havin’ some dancin’ tonight.”

Banner joined a large knot of men where Kentucky Bill Snyder was braggin’ on his horse. Said it was the fastest in this new Brown County. He got a good laugh out of that. Soon they were betting on horses they hadn’t even seen yet and planning to meet later in the month up in Georgetown where there was a good flat field to run.

Banner noticed one of the commissioners, Hiram Wilson, fanning himself with a piece of the county map. Something about it caught his eye.

“Lemmee see that for a minute, Hiram,” Brummett said, reaching out. His jaw swung open as he realized what he was seeing. “You added this new township and now Jacksonburg is outside of Jackson township. It’s gonna confuse people.”

“Don’t worry about that now, Banner, we’ll fix it later,” Hiram tipped his hat and stepped over to speak to the widow Jordan.

ØØØ

Seven months later the Indiana General Assembly officially changed Jacksonville’s name to Nashville, at Banner Brummett’s suggestion, to honor the city and state from where many of the county’s earliest settlers had come and where their beloved Old Hickory made his home.

Originally published in Our Brown County Magazine 1995

They put them all in the Blockhouse eventually.

Confessions of a New York Squid

From White Harlem

I look down the street warily. Every man is suspect. One approaches me even now. Leather jacket. Shades. He stops, still too far away to see well. He takes something from his pocket. A gun! He cleans his glasses against the light of a streetlamp. I relax a little. What if he is polishing his gun! Behind him comes a smaller man. What’s he up to! You had to suspect strangers in the city. They could be murderers ... thieves ... sportscoats.

Invocation
I’m about to spit up all the bile that has been accumulating in me since coming to New York City. I’m bloated with the yellow viscous matter, my organs are swimming in the stuff like a dead virgin pig in the hot afternoon sun. The sun of my contempt. I don’t blame anyone else for my faults—I know them too well!

I thoroughly intended to love New York for its flaws, as all must. The “greatest city in the world” is no place for the half-hearted or weak-willed. I found that out quickly enough. I actually enjoyed this aspect of it. Developing a thick scab of insensitivity suited me, made me diamond hard. Ready to be cracked.

I
Absurdist Fuselage
Mid-June 1981, NYC. Calm. A baby cries. Gargoyles laugh across the street. Faint breeze. Traffic is picking up on Broadway. Not along this street, though. Street lights go out. Vertigo. Young dude pushing out cartloads of garbage, stacking it against the building.

Things will be fine as long as I don’t hold their humanness against them.

II
Waiting Mantra
(For La Maga)
Been on a string four hours
Third beer & counting
If you don’t want to see me
Why don’t you say so?

La Maga likes to make new friends. Her old ones ... well they could be a nuisance. Sometimes they were useful, if she needed help moving, or a quick loan but most of the time she just wanted them to leave her alone.

I felt affection for her. Why should I hide it? I didn’t take it for granted. I didn’t expect more. Didn’t ask for more. Didn’t expect her to wake up one day and be in love with me. Yet it disturbed her. A kiss on the cheek, a hug ... she ducked. A firm handclasp and affectionate glance she could handle. What was she afraid of?

(There are all sorts of nasty things in this hairball chest.)

III
Titmouse
New York is a humorous place. Every minute there seems to be something new to laugh about, whether it be a covey of toy poodles on leashes or an expensively dressed lady in high heels trying to get her Doberman to shit into a business envelope she’s holding under its straining anus.

Or amaze. I saw a rainstorm hit the World Trade Center as I stood in the center of Greenwich Village about a mile away. The wind was gusting and people were running like motherfuckers because it looked like it was going to come off that giant building and eat us. It wasn’t a bad storm. Seeing it vertically was what was shocking.

IV
La Maga and I are of opposite personalities. She expresses everything, even if it is stupid or bigoted, dangerous or insulting. She has her secret knowledge, of course.

I have a willful personality expressed in the passive manner, stubborn mule sides, refuses to budge. I express very little of my emotion except when passionate. Passion is the only thing that will budge me. Pent up rage and frustration all swallowed up. I sit in coffeeshops like Ronald McBoingBoing.

PARANOID. Newsweek says the notebook found in his possession contained several references to his being in Newsweek stories. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR! Says Arnaud de Bourchgrave.

Pecka Pecka, awl, Pecka Pecka!!

V
I’m sizzling on the spit already. My one known path out of here closed off.

Our natural instinct is to kill.

This is one of the factors that make modern life so hard. We repress the naked desire and kill in other ways (backstabbing, sports, business, rock music, professional criticism and the like). War used to fill the gap, allowing young men to let the red blood flow but modern war means annihilation. We clench our bowels and sit growling at one another.

Some kill and the rest of us fear them. We are in awe—to take a life. What that means. Like some sort of priest passing out communion wafers. Dirt, sin, death, sleaze. Like cigarette butts in urine. Like a cock spurting aimlessly at random over some long lost field of ice. What can it be? Death, bloody death of the whole human race.

Do you know what I’m talking about? No?

It figures.

VI
Going out today I found the King of Spades. He looks sad. One face is scratched off. No can tell what it means but I better keep my eyes open.

Hot day, strong breeze, air brilliant with pollutants.

La Maga was sick with a migraine headache and asked me to come help her. For two days I took care of her. I changed the washcloth to cool her forehead, stumbling from lack of sleep. I cooked her food and served it to her and didn’t mind when she wouldn’t let me have any for myself. Not even a lousy potato. I went out on the weird streets of St. Mark’s to buy her ice cream. I walked her to the doctor. I cared for her. A regular fucking prince. I loved it. The second night I massaged her hands and arms while we watched TV. She was getting better and we laughed. I held her in my arms.

The next day she was well enough to start bitching at me. I was eating too much of her food. (I’d dared to make myself a half a sandwich.) We argued about ridiculous things. I guess we’d been together too long. She talked about seeing Howard, looking at me with steady defiant gaze. I didn’t remember making any claims. Buy your curio and get out, I thought. She thanked me as I left but there was none of the warmth of our domestic scene of the previous evening. My motives were pure. I’d be lying to deny that I felt let down by the brusqueness of my dismissal. It was obvious that she had goals that simply didn’t include me.

Would she do the same for me? I have to doubt it. She uses me as her psychic shield.

VII
When you’re in a place where you know you no longer can be. When every day is pain. When you have become stagnant creatively. When love is no longer possible. When you have failed for the hundredth time. How can people continue to believe in you? How can you believe in yourself? Without self-pity I can say that my life is hell and continues to be. I don’t want pity. I don’t want a cure, I don’t want an answer. I want love and the peace to work. I don’t want to deal with irate sonovabitches on the street. I used to have charity, although not very much, I used to enjoy people. Now all I want is to see them frozen in space and time until I’ve passed through. They can continue to exist without me. Every contact with a human being is painful. My paranoia pushes me close to violence. I survive by continuing blindly, a Pontiac in an acid rain. I hate this place yet I know the real problem is inside me.

VIII
Blasphemy
K: Are there nuns anymore?

W: Of course. They’re getting raped and murdered in El Salvador.

K: Those weren’t nuns, they were communists ... and lesbians.

W: No. They were Jesus’s wives. The wives of Xhrist. You don’t fuck with Xhrist’s harem.

A moment of silence.

W: Of course Jesus doesn’t fuck them ... Why should He when He has His Mother?

God enjoys blasphemy. He blasphemes against the human race every day. Cancer to eat us up; love without hope, nasty twists of fate. I’m not saying that we deserve any better, just that God blasphemes, too, against us His little children.

A ray of sunlight strikes my face as I write this last line.

IX
This story begins with a man following his wine bottle up the street. Now, this isn’t as mysterious as it might seem. Indeed, the wine bottle, green, cheap, was in his hand. I say he was following it because he held it in front of him, like Yorick’s skull, as he staggered, all fetid and rotten, behind it.

“Yoke him,” I think as I sit in this here coffeeshop drinking espresso with the last 5 dollars in my pocket (& this borrowed),serenely writing in my notebook about the wino and his bottle and drawing the obvious parallel between his madness and mine.

My wine is this ridiculous muse, intoxicating and corrupting, bearer of false dreams.

X
An Interview
A: Well, for one thing I can’t read book reviews anymore because I’m afraid of seeing my ideas already there ... and because I know Jesus is trying to destroy me. Or maybe it’s Yahweh trying to drive me to Jesus. Each day is too cannily designed to destroy my equilibrium to be anything but the work of a malignant enemy.

Q: That’s quite egocentric, don’t you think? To presume that you’re the center of God’s attention?

A: Well, that’s why God is great, He torments everyone at once. It’s not only me.

Q: People are starving, being blown to bits, tortured by their loved ones ...

A: I’m tortured on the inside. Hey, you think God’s such a friendly fellow?

Q: That’s an old question that every philosopher has tried to deal with, the presence of evil. Better men than you, I might add.

A: No doubt, but they still got their asses kicked. I’m just tired of being worked over all the time.

XI
The Editor
He pointed to the passage like an adult trying to show an incredibly dull child for the fourteenth time the simple truth of the matter.

“What’s the point of this?”

“What?”

“'He slips and falls.’ Why does he slip and fall? It doesn’t advance the plot. Nothing becomes of it...”

“There’s water on the floor,” Marvin leans forward to point out the words: `... there was water on the floor.’ “What can I tell ya?” Marvin shrugged. “He slipped and fell in some water. He wasn’t hurt. What ‘a ya want me to do, hurt him? You want me to break my main man’s arm just to please you? How’s he gonna wrestle a Samurai like that?”

The name of his book?—I’m an Asshole and so are You

XII
The Story of the Last Hundred Years
His lower back ached.
His ear hurt where the frame of his glasses rested.
Dried sweat on his right lens disturbed his vision.
His right hand seemed to lose some feeling.
A spot in the upper third of his ass crack itched.
His crossed leg began falling asleep.
His left thumb tingled.
He prepared to write.
His left eyebrow itched.
A hair fell into his eye.
He looked at the article to be read in panic.
Thought of a humiliating experience in journalism class, fifteen years before.
Hated himself.
Last night.
Regained control.
Scratched his neck realizing that he hadn’t shaved.
A deeper part of his ass itched.
His shoulder itched.
His forehead itched.
His inner elbow itched.
His mouth tasted foul reminding him that he still needed to shave and brush his teeth.
Each day revolved quickly yet he did nothing.
Attacked by the memory of a past lover.

XIII
I call La Maga to congratulate her upon her birthday. She doesn’t recognize my voice, asks me who I am. There’s been a misunderstanding of late. She’s been avoiding me. A relationship that I’d hoped to strengthen has withered away.

We feel each other out carefully, maintaining a jovial tone while something deeper eats away, at least in me. She must know what has happened. A drifting away. A re-birth of her identity, of her hopes, of her spontaneity. Something she and I lost a longtime ago in a look exchanged on the Epiphany, when I waved bye-bye to her at the door as she left the party with the nice man who’d offered her a ride home—the long way around.

We spoke of her, mostly, as always. I interjected a few personal notes of despair and one upsmanship but she insisted on talking about herself.

I don’t begrudge her; the change brings her closer to the old La Maga. The one I love.

I feel betrayed. By God. By fate. My myself. By her.

So, her life is wonderful right now. She’s signed up for a filmmaking course at NYU. When I enthusiastically offer to help she swats me carelessly. I curse my lapse of face.

I much want not to be uncivil.

She wants to hang up early in the conversation but we get diverted onto Isherwood.

She becomes enthused as a spark glows faintly between us. Less restrained she forgets the distance I can’t forget.

But I am civil. I don’t forget my basic sympathetic feelings for her.

Then I reach my limit. Fortunately there is a junction for a quick exit and I take it. Unfortunately La Maga wants to go for all the bananas and starts to explain why she’s been so quirky of late.

I know why. To discuss it would only cause an argument.

We should have argued. I’m exhausted and can’t absolve her. I whimsically compare her to a slug. Whimsy being something she taught me. This statement shocks her but I am out of my head and not responsible.

The truth is she has abandoned me.

XIV
Thoughts Overheard of a Woman Looking Back at Me
Man
Staring with lifeless eyes
I’m gonna kill you
Piss on your grave
I’m gonna ...
Smoke this cigarette

XV
Park Slope/Park East
I feel like a pendulum swinging between three boroughs. I live in Brooklyn, work in Manhattan, and visit Toinette in the Bronx. Mama Pro’s Delicatessen is the bottom of the swing.

Boro Hall.

Stuck on those long subway lines, stuck in a room full of fuckers I don’t even want to share the planet with much less be crammed flesh to flesh with in a steamy, jolting subway car. A car full of assholes. I try to imagine this literally. Palpitating, farting, making sucking noises.

Better not laugh. Some sucker will notice and make fun of the crazy white boy.

—Call me crazy? Well, fuck you!

Yeah, then he’s got to get serious with you, too.

“No motherfucker tells me to fuck off! You got that, boy? I’ll kill you, you fuck with me! You got that? I’ll kill you!”

Yeah, yeah, is it my fault?

You wanna say, “Fuck you, sumnabitch, I ain’t taking shit off you, neither!”

But you don’t. What if he’s a psycho killer? What if he’s already been pushed so far in a corner that all he has left is the power of life and death? “Nobody fucks with me, man!”

Death. Doom. Destruction.

XVI
“Anarchy? No,” he cocked his head. “I don’t want power to be in the hands of the violent as it would in anarchy, you’d have chieftains ... but it’s the violent that rule now. Look at it. Look at the ’60s. You hear a lot about the violent society—and it is—on every level. Look at it. How many Black Panthers were killed by the police? About one third. Would they do it again? You don’t have to ask. How many liberals were assassinated? Think about it. How many intellectuals discredited? Hmmm? You think it was an accident? No way, baby, no way. ‘The American assassin is a loner, a sexual twist, someone uncertain about reality, identifying with famous people, killing to be one with the symbol.’ Could be, ace, if you want to buy that story, but think about it because the story could be different.

“You know the one about the spy who didn’t know he was a spy? The assassin who didn’t know he was an assassin? One day an idea pops into his head from nowhere. He doesn’t know where it came from. Years before he was in the army or maybe working for Motorola. He had the usual teenage fixation on the Beatles. He was sick for a couple of weeks. Bad. ‘Don’t remember a thing about it, said I ran a temperature of 105. Should be dead.’ Gets the shakes and beats his wife. John Lennon’s in the papers again. Think maybe I should go and kill him. Why not kill Reagan, too, after being put on the scent by a twelve year old nymphet?’ Click, boing! There’s the signal. The Winston Lights ad in the hands of his press agent.’ Boom! Screech! President be shot but not for long because there is always someone around to take his place. ”No, I don’t believe in hurting individuals but I believe in fucking over institutions in any way I can.”

XVII
El Diablo
I was very jumpy. There had been the usual Christmas rash of murders in NYC so I decided it was safer to stay in the neighborhood. There were no pick-ups at the West End so I drank a few brew and watched a young stud in black muscle t-shirt playing pinball. Every time he lost the ball he’d whirl completely around while giving the machine a vicious kick. I expected someone to ask him to calm down but no one did. When he’d finished he put on a Cheap Trick jacket to tend the bar.

I took a walk through campus and back, dreaming of my future.

Returning to the bar I saw Fromage. He was sitting with Julie, the girlfriend of one of our co-workers. She was a very sharp woman who pored herself into tight red pants to burn down the city. She was also very drunk. A friend of hers had been murdered a block away just last night. He was walking a young woman home after work when they’d been surprised by a bandit. He courageously pushed her into building before turning to the robber. It was the last time she’d see him alive.

I bought Julie a beer. Fromage was beside himself. Her gloom was depressing him. He was pissed because she owed him money from a wild night they’d shared recently and now she wouldn’t pay. Billy Joel’s Only a Woman played on the jukebox.

“This is my song.” She held my hand while singing the lyrics, gesturing with her long red nails.

When she was finished she hugged me, kissing me while saying, “I love you, baby.”

I returned the compliment wondering where this was leading.

She demanded I play the song again so I took my boner to the jukebox and tried to calm down while punching a couple of songs of my own (If You See Her Say Hello; I’m One). Luckily, before her song could play again she wanted to leave. She demanded we go to Fromage’s apartment. Fromage felt very put upon. He didn’t want any more of nonsense and tried to talk her out of it. I remained noncommittal. Fromage asked me to come along to help babysit her. He thanked me but I would have thanked him.

Julie was a fiery Italian Catholic from Cape Cod. She kept her reserve except when drunk. Then the whole mountainside fell down.

At his apartment she demanded to hear a particular song. Once more. Then again. Finally ignoring her Fromage put on a Supremes record. She wanted to dance. Fromage refused so I was enlisted. We gyrated lasciviously, crotch to crotch, ass to ass, down and dirty, hot lava in a molten stream. Fromage didn’t hesitate, when he got the chance, to point out that her boyfriend had a key to the apartment if he felt like looking for her. He was known for violent temper.

I hadn’t kissed a woman in over six months and it showed. She rubbed me with every part of her body. Fromage watched the ceiling with a look of disgust on his face although he was probably just bored. “Give the poor boy a rest,” he said. Then left the room.

Ain’t life a funny thing? A man had to be killed before I could have what love and devotion could never win. She never gave me the time of day before that or after yet our brief moment together was enough to affirm life for each of us. A delicate thing. Surprise. Action.

XVIII
The Turtle Dance
That day I left on the train for Washington DC to visit my old friend Rodan and his wife Georgia Tech. I had taken the poison, now to administer the bullet.

As the train slid through New Jersey I thought of Marvin Totallion. They called him “Blue Boots” at work because he’d spray-painted his shoes aquamarine. He’d shaved his head, leaving only an aesthetic fringe, like a gaunt St. Jocobo, the kissing saint. He spoke in short, twisted bursts of perverse humor, laughing by pointing his face at the ceiling so you could watch his throat muscles work. He was lean, mean, and sarcastic.

One night we went back to his place at 108th and Amsterdam, past a Catholic church where there was a small statue of the Virgin Mary. The ledge outside his window was stained with brown spots. He pointed that out. We drank Dos Equis, smoked hooter, and expounded on things as young men will.

He showed me a piece of his artwork, a hunk of insulation torn from a burned supermarket. It looked like a stone slab but was in fact very light. He had spraypainted red and black crisscrossing lines across its dun surface.

Marvin related a vision he’d had late one night. Being unable to pay the electric bill he’d been reading by candlelight. The book was Raymond Roussell’s Impressions of Africa. He became aware of movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up the brown spots that his landlord had dripped onto the stone ledge while painting the window frame had come alive.

They had become turtles, crowding around him, swaying rhythmically on their hind legs in a turtle dance. The next morning he found himself lying in the middle of the room on his back. He was wearing his coat, the candles were burned out, the brown spots had returned to their places in the dappled sunlight.

The train continues through the afternoon haze into Baltimore where La Maga was born.

Misquoting Jesus

by Bart D. Ehrman
What if the Bible were more like the Wikipedia than the exact Word of God? With thousands of people making changes over hundreds of years, except with no track back. How could you ever trust it, much less condemn people to hell because of someone's interpretation of it? Hold onto your head, because that's exactly what happened. All kinds of basic, dare I say—fundamental—changes were made to the New Testament and no one can possibly know how much was changed, whether it's about snake handling or virgin birth. Ehrman makes a very good case for taking a more relaxed view about the Passion o' Christ and seeing it for the metaphor that it is, rather than divine smackdown some would have it be. Worth a look if you're a skeptic and don't know why, or a Christian who wants to test his faith.

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