I am of Arnold

Arnold Schwarzenegger invited us all to his cabin - more like a double-wide trailer - in the woods.

It was rather hill-pretty and green, like that stretch of interstate between Ft. Smith and Fayetteville in April, May, or even June. We tried slaughtering him when he turned into "The Predator," even though he looked nothing like that alien thing we're all used to from the governor-filled films. He came back to life.

We tried again, this time succeeding at least in gashing a perfect circle-hole through his toned abs. Soon the circle was filled through some divine, perhaps satanic, process of mending.

At the University of Arkansas, after wandering the lots where cars cannot park without sticky sticker faculty passes, I found all the students in the university were studying, by obligation, the ins and outs of this Austrian "Predator."

"I don't get it" a journalism major complained. "I'm a journalism major. Why do I have to know about The Predator?"

Back at the trailer a Reed Indeed practice is going on without me, perfect practice for a porch, at the end of which Arnold is particularly strong.

He teaches me the secret of mending and I realize, at last, that I am strong and I am Arnold.

This is the perfect street for collusion.

The world is coming to an end. I get this feeling because people are worried that the resources they are using are limited. But no one wants to cut back. Other than my family, people still bathe twice a day and use their electricity as if these impermanent privledges are eternal rights, even though everybody knows the end is near. The Alesian Church is especially guilty. I was holed up at my parents' house trying to avoid marauders one evening, the sun having just gone down, when suddenly I heard, and seconds later saw, a white helicopter, descending wobbly and grotesque into the driveway. Either man or machine had been drinking, that was certain. I asked the pilot where he got such a thing and, moreover, gas for such a thing. He chuckled and said, "Well, the Alesians, of course."

He took me to their church. I thought it was "Elysians," but alas, the front door of their "temple" had it spelled all wrong. "They've got it all wrong," I thought. But they didn't. They had electricity, and they were all happy. They weren't talking about God or Jesus at all, just having fun and not worrying. Lots of apocalyptic games like tag and hide-and-go-seek.

A man came by my parents' house the other day. He was looking for my brother, said something about arms dealing. My father said he wasn't home. He covered for him. So he was pretty pissed when upstairs he found the square, clear plastic zip-up travel bag with two .38 revolvers in it. He yelled when he found the guns. My brother deserved it, the yelling, and my brother knew he deserved it. And this fact made him giggle. Usually when my brother giggles it is when he knows something is wrong and everyone else knows something is wrong and he makes it clear that he endorses that wrong something and this was no exception.

So my brother sat down next to me on the striped couch in the living room and yapped on about what a wuss my father - his stepfather - is. I told him he was wrong and he responded by momentarily paralyzing me. I'm not sure how he did it, which is something I often say about my brother (actually it's more like "I don't know how he does it"), but as my body was gradually returned its right to motion, that right I did exercise. Gradually. I began by rubbing his hand. I think we called it Injin burn - or something like that - when we were kids. But that was the nineties, back when we ate dinner at a table and prayed before meals. Then I bit his arm as dilligently as possible.

Then I punched him in the face, but not so dilligently. At first he laughed, but after a harder strike he said something soft and surprised like "Oh, that hurt." It was the kind of thing brothers might do to each other when they're young and horsing around. I guess you'd say we were just horsing around, but really I wanted to kick the shit out of him.

I have to get going now. After all it is snowing outside, the world is about to end, and I have to meet some friends at 40th street, which - I am about to find out - is the perfect street for collusion.

This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion.

I found out after wondering for some time that Bob Saget gets his mouthwash from Estonia. Also, it turns out that while Estonians speak Estonian, they print all their mouthwash labels in Turkish.

I am on Hendrix campus, which has apparently undergone a total makeover since I last saw it in real life. There is a deep, rectangular hole in the asphalt of the parking lot and it is, for some reason, important. So that is where I park my car.

It looks like Memphis Pencils are playing another show at Hendrix. It is at this point - when I realize I am to perform - that I am back at my parents' house, snorting and licking cocaine off the kitchen wall. The walls were white, don't ask how I found it.

I apologize to my mother for getting blown just as she is leaving. She forgives me, though; she's in a good mood because she and Neil are about to see Frank Zappa.

I'm back into the party atmosphere. It doesn't look like Hendrix. It is probably still Hendrix. The first Hendrix didn't look like Hendrix either. There is a family-renunion/county fair/church picnic sort of thing going on. This is clear despite a marked lack of pavilion. Jesse Belt and I go to the nearby gas station where they return drunk-from beer cans to the shelves. I stock up on watermelon as he is probably buying cigarettes.

There is some boring shit with my family in there somewhere. Where we're going to eat, who's staying at home, whose birthday it is, who's driving which car. There is some really boring shit with my family in there somewhere.

I'm back at the real Hendrix, the real reimagined Hendrix. There is probably a pavilion somewhere. There are some acquaintaces from junior high standing on a sidewalk and I decide not to say hello. Memphis Pencils are about to perform, but alas - I'm in a dermal dilema. My ass is showing. Because my pants are assless.

Don't worry, I've ended up with a towel. Well, shit: it keeps falling down. It keeps falling down and people keep seeing my ass. Shit. Someone asks me about my shirt. I tell them all about how I designed it, but Neil reminds me that it was a gift from JD, that JD had done the design. Oh, right.

More importantly, Jamie Claire approaches me to ask where she should park her car - "Should I park it over in front of that building? I wouldn't want to get an arm on it."

"Oh, Jamie," I think, "I didn't know you were into non sequiturs!" But it turns out a bloody arm, cut at the elbow with hand and all and a Luger next to it, is lying in the perfect fucking parking spot. Now no one can have the perfect parking spot. That is so rude.

Daylight comes and still no police have shown up, but that's okay because the annual Halloween zombie parade is here. We, without knowing who we are, throw rocks at the zombies and say, in all caps, "FUCK ZOMBIES!"

Glorious dolphins result in shitfish monsters.

I am chewing gum in the front pew of a Catholic church next to a couple of Mexican kids who mutter something to me about a sandwich. A nun chides me for the gum, but when I take it out, most of it sticks to my back teeth. Some high school aged kids then performed "Bored By Beacons," a Memphis Pencils song.

Neil comes home. His chin is bloodied and I don't find out why, just that he thought he was going to get "stitched up," but actually got "stitched." That fucking nurse. Neil spits his tooth into the sink and I extract my own by hand, the one to which the earlier gum was stuck. The tooth is so unhealthy that it is translucent, practically falling apart, and it expands until it is the size of that big-ass diamond in "The Rescuers."

There is a story going around that some young black guy was caught doing something naughty - but not so terrible by liberal standards - and that he was going to get a very harsh sentence in a couple of weeks. I think he was expecting up to ten years for a DUI. He was charged for that after doing something lewd or especially negroid at a party. Some friends and I are walking on Dickson St at the intersection with Arkansas Ave, discussing the travesty when a couple of female police officers begin chiding us about how hard their jobs are. We agree, but that wasn't really the point, ladies.

Ayşenur nags me about something, about which something or other I should choose. We are at a picnic.

I am in an Amazon-like river and what appear to be glorious dolphins end up being shitfish monsters, like in that campy horror movie.

An irrelevant speck of dust grows to a size which overwhelms the universe.

A guy from Indiana about my age whom I have never met runs into me at Wal-Mart. We are looking at books. He recognizes me from the internet and says, "Oh, I saw you recently read such and such novel. How'd you like it?" to which I respond "I didn't think anyone read the stuff I put on the internet."

1995 you don't know shit

I am worried when in the eighth or ninth inning John Rocker, Atlanta Braves pitcher from the 1990s, comes hauling ass out of the bullpen, lookin pissed as always, but tonight especially so. Pissed like he's pitching against his New York city-slicker god-questioning, queer-forgiving rivals. Or like I've reamed his daughter, maybe even insulted his wife. ("Your ass is mine, Bemberg!") Then we are in a dimly lit room with baby-shit tan walls. Rocker's not able to do the things he gets paid to do (close out baseball games, kick ass, make an ass of himself in the media) until I turn on the light, which I do without hesitation. I push the pin on that fucking construction lamp and the whole thing is over. No pitches thrown. Everyone's favorite shock-jock John Rocker is gone, never to harass our progressive sensibilities again.

You gotta snake in ya pants? Dance!

My mother and I are walking along a paved trail in a rural area without season. When we take a turn, my perspective changes entirely and so does Mum. She's now Molly. Molly and I squat in the trail. There are a few faceless people watching. I sit on a pile of rocks, which gradually falls apart until finally I feel skin on my ankle. I look at the pile and turns out to be a grotesque, slimed-out snake whose skin has the consistency of a sloppily glazed doughnut. I try to move quickly, but my legs have trouble getting started. I finally get about six feet away from it and lean up against a rickety fence. The snake hauls ass in my direction and climbs up into my pants.

Simian Rivendell

Imagine riding a horse through deciduous mountain terrain when the leaves have turned to orange and gold as the sky has in its crepuscule. Now imagine thinking this is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Now imagine gorillas plumbumming out of the woods downhill, then thinking "Wow, this is a once in a lifetime experience." Now imagine one of those gorillas mauling you, and waking up.

(taped together like fringe)

"you were in my dream last night. you lived in a sprawling seventies ranch-style house, dark wood and wall-size windows. i had crashed on your couch and you took me to work in the morning. when we went outside it was sunny and snowing. we drove down park ave. and saw about four horrible car accidents, which i was perturbed by but didn't seem to faze you. i was holding a shrimp salad and you kept looking down at it, finally saying, "it's so pink! way pinker than that orangey-red color of that shrimp," pointing over at a little kid dressed in a full-body shrimp costume. there must have been some sort of costumed little league game that had just finished, because groups of kids were walking home dressed like shrimp, pocahontas, and pixie stix (thousands of pixie sticks taped together like fringe). i commented on the car accidents and you said, "well, i think the big motorcycle crash over by the locksmith building was just a publicity stunt." i had to concur."

Sarah Levine

cheese jello

Jayson Black, and a combination of strangers that he embodies, and I are on our way to some small bayou town in Louisianna. We have a lot of trouble finding our way there because the roads are mapped for us on a napkin as a knotty oak tree. When we arrive, my father is the only person I recognize. Jason has even turned into someone I don't know. The party has an ala carte, self-service Thanksgiving feel. The Jello has, I think, cream cheese on it.

these arms know not what they do

A friend is getting married. All of my friends and family are going to the wedding, but none of us know what time it starts. We gather somewhere profane before the ceremony and worry that we are late, that we have missed the vows, but that the bride and groom will surely understand. We can't be the only ones who made that mistake. The wedding never happens.

My consciousness floats above my body, which is flirting with a foreign girl. I want to stop because she is not Aysenur, but the body obeys not. Forgive these arms, Lord, for they know not what they do.

metronome gasps

In a dark cafe or restaurant, Ahmet asks me how I like my Snickers bar. I tell him there must be something wrong with my head because I can't remember eating it, despite it's wrapper glaring back at me from the palm of my hand. My consciousness floats above my body, which is on the white-and-black-tiled floor, choking Aysenur. She doesn't seem to mind. She might even enjoy it. I want to stop, but can't, and it reminds me of when Neil socked Ryan when he dreamed a dark spirit-figure had flown into their bed and her body. I wake up, a gasping metronome my heart.

Haitian Tunnel

In the Haitian neighborhood, somewhere off Garland Avenue, there is a narrow tunnel that crosses a mostly quiet street. Rabbits and other critters run back and forth beneath it.

Yes it did.

This one kept me in bed until 5:30 p.m.

In the bedroom at my parents' house, I pull a cough drop from your cervix. When the doorbell rings, you are my three year-old niece running to the front door where a man in dark clothes waits to take you away. He has bad intentions. There iss lightning and torrential rain.

I Got Life

I was performing "Ain't Got No...I've Got Life" with an older, double-chinned Nina Simone in a basement-grey venue that was something like The Music Hall. Zach Ash was at center stage playing my Yamaha keyboard, and during the applause in between the first song and "Happy Birthday, Harvey" I noticed the levels on a soundboard, which were both very low and very high frequencies. Because of this and Nina's mid-song mood swings I said "It feels kind of bipolar up here." Zach gave me a worried look, and we started the next song.

dreamless in sleep

So I haven't been dreaming much lately, but I have had some pretty dreamlike experiences while awake. Watching Hiromi with Boodge was definitely one of them:

nothing surreal, or real, or revelatory

I was in Bavaria near Neuschwanstein. My mother or some respected woman was there to guide me. It was raining. From the edge of a mountain trail the local tourist tavern was in view.

Ascension

You had been in France and for some reason come back to lead me to the basement and tell me how to clean it. It was full of surprising minutia. I vacuumed strings. Maybe we were looking for something.

Later, my father told me that the repairs couldn't be done, or received at least, without taking a computer to the shop. A laptop wouldn't do.

When I gained a hazy consciousness, I was standing in a bar, dark as the rest and peopled by shadows that yelped about this and that, but mostly that.

I was vaguely on Ascension.

Having heard of fireworks

From the high-fenced place we raced, having heard once or twice of fireworks. We made it to the sculpted basin made of clay, and by then it was day. We had just sat down at the green-blue reflecting pool and ate a hamburger when I heard an automated voice on my phone that said mum had died in surgery. After some wrinkle in the fabric of time, we saw Renny Bover in the snow. He said he'd be back from Chicago soon. People are better at driving in the snow there.

No one has to know all this, but someone will probably tell.