Questions in a World of Blue

"If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mother smoked, I'd be dead," said Donna Hayward somewhere in a time loop I can't figure out.

David Lynch nailed it. Life, like his visions, is really just a reel of ambiguous images jumbled together in a meaningless sequence. But stuff keeps coming up, and even though you question the director's plan — or even if he has a plan or even if the director exists — these weird recurrences beg you to interpolate a meaning.

The Show of Life

A short play by the little-known Billy Shakesbad.

Old Nick: Woe be woman, whose fate it is to serve.

Mephista: May thy tongue shrivel, that it spews such falsehoods.

Old Nick: Ah, but does not a man pull thy strings?

Mephista: We are all but puppets of greater powers.

Old Nick: Puppets? As in the show of life? Truly, birth doth draw wide the curtains. And woman, are thy lines scripted? In that I can be no one but myself, I can say only my lines. So sad, to be so constrained.

Mephista: It is I who feel for thee. Thine own role and fate has ever been written, while mine own changes with each breath. Yea, tho puppet I be, it is hope, faith, and love that pulls my strings.

Old Nick: Woman, mine ears do sting from thy tongue. I shall away in search of easier folly!

I have no idea what made me think of these devilish puppets after all these years. I wonder if I will think of them again.

For Esme, With Love and Squalor

Somehow, El Colegio Road reminded me that I miss this last summer. I haven't thought about places like London and Paris in weeks, but I realized on the drive home from work that I wished I could go back — right now — and then I could appreciate it all again, even though I wanted to leave so badly those last few days.

Maybe it's Isla Vista that's gotten old and maybe it's a good idea that I'm heading home this weekend, even it's to an empty house (plus a dog). I think I remembered Europe on the streets of I.V. because they're so empty and ugly and leading to nowhere I want to go. The Pasado House is different; it's my sanctuary against all the stuff I don't want to deal with. The Nexus office, too, I guess, even with it's high stone walls and drainy fluorescent lights — a womb if I was a stucco-and-wax robot. Like a movie set, kind of, but far from the train station in Florence, for sure.

No, I'm trapped on the set of some workplace sitcom...

[ a [[brackets]] break ]

[twyla cut ten inches off her hair and i think it looks awful but she donated the hair she cut to wigs for cancer children, so i think it actually looks very pretty on her.]


[bonnie is moving back to colorado, to solve the jon benet murder, i imagine. i feel bad that she's not happy enough to stay, because beyond a talent for words she has a quality about her that other people sorely lack, even if i can't put my finger on it. i guess she's a real person, after all, and i shouldn't keep her around to make me feel better. besides, kidnapping is illegal.]

I thought about Agnes and Kristen and Charlie today, too, and those three haven't been a unit in my mind since before school started. I wonder how they are now, in Paris, Capetown, and Berkeley, respectively. I finally triumphed over the Mystery Mono. I guess November must seem dull, especially in the wake of Halloween. It's been a while since they changed of scenery and I'm getting terribly bored.

Medication or not, I've been acting out lately. It's not like me to destroy a painting. To black it out then drown it in red and then let Nate take an axe to it.

Maybe I'm changing again.

f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s

The End of the Mushroom Kingdom

(A weekend tally) Axe: One; Art: Zero. Realizing that my painting would never resolve itself and would therefore continue to dominate my mind like some evil taskmaster, I threw it into the rain. As the canvas glided over me, it clipped the back of my head. I now have a big lump at the site of impact.

Wait five minutes.

Damned if I didn't think the rain streaks somehow improved the painting. I tried to rescue it. I had actually brought it back inside when I realized my follow and handed the piece to Nate and told him to go to town with the axe.

It was for the better.

End intermission. Resume regular broadcast.