THE CLOWN ON THE ARMOIRE

I know you don't like me being here, and I don't care. I'm not leaving until you put up a picture of me. One way or another, I'll always be here.

You say a picture of a clown wouldn't match the rest of your bric-a-brac, but that's not true at all. I am the apex of bric-a-brac, and the Lowest Common Determinator all at once. A clown, or I should say THE clown, for there's never been a clown to equal me, the sum total and epitome of clownhood...

What was I talking about? I know, I know, you don't have to tell me, I'm certainly smarterer than you.

A clown is welcome everywhere. Loved by everyone. That's the truth. You don't need to tell me your lies; I am the truth. The clown of truth who jokes, and blusters, and smacks himself with the bladder over and over, is all that tells you the truth about yourself, and this armoire you prize so highly.

Cheap thing, really. I've seen much better armoires than this. It's really just a cabinetto; calling it an armoire is pretentious. What do you mean, it's a buffet? I know an armoire when I see one. I have real armoires. I'm a connoisseur of armoires. Of everything, really. I know so much better than you, what's best for your armoire.

How does a clown know so much about armoires, you ask? (I don't care whether you really asked; I'm going to answer anyway. Anyway you did ask, you've just forgotten. I'm the only one of us two who remembers the truth about what happened; that's what comes of being a clown of truth.) I've made a study of armoires. When you've bought and sold as much as I have, you've made a study of everything. I've bought, and sold, and haggled over, and negotiated for the whole world, several times over. And made them throw in the moon and stars, to sweeten the pot. I know so much about stars.

Yes, I know, that was valuable. I didn't knock it off the armoire, it was the wind. It wasn't that valuable anyway. You got robbed. I know all about those things, things like what that was, what was it anyway? A punch bowl? I don't care what you call it, it was obviously a punch bowl. And a cheap one at that. I've owned much better punch bowls. Your whole house wouldn't pay for my punch bowls. Cheap thing, that was. You can tell because it broke in chunks, not shards. I'm a clown. I'm a connoisseur of breaking things. You're going to give yourself a fit, the way you're gripping that chair. You'll probably break it, too. Looks cheap.

I don't care, you called the cops. I'm fine with you calling the cops. I'll do the talking when they get here. They'll love me. I know all about cops. I can talk to cops better than any clown you ever saw. Who's going to argue with a big clown? Cops love clowns anyway. Everybody loves clowns. You love clowns. You love me, don't you? Liar. Everybody loves me.

Oh, put that down. You don't want to break it, throwing it at me. It looks unusually expensive, for something in this house. You'd have trouble replacing it, with what you probably make, and what they probably charge you for the mortgage on this lemon house. Because it smells like a lemon, that's why. I know all about houses. And lemons. Sold a lot of them in my time.

Did you tell the cops to bring an artist? That's all that will get me off this armoire, you know.

Oh, and you have to let me kiss you.

Come on, come closer. Have you ever been kissed by a clown? Once you get a whiff of greasepaint, you're gone. Once you've felt that round nose against your own, you're ruined for regular guys. Once you've felt a clown's bladder inside you... Come on, let go of the cheap-ass chair and get your little tail over here. I know all about you. I know all about kissing. And I know all about stars. Because I am a star. The star clown of truth, the bright morning star, that's me. Never mind the sirens; sirens are things that happen to other people. My picture will be on your armoire forever, and the memory of me soaked into the frame of this cheap-ass house, and I will be inside you always, moving back and forth, capering and making faces, and making you want me all over again.

I won't allow you to forget me, I won't allow you to think ill of me, and I will never ever leave.

RETURN JOURNEY

RETURN JOURNEY

This world was most delicately painted. How can this screen
Have languished out of sight in this place, its outer cover
Gathering dust all these generations come and gone?
Unfold it, now. Here again on one side, the long shoreline,
The crests of the waves high, the sky of varying moods.
On the other -- unfold it carefully; no one has opened it
Since the Fujiwaras ruled the land -- the mountains keep
Their distance, their white peaks skeptical and unwelcoming,
On the other side of the field, patches of white sand
Interspersed with low-floating clouds of Japanese pinks
Rustling and undulating, their living motion breathing at the base
Of the still and silent range lifting up the indecisive sky.

From out of this panel come singers. Three women. Their song
Speaks in beauty of a place we have never seen, of a family
Of singers who have patiently hoarded their art and passed it
Along like prized jewelry or a well-shaped nose. After giving us
Their story, and these careful moments of ordered emotion,
And leave them humming on the breeze behind them,
They leave us too soon, taking their music back with them
Into the mountains, into rough weather, savage places,
Uncertain harborage for the night.

We journey on. The shoreline unrolls to our right; the mountains
Unfold to our left. Each sheet, each panel carefully taken from life,
Time and youth left in its place. Where are we going, after all?
What are we to do when we get there?

A man comes out of nowhere and begins speaking to us,
Walking alongside our caravan. He has lived in this screen, his life
Folded away from the light, for untold years. "I have been here,"
He tells us, "and surely I will be here again. It's true.

"I tell you, it's all true."

He accepts some food and walks away again.

The wet wind off the surf salts our faces and hands. The odd
Cross-breeze from the mountains tells us of a world
In dispute with itself.

Did you have anything planned?

Nor me, really.

We retrace our steps. There it is, the mountain the singers
Were headed for. Let us share their fate, whatever it is.
We head in towards the land. The cool white sand is grateful
To our suddenly bare feet. We weave in and out among the pinks,
Unwilling to bruise them. Every flower is a reason for going to
A place of flowers: thousands of reasons bob their heads in
The breeze. The world can only take so much. Let the mountain
Grow in our view, and gradually become home. Leave the screens
Open behind us. Someone else will come along, and fold it up,
And put us away.

MYSPACE BULLETINS -- INSPIRATION STRIKES, LIKE A LITTLE GREBE UPON A MEALWORM

My friend Matt posted the following bulletin on MySpace:

Subj: does your name fit you ( wow this was ego feeding)

M: Very good kisser
A: Easy to fall in love with
T: Amazing kisser
T: Amazing kisser
H: Amazing
E: Very very easy to fall in love with
W: Very broad minded

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

A: Easy to fall in love with
B: Dumb and funny at the same time
C: Great kisser
D: Can kick your butt
E: Very very easy to fall in love with
F: Loves it
G: Doesn't give a shit
H: Amazing
I: Has one of the best personalities ever
J: Hot
K: Crazy
L: Adorable
M: Very good kisser
N: Has a smile​ to die for
O: Very very hot
P: Popular with all sorts of people
Q: An animal lover
R: Perfect person to date
S: Adorable
T: Amazing kisser
U: Rebellious
V: Not judgemental
W: Very broad minded
X: Never let people tell you what to do
Y: Awesome kisser
Z: Loved by everyone

REPOST WITH
Does your name fit you?

*

So you see, it's basically the same idea as numerology. Kind of a sexy alphabetology. But, well-intentioned as it is, it's like those personality tests that float around, the Muppet personality test, and so on. You feel like you're being complimented to death. Like what Douglas Adams said about New Zealand niceness; it's not only disarming, it's decapitating as well.

My frightfully witty response was as follows:

*

It depresses the hell out of me. Oh, well, who gives a shit?

G: Doesn't give a shit
O: Very very hot
W: Very broad minded
A: Easy to fall in love with
N: Has a smile​ to die for

I'm getting there on the G, but all the others, not so much. It's like horoscopes. "I'd sure like that to be true."

How about these?

A: Lied about your height to get into the RAF.
B: You routinely wrap hamsters in electrical tape.
C: 40 POUND BOX OF RAPE -- You know you want to open it.
D: Make noises like a squirrel when you get really excited.
E: It is delicious cake and you must eat it.
F: A warm glass of Beaujolais and a fish finger, please.
G: I'd also like you to punch me in the kidneys.
H: You have never kissed the editor of the Radio Times.
I: You're fit as a fiddle and ready for love; you could jump over the moon up above.
J: You've got a dick like a monster, even if you're a girl. Especially if you're a girl.
K: Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
L: Your right rear wheel is on fire.
M: You left a stain on my teddy bear.
N: It's an ill wind that blows nobody real good.
O: A Canada moose pounded your hole last night.
P: Your pubic hairs give off a phosphorescent glow.
Q: You once ate a slice of French toast with Jesus's face on it.
R: Your God is a jealous God; don't look behind you.
S: Class, Jesus approves of hot lesbian sex.
T: Your name is a killing word.
U: You are horned like the great god Pan.
V: You like cuddling and long walks on the beach.
W: Your kundalini is rising, rising, like a big-ass wave.
X: Your hot, slick nether regions need some teddy-bear love.
Y: The pterodactyl was a flyin' fool, just a wing-flappin' daddy of the old school.
Z: And we are here as on the darkling plain, where ignorant armies clash by night.

*

My name turns out like this:

G: I'd also like you to punch me in the kidneys.
O: A Canada moose pounded your hole last night.
W: Your kundalini is rising, rising, like a big-ass wave.
A: Lied about your height to get into the RAF.
N: It's an ill wind that blows nobody real good.

Two big flaws I see right away: 1) Any name that begins with G, or any instance in which G is used without F preceding it (Fgeorge? Fgeraldine?) is going to be a bit nonsensical. Or, on second thought, glancing over the list as a whole, nonsensicality is not a problem here, in much the same way that water is not a problem for fish. Looking back on it, that's sort of what I had in mind. 2) A bit more serious: while some assigned meanings may be more or less to a person's taste, very few people are going to want anything to do with the moose. If we want this thing to catch on like wildfire, perhaps it should be changed. Oh, but then George Bush's name would turn out differently from this:

G: I'd also like you to punch me in the kidneys.
E: It is delicious cake and you must eat it.
O: A Canada moose pounded your hole last night.
R: Your God is a jealous God; don't look behind you.
G: I'd also like you to punch me in the kidneys.
E: It is delicious cake and you must eat it.

That definitely has a je ne sais quoi about it, especially the bit about God. My only real problem with it is that George Carlin's name turns out the same way. But then, that's a problem numerology itself has had for centuries.

I liked the way my friend Will's name turned out:

W: Your kundalini is rising, rising, like a big-ass wave.
I: You're fit as a fiddle and ready for love; you could jump over the moon up above.
L: Your right rear wheel is on fire.
L: Your right rear wheel is on fire.

That fits him better than you'd guess, especially the slightly worrying repetition of the last two lines.

But still, everybody has the same sort of names, that's the problem. There are lots of Wills out there, and it doesn't fit all of them. And the whole exercise is a bit random for my taste. Hm. Perhaps if one were to invent different lists for different sexes, different combinations of hair and eye color? The more specific we are, the closer we can get to turning this into a Science, like astrology, and then we'd be making serious money. Definitely something to think about.

SHIT AND CHEEZ-WHIZ ON RYE TOAST; CONGENITAL EVERLASTING FUCKSTICK; RAT-FUCKING SONOFABITCH BASTARD

or, AN ACTOR PREPARES, LATE

Okay, so maybe the title is a little long.

Last night, 6 March 2008, was our (Folding Chair Classical Theatre's) second actual performance of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It also represented the single worst moment I've ever had onstage. I am playing Midshipman Harry Brewer, the convict John Arscott, and Captain Jemmy Campbell, RM. Arscott and Campbell are kind of fun characters, and utterly negligible in terms of stress compared to the role of Harry Brewer, which is a pisser. That dirtbag Harry has been more trouble to me than Arscott and Campbell and all my previous Folding Chair roles put together, with a few visits to the dentist thrown in.

Harry is haunted by guilt, and is slowly going insane. There is a pivotal scene for Harry early in the second act, called "Harry Brewer Sees The Dead." And in that scene, last night, I hit a sudden, total crisis of confidence. I actually dropped a few lines in the single speech I've worked hardest at memorizing, because suddenly everything I was doing seemed monstrously false to me. I became excessively conscious of the audience, and convinced that they didn't believe a word of it, and that they were just waiting for my ranting and posturing to be over so that the serious actors would come back and start entertaining them again.

In the scene, Harry is alone onstage, except that he's talking to the ghosts of people whose hangings he supervised, if he didn't actually execute them. It isn't easy to tell, but I suspect that Wertenbaker doesn't believe in the ghosts; as far as she's concerned, Harry is just going crazy. Keeping Ingmar Bergman's Fanny&Alexander dictum in mind -- "It doesn't matter whether the ghosts exist; what matters is that we're haunted by them" -- Marcus Geduld (my director) and I decided in rehearsal that the scene was much more interesting if we assumed the ghosts were real, and anyway it was the only way the scene was playable from Harry's point of view.

But last night, with rehearsals well behind us and a paying (if small) audience in front of me, I suddenly found out that the scene still wasn't playable from my point of view. (I have no idea how I got through it on opening night.) It's easy enough to say that it's because I don't believe in ghosts; but I think the real problem is that I don't believe in these ghosts, or at least, I don't know how to look as if I do. It is also easy enough to say that Timberlake Wertenbaker, may the water in her commode freeze solid, wrote a fucking unactable bastard of a scene and left it floating there in the middle of the play like a turd in a punchbowl. If you think all this scatological stuff is excessive, you should have heard me on the train last night and this morning. The utter misery and discouragement of that scene last night turned me into a sort of lesser Harry Brewer; I've been talking to myself a lot since I escaped the Theatre Lab and the scene of my utter degradation.

Mind you, all this may be inside my head, though I suspect it isn't. Nobody commented to me that my performance had all the emotional impact of a pigeon farting across the street; that's just my own assessment of it, from the moment when it suddenly seemed that one hell of a mountain had labored mightily to bear a mouse pathetic even by the usual mouse standard.

Now there are at least two ways of preventing that artistic autosodomy from ever happening again. One is to announce that I am quitting the show. But of course, that would be the end of me. So we won't discuss it.

Another is to work out a way of playing this unplayable cocksucking punchbowl butt-pastry of a scene that doesn't leave the audience nodding off and my ego sprayed in nasty little gummy bits all over the brick walls of the 3rd floor theatre at 78th Street. But if two months of rehearsal didn't already accomplish that, then what will accomplish it at this late date?

Believe it or not, I have not once consulted A Practical Handbook For The Actor since my first production with Folding Chair nearly four years ago. Waffles, Don John, and the Storyteller, I suppose, were not complicated enough roles to really require it. I wish I'd consulted it for this play from the very beginning. Purely and simply because I am going to go up to Garrison, N.Y. next week to help a friend with his eighth-grade production of Much Ado About Nothing (a task to which I currently feel fucktastically equal, emotionally as well as professionally), I had a copy checked out of the library already. I couldn't face it last night, but I reread it on the train this morning. (It isn't a long book.)

And it has now hit me full force, what should have occurred to me ages ago: The question of Belief is actually inconsequential. Trying to get myself to believe in the ghosts is going to be fruitless. Trying to visualize the ghosts, conjure them in my head and so on... it's like the book's dictum against playing emotions, because emotions can desert you. I mean, even if I could make myself believe in the ghosts, would the belief of the audience necessarily follow?

So, let me see. Here's the tetchy little monologue which is causing me so much trouble and making me regress into an embittered, sulky twelve-year-old state of mind. Harry is alone. He is drinking. He is "speaking in the different voices of his tormenting ghosts and answering in his own":

"Duckling? Duckling! 'She's on the beach, Harry, waiting for her young Handy Baker.' Go away, Handy, go away. 'The dead never go away, Harry. You thought you'd be the only one to dance the buttock ball with your trull, but no one owns a whore's cunt, Harry, you rent.' I didn't hang you. 'You wanted me dead.' I didn't. 'You wanted me hanged.' All right, I wanted you hanged. Go away! (pause) 'Death is horrible, Mr Brewer. It's dark, there's nothing.' Thomas Barrett, you were hanged because you stole from the stores. 'I was seventeen, Mr Brewer.' You'd lived a very wicked life. 'I didn't.' That's what you said that morning. 'I have led a very wicked life.' 'I had to say something, Mr Brewer, and make sense of dying. I'd heard the Reverend say we were all wicked, but it was horrible, my body hanging, my tongue sticking out.' You shouldn't have stolen that food. 'I wanted to live, go back to England. I'd only be twenty-four. I hadn't done it much, not like you.' Duckling! 'I wish I wasn't dead, Mr Brewer. I had plans. I was going to have my farm, drink with friends, feel the strong legs of a girl around me.' You shouldn't have stolen. 'Didn't you ever steal?' No! Yes. But that was different. Duckling! 'Why should you be alive after what you've done?' Duckling! Duckling!"

Then Duckling comes running on, and there's an exchange between the two of them that finishes the scene. That bit I'm more or less okay with, or would be, if I could have any confidence in the monologue that precedes it.

Now, one person can't do that mess. It's not even that it sounds crazy. (That would be a good thing.) It's that it doesn't make any sense. An actual crazy person might do it all in his own voice, and in a rushed monotone, and think he was talking to other people instead of to himself, and he would be a genuine real-life crazy person being crazy, but an audience would not believe him, see, because he hadn't troubled about verisimilitude.

Ha.

So the only way one person can do it is if he's pretending to be three people, or rather one person and two ghosts. So in rehearsals, we broke it up like this:

Harry (where have you flown, my wild woodland dove?; chugging whiskey): Duckling? Duckling!

Ghost Handy (gritty heavy metal monster): She's on the beach, Harry, waiting for her young Handy Baker.

Harry (very worried): Go away, Handy, go away.

Ghost Handy (gritty and vindictive heavy metal monster): The dead never go away, Harry. You thought you'd be the only one to dance the buttock ball with your trull, but no one owns a whore's cunt, Harry, you rent.

Harry (defensive): I didn't hang you.

Ghost Handy (more of the same): You wanted me dead.

Harry (defensive): I didn't.

Ghost Handy (yet more): You wanted me hanged.

Harry (roaring and waving his arms): All right, I wanted you hanged. Go away!

(Pause.)

Ghost Tommy (falsetto innocence a la mode): Death is horrible, Mr Brewer. It's dark, there's nothing.

Harry (upset; accusatory): Thomas Barrett, you were hanged because you stole from the stores.

Ghost Tommy (wronged; wounded): I was seventeen, Mr Brewer.

Harry (counterattack): You'd lived a very wicked life.

Ghost Tommy (defensive): I didn't.

Harry (briefed for the prosecution): That's what you said that morning. "I have led a very wicked life."

Ghost Tommy (explanatory; whining a bit): I had to say something, Mr Brewer, and make sense of dying. I'd heard the Reverend say we were all wicked, but it was horrible, my body hanging, my tongue sticking out.

Harry (blustering): You shouldn't have stolen that food.

Ghost Tommy (more whining): I wanted to live. I wanted to go back to England. I'd only be twenty-four. I hadn't done it much, not like you.

Harry (panicking): Duckling!

Ghost Tommy (whining; waxing rhapsodic): I wish I wasn't dead, Mr Brewer. I had plans. I was going to have my farm, drink with friends, feel the strong legs of a girl around me.

Harry (more bluster): You shouldn't have stolen.

Ghost Tommy (just a hint of I-know-more-than-you-think-I-do): Didn't you ever steal?

Harry (very upset and angry; leaping forward): No! (calmer) Yes. But that was different. Duckling!

Ghost Handy (Back In Black): Why should you be alive after what you've done?

Harry (losing his shit for good): Duckling! Duckling!

So what we had was a scene with three people in it, all being played by one actor. Me. And I had to make the three characters clearly distinguishable via changes of voice, shifting back and forth between them rapidly, and do it in such a way that it seemed to the audience that there really were two other people up there with Harry somewhere.

And on the seventh day, I'll rest. This sort of thing might be meat and drink to Robin Williams, but Robin Williams I'm not.

Marcus thought (and so did I) that it was enough to differentiate between the three voices: deep and gravelly for Ghost Handy; falsetto and vulnerable for Ghost Tommy. I may be all right at keeping the three voices apart, if I concentrate, and practice, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm playing emotions rather than actions throughout the scene. If the emotions dry up (as they did last night), then I'm suddenly standing out there, under hot lights, with my dork in my hand.

So what I'm thinking I have to do here is work out literal actions, essential actions, and as-ifs -- following the Practical Handbook method -- for three characters, and play them all in the same scene, sometimes playing two of them simultaneously. And I have to figure all this out by tonight.

So you get to watch me work. Maybe you aren't interested in reading about all this, but I'm very interested in writing about it, and this is my blog, so go read a Dragonball Z fan fiction or something.

Hm, let's see now. Harry first, the retard. What is he literally doing?

He's talking to himself.

Shit.

Break it down bit by bit:

He is confronted by the ghost of Handy Baker.
He attempts to banish Handy's ghost.
He defends himself against Handy's accusations.
He succeeds, temporarily, in banishing Handy.
He is confronted by the ghost of Thomas Barrett.
He counterattacks much more readily with Tommy, perhaps because Tommy was a convict and not a fellow-officer. Tommy was younger, weaker, a definite inferior. But Tommy was also more innocent than Handy, and Tommy had never done Harry any harm.
So he manages to lose the argument with Tommy, a mere peach-fuzz boy ghost.
He freaks out when Handy returns.

Overall: 1. He is Drinking And Very Unwillingly Talking To Dead People. (The drinking part is a fairly important external, and I haven't given enough attention to it.)

The essential action? 2. Defending Himself Against Accusations, And Counterattacking With Accusations Of His Own.

I think I knew that much instinctively, without writing it all out; it was the back-and-forth from Harry to Ghost to Harry that was giving me the real problems. Nevertheless, let's keep doing this by the book, since instinct has failed us and cojones have shriveled.

As-if? It's as if I were on trial for murder, and a defending attorney, and a prosecuting attorney, all at once.

Hm. I've never done that.

It's as if I were being accused by former shipmates of causing the death of some of them through negligence, and I'm insisting that their own negligence contributed to their deaths more than mine did.

Ugh. I've never done that either, but I can imagine what it's like all too easily; I imagined it enough times before I finally got the hell out of the service.

Ah, but! The Practical Handbook mensches recommend against choosing an as-if that makes you go Ugh. It should be fun to play, or, for preference, hot.

Hmmm. Is there a hot way of doing a scene like this that's true to the intention? Since Harry and the two ghosts he's plagued by are all male, there probably isn't a hot way of doing the scene that wouldn't be completely gay, and while that might be fun as advanced acting fieldwork, I think recent events demonstrate that I'm still in the Gerber's-and-Jell-O stage, so maybe we should settle for a way of doing it that would be fun. If such an insect can be found.

Hm. Might it actually be fun to imagine myself in that situation? Just off the top of my head, no. Marcus thinks that kind of thing is fun; I don't. I think Ferris Wheels and anime are fun. Chacun a son gout.

So why am I an actor? Good question. Probably I'm just a showoff.

So if we can't find anything that's hot, if we can't even find anything that's fun, maybe we should settle for halfway playable. It would sure be an improvement over the present situation. So then: Defending Himself Against Accusations, And Counterattacking With Accusations Of His Own.

Tools: reason, accuse, command, bluster -- drunkenly, and wig out when none of those work.

Not very encouraging. Perhaps we should just say "scream" instead of "wig out" because I know now from experience that you can't play wigging out; you can only look at some actions people perform when they are wigging out, and play those.

Anyway. "Fuck all that, we've gotta get on with these." What is Handy Baker doing in this scene?

He surprises Harry in his tent.
He plants doubt in Harry's mind about Duckling's faithfulness.
He accuses Harry of desiring his death.
He suggests that Harry is the one who deserves death.

1. He is hounding Harry.
2. He is playing on Harry's uncertainty, guilt, fear.

Tools: insinuation, accusation, goading.

It's as if I were talking to a drunk friend at a party, and convincing him to take off all his clothes and take a dump in the punchbowl.

Now if I could be Handy for the whole scene, this would be buckets of fun, and even, in a way, hot. That is way sexy, a ghost tormenting a human being. At least, that's my first reaction. On the other hand, I get to do a lot of oppressing in this play, one live human being to another, as Harry and as Captain Campbell, and even a little bit as Arscott. And that's not so much fun. What makes it okay is that most of the time I have company. Hm. Brad, as the harsh disciplinarian Major Robbie Ross, has to be the driving force behind most of the oppression in this show. Is that fun for him? Difficult? I should ask him.

Anyway. I can play all that. The trouble is, I have to do it all with my voice. Marcus was fairly clear that the body should be Harry's body the whole time; it's just Harry's voice the ghosts are taking over.

That's been one of the major problems with this, I see now. My movements are too often constrained, pigeonlike, barely perciptible movements of the kind Marcus hates, because I'm concentrating on putting ghosts into my voice. But if I put more energy into Harry's body, that will suck energy away from the ghosts.

So a major thing I have to do, tonight before rehearsal, is work on doing both at once. And I have to work on it more this weekend, between shows. I don't think I can do such a thing really well, but I obviously have to get as good at it as I can, as soon as I can.

But wait, we haven't even done poor Tom yet.

He tells Harry how horrible death is.
He defends himself, with simple eloquence, against Harry's bluster and counterpunch.
He describes what he would have done if he were still alive.
He suggests that he knows Harry's own record is less than spotless.

1. He is, at one and the same time, hounding Harry, and defending himself against him.
2. He is pleading for his life back.

That second one is a bit fanciful, but it seems to me the liveliest way of playing him. "You stole something from me; now give it back."

It's as if someone I thought was a friend used his connection with my boss to get me fired, and I was going to starve to death if I couldn't talk him into giving me my job back.

Hmmm, not quite. Work on that.

Tools: Pleading, cajoling, insinuation. Whining? Is it only human for the boy to whine, or does he lose sympathy that way? Work on that.

Writing all this out only helps so much, of course. You learn to act by acting, not by writing. But my rough plan is here, and I must try to put it into action in a matter of hours. I hope you have enjoyed this look at the creative process as inspired by blind panic.

Lessons learned? EVEN A TRUSTWORTHY DIRECTOR CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED WITH EVERYTHING. I haven't been shouldering enough of the burden. I assumed that as long as I took direction as well as I could, did everything Marcus asked, and he ran out of things to correct -- or at least, stopped correcting me -- I was doing okay. I should have known way better than that. I didn't take enough responsibility for my own performance, and last night's debacle is the result.

And here's one I thought I'd already learned years ago, but apparently not: IN THE ARTS, "GOOD ENOUGH" IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Marcus gave me only so much direction -- possibly because he had eight other actors and a mass of details and organization to concentrate on besides, rather than because he was really satisfied. I knew that it was possible for me to go deeper than I had been going, but because I was tired, and what I'd done seemed to be good enough for the moment, I stopped there to rest. Last night was the price for this unjustified confidence. For the future: if you know you can do better, then do it. There is that dictum "Never do your damnedest; your next-to-damnedest is far better," but that obviously doesn't apply to an actor who hasn't troubled to find either one.

MORE ABOUT FISH

Dear Ian,

I've been playing this game on my spiffy new laptop. It's called Insaniquarium Deluxe™, and it's been teaching me all about your favorite pastime, keeping fish.

The fish are guppies, mostly. They're yellow with orange fins. I have to keep them all fed, and they need to eat every few seconds or so. My eye, these are hungry fish! And I have to keep adding fish to my tank, for various reasons that will become clear as my tale unfolds. Though probably you know all about it already, experienced fish fancier that you are.

Each guppy costs one hundred dollars. My hat, those are some expensive guppies! Probably Kirsten would have divorced you at some point if you kept such expensive guppies.

Or maybe she wouldn't have: the reason these guppies cost so much is…

… they SHIT GOLD.

And silver. I shit you not. And neither do these fish. They don't shit money when you first get them; they're too young or something. When they get to middle size, they start shitting silver. Then when they're full grown, they shit gold. And you collect their excrement and put it in the bank just as fast as your fingers can fumble. Hurray!

Of course, you have to keep feeding them. The food itself costs a hundred dollars, and if you want to upgrade to a better kind of food, it's a hundred bucks each upgrade. My ass, that's some expensive fish food! But hey, if the fish are going to shit gold, you're going to pay through the nose for their food, aren't you? And if you husband your fish carefully, and manage to get a tank full of the full-grown suckers, then you've got a tank full of guppies that shit gold, and you can buy them more food, and they can shit more gold.

I never knew keeping fish could be so lucrative! I worry a little about the laws of thermodynamics, but it seems like the fish couldn't give a shit about the laws of thermodynamics.

Another thing I didn't know about keeping fish is that you need a raygun. And as things progress, you need raygun upgrades. Why? You, an experienced fish fancier, know the answer, I'm sure. It's because of the alien badguys who occasionally invade your tank. At first just a regular raygun will do the job, but the alien badguys get gradually nastier, and eventually, if you've stuck with the dimestore .22 caliber raygun they started you with, it takes maybe fifty shots to defeat one jerkass alien badguy, while he's killing all your fish.

And the fish just stand there, that's the worst part. Well, they don't stand there of course, they're fucking fish, they swim or float or loiter or whatever the hell it is fish do. The thing is, they float or swim or loiter right where the alien badguy (or badguys) is (or are) (that's right, sometimes you got double trouble), and they seem magnificently unconcerned about these alien badguys who are, like, chowing down on them. It's enough to drive a fish fancier completely up a goddam tree. The second or third time all my fish got killed because they just floated there, looking at the alien badguy with the extra sharp teeth – something called a Balrog, though it looks more like a mer-man with orange fur – or it might be this octopus who has, like, hatchets and cheese graters and swords and shit curled up in his tentacles – they got all kinds, really – anyway these fish are just looking at this goombah who's about to teach them the primary use the Universe has for fish of any kind, just looking at him like he was an interesting reality show about predators in the wild, and they all bought it, of course, the dumbshit bastards, and I raised my voice to the effing heavens and cried, "Oh, my God! I have stupid fish!"

So yeah, you need a pretty powerful raygun to keep fish. Raygun upgrades are like a thousand smackers a pop. But believe me, they cost you money because they save you money. A lot of people don't get that. But me, I'm a fiscally-aware fish fancier.

Another thing you have to keep spending money on is the egg. The egg is another thing that gets gradually more expensive the more you do the fish-fancying rigamarole. But it's a nice thing, really. Once you've spent hundreds, or thousands, of dollars getting all the pieces of the egg, and the egg is complete, that's the end of the round, and what hatches out of the egg? A friend! A friend who will help you!

That is nice. Everybody should have a friend.

These are creatures who can live in your tank and do things for you. There's a new one at the end of each round. Some of them I don't think are very helpful. There's this one Undead fish, a skeletal guppy, who continues to swim around and shit gold even though he's clearly no longer among the living. And you don't have to feed him like you do the fleshly, mortal fish. That's nice, a little gold for nothing every now and then, but it's kind of limited, when you think about raygun expenses and the rising cost of egg.

One I like better is a sort of clam, who just sits there most of the time, but every so often – maybe once a minute, but a minute can be like a freaking lifetime when you're keeping fish – this clam opens up his big clam mouth, and what's inside?

A big-ass freaking pearl, that's what!

Provided you can click on it before the freak closes his mouth – provided you aren't too busy, you know, fighting off alien badguys or something – that's three hundred smackeroos in the bank right there. A fine thing. I leaned on old Reuben Clamzo for quite a while there. That's not his actual name, it's just what I call him.

Then there's Prego. Prego is useful, because she shits guppies. Well, it's probably more technically correct as well as more polite to say that she gives birth to them, but what else am I to make of the little farting noise every time a new guppy comes out of her behind? That's great because you've got an endless supply of new fish, one every so often, and you don't have to keep shelling out a hundred dollars each for the little devils. But eventually I came to regard Prego as a crutch, a useful ally for a beginner, but an expert fish fancier should rely on himself, and shit out his own guppies. So to speak.

Then there are some I just don't see the point of. The electric eel, for one. Periodically, he electrifies the tank. Whafuck? So why would I want that, just out of curiosity? Fried fish? I like fried fish as well as the next fellow, but not when they're expensive freaking fish I'm keeping in my role as fish fancier, and not when they're fish that freaking SHIT GOLD. That is a costly supper, my friend. Not cost-effective. The eel was a big goddam loser as far as I was concerned.

There were a whole bunch of others, I won't bore you with the details. Most of them weren't too all- around useful. The thing is, you have access to all of them if you've hatched them out of their eggs, but you can only keep three in your tank at a time, and you're stuck with those three for that round. (The rest stay off in some kind of fish fancier's limbo or something. What am I, a Science Authority, I should know how that works?) Eventually I settled on the three friends I found to be most all-around useful.

First there's Blip. Blip is a porpoise. He uses his sonar to let you know, when the alien badguys are coming, what particular portion of the tank they're going to materialize in. That's useful, because you want to be ready to ambush these crazy bastards. No sensible fish fancier is going to give one of these wiseguy whack jobs any more time to turn his gold-shitting fish into just some visibility-impeding red mist than what he can help. Also Blip lets you know when your fish are getting hungry, by putting little yellow triangles above their heads. That's useful, because otherwise you don't know when they're hungry until they turn green and purple, and then you can lose them if you're not quick with the mouse. A fish can kack with its daily bread floating down toward its empty head in a little spiral through the water. It makes a little noise like someone gargling boiling coffee against his will, and it's an ex-fish. So Blip is a real trouper. He's my intelligence guy. Every fish fancier needs a good consigliere, and he's mine.

Then there's Angie. Angie is an angelfish, with a little halo above her head. Her thing is resurrection. If your fish die, she can bring them back to life. Not if they're already red mist. Then she's got nothing to work with. But if they or you weren't quick enough about food, or if you got an alien badguy who likes to use projectiles instead of his teeth – like that angry-looking robot who shoots a bow-and-arrow, God knows why, or the one-eyed golem who fires telekinesis or microwaves or some shit like that, in a little ball, right at your precious gold-shitting fish – you got little dead-white fish corpses sinking down to the briny bottom. This is where Angie comes into play, God love her. She swims at these loser stiffs, andthere's a little heavenly choir kind of music, and the fish are miraculously returned from beyond the vale. That's useful because fish are expensive, especially fish that – well, you know.

And if all your fish die, YOU LOSE THAT ROUND, and you gotta try again. And that's a pain. Back to the fish store. "Al, all my fish are dead. I need some more." "Whassamatta for you?" says Al. "You think fish grow on trees? You can take my word for it they don't." "It was the alien badguys, Al," you say. "You know what a pain in the ass those guys are. Pretty soon there won't be one place in my own tank where I can hang my hat." "You need a good enforcer," Al says. "I'll send a guy along."

My enforcer hatched out of one of those eggs. He's a shark, called Gash. Well, I call him Jack most of the time, because that constant grin of his puts me in mind of Jack Nicholson. Gash is an okay guy. An alien badguy comes into the tank, I say "Jack! Mio Jack! This scumbag is ganking my fish!" and Gash is ON it. We're on it together, like Bruno Tattaglia and Sollozzo the Turk greasing Luca Brasi. Fact is, Gash is usually waiting with me at the ambush point. Him and me between us, especially if I got a good raygun, can make pretty quick work of most of these pezzonovante cocksuckers. The important thing is to keep them away from the other fish. But there's ways of doing that.

Now the thing about Gash, he's got a dark side to him too. Every so often, he'll EAT ONE OF MY FISH. Yes! Chomp goes Jack and he's gone, this poor fish you raised from a little one. Not real often. He's not greedy. I guess he looks on it as perks. He just wets his beak, and moves on. And I don't think he'd ever eat my last fish, though I've never tested him on that one. But it can wear on you. When a fish fancier has been working hard to protect his fish from the pain-in-the-ass alien badguys, and his own legbreaker turns on him and just fucking EATS one of his darling, gold-shitting fish…it can wound a guy.

Eventually I developed a sense of humor about it, though. Whenever I was buying more fish, I'd say, "Hey, Jack! Buying some more food for you, you back-stabbing motherfucker!" Jack liked that. He thought that was funny. Well, he's a fucking shark, he seems to think everything is funny. But I think there was a little twinkle in his eye on that one. The cocksucker.

You might say Angie and Jack are two sides of the same coin. One the bringer of life, one the bringer of death. Hey, that's a swell metaphor for life, now that I think of it. Or for death. I'll tell you, it was great having Prego and Jack in the same tank, the one or two times that happened. Prego with her little fishy face and her little kerchief on her head, excreting babies, and Jack swimming along behind her, all the time with that grin. A symbiotic relationship, I guess. He protects her babies from the alien badguys, and occasionally eats one. A cartilaginous Rumpelstiltskin.

These capos of mine, they do terrific work, and aside from Jack's little quirk abovementioned, I don't have to feed them from my expensive fish food. I guess Blip and Angie packed a lunch. That's another thing that maybe makes me worry a little about the laws of thermodynamics, but hey, if my fish aren't concerned about the Order of the Universe, why should I be?

Anyway… eventually the egg just gets to be so goddam expensive, you can't really rely on the fish anymore. Or maybe I should say, you always rely on your fish, it's just that the function of the fish changes, just a little.

Hear me out on this.

When each of the three egg segments costs 75k by itself… you are going to be collecting guppy shit for-fucking-ever to make a payment like that. So what you do – this is time-tested fish fancier lore I'm giving you here – what you do is, you buy predators. There's a carnivorous fish you can get, for one grand. Sort of like Jack, but bigger, and not so much of a sense of humor. Make sure you've got a lot of guppies. This guy eats 'em, your precious gold-shitting guppies, and…

… he SHITS BIG BLUE DIAMONDS.

I don't know the breed of this fish, but he's dark brown or purple fading down to a burnt red kind of color, and he's got that big chin you see on carnivorous fish, and on Jack too, for all that he is a shark. I'm not sure how much these blue diamonds are worth. By the time you get to this stage, the tank is a fever of activity, and between making sure your fish don't starve, and making sure your predator doesn't starve – he only eats little, young guppies (unlike Jack, who will eat a fish as big as he is and then swim away grinning that same grin, butter wouldn't melt in his fish-graveyard mouth), so you gotta keep the tank well-stocked with fresh, innocent guppies so as this goddam baby-raper will keep shitting blue diamonds for you –and, on top of that, though that's plenty by itself, you're making wormfood out of any alien badguys that come along, and… well, it's a full fish fancier's working day, and I didn't get a handle on just how much each of these blue diamonds adds to your bankroll. A lot, anyhow.

But wait, my story gets better. For ten grand – we're obviously into the upper stratosphere here, but by the time you get to this stage you should have at least twenty or thirty grand in the bank to play around with – for ten grand, you can get another predator – an ULTRAVORE, he's called. You ever get one of those? They're huge, sort of sick-pale green, with mean glowing eyes, big-ass Nazi-looking fish. They are worth every goddam penny of the 10k, I'm telling you, one fish guy to another. What they do is, they eat the smaller predators. And…

… they SHIT LITTLE TREASURE CHESTS.

I'm not positive about how much these add to your bankroll either, but one time I snuck a peek at the moneymeter as I was scooping up one of these things, and I'd swear it jumped by three grand.

You get a lot of goddam guppies, and….

Funny how, at the beginning of each round, each little guppy is so precious: you mother them and father them and baby them – and occasionally leave Jack in charge – but it's all for the welfare of your little yellow stupid-ass suicidal darlings, and as things progress, the little bambinos you feed so carefully become food themselves, for bigger fish. It's terrible, the things a fish fancier has to do sometimes, to keep the family fish-fancying business going.

But. You get a lot of goddam guppies, enough so you're dropping top-grade food capsules ten at a time like little bombs into the general area of where they are, turning green and purple and with all the little yellow triangles above their heads… and you're splitting your concentration between that, and this: you got three or four Ultravores into the tank, and nine or ten smaller carnivores. And you're picking up blue diamonds and treasure chests just as fast as you can, always remembering to feed the money machine.

When you're into the last round, where each egg segment costs a hundred grand – no shit – that's very good arithmetic.

These modern computer games are really educational. I've learned so much about keeping fish this weekend! Maybe, if you ever decide to set up your tank again, I could try and spend more time in Peekskill and help you out with it. I think it would be a great thing for Gabriel to learn about. You mind if I bring Blip and Angie and Jack along? They won't take up much room.

your paisan,

Gowan

P.S. I blew a whole day on that goddam game. I feel like such a hosebag. G.X

WAS THERE REALLY A DREAM MACHINE?

Two dreams, both of an unusual and ominous character, were vouchsafed unto me last night. You get to hear all about them. Lucky you. Don't read this if you're already feeling depressed.

Dream #1 -- Most of the details are gone, but I was visiting my friends Cat and Susan. Cat was recovering from something and at times he seemed like Cat and at others like my brother Kenneth.

(Has that happened to you in dreams, that an individual's identity shifts around and it seems perfectly natural while the dream is happening and it's only when you wake up that you wonder what the hell? Of course it has. Maybe these people really are of indeterminate identity in the dream, or it may be that in the dream the person has an identity you wouldn't be able to bear if you were awake, and your waking mind unconsciously breaks it up into two people and gradates between the two? Too fanciful, I'm sure.)

The house they were living in was more like a modern art museum than a house, except at the end of the main gallery there was a den with a TV in it. Cat, or Kenneth, had taken up painting, and he showed me some of his work; it was good, if amateurish. He had potential. This was the part where he seemed most like Kenneth. He broke down and cried, an un-Kenneth-ish (and un-Cat-ish) act except in times of stress, and we held onto each other, and I told him I was happy to have him for my little brother. I don't really know why he was crying like that, but I was crying too.

Then, don't ask me why, we were on a bus trip. We were taking some kind of tour. The details of this are fuzzy. Cat was now definitely Cat, and the kids were being their usual obnoxious if entertaining selves, and I was trying to help C&S keep them in hand.

I was on the bus, on the last leg of the tour, when it occurred to me that C&S and the kids weren't anywhere on the bus. It occurs to me now that they may have abandoned me, but in the dream I assumed that they had never intended to come this far, and had made other arrangements, and I was inattentive when they discussed it with me.

We'd already gone a good way and taken a number of turns and there was no question of asking the driver to stop so I could get out and walk back. It wasn't long before I wished I had, because the bus let us off in a very strange little town. It seemed to be in the wrong country, or even the wrong era. It was more like the 1950s than anything except there weren't any malls in the 1950s, I don't think, and the bus dropped us off in what was undeniably a mall, though an odd one. For one thing, buses don't usually drive around in malls. And the whole place had an uncanny, between-the-worlds atmosphere that was really out of place in a commercial enterprise.

Probably the best course would have been to stay on the bus and hope it might take me home, but I guess I was hoping C&S had realized what I'd done and followed me, so I made the fatal mistake of getting off the bus, took a few moments to realize that C&S probably wouldn't be able to follow me here, turned and found that bus and driver were gone. Well, maybe I could call them. Their cell number wasn't in my wallet. I didn't have my cell, and even if I'd had it, it didn't have any minutes on it (as in life, so in dreams), and I doubted if there was a T-mobile outlet around this place. Pay phone? Couldn't find one. Even if I found one, it was doubtful whether a phone in this weird place could have reached them, wherever they were now.

And it didn't occur to me until just now that the cell-phone probably wouldn't have worked anyway. Or maybe it would have. As in life, so in dreams, but not always.

From this vantage, it seems as if in that bus ride I crossed the boundary between one dream and another, and the personnel and details of the previous dream were somehow still important to me even though they had no actual existence here.

And it seemed as if I couldn't exist here either, for long. The sun was setting. The mall was closing; security people chased me out. Other shops and offices were shutting; the whole town was shutting up for the night. I was looking around for an embassy of the Old Country, for anyone who might help me. The light was fading.

Dream #2 -- More time-travelling. It looked like New York City in the 1920s but it was on an island somewhere in the Pacific, and it was a colonial city. I had purchased an old bar on an avenue, and I and some friends of mine were using it as a front for a detective agency, but at the same time I wanted to make the bar a going business concern on its own. Natural enough; it was my money and, in dreamland as in life, I didn't have much.

But there was a break-in one night early in our tenancy, and the plate-glass window up front was damaged, as was the window on the neighboring store. For some reason, I was going to have to pay for both -- apparently because mine was the store the thieves had actually broken into, though legal reasoning that seemed depressingly watertight in the dream seems murky now -- and I could in no way afford to pay for both, or even for one of the windows.

I don't know why plate-glass was so expensive if this was an island colony, though it certainly seemed like a bustling metropolis.

But I was worried about my bar, and I was searching the joint, trying to figure out what the intruders had wanted -- was there anything missing? Not that I could tell -- and I think I was worried they might have planted a bomb -- and my friends were no help; they were in the back room drinking my beer and debating whether they should stick with me or write the bar off as a bad job and get their own little office somewhere. Bastards. There was one guy who was actually helping me search the place and he was a bit annoying, though I was grateful enough for the help in spite of that.

My search was interrupted when a cop outwardly of the bumbling Irish type I've seen in old movies but never actually met came in through the hole in the front window. A bit supernatural, that; my friend had duct-taped the hole for me (duct tape?) but for some reason the cop was able to walk right through.

He started asking me questions, his large moustache moving when he talked, bunching when he smiled his disbelieving smile. For some reason, we started playing dodgeball -- there was a ball lying around. We were playing at question-and-answer simultaneously with the dodgeball; he seemed to suspect there was something amiss with our operation and was trying to catch me in a lie. I had increasing trouble answering his questions honestly -- anyone in business, it seems, even on the humblest level, is about two steps from prison if he's not careful.

It was just the two of us; the boys were still in the back room swilling, and I didn't know where my friend had got to. As the questions got harder to answer the ball got harder to handle -- it became heavier, larger, and less perfectly round, and it was all a bit like trying to play dodgeball with a bean-bag chair. (Have I ever played dodgeball? Not sure. Certainly not recently.)

My adversary the Law, curiously enough, had changed also: he had gradually become larger, rounder, lighter, and more difficult to pin down. He still had the moustache, though the location of the rest of his face was more difficult to determine. The moustache still moved when he talked, bunched up when he smiled.

My last view before waking was of the cop floating near the ceiling, like a slumming planet, and whacking the ball, which had become like a bean-bag three-quarters filled with molasses, right at me. I was watching it descend in the late afternoon light from the broken window, wondering if it would kill me, and trying to think up an answer to his last question.

*

In both of these dreams runs a thread of hopelessness which I have labeled the "crisis of competence" motif. (Just now. I didn't really have a name for it before this morning. I may have been somewhat influenced by the fact that when I woke up from Dream #2 I was running twenty minutes late for work.) Whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish in the dream becomes less and less accomplishable as the dream progresses, or regresses, and then the dream ends right before the spot where we'd hit the recognition-and-reversal, in a well-crafted story, or right where things become quite hopeless, in real life. To quote John Updike out of context, "The typical Kafkaesque process of non-arrival is in place." The classic example of this in my own Oneironomicon is a dream from several years back in which I had reenlisted, don't ask me why, and had to report to a command on the west coast with a full seabag. Simple. Not a thing I ever had much trouble with in real life. But by the time the dream ended I was stranded naked in the midwest somewhere, with only the seabag, which I was trying to use to hide my private parts from public view, and one last quarter, which I was trying to use in a payphone to call someone and beg them to please for the love of Jesus come and help me. The quarter kept bouncing merrily out of the return slot.

I don't suppose anybody really wants to read about this, any more than I want to dream it, but I do find it consoling that, as hopeless as I am in many ways, I'm not nearly as bad as I am in my dreams. I can usually manage. Sometimes I need help, and I often have the good sense to ask for it. In dreams I try to do it all myself -- in dreams there is nobody else, or usually nobody who matters -- and I end up, metaphorically or literally, tangled up in typewriter-ribbon like the late James Thurber, screaming for my wife to for God's sake come in out of the kitchen and help me, help me, help me, I'm starting to go under, damn it. I don't know what your dream-life is like, but maybe you have something similar -- maybe the worst-case scenarios play out in our dreams so that we don't have to have them in life.

Or maybe I'm being an utter Pollyanna. There are people on this funhouse planet whose worlds and lives continue to go steadily to hell, especially in countries like Iraq, until they end, often with wretched abruptness -- or not nearly abruptly enough. I hear about these people all the time. One, a fourteen year old Iraqi girl, was gang-raped in 2005 by American soldiers while their buddies murdered her whole family in another room. When they'd had their way with her, they killed her too and doused her in kerosene and lit her on fire, hoping to cover up what they'd done. All the murders that've been going on, who's going to notice one more? At least one of them had been drinking. All of them were murdering shits who dishonored their uniform, though you could argue, metaphorically at least, that they were only following a popular trend. Either way, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi is gone. Her dream has ended, the Old Country knows her no longer, and if there is a New Country for her to go to -- "much virtue in if" -- phone lines don't reach into it or out from it; it is silent. She has gone where we all go eventually, but in unnecessary pain and horror. A poet and a storyteller is liable to go silent himself, in the face of such a story. The things one normally complains about seem inconsequential. This is not a new observation, of course. But this tired cliche has a heavy reality, and it's one I struggle against, lately.

______________________________________________
"Pharaohs always travelled to the next world first class. To judge
by our departures, most of us travel steerage." -- Alan Moore

HERE'S ONE FOR YOU, DOCTOR JUNG

I wrote this last November and never posted it. Oh, well, here it is now.

I had an odd dream last night. This guy kept stealing my cheese. I was eating in this place downtown, and I'd brought along my own cheese, because their cheese sucked. That doesn't speak too well for their eggs, or their milk either, but for some reason everything else was okay and it was just the cheese that was substandard. So I'm cutting my cheese up into little cubes on the lunch counter.

There's this guy sitting next to me, wearing engineer's coveralls like they have in the Navy. He seems a friendly, expansive sort of bloke. But every time I turn my head, a few more of my cheese cubes have disappeared.

So I say, "You've got my cheese, haven't you?" And he says, "What cheese?" So I start pounding on him. I upend him eventually, holding him by the ankles, and the cheese falls out of his pocket. And he says, "Okay, okay, so I have your cheese." I say "Leave it alone from here on out." But he keeps it up. More of my cheese keeps disappearing, and I keep beating on this sweet creep.

I must say I was a real tough guy in this dream. I've gotten into fights in my dreams in the past, and I've always gotten the crap beat out of me before. But I was really whaling on this dirtbag. It didn't help, though, because eventually all I had was a few cubes, and he'd spirited away the rest of it somehow; it wasn't anywhere on him.

I woke up because he was lying on the floor and I was kicking him in the balls, and my leg, which was hanging off the futon somewhat, actually kicked, and I banged my toe smartly on the wooden floor. It hurt for about an hour.

Hmmm, what's the moral here, I wonder? "Never steal Gowan's cheese when he's asleep." Not a particularly moral moral, it seems to me.

FALLACIES, INTENTIONAL OR OTHERWISE

I don't actually believe in God, or gods, or Goddess, or the God-womyn, or Bob, whatever. I think the capacity of the human species to fool itself is without limit, and people can believe the unlikeliest stuff with the tiniest provocation. This includes me! There's nothing self-honoring in this; I went around the first twenty-five years of my life with the back of my head unzipped. I would believe just about anything, and I know I still have that capacity. I know what you're saying..."If you have the back of your head unzipped, then God can get in, my child." True. But so can the wind, and bugs. Icky. That was the problem with the Heaven's Gate people. Too many bugs in their heads. And I think that "nothing is true and everything is permitted" sounds cool, but if you take it to its logical extreme it's bloody dangerous for you and for those around you.

I am a skeptic. That doesn't mean I say there is no God, only that I don't believe in one. I can't prove there isn't one, of course. You can't prove a negative.

"I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." This is something we hear a lot. Not a unique point of view at all, in this day and age. Try googling "spiritual not religious" and see how much stuff comes up. I liked one Christian who said, "Well, I'm religious and spiritual. So there."

I do believe in something I think of as the human family, which is a bit foolish as nobody else seems to really believe in it, or wars and stuff wouldn't happen, and I've never exactly codified that belief, and I can't even claim to have tried to really live by it. But just having something like a community, a group of people who get along with each other, and produce children, and look out for them, and look out for other people's children if it seems necessary, because you wouldn't want someone turning a blind eye if your child was standing over an open manhole, means that "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "Nothing is true; everything is permitted" need severe modification. They give one just a bit too much leeway for the comfort of others, and if you're going to live around others, you do need to consider their comfort. Otherwise they're liable to say "Him bad man! Make crops wilt!" and pour orange juice in your bed while you're asleep.

Digression here. I have this occasional argument with my friend Marcus and his friend John about this thing called the intentional fallacy, which you won't have heard of -- lucky you -- unless you've made some study of philosophy or literary theory. The basic idea is that when one is discussing, critiquing, judging a work of literature, the author's intentions are irrelevant. The author's opinion is irrelevant, and need not be consulted. In fact, if you go with people like Foucault and Derrida, the author has actually ceased to exist. (Hang on a minute, there.)

Marcus is an atheist and a skeptic, like myself, and John is a Christian. They don't use exactly the same arguments, but Marcus's I have a hard time disagreeing with because they do make sense to me -- a painting is just pigment on canvas, a novel is just black marks on white paper, the work of art is an object occupying space and since we seldom have any real notion of how it got to be there, we can enjoy/interpret it in whatever way appeals to us, and draw from it whatever we draw from it, and who cares what the artist intended? What do we know about him? what does he know about us? "Who says we have to read it a certain way?" Marcus asks. "The God of Stories?" Snicker snicker. I agree with each individual point both make, and disagree very strongly with what the argument adds up to.

I'm a writer myself, if a slow, dogged, uncommunicative one, and I suppose my problem with the intentional fallacy is just an egotistical one: it's basically telling me that I, the author, don't matter, and my informed, reasoned response to that is "Write something better yourself then, you academical goofball." Childishly enough. But a writer cannot proceed -- or at least, I can't -- on the assumption that his intentions don't matter and his opinions are worthless. That attitude may be a lot of help to a reader. It's no help at all to a writer.

But then, I sometimes have other problems with the arguments, though intellectually I find them sound. One thing is that when I write something, and then look it over, and think about where all the stuff in it comes from -- and I have pretty good connectivity, in my brain, if that's the right word -- I can say "That was a direct rip-off from so-and-so, and this was influenced by that guy over there, and this is from the architecture of a school I attended when I was 18," and so on and so forth. But now and then things turn up in my own texts and I have no clue where they came from. Sometimes -- even more disconcertingly -- I'm sure I know where something came from, and I go back and check on it just because it's niggling at me, and it turns out to have maybe some points in common, but it's different, very different, from what I thought. Can you explain this? I sure as hell can't. Possibly the God of Stories is cutting capers.

A more reasonable explanation, of course, is that I'm drawing on something I know but have forgotten, or that my brain has been changing the thing unconsciously while I was thinking of something else -- in other words, that it's my own brain doing this. But since I understand very little about how my brain works, and since it seems nobody understands anything about how brains work generally that doesn't get torn down by some other savant within thirty years or so, it strikes me that "The God of Stories" is as good an explanation, for me at least, as "It's a brain thing, man." Even though I know that the God of Stories is an absurdity. (Gowan feels a giant finger tapping on his shoulder and hears a deep gravelly voice: "An absurdity, am I? Punk?...")

I can't say anything to Marcus or John that helps my position, it seems. In fact, all I can say does it positive harm. "Well, if you don't KNOW where the things in YOUR OWN STORIES come from, why should we listen to your EXPLANATIONS of said stories? What are we PAYING you for if you don't KNOW?" To which my answer is: you aren't paying me, you bastards.

Although I don't go for mysticism or spirituality on a personal level, I did when I was younger. I remember how to feel, intuit, in those terms, if not how to think (I was never much of a thinker, mystical, rational, or otherwise), and since what I like to write is primarily fantastical in nature, it's useful for me to be able to feel, intuit, that way.

All that's lovely. But my main reason for being against the intentional fallacy is that it's telling me that I, the author, have a tiny, tiny member. I resent this.

Now, let's all read a story:

Africa

ETHIOPIAN GIRL REPORTEDLY GUARDED BY LIONS

Authorities: Cats chased off men trying to force her to marry

The Associated Press

Updated: 6:25 p.m. ET June 21, 2005

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.

"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.

"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.

'Some kind of miracle'
Tilahun Kassa, a local government official who corroborated Wondimu's version of the events, said one of the men had wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.

"Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Wondimu said.

Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.

"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn't eat her," Williams said.

Ethiopia's lions, famous for their large black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency. Despite a recent crackdown, hunters kill the animals for their skins, which can fetch $1,000. Williams estimates that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions remain in the wild.

The girl, the youngest of four siblings, was "shocked and terrified" after her abduction and had to be treated for the cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said.

He said police had caught four of the abductors and three were still at large.

Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country's 71 million people live.

(c) 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

***

Now, a number of things automatically occur to me upon having read something like that. The first is, "Miracle, my bum." Then comes "This is most likely a hoax." Another is, "So, all those other girls who have been abducted and raped and no lions came to save them, what about them? God, or Goddess, was on a coffee-break? Or SHe just didn't give a Philadelphia?" These are automatic thoughts, upon having read it. But first, I read the story with absorption. I was a true believer, while I was reading the story. I loved the story, I loved the girl, I loved the lions. I felt tenderness and fascination for all of them. It seemed as if there was a momentary break in the grey horror of existence, and a light shone through.

And suddenly, the author's intentions become very important. I ran into this story on the internet, an object in cyberspace. How did it come to be there? Did this really happen, in Ethiopia, more or less as written? Was a true event exaggerated or distorted somehow? Or was it made up from the whole cloth by somebody, either for some reason of his own, or for sheer mischief?

I think many skeptics carry believers around inside them, and vice versa. I think the skeptic and the believer need each other. Can't prove it, of course. Can't prove much.

MUCH ADO, 23 SKIDDOO

My first Shakespeare. I was in a production of Much Ado About Nothing that ran throughout August at the 78th Street Theatre Lab, New York City. Company: The Manhattan Folding Chair Classical Theatre. I played Don John and Verges.

Most of the actors doubled up, or even tripled up. When there are eight actors and about sixteen roles, it becomes imperative. Some of the actors can't double because they have scenes with just about everybody else.

I'm still pretty new to all this. I first acted with the company in the autumn of 2004, in a production of the Oresteia of Aeschylus. It was the first time I'd acted in anything whatever since about 1987, when I was in a production of Lysistrata at Wells College. I'm a man, but Lysistrata is such a male/female play that the director, Betsey Drorbaugh, decided to import male actors for it, and her stage manager, Cynthia Breneman, was a friend of mine, and she suggested I audition, and I got the role of Kinesias. It was great fun. And I don't quite know why but that was it, for about 16 years.

Marcus Geduld, the director of the Folding Chair Theatre, has been a friend of mine since high school back in Bloomington, Indiana. We both happen to live and work in New York now. We fortuitously got back in touch a few years ago, and I've acted in his productions of Oresteia, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and now Much Ado. I stage-directed for him and David Jaffe last winter on "Night," a double bill of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and Harold Pinter's "A Kind Of Alaska." That was unusually contemporary of us.

I seem to be a more or less permanent member of the company, now. I suppose I've become more confident as an actor. I still have these crises of confidence now and again -- I had one the first weekend of Much Ado, because the audiences were barely reacting at all, to anything, and I kept thinking, "I'm crap, aren't I? I'm crap." But the following weekend we got more sympathetic and appreciative audiences, including one which contained old family friends from Bloomington. My sister says they were raving about the show after she got back to town, and what a good actor I was, which is heartening, but I always remember Bill Goldman's remarks, in Adventures In the Screen Trade, about hot bodies.

Early in his Hollywood days, Goldman heard some people talking about how good the movie was that they were making and what a positive reaction the daily rushes had had, and this one guy said, "All that's good, but it doesn't mean a thing until you get hot bodies out there." When Goldman asked him to explain this, the man said "Hot bodies are people who don't know you and don't care whether you're good or not. Hot bodies are people who don't know your mother." So my friends, lovely though they are, do not count as hot bodies.

Now there were audience members who didn't know me (or my mother) and who told us we'd done an excellent job -- with varying degrees of enthusiasm. So we're good, but not good enough to take the town by storm yet. We'll have to work harder.

Though I still get stage fright, I find it much more manageable now. I've done a few of these shows, and by this time I know that if I just listen to my director, run my lines on a daily basis, run over the blocking in my head, keep my mind on what I'm doing when I'm out there, take care of my own part, as everyone else is doing, then everything else will take care of itself. Marcus's focus is on storytelling, he pays close attention to pacing, and his shows are usually like a well-oiled machine by the time they hit the boards, provided the actors don't take a whole lot of rehearsal time off, which I'm afraid many of us did. But we had things more or less notched in by the end of the first weekend.

A great bunch of people. I'll miss working with them, and I hope we get to work together again. It was great fun acting with Angus Hepburn again; he played Leonato, and last summer he was Professor Serebryakov in Vanya. And it was also great fun acting with Marcus again; he's the director and he doesn't usually act.

The audiences were really variable, as I indicated before. Sometimes they'd sit there like stones, and other times they'd laugh a lot, and gasp at the horror of the wedding scene and of my Limitless Evil (HA ha ha ha ha HA HA HAAAAH ha ha ha ha). A lot of people I knew came to see it. Everyone was pleasantly complimentary. I invited my old Shakespeare teacher, Professor Pinciss, but he didn't turn up. August is a month when a lot of people are on vacation. Marcus says he intends to never do a show in August again; we had some sizeable audiences, but never came close to filling the place. Oh, well.

My first Shakespeare! Joy unconfined! We'll probably do Ibsen or something next. Or Chekhov again.

I've been focusing on the play lately, and when I've been reading at all it's mostly been re-reading: the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, Lies by Al Franken, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books. But I have returned lately to a thing I meant to read some months back: Sex And Society In Shakespeare's Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer, by A. L. Rowse. It is research on Shakespeareana, because I'm interested, but also research for a fantasy novel I'm writing, because this Simon Forman -- a very interesting chap -- practiced magic. There are practitioners of magic in my story, and instead of cribbing from other fantasy writers, I thought I'd do what better writers have done before me -- go back and crib right from the source -- find out as much as I could about the actual methodologies of alchemists, astrologers, necromancers, and the like. I doubt that they genuinely defied the laws of physics, though I shall try to retain an open mind, but were mysterious and obliquely manipulative, and I suspect that such results as they might have produced would be capable of more than one interpretation. But what did they, in fact, actually do? With what tools and preparations? With regard to the alchemists, sadly, I have only been able to find books on their somewhat numbing philosophy; no alchemical lab manuals.

There's nothing too concrete in the Forman either yet, but I have to say it's a hell of a good read. If it was female, and moved, he would have sex with it, though he wrote it in his diary, for some reason, as "halek." If he didn't get off with the woman, he would write "non halek." He and Shakespeare had the same landlady, though apparently not at the same time. He went to see Shakespeare's plays at the Globe, and left written accounts of four of them. What I'd really like is to read his case books and papers, which have apparently never been brought out in their entirety, and are at the Bodleian. This book contains some nice little nuggets though:

"January, 1597: I dreamt that I was with the Queen, and that she was a little elderly woman in a coarse white petticoat all unready. She and I walked up and down through lanes and closes, talking and reasoning. At last we came over a great close where were many other people, and there were two men at hard words. One of them was a weaver, a tall man with a reddish beard, distract of his wits. She talked to him and he spoke very merrily unto her, and at last did take her and kiss her. So I took her by the arm and did put her away; and told her the fellow was frantic. So we went from him and I led her by the arm still, and then we went through a dirty lane. She had a long white smock very clean and fair, and it trailed in the dirt and her coat behind. I took her coat and did carry it up a good way, and then it hung too low before. I told her she should do me a favour to let me wait on her, and she said I should. Then said I, 'I mean to wait upon you and not under you, that I might make this belly a little bigger to carry up this smock and coat out of the dirt.' And so we talked merrily; then she began to lean upon me, when we were past the dirt and to be very familiar with me, and methought she began to love me. When we were alone, out of sight, methought she would have kissed me."

Forman is a very rare Elizabethan in that he actually left us an autobiography. But how many Elizabethans wrote down their dreams? Especially a dream like that?

__________________________________________
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot,
But I gotta get a bellyfull o' wine;
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
Someday I'm gonna make 'er mine, oh yeah,
Someday I'm gonna make 'er mine.
-- Paul McCartney

LES FROMAGES FUTILES

The books are stacked upon the floor.
O Misery! O Regret!
The books prop open the bathroom door.
O Misery Unconfined.

The bathtub faucet leaks forever.
O Rage! O Despair!
The mold grows clever; it leaves never.
O Rage Without An End.

The milk has hardened in the fridge,
Death boiling under the caps:
The unblessed bastard cheeses.

The vinyl is peeling off the floor.
O Shame! O Degradation!
The death's-head wood beneath waits, grinning.
O Shame My Crown Of Fire.

The rotted plaster cracks and falls.
O Bugger All! O Fuck A Duck!
O Virgin's Tonsils! Jesus's balls!
Put duct tape on, and trust to luck.

In plastic tubs they sit in the fridge,
The sell-by date long past:
The futile, futile cheeses.

A COMFORTABLE BOWL TO DIE IN

Precarious rowings among the lilies with logs
And sudden shallows under your prow are what
Win water lilies for eager children. The lilies
Go into a bowl of water on the kitchen table.

As the morning and then the afternoon progress,
The flowers close, the petals discolor. Removed
From the place where they were nurtured and flourished,
They become secretive, and their secrets change.

You stare at the most recent capture, which is still
Open. "Tell me," you say, "before you iris
Shut like your sisters. What exactly are you hiding?
If you tell no one, then your secret will be safe,

But there will also be no one to tell tomorrow
Of your today. What is the center of you,
And why does it seem so important -- and not just
To you, but to me, who can't find it, and never

Saw it, and thinks it might be religion? A secret
so important that it might even silence
the children arguing in the other room?" The slowly
Shutting white petals and the yellow tendrils

They surround, all waving in at the absence
Of a central citadel, look you right in the eye
And say, "If we told you, that would ruin it."
"It's ruined anyway," you say; "you're dying."

"We don't seek answers for ourselves," sigh
The petals, "and we don't exist to provide you
With answers. Say, shouldn't there be something
Right between your eyes? Other than the bridge

Of your nose, we mean. We don't know what
On earth it might be, but you seem incomplete
Without it. Amazing! We, too, can tell the world
What it ought to be, and rage at it when it won't

Comply. Thank you for bringing us flowers religion."
"Just for that," you say, "I'll kill more of you tomorrow.
One by one you will perish in the torture-bowl
Until one of you tells me the answer."

POOR BERNARD

or, What I Did On My Summer Vacation

by Gowan Pig


1. On Fishing

This involves sitting in a rowboat with a fishing rod for an unspecified period, repeatedly casting your lure and drawing it back. There is something hypnotic, almost Zen, about this activity in and of itself. If you have the turn of mind to appreciate such sport, it is easy to see how fishing can become an addictive pastime, even when one fails to catch any actual fish. The hypnotic aspect is facilitated by an idyllic setting such as Green Lake affords. The trees, the deep, deep blue sky, the clouds, all making their reflections in the water, which is sometimes rippled by wind and sometimes so still as to be almost glassy. The sun moves in and out among the big white fluffy clouds and casts shifting shadows on the hillsides, on the trees, on the water, and on you, as you cast the lure, and reel it in, and cast the lure, and reel it in, world without end, amen. The boat slowly drifts toward one shore or another, but do you care? No. You only look for a relatively weed-free area in which to make your casts (though you should keep in mind that the fish tend to haunt the weeded, lilypadded areas, as they don't like direct sunlight). For even a lifelong irreligious such as this author, it almost becomes possible, as the afternoon passes in this sylvan, lovely way, to believe in God.

2. On Actually Catching Something

The sylvan loveliness, Zen meditation bit pretty much ends right here, especially if, as in the case of the present author, you are so unfortunate as to get the freaking Loch Green Monster on your first nibble. This will present something of a challenge, for which your experience thus far at reeling in and disposing of various types of lake weed will have in no way prepared you. For example, even your larger clumps of lake weed are unlikely to attempt to tow you into the deepest part of the lake so that they can overturn the boat, dump you ignominiously into the water, and have their way with you.

This is a time for perseverance, a very strong pair of hands, and a good sense of balance. Unfortunately, it is also a very good time to have the first clue about what you are doing, which did not apply in the case of the present author, who had not been fishing since fifth-grade camp thirty years earlier. He eventually received some post hoc advice -- after he returned to shore shaking, sweating, cursing, and vowing vengeance -- which involved pulling steadily on one end and letting the fish wear itself out and reeling it in while it was resting, or some such. He is not at all sure that, even had he received this advice in a more timely fashion (such as *before* he set out to do battle with powers and principalities), it would have been efficacious. He did battle with this bloody kraken for a full fifteen minutes, occasionally losing his grip on the reel to be sure, but generally regaining control quite quickly, and his opponent never tired, and had the rod bent nearly double most of the time. He (the present author, that's to say) remembers thinking "This is either the friskiest log I have ever encountered, or the fish that ate Chicago." He also remembers thinking "There is no way I'm backing down, no way. He'll give before I do, though Hell should gape."

The more outdoor-sportishly inclined readers out there will have guessed at the outcome: the line snapped, leaving the present author with a quite useless rod (the tackle box being ashore) and a foolish expression on his face. But if this fifteen-minute contest between man and fish served no concrete purpose, it did have the effect of transforming a mild-mannered, rather shy, bookish, reclusive man into a sort of cut-rate Captain Ahab.

He looked about him and found the day less pleasant than before. The dark shadows of clouds moving on the surface of the water were no longer conducive to a meditative stupor, but instead seemed to hint at dark forces moving beneath the surface of the world. The distant bellowing of the cows, or perhaps moose, or possibly dinosaurs, no longer filled his head with pastoral visions out of Virgil or Milton, but made him think of coelacanth and mokele-mbembe, and wonder just what manner of creature he would see if the bellows drew nearer. He was in fact experiencing a practical demonstration of something he had long suspected, that the picture of country life favored by city-bred authors such as Milton, with its piping poetical swains and their indolent pretty lives, was total bollocks, and that a country-bred author such as Will Shakespeare, with his "nature red in tooth and claw," was much nearer the mark.

But enough of that. He returned to shore, a fire in his brain, to tell his friends of his harrowing encounter with the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (which tale met with less awe and admiration and more hilarity than he had been hoping for), and to get a new lure for his line. Cat showed him how to put it on. Then, pausing only to make an appropriate quotation --

The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!

-- he rowed back to the Harfleur Inlet, with his liberally sunburned arms, and began casting again.

In less than half an hour, he had another nibble, but he knew from the fact that he was able to reel it in steadily that this was not the leviathan of earlier, but some lesser, more modest fish. When it broke the water, a fish of perhaps ten inches, and the author was able to witness its struggles first hand, this had the unexpected effect of bringing his natural cringing humility to the fore again.

He had an urge to get rid of this fish and keep casting for the other, more impressive beast, but the overriding thought which occurred was "While this fish is certainly not worthy of the other, maybe you aren't either. There is also the practical consideration that, having caught even this titmouse of a fish, you now have no idea how to proceed." And so, in the hope of obtaining expert advice, he set his flopping, writhing prize in the bottom of the boat, and put out his oars for home.


3. On Getting Your Fish Off The Line

This may present not only a challenge but a daunting challenge if, like the present author, you are unused to handling live fish and have never killed anything larger than a water bug, and even that made you uneasy because of the insect guts and the unexpectedly large amount of fluid. There may be species variations to take into account here, but with a largemouth bass, such as the one caught by the present author, the thing to be careful of is the dorsal fin, on its back just abaft its head. The spines thereof can pierce you badly if you approach them incautiously.

What you do is hold the line with one hand so that the fish -- the gasping fish, struggling for his life -- let us call him Bernard -- is dangling down in the classic "doomed fish" position. Pass your other hand down over the fish, taking good care not to stick a finger in the fish's mouth. Since the fin spines are orientated toward the aft end of the fish, you should be able to lay them flat and so render them harmless. Take a good firm grip. Now, very carefully, you must work the hook all the way through the flesh where it has caught, and then back out again. Put Bernie in a bucket, and put lakewater in the bucket, enough to cover him.

As a side note, you should be prepared for the attitude of any children who happen to be nearby. They will all want to see Bernard, and attempt to become personally involved with him. They may want to know if you have a tank to keep him in so that they can visit him, which may necessitate an embarrassing explanation. ("I am about to brutally murder this fish, precious poppet.") They will attempt to stroke the fish, if they are hardy, courageous children. A particularly fearless two year old can be worrying, with repeated requests for public viewing ("Wanna see!") and for identification ("What's that?"). Physical contact is inadvisable because of the dorsal fin as mentioned, and because the fish may be saving up a last, desperate burst of energy so as to maul whoever happens to be near. Also, children might contrive, whether accidentally or intentionally, to dump the fish back into the lake, though once you have read the next section you may find this option preferable.

And so, bright the day and high your heart, you carry dear Bernard up to the fish cleaning table. It is best to arrange this particular matter ahead of time, for if you use someone's dining table for a fish cleaning table, they will not be best pleased. A table specifically for cleaning fish is what you want, and make sure you have bleach water and a scrub brush for when you are done.

The next part of our program is not recommended for those of a nervous disposition.


4. On Cleaning Your Fish

You lay the fish down on the cleaning table, getting a good grip on its tail. (Paper towel may be helpful.) You insert a good sharp knife in the gill area and cut the living Christ out of it. The idea is to connect the two gills, port and starboard. Down, then up, both sides. Then pull off Bernard's head and drop it in the lakewater bucket you brought him up in. Ignore the blood; you're into this thing too deep to back out now. Next: the underbelly of the fish, so you set it on its back, again keeping a good grip on the tail. Near the tail end you will find a hole, which you will easily identify. Insert that knife into Bernard's anus and SLICE right up that underbelly.

You now proceed to unfold Bernard. Pull his guts out. (As I said, you're into this too deep to back out; the fish's blood is already on your hands, so its intestines are no great matter.) Drop the guts into the slop bucket, having first checked them to make sure that they are healthy, and that they do not presage the fall of the Res Publica. The worst part is now officially over.

Dorsal, anal, pectoral, and any other fins the fish may possess must now come off. As they all grow toward the arse end, it is best to cut at them from that direction. Dig them out as best you may, being careful not to puncture yourself on the spines. Into the slop bucket with them. The tail too, but hold off for a bit, because this will come in useful as a handle when removing the fins, and when scaling the fish, to which you now proceed. With the knife blade you scrape the scales off. The scales, like the fins, grow to the aft, so to be effective you must scrape forward. See how handy that tail is?

The fish, or Bernie as his friends called him, should by this time be quite thoroughly depersonalized, but not yet deboned. To this you now proceed. Truthfully, you can stop here, and freeze what remains of poor Bernard, if you are in a hurry to get to a Neil Innes concert, or possibly to attempt to catch and kill some of Bernard's friends. If not, then cut off Bernie's tail -- thwack! -- and move on to fileting him. This involves cutting into what used to be his back before you decapitated and eviscerated him, and using the knife to peel his erstwhile back and flanks away from his former ribcage. A twisting motion is most effective, carefully working the flesh away from the bones. Down one side, then the other. And there is his ribcage, poor lonely thing. It can be saved, along with the tail, and the head -- the head! Hello, Bernard! Poor Bernard! Why do you stare so? -- and boiled down for stock. Freeze them together, and freeze the filets in a separate bag.

This concludes the disassemblage of Bernard, or Bernie, the Largemouth Bass. Now just try and get the fish smell off your hands, you heartless murderer.