The Perpendiculars, Pt 3

Continuing for your delectation a work in progress. Part one is here, part two is here.

Adastra Morales is beautiful when she’s sleeping. I mean, she’s pretty cute when she’s awake, but when sleep hides the trouble in her eyes, when her mouth goes slack and those tight lines fade, when her dark curls frame her baby-doll face… yeah. I saw her mind moving behind her flickering eyelids, moving through dreams. She was beautiful in there, too. Too beautiful.

I could have stood a long time watching her through the dirty window of the Bunny, drooling gently onto her Bay blanket, driver’s seat reclined as far back as it could go and still be counted on to return to an upright position, but I really wanted to get as far away from that farm as I could, as fast as four German cylinders could carry me. Plenty of time to moon over sleepy sorta-ex-girlfriends back in town, away from angry mummies and their primordial punishments. One of the boons Sekhemkhet had granted me in gratitude for winning his arm race was that he would deign to delay his vengeance for “one solar hour,” just long enough to hustle fragile Addy out of the psychic blast radius. Plus, you know, I needed a drink. This action-adventure shit is thirsty work.

Addy started awake at my knock, brown eyes shedding panicky sparks. I had a brief vision of her as a tough-as-nails, pistol-packin’ mama, pulling a piece from under that drool-damp wool wrap and me flinching back, hands quick into the air, and she sighs out a big breath, letting in the hammer with her thumb and saying something like “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”

Where did that come from? Addy hates guns. In every personal interaction I’d seen her have with a firearm, she’d picked the gun up between thumb and forefinger, like garbage, dangling it at arm’s length only long enough to pass it to me. Instead of a six-gun popping up from under the blanket, I got a sleepy scowl and a fuzzy-mittened hand popping the broken passenger-side door open from the inside. I slid onto the chilly seat.

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The Perpendiculars, excerpt cont'd

Work in progress, etc. Part one is HERE

As sanctums go, Sekhemkhet’s prairie pad had never been much to look at on the surface, but now it was a full-on dump, human trash mixed in with the garbage. Breathing shallow through my mouth and damping down other senses I couldn't lose if I tried, I still gagged on the flophouse stench, the corruption of decayed and eroded enchantments.

The place was filled with people and the shells of people, a wall-to-wall, room-to-room carpet of bodies in various states of narcosis, drunkenness, withdrawal, unconsciousness. In dim light refracted between heavy curtains I counted six people leaning against the stained walls of the dining-room, in the centre of which a big table buried in reeking food containers tilted on two legs. Nobody cared, was able to care, that I was there. Another morning after in three years of mornings after, thralls rocking a sick and stolen party. How could they know Daddy was coming home?

On the livingroom loveseat, under an obscenely daubed diagram that made my sloppy glyphwork look like the Seventh Seal, a jaundiced teenager lay passed out with her mouth slack around her scabby lover’s limp dick. Beyond this charming tableau, a greasy dude in ancient Ocean Pacific surfer shorts lay with his head propped up against a charred Ottoman, playing Grand Theft Auto with the sound off, bashing a virtual bag-lady with a golf club over and over again, digital bloodspatter replacing itself as fast as it faded from the screen. I knew that if I opened up I’d see the sick loops circling around his head; dude was in the zone.

Honestly? I was disappointed. I mean, what a waste – an ancient archbeing’s undying power usurped, a treasure trove of physical and mystic power free for the fucking around with, and all you can come up with is drink, drugs and whoring? I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of angry jealousy at this failure of imagination, knowing that if my buddies and I had dared to run a grift like this we’d have done so much better. Just thinking like that must’ve been the taint of the place getting to me, but... seriously. Even if we hedged fully half the money and mojo on spooky insurance and cosmic bribes we’d still manage a hundred years of wonder, maybe a millennium of might and majesty, before that inevitable, inexorable somebody showed up at our door to do exactly what I was about to do.

I hoped Shafiq had something more interesting set up downstairs in the vault. If a man might be judged by the caliber of his opponents, I was coming out of this operation looking pretty low-rent. Stepping over a pasty jerk with PRAIZE SATAN 666 branded on his distended belly, I clickety-clacked through an unbelievably tacky chicken-bone bead curtain and headed down down down into the dirty earth.


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Shifts.

Chapter 1.


Hardwood floors always feel cool if the sun hasn’t been hitting them all day,
and I liked that. It’s probably why it was my third night sleeping a stumble from my
desk. I doubt it had much to do with me being too drunk to do anything but fall out
of my chair; making it to bed had become as daunting as climbing a mountain or
running a marathon, in that state.

The floor was where I slept and it kept my face cooler than flipping my pillow
100 times a night. Although it wasn’t very soft at all and I hadn’t vacuumed it in a
while, it did keep me cool those nights. And I guess nothing more than wood could
really be as hard as you, so it was no change. Cold and wooden; yes, it was like I was
in your arms all over again. Except at least now I was drunk and unconscious and
didn’t care this time.

Showering always feels good, no matter what crimes you may or may not
have committed the night before; or even before that. I loved shaving that day, and
even tried to press the blades into my face just to see how much pressure it would
take to bleed-out and into the sink. It didn’t work and I just ended up looking well
groomed.

No breakfast today, I knew it would make me sick. I drove to Anon looking at
those fingers gripping my wheel. I could never get my fingernails clean. The Kendall
“ToughTac” and its “3% Moly” haunted my hands forever. Fuck that grease. And fuck
the long series of checks I had to pass through just to do a job.
I have lived in Bnei Brak since 2004. Five years, now. I have driven this road
a thousand times since then. They know me. I know them.

“Papers? Who are you? Why are you going to Anon? Do you have a pass? You are Canadian Passport, why do you come to Anon?”.

“My name is Sid Heart. I am the regional sales, repair and rep. for Caterpillar International. We sell you IDF boys the D9; you know? The dozer you call “Teddy Bear”?

“Ok, Mr. Heart. Please show me your company document and access permission. And where do you live?”

“I live in Bnei Brak, corner of OrHaHayim and Rashi, you know?”

“No. Show me your car. Get out, keys on roof. Please open the boot and doors.”

“Ok, here is the number of Rebbi Kats, he is my contact at the IDF, 972-3-821-8911. Please call him for verification.”

“Open your jacket and turn toward the barrier, slowly. Please do not move too quickly, Mr. Heart, my men will shoot you.”

“*sigh*…fuck you Silverman.”

I had seen, met and even drank with ‘Mamak’ Silverman before.
‘Mamak’ Silverman is a terrible poker player. He always stands his rifle up
and rests his chin on the stalk, lightly kicking the barrel when he is bluffing. It’s a shit tell.
But we have played together, many times; when the roads are down and the
lines are long, it’s best to make friends. Yet, he always gives me shit when I see him
on those desert roads into the territories; the settlements. The bull-dozed-invasions.
I’d get arrested for a fucking camera much, much quicker than I would for an AK-47
at these checks; IDF hates foreign media. A lot.

I fucking hate this desert. And I don’t get it; people actually kill and die for
this shit. If God gave you this land, well, I think God is either an asshole or God really hates you.

Of course, Silverman and the boys let me through.

“Yes, Mr. Kats, I understand. Sorry, sir.”

Silverman half bows and quickly closes the sat. phone. He gestures to the road ahead.

“O.k., Mr. Sid Heart, you are verified for access to Anon, please be careful…”

I turn up the volume on my radio while he speaks and before Silverman
finishes I weave through the concrete barriers and posted gunners, peeling out and
off. I head for Anon, again.

My car is a modified Audi 900 with a skid-plate covering the entire chassis
belly, armoured panels and bullet-proof windows. Diesel is costly, but the IDF pays,
so I can’t really bitch about that. That armoured car looked so feeble, though, when
IDF had its doors open and the hood and trunk were up, like some prehistoric metal
bird in its dying throes or looking for a mate; pathetic and floundering.

90 minutes late. Fuck.

Anon is a shit-hole. A bulldozed shit-hole, thanks to me; thanks to the D9.
Beit Shamesh, Anon’s mayor, welcomes me like a lost brother. The only
reason he wants my D9 expertise is to clear land that isn’t his.

“Shalom. Shalom, Mr. Heart. I trust that your drive was safe? Did you encounter any problems?”

Israelis tend to refer to intifada or rocket-attacks or suicide-bombings as “problems” in the same glib manner the IRA are referred to as “the troubles”, in Belfast.
Problems. Yeah, fuck you, Shamesh. IDF gives me more grief, and I sell you shit, than I have ever gotten from any Arabs in 5 years.

“Nope, it was a fine drive through God’s country Mr. Shamesh. And Peace to your town, Selah.”

In Anon I make the tired pitches;

“The Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer is Caterpillar's most well known piece of equipment. It weighs 54 tons, stock, and is powered by a 474 HP Cat diesel engine. Not only is it capable of razing an entire town with its 13 foot blade and optional ripper attachment, it also serves a very important position in the mining, forestry, construction, and waste management sectors”.

I started as a small engine repairman after a life fixing tractor engines and
combine hydraulics for Ontario farms. I left the farms and worked in Toronto on city
snowplows and graters. Finning hired me for Cat-troubles in Toronto. The, “Willing
to Relocate?” box has always been checked on every application I sent. I never really
meant it but I still checked it.
I was, and also am, still, willing to relocate.

I am the only person in Anon without an Uzi, without an automatic machine-
gun shoulder-slung. I decided long ago that carrying a gun was making a choice in
this war of attrition, and I don’t care enough to choose. I just work; and drink and
smoke. Those are the sides I choose. Those are the only sides I’ll ever choose and
work for. At least then the war and casualties are both mine, alone.

After the sales meeting, town meeting, I dined with Shamesh at his fortress.
Orthodox dinners are the worst. The food is fine but man, every fucking table
probably looks the same at the same moment over Israel. The head of the house, the
man, talks and talks and even starts yelling; challah in hand, soup dripping down his
beard.
The poor women, wife and daughter, just sit there, head down and serving
food.
Fucking awful; I like hearing other, less bearded voices.

I like silence. And I am fucking sick of talking business between bites and slurps. I just don’t care, really. I sell to these people but to me it’s just a pay-cheque; to them it’s life, death. But I don’t care at all. A part is a part and grease is just that. I hate this place. I hate being forced to choose a side on something I don’t give a fuck about.

I wanted to tell Shamesh that Fatah had ordered three stock D-9s. Not
just to ramp prices, but to shut him up. Just to have some silence.

On the drive back I think I smoked about 20 cigarettes, one right after the
other. I threw the glowing stubs out the window and watched in my rear-view as
they hit the ground and exploded in sparks.

Spock Days, 2009

With Leonard Nimoy, Mr. Spock himself, making his long-awaited first visit to the town of Vulcan, I figured I'd go ahead and post this piece I wrote at last summer's Spock Days, which got the spike because I guess a Toronto newspaper somehow had something more interesting to run than coverage of a strange event that had already happened on the other side of the country. Go figure.

Abbot K'Obol Chang-K'Onor of Klingon Assault Group (KAG) Kanada, a fan club dedicated to the culture and costumery of Star Trek's fearsome warriors, is glaring at me through his space-shades, sun glinting off sharpened teeth. Handmade leather armor creaks as he sets his shoulders; a twin-headed flail, replete with wicked spikes, dangles menacingly from his gauntleted hand.

"Your understanding of Klingon philosogpy," he growls, "is... imperfect."

As a senior Klingon cleric, the Abbot (aka Doug Welsh of Halifax) would know. His head freshly sheared in the "Shave a Klingon for Cancer" event here at Spock Days/Galaxyfest in the town of Vulcan, Alberta, I made the mistake of asking how he reconciles such charity work -- and the dozens of other good-cause events, from MS fun-runs to fundraising daffodil sales, in which KAG Kanada participates -- with the apparent cruelty of survival-of-the-fittest Klingon culture.

"Klingon philosophy is not about destroying the weak," he explains, as patiently as is possible for a Klingon;"Klingon philosophy is about making the weak stronger. We think everybody should be Klingon!"

They're making a good start on it here in this farming community of 2,000 that's trying hard to turn the sci-fi cachet of its 94-year-old name into precious nerd-tourism dollars. A concrete-and-steel replica of the Starship Enterprise presides over the highway, in view of the seed-cleaning plant; the futuristic headquarters of the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek offers souvenir Spock Ears and a rather cheesy virtual-reality "Vulcan space adventure"; Trek murals dot downtown, and street signs are styled after Starfleet insignia. With the KAG's 20th-anniverasry gathering coinciding with Galaxyfest, the town's rolled out the blood-red carpet: a local cafe's menu board offers, untranslated, such Klingon delicacies as "Throck," "Mool" and "Bartas bir Jablu"; the tavern of the Vulcan Hotel is offering $1.50 mugs of refreshing "Klingon Beer" -- pisswater draft tarted up with lime juice and red food coloring.

It's a strange intersection of cultures. Without its spacey trappings -- out of costume, you could say -- Vulcan would be more or less the epitome of the dire little struggling farmtown, but GalaxyFest's combination of rural county fair and Star Trek convention makes for a surreal appeal. An elderly lady sporting pointy-eared prosthetics rolls by on a handi-scooter decked out in spaceship regalia. The local old-folks' home leads the parade with a replica Enterprise float, complete with command-bridge cockpit and laser sound effects. Characters like "Ysnap the Peace Klingon",  her costume a combination of star warrior and glam hippie, line up along with weatherbeaten farmers and truckers for bratwurst Spock Dogs. Another Klingon tries to wipe away tears without smudging his makeup as a woman on the Community Stage karaoke-sings a country tearjerker about childhood cancer. Local dudes at the beer garden out by the softball diamond horse around with town mascot "Ee-Cheeya", a furry cat-thing modeled after Spock's childhood pet.

"It's amazing," says celebrity guest Lolita Fatjo, a veteran of Trek TV and movie production crews and now operator of a company that books guest appearances for Trek stars; "I've been booking talent for [Galaxyfest] for six years. Everybody I've sent up here has come back and said 'Oh my god, that was so fun.' Usually we go to a hotel, we never see the light of day, we're in that hotel for two or three days..."

Suzie Plakson, who's played several Trek aliens ("I'm a multiracial, global trekkie-gal") including Worf's half-Klingon mate K'Ehleyr, agrees. "A mainstream convention -- and I don't mean this as derogatory -- the description is 'mercenary'. Because it kind of has to be. But this is just pure heart. There's something more... organic about the Trekhood of this town. It's something woven into everything."

Still, this is Vulcan the out-of-the-way grain town, not Vulcan the planet of calculating space-philosophers. In front of the Cinnastop cafe, whose windows sport a mural of what looks to be Captain Kirk and Scotty running toward an alien mirage of giant milkshakes and hamburgers, a pair of shimmery-cloaked Talosians (the bum-head aliens from the original series, remember?) stroll by pushing a dummy replica of crippled Captain Pike, Kirk's predecessor. A trio of old ladies watch them pass, bemused looks on their faces.

"Well," one remarks, with that inimitable small-town cluck of the tongue; "there certainly are a lot of strangers in town today."

“The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty..."

I think there is an animal in there, in my brain, walking and eating and laughing and shitting in there. I think it is gnawing wires for kicks.

I think I am losing control but I mean I really can't help it this time and I drink and do drugs and fuck to shake it but no; no, it is in control and there is nothing I can do anymore but observe and tell you about it.

I tried again to keep it under control but I made another mistake again and have to write a report about it. Again.

I'll write it in the morning. Tonight, though, tonight is time for a swim.

The still phosphorescence as I forward-crawl through the lake is enough. I mean I know I am mad, but why lights? Why at night?

But, do you know why I struggle so?

It's for you, my lost love. I swim for you.

And drown too.

The Perpendiculars, Book one, Part one -- excerpt

“Char me the trunk of a giant redwood, give me pages of white cliffs to write upon, magnify me thousands of times and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania… then I might write large enough for our subjects.”

-- Charles Hoy Fort, the Book of the Damned

1 - THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY’S HAND

A late October morning, see-your-breath cold. Frost on the ground and the dirt track feeling stiff underfoot. A morning for quiet contemplation of the coming winter, for watching the pinking east through a cloud of coffee-steam… or for staying in bed, cozy, until the sun softened things, chased off the frost.

Without coffee and without a bed – I’d rolled up my rim about twenty kilometers back on the highway, and my blankets were two chilly hours behind that – all I had on that country morning was a mission and a message, a bagful of mojo dynamite. I fingered the battered satchel at my side, feeling my own flimsy hocus-pocus over and around the dark and ancient secrets within. It felt transparent; only a lazy idiot could fall for this gimmick. Lucky for me, I guess, that laziness and idiocy are powerful constants in this unpredictable world. What else can you count on?

The house itself was unremarkable. Hardly the pulp-novel image of a wretched hive or a royal refuge, which was of course the whole point, since it was both. Vinyl siding, cedar deck, tar shingles… just another ranch-style farmhouse on a medium-sized acreage in a typically pretty chunk of some run-of-the-mill geography. A retirement plot, exactly.

Except this particular piece of Freedom 55 – Freedom 5,500, if you want to get cute – was a long way from country-kitchen fantasies of thanksgiving with the grandkids. I could smell it from the foot of the drive, mystic stink overpowering the molecular diesel aroma of Addy’s idling Rabbit, the Brave Bunny. Scent of decay, mouldering mansion… something majestic gone sick and wrong. Piss in the corner of a palace, a cathedral repurposed as a dungheap, and through it all a whiff of incense, of camphor, of clean reeds from my bag. I pumped as much will as I dared into my metaphysical odor-eater; I didn’t want the shitdwellers scenting the disinfectant. Not yet.


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“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. "

Sandra Concepcion interviews Sid Heart, one of this century's greatest fuck-ups.
Here is the full interview:

Concepcion: "Good morning, Sid, thank you for doing this at such short notice."

Heart: "...unh..."

Conception: "So, um, can you give me a break down of your recent writings and the success of them all?"

Heart: "...fuck, what?"

Concepcion: "It just seems with your last bit about mushrooms and regular proclamations of loneliness you are, well, not very interesting as a writer.

Heart: "Well that's something I go through all the time; I never said I was good, I just write. But 'polls', or shit like that, have never troubled me much."

Concepcion: "O.k., well, why do you always write about love and beauty and lost things?"

Heart: "What else is there to document? I mean, for me. These are the things which captivate me and send me. You know?"

Concepcion: "Maybe. And maybe I might be able to swim through that, it doesn't mean our readers will. Can you simplify it?"

Heart: "No. Look, if someone doesn't understand heart-break then there is nothing I can do about that. They just don't know. It's like describing a colour to someone who has never seen said colour. Impossible.

Concepcion: "Interesting. Another question people want to know is 'why are you single?'."

Heart: "I don't know and have stopped trying for love. I mean not in a bad way, but I have recently decided to focus on me and forget the women. You know?"

Concepcion. "Yes. I think so. Last question, Sid, as I know you are on your way out, is there any advice you would give to young men out there?"

Heart: "Yeah. Have friends like Fish and Darren and Steve and Dwayne. These men have always made me better."

Concepcion: "O.k. Thank you so much and goodnight."

"Even the river wanted him dead."

I tried writing on a mushroom jaunt; not very good.
But I did take notes and tried to record the times as best as I could. Thank god for the digital 12-hour cllock on my computer or I would have been fucked in that respect.
I was fucked anyhow. This was all that I could get out.
Alone in my apartment after a 10 hour trip with my buddy Chris, walking through Stanley Park and uptown. We had some beers and then I came home and ate a ton of mushrooms; still buzzing and just wanting to see if it would work, or something.
This is unedited, un-spell-checked and untouched.

5:20 p.m.

At 20 after 5 I am feeling the pull.
I ate a half-ounce of potent mushrooms at 5 today.
I have no plans and nothing to do, which is good, as I am sure to be fucked for a solid 12 hours; fucked from doing anything.
And I have a 6 pack of beer, just to keep me grounded.

5:26 p.m.

I have closed the curtains now, though I had thought of looking at the Yoga-practicing redhead in the condo across Nelson Street; always when I am drunk and smoking out there on the balcony, she turns on the back-lighting in her kitchen and then stretches beautiful in the living room.
But I have closed the curtains tonight. Even she can't save me now.

5:32 p.m.

The mushrooms come in yawns and heightened awareness. As my pupils dialate the dark becomes more friendly; I can see better. I doubt I'll be interested in documenting this much longer.

5:39 p.m.
I was right, except I am really fucking terribly aroused. I guess if you eat enough mushrooms, your cock becomes an iron rod. I bet I could have worked the spike-line on the railroad with this thing. i am feeling very thoughtful about trains a

/awareness shift(?)

something felt different again. I mean it was the music this time it really is the music after-all.

6:28

I am ruined. But laughing because you are all fucking ruined, too.
E

wait, wait. it's just drugs.
Smoke? This is shameful. But how am I supposed to know the difference?
Nevermind.

6:48 What?
that was never just 20 minutes. was it? why does it look like everything has been painted by Robert Bateman?

6;54
this is stupid. fuck it. I need a bigger typewriter.

7;20 pm

I just made contact. She was waving something and by the fridge i thought it was awoman you know just forget it

i am so fucking high

that was just 15 minutes no fuckING WAY?????

7:46 p.m.
I have resumed control.
Rosanne Cash and a beer, rations.

Fuck this is like war.

I smoked some pot just now in hopes of getting sleepy.

8:00 p.m.
So, this is a never-ending trip broken only by time-checks?
fine.
let's go then. This is laughable. I need stronger drugs to challenge my MENTAL MONZTERR!!!

New reality show idea
nah

8:07 p.m. eh?

8:30 p.m.
still incredibly stoned.
Hilarious.

9:16 p.m.
I just ate so much food, feel better.
sleep soon I think, no?
not yet?

10:04 pm
I think I was on the phone but I never dialed and thought i was on hold the whole time.
I was reading before and am stsrting to chill out.
I dont know if I can sleep yet, but I am going to try. This experiment was shit.
Stupid idea I didn't write anything. Fucking fuck.

G'night.

-Sid

JUST SAYIN'

Goodbye and Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish.

It was so long since I had seen you.
I doubted you would know me and knew you had long forgotten my breath on your spine as we slept in that old house.

Goodbye dear book, I am sorry to have outlived you like this.
But you offer me nothing but bitter memories now; when you opened for me and I gleaned knowledge and joy from you, sequentially.

Goodnight. I hope your spirit is infused into the milk carton or legal pad you are destined to become in this recycled world.

Goodbye dear book.



-Sid