textfiles/magazines/TUC/tuc5.txt

...
  eyes unshrink
daylight massages
         ...
(pick slide_________________________________________________________________)
 abundantlike                                               flesh
  inspring growing like                                         flesh.
never enough found                                       to go 'round.
  yeah, yeah, yeah                                      blame your parents
    inspiring growth                                    the mind: twitch
       days as anothers, stolen time from death.              a rose,
    flattened.  from it grows a soft moss.              green like spring
  why not born to die.  to live,                        readiness is
                                         all.
in the loneliness of your hollow foot,
the hall chorus drums you alone,
or your anemone softlike reaching,
brilliance of its echo, rolling back to you, the essence of selfisolate.
and in your hand, its glass diffracts the sun,
a brutality of: a joy of: notyetsurfeit of: a stench of: a truth of:
(____________________________________________________________________alive...
          the-
          undi      pretentious literariness
          scov      from s.r. prozak & l.b. noire
          ered
          coun                               cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu
          try.                               rm09216@academia.swt.edu

<05nov93 -0:02>
                                                                 ...unshaded)

c     o     n     t     e     n     t     s    .:


~                                                                  l.b. noire
                                                          'filter (a.d.1993)'

~                                                            w. cattish marsh
                                                                    'eyelash'

~                                              r. barney grubbs & s.r. prozak
                                   'in the lee of the seer: poetical collage'

~                                                                  b. ambrose
                                                           'you asked for it'

~                                                                 s.r. prozak
                                                            stoner adventures

~                                                                 s.r. prozak
                                                               musical morass

...............................................:
l.b.noire 'filter (a.d.1993)'

     It was a Friday night.  For once, I didn't have to work the next day so it
left the night open for exploration of many kinds...  When I opened up the door
of my darkened apartment, the only thing I could see was the steady red light
of my answering machine -- it was serving its purpose.  I didn't turn on the
lights.  Instead, I closed the door behind me and locked it.  As soon as the
outside lights from the hall were blocked out, the street light filtering
through the blinds was the only source illuminating the room.  I set my
backpack on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.  It was
actually one large room, but the bar gave it the illusion of being two.  I
walked to the middle of the living room, took off my shoes, sat down and
crossed my legs.  The carpet was bare except for a small entertainment center
sitting flush against the wall.  In the entertainment center sat an aging
television, a half-working VCR, and an ad-hoc stereo with an add-on compact
disc player.  I crawled over to the television and turned it on.  After
flipping through several channels, I became bored and tapped the knob, turning
it off.  After that, I sought comfort from music.  However, the CD's I flipped
through brought back unpleasant memories since they were remnants of something
no longer there.  I laid on the floor staring up at the ceiling as my mind
started to tense up.  I had only been home five minutes and was already bored
into psychosis.

     After a few minutes, I crawled across the living room and into the narrow
hallway that served as a separation for the living room and the bedroom.  I
opened the closet and crawled in until I was sitting in front of the
footlocker.  I fished my keys from my pocket and opened the lock.  After
digging through teenage leftovers, I found what I was looking for.  I took out
the small bag crawled back into the middle of the living room.  I again sat
cross-legged and opened the bag.  I took out five hollow point bullets and the
.38 special.  I loaded all five bullets into the gun and pulled the hammer
back.  It looked like I would go through my daily ritual of trying to think of
all the reasons not to let the firing pin go forward for once.  I put the
barrel between my incisors and bit the metal lightly.  My index finger quivered
on the trigger with a tensed muscle.  I was hoping that if I did get the
courage to pull the trigger, my medulla would create a unique spray pattern on
the wall directly behind me.  It would be my posthumous contribution to the
world of art.  However, the usual thoughts ran through my head and the usual
tears ran from my eyes.  And as usual, I curled into a fetal position and fell
asleep on the floor with Gun still in my hand.

An angel floated to my side and whispered in my ear...

     The telephone beeped at me shortly after 10:00pm.  I staggered over to it
through the dark, trying to distinguish between reality and the fading bits of
a dream I was already forgetting.  I finally found the phone just before the
answering machine kicked on.  I pulled the antenna out and flipped the switch
to "talk."  The concerned voice on the other end was returning my call and made
an inquiry.  "Oh, nothing," I lied as I laid Gun on the bar.  We exchanged some
promises, but I picked up something else.  It would at least drive me until the
next weekend.  A voice of reassurance...  It would be best to leave the
sanctuary before Boredom settled in again.  I put on a white t-shirt and a
black pair of shorts then headed out the front door.  The night air was humid
causing my t-shirt to stick to my skin as if it was wet.

     I only lived two blocks off the main drag of town.  There were plenty of
bars, clubs and dives for me to choose from, but I always ended up in the same
one.  The crowd was familiar, the employees were familiar, and the chemicals
were familiar.  I walked through the front doors and exchanged some greetings
with the owner.  We were friends so I didn't have to worry about the cover
charge.  This meant I could save the five dollars for something with which to
squeegee my brain.  The music was so loud that it was unidentifiable.  I could
only feel the kick drum emanating from the speakers and resonating in my rib
cage.  I bought a bottle of cheap domestic beer and sat down on some stairs
while watching the crowd -- my favorite pastime.  Somewhere between my fourth
and fifth beer, I had pulled a couple of small capsules from my pocket and
swallowed them with the urine-colored drink.  I remembered something about not
mixing alcohol with barbiturates, but hardly concerned with this.  Actually, I
was interested in finding new perceptions by mixing different chemicals. 
Shortly after midnight I was talking to a "friend" I only knew as Brandon.  For
some reason, he was also known as "Turnip" to some other people in the crowd. 
We had managed to locate a couple of Al Hofmann's problem children.  At prime
time, we decided to head back to my apartment for some vein candy I had been
saving.

Last train to reality departing on Track 9...

     The walk back to the apartment was quite interesting.  It was a challenge
trying to keep the two of us together.  Brandon was convinced that "little
people" kept running out from under houses and biting his ankles only to run
back when he would look down.  I was convinced that police cars still looked
evil when filtered through synthetic ergot derivatives.  We eventually made it
back to the apartment without getting hit by a car or bus.  He just happened
(!) to have a strand of rubber tubing with him.  I just happened (!) to have a
few syringes and a vial of Demerol(TM) which I swiped from work.  I had no
previous experience with self-injection, but Brandon showed me the four simple
steps.  Within thirty minutes, we had both administered doses that were more
than likely above prescription level.  The first wave I fought against was the
nausea.

     Somewhere over the next 36 hours, Brandon wandered back into the street. 
I stayed in the apartment and decided to watch the criss-crossing color
patterns of my bedroom ceiling.  The television was fucked also up.  The red
light on my answering machine came to life with new vigor.  I tried to drink
something because my throat was dry, but I was having a hard time with the
glass.  This neon matrix is really interesting!

"Please don't take it for granted again..."

     A fresh stream of vomit emerging from my mouth woke me.  It mixed quite
well with the dry puddle on my pillow.  I was lying on my bed in only my
underwear.  I tried to stand but only fell to the ground in the attempt.  My
sense of balance was nowhere to be found.  I crawled into the bathroom and
leaned into the sink.  I turned on the cold water and rinsed my mouth.  The
fluorescent light was too harsh for my eyes, but I managed to focus them
slightly.  My pupils were quite dilated.  My throat was swollen and too
constricted for me to swallow much more than thin liquids.  I walked into the
kitchen with thanks to the wall.  A broken glass was scattered across the sink
and the cabinet top.  A small pool of blood was next the glass and was spread
onto the floor.  A previously full bottle of Gatorade was on its side.  Its
contents made the cabinet and floor quite sticky.  I walked over to the
answering machine and pushed the "play" button.  A few calls from a parent
feigning concern for my whereabouts, an occasional friend, a co-worker, and an
automated telemarketing machine wanting me to tour lakefront property in an
area that could probably only be reached by four-wheel drive.  I unplugged the
phone and went back into the bedroom.  I didn't know what day it was and didn't
care if I was supposed to be at work.  I crawled back into my bed and pulled
the comforter and a clean pillow over my head.  There were still little things
crawling up the walls and I wanted them to go away.  I just wanted _everything_
to go away.

The angel sat beside me and cradled my head as I left.

...............................................:
w. cattish marsh 'eyelash'

I can't seem to touch realiy
  I'm free floating in my capsule of illusion
it gushes and mends insanely
   twists and contorts
     inescapable
my thoughts cushioning actuality
	Oh truth pierce me!
  rupture   cleave my cell of delusions
  my comforter of rationalizations
 slaughter me awake
    show no mercy
let me face existance head on
    stand before me in all its glorious brutality
 don't snip at me and run away
  stop teasing!
	I, and my enshroudings, begin to fray
rather slice once and let me confront
     the life or death of truth

...............................................:
'in the eye of the seer'

I found a little baby
I hung it from my prick
it makes the day seem brighter,
with a baby on your dick.
I hung it from a little hook,
it nestled gently in the crook
between my cock and leg.

I taught it how to juggle,
I taught it how to eat.
I taught it how to piss, of course,
(it couldn't help but see)
I taught it how to cut its meat
with scissors glinting keen,
then rap-a-dang-ding, 
with one simple swing,
it snipped off my thing
and was gone.
                           b. grubbs

.

Against the glass my fingers spread
Beyond which children dance, alive
In each one daring to be each,
Against the ice I lean my head,
To watch the sun crest ev'ry blade
Of grass abundantly profuse,
With each one daring to be lone,
As I had been in youth submerged,
The moist cadaver of my past:
As from the bursting lungs of death
A drowning sailor grasps the air,
And bushmen quicksand fast depart,
My eyes found airport, stench of sweat,
And empty bottles, empty threats.

..

waves of mortality
decorate this floor
the crushed breast of a red bird
(...bravely presented to his children,
loves, potential, combat for the self replicated)
the sticking leaves of a fallen tree
rot's sweet ichor repulsing my nostrils

yet i have escaped
a greater sweetness of stench
the clotted ways of breath
whisking through the streets,
collossal power of fluid retribution,
clinging each to its fragments,
as if to balance the whole
in the destruction of the tiny.
like clinging hooks,
gnats.

here these feet i think 
enshrined far from safety
must be i think happier
yet wistful, as the eyes,
touching each cell in the skin,
each twitching hair,
will never witness themselves in reflection
seemingly never (again, perhaps)
in the deep smooth muscular lakes
of admonishing eyes.

...

in the best howl of his words,
among of course his (devices &
rhythms & symbol syndicate) work
he paused, breath over beard,
then returned, shoes hard against the wind,
to speak out the last utterances
of some great man
on paper.
into the heedless they flee,
paper birds over the harsh flare
of an invisible city, burning.

....

purpled like my oldest vein
sky reaches past a concrete rooftop
another incarnation of security and stolidity
each grey emplacement a brick,
mechanical, plotted, intricate resistance
to the depth of infinite indefinite
grasping space.  drifting into space is freedom,
falling out of space is progression.

from here to beyond the space extrudes,
extensible yearning lurking, a drawing lust,
it takes the flesh of the young,
and perverts the will of the old,
into dreadful casting tears, siding the face,
battered in the thousand wars of a mundane lifetime,
defeated in the abscess of time.

                           s.r.p.

...............................................:
b. ambrose 'you asked for it'

                                                I.
	Heat, pounding heat, pulsing and writhing like some 
decapitated snake, washing in waves to an irregular heartbeat; that 
alone was all he knew.  Well, that and the fact that Ned's Atomic 
Dustbin was on the radio urging destructive practices on the 
television set he didn't own.  "Somewhere along this road," he 
mumbled to himself, "there should be a sign, some sort of 
demarcation."  There was a pause as he considered how best to tell 
himself just what kind of construction was needed.  "Certainly not 
something cheesy or conventional like 'Entering ...' or 'Welcome to ...', 
but something else [pause], something a bit more undefinable."  The 
man chose not to elaborate out loud any further at this point, 
speaking was an effort, and the doll on the seat next to him in turn 
seemed reluctant to probe for deeper meaning in the statements, 
preferring to stare mutely off to the side at the passing landscape.  
Not that there was much in the way of scenery as far as the doll was 
concerned; the barren terrain that sped by in graduated parallax 
offered little comfort.  The doll itself had no name, or at least it didn't 
attach any particular concept-sound to itself, and certainly no one 
had ever bothered to give it one.  Brightly covered paint strokes 
adorned the doll's wooden surface in a swirling pattern, order amidst 
chaos, that when combined with the thing's bulbous goggling eyes, 
spiraling horns, and permanent grimace, made quite an aesthetically 
unpleasant impression despite the obvious care and craftsmanship 
that had gone into its making.  Perhaps aesthetically unpleasant 
would be the wrong phrase to use, more like aesthetically disturbing.  
Whatever it was, it certainly didn't appear to be benevolent in 
nature, a fact that didn't bother the doll in the least.  The only other 
remarkable feature about the kachina doll, for that is what it was, 
was the fact that embedded in its back was a squarish lump of blue-
gray metal.  Cool to the touch even in the mind-numbing heat, the 
metallic slab was definitely out of place, but as of yet, no one had 
bothered to tell it thus, and so it remained blithely ignorant of the 
quizzical looks it received from the man next to it.
	The man, quite unlike the doll, did indeed have a name, David 
Proudfoot, to be exact.  David (as he preferred to be called), again 
unlike the doll, was rather unremarkable in appearance.  A pair of 
dusty boots, a loose slightly-soiled white t-shirt, and blue jeans 
punished in ways that rivaled the Spanish Inquisition in brutality all 
clung in a sweat-fueled embrace to David Proudfoot's rather lanky, 
dark form.  At the present, he seemed to be playing a little game as 
to exactly how little he could move his arms, and body in general for 
that matter, and still stay on the barely defined road that led deeper 
into Hopi territory.  In fact, as far as the neutral observer was 
concerned, there were two passengers in a truck that obviously 
represented a marvelous advance in technology, for it was doing a 
very competent job of driving itself, though at times it would seem to 
err and come dangerously close to the road's edge.  Ned's Atomic 
Dustbin had long since ceased it's techno-destructive tirade, and the 
radio had moved on to a song that David did not recognize.  Whoever 
it was, they sure were angry, or at least acting like they were.
	Time passed, sagebrush rolled, the sun shone, and finally the 
station crackled into tinny oblivion, unresurrectable unless the 
vehicle that housed the radio began to travel in a direction opposite 
its current path, but by now it had became quite obvious that the 
truck had absolutely no intention of doing so.
	Slowly, almost reverently, David detached an arm from the 
steering wheel with an audible *shclup* and lightly punched a button 
on the radio.  Static indicated a lack of success.  A similar result with 
the remaining five buttons produced a small frown, the nearest thing 
to emotion that David had shown externally since the beginning of 
the trip.  The arm returned to its former position on the steering 
wheel, which seemed to please the truck, for it no longer weaved off 
the road like it had when David's arm had been occupied with the 
radio.
	For what was probably the hundredth time if anybody had've 
bothered to count (but of course nobody did), David glanced 
momentarily at the doll seated next to him before returning his 
concentration once again to the road in front of him.  It puzzled him, 
this menacing kachina doll with the metal lump protruding from its 
back.  He had picked it up from a small out-of-the-way occult shop in 
Phoenix, and though his original purpose had been to buy feathers 
for tomorrow's ceremony, he purchased the costly doll so 
automatically that afterwards he gave serious credence to the idea 
that someone or something else had somehow influenced or coerced 
him to buy it, rather than its purchase being a product of his own 
will.  
	Glancing at it again (101 for those counting), his mind 
wandered towards the problem of the kachina doll's origins, purpose, 
and function.  It was the metal, not the too-perfect craftsmanship, 
nor the chaotic and foreign designs on its surface, that bothered him 
the most, he decided.  After he had acquired the doll and returned to 
the safety of his cramped apartment, he had spent several hours 
poring over it, examining the designs, feeling the smooth contours, 
and most of all, puzzling over the metal block.  When he had first 
touched it, perched on his sagging bed, a strange sort of vibration 
accompanied by a barely audible humming sound seemed to 
emanate from it.  Efforts to pry it out proved to be completely 
fruitless, it was almost as if the wood not only fit around the metal, 
but had also grown into and become a part of it.  David wondered if 
the doll's expression perhaps sprung from the very fact that it had 
such a lump of foreign substance protruding from its back; he was 
pretty sure that he would wear a similar grimace if such a plight was 
ever his, but then again he wasn't really worried at this point that 
such an possibility lay in his eminent future.   The patterns bothered 
him too, albeit to a lesser extent.  Somewhere, he knew, he had seen 
these designs, but for the life of him, he wasn't able to recall where 
or in what context.  Nonetheless, the thing remained an enigma that 
his mind could not ignore.  Who would carve such a thing, and for 
that matter why?  Answers obstinately refused to present 
themselves, so when it had came time to journey to the village for 
the year's most important rain ceremony, the doll became a guest-
passenger on the trip in hopes that someone else might be able to 
shed a little light on the mystery.  For now, David just drove, the land 
scrolled on by, the sun slugged its way towards the western horizon, 
and through it all the doll sat, deaf and dumb, offering not a single 
word.

					      II.
	He arrived at the village at sunset, the colors so brilliant that 
he fancied briefly that nature's palette had somehow been scrambled 
in a such a chaotic fashion that nothing was left untouched, orange 
houses, red dirt, and purplish clumps of water-starved grass.  David 
always felt a funny twinge when he returned here to the village, 
nostalgia perhaps.  The best he could think of was the feeling of 
being caught between two worlds, but even that clich<63> wasn't right.  
He couldn't help but liken his situation to that of the kachina doll, an 
uncomfortable synthesis between tradition and technology, past and 
the present.  He returned monthly, participated in the many 
ceremonies, and did his best to help with the survival of the village, 
yet at the same time, he lived in the city, in an apartment even, and 
did the accounting for a prospering insurance company.  The intricate 
doll was caught in the same situation, its form grounded in the 
traditions of centuries past, yet also integrated so jarringly with the 
present through the metallic parasite.  "The designs too," he thought 
suddenly, "they too were somehow connected to the technological 
side... where were they from, where were they from?"  He barred his 
teeth and shook his head in frustration, but unfortunately, those 
gestures did nothing for the puzzle.
	Driving always exhausted David, especially with the summer 
heat, so after briefly visiting friends, he retired for the night to his 
parents' house.  He dreamed of nothing in particular.
	The ceremony the next day went rather uneventfully.  Looking 
around at the sweaty red-faced tourists, David wondered briefly 
what went through their minds while they watched.  Did they see the 
same things, the harmony, the intricacy, the blending between 
nature, people, and lifestyle?  For the most part he doubted it.  "Odd," 
he thought, "I'm witnessing probably the most important rain dance 
in the village's history, and all I can think of are some silly-looking 
tourists and some oddly-made kachina doll that I picked up for an 
arm and a leg from some occult freak back in the city."  
Unfortunately, this mental reprimand did nothing for David's 
wavering attention towards what was going on around him.
	It had been a bad year for the village, another bad year in a 
long succession of bad years, drought and barren fields were 
becoming the norm, not the exception.  Of course, with people like 
David to help out financially and such, the village was not in any 
immediate danger of starving; rather the threat came from within, as 
more and more people lost faith in the old ways, especially the 
younger ones.  Those who remained adamant in the face of such stiff 
adversity found themselves facing a dwindling population as more 
and more left the village convinced it had fallen out of favor with the 
gods.  If there was any time that rain was needed, now was truly it.
	Two days later, David, was nearly convinced too, that indeed 
the place had been cursed by the gods; the weather remained 
unbearably hot, the land blistered and parched.  He called in sick 
from the village's one phone and remained to help out with the many 
jobs that more and more went unfinished as the work force 
dwindled.  As he staggered into bed later that night, his toe 
connected painfully with a rather hard object that had found its way 
into his bed.  Pulling it out from among the covers, he discovered, 
much to his amazement, the kachina doll.  What was so amazing to 
him though, was the fact that for two days he had been so immersed 
in his work that he had managed to completely forget the doll's 
existence.  Now that he was reminded of it however, he found 
himself bothered so much by its mystery that, imbued with new 
purpose, he straight away padded over to one of the village elders's 
homes, doll in hand.  His visit was about as successful as the rain-
calling ceremony several days before.  
	Rising-moon, his paternal grandfather, and one of the most 
famous kachina doll makers in the southwest, was not only clueless 
as to the doll's origins or meanings, but he also exhibited an almost 
hostile air towards the thing itself.  He refused to give any reasons 
for his distrust, simply saying that the best thing to do at this point 
would be to burn the thing.  Consulting with others produced similar 
results, though none so hostile; no one seemed to be able to answer 
any of the questions David posed.  More frustrated than ever, he 
returned to bed, and drifted off into a restless sleep.

					      III.
	He awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a single 
wolf howling in the distance.  He felt the strange need for a walk, so 
without any consideration whatsoever he sloughed out of bed and 
tromped out of the village in the direction of the nearby hills; it was 
only when he was a good mile or so out that he realized he'd brought 
along the doll.
	The memories of childhood were particularly strong here 
amongst the rocky outcroppings and rising swells that constituted his 
personal playground as a young child.  Many things remained locked 
up and secret, a near-fatal encounter with an angry rattlesnake, 
breaking an arm after slipping off a small ledge, and of course the 
discovery of the cave.
	David first encountered the cave while on one of his many 
walks amongst the cyclopean masonry that seemed to propagate and 
reproduce so much in these hills.  Tucked behind a rather monstrous 
boulder so that only the slim could ever hope to enter, a small crawl 
hole opened into a spacious but bare cavern.  The place still 
contained a strong magic, the kind that tended to accumulate in the 
mind of a young child.  Barely squeezing through the small niche-like 
opening, David recoiled in shock at what he saw when he shone his 
light about the cavern.  Someone, or something, had been in here 
recently, very recently in fact.  The chamber was completely devoid 
of dust, and in the center lay the charred form of a kachina doll.  
David's hand automatically reached for his doll, and much to his 
relief he found it safe and sound, resting quietly in his pocket.  The 
charred doll appeared to be very similar to one his grandfather 
might have made, and it seemed not to have suffered extensive 
damage, so David gathered it up into the folds of his sweatshirt, but 
not before pulling out his own doll.  In the weak and wavering light, 
it appeared more monstrous and menacing than ever, leering 
mindlessly in a way that reminded David so much of some nameless 
zombie in a cheesy horror film.  Setting the doll down in the thin 
layer of ashes before him, he crouched down for a while, eyes closed, 
wondering what all this could mean.
	Movement occurred, movement that was not his own, and 
David shot up out of his crouch so quickly in a rush of fear and 
adrenaline that he almost thwacked his head against the low ceiling.  
A quick glance around told him that he was still alone, no one but 
himself and the doll standing amongst the ashes.  It was at this point 
that David's eyes bugged out in a manner that would have made the 
doll quite proud, for the doll's physical position and form had 
changed; what was once a threatening grimace now was a 
triumphant smile that seemed altogether even more hideous than 
the formerly leering countenance.  And when the doll began to 
speak, David, staring numbly, found himself not the least bit 
surprised...
	He must have dozed, for his next memory was that of a sliver 
of morning sun creeping across the back wall of the cave.  Not 
bothering to even look around at his surroundings, David 
staggered/wormed his way out of the cavern and into the blinding 
sun, which although it had but just risen was already beginning the 
transmutation of the cold night air to the stifling heat waves of 
midday.  He paused, groped about in his pocket, and despite the 
warm day, felt an icy, electric chill rush through his body as he 
grasped the form of the doll, not the burnt one, but the accursed one 
his grandfather would not touch.  He clutched it spasmodically, and 
everything came back to him.

					       IV.
	These days David found himself returning to the village less 
and less, whether it was out of fear or guilt he didn't want to know.  
Besides, the village no longer really needed him; it was prospering 
like it never had before despite the numerous disappearances that 
had taken place in the area and the ugly rumors that had begun to 
spread as a result.  Actually, he knew inside that he'd never go back, 
not after witnessing the last ceremony filled with the grimacing 
dancers, each and every one twisting and writhing with shining 
metal boxes strapped to their backs, not after witnessing how less 
than an hour later a gentle and refreshing rain had washed down 
and fed the thirsty fields like a mother would her toddler.  There 
was something unnatural and wrong about that rain, it had seemed 
tainted, almost pinkish, but the corn plants didn't seem to mind in 
the least bit.  Just what had he unleashed?  He didn't know, nor did 
he want to find out.  No, the village nor its gods were no longer for 
him.  You see, it was not until later, not until after waking up from 
some blasphemous nightmare that David finally realized what the 
design on the kachina doll was and where he had seen it before.  All 
he had to do was recall his years in college, one class in particular, 
Engineering 41, something he had audited briefly before deciding 
that engineering wasn't his calling; the design so carefully painted on 
the leering kachina doll was that of a microchip.

...............................................:
s.r. prozak / stoner adventures

Into the darkness the smoke vanished, swirling upward like mother's 
skirts in a dance.  Something I remember from childhood:  my mother 
dancing.  Something I remember vaguely, like a severed head rolling 
down the aisles at church.  Drifting from the morass of years, so 
detached that I can't tell if I am five or fifteen in the vision.  Artefacted, 
rejected.  Gone in a heavy-headed haze like a blackout.  More smoke 
pours over the sill, serpentine in its aceitine slowness, somnolent 
stirrings, stiffening.  The glistening stained-glass tower pouring smoke 
passed through us one more time, cashed and done, then reloaded 
from another entrant, a man named Goldbee.  

Narrow, Italian, he wended his feet between ours to claim the edge of 
a couch.  His bag a shallow scratching of schwag, shitty pot, about to 
pass to us, some declining from the rattiness.  "It's brick, but it's not 
bad brick," his eyes turning to me wildly and I unwilling to refuse, 
smoked.  Harsh, and no additional effect at first.  "Wait a while," he 
said.  "I got so stoned once I saw my childhood.  I was in the kitchen 
and my mother was baking and then I went outside, and fell down, and 
cut myself.  I came back in and was sitting on the counter bleeding, 
and she was cooking,  and then my father came home and asked what 
happened.  I said I didn't know, I'd fallen.  It was around ten p.m., and 
then dinner was served.  Some of the plates broke and I went outside 
to get away from the noise.  I was out there and I saw an old man at 
the curb, smoking a cigarette.  I came closer and saw he wasn't old.  
He spoke to me, and I left him shortly.  I left without turning around."  
Goldbee left, later, after Spike had pity and brought forth our bag of 
thick luscious ropes of Cleveland Gold.

(Cleveland Gold was an old favorite on the block; a man named Jake 
Hanscom, a guitarist for some blues-rock outfit in Texas, grew it on the 
roof of his downtown Austin store.  The roof was an atrium, but plants 
were still visible, even from a nearby dorm.  He never got busted, 
however.  He had perfected his technique by touring with his band, 
Dijon Lonely, and smoking with fans and bands and an entourage of 
rocknroll crazies out to see the blues across the land, saving seeds as 
he went.  When he got back, he practiced some rather unselective 
breeding which worked out miraculously.  His first notice of the new 
plants, with their distinctive purplish tint and reflectively-laden leaves, 
coincided with Spike, Aurora (a man), and I arriving at his apartment in 
the back of the store.  Spike had brought his new device, a speaker 
impaled with a standard bong ("When the bass kicks in you go wild, it 
reverberates through you and takes off your head" said Spike later, 
slowly staring out a viscous window) and we had loaded a bowl.  The 
hit was so smooth we had no idea it had occurred, almost, until the 
voice of Jake punched through the smoky silence, first the broad bass 
of his region of Texas, and then the high screechy international whine 
of a stoner gone happily berserk.  "I'm going to fuckin' 
Cleeeeeeveland," Jake sang out, falling back into a ratty dun couch 
with 'BONES 77' spray-painted on its back, pointed toward the 
woodburning stove he kept as a kitchen)

This was all from the vantage of Spike's temporary Los Angeles 
apartment, hovering from a precarious building in the gangrenous 
flesh of the styrofoam city.  A burnished wood finish guitar lay in the 
diagonal shadows of a corner, the wind wrestling brief snatches of 
blues from its strings.  The sun had set, and the world slowed.  I had 
been in a tremendous funk as if possessed maliciously by the demon 
of slow death, feeling the day settle into my gut like a leaden meal.  
There is something in that feeling which passes through me with a 
shudder; I think it's entrapped childhood, pushing to get out and find 
fast old fields of suspense and expectation, instead colliding with the 
day and its falling gap with a stutter.  Imagining a wall of whale 
blubber solidly knocking a New England fisherman into the sea, one 
hand gripping his cap for no reason other than habit, the other hailing 
the boat swung away toward the shore by the ruffled string of its wake.  
At Spike's I was more than diffident, but after smoking more than a fair 
share of the Gold (Spike whispering "Cleeeeeeveland" in my ear as I 
each time took a hit, lightening the bits of consternation tracking my 
face) I was too diffuse to notice the artefacted children playing in the 
window.  I attempted a read;

"motherchrist and stern concern,
 her eyes and arms wooden in the day,
 summer suns strengthened years,
 the lifetime of easter eggs defied.
 motherchrist in her darkest smile,
 even too much for the end of day,
 too content with the grating of the cell.
 8x10 squared i am."

("that's no fucking good," says Spike, ladling ash from a bowl onto the 
floor.  It is his apartment, orange carpet beaten by feet like a 
drumhead.  "that's a fucking local rag, in the best sense of that, which 
still leaves it...not really any good.  no, but yeah, there's nothing in it.  
check out some of this," he said, handing me a too much frothy electric 
novel, in the same way some dance music sticks to the roof of your 
mouth.  "inauthentic," I'd once said at a party, and we had a debate 
going, until a girl with the fixed pupils of transportation said to me:  
who cares, you dance to it, and then you fuck to it.  deny it that; and I 
was silent, but unsettled.  A partial explanation, true but inexplicably 
unsatisfying, as if the truth only gapped a wall, leaving the house 
obscured.  "that's no fucking good," Spike rescued, expounding on the 
truth of the blues, and Muddy Waters' truth.  "ask burr, he's a writer.  
does Muddy Waters write well?  no, but in his icon salad and rhythmic 
leer he tells his truth.  his movie."  I nodded, gratefully lapsing into a 
zoned moment of quiet breathing.  Someone left to dance.)

"of course babe you're down,
 it's the city, take you 'round,
 when we go down, we go down,
 and the sun it drop with us."

The yellowing shadows held tack to the light, lining slickly the floors 
with vinyl darkness.  Heavily the air rested on our eyes, burdening the 
lids.  Late in the night, earlier than the coffee shops.  We went outside, 
to the shared balcony of his apartment complex, above the muddy 
pool in which the larvae of hungry mosquitoes bred beyond the lives of 
their parents, growing to full size until the malathion truck came, 
adding one more mist to the sludgy fog hanging over the city, trapping 
it and its vacant anger under the blanket of refuse.  Spike exhaled, 
blowing the remnants of a bong hit over the iron railing, it descending 
toward the pool and then hanging in the courtyard.  We dreamt that 
those never joined the slurry of the sky.

Later that night, heading home in the aching weariness of morning, no 
classes I would attend, a project to finish on hold.  Sleep chancre bore 
my eyes as I fumbled into the lobby of my apartment, my clothes 
drawn with the drunken hand of a bitter cartoonist, hanging to my skin 
in the clumping disarray of rotting curtains in an abandoned house.  
For an instant my brain recollected, falling back into strain, as I was 
halfway through the lobby, blessed seconds from stairs, softness and 
sleep.  An echo of the incessant "hey got a light" shot through the hair 
behind my ears, and I turned, too tired to realize dangers although 
fear vaguely sunk into my neck meeting skull.  Four days of all black 
coated him, silkish shirt taught over a body molded into it by the 
adipocere of inactivity.  His finger held a cigarette in the canting 
stretch of the shadows on Spike's walls lengthening into morning.  
"Sure," thickly, the lighter extending past the immediate fuzz to the 
man:  gently, like a swan, his neck bending to the glow of the lighter, 
head returning upright with cigarette stares.  "Thanks; join me?" and I 
agreed, sitting in the cheap lobby furniture smoking Marlboros.  "I like 
these.  I once stole a pack when I was young above twelve, and then, 
in the midst of a vacation, smoked most of them.  They asked me the 
second day if I smoked, and I knew they'd smelled it the first day of 
seven on a dude ranch, and I said no, it was the people in the lounge, 
knowing they had smelled and discussed the It, the cigarette, and 
inconclusively accepted the easy answer.  I hadn't even looked at 
them when saying it, I was watching TV.  I spent a lot of time doing 
that, and spent some writing in a diary I abandoned, full of the scariest 
immature fantasies I could imagine.  I was twelve writing like I was 
two, with large dragons who were friendly until they saw something, 
maybe a flowerpot or maybe a ring, and then they became largely red, 
and changed into slumping swamp-things which consumed me (or 
maybe not me, the narrator) with pseudopods and ire.  We left on the 
sixth day."  The smoke coiled over two butts flattened like bullets in 
the ashtray.

The pillow lay softly like my past, beneath the aching head, sensing 
earth and the moist satisfaction it brings.  I reclined, a man atop a void 
of memories, feeling immensely the power of the fall.  However life 
works, there is a fall.  Priests, man, carnivores fall from grace, and 
others fall out of fashion, out of positions, out of vehicles.  Death falls, 
night falls.  The earth receives the falling rain and the sweet sense of 
satisfaction drifts up in a mist, an epitaph to sleep.

Morning crisp with the edge of cold and awakening, the city 
slumbering by in thick rivers of cars, draining past in the waning light.  
My hair unsheveled, undone in the spiking randomness of a battering 
night, I bore my eyes through the mirror, like sifting through a bushel 
of grain.  At my terminal, I connected to a site in Australia bearing 
some graphical images for public manipulation.  I use the net as my 
home, my shield, my buffer; in it lies half of my personality.  Stowed 
away in duplicate invisible areas throughout it is the database that 
more comprises me than I do, all of the information of my past 
contacts, each touch with the world through a net.  Pointers to every 
known site, vast hordes of data on everyone conceivable I've run into.  
The program which maintains it -- beyond the worm, beyond a virus, 
more like an uberkernel under the kernel (if there is such a thing) of 
the net -- is almost as large, consisting of some of my favorite self-
modifiers and encryptors, some extremely versatile net manipulation 
software Golgotha Vein and I cooked up one night baked, stupor-
bound to our terminals, creating our story carved in the net, some 
viruses and defenses, Syd Semper Tyranus' detection evasion 
software, and a thousand subprograms, daemons, and fragments 
crammed into a semiselfaware program which maintains me.  
Transparently, silently -- it is my greatest creation, and the world 
cannot know it, because I only can use it, in my secretive world of 
evasion. 

I worked through the vein of a topology I didn't recognize.  I found a 
machine -- I assumed it was a billing computer from its size and 
system setup, both fairly standard --  in one of the stranger setups I 
had seen on the net.  After an hour, I gave myself respite; I owed an 
editorial to a local paper, and had no inspiration, no desire.   Last 
visiting engorged me with rage for the fetid sickness of pop journalism, 
the reductive impulse in mute surrender to the capitulate crowd of a 
gourmand.  Wrenching a beer open, firing up the word processor, 
shooting out a link to the cluster of sites I'd found (connected 
bafflingly, as if to confuse, linking two separate topologies through 
collective links nested in each topology) with a program I'd developed 
called FetchBone, an elaborate jury-rig of code interspersed with 
some of the best work I'd done in years.  While I wrote, it probed the 
eiffel tower of network connections, spewing a printout silently behind 
me.  My cockpit existed in this room, a collection of equipment tied 
together loosely with the cables that powered it, connected it, ran it.  
My devices didn't work with me; I worked through them.

("...christ under deadline even," the brown man vested for hibernation 
spoke to me.  "I didn't let it fall through any cracks," I said, ludicrously 
high.  (Spike and I had found a parking meter in a junkyard early in the 
week, and, my column being finished, badly but doneso, we had taken 
it to Raul's apartment over the lip of the baseball stadium downtown.  
Raul used to be called Paul, but had one day taken several hundred 
micrograms of good acid and connected to the net, converting himself 
with us, the epiphany naming him Raul.  Over the tympanic passing of 
a train we plotted uses for the meter until Spike (too tired of 
deliberation) rammed it into an old vacuum cleaner, prompting Raul 
and I to modify the device.  The coin slot now gaped, the glass 
cleaned; when a perfectly huge bong hit was loaded, the pointer 
swung to the three hour mark, and, when this hit ascended into our 
lungs, swung to 'EXPIRED.'  A touch on the vacuum switch operated 
the device, a screw knob on the side regulating lung capacity 
expected.  Spike shrugged a bag of fresh green dope from his 
shoulder pocket, uncoiling an arm to slink it onto the table.  This was 
DungBrow WetHair, a super-potent variety of red hair grown 
somewhere in the sewers of the city by a college friend of ours, 
LoadingZone O'Rourke (famous for swinging into a physics final 
observably too high to complete it, taking one look at it, and drawing 
out brilliantly the first and last problems, scratching out the questions in 
between, writing "the rest is silence") living on bail for a statute of 
limitations to gasp its last.  Four large hits of that assassination mint, 
each one slamming into my lungs reaching serpentine through my 
brain, a clock slurred into focus, meaning my time to deliver; and I run 
downstairs a street or two, a bus departs a lighted barge into the night, 
very hazy like being stoned on the net, getting to my apartment's altar 
in time to realize my needed appearance, staggering into the 
newspaper offices to present the document on local machines (a small 
intrusion having crippled a core machine, killing my link access)  and 
bypassing the acetate chaos of a newspaper office to find the small 
brown man:) "...christ I thought you'd never arrive," he says, corpulent 
face hung over smallish body, sheathing fat of a chair life enveloping 
him, creating a miasmic spear of a man, acerbic acidic and harried, 
aging fast.  "Is it good to go?"  (sure) "Thanks you can ..." his phrases 
lost, my feet carrying me (detached blissfully) from the arena, to home 
and the net, my program deconstructing)

Early in the haze of protective morning I found Skunk latched to a 
wallcorner, dismal cigarette poking from his beard, raging pointer of 
fire which drew the morning to a point.  He lit me one, given in the half-
handshake of the accomplished cigarette swap, and we together blew 
smoke into the morning fog.  The haze lifted vaguely from my brows as 
I spoke:  "Greetings, Skunk, bearer of unholy weed (Skunk had found 
his name in the Foundation area where he was famous for homegrown 
pot so fragrantly pungent that local authorities had busted him by 
smell in a crowd.  Once Spike and I became so stoned at Skunk's that 
we had gone down to the park, and sat in slatted benches by the 
melodic water.  A policeman came with metallic tones and told us a 
question to leave, then became upset when we did not really answer.  
I was incapable of saying anything at that point even.  I wanted more 
lake-melody, the ancient water rising from its cold wet quietude to 
flood the yearning relic my mind, lost somewhere between a bicycle 
and four days in June some year in highschool.  Spike looked up, and 
the blueman wrenched Spike's arm with a grinding sound, beshitting 
all that was tonal and fine in the balance of the morning.  The dark 
lakefog colored with mercy enough to see us away, and the blue man 
tapping his shiny black toe at the base of the sword of orange-gold 
reaching from the submerged sun, lurking with trepidation of the 
morning), how goes it?"  Skunk said little, flicking his cigarette ash the 
color of his stubble with the same abrasive resignation the mask 
implied.  Eyes riding red glow he said:  "Not bad.  I am waiting for 
something, but I have forgotten what, because I'm really high.  I got a 
bag last night, and Oso came over, as did mighty Amon, and we 
consumed masses of thick fragrant smoke.  I found myself here some 
minutes ago, for my friends have drifted away, I think to resume lives 
of waiting for jobs in their hydrocarbon homes.  I am just now seeing 
how nice it is to have fog drift over everything.  I see people in it; I 
think I am almost too high."  I said there was no such thing.  There isn't 
on a general scale -- you can't get "too high."  Specifically, you can be 
too high to do certain things, usually involving other people who 
wouldn't understand.  For those you either persevere or make 
excuses.  I recall hating excuses.  I asked him for what too high and 
Skunk said, "Well, I gotta look for a job today, and I don't see myself 
being normal before everything's closed, so it's going to be a gritter.  
I'll have to take Murine and fake it, but it always makes me twitch, in 
those anaesthetic lines and offices, on dust-clotted floors and in 
sweat-greased armchairs.  I don't really want a job, because I want to 
go to school, but I don't want school either.  So it's to the lines.  Last 
night I think I was too high to talk, because sometimes you get to the 
point where everything else recedes and you can't really talk but you 
think fine, just nowhere near anything else anyone wants you to think.  
They want you to hear them and the world, and talk to them, and you 
want to be underwater in the clarity of that peacefulness, to not be 
there but to feel it more than they."  I agreed, vanishing the last eighth 
of my cigarette with a long draw.  I don't normally smoke.
	Someguy with dark long hair, curling over his avian shoulders, 
looked at us through the membranes of his lower eyelids.  "Heyman, 
can you spare a cigarette?" he repeated.  Sure shuffled Skunk and 
lofted him one from the sheaf of his softpack.  I bent to with a light 
from a lighter I'd found in some thrift store, a zippo with a marine 
regiment inscription.  Puff, drift.  The drummer behind us slowed, and 
the inexorable time to speak came.
	Someguy:  Thanks.  Sure is a nice morning.
	Skunk:  S'foggy.
	Someguy:  I kind of like it.  Mournful.
	Skunk:  I am not inclined to be mournful.  I like it because it's 
harder to see everything.
	Someguy:  Harder to see...?  Yeah, I can see that.  I can 
imagine that could be fun.  Hey is that a somebattalion insignia?
	My own skull spoke at him:  I don't know I got this at some 
pawnshop.  Richenbacker and Hanover streets.
	Someguy:  I was in somebattalion.  This was during 
somepoliceaction.  We fought in the valley and took heavy casualties.
	Skunk:  Wars...I don't get.  Fog obscures everything.
	Someguy:  Yeah, it was pretty foggy there too.  We had to 
shoot into the fog, and sometimes we'd get something.  You'd hear a 
yip or something.  Pretty ripe ha?
	My lidding eyes:  Must have been scary.  Glad it's over.
	Someguy:  I am actually.  It was actually a pretty bad 
experience.  But I think I got a lot from it actually.  I think it benefited 
me in my real state.
	Skunk:  Real estate.  My grandfather made a fortune in the 
purchasing.
	My dried, chewed, disconsolate mouth:  My grandmother 
canned hams, and was almost shot for witchcraft.
	Someguy:  Witchcraft?  I never got into that Satan shit.  
(Dusting hands he departs).  Thanks for the smoke.  Catch me on the 
docks sometime and I'll return the favor.
	Skunk:  I live in Minneapolis.
	Someguy:  Cool.  Do they have fog there?  (Sideglance)  I'll 
catch you around.
	Skunk:  Yep. (looking at me with slaughterhouse look of 
acclimatization)
	My eyes still hung like sodden-framed pictures outside the 
museum in the desolation of twilight.  I gots to go, Skunk.  We smoking 
Friday I think not really sure, my life's kinda a mess.
	No problems man.  We are probably all going to smoke like 
crazy this week.  I was gonna look for a job, right, but I think now that 
this is what I must do.  Get beyond all of that stuff before it becomes 
me.  I feel like I'm going to be executed.
	I didn't know, so I said to look around the northern office district.  
Sometimes sweet stuff got handed out there, relating my tale of 
working as a file-boy for some extravagant rate because I'd proven 
that I didn't talk.  
	I took my leave and let the fog slip behind me as coattails as I 
went into downtown.
	Crusting paint slotted stairs sideways up to the landing, at 
which the option of further progress presented us.  Spike and I, both 
staggeringly high and drunken, rested the balls of our feet on 
alternating brown and white patches of lichenous paint, drenched in 
the sluggish smell of humid apartment building.  A door led away from 
the landing; it was the Nowhere Door, leading impossibly through a 
wall.  Beyond the Nowhere Door was outside from three stories up, a 
blank wallface.  Its purpose undetermined, it reflected graffiti back 
toward us:

	"Bill woke each day and went downtown,
	 There he found all hangers-round,
	 And he asked them what they'd found,
	 They replied without a sound:
	 There is a girl named Margey-May,
	 Who by all accounts is large as day,
	 And if you find her, you'll hit the hay,
	 With living, bouncing Margey-May.
	 And if with her you're really high,
	 You might think your time to die,
	 Has come, but on Margey's thigh,
	 You'll read the motto:
		Now I lay me down to sleep,
		For only I my soul can keep."

	Two flights of stairs further upward we paused at Bill the 
Kitchen's door.  Bill's Kitchen is his room, his house, wherever.  
Chemistry fell into Bill's hands in an acid-rimmed highschool lifestyle, 
and from there he went on to produce some of the most incredible 
custom drugs known to man.  This apartment, with its gutted door of 
paint turned to decaying putty, blackened scorchscars outside the 
windows, and floor flooded with chemicals, trash and clothing, was 
home to many a great production scheme.  Bill's bed abutted the 
stove: his pillow was always warm.  The rest of the room was a sofa 
facing the bathroom, a small foot-table with a vase and flowers on top, 
and Bill, six feet of sweat clouded with a cigarette burning beneath 
prodigious hair and shadowy face.  It had taken him two minutes to 
exhale as we stood there.  The faint odor of dope pervaded his clotting 
smoke.
	"Ayeh," Bill said, stepping out into his kitchen from the self 
ensconced in smoke.  His eyes glowed upward at us, pupils writhing.  
"I made the new batch: it's dope: it's my savior, man," he said.
	"Christ, Bill," Spike said, "You didn't get religion, did you?"  
Stepping up to a bar, pasting his beer on the table.
	"Nehep," Bill intoned, softly with smoke rising past his focused 
pupils.  Suddenly sharp, in the courtroom.  More whitespace staring 
outward, the pupils recessive again, lost in the land past the smoke.  
Smoke covered all of us, flowers coming out of Bill's foot-table.  The 
vase stared deep into its core.
	Spike footed it, tapping the edge.  "Strange contraption," I 
asked.  Bill opened the small side door to reveal two thick waterfilled 
chambers made from large mayonnaise jars, an electric bowl made 
from a 1986 Buick cigarette lighter, and some assorted tubing.  The 
guts of the beast: sacrifice.  "Very technical device, for a bong," Bill 
said, exhaling into Kitchen, "but very good.   I hadda problem with pot, 
it being very nice (veryfine) but also pretty ratty stuff: the high was 
great, delivery bad.  I couldn't really distill it into a pill and have it be 
fun, so I made this scrub bong.  Pop inna some schwag," he said, 
ladling dusty, ratty Mexican brick pot from a large loose bag.  "Lift the 
handle to take a hit," he said, closing the door with a musty warning 
that the hit was blown upward when the handle was released, and until 
then the chamber filled "like blood in water."
	Spike's mouth trumpeted to meet the fluting mouthpiece of the 
vase, his fingers twisting upward the chintzgilded handle, smoke 
pouring in a trickle, more like mist than smoke, in the flouting glow of 
the upright room.  Clear glass mottled with its own dimension 
intertwined with thick green glass, a pattern from a forgotten urge of 
dead parents; Spike's face pulled back, pallid in parts, BillKitchen: 
"Huge hit", quick inhalation to seal the deed, then a calming face 
shriven in its ruddiness.  Bill:  "Huge hit."  Spike slowly withdrew his 
face toward the window, and blew a pure note of clear smoke into the 
crouching night.  "Huge," he said, slowly.  We checked the bowl:  
cashed.  Outside a car horn howled into a screech, and then a blast of 
metal groaning into a creaking collapse, swearing, an impact.  Dim 
edges of streetlight like the rim of an iris diffracted into the barnacled 
windowpane.  I took the next hit.
	The smoke was soft underwater gesturing, like falling through a 
memory of some summer spent in the breast of childhood, staring past 
cloudy sunlight into something beckoning, a memory as bogus as it 
was real, embittered in the swelling of life into smacklike infusion to 
the main.  The main, which rambled by below us.  Outside:  more 
swearing, a muffled punching sound caught in the screaming horn of a 
train.  Car engine, vanishment into haze.  "...so I figure, something's 
gotta scrub schwag, cuz it's all that I can afford.  And I talking to Silvia 
one day: she said I was an artch chemist, and from that gotta be able 
to figure out something.  I worked with membranes a summer orso 
ago, and these fit well into my two-barrel design, and so I made this, 
and it takes my gunch pot and gives you clean smoke, licking your 
lungs like a slender hand...this is all I need, now."  Looking up to Bill, 
past him the intricate crockwork of interlocking tubules like bones and 
skulls, each decanter, each pustule of chemical mixing, and then to his 
face, set apart in the glow of its skin.  I was really stoned -- am really 
stoned.  Was I in childhood?  That memory of a ball bouncing between 
trees, over thick grass, really alive, some people, some hope.  Parents 
even not descanted in their faces.  Shriven with truth; now beyond the 
censer, something must exist in my mind...Bill saying something to 
Spike: them talking I stoned too much?
	"...big hit."  My voice finished from somewhere, and Bill's 
Kitchen device filling him up with strenuous billows of smoke.  Gasping 
backward, sucking air, leaning down, grinning a grimace of future 
knowledge: the soft smoke inflating his lungs in huge blasts would 
soon inundate his spine, a serpent swirling to the brain.  His hand 
rested on the vase, affixed to that rock of a foot-table.  Each hit had 
burned a sixteenth of an ounce or more of cheap pot; Bill's Scrub of 
the Kitchen had curbed the harshness, leaving a manageable hit of 
pure stoniness.  I relaxed with pulsing energy flooding out of my limbs.  
The warm orangeness of the sofa supported me; I felt the waves of 
dopeness (beyond dopeness, beyond the slowness, beyond 
relaxation, more to an energy derived from the leftover) swim through 
me, gently reflecting from the sofa and the limits of my limbs, clouding 
them in brilliant adhering light, swarming throughout me to exude from 
me like the smoke I'd blown out.  Muscles sunk into the ready atrophy 
of relaxation, my eyes sunk into my face.  Spike and Bill droned on 
intermittently, speaking more for the sound of light syllables like Bill's 
high laughter, I spoke a word or two occasionally, my ears swinging 
questions or thoughts through a large space in which my mind moved.  
From me moved energy; without me moved energy, vague awareness 
of other objects, some good, and some dark stimulus, deadness.  I felt 
the connection of the world like electricity singing down a wire, or a 
spidersweb of wires covering the world like the outstretched hand of 
gOD.  Everywhere the lightness of energy -- beyond particulate, 
beyond wave, more an awareness of both, of creation more than 
substance, a cyclical pulsation -- emanated from its respective entities, 
human or non.  I could feel Spike's mind like calm breathing beside 
me, and beyond that toward the corner of the world Bill's Kitchen 
rested absolute, projecting quick alive thoughts into the void in which 
we all swam, lost but not needing to be found, as in a space that open 
and full of potential and hope there is no need for locale..."large 
smoke, very stoned."  Spike's quick unhurried laughter.
	"What's its name?" Spike asked Bill, in morning, the next thrift 
store we'd run into.  Bill poring through clothing, quickly talking in 
offbeats, smoke still coming off his lip from the cigarette he had spun 
into shorn bushes outside the door.  Above the day waxed bleak; I had 
to wander through this greyness to deliver a column, but first solved 
that problem with a quarter phone call to verify that I could have some 
margin of time.  Last issue of the magazine turns out was late, and 
deadlines pushed ahead by two days.  A sense of encompassing 
knowledge and the urge to probe it called to me.  "...thrift stores.  The 
cool thing is, this is people selling each other stuff almost directly, little 
outside interaction.  Plus you get some groovy shit:" Bill holding up a 
seventies bellbottom pantsuit in orange gold suspended in red, with 
diving canaries of green and vivid blue breaking it into composite 
pieces falling into the furnace of the whole.  
	My feet walked backward home, crosscutting through some of 
the clustered collections of building materials in the laundry district.  
These operated 24-7, and blasted steam from their tenuous 
occupation of earth toward the solemn drained monoliths that held the 
starched sky upright over these human twitchings.  Multilingual 
musings tongued around me, probing the air for life.  Venus would be 
proud; the occasional outburst of exploding language clattered around 
my ears like falling swords.  Starch, suds, and steam tunneled around 
me, the wet frothy concrete earth returning impact to my boots, the 
steam sounding hoarlike in its demonic intensity.  Onward my feet 
trod, pawing ground backward and whisking it into blurs like nighttime 
skies spinning when one is intoxicated, young.  I looked up: the tunnel 
of steam was receding ahead of me, and there lay the grey slack road 
leading home.
	A waterstain started downstairs, and led up the curving 
staircase intermittently, like a contortionist's chair rail, and dying like a 
fallen whip by my door.  I grasped the handle, and opened it; inside all 
was silent with the settled smell of infrequent occupation.  The skylight 
glowed vaguely over it all.  My terminal awaited, the keyboard awake 
with one faint light.  A touch and click as the key returned, my eyes 
wandering over the screen as my hands smoothed over the keys.  Six 
minutes later back to my newly-found site.  I almost went right in, but 
pulled back, built another link and probed from the side.  Nothing 
really wrong, vagueness again.  A door ajar, almost.  I coughed, and 
dropped off, falling instead on another site riding the same vein: some 
brief manipulation with a verify function in their email system, an 
archaic one brought up to date too fast for its security structure, and I 
found a reading on packets to my system.  Things had changed:  no 
real traffic, and a poke further found the alias: the site was linked 
elsewhere.  Fingers pulsing with my heart's anticipatory fear, I slighted 
hand and took a last guess at the link: somewhere to the mountains, 
the connection dead and keyboard closing.  Four hours later my 
anonymous storage reactivated, my rent paid, and I sat on my duffel 
bag smoking a slight cigarette and drinking coffee, waiting for Spike.  
He let me stay the week.
	We wandered to a cafe that night, an open air situation fronting 
Mexican food and beers, good and better.  A Dos Equis and I drew out 
the day for Spike, and the reason for my flight: I had sensed the 
stroking fingers of what would be called justice in the obituary.  His 
eyes called for an explanation, sighted between the beer and I, over 
his mouth.  "I am a humble stoner," I affirmed.  I took a draught of 
beer, cold, heavy, sweet and full, with the timbre of broad land and 
rich country.  "But we fear the dark: that which is not understood can 
be held over us: if we learn the light switch, we can at least know.  I 
found, I know.  Something is up at that site, but I need another locale 
to see it, more carefully this time.  I am not a warrior.  I find, I see, I 
explicate to our community.  We tell those deserving to know.  We 
work for no governments, have our own laws.  And they fear us, 
because we can understand as well as speak the language they've 
created in Olympus."  Spike drawled a sip of beer down his throat, and 
agreed it was necessary, but wondered why I: it's like art, I like life.  I 
like being alive and knowing, and finding myself out there, a sense 
that I'm alive, that we all are.  Otherwise, this...?  Spike asked if I didn't 
like the restaurant.
	To the streets we took, directing ourselves toward a more 
obscure festival in a semi-abandoned house held in escrow 
somewhere to the east.  We found it by luck, or by stoner's intuition, or 
something.  Two stories of conventional house, cheaply made but 
humble in appearance, drew up above us, coated in the same shade 
of smog-tainted brown that much of the city without money is painted.  
Some grey shone in the sash of a window above.  At the door, we 
greeted our friend Jeff, who waved us in.  Each room shown with the 
light of effort; the walls were fresh sheetrock, the lightbulbs 
unyellowed.  It was Zentower's doing: Zentower, the artist of flaring 
colors and indeterminate periods of ranging experimentation, who had 
gone each week of one school year on a painting binge, and outlined 
in watercolor some ideas for a series of paintings: now his House of 
Suites stood toward the sky, unveiled anew, recreated from the ashes 
of its intent.    "It's dope," Spike began, shouldering the blazing room 
around him, and sliding a knifelike hand into his own trenchcoat 
quickly beneath Zentower's eyes -- withdrawing his latest, a gift from 
one of the indeterminably placed characters named Bob who run 
military surplus stores, a rocket launcher which bore Bob's scratchy 
writing in blue pencil: "Create the apocalypse; save the day."  
Converted with bowl and mouthpiece, it unlocked and slid open to 
unseal the chamber of water kept tight for traveling.  "Fatness 
awaits...." Zentower took the bong, and flipped a lighter alight, 
swinging a swerving trace of flame down into the bowl, a whirlpool of 
lifelike fire.  He pulled the trigger and fresh air blew through the bong: 
Zentower relaxed, thanked us, excused himself and molded into the 
air to travel around the oddly-lighted rooms.  People clustered in party 
poses, toes upward, casual hands sliding into dogsear pockets.  
Clothing ranged from new yuppified to retro, both new words for old 
ideas.  But if an old idea is well?
	The old kitchen had its cabinets and drawers stripped from it; 
where the sink and counter had been, a drumset stood, been pounded 
lightly by a vacant-looking Chinese youth, part of the entirely Asian 
band.  I swung my chin slightly; the greeting of the discrete from 
across rooms at parties.  We knew each other well, their dissonant 
cover tunes having emerged from the yellow light of many parties.  
"The all-Asian band that played Led Zep covers for free beer in 
browns," I had thought once, heading over the ivywall next to a lighted 
pool as police ranting started eroding the front door.  My beer had 
fallen, and landed upright, a tombstone to the head of a reveler 
inundated before his time.  We went further into the living room, 
dispensing bong hits to the unwary.  We had San Quentin 
Wallclimber, incredibly potent dope grown in the center of America's 
most famous prison by a warden set too much like a heirloom diamond 
to forgive his ways.  "Well yawl don't really have to see it, out there," 
he had said, "but in here you see how much unhope is rested in the 
human breast.  An' for some of these guys, I like to sell 'em a little 
cheap -- I make a profit, yes, but not much, considerin' the risk an' all -
- cuz I _know_ they're not getting out.  An' the thing is, fellas -- I aren't 
gettin' out either, really.  I sold myself to the prison, now I'm selling the 
prison ... some of myself."  Thick A's.  We had met him during visiting 
hours, and had been introduced by Tremors (from his name, Phil 
Shakes, but also from his habit of shaking wildly when high, as if full of 
energy he was unable to release) to the good warden, who had then 
offered us some of his pot.  It was full, fresh, and fed on the scraps of 
the prison cafeteria.  "Amazing," Spike said, and we shrugged our way 
out of the faded gray labyrinthine construct.
	We ran into a room with Sift and Shar, two skatepunks who I'd 
hung with some years before, but had drifted out of favor as they got 
more into the skate scene and less into reality.  The identity takes 
them, and swallows them whole, but the fishing line still runs out of the 
fish, which then leads the unknowing line around.  They were packing 
scraggly dope into a guava juice canister modified to be a large, 
cheesy bong, so we treated them each to two hits of our bag.  They 
seemed more glazed, relaxed, and so we caught up on past.  Their 
time was conceived in the tomorrows and yesterdays; "yestidday we 
went down to the mall, and got kicked out by a mall cop.  You can 
always tell mall cops because they look left and right on the footsteps, 
as if it were some kinda drumbeat -- and then they see you and slow 
their beat so they can watch you, head turning right with each leftstep, 
head left with each rightstep.  Sifto here tried a dine n dash at a fuckin' 
ice cream shop."  They were living in a trailer home abandoned after 
being smashed by a tractor in the three-lane crisis finale to a multiple 
car wreck, leaving a handful dead.  The cause of it had been a stubby 
red car whose driver was busy with a phone call, blurring lanes 
distinctly into a diagonal path, bypassing a truck driver too fast to stop 
whose fender became stained in two shades of ire.  The trailer home 
remained, with one end patched with the remnants of cartons that had 
once contained a brand of diapers billed as having "the deepest-
reaching comfort."  We smoked on, the lawn chairs being more 
comfortable than most other accommodations.
	"I was in this convenience store, and I had to take a dump, and 
I talked to the guy, and he wouldn't let me, so I pissed in the aisle."  
General laughter from some more positioned people behind us.
	"Fuckin' cops, giving me hell.  It's not so much that they got the 
'statutes' or whatever, but that they got the attitude, the want to bust 
you.  It's as if one kid not wanting to be a cop is every kid giving the 
cop a finger.  They know they don't have control, so when they gets 
you -- the got you."  Shar spat.
	Spike brought up some of our recent experiences with the 
intricacies of life.  "Our fridge died some days ago.  We bought it a 
year past from a thrift shop in Dayton, and Ed and Flam brought it 
back in their hippybus.  They went crosscountry with only $98.50, 
which they spent on gas, and got the rest of the cash for gas and food 
by working nights in towns they'd stop in, getting paid like $4 an hour.  
Noone ever hesitates to pay you cheap under the counter."
	"Yeah," Shar said.  "We were living on the Beach last year and 
I didn't have a job, and kept looking, and then one night I went and 
found a restaurant, and they paid me to clean up the kitchen and stuff 
after hours -- midnight on -- for about $10 a night, which kept me going 
until I found this other job up the street.  I was bussing tables there, 
and I got paid for three hours a day, but they hinted that I'd get a raise 
if I worked five.  I worked five hours a day for a month, and kept asking 
for more hours, and finally one day left after three.  Went back the 
next day and I had a pink slip."
	Spike couldn't resist:  "Were you surprised?"  
	"No," Shar said.  "I didn't really care.  I thought about it later, 
and it was like I wanted to get the hell out of there, but didn't really 
have any excuse, and so my body got punk to throw my mind out of 
there.  They handed me the pink slip, and I told them to fuck off, and 
they told me I'd better leave or they'd get the cops to come.  I just 
tipped over a whole rack of glasses, and they shattered, and I could 
hear her dialing the phone so I split through the back, and cashed the 
check at a liquor store two streets over, bought a bag and hit the 
road."
	"They don't mind dicking you over, cuz there's a thousand of 
yous coming through each month.  They can dick anyone over except 
the government, who's probably dicking them over anyway," Sift said.
	A man in black belted white leaned over urbanely and said: 
"They are dicking them over.  They're dicking everyone over.  You 
should see what I paid in taxes last month."
	Sift:  "I don't pay taxes."
	Man: "Yeah, I thought about that, but then I realized that I want 
to contribute to society.  I mean, if I can hack it with paying taxes, why 
not?  It hasn't been that bad so far."
	Sift's response was a very stoned stare.  The man mumbled 
something and sipped his drink, backing away into the shade of the 
light.  Sift: "That job really did suck.  I spent half my time making sure 
that people had clean plates for breakfast five days a week."
	Winding home, each foot crossing the other's path, Spike and I 
drifted through red alleys and slick reflective streets.  The city dwelt 
unconscious.  The cockroaches ran and scurried between our feet, 
crossing the trails of our pointing toes.  Over parked cars our voices 
echoed, into the darkness we vanished, and then came through again, 
the mist of the night coalescing and disintegrating, cotton combed at 
the feet of a spinning wheel.  We passed an overturned bike, wheel 
spinning in the air.  At chance it stopped as we passed.  Spike pitched 
his cigarette through the spokes.
	In Spike's digs, we got ready to sack for the night.  I was 
temporary possessor of sofaspace, a comfortable, beaten, beery-
smelling expanse of wide green softness loosely kept corporate by 
stained white buttons.  I threw my trenchcoat over a chair, and then 
sat into it, more shifting my weight from standing to collapsed with a 
convenient catch by the aged wood.
	"Bong hits?" Spike said, hands over his eyes, wandering as if 
he were blind.  "Bong hits?  Bong hits?"  Good idea, relaxation sleep.  
We packed a bowl of some consummately kind Thai Express, which 
gained its name from its site of purchase, an Amtrak porter who had 
worldwide connections with large diplomatic bags.  Thai Express is a 
rocket: up fast, very high, but it didn't hold us up hanging over our 
consciousness, like other Thai pot.
	"A nice big bowl," Spike said, descending on his newest 
smoking creation.  One of his two speakers had a musicbox resting on 
top of it; Spike flicked open the box, and music sounded as a ballerina 
danced.  Spike pressed her head backward in a neckbreaking 
position, and lifted the ballerina and a large circular base from the 
musicbox.  Taking a nearby large plastic mug, he flicked out the heavy 
plastic base and inserted it in the box, removing the front cover of the 
speaker to reveal a bowl as he did so.  He turned on the stereo: some 
Black Sabbath: "the bass is best when you take a ripper."  I took first 
hit, blowing my smoke out the open window, around which danced 
curtains like light skirts, or maybe smoke itself.
	Daylight fluttered past the curtains, now limp.  Through the 
greyness it pervaded the room, something I was aware of with only 
light consciousness.  Everything was ash-grey; exhausted, the room 
hung with the same spent unrestful quiet that I did.  My eyes were 
merging back into unconscious oblivion when they caught just enough 
of something foreign to alert my brain.  The doorknob turned, and two 
large men came in.  I remained solid in my blanket, viewing them with 
eyes at quarter moon.  Behind them a woman I recognized as Spike's 
landlord lurked; I realized something official but negative was 
occurring, better than a robbery perhaps, but probably going to leave 
the same feeling of having been torn, betrayed by some false kinship 
of species.
	Luckily action was not required on my part.  Spike, roused by 
noise, came out to interdict the men folding his furniture into the hall 
with a yelp.  He moved forward sleepily, and was cautioned to come 
no closer by the landlady.  His queries met with little answer; finally, 
they ducked outside the door, to have a somewhat hushed 
conversation salted with strident whispers as mica is with tiny livid 
cracks.  The two men in black stood, gloved hands at sides, staring 
around the room, sometimes at me.  With a suddenly elbow, I turned 
over, loudly expectorated opinional air, a rising cleft cloud to dispel the 
stillness of the room, and feigned sleep until Spike came in to tell me 
that we had been witnessed smoking pot by an elderly neighbor 
across the way, and were very much evicted.  The men resumed 
placing our stuff in the hall.
	"Isn't there a law against this?" I asked him later, as we bade 
Amon and his helpful battered red truck goodbye at the rental storage 
site.  Spike wrapped a corner of his mouth around itself, like the knot 
in my stomach, and said no, it was not legal because he hadn't rented 
legally -- lowered rates for no complaints about size, non-working 
facilities and noise from the weird machinery her husband ran in the 
basement.  (We learned some years later that he had been busted for 
manufacturing explosives for a foreign concern; we never heard which 
foreign concern, but it was information of doubtful value to us, as 
shortly afterward we learned the pair had been busted for 
manufacturing and selling phencyclidine)
	A mall in flypaper suburbia provided a fast, paper-rustling lunch 
as we planned our next move.  "Where to?"  
	"I don't know," said Spike.  "I don't have enough cash to get a 
real place.  I don't know where I can go."  Neither of us bothered to 
ask about family; we knew that on each end it had become an archaic 
institution, a forgotten idea thankfully allowed to decay in photo 
albums full of lies.  Subservient grins.  "I can't think of anything in the 
city.  I can't think of wanting to stay here.  It's not like this is that big of 
a deal, but the burgeoning out of control of it.  First you, then me.  
Paul took it heavy last month, and who knows where he ended up?"  I 
said I didn't want a permanent base of operations.  "What you saw 
scared you?"
	"It's another manifestation of a wrong voice.  The voice there 
has information on us, and knows who we are, but doesn't want to 
know us.  It knows we know it exists.  It's not even that I suspect what 
it is: the way the net works, it could be government, or anything but 
government.  Who pays taxes anymore?  Who has the voice to pay 
them?"  I continued:  "I want to hit the road."  Maybe a moving target, 
but more moving vision, to catch the life we've filed too quickly here.  I 
like cities; I live in cities.  A tour, like a band, or something.  Road, 
because it gives hope: it stretches into the horizon like life, in which 
you can never see the end, only visualize on what it is.  If you try to 
see the end, and explain it, you'll spook.  So you just watch the sun 
set, and then watch your feet, crossing each other as they pound 
against the dark heavy road.  Only when you stop do you remain.
	The gritty sleeplessness hung under my eyes.  I pushed out a 
cigarette in another collapsible hat of an aluminum ashtray.  My half-
empty coke, waxen cup and halfwet straw pushed out at the skylights 
casting bright existence on the trodding mall, sat next to Spike's hand, 
and his cigarette, infected with fire, grey ash of the deadness moving 
up toward his hand.  "Spike," I said.  "Ash."
	He swept the air with his eyes, and locked them on me, flicking 
ash on the table reflexively.  I knew he wanted to leave, to roam.  I 
knew his eyes were sweeping memories, sweeping some away, and 
saving others for a return, a mental packing.  I lit another cigarette and 
stared at the colors of clothing passing.  I heard his cigarette quench 
itself in my coke, the crumpling of the pack and the light impact of it 
dropping to the table, or maybe floor.  I hooked my duffelbagstrap, and 
swung my scarf over a shoulder as I hefted it and stepped into the flow 
of people.  Spike followed, and then pressed his chest past me, 
leading toward a site for cheap junkers, fast, traded for a kingsransom 
of pot.  
	As we marched outside, the swirling smog engulfed us for a 
minute, and we barely noticed the dawn of winter over the spawning 
noon crowds.

...............................................:
s.r. prozak / musical morass

Macabre 'Sinister Slaughter' - Infested since its inception with the
fascination with the obscure, morose, morbid, and gruesome, grindcore
progressed into a less elemental and more intricate genre with bands
like Macabre.  With this offshoot of the genre, grindcore becomes tight
and compact, losing its characteristic loose, muddy, abrasive sound.
Yet still it grates -- not as much in the musical assault sense, but in
the phenomenon of structured musical power in conflict, producing
frighteningly apt short blasts of grind.  Macabre structure their album
around 21 serial killers, with a lyrical fairy tale matching each.  Sung
in goofy variations on classic grindcore howl and growl, each song
remains distinct, with touches such as non-distorted guitar intros and a
cappella parts adding even more variation.  Potentially Macabre are the
most apt musicians in their genre, playing stuff easily as heavy as any
other band with effortless technical prowess.

Cynic 'Focus' - A great album and a great disappointment.  Cynic, whose
release was easily the most anticipated in death metal, earned their
fame by playing progressive death metal on their own and for other
leading acts.  On their first album, Cynic produce the incredibly
technical music all anticipated, but without the progression to a newer
form of metal most hoped for: as the leading musicians of a genre, Cynic
were hoped to bring modern metal from the clone-slump that has embogged
death and speed metal.  Instead, what one ends up with is almost a
composite, although a little more integrated: one part death metal, one
part jazz-fusion, and one part progressive.  With incredible tempo
changes, difficult guitar work and incredible bass precision, Cynic have
proven they can play, but seem to have fallen prey to that traditional
hangup of progressive metal bands instead of concentrating on bringing
the music beyond what could have been extrapolated from listening to the
top five current acts.  Not to denigrate this release -- this album is
excellent listening, with plenty of complexity for discerning (and
perhaps bored with crunch-crunch-smash death metal) listeners.

Therion 'Beyond Sanctorum' - Since Swedish death metal exploded into a
large portion of the market some years ago, a common complaint has been
that all Swedish bands sound very...Swedish, that they have stereotyped
themselves.  Therion have held out as one of the most unique acts, with
"Of Darkness...", their other US release, being distinguishable from
related acts.  "Beyond Sanctorum" takes the musical vision on "Of
Darkness..." -- a dense darkness in art, coupled with the
environmental/political conscience of their lyrics -- and expands it on
this fantasy epic relying partially on the creations of H.P. Lovecraft.
In that sense it is not unique -- thousands of metal bands have done
Lovecraftian songs -- but Therion place it into a complex story of an
album.  Rich with quirkiness and unexpected intricacy, "Beyond
Sanctorum" takes a listen or two to get into, and then furnishes the
listener with hours more of in-depth listening.

...............................................and so...

Thanks for reading the fifth issue of the undiscovered country.  Back
issues and future issues are available at the following ftp sites:

red.css.itd.umich.edu   /zines/Undiscovered_Country
ftp.eff.org             /pub/journals/The_Undiscovered_Country
cs.uwp.edu              /pub/music/lists/tuc
pomona.claremont.edu    po_1995:[cblanc.tuc]

...or by mailing either cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu or
rm09216@academia.swt.edu.

                 "be always drunken"

[EOF]