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Show THE ZEPHYROCTOBER 1994 Rhapsody on Farts: plaintive forts, resounding forts, explosive farts, reverberating forts, timid muffled farts, fluid forts, forts vigorous and robust, farts masculine, forts feminine, beastly forts, grim forts, lethal forts, poisonous farts, crushing forts, deadly forts, vicious and cruel forts. There are the honest manly unabashed forts of plumbers and ocomotive engineers, the candid forts of formers, the masculine and solitary farts of cowboys and sheepherders and rangers, the bold united forts of factory workers. There are the talented aerobatic forts of schoolboys, the bemused abstracted forts of college students, the soft mellow farts of old professors of philosophy. There are the forts protracted and sullen of infantry soldiers, the forts peremptory of sergeants, a k mUitaire of captains, pompous and brassy of colonels; the stem, powerful and prolonged artillery of generals. There are the plaintive wistful forts of clerks, the suffocated forts of secretaries and stenographers, the nervous forts of switchboard operators, the farts pallid and timid of office receptionists and airline hostesses. There are the casual, indifferent forts of ward bosses and farts of candidates, the loud cheerful farts of precinct captains, the ingratiating the forensic and of embattled farts governors, congressmen, the magnificent thundering farts of senators, the proud stately farts of ambassadors and cabinet officers, the grave and politic farts of presidents and prime ministers. There is the deliberate insolent fart of the pimp, the bitter fart of the whore, the aggressive fart of the car dealer and realtor, the stealthy fart of the burglar and the smug, satisfied fart of the money-lende- r, die insidious fart of the pomographer, the cruel fart of the model, the vulgar and brazen fart of the huckster, the sly vile fart of the mortician and swindler, the startled fart of the pickpocket. There are the farts dull and sorrowful of policemen, harsh of desk sergeants and detectives, crude and brutal of screws, wary and apprehensive of police commissioners. There is the diffident fart of the seminarian, the gritty fart of the Bible student, the fart loud and exhartatory of the fundamentalist preacher, the incriminating and revealing fart of the evangelist, the mellifluous fart of the TV theologian, the impromptu fart of the organist and the fart sotto voce a la tempo of the choirmaster. There is the discreet and sanctimonious fart of the priest, the consecrated fart of the nun, the inadvertent fart of the altar boy, the irritable fart of of the archbishop, the painful and the bishop, the arch-fa-rt fart of the cardinal, the solemn apostolic liturgical and infallible fart of the Pope himself. There will be finally the final divine omnipotent pretentious imperial fart of God. After that, nothing fartable will remain to be farted; for foe mystery beyond God - foe the Brahman - does not fart well-mea- nt us All-Sour- ce, June 15, 1956 - Arches God knows I'm lonesome here - at times, at bad times - with an almost desperate pain, poignancy. And yet, there are other times - the good times? - when in action, in creation, in music and beer, I can rejoice in myself and my powers and my world and feel no need of any one particular woman. ("A man should stand alone." But should he? And can he?) PAGE 9 Chesler Park in foe Needles country of Canyonlands National Park, Utah: Green pastures without still waters; a dry Elysium; a Paradise for foe bodiless, the invisible, for poetic spirits and romantic ghosts. August 26, 1956 - Arches A high excitement in foe air and sky today: wind wind wind blowing all day long, no ceasing, no pausing, a continual singing whistling moaning wind. All day long, while the sun glares like - day's eye! fury incarcerated. Portentous wind, thrilling to blood and nerve and heart, portending .? autumn? departure? victory? doom? These magnificent oh splendid oh terrible oh charmingly futile summer storms of foe desert! sunlit rocks Just a week ago, a rich thick glowing double-rainboarching over the of the Windows - one end in the canyon of the Colorado, the other end ten miles north in Salt Valley; or was it Cache Valley? And then lightning jumping, dancing, glittering, sparkling behind - within! - the arc of the rainbow! Somewhere over Castle Valley and Fisher Towers. Jesu Crista! While a mere dab of rain flickered at my face ... And west, searing foe horizon, the sun going down in flame, dragging vast envelopes of doudfire with it - immolation! - celestial suttee! And oh not a wretdied common tourist, not a base villain of a shutterbug within miles of this grandiloquent display -- all the craven varlets ran - run - for cover.... This is the thing: The desert is a good place - dean, honest, dangerous, uncluttered, strong, open, big, vibrant with legend. It's the evenings that are kinda bad; mostly around supper time; I sit down to my steak and beans with only a can of beer for company. Ah then, then I miss her, miss my friends, miss all the crazy irresponsible delights of my old society. Bust most of all, then I miss her, foe one true of my life on earth. I mean Rita. w love-passi- red-gold-en on Two old men, sixty or worse: "Can't live forever, compadre. Down the nowhere road. End with a bang. I say, cuate 'pal', let's head for the hills - go bandido, eh? Romantic and mad to the very end Die in gunfire, eh?" Glen Canyon: latrines & register-bookO Christ! Bam fifty years too late. But the most I painful thought even eight years ago could have found the Colorado in its primitive state. In such a brief span of time has foe virginal wilderness been insulted, despoiled and desecrated. s! On the Negro question: I don't like 'em. Don't like Negroes. As far as I can see, they're just as stupid & depraved as whites. On Gawd: This citified religion is no blame good; if they can't find him (Gawd) in the woods or swamps or mountains, or along the seashore or in the desert, they sure as hell won't find him in their stinking old theological libraries. On wilderness preservation: Don't rely on the Park Service; all they can think of is more asphalt paving, more picnic tables, more garbage cans, more shifoouses, more electric lights, more Kteenix dispensers. Those bastards are scared to death of congressmen, who in turn are representatives of and often identical with local chambers of commerce. Sign at entrance to an imagined Abbey's Ranch: MEN OF FOOT OR HORSEBACK, WELCOME MORTORISTS AND COMMON TOURISTS, NOT WELCOME FBI AGENTS, SHOT ON SIGHT 1 I like to go swimmin d With wimmin And dive between their legs. -- Traditional bare-nake- Tourists thick as flies on a dead hog. "Thot you said it wouldn't rain," the tourist says to me. "Did I say that?" I answer. "Yes, you did," the tourist says. "Well doggone," I say - "that just goes to show, you can't trust the weather around here." July 1956 - Arches Me and the Tourist: O, I'm a comedian. A tourist says to me, "That's a lousy road you got in here," and 1 say, "If I had my way, there wouldn't be any road atall in here," and they laugh and laugh. "You have TV here?" another tourist asks, and I say, "If I saw a TV set in here. I'd shoot it like I would a mad dog," and they laugh again. "Well," says a third, "what do you do for entertainment?" and I say, "I talk with the tourists," and they laugh and laugh and laugh. at me. "Don't you get There I am, deadly serious, and they stand there just lonesome out here?" says another tourist, and I say, "I like my own company, I get along with myself pretty good." And another tourist says, "You got an awful job," and I say, Td a lot rather be doing this than what you're doing," and they all start laughing again. Nobody takes me seriously. Tourist says, "Does it ever rain out here?" and I say. "I don't know. I've only been here twenty-eigyears." They go for that one, too. Laugh, Christ! ht August 25, 1956 - Arches National Monument, Utah News from nowhere. All these desert roads, laced with idiotic care and trouble over and around the red cruel deathly loveliness of the desert - to where? To nowhere. Down that nowhere road funnels of jeeps crawl, skittering puffballs of dust, dump trucks rumble in the van of moiling absurd with automobiles desperation. creep along flying sand, tourists in fat gleaming Bound far what? A pocket of uranium ore in the gray Shinarump sandstone, maybe, or the rumor of ore - or less, for a view, a picture, a transparency of the mute and timeless and canyons of the rich implacable and sinister and incredible and I Listen to that bleed. fVWaHrt Why? Jesus Christ, dad, do not ask why...You're killing me; croaking black bird in the dead pin yon pine! heart-troubli- ng mind-stunni- ng Dreiser the Magnificent Prose like a glacier of truth, massive, powerful and beautiful; shall not ciiHo easily, oilily, oozily down foe tender gullets of twiddling aesthetes, no; but rather, hammers on the door of foe mind like Beethoven knocking, thunders, silences with glory, soaked in awe. Melville, Mark Twain, Dreiser. Thus Theo Dreiser is America's third great novelist-poe- t: Faulkner now, almost all poetry and passion, had only a moderate regard for truth. That was his trouble. All foe dever little writers with the pretty names: Flannery, Robie Carson, Thiman, Tennessee, Twiddled ee, Flddletree, Piddebee.I September 3, 1956 - Arches Brave tourists gp home. Oh brave and profligate tourists go home now. Go home now please. Thirty thousand tourists can't be stopped. In the cabinet above my kitchen sink: gin, vodka, bourbon, scotch, rye. I'm weary of grandeur. I long now for the grime, noise and confusion of the dties, for little touches of Nature - like a potted geranium on a windowsill, or a dead tumbleweed rattling over an asphalt parking lot. Such is the fickle whim of this human heart Oh for the taste of hashbrown potatoes, oh for the smell of the men's room at Minsky's. Sobering thought: Of all the world's two billion or more people, none would miss me very much if I were to die, except my parents and possibly Rita. No one else. Odd that I never a thought of this before. But that's why a man - an ordinary man needs a woman: only woman is fool enough and great enough to love a man despite his obvious worthlessness. To the question - AM I NECESSARY? - therefore, the answer is - NO. Solitude is a great and difficult gift; loneliness is a sickness; and to be condemned to be alone is a terrible thing - madness follows. The tourists drift in and out of here like turds floating through a sewer. The frimile could be extended easily, in several directions. And I? I am a watcher of turds. Fragments of Kleenix flutter before the wind like an armada of butterflies. A girl from Oregon, alone in a new convertible, passing through and I missed her. pretty Christ! I'll be regretting this on my deathbed. For this world that we have made, none of us is bad enough. But for the world that made us, we are not good enough. . - Arches This entry opens with scattered quotes from a letter Ed has just received from Rita, saying, in effect, that their marriage is finished. In eloquent prose, Rita explains that she feds Ed is an unfit father, an untrustworthy husband, and frustrating to live with. Terrible words; they make living rather difficult Therefore, I must go back to her at once, even though she writes that there is nothing for me to come home to except "a glimpse of what could have been." I must go back; three or four more days, then I leave this place. Probably forever. A lovely place, but tourists have come to depress me terribly. I can't bear to look a tourist in the face anymore. September 15, 1956 HUBS NEXT MONTH: Selected entries from the midJOs to 1989. |