Saturday, December 18, 2004

IT'S BACK!!

The New Absurdist is Back online.

I am screaming like a little girl. The forum is gone so we had better keep the temporary Absurdist for that but its back. Holy shite! Why wasn't I told about this... Oh boY Oh boY Oh boY Oh boY Oh boY Oh boY

Friday, December 10, 2004

Algae Number Four

The wall outside is glowing golden. A bird is standing in the air, right in front of her window. It is carrying two yellow straw sticks. She reaches for her watch. A quarter to eight. Sunrise has happened without her, even though it is Sunday. But then, Sundays are different, and thus the hour feels right and wrong at the same time. She thinks of simply drifting back to sleep again. It is tempting, the bed so warm, still carrying the imprint of her night body.

Outside, the grass is wet when she walks through the leaves. It hasn’t rained, the drops of water are dew, or are due to the sprinkling machines. She can’t tell the difference, and there is no one around to ask. Everyone else seems to be asleep still. Sunday, she remembers. Even the wind hasn’t woken up yet. The ocean lays still, the water seems thicker, heavier, almost like liquid metal. Above it, the sun, not golden, but blinding white. The shore is black, and the water close by is black, too. Oil, she thinks. But it isn’t, it is algae, dead algae. The waves must have carried them to the beach in the night. It looks disturbing.

A bus passes by, it doesn’t stop in front of the bungalows. Seeing it, she remembers the start of the journey that brought her here. She had been in a city, walking to the bus station. The place, she knew it, had crossed through it before. Yet, there was another woman waiting at the bus station already, wearing the same coat as she did. They both had tickets for line number eight. A bus arrived, and they stored their bags away. Then they drove through streets, on and on. “It will take hours to get out of the city,” the other woman said. “I don’t mind, I like to be moving,” she answered. When they reached the next stop, she realized that they had caught the wrong bus. The number of it was four. There was something else that was wrong. She tries to remember it, while she watches the oily algae waves sip against the black beach.

Her breath is turning into a hazy little cloud, as she stands there. This can’t be, she thinks, and tries again. Another cloud appears. She tries once more. Again, the warm air she exhales turns to white, even though it isn’t cold enough for it. On the way back, she keeps watching her breath. It stays invisible. Maybe it was a string of cold air, or the humidity of the ocean, she thinks.

Back in her bungalow, she sees the bird again, standing in the air, on the other side of the window, looking in the way she is looking out.

When she returns to the ocean, later in the day, all the algae is gone.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

THE SPIDERED WEB OF polycarp kusch

Before I killed off the Hertzan Chimera pseudonym, I interviewed a whole heap of out-there hippied and social reprobates for my Stoker-recommended non-fiction paperback SPIDERED WEB from Cyber Pulp Books. Creator of the New Absurdist and all round good egg, Polycarp Kusch was one of the most entertaining guys - boy, does he have some stories to tell. Anyway, here's the interview with this absurdist master, originally entitle Purple is not a Letter...

A perfectly filthy day in the Belvaros section of Budapest, Hungary. Ahhh how the grey overcast clouds trap the car exhaust and keep it down in the streets where the people need it most. Hertzan Chimera takes shelter in the decaying Pushkin mozi café, choking in cheap tobacco smoke and wondering if the patched-up machine gun holes in the walls are of nazi or soviet era calibre.

Polycarp Kusch is there in his corner, wearing his thongs with his head shaved down close because he's apparently not bright enough to know it's winter and that shoes and hair keep people warm. His brain throbbing under his semi-transparent skull going ak-ak-ak ak-ak-ak and a roll of 50 forint pieces stuffed at an odd angle in his pocket to boost his confidence with the iridescent red haired Barbie dolls that seem to run in packs and own the utca-s and körút-s here. Who could resist an opportunity to spend a few moments in the presence of Hungary’s most alluring social realist.

Initially, Polycarp Kusch is suspicious but a few drinks later and ... no wait… more drinks and…no… that's not an interview, that's him lighting a cigarette… and finally…

This interview may never have taken place were it not for the weather.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Polycarp. Do you mind if I tape this?…

Polycarp Kusch reels back reliving a scene from his junior high school PE class, frightened that Mr Chimera is going to masking tape his butt cheeks together, but relaxes upon seeing the handheld recording device.

Ok…. Tell me something about a friend of yours, Comrade Daniil Kharms.

POLYCARP KUSCH: Well after being exiled twice, having his writings banned and eventually dying of starvation in a soviet "psychiatric" hospital, I think Mr. Kharms would take some offence at the title Comrade, but anyway…

Kharms is the master of the Incident, the incredibly short bizarre - short story. He was also a man who believed it to be bad luck to ever use the same name twice. So he is Kharms, Harms, Charms, DanDan, HarmsDanDan and a hundred others variations. He also had an amazingly bizarre attachment to the aroma women put off when sexually excited. But then who doesn't?

When I first started writing, my stories were incredibly short, which I saw as a personal flaw. I was still living under the delusion that the novel was the great literary form to aspire to. Then I discovered Daniil Kharms.

Kharms taught me three basic points of writing:
1) Write 3 pages a day, even if they suck.
2) The vision is more important than the number of words needed to express it.
3) The mundane will always expose the most fascinating part of ourselves.

If I get blocked up when I'm writing, it's usually because I'm taking the whole matter, including myself, way too seriously. I'll sit down, read Kharms and it's completely cathartic. Who was it that told writers their words had to make sense? High school English teachers should be taken out and shot.

I really wish writers could enjoy the same freedom of expression as painters and composers. There was never a truly grand abstract period to literature that could be paralleled with John Cage musically or to Jackson Pollack visually. I think the closest we've gotten to that was the dadaist tone poems, then one step up to Joyce and then right back into sentences full of words that people know, arranged in ways they're comfortable with, telling the same stories over and over. I'm not saying that conventional storytelling is bad. It just doesn't have to be our only option.

But back to Kharms… Find him! Read him! He's all over the net in every language you can imagine. I even saw one site where he's been translated into Esperanto. My greatest goal is to one day be translated into an absolutely synthetic language like Esperanto. Let's have a show of hands on who speaks Esperanto… Anyone? Anyone? Anyone at all?

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Is it always like this round here, the weather?

POLYCARP KUSCH: No no no, the only place on the planet to be come springtime is Budapest. So beautiful, it could almost make you believe there's hope for people. But the crappy winters in central Europe give a nice contrast, a reason to stay inside and drive up Nintendo's stock value. There is a sense of continuity with everything here that doesn't exist in the US or that I never found living there. And living in a country that doesn't have the highest state-of-the-art street sanitation techniques really makes one appreciate the colder heavier air of winter that keeps the dog poop smell close to the ground instead of rising up and coming in through your windows like it does in the summer.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Freedom is very important to us all but this shines through in your writing. There is an ethos, yes?

POLYCARP KUSCH: Freedom and openess generate a fair amount of crap because we can't seem to get used to the idea that others might actually listen to what we have to say if we don't make it as loud and obnoxious as possible. I will most surely admit that. Small children will randomly say 'Turd' into the telephone simply for the shock value they think the word possesses (and for that matter, the power we've gifted it). Writers will write about their bent on “fucking” or use new words they've just learned or made up. Who's to judge what’s good bad or otherwise other than the reader? What doesn't generate crap? No one stops eating because crap continues to come out, even though we all realize the causal connection.I believe everyone is an artist, so far as everyone has their own vision of the world. It's inescapable. Hemmingway speaks to some, Handke to others and 73 year old waitresses have stories to tell as well that would connect with readers given the chance.It's getting to the point where I don't even see writing as a valuable form of expression. Time is too tight in people's minds now. To invest one's self in a day's reading of a novel, it better be a damn good novel. So we look to others to tell us what's good before we even start. What is worth my valuable time? We waste our lives on so many things we never even bother to think about. Why with art do we demand a guide and handhold?

HERTZAN CHIMERA: You have a bouncing baby boy called ABSURDISM! excuse me but what the fuck is that all about?

POLYCARP KUSCH: Unfortunately, the Absurdism! site is now gone, but the goal was to have an editor free environment where writers could post whatever random bits of themselves they wanted for public exhibition, in stark contrast to the inhibition in writing generated by editors of the old guard of print media who are now carrying that vision into cyberland.

The grand reward of writing is others reading it and seeing our small piece of the picture. Awards are lovely, free advertising, but they've outscoped themselves in importance. Again another dilation device for the time impaired. Well that won that, I can spare myself a minute to see. That writers would lend themselves to give out writing awards shocks me. It's the frat house mentality of I had to go through the initiation, so why shouldn't you. Petty bullshit.We can do it all ourselves now, and that's got to put a scare into publishing houses who pick and choose who gets paid and promoted. So Absurdism! was meant to put writing back in the hands of those who wanted it, those who felt it valuable and had the time.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: You support absurdism and you say your work is absurdist but it smacks of the most horrific socio-realism this interviewer has ever had the pleasure of reading.

POLYCARP KUSCH: Social realism is such a great term. If the real world itself wasn't so freak'n absurd I'd switch over and use that, but then I'd have to change all my business cards too.Truly, I don't care what you call it, I just want to be read and have that mean something after the book goes back on the shelf. I've read people, put the book down and couldn't remember it one way or the other. I'd love to have a copy editor go over my stuff and help me define what's the style I'm shooting at and what are just grammatical mistakes. Things tend to fall out intentionally in two different ways: one I like to write in sentence fragments, the other is writing incredibly long, unpunctuated compound sentences. I read too much Joyce and like it too much. My narratives become dialogs and I write them either broken or running on and on. How things fall out unintentionally, read it and tell me.I think most of the time it works to put across the characters I'm trying to build, but sometimes... it doesn't. You can't win all the time. Spelling... I'm just a moron with a bad keyboard and an attention span too short to run a spell check before transforming to pdf.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: To say I am besotted with your straight-forward, vile, insane, touching, brutal, architecture of words would be the #1 understatement of all time. I have read your collections MACABRE and A BRIEF COMPILATION and need to know what’s next on the horizon?

POLYCARP KUSCH: My main project over the past few months has been trying to find aluminium foil in this country. I don't believe it exists here. And some of those zip-lock freezer baggy things. I like those too. They're great for meat. Ask me more about this later because now you've got me obsessing on food storage.

HERTZAN CHIMERA: Will the real Polycarp Kusch ever stand up and admit his identity in a criminal line-up?

POLYCARP KUSCH: The polycarp is an invention that allows me to actually live the fictional account of my own life. A kind of imaginary friend that would come to your house, wipe his ass on your hand towels and then wait patiently to see what kind of moustache you come out with after washing your face. So the answer there would be no.

Salvador Dali has one of the best quotes, "Everyday I awake to the greatest joy possible… that of being Salvador Dali." I wake up in the morning and say, "I invented the letter D" or "I'm so freak'n famous I can't stand myself. What do you mean you've never heard of me?" and then I tell people that again and again until they either believe it or tell me to shut the hell up and I move on to my next fixation.

It's much easier to write fiction if you just live it. Then it's a simple matter of transcribing the thing. I'm not a writer; I'm a clerk typist. And by the way… polycarp kusch is not capitalized...

HERTZAN CHIMERA: (yawning) I'm sorry… what were you saying? Never mind. Probably wasn't all that important anyway. So, my pager's about to ring and I've got a train to catch to get out of this god forsaken place, but two more quick questions. Where can people download these e-books of yours? And I've heard you've found the cure for cancer? Please fill us in on both.

POLYCARP KUSCH: Well, the good folks over at dreampeople.org have been nice enough to post my books up for download until the other good people (the ones hiding in the pentagon bunkers) clear my application for a new absurdist site.

About the whole cancer thing, I don't see why these so-called researchers haven't seen it. Curing cancer is a simple matter of…

At this point in the interview the tape ran out and polycarp turned into a basking shark and chased me out of Budapest. Good job I had on my jogging shoes. Schlop schlop schlop...


(c) Mike Philbin 2003

http://www.mikephilbin.com


Wednesday, December 01, 2004

A Filthy Old Dad Christmas Carol

This is something I wrote about 2 years ago and is part of a trilogy. Sorry, it's a bit long for the blog, but maybe you'll get a laugh...


It was a deathly cold Christmas Eve in the Small Town and Filthy Old Dad was making his way down Elm Street, cursing and punching virgins and laughing at mental defectives and cripples, and tripping blind men and heaping abuse on every living thing, as was his habit. He was dressed in his usual old brown shoes and brown leisure suit, heavily stained with beer and the remains of Little Debbie snack cakes. He had no hat or gloves, and his unshaven face was bright red, as were his drunken eyes. The eyes…those evil eyes! They darted this way and that, glittering with hatred, condemning the world and everyone in it with each machine gun glance.

“I’ll see you in hell!” he screamed at a group of children helping a little old lady across the street.

“That man!” exclaimed Emma Gondwallow. She stared at Filthy Old Dad from the front window of Emma’s Beauty Salon and Facial Repair Shop. “What did anyone ever do to him?”
“Hah!” cackled Sally Thrushbottom. She shifted her massive frame in the chair. It was hard to get comfortable in that chair, for it was plastic and small, and Sally was not. She was getting another perm, a virulently ugly shade of purple. She averaged about one a month. Her hair positively crackled in anything more than a slight breeze.
“He’s a bad one, a devil’s seed! He killed my neighbor’s dog last Christmas, just breathed on it and it dropped dead! He’s not been worth a damn since his wife died. Just taking up space is all he’s doing.”

Emma watched as Old Dad stumbled and pitched into the gutter, his ragged clothes instantly soaked with the salty, melted slush collecting there.
“Well,” said Emma, closing the curtains and turning her attention to the mountain of reeking flesh who helped pay her bills, “I wish he would die and go to hell, he’s a curse on this town, especially at Christmas time. That drunken fool wouldn’t know a Merry Christmas if it charged up his ass and stapled jingle bells to his tongue.”
Sally jiggled with laughter, suffering a mild heart attack that she passed off as indigestion. “You are a caution, Emma, a real caution.”

Filthy Old Dad shook like a dog, sending dirty salted water flying in every direction. He lurched against the brick front of Tim’s Liquor Emporium and felt his way to the door. Christmas bells chimed as he entered.
“Merry Christmas, Old Dad.” Tim was wrapping a bottle of wine for a customer.
“I got your Merry Christmas right here,” sneered Filthy Old Dad, clutching his groin with a dirty hand.
Tim looked bored. Most of the liquor stores in town wouldn’t serve the old man anymore. There had been some incidents. Tim had a soft spot for drunks, though; his own father had been one. So he continued to allow him in the store, although most of the time he felt like punching him in the face.
“Great,” he said. “Hilarious. What can I get you?” He already knew the old man’s poison, but asked just to piss him off. It was easy to do.

Filthy Old Dad had a temper like a rat with gonorrhea.

“Thunderbird!” screamed Filthy Old Dad. “Thunderbird, you fairy faggot! How many times I gotta tell you? Stupid fu—“
“Hey,” Tim warned, “you want I should kick you out? It’s Christmas for God’s sake. Show some freaking respect, Old Dad.” Tim gave him his best stare, forcing the old man to drop his eyes.
“Yea,” Filthy Old Dad mumbled, clutching the thin brown paper bag containing his precious Thunderbird wine, “merry freaking Christmas.” He grabbed his change and darted out of the store, back into the wind and the coming dark and his own confused thoughts.

He made his way slowly down the street in the growing gloom. Tiny crystals of snow started to fall and stung his eyes. He brushed against Tad Lowell, star quarterback at Small Town High, and almost fell down.
“Watch where you’re going, old man!”
“Eat dog shit and die,” suggested Old Dad as he ripped a tremendous, wine-flavored belch.
“Stinkin’ wino, I oughta…”
“How’s your Mom?” Old Dad said suddenly, a knowing leer spreading across his face, “I see her at the Prarieview Motel a lot.”
“What do you mean?” Tad said suspiciously.
“Nothing.” Filthy Old Dad unscrewed the cap and took a swallow. “Forget it.”
Tad watched him as he headed down the street toward Jefferson Park. Just before he disappeared, he turned and shouted “Hey, you look a lot like the Sheriff! Maybe you’ll be a cop someday!” He laughed like a hyena as the night swallowed him.
Tad shook his head, baffled and angry. “Old drunk. Don’t make any sense, talkin’ about my mom…”

Tad did very poorly on his SAT’s that spring and never made it to college. He got syphilis at a drunken graduation party and died in a car accident the next year without finding out about his hideous disease, though he did manage to pass it on to a couple of whores first.

Filthy Old Dad headed for his secret place in the center of the park. He was the only one who knew about it and he guarded it jealously from other drunks. It was a shed of weathered wood planks overgrown with vines and surrounded by saplings, formally an equipment shed used by the Small Town for storing lawnmowers and grass seed, and the bases and lime for the softball field. He had another half-bottle of Thunderbird hidden there. He planned to drink fast and pass out; wrapping himself in old blankets he had stolen from clotheslines in unguarded backyards.

He went inside and lit his candle. It was damn cold and he got serious with the half-bottle of wine. “Ah, shit,” he said, feeling better. He was numb now and stumbled outside to take a piss. Watching the yellow steaming flow he shivered, knowing he didn’t have long to live. His liver was shot to hell and he didn’t care. Old Dad turned his face to the heavens as he shook off the last few drops.

“Hey God, you up there?”

He didn’t wait for an answer but passed out right there in the snow.