Category Archives: Schrodinger’s Dachshund
Coarse Encounters of the Fed Kind
Seated on foam padding bursting through blue upholstery, you recoil from a moldering mass grave of soda cans, candy wrappers, and strata upon strata of fast-food containers. Like anguished spirits unable to enter the next realm, fierce vapors linger, the ghosts of these mortal remains. A black tube lies across your lap; another half-pint fills your hand. Accepting a ride from these littering marauders seemed like madness until a free beverage entered the equation. To the relief of your long-suffering ears, the passenger ejects a cassette.
“Kid, I was gonna rewind that. Buddy Rich is a gem.”
“Kid, Buddy Rich is the emperor of ice cream, but we been listenin’ to him all day.”
Toothpicks impale the loaves of flesh protruding between their shoulders. The change from concrete to gravel levitates the three of you along with the moveable burial ground. Beneath a cloud whose tentacles dissolve into membranous nubs, broken glass glitters on the hills and recesses of a serpentine road. Even at five mph it’s clear the wagon’s suspension is in the same state of dilapidation as its upholstery.
Two boys wearing black and gold hockey jerseys throw rocks at beer bottles lined atop a doorless refrigerator. They stop and stare as though frightened on your behalf. One runs a finger across his throat. The side-burned blobs sneer in unison. “What the hell you lookin’ at?” says the driver.
“Go ask your ma where babies come from,” says the passenger. “Tell her to show you. It stinks worse than any stork.” The boys dutifully trudge inside a trailer.
Disassembled cars suggest a village of aspiring mechanics. A black cat peers through reeds of long-neglected grass before darting in front of the wagon. You lean back and smile. Right to left means good luck. Then the cat risks its life to run back, double cursing you. Just as Bobby and Jerry played the same songs differently night after night, Chaos and Entropy are doing a wild jam with the trailer cars. Any individuality stems from unique states of disrepair. Tiny and sparsely allocated windows look like the holes a child pokes on a box before confining a frog in it. Partaking of the knowledge that it’s five o’clock somewhere, men uniformed in flannel pretend to ignore the wagon.
After rounding a sharp turn, the homage to corrosion stops in front of the last trailer on the road. Sprawling vines of poison ivy almost hide a barbwire fence. Which design is crueler? The driver pulls a cassette off the dash. Like a genie trapped in a plugged bottle he writhes his way out of the car. The silver chain connecting his wallet to his jeans could constrain King Kong. The car rises two feet after the passenger emerges. While comparing them you remember a principle regarding the identity of indiscernibles. Or was it the indiscernibility of identicals? Their grace on land suggests the front seat is their natural habitat.
“Kid, where’s the other tape?”
“It was right here, kid. If you lost it again the Kangaroo will go berserk.”
While four mitts turn the car inside out you pretend to sift through layers in the landfill.
“Kid, this igit was sittin’ on it.”
“Thanks a lot, cockbreath. Here, you carry ’em.”
In loose-fitting clothes they would look intimidating, retired power-lifters enjoying la dolce vita. In tight undershirts the show’s over. Meaty inner-tubes jiggle and jangle beneath the flimsy cotton medium. One runs his knuckles across a homemade wind chime made out of five lacquered cans of Olde Frothingslosh ale. They wait. Rotund shadows pool at their feet like pits of tar swallowing prehistoric beasts.
A girl with cinnamon skin and one black eye opens the door and steps out, ferociously beautiful, skinny like a famine survivor medevaced in the nick of time. The breeze lashes long dark hair against her shoulders. Wildly arching eyebrows send a lupine fury cascading down her face to break on pouty lips. She takes a drag off a cigarette, revealing scars like disorganized crop circles on her stringy forearm, and blows smoke at your escorts as they enter. Thimbles threaten to pop through the planar surface of her green tank-top.
The queasy shame of a man denying the allure of Balthus’ nymphs compels you to look away, to peek around the corner where a satellite dish points at the ground. Behind it stands a gaunt man in his third trimester. “You got business here?” he says, clutching the wrong end of a .454 magnum like some deranged judge preparing to declare order for the last time.
You hop back to the cinnamon girl, who shuts the door behind you. Cardboard shades banish all rumors of the sun. The lambent glow from a TV illumes a pyramid of milk crates jammed with walkie-talkies and assorted gadgetry. Handcuffs and a cattle prod are not the most conspicuous. Empty popcorn bags litter a kitchenette counter like conches washed up on shore.
Standing in front of a narrow door one of the twins clears his throat. “What is the difference between an orange?”
“Just go in,” says the cinnamon girl.
“What … is the difference between an orange.”
“This is so lame.”
“If I have to say it again.”
In one long groan she says, “A bicycle because a vest has no sleeves.” She stands beside him and they both put a key in the door.
“Turn it,” he says.
“I am, you fucktard.”
“Try it again. Turn now.”
Nothing. He takes a step back and lands a savage kick, opening it. You join the brothers inside a closet lined with Pabst tall boys. Next to a dangling bulb their faces look like freshly-waxed cars on a drizzly day. One turns around. His flabby arm pushes you into the absorbent mass of his cohort. He selects a beer at eye-level and carefully pulls it to a ninety degree angle.
“It ain’t that one, kid.”
He tries the one next to it, and the next. “This’ll be the death of me.”
“What the hell, kid. Any day now.”
“Kid, it’s one of these.” And for the next ten minutes he pulls cans in the general area until the closet makes a terrible grinding noise like buckshot in a blender and begins to descend. A whiff of burnt oil acts as a desperately needed air freshener.
“Kid, don’t forget which one it is.”
“You ain’t no better at findin’ it, kid.”
After a prelude to eternity the closet jerks to a stop, rises a few feet, and squeals with a pitch and volume that has to be audible to every pooch in the Northern Hemisphere.
The door opens to what looks like an old submarine. You follow them into a dank room and take a seat at a picnic table. Along a wall nourishing barnacles of rust, silver keyholes fail to correspond to lines, recesses, or anything indicating the presence of doors or compartments.
You place the tapes on the table. One of your hosts taps it with both hands, doing a percussion version of “Kilimanjaro Cookout.” His twin joins him for an inspired take on an old favorite before veering off into tribal drumming.
A walking affront to the proportional standards of the ideal masculine physique enters the room. Atop shoulders too narrow for everything beneath them, an oily leather face droops off a cylindrical head tucked into a Packers cap. Mighty gray tumbleweeds cover his cheeks.
“This week on the Home Remodeling Show, the house that Pabst built,” says one of your hosts, pointing to a bulge taxing the seams of the Kangaroo’s bib overalls.
“Shut your pie hole, Remus,” he responds in a quavering voice.
“Yeah, Remus,” says his brother, doing a pitch-perfect impression.
“I’ll bitch slap you, Romulus.”
“Sorry boss.”
The Kangaroo pulls a key from his overalls and turns it in one of the shiny holes. A section of the wall ascends like a door sliding open on a concession stand, revealing a red panel where silver knobs descend incrementally in size from a softball to a penny. Above them a yellow grid subdivides a green screen. Four speakers descend from the ceiling. “You fellas get anything on tape?”
“Signed, sealed, and delivered, chief,” says Remus.
“You fellas sure you know how to use the tube?”
“Piece of cake, boss,” says Romulus, handing him one of the tapes.
The Kangaroo inserts it in a slot. Scraggly white lines dance across the screen and static explodes from the speakers. You cover your ears. He adjusts knobs like he’s playing Tetris. The lines on the grid become less jagged, almost parabolic. “That boy is a natural born scrambler.”
“Scramblin’ like a cook at George Webb,” says Remus, drumming his fingers on the table.
“Whose tape is this?” says the Kangaroo.
Like some inquisitive beast discovering a mirror in the ruins of an abandoned town, the twins eye each other amid a pantomime of shrugs and grimaces. Though capable of one basic expression they make the most of it with virtuosic skill. Romulus hunches his shoulders and throws up his hands. “The big fella?”
“Travis something,” says Remus. “Something Polish.”
“Kid, what’s the difference between a Polack security guard and a bucket of shit?”
“A bucket of shit can feed a Polish family?”
“No, the only difference is the bucket.”
The Kangaroo puts the other tape in the slot. “Looky here, looky here. This boy is one king-hell scramblin’ man.”
“That’s from the chess doofus,” says Remus.
“Chief, are you sure you’re usin’ this new shit right?” says Romulus. “They’re always scramblin’.”
“The likes of you two will not be tellin’ me how to do my job. These are the fellas the Mantis led you to?”
“His job performance needs improvement.”
“He was failing to accomplish tasks with a sufficient degree of sufficiency.”
“In English,” says the Kangaroo.
“He was barfin’ like Linda Blair.”
“Has he been drinkin’ again?”
“He’s been drinkin’ all the time. Somethin’ purple.”
The Kangaroo strokes a cumulonimbus sideburn. “What’s up with him? He’s been actin’ weird lately. You’d think he’d consider boozin’ to be a dereliction of his sacred duties.”
“He no longer demonstrates a proficient sense of pride in the organization.”
“Long as he gets the job done a little hootch ain’t gonna hurt. Good thing we’re trainin’ another, just in case.”
“I don’t think Zelda’s got the right stuff, chief.”
“She got a mouth on her, boss. Her cussin’ could take the paint off a wall.”
“Her cussin’ could knock flies off a turd. She uses swear words I never heard of. It ain’t right for a girl to talk like that. She’s violent too. Kneed me in the balls just for lookin’ at her. Romulus was thinkin’ this guy here might have what it takes.”
“It was Remus’ idea.”
The Kangaroo looks in your general direction and shudders. “Quit bringin’ rummies down here. Does this look like a flophouse? Stop fartin’ around. This location is secret and your jobs are serious. We ain’t workin’ for the CIA or FBI no more. Give Zelda a chance.” He ejects the tape and sits beside you. Suppressing your gag reflex you watch him roll a wad of syrupy chaw juice over his bulging lip while adjusting a huge black mound of snuff. “You boys sure these fellas are full-time third shift?”
“These guys are hardcore third. Drunk or not, you gotta trust the Mantis. He’s like a dividin’ rod for findin’ guards.”
“These fellas ain’t rent-a-cops, are they?”
“No way. Lodestar’s a classy joint. These guys are in-house.”
“Keepin’ tabs on rent-a-cops is like tryin’ to keep track of migratin’ deer,” says the Kangaroo.
“It’s like trackin’ meth sluts.”
“Kid, you could implant a chip in their ear while they’re knobbin’ you.”
“I got us a hee-uge contract lined up,” says the Kangaroo. “We take good care of this client and we’ll be eau de bologna.”
“Are these two gonna be the containers?”
“They’ll make top notch containers. They both got some serious aptitude for scramblin’, specially the first fella. Now it’s a matter of matchin’ the initiation process to each one’s specific profile.” The Kangaroo spits a dark stream over your head. Some of it lands in a puddle on the floor where many have preceded it. Most of it does not. He pounds his fist and points between the stout twins. “A few of our other clients is less than satisfied with the services provided. You fellas can’t be blabbin’ about the secret key.”
“I never said nothin’,” says Remus.
“Am I supposed to believe the containers heard it on the news?”
“It wasn’t me,” says Romulus.”
“Well it’s gotta stop. Word of mouth is our only means of advertisin’. I don’t think the brochure was one of Duane Callahan’s finer ideas.”
Pretty boy Duane,” laughs Remus.
“Sweet Jane Duane,” says Romulus.
“What in tarnation is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’ chief. Your cousin’s a good guy.”
“Duane’s fine by me, boss.”
The Kangaroo cracks his knuckles and stares at the table. “I regret to inform you that due to the new technology we have acquired and successfully utilized we will no longer be needin’ the doses of William Werzinski.”
The brothers bellow like tenors in some ungodly opera. “He’s practically family,” pleads Romulus. “Nobody gets better acid than William.”
“You can’t replace William with a tube,” says Remus. “He’ll take it hard. He ain’t exactly stable.”
“He’s a sensitive genius, chief. You know how they are.”
“The LSD method wasn’t workin’ for shit and you fellas know it,” says the Kangaroo. “He ain’t gonna starve. If I ain’t mistaken, him and his wiener dog still live at home.”
“William says Maestoso is a quantum mechanic.”
“Kid, how could it fix anything with them little hands?”
“There’s somethin’ special about that wiener dog, especially when you’re dosed.”
“Kid, I wouldn’t worship him like William”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t mess with him. You see the way he watches you, like he knows what you’re thinkin’ and he ain’t impressed.”
“Let’s make sure things go smoothly,” says the Kangaroo. “Good containers is hard to come by. I’ll need all the usual details about both loads. I mean guards. Then, I swear, if their uploads don’t go right there’ll be hell to pay. We never had a Jawa for a client before.”
“Ain’t they those grubby little critters from Star Wars?”
“Even worse. Now give this dirty rummy some free drink chips and get him the hell out of here.”
On your back in the alley behind Straight Flush tavern you stare at the speckled canopy above, no more lost than anything else up there. Visions of Zelda dance through your mind: reflections on the contradictory conjunction of her frailty and fierce demeanor; 1,001 inferences based on several seconds of observation, the notorious first impression to which everything else is an appendix; longings that feel awkward even here, as though some prohibitions are not the excrescence of bureaucratic fiat but etched in the tablet of existence. Maybe you’re tasting the bitter fruit harvested by recluses and misfits throughout the ages, the discovery that we remain attached to the fabric of humanity simply by being alive. An invisible strand keeps us connected to this web, which has no statute of spatial limitations.
The stars, are they not confetti? There is a direct relation between the number of them and the triviality of you. Squint your eyes. The constellation of a long slender hound appears, marking the heavens more objectively than dippers or crabs or bowmen. Trace it with your finger. The dog glares as if perturbed by your discovery.
Perhaps the ancients didn’t name him for a reason, or only spoke the name during ceremonies where his guidance was sought, his wrath placated. They looked to the stars and the stars looked back. What became of them? Survival was not among the blessings from this deity.
Close your eyes and seize the earth. So solid. So flat and stationary. Your senses are liars and fools. The hound in the sky continues to scowl, as he did before you were born, before all men were born.
November of Her Years
Appropriated* from the Adventures of a Hero
Zelda’s confrontation with the mirror reveals that her collarbone is diminishing like a treasure abandoned to sandstorms. She has one stick of celery instead of three and pops two Provigil. In her room an army of PEZ dispensers overlooks piles of clothes discarded like shed snakeskin. On two framed pictures she stands beside the stone altar at Monte Albán with her father. His Summerfest shirt and her gap-toothed grin neutralize the morbid ambience. Would those butchered there have found comfort or despair from knowing it became a tourist spot? She sits on the floor and powers up an old laptop. On a site filled with pictures of stick-figure models and celebrities she checks her latest entry:
they say u hav a disees. Maybe its cuz THERE AFRADE OF UR POWER AND WANT 2 CONTROL U!! ur ability 2 eat how much u want gives u TOTAL POWER and they hate u 4 it. they want 2 keep u trappd in a JAIL of FAT! Are u sik or R THEY JELLUS? stay strong thru Ana!
Covered with shingles instead of vinyl siding, her house would not have appeared out of place in an ancient time. She locks the door and runs to avoid intermittent downpours. Thunder growls like some deity provoked and silver veins pump life to the gray hide wrapping the world. Under a bus stop canopy she savors a head-rush complete with tingly feet from the first Newport of the day. Then it’s all downhill. She runs through alleys and across a field and with the precision of an insect climbs a fence where a section of barbwire is missing. Through puddles reflecting the bright garages of a U-haul storage facility she splashes like some urchin traversing a blood-soaked battlefield. She pokes her head around a corner and looks both ways and pounds on a door.
“Agent Alpizar, you’re late,” says Rolando. If his greasy pompadour isn’t the result of a genetic snafu, surely the faculty that chose it is. “Don’t wait for it to open all the way. Dive under.”
“Maybe tomorrow. Tell me again why I have to get up this early. Those slobs don’t get up before noon.”
“What happened to your eye? Who did that?”
“Who do you think? One of the fat fucks.”
Illuminating walls where the main event, Rust vs. Metal, was decided long ago, portable lights dangle from plastic shelves crammed with files held in place by cement blocks and cans of soup. From the roof water drips into three buckets, a coffee can, and two Tupperware bowls. A beanbag-shaped woman with gray and auburn hair pecks at a word processor. The motion sends waves rolling across the subcutaneous seas covering her arms. Zelda stares at the tidal pattern and rubs her triceps as though dispelling goose bumps.
“It’s not because they suspect you, is it honey?” the typist says. “You can’t stay there if they suspect you.”
A sheen of rain and sweat glistens on Zelda’s face. “They don’t suspect nothing. I kinda kneed one in the balls.”
Rolando straddles a folding chair and rests his hands on the back and his chin on his thumbs.
“It was an accident,” says Zelda.
He waits for her to look at him. She doesn’t. “What kind of recruits do they have?” he says, picking at a mole that bisects his thin mustache like a cow blocking a railroad track.
“Losers.”
“Third shift security guards?”
“I said they were losers. When do I get paid?”
He wraps his knuckles on the chair. “Are they third shift guards?”
She lights a cigarette and inhales deeply, chasing the dragon of the first. “Look, they’re gonna show them to me, okay? I only know what I hear.”
“Why is it always watchmen? Why couldn’t a delivery man be a secret container, or a retired senior citizen?”
“They need someone with special mental conditioning, like in a trance or something. Most of these dipshits are half- asleep. And they’re the easiest to sneak up on. And you can always find them again.”
Wild with yearning, Rolando’s eyes harvest light from the halogen lanterns. “Is that your theory or is that what they say?”
“What they say? You wanna know what they say?” She drops an octave and talks out the side of her mouth. “Kid, Omega gyros ain’t half as good as Aristotle’s gyros. Kid, let’s score some doses. Kid, smell this fart. Kid, kid, kid, all day long. They’re total fucktards.”
“Do not underestimate them. And you’re not there to judge. You’re there to observe and report.”
“Judging from the shit they say that isn’t about food or acid, the secrecy of who’s a container is important. The containers don’t even know they’re containers.”
“I, too, read their pamphlet.”
“Then why do you keep asking me?”
“What about the man in charge, the Kangaroo?” whispers Rolando, as if saying it too loud would cast a spell or summon forces he dare not provoke.
“He did something for the government. They fired him for being an arsonist.”
“You mean isolationist?”
“Something like that.”
With the reservation of a man inquiring about his wife’s fidelity, Rolando says, “And the big guys, the terrible twins, Remus and Romulus?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Are they mantises?”
“More like mana-tees.”
“Agent Alpizar, you need to learn everything about the hierarchies within their agency. What is the significance of a mantis? According to the Greeks it resembles someone who is praying.”
“This one should be praying for a clue. He’s so out there. A mantis hunts guards. That’s what they’re training me for.”
“What technique is used?”
“He goes from building to building and looks in the window. If anyone in a uniform is passed out in the lobby he’s found his man. Then Remus and Romulus make a note of it.”
“They haven’t made any uploads yet, have they? It’s essential that you’re there when they do them.”
“We still have to get profiles of the containers. It ain’t easy. We can’t just walk up and do a survey.”
“The most important thing is to get the key to the containers. It should be a phrase or a sentence.” Rolando stands and scratches his chin and watches crystal drops fall from the ceiling. “It could be a single word. I suppose a number would work, or a tune they hum. It could even be a noise they make.”
“Thanks for narrowing it down. Is there anything it couldn’t be?”
“You need to turn your memory into a magnet. Ask lots of questions. Tell them you want to be the best mantis you can be.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t whatever me. Why can’t you be nicer? It’s easier to infiltrate if you’re friendly. They probably wouldn’t have hit you if you weren’t sulking all the time.”
“Are you saying I deserved this, you bumblefuck.”
“Shhh, there’s families living in some of these garages. You were smarting off again, weren’t you?”
Her glare emits waves of sullen hostility that threaten to melt the feeble metal structure. “Following cheating husbands was easier.”
“There’s too much competition.”
“Why don’t you start your own agency? Why are you copying these dorks?”
The typist chuckles. Her pointer finger circles before landing on the letter G. “Honey, if I had a nickel for every time I told him that.”
“I don’t pay either of you to tell me how to run things. I know nothing about uploads or scrambling. They make it look easy. Don’t be fooled. And how do I get their clients? Those are some of the most dangerous men on earth. Agent Alpizar, you need to remember what you learned from your training films. Always ask WWPGD.”
“I know,” she groans. “What would Pussy Galore do?”
“Also study the example of Anya Amasova.”
“I’ve watched all those stupid movies. The guys after Sean Connery are wussies.”
“James Bond is not your role model. After you observe an upload and get the key to the containers we’ll run them out of business. But it’s all up to you.”
Zelda practices letting smoke float out of her mouth and into her nose. She feels her eyebrows for signs of asymmetry. She examines her chest for signs of its appearance.
“Agent Alpizar.”
“I heard you. Get the key to the containers.”
“And you need to keep sabotaging the Mantis. Once he’s gone you’ll be the only replacement. Then you can divert their clients to us. What is his current status?”
“I gave him the secret message that the only way to protect his thoughts from being intercepted is to stay drunk all the time.”
“Good work, agent Alpizar.”
“Whatever.”
Excerpted from Schrodinger’s Dachshund
Most Art by Jacek Yerka
*Who else could write about Zelda and her heroic (if Pyrrhic victory) over the Sentinels of the Chandelier? If only one writer was there only he can tell the tale. ‘Cultural appropriation’? Bullshit! The only freedom of speech we don’t have is cursing G-d.
The Thematic Unity of “Alex”
In response to disproportionate (and frankly disturbing) interest in Serial Killers Who Worked Security, the most popular entry on this site, consider a case study: the phenomenology of a Security Guard in Existential turmoil, the clinical description of what we’ve come to suspect. Based on a true story.
Are we the sum of our sensations, or the remainder when they’re subtracted?
If a zoologist from another planet studied Alex Jitney, the milky pallor and nondescript features might instigate regrets that humans aren’t reptilian. Despite acknowledging that hair once enabled our drab but vicious species to exert pheromonal influences by trapping body scents, it would soon focus on the rich tapestries of the Rainbow Boa-constrictor and Peninsular Rock Agama. The field guide would recommend visiting the deserts and rain-forests while proceeding with extreme caution on this woebegone planet of apes.
If Alex shared his shift with other workers, the uniform dangling from his angular frame might initiate questions about his ability to defend Lodestar’s Shipping and Receiving Center in the dead of night. “He can’t be here for deterrence,” they’d whisper. “What could he deter?”
At 2:11 A.M. Alex steps over the red beam of a motion detector and walks down rows of brown boxes in a cavernous room, lost in thoughts of Security, pondering its essence: Why did Petrosian lose to Bobby Fischer? How could Karpov lose to Kasparov? Defense is superior to offense. A state of equilibrium smiles upon those who work to maintain it, not those who rupture its static pattern with aggression.
He removes the pineapple from two pieces of chicken pizza before eating them. Love the sin, hate the sinner. After lunch he clasps his hands behind his head and props his feet on the windowsill to enjoy the harmony of silence. But there is no such thing. The illogical pattern of the herringbone wall across the street is louder than any stereo, more offensive than swastikas. He closes his eyes and a parade barges across the space between his ears: a list of prime numbers separated by two, the sweet aftertaste of fruit, the sound of a car backfiring, the stretch of a full bladder.
Unknown is whether “Alex” is the sum of these impressions or the remainder when they’re subtracted. Time spent alone, rare and awkward moments when he’s not thinking about chess send him searching for a mysterious being called the self. It’s like looking for a shadow with a spotlight. The commotion and chitchat must hide this from first and second shift. Are they lucky or deluded or both?
What are we, and Why, and Where — you wouldn’t think to ask such questions in a crowded office. And there’s no screaming silence to those queries when everyone’s talking about the Packers. Quiet time spent in solitude, paradoxical potion, familiar friend and dreaded torture, its company attracts and repels, revives and kills, and creates addicts of some who hate it.
While Alex turns an abstract painting on the wall around so only its non-chaotic backside is visible, a green silhouette like Nosferatu with a beer gut appears in the window and points a trembling finger at him. Alex checks his watch. Contrary to the trite expression, there is no crack of dawn. A dirty yellow growth will soon spread across the horizon like fungus on chocolate cake, devouring the delicate textures of the night.
He removes a silver pendant from his neck. You don’t need to check it again. You’ve checked it twelve times since the start of your shift. He opens it and extracts a tiny scroll. Such elegant and simple premises. So harmoniously the conclusion flows from them like a river filled by lesser tributaries. No wonder it’s never been found. Everyone expects something dense and convoluted.
He puts the pendant back and doesn’t hear voices in the street. For all their rage and urgency they could just as well be the croaks of bullfrogs, differing only by degree. When crimson guts spill from the belly of the night, he watches for his relief, for the 2003 Saturn stirring up clouds of dust like some chariot riding out of a whirlwind. Watchmen, sentinels of the remorseless hinterland between dusk and morn, priests of the rosary beading all the days, keepers of the promise that renewal comes with dawn, are they not warriors?
***
“Like a surreal existentialist crisis” Publishers Weekly
Gus Sanders, Segmentarian
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Camus
The archetypal resemblance between the Grim Reaper’s scythe and your lawnmower, surely it’s no coincidence the Big D carries a yard tool rather than a metal-detector, .357, or pool cue. To explain the particular, start with the general. Take a step back with Gus Sanders, founder of Segmentarianism. During a Peak Experience (aka Satori) he realized the gods made Sisyphus push a boulder because their mower was in the shop. Based on a true story.
Gus Sanders rested his hands on bulbous knees jutting above black socks and gulped for air. With desperate eyes he sized up his abhorrent foe, his Goliath. Its silence, a snide boast of invulnerability, mocked him more than howls of laughter. Unknown muscles in his shoulder and back twitched. He spat and probed for weaknesses. Then the fifty-sixth attack met the same ignominious fate as its predecessors.
He sought sustenance in Hate, which is not a fickle flame contingent on the fuel of man’s misfortunes but a great wind impelling warriors in all ages. His Aussie slouch hat provided scant protection from the jaundiced eye in the heavens. How many conflicts has it beheld, delighted or appalled but never indifferent. That would be intolerable. If it doesn’t care, who does?
Impervious, the start chord awaited, an Excalibur only the salesman could effectively extract from the LawnMaster Easy-Start Deluxe Mulching Mower. Gus shielded his eyes and looked to the horizon for strength, for perspective. The earth, is it not a vast coliseum?
Rivulets of sweat added a shimmering gloss to what he saw, but they didn’t create it. Certainly an electrolyte deficiency played a role, but not as a sufficient cause. When he attempted to stretch, the crackle from his back was disturbing but extraneous to what followed. Not all enigmatic visions can be dismissed as pathologies. The smug little skeptics who deify first principles forget that philosophic fundamentalism is as inbred and ill-kempt as its bucktoothed religious cousin.
Above a Bucky Badger weather-vane on the garage, cumulus clouds morphed into a ghostly figure pushing a mower across a lawn punctured by iridescent dandelions. He dissolved but the grass remained, as if to ridicule and defile the purpose of his fleeting existence. Gus collapsed. “How many hours of my life have I spent cutting the lawn?” he cried, recoiling from the leprous growth surrounding him.
Mentholated smoke wafted through the den where his wife played Mah Jong on the computer amid the sonorous thunder of “Song Sung Blue.” “Why don’t you wait until the sun goes down?”
“Because it will be dark then. We’d need to add a guide dog to the other five.” He tottered to the kitchen and poured a gin-and-tonic sans tonic and found a scratch-pad. “Must have started when I was twelve. That’s an hour each week walking behind a deafening machine, choking on exhaust in the scalding sun. Have to do it at least twenty times a year. Forty years times twenty equals … sweet Jesus. That’s over a month of cutting the lawn non-stop. Look at that segment of my life. Stolen. And I never would have known.”
“Gussy, what are you shouting about? Why don’t we pay one of the neighbor kids to do it?”
“Because cutting the grass isn’t a video game, and we can’t afford the special helmets they need.” He stared at the numbers like a scientist examining a lethal virus through a microscope. “All the evidence is right here. Anyone could have found it. Unless they’re afraid or brainwashed, why haven’t they? Maybe it’s like people stuck in a communist country who have no idea how restricted their lives are.”
He poured another gin-and-tonic sans tonic and looked out the window at the insidious LawnMaster Easy-Start Deluxe Mulching Mower. Its chrome handle extruded from an orange plastic shell: a monstrous, rapacious crustacean waiting to attack him and devour more of his life. “You’ve been sucking up my time. What sane man would consent to being born if he knew his life would involve an entire month of cutting the grass?”
Propelled by the mysterious dynamism animating all beings, the analysis took on a life of its own. During his weekend shifts, Gus ignored college football, Cops, and even the adventures of Mary Weatherworth to begin a Segmentarian Critique. The calculations were simple to perform, but contemplating the sums proved no less daunting than the observation of crime scene photos. Worse than the outrage was the lack of a culprit.
“Shaving averages out to five minutes a day since I was fifteen. If I live to be eighty that’s … Who would consent to being born if he knew he’d have to spend three months shaving?”
“Tossing and turning in bed is at least four hours a week, which comes to … another twelve months. After all these segments are chopped off, what’s left? And if the government isn’t behind this, who is? It’s too organized and systematic to be a coincidence. Has anyone else calculated it? Maybe this is what pushed John Nash over the edge.”
With the weariness of all lonely soldiers of fortune fighting a war of ideas, Gus wishes his LawnMaster Easy-Start Deluxe Mulching Mower had started on the fifty-sixth try that afternoon. Once you start exposing life to the terrifying clarity of Segmentarianism there is no turning back. Amazing how a happenstance brush with an idea can change a man.
“Some day all the grass will look like this. When there’s no one round to cut it, it’ll just grow and grow, all long and messy.”
To remedy the Lawnmower Blues, contemplate things less ephemeral than your absurd chore. You, shadow’s dream, changing the length of your lawn each week, devoting your fleeting days to glorifications of futility while the cluster of gasses recently nicknamed Jupiter remain chaotic as they were in the Permian. Oblivion is patient; permanence, relative. That even it shall die, this cherub who shone in a wondrous way for billenium, should its mortality bring you comfort, a sense of familial affinity, or despair? If nothing be permanent, then only Nothing is permanent. And ultimately triumphant. There is no Ontological anchor in Heraclitus’ rapids.
Give the Gift of Enlightenment
Total Understanding or Double Your Money Back!
Employs secrets and intrigue as a driving, page-turning force. PW
Spy by night, blogger by day, Zelda Alpizar becomes infected by a contagion known to civilians as guilt, forcing her to choose between following orders or intervening to save two watchmen. Their trance-like lethargy makes them the ideal storage drives for a detonation code. Decrypting it could have lethal side-effects. Though the most important thing Zelda will ever find, the boundary between good and evil is of little value in a place where the only legend reads Here There Be Monsters.
Security guards, harbingers of dawn, are they not warriors? Beneath the polyester Travis and Alex consist of flesh and blood. A predator stalks them, more implacable than skateboarders. Putting your tax dollars to work, the NSA discovers that human storage devices offer greater security than digital ones. Dead drives tell no tales. Like all their secrets it’s soon available to the highest bidder. When Zelda infiltrates a secret society lending this service to terrorists, she sees how the private sector can be almost as wicked and incompetent as the government.
They should have chosen a more secure password. “Mary Weatherworth” is also an adult actress beloved by security guards, and an urban legend reputed to appear in mirrors when summoned thrice. Busy lady. This ambiguity entwines discrepant parties in strange ways. Connected to them all by one degree of separation, the sausage link in a karmic chain, Maestoso the Dachshund waddles across this remorseless battlefield, observing the chaos, perhaps resolving it. Avoid eye contact. You don’t want him inside your head.
The Infinite Jest of security guards. Goodreads
Crisp leaves enshroud Milwaukee, never as beautiful in life as they are in death. All rejoice in the tomb of summer, frolicking in the burial ground of a time that is no more. This remorseless decomposition, land of nostalgia and déjà vu, idyllic for football and hunting and lakefront bonfires at night, it calls from a place beyond instinct, one primal or mystical and ineptly mapped by our concepts. If Nature speaks through her patterns, what are we to make of this delirious paean to necrophilia, this hypnotic Ode to Mortality?
The Yellow Warbler can’t hide forever. Surrounded by a sweet-scented auburn cloud, you perch on a branch above a blacktopped road, basking in the heavens of this idyllic season. Summer is a lowly transitional phase, an impetuous adolescent, a brutish prototype from which evolves the exemplar of fall. Remove the caps from your binoculars. For once Time is an ally.
A raucous guitar grows louder as an SUV approaches and flashes past below. From the shadows across the street, a man and dog appear. He tilts his head back for a mouthful of Fiddle Faddle and throws the box beneath the tree. “Listen to the guitar’s pitch decrease as the sound waves are stretched further apart. This is how we know the universe is expanding, the Doppler Effect.”
“I didn’t climb up here to have a conversation. You’ll scare the damn birds away.”
“If it’s getting bigger, you’re smaller today than yesterday, less meaningful now than a moment ago. What happens when something keeps shrinking?”
“I’ll disappear?”
Long and slender like a Doberman by Dali, the dog howls and wags its tail as if delighted by the news. Brown spots over his eyes conspire with lips upturned at the corners of his gator snout to cast a countenance of cruel mirth. A tie-dyed bandana does nothing to mitigate this impression. Vertigo compels you to look skyward, as though man can only find comfort from his essence, which is not the substance of earth but the nothingness of space.
“Don’t forget there are countless universes, all part of the multiverse,” says the man. “There will be a billion more by the time you take another breath. They have the fecundity of aphids. It’s funny how modern physics adds new dimensions to the vanity of life lamented by the ancients. Solomon didn’t know the half of it.”
Let go of the branch. What difference does it make? You were already falling.
Basking in the sun while resting its posterior in a shadow, his dog could be mistaken for a Tiktaalik emerging from the sea to explore the land, or the missing link between Being and Nothingness. Though initially deterred by your moans and writhing, two crows land under the tree and peck at the remaining nuggets of Fiddle Faddle. Stretched like a rolling pin, the dog points at them.
“These magnificent birds,” says the man, “so intelligent they place walnuts on the road to be opened by traffic, can there be any doubt they’re acknowledging this as a blessing from their crow god, a deity characterized not only by darkness, but wisdom?”
“Maybe they’re hungry.”
“To think is to think about causes. They’re not postulating some grand unified theory involving caramel popcorn, gravity, and probability.” A scowl kneads a tragic mask across his features. “This is the dawn of a new horizon of study, the uncharted territory beyond the intersection of metaphysics and ornithology.”
“It was a stupid accident. The box just plopped there. This universe isn’t about them. It isn’t about any of us.”
The man towers over you. “Incorrect. It is about my Dachshund. Come along Maestoso.” They depart, the dog gliding away like some salami hovercraft.
The stars, are they not confetti? There is a direct relation between the number of them and the triviality of you. Squint your eyes. The constellation of a long slender hound appears, marking the heavens more objectively than dippers or crabs or bowmen. Trace it with your finger. The dog glares as if perturbed by your discovery. Heaven is not a Rorschach after all.
Perhaps the ancients didn’t name him for a reason, or only spoke the name during ceremonies where his guidance was sought, his wrath placated. They looked to the stars and the stars looked back. What became of them? Survival was not among the blessings from this deity. His ferocity makes him more humanlike than one of love. Close your eyes and seize the earth. So solid. So flat and stationary. Your senses are liars and fools.
“What about those other universes, the Multiverse?” you whisper, assuming the fetal position. It worked once. “Screw it. All politics is local. As long as they aren’t connected they don’t dilute the significance of this one.”
The hound in the sky continues to scowl, as he did before you were born, before all men were born.
The paperback is preferred. When you position it upright Maestoso’s eyes follow you around the room, anticipating your actions with some canine analogue of foreknowledge, disarming at first then strangely serene. Purchase several as guardians or talismans.
The Danzantes of Monte Albán
Would its victims find comfort in knowing it became a tourist spot?
One glimpse above Monte Albán reveals a Copernican revolution of the idea that the moon is a light in the darkness. A slice of dead tissue clings to the black hide of an omnipresent being. Like some curio forgotten in an attic, a temple molders on a hilltop. Its ornate construction stands as a reminder of how little the past can teach the present. Between fits of mad laughter it calls, “Someday you and everything you love will be as irrelevant and forgotten and unfathomable as this.”
The Mantis wanders the ruins by day, treading the same ground where priests in fish and bird masks once adjured gods more humanlike than one of love and mercy: gods sadistic, gods insane. Per his secret instructions he studies mysterious carvings, the Danzantes, templates of the human heart to which all literature and philosophy and art are footnotes.
“They weren’t dancin’ for fun,” she told him. “Look at the ones holding their guts in their hands. You didn’t want to get caught alive by the Zapotecs. They were into some wild-ass shit back then. Check out the altar. That wasn’t for sacrificing chickens. Don’t worry, we’ll be checking your thoughts so you don’t have to do nothin’. This is a total promotion. And quit wearin’ green.”
With polite obstinacy he spurns vendors who offer “authentic relics” made of baked manure. “No gracias,” he says, waving a bony finger. Not lost but found in the silent majesty of this crypt of a civilization he spends his days in pursuit of phantoms, guided by a phantom map and at the behest of connections linked by the unrelenting velocity of phantom logic. But his joy is real. Amid dark stains of misery, smeared within a pastiche of solemnity, hilarity, and tedium, the newfound purpose adds a streak of gold to the collage of his life. And like all men he mistakes the fleeting nuance for the color of the underlying canvas.
Above: the deities go unseen by Western materialist eyes. Mankind blinds itself from teleological interpretations of Reality and calls this “enlightenment.” Democritus blushes. Not even he would go so far. Below: what the ancient priests saw. You jelly? Join them.
Meme researcher Delores Locascio writes, “Some memes brush against reality. How many have we seen involving Monte Albán? Princess Nica is the latest of many. This ceremonial altar has several hundred carvings known as Danzantes. The first archeologists to discover the site assumed the figures were dancing. In a sense they were. The Zapotecs depicted rival chieftains being tortured to death, many castrated. That wasn’t a symbolic flower carved between the legs of one figure; it was blood gushing from a hole. Several of the stones depict women with strange objects protruding from their eyes. Archeologists assumed from their vestments and jewels that they were priestesses. As we’ve seen, others claim they were entities the Zapotecs encountered in mirrors and made sacrifices to (until they ran out of victims).”
“Schrodinger’s Dachshund is more like a collection of mysteriously connected stories than a conventional novel. Jablonski’s lyrical prose turns creepy during the second-person POV parts. Enter the Bosch-like parallel universe of Cudahy, Wisconsin. Good luck. Jablonski doesn’t hold your hand, like he’s sharing as much as possible, hoping you’ll figure it out. This has a way of making these characters come alive. Highly recommended, but this taste is acquired. Not to be mistaken for genre espionage or sci-fi (or anything). This is plain weird! Magic anti-realism? Backhanded compliment time. It’s a showcase for Jablonski’s freaky powers of description. It’s a dark, insanely funny, bizarre book with disarmingly vivid prose.” Goodreads
Who is Maestoso and Why is He Following You?
The Sentinels of The Chandelier Keep the Faith
Who is Maestoso the Dachshund and Why is He Following You?
“As crazy as it sounds, many working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory …” Sean Carroll
They literally believe, “Everything in our universe — including you and me, every atom and every galaxy — has counterparts in these other universes.” David Deutsch
But they never speak of the Dachshund-related implications. Until now.
“Driving, page-turning force” Publishers Weekly
Set amid the entropy of the mortgage meltdown, Schrödinger’s Dachshund prowls the shades of gray separating science from the paranormal, internet memes from philosophy, NSA agents from bumbling security guards, and unpleasant necessity from Evil.
Meet Maestoso. Avoid eye contact. You don’t want him inside your head. He’ll play with your mind like a squeaky toy and chuck it away when he’s bored. Should it be a source of relief or despair that the purpose of Creation is them, not us?
Creatio ex Dachshund
The Yellow Warbler can’t hide forever. Surrounded by a sweet-scented auburn cloud, you perch on a branch above a blacktopped road, basking in the heavens of this idyllic season. Summer is a lowly transitional phase, an impetuous adolescent, a brutish prototype from which evolves the exemplar of fall. Remove the caps from your binoculars. For once Time is an ally.
A raucous guitar grows louder as an SUV approaches and flashes past below. From the shadows across the street, a man and dog appear. He tilts his head back for a mouthful of Fiddle Faddle and throws the box beneath the tree. “Listen to the guitar’s pitch decrease as the sound waves are stretched further apart. This is how we know the universe is expanding, the Doppler Effect.”
“I didn’t climb up here to have a conversation. You’ll scare the damn birds away.”
“If it’s getting bigger, you’re smaller today than yesterday, less meaningful now than a moment ago. What happens when something keeps shrinking?”
“I’ll disappear?”
Long and slender like a Doberman by Dali, the dog howls and wags its tail as if delighted by the news. Brown spots over his eyes conspire with lips upturned at the corners of his gator snout to cast a countenance of cruel mirth. A tie-dyed bandana does nothing to mitigate this impression. Vertigo compels you to look skyward, as though man can only find comfort from his essence, which is not the substance of earth but the nothingness of space.
“Don’t forget there are countless universes, all part of the multiverse,” says the man. “There will be a billion more by the time you take another breath. They have the fecundity of aphids. It’s funny how modern physics adds new dimensions to the vanity of life lamented by the ancients. Solomon didn’t know the half of it.”
Let go of the branch. What difference does it make? You were already falling.
Basking in the sun while resting its posterior in a shadow, his dog could be mistaken for a Tiktaalik emerging from the sea to explore the land, or the missing link between Being and Nothingness. Though initially deterred by your moans and writhing, two crows land under the tree and peck at the remaining nuggets of Fiddle Faddle. Stretched like a rolling pin, the dog points at them.
“These magnificent birds,” says the man, “so intelligent they place walnuts on the road to be opened by traffic, can there be any doubt they’re acknowledging this as a blessing from their crow god, a deity characterized not only by darkness, but wisdom?”
“Maybe they’re hungry.”
“To think is to think about causes. They’re not postulating some grand unified theory involving caramel popcorn, gravity, and probability.” A scowl kneads a tragic mask across his features. “This is the dawn of a new horizon of study, the uncharted territory beyond the intersection of metaphysics and ornithology.”
“It was a stupid accident. The box just plopped there. This universe isn’t about them. It isn’t about any of us.”
The man towers over you. “Incorrect. It is about my Dachshund. Come along Maestoso.” They depart, the dog gliding away like some salami hovercraft.
A squished fly covers the Sub in Sub Gum Wanton. Contemplate how this creature’s only entry in the tablet of Existence is a bloody smear. But how many people, how many civilizations, amount to more?
The waitress, messenger from an olfactory heaven, weaver of the golden thread connecting prayers made to prayers answered, herald of things hoped for, is she not divine? If your ribs are fractured you need calcium.
“I’ll have the Happy Family with lobster instead of chicken.”
“Buffet,” she points.
Examine egg rolls beneath the pitiless rays of a heat lamp. If rearranged they could be used for a museum exhibit depicting the stages of decomposition. Were it not for spray patterns on the sneeze guard, quests for the lesser evil among three pans of swampy broth would be a fool’s errand. As always, hunger is the best sauce, but you can’t help grieving the loss of what could have been.
Take another mouthful of the orange puree with green swirls. Like a reptilian Mona Lisa it’s familiar but grotesque. If General Tso were here he’d behead the chef who did this to his recipe. A sharp fragment in the heretofore slimy globs wedges between two teeth and pierces your gum. Ironic how Greek cuisine would have provided better shelter from the first noble truth.
Outside Maestoso watches you with feigned serenity. His human companion kneels behind him, strokes his head and speaks to him and waves the other hand as though exhorting a disciple, or, more likely, pleading for wisdom from a sage.
“What the heck. Why are you guys following me?”
“I take it your knowledge of quantum mechanics is rather modest. Condolences. Causes do not necessarily precede their effects.” He looks both ways down the street and wiggles his fingers as though casting a spell. “Could I interest you in some doses?” A bead of sweat trickles down a lens of his shades, leaving a trail of crystalline stepping stones. “You’ll trip the light fantastic. You’ll see the canvas of reality when the gallery opens.”
“Will it make me throw up? I may have been poisoned.”
“You’re thinking of peyote. This will cleanse you at a deeper level.”
It’s time to examine the Big Picture and act accordingly. Consider the Battle of the Somme. Over thirty-thousand men died the first day. Name one. How many of your peers could name the war? Who will remember your glorious skirmishes? There’s only one practical conclusion. Carpe diem. Defy the cruel hand of Fate or whichever cosmic sadist preoccupies itself with the frustration of your desires. “Let’s go to my car.”
“You should definitely tear it in quarters,” he says. “You’ve become so accustomed to the painting you no longer know it is a painting. The realization will be momentous.”
“General Douglas Haig wouldn’t have dropped a quarter hit,” you tell him, taking three. “Here’s to old heroes and new friends.”
“Goodness gracious. You didn’t have any plans for today and tomorrow, did you? A direct confrontation with the ultimate artist will be a point of divergence in your life.” He tunes in the classical station and curses. Maestoso emits a sorrowful bay, reminding you he’s a hound dog. “There’s a conspiracy against Anton Bruckner. They played the adagio from the Seventh Symphony when Hitler died. How was that Bruckner’s fault? Did he travel forward in time and compose it on behalf of the fuehrer?”
“A Jewish conspiracy?”
“Don’t be obtuse. This is Chopin.”
“But the Nazis liked Beethoven and you hear him constantly.”
“Featherweight. Do you mind if we drive around until the gallery opens? Then we can go to my place and listen to Bruckner. The mystical gravitas of the situation cries out to the heavens for him. I majored in physics and music. Only one composer uncovered the design of reality. If it were destroyed it could be reconstructed from the blueprints of his symphonies. In layman’s terms, that’s the finest tripping music there is.”
“Better than Captain Beefheart?”
“Better than Buddy Rich,” he says.
“I call shenanigans.”
“It’s all about contrapuntal structures.”
The car descends a steep road toward Grant Park like it’s soaring down a rabbit hole. Streaks of silvery blue from Lake Michigan gleam between gold and crimson trees. On the golf course, colorful reapers swing their scythes as if practicing for appointments in Venice and Arcadia and everywhere.
“I don’t care where we go as long as I put that nasty lunch behind me.”
“Impossible. Your lunch splintered the universe.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“You don’t understand. Every possibility branches off hydra-style into another universe. The belief that there’s only one is more benighted than thinking the earth is the center of the cosmos. Every choice you make creates a you who took the other option.”
“It’ll be cool to talk about that when we’re tripping.”
“To the contrary. It’s a testament to mankind’s pig-ignorance of science and philosophy that no one before me has plumbed the consequences. You have a trillion clones. How does that impact the meaning of your existence? Should you extend to them the love you reserve for your self, or the hatred of Cain for an army of Abels?”
“Can we swap girlfriends?”
“The value of your life is deflated like U.S. currency. If everything that can happen does happen, free will is an obscene illusion. Good and evil are noises we make with our mouths. Life, with all its seemingly weighty choices, is a rigged lottery where all the numbers are picked in each drawing. We’re not dignified beings struggling through some great epic; we’re pitiful amoebas splitting every time the stimulus of an alternative is encountered.”
“At least I’m the original.”
“How do you know? Each new you is created with the memories of the one it split from, sustaining the illusion of personal identity. You might be ten seconds old. Worst of all, I’m trapped in a universe where Bruckner has only nine mature symphonies. In some he makes Haydn seem stingy.”
“And I’m trapped in one where Mary Weatherworth doesn’t answer my emails.”
Maestoso regards you with a chilling canine analogue of final judgment. His primate companion gasps, “The malevolent sorceress, sentry of the threshold between realms?”
“That’s one way to describe her. She’s quite the actress. I’m a big fan of her realms. Two in particular. It doesn’t feel like anything splits off.”
“It doesn’t feel like the earth is traveling around the sun at eighteen miles a second either.”
“What happens to all the clone universes?”
“They continue branching and splitting. You’re getting smaller, riding a roller coaster to nothingness down an asymptotic hill. How are we supposed to live knowing this is true? Many-worlds scenarios make doctrines of predestination a Spongebob episode by comparison. Try not to think about it. No one else does. I’m carrying this burden all by myself.”
“So if I play Russian roulette I can’t lose?”
“In a manner of speaking. One of you is bound to survive, but it’s Moloch’s immortality, sustained by the bloody sacrifices of all those who don’t. These maddening complications make me long for the blessed peace of oblivion. I’d love to visit a universe where I don’t exist.”
“But then you’d be there.”
“I’d wear a disguise.”
“So these doses are strong?”
“I can’t believe you dropped three.”
“Remember the Somme.”
“What’s dropped is dropped. You cannot un-drop what has been dropped.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Perched on the man’s knees like some surfing Anubis, Maestoso growls at a squirrel. “There’s a universe where he didn’t do that. Who knows how his silence changed the course of history there. It might not amount to much over the course of days or weeks, but in a thousand years it could be the difference between the Amish and the Ik tribe.”
“He should be more careful. Is there any way these universes connect?”
“Hugh Everett maintained that they’re decoherent from each other.”
“Was he a physicist?”
“He was the Messiah, surrounded by pygmies like Bohr. They persecuted him like a witch, dismissed him as a theologian. Can you imagine, those arrogant thugs considered theology beneath them.”
“So he said they can’t connect?”
Maestoso turns to you and growls like some conduit of thunder. The man leans down and puts his mouth next to one of the floppy ears. “Shhhhhh. He’s just asking.”
“It’s alright. There’s a universe where he didn’t do that.”
“Incorrect. He growled at you in all of them.”
Glittering slabs of sound enter the world through Bang & Olufsen speakers propping two windows open. Like a slender manatee suffering tonic-clonic seizures, Maestoso’s friend improvises a water ballet routine. During a quiet passage he leans over the side. “There’s another pool in the attic I could inflate for you. It’s safer than a chair. The swirling brass makes you feel like you’re flying.”
“I’m good.”
“How did you get blood on your clothes?”
“There was a bone in my tofu. I could have sworn they were invertebrates.”
“I’ll put those in the wash. You shouldn’t eat at Dong’s Wok. Their infractions of the health code are legion. Dong’s concept of hygiene is a child of the Shang Dynasty. You should have waited seventy-two hours before dosing.”
“That’s great advice. I’ll go back and do that.”
“Listen to the colors of the oboe. It’s like a tentacle covered with eyes reaching down from heaven.”
He’s right. And the clouds exhibit more evidence of intelligent design than anything below. Like globs of concrete hurled by graffiti artists, the messages drip down the sky, becoming chariots of mutant divinities scrambling for parking. Maestoso circles the pool, looking less like a sausage satellite and more like a kite tail. His human friend squeezes submerged fists to create pulsating jets that intersect in a crystal aurora. “I wonder how the universe where he went clockwise will turn out.”
“This many worlds stuff is Greek to me.”
“Some days I despair of understanding all the moral and existential consequences. Physicists who know it’s true won’t speak of how it impacts the meaning of our lives. They’re like a Roman mystery cult hiding evil secrets. Don’t be fooled by slick documentaries with breathless nerds babbling about how interesting it is. The only appropriate response is dismay. I don’t consent to exist in a universe this strange.”
“How does it work?”
“I’ll give you an example in laymen’s terms. Once upon a time Maestoso had to choose between defecating or taking a nap. Man’s deceptive instincts fool him into thinking only one of these options can exist. In fact, each occurred simultaneously in separate dimensions.”
“Which one are we in?”
“Probably the former, but it’s only a theory.”
Reading about this in Scientific American after nothing stronger than a cup of coffee would have its advantages. “How do we know when there’s a split?”
“The feeling of free will is often cited as proof of our ability to determine our choices and destinies. It’s nothing more than a dim awareness of the split. Which is more incredible, some magical property that allows us to be the uncaused cause of everything we do, or that alternate dimensions exist in the way the earth is not the center of the solar system? Luther and Calvin would have gratefully reconciled this with their theology. Wise men know free will is a sham.”
“So there’s a universe where I had the Chinese Happy Family?”
“There’s one where Dong washes his hands.”
“Why did I get stuck here?”
“There’s also one where he’s even less concerned with cleanliness. You’re writhing in agony there. Some gratitude is in order.”
“Wait a minute. A wiener dog created the universe? Is that good news or bad news?”
“Welcome to my world. Enter if you dare. Figuring out the ramifications is the greatest intellectual challenge of all time. Make no mistake, Maestoso didn’t wave his paws and exclaim, ‘Let there be a preposterous mess.’ It wasn’t intentional and it’s only one example, perfectly consistent with everything we know about quantum mechanics. If you want to deny it feel free to come up with a new scientific paradigm.”
“It’s probably best that no one knows we had such humble origins.”
“Compared to what? By their nature all creation stories are weird. Look how humans come into existence. It’s bizarre beyond words. Why should cosmic geneses be any different?”
Change the subject. This is a bad buzz. “I like those mirror balls in the garden.”
“Don’t stare at them. The ancients believed mirrors opened a passageway to hostile worlds, the wicked and cunning denizens of which insisted they were real and we were the reflections.”
“So they believed in a multiverse too?”
“Wise men saw the threat of mirrors firsthand. Detritus wrote that having a mirror was the same as leaving your window open during a pestilence. What happened when these bans were rescinded? What became of Egypt, Rome, the Zapotecs? Do you for so much as one second believe the collapse of these mighty empires was due to bad luck? Modern physicists willfully ignore how parallel universes aren’t completely cut off from each other.”
Maestoso drops a squeaky toy and howls and rubs his fangs on a corner of the pool.
“What I meant to say is that the inclination to squeeze the Weltanschauung of a prior age into our paradigm is best resisted. Who knows what they were thinking. Listen to this movement. The adagio of the Eighth Symphony will be the greatest half-hour of your life. This recording is sublime. Too many conductors race through it.”
“Wouldn’t there be a universe where it’s longer, where it lasts for hours?”
He looks at you like an infant gazing at its mother. “Where it lasts forever. That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said. The eternal adagio is what we mean when we speak of paradise, and it is a paradise lost.”
A luminous glacier emerges from the speakers and drifts through the garden. Trailing a sapphire stream, it crosses the alley and slides over the edge of the world. Like a periscope come to life, Maestoso stands against the pool and watches his friend’s amphibious ritual. Silence beckons him back to the side. “Is this what you thought he’d be like?”
“He’s cute, like a skinny downsized Basset Hound.”
“No, not him. God. Say it. Speak the name.”
“God.”
“Say it again.”
“God.”
“Again.”
“God.”
“Look behind the word. What’s there? Why have you never thought about this? Are you afraid? Keep repeating it. Watch what happens. The sounds we attach to things do not explain them. Now that you know you’ll never forget. From now on the world will appear in all its outrageous strangeness.”
“Thanks. Can I pet your dog?”
“He does not exist for your amusement. Nor does the world. And God does not exist to be cursed when you get a flat tire, or to be flattered with obsequious nonsense if you’re diagnosed with cancer.”
“I like your tie-dyed speaker covers.”
“The subject will persist whether we discuss it or not.”
“Maybe we could get back to it. I’m free next week.”
“You’re freaked out because the reclusive creator disappears in the familiarity of things. You’ve become inured to the primordial strangeness of everything: dirt, the stars in the sky, the thoughts in your head. A dose reveals the masterful canvas of reality as though you just walked into a gallery and saw it for the first time. Up until now you’ve been a bat fluttering around in the Sistine Chapel, thinking your perceptions are accurate. Reality was designed to hide all signs of the artist. Why do you think the shaman’s stock in trade was the vision quest?”
“Why is he hiding?”
“Most great creators are reclusive. He wants his work to speak for itself.”
“Like Buckethead?”
“They both have some gnarly shards.”
“Why does everyone who looks for him come back with something different?”
“Describe Michelangelo, little bat. Don’t forget that artists love ambiguity. And you’ve been stultified. You’re like a feral child raised in the Louvre, taking it all for granted. Those paintings aren’t wallpaper. Smell the air. It’s a masterpiece. Feel this water. It’s a work of absolute genius.”
“Watch your dog eat a rabbit.”
His hyena laugh gives you goose bumps. “Indeed, we are not the endpoint of things. though the belief propels us in useful ways. We were, at best, a necessary evil. The purpose of man was to breed Dachshunds into existence.”
Your sensitive condition makes this an ideal time for discussions about whether you possess the telekinetic power to mold cloudscapes or simply the modest psychic ability to anticipate their changes — anything but this.
“My conceptions are no less probable than any others,” he says. “How can you ascribe probability to such things? Their rarity is owing to a lack of efficient promulgation. If only I had been an advisor to Constantine. The West would be dotted with Dachshund temples.”
Apocalyptic horns summon him back into the two-foot depths, possessing him to gyre in the waves. Maestoso soars past like some landing Boeing. When he plops down and stretches you question whether the sphinx was modeled on a cat. These Teutonic steeds, scourges of the underworld, defilers of burrows, symbol of Germany during the Great War, did they serve the Pharaohs? No, the Pharaohs served them.
“Listen to this next movement.” He jumps out of the pool. “Bruckner didn’t compose symphonies. He created of a kingdom of aural phyla. Can you imagine if this was a tree? It would be bigger than the Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of life.”
The music stops. You could swear it’s the Pillsbury Doughboy running around the yard with a spade and a CD, followed by an elegant hybrid between a stallion and a caterpillar. It’s enthralling until menacing inquiries descend: How many times have you tripped? Will you know when you’re headed around that rainbow bend? How will your personality weather those changes? He was a physics student. You barely made it through algebra.
“Maybe I should fertilize it with a dose,” he says, patting the top of a mound next to a divot of sod. “How long do you think it’ll take to grow?” He wipes sweat from his face with dirty hands, leaving skid marks, and galumphs back inside. He returns with a handful of CDs. “We’ll grow a tree from each one,” he says, pacing to select the best patches to plant his crop.
You should talk him out of this, but many hands of bright fingers wave from your peripheral field and disappear when you turn to look. Wait, those are swarms of flying Gummi Worms. What if they crawl in your ears?
“Except the Ninth Symphony. That tree would grab us up in its branches and never let us go.” His herky-jerky motion, reminiscent of an amateur cartoon, temps you to break the First Commandment of Trippers: thou shalt not regret the dose thou dropped.
“I shouldn’t have taken three hits.”
The rueful admission echoes down serpentine catacombs deep in your mind, waving a torch through long-buried chambers inscribed with crayon hieroglyphics: you’re staring up at the diving board with dread during a swimming lesson; you’re playing hide and seek in your grandparent’s musty basement; you’re debating whether to shoplift and you know the clerk knows what you’re thinking; you’re kissing and you’re sure you’re doing it wrong and wondering if she knows you know she knows.
You’ve been robbed. Those times, where did they go? Once so alive but now hidden in a mass grave. And that’s where the future ones are headed. Remember that. All the days to come will vanish thus. What value or meaning can they contain? We are hoarders of dust. Feel the liquid drip from your eyes. Is it the inseparable gloss of a magnificent canvas or an arbitrarily applied sheen splotched over a bungled hobby model?
Maestoso’s friend appears to be wearing blackface. The yard could be mistaken for a pet cemetery with an indolent caretaker. “I also planted symphonies zero and double zero. Bruckner’s symphonies didn’t start with one.”
When he pumps his fists incandescent smoke drifts off his arms, causing another lapse. Should’ve taken a quarter hit. He warned me. Darkness chases the light west, peeling the callus of familiarity until the presence of its absence and the absence of its presence become one. The word-shields are gone and Reality glows bright and strange under a thick hide of normalcy.
“Whether it’s more absurd than contemptible to have a badger as the state animal is open to debate,” he says, riding a train of thought free from the tyranny of tracks. “The noble Dachshund rid Germany of those insipid vermin, just like Saint Patrick chased the snakes from Ireland.”
Which is worse, Maestoso reading your mind like Shakespeare paging through a comic book, or that the proud but evasive Homunculus defending the fortress within, the last holdout against such insidious ideas, is mortally wounded by your lackadaisical pursuit of a cheap buzz? When he abandons his post “you” will be the sum of these garish sensations and nothing else. Contra Buddha, contra Hume, there was a self in there all along only you had to obliterate him to prove it. How paradoxical. Happy now?
To whom it may concern: please make this stop. I promise I’ll never even drink again. I’ll spend the rest of my life doing good stuff.
“You’ve noticed Maestoso’s slender torso, yes? That was for excavating the cowardly badger. Wisconsin may as well have a tapeworm on its flag. Have you ever written to our imbecilic governor demanding the Dachshund be made the state animal? I’ll give you the address. I used to call his office every day until the FBI asked me to stop.”
Car doors slam. Voices echo on the side of the house, their pitch and speed commensurate with the breeze. They slow to demonic moans and accelerate to chirps. Maestoso watches you, giggling. His swan neck corkscrews like a lasso. He knows you know that some ancient king summoned his forbears from the sea, enticing them to adapt to land, waiting for their stubby legs to sprout. What pact was made with these primal serpents of the deep? And how long before they devoured the foolish monarch and established their kingdom on earth?
“Goodness gracious. My parents are home. I didn’t expect them for two days.”
“Your parents? Dealing acid must be a labor of love.”
“I resent that characterization. I’m the curator of a forbidden gallery.”
“I don’t know where she gets her recipes,” says a chipmunk voice. “That peach cobbler was — Goodness gracious.”
“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” growls a voice.
With the effort it takes to squat 10,000 pounds you turn your head and swear that senior and junior are twins. Can sexual reproduction be bypassed? you wonder with eyes at half-mast. A mushroom sprouts on his father’s forearm and grows to a cauliflower with junior’s features. “Could I interest you in some doses?” the fetal bud inquires. “You’ll trip the light fantastic.”
You pry your eyes open and promise to never again question the wisdom of Nature or God or whatever runs this vile burlesque. A vortex of translucent black and white squares surrounds his parents, depriving them of the green light emanating from the Bruckner mounds.
Maestoso floats toward you like a submarine by Louis Wain, the thin black lips on his alligator jaws pressed together in a sardonic smile, whiskers twitching, his eyes not the perceptual organs of a unique being but portholes to the world of imperishable abstractions where modus ponens and the prime nature of three and five will survive the heat death of the universe.
“What happened to my lawn?” says senior, emitting gobs of spittle like a venom-spewing toad. He turns to you. The rotation frames dozens of holographic images, each of which tries to catch up to the original but overshoots the mark to create a corkscrew, then a cyclone. A sausage-link finger appears from the whirlwind. “Did you do this to my lawn?”
Most of the power lines between your brain and mouth are down. “We’re growing an Ewok village … or something.”
“He’s high on some drug, isn’t he?” Apparently his son’s muddy face is par for the course but your consciousness expansion is a crime against humanity.
“The problem of other minds has never been satisfactorily resolved,” says Maestoso’s friend, “which makes the ascription of specific brain-states tenuous. We’re comparing Bruckner trees to the Yggdrasil.”
“Why is he in his underwear?”
“I’m helping him remove the blood from his clothing.” In spite of its accuracy the explanation feels askew like a wheel off its axle.
“You need to get a job. You’re not gonna spend the rest of your life wandering around with a wiener dog.”
“If it was good enough for Detritus it’s good enough for me.”
“They did not have wiener dogs in ancient Greece.”
“And how would you know? Did you learn that at Briggs and Stratton? His teachings about mirror worlds defended by Dachshunds were stolen by the Sentinels of the Chandelier.”
The portion of your mind that once gracefully orchestrated social interactions attempts to defuse this awkward situation. “That wiener dog can read my mind. He created the universe. He evolved from sea serpents.”
As his father drops you on the curb, you notice the resemblance between your car and a Portuguese man-of-war. “I don’t think I should drive,” you say, hoping he can understand you in the echo chamber, wishing that “you” were in the parallel world where Maestoso took a nap, or, better still, the one where Mary Weatherworth answers your emails.
Like ingredients in a magic potion, the combination of his words smash your head and baseball bat sends your faltering limbs down the sidewalk, which unwinds toward the horizon like a roll of toilet paper.
The stars, are they not confetti? There is a direct relation between the number of them and the triviality of you. Squint your eyes. The constellation of a long slender hound appears, marking the heavens more objectively than dippers or crabs or bowmen. Trace it with your finger. The dog glares as if perturbed by your discovery. Heaven is not a Rorschach after all.
Perhaps the ancients didn’t name him for a reason, or only spoke the name during ceremonies where his guidance was sought, his wrath placated. They looked to the stars and the stars looked back. What became of them? Survival was not among the blessings from this deity. His ferocity makes him more humanlike than one of love. Close your eyes and seize the earth. So solid. So flat and stationary. Your senses are liars and fools.
“What about those other universes he was talking about?” you whisper, assuming the fetal position. It worked once. “Screw it. All politics is local. As long as they aren’t connected they don’t dilute the significance of this one.”
The hound in the sky continues to scowl, as he did before you were born, before all men were born.
Petronius Jablonski 