July 28th, 2010
There was a time, not long ago, when I went from having everything I wanted out of life to having very little. As time wore on the hole went deeper and deeper. I did what I could to clamber out, eventually spending every waking hour, seven days a week at this job or that. But my health suffered and what gains I had made were quickly lost. In the midst of this gloom, a friend appeared, back from the Wild West with a notion of starting a literary concern – one of those fruitless little ventures of no consequence; I was eager to contribute, to perhaps regain a little bit of my lost life.
Early on in the endeavor my friend received a humble submission entitled “german briefness and a bucket full of eels” penned by a beleaguered prostitute in Belgium. It was a masterful black fairy tale about her sordid life. She was a godsend and quickly became his marquee writer. Her blood and guts stories were full of horror and misery and yet always managed a breath of humor or some small gesture of heartbreaking tenderness.
My friend smartly resolved to publish a book of her writing. He commissioned more work from her, which came in a flood, sometimes two or three stories in a day. He then took the literally hundreds of pieces and assembled the best of them into a vague narrative. The result was a kind of fugue – a portrait of a young woman as complete as Anna Karenina but superior in its black humor and bloody violence. He asked if I would design a cover and I jumped, but how could I represent this wonderful artifact? Surely all books are forever judged by their cover. I knew a careless reader would see only an endless and irredeemable barrage of sadism and perversion – I wanted to emphasize its astounding literary quality.
I procrastinated, of course. Then one day I had a breakdown. The structure of my unreasonable life gave out and the ever-deepening hole caved in on me. I quit one job, and took a leave of absence from another. I was emotionally broken, exhausted, and suffering from serious health problems. At last I had time to illustrate. If you looked closely at the lines of my drawing you would see a trembling hand, an effect of a middling fever and strong medications. Designing the art for a small press book by an unknown Belgian writer is not the most consequential thing a person can do, but it was everything to me.
…
Kittens in the Boiler
by Delphine Lecompte
[amazon]
July 21st, 2010
Thelonious Lamedvavnik drifted down the boulevard as a solemn drizzle began to fall. At length he reached the lamp lit walk and line of elm trees that girded the commons. The leaves began to shiver as the drizzle turned to rain and a churning mantle of vapor flooded the green. Quivering, he drew out his pocket watch. He had made his appointment on time and hoped that that would mean something in the final reckoning. His caller was also punctual. It came first by a great wind that drove the rain sidelong and upwards. The elms were stripped of their leaves, the grasses flattened, the mists dispersed. The massive worm lit upon the green with a stroke of thunder that rumpled the earth.
The Dragon’s lustrous, nictitating eyes found Thelonious’ meager shape; he swallowed and raised his tremulous voice as high as it would go “Are you, by chance, the serpent, Vespasian I?” The worm flattened the commons with a thunderous roar, and its scorching, rank breath washed over Thelonious and singed his hair. “You see, I was asking on behalf of a friend. He’s a historian and-” The dragon’s tail swept the green like a tidal wave, felling the trees and shattering the line of lamps. The calm of certain doom overcame Thelonious then, and he found in himself a degree of audacity, “Is this meeting regarding my work as a onomastographer?”
The serpent’s massive head reared up several stories, then snapped forward like a cobra. Poor Thelonious closed his eyes and leapt in fear! When he again opened them, he found himself rushing through the air, holding fast to one of the beast’s curving horns. A roar of unearthly volume and violence blared from the beast’s maw as it tried to shake him free. But Thelonious held fast! He lifted his face to the sky and addressed a plea to every name for God he knew. He had no idea that the Dragon’s raging had masked the sound of a terrific explosion several blocks away, or that an antique player piano was presently hurtling through the air toward them, trailing the limpid notes of ‘Daisy Bell’.
In fact, Thelonious and the Dragon were quite ill prepared when the player piano struck. The instrument smashed on both Thelonious and the skull of the beast with a queer resonance as one of its legs drove through the Dragon’s watery eye. Thelonious fell to the ground amongst a rain of debris. The lifeless head of the beast smote the green and the earth shivered. Thelonious returned to consciousness in the pattering rain and achingly rose from the mud. With excruciating effort he crossed the devastated commons to the boulevard and hailed a hansom cab. And yes, the taxi very nearly killed him.
…
July 14th, 2010
Thelonious knew Guillaume de Gaulle from the dominoes club he once belonged to (but was ejected from due to a number of upset games). Guillaume de Gaulle was a nasty man, and a cheater at dominoes. His appearance fed into Thelonious’ suspicions, and rightly so, for Guillaume de Gaulle confirmed everything when he came to Thelonious, on an early evening stroll through the park, and announced that Thelonious had an appointment.
“An appointment?” Thelonious squawked. The impish Guillaume hissed in his ear, “Indeed…with a dragon!” Thelonious cried out, “Oh dear, what does a dragon want with me?” There was a crack of wood in the distance. “Why, to eat you up, of course!” Guillaume de Gaulle said with perverse pleasure. Thelonious turned white with fear as a baseball struck him in the back of his head; he rubbed it whining, “Where? When?” Guillaume de Gaulle snapped, “On the commons, midnight!” Thelonious said, “Well I won’t be there!” Guillaume de Gaulle’s eyes went wide, “-and not keep an appointment?” he said, “with a dragon? Why, if you don’t appear he’ll not only devour you, but all you love!” With that Guillaume de Gaulle leapt off into the night.
Thelonious sent an urgent telegram to his friend Albert Ethelbert. Albert was a historian, but unbeknownst to Thelonious, he was a terrible one. Albert’s money came chiefly from constantly winning small prizes in the lottery. He told no one of this, least of all Thelonious, for Thelonious had come to trust Albert’s readings of history and poor Albert did not want to disappoint his friend. They agreed to meet at a favorite café of theirs in the city. “I’m late,” Thelonious apologized when he at last showed, “a landau struck me on the way.” The tea arrived then, scalding Thelonious’ lap, and he apologized again, “I apologize again, but I’m in something of a hurry. My appointment is in less than an hour!”
“Well, I think I can be of some assistance,” Albert offered. “Your Guillaume de Gaulle is, no doubt, so called because he traces his line back to the Gauls of southern Europe, who in ancient times were called the Gauldarnits.” Thelonious gently dabbed his lap with a napkin, “And this relates to the dragon?” “More directly than I first presumed!” Albert read from his notes, “You see, the Gauldarnits were sacked by marauders from Tartarstan, who ate their food, and cursed like sailors, poisoning the ears of children. The desperate Gauldarnits had no recourse but to summon the great serpent, Vespasian I, in hopes of frightening off the menacing Tartars. Propriety dictated that the Gauldarnits appoint a herald for the beast, for which they chose ‘Gilles de Gaul’, no doubt an ancestor of your Guillaume!” Thelonious gathered his things, “Well, I thank you for your help, Alby.” Albert wished his dear friend the best of luck, but as Thelonious left the café a migrating duck suffered a stroke, fell out of the sky, and rapped him on the head.
…
July 7th, 2010
Thelonious A. Lamedvavnik had two professions: firstly, he was a chronicler of names, an onomastographer, as he liked to call it; secondly, he was a calameter, one who is hit by moving vehicles for the insurance money. He rarely spoke of the latter, though if the truth be told, it was obscenely lucrative. Being an onomastographer, on the other hand, never made Thelonious a hapenny. In Singapore, he would lecture sailors resting between shore leave appointments, on the periods in history in which oriental names were fashionable in the West. He would fail to mention the jin-rickshaw that had trampled him the day before that was going to fetch him a ticket home on a luxury ocean liner.
Thelonious had been hit by horse-drawn taxis, carriages, trolleys, trains, he had even fallen into the subway tube and been trampled by horses at the track. Thelonious was the first to be struck by the automobile. Any evidence of success in onomastics was actually paid for with calametry. Even his offices, Lamedvavnik Onomastics, had been paid for by an unlucky sleigh rider who had ridden down Thelonious one unfortunate Christmas Eve.
Conveyances were not the only things that hit Thelonious. Practically everything that was not stationary struck him. He was even once hit by stationery: a dear lady friend of Thelonious had received a letter from her fiancé confessing an indiscretion; she had crumpled the letter and thrown it in anger, striking poor Thelonious in the eye. Thelonious’ life was a never ending rain of rocks, chamber pots, soap, loose bricks, hot bowls of soup and so on. In the city, where such objects are often bandied about, Thelonious could even be struck by several things at once!
One particularly egregious incident occurred while Thelonious was strolling along the esplanade. He spied a bicyclist bearing down on him, and, fully aware of his personal disposition, stepped clear to the side – and into another bicyclist who knocked him into the first. At that very same moment, an empty bottle of ripple, cast off by a vagrant, smashed on Thelonious’ foot. As he grabbed at his pained foot a half-eaten mule from god knows where fell from the sky and obliterated the whole heap! After that, Thelonious decided that there was some sort of conspiracy, not against him, but against the art of onomastics. To make matters worse he was being stalked by his bitter rival, Guillaume de Gaulle!
…
June 30th, 2010
an open letter to the members of the United States Congress
For several years now I have been a proud resident of a certain mill town in New England. Along with many of my fellow residents I think it is a lovely city. Some would disagree. They see it as a rotten city, spoiled by one of the crucial features that makes it so appealing to the rest of us: a substantial population of immigrants. On a warm summer night I like to walk along the lamp lit river esplanade for there I find a parade of people from the four corners of the world, strolling and quietly chatting in their native tongues. Everyone smiles as you pass; we are pleased to share in this conspiracy, this fine privilege known only to a few places, a few precious times in history.
I suppose that you would say that some of these immigrants are here ‘illegally’. What a stupid notion! Who can tell another man where to hang his hat? They show no desire to evict us, to seize our parcels for themselves – you will remember that our forebears were not so courteous when they immigrated here. There is a glut of property available, and in fact we need immigrants, desperately.
Since its inception our nation has ridden on their steam. It takes people with tremendous gumption to transplant their lives to this land of mad outcasts. Thus, in spite of ourselves, we siphon off the most intrepid and resourceful of the other nations. We should be welcoming these exceptional new neighbors with apple pie for it is their will to make a new life that gives our nation its best advantage. Those of us whose families have resided here for more than a few generations mysteriously feel some grand sense of entitlement by contrast, and yet we offer very little. All the adventure has been bred out of us. We have none of the constitution of our immigrant ancestors.
If there is disproportionate crime and poverty among the caste of immigrants, it is most certainly due to their lack of that most essential right, hard won by our own immigrant forebears: representation. Yet before long, much like the wolves that came before, these immigrants will find the way into your peerage, and though some of your colleagues are doing everything they can to drive them off, they will prevail certainly, for they come from better stock. Take heart! Like us, once fed they will domesticate, and together we can bark at wind that stirs in the bushes.
…
