♥death cult♥
Posted by sean on August 1, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/08/01/%e2%99%a5death-cult%e2%99%a5/
from the amalgamator’s observatory
In the city summer after the trashmen have driven off with the week’s waste, a trailing fetid odor stagnates mid-street. I ride through the rank air and it feels so oddly cool and clean. A young man asks if it will rain today and I shrug toward the dark clouds moving towards us from the south. A neighbor stares through me from behind dark glasses and I wonder why, when before she used to say hello. I believe things shifted when she bleached her hair. Perhaps she bleached out more than pigment. In the close quarters of rowhouse life, we are farther apart than in the rural countryside where being a neighbor means more than someone to avoid eye contact with. There it means sharing and helping, a way of life. I like my space and freedom from the noise of others, but I prefer a friendly understanding to rude avoidance. What if, like Bartleby, we all preferred not to. That said, I have my aloof days. I do have those.
And so…summer’s confluence of days spreads farther into time’s watershed, like tiny feeder streams losing their autonomy. Warm water mixes with cool and thus blended seeps through me. I am a slow cracked flagon, never empty, never full. Plagued by seeing all the wrong things, agreeing to mistakes made in advance. Orchestrating release of the next batch of tics, twitches, compulsions to soothe and smooth. Periods of mania descending to flatline. Elaborating on the never happening.
But wait! It’s never just the weather, is it. Isn’t it. Yes and no. This is getting repetitive. Instead let’s go word diving. It’s like pearl diving, but with words, and less dangerous. Fun fact: the average university-educated native English speaker’s receptive vocabulary size is around 20,000 word families (a word family is a base word and its inflected forms and derivations). Receptive size refers to the number of words recognized while listening and reading. Productive size refers to the number of words used in speaking and writing, and is often understood to be half the receptive size. To put this in perspective, the OED defines roughly 600,000 words. So dive deep, the bottom is farther away than you might think.
Posted by sean on July 31, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/31/from-the-amalgamators-observatory/
box stores and theme restaurants
New entries from the American Handbook™, ultimate lexicon of the American lifestyle!
Box store: A cavernous corporate-owned structure filled with name brand products arranged on shelves and available for purchase. A nice little Saturday in America typically includes a trip to at least one, but preferably six or eight, of these wonders of modern consumerism. Often bundled together into convenient concrete and asphalt abominations called “strip malls,” box stores alleviated the tedious need for easily winded Americans to visit multiple small independent businesses operated by their hard-working fellow citizens. Americans now thrill to the experience of strolling down a box store’s expansive aisles, thoughtfully constructed wide enough to accommodate most American consumers’ considerable girth. Fast food kiosks strategically placed throughout the store offer fried snacks and sugar-laden beverages to counteract the physical exhaustion associated with choosing and purchasing products. The genius inherent in the box store concept is the implicit understanding that what Americans want above all is for everything they desire to be within their pudgy arms’ reach wherever they go. The box store offers consumers much more than a place to buy both toasters and toilet paper. It also nourishes their cravings for high calorie foods, provides their ill-mannered offspring with mindless entertainment, and comforts them with the familiar warm embrace of all their favorite corporate brands.
Theme restaurant: An eating establishment, often corporate-owned, where an overt guiding concept takes precedence over food quality. In these restaurants, the experience of being entertained is what matters, because at a basic level, Americans have a slavish need to be entertained at all times. And let’s face it, restaurants are boring. There’s nothing fun about sitting down at a table with your family and friends and eating weird food brought to you by some dull waiter. But dress that waiter up like a pirate or a clown, and suddenly the air is charged with the electricity of fun. As an extreme example of this, there is an American restaurant chain called Dick’s Last Resort where the wait staff is trained to be purposefully obnoxious and patrons arrive expecting to be verbally abused and placed in awkward situations. There is nothing better than a day of wandering the aisles of your favorite box stores followed by a delicious meal at Dick’s, where the waitress ridicules your bald spot and pours cream of cauliflower soup in your crotch. This right to pay for bad food paired with public humiliation is a cherished feather in the American Freedom Cap™, and that’s why communism was such a disturbing threat.
Posted by sean on July 30, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/30/box-stores-and-theme-restaurants/
vera
She used to call on Friday evenings. As soon as I’d get settled at the reference desk after cataloging books all day, the phone would ring. If Rich were there, he’d smirk and walk away, knowing who was on the other end of the line.
“Hello, who’s this?” she’d brusquely ask.
“Hi, Vera, it’s Sean,” I’d say.
Over time she’d come to recognize my voice and would even start asking for me if I was not the one who answered. She was suspicious of new people, but it didn’t faze her for long. The first time I talked to her, I was bewildered. She began listing off seemingly random phrases. Slowly I realized they were crossword clues. She was not unfriendly, although neither would I characterize her as friendly.
She’d often argue about the correctness of the answers I provided. Over time, though, we developed a hesitant rapport. I was surprised when my irritation at her long-winded calls suddenly gave way to comfort in how she helped pass the time on slow Friday nights. I began spending my Friday lunch hour working my way through the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzle so I would be prepared for her calls.
The first time she stopped calling, I wondered where she’d gone. From talking with some of my colleagues, I found out that she was periodically institutionalized at the state hospital. She’d disappear from the phone lines for several months, and one day she’d start calling again like normal. No one seemed to know the details. Well, probably someone did, but I never heard them. I kind of didn’t want to know.
Some of the staff had even met her before. At one time she was well enough to come to the library. I discovered other bits and pieces from talking to my colleagues. For instance, they told me she owned one of those hand-held computers used for helping solve crosswords, which begged the question of why she called at all. Behind her disengaged and often hostile manner, was she really just lonely?
Sometimes while on the phone with her, I’d hear a male voice in the background. She’d occasionally refer to him or say something to him, but never explained who he was. I think his name was Harold, but I may be confusing my memory of these phone calls with the movie Harold and Maude. In my head now, Vera sounds like Maude, but in reality I think her voice was harsher. The years have softened over that roughness in my recollections, like they’ve done with other jagged edges of the past.
I wonder sometimes if Vera still calls the library. I wonder if she ever asked about me after I left. There were so many people I never said goodbye to before I ran from that town. Of course I could find out easily enough if she’s still around. But I don’t really want to know, in the same way that I didn’t want to see her in person. For me, she was a disembodied voice on the other end of the line, someone I could count on to be the same every single time, someone who wanted something from me that I could actually provide. She was an odd piece of the absurd puzzle that comprised a not altogether pleasant period of my life. Somehow she fit in there, though, just like all the other odd pieces did.
Posted by sean on July 27, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/27/vera/
hold this empty box
Tonight I watched Box of Moonlight. I cannot believe it took me so long to find this film [thanks to a respected Goodreads user for mentioning it in a comment thread]. It came out in 1996, while I was deep into my cultural blackout period. Lord knows what else I missed during that time. But I wouldn’t trade those halcyon days of shooting pellet guns at the abandoned van in the gravel parking lot of my hut down by the river. Or maybe I would. Depends on the price. Regardless, it’s all part of who I am now. When you watch a film from 1996 on DVD, the movie starts right up without any previews or pushing any buttons on the remote. It’s nice. I like John Turturro and Sam Rockwell and Catherine Keener. They are all good people in the movies. This is a film that the orbs would hate. Only strange people like films like this. People are smart in different ways. I wish this was universally understood. One person can’t know everything. People think in different ways. This leads to exceptional behavior in one avenue for one person, and a different avenue for another person. What this means is we each can learn from another, from anyone. People are so hard on themselves. It’s unnecessary. We can only do the best that we can.
So there’s this zine called Miranda and the editor, Kate Haas, writes a regular column in it called “Motel of Lost Companions,” where in each issue she spotlights some person from her past she’s no longer in touch with and talks about the significance of this person in her life at the time. This has always resonated with me, for my past is littered with lost companions. Where they all are now is anyone’s guess. I suppose I could get a Facebook account and try to find them, but what would be the point. Likely to be a depressing and futile exercise. I’m sure most are married with kids now…so boring and predictable. Although I suspect some of them aren’t even on Facebook at all. Some of them are probably living desperate lives in basements or roominghouses, struggling to get by and largely failing. Those are the ones I’d probably like to have a conversation with but could never find.
The current moon phase is 47% of full. I hate the internet for telling me that. It would be a tough night to gather moonlight in a box, especially in the city. When I went out, the air felt cool and clean at least. I thought about lost companions and the few that still remain. I thought about Joy Division’s song “In A Lonely Place” and how it haunts me. It’s tied to someone lost, then found, now in limbo. The needle on the vinyl in that room so long ago, caressing the marble and stone, the blinds drawn against our futures.
There are lost companions everywhere, some of them lost before they’re even found. And we’ll never meet because the world is so big. I guess that’s okay, although it sometimes still bothers me. We are all of us in lonely places, after all, but the ones inside us we cannot leave.
Posted by sean on July 25, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/25/hold-this-empty-box/
a philalethe and a panmnesiac walk into a bar
Scripturient fugues scrape at this summer torment, as I sit saccadic in my seat, genuflecting to twin telescreens, the slim dark overlords of these waking hours. Glistering dreams spawn from stem and cortex under cloak of darkness; if not coaxed out quick, consciousness crucifies them upon the day’s brutal y-axis.
Late at night I hail the sidewalk slugs, grown fat on summer’s bounty, no longer convening, but navigating solo in their slow deliberate way, yearning perhaps for a more saltigrade life. I try to lead Farley’s falling paws away from their soft yielding bodies, but theirs is forever a doomed existence in this urban setting. I can only do so much.
Revulsion spawns in less innocent corners, as I perceive the proboscis of humanity probing at inappropriate places. Get thee away, proboscis! See how your callous actions rub salt in your own wounds, spinning on until one day you’ll all lie screaming, salted strips of dried-out flesh stretched on a burning hot bed of asphalt. Or something…ahem.
Never mind, it’s time to molt this dacrygelotic husk. It’s time to cram these junked-out hours in a dirty suitcase and hurl it in the harbor. The air is like bathwater and I will yet swim in it, for I have no choice. And yet the psithurism of the autumnal approach beckons. I still hear it, muted and steam-wrapped as it is.
Posted by sean on July 24, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/24/a-philalethe-and-a-panmnesiac-walk-into-a-bar/
quadripartite
Farley channeled his dingo ancestors in a frenetic dig for water.
He jumped in the pool to clean off.
Decrepit truck with dog.
Corn! We picked some and ate it. ‘Twas good.
Posted by sean on July 24, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/24/quadripartite/
ignotum per ignotius
This has nothing to do with the following post.
Good evening, this is your onomatomaniacal captain speaking. While I ruminate over a possible second section of the previously published story, I’m returning this blog to its regularly scheduled program of automatic writing, arcane ramblings, and sudden bursts of intentional confusion. I feel excited and relieved about that, although I realize others might not. To those folks I will relate the following anecdote. I have always been curious about the wasp they call the cicada killer. Now, I like cicadas, so much so that I even have a tattoo of one on my arm (people usually think it’s a butterfly or a bee, but to hell with them). So I was shocked when I first learned that there was a wasp feeding on cicadas. To me, they seemed untouchable. I just figured they showed up, made a lot of noise, and then fell dead on the ground. I had no idea about this cicada killer and I wanted to know more. Well, today I finally saw a cicada killer. IT WAS FLYING WITH A CICADA THAT IT HAD JUST CAUGHT. This was at the country estate of my sister and her boyfriend. The cicada killer flew past me with its cargo and descended from the sky to the edge of the garden, where it promptly disappeared into a hole in the ground! I was flabbergasted. So if you’re feeling disappointed about the story not continuing right now, just be thankful you’re not a half-dead cicada being dragged underground by a wasp. And if you’re not disappointed, that’s good, too, because you must be reading this blog for the aforementioned rambling confusion and such, which is what we now have plenty of here.
More about cicada killers here. Side note: my favorite part of that link is the droll observation made in the photo’s caption that “Tall grass does not seem to keep them from locating the entrance.” Indeed it does not, as I saw with my very own peepers earlier today!
P.S. I may post a few more photos later from “Weekend at the Country Estate,” starring cicada killers, muddy dogs, giant gardens, and ancient abandoned vehicles.
Posted by sean on July 22, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/22/ignotum-per-ignotius/
hiding under my deck from the insect overlords
Channel 6 anchorman Kent Brockman mistakenly reports on a master race of giant space ants.
Welcome to the Kingdom of Ants. I don’t know what goes on here, but I like it. Actually I don’t care for ants. I particularly don’t like when they start that business of traveling in lines. Nor do I like them crawling incessantly around on my kitchen counter or invading the hummingbird feeders (even though there are no hummingbirds this year? where are they? hello?? I created an urban paradise for you and you never showed up?). But enough about that. I enjoy the idea of an Ant Kingdom. Do you remember the Simpsons episode where Homer gets sent into space? He bumps into an experimental ant farm, letting the ants loose into the space shuttle. Footage of the accident, depicting ants looming large in the camera lens, is picked up by Springfield’s Channel 6 News. Anchorman Kent Brockman subsequently reports that the shuttle has been taken over by a “master race of giant space ants.” Brockman goes on to state: “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.” On the wall behind him, Brockman has hung a homemade “Hail Ants” sign. Now that’s funny. My roommates and I hung an identical sign in our apartment many years ago. But in reality I’m pretty sure I would not enjoy living under insect overlords. They would likely make me march in lines, which I would hate.
Brockman shows off his obsequious nature.
Mondays are so absurd. Lately I’ve been away from work more than I’ve been at work, which makes being at work now seem all the more ridiculous. I’ve got this sticker at home in a box that says “Why do you work?” I hate that sticker. That’s why it stays in the box. It’s so cold at work and it’s so hot at home and this is a source of perpetual confusion for my body and my mind. This morning it was raining so I suited up in rain gear and then the sun came out as I rode to work sweating in my non-breathable rain gear, as was expected according to this fundamental rule of bike commuting. This evening I rode into the alley and the kid whose grandmother always screams at him was walking toward me, banging a long metal pole of some sort against the pavement. And it was like that scene in The Warriors where David Patrick Kelly clinks the beer bottles together, yelling “Waaaarrrrrriiiorsss, come out to pla-ay!” except substitute a little kid for David Patrick Kelly, a long metal pole for the beer bottles, and a cold blank look for “Waaaarrrrrriiiorsss, come out to pla-ay!” I got off my bike and I was sad.
But I digress. Here are two mostly unedited short pieces I scrawled in my notebook a few months back while riding south on the light rail. I’m not exactly sure where I was going with these at the time. I think I was pondering the 1950s and the beginning of the suburbanization of America. Maybe imagine these as entries in the American Handbook™ that we give to our insect overlords so they’ll understand us better. If we’re lucky maybe they won’t force us all into subterranean caverns and we can keep our decks and our pools and our acres of green green grass.
Deck: A deck is a popular structure attached to a house. When people tire of feeling closed in, they retire to the outdoors, without leaving behind the comfort and security of their home, the deck being an extension of the house and not a separate entity vulnerable to attack. Homeowners enjoy inviting over acquaintances to sit on their decks with them. Often this is accompanied by a meal cooked “en plein air” on a grill that sits proudly on the deck. The man, clad in a masculine-themed apron, always controls the grill. It is his domain. His wife brings him platters heaped with sanitized animal flesh, which he slathers with sauce before neatly placing on the foil-covered surface of the grill. After the meal, the deck people continue drinking themselves into oblivion before finally driving home and/or passing out in their bedrooms.
Pool: A pool is a status symbol popular among the wealthy. In-ground pools are the only ones that anyone cares about. If heated and covered by a screened room to keep out bugs, so much the better. Teenage girls enjoy laying out by the pool as their bratty brothers plot to splash them with water or inflict some other heinous act upon them. Rich mothers bring trays laden with glasses of cold lemonade to poolside. Their daughters sip daintily before applying more tanning oil. Their snotty sons then sneak up and snap the bikini tops of their pretty daughters. When the man of the house arrives home from a tough day at the office, he may, if of a certain disposition, change into his trunks and swim a few laps. But first he tousles his son’s hair in greeting and gazes briefly and uneasily at his daughter before finally kissing his wife on the cheek. He may then pop open an Amstel Light if feeling particularly spent.
Stay tuned for more entries!
Maybe. Depends on if the ants come, I guess.
Posted by sean on July 9, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/09/hiding-under-my-deck-from-the-insect-overlords/
ending days
How do you end a day? Does it depend upon the day? Likely. Today is ending with Bedhead and a beer after a long day of driving and visiting with my family. The visit was good; the drive was bad. That’s all I will say about that.
Are there rituals? I read until my eyes can’t stay open any longer. Right now I’m reading Solzhenitsyn’s “We Never Make Mistakes.” Could there be a better title for a book describing Stalinist Russia? Unlikely.
How to end the day. How to tie it to the next one, trailing a tail braided of only the best moments perhaps. Or is it better to let dreamland clean the slate and start anew in morning time.
These are questions beyond me, right now and maybe always.
Posted by sean on July 7, 2012
https://sd-stewart.com/2012/07/07/ending-days/
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