Mister Nihil

When a great mind starts out to do a project, or, more specifically, when a mind sets out to do a project that will come out to be great or good, does that mind prepare adequately, or does it simply throw itself out and into the streets? I've found that a tone is the most difficult thing about this, and that probably maintaining precisely the right cryptic tone while also saying things which are interesting and necessary is difficult to manage for more than about, say, this long.
If you make a skeleton, though, and come back in and [fill in details later, something about prunes being a metaphor for writing]
That works fine, but, like the mighty prune, when you're done with the story, do you have the fortitude to come back and look it full in the eye and determine if there's something worthwhile there? What if you come back in later and fix the language, but you just write the rest of it at some kind of breakneck pace, not really look at what you write and just write but then you have to come back and fix and if it doesn't look right you just have to say whoops type and comma mistake and meant that to be two sentences?
The question seems to come down to the ability to want to work, and I don't know if I have it yet. I mean, I can see the story, but I don't know if I can see enough of the details of it to actually write it, and certainly I can't see enough of it for long enough to write it out in one spurt, like this.
[note: go back add details regarding prune story probably about childhood?]
I guess that works too, but you have to have a good system, and mine doesn't work on web-based composition. [put in prune joke to tie up][and add word "pruny" before "mind," first sentence]

Thanks for everything.

Part 4: Lost America

There is a disappearing breed of hotel in the world, that with a restaurant and bar in the first level, a sweeping mezzanine and a collection of the kind of comfortable chairs which intimidate the average sitter, overstuffed leather affairs, of the type that one dare not afford. One such hotel still extant is the dear and delightful much-storied Driskill Hotel, an establishment at which it has never been my pleasure to sleep for more than fifteen minutes of an afternoon, but which I have frequented, as one may be said to have done.
Also endangered in the world is the traveling family, a trio or quartet of persons, displaced by wanderlust and a surfeit of cash, they dress in uncomfortable clothes and feel that it is important to make good impressions on those they meet along the way. They wash the car before they leave. They plan the trip to within a single tolerance of plausibility. Father wears his dress hat. Mother sews a sun dress. Two activity books are selected for each of the children, of the favored type, one for the trip there, one for the trip back (and didn't those forbidden way-home connect-the-dots promise such wonders!). Luckily for the general state of the world, it is still possible to see this dying race, in no less company than that self-same Driskill, sitting on the very edge of those chairs, sinking slowly into the comfort which is offered but advantage of which cannot be taken without becoming that worst of Kind of Person, Rude and Presumptuous.
And I, lucky man that I am, was witness to a moment on a leather couch between such a father an son.
“Dad,” he chirruped.
“Yes, J-,” I have protected his name, so as to avoid embarrassment.
“Did you pay for the hotel room?”
“Well, I paid him a deposit six months ago, and today I gave him my credit card information. When we leave, we will pay for the room.”
“Hm.” He seemed put off.
“J-,” his father started, “what strife troubles your innocent brow?”
“Why do we have to put down a deposit?” Ah, from the mouths of babes, eh?
“As you know,” his father began, “Most trouble in the world dates back to imagination.”
“Of course, Father,” I was shocked but listened nonetheless intently.
“Well, some years ago, when your grandfather was only a boy,” he began prematurely, but was stopped by the title.

The Traveler's Tale

When your grandfather was only a boy, people discovered that they ran out of money, just as we are wont to do today. Your Grandfather, bless his heart and rest his soul, believes he remembers the day to be April 7th, but I suppose it depends upon your point of view. Now, as you are also no doubt aware, people love travel, even when sans souci, and the gentlemen of the day were no different, except that they were dreamers all. Well, it seemed that a man named Roynette who lived in a mansion above an underground sea on a high mountain in the Alps wanted to travel.
“Oh,” he lamented, “Will that I could leave this wasted wonder behind and see the flatter parts of the world! The wonderful mundane, the everyday beauty of the pavement and the eclipsed sky, those things taunt me and remind me how wonderful life could be, had we not entirely run out of cash on or about April 7th!” He sat on a log of Swiss chocolate and cried golden teardrops which fell down and sunk into the lake.
Ah, but the sight of the disappearing glitters gave Roynette an idea! Why, he could still travel! He could have everything travel would afford him, all the excitement, all the awkwardness, without spending a dime!
So, he chose the town to which he wanted to travel. He checked the internet and collected the telephone numbers, sent emails to request literature, compared hotels and Bed and Breakfast Establishments, and finally decided. He made reservations at the finest hotel, asked for their finest rooms, a suite for seven solid days! He engaged a Bed and Breakfast of long standing and formidable history and asked that they hold every room for a week and prepare for him a feast of fruit and pancakes, the favored regional specialties, everything exotic and domestic which could be coaxed upon a breakfast table.
He called the airport and asked that a row of seats be held on the most comfortable of airplanes. This was, of course, in the days when one could ask which type of airplane would be making a given flight, without being arrested and detained for months or years on the grounds of simple curiosity. He demanded the finest double-decker plane, not caring even that it would only fly into an airport almost three hours' drive from his intended lodging.
He chartered a car to wait for him at the airport, arranged for the driver to stand, wearing a flat-brimmed cabbie's cap and matching square-shouldered suit, holding a sign that said “Roynette,” in gold letters with curlicues, exactly the kind one cannot request today.
He made reservations in the finest restaurants on the second day and every day beyond, reasoning that he would dine en locale on the first evening at least. He downloaded and printed menues and spent veritable eternities poring over their contents, picturing each dish in his head, eating every mouthful over and over until he had picked perfection in each place, and in the process of his reservation, requested that the dishes he desired be prepared prior to his arrival.
He arranged for a laundry service to come to his suite and then to the Bed and Breakfast and to service his every laundry whim. He called his bank and took the name of the local representative, and arranged a series of meetings that he might still manage his accounts, even while on the road.
He packed his belongings into a suite of suitcases, taking hours to determine the best choices for weather and probably activity. He packed suit bags and cases, toiletries and towels, a briefcase and a hidden money pouch.
Finally, the appointed day came.
He asked a taxicab to meet him at his house. When it arrived, he begged off and instead went to sit in his car for twenty minutes, while he read a newspaper. Then, he called the airport and canceled his flight. He sat in a straight-backed chair for three hours, only stirring occasionally to use the restroom. He prepared coffee and a small cookie and ate them carefully, spilling crumbs onto his lap. He called the car service and canceled the driver who was, of course, already standing in the concourse with his beautifully hand-lettered sign. Roynette sat in his own car, then, for another three hours, and then called the hotel and the Bed and Breakfast and canceled his reservations there. He brought his bags back into his house and set them down.
He spent a week canceling restaurant reservations at the last minute and walking around the quaint Alpine village 'round about his home and pretending not to speak anything but Badly accented American English.
“Gorden Targ, Jor-nny, Wood you have any Chor-coh-lit? I hear you Zwizzers got good chor-coh-lit. Har Har.”
Then, as he stood there on Friday and basked in the glow of their disapproval, wishing more than anything that he was home, he was.
He went back to his home, having scratched his travel itch.
And he did the same thing the next year, to the chagrin of a new town.
And again the next, to a cold reception on the telephone of another town.
The trouble, though, started the following year, when he tried it again. Every place was wise to his trick and asked him for half of the cost up front. Well! That would defeat the purpose, and he more or less learned his lesson and never did the same thing again. He probably would, though, given the chance.
The damage was done. Now, when a father calls a hotel and asks to make a reservation, they ask for half of the cost up front. That is why, when you take a system based on trust and exploit it, we say you Roynette.

“Hey Mister,”
What a Joy children are.
“Hey, Uncle Mister, Hey, hey,”
Their simple presence may well enrich the world around them.
“Um, um, um, what, what kind, um, no, wait.”
I delight in their pure laughter and am endlessly amused by their apparent motivelessness.
“Did, um. So, there was a man named Smith and he had a wooden leg. He said he was, um, he was hungry.”
Is the pun the lowest form of humor? If so, then surely the child's joke is the highest.
“He said he was hungry, so, um, so I bit him.”
Ah, a child's laugh: the music of angel farts.
“Ha ha ha! You said Farts, Mister!”

Every year, as I watch the Academy Awards, I play a drinking game. Every time a smug, self-satisfied vision of pure intellectual horror opens its mouth and spews tar and filth across the stage, drowning orphans and setting fire to Schwabian villages, tearing the heads off friend and foe alike, I take a drink.
I seldom make it past the first commercial break.
With a scant two days until the Oscars, I'm left with a pathetic moral quandary: none of the films I saw this year were even considered for nomination, much less are in any kind of danger of winning. It's not that I think that winning a statue would cost any of the crap I saw in 2008 any of their meager Moral Standing or Intellectual Prowess, quite the opposite.
So, what are we left with? Are we supposed to believe that the best movies in 2008 were about Batman or a politician? Really? Really? Are we back to that? Are we really back to pretending that there isn't a problem? I mean, sure, we were there in 2007, but that doesn't mean that 2009 has to perpetuate the mindset.
So, who wins?
What about Slumdog Millionaire, I hear you asking. Mightn't that have been the best movie of the year? Nope. Hell nope. Look, the Academy aren't fooled: that isn't even really a foreign movie. Don't you fall into that trap. Good for you, looking all smart, waving your ticket stub around at a party, and we're all very proud that you got some, but you can't kid me and you can't kid Oscar, so keep it in your pants.
Well, what about the dark horse, the Curious Case of Piece of Crap? Well, as if the title weren't a big enough giveaway, you should really think long and hard about why it is you think you like Scott Fitzgerald. Or, should I say, Francis? Yes, I probably should. See? You don't even know his name.
And Milk? There isn't enough peanut butter in Montana to get Sean Penn an Oscar, even peripherally, and that goes for Frost/Nixon, too. Frank Langella may be a rotten sunuvabitch, but he isn't going to take home any statues without blood and brain splattered on them.
Which brings us to the end. The end? What about the Reader? What about Heath Ledger? What about Wall-E?
Nope. Nobody wins.
The best you can hope for is to see a bunch of wrinkly bastards sweating and trying not to fart as their products are talked about in glowing terms by people they don't like. So go outside and fly a kite this Sunday. The best you could hope for is to make a pot roast and watch Wizard People Dear Readers again. You know what? That doesn't sound half bad.

“It is true.”
“It is not.”
“Look, I'll prove it to you-”
“No. You will enter the realm of the ridiculous.”
“The universe is infinite, right?”
“You will apply for a work visa in the realm of the ridiculous.”
“The universe being infinite, it must contain every combination of atoms.”
“You will find a job in the realm and work hard.”
“Every combination means every combination. This means that within the infinitude of reality, there must be an infinitely huge number of worlds exactly like this one, but with one difference.”
“You will meet a gangster who will offer to sell you papers so that you do not have to leave when your work visa expires.”
“The difference can be huge or small. A photon one micron to the left or a comet that destroys the milky way before it even forms.”
“You will assume this new identity and accept a position at a law firm, working until you make partner.”
“There must be, then an infinite number of realities, which means that all of them, even the most preposterous, must exist somewhere out there. There must be a world in which we are all clowns.”
“You will start a family and build your summer home in the realm of the ridiculous. What you will not do, is convince me.”
“But, see, there is a reality where I do convince you. These realities must exist. My question is, do we cause them to exist by imagining them, or does their existence cause us to imagine them?”
“No sir, and I'll prove it to you.”

I find myself without form of purpose. The wind gives me direction, which is seize, and the passing thoughts of vagrants give me something like a purpose. I coalesce in the changing patterns of the wind. I pick up a pair of leaves and with my makeshift eyes I see the world in rich rusts and browns. I blink my crackly retinas and they fall to pieces and for a moment I feel the giddy nausea of spinning to the ground in eighty five pieces. I release the leaves and pick up a discarded wrapper in their stead. I blow, cyclopean and powerful down the sidewalk. I pluck six grams of sand and four cigarette butts from the cracks in the sidewalk and form myself into a long snake, then an amoeboid blob with cotton rivets. I swing out a pseudopod at a passing car, grabbing the grit from the exhaust and the microfine powder from the brakes and pull it into center, pulling and pushing until the memory of velocity becomes a beating heart. I pass the creek and slurp up a vortex of brackish water and algae, taking on sudden bulk. The breeze becomes insufficient to my needs and I push off of the sidewalk, picking up soil from under the grass and propelling myself along the sidewalk. I stand and look to my left and right and find that I have become the sentience of the very world. I swirl and reform until I take in the whole of the universe. I engulf everything and begin to eat away at it, searching in my infinite being for more life, more energy. I find none. I find that the entirety of infinity, the entirety of the infinite collection of infinities, is devoid of all forms of life. There is nothing outside of myself. There never was.

“Take that, ugly-face!”
“I don't see what that proves. I mean, the universe is still infinite.”
“Ooh! Pwnage! Ju S0xxorz! Limited Universe Theory FTW!”

I think we were all behind him in the beginning. What did he call himself then? Thematically Appropriate man, wasn't it? Back then, he was discovering powers every day, something new for every situation and we loved him for it. The Chronicle could barely keep up with him, and by the end of that first summer, they were dedicating halves of issues to him. And who could blame them?
First he solved all the open murder cases. I mean, yay, right? Then, he started stopping murders in progress, which is also cool. I forget what he called that power, but I think it was some kind of precognitive thing. Then he started breaking up fights on sixth, which works for pretty much everybody, especially when he debuted his power to put an entire room to sleep with a wave of his hand. I've seen the films of that one, and it's pretty damn impressive. Fifty people fall down, mid-swing and just go to sleep on the dirty bar floor. The police come in, mop up, and TE-Man was gone, hopped into a taxi, I think.
And so what if he couldn't fly? This isn't a comic book and he isn't Superman. What he does on a daily basis is cool enough, probably.
In August, he started stepping on toes. He cleared all the cocaine and heroin out of town. The police got a little pissy, because he didn't give them any arrests, just took the stuff away. I think he was calling himself Austin Guy then. That was about the beginning of the PR nightmare. He changed his costume for a dirty white dress shirt and skinny tie, with faded slacks and a pair of old basketball shoes. He called himself something different every week. He took away our pot. Again, he didn't give anybody to the cops, just took it all away.
He got really weird. He started calling himself Clark Kent, which was probably some kind of GenX bullshit joke about his being a normal person, but it's hard to pay attention to him during that period. The protests were constant. His public turned completely on him, and he took it personally. In September, he moved out to Kerrville.
It's still goddamn impossible to get a lid out here in town, but I've heard he's dealing. They say you'd better not bring it back into town, or you wasted your money. Dumbass superhero.
But, you know, it's still better than not having him, I say. I guess.