Author: auspiciaoblativa

Reckoning

Lt. “Mr.” Gorgonsen alighted from the wreckage of his exploded enemy with the lightest foot he knew, but it was no match for a disgruntled, panicked, violently confused group of American soldiers. Guns were going off everywhere. Birds were falling from the sky. He could feel something at his heels, something closing down from above.

Gasping, gagging on sand or fright, he began to strip off his clothes as he ran. He abandoned his jacket, his trousers, his underclothes, his socks, even his body armor. He ran naked through the hot strobe of the desert, terrified to his toenails, unable to stop. He dodged the falling bodies of pigeons like they were ghosts of the grenades he had thrown, aiming to take him down with the decisive blow of instant karma. He fled the thought of the dark dogs chasing behind him, cursing the footprints left in his wake, daring them to explode upon contact, no matter what contact it might be. He felt the darkness shudder and swell, threatening to swallow him forever in the mistake of a lifetime.

The crazed Lt. Mr. had no idea what he had done, only that it felt disastrous. He had no respect nor concept for intuition, but somehow he ran on in the certitude that he had done something wrong and the wrong one had died as a result. He made his escape in naked anguish, growing smaller and more frightened with each step, despite relative distance gained.

The cloud above him would not go away no matter how far from the base he got. It would not stop its roiling, horrible motion. It seemed to follow him through miles and miles of impossibly unchanging desert.

His legs hardly worked by the time he found it. A half-destroyed, smoldering shell of a car over in the ditch of something that could hardly be called a road. The front end was completely blown off and the blackened seats inside were curled to nubbins and the killing felt fresh enough to taste, but Mr. was unable to feel anything but his fear and so he went into the still-intact back side of the thing, where the remains of a trunk held some boxes of food and clothes. He hastily donned the long, traditional robes of some deceased stranger, took a carton of dates, and continued on his way, running in stagger-spurts like an open wound.

Five steps into his sprint, the skies opened to a distressing spaciousness, a lack of bird mass which defied logic and threatened the terrified man’s already-taxed sense of reality. Looking up wildly searching the sky for information, Mr. stumbled bleary-eyed toward the dubious promise of a life in exile that somehow didn’t end with a million birds of doom raining feverishly upon his head.

And then, there it was, and there they were. A dragon, soaring its numinous serpentine omen across the whites of the atmospheric eye. It roared deafening silence and breathed the fire of feathered soot. Too heavy for flight and too light for gravity.

Mr. dropped to his knees and threw up in his date container.

The dragon coiled a dark figure eight and spun back on itself in layer after nauseating layer. The dance in the sky meant many things to many people in that very moment, but to Lt. Mr. Gorgonsen, it meant one thing: the End Was Near. And, more importantly, he had started it.

There was nowhere to hide, but he would keep running until he found hiding people among whom to be anonymous.

There was no atonement, but he would continue fleeing its wrath through his every move.

There was no Apocalypse, as it turned out, but he would continue to live in it for as long as he could see.

 

-**

Theatre

Gold is fleeting, gold is fickle, gold is fun!

There is gold across the river but I don’t want none

I would rather be dry than held up by a golden gun

saying Work more, earn more, live more, have more fun!

-Laura Marling-

 

In a few short hops, the squirrel would have made it to the little paper scrap flapping out of the sidewalk crack, but since she was already holding between her teeth a chunk of bread twice the mass of her body, she had a moment of existential crisis. Comfort or Curiosity? Nourishment or Knowledge? Provisions or Poetry? As it happened, the point was made moot in a moment of unruly scramble:

Two pairs of feet went rushing toward the squirrel, as their passengers yelled “Get the bread! Get the bread!” Reacting instinctively like a bat out of hell, the squirrel-plus-loaf almost ran smack into a crude pair of skinny tires belonging to an even cruder cyclist who yelled, “Outta the road, squirrel! Goddam rodent scum! Fucknuts!”

Calming her nerves with bread, the squirrel watched in relief from the shelter of a curbside bush, as the little paper scrap was discovered and read by a rotund man in a very thick tweed-suit-and-overcoat ensemble.

The man stood still a moment, reading the aforementioned scrap of brilliance. He let the paper rest its weightlessness in his hands as his eyes made a full circle around their quarters; then, with an invisible shrug, he put the paper in his pocket and whistled in his stroll past the theatre department down to the math hall where Real Men were made.

He did not, nor did the squirrel for that matter, have any reason to imagine that a young student inside that theatre building would have found (had he found it) that lyric delightful and poignant, simple and direct. Both squirrel and man had plenty business of their own without worrying over whether or not some young lad who would highly value Marling’s poetry was currently plotting an act of insurrectionary art.

Indeed, said art student was deep in the laboratory of cultural examination, learning an exact alchemy of art and science. Harmless compounds that would turn to colorful cloud bursts when mixed with the sulfuric gasses of a human being’s digestive waste. Harmful compounds that would detonate upon impact with air, bone, or a ten-foot wall of thickly-stacked twenty dollar bills. Careful formulas of ultra-diluted, odorless pepper spray that could be piped into a room slowly but surely, causing tears and nausea so mild as to be thought emotive.

The idea was nebulous, but then so was Jove’s sense of self at the time. Since his liberation into the fermentation garden that was NYU, he had laid himself and everything he had known upon the chopping block. Everything he had always known to be real was real—which alone was terrifying—but so, too, was everything he wanted to be certain was not. His work was both a breaking down and a knitting together. This production fed him as it fed upon him. Everything was going in, and whether he ended up with Sangria or Cyanide was none of his concern [1]. When he went into this cave, all the hieroglyphs were moving, enraptured and enraged, into philharmonic action. Everything was on the table. There was nothing to hold back and nothing to hide, though Jove always did his work in the dark recesses of his allotted personal Theatre Department cube. He was extremely well-hidden as modern cave-dwellers go, insulated by blaring jazz, binging on a particularly well-crafted mix of licorice tea and deprivation.

In this way, before the first Harvest Moon, he was able to come up with the bones, or rather the spinal cord and tadpole tail, of his production. By “his production,” it is appropriate to infer that he—yes, even as a mere sophomore—had showed his chops in such a manner as to be selected winner of the Theatre Department’s yearly contest, the College Heavyweight Arts Intensive, in which individual artists were challenged to give eighteen shows in eighteen days, in honor of Chai, the numerological basis of the Hebrew word for “Life” and yeah, Theatre Nerds are that thorough. The CHAI this year had as its grand prize, in addition to a year’s supply of a certain warm beverage, the chance to write and direct a theatrical production that would premiere during the Vice Presidential address, given in the first months after Inauguration. NYU was well-funded and well-connected, and the Theatre Department had a special sort of pull with the Board [2], so every four years the VPOTUS was signed up to give a motivational address to the Hardworking Inspired Student Body of this Outstanding Institution [3]. This year happened to be Inauguration year, so, to many theatre students, performing at the VP address was akin to tea time with the Pope. So Jove had done a right jolly good job in the esteemed CHAI contest. He had worked his garbage-can-playing, body-painting, glitter-spewing, gender-questioning, young gifted ass off. And he had won all the marbles, at the ripe age of 20.

If he’d had a father who would have slapped him heartily on the back for an artistic feat of wonderment, he’d have been slapped on the back for this one. But Jove had, it was crystal clear to him, a father that would be shocked and chagrined by the creative assembly of his son’s artful vendetta. [4]

Although the project was still quite embryonic, we can get a glimpse of its form.

So far, the spinal cord and tadpole tale would appear like this, with enough sonic waves bounced off of them:

Explosion.

Begins the scene and catches the attention. Erupts into wondrous spiral dancers with dinosaur bones who eventually melt into the ground. (Two levels used simultaneously or singly, connected by spiral stairs and a firefighter’s pole. And a stripper’s pole.)

Scene 1 with Board Room and Belly Dancers. Very psychotically-early-60s entertainment vibe, real decisions being made. Strangely off-putting, doomful, but rife with colorful delight.

Belly Dancers remain, become jingling stars. Sky is falling. Kids with telescopes. “Jimmy’s Day at Camp” feeling. Earth opens up, children leap into it with glee and abandon. Fire. Hidden.

Shadow screen, dancers behind. Red. Fast. Feels thick. Wheat grows up from this. Second story ground. Slowly: bugs.

Tiny spiky insects. Eating away chunks in wheat, tearing off each other’s legs, piling them in the middle with the wheat shards, burning the pile with last arms left (use red crinoline for this fire, yellow for slow glow, sink through to lower stage, unleash dancers.)

Dancers below & above; fire & aerial. By this time, the crowd is at a delightful Cirque de Luna, captivated and dazzled, sparkley-eyed. Play with them.

Lights down, fire dancers swirl round, igniting slowly walls of candles. Hundreds of candles. Thousands. Candles handed out in the rows. Candles across the balcony. Candles in the scaffolding. (Get fire marshall signed off on this.) (Give cash if necessary.)

Jove. Spiral-eyed child, crackpot journalist and insurgent dreamer, mouthpiece of the clarinet. He had had enough enough times to cause a runaway train to derail on his neurons. But his body had not won the battle with his mind, partly because they were secretly in love and didn’t want to disappoint the Planning Committee by coming out in unity. They had work to do. Hard work. There was a war on, for Chrissake!

Thus, his brain was hard at work sparking The Change, his body surrounded with the Bunson burners of redemption. Everything in the way of understanding is a product of this culture, he was scribbling in a journal on his right while scooping a pile of metallic powder on his left. (He left out the part about how every product of the culture was a way of understanding, but one can suppose it is implied by the rule of opposites. Or the Theory of Relativity. Or something. [5])

Holy cross. Bugle player. Mountain rancher sunset. Something equally manipulative, flags or bunnies. Heartbreakingly beautiful. Must cause tears. Must. (Gas available.) Film reel of home movies spliced in with babies, birds, and detonations. Flowered vines, soaring kites, smog, detonations. Kissing fools, dancing cranes, running water, detonations. Hand jives, hand tools, hand shakes, hand jobs, detonations. Keep it going way past comfort. Slow, sad curtain with silk-spinning dancers drawing them closed mid-air.

No intermission. Leave people holding their candles for a full minute. Keep the aerial dancers spinning slightly off-stage. Then open curtains: candles gone. Brick building in place. No light. All light in audience. One (implanted) audience member get up and check out building dimensions with candle. One (implanted) usher follow and assess the situation. Two lights on stage. Tension of possible conflict, but candle meets flashlight. Begin to dance.

Meanwhile… Cash stacked inside. Chains discovered upon the building. Chain dance. All dancers back, but hidden and locked up on second floor. In chains. Movements wrong, maddened, menaced, crazed. Anxiety. Nausea. Awful. Loud fearsome music. Over the top.

Walls sink. Dinosaur bones stand in their place, house skeleton.

Christmas tree cash tower. Money stacked. Examined. Stage lights very important now. Music has lots of space, silence, stretches of shadow.

Every few minutes he would stretch out his long legs, crank up his Nat King Cole or Prince or Copeland or what have you, kick across the room, and tail-spin back. This would not only wake him up and remind him of his holysacred heart, but it would give the lonely strips of skin paving the deserted psoas highway a chance to feel again, if only to feel the inside of his pant legs. Then, well-acquainted with gravity, he would land dutifully back into his spinny stool and crank the machine of the brain until the next wave of embodied movement.

The kid was very efficient. In this manner, he could work all night, sleep for one R.E.M. cycle after the sun rose, if necessary, and bust his ass for class all day. Most of the time, instead of sleeping, he would just climb to the roof and watch the sunrise with a teacup in one hand and the latest music-playing marvel in the other. [6]

More to stage that are “in audience” or “on crew” or “hospitality.” Two more scenes, please. Make them count: pull attention to the edges and wings. Keep anxiety in place, right in the middle, but divert and deny enough to cause resignation, to cause a preference for distraction, a surrender to the authority of the Stage.

Lull to sleep, then rip open with Explosion. Big one. Money burn and fly. Security guards in. VPrez will be contained, but one dancer will brave being tazed in order to deliver goods. Make dramatic citizen’s arrest in the name of tax evasion, embezzlement, fraud, and war crimes. (Guns not necessary, but back-up options available.) When people get a grip, it is done. Allow them to consider, compute, and clap wildly. It is theatre. It is real. It is done.

To Do: Contact hackers and puppets to completely deplete the Federal Reserve. For Real. (Call Jarrod.) Finish Revolution. Enter Exquisite Redemption.

This scrawled impressionism was not yet any real living being of Jove’s conception, although it indeed was being given its life. The above was merely, as stated, the ultrasound. While the ultra-sonic depiction of reality that language provides is fascinating enough, it is certainly no Venus de Milo, no L’Eternel Printemps, no homemade YouTube classic [7]. It is a cool photobooth reel, live enough to cause excitement, fuzzy enough to cause confusion. Words, Jove reminded himself, could not grasp what his endless toil was actually producing in that basement.

Many rooftop mornings, after his Liquid Licorice-n-Sunlight breakfast, he would read the following passage by Rainer Maria Rilke, squinting needlessly against his memory’s boast into the crumpled font peppered over the long, thin ribbon of wood pulp. He felt like a treasure hunter. He felt like Banksy in a Guy Fawkes mask. He felt like a Lady of Marie Antoinette’s court. He felt like his heart was beating:

Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism; they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren’t all so tangible and sayble as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

 

-**

1. Well, as we will see, the latter was very much indeed of his concern. Was I not supposed to say that?
2. Yes, what you heard is true, they are sleeping together.
3. HIS BOI…? Surely leading to future headlines: Vice Potus Hollers at His Boi!
4. That fact was indeed part of the inspiration for this piece.
5. He was no Physicist, to everyone’s surprise.
6. As was common with many of his peers, Jove’s marvel was smaller than a postage stamp and his teacup was bigger than a breadbox.
7. Respect, Sweet Brown. 

Secrets

Glory’s dream journal was not a book. It was not a stack of pages or an album of pictures. It was an unfathomable diorama, a pop-up jigsaw puzzle of storyboards and film reels, a textured landscape of living textiles and the tentacled offspring of machine-made seeds. It looked like a pile of art scraps when it lay on her special bedside table; a deconstructed muppet head, still twitching with bad jokes and good magic. To an ignorant bystander, it would seem completely unremarkable in its inert form, except for one thing: it glowed. Actually glowed. When the lights went out at night, no matter what phase the moon was in, a silvery light cast its gentle spectrum off the deranged bundle so its shape was the only vision in the room. In the day, despite the visual offset of daylight, the feeling of the glow remained present enough to draw the eye.

This is how Dennis came to endanger the life of his curious cat.

He had caught sight of it many times before, simply by grace of its invisible glow and irregular shape. Dennis was always sincerely interested in his daughter’s creative exploits, and this one seemed a labyrinth of continual development. He had no interest in rushing her to share; he knew she had the timing and impulse of a bear cub tempered with the patience and wisdom of a ninety-year-old whittler. She was learning to create with care and offer with responsibility. He had no doubt that she would change the world, when she was ready. He had gotten used to waiting. He was good at waiting. Almost always.

In the warm sunshine of a wintry afternoon, in the small handful of “downtime” hours he was afforded per week, Dennis was bringing a stack of laundry to Glory’s bed when he was struck by a staring spell. He stared at that dream pile for several minutes, the folded clothes heavy in his hands, socks dangling off his forearms. Finally, he shook off the blankness of reverie and put the laundry down. With no thought nor reason, he walked over to the thing and carefully flipped open to a “page” in the middle.

There was a shape, a purple shape, and a swirl of pink dust in its cracks. Inside the shape were thousands—really, thousands—of delicate little black threads, waving every which way, curling in thick clumps toward the edges, dispersing in flimsy couplets toward the center. Contained in unimaginable depth were the long, thin lines of two figures in the middle, touching just barely at the waist, limbs and heads stretching out beyond the page in tapering pipecleaner twists. There were only eight words on the page, and it was hard to tell where they were written: “What happened to you happened to me.”

There was a slam at the front door. The man froze on the spot. Glory’s home, said his Observer. Holy Mother of God!!! said his Reactor. Frantic clomps up the steps. No time passed. There she was.

Glory was mad, spitting mad. She didn’t even know why, but didn’t need to. She came roaring through the door, clawing the thing from his hands before she even set foot in the room. He dropped it on the bed, guilty as a kid caught shoplifting.

“I’m sorry, MG,” he stammered sincerely. “I didn’t—”

“You can’t do this! Get out of here! What if you’ve scared them?! How could you? Don’t you know what will HAPPEN if you mess this up?!” she shrieked. “Get out of here! Out! Out! Out!”

She had never before spoken this way to the man she called father. She was fuming, eyes rolling, smoke spilling out her pores. He blinked at her, sadder than he’d ever looked.

“Glory,” he said quietly, “please forgive your father.”

She shot him a look he had never seen on the face of a human. “I’m. Trying.”

He couldn’t be sure, because at that moment he was sure of nothing, including the sanity of the young lady before him, but he had a feeling in his gut that she wasn’t talking about him.

Suddenly wide-eyed with paranoia, terrified that his mind was not a private affair but the clear lens of a projector shooting his truth every which way, Dennis backed out of the room.

Visibly calming, claiming her space like a hunting tiger, she paced after him. “Do you have any idea how important this is to me?”

He nodded. He didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he frowned.

She grew several years older to say, “I know. I have to be alone now.” Then she closed the door.

 

-**

Ink

Next: we discuss the tattoo. Each attendant of these services will choose an inking that will open their physical experience here. It is agreed in our initial groundwork session, carefully outlined in the legal documentations, waivers, and consent forms, that each participant will be inked with a symbol of their choice, to commemorate their initiation.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that everyone the world over need adopt this practice. Not every sexual act need be matched with a mark. But it is part of my own regulations to demarcate the opening of a door. Responsible for the invitation I am giving. I must ask you to do this, you see. (Take a spin over to your local physics department and they’ll have a formula or three that may help.) It is crystal clear to me that the experiences and experiments we undertake will bring notable change to your consciousness, change that is real and lasting. (True of any experience, yes. We focus the lens.) It is important to physically acknowledge this, out loud, in the flesh, before overt sexual contact is generated. It is an important threshold for us, a gift I am committed to offering your sacred personage. (And yes, I believe wholly that my own experience changes me with each encounter, thus my own skin grows a symphony of liminal patterning, as you can see. You’ll be welcome to try to see it all at once, once you’ve come across your own doorstep.) The exact inking is open to your choice, both in location and detail. We will see to its completion in one session. It then serves as a useful reroute for neural pathways anytime we find ourselves immersed in memory functions that require immersive healing. You see the mark of your own threshold crossed and thus are supported to remain anchored in the infinity of the Present.

I trust you understand the purpose and importance of this step. If you don’t, please seek understanding. Questions are welcome and essential here.

I expect you to hold yourself in the highest esteem while you are here seeking my services; when that is unavailable, you must be able to acknowledge another person holding you in the highest esteem. I’m not here to fuck around. (Odd anyone would think otherwise.) I implore you: do not degrade your own experience with doubt. You have your own tools which you can wield with powerful magic, and we’re dedicated to cultivating your natural aptitudes here. Awaken senses. Accelerate heartbeat. Affect destiny. Align with the purpose of your choice. Come. Alive. Here.

Trust, I will say this every time:

Everything, every moment, is in a process of birthing & killing, dying & rebirthing.

Little deaths open doors for new beings. New beings bring new eras. It’s common, and yet commonly missed. In birth, the old form dies and transforms multiplied. Let go fully and you will become new.

It’s just like the Baptists are always going on about.

But without the witness of Consent, baptism, like sex, is just glorified dunking. Waterboarding, even. With Consent, it becomes a holy act, a flame of purification, a rope bridge turned to swinging catapult into warm waters at the flick of a sword. It’s what it feels like to call back home the devil and the god, to welcome them in from the snow, feed them warm soup, listen to them giggle together, in love. How it feels to love something from first conception to last contraction. To be rendered in two and remain whole.

These are the tools of the lineage. We apply them to the work of sexual healing, and here you have your sacred parthenogenesis. You’ve gone and pulled yourself out of your own cunt again.

In the work that honors this temple, it’s only right & proper that I express the truth of what I am capable. As well as the truth of my limitations & boundaries. That way, there’s quite a tidy & clear space for you to share of what you are, making way for what you are becoming.

For one thing, the person you will be will have an exceptional tattoo. That person will be utterly different each time we meet, and thus we nod to one another like a bow at the beginning of a long meditation or a handshake before a good thorough mud wrestling brawl.

Welcome, as I said, to the fold.

Between blankets and groundcover:

these arms.

 

++

 

If she was Mother she was Lover, Survivor,

or Both.

Mary, Holy Mother, and Miriam, Benedictia,

we honour and bow deeply in the temple

of Your creation.

Ecstatic Yes of Magdalene, of Miriam, of Inanna through Thérèse and beyond: we receive the gifts of your Choices.

With eyes open we add our own.

 

~VGR~

 

**Fine Print: The ink is, indeed, permanent but also alterable. Everything and nothing is permanent. You are free, of course, to suggest another physical alteration of your preference during this ceremony, provided you can speak clearly for why it is of special significance to you. It must be stored physically on the flesh. I say this not for my benefit but because it’s a reminder to you of your own Choice, and it provides you with a prompt to revisit this Choice each time it is encountered. Sati. Anchor. Consent.**

Mirrormask

She leaned forward, upper thighs pressing into the counter’s edge, eye to eye in a steady stare less than a foot from the mirror. The lovely bluish glow of the predawn was masked by the cabaret-bright lights of the bathroom’s vanity mirror. Mrs. “Mrs.” Gorgonsen steadied her tweezer-wielding hand and began to pluck, one by one, each tiny hair that threatened to encroach on the eyebrow’s intended shape of Youthful Allure. One by one, she felt the pain’s tiny hot flash bestow unto her this morning’s pious allotment of thrill. One by one, she stuck each removed hair bulb to the mirror’s edge in a gross little collection of what she was not. One by one, she declared victory over her face, watching it match her expectations and submit to her instructions. She didn’t err into the slightly-too-angular territory of Sly Vixen Harlotry; no, the Mrs. was a good Christian woman who kept her eyebrows the shape of Untouchable Beauty, if leaning slightly toward an air of Pleasant Surprise and Enthusiasm. Wonderful. There. It was done. She lifted her chin and blinked several times. Perfect.

She gave a curt nod to the tiny pile of brow-whiskers stuck to left side of the mirror, an intentional act of visual disgust that would ensure she would come back to clean the whole bathroom promptly after she was done putting her face on and making breakfast for the Mr.

Next, the creams. She opened three small vessels, each of which cost about $50 more than the last, and she gingerly dabbed her fingertips in. These she spread circularly on the skin until it was reddened and glowing with a sheen of fragrant amplification. It was as if underground blood vessels had been called to arms to expose all blemishes from their hiding places. Unalarmed by this process, the Mrs. sprayed and patted her visage with another series of products, knowing it would soon calm the skin back down so it could be properly coated with gesso. There it was. Back nearly to how it started. But much better and brighter, she was sure.

The gesso. It was a tube of expertly-matched fancy modern facepaint in Pure Classic Creamy Ceramic Beige. It coated every last pore with a smooth satin finish, obscuring the marks of living. There. Good. The Mrs. now looked like a light butternut squash onto which someone had delicately penciled some features. A nice clean canvas.

The birds were singing on the tree outside the window, as the dawn was pinking its way into consciousness. The Mrs. noticed this none, as she opened her bedazzled pink pouch of art supplies. The intense focus required in order to wield these volatile concoctions, especially in the early morning hours, was a feat indicative of her tenure as Woman. The masterful degree of non-attachment evinced by the ability to pore over these arts with such care each day, only to wash them down the drain the same evening: surely she had earned a belt or two toward Enlightenment, no? Surely the resources were worth the education many times over. She contemplated this as she pawed through her pouch for a handful of tapered instruments and facial condiments. Next: the eyes!

The eyes of course mattered the most, as they would be interpreted at every waking moment of interaction. They needed to convey everything from Admirable Goodness to Enthusiastic Attention to Polite Acquiescence to Tender Happy Youth. (All while maintaining the steady undertone of Untouchable Beauty, of course.) The Mrs. chose a series of natural rosy pinks on this day, warming her eyelids up to a temperature forty degrees higher than the chilly November air. She then painted on a nice distinguished black to limn the lash line exactly. Sighing after each eye, noting for a moment that she’d again held her breath as she did for photos, good news, bad news, and the sound of a key in the front door, the Mrs. took a moment to smile at her lovely work. Expert level as usual. Finally, she fluffed the everloving shit out of her eyelashes, combing lacquer into them to achieve a volume-boosting effect reminiscent of a thoroughly back-petted cat. When her lashes were 3 times the bouffant of their original setting, she blotted them daintily with a tissue and admired her work. Friendly. Smartly elegant but not too regal for a simple daytime shopping trip. Relatable.

At last, the Mrs. arrived at her favorite part: the blush. For this trick, she was simply to smile and then highlight the beauty of her smile with a soft brush on the cheeks; how utterly pleasing. She took extra care every time to give herself ideas for Genuinely Warm Smiles, so that the blush would be perfectly placed. She wanted the art to be worthy of its efforts. This morning, she thought of these thoroughly pleasing things: 1) Magpie’s new little booties that would keep her paws safe from road salts, 2) the neighbor’s remark on the perfect positioning of the Christmas lights yesterday, 3) the likelihood that she would bake a pie that very afternoon, and of course 4) the wonderful satisfaction of a quiet house as she tended her morning ritual. After a few strokes of the giant floof of blush-brush, it was done.

Last, but certainly not least, was the lipstick. The Mrs. was rather oldschool in this regard: Red. She found no reason to hide the fact that she was wearing lipstick, and in fact she wanted to bring attention to the wonderful job she had done with the rest of the face, and so Red was the obvious choice. Classic, sturdy, friendly Red. In an extra layer of benefit, it helped to reinforce the notion that she was a natural blonde, for reasons of rutted-in subliminal cultural associations well beyond her ken. What the Mrs. knew was that Red was the correct color for her lips and that she had a whole box of various forms & shapes & names of Red. Today she chose the one called The Great Babe Rouge, because it made her feel like part of an inside joke.

And finally it was done. The sun had begun casting sparkles off the morning snow, and it was clearly time to get the breakfast on before the house started stirring. The Mrs. gave herself a noble nod, having used the mirror to the fullest extent of its usefulness on that morning’s visit. She gathered her ample bosom back up into her velveteen robe, patted her well-placed hair, donned her giant slippers once more, and padded down to the kitchen.

 

-**

Pro-Life Pigeon League

They met regularly in a secret bell tower in the city of Chicago, a city so hazardous and inhospitable to Pigeonkind that it not only completely banned Pigeon keeping, feeding, racing and fancying, but it employed some of the more aggressive anti-Pigeon operations seen in the United States.

Members of the Pro-Life Pigeon League were all a-flutter on this chilly November day, mostly on account of the myths that the Blue Scare were muddling up into the facts. They discussed their usual business with a dash of urgency, a hint of azure.

“As we make progress toward our critical mass,” said Harvey to the gathering, “we need to keep in mind the ancestry of our choices. In order to stay strong in these coming times, we need to stay present to the many leagues of Rock Dove that have gone before. They knew these ways, and we are connecting with them in our blood, in our sacred choosing, in our return to Martha’s way, the ancient way. In their wingspans do we fly.”

Harvey was a bird who brushed up on her oratory skills every time she flew to the Capitol, where she was the main liason from Central Squabland. There she filled up on rhetoric like a hummingbird on nectar. Thus she was nearly always chosen to open meetings, and she did so with fanfare. A wave of bobbing Pigeon heads passed the tower from perch to perch. [1]

Martha was commonly invoked in these meetings. The Last Passenger Pigeon, the final member of the extinct clan whose ways were widely considered superior to those of modern adaptation-minded Pigeons. “Common Pigeons,” they were called among breeders and racers alike. Sometimes they were referred to as “Wild Ones” or “Feral” or “City Birds.” A little update: in modern times, no matter how sheltered, no matter how intentionally controlled their bloodline, all Pigeons were adapted birds. They had learned ways to survive a world ruthlessly dominated by the human species. Some, like Racing Homers and Fancy Breeds, survived through a reinforced sense of superiority. Others survived through a prideless cohabitation with those who displaced them.

No one was arguing that there was not a marked difference between the carefully-bred Homers and the willy-nilly Rock Doves of the city. But since the origins of Livia’s Tower, since the early days of the Pro-Life Pigeon League, the city birds and feral racers alike were getting educated together. They knew they all came from the same original stock, and they shared a common ancestry. Cross-bred with the hallowed White Dove in Sumeria some three-thousand years before the birth of the Christians’ Christ, they had long been adopted into the family of heroic odyssey. Somewhere along the line, an artificial social distinction was made in order to match projection with perception. The distopian inventions of class and race were anthropomorphically applied to the widely diverse bird family. Unbelievable, untenable human standards were shackled round the little twig-legs, and the flock was divided. One single breed, not surprisingly a white one, was singled out to represent the Holy Spirit. The rest were cast aside. Indeed, a whole race of them had already been wiped out: the pastoral, innocent, naïve, plentiful Passengers. Much of the Squabland diaspora that remained had been disconnected and dissociated for decades. But no longer. Here, in the PLPL, they could come together, for the future of their little squeakers and their squeakers’ squeakers! In the PLPL, they were able to share the skills of their widely variant evolutionary adaptations, together choosing the consensual upgrades that would create an empowered future, an exalted Squabland where the natural brilliance and majesty of their nature would shine forth, untarnished and unlimited!

In order to appeal to the variety of cognitive abilities in the bunch [2], they reviewed this material in every meeting.

“Our first line of defense, brethren, is to proliferate as widely and quickly as possible, while keeping our growing numbers safe. This way, our predators can’t possibly make a dent in our populations, can’t affect the great soul of our people. And those lost will only come back stronger. So sayeth the promise of the All-Bird.”

A murmured couping purred through the crowd as the lot of them paid their respected to their Sovereign. As the sound rose into a veritable organ hum, members of the flock trembled and flapped and cried out, gone static electric with the collective resonance.

“Stuff ‘em silly, and they’ll quit before they make it through the appetizers!” called out one respected old Roller from Chicago, squeaking through his statue-sharpened beak.

“They won’t even make it through our front lines! Let’s see ‘em take on all the Pigeon nations united as one! They’ll die trying!” shrieked a young Parlour Roller raised in Livia’s tower.

“We’ve been coming back since before there was such a thing as a comeback”

A chant started vaguely in the West corner: “Com-ing BACK! Com-ing BACK!”

The tone was set. The pulse heightened, the flock warm. Navigating the GPS-minds to the heart of the mission at hand, Harvey asked Karl to give them a brief overview of their campaign basics.

“Allright, y’all, listen up! I want to see one eye from each of ya,” called out Karl, ever the popular rabble-rouser among the Chicago lofts. Karl was descended from a pair of Manchester Rollers who flew the coop for freedom before he was nested. After his parents were killed in a tragic municipal poisoning, Karl grew up a lone fancy feral among city birds. He sported a well-honed charismatic combo of a no-bullshit-or-I’ll-slice-ya street presence, a joyful ease with the whimsical talents of all Roller Pigeons [3], and a sense of humor providing enough room for the fullness of that spectrum in one bird. “So, remember why we’re in this: this here’s a freedom fight for our kind. Ain’t gonna study this war no more. This is about planetary survival! No longer will we be divided and conquered. No longer will we perpetuate the values of the colonizer. No longer will we be segregated into ‘White Doves’ and ‘Racing Homers,’ ‘Fancy Breeds’ and ‘Street-Rat Vermin!’”

A ripple went through the feathers upon the utterance of the V-word. Personally, Karl liked to tousle those feathers, so he gave his wings a good flap or two and continued on.

“This kind of segregation is how we lost our Passengers, it’s true, and Flo can say more about that in our History and Current Events portion of the evening.” He winked an orange saucer in Florence’s direction. “But I’m here to remind y’all of why we’re here, WHY we gather like this. We are working for a Superbreed here, and that kind of evolutionary leap don’t come overnight.”

“That’s right!”

“It won’t come without a fight!”

“Sing it, brother!”

Karl continued, “As it’s been told, we Pigeonfolk have been meeting like this since Martha passed the Great Note [4] and our Benefactress delivered the Prophecy. We are slowly, but surely, taking responsibility for our own people, our own ways, our own role in this evolutionary uprising. And we are circling back around for those still lost; no one is left behind. We are steady infiltrating the ranks of those whose brains were washed, those who will get squashed on a one-way street just trying to grab a moldy chunk of hotdog bun.”

Wings flapped in syncopated agitation. Squawks from the many Chicago birds who had lost family members in this way.

“They’ve asserted control over our numbers as well as our perches. They’ve massacred a royal family and its whole nomadic kind. And who are they? Just big ole chickens, trying to rule the roost. Well, we see their trembling wattles. They got their flailing talons and fumbly tactics, we got our wits and wings! They got their machines and menaces, we got our networks, our communities, our dauntless courage, our very way of life! They try and try to take us down, but we’re on the rise, Squabland!”

“We’re on the rise! Let them chickens run!”

“Poor confused idiots,” clucked a loud Trumpeter from the Southside. “The fool-ass folks trying to kill us don’t even know they need us! They need every last one of us to keep this ship from going down!”

“That’s right, Bokhara. We got this! Let’s keep those numbers growing!”

“Nest up, homies! Make it count!”

“That’s right, my friends. We will let any perceived threat to our populations serve to further galvanize us to fulfill our mission. I ask you, why would there be so many of us at this time, why would we have been given the tools & skills, the motivation & follow-through, if we weren’t all necessary for what is coming through on this planet? The humans may be the last fools to see it, but they’ll see it all right. It’s gonna take all of us, together, to pull this thing off. Together we rise. Coup! Coup! Coup!”

“Coup! Cooooup! Cooooup!”

“Coup! Cooooooooup!”

“Cooooooooooup!”

The storm of Pigeon sounds lasted for a long glorious moment, filling the air and bobbing the heads. Karl puffed out his chest just a tiny bit as he strode back to his perch. It was good to be among friends.

 

-**

1. More than the usual bobbing, that is.
2. Colloquially called “Bird Brain” in human circles.
3. Realtalk: one of Karl’s relatives shown here.
4. So the story goes in Squabland: in the zoo cage that held her death, Martha had sent word to the monkeyhouse for a note to be written, a note that would be carried via Homer until the right time & place for its delivery. (The Rev. contended that it was his great, great, great, great grandmother who was that Homer. However, in many circles it was well-known that this Homer was Martha’s last lover. So talk amongst yourselves.) Of the humanfolk, only Livia knew this sacred story of Birdland. Because it was Livia who found the Homer. Or rather, it was Livia the Homer found. In any case, the note it carried, the note dictated by Martha from her deathnest, the note now referred to as the Great Note, said simply this: -**