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Comedy of the Uncommon
South Atlantic, approaching the Canaries: 1873
The greater the risk- the greater the reward. No. The risk is there for a reason. Maybe it ant real. Most likely- it is. Plenty want that reward. But few are chosen. Why is this. One day I wake up a Raven. Chaska say she has silver bars for ballast and run like shit through a pipe. Thabo fire up second engine below and all the buoys run to their marks. Show time. We come out of the sun. Risk is we start an international incident. Chaska say they see our smoke signal. No. She is bound for Madrid inland. Goya lived there once. Chaska see picture at once.
National sloops of war protect the family and show the flag. Thabo know this and say so to his mates over clatter rumble chunka hiss turn of pounding twin screws. Henry James. Dart closed the deal swiftly and the family was rewarded for their secrets and silence. Ja Schwarzkopf will make us better fish. Now Tom catch that midnight train to Charleston. Don wanna be no fish boss. You had dem cards anyhow so why you leave day all naked to sleep with they wishes. Chaska say they have plenty Spanish trouble soon. We pay them back for horses. We come in stone canoe plenty sunset long ago.
Dim inklings from the shadowy sphere
Fixed him and fascinated here.
Imperialism is quite normal. It’s what civilized nations do. Nothing more than big fish stealing from the little fish. Law of the jungle they say. They think it is science. They read books and shit. Nothing wrong with that. Thabo say a nigger read pick up plenty say Chaska listening to the wireless. Luck of the draw say Henry shuffling the deck. You cut. Humbuggery boss. You cheat. No see um say Chaska. Best kind of cheat. Cooke bankrupt say the wire. All the Buoys smile. Union business back home. Ho Buoys cantcha line em thump a Thabo.
But they can’t drive steal like me. Behind the Shenandoah: 1973
Beanfield Hank say fuck helicopters. But them cobra boys was good fun. Good aircav too as far as that shit goes. But the B-52 fucks delivered ordinance. Like dump truck drivers. And they believed all that stop communism shit or said they did. Stupid cocksuckers. Cobra boys were bad enough. If they missed they could wipe out a whole village. These faggots wiped out a whole motherfucking province. All the dinks in town had dead family. What would you… Just what I did say the Hobo. Slow-motion train wreck. Opening time.
1 May = Labor Day!
Big Orange Cat
Golden Spike Metamorphosis
Yam that I am: Windward, downstream- 1867
Henry knew there were changelings among the Indians and with the Shoshone he found out how they did it. One morning, when Henry woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his robes to a horrible orange cat. Not like a panther. More like a raccoon. What’s happened to me he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His people, a proper human folk although a little too small, lay peacefully around the wigwam. Now you have the gift. They giggled. You do not choose your skin. It choose you when it needs to. Donnerwetter thought Henry.
Daisy, being one who never gave in to letting folks see her sweat, made her plans to head for Council Bluffs, Iowa and planned a visit to California for a visit with Phoebe Hearst. Mr. Comely had surprised her with the deed to one of the most coveted riverboats on the river, impeccably maintained, booked for months in advance. It had been one of Henry’s. How was it that he knew everything that she was about and her whereabouts at any given time. She was raged in conflict between her love for his attention to her cravings, and the many promises for a more personal thank you.
Ah! Stone Fleet.
There are no rats aboard the S.S. Dart and the galley cat is sometimes seen aloft watching gulls. Spike always went ashore- always returned. In the east, the Union Pacific selected a foreign name, calling their construction firm Crédit Mobilier of America. The latter company was later implicated in a far-reaching scandal which would greatly effect the railroads purpose, described later. The banker yacht would have been hard to see if not for her billowed sails. She was keeping well ahead of the Dart. But not for long.
Union Pacific Railroad owners and management believed they had passenger safety under control, with the natives accepting the rails as getting the settlers through their lands as long as they didn’t stop. Seven years and one month or so after the golden spike had been ceremoniously hammered into the rails connecting the west coast to the east coast, Daisy was scheduled to take her summer trip to visit her old friend, believing the trip to be safe. And here was Henry, ruling the most important navigation route between north and south.
Each worn and ancient one,
With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam;
Ay, it was unkindly done.
But so they serve the Obsolete—
Even so, Stone Fleet!
He was quite impossibly always at right place at the right time.
Shipset Sale. 50% On.
Sweet Miss Steak
I scudded round the Horn in one—
Haute Cuisine- Pittsburgh to New Orleans 1872
Well, the Daisy Belle purchase fell through. She knew that she appeared to be a loose woman appearing in the hotel bar by herself, and many bars still did not allow single women into those rooms to begin with, so she tried to exercise caution in her demeanor. Daisy had hoped that her age had excused the suspicion of her intentions there, but she longed to be sociable and collect new ideas from other folks for the Daisy Belle. She was rarely excited to this degree and it was even more rare for her to show her excitement.
Her visible excitement had begun to work against her. A hotel executive approached her and suggested apologetically that he accompany her by escorting her to her room, making it clear that they were no longer going to allow her to stay in their lounge as a single female and that they had already stretched hotel policy and local ordinances. However- Henry knew about Daisy’s special skill with camouflage. He learned it himself at Edinburgh and the secret of the Ghillie developed by gamekeeper and learned by Jägermeister for generations.
Sack them, and dismast;
They sunk so slow, they died so hard,
But gurgling dropped at last.
Turning as well the firearm fables and fireside tables about the days of the claymore and double soldiers, Scots had many of the same qualities as the Bavarians- both highlanders. But the lowland farms had better food- even the raiding Iroquois knew this. For the boat itself you needed three good men- one below with the engine, one on deck to steer and one aloft to watch the water. The French and the Italians… especially the Africans were better in the galley. Henry gave his prize riverboat to Daisy in honor of his colleague and patron, Mrs. Lacroix.
Jock Flemming is a Scotsman- and laughs at Henry dressing the Dart for a party. Chaska say it is war paint. Thabo will be leaving on that midnight train to Georgia. He picked Richmond in the first place after the horse race. The rich passengers never talked about the war- except when it briefly touched the Ohio. They raved about the food- the entertainment and fine merchandise available from the best craftsmen in Europe were the rich folk fare on the Sweet Miss. Passed Vicksburg once during the war- wheat down the Mississippi, then up with a load of cotton.
Hunters Moon aboard the Dart, trophies no longer prizes
Where, where? Up in the air.
Selling black puddings, a penny a pair.
Henry loved all the boats on the river. But Dart was the one Henry…like Chaska and Thabo… called home. None of them a blue-water sailor. She was built for speed. The left bank of the Ohio… just like the Seine and the Rhine…had the fastest racers in the world among art culture design and cuisine. Noble yachts could outrun most any warship. But not the Dart. The Buoys spent summer of 65 to capture her- ship and crew. And ocean running in foul weather at high speed scared the hell out of all of them. Perhaps why they loved it: forbidden fruit.
With her Whitehead torpedoes and brass era deck guns, when Dart came astern in a fog the signal was usually similar. не стреляй в меня. Do not shoot me. Я знаю секреты. I know secrets. Dart paid a fair price for the cargo- an offer they could not refuse anyway. Like Jubal Early script at Gettysburg- an old Landsknecht circumspect. All the while wishing they were in St. Lousy eating a strawberry part- the price was silence and the prizes always paid. Sometimes officers paid with their wives aboard the Sweet Miss during the war. Cunard the target- Vanderbilt the key.
But that is another story.
Roadwork Album
Do yourself a Favor
And they don’t know how to rest.
Cubitt Town, 1864
The iron Confederate cruiser Tallahassee was named after the Confederate state capital of Tallahassee in Florida and was built on the River Thames by J & W Dudgeon of Cubitt Town, London for London, Chatham & Dover Rly. Co. to the design of Capt. T. E. Symonds, Royal Navy, ostensibly for the Chinese opium trade. She was previously the blockade runner Atalanta and made the Dover-Calais crossing in 77 minutes on an even keel. She had made several blockade runs between Bermuda and Wilmington, N.C. before the Confederates bought her.
My Lord Baron: we have acquired a 700 ton fast oceanic vessel for your service armed with 1 rifled 32 pounder forward, 1 rifled 100 pounder amidships, 1 heavy Parrot aft for defense. Mr. C will send particulars regarding our American manufactures and delivery. Your servant H. Now Tom… have Chaska see the wire is acknowledged. He scares the white people. Sure enough boss. Got to get working on the railroad. Ja but this schnellboot is ours. Not for Mr. James. For our own prizes. Leave me off at Charleston boss. Thabo know what you gonna do.
The Rest is Silence
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
In Atlanta, Georgia, the city government intends to destroy large swaths of what remains of the South River Forest—also known by the Muskogee name for the river, Weelaunee. In place of one stretch of woods, they aim to build a police training compound; they have sold the neighboring part to Blackhall Studios executive Ryan Millsap, who intends to build a giant soundstage. Yet for more than a year now, activists have protected the forest against their plans. There’s joy in our fight. This spirit, this forest, will never be able to be contained. Naturally Symonds pocketed my drawings.
Everywhere you look, the police are trying to shrink our worlds, shrink our lives. But we have chosen to say no. Our fight extends beyond the borders of this forest—it extends through our expressions of collective and individual joy, incomprehensible to the narrow imaginations of the police and the ruling class that they protect. Thabo say he couldn’t help himself. Now Tom- that was the plan. They built it. We bought it. They fed the fish. We caught it. Honor among thieves is Miss Steak among beeves. Saving they hide out the mine. Lost cause and effect. Get no respect. Marble head of a pin.
Sludge hammer gonna bare it an grin.
Gallows Humor
SS Dart; North Atlantic, 1887
Aboard VonHot 10 up the Ohio (25 years ago)
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
Remembering 26 December, 1862
On August 17, 1862, four young Dakota men on a hunting trip in the Big Woods killed five settlers near a settlement in Acton Township, Minnesota. Some accounts say that the men acted on a dare, following an argument about whether or not they should steal eggs. Others say that the men were provoked when the farmer refused to give them food or water, or liquor. The victims included Robinson Jones, who ran a post office, lodge, and store, and four others, including his wife and 15-year-old adopted daughter.
Realizing that they were in trouble… ( Big Indian belch for emphasis )… the four men – Wahpeton men who had married Mdewakanton women – returned to Rice Creek village to tell their story to Red Middle Voice, the head of their band, and Cut Nose, the head soldier of their lodge. Red Middle Voice lobbied his nephew Chief Shakopee III for support, and together they traveled to Little Crow’s village near the Lower Sioux Agency. Chaska tell the story in five mutinies with his usual deadpan face.
Where you and all may see.
In four moon time they sing death song and dangle on gallows heap plenty fuss… feathers… paint. Chaska tell the story with handless clock face. Ugh. Dead fuckers. You English don’t fuck around. Not me English you stupid Indian. How many coup we count on way to He Sapa. Too many where nobody sees plenty. You open my eye with long knife for Dancing Bear. You open my bottle fur mein own scare. Thabo no go aloft. You look for singing grass at sea. Chaska Thabo and Heinrich are old pirates and realizing they could not let it be.
Henry fears pity will make him sleepy- pass the trawl…
…and the sea will rise- and catch us all.
Fire in the Whole
A Canon of Methods
Baleen- why can’t you be true.
Some children see him. MOST PEOPLE in the industrial world believe that the future is, by definition, supposed to be better than the past, that growth is normal and contraction is not, that newer technologies are superior to older ones, and that the replacement of simple technologies by complex ones is as unstoppable as it is beneficent. That’s the bedrock of the contemporary faith in progress. This faith remains unchallenged by most people today, even though the evidence of our everyday lives contradicts it at every turn. Death took him in his sleep. Maybe from fear- but most likely- from professional courtesy. Fencing master died sawing logs. Zzz.
I feel like I’m falling forward into an unknown future, say the model who once sold Lemons, that holds great danger. She was known as Used Carlotta. But they seemed to want her anyway. HOWEVER. We best NOT use our machine devices the way we have used our poultry animal and mammal fishing buddies. AI is advancing fast – much, much faster than the public realizes – and the most serious and important issues of our time are going to start to sound increasingly like science fiction to the average person. Science fiction to the average person… is like Connie Willis to a crab basket at Popeye’s where somebody is reading some of her shit right now. Can AI be sentient. Does a fat bear frog water-tight farts. Good God. Yawl.
Jurassic Park logos should be floating up through hippocampus by now and burning its way out the retinal occlusion. Emphysematous changes with an upper lung predominance. Bronchial wall thickening with some mucus plugging in the lower lungs. Linear strands of airspace disease more prominent the right lower lung either atelectasis or sequelae of the bronchiolitis are seen more proximally. No suspicious nodules or masses are seen. Multiple healing right lateral rib fractures 1 of which corresponds to the lesion seen previously. Old fractures of several left posterolateral ribs. No suspicious lytic or sclerotic osseous lesions are seen. They have been reported to the proper authorities.
Say don’t you remember. You called me Al. It was AI all the time.
Touched by Fire
S.S. Daisy Belle
On the Mississippi and at sea, 1873
A rather nervous man had met her at the station in St. Louis. She had hoped to be met by one of her girls. Her St. Louis Theater was still thriving, as such places do that provide mental escape during uncertain and frightening times. There is great money in diversions. Even when there is no money to grasp, it shows up for sport, laughter, and lust. So, Daisy had excused the oversight of any her girls to greet her. Once the realization had taken hold, she resigned to status quo and gave her attention to the nervous man. His name was Douglas Connelly, an Irishman.
In Kentucky, police recently arrested a 20-year-old man hiding in a ditch, wearing a clown costume. Police in Virginia arrested two teens for wearing clown outfits and chasing children. Meanwhile police in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, arrested a man for falsely claiming he had seen a clown trying to lure children and chased it into the woods. He had made it all up, he told police. But that is what is happening now. During the war, silly shit like this happened every goddam day. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. No… we invent all kinds of bullshit reasons for what we want to do anyway. And when we can’t do it, we give all kinds of crazy batshit sour grape plop cognitive dissonance puts and calls. Role a roll a row oh… pluckit .
Daisy watched the river as they rode alongside it, and it was obvious to her that winter was essentially upon them this far west and north of home. The leaves were gone, the air was chilly and the sun was sliding along mostly south in the sky. She seldom missed the northern cities in which she had been so successful. Most commercial enterprises couldn’t seem to succeed without the filth and dreary environment they rendered the cities. By Saturday, she would have her offer formulated based upon her personal experience, the reaction of the clientele and her accounting inspection.
Chaska, Thabo and Heinrich- an Indian, an African and a European- drew their doodles on the margins of the Atlantic monthly to test the currency of the golf scream. It was invented in Scotland you know- along with those Pinkerton sluts who now dog us for our bones. Kate Warne, eh. A real person. Ant we all say Henry. All the buoys were 40 years old and still full of clang and foghorn and such. Bobbin on the space-time rubber sheet down their event horizon, they could not avoid the war. It was a reference point- nothing more. Bloom and grow.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. —Plato
Scary Flying Shark
Eye of the Scarab
Not with a bang but a whimper.
You do not see the pencil being pushed through the paper. Instead take alarm at an ever-expanding circle and peep about choices. You are the plaster of your plate. Capstan of your sole… and what happens. Wow. Scary flying sharks. When they are awakened, they take to the skies, with terrible consequences for everything and everybody. An elite military group of four fallen US soldiers in Vietnam faces the threat to save the Earth from destruction. They get stoned. They will not forget about it.
Sharpsburg; (not Antietam)- along the Allegheny; harvest time, 1869
Henry John Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There, he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and started marketing bottled horseradish, soon followed by sauerkraut, vinegar, and pickles. The company went bankrupt in 1875. The following year, Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin Fred. Heinz said he chose 5 because it was his lucky number; the number 7 was his wife’s lucky number. Do you believe that? The war is over.
Dingdong Daddy; Bong o Bucks, 1968
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
You don’t need to believe any of it. Just remember the numbers- any numbers. Whap bottle flat pat a burp render tomato red blob the fire black flesh and it dumps meaning over bad meat with the victors in Valhalla. Or something like that. Then you know you’re riding with the King. Because of good choices you made. How sweet. For sweet little yams have their turn at the steering wheel. So Major Jack took Hank for a ride in a Phantom. Raven rock was there. Civil war Henry saw it too… sort of upside-down.
Marble mountain memorial like a black granite grin.
Fin de siècle
Another Z axis in FlatLand
Wireless room, SS Dart off Savannah Ga., foul weather- 1893
I will tell you that I’m leaving my financial interest in the farm, right here where it is. As of today, freeze my portion and hold the addition of any profits during my absence until my return and I once again begin to work my way back into earning them. You can donate my land to being a teaching field and split any profits amongst you, pending my possible return. Can you think of anything else you’d like to ask before I can clean up after my mess in the kitchen and get ready to go as far as Eatonton? Daisy would go to Xanadu for her beloved Georgia Soviet Union. Fortunately, the railroad was at her service.
Unfortunately, the state of Georgia was no longer at the service of Maggie or any other Southron belle. In December 1864, a large swath of the state from Atlanta to Savannah was destroyed during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea. 18,253 Georgian soldiers died in service, roughly one of every five who served. In 1870, following the Reconstruction era, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be restored to the Union. They had to let her in. They were grumpy about it too- but the war pigs were busy grunting out another war as usual… turning rivers into toilets and rails to hobo highways.
A Change (of Course)
Will you never let us go?
Coins melted into ingots lose their face and identity… but not their weight. Paper is lighter… but more volatile. Like swamp gas. Thirty years after the war- and as far as Henry was concerned- the Battle of Gettysburg WAS the war- melted into bars, blooming costumed dancers in fractal patterns on a two-dimensional chessboard. The value of paper was not the commodity it was supposed to represent- but for the information it could contain. Now Tom turned Dart hard to the lee and Henry felt a bit woozy. Nine foot waves could do that, and Henry concentrated on the words. Change. Small change. Indeed…
Henry was nearly 80 years old when he purchased a Baker Electric for Daisy’s theatre girls. The Aristocrats of Motordom says the advertising. Laughed so hard he spilled his beer. That was a rare day for the crew. However, this is in the future… more than 40 years after the war. Henry had citizenship papers from other nation-states by then. That is another story as well. This is the gay 90s. Gibson Girls and such. The craftsmanship was outstanding. In the Baker Electric that is. Every bump and jar… every bullet and cut since the battle comes back now like a bad debt the Dutchman could not pay. Want to go home. Not today. Pipe them little red shoes.
Has heard the yarn of Dan McGrew ….
Don’t think your stuff I’m not applaudin’ —
My taste is Eliot and Auden.
To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Raptor religion
Willow the which
Aboard the SS Dart: New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, 1873
We can see and hear and count and read and write!
Now Tom was black as anthracite coal and did not suffer fools gladly. Thabo he was called in his Zulu African tongue, but he was Tom to the white folks and Thabo did not care what they called him as long as they paid in advance. Now Tom is how Henry usually began his answers to Thabo (the thumper) and the name stuck. Thabo was a hundred years from his homeland anyway, but the Dart flies a Hessian flag and the warships take her for a private yacht… which she is. Henry had to run the blockade once during the war. Thabo had to ask. Little light to turn her 300 foot hull about her 25 foot beam.
Know what boss… the only time I seen you happy is when hunter become hunted. Indian say you bigtime hunter. Seen you do that. You takin care of business jest like everybody else. But you eyes light up when tables turn. Like when the river get mean. Like when Pinkerton boys is after you. Tell me why that is. Now Tom there ant nothing to it. Speed is life. The faster the better. Shit man. You humbugging me. No. Like switching brains you see. I learned this from a horse. Or a woman. I am not sure. No deal boss. Ant goin back to Georgia.
Pathfinder spirits
We were melted in the furnace and the pit—
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
I saw it too you know. When I was a boy in the forest over the Bieber. Looked like a great stag on his hind legs. It was a gator on his tail man. Eye seed two. Big eyes. Talk in you head man. Magic powder talk. Forget it boss. You and the Indian is in cahoots. Henry is in cahoots with black folk everywhere old thumper Thabo. From river to rail. Dining cars. Pathfinder spirit is not methane or bioluminescence. Gründerzeit is not a word for sneezing. We bound for Charleston now. You to West Virginia… me to South Carolina. Now Tom the river pilot gonna make a super conductor.
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!
Henry had a dream that night. Who knows what it means. They say dogs can smell the future. Everyone knows dogs can talk. But they do not say much. Shoshone pony winked in as a black motorcycle- and of course Henry had no idea what a motorcycle was. Raven rock was the place. And in the sky was an upside-down jungle with clouds like palm fronds cheering a future war. That is another story. Pathfinder Spirit is a light in the darkness that does not lead you into the quicksand tar pit that is the end of all living things. Anima rising. Queen of queens. But I would not feel so all alone…
Harsh mistress moan. Every potty must get stoned.
waldopaper 
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