Faith, an Elegy

I miss God sometimes
Rather, I miss when I could believe
He might be the father to stand in
for the father I never had.

Like so many others, though,
in the fullness of time
I fell upon that belief 
with claws and teeth

It wasn’t enough 
to cast off allegiance
I wanted to hurt 
that imaginary being

I wonder if this 
reaction has a relation 
to the urge some young girls have
upon the onset of puberty 

to mutilate, burn, or otherwise 
ritualistically torture their dolls

mindless, gleeful violence gloating
over the remains of 
childish affection

for some it appears a necessary development
the artifacts of a once sweet and loving child 
not merely destroyed
but desecrated

memories of happier, more loving times 
slaughtered, the more cruelly the better
so that the more practical 
sensible adult may take the place
of a child who somehow
vanished in a single night’s sleep
went out to play that one last time
came back
ate dinner, went to bed
and that was that. 

Of course, God was nothing like a sweet child
making up stories and enjoying tea with her toys
but a cranky old man who created us flawed
and hated us for it

therefore He had to permit His only Son
His avatar on Earth to be mutilated, tortured and
killed oh-so-slowly (those glorious Romans
being such expert practical, sensible adults)
that we might be washed clean in the blood
wrung from agonized flesh

ah, and that final detail—

the son of heaven
crying out for his father
but the father has withdrawn 
and so the son dies
humiliated, in pain
alone

salvation born in plain hateful meanness
for some reason this was necessary
the practical, sensible, and 
most God-like thing to do

The story should have lost me at the
sticky, stinking, so gratuitously spilled 
gore washing us clean

we’d been treated like rotten little children
promised something better if we only behaved
while the Favored Ones were as rotten as could be
and rewarded before our faces
right here on Earth
right where and when it counted

so we acted out like rotten little children
at once rebelling against our father
while most faithfully imitating Him.

This is far from 
the Greatest Story Ever Told
but it’s certainly among
the oldest.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

The Passion of Sgt. Pepper

A landmark popular music album reconsidered over one half-century later. When what’s taken as your best is really the beginning of the end.

On 1 June (2 June in the U.S.) 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As this album with the colorfully striking and instantly iconic cover appeared after a relatively long, quiet stretch after calling it quits on years of touring, Sgt. Pepper was considered a comeback album. Strange as it may seem to us in the distant galaxy of the early 21st century, but it had been over three years since the band had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and in the hurried-up world of the emergent global popular culture of the mid- to late 1960s, The Beatles were already considered old hat and on the way out.

As the album was called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and as Paul McCartney was hyping it as The Beatles pretending to be another band entirely, the album is also considered the first “reinvention,” or rebranding of a popular music act—and, given the circumstances, just in the nick of time. As always, to fully appreciate this requires an understanding of the way things were when world superstars like The Beatles were a brand new phenomenon.  Consider the world of February 1964, when “the loveable moptops” in matching suits played on Ed Sullivan, versus the world of June 1967. Google the images. 

Hint: They looked nothing like this three years ago, not even the year before.

Now realize that, with what most critics consider The Beatles’ peak as a band, they had all of two years, two months, and 22 days to go until they were over. The last time the four men would be all together in one place was for the final promotional photo shoot at John Lennon’s Tittenhurst mansion on 22 August 1969. They had just exhausted their last bit of tolerance for one another on their last album, Abbey Road, finished just days before. Look at those photos and flash back two years before, then three years before that. It’s curiously apropos seeing that black-and-white world turn into fuzzy color. (Coincidentally, The Beatles’ previous album, Revolver, had a black-and-white art motif versus Sgt. Pepper’s blasts of blues, pinks, reds, greens, etc.)

I disagree with the generally accepted notion that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was The Beatles’ peak. All the hype stripped away, Sgt. Pepper was a better-than-average Paul McCartney album with very special guests and the most painfully mediocre songs of his Beatles career. 

But it was so well-produced! Ahead of its time! Revolutionary! 

Please. “Fixing a Hole”? “Lovely Rita”? 

“When I’m Sixty-Four,” while cute, is yet another one of Paul’s “rooty-toot songs” as described by producer George Martin, and more scornfully as “granny music” by George Harrison. When John Lennon was asked what his contribution to the song was in his final interview for Playboy magazine, he sniffed that such a thing would never occur to him. (The song was indeed all Paul’s, as he’d composed “When I’m Sixty-Four” when he was 16 and still living at home.) The best I can say for it is it’s a relief following the tedium of George Harrison’s twangy-dangy, boop-bop-bop of “Within You Without You.” Finally, something with a melody!

A somewhat deceiving image. George was famously bored throughout these sessions. Ringo had so little to do he learned to play chess to pass the time. They were no longer four guys learning songs to play for a show. It was more like two, sometimes three guys seeing how much studio jiggery-pokery they could load up their own songs with. They still had many classics to record, but it would only get worse from here.

Imagine if the quasi-metal stomp of “It’s All Too Much,” recorded during the Pepper sessions, but discarded for 1968’s Yellow Submarine soundtrack, had opened side two instead. I imagine a much better album. Even John Lennon’s contributions, aside from “Lucy in the Sky,”  “Good Morning, Good Morning” and the much ballyhooed (because much produced) “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” seemed forced to me. (The White Album, in which they practically all made solo tracks, is where Lennon would really shine in this declining phase of the band.)

Yes, Sgt. Pepper had “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and the greatest John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaboration to end them all, “A Day in the Life,” but this album was the beginning of the end. The Beatles’ last album as a cohesive band was Revolver. At the beginning of June 1967 the band was no longer touring, founder John was psychologically checked out as leader, and Paul was much too eager to take over. With the band soon to lose the guidance of manager Brian Epstein, as of June first, The Beatles had all of two years, two months, and 22 days left as a working entity.

I know I’ve mentioned that fact already.  My contrarian take on one of their most iconic albums aside, I simply can’t get over how much quality work did get produced, and over such a short, febrile period of changes in fashion and attitude. We’ll never see such times again, let alone such a band. 

Great Stories Well-Told Are Like Arrowheads

That is to say, they’re out there to be found, but you have to know where to look. At least in this metaphorical case the arrowheads are still being manufactured. 

The following is a case in point from a Facebook page called Green Text, which refers to the Reddit and chan board custom of posting in green text to indicate the text is either a story/anecdote, a quote, or a summation of another post. Normally colored text can and often does follow, sometimes to provide the punchline.

It’s a visual language unto itself, but easily acquired. My point is, you won’t find anything published by the Big Five publishing houses to match the chills in this story. Long ago, in a world far, far away, writers like Saki, O. Henry, and Guy de Maupassant specialized in tales like this. You could read them in regular little magazines devoted to such things; can you imagine that? 

Anyway, I can hear these once popular, now nearly forgotten masters cackling from beyond the grave as I get towards the end:

Probably the darkest Be Careful What You Wish For tale I’ve ever read. If there’s a darker one, I’m glad I forgot it.

I pray to God this is fiction. The hell of it is, it’s a hell of a world and we might not even be hearing the worst of it.

To end on a happy note, though, I trust those who have followed the links embedded in the author’s names have realized you can read their best works for free on the Internet. (These people are long dead; they don’t mind.) Of course, green text stories such as the above can be found browsing boards on Reddit, 4chan, or 8chan. They can be as crude as they are crudely formatted, punctuated, etc., but there is more life to many of these anonymously posted tales that you will find in any celebrity author-edited Best Short Stories of 20__ collections of stylized tedium.

For readers and writers alike, these are great days to be alive. Even as illiteracy and coarseness seem to be metastasizing across our culture, these may very well be the best of times. The Good Stuff is out there. You only have to look, read, and enjoy.

Jack’s Weekend Out

Once again I find myself confronted with change and looming mortality, albeit on a smaller scale. Also, is this the best life we’re living? One cat seeks to answer this most important question.

I’d done it before, but they all came back in. These were the same cats, too, Jack and Luna, who slipped out the primitive screen door on the side of the mud room facing the backyard, because I’d neglected to put the big concrete chunks in front to keep it secured.

The first time this happened, they came back inside quickly on their own volition. This time, Luna had to be dragged out from beneath my son’s car. 

Jack ran away.

Jack, from our last years in Colorado Springs. Although we’ve had Jack since my daughter brought him home as a kitten in August 2011, it’s only in recent years that he increased in mass (not fat, mind you) to become our largest cat. Also, several of his whiskers are bright white now.

I hadn’t realized he was out until I came back from my evening constitutional and saw his large, black-furred frame standing to one side of the porch in the front yard. I called his name. In cat-like fashion, he looked blankly back at me. I went inside, and was promptly asked, “Have you seen Jack?” 

Well....

Jack, doing his flat-cat thing on my old futon in my Colorado Springs basement office. For many years Jack could lie down on something and his uncanny ability to conform to the surface made me wonder what he did with his internal organs. 

I went back outside and walked the perimeter of our yard. The regular outdoor ferals were out and about as always, but no sign of Jack. 

“Well, it’s not the first time he’s spent the night outdoors,” I said, coming back in. “He’ll show up when he’s hungry.”

“A reasonable assumption, human. However....”

I found myself looking through every window I passed as I drew the curtains and closed up the house for the evening. I was in the master bedroom upstairs peering through the windows that overlooked the front yard when I saw a familiar shape sprawled comfortably across the front walk. I unlocked the window, but by the time I had pulled it back to call his name, Jack was gone.

After a few minutes I went back downstairs. Jack was back on the front walk. The porch cats were in the yard hunting grasshoppers and moths, and, so far, coexisting quite well with the large black gelded tom reclining across the concrete like he owned it. I opened the front door and stepped out to the porch.

“You think you know me, human, after all these years. Bah!”

Jack saw me. He knows my voice. He knows the inside of the house, which he could certainly see through the open door behind me.

When I called him to come in, Jack ran away into the darkness.

“I suppose he’s where he wants to be,” I told my wife.

“He has no claws.”

I said I figured he’d do the best he can. “Remember that cat in Anchorage with no front claws that managed to kill every last rabbit in the bog near our house?”

I looked out the windows every now and then, but I finally had to give up and go to bed.

I expected Jack to appear as I fed the porch cats in the morning. I saw no sign of him. Jack is something of a “chow hound,” if you’ll pardon the expression, and it wasn’t like him to miss a meal.

I walked out into the yard and looked around. I looked toward the big empty lot across the street from our house, then up and down the street.

I turned around and went back inside. I could only hope he was close by, and unharmed.

My wife, as always, articulated what was already pointing a bony, accusatory finger at me from the back of my mind. “I kinda feel guilty for not feeling worse about this. I really don’t miss him that much.”

Indeed, Jack’s defection to the great outdoors presented an opportunity we thought we’d only have upon the death of our eldest cat, namely, to bring the big, shaggy white rag doll mix we call Gal into the house.

Gal is a tale unto herself, being one of the first cats I noticed that “came with the house” we moved into two years ago. I used to call her the Yeti, because she was so huge and shaggy and white. She would scowl down on me from the top rail of the old chicken coop in the backyard, when the stray cats used to all congregate there. (That they don’t anymore is a mystery. They all stay near the front porch when they’re not inside the abandoned house across the street.)

For the longest time, we never saw her. I couldn’t tell you when she showed up again, only that it was sometime over last winter. Over the past year we noticed how she got closer and closer to us as we went outside to feed the outdoor cats. She would run between our legs to get at the bowls we were filling.

One day this summer, she let my wife pet her. The next day, my wife held Gal in her arms. I was still recovering from surgery at the time, but it wasn’t long before Gal was in my lap, nuzzling my chin. There is no doubt in our minds that Gal was abandoned, perhaps by the same people who left this house empty for two years before we came along to buy it.

Note Gal at the door. She comes inside to visit us from time to time, but isn’t comfortable with the indoor cats. Everything is a work in progress.

It didn’t sit right with me, though. I watched Saturday afternoon as Jack tried playing with Angel, the big white tom, only to narrowly miss getting his face taken off. Again, Jack has no claws. He can’t even run up at tree when the occasional stray dog comes around, and it wasn’t looking good for his acceptance by the born-and-bred ferals under our porch.

Saturday evening I tried cornering Jack so I could bring him indoors. Everywhere he saw me, he ran.

Maybe this was it, after all. This was the life he wanted to live and he’d find a way. And if he didn’t, he’d die giving it his best shot. It’s what any sensible, self-respecting creature wants, so why I am trying to cage him in this house?

Spooks (full name Spooky McSpookerton) is of the third generation of kittens to be born since we moved here, and for as well as he gets on in the great outdoors, would not enjoy being domesticated at all. 

Regardless of these thoughts, I went out on Sunday morning, this time leaving the front door wide open. He regarded the open door before him. I took a step towards him and he shot up the steps to the porch, across the porch and into the house.

The family was complete again, our weekend-long crisis over in three minutes. Jack had to make the decision, I keep telling myself. He wanted to do this.

The other cats in the house had a grand time sniffing him over for all those exotic outdoor scents, and Jack didn’t mind the attention. That was all there was to it. Jack hasn’t tried escaping since. He’s even a little more affectionate with me, even demanding of it from his perch on the chair by the picture window looking out over the front yard.

He’d made his decision. Was it the best one? I don’t know, but I’m glad it turned out this way. The incident gave me much to think about in terms of freedom versus comfort.

If nothing else, they do furnish a room.But is that all we’re here for? To furnish a wet rock spinning through space? Yeah, we’ll stop here. I’m obviously tired.

The Software-as-a-Subscription (SAAS) Model Was Only the Injury

Here comes the insult.

I’ll never forget that first day playing with Word in Office 2010 on its debut ten years ago, just in time for Windows 7 to improve on the buggy traninwreck that was Vista. (I once heard Win 7 referred to as “Fixta.” Amusing, because apt.). It was love at first scroll with that ribbon bar. 2010 certainly looked like the future from there, and a fine one, at that. 

Years later, with 2010 well in the past, they offer me a subscription service by way of an upgrade. Ha-ha, funny. No, thanks, I’m good. 

One full decade later in 2019, they’ve not only bottomed out, they’re drilling the abyss. The grammar function on Word has always been about as useful as tits on a boar hog. Now....

I got this image from someone’s Facebook page. I looked up the article, and, ironically, this is the one article of many on the subject that does not gush over the “gender inclusive” silliness beyond the logline. Of course, it might have something to do with the audience of this particular online paper. See for yourself. Asinine Western pop-cultural fashions aside, the latest Word is an intrusive piece of software. This may be all well and good for brainless business drones who must be kept in corporate cultural lockstep. For writers who value their artistic integrity, it’s cancer.

I’ll handle my own editorial, thank you. Office 2010 ‘til I die, then.

If All the Stories Have Been Told, Why Do We Still Need to Hear Them?

My entire philosophy of art in two handy quotes.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
— G. K. Chesterton

Art’s highest purpose is to comfort and encourage the weary and the frightened, to uplift the downhearted. We follow the story of the hero as everything that matters is taken from him. Maybe all he really loses is hope (and that’s bad enough). When he’s on the resurgence in Act III, we know we can come back from whomever or whatever puts us down, too.

There are many sculptures of Heracles versus the Hydra. This one is in Denmark. Imagine all those snake heads as hungry zombies and we’ve updated the story of one man versus all manner of bad craziness.

That is, if it’s well and convincingly written. Maybe you could sculpt a statue of someone performing a mighty deed, Heracles and the Hydra-style. Or paint something so serenely beautiful as to soothe our last surviving nerves from work. I want to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, goes a line to a popular song from a few decades back. Show us it’s possible to at least manage that pain, too, if you don’t mind. Or at least give us a dank, sticky three-chord riff to make us forget it for two and a half minutes.

Most of all, we want to know we can all make it if we just hang in there and take that final stand. Sometimes all the hero has to do is show up before the bad guy, thinking he’s got nothing left to lose but his life, and what do you know? He sees this thing here, that thing there, he hears an inflection in his antagonist’s voice. A memory surfaces, something someone said. He sees his shot. He takes it.

And if this guy could do it....

“I shall rebuild...somewhere else. The Zorgons hit this place pretty hard, by the looks of it.”

We have art so that we may not perish from truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Neetch was snarking here, but there’s another level to this besides “we have art because we can’t handle the truth.” At least according to how I choose to interpret it, and it’s debatable whether Nietzsche would appreciate my interpretation. I’m aware I’m turning his line inside out, but I stand by my variation, which is We have art so that we know we are not alone.

Every hero in every story you ever see has a Darkest Hour. By this point it’s been one disappointment, one failed plan after another. We’ve lost people, we’ve been betrayed, every move we make is on someone else’s metaphorical chessboard and we’re eternally in check.

There’s some downtime involved here as the hero sulks in silence, wondering whether to proceed at all. Either new information comes to light, or he decides to go out swinging despite the overwhelming odds. Either way, we’re encouraging those in their own private darknesses not to make any rash decisions. Wait either for the new information, or the resolve not to give your enemies the satisfaction. A lot of times that new information—a revealed weakness, or weapon, the cavalry, etc.—comes up in the course of our hero taking those final swings. 

However it plays out, evil falls. The hero overcomes.

As per Chesterton’s quote about the dragons, we know the dragons can be slain. Here, we know we require these stories that we may not perish from refusing to disregard the odds. The numbers never lie, but a good heart can sometimes change the equation. What Chesterton understood as the power of a valiant spirit, Nietzsche would recognize as self-interested will unfettered by the slave moralities of timorousness and terror. 

Whatever you want to call it. These are my stories, and I’m sticking to them.