bill235

I haven't posted anything for a while. I should probably be punished for dereliction of duty. I suspect I may try to set up my own blog out there in the big wild world beyond LJ soon. Who knows. Here is a new poem. Forgive me, it is rather grim.

Failure

That words are out of jointure.
Or no. That words just are
This failure to connect.
To occupy a dying space.
Vanishing Being leaving no trace.
It falls.
All falls.
Words like fish dead on the floor.
What if we could
You know, understand
One another.
What abysses
We would star-gaze in then.
Horror struck,
The visual verdict
That there is nothing there.
Thankfully our words misdirect,
Unconnect one thing from another.
Skin slides on skin
And we wrap round together
In serpentine rings
But our bones never touch.
We are a will to the shallow
To hide that we are
Mere surfaces
Failing to meet.

Homes

Homes make requirements of you,
Each one different,
Calls for creations
Suited only to your talents
And repairs
Fit perfect for your hand.
Homes make demands
Of those who hear the call,
As most don't
Who think a home
Something to rent or own
And not something
That owns you.
A home is built
Of challenges lovingly made
And with cherishing labor met.
How many don't live
But rather occupy
A box to hold the remains of years?
How many really wrestle
With space
To form of it a place?
Gardens must be fought for
Then sheltered amidst the dust.
The wood of table and floor
Holds the impression
Of attentive shinning hands.
Walls are worn by laughter
And stained with the smells
Of dinners delicately planned.
Amongst these
You must make your stand.
Amongst these
You must find your place.

All of what I have posted here is old, whether by a few months or several years. Here is a poem I wrote tonight.

Rivers

You are so silent for a city river
With hardly a crew scull or motor boat
Sliding your surface,
Then seagull song
From under a distant bridge
Rings a harsh break
With afternoon calm.
I have hated this place,
This southern exile,
But I can't hate you now
When your wistful lapping
Call as an echo of other rivers.
I had been on a bench
But you drew me down to your bank
With the promise of memory
And just a touch of sadness.
The college docks across from me
Reflect that distant dock in Boston
Where for the first time
I saw that the night sky had depth.
We lay there and with sudden shift
My upward gaze looked out
No longer upon a black canvas with light points
But upon a terrifying hallway
Receding.
I wept by that river
When I had to leave it
And begged it to bring me back.
A part of me walks the Charles still.
But it is afternoon in Tampa
And the stars were in my head.
Then seagull song
From under the distant bridge
Seems a call
From the river of my youth.
My father's boat waited there
On whose heaving deck I used to stand
Laughing at the bow in the sea spray.
We raced along the silver highway
Chasing the moon
And rode the sea as the sun left it.
But homeward we always went
Between that river's bending banks.
The seagulls there feasted on fish carcasses
And their beaks were red with blood.
Bones littered the mud beneath the dock
Where crabs searched for flesh,
But far inland the river wandered
Between wooded banks
Where we lit fires at night
And howled with youth
And hunted petrified sharks teeth
Hidden for centuries in the silt.
But here and now your banks,
Beneath the Florida sun,
Are hunted by prehistoric children
Whose living mouths still house their teeth.
Here the trees that shade your edge
Are cloaked with sashes of spiderweb moss
Whose slowly waving folds
Seem to conceal southern secrets
To rival our old midnight bonfires.
But here in the city's heart
Your edge is stark man made stone
Which neither tree nor alligator disturbs.
And you are silent for a city river,
With a stillness that seems to reveal
That you are remembering
Better times
When your ways were more well loved
And your face reflected a merrier view
Of a livelier place.

(A while back I posted some of the introduction to a novel entitled Searching for Pierre. The introduction to the work is long and provides much of the background for what happens later but, despite that, I figured I would jump ahead and post some pieces from the main sections of the book. Here you go.)

Searching for Pierre

Book I
 
Luna Chasing Helios

Chapter One: Study of New York Sparrows Over Paris

     When the earth was still young, but getting on in age, at that fragile time between childhood and cold adult life, Daniel Gorse stepped out of Penn. Station in New York and flinched at that sudden flood of noise. New York was a prickly city, a city of spines that clawed the ears, scratched the feet and impaled the eyes. A city akin to a rabid baboon screaming and chattering wildly on a leash; unpredictable, noisy, annoying, dangerous and just barely contained.
     He hailed a taxi and found himself in the cab with no idea where to go. He told the driver (a middle aged man with wild ragged hair, wrinkled skin covering hands scattered with blotches of discoloration and a sever lack of teeth) to just drive around. He was driven about for close onto an hour, through the cavernous canyons between towering glass and steel dolmen and across bridges held aloft by spider webs of silver metal. It seemed fantastic, so light and airy, the glass and thread, as if New York floated, a gentle dream. He did not contemplate the delicacy of glass and spider web, how they might fall, shatter, crash at any moment. The world was still young and the modern dream, no longer American alone, beat in the blood of a planet as the sun slid slowly towards the horizon, painting the city crimson, making of steel stone and glass, ruby. The moon struggled to rise.
     The chirp or thrush of a pigeon as it moves from one stone, on a ledge high above the busy city street, to another, sounded painfully like rain fall in the distant steppes of Russia. No one heard however. While the sound of a plaintiff "tick, tick, tick" whispered from a trash pile in a back alley where a broken watch had been cast in disgust by its owner.
      Its owner tick was named Howard tick and tick had worked for several tick years on wall tick street. tick tick he had never tick, however, tick bothered to tick buy an expensive tick but reliable watch though he tick made plenty tick of money. Cash tick pilled in his bank accounts, waiting tick to purchase his tick escape from New tick York tick and his purchase of tick a tick house somewhere in Bermuda tick where never again would he have to avoid the danger of low flying pigeons or insane taxi drivers. tick tick tick time goes by tapped out perfectly by the constant tick tick tick of the watch hidden under a paper cup, an empty whiskey bottle, and a plastic bag ticking away the time of the city in the moist dark. The constant and insistent tick tick tick ticking, New York City's hidden heart. Strangely enough the time told on the broken watch's tick ticking face is the precise time in Paris
                                                                                                                                                                                           where John Gorse slowly awakes from his dark sleep in his hospital bed to groan at the disturbing feel of the I.V. needle in his arm, the cotton crowding his head, and the stern looking nurse who stood at the end of his bed looking, well, particularly stern.
     "Good morning Mr-" She glanced down at his chart, held in her impeccable hands, "Mr. Gorse is it? You've been having quite a sleep, though not as long as the one you could have ended up with. You've had a close call, I can tell you that." Her voice throbbed with disapproval.
     "Your lovely Madame." said John. "What is your name?" She frowned, her face a mountain's granite side.
     "That is hardly important." Her voice was a sparrow's, chirping on and on on a soaring wing over the fragrant streets of Paris to settle on a ledge half way up the Eiffel Tower which once held a Nazi flag and now stood bold and proud, waiting to fall
                                                                                                                                                                                              as the pigeon on the New York skyline does while it dives towards the empty fountain in the center of Washington Square Park where Daniel Gorse has finally exited his taxi and decided, for a while, to stay. There he sits on a bench in the dark, for the sun has finished setting and the moon's rise has been delayed. He sits and his eyes wander, sliding over trees and benches and people walking dogs or laughing or talking while walking. He thinks of Art, how music has descended to be the fodder of the masses, and about the way in which that lady allowed her poodle to shit on the sidewalk and refused to pick it up, she simply walked away, and the use of the word "shit" in his mind, with its crass ring, clearly shows his disapproval. The dog's shit is made up of different brown or green mushy masses congealing together or sliding apart as the whole lump steams slightly in the cool air. The different mushes are made up of particles of this or that part of the poodles lunch which in turn are made up of molecules formed of atoms which hold spinning electrons, achieving the impossible by jumping from one place to another without moving in the space between as they race at unimaginable speeds around the sun of neutrons and protons which clutch each other like lovers in the core of the atom of endless possibilities.  
     Daniel looks away from the steaming mound, small and petite, of dog shit. Has anyone ever clocked the run of the electron? Not possible. A man stumbles through the park singing "You'll come a waltzing, a waltzing with me." And he sang as he walked and waited in the park, which in no way resembled a billabong. While the nurse talked, John admired, Daniel thought, the moon rose, and the tick clock tick spelled tick out tick the tick passing...

Chapter Two:   Lilies in the Background of a Mighty Cathedral

      Dr. Peter Brown of Buckman Buckman and Reid Incorporated held a chunk of white quartz in his hand. When revealed to the light it sparkled faintly all across its white surface like ground glass in milk. Dr. Peter F. Brown was not, admittedly, a member of "the search for Pierre" but he had known of it for several years. It was part of his area of study for the C.R.T.I. (College for Researches of Theological Import) which was a sub department of the vast organization that was Buckman, Buckman and Reid.
This study, due to the odd complexity of its subject matter, he conducted through a categorical study of each of the search's members. He traveled the world recording the members' adventures in secret from afar. A reserved, even repressed, individual of impeccable manners, he went about his "spy work" in as demure and non-intrusive a manner as possible. He rarely, if ever, met those he studied, choosing rather to watch them from afar and talk only with their chance acquaintances. He was soon to find his job becoming much more involved then he had first anticipated.
     The cause of this was to be Mason G. who had men watching Dr. Peter F. Brown even as the good doctor watched Sebastian in the streets of Paris. Mason G. himself sat alone in his study, his hands resting on the finely polished oak of his desk's surface like the marble hands of some god's statue buried in Atlantian ruins. He sat, he thought, and he wove his webs out in ever widening spirals of greater complexity all in the name of the Search for Pierre.
     Sebastian had only just finished visiting John Gorse in the hospital. John had not yet woken from his dream and delirium so he knew nothing of the visit. Sebastian wasn't much troubled by this however, and returned to his humble tenement, with its strange rich land lady, and retired to writing feverishly into the night in several different ragged note books while the building's fellow inhabitants commented on his strange proper dress and the literary frenzy which seemed habitual to him.
     One must understand that Margaret was a Goddess to John who, though many years and even more miles separated from her, still dreamed of her in his hospital bed. Yet each day he awoke to the stern grim nurse with her silent condemnation and haunting girl-like eyes.
     Margaret, all the while, was residing in Japan under the guise of a French Duchess. She stood in her painfully modern flat gazing out the windows , which extended from floor to ceiling, which granted her a fair view of Tokyo, and thought of the charming eccentric she had met in Prague several years earlier. It was the cloudy night and soft silky misting drizzle that brought him to mind. It had been on such a night, with just such a romantic clime, that she had been set upon and nearly raped by three thugs.
Prague is, truly, the most medieval of cities, with a dark brooding loveliness that whispers of elegant mysterious vampires and other romantic legends of the night. Its wondrous ancient streets, as Margaret wandered on in her search, yielded a different kind of far less enchanting vampire.
     She could still remember their rough and dirty hands, the cruel brutish faces, the broken teeth and harsh grunting breath stinking of cheap booze beneath the glorious stars which unfurled like a tapestry of heaven above the damp alley into which she had been shoved and forcefully man handled. She had always imagined the smell of fear to be sour, however, as it scented the soft European night she discovered it was deep and sweet, cloying, like terribly over ripe fruit. Surprisingly the taste of hate was like salt to the dehydrated, it was frightfully refreshing, addictive, burned slightly and leaded ever on to the need for more.
Her back against a rough stonewall, her mouth bleeding from where one of the assailants had struck her, she thought that this was how it ends. Not her life, her mind was of a far deeper bent then that, but rather the world. The glorious creations of the few great or clever men fallen to the brutality and stupidity of the crass and common masses. Two strong hands painfully clutching her arms as she struggled and screamed, two knees forcing her legs open, the feel of the point of a knife on her throat, the complex sound of church chimes like nightingales soaring through the still night, and some harsh laughter as the biggest of the beasts prepared for a more metaphorical and terrible assault.
     Then, like a minor sunrise in that dark alley in the middle of the night, the whistle of a cane flying through the air in a deadly arch and one of her assailants grunted and toppled. A blur of a new figure, seemingly dancing with impeccable skill and elegance around the remaining two attackers, and soon they too fell and she and her savior alone stood. He smiled. She found he was a roguish figure in a jean jacket, black pants and a seemingly fine silk shirt. He had a small reddish goatee and a large dominant mustache. In his hands he held a carved and varnished quarterstaff.
     "Sir Anderson Brook, Madame." He introduced himself with a slight bow and dashing smile. And so Margaret met the Knight Errant of Eastern Europe.
     She sighed, remembering in her Tokyo flat, and sipped her wine. She moved over to her "Home entertainment system", a silver monstrosity with flashing buttons and dials. She flipped a switch and a fugue by Bach began to play. This was all she wanted. No need for vast technological advances. She would have settled for one man on a clavier.
     The music soared, the amazing delicacy of a gothic cathedral's towering peek, it grew soft like the shadows and dust in the knave, then the fugue itself, Latin chants, mumbled prayers, repeated over and over in infinite variety, the columns growing into soaring buttresses one after another, lining the mighty vault of the cavernous cathedral. This was life, this was joy, a perfectly simple tune repeated into endless complexity, woven into a tapestry of infinity. So too the people we meet throughout or lives, variations on a simple melody gaining endless complexity through repetition, a hologram with the whole contained in every piece, a fractal, growing till the melody shakes the vaults of heaven, shivers the flying buttresses of the all powerful.  
      Sir Anderson Brook and Margaret had shared that night together. He took her to his rooms, made her tea to warm her and something to eat. He who had saved her now comforted her, and she in return told him of the "Search for Pierre". She spoke of its origins in the wager, of its meaning, purpose, precepts, its mythic and epic proportions. He listened, enchanted, and found it was a search worthy of a Knight. From that day on he pursued no other quest.
 
     But Sebastian was an odd one, or so all those who knew him or knew of him in Paris thought. He had said, when he had first moved in, that he was looking for someone. None, however, could figure out whom, and though he was always friendly and willing to converse he positively never told anything of himself, his life or his purpose. He had a strange way of always turning a conversation around upon those with whom he spoke until finally he knew everything about them from their history to their views and passions. He was charming like none other and seemed to possess a vast understanding of human psychology. 
     He also seemed to possess unending funds. He neither worked nor sought work while in Paris. The curiosity and frustration he inspired drove his landlady to distraction as he spent his days wandering Paris' finest parks and gardens, or sat in cafes alone watching people, and at night drifting from one bar to another, though he rarely drank anything. He simply watched, watched everything and everyone with strangely burning blue eyes like sapphires with some terrible intense consciousness. He watched by day, he watched by night, talked, charmed but most often listened, listened and observed. Then each night he returned home to write franticly for hours, alone, until the early morning.
     All this Dr Peter F. Brown watched himself. He felt like a spy spying on a spy at times. In truth he was a spy watching a spy while being watched by a spy, just the type of knot Mason G most enjoyed. The doctor found Sebastian unnerving, he seemed inhuman with his uncanny habit of observation and unobtrusive secrecy. The doctor took note, with interest, of Sebastian's visit to John Gorse, one of the famous original "seekers". At times the doctor felt that the "seekers", all of them, were pacing out the steps of some vast cosmic dance while they remained all unawares of the fact, weaving ever in and out of each other's lives and stretching across the globe.

(Here is another of the Drake stories. This one is much more clearly within the mystery genre which inspired the Drake stories to begin with. I am afraid Drake comes off looking rather poor in this one, but it is necessary to give us a sense of how frightening he can be. There is later story I may post some day meant to "take revenge" on Drake for his attitude in this one.)
 
          A Bitter Draft to Drink

     Jonathan exhaled a cloud of smoke from the depths of his lungs and then gulped at the cold night air like a drunkard gulping beer. The night was crisp and quite yet the city streets seemed to almost shiver with electric energy. Jonathan liked the night, liked the enshrouding darkness that cloaked him from the prying eyes of the condemning masses. He took another slow loving drag off his cigarette, as if the poisonous smoke were his life blood. Ah Blood, that brought a deliciously decadent tingle to his spine. He watched as a couple strolled by in each others loving embrace. Blood, yes blood was nature’s true perfection. That ambrosia of the gods which was both the essence of life and so often the harbinger of death. Even the night air had a pulse, a slow succulent beat that filled the air with a shivering flow of vitality, the blood of the night. It was a vitality made up of people’s hidden passions and most subverted dreams. A pulse created by all that was human and all that man sought to hide under veils of darkness. Shivering and smiling Jonathan slowly began to walk in the direction the couple had gone.
     Had the couple turned at that moment they would have been greeted with a not uncommon scene. The man strolling behind them was perhaps 25 years old, he had longish black hair and wore a flowing black coat. Between his fingers dangled a half smoked cigarette and his smile and swagger was that of a kid thinking he owned the world. Only his eyes, which were hidden in shadows, would have revealed the strange fire that burned beneath the surface. Only the eyes, which were supposed windows to the soul, could have portrayed to the blissful couple the depth of the bitterness that followed after and the terrible hunger grown out of awful emptiness and dejection. Perhaps they would have overlooked the tell tale shadow in his strangely shining eyes that spoke of years of forced painful loneliness which had taught him to be alone always, even in a crowd, and to be strangely grateful for it. Indeed, anger burns like a fire and is gone, but hatred festers to a bitterness that gnaws upon the soul until nothing remains. The streets are full of the soulless gnawing upon their own emptiness and finding nothing to sustain them but  illusions. The couple turned a corner and wandered into a peaceful city park, Jonathon followed closely after.

 
     The day was slow and lazy behind the forbidding doors of the elite gentlemen’s club known as the Hasan Society. The society was named for the powerful figure of the Old Man of the Mountain, Sheikh of the secret society known as the Assassins which  had held all the Middle East in terror starting in 1090 and rumored to have never truly ceased. The modern gentlemen’s club, however, was founded much more recently, supposedly by the great anarchist and multi-millionaire adventurer known by many as Hagbard Celine. Within the plush mansion of a club, which majestically towered over Beacon Hill in Boston, everything was lacquered hardwood and champaign. The interior seemed to be a mix between the Elizabethan decadence of a royal palace and the succulent comfort of a Persian opium den. The members of the club strolled about the building, playing chess in one corner, reading or writing a book in another. In truth the entire club was made up of anarchists who took great joy in proving that even the obsessively individualistic anarchist could be an elitist bastard. It was a requirement of the club that every member be able to technically prove themselves a heretic in at least three of the orthodox religions of the world and to have performed at least 5 acts which would nationally be considered treason against capitalism, society, and state. Surprisingly, however, most of the members could just have easily been found in Congress, courts or corporate offices. Many of them were in fact the most upstanding judges, lawyers, and businessmen of the state. Most believed in keeping their friends close and their enemies closer which is why they so snidely snuggled to the cold calculating breast of mother bureaucracy.
     This day was much like any other inside the protective walls of the club’s palace of elite separation. Lazy and epicurean, the hours rolled by as the members smoked and drank and talked of everything and nothing. In the corner the clubs most  honored and enigmatic member, known only as Drake to most, sat calmly smoking an expensive and illegal Cuban cigar and sipping a fine white wine while playing a strange game of four player chess with two other members. The fourth side of the game was played by a supposed spirit who whispered its desired moves into the ear of Drake’s dear friend Mathew Macgregor. Drake lounged in a throne-like chair positioned precisely in the corner from which he could observe the entire gathering. Across from him Mathew conversed with his spirit opponent and the other member of the group, Jacob Harris, who mused aloud about his latest case. He was the city’s greatest private detective and had, in fact, sold his talents in most major cities around the world. It was rumored, in hushed tones amongst the other members of the club, that he had in fact also often worked as a bounty hunter and assassin. Such topics were never discussed aloud, of course, in the civilized decor of the club.
     “Surely you have seen the more grisly details of the case in the papers.” Jacob murmured to Drake while agonizing over his next move. “The entire city is ablaze with conjecture and rumor, and now two of the city’s wealthier families have hired me to hunt down the mystery.”
     “My dear sir,” Drake drawled, “I find that anyone who has even the slightest fondness for the truth avoids the papers and other creatures of the news industry like the plaque. I have no need for my understanding of the universe to be poisoned by the fairy tales woven by the poor fiction writers of the Globe or Times.” Mathew Macgregor chuckled to himself and waited to see what climax this conversation would reach.
      “Allow me to read you some of the most recent ‘fictions’ then.” Said Jacob as he pulled a paper from his traveling case. “Headline, Vampire Murderer of Boston Strikes Again! The midnight horror of the Boston’s streets has added two more victims to its list of kills. Over the period of the last four weeks the serial killer, now commonly referred to as the Vampire of Boston, is suspected of being responsible for 6 deaths. Investigators are mystified. The killer, who gains his name from the bloodless state in which he leaves his victims, has added a honeymoon couple’s lives to his list of death. A list which includes the names of young and old, rich and poor, alike. Investigators say that every murder has been perpetrated in the late hours of the night and each victim has been drained of large quantities of blood extracted from large knife like wounds to the throat. Residents of Boston are advised to avoid the streets as much as possible in the late hours and to travel in large groups whenever travel at night is necessary. Well Drake? What do you think of that? And two of the victims the golden children of two of Boston’s wealthiest families. Now it is my job to find this mad man! It’s unsolvable, I swear. Six deaths and not a single lead!” Drake smiled indulgently and sipped his wine, then graced Jacob with a response.
     “My dear sir, despite your long history of success, I assure you that this case shall be different from any other you have ever taken. To begin with you find the case so difficult because of your lack of understanding, both of the psychology of the human mind and the more important sciences of the human soul. With appropriate knowledge of both of these this case would provide you, I assure, with more than enough leads. Already, however, your own psychology has tainted your view of the situation to the point where there is more obfuscation then clarity.”
     Jacob snorted insultingly. “Is that so sir! Perhaps you would like to enlighten me about these obfuscations.” He growled.
     Drake smiled calmly. “I fear that such education would take more time than even I have the energy and desire for. I can, however, point out some key examples. One, you refer to the murderer as “he” and “him” and yet you have no evidence for even this most basic of claims. Very possibly the murderer is of the female persuasion and you could have been running all over the state hunting the wrong sex. Secondly, you most likely have over looked the simple fact that often names have more meaning then one would suspect. This bringer of death is called the Vampire of Boston, and it is very true indeed that a vampire is precisely what we are dealing with.”
     “Ohhh please! What rubbish! You actually are suggesting that a preternatural monster is committing these crimes? A horror story fiction? And you accuse me of obfuscation! What insanity sir!” Exclaimed Jacob.
     Drake simply yawned and sipped his wine. AI believe that by the end of this case you will discover there are many more types of vampires than you would ever imagine. One feeds because one lacks sustenance in one’s body. Likewise, a vampire feeds off others in a certain way because it lacks a certain something in both soul and mind. Your killer is attempting to fill a void with the blood of his or her victims, which I ensure you this vampire is ingesting. If you want to find this killer look for a vampire, and not a man or woman.” Jacob simply broke into disbelieving laughter. Matthew Macgregor, however, knew better than to ever doubt Drake’s amazingly acute observations. He also knew Jacob to be an obsessive gambler. He saw a chance for quite an entertaining game in this argument.
     “Gentlemen,” Mathew interrupted, “If I may suggest a wager. It would appear that you both believe yourselves better equipped than the other to solves this case. I suggest that we begin a race, the first to solve this crime wins. I myself put three thousand on Drake.” Jacob’s eyes light up for a moment in interest and then the flame died as he remembered his earlier claim that the case was unsolvable.
      “And what if neither of us prevail?” Asked the detective.
     “Then, sir, whoever bet that the case was unsolvable wins the pot.” Replied Matthew. Drake interrupted them both.
      “Matthew, I do not enjoy being brought into one of your vain attempts to turn life into a third rate drama. Nor do I approve of this covetous maneuvering of meaningless sickly green pieces of paper. One should have one’s mind on higher matters than the movements of paper. However, I accept the challenge if only to see justice done and to teach our friend here the value of the study of the sciences of the human soul. I hear by swear to see all parties responsible for these murders duly punished.” He replied as he moved one chess piece and placed all three of his opponents in checkmate. And so the deal was done. In a matter of moments the entire club had cast bets for one party or the other, or neither. It proved to be one of the best of Matthew’s games yet.

     The following day Jacob set off into the city with a determined cast to his prominent chin and a grim clench to his jaw. He visited each of the crime scenes and interviewed anyone who knew any of the victims, desperately searching for a common factor which might point to a motive. He also bribed an officer at the police department for all information pertaining to the case. He went home that evening exhausted and having gotten himself no where. He was frustrated and even mulled over following up the vampire lead Drake had suggested. Injuring his pride only a little he decided the following day would be spent investigating the few “vampire clubs” in Boston where gothic role players went to play make believe games such as Vampire the Masquerade. He was determined to beat Drake if it was the last thing he did. As far as anyone knew no one had ever bested the mysterious mystic. Jacob was determined to be the first.
     Drake, meanwhile, spent his day at Harvard Square. The area was filled with bohemian street performers and quite cafes that suited Drake’s mood. He engaged in a few swift games of chess with the self-aggrandized students of Harvard and found their so called "competition” neither threatening nor stimulating. In a cloud of boredom he wandered back across the river to the Boston Commons where he spent several hours reading beneath an oak tree and watching the public pass in that self important haste designed to keep them busy and away from such dangerous activities as thought. The tone of the city had changed however, for now the words upon everyone’s lips pertained to the horrific murders and the stalking vampire killer whose reputation had grown to super natural proportions. More then one seemingly fully rational man whispered to his friend, as he passed Drake, that the police’s inability to catch the killer suggested that perhaps the crimes were being committed by a true vampire indeed. Soon rumors of men changing themselves into bats and wolves would be filling the streets as well. Boston was aflame with conjecture, fear, and the sickening excitement often displayed at the scenes of accidents where passers by stare in grim fascination at the blood littering the area. The public preferred anything to the monotony of their self-inflicted pointlessness and boredom.
     As the sun sank below the horizon Drake left the commons and wandered to one of his favorite coffee houses to meet his friend Matthew MacGregor. Matthew’s talk was all focused on attempting to pull details of Drake’s theories of the crime from his vague silences. Drake, on the other hand, simply lazily watched the smoke from his cigarette curl towards the roof and sipped at his classically poorly brewed coffee. Between puzzling statements of esoteric philosophy he watched the patrons come and go and listened to them buzz about the murders. More than one of the eclectic coffee drinkers claimed to know for a fact that several real vampires were on the loose and three members of different coffee clutches even claimed to be themselves vampires and killers. Drake smiled in benign amusement and turned his conversation with Matthew to more mundane areas.
     “So, my friend, what do you know of my worthy competitor?” Asked Drake calmly between a sip of coffee and a drag off his cigarette. “He must have a very interesting history.”
      “Not very many people know much, in that aspect he is almost as much a mystery as you are.” Drake did not respond to Matthew’s obvious attempt to pry into his past. “Jacob Harris has spent his life traveling the world and most of that time was spent hunting one criminal or another for profit. He is an incessant gambler, as his current situation so nicely shows, and he believes himself the modern Sherlock Holmes. He was born in New York City, they say, and so hated it that he moved to London. How he came by his money is also very debated, but there are rumors of any number of possible illegal activities. He hated London as well and went to Paris where he first began working as a private detective. There are also rumors that he has been hired from time to time to not only find a criminal but also to kill him if possible, which is perhaps a reason for his constant movement. A country’s law enforcement agency rarely likes private detectives that exact their own justice. He spent three years in Paris where he had several supposed affairs, which is no surprise considering he has been known to rob any city he visits of its virgins, if you’ll excuse the vulgarity. He does, however, have a most confusing affinity for justice. Indeed it is said that he performs the jobs he performs completely for the enjoyment he obtains from catching the criminal. He has an almost religious obsession with the concept of justice and has alluded to viewing himself as the hand of justice, above the law as it were. It is also rumored that in the current situation he has been hired, not only to find the criminal, but apprehend or kill him as well. Having failed in the last two cases he has taken, he is driving himself mad over solving this one.” Finally Matthew’s famously long-winded nature ran down. Drake nodded and sipped his drink.
     “Yes, to a man in a situation like this with a history like Jacob’s the criminal becomes the devil himself, often enough. He does not hunt men, he hunts all he hates about society, and most often about himself.” Drake mused aloud. AI wonder if you would do me a favor. I am planning to be busy all evening, however there is some information I need. Could you perhaps contact my dear friend the Marquis du Nizet in Paris and request any information he can dig up on Jacob Harris and his actions in Paris?”
      Matthew was slightly taken aback. “Of course I will, but don’t you think that you should be focusing on the case? There is a wager at stake here my friend. Shouldn’t you be hunting this supposed vampire and not collecting information about your competitor?”     
     Drake sighed and shook his head. “My dear friend, will you never learn the subtlety of the real game I play? I am already on the very edge of solving these murders, that shall be little trouble. However, modern Quantum theory has proven that the simple act of investigating a particle changes it’s properties and behavior. One must study the method of study to understand the true properties of the particle and how it behaves. Our friend Jacob is the investigator in this, I do not investigate I simply wait and watch. He is the one who is hunting the particle which at this time happens to be a killer. We must understand him to understand the killer.”
     Matthew shook his head in befuddlement. “Very well my friend, I shall trust you. Ill get you your information as long as you win me this bet.” Drake smiled slightly.
      “I am involved in no bet and no wager Matt. I swore to see those responsible for this crime brought to justice, nothing else. I am afraid I have no interest in who wins the bet.” And with that the conversation was over. Drake put out his cigarette with a clear sense of finality and stood up. Jacob watched in chagrin as he wandered over to a group of college students playing chess and challenged the winner to a game. In a matter of moments Drake had skillfully turned their topic of conversation away from the murders and focused them on a lively debate about Brahm Stoker’s Dracula and the motivation of the vampire in the book. “What do you think the noble count was after good sir?” Drake finally asked his opponent, a soft spoken boy who had said little more than a word the entire time.
      “I really couldn’t say sir.” He replied. “I have never read the book. Check.” He finished decisively. Drake moved his knight to block the attack of the boy’s bishop.
    “You don’t really have to have read it. Just what do you think would motivate a vampire? Any vampire?” Asked Drake absently as he concentrated on the game.
     “Hunger I would imagine. Don’t vampires drink blood because they have to? To survive or something. To sustain their eternal life I would suppose.” Muttered the boy as he attempted another line of attack against Drake’s king.
     “Ohhh I wouldn’t say that friend. I would imagine that some vampires at least could give up the hunt for blood and simply drink wine or orange juice. No one ever made clear the entire issue to my personal liking. And why not simply break into a blood bank and not have to kill eh?” Drake moved his king to the side, just barely side stepping an attack from the boys queen. The boy was a very assertive and offensive player for one so quite.
     “I suppose the actual act of the killing has as much to do with the hunger as the blood does.” The boy said softly. “Maybe the blood is a symbol of the life the living dead lack. They have to feed off other people’s life force. The killing is really where they get to feed, the act of taking life proves they exist, proves they have power, proves they can effect the world and are not simply phantoms.” He stopped and sipped his coffee. Drake smiled slowly.
     “Precisely my boy,” Drake responded and moved his own queen out to checkmate his opponents unprepared king. He looked up from the board and stared the boy right in the eyes. “You seem to understand the mind of the vampire very well.” Drake smiled and did not break eye contact, the boy shrugged and began clearing the chess board.
     “Good game.” He mumbled as he put his pieces away one by one. Drake continued to watch him and smile.
     “I would imagine the life of the vampire is very lonely. Perhaps that is the hunger he has to feed with blood and murder. Man is often defined by other men. Someone who is alone, even in a crowd, can feel very undefined. Like a phantom if you will. A lonely and powerless life I would imagine. Your right though, by killing the vampire proves he is not just the living dead. He can affect the world, he is real and does exist in the few moments of slaughter.” Drake chuckled to himself and grinned. “A rather grim topic though, I must admit. I am known as Drake. You play a good game of chess, perhaps I shall have the opportunity to play against you again sometime.” The boy nodded absently and shook Drake’s extended hand.
      “I’m Jonathan, it’s nice to meet you.” The boy said softly. Drake nodded and removed a card from his coat pocket.
      “This is my phone number and my address when I am staying here in Boston. If you ever want to discuss your game and perhaps look for some guidance simply call me or stop by. I would, however, suggest that you NOT stop by after dark, I’m afraid I am rarely available at night and would find any intrusion then quite rude.” Drake smiled as he completed his multi-meaningful introduction. He walked over to collect Matthew and the two left.
      “What was that all about Drake?” Asked Matthew, “I’ve seen you play chess thousands of times and that was by far the worst game you ever played. You let that boy control the game the entire time.”
     Drake smiled mysteriously and replied that the best way to win any game is to allow your opponent to think that they have the upper hand and then to reveal their own weaknesses to them, in the end just before you claim checkmate. Drake left Jacob at the door of the coffee house and went off to wander the dark streets by himself.
     “Ohh dear,” He joked, “I fear I have forgotten my garlic and stake. God lord, what kind of vampire hunter am I?” And with that he disappeared into the dark chill Bostonian night. Watching him go Matthew truly felt sorry for any would by killers, Drake was not a man to toy with.

     The next day dawned clear and crisp and the morning papers were abuzz with word of another attack by the Boston Vampire. This time the victim was a young man returning from a punk concert. The city was in hysterics. Even the inner sanctuary of the Hasan Society was abuzz, mostly because the members were worried about their wagers. While the city buzzed, and the club wondered, Drake sat in one of the clubs private sitting room and spoke to the Marqui du Nizet in Paris. He received the information he needed, and smiling, thanked his friend and hung up. Meanwhile Jacob sat in a separate room of the club and poured over his notes and all the information he had gathered both from the police and from his own investigations. He still had no leads. Hearing the sound of a cane clicking upon the hard wood floors Jacob raised his head from his notes to see Drake approaching him in good humor. He swung a black lacquered cane with a fine silver handle absently between his hands.
     “Well old chap, any luck?” Drawled Drake and smiled condescendingly. Jacob snorted in disgust and shrugged.
     “Nothing much, a lead here and a lead there. I dare say it must be more than you’ve got. I hear you’ve spent your time sipping coffee, reading books, and playing chess.” Jacob replied bitterly. Drake chuckled wryly.
     “Ahhh, not so my friend. I’ve been doing quite well for my old self. Granted I’m not the most distinguished investigator on four continents, but I have been holding my own.” Drake responded. Others, hearing the conversation, drew near in hopes of finding out which side of the battle held the lead. “In point of fact I have seen the killer. Last night I saw him fleeing the scene of the crime. Alas I was to late to save the poor victim’s life. Indeed, it was I who phoned the police, though I neglected to grant them my name. I attempted pursuit, after making sure there was nothing I could do for the departed and contacting the officials, but the braggart was already quite gone. He had a frightful head start and I am no longer the man of my youth. I did, however, catch a view or two of his retreating form. Indeed I am quite on the tail of our mysterious vampire.” There were a few sighs of relief and some small cheers from the crowd which had gathered and there was also more than one curse of frustration from those foolish enough to bet against Drake. “I am sure, however, you are just as close on his tail. You are the most worthy of opponents.” Smiling Drake finished his slightly sarcastic speech and wandered from the room. The second he was out of the room Mathew caught up to him.
      “Good Lord Drake, did you really see the man? Are you so close already?” He asked in wonder and joy at the prospects of winning his bet. Drake chuckled to himself.
     “Mathew my dear boy you are so obtuse. I knew who the murderer was two days ago. I simply had to confirm the fact so that no doubt could be summoned up. The killer’s identity is as clear to me now as the sun is to you.”
     “Then announce it! Call in the police! Save the day! Win the bet for Christ sake!” Drake spun on him savagely with a stare as cold as ice.
     “Macgregor there are lives at stake here, this is not a matter of a bet! You would do well to end the entire deal now. I warn you, this is a very forbidding situation and none involved shall depart from this game without losing something very dear to them. End the game now while you’re ahead.” His words were cold as ice and sharp as daggers. Mathew was in shock, Drake never behaved so bluntly unless he was under very great strain. He must truly be troubled by the situation. It was a rare occurrence. Mathew’s musings were halted, however, by Drake’s final words. “I am not in this to win some bet my friend, I tell you this once again. I swore to bring all responsible to justice, and that is what I prepare even now to do. Justice is a cruel goddess who has killed her every lover. Remember that always my friend.” Grimly Drake strode from the club into the cold streets of Boston.

     It was approximately 6:30 and Jonathan was just preparing to go out for the evening when there was a firm knock on his apartment door. He swiftly went to the door to see who was there and found only a simple note on expensive parchment. It read: “I know who you are and what you are doing. If you value your secret meet me tonight. 12:30. The Public Gardens. If you are not there expect to hear next from the police.” Shivering he read the note over and over again. It could only be that man Drake! All his talk of vampires and loneliness. Jonathan choked back a sob. Drake knew, yes he knew about the murders, but more importantly he knew about Jonathan. He knew why he killed. He knew the hunger, the terrible loneliness. The man had hit the mark seemingly by accident. Jonathan was not a phantom! He was not the walking dead, as he so often felt. He didn’t need the love, the friendship, the family he had always lacked! He had shown them that, the entire city. Weeping openly now the boy crumpled into a ball on the bed. It was over. Thank god it was over. He had not wanted to kill those people... he had no choice. They didn’t care, they didn’t know him, they didn’t see him. He was just another shadow as he had always been, worthless, a nothing. God they had known him at the end, as he had tried so desperately to drain from them that which made them real. He wasn’t real. Jonathan wasn’t anything, he didn’t even exist. He begged god to kill him every day, and every day he lived on in the limbo that is a worthless, empty, lonely life. He had grown cold, all the years of his childhood had taught him to be cold. The years of being the unwanted child of a whore. Left to himself for days on end. He was to cold to kill himself. How he prayed someone else would. Every time he stalked someone through the dark empty streets he prayed this would be the man to pull a gun on him and kill him finally. He only existed when he was the vampire, and once he was dead he would be someone. People cared about him now for the first time in his life. But it was over now, he knew it. Drake had proven to good a player, he had found him out. Unless.... He could go to the man’s house and hunt him down now. But no, Drake would be prepared for that. The only choice was to go to the meeting tonight and see what the man wanted. Perhaps he wanted to help him, he had seemed to care when he gave Jonathan his card. Yet now even the caring of another just revealed to Jonathan the horror of what he was. Yet Drake seemed wise, kind, merciful maybe. He could perhaps gain redemption from Drake, redemption or mercy. If not mercy then perhaps death. And if those two options did not come about then he himself would kill Drake. Alone in his dark room Jonathan weeped bitter self-hating tears, as always there was no one there to even notice.

     About the same time that day Jacob Harris received a simple letter in the mail, there was no return address. It read: “Murder has haunted the streets long enough and justice has come to punish all those responsible. The Vampire of Boston will be in the public gardens tonight at precisely 12:30. Be prepared for the extraction of Justice.” There was no signature. Jacob found the entire situation odd, but he could not pass up a possible lead now. Turning to his desk he took out two hand guns and began to load them. Tonight he was the hand of justice, and the victory would be his.

     The sun set that evening in an explosion of pinks and purples as if the light were trying to make up for the horror its passing allowed to wander the land. That night was silent and peaceful in Boston. The wind that had blown throughout the day settled to a gentle breeze and a light snow fall began to blanket the ground. The streets were empty, for all feared the mysterious death that had taken over their once safe city. Alone, Jacob Harris wandered slowly and warily into the public gardens. All was still as if the world itself held its breath. Tonight Jacob was hunting the devil himself, and tonight he would win. The trees slowly parted before him as if gradually revealing a secret they had harbored for to long. Before him Jacob saw a figure standing stock still in the dark. The figure became a boy, no older then 26, and wearing a long black coat and a dark concealing hat. His hands were in his pockets. The boy saw Jacob and stiffened as if waiting for him. He began to walk in Jacob’s direction and soon the two were divided only be a small foot bridge. There both stopped as if the bridge were some gate into another world, the world of the dead.
     “Your not Drake.” Said the boy in worried wonder. Jacob simply stared for a moment. Here he was at last, the devil who had slaughtered men, women and children with no regard for propriety or justice. Justice would not be mocked this night, Jacob was sworn to see to that.
      “Drake? What does Drake have to do with any of this? I am not Drake, I am justice! Why did you kill them? Did you really think there wouldn’t be a price?” Jacob’s voice shook with self-righteous fury. A boy! A simple boy! The world was insane when such evil grew out of children. He hated the world at that moment, and suddenly realized he always had. He was too good for this world of criminals and idiots he lived in. Justice had no place in this sick, stupid, meaningless world, thought Jacob. That, he realized, was why he had chosen the career he had. In some way he hoped to be able to bring the entire world to the judgment of justice it rightly deserved. There was no excuse for the evils he saw every day on the street. The evils men perpetrated behind closed doors when no one was looking. Justice was looking and Jacob was at that moment justice. Men used words like freedom and liberty to justify their inequity. Jacob was not fooled. Justice knew no liberty, believed in no freedom, yet all were equally answerable under her mighty throne. No rationalizations or political back talk could slow her true wrath. Jacob saw it all so clearly, the inadequacies of his fellow men. Men, they were little more than beasts. They would all learn to fear the sting of judgment soon enough. The boy was no longer a boy, he was a vampire, he was a killer, he was the devil himself and the embodiment of every cruelty the world had carelessly shown Jacob in not appreciating his true value. Every snide comment, every time he had been forced to flee a country for seeking justice, every man who had doubted his talents and judgment. And Drake, that devil himself. Well Jacob had won now, and now the devil must die!
His reverie was broken as the boy pulled a long razor sharp dagger from his coat pocket and flung himself at Jacob. Jacob did not hesitate, he did not regret what had to be done. Justice had no weak meaningless heart. Justice was cold, quick, and sure. He pulled his gun and fired twice. The boy fell, dead, in the center of the bridge. His blood slowly flowed over the path to drip into the small pond beneath. The two gun shoots echoed for a moment then all was silent. Jacob laughed. He had won! Won the bet and beat the devil himself! He was a god in that moment.
     Drake stepped out of the shadows and onto the bridge suddenly, and Jacob’s laughter was cut short.
    “Well done my friend.” Said Drake calmly. “You have won the game and the bet. Congratulations!” Jacob was amazed.
     “Y-you set this whole thing up didn’t you?” He stuttered in surprise and horror. The damn mystic was stealing his triumph!
     “Don’t worry about that. But let’s see what has come to pass this evening, shall we?” Drake smiled a cold and infinitely sad smile. "Jacob Harris, meet Jonathan. He is 25 years old, born in France to a high class Parisian lady by the name of Madam Julien. He was born approximately 8 months after you were forced to flee the French police when they were investigating the murder of a drug lord. At the time you had been living in Madam Julien’s home while her husband was away on foreign business. Rumor has it you helped ease her loneliness, to put it gently. 8 months after you left her this boy, Jonathan, was born to her. An unwanted bastard child and a social embarrassment. A child you knew you had created. You left and never contacted her again. She could not keep him and so paid the owner of a brothel to raise him. How he came to Boston is anyone’s guess, but he did. His years of abuse in the brothel, and being abandoned by his mother at birth, warped his innocent mind. Never having, knowing, or seeing a father wounded him worse than we can ever know. Years of loneliness, neglect, and being unwanted made him cold and hungry. Supernaturally hungry for the humanity that was never shown him by either a father or a mother. He became a killer because he was sick, he was sick because he was hated and unwanted by everyone. Especially by those who had caused his inopportune entrance into this world. He is a victim of the worst injustice, your injustice.” Drake’s face was cold as stone and his eyes were sharp as shards of ice. “Jacob Harris, meet Jonathan Harris. Meet your son.” There was no pity for Jacob in Drake’s face, there was no forgiveness. Justice did not forgive those who acted unjustly in her name. Drake did, however, lean down and tenderly close the eyes of Jonathan. A boy who was never loved and received a moment of kindness only after his death. Then, grim as death itself, Drake walked across the bridge and past Jacob. Before he disappeared into the night he turned one last time to look at the private investigator who stood now staring and unmoving. “Call the police Jacob. Call them and tell them of your victory. Tell them how you killed the murderer you had created. Tell them how you killed the son who you turned into a monster. The only vampire walking the streets these last few nights has been you my friend.” And with that the mystic departed. He walked slowly down the dark path which would no longer be haunted by vampires. He left the gardens just as he heard the third and last gunshot of the night. The sound of the shot shivered in the air for a perfect moment like the final crystal note of an opera. Nodding Drake moved on, knowing father and son both lay now upon the cold surface of the bridge. Divided in life they were now united in death.
     Later that night Drake sat in his usual corner at the Hasan Society. He spoke to no one and neither drank nor smoked. He was silent and serene, but his eyes shown with an infinite sadness. Finally Matthew went over to find out what was going on. The response he received shocked him to the extreme. Drake dictated to him the entire story. How he had heard about the reclusive Jonathan while at Harvard Square, the boy was something of a poet for a time and had gained some reputation amongst the bohemian students of the city. Drake knew immediately, from his description and psychological profile, that Jonathan must be the murderer. He had then found out his favorite coffee house, which happened to be Drake’s as well, and had arranged the meeting with Matthew so as to be in the right place at the right time. The entire conversation over the chess game had been the final evidence of Jonathan’s guilt. Drake had offered him salvation by offering him his card and friendship. He gave him one day to respond, had he responded Drake would have aided him in seeking help and escape from his demons. He did not seek help.
      Meanwhile Drake had looked into Jacob’s past and discovered his actions in Paris and the son he carelessly fathered and then left to fate. The fact that the son was the murderer was simply a tragic twist of fate. Fate seemed to have taken an interest in father and son alike. The rest was simply allowing justice to run its course, as it always does of its own accord in time.
“I swore to see all those responsible for the murders brought to justice, and that I did Matthew.” Drake finished sadly. Matthew was shocked to the bone by the horror of the story, and the god-like reserve of the man known as Drake. Shortly, however, his aristocratic bearing returned and Matthew regained his bourgeois air of flippant indifference.
     “But, you lost the bet. You could have won, and saved Jacob the shock which caused him to kill himself.” He muttered.
     “What came to Jacob was what Jacob himself had sown. He found the justice he so loved to speak about. As for winning, there are no real winners in this game my friend. There are only those who lose more and those who lose less. The bet was meaningless and it is perhaps another aspect of Justice’s plan in this game that you lost the bet you had created in such cold blooded humor. You too have tasted a touch of the bitter draft of judgment. This has not been an easy game for any of us.”
Mathew shook his head in wonder and remorse. “So everyone lost.” Matthew MacGregor said sadly. Throughout the conversation Drake’s voice had been as deep and somber as his face. Slowly, however, a small melancholy smile drifted onto his countenance.
     “Not everyone my friend. Though I have lost a thousand wagers worth of winnings in sorrow, I do have something to show for all this. I knew this was a game I could not truly win, so when everyone began placing bets I had a friend place a fair sized wager of my own money. You see I bet on Jacob, and by losing I won.”

Proustian Shreds of Self Erasure:

    Truman Capote was an avid reading of Marcel Proust’s massive work Remembrance of Things Past. Proust wrote this work locked away in a bedroom he rarely left, intricately reconstructing the meaning and living essence of the memories he had of his own life. It was, he felt, in the remembrance of an event that the true nature of that event came to light, for at the time we are always lost in the rush and flow. In 1975 Capote spent several weeks vacationing in the Swiss Alps and reread all of Proust’s massive seven-volume work. He had already read it many times before. Shortly before the trip he had been spending his time in a small town in the Midwest with an FBI agent named Jake Pepper who was attempting to catch a serial killer who was stalking several members of the town. Capote’s book In Cold Blood which dealt with the murder of a farming family in Kansas, the writing of which had also required his spending time in the Midwest hobnobbing with Federal agents, had long since been published and made him famous. The story of Capote’s infatuation with the perpetrators of the Kansas crime, and speculation about the toll his personal relationship with them cost him, is today common intellectual currency. With all this in mind, the research of 1975 into a new Midwestern case of multiple murders appears almost like a re-visitation on his part of the path that led to In Cold Blood. Perhaps he felt he could absolve himself or rediscovery something he lost when he witnessed the execution of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. If this was the case he was to be disappointed. While away in the Alps he missed notification that Jack Pepper’s fiancé, whom he had also grown to know and love, had also fallen to the killer’s hand. His chronicle of the murders and investigation appear as “Handcarved Coffins” in a collection of his later works entitled Music for Chameleons. The last scene of “Handcarved Coffins” consists of Capote speaking with the man he is convinced is the serial killer, with Jake Pepper his FBI agent friend shattered by his loss and retired back to Oregon with the murder case gone cold, and the killer certain to escape capture or retribution. At the end of this work there would be no execution, but there would also be no repeat of Capote’s infatuation with the killer. Bob Quinn of “Handcarved Coffins” was no Perry Smith.
    As I have complained before, Capote demonstrates that the events of In Cold Blood were too close to him for him to really record them honestly. He writes himself entirely out of the story, as if he could write out his own emotional connections to the events. This is an attempt Proust never made, and Remembrance of Things Past, is intended to be a projection of Proust himself in a shattered shifting kaleidoscope of memories. It is, perhaps, this honest recreation that Capote had failed to learn earlier on and which he attempted to recapture in “Handcarved Coffins”. In that work he speaks, he reacts, he feels and fears, he admits guilt and desire. But even there haunting omissions occur. Much of the work is written in the format favored by playwrights. A name and colon open a line of dialogue followed by another name and the reply etc. Most of the work is dialogue in which Capote is a major interlocutor. But never do we see his name. We find lines of dialogue beginning with Jake, Addie and Quinn but all of Capote’s lines begin simply TC. We find people referring to one another by name, but no one mentions Capote by name. Repeatedly we read letters with the opening salutation, which might read “Dear Truman”, left out. At one point, when Capote must tell bar tender on the phone who is calling to speak with Jake he simply says “A friend from New York” and Jake answers “Hello friend from New York”. It is a stiff and unbelievable formulation we can sense Jake never used. Why in this recreation of an attempt to recreate an already previous event, from which he had already struck himself, does Capote fail to ever include his name? Why this last shred of self erasure?

Amsterdam Aught Two:
 
   Here are the opening fragments of the journal I kept in Amsterdam:
          
    For a long time I could ignore the voices, the whispers of life, or they could be idealized in dreams of the great book they would one day birth from me as a womb. Finally, however, I was driven from the lands I knew, or thought I knew, into the entrancing mystique of foreign lands. Two years following the rather uneventful birth of a “new millennium” the empty promises of supposed talent or vision, as well as nation and life, left me seeking for something I could not name or even conceive. In need of something not of myself, something from without, something in some way more true than the rest, something that could reach toward me, into me, and by pain or pleasure create something not bred of illusion, thought, or even human hand. Something not of nature or history. A college student, a tourist, one like any other, come to seek something new in the world of the old, finding, instead, cookie cutter culture just like back home. Rainbows subdued in the glare of red, white, and blue.
    The mind works in circles, weaving back and around itself like a serpent tying itself in knots and feeding off itself, a computer infinitely self referencing, canals circling about in concentric dreams about a dam formed to halt, harbor and channel the flow of some universal pulse that is completely hidden by an expansive city square centered around one forceful spire which rises from the flat full stones of the man made plane in monument to a self image molded of the nightmares of history. This is the national monument nestled in the chest of the City on the Amstel, built in memory of world war two’s terrors. City of concentric canals, oh, Amsterdam! Where one must think in circles in order to navigate.
    The American Dream acts as a mountain, a vastness making everything small, the European dream is a forgotten memory. Museums to house, in concise boxes, the minor flames of past genius….genius contained precisely, stone statues standing guard over national dust, churches silent to missing prayers, the modern world raised of ashes dreams and memories.
    On a plane the mind can make several revolutions around its set orbits before succumbing to a Tylenol P.M. induced nap of 3 deeply unconscious hours. 10 days, ten days in Amsterdam, if the lord could make the world in six surely I could unlock its mystery in 10, with a few days of rest in which to enjoy myself. We would have to wait and see, dare the universe to confront me, until then the pills, eased along with a gin and tonic, were doing their job…for the dark was closing in accompanied by the buzz of plane engines.
    To a smoker, a heavy smoker, the thought of 6 hours or more on a plane, fascistly denied the right to partake of flaming goodness, can be a damnation to a pit of the most unspeakable torment. The close containing quarters of a plane can easily match the prison angles of a cell to a mind raging against constraint. And so we do what our times have trained us to do, we anesthetize ourselves, seeking the bosom of numb sleep.
    You close your eyes and open them three hours later but nine hours in the future. Now that is quite a trip. Miles and miles of milky blue waters crossed in seeming moments, the concept of time crumbles, both man made conventions and real seeming perceptual ticks. Plane food, plane time, a plastic capsulated world all its own, hurtling through empty air.
    London, less than an hour to spend in an over crowed airport, security lines, ticket lines, costumes lines, and lord knows what else. The air is still, throbbing with the annoyance of “important” travelers. The airport, the exact antithesis of what I know as Europe. An Ideal, a dream of a land encountered twice before, once on a whirlwind tour of Britain and once in an equally swift jaunt through the Germanic states. These trips had breed in me, along with long held anglophilia, an image of Europe as the promised land. This grew, I would imagine, first from the stolid attitudes of my parents…these were good working middle class Americans who saw Europe as a retreat for the rich. Why would anyone want to leave America in favor of foreign lands with the foreign rude? I had always held a dream of wealth and culture and so, for me, Europe became the beacon of my longing. I didn’t know then that my ever loving parents would spend money we didn’t have on my silly dreams. Bless them for doing it.
    And so I ventured twice before to the old country and forged from out these visits a portrait of those distant shores as the hold of civility, rich in meaningful history and sparkling culture, lands of magic and misty mystery, a dream. My phantasms have yet to be shattered, I have always been a dreamer despite my American cynicism. In point of fact it was after my first trip to Britain, several months after, that I had a most simple yet powerful and telling dream.  
    I stood on a hill overlooking London, the river Thames below me with its magnificent bridges like monuments to unknown gods, and one silent thought reached forth joyfully into the landscape before me. “Home!”
    But the stifling air and annoyed garbled tongues of those waiting nastily in security lines reflects none of the European dream. Time is tight, airplane food is the unsettling crap it is universally hailed as, my legs are cramping from seats to small for a 6’4” male and I need a cigarette desperately. Looking at the cranky faces of my traveling companions I wonder how many will make it out of our 8 person hostel room alive after 10 days…and what basest faults in the human psyche are soon to be revealed through the actions of friends?
    And here I sit, something akin to 8 days later, watching them watching me write all we have seen and done. We? Shall they feature in this lurid wandering script? Their bland faces grown so familiar as to be alien through comfort; sparkling eyes or dull, painted faces, styled hair, arching eyebrows, pricking lovely eyelashes mounted, perhaps, on a ghastly face, or lovely, or kind, or petty, or just cramped from to much hidden emotion, those gentle hands shaking from hash intake, alcohol haze, mushroom mania, and so on towards the end of the lists of every semi legal drug, hands gentle…for what cruelty resides here is hidden behind the eyes or curls gently on the tip of the tongue. Where shall these characters place? Isn’t this an internal search, devoid, perhaps, of externality? Or no…rather a mission preceding in and out of that no man’s land where It and I meet…who is to say they are not internal more than external, these talking, moving, laughing, sneering, sleeping figures around me…personal more then objective, the subjects of my journey’s dream.

    Does anyone take note of airports when they first arrive at their destination, expecting barely suppressible excitement spawned from the fresh reaches of new regions, and finding only the dull ache of lethargy born of jet lag and hours of travel, plane boredom… the boredom which exhausts. The post modern stretches of the airport open before me filled with strange people from distant lands all rushing about with the same vague confused tired look. Ah the airport of Amsterdam, an attempt at beauty through the hardships of contemporary approach, all airports are much the same but at least this one tries to be better.
    And what comes next, after confused fumbling through the airports, onto a crowded train and through the countryside finally screaming into the central station of Amsterdam city, but the expansive beauty of a train station which could be a palace. Spires, sculptures, winding and waving and bursting froth into the sky in ancient unconquerable triumph. Gold on red brick, silver and marble and a clock fixed to the top as if to challenge time to defeat this pragmatic glory, ticking away each moment that it stands in defiance to the entropic flow of the universe. One minute, two, three, a year, a century, several centuries pilled with the dust about the mammoth walls, the score: Amsterdam centuries, time nothing.
    Water next, leaping with silver aura from the city’s bracelet canals, murmuring with the voices of a thousand travelers... Music like water enlivening the air. The off kilter bounce of crank organs wobbling along the crowded streets. It is impossible to tell which came first, what fundamental element gave rise to the grit and grace of that city rising before me in some primal soup of song and water. Did the stout glory of the peaked roofs and complex facades, covered in complex faces and meaningless spiraling designs, sprout and mold itself from the murmuring chants of wayward timeless channels and canals, grandeur from chaos? Or was it these bold buildings, palaces, which deemed the being of concentric circles of waterways and song, like gods birthing all from nothing….the city rises like a mystery.

(Now we make the dreaded turn to some of my "love poetry". Yes, you are right to shudder. Don't worry, there is not much of it I am willing to share. Let's say I post two pieces and then move on to something else.)

You Make Me

You make me wish to be a poet
That I might duly sing your praise.
You make me long for the muses
That temples to you I might raise.

This is not romance
Devoid of sincerity,
It is the firmest desire
To fix the disparity
Between my feelings for you
And my power to express.
Yet my truest expression
Must sound like excess.

You make me writhe in the agony of seclusion
That my feelings to you cannot flow,
And revel in the delusion
That one awareness from two minds might grow.

This is not agony
It is sweetest delight,
It is not tragedy
But the birthing of sight
From my knowledge of what I am
And my desire, with you, to be greater;
To become something worthy of us
And sing our sweet songs to it later.


Love, Yes

Love, yes.
The world respects you
For dreaming,
And if not it
Then I.
The beauty of a dream
Is the integrity
demanded of the dreamer.

Love, yes.
You are most lovely
Glimmering like crystal
In the face of the storm,
An impossible strength
Through purity.
You stand and announce
Your pride.
The world will bow in time.

Love, yes.
It is not so long as it seems
Between now and eternity.
The joy birthed in your song today
Weaves a thousand symphonies
For the future.

Love, yes.
I would face down the fury
Of the cold sightless gaze
And force all eyes to you
That they may see what I see;
A beauty unbetrayed.

This is not a gift for you
But a gift for they
Who suffer, unaware,
Of the vision they have lacked.
The vision is of you;
Tall, smiling, warm
With a voice like fate
Gentle, insistent,
And destined to be heard.
Love I say yes!
My voice will be
The opening of a chorus.         

(This story is from a collection of mystery style short stories about a man named Drake. I have been toying with this character, and these stories, for a long while. As of now I have a completed first volume of them, consisting of something like twelve stories, entitled The Elucidations of Drake. Should I ever have the time and drive I have planned at least two more volumes revolving around this same character. This story in particular should be dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft from whom I stole heavily.) 

When Dreamers Weep

     The town house was a fine brownstone in Brookline, a step outside of Boston. The stones of the building were always kept meticulous, they seemed to glow like polished bronze. Several evergreens sat perfectly positioned and finely trimmed in the front, amongst which three rose bushes in full bloom sat. The white of the roses caught and reflected the light of the quarter moon as the guests arrived.
     The cocktail party was a classy and common occurrence at 235 Harvard Ave. Brookline. At least once a month the owner of the precise town house in Boston would invite his several friends and fellow artists over for a “quaint gathering” which was very rarely quaint, considering his taste for the dramatic, and very rarely only a gathering. John Crisman, owner of the much used town house, had a very universal definition of art and it was one of his several affectations that he never associated with anyone whom he did not consider an artist of some kind. When the time came for his Agatherings@ he always felt the need to invite every artist in Boston. His idea of art however included; political art, social art, the arts of the theater, the arts of business, the arts of human deception, the classic arts, liturgical arts, and (most objectionable of all) the occult arts. For this reason his parties were very rarely small and very often filled with friction and conflict, not to mention more than a little eccentricity.
     This party, however, was different. It was much subdued and almost boring. The energy of the entire occasion was ruined by the gloomy reclusive mood of one David Bore, the pampered darling child of Boston’s inner circle of Bohemian writers and poets. The poor lad, no older than 23, had become convinced that he had reached his artistic peak two years before, upon his completion of a cycle of poems he called the Sirius Cycle. The cycle dealt almost completely with the sexual relations between the old pagan gods of Gaul. It was widely acknowledged to be a masterpiece of both creative plot weaving, Neo-Pagan thought, and classic historical work. Now, however, he had fallen from his lofty peak of poetic genius and had failed to write a word worth printing since. He had become convinced the Old Gods, in response to his overly revealing work, had eternally cursed him and revoked his muse. So worked up over this sad circumstance were he and his confidantes that they did not mingle, they did not flirt or flutter, and they hardly even spoke. The brightest of Boston’s poets simply sat in the corner smoking clove cigarettes with a dire air and seeking relief from the agony of that dark master known as life. David himself was practically curled up in a ball of misery amongst his grim guardians, drowning his sorrows in glass after glass of O-Doul’s. He despised beer and his distraught state was very nicely revealed through his descent into the world of debauchery and vice inherent in strong drink.
      All this was driving the glowing host of the party simply to distraction. Nothing could calm him. Even the presence of the illustrious and aloof mystic Drake failed to console Chrisman. Drake’s appearance at the party was a complete surprise, he having spent the last several months in Europe on some unknown business of his own. He now sat calmly in the corner sipping a glass of fine red wine and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette while watching the entire flow of the gathering. His almost to wise eyes wandered time and again to the clutch of puffed up poets as they drowned in their own self pity. No one spoke to the solitary mystic, though many wished his advice or even the slightest sign of his attention. His knowledge on all subjects mystic and occult was envied by every magician and guru in the civilized world, and his vast wisdom concerning all else was almost constantly whispered about though never fully known. Few would have dared to interrupt his vigil or thoughts for matters as petty as theirs must surely seem to so lofty an individual.
      Were John Crisman not driven to complete distraction but the possible failure of his party he would never have even considered asking Drake for help on so earthly a problem. But surely the curse of the gods and failure of a great poet must interest the mystic in some way. And so in complete desperation John turned to Drake, to supplicate him to in some way aid the poor poet David.
      “My darling host,” Murmured the distant mystic, “Far be it for me to allow one of our finest and brightest poets to fall into the pit of strong drink to the exclusion of his responsibility to his divine gift.” Drake smiled slowly then chuckled wryly to himself, his voice completely honest but smelling of sarcasm. “It would be my pleasure to attempt to rescue, if not this party, then perhaps any you may have in the future. Fear not, I am humbly on the case.” And with that he leaned back in his large comfortable seat and sipped his wine as his eyes slowly closed in complete lack of concern. John was much reassured, if the esteemed Drake was on the case there was no question that all would be well. He returned to mixing with his guests and flirting outrageously with any female victim to come his way.
     The party wound on into the evening until David, feeling overly effected by his indulgence in the devils brew, wandered out unto the balcony to get some air and stare at the city in melancholy desperation. Sighing heavily he gave voice to his pain, “Life is meaningless without Art.” He moaned. He did not expect an answer, but he received one.
     “Ah, but Art is meaningless without Life my dear boy. What is well planted cannot be uprooted. What is well embraced cannot slip away.” The mystic smiled and nodded seriously but the boy only looked confused.
     “Sir, I am quite losing my mind. The gods have cursed me.... my life is over, ended with my art. My muse has been robed from me, I am cursed.” Tears of pain glimmered in the young poets deep eyes.
     The mystic chuckled darkly in response, “Man is always slave to the gods he creates himself.” He muttered in response. Keenly he watched the boy who showed positively no sign of understanding. The mystic smiled wryly and moved on to small talk. “I was in Europe recently and heard the most interesting legend, would you care to hear it? Perhaps it might inspire a new muse within you.” The poet shrugged in a  noncommittal manner.                            
      “Well,” started Drake, “In the time of Elizabeth lived a man named Dr. Dee, the famous astrologer and scholar. He and another man claimed to speak with angels and a very complex system of magic grew out of these conversations, a system which came to be called Enochian magic. Now, one of the first actions of the angels was to give Dr. Dee a stone, a crystal ball if you will, which he then was to use to see and speak with them. This stone was supposedly to have materialized out of nowhere, appearing in Dr. Dee’s study one day during a conversation with the angels.” Drake told the story completely devoid of interest, as if he were simply passing time. He languidly lit a cigarette and stared up at the moon, completely ignoring the poet, as he continued. "The story now moves to the late 1800s in England. A much more modern day Magician by the name of Mathers was studying the works of Dr. Dee and Enochian Magic for a secret order of which he was the head. While studying the Enochian manuscripts that he had access to within the British Museum he stumbled upon the story of the Scrying Crystal of Dr. Dee, which was also housed in the British Museum. Using the pull he had within the museum he gained access one night to the stone and began to study it as well. He formed the opinion that the stone actually materialized from a world between worlds, a nether world of sorts. This was a world made of mental impressions, dreams of the spirit, and energy flows. The stone, coming from a world not our own, was found by Mathers to have a tendency to return to its place of origin. Putting it simply, the stone wanted to go home and had a tie to that other plane of existence. It was this tie which allowed Dee to see the Angels through the stone. Mathers, not being able to actual perform any drawn out studies of the stone in the middle of the museum, was not about to be so easily thwarted. One night, in the dark museum amongst the musty display cases, Mathers filed away part of the stone and part of the special metal holder which Dee had made for it. He then, for reasons of his own, had the stone samples melted down into a single stone and had the metal with silver from which he formed a band into which he had the stone placed. He made a ring of it and performed many unknown ceremonies and magical experiments upon it, using the whole body of his magical order to study and refine its power.” Drake turned slightly from his study of the moon and was pleased to see the young poet completely enthralled in what the mage and mystic was saying.
     “What precisely was done with the ring, and what powers it was found to have, are cloaked heavily in mystery to this day. We do know that it was thought to tie somehow to the world of dreams and visions and also to have some unknown connection to inspiration. Mathers gave it a complex Latin name and wore it for a long time as a symbol of power, however, as his mind declined into rumored madness he stopped wearing it. The name translates to something to the effect of Vordain’s Ring, though what that means I have no clue.” Drake finished his cigarette and casually turned to leave. “Well, I hope the story helped.” he yawned in boredom. “The night is old and I have matters of no small importance to attend to.” With that the mystic walked slowly into the now near empty party and moved to leave. The poet, however, was enthralled and wildly ran after him.
     “Mr. Drake! Mr. Drake wait!” He begged. “Where is the ring now? What ever happened to it? I must know Mr. Drake!” He tugged impatiently at Drake’s long black trench coat and received a cold stare of disdain in response. David realized his sin and quickly dropped the fold of the coat he had been holding, stammering an apology.
     “The name is Drake my boy, just Drake.” Slowly he turned to leave again, then seemed to remember the questions the boy had badgered him with. “The ring? Where is it? How should I know.” The mage paused in thought. “Hmmm... it was lost after Mathers’ order broke into revolt, however it eventually came into the hands of one of the order members, Arthur Macken, the famous English poet. It was said to have granted him visions of some of his greatest works. He disdained to use it though, claiming it had driven Mathers mad, so upon continual requests from a friend in America it was sent across the sea. I suppose it is still in the possession of the family of the man who gained it from Macken.” Drake yawned again and turned to leave once more.
      “Please Sir!” Begged the poor poet David, “Who in America got the ring, where did he live? What was his name? Please sir, this is my salvation!”
     Drake frowned in irritation. “Why H. P. Lovecraft my boy, the famous master of the macabre. He was a good friend of Mackens and begged him for it. Rumor has it he used the ring extensively to inspire his Cthulu Mythos and many of his other great works. He lived right here in New England.” And with that the mage yawned one final time, nodded to himself, and swept nobly from the party into the dark Boston night.
David was aflame with hope, his soul smoldered and flared with the thought of tapping into the source of the great Lovecraft’s holy fount of inspiration. The poor poet was fully enthralled in the subtly contrived net of an apathetic angler named Drake. He must have the ring, and it was somewhere right in New England. So close it seemed providential. David left the party with neither a nod for the host or a smile for his forgotten friends. He wandered the dim city streets for hours, his mind feverish and mad with hope and desire. Upon arrival at his humble artists loft he immediately went to his desk where he penned a feverish and truly inspired poem about the tantalizing hope now kindled in his soul. The lyrical masterpiece expressed with divine vision the pinnacle of pain, desperation and need he had reached. Throughout the work ran the electric dream of a possible reunion of the poor broken poet with his inspiration. It ended with the pleading and crazed whisper of a chance that some day he might again be able to write, one day perhaps his muse would return.
     The next several weeks were completely given over to a whirlwind search throughout New England. Every effort was made by the poor powerless poet to run to ground the mythical key to Lovecraft’s genius. Unfortunately the ring turned out to be as elusive as the inspiration which had itself left the poet in such a fickle manner. David grew feverish and slept little, his eyes were bloodshot and smoldered with an unearthly lust and terrible longing. His friends never heard from him and his days and nights were spent in contact with the oddest of characters. He developed a squint from the dim lighting of pawn shops and antique dealers, he developed allergies to the dust of the old warehouses and collectors lairs which had become his haunts. He repeatedly contacted the family of the late H. P. Lovecraft to implore desperately as to the whereabouts of the ring, but none of the family had ever even been aware of its existence. His hopes were dashed against the jagged rocks of futility again and again and had there not been some hope that the ring would be found the poor poet’s body would most definitely have decorated more material rocks at the bottom of the Charles river. But the possibility of hope drove him on, his need was insatiable and his spirit became an ever burning flame of desperation. It was precisely in this state of impaired sanity that David Bore stumbled into another one of John Crisman’s cocktail parties. It had been several months since David had last been seen at such a gathering and his disheveled and distracted entrance caused quite a stir.
      David did not grace the party with the questionable pleasure of his presence for just any reason, rather he had finally given up all hope of finding the ring on his own. His sleep deprived and desperation warped mind had thus come to the conclusion that the only man who might be in any way able to help was the very man who had started the entire affair. He came in search of the mysterious Drake who had become like unto a god in the corridors of the crazed poet’s head. Unfortunately for David, and fortunately for the guests of the party, Drake was not in attendance. Thus the poet soon removed the fine evening of his disturbingly excited presence. Before his merciful withdrawal, however, David accosted the long suffering host John Crisman in hopes of some information on Drake’s movements.
     John, who had been vaguely worried about the young poet who had rarely before missed any of his gatherings, was surprised to see David after so many months looking so much like a common mad man. No longer was he the fine, pampered poodle of the upper class poetry circles. Now he appeared to be more a common lunatic or homeless alcoholic. The delicate artist of lyric and verse now appeared truly ruined to John’s eyes. It was a sad sight indeed, and even sadder since John could in no way help the poor soul. Drake’s movements and whereabouts were as mysterious as his ambitions and motives. Drake was a mystery from start to finish, and nowhere to be found. David left without hope and in utter despair drove his expensive sports car towards the river where he planned to end his agony.
     The night was chill as the very hand of death and a constant bombardment of ice and water filled the airy voids above the city of Boston. The clouds tore and thrust at one another in a sick parody of Satan’s archfiends battling for the souls of the damned or soon to be damned. The wind wove amongst the chaos with the rushing might and sly speed of the lord of Hell himself. From above, the savage forces of Mother Nature’s might watched on in freezing disdain as David parked his car near Harvard Bridge and stumbled into the wild night air. The wind seemed to double in intensity, as if in a final attempt to keep David from his dire purpose. Shivering and sliding in the freezing muck along the road the broken poet fought his way to the center of the bridge to stare in utter horror at the raging waters below. The night was filled with the roar and the whistle of the wind, which seemed to whisper to David and then scream his name in either supplication or summons, he could not tell which. The rushing air beneath his feet tore at the tips of the reaching waves below and covered the entire bridge with freezing river water. David was soon soaked and horrified to find even his motivation in this last and most awful endeavor failing. He turned from his dire contemplation of the dark river to scan the bridge. For a moment he seemed to catch the outline of a tall man in a dark long coat on the end of the bridge. The stranger seemed to be watching with intense and yet surprisingly cold eyes. A moment later he was gone. David shivered harder as he convinced himself he had just seen the Great Tempter himself, come to take his soul after this most fatal of acts.
     In desperation David turned back to the waves below and clutched the cold divider in his trembling hands. Tears leaked from his eyes as he contemplated the awful outcome his life had come to. All the moments when he had dreamed of the glory his amazing talent would bring him paraded before his mind’s eye, mocking him. Nothing, his mind itself choked on the thought, nothing had come of his once great promise. He had come to nothing, was nothing and would never be anything. He had sinned against the gods and so his muse had been stolen. The grim outline of the last several months came into focus in his diseased perspective. All paths had led to this moment, he could now see. It was fated that he should die, the universe had cursed his wretched soul. Life was truly the most tragic of comedies. His eyes flashed and he suddenly stood straight, his finger pointed in second rate dramatics at the sky as he hurled curses to all the gods who had taunted him so with seemingly inevitable fame. David’s fury passed swiftly and ended in his dejected collapse onto the divider before him.
      “Good Lord David my boy, you look positively like a drowned rat. What in the name of all the gods are you doing out here?” Asked a cheerful voice behind the crumpled form of the suicidal poet. David yelped in terror and surprise as he spun about to face the intruder. There before him, in a long black over coat and dark hat, leaning cheerfully on a silver cane while smiling in a friendly if obscure manner was Drake. David could do nothing but stare in amazement at the very man he had been so desperately seeking. In an incoherent rush David began to babble the entire story of his desperate search both for the ring and for Drake. Drake, behaving as a true gentleman, refused to notice the subhuman  and maddened state of his current companion and so simply nodded and smiled and obviously completely ignored everything the mad poet said. “Yes yes my boy.” He murmured distantly. “Now come, my car is waiting. I was just returning from the airport, important trip to Europe don’t you know, and who should I see but the greatest poet in Boston hanging about in this accursed weather. Lord knows this isn’t a fit night for man or beast. Come and warm yourself a bit in the car.” He turned to head back towards the end of the bridge when suddenly he turned as a thought struck him. “Ohhh, and perhaps I might have something to cheer you a bit. It’s only a trinket mind you, but a friend passed it on to me a couple of weeks ago, thinking I still was in the habit of collecting pointless antiquities. I passed that hobby on to less serious men years ago, but some people can simply not manage to keep with the changing times. So anyway, here I am with a piece of the past which is almost completely without value for me, but perhaps it might help warm your shivering form a bit eh?” He chattered on kind heartedly as he led David back towards his waiting Rolls Royce.
     The car was perfection itself, seeming never to have received the slightest scratch or smallest blemish from either weather or dirt upon its smooth black surface. Drake’s chauffeur opened the doors for them and wrapped a warm blanket about David’s shoulder. The interior of the lovely car was deliciously warm and the soaking poet was grateful to be out of the sleet and winds. Drake sat next to him and smiled a lazy indulgent smile reminiscent of a kindly uncle humoring a silly young nephew.
     “I say,” Murmured Drake, “I just don’t know about the younger generation these days, wandering about in the heart of such a storm. One would think that Boston’s most renown poet would have more sense.” Drake seemed to simply be thinking out loud, and though his tone seemed to be that of a very old man, he did not in any way appear old. Nor, however, did he appear young. David noticed with a small start that he could not seem to put an age to Drake at all. He had the energy of a very young man and yet the manner of a much older gentleman. His eyes seemed ancient, though alive with a youthful fire. So engulfed was David in these observations that it took him a moment to take in what Drake was saying. Once the term, “Boston’s most renown poet” sunk in, David shuddered as if physically struck. It took all his will power not to break into sobs on the spot. Drake, however, was completely oblivious, or at least he seemed to be. Little did David know at the time that neither the seriousness of the situation nor the terrible condition of the poet had in any way escaped the wise man’s observation.
      Drake continued to ramble calmingly as he rummaged about in a fancy traveling bag that rested at his feet. In a moment his conversation with himself stopped and he rose to face David with a wry half smile on his face. In his hand was a smooth, heavily lacquered wooden box. “Well now, here we are. Nothing ever seems to be quite where I leave it these days, but here it is none the less. I’m not sure if you remember, I’m sure your mind is full of more important things of a poetic nature so I shan’t blame you for forgetfulness, but quite a while ago we held a conversation at that chap Chrisman’s house during one of his impeccable cocktail parties. I wont bore you with a recapitulation of the entire conversation, as I’m sure you were bored enough at the time.” Drake spoke on in a sing song way as if he had not a care in the world and not a thought in his head. His voice was surprisingly free of the least tone of irony, which demonstrated the supreme control with which he ruled every aspect of his life. “The point is, however, that the conversation quite revolved around the subject of a ring made by MacGregor Mathers and once owned by both Arther Macken and Howard Lovecraft. Well, quite by chance I happened to stumble upon it, in fact it was a gift from a friend as I have already mentioned. Now, besides some small eccentric value due to its history, it has little value for me. You, however, seemed to have been interested in my poor story in some small way, and so here is the ring. In truth I’ll be grateful to be rid of it, lord knows it serves no purpose in my hands.” And with that it was done. David, having never said a word, was handed the goal of his mad quest which he took in shaking hands. He was too dazed to speak, yet somehow found his way back to his car. He supposed Drake had had his driver drop him off, though he couldn’t remember. He drove back to his loft in an utter daze. David’s life seemed to have become a dream, awash in a surreal fog and violence.
     Later that evening Drake sat calmly in one of John Chrisman’s most finely arrayed sitting rooms, smoking an expensive cigar brought back from London, and sipping a marvelous glass of champaign. John was just ending a long winded speech about the fears he harbored for the once great poet David Bore.
     “He is not at all well my friend.” He complained to Drake who smiled blandly. “I hear he no longer writes and when he appeared this evening he looked like a totally destroyed man who had suffered many years from some terrible disease. I even suspect,” this he whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “that he has taken to drinking in excess.” John was clearly troubled, or as troubled as he could bring himself to be. David had been, after all, a gem in the social life of the famous Chrisman gatherings.
    In response Drake simply snorted faintly in disgust. “My dear sir,” he said gravely, “did you not ask me to help the poor boy? Have I ever before agreed to do something without fulfilling all I promised and more? I am not a man to either go back on his word or fail on a course to which I am set. My methods simply take more time than those of less successful fools.” Drake stopped speaking abruptly as if that put the topic to rest. John, however, though he knew enough of Drake to realize that once he agreed to do something one could do nothing but be certain all would be well even should the matter take many years to resolve, was still very much afeared for the safety of David Bore.
     “But the pour boy is ruined!” John blurted out.
     “I once had a friend,” Drake broke in. “who was struggling with an extremely troubling addiction to nicotine. Finally, after having tried everything, he came to me in complete desperation seeking help. I promised to cure him of the disease. I first made him swear by the most binding of oaths never again to take the least smoke without first gaining my consent. Having accomplished that, I took him to one of my lodges in the Appalachian mountains where there would be no chance of him gaining the drug behind my back. I brought one pack of exceptionally strong cigarettes and left him to wait. Several days went by during which I allowed him absolutely none of what he most craved. In the isolated mountain retreat there was nothing for him to do all day but obsess over his craving. It grew within him more and more each passing day until he was near insane with his need. Finally his sanity seemed almost at an end. He raved, he screamed, he begged, he completely degraded himself in the depths of his craving. I watched and waited until his withdrawal was at the peak of its intensity. At which time I smiled and agreed to grant him what he most desired, with one condition. If he had one cigarette he would have to smoke them all. The entire box, one after another until all were gone. He was too desperate to refuse and so we sat and I gave him the box.” Drake smiled coolly. “The reason he had desired to quite was the toll the habit had taken on his health. After smoking half the pack he was forced to stumble from the lodge to vomit. He returned feeling awful and sought my pity. I smiled and sympathized with him, and then lit him a cigarette and forced him to finish the rest of the pack. He was sick several other times in the process and was in bed for the next two days. He never smoked again, nor could he so much as stand the smell of smoke from that day on. He was cured by simply keeping him from the thing he most desired until the flame of craving had burned his mind clean to the point of madness, and then quenching the fire with a complete and total dose of his own medicine. In this process one’s mind is left cleansed of the obsession and the madness, life is seen in a completely new way, and the soul’s lens has been cleared of the addiction.” Drake took a calm sip of his Champaign and smiled. “So all will be well, fear not.” And with that the conversation ended, with John more confused then ever, yet completely certain that Drake was right. The conversation meant nothing to John but Drake’s tone and complete certainty left no room for doubting him.
     At approximately the same time David Bore sat in his humble artist=s loft and lovingly ran his hands along the finely crafted box in which resided his redemption. He attempted to appreciate the fine craftsmanship of the box, but he could postpone the moment no longer. With the determined air of a soldier the shivering and mentally broken man opened the lid of the dark wooden box. There was a small click and then he looked upon the object of his obsession.
     It rested on midnight blue velvet and seemed to have a faint glow of its own to his desperation wrought mind. The band of the ring was completely smooth, with neither a scratch nor a sharp edge. It was entirely sleek and was made all of curves. There was not one flat face or sharp edge in its entire design. The lack of sharp edges so associated with common jewelry made the ring seem almost other worldly to the poet. The metal of the band had a silver sheen to it and was cold and smooth to the touch, but somehow it seemed either more or less than common silver. Knowing the story behind the ring David realized that the metal was made of silver mixed with some of the metal from Dr. Dee’s original stand, whatever mysterious substance may have formed it. The stand must have had some ceremonial purpose and was most likely of some lesser known metal which had some occult significance. All this flashed through David’s mind in an instant, however, for it was the stone that most caught his attention. The stone was oval and completely smooth as well. It seemed almost to be one with the metal, though of a totally different material and color. It rose in a gentle bulge up out of the metal setting in which it sat, keeping with the complete motif of curves and lack of edges. The stone seemed to be of a dark blue color, though upon closer inspection David saw that it was made up of spirals and concentric circles of many different hues from dark blues to light greens and every color in between. The colors got consistently, though subtly, darker as one looked towards the center of the stone so that it had the affect of drawing one’s vision into the dark center. Light as well seemed to be caught by the stone and strangely diffracted, then reflected in a new way. David felt the stone seem to pull at his mind, trying to draw his thoughts into itself as it drew his eyesight to the center. The poet had never before seen a stone like it, and never would again.
     With a feeling of expectation and a touch of dread David slipped the seemingly holy object onto the ring finger of his right hand. It fit a bit snugly and seemed to make his skin tingle for a moment, though that could simply have been his over excited state at the time. Besides that nothing happened. Slowly he took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. Nothing happened. In frustration David realized he was not a magician and so had no experience with such things. He had absolutely no idea how to make the damnable ring work. He tried to clear his mind and closed his eyes. Perhaps it was only his need to notice something, but the darkness which had always awaited him behind his closed eyelids seemed darker, and somehow more alive. He waited in expectation... and nothing happened. His frustration got the better of him and he sighed heavily like a disappointed spoiled child. Damn it, he thought, there had to be something to the ring if both Macken and Lovecraft had used it.
     It was very late and David had experienced a very long day, a very long month for that matter. Indeed it seemed he had aged many years in the short time since he had first heard of the ring. Keeping all this in mind it will be easy to understand what happened next. In this over exhausted state the young man could no longer avoid sleep, and having gained something close at least to part of his quest some of the strain was removed from his mind. Totally unawares the poor young man drifted off into a deep slumber, sitting in his loft and still wearing both his damp clothing and Vordain’s Ring.
     David awoke, if he was indeed awake, to the experience of floating in a completely silent void. Dark emptiness stretched in every direction, with nothing in sight to ease the terrible blankness of the ultimately extended nothingness. David seemed completely unaware of his body, it seemed in fact that he had no form. He was mind alone floating in the darkness. He was a disembodied eye, transparent and dimensionless. Yet, now that he became more aware of his surroundings, or lack there of, he realized the void was not as empty as it seemed. True, he could see, hear, smell, and feel nothing. However, some deeper sense beyond his physical form insisted that there was more to his surroundings than immediately obvious. The void in which David was so oddly suspended seemed to be made of a complex overlay of realities. The poet was ignorant of  how he knew this, he seemed to sense it with some yet undeveloped part of his puny mammalian brain, or perhaps some part of his not so puny immortal soul. The metaphysics of the situation indeed deny description, but one must attempt such an impossibility for the sake of a careful record.
     The supposed “emptiness” seemed, in reality, to be made up of everything. The dark void was literally created by an infinite number of interwoven universes, each of which was the absolute opposite of another of the endless universes. Hence the sum total of the ongoing collection was the nothingness David found himself contained within. More than this, however, soon became apparent. Within each universe every single form, function, and reality, indeed every particle itself, had a complete opposite which in turn canceled the entire universe to nothingness. The void about David was pregnant with the completion of an eternal string of possibilities, and that completion was emptiness. It was the fullest emptiness anyone could ever know. His mind reeled from the pressure of to many paradoxes and shuddered back from their implications.     
     Slowly David became aware that the void was no longer empty, he sensed first and then saw a very strange sight indeed. It was a point of light, almost like a star in a completely empty night sky. The light seemed a pure white color and slowly grew brighter and larger as David seemed to slide closer to the beckoning light. Gradually, like drift wood on a calm sea, he and the light grew near until it floated only a short distance in front of him. It was not a ball of pure light as David had expected, rather it seemed to be some sort of crease in the fabric of the void. The edges of the crease were what gave off the light, which had seemed brilliant from a distance, but which now was soft and calm. David found what his new “sense” told him of this phenomenon even harder to grasp than the nature of the void itself. It seemed to him that the crease was a small fold in the multi-dimensional material surrounding him. Trying to picture three dimensional space alone “folding” made his mind scream in agony, but actually seeing what he somehow knew to be an infinite number of dimensions folded was inconceivable. The fold seemed to contain a bit of misplaced “space”. Similar to how one can pinch a piece of cloth, leaving a pocket of sorts. To his utmost alarm the poet slowly began to slide through the crease, into the fold beyond.
     The moment David entered the fold some of the common laws of the universe returned. He could tell this because he immediately began to fall. The fold itself did not seem to have any limits, as it naturally should have. Instead blackness once again stretched to infinity, with only the swiftly receding light of the crease to tell direction by. David could even feel air fly by as he plummeted through infinity, which brought to his attention that he could once more see his own body, moving and sensing as he should have been able to do before. He also noticed that Vordain’s Ring was still planted on his ring finger. It seemed to glow faintly and pulse with a similar light to that which the crease had given off. The void through which David now fell seemed both different and similar to the one he had only just left. It once again was not truly void, it too was a complex fabric of overlapping realities. These realities, however, seemed to have a different flavor to his strange new sense. It seemed as if these realities were the realities of the mind and imagination. They too cancelled each other out completely but seemed of a lighter, less physical, nature than the ones which made up the great void David had left. Perhaps it was made up of alternate realities of dreams, but he wasn’t sure. One thing was certain, however, it was just as “real” as the other void and what made it up. The entire situation was indeed confusing beyond comprehension.
     David had, by this time, been falling for quite a while. His original panic slipped away as he realized no bottom seemed to exist in the vastness through which he was plummeting. No ground reached forth to crush his bones and rend his body as he had first feared. Calmly he wondered if there was in fact any earth, land, or substance anywhere in this new void. The moment the poet had thought this he felt the entire fabric of reality about him shiver slightly and he lost consciousness.
     David awoke what seemed a moment later to the feel of a soft breeze on his face and the sun on his back. He was standing upon a grassy cliff which overlooked the most marvelous sight he had ever seen. Below him there lounged a city made entirely of crystal and marble. The sun, which rested in the sky behind him, was refracted and reflected by the city to form a dancing halo of rainbow light about the entire scene. It was breath taking. The sky was a clear and pristine blue above him and the breeze was pleasantly warm and soft. The city itself was a miracle of architecture. The buildings were made almost completely of airy columns, towers, and spires, all as graceful as finely wrought icicles of purest glass. Music floated up to David from a large building he took to be a palace, though every building was possibly a palace in this wonderful city. Through the soaring arches of the palace’s windows the poet saw that some type of ball was in progress and countless lords and ladies in the most regal regalia were dancing with a grace never before seen, to strains of something which resembled a waltz but far surpassed any music known to normal earthly life in complexity of meter and harmony.
     Scanning the broad avenues and open parks of the rest of the city the poet was greeted with sights even more thrilling. In one garden, all of the purest lilies, two young lovers chased each other till they both fell laughing on the soft grasses beneath them. In another grassy park two gentleman in fine silk fenced savagely with elegant curved sabers. All the while they laughed and smiled while fighting with an agility and grace David had never thought possible. It seemed to be some kind of Elizabethan heaven. Looking to the distance beyond the city David saw a large ancient forest which gave off a vibrant green shine as it gradually stretched up the slopes of the marvelously delicate mountains in the distance. Smiling, he wondered what wonders rested in the lazy glens of that forest.
     In response to his wondering thought the air about David shivered and Vordain’s ring pulsed slightly. Suddenly the space about David seemed to fold and turn and after a moment of disorientation he found himself standing in the depths of the great forest. The forest was made up of grandiose ancient oaks and mighty towering pines. It felt an unnatural mixture but the trees did not seem to realize. The ground was not grass or dried leaves, but rather was totally carpeted in soft mosses of healthy green and restful browns. The air was filled with the heavy healthy fragrance of summer and the soothing songs of birds in the higher branches of the fine forest. David began to stroll calmly about the wood when he saw a sunlight filled clearing in the distance. Towards this he aimed his slow strides.
      When he reached the clearing he found it was a perfect circle, defined by seven towering oaks and seven towering pines which were perfectly positioned between each other. Reverently David entered the golden circle of trees. The moment he entered he heard music, or perhaps several different forms of music, shimmering in the air which had now become completely still. Looking about him he saw small multicolored points of light in-between the trees and amongst the mosses and towering branches. These lights seemed to wink and dance to the barely heard music. More lights appeared and the music grew louder. At first it was simple, though incomprehensible to David, but each strain of the unknown melody was soon overlaid by another which was then greeted by another. It was marvelous, yet troubling. The songs, if songs they were, had no words and did not match in their complex melodies or rhythms. Each was completely original and perfect in its wildness and freedom. Soon there were thousands of songs and millions of points of light, all whirling and spinning about the clearing until the trees themselves disappeared amidst the glow and all David could see was an achingly beautiful dancing rainbow swirling about him in every direction. The musics were wild, fantastic and complete chaos, but rather than conflicting and sounding terribly they all simply complimented each others’ perfection though no single song was similar in time or melody with any other. The light became brighter, the music sweeter, and the poet found himself crying in awe of this beauty. His mind whirled with the lights and soared with the millions of songs. It was anarchy indeed, for no order was hidden in the dance of the lights or their song. However, it was a perfect anarchy, the true essence of beauty and vital life of truth. He could loose himself forever in this splendor, this wild release and ultimate freedom. Looking for order or reason in this glory seemed to be a search to bind all that is free. The chaos of the scene was the fulfillment of every possible perfection in one. Sighing, David wondered if there were any imperfection in this world, for surely here all was pleasure and beauty. He hardly noticed when Vordain’s ring began to pulse again and was taken by surprise when the air shivered and space once more turned and folded around him.
     David stood in the midst of madness. Flames flowed and crashed like waves amongst rivers of smoke at his feet. The sky was a raging expanse of whirling shards of glasslike ice and sheets of lightning which soon melted into thunder. Mountains of fire erupted from nothing to spiral into the frightful sky, stretching on into nothingness in the maelstrom above. The air was sweltering and freezing at the same time, flashing from one extreme to the next without warning. David stood upon nothing, he simply floated for a moment amidst the horror, then suddenly he was sucked into the liquid destruction which made both sea and sky. There was no up, no down, only the rush and roar and crash of the wild fury about him. He was caught in a streaming inferno that tore at his clothing and scorched his skin. He could not breath. He could not see. All was deafening meaningless sound and the flash of light too bright and harsh to be natural. The sounds, the speed of his crazy flight, the color and glare of the light, the smell of the smoke, all grew worse by the moment. Every particle of the chaos escalated to insane levels as if seeking some impossible crescendo. The poet’s body throbbed in agony as the wind sought to rend his limbs to pieces. All was pain and force and fury. David screamed and knew that it went unheeded by any, for there was nothing here to witness his suffering. Had he not been surrounded by some strange shield of light projecting from the ring and protecting his body, he was sure he would have been dead before he even knew where he was.
     Suddenly he was born upwards through the clouds of hurling ice and flashing lightning. He was being torn away into the blackest depths of the rushing skies above. Looking down desperately he saw forms move amidst the seas of smoke and fire. A giant snake made all of flame, larger than any building he had ever seen, burst from the seas rushing toward David. At the final moment it suddenly stopped its assent and was crushed in upon itself by its own momentum. Its form flowed into that of a giant screaming face and then was torn to shreds by the howling winds. Suddenly every cloud was a form with some resemblance to meaning. He rushed past laughing children made of smoke and flame, screaming women with hair of lightning and red lips of blood colored ice, and things even harder to explain which appeared half human and half animal. Explosions filled the air at random, having no cause or reason, and everything rushed and crashed, changing constantly to form some new horror which would only shift and burst into the next. The realization dawned on David that he was caught in a vortex, swirling and rushing inward towards some awful center and climax.     
      New sounds invaded the poet’s brutalized ears. Some seemed to be quite commonplace, but escalated to the point of unimaginable levels. It felt as if David’s eardrums must soon burst from the pressure under which his mind was already crumbling. The sounds of summer evening crickets and children laughing boomed amongst the howling blare of car horns and ear rending songs of birds in terror-twisted trees of nuclear holocaust. Simple conversations tore through the air at impossible volumes. In the distance mad pipes played desperately with no order or rhythm. They called forth the fury of the entire cacophony. David’s eyes lost focus and his mind swiftly followed, he knew only that he was nearing the horrible center of the vortex. He could no longer discern smoke from flame from ice from lightning. All colors blended and flashed, becoming undefined. Everything lost definition as one sound bowled into the next. David felt his mind torn to shreds to become but another part of the meaningless order-less hurricane of insanity about him. He began to lose his own sense of self, his own definition, as his maddened screams blended with the howling orchestra of hell about him. He knew that the moment he truly forgot who he was and became but a part of this nihilistic anarchy he would truly cease to exist. With that realization came the despair that would inevitably push him over the edge.
Then he saw it. The horror of horrors. The king of blasphemies. The crown of dementia. All was lost and his mind slipped into the dark abyss as he stared upon that awful nucleus of all chaos, surrounded by its insane pipers of meaningless cruelty and eternal frenzy. He felt his mind leave his body from the scream which sought to tear his own throat to shreds. He felt his soul burst to flame and rend the air about him, flowing with the unending howl he did not recognize as his own. He knew no more than the horror as he screamed and screamed and screamed the scream he knew would never end. The scream which transformed man to animal, and animal to demon, and demon to the flame which burns in the heart of every lunatic nightmare...
     The sun streamed through the open windows of David’s loft to warm the room and dry his still damp clothing. Slowly, as if fearing what he would see, the poet opened his eyes. A smile of wonder dawned upon his face as the pleasure of being back in his own safe home filled him. He could not believe he was alive. His mind reeled from the shards of memories which remained of his experiences the night before. The ring had indeed inspired the works of the great H.P. Lovecraft, for David had a gnawing feeling he had seen the crown of all Lovecraft’s horror, Azathoth himself, lord of chaos. The aching beauty and transcendent maddening horror of all he had seen could indeed have inspired a thousands works of genius, or insanity. David Bore tore Vordain’s Ring from his finger and flung it into the air to soar across the room and land sullenly in the dark corner. Shivering uncontrollably he ripped the damp clothing from his body and ran to the shower. In a matter of moments he was cleaned, dressed and practically jogging through the streets of downtown Boston to his favorite coffee house. He sat in the dark corner of the establishment for a short time, frantically running over everything that had befallen him both the night before and over the past several months. He felt as if he had awaken from a most horrible nightmare indeed, but it was not made up of last night’s adventures alone, it was made up of the years of artistic snobbery and melodramatic frivolity. The shadows in his corner of the room seemed to slither and stare at David. He could deal with it no longer. Hastily he left the cramped room to wander the cool and sunny streets of Boston.
    The storm of the night before had past swiftly after David returned to his loft, and the streets were now dried and warmed by the sun. It was a pleasant day and the poet was grateful for it, yet he still felt uneasy. He could almost feel the ring pulsing in his loft, calling him back. It called him to return to the all too lovely paradises he had wandered, and called him to once more be torn by the insanity of the universe=s nightmare. Though the sun was warm he shivered violently, convinced he would never forget what he had seen, and certain it was all either to wonderful or to marvelous to be put to paper. His experience seemed to transcend what poetic skill he did have. Any attempt to capture it in language would belittle the wonder and the horror of it all. It was as if Azathoth’s mighty force was reaching out like some awful claw to take back both his soul and his mind, both of which had somehow escaped the nucleus of madness itself. David found himself standing before a church. He was seeking redemption, but the cold statues and dogmatic phrases which surrounded the “holy sanctuary” mocked the beauty of last night’s wonder. It was utterly puny beside the force of the ultimate anarchy of infinite insanity. There was no salvation there.
     He found himself seated on a bench at the edge of the Boston Commons as cheerful and busy people wandered by. In his mind the first conversation he had ever had with the enigmatic Drake was replaying itself. “Life is meaningless without Art.” the poet had whined. David grimaced as he remembered the self-pity dripping from his words at the time.
    Suddenly his recollection was halted by the scene that unfolded before him. Across the commons was a middle age woman carrying a young child tenderly in her arms. Her face was lit with a secret smile of the purest joy, that of a mother. The words of a new sonnet began to fill David’s mind, for he had never quite seen so lovely an image as that of the simple mother with her child. All the legends of powerful goddesses and virgins bearing the children of gods blurred and unfolded to the simple truth that to every mother her child is a child born divine. To every child mother is the name divine. Love transfigures all the flaws and failures of this comic tragedy we call humanity into perfection itself, a perfection only made greater by every seeming flaw. The pulse of poetic creation flooded David’s mind and he got up and began to rush home where his writing books awaited him, to long unused. This would be his greatest work yet. An Ode to Humanity’s Simple Divinities he would title it. As he ran for his studio, all the horrors and adventures of the last several days forgotten, a few sentences from his first conversation with Drake whispered in his soul, “Ahh but Art is meaningless without Life my dear boy. What is well planted cannot be uprooted. What is well embraced cannot slip away.”

Epilogue

    The town house was a fine brownstone in Brookline, a step outside of  Boston. The stones of the building were always kept meticulous, they seemed to glow like polished bronze. Several evergreens sat perfectly positioned and finely trimmed in the front, amongst which three rose bushes in full bloom sat. The white of the roses caught and reflected the light of the quarter moon as the guests arrived.
    Inside, the latest cocktail party of John Crisman was well underway. The crowd was cheerful and laughed often as David Bore amused them with one story or another of the miss adventures of  Boston’s inner circle of Bohemian writers and poets. It seemed his days of seclusion and depression had passed like a momentary cloud over the moon. He was now, however, a much changed person from the pampered darling of Boston’s high society he had once been. No longer did he amuse and annoy his spectators with the melodramatics of his spoiled life and the pompous, if finely written, poetry of a self-centered prodigy. Now people commented on the tone of humble appreciation in his works and in his personality. No longer did he write of impossible god forms or Elizabethan romance, rather his works were the creations of a lover of humanity and a realist. He had torn down the flashy mansions of puffed up phraseology he had once used and rebuilt his edifice upon the sturdy foundations of human love and human folly.
     The party had seemed to reach its peak when the illustrious and aloof mystic Drake strolled nobly into the gathering. John Chrisman beamed joyfully, things were going wonderful, this was going to be his greatest social event yet. David noticed Drake as well and very solemnly walked to the throne like chair in the corner that the mystic currently occupied. Neither said anything for a moment, Drake waited with a wry and expectant half smile on his face. “I see you are back into the swing of artistic creation my fine young man.” He said at last. David only nodded slowly, and then drew from the confines of his pocket a smooth lacquered wooden box which contained a ring once owned by both H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen.
     “I believe this belongs with you sir,” The poet said slowly. “Lord knows,” he imitated the tone Drake had once used himself, “I have no use for it.” The mystic nodded solemnly and took the box, slipping it into his coat pocket.
     “I must compliment you on your latest work.” said Drake. “I especially liked the last line, ‘Man is always slave to the gods he makes himself, save only when he makes himself a god’.”

(This is a novel I have been working on for several years now. At this point it is sprawling, but desperately in need of rewriting and editing. Everything I have of it is in the form of a very rough, very long, first draft.)


In Search of Pierre
 
Prelude

Chasing the Dragon

Chapter I    

      John Gorse entered a crowded café in Paris with a handgun hidden in his waistcoat. He did not see Pierre, or rather saw that Pierre was not there, pulled the weapon from its hidden den, and opened fire over and over at random into the crowd, a crowd that undulated and thrashed in rage, in terror, and in pain. Screams echoing through the café, through the café, through the café, agony found in the unexpected burst of red, the anticipated pain of loss and the waiting guilt of survival. Such a terrible moment, the coffee spilled, the sugar running wild across the once neat and clean tabletops, tables cloaked in tasteful red draping. An old lady, pleasingly blue hair sparkling about a complex map of the earth’s craters on her face in wrinkles, gasped and tumbled onto the floor, her eyes screaming the endless question “why?”. Whom she was begging an answer from was never clear, from John, from some omnipotent uncaring God who allowed such tragedy to occur, from a Lama hidden in Dealy plaza, from the conspicuously absent Pierre, from her dead husband or married son or the blazing sun above. We may never know, perhaps we already do. John Gorse screams that the lost do not always long to be found by their way.
      John Gorse’s mother was a widower at the age of 23. Two sons under her belt, or rather out from under her belt, to grace the world with their dead father’s looks and trying touching tastes. But let us not explicate the disease before the symptoms are clear. She moved from a small town in France to London shortly after her husband departed this world for some other wandering dream. London, she found, was dreary and smelled perpetually of poorly made pastries pretending desperately to be French. She couldn’t stand the city or the bakery she lived above. Life was little more than a little more than nothing. This was hardly what she had had in mind, and so married a new man, an artist, who enjoyed dousing the family in vinyl paint after dinner, and sometimes rolled the boys in jam and cherries. He was a cheery sort, and his paintings of the idyllic undergarments of animals sold by the thousands. Most found him so avant-garde it hurt, he found himself rather plain and loved his wife for her endless remorse over un-perpetrated wrongs. In short, life was a lark of the most bohemian sort.
      It was in this atmosphere that John Gorse grew up, this garden that gave birth to his gun’s royal roar and his bullet’s terrible slaughter. Well, to be quite frank the bullets were anything but. Rather they were small, fragile plastic bubbles containing a small portion of water and young guppies. It was thus well armed that he marched in search of Pierre and slaughtered the monotony of many a café goer that fine Sunday morning. When asked about his motivations when undertaking this mass murder of defenseless aquatic young he stated that most did not die from the impact, and were their recipients accommodating they stood the chance of long happy fishy lives. “I thought the absence of Pierre should be memorialized in some way. Life was born of the primordial ooze, and some small defenseless aquatic young live there still. You make the connection,” he was want to say by way of explanation.
    
Chapter A

     John Gorse was a surrealist and the nature of the reality of his life clearly bellied this oddest of facts. The scarce Pierre was an existentialist, and a long time acquaintance of the first Glam Rock Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, whose role in the foregone scene presents many an amusing paradox when compared to how the life of an existentialist should pan out were it to reflect the owner’s interests. Daniel Gorse, John Gorse’s brother, was neither surrealist nor existentialist, but rather a Radical Individualist, which is a fish of an entirely different feather. The Radical Individualist is a worshiper of the old deities of Chaos, a Zen Anarchist, or Taoist Revolutionary. At present, however, he is also reflecting something of Pierre’s failure to be present. The reader is warned not to judge information about him as irrelevant, for authors have a tendency to introduce new characters at almost any moment, and here he comes now, right on time:
     Daniel Gorse found the entire buzz surrounding the disappearance of the president of Burundi irritatingly misdirected as he wandered down side walks which mapped out the entire quantum time line of history’s masturbatory nature in appropriately obtuse cracks and seemingly unimportant dents left by falling objects carried by unidentified walking objects most likely of the human bent or the strain of tree roots roaring silently like demons for release from the constraining world below. It was not that he held any animosity for the President of Burundi, but rather that he had hoped the mass population would notice the obvious connection between the growing force of multinational corporations and the political leader’s possible demise. Of course the majority stared in the wrong direction and missed the bus entirely. By chance, as Daniel crossed the street blindly lost in thought, he also missed the bus or rather the blaring box of metal just barely missed him with its horn glaring defiantly in a most auditory fashion at the “damned fool wandering dangerously into the busy street”.
     While his brother, Daniel, held an obsession for literature of any and all shapes, sizes and vintages, John Gorse was far more a man of numbers than letters. This observation proved true in several different realms and ways. For one thing John found himself with the unending infatuation with the dualistic judgments of true/false, better/worse, and good/bad which led him persistently to the practices of Ethics and Symbolic First Order Logic. To find such interests in a man whose other philosophical bent followed such a strikingly contradictory direction was odd, one might even say surreal, eliciting only the smallest of amused and ironic smiles.
     This penchant for morals, a characteristic many found painfully troublesome, arose from out the nebula of John’s odd soul in most unexpected forms. “The indolence of slate is perpetually active,” was one of his central ethical maxims, while he had been known to pontificate upon the impurity of roast duck in contrast to the moral virtue of halibut in a light cream sauce for several hours when lounging at ease over dinner. Roses were decidedly malicious, and thus clearly worthy of something akin to Smithian demerit, while the oak always held to the Kantian Universal Imperative, a feet of amazingly difficulty and thus deserving of exquisite admiration.
     It is the work of those early artists who first discovered the surreal in painting and writing that damned forever all future surrealists to be bound by the yoke of the need to create, to produce non-reality like mad machines run amuck in schizophrenic factories, weaving about in circles dreams of fish and swords. John Gorse, for his part, set about fulfilling the given universal maxim of the artist to create by carving complex proofs in symbolic logic to support his ethical claims, from out the rock of mental mirage. Thus:

There is an x such that MV(x1,x2)
-(x1 is more virtuous than x2)
Let mo = moment
Let mi = minute
          1.MV(mo, mi)) ^ MV(mi, mo)
2. MV(mo, mi) or MV(mi, mo)
3. a = a
4. mo = mo
5. mi = mi
6. -(mi = mo) ^ -(mo = mi)
7. Y
And so on ad infinitum

Chapter 1

     The man had lived for several years on the top of an old apartment building, eight stories above the city street below, overlooking a university huddled in the heart of Boston. His residence, though not his legally, had long been a wooden storage shed occupying the building’s roof. The shed had not been used in over 30 years and was approximately 10 feet square. It was now filled by a writing desk, an old wood stove, several thousand unpublished manuscripts, 13 different coats in several states of ragged chic, 3 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, 7 ash trays more or less filled with over 523 cigarette butts and numerous grains of ash, a bottle of expensive wine, two half full bottles of champagne, 3 burnt out stubs of candles and 2 fresh candles, a large sack of espresso beans the man was want to chew, a German bayonet from World War I, a bust of Lewis Carol wearing a large cowboy hat and wrapped about with a tattered silk scarf, an old but working typewriter, several pens, a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses (much torn and folded), and one gold ring with two emeralds and one ruby inset, hanging in the center of the room from a string.
     “No, no” the man said, crunching espresso beans in his mouth, his teeth dyed black by their juice, his hand shaking slightly like a leaf in a gentle breeze holding a smoking cigarette, “Earthquake in Tanzania. Can’t help it, can’t help it, sorry. Had to be. Well there it is.” He paced his small dwelling, his eyes flashing left to right, up to down, rolling slightly from time to time, “Xn + Yn = Zn. 3*3 + 4*4 = 5*5 . n>2. No, no, no. No solution. Thanks Fermont. Simple little proof . . . hehehehehehe, too small for the margin. Ha!” Above the man’s box of a home, while the man grunts, pauses, and feverishly sets about to writing, three seagulls circle and soar, rolling on the winds about each other just barely missing hitting one another, lost in some indecipherable waltz of love, mapping out the parabolas of planets, the cycles of the suffering soul in lust with life.
     “What?” shouts the man, looking up from a sheet of paper now covered in his elegant calligraphy, as he grabs another handful of coffee beans, the cigarette nestled on his lower lip, smoke sliding in and out of his mouth, in and out. “Birds circling above? Who are you calling ‘the man’?” In and out. “Kill your mother? What?” In and out. “Can’t. No, no, no!” In and out. “She’s got a purpose too you know.” And poof, an explosion of smoke from his blackened lips. Tap tap tap, the cigarette butt dead now in a tray, red with black stars, made of porcelain, crunch, crunch and the gritty gush of the flavor of coffee. “Kill the law or kill the Queen. Arthurian catch 22.” He yelps slightly, grabs a bottle of champagne to take a short gulp, and writes feverishly. “Une vie entiere de penitence. Yes that is nice.”
     Outside the sun slowly begins to set. The wind picks up a little, the circling sea gulls flap off to the west in hunt of the gateway of the departing sun and the palace of the daylight’s rest. The man decides to light a candle, stove not being necessary as of yet, and puts on a long cotton coat which is missing one sleeve over the Kashmir one he already wears. He lights a candle, he lights a smoke.
     “Not my kind of Game, brother.” He murmurs, jotting down a lengthy note on the desktop, not realizing yet that he is out of paper, “Not my kind of Game.” And Mozart’s Requiem Mass soars elegantly in his head while the rest of the world is silent with perhaps naught but one car horn far below.  

Mozart's Requiem