Wots YAWA? Not My Poem!

YAWA

A childhood story in verse oft overheard, but never understood:

Nursery Crime

I'll tell you a stow'way
about Jack Annoy'Way,
and now my stow'ways begun.

I'll tell you annoy-there
about his bro-there,
and now my stow'ways done.

The whole story just stole away after its second stanza . . .

DepthFool is right . . .

Frosty the Criminal

"Do you want to build a Yentl?"

sounds suspiciously like

"Papa can you snow man?"

. . . or somesuch.

Jack-a-Nory?

Wikipedia

My maternal grandfather loved kids and used to entertain us with stories, but when he grew weary of the acting - for he told his stories with great fervor - he'd head us off with a very short story:

I'll tell you a story
about Jack-a-Nory:
And now my story's begun.
I'll tell you another
about his brother:
And now my story's done.

But his ruse never worked, for we then wanted more stories about Jack-a-Nori! Incidentally, only yesterday did I find out where Grandpa learned this little rhyme: From Mother Goose!

Troy Frantz: Two Illustrations for "The Uncanny Story"

The Brooklyn-based artist Troy Frantz supplied my recently published tale, "The Uncanny Story," with two illustrations.

This upper image is an illustration of a Gawain Seminar taught by the protagonist early in the story, a tale of temptation to set the tone for what follows:

This lower image is an illustration showing the protagonist following Agashka - one of the several other characters in the story - on their way to see Emin Ence, with whom the protagonist will perhaps sign a contract:

Both illustrations are to be found on the website of the artist, Troy Frantz, at this link. The artist's main website address is here.

My tale, "The Uncanny Story,""can be found in the most recent of the anthology series edited by Carter Kaplan, namely, Emanations: 2 + 2 = 5, available on Amazon. (Carter Kaplan is also the guiding light for International Authors.)

But before reading "The Uncanny Story," you should read its 'prequel,' The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, also available on Amazon.

Snow White?

Lips Red as Blood?
Illustration by Franz Jüttner
Wikipedia

Once upon a time - when tigers smoked, as Koreans insist in their fairy tales - I read the following lines:

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl whose hair was dark as night, whose skin was white as snow, and whose lips were red as blood. They called her . . . "Bloody Lips!"

Okay, actually, they called her "Snow White," but they might have called her "Dark Hair" or even "Bloody Lips," if they'd acknowledged one or the other of the remaining two possibilities.

Suppose they'd called her one of the other two names. "Dark Hair," for instance. Such darkness could have led to a religious reading of the text.

But the "Bloody Lips"? That would be a vampire reading hidden in the wings, just waiting to pounce . . .

The Mis-Education of Horace Hodges

Horace Hodges (L) and Horace Jeffery Hodges (R)
HH Takes a Closer Look at Literature

I gave my talk yesterday at the international Conference on “Storytelling: Trauma, Healing, and Pedagogy,” but I didn't know much about the themes, so I spoke about what I know best:

The Mis-Education of Horace Hodges

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University

“When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies . . .”

- Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

Introduction

I am a hopeless, incorrigible, uncurable chromatic, a man in love with the vast, rich chromaticism of stories. As in the case of Don Quixote, a vast spectrum of colorful, disorderly notions, entire worlds of them, plucked from books and other sources, have crowded into my misshapen, mis-educated imagination (Cervantes), forming and re-forming themselves there into a sea-change of new stories, so rich and strange (Shakespeare, Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2) “as to shock the conservative, and delight the frivolous” (Adams), against the background of “a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, . . . birds singing on the bushes, . . . various insects flitting about, and . . . worms crawling through the damp earth” (Darwin, 863). Worms? Where did that come from? This talk begins already to sound rather morbid, don’t you think, getting down there in the muck with worms? I mean, that’s where we all eventually end up, right, and nobody wants to think about that, do they? We’d prefer a happy ending, okay? So, let’s strike out that traumatic part about worms, pretend we’ll never lie there under the earth. We’re too evolved for that - we’ll lie here upon the earth instead. That’s what telling stories is about, isn’t it, lying upon the earth?

Telling Stories

When I was a little boy growing up in the obscure, isolated Ozark Mountains, I was warned not to tell stories, which meant - in the hillbilly dialect spoken there - not to lie. This sense of “story” as “lie” is just as strong in the culturally similar Appalachians, as explained by April Lynne Burge in her blog Appalachian English in a post for the date of July 29, 2005, in which she cites the linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath:

Another cultural difference between the Appalachian dialect and the standard dialect of the educational system lies in the concept of lexical elements. For instance, Appalachians have one concept of the word story, while the school environment entertains another concept of the same word. Heath found that when teaching reading, teachers in Appalachia would occasionally ask students to “make up a story,” but students were sometimes reluctant to complete the task, which could have been interpreted by teachers as inability . . . to do so. However, the reason for the reluctance was a result of the lexical understanding of the word story in Appalachian English [AE]; in AE telling a story means lying, which is punishable in the Appalachian culture. (Burge, July 29, 2005; citing Heath, 294, 296)

Like those Appalachian students, I knew that lying would get you punished, possibly even roasted in Hell! That was the worst punishment. But I loved stories, and confronted with a Huck Finn choice, I decided to be a liar and go to Hell (Twain, Adventures, Chapter 31).

Practice makes perfect, and here’s one of the perfectly good lies I eventually managed to conjure up and tell to my own two children when they were yet young enough to believe every word I said:

Why Wolves Howl at the Moon

Long, long ago, before there were any people, there were . . . Wolves!

Like today’s wolves, they ran in packs.

But unlike the wolves of today, these wolves had a ball.

No one knew where the ball had come from. For all the wolves knew, it had always been there. Because it was unique, the ball was very valuable. The wolves took very good care of it.

Once a month, they would take the ball out and play with it. Their games were simple - throwing, catching, and chasing.

Simple though these games were, they required teamwork. Care was taken neither to damage nor dirty the ball. Because they cooperated, the wolves were happy.

In the course of time, however, there arose a selfish wolf as leader of the pack. He was strong and clever, but his selfishness marred his character.

He wanted the ball for himself.

One day, as the pack was playing its monthly game, their leader saw his chance. He grabbed the ball in his enormous jaws and darted away from the pack.

At first, the others thought his move was part of the game, but when they saw him run off for the hills . . . they burst after him, but he was very fast.

He was so fast that the pack at first could not keep up, but fell further behind.

Joyously free in his sole possession of the ball, the lone wolf tossed it into the air, catching it and tossing it again and again.

But his exertions wore him down, and the pack slowly gained on him.

He failed to notice this, and as the hills turned to mountains, his pace slowed even more.

At the highest mountain peak, the pack trapped him unawares, and advanced.

Noticing them at last, the leader panicked. Not wanting to share the ball again after having had it to himself . . . the head wolf hurled the ball skyward will all of his considerable might!

The ball soared high, higher, highest . . . and stayed.

Look up in the night sky, and you’ll see it, too, a bit roughed up from the selfish wolf’s teeth and slightly smudged with earth from having been dropped a few times.

The wolves see it every night, too, and they howl in despair at their loss.

The moon, however, belongs to no one now, and sheds its borrowed light on the just and the unjust, the wise and the foolish . . . the pack, and the lonely leader of the pack.

On us all . . .

Now as I said, when my children were young, they believed the story, and so perhaps do we during the telling, and maybe even after the telling, but that was, in fact, a wolfish pack of lies. We all know the moon was never a ball, and we know full well that wolves don’t howl at the moon because it once belonged to them, for it never was theirs to possess. This is nothing more than a kind of Kipling ‘Just-So’ story (Kipling). And Kipling was a British Lion imperialist, so we can simply ignore him and any lying tall tales of his sort. Instead, let’s turn to another teller of tales.

Bob Dylan, Story Teller

The pop-musicologist Seth Rogovoy, writing in Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, reviews volume one of Dylan’s memoires, Chronicles, and pegs him as a “storyteller”:

The most striking thing about Chronicles is how it introduces an entirely new voice - that of Bob Dylan, the colorful, garrulous storyteller. *More important than how closely he adheres or doesn’t adhere to the facts* is the language that he uses to recount his life and times, and the detours and byways down which he leads the reader, through literature, music, philosophy, and life’s learned lessons. (Rogovoy, Bob Dylan, 280; original quote revised between asterisks after consulting with Mr. Rogovoy)

The term “storyteller” here means someone who misleads the reader in entertaining ways, and having read a bit of Dylan’s Chronicles myself, I’d say that he ‘misleads’ with a nod and a wink, signaling to the wary reader that he’s not as good as his word, he’s better than that.

A passage early in volume one makes this point clear when Lou Levy, a higher-up in Leeds Music Publishing company, gives Dylan a big break and tells the head of publicity for Leeds, Billy James, to have a talk with Dylan and write promotional material on him for a press release bio. Here’s Dylan’s ‘memory’ of the talk, in which he admits to telling a story:

Billy dressed Ivy League like he could have come out of Yale - medium height, crisp black hair. He looked like he’d never been stoned a day in his life, never been in any kind of trouble. I strolled into his office, sat down opposite his desk, and he tried to get me to cough up some facts, like I was supposed to give them to him straight and square. He took out a notepad and pencil and asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Illinois and he wrote it down. He asked me if I ever did any other work and I told him that I had a dozen jobs, drove a bakery truck once. He wrote that down and asked me if there was anything else. I said I’d worked construction and he asked me where.

“Detroit.”

“You traveled around?”

“Yep.”

He asked me about my family, where they were. I told him I had no idea, that they were long gone.

“What was your home life like?”

I told him I’d been kicked out.

“What did your father do?”

“’lectrician.”

“And your mother, what about her?”

“Housewife.”

“What kind of music do you play?”

“Folk music.”

“What kind of music is folk music?”

I told him it was handed down songs. I hated these kind of questions. Felt I could ignore them. Billy seemed unsure of me and that was just fine. I didn’t feel like answering his questions anyway, didn’t feel the need to explain anything to anybody.

“How did you get here?” he asked me.

“I rode a freight train.”

“You mean a passenger train?”

“No, a freight train.”

“You mean, like a boxcar?”

“Yeah, like a boxcar. Like a freight train.”

“Okay, a freight train.”

I gazed past Billy, past his chair through his window across the street to an office building where I could see a blazing secretary soaked up in the spirit of something - she was scribbling busy, occupied at a desk in a meditative manner. There was nothing funny about her. I wished I had a telescope. Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today’s music scene. I told him, nobody. That part of things was true, I really didn’t see myself like anybody. The rest of it, though, was pure hokum - hophead talk. (Dylan, Chronicles, 7-8)

In short, Dylan told Billy James a pack of entertaining lies, and he did so because he “didn’t feel the need to explain anything to anybody.” People want a story anyway, so he gives them one for Mr. James to write up.

Dylan as Storyteller

But Dylan is not, primarily, a memoirist, he’s a songwriter and performer, and better known as a storyteller in his songs. Let’s listen to one of those stories in song, the 1975 tale of Isis, second track on his album Desire - co-written, incidentally, with Jacques Levy, a rare case of Dylan collaborating with another songwriter:

Isis

I married Isis on the fifth day of May,
But I could not hold on to her very long,
So I cut off my hair, and I rode straight away
For the wild unknown country, where I could not go wrong.

I came to a high place of darkness and light.
The dividing line ran through the center of town.
I hitched up my pony to a post on the right,
Went into a laundry to wash my clothes down.

A man in the corner approached me for a match.
I knew right away he was not ordinary.
He said, “Are you looking for something easy to catch?”
I said, “I got no money.” He said, “That ain’t necessary.”

We set out that night for the cold in the North.
I gave him my blanket, and he gave me his word.
I said, “Where are we going?” He said, “We’ll be back by the fourth.”
I said, “That’s the best news that I’ve ever heard.”

I was thinking about turquoise, I was thinking about gold,
I was thinking about diamonds and the world’s biggest necklace.
As we rode through the canyons through the devilish cold,
I was thinking about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless.

How she told me that one day we’d meet up again,
And things would be different the next time we wed,
If I only could hang on and just be her friend.
I still can’t remember all the best things she said.

We came to the pyramids all embedded in ice.
He said, “There’s a body I’m trying to find.
If I carry it out, it’ll bring a good price.”
It was then that I knew what he had on his mind.

The wind, it was howling, and the snow was outrageous.
We chopped through the night, and we chopped through the dawn.
When he died, I was hoping that it wasn’t contagious,
But I made up my mind that I had to go on.

I broke into the tomb, but the casket was empty.
There was no jewels, no nothing - I felt I’d been had.
When I saw that my partner was just being friendly,
When I took up his offer, I must’ve been mad.

I picked up his body, and I dragged him inside,
Threw him down in the hole, and I put back the cover.
I said a quick prayer, and I felt satisfied,
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her.

She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise,
Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed.
I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes.
I cursed her one time, then I rode on ahead.

She said, “Where ya been?” I said, “No place special.”
She said, “You look different.” I said, “Well, I guess.”
She said, “You been gone.” I said, “That’s only natural.”
She said, “You gonna stay?” I said, “If you want me to, yes.”

Isis, oh Isis, you mystical child,
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled,
On the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain. (Dylan and Levy)

There it is, the entire song, a great story - arguably of emotional healing, among other themes - and sung by a great storyteller. But why do I call this song a story? Because things happen in a sequence that fulfills our expectations, expectations set up with the first line: “I married Isis on the fifth day of May.” You see? Something happened. We hear the line and wonder, “What’s next?” Dylan tells us: “But I could not hold on to her very long.” What happened then? Dylan continues to tell us, and in what Coleridge called our “willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge, Biographia Chapter XIV) - a suspension rendered through our experience of a story being told well - we trust the story and its teller, much as Shakespeare trusts his mistress, though he knows she lies, and who is his true mistress if not the muse, and what are her lies if not the literary works she inspires, for he addresses her directly in sonnets 38, 78, and 100 (and mentions her in many others, e.g., 21, 32, 79, 82, 85, and 103)? This trust in literary falsehoods inspired by the muse constitutes the very reason for Plato’s contention in The Republic that poets - think epic, narrative poets - must be expelled from the true republic for their truth-seeming lies.

Milton as Truth Teller?

Many centuries later, in books 14 and 15 of the mid-fourteenth century encyclopedia of pagan mythology, Genealogia deorum gentilium (Genealogy of the Gods of the Nations), the great Renaissance literary figure Giovanni Boccaccio defends poets against the charge that their stories are lies. Two hundred years later, Sir Philip Sidney offers the defense that: “Now for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth” (Sidney, 57). On an abstract level, Boccaccio and Sidney might have a relatively strong case, but on the level of experience, I have to demur. Stories compel our belief. And what are we to do with narrative poets like Milton? He goes even further, calling on the Holy Spirit as muse to ensure the truth of what he affirms in his cracking good story, Paradise Lost, which opens like this:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men. (Paradise Lost 1.1-26)

Milton wants not only truth, he wants it writ in capitals: TRUTH! And he wants from his readers not merely a suspension of disbelief; he expects full-throated belief.

From the perspective of Boccaccio and Sidney, Milton would therefore be an outlier, if not an out-and-out liar, particularly because he’s given to uttering such self-confirming verses as the following, which seem to affirm his poem as divinely inspired, if not dictated, by the Holy Spirit, the:

. . . Celestial Patroness, who deignes
Her nightly visitation unimplor’d,
And dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires
Easie my unpremeditated Verse . . . (Paradise Lost 9.21-24)

Dictates? Inspires? Is Milton claiming divine inerrancy for his poem? Is that his intention? As a loyal reader of Milton, regardless of his intentions, I find that I believe his story as I’m reading it, caught up as I am in the experience of reading. Am I being misled? I am indeed, if Stanley Fish be correct in his monumental work on Milton in Surprised by Sin, for he there maintains that Milton intentionally misleads the reader toward initially identifying with a heroic Satan in order for the reader to experience sin and culpability firsthand through eventual disappointment with Satan’s low character.

Work on Myth

The German intellectual Hans Blumenberg wrote a great deal on mythos and logos, especially in his tome Work on Myth, in which he extolled the current importance of both ways of dealing with the world. In our existential situation, the truth of logos, or reason, must be nestled within mythos, or story, in order for us to find meaning and make sense of our lives. Partly for that reason, I was moved a couple of years ago to rewrite Stephen Vincent Benét’s Faustian story, The Devil and Daniel Webster, by combining it with Mikhail Bulgakov’s equally Faustian Master and Margarita and Milton’s Paradise Lost, along with other texts, including of course Goethe’s Faust, in order to derive a reworked mythos. I titled my story The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, and though I won’t recount the entire story here, to avoid plot spoilers, I would like to note the story’s opening lines:

The world sometimes just declines to cooperate with my good intentions. I had been drinking a bit more than my wife thought reasonable for my health and our pocketbook, and after a close encounter with a breathalyzer that I managed to confound by sheer dint of will, I bowed to her legalistic position on laws against drunk driving and even agreed to stop drinking altogether. I didn’t intend to pursue the twelve-step route to complete spiritual indoctrination, so I resolved to quit entirely on my own. But I reasoned that such a significant occasion called for a drink, and I wanted that drink to be extraordinary, even unforgettable. My wife grudgingly acceded to my desire for just one more bottle to celebrate my decision, and I began to wander the town looking for that perfect beer.

My quest took me down to an old part of the city that I’d never seen before, and I was surprised at its narrow and twisting, cobblestone streets. The area looked vaguely European, too archaic for the New World, but I shrugged the impression off, figuring the streets and buildings had been designed to draw tourists. Such traps are never what they seem to the unwary, but I had to marvel that the effect was so authentic. I noticed a few wine shops, and their selections were truly excellent - again an authentic touch - though the shops seemed to stock only older vintages, but I wasn’t looking for wine anyway.

At length, on a back street that twisted like a wandering maze, only to decline into a dead end, I came upon a shop above whose door was a metal arrow extending, sharp point outward, perpendicular to the shop’s façade and from whose shaft, suspended by two hooks, was a small sign bearing some rather puzzling words in Gothic script that I managed to make out after a fair bit of close inspection:

Our Back’s Ratskeller
Mr. Faland Em, Proprietor

I could at first only imagine an exterminator of rats, but the word was not “Ratskiller.” Definitely “Ratskeller.” Was it a misspelling? Curious, I attempted to peer through the window, but the shop was dark, and I could make out nothing of the vague room’s shape, nor of anyone within, nothing distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, just seemingly insubstantial shadow.

Erudite readers - as all of you of course are - would quickly catch such literary allusions as those to Goethe’s Faust or those to Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Yet, would any readers initially catch the ambiguity in the first line alone: “The world sometimes just declines to cooperate with my good intentions.” Two different interpretations present themselves. One can read “declines” as “refuses” or as “lowers itself.” Two incompatible meanings result, though the consequences are similar. If the world refuses to cooperate, then my good intentions find no support, so I fail. If the world lowers itself to cooperate, then my good intentions find support, but we must recall that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, hence consistent with a world that lowers itself! This latter meaning would gradually emerge upon subsequent readings of the entire story, and both interpretations are true, though not quite consistent with one another, and to affirm both simultaneously is to knowingly embrace a contradiction, hence perchance to lie, even as the text lies.

Conclusion

In his most popular work, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche claims that “all poets are liars,” and speaking myself as one intimately acquainted with various sorts of poiesis, I agree. We storytellers are tellers of stories and cannot be trusted. But we are trusted. Why? And can any pedagogical lesson be drawn from this fact? Let us see, anyway. Perhaps the reason for the trust lies partly in the expectation set up by a story. Think of Dylan’s line, “I married Isis on the fifth day of May.” An expectation is established, not especially specific, but we listeners know that some event has to occur next, and it does: “But I could not hold on to her very long.” Our expectation is met, confirmed, thus shown to be true. Concurrent with that confirmation is another expectation, more specific this time, namely, that the speaker will perhaps leave, and he does: “So I cut off my hair, and I rode straight away / For the wild unknown country, where I could not go wrong.” A story, then, is more than a series of events in sequence, it is a series of expected events in sequence, with each confirmation establishing the ‘truth’ of the preceding event. This is the experience of reading a story! Of course, not every event conforms to the expectation set up, but such is acceptable if implausible twists in the plot don’t occur too often or don’t offend narrative sensibilities through some entirely improbable deus ex machina or the like, an implausibility rendering the story ludicrous, a reaction undesired unless a writer intends to evoke laughter, and that’s okay, too, for I’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine, and that’s about the best I can do to shape my presentation into fitting the theme of this conference: “Storytelling: Trauma, Healing, and Pedagogy.”

Thank you for listening!

Bibliography

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2044/2044-h/2044-h.htm

Benét, Stephen Vincent. The Devil and Daniel Webster. Online. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602901.txt

Blumenberg, Hans. Work on Myth. Translated by Robert M. Wallace. MIT Press, 1988.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogia deorum gentilium.

Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Online. http://web.archive.org/web/20110606093139/http://lib.ru/BULGAKOW/master97_engl.txt

Burge, A. L. “Illiteracy in Appalachia.” Appalachian English. July 29, 2005 (Blog). Online. http://appalachianenglish.blogspot.kr/2005/07/illiteracy-in-appalachia.html

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/996

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. 1817. Online. http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/biographia.html

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection. 6th Edition. 1872.

Dylan, Bob. Chronicles, Volume One. Simon and Schuster: New York, 2004.

Dylan, Bob and Jacques Levy. “Isis.” Desire (album). 1975.

Fish, Stanley. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997.

Goethe, Wolfgang. Faust. Online. http://en.goethe-faust.org/

Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. New York: Cambridge, 1996.

Hodges, Horace Jeffery. The Bottomless Bottle of Beer. The Williamsburg Circle, 2013. Online. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E18KW0K

Kipling, Rudyard. Just So Stories. Gutenberg. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2781/2781-h/2781-h.htm

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The John Milton Reading Room. Ed. Thomas H. Luxon. 2014. Online. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7205/pg7205.html

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm

Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Online. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

Rogovoy, Seth. Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet. Scribner, 2009.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Online. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html

Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. Gutenberg. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1041/1041-h/1041-h.htm

Sidney, Sir Philip. An Apology for Poetry. Ed. Forrest Robinson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.

Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885. Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm

I didn't read out the bibliography aloud, but the audience had the entire paper in hand, so you're seeing what they saw.

I hope this was enjoyable . . . I know I am an acquired taste, best taken with a grain of salt.

A Colorful Character . . .

Scarlatti Chromaticism?
Google Books

I'm trying to finish the talk I'm scheduled to present sometime next Friday at the BK21 Plus International Symposium, and here's my provisional introductory paragraph:

I am a hopeless, incorrigible, uncurable chromatic, a man in love with the vast, rich chromaticism of stories. As in the case of Don Quixote, a vast spectrum of colorful, disorderly notions, entire worlds of them, plucked from books and other sources, have crowded into my misshapen, mis-educated imagination (Cervantes, 4), forming and re-forming themselves there into a sea-change of new stories, rich and strange (Shakespeare, Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2), against the background of "a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, . . . birds singing on the bushes, . . . various insects flitting about, and . . . worms crawling through the damp earth" (Darwin, 863). Worms? Where did that come from? This talk begins already to sound rather morbid, don't you think, getting down there in the muck with worms? I mean, that's where we all eventually end up, right, and nobody wants to think about that, do they? We’d prefer a happy ending, okay? So, let's strike out that part about worms, pretend we'll never lie there under the earth. We're too evolved for that - we'll lie here upon the earth instead. That's what telling stories is about, isn't it, lying upon the earth?

Now if I can just figure out what else to say! The theme is supposed to be "Storytelling: Trauma, Healing, and Pedagogy."

And, yes, I know the word's "incurable," not "uncurable," but the sequence sounds better with this wrong spelling . . .

Confession: I always lie . . .

Blue Dragon Pond
Chung-Ang University

I've been invited by Chung-Ang University's BK21 Plus International Symposium to present a paper on Friday, December 12, 2014, and here is a very brief outline of the activities:

Title: "Storytelling: Trauma, Healing, and Pedagogy"
Date: December 12 (Fri) - 13 (Sat), 2014
Place: Chung-Ang University (Seoul Campus)

Each presentation consists of 35 minutes of speech and 5 or 10 minutes of discussion. I worked all day yesterday preparing my talk, so this is all I have to say in today's blog entry.

I've titled my paper "The Mis-Education of Horace Hodges," and I'm hoping that those present will have a sense of humor . . .

Bob Dylan as Storyteller

Dylan
Photo by Ken Regan, Fall 1975
Rolling Thunder Revue

The song "Isis," the second track on Dylan's album Desire, was co-written by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy, as was also the case with "One More Cup of Coffee," a song I recently blogged on. You can listen to the song here, and follow with these lyrics, to which I've added punctuation:

Isis

I married Isis on the fifth day of May,
But I could not hold on to her very long,
So I cut off my hair, and I rode straight away
For the wild unknown country, where I could not go wrong.

I came to a high place of darkness and light.
The dividing line ran through the center of town.
I hitched up my pony to a post on the right,
Went into a laundry to wash my clothes down.

A man in the corner approached me for a match.
I knew right away he was not ordinary.
He said, "Are you looking for something easy to catch?"
I said, "I got no money." He said, "That ain't necessary."

We set out that night for the cold in the North.
I gave him my blanket, and he gave me his word.
I said, "Where are we going?" He said, "We'll be back by the fourth."
I said, "That's the best news that I've ever heard."

I was thinking about turquoise, I was thinking about gold,
I was thinking about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace.
As we rode through the canyons through the devilish cold,
I was thinking about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless.

How she told me that one day we'd meet up again,
And things would be different the next time we wed,
If I only could hang on and just be her friend.
I still can't remember all the best things she said.

We came to the pyramids all embedded in ice.
He said, "There's a body I'm trying to find.
If I carry it out, it'll bring a good price."
It was then that I knew what he had on his mind.

The wind, it was howling, and the snow was outrageous.
We chopped through the night, and we chopped through the dawn.
When he died, I was hoping that it wasn't contagious,
But I made up my mind that I had to go on.

I broke into the tomb, but the casket was empty.
There was no jewels, no nothing - I felt I'd been had.
When I saw that my partner was just being friendly,
When I took up his offer, I must've been mad.

I picked up his body, and I dragged him inside,
Threw him down in the hole, and I put back the cover.
I said a quick prayer, and I felt satisfied,
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her.

She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise,
Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed.
I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes.
I cursed her one time, then I rode on ahead.

She said, "Where ya been?" I said, "No place special."
She said, "You look different." I said, "Well, I guess."
She said, "You been gone." I said, "That's only natural."
She said, "You gonna stay?" I said, "If you want me to, yes."

Isis, oh Isis, you mystical child,
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled,
On the fifth day of May in the drizzling rain.

There it is, the entire song, a great story sung by a great storyteller! But why do I call this song a story? Because things happen in a sequence that fulfills our expectations, expectations set up with the first line: "I married Isis on the fifth day of May." You see? Something happened. We hear the line and wonder, "What's next?" Dylan tells us: "But I could not hold on to her very long." What happened then. Dylan continues to tell us . . .

Very different than "One More Cup of Coffee," which offers a portrait of a lady: "Your breath is sweet / Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky / Your back is straight your hair is smooth / On the pillow where you lie." Nothing's happening in this scene. Nothing much happens in the entire song. In that song, we're between stories, maybe, but we'll never know what those stories are.

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Pixar's 22 Rules to Storytelling?!

Pixar's 22 Rules on Slides
Posted by Gavin McMahon

Slide Share

And there you were thinking there were only five rules! These 22 aren't your easy rule-of-thumb rules, either. Let's take a look at these 22 rules for storytelling, which I'm borrowing from Cyriaque Lamar at io9:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about till you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you've got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it's poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it's not working, let go and move on - it'll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best and fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can't just write 'cool'. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What's the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

These must be good advice because everybody says so! Apparently, these 22 were first formulated in a series of tweets on Twitter by Emma Coates, former story artist at Pixar. Someone then made this enticing image:

Click the image to expand. Courtesy of The Masters Review Blog. I think these 22 aren't so much rules as pieces of seasoned advice, words of wisdom derived from years of working on stories.

Andrew Stanton - "Five Rules of Storytelling"

"Five Rules of Storytelling"
Click Image to Enlarge
Andrew Stanton

Andrew Stanton, a voice actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer at Pixar Animation Studios, has formulated five rules of storytelling, and these rules - according to the site Educational Technology and Mobile Learning - were taken by Karin Hueck and Rafael Quick (Brazilian culture and science magazine Superinteressante) and turned into the above visual for Stanton's TED Talk.

Here are the five rules, boiled down to a few words:

1. Make me care (i.e., about the protagonist).

2. Take me with you (i.e., with the protagonist).

3. Be intentional (i.e., about the protagonist's motives).

4. Let me like you (i.e., about the protagonist's likeability).

5. Delight me (i.e., about the audience's joy at the protagonist's success).

Obviously, these five rules are for stories with happy endings. Subverting one or several - as the diabolical Carter Kaplan suggested concerning Sean D'Souza's merely three rules of storytelling - makes for fun of the sort enjoyed by academics and literary critics!

Sean D'Souza on Storytelling: Three Core Elements

Cinderella's Slipper

In "The 3 Core Elements of Good Storytelling," Sean D'Souza offers good advice to novice writers. He begins with the basics of storytelling:

If we examine the Cinderella story closely we see three basic elements:

- The sequence

- The suspense

-The roller coaster

I argue that these same elements exist in every great story

Whether or not that's the case, I think that D'Souza is generally right, as we see:

Let's take a look at each of these three elements in the Cinderella story, and see how you can use them to your advantage:

1. The sequence:

We have the daughter who's mistreated and made to do menial work in the kitchen.

Then there're the other daughters romping about, having a great old time, doing what spoiled daughters do. These ladies fancy their romantic and social climbing chances with the prince.

But things don't go their way, and in turn, Cindy manages to get a fairy godmother. And blah, blah, blah.

There's a sequence of events building into each other here. But a good story must have some drama, some suspense.

2. The suspense:

Cinderella's mother dies and she's doomed to sleeping near the fireplace (which is how she gets the name, Cinderella).

But the fairy godmother appears from the blue - and suspense builds, because now Cinderella has a chance like everyone else. Will she make it? Won't she?

She does. And then, just as Cindy's hitting it off with the Prince, the clock goes nuts and her life is miserable once more.

What on earth is happening? What's with this girl? Is she just going to be a loser? Yup, that's all suspense.

3. The roller coaster

Good times, then bad. Then good, then bad.

Your story doesn't have to swing wildly, but it helps to have contrast, because contrast changes the pace of the story.

So, just as things are really yucky, along comes the knight in shining armour.

Or, just as things are looking great, an avian flu threatens to kill the entire population.

Cinderella's fortunes seem to bounce up and down, which keeps the interest in the story.

D'Souza now asks you to check your story (apparently, you've written one):

Every piece of story content you write must have a clear sequence, because without sequence a story has no meaning.

But what about suspense? You have to insert a certain amount of suspense. It's always there in your story, but when you insert a 'what the heck is happening' factor, you instantly build suspense.

And finally there's the roller coaster. If your story has been coasting with the fairies for a while, then it's time to bring out the ogres - and vice versa.

I think D'Souza's offered some good advice on basic storytelling. Recounting a tale takes more than a mere sequence of events. The reader needs to be held in suspense. And as I think about this, I see that the roller coaster element itself builds suspense, even bringing the suspense to a climax.

How to raise (mostly) novelists . . .

The King Clan
Photo by Bärbel Schmidt
The New York Times

In the photo above, moving clockwise from left to right, we find Joe Hill (i.e., Joe King), Tabitha King, Kelly Braffet, Owen King, Stephen King, Naomi King and Joe's dog, McMurtry. Naomi and McMurtry are the only non-novelists. Braffet is the sole literary outsider, having joined the clan by marrying Owen. Focusing on the offspring, we see that two of the three King children grew into writers. How did this come about? When they were growing up, the kids entertained their parents by reading to them, as we're told by Susan Dominus in "Stephen King's Family Business" (New York Times, July 31, 2013):

Entertaining their parents, for the King children, was part job, part enrichment. At bedtime, they were the ones expected to tell their parents stories, instead of the other way around. Whatever their methods or intentions, Stephen and Tabitha's shared vocation, and their approach to child rearing, has yielded a significant number of successful fiction writers in their household. Tabitha is an accomplished writer with eight novels to her credit, and two of their three children, Joe and Owen, are novelists. (Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist minister.) Joe's "NOS4A2," a sprawling mix of horror and fantasy that is his third critically praised best seller, was published last April; Owen's second work of fiction, a well-received comedic novel titled "Double Feature," was published in March. Owen, perhaps inevitably, married a writer, Kelly Braffet, whose third novel, a literary thriller called "Save Yourself," is out this month. And Stephen's much-anticipated sequel to the "The Shining," titled "Doctor Sleep," comes out this fall.

This method produced, perhaps inadvertently, two novelists out of three children. Why not Naomi? Why doesn't she tell stories? Well, she does:

"I have different stories, and those are the ones I tell. It's just a different genre." There are the stories she communicates to readers through her online ministry. There are also the stories she creates through sock monkeys costumed as adventuring pirates, whose exploits she creates and then documents on her Flickr account. "It's about play, and it's totally congruent with who I am as a religious leader," she said, "but that isn't what people have been taught to think." Like every other member of her family, she has stories in her life, and they sustain her.

This may sound weird, but telling stories is part of every ministry. I've never heard a good preacher who wasn't a good storyteller. An active imagination is apparently useful in religion, even (especially?) in prayer, as T. M. Luhrmann implies in "Addicted to Prayer" (New York Times, August 3, 2013):

Take Sigfried Gold, the subject of a recent article in The Washington Post. He's a thoughtful, articulate man who lives in Takoma Park, Md., and turned 50 yesterday. He is passionate about philosophy and long ago decided that there was no stuff in the universe that was not physical -- no supernatural, no divine . . . . [However,] he also smoked too much, and more than anything else he ate too much. He was worried that his weight -- a good 100 pounds of excess fat -- would kill him. So he joined a 12-step program to control his food addiction. One of the steps is to turn your problem over to a higher power. So Mr. Gold created a god he doesn't believe exists: a large African-American lesbian with an Afro that reached the edges of the universe . . . . Every day Mr. Gold dropped to his knees to pray, and every day he spent 30 minutes in meditative quiet time. These days Mr. Gold, who calls himself a "born-again atheist," doesn't smoke. He doesn't drink. And, at 5 feet 7 inches, he weighs 150 pounds.

Did he recount stories to himself? The "large African-American lesbian with an Afro . . . [reaching] the edges of the universe" sounds like part of a story to me. Of course, this goddess is merely Mr. Gold's anthropomorphization of the universe, but if he develops a personal relationship with this imaginary deity, a story would have to develop to frame that ongoing relationship and make sense of it.

Be that as it may, I now see that rather than reading to my children, which I did, and telling them stories, I ought to have had them reading to me!

They might then prefer books to smartphones . . .

Bunk Lumm of Agnos, Arkansas

Agnos, Arkansas

1940s

(Image from FamilyOldPhotos.com)

As some readers know, I've been assisting Mr. LeRoy Tucker as he reworks several of his stories about the quasi-fictional Ozark town of Climax, Arkansas, political center of the even more imaginary La Clair County, located on the border of Fulton and Sharp counties, both of which it overlaps, if that might help the cartographically oriented fix the place more securely. Anyway, over at his blog, which he had neglected of late due to time spent reworking old stories, Mr. Tucker has publicly thanked me for my efforts:

I have been seriously remiss. It is not my fault. Blame Dr. Jeffery Hodges who edits some of my work. He has kept me busy on older stuff trying to get it neat and respectable.

Since I'm being so helpful to an appreciative Mr. Tucker, I might as well send interested readers over to his blog, Folk Liar of the Ozarks, to enjoy one of his stories still in process, but which I've already spent considerable time editing, a task that primarily entails my suggesting punctuation, for Mr. Tucker needs no assistance in composing his stories. The story is "Hoops," a fictional tale about the time in 1937 that the Climax Wampus Cats won the State Tournament for high school basketball in Arkansas. Here's a teaser, a radio interview in which Little Rock sportswriter Missioner Cox poses some questions to Wampus Cat supporter and authentic backwoodsman Bunk Lumm, who's not the sharpest tool in the shed but who has a certain charm:

During his pre-game show, Missioner Tox, a sportswriter and radio personality, while asking around for someone from Climax, happened upon Bunk Lumm, who proudly proclaimed that he lived in the Climax area. When asked to comment on the area he complied. "Hit's dusty up home. Cars throws up dust, dust high'ern the trees. Trees up there is red with dust."

"That's interesting. Mr. Lumm. Is that spelled with only one 'm'?" Bunk stood staring blankly into the distance, unconcerned, until at last Tox saw the problem and moved on. "Mr. Lumm -- Climax, the town of Climax -- people out in radio land are eager to know about the town that produced the Wampus Cats. Could you describe Climax for the folks out there in radio land?"

"Hit's ugly, real ugly. Every store built outa rocks, ugly brown rocks," said Bunk.

"A nice town though?" asked Missioner Tox.

"No, I wouldn't hardly go that fer," was the reply.

Then Tox, warming to the task asked, "Bunk, all right if I call you 'Bunk'?"

"Who me?" asked Bunk.

"Yes Bunk, you. May I ask exactly where you live."

"Shore, shore, I'm from Agnos."

Tox was loving it. "Would that be Agnos, Arkansas?"

"Hit shore ain't nowheres else," said Bunk.

"Alright then. Bunk, tell the folks exactly now -- where is Agnos?"

"Why, Agnos is out west of Climax, yon side of Possum Trot 'fore you git to Glencoe. I thought ever body knowed that."

"Bunk, thank you so much for sharing your valuable time with me and a special thank you from the folks in radio land. I thank you, I and all my friends out there appreciate you for just being yourself. Good luck to you and good luck to the Wampus Cats of Climax . . ."

"I'll never find another one," thought Missioner Tox. "Damn, he's a classic, better than Lum and Abner."

Back in Climax, the boys in Ab's barber shop were delighted with Bunk's performance. They told and retold it to all who would listen. Regrettably it lost a lot in the telling but everyone was proud of Bunk.

The very real Ozark town of Agnos, Arkansas exists only a few miles southeast of my hometown, Salem, and one can also find the towns Glencoe and Possum Trot. As for Climax, it might or might not have existed sometime in the past, but it very much exists in the growing tales of Mr. LeRoy Tucker.

Anyway, if the teaser has interested you, then go read all of "Hoops," which gives a starring role to a great big old Huber steam tractor . . .

Uncle Cran gets bombed in Viola!

Viola, Arkansas Map

In case you, too, wish to get bombed in Viola...

(Image from Google)

Uncle Cran has sent us another one of his Adventures-in-the-Ozarks stories. This one's kind of lame . . . but so is Uncle Cran these days. Anyway, this story recounts the day that Uncle Cran got bombed in Viola -- a day to live in infamy. Let the story begin . . . after a couple of typical Cranfordian delays:

Prologue:

While recovering from my latest adventure, Steer Wrestling, which resulted in a victory for the steer and a broken femur and new titanium rod and ball inserted into my right hip socket, I have been doing a lot of reading. One book in particular, loaned by a neighbor, is a history of World War II. This 800+ page documentary brought back a memory of my sixth year, as a first grade student at Viola Elementary School, Viola, Arkansas. It made a tremendous impact on me at the time, but had faded somewhat in my memory through the years. I now recall the terror in my childish mind that day.

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES
(From the movie Forrest Gump).

I have always been somewhat gullible, or should I say naive?, . . . which sounds better.

My father was injured, and subsequently died as a result of his logging injuries when I was two and a half years old, so I turned my instinct for a father figure toward my older siblings. I believed everything they told me, and as a result, they used to use that for some "fun" (for them, not me). For instance, one evening I had to go to bed early while they would sit up and play card games. About ten pm, they came up with the bright idea of waking me, and telling me it was time to get ready for school. Sure enough, I got up, put on my school clothes, washed my face and hands, combed my hair, sat down at the table, then innocently asked, "Where's my breakfast?" Then back to bed, hiding my tears and shame, with their laughter ringing in my ears.

Also, during those early days, listening to the grownups talking about the war, not really comprehending, I tried to make sense out of what was going on. They would talk about Pearl Harbor. My Aunt Bertha was married to Earl Harbour, and I supposed "Pearl" was a close relative. Big Brother Bradley used my naivette to his advantage on occastion.

But my biggest feat of such tendency was in the fall of 1945.

THE DAY VIOLA SCHOOL WAS BOMBED

The fall of 1945 was my first day of school. We walked 1.75 miles to catch the bus, then a 5 mile ride to school. This made me so tired that I would go to sleep in class, and sleep through recess, until after a few weeks I toughened up and started to learn.

One day in late August, I was out on the playground with some other classmates. I recall we were on the southeast side of the campus playing, when I heard something in the sky. Looking up I saw an airplane, coming from the east and flying directly toward the school. As I watched, OBJECTS BEGAN FALLING FROM THE PLANE, WHIRLING DOWN TOWARD US!

I thought, "IT'S THE JAPS, AND WE ARE BEING BOMBED!!!"

Terrified, I ran as fast as my short legs would go, back toward my classroom.

My teacher said, "Cranford, where are you going?"

I gasped, "THE AIRPLANE . . . THE JAPS ARE BOMBING US!"

She said, "Honey, that's just one of our planes, and those are papers they are dropping."

Sure enough, it turned out to be a Piper Cub, flown by a man named Devoe Hanks, advertising that he was coming to Viola to put on an air show, and take people for rides the following weekend.

And the Japanese surrendered the the first week of September, 1945.

[Uncle Cran's Epilogue of Pitiful Lamentation]

However, that is not the end of my being easily deceived. For instance, I write my true, honest, and compelling stories, with the hope that favorite nephew Jeffery will relate them, with a sympathetic mind, and kind words on his blog, never criticizing nor will he critique my comments, pointing out any fallacies,or mis-spelled words. Nor will he hold his simple minded uncle up to ridicule.

At least, such is my hope.

Your hope is fulfilled, Uncle Cran, for this story of violence in Viola has already expressed everything that I might otherwise have needed to add . . . though I have seen fit to contribute the appropriate, bracketed words that label your epilogue so that I might indicate the degree of empathy that I truly feel.

Amphibious Assault: Der Tod Comes For "Frog"

Der Tod

Translation/Pronunciation

(From About.com)

Mad Mark wasn't the only one crazy from drugs in my hometown. Also mad was a man called "Frog," who once implicitly threatened the life of one friend of mine for being insufficiently 'respectful.'

I could see that he meant his veiled threat in earnest, that he would kill without remorse, and that he was crazy enough to follow through. But he had bigger fish to fry ... such as threatening to kill one of the town cops.

It happened on a Saturday evening at the local Dairy Queen, a hangout for high school students and young adults that we thought was cool but that I would now recognize as dreary. Frog drove up in his pickup truck, high on something and drinking, too, followed by a man and woman in a different vehicle but the same condition. The woman, so far gone that she apparently mistook the parking lot for a toilet, squatted right there in front of the Dairy Queen to urinate in public. Her companion laughed hysterically at that, while Frog just sat quietly in his truck.

The proprietors must have called the City Police, for within minutes, one arrived, blue lights flashing. He called Frog over to his car and was going to book him along with the other two but Frog had different ideas. As the two of them were seated in the police car, where the cop was filling out a form on public intoxication, Frog suddenly reached over, pulled the cop's pistol from its holster, and ordered him out of the car. He then pointed the gun at the cop's head, forced him to his knees, and threatened him, saying, "If you ever f**k with me again, I'll blow your f**kin' head off."

With those words echoing in our stunned minds, we watched as Frog climbed into his truck and spun off, heading for the Missouri state line, away from the Salem City Police's jurisdiction.

Frog's mother confiscated the gun and mailed it back to the city police from Missouri, but Frog didn't show up in town again -- and soon stopped showing up anywhere at all, for not long after these events, he lost control of his truck, crashed, and died.

I don't rejoice when people die, but I can't say that I was unhappy to hear that "Der Tod" had taken Frog.

Mad Mark: "Mad in pursuit, and in possession so"

.22 Target Rifle

(Image Borrowed from Paladin Armory)

Another bit of evidence that contributed to my thinking that drugs are "a swallowed bait, / On purpose laid to make the taker mad," was Mad Mark's behavior at a party.

Some of you will recognize the allusion to Shakespeare's "Sonnet 129," which is ostensibly about lust but which the online writer "Mad in Pursuit" suggests is also:

... about any restless, addictive behavior. It's when you get a jones for something you know you're better off without. When you jump in the car at 3 A.M. to buy a pack of cigarettes. When you drink that third cosmopolitan, knowing you'll be sick as a dog in the morning. When one piece of fudge is too much and the whole pan is not enough. You know that the wiggling worm is attached to a hook, but you bite anyway.

We've each experienced this, I suppose, but you're perhaps wondering about the 'Mad Mark' referred to above. That's the nickname that I've decided to use for the Mark who appeared in yesterday's entry.

Why 'Mad'?

Because he proved himself both crazy and aggressive one time at a party in a farmhouse at the end of some back-country dirt road way off in the Ozark woods.

Several friends and I were sitting on a sofa listening to Frank Zappa's Apostrophe (') (1974), an album belonging to Mark, who had slipped off into another room, apparently to satisfy his drug lust. Just as Fido in "Stink-Foot" was saying:

The crux of the biscuit
Is the Apostrophe(')

Mark walked back into the living room carrying a .22 rifle, pointed it at us, pulled the trigger, and laughed at our instant of stunned silence. None of us stayed a moment longer to find out if he was aiming to load that rifle before playing his game again.

After that experience, I had nothing more to do with Mad Mark.