Posted by This installment of the Confessor of Littlefield includes flash fiction sequences, satire and poetry. The story of Bill Dinklfpuss is separating itself in Adam’s mind toward its own absolution. Adam’s own story is becoming more of a back story as he absorbs Bill and his journals. The flash satire sequences contained in many of these installments are meant to be breaks from Adam and his story which I include as part of the whole. The whole is a bag of marbles, a loose bundle of wood being dropped and picked up with each installment.
Z
The global government of Roman Clunk has announced it has granted ownership of the sun to Sludskump Corp., whose board of directors includes the 12 wealthiest people on earth. President Clunk has long admired the warmth brought by the sun and is certain that Sludskump Corp. will run the sun far more efficiently than the government has. Senator Pissmule has introduced emergency legislation to do away with daylight savings time so that it stops interfering with the free will of the market to settle like the little ball in the roulette wheel, the value of the sun.
Senator Oxcorker will be introducing legislation to do away with time, which has recently been purchased from the government of Roman Clunk by a subsidiary of Roman Clunk Enterprises. Mini futures contracts will begin trading on Monday. Everyone will have a gain or loss of time. But no worries, citizens. You should not experience anything. The time will only be fractions of seconds in duration. We have applied a stop gap in advances and declines to insure that the free market acts sensibly. All citizens are still responsible for using their own time and must declare so on their tax returns even if their employer shorts time and uses a passive income tax carry forward thing to make everyone work extra hours. Anyone not assuming responsibility for their own time will be penalized an as yet to be determined amount amount of time, which will ultimately be ruled an original tax by the Supreme Court. Man is born in a state of original tax. There is a team of think tank specialists and marketing psychologists coordinating efforts to determine the best language to sculpt this colossal pile of crap into a morality thing for a bumpkin to nibble on.
Z
The voice says the author is trying to unravel his own issues through the characters he or she creates. It must be true. All voices are mine, cycling from the recesses with noisy machines whirring. I read ticker tape, Morse code, Navaho, but I am still a motor comprehending itself. The physicality of being provides the impetus and the grist to explore and explain to self while each to himself fears the other’s cunning. I don’t want your goddamn time, Calvin Dyme, but you want mine; in my shop, in my house, at my table and in my bed. Not to exclaim pretty Jesus is dead but that he lives by Roman administrator rules. He is commanding and demanding, always with ornery eyes and a declension of views, and an old disgust for ordinary self.
Z
From the notebooks of Bill Dinklpfuss
You don’t speak for the goddamn We, Calvin; you don’t speak for me, Trenton (Bill’s Calvinist farmer employer) Not you, study hall teacher demoted by the school system for one too many complaints about approaching boys in the bathroom to preach Christ. All I know is that all the world has cried to itself because of godly men like you. You call yourself men of the earth but you are imaginary minutemen with your psyches locked into slogan. You seek justice and protection against straw men, presuming with ill will, depravity with righteous indignation. You are born to be so worst than dust that only to dust could you hope to return. It is you who impose rule for show because it is the right thing to do.
Of John:Hapflik:
Day and time is for sale. I see others assuming depravity in others on the sidewalks, in their cars, in the stores. Their stares beat each other into into a more significant existence. I have seen the enemy and he is too awesome to behold. I will submit in advance and hope he or she or it spares me. The origin of masochism is spiritual, manifested as organized religion, with men writing as laws the deep structures in everyone’s mind. Everyone knows it is to their advantage to get along; beatitudes are universal. Taboos are universals written in local language. Jesus never walked in Littlefield or any other tiny town around the Great Lakes. If you wanna talk about the great deception, Calvin Dyme it isn’t just the Catholic church that dares interpose itself between the human and any would-be outside creator or manipulator. In Littlefield, there is a hypocritical, judging, cowardly puritanism that claims to be the voice of God, active in and manipulating politics and law enforcement. You wanna talk to me about the christian God, motherfucker? I have had all of him that I can stand and I just want him to leave me the fuck alone! The great beast is puritan politics that excludes, denigrates, chastises, demands because it judges all as depraved. As for you, Calvin Dyme, you see this bag I wear on my side, guy? You think that’s the price I paid for your christian God; paid for YOU, for YOUR freedom? Don’t come around here anymore. Ya’all make me sick.
(The last paragraph is taken from a passage in a notebook of Bill Dinklpfuss. The Dymes visited the garage for repairs over the years. Bill writes about them quite a bit They seem the very sort of Jonathan Edwards types who try to convict you of depravity so they can offer a hope out of it.)
Z
Poem from the notebook of Bill Dinklpfuss. It is dated April 13, 1964. The poems he writes after this date are sad and self indulgent. For the next five years Bill sees little of his mother and doesn’t mention any visitors to the cabin. There are a few dozen drawings on drawing paper that he does during this time and he writes quite a bit about Emerson. He reveals a maturing spirituality after an apparent break with his mother. He knows his mother is spiritually disengaged from him and views him more from a utilitarian point of view. She lacks a motherly instinct.
Once more, you said what you thought was right.
Live for what you need to show
Precious,
what matters convention
or blame
or hate
or reasons to justify?
All that’s thought is shadows
baying for attention
and love breaks
heartlessly, holding desire
longer than needs be
your self holds your production, child
and you are getting old
cut the reigns and be on your way, child
this is no longer your home
Z
Circles,
wound tight around me
suffocating
all my needs
Cancer, this circle
watching me believe
begging before it
desperate, in need
probe from me,
the point of being
interrogate my suffering
tax my patience
with condemnatory condolences
repositories more like suppositories
from some Catholic or Calvinist creed
I would rather sit around
and smoke weed
than listen, or touch
or see you,
you are the cursed We
~
I unwind
it’s just a day
but I’m caught inside
even though it’s raining
it’s a nice day for a drive
The winter breathes diesel fuel
defecates its dust
A smoke calms the killer that fights me
as I fantasize
I’m a real life action hero
who really doesn’t need
Television web
a spark and the network comes to life
makes me think who I am supposed to be
isn’t who I am, really
I didn’t part ways from my fellow man
I never felt a need to hide from him
except, he thinks of me, more often than not
as a bit player,
a fossil of a model of deductive clay
So what is it you need today
the mind-man-mirror
is compelled to say,
not a thing
it’s just a nice day for a drive
~
Every time I see a face
it makes me want to hide
why does fear divide
the moments between us
I swear I could’ve met you
in a different state
on a different day
but my partings didn’t effect you
just made me want to hate
~
What is the sum of your deposition
the groups tell us personal things don’t matter
you are a slogan
a ghost operative for the collective
with all your seeking
you are a shadow in our mirror
Z
Einstein admitted organized power can only be controlled by organized power. But what if the power is unorganized, overwhelming in its madness?
Z
“Eye dialect is what you are talking about,” said Prof Cliffnut when I began talking about how colloquial spelling matches intent of the author. “It is not a judgment by the narrator but it is taken as a matter of course that when presented by an author, colloquial language signifies lack of sophistication. That may be the inference of the reader but the reader’s inference is his own albatross,” said the Professor. “The hearer notes the fluctuations of vowels and consonants and how they are expressed on the dentals, the soft palate, the larynx. He observes his lungs and throat propelling wind for the sound. There is no “supposed to sound” to pronunciation. You can ask someone why they are pronouncing it a certain way in order to understand what that person is expressing, but you cannot insist that there is one certain way to pronounce a word. In Pygmalion, the George Bernard Shaw play, professor Higgins woos others with his ability to tell within a block or two where a person lived just by the way a person spoke. If you can’t wrap your head around that I am afraid academics isn’t for you, I tell some students. ”
“Business school.”
“Sure.”
Z
I met a Vietnamese Buddhist scholar who was the teacher and priest at the local temple. He had lived his entire life in zen temples and was completing a graduate degree in psychology. He told me he was only a priest at the temple so he could get his Psychology degree paid for and that zen was not profound in the least. The idea was just to get the mind off things. Count breaths. Indo-European, indeed all cultures, had physicians or priests who prescribed different types of meditation and exercise using the imagination to free oneself from some anxiety or malady. It was all simply language and tricks of language to speak to the collective what the individual already knows. An elder at the temple wanted to have a ceremony for me, gave me a prayer book of Buddhist chants and a robe with a zen name. When I told the teacher he said, “you don’t have time for that. Write a book, go on a trip; whatever. You will be better off.”
Z
I confess, I cried when I saw this. Bill had to put his beloved horse to sleep after it grew old and arthritic. The animal seems to be about the closest friend Bill Dinklpfuss ever had. Bill Dinklpfuss, thank you, wherever you are, for making me feel alive.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm
Fall has come early this year
my heart still shakes from what I fear
My companion who helped me
keep my days
suddenly must go away
Mellow, you changed things
made me feel I had a home
with you’re raspy whining
whenever you’d see me
I can’t bear the approaching hour,
I stumble with you to the back of the barn
crying like a girl
I don’t want to leave you this way
I know, it hurts to stand
I’m sorry, precious
I can’t make you stay
just for me
Z
Near Zero Blog 