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Filters

FCDC circa 1970

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an odd moment

so pretty quick he's crawling and you get this cute little rugrat crawling on you while you watch the boobtube. then you come in the door one day and she's smiling and she gets the three of you set up. the kid's got a big grin and she's holding his arms up like he's a zebra signalling touchdown and she says "show daddy what you can do." three steps later, more like a projectile than a pedestrian he's in your arms and in less than a week he's a regular biped.

nor does it take long for the noises to turn into words. you've always talked straight to him, being to being, even before he was born and even before he commands the verbal apparatus the flow of understanding both ways is pretty much clear. it's amazing how well he understands.

like one day, for instance, i was laid back on the beanbag reading a book and the boobtube was on the educational channel. ten to twelve year old boys were being asked "if you had to lose either your father or the television, which one would you keep?" hee hee! i'm not sure that's less ponographic than asking girls to bare their boobs for the camera. there were a couple of kids who just said straight up "the television" and some of the kids who said "my father were sunny and some were cloudy and there was one kid who knew the right answer was father but looked like he was trying to find a crowbar in his skull to disengage his brain from tv.

just then ian came toddling around the corner, that wide track rocking walk demanded by balance and the leg splaying butt covers with his usual grin so i popped the question of the day on him, just jiving around and expecting mere puzzlement and he blew me away. he understood the dynamics of the query on hearing it but had to doublecheck it. he stood there and you could see him rewind his time track, examine the last entry, and get the same result he got in present time. and it didn't make any more sense the second time than the first but dad asked a question so he answered, gave a little shrug and toddled on.

he was an awful bright kid.

god he was an awful bright kid.

stuck only briefly in a world where you must so often understand things which make no sense.
 
heading south

billy martin packed off to seattle in the fall of '77 and much later told me when he heard next year we were moving to philly he knew right then i was a marked man.

yeah.

i knew it too.

but kathie was pregnant with our second son and wanted the support of living near her folks. it had to be.

at the end of august i coached her through a much easier labor and we met a new friend, though it took ian a couple ticks to feel the love.

he was sitting on the front steps of her parents house when she came out of the hospital and if i were not again in a state of shock i probably would have burst out laughing at the face he made when she put his new brother in his arms. this was the first speed bump in ian's road and his nose come a bit out of joint about the intruder. one night a couple days later he was talking in his sleep, shaking his head back and forth moaning "no, no, no, no..."

of course the basic dynamics of his life had just been introduced to the san francisco eathquake of 1906 but there he was, just like the rest of us, all too human and plagued by the blight of "i, i, i, me, me, me, mine..." the inevitable pigself darkening the aldebo.

still the kid was a trooper from square one and no brambles grew from it. you may have heard of the "terrible twos" but they passed him by. a few years ago i read a report of a child psychologist explaining the phenomenon and it actually made pretty good sense. he can tell why they happen. i could tell you why they don't.

but not now.

i'm busy feeding mr. fish his holiday feast.

yum yum!

isn't this flavorful mr. fish?

and it gets better, stay tuned mr. fish. there's going to be a real treat for you on friday. i mean like you think it was fun for emma to get pinched by the local gendarmes? just wait till friday.

yum yum!
 
a chiaroscoru

especially when i was young but also ever since i have had moments when i lift into i know not where very briefly and return to here and now knowing only it was paradisical. one time in particular i recall i was perhaps nine or ten and riding in the backseat of grampa's 1938 buick with it's rust spots and running boards and musty aroma and gazing over the hills to the west slipped into the bosom of abraham and, thump, i came back to the thrum of the road and whoosh of the wind and everything was right there just as it is and i was so alive and awake and there were grampa and grammie in the front seat, good simple righteous hill people but dour and i saw they were asleep even though they were awake.

in the wild outrageous blossoming spring of '80 i was rocked back in my old black barcalounger one bright day and ian, so handsome, so straight and so strong was standing at my left shoulder gazing into the fair sky of bright blue and fleecy white out the window with a most beatific look on his face, rapt and transfixed. i watched and i knew he was where i too had been. i saw him come back so i asked "ian, what were you just thinking?" he looked at me and said "something". gee i was hoping he might have some pertinent information.

but.

what a thrill to think of the price i pad being raised by somnambulists and to look forward to being a better launch pad...

but.

but, but, butt.

just a few days later in the same seat i was reading a book and though i was intent upon the text i was not immersed in it, consumed by it but panoramic, vaguely monitoring the boobtube in front of me and even more in the kitchen to my left the beautiful woman great with child who would so soon drift gracefully into the persona of a case of live hand grenades and poisonous serpents was gracefully busy and to my right in the front room jaime was napping and ian was playing with a toy in the puddle of sunshine streaming through the front window and i was fully awash in the whole idyllic scene.

and then the commercials came on, so terribly well crafted by the psychs. ian stood up, walked over in front of the twonky and stood there with dull eyes and slack jaw entranced.

"ian!" i said firmly.

no response.

"ian!" i said again a notch up.

again no response.

i wasn't quite horrified, not then, but very interested and concerned, a thing to note well but not to fear...
 
block that kick!

the stairway had lost it's railing long before we moved into the old house on monastery avenue and ian, just turned two, was precariously perched at the top. i was twelve feet or more away when i saw him tip and if i have ever violated the known laws of physics it was when i moved catlike to make a highlight reel catch, my left hand beneath the back of his head a foot above the floor, the right a bit higher under his wump.

and so too did i move when he fell ill and i'd have caught him again had i not been blocked.

if you've been reading along on this thread for the past month you might recall my spontaneous rising from mage mountain in the spring of '86 to begin a magickal journey. only after i was told of his demise four years after it occurred would i understand i was then again making a leap to save him as he fell ill seeing not by eye but by soul.

my last line of communication to my sons was severed when i was in seattle in '82. i have persisted continuously all these years in trying to regain it. i am sane (and proud to be crazy) but i was hit by black dianetics from CoS and psychiatrically lynched and branded in 1980.

good work mr. fish!

real well done!

dance around mocking my dead son!

the story is much too long to sensibly condense in my hour in the library to give the context of the note greg wilhere sent but most briefly i got back east at the end of summer in '86. my mother, subjected to intimidation as i would learn would say only "i can't help you" and i wound up in new york where i hooked up with the legendary caliph and we did our famous project in alphabet city. i returned to seattle in dec '87 having failed utterly to locate my sons still preternaturally desperate to do so. i tried writing a concilliatory letter to kathies' mother in philly. there was no response so i sent postcard after postcard asking "where are my sons?"

and then one day a small note arrived at my return address in kirkland. it was postmarked los angeles but it bore no return address. it's small typed message instructed me to stop "harrassing" mary wilhere. it was signed with an illegible squiggle but i knew greg's hand from folder study back at fcdc.

THE 'CHURCH' OF SCIENTOLOGY IS A HATE CRIME MR. FISH!

yet it's ideas are wondrous things dear readers and, in part, it is for them i was able as a living soul to be frantically aware i must get to my dying son and yet was finally stymied by my brother-in-law's obedience to rotten policy informed by huge black lies enforced by barred communication.

i am confident many readers know for themselves how the diabolic machina functions.

but i then accomplished the impossible. sometime after xmas i will tell a marvelous tale of the triumph of the human spirit and how i personally financed my son's medical treatment.

but for now this writing is the yule log blazing on the hearth of mr. fish who shall be delightfully warmed by tomorrow's crowning vignette.
 
the bird

smack your lips mr. fish, a most uncommon delicacy...

the darkness of the january night was chilled beyond the marrow by the imminence of desert storm and the stranger's insolence was attuned to the zeitgeist but it would be four years until i learned the full depth of the harmony.

i was peddling the ruth daigon issue of the haight ashbury literary journal on haight street in front of freddies' place just off masonic fishing for a pair of ears to hear a reading of julia vinograd's magnificent "when abbie hoffman killed himself" in hope of garnering a few shekels for my next pack of smokes. he was wearing a dark dulltoned green garbadine suit, tailored i think, not off the rack, clean shaven and short salt and pepper hair, medium build and in good fit, almost atheletic. he was sort of crouched as he approached and moving quickly, a most unlikely patron but not impossible, i've sold many issues to men like him. once i fell in stride with a fellow like him and extolled the virtues of poetry and our quirky rag for two and a half blocks dissolving his disdain to bridge the thin illusion of a gulf between us and capture respect, mirth and a sale.

not so with this one. i waved my wares in his general direction and he stopped just as he passed, pivoted and thrust a taut middle finger rising from a white knuckled fist in my face his own face blazing with a black and vicious hate then scurried on. well i was surprised and baited. there seemed to be something terribly personal and triumphant in his gesture and he must have gained some satisfaction from my eyes for he cracked my TRO and i was a moment shocked and frightened. if i'd had a case of hiccups he'd have cured them. recovering i called after him "have a better day tomorrow."

who or why i knew not, perhaps a local property owner who despised the residue of hippies. but when in january of '95 billy told me my son died the fifth of january 1991 it was not long till i recalled him and knew it was exactly then he had appeared bearing greg's sangfroid served warm and delivered to me your condolences mr. fish.
 
a very merry xmas!

well now mr. fish

wasn't that just so delish?

not just the massive power of "fair game" but such sublime finesse.

what a gratifying image it must be, an offending auditor getting the finger when his son died incommunicado and then only learning it's meaning four years later, you must have doubled up with laughter when you read it.

well...

don't laugh alone.

by numerous apparently credible first hand accounts of the david this is just the sort of tale he favors.

you must pass it on to him and quickly.

imagine how angry he will be if he finds you've withheld it from him.

especially in this season of good cheer.

o just think of the raucous chortles spouting from him and greg, the kneeslapping guffaws! just think of the riproaring celebration of a most joyously unwoggish yuletide festival lighting up COB's palazzo in the village of the damned ringed in it's collar of magic thorns! o they'll be rolling on the floor spewing great gales of chuckles.

but hurry...

you never know, this be the last xmas the david gets to grind his heel
into the back of the necks of the rpfer's eating beans and rice, making his list and checking it twice, picking out one or two to receive his magnanimous generosity and quickly scarf down as good a xmas meal as a serial child murderer on death row receives.

hey!

maybe you should start studying a map of bulgravia and find out what you can about the local carabinieri. maybe you can be one of the toadies he takes with him when he goes. there's been some interesting information about a few million quid lately. best to start positioning yourself for the demolition derby following the decapitation early.

but first things first.

get this happy story of a "yapping gnat's" distress on the holiday drums.

go get 'em tiger.


p.s. there was a cardboard carton of my papers in the back of my ford escort and another in the trunk of the caddy. now that your colleagues know they are of no use to you i'd like them back. you know where to find me.
 
Everyone should have the right to publish their stuff, but the collective hottie inspiration that was the heart and soul of FCDC has been derailed.
 
I don't think it is derreailed, just esperienceing a little flaccidity.


a_jazz_mc_nudes.jpg
 
nozeno said:
He's publishing now Winnie. Leave him be.

At first I didn't get it, now I do.
Click to expand...

Point well taken. I am just an old man. Sometimes I don't understand myself, let alone any one else. Time I hibernate for a very long time, but don't miss me.

I am rediscovering why I became a musician in the first place. And no, I do not want to post recordings of myself--this is for me only. Or I should say for me and the players I am currently involved with. I need a break from ESMB...need to live in the real world. God bless you all.
 
Winston Smith said:
Point well taken. I am just an old man. Sometimes I don't understand myself, let alone any one else. Time I hibernate for a very long time, but don't miss me.

I am rediscovering why I became a musician in the first place. And no, I do not want to post recordings of myself--this is for me only. Or I should say for me and the players I am currently involved with. I need a break from ESMB...need to live in the real world. God bless you all.
Click to expand...

So you are playing with yourself?
 
mele kalikimaka

well

there you have it

a piquant bohemian elegy for a beautiful child composed to be suitable to the tastes of the remarkable folk who are denizens of esmb.

and now a word from our sponsor, the creator of heaven and earth.

time for our solstice celebration. days have grown shorter and shorter, daylight is fleeting and children have died. now days grow longer and children live. as in ancient days we freshen our confines with evergreen cuttings and feast on the last of harvest bounty.

and in a recent development we take heart not only in the growing outer light of the sun but the growing inner light of The Son. he was born, apparently, in march. there was snow and the shepards who had brought their flocks in for the winter had returned them to the fields. but outer light is such a fine metaphor for inner light let's double 'em up eh?

well now, with some vague exceptions you're all a pack of wretched scuzzbuckets who might show up in a church for a wedding or a funeral if at all, the stupid things are just obsolete in this glitzy glutzy modern age.

but...

maybe you got some kids.

do me a favor would ya? you got yours. i miss mine. take yours to a xmas eve service and let 'em sing a half a dozen xmas carols.

it's good for 'em.

trust me on this.

SING!

sing like you want our guys in the middle east to hear ya.

and maybe stick a copy of the bill of rights in their stockings and tell 'em it's a gift from them.

and if you want to really mainline the chiba of the thing find some place where a slim darkhaired young woman with warm brown eyes and a fancy set of pipes accompanied by two or three DROP DEAD musicians sings her heart out like ellen green in "little shop of horrors" performing "o holy night"
 
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