Author: Brad Zellar

…on the one hand, the correct political line is demanded of the poet; on the other, one is justified in expecting his work to have quality. Such a formulation is of course unsatisfactory as long as the connection between the two factors, political line and quality, has not been perceived. Of course, the connection can be asserted dogmatically. You can declare: a work that shows the correct political tendency need show no other quality. You can also declare: a work that exhibits this correct tendency must of necessity have every other quality.

—Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer,” Address at the Institute for the Study of Fascism, April 27, 1934.

We are born to be awake, not to be asleep!

—Paracelsus, “Toil, A Divine Commandment”

I’ve been thinking about purely private obsession, the grip of the wholly inexplicable. The claiming desire, some fascination –sometimes kink, sometimes compulsion– that puts down roots in your young skull and stakes a permanent camp. Some ceaselessly hectoring curiosity that won’t leave you alone, and ultimately defines you and how you’ll spend (or waste) your time and what you’ll want from your life.

It’s a narrowing, and generally happens early. A box your head puts you in and won’t ever let you out of. Childhood’s brand. You will love me always. You will follow me forever, and wherever I lead. You will serve me until the end of your days.

There are a million tiny and ridiculous ways you can be sidetracked and carried away, from the narrowest path off the main trail to a pitiful, dribbling creek or the most destructive, raging cataract.

You become a hostage to who you are, to what you want, what fascinates you, what breaks you down, what holds you under; the sense you feel compelled to build, the truth you try so helplessly to construct, who you ultimately and helplessly are.

All of this, of course, by way of trying to justify –to myself, to my wife, to the great, wondering world– my unchallenged status as the King of the Party Titans. I’m sorry, honey. It’s too late to turn back now. You married a man who was put on this earth to party with a ferocity that is –thank God– beyond the comprehension of most mere mortals. And with royalty comes responsibility, which is why I feel compelled to beg off on the opera Saturday night, so that I may assume my rightful place in the plush seats of the State Theater for the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular.

‘The question at stake,’ said Epictetus, ‘is no common one; it is this: Are we in our senses, or are we not?’

—The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

We cannot truly know whether we are not at this moment sitting in a madhouse.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms

There are those to whom one must advise madness.

—Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks

But the plausible would never be our medium.

—Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture

People –dreamers– look out. Never trust anyone who talks about the real world. Don’t get too close to the edge. I’m warning you: those tennis rackets are dangerous. If you put wheels on your feet you’re just asking for trouble. A mechanical bull will make a broken fool of you. Beware also of overweight white men, going door-to-door, running for things.

More: don’t lean on the counter. Don’t ask so many damn questions; answers never did a man any good in this world. Don’t stare at the elderly. Avoid malt liquor and anything that tastes too much like melon. Don’t waste your money on cologne or goldfish. Don’t feed the pigeons. Never give candy to strangers. If you see a swell broad on the street, tip your hat. Always remember that librarians put their pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else. Don’t sass your mama. Pat the bunny. Don’t be afraid of the merge. Turn that fucking frown upside down and smile.

To say nothing of the day behind me. Possible, but not likely, not likely at all. Something will sneak down through the clouds, always does. Above me the Attic Moses, beleaguered, rages –poor man never sleeps. I can hear him up there at all hours, moving things around and manufacturing the occasional shit-storm. I always respect his wrath, but I also get tired of walking on eggshells.

I can change, I swear. Give me just a little more time to familiarize myself with your demands.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s give this thing one more try. Let’s work together. Let’s get it on. Let’s blow this pop-stand. Let’s get ready to rumble. Let’s roll. Let’s bowl. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s go downtown. Let’s dance. Let’s get high. Let’s party. Let’s get something to eat. Let’s paint the town. Let’s wish upon a star. Let’s go swimming. Let’s get busy. Let’s get to work. Let’s clean up this mess. Let’s take a short break. Let’s just take a good look and see what we have here. Let’s be honest. Let’s be friends. Let’s let bygones be bygones. Let’s not get carried away. Let’s not get into that tonight. Let’s just calm down. Let’s just agree to disagree. Let’s call the whole thing off. Let’s just pretend the whole thing never happened. Let’s not and say we did. Let’s stop this nonsense right now. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s get some shut-eye. Let’s call it a night.

I stopped over to visit my old friend Rich last night. Rich is having a bit of a tough time, or so he had told me on the phone.

I go way back with this guy, and on a certain level I’ve always gotten a kick out of him. That said, he is, like many of my favorite people, something of a menace to society. Once upon a time he was going to be a rock star (you probably never heard of his first band, Shitsicle, or his later band, bumskuller. They didn’t play out much). These days he’s hoping to become a screenwriter. He’s got some good ideas –he’s always had good ideas– but he hasn’t managed to write anything yet, and in the meantime he’s working at Office Max.

Rich has had many jobs, and I’m confident he will have many more.

I seldom interfere in the private lives of my friends, but at present Rich is posing something of a dilemma in this regard. He has a child now. I’m not sure exactly how old Cassidy is –I’m not good at that sort of thing– but I think it’s safe to call her a toddler. She isn’t yet capable of speaking anything but gibberish, at any rate, and seems uncommonly filthy even for a toddler.

Cassidy’s mother and Rich’s girlfriend is a woman named Trina, a woman I think it’s fair to say is sort of stunted and unbalanced, a description, that to be just, could also be applied to Rich. Trina is taking an extended time-out at the moment, apparently. She has been “visiting” her sister in Wisconsin for the last couple weeks, this after she and Rich had fought over her disapproval of his attempts at growing a beard. Her objections, she had allegedly said, were based on the fact that she found the beard “too pubey.”

Rich was not so much insulted by Trina’s criticism of his facial hair as he was deeply aggrieved by her use of “pubey” as an adjective. Fair enough, it seemed to me.

Last night when I dropped by Rich was wearing an old Def Leppard tee-shirt and cut-offs, which I’ll admit struck me as a bit odd given that it is still winter in Minnesota. Cassidy had a cold, I was told, so Rich was making Nyquil grasshoppers in the blender and spoon feeding this concoction to his child. He was also trying to teach Cassidy to croak, “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’” like a parrot. If successful, he announced proudly, these would be his daughter’s first words.

I knew that the real reason Rich wanted to see me was because he needed money, but I sat fascinated for perhaps an hour while he squawked “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore,’” over and over to Cassidy and she eagerly slurped Nyquil grasshoppers and babbled happily. I could see that Rich was becoming frustrated, and he was also really pounding the grasshoppers.

In my defense I should note that I did mention to Rich that this particular cold remedy didn’t seem terribly kosher for a child of Cassidy’s age, at which point he changed the subject and asked to borrow $100. I gave him the money, of course, and as I drove home I tried to convince myself that I had done so out of sympathy for the child.

That, I fully realize and probably don’t need to tell you, was a lie.

I recall reading somewhere about a party of British adventurers who were mucking about in some primitive, forsaken place. This was, if I’m not mistaken, some time in the 19th century. According to a handful of sketchy journals they left behind they’d had an arduous expedition and had lost several members of their party to violence and various mysterious maladies.

Much of the time they spent navigating an unpredictable river and plodding through thick brush and rough, rocky terrain. I don’t quite remember what they were looking for, but I’m certain it can be safely surmised that it was more or less something they hadn’t seen before. Like many such explorers I’m supposing they were bored with domesticity and civilization, and hoped that hardship and peril would make them men again.

They were also –once again, like many such characters– blunderers, utterly ill-prepared and incompetent, certain that their firearms and education (they were mostly well-to-do graduates of Oxford, I believe, with a handful of hardscrabble human mules to do their dirty work) made them superior to the vague task at hand.

Almost needless to say, they disappeared, as is so often the case with such foolhardy explorers. Many years later a party of anthropologists and botanists stumbled across a jungle clearing in that still inhospitable part of the world, a clearing where they discovered a field of bleached skulls seemingly growing from the earth like jack-o-lanterns made of bone. Additional investigation revealed that the bodies belonging to these skulls had been buried vertically, and presumably alive, up to their necks.

When these unfortunate souls were excavated it was discovered that they were still wearing their tattered clothing, and one of their number was yet clutching in what was left of his right hand a scrap of moldering cloth on which was scrawled in fading script the words: “White Men.”

Look, man, I’m not saying every McDonald’s manager is a 265-pound white woman, I’m just telling you that that pretty much describes every one I’ve ever worked for.

You really think Tina’s 265 pounds?

If she isn’t, she’s not much more than a couple Big Macs away. Shit, man, why don’t you ask her? That ought to get you the assistant manager’s job.