Category: Yo Ivanhoe

So ain’t we all inanimate, George?

–Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280

‘Je’ est un autre. (‘I’ is someone else.)

–Arthur Rimbaud

You might, you’re perhaps fond of saying, occasionally like something concrete from me, something in the way of true disclosure, painful confession, political opinion, or merely, now and again, a bit of honest biographical kibble.

You can’t love me, you say, if I won’t let you in. I can understand this, I guess. It might be nice if I could once in a while roll back the clouds and give you a glimpse of the actual flesh-and-blood man hunched over a sprawling jigsaw puzzle shot full of holes.

The truth –the unfortunate truth in a world full of unfortunate truths– is that I don’t honestly know who or what really is signified by the name Brad Zellar. I can sometimes manage to get far enough outside myself and above the world to get a clear look at the puzzle as it’s taking shape on the tabletop. I can see all the missing pieces, but that’s not much help to a man who doesn’t have any idea where those pieces might be found, particularly since the puzzle seems to be comprised of little but random patterns or, some days, a cloudless sky. Other times it resembles nothing so much as a giant abstract impressionist canvas, a riot of colors and textures that ultimately doesn’t add up to much beyond a series of vague urges and strange decisions utterly lacking in any apparent inner logic.

I fear that it will never add up to anything, never be finished, and never resemble anything that makes any sense or looks at all like what I wish I could think of as my life. Or perhaps the problem is that it looks entirely too much like what I think of as my life.

Mirrors, unfortunately, aren’t much help either. They’re not much help at all, and I avoid them at every opportunity. It scares me that I don’t recognize the face I see staring out at me from the mirror. I mean this quite literally; that man is no one I know, and I frankly don’t care for the way he looks, don’t like the cut of his jib. If I was half the man I wish I was I’d kick his keister halfway to Hibbing.

If that’s who or what I am, though, I apologize to myself, and to you, even though I don’t suppose there’s a damn thing I can do about it. It pains me to admit that my grandfather was a bit of a prophet when he told me long ago that I wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.

All of this admitted confusion aside, I’ve racked my wracked brain for a few moments and managed to cough up a few personal tidbits that will perhaps help you to know me a little bit better:

I can’t begin to tell you how meaty I feel. Considerably meaty, on a regular basis.

Remember that insensitive remark you once made about my haircut? I’m not going to lie to you, it smarted.

I once saw my grandmother, drunk and wearing nothing but a sombrero, dancing naked in the backyard of the house she shared with my grandfather and my uncle Slim.

I have a cousin Rueben who once lost an eyeball in a shower mishap. Or at least that was the official family version of events.

My father was a self-professed visionary, habitually unemployed, who spent most of his days wandering the streets of my little hometown wearing a sandwich board that begged God for –depending on his (my father’s) mood– revenge, forgiveness, or inspiration. The story my father liked to tell was that he took a lock of my barren mother’s hair, buried it in the yard, and gathered together his no-account brothers. The whole bunch of them then spent most of an afternoon and long evening drinking Budweiser, grilling and eating Italian sausage, and pissing into the patch of dirt in which they had buried the lock of hair. Nine months later my father dug me bawling from the ground.

That’s enough for now. I’m tired.

Now why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? I feel like we hardly know each other.

The most that anyone of us can seem to do is to fashion something –an object, or ourselves– and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.

–Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.

–Wendell Berry, Standing By Words

Remember my earlier promise? Remember my surrender?

You’ve forgotten? That’s good. That’s merciful.

All that is abominable I will not eat. Shit is abominable. I will not eat it.

Come with me: Ascend the ladder. Bring your shadows. Or we could stay right here and you could make magic sounds, make music, tell stories, entertain us while the fire rages across the fields, the fields grown fallow after the people baked all the rain in their ovens.

“The carrion artist: Works at random, sneers at the people, makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things, works without care, defrauds peoples, is a thief.” (Aztec statement on art and artists.)

They are prostrate now, and mute or inconsolable, the great ones. They are buried in the earth or their ashes have been scattered in the streams.

What cow was that –or perhaps it was a goat– that floated away from the pasture with a bellyful of stars?

To whom am I speaking?

To whom should I speak?

The righteous are no more, the old man told me. The land is given over to evil-doers. If you sit still and listen I’ll tell you exactly what you’ll hear: the world going about its monkey business. Where the hell did these fuckers learn to drive? Why must we entrust the telling of our stories to complete strangers?

Why?

Because we have forgotten all the stories.

I have.

That gentle thing you did with your hand, how was I to know it wasn’t supposed to be a blessing?

Still, I cannot help myself: I love this world.

He had this hackneyed phrase in his head –“adrift in a sea of confusion”– that he couldn’t seem to get rid of.

Was this really the best he could do in describing how he felt? Yes, at least for the time being, he was forced to admit that it was. He wouldn’t be able to do any better until he somehow managed to banish that phrase.

He’d spend hours trying to shove those words from his head and could succeed for brief stretches in thinking of other things, things that were not his present situation, but he would always sense the troublesome phrase still loitering in the shadows and waiting to pounce the instant he let down his guard.

This business went on for several months. He eventually lost track, actually. At night the words would scroll again and again across his skull, and he would start to feel as if he were literally adrift on a sea of confusion, his bed a flooded boat or rolling raft.

He started to have episodes of intense seasickness, during which he would often vomit into a plastic ice cream bucket he took to placing alongside his night stand. He became addicted to Dramamine, which, taken in immoderate quantities, would induce in him powerful hallucinations and nightmares.

The medication did, however, seem to succeed in quelling his seasickness, but replaced it with terrifying visions of violent storms and hurricanes and sea serpents. Almost always in the midst of these visions he would find himself tossed from his boat into the endless roiling darkness of the sea.

One night, alone in his bed, after thrashing around in the usual fashion for a time, he felt himself sinking into a darker and darker place.

In his final moments he felt surprisingly calm.

The coroner’s report listed the cause of death as drowning.

Painting the word “Fuck” in fluorescent pink letters on the shell of a huge turtle would, I’m certain you’d agree, constitute a desecration. Such an act would be an affront to any definition of the sacred you could offer, and would thus be a grievous sin.

Releasing in a muddy creek a turtle that had been desecrated in such a fashion, and forcing it to go back to live among its fellows branded with a hot pink profanity would certainly only compound the already unpardonable sin.

I am feeling generally contrite today, and so wish to confess that once upon a time I did, in fact, desecrate a turtle –one of God’s most interesting and benign creatures– exactly as described above.

That long ago incident has come to me as a repressed memory, washed ashore on the waves of contrition that have been rolling in my skull all morning.

I can offer no reasonable defense for my actions, but I hope that I will be allowed to at least point out that I was at the time quite young, and I was bored and unconsciously cruel, a common enough combination, I suppose, in small town kids.

There was a creek not far from our house, and though my brother and I were not fishermen we did discover that during the summer months this creek was full of sluggish turtles. I’m not sure, really, what kind of turtles they were, but they were big, and surprisingly easy to catch. Sometimes we’d catch them with our bare hands; other times we’d use cheap nets we’d stolen from somewhere.

Often we’d take the turtles we captured back to our house, where we would deposit them in a plastic wading pool. They were fascinating things to look at.

I think the idea to use the shells of the turtles as profane billboards came to my brother and me as a sort of inspiration. I’m sure we thought it was funny at the time.

I hate to implicate my brother in this unpleasant business at all, but in the interest of fairness I feel the need to mention that he also painted a turtle. He was two years younger that I was, though, and not yet quite as confident or cavalier in his use of profanity.

My brother chose to name his turtle, and to paint that name on the turtle’s shell. The name my brother chose, and which he emblazoned across the poor creature’s shellacked and ornately detailed shell, was Mr. Poop.

Our parents were fine, upstanding people. They had raised us to know that the descration of turtles was wrong, even if they had never specifically proscribed such outrageous behavior.

They shouldn’t have had to, of course. We knew better. We both knew that one day we would be expected to answer for our sins.

I can only beg forgiveness, and pray that my sincere contrition will earn me dispensation, if not peace of mind.

“Nobody has ever lost basketball games in more novel settings than Klotz. He’s lost in a leper colony, on an aircraft carrier, in a bullring, a prison, the deep end of a swimming pool. He’s lost before kings and queens and four popes. He’s lost in 50 states and 117 countries. He hasn’t lost in outer space. Yet.”

–Basketball’s Master of Defeat

Sledding Safety Tips

A Checklist to Prevent Sledding Injuries

The Perils of Sledding

Sledding accidents

Two Case Reports From the World of Sledding Mishaps

Sledding is Dangerous, and Potentially Deadly

Bottom Line: Don’t Go Sledding, Ever

She must not swing her arms as though they were dangling ropes; she must not switch herself this way and that; she must not shout; and she must not, while wearing her bridal veil, smoke a cigarette.

—Emily Post, tips for the bride, in Etiquette –The Blue Book of Social Usage. 1922

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I understand that much of this material –such as it is– falls under the category of inscrutable. Some have gone so far as to call it impenetrable. At any rate, I’m willing to acknowledge that the bulk of what I have to say is more or less pure, private static –babble in the common parlance.

Depending on how charitable you’re willing to be, I’m either talking off the top of my head or talking out of my ass.

I don’t suppose I can even claim that there’s any method to this madness.

I have long felt compelled to ramble, is what it really boils down to. And I am also something of an obsessive fellow. It’s not so much that I have a tendency to get carried away, as that I often feel as if I am literally being carried away; I sense that I am being swept along by forces I can neither control nor understand.

The words are driven from me by a bellowing old fellow who once upon a time rode a swift and ornery horse. These days he does his work from one of those all-terrain vehicles.

If this man –I guess he is a sort of cowboy or shepherd– was not ceaselessly vigilant the words would likely overwhelm my head and I’ve no doubt I would eventually choke to death on them.

I guess you could say, then, that this fellow’s presence is something of a mixed blessing.

All the same, I do sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be happier without him.

A retired railroad brakeman named Eliot Show was cleaning his barbecue grill one afternoon when he inadvertently spilled a bucket of ashes and loosed a swarm of jinns on the neighborhood.

A cleric who was later summoned for advice on dealing with the infestation informed the neighborhood council that jinns had long been disposed to nest in ashes, and if undiscovered for even a relatively brief period were known to be rapid and promiscuous breeders.

The jinn took up residence in a neighborhood park, christened their encampment Jinnistan, and launched a relentless assault on surrounding streets and homes with rocks and flaming arrows.

Initially, whenever the jinn strayed from the park they confined their mischief to stealing wash from clotheslines, pilfering meat from local butchers and markets, and disrupting domestic life in small but nonetheless unsettling ways: spilling milk, rearranging furniture, scrambling television reception, and knocking on windows in the night. As their numbers grew, however, and as attempts to appease and relocate them failed, they became more brazen.

Many of them used their shape-shifting powers to assume human form, and, disguised as residents of the community, seduced and impregnated women, bilked elderly citizens of their life savings, sold insurance, and ran for city office.

Eventually, after the jinn became increasingly more aggressive and began to steal babies, the city attempted to eradicate them by repeated aerial bombardments of the park with salt.

Shortly after the Mayor announced in the local paper that this offensive had been a complete success the entire city was consumed by a tremendous conflagration, and a jinn civilization, larger than any previously seen on earth, rose from the ashes.

—Michael Thompson

—Michael Hernandez De Luna

Bad Press Books, The Stamp Art And Postal History Of Michael Thompson And Michael Hernandez De Luna

The Museum of Bad Art

Soviet Children’s Picture Books From the Twenties and Thirties

The Golden Age of Iron Men

Dictionary of Hobo Slang

Vintage Drug Ads

Thump Queen: Meryl Truett Photography

Blue Note Album Cover Art

Polish Poster Gallery

Lateral Science

Dream Anatomy Gallery

Belly Dancers and Harem Girls

Briefcase Full of Meat

The Enchanted World of Rankin and Bass

World Wide Wounds

Film Titles By Saul Bass

Snow Globes by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz

Surely you’re aware that there are dreams all around you.

You’re moving through them everywhere you go. They’re on every block and corner of the city you live in, and flickering behind the curtains and shades up and down every street. Open the Yellow Pages of your local phone book –what is that if not a catalog of dreams?

And beyond or behind all of those dreams just blooming or being born are millions –tens of millions– of dreams that have not yet been recognized or realized, and dreams that are withering from neglect.

It boggles the mind how many things the human heart can invest itself in or wish for, the myriad directions in which it can be cast by hope (so seemingly arbitrary, so heedless, so often ridiculous).

How can the world contain so much longing? And how can any of us live surrounded by so much disappointment? How can we all be so blind and careless with our attention?

How many dreams might be salvaged if each of us spent a little more time thinking about how and where we were going to spend our money? Or even if we made the slightest effort to be more curious about the cities and neighborhoods we live in? If we would just poke around a little bit and notice all the little, sometimes out-of-the-way places that represent such brave investments, such modest dreams?

Because so many of those dreams can only be fully realized when they are embraced by others, when they are finally seen and recognized and nurtured by the attention of strangers.

In this moment my body wants to evacuate my skin, rattle its bones, and, dancing, dream itself free. Or dreaming, dance itself free.

But my mind swings so wildly, and in this moment –a moment later– I feel like I am blindfolded, with a broken broomstick in my hands, flailing at a cement pinata.

Meanwhile, everything is huddled out there in the darkness, waiting for the truth. And terrified, of course, that it will be the awful truth.

It’s odd how the moon just disappears.

It’s not funny at all, really, how the night moves.

(Sits for a time, jangling his restless legs and staring numbly out the window at nothing in particular. Eventually is seized by a burst of what passes for inspiration at five o’clock in the morning.)

Allen’s appetite appeased, another appetizer appeared.

An apple almost appears arbitrary.

Aboard an aeroplane, accordianists amused an audience, almost all All-American acrobats and affirmative action adherents.

Ask anyone about Arnold; all agree.

At an art affair, Ashleigh acquired an admirer –an artist, actually, and athletic.

Acquiring acres as an accomplishment? Alas, all across America.

Nice try, but I can’t take that idea [sic] any further.

One last dubious revelation before I shut down this third-rate carnival: the best fishing is when you recognize that you’re both the fisherman and the fish.

Right now I just feel fished for.