Inspiration

I work in a comic book network. I do some drafting, some lettering, come up with some ideas. I am struggling. You can tell from my work I'm struggling.

Almost anyone can draw better than me, letter better, come up with better ideas sometimes. I am desperate, actually, if you want to know. I may not be here much longer.

I see something. Sometimes, I do. That's why I'm still here. There is a story in the news. I see the story. An aging pop star of sorts who has become a noble has had a picture in an exhibition confiscated. What was in the picture?

Little girls at play. One of them quite exposed.


I do a frame consisting of a drawing of the exact scene. I don't really see any sense to it. But I'm sure those who are better able to gauge artistry than I will do so here. I ink in every detail of this rather sorry snapshot.

My editor says, are you sick? There is nothing that can redeem a disgusting exploitation of children. She shrugs, sneaks copies of the graphic story out to where the usual moral bleaters will see it. They do see it.

Along about the time the comic comes out, so does the clamour and outrage. Oh, the sin, the depredation, the utter depravity! and the comics fly off the shelves.

For the next printing, we added a bit of whimsy, some sardonic dialogue fore, and a bit of irony aft, and the frame ran as before. We added a banner proclaiming this the Satiric Issue.

We set a record in sales, and I suppose the pews also were filled up, so everybody was happy. It's what makes us strong.

I look for the next inspiration from pop culture, as do, I'm sure, the preachers.

Who's Sorry Now?

I am in bed with Connie Francis.

She is smiling up from under me in full album-cover makeup.

Scene wipes like a movie. I'm now riding with Connie Francis in an auto. She shows me a picture. It's like George Grosz, a bad drawing with an odd perspective. Maybe a Picasso, with two figures engaged and another one a bit apart. Connie Francis says, remember this from last night? And I smile and nod and remember nothing.

Our land is on many levels, and down in the lower quadrant of our grounds like it never was, an auto is backing into the brush off our driveway. Wait, hold it!

It goes through the bushes, and I see it's actually a gate I never knew was there. I approach carefully. On the other side there are many animals, some quite exotic, inside dark bars like a zoo. I stare.

Ask Niki J. Do you know there's a petting zoo just beyond our drive? There's even a gate I didn't know about. Neither did she.

But now, closer to home, we have (in the dream) a stand-up natural gas wall heater. Only ... there's another one, roughly bolted to it. Somebody else, I conclude, is leaching off our heat for their own. How can this be? I ask Niki J. No, she wasn't aware of it at all.

But now I must go down. There is a tunnel, spiraling, ever downward. It's so far down the air pressure is very light, as if we're on high. But, strangely, we are able to go down deep into the earth very quickly.

We cannot stay here. We'll develop depth sickness. It's why our national culture is so superficial, after all. But we must bring back the clothing on hangers in the chamber. Yes, of course we must. But there are so many of them, brocade gowns, heavy cloaks. Why are there so many? We cannot carry it all. But we must make do. I begin gathering hangers.

In the auto, I ask Connie Francis, "So, do you still see Dick Clark?" She is to my left, facing forward now. I suppose someone else is driving, because she doesn't seem to be doing anything but musing. "No," she says simply, then, very softly, "I must get out of here."

Dissolve. Our wall heater stands alone now. And the brush down in the lower section, it probably no longer has a gate. Yes, yes, I'm sure of it.

Wait, what's happening on this set? I look in.

Colonel Bureagard over there is sitting on a camp stool. He is waiting for the President-Elect. Lincoln has not taken office yet. Here, Mr President, says the Colonel. I must show you something.

He's a naturalist, the Colonel is, but he used his drawing talent to record what he had seen among the Seminoles in Florida during a recent field trip. He knows his old law partner Lincoln will give him a meeting. Look here.

The scroungy Seminole in all his inglorious spartan want is displayed, the rank and the pitiful, even to the smallest children, and the last portrait is the result of a punishing mission, as General Claptrap called it. Corpses abound.

Lincoln is crying. "I promise you this iniquity, this tragedy, will be requited and it will not happen more." He slams his fist down on the puny camp table so that it collapses.

Colonol Bureagard rolls up his artwork, and I awaken.

Burning Sheets

I have a new invention here, but it isn't mine, and I'm not altogether comfortable with it. A new means of remaining warm on a cold night.

You simply douse the sheets with a special water, then set fire to it. The water will burn at an acceptable rate throughout the night. If you would turn the thermostat down, as it were, you simply kick off sheets. The smoke goes somewhere - don't worry, I am assured.

Now there are three hounds at the carnival. I must retrieve them. They are in the keeping of one of the sideshows, a Pool for Pups, run by a burly congenial one and his slatternly spouse. Basically, it's a small wading pool. They are traditional carny folk. I take the leashes of two, presumably Maya and another I'm keeping, and say, hold on with Scoob; I'll be right back. I take the two to Niki J, way over on the other side of the grounds.

When I return, there is the spouse, and she's telling me, "He went to see if Scoobie should be barred from here." What?

I rush to find him. Up the hill and down the midway and into a tent. There's the guy, and over there's Scoob. He is being fed something scrumptious, and likes it exceedingly. I take the leash, and I back out with it, but only after Scoob is finished, which doesn't take long. I am shaking. Me and the boy retrace our steps back past the Pool of Pups. It's all right now, but I'm wary.

Three-Octave Scale

A very efficient librarian hustles to a volume on a table. I watch from a short distance. She expertly rips a print from a large book and starts back to the reference desk with it. I am appalled. I say to her, but, but, and she ignores me utterly. That's a Botticelli you just ripped out! Amateurs, she is thinking. They don't know the ways of the Library.

I am walking now in step with George, recently deceased, from my old home town. He was a lifetime substance abuser who grew up in the sixties and went away then came back, chagrined, on the mend, an outspoken definer of abuse and its various dodges.

He says, I hear you're quite the show at a party. He says, and so quiet other times. I think, George is such a nice guy. Then as we trudge along, I'm thinking, hey, wait a minute! He just defined a primary pattern of alkies!

One wakes up, startled into a new world. (Am I also waking? I remember a pleasant intricate dream but none of the details preceeding.) He blinks, confused. Someone comes to arrest him. Yes, yes, very well, come along now. He is nude under a blanket, and he stands up, very tall, and is cuffed with hands behind him. I am given the chore of transporting him. Come along now.
He is in a red ermine cloak, and as he walks, some startling changes take place. One, he becomes shorter. Another, I see his hair color turn to grey. His elegant covering becomes a horizontally-striped Indian blanket. Then, he is no longer cuffed, and he walks into a building, looking back at me in some amusement.

He is Bill Bybee, the class clown from my elementary school. I think maybe I should consult the authorities, but I can't see how they would re-arrest someone who has not been arrested in the first place. This is an entirely different person than the one I started out with, and he seems to know the joke is on me, but what is there to do?

Three Blind Tries

1. There are notables of French thought arrayed up by an ancient rock wall. They're standing there at varying levels. I know of them. I watch. They don't say anything. Post-structuralism probably.
   
   
2. There is a grouping of dimestory Indians inside a circle of onlookers. From somewhere outside the circle comes another. He is in a fringed buckskin jacket. The camera, or our viewpoint, pans close up to the fringe.
   
   He is an ordinary chunky guy with a weathered face. Reminds me of that legal buffoon Spencer. The chief until the entry of the Fringed One falls in behind, calls out, "He is the leader in all things."
   
   The Fringed One takes them in a children's conga line, weaving like a train this way and that. The tribe attempts to maintain dignity. I am thinking they are deriving their culture from old movies, just like us.
   
   When he stops, the Fringed One addresses the tribe, or us with the tribe as characters in the play. You, he says, set up demonstrations. And you, he says, arrange an appointment with the Secretary of the Interior.
   
   
3. It is the time for slipping in. We go where we aren't allowed. We cause no harm, we only sneak in because we can. I cross some ground and hear the dogs bark over inside the compound. We can slither in this ravine to that fence. But I simply trot along the gulch.
   
   I'm too reckless. They come where I'm hiding inside the wall with lights. I step outside.
   
   I tell the one who has caught me, we can do good, we can show you where the defenses are weakest. He laughs. Do you think we cannot withstand such as you? He opens a door and I see another very solid one behind it. They had allowed us in simply because we were no threat.