From: d_halgren at hotmail.com (dhalgren) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: frost.bob 2 report, part 1 of 2 Message-ID: <d_halgren-0403010351410001@adsl-151-198-2020.nnj.adsl.bellatlantic.net> Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 08:52:10 GMT
there was a dream that was my life. large buildings. sick people. a pager that never quieted. a brane that never slept. a 4 AM shower with apricot-flavored shampoo in a fish-shaped bottle so i could sign out by 9 AM in the middle of things and struggle towards wakefulness.
("so Mr. C is the sickest one, his BP's 80 over palp, i left 500 cc wide open, morning crit's pending, the rest of 'em are PEG and SNF, PEG and SNF...")
drowsing thru a cab ride down the new jersey turnpike.
drowsing through check-in and security and customs. no ma'am, that's not a bomb in my pocket, i'm just happy to see you. a pretty girl in pants tight in places different from where new york girls have tightness-of-pants, speaking french to her long-haired boyfriend. quebec bound indeed.
the plane starts to taxi for takeoff, my favorite part.
i fall asleep before we leave the ground.
the eyes open. there are snowflakes out the window; and an island in
a river, covered with barren spikes that must once have been trees.
i remember a deeply psychotic patient, looking out the jail ward window.
he said, "i see: green; and blue; and white."
here there is only white.
a burly cab driver greets me. he is friendly! he stops to look at a map, then as if forgetting himself, reminds me that there will be a flat rate to vieux-quebec "and i'll find you your hotel. don't you worry." i ask to see the map. there is an island in a river, yes. other details are fuzzy. the windshield wipers disgorge a clear fluid, probably alcoholic, which solvates the windshield slush. a walled fortress glides into view. i drowse some more..
..and awake to darkness. this time really awake. a phone is ringing. am i on call? i scramble out of the bed, grab the phone.
A voice of vast presence alarms me.
"DAVE?"
"yeah.."
"IT'S EAMON! HEY!"
"uhh.."
"HEY, LISTEN, ARE YOU STAYING WITH SØREN? YOU'RE ROOMING WITH SØREN, RIGHT?"
"uhh.. søren's not here."
"RIGHT! THEY'VE GOT YOU ROOMING WITH KAY. I'M GOING TO FIX THIS, ALL RIGHT?"
"..right."
<click>
Man. I was expecting a scrawny geek. I fall back onto the bed and am unconscious again nearly immediately. Possibly I dream of the hot love of pants.
finally i awaken truly. it is night. i am surrounded by a warm hotel in the middle of a vast frozen wasteland. people who later turn out to have been eamon are walking around in the hall, but i don't recognize them, because i am still looking for a scrawny geek. i have a double shot of calvados, warm. thus fortified, i set out for aux anciens canadiens.
Travel and feasting! Who does not like that?
meredith's hair is darker than i remember, and she's definitely smiling more. yong-mi is the same herself i last confronted over a bowl of tairo root salad and a crude earthenware vessel of cold unfiltered rice wine.
she did not drink enough wine. and now look at her. just look at her!
the other people are who? except for kludge. kludge looks just like i expected, and talks like it too. i suspect that when the natural forces are tabulated into a grand unified field theory there will be a bugger factor for the quality of kludgeness. kludgeness is a slow deliberateness, a pronounced quality of wisdom and balance gained through time.
which is not strained.
the other people are eamon, apparently. and this guy who appears to be drunk who wanders in. that's waider. no, he's not drunk yet. he's just LIKE that.
please read between the lines to discover deep wellsprings of honest clean man-love.
eamon and waider and kludge are WD-40 and silicones and dry, dry graphite to lubricate the rest of us sticky gears. i imagine any of the three of them could make friends with their firing squad. through these good graces i identify the rest of those assembled. no, that's not captain picard junior. it's matt skala. i want, all reason aside, to wax his head.
not that it needs it. refulgent in the dim gloom, it is like a lamp.
the menu is meat. i like lamb. weird games stress me. it's done in a style best described as 'kill yer own, in delicious sauce.' after the maudite and cabbage soup i'm floating anyway.
eamon likes strange fruity beers. remind me to edit that out of the robot vampyr.
there is coffee, afterwards. and a walk down a snowy street. ljd "walks like he's acquiring territory." i find him inexplicably intimidating, enough so that i never manage to ask to see the scorpion tattoo.
i purchase a red trumpet for $4 canadian. and for two cents, and don't offer it to me, i'll give it to vampyr!
effigies are purchased. (i was expecting to burn it, but apparently that's a different festival.) i am introduced to the evil and vaguely perturbing bonhomme. although he is reminiscent of the plaque on the 'Voyager' spacecraft, and the Pillsbury Doughboy, and the Michelin guy, i can only think, in a doomed aykroydian way, that 'it's the sta-puft marshmallow man.'
i descend a steep hillside on an innertube and think of bensoo, who is exhausted. bonhomie, no relation to the white guy, abounds. the horn is blown by a lot of people. sexy ice sculptures are debated with respect to their merits.
there is a bar. there is boreale rousse, the world's finest beer. eamon's absence is like a gaping void into which quieter personalities emerge. the evening ends.
soren sleeps very quietly.
-- FISH APRHODISIAC -- and it's you they'll love. dhalgren at bellatlantic.net
From: d_halgren at hotmail.com (dhalgren) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: frost.bob report, part 2 of 2 Message-ID: <d_halgren-0403010352170001@adsl-151-198-20-20.nnj.adsl.bellatlantic.net> Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 08:52:48 GMT
morning. continental hotel breakfast. meredith and stevi and kludge, and, eventually, others. a conversation inspired by coffee. noon arrives. the topic of calling kate is much debated. the eminently sensible alternative of arriving at her door with an iced quad espresso is proposed, but laziness wins. this engenders guilt. finally kate's vital presence appears and energizes us in a way that caffeine could not. we depart.
a pizza parlor. beer flows. pizza comes. the table is L-shaped, but in such a way as to be exclusive, not inclusive. everyone else is far enough away for one to look over wistfully and wonder if their conversation is more interesting than one's own.
someone i loved, once - not a denizen - was at a bob with me. she pointed out that we're spoiled with respect to conversation. we're used to finishing our sentences, having our complete say, engaging in four conversations at once, and are accustomed to doing this without interrupting and while being perfectly heard. she claimed she found the multiple-conversation aspect disorienting.
multiple conversations were not had at this pizza parlor. wild mushrooms were. then there was off-buggering with bensoo, andrea, jacob and the dalies to that great white icy meridien, the vast frozen snowscape that underlay the storied Manoir Montmorency.
what is a bob without a deathmarch? as i trudged across the frozen lake, j.j came briefly to mind. i approached the caldera. frozen spray sparkled across my face and made a great unscalable drift. below, the unthinkable maelstrom roiled. it did not look cold. it looked ten thousand degrees and dark as the cold mystery of eternal death.
there was an extremely traumatic ride on a cable car. usually i worry about the cable snapping. kay, however, saw fit to inform me that Disneyland had taken down 'adventures in inner space'. years ago, apparently.
'THE NUCLEUS!!!' to my inner ear, that will always embody the pure voice of true science. let us shed now a tear for 'adventures in inner space', even while the cable car docks at the top of mount montmorency. ice cakes on my boots. boreale and hot chocolate is drunk. jacob haller's astounding cookies appear, for neither the first nor last time. jacob's cookies are alarming, and straddle the horns of a moral dilemma.
clearly they are good; but could they have even been conceived by a mind that did not know the rich pleasure afforded only by what is evil?
jacob takes out his tatting atop this thought. if intended as a gambit to reassure, it fails. it conjures images of sweet old ladies, which segues naturally to arsenic and old lace. i hold a bit of cookie on my tongue a moment longer, but detect no heavy metals or other trace elements.
a functionnaire arrives and perfunctorily informs us we are to vacate the premises. we inform him, a trace haughtily as suits his dismissiveness, that, no, we have in fact commanded the Maison to produce for us a noble repast, that he will in fact not dismiss us but rather fête us strongly, incessantly, according to our desires, until we command surcease.
he eyeballs us one more moment before becoming all gracious and escorting us into the dining room. sir, rest assured you are not forgotten. when the robots take your snowy wasteland of a province, that singular moment will be translated into an eternity of pain that will wind itself into your very genome and torment your future generations.
however, the food was very good, so perhaps some mercy is indicated.
there was an amuse-bouche consisting of a single mollusc, dolloped with oils and slivered bits of pungency that were something from the garlic or onion axis. one hesitates to write 'amuse-bouche', does one not? what does it say about my mouth that someone thought it necessary to amuse it? are we so far from laughing childhood that our mouths are doomed to grimness?
i laughed through my clam as i proposed this thesis to myself. bensoo, perhaps, noticed, but was too polite to inquire. one wonders what else bensoo perceives and then deigns to let pass, fragments of idea lost in the wash of time, dispersed like a pall of so much pipe-smoke.
discarding the thesis, i proceeded to some sort of soup - more nourishing, you see. this monologue has internalized with time, as the bob is now a month past - this accounts for splitting this document into two posts - and, i suppose, that says something about me.
the wine, a four year old burgundy, was astonishing. the second bottle was too much for our little end of the table, so kludge and meredith and yong-mi helped. kludge and meredith were getting into some sort of 'local white'. it was rough and sparkly and uncouthly friendly. tasting it after the burgundy, though, reminded me what is better about sleeping with women who are no longer teen-agers. in short, kludge, your wine was a little tart.
there was dessert. it contained sufficient chocolate. some persons ordered a fruit plate, which is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if the robot takeover has already happened and i just didn't notice. *my* dessert had vat-grown lychee!
after dinner, a wholly unwanted deathmarch was enforced. "but wait," i protested. "i already had my deathmarch today."
there was nothing for it but to walk. walk across a bridge, where arc lamps, in skilful array, sliced through a torrential mist of needle-like icy wetness to illuminate the vast ice spectacle of water, ensculpted into odontoid forms, sharp and twisting; crenellated into various hidden embrasures to cascade out natural gargoyles, all crafted of the essence of slippery white coldness. ensorcelled at this white meridien, the omphalos of a world unmoved, i gazed down upon that vast vortex whose terrible motion alone saved it from crystallizing and canalizing into some stagnant form.
it threatened to swallow me, disgorging me in ten thousand years, unchanged, after the next ice age had passed. someone came up next to me and looked down. i used some words, but failed to express myself adequately.
so, gentle reader, perhaps now you know.
the bridge debouched onto a gentle track which quickly gave way to -
- snow angels! -
an unbroken plain of deep virgin snow. i'd never seen so much snow. i
desired to experience it actively, to engage it in some sort of tactile
play.
however, the snow was cold and sort of inert. it did not want to play. i then thought, flown on wine, 'who is likely to want to play?' waider came to mind. waider then came to be in a deep crevasse full of snow with a madly gyrating dhalgren. waider was a superb sport about this - but i indulge in tautology. we wrestled around for a few moments in the snow.
can you spot the kludge bait in the previous page?
back at chez beautiful view, i got to know gypsy's toes. before this, however, i was subject to all sort of vile concoct, including warm eiswein, warm calvados, warm bourbon, warm fresh marzipan - i made a rose - and warm 'nameless-stuff-that-kludge-brought', which latter is apparently a bob staple. there was also warm NO BEER. let's be careful out there, folks, eh?
there was also warm potcheen, but after the fashion of wittgenstein, cicero, and the famed praeteritionists of the latter days of the Roman Empire - maybe they shouldn't have passed over the fact that the inbred Julio-Claudian line appeared to have acquired a gene for schizophrenia; frankly, it was all downhill after Nerva - i will pass over that about which there is nothing to say.
christ, that stuff is awful. i'm surprised they lifted the restriction on drinking it domestically - it's not liquor, it's a weapon of mass destruction. i started the evening with a double swig, taken at once, and i believe it disordered my mentation for at least a week. my throat closes at the memory.
meredith didn't play guitar. i was disappointed, but she'd mentioned something about not wanting to be the center of attention, so i let it pass. the guitar stylings of jwgh entertained. we were all on the bed. ljd's russian army officer's flask of minty stuff was tapped out. i got drunk and concentrated on my marzipan rose and steeped myself in gemütlichkeit.
i gave the rose tentacles. what the hell.
meredith and d. and i talked. d. has the kindest, sweetest face imaginable. i was boggled. i'd expected at least william jennings bryan, if not satan himself. his tongue doesn't even come to a point at the tip. it's fairly round. where he keeps all that cynical sarcasm, i don't know, but it's not visible from the outside.
meredith and d. and i talked about love and its various diseases and mournful expirations. i played with and tickled gypsy's perfect toes. d. lost the endurance contest and left. there was a moment when i was alone with the toes. then destiny walked in. we greeted her with the same rueful laugh.
night fell. then, in my dreams, stepped forth the sons of be-li'al, flown on insolence and wine..
i awoke, kissed søren deeply - yet manfully - then brushed my teeth, showered, and performed the five ritual ablutions before kneeling and facing Mecca.
er. wrong window. excuse me.
i remember blundering around in a light snow with søren, utterly failing to find the entrance to the Frontenac. we took sunday brunch at a long bright table full of white linen. the coffee was superb and the guy who gave it out really loved his job. he clearly felt, and made no secret of it, that the privilege of causing persons to be caffeinated early and often was a task to his taste. he smiled about it a lot.
i ate 3 of those potatoe pods. Now i am governor of indiana and i made pi equals three!
the frontenac is indeed the old canadian railroad hotel, as a cursory inspection of the sugar packets led kludge to suspect. on returning home, i told mom i'd been to vieux-quebec.
"Did you go to the big railroad hotel on the St. Lawrence?"
"Yes."
Turns out she'd been there - eaten in that same room, overlooking the river - in summer 1951. Fifty years ago. Small world, eh?
the food was remarkable for the smoked fish, as kate said - highly spiced with something green that was neither sage nor dill but reminded one of each - and, to my mind, for the incredible layered terrines, four sorts, under aspic. two of them were salmon-based and probably technically patés. i've never had anything even remotely involving aspic that i've cared to eat before, but i went back for more terrine. my bouche was amused. terribly.
i used soren's camera to take a picture down the table - i was at the foot. it's in the gallery.
the afternoon dispersal appeared to promise nothing promising, until i ran into meredith and stevi. they also appeared somewhat dismayed at the promise of nothing promising. so i proposed. they both said 'yes!' and we lived happily ever after.
seriously, we went a little buggy.
ok, let's try again with the sentences. we rented a buggy - the horse's name, oh dear, he told me the horse's name. could it have been 'sara'? rugs were spread over our laps. knees clanked. ankles clattered. our driver chatted amiably, pointing out various items of architectural interest, such as a prison, a monastery, and a bank. he was holding a pair of reins. this man was all about walls and restraint and keeping things safely held back. but he was a delightful tour guide.
i drew dozens of envious glances, mostly from teenage boys. having a buggy all to yourself with a couple of goddesses will do that.
the day was idyllic and the horse's hooves went clip-clop, clip-clop as the well-sprung buggy glided smoothly out the St. John's gate, past the fantastic ice-sculpture of a diminutive fire-breathing dragon - the closest we came to smarry - out about the city. the horse champed and whickered and we rubbed our hands together and our cheeks turned pink and our breath came white against the greyness of the midday winter sky.
i was sorry that the buggy ride had to end. there was something in the air of it that inspired happy optimistic attitudes. meredith and stevi spoke of vacationing together in rome. we all spoke of returning at harvest time on the ile d'nevererri or whatever it's called. for the first time in years i wasn't watching the skies for anvils. we were happy.
so, after great travel, great food. we went to this tiny little place ensconsed in the wall of the old fort and had fondue, redolent of what must have been a very drinkable white wine. as it turned out, that was my dinner.
a great convocation of newts was then arranged. this took place in a cave.
there is perhaps over-ample photographic documentation of the events of the evening. it was pleasant and definitively final. i confronted matt skala about that journal he was always scribbling in. gypsy had seen him write 'FREAK-FEST!!!!' in it and suspected evildoing. frankly i was expecting a dhalgren-esque (the book, silly) journal chronicling his nighttime adventures with the whores or illicit head-waxers or god knows what fetishes lurk in the hearts of Canadians.
as it turned out, the word was 'breakfast'. matt skala was nothing more or less than an amiable young man whose business card included the word 'Tarot' and a GnuGP key fingerprint. if you cut him, does he not bleed?
we didn't actually perform the experiment.
i noshed on everyone's dinner, preferring instead to drink the brown stuff. waider toasted. dawn - well, good lord. dawn's another one for the praeterition crew.
dawn's hands are so knowing. they scared me, up under my sweater. but it was a nice kind of scared. apart from that, one must remain silent.
waider toasted. yong-mi made this incredible shrieking noise - intended, i presume, to convey her hearty approbation? - when, for some reason, i foolishly flashed my tits. someone snapped a picture.
we all drank and talked, kate and ljd and dawn holding one end of the U shaped table, gypsy and stevi at the other. bensoo played with fire. bensoo got burned. conventional morality aside (and here i indulge in tautology again), the two events were causally unrelated. i rolled around in the belly of the U, in the cat-bird seat, imposing my presence briefly on everyone, like some kind of bonhomie-maddened firefly.
dwarf curling came on TV! i thought of corprew. O.K., so it was regular curling. i bet if corprew had been there we could have rousted out a few dwarves and curled them.
KLUDGE GAVE OUT
THE KLUDGE AWARD
A NICE CLOSE SHAVE
WAS WHAT I SCORED
Thank you, kludge. And thank you for that bite of sausage. Damn! Those were good sausages.
Suddenly I was out of that place and walking and looking at ice sculptures.
the ice weasels came.
i was struck by how much i enjoyed myself. a community of like-minded people, coming together for the sole purpose of enjoying each other's company. i suppose in old times, purposes such as husking corn were utilized, because of the labor shortage. we didn't need such a reason.
i half wanted to arm us with swords and march out and conquer something and take it in the name of klortho. or somehow cause a collective endeavor. perhaps, though, our collective endeavor is on a hard disk in paul lord's living room and is fossilized under dust in bits and time; and, perhaps, its meaning is no more, in the end, than all art - Alan Dean Foster chose, in his novelization of 'city on the edge of forever', to mention Praxiteles' lost gold statue of Pallas Athena.
it deserves mention, in context, these 2500 years later.
on monday i awoke, stood, stretched, invoked: 'by the holy claws of Klortho the Magnificent, it is, indeed, a fine morning!' the day was snowy and indeed fine. i managed to miss everyone as they went to the airport to board their delayed flights. late in the afternoon, i had a crepe soaked in maple butter. the day was slow and permitted my indulgence.
i purchased two tempera originals by d'Anjou, which are so beautiful they have already kept their haunting excellence forever.
>From the insert: "Universal appeal characterizes d'Anjou's creations. They're timeless tunnels to infinity, according to the artist."
It also says:
"In the words of d'Anjou: 'To the viewer my artistic visions are
everything - or they are nothing. However, it must be realized that from
nothing springs everything."
And also:
"The style of Yvon d'Anjou is unique. It has never been duplicated or
matched. And chances are, it never will be. Only he has mastered this
charismatic art style that draws the eye - and the SOUL - like a magnet."
[emphasis mine.]
a walk up through the ice; a deserted vieux-quebec. i stopped into a shop full of medieval dresses and vests that would have looked good in a renfaire. alone as i was, the dresses seemed invested with ghosts of beautiful women i've loved. it disturbed me and i left the shop sooner than i meant to. i trudged up icy staircases and struggled, snowed-on, through slushed streets. that night i found the irish place again and had beer and sausages. sleep was black and dreamless. eventually a plane came to take me away from that place. pending my appeal to the historical absolute, i am located here, atop a palisade overlooking this other city, this city of buildings and men. i am too weak to write much. i can still hear you, moving, moving through this dream; this dream; once
-- FISH APRHODISIAC -- and it's you they'll love. dhalgren at bellatlantic.net
