SOS Gab & Eti 1.52

Illustrations by Michael L. Johnson.

“Who says we cannot know the future? We can, but it [is] always a matter of interpretation, that is, of imagination. If that seems obvious, I should point out something not so obvious: that knowing the present is also always an act of imagination.” Lebbeus Woods

Bullfrog GO is not bearded GO, is not the shaven GO. There are now three GO's, a triumvirate of commotion forward, on screen, behind the screen and off. There is three of them like birch trees in a wind storm, the grove a paladin of merges, the real gazookus.

And I tell you to beware of the after taste of recycled cookies. The burp burned 'round the world.

May there be more? Are they all one? Are they all me? Are they all you? Are they this other imposing guy that parades around his city apartment and appears in his summer windows naked with a self-reflexive camera? We do not know. Ask their mother Momma Orgrease, who sends a monthly check to their brother Viédaze at the ecology retreat in the Yucatan jungle in order for his honorable and upright excellence who in perpetual meditation communes there with Mother Nature for him to please, pretty please, pretty please with a cherry on top... continue to admit that he is related to the many virile GOs of the world.

BF-GO: The sky room on rails was enclosed and overly stuffy, smelled of raw kerosene heat and moldy garments. The stage lights did not get any cooler as the climax lines of Tomorrow eased up and ended. The audience frittered in their undersized wooden seats. It was close in on the Radio Girl Squirrel to come onto the make-shift stage-in-the-round with her flaming baton and a yi yi yi ya ya ya! Then she would play a kazoo with her do.

Red silk hankie in hand – printed with a white skull and crossbones so that it would just perfectly fit over his face to make him out a pirate thief when he rode his hog -- a trace of a farmed pearl welled up just beneath his left eye with impending readiness to roll down the slant of his amphibious face where it would bisect the groove of his cleft chin. How many bullfrogs do you know with a cleft chin? Does a dancing frog sweat? He was desperate for the revitalization of a cold shower with the nerve soothing of Etidorpha's duck weed concentrated body lotion with honey, grapefruit-rind pomegranate and lanolin, sloppy, slimy aroma therapeutics. But for now as his act approached an end on this evening, no lotion was availed for him just yet, no relief as it came up in the auditorium a musk of bullfrog overlaid the otherwise dank space of sheetrock walls (black mold for now hidden) and knotty-pine board floor. Does a frog fret? GO the bullfrog threw a sloppy kiss to the digital vids and croaked out a final, "Tomorrow in the morning light, don't let the sun catch you cryin'."

In thrust of a genie's ass this small time performance was leapt and ascended in a tinkle to being cast in Meet the Depressed; only a pee-a-lot on a swing and an MP3 player as they always say repeatedly. Repeatedly as they always say.

But then as his arc took off from the port of hopes and dreams and credit default swaps and dreams and free credit reports and dreams and rapidly gained subliminal attitude on the sky train, the yellow vest with ketchup and crushed Japanese beetle-grub guts and pepper stains morphed into a red power tie and just as he (GO the BF) junted outward into the anus of oblivion (in one episode it is written that the massive hemorrhoid that quickly approaches on a trajectory toward Staten Island would be met by a reconditioned weapon of mass destruction but the otherwise undaunted crew of the space ship Further-Again would be imperiled by a gustatory expulsion) then in a swept up motion spiraled downward to the loving estimation of the now massive audience of three-dozen trilobites.

Shards of paper carnations of the very cheapest sort miraculously appeared humped up in a soggy pile at the stage door, little notes attached; and mutterings about "the next project" appeared in Rolling Stone all with the subtitle, "without really having a clue". No one could get enough of this odd little critter. "I'll thank you not to refer to me as a critter!"

In his heart he knew that his sister Etidorpha's BFF, the Radio Girl Squirrel would make his heart go pitter patter thump thump . What hope is there to imagine in the future romance of this celebrity frog with the Radio Girl Squirrel? Somehow the trans-species amplexus simply releases when converted into an on-screen 3-D animation and none of the children seem to notice the disparity.

But we live in a rapid world of industrialized artifice. Sex with robots supplants online experimentation with cats, dogs, Tolstoy, chickens and Thanksgiving turkeys in the suburbs of Middle America. Male robots barrage us with sextexts of their brass balls though nowadays replaced by titanium implants the size of trans-oceanic buoys. Female robots tweet us photos of creatures that plump their way into deep caves filled to the brim with lonely heart kisses. It is decades since BF-GO had first read in "The Fear of Frogging," ...this aerial switch is equipped with a moveable frog.” At the close of the act his legs twitch twitch in an electrified tap tap dance. Once again the suction cup balanced on his crown in a flash bang.

Stage direction from 1474: “Hell must be represented in the form of huge jaws which open and shut when needed.” anon

In an effort to make such and things not necessarily less crystalline clear, free of lees and dead dandelion wine yeast, we will elicit a spiritual dowser to drop a water melon seed pendulum hung from the web silk of a trap door spider. The diviner will say, "This is where we want the line to split between reality and play." to wit, shaven GO (S-GO) will respond, "And this here cut," as he slams down the sledge upon the basalt boulder, "...is where there is grain, true and right." To wit Bearded GO (B-GO) will say, "That seems less than fuzzy to me." To wit BF-GO will mutter, as he descends the back ladder (not to be confused with the ascending black adder) to his dressing room, how things that happen at one end of the universe happen instantly at the other end of the universe.

“Howdy do it?”

It behooves us educated ungulate to say straight out that the GO the bullfrog had accumulated too many fingers on his hands. Though he was somewhat consoled in the cosmic paranoia of his performance anxiety with reports of discovery of a star that shoots out water at 124,000 miles per hour.

Meet the Depressed: A retro 1970's historical reproduction all shot in a tiny back room studio situated up the stairs and down the dark hallway, shot in super 8 (or maybe even seven) with a daily budget of what amounted to $8.43 mostly for an assortment of flies and sow bugs to keep BF-GO fueled up and forever hoping. One midnight clear the director Suddy Warthole called out, "That's a Wrap! Put it in the can," as the day’s work concluded.

Critics complained periodically about the extensive editing involved in the production. Twit this, tweak that, adjust the volume, alter the hue, rejiggle the jaggle, shun the reader, by-pass the screenwriter, cut, cut, cut. All those cameo asides and the corny-copia of mop bucket be bop and altered off-tone slighting and clover-field crop circles not to mention the abundant gas track. Still, number one is number one; and that's in fact what it was. Number one. It was by no means not negative one. In fact, there was very little math involved at all. It was purely an overdone production.

Moon eclipsed evenings in the masonry room on the sky train were altered without question. Eti's day hadn't changed dramatically. Lots of great cookie and tart eating to be done there. BF-GO asked almost daily about bringing her on, in hopes that it would get him an opportunity to spend more quality time with the Radio Girl Squirrel. A new cast member and all that. She could wear a purple wig and the Radio Girl Squirrel a fake mustache. Great duet potential! But it was not hard to read Eti's thoughts on the matter. Three simple words, "NOT MY THING," were spelled out clearly (here finally is the clear part) as she lay about recuperation from their reality withdrawal, nestled deeply in the softness of her shiny near black fur coat. She dreamed of the embrace of endangered French hamsters.

To be continued: Shaven GO (S-GO) petitions the French government to establish a transnational sperm bank for endangered hamsters.

Text co-authored by Gabriel Orgrease with guidance from Michael L. Johnson.

SOS Gab & Eti 1.51

"I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once." George Maltezos

It was a stone menagerie of Robber Barons. I saw their leader in a movie fly off from the Hudson pier like he was a wetware helicopter to points north and east and wealthy on the early edge of a Friday afternoon. A fleshy little porker with ear flaps. It was balmy in a golden light which only seemed the more appropriate. We still watch those movies... I mean, of the Great Depression with song and dance, a banjo and minstrel black face though it is now the blue man group.

In our personal theater the lights are shut off and in a display of the cult of candle we forget what we forgot. Smells of apple-cinnamon, bayberry or the artifice of paper lilacs.

Yet, we continue to dream the lotus blossom delivery dream but it is one locked into a closet in a railroad flat in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Aluminum sides the street walls, all sorts of faded pastel colors. Cookies and the super saturated sugar filler of cannolis, the smell of hot sausage juice and peppers and onions euthanize the street festival. Ferris wheel, the portable ferries a wheel of fortune to be a rotation of baby buns or skeleton cakes.

The old folks Grace and Doria on the floors below control the steam heat so hot that the Never windows in their aluminum frames not to close all winter the street grinds in our ears twenty-four hours. There are no bird noises. Barking unicorns inflate our sleep.

An uncloaked Gabriel in the desert, alone, naked in the sun on the orange and umber mesa he heard this urban... this urban scream, sirens, in search of silence it is not Odysseus strapped to his bully pulpit that yearns female forms or that gregarious earthworm sizzle on a Sunday morning but fire trucks, those highly expensive utilitarian well polished noisy blaring loud outlander outrageous and cared for trucks that pull us to come to the carnival. A very hard sadness in that when the firefighter at the medical center counter mentioned his herniated disc.

Such bad things as tornados, unseasonal and displaced on our terrain, it was as if a plug had been pulled in the Gulf and the oil slick screwed us with the weather all really really badly. Nobody to admit to nothing.

I walked the dog in the rain. A few days past, nights too. The nights were tricky sometimes. Then one morning when the room as still dark. Dark is anything but a white elephant that squeaks when squeezed.

When the rotating rapture hits I would rather be where there is beer and music. Give me oompah!

Dawn was still three minutes away; Rufus Sandbank, Mink Zero and the bearded GO were gathered around a small twin bed in a little amber colored guest room aboard the Ryugyong Express -- up the stairs and off to the side of things down a dusty narrow hallway. There was a sideboard and plain old china pitcher made in China filled with water made in the cycle of heaven to earth. GO held a cool damp gray-green recycled cotton facecloth lightly to Eti's furrowed brow. There was a window sill next to the small bed, pungent with black mold beneath the green-gray paint. The old wood frame window sash, the lower sash was open eleven and thirteen-sixteenths inches to let in any cool air that would do so. The three men heard a slight groan and what might have been a sigh as Eti's eye lids began to stir and then very slowly open...... "Whah? Where am I?" whispered Eti. She began to breathe a little more fully, to take the molecules of cool air into her lungs."Easy now Eti. Take your time. Everything's okay now." said GO; then to the other two, "Here she comes boys. She's back with us now," feeling a warm tingle in his gut.

Now there was a sepia glow about the room. If one were to put on their reading glasses and look closely then they would notice that the walls were of a roughly cut yellow-white brick and oddly resemble the interior of a masonry bake oven.

'Time seems to pass and nothing happens or seems to be happening. I'd see one helicopter here, another there, but nothing else, and always far from me.' Francisco Piedrahita

[There needs to be an organizational chart, a graphic narrative placed here at this location in the book in order to separate out in the imagination of the reader the puppet characters from the real characters and from those characters who are in name only and those who are in fact dancing cookies.]

A little tearful smile crept over Etidorpha's face as she peered up at the three men standing there. "Ah learned a little somethin' 'bout life after that screw up." She said in her closest approximation to "heartfelt". Yes, indeed. No lie. That there was somethin' else."

Eti began to look a little further round the room and got a little choked up with her furrowed brow as she remembered the bullfrog. She also remembered acres and acres of bean sprouts poking themselves up out of the night soil. Where was he, clean shaved Gabe with his spiffy dress shirt and red power-tie? Was he still back there?

"What is it, Eti? Is something wrong?" asked the bearded Gabe, all the while gently dusting the odd short chestnut brown hairs off from the Amish quilted coverlet.

He half expected Eti's next words to be, "You were there, and you and you. And maybe Mink would be thinking he'd a tin peter, or maybe one of straw so ginormous it required a bamboo scaffold...”

"Eti. Will you watch this -- I just nailed my thirty-second fly this morning. Come have some breakfast". Eti shook her little squirrel sized head. Now she knew. Squirrels dream just like people and dogs and white elephants. That might come in handy where they were headed. Who knew?

The train trucks of the car – the one that hailed this small room aloft into the milky melt of stars -- sounded a curragh like a wert unicorn unable to navigate to his navel, but as one moved forward along the yellow trails the steel to steel grind of bearings and shocks banged and popped the sound of white fireworks burst in the dark black night chitty chitty.

Her lips murmured as her mouth held in place a small pool of liquid adhesives. The breath hummed a breen crenelation of her rodented teeth. She shook her furry little head and suddenly there were streams of laser glitter light splayed across the ceilings and walls of the room.

It was fairly no linger what it may have been. Either it was June or November. With an ice age on the horizon little critters throughout the northern latitudes were frozen within a few hoots of morning with undigested buttermilk waffles and strawberries in their bellies. As things which stimulate and enflame the senses are not among the things that really are.

There lingered in balance on the cold air a scent of fresh cookie dough in the oven.

To be continued... everything gets baked out very neatly and made perfectly clear in the next installment.