This Is My Brain. This Is My Brain On Blog. Any Questions?

The images pretty much sum up how the cogs in my brain seem to be these past few days. Lucas emailed me about if I was venting or if he (and others) should be concerned; I told it was more like extended journal entries. Quite possibly Frank St. Cyr might be thinking some of those passages since I made the second novel into a narrative. The three images seem to connect, at least to me. Well, regardless, happy springtime, everybody. I'll be out in the garage. Wayne

Midnight Confessions At The Rendering Plant

Bubbly Creek, the finale of "Shank of The Night", blips of methane forever rising from carcasses of animals (and mob victims) long dead, the former throwaways from the Stockyards, long gone. But the ghosts still ripple in the waters beneath the Ashland Avenue bridge. Several times, I have taken the el here, climbed the fence illegally, and tossed my own detritus into the waters, on the many boards lining the rocky shores, seeing if the currents of the South Branch of the Chicago River would move north, south, or simply leave the tossed items doing pirouettes, like a drowned ballerina. I am cleansing my past, using two scans of items I rediscovered as I continue the decimation of my belongings. The metal object came from a Greyhound bus bathroom door; I had been traveling to Louisville to get picked up by Cousin Slick, and spent much of the latter half of the ride talking to a Cherokee fellow who was going to visit his father, a neurosurgeon, in Elizabethtown. E-town, if you are a local. We were in the aisle seats just in front of the bathroom, I opened the door and the handle fell off. We both made the appropriately shocked looks and I pocketed my interesting new item. I parted ways with the Indian, John Cloud, and went to Shelbyville to watch Katrina destroy New Orleans. I also found a Dick book I had thought borrowed and gone. Philip K. Dick was one of the finest writers alive, even though he was fucking crazy. In a good way, though, except maybe towards the end when he thought a sentient spaceship named Valis was circling the Earth and monitoring him. The first time I felt that suicide would be simple was when I read THE DARK-HAIRED GIRL, which in part included letters from the Oregon Mental Hospital he had been admitted to voluntarily. In MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, he describes his theory for autism in a throwaway fashion, and THE CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON (circling Alpha Centauri, not of my hemisphere, Etain and Steve and Jamie Turner down in Tasmania), where each city is self-contained studies in mental disorders, the Obsessive-Compulsives, the Bipolars, the hapless and the sad, the manic futurists and those with eyes mirroring the empty void. The title story in I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON is an incredible short story about a man who cannot be "put under" for the ten year trip to his new home on a planet circling the star LD4, and so the ship's computer, with limited access, creates ten years of images into Victor Kemmings' brain, from his own past. But in true PK Dick guilt, the memories keep getting bobbled by memories of helping a cat eat a bird when he was four, the ownership of a signed Fabulous Freak Brothers poster, and images of his first wife, Martine. The trip ends, Martine has been contacted in the Sirius star system and is there to meet him, but in true PKD fashion, Kettering continues to think the reality is computer-induced, he thinks his hands go through a wall, or a TV is hollow, or a bee-sting is visible on his arm, a bee he once saved from a spiders web. PKD was a master of solipsism, the idea being that the universe is only what you can directly perceive; in my case right now, I am aware of my keyboard, a lamp, my Oceanic Airlines coffee mug on a stone coaster from Johannesburg, and my Psycho-Pirate action figure. The rest of the universe, even though I hear wind outside a window I am not looking at, is only an assumption. So...what did I confess to the happy dead of Bubbly Creek? In my late teens, I was walking along Cicero Avenue with my friend Dan, I saw an orange cat and spooked it, it ran into traffic and I watched the rear tire of a burnt sienna town car bing off its head. I went to get the cat, feeling guilty as all hell, and held it in my arms. He was able to walk, but I knew he had a concussion. (There were no veterinarians open at that time of night). I walked with him, talking to him for two hours, he looked at me with knowing eyes, fell asleep, and died. I cry when I think of this despicable moment in my life that occurred one summer Friday night 26 years ago. Like PKD and the weight of memory's madness.

The Scar Back Then Still White

I'm starting to use future titles from my commonplace book--the term for notebook in Karl Edward Wagner's honor, Sid maybe you'll take the weight after I'm in the wind--because at least they will be on the blog for others to get inspiration. "Still Crazy, After All These Fears." All yours. I'm being generous. I have started a purge, spending the last day decimating my bookshelves, losing one for every ten. Minor things along with the desecrated books went to the Salvation Army this morning. The books are in the crawlspace, my room is almost barren. This keyboard echoes like an electric typewriter, though the sound might just be that of my Frankenstein fingers. Today I had to post that Far Side cartoon, one of Gary Larson's best efforts. It sums up my every move when it comes to make anything work on a daily basis, my body keeps waking up every day, is what it is. Damned if I open my eyes, the same goes if they stay sewed shut. I always thought a noble death would be like Hartigan's, the Bruce Willis character in SIN CITY, instead, I wear pads on my back and neck that cause my skin to burn but I really don't give a fuck because I want to keep writing, whether this, my somewhat private notes to my somewhat private friends, or in the stories I need to write like "When It's Said And Done." I honestly think that once I finish CITY WITH NO SECOND CHANCES there will be no more me. I keep putting the novel off, but my mental state is so so so close to Frank St. Cyr's that his soul is bleeding inside me. I will write the story I mentioned above--about what would be my last trip home to Shelbyvbille, Kentucky--then continue in this barren room that is my body and my brain. Thanks for listening. Your chattel, Wayne

I'd Walk A Mile To Be Bicameral

I always seem to self-correct myself, and I do not think it is from being bipolar. Here's the deal, friends. One of my major health problems is the fact that my head cannot be kept steady, it lolls to the right side, I think because it gives my good left eye a greater range. But my neck eventually goes wacky, the blood vessels constrict, and then I get all loopy. Well, loopier. Tomorrow I will get an anti-inflammatory injection in my neck with a needle that reaches to the bone, an inch or so from my carotid artery, and for a week or so, as with the injections in my back, I get to be part of the human race again. But by pure happenstance, I read about psychologist Julian James and his theory of the Bicameral mind. He postulated that up until about 3,000 years ago, humans did not have the thought process of a unicameral mind, i.e., instead of having a series of connective thoughts in one's brain, it was more like thinking was a series of visions or hallucinations. Some thought them religious visions, hence the Epic of Gilgamesh, writer still unknown. So why do I feel so dastardly one evening, wanting to get on that Greyhound to Portland and hang myself from the Willimantic Bridge, and then keep dog paddling with my head above the water when I know damn well I'll start sinking again and again. That's why all my stories, the good ones, are narratives. Maybe when my neck is the way it is, sometimes worse than it is now--watch videos of me at conventions, I turn my head and it looks like a bowling ball with ears dropping into the gutter--I just get these dark moments so that I can blurt them out onto paper. Or this inhumane computer thing. When I am this low, I could give a damn if I'm relegated to being a "writer unknown" like the person who envisioned Gilgamesh and his buddy Enkidu. Crazy person in residence, Wayne Allen Sallee AKA The Insane Unknown

I Fought The Law, The Law Won

Or the aliens. Or the time warp. Sid posted a comment regarding Roy Thinnes in THE INVADERS, a great show from the 60s--I don't even want to think that this is going back almost half a century--where the dude is on the run from aliens in Bakersfield, California. They have the shape of humans, but bend their little finger in a weird Spock-wannabe movement. Roy Huggins created the show, along with Christian I. Nyby II (one damn cool name there, as a kid I thought it was Christian 1 Nyby 2). It was a follow-up to THE FUGITIVE, starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble. Forget ANY other version. Janssen was the man, in almost every scene back in a time when there were forty episodes a year, not twenty or piss and moan shows with ensemble casts. Kimble and Lt. Gerard, played by Barry Morse, whose hair made me think he had a matchstick for hair. (In two years, God willin' and if the creeks don't rise, I will have outlived Janssen, who died on Valentine's Day 1980, playing golf in Palm Springs. Heart attack. Me, I want to explode. Not a suicide bomber thing. Just a freak accident in a trans-dimensional attempt at finding an alternate universe where I actually have a girlfriend). But I digress. Kimble brought the one-armed man to justice--well, he killed him on the Mahia Mahia ride at Santa Monica Pier even though it was supposed to be Stafford, Indiana (see, I know my stuff). August 29th, 1967, the day the running stopped. Kimble with hottie Diane Baker, who then appeared in the first episode of THE INVADERS. An odd cycle, symmetry like in RUN, LOLA, RUN with Franke Potente. I posted the last shot for the guys reading the blog, I'm just saying, is all. I wasn't the only one running. Pant, pant, pant. I have Janssen's heart, if I outlive him, as I did Elvis and Karl Edward Wagner, Rod Serling is next on my list. One man's list, which wil take him to a place we can only call...THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Freaky, chain-smoking bastard. (I'm kidding, I'd be hotboxing Pall Malls with him in a second...) Well, time to shut my babbling brain off, see what happens when I can type fast? Your chattel, Wayne

Run, Jonny Algiers, Run!

Jonny came into existence the same year Forrest Gump popped into the world's collective brain pan. Algiers is the scary little ghetto across the waters, past New Orleans. Jonny had been Johnny, but AOL insisted that I could only use 5 characters (WTF?! to use Etain's parlance), so I made my P. I. into something more like Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, and settled on Jonny. This was back in 1997, now I could name him Rumpelstiltskin_Wojiehowicz_Algiers and AOL wouldn't bat an electronic eye (yes, I am on the Echelon watch list, I keep using coded words like Rumsfeld sucks donkey dick and my threats of wearing a blood-stained clown suit on the steps of the Capitol (or maybe the local Wal-Mart) and yelling ATTICA! ATTICA! like Al Pacino in DOG DAY AFTERNOON. So there you have it, Jonny Algiers. Photos taken by Dan Szostak, AKA Cousin Slick, who also took the shots of my new business cards. That's the way the mop flops, kids.

Jonny Algiers, The Zanzibar Con

Sid knows how this one ended up. Funny thing was, once they were on to me, they had Hunchback Chuck take me into the next building over, which was higher, and he tossed me off of that roof. This time, Sid and I had been trying to keep Bayou Bob Petitt out of trouble one more time.

Much Better, Thanks

Thanks for all your comments on my last post, everyone. I explained to Etain that I used the wolves metaphor as just being a cool image, in truth my daily life is a constant dog paddle, trying to keep my nose and mouth above water at least 50% of the time. The hexagonal pink pills I take for BPD (thx, Jr., didn't know it had an abbreviation as simple as, say, MS or OCD) really do nothing to stop my physical pain. So (again, referring to Jr's remark) if I were to suddenly go on a rampage, I'd be more like a bulemic zombie than a Viking berserker. The FoxNews cameras woulds be trained on me as I tripped walked right into the reporters because I can't focus out of my right eye, no depth perception. A complete MRI of my body could be made into an interactive video game. Thanks to Charles, because I even learn from what I right (though sometimes I do not listen to what I learn, if this makes sense), and it was good to hear from Stewart after a long absence. Oh, the photos. Right. As you can see, the medical facilities in Tyler, Texas are much more advance than here in Chicago, particularly for a guy with no health insurance. So while Dr. Sid has all the proper tools to give that bearded fellow a bikini wax, I'm left with fellow writer Jeff Osier winning a bet reagarding Richard Denning and John Agar an thus getting his wish to take me into an Oak Park basement and drill a hole into my skull. Fun was had by all. Except maybe Dr. Sid.

The Sword Of Time

Fair warning, this entry will be all over the place. The Lamactal I take for being bipolar sometimes makes a rod pop in my brain and I get quite suicidal. This only lasts for a day or so and I keep the wolves at bay, but right now all I can think about is replacing the broken glass inside my fingers and shoulders with one huge shard sticking out of my eye and another in my throat. Why the title of the entry? Its from the theme from the film M*A*S*H, where I got the title for my novella PAIN GRIN. The swords of time will pierce our skin/it doesn't hurt when it begins/but as it works its way on in/the pain grows stronger, watch it grin. I am in a fetal position, chewing on my shirt collar as I type this. Not out of vanity, afterI finish my blog entry I need to finish a story for the HELL IN THE HEARTLAND anthology. In an email I received earlier, Mike Fountain (see my links) suggested that Roger Dale Trexler put together a book of my photos and certain blog entries. The idea behind my even starting this blog, back when it was Meanwhile@Stately Wayne Manor was because Sid Williams and Rachel Drummond (again, see links), two of my personal saviours, thought that some of my emails to them warranted being seen by others. Finding out I could post photos sealed the deal. Which brings me to tonight's photo: I truly believe that I entertain people with making my veins pop out of my head because I want to get an aneurysm and die at my computer or on a bus like Ratso Rizzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Thanks for putting up with me, everybody, on nights when I when I want to call it quits. Your chattel, Wayne

Shells Of Easter In The City

Easter. The eggs get broken. Shells discarded. I'm still angry about my last post and how much I want to eviscerate the bastard involved. He will end up being a stand-up guy at 26th and Cal(ifornia), site of Cook County Jail. Wasn't like he killed a kid. Nope. Cripples and homeless are fair game. Years ago, a guy living in a box on Lower Wacker Drive was killed by some hotshot shooting a crossbow; the guy was eventually caught after bragging about it. The crime is still the only "killed by an arrow" homicide in Chicago's sundried history of squalor and vileness. Maurice Kindness--he tells me with his Touerette's stutter that I could not pronounce his true name--has sold flags for years, since before the First Gulf War, his pleas or perhaps simple words barely audible on a windy day. Frank, the guy in the next photo, lives in the alley near the Red Lion Pub, at Fullerton and Lincoln, a lifetime and a lifeline away from downtown. Whenever I am going to go to the TwilightTales readings on Monday nights, I'll offer Frank a fiver and drink a coffee instead of a beer to start out. I am usually pissed off at myself in the simple fact that thirty-five steps will bring me into a conversation with Joe Heinen the Owner, the coffee reawakening synapses, my good deed already submerging. On Easter, I find myself thinking of "Flagman" and Frank more than I do my own family.

Welcome To Chicago

This man should be beaten with a baseball bat after watching each of his friends similarly killed. Judge, Jury, & Executioner, The Father, The Son & The Holy Ghost.

And Now, Chicago

Chicago At @$#^*% Night

Spooky Chicago, my ass. Aw crap, its Holy Week, I'm doing another 52 years in purgatory, ah well. No, I did not write about the goth dead chicks, I had an article about all of the hallowed haunting grounds in this sinful city. It was 70 degrees on Sunday, and it is currently 28 and dropping. What the Geronimo H. Bald headed Christmas is going on? Who has my slice of the global warming pie? The only saving grace from this frightening return to semi-winter is the wonderful panel of Superman--ahem!--trying to explain to Supergirl why they can't have sex. Or go see a movie. Or read Roald Dahl stories aloud to each other as they sat from opposite ends of a big, giant bubble bath. Wearing fedoras.

aaaawwwwwooooooo

i'll likely find a photo to go with this, but i am again working a 12 hour shift. the last three out of five full moons i have been working 12 hour shifts. the full moon makes the woods and the cal sag channel very bright. what is the government hiding? when will rumsfeld quit reading my emails and, well, self-gratifying himself?
Much later, after what turned out to be a fourteen hour shift, there was a white castle's stop. for sliders. sid will probably comment on whattaburger. even a man who is pure of heart, and says his prayers at night, will become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and a white castle is in sight...