This Defies Explanation

The Tombstone Will Be My Diploma

From a quote by Eartha Kitt, who passed away today. She said how she learned something new every day, and that the tombstone would be her diploma. I'm lucky I even heard the news, its been so crazy here. From hideously cold temps to thunderstorms and literal four inch stacks of ice in the streets, and now more freezing rain and flash flood warnings because of the tons of snow and ice; we surpassed the wettest December on record about a week back. I get spasms in my neck quite easily, and last night (well, early today), I was checking that the water was at the 12-cup mark in the coffee pot and then I was cold-cocked as my neck jerked and my temple went into the corner of the cabinet. I woke up on the floor holding my head, I doubt if I was out for more than a minute or so, my hand covered in blood, but very little on the carpet. The wound bled for about an hour, but I was able to pour SuperGlue into it and then sleep with a bandanna on, like I was a pirate. Before and after shots up above, you can see SuperGlue works wonders, so who really needs health insurance? I haven't had any since March 2005.I think this will heal fine, so I'm still at Scar 39. If you visit my blog 18 March 1989, you'll see most of the other scars. Then there's my Mitchum blog. Man, Bobby the Mitch and Eartha the Kitt in a film together, that would have been the cat's pajamas.

Heading west into the black...Your chattel, Wayne

Answers On A Postcard

First, the Playing Card Man. All good titles for the story, Steve, I thought of Travis McGee's boat, THE BUSTED FLUSH. Bob, he couldn't use the deck correctly because the cards were already on the tracks, each train blowing a few on the platform. Funny the train only blew red cards, I have an idea about how the story will go, thx, Bob. Horatio, like your thoughts, I'll use all three in the story, because that's what I do. Onward.

This is the last postcard I received from Harry, postmarked October 2nd. Those damn turbines. Years ago, I read a Starman comic and in the heat of battle someone asked Jack Knight who they were fighting and all he could say was "Answers on a postcard." I assume it might mean that the answer is short enough to put on a postcard, past that, I really do not know. I'll have photos soon, when they get developed, of Harry's photo lab and billboards. A photo of Sean Doolittle a decade past in the corner, me as the enigmatic Mister 1934 from a Woolworth's photo booth. His dad, now 80, Edgar Allen Poe. Odd little things filling the margins. And on a shelf, rubberbanded (new word, guys, use it), a stack of postcards going back to 1995. I would assume they were in order, because I could recall the Captain America postcard as one I bought at Chicago Comics in September, I think I sent Bob a Ditko Spider-Man that same day. A load of free postcards they'd have in slots at the Red Lion, for bands or hair products. One was in green ink, which baffled me, I don't recall ever using a green ink pen. Harry's last words on the postcard, Climo Bumpkid, your reporter on the fringe...

I Feel It In The Air, Summer's Out of Reach

First off, as this is a continuation of the lyrics from "The Boys of Summer," Harry would at this point be growling that this is a song about chicks, man. Well, its about that big old desolation boulevard, too. I'm doing a double post tonight, look for "Answers On A Postcard" later. This first part is about my trek to Oak Park and the tribute to Harry. And there will be a tossing of the ashes on the vernal equinox, but, this being Chicago and all, it will probably only be thirty come March 21st. Here's the thing, I left the house fully ready for the fifteen below wind chill, but it somehow morphed into a crazy THIRTY-FIVE BELOW near the time I hit East Avenue on the Forest Park like. When I crossed Rehm Park and the first full gust hit me in a literal whiteout, it was like I had gotten punched on the bridge of my nose while pure ammonia was being shoved up my nose in some ethereal way. Disorienting enough that my body just flopped to the ground out of pure whatthefuckedness. The gathering itself was stupendous, and I will indeed address this in a few hours, a wonderful remembrance of HE Fassl. Let me back track a bit though, and relate the subway incident. To get from the Red Line to the Blue Line, you descend even lower underground and walk a tunnel two blocks in length and BAM, up the steps again. I heard the Playing Card Man while I was still in the tunnel. He was an enigma himself, balding white guy in his thirties, ver nice black car coat, banged up old suitcase with wheels, and quite definately off his meds for at least a few days. There was a deck of card on the tracks and a dozen or so lay on the platform. This guy would pace, either fighting obessive-comuplsion or just not knowing what decision to make, then he slapped a card over, grabbed his head and screamed O MY GOD! THE THREE OF DIAMONDS! Maybe seven of us in the frosty tunnel, no one moved back, we are used to this. O MY GOD, THE TEN OF HEARTS! From thirty feet away, the cards blown onto the platform in odd places from the wake of the previous el train. He was still grabbing at the snakes in his head by the time the train arrived, and I found it strange that he never called out a club or a spade, maybe he truly was angered and/or astonished that he always flipped up a red card. Walk in circles, bend down like slapping a live wire, cry out. The train turned west a block up and barrelled above ground at UIC. I was impressed enough by this guy that I've worked out a story in my head, but of course my own obsessive-compulsiveness will not let me start it until I have a title. So that's what I leave you with for now, the guy who drew only red and me falling to my knees in bafflement of the whiteout, my destination still three blocks away. Heading west into the black...Wayne

Nobody On The Road, Nobody On The Beach

Here's the temperature readings for tomorrow:
----- MY-CAST FOR CASTLE FRANKENSTEIN -----

Sat 9PM: 20F (Wind Chill 9F) Wind SW 10 Light snow
Sat 11PM: 17F (Wind Chill 3F) Wind W 13 Light snow
Sun 1AM: 14F (Wind Chill -2F) Wind W 16 Cloudy
Sun 3AM: 12F (Wind Chill -7F) Wind W 22 Cloudy

Sun 2AM: 13F (Wind Chill -5F) Wind W 20 Cloudy
Sun 8AM: 5F (Wind Chill -18F) Wind W 26 Cloudy
Sun 2PM: 8F (Wind Chill -14F) Wind W 26 Partly clear
Sun 8PM: 11F (Wind Chill -9F) Wind W 23 Cloudy
Mon 2AM: 9F (Wind Chill -9F) Wind NW 16 Cloudy
Mon 8AM: 8F (Wind Chill -7F) Wind W 11 Clear

Currently: 23F (Wind Chill 15F) Wind SE 6 Cloudy
(on Sat 6:51PM CST at Chicago Midway Airport)


So, yeah, we are not going to the lake with Harry's ashes. Hell, half of us could deal with it, but there's a few that might fall on the ice. So I'll be taking the bus & trains to Oak Park, Red & Blue Line. And here's how I am, pretty much breaking into misty eyes (which I TOTALLY EFFING HATE, mind you) when I heard not Don Henley, but Black Flag, singing "Boys of Summer," hence the title of my blog entry. I feel like a fool, but hell, after Sid Williams, Harry was my next big email buddy. I've mentioned that before (our email and postcard antics), but considering how I go on about despising technology, those almost daily emails made Harry a kind of roommate. Now, after Sid, I cannot think of anyone even close, so I'm pretty much afraid I'll be crying on an empty Sunday el train tomorrow. I get off the second train at Oak Park Avenue, walk to East Ave and then cut through Rhem Park and the house is about a block up. Diana called on Friday and we joked about Harry's voice telling us not to go to the lake: "mmmm.....maybe not...todayyy." So we will head out in the spring with his ashes. Tomorrow is the Ursa meteor shower, so if its not overcast, I'll look up as I wait for the train home and maybe he'll flash by. I think of times past as I, myself, keep heading west into the black...Wayne

First Snow Cuts The Deepest

I'm surprised I've never written about this before, maybe its because the last two years I've been doing this blog, the first snows have always come on days that I have been working and just didn't blog. I'm going to talk about sensation. My right side is always a mess because of the cerebral palsy, but my left arm has no real circulatory system, after all the operations on my left arm made the nerves wired wrong. We've had temperatures at -15 wind chill the past week, piece of cake after the first time. Snow is different, and this time it wasn't even from shoveling; I used the snow blower. I came back in and had to email NY before an editor's office closed and then a fellow writer in CO re: a joint project. The photos above might help by at least portraying my odd posture. The sensation takes me back to when my arm was in a bag of ice for days at a time throughout the spring of 1989. Demerol every three hours, Tylenol w/c codeine every half hour, yet I felt almost every minute of it. Fire and ice at the same time. I look at my own fingers yet they move as one, as if encased in some astronaut glove. Heat running through my palms at the same time my one finger touching the keyboard having the feeling of frozen cement. Just as with the ice bag in 1989, my fingers were splayed as if I was a hero drawn by Jack Kirby, the wrists cracking from cold and yet the palms burning up. Then the fingers, to type, I hear the wrist make a snapping noise, then its like I am a giant becaui se I start hittingmutiple keys at obnve and tyhemn I;'m poundinfg ojn the keybo0ard lijke a deaf man trying to tell someone a clue of some sort. The first snow always affects the skin baggie that is my left arm. A nemesis that always comes back to start the battle anew. Its good to be in a fighting mode again. Your chattel, Wayne

Different Seasons, Times Past

The middle photo only needs explaining if you hadn't heard me piss and moan about how totally messed up our Comcast service was in August after I signed up for high speed, phone, and the already existing cable. The winter photo I took about a decade ago. I'm on Lake Michigan in the summer of 2002.