I explained to the directors that I had never been much of a scholar, and that what they were asking me to do in regards to the new edition of the museum brochure was probably way beyond my meager capabilities in that department. Sure, I probably could have come up with a couple paragraphs of rank mediocrity, but the museum and its patrons deserved better than that.  Don't you think?  I took my sack lunch out of doors and wandered around the periphery, ruminating, unfocused, but eventually came to rest in an old picnic shelter and slowly munched my cottage cheese, cookies, and apple, gazing all the while out into the adjoining wilderness area, pretty sure that my backwoods fantasy would remain precisely that: a mere fantasy.  I still suspect that the board had civil society's better interests at heart, even if that stuff pertaining to the practice of bottling ditch water and selling it at 20 dollars a pop in the museum cafe was so efficiently swept under the rug.  The whole enchilada at one time is too much to be borne with any measure of dignity.  That gives the pen time to note and the palate time to reorient. I don’t see it but I hear it there lurking behind me.  The silence.  Sometimes people refer to it as a gift from above.  The proverbial voice from the whirlwind slithering out into the public domain.  So much for the much-touted art and devotion to craft.  I did all that the board of directors desired.  Initially I desired it too. For them. For the patrons.  For the bio-region itself!  Whenever they desired something so did I.  Automatically.  They only had to say what that thing was and I was pretty much off to the races.  When they didn’t desire anything, oh well.  In this way I didn’t live without desires.  No way.  If they had desired something for me personally I would have desired it too.  That seems obvious.  Happiness for example, or an elaborate tree house, say, built on the pattern of the immortal Swiss Family Robinson.  I only had the desires that they manifested and imparted to me.  Over the course of my internship they must have manifested close to 100. All their desires and needs, which at the time seemed virtually endless.  When they told me to bottle ditch water and affix labels implying far-off artesian sources, I hastened to do so. For some reason I drew enormous satisfaction from this.  For a brief period there we must have had the selfsame satisfactions. The same needs, the same dreams, and the same satisfactions.  And yet, one day they up and told me to leave the museum. It’s the verb they employed.  The institution must have been heading in a new and exciting direction. I don’t know if by that they meant me to leave for good or only to step outside onto the front steps for a moment. I never asked myself that question. I never asked myself any questions but theirs!  Whatever it was they meant I made off without looking back. Gone from reach of their voices I was gone from the museum.  Period.  Perhaps it was that which the board of directors truly desired. There are questions you see coming but don’t ask yourself with sufficient sincerity.  The institution itself must have already veered off in another direction entirely. I on the contrary was remaining true to the original course. I wanted to be more like Johnny Appleseed.  That's how I got the job in the first place! 

I'm not sure what else to call it, except maybe some kind of atypical wilderness.  I don't know if there are others.  The answer is probably 'yes.'  Reports from the field have been inconsistent at best.  On the one hand, sure, there was talking, and then, on the other hand, no prob, there was listening.  These activities were sometimes even carried out simultaneously.  Some people are better at multi-tasking then others.  I'm not sure how else to identify the core of the issue, except maybe by venturing out into what has sometimes been termed the 'primordial wilderness.'  I don't know if this line of thinking makes sense to others on the neighborhood outreach committee.  If I had to guess, the answer would probably be a slow, barely articulate 'yes' delivered along with a weary shrug and a stony gaze out into the distance. Incoming reports from the field have been making no linear sense whatsoever.  At times there is wild laughter, like you might expect from a Dostoyevskian maniac, and at different times, there is prolonged, perfect silence, like you might expect from a slightly more reserved type of Dostoyevskian maniac.  To say that these bio-fantasias might dwell simultaneously in the breast of the self-same internet user is to imply that multi-tasking is not only the probable wave of the future, but that the entire space-time matrix has been secretly coded onto what has been advertised recently as the New DNA Interface.  I'm not sure what else to call it, except maybe some kind of sea-green lagoon of endless meditation techniques and after-commentaries by eminent rishis on Youtube Turbo 7.  I'm not sure if anyone else on the committee has buckled under the weight of that ancient tradition.  If forced to guess, I would most likely settle once again on that old fall-back, 'yes', probably just writing the word out on a scrap piece of paper this time and saving all parties involved the effort of contending with spoken language mechanics.


  

I was informed of important things via telephone.  There was a story underway about one of the urgent questions swirling around the front office and/or what if the academy is no longer considered successful or relevant by the websites that mediate our concerns in these matters?  I sat at home in my arm chair, brooding, up in the attic, by the window, listening to my cousin Jay prepare food down below in the main living area.

If it was a matter of talking vs. listening there would be no hesitation or conflict.  We would venture out into the public and interview random people about their opinions concerning the museum's ongoing importance to culture.  Did they know about Johnny Appleseed?  Did they care about Johnny Appleseed?  Did they have any interest whatsoever in learning about Johnny's legacy and what it means for us in the year 2013?  The answer to all these questions was usually a half-hearted "yes", so we continued on with our labor and research.  

I don't really mind living alone up in the attic.  Jay is often gone from the apartment for days at a time and he doesn't mind if I lurk about the common areas in his absence.  His own bedroom remains a no-go zone, however, and I honor that faithfully, despite my long-standing inclinations towards eavesdropping.  I wish I could go back to social media and tell people all about my latest ideas!  The backyard, the front yard, the mailbox, the staircase, the bookshelf.  These are all important realities that will not just reveal themselves!  It is my job, as a greeter, to make people feel at home and at ease.  If they want more information there is an information desk expressly designed for that purpose, staffed by a highly-trained person who knows virtually everything there is to know about Johnny Appleseed's legacy.  If they want to silently browse for awhile on their own that is also perfectly fine, taking the exhibits in, one by one, at a pace of their choosing, reflecting on the many contributions that Johnny Appleseed made to this region.     

an upcoming article

The title of my upcoming article for the neighborhood newsletter had to be kept a secret up until the very last minute, and the editor, Reggie, was none too happy about that!  I don't feel like saying right now if Reggie is a man or a woman so for now I'm just gonna go with hir as a possessive pronoun.

I worked for awhile at the New Johnny Appleseed Museum in Pittsburgh.  It was a strange and difficult period.  Presently I am living in my cousin's attic in a minor suburb of that fair city.  Thankfully, my anonymity is still almost completely intact.  I no longer engage with any social media and I concede that this is probably a major mistake.  I don't know what people's name's are.  I don't know what their occupations or areas of interests are, either.  I know nothing and no one, essentially.  A desert island existence.  Confused and humbled beyond all proper measure.  If there are other people out there like me, and I'm sure that there are, I will most likely never become aware of their innermost secrets, and that's something I'm just gonna have to get used to.

I was told by people on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter that I was making serious errors, and that I probably needed to go off by myself for awhile and reflect at length on what those errors consisted of.  I was a greeter at the museum.  I sat in a desk chair just inside the front door and greeted people, in full costume, dressed as a middle-aged Johnny Appleseed.  When there was no one to greet I was allowed by my boss to read books, because apparently Johnny himself went in for that kind of thing.  The only stipulation was that they had to be well-worn 700+ page monsters, published before Johnny's lifetime, so as not to break character.  Books that Johnny might have actually read himself, if he'd wanted.

It was a bizarre job, indeed.  I'm not ashamed to admit it.  People must have thought I had some sort of psychological problem.  I guess that's not totally far from the truth!  I learned about some of these things from Robert Burton's encyclopedic The Anatomy of Melancholy.  If you know what I'm referring to here, send me some sort of message.  Drop a letter off at the museum and tell them it's for William.  They will understand what you are saying and happily comply with your wishes.  Believe it or not, I was fairly well-liked by my co-workers.  


    

(from an article by Marge Debussy, great-great granddaughter of the famous composer)

"...confession: our white-water rafting guide Ustava is a person who once assumed the guise of a young Johnny Appleseed, which she apparently decided to do after learning about the tricks of Rosalind and Celia in Arcadia National Park back in the 80's.  Her real name was allegedly along the lines of Joan Claribel Chapman. Nobody is entirely sure where she came from.

She and her beloved snow leopard Turtledove wandered well beyond the orchard's periphery with no sense of a clear starting point or fixed destination.  The seasons whirled around them.  The cycles were relatively familiar.  The cool of autumn began to erode the stagnant pool of summer, and in return was reduced to splinters by the black and brown bears of winter, who had spent weeks and months gathering insulation and lantern oil, and carefully studying texts like The Existential Burrow Patiently Carved Out By Franz Kafka's Long Distance Cycling Coach.  (Note: If her name was not Paula Bunyan or Rogera Waters it would have been something else, naturally.  Things and people need names.  Identification Science is a Helpful Science that should never be underestimated.)

We only begin to share these strange things at this particular juncture, untoward as they may or may not seem in this context, not because it is Apple Season, and not because the mariner Francis wants to melt into any other legendary, ancient disguise.  I accept the task I have now, which is to sort out the recycling.  This game preserve is as good an environment as any I've stumbled across in my cyberspace journeys.  That other person, simple Ustava, was happy indeed living the life of young John Appleseed for a summer. She thinks you might be also, if you ever decide to give it the old college try.  You probably think she's being ironic or whimsical but no, she takes basic education very seriously.  Ignoring the tabula rasa will only get you so far in this era.  

(Note: say for instance your inclination is to wander around alone for hours in primordial wilderness.  Say it, and Huckleberry Finn's avatar will most likely visit you in your dreams.  We hold to rigorous standards.  We are steadfast and reliable.  The declarative sentence sometimes appears out of nowhere, or the vapor, and is sometimes followed, inexplicably, by the interrogative sentence, or fragment, which is explained by many instructional videos easily searched for and enjoyed on a channel like Youtube.)

Yes, I interviewed Ustava, and she admitted to wishing that her intuition was stronger.  And yes, she hopes that certain parts of her character study will become more developed.  Is it simply a matter of quietly invoking the wisdom of a person like Buddha?  Time is still on her side, she thinks, despite what Syd Barret's agent said earlier about the Raft of Utter Abandonment.  He admitted later to being very melancholy when he imagined that forlorn device of the English, and besides, it doesn't even make linear or logical sense!  The fact that it got printed up in cheap newsprint brochures with all his other random musical improvisations is something art historians are shaking their heads about to this day..." 

 

epi/aft a

(the first thing that most people noticed when they stopped by the factory settings in pittsburgh was the mythological substructure, the autumn rhizome, the ethos, the almost pathological 

attention to visual detail, cattail hollow, a lattice, a screen turned in and then back away from 

the public, quite a bit of talk about mystery, many atomics allegedly attuned to the dimension of mystery.  late-night parallelograms slithering over the table and walls, hidden away 

in hotels, whispering about working for animals.  endlessly. that's one of the most dynamic parts of the conceptual narrative!  our own original 

artwork!  appropriated identity!  the fretted colors and textures that the factory settings more or less claimed as their own.  our little visit, followed shortly thereafter by a more significant visit.  fog of

breath noise,  i need sleep!  why are you stalking my dream-states?  may not be very educated, may not know where or how to attend the recital.  but somebody will, nonetheless.  just not sure who that somebody will be.  a list of names and pocket photos.  a similar list of charcoal

themed sketches.  the second thing that most people noticed was in line with a certain how-shall-we-put-this-delicately-but-still-maintain-rigor-inside-a-prison-building-mentality total disregard for statistics.  the statistics were told, in essence, to go take 

a massive hike thru the canyons.  we had gradually moved towards and then into the middle-aged portion of human experience.  taken all-in-all, it was a highly satisfying excursus.  we took our radicalism where we did and could, for the most part.  the basic and agreed-upon factory set of ladder-down-to-core  

satisfactions.  the third thing that most people noticed were a series of digital bridges.  these were based in part on bricks and mortar, and the muddy rivers that double back to the older part of the city.  basel.  pittsburgh.  decatur.  winston salem.  turin.  barrytown.  freiburg.  

chicago.  boulder. vienna.  ames.  london.  mankato.  wilmington.  tokyo.  we wanted to live in that older part, even though we were still very much middle-of-the-road-and-the-age.  the fourth and fifth things had to do with the so-called apocalypse; certain trends in pop culture had infused the old hollywood 

visuals with a new sense of urgency, a sense that this-time-it-really-is-going-to-happen-to-everyone!  not just the shantytown dwellers and not just the privileged few in their towers. for those of you who are interested) (golly jeepers i've already been wrong so many times, golly jeepers, it's almost like my full-blown career) people expect me 

to say "golly jeepers" over and over for no discernible reason and i will indeed i shall at some point i shall say i have a clear cut profession golly jeepers it will be a direct and actual quote not an indirect and oblique 

form of reaching out to infinite strangers although golly jeepers that's sort of how i prefer to interface with quote the general public) we will not shy away from the mythos!  it's the only 

thing that infuses the narrative with a semblance of actual life.  for those of you who are interested, the whole thing started out with a poem.

this poem:

epi/aft

as if remembering a nu time when
the moon never ends its old ocean

orbit. as if reconciled with the cathedral 
of headless and unlettered statues arising 

to view Love Locks forged in the back 
alleys of Logocentrifical Way fare

three rivers converge much like 
arteries driving directly into Saint Heart

and even Candylands Of Pleiades
gently play with Black Satellite Images

housing nipples and phalluses and
a tongue's absent powders from

split pills, distilleries, splintered trees double as 
readymades strewn by thunderstorms and

kinesis ornamenting a pragmatic memoir's
grass of leave's infrared readers.

as if finally reckoning how smooth the roc's
use increases over temperature/friction

folds to infolds under pressure;
the fingers the hands the bones polishing 

the planet's outermost & near-invisible 
layers. as if dreamed and waking bodies 

polish each other digitally and in analogue: 
protolith flowpapers tracing sub-anatomical grace-

bodies between them form chance
revolutions in the deep by co-piloting

collages & diamonds take all the time
in the world to deform their creators.

(written by readers)

(and for those of you are still interested, let me segue right into the follow-up:)

epi/aft 2

(afterwordless)

a sifted remembering 

anulled time carves 
its own primal ocean

curled back inside 

the next handful of quarters

orbit infinity's black
silent, deep, empty, cold, still 

stone cathedrals

headlong silver rushing 

toward dawn pennsylvania

living istats sink down to look 
side-by-side up and out 
into cat's naked hollow

quietly foraged, simmered, and tapped 

in the back alleys of the so-called eBook Highway

where three rivers converge
arteries into doublestained hearts 

and island-chain candylands

seek other tantalizing pleiades in 

one dark huddled mass, almost silent,

amidst countless whispering strangers

who might one day or lost night 

recall the bizarre yin-yang of voices

privately counting down 

to 

the 

next 

escape 

of 

velocity

velocit

veloci me

veloc you 

velo all of them

vel the black star in waiting

ve

v

\

housing ripples and genesis and

a tongue's absent powers inside
split peas spliced/ in fur trees

readymade cytokinesis
lies with thunder
leaves with hoofed readers' infrared 

clip-on fantasies
only just now remembering 

how smooth the full moon slowly rocks
our pure razor-sharp incidentals...

(or our own private emerald in 

neglected evergreen forests)

increases in temperature or
decreation of pressure;
the fingers/hands publishing the
poem bone's outermost layers... 

as if just now semi-dreaming
awake bodies still polishing,

ache-pulsing in digital and analogue forms 

protolithic, flowpapers of traced 
subatomic grains in the gravity

veined over and tangled in

semi-prophesied grace
(well-deserved)

faucets carved out under bodiless 

food from the wide place in the road

forming chance revolutions in the ash of dark 

by co-piloting

collaged 

diamond

bars 

take 

all 

the 

time

in 

the 

nu-multiversal

to 

def ormth eiri magi naryc reato rs

afterworldless

(written by ever-so-slightly-more-adventurous readers)

the train ride, the mainline, the tao te ching, and the overtime.  a wild series of costumes, dress rehearsals, delicate 

late-night strategy sessions, like one might imagine in the governance of an actual people.  does it come as a shock?  well, it shouldn't!  golly jeepers, have you even been paying attention?  

it's a pricey commodity, "true", and people are people are people are animals minerals ethers merry months of may many moments when the crowd isn't looking why why why do we why 

do others gumdrop living alone in an overgrown field summer spear of anonymous grass snaking up leaving blank spaces along the upgrade of living poets' oblivion:

epi/aft 3

(foreworld/forewords)

how much in time does it take to sift the
worlds from their meters? how many

quarters how many full moon cycles
does it take away to make change? why

do the hands stop crafting minutes
and seconds to paint their tips black

like infinity, which has no obvious afterword?
what orbit does the clock take as it

dismantles us headlong, leaving silver
and emerald in its ticking dawn wake?

can writing side-by-side hollow out a
deeper arch for eLove, elov, elve, lov

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
? how high can a back arch with the eStory 

arch under it? how silent must a heart 
beat for the sea to hear its ostensible own?

how loud must the water roar for certain
hearts to quell their escapes? what

breaks the nexus chains that regulate
and count the nu beats? what velocities

does the v use in its folds of timeless
age cities? what black star does infinity

replicate to cloak its last disappearance?
and when did the spliced hoof of Pan

become a readymade in the fantasy
pulsing a nu dream directly into the widest

place in the inter-state, where the v veins
like the l loves: a perfect play's private layers.

(written by increasingly astute and affectionate readers)

the sixth thing that most people noticed was that the so-called initial online encounters were derived 

from a photograph, a single open aerial shot.  wave forms proliferated as their old favorites embraced them, impressed that they were willing to 

venture so far out onto the ledge.  iricoila posted some of the initial results in the coffeshop.  cuspin told her to leave a note for him on the balcony table.  when he arrived 

home, he read it.  and when she saw him reading it carefully, she remembered what she wanted to ask him.  a faint series of 

images had begun to take shape.  the words matched the voices.  the eyes matched the long silences.  after a little more waiting, she enlisted her old friend bp 

nichols to secretly intersect the dynamic while they were out for the day visiting the shops, bridges, and prisons.  iricoila looked over at cuspin 

as they drifted down the boulevard of the allies- "are you paying attention, sir?"  "yes, i am.  the gps indicates that we are on time and on track."  "can we trust it?"  

"i'm not sure that we have a choice at this point."  "i thought you lived here in the 90's."  "yeah, but in an entirely different part of the city."  "oh... so you've never seen the Convergence?"  "only in 

photographs- does that count?"  "wait- is that a trick question?" and thus the conversation continues all the way to the atlantic, where iricoila is considering 

having her portrait painted next summer.  it's a test drive, so to speak, a little spin thru the vortex of space-time, and cuspin is pretty much just tagging 

along for the ride.  he may be rickety but he's clever, and has learned what money can and can't buy.  iricoila trusts him, emphatically.  she doesn't know why, exactly.



epi/aft 4

pier into the vastness  (a late night exchange between almost perfect strangers)

the setting: the distant future. the far end of a splintered boardwalk unraveling out into the atlantic.  cuspin, a tattered, rickety man of indeterminate origin, is calmly leaning forward on the railing, hands folded, gazing out into the stillness, silence, darkness, emptiness, solitude, etc.  after about 4 minutes and 33 seconds, iricoila, smartly dressed and extremely attractive, of equally indeterminate origin, approaches the railing, about 11 feet to cuspin's right.  she too leans forward and begins to gaze out into the vastness.  another 4 minutes and 33 seconds pass uneventfully.  iricoila discreetly glances over at cuspin .  he does not seem to notice this.  another 4'33''.  cuspin discreetly glances over at iricoila.  she does not seem to notice this.  another 4'33''.  out of nowhere, iricoila begins to question the vastness itself.

iri<<< how much time does it take to sift the words from their meters?

(another 4'33'')

iri<<< how much space does it require to give the terms enough breathing room?

(another 4'33'')

iri<<< (looking directly over at cusp) excuse me, sir... do you know what time moonrise is this evening?

(another 4'33)

cusp<<< (looking directly over at iri)  no idea... no idea... sorta wish i had an idea... but my wishing doesn't seem to change anything... no idea... no idea...

(pause)

iri<<< how many convergences do you think so-called "change" might require, sir?

(pause)

cusp<<< no idea, maam... no idea... but to be perfectly honest, i don't even really know what you mean by "convergences"... but my guess would be... a goodly amount... indeed... quite a few of these so-called "convergences"...

(pause)

iri<<< so it's a matter of quantity, then, you imagine...

cusp<<< that's right, maam... that is what i in fact imagine...

(pause)

iri<<< you seem to have quite an intense imagination...

cusp<<< intense... huh... intense... (pause) ...funny you should mention that, maam... i was just thinking tonight that it seemed to be a little bit tense...

iri<<< well, maybe it's both...

cusp<<< that could be...

(pause)

cusp<<< what about yours, maam?  your imagination, that is... could you fish up some adjectives for me? ...throw a scraggly net out into this anonymous vastness?

(long pause)

iri<<< it's beautiful out here...

cusp<<< you mean in there, maam?

(pause)

iri<<< i'm referring to all of it, sir...

cusp<<< oh... i see...

iri<<< starting to get an idea, then, sir?

(pause)

cusp<<< by golly, maybe i am!  

(another 4'33'')

cusp<<< why do the hands stop crafting minutes and seconds to paint their tips black like infinity?

iri<<< infinity often has the last word, you realize...

cusp<<< yes, I realize...

(long pause)

iri<<< wow... it's staggeringly beautiful out here...what orbit does the clock take as it's dismantled, sir?

cusp<<< no idea, maam... sorry.

iri<<< no need to be sorry... it's a really difficult question... no one has answered it yet... 

(long pause)

cusp<<< are you some kind of person in the arts, maam?  in some kind of artistic profession?

iri<<< funny you should ask me that, sir...

cusp<<< call me cuspin...

iri<<< ok... funny you should ask me that, cuspin... a cop asked me the exact same thing a couple hours ago...

(pause)

cusp<<< hope there wasn't any trouble, maam...

iri<<< call me iricoila...

cusp<<< oh... ok... hope there wasn't any unpleasantness...

iri<<< well, cuspin... sorry to disappoint you, but there was... there was in fact a little unpleasantness...

(pause)

cusp<<< would it help to go into it?

(pause)

iri<<< that, my dearest cuspin, is an extremely provocative question... no one has ever asked it of me...

(another 4'33'')

cusp<<< did you say it was going to be a full moon tonight, iricoila?

(pause)

iri<<< how silent must hearts beat for the veins to hear the sea's language?

(pause)

iri<<< what vellum cities does the v use in the salty folds of its soft timeless meter?

(pause) 

cusp<<< you're referring to the tides, maam?  the waves?

iri<<< my name isn't "maam", cuspin...

cusp<<< oh right... pardon me, iricoila.

ra<<< my name is not "iricoila" either...

(extremely long pause)

cusp<<< any chance you know when the spliced hoof of poseidon become a readymade fantasy-ache? 

iri<<< pulsing to be dreamt near the widest place in the inter-state?

cusp<<< where the v veins just referred to like the l laughs and loves?

(pause)

cusp<<< do you remember facebook, by chance?

(pause)

iri<<< exactly, cuspin... you nailed it... it's just like the liking behaviors chronicled in classic facebook mythology...

(cusp and iri discreetly move a few inches closer...)

(note from dramaturg: "every play has inexhaustible layers, most of them unspeakably private, intimate, secret, unfathomable, shipwrecked, etc...")

(written by the actors themselves)

(intermission)



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