| the ax files |

November 4, 2007

REJECTED!

Into the trash with you!

The rejected Halloween 2007 portrait of the author adjusting her drooping King of the Cats ears, by Lola of Café International.

I HAD TO DRAG IT OUT OF THE TRASH

to feature it here. Though hardly the most flattering portrait, unless I wish to feature my age, inherited mother’s bulbous nose, perennial black circles, and if-looks-could-kill moment in time, it is actually a great picture of me. I honestly look like a demon planning her next kill—and, God help me and bless her—“Lola” of Café International happened to capture it. The picture is especially effective accompanied by Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, my world-class background music as I type.

LORD, AT LEAST I CAN LAUGH AT MYSELF, YES?

I love the picture, despite myself, because of its raw depiction of what I call the “half-face” phenomenon of human physiognomy. It is not that of a demon about to change into an angel, but of whatever the demon emerged from. Take a look at each side of the face. One is crafty, yes, mischievous, it’s Halloween, I dare you to fuck with me; the other is actually evil, manipulative, here-I-come-ready-or-not, do NOT fuck with me, woe to you, etc.Oh, as my mother says, “I half to laugh.”Coincidentally, while on dropping lit on the campaign trail, I bought, for six bucks, a copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of Terror and Death, at Adobe Bookshop, might-as-well-be-greatest-bookshop-of-all-time, where the book had come in only yesterday, purchased along with early Kerouac writings Atop an Underwood, resulting in a tab of $19.55, to which I’d said, “Huh?” “$19.55, that’s your total.” Oh! I exclaimed. I was confused, because 1955 is the year I was born…

DURING WHICH ELLIPSIS

I invited myself to a house-warming/birthday party around the corner on Steiner which I heard taking place from my kitchen.

“HELLO!”

I’d said to the puzzled guests at the metal gate, “I live around the corner on Page St. and….” “We don’t live here. The hosts are around somewhere, did you need something?” “Well, I was in my kitchen and heard a post-Halloween party taking place here to which I’d not been invited, so I thought I’d check it out.” They were very welcoming, as I was not there to complain, and I scored a glass of white wine from one of the new tenants. I met some of my neighbors, and in the rear of the complex, had a very pleasant interlude with a fellow named John, who was there because his dog socializes with the dog of the person whose birthday it was, and who “would like to be a writer one day,” to whom I was explaining, though he did not live there, that I wanted to climb the blocked-off stairway to investigate how my flat might have been broken into three times (I was home the third time) and yes, indeed, there was easy access to my “backyard” from that location, though I’d never seen it from that perspective.

AS I LEAVE

people are speculating that I might have been thrown out, having crashed the affair to begin with. “No,” I assure them, “I’m just leaving” To return to this column, my mission accomplished. Idiotically, upon my return to my writing studio, ITunes is playing the theme from “Peter Gunn.” I can’t make this shit up.

Anyway, back to the present and the picture. It is a very fitting Halloween portrait, but I thought the in medias res aspect of the writing portrait more appropriate to the previous column, as it portrayed me writing it…

I found in Lovecraft’s “Nyarlathotep” a strange parallel to the post-Halloween/pre-election atmosphere in San Francisco:

THE GENERAL TENSION WAS HORRIBLE.

To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe has passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.

Or not.

APPARENTLY

not everyone experienced the Halloween I did. I received a sorry email from a friend reading: “Not fair. You had Halloween and I didn’t. I don’t like you anymore.” So sorry, but please address your complaints to:

Supervisor Bevan Dufty

City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244

San Francisco, Ca 94102-4689

(415) 554-6968 - voice (415) 554-6909 - fax

Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org

The devilish author wishes you and yours a Happy November Harvest Festival.

Cheers!

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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner

I had an acid flashback
on the Stairway at Auvers
But when I tried to climb the thing
It vanished into air
If tripping down this thoroughfare
While acid rain is pelting
You'll find youself exclaiming,
"I am melting, melting, melting!"
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Still Halloween to me...
11/4/07

goofcitygoof@yahoo.com