Recap, I
For this recipe you will need:
-1 (one) evening of boredom
-1 (one) evil-ex™ girlfriend, vintage 1999 or before
-1 (one) edited-for-TV version of Batman Returns, playing
-1 (one) caramel-colored bicycle laborer (Pooh hereafter),
-1 (one) Indifferent Monkey (TIM hereafter). Substitutions not recommended.
First, prepare bored evening and put aside, covered, until set. Add Pooh, TIM, and evil-ex™ in small increments to a shallow bowl, stirring until well-mixed. Add mixture to bored evening. Chill before serving (Pooh's unheated house is ideal, but a front porch would also serve). Garnish with inane smalltalk, uncomfortable silences, feigned interest in stupid movie, and lemon wedges.
Holden follows up...
“The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart. I’m not kidding.”
Mr. Antolini
"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." (24)
Lazy River
The Indifferent Monkey knew that the supposed reasons were really just a collection of wildly-exaggerated tales, but the bantering continued nonetheless. He, of course, was not affected by the assertions of friends, nor was he concerned with outcomes except where the mere principle was concerned. So it was that he called a halt to the meandering passage of the ritual ride. So it was that he led the descent into that dank, dark parking deck. So it was that he picked up that grimy receiver, punched those little silver buttons until that familiar voice strick his little round ear, echoing across the leagues. Spokes creaked, yearning for speed. Bricks groaned, protesting unwanted burdens. Furry tails twitched -- not nervous, but expectant -- a summer night that rustles restless before the storm. He spoke:
We know there are no reasons
for anything.
Lazy river,
and we by chance have fallen in,
merely sticks, broken free.
Our paths are set the moment we
hit the churning water --
No word or deed will change our course in the end.
We never know what to
do until, at last, we
only
know what
we should have
done.
Changed,
then forgotten.
Just a hand to hold,
eyes to look in,
words worth saying,
if it should end, after all.
No validation of life,
no res gestae to scribble,
but at least a memory, at least.
Most important now is soon replaced.
Resolutions:
Skele-
tons in closets.
To him the emphasis is on message, not reply. The deck echoed as the coins dropped, the call completed. There was no change in expression, of course. Just that old familiar smirk. And as they sped away, those who had asserted once continued to assert, and so the world spun on. Ask that monkey about that payphone now, and it was just one more stop along the way.
molae machinariae subiugum
Sed ubi me procul a civitate gregarius ille perduxerat, nullae deliciae ac ne ulla quidem libertas excipit. Nam protinus uxor eius, avara equidem nequissimae illa mulier, molae machinariae subiugum me dedit frondosoque baculo subinde castigans panem sibi suisque de meo parabat corio. Nec tantum sui cibi gratia me fatigare contenta, vicinorum etiam frumenta mercennariis discursibus meis conterebat, nec mihi misero statuta saltem cibaria pro tantis praestabantur laboribus. Namque hordeum meum frictum et sub eadem mola meis quassatum ambagibus colonis proximis venditabat, mihi vero per diem laboriosae machinae adtendo sub ipsa vespera furfures apponebat incretos ac sordidos multosque lapide salebrosos (Apuleius Metamorphoses VII.15)
But when hee (to whom the charge of me was so straightly committed) had brought me a good way distant from the City, I perceived no delicate meates nor no liberty which I should have, but by and by his covetous wife and most cursed queane made me a mill Mounkey, and (beating me with a cudgill full of knots) would wring bread for her selfe and her husband out of my skinne. Yet she was not contented to weary me and make me a drudge with carriage and grinding of her owne corne, but I was hired of her neighbours to beare their sackes likewise, howbeit shee would not give me such meate as I should have, nor sufficient to sustaine my life withall, for the barly which I ground for mine owne dinner she would sell to the Inhabitants by. And after that I had laboured all day, she would set before me at night a little filthy branne, nothing cleane but full of stones (Adlington, 1566).
"Desert Places"
The Indifferent Monkey did not shiver, did not chatter, did not huff or puff. He merely quoted Frost:Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with thier empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Endless
The Indifferent Monkey joins us on those lazy summer nights when everyone’s lives shut down and the most pressing concerns are put aside. And so he lounges with us, his friends, on those nightly, street-lit vigils, comfortable on our front-porch thrones and a fistful of popsicles to get us through. The endless passing cars are endless passing lives, and we are the only witness to their passing. Each one has their own story (which we will never know) and each passes by without a glance at us and our dim porch. Crickets sing and cicadas hum, invisible in the lurid orange darkness, and we are the city's secret observers, an island in a sea of concrete and steel. We laugh and hypothesize and whisper our dreams, while all around us Time hurls inexorably onward, deaf to our musings and late for some appointment. But as far as we are concerned, a popsicle never tasted so good, and our separate cares never seemed so far away...
Begin
At 11:26 The Indifferent Monkey wrote:
Maybe I'll post some fragmenta
in the near future.
