Poe Poe Pitiful Me

One of the most revered forms of American literature is the horror story. Several of my European friends are confused by the appeal of Ambrose Bierce, or HP Lovecraft, or the amazing EA Poe. I don’t know if Poe is my favorite, but each of his stories resonates with a terror I have built from unremembered incidents mortared with free-floating anxiety.

Last night I went to a lovely interpretation of several of Poe’s stories presented by a local theater production group called Meat & Potato Theater. The production was called “con·temp·POE·rar·y” and included songs composed from the plot of some of his stories as well as a puppet interpretation of the pit and pendulum. It was innovative and interesting.

The biggest reason I went was that Beatrice had broken the ghosting and asked me to go. I went knowing it was an emotional ambush. She had sent me a couple hate-filled emails that mentioned a dozen convoluted insults she had received over the course of our years-long relationship that had come to an abrupt confusing halt that-wasn't-really-an-end-or-something over the course of two face-to-face meetings spaced over two weeks. The final “fight-or-meeting” involved us declaring our love for each other while crying and feeling like crap. That’s not even a fight; is it?

In Poe’s “A Cask of Amontillado” the protagonist lures an unsuspecting victim who was guilty of some insult into a dark and malodorous trap by offering him something that he would be irresistibly drawn to taste. In Poe’s story the lure is a cask of sherry. The lure of the possibility of some emotional connection to Beatrice would prove irresistible to me, but any one of you, my readers, would know that as well as Beatrice and her conspirators; I am an easy mark when tempted by love.  

“This is a very good joke, indeed. Many times will we laugh about it” EA Poe (cask of Amontillado)

Whatever our last icky interaction was the follow up was week-after-week of ghosting followed -just yesterday- by a couple emails dripping with hate, but including a strange invitation to rebuild something from the starting point of “friends” at the end. I, of course, jumped on this apparent invitation as if I could not help myself. I could watch myself putting out vulnerable feelers, and getting partial assurances in return. Beatrice suggested this play as a place to meet. There was a little too much serendipity in the choice. She was an event organizer for a “Queer Friends” (QF) meetup group event to see the play, and I had a ticket from an aborted date that ended weeks before it had taken place. I had applied to be in QF quite a while earlier, and the organizer had sat on my application till shortly before this event. QF is a small 600 person Salt Lake City social meetup group for people in or connected to the LGBTQ spectrum, and is the dating group for the inner circle of event organizers, like Beatrice.

In Poe’s story “The Pit and The Pendulum” the protagonist explores a strange pitch-black cell by feel. He attempts to discern the dimensions of the cell in the absence of any visual information. He creates a reference point, and uses familiar methods of determining distance. Instead of fully realizing the nature of his pitch-black surroundings these familiar groundings only reveal the horror of a slime covered dungeon room with a deep pit in the center populated by huge rats. The clever and familiar methods only help to underscore the depth of the terror.

“Listen! Listen, and I will tell you how it happened. You will see, you will hear how healthy my mind is” EA Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart)

I only asked Beatrice to be gentle with my feelings. I did not want to be the third wheel in some PDA festooned date she was having with someone else. She acknowledged the request, but didn't specifically agree to it; I was specific though: “I will not go if this is a date night with you and someone else”.

In The Murders of the Roux Morgue Poe creates a protagonist whose reasoned investigation reveals more horrific and bizarre information as it progresses towards its fantastical final discovery. The lack of information provides clues to the investigator as often as the presence of bizarre evidence. Even as the case inexorably turns somewhat bizarre it does not give away the final bizarre twist.

Beatrice stopped communicating with me before the play. She knew the window it would take for me to get from work to the play would probably be 3 hours since I would need to change. During this window the woman I thought she might be on a date with RSVP’ed for the play; I knew this because the commute went early and I had a bit of time to log on to see if Beatrice had warned me of an impending date. She had not warned me; nothing from Beatrice.

“His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.” EA Poe (Murders at the roux morgue)

I knew the play was going to be an emotional ambush. The cruelty and vindictiveness needed for that sort of low-blow attack was mirrored in the hateful speech of the emails. One of the features of the emails was a switch in tone like Beatrice was trying to put in more barbed phraseology suggested by others. She accused me of contradictory offenses, and suggested that some behaviors were the normal actions that illuminated the degree of abnormal activity for one offense just before using them as indicators of mental insufficiency in another.

If she wanted an ambush so bad I would give her a victim. It was just an evening. If she needed emotional blood I would bleed for her; silent and stoic. My vanpool riders were amazed that I would go with what I suspected was going to happen. I felt embolden. I was looking and feeling strong. I had a few notches I could be taken down.

I had the Barista at Starbucks take my photo so I could have proof that I was smiling as I prepared to go to the ambush

I arrived at the theater right on time. For a second I felt dread as I approached the large glass windows fronting the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center building.

“There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.” EA Poe (Fall of the house of Usher)

I got a nod of recognition when I sat down on the far right hand side of the row of QF. There were two people sitting between myself and Beatrice. The woman I recognized as her probable date sat on the other side of her. I said hello to the woman who I had met at a previous event sitting next to Beatrice on my side, but she was strangely dismissive of my hello. Beatrice and her date barely acknowledged me. When the play began Beatrice and her date began stroking each other’s thighs, and holding hands when that got too hot.

At the intermission the two women on either side of Beatrice went to the bathroom, and Beatrice feigned a distanced hello to see if the PDA was working. I tried to provide a heartbroken smile to justify her subterfuge that got me there for the hurt.

The second act began with the woman sitting next to Beatrice on my side snuggling into her so aggressively that it had the lesbian couple sitting behind them sniggering in slight disapproval. I was in awe at just how terrific this ambush was. I was ambushed by a threesome of over-the-top PDA. Right now they are assuredly having much more fun exploring the possibilities of that affection than I am writing this post.

I thanked them as I left, and walked with a strange energy to my step back to my car.

“And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.” EA Poe (The Masque of the red death)

Ghost Dove

This is a cross-post with Daily Dead Bird

I saw a bird carcass today that stared at me with a haunting hollow gaze that followed me as I walked past it. It was so disconcerting that I retraced my couple-few steps to see if it was paralyzed or dazed. It lay on its back with unruffled feathers and the legs pulled in slightly. I imagined it sat like one of Audubon’s recently killed specimens; waiting patiently to become the animated subject of one of his paintings.

As I looked down at the bird its gaze was deeper than I imagined a bird’s could be. I imagine birds, especially doves like this bird, having the flighty stare of the eponymous “bird-brained”. The gaze was deep and black. It was several seconds of staring, and perhaps a shift in my shadow that let a little more light fall on the carcass, before I noticed a bit of skull in the stare. The bird’s head had been hollowed out, presumably by insects overnight, and the complicating stare was only shadow.

I believe the bird’s death progressed thusly: first the bird was flooded with the emotions and pain associated with the insult that killed it, then, as the support systems went offline, the brain ceased to provide an adequate mechanism to coordinate thoughts and everything was dumped as a jumble of unfiltered perception, then the brain turned off and there were no more thoughts. Later the brain would be eaten by insects. I bet the insects bored their way into the fatty neural tissue through the delicately soft and wet eyes.

“The eyes are a doorway to the soul” –unknown

There is a line of classical belief that takes the knowledge that the brain is the thinking organ of the body and uses faulty logic to suggest that those creatures which eat the brain gain some of the thoughts of the creature that used that brain while alive. There should be some pupating maggot meditating on the fact that the sunflower seeds in Hickman Canyon are particularly tasty this year. Another is probably just reliving the question: “Will this red tailed hawk be my friend if I say hello?”

Although it is somewhat humorous to imagine some carrion-feeding insect reliving the last bad decision of this bird it requires too many peculiar leaps of irrationality to make that something that is believable. The implications are interesting. Imagine a dermestidae beetle, which ingested the last fateful decision of the dove, being eaten by another bird; would this confer selective advantage to the new possessor of this dead dove’s wisdom? Could wisdom and knowledge be calculated by caloric content?

We impart meaning and substance to the fate of our most precious organs, but the more incredible implications of that become awkward to process. This is one of the things that faith is used for; to stifle questions about the implications of what is believed. I think it is better to just not believe. Just because it is fun to imagine fantastical possibilities does not mean we have to also believe in them. Belief is so cumbersome that it prevents imagining the complete vibrant spectrum of fantastical impossibilities.

I had seen the bird staring at me. I imagined that it was lying paralyzed beside the road; only able to plead its case with the look in its eyes. I had wondered, for a few brief seconds, if it thought I was a predator or instead a creature that would save it from being easy unmoving prey for a predator. I imagined all of these thoughts, most of which were probably too complex for a live dove’s brain, occurring just behind that hollow stare.

Sign for Utah Pride Parade 2016

Here is the finished sign I talked about a couple posts ago.  It is amazingly similar to the original design.  Clearly legible from a long distance.  I like it.  It is made with a measurable amount of win.

But there is hidden win behind the artsy semi-free-form lettering and awesome color scheme.  This sign is made of fiberboard, and is orders of magnitude stronger than ones made with standard poster-board or foam core.   This sign could withstand the impact of a vigorously launched rock or bottle.  In order to leverage this capability I designed a handle setup that allows the sign to work as a shield.  Here is a picture of the back.

 I put some paint on the back so I could tell which side was up without looking at the front.  The handle system is constructed from two sections of 2x3s and 2 pieces of 1 inch hardwood dowel.   The dowels act as the actual handles.  Here is a closeup of a dowel.

The handles allow the sign to be carried without grasping it from the sides.  Fingers do not obstruct the front of the sign, and the fingers are protected from being bashed.  This was, of course, the real reason for the handle system, but the fact that it turns the sign into a modestly effective shield is a bonus capability.

*UPDATE*

And here is the sign just about to be used in the parade: