Spaceships, Madonna, & Seraphim

 

The most difficult part of beginning a new story is beginning— the rest flows.

Writing to me is simply thinking through your fingers. 

I didn’t say it Isaac Asimov did— duck soup with teeth. But, I could think through my fingers for an eternity and never write a sentence of science fiction. 

I'm not disinterested in the stratosphere, occasionally I gaze at the stars like an ant looking up at a giraffe. 

But, my take on outer space is twisted, look for yourself, here’s a bit from a story I wrote a couple of years ago, Missiles, Fruit Flies, & Psychosis—

Further out in left field, let's mix Heaven with rocket science. 

As the Discovery shuttle jets through the outer regions of the thermosphere, it blows spent rocket fuel and ghastly smoke out of its propelling nozzle. 

The astronauts are altitude sick, puking spent residues of their wet food lunch into paper barf bags, unaware their craft is soaring uncomfortably close to the doorway of Heaven because it doesn’t show on the radar. 

The intrusion rattles the Angels, the sentries at Saint Peter’s Gate— Like Roman warriors, the Seraphim execute a simultaneous action. God’s Guardians lock arms, forming a circle around the thrusting craft, flapping their wings, generating a strapping force, and pitching the rocket out of Heaven’s sphere.

I don’t think you can call this science fiction, moreover, it’s an example of what happens when the working wheels of humankind enter the realm of Heaven uninvited— as you would expect God and His Guardian Angels have the last laugh on the hapless Homo sapien sapiens. 

There’s a recent snapshot of Madonna attending the student fashion show at the eminent art school Central Saint Martens in New York City.

The one-time material girl, who was materialistic before it was cool, is wearing her hair in double braids. A hairstyle I’m partial to, more than partial really— my heart goes boom, boom, when I see a woman with double braids. 

While Sean Penn was married to Madonna in the eighties, the couple visited his longtime pal, Charles Bukowski one afternoon, who was living in his two-story house in San Pedro, California with Linda Lee. 

The newlyweds show in a limo— as they get out a neighborhood kid spies Madonna and in no time there’s a mob of striplings standing in front of Bukowski’s house, hooting. 

Buk walks outside in his bathrobe to see about the racket— his neighbors weren’t aware he was a world-famous author because they were strictly whitebread.

One of the rug rats walks up to Buk, who's standing on the driveway, tugs on his robe, saying excitedly,  

Uncle, it's Madonna, Madonna's here.

The scene humbles Bukowski as he realizes his grapefruit-size balls only beguile a few, and when it comes to groupies, Madonna wins in a walk.

I couldn’t find a thing on the internet about the Bukowski, Penn, and Madonna meeting. So I made the preceding scene up, impetuously adding the bit about Buk's balls, nervous it might not go over.

As a jazz buff, I couldn't name one of Madonna's songs, but I’ve been falling for her for a couple hours now— regardless of her age and the nip and tucks, that fucking face dogs me to the bone. 

She owes her plastic surgeon one for the chiseled features, and those kissable lips, because the doctor created a masterpiece.

I followed @Madonna on Twitter half an hour ago and got a notification she followed me back—  my heart jumped, then I realized it was a copycat profile, without the blue verification badge. Going on to message me, a Janus-faced Nigerian says he's sending me 6000 dollars, seconds later the account disintegrates before my eyes, melting away, busted by the Twitter police, and banned.

I’m gonna steady my machete and say goodnight to the Queen of Reinvention.

It’s a new day and I’m back to not giving a tin shit about Madonna, the way it’s always been.

Here's a list of nine writing styles I'll loosely cover at this time, without a shred of seriousness. 

Comedy, drama, horror, realism, romance, satire, tragedy, thriller, and fantasy.

Horror— does nothing for me, take the worst nightmare you've ever had, do you want to relive it? Daily life is enough of a horror show. 

Comedy— most comedians aren’t funny, particularly stand-up comedians. 

Take Ricky Gervais’s stand-up hit, Supernature, it leaves you flat. 

Ricky’s introduced by Warwick Davis, his dwarf pal, can I say dwarf? Announcing, 

ladies and gentlemen, here’s a man who doesn’t know why he’s here, RICKY GERVAIS!

Indeed, why was he there? 

Gervais's handlers should have let Warwick do the stand-up routine, people are gaga for pygmies, going stark mad when they dance.

Or Seinfeld, maybe he and Larry David think being Jewish is a ticket to funny paradise. I never got it, there was nothing funny about the sitcom Seinfeld. And, the show had canned laughter, which is odd, like the guys in the control room are letting you know it’s time to laugh even though the bit is dying on the vine.  

Romance— honestly I don’t have a romantic bone in my body, my relationship with my girlfriend is habit that's all. Good sex for us has been over for a long time, and our conversations are limited to the dogs, what did you eat, and where are you going?

But of course women crave romance and men just wanna fuck. Take a long-term marriage when wifey, out of desperation, dresses like a whore to turn hubby on. Proof that romance is a fading commodity, headed downhill at the alter. 

Satire— now, that moves me, here's the dictionary definition.

The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in topical issues.

Have you met many stupid people? You won’t because there aren’t any, and by chance, if they admit to being stupid, trust me they don’t believe it.

Most stupidity is a put-on. 

Take the Southern Belle in Gone With the Wind, who’s wooing a gentleman caller, oozing diffidence, trying to reel the guy in, falling over everything he says, as though she doesn’t have a thought in her head. Who in reality is wicked smart.

As for people's vices, only a few divulge the secrets of their nasty fantasies. I'd rather hear about their fetishes and eating disorders.

Anis Nin made it clear in her writing that her primary concern in life was cuming. That was fifty years ago and things haven't changed, people still love to cum, OH GOD, DON'T STOP, OH MY GOD I'M CUMING.

Fantasy— take Disney's animated movies, favorites like Bambi, Pinocchio, or The Lion King, all of them are tragic, even the puppet Pinocchio was duped into a life of sin by Happy John, making a few bucks, then cursed by the Blue Fairy for lying about money with a nose that grew when he lied. His reality was a freakshow, blame the puppeteer.

Realism—  real writing about people's lifes. Personally, I don’t want to know the details and don’t want to look too closely.

Thrillers— there are too many Hollywood action films that are remakes of the same basic plots. Take Top Gun Maverick, can you believe they're digging the dinosaur up? It's all about money, like most things. Val Kilmer is half in the grave and the makers of TG 2 or Butt Wipe 2, are reviving his character using an expensive camera with 6 lenses.

The film has as much chance as pigs do flying at winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

If you’re looking for cheap thrills, go home and role-play with your old lady. Dress like whoever you want, a plumber, maid, bellboy, nurse, milkman, or your favorite Muppet. I liked Oscar the Grouch who lived in a garbage can because somebody thought he was deposable. No wonder he's a grump.

I’ve plum-tuckered out folks, time for some red curry soup and rice. 

Monkeypox, Living Rough, & Indian Trains

 

There’s a new virus in town, a real freak show, that makes Covid look like Bambi. Introducing Monkeypox.

Monkeypox is novel—  everyone in the world knows you have it because your face and body is covered with lesions.

The origin of Monkeypox is a matter of speculation by officials, who initially declared it was sexually transmitted, which always seems to be the first culprit.

You would think the genesis of the virus is the usual stuff— animals, bats, monkeys, hyenas, eating them or getting bitten.

Eventually the officials— have you seen an official lately? Do they wear lanyards with cards reading— OFFICIAL? 

Anyway, the officials have now decided there are no documented cases of Monkeypox being spread by sex— instead, more conventionally, it’s transmitted through close contact with infected people or contaminated materials.

So Monkeypox is spread the way covid is when viral droplets in the air get into bodily openings— mouth, eyes, and nose. 

Lucky for us, Monkeypox, discovered in a lab in 1958, will only have fifteen minutes of fame, this time around. 

I have been struck down by the making ends meet blues—  payoff for a lifetime of failing to prioritize money, but I ain’t busted yet. 

When I go broke you’ll see a blog post here reading, 

Figaro Lucowski has offed himself, overdosing on laughing gas slash Nitrous Oxide— busting a gut all the way to Heaven. 

Being destitute is the heaviest burden imaginable. 

The homeless, who are everywhere, have the hearts of lions— how else could they endure? 

Street people live to drink and dope, it’s all they have, and most likely the shit’s the reason they’re down.

For some unorthodox authors, living rough, drifting, and using is the wellhead of their writing. 

When Charles Bukowski’s father discovered he’d been writing stories on the typewriter they bought to help with his college work, his old man tossed the manuscripts, the typewriter, and his son’s clothes out onto the lawn. Bukowski took ten dollars from his mother and caught a bus to downtown LA where he rented a cheap room.

After working menial jobs in LA for a few months he caught a bus to New Orleans, finding work in a warehouse and saving his money until he had enough to quit and pay his rent in advance so he could stay in his room all day and write. 

When he ran short of money, he tried to live on candy bars to postpone getting another— eight-hour job of nothingness.

Jack Kerouac used drugs like amphetamine, marijuana, and alcohol, to fuel his writing. He wrote Dharma Bums in three days, jacked up on bennies. 

The Beat icon drank cheap wine and wrapped himself in a canvas tarp to keep warm at night in the Big Sur wilderness— living rough as he traveled the US, later writing On the Road. 

Hunter S. Thompson used everything imaginable to fuel his riotous writing, but, he wasn’t one for living rough on the road, preferring luxurious hotels if the bosses at Rolling Stone Magazine would flip the bill.

For the last month, I’ve been living in a dump in Pattaya, Thailand, coming to terms with it by telling myself a great artist has to suffer—cough, excuse me I've choked on a peanut shell. 

Yet, feeling sublime, working on my laptop, listening to epicurean jazz, roasted on Tramadol— writing, a little dope, and good music can elevate you above the milieus of life

I live in bed, sitting up, inclined on a few pillows set at an angle against the headboard, with my laptop on my forelegs.

Everything in the world is at your fingertips on a computer— the breathtaking, the laughable, and the grotesque.   

I eat in bed too, because I’ve lived in small rooms most of my life. But, the only thing I don’t do in bed is screw— sad, isn’t it? Beds are made for sleeping and screwing. 

As for sleeping, sleep hallucinations freak me out. They are different from dreams— you know right away when you wake from a dream that you were dreaming. In a sleep hallucination, you may not be able to figure out what is real and what isn't for several minutes. 

Several minutes of hanging out to dry on a clothesline in gagaville— your head feels like mush as it’s sending a message to the rest of your body to keel over. 

When I get out of bed in the morning, I put on my jockey shorts and go to the kitchen to make coffee, mixing it with hot milk. 

I think most people in the world need the jolt they get from caffeine, be it coffee or tea before they begin their day.

Starbucks is out for me because lattes are pricey, and their brew is overrated. There's a chain of coffee houses here in Thailand called Amazon, which is half the price and less pretentious than Starbucks. 

Years ago while traveling second class by train in India, just a bump above sleeping on the floor, I was wakened by the sound of squeaking brakes, getting out of my wooden seat and walking the aisle, looking for the privy. 

As you would guess, the water closet was rank— a hole that opened up right onto the tracks. If you're traveling in India second class on a tight budget it helps to have a sense of humor. So, I drop my cut-offs and let it fly, pitying the Untouchables living near the tracks in tar paper huts, polluting their groundwater. 

I wash up at the sink outside of the WC, splashing my hands and face with brown water— afraid of catching cholera if I brush my teeth, and rinse. 

Walking the aisle of the succeeding car I spy an animated brown man in a white robe squatting near a large black pot of boiling milk, Masala tea, sugar, and freshly, chopped ginger. He’s one of the trains Chaiwallahs, tea makers.

He hands me a large metal cup, it's Masala Chai tea. I drink two more cups of the savory brew standing astride in the aisle of the shaky train. 

Back at my seat, an old Indian woman is sitting in my place, I surrender without a fuss, sitting on the floor. Eventually, for kicks, I climb on the moving train's rooftop— sitting there holding onto a vent for dear life as the Indians who are jam-backed by my side laugh at me.

Soon the train reaches Pondicherry Station, my destination. I grab my canvas bag and get off, at the station entrance I get in a bicycle rickshaw, taking the slow road to the Butterfly Hotel, next to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 

I take a cold shower, and change my clothes, wearing light cotton slacks, a t-shirt, and rubber slippers.

In the area outside the hotel, I notice a group of European devotees from the ashram, exchanging blissful looks, knowing they are too high for me, I avoid them.

Downtown, walking the bustling city streets I look for Shantytown, where the poor live. 

At Shantytown, I follow a water-logged pathway passing dried mud huts with blankets as doorways, in no time smelling burning hashish, scoring a tola for a thousand Rupees. 

Back at the Butterfly hotel, I lay in bed, tuning in a cheap plastic radio as I puff burning hashish in a clay chillum, listening to sitar and tabla music on the local radio station, getting higher and higher until my body is hovering on the ceiling looking down at myself in bed. 

This is a good place to end this story within a story, on the ceiling of the Butterfly Hotel. 

I’m a Louse, a Schnuck, & a Loser

 

I feel like a dog with no home, depressed. I thought I had whipped it months ago, but the shit has come back for another round. 

If the black hole is back, I’ll take the goddamn meds, it’s no big deal. 

Psychotropic drugs have vastly improved over the years. 

 

In the nineties when you ate psycho dope it stirred through your body to your head leaving you with a dull ache similar to what you'd get if you drank a 500 ml bottle of artificial vanilla extract.

Blue or not, I spend 80 percent of my time in bed writing, reading eBooks downloaded from PDF Drive, eating, and downing a few Tramadol.  

Jack Nicholson spent a lot of time in bed reading at his Beverly Hills house, lying or sitting up on the same half of the bed which was imprinted by his bulk, calling it the dent.

My mattress doesn’t have a dent, because I’ve positioned a couple pillows under it on the cut slats. 

I'm going to write a story on the party scene at Nicholson’s house on Mulholland Drive during the seventies and eighties.

It was party central in Beverly Hills, there were loads of good times and a few bad.

I wrote a story in defense of Roman Polanski years ago, attributing his creative power and proclivity for Lolitas to his childhood existence— at four he was savaged by the Nazi SS, who’d shoot apples out of his hands for sport. To his credit, little Roman had balls and never flinched.  

One sunny afternoon at Nicholson’s house Polanski was coked up while doing a photoshoot of a 13-year-old girl in the backyard. 

Everybody in the world knows what happened next— the spook incapacitated the pretty baby with champagne and half a Quaalude, having sex with her in the pool. 

Maybe Roman was unaware she was 13, she was precocious and didn’t look her age. But, he has a history of molesting minors. 

Polanski fled to France when his lawyer told him the judge wasn’t going to accept his guilty plea. 

To this day France refuses to extradite him to the US, and his team of international lawyers has been playing ping pong with the LA prosecutor's office for years.

In 2011 Nicholson’s voodoo-cursed house on Mulholland Drive burned down, so he put the land up for sale, surely it's sold already. I wonder if the buyers knew the land is hexed.

Strolling through Twitter you see award-winning authors— writers who aren't famous and have a couple of thousand followers. 

There are lots and lots of awards out there, thousands, millions— a host of literary outfits run corny contests to decide who's a winner and who isn't.

Being an award-winning author must be good for the ego. 

FIGARO LUCOWSKI, AWARD WINNING AUTHOR 

That doesn't sound right. 

Do you think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will give someone an award who doesn’t know the difference between an African mosquito and a Tsetse fly?  

If there was an award for mad as March, that'd be mine.

I’m a louse, a schnuck, and a loser— living on bones, nervously waiting for payday at the end of the month, eating sardine and bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread, drinking mugs of Kool-Aid— jailhouse cuisine. 

When I think of eminent jazz saxophonists three come to mind— Art Pepper, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, all of them junks. 

Stan Getz reminds me of Bing Crosby, both were handsome and clean-cut. You'd never think Getz was a junky because he looked super straight.

Twelve years ago I wrote, I Gotta Feed My Man, a story about Art Pepper.  

Laurie Pepper was the only person on the West Coast jazz scene who wasn't put off by Art's complexity and addiction.

They were soulmates, she saved his life, got him off of junk, and organized his life.

Straight Life, Art's fabulous book on his life would have never been published without Laurie.

As a rule, people who kick junk love the freedom it gives them. In Art’s case, he said,

hey, I’ve never played better and I don’t have tracks on my arms anymore.  

My junk is Thai beer with ice. That’s how they drink it here. I drink two every evening. 

As for weed, it’s overrated — it makes you stupid.

I usta read loaded, reading the same page over and over.

Not to say that ganja isn’t a beautiful drug— it’s helped many people through many things. 

When I edit my work stoned I’m overly critical.

Blasted one night I almost deleted my seventeen-year-old blog— I reckoned my work was stupid and felt scared and ashamed. I had a panic attack and urgently needed a valium. 

In Thailand, a few pharmacies sell the relaxatives for less than twenty Baht apiece, but they are few and far between so you have to fish them out. 

Anyway, I can score valium or Xanax in Pattaya in a flash from a certain pharmacy near the beach.

Scoring Xanax in Thailand doesn’t compare to William Burroughs's junky lifestyle in Mexico City during the early fifties— day after day hustling to score Dilaudid to cook and shoot up.  Dilaudid is five times more potent than most street heroin.  

Old Bill Lee and his junky pal Bill Gains, worked every imaginable angle— forging scripts, paying Mexican doctors for scripts, or occasionally finding pharmacists who sold Dilaudid under the counter. 

Burroughs tried to kick a number of times, succeeding occasionally, cross addicting to booze. The downside was he drank a 1/5 of gin a day and couldn't handle it— he was a wretched and mean drunk. 

Towards the end of his life, William lived with his secretary James Grauerholz in a typical ranch-style house, isolated in the bush outside of Lawrence, Kansas— drinking scotch and poking syringes of methadone in what fatty tissue he had left on his cadaverous body.    

Old Bill Lee lived in the same house for seventeen years, dying of a heart attack at a Lawrence Hospital in 1997 at eighty-three.  

His death put an end to a lifetime of carrying 300 pounds of remorse around after killing his platonic wife Joan Vollmer during a drunken game of William Tell, missing the cocktail glass on her head, and shooting her in the forehead. 

In 1951 after serving thirteen days in a Mexico City jail, his family bribed the Mexican judges, freeing him from the joint, so he fled the country.

I live in Thailand to make ends meet, and none of my acquaintances here understand or read my work. 

Yesterday a pal, who’s no literato, told me my stories are crazy. 

I suppose they are, but here's an excerpt from Ducks Flying Backwards by Tom Robbins that he'd think is crazy too.

Should readers desire to make their own pilgrimage to the Canyon of the Vaginas—and it is, after all, one of the few holy places left in America—they’ll have to find it by themselves. Were one to inquire of its whereabouts at a bar or gas station (in west-central Nevada they’re often one and the same, complete with slot machines), the best that one could hope for is that a dude would wink and aim one at the pink gates of Bobbie’s Cottontail Ranch, or whatever the nearest brothel might be called.

Anyway, what the fuck? Whatever people think is— A BIG NOTHING at a time when the worldwide balance of power is on thin ice, and we're a heartbeat away from a war somewhere in the world employing light nuclear weapons between the Western alliance, and you name it— China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran.

Not to mention the precarious positions of the global economy, as well as, the mega-mounds of non-degradable plastics in garbage dumps and the ocean seriously plaguing all life forms.

The Martians, planted the seed for life on planet earth millions of years ago, giving us an organic vehicle to call our own — but we need a new car, and there are no planets in the universe for sale. 

If we collectively think positively, evil will evaporate. 

Tony Robbins doesn't like being called a guru, but, I agree with him when he says, thinking positive isn’t enough to change ourselves and the world around us. 

And may I add, at this point, taking action might not be enough, WE NEED A NEW PLANET AND THERE ARE NONE FOR SALE. 

Listening to Pharoh Sander's Journey to One— I realized when the planet is cracking at the seams,

paradise lives in your mind and soul, it's there for you.