Dispatches from Terra Incognita 2

A New Genre

Nov 18, 2024

Terra incognita world map (1565), 59'' x 34'' - OldMapster

As of late I have become excited about focusing exclusively on the “dispatch” as a genre. Certainly, other authors’ short prose has been juxtaposed in books, and yet I feel this is a new genre of sorts—one that is especially suitable for Substack. Think of my “dispatches” as notes from a bottle sent by an aging humanist stuck on an island of uncertainty, as he tries to make sense of a world where the grand narratives he has lived by and satirized are fading faster than an aging action hero’s career.

*******

In 1971 I was twenty and working as a copy boy at the Buffalo Evening News, where I ended up befriending a typesetter named Hank. He was a six-foot-six biker who was part of a “Motorcycle Club,” modeled after Hell’s Angel’s. He always wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a leather jacket, and broken-in engineer boots. He liked me, and whenever I bumped into him at Mulligan’s Brick Bar, he’d buy me shots of tequila. He had huge hands, and it was clear he could hurt someone if he needed to, but I never saw that side of him.

One night he told me to follow him to a party in a tough neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo. Upon arriving, I discovered a smorgasbord of drugs, alcohol, and the kind of women I had only seen in those ’60s Drive-In Biker Movies like The Mini-Skirt Mob. I would like to romanticize this experience, as we boomer males are wont to, recounting the debauched erotic evening I experienced, but, quite frankly, these women scared me.

Still, I decided to stay, finding myself, at the end of the night, sitting on a beat-up leather recliner, staring at other people stretched out half-comatose on couches arranged to form a circle. Everyone was shooting up, and it was moving my way. As I watched things transpire, I noticed Hank staring curiously at me from across the room. Not angry. Not disappointed. “Amused” would best describe his countenance.

At that point, I looked closely at my companions, suddenly wondering how this old Catholic boy had gotten himself into such a situation. That’s when a visceral breath-taking chill came over me, and I said softly to myself, “What the fuck, Peter?” After which, I left the house, stumbling toward my 1959 Rambler American.

I’d like to say my sensible decision stemmed from the way I was raised—that is, my good breeding and the kindness and decency taught to me by my parents, especially my mother. Or maybe I was too smart to do something that dumb.

But here’s the real reason I bolted:

I was lucky. Maybe if I had been more drunk, or had smoked a bit more hashish, or if my girlfriend of two years had just dumped me for some Adonis in his second year of law school, I could have easily made a different decision.

A few days after the party, Hank asked me, “Why didn’t you shoot up?”

I told him that I wasn’t quite sure.

“I wouldn’t have let you do it anyway,” he said, punching me hard in the arm.

****

I knew a guy who spent his whole life analyzing everyone’s imperfections, surprised when, on his deathbed, he discovered that those imperfections were, in fact, his own.

****

“It’s infuriating,” I tell my friend the way guys compare women to cars, talking about their ‘sleek lines’ and ‘strong chassis,’ not to mention what a ‘great ride’ certain ladies can give a man.”

“Agreed,” my friend says. “Which is why I think, especially in terms of the ride metaphor, a comparison to a horse is far more exact.”

“I think you missed my point,” I say.

****

“The first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”
This from Franz Kafka. I love the guy but sometimes wish he didn’t sound like my Uncle Lenny, who sucked the life out of every party by getting drunk, talking about his ex-wife’s infidelity, and then crying.

****

I’m sitting in a coffee shop awaiting the return of the dinosaurs, longing for the simplicity of tooth and claw. But today all I see are birds, who, by all accounts, are the last remaining lineage of dinosaurs. You could argue that this diminishes one’s fantasies about the prehistoric age, and yet this knowledge has given me more respect for this cardinal, happily perched on my birdfeeder, not to mention that fat drab robin, who arrives each morning to torment my pug outside our sliding glass doors.

****

A philosophical theorem in the shape of a dream where a very holy man in a straw hat appears at my bedside to calmly explain that evil people are composed from the snot of the Devil (who really does exist, by the way). You will of course dispute this on the same grounds you won’t accept, despite considerable evidence, that the skunk is a metaphor for the human heart. What I’m arguing here is that, at the current time, our overriding problem is the existence of a surplus of reality. Gone are the figments of the imagination—the hard-earned symbolism and hocus pocus that defines who we really are. What to do when a rat is merely a rat? The next thing you know the unimaginative will make suffering commonplace, instead of just pointing to the mark of the Serpent’s bite illustrated in a holy book that no one reads anymore.

****

This from Eduardo Galeano’s The Book of Embraces:
On his deathbed, a man of the Vineyard’s spoke into Marcela’s ear. Before dying, he revealed his secret.
“The grape,” he whispered, “is made of wine.”
Marcela Perez-Silva told me this, and I thought: If the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are.

****

She says, “I’m dying. Right now,” which naturally attracts the attention of other patients in the waiting room. “I can see Jesus,” she says. “He’s floating towards me.” “What does he look like?” I ask. “He’s beautiful with long shiny blond hair, just like in the paintings. “Pray for my son, Peter!” she says—an exclamation accompanied by a death rattle that sends other patients scurrying.

An hour later, we’re sitting at Ted’s Texas Red Hots eating footlongs with all the trimmings, knowing Jesus will have to wait until another day.

****

Today an ex-president called migrants “animals,” a black prosecutor a “racist,” and warned of an inevitable “bloodbath” if he weren’t elected president—all in one speech. A kind of a Trifecta of Insanity. And still half the country will vote for him, believing they are significant characters in a limited series, instead of like smug atheists, who after dying, will become terrified as they come face-to-face with a very pissed-off God.

Meanwhile on a quiet spring day bursting with joy, I contemplate the millions of stubbles I have shaved off my face over the years, not to mention all the diapers I have changed.

****

Autocracy: Repetition waiting in a dark alley with its heavy blackjack, ready and willing to bludgeon the marvelous into submission.

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

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