allen frost library

Trees in the Asylum Garden

2012-02-14T19:37:00.001-08:00

TREES IN THE ASYLUM GARDEN

“It is like the pollard willows of our Dutch meadows or the oak bushes of our dunes; the rustle of an olive grove has something very secret in it, and immensely old. It is too beautiful for us to dare to paint it or to be able to imagine it.”

*Letter from Vincent Van Gogh, May 1, 1882 (1)

“There was something that lurked in the dark. It could not be imagined. It could not be described.”

*The Monster from Earth’s End (2)

Amid the cabbage plants, mosses and lichens, tussock grass, stunted forest tangled with daisies and buttercups, something else spread across the tundra of Gow Island in 1959. The violence, insanity and horror that steadily took over there appealed to director Michael Hoey who confessed, “Around 1959, I read a book called The Monster from Earth’s End by Murray Leinster. I was very taken with it and thought, ‘Gee, this could be an exciting film.’” (3)

The administrating officer, Drake, tries to remain rational throughout his experience on the small island, “In a real world, everything follows natural laws. Impossible things do not happen. There is an explanation for everything that does happen.” (4) Despite such assurance, Drake begins to slip and admits to himself, “On the other hand, if something sufficiently unlikely occurred, he might disbelieve the evidence of his senses. He might become convinced of his own insanity. He could act on the assumption that he himself had gone mad.” (5) As people, dogs and birds die and fear takes over, it becomes clear that existence is as much a battle for sanity as it is a battle against an unknown terror. Drake insists, “But I’ve been having all the experiences of a madman. I’ve got to be a little bit stern and make him tell his hallucinations. They may not be delusions. Maybe they’re facts. On this island you can’t use the standards of a sane world to decide what’s crazy and what isn’t!” (6) What caused such a collapse and unleashed the hysteria and bloodshed to follow? The sight of trees…

“Its actual appearance in that place was as if some insane artist had traveled thousands of miles to create.”

*The Monster from Earth’s End (7)

“As for me, I tell you as a friend, I feel impotent when confronted with such nature, for my Northern brains were oppressed by a nightmare in those peaceful spots, as I felt that one ought to do better things with the foliage.”

*Letter from Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 (8)

If only Drake and the others trapped on Gow had been aware of a parallel place with an open door to their shadows. Thousands of miles away on the mirror other side of the world lies the North Pole, “that enchanted continent in the sky, land of everlasting mystery.” (9) Long a land of free imagination, this arctic source of myth and legends includes the horror of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In 1818 she set the scene: “I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks…Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight…there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe.” (10)
This vision became part of Admiral Byrd lore when the polar explorer hinted at greater mysteries in 1947, “I’d like to see the land beyond the Pole. That area beyond the Pole is the center of the great unknown.” (11) There are rumors that Byrd found that ‘center of the great unknown’ and even flew inside to explore, landing and finding that both poles have holes leading into the Hollow Earth.
Already revealed in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, Oz historian L. Frank Baum also used this location for Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, published in 1908. Dorothy says, “We are somewhere in the middle of the earth, and the chances are we’ll reach the other side of it before long. But it’s a big hollow, isn’t it?” (12) She and her traveling companions observe, “On some of the bushes might be seen a bud, a blossom, a baby, a half-grown person and a ripe one.” (13) It doesn’t take long before one of these plant creatures threatens them with a cruel death.
Then in 1951, a long flight from Alaska, “Botanists, physicists, including a pin-up girl” were at war with “Our superior in every way…a being from another world, as different from us as one pole from another.” The Thing from Another World revealed, “an intellectual super-carrot” from the crashed ice remains of a flying saucer. The North Pole base came under attack, dogs were mauled. Presiding Captain Patrick Hendry gathered the forces, arming his fellows with weapons, guns, gasoline and electricity.

In opposition to the vigilante mentality, scientist Dr. Carrington is committed to keeping a sane approach to the escalating violence. It is his goal to study the creature.

He decides “science rather than the army” should lead. Even in the face of death, he is sure, “Knowledge is more important than life.” So it is a pivotal moment when he introduces himself to the Frankenstein-like monster in a dark Quonset hallway with, “You’re wiser than anything on Earth—” only to get clubbed to the slatted floor. Like the night crawling menace of Gow Island, the Thing is also a deadly plant creature that lives on blood.

Inspired by The Thing from Another World, director Michael Hoey bought the rights to The Monster from Earth’s End in 1961 “for a horrendous sum, like around $4,000.” (14) Yet it took until 1966 to be filmed and Hoey sadly confirms the result, “By the time the film was completed, I would have been ashamed to talk to [the author] because of what happened.” (15) In any case…

“When I bought the book, I thought, ‘Monster from Earth’s End’…that’s too exploitative a title. I’d like another title.’ One day I’m driving down the street and I see a sign on some guy’s lawn, NIGHTCRAWLERS FOR SALE. Obviously he was talking about worms, but I thought, ‘Boy, that’s a great title for this project!’ So I called it The Nightcrawlers. But Jack Broder, who was the executive producer, retitled it The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, which is an abominable title. I remember the day when I was rehearsing and Broder walked in and announced what the new title was going to be. The entire cast was ready to walk out—they were furious that he would give it that title. Such an exploitative, dumb title.”

*Michael A. Hoey (16)

“The picture is one of the ugliest I have done…I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green.”

*Letter from Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 (17)

A painted sunset or sunrise appears as an orange and blue canvas backdrop for the words, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, and actor names. “I have observed that a very simple flat frame in vivid orange lead would produce the desired effect in conjunction with blues of the background and the dark green of trees.” (18) The picture fades in favor of a narration intoned over a bleak collection of stock footage ice, “Antarctica, the frozen continent at the bottom of the world. A continent as mysterious and unknown as the other planets of our solar system. Or a world in deep space a million light years away.” But the movie takes place on a tropical island. Gow Island resembles California or Vietnam.

Like the script of a paperback left out in the rain, the movie follows a warped version of the book. It seems clear that the film is directed more at a teenage Drive-In audience, especially with its mordant jokes about egg salad, balloons and girls. The sitcom atmosphere is quickly shattered though when death arrives whistling like a tea kettle in the night.

Antarctic trees crash land on Gow and begin to stalk. “It was a living fossil, with a basic structure remote from all experience. Its cellulose fibers were extraordinarily long. They were oriented like flax-fibers, from which linen is made.” (19) The sight of it is so terrifying to the people in the movie that their reaction may seem strange. Their horrific tortured nightmare of the psyche comes across in today’s light as a walking, sprouting sleeping bag. This didn’t go unnoticed by the director though. In an interview with Tom Weaver, Michael Hoey describes the film as a battle between his vision and the budget, but more specifically a war with his ham-fisted producer Jack Broder.

Jack Broder had ultimate control over the final cut. After Hoey turned in his reels and went to San Francisco to begin shooting Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Broder added 12 minutes to the running time to market the film for television. 720 more seconds result in a lot of comic book scenes, Mamie Van Doren’s blueprint dress, a beach full of tree stumps crawling, but the most surreal touch is saved for the closing moments, in the napalmed jungle finale: “The picture ends with a stock shot with the four Blue Angels, with multi-colored streamers going out the back. No combat plane in its life ever did anything like that! It was footage from an air show. The logic that went into it was almost non-existent!” (20)

Hoey had his own artistic logic, “The premise that I functioned under was ‘less is more,’ and if you don’t show it, the audience’s imagination would create a much more vivid monster than we could ever create visually.” (21) The breaking point for him was the sight of the trees. “I wanted the trees to look like the other trees, so that there wouldn’t be the feeling that they stood out like sore thumbs, which is what those stupid things did. Broder hired some guy who did them for $1.98. When they showed up on the set the first day, I refused to film them, I was so upset.” (22) Broder vs. Hoey was a contrast as polar as night and day and it literally came down to that in the filming of the trees. “They brought in one tree where a guy could get inside and wiggle his arms, and two other ‘dummy’ trees which just stood there. Stanley Cortez and I looked at each other and said, ‘How are we gonna shoot this?’, and I said, ‘How ‘bout no lights?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s probably the only way we can do it.’ So we literally tried to light it so that it was so dark that the only time you would see the trees was when the Molotov cocktails were exploding around them. Well, Broder didn’t like that and he had that scene ‘printed up’ [brightened] so that the trees are vividly lit. But that was never our intention of how we would show ‘em.” (23)

“I can’t imagine a thing which prefers darkness attacking things because they’re light.”

*The Monster from Earth’s End (24)

The imagining of it is where the horror lies. The monster Michael Hoey wanted to see is something that could hide in Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of poplars, willows, or olive trees.
In fact, it could be one of those trees! The way Van Gogh portrays them fits perfectly:

“The Roots shows some tree roots on sandy ground. Now I tried to put the same sentiment into the landscape as I put into the figure: the convulsive, passionate clinging to the earth, and yet being half torn up by the storm. I wanted to express something of the struggle for life... in the black, gnarled and knotty roots.” (25)

Also, compare the pastels of the Nightcrawlers’ jungle to the Night Café:

“The fact is that the sun has never penetrated us people of the North…a street stretching away under a blue sky spangled with stars…dark blue or violet and there is a green tree. Here you have a night picture without any black in it, done with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green, and citron-yellow color.” (26)

And the big screen repeats the view out his asylum window:

“These high trees stand out against an evening sky with violet stripes on a yellow ground, which higher up turns into pink, into green…Now the nearest tree is an enormous trunk, struck by lightning and sawed off. But one side branch shoots up very high and lets fall an avalanche of dark green pine needles. This somber giant—like a defeated proud man—contrasts, when considered in the nature of a living creature, with the pale smile of a last rose on the fading bush in front of him. Underneath the trees, empty stone benches, sullen box trees; the sky is mirrored—yellow—in a puddle left by the rain. A sunbeam, the last ray of daylight, raises the somber ocher almost to orange. Here and there small black figures wander around among the tree trunks.” (27)

This is the sight of trees that haunted Gow Island, painted with the vision of one haunted by worse monsters as he went out in his last days:

“A man called Jullian, who in later life went on to be the municipal librarian, recalled with shame how as a youth he had taken part in the baiting: ‘I remember—and I am bitterly ashamed of it now—how I threw cabbage-stalks at him! What do you expect? We were young, and he was odd, going out to paint in the country, his pipe between his teeth, his big body a bit hunched, a mad look in his eye.’” (28)

Footnotes (Stock Footage)

1) Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh; Edited by Irving

Stone; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston; 1937; p. 504

2) The Monster from Earth’s End, by Murray Leinster; Gold Medal Books;

Fawcett Publications Inc. Greenwich Conn. 1959; p. 79

3) I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror

Filmmakers, by Tom Weaver; McFarland & Co. Inc. Jefferson, NC,

2001; p. 96

4) The Monster from Earth’s End, by Murray Leinster; Gold Medal Books;

Fawcett Publications Inc. Greenwich Conn. 1959; p. 92

5) Ibid., p. 32

6) Ibid., p. 135

7) Ibid., p. 154

8) The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Volume Three, New York

Graphic Society, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1958; p.232

9) As quoting Admiral Byrd; The Hollow Earth, The Greatest Geographical

Discovery in History, Made by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the

Mysterious Land Beyond the Poles—The True Origin of the Flying

Saucers; by Dr. Raymond Bernard; Bell Publishing Company; NY;

1969; p.20

In 1947, “Before he left on his seven hour flight from his Arctic base over iceless land beyond the North Pole (leading to the interior of the Earth), Admiral Byrd said: ‘I would like to see that land beyond the Pole. That area beyond the Pole is the center of the Great Unknown.’ Admiral Byrd did not cross over the North Pole and travel 1,700 miles south on its other side. If he did, he would enter icebound territory. Instead he entered a land with a warmer climate, free from ice and snow, consisting of forests, mountains, lakes, green vegetation and animal life. This new unknown land over which he flew for 1, 700 miles, which was not on any map, existed inside the polar opening leading to the hollow interior of the Earth, where it is warmer than on its outside, which is here a land of ice and snow.” (29)

10) Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley; Viking, New York; 1998, p. 11

11) The Hollow Earth, The Greatest Geographical Discovery in History, Made

by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Mysterious Land Beyond the

Poles—The True Origin of the Flying Saucers; by Dr. Raymond

Bernard; Bell Publishing Company; NY; 1969; p. 44

12) Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, by L. Frank Baum; Books of Wonder,

Harper Collins Publishing; 1990; p.28

13) Ibid.

14) I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror

Filmmakers, by Tom Weaver; McFarland & Co. Inc. Jefferson, NC,

2001; p. 98

15) Ibid., p.97

16) Ibid., p.98

17) Stranger on the Earth; a Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh, by

Albert J. Lubin; New York, Holt, Rineheart Winston; 1972; p.142

18) The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Volume Three, New York

Graphic Society, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1958; p.258.

19) The Monster from Earth’s End, by Murray Leinster; Gold Medal Books;

Fawcett Publications Inc. Greenwich Conn. 1959; p.62

20) I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror

Filmmakers, by Tom Weaver; p.106

21) Ibid.; p.102

22) Ibid.; p.104

23) Ibid.; p.104

24) The Monster from Earth’s End; p. 49

25) The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Volume One, New York

Graphic Society, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1958; p.360

26) The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Volume Three; p.444

27) Ibid.; p. 524

28) Van Gogh, His Life and His Art; David Sweetman; Crown Publishers, Inc.

New York; 1990; p.299

29) The Hollow Earth, The Greatest Geographical Discovery in History, Made

by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Mysterious Land Beyond the

Poles—The True Origin of the Flying Saucers; p.24

Featuring Quotes from Films:

The Thing from Another World (1951)

The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)

“Gow Island. In the past, virtually unknown to the rest of the world. Today, a famous landmark in man’s struggle with the unknown. Another step forward in the march of science.”

Essay by Allen Frost

A Frog and A Pig

2012-02-09T16:04:00.001-08:00

A Frog & A Pig

With college almost over, since a job was

what all this learning was leading up to,

the English Department announced a

Career Day and brought in a publisher

from New York City. Having written

two novels already, I felt this was my

chance. There were about ten of us in

the wood paneled room, sun in the windows,

it was warm outside. What did I know?

I was reading Kerouac, I was ready to go.

What the woman from the publishing

metropolis offered was The Muppet Babies

cartoon. She was scouting for writers.

I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t even imagine it

at the time, the squeaky voices, pastels and

treacly jokes would have driven me mad.

But now I wonder how hard it would be to

twist my arm, to take me from my job and

put me in a little blue sailboat with a frog

and a pig and pay me to write the way out.

Annotated Frog and Pig:

Don't get me wrong, I like the Muppets.

I faithfully watched The Muppet Show

and I grew up with Sesame Street.

In fact, these two were my favorites:

Laughing to himself, "Three sticks...
Three sticks..."

The usual stooge walks by.

Still laughing...

"Three sticks where?"

Still laughing...

"Three sticks right HERE!!"

Laughing and fanfare.

Featuring Bob Hope

2012-02-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

Rustle has been writing short stories
featuring Bob Hope, as sidekick to
Captain Clean. This is the 2nd one.
I sure like the set-up, a robbery at
a lemonade stand. Pure vaudeville.
I've featured Bob Hope in two of
my books: Another Life and
Home Recordings, so I guess
he's in the air. Also, when Rosa
was born, I wrote to Bob Hope
for an autograph for her, which
he provided below:
Drawing of Captain Clean by Rustle

INDEX

2012-01-25T18:19:00.001-08:00

Finally, here's an Index to

the Stories, Essays and Books

appearing on this blog:

The 500 Pound Halo (September 2009)

Air Travel (November 2011)

Animals, Ghosts and Outer Space (February 2011)

Bathysphere Battle (September 2010)

Billie Ritchie in Haunting Birds (January 2010)

Bird Taxi (June 2009)

Burt Ives in Televisions All Over the World (July 2009)

Champion Dreamers of the World (July 2009)

Chan & Callahan (July 2011)

The Charts of the Sea (September 2009)

Clinton Street to Galveston (September 2009)

Crayon Fable (September 2011)

d.a levy in A Certain Strange Memory (February 2011)

Duck McGee Makes the Team (September 2011)

The End of Beryllium (July 2009)

Euphonium (May 2011)

Fly with Umbrella (July 2009)

Fred Again (January 2012)

The Flying Machine of Mr. Green (October 2009)

Ghoststores (November 2011)

Good Deed Rain (June 2009)

The Heaven Antenna (March-April 2011)

A House on Mars (September 2011)

In the Summer Air (June 2009)

Jack Kerouac and Film Noir (October 2009)

The Jimbaroo (July 2010)

The Journal of the Mermaid

Translation (December 2010)

The Journal of the Mermaid

Translation #2 (December 2010)

King Leopold’s Slow Leak (June 2009)

The Last Ohio Morning (May 2009)

Mental Magic (December 2011)

Motor Car Dealer Will Travel

By Balloon (October 2009)

Mr. Evans (September 2011)

The New Book of Endangered Birds (May 2009)

Ohio Time (June 2009)

One Eye Open (July 2009)

The Other Laugh (October 2009)

A Paper Cup (September 2009)

A Parent’s Guide to Raising Piranha (June 2009)

Paying For Water (June 2009)

Poems in Zoos (October 2009)

Populist Poem #7 (July 2009)

Radio (September 2009)

A Reversed Cat (November 2010)

Royalty Toy Company (June 2009)

Sacred Heart Junkyard (June 2009)

Seacow (July 2009)

Seashells and Love Poems (February 2010)

A Shark Cage Smith Adventure (September 2009)

The Shrinkers (October 2009)

Signals (August-September 2011)

Silent Machines in 9 Sizes (September 2009)

Sinking Celestial (February 2010)

Snotty Kid (May 2011)

Speaking of Richard Brautigan (January 2012)

Stick Chart of the Marshall Islands (December 2011)

The Stowaway (July 2009)

Such & Such #1 (September 2009)

Such & Such #2 (October 2009)

The Three Hearted Saint (January 2012)

Time After Time (June 2009)

The Time Has Come to Make All

the Machines Fly (September 2009)

Tree Frog (June 2009)

Trees in the Asylum Garden (February 2012)

Trelawny Cable Car (July 2009)

The W. Lee Wilder From Space (January 2010)

Water Everywhere (June 2009)

Water Ladder (October 2009)

With the Utmost Kindness and Calm (August 2009)

The Yellow Tree (November 2010)

You are 7 Love Poems, or

How to Build a Birdhouse Out of

Love Poems (February 2010)

Your Favorite World (June 2009)

The Three Hearted Saint

2012-01-24T16:28:00.001-08:00

The Three Hearted Saint

The Three Hearted Saint from India or Tibet

lived in a yellow house, sitting like a statue

surrounded by chanting and the clicking of

little chimes. If you walked the neighborhood

you could hear it going night and day

until one morning before the dawn bell

the white painted door opened and out he went.

Not wearing bright robes, he walked along

wearing clothes he found in the donation box.

There was no reason to think he was anyone

although his footprints left diamonds of dew

on the pavement. He followed the street

slanting to the sea. All the trees pointed

the way, cars parked by the curb, some

rolling past him, wheels crackling on cement.

He seemed to know where he was going.

When the street turned into a bridge

he stepped off the sidewalk, ducked beneath

the bare branches onto the steep hillside

crumbling cold earth, weeds and trash.

On the sides of his shoes, he slid down

the embankment. The bridge vaulted

overhead making a wide dark slash

across the gray sky. He stopped with

the loose stones and a rolling bottlecap

at the edge of the dirt. There was a

flat stone there, waiting for him.

He sat beside the hurried river,

took a deep breath and shut his eyes.

While The Three Hearted Saint

sat beside the river, a salmon rippled

in the shallows next to him. It stopped

and stayed in place just out of reach

Its body moved slightly, enough to keep

it there, nibbling on the edge of concrete.

The Saint was so used to the sound of cars

overhead, rumble and thump, the salmon

was something new and he opened his eyes.

The fish dallied at the cement, as if

tasting it, testing it to see how many

salmon it would take to tear the city

down, bridge by bridge, filling the streets

with streams. It could all begin with this

one fish. But that didn’t happen.

It gave a quick splash and returned

to the river flow.

When the man at the store asked,

he almost told him his name.

That would have been a mistake

there were people looking for him

maybe the storekeeper was one of them.

So he kept quiet and opened his hand

paying coins for the can of peaches.

The store with its own little temple bell

closed behind him, ringing as he left.

Truthfully, he must have known.

Every day he bought peaches there

he was leaving a trail, one that goes

back along the wet sidewalk to

the river’s edge, under the bridge

where a shrine of empty peach cans

grow.

Writing: Allen Frost
Illustrations: Rustle

"The 3 Hearted Saint" Annotations:
This story was inspired by mention
in John Tarrant's book of a monk
who was discovered under a bridge,
his disguise revealed by his love for
melons. I've since been reading about
that zen monk, whose name is Daito
in the book, Eloquent Zen. Of course,
I modernized the legend, and turned it
into peaches. I may be writing more
adventures of The Three Hearted Saint.

Speaking of Richard Brautigan

2012-01-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, January 7, 2012,

I went to Seattle to meet John Barber. John is

editor of Richard Brautigan, Essays on the

Writings and Life (2007, McFarland and Co.)

as well as curator of the comprehensive

online site, Richard Brautigan Bibliography

and Archive at: www.brautigan.net.

Down in the boiler room of the Fairmont Hotel

is a narrow crowded café. We found a little table

and he allowed me to record this interview.

I was a little worried that later on I wouldn’t

be able to hear him over the espresso machines

steaming and clunking, cups and plates clattering,

all the forks falling on the checkerboard floor,

a weird pinball sound, conversations all around,

the big band soundtrack CD with a crazy

‘In the Mood’ track skipping in the background,

fading for a while then reappearing.

Setting a copy of An Unfortunate Woman

between us, I asked about page 70, where

Brautigan’s journal suddenly wonders what

happened to time, as it jumps from

San Francisco into a blur. Perhaps that

missing time could be filled in.

John Barber:

That was in the Spring of 1982. He had

actually been contracted to be a visiting

professor in the English department prior to

that and he started in April. During early

March, he was traveling and the English

department at Montana State University

was writing him letter after letter saying,

“Are you coming, we really need to know?”

and he signed the contract on the very

last day that he could and returned it.

He had a ranch in Paradise Valley, just

south of Livingston. He was also given

an apartment in the married student

housing dorm at Montana State University.

It was a high-rise sort of dorm. He also

stayed in a very inexpensive motel in

Bozeman that I showed him. $9.95 cents

a night. He would often phone me and

say, “Come and pick me up and let’s go

to Bozeman and I’ll buy your drinks.”

So I would drive fifty miles to his ranch

to pick him up and then fifty miles back

to Bozeman, and then he insisted on

closing down every bar, every possible

opportunity for drinking. Main Street

Bozeman had a number of them, but he

had two or three favorites. He really

liked the Eagles’ Nest, the VFW bar.

Was he known there?

He was known everywhere. He was,

however, very hard to be around because

he was always drinking and always had

a lot to drink. And people that are always

drinking can be very tiring. He would

frequently just get up and go sit down

at a table with strangers and start talking

to them and ask them really pointed,

embarrassing questions and then argue

with them about their answers to the

point where they broke down or got

really uncomfortable.

So he was fairly obnoxious and people

knew that and some people didn’t like

it so much. Despite that, he would

come and hang out in Bozeman

searching for what he called

“the great American good time,”

and I would provide the transportation

back and forth. One time, I gave him

a ride in a yellow school bus and he

writes about that.

He thanks you in this book. And you

stopped at the grocery store for him too.

What did you get?

I think we got some wine and spaghetti.

I think he mentions he got lots of lettuce.

He wanted to make a salad.

That could be. I don’t remember exactly,

but I remember we got two or three plastic

bags full of groceries. And then we got

back on the bus and I drove him, dropped

him off in front of his house.

Why were you doing driving a school

bus?

My job was working for a tour bus

company based in Bozeman. That was

the way I was putting myself through

school. When working with a local or

smaller group, I would drive a school

bus as opposed to the big tour buses.

There was a girl scout camp up the

Yellowstone River from where

Richard Brautigan lived and I was

going to pick up a group camped there

and bring them back to Bozeman.

I had to drive right by his house to

get to this campground. The night

before my trip he was in town, so

I just said, “Look, I’m going this way

tomorrow and if you don’t have any

problem riding a school bus I can

give you a ride.”

Did he sit right up in the front with you?

Yes, he sat in the front seat of a school bus.

Could you talk about how you found

Richard Brautigan as a teacher?

It was a creative writing class. The very

first thing that he said was, “If you want

to learn to write, I can’t teach you.

That’s something you’re going to have

to do through your own process.”

And although he didn’t talk about it,

it was clear that he had been through

his own process to learn how to write,

which is pretty well documented.

He started with poetry, so he could

learn how to put words together to

make a sentence, and then having felt

success at writing a sentence, he felt

he could take on a novel. So he said,

“Instead of teaching you how to write

I can give you the benefit of my

experience in the publishing world.

I can talk to you about those sorts of

things and I can respond to your

writing and give you some feedback.”

He would stand in front of the classroom,

or lean against the table in front of the

classroom because he had a broken leg

that his doctor had decided not to put

in a cast. He was walking around with

a broken leg using a cane. He was

dressed entirely in blue denim,

blue denim jeans and a blue denim

farm jacket, worn brown cowboy boots

and a black wool felt Elmer Fudd hat,

with flaps that were up and tied

across the top. And of course,

his signature glasses, long

blonde hair and the signature long

droopy moustache. He looked very

much like his photograph on the

front of one of his early novels.

The class met once a week and each

meeting was a workshop where we

shared our writings with each other.

Brautigan responded with encouragement.

At the end of each class he would

provide a writing prompt and we

would go off for a week and work on

this prompt. One of the prompts that

I remember was to go someplace on

the campus that you haven’t been

before and write about what you see

and what you experience there. We

would write about it and then come

back and go around the room, each

of us reading what we had written and

then everyone in the class would

respond. Brautigan’s response was

always, “I like that. That’s very

interesting. Keep writing.” He would

never say something like, “Well

maybe you should shift paragraph

two and three or it seems like

something’s missing where you try

to make a transition between these

two ideas—” He would never say that.

His written comments were always

very short, “this is good, keep writing,”

and then that was the end of it.

There was one assignment where we

could write something longer and I

wrote about the time that I had spent

on steamboat hotels going up and

down the Mississippi River and he

called me to say, “I’m sitting here

with [girlfriend at the time] and we’re

reading your paper and just rolling

on the floor in laughter. I wanted you

to know that this is really great.

When I finish this, if you like, I’m

going to share it with my agent and

see—” and I thought Ohhh!—and

nothing ever came of it. Still, it was

pretty exciting that he called me to

say that he liked what I was doing.

At the end of the very first class

meeting, after everyone had left,

I walked up to him and I said,

“I would like to be friends with

you outside of class.” He looked

at me, he had this long hook-like

nose, and he looked at me down

his nose and I thought he was

thinking, “Well, I’ve been

approached by a lot of groupies

but never by a male”…Just this

kind of long pause…and then he

said, “Let’s go to the Eagles’ Nest

and have a drink and talk about it,

but I think I would like that.” So I

gave him a ride to the Eagles’ Nest

and we had lots of drinks and that

was it. That was the start of the

friendship.

Didn’t he have a white car?

He had a car that had been given to

him by Greg Keeler. It was in his

barn. He also had an abandoned car,

this rusting thing that he would sit on.

It was fabulous. You would sit

on it, leaning up against the

windshield and look at the

Absaroka Mountains. They were

snow covered year round so you

were lying out there in the sun

and looking at these huge soaring

mountains that are, in my experience,

the most magnificent mountains in

the country. The other car was in his

writing barn, just sitting there.

He never drove, he never learned

to drive, I don’t think he ever drove

anything.

He really didn't talk about anything

that had to do with him personally

and I made a point of not pushing
this information. He never talked

about his childhood, he never said

anything about his family, he never

said anything about San Francisco

or Japan.

Would he talk about what he was writing?

He was working on An Unfortunate

Woman while the class was going on.

He told me several times during the

class period that he was working on

the book and that he had written

x-number of chapters and it was very

sad, about a friend who was dying.

He never said anything to me about

it, he just frequently mentioned that

his friend was dying. He never gave

his friend a name, but that was very

typical. Throughout all of his books

there’s a nameless narrator. He never

uses names for anybody. My friend,

or a friend, and I think this is part

of what we can point to, to say that

much of the content in Brautigan’s

books is fictionalized autobiography.

One afternoon he called and
said, “My friend just died,
bring a bottle of whiskey and

come over.” And so I did. I spent

the evening with him and it was

an amazing experience.

The next day I said,

“I wrote about our experience in

my journal,” and he got very upset

I had written about a private

experience that we had shared

together. On one hand, I can

understand that. On the other

hand he was a writer and he kept

a journal and he wrote about things

that happened to him during the day,

so I thought okay, it’s a private thing,

but at the same time he’s hypocritical

being upset with me for doing

something that he would have

done as a writer. He concluded

by saying, “If you ever show that

to anybody before I’m dead,

I will haunt you for the rest of

my life.” And I did and he does.

So I guess that’s fair.

He never showed me anything that

he was working on. The only times

that he talked about his own work,

was the first time I went to his house,

he had just received a box of copies

of So The Wind Won’t Blow It All Away

from his publisher. He gave me a copy

and, he was kind enough to sign it.

So he said something about his book

there. I had other copies of his books

which later I brought to him and he

was gracious enough to sign, but

he never talked about them.

Another time, I told him that I

would really like to get copies of

his earliest books—

Waitress: Did you guys order three

cheese croissants?

JB: No, we didn’t, I’m sorry.

Three, no less.

She’s only holding two…He told me

in response, “Well they’re out of

print. They’re very hard to get, and

they’re very expensive.” I didn’t

know it at the time, but he was

being absolutely truthful with me.

His earliest books ARE out of

print and they ARE hard to get

and they ARE very expensive.

He had a few of his books in

translation that were on the

bookshelf in his living room,

but other than that his house

was very sparsely furnished,

just minimal furniture. Nicely

done though, he had taken this

Montana ranch house, brought

carpenters and redwood lumber

from Bolinas and redone the

inside of his house. It was really

fine, detailed finished carpentry.

And a guesthouse which was an

old smokehouse next to the main

house had been completely redone

with this redwood lumber.

The backyard of his house was

overgrown, the front was mowed.

I don’t know who mowed it, but

the back part of the place was

grown up, the weeds were waist high

and there were deer. Away from the

house was a grove of cottonwood

trees. When they bloomed they

dropped white fluffy seeds that

floated around and collected on

the porch, turning into a giant ball.

The chicken coop was there but

there were no chickens. It didn’t

look like chickens had been there

in quite a while.

Was writing your story about him

really how it ended between you?

That was part of it. We had a

disagreement and he told me to go

away, to never see him again. I saw him

once more after that, on the sidewalk,

in Bozeman. I walked up to him and

he was very surprised. It was as if

he had seen a ghost. I said, “Look,

I don’t want our friendship to end

this way. I’m very sorry. I’m sorry

for my part in the disagreement

and I apologize and I hope that

we can still be friends.” He replied,

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think

about it. I’ll let you know.”

And then I wrote once after that

and again apologized, “I was

thinking of you and I wanted to

apologize again.” I sent the letter

to his Livingston address. It was

forwarded to him in Japan. I got

a letter in reply from Japan.

It was very short. He said,

“Forget the past. It ain’t worth it.

Let’s try to get together when

I’m back in Montana. I would

like that.” And that was the

last thing that I ever heard

from him. He never contacted

me, never got in touch.

I actually had a premonition,

a thought that sometime

I would open the paper and

learn that Richard Brautigan

was dead. Sure enough, I did,

and he was.

Generally speaking when an

author dies, his or her literary

career continues going in the

same direction that it was going

at the time of their death. If it’s

down, that’s the way it goes.

If it’s up, then death just helps

it because now there’s a reason

to republish everything.

Richard Brautigan’s literary

career has been totally the

opposite of this. Despite the

fact that his literary career

was trashed at the time of his

death, he continues to attract

an incredible following of readers.

Everyday somebody discovers

Richard Brautigan for the first

time and claims him as his or

her favorite writer.

As an author, he was extremely

courageous because every book

that he wrote was not a sell-out,

not a cop-out—he did what he

wanted to do. It took him

twenty-something publishers to

get Trout Fishing in America

published, but he did and it

sold over a million copies.

Each of his other books is a

particular vision. I don’t think

that credit is given for that in

a world where we expect

certain packages.

Richard Brautigan very much
enjoyed a public persona and
he created one for himself.
He would look in the windows
of stores and criticize rock stars
posing on the covers of their
albums, yet he would do exactly
the same thing for his own books.
He controlled everything about
his early books, even the
photographer that would take
the picture for the cover and
the typeface and the page
formatting. It was totally unusual
in America at that time for an
author to have complete control
over their books. And he did.

That’s why the first omnibus,
the three volumes have three
different type settings reproduced,
as he says, in the likeness of the
original. That was all part of
what he was controlling.
So he’s criticizing people for
being on the covers of their
record albums, yet he’s posing
like a rock star on the covers
of his books, and always with
a different woman. He was
purposely mysterious about
his background and he was
using that mystery as a way
to market himself, promote
interest in himself, as this
kind of Emily Dickinson-like
character from a parallel
universe that’s speaking in
telegrams, using language
that William Carlos Williams
would approve of. He cultivated
this mystery about himself,
but at the same time he walks
around being a public person
promoting himself and his
books. There is a story that
he saw someone in a bookstore
looking at one of his books
and he said, “Steal that book.
Take it home. That’s my book.

It’s a good one.”Thanks to John Barber
for sharing his memories
of a great & inspiring writer.

Photo of lettuce by Rustle.

not to worry

2012-01-13T16:49:00.001-08:00

Here's what the self-published
book of 39 haiku looks like.
Dedicated to Taneda Santoka.
Cover by Rustle.

on the way

2012-01-10T16:01:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, I interviewed John Barber,
editor of Richard Brautigan, Essays on
the Writing and Life. He also gave
Richard Brautigan a ride in a school bus.
I'll be posting our conversation soon.

fred again

2012-01-09T16:15:00.001-08:00

For a brief strange amount of time, I opened the doors

to the Salvation Army and Goodwill to find my music.

This is always a fallback into years of wear, from the

clothes that hang and give the air its ghost, to the very

back wall where the records are tipped stacks in a bin.

I became familiar with the usual cast: Percy Faith,

everything with strings, cowboys, swingers, preachers,

patriots, dance crazes, and every once in a while the

true oddity. Something that had the power to stand up

out of its pit of time and grab like a shaggy, ice-age

creature. Something named ‘Whistlin Joe’, on a pink

Decca Records label, by someone named Fred Lowery.

For 25 cents, the 45 single was given a whole new life,

played over and over for days until its eerie warbling

and spooky chorus became too much for one listener.

He ran across the room, ripped it from the turntable

and smashed it against the gray speckled wall.

That fit, that terrible wax demise, seemed to have ended

a life. Even my joy of searching the musty world where

‘Whistlin Joe’ once lay entombed passed. As a last wish,

to serve eulogy to the person who had created such a stir

in my life, I felt duty bound to know what I could about

Fred Lowery. This was years before the computer

captured the logging of all human details, and the only

information on him I uncovered came from the few

lines in a thick reference book: “Blind whistling virtuoso

active in the late 30’s and 40’s. Attended Texas School

for the Blind in Austin…worked clubs and theatres;

some recording. Faded by the late 40’s; a few records

early 50’s.”

I kept the intact pink round record label, the very center,

the heart, all the remained of Fred Lowery’s 45 and have

carried it forever as a sort of holy relic.

How strange that I would rediscover Fred Lowery

some five years later at the other edge of the continent,

in a retro-store dedicated to the hip and cool culture of

America’s past.

Filed in with the pristine Capitol recordings of Sinatra

was an entire album by Fred Lowery entitled, ‘Walking

Along Kicking The Leaves…’ Surprise! He has risen again,

wrapped in a Technicolor sleeve, whistling with orchestra,

a bona-fide cult member of those who only seem to fade.

in the slipstream

2012-01-06T16:04:00.001-08:00

I have self-published my new book:
IN THE SLIPSTREAM
130 pages, which includes:
signals
(serialized in this blog Aug-September 2011)
not to worry
(39 unpublished haiku collection)
air travel
(partly serialized in this blog in November)

Hopefully someone will publish it

more movies

2012-01-04T16:25:00.001-08:00

watched two more French movies
'Under the Roofs of Paris' (1930)
and 'Mon Oncle' (1958)

The White Sheik, 1951

2011-12-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

Watched Federico Fellini's first film
at 5 A.M when the house was asleep.

Pottersville Public Library

2011-12-29T16:28:00.000-08:00

Finished the new Stephen King book
on Christmas day. Great read, ends
with a James Stewart moment in
alternate present, looking for library
when this exchange takes place:
"Ma'am, I just want to know if
the library is still--"
"It's been closed for years and
all the books are gone! They have
Hate Meetings there now." (p.804)
As usual, King has it pegged.

Blue Cliff King

2011-12-20T19:26:00.001-08:00

For the past couple months
I've been reading a chapter
a night from The Blue Cliff Record.
It's a centuries old collection of
koans and a good door to dreamland.
However, as of yesterday I opened
Stephen King's new book on
time travel. Everything else
has come to a tick-tock stop.

Lights in the Sky

2011-12-16T21:44:00.000-08:00

JGenius sent me this photo his friend took.
Some lights floating by in the sky last week.

Mental Magic

2011-12-16T18:53:00.001-08:00

Mental Magic

“Only fourteen more days until it snows,” he said

through his false teeth. They clicked in his mouth like

river stones. Cornlin Farrot also wore a fake moustache

and a coarse black wig, with a yellow baseball cap

perched on top.

The bus driver said, “Is that so?” The bus

drivers knew Cornlin. Anyone riding the 150 route

at this time of morning had seen him at his perch,

the first seat to the right. The drivers had even

given him a nickname, Mental Magic, for Cornlin

had an amazing knowledge for numbers, he was

like an almanac.

He pointed the thick sleeve of his green

rain jacket straight ahead out the sheet of windshield.

“The pancake house is closed. It was open for 22

years.”

With a grin, the driver asked, “How many

days is that?”

“8,030,” Cornlin replied. “Soon it will be

a Mexican restaurant. When it opens I’ll have to go.”

As the bus passed the blank concrete building, Cornlin

turned in his plastic seat to watch. The thick tinted

glasses he wore hid his eyes. The sight of it seemed

to remind him of something else, something that

quieted him.

Some mornings Cornlin would go on and

on like a radio, but now he seemed preoccupied,

weighed down by a heavy thought he wouldn’t share.

For the rest of the ride he remained silent, clutching

his blue cloth shopping bag on his lap, staring at

the window. When the bus stopped and the door

clacked open, he stood up and left without even

saying goodbye.

The driver watched Mental Magic get

lost in the streetlights and shadows. Maybe

tomorrow he’d ask him if he was doing okay.

Cornlin’s shuffling walk across the

damp stone pathway of campus began to change

the moment he opened the glass door of

Accounting Services. Once inside, it was like

another pair of legs was walking him, taking

him swiftly down the hall, around the corner

to the men’s restroom, out of sight. True,

he used to worry about being spotted, but it

was always early when arrived and some time

ago he had taken the precaution of informing

the custodial staff to clean this floor last.

He could make decisions like that. Corlin

Farrot was the director of Accounting Services.

He shuffled past the sinks, the wall

of mirrors, and entered the furthest stall.

He set the bag on the tiled floor. He took off

his yellow cap and wig and hung them on

the silver hook of the door. Then piece by piece

he removed his bus riding disguise, replacing

it with the carefully folded suit in his blue

shopping bag. The false teeth he tucked into

a pocket of the rain jacket. The transformation

was complete. The tennis shoes were gone too.

Instead, he wore expensive leather wingtips

with tassels.

As he left the stall, gone too was the

shuffling gambol, now he walked as if he had

been starched, rolled in a fresh American flag.

He stopped in front of the row of mirrors and

cleared his throat.

“Redefining the academic workplace…”

he said. It only took that long for him to find his

voice, it was deeper, grating as an asbestos panel.

“Necessarily, it has become strategically imperative

at this time…” His face was set between

thoughtfulness and a frown. He slipped one hand

in the pocket of his suit, the other he used to jab

the air. “I know we’re all aware of the severity

of the budgetary climate…” He paused again,

rose on the tips of his shoes and settled again.

He still had an hour before the staff meeting

when he would announce the elimination of two

staff positions. “I see this as an opportunity for

reshuffling responsibilities at the job core…”

He did enjoy the sound of his voice. He smiled.

Then he heard something move over

in the stalls.

Cornlin caught terror in the mirrored

eyes staring back at him. Someone was in here,

had been in the stall next to him the whole time,

and knew about his disguise.

If it was one of the cleaning ladies,

he would fire her on the spot. But what if she

threatened to tell? Walking towards the stall

Cornlin actually considered murder.

He stopped at the first stall. His hands

had become fists. “Who’s in there?” he growled.

The silver latch scratched and the door swung

open.

Cornlin took two steps backwards.

He was facing a gorilla.

Actually it was someone in a gorilla suit,

but the scare had been just as real.

“Look…” the gorilla began, “Don’t get

any weird ideas, I didn’t mean for anyone to find

me in here…”

“Who are you?!” Cornlin demanded.

The gorilla sighed, bowed and took off

his head. A red faced and sweaty man in his fifties

blinked at Cornlin. “Name’s Marty, Marty Brickles.

This is the first time I ever come in this building,

Mr. Farrot. Usually I hang around the Steam Plant.”

“What exactly are you doing?”

Marty shrugged. He chuckled, “Ahh, I

don’t know…I like to put on this costume and stomp

around in the woods before work. I never hurt anyone.

Every once in a while I give someone a scare, that’s

all. Hey, you’re not going to turn me in, are you,

Mr. Farrot?”

Cornlin glared.

“I know you’re a big man around here,

Mr. Farrot, but you don’t have to say anything…

Besides…” he turned the gorilla mask in his hands,

stroked it like a rabbit, “I guess you got a secret too.”

Annotated Mental Magic:
Of my hundreds of unpublished short stories
(add this one to the parade) every once in
a while, a guy in a gorilla suit appears.
That source would undoubtedly be all
those 1940s/1950s black & white movies
seen on Saturdays back in the 1970s.
The gorilla suit was also a fixture of
television variety shows and cartoons
of the day. Besides, what else could
possibly confront Cornlin Farrot?

bus drawing & writing:
allen frost December 9, 2011

100 Years of Kenneth Patchen

2011-12-13T17:23:00.001-08:00

Kenneth Patchen born 100 years ago today.

This is his handwritten introduction to

"An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air"

I AM OPPOSED TO ALL WAR.

I DON’T BELIEVE HUMAN BEINGS

SHOULD KILL EACH OTHER.

I AM OPPOSED TO ALL VIOLENCE—

FOR WHATEVER REASON.

I BELIEVE THAT WARS WILL

ONLY END WHEN MEN

REFUSE TO MURDER ONE ANOTHER—

FOR WHATEVER REASON. I BELIEVE

THESE THINGS AS A MAN AND AS A

REVOLUTIONIST. FOR I BELIEVE

WARS WILL ONLY END WHEN THE

PRESENT MURDEROUS FORMS OF

SOCIETY ARE ALLOWED TO DIE—

AND ALL MEN ARE AT LAST

PERMITTED TO LIVE

TOGETHER AS BROTHERS.

K.P NEW YORK CITY JULY 1945

Stick Chart of the Marshall Islands

2011-12-06T20:11:00.001-08:00

It's ironic that the last project
for repair in the Mendery is
a Stick Chart of the Marshall Islands.
"The charts of the Marshall Island
navigators are made, generally, of
narrow strips of the center ribs
of palm leaves lashed together
with cord made from locally grown
fiber."

This is for my friend Eric,
supervisor of the Mendery
a true craftsman who was
the shepherd of Wilson Library's
collection for many years.
From him I learned invaluable skills
for repairing books and also making
books. Many thanks from me and
the still living soul of this library.

"The stick charts illustrate spatial phenomena
of infinite importance to the native
inter-island navigator, but of little
significance to most other people."

movie time

2011-11-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

I can't stop thinking about this movie
I watched last weekend, Mr Hulot's Holiday.

Air Travel: 11

2011-11-19T10:41:00.001-08:00

Chapter 81

In fact, upon returning to hovering

over land, he descended and parked

his boat beside a lamppost on the shore.

Chapter 82

He tossed the rope around the pole

and hopped out. Five minutes later,

he returned with a bouquet of daisies,

it was a present for the ghost.

Chapter 83

His house was fluttering all its big

and little sails on the invisible walls.

He could see his rocking chair going,

though by the time he tied his boat to

the tree and turned to look again,

the chair was still as a painting.

Chapter 84

He never had any trouble with the ghost.

He only noticed it passing a few times

in the day. Sometimes he wondered if

it was giving him dreams, when he saw places

from long ago where he had never been.

Chapter 85

He made sort of a big show as he entered.

“Hello!” he called. He walked slowly like a

deep sea diver. “I brought you a present…

I want to say thank you…”

Chapter 86

Albert stopped in the kitchen and listened.

Nothing. He reached into an invisible cupboard

and took down a vase. He reached for the

invisible faucet on the invisible sink and filled

the vase with water.

Chapter 87

The house was still quiet. He settled

the flowers into the invisible water

and held it up to the air.

Chapter 88

“I just wanted to say thanks for scaring off

that fish…I guess it was getting on everyone’s

nerves…” Nothing happened. “I don’t know if

you like flowers, I don’t know what ghosts like.”

Chapter 89

Nearby, someone laughed and someone else,

closer to Albert said, “We’re not ghosts.”

Chapter 90

Albert stood there and listened to them.

“This used to be our house,” another unseen said.

“We didn’t want to leave,” said a girl’s voice.

Chapter 91

“Ohhh,” Albert said, figuring it out,

“You’re from The Invisible City…”

Someone corrected him,

“It’s only invisible to you.”

Chapter 92

“You’re not ghosts?” Albert stumbled on.

A laugh, “That’s what you people call us.”

From the sounds of their voices, there were

four of them. Albert asked, “You’re a family?”

“That’s right.”

Chapter 93

Albert sat in his rocking chair. On the table

where the fish used to be were the flowers.

Outside, which was all around him, leaves

were blowing, falling and swirling on the

jagged grass, rain was hissing, the yellow trees

were bending and waving.

Chapter 94

“I lost my job,” Norman Withers told him.

“We ran into some hard times. We lost

the house. We had nowhere to go.

What were we supposed to do?

So we stayed with the house.”

Chapter 95

“We didn’t think you would notice us,”

said Doris. “We tried to be quiet.”

Her children were near her, Albert

could hear them too.

Chapter 96

So there was an invisible family

in his invisible house. Now that he knew,

it was better. He let them have their rooms back.

They could live the way they were used to.

Chapter 97

He tried to give them space.

He had a little room in the attic,

a bed and a light, creaking floorboards…

basically Albert Roselli became a ghost.

to be continued...
Next, Part 3: The Bees

Drawings by Rustle
'listen, talk, walk
every tries
out of this world'
Photos of birch trees taken at my job

Annotated Air Travel:
1. If you drive across Lake Washington,
you may notice the floating bridge is
named after governor Albert Rosellini.
2. Here is Rustle's complete
knock-knock joke:

Air Travel: 10

2011-11-17T16:07:00.001-08:00

Chapter 71

He had been aware of this sound in the house,

a sound without a visible source, he could only

assume it was a ghost. His invisible house

was haunted.

Chapter 72

After sharing the house with Albert for

weeks (relaxing like a television image

in a pool of clear sea water that Albert replaced

twice a day, with gourmet minced kelp to eat)

it took this quiet October morning for the fish

to finally notice the ghost too.

Chapter 73

“Albert!”

He opened his eyes.

“What’s that noise?”

Albert sat and listened to the ghost

turning pages.

Chapter 74

“There’s a spook in your house!”

“Yes,” Albert told the fish. “I know.”

And then something miraculous

occurred. The fish chimed,

“I want out of here!”

Chapter 75

On the journey back to the sea,

the fish went on and on about it.

“That’s one thing we don’t have to

put up with in the ocean. If there’s

any ghosts, the tide takes care of them

and washes them away.”

Chapter 76

The October wind was picking up

and it was hard rowing but even

the cold blowing couldn’t drown out

that fish’s talking.

Chapter 77

Albert stopped in the same place

that used to be lucky for him,

the bed of brown kelp leaves.

Chapter 78

The sea parrot was back in the bucket

waving its fins. It took its own little white

cast off—that’s how much a hurry it was in.

Albert lifted the bucket by rope and began

to lower it hand over hand.

Chapter 79

The sea parrot was going in reverse,

taking the exact opposite journey

on a line back to the water, hopefully

for forever.

Chapter 80

He let the bucket sink into a wave,

he could see the fish flap out and

blur away into the murkiness, then

he pulled the fresh weight of water

back up again. It was heavy but to

Albert it felt so much lighter.

to be continued...

(Ghost with Fish picture by Rustle)

Air Travel: 9

2011-11-16T16:47:00.001-08:00

Chapter 62

Waking up was rough.

As soon as the night began to fade

into dawn, the sea parrot’s voice

would turn on like an alarm.

Chapter 63

“Albert…Mister Roselli…” He could

hear his name being thrown at him.

He was a floor away but it didn’t matter.

Chapter 64

He opened his eyes. The day was

a dull colored clay. He had to get up.

Chapter 65

Yes, he thought of draping a cloth

over the fish tank, the way people do

with their canaries at night,

but the sea parrot wouldn’t allow it.

It wanted natural light. It was an

early bird.

Chapter 66

And as long as it stayed in his house,

slowly mending, Albert couldn’t go fishing.

He had to take another job to make ends

meet. He made origami. He got paid

by the swan.

Chapter 67

Albert had been making them for years.

It wasn’t difficult work. He could make them

in his sleep. And it paid. Believe it or not,

there was always a demand.

Chapter 68

So he was lucky to have this job.

After all, there couldn’t be too many

people making an origami living.

Chapter 69

After he fed the sea parrot, Albert sat down

in the rocking chair. He pulled the blanket

over his legs and closed his eyes. Sometimes

the fish let him sleep for a while. Listen to

the popping sound of the fish eating and

the creaking of the slow rocking chair

levitated in the middle of a dark early morning.

Chapter 70

While he was half awake, Albert also heard

the movement of something else. It was

prickly, like a ball of newspaper blown

gently across the floor.

to be continued...

(Photo of fake origami taken today

in woods where this novel ended.

The leaf below is also from there.)

unmurked display

2011-11-16T16:32:00.001-08:00

Regarding W.W.U library's Special Collections display
featuring a selection of my publications, a certain
prominent Seattle composer of horror films found
the photo on the previous post to be "murky"
so here's a better look:

Air Travel: 8

2011-11-15T17:35:00.001-08:00

Chapter 54

Anyway, a year ago or so

he bought a house there

and towed it back to the yard

where he parked his boat.

Chapter 55

Back then, when the house

settled down, crushing a big square

into the grass, he was a little worried.

Chapter 56

With a ladder, he went all around

the invisible corners of it, wrapping it

with a rope. It did look weird to see

a lasso in the air holding nothing.

Chapter 57

Then he hung flags, clothes and rags

so nobody would run into the house.

That also gave the house a sound,

when there was wind.

Chapter 58

He didn’t have to worry about

animals running into the house.

They seemed to know it was there.

Chapter 59

Birds would fly around it,

bees would veer on their paths

to flowers.

Chapter 60

For him, there were some things

to get used to—knowing the rooms,

doorways and invisible stairs…

Chapter 61

Sleeping was easy though.

High off the ground, being in bed

it was just like floating along in his boat.

to be continued...

(House pictures by Rustle)

library displays

2011-11-15T17:14:00.001-08:00

Western Washington University's

Wilson Library is featuring

a selection of my donated books

in Special Collections Display Case #1:

"Allen is the author of five published books.

Meanwhile in the shroudy world of self publishing

he has 32 novels, 50 poem/story collections,

a book of essays and a partridge in a pear tree."

Special Collections is privileged to be home to most

of these one-of-a-kind specimens.

Meanwhile, I made a display for

one of my favorite authors Philip K. Dick:

Air Travel: 7

2011-11-14T16:19:00.001-08:00

Part 2: INVISIBLE SPACE

Chapter 48

About a year ago he went to

The Invisible City. It wasn’t much

to look at, you might not know

it was there.

Chapter 49

From his boat in the air

it was trees and gardens

planted in lines and squares

with patches of dirt where

buildings were. Streets were

scratched into the soil.

Chapter 50

When he lingered over

a baseball diamond, the ball

hit his boat.

Chapter 51

You could hear things happening.

Maybe that was a better name for it,

The City of Sound.

Chapter 52

He went there for bargains,

things he couldn’t afford back home.

They had a different rate of exchange.

Chapter 53

Strange that he never tried fishing

in their lakes, rivers or streams.

Then again, what would he do

with an invisible fish?

to be continued...

Air Travel: 6

2011-11-13T09:08:00.001-08:00

Chapter 36

“Okay!” the man said. “I’ll take you

back to my house and repair your

broken fin.” He lifted the sea parrot

and put it into the bucket, pulling

some seaweed over to protect it

from the overcast light of day.

Chapter 37

“Wait a minute!” the fish brayed.

“Someone’s already in here!”

Chapter 38

“Oh yeah…I forgot,” the man said.

The mackerel gave a cough and rasped,

“Don’t mind me, I’m just a forgotten fish,

left in here to die…”

Chapter 39

The sea parrot leaned out of the bucket

and shrieked at the man, “What is the

matter with you? You’ve got to get this

poor fellow back in water right away!”

Chapter 40

It was no surprise really

all the fish noise had attracted

a seagull. It landed on the bow

on the little triangle of wood.

It blinked yellow eyes,

dipped its smooth white head

towards the bucket.

Chapter 41

“That was supposed to be my lunch,”

said the man. The sea parrot choked,

“Lunch!?!” sweeping the weeds clear

from the wilting mackerel, “This fellow

probably has a family to support.”

Chapter 42

“I do,” the mackerel wheezed.

“Oh come on…” the man said.

The sea parrot wagged a fin at him,

“Imagine not being able to see your

loved ones because some barbarian

fed you a steel hook. It’s criminal!”

Chapter 43

“Don’t I know it,” sobbed the mackerel.

He gave a feeble twitch. The sea parrot

commanded, “Go on, return him!”

Chapter 44

As the mackerel flipped and glittered

through the air, the seagull yelled

and dove after the splash.

Chapter 45

“There goes my lunch,” said the man.

The sea parrot shrugged. He was

philosophical about it.

Chapter 46

There wasn’t much point lingering

in the air. The man knew it.

He stowed his fishing rod and

pushed the oars out to row

the way he had come.

Chapter 47

The water waved goodbye.

The town was awake by now,

little fires smoked out chimneys.

A dog barked up at him. He was

coming back with a broken fish.

to be continued...
Part 2: INVISIBLE SPACE

Air Travel: 5

2011-11-12T19:24:00.001-08:00

Chapter 30

“You’re a maniac!” the fish screeched.

“I can’t use this!” It paddled the air lamely.

“You broke my fin!”

Chapter 31

The man pictured the ocean listening.

“Just keep it down,” he said. “Don’t yell.”

“Don’t yell!” The fish sat up and gaped.

“You’re trying to kill me!”

Chapter 32

“No,” he said, flustered. “Look…

I’ll put you back.” The man moved

to scoop the sea parrot off the bench.

Chapter 33

“Oh no you don’t! I can’t return

like this! You have to fix my fin!”

Chapter 34

It was true, the man knew it.

A sea parrot could ruin him.

In no time at all, the sea would be

a newspaper. Every shrimp, crab

and whale would know the story.

Chapter 35

If that happened, he would have to

row his boat to a desert somewhere

and make a living sifting sand.

to be continued...

Air Travel: 4

2011-11-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Chapter 20

Sea parrots wouldn’t try

for hooks. It was bad luck that

caught it and bad luck for those

who caught them.

Chapter 21

Talk about talk!

It was like a radio

on the end of a hook.

Chapter 22

Back in the old day

before animals could talk

it was easy to kill a fish.

Just hit it with a stick.

Chapter 23

Now you had to listen

to their sad life story

some of them could really

lay it on thick. Still, if he

let them all go, he wouldn’t eat.

It was a predicament.

Chapter 24

He contemplated cutting the line

letting the sea parrot go free.

But even that could bring trouble.

Word got around.

Chapter 25

A sea parrot could carry a grudge,

track you down in the shallows

bringing along some friends

to get you back. Being a fisherman

meant accepting certain risks.

Chapter 26

The sea parrot didn’t waste any time.

The man knew it wouldn’t.

The moment he got it aboard,

the fish wagged its fin, showing him

the hook pinned to it.

Chapter 27

“Do you have any idea how this feels!”

The man sighed. He didn’t want that fish.

Anyway, they weren’t good eating.

They were all mouth.

Chapter 28

Some people kept them for companions.

Maybe he could try selling it in town.

He had seen them in jars and pans

playing the water like calliopes.

Chapter 29

He didn’t want to start a conversation,

he lay the fish on the bench and

kept it flat and took hold of the hook.

to be continued...

Air Travel: 3

2011-11-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Chapter 13

He caught a mackerel.

It was like a bar of silver

with green and black stripes.

He pulled it twenty feet

from the water to the boat.

Chapter 14

“Oh great…” the fish said to him.

Chapter 15

This part was never easy.

Since animals started talking

everything had changed.

Chapter 16

He took the hook out,

telling the fish, “Look…

I hate to do this to you…”

“Sure you do,” the fish said.

You hate it. How do you

think I feel?”

Chapter 17

The fish was in a bucket

with seaweed packed around.

He griped for a while, until

it became hard to breathe.

Chapter 18

About five minutes later

the man caught something else.

It looked like a handkerchief.

A flapping striped yellow and black

umbrella reeled towards him.

Chapter 19

He knew what it was.

Anyone who fished these waters

day after day, once in a while

caught a sea parrot.

to be continued...

Air Travel: 2

2011-11-12T08:24:00.001-08:00

Chapter 8

When the land gave way to water

he rowed a little further over waves

then pulled in the oars.

Chapter 9

He looked over the edge to see

the spot where the kelp fanned out.

Motoring in and out of there

like birds in trees were salmon.

Chapter 10

Sooner or later one of them would see

the silver spark of light in the water

not knowing it was a sharp hook

connected to a line traveling up

forty feet into the sky.

Chapter 11

He watched his reflection

that other him leaning over

in an upside down boat

fishing at the sky.

Connected by the same line

he was fishing for himself.

Chapter 12

Then the line twitched.

His reflection caught something

in the deep blue sky.

to be continued...

Air Travel: 1

2011-11-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Part 1: THE BROKEN FISH

Chapter 1

A boat stood on end, bow pointed at the sky.

Of course, this is how it gets around, cast off

the line from the oak tree it leans against

and up it goes.

Chapter 2

The man who rows rides it like a rocket,

vertical at first, then, past the electric wires

and above the rooftops, he levels off,

scooping the oars hard into the air.

Chapter 3

Now he can look down peacefully

on the backyards and streets and trees.

Chapter 4

It all depends on what you’re looking for.

This early morning, an old aluminum sky

before the sun shines, he rows to the sea

to go fishing.

Chapter 5

Following the road fifty feet below

it flows leading the way. The oarlocks

creak with each pull. A rooster crows

a few blocks away.

Chapter 6

Oh, sometimes he stops rowing

lets the boat drift. There’s no hurry,

holding the oars out flat like wings

nailed to a wooden bird.

Chapter 7

A chestnut tree brushes its leaves

along the smooth planks underneath,

a sigh as hushing as a seaweed bed.

to be continued...

ghoststores

2011-11-11T10:43:00.001-08:00

Driving around in the rain
on this day that used to be
called Armistice Day
(honoring Peace)
see what's probably happening
in your town too (the wars
are wearing us down)
stores are closing,
the ghosts are appearing

And our grocery store
where we get our food
is soon becoming gone

coming soon

2011-11-09T19:10:00.001-08:00

In spite of all the hours against me,
the full time job that wakes me at 6
until 4 back to home commotion
before going to bed at 9, I will write for you!
This time it's a novel in 150 chapters.
Begun October 20, 2011
on the 7 A.M bus ride to job
until November 2, 2011
finishing in the woods at job.
Chapter 1 arrives soon!

Heads of Ayr

2011-11-03T16:25:00.001-07:00

Mrs. Marion M. Blondel

2011-11-02T15:47:00.001-07:00

8 Monsters

2011-10-29T16:10:00.001-07:00

Here are the monster drawings
Rustle drew for the new poetry book
'Not To Worry'

An Elephant On His Hands

2011-10-25T21:18:00.001-07:00

Back when I was researching silent comedian
Billie Ritchie (see blog from Jan.15, 2010)
I ran across a microfilm ad for this movie:

"An Elephant On His Hands "
IN VAIN HE TRIED TO RID HIMSELF
OF THE ELEPHANT
Jane secures an elephant as one of her
numerous pets. Eddie, her husband,
disliking animals of all kinds, is forced
to care for it. It's a huge job. He can't
get rid of it--no one wants it. A farce
along new lines, immensely funny
like the beast it stars.

I'm guessing this silent film is
long lost. Anyway, I couldn't resist
bringing it back to life, fading in
and out of sight: Jane, Eddie,
and the Elephant.

What's New?

2011-10-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

I've been typing up letters of Kenneth Patchen
for a forthcoming book.

Also wrote a book of haiku
which will be available soon.
I've been calling it "Not To Worry"
then the other day, I was reading
KP's letter from 1967 and he
surprised me, saying the title:

A House on Mars

2011-09-30T17:22:00.001-07:00

a fable drawn for the kids
last weekend

Crayon Fable, part 6

2011-09-28T17:01:00.001-07:00

This is how Crayon Fable ends.
It was published in 20o1
as the second part of Ohio Trio.
The first part, The Heaven Antenna,
can be read in the March 2011
entry of this blog.

Crayon Fable, part 5

2011-09-26T16:41:00.001-07:00

to be continued...

Crayon Fable, part 4

2011-09-24T10:54:00.001-07:00

to be continued...

Crayon Fable, part 3

2011-09-23T15:45:00.001-07:00

to be continued...

Crayon Fable, part 2

2011-09-22T16:37:00.001-07:00

to be continued...

Crayon Fable, part 1

2011-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

Crayon Fable
writing & drawings
by Allen Frost in Ohio in 1998,
appeared in 2001 in Ohio Trio.
Presented in installments from
the hand sewn original book.

to be continued...

hot dog!

2011-09-20T15:58:00.001-07:00

this is a comic I did for
son & daughter
last spring

japan

2011-09-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

Ohio Time (summer 2007)
Radio (summer 2009)
&
Signals (summer 2011)
learned from
Richard Brautigan's June 30th, June 30th
Right now reading
Santoka Taneda

signals, pt. 5

2011-09-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Airport Diary

Oak Tree

Mirrors

Transplanting Elephants

The Bigger BIrdhouse

The Patriot

Sci-Fi Theatre

Etcetera Jones

Eagle Island

Laundry

Pterodactyl Cupped in the Hands

8 Year Old Egg

The Blue Lobster

2 Writing Dreams

Just Before 6 A.M

Airport Diary

Afterword

Airport Diary

Carrying a bag filled with letters,

the next book project, unpublished

correspondences of Kenneth Patchen

with Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings,

Henry Miller and more. A goldmine!

Surprisingly, it’s my Ganesh statue

that gets x-rayed three times.

Flight from Akron to Detroit was smooth.

Waiting in Concourse C for the connecting

flight to Maine. Just looked in my bag

to make sure the papers are still there.

No movie spies replaced the contents

with newspaper. I am feeling tired

but suspect that’s a natural result of

airport travel, not a sleeping potion

administered by the flight attendant.

Sitting by the escalator, down comes

a hook on a silver line from above.

Sydney Greenstreet with a fishing pole.

After a two hour wait and more,

we are boarding the plane, along with

a fly in the open airplane door. Could it be

bugs are doing this regularly? Visiting

relatives the way we do, carrying tiny

suitcases and traveling to a new home?

Looking at the ground, Detroit is the end

result of the empire of cars, so what

a surprise northeast of the burnt city

big squares of green farms connected

by country roads with windmills

planted in all the corners.

The beautiful sight turns to

dreamy white clouds.

As we climb to 20,000 feet,

Rustle falls asleep next to me.

I hold my hand over his knee.

Clouds follow us right to ground.

Oak Tree

Sleeping below the oak tree

all night rain and wind

acorns hitting the roof

Mirrors

Broken halves of seashells

mirrors filled with water

from the tide going out

Transplanting Elephants

Fallen off the elephant trunks

from these two oak trees in our yard

I’m filling a bag with acorns to take

back West. I’m going to plant them

all around my daily journeys, the way

I go to work and especially in the woods

along the bay where the sound and

smell of ocean will be familiar.

The Bigger Birdhouse

A white birdhouse

stacked four stories

bigger than their house

The Patriot

A seagull

with the face of

George Washington

Sci-Fi Theatre

A UFO lands , great rejoicing ,

the President and leaders gather

much flag waving, cameras and radios.

Can they share their advanced wisdom?

A speaker rises up out of the saucer

like a Japanese lantern swinging.

They have never seen such ignorance,

greed and savagery, they are appalled

by our governments and industries

killing such a beautiful planet.

Only a moment after that,

tanks start shooting.

Etcetera Jones

We were at the old site of Shop N Save in Brunswick

which has since turned into a bigger grocery store,

waiting in line to pay for corn and other necessities.

I suggested Rosa and Rustle go check out the used

book shelf to see if there was anything good.

After I paid, I caught up with them there. It was

a row of worn, twisted paperbacks. Rosa spotted

an intriguing one though, Love’s Sweeter Secret,

featuring a blonde damsel and a guy with no shirt.

I guess I have my preconceptions about that

Romance genre and I started to tell her, then

I stopped myself but it was too late. She wanted

to know. So did her seven year old brother.

We were back in the car driving and I had to

make up one of those stories for them. I didn’t

want to, but they wouldn’t let me alone.

Etcetera Jones in her red convertible sports car

stops by the side of the road to help McLellan

Chamberlain. (His name came from street signs

posted along the way.) His car wouldn’t run,

he gratefully got in beside the woman with

the handkerchief over her hair, sunglasses

hiding her eyes. She refused to go out of her way

though, she took him with her to the beach.

Miss Jones startled him there, pulling off her

dress to reveal a bikini underneath. (Telling

the story was making me ill, but the kids

wouldn’t let up, they had to know more.)

Finally, Etcetera drove him to town, they were

starting to warm to each other. “You’re rich too?”

he asked. “Yes, very!” she replied. Later, McLellan

brings Etcetera flowers to thank her. She’s arguing

with her boyfriend, McLellan knocks him out with

a wrench. Very heroic. Etcetera tags along with

McLellan while he competes in a local whistling

contest. He wins. In her excitement, she kisses

him. A photo of the event appears in the newspaper.

Etcetera’s scorned, wounded ex-boyfriend sees it

and swears revenge. Etcetera and McLellan have

a date at The Proposing Centaur (Rustle named it.

The kids are loving the story, but by now I have a

headache, the road is going too slow.) Soon, McLellan

invites her to his island estate, which is actually a

museum mansion on a state park. How can he manage

to go on lying about his wealth and what will Etcetera’s

jilted and bandaged ex do? Who knows? The trip

from town was over. I had enough. Little did I know

the story wouldn’t go away that easily. Two days later,

we were back at the grocery, Rosa tagging along,

bumping into me as we neared the bookshelf.

The paperback was still there. It was 50 cents.

I paid at the Customer Service counter. She was

already reading it as we made one last stop in town

at the post office, parking next to a little red

Austin Healey sports car convertible. Etcetera Jones

was very real and on our trail.

8/19/11

Eagle Island

We went across water to visit Perry’s House.

Of course I checked out the old bookshelves.

I just had a feeling I would find Charlie Chan

and sure enough, beside a narwhale tusk,

there’s The Black Camel. Also other books

with great titles: The Wonder Book of Light,

True Blue, and The King of the Air.

Laundry

I tried fishing for the first time in years.

Tide was coming in, breezy blue water.

Casting, caught nothing but seaweed or eel grass

until finally the surface rippled as the hook was

breaking. A school of little mackerel followed it in

like laundry flapping around the line. I caught one

briefly but it was too small and fell off.

Pterodactyl Cupped in the Hands

With one full day of vacation left, I have to say

I am tired of different beds, wearing the same clothes,

shrieking younger cousins, all the family drama,

I’m ready to go home. I’m just not looking forward

to the flying. This time we have three airports, plus

a three hour layover in Baltimore. It seems that

travel by air has gone back in time to the 1920s.

(Or is it the wars that make all this juggling across

the country?) We have the most sophisticated

flight deck locked behind a barred metal door.

After all the flying is done and we’ve taken a taxi

to our car, I’ve been told it might have a flat tire.

At midnight, I’ll have to figure out how to fix that

so we can make the hour and a half drive North

to Bellingham. All that is suspended in the air,

waiting for us to happen tomorrow.

8 Year Old Egg

Humpty Dumpty fell off the swing.

There he sits, legs sticking out in front,

his face flushed red, pouting with his hand

on his bumped head.

The Blue Lobster

Everyone wanted to get lobsters for supper,

except for me, I was just along for the ride.

We got to the wharf and they took us

down to the end where they kept the pen

to show us the Blue Lobster. It was even

mentioned in the newspaper apparently.

We had not heard of it though. I mumbled

to my wife, maybe there was something

we could do to cheer it up. She laughed.

They keep it in its own cage like a prisoner.

Yes and here he is, taken out into daylight,

dripping water. The Blue Lobster is quite a

sight. Then they put it back and lock the lid.

Along the edges of the dock a school of those

little mackerel reappear, green and black

tiger stripes, they move like wind-up submarines.

2 Writing Dreams

Second night in Maine, I met Stephen King.

He was hopeful and told me to keep going.

Early this morning, I was in a coffee shop.

I read two stories of mine and returned to

my seat, there was a note left for me.

It was from someone named Indra.*

*Later, I looked this up in the dictionary.

Indra is the Hindu God of the air,

rain and thunder and also war.

Just Before 6 A.M

Thick foggy morning

only white to see

sound of lobster boats

crows and waves

seagulls and terns

drops of rain on roof

Airport Diary

Not much to report on flight

from Maine to Baltimore.

Thinking about contacting

a fortune teller who can read

the mosquito bites on me

and reveal some mystery

in the pattern.

After landing in Maryland,

we ate lunch at a Chinese take-out.

I went looking for Poe in the airport.

I figured there would be a souvenir

since Edgar Allan Poe lived in Baltimore.

The football team is named the Ravens,

there are cups and shirts and hats of that,

but nothing in remembrance of Poe.

No pencil sharpeners, key chains, or

brass-plated poems. Surprisingly,

most of the souvenirs are presidential.

I bought a First Lady tea cup for Laura.

On the way back to our table, I saw a

soldier in camouflage. I asked him if

he was home now. He actually smiled

and said yes. I said, “Good.”

It’s too bad we can’t drop notes

down to the ground. I don’t know what

exactly, just random thoughts to be found

on playgrounds, or backyards, or parking lots.

Rattling bits of paper in trees.

When we landed in Milwaukee,

a mosquito came on the plane and

settled in business class.

While the plane was taxiing, I thought about

The Robot Poet. It’s introduced to the open mic

on Tuesday night in a café in town. It quickly

makes a reputation. Soon, it goes into the city

where it is met with critical response, some

people walk out on it, others champion it.

It’s even given a column in the local alternative

newspaper. How was it using language? Where

was it finding inspiration? Grabbing at words

seemingly by chance from the air.

Okay Patchen, here we go again,

the last leg of the journey home, Part 3,

that will take us out of the Midwest night,

four hours to Washington state.

Afterword:

Could it be I’m already forgetting the feeling

and my vow never to fly again? Mostly feeling

like Robert Ryan in an old boxing movie, being

pummeled but carrying on. Perhaps I should have

taken more notes, I did the best I could under

the circumstances. Even Basho with The Narrow Road

to the Deep North must have longed for more to say

or maybe no more than a nice rest under a kite

flying in a blue sunny sky.

8/21/11

40,000 feet

Signals, parts 1-5

writing allen frost in ohio & maine

august 2011

oak tree photos by allen

kite drawing by rustle

mr. evans

2011-09-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

drawn this weekend after
observing girl across the street
(it's not a true story, however)

signals, pt. 4

2011-09-09T18:56:00.001-07:00

It Rained Last Night

Half a Wing

Route 61

Michael

37 Cent Lettuce

Ohio Cloud Mountain

For Tom

Elyria

No More To Make

Ohio Buddha

Watermelon

Air

Cicada Taxi

It Rained Last Night

It was raining in my dream.

There are rivers running to

lakes that need to be filled,

keeping plants and everything green.

Even the dreamworld depends on rain.

Driving a shape-shifting car that glides

and slides on the wet road,

I remember to stop for people

and let them share a ride.

Half a Wing

I found half a cicada wing

in the wet grass, it’s delicate,

finely made as stained glass,

taken off maybe to wash in the dew

before I came along and took it home

to show you.

Route 61

From a distance they look like crows,

then something’s not right, they’re too big.

As the road passes the farmhouse, I can tell.

Three vultures are perched on their roof.

One of them shuffles next to the chimney

like a bent old man in a hot overcoat.

Michael

Michael sits

on the bench

outside Drug Mart

waiting

for a friend.

It’s a small town

people cross

the hot tar

some of them

he knows.

37 Cent Lettuce

A few leafs

packaged

just enough

for a sandwich

wilted soft

and green as

a summer dress

Ohio Cloud Mountain

Going East

the lake on the left

in all that flat

Cuyahoga Valley

the sky needs

something to build

a mountain

made of clouds

For Tom

Tom said

he doesn’t write

poetry anymore

it’s a faucet

that was shut off.

Even so

once in a while

a silver drop

will form

and fall

Elyria

The sun goes down

the windmill is still

the flowers sleep

tilted at the moon

No More To Make

The factory sleeps

rust and mill dust

form new ground

Ohio Buddha

In a garden

with hibiscus

Rose of Sharon

and birds

under the tree

eyes closed

with snails

upon his head

Watermelon

Surprised by a rabbit

in the backyard

eating seeds

under the birdfeeder.

Calm as a pond

it moves on

to the garden

tasting the sweet

fallen pink flowers.

When the sprinkler

starts it slips

into the green

suitcase of leaves

and is gone.

Air

Three bicycles in the garage,

one of them has a flat tire.

I’ll take the bike that doesn’t,

ride it to the gas station

to see if they have an air pump.

It isn’t far, under the cover of trees,

then across the road and along the cracked

sidewalk. There’s a lot of ironweed

growing beside the road, it fills the field.

Because of the name, I can’t help thinking

those tall green stalks could be cut and

bound to make railroad tracks.

When I get there, past the gas pumps,

on the corner where the road turns in,

attached to a lamppost is the air compressor.

A metal box with a hose. It’s free though,

just press a button and air comes right out.

I ride back to the house, switch bicycles

and push the one with the flat tire

all the way to the gas station again.

Past the field, chicory and ironweed

with purple flower smokestacks,

I feel a drop of rain.

From the way the clouds are

building and bruising together

it looks like one of those Great Lake

downpours will be happening soon.

Here’s a detail I didn’t notice

until the return trip. The big sign

with the gas price on the road

says they also sell worms.

What if I went into the store

to ask about that?

It’s probably an interesting story.

Are they grown locally?

How are they kept alive?

I guess that’s what separates

this story from the Pulitzer Prize…

I’m only here for the air.

Cicada Taxi

Off the tar

it clatters

wings rattling

Signals photo, drawings, writing:

allen frost in August 2011, Ohio

signals, pt. 3

2011-09-08T16:31:00.001-07:00

The Vacant Lot

Water and Sand

On Cleveland Road

Walker Road Fawn

Fox Subway

The Cricket Tide

Tibet Repair Kit

Lummi Transit

Giant Eagle

The Tar Baby

Imaginary Letter…

Cleveland Sand Castle

A Factory Cloud

The Vacant Lot

For as long as I’ve known it

filled with unmown grass and wild flowers

by now I guess you could call it a park

Water and Sand

Back when this land was all green running

to the lake, they stayed in old railroad cars

overnight. The scout master told them to be

on the lookout for bootleggers and they were,

following their flashlights to the sound of the shore.

Just like in the movies and comic strips

they saw a blink on the dark water

echoed by one on the land

and they watched as the boat came in.

A truck was waiting and men opened the flaps.

The boy scouts ran back through the trees

with their flashlights off and the branches

scratching their knees. They got to a phone,

they called the police, and it was just like

a show on the radio. But the police took their time

and when they got to the lake, there was nothing

only water and sand.

On Cleveland Road

Houses grow

around

the rusted barn

Walker Road Fawn

Hidden behind a tree

our son could see

the white spots

Fox Subway

I hoped for a chance to see the fox.

Sometimes he appears running along

the narrow treed edge between

their yard and next door.

The neighborhood is linked

by a chain of thin green paths

a fox will follow. They must learn

these routes like subways…

go right at the beechnut,

quick past the pool…

Even now, at 2 A.M,

I might happen to hear

a rush of wind and see

the low orange blur go by.

The Cricket Tide

At night

it returns

and we swim

in the sound

movement

made heavy

we get sleepy

and drown

Tibet Repair Kit

I’m sure there must be a way

to change bad dreams when they happen,

if someone gets hurt or something monstrous

occurs. Stopping the plot, redirecting the way

the movie goes…It probably takes a lifetime

to master, resulting in the discovery that

the same methods can also be applied

in the waking world and life really is

only another dream.

Lummi Transit

It’s a long way from the morning bike ride

to work. Usually I’ll be looking at gardens,

watching for glass in the road, knowing

I need air in the back tire and sometimes,

it can’t be predicted, the white van from

the Lummi tribe will appear.

Now I’m one week later, thinking of

that bus in this place, with a lot of land

in between.

Giant Eagle

Outside Giant Eagle

the parking lot is falling rain.

We stop next to a canoe.

It’s one of those Ohio

flash downpours.

By the time we get

the car doors open,

the rain is done.

We step on lily pads

floating above the tar,

the perch and carp

and silver grocery carts

below.

The Tar Baby

It’s so hot in Ohio today

the tar on the street

melted into a man.

Just looking at him

I feel the same way.

All I want to do is

lay down.

Turned soft

by the heat

not awake

not asleep

unable to move

an arm held out

for a helping hand.

Imaginary Letter to

The Sandusky Register

It’s been a couple years since

I’ve returned for a summer visit

and I must voice my alarm.

Two of my favorite Ohio attractions

appear to be virtually gone.

Where’s the sound of all the birds

that used to wake me in the morning

and where are the fireflies at night?

I think it may be a result of something

you’re probably aware of already,

the chemical poisoning of lawns

and farmlands. Of course we know

the impact this has on ecology,

the food chain, our health.

Nobody really wants to talk

about it, but I have noticed it,

thanks for listening and I wish you

Good Morning, Ohio and Good Night.

Cleveland Sand Castle

Towers and bridges

roads running through

down to the smallest details

abandoned buildings

filled with sand

everything built that way

A Factory Cloud

The heron left tracks

stamped into the sand

with iron precision

Where they stop

look up for

a factory cloud

signals photos and writing:
allen frost, August 2011
hopefully this will be a paper book soon