I Die, Alas, In My Suffering

Catalogue of Some Notable Lake Superior Shipwrecks

1680 - French Jesuit Renee de le Carre and a crew of fifty or so men, embark on an ill fated journey across Superior. Le Carre loses his mind after seeing a crew member accidently step on a hairless mouse. He sets fire to the ship and most of the crew perishes in the freezing waters.

1750 - A crew of seventy-five men -- along with another Jesuit, Guy Montaigne -- dissapear while crossing Superior. The wreck is discovered in 1968 by an amateur diver. Among the belongings of Montaigne is a shrunken head, thought to have originated in New Caledonia.

1810 - Independently wealthy, Franco-English painter Emile Rose sets up camp along Lake Superior, near what is now Terrace Bay, in order to paint landscapes. Somehow, a quasi-religious order springs up around Rose, attracting an estimated one hundred followers from neighbouring communities in a little over a year. By 1815, this number has nearly doubled and the order have started work on a large ship, which they intend to sail out to an unknown island to start an independent colony. They set out some time in May of 1818 and capsized within the same day. Miraculously, it appears that Rose was the sole survivor.



That reminds me.

Last weekend I was hanging out with George under the International Bridge, which spans the St. Mary's River, which links Lake Huron to Lake Superior - - and we were throwing rocks at the water.

"Oh shit, do you see that," George asked, gesturing towards the shore.

I looked over to the water and saw that it had worked itself up into an extremely vigorous boil - - bubbling with quite a bit of violence - - working itself up into an exploding white net.

"Hm," I said, and approached the shore.

As I peered into the water, the bubbling calmed down almost entirely, and I could see my reflection on the surface. I squinted and turned my head in an attempt to see past my image and, like when you suddenly see the faces in the image of the vase, I became aware of an enormous mass of lamprey - - thousands of them - - tangled in eachother, churning the water around them - - intermittently tightening and loosening the muscles in their disgusting mouths.

"That's strange," I said.

At this, the lampreys suddenly resumed their previous vigour, splashing water into the air.

"What the fuck is it," asked George.

"Lamprey," I said, taking several steps backwards away from the shore. "A shit ton of them."

George laughed and put his hands on his head.

"What the hell is a lamprey?"



Then, like a small atomic bomb, or like a solar flare the water splashed up and a black-grey shape rocketed out of the spout and tumbled, or really rolled up the rocks and settled at our feet. George and I looked down.

"That's fucking disgusting," said George.

Now this might seem a bit farfetched. This might be pushing it - - but I will have to push it, as the principles of Truth demand that I reveal that there before us, by our feet was a lamprey - - bent backwards, latching his parasitic mouth onto his own tail.

"He's killing himself," I said, stupefied.

"No," said George, delicately lifting its stiff, looped body up with a stick. "It's dead. Way fucking dead."

He dropped it back to the ground and it wobbled around like a coin before somehow putting itself right and gaining momentum. George and I followed it with our eyes as it rolled back into the water.

"Hm," I said, suddenly feeling very weak, easing myself down to the ground. "George, I think I have just had a vision of the grotesque regions of my true self. I really fucking think I have."

"Hm?" asked George, not seeming to hear me; feeling around in his coat pockets. "Should I roll us a doob?"

To Be Continued...

Cool, Clear Water

Okay, so. It's the year 3020 CE.



Mankind has largley destroyed itself through nuclear war and etc. Gangs of roving bandits- - or roving gangs of bandits wander the deserts of North America, the last of the human colonies, robbing and murdering in a Dionysian orgy-celebration of the apocalypse. Only scattered communities resembling the former human society still exist and so on, etc. Water has become more valuable then gold etc. etc.

Earth, after millions of years, has reached it's most trying - - it's most horrifying era...

The Roaring Twenties

If we only had water, cries the populace -- The blind could see and the deaf could hear!

One of the largest sources of fresh water, the remains of Lake Superior, is guarded by a hideous mutant - - his name unspeakable to the many small villages who depend on his grace for their supplies: The Rat King, Scourge of the Inner Crater.

He stands at over 16 cubits tall. In the first hundred years of his life, he spent his time fabricating an enormous coat out of the abundant population of rats that started to thrive after the first bombs dropped. Out of their tails he fashioned his mighty sling, from which he hurls boulders and garbage at unwanted visitors. The communities that surround his territory are distinguished by the smell (like rotting wood) that wafts up from the his open mouth.

Bring me - - he groaned at one of his many human servants- -My Piiyanoman.



And the Piiyanoman was brought, as usual - - wheeled in on a wooden cart, his ancient fingers hovering inches over the controls, his gaunt, dried up face tilted upwards with his eyes closed tightly.

Fanfare for the Rat King!




The Rat King smiled broadly, his toothless mouth brimming with saliva.

You remember - -he wheezed, bringing his momentous, boil-laden face close to the old Piiyanoman - -You remember water, don't you?

The old man did not speak or move. The Rat King rubbed his chin.

Play for me...water.

If he had anything left in his body, he might have started to sweat. Instead, he gathered what remained up into his hands and prepared to play.

He began, as usual, to shake - - slowly at first - - really just barely trembling - - but steadily building to a full-body vibration; a shivering spasm; a spasmatic undulation - - a tremendous undulatory spasmatic boil. The Rat King brought his hands up to his cheeks and squeeled in anticipation.



I'm getting ahead of myself.

To be continued...

Reading Charlie Parker's Liver

Ornithilogical Horuspicy

So, I'm in the library - -the medical library - -and I'm purusing a tome on obstetrics by the very late Sir Richard Manningham; enjoying it very much, learning a great deal about such and such and etc., stimulating and so on, just beggining to really start nodding in agreement when something slips out from between the pages and lands in my lap. 

Hm. What's this?

A neatly folded piece of yellowed paper. Hm. That doesn't seem very professional - -this is a medical library, not a post office. Well, I thought, I'd better take a look. 

Now, try and imagine my surprise at what I saw as I unfolded the note.

In big, sterile looking letters:

Autopsy Report of Charles Parker, Jr.

Sex: M

Age: 34

 Contents of Body

-One brain

-Two eyes

-One gallbladder

-One heart

-One jet black liver, abnormally, almost supernaturaly heavy. Unsuitable for prophetic uses.

-Two kidneys

-One stomach

It goes on like that for quite some time, and I'm afraid I have to cut it short in consideration of space. But, for some reason the contents of the report sparked my interest. Was this Charles Parker Jr. the Charles Parker Jr. I thought he was - - Charles 'Yardbird' Parker Jr.? And if so, what was his autopsy report doing in an old medical textbook in Toronto? Why the somewhat unusual attention to the individual properties of the liver?

Hm, I muttered to myself, my brain seething and foaming.

Could it be that the New York coroner's department was engaging in the age old practice of haruspicy - - the prophetic reading of the entrails of poultry? That seemed like a bit of a stretch. It was definately unlikely. But even so, a good scholar follows an hypothesis till its end.

Now, I knew absolutely nothing about haruspicy, augury or any other form of divination, and so the question for me was: Why was Charlie Parker's liver deemed to be "unsuitable for prophetic uses"? The answer seemed to be related to its blackness, which suggested some sort of progressive colour scale of liver readability, with jet-black being at one extreme, marked unreadable.

But why?

Now we can start to connect the dots. Charlie Parker's liver was unreadable. Does this derive from its supersaturation (with heroin, alcohol) in conjuction with (or totally unrelated to) a sort of over determination of meaning? Is the text so densely written, sentences overlayed on eachother over and over again so that that the individual words have become obscure?

 Hm, well it was very heavy, wasn't it?

Hm.

Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Yes, I definately was. I did not, and still don't believe in prophecy, and even less then that in conspiracy. The more I studied it the more certain I became that it was a fake, and a very bad one - - designed to lead some innocent medical student astray.

I closed Dr. Manningham briskly and decided I had better move on to other, less controversial areas of study. With the thought of birds still throbbing lightly in my head, I made my way to the Aviary.



I remembered something Carlin told me, about a man living in Greenwich Village in the 50's who claimed to be able to speak pigeon. There was maybe some truth in that, I thought. That I could believe a little better than that garbage about entrails. That was too violent. It seemed like if you were to sacrafice a bird to learn something about the future, you would get a similar answer every time: An answer fortelling violence. But if you just listened to them sing - - that was a little more neutral. A little more friendly.

A warm, farily overtly romantic feeling swept or washed or slipped over me, and I rested my head in my hands and leaned over the gate.

If only we could all speak bird, I thought, totally unaware of how nauseating I was being.



Well, damn, I thought. Maybe I should go find some foie gras. Get all of this out of my system.

I reached into my back pocket to check my wallet, and to my surprise I found the old yellow autopsy report, folded up just as neatly as I had found it. 

Hm, I don't remember bringing this along, I thought - -unfolding the paper almost unconsciously. What's this? Somehow I've missed something.

At the bottom of the page there was a handwritten (highly accurate) transcription of the theme for Ko-Ko, and below that, in very tiny, delicate script:

Examine further: Parker and the A-Bomb.

Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate!

To Be Continued...