THE JAR

Hello there, if you're reading this it means you have happened upon a story I just wrote here in the dark, listening to Hairway to Steven and 26 Songs. I like the idea of short fiction, and the websites that cater to that style of writin. I'm just gonna put the story here, and you read it if you like. Working title: the jar

I feel the need to tell you outright that I have, in my possession, a jar that I believe contains the disincarnate spirit of a young woman who died much too young. I could show you the simple Mason jar, its lid sealed shut with candlewax drippings of a rainbow of colors, melted with no apparent pattern. Inside the glass, there is a little pool of liquid, almost invisible unless you pick it up and disturb the jar.

I could tell you that She doesn't like that at all, that it really pisses her off, but you scoff and pick up the jar from my bookshelf altar, and you peer through the rough glass at the puddle, and I would feel her energy gathering in the room like a thundercloud until you set down the jar and look at me and smile that stupid grin, the one that means, you're a complete dipshit. However, I could tell you that I am certainly no dipshit. I feel that I could tell you quite a few things, more things than you could ever imagine. But first off the bat, you should know about the jar. The one you just unsettled. That's a weird story.

I used to be the kind of man who would hop the fences of graveyards after dark, and explore terrains that look so much different than they do in the daylight. In the light of the moon, everything takes on a certain twinkle, catching the reflection of the faintest star. I don't trespass anymore. I haven't done it in twenty years, and I am not an old man. I'm young, still young enough to remember the follies of my youth. I have had time to reflect on my actions, and my transgressions prevent me from breaking any more laws.

But I did it. I climbed over the rusted fence, in the dark and still, no cars in the parking lot, no headlights down the street. I threw over my bag and followed its transjectory. I explored the unfamiliar sprawl of the cemetery until I happened upon the jar, placed at the center of the upturned earth. I saw moonlight reflected in the glass, and I saw her face for the first time, reflected as if she was staring into a mirror. Her eyes were filled with fear and surprise. She was helpless, trapped in the glass by some strange magic, some horrid curse that imprisoned her soul inside the jar.

Do you want to know her name? Lily Abgel. I read the headstone, freshly engraved. I made a rubbing of the writing, with my charcoal and roll of paper I always carried on these trips. The earth beneath my feet sunk as I crouched and made the transfer. She was only twenty years old when she died. Just like that, she was gone.

I could tell you I heard people coming, cutting through the stones, approaching so swiftly that I felt I had no choice but to take the jar and run. That fact is somewhat irrefutable, since I still have the jar here in my possession. I wish I could tell you more, but I know practically nothing else about her. I searched the local newspapers for her obituary, for a story that should have been there. But it wasn't. There was no Lily anywhere I looked, not even in the library archives. She only seemed to exist in the graveyard, but when I went back the stone was gone. The grass was just beginning to grow again and the name became Leonard Sentence. Leonard was 93 when he died. I don't understand that part, but I have my suspicions.

You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. I completely understand. But I have no intention of deceiving you with any of this. I just want to tell you about the jar. I should have told you this part right at the beginning, so I am very sorry for that. Lily, she spends most days staring out of the glass, her face gets distorted by the bends so you see slivers of reflections of a sullen impatient girl. She never aged, forever preserved. But forever can get pretty tiresome, or so I have been told. Sometimes, it can get unbearable in here, when she gets into one of her fits. She goes batshit when I drape the black cloth over her, because she hates the dark. And that's when drawers start opening by themselves, and the channel gets changed on the tv, and all of the radios will turn on at once. My neighbors get pissed when this happens late at night and they've complained to the super. So, I really try to keep on her good side. Try not to ruffle her feathers. She likes it when I have visitors. She tells me she gets tired of looking at me all of the time, so that's why I invited you over, and that's why I'm telling you all of this.

I know this is weird, so forgive me in advance, but she likes to play a game whenever I have company. She sits on the shelf, and she knows I'm going to lead you over and tell you just a little bit about her and how she ended up in the jar. And she will correct me if the story leads astray even a little, oddly enough. I hear her in my head, feeding me lines whenever I trip up. But her game involves whether or not you pick up the jar or if you leave it alone. That's the hinge this whole relationship swings on. She gets the ones who shake her and upset her eternal relative tranquility, because for reasons she won't explain, she's going to end up taking your soul.

I'm really sorry. She won't let me tell anyone not to pick her up before you do it or not. Those are the rules that I have to play by. Please don't take it personally. You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. Just don't believe anything will happen.

She makes me, just know that. She makes me bring people over. I know we work together but it's nothing personal. I never know who will disturb the jar and who will just think I'm a nut. And the people who think I'm a little funny in the head, I usually end up becoming pretty good friends with them. We stay in touch. People who shake the jar, they just end up going, I hate to say. They just die, no apparent rhyme or reason, they fall to the ground or swerve the car into the oncoming lane or they go to bed and just never wake up.

But the night they die, I see them inside the jar with Lily. They're scared shitless, and she, well, I am not really sure what she does to them, but they're always gone by the next morning, and then she's back to staring out on my little room. She says she'll help me if she can, so I help her. But, maybe none of this will happen to you.

I hope it doesn't, because you seem cool. I really wish you didn't pick up the jar.

Absolom

BACKWARD MASKING III

This is it for this mask, except to set the paint and make it wearer-friendly. I sketched and painted in some psychic symbols about the crown of the head and orbiting the Third Eye. My hope is that, whoever ends up with this Mask will use it as an aid in trance and meditation, as a means to channel Spirit Bear and run through still landscapes that exist only in the deepest of dreams.

My thoughts drifted to the late Timothy Treadwell, the bear fanatic who met his end in the mouth and paws of his beloved beasts, a Last Supper of sorts where Timothy was the Host and the last good meal for a hungry bear. I thought how it would feel to see your future reflected in the eyes of the beast before it tore you apart. What can a Bear do to one's subconscious mind? Can it awaken a stubborn sense of power or a heightened awareness of territory? Despite my studies, my knowledge here is limited, and I am at a loss to the understanding of such universal powers that we live mostly unaware of? Enough questions. Become the Bear, and demand a picnic basket.

What are they going to see when they peer through the eye portholes and suddenly everything begins to feel...different? Infinity is your only horizon.

Nope.

Jambhuvantha or Jambavanta is the Great Bear found in Hindu mythology Ramayana and Mahabharatha. It is mentioned in Ramayana that Jambhuvantha was very intelligent and knowledgeable in war or Yudda Nithi. He is supposed have traveled whole earth 12 times and had extensive knowledge. At the time of Ramayana Jambhuvantha is Chief minister or Vanaras.

In Mahabharatha , Krishna marries Jambhuvantha's daughter named Jambhuvanthi and they had son named Samba.

In one of the incident Jambhuvantha fights with lion and kills it and takes away samanthaka mani. Which again Krishna fights with Jambhuvantha and gets it back. This story is recited during famous Ganesh Chowthi to get blessing of Ganesha.

Black bears feature prominently in the stories of some of America's indigenous peoples. One tale tells of how the black bear was a creation of theGreat Spirit, while the grizzly was created by the Evil Spirit. In the mythology of the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian people of the Northwest Coast, mankind first learned to respect bears when a girl married the son of black bear Chieftain. In Kwakiutl mythology, black and brown bears became enemies when Grizzly Bear Woman killed Black Bear Woman for being lazy. Black Bear Woman's children, in turn, killed Grizzly Bear Woman's own cubs. The Navajo believed that the Big Black Bear was chief among the bears of the four directions surrounding Sun's house, and would pray to it in order to be granted its protection during raids.

Morris Michtom, the creator of the Teddy Bear, was inspired to make the toy when he came across a cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a black bear cub trapped up a tree. Winnie the Pooh was named after Winnipeg, a female black bear cub that lived at London Zoo from 1915 until her death in 1934. A black bear cub who in the spring of 1950 was caught in the Capitan Gap fire was made into the living representative of Smokey Bear, the mascot of the United States Forest Service.

Yeah, I stole all that stuff from wikipedia. Report me. Don't really report me. I'm sorry.

BACKWARD MASKING II

Strange video montage of Elvis footage to Danzig's 'Blood and Tears.' No masks there ;)

I put some more work into my Grizzly spirit animal mask. Here is the photographic evidence:

He got an earlift, made out of pipecleaners and draping strips of plaster to create a skin like effect. I looked at eleven pictures of grizzly bears to get the look down, which doesn't necessarily translate well in these hands. I looked at the snout and shook my head. What was going on there? Like someone hit Yogi in the mouth with a baseball bat. Not so aesthetically pleasing.

Diamanda Galas 'Let My People Go'

Clearer shot of the top of his head, where I saw an opportunity to do something daring, something unhinged. My bear needed a third eye to enable his vision quests and phantom plundering. I took out my psychic scalpel and here's where things get, I don't know, kinda cosmic...

Willie Nelson 'I Never Cared For You'

I built a plain round mirror into the third eye chakra position, confident it would behave like a spiritual amplifier when worn by the celebrant. I did some reconstructive surgery on his mouth. I did what I could.

I got out my watercolors and did some design work on the crown of the mask, a spiritual conduit to gather cast off daydreams and psychic debris discharged in any given area at any given moment. The Grizzly gathers the sprinkles and the stardust and saves it for when he is worn.

Plans for this mask include being fitted to a head covering that will secure the atavistic beast to to the wearer's face.

A candy colored clown they call the Sandman...

BACKWARD MASKING

The mythos of the mythics and the minotaur that headbutts me in my sleep...

I had an urge to build a cage around the sun
I couldn't find a way to say no
I took a check on all the meters in my room
I kicked the dog and said let's go
The clouds were hanging low above the path
I had my arm around a sundial
I pinned my baby into yanking satan's crank
Bum deals with a thin smile.....oh yeah

Pushin up and pushin down against the sky
Like there's muscles 'round my torso
Fourth dimension of smiles, strokes and knifes
This little piggie's gotta go go
To live and blow all of that piss into your heart
You got veins of iron, baby
Oh man this egg is way too hot
Lay on a rock and split open.....oh yeah
(Unrelated lyrics)

So in the end I had a cage around the sun
Looked pretty horny if I do say
The dog is dead and the sacrifice is done

All in all a pretty good day
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber baby
Fate c'mon and slap me in the head
Punch the switch arrivederci

Monster Magnet sang about the creation of something sinister out of everyday objects like housepets and sundials; while such items are handy it is hardly practical to get so far out, Mr. Wyndorf. So sometimes, we suburban shaman get an urge to maybe not build a Cage around the Sun, but maskmaking seems to be a worthwhile endeavor. I went to my local craft store and took a look around and chose some paints and some plaster strip they sold in a roll to build an archetypal animal force mask. I'm particularly fascinated by shapeshifting and the legend and lore that connects to it so this pursuit allows me to pursue the psychic zeitgeist and make something out out of nothing at all.

I bought a bag of black balloons (see: Superjudge) and tied off a fat headed dummy. I dipped wet strips of plaster to mark out some vestigial traces of face. I couldn't help but think of Iron Maiden as their poster boy stared up at me with black latex eyeholes. I let him dry in the sink and I played some awesome music for Lindsey. Well, I played it mostly for me.

I guess my first spirit beast will look like a lucha libre reject. Too wimpy to be a rudo, and I only makes lucha masks for the rudos.

I don't know if it will end up being a snout or a beak, but something's poking out of the face, a sorta contorted grimace built up with a scissored Dixie cup, some foil, and more plaster strips. I should be painting this instead of sitting here listening to Iron Maiden and typing. Oh well. Here's a side shot:

Slumberland's calling, off to frolic with the mythical beasts, free to flee...

edit---so I went and did some painting.

I think I have a bear face, a very fancy bear with a golden honey smeared nose and delicious blue eye shadow. His existence bends in the pixels in the material world around him.

Looks like the leftovers of a bear cookoff. Do people eat bears? People probably shouldn't eat bears. Bears are good reasons to stay out of the woods, safe in your houses you can look out the window in your bear mask and know you are the alpha bear. You are the alpha bear.

The dead eyed stare of a plaster spiritual guardian.

Diamonds and Rust

El Justiciero

Please take a moment and listen to the following song:

Os Mutantes 'El Justiciero'

Once upon a time when perhaps the sun was fading behind
the mountains.
The shadow of a strong man, with a gun in his hand,
raised to protect
the poor people of the haciendas, they called him: "El
Justiciero"
He! El Justiciero buenos dias
Que tienes a decir
El Justiciero yo soy pobre
Que tienes a me dar
" Tiengo chocolate quiente
tequila, paga lo que deves"
El Justiciero cha, cha, cha
Que otra cosa puedo dar
El Justiciero yo tengo 30 hijos con hambre,
la guerra me ay strupatto tanto bene, socuerro
El Justiciero, ajuda me por favor
He! El Justiciero buenos dias
Que tienes a decir
El Justiciero yo soy pobre
Que tienes a me dar
Besa me mucho juanita Banana
Quando calienta el sol

This is what happened when I fed it through babelfish:

I have!

The Justiciero good morning

That you must to say

The Justiciero I am poor

That you must to give me "

Tiengo chocolate quiente tequila, pays what deves"

The Justiciero cha, cha, cha

That another thing I can give

The Justiciero I have 30 children with hunger,

the war me ay strupatto as much bene,

socuerro the Justiciero, ajuda me please I have!

The Justiciero good morning

That you must to say

The Justiciero I am poor

That you must to give me Much juanita Banana kisses

me Quando warms up the sun

I am afraid my weakness with the language barrier allowed me to paint a completely mental pictures every time I heard this song. I don't think you should have to tell El Justiciero that you are poor and you have many children to feed. El Justiciero should be aware of these facts already. He should have a good understanding of what is going on the village, and upon whom to deal out the justice. Then you pay him with chocolate tequila and he goes on another adventure in another village. The hacienda reverberates with his mere presence. With a gun in his hand, he protects the poor, and avenges their undoing.

He is El Justiciero.

Hester:10/4/22--10/29/90

Hester Hatfield Bowlin

Hester Bowlin was my father's mother, she who gave birth to ten children and tended to a steady litter of grandchildren. I remember Hester would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a spoon, and they tasted better made that way. At Christmastime, a Sears and Roebuck catalog was passed around and you could pick a present and they would get it for you. I remember her face lost behind a pair of glasses, and a warmth that extended beyond mere Grandma status, into a sort of matriarchal position.

More memories stick to the environment of their home for me, like the strange stain at the bottom of the stairs down to the basement? Was it really a bloodstain or were they telling me an elaborate sort of inside family joke? My Grandparents had had a new house built, on the same stretch of property that included a grand lake and the remains of their previous home. I was forbidden to go into or explore the old house, so I stuck to the backyard and the small body of water seems to resonate in distant memory retention. How it would freeze over in the winter and the adults would test its firmness before we were allowed on the ice.

There was a hammock, slung between two trees that was hung in the warmer months of the year, and you'd get into it and swing low between the trunks and the net would just swallow you in a cocoon of rough hemp. I would lay in it and stare at the crumbling mystery in the old house. The place seemed to radiate a strange energy for me, like more than one psychotrauma had occurred there. Attempted murder, mad rages, the white hot grief over a drowned son, that's there too, with the tenderness of this woman, torn between being loyal to her husband and son and hating him for making it happen. The whole experience that happened during my parent's divorce, it conquered and divided the family dynamic and left us holding broken pieces with shrapnel shards sticking out everywhere. I'm not at liberty to discuss the circumstances of the final schism, but I will say something in my Grandmother's bloodline boiled in her vessels and set forth a disincarnate energy that exists as a guardian spirit of her nephews, to protect and look after them in a way she had to discontinue dealing with her grandchildren.

But she passed away some years ago, the victim of disease, and yet, where is her spirit? Has it been sent to her own heaven? I would think, if she were to choose, her paradise would be in the presence of her brood, her clan, on the outskirts of their lives, if only to observe and sometimes aid in difficult situations. In death, some part of her still fills that capacity.

But how do we learn to feel her presence? Can she be called upon, for congress or for aid, this matron who changed a million diapers and made ten million pb&j's with a spoon, she is connected to us from our memory reserves, from a twinkling, maybe the presence of something else there with you. Somewhere, she watches over her kin, she of Hatfield blood, from her Mother's side, who adored Robert Mitchum with the devotion of a flagellant but when whoever took the spill down those stairs, from the hallway facing the living room down to the cement floor, she nursed them back to health and she sent him on and she keeps watch now over an infinite number of households, spread out over a giant life size map that her spirit lingers over, in that place with no time, no aging, no more death. She is comfortable there, but who knows when she'll make her next appearance. She's busy with the great-grandchildren, communicating during commercial breaks and afternoon naps, waiting up when one of them goes out late. But she's there.

This is for Harry Powell