Christopher WunderLee - Moore's Mythopoeia

“Mr. Reagan?” Joseph whispered. “Mr. Reagan?” The man awoke and looked up at the speaker, unalarmed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my children love your books.” A yawn followed by a slight raising of the eyebrows, big, bushy eyebrows that look like pubic hair of a Cro-Magnon, before the hand goes up to the mouth, two seconds too late, as the yawn has already occurred and will forever be left uncovered. “Well, I just wanted to let you know,” he continues uncomfortably, out of necessity, “I’ve read them all, twenty or so of them.” Now he’s focused, he looks in Joseph’s eyes, perhaps slightly motioning with his head in agreement, perhaps he’s shivering because of the daunting number of little urchins howling like mad invaders in metal chairs, impatiently waiting for the sleeping man to begin to read. “Do you intend, I always wanted to ask you, or, well, I’ve realized it’s a question I have for you, if you don’t mind me asking, what, before the reading has begun, just between the two of us, I always wanted… well I was wondering, perhaps it’s silly to think there is more to the story, but I, well I wondered: are you suggesting that through communication a practical effect may emerge, may emerge because of conceptual distinctions,” Joseph asked Peircely, “and that these distinctions should be correlated with the effect?”

“Evil odes or prose do live.”

Joseph, head aside, lips moving as he repeats after, two wrinkles over the bridge of his brow, looks down at the book in his hands. Says it again and again, looking for an apparent answer. He places the book up to his mouth, reflexively beginning to chew on the tough corner, “I guess what I was asking, I beg your pardon, is well, from what I can gather, I’m not a writer, a bit of a bibliophile in my youth, you could say, not by any means a connoisseur, like yourself, or a creator, but it appears to me, well it seems as though many of the books I’ve read to my children, yours and say, Father Nicholas’ or the Timera series, can’t remember who wrote them off the top of my head, well it seems that you have, like the Brothers Grimm or Aesop, anecdotal purposes, satirical observations, and the like, and I was just wondering, well, if that was intentional?”

“Evil I did dwell, lewd did I live.”

A repetition of the repetition of before as Joseph, repeating earlier and repeating the latter, realizes he’s gnawed the paper of the corner and sets the book back in the pile, which is snatched up by the author — Joseph assuming to inspect the damage and demand payment — who tosses it open and in the lectern of his palm begins to write in it. He waits, his hand fidgeting with his face, as if to suggest a neurosis, an explanation for his earlier meal, finally settling on his earlobe, which he tugs and rolls between his fingers like a lock of hair, cups the back of his head and massages his neck before effortly putting it to his side, now aware of it, hanging limply, he twittles his fingers, slaps his own thigh, aware he’s justified his teeth marks, scratches nose, and leaves it clasping his own waist effeminately.

Lovely Reader:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders requires the presence of nine symptoms for a diagnosis. The number of symptoms is as exaggerated as infinity. We’re all mad, if you can believe that, as this present author is no surer of his own sanity than a resident of a madhouse, since it really comes down to perspective. “Sir William said he never spoke of ‘madness’; he called it not having a sense of proportion.”

Proportion is acquired most scientifically by observation, normal activities, propagation, an occupation, behavior matching that of one’s peers, a lunatic in an asylum is still not sane, though, even as he follows all of these maxims. Are you ecstatic? Are you sad, depressed? Are you mad? The relief is in none of these, in no polarization of the emotions. One must be at all times harmonious, as harmonious as a mythical bodhisattva, an example, a teacher, a god, with no strong feelings. Outrage, fear, sadness, glee, exultation, sexual fervor, narcissism, desire, it is all disproportional to social reciprocity, social interaction, social functioning, and social development.

I would like to dispel any rumors you might have heard about me. I am not a human fly, I do not favor spiders for lunch, dinner, or any other midday snack, I do not educate delinquents for juvenile delinquency, I do not stretch my telekinetic fingers out over the expanses of time and space to grope unexpecting women’s crotches, it was not I who phantom phucked that virgin, it is not in my demeanor to eat the stars. I am not here to sell magazine subscriptions or insurance policies. On the contrary, I am the professor of a new algebra, a mathematical prediction formula for proportion’s sake called the ARTMEYYBO system. Read and understand (the grape vine, so-called for its Bacchus excesses, is wrong, I tell you this as a friend and a former/future lover, to be sure).

Creativity (a), Desire (b), Opportunity (c), Intellect (d), Emotion (e), Reason (f), Anger (g), Beauty (h), Body (i), Mind (j), Madness (k), Logic (l), Learning (m), Lie (n), Language (o), Kindness (p), Justice (q), Death (r), Jealousy (s), Hope (t), Love (u), Fate (v), Grace (w), Perfection (x), Destruction (y), Ability (z).

A + C = Z, just as Z + C = A, or A + Z = C

U — T = K, just as K — T = U, or U — K = T

I + J + H = X, just as F + L — E = C, or K + B — M = Y

If you are hoping for X, without I + J + H, E + F / Y = T, you are mad.

* * *

The darkness of the room was oppressive that evening as she entered, only the faint shadows of faces and forms, the synthetic colors of their masks receding out of the darkness, a surreal parade of jesters and comedians. When she came out of the air in the hallway, the room was stifling, the breath of all those men clinging to her skin, the soft hum of their voices intermingling with her thoughts. They did not look like men; they looked like tormented spirits in a godless dungeon. She was transfixed by it.

Elisa was the only woman present. She was always in the company of men, the same man multiplied a thousand times. He said the same things with a hundred different voices. He looked at her the same way with all those different eyes. She was a compliment to the proceedings, her face hidden by a mask: a smiling black cat with white whiskers and a protruding pink tongue. She always wore leather pants; she had to peel them off of her body. She knew what the pants did, how they shined in the faint illumination, the contours of her body highlighted by a ribbon of white light, punctuating her sensuality. The black boots with six-inch heels, the tight black tank top, her little gloves, she was a costume, a character. The men’s little pussy.

She joined the Wolf like she was his lap cat. Her eyes, which never seemed to focus on any one person, stopped on the sheen of organic blue. Like one star in the night sky, it twinkled in the darkness. She stared at it because it was out of place and because it was beautiful. All alone, set apart, surrounded by the faces. It took her several moments of constant focus to realize it was an eye, an eye set within a face, the face of an unmasked man, a man who stared back at her. His gaze didn’t tumble over her body. She did not feel like he was looking at her, it felt to Elisa like he was boring into her, like he was entering into her body and remaining, like he planned to dwell in there as an occupant, not a visitor. Her mouth had gone slack, she leaned awkwardly against the man beside her, like she had fallen and didn’t have the strength to recover. She had not resisted, she had not accented, either. It was as though he had tricked her into exposing herself, she felt anger and pleasure, she had not wanted it and yet, she wanted him to continue. That invasion roamed within her and Elisa let it, she felt it move inside her and she felt it drain her. She couldn’t force herself to repel him, to fight for what was left of her, to make a last stand, she wanted him to lay claim to it all.