At long last I closed this chapter of BRYAN THE TYGER (not the whole book, just the chapter: stop rejoicing) that I've been divvying out piecemeal for the last four posts. It's not good; unless you define "good" as "unabashedly self-indulgent", in which case it's TOO GOOD.
P.S.
In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.
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Balaam is so humiliated by this experience that, on the spot,
he abandons all hope of performing his plan. He lets drop from his hands both cursing-implements
— the magic wand and the laser shooter — and straightway Myala and I dash forth
to retrieve them:
Myala the Glowing Black Panther snatches the wand, immediately
breaks it, and then buries it certain fathoms in the earth. Simultaneously I Bryan
the Burning Tyger extend my mighty right forepaw (all this is happening in slow-motion,
which technique is used to imply fast action) and manage firmly to grip the phaser
gun, which I save in case we need to blast anything away.
Upon witnessing his equipment’s confiscation, the realization
of irreversible defeat jolts Balaam to his senses: Now, at long last, he is able
to perceive the dreadful spirit of Bloody Mary, the New-Age Magdalene, hovering
before him with her glittering sword uplifted.
“O!” Balaam cries, “I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize you were
here!” Then he prostrates himself.
Now Bloody Mary Magdalene of the New Age lifts her voice and
cries out: “Raca!” (which is a profane term that means: “Thou whoreson pig!”) “You
let your own cravings for political capital overrule my guidance. Mere greed became
your master; now look how it led you into folly! — Why did you abuse your own ass
three times with that magic wand? Your way is perverse. Donkey-boy here tried to
save you, by turning and pressing against the flesh of these fresco-nymphs. (Does
this mural run the whole length of the alley, by the way? If so, that’s impressive.)
Had this beast of burden not been spooked by my presence, I’d’ve run you right thru
and saved only your ass alive.”
Now Balaam the Professional Prophet replies in contrition: “I
am ashamed at having engaged in such base opportunism. I wish I could just dissolve
into the painting on this alley-wall and remain there forever, in a state of suspended
motion, among these bathing nymphs depicted. (For I agree, this is a really grand
mural.) So I understand if you still wish to butcher my soul — therefore, go ahead
now: Draw thy sword, and thrust me through. Chop me up, salt me, and package me;
lest these jungle beasts come and maul me, and assimilate my sinews, so that I become
one of them.” (Here Balaam fails to suppress a shudder.)
Seeing her intended victim repentant, Mary’s wrath begins to
abate. She lowers her arm and lets the glittering sword dangle at her side while
preparing to answer Balaam . . .
However, Balaam, seeing an opportunity to escape his present
predicament, swipes the sword from Mary’s hand and then falls upon it. Worse yet,
immediately after giving it up, his ghost does a U-turn and flies down upon the
blade as well: too quick to bust.
Mary hovers blinking in disbelief at what just happened.
“You’re over-generous,” I try to soothe Ms. Magdalene’s spirit;
“don’t waste another thought on Balaam — we win some and we lose some. You did everything
spiritually possible to make him a better prophet. Some of these souls are just
resistant to becoming distinguished. It’s like they are allergic to exuberance.
If wisdom or aesthetic dignity cannot be commodified, they want no part of it. Don’t
blame yourself — you did everything that could be expected from you.”
Mary Magdalene turns and looks into my Tyger-eyes. We’re both
fighting back tears.
“Thanks,” she sez.
“Hey, I’m glad we finally got a chance to meet, tho,” I attempt
to lighten the mood. “I’m accustomed to hearing so many rumors about you, dear Mary;
but now that I’ve beheld you face-to-face, I’m pleased to be able henceforward to
vouch for the fact that . . .”
“All the good things people say
about you are true,” Myala interjects.
The spirit of Bloody Mary blushes:
“The feeling is mutual. I’ve secretly admired you for a long time, actually. Even
when the Ruler warned us not to.”
This warms my soul: “It means a
lot to hear that! Myala and I have admired your own work, as well, ever since we
learned that you’re not just a virgin but also a harlot.”
“Yes, well, ex-harlot,” Mary
clarifies; “that’s technically the definition of ‘magdalene’: a reformed prostitute.”
“Wait, hold on,” sez Myala; “I thought
it just meant that you hail from the city of Magdala.”
“Well, yes,” replies Mary, “but
words acquire meaning with usage; thus, when I famously abandoned harlotry, after
having become its most notorious practitioner, my story infused the term so thoroughly
that it usurped its definition.”
I now must be wearing a sorrowful
look on my Tyger-visage, because Ms. Magdalene scratches my head and sez:
“Why so sad?”
Looking up, slightly surprised that
my mood was showing, I reply: “Oh, it just makes me downhearted to think that something
as pleasant as fornication could be considered a bad act; and that such a fine damsel
as yourself might agree with what that teenager sez in my favorite movie Wrong
Cops (2013), that ‘prostitution is wrong’.”
“Ah,” Mary smiles, “then you can cheer up! For it’s not the lovemaking
but the selling thereof that I abandoned. Free-love is the kingdom within
us; I only repented of its commercialization.”
“O-o-oh, NOW I understand!” this makes my fire-fur crackle.
“However,” adds Ms. Magdalene, “when you just now mentioned Wrong
Cops as your favorite motion picture, I immediately recalled that, in your most
recent newsletter, you refer to 2017’s The Green Fog as your favorite film.”
“You subscribe to my Tyger Tymes?” I say; “I’m flattered!
— But, yeah, each statement is correct: for it’s a tie; they’re both my favorite.
Sort of like how I hold you, Mary, in the same high esteem as I do Jesus and Jehovah.
I don’t see anything wrong with being intensely enthusiastic about what moves one.
So I simply love you all; I feel no compulsion to order or rank; as Whitman sez:
Showing the best and dividing it from the
worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity
of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
“Also, can I just say,” sez Myala to Mary Magdalene: “I love
the way that you incorporate the motif of hemoglobin into your stage routine; it’s
really effective. And the way that you utilize the glittering ‘Sword of the LORD’,
but only compassionately and for the sake of every thing that lives rather
than just for one exclusive nation or species. You’re truly kind-hearted, compared
to poor humankind’s leaders and ‘Mother Nature’. I commend that.”
“Oh god,” Bloody Mary exclaims, “that means so much, coming
from you, Myala! I was sort of afraid to even address you and Bryan here, when I
saw that we all had a scene together in this scripture — I honestly wasn’t even
sure if you would understand my language, because the two of you appear so . .
. I don’t know how to describe it: alien-deific? — but OH! now you make me
want to tell you what I think of your awesomest journey:
“I know that most fans favor your adventures at the nunnery,
cuz they like how each visit offers a montage of alluring tableaus, wherein the
viewer can imagine herself as a participant in the licking; but I, for whatever
reason, happen to appreciate most that sequence where you encounter the murdered
jellyfish and pursue its spirit into the underworld; then you suck up its soul,
and it electrocutes you, but nevertheless you return and go eat its flesh (even
after bragging about resisting the temptation to do so!) — I swear, that really
turns my crank.
“And,” continues Mary, “I bought your book-length Christmas card when it first came out, so I was familiar with the reference to the segment with
the video game, but I still went back and re‑read the tail end of that one cited
chapter over again, because I kept thinking ‘What? — did I miss something?’ And
then when I found out that everything was just a glorious hoax, I literally laughed
myself to sleep. Then, when I woke, I began to brainstorm about different ways that
one might bring these lunacies to life: Do you mind if I run a couple of my ideas
by you?”
“Not at all,” I say: “shoot!”
“Oh, good!” Mary breathes easier; “I just knew that you always
spoke of your Self-Amusements as texts that were written to be film-resistant, or impossible to adapt into movies
. . .”
“That was an experimental goal,” Myala interjects, “which we
set for ourself during composition, in hopes of provoking weirder results; but the
notion that anyone would actually TRY to visualize these zany books only tickled
us: we half assumed that the most genius filmmakers would take it as a challenge,
since such a goal is clearly impossible. Our only condition was always that there
be sundry attempts made, widely differing: diverse renderings and variations — no
‘Authorized Version’.”
“Alright, you put me at ease, thank you,” sez Mary. “So, back
to your episode of the video-game sea-jelly eucharist. (I assume it’s obvious that,
by ‘eucharist’, I mean both ‘thanksgiving’ and ‘massacre’.) Anyone who wanted to
make a cinematic version of this section of text for both storybooks — this present
one and your Merry Christmas novel — could simply reuse the footage from
the Xmas book’s Frogger action sequence to serve as the chase scene of the
present scripture’s film — you’d just need to edit in a Glowing Black Panther and
a Burning Tyger, plus superimpose the ghost of a sea-jelly over the frog, in post-production.
You could either employ computer-generated graphics, or use the ‘claymation’ technique.
An ambitious auteur would incorporate both; plus even get someone who knows how
to program pixels on old 80s video games to make a trinity of avatars: a panther
sprite, a tyger sprite, and a jelly sprite. You might even steal one of the ghosts
from the Pac-Man video game and let it serve as the sea-jelly’s shade. But
I wouldn’t rule out hiring live actors in physical costumes to play the roles, either:
then you could use the screenshots from the actual game as the background, and make
a composite of the two video streams based on color hues, using the chromakey method.
“Sorry if I’m getting too technical,” concludes Mary
Magdalene; “my point is this: I hope that all of the audiovisual artists out there
make a Big Blockbuster version of all your exploits, dear Tyger Bryan and Black
Panther Myala.”
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