And in the end the studio had to pay for a reshoot of the whole swamp scene because management couldn’t sign off on an intervention at the hands of a Russian, or anyone carrying a Russian sounding name.
The director, who was allergic to swamp creatures, moaned to his wife and turned in his bed and asked why, why am I here?
To suffer and bleed and make something of this shit, she said.
He huffed and puffed and got out of bed and put on his sunglasses, socks and tie. He slurped some powder into his nose, stood up in front of the emblazoned mirror and began trying on underwear.
His wife looked at him bemused.
Your tie.
whaddaboudit.
Its going to look bad under your shirt.
He angrily started ripping at his tie, nearly choking himself to death like Baron von Muenchhausens suicidal brother.
Jesus this day gone broke! He relapsed in his old mommies tongue.
Don’t bear it in mind, said the wife. She’ll come around.
She came out of bed and embraced him.
He, drawing her with him, sat down on the ground and embraced her like a convert embraces a priest.
If you say so, he sighed.
He then got up and looked in the mirror and said
help me with my tie.
and so the day of the great director began in earnest, and this was the day of the reshoot of the swamp scene.
the bubbles are unmistakable. A RUMBLING comes out of the near black in which we are located.
FAINT RAYS OF LIGHT come through the tarmac of green and reveal us to ourselves.
Igor delved in his soul and found a rubber Duckie. He tossed it outside of his body and it became a whirling storm that sucked him up and slurped him down the drainpipe of a bathtub of which faint memories remained intimate to his mind. He then slew seven dragons and twenty beasts with no heads - slaying them meant screwing on their heads - during which he got bit several times with rabies and other, more sinister madnesses, and for this he had to calmly flute herbs under a Buddhic tree and make a fire of a non-Buddhic tree and sit in the rain and smouldering ashes afterwards, contemplating everything one can do with an apple aside from eating it.
Igor now aimed his hypertrusive obstacular at the skies underneath and overhead and blasted.
What happened has been registered in and as every cartoon ever made.
Then he went out to eat, breakfast. It was noon. It was allowed. He had a hamburger and coffee.
And Munchausen aside, he grasped the iPhone in his pocket since he was expecting to vomit out a breakfast ill prepared by his wife, and suddenly forgot her name, and as he tried to recollect, a total loss occurred, in fact, the time of great reckoning was it hand, forgot everything about everything lead ing up to NOW, as if the instance, this, ate up every bit of memory had left, and no, he told himself, I will reboot one the taste of this badly prepared brew leaves my lovely apprehensive taste buds.
Igor was perturbed by Dracula, very much so because Dracula tried to out him, and he knew the rules befitting the service, otherwise his position of s double agent will be given up, even though it has been marginally been deposed and filed into some abandoned memory storage since microfilm days, dumped and forgotten.
So why should now be worried about dracula’s whereabouts and activities when Dracula was immersed in time travel as eagerly as he is?
He’ll if wife became overly inquisitive about his whereabouts, he could refrain from directly facing her underlings and proceed to tell her not to call any of drac’s acquaintances, drac he knew, was not much into too much daily exposure any way, and tried to keep it to the minimum.
In fact him and drac were attuned in certain ways to the swampy underground that meant certain exposure since Dostoevsky days when letters from underground didn’t mean much, and could not in a thousand ways indicate swampy terrain.
So slovenly forgot about the awful contents of the ill prepared breakfast brewed up by the missus, after stretching it out inordinately, and put on his well its another day another dollar day mask, went about his daily routine.
On a normal day, Igor has breakfast with coffee and hamburger - that is when he finds the opportunity to shove the wife’s conjuring in a plastic bag which he then maneuvers into his briefcase, which he possesses expressly for this purpose. The wife thinks Igor is an accountant, but Igor is in fact, a Man. In the occasional case where Igor is forced by his wife’s scruples to absorb into his digestive tract her conjurings, said digestive tract disallows the stufflings trespassing beyond a certain point, and addresses them back to sender in pulp form, yet Igor, polite being that he is, is compelled to find other locations into which to emit the retoured plasma than the Formica living-table, and in a bout of characteristic illuminance he has contacted a Finnish programmer he had remained in contact with from the days of “purple motion” and “second reality” to manufacture an iPhone app which will allow him to projectile vomit the plasma into to the phone-screen, where the app will secure its absorption and disposing into “the cloud”. However this morning it appears that the apps tolerance is still found wanting and the plasma smothers the physical object of the phone - meagre by proportion as the physically is next to the cloud-ness, the virtuality which holds the true significance of the device, despite its sleek design which is still, even covered in yellowish chunks, unmistakably American, and therefore real.
Igor wakes up and meets an eagle. He says “No matter what you’re told, I have a heart of gold”
Is it the eagle which says this, or Igor? It isn’t clear. He tries to remember and nearly falls asleep doing so!
Then Igor instantly finds a great measure of peace as he remembers his old friend, Rumi. He remembered the wonderful star-lit night when he and Rumi sat at the edge of the village at their favorite spot in front of a warm, comforting fire.
He had been trying to solve a problem that evening too, a conundrum of sorts. Rumi could see the almost anguished look on Igor’s countenance. He smiled at his friend, Igor, and said: "Ah, my dear and lasting friend. Igor looked up at him and marveled how Rumi’s countenance glowed as Rumi spoke the words:
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
Igor was so moved by the memory of these words that tears began to flow. It was as if this great weight had been lifted from his heart. “Does it really matter which of us spoke the words to the other?” All that truly matters is that I have met my first Eagle. We will speak to one another and learn many things from one another. I especially shall learn many, wondrous things from my Eagle Friend. Ah, I cannot imagine the things which this wonderful Eagle has to teach me, to tell me.
Then Igor looked up and called down the magnificent Being. Smiling to himself, he murmured: “It is beginning” and his heart soared!
As he was called from far asunder Rumi smiled with awe that If it would try to conjoin him in a wondrous union by the sacred tree of life.
Then he remembered that the sacred Eagle was never permitted there, Therefore he gathered all his mystical powers, . and Rumi transferred his eagle nature into the remarkable bat Dracula.
Then he flew, muse-like whipping Prometheus into , his alter narcissistic ego into an enchanting and slightly curved eclipse of plunging flight into Igor’s domain, where the holoscopic tree of myths and wonders stood within mystical shrouds in one of many hidden universes.
The tree proudly stood as time immemorial first planted it"s beguiling seeds , guarded by black angels of bestial virgins. They hissed and stabbed at the mythic poet with such vengeance and cruel stabbing motions, that even the primordial viper was taken aback with surprise and bewilderment.
Beneath its shadow Igor pulled down one of its forbidden fruits, biting into it with lasciviousness gluttony, spitting out the seeds to begin the cycle anew.
Then he drank deeply from the river Styx, refusing the boat captain’s invitation, he turned away from forgetfulness and began marching towards the sunlight - his eyes squinting, his retina’s ablaze, he endured the discomfort, slowly seeing distinctly, he re-cognized the bell tower.
Climbing it, one arm length at a time, he reached its pinnace where a heavy bell waited and weighted - he punched it with his fist listening to the reverberations spreading across the sundrenched landscape. He stood there, alight, looking down, and made it his home.
Deciding to ring the bell, twice a day, and thrice on holidays - to wake up the sleepers and cast fear in the souls of the priestly messiahs that preyed and prayed upon the sheeple below.
Igor was standing at the well with his sawed off still smoking and wondered how many sicknesses would come into the world from the corpse he had just dumped in there. He, absentmindedly, blew some smoke from his barrel. He looked at the sky which grew dark and then back to the shed. The moss on the roof glistened in some pale sunlight which managed to pierced through the western clouds.
He began wiping the barrel down and contemplated tossing the weapon in along with the corpse but then decided against it. He slowly walked back to the shed and sniffed the crisp air. Then he noticed a cluster of daisies and suddenly felt heavy with emotion.
Had he had the right to kill? But it hadn’t gone like that. One had not given him a choice. Still, choice, right, whatever. It weighed on his heart now. He crouched down, laid the gun on the grass and plucked a daisy. “it was just, it was unjust, it was just, it was unjust…”
Once a verdict had been reached, Igor had ceases to care.
Igor was looking at some monkeys in the zoo eating their own asses out. He marvelled. There was plenty of food thrown around them, fresh fruits and pieces of raw bird-meat. But the monkeys wouldn’t touch it. They kept burying their heads literally in their own asses and, when these heads where withdrawn from the holes and stuck back in the sunlight, there was a grinning about them, almost triumphant, as if, in that asshole, they had accomplished some victories no one would ever know about. Yet they seemed to know about each others victories alright, as soon enough they were crawling into each others anuses and lingering there for a while until there was a circle of monkeys with their heads in each others asses, like an obscene ouroboros. Igor had no idea why he was watching still, as he felt definitely queazy and just quite annoyed at the monkeys, too - what could possibly be the advantage to them, doing this weird performance demonstrating their fallibility, over just eating some good fruits and meats and being natural and sane? Damn, it was quite the conundrum for Igors brain and he stood there, under a tree, and the Sun passed over the tree and shadow passed over Igor and the monkeys … nothing changed about them. They were in their anal circle and bopping around as such, and it seemed they would never leave each others ass holes as long as some shit was produced inside of there they could eat, and then shit out into the next one… finally Igor threw up under the tree, which was by all accounts a very clean and proper way to act there and then, and he went about his way.
Igor was fast asleep. The steak had been good. Perfect.
Wine had been good, too. Pure pinot noir, round and almost sweet, almost decadent, almost bad. Just on the edge. Which is how he slept - and his dreams zoomed in and out of the black, the dark, the abyss, the nothingness, and they were jagged and sex pervaded their junctures.
When he woke it was early and birds were singing. He got up and made a cup of coffee and another one and sat on the porch and thought about people he would have to hurt to make things right. He thought about them carefully, clinically. He nodded to himself and got up, and walked to his truck.
Igor felt nauseous about all the vapors6 emanating from all the passed, bit he held strong, remembering Deborah Karr’s guidance from the night of the iguana proclaiming that anything human doesn’t revolt.
Asses including.
She just lost a small fortune just to prove that premise , .
That premise, in all outward senses meaning a tremendous self cursive sacrifice. of a self bedridden.
What else could be said of it except that night of the iguana, was splashed with multicolor resinances of grey, to which no one listened because they all thought mad, mad she must cause she need talk like that even if she was a missionary, and with an I que like hers.
No Kaitlyn must know, even beneath the lights , how it m a y REALLY feel?
To be like that, like that pitiful night, like that?
But hark, Dracula theater appears, as he walked Igor, hush hush Igor, do not fret, the night almost to dawn asunder, the twilight reduced mercifully to a few gaining streams of conscious revival!
And lost to lost, leaf to least the last farthing to procure, as Sweet orlovsky and what’s his name allen gin’ s berg , saying you can’t do it quite like that at city lights.
So if if if or were to held to suit , where in brothers would akin troop, remember, there are more then seven ways to skin a cat.
Gaming loss is worth it. Ompared to a level headed shrink’s fees. So what if need a few shots of black label , johnny, sorry gib, and whomever like Mowk, discount the muses as easily.
Igor, do not so easily discount this for lack of sober lost weekend type of non remembrance, for some dance to remember as some: to forget.
For this cost me more, much more, than an hour with shrinkage.
Igor decided to give it a go and looked in the internet for a shrink which wasn’t charging an arm and a leg. He didn’t find any one though so he bought, in recommendation, some black label and sat down in a lumpy easy chair at the window of a hut he had broken into last winter, and which no one had come to claim. Just to be sure though he had his sawed off on the little creaking rickety table which also held his glass and the bottle.
He commenced the work.
He lumped down the first portion, poured a next one and drank it half and commenced to talk to the dead plant he had installed in front of him. He figured that was as good as a shrink since a good shrink much doesn’t say anything as he had read in early Freudian literature of which, as we realize, he was expert.
So… yeah… Im not gonna talk about my mother, nor my father to you, plant. He said. And he drank the rest of the whiskey and poured more. He frowned and grimaced. Fuck that. He said. He wanted to beat the plant up, and realized it was going well. He stood up and walked in a couple of circles and sat down again.
You know, fear, plant? He said. Of course ya don’t. You’re dead. Dead men don’t fear. Dead plants, dead men, all same sausage. He sipped a bit and then was craving all kinds of things all of a sudden and realized, death and sex, they are totally the same if you are partaking in neither. Or whatever. Fuck. He sat down again, man. This time, he meant it.
Whatcha wanna know, plant, he said. So he went on about his childhood. I was born in a shack much like this by all accounts and then I went to school and had a few buddies we used to go and steal candy and hide it in a cut up football and my buddy Bert would toss the ball full of candy to me in the store, and I was scared because if we’d get caught Bert would be fine and Id get a beating before my sisters. But it didn’t happen. Bert was good like that and he mocked me. Have you ever been mocked, plant?
But the plant wasn’t mocking Igor. The plant was frowning on his superficial treatment of his own sorrow. Igor was refusing to face up to the real stuff which made him crooked. Igor didn’t even knew, he didn’t remember, what he had lost. The plant was basically reminding him, or trying to, but it failed, as a dead plant often will fail. Igor just went on rambling about bullshit and gradually the bottle was half empty now and Igor became all rambunctious to the sparse furniture but left his pain intact. He didn’t crush into his pain. He just ranted to the plant about stuff not even a dead plant wants to hear about even if it is paid a hefty fee. Suddenly though, a dog-skull looked at Igor from the shadows. Igor stared back and was instantly sober. He looked at the plant and back at the shadows and the dog skull was gone. But he remembered something. He smashed the bottle on the table and it didn’t break. He commenced drinking from it and pouring the liquor al over his face. Igor had remembered something and now he was properly trying to drown it. But now it came closer and had colours. It was clearly a woman and Igor knew who she was and he didn’t know who or what he was, knowing it. He knew he was not. He said “Hi” and the woman smiled sadly. And Igor said “well you can talk back” and she didn’t smile anymore. She seemed to judge him and he nodded. “Okay be that way, I deserve it” he says. “Probably.” And he went to do some push ups to make him feel better about himself but he got dizzy and he laid down on his back and the woman bowed down over him and kissed him on the fore head and he suddenly had a headache. “What did you do to me?” He whined and whimpered. “I loved you!” And then he heard satanic laughter and he saw the dog skull again and he bit at it, and he got on all fours and chased the dog head around and the lady was now sitting on his back and she was semi naked because he couldn’t see her and that was alright, the point was that he was being ridden and he felt yeah, thats true. And he looked at the plant but it had been toppled and a surge of sorrow and guilt poured into his heart and he crept to he plant and wept and said “I never meant for you to see me like this.” And then he changed his mind and said “oh plant I wished you could see me like this and forgive me, but you are dead.” He didn’t even know what kind of plant it was. This made him feel worst of all.
For the long time Igor, he had attempted Buddhism. But he was never glorious. Only vainglorious. But not even good at that man. For sure he was a vainglorious one in his dreams, but not so much in real life. He was more like the beast and he didn’t know how sitting below a tree and giving up what little possessions he had was going to grant him satisfaction, blissful voids notwithstanding; therefore Igor chose to imitate a trickier example, namely to God whose name means what two things mean which are both Gods, but both irreconcilable, the God … whose name speaks not itself where power -
well, Igor hanged himself upside down from a great big Ash tree in any case.
Then Igor got thirsty. He didn’t know for what, it wasn’t one of the usual things.
The night fell of the first days he hanged there. He could look at the moon, pale and not caring above the trees, inside the pond, because the sky looked like a lake now, looking at it upside down, but a very deep lake, not like a usual lake.
He kept waiting, but what am I waiting for , he asked himself, after a long time.
He had no timepiece, so he could not tell how long he was hanging there, if someone like the Master would have barged in, he would merely say that he was hanging in.
The master seemed to wander all over the place, and his comings and goings were recognized by the sound of the flapping wings he knew so well.
The Master needed to know, that Igor should not be left hanging like this, but after all, he reminded himself of his nihilistic tendencies for no unnecessary movement away from the usual catatonic stance he called just another Buddhic trance.
He faced this state, as did those whose desire is a perfect simulation of Siddharta.