A lot of strange people flowed into Indianapolis for the solar eclipse. Not to mention, the “I-70 Killer” circling the city, with his fangs out, on the long swooping bypasses. The teenager Treat met Roger, a religious drug addict, at a Spaghetti joint on Lex Avenue.
Spirals Authentic Italian Cuisine looked like a gaudy golden crown with green overflowing dumpsters playing peek-a-boo in the scuzzy alley. The sex workers came droning in and ate discounted meatloaf and Lasagna for breakfast. Treat always felt excited seeing their glammed-up purple and peach outfits. They were good to him like he was their mascot. Being 16 and on the streets was parceled with protectors and villains. Sometimes, it was hard to tell the difference.
About twelve of them sat at a large round table. They passed around a blue Jesus Icon for luck or the continuation of a private joke, always sitting on the table watching them. Treat didn’t like it because Jesus had sharp plastic thorns and mean eyes.
The restaurant smelled of sweet tomato paste and Alfredo sauces and it glowed reddish in the wintry morning sunshine. Treat looked at their sort of rubbery painted faces, thinking about the things they did last evening. It was like picking up the wild maternal night and sitting it down around him. He could smell it covered up in cheap perfume.
Roger, a fresh addition to their group, was the tallest and dressed in a black church suit. All eyes were on him and it seemed he sat at the head of the round table, like it wasn’t round at all. His white-walled coppery hair and laser straight part, large ears, and freckle scrubbed and shaved face, might drive people away with “Narc,” on their breaths.
Roger’s large earnest face burned with enthusiasm, switching between the spiritual to the sordid. One minute he lost them with the blood of Jesus then resurrected them with his exploits with Salt Lake City heroin. He held his arm out as if to test the baby’s milk. Showing them the black collapsed veins and red stick marks inside his forearms running under a green cross. He transformed a sugar packet into a glowing heroin talisman that appeared in the palm of his hand like a magic trick. It walked his fingers in a long bar of red light. He tilted a spoon, then acted like he was depressing the plunger into his right arm. Eyelids fluttering into the nod of pleasure. The girls smiled, perhaps thinking ahead. Dee-Dee, a huge gorgeous black woman, said in a guttural voice, “Yeah baby-yeah baby.” A few girls were kicking and going to Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings at Fairbanks Hospital and Treat felt uncomfortable for their sobriety.
Then Roger abruptly, as an Emperor’s gong, smacked his large white Bible on the table knocking over the Parmesan cheese. A sticker of the total lunar eclipse was stuck on the back. It looked pagan, and Treat thought, is this the black tar sun of heroin?
Roger talked about the solar eclipse as a sort of gateway. A place where their souls would enter but they must each pick up the cross. Treat thought Roger’s cross was heroin. He wasn’t sure what his was? Possibly being unloved and having too much time on his hands. The girl’s eyes glazed over and they made the cuckoo sign around their ears and scoffed. Roger lost them.
His ten female street apostles dropped their forks, washed down the crunchy garlic bread with red and pink lipstick smeared water glasses, gathered up their slim purses, and herded toward the street like a gang of skimpily clad sex advertisements. The night had moved onto the Starlight Motel on Michigan Street.
“That’s cool, Roger…I guess.” Treat followed religion like how some people follow political candidates, from a distance, but vaguely listening. He chalked Roger up with the other grifters, shamans, and gurus who descended upon the Indianapolis streets for the upcoming eclipse.
Roger went overboard into an almost fervent spiel of religiosity. He begged the busboy, a big man with a walrus prison mustache, to accept the tenets of Roger’s religion. It was embarrassing to see Roger kneeling, almost homosexual, genuflecting, debasing himself in front of the 40-year-old busboy who carried a large gray tub of dirty dishes.
“Your soul is at stake! Take my hand son, let us pray!” Roger pawed at a large hairy forearm.
“Get the fuck off of me!” The ex-con wheeled the tub of dishes and a red sloppy plate of noodles hit the carpet. “God damn it!”
Treat jumped up, even though he wasn’t that big, and grabbed the plate and swiped up some noodles, slimy and dripping through his fingers. “Here.” He pushed it into his tub.
“Get out of my way.” The busser stomped through the maroon dining room with the Italians on the wall. One looked suspiciously like Mussolini.
“Hey come on get up, Roger.” Treat’s face was beet red. He could feel his ears hot and burning, and he wasn’t even the one humiliating himself.
Roger jumped up—all wired. “See-See! He will think about this and someday he will convert.”
“I guess.”
“Let’s go.” Roger had something else burning inside him. “We’ve got missionary work. Saving souls, son. Are you with me?” Treat didn’t like someone his age or a little older, calling him son.
“Ok.” Treat took the ingenue’s approach to Indianapolis in the late 80s. He hopped in any available car—lucky the “I-70 Killer” didn’t snatch him up.
They drove down a lot of dirty slushy streets in the poor area of Indianapolis near the Colts new stadium. Then got on Martin Luther King Street and then followed Canal Street, and the river was solid white with dark weeping edges.
Treat saw a black toddler in green Grinch pajamas running across the river. His mother was screaming. He couldn’t hear much with the windows sealed tight. Like watching a TV show without sound or the benefit of theatrical music. It was spitting snow, and the eclipse was slowly turning the world darker. He saw all of this in the centrifuge sway of the curve. Like watching the snatch of a nightmare unfolding in a sinister darkening little snow globe. Roger smirked and kept driving.
“God, did I just see that?”
“I think so.” Roger smiled. “Some people don’t make it.”
“Hey, we should help.” Treat thought Roger’s Salt Lake religion would convict him. The baby convicted Treat, and he had no religion.
“Hey, we should help.” Roger mocked him stepping on the gas and changed lanes swooping around the curve. When the hopes of spring came, they floated up in the White River. Mother and baby, getting their 15 minutes, on page seven of the Indianapolis Tribune.
Treat thought about why he was in the car. He liked Roger at Spirals, sitting under the red lamps twisting huge forkfuls of spaghetti making the girls laugh, but Roger was different now. His face was as callous as a dead piece of leather.
They sloshed past an old Kroger’s grocery store on 10th street and pulled up to a dumpy white bungalow. Treat thought they would go to some rich church person’s house on Meridian or something.
The little house was fairly close to an Indianapolis precinct station. A large brick building with a tall chain-link fence around it in a crime-ridden area next to a run-down park. The police station made you feel safe if you were in the front but in the back, it had no effect. Like it was the teacher with their back turned. They were on the back-side.
“This is it, Sweet Treat. Let’s make some money.” Treat wasn’t used to doing daytime burglaries. He usually panhandled on the corner of Washington Street and Meridian, before the motorist could escape town on North Meridian or get on the 465 bypass. But he could use the money.
Roger claimed to be an Orthodox Mormon. Treat wasn’t sure there was such a thing. Maybe a Jehovah’s Witness, whatever he claimed Treat didn’t believe him. Roger’s bronze-colored hair and clean-shaven face with the cynical predatory glances didn’t look very Christian, even though he wore his black “Bible Salesman” suit.
Roger sometimes traveled around with another Salt Lake City thug named Ray, knocking on doors. If Treat saw the two hulking at his door, if he had one, Treat wouldn’t answer. He thought they were casing houses while doing their supposed-devout work.
Roger’s shiny dress shoe kicked the door in leaving a black mark. “Don’t just stand there ya little shit. You comin?”
“Hell yes!” Treat said hell yes a lot. He floated in over the splinters. Roger was like a wolf on an unguarded carcass. It seemed like Treat was dream-walking. He just stood around leafing through a McCall’s magazine. A woman in a red knit hat with a white Swiss cross on it kept his attention, and he read about her life in Wisconsin and listened to Roger’s cyclone.
Roger wasn’t too careful with the curio cabinet shattering the glass door. This wasn’t Treat’s kind of theft. He only wanted to steal things—not vandalize—or destroy. He went out to the kitchen and looked into the old Kelvinator refrigerator. The kind that will suffocate a kid at the dump like a stand up coffin. The fridge was full of plastic Tupperware containers and Mason jars, one filled with purple juice floating with boiled eggs. Like blind, soft cataracts. Treat wanted something easy like bologna, but they had nothing easy in there.
“Look at that, look at that!” A shiny gold watch dangled from Roger’s big hand.
“What is that? A Rolex!”
“Naw man. It’s a Seiko. I might wear it to Ecuador.”
“Are you really a missionary?”
“Yeah.” he said, studying his stolen loot.
A little white dog came up to Treat, he hadn’t made a sound, and he picked it up. “Hey, little buddy.” It’s dog tag jingled. He saw “Pixie” engraved on it. “Pixie.”
Roger frowned at the dog, and Treat thought the big nut might hurt it. Roger stood at the window. It was around 10 AM. People were lining up on the street. Black people. Treat hesitantly brought the dog over. “Damn, look at all those people. We need to get the hell out of here, Roger!”
“It’s getting dark out. The seven seals are being opened. I need to do some missionary work.” He looked around and found a Bible under some glass, shaking it off. Missionary work with a stolen Bible pretty well summed up Roger.
Treat watched Roger go outside. He looked very odd among the black people. They wore cardboard eclipse glasses with solid black lenses, looking like huge children—huge crazy black children. This was their turf, and Treat realized they would not welcome a couple of honky-ass thieves like them.
Cars kept filling up in the Kroger’s parking lot. The street lights lit up in the unearthly deep shadows and sunny darkness of the eclipse.
“What you be doin up in Harold’s?” A large black man hollered at Roger. The sun was gone. It was like midnight with an alien moon ringed in fire—casting central Indianapolis into a streaming dark gold weirdness. Treat watched the powerful-looking man go to a long green car with reddish chrome pipes coming out of the fender wells. The gold rims looked like they had chariot spikes. The trunk raised. He pulled a sword out like the entire trunk was its scabbard.
“I have marked this house for Passover, my son.” Then Roger was on his knees genuflecting into the strange bright darkness. “Take thy Lord into your heart.” He grabbed at the black man’s forearm just like he did with the busboy. All the faces wearing the flimsy solar eclipse glasses, hundreds, lining the street, were looking up as the sun went dark. An eternal ring of fire dancing around the black moon. They all turned like a single hive mind looking at Roger on his wet knees in the middle of the dirty icy street. The black man in a Kroger’s red smock looked like a fierce gladiator. A Katana sword flashing in the unnatural light.
The sword raised toward the black burning moon. The light was still impossible to keep out like God with a Band-Aid on his eye. It seemed like it might stay that way; the moon holding back the incomprehensible power. Treat trembled, clutching little Pixie, watching the horror unfold in a full lunar eclipse.
The crowd cheered. Like it was the Roman Coliseum, and no time had passed between now and then. They were all the same people that had ever existed, Treat too, and Roger. Treat looked around and wondered who was in charge and realized no one was.
A white Lincoln continental’s nose was stretching from the golden darkness flashing its lights. Treat let Pixie down, and he sat on the sidewalk, watching Treat. He could still feel the warmth of Pixie’s little body. The crowd turned toward Treat wearing their dark eclipse glasses. Pixie barked like he wanted to protect Treat.
Treat instinctively knew who was in that car, as if his need to be rescued had called him. This need had put him on the streets, searching for love in this barbaric world that had none to give.
Treat opened the door and when he sat on the white leather seat. He felt the up-rushing wind of falling into a great chasm.
Image: Drug paraphanalia, spoon, powder, syringe, straw from pixabay.com
literally stories 
Christopher
There are a lot of creeps in the world and a lot of people write about them; but those writers usually turn away from the topic and echo stereotypes from films. Not here. This is original–tough going, but perfectly done!
Leila
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Hi Leila
Thanks so much! Glad you liked the story!
Yes, the endless parade of creeps that go by us in cars or with shopping carts, and on different days some of those creeps are us.
Christopher
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I found this absolutely gripping. It was a wonderful mix of real life and a viscious and sordid existence but seasoned with something approaching fantasy. Wonderful atmopshere. Really well done – thank you – dd
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Hi Diane
Wow really happy you liked the story!
I was hoping the atmosphere would charge the battery. I witnessed an eclipse a few years ago. The moon crossing and blackening the sun still burns a ring of fire in the mind’s eye.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher,
It takes a brave writer to go where the story leads them.
If you are honest with this process, then you end up with something realistic, no matter how horrific the circumstances.
You couldn’t write boring if you tried!!!!!
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Hello Hugh!
Great to hear from my Scottish friend! “Ye’re a guid yin!”
Thanks so much for taking an interest in my writing!
That is a fine compliment! if I could have that written on my tombstone I would take it!
Christopher
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Tremendous.
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Thanks! That goes a long ways!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher!
The things you know about America (and the world) amaze and astonish!
This story made me hungry, it made me want to consume some opioids and worship Jesus and the eclipse, it made me want to drive around in edgy neighborhoods (a regular habit of mine), and it made me want to go to Indianapolis! All the above probably says more about me than about your story, but this tale is, truly, another masterpiece.
When put together with all your other pieces, it amazes and astonishes even more. Your novel-in-stories, and/or short story collection, is shaping up to be a work that truly, truly WILL take its place beside Carver’s WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE and Denis Johnson’s JESUS’ SON.
Wow, wow, and wow, all those years of reading Stephen King and Anton Chekhov really paid off so much, as I’ve said before and will say again, you’ve created an artistic fusion that blasts almost all other contemporary short fiction out of the water at all levels.
Totally mature work, frightening, funny, hilarious, human, sympathetic, prophetic, and your way with concrete details, the way you can build worlds that mirror the real world AND have their own shimmering, glimmering, sometimes horrible beauty, and imagination, makes most other writers look thin and wanting in comparison.
Your sympathy for the American underdog and outsider (and by extension just any and all underdogs and outsiders anywhere) is amazing. And religious. And Christ-like, very, very Christ-like. Like Chekhov and Dostoevsky, like Tolstoy and Flannery O’Connor, and like Hemingway and Sam Shepard, too.
And the fact that your stories are never OVERTLY “religious” always makes them MORE realistically religious than they would be if you stood around preaching about it all, which you never do. It must be intuitive literary genius.
The great state of Indiana has a true artistic gem in yourself. It will take note one day, in a big way. You are slowly, consistently, quietly turning it into a heartland metaphor for all of America.
Gotta run for now! More later!
Question: how long did it take you to write this story? How many drafts? When do you write and what do you do while writing? (Just curious…)
Dale
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Hi Dale!
Wow! Thank you with gratitude my friend!
I’m honored to be spoken with such giants!
Hopefully they have rubbed off–lying at their feet, drinking up their work just as voraciously as those alcoholic drinks and drugs once consumed me.
I’m happy the Indy setting made you want to fill up the car and see the seedier side of life! I like how you take your journeys and how you write about them. It’s very gritty and inspiring! I see your world and it’s a lot like mine! The ideas and glimmers of the broken beer bottles, needles, and empty swings in litter strewn parks can’t go unnoticed in their beautiful vacuums of despair.
Stevens’ said it best in “The Snowman” which I got from your excellent essay on him. “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” The kind of words that make you see something that you couldn’t say.
Christianity has a way of getting into my stories. I think from all my struggles with it and reading of the Bible. I once read the New Testament while doing a stretch in jail. Once those words come in they don’t leave. The Bible is not a novel it’s a sword! Unfathomable power!
I once read CS Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” about a senior Devil and his nephew. It was a very strange and compelling book. These phases of seeking the Lord and falling off into the oblivion of substance abuse and insanity can’t really be separated.
I looked up this story and I had 22 drafts. It started as flash fiction. I had been trying to write flash fiction, because it was a quicker way to get the elements of story writing down. That’s where a lot of my stories come from–expanding earlier flash fiction into short stories. I’m not sure if I’m a flash fiction guy that’s what I’ve learned. It takes a certain emotional wack upside the head to make flash fiction work. I like the broader development.
According to my records this story took around six months from when I started it. I actually had to rewrite it in the third person after I first submitted it to LS, because in the first person the narrator can’t die. I think there was a lot of happy labor that went into it. It may have even been called something different, before it became Eclipsing Indy. I thought it was a couple of years old since the last eclipse where it was born
I usually write in the morning for an hour or so, while I’m drinking cup after cup of coffee. Sometimes I read something to the prime pump, lol. I find myself reading Carver’s “The Father.” and Kate Chopin’s “The Night Came Slowly.” because they are very short and powerful.
Lately I’ve been reading Dorothy Parker. She has quite the wit! “The Good Soul,” shows it well. I found out she wrote the screen place for the original “A Star is Born.” There are three or four versions of it. I want to see the oldest one, but no one can beat Kris Kristofferson. “Are you a figment of my imagination, or I one of yours? Watch Closely Now.”
Thanks for generous and great comments!
Christopher
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Christopher
Check out Dorothy Parker’s amazing poetry collection ENOUGH ROPE if you never have. A riveting book, available for free on Project Gutenberg cuz it’s more than 100 years old. Her short story “The Telephone Call,” too – an absolute classic.
Gotta run for now (driving my kids around to work and school, etc) but of course I’ll have much more to say later!
Drinking endless cups of coffee while writing sounds familiar! (And then I switch to green tea mid-day…a beverage more healthy than vegetables…)
Dale
PS
Congrats again on this great story.
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Hi Dale
I’ll check out her poetry and the short story! I should get on the green tea, too!
Thanks!
Christopher
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CJA
Dorothy Parker’s ENOUGH ROPE is a great collection, it reminds me very much of Bob Dylan’s album BLOOD ON THE TRACKS except that Dorothy got there 50 years before Bob. Wonderful reinvention of the “nonsense verse” genre in light of a broken heart. Perfect, beautiful, and truly lasting. AND underappreciated and misunderstood to this day.
Yes, the Bible is a spiritual Sword.
I can imagine few things more educational in the deepest, truest, most spiritual sense, than reading it while incarcerated.
I’ve studied other spiritual classics (on and off) for years, like the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavadgita, and the Koran.
And those books are holy and powerful. Sometimes I feel like I need one or another of them more than the Bible – temporarily. Only temporarily.
Because for me The Bible IS IT, both the Jewish part of it, and the Gospels.
Inspired Writing has never hit levels quite like this.
For me much of this has to do with the “characters.” And their situations.
Adam and Eve. And the Serpent – and God.
Noah and his Ark. Moses and his People, and the Egyptian princess who rescues him when he’s a baby. Jacob and Isaac. Jonah and the Whale. Bathsheba and David. Joseph and his brothers. Jeremiah. Ezekiel. Amos.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, The Three Wisemen, Mary, Mary, Martha, The Woman at the Well, The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, Herod, Salome, Pontius Pilate, Peter, Paul, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, all the disciples….
And the writing. Mary Magdalene only appears a handful of times, but it’s so powerful we know her, we know WHO she is, far more than we know the main characters in the greatest secular novels ever written.
If you look at it from a secular perspective, it starts making you wonder why that is.
I was almost “shocked” one time when I heard a Catholic priest say (to someone else), “Jonah was not a real person and therefore he wasn’t swallowed by a whale. This whole story is symbolic – but that doesn’t make it any less TRUE.”
I was shocked because I am not Catholic and, up to that point, I had not been aware of how enlightened the Catholic view of the Bible can be – in the right hands.
I want to add one more spiritual classic here, especially since I know of your love for the Native American.
BLACK ELK SPEAKS As Told Through John G. Neihardt (Flaming Rainbow) by Nicholas Black Elk.
A GREAT BOOK that explains the Native American view of the world better than anything I’ve ever read.
Like Geronimo, Black Elk later became a Christian.
And he said he didn’t see anything in his Native religion that barred him from becoming a Christian. On the contrary, he felt like his people had been crucified.
Thanks again, more later!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Yes after reading a couple of her stories. I found Dorothy P. to be very impressive.
I think jail does bring people closer to God. People say the jailhouse Jesus and other things but being in there is different. The lonely and shameful quality of it is a stark experience. It might be a tiny preview for hell. “Abandon ye all hope who enter here.” With that mindset the Bible looks like something a person might try. Might try for real.
The doubters beat their drums and ridicule like they always have when the convert begins to prophesise from the bar-stool.
Black Elk sounds like an intriguing figure of history–awful about the crucifixion of his people!
Christopher
Wow that is really profound about “Black Elk
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CJA
22 drafts is amazing.
One: it’s THE reason why this story is so good (well, among others). What a great example of the “Writing is Rewriting” “Rule”!
Two: it shows amazing concentration and dedication, the kind that is demanded of a real writer. Like Hemingway. Like Carver. Who also did 22 drafts of things (or in that range, etc.).
Three: that kind of concentration and dedication, when done with a sense of humor, is like what the aim of zen buddhism is. It’s religious.
YES, great tea is health magic.
I just use the kind you can find in a normal grocery store (cover it when steeping).
I make it four or five times as strong as most people do. I combine decaf and regular.
I drink 5 to 10 cups a day of this brew.
Studies have shown that drinking two cups reduces your risk of having a stroke by 40% THAT DAY. SO ITS EFFECTS ARE IMMEDIATE!
In Japan, they smoke more than in the USA (on average), and have less lung cancer.
GREEN TEA IS THE REASON (probably combined with a better diet in general).
DWB
(PS
My Ph.D. was almost an M.D. at one point instead…)
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Hey Dale
Thanks! Yeah it’s crazy how many drafts it takes–at least for me. I think it’s hanging onto something that has promise. Then running out of gas–restarting–even going backwards. Then somehow it’s done.
I’ve been reading a book called “The Writing Life,” by Annie Dillard. It’s pretty good. It’s an actual paperback, too. lol.
Green tea sounds amazing!
The Japanese are some of my favorite writers. Murakami is top notch. “The Wind Cave” is a good one. Kafka was a big influence on him. His writing is very mysterious.
Wild about almost becoming a doctor!
Christopher
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Christopher
Back in the day when I was thinking of getting the MD degree, my specialty was going to be Psychiatry. SO I could prescribe medications for myself, LOL! Not the best idea perhaps, but I have spent several decades studying medicine informally since then so it is a genuine interest of mine that continues.
I was thinking more about your zen focus in doing 22 drafts of a story.
Hemingway said he wrote 39 different endings for his novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS. (Other parts were done in far fewer drafts but for the end: 39 times).
Things like this: the love interest dies; she doesn’t die. Their baby dies; the baby survives. The main character commits suicide; he doesn’t and just walks away. The whole family is killed in the war: none of them are directly killed by the war. The main character is shown getting drunk again at the end of the book; he is not shown getting drunk again at the end of the book and has made a vow to himself to never take another drink ever again in honor of Catherine; ETC, etc…
And so on, and so on, for a grand total of 39 different options until he finally settled on the one he used.
And since the ending to A FAREWELL TO ARMS has always been considered one of the best endings in American Lit, one can’t say that Hemmie was wasting his time when he did so.
Congrats again on “Eclipsing Indy”! Hemmie would’ve loved this story!
Dale
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Hi Dale
That’s cool about you wanting to be a psychiatrist! Wow no wonder you’re so interested in Freud and Jung! You speak and write about these men when with authority.
I was going to major in psychology and racked up about 30 credits, so I minored in it. I loved the abnormal psychology classes and I was surprised how much I liked cognitive psychology.
They do say people with mental disorders gravitate to psychology. I gave a speech on alcoholism in abnormal Psy.–about like regurgitating one of my AA leads with a few stats.
I mentioned my time in the state hospital and this big fat faced red haired woman, said, “But-but that’s the loony bin!” then she laughed. It was an awkward moment. She said it like I was absolutely crazy and what the hell was I doing on a college campus. lol, fuckin bitch
I was glad to take those classes because I learned about all the things I thought I was and wasn’t including being mentally retarded. I had gotten so fucked up in my drinking that I really did think I was retarded or the nicer (but no better) mentally challenged.. All the stupid things I had done..lol.
Thanks! Makes me feel better about some of these drafts getting so long in the tooth. That’s very good company to be in with Hemingway. I’m glad it wasn’t a waste of time. (Sometimes I think writing is a waste of time, but I enjoy it and can’t stop, anyway. It does help me to escape reality without the red lights picking me up).
They once asked Hemingway if he ever considered psychological therapy and he said, “Yes, I see Dr. Smith Corona everyday.”
Christopher
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Christopher
How outrageous that a literary genius such as yourself once thought of yourself as mentally challenged.
I blame this vile, hypocritical society we inhabit for such as that.
It’s a place that likes to trample its genuine and authentic artists and thinkers down into the dust all while elevating the fakest fraudsters among us to the highest positions.
Then again, it could be that resistance that helps to make us better in the end!
Yes, back in the day when I briefly considered becoming a psychiatrist, Siggie and Carl were my two main motivators (other than that thing about being able to write prescriptions).
That quote from Hemmie is great! And yes, without writing I believe I would be crazier than I already am.
Dale
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Hi Dale
Kind of magical thinking in reverse, lol. All the drinking and smoking meth dumbed down most of my self image to a point where I was making a lot excuses and looking for more! lol
Yes this society of factory working in mindless all day pursuits of pushing the rock up the hill, with other hateful robo-trons, takes a toll on the intellect.
Thank you for your kind comments!
from the hill people
Christopher
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DWB
Adding an Addendum to this conversation… I can relate to the sanity of writing and being crazy. The impossible to understand anxiety builds and the only answer is to write. It may be a way to find some control or to get lost in this other world of words.
CJA
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Ananias
The great German, Nietzsche, said this (in The Birth of Tragedy):
“At the juncture when the will is most imperiled, ART approaches, as a redeeming and healing enchantress; she alone may transform these horrible reflections on the terror and absurdity of existence into representations with which humans may live…the sublime is the artistic conquest of the awful. The comic is the artistic release from the nausea of the absurd.”
FYI the ending section of The Drifter’s column at SARAGUNSPRINGS is about YOU this week!
D
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Hi Dale
This is a truly powerful quote by Nietzsche! How the artist reacts in this tide of barberry makes sense.
I will definitely check your Sunday Column out! Thanks
Christopher
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Christopher,
I think I know about eclipses, jars of boiled eggs, suns, and moons, but of course not. I drove home yesterday with the most menacing man I ever met who explained everything I needed to know about Jesus, how large The Father’s Head was, and The Devil. I got out of the car as soon as I could. However, I took your ride into the great chasm. Holy Shit, man!
I saw an eclipse of the sun at a zoo. The giraffes went to sleep at noon. No sleeping during Eclipsing Indy. — gerry
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Hi Gerry
Thanks! Glad you liked those details. I remember adding those boiled eggs in the purple juice as a sort of upgrade, lol.
Sounds like the heavy hand of religion. He had you trapped, huh. lol.
Wow that’s crazy about the giraffes sleeping in the eclipse at the zoo. That sounds like quite a setting for an eclipse!
Christopher
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A teenager tagging along with a junkie-preacher during an eclipse, drifting into burglary and chaos while searching for love and safety in a collapsing, barbaric world. So much going on and it’s handled effectively. I hope Treat didn’t make a mistake getting in that car at the end.
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Hi David
Thanks! I think it was curtains for Treat.
There have been some bad dudes operating on the Interstates in Indiana and Indianapolis. Jim Jones was there for a while too.
Christopher
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Treat goes with Roger to find meaning and he finds the ultimate alright in that big car. Roger’s all over the place without focus ….he doesn’t have a centre though he’s trying, one of those bipolar wild fellows in my estimation, they’re charismatic but yes Treat becomes disillusioned and sidetracked and takes off to another, different ride. Hopefully this wasn’t the I-70 killer, though that could well be. Treat seems to need others, as the story says searching for love. Too bad he put Pixie down. Lots of vivid description almost stream of consciousness, on this wild night of the soul. Keeps me reading to find out where the journey leads. From the start though, Treat seems like he’s lost. I relate because I could’ve been him.
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Hi Harrison
Your insight into what drives these characters is really excellent! Roger probably needed to be on lithium, and Treat goes with the wind, which can be very dangerous when you’re young.
I can remember hitchhiking around Indiana when I was sixteen or seventeen–clueless and more lost by the moment.
Thanks for your comments!
Christopher
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Great characterizations and such rich and interesting description. So many lines on their own told a whole story within themselves – my favourite being ‘Missionary work with a stolen Bible pretty well summed up Roger.’
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Hi Paul
Thanks for your excellent comments!
Christopher
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