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I’m walking through the woods, ok, over these hills and bushes and stuff and I run into my brother.  He’s dead, right, but there he is, asking if I saw “that girl”.  I said I didn’t think so.  “Watch out for her,” he said, ” you won’t recognize her.”  And then he left.

The the dream changes and I was in this cave with my sister, who also happens to be dead, and also this white guy in bondage gear.  Crazy! We’re in the middle of these really intense negotiations that I can’t really remember, BUT  there was another damn thing about some girl, the girl, have you seen this girl??

I walk, or kind of float into another room and THERE’S THIS GIRL, she’s all bondaged up with iron bands, lying on a stone slab kind of thing, and get this, she says, and I remember this very clearly, she says “I’m not the girl you’re looking for.”  Crap.  At this point I always try to wake up, but I can’t.

Then all of a sudden I’m on some beach, tramping along in the wet sand and then I see her.   But there’s something wrong, she’s much shorter than she should have been, she’s stuck in the sand and all.  She’s half in, half out of the ocean.  She’s changed.

Then I wake up.

keeping to myself these days.  Kind of tired.  Ever since that last exorcism, the house has never really felt comfortable.  So much dust stirred up, bad memories, those crazy ones who live in the cupola.  ‘Who needs em!’  I always said, and now I know that’s the truth.  All the time screeching and clawing at the wall paper.  They just ruined the lovely cabbage roses I remember them putting up in ’68.  Always liked it.  Now, after surviving for 150 years, it’s hanging in ribbons.

I just don’t feel like myself.  I used to enjoy making a little mischief too!  When those ghost tours would come through? Or before that, young people looking for a thrill.  Kids, drunks looking for a dry place.  I’d toss that old chamber pot around and moan and sometimes woosh by to cause a little wind.  If I was feeling particularly spirited I’d pull their hair or knock one down.  But it’s just gotten boring now, I mean what’s the point?  Another person to scare, another producer taking a tour of the house going, “wow! Oh! Brr!” It just doesn’t thrill me like it did, watching their eyes widen, the hair on their bodies zinging up with electricity.  There’s not much variety in their responses.

So I stay up here in what’s been a nursery, a sewing room, a bedroom, a room for punishment, an empty room, a room for art, a storage room.  I may figure out how to get those freaks back to the cupola, but right now I just don’t have the energy.  If they don’t tear this place down, I may have another 100 years to rest.  That’s all this is, I’m just tired.  I’ll probably feel better by then.

“Time to go,” she said she said

“time to leave and gain the shed.”

‘What’s in the shed’ I said I said

(I knew but felt a dart of dread.)

“Get up and see old uncle Ned.”

‘I fear the worst’ I said I said

‘That monster’s mean before he’s fed.’

“He’s sweet today,”she said she said,

“The time for fear’s when he is dead.” I said

‘I’ll stay right here if you don’t mind,

I’ve left all care in monsters behind.

Except for those that live within

I’ve no need for outside sin.

Monsters come and monsters go

That one I don’t need  to know.’

She left me then for that rotten shed,

I stayed behind and hid abed.

My monster’s played within my head,

‘Just keep it quiet’ I said I said.

Is it a snarling lion?

Is it a snowy field?

Will something jump out and scare you?

The impulse to pull the curtain aside may overwhelm you, forcing you to ignore  your more protective instincts.  If you knew what was behind them, would you still want to look, not trusting the information until you glimpse it with your own eyes?

For various reasons i get caught in the darkness.  I take up temporary residence in the last, ill-lighted house on the street.

I begin to live in the blackness of thought, of vision of hope.

The light fails to draw me.  It seems weak, foolish and unexciting.  Akin to the drama of a florescent light bulb or a the weak beam of a dying flashlight.

I respond to what fascinates me, the thing that will stimulate the gland or nerve to fire and makes me feel alive.

It may be as innocuous as dead flowers in a bilge-water vase.  A dead bee or beetle on the sidewalk, a sleeping seed pod bursting prematurely.  These things are shadowy in a sense, and some may not want to look at them, but they contain a wholesome sense of the nature of the world.

But it can also violence, bestiality, blood, pain, soul wrenching savagery.

And when i become enmeshed in these worlds peering through the grimy windows, it  becomes harder to find a way out.  Everything in life takes on a sinister cast;  the evil of the dark is living at the center of me. I don’t want to leave.  I dwell in the mud of being.

When it gets this deep and dark, i look for a ladder despite myself to climb up to the light.  It no longer seems feeble but powerful, and desirable, and healthy and loving.  Living under the sun is the only place i ever really wanted to be!

As I climb those worlds recede.  Seeing and knowing from a distance isn’t as terrible.  Shall I dismantle the bridge that takes me there?  Destroy the ladder so once in, i can never leave?  I prefer now to occupy a place in between, a little more in the sun than the shade.

It started as a pseudo-scientific experiment we could exploit through film and photograph.

It involved two pig heads procured from the public market being exposed to different methods of trauma.  Which method would ravage the head faster than the other? What would the results be?

The first head: burned in a ceremonial pyre.  Results: Crispy black char, took a rather long time, held shape from skull which would not burn.  Smelled reluctantly of pork.

The second:  Boiled in water, soaked in acid.  The results: (Maybe I am confused here, maybe the first head was soaked in acid and burned in fire.)  But what of the boiled head?  Mushy, intact but gelatinous, very strong boiling meat smell pervading the kitchen.  I mean lab.

The charred head was posed and photographed and eventually buried, having nothing else to say that we could hear.  The boiled head, the watery head, was dissected by hand and studied intently; snout, ears, cheeks fatty and squishy.

At this time, the reality of dismemberment became oppressive.   What kind of appalling hipster lessons were we learning? Is abasement for pleasure cloaked in science any more palatable?  When one partner held the severed snout up to her face and snorted through it, I began to laugh hysterically, falling to the ground,  abandoning myself to the surreal horror of the image.

And the original plan, the plan before the science experiment, for securing a pig head was to feature it in a parade; by itself, exalted and proud, resting in wagon, pulled by and traveling amidst the freakish participants we knew ourselves to be.