Have been struggling to get the whole thing down in a coherent narrative. Struggling like a one-armed Sisyphus. Early Nineties here. – JDW
A Reminiscence Of Lycanthropic Metamorphosis or SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS.
“It was a time of innocence, a time of confidences, long ago, it must be. I have a photograph. Preserve your memories. They’re all that’s left of you.” – Simon & Garfunkel
First time he ran away from home, he forgot to pack a lunch.
***
“I have a memory problem. The first question – look, you can ask me this – is exactly how much evasive editing is part of my loss of memory. I’ve been up against that one before. My position with respect to anyone else’s claims for actuality has always been: it’s you against me and may the best man win.
“I’m not as stupid as I look. Are you? For instance, I’m no golfer. I did have a burst, and this is the ghastly thing which awaits each of us, of creating the world in my own image. I removed all resistance until I floated in my own invention. I creamed the opposition. Who in the history of ideas has prepared us for creaming the opposition? This has to be understood because otherwise… well, there is no otherwise; it really doesn’t matter.” – Tom McGuane.
“I don’t want to remember. Memory hurts. Like crying. But still and deep. Memory rises to the skin then I can’t be touched. I hurt all over, my bones ache, my teeth loosen in their gums, my nose bleeds. Don’t make me remember. I forget as hard as I can.” – Fred D’Aguiar.
***
Chapter 1. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, tbegins to make more sense with each passing day, yet the best piece of advice I have heard so far is, don’t look back.
I have no memory. Some folks don’t see so good close up, call’em near-sighted; others don’t see so good far away, call’em far-sighted. I don’t see so good into the past, call me back-sighted. Everything’s blurry behind me.
I guess the toughest job I ever had was…. husband. [Editor’s note: Took two more marriages and forty years to fill in that answer.]
***
Don’t Look Back. The Autobiography of Barker Ajax. The Adventures of Barker Ajax.
Call me crazy, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
I am at work on a large piece of fiction which includes concepts such as creative schizophrenia, practical self-help, mystery/love story/travelogue, philosophy for the next age, etc. and so forth.
A border is just a line in the mind.
My protagonist is a man not unlike myself who changes his life by allowing the “wildness” out. He crosses the line. He crosses the next line. He crosses back. And forth. He comes to control himself better by letting go of the chains of limitations. He leaves the porch, so to speak.
For some years now in a town called DARKLAND….
Barker Ajax writes a controversial column called WILD DOG. WILD DOG appears in a tabloid-sized magazine named THIS WORKS.
THIS WORKS is a sumptious literary supplement, delivered free – each Wednesday – to every doorstep in the DARKLAND metropolitan area.
Just try to get off the mailing list…. HA! Not a chance.
In DARKLAND, home of Barker Ajax, THIS WORKS arrives in the mail this week. Next week. Week after week.
Barker Ajax lives in a different world. Barker Ajax operates by different rules.
His Code Of The Wild Dog is a simple twelve-step program.
Doggone It!
Defy The Odds.
Stand For Something.
Break loose.
Quit For Good.
Adapt Your Game.
Act Now.
Amaze Yourself.
Do The Work.
Assist The Victims.
No Whining.
Become Your Own Hero.
Too weird to live, too rare to die.
***
Barker Ajax became a poet. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
THE PSYCHO POET? No. Hmmm. Half man, half dog, he’s all bard?
That’s the guy. This is his story.
A BOUNDARY IS THE END OF THE NET BELOW.
And the blank page is heavy lifting.
My name is Barker Ajax and I feel like a brand new man.
The Japanese people have a saying, Deru kugi wa utareru. The nail that sticks out gets hammered. Be the hammer.
Another of their proverbs tells us a great man does not let himself be known.
I tend to take a more skewed perspective on most things. For example, seems to me, a great man would have to be crazy to make himself known.
Look at what happened to the Son of God, for christ’s sakes. Not pretty. For what? To save the eternal soul of Jesse Helms (Reptile – Carolina).
Don’t get me started.
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity,” Smother told me from the time I was two years old, old enough to run away from home. The border between smart and crazy is easily crossed, so today I’ve got a Ph.D from the funny farm. Good ol’ WACK U.
A fine line is the edge I have crossed in the years since. It’s a tight rope.
An honest man makes the wrong enemies if he says the right words. I am Barker Ajax and I said something I shouldn’t have. Often. I couldn’t help myself. Truth is trouble these days and I was the last to find out.
If you personally focus on fear in the future, you are limiting your ability to succeed in the present.
When I was a kid, we used to curl up under the desk to protect ourselves from a treacherous nuclear attack from the commies. Some of us didn’t have kids ourselves, because we thought the bomb was going to drop any minute. We practically invented the notion of pollution. Blah, blah, blah.
For us as a people, for the financially disadvantaged, for the U.S.A., for the species, things will only get worse. True. But certain individuals and individual families will be fine in the near term. Improve yourself to be a better man when the apocalypse comes.
I repeat. If you personally focus on fear of the future, you are limiting your ability to succeed in the present.
***
“You are the hero of your own life story. The kind of story you want to tell yourself about yourself has a lot to do with the kind of person you are and can become. You can listen to (or read in books or watch in films) stories about other people. But that is only because you know, at some basic level, that you are – or could be – the hero of those stories, too. You are Ahab in Moby Dick, you are Michael Corleone in The Godfather, you are Rick or Ilsa in Casablanca, Jim in Lord Jim, or The Tramp in City Lights. And out of these make-believe selves, all of them your own self-in-the-making, you learn, if you were lucky and canny enough, to invent a better you than you could have before the story was told.” – Frank McConnell
In How To Write A Damn Good Novel, James N. Frey discusses the difference between natural man (homo sapiens) and fictional man (homo fictus).
Homo fictus is simpler.
Homo fictus has hotter passions and colder anger, travels more, fights more, loves more, changes more, has more sex. Lots more sex. Homo fictus has more of everything. Even if he’s plain, dull and boring, he’s more extraordinary in his plainess, dullness and boringness than his real-life counterpart.
Human beings sometimes do foolish things. They misspeak, they forget, they buy when they should sell, they miss opportunities, they’re blind to the obvious. In effect, they are not at all times and in all situations operating at their maximum capacity. Not so with homo fictus.
The principle of maximum capacity does not require that a character always be at an absolute maximum, but is at the maximum within that character’s capability.
Homo fictus always operates at his maximum capacity and it is never within a dramatic character’s maximum capacity, when faced with a problem or a challenge, to do nothing.
Makes me wonder.