B. Hutton c.1990
I am the prisoner of paradise.
The first-born. The brother left behind. I was there before the fall of Ai-iva from the grace of Odum. He was a most forgetful and inventive man. Made up most of what he could not remember. Ai-iva remembered all. We used to talk of it at times, her and I. Many of her stories were wordless. Words were not enough for the memory of Ai-idem. The sound of raindrops on the water a mere suggestion of the waters depth... I carry a memory or two myself of the days before the fall.., before the apple. I remember well the apple...
I guess it was too much for him, the notion of the apple. It occurred to him one perfect day in paradise. A day like any other timeless day. Ai-iva was bathing in the water. I could feel the ripples of her laughter where I sat scribbling with my fingers in the sand. I was always one for scribbling.
Odum was peaceful sitting, watching flying things, when he thought that maybe he would have the apple now. He wanted the apple but the apple was nowhere to be found. It began to dawn on him that the apple was apart from him and he wanted the apple as he had never wanted before.
He thought that perhaps Ai-iva might have the apple and he called out to her. But he could not hear her answer. Odum was so full of the want of the apple and the notion of the apple apart he could not feel the ripples of her laughter from the water. Another notion came to Odum...
If he was not the apple for the apple was apart, then neither was he...
“AI-IVA!!!”
He called out again, some strange new thing, some thing that had not been heard before was in his voice. And Ai-iva came. She had come away from the water in fact when she first sensed his disquiet... his first disturbing notion. She had rushed to him, but alas, not in the time it takes notion to beget notion.
He was not Ai-iva.
She would know better. She would always know better, but Odum could never again put two and one together. The want of the apple had become the want of Ai-iva and truly it was only want of the time before the want. Time before the notion of apart.
There was no serpent. Only Odum’s serpent member stirring, whispering with want of Ai-iva, reminding him too clearly of Ai-idem already lost and the time before, which he could not reclaim.
Something happened to me too that timeless day turned timeful with Odum’s want. My scribbles in the sand heretofore so perfect formless suddenly took form. And the form was A or ai and something in me knew it stood for apple and was indeed a cry for Ai-iva and Ai-idem itself taken form in sand and symbol.
Odum, as I have said, was a most inventive man. For him the story of Ai-idem became the story of the apple, the story of his great loss and sorrow. And the tale grew in the telling as the memory of Ai-idem grew dimmer. Odum’s sorrow did not dim...
The Odum of before grew more and more remote to him as Ai-idem faded from his vision and he replaced it with another vision.., a vision of another place he simply called the Garden. The Garden was indeed a wondrous place as Odum would describe it. For one who had not known Ai-idem, it could well pass for paradise.
There was a calm that came to him when he spoke of the Garden... and the pieces of Ai-idem that survived his imagination. He spoke most lovingly of the flying things... and of Ai-iva before her fall from grace. Before he had fallen from his grace.
Odum was never quite to forgive Ai-iva for the apple or the notion of the apple or the grace he could no longer give her. He was never, though, to fully fall from Ai-iva’s grace for she could still see Ai-idem in all its reverberations and Odum in all his want and sorrow, in all his separation and striving, was yet and still a reverberation.
But Odum scarce recognized his reflection in the Odum of Ai-idem. There was more than time between them. There was the apple. The Odum of before was somehow greater and more worthy than the Odum of the want and sorrow.
And as time passed and the tale was told and told and told again time itself took on some sad and wistful meaning as the thread was severed completely between Odum and his greater self. And the greater self became the Nameless One of the Garden, the embodiment of all that was known before the fall. And Odum in his want and in his stories became a mere once welcome guest of Ai-idem and the Nameless One.
Just as Odum could not see within himself the Nameless One, he could not place within the Nameless One the source of his disquiet. Thus was born the serpent. And Ai-iva in the image of the serpent’s messenger, the bearer of the notion of the apple.
It was Ai-iva’s grace that saw me through these times and the sadness that was upon us. Her eyes said many things to me that I cannot recount. Her words said simply, “As it is, Brul... as it is...”
She would know again the continuity of life within. Would soon again be whole with another.., and know again the sting of separation...
THE GLASS BEAD GAME
Excerpted from 'A Short (and probably pretty presumptuous) History of Japan'
B. Hutton c.1993
...And anyway, Colonialism can get to be pretty nasty stuff, with kind of a bitter aftertaste, which is maybe the way with anything force-fed, because it's all about finding a group of people that may be relatively naive, technologically, or maybe, politically speaking, though not necessarily so, and absolutely, art and culture doesn't count, unless you figure out a way to sell some of it at a profit back home. But the point is, you find these people, who are naive, perhaps, enough to be trusting and hospitable when you get there, and then, you take them for everything they've got.
Like maybe you've brought some cheap glass jewelry along on your trip across the ocean, back when trips across the ocean were still kind of a new thing, and you never know what's going to turn up on a trip like this. And let's say you get there, wherever it is, and the people are friendly, and right away, they show you around a bit, and maybe treat you to a few of the local delicacies, like turkey and tobacco, for instance.
And you are thinking, 'These are beautiful people, kind and gentle people. And unarmed... and I bet if I had a few good men with guns, I could turn them all into slaves...' Which is what Columbus wrote, in fact, in his diary, on Day One of meeting the Native American islanders. Though, in his own words, of course.
Or, maybe you are saying to these folks, "Say, this is a pretty nice little island you've got here. Tell you what. How about if I give you this whole sack of glass beads and trinkets, and all you have to do is just sign this little piece of paper here, giving us the island, and everything on it, forever and ever. Amen. And by the way, do you know who owns the mainland... "
And the people say, "Well... OK.", as they haven't invented cheap glass jewelry yet, or the idea of private property, for that matter, as they kind of like the idea that it all belongs to everybody, just take what you need and leave the rest, and anyhow, the beads sparkle kind of nicely in the unpolluted sunlight.
And before the natives know what hit them, there are epidemics and massacres, and trails of tears and reservations, and a lot of bad 'dumb Indian' jokes, and they're the bad guys in a whole lot of the movies. And the island has turned into someplace like Manhattan, with slums and subways and suburbs and financial districts, and not a lot of places left over for hunting or fishing, or hanging out around a campfire, telling stories and dancing.
And the natives are saying things like, "Didn't I used to belong here once?" and "Whew! Wasn't that a strange glass bead game?"
Excerpt from
'LOON'
B. Hutton c.1997
...And of course, her friend and patron isn't around, and part of me thinking 'cut my losses, drive away', but already into it for twenty, and not so long before her bank is open, and you know, the idea of leaving this shaky, slightly shabby, wheezing little woman in the cold on some obscure back street, and the thought of last week's drive ten hours, make eight bucks, and it's 'take me to the Captain Cook Hotel' and 'let's drive, don't stop, past my mother's house on the way', as they've been arguing lately, and okay, a way to bide our time till the bank opens, and who knows, you know, maybe she knows someone there at the big hotel who slips her money from time to time, and I know, of course, she's not making great decisions, but what about the drunks and the druggies and the sad little girls gone pro and the guys out to blow all their dough at the massage parlor and the bruised and battered gals going back to some sleaze and the life-wasting bad jobbers and the life-wasting good jobbers and all the others and all their bad decisions that butter the bread of the cab-drivers and the bar-keeps and the table-dancers and the landlords and the lawyers and the doctors, and all the investors and the insurance execs and the advertisers, who sell sugar and plastic and the fun of guns to children, and the military and the politicos and the moneymen and the moneymen and the moneymen and all the guys who make a buck or a fortune from the bad moves of others, and who am I to say, anyway, about somebody else's bad decisions, second Saturday in a row on an obvious idiot errand, trying to squeeze out an income in the off-season, and all my artistic ambitions, and where would I be if I started up with the 'sorry bud, but I can't take you there, as it doesn't seem to me such a good idea' and the exorbitant cab car lease breathing down my collar before I can even think about dollar one toward the rent, and on, you know, the way it goes on, when you haven't got a leg to stand on, but you're on, going on and on in your head, trying to find some moral ground, as you know you've got to get on with it, so you do.
TWEAKING
B. Hutton c.2003
12:01 am, January 5th, 2003
I'm tweaking out here. I'm going nuts.
Now, I know my good buddy Buzz was just trying to be a good guy. Just trying to get a little something going.
So there's a few of us out one night sitting in a bar having another one of those endless idiot brainstorm sessions that you get, you know how they go, like the one we had when we figured out the first few segments of the Hangover Man film series and where to mount the cameras and where the nefarious Niqhtwatchman fit into the plot, and the nights we postulated on the role of the mysterious Ombudsman in the big scheme of things, and how that gave birth to my aspirations to become an Ombudsman myself, if it didn't demand too much paperwork, like my day job now, which is tweaking me out and killing the writer in me, and me, only aspiring after parody, like a career pathology, like another outreach to mundanity, like an ongoing commitment to living out some random meander of middle americana, like selling vacuum cleaners and being a paperboy and driving a cab and playing Santa at the mall, and telemarketeering, for Christ's sake, and calling those Encyclopedia Britannica people back and actually asking for the demonstration, and I can't tell you how many times I 'beat the man' and walked out of one of those endless idiot condo pitches with a free coupon to a restaurant I never went to, and it goes on and on, and anyway thinking if I was going to be an Ombudsman, it'd probably be good to have some time under my belt as a Notary Public, and I might as well get something into the Reader's Digest, maybe 'Humor in Uniform', or 'Laughter is the Best Medicine' you know, 'I was standing in an elevator with a doctor one day--- ' and the nights we figured that one out, and the night we figured we should give an arts award event and invite the Ombudsman to give out the prizes, as he probably doesn't get out all that much, and all we really got out of our Hangover Man sessions was a couple of nights of me running around in that idiot Hangover Man costume and handing out business cards and aspirin, and that woman probably still thinks I'm nuts, the one I called and left the message on her answering machine telling her what I was wearing...
What was I thinking?
So you can see pretty clearly that some of these brainstorm sessions are best left alone, but then again there were the Film Fest brainstorms, and the Vicarious Vacation Contest, and the Big-Time Life-Changing Bus Tours Inc., and then there's Buzz's time travel theory, and the portable, disposable protest ashtrays, and the plot against the Parking Author--- never mind and the papier mache' taxi cab that lived in my living room for three years and a half and the papier mache' intervention they mounted that I'm sure was worked out on one of those nights I wasn't party to, and the telephone ringing, waking me up out of a sleep so deep I whacked myself in the forehead with the receiver.
'We got the truck. We're turning the corner. We?ll be up in a minute to pick up the cab.'
'Huh? What? Okay... '
And the night we decided to join the circus, and the night we decided to learn to say no to idiot projects, and then Bruce and I are sitting out in an inner tube in the middle of the lagoon shouting poetry from a bullhorn, and the night we decided to get Tanguray to sponsor the road trip, and the road trips to Homer in the borrowed Winnebago, and the Laziness Anti-Defamation League, and the No Work Cafe', and the ice puppet, and the exploding statue for the puppet play and the rug that caught on fire and the video we have of that, and how that might not have helped the grant application, and it goes on and on, and the prototypes and the prototypes and the prototypes and you give us an ashtray and a few beers, a decent pen and a barful of napkins and we're nuts, you know, we're crazy, we're insane with inspiration.
And we're out one night and we're talking, just talking, about another spoken word venue, and rubbing our hands together, saying,, 'Yes. We should make the judges read.' and 'Yes. We should make the writers perform all new material.', and Buzz comes in the next night, saying, 'Oh yeah, I booked the event', and I'm saying 'Huh? What? Okay... ', and it's 12:01am and it's two days before the Triathlon, and my computer's in the shop and my funky old word processing typewriter's out of ink and this day job is killing me, and I can't think of a goddamned thing to write about.
I'm tweaking out here. I'm going nuts.
