So Long, Marianne

This hellish image is the visage of Marianne. The icon of Liberty on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Originally, triumphant. A fearless warrior shouting a battlecry.  Now she looks like she's screaming in agony.

The Yellow Vests defaced her. Literally. Some heartless bastard smashed the right side of her face with a sledge hammer. But that's OK, right?

See, it's a political statement, not a form of art criticism.

The Yellow Jackets are upset at President Macron's gas tax. Hell, I don't blame them. The tax unfairly targets France's rural regions where folks have to travel long distances in cars and trucks, as opposed to the urban swells in Paris and other major cities who rely on subsidized mass transportation.

Take it to the streets. Stop the machine. Grind the city to a halt.

The ends don't justify the means. It's the other way around. The means justify the ends. People who like to torture and smashing shit up find a political justification. They like breaking eggs, so they start cooking omelets.

And the means are what matter. You are what you do. If you act like a fascist.

Progressive goals don't wash the blood off your hands.

Do what I want or I'll hurt you or destroy something you love is not a progressive tactic. It's the essence of fascism.

Yellow vest, brown shirt. What's the difference?

The Devolution will be televised

The Devolution Will be Televised
(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)

You’d best stay home, and lock the doors, brother
Log on, tune in, zone out, get your fix of anti-social media
Lose your mind and take a long deep drink of alt-right Kool-Aid
You are the target audience, and the target is on your back
Because the Devolution will be televised
The Devolution will be televised
The Devolution will be brought to you by the sons of Cambridge Analytica
A four-part infomercial disguised as reality programming
The Devolution will show you pictures of Donald Trump
Blowing a bugle and protecting us from the invading alien horde
General Disorder and Governor Kemp
Will round up invaders in their pickup trucks, along with confiscated voting machines
Yeah, I said that
The Devolution will be televised
The Devolution will be brought to you by Fox News
And available in Mobile Alabama and on your mobile device
The Devolution will call in your college loan
The Devolution will take pictures of you at the Phish concert
And the facial recognition system will track you down
The Devolution will push stamp, file, index and number you
The Devolution has got your number
And that number is Zero
The Devolution will rig the vote, brother
Taking it to the streets will not make the evening news
Your protest action will create no equal and opposite reaction
Because Reality is so twentieth century
The pigs will be happy as pigs drinking beer at the station
While a Robocop from Boston Dynamics busts your head
There will be no pictures of your blood in living color
Because the Devolution has taken control of your television set
And your computer and every other damn screen
Do not attempt to adjust the picture. 
They are controlling transmission. 
If They want to make it louder, They’ll bust your eardrums
If They want you to buy shit, you will
They control the horizontal, the vertical
And every other damn thing
For the next thousand years, sit quietly 
And They will control all that you see and hear
There is nothing wrong with your television set
We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set
Or the Black Mirror in your pocket
Because the Devolution will be televised, streamed and reamed
Don’t go out tonight
The dystopian horrors of the not-too-distant future
Will not be confined to the bad dreams of William Gibson, John Shirley, Frank Zappa, Harlan Ellison, 
Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Bruce Sterling and the crazy guy on the bus with tinfoil on his head
Their bad dreams have all come true
And so much more, brother
Ayn Rand is spinning in her grave
With an orgasm that registers 9.7 on the Richter scale
The bullies run the playground
And there is no coach or referee
Don’t bother to complain, brother
The facts are in, and there are no facts anymore
Don’t go out tonight
The Devolution will find you 
In church, synagogue, concert, kindergarten, yoga studio, movie theater
Wherethefuckever
Stay home, brother
The Proud Boys are marching
The Lone Gunman isn’t alone anymore
Charlie Manson is watching you
If you cough in the movie theater
Charlie Manson will shoot you
If the trigger word comes out of your mouth
Charlie Manson will shoot you
If you double-dip in the salad bar
Charlie Manson will shoot you
Play it safe, brother
Stay home and watch
Stay home and buy
The Devolution will deliver direct to your door
Keep buying until the debt is a rock on your neck
Dragging you down in the streaming media sea
Stay home and buy
Stay home and watch
It’s not safe out there
Because the Devolution will be live
And the Devolution will be televised

Copyright 2018, Marty Fugate, all rights reserved

O Florida, O Bollocks

Half of our voters went for Gillum. Based on a random sampling of Facebook, Democrats around the country have a simple explanation. 

Florida sucks. People from Florida suck. We're banjo-plucking inbred mutants. We're racists. Desantis won because we're bad people. 

Seriously. I'm not making this up.

It's bloody amazing how many Democrats have immediately started throwing stones. "Ashamed of Florida." "Floridump." "Florida voters! Uggh! Horrifying!" 

My friends. Artists. Intelligent people. Who should all know better. These bright-eyed specimens of the best of humanity should know there will always be set-backs, reversals and screw-ups. 

This applies to politics, football, and the game of life. Then what? Then you either come together as a team, get your heads in the game, and fight like hell for a comeback. Or you start pointing fingers and saying "You f***ed up!" "No, you f***ed up!" The team that comes together wins. The team that turns against itself loses. And deserves to lose. 

There's enough blame to go around for everybody. 

Hell, we can blame the voters of California for electing Ronald Reagan as governor, thus sending him on the path to the White House — where he gleefully began the process of dynamiting the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society. And blame the voters of Texas for electing George W. Bush over Ann Richards, and jump-starting his political career. Or, hell, the voters of America for putting Trump in the White House. We all suck.

There's no profit in demonizing any given state or region. (Particularly in making Florida the whipping boy for the nation's sins ... but I digress.) Democrats should stop pointing fingers and come together. Blame is a loser's game. Our focus should be on ideas, political strategy, and winning.

Once Upon a Time in England's Dark Satanic Mills

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
—Mario Savio

The man was standing there. First he was not there, then he was. The man wore a top hat. And a purple top hat, at that!

Like the ignorant country girl she was, Sally gaped at the sight of it. She thought the hat remarkable, but took the man's impossible, magical entrance for granted. Sally was seven years old, and hadn't yet learned to be surprised at grown-up people mysteriously appearing out of nowhere. How'd he get into the mill? Why was the foreman frozen like a waxworks in the corner? Sally didn't consider such questions. Adults do strange things all the time, like God and so forth, and their ways were mysterious to Sally. (To be fair to the poor child, she'd also been working for twelve hours straight and wasn't thinking quite clearly.) But she'd never seen anything like that silly purple hat before in her life and it filled her with wonder.

Strong it was, this wonder. It drove Sally to a foolish, reckless act. Yes, dear readers. In spite of all her shyness, hard-learned timidity, and sense of her proper, lowly station, Sally boldly approached the strange man and asked the logical question.

"Hey, you."

"Me?"
"Yes, you. Where'd you get that hat?"

"Berkeley, California, 1967," the man replied. "It's on loan, actually, From my good friend, Pigpen."

"You found it in a pigpen?"

"No. Pigpen is the man's name."

"The man who gave you the hat?"

"Loaned, but yes."

For no reason at all, she shouted at the top of her lungs.

"My name is Sally!"

"Yes, I know," the man said.

How do you know?

Another logical question. But it didn't occur to Sally. Because she was a stupid, stupid girl.

Want to know what she did?

Sally blushed like a beet, that's what she did. Then spoke in a whisper.

"What's your name?"

"That would be telling," the man smiled. 

Sally smiled back. The man was weird, but she liked him, although she couldn't place his accent. He definitely wasn't from around here.

Then the man did a funny magic trick. Closed his eyes, threw the hat up to the ceiling, spun around. And it landed on his head! Perfectly!

Sally applauded. The man bowed.

Then he pointed to the machine where Sally had been hard at work until his magical entry.

"What's that, then?"

"You mean that?"

Sally pointed to the same machine with a bloody, delicate finger.

"Yes, that," said the man. "Exactly that. What is it?"

"Stocking frame."

"Ah. What's it for?"

"Dunno."

"How's it work?"

"Dunno."

"Well, I do. To quote a machine intelligence in a world beyond your ken ... "

The man recited, in a droning sort of voice. A long string of singsong words. Like catechism, a bit. And the words made about as much sense to Sally.

"The needle bar goes forward; 
the open needles clear the web.
The weft thread is laid on the needles; 
the jack sinkers descend and form loops.
The weft thread is pushed down by the divider bar.
The jack sinkers come forward pulling the thread into the beard of the open needles.
The presser bar drops, the needle loops close 
and the old row of stitches is drawn off the needle.
The jack sinkers come down in front of the knitting 
and pull it up so the process can begin again." 

"Amen," said Sally.

The man laughed. Sally laughed, too. 

All at once the man stopped laughing. He looked sad.

"It's funny, but it's not."

"Why?"

"Because I know what you do with it. I know what ..."

The man stopped talking. He clenched his teeth. His face turned red—like he was fighting the horrible words inside him that he didn't want to say. The fight went on a bit, but the words didn't escape. (Sally reckoned the man won the fight. But adults are impossible, mad things. Who knows?)
At long last the man smiled brightly, and started talking again.

"This machine of yours. You know what I'm going to do with it, Sally?"

Sally shook her head "no."

"I'm going to smash the machine to bits, that's what."

"With what?"

"With this."

Presto-chango, the man was holding a very large hammer! (He didn't have it when he came in. She'd swear to it!) 

The hammer was big and ugly and horrible.

A sensible girl would've been terrified at this point.

But Sally laughed and squealed and applauded.

The man smiled, and then posed a seriously serious question.

"You know what will happen if I smash this thing?"

"Then I won't have to work!" cried Sally.

"Precisely," he said. "May I have your permission?"

"You may," said Sally.

The man stopped smiling. He nodded with great solemnity, then bowed.

And then he smashed the hateful machine to bits. He kept smashing.

Until, at last, the machine was dead.

Sally studied its metal corpse with hate and happiness and triumph. But also a little guilt.

The man noticed the cloud of sadness on her bright face.

"What's wrong?"

"Smashing machines, like that. It seems so ... so unfair."

"Why?"

"Because you can move and hit and strike, right? But they can't! Machines can't fight back! They can't run away! You can hurt them. But they can't hurt you."

"Not now," the man said sadly. "But they will, if I don't put a stop to 'em."

For some odd reason, a ghostly clock popped up in front of the man's face.

"Ah, look at the time! I'm afraid I must be going."

"Wait!" cried Sally. "What's your name?"

"Ned Ludd," the man said wickedly. "Keep it a secret, Sally. Promise?"

Sally nodded. 

The funny man tipped his funny purple hat, then vanished out of sight.

And Sally told the man's name to everybody.

(c) 2018, Marty Fugate. All rights reserved.

Take it to the Banksy Dept

This flows from the same logic as Duchamp's toilet bowls. Which is why I love it.

Allow me to expand on this thesis. I'll start with some E-Z Art History. Those who didn't sleep through art survey class will know this stuff. Forgive me if I state the obvious. Just laying a foundation for argumentative bricks and mortar, and all. Feel free to skip it.

Duchamp's original "Fountain" was a two-sided sword (or urinal). I think it's implying (and simultaneously skewering) a nominalist definition of art. I.e.: "It's art if I, the artist, say it is." The other side of the sword: Critics, galleries and museums. I.e.: "It's art if you buy it." Literally. And I know R. Mutt's cheeky readymades were controversial, and the first one vanished, etc. But the Art Establishment eventually bought it. Here, I think Duchamp aimed his sword at Capitalism. The art crowd (at least back then) like to pretend that Art was in a realm above commerce -- and the artists within flittered about like angels in a non-material plane of pure ideas, forms, images. But, c'mon. It's all buying and selling. There's an official circle of officially sanctioned artists, and their work (good or not) commands big bucks. Artists outside the circle starve, even if they're good. (And forgery is a crime!) So it's all about agreement. A piece of paper is money, if we agree it is. I'll exchange mass quantities of that paper for a toilet, if we agree it's art. It's a game! 

Duchamp, chessmaster that he was, pointed that out. He flipped over the board and knocked the pieces on the floor. Then walked away from the art game to devote his time to playing chess. 

So what the f**k do artists do now? (Speaking specifically of artists who want to follow in Duchamp's footsteps.) 

Basically, only two options remain: Sell out. Send a message. Or play games and pull pranks.

The Conceptual Artists, obviously, seized on the notion that it's the idea, not the execution that counts. (The idea behind the toilet makes it art!) Hell, you don't even need an art object. It can be a happening, performance art, whatever. Pop Art played the game of "We're taking commercial art gimmicks that the critics agree ain't art and making art with it. F*** you.") Most of 'em danced around the whole art/money continuum. Except for Warhol. Who boldly proclaimed, "I'm in it for the money."

Banksy played at good one on the high art crowd. And he made a shitload of money in the process. Yeah, it's been done. But, like the pie fight, whoopie cushion or blast from a seltzer bottle, it never gets old if you do it right. And Banksy did. 

Let's you and him fight

Comparing body counts is pointless misdirection. (Let's stop arguing about who killed who!) The key issue is the source of this notion of the Antifa evil hordes — that's simultaneously occuring to so many folks on the right. You're being played, people. If it makes you feel any better, the left is being played, too.
I have an infallible spider sense for grift. I could smell it in the last election. I can smell it now.
Somebody is spreading the following memes:
Targeting Democrats:
Walk away. There’s no point in voting.
Stop playing nice. Smash s**t up.
Shun Trump supporters. Defriend them. Stop talking to them. The time for dialog is over.
Proclaim your Socialism. Be loud and proud. Come out of the pinko closet!
Old people are evil. 
Targeting Republicans:
The Democratic opposition is evil. They’re a pack of Antifa thugs who want to destroy the American way of life.
Shun those who oppose Trump. Defriend them. Stop talking to them. The time for dialog is over.
Donald Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being you’ve ever known in your life.
Journalists are evil, unless they work for Fox News.
The greatest threats to America are the traitors within, and NATO and other Western global alliances. Russia, China? Is no big worry.
The name of the game is "Let's you and him fight."

History Comes Alive

Paw-paw gave Jonny a dollar for his birthday. Paw-paw always gave Jonny a dollar for his birthday. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” he’d say, then cackle like an idiot. “Ah, kid. You know I’m just messing with you.”
Yeah, Jonny knew that. Jonny wasn’t stupid. He liked his Paw-paw. Who always made a point of saying, “I know this is chickenfeed kid. I put some real money in your college fund like I always do. I hear you bitching about it, I’ll stop.”
Jonny didn’t bitch about it. Even when Paw-paw gave the same advice every year.
“Keep the stupid piece of paper, OK? It’s symbolic. Pin it to the wall in your bedroom. You might see what I’m talking about one day—though I hope to holy hell you don’t.”
So Jonny did exactly that.
On Jonny’s 11th birthday, he push-pinned his 11th dollar to the wall. But he accidentally pinned it back-to-front. And noticed something. He immediately pointed it out to Paw-paw.
“Hey, Paw-paw.”
“Huh.”
“The dollar bill … the one you just …”
“Spit it out, kid.”
“Well, uh … that pyramid on the back thing? Well … its kind of missing the floating eye on top.”
“Aw, fuck,” said Paw-paw.
“You know what that means, Paw-paw?”
Paw-paw did. 
“Look, I’ll tell ya, kid. But you’ll need to keep it to yourself. Can you do that?”
Jonny nodded.
“OK, it’s like this, kid.”
Paw-paw explained that, before the Masons started wearing those stupid hats and driving funny cars and whatnot, well, they were into some serious shit.
“Serious how?”
“Serious magic. That’s how.”
According to Paw-paw, the United States Constitution (which was written by the real Masons who didn’t fuck around) sorta had …
“You one of the real Masons, Paw-paw?”
“What do you think, dumbass? Don’t interrupt me.”
“Sorry, Paw-paw.”
After brief reflection, Paw-paw reboarded his sidetracked train of thought. Concerning the amendment we don’t talk about. (We call it the Zeroth amendment … but that’s a joke, kid. You’ll get it when you get older.) Anyhow, should circumstances arise where some tinplate dictator or demagogue fucks with the Constitution, (the chief asshole in charge and the assholes that run with him, I mean to say) well, that’s when the secret amendment kicks in. And it ain’t pretty. 
“What happens?”
According to Paw-paw, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. The Founding Fathers would instantly come back to life (for a limited period of time), claw their way out of their particular graves, track down these miscreants, and rip them each a new one.
“How would they know?”
“Well, the Eye, of course. The Eye sees everything.”
“But it’s gone.”
“Shit, that’s just the eye on the money. That’s paper! Symbolic, remember? That ain’t the real Eye, kid.”
“So … what’s it mean when the eye on the money is gone?”
“Well, kid. That’s how us real Masons know the shit’s hit the historical fan. Best stay inside the next few hours, y’know?”
They lived in a normally quiet suburb of Washington DC.
But now there was screaming outside.
Jonny thought about asking Paw-paw if they should maybe wake Mom and Dad. But he knew it was a really, really stupid question. Mom and Dad would sleep through hell on earth. It seemed like the best idea, under the circumstances.
The bigass flat screen TV was nothing but static on all channels. So Paw-paw got out the Backgammon board. 
“I’m gonna kick your ass, kid.”
“We’ll see,” said Jonny. 
But he was snoring like a buzzsaw ten minutes later.
Paw-paw smiled, tousled his hair, and made an ancient Masonic sign.
The kid definitely had potential.

© 2018, Marty Fugate, all rights reserved

Lookingglass Hell

Alone you’ll be free. But you can’t be alone.  

All one you'll be free but you can’t be all one. 

You can’t.

Because.

People are watching so you can’t say what. You’re thinking. Want to say can’t say can’t. Think. People have 

Eyes.

Like mirrors see you suck your soul out.

Glass eyes.

That’s what you see.

If you look behind everybody’s nobody’s eye. Behind the glass.

There’s a hole. A perfect sphere of blackness. Black hole sun, like that idiot pop song the idiot neighbor insists on playing so loudly. Yes, I might open my chained door a crack, and politely raise my voice. “Please turn it down.” I try to say it nicely. But my neighbor’s shouted reply is invariably, “Fuck you.” After which he turns up the volume to even greater decibel levels. Because I’m helpless. The neighbor knows I never come out. What I really should say …

In sheer defiance, I shout out the appropriate, impolite response in my fortress of solitude.

“Fuck you.”

Tourettes! It’s a breath mint! It’s a candy.

Silence! No more interruptions.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I refer you to Exhibit A, a painting by René Magritte. “The False Mirror,” en francais, “Le faux miroir.” If you examine this painting very closely, you can clearly see that the eye in the sky is clearly open, clearly proving that everyone’s eye in the whole world is open, and there’s a black hole inside/behind the I, and we’re all being sucked to our deaths into this cosmic vacuum cleaner. Everybody.

Except me.

Because I’m the Man Who Wasn't There.

(Shhh. That’s the secret!)

But it’s true.

I’m invisible.

You won’t see me. I won’t let you see me.

Because.

I have formed (ha!) a force field that protects. A barrier that.

Preserves me. Except there’s no you I me it. I’m not really talking to you (me) this is all done with mirrors! 

Based on this ineluctable logic, I decided in the year 25 AD of the Julienne Fries calendar to disappear from the world of people. Quit my job. Pounded boss’ desk with weak white fists. Fuck you you. RESIGNED like “The Prisoner.” XXXXX. 

Thanks to dear dead rich daddy I could do that.

Daddy died thanks daddy.

And left (me) enough money to live alone.

Thus, I became my own world. 

Home alone, home all one.

The will was read, the corpse was in the ground, the house was mine. I did what anyone would do in my situation.

Shut the doors, tinfoiled the windows, nailed up hurricane shutters, sealed out the mindstorm. Paid for decades of lawncare in advance. Phone, yes. TV, no. Food deliveries only, paid all my bills on time. Nobody bothered me. My brilliant plan worked.

Yay.

Ladies and gentlemen, sluts and thugs, I am now in the sixteenth hour of the thirteenth year of my great isolation, my grand experiment, my grande mal. To John Donne I say, Fuck you, sir. I am an island!

Like the astronuts before me, I have gone where no man has gone before. My trek stabs ever onward in this apparently stationary house, this Eden, this space capsule. To speak plainly, I’ve remained completely alone in my house since 1979! 

All doors, shut, windows closed.  

No contact with the Naked Apes at all.

Then.

In the Year of the Comet, disaster.

The old-school family grocery store down the street [insert name here] folded. The old man who ran it croaked and died. Thus, no more deliveries. Chains (you have nothing to lose but) don’t deliver. You go to them, they don’t go to you. That’s the way it works. It’s the law. (Exceptions for nuts, but that means getting on the nut list.)

After starving for days, I’m forced to go out for groceries. Before leaving, I grab a pair of mirrorshades, to reflect any harmful rays. Ray Bans, of course. Vintage. Put them on. The logo sparks a word association.  A painful childhood memory. The Miami Seaquarium. Waterworld life behind thick green glass. 

If you look inside the manta ray, gaping maw, inside, it’s hollow, look in you can see the rib cage!

Dad’s future widow squeezed my hand.

Look honey, look.

I squint my eyes.

No!

But the harassment continued. I finally looked.

And saw into the nothing. The hollowness. The implication was clear, and I was a clever little boy. The manta ray? It’s a tube with fins swimming around. I’m just a tube with legs. The direct cognition of emptiness, as the Buddhists say.

What’s wrong, honey?

Nothing.

I walk into the nothing now. A new kind of nothing.

How has the world changed during my self-imposed exile? What horrors await? The nightmares of Harlan Ellison? Or Philip K. Dick? Or.

Outside, sun stabs. No evil robots.

I walk like a robot to the shopping center on the corner. It’s now become the Sunrise Mall. Completely changed. No more fins on the Publix marquee. O brave new world.

Store. Door. Aisles. Cart. 

Aisles, aisles, aisles.

Colors, boxes, colors. All screaming for my attention.

Look at me, look at me, look at me.

Checkout line. I fish out a fistful of cash.

“Does money still work?”

Horrified look. But the clerk nods. Yes. It does! 

Callou, callay! O frabjous day!

The pimpled clerk starts swiping my purchases over an eye in the conveyor belt. Math seems to be a lost art in 1994. A world designed for morons. Kornbluth, it seems, got it right.

Scan, beep. Scan, beep.

I want to go home. 

Mister? Hey! Child’s voice, ignore it. Mister! Don’t engage. Scan, beep! An eternity later, I buy the needful groceries, try to walk out. But the child keeps calling out to me. Hey, mister! You. I didn’t die, but I’ve clearly violated some future protocol. Mister! I ignore her, keep walking. Redfaced manager appears. Are you all right, sir? I shake my head, no, walk past him. Then the child runs up, but Mother swoops down to save her. Don’t talk to him, honey. I walk past them both and out the sliding glass doors.

Sun now lower in the sky. But the light still hurts. Even through the Ray Bans. But let’s emphasize the positive.

My mission was a success. I’m still invisible.! 

I keep telling myself that. Keep walking.

Nobody saw. Ha-ha!

Sweating like a pig, I make my way back home. And then I’m inside. I made it!

My trek goes on, Masala. It goes on.

Plop the sack of groceries on the table. 

Ringing phone. 

Longstory short, I will still live alone, they won’t stop me. The question of groceries will not defeat me.

Ringing.

Switching metaphors, this is the story of my life. Or play. Performed inside this lonely stage. A tale told by an idiot. Performed by an idiot. For an idiot audience. Me. (applause) My Shakespeherian assault on that global village idiot theater of the collective unconscious is a hit with.

Ringing.

Ignore it. Pay attention to me! 

I wrote a song:

 Alone you’ll be free but you can’t be alone

The trees are watching, watching with glee

The trees are watching you now as they shellter

A coven of witches who live by the sea    

What did you think? I think.

Ringing.

The strident phone keeps doing that. I won’t need groceries for awhile, so I don’t pick it up. I go to bed.

Ringing, ringing, ringing.

No. Shut up.

I’m going to sleep.

Danger, Will Robinson. They saw you! They’re going.

Sleep. Safe and restful.

Sleep, sleep, sleep.

ZZZZ.

Bad dreams, not safe and restful.
First, an endless line of Men White Coats. Holding nets and marching in tune to an idiot novelty song from 1966.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha, ho-ho.

His brain agan, always worried about its own survival. They're coming to take you away. Not a joke. At a deep survival level, the organic computer inside his skull knows it's true. But he doesn't take the hint. He's afraid, but not enough.
So the nightmare gets worse. His brain stops dancing around. Makes the warning explicit. Spells it out.

You looked weird. You smelled bad. Somebody complained. Tomorrow, they’ll call and call again. You won’t answer. So they’ll come. Policeman, social services. The Man. The Man will pound on the door. Sir? You need to open up, sir. You’ll either open up or they’ll break the door down. And then they’ll take you away.

You wake. Which is to say, I do. Then reach for the big box of pills that daddy (thanks) stashed under the bed. Take one. Sleep again.

Now, safe and restful.

Lost in Technicolor dreams pretty about Alice and that pretty world of talking chesspieces and dragonflies and the White Knight and the Red Queen and the pretty things they said. The secrets they. 

Alice got through the glass.

Awake. Pop out of bed like a Jack in the Box.

Trying to remember. The secret the?

Alice = all ice = all I.

Alice got through the glass.

Escape is possible! Yes!

I go to the bathroom and try. For the thousandthousandthousandth time. But I can’t get in. No. Because myself is in the way, as always. That idiot on the other side of the mirror! No use pounding it bloody. I’ve learned my lesson.

But the dream revealed.

A secret. It’s in the book!

“Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”

What did she find? That’s not the point! 

Alice got through. 

The book tells you how.

The book is magick! There are spells within!

(I read that in another book.)

I try to find Dodgson’s novel in my mouldering ziggurat of books, but can’t. But I’ve read it. And what I need is in my head.

So, back to bed. I pop another pill, illegal this time. (Daddy sold them. That’s where the money came from. Don’t tell.)

Sleep, more dreams. But they’re not dreams.

Much bigger than that.

Hallucination, vision, spell. No.

Those are just words. They don’t describe.

The place where the terror comes from. The holy terror.

And he was in that place.

The realm of. 

Words? You’re going to name it?

As I was saying.

Here. This place. Is.

Magick. A crossroads. A decision. Bloody signature on paper. Sign here, sir. And here.

Quit stalling!

You’ve been here before.

You know what to do!

Drown the dormouse in the tea.

You’re the dormouse, you’ve always known that.

Doormouse = dormant.

The self/not-self you think you are, aren’t.

Kill yourself. 

You don’t exist. What have you got to lose?

“He” made the choice, the only choice. (“He,” “it,” “I,” whatever.) He killed himself. Drowned the dormouse kicking screaming burbling in a pot of tea.

And then woke up for the final time.

Happy for the first time in years.

Laughed and laughed.

It worked!

Now he was really alone.

Because there wasn’t any me any more.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you might expect, it went to that bathroom and walked up to the mirror. This time, ah, there was only empty glass. Skinny, out of shape, it huffed and puffed and hoisted itself up on the sagging mildew stinking sink cabinet below the mirror. Hunkered down, no hurry, studied it. There was nobody on the other side. His "I" did not deceive him. But be sure. Test. Experiment.

It did exactly that.

Put its hand through the glass. Right hand.

Its right hand went through. 

Hypothesis confirmed!

Pulled hand back. Shouted.

“Sic semper tyrannis!”

Now?

Only one thing left to do.

Go all the way through into the mirror world.

It pushes, struggles, pants.

The mirror yields melts like water.

And then it’s all the way there.

On the other side.

Here.

Where everything is different.

The chorus of voices. Stops. Finally.

Nothing but stuff here. Nothing but objects.

And it is an object.

It can finally touch things! 

Walls, glass, medicine cabinet.

It runs its hands over this and that. But what if?

Looked back at the mirror. Like Lot’s wife. 

Curiosity killed the.

But it doesn’t turn to dust.

Doesn’t fade away to ashes.

Because there’s nobody on the other side of the mirror. Still empty there, too! Which meant.

It can go back and forth. From one world to the next!

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Opens medicine cabinet, another empty mirror. Pill bottles.

DNIRDEZNEB. MUILAV.

Reaches out. Then its brain flashes out a warning.

Danger, Will Robinson.

Survival at stake. Take no pills. Why? Scientific American, July 1971. Parity and Looking Glass Enzymes. Complex technical article, organic chemistry, but the takeaway is clear. Take no pills, eat no food in Mirror World. You’ll die.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t want to die.

But it still feels curiouser and curiouser.

So it walks outside its Mirror House into the Mirror World.

Sun, not so different here. Knives of light. Can’t see. Then it can.

Visible signs of neglect on all sides. Weeds, grass, waisthigh on the lawn. (Lawn service took the monthly check, did no work. How was it supposed to know?) Childhood bicycle turned to rust, lying in the tangled green. Stained hurricane shutters. The whole house sagging. CODE VIOLATION notice on the door. Prime downtown property! A teardown! This neglect is just asking for trouble. The Man would surely come.

But nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. They’re coming to take you away. Not anymore. 

It smiles up at the stabbing sun. 

Then walks up to the cracked sidewalk. Kept walking. Looking.

 Everything is backwards. (In terms of parity, not time. It refers you to Scientific American.) Lookingglass world. Left is right, right left. Bus passes on the street, stops. Noise, stink, fumes, ad on the side.

SEIFSITAS MELAS.  

Sidewalk, people walking. Can’t see it, hurt it. (Body brain it formerly know as “I.”) A vacuum can’t destroy a vacuum! Nothing can hurt the Man Who Isn’t There! No one can see you!

Really?

Stand still on sidewalk. Experiment.

Flashes genital region.

No reaction.

Crowd keeps walking, walking, walking. 

Brain thinks: of course...

Hypothesis confirmed! Yes! It is invisible!

Logical. Obvious. Mirror World is imitation only. Just a copy of the Real World. These aren’t real people. No mind, no thought, no self. Ghosts. Empty images, the walking dead. They’re all its. Just like it! (But they don’t know it.) The fun part is.

They can’t see it because they aren’t there. Can they hear it?

It shouts.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you."

Nothing.

So happy, so happy.

It had lied to itself before, it knows that now. Pretended it was invisible. It really wasn't. But now the lie is true! Here, now, it truly is invisible. And …

Invisible means invincible!

Old woman drags squeaky wheel cart full of old woman stuff past the bus stop. Bus hisses, starts to go. As an experiment, it pushes her under the bus. The wheels of the bus go round and round, crush her, crunch her. She screams, thrashes around like a wind-up doll, spewing red fluid on the asphalt.

Then everything stops.

And the universe goes backwards, rewinds, repairs, goes forward again. The old woman is good as new.

Repeated experimental trials achieve the same result.

It realizes the first law of Mirror World.

Anything it does here is temporary. You can’t permanently change Mirror World because Mirror World only imitates Real World. It’s only a copy. Any change corrects itself.

It runs back home, grabs some needful stuff, then heads out again.

Then wanders the Earth like Mephistopheles. Walking up and down. Searching, studying. Killing Mirror People. At least temporarily.

It keeps this up for days, popping pills (amphetamines, symmetrical molecules), not sleeping, not eating, finally starving. It wanders far, far from home. Then.

Panic reaction. 

Because its brain is flashing out another warning. A very obvious fact it stupidly forgot.

It will die here. No food to eat.

Fear of death. But more.

Guilt feelings. 

It stops in front of a sidewalk cafe and screams.

“I’m sorry I killed myself! I'm sorry!”

Nobody reacts.

It runs. Panting. Head full of thoughts.

I have to get back, go home, push through the glass, get back to the other side. The Real World. Where people have eyes and they can really see you. I was wrong, I was wrong. Being seen isn’t the worst thing. I hate being invisible. I really really hate it!

It knows this is a lie. “I” have to do this, “I have to do that.” Who is it kidding?

But it runs anyway, and finally gets back home.

It fumbles with the key, opens the rain-soaked, mildewed door, goes in. Runs through the ruined kitchen, runs back to the bathroom, crying and crying, then it pulls itself up on the sink counter again. It's going to push through. It's going to go back. This time, it’s going to stay. 

But it can’t get through.

Because.

Because there’s some idiot on the other side! Eyes wide open, pounding bloody fists on the mirrorglass. Screaming and screaming. It’s seen this idiot before, it knows, can’t quite place it, but that’s not important now. The idiot screams at him. “Get out of the way, you idiot! Get out of the way!” It screams the same thing back, but it's useless.

No matter how much it screams, the idiot won't get out of the way.

— Marty Fugate, (c) 1994

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