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thank ptahnemhotep that's over - what a beautiful coming of age tale, a heartfelt story of freedom and redemption, of finding one's way in the bad big world, rising above the challenges of institutional life ... a tour of the circus, a celebration of the human asylum, a narrative of perseverance and pursuing one's dream, a love poem to absurdity and futility, a great revolt against the pressures to conform.

 

but as the committee of satirical memory of the society of patasa's sitting around smoking ganja someone muses about what jude's been up to - whether he's still working for satan in oaxaca, if he died of despair and drugs, if he shockingly returned to professional existence, whether he married a rich mexican and settled into a placid life of househusbandry.

 

after years of searching we finally hear something approximating his description might be down in the atacama desert munching on dried liolaemus fabiani turds and drinking fog - we write him asking how he feels about his work decades after creating it and here's his response which takes six months to get to us, strangely written with llareta seeds stuck to candelaris stems.

 

comrade inmates, i am a fiction, you are a fiction, history is a fiction, novel is a fiction, this has been a work of fiction, names characters businesses places events locales and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental, goodbye

 

tbh the committee's disappointed

the inmate's journal : postamble

Oh sure … Jude’s happy there with the Devil in Oaxaca.  Forging those passport apps, interviewing desperate Mexicans, chomping on spicy jícama and slurping cheap beer.  After Ouzo, after all the freaks at New Bank, after those maniacal god-believers in The Assembly and the perfumed pretenders in Spring Fragrance, who wouldn’t be content?

 

For a time.

 

You know as well as I do, though, that Jude’s not going to stay that way for long.  If you think he’s going to, you’re as naïve as he is … or was … or is …

 

Contentment’s a mood, peace is a day.  Who wants peace anyway—inner, outer, guru, or eco-?  We’re human not because we drink beer, have sex, or work 9 to 5  … we’re human because we dream … because we dream the impossible.  Sometimes the impossible is love, sometimes it’s peace, sometimes it’s immortality, sometimes it’s justice … and sometimes we call the great stew of all those impossibilities God.  And sometimes those dreams incarnate themselves for a second or a year and we say, See, I told you, dreams do come true.  There is a fairy-tale called life.  And maybe when we stop dreaming that fairy-tale—whether we call it God, love, peace, justice, or art—all there’s left to dream is death, and death’s the lesser dream.

 

Sometimes though we dream that we don’t dream the impossible, but that the impossible dreams us.  And sometimes, when we’re uncertain about what dreams what and why, we think maybe dreams are, more than anything else, what makes us human.

 

Maybe it was growing up being forcefed on God that made us talk about peace and joy but in our daily lives be addicted to the streetlife of the soul—that lurching nomadic celebration of desire and mystery.  Like the bum who careens and sleeps through alleys and parks, sidestepping knives, soft on the edge of nothing, we’ve become unaccustomed to staying still.  Not the hard power of hierarchy, not money’s caress and scream, not reputation’s mass, but the rush and fall, the steps and grind of that other dance, the erotic mess of it all, the addiction of a thousand little deaths.

 

The bum has something hardwired deep within him that says no to stability, career, progress, reputation.  No to the happy assurances of dental benefits.  Oh, maybe initially he’s unsure of the uncertainties, the constant leaping, the players more cunning and serious, but after a time, he knows this is the life for him … a life of risk, immediacy, surprise; a constant willingness to throw anything away; to be committed to nothing but adventure and movement.  Bums don’t just exist on the sidewalk, trying to get in your pockets … they’re everywhere, there are bums of the soul, sometimes in suits, always unsettled, acquainted with vulnerability … and they’re asking (and when they ask, a thrill!)—What’s around that smelly corner?  What happens when I jump off the ladder without a plan?  Does that garbage bin contain the secret?  

 

Jude’s a bum.  He loves bums, the life of bums.  He dreams of bums.  Dreams of dreaming bums.  Bums dreaming of bums who dream of bums dreaming.

 

And everyone he’s met as an inmate in institutions has been a bum too.

 

Rev. Weal, Sister Gooch, Ferrelyn, and Juan Juan McLoo … lost in the dream of goodness and God.  Twatfish and Maeby Might, Erikk Haze, Bobbi Childs and Hubert St. Paterson, Magna Flatch and Mr. Blood … lost in their dreams of donuts, sex, and power.  And Ouzo and her team of dowdy scholars … dreaming of sudsy knowledge.

 

We could go on, you know, you and me … looking in the tottering kingdom of words for whatever we’re looking for, bumping into all those other inmates.  The road’s endless … it’s what drives us crazy, keeps us alive.  Jude looked in religion where he cloaked himself in morality.  He explored the corporation where he almost found it in money.  He did the academy, home of bombast and lunacy.  Maybe he discovered that God’s alive—not where the theologians say, not in what the atheists debunk—but just an inch from your hand’s reach, just around the corner from your eyes’ lurching vision.  They’re Tantalus’ fruit, the lover, the fame, you’ll never have, tomorrow and quiet desperation … the human dream.

 

For now, though, Jude’s happy with the Devil in Mexico.  But, like you, no matter what’s on his business card, what his home's like, what he drinks and if he sleeps around … he’s a bum, moving from bench to bench, seeking for a better bottle, hoping for someone to reach out and drop something happy in his open hand.  Hoping for a smile, for the sun, a throne.

 

Like you, he’s an inmate, shuffled from cell to cell, if for no other reason than to get a change of smells.  To risk another dance with another smelly inmate, to see the guards and hope to see the warden, to maybe write about their crazy lives.

 

Who knows where he’ll be next?  What outlandish prison he’ll find himself in?  I don’t know.  All I know is that we’re made of madness and desire, my sisters, my brothers.  We’re chained to dreams.

the inmate's journal : the academy xiii

Status Meeting

 

I don’t know, said the Devil.  It’s true, the Gonzales boy is really cute, but they still owe me a cigar and their bourbon … well you know it was good but it wasn’t Bookers.  I’ve got to keep my standards Jude or who knows what’s going to happen; things have slipped so much already.

 

Come on Satan, they’re caught right in the middle of drug cartel fire, the boy’s going to be blown to smithereens before he’s 16.

 

Death or America … nobody ever told me about these choices back in devil training school.  I lose him either way.

 

Choices are hard.

 

You’re telling me.  Did you see how cute his little buttocks were, how they moved in a kind of contrapuntal perfection.  Like two golden ripe suns just about to rise.  Christ … the older I get the harder it is.

 

I’m sure a thousand beautiful Mexican boys are born every day.  Anyway, you’ve got a speech at Monte Albán at 2:00, it’s already 1:20 and we agreed to discuss the new financial accounting system today.  Remember, you said you weren’t comfortable with the numbers.

 

The Devil sipped his Corona and nibbled on diced jícama.  God, I love how spicy they make these, we’ve got to move our status meetings here.  He ordered more from the waitress and began thoughtfully plucking his wings.  You know what I still don’t understand … is how you said no to Ouzo.  No one says no to Ouzo.  I couldn’t say no to Ouzo.  Jesus couldn’t.  Even Freddy Mercury succumbed.

 

I really don’t understand it either.  I think I had just had it.  Like you know how they say—the most significant choices aren’t ones we make, but the ones that are made for us.  I’d had it with all the petty tyrants telling me knowledge was this and power was that and money was beauty and beauty was God and God was tenure and tenure was … was …

 

… hell.

 

All that pomposity, all that certitude, all that tedium.

 

All that money.  All that security.  All that cunnilingus. All that prestige.

 

The funny thing is, now that I’ve given up on the tyrants, on the institutional shit, I don’t care anymore about dreams and madness, about God and all that quest stuff.  I realize it sounds a bit sappy, but after a year of working with you I’m really just content here in Mexico being your admin.  You’re a good boss Satan, you know, probably the best I’ve ever had.  Anyway, it’s too hot here to dream.

 

When you’re in the heat, there’s only one dream Jude.  And Satan placed a hairy paw on my leg and began stroking.

 

Look, I’ll get Gonzales to come back, okay.

 

Satan relaxed his paw and ordered another Corona.  Oh Jude, you know I don’t expect you to.  But you’re a few thousand years younger than I am, my filing system’s never been more organized—you don’t know how grateful I am.  Your guacamole’s even better than Pedro’s.  You make such amazing coffee.  Your eyes … there’s something in them I’ve always dreamt about.  You’re my type.  You really are.

 

the inmate's journal : the academy xii

It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, said Ouzo.

 

Your instructions were rather vague.

 

What in the world’s clearer than humiliating someone else?  You only humiliated yourself and showed yourself to be a bungling idiot.  That’s not knowledge, that’s insanity.

 

I feel badly about IdI’s office.

 

Feel badly about IdI’s office.  Christ Jude, IdI’s office has always smelled.  Her files needed to be cleaned out anyway.  Her office needs a paint job, her chair was falling apart.  You did her a favor.

 

Does this mean I don’t get tenure?

 

The academy has historically been held together by one thing and that historic adhesive has shown no sign whatsoever of changing its nature or effects.  That glue has been and remains—collegiality.  How is collegiality shown?  Not through callow flights of fancy.  Not through naïve and suburban notions of niceness, kindness, superficial showings of respect … these are what fools associate with collegiality.  Let fools think what they like.  The continued and growing success of the academy—its weight, its influence, its pervasiveness and tenacity—is its ability to ignore fools and offer future thinkers the only definitions that have ever worked in the real world.  Foolishness is the denial of life’s raw principles.  And collegiality is nothing other than being bound together by strife.  Academics must continually fight - among themselves, in themselves, in the world - in words, in actions, in thought, in force.  That is how knowledge is born.  We can intersectionalize and dei-ize until hell freezes over, this doesn't alter the academy's essential character one bit. All it does is diversify the clothing on the eternally bellicose heart. Doesn't matter what a person looks like or how they play on whatever the orientations of the day are, everyone gets sucked into the academy's homogenized abattoir and shat out as a knowledge borg.  Content changes, that's what we fight about. Form never does, that's what unites us.

You’re a fool Jude.  You’ve consistently demonstrated amateurish incompetence, juvenile indolence, crushing naïveté, and a lack of understanding of university politics so thorough it makes me think you’ve just dropped from a monastery in Oz.  I find it almost impossible to believe you ever were the least bit successful in business but even if you were all that proves is that the real battles on earth take place here, that business is simply a training ground for the pinnacle of reality—the academy—and that you’re a most unsophisticated warrior on the world’s most severe battleground.  Having said all that, there is one way, however, I might still be able to overlook your substantial defects.

 

I don’t understand.

 

You can perform certain favors for me.

 

I’m afraid I still don’t understand.

 

Jude.  Before you, Dr. Hite was the only male in the department.  Now you are.  I might be able to convince the Dean you’re a worthy candidate for tenure if you service me.  Regularly. 

 

You mean …?

 

That’s exactly what I mean.

 

Isn’t that sexual harassment?

 

Oh Jude.  Only men sexually harass.  Women connive.  Anyway, this is the University.  I’ve explained all this.  Knowledge is born from persecution and coitus.  You’ll thank me later.

 

How would the Dean be convinced?

 

The Dean is not immune.

 

Immune?

 

Immune from temptation.  The Dean is the Dean.  Everything can be managed.  You maintain a propriety, Jude, that I can only surmise is a hangover from your religious days.  It would be comic if it weren’t so pathetically ineffectual.  Among the thousand and one management tools, the genitals are the most potent.  Never forget that if you aspire to greatness.

the inmate's journal : the academy xi

Ah yes.  Yes, yes.  Instant insight, liquidy grace, feel the feeling, wheel the wheeling …

 

… aaah … oh hah … knowledge … knowledge coming … slithering down confusion’s tree, fast and frothy …

 

Oh Alcohol, strategic counselor, flighty god, everlasting blather, prince of release, guide this dubious scholar, give him direction, confidence, and strength in this great moment of indecision.

 

Wait.  Wait.

 

Something’s coming.

 

What’s that?

 

Appearing in a spidery closet of my soul, born from suds?  What bulky apparition beckons from the days I kneeled to God?

 

Jude, I overhear through the bar’s lust, gossip, lust, and lust.

 

Yeah who’s that?

 

Jude.  Really.  The Lord is displeased that you neglect the memory of those who loved your soul.

 

Sister Gooch you still alive?

 

Those who belong to Jesus never die.

 

Well yeah but …

 

Those who belong to Jesus never falter in their love but rise above the world’s poor purposes to spread the seed of God.

 

No that’s good I like that sounds wonderful but I’d really like to know is how to humiliate someone.

 

Humiliation is the Lord’s, Jude.

 

Right right but I’m not in the Lord’s territory anymore I’m on other side.

 

The other side?

 

Yeah.

 

Don’t you remember our talk Jude?

 

Talk?

 

The talk we had about your soul by the goose and their droppings?

 

A lot of stuff’s happened.

 

I prophesied this.  You backsliding.  You becoming one of the Devil’s party.

 

Well that’s kinda the way it goes sometimes.

 

A man’s path is walked according to that man’s fate and that fate is chosen by God.

 

Y’know Goochy I’m in the world of knowledge now the big bright fucking world of knowledge things aren’t the same things look different here things are low and fuzzy and lifted up and crazy like a bomb.

 

Knowledge is the Lord’s Jude.  Thou shalt not usurp the Lord’s knowledge.

 

Knowledge is booze goochy gooch knowledge is cunt and smoke knowledge is piss knowledge is pits and cherries knowledge is mud, mud mud mud mud mud

 

Things will not go well for you Jude.  The Lord is frowning upon you.  Jesus is frowning upon you.  I am frowning upon you.  Knowledge is not man’s but belongs to the Lord and the Lord only.  Any man who attempts to usurp the Lord’s knowledge shall have his soul broken on the back of his flesh and shall spend his days in eternity crying for a mercy which never comes.  You shall long for the taste of the holy water but thou shall never taste …

 

Somewhere in sudsy reality a man sat down beside me and began telling me how much he hated his wife and children, his job, his house, his dog, parents, siblings, backyard, pension plan, his massive drill collection, his tendency to always just miss that big promotion, his golf slice, the little patch of cosmos by the garden shed, especially the little patch of cosmos … and that man shut Sister Gooch up and she left forever.  And because Sister Gooch left, I left too.  I left that complaining man and his stupid little cosmos patch and Sister Gooch’s stupid King James preaching and flew back to my Knickerloo office, singing on the wings of beer.

 

Gooch no good, I said to myself

 

Gooch sucks, but there are others, other guides, look look, look in your past … 

 

Past, dont remember anyone anymore, dont want to.

 

Ferrelyn, what would Ferrelyn do?

 

Ferrelyn?  Ferrelyn would pray, praying’s for losers.

 

Magna … Magna could help.

 

Magna was donuts and talk, nothing else, don’t be stupid.

 

What about Mori Utne? She was good, everything you learned you learned from Mori.

 

Mori’d break into IdI’s office she’s feisty that’s what she’d do.

 

Makes sense.

 

Should we do it?

 

Mori would do it.

 

What are we going to do when we get there?

 

You plan too much Jude, just wing it, wing it.

 

Keys need keys.

 

You know where the keys are, they’re in Asta’s bottom right drawer.

 

Desk locked.

 

You’ve seen her hide her desk key.

 

Where where don’t remember.

 

Underneath the, uh, underneath the …

 

… husband’s picture no behind behind picture.

 

In the frame, the frame.

 

Yeah yeah yoohoo we’re brilliant let’s go.

 

Tenure! Tenure! I shouted in the sallow academic halls, exhilarant with my plan, grabbing the keys and breaking into IdI’s office.

So neat, so neat, so sweet and neat, so neat and treat, how does IdI keep it all so neat?  Must be why Ouzo hates her.  Tis mess that makes the mind.  Ouzo least is smart.  Smart and cruel better than dumb and cruel.  Smart and cruel sexy, sexier than smart and nice.  What are we looking for?  Filing cabinet’s unlocked, that’s stupid.  Fuck, look at all the files, bile files, Academics and Adjectives, Adjectives and Post-Modernity, Apocalypse and Gender, Comma Theories Pre-1960, Donald Trump–General, Donald Trump–Newspaper Clippings, Donald Trump–Photos, Donald Trump–Awards … Donald Trump? … loser ... Punctuation and the Business Memo, Punctuation and the Business Letter, Punctuation and the … what’s this at the back?  Bottle of Bruichladdich!  20 year, holy shit!  Rip, pop, gulp.  Yum.  Oh yum yum.  Scotch botch snatch batch.  Yum yum.  IdI … no … yum yum Ouzo … no … yes … Ouzo’s hot cause she’s from hell … hell’s yum yum … yum yum tenure … yum yum yakkydemic life … strife knife … yum yum hell …

 

And Jude, happy with the successes of the evening, begins emptying files on IdI’s floor, baptizing them with Bruichladdich, pissing on the desk, drawing lewd pictures on the wall with whiteboard markers, taking his clothes off, masturbating in a textbook, shitting on the chair, vomiting in the garbage can, doing what any sensible academic does in such circumstances, composing a little song to amuse himself—

 

academics are an oatmeal lot in the pot for nine centuries and tepid

gotta get a phd then atrophy in the sewer of my mind called tenure

 

it aint marvelous but its a miracle

that someone pays me to take my brains out and fill my cranium with scotch

then chop my head off and drink the contents in my throat or something

what the hell

 

I think maybe if thinkings maybe if maybe thinking

I shoulda been a tuliptender or garbagemover or just cabbage

but you know we like to more than anything hate each other

and hatings thinking and thinkings what were made and laid and scared to do

 

so its over  this my party  this my songsong  this I know

knowledge  gotta love it  knowledge knowledge drink ye up

 

The scholar lies down, closes his eyes, exhausted by the punch of booze and the unproductive quest for God.  There he is, found the next morning by IdI in her transformed and very smelly office, crumpled in an academic corner, sleeping on the sodden luggage of his dreams.