“The Gorilla” and “The Gorilla and the Butterfly”

The Gorilla
By Frank Asch

There’s a gorilla sitting in my car.  He’s playing with the radio. First he listens to classical music.  He closes his eyes and seems to drift off into a dream.  Then his eyes flash wide open and he turns on the news.  He hears about violence in Africa and tears stream down his face.  Where the tears fall tiny green plants start to grow on the seat and on the floor.  In just a few minutes the car is choked with vines and flowers and big leafy green plants.  The gorilla just grins and turns back to the classical music.

–

Response :

–

The Gorilla and the Butterfly
By Gary Lindorff

I saw that gorilla.  He was playing a saxophone at the pub and taking requests, but all he could play was “Oh, Mary, don’t you weep”.  Everyone kept shouting out their favorite songs anyway, until a butterfly flew out of the mirror behind the bar shouting “QUIET!”, to everyone’s alarm.  The gorilla and the butterfly then vanished into the mirror, the butterfly shouting “QUIET! QUIET! QUIET!”, which became “TEIUQ! TEIUQ! TEIUQ!” as they passed inside.  A drunk shouted, “They’re gone!”  And that was true.  As they merged with their reflections, the two sets of gorilla and butterfly canceled each other out !  Then it was as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  The mounted moose head resumed spitting at the customers and the bartender continued pouring whiskey on the heads of every sunflower that was even slightly drooping, shouting angrily, “NO DRUNKEN FLOWERS ALLOWED! NO DRUNKEN FLOWERS!”

This evening and tonight

29 December 2011, 23:45

We went outside and stacked wood for a couple hours. Very cold and invigorating. The sun was setting, and the sky had that perfect grey-purple sheen, like the large dusted end of a glass vase sitting on an old table in the late-summer early-evening ending daylight of the last beautiful place in Florida. Then we went for a walk. A new place through the forest, with Sarah. She turned back to the house after stopping by a frozen pond and sliding across its rippled, dark glassy surface, and my dad and I continued into the woods. It was a quiet kind of cold, with a small wind. Every sound in the forest could be heard and brought forth, nearly magnified with importance. Each one so refined and self-contained; whittled down to a perfect sound-event occurring in time with no reference to anything else that ever existed. The moon rose as we went across a field, going home. It was a half moon, on its side, surrounded by stars. Later that night, we were standing on the porch, as Shirley said she heard coyotes in the distance. We did hear them as well, and my dad quickly ran in to the house to fetch a penny whistle. “Sometimes they answer to the penny whistle”, he told me. So he played, on the porch, in the dark and cold, to the coyotes. No response. He laughed. He played again. No response. He laughed again. Played once more. No response. He laughed again and said, “I guess they’re not into the music tonight.” We both laughed, “Yeah…” Despite that, we both knew they were into the music tonight.

Dog

Small lights at night

Photographs: 18 December 2011, Vermont

The shadows of the trees swept upon the patches of snow, and an isolation was implied. A double drawing, slightly offset and unfocused. Truly a beauty. Brass indentations, in one object. Just one, maybe two, two different ones. Each half golden and contoured.

Writing: 24 February 2011, 20:10, Chicago

On sound

“What we call the sound of rain or wind we could better call the sound of plant leaves and branches.” – Francisco Lopez

Quote c/o the site Scrapyard Forest. Drawing, as always, by me.

A Poem : From Vermont / Listening to Michael Nyman – Bell Set #1, by Gary Lindorff

From Vermont / Listening to Michael Nyman – Bell Set #1
By Gary Lindorff

What will we do when the gates go up?

Here is the dream:  Consumers with money. A virtual middle class.
Cash and stuff. Jobs and cash. Benefits!  Security.

Is there any way out?

Is it too late?
The lights go out. Nobody can find the switch.
Something as simple as a light switch and everything shifts.
Panic.

Dreams are amazing.
Everyone has the same dream. Think of that.

By linear time we have already reached the end.

What kind of history are we weaving?

If you ask the weather man,
After you have plied him with a few more drinks,
He will say,
We are making it easy for him . . .

Something about creation and prediction converging
In an open-ended season of 500-year storms.

The rivers, amnesiac,
Recovering from Irene,
Have conveniently forgotten
How they consumed their beds,
Swept gentle farms away,
Pushed huge trees to the brink
Of hydroelectric dams.

In the waterfalls I sometimes hear
The caterwauling and moaning and pining of the wild beasts.

When the gates went up
In malls across Turtle Island,
Consumers flooded through,
Tore into sales racks and displays . . .
But they weren’t buying.
They were just mad.

Were you mad, Grandpa?
(Muted gong, tinkling chimes . . . )
Ting, knnng, knnng, Ting . . . Mbronnggg!

—–
Posted at thiscantbehappening.net