THE DRONES THAT TEND THE GARDENS

THROUGH THE SLATS of the sagging fence, the quiet white figure periodically appeared. Paying scant attention to the peanut butter sandwich in his hands, the boy took occasional obligatory nibbles as he watched. The exposed end of the banana which his mother had cut in half, already turning color, attracted ants toward the plate placed before him where he sat cross-legged on the lawn. He watched the white figure quietly go about its business, transferring large, heavy-looking bags from a pallet in the driveway into the structure adjacent to the garage. His mother kept an eye on him through the kitchen window. When he turned around to look at her, she waved at him and he waved back. Taking another little bite out of his sandwich, the boy returned his attention to the faceless figure next door.

The head was shaped like an upside-down teardrop, the bulk of the figure a dull uniform white. Smaller parts at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles were dark. His mother called it a drone. The drone, she said, did not have a mind. "That's not a real man," she told him. "That's just someone else's machine."

The boy wished he had someone to play with. His mother said there used to be real people living all around. It used to be a neighborhood, she said. What exactly that meant, the boy did not quite understand. He was too young to remember.

He imagined riding on the back of the drone. He saw himself getting a shoulder ride. He could see himself standing on the shoulders of the drone, telling the drone what to do. Walking around the town, running through the woods.

When his mother came outside to take his plate, she saw that ants had taken over the half of a banana and the crust from the sandwich that the boy did not want.

"You can't leave your food like that for the ants to get," she said.

The boy's attention was fixed on the drone. "Mom, what is all that stuff he's moving?"

His mother frowned. "Potting soil," she said.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"It's for growing plants."

"What kind of plants?"

His mother paused. "Daisies," she said.

He watched while she brushed the ants off the plate and the banana. Peeling back the banana, she pulled away the discolored tip and gave him back the rest. "Don't waste food, sweetie," she said. "She if you can finish this."

The boy took a small, dutiful bite. "Can I have some juice?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie, we don't have any juice. I'll have to bring you out some water."

As his mother went into the house for the water, the boy wondered what it looked like inside the structure adjacent to the garage. He imagined a small drone his size. A quiet little boy with a blank white face. At first the small drone would be shy, but the boy would show the drone around the yard, and together they would be friends.

His mother returned with a glass of water. The boy took a sip and made a face. "It tastes bad," he said.

"I'm sorry," said his mother. "We don't have a new water filter yet."

Holding up the remainder of the banana, the boy said, "Can I be done?"

His mother sighed. "All right," she said. He handed it to her, and the rest of the water as well. She tossed it on a dry spot at the edge of the lawn. "Why don't you come inside and color?"

"Can I color outside?"

His mother looked next door. "All right," she said. "I'll bring out your coloring box. Then I have to get back to work."

"Okay, Mom."

The boy's mother kissed the top of his head. His hair was warm in the morning sun.

"I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too, Mom."

She looked back before going inside. "Don't get too close to the fence," she said.

"AFTERLIFE" REWARDING

PHILIP K. DICK – A DAY IN THE AFTERLIFE
Starring Philip K. Dick,
Thomas M. Disch,
Brian Aldiss,
Terry Gilliam,
Elvis Costello
Directed by Nicola Roberts


         
Excellent documentary about the visionary writer.
         
Insightful commentary from interviewees including friends, ex-wives, and a variety of artists livens this unique 1994 production from BBC’s “Arena.”
         
According to science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, “Like many a good man, Philip K. Dick went round the bend. Religion got him in the end, and so did all those drugs.”
         
PKD, as he is known, brought to sci-fi a sense of excitement coupled with serious metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. If you’ve seen the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, or The Adjustment Bureau, then you have some familiarity with his work adapted into film.
         
He blurred the lines between people and machines. As the narrator says, “Your toaster just might have an opinion of its own.”
          
 “My stories are attempts at reception, at listening to voices from another place, far away.”
         
Born in 1928, PKD’s twin sister died after less than eight weeks from an allergy to mother’s milk. All his life, PKD felt a strange sense of guilt about that. “I’m two people,” he said. “I’m on two sides of the fence.”
         
None of the forty-two novels he wrote were taken seriously until late in his life, briefly. He wrote for about thirty years, living in poverty. When he was writing in the 1950s, Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein were popular optimists. As Aldiss notes, “Now they seem like dinosaurs” and PKD seems “immensely contemporary.”
         
The documentary seamlessly integrates elements from his stories into the production. Filmmaker Terry Gilliam addresses us from within a TV set holding an aerosol container—referencing God in a spray can from the novel Ubik—with the letters PKD prominently displayed on it. “I use PKD to unclog my brains. Why don’t you?”
         
Many of his stories feature tiny figures in universal rubble, loser heroes in a mundane world. This vision was formed, according to narration, by “the changing landscape of California, a rural paradise that he saw bulldozed into submission.” This is why PKD, who died of heart failure after a stroke in 1982 at the age of fifty-three, had mixed feelings about Blade Runner. Visually, director Ridley Scott captured the atmosphere of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? with stunning skill. But the dialogue and Harrison Ford as the hero Hollywood-ized the film, and PKD was disappointed.
         
In exploring what makes a human being through writing that Thomas M. Disch calls “the prose equivalent of a drug trip,” PKD could be bitter about what was not human. Disch also notes that regarding PKD’s possible mental imbalance…he loved it. “If you’ve got a sort of paranoid side to you, best use it to write thrillers.”
          
 “The police once told me that I was a crusader, and they had no use for crusaders,” said PKD with a relishing air. “But unfortunately they didn’t tell me what I was crusading for.”
         
Freely available online.



 Stewart Kirby writes for

         

"WINCHESTER'S HOUSE" LABOR OF LOVE

MRS. WINCHESTER’S HOUSE
Narrated by Lillian Gish
Directed by Dick Williams
Written by R.E. Pusey, Jr., Ray Hubbard
Runtime 29 minutes

         
In 1963 Robert Wise, director of The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Sound of Music, directed the film version of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Apparently as a sort of companion piece to The Haunting, that same year Lillian Gish narrated the made-for-TV short documentary Mrs. Winchester’s House.
         
Excellently shot in black and white, the star of the film is the labyrinthine architectural product of an eccentric heiress. Sarah Lockwood Pardee, born circa 1840, give or take five years, was a child prodigy who by age twelve was fluent in five languages. In 1862 she married William Wirt Winchester, himself heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which sold guns to the U.S. Army during the Civil War.
         
In 1866 Sarah gave birth to their only child, Annie Pardee Winchester, who unfortunately lived only forty days. Fifteen years later, in 1881, William died of tuberculosis.
         
According to the film, Sarah had long held a strong interest in the occult. After meeting with a Boston medium, Sarah left New Haven, Connecticut for California. Supposedly, the medium had advised her to build a house for the restless spirits of the Indians, the soldiers, and all those who died by a Winchester rifle.
         
But that’s the mystery—or perhaps puzzle—of Sarah’s house, because beginning in 1884 and continuing unabated literally for the next 38 years nonstop, the house was under construction. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year every year. And Sarah herself was the architect—perhaps with a bit of help…from beyond.
         
Supposedly she spent a lot of time in a séance room with a planchette, basically a Ouija Board, and communed with William.
         
Dressed in black, wearing a veil, the reclusive Mrs. Winchester ordered bewildering peculiarities in the construction of her ever-mushrooming abode: rooms within rooms, stairways to nowhere. Skylights over skylights and a skylight in the floor. Tiny doors to big places; big doors to tiny places. A door that opens to a brick wall; a door that opens to a sheer drop. Some people find Sarah’s architecture comparable to the etchings of M.C. Escher. Others see Freemasonic-Rosicrucian influences involving the theories of Sir Francis Bacon.
         
Whatever the case, Sarah used a bewildering array of secret passageways to move about and observe unseen her shifts of workers working. There are literally miles of corridors inside. Once seven stories tall in some places, after the 1906 earthquake, the house was reduced down to four stories—and Sarah lived in a houseboat for the next six years. Yet even then, the work still went on.
         
One night, when she had returned, Sarah held a grand ball with rare and amazing food and wine, and a company of musicians. By midnight, the butler announced the names of guests. But as the musicians saw, there were no guests. It was the first and last ball ever held in the ballroom, and it creeped the musicians out completely.
         
You can visit Mrs. Winchester’s House freely on YouTube anytime, and stay there as long as you like.

 Stewart Kirby writes for

         

CLAYMATION PARTY FAVORS

DECADES AGO living away from home for the first time and going to college--attending the very institution for which I would eventually teach (at the lowest possible level while yet receiving the greatest honor, though not in terms of money)--my housemates threw a party. I didn't understand how to live with other students sharing a house, and didn't know that I didn't understand until after awhile they told me.

My housemates were two young women. We'll call them Velma and Daphne. Velma's parents down in Los Angeles gave her the house, kind of. We paid our rent to her directly. She was always nice to me. I liked Velma. Daphne, being particularly desirable, of course had a boyfriend. Gunter was from Norway. He was a blonde guy who looked like a surfer and smoked cigarettes all the time. Together we listened to the Beastie Boys and AC/DC. Velma and Daphne eventually said they thought it was weird how I'd hang out in the kitchen. And it was true, when I was making my dinner, often I would see one or both of them making their dinner as well. Instead of spiriting myself away to my room, I'd try to make conversation. They let me know how weird they thought that was, until they realized I was trying to make friends.

Fuckin' duh.

We lived up a hill in Arcata within walking distance of Humboldt State University. The city was just beginning to develop that hillside area at the time. The four of us in the house trekked up around in the woods often, never dreaming how fast those woods would go. On the night we held the rager, all around that quiet residential loop cars filled the hill. Gunter and I had Who Made Who on vinyl blasting away early to kick things off. Eventually the girls required their turn though, and switched the record selection over to Depeche Mode, Midnight Oil, the soft crap.

Strange faces floated all around. Music loud, bodies close, everybody trying to maintain foamy keg beer in red plastic cups. A joint or two was going around. There's always a joint or two going around. But these weren't growers. These were college students, most of whom came from afar. Certainly we'd all seen Animal House. Ours was the party. We were the ragers. We knew exactly how to act.

Amazing things happened I'll neverremember. SometimesIfelt notsogreat. But dammit I had to continue, had to...press on. I would arm wrestle anyone, and I always won. The Road Warrior t-shirt I wore I picked up in Santa Cruz the year before on a post-senior prom excursion to the Mustang Ranch whorehouse which sadly or fortunately fell through around the Bay Area because my buddy and I had left spontaneously at midnight and were just absolutely dead tired.

Daphne appeared at my elbow. "You see that girl over there?" I could see the one she meant. The pretty one in the chair. "You should go talk to her," she said, pulling me toward her as she said so. Daphne introduced me to a beautiful young woman who looked like Jane Seymour, only more intense. Her face was remarkably heart-shaped, framed by dark perfect eyebrows. She sat on a sweater that she had tied around her waist. Forgetting all about that Daphne person, we found ourselves engaged in animated conversation.

Jane, as we'll call her, had arrived rather late. She lived around the corner in a housemate situation just like ours. After awhile we noticed that almost everyone else had gone. Loathe for her to leave, I escorted Jane around the block while she walked with her ten speed bike.

Not long thereafter, an acquaintance from the party appeared at the house one afternoon. One of Daphne and Gunter's friends. Velma didn't much like him, but that seemed like because he rebuked her. He came over all excited about this acid he knew he could get. Not just LSD. Mushrooms, too. These were famous drugs. These were our road to the '60s. We were in college now.

The only sticking point with me was price. Sure, I had enough dough to rent a VCR player and a couple videos of a weekend, perhaps Mutiny on the Bounty or The Maltese Falcon. But my means were meager. I had to stretch the value of my drugging dollar in a most responsible manner. Then I found out it was only two bucks a hit. Holy shit! Once I learned that, I signed on for four bucks' worth.

That night, I couldn't wait. I looked at my two little pieces of paper, and I thought, "You know, I sure do have a strong constitution. Gosh these pieces of paper are small. Sure would like to get my money's worth. What the fuck, down the hatch."

So I waited. About fifteen minutes. Then I called up Jane.

"Jane," I said, "you wouldn't believe what I just did." We talked a little bit and she said to come on over. So I walked around the block, all excited to see Jane again. She came to the door as soon as I knocked. Standing in the doorway she looked in both directions before pulling me inside. "Quickly, to my room."

For some reason, or no reason, we couldn't be seen. I think she didn't want her housemates to know. She was afraid they'd ask if I was her boyfriend. Fine with me, because it meant we were right up next to each other listening to the Beatles. She told me all about the story of her Help! album. Her sincerity still overwhelms. Many items held tremendous importance. Baby, her ten speed bicycle, listened to much from Jane. For no particular reason she seems to me now like a character in a Hayao Miyazaki film.

Sitting next to each other, we began to get closer. But she was shy, and I had to drain the lizard. There was no hiding it now, and verily a man did exit Jane's very room with strong intent to set used beer free. Didn't see nobody, neither. Silly trepidation for naught. When lo, haha, the floor tile seemed to move. I watched the patterns crawl around while I relieved myself, laughing. Couldn't wait to tell her what I saw.

When I came back in, all happy and proud at what I'd accomplished, she welcomed me with open arms in a lime green button-down shirt and we kissed on her bed so sweetly, so gently, with innocent ardor and inexperienced lust. Every now and then I'd stop to look at my fingers waving before my face and laugh at the colors that they left.

All of this took about an hour. Jane expressed her pleasure, and her reservation. "Wow, that is really interesting. Wow. I have to get up early tomorrow, though." It was time for me to go.

Wow indeed! That was fun! I very much enjoyed it. Acid, you're a-ok with me! Thanks for that good time. Heading back around the block I felt like a walking chunk of Americana.

So, sending one last smile to the stars for the eventide, off I trundled to me quarters fer a bit o respite as it were sir, none the worse for wear.

Opened the door, shh, all quiet as I closed it, went on down the hall, into my room, turned on the light, felt queasy while I looked at the homework on my desk next to my bed. I had to sleep. What a day. I took off my clothes, turned out the light, and got in bed.

At first I felt okay. Just a little queasy still. Perhaps that was to be expected on one's first acid trip, taking two hits, at night, alone. But then...then, somehow, I knew that there was a gigantic spider dangling from the ceiling in the dark directly over me. It was impossible. But it was there. Huge. I withstood this as long as I could, until I couldn't take it any longer. Leaping up, I turned on the light.

Suddenly the entire room moved around in weird ways. Posters on the walls rolled up and down. Everything took on a meaty look, an unreal look, like things in the Claymation world of Gumby or some other form of stop motion animation. The striped lines of the wallpaper on one wall blew outward and curled back in like party favors.

I open the door to my room and enter an Oz-like world.

The color is incredible. Everything is incredible. I understand things now that I never understood before. Never needed to before, and never will again. I go over into a corner and look at some books. Holy shit why do I not do this more often? Look at what is available unto the human mind. We are here in time and space. Fascinating.

I go back to my room. Have some adventures there. Do all kinds of things. Then I happen to notice the time is 12:00 midnight. Neat.

So I go back out there unto the living room and now I see one of my housemates. How wonderful! And I have adventures. All sorts of amazing things happen. Until eventually I wander back into my room and I see. The time.

It's 12:01.

What? One minute? After all that, and only one minute has passed? It's not possible. It's not possible.

I go to take a shower. As soon as I get in, snakes and blood and terrible things come flowing out upon me. Spiders and frogs down at my feet move like the tile earlier. When I get out I am sparkling scarlet, beet red all over. Looking at my face in the mirror I tear apart my flesh and see my skull.

Probably I had turned on the hot water only, because as soon as I get out of the bathroom--and I'm amazed I managed to put on pants or shorts or anything at all--soon as I leave the bathroom, I see Velma, her expression of horror and confusion still etched in my mind. She's asking if I'm okay. She's asking if I've done any drugs. By way of reply I stomp a hoof twice.

"Shumendy lo bapa." Color zipping. Her mouth moves. "Shumendy du baspa?"

While I'm on the couch being red, and Velma's trying to get my sister's phone number out of me, Daphne and Gunter walk in the front door with their dog. They have strange expressions on their faces as they walk in, then they stop. They reverse motion. They walk back out through the front door, backwards. The dog walks backwards, they walk backwards, the door shuts. Then the front door opens again and in they walk, looking at me. Now backwards. Door shuts. Door opens. In they walk in again. Looking at me. My mind replays this over and over.

Eventually my sister appears with her boyfriend. They try giving me food. They try walking me around the block. Flailing and blithering I try to comply. At some point after an eternity of sheer hell I finally throw up in the hall on my way to the bathroom. Last thing I remember, I'm lying in bed with my sister crouched on the floor next to me holding my hand.

When I woke up, I saw my sister's boyfriend sitting on the floor against the wall with his eyes closed. My sister was still on the floor next to me. Every part of my being rang with incredible pain. Through the room's single window, the first rays of dawn began sifting in.

"How do you feel?" my sister asked.

Everything hurt so much. World's worst hangover. "Like I died," I said.

"You should drink some water and have something gentle on your stomach."

"I remember throwing up."

"Yeah, you bolted out of bed and threw up in the hall. You almost made it! Just a few more inches and it would've been on the linoleum. Well, a little bit was on the linoleum."

"Oh god."

"It's all right. Velma did most of the cleaning."

"Oh my god. Never again."

"You should thank her."

"I'm so sorry."

"She was really worried about you."

Many years later I told a friend about this episode and he said he doubted it was actually acid that I took. May well be true. I've talked to people who said they've taken literally hundreds of doses, yet never experienced anything like what I went through. I always figured I got lucky. One rotten night of hell and I was done with that shit forever. Now every time I pass by a TV I see a prescription drug commercial touting the wonders of getting back into life by popping some pill with side-effects, including blindness, organ failure, depression, suicidal thoughts, paralysis, death, and not only vomiting, but severe diarrhea, as well. 

THE DIMENSION OF IMAGINATION

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.



         

Presented for your consideration: A prestigious writer rebelling against censorship opens the door to one of the best things to ever happen with television.
         
In a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, three-time Emmy Award-winning writer Rod Serling discusses problems with censorship and commercialism threatening creativity. In the battle of the writer for creative freedom, Serling realized that while networks and sponsors would censor topical stories with strong social commentary, the way to slip around the gatekeepers and work with off-limits subject matter was to couch controversial topics in science fiction and fantasy.
         
In the five-year run of Serling’s brainchild, “The Twilight Zone” showcased thought-provoking tales exploring the human condition. (His first Emmy was for “Patterns,” a drama about corporate competitiveness.) Of the 156 episodes of the show, Serling penned 92 of them himself. Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, and Charles Beaumont wrote the bulk of the rest, with Beaumont coming in second after Serling.
         
Charles Beaumont is a Twilight Zone story unto himself. Totally self-taught, totally influential, developed Alzheimer’s in his mid-thirties and died in his early forties.
         
According to Marc Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, who knew both Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury, Serling had asked to meet Bradbury while creating the show. Bradbury had Serling come over to his house, and there gave him a couple of books by his proteges, one by Matheson and the other by Beaumont, telling him to read these guys. Serling subsequently hired them. For a variety of reasons, the show used only one Bradbury story—“I Sing the Body Electric” in the third season. In a short YouTube video, Zicree goes into greater detail on Bradbury’s relationship with the show.
         
Top-notch writing was only one of many strengths. Getting Bernard Herrmann to compose the theme was a major coup. Herrmann is film’s greatest composer, so it’s not surprising that he came up with TV’s most recognizable theme song. Even people who have never seen an episode can recognize the four simple notes in the theme, and understand those sounds mean something weird is going on.
         
Tales with twists and often grim endings characterize the show. In “Long Distance Call,” an ailing old woman gives her grandson a toy phone, and after she dies he uses it to talk with her. In “Time Enough at Last,” a man who loves to read finds he is the only survivor of a nuclear blast.
         
New stories with different characters kept it fresh every week. The only thing predictable was unpredictability.
         
At the center of the Twilight Zone universe operates a morality which rewards the just and punishes the unjust. When Telly Savalas is a bad dad in “Living Doll,” we like that Talky Tina says things she’s not supposed to. Even when nobody pulls the string.
         
Which gets to the heart of why the show was ever made. High-quality, polished short films. Too interesting to be forgotten, too smart for the censors to touch.  
         
Freely available online.


 Stewart Kirby writes for

ULTIMATE POEM

All making sense
No space omitted
It all interacts

https://soundcloud.com/stewart-kirby/ultimate-poem

To learn more about physics and philosophy, listen to more C R O W M A G

WOTAN (Remastered)

Recently I found a way to convert files that allows me to, among other things, amplify the sound. I think WOTAN is one of our best for several reasons, except whereas before it was too quiet, now it isn't.

https://soundcloud.com/stewart-kirby/wotan-remastered

The first part of the song is my preexisting poem on Odin. The music developed quickly with very general direction. Then the song moves into spoken word from AVENUE OF THE GIANTS before returning to the poem and flying off.






C  R  O  W  M  A  G

Conor Ross - guitar
Gerry Maze - drums
Jon Lindberg - bass
Stewart Kirby - words, vocals