There is one lie in this part, but there will be 0 in part 2. There may or may not be mistakes, I’m not guilty of just a few.
How many trufs lie herein is open to interpretation.
I like truf over truth because while missing thending, it is still true – though not complete. Incomplete is how I feel a lot of the time, but then I turn to poetry and find Trufism to be a suitable rhyme (for Sufism) - the key to the bickering triangle that is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Despite discordant dictations & dissenting dervishes, do as would be done if you could make your actions a Universal Law. Agape.
You might be wondering what this is all about. Well, to be Frank with you, minus the bunny suit, it’s about how I followed the white rabbit like Lewis and Clark from VCU to IdR (gotta thank Ben Muri for that one) to RVA to TIME to Vice to Style to Transformus, with a few guardian angels thrown in. It’s a story of 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days. It’s about my addiction to cigarettes and my firm belief that I would be able to conquer this evil addiction once and for all if Weeds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrWLdWh7Ayg&feature=related) were legalized.
It’s about how I love to do two things at once, and typically fail to do anything right. It’s a tale filled with the Juxtaposed Context that only two can provide – two cities (Richmond and NYC), two burns (Heartburn and Transformus), two communities (PLF and PEX), two K’s (Kostume Kult), two mentor figures (Parker Parker and Christian Detres), the memory of two dancing women at Transformus that haunts me still, the haunting difference two years (2009 and 2010) make, and the differences between two filmmakers who should be working together to finish something great.
It includes the two week period (from the June solstice 2009 to Independence Day 2009) in which I spiraled into a DPT and opium-induced madness (during which I became convinced the gay mafia was first after me, then protecting me – nearly became a male stripper – started questioning the devilish nature surrounding Richmond – and finally broke down and cried while listening to Gills and Wings perform Time Travel at Gallery5). It’s about dirty little secrets and secrets so surreal they just might be real. It’s about rooftops and alleyways, and the intercourses had on and in them. It’s also about growing up and finding one’s identity in this 21st century Sanitarium of existence we deem civilized.
Some people describe Richmond as a black hole – I used to describe it as home. They say you can’t truly leave Richmond, that it will always suck you back in. I think in my case, you’re going to witness the opposite (like some Strange anti-Matter). There are various theories as to why Richmond is a black hole – mine is that the pentagon/Graham that is Monroe Park creates a vortex, and VCU feeds off it (if you noticed in the prologue, the IdR link to a Richmond.com interview doesn’t work – I noticed this the same time I noticed that Richmond Times Dispatch had seemingly erased all their obituaries, articles, etc about Graham Stevenson – a friend of Sera Tabb’s who died in an unexplained bridge death). Others might point towards Philip Morris and DuPont as the massive capitalistic singularities driving Richmond’s economy and devouring its soul (or at least its lungs and rivers).
Some might venture a guess that Richmond sold its artistic soul to advertising because the only good that seems to come out of it is from the Martin Agency, Park Group, and other advertising/marketing companies. I would say they are the keys to its current revival and future survival, as long as they resurrect the corpse of Cannabis. To pair a phrase for my field of dreams, “If you (legalize) it, everyone will come.” I’ll speak more on this in the appropriate chapters.
Speaking of singularities, have you ever noticed the Persephone statue above the entrance to Johnson Hall - maybe that's why it made into High Times? Its gaze is clearly purveying Monroe Park, and it’s a miniature version of the same statue that presides over the US Capitol building. It isn’t the only famous miniature to be found in Richmond. Did you know that Richmond has its own Statue of Liberty? Indeed – right in Chimborazo Park (Part of Church Hill) there is a Statue of Liberty about 12 feet tall facing south. It’s a good reminder that Richmond, not the Mason-Dixon line, is the true divider between North and South (and that it was NY who rebuilt Richmond following its burning at the hands of the Confederates).
Ironically or intentionally, there is another statue in an adjacent park, Libby Hill Park. Here resides an unnamed Confederate Soldier, adorning a massive column, looking westward straight through the heart of Shockoe Bottom and Downtown, straight to Monroe Park. I wonder if its ass is intentionally facing the Statue of Liberty. It kind of reminds me of Parker at Preston and Becca’s apartment during a Pre-Halloween party last year. I guess it’s just a Dixie thing – better than a Jersey thing, but definitely not like the NY State of mind.
I don’t know much about the Dixons, but I do know some Masons, and their fingerprints are all over Richmond. The first US Masonic temple was built in Shockoe Bottom, and off 9 (4+3+2)-Mile Rd is a massive Mason complex. Monroe Park, for all we know, could be a Masonic experiment gone wrong – or maybe it is the key to time travel – at least for this story. Allow me to share a different memoir – one that I wrote for an Advanced Writing course at VCU in Spring 2006:
“Shadows and Reflections of a Lifelong Journey”
People are always hounding me with the same three questions, “Who are you, what do you want, and where are you going?” I doubt there is any way to truly answer these infinitely deep questions, yet they still haunt me like a Baskerville on a moor.
With these questions in mind, I light the cherry clove in my hand and leave my friend (Danton)’s apartment. As I begin my long walk through the persistent fog, our conversations are still fresh in my mind. Words of Plato, heretical Gnostic concepts, Cthulhu dreams, Timothy Leary’s theories, RAW (Robert Anton Wilson), and all the great mysteries flow through the vast connections in my mind. I have no real connection to any of them, yet somehow they are relevant to me.
The air is moist and diffused with the harsh light of street lamps. Storm clouds disperse above me as their loads have already scattered reflection pools throughout my journey home. The immediate answer to one question is my apartment, but beyond the immediate future, ideas of where I am going, plan to go, and the like are as clouded as the air in front of me and the sky above me.
Walking through Monroe Park, I am surrounded by a gang of shadows. Some move quickly, and others slink by slowly. Concerned that I am being followed, I take another puff of my clove and glance behind me. It’s nothing but my own shadows. Looking around, I notice street lamps, not people, surrounding me. Plato’s Cave immediately surfaces in my mind. These shadows are like the faint traces of what was, what might be, and what could have been.
The shadows behind me are the burdens of depression that once nearly killed me, and now linger as a nagging reminder of all I have lost. The shadows to my right and left are all the people I could have been. I could have been a collegiate football player, and perhaps one day a great coach. In another life, I could have been a grey-robed Christian hiding in the shadows from the persecution of a tyrannical religion. Maybe in some other life, I was a mystic or a real-life hero. Perhaps I’ll never know. In front of me is the long shadow that reminds me of the ominous dreams of Cthulhu, a name (Ktulu) I ignorantly took up as an online alias, only to become him in a vivid dream.
Continuing my stroll through the park, my mind maintains its travel through RAW’s reality tunnels and out of Plato’s Cave. I can only hope these tunnels will take me somewhere useful. A shadow droops over a nearby puddle as a powerful mustang roars down Franklin St. With the puddle rippling through my mind, I see a distorted image from my past. Gone is the park and all of its lights. The wrinkling puddle is now the churning waves of the Baltic Sea, and I am leaning on a cruise ship’s railing. As I contemplate the pros and cons of jumping to an assured death, the flickering street lamp pulls me out of my past. The next puff of my clove is the sweetest of the entire night.
The next reflection pool I stare into, I see the scar above my right eye. It is an eternal reminder of the car crash that should have been my last. I can’t help but wonder if I was saved for a yet-unknown purpose. The desire to be someone or something great has forever been a friend and a foe. It is the angel on my right, telling me I have a purpose and guarding me in my most vulnerable times. It is also the devil on my left, telling me I have the ability to do whatever I want and always providing opportunities to prove it. Sometimes I think they’re both right, and sometimes I think I’m just crazy.
With my journey nearly over, I stare into one last puddle. It is by far the largest of all the pools I have come across tonight, and I can see almost my entire reflection. I notice my Star Wars t-shirt and can’t help but wonder why I can’t be Joseph Campbell’s multi-faced hero. I see the images of both Luke and Anakin Skywalker superimposed onto my own. I have Luke’s youth, and Anakin’s scar-hardened face. My hair is a blend of the two, and my heart is bigger than both of them. I know they are mere fictions in the imagination of bearded man, but I’m always asking myself, am I Darth Vader or his redeemer, or perhaps, something greater?
Nearing my apartment complex, I take one last puff of cherry smoke from the only friend to share this journey with me. The streetlights are ominously silent, and there are no more shadows for me to contemplate and no more pools to reflect in. The fog has finally cleared from the late night air, and for the first time tonight I behold the full moon.
A surge of energy storms up my spine; a mystic would probably call it a Kundalini Awakening. Basking in the glow of the moonlight, I see a thousand self-projections replace the man on the moon. I recognize a few: the ancient Plato arguing with a rebellious student, Timothy Leary saying something about tuning in and dropping out, a black mask with a menacing voice, a monstrous entity with tentacles for a beard chewing on a glowing hound, and an old man radiating with the spark of gnosis. I can only smile as my journey comes to an end.
What wasn’t included in the original was the fact that we smoked a lot of weed and drank really good beer (I was 19 at the time) while engaging in a mental mindfuck – then we played video games, Halo, I think. I used to waste a lot of time playing video games, but I mostly played Halo, GTA, Madden, Snowboarding, and Star Wars games. Now, I wish I had spent that time making short films and learning animation in my spare time, instead of wasting my waking, non-studying hours in front of a TV. Also missing in this reflection was an admission to the loss of heterosexuality. Bi the way, the last paragraph was complete hyperbole, because the only Kundalini Awakening I had sober was when I discovered 432 in the midst of a Joseph Campbell essay on Altruism (Altria, ;-)
The Star Wars t-shirt I mentioned was actually a “Sith Park” t-shirt, in which Darth Maul, Darth Vader, and Darth Sidious are standing around and one of them says, “Oh my god, we killed Qui-Gon”. Some would argue that Darth Vader wasn’t present, but if it weren’t for Qui-Gon’s insistence that Anakin was the Chosen One, he probably wouldn’t have died in the manner that he did. Missing from the shirt is Obi-Wan screaming, “You Bastards!” In the end, I may end up being more like Han Solo or Cade Skywalker than anyone other character. All right, that’s enough geekery, for now.
Reading it now, for myself, is like reading Crowley’s “Book of the Law” for the first time (http://www.myspace.com/mysticaltruth/blog/234737819) - I’m losing myself in 4.32 years of extended meanings, memories, metaphors, and metafictions (4.32 years to the day I wrote this reflection would be 2010’s July First Friday – a day I spent with Corey Daniels, Arianna Vincenzi, and Shelley Illmensee – the day that started a chain reaction of events that led me to NYC). I won’t explain why, at least for now, but allow me to relate this to my last trip to Richmond, in part two (& Chapter 34).
“Policy of Truth” by Depeche Mode from their album, “Violator” is playing on Roman Zelgatas’s “New Order” Pandora playlist as I write this. Consider it an omen, but I doubt it’s from Roman. There are many who would question my skills, talents, and intentions as a filmmaker and photographer, but it would be unwise to have the same questions about my writings. This story doesn’t begin in Richmond, nor will it end in its lifelong rival, New York City (it begins in Woodstock), but Richmond is where I found myself, and it is here, in my words, where I will make myself, or fall crashing back to Earth.
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