BREAKING ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE

Originally published on December 27, 1996

A note to newcomers. Steve and I work this ruthless game of acronymics which simultaneously insults and delights us as we plug in words to match or extend our given initials. Another variation on this passionate and rich wordplay is the psychology-based or habit-driven puns we derive from a combination of two people's names who share a discernable time-revealed psychological or sociological habit. For instance, to pull a STIM (a combination Steve and Tim habit) might be spilling a beer in a no no situation, or since Gabriel is not so free from this ghastly flaw himself, we might call that "pulling a GAST!"

There is the STOO (Steve, Tim, and Sue), say anything do nothing approach to sliding past a particularly debilitating lethargy. Or in Sue and Tim's case, the SIM, responding to a question with a self-evident answer while missing the point of the question entirely.

A GOO (Gabriel & Sue) work til we drop modis operandi fat ass config. If Tim were ever to develope this habit around the Dollhouse we might redub this event a GOOTS. A STAB (Steve & Gabriel) qualifies as fast as lightening, smartest in the room, analysis a million ways to Mars approach to daily murmuring. A JENSET (completely in love with themselves, immensely and publically proud of their own physical prowess, beauty, and sense of fashion). We can extend this into a STACK (Steve, Tim, and Jack), a tendancy to usurp, and add Gabriel with his barroom boorishness to that mix, and you've got simply a GASTACK, or a SETSTACK might indicate a fast-talking never say die 'tude. A JOO (Jack & Sue) can be summed up as the cult of the secret fucksters. And on and on. Of course we can all say "we pulled a PETER..." once or twice in our lives.

This game originally evolved to its brutally hybrid level one afternoon down in the basement as I was chatting with Steve and Sue. Tim was elsewhere, but I had fallen into a strange habit of late in saying Tim when I meant Steve, saying Tom when I meant Tim. It was wild, creepy, megahaunting thing, and explainable perhaps only with an example taken from baseball history.

Occasionally, and it's happened enough times in history to not beg disbelief, including to this writer in his own youthful baseball days, that a player suddenly can't throw the ball in the particular fundamental routine he had long ago mastered. Most recently a young catcher on the New York Mets named Mackey Hatcher suddenly could not return the ball to the pitcher without doublepumping his arm. His throws to the bases, say to second on a steal attempt was not affected, but over a several year period this phenomenon continued to plague Hatcher's game. Somewtimes it goes away as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. Hatcher eventually lost his starting job to another catcher, and unfortunately I don't know what happened to his career since Hundley replaced him.

However, I developed a similar affliction when trying out for second base on a new team after our family moved to a new town in a different county where nobody knew my name or past stardom. I threw the ball fifteen, no exaggeration, feet over the first basemen's head every damned time I fielded a ground ball. It was preposterous, daunting, downright wicked and demonic to this hopeful infield candidate. I knew at fourteen that I had somehow, for some mystical reason beyond my grasp, succumbed to this strange affliction I had read about somewhere as I voraciously consumed all sports data I could plow my eyes through. But I really wanted to win that second base job. I did not want to get stuck in the outfield, which is where I ended up, so this was no pretend thing. I was a star athlete the previous year, and would do okay this summer, but during this spring tryout this mysterious baseball fluster swooped in and blew any opportunity for infielder status I had in front of these strangers in the new town. Needless to say, none of these kids or the adult coach were hip to this odd baseball phenomenon, and I knew there was no need to explain it. A second baseman is worthless if he can't thud the first baseman after a groundball is hit his way, even if it isn't his own fault.

And so here again in another life, I was experiencing this rather strange onset of a similar type of failure. Why I suddenly could not look at Steve and call his name was baffling. I had known him for a couple of years, and Tim a decade, Tom even longer, but the phenomenon never failed to appear during this period of mixing their names. Some deeply disturbing psychology robots must have been poking and probing the hardwired Gabriel much the same way search engine robots work the Internet, upsetting my throughput. This game of ours was destined to be willed into existence. For on this particular afternoon as I was looking right at Steve and Sue and referring to in a quite obvious way to Tim, I stumbled over S-T, stuh, catching myself, switched gears, finished with I-M, and STIM was born because at that very instant Gabriel and Steve both realized the communication or literary genius of the tongue slip, and Sue followed in a little slower, but we all shared a great meglomaniacal guffaw since the reference I now forget could have just as easily been describing Steve. Well, we spent the next few hours racing up and down the possibilities like a rabid dog trapped in a narrow dog run. Once again, genius had won out over routine expectations.

So where were we?

IT ALL ADDS UP, SUBTRACTS DOWN

Most excellent letter. Every note sounded to perfection!

I think you are coming around to wherever the line meets its maker. Thank you for noticing my lead. Am disturbing the peace upstairs today. Want to put some sleeper of sorts back into that corner. One ficus tree has major bug infestation spreading a jelly substance up its leaves and a thimbleful smudging that far north window. The other one had the beginnings of that rot on some newer sprigs nearer the trunk but I think by pruning them I might have chased away the culprit. As far as my life goes I don't claim to be any great shakes. I am merely following up on what feels most natural at any given moment. Just like yourself, Sue, Tim, and nearly every other grain of sand from here to as far as the mind can predict.

eRighteously in pursuit of a point of view, I was in persistent boil last night. Mostly over Tim, Steve, and Sue in that order, debrewing & stewing coursewise the baseball game Sue had channeled onto all TVs on the middlefloor much to my sour delight by the time I returned from Hechinger's with dirt and manure, a few more seeds, and a bulb to stick in a socket, knowing a kissup she denied, once twice, three times a cock crow. I ranted. I puffed. I rolled over.

But I feel blessed with knowledge and vision today despite an occasional stumble that's kicking down some doors and cleaning off some dirty windows just to SET things straight, shaking it up all the way from Eden down through the skulls and quills of the crack and the rat, and the latest bull edicts leftover from a question of the quick smack and the do nothing fats. It ain't easy on the middlefloor. Opened some doors. Closed some others. But you know how it goes. A good captain knows limits of his own ship.

I'm taking a room on the middle floor. Hope to get a day bed or something sane back there. I want to live in all the Dollhouse, work it, and make it suitable for the right number and right combination of people, you know, the imaginary band, and an occasional guest. Still have this afternoon that middlefloor rear window cleaning chore. Will shake up the books as we know them, but I'll come out feeling swell, not better in ages. May divorce Sue, most likely will not, since I told her I'd never leave her even if I had to yell all the time, which is precisely the force of habit she doesn't like, but let me tell you one thing, it is easier for me to do soooooomething, then yell about feeling nearly alone in my quest, than it is tooooooo convince others they should also try it.

Greener pastures? Yeah, no. Nod to sleep. Hear the winds. No TV. Close enough to hear the back gate coerced. The middle TV becomes mine in this shakeup. I control its passion, its loss. Night watchman, part owner, 40 Dollars and cents. All alone (dancing with myself). Others have retired to their own quarters. and so I would then see my guests on a need to know basis. And tell them to bug off when I'm just not in the mood. Sue and I no longer one mind. Eghads! What would become of life? Sue would say we've never been of one mind, and I say that's exactly how I solve the equation. I've already solved for X, and now I must solve for Y.

Sue and I, forever linked, but there is more where that came from, and I must keep up this struggle for the Dollhouse's best interests. Garbage in, garbage out. Looking for an angle, Steve? It's all right here. It's right here in me. I told Len Bracken that yesterday. Me and the rest of you. Tom knows I say it, Rounthwaite, Swartout. Williams, they all know it too. Am I great strikes? No, but I don't strike out a whole lot either.

My current unhappiness stems (uh, he said stims) from the slow pace at which I work. I stay busy all the time, but it never seems enough to do all that needs to be done. I love everything I am doing these days, even the gazing. My impatience with myself is exacerbated by the sandgnats of my generation buzzing all around my head and my toys, my time and my noise. But that's what in the end is called life. I just wish I had more privacy on the one hand, and a larger, more productive staff (or as they say in the rock and roll cruiser), the fab four or five, even six or seven motivated chaps righteous enough to launch this happening idea centered around the Dollhouse of course (well, the Stadium-Armory commercialization project would do wonders for these urges, but that's another archive my head keeps curling up in bed with better left to other paragraphs).

Bottom line, I'm ready for change. Watch the sailors sail. Tim without a job? Can't fathom his presence around here the same way he sees it. His intuitive lack of inspiration can also be painted as an intrinsic lack of discipline because nothing stands in the way of a Tim Shipman goodhour feasted with breaking soundbarriers and a loaf of goatsheadsoup with a chosen few gathered in His honor. I want to see Tim achieve these goals, but he ain't there yet as best I figger.

My own 24 hours a day are rather sacred to me, and I've always felt that way, but I have given them freely much too frequently to events I chafe while performing, and isn't this the root of all evil, as both Tim and Len Bracken would conspire to have me believe, and so I do also believe. And too, you would have no intellectual recourse but to throw another log on that fire of poor response as well. You have been chafing and moaning for months now. Sue is the same way. Hey, it's most people's nature. Yet faulty reckoning folks every inch of the way have no choice but to HEAR and SEE me rebelling against nonsense while they cling to and celebrate their own while all I dare to do is EVERYTHING. I do not celebrate bullshit.

When I finally cave to that stroke or that brain seizure and am in a twinkling of a cobra's eye made a vegetable, the false friends will soon enough scatter after the scorn and the laughter has faded to yet another dull memory. They always do. I can make most of it happen already in a flash. Even as we all slurfishly wait for the big one to fall into our lives.

Life creeps into our souls. How do we handle this creeping sickness? We begin to crave roles in which we can play the exemplar or the idiot. Messy! Yet it seems it can only be AFTER then (after the man with a thousand plans said Norko) that the My will versus Thy will way of life can finally produce results of a lifetime's toil, especially now as we all begin to recognize ourselves as the double-edged sword that rips its up-to-the-minute reports into our handheld brains. And in that time as always the scatterers will themselves be scattered.

Guess I should toss this one up on the wires. Dirty windows are calling.