Pirates of the Midwestern Region

THIRSTY ISSUE 1:
The Lightning Rod Migration
TAROT CARD: 1: THE MAGICIAN
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“Desolation anyway----”
-Jack Kerouac

smile: n. the thing that, once truly upon a face once, will overcome all obstacles to come back, in some form. watch the birdie. smile.

“The end has no end.”
-The Strokes
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Etymology of Names of the Cast of Characters

BRITTON
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English
Pronounced: BRIT-un [key]
Derived from a Middle English surname meaning "a Breton".

JOSHUA
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English, Biblical
Pronounced: JAH-shu-wa, JAW-shwa [key]
From the Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshu'a) which meant "YAHWEH is salvation". Joshua was one of the twelve spies sent into Canaan by Moses in the Old Testament. After Moses died Joshua succeeded him as leader of the Israelites. The name Jesus is derived from this name.

AURELIUS
Gender: Masculine
Usage: Ancient Roman
Roman family name which was derived from Latin aureus "golden, gilded". Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and philosophical writer. This was also the name of several early saints.

TIMOTHY
Gender: Masculine
Usage: English, Biblical
Pronounced: TIM-u-thee [key]
From the Greek name Τιμοθεος (Timotheos) meaning "honouring God", derived from τιμαω (timao) "to honour" and θεος (theos) "god". Saint Timothy was a companion of Paul on his missionary journeys and was the recipient of two of Paul's epistles that appear in the New Testament. According to tradition, he was martyred at Ephesus after protesting the worship of Artemis.

            If these people do kill us, I’m trying to picture my missing person’s report. … It’s nice to be missed.
            I’ve gotta pee.
            Josh and I were invited here after meeting Melissa at one of our shows, at a coffee shop. We were talking about immortality and I guess she decided we were vampire material, so she invited us here, to their clan’s house, for some kind of initiation party. All I know is we’re surrounded by people who are claiming they’re vampires.
            I get up and head to the bathroom, noticing a ’Nosferatu’ poster on the wall near the door. Whoever these people are, they‘re pretty serious about something.
Josh is out there sitting on the couch with ‘Aurele,‘their self proclaimed leader. I (show the heavy bolt of the door) bolt the door to the bathroom and lean against the door. This is all a bit much to take in.
            I think about who would care that I go missing. Who would come looking for me, and why. Really, what more can you ask for in this world than to have people come to your rescue when you’re being held captive by vampires?
        The first thing they’ll check is when and where I was last seen or heard from…

            “You should be around,” a friend of mine told me, a few weeks ago.
            “I am around.”
            “But I mean, you should be around.”
He means, even when you are around, you should actually be here.
            “Oh… Yeah. I’ll try.”

I haven’t been around. I know this. I’ve been trying to build, to… to get back here. Where have I been?The truth is, I need to live on a construction site… to be able to knock down buildings and build new ones. All the time. Maybe a reconstruction site, that might be a better name. And if I’m not in that place, I need to do everything I can to get there. So, hopefully I was last seen driving a Caterpillar.

            How did we get to this place? This room full of oldyoung eyes, beckoning us to join their ranks, apparently ready to sink in teeth and draw blood, ready to drink in a million thirsty eyes and when the morning comes, redeyed, still prepared to drink the sunrise? (They told us they were the type of vampire who had no aversion to the sun.)

            I’m hungry to misinterpret a quote. “I was a vegetarian until I started leaning towards the sunlight. ”

        Yes m’am, I understand you’re looking for your sun. Can you tell us any likely destinations he may have been headed towards? Any favorite places or places with past connections for him?

(drawing: kind of buzzing letters)      Chicago! I can’t wait for the night. There it’s like a word you can’t think of that knows everything… You nuzzle against it, your head buzzing like the world’s greatest wines uncorked for an evening of whatever you could imagine, as long as you imagine something good. What do you want to do? This city is ours. It’s our home. These buildings beams are our surrogate bones. Every glow from a window or a streetlight or a moon is a beautiful stranger’s eye looking friendly, one who knows who you are and you know it. I could live in this city.

PART I: IN THE BEGINNING
(The love you make is equal to the leaves you rake.)

            As I’m brushing my teeth, the radio is playing. It’s that song that sains , “I’ll stop the world and melt with you.” The song kind of freaks me out a tiny bit, having dealt with threats of ego-death. But this morning I’m feeling as whole as I can.
            There’s this radio station in this city called ‘The Arch.’ 106.5 on the dial. It’s owned by Simon Archer, if that’s his real name. He has little spots where he makes quips non sequitur fashion, normally pop culture or music references, like “If the sky is ‘a hazy shade of winter ,’ it‘s time to put away the white pants.”
            They also have this program note where the announcer asks, “What is the Arch?” and then they play little clips from three or so songs right next to each other, bits of a variety that have some kind of glue between them… a flavor demarcating the station supposedly, to which the announcer decrees, “Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” answering the original question. It’s a metaphysical experience really. But then, most experiences involving music are.

            I’d been going crazy in months past. I’ve been wondering how to stay sane. That‘s the goal, sanity. I mean, ideally.
            What is the real in my own life?
            I think sanity is something like that group of three clips from different songs that somehow fit together and form an idea of the station, and the station that you’re listening to and is something you want to be listening to and keep listening to is a stable mind. They feel held with a certain type of glue… and they’re in the right range of broadcast. And hopefully they’re good songs.
            I finish brushing my teeth and turn off the radio in the bathroom, then head into the living room where the entertainment center radio is playing. The song on now is ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, the remade version by the Counting Crows (with Vanessa Carlton ). The lyrics, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
            So... understand what you have... and always imagine the possibility of losing it. You can live in fear and not be afraid. The moral here seems to be think about and appreciate what you have while you have it… and don’t pave paradise, or at least if you do don’t put up a parking lot. Try to be objective. Everyone thinks they’re objective to some degree. Sees themselves like a sunrise over the earth.
            I hear the honk on the street.
(WALKING OUTSIDE INTO THE MORNING)
            Zero in on the ground. Sunrise all over the world.
(JOSH SHOWS UP WITH THE CAR)
            I approach the green car, under the sun, beneath the green trees. Not much to say but plenty to feel on this day of days.
            I speak.
            Briton: “What’s up?”
            The voice that speaks is never the same as the voice before it speaks. It digs. The means determine the ends. The tongue is a rudder that steers the whole ship .
(Josh: “Not too much.”)
            Doris Lessing wrote that “All sanity depends on is this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.”
            I think that’s right, and it has something to do with hope. You can count your blessings… but you can also bless your blessings.
(Briton: “YOU READY TO GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE?”)
(A SHOT OF PUTTING A BOX OF BOOKS IN THE TRUNK, SHOWING THE TITLE OF SEVERAL BOOKS, A BOOK ON ORGONE ENERGY BY WILHELM REICH, A BOOK ON THE MIND, THE IMMORTALIST BY ALAN HARRINGTON, THE REBEL BY ALBERT CAMUS)

            What makes you able to hear things the good way, and think the right way, besides rationality, is hope. Hope in the right sense of course. Hope is important. Hope is the great barometer for people like us.
(Josh: “LET’S ROCK”) (*CLOSES TRUNK*)
            We are hope, or we’re… not, I guess.
            Luckily, in the right circumstances, and with a little applied sanity, hope is a natural resource, available from the passing of time into new possibilities, and the things around us that are generative of newness.
            It works… as long as we’re…
                Thirsty

On the highway there’s light traffic. We have an open road and put on some music for the drive. An mp3 mix CD in the car’s stereo, volume high medium. It’s an indie rocking morning. The Get Up Kids are playing the song ‘Stay Gold, Ponyboy. ” I think to myself… stay gold… gold is of the densest of elements, it’s a brilliant shield. From the corruptedness. If you can rebuild the elements of gold around you, and live within that feeling, at the core, you can remain, stay, become again… gold.
I light a cigarette and lean back in my seat, thinking of a commercial I heard on the radio the other day for tires that said something to the effect of “they’re the only thing between you and the road,” autosuggesting the perception that you are your moving car, and I’m running along the open road sixty miles an hour.

LISTENING TO THE RADIO IN THE CAR ON THE HIGHWAY:
This is where we are.
Digging, always into the future.`

            "Strange morning." (Drawing: It’s one of those weird times where the sun is out, in this case just rising, but it’s also raining.)
            We leave at dawn headed east, to Chicago, a city known for its public transportation, wind, and cold.
            I've built it up in my mind as a dream city, full of neo-Sartrean-worthy coffee shops, hole-in-THE-wall music clubs, angel headed hipsters, madmen bums and the like.
            And all the while still Sinatra's kind of town.
            I need this move.
            Setting my shuffling ipod running through the car's tape deck, I turn up the volume, imagining a corresponding hope slightly rising inside me, that there's some truth to the perceived symbolism: driving off into the sunrise.
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            But still the rain reminds.
            As we cross the Poplar St. Bridge, I look back on St. Louis, the city I've always called home.
            I think to myself I'm starting a new stage in my life, and I've tried to package my life up to this point as neatly as the artifacts from that life are packaged in the back of my car.
            But whenever you try and package the past like that, the packaging inevitably bleeds.
(THESE TWO PAGES NEED TO BE SIDE BY SIDE)
            Here I find myself, 19 years old, moving out on my own for the first time. It's about time. I sit behind the wheel, clothed in knowledge, belief, predilection, loves, and the scabs, scars, and bandages of a lifetime, looking out at the always passing present, wondering what to make of all of it. All this this.
            Blood pumping through it all like sunlight.
            I suppose all I can know is what this blood, these feelings, this life, mean to me.

Briton: “What time’ve you got?
Josh (who‘s wearing two watches): “Five minutes before seven. Or five minutes after. Whatever works for you.”
Briton: “You think you’re the train man? In this car, I make the rules. ”
Josh: “You think this thing'll make it?”
Briton: “The Briton-mobile will make it. If not… Triple-A.”
Josh: “A-A-A-OK.”
I sit listening to the music and driving, reveling in the roadtrip ethos.

Josh:    “What are you thinking about?
Briton: “Uh... The Batcave…”
Josh:    “______”
Briton: “I was wondering if Batman and Alfred ever camp out down there and roast marshmallows. Like, maybe make a tent by throwing some sheets over the supercomputer and the big chair.”
Josh:    “Hah. Batman deserves some good clean intentional innocence.”
Briton: “Sure.”

M’am, do you have any idea what may be the cause of his absence? Was there a family conflict? Is he lost? Did he wander away at some time?

Briton: “Close enough. Old friends.”
I get quiet.
Josh:    “Well, start thinking about Chicago. And maybe seeing some cows, or, frequently photographed barns or something on this trip.”
(Briton thinking: He's trying to cheer me up. I appreciate it, but the mood of the morning is drawing me into the memory of them and I go into it willingly...
            I read a book on memory once that said whenever you recall a memory, depending on how you think about it, and leave it, it might be changed the next time you recall it...
I'm so afraid to lose what I have left of them. But I'm so afraid to feel what I lost of them.
            I try to pull up images of us together, something tangible, but all I get are shaky polaroids, hazy solid-light feelings... and the gravity of that night.)

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Rita Rudner

Sain - a piece of writing “says” something, whereas a song “sains” something, the difference between speaking or telling and singing something.

‘Simon and Garfunkle’ - ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’

Let’s not forget her.

Lyrics from the band ’Brand New’ from their song ’Play Crack the Sky’

A reference to ‘The Outsiders’ by S.E. Hinton

For those unfamiliar with Comic book terminology, a frequently used technique, a “Splash page” is one of the opening pages, or the opening page is a full page image-scape (continued) introducing the comic, often with the title of the issue and name of the comic prominently featured.

‘The Train Man, a character from the movie ‘The Matrix Reloaded’, in a scene where the main character Neo is trapped between two worlds.

A reference to a phenomenon of landmarks being famous for being photographed many times, leading to them being photographed more times; really a reference to Don DeLillo’s novel ‘White Noise’