Smiley-Man Chronicles

By Jeff Harris

poetic memoire, archival in nature: the author has synthesized the collective wisdom of several brilliant unsung heroes--into a poetic amalgam of fiction and nonfiction (whew!--)

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781609849894

Jeff Harris

Jeff Harris believes that children need stories to understand how to make tough decisions in difficult situations. He wrote Ginger’s Journey to help them think about what they would do if they were faced with that situation. Harris currently resides in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with his wife and family.

Book preview

-1-

When I was a little boy, I went out to find the secret knowledge; at least, I thought that was my job description. If I acquired the knowledge, I was to tell no one. I divined certain methods for discovering it: one was to walk in a straight diagonal from my house as far as possible without getting hit by a car or falling into a lake. Also I was to fall in love with many little girls, and kiss them. This was another way straight into the secret knowledge. And, of course, kissing was not for telling.

All the poets of the hidden mystery are quietly trying to tell what they know. All of our parents were trying to tell us all along, or so we thought. Some of us decided our parents knew nothing. Our poor parents--they were hiding just nothing. This was the first grown-up thought that you could get into your little head. This was a hard thought to have in yonder head. Once that thought gets in there, you start dying. Before that, you are out of time, quite literally. There is no time. That is the glory time in being a kid.

One day, as I was on my bike searching for the hidden mystery, I experienced the whole world turning and rotating about other heavenly bodies. And one of these heavenly bodies was Susan Mauer, and the whole galaxy was expanding about Susan Mauer’s body.

She said to me, Michael, come and kiss me up in the tree. We got married inside of that kiss, for real. Actual miracles occur everyday. This is part of the kissing history of the clocky-turnings of the hidden mystery.

I grew up in a rough neighborhood--at least it was rough on the edges--and the edges were always moving center. I learned early that if you just looked at somebody the wrong way, that could make them want to kill you. That old saying about how if looks could kill is really only true in reverse. Much of the secret knowledge is obtained by reversing the common thought either a full l80 degrees, or just tweaking it 45 or 90 or whatever degrees you need. Nothing is known for sure.

Apropos of this is that some people (and I am one of them) can stare at somebody--even at the back of their head when they are walking far ahead up the street--and make them turn around. They can feel that stare. And it even works through glass! This sounds like an ad for a new cleaning product, but it’s true. I can stare at somebody through the glass window of a store, even if they are facing the other way, and make them turn around. This is testimony to the vibrational nature of the universe. This is part of the secret knowledge that is still secret though everybody knows it, so I guess this is a bit of the paradoxical hidden mystery that exists in the world of being blind--or blindom as I like to call it.

The world of blindom is the black-hole of luck. It’s like when your lucky ring disappears. It doesn’t just get lost; it actually de-constructs. It rolls off your finger, rolls along the ground and then quite literally disappears--matter destroyed (despite Newton’s first law of physics). Other aspects of The Chronicles will testify to the destruction of other physical as well as moral laws, because even if folks really need that government check, we sure as hell are gonna make it hard for them to get it. It’s not really Old Testament (do unto them the same kinda thing that got done unto you); it’s more like leaky New Testament with a kind of Old Testament eye-for-an-eye meanness to it.

Now I know that you’re probably wondering about now where this is all heading. Is it heading into your bedroom window and then directly into your body? You’re wondering if this could be heading toward a happy ending or a tragic beginning. You’re wondering if this will be boring, plotless, sexless, rambling and if it will squander you’re money. That is, will it be expensive, both spiritually and financially. You see when I was a child, that same guy kept showing up all the time. That guy who chased you off the stoop for playing step-ball at your building, that guy who thought you were always making a little too much noise for him. Then that same guy turns out to be one of your relatives, a third cousin, who the hell knows. Maybe he wanted to pull your pants down, who the hell knows. Maybe he wanted to kiss your little person. Maybe you don’t even have a little person, who the hell knows!

You see, in the old days it was well known that through the cracks in the heads of crazy people, some of the secret knowledge comes through, and that these people, be they just fools, are our fools, and we are suppose to take care of them and listen to them and learn from them and respect them. Come hell or high water. The American Indians knew this, and the medicine men made big medicine out of it. But the white man made big business and disintegrated the free range, because the White insists that everything be owned by somebody--even the beach, even the oceans, even the very thoughts in your head. This is innately an irreverent and anti-religious concept. No wonder they got to go to church so much. Just swivel this concept around about 49 degrees and you’ll see what I mean. Where did compassion go? The world is starving for compassion. But now THEY are running everything. And of course THEY think that what the world needs are just real good problem solvers, net-workers, and businessmen, and good technology people, and then, therefore, there’s nothing that these little suckers can’t solve. If we only knew what the problems were! Hold off on the answers. What we need are some creative minds to elucidate the problems.

First Sounding: (Barely a Chuckle-Tone): This is the story of Spithead, England down there in the holy war with the Challenger ship goin’ down there deep into The Atlantic lookin’ for cross currents of civilization down there upsides the head.

I was workin’ in a restaurant and drinkin’ myself to death and I was wonderin’ if the new band should be called Dig Johnson or Little Big Horn Candy Corn--a dance band about how the Indians danced over Custer’s last stand--and after that, they knew they had to go, and all the chiefs knew it, and the day would never come back, but at least they sent those savages down to Davy Jones’ Locker. They named a lot of towns Spithead after that, and Dry Gulch, and Tombstone--all dead names--and they tore up the land and turned everything into microchips, hoping that the white-man could imagine himself outta this one, but he couldn’t unless you were willing to print up new money and put your own picture on it. He invented that computer in his own image and they started makin’ em a lot smaller so you could eat em like sugar cubes in the morning with your cereal, and if you were suppose to do something, well, you could just tell em all to leave your house this instant and you could look it up with the satellite dish and lower your laundry down into a big worry tube that takes all the cotton outta it and replaces it with pentium III processors. Then the ball-game would come on and everybody could root for them glory guys, but even they couldn’t bring the buffalo back for real, just for decoration, and you can’t really give the whole fucking country back, so you all might as well come on down to Spithead, England and get yourself a big boat and go on out and do some soundings. It feels real good to be young again and to take a bath with a boat. This was just a test. There’s a lefty Jones Band song called Faith in Blues, that’s a big Faith, which goes faith in blues, that’s a big faith, faith in blues, rise again, faith in blues, I know you got the bends, but it’s all new coming up again."

This book is totally of no charge to you. I have written several books and have tried to get them published, but all the publishers tell me, well, Lefty, not over my dead body. Well, I can take a hint, so I have decided to publish all of this myself and to give it away for free. This is the Cherokee thing to do.

I suppose now is the best time to mention my friend Tahni Jones. Jones is the spiritual leader of our band, and plays a prominent role in both our real lives and our fictional life in the early drafts of The Chronicles. We first catch up to him in that book when a group of us get it into our heads to make a play for the moon, quite literally that is; we figure, hell, if NASA can do it, why can’t we? This is when Jones comes along..

I was in jail with Willie Sutton’s son, says Jones. He was Oliver Sutton, and I said, yeah, I’m Oliver too, Oliver Jones. They called me ‘All-Over’ Jones, see ‘Oliver—All Over—ha!, and he was Oliver Sutton, yeah, All-of-a-Sudden, see, he was a fighter, bam! bam! what a right, and he loved to fucking fight, man, he was good too, very strong, man. And then I saw him again in California, 3000 miles away, man, I was asleep in a van, and bam!, right on the window, I hear somebody yelling, Is that you, ‘All-Over’?, get up, fuckhead!, and it’s Oliver Sutton, God, 3000 miles away, man, I’m asleep in an alley, do you believe it? Then I used to carry him around on my back all over California to the hospital, he had something wrong with his back here, All-Of-A-Sudden, God, bam, bam! (he’s gesturing with his fist), he’d be wanting to fight, right off, Irish, knocking on my window, I’m staggering, going, hey wait a minute, Sutton, I can’t fight yet, I’m not up, ..shit!, he was a mother’, my mama called me Bear, ever since I was little,"…..Then I gave ‘All-Of-A-Sudden’ a big hug.

He kept saying he was tired of being a bum, yelling at every girl on the street, LET’S GET MARRIED--. He’d go up to every person he could find and charm money out of them. Somebody gave him a card which said, apply for The Course, be a graduate! That tickled him. He said he makes a hundred dollars a day and just sends it out. He doesn’t know where it goes. He said he’s got a year and a half, maybe two, max, left to live (that was 10 years ago). His dark eyes were always laughing, and he’d ruff up against everybody’s ego, and laugh, and not do nothing difficult, except he peed on the floor of a restaurant when they wouldn’t let him in. And when you went around with him, everybody seemed like they were scripted to play dead except for him--he was the only one that had life, he was the only one could go up, only one who could do stuff, say stuff, be stuff, ride on waves. Everybody else had to stay put and be part of the scenery. He’d make about 50 people a day smile, and he’d say he was gonna do something good for the world, ‘cause he was tired of being a bum. And he’d be spitting and smiling and drinking and hugging, walking around with his knapsack with his license plates in it, getting ready to go to England to sculpt a huge fallen tree that would be taken into a church; he’d a grant for that. And his mama wouldn’t give him any money. She always gives me something to sell instead….,this time, the harp.

In The Chronicles, Jones is called Raymond-The–Royal, and he comes on board to organize our play for the moon, quite literally, as I said before. That Royal had been in jail 20 outta 30 days he was in Martha’s Vineyard, but he didn’t want to tell us that, but he was filing suit against the police for a defective bed ‘cause he fell outta the top birth onto his head, thud! and lost a pint of blood, ‘cause the whole part of the springs was missing on the right side, and his foot got caught in it when he fell asleep..

THE LUCKY RING COMES BACK

One day the lucky ring came back. It didn’t even reduce its size. The lucky ring was lost in the light. It cast off true colors like a lure.

Walking down the street with the lucky ring on, your author was surprised by the presence of Monica Flo-Finaman who had been living in a tree in Tompkins Square Park. She bounded down and said that it was an honor to be in the writer’s presence. It was already apparent to everyone that it WAS the lucky ring that had come back.

She bounded away with Posie, on a little leash, and he jumped all over the first girl walking by, and Mona Monica Flo-Finaman apologized profusely to the girl, saying she was sorry he was doing this crazy stuff, but he just thinks you’re pregnant, ...are you?

Papa Aqua

Papa Aqua taught me how to love a pretty woman. He stood beside me and brought a beautiful woman to me and made me stare her right square in the eyes, and look at her. And she’d look straight at me, and Papa Aqua wouldn’t let me turn away. And he showed me how not to be intimidated by a beautiful woman, and he showed me how to just love her, because a beautiful woman wants you to just love her most of all and to love to look at her, because that makes her shine more and more. And Papa Aqua didn’t think that was a new-age thought, and he didn’t think it was all gushy either, and he just stood her so strong and beautiful right into my eyes and let us have the loveliest afternoon.

It was about this time, in the autumn, that Raymond-the-Royal’s van got picked up by the police in the city. Too many tickets. Raymond came out and they had the jaws of death riveted to his steering wheel. He went in, grabbed his paintings and waited for the inevitable. Soon the tow truck arrived and took away the RV. The Raymond went to court. Said, no-can-do, gonna cost the Royal $900.00. The Royal, being all empty-pockets leaves court and sees the RV still parked out there near the courthouse. So he slips into it and goes back to the rear and hides in the closet. The Royal’s prepared for this. He’s been waiting for this. He’s been planning this. He’s been planning this since the day he was born. Ever since he lived in California, with his Dad, the mad, brilliant engineer working for Hewlett-Packard. Every since his lovely Dad thought all the people in the neighborhood loved him, loved the whole family. But his mom knew hate. She knew it when she saw it, how they all hated black people. They were the only ones in a white neighborhood. The Dad thought they all loved him. Then they did the big number on him, the big swindle, swindled him out of his land, out of his money, out of everything, laughin’. That’s when his mom went crazy, after they set him up. That’s when they dragged her off to the nut-house. And that’s when the Royal and his sister-- two little kids they were, real small-- walked all over the neighborhood crying. They looked so cute, crying. That’s when the whole neighborhood really did love them, looking at them in all their tears, two little kids, that’s when they were loved!

That’s when the tow-truck came. Picked up the RV, with the very Royal in it, in that closet. Man, he said, I was shaking, but then I started downing vodka, two pints of vodka; then I was alright. They get to the impounding yard. The Royal stays put for a couple of hours. Then it’s late. That’s when he comes out. People are working in the yard. Royal puts on his green overalls with the American flag on the shoulder. Got to have a flag, he says, With a flag, man…you can pull off your shit! He’s got a forty foot power cord in there, and a saw with a cadmium blade. He’s ready for this. He hops out of the van, sure as sin, giving a Reagon-type wave to the other workers, ‘how’s the family’, all that stuff, connect up, they know him, it’s alright. He plugs the cord into a building about twenty feet away. He saws right through the middle of the lock, diagonally, like this, man, on a diagonal, then you pop the sucker right the fuck off, Jack—pop, she goes. Then he finds a transfer sticker in an official vehicle parked nearby, puts it on the RV, and then just wave goodbye, my good-man, another Reagon wave, takes his shirt off, plays the stumbling nigger for a while, shuffling, then pops on his glasses, then off for sure…, ok, he’s gone, right out the gate.

He comes in tripping, delighted. I did this for you, man! I did it for us! It was the colorful thing! I did it for my Dad, for all that shit they always gave us, for all the shit I’ve got to take all fucking day, man, and then something like this comes along, Jack, some opportunity to use all my intelligence, man, all my cunning. They haven’t seen shit like this, man, and then I pull it off, man, I get on top of it again, man, and wham! I’m as high as a kite, it makes me feel so good about myself again, Jack! ‘cause I don’t feel good about myself, Michael. Now in a few weeks I’ll go back there with some money, saying I’m ready to get my RV back, and they’re going to say, hell, it’s gone, it was stolen, something or other, and then I got em again, man I demand $8,000.00 for it, hell, I’ll settle for seven!!!!!

See, Michael… the Royal says to me, "this is me, ME, I don’t have no woman, I haven’t had a woman in eight years, man. I left my wife. God, I loved her. But I visit her in my sleep, man, at night, in my dreams. I go to her, I really do. And I carry her around with me, here, in my heart. Now, you and me, we’re just two men here…talking. We don’t have any women round here, nagging us now. And we’re here, man, we’re brothers, we’re all beneath it, man, we’re not surface. You know what I’m talking ‘bout, man, we’re secrets. We’re secret things! We’re not surface at all. You can’t budge us-- not an inch-- from where we are. You can’t twist us off our shit, no matter how hard you try! See, we’re angels, man! We got angels walkin’ with us! And we’re homeless, man, we’re homeless people. Course, we’re on different ends of the stick, we’re different melodies, but we’re both homeless."

See, he says, before all this, a long time ago, they put secrets under harmonies and sounds. Then everybody just fell into materialism, and that was a very big fall. Now we’re all just using a little teeny, tiny bit of our brains; I’m scared now because of the things that I do! But when I come here--here like this--and we talk, well it’s alright somehow again. The two of us, like two old stones, …talking. Things just reflecting off of us... sun and stuff,….but,….well, I’m lonely. And he’s way up in the haze now, The Royal is. And I look at him.…well, I say, and he cracks up, hysterical, WE crack up, look at us! Look at you! What’d you expect!!!!!!!

-2-

A little bit later, this whole manuscript was stolen along with the van that it was in, along with all the writer’s belongings, which were also in the van, while it was parked outside of his girlfriend’s house. He wasn’t allowed to bring anything inside her house except for his body, which he was only allowed to lend to her. Eventually the cops recovered the van, but nothing remained in it except for T. Jones. So the author had to re-write that manuscript. We will not re-roof before it’s time--that’s what it said on the van. Anyway, the manuscript turned into some kind of American love story called Fay & Eddy. Thank God, you’ll never have to read it. The odds of it ever getting published are a least a million times slimmer than the odds of this book ever being published, so the odds of your ever reading it are infinitesimally small compared to the odds of your reading this book which are harrowingly minute. Nothing short of death could possibly unlock this manuscript from the shackles of obscurity. With death, there is always a chance that someone would deign to move it into the market-place. After all, there’s nothing that they like better than a dead poet, unless of course, it’s a dead painter.

First I said my little rap about freedom and responsibility, then Uncle said his little rap about how dawn from out of it followed so sweetly. Then I said my little rap, and then he said his little rap, and then he laughed and laughed and laughed some more, and Moe laughed and laughed and laughed even more. We found the perfect spot to laugh into. All the worries of the world and all the worries in our mind fell off, and we saw two silly things there, just sampling. That’s what I meant, Uncle said, starting up his tune again. Me too. We walked into a town we didn’t even see before, but there it was as clear as mud in front of us. It was up there blinking and hovering the whole time. Well, then we closed and took a long drive on the concrete. It wound all through the grass. It wound for miles and miles throughout this country. As long as we stayed in the free zone we were alright. Papa Aqua says to check out that light. Write some stuff in your tuning attic about how deeply stuff falls and then comes out so prettily. Write stuff up in the tuning attic. Hope you don’t mind this falling-time of little kings and little queens who don’t know what tomorrow brings but who sing very softly at night…,in their sleep. Everyone was so perfectly beautiful in there; everyone stayed, and everyone is so nice in this type of town… which meets on the edge of town. We would hardly make a beanbag fall, much less stop it.

Uncle Aqua was seriously sampling down the road, seriously peaking out, when he turned