A bedtime story fit for a monster.

Top of the morning gents,

I sure write a lot. A fucking lot.

Some messages are to my friends. Some messages are to
the Mrs.

Despite suffering a typically tragic and violent
Eskimo childhood; she possesses unfathomably deep
reserves of kindness, care and understanding.
Benevolent attributes absolutely necessary to wed such
a monster possessing tools and abilities few can
understand, stomach nor learn from.

Most of what I spew is curse ridden prayers to my best
mates I've accumulated along this long ass road we
call life. Until we serve some asymptotic and elusive
purpose this dirt road will seem tiresome and endless.
My back aches, my feet hurt and my soul is strewn with
shit much like this dirty and dusty road with ditches
filled with good and evil human wreckage on both
sides.

Hell, some of you blessed gunslingers were found in
those piles of bleeding shit and road kill. Glad to
have made yer acquaintances.

Do ye ever feel like we were scooped up outa the ditch
at moments when we truly needed a friend? At these
moments when our grasping Homo erectus hands clenched,
I 'spect we all needed mutually ungodly friendship
too.

Some of my daily postings are well camouflaged so that
you git what the fuck I'm writing about a few days
after ye read my shit. My most wonderful concepts of
kindness and the love of our fellow man are smeared
with shit and syphilis.

Yup, my missives most eloquently foul and disgusting
are intentionally cryptic: heartfelt thanks, cloaked
apologies to the universe, and you lot.

Some twists and turns in our flight paths are shrouded
in shadowed gloomy darkness equal to unlit roads along
the Skagit River on any foggy winter midnight. Nights
so dark, even blue dot acid, mice nor burgundy
mycelium will beacon a lost lad pursuing a Bard’s
enlightenment.

If you focus real hard and look in my rear view
mirror, you'll see what I'm talking about. Ya see, I
come from a long line of monsters. And today is a good
day to say I'm sorry.

I ain't apologizing to you sons of fucks, friends
don't ever gotta apologize fer shit. Part of the deal
when ye make friends, apologies are implicit:
forgiveness is explicit.

As you all know, I’ve never laid hands upon another
human, nor ever touched a weapon of any kind, but I am
compelled to take responsibility for horrors
unspeakable done to, and done by, my grams, gramps and
great gramps.

Assuming responsibilities plural and ownership of my
murderous legacy, I sense tremendous imbalance. Yup,
the karmic score card is lopsided towards the maimed
and leaking hence my schizophrenic vigilante contract
work tapping the reserves of pure evil seeping outa my
pores, mouth and hands.

All evil is within all of us, and so is limitless
goodness and kindness gloved in infinite capacity to
give. I just tend to get distracted and confused once
in a while, getting a little carried away folding
space, turning devilish reflections counterfeit upon
evildoers that prey upon the naïve and innocent
forever trapped in darkness that don’t and never will
know better. Okay, I get carried away a lot and often.

As you all are aware, I’ve executed orders created
above AND below, playing both sides of the coin: bait
and hook, fish and fisherman, and predator and prey.
In my game of prolific theft, embezzlement,
prostitution, smuggling and consumption there aren’t
any rules, no rights and no referees. I’m gonna have
my hemp cake AND eat it too. My mission in life
straddles good and evil in codependent ways
comprehensible only to those suffering similar
bi-polarity and stress traumatic erosion corroding
your halos.

My path usually has 2 sets of footprints; occasionally
you’ll see only 1 set. Whoever carries me through my
most torturous stretches of road is anyone’s guess.
The big guy manning the helm sports a silver beard yet
refuses me sight of my dearly departed.

Fuck me in the goat ass; suffering and existence are
inseparable, yet I awake every blessed day forever
imprisoned within my own militarized zone of lunatic
occupancy.

Today’s litany of lineal absolution is a gift I’ve
intentionally pissed and shit all over, then shared
with you lot.

My Grandma Saimi grew up in rural Finland, more
specifically, a remote Suomen village far North of the
Arctic Circle. (See a pattern here?) God bless her:
fearful, superstitious village woman that viewed her
own gender as chattel and men as prize possessions and
horsepower.

Give or take a thousand years, back before the
centennial 19th hunnert year of our Lord, a local man
fell in front of his own horse drawn plow, died in
agony, leaving a widow behind without children.

In Nordic fashion, the village folk left the poor sod
for 3 days in his own unfilled grave, in his box but
with a string attached to a bell. During the Black
Plague it was customary to let a corpse rest for three
days in their coffin before nailing down the lid and
pitching dirt on ‘em. For some ungodly reason, some
undead folks awoke and rang the bell for help outa
their damn pine box. Hence the phrase, “Saved by the
bell.”

This downtrodden stiff never awoke to ring his bell.
So he got the heave-ho, sealed tight and buried six
feet under. Conifer seed cones were poured in and
around the coffin to expand huge forests haunted
feeding upon sapient mortals past their pull date and
sailing effortlessly amongst the clouds of Valhalla.

As mentioned heretofore, I come from a race of pale
pagans notorious for prehistoric pillaging and the
last holdouts against Christianity, so my ancestors
had no use for decorating buried boxes of dead meat
with crucifixes nor crosses of Russian orthodoxy. Tall
and straight-grained trees grown intentionally atop
the dead and buried for shipwright lumber are what any
good Sammi or Laplander uses for a grave marker.

You’ll likely never find any ancient graves or burial
sites in Northern Scandinavia, just huge forests atop
all of history’s dead and buried Vikings. The notion
of haunted forests arose from the millions of Viking
Dead subsequently nourishing premium continental
forests of selective species and grade. Like all your
subsistence sea mammals, trees bear the spirits of the
dead and have offered themselves to Norse shipwrights
for an estimated 150,000 years.

Besides, cutting 2 planks for a cross would be such a
waste of blessed wood. Wood better utilized in the
manufacture and construction of man’s earliest ocean
going sea vessels.

Once buried and seeded, a corpse is never mentioned.
Speaking ill of the Viking Dead causes unrest in the
Earth, and is believed to retard the appearance of
high-grade lumber seedlings in the next reincarnation.
It also forces a widow to quit her bitching and
moaning, get over her self, get another husband and
get on with her life.

King James plagiarized a lot of Norse folk wisdom. So
did the American Psychiatric Association in echoed
epochs inhabited by us time traveling serial killers
and graying gunslingers.

Well, this widow refused to neither interview nor
audition any eligible candidates. Instead she received
late night guests bearing gifts, spirits and
adulterous erections. One by one, all the married men
of the village popped in for a little buttered biscuit
and un-birthed womb service. Amongst the village women
this was tolerated, but not forgiven. Viking women,
like Eskimo women understand why both Tupperware users
and walrus prefer a tight seal.

Ever since prehistory, even Vikings frowned upon
infidelity for fear of pain, pus and scraling
discharge characteristic of Vikings returning from
round the world tours raping, pillaging and
exterminating any race shorter, darker and free of
slave shackles.

Far be it for the men to exercise better judgment, but
ornery village women surely did. Once word of this
village wide biscuit thawing and seasoning rounded the
sewing, knitting and skinning circles: a curative
measure was devised.

On a night darker than Death, my grandma Saimi joined
all the village women and paid this unattached harlot
a lethal visit. She was dragged from her sod cottage,
out to the edge of the haunted forest and dismembered.
Alleviating recapitulation, culpability and recourse,
every female stabbed or slashed this poor unmarried
widow as penitence for soiling their husbands’
divining rods, kickstands and selfish genetic pistols.
Not one girl, mother nor grandmother shied away from
this duty, not even my dear grandma Saimi.

What was left wouldn’t even pass for shitty dog food.
But this ancient exorcism wasn’t completed yet.

The eldest matriarch of the village bent down and
shoved an earthen jug full of poisonous mushrooms and
lethal toxic herbs up inside the dead woman's uterus,
then stomped upon her abdomen shattering the clay pot
and releasing the contents inside her abbreviated soul
kitchen. This last measure voided any 3-day waiting
period eliminating any chance to be saved by the bell
and symbolizes where the soul of a woman resides.

The shredded corpse was pitched in a hole, covered
with coniferous pinecones and seeds of premium grade
shipwright lumber and buried with lots of spit, cuss
and dirt, thus contributing to an ever-healthier
village and an ever expanding haunted forest.

So you see my dichotomous conflict: not being my
grandparents still ain't being myself.

The next time you take a saw to a plank or board, duly
note the offering. Even if you’re not a carpenter, I’m
betting your boss is.


Karl.