INTRODUCTION
Hi there. Welcome to the first installment of Jim’s SubStack magazine, The Big Tent Review. Twice a month, more or less, at least for now, gulp! readers and viewers will find content here.
The material of each issue will come from seven or more of the thirteen categories in the entirety of the capacious teepee of my work. All readers will get a sample of what is available in the given instance, in this case Number One.
God and Goddess know that I am capable of babbling on and on about almost anything. Often enough, I’ll present at the beginning a bit of a prefatory statement, or even a brief essay.
For today, with the publication date still eight days hence, I wanted to mention a vivid dream that I had last night. In typical dreamscape fashion, I simply discovered myself navigating the shady streets of Hot Springs. I realized as an afterthought that my soccer ball was at my feet, with a touch here and there staying a few yards ahead of me.
Suddenly, when my ball rebounded from a protruding root, this preferred workout toy was bounding downhill toward the white water that typifies Spring Creek hereabouts. Alarmed, as if a child had escaped the leash and tumbled toward the shoals, I hurried my descent toward a downstream point where I would be able to recapture it. Once adjacent to the water, in I plunged, emerging like a seal to toss my sodden hair aside and see what was what.
In the event, I began paddling and wading upstream, till I found my ball, enmeshed in a tangle of brush and flotsam, just below a crashing cascade. Having succeeded in saving it, I emerged from the water to wake and wonder what in the world this all might mean.
I’m still not sure. Perhaps it concerns the way that this creative process is a kind of playful exercise in which I must juggle everything on display, similarly as, when I work out, I must respond to the ball’s trajectories and arcs as they happen, not as I might have imagined them in advance.
Obviously, still in the throes of what a friend has called a ‘Pandemic of Insanity,’ I might well have written now about more substantive matters. Often enough, I will do just that, while, as today, at other times I consider matters more personally, in terms of the undulations of emotion and energy and action that make up my daily rounds. In any event, here is a bit from each portion of today’s BTR. Subscribers will be able to breach the paywall and read all the continuing material ‘below the line,’ so to say, where twice monthly most of audio and video components of each issue will also appear.
Tarot’s Tantric Tidbits
I’ve noted now hundreds of times how my unexpected Tarot turn came to pass, how I resisted turning to the Goddess in this way because Alicia read the cards much of her life; I’d be damned before I tried to do so. Then the book and the deck tumbled from the closet and smacked me in the foot, mandating my attention and an intention to try things out.
“TRUSTING & TETHERING”———My very first online Tarot encounter evokes the old saying that one ‘should trust one’s neighbors but tether one’s camels,’ not to mention other livestock of any sort whatsoever, including feral ideas and wild storytellling experiences. When I answered the call, I thought that she was referring to one of my items for sale on Craigslist.
“No,” she said. “I need a reading.” Maybe I should have bolted after she named herself ‘Valencia’ as if it were merely a convenient nomme de guerre. Her sigh, as she recollected her “shitty day” and need for relationship advice, won me over.
After I provided my Venmo handle and ‘last four digits,’ and I navigated three or four technical snafus, she was adamant that we proceed, as she was fading fast, blah blah blah. I went right ahead, naked of defense, one of my common postures..
Her Essence card, the first of seven, delivered The World and its promise of integrated achievement and fulfillment. She cut off my shtick about ‘bonus cards’ and their perils. “What else does it say?” Her tone was peremptory and imperious; again, maybe I should have bolted.
But no, not me. (Continued below the PayWall)…
All God’s Cousins
Fully posting the entire run of this novelized version of ‘Documentary Fiction’ will take well over the next year. For now, I’m leaving aside all prefatory material, with the exception of saying that an interesting premise, to me, is that our perambulations toward collision, as fated as they feel in any specific moment’s miraculous manifestation, must axiomatically have started long ago and far away.
Thus, this Book in this monumental series begins in 1976 and proceeds till February’s Winter of 2022. It all begins with “Chapter One.”
CHAPTER I— — —“Conveying his mother to Logan Airport and then dispatching her back to Texas for her ‘failure to cooperate’ in his inestimably individual take on “graduating from Harvard” were all well and good. In advance, he’d borrowed money for a taxi from Danielle, “just in case.”
So he was ready. Kassy’s plea, “But I want to see you in your cap and gown,” ran up against the final pair of incompletes that he was completing, the last of which required a fifty page paper on the indigenous peoples of the Southern Appalachians, where soon enough he would be living.
When Kassy got petulant, which, always, might easily become a sight to see, like an erupting volcano that somehow had teeth to bite as well as lava to spew, Lou would have none of it. However many No-Doz had been necessary to keep him awake and in some sense cogent for forty-eight hours or so had also delivered him to that sense of space and time in which things sparkled and hummed, like when a live wire is occasionally touching ground but does so quietly, without making itself felt for the most part. In such a state, he shrugged at his mother's nascent outburst, her beginning to spew her clinical craziness at whoever stood in the way of her getting what she thought she wanted, in this case the dapper form of her stretched-to-the-limit son.
He called the cab even as his mom was yelling and threatening, using that tone in which she spat a threat like a cobra’s spitting venom, yet her caviling complaint was no more obtrusive on Louis’ state of mind than the faint buzz of a lawn mower’s puttering away a block outside an open window, where he might notice, almost absent-mindedly, the curtain’s fluttering and light’s leaking through. In the end, she went silently, accepting a hug and merely shaking her head, lips pursed, at his final words for the present pass, prosaic and far too simple for her sense of the moment’s drama: “I love you mom, but I’ve got to get this shit done.”
Nevertheless, even after he had finally(Continued below the PayWall)…
Ponder Panels, Homily Sticks, & More: Wood Words Essays
I have almost limitless materials for this segment of the process. However, since my initial video initiated my Driftwood Paddle, I’ll talk a bit about that message here.
This piece of wood, perhaps serving as much a decorative as a practical function, started as a humble oar, before I first eyed it, embedded in jetsam in the fork of a tree, eight foot above the stony beaches of the Laurel River Trail. Cleaning this piece up was more time-consuming than usual, definitely over ten hours in fits and starts, arduous work too, sanding away at whatever remainder of glaze the paddle still had when I took it home from its flood-borne perch.
In fact, every step of creating this specific composition proved much slower, at once more generally difficult and often ponderous, than other panels and sticks on the tables of Marshall Arts. This was the reason, with a hundred sixty hours in and loads remaining to complete, I set the piece aside, with the thought, “Nobody’s going to pay eight hundred dollars for an oar!” Even if unarticulated, this notion kept me from returning to finish this striking object, one that I liked a lot.
This reticence gave way, however, following a series of Tarot Readings that I did for myself as I was learning the system, a months or so after my separation from Alicia.(Continued below the PayWall)…
Empowered Political Forays
That great films need only demonstrate masterful craft and creativity's mysterious marvels is abundantly obvious in considering “Oppenheimer,” already on any short list of the greatest movies of history. Reviews here will generally act as briefings for readers about pitfalls and nuggets embedded in productions of one sort and another. Once in a while, when I can’t stop myself, these presentations will appear as longer essays.
“GRAND & GLORIOUS, REPLETE WITH SUBTLE MANIPULATIVE FRAUD”— — —The story of the interlocutor of Los Alamos, Robert J. Oppenheimer, simply bursts from the screen with epiphany and hilarity perfectly timed in their intervening confluence with the narrative flow. Yet the yarn that emerges has profound flaws that, if not noticed and understood, make of “Oppenheimer” an ugly excrescence, merely another of Hollywood's hustling morsels of distraction, disaffection, disorientation.
That said, the performative parts of this opus—three hours without an intermission—are simply astonishing in their clarity, intensity, and authenticity. Even in the case of the walk-on part of President Harry S. Truman, whose scripted lines ring hollow because of the contextual flaws of the script itself, the character of this clever, not necessarily friendly, politician leaps from the screen, right down to his “crybaby” characterization of Oppenheimer as he exits.
So too the scenic and documentary elements of the production: they are flawless, well-chosen in their compelling contributions to the exposition, even as they undermine later narrative choices. Thus, the reference to the Szilard missive to Roosevelt, over which Albert Einstein added his own signature so as to command FDR’s attention, appears so as to give viewers access to the actual events that followed Lise Meitner’s and Otto Frisch’s confirmation of the long-sought mechanism of Uranium fission, at the same time that this iconic missive annihilates the coming story sorty that the Russians would be unable to figure all this out without spies or larcenous traitors who would tender to them the precious knowledge that only Americans could command.
Thematically and, on occasion, factually, however(Continued below the PayWall)…
New Fiction Series
For the most part, in all but one case, these are not yet completely drafted materials, as is true of the “Mad Cows & Englishmen” excerpt to begin here. I’ve got five or six chapters or so complete, and then I’ll be breaking new ground, a couple months or so forward from the present pass.
Mad Cows and Englishmen
PART ONE
A popular way of thinking about choice is to imagine a situation that merely requires selecting either chocolate or vanilla. Justifying this as a choice is not the point and is no part of any act of actual choosing; one just chooses, when that is what one is doing, because one does so. My coming to London, on the other hand, was very much a decision, not a choice, in this hypothetically interesting way of looking at things.
For my entire adult existence, I had acted as a bright red mole, trying to burrow a path to a less capitalist and more socialist future. I had the extensive FBI file to prove my bona fides in this regard, which for years, until roughly 2020 anyway, merely amused the police at traffic stops, but recently had them fondling their Tazomatics and loosening their pistols and eyeing me as if I might have bombs strapped around my midsection or a pulsar ready to let fly. As a 'pinko,' commie, social democratic secret-agent-without-portfolio, leaving America behind had become unavoidable.
The United States, after all, had become not only fascistic but also delusional. Our leaders all seemed to be either morons selected because they played at being 'good old boys' fairly well, or smoothly organized operatives elected in order to diminish our anger at how cocked-up everything had become. Moreover, the USA's only response to multiple intersecting disasters had been to improve its automatic kill response, via macro and micro machines of differing levels of lethal capacity.
England, as much as any other 'operational center' around the globe, had demonstrated real leadership about the crises characteristic of our increasingly 'interesting times.' What are we to eat? How are we to find clean water? How will we constitute a workable economy? How can we keep from killing and skinning one another? These and other pertinent issues actually seemed to elicit rational discussion among the citizens of the United Kingdom, although their answers, in the event, seem often to have come down to how to make the worsening possibilities in some sense palatable for the teeming masses, without necessitating anything transformational among the upper classes.
As well, of course, the English speak English, which has long been more or less my 'stock-in-trade,' as the saying goes. So I found myself in a ghetto warren in an increasingly chic quarter of the 'South End,' in a third floor flat serendipitously warmed by Pakistanis beneath me who couldn't countenance the damp claw of an English chill. I sold reviews; I tutored neighbors and students in the Bard's tongue; I suppose that I was something of a spy since I also drafted 'essays' that were much more like reports about what Le Carre liked to refer to as 'the Cousins' business,' based on both my knowledge of aspects of America and my continuing contacts in the States.
Unfortunately, with beef no longer part of the marketplace, pork priced like gold, and even chicken almost a luxury, I was always extremely horny for money. That the World Wide Web continued to operate was miraculous in innumerable ways, the ones of which mattered to me concerning remuneration and opportunity. I could be a reasonably good spy at a distance, for instance.(Continued below the PayWall)…
Classic Folk, Rejuvenated
Like most of these materials, Little Red speaks for itself. So saying, therefore, here goes.
Little Red (an old tale in new garb)
CHAPTER ONE— — —Once, so long ago that we can hardly say when exactly, a young girl was growing up in a little village between the river and the mountain, where the forest grew tall and straight and dark right up to the doorsteps of the villagers. This little country girl, even when she was but a wild and laughing sprite, seemed like the prettiest creature whom anyone had ever seen.
No one could remember so fair a youth anyway, and many had both high hopes and deep fears for such a blessed child. Her great grandmother, before dying, had whispered to her, "Never forget you are but a girl," something that the youngster never told another soul and about which she wondered often. "What exactly did great gran mean?" she would ask herself when she worked on her chores or occasionally took time to play or pray. She could think of many things - the greater power and quickness of many boys, in spite of her own marvelous ability, for example; or the way that families favored sons, when they had them, though this did not apply to her situation - but she was sure her gran-grannie had meant something special for her to think about.
In time, of course, this child flowered into a young woman who, along with all of her female cousins and sisters and friends who came to that age, received her own red hood, to hark her blooming maturity. The garment, which her crafty aunt had woven with both gold and silver veins scattered among the threads of deep red woolen yarn, suited the girl so extremely well that everybody began to call her "Little Red Riding Hood."
She would come and go around the village, flashing like sunlight on autumn leaves, for though she was beautiful and adored, she was nevertheless a hard-working girl who never shied away from any assignment, especially one that let her run or jump or show her strength or speed or guile. Sometimes, in truth, she would forget her gran-grannie's dying sentence because she might overwhelm all but the strongest of the local boys who were her friends and enemies and playmates and opponents.
Her mother, who sometimes found herself all breathless at the good fortune that had come to her with her only daughter and only child, was excessively fond of the girl. She too, however, knew that with great fortune came great risk, which would cause her heart to jump and her breathing to flutter when she thought about her young one's future. "What should I do?" she would ask friend and family alike when she felt this way.(Continued below the PayWall)…
Communication & Human Survival
Some of the entries in this section will deal with big concerns about “the Media” in our lives. Others will be diminutive indeed, almost whimsical in wondering about language and the way that we use words. Today’s entry is of this latter sort.
The mediation of things, of which Substack forms a new and dynamic twist, lies at the heart of making the world work as those ‘atop the human heap’ want things to develop. Those of us who operate without plutocratic privilege have two choices: nominate a billionaire or start some sort of movement toward Solidarity & Social Justice.
Such miracles of common purpose toward fairer dealings inherently necessitate mastering the rhetorical tricks that underpin almost all instances of instruction and persuasion. English, apparently, favors acronyms as one of its array of techniques to facilitate behavior with words. Those in the know represent in such cases a set of cognizant members of a cognoscenti, so to speak. IYKYK, in modern parlance.
Snafu is a wonderful example. It was ubiquitous as I rose through the ranks to become the Cadet Commander of the purportedly largest high school Reserve Officer Training Corps in the entire State of Texas, a particularly fertile territory for such programs of modern martial instruction. The word’s origins from military usage is emblematic.(Continued below the PayWall)…
Erotic Snippets
Many friends and readers fancy my fondness for writing hot prose that drips love’s libations through verse or storytelling or other means. We’ll see, or so I’ll suppose, as I take a stab at delivering that which is salacious and satisfying, ha ha, hopefully without upsetting any apple carts in readers’ psyches, so to speak.
Whatever the case may be, most of what shows up in this segment of any BTR issue is pure fantasy, except for those based on actual experience. Readers may wonder, in any given instance, whether a particular story is at least somewhat factual or merely, in a word, fabulous, to wit this.
“SHARK INFESTED WATERS”— — —For most of our marriage, I had confronted pathological jealousy on Carmelita’s part, before her third problematic infatuation changed her mind or, at a minimum, calmed her down. We had just crafted the second version of our Love Shark. “Love Will Ever Evoke Experience Both Sublime & Dangerous, at Once a Celestial Cove's Pristine Waters That Invite Complete Immersion Naked of All Defense, & a Shark-Infested Inlet's Murky Depths, Which Threaten Erstwhile Innocent Swimmers With Imminent Bloodbath.”
Connie Ironwood had purchased our initial Love Shark, which she intended as an admonitory gift for her medical school paramour. Connie was one of those female visitors to my ‘feral nerd performance space’ who elicited that sense of whole body connection between a woman and a man that gripped my groin and bated my breath even as her pupils expanded and her loins dripped their juicy aromatic sweetness, in real time a connection that just about caused five-foot high Carmelita to assault the six foot Amazon who was doing a public dance with Carme’s husband, erotic in spite of its adherence to ‘proprieties’ both commercial and social.
In the event, my spouse merely keyed Ms. Ironwood’s car, which I criticized but did nothing else to obviate. Knowing that this intense explosiveness had such a short fuse, when Connie asked me to deliver the piece, for which she’d requested another coat of polyurethane, I might have kept myself on a more firmly-held leash than I did.
Then again, given Carmelita’s antics with her first wealthy ‘crush,’ Taylor Lawrence, not to mention a salacious groupie’s flirtation with her buffed guitar god, I had several get-out-of-jail-free cards coming my way. Connie seemed tough enough, hence safe enough, but also interested enough to imagine that something might unfold between us that served up sweet salubrious libations, so to say.
As things developed, before her door had firmly closed, she had clasped my greeting hand so that the click of the bolt punctuated our first fierce kiss, our tongues like famished ferrets with unexpected access to a fresh meaty feast. With the facility of practiced philanderers we had removed each other’s shorts—neither of us had underwear in the way—within a quick minute of our soul-kissing’s fiery embrace.
Lifting her taut, luscious behind onto a sturdy pub-chair gave me an ideal platform to wrap her legs around my ears and bury my face between her thighs, where the melding of my lips with her pudenda perfected a portal for our paradisaical fondling to continue to predictable ends for the course of a brief afternoon rendezvous that felt eternal in its durable endurance of frenzy and felicity.(Continued below the PayWall)…
Last Words For Now
Thus the curtain closes on the first scene of whatever slice of eternity I manage to manifest here on Substack. I’ve certainly got enough material to continue for decades, if I can just find a few hundred readers who appreciate my wiles and my wit and my ways with words and ideas. Until next time, then, ‘vaya con Dios!’ And blah blah blah.
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