Last Post of Mine (in English): Hooray @PlaywritingFest

Flower sits in a chair, wrapped in translucent plastic. She looks like a broken takeaway baguette.

TANNER  There was a place called World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto in 1995. Man, it was paradise. There were books printed twenty years before, ones that you’d barely heard of, on display. I could easily waste an entire afternoon there, just wandering, checking out their catalog, feeling dizzy, ending up buying absolutely nothing. Overwhelmed by the possibilities.

We had a similar place here. The Only Bookstore in Finland, they might named it back in the day. Instead, they strove for the Olympic heights. Be careful what you wish for. There comes the reckoning—woo woo! Like a long black train, and its name is Memory.

FLOWER  Memory is its name.

TANNER  The day they call your bluff. The end of Finland as we know it, at long, long last. Hallelujah!

FLOWER  I object. A bookstore and country are two separate entities.

TANNER  That’s what you think. Let me finish.

FLOWER  By all means.

TANNER  You said it. The other day I stopped at The Olympic Bookstore to fetch a book, a paperback, one you can read backwards, which is essential for a fool like me. Of course the title in question wasn’t available presently. But, they said, as they always do. They can order it from abroad! Guess what? So can I. At this point, I was ready for my daily bowel movement, and thank God they hadn’t renovated their washroom into a trendy coffee bar yet. The only thing still standing from the good old days. And there I sat, reading my Kindle, having profound and foul visions of the future of this country.

And now I read the Toronto store is about to be closed. And Helsinki will be remembered as fondly as a tiny snowman in hell. That bookstore is a tombstone; the daily paper, a mouthful of soil.

http://www.thestar.com/business/2012/06/20/torontos_worlds_biggest_bookstore_could_close_in_2013.html#

The Options in Syria

TANNER  Something happened today. I was coming home from the library, across the tracks. It was dark already. I had taken the steps on my side, when something made me look up. Beneath the overpass, at the corner where the ground meets the bridge, with barely enough room to sit in, I saw a small fire burning. And a figure sitting there, watching me over the flames. Rubbing his hands together.

I made an experiment. An exercise in populism, you might call it. As I said, I went to the library, and visited a traditionalist website. For those of you whom the typhus of traditionalism has passed, few words of introduction are due. Take a trip to Paris, to the cathedral of Notre Dame. Imagine the altar there sprayed by brain matter. That sight, my friends, is traditionalism taken to its logical conclusion. Enough of those wankers. After the library, I visited the corner bar, listened to the regulars discussing various current affairs. I was drinking coffee, mind. Then I went home and wrote an article based on what I’d read and heard, changing a word here and there, replacing “hajjis” with sectarian rift, “let them finish each other off” with the unpredictable outcome of a hypothetical intervention, messing with the affairs of a sovereign state, and so on. I’ve never written so fast in my life—the piece on Syria took me ten minutes, tops. And what do you know, before I could take a leak, Flower was back.

FLOWER You lied to me.

TANNER So did you. Your name, if you're wondering, for starters. But hey, I like it. It suits you, somehow, better than, say, cow.

FLOWER A cow? Gee, thanks.

TANNER How now, an example. Like I said, Flower fits you. May I call you Flower? Regardless of who you really are? Thanks. Now, to the business at hand...


Tim Buckley – Wayfaring Stranger/You Got me Runnin'

Thus began my apprenticeship in Orthodox Anti-Imperialism—
the empire here being the United States. Flower and I started a fruitful collaboration. She gave me the topic, and I painted it in broad strokes of moral outrage, reviving the animal, no, the herd instincts in our dear readers. Jealousy, fear... it worked like magic. We worked like magic. And then she asked me to do something stupid.

FLOWER You need to write a review of the latest Batman.

TANNER Why? It's been done.

FLOWER Still, it's important.

TANNER The Dark Knight Rises? FLOWER The readers need to know where we stand.

TANNER With Batman? FLOWER It's important. Just do it.

TANNER And I did.

TILIKUM Chomsky Speaks Per Anum

[The Zombie Marxist Cookbook cont'd]

FLOWER  We're putting up a website. Could use a real writer like you.

TANNER  Is there money in it?

FLOWER  We are able to pay a little. Say, twenty for a published article.

TANNER  Twenty? Wow. I'm in.

FLOWER  Great. I brought you some material. Check them out, and I'll get back to you at the end of the week. If you're able to cook something up before that, even better. Hit me with an email then. My address should be in there somewhere. Anyway, it's easy: "flow" like the festival, "sho" like sure, written in Faulknerian...

TANNER  Um, ex...

FLOWER  ... or shore minus (re mi fa so la si do).

TANNER  ... scuse me, I don't...

FLOWER  But I'm babbling. At chomskyite dot fi.

TANNER  What?

FLOWER  Chomskyite. You know who Chomsky is? Don't you?

TANNER  Yes. Yes.

FLOWER  So?

TANNER  The most important intellectual of our time. Living. The most important living intellectual of...

FLOWER  I got it. Thank you.

TANNER  How... You allowed to use his name, or just...

FLOWER  We are.

TANNER  You know him? Chomsky?

FLOWER  Not personally, no.

TANNER  You write to him? He writes to you?

FLOWER  Well, let's just say we have his recognition.

TANNER  Oh wow. I'll get right into it. I'll start studying, like, yesterday.

FLOWER  Good. Well, I better not keep you occupied any longer...

TANNER  No. Haha. Occupied, hahaha. Very funny. One more thing, though, before you go.

FLOWER  Yes? What is it?

TANNER  I can't use the computer.

FLOWER  Can't...?

TANNER  Or the phone.

FLOWER  Won't.

TANNER  Whatever. I don't use ‘em.

FLOWER  May I ask why? No, let me guess...

TANNER  They have been "contaminated", I'm afraid.

FLOWER  Been watching too much porn lately?

TANNER  No! It's the, I don't know, uh...

FLOWER  Yes?

TANNER  CIA, I think.

FLOWER  You mean NSA.

TANNER  That's right. The Snowden crew. Greenwald et cetera. No, not them. The ones they're afterr.

FLOWER  I see.

TANNER  Do you?

FLOWER  I think I do. And here's what we'll to do. I'll stop by again on Friday. You give me what you got, and I give you some new stuff to look into. Does that sound okay?

TANNER  Okay.

FLOWER  And remember what you wrote yourself. About eating the whale.

TANNER  One bite at a time.

FLOWER  Exactly. Destroy your opponents, one by one.

TANNER  If you say so.

FLOWER  I do. See you on Friday!

TANNER  And so my deal with the Devil was sealed. I started leafing through the so-called stuff, the propaganda she left competing with the opiate effects of her lingering perfume. I had grave difficulties concentrating. The genocide of Native Americans... meaning Indians, I suppose. Being a cowboy myself, I'll have to pass. The imperialistic war waged by the West in East Timor... What is this East Femur they can't shut their gabs about? Almost wish I could go to Google and check it out. The short history of Russia... Heaven help me, no. The short history of the People's Republic of China... What the hell am I supposed to make of these? Chinese rhymes with cheese.

Tim Buckley – I've been Out Walking

FLOWER  What you got?

TANNER  It's a riot seeing you, too. Sit down.

FLOWER  Wow. Where'd you get this?

TANNER  I wrote it.

FLOWER  No, I mean...

TANNER  Maybe I broke into the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In the old way.

FLOWER  It's, it's...

TANNER  Thick? I know there's a layer or two too many. I'm just a beginner when it comes to graffiti. Can you call it a graffiti if it's not on a wall?

FLOWER  It's quite funny.

TANNER  Thanks.

FLOWER  Seriously. I mean it.

TANNER  Now who would’ve thought that “Paint It Black” actually had a message?

FLOWER  Let's see now.

TANNER  How to win the hearts of beautiful young ladies. Even if it's only an envelope.

FLOWER  “The most important battle these days is taking place on two fronts simultaneously...”

TANNER Maybe that's what it is, an envelope.

FLOWER “From within the criminal enterprise we call corporate capitalism...”

TANNER The heart, that is. Joint.

FLOWER “And from without.”

TANNER Criminal enterprise. Of beautiful women.

FLOWER  “If we remember one thing...”

TANNER Young.

FLOWER  “... from the history of the Third Reich, or the fantasies of omnipotence followed to their bitter end...”

TANNER Young, beautiful women.

FLOWER “... by another little emperor, the one from the 19th century, it should be this.”

TANNER Never fuck with the elements. Or, having made up your mind about fucking with them, make sure they are not Russian elements. In that case, put a bullet in your brain. It’s faster, more effective, and nearly painless, compared to the abyss of despair you are about to plunge yourself into...

FLOWER We can’t use this.

TANNER Hell. That is hell as we know it. Why not?

FLOWER Too high-brow. Too obscure. What the hell happened? I understood you were writing about China?

TANNER I was.

FLOWER And that line about Russia, that was the last straw. Under no circumstances can we run a line like that. Are you out of your mind, or what?

TANNER It is not about Russia. It’s the elements.

FLOWER Do not tell me what it is! I am fully aware of what it is!

TANNER Touched a nerve there, did I? FLOWER This is it. We’re done.

TANNER Bye.

FLOWER Goodbye!

[Continued... HERE.]