Judih Haggai 87

From Soulard’s Notebooks Assistant Editor: Kassandra Soulard Poetry by Joe Coleman 1 Secret Joy Amongst These Times: The History of Scriptor Press by Raymond Soulard, Jr. 5 Poetry by Nathan D. Horowitz 31 A Travel to Belize [Journal] by Charlie Beyer 35 Many Musics [Poetry] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. 49 The King of the Elves [Classic Fiction] by Philip K. Dick 59 Poetry by Martina Newberry 75 Notes from New England [Commentary] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. 81 Poetry by Judih Haggai 87 Labyrinthine [A New Fixtion] by Raymond Soulard, Jr. 97 Poetry by Tom Sheehan 133 5 Fascinating New Uses for Psychedelics [Essay] by Sarah Seltzer 141 Notes on Contributors 147 2012 Front and back cover art by Raymond Soulard, Jr. & Kassandra Soulard. On the front cover, and also depicted within, are photographs of Josiah McElheny’s work “Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism” (2007), on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. McElheny’s exhibition, Some Pictures of the Infinite, can be seen through October 14, 2012 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, also in Boston. Accompanying disk to print version contains: • Cenacles #47-81 • Burning Man Books #1-66 • Scriptor Press Sampler #1-13 • RaiBooks #1-7 • RS Mixes from “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution”; & • Jellicle Literary Guild Highlights Series Disk contents downloadable at: http://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/supplementary_disk.zip The Cenacle is published quarterly (with occasional special issues) by Scriptor Press New England, 2442 NW Market Street, #363, Seattle, Washington, 98107. It is kin organ to ElectroLounge website (http://www.scriptorpress.com), RaiBooks, Burning Man Books, Scriptor Press Sampler, The Jellicle Literary Guild, & “Within’s Within: Scenes from the Psychedelic Revolution w/Soulard,” broadcast online worldwide weekends on SpiritPlants Radio (http://www.spiritplantsradio.com). All rights of works published herein belong exclusively to the creator of the work. Email comments to: [email protected] Thank you to my now ex-colleagues at UBH, your loyalty & good fellowship made a decent job even better . thank you to my new friends & collaborators at Occupy Boston Radio (http://obr.fm) for taking the spirit of Occupy & applying it to a really good project! Jeremy Kilar 1 Joe Coleman “Goodness gracious. Mercy me! I’m all out of sugar and have little tea. My milk and cookies are getting’ low . ‘Tis off to the market I go.” So Dolores Toodle pulled up her stockings, put on her bonnet, and started walking. Resolute, focused, determined, resigned, Dolores with groceries on her mind. ‘Twas a glorious morning—no morning so fair— with larkspur and lilac perfuming the air. “And how are you today, Mrs. Millicent Warner?” She asked of the widow who lived on the corner. “Quite well, indeed, tho’ sad I am, to have neither butter nor strawberry jam.” Dolores replied, “I happen to be taking steps to the market. Come walking with me.” Thus, two elderly women continued their way toward the neighborhood market that glorious day. They met old Bridie Cullen on Cavendish Street. She was going for crisps and a tin of meet. With her cane tapping flagstone she joined the parade. —a spinster—a widow—and lonely old maid. “Sweet Jaysus and Mary,” prayed pious Dolores, “Bless and direct and defend and watch o’er us.” ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 81 | June 2012 2 3 They arrived at the market. They burst through the door! Millie Warner yelled, “All of you—down on the floor!” Bridie flipped the sign over to the side with Closed on it, while Dolores brandished a pin from her bonnet, as if she was pointing a Colt 45, she cried, “Nobody’s leaving this market alive unless all of the sugar and butter and tea are forked over to Bridie and Millie and me! Heads down! Don’t move! Yes, you too dear . or I’ll jab every last bloomin’ one of you here! We’ll be wanting your cookies and crispies as well, or I’ll send all you sweethearts to hell!” Bridie caned and disabled the security cam, adding: “Don’t forget milk and the strawberry jam!” She poked at the stock boy: “Your ass is mine . I’ll ram this cane up where the sun don’t shine if you even so much as look up at my face— so be a darlin’ ‘till we blow this place.” As Dolores and Bridie stuffed loot in their sack, Millie went to get booze from the cooler out back. Dolores demanded a carton of smokes, a tin of meat, then she waved. “Toodle-oo, folks!” They hotwired a Bentley, with pedal to metal, and Dolores was soon boiling tea in her kettle, back in her hide-out that night all alone, Dolores Toodle was using her telephone, to tell her two cronies, “We certainly must take a walk one day soon to the Savings and Trust.” As we age it may seem that we run out of time. But you’re never too old for a life of crime. * * * * * * ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 81 | June 2012 4 5 Raymond Soulard, Jr. Secret Joy Amongst These Times: The History of Scriptor Press, 1995 to the Present “Think for yourself & question authority.” —Dr. Timothy Leary Chapter Sixteen continued from The Cenacle | 75 | October 2010 For Scriptor Press, & for me personally, 2009 would be a year of lasts. It would be Kassi’s & my last full year living in Portland; it would bear the last job I would work in Portland too; & it would be the last year we would go to the Burning Man Arts Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. I knew none of this at year’s commence, but by year’s end I was close upon the decision to move back to Boston. I’d first moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2002, in love with a girl I’d met in cyberspace, & with Burning Man. With the exception of about a year spent back in Connecticut, licking wounds from the girl’s protracted rejection, I’d been living in either Seattle or Portland for the years since 2002. Attending Burning Man every year with my press’s No Borders Free Bookstore project. Gotten married along the way, too, to another girl, Kassi, who I loved & love just as deeply, who’d stayed, & thus eventually even deeper. I’d visited back East a few times to see kin & sentimentalize, but little more. The Pacific Northwest washome ; everywhere else was not. What eventually led me to leave was at first a sense of disappointment, coupled with persistent economic troubles, & trumped finally by the same feeling I’d had years ago in coming out West: a desire to play out my struggles & victories on the playing field my heart & head wished. This was the last year it was the Pacific Northwest. It’s hard leaving a place. Even roots not deepest sunk cling to what stability they have. So this initially set out theme of the year will often seem barely there as it is detailed. But it’s there. What were shadows little noticed during those days are, in retrospect, solid uncouplings, made of dissatisfactions, a few, then more as the months passed. To begin this history’s discussion of 2009 is to talk about the new American presidency of Barack Obama. Against much improbability, he took office on January 20. I wonder now, a couple of years later, if he was as convinced of his power to change things swiftly as the millions of us who voted for him were. He was elected with a seeming “mandate” not just to withdraw us from two disastrous wars, & recover the economy destroyed by George W. Bush, but to ScriptorPress.com The Cenacle | 81 | June 2012 6 restore the domestic safety net of law & justice. If he had ascended to throne of King of America, maybe, just maybe, & I’m not sure even then. As it was, he did what he could as the solid ground below his feet disintegrated. He took steps to end the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan; he pushed a hurried, imperfect package of economic measures through Congress to avert a new Depression. He managed enactment of a healthcare reform law that cost him a lot of political capital. In short, he set about digging the country out of the miles-deep pile of shit Bush had left behind. I can only think this additionally: if Obama had lost, if Arizona Senator John McCain had won this election, what then? Would he have expanded the two wars? Would he have done what was needed to restore the economy to at-least-feeble functionality? No way of knowing. McCain would have faced a Democrat-controlled Congress, no doubt quite arrayed against him. Maybe compromises would have been fought to, & worked out. I don’t know. It’s strange to wonder, & never to know. One thing I recall Obama saying at the time was this: it was years creating the mess we found ourselves in—in the United States, around the world—, & it would not be quick getting out of it. And I would add: there will be new days, better days some of them, but no return. All that has happened, has happened. What comes will be a stewing mix of the familiar & the strange, & will not taste quite the same. Ever. Getting Obama elected was a good thing, even if it didn’t play out as he or anyone else supposed. There are too many special interests & corporate influence, entrenched corruption comfortably abed with the mainstream media, for any kind of coherent, intelligent government of generosity & good will to occur successfully.

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