Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: Monkey Head

Harold brought in a monkey head; not an actual monkey's head, but an animatronic one. My first reaction was, "Oh, my God! A monkey head!" I could barely contain my enthusiasm, but I'm not sure why. I was fascinated. It was just a head. Harold set it on its own special little table, underneath a pink fringed Victorian floor lamp. It had its own spotlight. We plugged it into the wall, and it sprang to life immediately, chatting chimpanzee speak, moving its head from side to side, wiggling its eyebrows, and cooing.

The monkey head is very random. It will sit quietly for some time, and then start going through its bag of tricks sporadically. It follows me with its eyes when I walk past it. I stare back. I also talk to it like it was a real monkey. "Hello, monkey!" Usually when I address it, it ignores me, but not always. I want it to respond, I want to strike up a genuine rapport, but it's just an animatronic head, so I also know that this is not possible. But my mind has conjured up several scenarios involving true connection.

I think maybe I will be at work one night, after the store closes, and the monkey head will strike up a conversation, because in addition to knowing a few movements, gestures, and sounds it would also know how to speak English. Maybe it could advise me in personal matters? Maybe it would be a psychoanalytical monkey? Maybe it would know some Freudian theories? Maybe it would be able to see inside my soul and guide me through some kind of mystical journey? The possibilities are endless.

Maybe it would be a monkey head from outer space? Or a God Head? Maybe it would have all the answers to all the questions in the Universe?

In the meantime, I enjoy it for various reasons, most of which are somewhat vague.

Customers are immediately drawn to it, also. As soon as they walk through the door, they see it sitting on its special little table, underneath the Victorian lamp, and they call out to their companions, "Monkey head! Look! Look at the talking monkey head!" They walk quickly towards it, to examine it closer, to have an intimate moment with this strange contraption; they react as if it was a real monkey.

It appears to be motion-sensitive (but not always), and when someone approaches, it moves its head, or lets out a little cry, or wiggles its eyebrows at them. Now I'm watching the monkey head, and other people's reaction to it, and its reaction to them. It's almost like a real monkey. Without a body.

A little boy came in the store with his family, and picked up the monkey's remote control unit and had that monkey head jumping through hoops. He ran down the entire list of available monkey tricks and commands, and I have to say that I was more impressed than ever. The monkey head was far more versatile than I had originally suspected.

An older man came in (maybe in his sixties or seventies) with coke-bottle glasses, and high-waisted brown polyester pants, and kept muttering to himself while he tried on roller skates. We had just put about eight pairs in the front window, and he tried on every pair to see if they would fit; none of them did. Each time he would put on a new pair, he would talk to himself about whether the skates fit him or not, and he came to the same conclusion every time: no, they did not fit. He would stand up and attempt to skate across the floor, anyway, just to make sure.

The little boy's family continued to browse for a while in the other rooms, and he spent all his time with the monkey head; while it made guttural noises, and shrieked out, shaking its head from side to side. I think it would have beat on its chest, if it had had one.

The older man continued to skate wobbly back and forth on the freshly tiled and slippery floor, muttering to himself about shoe size.

I hoped for the best, and went into the kitchen to make a sandwich.

Red Felt Heart "Liar" featuring Linda Benskin

Strange Creatures that go 'Screech!' in the Night

A woman was very tired. Sleepy, but strangely wired too. She had fantasized about sleep for days, catching bits and pieces here and there, moving about in a slightly unexplainable trance-like state, and she was greatly looking forward to her bed and private dreamtime lollygagging.

All the elements were in line; dark, quiet, clean, rain on the way. And purring cats. All of them ready for sleep. Solitude.

But a wild screeching creature was outside the open window, cackling madly. "Screeeeeech! Screeeech!" it cawed loudly, rude and spiteful. "Screeeeeech! Screeeeech!"

"What the fuck is that?!" her gold tomcat asked, disgruntled.

"I don't know..." she replied, exhausted.

"Screeeeech! Screeeeech!" the creature in the dark called out.

"You have got to be kidding me!" her black cat said, and jumped off the bed to get a closer look.

The other two followed to the window, and looked out, searching in the blackness for the screecher.

"I don't see anything..." the woman said, half asleep.

"Look, there!" gold tom said. "In the tree!"

They all looked, and saw a flapping winged creature, flying aimlessly and awkwardly in an uneven circle, and screeching wildly.

"It's a bat!" little black cat said.

"You're right, it is a bat," said the woman.

They stood and watched it for a long time, flapping its wings and flying around in a circle, yelping out sporadically.

They finally tired of this, and shut the window, and went to bed.

They had fitful, screeching dreams, but woke up to a peaceful day, full of sparrows and songbirds, and little yellow roses.

The Race

"You will win the race!" Sheila affirmed.

"But I have a broken leg from the last race..." Stan 'The Man' Johnson replied.

"No matter! You've been putting too much weight on this broken bone! All in your head! Fly like the wind!"

"But..."

"No 'butts'; just do! You do like you doo-doo: because you have to! No more questions; off you go!"

Stan 'The Man' Johnson hobbled over to his race car and hesitantly got inside.

"Are you sure?!" he asked.

"Yes! Yes! Don't be such a pansy! Go! Go!"

Stan 'The Man' Johnson sped away as fast as he could go. At the first curve, his car overturned and burst into flames.

"Well," Sheila said to herself. "You win some, and you lose some; that's life."

Stan 'The Man' Johnson's spirit swirled around her for a moment in a fog-like mist, and then was gone.

Most Reprehensible Instrument

When Lila made the appointment for her MRI, the scheduler asked her if she was claustrophobic.
"No," Lila replied. "I'm not." In her mind's eye, she was a brave person.

Lila believed herself to be a stoic individual, someone who remained calm in a crisis, and did what she had to do in order to keep things running the way they should.

Two of her family members offered to drive her to the appointment, but she declined them both, saying that she would be fine, and that it was not a big deal.

She arrived at her appointment an hour early, anticipating paperwork. She ended up waiting for an hour and a half in the lobby, watching the clock tick the minutes off. Finally she stood up impatiently and waited by the front desk. A technician eventually came up to the window and apologized for the delay; there was apparently some kind of 'emergency' case ahead of her. Her mind raced with sudden violent thoughts not easily subdued. She was polite and said she understood, and sat back down.

A few minutes later, she was called into the back rooms, where she was instructed to strip and wear a white paper robe, and remove all of her jewelry and store it in a provided locker. The technician gave her a key, which she held onto tightly; in a moment it would be taken away from her. She started to become more concerned. There were no women here, only men with accents, and they were taking things very seriously, like something could actually be wrong. She attempted humor, but her jokes fell flat to her own ears, and the technicians smiled wanly like they had heard them all before.

They took her into an all-white room, with a photo of a clear blue sky with little white puffy clouds on the ceiling. She stared at this sky intermittently for over an hour (she knows it was over an hour because she kept her eye on the clock, going and coming), but afterward she couldn't remember exactly what it looked like, all its details being washed away by the tides inside mind.

The technician asked her if she had any questions before they started, and she couldn't think of any, off the top of her head, so he shoved earplugs in both her ears (which she hadn't expected), and started to move her into the machine, feet first.

She soon discovered the reason for the earplugs: there were noises like exploding weapons and space alien ray gun fights and earthquakes and bombs dropping all around her. Why so noisy to snap a few pictures of her insides? She didn't understand. Why the vibrations and transmutations all around her body, making her mind ache? The technicians were staying far outside the room, which was apparently toxic. She wondered how safe it was to be inside this mechanism. If she didn't have some kind of disease, surely this machine would give her one by the time she was through, or it was through with her. How many other people had been slid through this thing? How much pain and suffering had this monstrosity absorbed over the years? What if the person who was in here before her had lice? Or some kind of rare skin disease that she could catch by lying in the same spot?

Where was the technician? He hadn't checked in with her for quite some time. Had it been ten minutes? Twenty minutes? What if they had gone on a lunch break and left her here alone? What if there was some kind of emergency outside the building, like a fire or something? There had been protesters along the sidewalk when she arrived, but she blindly looked past their signs. What if this giant dome fell on her and crushed her alive? Her face was only inches away from the lid, or the top of it. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and started to hyperventilate. The technicians didn't seem to notice, even though she was supposedly wearing some kind of strap that monitored her breathing.

"Can I ask a question?" she asked, her voice sounding high-pitched and tense even to herself.

No one replied.

"Can I ask a question?" she repeated again, loudly and insistent, and this time the technician responded.

"Is there a problem?" he asked, in a blase tone.

"I need to come out of this thing for a minute!"

The technician came into the room, and pressed a button on the front of the machine, and she rolled out slowly, like something very hot being pulled out of an oven.

"My arms are falling asleep from having them over my head for so long," Lila said. "How much longer?"

"About forty-five minutes."

A ridiculously unbearable amount of time.

Lila bit her nails, and asked for a glass of water. Stalling tactics. She was strapped in. The technician brought her a Styrofoam cup with ice cold water in it, and a straw. He said he couldn't unstrap her, she needed to go back in; her doctor had wanted films of her abdomen and her pelvis, with and without contrast dye, so it was going to take a while longer. It was two days before Christmas, and she could tell he wanted to get out of there.

She resigned herself to going back inside, with a sudden heavy inescapable dread that outweighed even her fear of being crushed alive by this machine.

Lucid Dreaming (Part Deux)

The light switch wouldn't turn on (always my first clue). It usually takes me a few seconds to realize it, and sometimes I have to check more than one light to make sure. Then comes that rush of feeling, like sailing down a rollercoaster ramp at top speed; I know I'm dreaming, and am aware of it. With this comes total freedom, but I usually restrain myself out of fear of the unknown.

I decide to throw caution to the wind tonight, and walk through the sliding glass door onto my balcony. I watch myself walk through it like a knife through butter, see my hands and feet appear on the other side. I walked through with a little too much force, however, and immediately launch myself off the edge of the balcony, to focus on my flying skills before I have time to contemplate it. I have the thought, and it happens; mind-bocy coordination.

I fly thrillingly over the backyard for a few seconds, before thinking too much (always my downfall). When I start to freak out about flying, I fall splat on the ground and wake up.

Next time I need to focus on flying with confidence, and eradicate the fear somehow in order to go further.

Possession

I had been out riding my bicycle. It was one of those days that was vibrant and electric. It had just rained, and the grass was that other-worldly green, almost alien, or like something you'd see in a magazine that had been color-enhanced. The scenery looked too perfect to be real, with a low-hanging mist blanketing the green hills and the road and the houses, enveloping them and cradling them, hugging them tightly.

My mother was with my aunt in the back garden, drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. She called out to me when she heard me come in, to come and join them. I called back that I would be right there, looking forward to tea, and hoping for miniature frosted cakes as well. There was a good chance there were some of these, since my aunt was here visiting.

I walked to the fireplace mantle, and took off my gloves, and noticed that the clock had stopped ticking, which struck me as odd. I had that feeling of stepping on glass; watching myself step on it and knowing the pain and the blood would be coming soon afterward, but having already put my foot down on it there was nothing I could do but observe the outcome.

I heard a melody in the background, coming from the house itself, from inside the walls, clunking out with the gas pipes and the heating vents. I was unable to move, and was aware that I hadn't taken a breath for quite some time.

I was lifted up into the air, as if by the scruff of my neck, and saw my cat watching in horror from the corner of the room. I heard things falling, but couldn't tell which direction they were coming from, or what they were. I was hoisted, smoothly yet jerking-ly, like a ride at an amusement park from one corner of the room to the other, my face pressed up inches from the walls to view old family photos with heightened awareness and clarity, albeit in a very confused state of mind.

I was shifted from object to object, my nose almost pressed against each one that came before me, and was aware that my feet were two or three feet above the ground, dangling from my legs with no will or direction of their own.

I was herky-jerked around the room for what seemed like several minutes before I was dropped without fanfare on my tailbone, knocking the wind out of me completely.

I heard my mother's voice calling for me from the garden, and I managed to stand up and stumble outside, stunned and speechless.

My mother and aunt were laughing, and engrossed in memories and conversation, and didn't notice my eroded state; maybe they thought I was winded from being outdoors all afternoon? My mother pulled a chair out for me, while talking to my aunt, and I sat down, not knowing what else to do or say.

Seeing that there were, indeed, little frosted cakes, I said nothing, but sat and ate, while my mother and my aunt laughed and talked as if I wasn't there at all.

Cardboard Boxes

Cardboard boxes contain my past. Searching for a misplaced will which ensures my possible future as a natural gas heiress.This has somehow been misplaced.

Instead I find brochures about how to care for your newborn infant from the 1960's, old birthday cards from various relatives and friends, some handmade, dried up acrylic paint in tubes, half-drawn sketches of nature scenes, a book of modeling nudes, family photos from the 1970's, an old roll of toilet paper stained with something, Victorian cut-outs from an old calendar, my grandmother's handwriting on notes written more than forty years ago, teacups and saucers (matching sets, but dozens of different patterns), a soup tureen shaped like a duck, with a mini-duck tureen son or daughter, framed photos from the 1940's, old report cards, catalog order forms, secret thoughts of my mother written in a green spiral notebook, and countless other objects and memorabilia, moments in time, pieces of a life, pieces of a family. Small nuances that make up a greater, elusive whole.

One photographs contains four people I once knew, all of whom are dead now. But the photo still exists, in a cardboard box in my garage.

Existential Void Haiku

Existential Void
rears its ugly head again,
longing, lusting, blank.

Small

Darlene was short. 34-1/2" to be exact. Some called her a "little person", which was dully annoying to her, and at the same time mildly amusing. She was little, compared to most, and she was a person. So even she would concede that she was a little person, although it had a hint or a very large stink of condescension.

Her friend, Barbara would drive her around places and take her to lunch and shopping. Barbara told Darlene that it was because she was so extra-special to her, and Darlene knew she was; she didn't need Barbara to tell her that. She had her shortcomings, like anyone else, but overall she enjoyed her own company and had a healthy sense of who she was and what she wanted. Darlene really thought that Barbara liked to take her places because she liked all the attention that Darlene drew when she walked into a place. All heads would turn, and then slowly look away (leaving trails in the air) as if to say, "I noticed immediately that you are very small, but I'm pretending that it doesn't affect me and that I am not prejudiced against little people; I am above that sort of judgment."

But as Darlene strolled through a shop, or walked to her table at a restaurant, or climbed into her seat at a movie theater, she would see the eyes return to her again and again, sizing her up, calculating figures, and asking silent questions. It was always the same, like purgatory might be. Then if she would speak to the eyes that were glancing and darting, they would look away, or feign an exaggerated sense of casualness or ambivalence, smiling at her and being overly polite while she clenched her teeth and smiled back at them, politely, also, but with a little show of her jolly good heart and generosity of spirit; she forgave them.

Barbara would act like a mother hen, ushering her in and out of places, using her own body to block the flow of traffic and steer the ship of their adventures. This was a relief and a burden to Darlene. Sometimes she welcomed the protection and comfort of her false mother-friend, and sometimes she felt she was suffocating underneath a very large pillow and things would start to swim in front of her, and she would slide into a slippery realm of non-existence and would have to sit down for a few minutes and catch her breath and sometimes even get a cold, wet cloth to put on her forehead. Barbara thought maybe she got dizzy from looking up all the time with her head tilted and her neck craned. Barbara could be very officious, but she was also right about a lot of things a lot of the time. The compound interest of their friendship totaled up to be more equal than the sum of its parts.

They were in a little boutique one afternoon, looking at pretty things; vintage clothing and jewelry, baubles and things to make pretty ladies even prettier. Barbara tried on several items, but none of them worked for her. She left them discarded in the dressing room and wandered around the store, picking things up and putting them down.

Darlene went through the store, collecting a gold lame blouse that she would wear as a cocktail dress, several printed silk scarves, and fabric butterflies and flowers for her hair. She was impetuous and moved quickly, not wanting to try anything on, but wanting to buy something beautiful.

Barbara complimented Darlene on her taste, and her unique fashion sense, beaming and smiling proudly at her little friend, as she paid the woman behind the counter and accepted her bags, all done very officially, as if handing parcels to the Queen of England, or curtsey-ing in a school play, stiffly yet with great pomp and circumstance. Barbara opened the door for Darlene as they exited.

Later that evening, alone in her bedroom, Darlene pinned the butterflies and flowers in her hair, and put on the gold lame blouse-dress, and carried several scarves in her hands at once, and danced around her room like a faerie princess, skipping and singing to herself. Her dress was slightly smock-like, but it was the color of kings and queens, and she dreamed very large and elaborate dreams that night.