A Descent Into The Maelstrom

My favorite story by Edgar Allen Poe is a surprisingly harrowing tale about the force of Nature. No supernatural plot point, no plunging the depths of human depravity. It's a story about brothers caught in a whirlpool off the Norwegian coast. There's a narration trick, for starters. The initial protagonist becomes a mere listener for the remainder of the story, after he visits the site of a notorious recurring maelstrom with one of it's only survivors.

The description of the watery destruction scrapes my psyche for some reason. Perhaps it's the absence of villain, the futility of escape, the visage of ships and brothers disappearing into the vast, unstoppable watery swirl. It's unlike any other scary story I've ever read.

But there's more. There's a solution to a puzzle, a mystery solved, that saves the life of the storyteller. Suffice to say that modern concepts of pattern recognition and situational awareness are keys to survival. That, and choosing the right piece of wood in the churning sea to hold onto.

I often think of the story as I stand in the center of the crowded, seething, stinking courtrooms of the Poverty Capital of America, where I beg for justice and mercy for the poor, as my father did before me before he died of a liquor-soaked, broken heart. I clutch the podium provided, and hang on for survival.

I watch for patterns in the behaviors of judges and prosecutors and cops and clients. I pay attention to the cameras and microphones and watch my every word. I note the presence of people in the gallery behind me, I expect they are gauging my persuasion, my character, with each poor meat patty in the prison/industrial complex fast food restaurant I represent, until it's their turn to stand with me at the podium.

I think of my own solution to the puzzle, my own mystery solved, that grants me an almost beatific buoyancy amid the swirling eddy of despair and prejudice and ignorance and addiction and incompetence and corruption that nearly engulfs me each day.

The solution is this: Courtroom Classroom Theater Church. And I have wisely chosen the right piece of wood.

The Alchemical Routine

Bloomsday drives east, towards Clevelandia, on the shoreway that hugs the southern banks of Lake Erie. it is the first business day of 2012. His mind reels backward in time, to Prague and the alchemists, their transformations of base metals to gold, guided by elemental recipes.

He exits at East 9th and takes a quick left, northward. Ahead, the street seems to drop off into the icy water. White foaming waves crash over the breakwall, screaming into the left ear of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's pyramid. Another left, and he sees the giant, trinitarian turbine looming in front of the Great Lakes Science Center and its massive sphere. Then, a strange tribute to fallen firefighters, two rescue-suited statues overcome by the three-storied flames, footsteps from the turbine's base. Then comes Browns stadium. Brown, the earthen hue of dirt cast upon the annual grave of hopes we bury each year in this garish orange vault.

As Bloomsday vrooms to his Port of Clevelandia parking spot, he notes the succession: water of the lake, wind of the turbine, fire of the memorial, earth of Browns Stadium. Water. Wind. Fire. Earth.

He passes under West 3rd to the gated entrance to his city's port, and notices the port is...busy. Unusually busy. Cargo ships, containers, trucks, flatbeds with mysterious, large objects tethered under opaque plastics.

All the elements for transformation are here, he muses. Ripe for the commingling.