Appalachian Galapagos (2 page)
Now, before you start thinking I'm no better than one of them fellows on the street corner selling a couple hits of well-being and before you start thinking that I gladly lie to prove a point, let me tell you this—
Facts are thought to be as sacrosanct as they are, merely because people have yet to disprove them. Since the last time I checked, the world and a pancake are geometrically different, therefore it seems that facts tend to have their own sort of evolution as they are born, grow and then die.
Let us not forget about faith, however.
Faith is the entire reason I am here today.
Faith has killed millions with its power of obfuscation.
Faith, that silly thing without a definition that allows one person to believe in the Bible and the other to believe in
Mad Magazine
, each person with such ungracious hospitality they would kill one for reading the other.
Faith, which like facts, can be changed by the natural inequities of human tampering resulting in the perfection of a Kipling Conundrum.
So, my partners, my co-conspirators in this great sham we call Blind Faith, consider me to be nothing more than the person who sits inside your skull and asks the eternal Big 3...
...What?
...How?
...Why?
Think of me as a rather large, un-green Jiminy Cricket who can advise you as only your conscience can. Most importantly, think of me by my own true name—I am Professor Elvis G. Giddy and I thank you for your invitation to speak.
The question is, when this is all done, will you return that thanks? Or will you string me up on a pole?
You know, it's a strange irony receiving this invitation as I did. Me and my Eugenia Joe were sitting upon the porch drinking some of our Kudzu Sun Teas when the mailman came and delivered the invitation. Seems that some of you here felt the need for me to speak upon such a tense and uneasy topic. Someone believed that I was a person to speak and elucidate without truly unleashing the inherent devastation
Darwinistic
dictums tend to trend.
Of course, the fact that the University of Appalachia is the one who wants to discuss Darwinism is the actual irony. Appalachia, a region stretching from the north of Maine to the south of Georgia. A band of mountains that truly shows no political, regional or social affiliation. Really it's nothing more than a geological formation—just a long ridge of fairly mediocre mountains that do nothing more than break up the monotony of driving across the rolling woodlands of the Eastern United States by offering a few vistas and a few interesting folks to meet.
Which interestingly enough is what sailors once thought about the Galapagos Islands.
Tell me if anything sounds familiar here…
The Galapagos Islands...
Small
no, tiny
out of the way
unimportant
something easily overlooked in the grand scope of things.
A group of islands that truly shows no political, regional or social affiliation. Really it's nothing more than a geological formation. As many would say, merely a group of fairly small islands that did nothing more than break up the virtually never-ending monotony of the Pacific Ocean before the sailors could feast upon the sights, sounds and sirens of South America. All these islands had to offer was some nuts, some berries and a few strange animals.
The major difference between the two, I suppose, is that Mr. Darwin never traveled to Appalachia. As far as I know, he never even heard of it. But, and this we do know, he did travel to the Galapagos and here are the facts. Darwin traveled there aboard the HMS Beagle in the year 1835 and the divergence of species that he observed in those isolated islands helped set him on the path to the theory of evolution.
Darwin's observations of these unique animals, their remarkable adaptation to a hostile environment, and the subtle variations between races of the same species living on different islands led directly to his theory of natural selection; and it is with this theory that he explains how the vast multitude of species on the Earth have evolved from a simple, singled-celled ancestors.
So, what might he have thought of the cultural and physical divergences found within Appalachia?
Did the vast multitude of species in America evolve from that simple low organism called the Redneck?
Or are we entirely discounting this heretical theory and embracing the words of God's anointed?
The Jesus people say that all Darwinists are Hell-bound and insane. 'After all,' they say, 'Adam wasn't a chimp and Eve most certainly wasn't an orangutan.' In that, I tend to agree, for unlike Darwin, I haven't lost my religion and the belief that the mother of my species was the second cousin to one of Clint Eastwood's co-stars is just plain too much for a simple man like me to handle.
And yes, you heard me right. Darwin lost his religion. Once devout, he was unable to make room for God in his self-created cosmos. According to Dawkins, in his book
The Selfish Gene
, Darwin said later in life—'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the digger wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.'
I suppose he has a point.
So who was it who created the man with no-legs who propels himself from place to place upon a cheap skateboard, knuckles bruised, soul wounded, despised by the whole?
Who was it who created the babbling woman who
spits
on cars because they refuse to answer the riddles of life?
Who was it who created a father who would rather use the scarred back of his favorite son to put out his cigarette rather than the plastic ashtray he stole from the local fast food restaurant?
Is evolution merely a scapegoat we created so we wouldn't get pissed off at this whole divine tragic comedy?
I say if God has a problem with this whole Darwin thing, he should just make it go away. That'll solve the whole she-bang, as long as that action by God doesn't prove that whole pesky survival of the fittest theorem. That one might hurt.
Contents
Preface:
Excerpt
from a Speech given by Professor Elvis G. Giddy on Survival of the Fittest – Edward Lee
or
Up Shit's Creek With A Case of Beer and No Fucking Paddles
Weston
Ochse
and David Whitman
Weston
Ochse
(Originally published in The Edge, 2000)
David Whitman
Weston
Ochse
David Whitman
The Smell of Leaves Burning in Winter
Weston
Ochse
(Originally published in Electric Wine, 2000)
David Whitman
Weston
Ochse
(Originally published in Sinister Element, 1998)
David Whitman
(Originally published in Primordial Magazine, 1999)
Weston
Ochse
David Whitman
Weston
Ochse
David Whitman
(Originally published in Sinister Element 1998)
Weston
Ochse
Flying Through Heavens With Beer In Hand
David Whitman
or better known as
(Up Shit's Creek With A Case of
Beer and No Fucking Paddles)
Chapter 1:
Bradbury...Bewitched...Mullets...Darwin...Stupid Is As Stupid Does...WWF Free For All...Chimneys and Easter Bunnies...Goldilocks and Picky Bears
Frank stared out upon the green, easy river, wondering why he had ever returned.
Many years had passed since he'd even thought of the
Hiawasee
much less rafted upon it. Yet now, confronted with the perfect mnemonic of the real thing, a memory that he had successfully forgotten resurfaced like a rotting catfish.
Memories of a Dandelion Wine summer, a boy scout canoe trip, marshmallow roasting and ghost stories around a campfire, the frivolity of adolescence and his best friend dead...half-eaten.
Bloody lacerations mixed with the unmistakable reality of teeth-marks.
Ragged spaces where organs and limbs had once called home.
Strips of flesh and ligaments that looked too much like red yarn dangling from a body which had been wedged in the crux of an oak.
And within the congealing mess beneath it all, within a pool of green, gray and red body fluids, was a lone handprint.
Unmistakable.
Out of place.
And impossibly huge.
"Hey Frank! Stop your
dreamin
' and give me a hand!"
Frank spun just in time to get a twelve pack in the chest, the impact sending him teetering along the edge of the crumbly clay shore. Fighting to maintain his balance, he glanced fearfully at the muddy, rushing water below.
At the last second, he was yanked to safety. In Jimmy's stoned stare, he saw his own fear reflected from the mirror sheen of too much weed. He needed to get a hold of himself.
"Thanks, man," Frank said.
He grinned as he noticed he had somehow managed to hang on to the beer.
"Thanks
nothin
'. I was more worried about the beer than your big city ass."