Character Sketch of Moleman/The Scavenger

On the east side of town is a series of tenement buildings filled with all kinds of people, ranging from the mid-level drug dealer to the struggling single-mother on welfare. These buildings are coincidentally called the New Hope Projects, like some sort of sick joke about the nature of social mobility in the American metropolis. Most people outside the know are oblivious to the set of culture that emerges from a poor group of people in close proximity. There are stories and there are legends of people and events that never truly get forgotten. One such legend lives inside building B in room 425. He is known as the scavenger.

The scavenger is really a perfect name for him as he never loses anything, but accrues more and more. Those who see him migrate to and from his room say he always comes back with bundles, but never leaves with anything. There is a certain level of acquiescence as to leave him alone: uncertainty looms from behind his closed and latched door. He’s a source of mystery and almost a source of pride to the projects. His nickname permeates the dankest drug dealer’s frame of project culture and the rhymes of the children playing hopscotch and jumprope.

The wind of the projects whispers of big drug connections and a forgotten family in Eastern Europe. The children joke about his mole-like countenance, his bent back and the black overcoat he wears. “1-2-3-4. Moleman hides behind the door. 5-6-7-8. Ugly face and big-ass weight.” The teenagers mock him until he passes them, at which point he becomes quiet. “They say those bags is body parts.” “Man, please, that room don’t stank.” “Like you ever seen it.” And so on. Stories get made up and stories get forgotten, but an overarching stench of the unknown gets carried forth and perhaps even a level of respect for the scavenger gets exhibited.

The truth of the matter is that the scavenger has an unhealthy obsession with getting the most out of his money. Every day he ventures to traveling agencies and free museums and stocks up on all the brochures. He needs them to know he is getting the most out of his life. It started out funny, but as it continued, the shopkeepers and security began chasing him out: “one brochure per person, you ugly fuck.” So he has to resort to less obvious tactics, like soliciting more beautiful people, several dozen a day. The Japanese tourists with the camera who speak nearly no lick of English. The laughing hipsters with jingling change in their front shirt pockets. Some days it’s easy come, easy go, but other days the police chase him and he has to drop his brochure bags and the police catch him and beat him with his night sticks with threats of mental institutions and the big freeze.

And so he lives. And so the projects spread its myth of a man so far rooted into the underground he has no human connection.

Working Prologue for Current Book

Prologue

It’s called the windy city, and in truth it is windy. It comes from the number of people conversing in the subway stations and the prattle arising amongst the consumption of coffee and the business deals going awry and the minority neighborhoods whispering in fear of the police state. It comes from a million things and it comes from one thing that holds central to the essence of humanity: what is it to be human, to fear, to love and to communicate? If you listen to the wind you can hear the voices warning about tax hikes and the elections. It’s winter and it’s Chicago. A lot of people claim to love it, but they lie because the wind is ubiquitous and the wind is cold and it cuts not only to your bones, but to your soul and it says that you need to go inside and wait. Because humans do hibernate, although we lie to ourselves. To hibernate is to be indoors or to be sheltered or to huddle close for warmth and though it may be cold outside, the warmth of human truth keeps us warm.

I hate the winter. Chicago winters are cold and cloudy and windy and miserable. I wrap myself in commodities and personal invitations when it comes. Used to drink whiskey or cheap champagne just to feel a little warmer inside but it turns out that it isn’t healthy for you. You live through enough of these and complain, God, I always complain, but you end up at least respecting it for its power. Winter demonstrates that you can’t win in regards to nature. We bend to its rules and realize when it has some sort of sublime majesty that we can’t ever emulate the same thing because to be sublime is to be superhuman. So we strive in our sciences and art and we feel as though we’re getting a little closer and I begin to ask myself whether or not we’re doing it until I see my friends or relations conquer cancer and my cynicism erase itself.

I live on the thirty-second story of a big building and enjoy the view. The key of Chicago is to know when you’re winning and when you’re losing and as long as you’re on some sort of high floor, you know that while you can’t beat the sublime, you can at least enjoy that strange feeling of terror you get from whatever it is that dictates your mind. I watch the storms in the winter and the lake in the summer. The summer requires that people go outside. The winter is useful for having people over. There are pros and cons for everything and naturally I have some things that I feel more akin to, like the summer, but I can at least recognize that draw of some of the other stuff too. I don’t like to live in black and whites. I don’t quite have concrete beliefs, just things that are close to them, because I feel that if someone brings up a better argument or if there is a small case for something else, then it should be considered. I do like summer, that much is true: I like it a lot, but I will hold out through winter as I can see the parts of it that can be attractive. The snow looks pretty when it falls, as it is now. It lingers in beauty on the sidewalks for a few hours and then heavy boots and salt corrupts it, twisting it into a slushy residue of the purity that originally the earth. But it’s like God knew that we weren’t going to like winter, so He decided that we could at least have something pretty, and so snow was created. Thanks.

From my view, I can watch the snow collapse upon the lesser buildings. It gathers on antennas and folds upon the rooftops. Snow is really pretty. There’s really no need to explain any more than that.

I’m really only writing this beginning to give a little bit of my personality to the reader. Apparently, I’m something of an enigma. If you couldn’t tell from the cover of the book, my name is Regimund Fuko. I get funny looks when I say that. What kind of name is Fuko? Some sort of perversion of Japanese? I don’t really know to be honest. I was born with it. And I think Regimund is a fairly regal name, recalling the monarchy of the old world or at least the pseudo-aristocracy of the old United States. Sometimes I wonder whether my parents were simply playing some sort of joke on me, but the name has served me well. It’s unique, I suppose. I’ve never actually met another Regimund, and outside of my family, I’ve never met another Fuko. I kind of like it to be honest.

The year is 2010 and I am well set in my ways. I am an elderly youngster. I am thirty three years old and have come from a strange past. Not like some sort of science-fiction thing, though I wouldn’t be in complete opposition if that were the case, but rather I’ve done a lot of things that the populace would consider different. It’s where I draw a lot of my controversy. In my time, I’ve written several books and published a lot of short fiction. I’m sure you’ve read some of them; why else would you be reading this?

My writing allows me to live on the thirty second floor and owning my own publishing house also allows me to make a bit more money than people make from mere writing. It’s not like a musician where you can sell merch in a gesture to draw funds from different people. No one wants a “R. Fuko 2005 World Tour” t-shirt. No one wants a tote bag with my name on it. That would be silly. Instead, I make a lot of money and save it for a future that I hope I am having now. My works are best-sellers and a bunch of them are considered pretty damn good. Hopefully that trend continues as I write to be lauded. That is the true calling of the writer. We write in order that we may be listened to and viewed as some sort of disturbed philosopher or pre-natal prophet that really only prophecies the present. We write as we cater to the present and we say things that really only are created from the people we know or the places we have been. Read to gain knowledge and perspective. Write to vomit your soul upon some pages that may be seen or may be passed or ridiculed. It matter and it doesn’t, because of the catharsis that is received from creating anything.

Creation.

Sand (lyrics for a song)

I woke up in a pit of sand
A darkened world with blunted land
Full of darkness mystery
An unbeknownst old history
And lifted myself from off the ground
Flickered my eyes round and round
Saw nothing but decay and death
And just kept looking holding breath

I wandered like a broken watch
Amidst the aching land of rot
Waiting for light or life or faith
Lingering lost and like a wraith

I guess it started long ago
the sun was high and the weeds were low
Before the age of hate and war
When love existed, but nevermore
The skies all shrieked like dying birds
The plains eradicated all the herds
And men became like primal beasts
And hell was real, not just for priests

The bombs went off and lit the world
And holy ghosts were then unfurled
As men yelled out and cried to god
Cause we were dead, decayed and flawed

I wandered like a broken watch
Amidst the aching land of rot
Waiting for light or life or faith
Lingering lost and like a wraith

And I'm coming to terms with the idea
I might not exist

I forgot myself today (lyrics for a song)

I forgot myself today
I left me in the cold
And all the car horns in the wind
Sounded weak and old
But it wasn't my body
It was more like my mind
So I'm asking you to go outside
Maybe my essence you could find

I lost my purity long ago
It cackled in the snow
And the white ground covered it up with fate
Cause that's the way things go
There's only one way to procreate
But it makes you lose your soul
And the human race lives longer on
But the world just takes its toll

And I'm not just melancholy now
I see this happening
The world just turns and leaves you there
And no ones listening
But that's just what you're supposed to think
The world passing you by
So you grab that fucker and hold it tight
Cause life's not just to die

Poetry

Poetry is all about truthfulness

Also language

But seriously about truth

It's like. So there are these words

And ways that they're supposed to connect

But there's also the idea of conveyance

Which means

That language is supposed to bridge thoughts

And feelings

From one mind to another

So in this way it fails

But poetry removes a little bit about that

And tries to visually demonstrate it

And allows for words to tinsel

Non-sequitur framework

But it also fails

?

Untitled Poem (Working Title)

There's a sailor who's lost
In a cemetery
And he's putting his ear to the granite
Lifting the grass and determining
The direction of the wind

The clouds are impartial
The ether is hidden

A mole roots around
Licentiously
Pushing the sacred to the outskirts
For what is it looking?
What is calling?

Beneath
The world
Explodes

There's an eagle
Whispering to the trees
Searching for a great spirit
Its piercing eyes play tricks on its heart

The trees are old
This mossy rock is old

On the moon is a rocketship
So it goes

On the Nature of the Soul

Afterwards, I wondered whether our souls had taken the form of smoke.

At the time, there were seven of us. In the room a flattened mattress pad, Christmas lights and an open window. The piece was stocked with salvia, a powerful legal hallucinogen that quickly materializes in mental motions and dissipates into nothingness only minutes after. A green grass-like substance, looking common enough, like straightened sticks of green tea. Crushed and furrowed like a marionette with severed strings. It collapses into a bowl with relative ease.

The first took a big hit, lighting the herb and inwardly howling the substance. Capricious breaths mounted an offensive against the brain and the lungs and expanded once inside. Robert held his breath and exhaled out of the open window, melancholy and overwrought with patience. Then the giggles hit and his hands went to his face and he crumpled into the corner, uttering a noise whose underlying assertion could not be distinguished as happiness or mania.

“Oh my God, you guys,” he ejaculated. Laughter circled the room as he writhed in ecstasy.

“I have to try this”

“What is it like?”

“It’s like a movie, guys. I’m in Blockland.” Another hysterical fit of laughter rode through the room.

The piece rotated to the packing guru. Richard tinseled the bowl with more salvia and packed it before handing it over to Tim, who nervously glanced at Russell, still petting himself between sob-like hiccups of laughter in the corner. Tim lit the salvia and inhaled deeply, holding his breath until he couldn’t take it anymore. He turned towards the window and exhaled, immediately engulfed in a fit of giggles.

“It’s hitting me,” he whispered, red and giggly. “It’s like I’m really high.”

“Do you see anything?”

“No, I’m just really high.”

“I gotta try this,” Daniel said sternly, taking the piece from Tim. “I don’t care if I die doing this.”

The moonlight pierced through the window and etched its allowed silhouette onto the mattress. We all looked outside and listened, but only holes of selfish laughter and illusion filled our ears.

We watched Daniel light the salvia and inhale. And silence took the room hostage: even the magical euphoria of the others had drowned off and was replaced by a sense of reverence and we asked ourselves whether something holy was happening. Daniel’s mouth didn’t leave the piece for what seemed like an eternity, remaining steadfast even when we thought we knew it wouldn’t. Our eyes circled the room, perusing the reality of ourselves and of the situation, only finding disbelief and insecurity in each others’ eyes. Daniel put the piece down and moved towards the open window. A cloud moved, permitting the moonlight to fill his face.

And from the angle I saw, it looked like he might howl to the moon and embrace some primal instinct we had all forgotten so long ago that used to make us human. But his eyes just stared outwards and I wondered what he saw as the smoke seeped slowly from his mouth, arcing out to the silver-lining of clouds, the moonlight, the stars and into the ether that would forever be unknown to man.

The smoke settled somewhere far beyond what I could see or imagine and all I could think was that maybe our souls had left the room and found something better, leaving our bodies behind somewhere between the heavens and the unknown depths of nothingness.