Star Island finale chorus (Is their a cure for this restlessness?)

We run with wolves
but we don't run in packs
racing against
the sweat dripping down our backs

Oh! there must be somewhere
that is everywhere
it is here/so I go

Essay trashed version

The common thread between me and any "scene" I have partook in has been people who are restless, self-reliant, well traveled and are mainly self-taught on any skill they have inherited.

In my "adult" years travel, music and literature have all dictated moves I have made in my life.

At a very early age I began to grasp onto the stories of musicians and artists. I searched for obscure films and writings to validate that there was a world out side of the one I knew, I became obsessed with the lives of artist and others who had forced new ways of living for themselves often in spite of comfort or notoriety.

When growing up in Durham, NC my friends slowly began to drop out of high school and leave town. A collection of group houses had opened up that were made up of traveling kids that came and went, the occupants of these houses seemed to all be temporary, they were in crusted in dirt, seemed self reliant and fearless of expectations. They were my age but of a different breed, they had traveled, worked, seen things, experience highs and lows and my face was just pressed up against the glass. Out of a wide circle of friends I was one of the few who finished high school, I went to a film school in Winston-Salem, NC for a year but the stories I heard from my traveling friends made my peers screenplays seem pale and shallow. I had to leave to go travel.

When I first encountered this young traveling culture they seemed to embody all I was looking for. They did things often blindly and were obviously naive but they seemed fearless and accepted failure. Their life style guaranteed obscurity, discomfort but also was exciting, their lives were built on experience and constant movement and escape from the mundane. Suddenly the characters in the books, the musicians were all real and with will power and endurence everything was attainable. Of course it was not all this simple but for my young naive mind everything had just been rewritten.

I spent a summer hopping trains after leaving college, I was impressed at how much the community overlapped. We had gotten our hands on guides that had been compiled by other travelers that held infinite helpful information. Starting as broadly as where the trains go, to places to stay and where to find free food to where a plank of wood had been placed to help cross a creak. I was amazed, here I was apart of a community that existed with structure and thrived on its own world. These became the same reasons I left this community. It was too isolated, too cut off from society and like the community I left for it, I began to find it too isolating and overly controlled by a ideaology that was not my own.

I wanted to continue in the direction but I didn't want to get lost in a scene that held to many standards, I felt it was counter productive to the independetence it hinted at and too much was done in spite. I had my problems with society but I was not ready to turn away from it completely.

When I returned home I searched out other parts of D.I.Y.( do it your self) culture eventually I fell in with a wherehouse space in Winston-Salem, Nc. It was a small town but in this building held a art gallery, art studios, a music venue, a bakery and a coffee shop/bar. The people involved have put the space together from scratch and learned how to do things along the way through a process of trial and error. It was a community of people who had done things their own way but it was still about the greater community as well. I got involved with playing and recording music, starting a bike co-op and showing films. Though I have not lived there for a few years the space still has established a standard of hard work and a fearlessness of learning. Though I have not held onto much of the astetic of the more extreme train hopping community I have continues to travel off the cusp and the knowledge that if you want to go travel a lack of funds need not be a handicap. I have also continued to read literature through all of these phases and now that I’m older and some of my restlessness has eased I would like to spend more of my time writing my own stories and devoting more time to the medium that had inspired me to began what I would call my education witch was started in travel.

SWINE

SWINE

By Dylan Angell




The pig came stomping his great hooves down the dirt path leaving a cloud of dust that hovered with the moments behind.
His shirt missing half of its buttons exposed his expansive stomach, bouncing and creating a tide as his stomach motioned with the unnecessary pounding of his two legs through the dust. The birds squawked at the beast like trumpets blaring as if preparing a town for invasion. It was barely midday and the pig was already drunk on champagne, busy yelling his curses to the birds and damning the sun. The taste of vile entered any mouth that bared witness to the beast. A strange power of hypnosis was released from the pig's belly as it jiggled, pointing in all directions inducing sea sickness or food poisoning from a food uneaten.
Soon all who bared witness became impotent, love became lust, all wants or needs soured perversely. Old people felt wrinkles scarring into their skin and teeth loosen. As the sun brightened, all became soft,pale,yellowed and old. The pig's brown rock hooves shook the town and nostalgia hit all the people--feeling as if an era had ended and a new awful day had begun and would not end.

In a small garden, four retired school teachers sat drinking their afternoon tea. The day had began beautifully and they sat among exotic flowers when suddenly a cloud of dust hovered upon them. Their tea turned the color of mud. A small swarm of dust found its way into their eyes and skin and they began to cough wildly. The women gasped as the beast appeared and the smell of shit and vile permeated the air. The beast reached with his giant, thumbless hands and grabbed the one named Pearl by the collar of her flower print dress.
His claws tore into her and he began to slide his mucus-drenched muzzle on her bare, wrinkled breasts that lay defeated like rotten fruit. The same bosom which many children had rested their heads in their darkest moments  now was taking part in its own moment of terror. The other women froze like cowards and then ran leaving their brittle little friend to be engulfed by the great beast twice her size. He stretched Pearl's skin. Her eyes rolled back into her head, refusing the moment.
Pearl's lungs released a sound she had never heard before. It broke through the chords in her throat, layer by layer,finally releasing a banshee wail. This was not a cry for help for any human ear; no human could help her. To them this scream may well have been silence. This was a prayer. She waited and waited and no mercy came. Her silent prayer grew louder and louder until her voice collapsed. Her lord had gone deaf to her cry and she was now orphaned and mute.
When the eyes opened to the wrinkled body, its face swollen and legs weak, it stood naked. The pig gone,her clothes gone, and her mind elsewhere trying to come back. The body composed itself and began to move. It walked down the empty streets taking small steps. No eyes spotted it. People walked by but did not look towards it. " Why?" it asked looking towards the sky.

If thy father is no hope, the children must work. All life leaving her, as a body that is no longer her own, she laid on the floor of her little home. Pearl stared to the ceiling, thinking of all the children she had known. There was not a child in the town that she had not touched. In fifty years of teaching, most of her children had grown up and become important people in the city and she had taught their children's children. That night with the last of her strength,she wrote many letters since her voice no longer functioned. She called her children together to seek revenge to express the scream she could not manage. The characters were in place, everything was moving forward. That night she died in her sleep unable to see her plan hatched.



Walls of the city were splashed with glue. A stickiness floated threw the air. One's breath could get stuck to one's own throat. Young boys on bicycles rode through the city throwing posters up on the walls. Posters that read "Elect the beast!" and "The pig is the new way!". The whole city was drunk on champagne; people were fornicating and vomiting in the street. Children of all ages were out burning and looting the city they had built. All marriages dissolved and no rules or rights were respected. All men of business dropped their life's work and devoted all their time and energy to the beast. The street was filled with trash and human excrement. It went on for months. 

With the election just weeks away people stopped celebrating, for they were not sure if the beast was real. There had been no sign of the beast. They began to clean up the streets and neighborhoods. The law was restored. Then one very quiet day the beast emerged into the town on a small platform in the city square and announced himself. He stood alone with just a microphone staring into a invisible crowd. 

"My people show yourselves"! Lights flickered inside the homes.

 Silence.

 "If you are my people let me see you"!  Suddenly the sound of windows breaking, women screaming, and humans shouting filled the square and a crowd of people exploded onto the street. "Shut up!", he yelled, and they followed his word.  "You are all pathetic." He grinned. "You ask of me but ask nothing of yourselves.  Look at you.  You have clung too tightly to your pathetic lives. You have all married into mundane routines and empty rules stemmed from no truth! You worry about money and status but nothing that will cause you true death. If you elect me, don't elect me! Don't go to the voting booth! Stay here and burn the city! Break the windows and take the shards and smash them in the eyes of the statues of our former leaders! Loot and empty the banks, bring the money to this square and create a huge fire! Drag your clothes and your furniture, your precious antiques and burn them all! Paint your faces black! Don't elect the beast-- become the beast! "

Hundreds of jaws dropped in blind laughter and a marching band tread through the square. That night the city could have been seen from space it burned so bright. The city chanted all in a choir as one voice. As if a switch was flipped and all humanity left them  they drank and screwed as animals, flinging shit into the fire. It went on like this till the first light of morning. 

In a small dark corner a lone man emerged. He was well-dressed in a suit; he was a reminder of the days of order. He walked out on the platform and toward the microphone. The crowd was silent as if they were all children waiting to be scolded. The former mayor began to speak.
"Hello my city" he said with tears in his eyes,"I would like to share some final thoughts. First off I would like to congratulate the beast." The crowd was silent.
Second I would like to offer him the key to the city!"
The pig laughed.
"A key  for a door I've already kicked in ?"
The mayor cleared his throat. His voice shook as he tried to find the words.

"I would like to say one more thing to my people before I bid farewell. You have spoken that the beast is the new way and you have acted on this, and the beast now acts as man. So we must make him feel vulnerable as he has made us as men feel".
The pig sat confused. The mayor looked towards him.
" I have one more gift I would like to give you."
"What?"
" An apple."

The mayor handed him a plump red apple and the pig placed it in his mouth. He raised his frail, small hands and swung, pushing the apple deeper into the pigs throat. With jaw stretched, the pig began to choke. The people's smiles straightened and their eyes squinted as if they had business to attend to. Suddenly, four men came out with a rope and ran in circles around the pig and they dragged him into the square. Around the beast the city burned and people began to drag pieces of wood into a great heap and set it ablaze in the middle of the square. They slid the pig into the fire. The pig's silent eyes expressed true terror. His pink flesh burned black and he squealed with pain.
Soon every mother, father, and child came to the square with knives,forks,shovels-- whatever tools they could find and they began to devour the beast like ants on a fallen fruit.

As the pig screamed its last grunt and life left its eyes, a bearded man with blood around his mouth stood up. "We have tempted the pig, and sought revenge!" The crowd cheered. "Now we can rebuild our lives!" another yelled. The crowd cheered again. The mayor stood before the microphone.
"You fools! You fell too deep into the beast's ways! There are no homes! There is no food! We have nothing to rebuild!"
With this declaration, anger possessed the people. With no one to blame they all began to fight one another. Within twenty four days they had all starved or been slaughtered.  Only the way of the beast lived on.

THE END

Pulling from the table

Now that she's gone

I don't wait for her

There is

a new anticipation 

waiting for something

knowing nothing 

is on it's way

and knowing nothing 

will move 

 unless I make it move

so I go

A child's note written on the wall of the bath in soap

The world is a small, chaotic maze and we are all insane 
I, myself, have already lived through 3 wars and I am only 9 years old 
I want to live in a world where sympathy is not a muscle you exercise, but a basic function
(like eating and fucking)
Tell me a place where man is sympathetic and I will move into that house 
Until that day I will be homeless, cause no home built by man is safe
Man only builds structures that will eventually collapse on itself

I will sleep outdoors with my eyes tightly shut
(so the light of the stars do not keep me awake through dark nights) 

I have known many woman, they scrape my back with a bar of soap like fingers on a chalk board before I go to bed
They tell me time will move and I will stay still
My skin will wrinkle in the tub, but little more will change 
They call my mother and tell her how they are worried about me in exchange for ancient secrets I have forgotten
Terrible story that have decomposed in my memory
Secrets that are no longer mine and only live in the world of gossip

I try to turn myself off, I close my eyes and turn off my ears
Soon I awake gasping for air! 

My dreams are so heavy Im am afraid they will crack my skull! 
Though this world is heavy upon our backs I refuse to turn the lights off
I will leave them on so when I do come home, I will recognize it and go in

My Education

In the last 7 years of travel and many self inflicted fresh starts  I have bravely/foolishly found myself in place's I know little about.   I thought  a preface of history  may somehow inhibit me from a fresh experience.  Somehow the history would come to me if I just threw myself knee deep into the culture.   I felt strongly about going in blind and come back knowing just what I saw. I had a distaste for history books and used literature as if it was fact.  Personal stories held more truth to me and I thought if I went out and met people this would be education enough. 

  My distaste for  history books was a natural result of a hatred for public education,just as much as my restlessness that led to these travels were.  I try to put aside a bitterness that I was never in a class that made me interested in history and that it was never discussed in a real way.  Now I wished I had known more about the war in Croatia  that kept me from wondering off the path that led me to the beach because their may be land mines left over from a war that had ended 10 years before.  I walked through history to sun bathe. I wish I knew more about Ataturk before going to Istanbul where their are more pictures and statues of this man then there are trees. 

This past winter I began to look into volunteer work abroad for the summer,  I was willing to pay and do grunt work and put my love of travel into use.  Of course this would also further my education in the world but everything I applied toward rejected me for my lack of education.  Of course this is bullshit,but I began to understand that these are institutions and they where built with college students in mind.  Students who may have a sense of history and will be able to use this on their resumes. 

I  began to think about how literature had guided me to my travels and how I  wished to study literature further.  Literature and film opened me up to an interest in the culture behind the art and that lead me to traveling.  

As I prepare to go back to school,  I have to hold my breath, and put aside my restless tendencies  and not resist the order of a classroom so I can continue a education that began in chaos.