JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2006 6:01:15 PM
Subject: Right
I wonder if this is where that guy painting the picture was standing?
http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=aN.47.619681_-122.348911
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 9 May 2006 excerpt ends]
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&layer=tc&cbll=47.619176,-122.348985&panoid=-lfueBIXwUv3LKH8_yDIyw&cbp=12,354.84278861856137,,2,3.587035306919222&ll=47.619407,-122.349037&spn=0,359.99794&z=20
156 4th Ave N, Seattle, WA, United States
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: ----- Original Message ----
From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 2:45:01 PM
Subject: Re: Finally
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 10 May 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Wed, May 10, 2006 2:45:01 PM
Subject: Re: Finally
Kerry Burgess wrote:
It'll take damn near a century to get this unscrewed right.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 10 May 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: ----- Original Message ----
From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 2:45:01 PM
Subject: Re: Finally
the worst time is seeing the plane flying over and waiting..........
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 10 May 2006 excerpt ends]
[ Bill Gates-Microsoft-Corbis-Nazi the cowardly International Terrorist Organization violently against the United States of America actively instigate insurrection and subversive activity against the United States of America with all Bill Gates-Microsoft-Corbis-Nazi staff partners contributors employees contractors lawyers managers of any capacity as severely treasonous criminal accomplices and that are active unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States that actively make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in the United States and in the Severely Treasonous and Criminally Rebellious State of Washington by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings ]
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Chapter 37
At first Stu accepted the sound without question; it was such a typical part of a bright summer morning. He had just passed through the town of South Ryegate, New Hampshire, and now the highway wound through a pretty country of overhanging elms that dappled the road with coins of moving sunlight. The underbrush on either side was thick—bright sumac, blue-gray juniper, lots of bushes he couldn’t name. The profusion of them was still a wonder to his eyes, accustomed as they were to East Texas, where the roadside flora had nothing like this variety. On the left, an ancient rock wall meandered in and out of the brush, and on the right a small brook gurgled cheerily east. Every now and then small animals would move in the underbrush (yesterday he had been transfixed by the sight of a large doe standing on the white line of 302, scenting the morning air), and birds called raucously. And against that background of sound, the barking dog sounded like the most natural thing in the world.
He walked almost another mile before it occurred to him that the dog—closer now, by the sound—might be out of the ordinary after all. He had seen a great many dead dogs since leaving Stovington, but no live ones. Well, he supposed, the flu had killed most but not all of the people. Apparently it had killed most but not all of the dogs, as well. Probably it would be extremely people-shy by now. When it scented him, it would most likely crawl back into the bushes and bark hysterically at him until Stu left its territory.
He adjusted the straps of the Day-Glo pack he was wearing and refolded the handkerchiefs that lay under the straps at each shoulder. He was wearing a pair of Georgia Giants, and three days of walking had rubbed most of the new from them. On his head was a jaunty, wide-brimmed red felt hat, and there was an army carbine slung across his shoulder. He did not expect to run across marauders, but he had a vague idea that it might be a good idea to have a gun. Fresh meat, maybe. Well, he had seen fresh meat yesterday, still on the hoof, and he had been too amazed and pleased to even think about shooting it.
The pack riding easily again, he went on up the road. The dog sounded as if it was just beyond the next bend. Maybe I’ll see him after all, Stu thought.
He had picked up 302 going east because he supposed that sooner or later it would take him to the ocean. He had made a kind of compact with himself: When I get to the ocean, I’ll decide what I’m going to do. Until then, I won’t think about it at all. His walk, now in its fourth day, had been a kind of healing process. He had thought about taking a ten-speed bike or maybe a motorcycle with which he could thread his way through—the occasional crashes that blocked the road, but instead had decided to walk. He had always enjoyed hiking, and his body cried out for exercise. Until his escape from Stovington he had been cooped up for nearly two weeks, and he felt flabby and out of shape. He supposed that sooner or later his slow progress would make him impatient and he would get the bike or motorcycle, but for now he was content to hike east on this road, looking at whatever he wanted to look at, taking five when he wanted to, or in the afternoon, dropping off for a snooze during the hottest part of the day. It was good for him to be doing this. Little by little the lunatic search for a way out was fading into memory, just something that had happened instead of a thing so vivid it brought cold sweat out onto his skin. The memory of that feeling of someone following him had been the hardest to shake. The first two nights on the road he had dreamed again and again of his final encounter with Elder, when Elder had come to carry out his orders. In the dreams Stu was always too slow with the chair. Elder stepped back out of its arc, pulled the trigger of his pistol, and Stu felt a heavy but painless boxing glove weighted with lead shot land on his chest. He dreamed this over and over until he woke unrested in the morning, but so glad to be alive that he hardly realized it. Last night the dream hadn’t come. He doubted if the willies would stop all at once, but he thought he might be walking the poison out of his system little by little. Maybe he would never get rid of all of it, but when most of it was gone he felt sure he would be able to think better about what came next, whether he had reached the ocean by then or not.
He came around the bend and there was the dog, an auburn-colored Irish setter. It barked joyously at the sight of Stu and ran up the road, toenails clicking on the composition surface, tail wagging frantically back and forth. It jumped up, placing its forepaws on Stu’s belly, and its forward motion made him stagger back a step. “Whoa, boy,” he said, grinning.
The dog barked happily at the sound of his voice and leaped up again.
“Kojak!” a stern voice said, and Stu jumped and stared around. “Get down! Leave that man alone! You’re going to track all over his shirt! Miserable dog!”
Kojak put all four feet on the road again and walked around Stu with his tail between his legs. The tail was still flipping back and forth in suppressed joy despite its confinement, however, and Stu decided this one would never make much of a canine put-on artist.
Now he could see the owner of the voice—and of Kojak, it seemed like. A man of about sixty wearing a ragged sweater, old gray pants… and a beret. He was sitting on a piano stool and holding a palette. An easel with a canvas on it stood before him.
Now he stood up, placed the palette on the piano stool (under his breath Stu heard him mutter, “Now don’t forget and sit on that”), and walked toward Stu with his hand extended. Beneath the beret his fluffy grayish hair bounced in a small and mellow breeze.
“I hope you intend no foul play with that rifle, sir. Glen Bateman, at your service.”
Stu stepped forward and took the outstretched hand (Kojak was growing frisky again, bouncing around Stu but not daring to renew his leaps—not yet, at least). “Stuart Redman. Don’t worry about the gun. I ain’t seen enough people to start shootin em. In fact, I ain’t seen any, until you.”
“Do you like caviar?”
“Never tried it.”
“Then it’s time you did. And if you don’t care for it, there’s plenty of other things. Kojak, don’t jump. I know you’re thinking of renewing your crazed leaps—I can read you like a book—but control yourself. Always remember, Kojak, that control is what separates the higher orders from the lower. Control!”
His better nature thus appealed to, Kojak shrank down on his haunches and began to pant. He had a big grin on his doggy face. It had been Stu’s experience that a grinning dog is either a biting dog or a damned good dog. And this didn’t look like a biting dog.
“I’m inviting you to lunch,” Bateman said. “You’re the first human being I’ve seen, at least in the last week. Will you stay?”
“I’d be glad to.”
“Southerner, aren’t you?”
“East Texas.”
“An Easterner, my mistake.” Bateman cackled at his own wit and turned back to his picture, an indifferent watercolor of the woods across the road.
“I wouldn’t sit down on that piano stool, if I were you,” Stu said.
“Shit, no! Wouldn’t do at all, would it?” He changed course and headed toward the back of the small clearing. Stu saw there was an orange and white cooler chest in the shade back there, with what looked like a white lawn tablecloth folded on top of it. When Bateman fluffed it out, Stu saw that was just what it was.
“Used to be part of the communion set at the Grace Baptist Church in Woodsville,” Bateman said. “I liberated it. I don’t think the Baptists will miss it. They’ve all gone home to Jesus. At least all the Woodsville Baptists have. They can celebrate their communion in person now. Although I think the Baptists are going to find heaven a great letdown unless the management allows them television—or perhaps they call it heavenvision up there—on which they can watch Jerry Falwell and Jack van Impe. What we have here is an old pagan communing with nature instead. Kojak, don’t step on the tablecloth. Control, always remember that, Kojak. In all you do, make control your watchword. Shall we step across the road and have a wash, Mr. Redman?”
“Make it Stu.”
“All right, I will.”
They went down the road and washed in the cold, clear water. Stu felt happy. Meeting this particular man at this particular time seemed somehow exactly right. Downstream from them Kojak lapped at the water and then bounded off into the woods, barking happily. He flushed a wood pheasant and Stu watched it explode up from the brush and thought with some surprise that just maybe everything would be all right. Somehow all right.
He didn’t care much for the caviar—it tasted like cold fish jelly—but Bateman also had a pepperoni, a salami, two tins of sardines, some slightly mushy apples, and a large box of Keebler fig bars. Wonderful for the bowels, fig bars, Bateman said. Stu’s bowels had been giving him no grief at all since he’d gotten out of Stovington and started walking, but he liked fig bars anyway, and helped himself to half a dozen. In fact, he ate hugely of everything.
During the meal, which was eaten largely on Saltines, Bateman told Stu he had been an assistant professor of sociology at Woodsville Community College. Woodsville, he said, was a small town (“famous for its community college and its four gas stations,” he told Stu) another six miles down the road. His wife had been dead ten years. They had been childless. Most of his colleagues had not cared for him, he said, and the feeling had been heartily mutual. “They thought I was a lunatic,” he said. “The strong possibility that they were right did nothing to improve our relations.” He had accepted the superflu epidemic with equanimity, he said, because at last he would be able to retire and paint full-time, as he had always wanted to do.
As he divided the dessert (a Sara Lee poundcake) and handed Stu his half on a paper plate, he said, “I’m a horrible painter, horrible. But I simply tell myself that this July there is no one on earth painting better landscapes than Glendon Pequod Bateman, B.A., M.A., M.F.A. A cheap ego trip, but mine own.”
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
“Exactly. There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud’s being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more—that dreams are the psyche’s way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who don’t dream—or don’t dream in away they can often remember when they wake up—are mentally constipated in some way. After all, the only practical compensation for having a nightmare is waking up and realizing it was all just a dream.”
Stu smiled.
“But lately, I’ve had an extremely bad dream. It recurs, like my dream of being crushed to death under the lift, but it makes that one look like a pussycat in comparison. It’s like no other dream I’ve ever had, but somehow it’s like all of them. As if… as if it were the sum of all bad dreams. And I wake up feeling bad, as if it wasn’t a dream at all, but a vision. I know how crazy that must sound.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a man,” Bateman said quietly. “At least, I think it’s a man. He’s standing on the roof of a high building, or maybe it’s a cliff that he’s on. Whatever it is, it’s so high that it sheers away into mist thousands of feet below. It’s near sunset, but he’s looking the other way, east. Sometimes he seems to be wearing bluejeans and a denim jacket, but more often he’s in a robe with a cowl. I can never see his face, but I can see his eyes. He has red eyes. And I have a feeling that he’s looking for me —and that sooner or later he will find me or I will be forced to go to him… and that will be the death of me. So I try to scream, and…” He trailed off with an embarrassed little shrug.
“That’s when you wake up?”
“Yes.” They watched Kojak come trotting back, and Bateman patted him while Kojak nosed in the aluminum dish and cleaned up the last of the poundcake.
“Well, it’s just a dream, I suppose,” Bateman said. He stood up, wincing as his knees popped. “If I were being psychoanalyzed, I suppose the shrink would say the dream expresses my unconscious fear of some leader or leaders who will start the whole thing going again. Maybe a fear of technology in general. Because I do believe that all the new societies which arise, at least in the Western world, will have technology as their cornerstone. It’s a pity, and it needn’t be, but it will be, because we are hooked. They won’t remember—or won’t choose to remember—the corner we had painted ourselves into. The dirty rivers, the hole in the ozone layer, the atomic bomb, the atmospheric pollution. All they’ll remember is that once upon a time they could keep warm at night without expending much effort to do it. I’m a Luddite on top of my other failings, you see. But this dream… it preys on me, Stu.”
Stu said nothing.
“Well, I want to get back,” Bateman said briskly. “I’m halfway drunk already, and I believe there will be thundershowers this afternoon.” He walked to the back of the clearing and rummaged there. A few moments later he came back with a wheelbarrow. He screwed the piano stool down to its lowest elevation, put it in, added his palette, the picnic cooler, and balanced precariously on top of everything else, his mediocre painting.
“You wheeled that all the way out here?” Stu asked.
“I wheeled it until I saw something I wanted to paint. I go different ways on different days. It’s good exercise. If you’re going east, why don’t you come back to Woodsville and spend the night at my house? We can take turns wheeling the barrow, and I’ve got yet another six-pack of beer cooling in yonder stream. That ought to get us home in style.”
“I accept,” Stu said.
“Good man. I’ll probably talk all the way home. You are in the arms of the Garrulous Professor, East Texas. When I bore you, just tell me to shut up. I won’t be offended.”
“I like to listen,” Stu said.
“Then you are one of God’s chosen. Let’s go.”
