Merry Christmas from the Gardener brothers

I just wanted to write and tell everyone that the Gardener brothers wish you a very merry Christmas. We are now united in Sioux Falls.

Our first album, I Will Tear Down My Barns, is now officially released. We will have to find a way to sell it/give it away.

For Christmas, we got Leo a tie imported from Paris. We got Horace a beat up old copy of the Little Flowers of Saint Francis which he said he will read very slowly. He has loved Brother Juniper for a long time. Leo and Horace got me a very nice pen to write down my thoughts. They attached a card I appreciated, which said,

Dear Sebastian,

You are an engine. Our engine. Keep it real.

Love,

Horace and Leo
Your brothers

The first thing I wrote with my new pen:

The excellence of brotherly love
is a heavy solid staff. My hand
is supple still. I have been
told by dear ones whom I trust
that this is all right. So far.

Peace be to you, reader!

Leo and Horace A-OK

I have a few pieces of news, which I think everyone will enjoy.

One is that I got a phone call from Horace and Leo to the effect that everything is fine. I recorded the conversation so I'll report the good parts verbatim. If I can figure it out I may post the phone call as a podcast. There were some really nice thoughts in it, both from Leo and Horace.

The other piece of news is that I finally put up some of our glamor shots on a new web album. They are for those fans of ours who aren't satisfied seeing us in our unpredictable shows given in unpredictable locations in small midwestern cities. I will post here whenever there's new material there. I think the official release of our album will be tomorrow, so we'll get more mp3s up on our myspace page, and maybe find a way to sell the albums as well. But there are already some copies floating around out there. We met a guy at one of our shows who bought all the ones we had with us.

But to get to the point. I was fiddling with some of our tracks this morning when the phone rang. I picked it up.

"Hi, Sebastian," the voice said.

"Is this Leo?" I said.

"No, Horace," said Horace.

"Oh, hi Horace," I said to Horace. "Is Leo still being held captive by the anarchists?"

"No, I got him," Horace said.

"That's great," I said. "Tell me what happened."

"I'll let Leo."

Then Leo got on the phone.

"That was really something," he said.

"Explain!" I said.

"Well, so the anarchists had me give this talk. And I told them that even though I wasn't crazy, if I was, I would resent the fact that they had imprisoned me in their revolutionary library. And this seemed to make them ashamed and one of them said, 'What the hell were we thinking?' But then I recited your poem about how Jesus turns people into fish, and they became afraid and they locked me in the revolutionary library again and they said Christmas was bad for a bunch of reasons."

"I slept there and in the morning a few of them let me out, saying that they thought the others were totally insane and they thought all of this was nuts and nothing made sense anymore and they thought this anarchist collective sucked. That was what they kept saying, 'This anarchist collective sucks. I hate it.' I was really confused. Which I guess I'm used to."

"I asked them if they would let me out because it was Christmas Eve Day, and then they got uncomfortable and asked me why I cared about that, and I said, 'Look, I'm not going to tell you about me and the Lord because direct speech on the subject would only make you angry, and so I'm going to have to speak in riddles.' But of course by saying 'the Lord' I had spoken directly and we got into a big argument about all kinds of things. I guess I knew saying 'me and the Lord' would really get them going, because normally it's not something I say. The argument went on for quite some time. And they said they understood why the others had locked me in the library, and the things I said sounded really wrong-headed, and so on and so forth."

"We were getting nowhere, and I was about to put their commitment to violence to the test by just walking out the door, when Horace drove up in his Buick and walked in the front door which was unlocked. Horace, what did you say to them?"

Horace got on the phone.

"It was a speech. One I'd been working on. In my head, I mean. So it was all ready. I said: 'Why are your faces so contorted and your hairs arranged so thusly? Look: my brother and I are going. You can't go with us where we're going. We're going in a Buick. We're going home to see our other brother. His name is Sebastian.'"

"'You think we're the same. We're not. Look. You say identical triplets don't exist. I know you say that because I read the blog. But look. Here we are. We exist. Right? Touch my arm."

"'I've seen these books before.' I gestured to the library. 'I know what you say about the heart of the human species, how we are animals and we are free. And you say: If we ate whole grains. If we adopted polyamory. If we put herbs on our skin. If we made zines. And so on.' I walked into the library and they followed me. I opened a window. Then I started picking up their books and throwing them out the window as I spoke."

"'But you do not know the common nature at all,' I said. Then I became full of passion. 'How can you walk through these sidewalks and brush up against these people in sterile gas stations and not know?' I whispered. 'How can you not understand the sorrow and the longing when we are all steeped in it? People suffer. Yes, they do! But: If you are hungry. If you can get no job. You feel a wound. The wound is that your body is in pain. The deeper wound is that you see hatred in your brother.'"

"'But what do you offer us? What do you offer the world crying out for humanity? The world who senses its own dignity in spite of everything. Senses it because the mind of Almighty God is so near. You say: You are parakeets. You are free. Eat this seed. Mate with the the pretty blue birds. Now your suffering is gone.'"

"Ah, you do not see!' I said, and they looked at each other. They seemed bored. I kept going. 'No, you are thoroughly blind!' I said. 'You refuse to give that which is lacked. You refuse to condescend and fill in the pain with mercy. Because you lack wisdom. Because you lack wisdom, you don't know mercy. You probably don't even think mercy is good. But then, the word mercy has probably been transformed into an alien symbol...' At this point I trailed off. The two anarchists were lying face down on the ground and covering their ears. Leo said, 'Let's go,' and we just walked out. No one stopped us."

Leo got on.

"Isn't that good?" he said.

"It seems very confusing," I said. "Not to me. I think he took some of my ideas. Confusing to others."

"That's the deal, right?" Leo said.

"Yes. That's the deal," I said.

Then he told me they were driving home and he hung up.

Still your brother in chains

I was released from jail this morning only to find myself in a much more unexpected kind of imprisonment.

The guards came in at 7:30 and told me that I was going to appear before a judge, since I had refused to be released on my own recognizance a few hours after I was arrested. (I refused to be release because I figured I had better just stay put and let Horace find me, plus I had no where else to stay and no hotel owner within 15 miles would let me stay with them... And I had of course heard it from a guard that the jail had free internet. Go figure.) They told me I could plead guilty or innocent or no contest, and the judge would sentence me there.

I was expecting to be brought in to a courtroom, but instead they put me in a room with a TV and a video camera. The judge appeared on the video screen and explained my rights. She had brown hair and a severe expression. She didn't look directly into the camera (i.e., at me) but seemed preoccupied with some papers on her desk.

"Horace Gardener, you've been charged with trespassing and resisting arrest," she said. "How do you plead?"

"I'm not Horace Gardener," I said.

"The defendant will refer to me as 'Your Honor,'" said the judge.

I rolled my eyes as loudly as I could. "Your honor," I said.

"You say you're not Horace Gardener?" asked the judge.

"No, I'm his identical brother," I said. "You can look at my ID, which you probably have a photocopy of. I'm Leo Gardener."

The judge shuffled through some of her papers, then pulled out the one she was looking for. "Minus the beard, he looks exactly like you," she said.

"There are subtle differences," I said.

"Nevertheless I can't deny that you aren't the same person. Sorry about you being in jail. Case dismissed."

Then the screen turned off. A guard came in, took me to another cell, gave me my clothes, and after I had changed, let me out of the jail into an alley. There was a taxi waiting there.

"Need a ride somewhere?" the driver said.

I was about to say "No, thanks," when a blue suburban pulled up. There was a black and red star painted on the door. A white woman with dreadlocks leaned out of the window and said, "Are you Horace Gardener?"

"No," I said. "But I'm his brother. We're two of three identical triplets."

"Identical triplets don't exist," she said. "Get in."

"I think I'll walk," I said.

And then she said, "No, come on, we need a speaker for our Saturday night meeting."

"Who are you?" I said. The cabbie was watching us with some degree of interest.

"My name's Kendra and I'm from the 1st National Anarchist House of Madison. We have a potluck and meeting every Saturday night and we always need a speaker. The grandmothers of one of our members heard you say some amazing things at that motel in De Forest. We've all been talking about it. Get in."

I thought of Horace coming to look for me. "Um, I'd better stick around De Forest," I said.

But then two large tattooed people, a man and a woman, came out of the rear window of the suburban, opened up one of the doors, gave me a cigarette, then grabbed me by either arm and thew me in. They sat down on either side of me and then shut the door. Then Kendra hit the gas and we were tearing out of De Forest.

"That seemed really wrong," I said. No one said anything. There was a backpack on the ground that had a pin that said, "Visualize Armed Revolution," with a picture of an AK-47 on it. I gestured at it and said, "Nice," to the large man next to me. "I don't think I'll make a good speaker. I don't believe in violence," I said.

"Look, sorry," said Kendra, "But we really wanted somebody from the mad community. We thought you probably wouldn't mind actually. Based on what Fur's grandma said."

"Mad community? You mean crazy people?" I said.

"Yeah," said Kendra, "Except most mad community people I know prefer to call themselves the mad community rather than crazy people."

"You know, this is the second time I've had my sanity questioned in the last couple of days," I said.

"Welcome to the revolution," said the large woman sitting next to me.

I thought about this.

"I don't think we're part of the same revolution," I said.

No one said anything after that.

They brought me to a large wooden house in Madison and locked me in the room I'm in now, which appears to be a revolutionary library, and which appears to have free internet. (The internet is everywhere now. This is starting to alarm me.)

They let me out at dinner and I tried to escape. Everyone had a good laugh and then I gave my talk, which I think I'll have to recount later because I think someone is about to come in, and I don't think they know I'm writing this. I'm going to try to get them to let me out tomorrow (it's Christmas Eve, right?) but I heard one of them saying Christmas was bad for a bunch of reasons, so maybe they'll keep me locked up.

Horace, if it's not too much trouble, could you come rescue me?

Hun(stop)in

I'm sorry brothers. I was gone because I met a man on a road near Sparta and we went hunting. Except he said, "Hun(stop)in." Swallowing the T in "huntin'". No sign of an apostrophe at the end.

I spent two days visiting the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bike Museum. It portrays human history as a progression from bicycle to spaceship. And Deke Slayton is the center of it all. He was an astronaut from the area. Sebastian. I wish you had been with me. It is your kind of thing exactly. You could have written a good poem.

For my two days at the museum, I was the first person there and the last person to leave. I asked for special appointments to stay later. This seemed to make them nervous. So I decided to drive my car away from Sparta. Go somewhere else. I wasn't reading the blog. I was too busy.

I was driving along a road. My car started running out of gas. So I parked it on the shoulder. There were woods around. I turned off the car and got out. There was a man in camouflage standing about ten feet away. He was sitting behind a bush and looking at me.

"I can see you," I said.

"Dang," he said.

"What are you doing?" I asked him.

"Huntin'," he said, except without the T or the apostrophe. I noticed he did actually have a rifle in his hands.

"Are you allowed to hunt here?" I asked him.

"Nope," he said. "This is military land here. Big base nearby." He stood up. "My names Walt," he said.

"Hi Walt," I said. "Horace."

"Pleased to meetcha," he said. I agreed with him. Then he said, "You ever hunt?" I shook my head no. "Wanna learn?" he said.

"No. But I could walk with you," I said.

"Can you move silently amidst the underbrush?" he said.

"Yes," I said truthfully.

"Then follow me."

I followed him and we moved silently further into the forest. It was grey outside. Cold. I had put on my lined coveralls. We walked for about fifteen minutes. Then he dropped to one knee. I looked ahead of us. There was a deer maybe fifty feet away from us.

"Dang," he said. "Dang." The deer perked up its head. Walt knelt there for two minutes. Maybe three. The deer and us were very still.

"Can't do it," Walt said. He seeemed to be in great pain. "Can't. Mother. Friggin. Do it," he said. "Sorry bout the language," he added. The deer started bounding away. Walt jumped up and threw his rifle after it. The gun hit a tree about ten feet away and got stuck in the branches. We looked at the gun dangling there for a bit. "Better that way," Walt said.

"You're an unusual hunter," I said.

Walt laughed and looked at me and said, "Dang right I am." Then he sat down on a log and started crying. He said, "MotheraChrist." Very tenderly.

I stayed where I was. I looked at him and the big tears rolling down his fat cheeks. He didn't seem that old, maybe 30s. He took his camouflage baseball hat off his head and wiped his face and then let the cap dangle between his legs. He continued weeping. I was filled with love for him. "My dear brother," I said. "You are carrying great sorrow in your hands."

He didn't say anything, just kept staring at the ground and crying. So I decided to keep talking. "The world is swollen with grief," I said. "One bit of this grief is enough to undo any of us. And no soul on this earth is untouched by it. It is a leaden weight pulling down on the heart of all mankind. And it weighs heavy as we receive the wounds of this life."

I was stung with pain. "Oh, these wounds!" I said. "They are more than enough for us. But listen! They will drive us to despair and nothingness and inane philosophies if we are not worthy of them. But what makes anyone worthy? What does that even mean? I don't know. But so great a suffering only approaches making sense when we always, always keep in mind the great forgiveness of God, which lies sleeping, immense and incomprehensible, at the heart of the universe."

"His forgiveness is closer than your sorrow. It is flowing through you more than your blood," I said.

He stopped crying for a moment, then said, "Those are nice things to say." Then he started crying again. I stood there watching.

He cried for more than a day. I stood with him. Then I brought him to my car. He refused to get in. So I put him in the trunk. Sparta was downhill, so I put the car in neutral and we rolled. I stopped in front of a motel. I openend the trunk and took Walt out. I walked him inside.

I gave the clerk a bunch of money. "Here," I said. "This is Walt. Let him stay here until he's better."

"Um..." said the clerk. "This'll last maybe three days."

I said, "Whatever." The clerk looked at Walt.

"What's wrong with him?" he said.

"Actually, probably nothing," I said. "But everybody needs rest sometimes."

I stayed in that town until today, when I drove to Tomah. I didn't see Walt again.

Leo, I'll come bail you out.


In His Most Holy Name.

Horace.

This seems bad

Sebastian here. Leo, are you still in jail? Horace, where are you? Even if you feel it's best to let the silence speak, I would like to know where you are.

I have almost finished mastering our album. I think it is OK. Perhaps the guitars are too loud on some songs, and I could have made some of your vocals, Leo, take up a little more presence in the mix. But... I'm tired of doing this. I hope people read the lyrics. That's where the action happens and all the magma comes out.

All of you people with your hearts in knots: there is water dripping somewhere nearby. There are muscled animals grazing. But this is all imperfect, and I hope you know that.

Ah, I can feel the soul in me, how it is so separate from the soul in you and so like it.

Pull the webs from my eyelids. There is breath on my face and the frost melts. Smile marks appear.

I have been a long time walking these roads of the heart, which wind like pythons around us and through us worm-like. I have seen things dark and heavy, and you have felt them to be right and light and warmth. And you have been wrong.

I wish there would be a judge. I wish there would be a leveller. I wish there would be someone. God! Let there be someone. Is there any feeling better than salvation?

No. There is not.

I would weep if I could for this people, for these generations milling around us. Oh, my neighbors. You are wandering and coughing and shaking your coats accidentally.

Look up! Your chin. Tilt it the other way, to the sky.

Somewhere the people of Nineveh are putting down their newspapers and standing up from the breakfast table.

Arising. This is the first sign.

Oh, my neighbors.

Your brother in chains

I left the UW campus and walked out toward Highway 151 as I figured that someone could probably get me to De Forest from there. I spent some time looking at the lake--there's a big, beautiful lake right in Madison, and 151 goes along it. Then I decided to I'd better find a gas station if I was serious about hitchhiking to De Forest. It turns out I wasn't really. I waited for about an hour, then asked the man behind the counter how far De Forest was. He said it was less than half an hour by car, maybe 15 miles.

"What am I doing waiting here?" I said. "I could walk that in less than three hours."

"You have comfortable shoes?" he said.

"Yeah. I got them from a friend," I said, and I showed him my shoes.

"I've never heard of anyone walking to De Forest before," he said.

"Me neither," I said. Then I said bye and left.

It got dark about halfway through my walk. As I started being able to see what I assumed were the lights of De Forest, a police car pulled up behind me and turned on its mars lights. I turned around and tried to look past the headlights into the car. A policeman got out of the passenger side. He had a moustache, which no longer shocks me.

"Would you mind stepping over to the car?" he said.

"Sure, no problem," I said, and I went over to him.

"Drivers license," he said. Had I been speeding? I took out my wallet and gave him my license. "Your car break down somewhere around here?" he asked while giving my license to his partner in the car.

"I took a bus to Madison and started walking."

"Why not take a cab?" he said.

"I'm cheap," I said.

After a few more seconds his partner nodded to him and the policeman who had called me over, the one standing next to me, said, "I'm going to have to ask you get in the car."

"Am I under arrest?" I said.

"No," he said. "We're just going to take you to the station and ask you some questions."

I said OK and got in the car, and we drove into town. It turns out I was only about two miles away when they picked me up. The one policeman I had talked to led me up the handicapped-accessible ramp into the station, and then he brought me into a small room with walls made of bricks, a mirror, a table with two chairs, and a bare lightbulb in the ceiling. I looked at the mirror.

"People on the outside can see through that, can't they?" I asked.

"I'll ask the questions, OK?" he said.

"You bet," I said.

"Where were you this morning?" he said.

"Madison," I said.

"You weren't at the Holiday Inn Express?"

"No. But I bet my brother Horace was."

"Your brother Horace?"

"Yeah, he's one of two identical triplet brothers I have. The other one's name is Sebastian," I said.

"Identical triplets."

"That's right."

"I don't think those exist."

"Well, maybe I don't exist," I said.

"Don't get smart," he said. "So, you and your 'brother,' you, uh, what do you do?"

"Like with our lives?"

"Like for money. Yes."

"We're dislodged evangelists," I said.

He looked doubtfully at me.

"Let me ask you something," I said.

"I said, I'll do the--" but I interrupted him.

"Have you ever become disembedded from your sensual experience?"

"That sounds like a personal question," he said.

"It is. Has, in your view, sense-based reality ever stopped cohering suddenly?" I started feeling very thirsty, and started wondering what in the world Horace had done at the Holiday Inn Express.

"So you're telling me you're some kinda guru," he said.

"What I'm telling you," I told him, "Is that I'm trying to tell people the good news, but because reality is no longer intelligible to anyone, and as our modes of communication have helped the unintelligibility, the only way to speak is with symbols, metaphors, and heightened academic-sounding nonsense speech. None of which anyone understands. So telling people the good news becomes exceptionally confusing for everyone involved."

"I don't understand," he said.

"Exactly," I said.

He looked at the ground thoughtfully for a minute.

"You're not a bad guy," he said. Then he raised his eyes to me, big, soft, brown eyes. "But I think you're crazy. What do you think about that?"

I thought for a moment. "Don't they tell you in interrogation school that crazy people don't think they're crazy?" I asked him.

"I didn't go to interrogation school," he said, and took a breath while looking at his watch. "How do I know you actually have an identical brother?"

"I can tell you what he looks like," I said.

"Let me guess: exactly like you."

"Well, there are subtle differences."

"Such as?"

"He has a beard and a hat and sunglasses."

"So you're telling me he looks like one of those Santa Claus commercials," he said.

"That was good," I said. Maybe this guy actually did go to interrogation school. "He also wears a blue jumpsuit," I said.

"OK," he said. "Accurate description. How do I know you didn't just change your clothes and shave after this morning's events?" he said.

"And then what?" I said. "Did I flee De Forest only to decide to come back? On foot? At night?"

"The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime," he said lamely. I noticed that he looked exceptionally bored.

"Look," I said. "What did Horace do this morning that was so bad?"

"He stood on a table and talked crazy and dumped a bunch of Honey Nut Cheerios in a sink," he said.

"And you can arrest him--me--for that?" I said.

"Well..."

"Is that a crime in Wisconsin?" I said. "No, it's not a crime. What, did he scare some people?"

"Yeah," said the policeman. "He scared some people pretty bad."

"He was probably trying to evangelize them," I said. "That's what we do."

"Do you."

"Yes."

"I don't believe it."

"At this point, my brother Sebastian would probably say, 'Deep in your organs you know that the air you think you breathe is not really the air as it is. Thought. Mind. Eyeballs! What matches up? Real air. Real air is from the starboard bow, it sprays, it dazzles! It is cold.' That's from a poem he wrote."

"You my friend," he said, "Are going to jail."

Which is where I am now. Strangely, we get to use the internet sometimes. Horace, if you read this, could you please come bail me out of the jail here? Sebastian, perhaps you could wire some bail money.

The guard is yelling.

Was there music?

So this is the first chance I’ve had to use a computer since the other day. That girl came back just after I’d gotten up from her computer, and so I asked her if she knew anyone who could give me a ride to De Forest.

“Where’s De Forest?” she said. She had curly hair and framey glasses and looked like she probably ate a lot of natural foods.

“Maybe forty minutes from here,” I said. “I actually have never been there.” I explained that I was trying to find Horace.

“Are you a grad student here?” she said.

“No,” I said, “I’m a dislodged evangelist.” I noticed the apprehensive look on her face, so I added, “I’m prefiguring the musical apocalypse, along with my two brothers.”

“You’re really funny,” she said.

“Um, thanks,” I said. “So do you know anyone I could get a ride from?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “But maybe you could take a cab.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. I decided to hitchhike at that point. “Do you have a piece of cardboard and a permanent marker?” I asked her.

“Yeah, actually,” she said, and she took them out of her book bag, a piece of cardboard maybe 24 by 12 inches and a Sharpie.

I sat down at a table nearby and wrote “De Forest” on the piece of cardboard, making sure to make clear, thick letters. Many people are not aware that success in hitchhiking owes a lot to having a neat, legible sign. When I was done, I handed it back.

“Thanks,” I said.

“So are you going to get that cab?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Hitchhiking?”

“Yeah.”

“Not worried?”

“Nah,” I said.

“Lemme ask you something before you go,” she said. I looked away and waited. “In what way did this prefigure the musical apocalypse?” she asked.

“Was there music?” I said.

A lot more happened to me, especially once I got to De Forest. But I’m out of time for writing right now, so I’ll try again tomorrow or the next day.