HARAR:

TAKEN to TWIN PEAKS

AN E-NOVEL

29. "Miss Twin Peaks"

"Rimbaud's complete works are a partial mess."

- Wyatt Mason

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by Edward Lacie

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Episode Twenty-Nine

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I want the theme song, this whole episode, to go slower than usual. I want to savor it. I realize I hold the present dear for fear that the future will either be worse or a void. It's why I stay awake so long so often (like now as I rewrite and type this).

David Lynch did not direct this first half of the final presentation; I'm surprised.

As this episode starts and I watch and write, I know that in two hours I'll have decided what to do with Greg Baysans, my captive of three months. 

I look back at what all I've written before this and see how it will need to be rewritten, typed, organized. A huge project, I wonder if I can accomplish it. Jim has been difficult to live with through this first draft; I can't imagine him withstanding another month or two of me being preoccupied.

Cooper is calling Donna and Audrey to the Sheriff's Station. I feel a time bomb ticking down.

My chances of financial success are better with Baysans dead, I know. The more I study both poetry and poets, the more I see how useless the actual life of a poet is while he/she is alive. It's only in death that any poet can begin to be measured. And no one gets paid just for waiting to die.

Windham Earl says, "The only thing Columbus discovered is that he was lost." 

(First draft:) I wonder how much more time I should spend creating the mythical Blaise Cendrars. (Rewrite:) The bare bones of a character I created have been picked up and built upon by other hackers so rapidly that forgeries exist in bookstores with Cendrars references. (Final typing:) Three books I created and placed in a used bookstores in Seattle have been copied, mass produced, quoted from and anthologized.

The poetry I've written as Blaise Cendrars has been creatively rewarding but is not fully satisfactory to my wish to incorporate elements of my own life into a work of art called a poem. To that end, I'm considering writing¹ poems (prose poems, maybe!) under the new pen name of Fred Sauser.

Perhaps Fred Sauser should become a journalist, the field Rimbaud was considering as he made final plans to get back to Harar. Rather than writing prose poems, Fred Sauser could make us some money.

A Wendy's commercial comes on featuring founder Dave Thomas. He died last year and has not been seen on commercials since. If I could start again.... Fred Sauser, new spokesman for a fast food chain. Fred plays the guy behind the counter making your fries.

When assigned fries in this commercial series, the phrase "on broil" (as in broiler) is used. Fred Sauser is working on a new manuscript, "A Season on Broil."

"Blood for breakfast, blood for lunch: the good old days," Windham Earl expounds. "Shelley wins Miss Twin Peaks. Shelley dies," he explains. Leo is getting his charges, electrical charges.

I need to refill my Prozac prescription.

"Some creep sent me a poem,²" Audrey gripes.

"The symptoms resemble the onset of malaria," Cooper says of falling in love with Annie.

At which time our villian, Windham Earl, approaches the General in the woods. Windham Earl is in disguise, again, this time as a comic costume horse. Earl is the front of the horse; Leo Johnson is the back. 

Greg Baysans is a horse's ass. As was Poet X who is better off dead. 

I've asked Baysans all I want to ask except the rhetorical question, "Would you like to go for a ride?" (And have learned much more than necessary regarding questions I'd had on his life and poems.)

I'm warming up the truck for a trip to a deep Northern Washington gorge bridge. Shall we find out if poets can fly "like some Icarus" (see Episode... what is it? ...sixteen?)?

"I'm a virgin," Audrey says to Billy Zane who is batting those lovely long lashes. (Coincidence, not a BM: he was in the VH-1 biopic of Jimi Hendrix that I saw last night, Feb. 1, 2003; he played Hendrix's pilferring manager.) "It's your jet," they get on. Pete twitches.

(First draft:) Jim Post calls. He'll be home sooner than expected so I won't be able to finish this writing project (and that "other" decision) just now like I'd intended.

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information," the Major intones. The major gets shot.

No one misses the presence of Poet X, that's for sure (except maybe his bartender's banker). It's been eight, almost nine months since I flattened him with a multi-ton implement of everyday death. No one asks where he is or if he'll be back. He won't be.

The puzzle box opens another layer.

Smash. The next layer, which was wood, is taken care of impetuously by Andrew and a heavy object.

Miss Twin Peaks! The dance floor shows activity, last minute decorations, adjustments.

In the room, the children come and go, eating Minot³ grapes.

First draft note: Bush at an emergency news conference is asked, "Will there be war?"

"With which country?" he asks back.

While retyping this, I am so broke that for the first time in my life I no longer have a newspaper subscription. The prose first draft, I mean, of this narrative. Not the first draft, my poetry, of theories on time and dreams.

The Sunday paper arrives. (See? That's from the first draft, not the rewrite.) I need a job, have needed one for over two years now.

I'm retyping. It's the only job I can find. Jim is sleeping. There aren't jobs available making sandwiches, something I'd said I wouldn't do. How many movies use the line, "Pride is something I can't afford"? ("The Women" ends with it.)

I honestly don't remember who wins Miss Twin Peaks.

If Shelley wins, I'll kill Baysans. If Audrey wins, I'll hold him hostage longer against Jim's demands. If Donna wins, I'll let him go and forget the whole plan.

Poet X showed up in today's BB again: ( https://members.tripod.com/~poetx/prose/y301.html. (First draft: January 23, 2003). I have continued to allow Baysans access to that pseudonym and I don't worry in the least that Poet X is still alive. 

I have been far too kind in allowing him access to "the outside." No wonder I couldn't rummage up a ransom.

I could just go back to bed and wait for Jim to come home. If he makes love to me I'll kill Baysans immediately afterwards (but little fear of that happening, I'm deliberately ruling that almost completely out). 

If he asks me to leave again, both Baysans and I will leave freely and I will will learn languages and abandon writing like Rimbaud did, maybe become a mercenary soldier (wink, wink, until I desert, that is, like Rimbaud did to the Dutch) or arms dealer in Africa. It could happen. 

If Jim Post wants "business as usual" I'll keep Baysans hostage until, like originally planned, I earn money with my explications about his poems and writings or until I can go to three bookstores downtown and find a book of his poems available there (along with other former contributors to the JWR).

Cooper is teaching Annie how to dance. Annie decides to enter the contest. The Giant suddenly appears.

"No-o-o-o-o," he drawls and gestures. The lights have dimmed and a spotlight is on the Giant at the microphone on stage.

That's the problem when pinning an allegory to current conditions: as events evolve, your allegory must follow. You, reader, allow no other choice.

Say it's November and a viewer is watching a football game, identifying with Team A. They have a good lead. As the lead dwindles, the assurance is gone. But more importantly, once a viewer identifies with Team A, their fates are tied, linked, combined, fused,

What do I do with Baysans if Annie wins Miss Twin Peaks?

The invitation is also a map to the Black Lodge. A hand appears from nowhere, scary Bob's. He is back from wherever and the episode's over.

First draft homage here one last time, mention of Dean and David, both gone within a year after the final showing of this final double episode of "Twin Peaks".

It's been a long time, a long, long time now without him, without them. The thought was unimaginable, their not being there, here.

Crickets crawl across the carpet. My toes are cold. Jim likes it that way.

The Log Lady is in attendance at the Miss Twin Peaks Contest. It begins, this is not a rehearsal. A second Log Lady comes in the back door. Has the door to the Black Lodge come undone? Has everyone's double leaked out? In? Here?

Audrey gives her speech. Donna confronts Ben Horne. Storm clouds are collecting for a big one. Annie gives her speech. Where is Shelley Johnson?

It's not the Black Lodge loosed its minions. It's Windham Earl dressed as the Log Lady. He is on the rafters now in true melodramatic fashion.

"It is time to make the announcement...."

Annie wins. The stage is plunged in darkness. A riot ensues.

Andy gives Cooper the last clue at last: "It's a map!"

30. "Beyond Life and Death"

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Final draft homage here to Dean and David, both gone within a year of this last double episode airing. Both had AIDS. Both were guests at my "Twin Peaks" party where apple pie and coffee were served. Today, March 16, 2003, is the twelfth anniversary of Dean's departure through a qubit to his bouleversement.

"King Arthur's buried in England," Pete drawls (Jack Nance, as noted, also dead now) in his way, "last I heard."

The Log Lady has brought oil.

Nadine got hit on the head and has regained her previous sense of age and (lack of superhuman) strength.

"You're my daddy, you're my daddy," Donna sobs just before a scene of bloody violence. Like the night the mill burned, things are happening pretty fast.

Andrew replaces the key from the Chinese puzzle box (the puzzle box has been completely opened and the key was the key¹) with another much like it and leaves. Cooper visits Truman at Windham Earl's abandoned vehicle. 

Cooper is walking around the circle, the entrance to the Black Lodge (or the White Lodge?). Truman is watching. Cooper is gone. It is night.

I follow Cooper down the red-draped hallway of his dreams. A strange man sings. Strobes flash, dim, flash. All strange, unexpected. It is daylight.

"It's been about ten hours since he went in there," Sheriff Truman says.

Audrey is chaining herself to a bank vault. Andrew shows up with his vault key and wants in.

Black Lodge. Commercials. Red carpet, midget. Cooper.

"When you see me again, it will be me. This is the waiting room."

My phone rings. The strobe has returned. 

Maddy shows up, "Watch out for my cousin."

Cooper runs. Much screaming. A trail of blood.

I think of Rimbaud carried across Africa on a stretcher.

Annie. Cooper. Their bodies on the floor. Yet Cooper walks in. Annie is standing with a black dress on. They look at the two bodies.

Cooper and Annie and Bob and Leland and the midget scurry from room to room.

Outside it is night again and Truman sleeps. Annie's body appears in the circle in the woods.

Cooper (but is it Cooper?) wakes up in his bed at the Great Northern. He looks in the mirror and sees Bob.

He looks again. "How's Annie?" he mocks himself.

He looks again in the mirror.

Who does he see?

Next:

Cooper

Bob