"The result was a disorder which became my particular order."

- Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words

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by Edward Lacie

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Episode Fifteen

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This episode appears out of chronological order on my tapes. I hope numbering is not affected. Already my numbering doesn't coincide with episode lists I've seen which start numbering the episodes only after the pilot, so what I have as "2" is their "1".

The secret is revealed: the Chinaman is Katherine! It was never a secret in this, my narrative.

In real time, Al Gore announced last night (December, 2002), on Saturday Night Live, no less, that he will not run for President in 2004. The usual commentators on the usual news channels have brought up the fact that the line between news and entertainment continues to blur. (If, instead of chronicling "Twin Peaks" in this narrative I had Al Gore as my subject, the occurence of last night's announcement would have to be reflected in the writing by some sort of noticeable change of form or focus. Given that the announcment was a big deal, the change in this narrative would have to be as crucial.)

The four pages are taken up with a "new" theory, my Gore Theory: the moment in time when Gore announced on live television that he wouldn't run for president in the next election, by changing Gore, changed all of us. 
Laura's mom sees a white horse in her living room, a vision. The mysterious Bob shows up too. Is this a dream? Drug-induced fantasy? Hallucination? A sudden first person presentation in an otherwise third person presentation of the plot?

Hairs on the back of hands up! Cooper is having a vision.

"It is happening again," the Giant warns from on-stage. That's both what I want and am deathly afraid of: it happening again. Is the Son of Sam accomplice's killer coming to dine? Will the sheriff order more than toast?

How long did I stalk Greg Baysans and Poet X before killing the later? Six months? My poverty made me impatient for Baysans to clean up his act.

"Something is burning," Maddy says. Her uncle Leland puts on surgical gloves. Leland is Bob! He is attacking his niece who looks like his dead daughter. The mother is passed out on the floor after seeing the horse. Leland has returned and tries to save Maddy, calling her "Laura."

I'm so ready to kill someone again, I can hardly remain in my itchy skin. I wish Poet X were alive to be killed again; it would spare someone I admire. I introduced my neighbor, Lara, to my captive but did not say he'd been kidnapped. 

Poet X and Baysans were "out there."²

I'm getting angry at Jim Post as much as at the kidnapping's failure to earn a ransom.

It's as though Jim Post were my kidnapper: I can't work with him here. He knows I don't like to work on this while he's awake, and so he stays awake longer than usual, knowing I want to watch a little "Twin Peaks" and work on my writing of this journal and narrative.

Waldo? Who said something about Waldo? Who is Waldo? Where is Waldo?

I sometimes worry leaving Jim alone here with Baysans.

Interviewing Baysans by e-mail the first time, I asked, after Baysans mentioned reading Atlas Shrugged, what he most remembered of it. Baysans answered that he didn't need to wear eyeglasses before reading the book but needed them by the time he finished.

This anger I'm soaking in could be good. It certainly could ease a killing! I should do it immediately, knowing as soon as Baysans is dead the value of study of his poetry should increase. 

I'll take my anger at Jim Post (which is only reflected from what I feel he's sending me) and use it to kill Baysans! Talk about forgeries!

"You're going back to Missoula, Montana," Leland tells her before changing back into Bob and inserting the letter "O" under her fingernail.

Jim Post and Lara went shopping, giving me much-needed time to work on this project. Spoke too soon, they're back. He bought a new couch.

Cooper has another vision.

The heightened and unreal sense that Cooper experiences is a weak version of the craziness of waiting for the real Son of Sam to jump out from behind the kitchen door and start killing me. I've dug in my closet and found the book that began this, the poetry I attempted so long ago, my "Gnome Notebook" first draft of this, the presentation of my theories and philosophies.

There is a drawing on the cover to go with the preprinted "Gnome Notebook".

Inside, the contents are written in what may be a personal and lost code. I don't remember the code. A few references pass through uncoded: the vent in the cooking area at the restaurant is the site of a bug, a suspected planted microphone that captures my every opinion. 

The examples set by Emily Dickinson and Vincent Van Gogh inform and encourage my first thought which was to simply kill him. His poetry will have more value once he is dead. I softened. Alcohol poisoning would be a good method, an apt end, probably made to look like suicide.

The problem always was in trying to guess who would bug the cooking area. The FBI? Son of Sam, I don't mean David Berkowitz either, himself? CIA? Satanists? The building's owner? The restaurant's owner?

My first draft of this in prose mentions something about "a quick, silent vision of the man who saved Cooper's life after he was shot." The juxtaposition tells me that Maddy has died. Leland, as Bob, has killed again.

Why is it easier to believe that Berkowitz acted alone than to believe the truth?

From the streets of Harar where the gutters flow with the blood of Rimbaud being cheated, not only there but in toto. 

"I want to work so badly I cry," Baysans recently wrote in a private letter. I believe him. 

The Oregonian is still not hiring proofreaders, has no use for them. Yesterday - check the archives, Jan. 27, 2003 - they printed a "letter to the editor" twice by accident, on facing pages, one of the two has had an editor's minor touches (but I can't tell which an editor thought was the better). Perhaps they're testing and interviewing new Letters editors.

I need to sleep. I need to work as badly or worse than Baysans. The value of his poetry is that it depicts the employment choices available to the laid off from Enron, from K-Mart, from dot-coms: benefits? full-time? honest pay? reward for competence? competence? "The world is too much with us"¹ indeed.

Zero inquiries have been made, four months later, about the fake obituary for Greg Baysans that was sent to what he calls his "baby", The James White Review. (As I rewrite and type this, it's been over eight months since the note was sent.)

I know it would have been better to kill him outright. Had Baysans not been drunk when we met, he never would have charmed me and changed my mind about his very fate. 

As if to remind me of constant financial pressure, Jim Post just woke. His mood toward me is always worst when he first wakes, making me suspicious of the script he's reading in his dreams each night.

Baysans has written more than a couple recent poems about the abuses allowed in the employment sector nowadays that insult the work force: temp agencies, fraudulent schools, Bush's war machine, rule by lawyers and random "law".

I'm beginning to wonder if politics has more to do with literature than literature does.

End of this episode. I'm going to sleep.