The Love-Debts of Pallas Athena (A Song about Florida)

Florida (Theme)

This is a song about Florida – a thin, fake Florida, as I have never been there. For all that, I can recount better than most its flat fountains, its calculus curves, its floating points, its Riemann hills. Or perhaps, if you like, its sun-times, its elephant-moss, its Brobdingnagian towers, its climbers, its creepers, its citrus groves, its alligators tanned in chrome –

There! Don't you feel as if you'd been there? So there's no need to go.

But my people, you say. My people live in Orangeville.

All right, I say wearily:

Once upon a time, at the end of a short, dusty, flat red road in Orangeville –

Wait, you say. That's Georgia.

True, I say. I've been to Georgia, and the dirt really is red there.

Wouldn't you rather go to Florida, you say, with the retirement homes, the Art Deco restorations, the Keys?

Keys to what? I say.

No, no, you say. It's like "quays" – but that spelling makes no sense.

Sense? I say. You came here for sense? You'd best go outside, then – if you want to experience your senses. If you want to knock on their wood.

Knock twice, you say, and you'll see a star – and the Fountain of Youth.

What's that, I say – plastic surgery?

Yes, you say, the insertion of plastic – very popular in Florida.

You must be thinking of L.A., I say.

No, I am thinking of Florida, you say rather huffily – Orangeville, Florida. USA.

Postcards, I say, are thin and flat. As is this story.

Make it real for me, you say. Make it real.

All right, I sigh:

Once upon a time, in the coldest place on Earth –

No, you say, Florida's not the coldest place on Earth.

Neither is it the hottest, I say. Ha ha! I've got you there!

You are silent.

All right, I say. Once upon a time, in a pretty little town called Orangeville, where the chickens –

There are no chickens in Orangeville, you say.

Once upon a time in Orangeville, where the little girls eat roast alligator every Sunday – Any objection to that?

None, you say. But hurry up, you say, looking at your watch, because I have to get to work in fifteen minutes.

Well! I say. I am now perfectly disinclined to tell a story. You'll have to do it yourself.

But I'm not a writer, you say. And we only have ten minutes left. Tell me a story.

Sorry, I say. In the twenty-first century we have lost the art of the simple tale.

What about TV? you say. And the movies?

You want a TV show? I ask.

Sure, a half-hour sitcom, you say. But make it quick, we're at nine minutes and counting.

I cannot submit, I say, an artist such as I, to your philistine constrictions. Television, indeed. Nine minutes, indeed.

Eight minutes, you say. And I'll pay you.

Once upon a time in Orangeville, I say quickly, there was a little girl named Teemaw –

Teemaw? you say. What kind of name is that?

A faux-Indian name, I say with dignity.

I'm not Indian, you say, though of course I have nothing against any native peoples and am fully cognizant of the hideous crimes we descendants of Vikings, we genocidal spawn of Attila, have perpetrated on the innocent tan folk who used to swim in the clear lagoons off Orange Point.

Wow, I say. You'd better tell this story yourself. You've revealed a hidden vein.

There's five minutes left, you say. Better make it a commercial.

Florida! I shout. Where the rivers are believable, the mountains are heretical, the people are fantastical!

You shake your head. I want to hear about Orangeville, you say. Even if it's just a commercial.

 

Perdida

 

Perdida, my lost country! Country of low-lying lakes! Lakes where one lies low and cannot be found! Found by the king's men and hunted into extinction! Extinction of the behemoth! Behemoth, thy name is Mammon! Mammon, thy name is Legion! Legion, thy airs of disease!

Perdida, disease of my youth! Island of lost girls!

(Florida is a peninsula.)

Backtalk deficiency! Lacking in backbone! Lacking in claws and in fangs!

(Floridian plants require a perfect evenness in moisture to survive.)

We cannot fight! They have torn out our teeth!

(Tourism is Florida's greatest "industry.")

We can't see! They have torn out our eyes! Oh lost, lost!

(Florida's population is growing too rapidly.)

We came to the sea in the past, to escape the king's men. Crammed into boats the size of a matchstick, we cut back on furbelows sharply. Each girl was required to file down her teeth. Veils of anti-scent covered us. Nets of fiberfish swam round our loins. We were suffering, dying, bladderwrack splitting us, teachers boring into our heads through their wormholes, taking the best of us with them.

(Florida's first schools were British.)

On Perdida, that magic isle, there are exactly two thousand, one hundred and thirty-three lakes, some of them no bigger than a thumbnail. The center of population is the shoe plant, where the manufacture of seaweed galoshes is carried out by the locals. Personal income ranges from no dollars per sleepless night (no one ever sleeps on Perdida) to five dollars per sleepless day (everyone on Perdida sleeps all day long, every day).

Perdida is an island in the shape of a disease. It was more beautiful than you can possibly imagine, so it is rife with imagination stores.

On Perdida, no one goes hungry. All the girls are bulimic. The state nickname is "Primitive Pan-dowdy." The state bird is the pigeon-pie. The state song is Clover the Hills and Flower Away. The state flower is whiteness. The state tree is family values.

(Florida contains Orange, Orange City, Orange Lake, Orange Park and Orange Springs, but no Orangeville, no Orange Point, and no Perdida.)

Perdida is next to Orangeville. It forms a hypotenuse when viewed with Orange Point, which is situated ten thousand miles from Orangeville, in the northwest corner of Florida.

(The Seminoles once hunted in the Everglades.)

Underhill, or, The Impossible Tasks

I. Socratic Dialogue

Given: Joey Underhill lived on the moon.

What sort of moon?

One of Jupiter's moons.

What sort of Jupiter?

The mythical god.

What sort of god?

The kind that you worship.

What sort of worship?

The kind where you get down on your knees.

What sort of knees?

The kind that break easily.

What sort of easily?

The kind that happens frequently.

What sort of frequently?

Are you a machine?

What sort of machine?

The kind that drives people crazy.

What sort of crazy?

The kind that is really messed up!

What sort of up?

What sort of up?

What sort of up?

II. Sentence Comprehension

Mark the following sentences True (T), False (F), Prevaricatory (P) or Imprecise (I).

1. Joey Underhill lived on the moon. ( )

2. He couldn't have been Joey Heatherton, because then he would have been a boygirl. ( )

3. He lived on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. ( )

4. He constructed a house of lead, to shield himself from incoming radiation. ( )

5. One day, due to the bending of light, he fractured his kneecap. ( )

6. He is no longer able to dance.

III. Paragraph Comprehension

Answer the questions following the following paragraph, following them as best you can. Mark firmly with your pencil, being certain to obliterate all proximate towns and villages. This will ensure your consideration as a future Marine.

"The kind of boys named Joey Underhill are not the kind of boys I like, except the times I do. All I did was throw his stupid bookbag in the mud, and stab him with my pen, which wasn't even loaded, and the big baby went to Mrs. Blumenthal. I'm not walking home from school with him no more, except today since we have a test on Florida and he's really good in that subject, plus he's really cute when I like him. His hair makes a comma like James Bond, plus he might be a changeling, and he claims he has wings."

1. What would be the most appropriate title for the preceding paragraph?

1. My life with Joey Underhill

2. Some Aspects of Human-Changeling Relations Considered on the Secondary-School Level

3. Aliens Among Us: The Real Story

4. I Killed Joey Underhill

2. What is the likelihood that the speaker has read the James Bond series?

1. Very likely

2. Somewhat likely

3. Not too likely

4. Highly unlikely

3. What does the speaker mean by saying "my pen … wasn't even loaded"?

1. The pen, being a 29-cent refillable ballpoint of a brilliant turquoise color, marked near the plunger end with a successively compressive series of what could only be human teeth marks, contained no refill at the time, thus rendering it useless as a writing implement, but still allowing it a metaphorical resemblance to a firearm.

2. The speaker is an undercover operative (thus the reference to James Bond) posing as a schoolchild, and the "pen," actually a cutting-edge prototype in handheld weapons, was insufficiently charged with available light ("loaded") to perform its lethal functions.

3. The speaker is a middle-aged man, clumsily burlesquing his school-age child's gushing and inconsequent writing style in order to relieve pent-up fears about age-related sterility.

4. None of the above.

Breakup

(Scene: a diner)

A: Did you hear about the Underhills?

B: Don't tell me.

A: Yeah, they split up.

B: Oh, man.

A: I never liked her anyway.

B: That's cold!

A: I give it three months till they hook up again.

B: Get remarried?

A: No, hook up with different people. Me, for instance.

B: You?

A: I always had a thing for Joey Underhill.

B: You're kidding.

A: I like the wings.

B: What wings?

A: You've never seen him fly?

(B stares at A.)

A: Joey was a changeling child. That's why their marriage didn't work.

B: Is this a metaphor?

A: Underhill's a fairy.

B: He's gay?

A: No, I mean literally.

B: Tinkerbell.

A: That's Disney.

B: Tinkerbell has wings.

(Their food comes; C enters)

C: Mind if I join you?

B: No, come on! Plenty of room!

(B glares at A, who reluctantly moves over)

C: (Rubs hands, looks at A's food) Boy, that looks good! What is that, an omelet?

(A regards C with scarcely veiled disgust)

C: Sausage too? Cholesterol city!

(A glares at C with undisguised hatred; C is oblivious)

B: We were just talking about the Underhills.

C: Hell of a thing. Makes me glad Dee and I are sewed up tight.

B: That's good.

C: Tighter 'n a drum. (Whacks table with flat of hand) Solid as a rock!

A: Rock can break up too.

C: What's that?

A: Avalanches.

C: (Dismissively) Those are caused by false moves.

A: And volcanoes. That's rock acting up as well.

(B gives A a warning glance, which A ignores)

A: For instance, Io, one of Jupiter's moons, has eight active volcanoes, constantly erupting sulfur.

C: Must be one hell of a stink.

(B and C laugh)

C: I'm sure glad I don't live on Jupiter.

A: Io's pretty far away. You wouldn't smell it on the mainland.

C: (To B) Hey, that reminds me. Dee and I are planning to sail down the coast next spring.

B: Oh yeah?

C: Little place called Orange Point. Heard of it?

B: No. Where is it?

C: Off the northwest coast of Florida, way out past Apalachicola. Great place.

A: Orange Point?

C: You heard of it?

A: Maybe.

C: Supposed to be, you know, totally unspoiled – ten miles of perfect beach. Great fishing.

A: Maybe I'm thinking of somewhere else.

C: You might be thinking of Port Orange. That's on the northeast coast, by Ponce Inlet and DeLeon Springs.

A: I don't think so.

B: (Clears throat) DeLeon Springs. After Ponce DeLeon? The explorer?

C: Yeah, he was looking for the fountain of youth. Got shot by Indians and died in Havana. Arrows tipped with poison, probably.

Title Bout

OK, this girl I know, Athena Jones? She killed a guy. Kickboxing. They're sparring, and she does this karate move, whap! like a cobra, way up high. Breaks his nose, it goes up in his brain. And just like that, he's gone.

His name was Frank Palladio. They hung out a lot, but they never hooked up, she wasn't into that. He was really tall and skinny, practically a giant. He used to help her with her math homework.

I wasn't there. I found out when I went over to her house. Her dad was freaking out. He gets all macho when he gets mad. They're a very traditional Greek family. Their name's not really Jones; they changed it when they got here. I don't know what it was, Acropolis or something. Something long.

Anyway, her dad's in the middle of the living room, yelling at her. "Did I bring you up to be a killer? No! Only in a good cause! Only in self-defense!"

She's just standing there, beyond bummed. I mean, this is heavy. This could ruin your whole life.

Athena's father is a total player. He has all these affairs. Runs some bogus talent agency so he can hit on women. Comes on with some lame-o line like "I'll make you a star!" and they go for it. He knows how to get the upper hand, has the goods on everyone, so he got the manslaughter charge dropped. She just had to do community service.

Weird thing is, she takes his name. Palladio, that is. She moves out of the house. Age sixteen, but she moves out. And she opens up this martial arts academy. Can you believe it? You'd think in a little town like Orangeville, they'd be like, Get away from me! You know, like, Psycho killer! But they weren't. She has her dad's charisma.

OK, so she has this half-brother, Joey Underhill? He's really cute. They, like, adopted him or something. He doesn't look like them, he has these really light green eyes, kind of slanty, and this light brown hair. It's straight and shiny. His mother was a dancer. She looked just like Joey Heatherton. Like this blonde vixen, like this pixie. She went to Egypt. I don't know why. Her name was Isadora Olga, but she changed it to Io; Io Underhill.

See, one night me and Joey Underhill were watching cable, the movie channel, and this really weird thing comes on. It's called Bluebeard, and it's Hungarian. It's, like, from the Seventies. And this woman in it, she looks just like Joey's mom. I know because he has her picture. He's always showing it to me. He has this scrapbook of her dancing career.

So I go, "My God, Joey, that looks just like your mom!"

And he goes, "Dude! You're right!"

It was mega-weird. We found her name in the credits, there it was, Joey Heatherton.

So I go, "I bet your mom named you after her!"

And he just looks at me.

I go there all the time, to Joey and Athena's. It's this humongous loft space, over the studio.

"Athena Palladio, Martial Arts Instructor." It's incredible. See, this loft used to be an airplane factory. The second-floor ceiling's like forty, fifty feet high. You could hang-glide up there. And Joey's got this way cool thing set up, he does trapeze. All these bars and ropes. Sometimes he lets me watch him practice, and man! it's like he's flying.

Bio

My name is Joey Underhill. I come from the other side of reality.¹ There we bathed daily in underground rivers of gold,² springing forth with joy into the air.³

The name of my father is Luminous Sky;⁴ his mightiness fills up the heavens.⁵⁶ she's a dancer.⁷ My mother is yellow, and yellow, and yellow, with pink and blue eyes on the back of her head;

We are all dancers, under the hill;⁸ every pirouette takes us one dozen years.⁹ But I was cast out; I was injured; I lost my grace.

We only love beauty, which is only right; what is broken we shun.¹⁰

All light is good, I had thought; but one day, when the terrible light came upon us, broken in pieces,¹¹ I fell and was broken.¹² I was broken by broken light. My people replaced me with one of yours;¹³ now I am exiled.

In the cave of my sister, I found partial refuge.¹⁴ There I can fly.¹⁵ But can I love a human girl?¹⁶ And can she love me?¹⁷

1⁷ Yes, but not for long.

Compare and Contrast

There's a secret correspondence between this world and that one, she said, opening the door.

This is how she began correspondence:

Dear Sir,

I am mortally wounded in flowering, in mi parte florida. That is to say, finity wounds me. When I see the green moss, vivid, rapturous, leading the way to the public beach, and the mist on the water, then I think of the hidden and lost; something hums.

There on Perdida, lost in the distance! the singing I can't hear confounds me. I remember the day when a boygirl came swimming; we thought his a seal's head at first. Then he staggered upon the shore, naked and beautiful; bloodwater sluiced from his limbs; he fell down in the sand, and the bold ones said, Drown him! said, Roll him back in! The blind oracle clutched up a rock, calling, Smash his head open, we'll eat up his brains! and we cackled like gulls.

But I saved him; my girl's heart was tender inside a hard shell. I said, My life for his! put my ear to his lips, heard his faltering whisper; the shimmering isle disappeared; the clear stream of my girlhood was muddied; I could not see Perdida.

That I cannot see it, does not mean it is not still there.

I will wait for you under the roof of the general store. I have been living there, these past days; no one, I think, can suspect me; I am very small now; I am quiet. Please find me before the flood tides.

Maria Brunetti

General Delivery

Orangeville, Florida

This is how he responded:

 

Dear Madam,

It is with the most profound regret that I inform you we cannot comply with your request. The orchid species you desire, Matrimonia felix, is, unfortunately, now extinct. Alas! no one feels this loss more keenly than I; for, you must understand, we growers are avid fanciers as well; it is not mere crass commercialism which drives us to establish an enterprise such as ours. On the contrary! it is a love of the exotic, an appreciation of the delicate nurture required to ensure that these fabulous jungle creatures not merely survive, but flourish. In this wish, I am certain that you join with us; I am therefore sending you our current catalogue, in which you will find represented many magnificent specimens, at least one of which, I hope, will meet with your satisfaction.

Allow me, if I may, to recommend the genus Amicus, which, in all its variants, is very popular today, having replaced the once justly celebrated M. felix. Although the Amicus does not yield the showy blooms of M. felix – ah, those reds and purples, crimsons and vivid blues! which seemed to contain, in one square inch, the distillation of a hundred summer skies – yet it affords, in its quiet mint- and apple-greens, its creamy, softly glowing whites with the occasional shy hint of blushing pink, what many now feel to be a more refined, even a maturer pleasure. Be that as it may, there are now dozens of cultivars to choose from, some much longer-lived than others, but all requiring, when grown in our current compromised environment, the utmost care.

In hopes that we may please you more in future,

Joseph H. Underhill

Suppliers to the Trade

Paris * Rome * New Orleans * Florida

Florida (Da Capo)

Well, I say. How do you like it so far?

Put in more about Florida, you say, looking at your watch. You went off topic.

How much time do we have? I say.

A few minutes, you say.

Enough time to complain, apparently, I say.

Well, really, you say, can you blame me? I thought I'd learn something about Florida, and you go off on "Joey Underhill" and "Perdida" and I don't know what-all.

"What-all," I say. An intriguing expression.

See? You're off topic, you say.

What is the topic? I say. Does postmodern metafiction have topics? That is, what's it about? Must it be about something? What is this tyranny of aboutness? Do you ask what a flower is about?

The topic is Florida, you say. Specifically, Orangeville.

Now wait a minute, I say. I said Florida; it was you who said Orangeville. And a fictional place at that, I might add.

Orangeville, Florida, is no more fictional than you and me standing here, you say. I grew up there, for Chrissake. How can it be fictional?

OK, you tell the story, I say. Talk about Orangeville.

You stare at your shoes.

Did you ever eat grits? I say. With redeye gravy?

Hominy grits? Sure. I miss them up North.

How did you fix them? I say.

Just with butter and salt, you say, no redeye gravy; but man! were they good. With biscuits and country ham!

Sounds good, I say.

Comfort food, you say. Mama in her apron, wiping her hands. Oh! those were the days.

Was it warm there? I ask.

Oh, yeah. Not like here, though. Not too warm. See, the trade winds keep things cool in summer.

What about hurricanes? I ask.

You harden abruptly. My mama died in one, you say.

So that's what's behind this whole thing, I say. This need to go back to the place of great trauma.

I haven't gone back, you say sharply. I live up North now.

Your mama … I say. Did she really live? Did she really die?

We're talking about a 150-mile wind, you say. Would you like to sit in a lawn chair in that?

You'd think she'd know better, I say.

Your bus comes. You get on without a word. The driver looks at me. I shake my head. He pulls on the metal rod, closing the door.

Hey, wait! I shout, running after the bus. Did you know Joey Underhill? Or Maria Brunetti? How about Athena Jones?

But your face is set, eyes straight ahead. I have mortally wounded you. The bus drives beyond my reach. How will I know, now, the real Florida?

Written 12-12-96/12-22-06

Copyright 2008 Websafe Studio