"Royal Republic of Sydneyland"

"...not dying"

I've been rather busy not dying, and all so you'll forgive me. While laying about gathering dust I've had all manner of ideas for projects to fill up my end of the void with.

The usual art crap, and spirit stuff that no one will care about, but which will make at least me chuckle. Caravaggio had the same idea. "Yeah" he thought. "Think I'll paint this weird crypto-sexual painting of an Angel boy"

'And he did.

Popes, and assorted rich guys have had it in their private collections for centuries...till publishing came along, and perverts like me, and Keith Haring got our own sweaty copies.

There's the little fucker up there.

He goes in, and out of fashion like wing tipped shoes...right now in a bit of disfavor for reasons we know too well. Then again there's that wonderfully insane Van Gogh.

Him Caravaggio, and Walt Whitman I'd loved to have sat down with for the night, and snorted speed coke, and drunk bottles of cheap wine. While bullshitting about the world the fucking universe, and everything.

Yeah I'd have really liked that.

Be back later.

"Rain,...so much rain now"

"Faerie Nights"

(...Wrote this 12 years ago. It holds up okay. I like it.)

I got a story for you folks. Now this happened years ago when America was great, and even regular Joe's had jobs, and laff's. Well one night in this long ago happy time I was sitting next to my dad on the front seat of our old Buick.

A 1955 sky blue, and white two tone. A classic! I'd give anything to have one'a them today. Well as is the habit of kids everywhere I was squinting my eyes to make the passing street lights look weird. I had just begun to do the same with the tail lights ahead of us when I see something.

Wow that's a big bug I thought. Only when I stopped squinting it wasn't. A bug that is. It wasn't tinker bell either. Ya'know whole generations of rubes got real wacky ideas of what faeries look like 'cause of all the Disney propaganda. Thing is faerie's is just like folks. Just alot smaller,..with wings,.. and feelers, sometimes extra arms'n stuff, magical powers, eh halos, and... Well okay faerie's ain't like folks at all, but so what.

Well there I am sit'n next to the old man as we're roll'n through Queens on our way back to Brooklyn, and there's these little faerie folks darting around the tail lights of the '58 Oldsmobile in front of us. Hey, com'on ya can't make this stuff up.

Now by this time I'm an 'experienced' kid, and know better than to tell my dad that I'm seen'n glow'n bug people buzz'n around the butt-end of the car in front of us. Hey gimme some credit. I still remember the shit storm from one of my previous visions.

I foolishly told my folks that I saw flaming batwinged demons flying out of an open manhole on Flatbush avenue. My mom made me kneel on a steel rod while I said the rosary ten times for being in league with Satan. Heck I never even met the guy.

So, I keeps my trap shut, and enjoys the doing's of the wee folk in front of us. If dad saw anything he wasn't about to tell me. He knew better too. Still they was fun to watch, and they meant no harm.

Not like that seriously scary furry sky-monster-thing. Ya know the one on that famous "Twilight Zone" episode w/the pre-"Trek" Shatner. The hairy bastard, not Shantner, just floats in the air chase'n after airplanes. When he catches one he rips their engines apart so they crash. Remember that one? Sixty years later it still scares the crap out'a me! Rod you was one scary genius!

"Yes very interesting", I hear you say, "but Uncle Sidney what the hell are you getting at?"

Ah, I'm glad you asked! See with the warmer weather coming we has to prepare for "Faerie Time!" As we know from tradition handed down from kid, to kid. Generation to generation, like the varied rules of stick ball or "Ring Around the Rosy". All passed from kid to kid for nearly a thousand years. The knowledge of "Faerie Time" in the same way has come to the 21st century.

Come June 21st at midnight, on that 'Longest Day' all "Faeriedom" awakes! They pops out of their hidey holes,and begins their summer frolics! Which is to say it's their mating, and general screwing around w/humanity season.

They never hurt anybody ya understands. 'Least not on purpose. One thing tho' don't rob or try to mess with them. These guys don't kid around about that sort'a thing. They may be seriously cute,..some of them, but they have poisoned thorns.

Get my drift?

Otherwise we're all welcome to dance the summer away with them. That business about them abducting folks for years is crap told by the Church, and the CIA. They don't do that,..the demons on the other hand. 'Word to da wise,..stay clear of them.

No one knows how long has this been going on . Maybe it's from before Ur or Babylon. Legends is full of all sorts of traces about "Faerie Times", and it's goings on. That Shakespeare story kind'a got some of it right, but he mixed it up with all the class, and culture bullshit of his times. I guess we all do that.

But "Faerie Time" is real. My older cousins told me, and I told my special friends at school, and they told their friends, and so, and so, and so through the years, and generations, and ages to come. An unbroken kid tradition.

When I was little I danced in a faerie circle with the sweet wee folk by the light of a full moon in Prospect Park. Then again on warm steamy night in Central Park when I was a happily crazed'n horny teenager. Now in my demented pissed off Elder years I still hear their songs.

Bless the little fuckers!

“Pan Speaks to the World”

"Yes I know all about the World of Men with their Greed Wars Cruelty, and Madness. You exterminate whole peoples you murder babies children you poison the land the seas the skies. Yes I know your world well. Which is why I rescue as many of your little ones as I can"

"You Had to be There"

Once again being an old guy comes in handy. We remember shit because we were there. I'd say we were "...fucking there", but that could be misunderstood. Anyway back in the 20th century. During the part when cars had just shed their cute fins, and guys started walking around on the Moon.

Them were the days.

In them happy long past times Queers was going nuts, and demanding everybody should stop beating us up, and killing us. Imagine. 'Course now in these bright enlightened times such is unimaginable,...unless it happens to you.

Well you or some other random Queer.

Okay shit ain't changed at all other than we're more visible. This making it easier to find, and kill us.

But I digress.

An apparent little known fact of those gleeful elder daze was the founding of the first as in the first American Queer community center. Mind you not the first in history. The real first I think was the 1919~CE "Hirscheld Institute".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft

Wadda guy. Look him, and his pals up. You'll get an eyeful. Anyway 52 years later during another try after the Institute was burned to the ground by Nazis, and 80+ Millions of folks were murdered during WW2.

There was another attempt at that stop killing folks stuff.

A bit more modest this time. In 1971 the first American Queer Community Center opened in NYC in a loft above "Folk City". A dive where the like of Mr. Dylan the Fugs, and Mr. Ginsberg held forth.
Like most of history it's forgotten.

Except by those still alive like myself who were there. I was just 20, and dropped out of college,...again. A habit I was to maintain for several years till finally finishing.

By the standards of today it was revolutionary in that it didn't forbid anyone. Every variation of Dykedom Faggotry imagination peacefully blended like a very happy 'gay' cream in deep black coffee.

I mean every color age class, and hat size was there. Trannies before they had a name. Sissies BL folks leather rough trade street kids hippies lonely lawyers librarians young G.I.'s just back from the Vietnam War.

This plus any number of high school teachers who would accidently run in to former or current students.

I ran into a former English teacher there.

We were profoundly democratic in our desperation. Stonewall was still thought of as a riot, and it looked like a failed one. This as opposed to a City sponsored Mardi Gras.

I liked it there, and went near everyday. I eventually was on the housekeeping collective,....yeah we called it that. The revolution coming, and all. So being Queers we kept it nice, and tidy.

Till the City found out we were there.

They put the screws to our landlord the Folk Club. After a year of fire inspection raids, and police hunts for minors,...which was about one quarter of the usual population. ...this is why we forbade drinking, and dope. Anyway after a year, and four months we had to close.

...and were forgotten.

Several years later as things got more organized a few other centers opened. These I never liked as they were reflection's the divisions that were fracturing the hippie ethnic we used to have. Race gender class, and particular orientations became barriers. We had begun to internally segregate ourselves.

When the current politically connected NYC Homophile Center opened in the 1990's I had nothing to do with it. For one people like me had long since been declared "not gay". It was also racist in the ugly slightly screened way liberals do it.

I'd have preferred that they just wore pink hoods, and had done with it. Anyway that was the brief rise, and fall of the first, and last Community Center for Perverts of all kinds to hang out in. This in safety, and laughter.

Back then when a sister Dyke called me her Gay brother,....I would know she meant it. We were still one family then.

Today if I marched with a banner with my fantasy Queer Angel, and Faerie art on it. As I did back then at demos.
I would not get kindly supportive comments from my former comrade perverts. As I did back in the day.

At the time I actually thought like Michelangelo that Angels were 'supposed' to be beautiful winged, and nude. See above the times force me to illustrate this with modesty.

Today my banners would be likely be attacked, and me arrested.

Progress.

Happy Pride Day, if you fit the expected norms.

"Madness of Angels"

Beware inking down of your dreams. They'll either end up in some future holy scripture, and or as evidence at your trial. To the matter. Time is not linear, and space warps. The damned thing stretches contracts , and twists. Like origami on crack whiskey, and pastries.

I mean just ask Niels Bohr...he'll give you an earful.

However the Dreams.

Just emerged from a mist where it was made plain in the vagueness of that realm that no you ain't from here. Neither is your family. Not your line nor the lines of many others.

Elsewhere, and Else-when.

I wonder if the "Twilight Zone" was not just an entertainment, but a message. That, and all the other strange stories wonderings, and essays. These that the "different" keep writing, and putting before our eyes.

My digital "Hearth, and Home". If done right these platforms of meeting could be such a miracle. It is, but could be so much more. ...just needs a bit more heart, and introspection.

I'm not from here?

Well that would confirm certain oddities from early childhood. Hearing singing as I fell to sleep. Seeing the sky as different colors from what I was told it was. Remembering sight of the Earth from far above, and away. I saw, in dreams?, our cloud covered home as we see it now. I saw it as it really is before there was the evidence of science.

"I'm sorry,...what the fuck is going on?

Not from here.

...Some elsewhere else-when. I'm intermittently grateful. This for making me aware. For helping me endure life sharply, and perhaps more respectfully.

I'm no Angel. No one is.

Well not all the time. An Angel as I've found is an act. A verb not a noun. We become Angels of the moment by our works, and example. Pass the popcorn.