Belle Does Rip Van Winkle

Belle Burch agreed to be my muse and model. She brought up nudity – but no sex! I agreed. Then she sent me her infamous poem and an e-mail asking me for more personal details. She had been looking at this blog for twelve days. She did not tell me she was a member of SLEEPS. Belle did say she was majoring in English Literature at Lane. With her due to come over and pose, I accused her of trying to steal my novel ‘Capturing Beauty’. She – the twelve – needed money to pay for their attorneys. This was going to be an ultraistic theft of the best kind, that has inspired a thousand stories. All is forgiven!

There we would be, the old master before his empty canvas, doing my rendition of ‘Leda and the Swan’. Belle has this body type and looks like Leonardo’s model. She would ask me more questions about my health my bout with cancer, my genealogy. She wants my story to be her story. She is like a thief in the night, a master of disguises. She has a very long neck. Da Vinci’s model, does not. What a mistake. He should have taken artistic license.

Marilyn suggested the reason Belle his her true identity is she did not want me to know she is a radical who got arrested for demonstrating in the City Manager’s office. However, she gives herself away in her poem. The red bandana has the word OCCUPY on it. She is a child of Victor Hugo. She is my ideal. I have immortalized here, and will do more of this, when I reveal the theory a scholar published, about Irving plagiarizing Mr. Winkle. Belle will forever be a part of American Literature. The story of an old scholar leaving his legacy to a ragamuffin, a street urchin – is classic! Did Belle plagiarize Irving, she barhopping in the Barmuda Triangle which suggests a Time Zone.

“Van Winkle does not ask who they are or how they know his name. Instead, he begins to drink some of their Jenever and soon falls asleep.”

https://rosamondpress.com/2017/09/05/bohemian-nation-of-washington-woodstock/

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

“I texted a lover in New Orleans,
‘I’m stuffing almonds into a banana,
around my neck is a red bandana
and I love you.’”

Belle’s mother is Catherine Vandertuin, a Dutch name that means ‘Of The Garden’ . Van Der Tuin. She conducted a Labyrinth Walk with Belle’s father. Henry Breevort came from Holland and wrote letters to Washington Irving, who stayed Sir Walter Scott who claims he was given the floor plan of the Bower and Maze at Woodstock, where Fair Rosamond was kept. When I first lay eyes on Belle I knew I found model for Fair Rosamond. Who is the author of this amazing story? The great Muse is at work here! She wants Catherine and Belle to be immortalized.

I put on Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’. I talk to her from behind my large canvas, taking a peek now and then. She is a reader. We talk about Henry Brevoort and Washington Irving. I am falling in love with the beautiful young woman who sent me a poem. Who would not? Surely an old man may hesitate lest he get into – more trouble! I have had a lot of trouble in my life. I tell Belle about my brushes with death. She thinks she is seeing things. Each time I take a peek, I appear five year younger.

Then, she hears the rustling of wings. I take my last peek. I am wearing the helmet of a knight. There are the wings of a swan upon it.

“What is your name?” Belle asks, there goose bumps up and down her beautiful arms. I step from behind my canvas……….

“I am……………..”

Jon Presco

Copyright 2017

http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/064.html

Untitled

by Belle Burch

Last night I fell
asleep in a tent on the concrete
in front of city hall
to the sounds of a quiet radio-
some show about the Bermuda Triangle.
How things, people
disappear there.
Whether or not it exists.
Interviews with people
who believed in it,
interviews with people
who didn’t. Its history.
Amelia Earhart. (Airheart?)
It seemed to go on
for centuries.
There are people out there
who don’t have state IDs, passports,
birth certificates,
social security numbers,
who technically
legally
don’t exist.
The faeries who put people
to sleep for 100 years must live there
in that West Atlantic Vortex.
I got lost in it,
like Rip Van Winkle*,
and woke
to a changed world.
I texted a lover in New Orleans,
‘I’m stuffing almonds into a banana,
around my neck is a red bandana
and I love you.’ It was all true.
I walked through what is known
in Eugene as the Barmuda Triangle,
the magical trine of Luckey’s,
Horsehead and Jameson’s downtown.
If you order food at Jameson’s,
it gets run across the street
from Horsehead.
Luckey’s has the best pool tables,
and a fantastic little Mexican foodcart lovechild
that only accepts cash.
At the Horsehead,
there is a touch screen machine
where you get to choose
what music is being played.
You pay money for this privilege.
If you pay more money,
your songs get played
first.
This is a triangle
you can only get lost in
if you’re a real person.
* bandana around my eyes to keep the
blazing orange streetlights out

America’s Hidden Royalty

Whiteley The Wendling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda_and_the_Swan_(Leonardo)

http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/064.html

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

https://rosamondpress.com/2017/02/02/gamergate-and-the-labyrinth/

https://rosamondpress.com/2016/01/19/the-ken-and-catherine-maze-walk/

Iris van der Tuin is associate professor in, and program director of, Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies). Trained as a feminist epistemologist and working as an interdisciplinarian, she is specialized in gender studies and new materialisms (especially pertaining to humanities scholarship that traverses ‘the two cultures’).  https://www.uu.nl/staff/IvanderTuin

SLANT Eugene lost one of its most creative artists last week. Cancer stole Catherine Vandertuin from us when she was far too young. In her too-short time here, Vandertuin, the founder and artistic director of Eugene Chamber Theatre, applied enormous energy, creativity and collaboration to the innovative theater/music productions of Dust and Dreams, Antigone, The Descent of Innana and Ice Cure, the last adapted from an original manuscript. She also collaborated in various puppet and mask theater productions. Her vision was to create multi-disciplinary works that explored themes of balance and wholeness. Catherine brought Javanese gamelan music to Eugene in 1992 with the founding of Gamelan Nuju Laras, well known for accompanying labyrinth walks created by her partner, Jeff Burch. Although her theater work and family obligations eventually forced her to give up the gamelan, Catherine’s contribution continues in Nuju Laras’s successor, Gamelan Sari Pandhawa, and the 90-piece Javanese gamelan Gamelan Kyai Tunjung Mulya, whose construction she commissioned and supervised. Gamelan Kyai Tunjung Mulya was ultimately donated to the UO where it is used to teach UO students and other community members. Through her teaching at LCC, collaborations with other community artists, and irrepressibly creative spirit, Catherine made Eugene a much more artistically vital place, and her legacy will live on in the audiences she touched and the artists she taught and inspired.