Basebally's Blog

Delayed Narcissism

2007-08-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I'm sorry that I have been remiss in updating this journal, but I have been temporarily removed from the "web." However, now that I'm back among the Polis, I am putting up a few thoughts I wrote down in my Moleskine while on the lam.

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Campfire

It's tough to say how long I have been in the woods...it's tough to say much of anything with the state my mouth is in. Trust to a dirty redneck to call a simple citizen a "faggot" and hit him simply for expressing a different point of view. And for wearing a baseball on his head. But that's all past now.

I'm sitting around the communal fire with Dusty and Cameron, my fellow hobo-companions. The air is heady with a mix of sycamore. My clothes are fragrant with campfire smoke -- so reminiscent of smoky Lapsong Suchong. Ah...how I miss civil tea. Right now we are drinking a bitter mimx that Dusty has brewed from wild Sassafrass. Its taste bridges my other sense of smoke and trees, and warms my interior. I feel protected against the chill of this unexpected shower.

Every few intervals, I pull out my "bundle" and check its contents. Dusty says that the bundle in the hobo's best friend. It is nothing more than a hankerchief wrapped tightly around all my worldly possessions, but already it feels like my world. Oh for a glass of cool Chardonnay.

Goodnight Friends,
Basebally

A Poem

2007-08-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Eye On the Ball

A white dome, streaked with bits of red.
I hide away from the world.
Every day a new curve,
This curveball goes too fast.
When will I be hit?
Do I fear most to be smacked over the fence,
Or to be missed, and tossed away
Scuffed with dirt.
Spit on me.
Grind me against your hip.
Give me to a fan who loves me more than you.
Did I not dance enough for you?
Did I not prance enough for you?
Did I not love you enough?
Do you love me?

I was only your pasttime.
Hooray for the Home Team.

The Unkindest Cut

2007-07-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

That which I had hitherto hinted at is lost forever. For a fleeting moment, I thought that I had found something precious, only to have it degraded before me. Am I too vague? Here it is, then:

The little Pie Shop that I had mentioned was a setting not only for many a merry feast, but for a revelation. That revelation came in the form of a young lady, of whose name I dare not speak for trembling. Even now I must do what I can to calm my nerves so that I can type this words (and still, each sentence requires so very many rewrites). Our romance was brief, but wonderful...and I flattered myself to think that she shared in it. But, no.

And then, as quickly and cleanly as it started, it ended abruptly and messily. I'm not proud of what I did, and I cannot even speak of it now. Needless to say, that I have moved on from that town. The Baseball, and the Vengeance sustain me.

Goodnight, Friends.

Basebally.

A Slice of Life

2007-07-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

Has anyone seen any good movies lately? I haven't.

To be honest, I must admit to never having seen a single one. In a most purposeful way, I have avoided all my life that which my Father would have called "The Devil's Canvas." Now, however, I long for the escapeism that I read about in books about movies. Normal people sound so uplifted when they see them. It seems nice

I find myself constantly distracted lately -- it becomes increasingly more difficult to concentrate on a single task. Surely there have been too many times to number that I have begun upon a measure, only to find myself lost as to where I had begun. Am i worried? Strangely, no. It is refreshing, indeed. This....forgetfulness, it clears away only the little things; the small and disjointed efforts of banal, everyday existence. Never once dose it touch my most sacred and singular of purposes: my revenge. The forgetfulness becomes as to a torch in a cobwebbed room, burning that which obscures me from my goal.

I've even lost weight from forgetting to eat! And yet my strength grows. Surely this is a sign from a larger hand than mine, lending support to my efforts, and directing me toward my ends? I pray that it is.

To the extent that I do it, it is entirely pies. I wish that I could reveal my location, because there is a seductive little pie shop here that makes the greatest pecan, rhubarb, and blueberrry buckle pies which I had ever been fortunate enough to taste. And taste them I do. Indeed, I have appetite for little else.

However...there is another reason I love this little pie shop in C_______. More on this later.

Goodnight Friends,

Basebally

A Long and Weary Journey

2007-06-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Damn, Damn, Damn!!!

How have I come to be this cursed? As the days pass, I grow even more wretched...but a shadow of myself. I had started this diary of a kind in order to purge myself of the demons inside. But I feel them growing, maturing, taking over. The anger. How can I speak of the anger without speaking of myself? I am become the anger within me.

Before I was able to hide so much of myself behind the Baseball. But then I found friends, real friend. Avatard, Pirate, that other guy...they were the first people to make me feel wanted -- and not just because of the shucking and jiving of the Mascot in me. No, they loved me for me. Or so I thought. It seems ridiculous and embarrassing to say now, but I had even considered taking off the Baseball around them. About being really, truly naked in front of my FRIENDS.

Friends. That word is meaningless to me now. Fuck them! Fuck them all!!! The cast ME out? To spurn ME?! For what?! For some fucking bitch that they don't even know? I hate them...I despise them...I will bring so much pain upon them.

Even now I taste the bile in my throat, and it tastes good. It tastes like revenge.

Goodnight friends,

Basebally

Allow Me to Introduce Myself...

2007-05-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and gentle hearts: Attend to me a while, and allow me to tell you my story, humble though it be. Perhaps when we're through here, you won't think any better of me, but I mean, in the short time I have allotted, to tell you something of myself so that you might say not that Basebally was a good man...but just a man.

I can't remember now (perhaps I never knew!) whether it was I who found the Baseball, or the Baseball who found me. This I know: It was the Baseball who made me what I am, and what I forever will be. Can I call my beginnings ordinary? Certainly that which bears the dust of memory in the corners of our minds may seem ordinary to us; but to others, newly found, may have the freshness of discovery. In the little town on _______ where I served my childhood, I was surely much less than ordinary. Unnoticed, I floated ghostlike through my younger, and adolescent year, unremarked upon even by those I called my family. Would it surprise me to know that not a single soul was troubled when I slipped out, unseen, on that warm June evening? No, it would not.

By then, I had already taken to hiding my features. Ashamed and disgusted with my plain, featureless face, I had begun wearing a burlap sack to hide it. No one seemed to notice. It was only years later, in a town far from where I had begun, while scrounging beneath bleachers for discarded change and half-clean food, that the Baseball came to me, and I to it. What second-rate, corn-league mascot had cast him off, I'm sure I'll never know; the truth was that He never belonged to another just as I had never belonged to my home. We found a home in each other, and I became Basebally...my old, false name lost in the dust beneath those bleachers.

Now, for the first time, the world took note. As long and uneventful as the time BEFORE had been, so just as short was my meteoric rise to mascot stardom. I found that I was not just a good mascot, but a great one. Demanded across the country, I became a free agent, playing for the highest purse. With money in my pocket, and the cheers of fans ringing daily in my ears, one would think I would have found satisfaction at last. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough. However, i grow tired now, and the bare bulb in this dimly-lit motel room is burning into my brain and giving me a headache. I must retire. More later, goodnight friends,

Basebally