Oscar Wilde

The Chool Bus (ch09)

Chapter 09: Mork Thompson ponders the mental residue of a recent dream and the newly expanded Forks make sightseeing plans before resuming research interviews. 

Professor T was already settled by the time Billie set the parking brake in Silverthorne. Behind the privacy curtain, he was reading a novel illuminated by a clip-on book light. This week he was well into an uncensored version of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. As he pondered ideas articulated by Wilde, such as the intertwining of intellect and spirit, his attention turned back to the dream from the night before. In this dream, artifacts of science and religion were swirling in opposition, a spiraling motion like a hurricane or the stars making up the Milky Way. It seemed as if these icons were exhibiting an attractive and repellant influence on each other simultaneously, both maintaining and dispersing the spiraling motion. It seemed to Professor T that an irreconcilability of the nation’s warring cultural forces resembled this image, and perhaps could be better understood through a similar frame. 

“Sweet dreams, everyone,” Billie was in a rare bubbly mood.

“I’ll decide,” Jack was not.

“Thank you,” Buck yawned.

“Humph,” Professor T. turned the page.

Tomorrow would be a new day, they would arrive in Salt Lake City in time to enjoy a relaxing dinner, then a couple full days of sightseeing and wanderings before getting back to work gaining insights from people in the area. Jack wanted to take an excursion to nearby Park City. He had heard some great stories of après-ski babes in the off-season, and he wanted to mingle with the singles. Billie asked about his squeeze back home, Jackie Blue. 

“She bailed,” said Jack. “She’s got ADD bad. She knew she’d get bored with me being gone weeks on end. It’s all good… we were starting to get stale anyway.”

“That’s an interesting relationship assessment,” said Billie. “Whatever happened to romance?”

“You’re one to talk,” Jack said with a smirk. “Billie the man-eater is nostalgic for romance, hash-tag LOL.”

Billie winked. “Don’t believe a word of it,” she was looking at Buck. “I still believe… just waiting for the right combination. It’s not my fault i was born this fabulous. The right one’s out there somewhere… i just know it.”

“You’re cursed with super model looks and the hide of a 21st century Annie Oakley,” said Jack. “Good luck finding your Wild Bill, or Calamity Jane, or whatever. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.”

Professor T. could hear this exchange mingling with the mental formation of Wilde’s words leaping off the Dorian Gray pages and it added to his reverie of the spiraling forces of intellect and spirit. He paused the reading a moment to listen as Billie, Jack, and Buck’s friendly banter carried on from topic to topic with a relaxed ease. Professor T smiled. He was glad to have Buck Wellstone added to the gang. The music of his slight southern drawl mixed with Billie’s melodious tones and Jack’s witty sarcasm was music to Professor T. He was fading. He closed the book the voices trailed and he drifted off to sleep.

“So what should we do first in Utah,” asked Jack?

“I’ve always wanted to see MOAB,” said Billie.

“I’ve been there,” Buck interjected. “It’s amazing, but we need motorcycles to properly get the full effect. Hiking takes too long.” Do you think Professor T’s up for that?”

“Oh yeah,” Said Jack. “He’s a trooper… he’ll keep up with anything we can throw at him.”

“Ain’t that right,” Billie directed the question to Mork’s sleeping birth?

Silence.

“Well… i guess that’s it for the skipper. I think i’m next,” said Jack. “We’ll see ya’ll in the morning.”

Billie made her way to the back of the Chool Bus to brush her teeth and whatever else she does before settling into her sleeping birth. Buck, feeling a bit self conscious still waited for everyone to get settled before heading that way himself. He pulled out his phone and checked his emails while Billie did her thing. Within a few moments the Forks were off to a painted desert dreamland.

NEXT WEEK:
The Forks spend a day among the bougie natives of Park City and Professor T. receives some troubling news from home.

The Chool Bus (preface):

PREFACE: And Chapter Links

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: In the years of our lord 2024-25 the Loopcircus blog roared along with consistent weekly glimpses into our Hot Springs or Busk (HSoB) travels. This was a settled workflow, quite manageable, rendering weekly 4-10 minute posts and illustrative graphics (thanks to various AI image generation tools). The posts were accompanied by audio versions of the text in narrative podcast form. Presently, a few developments have altered our expectations post-HSoB. Specifically, create a long-form narrative, eventually cobbled together in novel form (audio & print). And shift gears from visiting each of the 48 contiguous United States, a blog post for each (several for Florida… of course) and begin making travel decisions determined by favorable Van-Life weather.

And so, approaching week #4 with the new project, we’re finding those aimless moments of formless drifting, some call it writer’s block where, at the end of what could have been a productive day, we reflect with a bit of slothful guilt that nothing of consequence had been produced. This is anathema to your typical Type-A personality, no matter HOW retired i think i am. So, this morning, it hit me. In those heady days when we had weekly publish deadlines (a mere four weeks ago), things got done. In fact we were able to work so far ahead of deadlines to be three to six weeks ahead of publishing targets. Of course, this provides more time for reflection and review, and that’s a good thing as it’s hard to catch mechanical errors when the work is rushed. Anyway, we decided to roll this narrative out as a Loopcircus serial. Many fine works got their public introduction thusly. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray comes to mind, among others, Twain, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Joyce, etc.. 

So, we’ll get back to weekly postings with an eye toward minimizing the use of artificial intelligence tools. That said, my graphics talent is right up there with Kurt Vonnegut’s (if you know, you know). So, we’ll continue to enlist a robot’s assistance for the weekly post’s featured images. We’ll engage a human artist should the finished product ever make it to professional publication. 

And now… without further adieu… a brief introduction: 
In this story, the eminent and amiable Professor Mork Thompson (Professor T.) and his bandmates… known as The Forks in their youthful heyday… wander around United States of America indulging a preternatural interest in human nature. This shared interest inspires a question which eventually earns Professor T. a lucrative research grant. Early on, Professor T. recruits a young cowboy and recent graduate of the University of Wyoming for research assistance and aid de camp. Buck Wellstone, whose unhurried country gentility and forthright attitude adds contrast to the sometimes naive and uptight countenance of the former grunge guitar flogger/songsinger, Mork Thompson. On the back roads and freeways of this vast nation, The Forks bear witness to many sometimes perilous, sometimes awkward, sometimes comic adventures that culminate with resolution in a nagging, ongoing inquest/lawsuit concerning Professor T.’s alleged Title IX violations brought by his long-time administrative assistant.

Okay… back to the weekly posts, back to appeasing the Type-A gods. Please join us checking in on the adventures and misadventures of Mork T. and the Forks as they make their way around our precariously vacillating experiment in pluralistic democracy, searching for the fibrillating heart of our divided nation.

May whatever you call the infinite mystery of existence swoop in and help us all.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie