From a distance we see it-- a gilded plateau perilously gleaning on a melancholic spring morning; it is as if a geometrical chunk of the nearest solar orb has capitulated and fallen, planting itself into the riveting electric coniferous green meadows
of Britain. I make an analogy to my reflection in the window of the bus that it
looks like the Versailles of the UK to which counselor Dan, seated two rows ahead of me swivels his chin driveling something en francais. Vivian is
telling us that what we are about to witness is the country house of the Duke
of Marlborough. She tells us that we are traversing through Woodstock only it
is not the Woodstock as you are accustomed to envisioning with psychedelic
peace signs and folk music and free love now, is it?
Spencer makes a peace sign in the direction of Daisy, tells the entire bus to make love not war.
Spencer makes a peace sign in the direction of Daisy, tells the entire bus to make love not war.
Vivian begins to discus the genealogy of the Duke of Marlborough in
manners which are confusing, like cool Joe Thomas quickly discussing Mendel
and hybrids before digressing on one of his long tortuous anecdotes concerning
dessert menus at Bishops. In what is surely an exegesis in inbred plutocracy the 11th Duke of Marlborough has blood-lines to Winston Churchill, the once Lady Diana Spencer and even, Vivian notes, your Vanderbilt’s in the United States. He
was also married to Aristotle Onasis’ first wife for a short time.
Vivian notes as you can see by the exterior of the
building alone we’re talking about quite a bit of money here.
She talks about the Battle of Blenheim. She talks about the estate being one of Britain’s
largest houses if not thee largest. She talks with affability about the current
Duke and how, throughout the millions, he has served as a cultural steward and knightly custodian for the estate, opening it up to the public and going out of his way
to keep it preserved. Vivian notes how we are all grateful for the Duke, but I'm afraid his heir has a bit of a reputation of being a bad boy now doesn't he, winding up on the front page of the Daily Mail and all with allegations of prescription drug abuse and whatnot.
She notes that there has even been some speculation about the current Duke's heir may not inherit this priceless heirloom.
As we walk to the opening gate it feels like there
should be an old man with a beard, robe and halo identifying himself as St.
Peter verifying reservations.
“Wait, I can take a picture of you in front of
the castle if you like.”
It is Frank McNuty.
It is Frank McNuty.
Frank McNulty is a millionaire. He is the CEO of PARADE
magazine, the magazine with the largest circulation in the Unites States, he
sits with his wife at the front of the bus. He seems to look at the BIG TEN in
a slightly annoyed Boys-will-be-boys inflection.
“I can take a picture of you,” He says again, requesting
that I hand him my camera and show him which button to push. I hand him my
camera. I am wearing my glasses. I stand
very straight with my hands behind my back. After he takes the picture I ask if
I can return the favor by taking one of him and his wife.
“Why yes young man. We would appreciate that.”
He hands me their camera. Frank McNulty and his wife are together
smiling. I snap the camera. I then hand it back to them.
Frank accepts the camera. I keep calling him sir. He tells me thank you. He tells me it looks like your group
the Big Ten is getting ahead so you might want to join them for the tour. I
tell him yes sir. I wonder if Mr. McNulty will put a word in with Lynn Minton
and she will ask me to sit in on a Fresh Voices column.
As I walk ahead to join my group I can still see Mark’s
beret in the distance. I can make out Sam and Vinny with his camcorder plugged
into his right eye. Behind me I can hear Frank McNulty’s wife saying that he
certainly is a polite young man.
Again I feel like I have scored.
"The days that followed had a tight itinerary, including a dinner with the Lord Mayor of Oxford, a boat tour on the Thames River, and a visit to Windsor Castle. Stoller said his favorite stop was a tour of Blenheim Palace while Light liked visiting Warwick Castle."
Newspaper carriers report jolly time in England, Peoria Journal Star, April 14th, 1995
***
Beneath the portico where we enter the Palace there are six eyes. Jim Baker says that this is like some serious Illuminati back of the dollar bill all-seeing-eye pyramid shit. It looks like one of the eyes is winking at me as if from across a bar. Vivian is noting how the eyes were done in the late '20s as a tribute to the wife of the Duke of Marlborough but some conspiracy theorists think that they have dual meanings.
"It feels like we are entering a masonic mecca" Jim says, w.out using the word mecca, the most profound statement his scatological-intoned psyche has posited this entire trip as we enter the
as one, swallowed into the archways of the establishment. Vivian is talking about how this estate was presented by Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. We are digested by pristine beauty. Vivian makes a note that shortly we shall see the room where Sir Winston Churchill was born, fulfilling a legend that a great leader shall arise out of battle of Blenheim before stating that Blenheim palace has 187, more than both Buckingham and Windsor. We are being digested into a palatial palate, chandeliers glistening cascading orbs, iridescent pebbles splashing across mythological frescoes, each room engendering a succinct arboretum of aesthetics.
Trevor turns to Sir Charles and states, dude, this is like a museum.
It feels like I am traipsing through the chorus of an unknown symphony. Each room adorned with paintings, antiques furniture and statues. The library at the far end seems to be the size of my entire high school. Each room I keep looking up at a giant frieze painted on the top of the wall. It is sensory overload masterpiece theater style. My eyelids feel like they are having an orgasm.
It is gaudy yet not hoity-toity upper crust British prominent chin-bone stuffy. It is aesthetic yet not arrogant. I continue to lose myself in the fashion that I did in Warwick castle all of 24 hours earlier. I begin to float. I am hovering room through room. I am a helium-filled evaporated quarter note from Mozart's unfinished symphony. I am billowing above the foreheads of my group, the fucking Big Ten, not even having the deference to remove their sports caps upon entering this shrine. I am back-floating. I am upside-down. I am finding myself buoyed in a uterus of emotion, gestating, the placenta of the promise of the world to come flooding my optical periphery. I am looking at brush strokes of a painting of Princess Diana's great aunt. I am reeled into the umbilicus of the marble sepulcher demarcating the punctuating resting place of the first Duke of Marlborough. I am lost in the chime of the organ, chrome stalks emanating minor-keyed fantasias, all the while Vivian is in front of us, umbrella exulted above her. In front of me is an exodus of Young Columbus filtering, snapping photos, floating. Vivian is stating that this is the room where sir Winston Churchill was born two months prematurely. A lock of his curls enclosed in a glass bulb, bubbling in carbonation. I am floating in Blenheim palace, thinking of the Roll Right stone hatching from the earth 3000 years before Christ, scantily clad pagans shouting epitaphs at the dun of the harvest moon, stagnant, wondering where the copse of the planet will be 3000 years in the future, mankind resembling a different genus, a color not yet perceived by the slithered myopic purview of sight, mankind constantly getting off, constantly worshiping something yet unknown, hovering lights creating galactic arcana above stones of light, Blenheim palace, an exploited alternator, a gold filling in the cavity of expired British monarchy, a charred library of Alexandra burnt as society rises in the wisp of oneness expelling the hegemonic hiccup of social-class caliber as if it were nothing more than a wet dream you were not a part of..,
I am floating in Blenheim palace.
As with the eyelids of the day before I am searching for Harmony, the variegated squares on the dance floor, sure that yesterday in Warwick she was stowed in a turret, thinking Rapunzel, Rapunzel, show me yer tits!!I am floating. . Jim Baker keeps flashing his penis mistaken for a royal scepter than Van Goghs ear, Spencer, placing the instrument to his face pressing it into his forehead like a spout asking Daisy if she would care for a drink of mineral water compliments of Bath.
I am floating through Blenheim Palace as if a golden cloud.
The eleventh duke of Marlborough is standing like Jeeves inexplicably telling everyone to hurry up please its time, read to me by Harmony over the phone 18 months and a lifetime later, telling me about a poet I have never heard of before , reading in a British accent. I am etherized upon the ceiling. I am floating in a dome of angels. If I squint I can make out Vinny and his camcorder filming a documentary on Xanadu and Kublu Khan. I see Greta with her bandanna and purple boots massaging the side of her temples, taking deep breaths in front of a crowd, explicating the salubrious ramifications of distilled thought patterns. I see Mark followed by a hyphen in tandem with his middle name still wearing his beret, painting a mural asking the query who shot JR? I am lost. I need to find the girl with the pasty skin or Meg Weaver but instead find myself shooting Heroin in Amarillo, Texas, Sam, reading Blood Meridian, chuckling next to me, stating that the title sound like Amarillo pin girl had her first period using a Rand McNally atlas as a maxi-pad. I am lost. Tamara is wearing a trench coat and is chewing gum and is next to Sheila and when I wave she pretends she doesn't see me. Sheila waves and her fingers transition into laurel-leaf heralding peace doves looking for an ark to constitute a new beginning in the book of genesis.
I am above I am floating through Blenheim Palace.
I am watching Sir Charles christened a knight by the trash talking power forward of the Phoenix Sun who bares his names sake rising from the discarded ash of Winston Churchill's cigar, stating that the only thing we have to fear is that most of us will be ash come fifty years. I am certain I can find her. I am certain I can weld my body inside the lithe curvature of her torso then we will form an unknown hieroglyph of flesh, extrapolated kisses, Dante kicking his Virgils into the side of Beatrice's thighs, laughing, Rita wearing scrubs and feathers asking me why I couldn't have waited, Meg sweating just a little bit as we walk past the tapestry delving into the birth canal of the British country side, into the labyrinthine garden abutting the side of the estate, somehow lost, somehow finding everything out all over again.
Somehow reborn.
****
The garden is a labyrinth of hedges and fountains and statues with no marble undergarments. I see Mark ahead with his camera taking pictures.
"Looking for the tree of Knowledge?" I pun. He smiles. His beret is the coolest thing I swear I have ever seen.
"Just don't eat of the fruit. God will exile you from the garden."
He smiles. Behind me are giggles.
It is a feminine voice. I mistook it for Eve.
 |
| Not Rita. |
It is Rita. She has her hair pulled back. I can tell that her heartbeat has ameliorated fumbling inside Blenheim palace.
Still for some reason, I feel the need to inquire if she liked it. She is smiling. Rita places her hand to her chest like she is in a Jane Austin book club talking about Mr. Darcy. She is telling me that it is timeless.
She uses the word indelible. She asks me what I thought about the organ. She asks me if I happened to read the poem that was planted in the center of the organ.
I tell her that I did not.
"It was really beautiful. The inscription in the center of the organ is an ode to timelessness. It says something like “ to this glorious home we leave thy voice to speak within these walls in years to come when ours are still.”
I am in Blenheim with a beautiful girl. Behind me I hear Jim Baker pointing at one of the naked male statues, saying look, from here it looks like Harry is talking right into that statue's butt.
I look at Rita. My head is oscillating looking for Harmony wondering if I might perhaps saunter into her within the garden, wondering what she meant last night by not being in her room because she was helping a PARADE escort out.
Rita is being summoned by her counselor to join her group. She flashes me a smile, cherry streaks of fresh snow.
Near the front of the building the Big Ten is giving it up. I can't stop looking at the overhead eyes. I swear the lower-middle eye is blinking at me. I looks like is contains a furled python. It looks like it is looking for a phone-booth. It is the color of the coats we are wearing. It looks like it need Visine. I lay on my back as if I am in a tanning bed and look at the eyes. They are hypnotic. There is something overtly Egyptian about their semblance. I feel like I am floating again. In front of me there is a motorized roar. I hear Justin shout.
"Dude, that's a Lamborghini!!"
A black vehicle is driving fast, swerving, as if the driver is pleasantly intoxicated
I am trying to tell my fellow Young Columbuses that one of the six eyes is now the color of our jackets and that it is blinking only they are enamored with the Lamborghini.
Vivian has her umbrella free hand saluted over her forehead like a poker visor. She is stating that, yes, you can tell by the reckless driving, that's the Duke's heir.
He is speeding. Jim Baker is stating that if he inherited that sort of money he would be fucking everything in sight. Groups are milling around. There is an almost general consensus that this is the coolest thing we have seen so far on our voyage yet everyday has surpassed the last. Photos are still snapping. While I was in Blenheim palace I lost track of Frank McNulty and Lynn Minton. I want to inquire if anyone has seen Harmony. I want to continue the conversation we had started at the Rollright stones.
Justin points. He is calling me Harry.
Over at the gate there is a group of girls locking elbows, skipping. It is her group. Harmony is next to Meg Weaver.
It is like they are waving goodbye.
It is time to go, It is time for lunch. I point at Vivian. I tell her to look at the eyes beneath the brim of the portico. She doesn't seem to hear me.
She points at the Big Ten. She says hurry up please it is time.
A line I swear whose echo I have heard somewhere before.
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