"You
haven't seen me because I've been working late."
PREFACE TO BOOK III
II.3.1. The texts in this third Book cover the
years 1993-1994. I've tried to
present them in a rough chronological order. As I was no longer working at the cafŽ during much of this time,
I necessarily encountered Cosmo di Madison less frequently. Our meetings took place in a wider
variety of contexts, and thus the matter of this third Book centers less on the
life of the cafŽ, and more on the life of Cosmo di Madison as he lived it in
the city at large.
I must admit that after the completion of
Book II of the Gospels I thought that my work in writing the Doctrine was
finished. There was a period
during which both Cosmo di Madison and I felt content with the teachings as they'd
been recorded. But then Cosmo came
forward with his complaint: "They're not fucking listening, honey. They're still not fucking listening." And he began explaining again things
he'd said earlier, and clarifying teachings he could see remained obscure even
to me, and I realized I was being called upon to take up the writing once
more. And how, in any case, could
I leave anything in silence? If he
was telling it to me, it was certainly for a purpose. He was not--I think you will agree with me on this--the kind
of man who just liked to listen to himself talk. No, I couldn't allow these new teachings to drift into
oblivion. There was the world to
think of, the future. I have a
responsibility. For I recognize as
well as anyone that the current generation is unused to reading the important
texts of the tradition, with the obvious result that it is sorely in need of exempla
to
follow in both spiritual and worldly matters. And Cosmo di Madison is a fountain of such exempla, as you
have certainly remarked in your reading of Books I and II. Luckily here in Madison--here where
Isaiah, Augustine, Eckhart and Villon are no longer read--luckily here we have
Cosmo di Madison, a voice crying out in a veritable wilderness of bozos and
slackers. A wilderness? It is a jungle, reader. The canopy teems with Lutheran
sympathizers, moneygrubbing workaholics, MTV brain-dead teens, illiterate
teaching assistants, wide-eyed Internet perverts, mall strollers, spare-a-dime
Rainbow Gathering derelicts, gender Stalinists, beer-swelled fifty-year-old
frat boys, pallid quantum-mechanical geeks, jittery theory enthusiasts from
some post-structuralist cartoonland, floribund state-employed lithium pushers,
post-doctorate waiters and waitresses and taxi drivers and day-care workers--and
this, this is only the beginning, only the very merest beginning of a taxonomy
of our jungle. Who is there to
address such a ragtag crowd? From
whom can they receive the truth?
There is Cosmo di Madison.
And who else? Who?
Though I repeatedly petitioned Cosmo di
Madison during these years to bring me along with him on one of his missions
overseas, my requests were continually, for whatever reason, denied. This is a weak point in my book, one I
fully acknowledge. For I can still
make no claims to being a first-hand witness to his various actions in Bosnia,
Iraq or Japan, and am constrained to present all facts relating to these
missions according to Cosmo di Madison's own narration of them. Hopefully in reading Books I and II the
reader has recognized Cosmo di Madison's scrupulous adherence to the truth in
these matters, and will not feel that my work suffers too much through my
having been continuously grounded here in Madison while my subject traipsed
about the planet righting wrongs, undermining dictatorships, and generally
"maintaining the proper ossivant of the balance of worldly powers."
You have trusted us this far, reader.
So boldly march on, glancing neither to the left nor to the right. Eric Mader-Lin, Madison, 1995
II.3.3. In the nook set aside for
them to create those marvelous cakes, pastries, liquored puddings
and--yes--chocolate-chip cookies so enjoyed by the riffraff that talks
postmodernism and gender for hours on end in our cafŽ--in this nook I overheard
one day two of the bakers--Amy and Chris--challenging each other to tell,
respectively, the strangest place they ever had sex. They weren't really coming out about this, however, as I was
standing there listening to them. (Aureurism, my field of
study.) I suppose they suspected
that were they to reveal "the strangest place [they] ever did it"
while I was standing there cleaning the cocoa-dispenser and listening in
obtrusively--they suspected their adventures would end up in a book of the
scandalous kind I am known to promote.
Then suddenly, to relieve them of their
burden, Cosmo di Madison stepped into the bakery and demanded doughnuts--this
for the 400th time in my hearing alone, for though Cosmo di Madison knows full
well that the bakers have never and will never make doughnuts, he continues
persistently to demand them nearly every morning, for Cosmo di Madison--I
believe this is his point--is not about to bow to the obstinacy of the hired
help.
"I would like doughnuts!" he
intoned, briskly thumping the baker's table with his fist.
"But Cosmo, we don't make
doughnuts!" replied Amy all singsong.
"Doughnuts or nothing!" insisted
Cosmo.
"Cosmo," said Chris, "where
is the strangest place you've ever made love?"
Cosmo di Madison glanced at his
fingernails in a gesture of modesty, and then began to laugh in a low, almost
sinister tone. "Heh heh
heh heh...."
"C'mon, Cosmo," chimed Amy.
"You can tell us. The
strangest place you've ever made love."
"The strangest place?" asked
Cosmo.
"Yeah," said Amy.
"You really want to know?"
"Yeah, tell us!" said Chris.
"C'mon."
Cosmo di Madison
leaned toward Chris and fixed her with his eyes. In a low and steady voice, one which sent a chill even down
my spine, he confided: "It was in a freshly dug grave."
Then deliberately
dipping his index finger in a bowl of flour, he came forward and began gently
to draw a white stripe down Chris's cheek, fixing her with his eyes. She recoiled in horror.
Turning on his heels, Cosmo di Madison
stormed out of the bakery, holding the flour-dusted hand before him like a claw
and declaring in full volume for the whole cafŽ: "Doughnuts, I tell
you! Tomorrow! Or else! BAAAAHHH-AAAAHHHH-AAAHHHHH-AAAAAHHH!"
II.3.4. CAFƒ COSMOS --Service
is our 58th name--
II.3.5. During the Spring of 1993, Cosmo di Madison's early morning
phone calls to me became more and more frequent. These calls would usually occur between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m., with
the result that by the following day I had usually forgotten the details of
what he had related. Was my
fidelity to the cause being tested?
From what Cosmo di Madison told me during those early morning
communiquŽs, I could gather that there was some kind of forced drugging
campaign going on at the cafŽ. Two
members of the staff, one Craig and one Dean (alias "Monkey Butt"),
were involved in this pernicious business. Given the gravity of the situation, I decided to leave a
tape-recorder by the phone, so that next time I received one of these calls I
could verify what I'd heard by listening to the tape the following
morning. Any course of action of
mine would then be based upon correct information, and not merely upon vague,
nightmarish memories.
To give the reader a better idea of this
illicit activity, I have typed up a segment from one of these 4:00 a.m.
monologues:
...You can tell
they're lying. You just stare into
their eyes, putting on a little ossifated telepathy, and ask them in a
steady voice: Did you put barbiturates in my iced coffee? Psssh! They'll pinch their lips together and look at the
ground: Naw, it wasn't me,
Cosmo! I shore di'n't do it. It shore wasn't me! That's the way it is--the fucking
losers. I never saw such a sorry
performance in my life! Who do
they think they're dealing with here, Mr. Rogers? Psssh! That
Monkey Butt and that Craaaaig are takin' funny money from Henry Kissinger--you
know it, don't you? I don't even
wanna see that Monkey Butt any more.
He's fucking drugged me prob'ly fifty times by now. And that Craaaaig thinks he can fool me
with that smile of his. Oh, hi
Cosmo! Here's your iced coffee
just ready and waiting for you! We
just put a little FUCKING BARBITURATES in it--hope you don't mind. We need to make a little money too now
and then--on HENRY KISSINGER'S FUCKING PAYROLL--YOU KNOW IT, DON'T YOU? I want you to talk to Mark about
this first thing when you get there.
Are you opening today?...
Well, just talk to him when you get there then. If he knew his FUCKING EMPLOYEES were
putting barbiturates in people's coffee, he'd have them skinned--ya hear
me? He doesn't go for that kind of
funny business....
I feel no need to reproduce more of
this depressing story, which, if it has any value at all, should stand in these
writings as a testimony to the corruptibility of youth in this money-grubbing
and secularized nation of ours.
Suffice it to say that the situation was soon resolved, but that for
some time after this Cosmo di Madison would only trust certain members of the
staff in the preparation of his iced coffees.
II.3.6. A man at the counter, fumbling for change.
"Shit. I'm on my last leg here. This is all I've got 'til my next check."
He puts down 95 cents, a mere nickel more
than the price of his coffee.
Cosmo di Madison pipes in from the side:
"Tell me about it."
"Oh, so you're broke too, huh?"
the man asks Cosmo.
Cosmo di Madison: "I had to buy new
rosaries for 4,312 of my kids. You
bet I'm fucking broke. Blacklisted
in America too. The fucking
CFR. Psssh!"
The man looks to me, obviously puzzled.
"Yeah, go ahead!" Cosmo snaps at
him. "Pretend you don't know
what I'm talking about!
Psssssssh!"
Cosmo di Madison steps away indignantly,
his glass of iced coffee clutched proudly to his chest.
"I suppose I shouldn't
complain," the man winks at me.
"Just look at that guy!"
"Oh, don't think you can fool
me," I reply deadpan.
"What?"
"As if you don't know what he's
talking about! Psssh!"
The man finally wanders to his table,
shaking his head, unsure whether to grumble or laugh. But I have no such uncertainty in me. In fact I go right to the machine and
make myself another double espresso, the third double of the morning, for I, as
you have probably gleaned by now--I am an espresso jerk.
"An espresso jerk?" you
ask. "What is an espresso
jerk?"
You may wonder, reader. What, indeed?
Perhaps we should put this question to the
Man himself. For it was Cosmo di
Madison who best characterized us espresso jerks when he said: "An
espresso jerk is like a soda jerk, except more of a jerk."
I have to admit the truth of this
definition. It covers all the
essentials. Given the sheer volume
of our caffeine intake during a day behind the counter. Given the heat of the machines. Given--more than anything--the
slackjawed, often desperate character of the clientele. The espresso jerk is like a soda
jerk, except more of a jerk. Which is
to say: like a soda jerk armed to the teeth. Like a soda jerk with teeth sharpened into nasty little
points. Sharp little teeth, nasty
little teeth, ready and waiting...
to bite you.
II.3.7.
affant
magdalent energy
II.3.8. CAFƒ COSMOS --Because
you deserve us--
II.3.9. The Modesty of Cosmo di Madison. It is time to remark in these writings
the supersubtle nuances of Cosmo di Madison's modesty.
Though I'd been downtown since morning, I
hadn't yet encountered Cosmo di Madison.
Finally, around 4:30, I heard from a friend that he'd been seen being
carried along the street by an unknown and very muscly little man, and that the
man was carrying Cosmo because he had a cast on one leg. The scene was apparently memorable not
simply for the cast, but because Cosmo di Madison, while being carried along by
the shorter man, was seen to be holding his crutches in one hand while taking
rather aristocratic puffs from a cigarette in the other, his head held back
imperially. The story must have
been true, because later the same day I heard from someone else that Cosmo di
Madison was in a cast and that, upon being asked what had happened to him,
claimed that he had twisted his ankle when he tripped down the stairway of his
apartment building the previous morning.
"He tripped down the stairway!"
I asked in surprise.
"Yes," replied my source.
For those who know Cosmo di Madison, who
know, in short, the great rigor of his lifestyle--his military daring, his police
work and so on--this tale of having tripped down a stairway sounds rather
unlikely. It was clear to me at
least that Cosmo was just being modest and did not want to go around bragging
about the as yet undisclosed heroic feat that most certainly led to his injury.
The following day I didn't see Cosmo di
Madison at the cafŽ, but heard that he was incapacitated in his apartment. I was told in fact that he had called
earlier requesting someone deliver him a pitcher of icy ("icy" being
our cafŽ's special blend of iced coffee--top-grade goods--liable to give you a
headache or make you ill if you happen to live on the West side). When the coffee was delivered, and
Cosmo di Madison was asked how he'd broken his ankle, our faithful delivery
person was told that several ligaments were torn the previous morning when a
handful of Serbian punks pushed him down the stairs.
So that was it. I should have suspected as much. The real source of Cosmo di Madison's injury was linked to
his work in the Balkans. The
Serbian punks, Cosmo admitted, were waiting just for him, hanging upside-down
from the ceiling just outside his door.
When he went to go down the steps, they jumped him.
Being previously engaged, I couldn't visit
Cosmo di Madison that evening to confirm what I'd heard. The following day, however, I was at
the cafŽ when he arrived on crutches and in his cast.
"Doll face," I said, "I'm
so sorry to hear about your break.
Tell me how it happened."
"Land-mine," he said.
"A land-mine? I heard it was the Serbs who did
it."
"Well, you heard right," he
said, leaning his crutches against the counter. "I was leading some of my units outside Sarajevo and I
stepped on a fucking Serbian mine.
I'm lucky to be alive. It
fucking blew the guts out of three of my best men. Don't worry, though.
We've got it under control."
I ask you, reader: Is this the usual
bragging military man we have here?
Hardly. For three full days
Cosmo di Madison stayed shy of the real explanation of his injury, modestly not
wanting to acknowledge his role in the recent fighting in the Balkans. But finally the truth comes out.
II.3.10. The day after Bill Clinton was elected, I asked Cosmo di
Madison: What now? What would he
do now that a Democrat held the highest office? What would become of his forces?
Cosmo di Madison: "I already told
you, honey. We'll just have to
wait it out. In 1994, everyone
will realize that I'm right."
II.3.11. "Doll face."
"Yeah?"
"You're trying to make me immortal,
aren't you?"
"I'm doing my best."
"Good. Someone oughta do it.
Ya hear me?"
II.3.13. I recently asked Cosmo di Madison concerning the End of the World,
an event felt to be imminent by many, nearly past by others.
"Psssh!" he replied in
contempt. "Don't believe that
nonsense! The world isn't going to
end!"
"But what about what is written in
Scripture?" I asked.
"What about the Book of Revelation?"
"And what is written in
Scripture?" he replied.
"Huh? The world is
never going to end! We are now in
the Fourth Creation, and the Fifth will occur any day. That End of the World bit is just a lot
of Lutheran rhetoric. Don't believe
it even for a minute, ya hear me?"
And this leads me to a sneaking and even
frightening suspicion. A seeming
paradox beyond my comprehension may be at work in the Cosmic doctrine. One wonders: Is Cosmo di Madison--the
most devout Roman Catholic I've yet met in this city of cartoon post-Marxists,
cyberpunk aesthetes and PC Stalinistas--is Cosmo di Madison a disciple of the
eternal return? I think not. But how do we explain his refusal of
traditional teleologies? This is a
problem I've yet to resolve.
II.3.14. Cosmo di Madison: his frame and vision even sharper than Don
Quixote's, his laugh and lingo one-upping Sancho Panza's. Cosmo di Madison--is he the two of them
in one man?
But best of all, reader--Cosmo di Madison
is here in Madison. In short, he
is a real man. He walks the street
like you and I. You may in fact
speak with him any day you choose, he whose adventures never end, whose labors
are more than Herculean, whose Beatrice is a hat, or a windmill on the farthest
end of the East side, whose Beatrice is an inscribed clay bauble round his
neck, reading simply--BAAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAA-AAAHHHHHH!
II.3.15. Cosmo di Madison is the inventor of the world's most
advanced heart-resuscitation machine.
The government has made it illegal, however, because they don't want any
more credit going to this great benefactor of mankind, not to mention profits.
"If the person has been dead less
than fifty-two hours, we can bring them back. I myself have brought back many people right around the
fifty-hour mark."
Cosmo di Madison, out of humanitarian
concern, has performed numerous illegal resuscitations here in Wisconsin and
elsewhere. He doesn't charge anything
for his service.
"If the person has been dead longer
than fifty-two hours, things get difficult. It's sometimes still possible to bring them back up to
fifty-five or fifty-seven hours, but the side effects are nasty. The blood starts to rot after fifty
hours or so, and then the lungs start to rot. Sometimes when I bring 'em back after fifty-four or
fifty-five hours, they will live alright--they'll be able to move around--but
they'll have absolutely terrible breath for the rest of their life. You can't imagine. It fucking stinks! So sometimes it's better just to let
'em stay dead."
II.3.17.
In
fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
But what we're not taught, according
to Cosmo di Madison, is the verifiable fact that in 1492 the ocean blue, being
the Atlantic Ocean, was scarcely wider than Lake Michigan is now, five hundred
years later.
"In Columbus's day the world was
still flat," says Cosmo di Madison, vindicating the older science. "The world was flat, but Chiang
Kai-Shek and my grandfather the Earl of Windsor made it round. They had the help of several Catholic
bishops. When my grandfather was
young, the world was still flat.
It's all there in the Continental Divide--you can study it if you
want."
A great calm descends on me: I'm hearing
something I always knew to be true.
The world was flat. But
why was the change made? How? I ask Cosmo di Madison to explain.
"Three of the Catholic bishops were
also psychics--that was key. The
work was necessary for military reasons.
The balance of power on the planet needed more water between the nations
so each could train their own troops in their own proper sphere. The only way to spread the oceans
smoothly was to make the planet round.
It will go back, though, at Armageddon."
"The world will be flat again at the
end?" I ask.
"The world is never gonna end,
doll. How many times do I gotta
say it? That's all just Lutheran
rhetoric!" insists Cosmo di Madison, clearly disappointed in his star
pupil, knitting his brows and gesturing as if to send me away.
"But you mentioned the Battle of
Armageddon," I reply deferentially.
"It is just so confusing to me. I'm sorry."
"That's OK. I don't expect you to know everything. Let me tell you. There will be a battle, but it doesn't
mean the world is gonna end. The
Battle of Armageddon will take place right here in Dane County. A lot of people don't know this. The world will re-escoff into a flat
surface, and Tibet will move in up near Oshkosh. Vietnam will be down by Beloit. The Battle will happen right in Dane County, and the
Tibetans will be on my side. It
will be me against the Sandinistas.
Don't worry though, doll.
We'll kick their asses. Our
Fate is to kick their asses into the ground. It's all in the Seals."
"You know what's in the
Seals?" I ask in astonishment.
"Hell, we wrote the Seals,
honey! What do you thing?"
But I am sworn, reader, not to
reveal to you the hints I received concerning the contents of the Seven Seals.
II.3.19. Further discoveries:
He discovered that coffee cures
rheumatoid arthritis.
He discovered the current practice of
using stale milk to clean up oil spills.
Cosmo di Madison: "If I hadn't
experimented with milk on oil spills back in the '80's, the whole West coast
would be a fucking tar pit by now.
All those baby harp seals choking on crude oil. It was too sad. We had to do something."
II.3.20. Kissinger has recently acquired a residence in Madison. It is actually in Monona. The old widow who had previously lived
there wanted too much money for it--she was very attached to the place, having
spent the past fifty years of her life there--so Kissinger had her murdered and
ate her flesh. Then he moved
in. Within two weeks he'd moved in
some two-hundred of his Persian cats.
He doesn't take care of them, never cleans up after them, and they breed
like rabbits. In short, the place
smells like a huge litter-box, so much so that people as far as two blocks away
are having to move out because of the stench.
Cosmo di Madison: "The whole
neighborhood's turned into one big fucking kitty whorehouse. Anybody who complains, he gets his
fucking psych-thugs to break their legs, the fucking bastard. Kids are dying over there--from all the
cat diseases from the cat piss all over the lawns and the sidewalks and
everything else. You don't read
about it 'cuz he's already got the local Press in his pocket--he's got so much
fucking money from illegally siphoning off my accounts for the past twenty
years. The whole scene is totally
fucking sick--ya hear me?"
II.3.21. During a chilly autumn visit to the city of Aztalan, Cosmo
di Madison informed me that the main pyramidal mound marks "the burial
site of Phonecian Zeus." I
chide myself for not asking him to elaborate on this, there where he would have
been inclined to do so, because now I am left with the question: Who is
Phonecian Zeus?
Is Phonecian Zeus perhaps Zeus as saved
from the clutches of Typhon by the Phonecian traveler Cadmus? This was my first thought upon going
over my notes. After all, the
Phonecians have every right to be proud of this tale. But then why does this Zeus, one of the immortals, have a
burial mound? It's a question I
can't yet answer, as I haven't been able to get Cosmo di Madison out to Aztalan
where he would be certain to tell me more. I'll have to wait on this.
Do not lose faith in me, reader. We haven't yet come upon anything like
a dead end. For though the classicists,
archaeologists and historians of the liberal university wait in dread the
revelations that will most certainly put to shame their shallow fabrications
and impostures, I am determined to hear more from Cosmo di Madison concerning
Phonecian Zeus, and I intend to make the religious culture of the early
Wisconsin Phonecians a matter of scholarly record as soon as I am able to do
so. Of particular interest in this history is of course the question of when
the Wisconsin Phonecians converted to Roman Catholicism. One may even speculate that this
conversion has something to do with the fact of there being a burial mound of a
pagan deity. But I'm overstepping
myself here, and I shouldn't. As
the Pseudo-Berosus remarked: "A good scholar doesn't let his enthusiasm
for the subject undermine the prudence required by the profession."
II.3.22. It was the Phonecians who taught the Chinese how to make
jade. All Chinese jade is an
archaeological remnant of this early Phonecian influence, for the Chinese have
since forgotten the secret of jade making.
"The Phonecians were one of the
earliest peoples to settle in China," says Cosmo di Madison. "They taught the Chinese how to
make jade. Basically the Chinese
learned it by accident. The
Phonecians in China lived in bamboo huts, like everyone else in ancient
times. But they knew the secret
for making their huts stronger: they would wrap the bamboo in certain species
of sea kelp, and then marinate it with a mixture of herbs and oil. When this was done, after a handful of
generations had lived in the hut, the hut would have turned to solid jade. The Phonecians taught the Chinese this
technique, and the Chinese did it for awhile, but it was forgotten later in the
long period of Chinese wars. All
the jade in China comes from pieces of these huts, and it is the respectful
memory of the years when the Phonecians and Chinese built a perfect empire
together--it is this memory that makes jade so precious."
"How did the Phonecians help the Chinese build a perfect empire?" I ask Cosmo di Madison.