Dionysus

Well, at first, this appears like a story about one Amanda. She was murdered last night beside the river 1992. The Storyteller was there when they "discovered" her body, they tied him up at once and called the police to take him in for questioning and forensic analysis.
    "Why did you kill her?" the police chief said.
    "I confess, I killed her, isn't that enough?"
    "I prefer to know also how and why you killed her."
    He became bored. Like last night, when Amanda stood beside the current, naked, and told him: "Jacob, that's just my story. It's a boring life I've been leading. Kill me. That'll add excitement into my life story."
    Because he loved her, he had to decide which special stone to use to bash her head with, also what shape, what color, looking for it while holding his flashlight. Finally he saw the right stone, the triangle stone, or was it rectangle? and bashed her with it. Immediately she was moaning; he bashed her again.
    Silently, he mused over titles.
    In the morning the villagers discovered a dead body---"hah!"---Amanda's body, on the riverside, drenched in blood and water, some of the blood earlier in the morning occasionally visiting their laundry. A few meters away from the body they found the Storyteller sleeping, tired was he from a whole night of crying like a genius, holding his rock trophy of achievement.
    "Okay, Mr. Storyteller," the villagers said, waking him up, "now you've made your point of creating a story out of real life. What do you want us to title this---The Mystery of the Adventure Girl's Murder?"
    The chief of police couldn't get anything out of him. The Storyteller kept saying, "The story is just what it is. It is its own genius, it answers itself." So the chief tried to argue him out of it: "You create a story, you create an event. But do you stop there? Don't you use the story for something else? Don't you use it to protest something? Or protect something, your religion perhaps? Tell me, aren't you at least a unionist?"
    It was useless. The people at the police station left him. So that now, the Storyteller, touching for the last time the rock award of achievement on the table of evidences, did nothing but wait for his lawyer, Atty. Go Pao Ke (that respected critic of traditional law), to settle the bail, so for the Storyteller to spend another day of "reckless storytelling" better known hereabouts as fiction art.
    Now, our story doesn't end here. There are yet rumors of a councilor's efforts to try to pass a bill that would deem reckless storywriting a crime, and even render critics of, actually from, traditional law accomplices to the crime. But as of this writing the bill is still pending first reading, and the legislature has already recessed to a week of gossip and flattery, devoid of heroes in this town of artists.

PART TWO (The Savior)

What the town understood too well was how the Storyteller was---like them---possessed of noble intentions. To some it was clear he murdered Amanda to sort of protest the failure of feminism. To others the murder was about returning to nature what only properly belongs to nature, not to be owned by any generic man. In this case that thing was life. Still, to some, the murder was really all about the love-hate relationship, within each of us, between the innate bourgeois senses and our instructive missionary zeal to liberate generic mankind from boredom, whatever that may mean to you, a reading close to the Storyteller's announced intentions.
    Actually these are all fine, as they go, good readings (or gossip) by teachers left and right of this town.
    But what deus ex machinos like me have noticed about these provincials who call themselves Artists-reading-other-Artists is how they always fail to convince upstarts to the scene of the integrity of those readings everytime murders like Amanda's occur. This is an urgent matter because we in heaven simply cannot allow, anymore, this senseless proliferation of sensationalisms, mostly murders, headlining forever within the expanding industry of publishing journals or magazines of sin.
    Now, since no living hero in this town is taking the matter into his hands, for one reason or another (cowardice's excuses, rather), I as a deus ex machino find it high time, after having gotten fed up, to give notice of a root problem here. Thus my clipped wings. Now, in case you're---uh---you know, worried, there is really nothing to worry about. I should be safe from any democratic Filipino villager's attempts at stoning my person, since I'm already dead, and, besides, this is only a story which, were my security threat-absorbing, I can always rip off.
    So, then. Let's hasten and go straight to the issue of the Storyteller, now near success in evading all analysis by the literary police. I suspect, should everyone be right then that the Storyteller has indeed a point or two (or more) in doing the things he does, that what final message he may have for us here would be nothing else but one from an Unchristian sort of art, one with a done discourse that's also shallow, confused, sinful, underinformed, maybe even stupid or immature. In short, somewhat Pompeiian in its indulgence. I suspect, finally, he's got nothing really but showy elegance up his sleeve, or murderous technique, dangerous flattery. I know---or can suppose---he has themes, oh a collection of them I'm sure, ladies and gentlemen in this town. But my present allegations (pardon my omniscience, people) is now running like a bunch that would love to urgently strike with a bolt of lightning this Storyteller for using holy themes for the purpose of flaunting . . . NEW TECHNIQUES! Do his techniques hold together, in the name of the Lord? Do you notice how he keeps on evading POINT, beloved townspeople, oh God's beloved, preferring to discuss your AWE?! Granted, he's for that that they call "an open text," as it were, but . . . open to whom, townsfolk in this parish? Which Christ is he deceiving? Closed are the eyes of your councilors to text, all you have are critics of traditional law who think fine and pop, art and entertainment, and the sculptor and the juggler, occupy the same room in heaven (though I know they're equal in importance to God), who think all fiction is knife technique, burial plot, dead characters, and then holy theme, linguistic suspense, and damn logic left or right, damn priestly discourse, damn magnificence of vision upon a theme in Israel, and so hail the sacrifice of more virgins bored in this town of free artistry! Hoping a significance within this circus might finally drop like manna from some Somewhere Out There! Ping! Bang! Carpenters all! And so, Josephs? Living on as faithful to an unrecognizable objective.