Two years ago, I stepped into purity. Two years ago, I dreamt that I watched a 707 pancake down from the sky and explode upon my city with a fiery explosion. The next day, I got my contractor license and a domain and a loan from the bank for a Komatsu excavator. My company is named Fablegun Construction. The logo looks identical to the MMA clothing brand, Tapout, except mine says Fablegun, not Tapout. You can see it, you can imagine it. Behind the word, there is a beautiful woman with angel wings. You can also see that. Picture this. This is my company. We work midsized residential. And by we, I mean me. It is economically beneficial for me to not let people in, to not share my ideas. My ideas are my net worth. My old boss has been coming to me asking for ideas, he says to me, the world is ending, everything is gone to shit, I need some ideas. But I never give him any, I shoot him with my fablegun, that is why the company is named Fablegun. I wield it like a mythic hero. Because I am. We all are. We just have to realize this.
In that dream, the plane one from two years ago, after the fiery explosion, I was laid up in a dark cave on a bed of feathers. At the foot of the bed, a woman was looking at me, telling me to get up and dance with her. And hell, I did, I’ve been dancing since that dream. Sometime between then and now, my girlfriend tried to break up with me, I convinced her otherwise. I spoke plainly and simply. You can convince almost anyone of anything. You can convince your way into millions of dollars. You can convince your way into being heralded as a Christlike figure on a minor island in the Pacific.
My company office is located on the thirty-second floor of the Benson building downtown. I spend an occasional evening there. The sun sets over the water, over the noise of this cruel city. I often see sacred geometry in the sky, right outside my window, something you’d see tattooed on a wook girl, you can imagine it, I see them right there plain as day, two-dimensional prints, sacred geometry, my life is full of meaning.
The first job I took on was located on a twenty-acre property on an island just south of the city. I would take the early ferry and park my truck right at the front and watch the sunrise beautiful and full before me. This was my life being fulfilled. This was me taking the reins. There was a crack in my windshield that ran from the top left down to a pocked hole in the lower right that glowed like a slash in the heavens as we moved through the water. These mornings moved me. These were the mornings that I would write poetry and sing a tune and give a little nod to the ferry workers as I pulled off the boat.
The property of my client began at a right turn off of a road called the Old Country Highway. It immediately turned to dirt with the raised grass middle where the tires don’t hit and the entrance was so obscured by rogue branches and overgrown brush that I would have missed it if not for a scrap metal sculpture stood next to the turn. I slowed to look and took in the man-sized sculpture which appeared to me as a shrapnel explosion protruding from the chest of some poor metal humanoid. It had what I assumed was an arm stretched out and screwed to that was a wood sign with rot and the address of my client and I mumbled to myself, a path has appeared.
The client himself was an elderly man who I learned was born in Mexico and had spent nearly his whole life on the island working in the landscape business. I could respect that. He told me he had come to own this property through the grace of God alone and he intended to honor this blessing with beauty and intentionality. I could also respect that. Near the end of our introductory conversation, we wandered down to the waterfront and he started pointing to the nearby birdlife. They were far out in the water, I could not distinguish them from each other so I listened to this man and I nodded. Buffleheads. Goldeneyes. A fleet of mergansers. Cinnamon teals. The man knew his birds. He spoke of their habits, the patterns he had observed, he was passionate. I stood there and listened and felt satisfaction. This was my job now, this was going to bring home the bacon, a full six months' worth. I remember standing on that shore and thinking to myself, I’ll build anything this man wants, The ferry, the shrapnel sculpture, the birds, they all added up to something that I wanted to be a part of. I shook his hand when I left and I walked back to my truck and drove back to the ferry and took a deep breath and I could sense the world had shifted. Fablegun Construction. On the ferry, I got out of my truck and felt the wind rushing by me, I raised my arm, I fired the fablegun straight into the air.
The client wanted a pond to be built and I did the work stolidly and routinely. The pond had six columns which were oriented as the corners of a hexagon for reasons that were not revealed to me. I contracted out the masonry work and a team of eight men showed up every day for two weeks as the client watched from his porch. I made a lot of money from this job. I made the money back on my excavator. I made enough money to take on a second job. This is how it goes. Plainly and simply. This was the beginning of a string of good luck in my life. I was firing off my fablegun nearly every day. Fablegun Construction. Others have started to ask me, how did I do it, how did I cultivate this luck into my life. My close friends come over to my house and I sit them down and make them a potion of sorts. Lemon and chlorophyll and manuka honey and a special blend of mushrooms. I say to them a series of words that they may not recognize but hold the secret of my luck. Stones. Pressure points. Propolis. Linen. Cedar. Grounding. Inhalation. Chiron. Confrontation. Return. Clarity. Suicide. Clarity. Clarity.
Occasionally, I see a glimpse of understanding. Mostly, I see gloss, I see a face of goop that I could press a finger into and leave a permanent mark. I have no apprentices, I have no overhead, I have no meetings. I have an excavator, I have a job to do, and one after that, and another one still. I have my luck, my sacred geometry, and most importantly, my fablegun. I have stepped into purity, I have my life in front of me and one foot through the door as they say, this is the ethos of Fablegun Construction, this is how I reclaim my sovereignty. Simply and plainly.
