Chad Tarzinsky grown up narrates through sonnets about Paco, Joe, Sofia, and the caverns of adulthood.  The order below is the sequence of composition; the characters' ages go in a different order.  Here's a breakdown of the books' chronologies to help you keep track of who talks about when:

Paco and Chad were only twelve year olds at the beginning of Paco the Great, narrated by Paco.  

They're seventeen in The Book of Jeremiah, narrated by Jeremy in his senior year. 

Elias narrates Called to the Mat; he's twenty-two but goes way back in the beginning of the novel. 

Rotten Kid, an experimental book told by Chad, happens in eighth grade, and although Paco and the wrestlers are in it, the happenings show Chad outside the wrestling room; you really get to know Adam Shapiro and Chad's psychotherapist.

Adam's Sins is the chronological first, happening even before Paco the Great.  This experimental novel is the only one told in third person point of view.  It elaborates the precise nature of sexual abuse upon Adam Shapiro, the foster kid who moves in across the street from Chad Tarzinsky and Good Neighbor Sam.  This novel highlights one of the three great heroines in the Thunder Boy Series, but so far it is the only place to get to know Adam's foster mom.  (The other great heroines are Sofia De Colores in all the books and Megalomania Apollosios in Sunny Day, Rainy Boy.)

On My Knees is John's first rapid fire, in your face "speaker meeting" type drunkalog and recoverylog.  He starts out about thirteen and ends up seventeen.

Rocks is the second Jeremy novel.  He's eighteen and has graduated.  The author finished the first draft in the fall of 1997, then elaborated and revised it, tripling its size until 2003 when he graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing; this was his thesis.

Grass Boy is a big top secret book that is so out there that it helped the writer grow up in myriad methods.  Only a few people have heard any of it because the author hopes to have it on big store shelves someday and wants it polished; it's still in first draft.  Chad's uncle Chuckie narrates, and Chad & Co. are seventeen.

Sunny Day, Rainy Boy is John's second narration, and now the boys are turning 23.  The writer character, Adam Apollosios, is 32 going on 33.

The new book, Cute Little Monster, is Chad's second narration.  He is 29 and sober one year after his Saturn return.  The writer character, Adam A., is now 38.

Jeremiah wakes up from a suicide attempt as who should come knocking on his door but Paco the Great himself. Can the stud get up and wrestled one more time, or will he regret trying life again?

John De Colores paints a candid picture of the teen pop icon Elias and what it was really like to be his number one fan.  This explicit account of Boy Blue's socio-spiritual psyche branches into areas of the family tree where bats hang and gnomes hide from their mainstream judges.  Come now, who would dare imagine that a young man of so many blessings could possibly have escaped their counterpart curses.

This chapter comes from Sunny Day, Rainy Boy, the author's ninth and last novel.

Elias's first chapter from Called to the Mat opens up his confessions about temptation, attraction, and masturbation. Why does the boy prophet hear God's voice yet still he can't keep his hands off himself? Why do his eyes have a faith of their own quite contradictory to his soul's convictions? This coming of age narration candidly delves into some of the torrential struggles of Christian teens who can dance, sing, wrestle, and preach but carry a personal cross, that inescapable reality of being normal and quite human.

The Book of Jeremiah theme song based on Raag Lalit, a traditional Hindustani raga, performed and recorded on sitar, violin, tambura, harmonium, and vocal. Lyrics allude to the monkey god Hanuman protecting his beloved Rama and Sita, but in this case the divine powers care for Jeremiah and his wrestling teammates he secretly loves as more than friends. The theme song begins with an alap, an improvisational phrasing indicative of the raag, but without a set taala or rhythm pattern; progressing to jor, or a pulsing series of improvisations; followed by jhalla, the fast part; leading into a vilambit in teentaal. Lyrics dance around with the following basis: The . before a note in sargam refers to the lower octave, and a . after a note refers to high Sa. Lower case notes are khomal, and capitalized Ma or Ni are tivra. Jeremiah . . . Jai jai jai Hanuman gusai . . . Jeremiah . . . .Ni Sa gha ma gha re Sa, .Ni Sa gha Ma dha Ma ma . . . Sa. Ni dha Ma ma . . . Hanumani/Hanumano . . . Hanumano/Hanumani . . . Hare Ram, hare Rama, hare om . . . Jeremiah, Jeremeeoh . . . As you can tell from the vocals which sound like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, this recording is really violin and sitar with the pitch altered to mimic cello and veena. The variations on Hanuman and Jeremiah's names imitate Buffy St. Marie's song "Jeremiah." Although the novel, The Book of Jeremiah, is not literally about Hinduism or Buddhism, the topics in the book relate to karma, fasting, self-acceptance, and self-actualization for not only the present life of a soul but also one's cosmic purpose across incarnations. I picked allusions to Rama and Hanuman because, like the Hindu gods, Jeremiah and his dog are a devoted duo. The recipients of Jeremiah's love would be like Sita, and since my characters are gay, I felt the flying monkey voice would be apropos in reference to the Wizard of Oz, a notorious gay allusion.

John's narration about meeting Jeremy, as told in Sunny Day, Rainy Boy.

2nd part of John-Jeremy meeting, with Chap 32 of Sunny Day, Rainy Boy which was finished in 2007. This episode features John's point of view from which he telecognitively converses with Jeremy's dog Hamlet, delving into the young man's secrets. John expresses basic truths about Making Weight and his Inextricably Bound theory, which is an allusion to a phrase used by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I Have a Dream" speech: "Their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom." The chapter also alludes to Cerberus, the 3-headed dog at the gate of Hades; in this case, Jeremy has several minds, including the dog Hamlet if he is part of Jeremy's conscience into which John can see.

Part I compares Chap 31 of the author's 2nd book with its Chap 32 of his 9th novel. Adam reads aloud and discusses changes in his life, style, metaphors, allusions, censorship, voice, self-defining narrative, and emotional health. Part II will feature the meeting scene told from the character John's point of view, and Part III will finish John's telling and examine changes in the writing experience.

Jeremiah Hoffereene loses a wrestling match to his crosstown rival and crush. His coach's wife is cheating on him with the lay reader from church, who has the gall to show up at the meet and sit next to the coach's wife. Coach takes out his personal problems on Jeremiah, who is already suicidal over hunger, depression, and failing on the mat. But younger teammates Paco, Chad, and Elias won't stop pestering him with affection and attention. Jeremiah only hates himself more for wanting to eat these younger teammates alive. Now what the hell is his old man neighbor doing, up snow-blowing his driveway on a cold winter night? He's always paying too much attention to that kid next door whose parents are never home. He'll ruin Jeremy's suicide plan. Jeremy tries to wait up for the old man to go to bed, but his speed from weightloss is crashing hard. If he could just stay up, he could end this pain for good.

Song on sitar, violin, and vocal dedicated to Benjamin Bernstein of http://itsallgoodastrology.com.  Benjamin is an excellent teacher who breaks down complicated so that even neophytes can benefit from his guidance in self-discovdery.  In writing Sunny Day, Rainy Boy, much of what I learned in order to use astrology as symbols in my characterization camde from Benjamin.  He is currently studying shamanism and seems to me to have an obvious knack for intuition and compassionate wisdom.  He has also dared to restart careers not out of lack of competency but in search of his dharma.  This evening, romantic raga goes out to Benjamin and his wife Spirit Song.

A video podcast episode about watching Rocky II as a fully grown gay former wrestler.  We never stop trying to measure up, pass tests, qualify as worthy.

For more of Adam's poetry, visit http://stores.lulu.com/adamapellasios and look for The Belmont Rocks and Other Gay Chicago Poems.

Efxaristo for joining us!

I want to sing Bageshree when you open up to me
so you'll know how God sounds when he thinks about you
The night we first kissed and the night of your expectations
like unrequited verses have rewritten themselves into this composition
as it becomes all I have of you to touch in the the images 
you dropped, and I picked them up and can't let go, I can't let go

 

Let me know if you enjoy some real pix and footage of the original setting of Paco the Great.  If you visit http://stores.lulu.com/adamapellasios you will see I've been busy formatting print and pdf versions of older works in the even of an alien abduction, in which case you would still be able to obtain my life work.

I plan to begin recording audiobooks again perhaps during Turkey Massacre weekend.  My Indian friends say they're glad Columbus wasn't looking for Turkey.

Since I finished the audiobook of Paco the Great, I've been sewing dance regalia which is actually part of Sunny Day, Rainy Boy, my 700 page 9th novel and life work.  That one has lots of video footage and full movies for the Making Of, but I'm going to revise it and try to sell it before podcasting it.

After I finish sewing the outfit that, fictionally, is for Taco/John, I'll get back to podcasting more regularly.  I wanted to try this video to let you know there is more to come and also to experiment with mpegs.

Jeremiah Hoffereene starves himself to make weight and cuts too much to win.  When he doesn't make weight for conference, the coach confides in his own rivals about his team woes.  Paco has had enough of adults abusing his friends.

Paco hears the rattling of ice as his ma has taken out her jingle dress to dance again.  The sound awakens him from a dream where Laughs a Lot appeared and asked him to dance for him at the Gathering of Nations pow wow.  Paco meets his two spirit cousin, Hawk's grandson, who is a fancy dancer and takes all night to teach Paco how to dance.  He shows Paco pictures of his two spirit grandpa who is a spitting image of Paco's drawings of Baseball Man.

Paco returns from his memories and finds himself in his old bedroom just before the sun comes up and it's time to go out for a run the day of his first pro baseball game against Chicago.

It's a hungry, parched night before the ultimate matches that decide who goes downstate, and three Indian princesses, Corn, Beans, and Squash, visit Paco in a dream and make him pick who's prettiest.  One promises him strength, another to make him smart, and the third promises him true love.  He reaches to hug her and . . . the most important bouts of Paco's life unfold.

The dream alludes to Paris's dilemma in Homer's Illiad in which Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite tried to con the handsome prince into picking them in a beauty contest.

The hawk spirit appears to Paco as he comes out to his dad.

Paco's heart and body sicken with goodbye to John, but it's not contagious.  Chad doesn't catch it when he visits and makes Paco feel better just in time for the hot part of the wrestling season to heat up to hellish degrees.

Christmas Day at the De Colores lodge!  Relatives, extended family, and friends give gifts of dysfunction, abstract architecture, a choker, Pendletons, Rainbow Tribe books about Buffy St. Marie, and the gift of sobriety.  John and Paco share a bed.  Can Paco keep his hands to himself?

Christmas Eve with Laughs a Lot and John home for the holiday!  But Paco's dad has also rounded up the rest of his pack, with Chad and Elias over where they belong, with Paco.  Laughs a Lot tells of his vision quest.  Paco finds another use for an acrostic.  Why does Sofia give her pastor back her church keys after the midnight service where Elias sings in tongues?  What did Paco's great-grandfather mean when he told Paco he had "two spirits," or did he call him a two spirit?

The artwork in this file is of John.  It's his CrossRoads school picture.

Taco, now John Grotten, returns from rehab during a dark moon phase to wrap up some karma.  Then he's off to CrossRoads, a halfway house.  This chapter's archetypes and symbols represent major life-changing passages.

Paco actually prays, "Gitchee Manidoo, meegwech!"  God, thank you!

The Tunnel ends and John's thinking clears.  Paco's dog's spirit makes it clear to Paco that he must not follow in the pawprints of John's previous "friends," aka abusers.  John is seeing a new freedom and a new happiness; thus, he steps out of the tunnel, but he and Paco know they're dealing with damaged goods.  Life from here on out is not going to mimic a Disney movie.Taco, now John Grotten, returns from rehab during a dark moon phase to wrap up some karma.  Then he's off to CrossRoads, a halfway house.  This chapter's archetypes and symbols represent major life-changing passages.

Paco actually prays, "Gitchee Manidoo, meegwech!"  God, thank you!

The Tunnel ends and John's thinking clears.  Paco's dog's spirit makes it clear to Paco that he must not follow in the pawprints of John's previous "friends," aka abusers.  John is seeing a new freedom and a new happiness; thus, he steps out of the tunnel, but he and Paco know they're dealing with damaged goods.  Life from here on out is not going to mimic a Disney movie.

Wrestling begins:  top, bottom, neutral, defer?  Paco would rather lose than see Chad lose.  Paco wants only one thing for Christmas, but only the one he wants can give it.  Book talk elaborates lingo, motives/motifs, crushes, dissociation, holidays.

Taco attempts suicide.  The Pony Boys wrestle and kick some serious ass except where Taco's dad is concerned, revealed by the adult foot-sized bruise on his ribs.  Yet Paco tries to handle his friends problems himself, sneaking him up into his room on nights when Taco foregoes drinking with his sources.

The title of this chapter, breakdown, refers to a wrestling term where you literally break down your opponent, from his knees to his stomach so you can turn him to his back, but it also refers to Paco and Chad's plan breaking down.  Taco's problems definitely fit the phrase that No human power could relieve our alcoholism.

Taco's life is so unmanageable that he attempts suicide, and he winds up in the town of Aurora's legendary Emo institution:  Mercyville, a hospital with an adolescent psyche unit, which has done a pretty damn good job of keeping kids alive over the many years.  The author visited once as a guest but had many friends on the edge who chose to jump down to the safe side, accepting help.

Paco alludes to Oliver Twist, one of the author's primary inspirations for writing social protest fiction.  Paco the Great is supposed to be just that:  sexual abuse recovery fiction.  The author did not want to paint a pretty picture or a pastoral, overly-optimistic, soap-boxy portrayal of how hard it is for boys who have been sexually abused.  Growing up as damaged goods is, however, possible

The artwork in the ID3 tags is the author's first wrestling team back in fourth grade, 1979.

Wrestling camp folklore of piss pills traded with girlfriends who had Rx-level PMS; of Rufie the Iowa superheavyweight; and of Coach Joey's disgraceful feeling even when others bragged of him overcoming prejudice from hicktown fans and refs.  Joey admits he got better at wrestling after high school, but to Paco the dark Sagittarius is like Jupiter with lightning quick headlocks and his message for boys about destiny and self-actualization.

After the mini wrestling camp, the season begins, and the Pony Boys (Joey's pun on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) win their first matches.  One coach would call Elias, John, Chad, and Paco Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and Paco's mom thinks of them as her medicine wheel:  Elias the white, John the yellow, Paco the red, and Chad the black.  While Paco knows he loves his friends, he's feeling the pressure not to admit he's IN love with them.

Chad's flashbacks, sexual acting out, and depression resurrect in math class.  Chad refuses to go up to the board and announces he won't walk up in front of everybody with a hard-on.

Paco details skipping dinner and water and sleeping with grumbling tummies and drymouth, cravings, nerves, tossing, turning, the wind rattling the panes, dark nights of the soul, waking up before dawn to run in the winter, the sweet summer apples now frozen rotten.  Paco remembers the racism of the fans against Joey and thinks of it as child abuse not just against Joey but also against their own kid, for teaching him to be a monster.  Then Paco recalls he doesn't exactly like the other Native boys he's met.  To him, his tribe is his team.  While running, lust for bananas brings the image of bruised bananas and the bruised yellowish color around his friend Taco/John's ribs.

He runs hard enough to get to eat breakfast and down a gurgling fountain of ginger ale, the nectar of the gods to a parched throat.  Paco has won his first match, and his report card is up!  He even gets kissed . . . by the girl who says she's going back to live with her mom and won't see him again.  In spite of losing the girl he COULD have liked, Paco claims things are getting much better for him and his friends--really, they are, he insists!

The picture is Paco's park in winter when he runs in the cold to make weight.

Shadow archetypes emerge and a blood bonding ritual binds the four boys to each other in a moon-bathed vow beyond the blackness of the team socks.  Coach Joey and his same-aged wrestling brother Mike shut the kids out of the wrestling room while they brawl in private.  Paco drinks from Chad's finger and opens his eyes to the dawn as the black cat creeps out of the dorm.  He chases the ungainable shadow through the woods until he finds the dark soul is resting inside its rightful owner, lying on the dock, staring down into the murky water.  Paco wants to swim in that unknown murkiness where his coach is also his friend.  Who can catch a friend whose secrets slip away so swiftly?

Once the black socks go on, the season has begun.  At a mini-camp, Paco finally has his pack on the mat.  Only trouble is he has to share his coach with kids from other teams at this outdoor ed camp, and then Joey's sidekick, Sammy, even gifts a pair of black socks to a kid from another team.  Are they all in this together or something?

The photo is the island at night.

Wrestling weighins, puberty, self-consciousness, and promiscuity twirl in the minds of the boys becoming better than friends, but Pop finds Taco's Mad Dog up in Paco's room.  Uh oh!  Should a good kid like Paco be hanging around with a ragamuffin like Taco, who even admits he sort of hit on Paco's dad to see if he was like the others whom he manipulated to acquire drugs, alcohol, and what seems to him like a safer place to spend the night.  Taco is making a living at being a victim, but Paco is trying to show him a better way:  by becoming his brother.  Will Paco have to draw the line on his own codependence?

The picture posted is another of John from his book On My Knees.

Paco's pack holds their first overnight at the De Colores lodge, and after Taco and Chad fall asleep, Elias confesses he might be part vampire.  The title of the chapter, "Vamping," suggests word associations from the letter V:  vamping (guitar strumming; Elias plays blues guitar), revamp (change), vampire (he's pale and can feel weakened by his predatory thirst, a dark inheritance of his past), vanity (suggesting Elias has a shallow side), vain (futility), vane (weather, sensing danger), and vein (Elias's blue blood or passages into his mind).

The chapter's anecdote on the Red Camel refers to a true legend of the Southwest in which a dead body was strapped to a camel back when Southwesterners used camels before horses became the dominant beast of burden.  The Red Camel, like Animoosh, is a symbol for the boys' desperate inner natures.  They carry ghosts of their pasts.

Authorial dissociation as a theme in the writing process is seen in Elias's suggestion that he becomes somebody else, a guardian type figure with silver fangs; he had chrome claws removed as a kid so he'd fit in better.  Elias feels a loss of control at times, but he is co-conscious when other entities control his actions.

Book talk shares that Elias is the author's dancer side, the out-going, talkative entertainer.  This is really a chapter about personality development, self-doubt vs. courage, industry vs. inferiority.  It is also about how the author came up with writing out of the plot's chronological order.  The author describes writing by hand, at a computer, and the struggle to keep up with typing what you've written by hand.  He wrote about wrestling during wrestling season even though he hadn't finished writing the summer chapters from part I of the novel.

Key words:  dissociation, co-consciousness, Red Camel, alter ego, MPD, multiple personalities, integration, abuse, vampires, adolescent, personality development, confession.

The sketch in the ID3 Artwork shows Elias's "Killer" side, the fanged, top-hatted guardian persona within him, who watches over his little sisters and friends.

For Elias's novel, see the book Called to the Mat at http://stores.lulu.com/adamapellasios.

Paco takes his family and friends to a rained-out Sox game.  It's Elias and Taco's first pro baseball game.  A book talk follows in which the author asks God important questions, and God answers!  Find out if God was right about the ending of Harry Potter #7.

Picture is of an interesting bridge outside Sox park in Chicago.

Animoosh is needed in the Afterworld on the night Taco returns to school, smelling fermented and ashy.  Do our beloved animal spirits come back and guard us?  Paco digs his dog's grave and later digs himself deeper into Taco's danger.  Sneaking his friend upstairs, Paco hosts Taco's first overnight.  Paco is dazzled by the sight of him in the moonlight but guards his friend from these feelings.  Taco's thousand questions under the influence of Mad Dog keep Paco up; is he leading Paco on? 

Paco dreams of an earth lodge for him and all his friends.

The picture is a crayon drawing of Taco before he becomes John.

Falling in a lot of ways:  failing grades, falling for mainstream pressure to be like everyone else.  Paco's new friend Elias tries to cheer him up with some blues songs, and a cute, sweet Mexican girl tries to tutor him in Spanish.  Todd, who stole Traci, bumps more than the volleyball, and Paco wants to spike him in the head.  Meegwich to Gitchee Manidoo for art class at the end of the day, where the kids laugh and create away their seventh grade stress.

The Parent Song based on Raag Bageshree is a dialogue between Paco and Ma-Pop after this chapter about them helping their son stop digging and realize he's in a hole of school and girl drama.  They bond while studying and digging up background on the parents about the origin of their name change, De Colores, as well as how they met through tutoring in the first place. 

Pop alludes to Henri Alain-Fournier's The Wanderer, an immature romance novel written by an author who died in WWI; the theme of the novel is that you lose whatever you most passionately desire if you actually achieve it, which describes the loss of Paco's possibility of him and Traci ever becoming like Sofia and Joe De Colores.

The lyrics to the Parent Song, with the italics being the parents, are below:

If I told you I couldn't be like you, would you love me still
I promise you I will
If you knew how I'm not the same as you, would you hug me still
I promise you I will

Do you know who you're talking to is not the boy you raised
Do you know who you're praying for is not the god you praise

The god we praise, he lives through you and heaven is our home
We're servants of the angel who lives upstairs alone

The boy we raised takes care of friends; we know we raised him to
They're lucky they have you
We know what you won't say
We love you anyway

A hard rock song Back to School intros Paco's first day of junior high, where he hates his math teacher and likes his wrestling coach English teacher, who gives him Oliver Twist.  He meets the most out-going, popular kid, Elias Van J'Lis, who is an evangelist, singer, dancer, but is as pale as an undernourished vampire.  But where's Traci been?  Their relationship comes to a head after her soccer practice, where Paco comes to realize what has become of them.

The song lyrics are below:

I can't wait to see you again
but will it be you I'm seeing?
I can't believe the scene's caught us again,
but who will I see you being?

The summer has run, the lion's asleep,
the Virgos awaken beginnings
The Cancer has died, the Leos cried,
can anyone call our loss winning?

Where hides the pride of the lionness queen?
Did I leave behind the boy I never liked being?

I feel fear just being alive
Another year, how will we survive?

This song is about going back to school and leaving behind the summer months of Cancer and Leo.  September brings Virgo, a time to start over and do better.  The fictional character of Paco's mother is a Leo; she is the lionness queen, and Paco is her pride although he thinks little of himself and strives to be better.

Paco makes it to the end of his trails!  The author switches to present tense for one chapter to see Paco's apex as it happens.  The hero's journey rewards him with a magical meeting as his eyes find not a golden fleece but another dark-eyed traveller like himself:  Jeremiah Hoffereene, a high school wrestling loner with his own wrestling mat but no friend to work out with.  Paco grabs a rock thrown to him by Baseball Man in a dream and scratches his phone number into a forest preserve picnic table.  No sooner has he made his affections clear than Jeremy just up and leaves him.

After this swing at bat results in striking out, Paco runs home and meets up with Traci at their old school playground.  They kiss their childhoods goodbye at the top of a slide, and Traci reveals that she knows he's been kissing Chad.

Finally, his head hits the pillow for the last night that summer before waking up to junior high.

The picture is Jeremy; I picked this one because it is the mate of Chad's "Cereal Killer" pic below.  Their prescription cereal is  antidepressants.

You can find the complete text as well as a bound edition of Paco the Great at my Lulu storefront.

In Chapter 20, Paco begins to think that what he's doing with Chad is abuse toward him.

In Chapter 21, Chad serenades Paco with some Chopin the day before they go back to school.  They end up upstairs in Chad's room.

In Chapter 22, Paco confides in Tracy that he made an ass out of himself at the baseball game.  She basically hits on him up front.

The podcast episode closes with Raag Bageshree, a Hindustani raga in vilambit (slow) teentaal (a 16 beat rhythmic cycle).  This piece reflects a romantic evening but one with nostalgia, a sense of loss, in this case the loss of not only innocence but also summer.

The picture is of Chad eating Rx cereal.

After a WWII dream, Paco wakes up Chad to hit the trails.  At the park they find a body under a Helter Skelter slide with no footprints in the dew; the body had lain there that night.  The search for Taco is over; Taco aka John is back from his "gayass Uncle's" but will kill himself before he lives with his father again.  A book talk follows about symbolic colors, painting, and writing based on who the author had been as a developing adolescent and how these personas became fictional characters.  The painting in this entry features Taco, who is John before sobriety; this image became the character Trevor in later writing.

At last, Paco's long-awaited birthday with its Cancerian roller-coaster moods. . . the boy is 13 now and by many rites a man.  After the dream chapters, he emerges from his unconscious, his Sheol, by meditating upon courage through his outdoor, early morning runs.  He has come across the kid with the taco-colored hair, the fighter from elementary school, who he knows spent time alone with Chad; point being that Paco's picking his pack which will consist of the two most controversial kids in his naturalistic environment.  What do you call friends who are more than friends?  Paco's dad calls them cousins.  Chad tells Paco he should have told him it was his birthday so he could've out-gifted everyone, and Paco tells him what he wants from him:  to be his cousin.  The De Colores clan custom of adoption is written in the stars carefully placed by Coyote in the mythology of constellations.

Nin winidee, nin dewidee, nind ishkidee, nin mikage niminagan, kitimageningewin, nind ajoganike gigi songendamowin, songidee gigi songendamowin, songideewin . . .

I have an unclean heart
I feel pain in my heart
My heart is tired of sorrow and grief
I find a place of crossing:  compassion
I make a bridge with my strong thought
I am brave with strong thought:  courage

After Paco's awful acrostic, he writes his mom a poem about waking up early to run, talking to Gitchee Manidoo, making friends of baby rabbits, his attraction to certain friends, and finding a kid sleeping under the slide at his park.  This new character has literally hit bottom in a Helter Skelter life.  Will Paco fall into that mythical river like he did with Chad?  Will attraction get the best of him again?

Picture is a bunny on Paco's trail revisited August 1, 2007.

Paco's strength and courage build from running with his dog Animoosh, with Tracy, and by himself.  He vows to marathon to the end of all the trails which he finds out is farther than it used to be.  He even brings speed from his dreams to his feet and meets momentum, a force that answers his bursts with Newtonian physics.  Where tarot card 7 was the Chariot, a vehicle of thought, or knowing what you need to do but not necessarily being ready to do it, this chapter is card 8, Strength, where somehow you find yourself able to pull off feats where you previously expected defeat.

The pic is the real Animoosh!

Tracy pegs a bike thief in the head with a rock, and Paco's parents don't want him to run alone anymore.  He's livid.  His dog noses her leash, arthritic and old as she is, and he gives in, but out of his mouth pops, "Animosh!" which is Ojibwe for dog.  He didn't know he knew it, and he surprises the shit out of his ma.  Now she's wondering what else is going on in this kid who can suddenly argue, cuss, and speak a little Ojibwe?

The pic shows the path that leads to, literally, the other side of the tracks, wherein lies Aurora's proverbial "wrong side of the tracks."  The subdivision fictionally known as Wormwood is still a dump and was infested with drug dealers and gang leaders in the author's youth.  The character Taco lived in a house on the edge.

In a dream, Paco and Baseball Man have a sit-down talk about family crap.  Paco alludes to Waubonsee, a Pottawattomie chief who was known to have beaten his wives and children; he was said to have buried a wife in every camp.  He also sold Native land for 5 cents an acre, which the U.S. government resold for $1.25 an acre.  So Aurora names two schools after him.  Does Paco have family crap?  He's afraid his big secret will leak and bring ghosts into his house.  Baseball Man has to ask our boy hero, "What makes you think your parents don't already know?"

Baseball Man comes in a dream for a showdown against the Annihilator, whose faces shifts to Jim Buckingham's, the kid Paco fears and respects most.  Then the Annihilator's face mirrors Paco's in this chapter about facing yourself.  Through archetypal memory Paco brings up the name "Gitchee Manidoo," which means Great Spirit in Ojibwe.  Paco's spirituality begins to focus and strengthen.

Paco picks up his pace on the nature trails, finally turning his anger outward rather than upon himself.  In his running meditation he recalls a Coach Joey counseling session and realizes that he, Chad, and their coach share more than a love of wrestling.  In a telepathic letter to Coach, Paco confides his empathy and awareness.  The previous chapter explored the concept of the Chariot, the 7th card of the tarot's major arcana; the Horse or Chariot was defined as a vehicle or psychological means for understanding what you need to do but not necessarily being ready to do it.  This episode fulfills the 8th card archetype of Strength or the Lion, in which you become able to do what you couldn't do or didn't think you could do in 7.  Paco's strength is literally starting to kick in as his 13th birthday approaches; the rite of passage will take him into another level of manhood and personal relationships.

The bridge pictured is where he breaks, stretches, bats rocks, and watches his dog Ninja aka Animoosh cool off.  This picture was taken August 1, 2007 on a special jog back to Paco's bridge; the author hadn't visited it in about 16 years, and it was exactly the same!

A bear dance introduces a transformative chapter in which the Coyote Trickster Chad races the Lioness, Paco's mom, in go carts representing the Chariot and Strength Tarot cards.  Sometimes you know what's right for you but you're not sure you have the courage to get over or around the obstacle.  Does Paco have a Chariot?  He has a bike with pegs.  Episode also reveals Paco's hopes and dreams for destiny.  The Get Up and Run grass song and the River Song reflect motives for overcoming and getting involved in other people's crap.

The picture is Blackberry Creek which flows under Paco's bridge on his trails, which are based on the Virgil L. Gilman Trails throughout Aurora, Illinois.

Paco takes his ma, pop, and best friends Chad and Tracy to see the Chicago White Sox.  They spend the night while he stares at them sleeping and remembers Chad's Young Authors Contest story about suicide.  An illuminating book talk after the chapter delves into dissociation and the effects of sexual abuse upon personality development in adults.  Discussion deals with victim vs. survivor mentalities as well as adaptibility and a mystical transformation in a sweat lodge.  The talk ends with a bear dance.

Paco's get up and go gets him up and out the door and to the trails.  Better to make dreams come true than to lie in bed and dream.  This episode introduces Paco's Waking Song based on Raag Bhairavi but combining the Hindustani motif with Native hand drum and harmony.  The Ojibwe lyrics are . . .

Makoons nin man, manando baidimin
Nind amadja, amad, madjikiwiss
Paco, mako kwiwisens
Maman djithigewin nin wania

(Bear cub, I awaken him with magic
Paco, the bear's first born son
Magic.  I miss him.)

Paco's parents make him sit with them and open up about his First Day at Work, but he opens them up as to how they feel about Chad.  His ma gets out her bald eagle feather and sage and smudges Paco as they each talk to "God" in their own way.  The book talk following the reading journeys into the author's spiritual transformation while beginning recovery from sexual abuse and in coming out of the closet.  Also, the author elaborates on the Magician, High Priestess, Emperess, Emperor, and Hierophant tarot cards and their parallels to Son, Daughter, Mom, Dad, and School archetypes in the hero's journey.  The author also discusses how the architecture of the house symbolizes the psychology of its family.  The writer interprets Edgar Allen Poe's fictional architecture as a symbol for the mind, such as the underground wine vaults in "The Cask of Amontillado" and the house in "The Fall of the House of Usher" representing plotting and family secrets.

Chad asks Paco to take him up to his room . . . followed by a book talk about Shadow, Moon, and Trickster archetypes as well as secondary abuse, memory triggers, and deciding how to write about sexual abuse.  The posted picture is of Chad; it was only about my third acrylic, painted back in 1991 when I was trying out painting since I wanted Paco to be an artist.  Episode book talk also shares recollections of college wrestling and the emotional reactions of a teammate who recalled being sexually assaulted as a pre-teen and how that affected his wrestling.

The red flag marks the 12th hole of Paco's first job.

Chad takes Paco caddying at the ritzy private country club, where he learns how to Yes, Sir and No, Sir like a good little low boy on the totem pole.  Post-chapter, the author delves into a Marxist interpretation of social class struggles implicit in the novel and how the U.S. Gov's manipulation of resources created historical conflicts, dividing Native Americans and creating a dominant ideology.  This chapter reveals a bit of Chad's issues with women, which at first make him appear misogynistic, but reconsideration points toward a desire and failed attempts to be close to his mother, who failed in her role as lioness and could not protect him.  He seeks parenthood outside the home; this is supposed to suggest what might have contributed to his notorious refusal to testify in a sexual abuse trial.  Is he protecting the abuser, whom he views as a surrogate?

The picture is of Chad.

Chad hypnotizes Paco into mindreading Tracy's feelings about them, but Paco burns with jealousy that Chad isn't picking up on his feelings for him.  This episode features a new introductory song:

Paco where you gonna run to if your buddy dies
Will you go down, how far will you go down to find your friend
The river is cold and I shiver just thinkin
you might drown in my dreams
and nobody will find my friend
Will you come back and run with me again
Will you come back and run with me again

(Harmony)
Paco De Colores flies away from the sun
Moony moody boy in my dreams where he runs away
Mokise gisiis, sagienima wey oh hey
Sanagitagos, sakaweyahia way oh hey

(The sun rises
I love him in my thoughts
I am telling difficult things
I make him burn)

Chad invites the baseball team over to swim and Paco stays overnight.  Chad introduces him to the internet and discloses exposition about his notorious trauma and trial, and Paco discloses attraction to Chad in spite of knowing his precocious, seductive friend is an emotional mess inclined toward self-destruction.

The picture is the book cover for the Paco the Great Podcast Edition available at http://stores.lulu.com/adamapellasios for $14.95.  The text is the same as the distribution edition; the difference comes from Lulu's rules for pricing an edition that goes out to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and wholesalers who receive a 60% discount.  The Podcast Edition is an English size, which is slightly larger, resulting in fewer pages.