how do you like your blue-eyed bird, mr. death?

Roy R. Behrens, © digital montage

Above One of my early digital montages (its title and date I can't recall). At the time I was interested in Arts and Crafts designer William Morris (that's Jane Morris leaning leftward), and Buffalo Bill (behind and above the target). One day we discovered that a bird (a starling) had been trapped in our wood stove, where it died and remained somewhat preserved. The feather colors were astonishing, and I decided I should place its body on a flat bed scanner, then use the result in a montage. Perhaps I also had in mind that wonderful e.e. cummings poem about the demise of Buffalo Bill: "How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death."

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Wilhelm Reich, Passion of Youth: An Autobiography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988, p. 10—

Once I was playing by the fence and a peasant boy my age [whom he was forbidden to play with] was watching me from a few meters away. Suddenly he grabbed a stone, I presume as a joke, and threw it at me. It hit my forehead and I bled a little. He certainly had not intended to be mean. My mother washed my forehead and told my father [who was the boss of the other boy's father] what had happened. Father became enraged. He summoned the child and the child's father. After referring briefly to the incident, he gave the father a dreadful beating. The peasant endured it quietly, without defending himself. As he walked off with his child, I could see him beating him the whole way home. The boy screamed frightfully. I was very upset, but said nothing and crept away to hide. I was about eight years old.

Behrens, Dreams of Fields (2025)

if they think i am crazy, i will open for a dollar

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Taking Liberties: No Regrets (© 2021). Digital montage.

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Daniel W. Humphrey, quoted in Steven J. Zeitlin, et al., A Celebration of American Family Folklore (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 39-40—

One day my dad got hurt on the job and, as a result, he said he couldn’t bear to put any weight on his heel. The doctors, however, said it was all in his mind, and they sent him to a psychiatrist. This irked him, so my dad said, “If they want to think I'm crazy, I'll make them think I'm crazy.” So he goes to the doctor's office, and the doctor brings out the Rorschach inkblot tests. The doctor laid these cards down in front of my father, and Dad reached over, picked them up, shuffled them and dealt them out for a hand of Five Card Draw and said, “I'll open for a dollar.”