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diff --git a/veryold/very old writings/existential ich/existential ichiness.txt b/veryold/very old writings/existential ich/existential ichiness.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2031436 --- /dev/null +++ b/veryold/very old writings/existential ich/existential ichiness.txt @@ -0,0 +1,691 @@ + + + + + + + + + + + + +Prologue + +(Ordering food at the drive thru) + + + + +Write what you know... What if you don’t know anything? Don’t write. An entirely unacceptable solution. Learn something. Far too great an output of emotional energy. Do some drugs? Esoteric solutions always being the best. I need what every writer needs -some giant epochal adventure by which to define a generation while I myself, like those before me, mumble about being misunderstood and quietly drift into a life of oblivion, all the while snickering at those who bought the bullshit and made my life easy. + “Chicken sandwich with cheese and grilled onions” + “Honey mustard of that?” + “Sure and an order of fries” + Its amazing even in this day and age that one can obtain food by talking into a metal box. + Side note for the book on tape version: Reader please lean a little closer to the microphone in the million dollar studio and repeat the following... “I (insert celebrity name who recently starred in the movie version) love to grease my ass with Vaseline and insert a string of sausages with the other end in my mouth; I then eat until I reach my belly button at which point I come and enjoy a slice of watermelon and bask in the warm after glow of sex.” + Everyone these days is completely obsessed with The Bizarre. So much so that nothing really is The Bizarre anymore. Yuppies ride Harleys and frequent bondage parlors on the weekends while pulling in double incomes of 150K during the week scurrying from house to latte to work to the onceaweekmatrimonialassfucking. This is not bizarre this is vaudevillian comedy gone real life. + “$6.35 next window please.” + “I only got five bucks better hold the fries.” + “4.95 second window.” + “Thanks.” + You need bizarre, truly bizarre. You need circus freaks castrating themselves on the street corners and pimps shooting heroin in there balls while screaming whores accost their long dead mothers in hotel rooms cockroach won’t set foot in while lawyers sit on the roof television antenna protruding from there limbs as policemen ritualistically torture themselves gouging out there own eyeballs to avoid the scene below them. + “I think we need to get out of town.” + “Why? So we can live that tired old Kerouac/Thompson road trip in our quintessential american kind of way?” + “No. Because rent is two months overdue and I heard from our neighbors that the landlady’s gonna have the sheriff at our place in the morning.” + “What?! Fuck! Gimme my sandwich I’m fucking starved.” + “Fuck is not a adjective for every situation you know. I thought You were a writer.” + “For your information Fuck is a multi-purpose word to be used whenever other modifiers are deemed inappropriate or lacking or -in this case- when one does not feel the situation merits the construction of a complex descriptive metaphor. So what you’re saying is that we need to leave or all our shit will get seized in the morning?” + “Ya.” + “Alright lets pack.” + + + +Teridactal winged birds flew overhead and the ground was squirming the way heat waves shimmer the horizon. The Fort at San Juan rose distinctly to my left as if my subconscious were unabashed stealing its imagery from salvador dali. I licked my fingers and and found them to be an interesting Teriyaki-lemon flavor quite unlike anything I had ever tasted before. I looked at my shoes and realized I was standing on a giant skeleton key which I somehow knew was to the old Fort at San Juan. I tried to pick it up and carry it to the door but it was much to heavy for one man. In the distance I could see a bus approaching and felt as though I had been waiting for it the whole time. It pulled up next to me and all my college friends were gesturing for me to come aboard. The door opened. + + We left the following morning with me disparaging about the existential ichiness I felt toward driving a Japanese Sedan on what should be a quintessential american journey. That’s the problem these days, everything is ever so slightly perverted so as real insanity goes almost totally unnoticed. He was real quiet. A good neighbor. Kept to himself. I never imagined. It’s just terrible. Real insanity is left to drugs and those are hardly worth a writer’s time anymore (god rest your gonzo souls). We’re left with a watered-down silicon-infused Pop culture whose art is its adverts and whose only god is commodity. You snicker and suggest that television is to blame. The Media. Fuck you I am the media and I blame everyone but the media. As if the puppets on your TV screen were capable of destroying a culture. Proctor and Gamble destroyed your culture and we’ve all been put on the payroll. I’ll keep complaining so long as the checks keep rolling in. + Nice fucking sneakers from Indonesian slave labor camps propped up on your italian leather ottoman watching you stare at your state of the art hi-fidelity TV babbling about what's wrong. Headless chicken man is here to save the day. Rush Limbaugh isn’t right and probably doesn’t even believe the shit he spews out, its show biz folks your whole life has been pre-scripted so that you will know what to say and when. No stumbling over lines, the computer chip in you brain has precision craftsmanship unequalled in its uncompromising quality. No expense has been spared in the programming of your life. + “What's the scrapping noise?” + “My internal anger” + “Seriously, is that your brakes.” + “What brakes?” + “Are you stabbing at existentialism?” + “Its the brakes.” + You the insolent reader wishing you knew what was going on here. Who is having this conversation anyway? Wouldn’t you like to know? Too fucking bad you can’t have it all on a plate. Hallucinogens would help of course; you understand. I’m not talking about LSD here, no your medulla doesn’t need to slowed down anymore that it already has. I’m talking about the greatest drug of all the strongest hallucinogen known to man: the television. The great Tractor Beam of America sucking out your insides, and turning your guts to mush that I can spoon out and pour over ice cream. It’s oozing from your clawed out eye sockets, slowly at first and then in a fiery blast your projectile vomit squirts unrecognizable organs mashed into goo across the room to the smiling screen of the television. Ted Turner loves you. Turn the page and read the goddamn book. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +Chapter 1 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +Chapter 2 + +The Legalization of Marijuana +(three straw theory) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Somewhere in Texas I fell asleep. I awoke at the exit of a drive thru wide-eyed in Terror clutching three straws. + “Are you okay?” Ed asked. + “No.” + “Maybe we should let the dog drive.” + “We don’t have a dog.” + “Right. What’s with you?” + “They gave us three straws.” + “So?” + “We only needed two.” + “So?” + “The next time we go to a drive thru it’ll be late at night and in the middle of nowhere and we’ll be back on the road again before we realize that they gave us only one straw.” + “So...Why don’t we just save this one?” + “It’ll never last. Look at it. It knows what just happened. You can’t just go around bending the rules of fast food physics.” + “You are genuinely strange.” + + + I had a dream last night and Johnny Depp was not in it. I was twenty-three. Again. It was the twentieth century. Again. I hadn’t finished college. Again. I was scraping by on a Dean Moriarty salary parking cars nine hours a day. I got off at three and went home to find a sailor on my couch. There was a needle in his arm; he was watching soap operas. The woman on television was pregnant by her daughter’s husband. We laughed. I sat down and the sailor put a needle in my vein. William Burroughs walked in from the kitchen and stood over us. He smiled sadistically, knowingly. + “I wanted to be a writer,” I said to him. + He laughed obnoxiously. + “Shoot up kid its the easiest thing to do. I’d love to stay but they're expecting me in Tangiers.” He left and I awoke feverish and uncertain of where I began and ended. + I had another dream that night. The world’s end was at my doorstep. A white hot light had flashed civilization out. Cities ran as great metalglassconcrete rivers of deathdisfiguremanglement. Citizen’s charred limbs protruded like rocks that were floating with the stream. The searing smell of burning flesh darted through the hazy yellow air. A great clock tower was dripping time from its hands and my one true love stood beneath, arms severed and lying by her side. Her face had been burned off and eyes dissolved. Her head was upturned and its jaw hung down swinging stupidly in the yellow flesh burning air. Time was pooling in her mouth and dribbling done her chin like come. I awoke deeply offended by my subconscious mind. + I got out of bed convinced that we must find my Georgia friend Todd before it was too late. We were in Louisiana still and dangerously low on hallucinogens. + “I’d hate to have to go home early because we ran out of drugs.” + “I’d hate to run out of drugs.” + I ate the last of the mushrooms and relaxed staring at the dresser on the opposite wall. Presently it began to change. It dissolved into millions of tiny ants that crawled up on to the wall and began to flash messages like those signs at the side of the road that warn of up coming delays. + “Hello. We are ants.” +THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW: + Our purpose is singular. To inform you as to your mission. + “Hey are you seeing this Ed?” + “Probably not.” +SHUT UP AND READ, HOW OFTEN DO ANTS IMPART ADVISE? + <<<<<<Our singular purpose is to inform you of you mission, should you choose to accept it (even ants it seems are aware of televisions finest moments). Should you not accept we will devour your flesh <choices choices>. Orders from above. You understand. Nothing personal. Actually we like you. Proceed from above dialog to TODD’S HOUSE. There you will be seduced by the enemy. Do not believe them. LIE is in the middle of believe. Talk to The Pigeon Man. He will be perched on the rain gutter out back above the patio. He will tell you how to proceed. You are our greatest hope. Avoid the cock-eating sirens as you may need your cock in the future. If locating TODD’S HOUSE proves difficult go to Ed’s Pets in Watsonville and buy Stevie Wonder. He is the chocolate lab just before the back door. He knows the way. <<<<<<<<<END TRANSMISSION>>>>>>> + They slowly moved off the wall and structurally reformed the dresser. I got up and opened the drawer suspiciously. You just never know who to trust these days. + “Ah ha! just as I suspected. We must leave at once. The Gideons have been here.” + + + Nothing makes me as uncomfortable as organized religion. Especially one that sounds like some boxy Ford from the seventies. We checked out five minutes later after confirming that the effects of the mushrooms had indeed vacated my brain. For the most part anyway. Actually truth be told I was pretty out of it still and I just kind of threw the key at a bewildered looking Pakistani man. Or was that fear? + “Drive,” I said jumping in the already running car “I think he was on to us.” + The tires spit Gravel and we were off. (I love a good cliche.) + “We need to get to Watsonville.” + “Where the fuck is that?” + “Its just outside of Athens.” + “How the hell are we going to get to Athens?” + “Not Athens Greece you idiot, Athens Georgia.” I said impatiently. + “I know that you idiot, but we don’t have the gas money to get to Georgia.” + “Okay. Lets rob a gas station.” + “You know you would be dead by now if I wasn’t here, right?” + “How do you mean?” + “Look around you, we are in THE SOUTH. People here have guns, big guns, and they use them. Alot. What do we have?” + “Good point. But we have to go to Stevie Wonder’s Pet store and buy Al the chocolate lab. I need to have dog on this trip.” + “Buy a dog? Are you not hearing me? Money?” + “Well shit I don’t know what did Kerouac do?” + “His PUBLISHER IN NEW YORK wired him money.” + “Right. Find a phone.” + “You don’t have a PINY.” + “I know I don’t.” + We pulled over at a Exxon station and I strode in saying I was Capt. XXXXX XXXXXXXXX and I needed to use the phone to report an accident. The attendant look straight out of a Flannery O’Conner novel but he handed me the phone. + “Hello Penguin Books? Yes this is Edward Abbey. I’m in a spot of trouble and I need you to send some money.” + <Edward Abbey is dead asshole.> click. + Shit. I leaned out the door and yelled to Ed “whose America’s most noted literary figure that's alive?” He looked puzzled. + “Tom Clancy?” + “Good thinking. Hello Random House? This is Tom Clancy, I’m in a spot of trouble I need some money.” + <Who? What? Hold on.> + <Tom is that you?> male voice. + “Ya the CIA’s harassing me down here in Louisiana and I need you to wire me some money. They took my wallet and all.” + <Could you confirm your identity?> + “Do you think anyone is stupid enough to try and mess with a publishing company?” “Now look,” I said raising my voice, “If you want to see anymore of my manuscripts tell Ralph here to give me whatever is in his safe and you’ll wire him a reimbursement alright?” + <Okay, okay, calm down.> + I handed the phone to the attendant who listened for a moment, eyes widening and nodded the way some people do as if the person on the other end can see you nodding. He hung up and went in the back room without saying a word. He returned with a bag of money under one arm and The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger in the other. + “I just love your books here would you mind signing them?” + I snatched the money and scrawled quickly in Hunt for Red October, To Ralph. I love you, Thomas Clancy and flipping to the back of Clear and Present Danger I wrote Ralph you are a true American. Call me sometime 555-8216, love Tom. I ran out the door and jumped in the car. + “What took so long?” + “I had my first book signing, it couldn’t be rushed.” + We split the rest of Earls potion and I drifted into a semi-conscious day dream state. + Fragments of Ash falling. +White washed ceilings hanging so ominous +Hallucination of bubble headed figures +crawling like the Michelin Man +across an indescribable mountain of tires +Motels Motels Motels +Whiskey Bourbon. +Tow truck +non-ordinary state of reality +precludes a state of reality +that something is real Point at +the autistic man woman child +Autistic man pointing at you +laughing unable to fathom how you brain +functions and quite self righteously +you you cling to its definitions. +Must delineate between abnormality +and those of us who Understand +The Human Virus breeding +like rats unconsciously conscious and aware +of our disorganization. +Gas Station Cold Fusion dreams +of the Anarchist are breeding +in the minds of the oil men +who don’t want to +lose they're stranglehold of reality. +(where is Earl nice guy.) +Fragments of Ash falling +the continual settling of dust +weighing down humanity and the +French Maid masturbates discreetly in +the next room. you need her +to keep the dust off your mortal +coil spring. +Rebirth mythology. +Mythology of reality. We must +distinguish between what will be defined as +sane and what shall be referred to +as insanity. Kevlar definitions +constructed to make a better shampoo +seem like a logical item on which +to squander your paperbacked slavery bills. +After all these years Tide still +gets your socks whiter +Its a wonder +they aren’t transparent by now. +that your brain retarded +in its development +that evolution had not +anticipated the advent +of the opposable thumb the unopposable +domination of the thumb leading +to and insect superiority of mating +rituals stolen from a textbook +on damselflies darning needles +sewing shut your lips, mind atrophy. +Weber's White Race Enriched for Superiority +Scorched earth campaigns raining Ash. +Shit from the sky. Tax man came +for your baby in exchange for unpaid balance. +You understand. Nothing Personal +Just doing our job. Same as the +next guy. From Auzwich on down the +line. Didn’t make the rules. Sorry. +We perfected them. +There are no innocents in a world of +free will. You don’t have to survive +at the expense of others. You could +die with puncture wounds in your hands +and other would create a new mythology +strange irony would find another with holes +in his hands unwilling to accept +cockroach mentalities. +You want to beLIEve Hitler +was a madman but he lives on +buried under restraint in everyone mind. +Only taking orders you understand. Didn’t have +a CHOICE. Got a family to feed. +radio crackle. pop. hiss. +silence. +<<<<<<<<<<<END TRANSMISSION>>>>>>>>> + + + + Georgia is a beautiful state if you take the right drugs. The drugs obscure the frightening backward racist mentality that the New South’s propaganda claims is gone. A thing of the past. I’ve been through Macon and if that’s the New South I’m damn glad I wasn’t here for the old. Earl’s miracle potion wears off as we pass through Jasper. + + + + +I have a penchant for old cars. Actually I have a penchant for anything old, anything with heritage. Items found tucked in the back of junk shops layered in dust still settling from the days of Atlantis. Heritage is the human element that lingers long after the actual owner of an old ford "woody" station wagon has disappeared. There is a feeling one gets from holding up a slightly rusted coca-cola sign, hung for years of the wall of a small country store where an old man used to sit of the porch and smile at the customers as they walked in. An old man who used to show local children the holes in his wrists where they pounded through the nails. + Salvation lies in artifacts, coca-cola signs from old stores or advertisements for the old clipper-ship routes to Paris where a young woman once went to be alone, to write, to create. Slow spoken words sink in, unlike gibberish sloganeering of our day, sliding quickly off the deaf ears of time. I treasure artifacts left behind to carry on memories when there is no clipper ship route for her to take anymore. + Artifacts are not a part of "americana," they are a part of lives. Old cars talk. Drive one a thousand miles east into your own past, they will find you. Words can always find you even across the ages. "Americana" is the garbage hawked in front of tourist landmarks. The artifacts are gone, for when the voices leave to escape the throngs of unwisemen, the artifacts leave with them. Of course trinkets of "americana" remain, to sold for thirty pieces of silver. + Artifacts must be sought after, they are never found. Most began as the dream in some ancient person's head, a fanciful dream to which only they adhered. Their voices can be heard of course, even without the artifact, for dreams inhabit the earth. Anyone who has spent any time in the canyon country of southern Utah will tell you as the old man did, "there are voices in the hills." Voices yes, but precious few listeners. Falling trees need ears to hear their sound, lest they remain simply vibrations and sudden movements of air. + Science has taught modern man to understand the how, but it can not answer the more ancient "why?" The voices in the hills know why, and those who spend the time sinking roots into the land and into the artifacts of the land, they know why. Technological society has entrapped itself in an ever more complex web of "how's" at the cost of listening ears. Deafness is a disease. + It is a disease wrought upon those who have cut loose their roots and float expressionless dangling ten feet above the earth. I have observed such people and wanted to help them, but I am small and could not reach. I have watched as some people, giants rather, Abbey, Thoreau, or a young girl named Anna, pulled them down. All this I have observed, but observation is nothing --reflection and meditation is where creation lies. In meditation I find only loss and sorrow, pain and dread, an overwhelming sense of my unimportance. This is the trouble with writers, they know only pain for reflecting back on life is to see a series of goodbyes farewells, a never-ending and complex web of leaving ears. Until there's no left to listen to the stories you tell; death is the process of being absorbed into the land, into artifacts. + Old Ford "woodies" were artifacts --simple in-line six engines without air conditioning, tape decks or alarm systems. You rolled down the window and listened. Listened to the wind rushing through the car, carrying the voices to your ears. You stopped at gas stations where old men wore overalls and you bought coca-cola beneath a shiny new metal sign. You could drive for days and in the end you might well have picked up a woman headed for New York to catch a clipper ship to Paris, or an old man who had holes in his wrists. + + + + Every so often in the course of observation one finds the kind of simple beauty on the face of a simple person that gives us pause. Pause to smile and wonder how we could have done without such a smile, such a radiance, such a pair of eyes. God made beauty and radiance and chose to call them children. I saw a photograph recently of a captivating child whose moment of radiance and simple beauty had been frozen for eternity by a shutter-click. An image lighted with a spirit and essence of beauty about it. Children have the kind of light about them that you need in April. By the time I'm eighty I hope I will have that radiance again. + Promise. Promises are what people need in April when the Earth is just beginning to warm up. The light tends to be clearer and the ocean swell finally arrives from some distant Mexican shore bringing the scent of flowers from the sand dunes. Flowers and passion are so often breathed in the same sentence they tend to loose there connection, but it lingers. Passion and flowers both need spontaneity and freedom to bloom. Is that the connection they seek? + Passion and Promise. Sometimes you push down the shutter of a camera and look back in a year only to find that you hate half the faces you froze. The good times are when you look back at a single face and stare right through it into the soul --the light behind the eyes. + Her eyes are windows into a soul, a soul which we create in reeling pitches of beauty and strength. If I had my way I should make her queen of the world. Oh Queen of the World won't you rescue me? I need a savior, and behind some immeasurable depth of eyes there is a kind of salvation. In the midst of a generation spinning and hurling violently around the sun one girl smiled to save me. + Passion, Promise and Salvation. I wish I could thank her, give her my hand to hold as we spin across the face of the sun at 68,000 miles an hour. It's a fast-paced world. I hardly have time to breathe, but in the air I do find I find a kind of vision. A hallucination and vague dream of a street in New York many years ago when Diane Arbus froze in time "a girl and a watch cap." + April's fading fast. The world's spinning faster and faster falling slowly and inevitably out of its orbit. I hope it hangs in there long enough for me to find a copy of that photo to hang on my wall. I'll hang it next to Christ. Christ is holding hands with that smiling little girl. She's helping him to his feet. She holding her hand out to me. + + + + + Some people say that after a rain the earth is cleansed and everything washed anew, and then, claim they, we are also. Oddly most of them own umbrellas. And now I stand in the rain watching them run, cursing their luck at being caught naked in the middle of salvation. Water drips down her nose onto the already soaked grass. I picked up a pen and called you to say... + I only want to love people, and I do in my fashion, but I am angry that not everyone wants to love everyone. I'm not bitter at people, I'm just saddened that they don't want to love each other. Race, Culture, Religion, all these things divide us, and to what purpose? I only want to stop them in their tracks and dump buckets of water, wet, cold, and painfully truthful, on their heads. To bandage the shallow petty wounds and wipe the blood away. "In his blood you are saved" --as if I needed more blood. Your hands are punctured, sir, give me your shroud and I will bandage them, stop the bleeding. + Rain falls evenly on the surface of rock, but it runs off and pools in the places where the granite has dug into itself to create depth. Granite is salvation, it is firm. On a granite surface you can climb, I can pull myself up granite cliffs and stand atop their holiness. But it is the depressions, cracks, and holes in the rock where I place my hands and feel secure. + "I heard the rainfall on my tentfly" and promptly took it off. I sleep much better when the rain can pool in my mouth. I dreamed long dreams of gold and silver snakes. A young boy found them, brilliant, shining creatures, deep in the forest. He brought them back to his village to keep them as pets. They began to grow and soon the boy was forced to spend much of his time finding them food. Soon they became so large that the boy had to toil from dawn to dusk just to keep their bellies full. They were consuming him, devouring up all his time until the day they devoured him. Two massive snakes of silver and gold hissing and striking poison into the body of a once curious young boy. + I awoke to a world where people carried their religions and philosophies tidily on the bumpers of their cars. Buildings and jewelry, smiles and sunsets, rings and promises all sparkled --silver and gold. Somewhere an old man was standing, holes in his hands, rain washing down on him. Water filled his eyes. He wept. + A freeway snaked across the land, its blood coursing with little religions and philosophies. This is where we lived, this is what we lived for. + + + + Nothing is ever as it seems. It has been sunny and warm lately so I thought I ought to tell about the time a dark-haired girl told me about people who lie in the sun. To tan of course. But a cynic informed me that a tan was merely the preliminary stage of cancer. No more of death. I have to much of death in my life, too much altogether. The Phoenix is dead. No life comes out of death, only pain, and sad memories, stored carefully from the beginning, for everyone knows there will be a time when memories are all we have. + So I set out to dance the sun up past the morning, catching with it the approving eye of sleeping squirrels and a once called god, old man. Life would be this much simpler if only I could clear thought from my mind. Truth. So truth is what you seek? + Our truth is only what we have known the longest. Men are stronger than women. That is the truth. We have known it the longest, heavy-handed down from weak lying old men who crawled about from bath to bath, groveling after truth. I have heard that men have been to the moon, but I have also heard that it was all staged. No. Truth must be that they have been there, I have heard that lie the longest. + Truth. The oldest and rankest lie is what we call truth. + And so shall be truth, there is nothing you can do to avoid it. You know you can not fly, it is the truth, and you will never fly. It is truth that you will never know whether your failure is because you can't fly or because you think you can't fly. Birds have hollow bones. That is truth. That is how they fly. Humans have hollow heads. That is truth, that is why they can not fly. + Boxcars and trains haunt my truth, a vision of a girl; black hair and smoky eyes. Fire. Fire is the one truth I can never escape, heat is all that is need to live. Fire in her eyes. Fire in Laguna's hills. Fire burning through her cheeks, her smile, flames licking and consuming her body. If only for a moment. + Images of dark and light arise from the depths only to be slapped in the face, clawed, bit, pulled under by the hair, ripped, torn and ravaged entirely by cliche. That in the end is truth enough for anyone. Especially a writer. + "You can cut a chicken's head off and it will keep on running," how's that for truth? Truth that death isn't death and isn't life, it is monotonous continuing about life without a head. Truth that spirit is inseparable from body. Truth that the spirit is in the body and the body is in the spirit. Our roots tell us that truth can be found by denying the body. By detaching it. What has sex to do with love? Sharpen your knives and prepare to cut lose the next limb. The truth is you don't know how to use it anyway. + I can cut your head off and you will keep on running too. Running about from your government to your economy to your business to your bedroom, but the blood doesn't stop spewing and bubbling out of your stump-neck, waiting for a moment, trickling down your body as if hoping some god will be your savior. It clots and dries and the only thing left is fire. Fire to burn you up without ceremony, only a faint crackling and sizzling as you burn without your headless for truth. + She didn't lose her head she only smiled and the flames cooled her. Shadrach and a girl with black hair. She was lifted, she did not twitch, only floated, and was delivered on. That is truth. You have blood. She has herself. Go ahead break it drink it. She'll never know. + +To me that image produces such strong emotions of longing for the road that sometimes I just want to break down and cry. The simplicity of life, the sheer joy and love I felt on the road last fall confirmed what I'd always believed, that I was born to travel. I don't know exactly what it is that is so enticing and alluring to me. I guess maybe its the freedom; the freedom to not have a job, to not have anyplace to go, not have anything to do that I don't really want to do. The simplicity, the essentials of life food, cigarettes, beer and gas. Give me those and I could live a million years in total ecstasy and bliss. The wind in my hair, the open road in front of me -its utter poetry for my heart and soul. The warmth of loneliness and the peace that it brings is overwhelming. Its not a sad loneliness, but rather one of infinite gratitude and joy in simply being alive and I know that might sound kind of corny but its really how I feel. If I could step into that photograph and just smell the air and hear the beautiful sounds of cars wizzing by and the talk of local folk, I could disappear forever + + + + + +I had a dream last night and Johnny Depp was not in it. I was twenty-three. Again. It was the twentieth century. Again. I hadn’t finished college. Again. I was scraping by on a Dean Moriarty salary parking cars nine hours a day. I got off at three and went home to find a sailor on my couch. There was a needle in his arm; he was watching soap operas. The woman on television was pregnant by her daughter’s husband. We laughed. I sat down and the sailor put a needle in my vein. William Burroughs walked in from the kitchen and stood over us. He smiled sadistically, knowingly. + “I wanted to be a writer,” I said to him. + He laughed obnoxiously. + “Shoot up kid its the easiest thing to do. I’d love to stay but they're expecting me in Tangiers.” He left and I awoke feverish and uncertain of where I began and ended. + I had another dream that night. The world’s end was at my doorstep. A white hot light had flashed civilization out. Cities ran as great metalglassconcrete rivers of deathdisfiguremanglement. Citizen’s charred limbs protruded like rocks that were floating with the stream. The searing smell of burning flesh darted through the hazy yellow air. A great clock tower was dripping time from its hands and my one true love stood beneath, arms severed and lying by her side. Her face had been burned off and eyes dissolved. Her head was upturned and its jaw hung down swinging stupidly in the yellow flesh burning air. Time was pooling in her mouth and dribbling done her chin like come. I awoke deeply offended by my subconscious mind. + I got out of bed convinced that we must find my Georgia friend Todd before it was too late. We were in Louisiana still and dangerously low on hallucinogens. + “I’d hate to have to go home early because we ran out of drugs.” + “I’d hate to run out of drugs.” + I ate the last of the mushrooms and relaxed staring at the dresser on the opposite wall. Presently it began to change. It dissolved into millions of tiny ants that crawled up on to the wall and began to flash messages like those signs at the side of the road that warn of up coming delays. + “Hello. We are ants.” +THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW: + Our purpose is singular. To inform you as to your mission. + “Hey are you seeing this Bill?” + “Probably not.” +SHUT UP AND READ, HOW OFTEN DO ANTS IMPART ADVISE? + <<<<<<Our singular purpose is to inform you of you mission, should you choose to accept it (even ants it seems are aware of televisions finest moments). Should you not accept we will devour your flesh <choices choices>. Orders from above. You understand. Nothing personal. Actually we like you. Proceed from above dialog to TODD’S HOUSE. There you will be seduced by the enemy. Do not believe them. LIE is in the middle of believe. Talk to The Pigeon Man. He will be perched on the rain gutter out back above the patio. He will tell you how to proceed. You are our greatest hope. Avoid the cock-eating sirens as you may need your cock in the future. If locating TODD’S HOUSE proves difficult go to Ed’s Pets in Watsonville and buy Stevie Wonder. He is the chocolate lab just before the back door. He knows the way. <<<<<<<<<END TRANSMISSION>>>>>>> + They slowly moved off the wall and structurally reformed the dresser. I got up and opened the drawer suspiciously. You just never know who to trust these days. + “Ah ha! just as I suspected. We must leave at once. The Gideons have been here.” + + + Nothing makes me as uncomfortable as organized religion. Especially one that sounds like some boxy Ford from the seventies. We checked out five minutes later after confirming that the effects of the mushrooms had indeed vacated my brain. For the most part anyway. Actually truth be told I was pretty out of it still and I just kind of threw the key at a bewildered looking Pakistani man. Or was that fear? + “Drive,” I said jumping in the already running car “I think he was on to us.” + The tires spit Gravel and we were off. (I love a good cliche.) + “We need to get to Watsonville.” + “Where the fuck is that?” + “Its just outside of Athens.” + “How the hell are we going to get to Athens?” + “Not Athens Greece you idiot, Athens Georgia.” I said impatiently. + “I know that you idiot, but we don’t have the gas money to get to Georgia.” + “Okay. Lets rob a gas station.” + “You know you would be dead by now if I wasn’t here, right?” + “How do you mean?” + “Look around you, we are in THE SOUTH. People here have guns, big guns, and they use them. Alot. What do we have?” + “Good point. But we have to go to Stevie Wonder’s Pet store and buy Al the chocolate lab. I need to have dog on this trip.” + “Buy a dog? Are you not hearing me? Money?” + “Well shit I don’t know what did Kerouac do?” + “His PUBLISHER IN NEW YORK wired him money.” + “Right. Find a phone.” + “You don’t have a PINY.” + “I know I don’t.” + We pulled over at a Exxon station and I strode in saying I was Capt. XXXXX XXXXXXXXX and I needed to use the phone to report an accident. The attendant look straight out of a Flannery O’Conner novel but he handed me the phone. + “Hello Penguin Books? Yes this is Edward Abbey. I’m in a spot of trouble and I need you to send some money.” + <Edward Abbey is dead asshole.> click. + Shit. I leaned out the door and yelled to Ed “whose America’s most noted literary figure that's alive?” He looked puzzled. + “Tom Clancy?” + “Good thinking. Hello Random House? This is Tom Clancy, I’m in a spot of trouble I need some money.” + <Who? What? Hold on.> + <Tom is that you?> male voice. + “Ya the CIA’s harassing me down here in Louisiana and I need you to wire me some money. They took my wallet and all.” + <Could you confirm your identity?> + “Do you think anyone is stupid enough to try and mess with a publishing company?” “Now look,” I said raising my voice, “If you want to see anymore of my manuscripts tell Ralph here to give me whatever is in his safe and you’ll wire him a reimbursement alright?” + <Okay, okay, calm down.> + I handed the phone to the attendant who listened for a moment, eyes widening and nodded the way some people do as if the person on the other end can see you nodding. He hung up and went in the back room without saying a word. He returned with a bag of money under one arm and The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger in the other. + “I just love your books here would you mind signing them?” + I snatched the money and scrawled quickly in Hunt for Red October, To Ralph. I love you, Thomas Clancy and flipping to the back of Clear and Present Danger I wrote Ralph you are a true American. Call me sometime 555-8216, love Tom. I ran out the door and jumped in the car. + “What took so long?” + “I had my first book signing, it couldn’t be rushed.” + We split the rest of Earls potion and I drifted into a semi-conscious day dream state. + Fragments of Ash falling. +White washed ceilings hanging so ominous +Hallucination of bubble headed figures +crawling like the Michelin Man +across an indescribable mountain of tires +Motels Motels Motels +Whiskey Bourbon. +Tow truck +non-ordinary state of reality +precludes a state of reality +that something is real Point at +the autistic man woman child +Autistic man pointing at you +laughing unable to fathom how you brain +functions and quite self righteously +you you cling to its definitions. +Must delineate between abnormality +and those of us who Understand +The Human Virus breeding +like rats unconsciously conscious and aware +of our disorganization. +Gas Station Cold Fusion dreams +of the Anarchist are breeding +in the minds of the oil men +who don’t want to +lose they're stranglehold of reality. +(where is Earl nice guy.) +Fragments of Ash falling +the continual settling of dust +weighing down humanity and the +French Maid masturbates discreetly in +the next room. you need her +to keep the dust off your mortal +coil spring. +Rebirth mythology. +Mythology of reality. We must +distinguish between what will be defined as +sane and what shall be referred to +as insanity. Kevlar definitions +constructed to make a better shampoo +seem like a logical item on which +to squander your paperbacked slavery bills. +After all these years Tide still +gets your socks whiter +Its a wonder +they aren’t transparent by now. +that your brain retarded +in its development +that evolution had not +anticipated the advent +of the opposable thumb the unopposable +domination of the thumb leading +to and insect superiority of mating +rituals stolen from a textbook +on damselflies darning needles +sewing shut your lips, mind atrophy. +Weber's White Race Enriched for Superiority +Scorched earth campaigns raining Ash. +Shit from the sky. Tax man came +for your baby in exchange for unpaid balance. +You understand. Nothing Personal +Just doing our job. Same as the +next guy. From Auzwich on down the +line. Didn’t make the rules. Sorry. +We perfected them. +There are no innocents in a world of +free will. You don’t have to survive +at the expense of others. You could +die with puncture wounds in your hands +and other would create a new mythology +strange irony would find another with holes +in his hands unwilling to accept +cockroach mentalities. +You want to beLIEve Hitler +was a madman but he lives on +buried under restraint in everyone mind. +Only taking orders you understand. Didn’t have +a CHOICE. Got a family to feed. +radio crackle. pop. hiss. +silence. +<<<<<<<<<<<END TRANSMISSION>>>>>>>>> + + + + Georgia is a beautiful state -if you take the right drugs. The drugs obscure the frightening backward racist mentality that the New South’s propaganda claims is gone. A thing of the past. I’ve been through Macon and if that’s the New South I’m damn glad I wasn’t here for the old. Earl’s miracle potion wears off as we pass through Jasper. + + + + + We arrived in Watsonville this morning and went to Steve's Pets where we bought a chocolate lab we named Al The Wonder Dog or ATW for short. A couple dozen milk bones later we arrived at Todd's house. Todd was looking worried and not at all glad to see us. + "I figured you freaks were on your way out here, this came in the mail yesterday," he said handing me a letter. + "It's good to see you too" I shot back. They always seem to know when I'm coming like I am the anti-stealth bomber. + "I'm sorry man, its just that Carol lee's parents are coming up from Macom' and I don't know what to do with you guy's." + "Well, we already got somewhere to stay so don't sweat it we weren't expecting anything but a cold beer." + "Of course, of course come inside." + I went out back on the porch and opened the letter and sat relaxing in the sticky humid southern evening. It went like this. + + Dear Wayfarer, + Thanks for your piece on Mardi Gras. It was definitely a first, and perhaps only, of its kind for the magazine. You should see the stack of letters sitting on my desk, people love you or hate you. Actually seven people loved you and over two hundred found you and your story to be the most offensive thing they had ever read -which I figured you would be delighted to know. + Anyway I was hoping you could do something on this piece I clipped from -------- magazine (our major competition in the LA and New York markets). I called them and got permission to rerun it in "an editorial form" (which I have on tape) so I think our butts are covered. + + Do the math. Many hosts are unsure how much liquor to buy for cocktail parties. When in doubt turn to arithmetic. Most drink recipes call for two ounces of liquor. + A 750mL bottle contains 25 ounces allowing for spillage. You can expect 12 serving per bottle. Figure most quests will have two drinks in an evening so you get one bottle per six people. + + + + + + Richard says to tell your to keep going up to D.C. Next week he wants you to cover some event that the Rev Farrakkan is having. Gimme a call, 'cause I think I actually got him to book a hotel room for you. + + + good luck, + + Dean + + + + I reread the letter several times trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do with the clipping. I mean shouldn't we be writing our own shit not just making fun of other people's shit? It occurs to me however, that magazines seldom blantantly make fun of each other, so who better to do it than me? I get another beer from Todd's fridge while he's playing with ATW, and I roll a cigarette on the porch. What sort of people need to have a formal theory for mixing drinks anyway? No one I've ever known has ever had a cocktail party, we usually all just show up at some often unsuspecting friend's house after the bars are all closed and proceed to raid there supplies of liquor and pharmaceuticals. Two ounces per drink. Who the hell knows how much two ounces is by sight? Besides that's the reason you drink at home -because you can make a God's honest beverage sure to alter your normal brainwaves after a few sips, instead of paying five dollars for a drink that wouldn't faze a second grader. I like to have two drinks in a evening too. Preferably poured in leftover 32 oz 7 eleven plastic cups. About three quarters full of alcohol (preferably clear and of Russian origin) and one quarter something else for taste. I like to drink in large quantities. + But it'll make you sick (sound of church ladies agast). Well your pointless life of boorish toiling from dawn to dusk with an hours worth of watered down pissass drinks at the pub on the way home to the overpriced, style-challenged suburban dwelling with your weekend cocktail parties where you gag on your bosses short dick angling for a promotion makes me sick. So fuck you and your organized society with stoplights and clockwise circles and social security cards and adverts drooling over the latest piece-of-shit-got-to-have-it plastic automobile so big you can't even drive it. Get the fuck out my way. Come out here sit on this porch in languid evening sun, relishing the sweet sticky smell of the southern air fanning across your bare chest as the Godless afternoon heat relents into a warm evening breeze. Then you'll understand what I'm talking about. + On second thought don't. You've got that big mortgage payment to worry about, and well, quite frankly, I just wouldn't be as relaxed if anyone else was here. Be content with your life and enjoy your smug possessions and play armchair enthusiast. I am your omnipotent guide and everything is under control. Actually if you must know I'm lost and everything about this god awful society is totally fucked-up. But nevermind, we'll get to that. + I set down the pen and my seventh beer and gaze cross-eyed at my response written in column form to impress THE EDITORS. + + Forget the math, you'll be too drunk to figure it out anyway. Buy one 750mL bottle per person bare minimum. When in doubt buy two. most drinks should be made with 12-15 ounces of alcohol and spillage will only earn the ridicule of your friends. Buy some pouring nipples or steal them from a bar you don't go to very often. + Figure that most guests will be belligerently drunk by ten so to save funds bust out the cheap stuff (re: Ralph's charcoal filtered vodka). Another excellent way to cut costs is to have a readily available supply of marijuana amphetamines and opiates. Avoid hallucinogens at you own party, better to bring them to someone else's house. That way should the neighbors find you huddled naked beneath a tree barking like a dog and foaming at the mouth, at least they won't be your neighbors. + + I have the strangest drunken feeling that that will never be printed in a magazine and that if it were I would be forever hounded by every law enforcement agency from coast to coast. I hurriedly scrawl a note that, if printed, not to put my name on it. Cops are like rattlesnakes there's no sense throwing rocks at 'em you know what they'll do. In fact I think in all likelihood the name on the jacket of this book will not by mine. People stopped believing in fiction along time ago, twentieth century imagination-atrophy syndrome. + I wander inside and find Bill and Todd staring mindlessly at the television. Creature of a human resemblance are cavorting on screen to a ten cent laugh track background designed to cover up the fact that sitcoms are basically not even remotely funny. They have to be stoned I realize and after a moments search I pick up the rest of the joint laying next to the ashtray. I light it and ease onto the couch. + "We should go down and see what's happening at the Knight." + No response. I take another drag hoping to catch up. I glance at Todd's glazed over eyes and realize that more than pot might be involved in this situation. I’m not talking about LSD here, no ours medulla don’t need to slowed down anymore than they already have. I’m talking about the greatest drug of all, the strongest hallucinogen known to man: the television. The great Tractor Beam of America sucking out your insides, and turning your guts to mush that I can spoon out and pour over ice cream. It’s oozing from your clawed out eye sockets, slowly at first and then in a fiery blast your projectile vomit squirts unrecognizable organs mashed into goo across the room to the smiling screen of the television. Ted Turner loves us. He's given us our own alter state of reality that we can all share together. + I wave my hand in front of Bill's face. + "Hey man shut up I'm trying to watch this thing." + I turn off the television and ask "have you ever considered that maybe it is watching you?" + "Yes," answers Todd, "but I don't publisize my paranoia" + They seem to have snapped out of their primordial trance state so I again suggest the Little Knight and this time they agree, but Todd the dutiful husband can only go for an hour. Uh hu. I'm going to need more than an hour I love Georgia girls and the most beautiful and intelligent ones (no thats not a oximoron) hang out at the Little Knight + Besides which, I'm full from all that beer, and am feeling the need to lighten up my head with something clear. Something Russian. We sit in the customary back booth where Todd and I first shared a beer. And I do mean shared, we were both so broke at the time that between the two of us we had only enough for one pint of Guiness. But that was many moons ago. I gave Todd some ecxtasy the New Orleans club girls had given me, and despite his protests of coming in-laws (whats worse in-laws on extasy or a wife stood up because you're on exctasy? Tough call.) Now he and Bill have become thoroughly enchanted with the red velvet texture that cover the walls. I'm not big on X its too tactile of a drug. I start thinking of the how long its been since I've been here. I miss this one little outpost nestled in the middle of anotherwise boring and featureless state. Perhaps boring is the wrong word, sufficeto say that Georgia's beauty is in its subtlies. the little pockets of beauty that you can't find anywhere except Georgia. And of the eccentricies of the folk the land has given birth to. + I think, for instance, of Leo the crazy cook back in Athens Georgia, black like the greasy skillets and pots he is forever clanging around and the glum ceilings of the kitchen, greasy smoke crawling up the wall to rest at the top, muddy brown, delicious looking. Automatic. Your food is thrust at you by a wide-eyed black woman who appears to be Leo’s wife but never says anything except "Greens, potatoes or Yams?" "Greens please." The first time we were there she added "sweet tea is on the left regular right." After that when we would come back she seem satisfied the we could figure the tea situation ourselves. "Greens, potatoes or yams?" Yams please. And cigarettes, always cigarettes, after a meal the soothing feel of smoke blowing out you nose, relaxing your greasy full belly. I would like to sing an ode to cigarettes at the top of my lungs, at the top of my hills at the bottom of my valleys. Cigarettes are always there. Food and Women come and go and can be enjoyed properly when you have them, but cigarettes you must always have cigarettes. + And MY My my the southern girls (why always girls? Why not?). The true peaches of Georgia. Lips honey sweet and dripping with southern accents. The hot sticky air that seems to cling to you like unwanted jackets your mother used to put on you when you went out to play in the snow. It makes you want to throw off whatever garments propriety dictated onto your unwitting frame and dive naked in the cool river, swim naked with the girls, women, water moccasins, and the lucky alligator or two if any are around. + But tonight the Knight is empty save for the token Frat boys playing pool. And of course Anthony Luigie Bruno. Or Tony as we call him. Bartender extrodiniarar. I don't know anything about Tony. Or at least I don't know anything for sure about Tony. I could probably fill twenty pages with the bullshit stories I've heard him tell unsuspecting "freshies" as he calls them. He really is Italian and he really pours stiff drink and he rarely makes me pay for them. That's the extent of the truth about Tony and beyond that in all honesty I'm really not mush interested. + + + +Brian a quiet shy nice good, weed suppling friend. We’ve been in the back rooms of Frat houses just passing time. Hendrix, Zepplin, tie-dyed Jerry Garcia staring down from the stark plaster-patched walls. Michael and I flat on our backs listening to Adam Sandler sing "I’m fucking wasted/its the best shit I’ve ever tasted." It’s all down hill from here, such beautiful silence between songs, minds scouring for thoughts like a thousand skinny starved rats devouring a single crumb. Giant looping conversations chasing bumblebee ideas through great open fields of thoughtless silence. + Hey what day is it? Lets go downtown, by the fountain, cool jazz music drifting out the open windows of the too crowded to enter bar. I try. Can I get a beer? In a minute. Didn’t have a minute, life was flying by, Amtrak coast to coast flyer, stopping causes derailment. Back out into the dizzying flow of human traffic. We’re trying hard not to get trampled like those poor soccer fans at the stadium riots in Italy that I always am reading about. Its Brian, It’s his fault where are the girls? "Lets go to Tangz!" he says. So we warder through throngs of drunken kids --college towns 20,000 people with nothing to do but drink Tangz! is too crowded full of Hootie and the Blowfish listeners for Michael’s tastes, so we leave. Brian stays. + Wandering together like we always end up. Drunk now, the tea worn off. Streets swirl and in my daze I hear horns and skidding tires, get out of the street you moron. A cop cruises by this city is fucking chocked full of cops, we duck down an alley. Half way down a drunken bum accosts us. + "This is my alley college boys." + "We are not college boys," Michael babbles with little coherency, but a lot of conviction, "we are upon a sojourn." Big words usually piss bums off and I am fully prepared to run from a spraying onslaught of cheap red wine, but it never comes. + "Where are you sojourning to?" mumbles the bum. + "Tonight we decided to share your alley, I say, trying to keep the world upright, but it refuses. "I think I better sit down." I lean against the wall next to the bum and slowly slide down, the bricks bumping my back, until I arrive on the ground with the bum. A small journey downward amongst some larger incoherent vision. Sitting relieves the mind of its burdens if only for a second while the brain floats downward and lodges back in your drugged skull. + "Chinese?" + The bum offers me food. + "Shouldn’t I be offering you food?" I laugh. + "Food is food right now I’ve got some and you don’t so I’m offering it to you, someday you’ll have some and maybe you’ll offer it to me." + I acquiesce and eat a bite. Pass it to Michael. He jabs his finger in to scoop up some noodles. + "Shit boy wheres your manners?" the bum croaks in disgust. + "I don’t know how to use chopsticks." + "Shit you’re out here on your own ‘sojourning’ around and you can’t even use chopsticks. Come here I’ll teach you." + I’m laughing at the comic nature of the bum trying to show Michael how to eat with chopsticks, ready to slouch down and say goodbye to the world for a while. No, not yet. I raise my heavy head banging it into the bricks. OW! The bricks are laughing at me manic side splitting laughter. I try desperately to focus on the wall on the opposite side of the alley. I notice lights and I become aware for the first time of music, not just music, but Prince. It occurs to me that its probably Tangz! right down the street. Drunks usually don’t wander very far. + The faint lights down toward the end of the alley fade out of focus I squint and suddenly all I can see is some coastal port for France. My brain gives in to the illusion and start to see it clearer the faraway sparkle as one might see from an ocean liner steaming across the channel, glittering insane promises of wine whore and Henry miller. Miller and I are in some dim lit alley, scrounging for scraps of bread in the flickering shadows of gas lamps. We come to a door, a pastry shop! Straining my head I can see glass shelves behind a counter displaying torts, cheesecakes, eclairs, raspberry torts, blueberry, lemon. lime, blackberry, and chocolate cake dripping fudge, carrot cake, pineapple upside down cake, buns muffins all seductively delicious in rows and piles, food to feed armies, countries, continents. But the counter is made of barbed wire, we can’t get to them. All the food to feed the world and I can’t reach it. I am trying but the razor barbs cut me, I am bleeding, Miller is gone, I’m no longer in the store, my neck aches and throbs. + I open my eyes and am suddenly blinded by the midday Colorado sun. I am desperately craving a raspberry tort. I can’t figure out why, then I remember the dream. Walls come into focus and that rushing of blood to my head that signals the onslaught of a terrific headache. Michael’s head is resting on my shoulder and his arm is strewn across my legs. I heave him off and stand up. We arm in the alley still I notice just a few doors down from the back entrance to Tangz! A horrid thought strikes me and I reach for my back pocket, but no my wallet and all its money ($23) is still there. Maybe bums are the last honest people left. + Michael is up and rubbing his eyes. + "Take those contacts out one or these days or your going to go blind," I warn. + "I am blind. Where are we?" + "In that alley still." + "oh yeah, hey you passed out, I kept trying to wake you up man that bum was one wacky cat." Michael unconsciously imitating the slang of the cool old ponytailed Jazz musician who runs and open mike night at this little coffee shop in LA. Michael and I used to go there me with guitar and him singing, we’d slaughter Bruce Springsteen song and the guy would just say "you cats are pretty cool -I can dig you." I loved that guy. + + + + +I talk to bums. I smile at there stories and listen in reverence to the quiet theories of conspiracy. Why not who else to talk to in these most disheartening of times. The manic glow of thought that echoes hollowly from our collective lips is little more than the endless glow of faceless faces radiating a cheap phosphorescent light streaming stupidly by on the streets. What have you to say to me what have I to say to you? Bums are crazy not one has ever made any attempt to shed any sort of sanity into my life. I talk to bums. I give them money for food for cigarettes for alcohol to numb the stupidity of their lives. If I were rich I would by everyone a bottle of wild turkey and hand them out on the corner of 6th and Broadway. Here take off your mask admit the insanity of our lives. Face it square on, look into its eyes, grab it by the throat and choke the life right out of it until you are numb and your hands relax from your own throat. I hate my generation. sickened swine what have you to say to me? Same as I to you not a goddamned thing. + I tried to do that, to choke the marrow out of life or some other ridiculous sophomoric whine that passes for art. Now I talk to bums. The more I rant in aimless circles the more they listen. They have nowhere to go no one to believe in. Who would you believe in if no one believed in you? Bums don’t lie. They tell stories that never happened they bow their heads to priest whose god disowned them, but they don;t lie. We lie. The ones with the warm houses ,the comfortable chairs, the endless sewer of easy loves and voluptuous non existence, that I wouldn’t trade for one instant of truth or enlightenment. We lie. To ourselves to the empty communitiless society we have created. What we wouldn’t give for true vulgarity in our lives. Not the false hopeless vulgarities we have dreamed up -pornography, narcotics, state supported war. But real vulgarity live stripped back to the essential to the marrow of existence. To have to forage for our own food for one mere night, to find shelter for ourselves and our families, to love life as the precious dirty scuffed diamond in the rough. To sink your hands into the dry desert sand clawing for a God who doesn’t hear with the sun beating endlessly on your naked back ,your fetal heart. + I talk to bums because they seem not amazed at the contradictions of life. They know the hideous lie of monogamy and the false happiness in sorrow. They are not loyal to state to man not even to each other I have no doubt they would rob me blind if they could and I respect them for it. Better bitter honesty than the stinking filth of the man who marries one woman and disowns four others in the process. We bought this lie this one mate, one country, one planet in the face of a 250 billion other galaxies. we are the ones the only ones. We are at least probably the only ones who have the audacity to believe we are the only ones. Would the mule deer grazing in land locked Colorado deny the existence of whales in an ocean it has never seen? I have asked many, but in there silence I can only assume they do. After all if we found life outside out planet would we remain calm and un moved and go about our business as we always had. Would our beliefs hold up in the face of such a test? would our religions crumble, our faith in the “order of the universe” be irrevocably shaken? Ask the mothers whose sons and daughter have been struck down on our streets about the “order of the universe” God may not play dice with the universe, but physics don’t control it either + + + + + + + + + +Sitting at a table in upstate New York- + And the Galaxy girl walks down the street, boyfriend in tow, brown stomach seductively bare, midriff shirt. They're meeting friends later at the gate hanging ten feet high down town. She and her shirt with GALAXY GIRL written in glittering silver, would like to get drunk, high on little golden yellow pills, and float in the ecstasy of swirling music. Who wouldn't? + Three marines drive smiling and pointed in squirish red truck (marines de reguir) desperately hoping for some sweet young girl to cross the street coming back from the beach. Stoplights are a woman’s worst nightmare. Catcalls. Warbles, like sex crazed crows float up the street. Victim. Hoping for a smile of a acknowledgement to insincere flattery. Them squirming in their truck. Hey baby... Marines cruising for cunt. Any cunt will do + And the aging club girl with bright cherry lips painted extra red by the contrast in her black leather jacket eyeing me. She sits slouched in a chair as if resigned that she will never make it back to New York. CEBE JEBES THE ALIGATOR LOUNGE. Those were the good days. Now its just slouched days in slouched chairs cigarette aimed skyward dreaming of darkness and the wild seductive wails of guitar (what was that blonde guys name?) the rhythmic pounding of the beat forcing its way into your chest, the throb, the guttural appeal of all thing taboo and enticing. + The surfer and his girl stroll by, her breasts spilling out of the too small top, losing its Herculean battle to save the world from nudity. They wander into the cafe’ for snacks, drinks, to gorge the thirst induced by the haughtless sun now carving the end of its tyrannical arc. They order designer water and leave. + The tired shopkeeper is out smoking her obscenely thin cigarettes again (excuse me is there any tobacco in those?). She smokes constantly pausing only to give a tired answer to the same tourists she has to stare at day after day. An endless reminder that they not her are the ones enjoying life. Too many of them day after day year after year look look looking never buying. THE LEATHER CONNECTION doesn’t do a lot of business on hot spring days. Nor is it the kinky sort of fetish shop you might hope for. Not even any leather in the windows. She moves her lips mumbling incoherences intelligible only to herself. She’s probably thinking like I am that she shouldn’t have married that conceited machoistic slob, that cigar smoking house tyrant who will be demanding dinner the moment she walks in the door. She lights another cigarette. Get some thicker smokes, they’ll last longer I want to say. But I can tell she’s not the type to take unsolicited advise. + The sharp eyed Asian hawk sitting behind me closes her purse, pen safely secured inside. She licks stamps and affixes them to postcards. Notes for those at home. “Jenny: New York is great -warm sunny. I’m having a great time. Remind me to tell you about this guy Bill I met the other day. Take care of yourself. Say hi to Tom for me. Love....” + Families wander by looking for a nice place to eat. The neon signs offer Mexican Italian Greek food, “but we need a children's menu.” “Tommy’s only nine, he can’t eat a whole meal himself.” “Do you think they could split a dinner, I’m not very hungry myself?” “You brought the credit card right?” “No, but I’ve still got some cash left over from breakfast this morning. “Wasn’t that a charming little place?” “What was it called?” “Lets go there again before we leave.” + And the girls the beautiful girls yes they keep going by, but I ignore them all I can ever think of them is what color lace covers there sweet impressionable pussies... + The locals, the non-travelers, the doomed-forever-to-live-in-one-placers stream by in shinny cars coming home from work in THE BIG CITY. Their flimsy soda can Japanese cars that look as if a good size bird could with good aim crush the plastic colored roofs. Remember when Kerouac and his crazy friends roamed the highways remember when cars were made of steel? Me either. The locals drive with windows up and frowns turned down. “Did I remember to e-mail that memo to Tony at the office in Chicago? I wonder what sort of crap Diane cooked for dinner tonight? She is the worst cook. What happened to that tri-tip on Friday? I wouldn’t have known what is was if I hadn’t bought it myself. Dave and Linda smiled and said it was delicious the lying bastards. don’t encourage her she might actually believe she can cook. Dave probably just wants to sleep with her. That whore. I wonder if she’s fooling around behind my back? She never wants to have sex anymore. Its always the same routine. Me still dripping from a shower her reading some book I crawl onto of her . ‘Not tonight honey I’m to tired.’ I wait till she’s fast a sleep and sneak down to the kitchen reach behind the fridge and pull out the nudie magazines off quietly to the bathroom. I wonder what Diane would look like in tight leather probably fat. She still hasn’t lost all the wait from the pregnancy. God its been what like eighteen months Justin’s starting to walk for christsakes. The light is green, fucking traffic.” The typical suburbian woes. + Fog is settling in from the hills meeting up with banks rolling in from the sea, threatening the star’s view, tiny windows of the gods peeping in watching our silly games in continued amusement. (“they keep doing it every night”) Reminding me of San Francisco, the golden gate after sundown glowing like it were Apollos chariot itself. Proudly beckoning the traveler with tale of endless wanderlust -out here the final frontier come swim discover secrets hidden from mankind...Come the sharks are hungry. The mashing of teeth and bone the tearing of flesh. Being ripped to sheds in the jaws of nature that is a glorious death. + A bitter couple take a seat behind me. “out here in the great outdoors the largest smoking section in America.” Amen brother. Places out of reach of the spreading TYRANTS OF HEALTH. Would you like extra grease on that steak? Why, yes please. Breakfast in Memphis, eggs pancakes toast slices of orange parsley, juice and a happy go lucky waiter offering free Sprite? Why, yes please and keep it coming. Michael could I borrow you lighter? Certainly sir. Cigarettes coffee and more open road that's what I need. Bad coffee, bad roads full of chuckholes and entire lanes wiped out in flood, and of course really good cigarettes, that's what I really need -enough of this damn city. + But it the girls the girls the girls. Sweet tight little asses hidden under Levis soft pillowly breasts rounding out tight white black blue silver t-shirts, arms cut short and stomachs exposed by some ingenious designer who truly understands life. Belly buttons sunken gently with the hint of what sweet candy lies below wrapped in red green white black lace, curly auburn hairs, not brown, never true blond, but in between --auburn. In between indeed. + And the men at the bench across the way cackle and pop with laughter pointing and gesticulating as if begging for some passerby to take interest and join in their conversation. The dizzying roar of a departing bus temporarily drowns them out. That was seven moons ago and any return is several moons hence. I am here, California. The Queen Bitch. No more humid smiles. + The milk of human kindness. The smiles of a five year old with grandmother eyes. Don’t look at me it is to late for me, save yourself. + Brave is the soul who dare to parallel park in the clanging honking impatient drone of six o'clock traffic. They have other destinations, other places they want to be unlucky soul giving in and going away. Only to return moments later and steal stealthily into that same spot! The triumph of the human spirit is reduced to finding good parking. And she exits to the roar of cheers, friends waiting on the balcony above me. Greek. Ladies night out at the Aegean Cafe’. Park the husbands on the couch, insert beer, and leave. Ladies night out. + The eastern couple hesitates on the steps below he Indian she Asian. Such a wonderfully raceless baby they could have. We need a worldwide orgy to end racial differences. End racism, fuck a foreigner! And of course end culture, diversity and everything interesting about people. + I would not fuck you in Thailand/ I would not fuck you in a plane over Japan. One of Dr. Suess’ lesser known couplets. Brain candy. Soul fodder. + Three big beefcake men approach in white t-shirts, dripping fake tans. Score! Find a cunt jack off in. Find us all one. Dewy eyed art school girls who want nothing to do with the beefcakes’ piercing horny lecherous stares, they want coffee cigarettes and conversation. And maybe, just maybe some weird vampire sex with blood sucking and candle wax dripping, burning nipples. But you wouldn’t know any better than I. Such eroticisms sparkle and fade. Sparkle and fade. + A limo. Movie stars? Sparkle and fade. A beautiful Spanish style villa to return to after a night on the town, bring the press along we’ll write it all up for the morning papers. We’ll waltz under the comet’s tail, our bare feet shuffling in the sand falling between naked toes making the sound of a a rainstick, its seeds forever trapped in a cactus skull, only too quiet to hear. + Four sweet college girls pause and seeming ask no one “‘didn’t this use to be called Fahrenheit 451?’ Sure I reply. They study me uncertain. It cooled off I guess. Poor smiles for a poor attempt at humor. ‘What are you writing?’ (The blond too.) A bunckofworthlesscrap no one will ever read. ‘Can I try?’ (Shit.) My writings pretty bad. + +. + + + + + + I woke up this morning in a sleeping bag with no where left to run. We are in Wyhoming. Again. It's still the twentieth century and not much else appears to have changed. Al is licking my face and appears to want food. That dog is eating me out of House and home. House being a battered sixty-nine Ford Pickup and home having disappeared several months ago. + + + + + +As it turned out it was a good day to ask. I was going through one of my increasingly frequent fazes of moping. What Dr. Fredrick called depression, but he didn’t understand people very well, on account of his being a psychiatrist and all. I cut him slack though because he did provide for the occasionally insightful discussions. I think it was boredom that held me in its jaws, not chemical depression. I was going through a cliche period, I was pondering the meaning of life. + I have nothing that could be termed a skill so as my friends and neighbors began to get more and more involved in jobs and families, I spent more and more time in my room staring at ominously blank sheets of paper sticking out of my antique, but fully functional Underwood typewriter. Lacking anything better to say, all I ever typed was I am bored. Forty of fifty sheets of paper were neatly pinned on the wall above my desk reading just that. I was just arriving at the conclusion that perhaps it was the city and its claustrophobic patches of grey sky wedged angularly between skyscrapers that was getting me down. I was contemplating moving to France when a friend pointed out that the sun rarely shone in Paris either. I have lived in this city for five years and have yet to run across anyone who can explain why this place never sees the sun. A half an hours drive in any direction will generally produce sunshine, but the city itself seems to have been built in the world’s only perpetual fog bank. + In lieu of any logical explanation I have conceived my own; the weather is out to bore me into depression. Dr. Fredrick’s eyes lit up when I mentioned this theory to him, and he immediately asked if I ever heard voices. I told him yes, but generally only on the cordless phone. I told him that the company had said that if wanted to up grade to digital the noises would go a way. Dr. Fredrick’s smile widened for a moment and vanish along with his grandiose idea that perhaps I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Dr. Fredrick’s mission, and hence my reason for visiting him, was to study the psyche of the artist and try to prove that artistry was perhaps a chemical imbalance in the brain which led to increased creative urges. He a big grant from some fancy university back east and paid me to be one of his test subjects. Unable to hold down a job, lack of motivation or sheer laziness its your call, I needed easy money so I had answered his ad and apparently did a good job of convincing him that I was a writer. The fact that I had never really sat down and written anything of substance didn’t seem to bother him. “Its not so much the act of writing, but the heartfelt need to write that interests me,” he used to say. I usually just nodded and let him inject me with some chemical that let his scanners see what parts of my brain were active and which weren’t. The five hundred dollars I received every Friday cinched the idea for me. + I never mentioned it to him, but I had already exorcized my right to self diagnosis and in my educated opinion I was chronically afflict with the disorder of humanity, that is to say that I was human and subject to the usual symptoms of emotional turmoil and occasional serious ups and downs of life. A condition which I concluded was both terminal and incurable. + + This morning started like any other, I struggled to get out of bed before noon and after I finished typing my usual rendition of I am Bored and pinned it next to the others, I headed out for some fresh if foggy air and a cup of coffee. That's what you do if your an artist I learned you frequent coffee shops with a pen and sketch pad order a cup of coffee, sit preferably in a dark corner table and put on airs of deep thought and cosmic contemplation. So it was with a sense of heavy obligation that a swung open the door at Jittery Joe's and strolled over to my table in the dark corner opposite the front door. I deposited my pen and sketch pad and strolled to the coffee bar trying my best to appear distracted and preoccupied with my very own “big idea.” + Supposedly I was researching a book which was to be my masterpiece, I wanted to storm on to the scene as the triumphant and brilliant new writer who would issue in a new area in modern fiction. The mundane reality was a little bit different. I was facinateed at the time, with aboriginal world views and the native minds connection with the earth. I had gotten so far as the ominous one hundred page mark when my puplisher told me in an exited voice that this was exactly the book the were looking for to break into the burgening new age genre. I set the phone down and ran into the other roon scooped up my manuscript and flushed the entire contents down the toilet. My masterpiece work of genius was beginning to look like a lucrative career ghost writing for Penthouse Letters. + But, as I settle back into the plush highbacked chair that I am forever dragging from one end of joes to the other, whatwas mainly on my mind was hwo to get to Utah. My publisher had kindly arranged some time ago for me to sit in with some members of the hopi tribe on a dream quest or something of that nature. Not wanting to miss such an opportunity I had yet to tell my publisher about the toilet flushing insident, so I was left without a ride to Utah. He was supposed to give me his car, but since that would involve my giving up what I had written I was at present, screwed. + + + + + Wake up and walk down never having satopped. Beginnings are always violent; the universe sxploded from a single point, achild is pushed out of a whole that is normally tight around my cock. Violence is the natural state of beginnings. Without violence there is sterilty a barren wasteland. Test tube babies sickening smell of death waiting like a vulture, to ooze out of the scientists lab. The good Dr. B having a bowl of weavils for breakfast sucking them up out of a 1920's huca smoke seeping out the floorboards of the room + + + + + + + + |