Part Two: "Some Kind of Record"
March 17 I learned something about genetics today I think. Most
people are inclined to be grouchy; others find some kind of sanctity
or finally lose it I guess. Another way to think of it: For most
people if it doesn't come from the depths of their bowels and up
through the top of their own heads, then it's faking it. A warped
sense of honesty based on some bad ideas about universals I guess, viz
a viz, 1) Yes, they exist; and 2) Yes, I understand reality because of
the privileged position of my reality system. Hence they are
motivated by little, and having, then, little opportunity to exert the
natural energies, siphon them off in selfish little fits of bitterness
and become the Grouchies. The opposite I guess are those who can take
any little suggestion of a suggestion and focus on it, turn it,
examine it, find some tentative understanding and then shrink it down
to be put aside till needed. It's truly difficult, though, as
Philosophers and Scientists well know, to get an honest grip on
things--that's why most people obsess on themselves instead of the
world around them and before them, a little me of simple and true
motivations and fears, please do not disturb. Hmmm.... started this
with genetics, where was I going? Oh well, best stay away from that
topic anyway lest one be labeled a fascist needlessly. By the way, as
this paragraph demonstrates, I'm trying it again, OK? We'll see how
long it lasts this time....
March 18 Nothing to report.
March 22 Look this isn't going very well so just don't hassle me for
awhile.
May 5 Met this old man in Bath England. What a killer. I swear he
had the answer for everything and could put it to you in the most
astounding modern verse you've ever heard. I think he was a musician
years ago in some band no-one's ever heard of--something about the
power of stars or.... Anyway he proposed to demonstrate to me that
life was indeed a conspiracy of the rich and powerful, but that this
fact of reality is generated by a terrible illusion about what indeed
life is. It sounded pretty typical from the description, but I was
slightly flattered by his intellectual attention, in a way, though I
couldn't say why I should consider his ramblings so intellectually
important or even worthy of attention--he seemed to readily assume
that posture and those around him, including myself, seemed equally
comfortable and willing to allow this mystical hierarchy. Confounded
I was. He'd convinced me of many things in his little cottage very
quickly, and strangely I felt more willing to get sexual with him than
I had been for some time, but he never asked and I never offered,
though not from any fear that he might be impotent; even at his age,
talking to him, there could be no doubt of his virility. We talked
all night, he doesn't sleep. He told me that he'll be dead in under
two weeks, and I can't but believe that I'll see his notice in the
papers this month. Oh I guess not, I'll be back in New York.
May 7 Did something wicked that I'll probably never even tell you
about. It was delicious.
May 11 Back in New York something's stirring I can smell it. Maybe
it's just the river. Went to a butcher shop today. You don't want to
hear this do you. Ok.
May 12 Definitely something going on. I don't know what it is, but
there's something boiling out there. Maybe it's that guy who
gun-downed his Gramps a couple months ago. The stiff was a rich man
who nobody liked--ran over a little girl or something like that years
ago. When people get killed who nobody likes you'd think there'd be
rejoicing instead of bitterness. I don't know, it's probably just
this gawdamn heat. It's only May. If this ain't global warming than
I'm a turnip in a teapot without a spout nor handle.
May 15 OK look I've decided that I don't care who sees this record.
Maybe something from Bath is finally sinking in or what, but I've
decided that if I'm going to write this I'm not going to play like I'm
living in a world of spies. It's my game and I'm going to play like I
don't give a shit who knows what I know. Notice: anyone who
willfully copyrights this record is a slathering pitviper with no
excuses left for living. I'll write about SDS if I want to--this is a
place where I'll stand and be counted.
May 15 Just had this dream about snakes. Guess I shouldn't be so
fascist with my metaphors. Imagine climbing a mountain and right as
you pull yourself up the last ledge a rattlesnake jumps right in your
face. I fell and fell. When they say you die if you hit bottom--it's
bullshit. Holy-smokes the imagination can be terrifying. Guess I'll
get up and wait for sunrise.
May 23 Decided to go out West and see some savages. The Black Hills
are six billion years old. I went down the Thieves Road to see where
the buffalo were slaughtered. Went to Ft. Laramie where treaties were
signed to be broken. Funny, everyone out East thinks the Indians are
gone. Out here they're everywhere, though, I suppose, eminently
ignorable by most. I can't say why, but I'm convinced that someday
these people will pick up where we leave off. Custer's Last Stand,
better Custer's Last Butcherous Blunder, is a type for the rest of
American history. Look at a buffalo face to face and you can be
certain of your measliness.
May 24 Run in with the Goons. I spent the night on the Pineridge
Reservation with some newly made friends and talked the night away.
On the peak of understanding the dawn rose and the Goons kicked the
door down. They seemed as shocked to see me as I was to see them.
They jumped everyone in the room but me, beat them and hauled them
away. They pretended I wasn't even there. I walked toward town until
an old Indian man gave me a ride. I told him what had happened and he
nodded and shook his head and said 'yep' alot. I'm sure he was drunk,
but somehow that was okay with me.
May 27 Spent the last three days trying to get those poor people out
of prison. Damn this state is backward! There's no justice
here--just like in New York. All the time walking around from place
to place I kept wondering why I was trying to save these people from
the police and not rather trying to save their drunken compatriots
that litter the street. Frustration deluxe.
May 29 I finally got to talk to the folks I've been trying to help.
They told me to leave them alone and get the Hell out of South Dakota.
It didn't make me angry. I didn't understand, but in not
understanding understood. "Save these people"--what an ass I've been!
Right now I'm on a plane to Arizona. Seven thousand feet in the air,
hundreds of miles per hour. Here I am.
May 30 Came here looking for more Natives, found Hippies instead--at
least some variety of Hippie-like strangers. Spent the night and
today at a party somewhere up in the mountains. Hell I'm not even
sure I'm still in Arizona. Must be though, these Western states never
end. There was a woman there who I danced and talked with for hours
who had the most amazing drawings on her face and all over her body.
She worshiped the memory of a Chinese-Mexican artist by the name of
Salamon Arando, and elsewhere I've written his life story as told to
me by Arion of Arizona (as I knew her). If it is true that the dark
silhouette images that covered her body where indeed, as she said,
exact replicas of his work, then he was an artist worthy of the word.
Arando had in his early days been a boxer in Mexico City under the
name of Salamon Chon-ce. His parents had emigrated from Shanghai
starving before he was born and later owned a chain of prestigious
grocery stores in the Querido district. Because he'd been a boxer,
she too knew how to box and sparred with me and smacked me
good--that'll teach me. Her grandfather used to tell her stories
about Pancho Turley, a miner who'd gone twenty-eight rounds, hands
wrapped in cloth and strips of leather, with Gentleman Jim Corbett,
two fights before he beat Sullivan and became Champion of the World.
"Pancho fought and mined around here in these very hills for eleven
years and then moved back down to Old Mexico, where, it's said, he had
three wives waiting." I remember these words exactly because I loved
the sound, the resonance of her intoning voice as she spoke these long
rehearsed phrases before me in the moonlight of the mountains.
June 2 Back in New York and feeling still slightly excited from my
last little jog West, though I fear it will wear off soon. Something
strange going on--don't know what it is but I feel like somehow I
should.
June 3 Okay, no more of that. The resurrection of SDS is going
better than I could've ever expected. Surprisingly there are so many
computer heads at the meetings. A new generation that, of course,
breaks the mold. Good for me too, I think I'm getting the hang of
this stuff. You can easily apply idealism to the electronic world if
you want too--not so for the physical world. Now how to make a
computer do pragmatics. Aye there's the rub. This is the problem: I
remember out in Rosebud listening to an old Lakota woman talking about
how she felt at Crow Dog's funeral in 1985. She was saying that in
some way the old people all died when he died. She felt old at the
time, though she's since lived well beyond those years. She said she
felt so happy that he was going back to the People, to be with the
Grandfathers. She said she could feel everybody's thoughts and
couldn't understand the sorrow and fear coming from most
present--except the drummers who could not fear--while she was so
happy to see him lying there all dead and ready to be buried. Now how
can I communicate to you what it was like to experience her
communication of the feelings she felt and she believed others felt so
many years ago? Now make a heuristic to interrogate all these levels
and I'll know what I'm doing. It's not as impossible as it seems, but
it's a mountain, no doubt.
June 4 It is impossible. I'm so glad. I was a fool to think the
world was so small. Never again. Wait, maybe an approximation? No--
June 11 Flew with this guy on his private jet to Nova Scotia to get a
glimpse of an eclipse. No such luck. Can you believe he had the gall
to pick up another woman there--probably because I wouldn't sleep with
him. Oh well, who gives a shit, huh? He gave me a ticket to New
York; I cashed it in for a bus ride to Toronto to talk to some people
I'd met there twenty-five years ago. Draft resisters from the War in
Southeast Asia who never gave a thought to going back--to what?
Anyway, Luhina and Fran were home, but didn't remember me. Invited me
in, we talked for awhile. Luhina finally confessed to recognizing me
from the media but hadn't remembered when I came up here with Jimmy
during the early riot years. He said he knew I was resurrecting SDS
and got pretty defensive about his non-involvement with the things of
the world, et al ad nausea et cetera. A rill drag. Why did I come
here? Nothing's ever popping in Canada. I suppose that means I
should head for Mexico or the Caribbean. Yeah, why not?
June 13 Back in New York for who knows what reason. Was it another
SDS meeting? These people don't even need me anymore--Hell my brain's
too old to keep up with their devious thought processes, but somehow
they always want my word on things and seem grateful for supplying
observations that they find fill in the missing pieces. Is it all
some kind of mother fixation game? I wish I could think so, but it's
not. I don't know--feel like I need to get the Hell out again. Yeah,
but where this time?
June 14 I just remembered something I'd forgotten. I talked to this
funny little man in Nova Scotia as we all stood there squinting at the
clouds. It's like the things he said didn't mean anything at the
time, but were time-released into my bloodstream only this morning.
I'd found this old raincoat on the walk across the rocks to the
looking place; it was kind of beat up, but I liked the color and it
seemed rather convenient, being that it was a blustery, threatening
sky and I'd brought nothing with me. The man asked me for a
cigarette, and without thinking I pulled a pack out of the coat's left
pocket. They seemed okay, some French-Canadian brand, so I gave him
one and smoked one too. He kept saying how I should go down to the
caves by the shore sometime. He kept describing them in an intricate
detail that'd frighten a Robbe-Grillet, that would mute Faust in his
tracks. He seemed able to give life with words to chaotic structures,
to cave-wall relief that would make a Mandelbrot hesitate, that would
stampede a heard of positivist realists up a tree, with such precision
and animation that I hardly noticed when he shifted his speaking to
the ensuing non-eclipse and some esoteric and bitter discussion of
Sun-gods in different phases in different parts of the world. Hmmm,
let's see, there was some meaning there a moment ago that I felt I had
to get down....now where'd it go? Hmmm...still, I don't know why I
know it, but he knew there were cigarettes in the coat, and he knew
I'd found the coat along the way. Perhaps he'd found it too,
earlier--I doubt he'd worn it, it was too feminine--and'd stolen a
cigarette from it earlier. But, no, he seemed to glare at me in a
perverted sort of way, a way that hinted that he knew things about
that coat that spoke perverse histories to which he alone was privy.
The whole time I was with him I didn't feel like I was with a man at
all--more like a machine, some sort of device with limited function;
though this is all fantasy, of course, he was, indeed, real. The way
he broke away from his diatribe when I showed the first disinterested
shift of attention, demonstrated an almost adolescent savantism for
the mechanics of casual conversation between strangers. Nonetheless I
now reflect on his words and am simultaneously enlightened and
confounded, like a day that doesn't dawn on time and seems frozen in
its first suggestion of a ray, a great big bird's-eye hold that drains
you blue in the face. Blue as that raincoat. I lost it on the bus to
Toronto.
June 17 Met some low-lifes down on the badside yesterday. They
explained to me some helpful terminology for understanding the modern
world. The world, the say, 's made up of Gooks, Chooks, and Goons.
Nothing else. "Gooks is us all," says this likely-story face, "you
gook, me gook--rags and cribs don't mean shit. Gooks is us waiting to
be had, dig? Step in line, step right up, your time to kiss some ass
or gets stuck in the ribs with a pointy stick like a dog. Dog's
another way to look at it see. Gooks, dogs, y'know." (I have this
handy new recording toy--I'll be quoting more often, better effect.)
"Chooks, is them shitheads on top what shit on us all. Chooks tell
the Gooks when where to shit piss fuck trot and die. Goons is us
Gooks done sold out to the Chooks with a gun and uniform, or a tie and
an axe-job. Somebody steal yo' pension, or bust your head with a
night-stick, if he got a badge. No badge?--just another Gook..."
Later somebody brought up the point that if there's Gooks and Goons,
then there must be Choons: Chooks what got the bug so bad that they
don't want to just party and rub it in everybody's face, but want to
go out and be a super-Goon, a Choon, a shithead with an attitude and
alot of fancy toys. I said it sounded like a fairytale. They laughed
at me nervous-like. "This is a dangerous place, y'know," one fellow
Gook said. "Dangerous place," I said snorting, "what dangerous
place?" At this point everybody's staring and snarling at each
other--it's all very boring and stupid--when somebody in the back
yells "Yeah, she's just a gawdamn Puke." Somebody jabs him and yells
"Shaddup;" you can hear him grunt as he takes a blow, a couple of
minor scuffles break out. "Sorry," the head hancho says in a macho
sort of way, "we disallowed people saying Pukes long time ago...no
sexist offense intended from anybody but the dingbat who just got
goosed." "Swell," I retorted, and walked away swinging my hips. When
I got to the end of the block I turned and yelled an obscenity in
Arabic before sliding into the rent-a-car and scooting away back
uptown...yeah, back to the wildside of Manhattan, where the days hop
with the wonder of the world rolling by and the nights are like
a...wait just a minute, what is this garbage--I better get a better
chorus before I find my wit chin-deep in one of those new
hydro-hermetic landfills. By the way, I later discovered that Puke is
a derogatory jargonism for a female, especially as reduced to a merely
sexual being, a somewhat undesirable, even disgusting, sexual being at
that, coming from the old punk-rock cliche "My girlfriend/ She makes
me wanna puke!"
June 27 Gawww, did someone slip something in my coffee. Wait, I
don't drink coffee, do I? Gosh I feel terrible.
July 7 Hh. Reading the last few posts to see how I can pick this up
again and I can't believe how quickly reality's paced in this
post-post-post-modern world. The head hancho guy of two entries ago
is Alfredo. I met him in a upscale coffee club about a week after the
Gook and Chook lesson. He was dressed very differently. He comes up
to me and starts shouting in Arabic: "Hey your the woman who called
me a bastard son of a goat the other day! Who the hell do you think
you are?" I was as startled to be confronted with this turn of events
and he must've been when I had sworn at him in the street. Why'd I
pick Arabic there of thirteen-odd idioms at the tip of my tongue? He
thought to seduce me. Instead, in record time, I'd converted him to
the cause. He's now heading the Alfredo Faction of SDS. Named after
him for damn good reason--he's got pull on both sides of the widening
gulf of economic disparity. He's also a natural leader, and's doing
things with some of the more disaffected of our ranks that I believe
haven't been tried since Leary held magic court up at the Mansion, lo
these many years ago. I still remember, Jimmy, I still remember all
those promises you made me when you had breath. OK, no more of that.
I asked Alfredo if Chooks had any connection with 'chuc's, as in
"pachucos" or punks. "Sure," he said, "of course that's where it's
from--them street folks ain't stupid, they know who the shitheads
rilly are: just a bunch of lousy punks! Bunch of lousy Chooks!
Killers!" He's dedicated, and why not?
July 8 Spent the day trying on clothes in my apartment. Lately I
want to dress up when I go out at night. I'm not sure why--it's
almost a morbid thing, but not actually, more sexual. Just maybe,
though, my subconscious is trying to communicate with me--trying to
trip myself up, to reveal myself to myself somehow. Holy smokes this
is getting terrible. I'm going to a party tonight and I'm going to
dress up. I feel ten years younger, a product, I guess, of being ten
years older--but somehow I get this strange sense like I ought to be
annoyed at somebody for it. Weird, I know.
July 9 They are going to try that little murderer. Bet he'll get
life. Strangely, the Computer Heads say there's better than good odds
that when this killing goes to trial sometime next year (or the next
or the next) it'll be an issue of some purport. I can hardly believe
it, but looking at the shape of insanity in this city I'd say anything
is possible, most things are even likely. Surprise has become almost
a necessary artform in NYC this side of the Information Age of boring
uselessness and crummy food. And people wonder why there's guerrilla
warfare in the streets on weekends. It's off to the wide world again
for me, though. At first I was going to run off to Africa or
Southeast Asia, but now I don't feel like I should leave the Western
Hemisphere for awhile. Maybe never again, huh? I guess I'll head
back to Phoenix.
July 13 Never go through Monticello, Utah. My uncle used to tell me
that. Just take my word for it. Never go through Monticello, Utah
unless you want some first-hand research on low-brow, bonehead police
ignorance. It's that little town you see on the movies where
everybody gets pulled over. I guess it's too close to the old uranium
mines or something. But there was that other little town just south
of there where we got burgers. They were so nice.
July 14 The shops in Phoenix turn me off. I'm no longer interested
in their cheap imitation excitement. Coming down the highway from
Flag and Sedona I caught this impression of just ignoring the border
and heading down the grand Chichimeca all the way to the Valley of
Mexico. That's what I'm going to do. But I won't ignore the border.
I'll ignore it in my mind, but get the correct papers anyway. Hmmph,
funny how goods and services cross so freely. I suppose if I were a
consumable instead of a consumer that things would be different.
Welllll, not me.
July 16 Tequila party on the desert. Some delay on the paperwork to
get a car into Mexico. Ignore the border--yeah. Did some deadly
things last night. Hey some of these Indians are as crazy as airline
pilots. You know, there are roads everywhere. I think we found some
lost city and goldmine last night and then lost it again. I've
learned an amazing amount of things to say in various Apache and Yaqui
dialects in one night. Head feels like I slept on a Howitzer in
combat. Don't think I'm going to Mexico. Don't know if my white ass
can stand any more tequila parties.
July 17 Paperwork came through but I'm already making plans to head
back to New York in a day or two. I'm just going to check out a
couple more restaurants and then head back. Sorry to be so boring.
It's the dryness--that's it, my excuse for the day.
July 19 Made a good friend in one Alice Sinsil and have decided to go
with her into Mexico for at least a couple of days. Might as well use
these tourist passes now that I have them. We figure we'll just point
our noses down a south highway and see what happens.
July 21 Wow! So we head down the highway into Mexico. After about
two hours of driving in what seems to be the most vacant forsaken
piece of dirt on the planet we go up a few ridges to a squat plateau
and find ourselves in a little town where another highway comes
through. We decide to live dangerously, so, popping a vioformo each,
we go into this roadside eatery for some local burritos. They looked
dangerous and were delicious. Here we meet some guy. He looks
American and speaks English, but chuckles when we ask him where he's
from. "Around here," he says. We talk for awhile and Alice seems
interested. We say we're looking for adventure and he offers to take
us to some caves that he knows back in the little foothills we've just
come through. I'm instantly drawn by the notion, even though he
indicates that we'll have to make the first forty-foot descent by
rope. Alice obviously thinks this will be a golden opportunity to get
this white Mexican alone somewhere in the dark and I'm amazed by her
flamboyant sexual overtures. She's overdoing it terribly--something
they say happens to some when they cross the border. Her innuendoes
and body contortions get to me too, and though I've no intention to
sleep with either of them, I feel a great sexual tension in the
thought of lowering myself into the earth and, of course, can't help
but think about the seacaves in Nova Scotia which I never got around
to seeing. I instantly want to jump in the car and drive to Nova
Scotia. This is, of course, silly and we proceed to climb into the
cab of an old beatup pickup and head off across the flats toward what
seems to be nowhere at all. It is very exciting in a droll sort of
way. We are squeezed in rather tightly, Alice in the middle, so the
driver can't help but rub her knees a bit as he shifts the gears. She
shakes slightly with each shift and the sensation is transferred to me
from my arm pressed against her arm and right breast. All the
vibrations and bouncing make it quite impossible to not touch each
other in many unforeseen ways. I fight it for awhile and then give in
to the feeling. My tits get hard and stick out. I can see Alice's
are too. Here we are, our tits sticking out, bouncing across the
desert toward a whole in the earth. Our tits are sticking out, our
pussies our dripping, and the bumpy washed-out road means the driver
has to shift alot causing the nerves in Alice's knees to send sparks
all over us. After awhile Alice even starts to whimper and moan. I
stare out the window entranced by the beauty of nothingness bouncing
past me. I'm going to have to stop here and finish this entry
tomorrow. We did eventually make it to a hole in the ground by a
spring and descended into a cavern. It was frightening and
awe-inspiring. It was wonderful.
July 23 Somewhere in the Midwest, Illinois I think, or Kentucky. I
didn't finish the last story, but well...hmmm.... How do I get here
from there? Well I should just patch it up with a couple of images.
Descending down the big rope. Exploring fantastic caverns, huge
rooms, indescribable formations. Way down in a hole in a hole we
found round and phallic stalactites that hummed music when caressed.
I might've been playing that crystalline music, under the earth, for
days, but I'm sure it was only hours. It was a mind trip. After a
while we split up in a big room and explored. I remember seeing the
man who brought us praying in the dark. I remember Alice being goofy,
crazy. I could hear her laughing and moaning somewhere alone. Later
when we went back up it was late night. A flock a fruit bats were
hovering in a cactus patch, drinking nectar from the flowers.
Everybody says there aren't fruit bats on the desert, but everybody's
wrong. We saw them feeding and flying in the silvery brightness of a
gibbous moon. Afterwards I recollected that I'd thought Mr. White
Mexican Caveguide was after sex, Alice sure was...I think. But he
didn't ever touch us except to help us climb or descend. I can't
fathom it. He left us off back where we met. Said he had to get home
for 'The Celebration'. What celebration? Despite the innocent
excitement of it all I can't deny that my impressions of this 'out
west' visit have been distinctly sexual. It's too late and I gotta
get back to New York before this rent-a-car breaks me. How did I get
here? In a rent-a-car. Left Alice in Phoenix and have driven for
hours....
July 27 Back in New York I've decided that this journal is getting
boring. Think I'll inject some fiction into it. Yeah, why not? I
think I'll write a story in this journal when I'm bored. Something
Gothic but nonetheless mundane and philosophical...no, something
stupid. I'll come up with something. Something is definitely brewing
in this city. It's gonna take awhile, but I think this ageist
case--murder, I mean--is gonna take it's toll on this city. Maybe
blow the whole damn thing apart. Who'd've known there were so many
Morituri's Daughters still around? The more radical ones have been
killing old people, and not the run-of-the-mill grandma on Social
Secretly mugged in the park type of hits--rich old people, executed
from cars with no robbing involved. When rich people get slaughtered
and their fat wallets remain intact...well let's just say the Chooks
and the Goons get nervous. Someone's also leaving smashed TVs in
prominent places on a regular basis. It's New York, so, what need I
say? If it hasn't happened here yet, wait around, it will soon.
Sooner or later everything will've happened here and I guess then the
whole damn thing WILL blow apart like a turd slogging down the pipe.
I love this city! At least the poor here have the decency to die away
from the camera--get these third world starvlings off my screen and
into some fanatic's army. What year is it anyway?? Where's my green
jacket? Did I ever mention that I've lived here all my life and I've
still never been to Radio City Music Hall. Radio City, calling Radio
City, this is TV town, urgent reply requested communique from
Phoneville...
July 29 This City is definitely killing my brain. I wish I knew
exactly how--that is, beyond the usual blamers. I'm gonna find out
soon though, and then watch out suckers!
July 31 "Satellite Sally/ How I wish you were mine/ You fly through
the heavens/ Keep the world on time...."
Aug 18 OK, here's the story. The main character is a man in some
small town in Ohio. His name's unimportant; I'll make one up when I
need it. He comes to understand, he believes, that the Spirit World
in all about us and very close. We learn as babies to ignore the
Spirit World in favor of the physical. New Ghosts learn also to
ignore us, though it's easier for us than them. So, one day our
character is walking down a path in a forest when he accidentally
startles a family of ghosts. The momentary but intense reaction
produced by this sudden chance meeting propels our hero into a
sensitivity of spirits, i.e., he becomes a medium in a sense, but not
like the stereotypes would have you think. He discovers eventually
that those in the Spirit World who have not successfully learned to
ignore the Physical spend much effort to try to attract the attention
of the Physical world for some great but unknown end. OK, that's the
setup. I'll try to develop this. Been having headaches and nausea,
but I'm okay. SDS is booming. They're--I mean WE're doing things
with computers and counting heads I'd never've dreamed of a few years
ago. This nasty little case--you know, what was his name?--IS going
to blow a hole in this nasty city and WE're going to be there in
force. Forget about who's right and wrong--everyone is! Human energy
will be released. It needs to be harnessed. This is it, folks!
Sept 1 Read this article today about UFOs. The style was so
matter-o'-fact empiricist that I almost choked. Using some pretty
sophisticated social theories this guy argues what Wilson and Whole
Earth said clear back in the dark ages, that UFOs all came from this
one source, 1947 or something....a picture book or something. But,
you know, the smug tone of this study reveals, I suppose, what was
wrong with the argument in the first place--It just took some jerk
with a PhD to make it stink enough to smell it. Now, I'm not going to
make the same mistake and say I have some kind of an answer, but I
think it's worth considering. People make up bugaboos all the time.
Some catch on, some never get beyond your bedroom closet. Some
creative egghead might've made up some saucer stories out of the
techno-gore of World War II, but it wouldn't have meant anything to
the world if people weren't, in some ways, primed for the idea--the
idea, being, of course, that there are other people--or what have
you--inhabiting other star-systems. Sure some people must've caught
on to that idea a long time ago. Hopis claim they've known about
other worlds forever and used to communicate interstellarly with their
sacred wells (murdered by Peabody Coal). I suppose it probably
occurred to Newton and some of his friends or even Copernicus...no,
not Copernicus, but maybe Galileo, huh? Well, whatever, in 1947 I
suppose most Americans had finally reached Newton's Universe and were
ready for extraterrestrial life. Wow, I wonder what will happen when
most people catch up with Einstein and Heisenberg...hmmm....Let's
dream up a new myth.
Sept 3 OK, so Harry, now being sensitized to the Ghost World (as he
calls it and because Spirit World sounds too bozoid) spends many long
hours staring into the fire in the fireplace at home, the house he was
born in, and stares at the swirling mass of spirits scurrying around
in their non-lives. It's like searching a world with a VR, a huge
world, seemingly never ending. One night almost by accident Harry
stumbles on to a bird's eye view, so to speak, from which for a
fleeting moment he sees a spiritual beacon, like a simple but
piercing, glowing candle in the distance off to the side of his
perception. The sudden impulse to move toward the candle is
unmistakable, and Harry finds himself quickly focusing in on a group
of strange spirits standing in front of some sort of wall that they
have built. Some are moaning, some chanting, some discussing, most
concentrating intensely with their ghost eyes squeezed shut. Several
of the ghosts notice his coming and a shout goes up. Harry is
startled, no ghosts have ever seen or wanted to see him before as he
explored, mentally, their realm. The situation is intense. Ghosts
are buzzing around. Some are running toward Harry, others are trying
to revive the concentraters to join the welcoming party, others are
wringing their hangs and trying to stop those who are trying to wake
the trancers. At once a breeze, a ghost breeze, blows in and freezes
them in their tracks. When the breeze leaves they all go back to what
they were doing before. They have forgotten Harry. But no, not all.
Several ghosts come his way. He can see that one of them is his
father.
Sept 4 What's a bird's-eye view? Says one ghost to another. What's
a bird's-eye view? Harry's father says to him. I don't know, says
Harry, I don't even want to know. The ghost world is reaching out to
you say the chanters, from some he can feel love. Before Harry has
only explored this realm as a VR sightseer, now he sits to talk. How
does he talk to ghosts? I think a bolt of lightning hit him when he
was a child. I think he fell on his head on the way to the ball. I
think he was flooped in a fly-away fie time, a woop in a wanna wanna
hey. What is this? What connection here? Harry? No... Hmmm...
Sept 7 Been down long. This is up. Spent the last two days putting
up fliers for a big meeting. We're organizing our computer resources
and delegating tasks. When the shit hits the ventilation duct we want
to be ready for everything. We're also dividing up along ideological
lines--no, this is good. The observers will concentrate on observing;
the actors on acting; the servers on service, and the shit-slinging
pyro-techies on...well, their special brand of magick. We have at
least seven more months--plenty of time to get the information we'll
need. Projection=Time=Information=Power. What'll we think of next?
'We', yeah, what a great word....
....Harry spent non-days and non-nights glued to the feet of his
newfound mentors. The Dead, he learned--at least those dead that were
unwilling to accept the non-day to non-day mundaneness of death, that
yearned, as it were, for some golden promise spoken into their ears
long ago that said there'd be answers--these dead, he learned, were
always reaching out to the living. And many of these did not
understand what they sought though they responded to the innate
motivation to send a message of some kind or another to the breathing
and bleeding hordes of human flesh. Without understanding they reach
out desperately and vulgarly, haunting the fearful and mesmerizing the
faint of heart among the living. Some, though, as Harry discovered,
had begun, non-eons ago, to organize efforts at developing theories
and practices for communication with life. And, indeed, there was
among many such groups a belief that theory, method and an
understanding of what exactly they sought would coincide at some
juncture. Those ghosts who have remained aware of Harry dump their
summations of knowledge into Harry's head at desperate, exhausting
speeds and then collapse one by one. (Here Harry begins to suspect
that ultimately all existence, even the spiritual, is material--he is
right.) Finally Harry is left alone with his father. The ghost
stands, takes his son by the hand. This is the juncture, says Harry's
ghost-father, I know now why we have worked lo these many non-ages,
and I know now why you are come to us. Harry and his father sit under
the ghost of a dead juniper and discuss the mysteries of being and
becoming.
September 14th Oo I wish I were a beatnik/ Living in the 50s/
Banging on bongodrums/ Oo oo like I'm hepcat in a hip pad/
I got heels to rock this universe/ A motion flow shone through/
The upside down side of the night! Hah!
Harry? He's an ass. Doesn't know his tooter from his hooter. That's
dangerous, my grabby friends. His father, a ghost, yet still a fool.
Couldn't you tell by all the neoplatonic nonsense? Didn't you see
them all wearing those silly flowing robes? And you missed the one's
smoking fat ghost-cigars underneath the veranda?... Harry fell for it
all, and why not? He'd been flying around in the ghost world so long
now that he almost didn't realize that he was becoming a plug zombie,
sans plug. The fire in his hearth had gone out long ago and the itch
of his sweater finally brings Harry back to his wee senses--reduced,
that is, because of emaciation. He doesn't know how long he's been on
the floor. He flounders, wails. At once jumps up and lurches into
the kitchen to eat a peach pie and stare nauseatedly at the cheap
wallpaper and mounted oriental trinkets. The peach pie begins to work
its special brand of magic and instead of throwing up Harry smashes a
porcelain dog from the far east and is elated. It's orientalism gone
in a blinding flash of insight and a desire to hear something break
apart here in the realm of the living, and the mix was perfect, nice
resonance to the ring, but the artistry was non-existent, replaced by
a machine, or worse, those half-human waifs, the robot majority.
Trinket smashing keeps him active for at least seven minutes (his
grandmother would've needed half a day, her mother several seasons)
which was time enough for the peach pie trip to wear off into some gut
wrenching version of digestion. Still half-frenzied, head hurts
Harry, he reels between tenses. Intensely aware of this thing
digestion, this rendering of other beings into the sweat and shit of
life among the living. Not too good, but still sweet in a way he
cannot described and wonders if he should desire, and feels driven to
a slight but secret revelling in this passage, this gasping grasping
life. A bath is in order he decides and heads for the upstairs tub
with a box of salts and a frosty can of reverse-osmosis sparkling
water. While lying in steam he remembers he has a cat and wonders if
she's okay. Who knows? Who knows how many days its been huh? The
thought is the opening to a gut splitting notion of how bad his
predicament might be and he doubles up in pain. The pie has not given
up so easily, it is unsure if, under the rules, it must yield to this
creature, perhaps not much more living than itself. Abdominal revolts
erupt ubiquitously. Unable to lift himself out of the suds Harry lies
there naked and wet groaning and twitching with each cramp, shaking
and sobbing like a baby. He thinks about his mother and cries. He
never saw her in the ghost world. He never even tried.
Sept 17 Just missed another national holiday. Was up in the
Adirondacks, what's left of them. Came home just in time to see it
snow in September up to my ankles. I feel like a lie.
Sept 23 Been there. Yup. Done that. Yup. Been there. Yup. Don't
wanna monkey on my back.
Oct 11 Tomorrow's Columbus Day ("heh heh," as we use to say) or was
it yesterday. I'm gonna turn this whole town upsidedown to find out,
honey, I am. What time is it anyway. It's 10:23. Ooo wee. So,
okay, Harry, like, survives his run-in with the pie and the tub? And,
and he gets to the point eventually that he can speak with some of the
ghost adepts, y'know, like, like his father and the other hipsters,
like, without having to like get all bulemic or whatever, y'know,
cause, ah, like, ah, that was a bad scene, y'know, see? Well anyway
it takes a while but Harry's father, y'know?, he, uh, convinces him,
uh, uh, Harry, that, uh, he has got it figured out and, well, the
bottom line is that he wants to use Harry in an experiment that might
be able to bring the dead back to life, or some kind of life (not
necessarily, like, back here on Earth, which, y'know, would get, well
uh, quite crowded?, y'know?, ifin we start letting all these dead
people come back to life, y'know?) like in space or something, but
he's just gotta have Harry as the guineapig, see. See, Harry's
intuned so he won't go crazy, and he's not, cause he's not going
crazy, at least I don't think he's going crazy, and he's got these
dudes in his head all the time, or well, like, not all the time, but,
y'know.... Anyway, his dad, like, he's a ghost, remember?, wants to
somehow use his, Harry's, pattern, like, his, like, pattern of life,
like, to, uh, y'know (no, I guess you don't, huh? haha), like,
regenerate himself somehow so like he'll be alive again, only this
time it's him doing it for himself and so he can't die again, see?
Immortality. Anyways, things don't go so well as youins might a' been
suspiciousful of, on account of the stuff about them intellectual
ghosts, like, uh, being jackasses and, y'know. So. uh, uh, yeah, but
you'll find about that alright, but, uh, later.
Oct 17 The big day came, and Harry went off to a remote logging camp
in the Adirondacks in order to be in top mental form for the ordeal,
for ordeal it promised to be. Indeed. His father (a ghost) planned
to clone himself anew be minutely focusing of the emanations of life
essence coming from the physical realm and as projected by the intuned
and focused gravity of Harry's existence--an ultimate medium. But a
big breakfast didn't help much.
--Look I'm on to something. This stuff I write--it's not all me. I'm
almost sure of it. Yesterday I walked past a dumpster, and certain
smells wafting my direction from it brought up memories so distinct
yet so shallow, so tangible yet so illusive, that I'm beginning to
believe my mind's being tampered with, like in 1969 when they held me
in that special cell for 17 hours and made it so I could never tell
anyone. Well, I guess it didn't work entirely. My analyst saw to
that. I could tell you all about it now but it's too pornographic for
this book. No, I wasn't raped, not sexually. I guess I was
raped--rather like being vulgarly assaulted by a strutting idiot too
floppy to be very dangerous. See, I've let it seep in again. I'm
supposed to repress these things, I know that somehow.--
All night long the spiritual lightning flashed over the scarred
mountaintop cabin where our hero lay buried in the emeshings of
history, of life and death, generation and evolution, the possibility
of new frontiers without the severance from reason demanded by the
churches and their alchemist minions. --I know this is therapeutic.--
Harry lay there still as Pygmalion's love while all night he found the
stirrings of his father deep within his soul. Great forces of energy
stirred in the ghost world and the physical, and beneath the ambient
thunder the ghost college chanted about DNA and water. As Harry
blinked off into the night sky he smelled the memory of anahydrous
ether and sensed that, Buddha-like, he was to reach the Nirvana of
nothingness. In the morning he felt anticlimactic. Rising to shave
he sensed nothing had happened, and sensed no connection with the
spirit. Instinctively he reached out to touch the ghost world and had
the startling sensation that no-one was home, that they all had gone
into hiding, and he could smell a faint odor that smelled like shame.
All at once prickling sensations running up his neck burst into panic,
as when something under pressure is released in a sudden expansion,
and he fell into the empty tub in fear and confusion. Gently from
some hidden ghost-corner red-ghost-faced Harry's father comes before
him with the bad news. "Yes, Harry. Yes, I'm right in front of our
face cause I'm right in you. I don't know Harry. I don't know if it
ever even would've worked in the first place. If it does, I know I
couldn't do it. But it was easy, eventually, to get inside of you,
and I just couldn't resist. It was a siren call. I didn't mean to
stay, but I stayed too long and now I'm in here for good, Harry, so
you'd better start getting used to it okay, son?" In trying to become
some shallow souls' misguided version of a god, Harry's father,
instead, became the most boring of demons. And so here's to you,
Harry, in your black and white suit and your work-a-day week. Here's
to all the many ex-people who would like to crawl into your head for a
ride, something destined, I'll wager, to keep you cowered in the
remotest corner of your social psyche from now until doomsday. What
do you say, Harry, huh?
What is it?
Oct 22 This would be a day for speaking and writing if it were not a
day for the entrapment of the sanitized. Think of it as a muck
dredging.
Oct 23 For some reason today I keep thinking about the words of a
Hopi man I met on one of my flings out West... what was his name? He
claimed to have lived with the Arawak, though I could never get him to
explain how that could be. Said he learned so much from seeing what
he called "the distance between us since we last parted." I don't
know, I've been to the Arawak and don't remember hearing any of this
weird stuff that this guy--Bill, Bill... Runs Ahead is his name--was
saying. Probably just made it all up. Well, anyway, it's my
nightmare. The one I've been having. It's like I'm slogging through
a sewer with bats and moaning all around and I know something's
lurking in the depths, something hideous. The trip is sometimes
better or worse (last night's--wooo), and though I always manage to
find and fight my way to the exit, I hear this laughter booming behind
me, laughing at the futility of my escape--it knows I'll be back
tomorrow night, or soon enough. The I wake up, like clockwork.
(Lately I don't know if I ever dream anything else--guess I should try
to check on that.) Today I woke up with Bill Runs Ahead's words in my
mind: "Y'konw, if not for grace of the Great Spirit we would all
become demons some day--inevitable. The Aztecs, like do many peoples,
forgot about grace, and so rightly seeing their destiny in demonhood,
deemed that they should seek to become adept at it, better to reign in
Hell than to serve there, better to be the torturers than the
tortured. Poor fools!" He was a devout Christian, though he wore
traditional ceremonial clothes all the time and hated to speak
English. We conversed mainly in Indian Spanish, and I learned some
Hopi from him. Come to think of it, I think he did know a little
Arawak. Could've gotten it out of a book I guess.
Oct 28 Met another life today. Fascinating! Went to a lecture on
SocioRadicalism at the University and began talking to this woman.
She'd run away from home at age 13 to keep from being raped and ended
up as a biker woman for six years. At nineteen she'd tried to be a
model and ended up as a hooker. Found out by accident one day that
she wasn't as dumb as people, including herself, thought. Started
outsmarting the pimps and ended up with some money. Was a pimp too
for awhile. Sold drugs, ran some schemes, eventually escaped it all
with the help of a social worker and ended up with a PhD from
Stanford. She spent seven months in the slam at 22. Fascinating
person, unbelievable. Then there's Stacy who I haven't even mentioned
up to now. I met her, what, six weeks, ago? I think. She's twelve
or thirteen, I think. We've become real pals. She seems so moody but
never is. She's definitely the best SDS recruit we've had in months.
I think. And she's white. I don't know why that should seem so
significant. Guess I just don't meet many white people nowadays. No,
that's not true. But it is in a sense. I know I'm not making sense.
I guess it's that she's young and white and living in New York instead
of Hong Kong or Dusseldorf. Maybe that's why I've sworn off the Old
World. Or maybe that's just another symptom.
Oct 31 Just had to do some Harry today. You can probably guess what
life's been like for him lately. Harry I'm thirsty! Harry, why don't
you get a cat? Harry how could you think such things? Harry you're
life's a wreck! Yup, says Harry, I'm a rilly big mess! And when
Harry's Daddy is preoccupied Harry often thinks of a little silver gun
he has hidden upstairs in the chest. Harry takes a vacation to
Arkansas to try to rid himself of his torment, but finds the torment
strengthened. Daddy's never been to Arkansas before and he loves it
because he always liked to go places. He tries booze and finds his
father enjoys it more than he does and starts to insist on it more and
more often. The persistence of someone in your own head can be
horrendous and so Harry finds himself at first grudgingly and later
forcefully taken over by Papa's ghost to go on one of his "flings."
Harry's getting desperate, but he begins to notice that indeed his
father has grown lecherous. Perhaps it was death, or who knows--he'd
been quite the prude in his life. Harry notices that the porn scenes
in shows distract Daddy instinctively and so he begins to watch more
and more racy flicks which seem to give him some thinking space. On a
whim he seduces a co-worker and at the last minute turns the action
over to his startled but very pleased voyeur father who proceeds head
long into chasms of intense delight leaving Harry breathing room he
hasn't had in seeming ages, breathing room in which he begins to plan
for his future.
Nov 7 Boy am I lost. Wandering around this city. What am I doing?
How come I can't manage to escape? Is it becoming obvious? Guess
I'll come clean. I was born in the Midwest...well, at least I grew up
there. I can even say " on account a' " and sound convincing. For
the last week or so I've been hanging out in coffee houses and diners
again. That's too bad, because, as you know, I hate coffee and most
of what they serve in city diners isn't fit for pig-slop. I know how
to grow pigs on black locust and tomatoes on pee. I'd make one hell
of an organic farmer, but I can't stand to work for big corporations.
Guess I could "flee to Columbia South America" as I always thought I
would someday. Can't seem to get away from picking brains and growing
revolution on shit, spit and sloganeering. Still you'd think I could
get back to Arizona or even Guatemala. Yeh, Guatemala, that's where
I'll go. I mean there's gotta be something more than this, you know?
I mean, these Celtic music dives are giving me the willies. There's
gotta be something I could reach out and grab, something beyond
everything but as much a part of human life as the automobile must've
been in 1863. Hey! Something just took over my mind! Hey, I swear,
and I'm recording it right here. Something just now grabbed my head
and I felt like I was typing. I was typing "--arven blue scandle.
Heaven in a cottlefish...", but when I looked down nothing was there.
Am I crazy? Am I going crazy? No, I don't think so. I seem to be
functioning normally now. Hmmmm....gotta get out of this city, I
guess. But no, this time it is my head. Somewhere in the back of my
mind I can hear Kierkegaard wagging his rotation tongue at me.
Endless noodling! That's it! Joe said the other night he could tell
I'd grown up in the midwest because I like "that endless noodling
music." It somehow makes sense to me now though I don't know if I can
explain. That's why I don't want to travel anymore.
Nov 9 Started to write an entry about orange juice today but
scratched it. Realized I've left Harry in an awful bind. I should be
kind to him and have the poor sonuvabitch blow himself away, but I
won't. Not till he does something for me, hah? What was it that guy
up on Hudson Bay said? Something about if the winter wouldn't freeze
the lake, summer would not let it come. He was telling me about the
monster that walks across the frozen waters of Canada in winter. At
first I thought this was another European (he was French of course)
Nature allegory--you know the crude kind fermented from the authentic
by the Romantics and Gothic Victorians, but now I'm beginning to
believe that he did know a thing or too about the alchemical
psychologies and how they represent the tantalizingly ubiquitous and
illusively fluid hives of meaning that we call consciousness. Hmmm,
I've just realized that this Harry story IS a dream-vision. Of
course, my subconscious knew it all along. Hmmph, but now I've grown
--yawawawn-- tired and I'll write it all tomorrow or the next day.
Harry gets his muffins baked and becomes inventions mother. It's all
a rather painful and gory birth, like most, and the details are hardly
necessary. Still, if we don't get carried away into the false
illusion that the details somehow convey the reality, they do make the
ride more interesting, since, of course, these things have all been
said before. And so, tomorrow, tomorrow I will write it all.
Nov 9 We spend alot of time in our world (not THE world)
systematizing phenomena, demonstrating accuracy of prediction; indeed,
we pride ourselves on inventing predictable circumstances from the raw
components of life, i.e, materials and information. Ontology
recapitulates morphology. We evolve from experiential pupae into
systematizing machines, and we systematize and predict and believe
like butterflies fly and eat shit--it's in our blood. We can see, and
so usually do see it that way, the child develop into the adult by a
series of revelations about the systematic and predictable nature of
existence that become more and more sophisticated through the years
until one has a PhD in Astrophysics or at least can hold a
conversation on a street corner and not sound entirely provincial.
Yet what, indeed, all of these complexities, that we, in our naively
culturally schizophrenic manner, continue to shout out in more complex
and erudite ways, becoming ever more insistent on their
'reality'--what this self-supporting hodgepodge is indeed saying to
the astute observer is that such emphasis, such intricate
protestation, must hide some obvious and basic contradiction, that, of
course, being, the nevertheless singularity of reality. All the later
experiments with systematization seem to drive out all the early ones
in which we learn the darnedness of corporeal existence. Age 3:
You've rolled that ball down the stairs 37 times today and it's
smacked the wall in 37 different places evidenced by 37 slight smudges
which singularly would go unnoticed, or even in twos, but such amount
cannot helped but be noticed and punished. See! You naughty girl,
you've gone and revealed the chaos behind our winks and nudges! Go to
your room while I scrub these 37 marks off with this handy pump spray
and rag. Thirty-seven? Wow? Yes, thirty-seven. I counted them so
the story would tell well at the koffee-klatsch--has a nice ring to
it. No cookies for you, substitute a questing mind for a bowl of rice
and a pair of blinders. C'mon Bess! We're going to town! That's why
history's made to seem unfair--incentive to believe in automatic
adjustment theories, futile protests against one's own face. Take
Harry, for example. How singular. He's possessed by the ghost of his
dear old Dad. So what's a son to do, huh? You remember. Feeds
President Daddy on porno and devises subtle plans. Harry quickly
realizes that he can outwit old Dad in lots of ways. First off he
encodes his ideas in subtle protein patterns in his blood. He can
forget about everything and then review when the time comes again for
plotting. All he needs to recall is the bootstrap knowledge that he's
hatching a plan to peel the old man out his head, and this he needs
not hide. Daddy could guess it if he wanted to and does and has and
hasn't been able to find any evidence of the anticipated attack. At
first Harry's Dad is having too much fun to notice, but soon the lack
of memory trails begin to seem suspicious, and, wretchedly wrenchingly
pulls himself away from the tender sweet thing below his surrogate
body to peek in on his son. He can see him weaving his web of code
and knows he cannot break it. He also knows that by tomorrow Harry
will know about this little espionage, and that he cannot stop Harry
from doing whatever he's doing. He's frightened and in a frenzy pulls
back to the woman at full force, and, having seemed to her to have
dozed for a moment, drives into her with a vigor so intense that all
three persons in this perverse little menage-aux-trois are shocked by
the jolt of it. Daddy's going out in one last intense and
mind-boggling eruption of semen that is, after all, at least half his.
Harry understands the implications and encodes secret rejoicing on his
protein chains.
Nov 13 The big day has arrived once more. Harry hasn't slept eaten
drank or moved more than thirty feet in five days. Ghost of Daddy is
very upset. He, however, has found, to both their surprise, that his
lusts have enchained him. Like a convict on the row he awaits the
familiar fatal hour as Harry assembles his machine from old PCs and
three vacuum cleaners. The plans were altered from a hover-craft 50
cent blue print ad from an old back issue of Boy's Life. Damn,
thought Daddy, them scouts were no good. Shocked by his ever
slackening dialect, Daddy can only caterwaul when the juice is thrown
and Harry filters his mind through the contraption; and as well as
straining out his father's ghost, Harry finds himself an insight he
can hardly believe. A companion. The future promises him a companion
with red hair and big bosoms. Next week he's to meet her at an
official party for which the invitation will arrive in moments. Hands
pressed against his nose, Harry cannot understand the gift, but, now
rid of all cursings, the thought of love begins to massage many sore
spots soon to be made healthy. And so we leave are misbegotten folk
hero wrapped up in a little fetal ball and waiting on the edge of
someone's soap-bubble possibility, a charity, that though he talked
with the dead and knew great signs and wonders, destined to make his
soon to be passed self seem but a collection of tin trinkets. Bye
Harry.
Nov 14 Thought what the hell. I'll climb the Empire State Building.
It's not as high as the others and anyway I suppose they'll knock it
down sometime soon. Nothing sacred these days, not even nasty lumps
of steel and concrete shit. Up flight after flight. Caught the
elevator for seven floors but it was more annoying than the stairs.
Saw a couple having sex somewhere where I'd lost track of the floor
count. They didn't see me. Ten flights from the top I decided to
hell with it and took a twenty flight shortcut down. Ruined a good
pair of shoes. Serves me right for buying good shoes.
Nov 15 Never go to the Hogalum Coffee House on what's-its-face
street. Just take my word for it. I'm beginning to see how intensely
specific geography affects our lives. Being in the right or wrong
place in amazingly significant. Should've learned this from the Hopi
out West--maybe I did. All at once it seems terrible to let other
people and social institutions decide for you where you should be.
All at once our whole damn world seems mean and petty, worthy only of
ignominy. I should go to Guatemala. This world is bad, but there're
plenty of others (smaller ones) on this planet, and I for one am about
ready for a nice cave in a mountain somewhere to hide out in and
conceive a new world, or an old one, just a different one.
Nov 19 Blown away. Couldn't see it coming. Some crazy sonuvabitch
with a fish head on his t-shirt warned me but I wouldn't listen--
actually couldn't because of a passing train and didn't ask him to
repeat himself. Columbia, I can't hardly believe this could be
happening and I could be writing about it in a personal journal,
Columbia has decided to move into some neighborhoods and in a
preemptive strike have killed two supposed drug-dealers. All hell's
breaking loose. I can't believe it. Everything's changed but I'll be
damned if this ain't the same hole from back with Jimmy--It's the same
damned block at least! As you can imagine, it's taken us (SDS-R) by
surprise. I saw a few eggheads crying. Oh well, this is what it's
all about anyway. Little surprises. Whoops batons and gas comin' our
way. Over and out.
Nov 20 Help! Help! Read all about it! Monkey-man arrested for
molesting his wife without a permit! Two-timing scumbags take the
money and run after judge rules in favor of the lawyers! Today,
though, I think I'm gonna get one of them with a big stick!
Nov 21 Holed up in one of the condemned brownhouses. Can't begin to
tell you all that's been happening. Crazy business, this. Glad I
didn't go to Arizona after all. Wait, oh shit, here they come. Bye.
Nov 22 A poster's gone up accusing us of all the usuals, basically
the use of undue force to gain political ends. All the walls and all
the nets, the same, almost a carbon copy of the original--seven months
(not counting years) difference, hmmmmf, maybe we'll be lucky--
basically saying that we shove ourselves down everybody else's throats
with impunity and with big nasty technology so that nobody else can be
heard (ha!). WE threaten the system, WE break any rule we want to...
Well? So what? So what if WE do? I for one don't give a chicken's
back neck. Nick, yeah, they ask if Nick will be our next Lieutenant
Blunderbuss, Administrator in Charge of Punishments for Underclassmen.
And then the requisite call for arms from the morally deficient
plurality (read finance majors) to come bash us. At first unsigned,
now it's come forth is several editions, paper and electronic, with
everyone and their dog (as we'd say in the midwest!) taking credit.
Of course, walla (as they say in LA), the threats of goon
counterattacks have swelled our ranks with doogies and liberals, folks
that hate us but hate the right more. Hhhh! Remember Jeems??
Remember? Suddenly I remember they called us all Pukes back then!
That's true! Still I hate what all this shit might do to my image in
the coffee-house circuit; I've grown such a rapport with these folks,
and I think there might be an out for some of them, though sometimes I
think that it's rilly sex; I mean, I'm too middle-class by nature not
to find those people, well, erotic. Oh well I'm in this for the
duration no matter what.
November 23 When's Thanksgiving? Oh well, today I guess, since I'm
fasting. How many days will it last? Not a political protest.
Something more important that I need to see and this is the way to do
it. I feel great. Wait, no, this is the wrong day and it's giving
back to a whoops three days ago. Today there were 500 people at the
Info Pagodas listening to Nick Fanderville, who most think is a jerk
because he calls us all shitheads. He wants everyone to spread out
and "fuck the place up good if they don't give in." Someone suggests
taking over the library and holding someone male, white and
enfranchised hostage for a while. Nick is male and white, which makes
him stand out like a bald dry roasted lima bean anyway; he nervously
yells: "Well go ahead! That sounds good. Just makes sure you get
the biggest prick you can find if your gonna play games. I don't
wanna see no librarian tortured, man. Grab some real ones. Go up
town to fucking Wall Street if you think your such a sonuvabitch
buddy, but for today we're trashing this place with impunity. Are you
with me?" A roar goes up from the crowd, but I can't tell if it's for
Nick or because the Goons with Dean Whiner in their midst sneak attack
the crowd with mace and billyclubs. There all wearing T-shirts that
say "Go! Go! Go! Go!" I don't know what it means. A "Go!" for each
direction or each point of the cross? or one for each grunt it takes
to get the job done? That's it! That's why we're all going to die
this time! Because we've been reduced to "getting the job done", the
catch phrase of the current administration, what we used to call the
Ronald McDonald Reagan special--french fries with extra ketchup. We
need kids for the future, so, let's say, gang raping civilians gets
the job done. It's a sick metaphor I know, but hey, what year is it
anyway? All at once our ranks swell from out of nowhere and we swarm
from the pagoda pad into the streets and straight into the
neighborhood where they killed the squatters. We rush into condemned
houses screaming, "We claim this dwelling for the freedom of all
peoples!" Why are we saying this? What does it mean? Eventually the
bulk of the crowd finds its way to where there's an ugly fence cutting
across the park, behind which is a big gaping hole where they've begun
the excavation for one of their fucking police safeports, a damn Goon
stronghouse. In a fierce burst of anger we rush the site pushing
aside the few police who're standing ridiculously defiant in front of
us. Some dude with long hair and a beard yells at me "Hey leave that
cop alone." A couple of us grab the cop and throw him at the hippie
who yelled; they smack the pavement together in a painful embrace. We
rip up the fence and push it into the hole. Then we push a few
roadblocks and cars into the whole. And then we push everything in.
The community has turned out in force to help. There's a joyous noise
going up from the participants. Children run by laughing, throwing
ragdolls at each other. Folks dump their old sofas and lamps and lots
and lots of TVs into the pit. Radios, microwave ovens, old analog
recordings, and the garbage from all the dumpsters. I time the
action. Seventeen minutes. The hole is three-quarters full, we hear
the screaming sirens of the big pigs coming at us. Everyone beats a
hasty retreat into doing their thing. The students (and I) run back
to campus and instinctively break off into occupying groups for all
the major buildings and begin making strategies for the next round.
So far communications are superb, thanks to my friends. And all of
this is being recorded back at base, uh, my home, though I'm sure that
you're reading an edited (not too much) version. Before we go to bed
someone produces magic markers, big thick ones, and we draw murals all
over the walls. I think we're in the history department. No, it's
physics or analytic com.
November 24 Some lunatic starts crowing like a rooster at 5:35 AM.
He crows, we all groan and then he screams: "Now I got yall
attention. Look, all the white folks and wannabes gots to go." A
couple of young white girls in a corner next to me start cracking up
with laughter and slobbering. They can't see any white people
anywhere. They can't see me or Boots wherever he is. "What white
people?" one of the girls yells laughing. Someone has the good graces
to hit Mr. Rooster in the head with a shoe. He yells and runs off.
Somebody with a heavy Central Asian accent says: "Don't mind him
folks, he's probably just wet his pants or something, eh?" We all go
back to sleep, including the look outs. We get up about nine and
there's a bunch of very young people hanging out by the pagodas with
painted faces and signs designed to present alternative and
provocative view points. I'm the only one in our building who is even
slightly impressed. A few people suggest that we should throw things
at them but they are quickly shouted down, as most suggestions are.
Somebody announces that he's finally found the secret room, and though
he seems like a kid from some Disney movie, a good selection of
intelligent looking people jump up immediately and follow him back out
the door. Thinking quickly I rush out also. Soon everyone else does
too, which is why I jumped. I was afraid that would happen. Sure
enough, though, our rapid pace brings us quickly into this sort of
inner temple hidden room that's filled with all sorts of objects
d'arte and reams of data disks. But very comfortable. A big desk,
plush carpeting, beautiful food machines which we turn on full blast.
We feast on fruits and nuts of all kinds, and I saw some even eating
baloney sandwiches and chicken, which I think bold in this crowd.
Satiated we then divide into groups to begin the routine tasks. Water
and rags for tear gas. Properly engineered door blocks. And some
begin reading and filtering the many terabytes of data in the
cabinets, feeding the results into the satellite link and base. We're
like fucking ants. I think I understand now what THEY are rilly
afraid of, and it makes me feel very unsure all at once now about the
future. Smells....musty.
November 25 I'm going to skip the twenty-fifth. We fix two broken
computers and use them to send press releases over the nets. We find
much incriminating information in the data stores, which we released
in further press releases. I get bored and sneak off to a city diner
for a sandwich and some coffee. Thinking better of it I leave the
coffee untouched and eat the sandwich on a bustop bench. I get about
half through with the sandwich when some creep shows up and starts
grabbing my legs. I shove the rest of the sandwich in his face and
kick him in the kneecap, then walk home, dress up like my mother and
fall to sleep on the couch. Later I wake up and make arrangements to
take a vacation in the Adirondacks for the next couple of days. On
the radio I hear that Florida Springfield and the Melianite coalition
are on campus. Good, that means they won't be in the Adirondacks. I
then run a police line to get back into campus and our
no-longer-a-secret room. It's relatively easy for me to do this, and
I chalk it up to being a middle-age white woman in a skirt. When I
get back I change in a restroom and fall asleep in a chair in front of
one of the computers while reading the news. I guess I didn't skip
the twenty-fifth, just the details, and something I seem to have
forgotten. Did I write all this for a reason? Is this how it
happened? I feel good.
November 26 I get up early and walk right passed the cops and home.
At 9:55 I catch a train north and spend the time chatting with an old
friend on the portaphone. We talk about the Columbia action. He
smugly asks me when's the last time I read Ghandi or Alfred North
Whitehead. I ask him when's the last time he kicked a cop in the
balls. He says he's never done that. Well, I said, I think Whitehead
would approve. Anyway I'm no-one's fool and know my head is not
entirely my own. We make arrangements to meet soon and I get the
sensation that my work and my paranoias are both rapidly coming to a
head. Somehow the riot I've left behind seems rather petty and I
don't know if I'll return. Perhaps it's some kind of smokescreen, a
performance staged by the Circus Central to throw us off the scent,
that hidden something, can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps I've
freaked out--already off the deep end. But I don't think so...not
yet.
November 27 Spent the night in a cabin, the day hiking up to the top
of a mountain; it's supposed to be sacred. It was good for me. When
I got to the top I climbed the biggest tree. I'm too old for doing
something like that, I think. I stayed up there for a long time
(probably only fifteen minutes or so) and then climb down part way and
dropped the rest of the way. Sitting on a rock examining my scratches
and bruises, I suddenly felt a satori. I wish I had a better word for
it though, it doesn't fit the feeling, but it's as close as I can get.
I reflected over the last six months of my life and had mental
sensations I can't explain. Too deep. Some shade between the cliche
and the esoteric. Let me try: I felt new in a mystical and powerful
way. Something about feeling my lungs work as I breathed in and out.
Feeling the oxygen dissolve into my blood. Something I learned in a
hole in the ground in Northern Mexico (or was it on a rainy rock in
Nova Scotia?) sank deep within me and I came to know things that I
cannot write, some because they cannot be expressed in words, others
because you wouldn't believe me. That only leaves the cliche, so
let's just say I found a way to peel myself up out of the holes within
my bundled soul, and to stand and survey the world. I know somehow
that the only things within myself I cannot control are actual
ignorances that will soon be overcome. This hike. Nobody knew about
it until me when I decided on impulse to do it. Nobody knew about
this trip. That gives me, somehow, some reassurance. I feel like
I've come off some kind of addiction.
After the hike I quickly pack and head back to the city and
Columbia. When I get back the food runs are on. People are getting
pretty hungry as the police have been blockading us for three days.
Allies, though, seem to stream in from everywhere and the cops can't
keep track of everyone. When I get back to command central I find
lots to eat but am not hungry. I consider calling "my friend" again
but can't find a working phone. This has me worried. I'm more bored
than worried, though, and after much searching find a nice empty study
carrel to sleep in. Goodnight.
November 28 The day just seems to drag on. I wish the NYPD would get
off their butts and come bust us. Now I'm sure this is all a
smokescreen. I have this tremendous craving to find secret tunnels
underneath the buildings and crawl around in some giant vents for a
while before giving up. We decide late in the afternoon to have a
formal meeting, but it doesn't go over well. Only about half of the
regulars show. I realize I haven't seen Stacy in over a week. Twenty
minutes of whining and I realize we're going to need some massive
reorganization when this is all through. And I think we are all
through for practical purposes. The noon news didn't even mention us.
Oh well, I think it's time to put this little game behind us anyway.
There're some more wars stirring in Central Asia and in Africa that
probably would be more worthy targets of our attention. I feel like
getting drunk or laid or both. Impossible here, huh? Instead I spend
the night on the roof with a young student discussing the civil wars
of the last decade. At about 3 AM he suddenly and bluntly comes on to
me. I tell him I'm too tired, which is the truth, and curl up in a
ball and fall to sleep right there on the roof.
November 29 I wake up at sunrise all alone. I stretch, stand and
swear to get the hell out of this business, well at least out of this
operation. Then in the distance I hear noises that convince me I've
come to the right conclusion too late. We're being busted in a big
way. I climb over to the side and look down on the quad. The
Tactical Force is all over the campus. I can see them kicking down
barricades and rushing into all the buildings. There are helicopters
flying over head so I duck into the shadow of the portico. From the
helicopters they are broadcasting one very loud message to the world:
"Come out with your hands up! You will not be harmed!" Yeh, I've
heard that one before. Below me confusion reigns. Everywhere I look
I see cops, plainclothes and uniformed, running around gassing and
clubbing students. There's a distinct smell of shit in the air. I
pick up a rock and smack a bluecapped head. Luckily nobody knows
where it came from, still I decide it rilly is time to get the hell
out. I sneak down the back stairs and head across campus. Well I
guess Nick got his way--the place looks pretty trashed. Somehow it
doesn't make me happy. Trying to look like I know what I'm doing I
get all the way to the other side of campus and start to cross a
barricade when someone shout, "Grab her! She's one of them!!" I'm
grabbed by three uniform cops who wrestle me to the ground and
handcuff me. I feign sexual excitement and one of the cops calls me a
"stupid bitch." I look at his face, he must be 19, and call him a
"snot nosed punk." They quickly hustle me off to the paddy wagon,
some Japanese all-terrain vehicle. When I step up in everyone cheers.
We are taken to the 204th precinct for booking. It's pretty
degrading, but I've been through all of this before. The woman who's
supposed to make me strip and then look up my ass and cunt has mercy
on me for some strange reason and tells me just to shut up and keep
moving. Fine with me, I've already been violated enough for one day.
Still, my mind is elsewhere. I hardly even notice where I am. I keep
thinking about those caves in Nova Scotia that I neglected to find. I
keep imagining myself escaping into the sewer. Taking a nap in our
little crowded cell is difficult, but my friends make me comfortable.
I dream about escaping into the sewer. I wake up in time to be
released on my own reconnaissance, another term I've never fully
understood. A couple of the guys give me a ride home, and I invite
them up for a while. They can't believe how incredibly mainstream my
apartment is. Stacy shows up with a woman named Janice who looks like
she's from my generation but just played a little too hard in her day.
She seems vaguely familiar. They all decide to go to a club. I
decline and see them off thinking I'll later go to one of my coffee
houses. Looking out the window I see a man playing a muted trumpet in
the alley. He tells a passer by that he's playing blues because he's
saddened by all the violence. 'No shit,' I think, 'we always leave
ruined lives in our wake,' and start to feel guilty. When is this all
going to end? Probably in April when they bring Constanzi Boy One to
trial for the murder of his grandfather. Tomorrow I'm calling my ex
to finalize our plans. I'm not going to the Pagoda rally tomorrow;
I'm heading off for Arizona instead. I'm not going to help SDS-R sort
it all out; they're better off without me (I insist). Some of my
Adirondack revelation starts to make more sense. I've got to get to
Arizona and ask Armando a few more questions, then it's off to see my
ex. He'll be glad to hear me say I'll sleep with him again--well, at
least at first, until the big surprise....
March 7 Well I guess I'm giving this up. Just got back from
Guatemala. Going to Virginia to finally see my ex again next week.
He's been ecstatic since our little Christmas tryst, just about where
I want him. My mind's a complicated mess I almost got it worked out.
It is coming soon, I just know it. After Virginia maybe--the big
showdown with my subconscious. My head's a wreck, my fingers are
putty. Just can't write anymore. Too much to do anyway between now
and July (when the CB-1 trial, perhaps, will start). I'm probably
going to get busted tonight, but I have a plan to elude that if I can.
It'll need precision timing and the incompetency of the city water and
sewer workers to fall together, but I have high hopes. Sorry, this
record is finished.
Back to July 29, 1992_CityCity_ Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5