Part Five--Epilogue: "The Voice of the Sand"

--All is smooth. Retro one. Very smooth.
--Retrorocket number one has fired.
--Learning how to think and participate. Message.
--Money meant real estate, Mercedez automobiles, and fine clothes
which they wore with leg-irons to the Federal Court House.
--Oh golly golly golly golly golly golly golly golly. Work sake
mutha'. Golly OH OH OHOH OH! Ich bin werkzeugmacher! A parliament
of budgies.
--Twelve inches long, nine inches wide and was four and half inches
thick.
--All the right wing nationalistic slogans and with...along with other
manners of intimidation and manipulation as it is, as it were, in
Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, it's not...
--What would you like for Xmas John?
--..uh--
--A new Ferari?
--Uh, yeah!
--Later, much later, very late the troops wait to cross the channel in
the dead of the winter's night listening to goochi-goochi music on the
wireless, the headless we call 'em. Do you, do you suspect, doctor,
that when we die we give off some aura or transmit some sort of
message to others?
--Uh...that's a possibility, uh, it's hard to know exactly what
happens, but uh... Whereof we are glad, the music department, I
appreciate their service rendered. One winter Charlie went skiing and
broke his leg in three places. He was hospitalized, in traction and
worried to death. Message.
--Brett went home to change his underwear. Hoh! That'll be the day.
--Learn from us very much. Look, but, turning around and the sun is
rilly bright. Manual handle is out. The sky is very very black.
--Well you don't know me, but I know you. Hello Mr. Snuffalupagus!
Here come the planes. Surprise! Bean time. To be in jeopardy.
--Why can't we wait for this to pass. Why does the head hurt, ooh so
alone. I'm a turtle after all.
--That's good. I've been through this, when it starts to hurt you're
on your way. Now try to change it all.
--What?
--Lean it one way or the other. Juggle the words, transpose the
jingles. Speed it up, slow it down. Slice it into the quiet bare
existence we use to live on the pass floor.
--I'm a hip! I'm a hip! Hop! Hop! Is everybody happy??
--He's had it.
--No, he's got it, dude. Hear that beat!
--No, just the rain. I'm hungry, anybody got any bread? Or something
to drink? Some sodi? Come on! Don't deny me.
--Here friend. Thirst is good. You're coming around. Soon you'll be
ok. Here, give those others a few minutes, now. Don't talk to them.
You'll only get your own head mixed in it again.
--I love my girl, I love my head.
--See, here. Get away.
--That's right, come this way. Here take this. That's better.
You've been through a head trap. Are you ok?
--Yes, friend. Yes, I'm fine. Our companions?
--They'll be alright.
--...a leadership that's, uh, somewhat isolated from the currents of
world affairs.
--These are but a few of the medical conditions that people are
susceptible to. Message.
--In effect you are mentally conditioning the prospect to say, "Tell
me more!" And that's exactly what you want at this juncture.
--See, they're still under the floor-boards. It won't do to try to
dig them out with your mind. It's like mental cement, ok? Don't
worry. I know they seem bad, but they'll be alright. Believe me.
--Okay, friend. You're right. You know these places better than we
temple sitters do. Till these past two days we'd never left the
Island but for Festival.
--Well these are dangerous places!
--Don't tell me these thing, brother! I know them now well! Look at
my companions!
--We shouldn't meet in places like this. Please. I beg of you. Now
give me everything. So bleak. So much shell over what? Eh? Like I
feel?
--A true horror, friend. But there is no danger we cannot overcome.
We are experts of our environment. Every well has its own despair,
and we've catalogued them all.
--A vast lonely forbidding type of existence or expanse of nothing.
--Oh migoodness. I never. I wanted to wait. I guess if you say so.
Oh it hurts a little.
--Now open the professional executive proposal to the section headed
monthly income benefit for total disability. Same old me. Opinion!
Shit!
--Can we move away a little. It's giving me chills.
--Yes. There you go. Yes, move away to the fire. Warm yourself.
I'll care for these your friends. I know what to say to them.
--Newspapers. Tragedies. Me. No idea made a face. Stupid fucking
habits. Old opinion. Same Shit Different Day.
--Come away from there. Here come away.
--What? What? Is this an announcement? Is it spread 'em Willy?
--I don't know why this happened I don't know...But they're saying,
that's right, they're saying they'd rather die--go home, deja mi paiz!
El pueblo han oido. Vamos a ganar, como ya lo hizo Vietnam. Como ya
lo hizo Nicaragu--
--Take this.
--What? What this mean? Brute land? Announced and human?? My
flesh, I--
--It is a stone.
--Would you offer me a serpent?
--Hold on to it. Here is a branch. Bang-bang on the head!
--Yeh! Bang-bang! On de head! Wait? Who is this? Where is this
ocean?
--...el Tirano! Y su Guardia Nacional! Se mete--
--Hey! What's wrong with my brother! Hey brother!
--Now down down the Dulce Vita has no time. All heroes sold. Find a
way to live without your parents. Take care of the children.
--Leave him! Here, by the fire.
--You guys are crazy!
--No, no! Brother! Come over here to me to the fire!
--Brother! Yes! I will! I was in doubt--
--No brother! We will be well. Leave all to the hands of our friend
here. He assures me that even our last brother shall be whole, though
I don't doubt but he will be a hard face to run down. Here now. You
come over to me. You are not well yet. Neither of us are.
--Ok, brother. I am coming to you.
--Gonna find a way! If it's being got and it's getting, and ifin he
ain't gettin' it the way it's gettin then it's gonna be got one way or
another...
--Here, hold--
--NO!! I will not!!
--You will not?
--I will not. After my seven years on the road I mourned my youth,
spread like thin jam of the land, the tierra, of Latin America. Would
you like to be held responsible for what your government does? I
mean, who runs this country? The people? Ve are afwaid of what ze
United States might try to do to ozzer countries. We made a big
mistake.
--Come, my friend. Hold this branch!
--NO no no I will not! She replied. Put that thing away this minute.
--Hmm..
--I know what you're trying to do, my friend. See, you're eyes light
up when you hear me call you that.
--So will you take the branch.
--No.
--Oh. I see.
--No no no you do not see! But you will. I'm one you haven't heard
of yet. I won't come back. I'll never go stand by that fire with the
others. But you'll see. I'll take that branch. Here. See? No
change. And I propose we dance, and head out for our camp which lies
miles north of here. If I can know that, you cannot deny me the
insanity I choose to retain. I'll not inflict you with it if you'll
tell the my Brothers that I am...well, relatively okay.
--Agreed then. Only time will tell. Yes, let's go to the camp. And
you're right. I've not seen your like. This reaction--very strange
indeed!
--Ah yes! And in reflection as well! Let's be off. Brothers come
now, brothers, northward!
--So are you well too then?
--As fit as I'll ever be.
--Is this truth then, friend. He looks a bit pekid, does he not?
--Well, he is a Priest. Little good that'll do us here where such
dangers lurk.
--Friends! Have I not consented to be your guide! Yes! And I say we
follow our dear friend and brother here holding this branch. I
propose he should lead us onward with it.
--And so I shall! Ho! My brothers! Ho!
--Alright.
--Okay.
--Fine with me...Fine with you if I bring up the rear?
--But of course! Now! Through the weeds!
--And here it is! In this Brook! I shall eat this stone and be off!
--He's not well yet brother!
--I shall eat this silicon wafer and know all.
--Leave him.
--But--
--Please, leave him lead. Please! Even I'm now afraid. We must run.
--No no! We will walk and I will lead you with this branch into the
night. By the morrow we shall be whole and by moon's end shall find
our Grandmother's land...it is a Cave!

Silently sitting at night the crazy one learns all from his swallowed
stone. The night it all fell. Laura laughing and escaping, gathering
acolytes to lead the march into the Catskills and then on to the
Adirondacks. He thinks he's dreaming but he's still babbling and days
are passing walking. His brothers are afraid but when they are
obedient to this directions all is well. A fortnight of insanity
ending at the foot of the Mountain. Can we skip this part? Yes?
They're in their Mountain Home now. Laura, ancient, meets them at the
entrance to the cave. Inside Clyde and Stacy are calculating the
movements of galaxies and quasars. Their's is an anthrophysics that
can dance only in dark caves or on starry nights. There is a bustling
community here that knows nothing of its past. The future has brought
a repeal to all the nonsense and they live here in idle wonder at the
great mystery of the lives they lead. Our four wanderers, our three
rubble priests and their guide, are the last edition, necessary
elements in an untranslatable journey of love and self-knowledge. The
crazy one and Laura descend to the bowels of the mountain to exchange
fluids and information. The others eat dog meat in the longhouses and
decide to stay forever, let the Sea take care of City's rubble. Let
the Earth take care of the Sky and Water. Let the living take care of
the dead, and let the dead find their own light. There are three
young female acolytes as brides for the three other wanderers. One of
them is myself and as we sit on the tops of the mountains alone
watching old paper and plastic fly across the hillsides we become
those scraps and then hitching a ride on a brisky gust go flying off
to join scattered pieces of old news dancing through the craggy
summits and becoming a flight of birds head north.

Clyde and Stacy stop and stare at each other. Their calculations are
correct. The Ice Age is indeed coming back and soon the Sun and the
Moon will disappear from the sky again, perhaps never to be reborn in
the minds of human beings, perhaps to return in ten thousand years.
They hold each other's hands and bask in lover's beamings like the
youngsters they haven't been in many years. They can't tell you how
this Icing will make the world Holy again, why these frozen times make
life a paradise, how time stretches out from the Meridian through the
soupy sinfulness of equatorial warmth to the cold awareness of glacial
blessing. See? It is easier done than said. Easier to move thirty
billion tons of Ice on top of our heads. They hold hands and whisper
Adam and Eve vows to each other and the walls around them. They dream
of children and what they'll teach them while the clock they've
invented ticks off the moments it has chosen to keep, turning heads in
dances inward, outward, forward and backward in time connecting
protein links and children with their parents with their children.

Back on the Island the crumbling blocks return sand to the beaches and
in the Sand is a Voice of Understanding. With a virtual particle
pulse of lost and stored memory it understands, and nothing else need
be known but the Sun and the Sea.



Back to January 28, 1993

_CityCity_ Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5