Chapter 19: The sun has dropped behind the gun shop. The streetlights, coming on, flicker in cold white. Nearby J street is busier than ever, showing tired wage earners the way to go home. Going west, it becomes a bridge over the river on its way to the Pacific Ocean. Going east, it just keeps on going, a street past work-weary suburbs to desolate stretches beyond, and then a highway, its names changing, its siren-soft shoulders calling to vagabonds throughout the night. The cafe will close soon. Olney Garkle is being resolutely ignored by Helga. She talks quietly with the Odd Chinaman, the only other customer. Perhaps they are related. With a lugubrious sigh, Olney thinks: Instead of a cigarette, I've got a Gutso out there who's gonna cream my ass. Oh, well, better to get thugged in defense of what's not all that far from the truth... He feels sort of peaceful, or maybe he's finally relaxing after all these hours at the Moon Food Cafe, all these years of gnashing life. Is it because those desirous little selves have somehow been neutralized? And the Unc, if not neutralized, then bound, gagged and ready to be thrown overboard? Thinks he: Better watch it. A peculiarity of life is such that opinions and beliefs can suddenly about face and then we're pounding the barricades on behalf of the opposing view, as if it were always the view. Best neither to believe nor opine. Continues: And then there's the Cruzers. Poor Unc. It's all in his mind, 'cept his mind's in my cock and that's one troublesome pecker. No doubt the Earth owes all to the succulence of a Cruzer's flesh, but the Earth and flesh are dense. And the weight is killing me. Unc wins and the whole world'll become a sex object. Imagine that. From somewhere deep inside comes a puffing, tugging, moaning attempt to free the shackles. Pacing now in a clearing of mind, O. thinks: Problem is, whatever you can put your hands on isn't ultimately worth it. After you've got it, boredom and apathy'll be there next. Sex the only exception to the rule, damn it. In the genes to treat every hardon as the first ever. Big problem there (but not big enough 'cording to that Maggie girl, harummph.) No solution. Truth is, all you're gonna take with you at the end is not yr cock but yr mind. Cock'll turn into compost is its noble end. But the mind. All of all of it stored there. Lots of needless data, too, inelegant gotos wasting valuable lifetimes. Put simply, it's like this: once perceived, thus recorded, and move on. The old process, isn't it? The means being so much more vastly important than the end. Because, after all, what is an "end" but a short-term thrill? Usually made possible by any expeditious "means" whatsoever. Bad shit, that. Choice of means, especially the attitude toward, quite possibly the sole standard by which one's life is judged. Hmmm. Judged by whom? Good question, that. More'n likely by each "yours truly," a little bit now and a whole lot betwixt lives. Dispassionate summation then of all that's been, with a basic game plan for improvement in the coming life. Then through Customs at the Aetherport and ... that's where I blew it. Instead of a final, ethical, loving life insuring no more heartbreak of eternal return, got hung up at the newsagent's thumbing through tits and ass mags. Unc was right. And now I've gotta make up for lost "time". Get rid of the phat, is the thing to do. Turn that quick-thickener into greased lightning. By ... by ... Wonders how... Thinks: Must be present. Aware of all inside and out. Such as retaining self while at the same time knowing everything else to be ... inseparable. Ha-ha and good luck, etc. Olney fights the recollection of his trip to India and Nepal not so many years ago, and his aborted attempt to redirect a wasted life. The lamas and their teaching by example had reduced his already soft resolve to divest himself of negative mind to no resolve at all. And their admonition that this life is only a preparation for the next, so get it right had Olney beating his babypudge fists against the wall. For what do the Olneys of this world really want? They want to lie in their cribs and pull on their weewees and feel the warm poo in their nappies and when the warm poo gets cold they want her to take it away and then they want to be cleaned and powdered and cuddled and kissed and allowed to suckle and suckle and suckle some more and when they've had their fill they want to be put back in their cribs for a little snooze and when they awaken she had better be there. That's what all those Olney's want. No! No, we don't! Does Olney protest overmuch? For who fled the gompa and ran down the hill, a weak and whimpering failure? Little Olney Garkle! And who flew straightaway to India to buy the sexual favors of the enslaved? Little Olney Garkle! And who has so stubbornly put those lifetimes-saving teachings out of his mind? Little Olney Garkle! And it's been downhill ever since. For karmic loafers like O., the lamas had twisted the knife forever with their parting shot: It's not certain which will come next, tomorrow or the next life. O.'s clearing, now reduced to a filthy room with rented girl, finds him pacing still: I threw it all away. Best ever chance to be free of the wheel, free of all this suffering I'm so sick of. And yet ... strange bedfellow, suffering, one's best friend in the end. Make that bedfellowette, he leers, looking over at the cot--say, she's kinda pretty--all cowering and breathtakingly desirable there. But: Damn that Unc. He'd have us live in this room, forever lifting her dress, licking her knees, inhaling her thigh-ascending heat, burying our soul twixt her netherlips ... Hey... ...Sound of thick ropes unknotting as the Unc from Within breaks free and the clearing dissolves...Oh, no! "Oh, y-y-yes!" bursts forth the Unc. "Lifting up dresses past knees to fusion's favorite fissure is our destiny. Remember the knees, Olney? You always liked the knees. Think k-n-e-e-s!" "But, Unc, if I give in to you it won't take long until every female in town cringes when she sees me, a drooling maniac in the eyes of even the scuzziest." "We can work on your image. They do it for politicians all the time." "Unhelpful as usual. Sooner or later I'll be facing the uncontrollable urge to commit some basic sociopathic solecism. And without the funds to fend off snooping cops, won't that be a stunning moment. Let's face it, we're too poor to be sex maniacs. If we cultivate lust without the necessary riches to properly tap its essentially artistic nature--not to mention lust's practical needs, such as buying a house at the edge of town, putting up the soundproofing, outfitting the delivery van, etc.--we'll go to jail." "The 'essentially artistic nature' of lust. I like that." "Creep. Use your so-called imagination to imagine the disintegration of mind I'll experience if you win the day. And, of course, the disintegration of just about everything for the victims." "But they won't be victims. They'll enjoy it. And besides, we won't hurt them. After we're through, they can go home." "Now who's being naïve? I want you to know I intend to evolve beyond your base desires." "Spoilsport." "Yes, I'm afraid it's true. You've pushed me over the soft edges too many times; the hard ones are out of the question." "You're final word, is it?" "The last." "Guess the jig's up, then." Unc slowly heads for the fateful stairs. "You don't have to confine me to barracks any more, I'll slip from your life of my own accord." He looks back with quivering lips. "It's been a slice." "Hold on, Unc, don't be rash. I need someone to talk to ... even if you are a bad influence." "Many thanks." "It would help if you'd try to look at things from a different angle." "Sorry, my angle is usually 45 degrees" "Yeah, that is a problem." Olney mulls it over. "Well, look, sex isn't something we have to give up. I'd just like us to be rid of the addiction to it. I'm talking about freedom and you've been aiming for incarceration. I mean the freedom to do what we will without the fear of doing wrong. We're mysterious beings, Unc, much more than slobbering sex maniacs and politicians and free enterprisers. In those limited conditions we want more and more and we're willing to lie and cheat and even kill to build the mountain of shit it takes to satisfy us. Carve off the phat, Unc, and less includes all of it." The Unc squirming here: "So how do you propose to accomplish this ... this freedom?" "Wish I knew. The energy is there. It's the will's the problem. Not only does the planet seem like a prison, but so does the ego. Keeps the will locked up in its bunker, looking through slits of suspicion with beady eyes." "You'll have to admit, old beady eyes never misses a pretty face." "True. But pretty faces aren't threatening, either. No, Unc, it's important to be aware of what's happening directly, instead of having it filtered through Mr. I's censor. Every experience is second hand, thanks to his paranoia. And yet, I'm reluctant to get rid of him." "Don't knock yourself, most people love their built-in buffer. As for 'what's happening', they'd as soon put it in jail." "Exactly. Will the real wretched of Earth please stand up? And there they are, the jailers, the politically correct nay-sayers. At least the oppressed are in touch; at the end they will have learned something simply by being forced to cooperate with one another in the struggle to survive. But the so-called Citizens of the Free World...out of fear they elect the deceased to office, hoping the new prop will shove Time against the wall and order it to stand still. Yet, if anything, Time is speeding up. The changes are coming down faster than ever, to the point where everything is less forever now than it ever was, and the next forty or fifty years will be equal to the entire span of history. We're in the midst of an exponential overload, on the edge of severe blowouts from the quantum jump in information, and the Molochs who're still celebrating the last war, not to mention the fundamentalists who're still celebrating the dark ages, can't handle it. Scared to death because they've always belittled the mind, always impeded life. And we let them, Unc, because we too are afraid of the mysteries, afraid of being alive. It's time to move, or we're going to die screaming. The immortally dead who run this world will see to it unless we do something." "But what are you going to do? What can one man do?" "For openers, I could stop frowning all the time. I could actually smile at people." "Smile at people?" the Unc a tad gibbery here. "But ... but ... they'll just think you're a weirdo and look the other way, or worse, lock you up and then we won't ever get to ... to ... uh ... oh, forget it." "You're right, you old satyr, it does seem hopeless. No one gives a shit. Look at the world: a picturesque slaughterhouse for the power brokers. But even if the brotherhood of man doesn't exist, I can operate as if it does. I can help defuse the insanity. And maybe something as corny as smiling at people is the way to begin. Not with a nauseating happy face, or a psychotic Christian pal-Jesus grin, but a nod, a simple and friendly acknowledgment of someone's existence without the threat of a proselytizing followup. Who knows, the gesture might even be passed along. Better a smile than a frown. When I think of all those long faces I've pulled in public. Mean faces. How do I know some of them haven't provided the 'last straw' and caused someone's death. Suppose I'm walking down the street, infuriated by something or other--" "Hah. When aren't you." "That's just it, never. Then, next thing, I'm turning that fury into a scowl and laying it on the next passerby. It happened just this morning. I know the guy took it personally, but did I care? Well, suppose he was already uptight, and my action was the last straw. Suppose he took out his anger on the next person he saw, someone at the end of his or her rope for whatever reason, and then that person goes home and, who knows, commits suicide. I know, I know, the chance that someone's sidewalk scowl could indirectly cause the death of another is remote and probably just an egocentric notion, but it could happen. Unc, I'm always scowling in public. Instead of potentially condemning people to their death, I could at least show them some sympathy. Just think what life would be like if each one of us stopped sending out negative energy. We'd be living in paradise." "I dunno, boy, sounds goopy to me. I mean, what you say has merit, but could you pull it off without making me and everyone else puke from embarrassment?" "We could work together. Compassion without overamping should see us through everything." "B-but the quest for quim?" "Look at it this way," O. hoping valiantly to forestall the coup against any sane future, "now we have to lurk in a grey fog to coax the highest good to undress. By throwing off the phat, the highest good will come to us--without our even asking--and in the clear light of day." "Even the Cruzers?" "The Goddess herself, Unc." "Well, one thing is sure, we're not getting anywhere the way you've been operating." "Then it's go?" "Yeah, but where are we going?" "Out of this cafe and into a creative life." "Creative?" the Unc exhibiting mild panic here. "Creative at what?" O., suddenly remembering why he is alive: "Gonna write the book." "Ha-ha," says the Unc, mightily relieved, "you've been gonna start that thing for ever." Almost happily, he fakes a minor taunt: "What makes you think you can do it now, chumpso?" "Because there's no choice. We're at the end of every line but that one, Unc. I don't know how, but we'll find the money to set up in some poverty-stricken hovel, maybe here, maybe in Canada, maybe even in Europe ... a one-way ticket to that goat shed. And when we do, I'll put it all together, including everything we've ever done or talked about." "Yikes! You mean we have to go through this all over again?" "Over and over, I suppose, until we finally get it." "Aw, what the hell," the Unc says, throwing his hands to the high skies of Olney's mind, "I give up." §§§ Chapter 20: Where to, bub? |