One eventless evening, we 7 bridged the raging flood, rode the current tidal wave of foolishness to the trendy Isobar, where we bribed Nasty Norman and Rotten Harold to let us in. Pressure was on to find leaning room at the rail where the race between the back lashing counter cultures had begun. It was a deep shallow crowd, hunting for sex, or drugs, or some other extra fix buzz. There were alliances, no beta dog defiances, and filthy amounts of money flowing like diseased seaman. Accomplishing chemical transferences to the 4th dementia, we threw away our implanted social censors and self respect and dumped ourselves into the pop-pop, fizz-fizz experience. Stuffed cornstalk doll stock yuppies, having just returned from terrorist training camps, joked with bloody bankers about collateral damage and discussed their shares of the world’s collective future and investments in tazer technologies, vaulted at Fort Polio. An old man, probably in his late 30’s, bumped into me, spilling his clear alcoholic drink on my shoulder, he grinned and slurred, “did you know that Jimi Hendrix is the Albert Einstein of Rock n’ Roll?”
“What a people farm,” I thought.
A converted dance floor provided an office space alter for hucksters to barter and sell weapons, flags, and an international line of sports clothing with logos of angry beasts or murderous humans embossed. As an incentive to individuals to voluntarily surrender their free wills, plastic pumps filled credit card lines with speculations. It was a feeding frenzy by the group identity. A sign overhead read…
Submission = Reward
A large, grandmotherly, toothless woman, wiggled through the masses trailing sweet powder smell and handing out white bumper stickers with red lettering that said…
Shun Them or Shoot Them
One companion, rose to the moment, prostated himself in a short cut to self-realization, and wandered off looking for salvation in the form of a hand towel. Nervous Ned followed behind, stuttering, stammering, and stumbling over peoples’ feet.
Then we were 5.
A professor professed alongside on the subject of hip-no-talking.
He explained:
“A generic, prepared, political speech, memorized or read, but never spontaneously delivered from the heart, and spoken in such a rhythm and tone as to mesmerize, and in so doing, short circuit any listeners brain to a degree that it goes unnoticed that the orator has spoken in generalities that everyone would agree with and has offered virtually no specifics or insight into the problems he or she is addressing. This ritual is usually followed by wild applause, the sound of which slowly wakes the audience, returning them to their usual, unenlightened, realities.”
The scholar was cussed at, condemned, and spat upon.
“Hey,” spoke up my friend drunken Duane, loudly, and laughingly, in an attempt to lighten things up, “this is a no condom nation.”
Rushing in from the perimeter darkness, broad shouldered mind police snatched him up and delivered him down to the brain laundry where he could be cleansed and tumbled dry to a crisp social unconsciousness.
We then numbered 4, and in need of fresh air, filtered through the, legendary in their own minds, Greek Council, or Geek Council, and into a rainy ally. A bouncer pursued us in anger; upset we had left of our own accord. I slammed the steel door in his face, causing a time warp ripple, and the large building we had just exited was instantaneously converted into what could best be described as a black, metal, seamless, trunk.
Raindrops ran down my brow, I turned to gather in my friends’ reactions. In their place stood the 3 wise men of Biblical fame; they were pointing towards the sky to a large white star. It was painted on the side of a helicopter passing by.
“It must be Christmas,” one of them proclaimed.
A chill came to the air as large snowflakes began floating and twirling round beneath the street lights’ glow. Heading to the parking garage, we stopped in a small park where the navigator, sextant held high, plotted our course, as a Madonna rehearsed with a sextet in a sex tent as she jizzed and jazzed with the newly unwrapped erector sets.
In 3 chrome Cadillacs we drove, through the stump filled junk-mail forest with orange fern carpeting, past the bus stop, bust line, drug pop, prostitute, mud puddles.
Detour; a large, fluorescent orange sign, black arrow pointing to the ground; we enlisted the services of a burley, bearded biker in a “borrowed” Barracuda to be our guide through no-man’s land. At a halfway roadhouse, necessary connections were made. It was a palatial residence, sporting all the newest compliances. A blouse-less woman bragged about her collection of compact discs and took credit for being the backbone of the business, a true athlete; she had done countless laps a day for years. Mr. Portland slumped stiffly in his chair, poorly poured, not laid, gone to his resting place in blue gravity. Outside the small window, up high, the war of the rabid children’s hand puppets bled volumes.
It was getting late, there was just enough time to stop at an open-till-midnight department store, buy some gifts, and hurry over to the nativity scene. Vehicle access ended at the police barricades. From there, one of the wise men rented an old shopping cart, recycled, everyday, American river garbage to transport his chosen present. General Chaos and Major Disaster, from a racked collection of antique brass, with new diplomas in diplomacy, fell upon their knees to oil the squeaking, sticking, castors because the sound was annoying the Big Bird of prey perched upon the handle, talons exposed.
A jagged white line flashed down from the sky, illuminating everything; “CRACK!” An old man’s head, grizzly faced and hollow eyed stretched out from a dirty cardboard box like a turtle… “That’s God taking a picture,” he said.
“Oh Christ,” said one of the wise men, “the savior must be born.” We ran the last four blocks.
…and behold, there, beneath a gigantic, floating, masonry pyramid, all-seeing eye on top, insuring 360 degrees of surveillance, was a glow, perchance a glimmer of hope.
De Press and perpetual updating media hounds, sniffed and poked about the farmyard, filling the place with the stench of news casting show business. The rudely babbling, slick, lying entourage parted before us like the great matador did the Red Sea. My 3 escorts advanced slowly, a moving wedge, me following in their wake. Clipping open a purple velvet rope, the matre’d escorted us inside. There, lying in a manger, was the baby Jesus. He was adorned in a red hoody with white fur trim, blue eyes twinkling, his fluffy full beard was flaxen. Although heavy, he was a jolly child.
Black skinned and tall with pointed goat’s beard, the first wise man approached, in his arms, a new hard-shell briefcase full of stock options. Not too personal a gift, but tastefully conservative. The baby Santa cooed like a flock of government pigeons selling out the streets, though totally unaware of the gift’s potential to own other peoples’ futures.
Redheaded, clad in a brown tweed suit, and sporting a Union Jack T-shirt, the second wise man presented a freshly inked title to a barge containing 666 gold bars, long sunken in the Nile, by the Third Reich.
Joseph nodded with an approving smile and handed both bundles of paperwork back to a member of his private militia, who in turn, slid the parcels under the Christmas tree, atop which was a cardboard cut-out of the Star of David.
Wise man number 3 was Asian, short, dressed in a shiny red silk outfit with yellow tie upon which a hand painted dragon slithered. Holiday lights reflected off his opaque dark glasses. Realizing that children needed some actual hands on toys to develop properly, he gave the infant Pandora’s Box, with a stipulation being, the recipient would be the first to open said box, once physical development and curiosity allowed.
Then it was my turn…stepping forward, I humbly offered up my gift, an illustrated children’s book by Dr. Seuss, The Butter Battle Book.
“Oh good Lord!” Mary barked in anger. She snatched the issue from my hands and flung the copy like a Frisbee out through a flap in the back of the stealth material shelter. “That’s way over his head.”
Ashamed, head bowed, and feeling obligated to contribute something of value I retreated, saying, “I’ll feed the animals before I go. All eyes turned away from the one stained “Persona Non Grata”. I fed and watered the reindeer before leaving. Social inadequacies haunted my soul as I made my way amongst the broken props in the back lot. I knew I could never stop traveling until I had lost all my baggage. I passed a couple; the woman was beating the man about the head with a rolled up newspaper and screaming, “I liked you better when you were a puppy!”
“I’m sorry dear,” he whimpered.
Waking in the morning, curled up on the ground in a bed of freeze-dried leaves, covered with powdery snow, I stood and peered into the morning sky. What was I looking at? I was confused. Was it an enormous flock of birds in some bizarre ritual? They came closer, no; it was leaflets, thousands of them, fluttering chaotically downward from the sky. The message, “You are free.”
I wondered if that meant I didn’t have to be paid for?
Suddenly it was spring.
Moving along the avenues of broken, locked out families, through the crowded streets of thrown away children, everywhere, people genuflected and trembled in quiet fear. Loud speakers blared, “Glory, Glory, Glory!” and informed us that financial regulators were readjusting the value of our time, our property, our money, and our identities.
For the love of the holy Profit, everyone was to work harder and longer in order to make things cheaper and to become possessed by more personal inventory, even if a lot of it is just new plastic junk. We owed it to the economy.
A swarm of humans, in hopes of forming an original thought, congregated, in prayer, at the cathedral intersection ahead. Preaching atop an upside down garbage can, former contents in the gutter, a magician dazzled, his right hand held high, holding everyone’s attention, while his hidden left hand did dirty deeds, unseen, down below. Pick pocketing frocked brothers did the masses. Blaring bugles and pounding drums marched up the boulevard, preceded by countless waving banners and flags, each different, each representing societies of inclusion and so of exclusion. Junkyard war floats, in a bumper-to-bumper chain, carried throngs of riders loudly chanting…
“Money is God”
“Oil is the Son”
“Plastic is the Holy Ghost”
Spectators joined in, roaring in repetition, enthusiastically advancing the falsely portrayed, Victory Day Parade.
Trophied remains of dead enemies, clad in city-brick camouflage, were Velcro-ed to adjoining walls and defaced with graffiti. Some had been disemboweled and stuffed with colorful confetti.
Ceremonial shots rang out in the city square. Speaking from the courthouse steps, manicured politicians filled the public address system airwaves.
“Oh, brothers and sisters, who owns the rights to violence?!”
“We do, We do, We do!” they screamed in response, and reaching a fevered pitch, they turned upon each other in a blind frenzy and wicked hand-to-hand combat ensued.
Bolting in fear, I sprinted away, dodging would be assailants, knocking down others, and frantically escaping to the surrounding wooded hills. At last, the quiet countryside caressed me. Beneath a communications tower, I rested, looking back, still trying to restore an even breath.
Was that a drop of rain I felt, out of a clear sky? No, it’s red, dripping on the back of my hand, and again, it’s blood. Stepping back, I looked upwards to see a freshly crucified Christ, mumbling inaudibly. Scrambling aloft in an attempt to free him from his fate, I was greeted with contempt.
“How did you get in this play? Don’t you know how the story goes? Nothing is allowed to change, ever!”
“Forgive me,” I responded, “for I know not what I do.”
I hurried to the ground and departed.
A group of prison guards passed me as I left, one carried a spear gun. Obviously in a hurry to catch the rest of the show, they paid me little mind.
A deep need to exorcise my demons bid me to walk on, though there was no place I wanted to be. I pondered.
Many miles downstream was Babylon, a place, where as a child, I had been happy, fishing with my father. For there, I embarked. The glorious gates of the great city were no more, streets were filled with smoldering rubble, crows cawed on carrion, the carefully crafted inheritance of mankind lay wasted. Mother nature needed to be raped again, workers to be worked again, forests to be felled, more earth mined, and old overlords to make new fortunes.
With no place to gravitate, or meditate, or hibernate, I fell upon my knees and begged God to intervene.
An alien voice spoke to me from inside my own mind. “Why do you folks ignore me until the shit has hit the fan? Humanity has created me in it’s own image and reduced me to a figurehead. On your currency, it says In God We Trust, but it is in money you believe. Capitalism is a pyramid scam, devouring and converting everything to the bottom line, and like fire, it is an unreasoning, unquenchable entity unto itself, it’s fingers reaching into every crevice of reality and destroying it all.”
“I may have created you spiritually retarded batch of primates, but you are the ones who invented the devil, you manufactured evil, not me!”
“There must be another way,” I pleaded.
“You’re as bad as my son, hanging out with philosophers, trying to reason out a method that can be universally embraced so that progress could be made on some unified altruistic level. Hey, it ain’t gonna happen, I know, I’m God.”
“If we turned our deception to Truth, our competition to cooperation, our fear of others to concern for others, what then?”
“Listen kid, 3 days from now is Easter, children are going to be scurrying around looking for chocolate eggs in some places, in others they’ll be picking through garbage cans looking for breakfast. The Holy Ghost is going to roll away a massive stone from in front of His tomb and accept a job offer as a strong man in a traveling circus. You, you’ll be out here ranting and raving all alone.”
“Something, please tell me something to give me some hope, a direction.”
“Move to Alaska, stay away from people, I’ll talk to some of my Hindu friends, maybe we can get you reincarnated as a wolverine, nobody will fuck with you and you’ll get a lot of respect from the local Indians.”
“Sorry kid, gotta go, have a call on line 2.”
Sobbing, I closed my eyes to blott away the tears, and on the other side of that blink, I was standing barefoot and alone on a pristine beach. The wind had sculpted rippled patterns in the beige sand. There were no footprints anywhere and my feet felt cool. Peaceful waves sounded as seabirds sailed the tides of the fresh ocean air.
I felt no pain in my heart or anger in my soul, and I decided to carry that gift with me into the future of my inevitable next first step.
Joseph N. Kirchner
1/6/02
