Many times, the insane gets a kick in the pants from the inane. To wit:
Perhaps I realized the futility of using Microsoft Office to avoid the office, but I didn't care. Bill Gates and an army of Irony were no match for me, I would use this drab office product, and use it well. I would become the writer that I had dreamed I would be. I would no longer sit back uninspired as the long nights of worry about the future, the past, generally all periods not present unfurled in my mind, like the smoke vapors of some ancient Indian ritual, worshiping ancestors out of fear for tomorrow's harvest of crops, or the threat of puma or Souix.
Here I am god. (oh how a comma can change a sentence-I think the ol lady was wrong when she said no to our friend the comma.) I am here to write things not yet thought and never told. Like some great mythic traveling whorehouse I will find satisfaction, and if Tarrintino was right, it will be bloody.
So what of it? What do you think of my bold plan? And what would you, dear reader, like to do with your life, anyway? Are you already doing it? Are you where you want to be? Are you as utterly satisfied as some deified Indian cow, chewing the cud of infinite contemplation, making “all” right in the world sheerly by the fearless and desire-less will of your mind?
I think not. (whew thank god thats over)
Indirectly thats why I found myself in jail. I had been driving naked in my beat up Z28, with its Heart of Dixie tag and 155 mph speedometer, I had been driving naked at 130 mph, which was about as fast as I could push the old beast on level ground. I called her Trixie, named after a cat I had in my youth. Trixie was a good cat, as cats go. My mom ran over her with our Suburban one day after school. Saddest damn thing that ever happened to an animal. Killed by a soccer mom. I named the beast in her honor, but the cop didn't care about that, he cared only for my nudity and extreme speed. Which is why I found myself detained, for the time being, from my journey west.
The hicks in the hick town eventually had to let me go. They could find no good reasons to hold me for long. -Dire warnings to all bale jumpers and general non appearers in court- I wasn't carrying any drugs and I seemed to be in my right mind, nudity and velocity notwithstanding for long.
So I went. They gave me good sound down home low country advice to “slow the fuck down” and “get the fuck out of their district. I knew I could count on them to vote conservatively and I was certainly happy to oblige them in the second request, the first, never.
I wasn't even out of the parking lot of that po-dunk, doughnut bubble gum pit before I hit seventy. What would they know of it, with their dulled senses? What could they do but stare in awe?
Besides, what man, freshly caught, tagged and released like a fish in some salmon salvation program ongoing in Alaska, would go tear assing at anything over sixty through the cops very den, their thick and fatty layer of morality, with the very fabric of space and time forbidding it? Fuck the bears and the pollution, I was gone in the acrid dust of tire smoke and a hail of gravel. Kant would be proud. Thourou had a wicked grin on within his grave. I was more beast than man, one with Trixie.
All philosophy aside, I was off. Like Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, or James Dean I was in search of the great and mythic west. Whether it be a side of my soul, a side of the planet, or a simple aside, not to be confused with a soliloquy, gone. Just gone.
I managed to avoid five traffic tickets as I continued west; for all my speed I only got four. I must have been wearing cloths since there was no further commentary on my nudity but I couldn't be sure. Maybe I was just bathed in a swath of papers, two many to blow out through the tee tops, despite my extreme speed and the ever present danger. The tickets were my travel log, detailing my progress westward with times and only estimated velocities. Who could guess what they really meant? I sent them home as dispatches from the front. But I would stop for no man and no law, certainly no law any man had ever willfully and arbitrarily subjected himself too by force and folly. Driving is a right not a privilage, don't be mislead. Come to think of it, maybe I should own the road and set my own limits, my own laws, perhaps that would be consistent, but I have no time to ponder, consistency is for people of leisure, and the quest draws on.
Onward I traversed over hill and dale, once meeting a fellow nudist in the hills and mountain outside of Catfish, Colorado. I couldn't see what she was up to, for the black tinted windows of her 300ZX would allow no light, no information could pass through that opacity, but I knew in my soul I had found a fellow traveler, and she must have been grateful as I sped past both her and the Peru county federali who stopped her. I was at well over 100 miles an hour and made no stops to investigate. I was running on assumptions and gasoline. I was grateful to have saved a kindred spirit the trouble of a ticket, and without any further adue, the sparkling Pacific Ocean presented herself before me. Just in time, for I was out of gas and would need to pawn Trixie for a surf board and a bottle of Napa Valley's finest Mountain Dew. No worry, the rest would come.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Jim
Jim received the bank statement like a loaded gun. He handled it gently, taking care not to fray the edges of the envelope with his shaky fingers. Inside was the story of his life. Broke again. Overdrafted. Kinda funny actually, with outright nationalization probably just around the corner...
Later on that day, after the robbery, the shaky teller talking to the cops couldn't recall the man's height, weight, build, or facial hair, just that he was a white guy, or a really tan black guy, and that he was smoking a cigerette. She forgot to mention that he had on a weird tee-shirt, not that shee could have told the cops what it said anyway. She didn't even see the fucking guitar. I was slung across his back. He probably felt like Antonio Banderas robbing that bank, but she never saw Desperado or looked up after the gun was pulled.
As she took another drag off her last lucky strike, she said to some officer named Sanderson, “I don't know what he looked like, I was to busy doing what I was told.
By then Jim was walking into the cafe on 3rd street, past the Jewish pastry shop. Peter, the owner of the “Crummy Cafe” (Yeah it was really called that) stopped him just as he entered and said, “Hey Jim, nice to see you! -You coming by to pay your tab that is. You got my money, or you got my money?” Before Jim could mouth a word about his money, Peter pointed to the TV and said, I know we're all red come Thursday, the pretty lady on my black and white here informs me of that, but its Tuesday, and I'm as capitalist as anybody else for the next 40 hours or so.” “So where is my dough?
Jim pulled out a wad of bank notes and said, “I've been capitalizing too, ya greedy jar head fish cutter.”
Peter, only slightly incredulous at the roll of green, recovered his words.
“The 101 bitch, and I hate that movie.” he said, taking the notes off the bar before they got too soggy.
“Whatever.”
Jim strolled back out on the street, feeling pretty good now that he was going to pay his very nice and strangely young landlady for his rent. Not that she would be a landlady anymore anyway. And not that anyone else could pay their rent either. She was cute. He didn't think of it long. Probably none of it would matter.
Back in the dinner, the pretty pundit on Pete's black and white was saying something like, “Remember, this market failure all started with the housing crisis a couple of years ago. What do you think, senator?”
She was dead wrong on all three counts.
She was wicked right on the money with her demographic.
Later on that day, after the robbery, the shaky teller talking to the cops couldn't recall the man's height, weight, build, or facial hair, just that he was a white guy, or a really tan black guy, and that he was smoking a cigerette. She forgot to mention that he had on a weird tee-shirt, not that shee could have told the cops what it said anyway. She didn't even see the fucking guitar. I was slung across his back. He probably felt like Antonio Banderas robbing that bank, but she never saw Desperado or looked up after the gun was pulled.
As she took another drag off her last lucky strike, she said to some officer named Sanderson, “I don't know what he looked like, I was to busy doing what I was told.
By then Jim was walking into the cafe on 3rd street, past the Jewish pastry shop. Peter, the owner of the “Crummy Cafe” (Yeah it was really called that) stopped him just as he entered and said, “Hey Jim, nice to see you! -You coming by to pay your tab that is. You got my money, or you got my money?” Before Jim could mouth a word about his money, Peter pointed to the TV and said, I know we're all red come Thursday, the pretty lady on my black and white here informs me of that, but its Tuesday, and I'm as capitalist as anybody else for the next 40 hours or so.” “So where is my dough?
Jim pulled out a wad of bank notes and said, “I've been capitalizing too, ya greedy jar head fish cutter.”
Peter, only slightly incredulous at the roll of green, recovered his words.
“The 101 bitch, and I hate that movie.” he said, taking the notes off the bar before they got too soggy.
“Whatever.”
Jim strolled back out on the street, feeling pretty good now that he was going to pay his very nice and strangely young landlady for his rent. Not that she would be a landlady anymore anyway. And not that anyone else could pay their rent either. She was cute. He didn't think of it long. Probably none of it would matter.
Back in the dinner, the pretty pundit on Pete's black and white was saying something like, “Remember, this market failure all started with the housing crisis a couple of years ago. What do you think, senator?”
She was dead wrong on all three counts.
She was wicked right on the money with her demographic.
A little explanation, as a quote.
I want to write storys. Therefore, the student I am, I did some reading on the subject. I found something good. Hear it is.
Henriette Anne Klauser said:
"Once I went to a piano concert where a brilliant Russian pianist was playing an evening of Franz Liszt. He played the Tarantella, the Don Juan Fantasy, and Liefestraum. The music was cellestial; it took the top off my head. When the lights went up, I turned my attention to the program notes. I was still somewhat dazed from the power and majesty of the music I had just heard. What I read there brought me sharply back to the mundane world.
"Liszt," the program said, "was a typical product of the Romantic age... He produced more than seven hundred works, including many that are either uneven in quality, superficially constructed, or downright dull."
Ha! Do you see the press for perfection we put even on our great composers? We do not allow even Liszt to have mulch for his mind. Can you imagine what it would have been like had Liszt sat down and said, "I am not going to write anything at all. I am not going to write one note until I think of something grand. Until I can compose Liebestraum without stopping, do the Tarantella from top to bottom, until I can let my pen fly across the page and never cross out or writie something less than celestial, I will not write at all. No way will I ever put myself in the position of having some program notes on my music dismiss the bulk of my outpourings as being dull, shallow, and uneven."
Chances are he never would have written the soaring music that thrills the heart today, 150 years later."
So when you, reader, read some garbage on this blog, think of it as part of my Lizt questing. Maybe I will spew forth mountainous quantities of tripe and a good story now and then, who knows, shall we see?
Henriette Anne Klauser said:
"Once I went to a piano concert where a brilliant Russian pianist was playing an evening of Franz Liszt. He played the Tarantella, the Don Juan Fantasy, and Liefestraum. The music was cellestial; it took the top off my head. When the lights went up, I turned my attention to the program notes. I was still somewhat dazed from the power and majesty of the music I had just heard. What I read there brought me sharply back to the mundane world.
"Liszt," the program said, "was a typical product of the Romantic age... He produced more than seven hundred works, including many that are either uneven in quality, superficially constructed, or downright dull."
Ha! Do you see the press for perfection we put even on our great composers? We do not allow even Liszt to have mulch for his mind. Can you imagine what it would have been like had Liszt sat down and said, "I am not going to write anything at all. I am not going to write one note until I think of something grand. Until I can compose Liebestraum without stopping, do the Tarantella from top to bottom, until I can let my pen fly across the page and never cross out or writie something less than celestial, I will not write at all. No way will I ever put myself in the position of having some program notes on my music dismiss the bulk of my outpourings as being dull, shallow, and uneven."
Chances are he never would have written the soaring music that thrills the heart today, 150 years later."
So when you, reader, read some garbage on this blog, think of it as part of my Lizt questing. Maybe I will spew forth mountainous quantities of tripe and a good story now and then, who knows, shall we see?
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