Filed under: thoughtful trips
Even Mayan treasure hunters had the occasional blow down. Time slowed, then paused as if it might be gathering its thoughts, then decided better of starting again. With the stoppage of time came thoughts and fears, anger at the strawberry blond of Western origin, and a deep and abiding desire to see a tornado eat the landscape that had somehow stagnated under the sun. I have yet to learn how to turn off the faucet spewing impossibly angry lines, and by now, even the guy bearing the colors has learned to fear and respect the power of such an emotion to cause misery and despair. Even the ocean seems like its farther away.
Locked and roiled in some arcane episode of black and white hues with fractional breaks of color, another unknown precipitating the tragedy so feared yet called into existence by the repetitious actions mourning the long ago. Fictitious doesn’t go far enough to describe the scene. It is the strange allure of the metastasis in such an insecure environment that the virus still spreads, irregardless of the inertia that preceded its first display. Today is a pretty standard J curve. Plots are formulaic and every beginning seems in an awful hurry to disgorge the ending without any pretense of thrill or surprise. The mirror tells the whole story…clean jaw lines, the seashells, those dark eyes.
Following the last procession, the time comes to decide whether or not we are safer here than out in the street. I’ve got nothing to take, or at least not anything valuable or irreplaceable, and much like the deterioration in overall progression, strange characters dance with the movement of the sun. I am close to positive that the figures are just a few kids yet to figure out that this show runs daily, and qualifies as forever when measured on a human timescale. Rapid hurricanes, somnombulous fissure’s, upset apple carts, miles of testimony all repeating the same theme, the same panicked appeal for help combined with a total inability to decide what would constitute the help so desperately sought. It is running in place at a thousand miles an hour. When the litany of what if questions speak too loudly, or demand too much attention, there are few avenues that can slacken the pressure of decision. Why anyone should ever apologize for methods appropriated I will never understand. Nobody gets hurt at times like these.
Small wonder that approaching doom feels like the greatest high in the world. Claims of harmony aside, it helps to remember that there is a defined rationale that explains all of this and more. Something first emitted in the raving and somehow congruent speech heard while wandering downtown, first frightening then more reassuring. The man in the wheelchair said that judgment was coming. He even had a sign, though some of the spelling was off and the grammar could have been better. When I asked him how he could be so sure that judgment was rolling our way this very second, he simply smiled and said he had it on good authority that strangers in ripped jeans asking questions were to be counted as evidence of his theory and a cause for optimism. It didn’t take much to make that cripple smile, that I can tell you. The rest of our discussion was boilerplate BS wrapped in kind words, but I could begin to see how he was able to twist the entire conversation into the evidence he so dearly sought. The power of the mind to conjure into existence the needed principle at the correct time is just a survival skill. That’s our reptilian ancestors talking in the voice of a Midwestern used car salesman. In a tweed jacket.
Waking up alone in a place I hadn’t fallen asleep brings the same incredulity to the morning greetings as ever. Patterns, epic thought experiments, a certain sameness numbing the senses while beguiling the supposed genius in his native environment. I fought another set of dreams from sleep to waking, and upon awakening, found to my own horror and amusement that dreams were no longer distinguishable from the narrative. Living out on the horizon is a tiny house, but the fortunes and opportunities of the inhabitants are so far out of my sight that whether or not they exist is still open to debate. All that is certain is that time has slowed it’s pace from breakneck speed to astute passerby. All of the double talk, the whole cock tease that an answer is to be found somewhere around this rupture, the whole shit and shinola, seems a tawdry bit of busy work rather than continuing to walk and explore. Billy Bragg said fear is a man’s best friend, but in this state of panic and parabolic excitations, the fear of what just happened is just a motivational tool to keep moving. Slash and burn until something new really does rise from the ashes and capture the hearts, minds, and attention spans for one more trip around the mountain of faith.
The days ebb and flow, but movement remains. Moving on from here, but letting the events of time wait a little longer. Trailing just a little behind the top quality troops, I can get a few extra seconds to think before acting, and a few extra acts before committing. The chaplain tells me we’re beyond saving, but won’t tell me exactly what “we’re” refers to. I think he is a double agent, and what’s more, I am almost certain he doesn’t have God’s ear any more than I do. If he does, he probably cut it off as a souvenir. Crazy fucker is just the type that would do something like that. Is anyone even positive he’s a chaplain?
