There\u2019s a lull in the air\u2026 some driftwood hiatus in the long decline of principles and manners. I don\u2019t know which one went through the door first. They tend to hang out with each other so\u2026 Yeah, they\u2019re part of a crowd that used to come around but we don\u2019t see them that often in recent times. I\u2019m thinking they felt out of place at the usual affairs. It isn\u2019t like the old days; former times. It\u2019s almost like they never existed at all.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a new scene these days. Sure, there was always a certain amount of shuck and jive. There was always the marauding instinct and the guys and girls who wanted to hump your wife or take off with your boy friend. Sometimes people got a little too drunk and they said the wrong things or got into a fight but\u2026 there was always a prevailing sense of what was right, or at least I thought there was.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t been in America in about five years now. Last time I was there they nearly wouldn\u2019t let me leave; didn\u2019t want to issue me a new passport. I\u2019d gone to Maui for the winter as I had the year before. Things were different the first time. They were much different the following year. It was a tense progression. Finally, on the day before my companions and I were due to head back to Europe, it arrived.<\/p>\n
I had left four years previous when I saw Bush coming. Something told me there was going to be trouble and I know trouble. They tried to stick me with twenty years when Nixon was rampant on a field of blood and then they tried to give me life when Reagan McDonald was in the ascendant; astrologically speaking.<\/p>\n
America was always a problematic situation for me\u2026 they don\u2019t take kindly to that Jeremiah thing. They don\u2019t care for Cassandra. They prefer the Sisyphus, Step \u2018n Fetchit, bend over and wait scenario. I always felt like I was tacking against the wind between Scylla and Charybdis, looking for mystical Ithaca only to find myself in Palm Springs by way of Cathedral City. No, they do not have a cathedral. Last time I was there Tom Wait\u2019s had just finished painting a wide spot in the middle of the road.<\/p>\n
I hitchhiked all over the place looking for something that just wasn\u2019t there. It would show up a time or two but then it went away. There was no permanence. There was no candle in the window, no welcoming hearth. The love attracted me but it was very hard to find and it had an enormous costume closet that it would frequently disappear into and then I would be forced to follow after\u2026 which led me to all those roles in movies that never got released on this planet. I suppose that they might well be watching them somewhere else; in another time, in another place. I only ever saw them inside my head when I was in the desert or the woods or beside the sea looking for the man on the beach.<\/p>\n
I met The Man on the Beach but it didn\u2019t have anything to do with America as far as I could tell. It felt much more Asian\u2026Oriental. For a moment I had that Yin Yang thing\u2026East\u2026 West\u2026 one turning into the other\u2026 One minute it was Samurais in Kyoto and then it was knighthood in Camelot. It started to feel like everything was the same except for the outfits that kept coming out of that costume closet where love disappeared.<\/p>\n
When I think about America, I think about an experiment. It\u2019s not a country really. It\u2019s an experiment. It was a canvas but the canvas wasn\u2019t blank. There were rivers and trees, animals and people\u2026 some kind of landscape portrait which they gessoed white, so they could try some kind of modern art over the top and over the top it went. White can\u2019t say much without black so they brought in a lot of different kinds of blacks for that chiaroscuro shades of gray thing and they brought in all the other colors they could find and they cooked it and stroked it and pushed it and pounded and formed it. They three dimensionalized it into the hollow of endless hands that ran it through every ritual and routine they could think of. They brought in lights and mirrors and music. They brought in ball room dancers. They wined it and dined it and then they took it home and they screwed it. They screwed it in every position and they photographed that \u2026and then decoupaged it on to an old dining room table and then they put it in a history book with footnotes and fables for the benefit of the need to believe.<\/p>\n
Then they put it out on the street and they sold it for whatever they could get and every time somebody porked it, it got a little less attractive until they just spit on it and punched out its lights and then threw it away in an empty, weeded lot and used it for target practice. Every bullet was a sperm engine that made it pregnant with pigs. Now we find ourselves in the final chapters of The Last Exit to Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
I am sure that some few tried to make love to it but the nature of the experiment made that an impossible thing. You wind up In Human Bondage. From The Great White Way to Las Vegas in the sand, it\u2019s the thing that isn\u2019t the thing, being sold as The Thing; the thing that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
Out of control now\u2026 no compass, no rudder, no sails\u2026 Harbor Lights might be playing in the background but I can\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re in unknown country now. Anything could happen. Anything does happen.<\/p>\n
Only Love is strong enough to power and direct the changes needed. We seem to be increasingly insulated against that. We\u2019ve locked our doors. We\u2019re pretty sure that it won\u2019t be love that comes knocking. If the van is rocking it is probably because Lawrence Bittaker is inside. People are saying Will Smith\u2019s latest movie isn\u2019t as good as the last one. The last one was one of the worst pieces of shit I ever saw (almost as bad as Independence Day with the Judd Hirsh scene at the end). Now I\u2019m hearing it was a pretty good movie. I guess that\u2019s how history got to be the way it is. You could be right there looking at it happen and it turns out that nothing you saw was real.<\/p>\n
In my mind there is an hour glass with the sand slowly falling. Grain by grain it falls until the sand has passed and then it turns itself over again. I tap my fingertips on the table. I stare into space filled with images by Bosch. I guess it\u2019s no surprise that he painted the New York City skyline in the fifteenth century. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m no saint. I\u2019ve tried to do good\u2026 but I\u2019ve made my share of mistakes. It took me some time to understand what good was. It took me some time to understand the motive had to be love. As much as love can be seen as unbridled, Love is also restrained. It took me some time to learn restraint. I have been reckless, impetuous and a fool but\u2026 I have learned. Pain is a marvelous educator and loss is a fine reminder. Five of Cups, Eight of Cups\u2026. Mad Hatters with counterfeiting machines, counterfeiting love and money; where does it end except in sorrow and regret?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know how you do it. I don\u2019t know how you get up every day and expect it to get better while it only gets worse. I don\u2019t know how you can stand it. I would be dead or in prison if I had not left because I could not stand it. I never could. Shit with Hollandaise Sauce is still shit. Hypocrisy is not beautiful. Lies are not necessary to protect the truth. Flags are not fashion accessories. Fish don\u2019t ride bicycles. Pig don\u2019t fly, though sometimes it seems that they do with all the shit raining down upon us.<\/p>\n
I wonder if the reason people can stand the smell is because their own smell is that much more intense. Real people die and become Tom and Jerry cartoons. It\u2019s not just costumes and drama. It\u2019s real people in movies that should never have been made. It\u2019s an absence of love. We have to love something, we must love something but we\u2019re not sure what that is any more.<\/p>\n