Landlord stories:
When I didn't have a car I used to walk down to the road,thru the ruined garden,the ragged fence,the myrtle creeping out across the path,one time there was a dead raccoon in the compost. Skinny,looked ill,I don't know how old it was. I thought to bury it,then thought well I'll just take it across the road. My ex-girlfriend lives way off the other side,her property borders the road over there,a lot of land between the road and her house,I was going to toss the raccoon's body down there. I had it by the tail,feeling strange,carrying it like a guilty man in a way. I heard a car coming,stepped back a little out of the way,thinking if someone saw me it would deepen my already strange reputation here,the car came fast,speeding up and turning right off the road coming up to where I was,slamming to a stop there,which was not part of the road,not a driveway at all. It was the landlord. Thoght he had me. Because I stepped back. I could feel that so clearly. Do you understand how deeply insulting that is,from someone I've always spoken highly of,never done dirt to,was always ready to be a friend of,if there wasn't so much shit in the way. The fear that goes unexpressed by all these people,sometimes it just gets so clear. Not that it helps to see it. Mostly I used to prefer that it not be visible. I am not that unlike anyone else. It threatens my survival greatly. To have all this happening and still have to feed myself,cut my dreams back to a bare subsistence level. Of course I'd rather everyone respected me. But never for selling out the way they have.
I can't get away anymore rorm what Babbs said about Kesey,the instant forgiveness,given no matter what. I remember most of all that now,why it would matter so greatly what he thought. Bu it's so late,too late for me to see him,hear him,if I did manage to get some work done,and send it to him again.
Now a big part of my engagement with the things of this world is shaded with bleak satisfaction. No matter what they do to me now,no matter what happens,they don't go. That part seems done. I would have wanted a finer sifting,a better filter,but we were too much like dependents,like parasites I suppose is how the more powerful in the immediate sense would see it. We couldn't just tear it down and wipe them out without taking ourselves out too. It was about preserving. The great poets,many of them working to clean up a little piece of this,holding on to the fading grip of the last of so much. And there I go raging behind the false safety of these rickety cabin walls. Talking into the unseen microphones. As though it was all perfectly normal. But it isn't. It wasn't. It's as if the sickness of this time was focused,concentrated and focused on me. Often,too often,I try to find some proof that I didn't die into this world,from another,more 'real' one. One where you do what you do and get judged,and then when you die in that one,you end up in one like this,where some huge power,sicker than any madman,fucks with your head at every turn.
And no way to speak to that,no one to hear you,with mind and heart wide enough,deep enough,to understand.
So I end up being weird. And slowly breaking down. I lasted more than ten years longer than I thought I would. There's that. All this time knowing I had one shot. And they expected me to go berserk I suppose. As though just randomly taking someone out would do anything for me. My prayers were a little bigger than that, being for the death of that thing,nameless and covering the earth with it's giddy childish self-importance.
I'll probaly never know what was really going on. Never found anything,or anyone,that rang true. Just placebo religions,and systems of comforting fantasy. Tho something was happening,is happening,will be happening,no matter where this goes. What I keep trying to find is a prayer that says what I most deeply honestly feel. Something here that is good,so beleaguered,so beaten down,I wanted that to rise,but it just keeps dying. And this insect scum buzzing louder and louder. Every word that leaves my mouth now,as I wrote back in '78,is weighed for its value,and as with every other thing they've burned,they never stop to calculate the damage their control leaves behind it.
The landlord weighs the possible comeback,and sees no reason not to insult me to my face,time and time again,with his view of me as beaten weakling,easily controlled. Naturally I wonder if there's more,some information to make him feel safer,more righteous. It wouldn't surprise me if there is some kind of profile working at the edges of my days, so that these spineless little men can get their pride back. Because they lose it so easily.
posted by Juke at 10:32 PM [edit]