the image I have, have always had really, it goes way back, it was the first edge of knowing, so hard, so illusionless, just the chickens in the farmyard, and the way they peck to death any other chicken with blood on it. it's just the way they are, no big deal. unless you're a chicken with blood on it. the non-savage, non-cruel, just absolutely cold way it is. a lot of people live there, not in the farmyard but in a world that has nothing but the illusion of kindness, selfish drive behind anything like compassion, romance just the genes driving forward, all seeming acts of charity or selflessness just more complex versions of the same greedy shit. so I have that picture in my mind, the head of Mangas on a pole in the zocalo. again no big deal unless you're a Chiracauhua Apache, or a sympathizer or something. but that mass that gantlet of ignorance and gleeful cruelty. well that's what it's all about.
most of the time I think it's about not breaking down, because what's there is a prayer for fire, for the complete annihilation of the faces along the way. and that's what in calmer moments I think this was, an effort on the part of whatever it is that runs this hellhole to get someone else to take the blame, so if I break, if I pray, and by prayer I mean bend my will toward that end, then I become the cause or one of the causes, I get to have my name on it. that may be hard for someone outside of all this to see.
so a couple weeks ago, or maybe just one or so, anyway it was a Saturday, yeah a week ago, it seems longer because so much has happened since. I took a load of firewood up to one of neighbors. a load that would fit in my car. because they've been kind over the years I've known them, and he had made overtures of that kind of guy friendship that's safe and reserved, common interests, the barbecue, some beer, maybe a couple of shots at the end of the evening, some herb. loud music and computer games or who knows what, he made the offer I made some noises like I'd be up, never showed, it feels false, it always has, I go through the motions and regret it, feel responsible for the souls of people I can't see any way to help. and don't feel a connection at the level I need it to be at. so it's about some kind of sacrifice, codependency, whatever it is it doesn't work for me. so then there's guilt. these guys are all relatively decent, more or less, at least they're not fully committed to depravity and evil. but it isn't enough for me. so I live in this twilight world, of the monologue when no one's there. which would have led straight to the nut house except that over the years I built up enough high grade material that it became obvious there's something else going on. so that's where I really live, and no one can meet me there, so then it's a condemnation, and all of it the finding out, the screaming in pain, the bitter humor, the music the poetry, all of it takes place at the edge of giving in, the surrender to the evil this world is filled with, or worse, the mediocre delusions, the better among them hide behind. so I ended up trying to do this simple easy logic stuff, to prove why this shit has happened, it's about hey, I had this going on in spades when I was a teenager, you don't think they had scouts? like basketball is more important than what? the safety of the kingdom? whatever it's called. that became the main thing, the demonstration, here. I have this ability. and all I'm asking you to take on faith is that I had it much more strongly before all the nerve damage and post-traumatic stress, and that I was obviously never going to be a party-line boy. so my point, which I think I've made about as clearly as it can be, is they hit me, hard , and continued to until something happened, whether it was they felt I'd been beaten down far enough or somebody stepped in, or what it was I don't know, I don't even know what happened, I just have too many memories that line up too well for me to buy the idea I've made it up out of whole cloth. but here's the real kick, I don't care anymore. there's nothing anyone can do for me now, that would make it even near alright. and aside from actual physical pain and intimidation there's nothing anyone can threaten me with, everything has been taken away from me. including any love I had for the human endeavor. that woody guthrie feeling, that big group loyalty. I can get it intellectually but my heart is cold now.
so I had to go up the hill, to get my anti-virus CD, at a different neighbors, and I thought I'd hit the neighbor I mentioned, see if he had any PC100 memory sticks around that he had no need of, he had a bunch of old computer parts lying around last time I was there, I took a couple, which he knew I guess, maybe I should have left a note or something, I had to do a lot in the next 24 hours because I was heading down here, and didn't know when or for long I'd be back. anyway what I'm trying to establish there is my state of mind, which I'm real clear about, straightforward and no ulterior bullshit. so I get there and there's I think 7 cars there but no one's answering the door, I checked around the back no one. so I unloaded the firewood I brought, and was looking through some old hardware chips and modems and whatnot that he had outside and I hear the generator start up. so I go down toward it, and it's their daughter, she's maybe 14 or so now, but fully developed, and weird attitude, lame and vicious, I used to think he was maybe using her sexually, the wife/mom has a history of that in her family, she herself was abused that way, so it wasn't beyond the possible she had replicated her home life, but it's not a thing that calls from her, I don't feel that from her, that sense of violation, there's power and a strange kind of otherworldly depth. so that in theory, at a distance there's concern, but there's much more empathy in me for her sister who she treats cruelly and violently, than for her. anyway the kid is walking toward the house, I said hi but she was doing that dead affect thing, I asked her if she hadn't heard me, but it was dead affect time all the way, which is deeply insulting, but it's ok to insult certain people at certain times according to the way things are now, like it's ok to insult homeless people, but not people in expensive clothes, so she continues walking toward the house and the whole time in the back of my mind I'm measuring the intensity and danger of the situation, how easily little chumps like Switzer could shift this thing around to fit what they wanted to find, what they found, what they wanted to have me be. and of course that interior state is never public, it has to be spoken or written as here, and rather than defend myself against what is more and more obviously a deeply rooted spiritual incompetence, thrashing against its own chains and shackles, I really feel more and more like saying 'fuck it. let's just take the whole thing down.' which is how I started this rap isn't it.
so I started to become irritated by her insulting behavior, and the circumstances, and the whole thing generally, people don't realize most of them how bitter compassion becomes when it goes unrecognized so completely. then it goes away. so I said something like where's your folks, she said they went to the dump, I said 'well tell your Dad I came by ok?' and she mumbled something. and I asked her how she was doing and she didn't say a word. so into that malicious silence I said 'that good huh?' and the whole time this is taking place I'm walking back toward my car half turned away from her, and she's walking toward the house sort of at 30 degree angle away from where the car is. and that was pretty much that.
later on I realized the wife/mom had said they'd be home but I could call. and I hadn't because I was going up that way anyway and wanted to drop off the wood whether they were home or not, my main point here is I never thought about whether the girl would be there, alone especially, and if I had known I wouldn't have gone near the place. but almost immediately irealized how perfectly that would play into the hands of someone who wanted to run that judgement on me. I am intensely aware of how many fools are breathing down my neck now, at all times, these are simple ignorant brutal minds, there is nothing subtle about them, it's like the smell of a wet dog, psychically it's unmistakable. the same thing happens on the net, when I look at porn of any kind, when there's a picture of a kid, especially a young girl, and the idea that that is happening is not something I am at all interested in establishing with anyone who doesn't have it already. I don't need acceptance at that level. but of course you don't think that through do you? what would happen if I did prove it? hmm? you think I'd get any privacy after that? hmmm? I don't care anymore. that's the thing people won't understand too easily. it's too late. too much of what I loved is no longer possible for me. it's been taken and it can't be returned.
so just now I called up to that same neighbor's because he gave me a bootleg OS that I couldn't get to setup w/out a product key. so I called him to see about that, and his wife answered and where she is usually warm and friendly she was tight and not warm at all. and then he was the same, what they used to call 'not forthcoming' so after a couple of pokes at that to measure it out, I got the skinny on the OS, said goodbye and hung up the phone, and thought well here we go again. only this time unlike twenty years ago, I no longer have the burden of the conflict, in those days I was torn between the fullhearted love of what it was to be human, all of it, the innocence and beauty of the great chain of human being, between that and the immediate hell of ignorant viciousness, the wasps stinging, the chump thug threats and bestial ignorance of the common mind. I don't have that burden now. I realized the other morning when I was thinking about how easily the old poison exhaust scam could be run on me now that I've got a predictable course through the day, and I thought to myself how freeing it was not to care anymore.
but that's the task as they say. to care in spite of that. that's what Dylan did for me, through his work, the recognition, and the personal statement, the despair, the continuing. so I'm continuing. and though I don't care, not in the sense that I have emotions that are loving, at the same time I haven't surrendered to the desire for revenge. I do have fantasies of course. people like Switzer who have obviously gone so far toward stabbing me in the back, and smiled that sick little chump smile to my face, copping the interrogator's power on me, those authoritarian moves that anyone who's been broken in those rooms is helpless under, that does build hatred, and that hatred never leaves, but the job is to fight it, not pretend it doesn't exist, but fight it, keep it from dominating the residue of love, the old innocent songs of hope and promise, things I know now only as memory.
so I wanted to get this down while I had a little time, and while the fire of it, the pain and worry of it were fresh, because there's always things that come up, and tomorrow's burden's won't be the same as today's. though I'm sure today's will be there still.
so it's surface form is social, moral, psychological. but the truth is mostly it's magic. it's really about midlevel wizards flourishing in the absence of their betters, the way sports fans scream for the blood of Saddam Hussein, knowing nothing about him but what they're told by the invisible warlocks who build that hatred in them like a spell. so that the real power here gets its business done for it by unconscious proxy, and although talk of magic has yet to be socially acceptable, that is what it is, but if it helps, think of it as the politics of the unseen, or the gangster rules of the spirit world.
posted by Juke at 7:37 PM [edit]