by Tomorrow's Man
Don't think that zeitgeist stored with my tattered smile in the worn luggage at the back of the train doesn't still have potential; the minute someone pops these antique latches, the zeitgeist and I, we're outta here...
Because you are the opposite of everything I thought was true.
Because you have made me view myself in more than three dimensions.
Because you speak with a voice that ripples the land like a tide.
Because in your presence there is no distance between Point A and Point B.
Because in your presence time is less important than timing.
Because in your presence I feel less of the beast in me.
Because you were only a dream,
and you changed me.
I'm more scar than celebrity, picked upon like a rash of bad meat flung down throats, I've got no sound and far too much vision, I'm a sprayed whistle of blood in the fury, I'm a middle finger broken by annihilation, I'm far flung bad meat, one more bruised human more scar than celebrity.
The storm torn down I94 as I tore into it, the ever-dedicated student driving in weather he'd rather not be toward a class he didn't comprehend to earn a degree that he didn't care about. The rain became a suffocation. Eyes were useless; unfortunately, cars don't have eyes, so we highway denizens sped on headlong.
My head did what heads do when blinded: toss to and fro, toss to and fro, hoping to see anything other than the glint of a scythe. Just before Deerfield Exit 250, my head fro'd right, the planet lit up not only like it had nothing better to do, but it had been planning this immolation all along.
It was a second literally split:
[hh:mm:ss.ss]
4:47:15.09: 100 feet off the highway to my right, somewhere on a small farm, a glow occurs and brightens.
4:47:15.15: The shape of the bolt becomes apparent to my eyes; a thick one, more joules than I can count, so sudden and strong a blast that the only reason I can see it .06 seconds after it strikes is because it is already fading out.
4:47:15.17: The cool black tracing of the lightning's outline -- a phantom reality, lightning has no outline -- is impressing on my retinas in the wake of the hit. The burn in my eyes is cooler toward the edges of the bolt, so I think I see outlines in cold black.
4:47:15.21: A golden glow begins to radiate from the ground. Without pause for metaphorical allegory (where the hell would I have paused?) it resembles a hand of dessicated fingers reaching to the sky. [With pause for metaphorical allegory, I realize seconds later that I think it is the oppressed, offering to either shake hands with or arm wrestle The Presence.]
4:47:15.23: It is not a hand, or fingers. It is a tree, and it has just been struck by lightning.
4:47:15.31: The black kirlian aura of the bolt folds into and over the place where the bolt had been nanoseconds before as if the fury of it were being replaced by a hewn sword, the black emptiness folded and folded, honed and folded and honed and folded and folded a thousand times into an edge designed to deliver nothing less than the decisive electric death meant for whom it touches.
4:47:15.34: The tree has evolved into a hand of fire, fingers splitting wide with the trunk. Either The Presence refused its supplication, or defeated it at the arm wrestle. Either way, the tree is toast. In full furious flower and glowing like the doomed of Horsell Common, it cracks with the punishing crescendo of the lightning displacing all that stood in it's way. The concussion is a roar of victory.
4:47:15.42: It's over. I'm swerving through blinding rain.
Everything changes you with subtlety; but some things change you utterly.
As part of my need to destruct fully, I need to get rid of all of my belongings. My stuff. My things, those that own me, those that trap me in space and time.
I have three choices: Donate them to a religious organization (which could then sell them for profit); donate them to a political party (which could then sell them for profit); or sell them off and buy a gun.
What would you choose: God, gun, or government?
Lift weights. Eat fiber, and only fiber. Buy a gun. Give or throw away all possessions. Taste blood. Smile like a happy wound.
We're happy. Sure. We're so happy.
Shopping for items you need to move takes on a cloying sense akin to Stockholm Syndrome -- yes, everything in your life has broken you down to your rawest, twitching bits; but at least you have large trash bags. At least your got that packing tape situation taken care of. At least you have paper towels and rubber gloves, and you will be able to get that blood stain out of the rug. At least you don't have to worry about finding a Sharpie
Somehow, we consider this a step up from death. Many of us have forgotten why the Death card in the tarot means "change" -- it is because the two transitions feel the same.
Home earlier than planned, exhausted more than could possibly have been expected. Now, to start packing. 84 degrees. I thought it felt cold; then I realized it is just me, just me, chilling to stillness inside.
I didn't know it was Elvis Presley Weekend in Memphis. I just assumed every weekend was....
I'm hunkered down underneath the water bubblers, between the women's room/severe weather shelter and the emergency defibrillator. I'm past gate 31, almost to 33, but I never made it to my gate, 34.
Across the hall from me - on the other side of the masses heaving into fullbloodfevered Memphis - is a Memphis Flyer, a free local rag, with the King Himself in full white jumpsuit glory on the cover. The headline reads "Elvis Presley, 1935-2007: A Wonderful Life."
I canLt fathom what this means...have they accepted it, at last? Had he been a prisoner all this time?
All I know is that I can't move from beneath the bubblers...if you've ever seen an Aphex Twin video, you'll know why. On shirts, in masks, and adorned in full outfits and makeup, the terminal is swarming with a thousand faces of Elvis, headed right at me. For every human, there's an Elvis. If he's still alive, the terminal is shaking with double the population on foot; if he's dead, I'm being inundated with thousands of clone corpses.
Either way, I'm staying under the bubblers.
Road Notes, Memphis, TN., 5:23PM
105 degrees. The pavement is soft, the air scorched to a scent of charcoal.
Say hello, goodbye, my melted heart.
Road Notes, Blytheville, Arkansas., 3:42PM
I had high hopes for Arkansas. The Burger King was normal, the service fast, professional, and very courteous. They even had iced mocha.
A quick stop to the restroom was in order. I opened the door and was slammed by a wall of heat. I thought there must be an open vent to the outside (it is 101 degrees right now). But no...no vent. It was just the 12-year old boy bathing himself in the men's room sink, whapping at the big hand-dryer button every time it turned off.
G'bye, Arkansas. I'm happy your boys are clean.
Yes, Braggadocio, Missouri. Need I say more? Yes, I need. I need say that my greatest regret on this leg of this trip is that we don't have time to go visit Cooter.
Yes. Cooter, Missouri. Gonna miss it by under 2 miles.
Cooter.
At 103 degrees, I can smell my brain cooking and everything is funny.
painless is
suicide
painless is
suicide
painless is
suicide
painless issu
icide
life no
life no
life no
life no
life, no
life, no
life, no
life? no.
life? no.
life? painless?
No.
104 degrees today; the last time I was in an atmosphere of this temperature I was three heartbeats from my fever sinking in teeth that had become deadly. Back then, in the Emergency Room, they submerged me in a tub of ice water and jammed a tube into my nose and choked it down my throat to pump my stomach of the sick blood that had distended it.
Today, here, 104 is just...how it is.
The horseflies are visible crawling on surfaces from 200 paces. They look like black holes twitching about, settling on a place to begin devouring the world; they look like spider's nightmares.
When I entered my hotel room, the Bible was already open. Never a good sign for the suicidal. It lay there showing me the book of Psalms, 11-14, Psalms to the chief Musician: "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"
In other words, it doesn't matter how long you hop if you don't have a leg to stand on.
I closed the Psalms. I held the book with the spine to the desk and exhaled. I let the pages fall open where thy will be done.
The Book brought me to Job 6:7 -- "Mine eye shall no more see good."
Ah, fuck.
And tomorrow, they're predicting 109.
101 degrees in the air; 105 on the runway. The plane oozed into Memphis, sludged to a halt at the gate. The pilot didn't even need to brake or afterburn; the plane was just exhausted.
We had to disembark quickly as the fuselage dissolved into the goo of the tarmac. (Boiling tarmac sounds a lot like molasses farts.)
I stepped outside the terminal and was gut-punched by a sunbeam. No one expects them to be violent -- all shiny and life-giving and featured on baby clothes and diapers and such -- but they don't even need to gang up on you; just one will jerky your ass.
there's no place.
there's no like.
there's no home.
Here in the airport bar CNN is being played in larger than life plasma surround sound. Makes it all the better to take in the special report they're showing on devastating plane crashes with no survivors.
The beat of life goes on 'n on, and I still love being a perpetual drumfill.
Three days to Tennessee, where I hope I will still smell like my sweet love.
Vagabond Opera, and the world changes by shifting 17 paces of emotional passion - comprehension - toward your creative brain. There is nothing like this.
Food coma after food coma. Terminal. (Terminal food coma still better than the terminal in Kansas City, MO). Svelte 96 today. Sad, no more 100s for me, I'm just like the rest sweating.
Too much light means too much day left between the planets. Seems they're sharing secrets, likely with women. I'd come closer to the truth of it all, but my wings were folded into Origami swans by Icarus' greatest grandchild.
Damned kids.
Still, sun's close enough to reach out and touch; between it and me is just a layer of atomized caramel coating the lungs in burnt sugar. No one in California dies of cancer; they die of candy.
Road Notes, Antioch, CA., 4:43AM PDT
Debauchery. Hot tub panties and the clang of swords well on toward dawn. Breathing phantom jasmine and leaping from the water to pick a peach from the bough. Pass the black rum, bite into succulence, pass the black rum, bow to the angel, pass the black rum, spiral and twirl, pass the black rum, float and cavort, float and cavort, kiss the edge of the dawn as she rises like lust in a redhead, kiss the skin of fresh peachflesh, bite into succulence, whisper "Eden" and flick a tear up, up, up to become one with the roiling Pacific fog so close, so many miles away.
Road Notes, Milwaukee, WI., Milwaukee Int'l Airport, 1:01 PM
A very brave and bold man in a turban is singing in his native language as he boards the plane. I am assuming it is a song of prayer.
Around me are about two dozen young men and women in yellow tee-shirts emblazoned with the phrase "You Died 4 Us 4 You" in stylized letters that fill the 3D image of a bleeding cross. Strangely, they all wear similar blank cow stares and speak little despite the size of their group.
I'm warm because I wore pants, and my deodorant was examined at security because it is a 2.1 fl. oz. container, too high by a tenth.
The cabin door has closed, and the humanity builds up around me, if not inside me.
Road Notes, Kansas City, MO Airport, 3:01 PM
If you are given the choice, never ever ever ever ever ever connect through this airport.
Scenario: 100 degrees outside, near 80 in the "air conditioned" terminal. Deplane at Gate 29 to find eleven feet of chaos between the gate door and the EXIT sign - between them is the end of the security line. I quickly head toward the exit, then stop, checking the strange layout.
Back to the rep at the counter. I ask if exiting means having to come back in through security to get to my connecting gate, 26. The answer is an inexplicable yes.
Outside the windows lining the long, thin terminal, the single-file line at security stretches past where my eye can see, and I can see easily 500 feet down the long corridor.
I ask if there is anywhere in the terminal to get a drink. The counter-slave says no - but in addition to bathrooms, the terminal has a 'drink guy.'
The 'drink guy' is chugging cough syrup as I approach. I ask for a Diet Coke. He puts it on the counter. I grasp it and it is warmer than my hand. "Cooler's broken," he shares. "$2.32," he adds.
I'm terminal-bound, dry, hot, thirsty, and further disenchanted with the midwest. I miss the turbaned man's singing - at least I know it meant something, as did the time he invested in it.
I have no idea what all the rest of this around me should mean.