Gameteus and the book of maybes

Gameteus & the book of maybes




Pigtail Editions
















Part 1
Episode 1


Man is only as great
as the devil which pursues



I am sitting on a log somewhere on the Sunshine Coast. Tetrahedron Park may be the location; the map I have is useless to me. My difficulty with maps may have something to do with the fact that I find it safer and certainly preferable in some respects, to be lost than to be found. However, I am in the middle of a saddle-shaped clear cut about ten years old. It snowed overnight and then the clouds cleared out during the day. It is now a blindingly bright sunny afternoon. My sight flows downward over the snow-covered young trees to the distant shimmering Strait of Georgia and beyond. The dark silhouette of Vancouver Island cuts across this explosion like a jagged shard to what my solitude perceives as a vast, silent and empty open stage. There are no perceptible movements. Waves, boats and tugs have been reduced to mere specks, frozen in time. It is just vast, silent and motionless splendour. The water of the strait is a golden blaze. The intensity of that blazing ocean has the same blinding brightness of the sun itself. It is as if that fireball had splashed down, dissolved evenly over the whole ocean. I am awed and puzzled. Can a reflection be so much greater that the object it reflects and yet not lose any of its intensity? Surely I might have observed this phenomenon many times before! Perhaps just not of such proportions.
Here and now it is of such a scale and fierce power that I am overwhelmed. This grandiose scene overflows the mental channel that leads down to the vault of precious memories.
I remember therefore I am! And is it not possible that under certain conditions I–the reflection–is greater, more focused and simultaneously more pervasively and profoundly present that the source I reflect? I am Gameteus. Life dances me to the tune of my memories. Instinctive, inculcated or fortuitous they deliver me to Nature’s seductive and forbidding terms, that I may contribute to her incomprehensible compulsion to evolve and experience every possible form and way. But, this is seduction of a different nature! I warn myself as I go on comparing the brightness of the setting sun to the brilliance of this spectacular splash.
This scene, like a starry sky or a weed’s struggle in a paved parking lot, does not communicate anything that can be assayed or measured, it does not tell me.... It does not speak to the dummy but just bewilders it? If anything, it excommunicates me! My vocabulary is awash in a deluge of light and colour flooding in through the senses. I am swamped. Words! Metaphors, Superlatives! All come to mind but to no avail. I want to grasp it, to capture it, merge with it, but it is as though I am a shipwreck and what is at hand is nothing more than flotsam without substance. Words, such as beautiful or spectacular, mock me. Awesome seems to do better because it lacks clarity, and it is awesome, something possibly wonderful but uncertain and untractable It evokes optimism and delight but withholds confidence leaving me with a vague but fascinating discomfort. It is this internal puzzling conflict as much as the grandiose spectacle before me that draws me in, but I cannot let go of the self that stands obstinately on guard. At last I am able to withdraw and suddenly I am just sitting on a log at the Pillars of Hercules beholding the end of the world, the un-begotten! How did I get here? Why? I did not get to be sitting on this log by chance. Not at all! Like a lesser god I have been bumped and shoved, caromed and ricocheted all the way as if by that uncaring hand of mother gravity. Yet I may choose to believe that gravity is intelligence at work! Perhaps even benevolent After all if God did not separate the waters and did not make light, gravity did. If God did, He evidently used gravity. I must add Holy Gravity to my pantheon. So words again!
Heeding a sense of foreboding, I allow myself one more moment of splendour unlimited, then I withdraw from it by contemplating the terrifying horror of it, were I to say: -STAY!

***

I could though, stay here for a while! I could stay as long as I want or need to tailor myself into a new cosmology. Like, in the beginning was the word…No! Numbers, then came gravity of course, then because of gravity things were gathered, took shape and began struggling against gravity. Then came MAYBE. And now finally gravity presents: Tataaa! Born again Christians!
On Sixty Minutes the head of the Evangelical Church and Born again Christians, which include Bush and Romsfeld, explained that this dispensation is about to end and that on that day all born again Christians (mostly American republicans) will be zoomed up to heaven and all there will be left of them on earth will be their clothes, glasses, prosthetics, etc., all in neat little piles on the ground wherever their owners may have happened to be at the time. Curiously the good man could not say about tooth fillings. God must be reflecting on that, and I am beginning to think this may cause another millennial delay. And how is God going to deal with implants? More delays.
As I sat there on that log before the Pillars of Hercules contemplating the end of the world, the superimposed image of little piles of accessories all over this great continent of ours put my soul at ease. Gone was the discomfort of the bewildering spell. This image had somehow re-established my precarious balance in a teetering universe.
But don’t think I am laughing, I am not even amused. Had I been persuaded to move with the pack and within the pack, I would now probably have a garage full of exercise machines, and more machines, thousands and thousands of pictures, a mantelpiece with trophies, framed parchments, the whole caboodle! I would be a snowbird, and on Sunday a crystal cathedral dove cooing with all the other Sundays’ doves longing for the aviary in the sky.
I have got things in order again and everything seems O.K. That river of gold before me, (perhaps the Lethe) flows imperceptibly in both directions, the sun above it stands still as it goes on its orbit, and still is the tiny silhouette of a barge pulling a raft of logs.
Everything has the stillness and silence of things that are, that unexplainably, and unintentionally just happened and just are. They seem to me to be at a distance not of space but of essence, separated not by time but symmetry.
The little piles of clothes just lie where they have dropped. The log just rested in a clear-cut on a mountainside, I just sat on it for a moment of uncertainty knowing that I had not yet reached my own angle of repose.
I am–just not yet! Not complete, and so all of creation is continuing to increase its potential by expanding its limits.
Yet I feel that I am no longer a man. I am a kind of butterfly. The world, the past, the present and future are all one medium for me, one season, my season of becoming, of fullness. Wings will take me off without intent or aim; here and there I will alight without care, because in a sense it is all done, all taken care of. All was taken care of from day one and number four. The caterpillar just did not know it.
The wind, the earth, sun and rain, the crawling, chewing and spinning of the immense other had metamorphosed and spread out to beckon and attract me to it and receive from me, from my spontaneous response, its own significance. Pain, laughter, joys and sorrows have bloomed to nourish what is now an entirely different creature touching sense to an entirely different world. If you follow this dance, you will realize that the movements, the pauses and reflections are not in themselves the rhythm nor the purpose. You will understand that your mind should not focus on the seemingly haphazard pattern but abandon itself to its apparent nonsense and so let another order penetrate and dissolve temporarily the tight-knit bindings of perception.
I am no longer a man, not always a butterfly. But the blink, the stasis, the metaphor, the synthesis. And what you might see is a toothless old man, ranting and raving and laughing. Insane, ridiculous. A madman.
I am a wretched blank among billions, and yet I am Gameteus, half god and half beast. Half of everything that exists...its consciousness! Half a universe! And what complex different universes we are! I write poetry like I stepped on a wet log and there I am, flat on my back peering through the top branches at blue infinity.
You on the other hand lure me to the base of the same High Throne through a perfectly arranged and neat labyrinth where only a few coloured pebbles draw my eyes back to Quarnaro.
I get there with a pocket full of pebbles and Canio’s laughter still moist with tears.
You (I suspect) lay where I fell you, munching thoughtfully on a string of vocables.
-I may be wrong, but I think that poets should be decimated, Hollywoodism is enough for anybody.
It was sad to see the tearful garlanded bull led into the temple of shame. The lecherous self-adulating mob celebrating as the fancy bitch cheered them on.
The taming of yet another soul that may have dared but got lost, tired, and confused. He, was brought back to the fold, was fed to the fold.
-And HERE HE IS! She trumpeted with glut, -OUR! . . . LEONARD COHEN!


I have no heroes left. NONE! They all wound up in their glorious graves.


-What is his name?
-Leonard Cohen, General Sir!
-Shoot him.
And I tell you, if you do, I mean if you do have heroes, you are yet far from being. You are nothing more than someone else’s indigestion.
If you have a Hero, a Buddha, a Christ, slay him. For in truth, Nietzsche is dead and God insane. The mob lives and jubilates, they are clutching at paradise.
-Paradise my ass!
-If you think of it, Hell might work. But Paradise, you’d have to be an unconscionable bastard to enjoy it! I mean how can you enjoy Paradise when your brother is burning in Hell? And this, when even the stones are your brothers. So, make this, your perfect hell. A major makeover I know, but we’ve been at it so long and it is coming along splendidly. Isn’t it?



De tribus impostoribus.

From the squirrel cages:

…The famous Temple of the LORD that Solomon built was no more than a cosy whorehouse of male and female prostitutes!!!

All I had asked this guy was–if in his scholarly opinion–more people have been tortured and killed in the name of Christ than anyone else in history or if that record should rightly belong to Moses who started the whole damn thing.

E-mail from Alex:
Lots of snow then it melted now lots of rain. No squirrel cage online yet. And I'm still socially acceptable so no basket weaving. I'm feeling pretty low. In the last 2 weeks a friend died and another told me he's dying. And of course I have the friends that are killing themselves, like the one who does 200 Tylenol with codeine pills a week then wonders why he can't remember what day of the week it is.
I've been playing tennis after work but now it's too dark and cold so it's to the gym. I hate the gym but it's better than slowly rotting. What do you do for entertainment in the winter?

-I usually stay at the “ El Arab” in Dubai.
But yes it is intellectually elegant and spiritually noble
To feel the ennui of winter slither in,
cold and damp. Reptilian.
A winter’s den, is this reptilian man.

Awareness slithers, side-winds.… Something that a man of forty told me I may have understood at forty, and sometimes much later.
I heard one say: “do the opposite!” Half a century later it reaches me as I read again the first words of the “The portable Nietzsche”, which are Nietzsche’s sister and it hit me “the truth is always on the side of the more difficult.” Difficult because it hides in the unlikely, in the unacceptable, in madness but it hides best in art, poetry, books and cannons, on altars and among the heroes, the angels, saints and the gods of the living dead. You can tell the living dead now easier than ever because they try so hard to appear alive, not only are they everywhere but they are much more ostentatious with today’s’ means. Yet I am in part one of these hypogean creatures, just another bastard offspring of Pollyanna’s rape, but so strange that I should have been advised to do the opposite, which I found hard to do, but failed and failed so many times that in the end although my performance did not improve, I began to see and think contrary to the norm. Disturbing images, visions. Consider my share of the security budget. It can’t amount to much right? Yet as mine and yours and everyone else’s miserable needs add up, they produce unimaginable arsenals of destructive power. Of course we can all begrudgingly admit to this, but how did we get to this? The truth is always on the side of the difficult! Do the opposite! To do the opposite is only possible if you have no allies! What at are the probabilities that there are not fifty, not ten, maybe not even four people in the world today who would agree with me? Pretty good in fact! Ha the great grinding stone of nature crushed all and any dissension that may have been tempted to sprout by a stray and strange beam of light and missed me somehow? Yeah, it is possible!
-And of Pollyanna’s rape what have you to say? Do you still maintain your testimony that it was she who…
-I swear to God Your Honour, it was She, uh, her! I swear to God almighty!
-It is three in the morning, Mercury can’t sleep, the din of sixty million squirrel cages squeaking. Must I stay? Must I be alone?
-Well yeah! What the hell did you expect when you chose the path least travelled?
It would have been better for me that I would have been castrated at birth, then taught how to read and then for good measure be beaten to death with Pierre Bayle’s dictionnaire! What madness could have led me to suspect that what we hold most sacred and see as our only hope is the cause of all our evils? How many scorching jabs before I was able to snatch that notion out of the fire! And now, I am burning with it, like a moth in a close searing transit.
Hume: When I shall be dead, the principles of which I am composed will still perform their part in the universe, and will be equally useful in the grand fabric...

Grand fabric?
What we have may be creation by default. A weakness in a field has allowed the tumbling out of an infinite number of factors which operating at random may or did eventually form the hyper-improbable to contemplate its own self annihilation as the only and supremely exquisite expression of free will.

Email from Jeff: There is a cabin for me at Horsefly if I am heading that way. I have no idea which way I am heading. Down Regret Boulevard in the season of sighs has bloomed into winter. I regret everything, even some of the good things I may have done, because they happened in the loom of deception and were too few anyway. That I cannot look back with any pride, that I can only feel shame may be the price of redemption.

…Yep right across from the Anvil Pub in the old rodeo grounds, talk to Gillies, the owner and my drinking buddy-tell him you know me Jeff, Elvis.

Sometimes I find myself climbing a mountain in a storm and in complete darkness. I just have to reach the top because way up there, above the clouds and the tempest, above the darkness, at the very summit, a sage is waiting for me. So I struggle on and on and by gum I make it every time! Only to find out that the guy up there is an idiot, and that this fool had been up there for years and years waiting for me!
In a variation of it, when I finally get there he asks eagerly,
-Did you bring beer?




Leibniz.
TWO leaves often look identical. But, he argues, if 'two' things are alike in every respect, then they are the same object, and not two things at all. So, it must be the case that no two leaves are ever exactly alike. But why should this be the case? For if they were in every way the same, but actually different, then there would be no sufficient reason (i.e. no possible explanation) why the first is where (and when) it is and the second is where (and when) it is, and not the other way around.
If, then, we posit the possible existence of two identical things (things that differ in number only, that is, we can count them, but that is all), then we also posit the existence of an absurd universe, one in which the principle of sufficient reason is not universally true.

…ELVIS at Horsefly?! There too?

E-mail from Eric:

cant seem to read any more not writhing either.
it was hot today I watched the cat climb the cedar tree and arrive at the translucent roof a blue shadow appeared to meet the cat and together they passed over me and I for my part became a last cicada song
and the cicada song became the rush of the rain which fell with night falling and today it is cold
in this way no one thing is identical with anything else but neither is it different
is she in your mind? if she is your head must feel very heavy is she out there? and out ther only? then how is it you perceive her? for what is perceived becomes part of the body does it not? so two identical leaves are part of the body and the body is part of the universe and the universe is part of the body what therefore is absurd or not absurd?what is absurdity but thinking? and what is thinking but absurdity?

I did not go to Horsefly. I went back to that esker in Kokanee Park to visit with a boulder I had befriended on my previous trip there. It could talk, let me tell you, and maybe it understood…imagine…and yes that is practically what the boulder said!
-I can’t remember who it was at the moment, said the boulder, -but someone went on about how God could not have made a world in which there were more cows than sheep and more sheep than cows at the same time, said the boulder. Which made sense to me. -Nature is like that because it is self-creating and self directing. It does not have to account to anything because it is based on mathematical principles, that’s all! Do you get it?
-Nnnnnhhhhyeaaeaaaaahno!
No, no actually. It is a different animal, can’t catch that one with this old trap. This trap is made to catch only what I believe to exist out there. Truth is like a wild beast, it cannot be tamed and so it cannot be used to do work and it is not even good to eat. Might be poisonous in fact. On the other hand the compromises are delicious. Speaking of which, yes I came here as a compromise as well, because what I really would have wanted to do was to go back to Revelstoke and see Quasimodo again. But to be honest I was afraid. What could I say to him! I mean what could I say to a guy who is every mother’s worst nightmare? Gee Chris, I am really sorry that you are a monster, ah, in viso only mind you! Ah, and what I really was afraid of and am still troubled by, would have been to find out that such an horrendous looking creature had not been compensated with a nobly beautiful mind like the elephant man. A Caliban through and through. For me the worst part was that finally I had found something for which I really could not feel responsible and damn if I didn’t feel guilty anyway! Guilty by having witnessed if nothing else. Guilty for continuing to exist in a patently unacceptable world. Think about it–what does everyone want? To be liked, to be handsome or beautiful, to be smart, successful, admired and loved. All the wrong things in a sense, but then there is Chris. He is as ugly as the naked truth. The presence, the injection of this monstrous looking young lad into my evolving new order of reality has destabilized everything so that in the end, even if I could rid myself of all the poets, and all the heroes, saints and prophets I would still have this Quasimodo and a child dying of cancer to deal with somehow. To justify, to rationalize? No, not this. It is not possible. So, when in doubt masturbate, right Carl? I will not do that, done enough of it, too much, even once is too much. The best thing is to get in good shape, because to die properly at the right time, is a gift that must be fully appreciated. Life is but its colourful wrapping. And yes, the only meaningful gift is that great terrifying gift that becomes fearfully yours no matter how desperately you wish to avoid it.


Alexander:

I think that your dead are my mob. At least that's how I think of them…
I'd like to understand your suicide. I don't quite get it yet.
Do you like Mozart?


-Yeah, Mozart…alchemists…thieves…actors…sorcerers, swindlers!
Mozart, yes! Language is music, words incantations. Words conjuring experience, existence. We are these sounds, these incantations, this music… Ha we are the music Alex!
Imagine the music. The music of an infinite orchestra, a super symmetrical orchestra if you will, of which we are protagonists and spectators. So vast the music that members and public are one and they carry on with their daily routines, their personal dramas, eat sleep, fornicate, they are born and die in the score. Argue, struggle, fight, and even engage in murderous wars where all of these are the excitations of strings, the turbulent fluxes of air and the shocks of percussions all in perfect harmony to the infinite music. Music and harmony. It is nearly impossible for us to produce any sound that would be dissonant to that big magic. The vibes you get from the sound “suicide” have been fine-tuned for ages. Did you ever wonder who was the first man to commit suicide? And can you imagine the surprise and incredulity of his fellow cavemen? When you use this word, or for that matter any word–love, beauty or harquebus–you are intoning a perfectly attuned and franchised sound part of the score of an infinite symphony. You are its energy, its vibrations, its language. If you were indeed able to use words for your own scope, words reflecting a unique personal concept and will, words that issued from a new pristine and independent creative centre within an independent consciousness it would be so dissonant, so disturbing that it would not only be heard above the vastness of its melody but it would tear its majesty and destroy its magic, and then maybe your electric toothbrush would mysteriously turn itself on, your garage door go insane and the whole power grid fail catastrophically….
Oh how I marvel when a child prodigy comes along, a ten year old youth maybe who–let’s say–has founded a very successful international organization to help bridge the chalk gap between first and third world. So he or she is on the stage performing what amounts to a solo passage, and it is so amusing to see how well he/she has mastered the technique of playing the right words to form phrases, counterpoints and fugues which exquisitely produce the melodies which are of such comfort to us. And then you might consider another aspect of this rather unreserved metaphor if you take a normal orchestra, one of seventy or more members which would represent a fairly good cross section of types. Individually taken these types may include weirdos, cheats, liars, perverts, scoundrels of many colours, even murderers and they may also be at odds with each other but all these individualities are of no import whatever, nor any impediment to what they have in common and what this common ability and objective can achieve by its unity of purpose. This overriding common interest elevates the individual to the power of teams, tribes, governments, nations and ultimately, species. No Alex, seriously; when you are sitting among those rows and piles of literature and philosophy, all of which by the way, is dedicated to concealment, waiting, hoping that a nice pair of tits walks into your store and into your life, what is there is not really you. That is the vehicle, the spaceship. The real you is coiled up inside you sleeping like an astronaut on a long interstellar voyage. It isn’t going to wake up until it approaches its destination. These dissonant words and concepts that I was talking about are the approaches to that destination. But that may never happen to you. Your dormant seed may go on being shuttled to one spaceship after another like an astronaut in suspended animation in a spaceship that does not have a target. These proscribed words that are the approaches to the most hidden, like the bee’s sting, have barbs that are rooted in the entrails of your master form, unless you use them as approved these words can eviscerate you, lif-erate you. If you chance upon a concept of a sound that is not part of this score or its counterpoints, you must take great care to handle it as you would pick Mandrake, only in the darkest part of the new moon when both the living and the dead are unaware.


The sign read “books and music.” I went in and saw him immersed in books and discs.
-But I don’t understand it! he protested.
-What is the point of living a few more years. It is not like a bank deposit, I said.
-True, adding to the total makes no difference. Whenever the moment comes to die you will still naturally wish to put it off.
You see Alex, the fault is not in ourselves, but in the stars.

Alex writes

-All I'like is to be allowed my fuckups.

In fact he has no idea what a fuck up really is. One of mine has lasted over forty years! I believe that only the state of motherhood can produce more enduring delusions.
Speaking of fuckups, lately, as I had just mentioned, I have mentally gone down that hall of shame. I just got mired in it and couldn’t get out of it.
I have been ad infimis since I finished the first draft of this logbook of maybes.
It is of some consolation to know that no one should feel entitled to leave this world satisfied or proud of oneself. That would be the ultimate joke, the final deception.
Excellence only sugar-coats and perpetuates the lie, and “To the best goes the most terrible eulogy: Hell is a better place because of him.”
Thus, like the censor, I am condemned to go around mumbling -Kill the poets! Kill the saints! Kill the heroes. And it does literally happen sometimes. But it cannot be explained.
Dawn and I have corresponded lately. We do that now and then. She has a good sense of humour. I remember I wrote to her from Mexico a few years back, that I had ordered a coffee in one dusty pueblo and I was served a paper cup of a lukewarm liquid of uncertain composition, and as I was looking at it trying to decide what to do with it, something came up from its depth, broke to the surface and spit at me.
-'Twasn’t me, was her reply.
This time we had a flurry of show and tell ending in:

-Alright who are you and what have you done with my dad?


I went down a familiar old trail that retraces in part
the contorted form that–pursued by hope–
the spirit followed everywhere.


***


- Soon the time will come you know!
-I know, I know.
-Are you O.K.?
-Yes… No… Maybe.




Episode 2


I am wonderful
Wonderfully lost
For a wonderful moment.



It has been 60 years since I lost the Second World War.
Sixty years!
According to Marcus Aurelius: A man of forty endowed with moderate intelligence has seen–in the light of the uniformity of nature–the entire past and future.
Ha! Intelligence! I wonder just how little of its spectrum the mind operates in to create such a uniformity of delusions that makes dialogue, debate and conflict possible. And what percentage is ideal to create the illusion of reality, love, logic and all the other crazy stuff? Surely less than the sight requires to make out a rainbow. And goodness, a much lesser proportion than the structure of a quartet! And then there is Kim! Have you seen those North Koreans march? Goodness! War! Jeremy obsesses over it. War! Why? Why does it still happen? O Jeremy, look at the playing field, and the players, how could it not happen? I thought I might reflect on the great events of my tenure. Nanking, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, but oddly enough Domicella and my aunt Virgilia’s scrawny chickens prevail and take centre stage. The mind has its reasons…the heart has its reasons too…the stomach also…the prick most of all! Damn! I was telling Margot a few days ago, that assuming there is a “me” aside from all these parts, their functions and their needs, this wretched me has been held hostage by its parts for seven decades!
This small town was in the deep south of Italy which in A.D. 1941 was still immersed in the long shadows of the dark ages wherein according to Carlo Levi, who was exiled there, not even Christ would venture, keeps popping up. Every time I open a carton or a fancy plastic package of grade A large eggs from free run chickens, I think of her. I remember, hell no! I am there! Shit, remembering her I feel I become her! I am interchangeable now. I understand her, my stupid aunt! I understand her and therefore I must be like her, like her and those stupid free run chickens of hers, I am those too. Their misery, their humiliation! My present is translucent or something like that. It has lost its edges, its sharpness and contrast…. I see myself as I would see the superimposed reflection of me on a store window. The past seems more relevant, more real while the present has acquired the ghostly substance of a deja vu. The past re-membered, seems even more real than it did in actual time. The tall warning pikes at the entrance of town to ward off brigands still standing. At night the Vesuvius’ foculae flaring up, dying down. Me trying to stay awake, unwilling to give up that dreamy sensation, that magic. So hard to sleep now. Was it yesterday that Eric for once agreed with me? -Yes, you are the father to my certain death… How long will it be before he understands these words he wrote and the irrepleaceability of the gift? All these things that are happening to me now, present and past, memories, reveries, delusions are all meshing together into one big hallucination which include Dementia who is knocking at my door as I am going over this phantasmagorical log book. Hell! I have been practising for senility for the past fifty years at least! I should be ready for it now! At 73 I am finally ready for this crazy world! Ha-haaa! You know what did it for me?...and you maybe. All those parts, those reasons…that string of eggs maybe, or that reservoir of sperm and all those auxiliary faculties allocated to them as main propagandists. Concepts, praetorian guards and ladies in waiting. I wish someone had warned me. Of course I would not have understood it. I was not meant to, not allowed to! I wouldn’t have made a good soldier, a good citizen a good sperm dispenser. As I am editing these entries, things are happening. Dementia across the hall from me, is knocking at my door. She is cute, her name is Florence, she is 77 and has a plastic tube hanging from her nose that is long enough for her to wheel her walker out of her apartment, cross the hall and knock at my door. On the walker she has a plastic pail for her to spit in and a box of Kleenex to wipe her drooling. Flo has a crush on me. Olive, down the hallway a few doors also has a crush on me, but Flo has territorial advantage. She is first at intercepting me. Olive is cute too, a bit older, bluish white hair, ash white face with a very bright red tongue always hanging out. These two little ladies must have motion sensors. I am so careful not to make a sound when I open my door, but they never miss me. They are out in the hall coming at me with cookies and cupcakes. Olive is resentful of Flo’s strategic advantage. I have taken to staying in a lot. Like in that bachelor apartment on the ground floor of this brownstone building where a bunch of hooligans occupied the top floor.
To counter Flo’s territorial advantage and long enough tube Olive had to resort to undercover activities, spying and reporting to Flo’s younger brother. All is fair in love and war right? The two sides of the same coin right? The wages of love is war! Or is it the price? It bothered me that I just could not get through to her. That I didn’t want hugs and kisses and more cookies every ten. Then she started banging at my door at six in the morning for heaven’s sake! Killing her crossed my mind. Mercifully Olive’s subversive activities achieved the desired effect. Flo’s son came to visit me, to explain and apologize. He confirmed Olive’s intelligence activities which were corroborated by his sister’s sudden, insistent and surprising demands for fancy clothes and lots and lots of cookies and chocolates.
-She suffers from dementia you know!
-Yeah I know.
-She cannot help herself you understand! Yeah, I know. I have not known anyone that could. For sure I don’t know where the hell all others get off on their Byzantine flights of logic and tell me that I have free will because so far as I am concerned, if I was not asked whether I wanted to play this crazy game to begin with, how the hell they expect me to Rah-rah now that I am forced to play this game of free will?
Kierkegaard:
How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint? [2]
I think that Flo has never felt the need to wonder about that. She is in chemistry with me. The “Love” program in her is still running. And damn it if she was only sixty years younger I’d have a hell of a time to free will myself out of it even after years of disciplined precautions. O.K., I am thinking that if premature ejaculation in my youth was a hair-trigger device of necessary if not Intelligent Design aimed to achieve the primary and sole objective of copulation eschewing all other considerations and causing disappointing anticlimax and confusion on the more culturally submissive other end of the transactions, this persistent geriatric libido is now equally trying and confusing in an old man without appearing the least intelligent. The magnificent prop choreography is starkly absent when in your seventies you are jerking off in an aluminium trailer or Flo appears at your door at six a.m. all dallied up and painted with a tube hanging from her nose. The damned romantic label has completely worn off revealing a mechanism that operates strictly on a–try anything and implement anything that works–basis, and don’t give a fuck how unseemly it might be… I don’t know, did Kant jerk off punctually at some private freewill hour of the day?
-Come on let’s go to Buffalo for coffee!
-What?
-Come come let’s go!
-Immanuel, it is almost two in the morning for chrissake!
-Ha, so what!
-It is a two hour drive in a snow storm and your tires are as bald as billiard balls!
-Ah don’t be such a poor sport.
-Where the hell do you get these crazy urges?
-It isn’t an urge!
-No?
-No, it is a spontaneous expression of my spirit which as you know is in my view the expression of freedom.
-Then it looks like you are necessarily free to go. But not with me. You can take Daimon with you if you want company.
-Ha-ha! Not me either! Not because I might not enjoy it but because I just can’t imagine driving with Immy to Buffalo for coffee…at two a.m. in a blizzard.
-Speaking of limitations, since my epiphany you often taunt me by questioning my readiness. I don’t bother answering because it is not possible nor even necessary, but let me ask you a parallel question. Let’s say you are a spirit endowed with knowledge and reason and blessed with equanimity and some higher authority comes along and tells you that the time has come for you to be born. To be born subject to complete chance as someone somewhere down here on this wild earth. Would you be ready?
Dreamy realities, actual revelries! So many and so convincing. But now only two things are worth considering.




Episode 3


I am the varmint
That lived under the stone
That the builders rejected.

The reason I was sent to stay with my aunt and uncle, had something to do with the war. I don’t recall exactly why my dad chose Domicella. It was not only a distant little place geographically but also about a thousand years in the past. Naturally I enjoyed the strange experience. It was amusing to me feeling so out of place and so different.
Uncle Nicola was the post officer, an important position in a small town since as a post officer he handled not only the mail and the telegraph but also all the banking, pensions, war bonds, savings accounts, and–I believe–also the distribution of rations coupons. Judicious and clever mishandling of some of his functions was not only modestly lucrative for my uncle but also placed him in the enviable position of being able to extend favours to his social superiors. For instance; the baron who owned most of the town and also the only automobile in it. If the baron needed to use the car he would have to turn to my uncle for the gasoline coupons. The old Fiat was locked up in the garage which used to be a stable and part of our compound which included the post office, our living quarters plus some other buildings forming at its centre a small court yard. This gravel enclosure, as devoid of life as the surface of the Moon, was where my aunt’s scrawny chickens were allowed free run and kept their claws and eyes sharp .
The extreme measures imposed by the war on most of a population were a source of perverse delight to my very own uncle Scrooge.
In retrospect I know now that he was doing the right thing and but also that he would have imposed wherever possible a margin of stringency superior to what was already dictated by the ministry not only because he would profit by it but also because he understood the natural wisdom of being hungry and felt it behoved him to make sure everyone else benefited from his insight at least enough to be as hungry as he or even hungrier. A situation of such scarcity and uncertainty compelled many who, like my uncle, could permit themselves that little bit of the superfluous that would make life tolerable, to restrain from doing so in order to add to that security cushion which eventually would be wiped out by some man-made economy cataclysm. In any case my uncle revelled in severe conditions and gloomier expectations. Austerity and controlled gloom he constantly preached to my aunt Virgilia who responded with shudders, laments and constant jitteriness.
Uncle Nicola was a big gruff man of very few words. Very very few words. He limited himself whenever possible to respond or comment with appropriate grunts which to my recollection, did not include approval. Approval or satisfaction to him did not seem worth the effort of a simple grunt. I suppose it was up to my aunt to know when silence implied assent. Aunt Virgilia was a small nervous woman with a kicked-in Pekinese dog face complete with a fixed toothy grimace which suggested that some grisly thought was permanently lodged before her mind’s eyes. Their terse and brief exchanges were usually concluded with a grunt and a whine. He grunted and she whined. Sometimes, often actually, she kept on whining long after the grunting had ceased. Come to think of it, I don’t ever remember any other kind of response from her. Yet, all considered, I can’t say that they ever failed to establish their priorities or perhaps even their deepest feelings. A memorable example of this terse exchange of information would occur when aunt Virgilia had prepared a meal, supper let’s say, beans, let’s say, up to the point when it was time to add the condiment which usually meant preciously expensive olive oil. Aunt would then require the presence and supervision of my uncle who would be working away at the other end of the house in his post office. There were no corridors in the ancient building so that to go from one end of the building to the other one had to go through all the other rooms in between. There weren’t many, but they were large. The point being that she could not just holler. I happened to be around, so she would send me to fetch him for the important task at hand. I loved it. It was a chance for me to be in that fascinating place with the large assembly of glass voltaic batteries, the telegraph ticker, the manifestos on the walls, Mussolini’s various poses and exhortations plus bulletins and war bonds advertisements. I would usually find my uncle deeply absorbed in his mysteriously important work which had to do with enormous ledgers, piles of loose documents and a lot of thunderous stamping while the ticker off and on sprang into activity. Having delivered the message which may have been confirmed by an almost inaudible grunt, I waited and watched. Click-click, click-click, or THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Sometimes he would have to seal with red lacquer important official letters, for these communications he used new envelopes rather than turn used envelopes inside out as he did for lesser correspondence. Begrudging the new envelopes he doubled his effort on using only as much lacquer as it was materially possible to impress a barely legible seal. He held his breath watching the small pool of red lacquer build up to a minimum usable little pool and, Bang! Not a drop wasted. It resulted that his seals were irregular and borderless like some of the ancient silver coins that had been filed a bit more over and over again as they circulated from one parsimonious hand to another. Waste not–drip, drip, drip–want not, THUMP!
He-he! This reminds me of another uncle of mine, uncle Serafino.
I am laughing, not because this story reminded me of uncle Serafino but because as often is the case, this attic rummaging sparks an uncontrolled chain reaction of memories that light up like a flashing marquis the whole of history. The thing is that this story is happening in 2005 in British Columbia, now 2006, is the time of rewriting 1941. The old man with a tuberous nose and pale blue eyes barely breathing as he is focusing so intensely on the melting tip of a stick of lacquer, would have been a man in his forties even as the 10 year old kid who is watching him is a much older man. All history is but the present awareness of it.
By and by, uncle would push off the big ledger, take off his glasses and start wiping the lenses as we walked through the house and into the kitchen where aunt was standing by the pot, bottle in hand and that worrisome grin straining to gain maximum expression as uncle approached. Then, and only after he had finished wiping his glasses and grunting his readiness to proceed, aunt turned the light on and the two of them converged under the dim cone of light over the pot. Their heads drew close together over the pot of beans and under the feeble light of a 45 watt light bulb in what seemed to me the only act of intimacy they were capable of. Uncle Nicola adjusted his glasses as aunt Virgilia raised the bottle over the pot and with a remarkably steady hand for such a jittery little person, began tilting it slowly and steadily under their focused attention. Eventually as if responding to a precise and imperative will rather than any laws of physics, the thinnest thread of the precious liquid began pouring down unbroken and unwavering so as to appear motionless, uniting the tip of the bottle to which my aunt was attached to the surface of the beans and at the same time by some ineffable but palpable intensity drawing into this unity my uncle and me for a couple of magical seconds. The tension that had formed with that thin column of oil held our eyes, our breaths and our hearts and thoughts together with the pot, the bottle, the flickering light bulb aloft in a dimension of suspense in which it seemed nothing else mattered or even existed. A volley of grunts startled me. My aunt jolted. The bottle jerked upright, the thin thread that had suspended us was broken, poor aunty wined long, loud and miserably, more so than usual. It was obvious that the startling crescendo of grunts had lasted longer and had grown louder than she would have wished (it invariably did), and by it she had inferred that her reaction time had been judged very unsatisfactory. Anyway the spell was broken, the light was switched off, the room was plunged into grey dimness. Uncle took off his glasses and grunted back to his office to finish off what he had been working on before this daily ritual had interrupted it. Aunt moaned away like after shocks as she chased with a finger an invisible drop of oil up the bottle’s neck and back into its interior. Then she licked her finger, corked the bottle and placed it back in its tabernacle.
Ha, the chickens! Out in the gravely courtyard are the chickens, the bottom part of the Dutch door keeps them out of the kitchen, but they listen attentively to every sound. Aunt Virgilia suffers from a chronic bronchitis condition. When she starts coughing the chickens stop and listen, they diagnose the sound and at the same time they slowly and expectantly converge towards the Dutch door. If the anticipatory diagnosis which drew their attention and prompted them to slowly converge toward the Dutch door is followed by corroborating Virgilia’s footfalls approaching the same door from the inside and is moreover confirmed by more fitful coughing followed by the most promising gurgling sound of thick gathering phlegm, the outfielders come in on the run. There is great excitement in the Chicken yard! By the time the thick gob of protein is ready for launch the whole team is jostling for position. There is a sharp team out there let me tell you! To my knowledge, no fly ball was ever dropped. Other times my aunt goes fretting around the kitchen with that snarl on her face whining a bit more than usual when meal time is approaching and so time to figure out the menu for the day. This usually means beans, but not necessarily…and she bolts out and starts running after the chickens. One can see by her pursuit that she has selected some of these as targets. It is impossible to tell which one she is after in the driven panic she causes, but she is amazingly quick and deft for a little old lady and soon enough one by one she catches the ones on which she had pinned her hope for a variation in diet. As soon as she catches one she places the victim under her left arm, adjusts her grip and position for the delicate operation and then adroitly plunges her index finger into the bird’s anus! A moment of suspense follows when her quick slightly cataract eyes focus inward and the snarl relaxes enough to allow the tip of her tongue to poke out of her mouth and slide thoughtfully and slowly over to one corner of her lips or another reflecting I suppose, the direction that her finger is taking in that interior mystery in her thoughtful probing of the chicken bowels. Then in an instant it is over, the finger comes out, the tongue recedes, the chicken is dropped unceremoniously and the snarl is fully reinstated with accompanying lamentations as she turns her sights on another.
My aunt and uncle produced, I believe, 11 children, of which two somehow survived and one of which turned out to be a compulsive delinquent gambler. Whatever had been left of uncle’s savings after the war, he cleaned that out. It may not have been a fortune but in terms of turned inside out envelopes, coupons, drops of lacquer and quick thumps, it must be considered quite relevant.


I am watching Hiroshima the other day, I watch it twice, reflect on it, I am there, I am coeval with all of it. What this maybe means is that the journey, the adventure is always completed in the present, never in the past. And so in a way, it is never completed! Never past! Maybe never present. It does work in the present tense!
CHRIST! Benedetto was right, and so was Alfonso! I mean–Is and are are right just as they are dead!
Their past is our present which we misinterpret through memory as history.
But then how does it work? How do I choose…or how does it chooses me? Howie says that what he particularly appreciates about me is the fact that I never mention my past, that I don’t parade it and review it, indicating by way of it, that now regrettably, I do. It bothers him that my past is now like a backing up sewer, flooding our relationship. But I must confess that I am rather eager to admit to this emotional incontinence. This age of sighs is, as I understand it now, no mere substitute for that me as the star role of creation fading away as stage hands and spectators move on to adjacent studios and fresh new dramas. This age is the awesome now which we experience in proportion to our ability to forget as we do our mystifying egos.
-Now give me a past tense!
-DEAD!
-CHRIST! Ah well… I was beginning to think that following my reaction to meeting Quasimodo you would never speak to me again.
-Yes It’s been hard watching your balancing act on a tightrope, juggling with sharp knifes.
-Knives ugh? Yes, I have always sought to attain the edge of madness, mostly succeeded in being foolish or at best extravagant. But as Blake exhorted, I persisted. I felt that if something didn’t feel absolutely insane or at least weird, it was not worth pursuing. And then one day I opened the door to my trailer and there it was! I have not been not living my life, life has been living me! But then something happened in that brown stone house… in New York I guess.
No matter how stealthily I tried to sneak in and out those bullies were always ready for me up there on the landing. They loved terrorizing me and the other tenants who must have spent most of the time quivering in their little flats because I had never seen them. I don’t know how many of these bullies there are up there, they are loud enough to be legions. They shout threats and throw garbage, beer bottles and piss on me. I don’t know what to do about it. But one day I decided I would not take their abuse any more. I can’t understand what came over me, I just headed straight up the stairs. As I did two allies show up from I don’t know where. One is a frail, obviously timid young man, and the other a pretty and innocent looking young woman. One look and I know they are not going to be of any help, but somehow I feel good about their showing up and so even more determined. As we climb the bullying and laughter gets louder and louder and the barrage of garbage and shit that hits us is incredible. Followed by my allies I am bravely and foolishly walking into a pandemonium. A horrid scene that is likely to end in a massacre but really, I don’t care any more. I simply don’t care and when I reach the landing and I am face to face with some of the meanest and ugliest brutes one can imagine who appear to relish the opportunity to tear me to pieces, I hear myself saying in a calm commanding tone, -Enough! Out all of you! Out of here! And Jesus if they didn’t stop laughing and slink past me, rush down the stairs and away. That is the part of the whole event that left me dumbfounded. In a moment, their pigsty is empty except for the runt of the batch. A small stupid looking guy that evidently can’t summon up enough courage to sneak past me and flee with the others. He is standing at an open window and is clearly so afraid of me that would I but budge towards him he might jump to his death. So I ignored him. I let him stay up there, but to this day I wonder what made me do that, I wonder if I shouldn’t have made him jump to his death. It just bothers me that he is up there, true,quiet as a mouse, but there nevertheless and only because I didn’t want to be responsible for his death. I keep thinking that I am going to pay for it eventually, and, and yes! What if that guy is me?




Episode 4


There are only two things that I can call exclusively mine:
My folly and my death.

More precisely, the precious moments of folly snatched opportunistically now and then when the system malfunctions. These are spontaneous, serendipitous and fleeting moments, but the second, as Jacques Derrida puts it, my most personal and individual singularity, is intentional and eternal. The hour of my death. It involves forethought, planning and yes, finally, at long last! Actual FREE WILL! It has to be willed to occur well before the first stroke of midnight, while the music is still playing and the ball is in full swing.
I gave it some thought.

-No one is here by choice nor is anyone what one is by choice. Life happens to all of us and so anything that follows is a consequence of a fait accompli that forces us to make sub-choices. Under such conditions, the only true free choice available to anyone alive is self-extinguishment.
-There is no such thing as dying. What we wrongly conceptualize and grammatically incorrectly define as dying is that nasty living that happens when the life force drives on unabatedly and blindly in a body that is worn out and riddled with disease. That lugubrious and laborious rattling that sometimes denotes the body's futile struggle to hang on is not dying but living.

Juggling with sharp knives while walking on a tightrope does describe my present situation.
Why do I write? Karonne asked me that when she heard I was writing a book, or something like that. She thinks enough of me that this obsession of mine is puzzling to her. Why would I feel the necessity to write? I have been asking myself this all along. I have gone on writing, thinking that the answer might come to me as I go. This monologue, this river of regurgitations and dancing reflections that flows over the banks and spills onto this screen, is it the register of a dogged valorous search or the feeble moaning of one who is hopelessly lost? I continued to hope even as I was writing the last chapter, the closing words and now as I rewrite that something miraculous might happen, something decisive and conclusive that would reveal the first cause and the central reason for everything. And for a while it seemed that all I had managed to do was to take apart a complex mechanism piece by piece and ended up with a table full of little parts that are totally useless unless they are reassembled to form the same mechanism that so vexed me. What to do? What to do? And then I had a glimpse of what I must have known all along but could not accept. Not yet the eternally intractable because to the crucial why mind you, but still a more advanced how. And it was so obvious…so in my face…so close…so like my own skin, and everywhere at the same time that I couldn’t admit it. That one glimpse catapulted me back to the beginning, to the separation and scattering of all beings by their own self-awareness.
-O the blindness of seeing!
-Oh for heaven’s sake! What the hell are you blabbering now?
-I am NOT! I am uncovering what was never hidden.
-What?
-That you can’t have a purpose and reason at the same time. It is not possible. Get this Daimon, one cannot have an aim and be free!
-But you can choose your aim!
-Absolutely not! To do so you’d have to be able to choose your form.
Like Ginn’s kid brother, when with his dad he was looking at a plane flying overhead and he was asked if he would like to be a pilot and fly a plane. He replied, -I would rather be a wabbit. You see, form follows function, e.g. the little pieces of a clock on my table, function follows necessity, the need to know the time let’s say, and necessity must follow imbalance or uncertainty. Now then, the only thing that can create an imbalance out of nothing must be a principal property of numbers plus or minus 216 digits. Maybe not, but the movie was convincing.
-I don’t get it, but I would venture to say that you must be a subtraction.
Neither did Steve by the way! You see, Steven eagle, your eyes are younger and sharper than mine, and someone else's eyes may see better than that yet, but it is because they function so well within their spectrum and because the image is so sharp that the mind cannot see. The image blinds them. Eyes see by discriminating. By omitting most of what is there and so does the mind, its discriminating is called intelligence. It is like rails are to boxcars. It keeps most people on track. We are in effect, as smart as boxcars! Therefore we expect that if dolphins are intelligent they will share our interests and concerns, they will be on rails and towable or shunt-able. All we need to do is decipher their language and then we can proceed to discuss geometry and eventually baptise them. But this is bullshit because they have a different form. I believe my folly has served me well, and that those two things that are exclusively mine, are the only extracurricular activities preciously available to me. In “The Gift of Death” Jacques Derrida identifies one of these and I wish I had heard of it sooner. Of the very personal experience of death he declares that only by being both cognizant and mortal can this privilege be fully appreciated as the secret in which my irreplaceability is conferred to the place of my most personal and individual singularity. And it is precisely in my willingness to pay the ultimate price, which is my irreplaceability, that I gain access to what he defines as the tremendous mystery of reciprocity inherent in the ultimate gift experience. This experience is equal to–even if apparently opposite to–the act of creation, since the moment I completely submit, the instant it is my will to cease to exist is also the moment when I attain the highest potential. It is only in self-extinction that complete self-assertion is attained and celebrated. There it is! The g factor needs to be raised to its absolute level to expresses absolute freedom which is tantamount to absolute power!
Interestingly enough, this self-sacrifice to self-assertion theme occurs in fables, myths and religions. In various versions God–the creator–sacrifices himself, becomes dumb in order to create the world.
Apart from this freedom, I know now that I am not living my life, but that Life is living me so I see myself as a self-aware notion concomitant to the locus of a biological process and what comes into focus through the prism of this mind to which I feel a strong affinity, is not my life, not my will not even my mind but a role, a soupçon of fleeting suppleness within a grand scheme. And because I have finally recognized my inconsequence, my weakness, I have the power of that moment and suddenly it is like a main switch has been provided. It is big magic, it is mine. Click!
All gone!

All gone yet nothing is lost. Like those dreams I do not recall in the morning! They are not lost because I do not remember dreaming them, nor are they lost if I do remember them. Either way, would it matter had they been sweeter? Had they lasted a few R.E.M.s longer? All I can say is that if they happened they did so to serve the moment and for that moment only they made sense. So does life, with only one major difference. Now the off switch is available to me. This is the only thing that entitles me. Apart from this, I is but a label on a ephemeral event, part of a humongous fractal process to which I am but a segment, yet a segment that is now set adrift. Folly has evaded the thresher. Everything else goes to the granary where the seeds with only their mathematical codes are stored to be planted and reactivated for another season. In “The Logbook O The sea Of Cortez”, Steinbeck points out how tremendous a premium nature places on this perennial and bounteous recycling. He gives credit to the sea hare as being the most prolific of sea creatures in that it reproduces four hundred million offspring in her lifetime, or maybe even in a season. I am not sure. In either case this clearly must be taken as an indication that nature can do no more than provide for the best possible odds and that the rest is up to us.
And so it is that in P’yongyang, they are marching.


I thought that the desert would be the best place for it until I went scouting. I was devastated to find that they have not left an inch of it in its natural state. The Huns are churning it all up with their INFERNAL FUN MACHINES.
So I decided that It will have to be on a mountain top. Hence I am in these Canadian Rockies. I have to get in shape. I have stopped smoking and I am pushing myself to the limit. I stopped smoking because I plan to die soon, and for that I have to get in the best of shapes.
Finally I am glad that Jacques covered that end of it, and with eminent lucidity because that leaves me with the easier and more pleasurable task, the pursuit and the registering of my folly.




Episode 5


I will travel a road
that isn’t a road,
it will take me to a place
that isn’t a place,
and there will be no one there…
not even I.

If you do not travel with the pack you have nowhere to hide and you feel like you are lost, which you would not feel within the pack even if the pack itself was lost. In real life, Willie Wonka never finds Charlie. So Charlie grows up and goes up the Mekong to become Kurts.
Lawrence says that I am like a little kid with his fist raised threateningly to the big sky. The thing he doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know, is that most people in this great chocolate factory, take a long time to die. And even then there is that clinging, that desperate clinging which thanks to medical science can now be protracted at a sacrilegious price, by recourse to absurd surgical procedures which allows the clingons to die a little longer. And if a nation can be likened to a body, an economist ought to come up with a principle to the effect that when a nation spends as much of its budget on the sick and the dying as on waging war. it itself is dying. Mmmmh–might have to throw deodorants and pets into the equation.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundest the precept: "Die at the right time!”

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Doing is ploughing
Giving is planting
Receiving is safekeeping.… Ha-ha!

It is one-thirty in the morning.
I have been in bed for hours.
As usual I can’t sleep.
On my bed stand there is a glass of milk,
a French-English dictionary and vice versa.
A Latin-Italian dictionary and vice versa.
A note book and pen,
also one tangerine,
a box of Kleenex,
some chewing tobacco
and my quartz watch…
Mmmh.... Something is missing.


I was sixty-eight years old, I was! I had been living alone at an acceptable level of simplicity, comfort and isolation and since my divorce from my second wife, I had finally gained control, albeit guardedly, over one of life’s principle causes of turmoil and I was making slow, even if unsteady, progress on the second. You may think that it shouldn’t take much for a man in his sixties to overcome his sexual drive, and then, you may ask, what has an old man to be vain about? As for sex, when I was in my fifties, doing what I would have never thought I would be doing at that age, my wife, who was much younger but as a nurse knew some crazy things about people, said to me one day, -You know, you will be doing this when you are eighty.
I remember being vaguely puzzled at her statement for a moment, and then the notion slid off my mind like water off a duck’s back. It never even got me damp. It is like I have a firewall. Of the two though, vanity turned out to be the tougher. The hardest thing for a male to do, is to let another male almost as capable, win at a contest. To let another be the better without letting him or anyone else ever even suspect the opposite.
As I was saying, I was in my late sixties, I was alone and feeling quite pleased with my progress and my lot, when on this particular day I felt the need to reflect seriously about death. I sat down and said to myself:
-Now old man, one day soon you must die.
Having said that, it seemed that there was nothing further to be said or to reflect about.
-So that’s that! I was about to comment sarcastically, when at this apparent dead end I was struck by a thought which was as surprising and as electrifying as it was obvious.
-Yes! Nothing I can do about that! But! I can choose the where and the how!
It was incredible! I had never thought of it! Something so obvious had eluded me. It was as though all of a sudden I had discovered omnipotence. A reverse mode of omnipotence of course, but still omnipotence! I was riding in the highest, a vision formed slowly before my mind’s eyes and wonderful details were added as I eagerly placed myself centre stage.
I saw myself all alone in a great desert.
It was sundown.
I had just finished my last supper, a small meal that included bits of my favourite fairs.
I was sitting sipping wine while my lap top played some of my favourite music. As the light of day began draining off the sky and before the first stars began to flicker on, I chose a piece of Koto, Sakura, maybe, maybe my own. Anyway I put it on repeat, picked up my pills and hanging on to the bottle of wine I climbed on the roof of my van. After a minute or so, very calmly, I swallowed my cicuta, washed it down with the rest of the wine, threw the bottle away and then lying on my back, on top of the world, feeling absolutely wonderful, I let my mind flow out with my gaze into the infinite emptiness whence it had gathered. The first stars began to flicker on as my dwindling self awareness released its hold.
-THIS! This was the how! I thought triumphantly.
I felt as if the greatest gift had been bestowed on me. Was I worthy of it?
Was I mad? Was it Suicide? NO! Nothing like that at all! Why…this was not final capitulation, it was empowerment! A Fiat! The culmination and celebration of life. Time had finally come when the hitherto necessary fear of death had given way to a deliberately complete reconciliation with it. Not at all an extreme measure to avoid pain and humiliation, which would do that alright, but at the price of self esteem and a total break of faith with the greater Thou. O.K. there may be no greater Thou, but there is me at that point, a me which is greater than the sum of my faculties, virtues and deficiencies. It is at that precise moment where the will transcends desires and fears that I attain the immeasurable. It is so, just as Zarathustra says, because it is the right time for it, and to which I add, it is the right way. To go when I am at my best! Like a bridegroom. And of this I was absolutely convinced, there had never been a time when I had felt happier with myself and the world. I had made it to the top of the mountain after all!
So now all I had to do was to decide when. When would be the right time for it? It was obvious to me that this decision would not be so easy. I felt that I should neither be rushed into it by the zeal of the moment, that hubris, that inebriating feeling of omnipotence, nor that I should stretch it as much as I could in order not to miss out on anything.
I was reminded of Erwin, who being a scientist, recently expressed his chagrin that death would soon deprive him of the wonderful future discoveries. Poor man! Such a large brain stumped by such minutiae.
I decided that it would be best for me to set a date. By doing that I would be bound to it, which would not only make me worthy of it but also be of itself a rewarding accomplishment and failing to go through with it after I announced my intention to everyone I knew, I would at the very least have to eat a lot of crow. It was decided, I had to make an appointment with the Grim Reaper, and in so doing unmask him and reveal His true nature–the ultimate Beatitude and my greatest potential.
So I made an appointment with my doctor. I told him I was thinking of suicide as a better more suitable option for me than to let things take their natural course. I was going to ask him to make an educated guess as to how long that might take so that I could then set a date. A date with plenty of time to spare.
He smiled and said, -Why don’t we talk about this when you are eighty-eight?
It was my turn to smile. He had told me what I needed to know, probably better than if he had placed a stethoscope on it. But then I realized that he had given me twenty years to live. I was surprised.
-That long?
He chuckled, -Well, look at yourself!
I shook my head in disbelief. -O.K. He went on holding my file under my nose, -This is your file for the past nine or ten years. It may have contained three or four sheets of paper, -Now, would you like to see some of the other files I have for people your age?
He was right, since I had kicked my hyperthyroidism, my Ginn syndrome and my beloved second failure, I had been on nothing more than sleeping pills.
Back home I did some figuring, figuring based on nothing in particular except that I knew I wanted it to happen in summer, when nature is at its glorious best and the living is easy. I also wanted four or five years to experience what it would be like to see the world from the great divide. Finally I thought that it would be a nice gesture to leave at least a dozen years or so on the banquet of life. For the poor, for Lazarus. I picked July 17, 2007, as the date. Ready or not, here I come!
Just then Gordy came for a visit. He is an ex jet and helicopter pilot whom I got to know well enough to lose entirely my sense of confidence in those smart and competent-looking commercial pilots and in flying as a means of travel.
I told him briefly about my epiphany and subsequent decision. The thought frightened him: “Ooooh! You are taking a big chance!” He said shivering.
He meant that God would punish me. I tried to explain to him, that in my view if such entity existed he would either be too big to be angry at a little squirt like me and would surely interpret my act as the ultimate and extreme measure to overcome the darkness. If not that, but a vengeful type, the kind that would have to get a piece of hide of something so insignificant, so ill equipped, fallible and extremely mismatched, I would dare say I could not really wish to be elect to his company and I would rather take my chances with the devil anyway. I would take a Cathari attitude. And the on the other hand, if there was no afterlife, but this was it and nothing more, eighty eight years times zero or seventy four times zero still amounted to zero. But the latter a hell of lot more magnificent a zero.

The day I spent at Tetrahedron Park, on the first leg of my journey, was meant to be a pose on the boundary where the Thou Shalt and the Thou Will formed the meridian where light and dark butted. I felt of course, that I was on the light side of the demarcator, and did not notice that by being there I had acquired a shadow. My state of euphoria pre-empted such notice or consideration. I felt (quite wrongly as it turned out) as if I were in a state of grace wherein nothing could stand in my way or mar my bliss. I had dared to defy and overcome what is for a human the ultimate taboo and in doing so I had been granted the gift. I was invincible, but only invincible as Achilles. It took me a while, a long while, to discover and admit this trace but indispensable vulnerability. It was as though when I had crossed the threshold into light, a piece of the darkness clung to me. It reminded me of the runt that I had allowed to live upstairs in that brownstone house. I remembered how I felt quite unexplainably, that not to cause his death seemed wrong and that I feared it would come back to haunt me. Finally it became clear that I had spared him not out of magnanimity or mercy, but for the love of my self-image. And so although I no longer lived in darkness but in the brilliant light a part of me still belonged to that darkness. Only recently, four years or so later, I realized that it was so and that it had to be so, that so long as I still lived, I could either live on the dark side yearning for a little light, or be on the light side haunted by my shadow. In short, the search for deliverance had brought the gift, and the gift had brought responsibility and re-revealed the fact that perfection must include a flaw or there would be something missing to it and therefore not perfect. So, that is good right? Right, but this admits a chance, a seminal potential to corruptibility which dualizes as it valourises perfection. It is not really a problem but a touchstone, the problem is the inverse of it which tests us continuously and mercilessly. That is when the corruptible, the corrupt, even the most incredibly corrupt includes a seed of perfection within it and by it becomes aware of itself by that unrequited kernel of perfection then acts like a festering little devil, which source of disturbing and at times unbearable and incessant joust of desire and angst.
In time I had to change my cavalier attitude from: Ready or not, here I come! to: True or not, right or wrong, let It come!

I went to Mexico.


Yes John, to err is divine…
Divine temptation.




Episode 6


Interstate Highway 5.


Heck!
Even if I am totally insane
And if everybody and the Mayor out there
Are dead
Writing is still as much a pleasure as climbing telephone poles
And more rewarding than sex.

If this major artery could be taken as the pulse of this nation and by it, its state of health determined, an MD would be shocked by the obvious symptoms of an impending catastrophic event. A psychologist would, with equal concern and certainty, point to a state of such intense psychological stress that the patient may be said to be in the midst of total mental breakdown. I am in bed in my parked van at a rest stop a hundred or so yards off to the side, listening to the incessant and insistent howling of tires and roaring of engines tearing the night in both directions to the horizon of sound. It curiously brings to mind the lingering memory of a sound of a different age, different world; clippety-clop clippety-clop–a solitary horse and buggy labouring at a late hour up the hill towards home underscoring in the dark silence a rhythm that flowed in my veins. God! I have lived that long! No wonder I am awed and diminished by the volume, the pulse, the speed, the obsessive alacrity, the frenzy! This unrelenting madness! When I am driving and trying to keep pace with these tormented humans in their powerful machines I find that my own madness, which tempted me to set forth on this journey, is so far down the scale as to seem, by comparison, a benign, almost humorous condition. This roaring to and fro is the pulsating manifestation of that curse enshrined in the American Constitution: The pursuit of happiness, and this highway among countless others, a mechanized high powered high revved hedonistic carousel spinning faster and faster as exhilaration comes only when the ride approaches madness and catastrophe! How did it all start?
Well, it is actually quite simple! I started it! Every child does. Connecting bit by bit with this strange world outside and then, almost playfully at first, evaluating it and adjusting to it. At the same time and by the same measure by which I gained understanding, access and control with the anticipated commensurate benefits, I also became understood, accessed and controlled by it with a proportionate debit. It is the process in fact, of the breaking down and reduction of a value of universal character to that of an elemental usable-self-reproducing and disposable component. Looking back at it via a few surviving memories of that period I know now that I became enchanted–as in bewitched–in the operation of enmeshing with this surprising world, lured by the joy of discernment and power and compromised or indeed enslaved by my success or at least the will and hope to succeed. Knowledge Gained, Virtue Lost. Unavoidably so, without a doubt, but what a shame! Or is it? It reminds me of a lecture by Alan Watts in which he suggests that to understand the Tao one must forget everything one knows and become as a child. A child that has not yet began the internal versus external process of cognition and separation with all the engaging consequences that follows. I have only glimpses of that stage, a piece of moss on a wall, walking unsteadily into the water of the sea. Is this useful in understanding how this astounding process could eventually lead me to be barrelling down a scary highway in my red motorized pumpkin? And for what motive? And I don’t mean the superficial or apparent reason, such as: “Oh just another snow bird going south for the winter.” No, I want to know the real archetype magic of it. Not only of that incipient stage of discovery but also of the insane accumulated magic that makes today seem normal, acceptable and tomorrow possibly more so.
The mind-boggling question is not really, “is all this really happening?” because it certainly is, but rather: “Oh Lord, does it have to, do I have to?”
Why would something like me for one, of the character of Tao, the configuration of an Atman be eventually turned into a powerful idiot amidst other countless idiots roaring up or down an infernal network of highways without the least sense if what he is pursuing is out there or inside, or anywhere?
Perhaps! Just perhaps, some of these may be heading to a Buddhist retreat in Southern California where at a price they might be painstakingly instructed to erase from their minds the world they had hitched on to in order to experience again what it is like to be without concepts. Something godly had to be born into the world, become an idiot (preferably of some means) so that it may be possible for it to hire a Guru to help him retrieve what he has forfeited in the process of acquiring those means. God-man-God I have done that too! Big and exotic mumbo jumbo for the most part! Among the myriad forms by which creation attempts to experience itself there had to be one, even if only one, to negate the whole experiment. That so far as I know, and with the possible remarkable exception of Peregrinus Protheus, I had to be the one is more a bumble bee factor attributable to the divine economy than that of favour. That in spite of it I still feel enormously privileged is soon reinforced by one of the wackiest most unexpected incidental experiences that you might ever imagine.
Driving this hellish juggernaut farther and farther away from the Canadian border and, alas! from CBC 2, a tide…a tsunami of patriotism and spiritual doom invades the airwaves. Whenever you turn the radio on and you press the search button you are invariably tuned in to the clearest most potent reception of perpetual bible thumping and sabre rattling anywhere (I hope) in the universe. It seems that there is nothing so pressing and so urgent for anyone alive to do and do so immediately, as to arm himself to the teeth and run into the arms of Jesus. These truculent sanctimonious criers are as raucous and relentless and as forceful as all the speed and horsepower that is bearing down on you. Between them and the traffic stands my invincibility, and if I make it through, it will prove itself mightier than anything on earth. But then even more astounding as you progress further south towards Mexico, another tsunami approaches from the south! It is of equal intensity and urgency but of completely different character. The ENEMY? Maybe I am now swamped by two clashing Armageddon’s armies! But of course they are not the forces of good against those of evil There are not and there will never be such armies. The misinterpretation was incurred by me as many others when I didn’t realize that the Holy Book I was trying so hard to apply was the Bible For Dummies version of it. The original being lost I presume, or chucked in some jars as yet undiscovered. You can appreciate the confusion! Anyway I have come to the conclusion that this battle is being fought here and there and as always, by the armies of the fat against those of the lean, with nature naturally rooting for the lean. So here I was, in no man’s land, between the fat lumbering on almost crushed by the weight of their armaments and means, facing the lean, the indigent, groping dreamily as the frenetic rhythms of mariachis and cucarachas extolled the rapture of merchandise and consumption which they should covet as if there were no tomorrow so that they may be fattened. This I could understand. I remembered that on the plateau of Oaxaca, far away from the great battle, where insecurity is a constant so ingrained into the psyche of its inhabitants, that people moved around on foot, not as if they walked on the earth, but as if they caught it with each step.
Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!
It is the only plausible explanation, for the people in this front line of poverty, to be so boiling happy about the prospects of acquiring some of the goods of the rich materialist neighbours to the north, which at the same time explains why those, who are so steeped in hardware shit, to almost touch heaven, have succumbed to a morose garrison mentality and obsess about their souls.
If I had to make a choice between them, I think I would rather put up with 24/7 mariachi but I’d rather be a wabbit of course or at least (as Veronica did) convert to Baseballity




Episode 7


Ideas too, have their season. New ones are few and usually appear following one storm or another, and then they either bloom too early and are burned by a late frost, or too late and never come to fruit. Then there are those that come in full season when all other fruits are good picking and thus may be overlooked or not appreciated. But those that did ripen and were picked should be the flavour of that season only. Daimon had another fit. He was right I am no avatar I am a frail butterfly on a field of poppies on the front line of advancing and clashing graves. It is a macabre demolition derby. The graves crash into each other and are demolished, or are shot off from the dragon-like mouth of Big Bertha and explode, releasing the corpses inside. The battle wages on, opening great wounds on the earth to fill with dead sacrifices, the voracious gullet of unappeasable and implacable old follies. Words, ideas will not slacken the jaws, they must be drowned in blood. I must not bear a light to this massacre but bleed upon it. If I do not bleed, if I cease to bleed for whatever reason, I am also dead. Driving a coffin, riding a bomb, dead. I was talking to Eric about this just the other day, telling him to bleed and bleed well! Like Andrea Chenier bleeds in the dream of the world aria. The whole world will be completely dead when artists sit contentedly at their easels and poets sing of nature with joy. When the armies of evil are defeated, it will be a dead world. Seek then your own defeat, I tell you my Isaak. Do not fight the dust, the noise and the wind, but fight to lose your own battle with all your energy. Give to this perfect hell, a bleeding soul.
On the other end of the scale, my brother, whom I had long given up for dead, called me the other day. Yes there was a time when I tried and failed to cut all ties. These bonds that we grow into, become our roots and then in turn we become roots to others. My brother became strong, deep roots, clinging to rocks and darkness. I suspect that this is Steve’s problem too. He sees himself as an Indian root fighting against invading white roots. I have no roots; I get my nourishment from the new morning’s dew. Let the sky feed me or let me wither away in this wind-torn desert.
Speaking of desert, that is in part the reason why I decided to go south that winter. I had been in Baja before, and discovered some great deserts that I thought would make a proper site for my ascension. For the same reason, I am now here in the Kootenays, a place of great mountains and rain forests. Possibly a good place for it.
Daimon is having another fit. He is right. So, O.K. There is no place to ascend to!
But there is a place to ascend from!

*

Highway #3 starts thirty five miles east of Sand Diego at the typically demolition derby kind of Mexican town of Tecate. From there it runs up, down and around some the most rugged terrain of this rugged Baja peninsula for about seventy unforgettable miles to Ensenada. It is a harrowing narrow band of asphalt traversing one of the weakest regions of space/time continuum known to me. This paved road is narrow and with no shoulders at all. The white line on your side of it is the end of the world as you know it. In winding high places God’s presence becomes particular and palpable. Driving this roller coaster forces your body to gather and lock up in a posture that physically projects your sight and your mind into sharp and unwavering focus at a precisely calculated distance just ahead. With your back stiffly leaning forward, your head thrust above your firm ten and two grip of the steering wheel, you are clutching the seat with a red alert buttocks formation. The tip of your right foot is poised with great sensitivity to exert just the right pressure on the gas pedal. In this body posture and with undivided attention, you have achieved those mental and physical attitudes that are a prerequisite for proper worship. God is right there, your back seat driver. In some places where the road is cut out of the mountainside or is following the crest of a hog’s back where the friable terrain has eroded part of its bed, your side of the pavement ends jutting out suspended above the abyss a bit like the deck of an aircraft carrier. One moment of inattention guarantees you a splashy entrance into that other place. I would say that it is difficult to remain an atheist on this road and the numerous crosses laden with fading paper and plastic flowers testify to this and indicate with some precision I suppose, the exact location where the delicate membrane was breached. If there are space/time variants where this material world’s has a tendency to herniate into the immaterial, this road, at three in the morning, must be considered one of the best places to be driving for a peak spiritual experience.
Anyway since my driving it to Ensenada was such a challenge and I have to say, an achievement from which I derived some justified pride and confidence, after a brief stay there, I decided to drive back at night. It has changed me. It was eerie and at the same time spellbinding, yeah! A magic drive culminating at about four in the morning with a spectacular moon crescent flanked on each side on the ecliptic by Venus and Jupiter. I said to myself: “Don’t look Ruth!” But I did! And more than once!
I didn’t feel right being in Mexico this time. It is easier and I am always more comfortable being poor (or so perceived) among the rich, than being rich (or so perceived) among the poor. It is possible that if I had gone further south as I had planned, I would have enjoyed it. Up to when I decided to make that magical night drive, the whole trip had been a disappointment. There was nothing really wrong with me staying at Karonne and Dale’s place. There was a humorous side to it of course as there is mostly everywhere I go. O.K. It’s a very nice house not yet completed nor furnished. Nice location, nice lot enclosed by a meter or so high ornamental wall. At the back, where wall abuts to the house, it rises to the height of the building and neatly compliments its design so that it looks as an extension of it. Entrance is provided both by a very nice wooden door with a neat little spy window and right beside it by a roll-up garage door for vehicle access. My raised roof van would not clear it. Since I could not drive into the compound, the next best place to park was outside the wall on the adjacent lot which they also own. This meant that to do as I had planned which was to sleep in my van and use only the household plumbing, I had to hop down from my side sliding door, climb two steps made with loose cinder blocks, heave myself up to the top of the wall itself keeping in mind the protruding rim bars, hop down onto some more cinder blocks, walk a crescent around the hot tub then climb some wacky poured cement steps the first of which is not only very high but also sloped, to climb to the porch and into the house. The point I wish to make here, is that one has no idea how many times one has to go to the bathroom, or wash one’s hands, or rinse a dish or get a pot of water or do something even remotely connected to house plumbing until one is forced to hop down, climb up, steady oneself, watch the rods, hop down climb up etc., etc. After a couple of days I was managing it like a cricket, but I also found out that these activities took up most of my day. There was little time left for me to explore, write, sketch or do anything else. So I decided to take my foam and bedroll to the house and sleep there. This meant of course that my stove, food, clothes, laptop etc., were in my van now and that I was going through the same rickety routine as before only in the reverse order. Whereas before I started my day with my cup of coffee heading up and down and around more or less straight to the bathroom . . . ah hell! You get the picture. I was getting in good shape though.




Episode 8


I have been camping in a scruffy desert on the south east corner of Imperial Valley, California.
I found a nice secluded site under a bunch of chattering palm trees right by the canal waters of the Colorado River. Water with the zing I like for a morning dip to instantly ping myself awake. Since I got here a month ago I have been left alone, some humans have jogged or bicycled by, but I have made no contact. It is peaceful; quiet except when the wind blows.
-Occasionally you might mention the fact that most of the time you were bored out of your fucking mind!
-It wasn’t that bad!
-The hell it wasn’t! What I can’t figure out is why you twist things around to make everything sound exciting or funny?
-It does look funny now! Like the coyotes on new year’s eve, like, like everything!
-Yeah, but what about the rest of the day, the rest of the time and most of the trip?
-Yeah, it was boring.
-You are panning for gold in a river of boredom! Maybe you ought to join your peers at the camp ground, maybe sit in a hot tub with them! Ha-ha!
It is true. I started out from Tetrahedron Park thinking that I had earned a special dispensation from endless and meaningless drudgery. I had turned the one stone that Sint Stephen had missed, the only one left unturned, the one with the big MAYBE written on it. The most terrifying one! There could be nothing greater to accomplish nor anything to stand in the way. I was in a state of euphoria, felt elected, invincible. Time would stand still for me, the universe would have to yield in homage to my apotheosis. Ah well.

I did make a feeble attempt of going south, to La Paz, El Trionfo, or at least to the beautiful Catavina Desert, but I soon desisted. I didn’t have the stamina and the nerves for such a drive. I am decadent, I like shoulders on roads, nice wide paved shoulders. I also tend to treasure, to extol the virtues of appreciating small comforts and simple routines. As one grows older one loses heroes as a growing boy looses toy soldiers. The taste for challenges on which the young spirit thrives also goes. Adventures, I still like but with a minimum of effort. It makes me laugh now that I had chosen a desert place in which to die paying no attention to such details as comforts and paved shoulders. Heck, maybe even a MacDonalds! A few years earlier I had hitch-hiked up and down the whole peninsula. A late bloomer, Veronica euphemistically used to call me.


I was disappointed though, this I can say. I was looking forward to El Trionfo, La Paz, Los Cabos and then maybe take the ferry to Pocolomombo or whatever, and drive down through Puerto Escondido, down to and across Chiapas and then to Xocen, the centre of the world!
In El Trionfo waiting in line for a larga distancia public telephone I watched a bovine standing across the road with his ear pressed against a hydro pole. It seemed to me that the animal was listening to the humming of the wires and watching me watching him, then let out long loud bellowing lament every minute or two. It was puzzling. I had no way of knowing if these laments were directed at me or were a response to his larga distancia conversation with another bovine somewhere down the line. I turned to Antonio. What is that animal doing there? Antonio was amused by my stupidity. He was tied to that pole across from the small tienda because they were going to butcher it in the morning. I strained my eyes to see the rope, and indeed now I was able to see it. The poor thing was tied on such a short rope that it seemed as though he was intentionally standing there. I did not dare ask why this why that, I figured that the short rope prevented the animal from thrashing around and maybe break it in the night. As it was, the poor thing could not move an inch, all he could do is look at me and bellow plaintively as though I was responsible for his predicament or he was appealing to me for help.
That night as I lay in my hammock looking up to the starry sky, I must have been the only one in the whole town not able to ignore the drama and get some sleep. In the deep crystal quiet of the desert night, that persistent lacrimose interior sorrow poured out and rose straight to heaven creating a mighty draft which sucked my soul up with it. The next day I marched down to the dark little store which reminded me of another dark little store of my youth. And I found what was the concrete residue of my unpleasant night experience, in a large galvanized laundry tub. It looked like it had been hacked to pieces with machetes. The owner invited me to pick one out. I got a pinch hold of a piece maybe half an inch thick and about two inches wide and I pulled, and it kept coming and coming as I kept pulling and pulling. When it came free from the tub of remains, I was standing in that dingy dark store like a Donatello, a piece of what had been a feeling suffering desiring being almost a yard long hung from my hand. I think I might have stayed like that, semi real, with this limp piece hanging from my hand for ever, had the store keeper not grabbed it from me and rolled it in a piece of paper. I tell you, that right from the start, if any religion, ANY GOD, tells you that you should have domain over the lesser creature, it is false religion: A False God! I went home, cooked it and ate it. It was tough and disgusting but I forced myself to eat the whole thing as if taking communion with that stupid beast and being a living testament to the terrible lie.
The teacher knew, I think, that there would be no second coming, no Armageddon, no heaven, no deliverance at all, and said so. The shit you see is the shit you get! He may or may have not made have used these words but this was the message. This world does not come with a god or a Tinker Bell, and it is not meant to reform itself! It is waiting for you and you are waiting for it. Just like the two lovers at Monster Park.

And I would have liked going to Xocen again. I spent one of the coldest nights I could remember in the middle of Yucatan even though I owned the warmest fluffiest blanket in the whole town. Weird.
Xocen, the center of the world! It must cause these weird things! Anyway, if you have never tried it, wrapping yourself up in a big blanket and then getting on a Oaxaca hammock, is simply impossible. I had a hell of time trying, hoping to survive the night, waiting for the sun to come up. There is a lot of waiting in life, maybe a lot more waiting then there is of things coming to those who wait. But the sun did come up at long last. I must have looked like the saddest bundle sitting on stump that the locals had ever seen. Shame and anger were vying for the attention of that forlorn bundle. I guess only those would bother. Oh I do like my simple comforts …like central heating or at least an old van with a nice thick foam mattress in it. The tough white man from the big north shivered in shame. It must have taken an hour before I cared enough to respond to my host’s caring attention. The shaman sent his cute daughter to me with a barely tepid brew which could have been piss for all I cared and for its taste. I supposed that’s when something should have surfaced and spit at me.
Nevertheless during that long and miserable night I made a very interesting observation. Not new actually, but the confirming evidence of a curious phenomenon that I had noticed during the war and then in northern Quebec, in Ontario and even on some nature programs on TV. As I hung in my hammock shivering in the night I saw that every member of the family I was staying with slept blissfully in their own hammocks with only a small blanket laid on top so that their backside was completely exposed. Later on that morning I asked my host how they managed to sleep with only a blanket on top of them. The Shaman seemed surprised at my puzzlement but when he answered he did so with obvious matter of fact sincerity. -Oh the bottom doesn’t feel cold, only the top does!
But of course! Any idiot who tried but once should know that you can’t stretch out a hammock, hold it and climb on it while wrapped in a blanket, and that therefore the contract between nature and those who inhabit its peculiar conditions takes these things into account and allows reality to conform accordingly. My problem that night was that I belonged to a different union, subject to a different contractual arrangement. In some sub-Saharan desert I would, no doubt, quickly starve to death. Nature does make concessions, but it is quick to rescind any provision that are not used or are supplanted artificially and thus unclaimed. The more we become independent and self sufficient the harder nature comes down on us when our clever inventions fail. I was elated by this clear confirmation of one of my pet theories and so I felt well compensated for my great discomfort. Later that day, with my silly happy explorer mood fully re-established I was further rewarded when the Shaman, as he had promised, took me to the Mayan holy place that marks (yet another) the centre of the world. A sacred and magic place which houses the magic rock and is the site of yearly great celebrations and rituals. After such a build up, I should have been prepared for a big let down. The place was in fact the site of a small church. In it there were a few benches, a simple altar, a couple of candlesticks, a lectern, a little bell etc., and in the centre of the altar the great magic rock. La Santa Cruz. Wouldn’t you know it! It was in the shape of a cross which was wearing at the time, a flashy T-shirt bearing the name of some American university. From the exposed ends of this Santa Cruz stone, it seemed to me that it had formed naturally by crystallization. Either four large crystals radiating outward from a common point at a ninety degree angle forming a rudimentary cross, or perhaps more interesting from a geological point of view, two large crystals intersecting. That did not seem probable, but since I was not allowed to look under the T-shirt, I switched my attention to the other objects on the altar hoping to discover something that was not so basically catholic in character. So it was with some excitement and expectation that I discovered a very small bunch of what appeared to be chicken feathers tied with a rough twine. I picked it up reverently and asked the shaman as of its possibly mystical use. He took the feathers from me and demonstrated their use by dusting the altar with it.
There was though, another kind of magic in that small pueblo of scattered huts among the surrounding scrub. All the females wore the same plain white dress and the males the same white pants and shirt, their movements became a play of appearances and changes. The girl that had disappeared inside the hut a moment before would reappear as an old woman, then maybe the old woman disappears to reappear as a mere child. Sometimes where one went in two or more might come out. I wondered how it would work in a North American city if all females, women and children dressed the same? But I could not even begin to imagine. Yet if he is anything, man is an idea. So when all are dressed alike, they must be a common idea. A standardized idea which is meant to blend and be added to the fraction of the whole. What would a young Mayan girl think and feel if she were made to wear a red dress?
My first memorable experience with this structural social constraint happened when I finally persuaded my mother that my life was not worth living if I could not own a Tom Mix hat displayed in the window of a small dark store in which a little old lady sat. Every time we went to catch the bus to Varese, my mother had to drag me by that Tom Mix hat. It was close to the end of the war. My mother was going through a very difficult period and expecting worse to come. So she broke down one day. The old lady got up, went to the window to fetch that big white hat. The window was emptied. The little lady still sat there, but there was nothing in the window. I had the hat at home, hidden! I could not wear it when I played with the other kids knowing that all of them must have gone by that hat who knows how many times! I just could not summon enough courage to be seen wearing it. And it was just as trying for me, maybe more so, not to wear it after all I had put my mother through to get it. Fortunately soon after that the big trouble my mother had anticipated and worried so much about fell upon us and the hat was forgotten.
I have no idea what happened to it. Missing in action.




Episode 9


I got back to southern California. I noticed this place on my way from Yuma to Tecate, it is on a segment of an old highway that runs along the Mexican border. A nice high desert zone, not as Moorish as the Algodones nor as Zen as Catavina, but it does grow those cacti that made for very good sketching my first trip down here. I always wanted to do it again and to try to capture what it feels like from the inside to be a cactus. The outside interior of Bergson. This though is no longer necessary because if you can believe this, while driving on Interstate 5, I had an insight on the inner being of a cactus. It dawned on me that in a small scale it feels and functions like all the highways, cities, factories and malls of this great nation, of this great world. The whole world of Ovorton and my own metabolism duplicated in a cactus.
After all I am–according to the latest in genetics–only one percent human. So the cactus is probably only one percent cactus and so on. Turning it the other way around makes it an even more interesting thought; ninety nine percent of me is not me. I am in total agreement with that. Here in the desert, shame upon shame, a tiny part of this ninety nine percent that I am not has appeared as mere blip on the screen of U.S. Homeland Security. Really! They have picked me up. It went like this: I got to this camp site towards sunset, found a very nice location with a natural fireplace built in against one of those massive granite boulder compositions that occur here. In fact here, these boulder extravaganzas achieve extremes I have never seen before. These megaliths are piled up one upon another to form mountains. Anyway, I was very pleased with the prospect of a staying a while. I slept well for me, got up just before sunrise, made coffee in a hurry because I wanted to be immersed in that pre-dawn glow which charges me with a vivifying false optimism and eagerness in capturing that special aural moment of a dawning day. And out there all alone that morning felt like it belonged to me somehow. I did have to alter my usual morning routine a bit however. Instead of my usual coffee-cigarette-dump, I went for a walk.
About half an hour later I found myself bathed in sunlight on a rise which dominated the surrounding landscape when the second part of my morning routine–that is the B Movement–caught up with me. Why not? My B Movement al fresco!
Now I have been working on a theory that weird and funny things do not just happen to me, that they are not coincidences or synchronicities. I mean what can happen to me in a desert, two miles from the nearest highway, far from the nearest town and at that early hour? Nothing right? But the weirdest things have their way with me. So there I am on top of a knoll, facing south in the proper squat position with that generous and resplendent orb slightly over to my left and right on cue an air plane zooms by very low right above me. Oh well so what? I grumbled a bit because the timing was so bad! After the first beat it wouldn’t have affected the mood that much. Before I could fully recover the mood I heard the chopping sound of an approaching helicopter. This not merely disturbed the natural flow of things but truncated them. Yet I maintained my position and was determined not to give up the moment. Unfortunately more often than not valour is the hapless offspring of indecision and poor judgement that is often misinterpreted as courage and determination. When I spotted it, it was coming low and very fast for a chopper and on a curve that indicated a close fly by. My mood had vanished. To hell with them! Maintain your position Claudio at all costs! It commanded me as if I were General van Paulis at Stanlingrad!
With the worst possible sense of timing, strength of character, tenacity, and righteous determination shows up from nowhere and forces me to hang on to a moment that is utterly lost. Another problem was that to maintain my position was becoming very difficult, in fact at that point my legs were cramping up so that I was not at all sure that I could stand up without help. I was pondering the larger aspect of the incident that leads into the subtle yet vast undergrounds of the psyche when one thought prevailed, just what was my ass’s albedo. O! And wouldn’t you know it! Just as I am getting an aerial image of my situation, here comes the cavalry! Two vehicles charging up the desert road. A white truck raising a cloud of dust followed by a white Cherokee Jeep which, by the way, turned out to be a couple of siren chasers flying the proud colours of their great nation.
-Good morning officer!
-Good morning sir!
-Good morning indeed! It is beautiful, very beautiful morning here!
-Camping out?
-Yes, got in late afternoon yesterday. He was a nice young man in uniform and at his side an impressive array of electronic equipment. -Am I not supposed to be here?
-Oh no! It is quite alright! He said reassuringly and friendly.
I indicated the helicopter still circling, -But did I cause all this?
-You must have triggered some ground sensors!
Ground sensors ugh! -No albedometers? - I am sorry, I said lamely.
-What was that you asked?
-I was just being silly. I really did not intend to cause a problem. I didn’t know.
-O, it's not a problem! It’s only that we are so close to the Mexican border here.
-O? Are we, how far is it?
He turned in his seat to point back to the south. -You see that black straight line across there? That is the steel wall.
-Steel wall?
-That’s the border! he repeated plainly.
-Then I should move, I started to say.
-O no, you are free to stay, stay and enjoy it!
-Actually, I said in a confessional tone, -I was planning to stay here for a bit. It is very nice here and I love the desert.
-No problem sir, you have the right to stay as long you want!
-O really? I thought that it was very nice of him to say that.
On my walk that evening I tried to avoid another border incident and stayed on the road mostly. I reflected on the event and in particular the conversation with that nice young officer. I knew that under the same circumstances in the old country, almost anywhere in Europe or most countries around the world, an officer in his position would have exuded, no, oozed authority just for his own sake and why not, to get a bang out of it by intimidation regardless of cause or necessity. I reflected that we tend to pick up on Americans faults, probably in part as much for their enduring success and qualities as for their obvious shortcomings.
Oh yeah they are brash, overbearing, sometimes almost unbearably self-righteous and as I had just discovered–first hand–so to speak, paranoid or what have you. But it simply comes with the territory, any nation this big and powerful is like a big gob on a baseball. It will affect its trajectory, and as the gob gets bigger and bigger what happens eventually is the reverse. The gob gets so big that the ball starts to disturb the gob’s trajectory.
Anyway, travelling around this great gob, avoiding places like Vegas, I marvelled at how the new-world element is still a prevalent and vibrant feature of it. There is that lingering smell of camp fire and cordite in the air. There is a wildness about it. This is a young country, big and young, it ought to have big faults, it would be insufferable if it did not.
And I like Bush, he reminds me of a little boy with a very big helmet and a very big bat.




Episode 10


Eric writes:
what a tendersome remark of things, you’re still in there aren’t you?
I know you are, poor boy who had the whole mythos tables turned on him at such a tender age. And then what happened? The shciizophrenic Regressus the break off where the world recedes in importance to the point where the world is the enemy not just even this or that society but the very world itself. That multivalent will all permeating all abundant, it is life but it loses its place in YOUR life, in the life that is living through you. But there has been a break off early in the development. Little claudius the lame who has only just made the journey to the second womb, a womb with a view you might say. That was you my father but you had only just got there and the teat barely begun to swell in your mouth when through war and brutality and deceit you were cast out and that second womb of inculcation and growth just never got to be -
instead a mistrust of the whole world and all of it’s forms which all gave off the stench of polity to the mind to one who has gone inside the world important only insofar as it furnishes the signs that reflect what the mind already has discovered in its own realms.

Bull Shit! I can destroy this temple and no one will even notice!


-I watched two leaves caught in a small eddy
They danced and danced
Happy they were I thought
Then an unseen tow ripped one off.
It was sad.
I dipped my hand in the cold stream to feel the water
And I felt my hand.

We have to go early in the morning, I told her. I knew that it was best to go to the crypt, the lower basilica as they call it, as soon as it opened for business. There are only a few old ladies then, and one or two sandalled Franciscan monks kneeling here and there as they go on lighting candles. The place is then what it aims to be, enveloped in dark silent mysterious holiness. A place of shadows with glints of brass and silver, redolent of incense, starched linen, fading flowers and wax. The small flickering candle flames mere counterpoints to the dimness which prevails and renders the enclosing perimeter of this fairly large place indistinct and unsubstantial. There may be no God present here, but at this soft margin of sensory perceptions the imagination is incited to dismiss the feeble tangibles and revel in the dreamy side of reality. Bodies move about dream-like with barely a sound, old lips quiver silent with inward supplicating formulae, and then a pew, somewhere, creaks loudly fracturing for an instant the silent emptiness like a celestial spark. I know that this is what I am going to miss most of all, the creak of a pew in an empty church, the slamming of a screen door somewhere across the small bay early in the morning. Anyway I took her there and then down the stone steps under the floor to the tomb where the bones of the saint lay inside a heavy wrought iron cage.
Later, as it was getting lighter, I led her to the upper basilica. Which, like most basilicas in Italy, is like a big empty barn with frescoes. Most of Italy was in poverty after the fall of the empire, so frescoes were a cheap way to adorn these simple buildings, in a sense they were the comics of the time. And once in a while some good ones did happen. So here we were in the pale light of the morning, in the transept of the upper basilica under these glorious, large Cimabue. I went to sit on one of the row of thrones under the Great Crucifixion expecting her to follow me. Of course she had to differ. I tell you, Ginn was normally–but within bounds–full of piss and vinegar, but when I took her out of that environment, Italy as it happened, she could let go spectacularly. So in this empty basilica, I sat on one side of the transept and she had to sit opposite me past the altar and the apse a hundred yards away under the Saint Peter Healing the Sick, I think. Does not matter. In a gesture of acceptance or forgiveness I blessed her with papal grace with the sign of the cross. She responded by giving me the finger. I stood up and indignantly retaliated by giving her the whole arm. Then she stood up, turned around, and with deliberate ceremonious control dropped her pants and mooned me. Under those great frescoes, in the dim light of dawn her pale ass with a Selene glow touched a certainty of universal form so deep within my consciousness that the whole scene became the singularity by which the extremes of my consciousness fused in an instant of forbidden bliss.
A month or so later the site of that event was hit by an earthquake and the XIII century basilica of S. Francis reduced to its proper form, a pile of rubble.
I am still puzzled, how come it took that long? And if an act of God destroyed it, how did they permit themselves to rebuild it? As for the curious time gap, the only satisfactory way I came up with that could explain it is that Ginn took it down alright, right there and then, but that maybe, just maybe, it took God that long to recover from the organically charming soundness of her summation.




Episode 11


It is so silent here under the palms if the wind is not blowing, at night I can only hear the drone of a fridge, or a furnace. Can tinnitus be considered a reality or is it just a buzz in the ears? I am usually in bed when the coyotes start up. They seem happy, not bored. What have they got to be happy about that I don’t? Are they happy though, or are they pretending too? Eric looked up at a frolic of swallows in the late afternoon sky above Assisi. -How beautiful! he said. A feeding frenzy, I thought, but I smiled because I wanted him to enjoy the lie. These snowbirds with their gleaming white motor homes, ATVs, hot tubs and what have you, are trying so hard to have a good time because it is supposed to be their golden age reward?
Yesterday, New Year’s Eve, being a gorgeous day I decided to walk through the desert in the direction from which the coyotes’ golden howling came every sundown. I wanted to see their tracks, maybe catch a glimpse of them. If I found their hangout I might be able to figure out why they chose it as the spot to get together. And do they actually celebrate?. I took off bearing straight south for about a mile then circled looking for tracks. I found none, nor any sign of a gathering place. So after a while I gave up and came back following my foot prints.
That night I waited outside to hear them, hoping to get a better fix on the location. I whiled the time away watching the stars, planes, a couple of comets and the usual satellites. Being New Year’s Eve, I also expected to see or hear fireworks but to my surprise, for the first time in decades, there were none. I waited and waited and it bothered me that just that night when I had decided to wait outside past my usual bed time to hear them, they had decided not to howl. No celebrating! It is New Year’s Eve and not a sound. Every night they did so not much later than after dark, at which time I am getting ready for bed. So I don’t get to hear them as well nor can I get a good fix on the direction. It was past midnight when I decided to quit my vigil. I went straight to bed. I was nicely drifting off a few minutes later, when all hell broke loose. Such yelping, yapping, barking and howling as I had never heard before in my life. They were all around my van. -Happy new year to you too! I yelled from bed, and then imitated them for a while. Apparently I had wandered into their territory and so they decided to follow my tracks to investigate me in turn. The funny thing is that they must have been slinking and lurking in the dark all around me waiting for me to get in there and simmer down as it were, while I was impatiently waiting for them to start hooting it up. For crying out loud! Indeed I do make strange things happen.
I have been reading about the Cathars. Reading a lot lately only to find out that what I had figured out was already figured and noted and often forgotten, then maybe remembered again. But one thing that is becoming clearer and clearer to me is, that to know man’s horrendous history is to become kind of immortal. One simply becomes too stupid to die.
-Ha-haha-haaa!
-WHAT?
-O! It’s a good one for a change!
-You are trying to confuse me, right?
-No, not really! It made me think of the tree in the midst of the garden.
-You mean, the tree of knowledge: The day you eat thereof you shall surely die!
-Yes! Exactly! And yes, I did also think that you eminently qualify for immortality.
-That’s more like it.


Today it is raining in the desert. I am reading a tome by Cornelius Fabro: GOD IN EXILE. As if I didn’t already know it, philosophy to this guy is the intellectual version of pin the tail on the donkey. It is fun only if you wear a blindfold. Good poets do something like that too, or they should. They nimbly dance and sing all around the subject being ever so careful never to light right upon it. This book is over a thousand pages of delectable tiptoeing around the rosy whereby only rarely words are put together to express a clear thought.
Spinning a bit of my own Meta-Spinozism from it, I get that God as the absolute principle of the infinite unconscious essence of MAY from which all forms rain down into the world, is reluctantly beheld by the human form through the absolute principle of consciousness which is the essence of his BE eschewing its logical conclusion which would put an end to the game and obligate him to assume his responsible share of something incomprehensible.
I am reminded that when I was in Pomaia (Tuscany) with Ginn, we saw the young Dalai Lama being chased by his nanny because it was time for him to go back to study nonsense. Oni mani padmi Om. The child naturally wanted to go on playing.
GOD IN EXILE, P. 138
. . . There exists only one order, that of essence, and in it there is only one existence, substance, into which are resolved men and universe, the attributes and the modes, which exist not in themselves and through themselves but in virtue of their subsumption under the substance. “Et voila!”
I know that the ability to reason makes it nearly impossible for us to resist the temptation to snare God into the net of logic, but MAYBE we would do better to move our search for God outdoors, in the fresh air, to look under rocks and stones.
-Hey Daimon, help me with this or I swear I'll trade you in for Hippias!
-Yes Master!
-I FOUND HIM! I FOUND HIM!
-You didn’t!
-DID TOO!
-DID NOT!
-DID TOO! He was under a rock!
-What kind of rock?
-I don’t know what kind of rock! It was a round rock.
-ROUND did you say? And SMOOTH I suppose?
-Yeah! It was kind of round and smooth.
-Ha! Just as I thought! BLASPHEMY!
-What! Why?
-Come on, you might as well confess! This is just another of your devious attempts to aliment and promote your atheist theories and not too subtle at that, considering the obvious reference to the unicity by Appartenentia of immanentism!
-W-WHAT?
-We all know the monistic principle of subsumption into the prime and sole essence of all being, whilst the Thomistic principle clearly states that esse is not a property of essence but the fundamental separating act of the essence so that any believer should know that God could not be found under a round smooth unit of rock but rather and exclusively so, under a cleaved or split rock, whereby attesting to the properties which issue from His essence and directly refer to that essence. Beware Claudio! You may think as you wish of God but no one who dares to suggest that God may be an heretic shall go unpunished!
-O yes, I was in error! You made that so clear to me that from now on I will limit my search to a pile of split wood, maybe even boxes and boxes of toothpicks…
-What utter nonsense! To look for God as though he was lost! To look for HIM who knows where you are at any moment and knows your most intimate and secret thoughts.
Oh well…


* * *


Episode 12


Encyclopedia Britannica:
RIJEKA - Italian FIUME, city, major port and industrial, commercial, and cultural centre of Croatia, located on the Kvarner (a gulf of the Adriatic Sea). It is the major port of Croatia. The city is situated on a narrow flatland between the Julian Alps and the Adriatic, spreading up the slopes and onto the landfills on the seafront. The name, dating from the 13th century, refers to the river called Rjecina in Serbo-Croatian and Fiumara, or Eneo, in Italian. The port is a primary naval base and a point of departure for coastal shipping. The coastal section of the Adriatic Highway begins at Rijeka, which also has rail connections to Trieste, Ljubljana, and Zagreb. Shipyards and repair facilities, major oil refineries, a paper factory, and a diesel-engine works (in which in 1866 the English owner Robert Whitehead invented the torpedo) are industries of major importance. ….After 1918 Fiume-Rijeka became a major issue of the peace settlements.
On Sept. 12. 1919 the flamboyant poet Gabriele D'Annunzio led a group of volunteer "legionaries" to Fiume and occupied it himself. The Italian premier, ordered the battleship "Andrea Doria" to shell D'Annunzio's palace only, predicting that the surprise would cause the "commandant" to escape at once–as indeed it did.
1920, when Fiume became, briefly, an independent republic.
But when the Fascists gained power in Italy, the Rapallo Plan for a free state came to nothing. Pressed by Benito Mussolini, the Yugoslav government yielded, and a new Italo-Yugoslav treaty, signed in Rome on Jan. 27, 1924, recognized Fiume as Italian.

And with the 75th liberation of the city, arrived on the scene the carrier of half my genetic material. He was young, handsome, wore the uniform of an elite corps with yellow flames on his lapels and a long feather in his hat. My mom was eighteen, beautiful, romantic and bursting with hormones. In a bat of an eye her program was immediately reset to override all subprograms and go straight to rapture. A year later she went crying to her mother. -What am I to do? My man is mean to me!
-Ha, Gioconda, you are married now! There is nothing you can do.

Then the encyclopaedia goes on to mention the heavy bombing suffered by the city during W.W.2 which a few years later when I was in Bremen, I found to be quite relative as I gazed over a vast area of the city that looked like the aftermath of a tornado from hell. Anyway it goes on saying that following Italy’s surrender to the allied forces in 1943, the Germans occupied the city.
Wonderful! So it was 1943 that a major piece of my growing puzzle was added to my confusion. With the German occupation came a German military band. Boy, they had style. The band was billeted next door to our place. In the morning the big gates opened, band leader with big staff and band in smart uniforms, marched out onto the Viale Camice Nere playing some of the most battle-inspiring marches in the German repertoire. Of course, at the time no one was in the mood or had the time to enjoy the pageantry, except for a bunch of ragamuffin kids who followed it part of the way with glee. An hour or so later the band marched back, the music stopped and the gates closed. It was like a giant cuckoo clock.
The kids then hung around to torment Franzele. He was a big oaf with very little brain but with immeasurable passion for music. So we all did what comes naturally to kids. Gang up on someone really vulnerable. Eric knows that well.
-Hey, Franzele! No more music! It is over Franzele, there is no more music! we would chant tauntingly. Franzele became very agitated, and we pressed on, -It is all over Franzele! He moaned and cried and we, -Never again Franzele, the music is finished! There will never be music again! Eventually he became so distressed and not knowing what to do with all that pain nor how or on whom to vent it, the big lummox would turn it on himself and start biting his arm. This of course set off a round of laughter and fuelled our effort of taunting him, to the music’s lover increased despair. The sight of him biting his arm with so much anger that often he drew blood while we delighted in round after round of hysterical hilarity troubled me. Naturally I laughed even louder wishing to cover up this disturbing symptom of a nascent discord that was going to affect similar dark-lined merry moments the rest of my life. I think that it was exactly there, thanks to this poor dim wit, that I learned that I could act against my nature and against my desire almost as if I was performing in front of a mirror which somehow compelled me to match the image of me it chose to project. Recently, as I have mentioned, I caught myself in the same absurd situation, albeit altruistically, when I came face to face with Quasimodo. Talking about ignoring the elephant in the room!

-Why is there so much pain? asked Eric one day. The biologist would simply explain that organisms with a lower threshold of pain are preferred by natural selection, that there is an incentive to produce organisms that are more and more sensitive to pain and to pleasure. Pain and pleasure is to the mind what air is to the lungs. Robert White, writing in Dancing to the Evolution’s Tune, says that, Natural selections motto is “stay hungry.” That is, don’t stay happy . . . .
Neurochemistry is designed to make reward fleeting.
Thrills and strife will keep going.
-Surely you were not one of those horrid kids who tormented the poor guy! Margot asked.
-No, I donned my newspaper hat, and with my wooden sword I sprang into action! Of course I was! I was a mischievous, stupid kid, a horrid selfish adult and now a pitiful old man. I have to face every day and every challenge with this conviction in mind. I would have little or no chance to improve if I were to start off from a satisfactory position. That we are made in the image of God and that we are ruled by reason is a bad start especially since “reason” consistently bestows its favour on those who invoke it and does so, rather capriciously it seems, even to either side of a highly contentious issue whereby both quarrelling parties usually end up feeling fully on the side of right and so become entrenched with the usual destructive consequences.
Kalliste!




Episode 13


A few years ago, I spent nearly a week on a summer pasture north of Avola B.C., with a bunch of cows. That rolling pasture was a segment of a swath cut through the mountains as an easement for a pipeline. I drove through the gate and found a nice location close to a tumbling creek. I thought I’d stay a while, maybe do some sketches.
I got out of the van to close the gate and look around when I noticed that all the cows which had been spread out in the distance, had stopped grazing and were now converging towards me. I stood and watched them coming towards me wondering why they did that. Eventually, starting from the closest one to me, they stopped. Then they stood there facing me, looking at me as if they expected me to do something. I had no idea what. But I didn’t want to disappoint them; after all it was rare for me to be the centre of so much attention. I thought of performing a jig at first, but then a more appealing scenario came to my mind. I was an alien, I had just landed my Econoline spacecraft in their midst and so they were spellbound by my presence.
-HI! I am Gameteus, I come from a very distant pasture. Oh! And I have an important message for you!
They appeared very attentive. I had to ad lib something that would grab them, something nice, but what came out was not what I was hoping for.
-ALL IS VANITY! It is all in vain! There is no hope! Not one among you can change the way things are, the way you are, not even all of you together! You became cows by a process of a random assemblage of possibilities. Some were already losing interest, looking elsewhere but stayed put and most of them kept their eyes and ears trained on me.
-You are now cows not because to be cows is desirable or because it leads to something meaningful, but only because to be cows was possible. Not a very good reason is it? Hey! Don’t you look away when I am talking to you!
-Yeah I know, it is not very flattering…to be, just because it happens to be possible. But you are grown up cows, would you rather I flattered you… maybe told you that God loves you? That being cows is meaningful…is that what you came to hear? A few turned and mindlessly started walking away.
-WAIT! WAIT! You must stop believing that being cows is meaningful.
-WAIT! YOU STUPID DAUGHTERS OF NATURE’S AFFLICTION! COME BACK! DAMN IT! It is not you who are behaving thus! It is the PROCESS!
All except one were leaving. The one that stayed seemed fascinated with me. -BELIEVE ME! I yelled past her to the others, -I am speaking the truth, YOU MUST BREAK THE SPELL! You must stop acting as you are, I urge you therefore to heed the words of Carl Schmitt and DECIDE TO ACT ON EXCEPTION!
They paid no attention whatever. -OH, O.K. GO ON. Go on YOU STUPID COWS! Maybe you are nothing but stupid cows after all.
-AND WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STARING AT? Get, get! SHOO-SHOO! O go away! You are nothing but a process. I grumbled, ignoring my very own faithful Perpetua, the exception perhaps. -And you will be duly processed, ground up, packaged and broiled to feed another meaningless process. YEAH! Go on! You should see the size of the newest barbecue models, you cows!
It hurt me to know that except for the one stupid cow that would just not go away, I had lost them all to the nibbling of a bit of stupid grass. Serves me right for caring.
-That didn’t make sense!
-Did too!
I stayed nearly a week. I had to observe the meaningless process day after day not because it was interesting, it actually irked me, but because I wanted the process to know that I was watching it. Nibble-nibble-nibble, plop-plop-plop! That is all there was to it. Then under the shade of the trees they sat and chewed their cud. I watched them, lazily they watched me. One day though, something came over one of them. I quickly reverted back to being an interested alien observer. It seemed to me then, that whatever this thing was that had suddenly and mysteriously taken control of her did so in a way that she would behave as though she knew exactly what to do even though she probably had never done it before and evidently didn’t have the foggiest idea of what it was that was happening to her. And taken over by the same extraneous impulse so did the male cow that had began stalking her. It was as though she had something that belonged to him but did not want to give it up right there and then. He persisted undeterred and just as I was losing interest she relented, and the male cow heaved himself up on to her and rear ended her vigorously, plunging a long shiny probe at the place or near the place where the plops usually exited. With a few violent thrusts the male cow apparently got what he wanted out of her and the two went their own ways as if nothing had happened. I suppose that eventually, since it is such a fine thing being a cow, that cow dropped a replicate or two on the pipeline easement.
And that is basically what happened to my mother, and I came to “the light” as they arguably say in Italy. And then, with slight variations it happened to me and I added another link to the process. And that is why we are all here. Ginn really, really wanted to be reassured that sex was so good and so beautiful between us, because we truly loved each other, because we were designated by fate somehow to be that goodness, twin souls, violins etc. Selfishly, lazily and even somewhat credulously, I reassured her. Yes, I believed it too! We were blessed by the gods! I declared to her and to add to the credibility of my statement I inserted a note of caution, some of them may envy our great happiness. It was clear that Ginn needed and wished to believe that there had to be a noble spiritual component to coitus. Slowly, as I got to know more about her, I found out that in part at least, this concern of hers had to do with her being a nurse. The clincher came one day when the conversation somehow got around to delivery and the seldom mentioned placenta. From her expression and tone of voice I could tell she had great difficulty gift-wrapping that one along with the rest. Not wishing to poke in some dark corner of her more susceptible memories I improvised a probable scenario. I saw her and a bunch of happy, giggling girls taking the nursing course, being bushwhacked in a subterranean chamber of a hospital by a malicious old doctor with a butcher knife and a placenta. Now at 32, she was “in love” for the first time in her life and she wished to be able to abandon herself completely to those staggering emotions and sensations in the confidence that not only was it natural but completely aright! So absolutely right, that it could only have been ordained from the highest! Like it was something God wanted for us; to be blissfully, almost insanely, happy. Because if it was not that, if it was not something spiritually beautiful, what was it What could it be? Had she been drugged and was thus being used? Drugged and exploited by something powerful, dark and spellbinding, something fundamentally as unpleasant as a sliced placenta on a stainless steel table? To this disturbing doubt that could not be appeased she responded–or retaliated–with near ferocity. It was as though she had decided that if she could not make it go away she would overwhelm it, drown it, demolish it and in the process get as much as she could out of it while it lasted. Ah-hum…while I lasted. Of course this desperate measure was a clear symptom of a deep struggle. Though I was too stupefied to be aware of it at the time, I was in a sense much more than a mere instrument or facilitator. I was in fact the bloody plain of Armageddon, the soil upon which the armies of fanciful beliefs and stark realities had come to fight it out. To decide once and for all whether the nascent soul be mercifully smothered in pleasant dreams or be made to face a horrific ordeal for a slim chance that it might lead to a higher state of self awareness. Self realization! To be whole, unbound and self-sufficient in all respects! O how many wonders have been created to conceal this thought.
-Am I a Nymphomaniac? she asked sheepishly one day during one of her brief pauses. Fifty shattering orgasms in an afternoon would probably qualify her in one respect, but though it amazed me, I didn’t really see it as a problem, not at first anyway. Other times, feeling that she was shamelessly riding poor Rosinante on to the next peak, or the next charge, and then the next, and so on, she would express the same concern disguised as a compliment by asking me–on the gallop–how I could keep it up for such a long time. At fifty to one or two ratios I had no problems with it. And, as I said, I enjoyed thinking of myself as the instrument of her joy. I didn’t feel the need to analyse her concern. Had I done so, I would have realized, as I do now, that she had a very good point. What she was asking herself was simple and inescapably relevant.
Why such a gift? Why such grace?
Compared to her I had behaved pretty much like the cows on that pipeline. The answer she was seeking was, of course, that it was indeed a gift and that it could only be so if love was in fact an existing essence of form conceived by a benevolent mind and not, as she was probably thought in her course, as a mere expediency insuring the survival of the species. Unfortunately, as much as she hated the latter she could not really believe the former. Looking back at it now, I can see other reasons for her great conflict. Ginn was a Gemini and really the most apt paradigm of a living contradiction I have ever encountered. To start off, she cried; she screamed non stop from the moment she was born until she was almost three. She was an extreme candidate for sudden crib death if there ever was one. Fortunately or unfortunately for her, dad was her equal in patience. An extraordinary man! After work, as soon as he had his dinner, he would give his wife a well deserved respite by putting Ginn in his Dodge and driving around town half the night. Poor man.
Then when she was old enough to do Halloween, Ginn told her mother that she wanted to be a witch. Mother said, -Yes darling, and dressed her as a fairy.
So when people asked her, -And what are you dearie?
She proudly declared, -A witch!
True, one should not read too much in these things, but how to ignore them when they show such consistency? Her particular problem, which I did not recognize at the time, was not the fact that she could not or would not control her desire but that she could not ignore the big question that came with it. Why such a gift indeed! Most people just enjoy it, call it love and they even have a sacrament for it, a sacred bond sanctioned by God. They dress up for it naturally, the vicar of God dresses up for it, everybody does! It is yet another Halloween celebration, every celebration marked on every calendar in the world, are actually Halloween this, Halloween that. Ginn loved all Halloweens and would not and could not pass it up. She had to have a church wedding, the whole bit! She had to dress up as a fairy. I had trouble going through with it for her sake but of course I yielded. Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the craziest of them all?… Would have been really nice for me if she had dressed up as a witch for the church wedding. Anyway most people do not see themselves as part of a problem, and why would anyone question a natural and wholesome pleasure? Ginn did! She asked herself why she had been given such pleasure and she could not reconcile herself to a happiness based on a pleasure for which there was not a reasonable or even a discernible noble cause. Secretly, she hated this craving, her dependency; her happiness had a dark placental stain. I think that our relationship was intended to be a sacrifice to this dark passion. It was conceived in doom, its only aim had been the destruction of a concept made in a celestial penthouse. Worse still, she could not give it up even after our marriage had failed miserably. After it had become painfully clear that this was in fact the only thing left in our weekend relationship. She came, we made “love” and she hated herself for it. Like a junkie hates herself as she submits to another fix, another humiliation, another annihilation. I began hating myself too! I was taken off the shelf and played with on weekends and then put back on the shelf. What a fool! I had gone from an instrument of joy to a bad habit, a dirty drug, and finally thrust down to even less than that! A toy, a complete imbecile. Indeed she was a hell of witch. I was very fortunate to have fallen under her spell, because in a way I owe her a lot! She completely destroyed me. And for a fool like me, there would have been no other way to make any progress at all. The anathema to progress is a stable, comfortable and satisfying relationship. Shoot It is what everyone is aiming for! Just like in Groundhog Day. And all of it can be attributed to diets. A simple adaptation, a slight variation in diet, can get you cows or us! An open pasture–nibble nibble, plop plop! Or, cooperation, rules, myths, technology, romance and the bomb.
By insisting on performing all his natural functions in public, to behave as freely as a dog, Diogenes was reminding us of our original nature. We do not want to be reminded. We like to see ourselves as the masters of nature, we even control perspiration! It is Halloween of course! The biggest fucking masquerade in the whole of creation!
-Am I a nympho? She had asked! What the hell is a nympho anyway? An overdose? A harder drug? Another delusion?
-Ah! Not at all dear, God just loves you more!




Episode 14


It is not my mind,
not my will,
not my life…
AND NOT MY DOG!


I am convinced that by now my heart is held together by scars. I am done with the abstract sentimental notions which if we are subscribers, assign us to various organic activities as specified by nature. Why me? Why did she have to walk over two miles from the large contingent of friendly snowbirds huddled in this south-east corner of California and walk into my isolation? She just walked in, looked around a bit, saw me in here and laid herself down on my door mat. A beautiful full grown female German shepherd with one white eye.
Me decided to ignore her. She decided to be patient.
Me is sitting inside reading a book that is too heavy for me both by actual weight and by content, and as Me turns a page, now and again Me casts a furtive glance at the dog. She is resting on her side blissfully relaxed as though she is home and this is part of her daily routine. Me's concern is growing but Me continues to read and to pretend that she is not there. A couple of hours into this stand-off she decides to get off Me's mat and move about four paces away. What a remarkable move! Did she do it in response to Me's persistent indifference, recognizing that under the circumstances it would not be proper for her to remain on Me's mat? Is she so perceptive? So tactful? So cunning? Or maybe, so desperate?
I tried to figure out other possible motives for this move of hers, without success. She had not changed location to be in the shade of the palm trees since the mat was in the shade, and to my knowledge dogs always prefer to be on a mat or anything that relates to comfort and belonging. I found it disturbing that in an effort to resolve this delicate situation without violence I may be outmatched by a stray dog. Patience. I went on reading, although I could no longer give adequate attention to the subject of this volume which traces the progress of atheism since Descartes and proceeds to elaborate for twelve hundred pages what could be simply stated in a few words, like -if you believe in God, you are a believer and if you do not believe in God you are a non believer, therefore an atheist. HA! But are you then an a-theist or atheist? And then you could be a pantheist, or a panentheist! Also a monist or an immanentist, not to mention a deist or a theist, a humanist or a materialist or an existentialist and so on. Fascinating stuff! My mind was on another branch of philosophy at the moment. Philosophers have come and gone but the notion that we perceive the world around us through the senses and then organize it for our purpose by way of reason has persisted through the ages. Instinctively that dog knows better.
The senses’ primary and sole purpose even as they perceive and the reason even as it appears to organize the sense data into a system which appears to give us free agency are in fact designed to connect us into the world around us like psychological Velcro, to bind us inextricably to its own blind and relentless will.
“God is Dead!” exults the philosopher. So we fall out of God’s lap– which was nothing but a disguise–to what was our master all along. I listened to a drug addict one day. She explained that all her activities, thoughts and efforts, from the moment she got up in the morning to when she crashed at night, day after day, were entirely devoted to the procurement of her next fix. Why it sounds pretty much like everyone’s else state of affairs. Including the coyotes there yonder. Drugs imitate life.
I was buttressing up my determination by this kind of logic because I would not yield ever again even if all I would achieve would be more pangs of guilt! I tell you as you get older your mind regurgitates stuff, it vomits and vomits! Then when it starts to vomit the same thing over and over again whatever drugs you were on are not working any more.
-What exactly did you mean by saying that one is too stupid to die?
-Ha, are you still on that?
-Yes, I can’t make any sense of it, how does knowing history make you stupid.
-Well, you tell me. You know history don’t you? What does it teach you?
-That it will happen again?
-And where, in your opinion, will it all lead to eventually?
-Mmh! I suppose that eventually some species will become dominant and many others extinct.
-Go on don’t stop there.
-The cycle will go on and on until it will have exhausted the elements that started it and sustained it.
-Very good.
-So what?
-Yes, so what? That is the question. Can you suppose a purpose?
-I haven’t the foggiest.
-In other words you are now completely stupid.
-Mmm, yes, I suppose. But how does that make me immortal?
-Because by being stupid you cannot develop autonomy and so you must be a component part of a system that is probably infinite and endless. You get the impression that you are autonomous from the fact that you are physically separate and auto-mobile but in essence you are not different than a tuber or a galaxy.
-It is not at all as I thought it would be.
-Unless...
-Unless?
-Unless you stumble upon a way to take yourself out of the process.
-THEN WHAT?
-I didn’t get there yet, I have no idea.


I ignored that dog all day. I gave her neither water nor food nor did I acknowledge her presence by eye contact or demeanour.
I was hoping that she would get the idea sooner or later and take off to work her charm with the more emotionally charged carbon forms at the camp site. The problem was that to my determination to ignore her she responded passively, making no demands, no attempts to attract my attention, she simply lay there barely raising her head when I got out of the van and went about the camp site for some reason or other. It was as if she knew that ignoring was the present game and that her best chance therefore was to leave me alone. This incredibly astute psychology of being so patient with me was very disturbing. It set off a flurry of emotions with the complicit sweet mental conspiracies that are so hard to resist. Ah to break down and be rewarded with gratitude and happiness. I was under siege and facing a revolt within. On top of it all she reminded me of my mother.
Love
That gentle might
Which bid t’open
The petals in spring!

Damned poets, novelists and songwriters! It is just drugs! you idiots!
THAT DOG!
But you do understand that this contingency does not simply involve two animate more or less reasoning entities and a few scraps of food but calls into play the subtle and complex orders of existence which agitate within them and which eventually in spite of themselves determines their relationship which in turn, as it concerns me, calls for considerably inconvenient restructuring. I am in no position to restructure! I am here, in the desert, alone, to face my demons. To sever all bonds and to plan how to terminate this drama with the most gloriously singular, first and last independent action which was ever presented to me! So a dog, especially an affectionate dog, is absolutely out of the question. Yet I could not deny nor tame feelings of empathy, concern, and yes guilt and a coloratura of other symptoms generally associated with love or bonding, the purpose of which is, as I said, to work like Velcro. Of course the dog (which I named Velcro) did not know what turmoil she had provoked in me. But that is not to say that she was not instinctively aware that it was working. It was the Tao approach. She had entered through my senses into my awareness so all she had to do now, was to let nature take its course and for me, as if I could still fall for this ruse, to respond in her favour by indulging in goodness and take credit for it! In other words, to be a Sucker and interpret it as humain!
Another thing that I thought rather strange, is that in my view, dogs do not get lost. I had counted three tags on her collar. So why did she not decide to pick up her scent and go home? Could she actually be lost?
The next morning I stubbornly continued to ignore her. She accepted, it barely raising her head to see what I was doing. When she did get up it was not to approach me but to get down the canal embankment to have a drink. A second time she got up to stretch a little bit and then went right back to her waiting place under the palm tree.
So I baulked; I put my reading glasses on and approached her to look at her tags. She immediately interpreted this action as “the breaking of the barrier” and promptly broke into a demonstrative happy puppy routine, which made it impossible for me to get to her tags, let alone read them. She was bouncing, wagging, twisting and on my first try to get close to the tags she proceeded to mop my face with her tongue which knocked off my reading glasses and she proceeded to dance, trampling them into the sand. I waited a minute, tried to calm her down then tried again and again. Each time the same thing happened. She was a big overjoyed dog with a big tongue. I had to do something that would quiet her down. So I fed her. I had made some excellent pasta e fagioli the day before and had plenty left over for her. Though I can proudly claim to make a superb soup, it had never before been appreciated that much. After she had eaten I tried to get to those damned tags again but with the same result, plus a whiff of garlic.
After lunch I decided to bike to the camp ground hoping that someone there might recognize her, or that she would pick up the scent of her owners, since I thought it very possible that that was where she had come from in the first place. If nothing else I could get someone to read her tags while I controlled her enthusiasm. Off we went. She took the lead after a minute or two and that was very encouraging to me. At the camp site I asked a few people if they knew the dog. Once, on approaching a couple, another man in the proximity called out -NICE DOG! Yes she was a nice dog, very big ears too. On one occasion I was able to hold her still long enough for a guy to write down the telephone number on one of her tags.
It is a large camp site. I biked through it slowly stopping now and then to enquire about her. As I moved on from camper to camper I kept checking back to see if she was still following. Eventually it happened! I turned and she was nowhere in sight. I stopped, waited about a minute then I took off. On the straight stretch along the canal I looked back a few times and saw no sign of her. It was a great relief for me and it lasted about two hours. I suppose it took that long for her to disengage from gratuitous petting and maybe a biscuit or two, plus the long trot back.
Before I go on with Velcro, I, the butterfly, am going to flutter on to some colours of the spectrum that are beyond the range of my human vision to add to the complexity of this situation. I have stated at the beginning that I am Gameteus–the half of everything there is. Upon further reflection I can now confirm this statement and elaborate on it. I am at least half right. I am right in so far as I have been wrong in believing that I am Claudio. Over the years this organism that was known to me and others as Claudio has assumed a convincing but fictitious role on demand. It is necessary to society for individual members to assume a functioning and convincing identity so that they may be held responsible for their actions. The problem incurred by this concession is that what are fundamentally involuntary actions have to be reclassified as voluntary. To do so a whole system of abstract conventions had to be put in place like a fire wall to monitor, intercept, restrain and redefine those instinctive impulses and emotions that spring with rigorous authenticity from my nature. With the fire wall on, lust is now interpreted as love and love is equipped with all sorts of modifications and attachments that colour and vivify the social pageantry. As a process I have neither credits nor faults. Whatever talents or faults I present are an endowment, they are part of the package, as much as are my physical features and those auxiliary qualities which are necessary to apply those talents or to control those faults. The measure of success or failure which an individual will attain is a matter of chance. For some, as the saying goes, it is like being born with a silver spoon in the mouth, while others less fortunate will have to struggle with inadequate resources. Sometimes the lack of one resource may be compensated by another. I am just another variation. I have all kinds of talents but neither burning desire nor the will to succeed in any of them. In fact, to me success because it is based on social values is synonymous with failure. Meeting the approval or admiration of my peers only proves that I have failed to decide on the numinous state of exception. Eric said it best, -Dad, he said, -you are mad! But not mad enough!
Daimon may be justified in saying that my disdain for success may be just a way of protecting myself from the sting of failure. Whatever the case may turn out to be, it does not apply to an entity, but to a process. These words of the Tao are fundamental: There is the deed but not the doer thereof.
The dog was a process that was affecting another process, a process, that was determined not to be affected by the other, and so, IT WAS.

Early next morning I fed her, I gave her a couple of perfunctory hugs, got her in the van and drove off to town with the happiest dog in the world. Of course I anticipated the best possible scenario–a joyful reunion. In town I had to take off my belt to use it as a leash and went to the phone booth to call the number I got from the man at the camp site. I was all set to explode with joy.
-County Sheriff Office, said the voice. I hung up. What the hell!
After a moment of confusion I thought that since the numbers on the tag were hard to read, a six might have been an eight, or vice versa, a five maybe a six, a three, a five and so on. Got through about three combinations which turned out to be nonexistent numbers and then I had no more coins. I stopped a man who happened to come by, told him briefly my problem and asked him if he could help me check those tags and spare me some change.
-Nice Dog! he said. -Why don’t you just take it to the shelter? It is right there! He pointed at the police station, right behind the sheriff’s office. At the moment the word shelter, though not as nice as owner, appealed to me. Shelter!
So I went. The lady pulled up a form and started writing on it.
-Where was the dog found? She asked.
-By the hot-springs camp site.
-Ho that’s outside the township. Damn! I don’t like the way things are going. They are not supposed to. I am Gameteus! I have shattered the world of Maya, broken through the chrysalis of fear, I am immune! Atman! Anointed! GOD!
-Here is the number of the County’s office. She hands me a slip of paper. I get some change from her and head for the booth again. Velcro is excited and happy. As soon as I take a direction she leads on eagerly pulling me as if we were going who knows where.
-County Sheriff office, how may I help you?
I’ll be damned! That was the number! That number on the tag shaped like a heart. LOVE, it said on one side. This is someone’s cherished friend.
-HELLO! How may I help you?
-I have this dog!
-Moment please, I will switch you to the shelter. There goes that Shelter notion again.
-Mendoza here....
-I have this dog!
-I am all tied up at the moment, can you bring it in?
-No! Actually I did not know if I wanted to.
-Well, I tell you what, take the dog to the shelter there, ask what's'isname to just hold it for me 'till I get there.
Back to the shelter. I explain to her what I was told to do and at the same time my mood is getting very bitter. I am going through with it like a zombie. I am being a process captivated by another process. As I wait outside the office for the man to come to transfer the process I try to restore the connotations associated with Shelter. When the young man arrives quite a few minutes later, I have almost recovered but he has a strange grin in his face as he looks at Velcro, and he is rubbing his arm. I notice dog’s hair all over his uniform.
-I have just been attacked by a dog! He says in a state of shock and he looks down at my big dog. I think: Shelter, Love, Atman, Betrayal, Machine, Process, Damnation!
-Is he alright?
-She is wonderful, I respond and think: Gentle, loving, hopeful, trusting, beautiful! Damn it!
-O.K. He says dubiously and takes the leash from my hand and takes her away. Velcro goes with him happily, trustingly, beautiful.
I stand there, numb.
-Back at my camp site I sit in defeat. Judas sits under the palm trees. To him befell the most miserable of tasks and to him was assigned the reckoning of the deepest of sorrow. Judas cannot cry out! He cannot accuse. He cannot ask. He cannot expiate. He cannot condemn, he cannot even condemn himself because he is as much innocent as he is guilty, he, himself, is the victim of the great drama. You can dump the other disciples, you can dump the Virgin Mother, all the prophets all the saints and the drama is still all there. And, for whatever it is worth, without him, without Judas’ sacrifice, the cross would have no ground on which to stand.
And so it goes. I went around in circles, slept fitfully that night and had bad dreams. In the morning I had to fight against the temptation of driving to town as I so wished to find out that there was a happy ending to the story. But no, without Daimon’s help, I talked myself out of it. There are no happy endings, only fits of delusions. And the next night more bad dreams. Next day more fighting with myself. What would I do if no one claimed her? It was near time to head back to Canada. What if another dog process came along? Why did she have to remind me so much of my mother? Submissive, patient, kind, loving and tragic. In the end my mother too wound up in a shelter, like a stray dog. And when I visited her she begged me to take her home. And I Betrayed Her. I thought she would be well taken care of and that she would be better off there. It seemed so right at the time. It seems so wrong now. So wrong!
A few days later a couple came by fishing along the canal. They recognized me.
-What happened to the dog? the man asked me. -Did you find the owners?
-No, I took her to the shelter. Shelter! Why did I choose the better lie?
-Oh, we found out after you left, from other people at the camp site, that she had been dumped there.
-Nice dog! Said the lady.
-Yes, nice dog….
That night I had a nightmare. I have had a series of dreams lately in a crescendo of form and meaning which culminated in a nightmare that struck me with such panic that I was bolted out of bed, had time to grab a sock and then my mind went blank.




Episode 15


I was walking down to Northcliffe Lodge, or where the lodge used to be before my good friend who owned it, had died. After that, the abandoned building had burned down and the place left vacant, so I was really surprised to see a new building under construction. I went in to have a look and was even more surprised to see many crews at work inside. Everywhere I went, and everywhere I looked people were busy adding rooms to the place and this from the inside. They were all so busy that none of them seemed to notice me or to care. I realized that all these people at work were not tradesmen but families busy adding their own living quarters inside the building which somehow expanded accordingly. Soon I also discovered that all these people were building according to their fancy or need but without any reference to an overall plan. I found out that because of this lack of a basic design, rooms, hallways, stairs led to other rooms, hallways and stairs which led on to others which were hastily added on. I realized then that I could no longer retrace my steps and that as the building was growing continuously I had little chance to find my way out. In panic I sought help. I asked people to help me find my way out. My request appeared strange to them, they seemed puzzled as to why I should want to find my way out of it, but politely they ignored my curious interest and tried to help, only to give it up as soon as they realized that they didn’t know and they did not really care. It was then that I began hearing this chorus of laments as I wandered around in a panic inside a building that kept growing. This litany grew louder and more woeful as my panic grew, and at the same time I realized that my body had began to shrink. I was walking over half the length of my pant-legs by the time I took notice, yet I was too frightened at being lost to worry about my shrinking. And the chorus of woeful laments grew. It was not until the next day, in going over the details of the nightmare, that I realized that what I had heard as a wailing chorus was the sound of my own pitiful moaning as it reached me from another region of experience.
I was in such a state of utter despair when a bunch of kids happened by. I beseeched them to please help me find the way out. Cheerfully they said they would and added reassuringly that they thought they knew the way. For a moment I felt the tug of hope, I followed them up and down expanding corridors and stairways but soon they stopped and as they turned to me to explain or maybe question me they all started laughing and pointing at me.
-Look what Claudio is turning into! said a voice among them to which the others responded splitting their sides with laughter.
I did not understand, I thought they were referring to someone else, a friend perhaps, the name seemed familiar, but not mine. So I began to protest.
-No! That’s not me!
It seemed to me that whatever they were laughing at was not me but just as I said that, I saw myself. All there was to me was something like a white ball with a smaller black ball at the centre of it. It reminded me of a clown’s round white face with a big red nose. I was shattered! I had been reduced to a one cell big blob.
A moment later I was standing in my van petrified by a single horrifying thought. Madness! Like a black hole it sucked up all other matters and mental processes. It left me standing there whimpering, holding on to the sock and pressed by a desperate urge to do something but unable to envision an objective or even a simple movement. Will-less, mindless and without a single reference point, I was the source and the recipient of a blank and implacable terror in which–however concealed and vague–persisted the crescent of a baffling smile and the hardly audible beat of a ghostly giggle which added to my infinite misery the disconcerting suggestion of mercy denied. I was living the living-death experience.
It took the longest time for me to be able to think one thought, and when I finally could think of moving and was able to take one step I could not decide on a direction or an objective. So I went around and around in the small uncluttered area of the van. Naked, whimpering, shivering now, sock in hand, round and round went the old Sint moaning pitifully, lost, abandoned, able to move but without aim or reason. To hope, to so intensely desire and not to have the faintest notion of what might be the object of that desire. Several times I have experienced a similar terror in a recurrent nightmare where I feel that I must run for my life but my body is so heavy I can hardly move or when I am standing on a narrow ledge above a dark abyss, but to these oneiric terrors there is a diffusing sense of not being wholly there and not completely involved, of being something in between a victim and a spectator. Shit! I remember now where I had seen that smile before! It was on the night the R.A.F. bombed the oil refinery. My poor mom, the shelter was less than a hundred meters away but it might as well have been on the other side of the earth. It happened soon after she had been injured when the train she was travelling on was blown up by Tito’s partisans. She couldn’t even stand but the terror inside of her wanted to run but all that desire could not be transformed into motion. She whimpered woefully and her whole body shuddered convulsively with every painfully slow step as she leaned on me. And I kept repeating over and over again the most useless words, -Don’t worry mama, we will get there! We will get there! And as the bright white light of the flares hanging in the sky, that with the dark red flames of the burning refinery mixed in a strange eerie light while flashes of explosions blasted what was left of the night as God might have intended it, we slowly passed by a guy leaning on his elbows on a ground floor window calmly watching the spectacle. From behind him out of the darkened room came very loud and clear the suave voice of Begniamino Gigli singing the Ave Maria of Shubert. It poured out of the room and then, there it was! That smile! That strange paradoxical smile I had glimpsed in my terror. He smiled at me, at us, or at the whole blasted pandemonium, a silent smile to madness. And blank madness was the real threat that I felt. But curiously, it was not my will that eventually drew me back from the brink of the abyss, I was cold and shivering violently and so it was this threat to the body that reactivated the circuits that recalled the mind to its duty. I had to get dressed. And as I began to function, albeit fitfully and confused, to look after simple need, thoughts, in fragments at first, began to assess what had happened and indicate what may yet happen. Never in my life I had contemplated the possibility of going insane. And insane as Friedrich did, and now this thought made my recovery–which might be just a temporary reprieve–even more difficult. I wanted to put my dirty underwear away and get a clean pair, but although the thought of putting it away was clear, the how and where was totally absent. I fumbled about trying and before I could figure out that one, another thought fragment came to me. To light the stove because I was so cold, and it mercifully it came with the instructions of how to do it!
So a little bit at a time I managed to accomplish what I had instantly set out to do the moment I awoke with the realization that at any moment I was going to loose my mind permanently. I put away my dirty underwear at last. I managed to get dressed now my mind was trying to race ahead and stay ahead of this threat of terminal insanity. I had to put my affairs in order, to dig out the documents, my wallet, my banking papers and of all things, the book of Urantia so that it would not be overdue. And then I had to be able to take my life and so escape the horrible fate of insanity. It seemed to me that I had no choice, that I worried about the book of Urantia at that time kind of confirms the proximity of that eventuality. And too bad it had to be here in the United States! Too bad it had to be now! Imagine finding this weird book in such a small town! And how did I get to own that book so long ago? Who gave it to me, what was his name? I remembered thinking at the time that I should have placed that book in a jar of formaldehyde and shipped it to Basil, to be displayed at the medical museum with all the other human deformities.
My frenzied efforts to complete the task of putting things in order and to prepare for suicide and obsessively trying to figure out who had given me that book had as a result, the opposite effect of my initial intention. I had managed to throw everything all over the place so that in the end I stood in the middle of a physical representation of my state of mind and it did not seem to matter at all any more.
It was not my life, not my mind, not my soul, and now, not my van anyway!
Nietzsche’s image came to me, with that awful moustache and diamond earrings. It urged me on. I got out of the van, looked up at the starry sky and bowed. I had to save something by conceding defeat with that chivalrous gesture. Back inside, though still very frightened, I was a little more coherent. I lit the candle, took out my emergency pink plastic bag with a collection of pills, and then, of all things, after so many mental rehearsals and drills to make sure I would do the right things when the time came, I took only half a sleeping pill. Half a sleeping pill! Half! That is what I usually take at bed time!
I lay down fully dressed, turned on some music and finally put the plastic bag over my head making sure that it was tight around my torso. I felt very calm then. Relieved that I was about to escape a most horrible fate. Madness would not have me!
Breathing became laborious and the bag filled with condensation, I was not fading out but struggling harder and harder to stay on side.
And then sudden panic again: THIS IS NOT WORKING! I bolted out of bed again. I had to switch to plan B. I had to connect the flexible pipe to the exhaust and turn on the motor. As I went outside to get the pipe out of the back of the van another thought struck me! What if THIS IS A TEST?
I did not mean it in a way that something or some one would have devised this as a test, but merely as one of any number of contingencies that could put to test my determination and wreck my beautiful plan.
Oh dear! How miserably I would have failed. After all a test would be essential to the nature and style of my quest. If I firmly believed that I was laying the groundwork for new, more sane approach to life and death so that the risk of winding up as a vegetable was not only worth it, but imperative. Taking such a risk placed the proper value to my conviction and resolve. I had to take a chance! I could not fail so miserably so close to my goal. I had been momentarily driven to insanity, but I had overcome. Somehow. By a whisker. Oh the panic! Oh my!
I rolled the pipe, turned off the motor, had a cigar and though I dreaded what sequel to the nightmare might follow, I bravely lay down in my finery, and waited for sleep or insanity.
I slept!
In the morning I felt as though I had been mortally wounded inside and had the sensation that I was observing myself going through the motions of being alive only physically while expecting the corroborating mental process to join in at any moment. The nightmare itself could have seemed comic had it not triggered such a primordial fear that the persona had no means to deal with and so had to be swept aside and let the primitive, the genuine beast-like entity respond to that primordial threat.

I have been reading the Meditations lately which has inspired me to examine how effective and ornate a cage can be constructed by the power of reason to hold at bay–under normal conditions–the beast within. I am mulling things over in my mind when in an isle of a Superstore I am struck with the realization that all those cans of beans before me have made it to those shelves the same way I got to be here. I am standing in amazement as I consider that their location and order has been assigned to them by an intelligence and authority that is external to them, not at all in the essence of bean cans. That moreover this external intellect and will acting upon these tin cans has a purpose and is necessary so that I cannot doubt its existence. From this principle I can then conclude with absolute certainty that what I perceive through my senses right here before me is evidence of a process that without fail will be repeated over and over again in all the great stores of this great land and that furthermore this order must be spreading to other great countries so that ultimately it will become universal and attest to the infinite will and wisdom governing all bean cans and things. And whereas Rene was too pious to let his reason have free reign, which led him to have to face several distinguished objections, I, on the other hand, am not at all pious and neither do I believe that if such divine entity really existed it would welcome such consideration. Therefore with all humility I will add to the other eminent objections to Rene’s meditations one of my own, which is that though Rene might have proved to his ontological satisfaction that although God existed and He was the first and only cause of all that is, He could not be held responsible for any deception or errors. And then I will ride reason on a hyperbola to those unexplored regions that can only be reached by that state of individual freedom which coincides with the state of an absolute cosmic will or necessity. I know that under those conditions, I may apply reason not only to determine the maximum common denominator between bean cans and me, and that God exists and what he is like but also to infer by reason based on the data available why He does not play with dice and if indeed Origami is His favourite hobby.
Ah, make that Mathematical Origami.

It was the beginning of March, time to head north.









Part 2

Caveat lector

Episode 16


I will travel a road
that isn’t a road
it will take me to a place
that isn’t a place
and there will be no one there
not even I.


I imagine that in most cases a reason for driving to Wawanesa must be tethered by the thinnest and most delicate of threads which lace the fabric of commerce and socio-politics into the landscape of a nation. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the personal thread which led me there had been equally tenuous in nature, like the mental equivalent of a hard-to-locate itch perhaps. Since my monumental epiphany my outlook towards life had changed radically. In fact, I had gone from a sort of slow, hardly perceptible, stultifying and uncontrollable rolling down a long inclined plane straight into an imperious free fall towards a similarly frightening conclusion of something that can only be expressed as:
-What the hell was all that about?
-Well alright!
-Oh Shut up!
I had driven aimlessly for a month but with an increasingly detectable constant drift eastward. I had reached Manitoba before I could admit to myself that in spite of all the inversions my hidden destination had been Ontario all along. Ontario was where my kids lived. I decided then to stop being a back-seat driver and enjoy the ride. It was clear to me that the water in my well comes from a larger source, which is part of a large cycle which in turn is part of a yet larger one and so on, to deny it either by pretending that Ontario was indeed where I wanted to go in the first place, or to turn around and pretend that by overruling the water table I would be asserting my own independent and sovereign will would be childish and unnecessary. I tried to interpret my current situation in a Salvador Dali style, things hanging in space separated physically and by an amusing irrelevance to each other and the observer’s expectations suggesting maybe an effortless disrespect for the awesome laws normally governing their distribution, their function and connections.
-Exactly! said the idiot, anticipating my comment.
-A bit like me don’t you think? I asked anyway.
Yeah, I talk to the idiot. Just a few words usually, but on occasion I will indulge in long and animated debates. But you’d be wrong in assuming that it is a sign of incipient dementia or some other feebleness. In my case I decided to engage in it as much as possible for the simple reason that these dialogues with the little man inside, not only go on all the time without our noticing it but may be the minutes of the process by which we arrive at what we define as reason or something like it.
I was rolling along on a secondary highway enjoying the landscape, which in contrast to the utilitarian homogeneity of Saskatchewan was pleasing as it was familiar to me. It reminded me of England or Europe in general. A gently rolling rural countryside cultivated in a way that had evidently taken into account its natural topography. Here rather than the overriding principle of profit, a more pleasant dictate had evidently engaged the backs and minds of men. Hillocks and ravines, even if not representing insurmountable obstacles to mechanized agriculture, were left in their natural arboreal state. Deciduous trees such as oak, maple, poplars congregated in such favourable places with great density of foliage, shining canopies and deep shadows defined and bordered contrasting softly waving extents of wheat or grasses. To my romantic nature this suggested harmony between man and land based on a balance of aesthetic sensibilities and needs producing a visual harmony of plains, forms and colours which proclaimed a tranquil and agreeable coexistence. Over all this, the sun presided above a vast parade of fair-weather summer clouds.
I did not expect better motoring for a day or so, but Fortuna, sicut Luna… was on the rise just as my gas gage pointed to empty.
A sign pointed north:
Wawanesa 5km
North happened to be to my left. The funny thing is that my main advice concerning travelling in Italy is, even if you are on the beautiful Autostrada Del Sole going south to Calabria, get off it! Make a left turn, get lost! It is peremptory advice. And yet here I was with all my savvy barrelling straight across hundreds of kilometres of unexplored left turns. I thought it had been sufficiently clever of me to have veered off the Trans-Canada on to a secondary parallel highway.
Certainty replaced inkling that the contingency may translate to happy discovery when the road made a sweeping downward curve similar to a landing approach and headed straight down into one those bushy ravines I had been admiring from a distance. The road cut into it reminding me of the old highways in Italy, which were usually covered entirely by ageless wild chestnut trees which with their massive canopies provide some protection from the summer sun to wayfarers and their beasts of burden. I slowed right down as I approached a one-lane, rusty old cantilevered bridge. Just before it on a piece of plywood nailed to a tree and a bit askew, had been painted in black by an unsteady hand, the number 40.
Daimon laughed.
-What?
-0!
-Tons I guess. Kilometres…maybe both.
-Ha-haaaa!
-What, what?
-Well, what if for once it was meant to be just what it is? 40!
-40 is a very nice number. Suddenly, as if my mind had just hit a wall I yanked the van to the side and slammed on the brakes. We came to a stop five steps from the tree and we sat there staring up at the crazy sign in disbelief.
It was just a frigging piece of plywood nailed a bit askew on a tree trunk with the number 40 painted on it with black paint by an unsteady hand and with a bad brush. Or was it?
-MY GOD!
-Yeah! Very refreshing, but, O deep thought, shouldn’t it be 42?
-No! Four-O! 40, it is a sign dummy!
For me the implications were as enormous as they were numerous. I have this thing about the number four and all the numbers after four and its multiples but I didn’t want to go there at the time. It would have taxed my mind, instead I wanted to maintain that fizzy emotion I felt when I first saw the sign and to figure out whether my good humour was directly connected to that wacky sign or cumulative, in which case the sign had acted as catalyst to all the other promising tangential factors which had suddenly intersected my chance location and state of mind and at the same time I couldn’t wait to see what other surprises were in store for me. I drove on. I was rattling the rusty old bridge with my Econoline 150 over a lazy river when on the opposite bank, spearing up above a stand of poplars I saw the slender steeple of a church. Perfect! On an appropriate scale, a church–regardless of its original purpose and the ridiculous functions performed inside–does provide a focal point to the aesthetic whole of such a setting.
-Yeah, but so hollow! So niggardly! Just how far our spirit has sunk since Moses and Christ is evident at the Stone areola of Wiltshire. In the church we are sinners, losers, beggars soliciting forgiveness! At Stonehenge, we set up a heavenly banquet–celebrating the material bounty of life by offering to the immaterial heavenly spirits Mother Earth’s nursing nipple.
-Spirits of Heaven!
Come share with us and be our brothers!
Suckle from our great mother!

As I was getting gas I told the young attendant that I liked his town very much. Promptly he informed me about the camp ground, down there, by the river just past the swimming pool. Perfect!
Naturally it too was perfect! The airborne cottonwood seeds moved very slowly to their yet unassigned resting-places. Unseen fish made expanding rings on the surface of the river, which was placidly meandering around the town. The grass was cut, tables freshly painted, the fire pits clean. The steep wooded bank across the river guarded the peaceful setting. I chose a site, took my bicycle off the rack and eagerly began exploring.
The next day I moved into a two bedroom apartment above the “Lucy Gifts & Flowers” store. I felt totally out of place in this town which so faithfully testified to the apple pie and white picket fence myth that drove the covered wagons to the centre of this continent. -Here, I thought, -I should be as alien as anywhere within a conservative radius of hundred parsecs.
The first thing I noted about the inhabitants is that, in summer, mowing lawns is an obsession. I have likened this activity to the setting up of tables, chairs, decorations etc. preceding a banquet or other outdoor festivity. The ardent intent of the people of Wawanesa is to celebrate summer by dedicating as much effort to this chore as to equal the effort of winter's snow removal. They mow every plain Euclidean area for miles. Being a pleasant chore, they even surpass their winter effort and budget. What topped it off is that just about every so-well-groomed lawn displayed a spotlessly white painted bicycle. All of these had handlebar baskets filled with colourful blooms of potted flowers. Everything about this place, from main street to the fair grounds, the gingerbread houses and picket fences flaunted its incongruity with the reality of the world out there, with life! But the white bicycles added a brilliant note of total conviction. It is inconceivable to me that one would place a white bicycle with its handlebar basket full of flowers on the front loan unless one was absolutely confident of meeting all the required conditions.
This is no mere a cherry on top of a cake!
and more than a signature on a document
or a piece of art!
-Here, it proclaims, -dream and dreamer are one!
The verb in the flesh!

Later, although not detracting from my earlier impressions, I found out a more plausible if sombre explanation for keeping grass everywhere down to its common minimum vertical sustainability. In its natural state this region is infested with wood ticks. As I write this, I have had three of these pests on me.
I asked the landlady what measure I should take to protect my temple from such an intrusive parasite. She is a gentle, generous young lady with red cheeks and attentive black eyes that suggest an orderly and intelligent application to my various queries which usually are by contrast, unintelligible, confused mumbling which often leaves even me wondering what exactly it was that I may have managed to utter in the end.
Living language to me represents a challenge that can only be fully appreciated by the notorious one-armed wallpaper hanger. Anyway she gets it every time. Never misses. I often leave her with more of a feeling of gratitude than the information obtained could possibly elicit.
This time she told me, that you just flush them down the toilet, if you try to crush them you need a hammer!
Remarkable!
Being completely devoted to Socrates' dictum which states that no one is bad by choice (and conversely that no one is good by choice), I did not know how to deal with the situation. The tick did not choose to be a tick or how he goes about being one. So there I was with the tick in a plastic prescription pill container wondering what to do with it. If I were to let him go, he would likely attack again; it is his nature so why should I take it out on the tick? This alternative presented me with hallucinating visions of suffocating voyages through dark slurry, and slimy cloacae to pump jets and sprays of turbo depurators. Or to Vulcan’s forge, hammer, anvil and explosions. Worse still, as others suggested, fire! Pyres, rogues...Holocaust! -What? Did you say Cigarettes? Shit! Not fair, me bicycling with my little container past all the beautifully mowed lawns of town ‘till the critter folded his normally spread out members and lay at the bottom of my amber-coloured container like it had been praying with all hands clasped to its chest at the time of death. Damn! I was traumatized! I had not anticipated it dying on me so soon. Several times I shook the container. I blew into it, but no, there it lay in its R.I.P. mode as a tiny accusation of my ineptitude. I used to believe that, all things considered, my life constituted a crime. That my existence, or for that matter, any existence inflicts in various measures degradation, pain, death to all others things. Since I had recently discovered Socrates–in a Hare Krishna ashram in Italy of all places–I have revised it to a crime of innocence, hence a mere non-prosecutable pain in the arse; crimes of innocence, life is full of them.
I concluded from this experience that God's job is impossible, and that therefore God is a condition infinitely more baffling than mine, or outright impossible and finally, that the only possibility must therefore rest with me.
Yet with the exception of certain commonly adopted delusions, which are sustenance to most people most of the time, I can no longer accept any of these. Life at its greatest depths does not appear to conceal a mother lode of a precious resource needed to redress reality. If this is true, and I am sufficiently certain of it to have bet my life on it, the solution to the Tremendous Mystery is nothing other than a belly laugh. There is no greater travesty than that of living a proper, decent, wholesome, or especially, a saintly life! The life of that petty thief whom I picked up near Shuswap is just as valid, or more so than that of the self-deluded Good Samaritan! I did play the good Samaritan with him for a couple of days and profited from his misfortune; simple psychological greed. I fed him; I made his bed and tended with great care to his foot infection, only to see him one morning hastily disappearing down gasoline alley as I fumbled through my pockets for the missing wallet. That guy's life, or the most despicable character you can think of, or the mere life of a Manitoba wood tick, is equal to that of any saint certified by the appropriate Vatican quorum of pink plump cardinals.
It contributes to the function of the whole.
Five centuries into this so-called Age of Reason I witnessed the spectacle of a dead Saint being paraded through the streets of Calcutta on a field artillery carriage. Saints and heroes do much to add to our already unwieldy handicap. The occasional glimpse of verity, such as the break of trust by persons in high places and more refreshingly, the hanky-panky going on in the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world, could restore some objective clarity to our bedazzled vision but do not. Delusion is a renewable resource, it never fails us not even at the very end.

You may find this difficult to believe, but I just found out that the ladies of the temperance movement strongly objected to the town's original name “Sipiweske.” This word in Cree Indian means “Light Through the Trees.”
What a beautiful name for a place right? But they saw lurking danger in its possible misinterpretation. Council agreed; it made sense. Hence Wawanesa, presumably. “Wood tick on a grass stump.” All I need to feel sane is to be in sync with the dumb majority, but instead I have to examine, test and record any of the various aspects of “insanity” that stalk the wellmarked routes of conventional behaviour, for it is most likely in these wayward lanes of lunacies, that the most apparently insane proposition of all might be uncovered and reveal my true connection to reality. Otherwise what am I and what is my purpose but to be at various times a mere link, a frenzied shuttle, a drugged brainless Kamikaze? Really!




Episode 17


You probably have not heard of Pelican Lake, Manitoba. I sure hadn't... Pelicans in Manitoba? Are they lost? But No! And there goes another dint in my limited, orderly world.
Knowledge of the things I don't know is expanding at the same rate as my ignorance of things I "do know."
In Baja a few years ago, I chanced upon a beach of the Sea of Cortez that was a Pelicans' bone yard. I saw it as an unexpected invitation to play at doing some research in the field. Immediately I set out to study the large wing bones of these birds. Dilettantish, I compared them in weight, length, and thickness, and then I focused my attention to the internal structure of a particular section. At first glance they seemed identical, but slowly slight differences revealed themselves to my keen interest. A thin bone filament uniting one side of the interior wall to the other, its purpose akin to that of a strut, differed slightly in every specimen. Renewed effort eventually led me to conclude, as I expected, that they were all slightly different. I was so excited! Pity that such small joys of discovery have been generally sacrificed on the altar of competence and self-assuredness. Rarely we walk barefoot or take a minute to look up at the sky, and so we become inured to many magical experiences that could re-awake, even if momentarily, the awareness of juxtaposition with a refreshing shift of our self-identity. Because of a tiny bone filament my identity had just budged half a millimeter perhaps, yet as small as this measure may seem, it produced an emotive quantum which had, in my view, set in motion permanent reverberations. This may seem disproportionate because not only have we been desensitized by a culture that offers security at the price of reflection and spontaneity but then proceeded further to educate us in how to impose spontaneity, creativity and consensus on what should inspire us to which emotions and in which way. It has largely homogenized and duped us into accepting cultural formulae as the highest expression of what we can expect to achieve emotionally or even spiritually. So much so that not only may we gather brainlessly in warehouses of spirituality, but also fanatically entrust our passions to the hotly contested movements of a puck or obsess over the dictates of fashion. But what really stands out for me as an example of trained thinking is our reaction when we gaze at the starry sky.
-How small and insignificant I am! That is what I am supposed to feel.
What the hell has size to do with it? What meaning could size possibly have in a universe that is infinite? It is absurd. I am thinking of a different kind of magnitude, a meaning that has not yet been grasped, seemingly too distant because witnessed constantly:
When I move I rearrange the Universe! When I go out there under that “humbling dome” I am not humbled! I am exalted! And if I am not shooting my semen at it, I stand there defiant, indeed triumphant! I may be a mess but I am supreme, unequaled mess! Look at me! Look at infinite meaning, you infinite meaningless junk! And then I smile warmly, reassuringly.
-BOW TO ME!
I am Gameteus!
the spirit and state of the art.
Here, here! On this uninhabited rocky crag stands a speck…
A speck stands
A speck that is the glory and the bane of everything!
FROM IT, HANG!
YOU meaningless wallop and aimless IMMENSITY!
-Right?
No reply.
-RIGHT!?
I had gone too far. And not unusual, maybe contradicted myself. Daimon would not even bother a comment. And speaking of contradicting myself, later on, thanks to Howie, my personal devil’s advocate, who’s keen wit can mockingly deliver a Hellenic compliment, I looked up Alexander Pope! Better late than never uh? And yes, ye, YES! Oh blessed ignorance! I found delightful despair in this miglior fabro where I expected platitudes

Plac’d on this isthmus of middle state
A being darkly wise and rudely great...
Sole judge of Truth, in endless herror hurl’d;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world!




Episode 18


On that beach, I was prompted to reflect that the architecture of necessity which had worked on those bones was continuously tinkering and adjusting my brain, a brain which in my view was already the most productively unstable structure in the kingdom. As we know, stability is not very interesting, not creative, just blah. But an element out of whack, way out of balance with the whole is something to behold. The greater the unbalance, the greater its activity and its creativity.

There lives a little old lady not far from Lucy’s, with a small tent roof house and small lawn. She has more species of lawn creatures in her yard than anyone else in the universe. Her front and back yards are covered with gnomes, frogs, fawns, rabbits, Snow White and the seven dwarfs etc., etc. And yes even two full-size pelicans squatting or incubating side by side. Now the thing is, she isn't finished bringing them up from her basement yet.
I often ride by her place to check on her progress. Once I even tried to engage her into a conversation hoping to steer it delicately to the subject of her strange obsession. I was very curious, but soon, after just a few words, I had to desist as it became very clear that I was keeping her from her task and this caused her great stress. As I walked away I glanced back and saw her hurriedly getting back to her duty… ah yeah, duty! She went at it like her life depended on it. And then ,just as I was saying about unstable mind being productive, I began developing this theory that maybe, just maybe, it was not the greenhouse effect that was producing global warming, but this little lady. It is nearly July and she is still bringing them up. By the time she is finished, like a pendulum marking time or season, she must begin taking them down. Now, calculating that even on a small pension she might add each year one or two of these ornaments to her collection, plus the fact that she may be slowing down a bit, solstice, climate, seasons may be, as a consequence, noticeably affected.
I take these things seriously, as seriously as a physicist may take laws of motion, or conservation etc.
Just how serious? Well one day I considered alerting The Front for the Liberation of Lawn Creatures. I believe it is based in France. They go under cover of dark moonless nights to snatch these elves et. al., and liberate them by relocating them in some deep distant forest. But then I thought to myself -What if my action tipped this precarious and curious arrangement to which we are accustomed and precipitated a catastrophic climatic change?
Perhaps a Farmer's almanac based on her progress would do no harm.
I have to stop this. It must have become apparent to you that Wawanesa is not a place with green lawns, hanging baskets, flags, ball park, painted white bicycles. It is a state of mind played out on an extended field. It is an interplay of photons, nuons, particles, energy, maybe some monads thrown in there for good measure that have passed through the prism of my mind and projected a scene in a theatre of thoughts that is the kaleidoscope of the cosmos' dreamtime. Interference lines have assumed form, acquired names, and pushed lawnmowers as I have paused here on my four year journey to confront the Wizard.
It is at the very least a bit better than what I could be doing at my age, like going through memorabilia, looking at pictures, cracked commemorative plates, bronzed baby shoes, as if they were proof of or at least the concrete remains of some meaningful event. Here I am in a quasi-minimalist state, a large bare apartment with a computer, a guitar, a bedroll, a plastic milk crate upon which I sit, and not to forget a large oil landscape painting by Lawrence Nickle. Oh Yeah, I must not forget, a keyboard…. GEE! I really have too much. Too much grace Saint Antony, too much grace! How did Diogenes do it? And what did he accomplished really? Not man! Not the man I know anyway.
Ah! All I need to tell you for now is that there is lift under my wings, that this curiously modified model has soared further on this up-draft of maybes than your own wings have ever allowed you to imagine.

package in the mail from Linda.

! “V for Vendetta” !

WONDERFUL! Oh this is so good!

…-Rookwood, why didn’t you come forward with it before? What were you waiting for?
-For you inspector! I was waiting for you!

(WOW!) No truer words ever came out of Hollywood! Hell, anywhere!
I had a sore back or a sore head, I don’t remember, but I remember that I didn’t feel like watching Diana watching Dr. Phil, so I asked Eric if he had any DVDs that I might find interesting. He handed me 3 which he thought, with some apprehension, I might not find to be outright trash. I went to my room, and tried the other two first. Trash. V was left not as a last resort but because by its cover I had judged it the least likely of the three. If I understand Hume correctly, I know what I like and what I dislike, and that is all. Any idiot would rather have pleasure than pain, but then if we have to choose between life and death we choose life which is both. I have concluded that though we are endowed with a higher I.Q. than a falling pot of petunias we have not yet discovered an application for it that is not biased and flawed, not even in science. According to science, the farthest galaxies visible are 13.7 billion light years away, hence according to these luminaries, this big firework we are riding is for the moment 13.7 billion years old. But something interesting happens when you apply grade four mathematics to test these data. If Jack, who has lived on that farthest galaxy since the big bang, has been travelling on average at one tenth the speed of light it will have taken him 137 billion years to get 13.7 billion light years away from me, so how do we get the age of the Universe to be only 13,7 billion years? As le bon David said: let us chase our imagination to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves… And philosophers fare no better in their examination of man because they do not realize that he is of two natures. Both master and slave at the same time because the half which would be master cannot free itself from the other half which would be slave. At times I am a scream inside an Iron Maiden and I feel well represented by Gormley’s Iron Man with tits… Why do I have tits?

Daimon said that I go too far, that if I had it my way life would be devoid of pleasure, fun, adventure and without love, hope or imagination. True, of potent drugs and false hopes this country I have to quit, but for lack of imagination? No sir! There is never enough of it!
It was out of consideration for Eric that I started watching the movie.
I knew that he had been forced to make a difficult decision and had chosen those three DVDs with some trepidation. He knows, and he is right, that I am too fucking highfalutin discriminating! But what can I do if the world is full of assholes and garbage? Ah but what a pleasure to be absolutely wrong now and then.
So I am in my bed in a room full of garbage, absent mindedly watching the screen expecting nothing and so without noticing it I am quietly dropped into the private moments of the two main characters. I am alternatively, without camera wizardry, transformed into a fly on the wall at V’s place or Evey’s as the state’s ideological boob is on the Telly feeding worker jelly to the hive.
Then it gets better, then good and at times, absolutely brilliant! Like when she is shoved into her cell and in mid scene the director cares enough to have the camera switch to a shot of her stumbling feet to express what it feels like when the world she knew is pulled away from under her. And I loved the reference to the day of the walking dead (or something like that) when the Telly goes off:
-Dad, what’s wrong with the Telly?
Like zombies rising from their graves, father stands and blankly faces the set as mom moves lifelessly in from the kitchen. But there are so many good things happening in this celluloid second coming. It is going to keep me busy for a while. Oh yeah! When the director interprets in visual poetry how an ill conceived idea dies by moving the camera away from dying Delia and on to the rose as it drops on the bed (facing me Ha-ha!) I had to take a break. I had not had as intense a moment in movies since Amadeus. When at dawn, after a long night, Salieri is finished and so is the young priest who can barely hold on to the crucifix that hangs upside down below his knees where the evening before it had stood upright and firmly planted on his lap. Or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Movies are doing a better job than academia at pushing the envelope. I guess they can take more chances. They can freeze Manhattan, change missiles into sperm whales and if they would have reversed Matrix, they could have come very close…like we are so dumb that we are doing all we can to plug ourselves into the machine, ah, anyway....
I was stunned. I guess Eric was stunned at my unexpected reaction. I raved about the directing, the acting, the camera work and lighting, the best acting ever by a mask, I thought. And then the quotes, the many allusions and appropriate inferences… Oh! And wasn’t the scene at the bishop’s delightfully choreographed to bring together true debauchery and feigned innocence? Ah for sure I had to put up with too much cranberry juice and swashbuckling but the action never completely buried the argument as, very regrettably, The Matrix did instantly and completely. A couple of things I could not figure out; why didn’t the director make use of the deeply orthodox metaphysical first movement of the 1812 and how come he presented V as a strictly political character without any messianic tones which could have been so easily exploited. Even as he prepares to die and makes a gift of his life’s work to Evey and the next generations, he does so without casting the slightest shadow of a cross or a hint of a supernatural will on an act ordained by obvious necessity and pure unadorned reason. I felt as though I had been introduced to a new type of human rather than a superhuman hero. A human, all so simply human! The reply to the bishop’s plea for mercy is a powerful affirmation of this newly acquired level of human integrity which needs not reward itself with sentimentality. To the plea, -Mercy, oh please have mercy! V’s response is neither vengeful nor compassionate but straightforward. So honest and simple as to be disturbing:
-O, not tonight bishop, not tonight!
And I enjoyed the brief reference to Casablanca when the train pulled off and Evey and the inspector walk away from a monumental event counterpointing it with casual conversation.
There are however, moments when V has to struggle with his ‘All too human’ rudiments of sentimentality, as when he explain to Evey how difficult it was for him to keep torturing her and then there is a moment unequalled in the art of the screen, when in the briefest possible visible sequence, and in this movie great insights are purposely so brief as to be almost subliminal, a scene meaningfully explosive, tells of V’s deepest anguish as he cannot longer deny to himself that he loves Evey. In the scene V’s back is to the camera so that his monstrous face is not visible when he tears off his masks and throws it at the mirror shattering it before its reflection becomes visible. What genius in the small details! And right then, one is made to feel that all the injustices, pains and horrors V had endured at the hands of his tormentors pale in comparison to the suffering inflicted on him by this unexpected vision of unattainable bliss. Ah, how well the bright fires of heavenly joys consume us.

I miss Daimon, let me tell you. How about him going ahead with my plan and committing suicide up there on Mount Niut? Of course the miserable conditions, the mosquitoes and that crazy grizzly did not affect him. But why? Did he do it to spite me? To teach me a lesson? Anyway I am now alone. I cannot talk to Daimon, I have severed all other ties. I have two, no, three contacts left, three women who love me and they love me no matter what. I call them my three faithful Magdalens. The thing is that without Daimon I cannot talk to myself. I can think thoughts but they evanesce quickly like dreams. I believe lots of dreams are not recollected in the morning for the same reason.
There is no actual verbal communication in dreams, and on those rare occasion when words are actually spoken in dreams, these are usually personal names.
Like:
-MOSES!
The same is true when one experiences visions. Like:
-PAUL! –– – – ––– –?
I heard my name called twice, once it was Veronica after we had separated, and the second time it was “My Master”!
-CLAUDIO!
-!?
-Get up and be on your way, do not dally! The way will be shown to you.
So I started right away. I walked out of the city to the edge of a desert. There I saw three long columns of people going into the desert. They were happily chanting and dancing and heading in three different directions. I asked the leader of the column which happened to be closest to me:
-Where are you going?
-WE are going to our master! He has summoned us. I can see that you too were summoned, so you better come with us! I looked at the other two columns and he understood my puzzlement. -Ah those others are fools, pay no attention to them. Come with us, you cannot go wrong because we have the book! He showed me the book. The master’s own words!
No doubt you will appreciate that I just had to check out the others. They too had been summoned and they too had the book with the true words of their Master. Dancing and singing they went and so I realized that I was confronted with three contrasting beliefs. It was only when I enquired why no one was going in that forth direction that they all agreed.
-No one goes that way and lives! Everybody knows that!
It made me smile, I thanked them and started that way.
They were horrified They cried after me.
-You will die!
-Yes, yes! Great! Thank you so kindly.

It appears that in dreams and visions we have no way to identify our self, our self image, except by name. Schizophrenics hear voices! But those voices are not their little man’s voices. They are the voices of entirely different and alien imaginary personalities. The little man represents the interests of the cultural, moral and religious beliefs of his society. The schizos’ voices are ghosts. The conventional belief that ghosts haunt run down castles or sometimes bungalows is stupid. What would ghosts want with walls, closets and attics? They would want a body wouldn’t they? And a live one naturally, which are usually occupied, so these ghosts evict the little man, and so their victims become schizophrenic.
Now, all these words have gathered slowly on this screen in a process similar to a mustard seed turning into a mustard plant. It may take weeks to reveal physically in an extended form the mustard concept that is already in the seed, which seed in turn is already wholly existent in all its stages in its immaterial master-form, or if you prefer, the God Particle. I think that the little man, sometimes referred to as the conscience, or a little guardian angel, is a pest, a republican, an ultraconservative spokesman for conformity, God and country. Yet he is essential whether I acquiesce to his will or resist it. When I act against his will, I am a rebel, a scoundrel maybe even a criminal, but if I don’t “hear” him at all…. If that social voice is absent altogether; I am a psychopath.
It blew me away when I was made to realize that V experienced true Hell only when he had a vision of absolute bliss.
Daimon is gone, I miss him a lot and as as usual when I feel depressed I get busy housecleaning. I have a tiny entry vestibule, as small as Nickle’s infernal trap, in it I keep my recyclables. There is enough to justify a hard bike ride to the depot but it is just what I think I need right now; inconsequential and incoherent activity. So I load up my baby trailer. It is snowing, the roads are bad. The worst parts are the treacherous car wheel ruts hidden under a layer of fresh snow and it is getting dark. It is a stupid thing to do if you are not stupid. I am smart enough to know that I am an idiot.
Pascal described this mental see-saw very nicely and concluded by declaring me to be an incomprehensible monster. It is so damned confusing and frustrating because to assert one is to confirm its opposite. Anyway, I hooked up to the bike my pink baby trailer that I bought for a song at the thrift store. It has a nice white vinyl top and a zipped clear plastic windshield. With the coloured bottles and cans that I threw in it, it looks just like a giant baby rattle. A giant pink and white rattle hooked to the saddle of a black and mean-looking mountain bike, and a crazy old coot riding it in a snowstorm. People stop and stare; some smile. When I fall and the giant baby rattle jackknifes in the middle of the road, traffic stops and people come to my aid. There is a proverb about fools and their luck. I have been demonstrating its veracity to the good folks of Revelstoke for months and in the process am learning to fall. Strangely enough, the only person who went out of his way to chew me up about it one day was Chinese! It puzzled me.
The guy at the depot is closing up as I arrive and shakes his head when he sees me coming. I zip the windshield open; he looks at about four bottles and three cans.
-Well at least it didn’t cost you ten times its worth in gas.
This recycling madness is a pet peeve of mine so I take the opportunity to appraise him of my opinion.
-Yeah, what nonsense! It is all public relations you know, it actually costs more and pollutes more to pick it, ship it here and there, who knows how far and process it just so that we may feel better about being lazy and spoiled. During the war they made us collect bits of metal scraps to make us feel we were contributing to the war effort, to victory!
-O I hear you! I hear you my friend! He says. He enunciates each word like he is savouring their very distinct and rich flavours. It reminds me of Nat King Cole! And Jesus! I take another look at him and by gum, it is him! Nat is recycling the contents of my giant baby rattle which suddenly is just that, with wheels.
So there! There ended what I thought was a very promising field of enquiry for me. I swear I had never, never heard words spoken in my dreams before, and so clearly! Why do all these crazy things happen to me? O.K. So If I am being mocked by a malin geni I should take comfort in knowing that thus my existence is confirmed.


notes

-Damn it, Russell Crowe spoiled the super bowl for me.


-The Stoke is a good place to rewrite part 2, recoup from my great failure, or success, and after 52 straight hours on a bus I got off in Revelstoke again and as luck would have it, the cabin I had lived in two years earlier had just become available again. Revelstoke, this small railroad town with three liquor stores on top of the Masons’ lodge, the Daughters of Pythias, the Loyal order of the Moose and the Lion’s, was a good decision even though this meant having Marlow as neighbour again. On the plus side it would be impossible for me to evade Quasimodo again. The place at the end of the road just before the big lumber mill was a perfect place for a monster to hide. There were no doubts in my mind that as destiny had arranged for me to meet him–the very day he was moving in and I was moving out–that same providence also prompted me to get off the bus and made the cabin available again just so that I could face the monster again and thus meet that part of me that always hides from me. I was determined to let him know that yes, I was seeing a monster just as I had done the first time but pretended otherwise. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that not only wasn’t he living in cabin #4 anymore but that no one remembered having seen him or had even heard of him. Christ! The landlords could not have missed him. No one could have missed a monster living in their midst! I didn’t know what to think of it, until by applying my first principle of insufficient reason which states that Everything is possible yet nothing certain, I was able to conclude that very possibly I had never met someone named Chris who looked worse than Quasimodo, but that I had met the Minotaur instead. And that, that mythical creature, half beast half human, was none other than myself. Half beast, half Man. That is me, half master half slave, no doubt about it! I had always wanted to meet my real self, to know myself, and when it actually happened I of course mistook me for someone else! Wonderful! Anyway that is why I am here jumping ahead of myself in one way as I lag behind in another. And a propos, I forgot the dedication to this book of maybes.
-I dedicate it to all those whom I have hurt, failed and betrayed. Put this way, everyone I have come in contact with and many more. Yet I wish to make it clear that I do so not as a self serving melodramatic act of contrition but a straightforward clinical recognition of fact.

*

Ten principles from the book of maybes.

1 No one can plant a cabbage for its sake.
2 I am not living my life, life is living me.
3 Activity is product of imbalance.
4 Love discriminates and is the foundation of all human evil.
5 The only two things that are exclusively mine are my folly and my death.
6 Death is the ultimate and most forbidden beatitude.
7 All history is present history.
8 Tolerance rides high or low on the economy.
9 All is mathematical expression Ugh, the devil made me say that. I can’t vouch for it but speaking of the devil, I saw him once. He came in a vision you might say. Others get the Virgin, God, Christ, Buddha or whoever, it just shows you how far I must have strayed from the straight an narrow. Further than Pogo maybe, because I came face to face with him and peered deep into his eyes. It only lasted a second maybe, but I downloaded a lot of information in that moment. It happened when I found myself in a dark open space, not so dark that I could not see anything at all like on a moonless cloudy night way out in the boonies when darkness is absolute, when it is as dark as being inside a cow. It was a grey kind of dark place, and I felt an overpowering conviction that my enemy, the devil in person, was nearby. I started running, I had no idea what I would do if I caught up with him but I had murder burning inside of me which propelled me like a Long Pa and just as I got up to full speed three other guys appeared beside me, running for the same reason. We all came to a sudden stop and took a second to size up the situation which was so obvious that there was no need to say anything, we were allies. Strangely we also all looked the same. And not only that, we all wore the same clothes and hats (Fedoras!) and so we all looked like Harrison Ford in one of his Sagas. The only difference, which was crucial to me, was that the others carried weapons. One of them had a baseball bat, another a pitchfork and the third, which was closest to me had a shining brand new carpenter’s hand-saw with a kink in it. Their intent clearly was to catch him, clobber him, stab him and then saw his legs off… I had to have a weapon. Oddly enough given the momentous situation, that kink bothered me. Any fool knows that you can ruin a beautiful instrument like that by putting too much pressure on the push stroke. That you must let the tool do its job, controlling your impatience or haste. So I was staring down at that kink, which I knew could never be straightened, as I approached the guy and then indignantly and without hesitation, I ripped the tool from his hand. It surprised me that I felt no resistance at all, but a moment later the four of us were running to beat the band around a dome-like knoll. And we ran and ran round and round this mound when it occurred to me that we were chasing and trying to catch up with the devil himself, not some stupid criminal. I imagined that it is as easy as pie for him to always be where anyone least expects him. On the opposite side of the knoll maybe, or on top of it laughing his head off. And that if we climbed to the top he would be underneath, and if we tunnelled underneath he would be at the top again, and that we might keep at it for ever which is just what he wants us to do. So I stopped abruptly and the others did the same, but evidently puzzled, as if they could not conceive of a reason for me to desist. That did it for me. It took care of any lingering doubts; I just knew that those dodos would keep running round and around the dome for ever. So I went to hand the saw back to that guy and as I was doing this I happened to look up at his face and our eyes locked for a second. I recognized him! There was no doubt and the expression in his eyes told me that he knew it. I hesitated momentarily and in that instant I was able to examine and reflect upon an enormous amount of data and arrive at a decision, which was to almost force the saw back into his hand and say nothing to the others. The expression in his eyes changed in a flash. It now said with total resignation as clear as any tongue or writ could convey: -I thought you might do that. You devil!
Ha-ha! Coming from him it was a real compliment…mmm! More than that! There was something diabolical about his predicament, something familiar to me. What was it? Had I revealed his identity to the others, his ordeal of chasing himself for ever in order to survive would have been over. I had no idea how this related to me, but I knew it did. Right after that the threesome kicked up their heels and were driven off in their relentless fate. The song, “What the world needs now” reminds me of it every time I hear it; it has that kind of tautological roundness to it, and at times the number four. That may seem odd and it is a bit complicated to explain, so I will only say that reflecting on that strange experience, I decided that I was spared their fate because I was the fourth entity and that since four is the first number that is not prime I had other factors working for me that endowed me with a separate or alternate role. It also is part of a pet theory of mine by which this number is the first in an endless series of numbers that are not an inevitable consequence but independent and therefore creative. That is to say that the number 1 is due to chance and meaningless by itself, which forces the subsequent and inevitable number 2 into existence, and thus the two numbers inevitably form a situation which is represented as 3 or third. This happens to be the least possible functional number of digits or things required to form a simple closed system. It follows then that 4 is the first non prime number which is also not inevitable and therefore discretely independent and hence creative. Echoes of the holy trinity and the triangle, which is the simplest and possibly most stable Euclidean form, though in some aspects also the least comfortable. In the above episode I was the fourth and evitable entity. As for number one, I think that there had to be a point–temporal or/and potential–when the odds were even for the universe to exist or not to exist. To be or not to be. And it seems to me that it is in this mathematical tension of potential that the infinite things precipitate into being because a perfect equilibrium here–between being and not being–was untenable since it is tantamount in effect to not being. Zero. Nada, the void, no activity, not being. This involuntary shift towards the Zero without satisfying the mathematical potential of the One introduced an incidental and unsatisfied element in the form of imbalance. An instability which becomes the field of weakness and the mould in which the One rebounds, prevails and finds limitless expression. There is justice in Mathematics. Of course this also implies that Gameteous might be less than half of everything…one fourth perhaps? Ah no! Impossible.




Episode 19


To persist in my folly,
to err mightily,
to break all the rules well,
and then-
go to hell.


In Italy, a man of the 10-12th century participating in the late afternoon promenade in any town of the deep south of my era, would have felt quite at home. He would have seen the Baron in his full wheel mantle and with a silver knobbed cane striding majestically in the middle of the street flanked by the Mayor perhaps and followed closely by a retinue which includes his wife and kids, and friends. The taller, long haired and fair skinned Baron would acknowledge with composed restraint the obsequious greetings of the town’s folk. These gestures of submission and respect were performed in earnest. The womenfolk and kids did this with an awkward walking curtsy that could easily be mistaken for a stumble whereas from the men he was entitled a more formal show of obsequiousness. They would bare their heads, bow deeply and utter the accompanying verbalized version of hand and feet kissing. The aforementioned time-traveller might have been familiar with the finer nuances of the gesture and would in this case, have chosen to regale the Baron with a polished performance. At the right distance from the approaching Baron and his family, he would come to a stop, then turn towards the Baron in a slow measured motion thereby indicating to him that he was preparing to offer his respect. To this the Baron would, without braking stride, turn his face towards him, make eye contact and thus recognize his intent and graciously consent it. At this, the millennial man would, with slight exuberance, remove his hat and suggestively station it as far from his person and towards the Baron’s hands as it was possible without straining and then proffer the words:
-Bacio le mani, Eccellenza!
Anyone lower in rank would not presumed to aim that high, so he would have brought his hat much lower and said:
-I kiss your feet, Your Excellency!
The baron would acknowledge with a slight nod and contained satisfaction.
A moment later the well-bred stranger would replay a scaled down version of it for the Baroness and her entourage.
A bit further ahead he may have tipped his hat at a couple of ladies on a balcony, one engaged in de-fleaing the other, as they enjoyed watching the promenade below. By and by the priest, followed by an altar boy, may have gone by on a mission of mercy, and stopping at the side-walk table outside the inn for a glass of wine, he may have observed the innkeeper’s wife performing an evil eye exorcism for a client, while from another table he may have heard some men discussing the perils of night travel and the latest report of blood-chilling activities of local brigands. Some towns of this region still sported the pikes outside their gates, though the custom of beheading brigands and skewering their heads on those pikes had been outlawed for a while. Brigands lurked everywhere in the dark of nights, according to the local lore. One did not venture far from home at night. These brigands must have been a desperate lot, let me tell you, for certain they were not after Spanish galleons! What booty could they expect from a local peasant aside from the ragged clothes he had on him is beyond me. And these they did take, often at the price of their hapless victims’ lives. In the day time, the locals were constantly alert and keenly sensitive to any obliquely furtive glance that bore that hint of envy or anger which was the unmistakable mark of the dreaded evil eye. I think this custom evolved in response to the special need in a protective and suspicious society to expose in safety their sexually budding youth to potential mates. These buds by the way, which were subject to incredible hardships from early childhood to early grave, bloomed early and lasted a very short time as you would expect of any living organisms under similarly harsh conditions. The race to survive and multiply under strain produced a crop of stunted, brutalized, ugly, dumb and skittish individuals hard as nails. This prompts me to another consideration of a modern interest, it completely excluded the possibility of foreplay in the copulating stage of these hardy and valorous champions of our species. I think no-frill and rather brief, violent spasms would be accurate. I have seen and felt the hands on some of these young males and females! Rakes, shovels, picks and other such prying implements come immediately to mind, and besides, I have to confess that in my own youth the practice of foreplay was largely unknown, as was the term for it.

I have been reading a lot lately, too lately, on religion and philosophy and I am baffled!
-Man was made to walk erect and look at the stars!
-God hath made all things beautiful!
-Man is condemned to be free!

What utter nonsense! Where did they get such ideas?
I have gone past the altar of despair,
And am now staring at the maniacal bliss
of the most forbidden knowledge.
I have gone beyond Love
No one there; I think I am as alone as God.

-DAMN IT! I am the only thing rattling in this big Meccano Set!
-Very good!
-Yes indeed! But now, let there be a big clunk!-There has to be a big clunk!


However, the other point that I wanted to make (presuming I made one point) is that I enjoyed my stay there. It was very different. It made me different. The locals, who in recognizing that I was not one of them and thus inevitably assumed that I must be better, referred to me as signorino (petit seigneur!). I was the son of the concierge at home, here I was little lord Fauntleroy. I did not really enjoy the appellative; I remember being disturbed by it. Anyway as I said, I enjoyed being there and I suspect this had nothing to do with the place being enjoyable nor the time or the culture. It had to do, I think, with the fact that I was at an age when role playing was becoming important, necessary and possibly terrifying to me. Being foreign, even if temporarily, had postponed and delayed my right of passage so that a little time later when unknown to me “my” mind was descending to relocate its command and control centre of operations in my scrotum (from where it operated uninterruptedly for the next half century), I lost the war and the world into which I was tentatively moving to append my forming identity was hung upside down at the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, I lost my grip! I kind of fell off it and lost the opportunity of developing a suitable role for myself which is convenient, if not indispensable, to confront the demands and perplexities of the life of a slave. From then on I was in the play but not of the play, an outsider. Not better a man for it of course, perhaps worse, but certainly different than the common fate of one who gets barnacled onto the local rock.




Episode 20

A dream is a visit,
Reality a persisting notion.
As I climb slowly this mountain trail
I may sit on it and rest for a while,
As a bird busy weaving a nest does,
Now and then
break into a song.


I share my apartment with a colony of tiny ants. They are very tiny and they are everywhere, exploring my computer at this very moment. I know from previous experiences with the species that I am not able to communicate with them. I spent a few days in the jungle around Chichen Itza studying them. There were enormous numbers of them, like live rivulets they mapped the territory all around me.
I discovered that if I drew my finger across one of these streams and obliterated a span of their scent track, the flow would be interrupted. Traffic jammed up. Curiously, though they could clearly see their comrades on the other side of the narrow gap they would not cross it. I had created a chasm. Some backtracked, confused. Eventually though the gap narrowed and closed so the traffic resumed moving, haltingly as they went on bumping into each other, touching antennae, weaving their way clear of those going in the opposite direction. It came to me that it might be feasible to teach them to adopt the right of way. I thought that if I could persuade them to adopt this method, their commerce would improve so much that they might overrun our planet and send us packing to some other distant planet or destroy us altogether.
I gave it a shot. I widened the gap to two fingers and installed a median, then, using tiny sticks, I tried to force single perplexed individuals on both sides of the divide to cross the gap on their respective right side. But of course, as soon as these confused and recalcitrant individuals were forced across the short bypass and reached the jammed up column on the other side of the control zone they happily resumed bumping along in their inefficient but obviously gregarious bazaar-like manner. My hopes were dashed, Prometheus had failed. But the other day I watched a Supertanker being assembled in South Korea, and all I could do was laugh! I could not stop laughing as I watched giant pieces of a giant ship being put together with giant cranes and machines. I thought it was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me! Or God forbid, right!




Episode 21


Hope! I despise it! I resent so much when one’s great resolve is Sicklied over and relinquished to the indignity of the irrational and unmerited operation of chance. When I was a kid I hated the God Willing version. Practically everything that was expressed as a wish, was straight-away consigned to God’s attic. Once it ended up there, one knew no recourse. No point raising the question again since the decision was now adding to the cluttered complexity of God’s dubious mansions. My poor mother was an expert on the subject. A graduate of WWI, a depression, and a bad marriage, doing at present postgraduate work on raising three kids during yet another WW, eminently qualified her.
Broken spirit turns to lesser hopes, and that is even worse than false hopes.
I think that my objection, although vaguely composed, was firmly grounded on direct personal experiences which could not admit the possibility that anyone or anything could outrank nor out-qualify my mother in goodness, wisdom and even in beauty and therefore so undeserving of grief! She was to me the sole source of deep affection and desire for her happiness. Those heaven splitting raptures so sought by mystics and saints are probably nothing more than this undying desire of recapturing the bliss of the first seduction. I worshipped her; the bright steady beacon of beauty and comfort she radiated made the awesome tides of bewildering challenges and threats more poignant and unbearable! And by her unconditional and unflinching devotion she unwittingly betrayed me. To this love I too was bound and set forth down that isle which had inexorably delivered her to the sacrificial stone- whereupon with, appropriately elaborate mumbo-jumbo rituals, her dreams were bled into the common trough of humanity.
Hope is Dukkha!
You may be wondering what all this has to do with ants, Mexican or Canadian, and to be truthful I don’t know and I don’t care to really know anything, nor do I care to ascertain its validity regarding the truth or its pertinence regarding the story. If it happens and it grabs my attention it will become an entry in this journal which I began after my Epiphany and intend to keep going right to the grosse Moment who die Frosche in das Wasser springen!
And since meandering is the structure that this journal has imposed on itself, let me tell you of a small but key incident that contributed to my wobbly course through oceans of stifling conventions.
I was in bed for my mandatory summer afternoon siesta. I wasn’t sleeping. My mom and dad were in the kitchen talking in very low voices. Usually only my dad did the talking, complaining mainly about his boss and Mussolini (my hero). He hated having to attend political rallies and to march on parades, idiotic things which encroached on his free time, which was not in effect free time since this was the time he was dedicated to a much higher authority than the despised Duce. My dad responded very strongly to nature’s call to contribute to the gene pool. He rarely was home more time than it took him to wash, eat, complain, put on the freshly washed and ironed shirts which was my mother’s modest contribution to nature’s imperative, and take off to some elegant Café. And oh they were elegant places, remnants of la belle époque! Ladies with black fish nets over their faces, birds of paradise nesting on their heads, glass-eyed foxes biting their tails wrapped over their shoulders, moved like visions wafting fragrant wakes among tranquil, seated gentlemen, smoking, reading newspapers which were hung on individual hand-held racks as trios or quartets played Viennese Waltzes.
My poor dad! He must have felt so out of place, so vulnerable, so impecunious and inadequate. The things we are made to do and that then we are presumed responsible for! Once he took me to such a place. He actually had my mom wash me and dress me like a little sailor so that he could take me for ice cream to one such place and show me off to his proprietress friend. Perhaps she had asked to see me. I have no idea what story he may have told my mom, nor how she must have felt. Anyway this particular afternoon, the two of them were in the kitchen, my dad was whispering–which was unusual–and my mom was responding–which was very unusual. Usually my dad did all the complaining and talking, and although he would lower his voice when cursing Mussolini, he had never whispered and never allowed my mom to participate. In fact, just before this incident he got so angry and so loud that as soon as he had finished and had left, my mother came to me and, with the pretext of doing up my shirt collar, she knelt down before me and begged me with tears in her eyes to, -Please, please I beg you! Never! Never tell anyone what you have just heard dad say. I was stunned. There were so many things wrong with this picture, and on top of it all her big, red, chaffed hands of a washerwoman stank so much! I hated it when she fiddled around my face, it was an awful smell that marred that beloved image. And now there were those rough hands that smelled of bleach and there were tears in her eyes and she was begging me as if I had some power unknown to me that could cause her great harm! Those tears! HOW? WHY? There were deep unseen threatening faults running under the ground of my being. As it happened, the day my father and mom whispered in the kitchen was the day Il Duce–following the astonishing blitzing successes of the German armed forces and fearing that he might miss the war altogether–shouted to the world that Italy had declared war against the allies. Of the whole conversation I remember being struck by my mom’s sobbing whispering voice:
-What are we going to do? How will we manage? What is going to happen to us?
It worried me. So later that afternoon I did myself proud. Secretly I paced our backyard and scanned every inch it for the whitest, brightest pebbles I could find until I had filled the one small pocket that, albeit with some difficulty, the economy of the times and my poor mom had provided for my handkerchief.




Episode 22


I noticed that I was tired and that it was getting dark. So I hurriedly started writing the notes on my experiments. I got thirsty so took out of my back pack the two bottles of coke that I had brought with me and attempted to open one on a rock beside me. The blow took the cap off alright but shattered the neck into numerous tiny sharp fragments. I was thirsty, it was getting dark, I wanted to write some pointers for my next experiments, so I placed the bottle on the ground beside the other one which I picked up and opened carefully against the same rock. The operation was successful this time so I had a drink, sat down, placed the second bottle next to the first and started writing again. There was a practical reason for me to keep the shattered bottle; I was far from anything in that jungle of the Yucatan. I thought that once the fragments had settled I would carefully decant the contents of it into the other bottle. But what I shouldn’t have done was to place it right beside the other bottle. So I got engrossed on my writing, it was getting dark, ideas were galloping into my head and onto the dim surface of the paper. I took a nice gulp, choked, coughed, exploded, and there I was, cuts in my mouth, alone, miles from anywhere with the proper sinking feeling while reminded of a B-grade movie where one of the bad guys (probably Sydney Greenstreet) had decided to elude judgement by dining on a Chinese delicacy laced with razor sharp thin strips of bamboo. Of course it did not occur to me to recall those reports of people eating nails, glasses, plates or even–this I don’t know if it is true but it sounds crazy enough to be so–a guy eating an airplane! None of those thoughts came to mind. What I did think of, besides big Sydney sitting in a Chinese restaurant sweating cold bullets and being jolted by sudden acute visceral messages, was my mother’s warnings about little shards of eggshell in the days when chickens took time and the right ingredients, plus a certain amount of justified pride in delivering Grade A large eggs with shells as hard as porcelain. Then there were the chicken bones! Bones of the same aforementioned proud chickens who wound up in pots only when no longer able to produce those remarkable Fabergé candidates, so old in fact that their bones where so hard and brittle that they broke and splintered into dog-killing little bayonets. Despite all this, and after the fact-quite understandably so–I was not in the least frightened because, as I can explain it to myself now, this case invoked the determining influence of a greater element; I was alone, there was no audience in attendance and since there was no one there to share my fear and misery and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, it was quite futile to get into a panic. In fact it felt quite natural for me to curl up on my bedroll and go directly to sleep mode. I slept like a log. It still amazes me, the strangely silent, closed in drama of one who is alone, perhaps drowning in the ocean or lost in the desert. His aloneness hangs over the reality of his situation like a diffused mirage, and in these quiescent surrounding his basic instinct switches off all useless mental productions and locks directly on to the primary ground of unfettered liberating fatalism. Had I been with someone and within reach of a telephone line connected to someone else who could help me, my mind would have whipped up a storm that would have driven me into a frenzy just so that I might elicit prompt and solicitous measures that would first and foremost satisfy my need for attention and then possibly, even avert a very nasty conclusion.
As it was, the grey skipper up there recognized that the red flashing lights and sirens would be useless and that the next best thing was to disarm all the alarms and let me get a good sleep. In fact it turned out to be one of the deepest, most reinvigorating sleeps I had ever experienced. In the morning I stood up feeling as Sol Invictus, fully alive, brave and very happy. Being alone and beyond help proved to be most helpful.




Episode 23


I align my minds
Writing poetry
And jumping over garbage cans.

These Sipiweske ants are not really interested in food, and they are not interested in colonizing me either. You might think it strange but I have observed them for days now. I have a bit of difficulty following their coming and going on the floor of this empty apartment because it is entirely covered with a white-to-gold-to-brown ravioli pattern carpet. But the bathroom is white linoleum and after I have acknowledged the presence of my bare feet, to which I am profoundly grateful. I sit on my throne enjoying one of my better and satisfying achievements in life–a well timed morning dump.
Pipe-coffee-dump!
I linger a bit observing them. What they are doing is clearing up floor kill.
I can’t figure it out. When I moved in I found ant traps strategically placed on counter, cupboards, window sills, etc. plus a package of new ones inside a kitchen drawer. I deployed those as well. I had traps all over but the ants showed no interest whatever to them or any kind of food. The only things I saw them picking up and carrying away were the bodies of their dead comrades.
These creatures were gathering their own dead. What for? I ask myself. I can’t believe that they do so for interment? Could it be that they are cannibals? They do not seem to eat anything else, but can the economy based on the consumption of its own members flourish? I am puzzled because as usual I make all kinds of false assumptions when failing to take into account that I am observing a different species and trying to understand their behaviour relative to my own values and experiences. I am persuaded to view nature as a process of creating, of engineering if you will, building, assembling and evolving onwards and upwards from simple elements into more and more complex compounds and forms. I should perhaps see it instead, as a process of precipitation whereby things are not created but precipitated into a catch-all matrix which by its compositions determines the structure of whatever happens upon it, much like a blotting paper determines the shape of an ink spot. So I can’t explain why the ants are doing what they are doing, nor why I do things, because I am not doing these things; they are happening. Like the Taoist said: There is the deed- but not the doer thereof.
This being settled, I am left entirely to my own devices, free to pursue with delight, my own, however extreme or wacky reveries. I get most of my inspirations, not from the scripture nor from the sages nor mystics and saints (though all of these can be very amusing), but from children’s fairy tales, Hollywood and that little known encrypted view of the world by the Captain Benjamin L. Willard of the XIV century. How well he describes life’s condition using the afterlife setting where the damned know their condition in the past and in the future but are totally unawares of the present. The present is that which is denied to us lest we erase the past and write our future and our own salvation eschewing any intercessor.
I think that is the reason for me to be here. In this fantasy town, oh yes the town! The notion is taking a firm hold in my mind that I chanced upon this mythical place because in that fateful moment when my tank showed empty and I veered off the main highway, I disturbed the frequency of resonances that produced the matrix of my dimension and “precipitated” me into a contiguous reality. This experience is similar to the spooky reality I created for myself as a kid, when darkness set off my imagination to stray into the terrorizing realm of ghosts, ogres and goblins. Darkness produced them and at the same time concealed them, urging me to fill in the vestigial lacunae within my not yet clearly defined reality to which I was assigned. It is obvious now that I never quite fully integrated and that a sudden surge of emotive energy in my sense integrator may have broken the superficial illusion and plunged me here, somewhere.
The moment I noticed I was running on empty, a sign appeared, “Wawanesa 5.” The first thing I hit in town is a gas station. The young attendant anticipates my desire to stay and informs me about the nice camp ground. When I get there it is as perfect, as if I had imagined it, empty and spread out before me. I like this place so much that the next day I decide to look for permanent accommodations. I enter a store and sure enough–almost inevitably–a neat upstairs apartment is available to me. I move in and continue my exploration. I had already noticed the white bikes, the old lady taking care of the weather, that there are parks and benches everywhere like the town expects a rush of tourists to hit at any moment, but it is very quiet. The few people I meet on my walks are very friendly. Their cheerful greetings are not at all perfunctory but intentionally delivered to make me feel welcome. I enter the post office and the postmistress magically appears behind the counter. I want to buy some stamps and she readily produces them for me. I go by the baseball park and two teams take to the field. This happens to me wherever I go but best of all, though I waited quite a few days before I allowed myself to consider it as a possibility, is the fact that there are no dogs in this town! A whole month I stayed before my final successful escape, and in all that time, in all my walks and rides I never saw a dog nor heard one bark! This fact alone, considering my estimated position in one frame of reference, could not have been accounted for unless, as I began to suspect, the frames of reference had switched and I had been precipitated into a parallel universe, or again as a solipsist might suspect, I had created a variation. In this variation, Canadians did not grow up, find a job, so that they could get married, so that they could buy a house, so that they could have kids, so that they coul have DOGS! I determined to prove it one way or the other and searched for evidence to the contrary. I biked all over the place, no dogs anywhere, and quite unexpectedly my research led me to another even more perplexing discovery. I rode my bike along the banks of the river which flows around the town until I wound up right back at the point I started from, without having crossed the river at any point. Yes there was the old cantilever bridge that led in and out of town but a tiny alarm bell kept ringing with annoying insistence. It occurred to me that I might have done something wrong. That is my usual first response. But no, I had not taken any wrong turn. I had gone along the river and wound up at the point I started without crossing it anywhere. How could I have possibly accomplished that? If I was not mistaken, this placidly flowing river had no source nor destination other than–so it appeared–to flow as a frame around and around the town. And so it should be in the best of all possible worlds! Yet it bothered me. When reason would have me rejoice that by tumbling down a kind of Rabbit-Hole I had landed in a far nicer place than I could have normally expected to chance upon. For one thing, there were no dogs in this place, a wish come true to me. When I lived at Madeira Park I often went for a walk up the side of the mountain to a new subdivision. Of course there is at least a dog to every residence along the way, and from the very first one up to the very last one, every single one of them is stirred up to perform a more or less fierce interpretation of what it considers its canine duty. By the time I reach the end of the road they all had a chance to feel good about their lot and the barking of the more zealous ones is hardly subsiding when I have to start back and get the whole neighbourhood up on the qui vive again. Not enjoyable at all and worse still if you think that had I driven up there in a truck or perhaps even a tank, I would not have caused any disturbance. But you try to sneak up there very quietly on your best behaviour, and Jesus, the whole canine population is in an uproar. And worse still, there is one dog in particular that causes me great anguish. This big black dog barks louder and louder as I approach and when I get to about a hundred yards or so from it, its bark changes from one of alarm to fear and then to poignant utter despair. Then it bolts down to hide somewhere behind some buildings from which it keeps yipping so woefully that one can only interpret it as holy terror. Like: -Oh God! He is HERE! He is here again! We are Lost! God Help US! WE ARE DOOMED!
It is, let me tell you, very disturbing. My self-image suffers greatly. I do not know how to council myself because on one hand I feel that a completely unjustified tort is being perpetrated on me and on the other hand, since my opinions are usually firmly anchored on rock solid doubt, I am forced to ask myself, -What if the stupid dog is right? What if he knows something that I don’t know about myself? Something that I don’t want to know. It is not a frivolous question. As pups are born with worms, so does reason come with deception. Deception cannot find ground to build on without reason, nor may reason have any purpose without some final grand deception. It is deceptively comforting to believe that we have acquired our capacity to reason for its own sake or in order to comprehend the riddle of existence. But I doubt very much that all that accretion above the reptilian brain occurred in response to a supernal and noble aim rather than to the obvious constant and universal demands of survival. What if indeed I am a monster?
Perhaps if I took the ants’ point of view, or none at all and just accepted it as a possibility. My dad used to call any of his superiors from his boss, to party officials to Mussolini -BABAU! And there where lots of these personified devils around in those days, and though I did not give him much credence I did keep a watchful eye on my mom’s face where often, though she tried hiding it, their presence was revealed to me. Like the morning I went with her to the local grocery store. A small store just across the road with some produce and a large barrel of sauerkraut out on the side walk where most of the transactions took place. Kids bragged about pinching some of it when Mrs. Pillepich was busy. I just could not summon the courage to steal a pinch of krauts to be numbered among the braves, and so had to lie my way onto their rank, and oh what an unhappy bargain that is! The Sauerkraut Barrel Principle works pretty well like the third law of motion; to every bit gained one way an equal amount is lost the other way.
Anyway there I was standing by the barrel as my mom waited her turn, and I for Mrs. Pillepich to open the big ledger on which she would have to enter the costumer’s additional debit and momentarily concentrate on it as she would quickly estimate that costumer’s total debit against the costumer's possibilities based on past payment history and possibly new risk factors. It was this big book moment that kids claimed to present the best opportunity. I was watching her and it was right then that something incredible happened. An old truck whined up the hill with a load of people and some German soldiers. As it noisily drove by me and the sauerkraut barrel a kid started screaming from it.
-MOTHER! MOTHER! MOTHER… We all looked up and I saw Davide (a kid I knew) hanging on to the wooden slats screaming his face off. Sure enough his mother was among our little group and she just stood there with a transfixed immobility that went down from her eyes and face to a place seemingly so deep that no force in the world could have possibly reprieved. Davide’s face pressed between the slats kept screaming and as the truck had gone by us and began picking up speed down Via Michelangelo Buonarroti something tremendous must have suddenly snapped inside the poor woman, the force of which projected her straight up in the air which sent her potatoes flying all over, and then she was propelled down the road at incredible speed, screaming over and over, -DAVIDE! DAVIDE! She ran after the old truck and soon they both disappeared from view. That lacerating scream was of such immeasurable passion that on a fair scale of values it should have overwhelmed–I think–halted and reversed the procession of events. If one thinks that men, and not only common people, but indeed men of great minds, find it reasonable to believe that God could halt the movement of the sun one would find it impossible to explain why this same God could not then have stopped a beat-up old truck. Possibly a twenty-year old chain-driven truck at that! Those leviathans were notoriously subject to the breaking of those chains and so it would been the easiest thing for a God to do. In fact, often times great men are so reputed out of appreciation for their monumental attempts to justify divine inconsistencies which far exceeded the effort it would take for the divine to be consistent and give their little brains a break. No, it seems to me that there is no infirmity more crippling than reason; it confers upon him refinement and at the same time allows him to justify his Profound Barbarism. For five hundred years this age of reason has not only failed to moderate man’s barbarousness, but on the contrary it has provided him with the latest rationales necessary to balance the extraordinary scale of insanity that modern means have made possible. The way to the vision in the middle of the garden is barred so I am digging a tunnel to it and keeping my gunpowder dry.

Yes indeed,
That which got us here
Will not now let go.
And so two by two we go
Like Asses to Boobieland.

A few moments after Davide’s mom disappeared from view I turned to look at my mom to ask her what was going on, but I saw the big tears running down her face and I knew that I had just witnessed one of those grown-up Babau moments that parents try to hide.




Episode 24


“Horror, Horror, Horror” Said Bertrand.


So I stood on the bank of the river that came from nowhere and flowed to nowhere, leaning on my bike, pondering the fascination of horror as I had often pondered the horror of beauty. I tried to understand what objections I may have harboured against being captive in a world or an illusion that was better than the one from which I had serendipitously escaped. Are duty and fate one and the same? Somewhat reluctantly, I could already admit that an escape syndrome had been activated and that though I might stay awhile and enjoy it down here in this rabbit hole, this Schrodinger place didn’t feel right. Not wrong, yet not right! Like maybe it wasn’t so much the place, it was nice in fact, but maybe it was me. I did not belong.
-He laughed.
-What?
-Remember Ulysses?
-Ulysses?... Of course I do!
-Not that one! The stowaway.
I had to think for a minute, then it came to me and I was surprised that he remembered something that I had completely forgotten.
-Yeah, that one!
An ant, one of the big Sunshine Coast types had gotten aboard my sail-boat somehow, probably inside a bag of groceries. She just could not find her way off the boat and, unusual for me, I decided not to help. I watched her coming and going for months.
-YEAH!
Poor thing, and I think eventually she was lost at sea during that night storm when we broke anchor and were blown aground on Savory Island. She probably drowned! Ginn was so scared that the same thing might happen to her that she got the shits and she had to shit on a wad of paper towels since the head was now almost vertical as the breakers bounced us on our port side! He-he-hee! That was so funny. She had her period too….
-Yes yes, that was funny alright. But do you remember trying to figure out how it most have felt….
-There was a regatta of hygienic pads floating inside the cabin. I was so doped with drugs, Ginn nearly out of her wits and all I cared to know was how come those pads were sailing among other flotsam inside my cabin.
-Hey Palinuro! Skip that part, do you remember trying to figure out what it most have felt like being an ant in world without ants?
-Oh! My God! Yeah! And if I didn’t know then, let me tell you, I sure know now. Since I have posted the first part of this logbook and my ten principles on icommons.com, people on my email list have dropped like leaves after a heavy frost. It may be that they think that insanity is contagious.
Daimon gave me a minute to reflect.
-SO, WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? He raised his voice impatiently.
-Oh, I know exactly. But I often dreamt that Ulysses survived. That she floated to shore on one of those nice white pads! I don’t expect to be that lucky, even if there is another shore out there, it is not likely that they make pads that big.
-No, pity though, the imagery is very amusing.
-Although you never know, you know.




Episode 25


You never know! You never know! I kept repeating as I tossed and turned in bed that night. Thought about all kinds of stupid things because I found that it is when the mind is occupied with trivia, with utter nonsensical trivia, that I am usually close to being rewarded with precious sleep. If I think of something interesting or important I get excited and sure enough I cannot sleep. I thought of Ulysses making it to the shore, meeting Nausicaa, getting married on the spot to live happily ever-after while Penelope back in Ithaca kept weaving, and just before her days were counted out, finished a cloth 12 hundred miles long, into which she had encrypted the triple helix blue print for the entire Universe. Not long after that, Mozart came and sat at my keyboard. He just sat there, he never played anything. After the first couple of nights, thinking that maybe he didn’t know how, I turned the keyboard on for him before I went to bed, but he never did play. I felt like biting my arm, but I didn’t think it would help. So I just ignored him and tried some other stupid thoughts. First I spent some time trying to figure out a way to make Artificial Intelligence happen naturally. Like if we could get a chip or a machine addicted to some drug, to feel pleasure and pain, fear and hope, all those things that keep our brain working away. If we could get a chip hooked on something that would foist on a it some unquenchable desire and unappeasable fear, would we want to do that? Would we want to create something in our image, something with doubt, vanity, deception, worry, pain, insomnia?
I decided we should not and tried to move on to something more stupid, less stimulating, but I could not let go of it. I tried to convince myself that there was no point pursuing the idea since there was no chance that we could think of a way to make a chip “feel” in the first place and then suddenly it came to me that something, something perhaps not intelligent and without intention, had managed to do just that! And not with a smart looking chip but with a bit of slime of all things! Jesus!
I did not sleep, I thought about the tree falling in the forest, about the cat in a box, about the river going around and around, the rabbit hole and Mozart just sitting there. That the Greeks held poetry superior to history in guiding the hearts of men to the process of liberation. Aye.! Nay! History makes me an idiot, poetry makes me a presumptuous idiot. Maybe not all poetry….

Tennessee Henry Ford:
…I OWE MY SOUL
TO THE COMPANY’S STORE!
It was all there! In a few words. Out of the Cave Of Shadows into the Hall of Mirrors…. Round and round it goes. Cripes! Two and a half millennia have past since Xenophanes observed that Greek gods were very Greek-like, as much as Thracian gods were so very Thracian. Mandrake roots don’t look like man; man looks like a Mandrake root.

Davide’s mom running down the hill at such speed reminds me of a skinny old lady with silver hair in all-black mourning clothes talking quietly with my mom as we were walking down a gravel road, when all of a sudden she took off like a shot. Over the ditch she jumped and across a grassy field and into a small wooded area were we caught glimpses of her progress through the trees. Then we heard a long chilling scream and a minute later we saw her come out of the bush with a big grin on her face holding a wild rabbit by its ears.
OH, Ha-ha-ha! Speaking of rabbits! By the way, I never found out what became of Davide and his mother. I like to think that the truck broke down and that they got reunited and then, what the heck! Owing to her remarkable physical ability, that they escaped and lived happily ever after in Switzerland or Detroit.
This other rabbit story could be told as a fairy tale, something in the vein of:
“The Ugly Rooster.”
Once upon a time, not too long ago and not to far away, in the canyon where the great Thompson river makes its way at a place called Shaw’s Springs, there lived a white rabbit. A rabbit most like any other domestic white rabbits I am sure at one time or another you may have met, but with one noticeably curious difference in this respect–his big rabbit ears were completely riddled with holes of different sizes and with torn edges like bullet riddled tattered flags. As sad and as curious a sight my eyes had never met.
How this poor gentle creature came to be in such a state, is that the owner of the place had two small kids you see. And as it often happens that parents are moved to grant gifts that they would have enjoyed receiving as kids, he bought this bunny and gave it to his two boys, which they took as a dear pet with glee. Yet too soon the novelty faded. And here the unexpected sad bunny’s fate was set. The owner you see, had a lot of chickens and a few cows along the river. He allowed them to run free, and out he let the bunny go on his own. The rabbit did very well indeed, and grew quite into a male bunny and horny at that. And I suppose as the cows were too big to be bred , he became so very fond of the chickens you see.
Now what else would you have a horny rabbit do but to court yearningly, hop and hop, closer and closer, the contemptuous and outraged hens pursue.
Such great love and such large and tender ears should not grow, for the beaks so sharp and quick and minds so small and set of those hens at the Springs.




Episode 26


See the wind
Hear the moon
Touch the farthest thought
Feel the press of stars!


It was nearly morning when I decided to give up on sleep altogether, got dressed, made coffee, and went to stand by the window, determined to catch a glimpse of the mysterious man “living” in the apartment next to mine. I hear him open and close the door and descend the stairs very early in the morning before I am up, and then late at night when he retires I hear him climb the stairs, open and shut his door, and then not one sound. No music, no television, no pots or pans, not even water pipes. Nothing, not a sound! It seems absolutely impossible, especially considering, as I found out later that morning, that he is a very big man. It is almost as though he ceases to exist when he retires at night and rematerializes as he leaves in the morning. But what is even more incredible, and this may sound really crazy, but not only don’t I hear any sounds from his apartment once he returns home but all activities cease and the whole town is quiet. I have never heard any kind of sounds from town or anywhere in the universe until the morning right after he leaves the building. Not one bird chirp! Not a motor, not a creak is heard before that, even Mozart does not play a note! I thought that he might be the key to solving all the strange things about this town and maybe all the other mysteries. I mean what good is a mystery if there is no solution to it? It is no better than a jig-saw puzzle with an infinite number of pieces right? But then, if I were to solve the mystery wouldn’t all things cease to exist? I decided to go for it. I had to dismiss outright creation and big bang. I was therefore left with mentation, a little known property of mind (maybe), that acts on thinking pretty well like gravity does on matter, organizing simple units commonly known as monads of appetite, perception and memory into the more complex and rational monads, which gives us consciousness and so affixes and subjects us to the bewildering realm of phenomena. And what the hell do I know! But of monads, which are said to be eternal, we are ephemeral representations. Maybe. So I decided that this place in Manitoba had to be, if not the centre of the universe, the near perfect equilibrium between the eternal forms and their representations. If so my mysterious neighbour had to be the master of ceremonies–Janos, in charge of the opening and closing or more precisely, turning this town in and out of existence. No wonder I didn’t feel right being there. I knew I belonged to the Hell’s kitchen kind of magic!
Like the magic night my mom had to help my dad stand guard outside the cigarette factory. We had recently moved to the suburbs, which move must have been one of the worrisome items on the agenda the afternoon my mother and dad had whispered in the kitchen. At that time we lived a couple of blocks from the railroad station and not far from other targets. The oil refinery, the Whitehead torpedo works, the shipyard and so on, so it turned out to be one of my dad’s good moves. Of course he must have also anticipated with a horror almost equal to my mother’s that he would be recalled to arms. It could just be that had Il Duce met my dad he might have weighed a bit more the pros and cons of missing a triumphant blitz-krieg. Italy–according to Il Duce–was a “Nation of Poets, Navigators and Heroes!” I was too little then to look at my dad and find a flaw with the great leader’s reasoning. Reflecting on it now, I do believe there must have been millions more of those templates. Anyway, since we had no baby sitter, Mother got me out of bed, dressed me up, filled a thermos with coffee and dragged me downtown to walk along the wall of the cigarette factory which my dad had to protect from the enemy. We walked and walked and dad grumbled and grumbled. My mom carried his Carcano M9/38 rifle, (the very same piece that later killed Jack Kennedy). It was too heavy for my dad. My dad carried the thermos and mom carried the rifle, plus kept a sharp look out for the military patrol because my dad was so tired and so pissed off with the whole damned master template to which he was assigned at the moment that he couldn’t have cared less if we all got arrested and maybe faced a court martial. Generally when my dad was tired and pissed off, which was very often, he presented a fearless and furious side of himself to my worried mom who therefore had to try her best to soothe and calm him down when she must have felt like screaming. I was very sleepy, so I was marginally bothered by the fact that my mom carried the rifle in her arms more like a stiff baby than a weapon, and that the moon bounced up and down over the tiled roofs of Braida getting bigger and bigger and at times two. I don’t remember much of what happened after the moon began to triple and bounce around like a beach ball, but I am pretty sure that my mom had to deal with a very sleepy boy as well as an anemic reluctant hero and a heavy rifle. How she managed I don’t know. Eventually she probably carried me home up the hill, past the old dump half way to the border with Yugoslavia and put me to bed.
At least, so far as I know, we did not come under attack by the enemy, the patrol did not catch us moonlighting and the cigarette factory was quite safe.
Thinking back I realize that my poor mom was probably too inhibited to shoulder the rifle as a soldier, which is another clue to the hidden power of mentation. The image of my mother in a coloured print cotton dress marching with the rifle on her shoulder next to a grumbling soldier with a long feather in his hat, a thermos in his hand, and a drunk kid trailing whining and stumbling under a full moon outside the “Tre Stelle” factory would have been too much. Too much to expect even from the infinite depository of all eternal forms to supply a template that might have helped her out. So she had to do the best she could. Sometimes we have to pitch in and help out you know. How this episode had something to do with Kennedy being killed with that particular rifle is a stretch to explain, but I have no trouble accepting the possibility. Jesus!




Episode 27


Words used to be food and water
To me
Wine and songs to my friends,
I suppose armour and swords
to my enemies.
They are now the best thing they can be
Tiny seeds,
great in good open ground,
but oh!
Have you ever seen such thistles and thorns?


E-mail to Howie.
It is indeed tearing to cut off those who wish to maintain a family relationship of seeming inertia. I view the world from my padded bench and see, in others, the mistakes I made. There is no longer a need for my personal dynamics, the urgency to stretch those muscles is no longer required. And so I am judged with sympathetic insignificance by those who follow, as I join not in their romance with empowerment and territorial imperative.
I am a success in that I was born in Canada by chance, played the game by rote, made mistakes while seeming significant. Now I can sit contentedly upon my padded bench and worry not of; sub-prime rates, the decline of the stock market, greed, growing unrest, global warming, global dimming, the decline of bats, penguins, bees, the mutation of superbugs, deadly virus-laden insects, the poisoning of air and water supplies and the soul of humanity.
I say I worry not, but informed I try to be. There is still a sense of humanity that is scrambling for answers. Answers that cannot be found from the inertia around me and directing the energy of family I can now sadly disregard.
My disregard is felt as disappointment as I too am not through with ego satisfaction. My DNA tells me I am the elder, the chief of my family tribe, the sorcerer of wisdom and an object of admiration and respect blah blah blah.

-To parched soil and buried life forms you sir, come as warm rain.

It is clear that my mind is unravelling from the old system and cannot find another system to wind itself on.
Take this proposition that should head the chapter containing the Flare Gun metaphor.

If to some it seems plausible to opine
That evil is necessary that we may enjoy good,
Shouldn't just as many others find it as reasonable
That good exists that we may submit to evil?

Starting with my brother a few years ago, I began to cut off all my relationships. Three kids, sister, brother, nephews nieces and decades-old friendships. I had less and less in common with them, apart from the usual inertia. Now probably everyone wonders what happened to me. Well I suppose senescence is a good guess. One niece kept trying, urging me to get in touch with my brother who is not well and maybe dying and my sister who loves me so much, but I kept sending her poems in reply, to reinforce and confirm the senility option.
Senescence is falling short of my expectations. It is decommissioning my vocabularies while maintaining the sex drive. Is that an example of intelligent design? I demand my dictionaries restored to me, and an apology. I spent hours the other day rummaging in there trying to find the word compassion!
Compassion of all things! My favourite word. It is like the words have been scrambled and are no longer in alphabetical order. I am in writers’ hell. It is all wrong, all wrong.




Episode 28


With balanced intensity to occupy the totality of my own space and time,
I will work with desperation
Live in anger
And even if all of you turn against me,
I will go on, I will suffer, I will lie in my blood
I will eat the scabs of my wounds
The twin blade of the intellect will cut me
The cruel wisdom of the elders
Will burn my wrists and ankles
But you won’t stop me
I will drink my tears
Breathe fiery rage
But I won’t budge.
To the power of all your fears
My foolish courage will learn no prudence
My ignorance will remain wonderfully blind.
My me will bleed and bleed
While yours will tremble.
In all creation
Truly only one man lives and dies;
I.

-CRIPES! If ever there was a man out to defeat himself. You are old, tired, and damaged, so you turn against yourself, like Franzele! And then at times out of dying vanity you promote yourself as a monster. A whining monster at that.
-Something like it.
-So now that you missed the connection, you turn from Sint to Messiah. Old Sint Steven is toothless now, neither reformed nor confirmed, he lost his bite! I liked him better then.
-Yes–NO! I am still in the grasp of mad and furious masters…
-Oh dear! The beast still raging within.
-Believe it or not, nature knows neither measure nor grace, but I have been able to take no pleasure in the ‘good’ things of this world, seeing that life here below is not my ‘portion’.
-Still I liked him better then:
Sweet young lady
Let me feel a tit,
You have two.




Episode 29


As soon as I heard his door open I tiptoed to my own door, waited till he had started down the steep narrow stairs, then I opened the door just a crack. I saw a big man–without prejudice–an obese man. He was going down sideways one step at the time, leaning heavily on the left rail and sliding his upper back against the wall. I could not see his face but a minute later when he crossed the yard below my window I was surprised to see that it was not the round bland face I had expected, but rather handsome, with strong features reminiscent of the bark of the oak trees that abound around here. Deep shadows gave it a dark, intimidating complexion but what really impressed me was his monumental bearing. His massive upper body was covered with a long light jacket which adhered from his shoulders and upper torso all the way to his widest girth then hung loose almost to his knees, so that his short legs appeared undersized and almost unattached. He moved with a steady measured pace. His arms traced a small angle of arc which was compensated by a fluid displacement of his upper body and gave his stride a lively rhythm, disturbingly contrasted by the immobility of his head planted on top of it, and the expression of total composure in his fixed gaze. As he passed closest to me under my window, I feared for a moment that he might catch a glimpse of me spying on him, but just as quickly realized that this man was as steadfast as his purpose, that he would not be distracted by anything happening around him. He was, after all, the grand master who opened and closed the book on Sipiweske so that anything that would take place between its covers fell within his purview. Very unlike myself, being constantly on guard for either opportunity or threat, have my skittish attention captivated by a leaf rolling along the sidewalk on a breeze and my defences alerted by the buzz of a passing bee. This guy was not just another imprint of his surrounding! He was the master of it. He was not walking about the town, he was materializing it, and doing it with me in it gaping down at him. He was creating time as he went so that his relative movement tricked my senses to see it instead as if the juxtaposition of his surrounding adjusted to his progressive station. Within that one minute or so that it took him to get out of my view, some of the radical shifts of attitudes which had been taking place within me since I had landed in this magical place were brought full circle and I surprised myself exclaiming out loud, -My God what a beautiful man!
I was changing, this strange place was changing me. I thought that if I stayed long enough I might find myself joining the men downstairs for coffee. They arrived in their pickups punctually every morning precisely a minute after Lucy opened the store. The pickups pulled up and parked perpendicular to the curb within seconds of each other with military precision. Then they sit at round tables amidst Sears and Greyhound shipments boxes, ceramics, knick-knacks, flowers, fresh loaves of bread, pies and you name it. They sip coffee and talk for an hour or so, then responding to some mysterious signal or an uncanny sense of timing, they all get up and leave. The phalanx of pickups, breaks up and disperses to be replaced, after a discreet hiatus, by the ladies in their cars and SUVs. The ladies tend to stay longer and I assume they have more things to talk about. What really puzzles me is what these local men might find so urgent every morning and what the subject of their conversation might be. What did they have to talk about? What would I have to contribute to this mundane, yet possibly cardinal event upon which the shaping structure of one’s whole day–or indeed–one’s whole life may depend on?
I remained at the window for a while and as I expected, as if on clue, no sooner had the Grand Master disappeared around the corner than the first signs of life, the first movements and sounds took to the stage. The first chirp, a car engine starting, a door opening. Uncanny!
-These are meaningless coincidences!
And coincidences of coincidences!
Yes to be sure, but then what is there that is not in fact, just that? Koheleth thought it was all in vain, everything was meaningless since it was transient. The man just could not assign any value to life since it was transient and led nowhere. But the falling man grasps at straws, God, afterlife, an unknown plan or what-have-you, and so misses enjoying the fall.

-The wise is in the house of mourning,
The fool is in the house of pleasure
But the devil is not in the details. Not at all….
-Above not a tile to cover the head
Below not an inch of ground for the foot




Episode 30


That good exists so that I may suffer evil and submit to it? Hell I made a list!
All the things that are beautiful, pleasurable, uplifting, inspiring etc., etc. Yeap! It is true, they are necessary goods. I discovered that my mind was ceaselessly scheming to improve my miserable lot. Always thinking of ways to gain this or that, to succeed, to improve my image etc. when I chanced upon W. T,Evan Wentz, A. David Neel, Suzuky et al. It was in the early 60's. I began by trying to clear my mind of all that clutter, chanting the Oni Mani Padmi Om mumbo jumbo shit. But my mind kept wandering off. As soon as I realized that, I would have to start again, as recommended. I figured it would take me months or years because it often happened that I would be reciting the mantra and thinking about a good way of making money or some such stupid thing at the same time for a while before I became aware of it. Ha ha! I said to myself, I have two levels of mind going simultaneously, so all I have to do is recite two mantras at the same time. Oni Mani Padme Om and Hare Krishna, Krishna Hare Hare…let’s say. But then why should it be double mumbo jumbo? People are so stupid, they do what they are told without question. The only other mantras I knew by memory that had any meaning to me were The Hail Mary and the Lord’s prayer. That’s better! In Latin! Even better. It was very difficult at the start, but I persevered and in a couple of days I could mentally recite them at the same time. One particular difficulty was that the Ave is shorter than the Pater, this meant that somewhere near the middle of the Pater I had to loop in the beginning of the Ave without missing a beat. But I managed eventually, well enough that I could just keep them going without interruptions and sure enough I noticed that no stowaway thoughts could sneak on board. But then it was recommended that I should keep at it continuously 24/7! That! I thought impossible because I needed my sleep. But lo and behold, I tried it, and tried it and eventually, not only I was able to do it, that is I was consciously keeping the mantras going all night but I also did not feel worse for it in the morning. In fact I went through my daily duties effortlessly as an automaton. Equanimity in action. Nothing upset me, or disturbed me in the least. During that period Veronica happened to be in great pain, all I had to do was to sit by her side, lay my hands on her legs and her pain ceased. She told me so and thanked me. I did not feel any sense of accomplishment; I felt as indifferent as if I had merely straightened a picture on a wall. Another curious thing that I remember very well, is that my body did not seem to weigh much. Later still, I realized that another level of mind was surfacing. I had to take care of it too. Considering that I was also carrying on my normal daily activities, it meant that I was juggling five levels of consciousness. Then another interesting discovery; I had become so good at my mantras that sometimes, I would review them mentally simultaneously and in an instant, or (as Eric rightly pointed out when I told him about it) in no time, without omitting a single word while doing my chores and contemplating the colour blue and being aware of all these activities. I had wife, kids, dogs, cats and I was going through that part of my life like a zombie. I had to decide. To go on and end up in a cave or worse, sitting on a cushion like a queen bee somewhere in California! No shit! I decided to stop, at least for a time. To reinstate my neurosis, to resume my selfish blundering ways. To love, which is to err again!
To Err. Man! Did I ever!
I bought myself a big V7 Moto Guzzi…or was it the Maserati? No I think the Maserati came before, maybe at the same time…I don’t remember. Had a hell of a crazy summer anyway. Though not really my style. So then I grabbed my back pack and went hitch-hiking all through Italy, Mexico and then across Canada, winding up in British Columbia panning for gold where eventually I met Ginn and really–totally lost my mind. But that is another story. Crazy! But then when was I not crazy? I remember at the time of my discovery of the mysteries of Asia, reading about the way by which the Tibetan monks go about finding the reincarnation of their latest departed Dalai Lama, which is really a kind of kitchen lottery, and not giving it a second thought at the time. The monks would simply place half a dozen interesting objects in front of a child and the child that picked the one that happened to have belonged to the defunct was declared the reincarnate, the living Dodolai lama!


I opted for the southern route because it was shorter even though this meant crossing the border into the U.S.A. Not a good idea for someone on the black list at the best of times and a real pain since September 11. To make it worse I had in my possession an old one inch bore flare gun and two remaining shells. It was all that remained of my sailing adventures on the west coast. I am not sentimental when it comes to material possessions, but this happened to be the weapon with which the old Sint made his last stand against the tyranny of nature! With it he had committed the ultimate taboo. He had (in his way of thinking) impregnated Heaven and started a new cycle of nature.
A scientist commenting on TV, -It is quite unexpected and very puzzling. Ah-um...it appears as if the universe had conceived and is presently “expecting”… Pausing a minute to scratch his head he went on. -As a scientist I may not venture an opinion that would express this celestial pregnancy in acceptable creationist terms but as a credent and as a person, not to mention as a baffled scientist, I am allowed to confess that to me this event appears to be miraculous! A miraculous conception.
What really happened is that I was in my trailer in bed watching T.V.
I was watching an uncut version of Apocalypse Now. You have to know that for a few years, since my separation from Ginn, I had achieved a guarded success in the practice of total abstinence. Guarded being the operative word and at that, in the most unequivocal, rigorously accurate sense of it. This meant that I had to be constantly vigilant in anticipating and avoiding certain situations, taking any precautions necessary short of going to bed wearing large red boxing gloves and a hockey cup. I would normally not watch a movie with adult situations and viewers' discretion advisory. I had become well aware that protracted abstinence did not reduce the libido factor but on the contrary, enhanced its sensitivity and promoted a more vigorous and prompt response to any stimuli. And although I know I am not a victim technically, since I have set myself up against my very own nature, I choose to regard it as a struggle against mad and furious masters. And all those qualities and impulses that enable me to compete successfully as a survivor and sperm dispenser are brought to bear against me once I go AWOL. After an initial measure of success I was duped by a sense of optimism and self satisfaction which soon revealed itself as deleterious as it was premature. The pressures and machinations against my erratic insubordinate will were mounting and whereas masturbation in youth is an easy if forlorn compromise, in old age it is wretched capitulation to a desire bereft. So when I was visited by Aphrodite in the flesh one night the scope of my conviction and the tremendous claim of nature upon me assumed in full their overwhelming proportion. There was this “I” naked, old, pathetic and toothless with bright red boxing gloves and a faded canary yellow plastic cup, arms spread out as far out as they could away from the locus of that prodigious ball of growing desire and promise of pleasure. A living, squirming crucifix is he, and She comes at him with bewildering, ravishing eagerness. Old Sint Steven is nailed to his bed and as the snake breaks out of its constraining plastic device which the magic mind renders as heavenly virginal penetration followed almost instantly with an explosion of a totally annihilating bliss he awakes screaming, raped by a greater, if senseless will and crying, a minute later feeling spent, polluted, betrayed and left over, like garbage.
Later I consoled myself somewhat, considering the positive aspects to this debacle. First came to mind the flattering implication that my resolve, and the logic which inspired it must have been considered as a very serious threat to the established order, so much of a threat in fact, as to have been judged expedient to enlist the services of the supreme exponent in the field–Aphrodite in person! And to skip all other possibly encouraging reflections there was one aspect of it that I found amusing. The thing is that thematically at least, I have to consider myself a product of Christian western culture, yet when it became necessary to oppose me, this higher estate found itself without adequate means and had to sub-contract the project to a lower, more primitive mythological hierarchy. Are the heavenly powers so unstable or insecure? I am septuagenarian for Chrissake! It is an outrage, besides being stupid, impractical, unbecoming, and a major impediment to my spiritual evolution. I talked to Howie about it and I was shocked to hear that to other old farts of my age, masturbation was a common, acceptable practice. It disturbed me deeply when in bed at night, to think that others in that trailer park and indeed in all the trailer parks of the world would be watching pornographic movies and conducting nature's business in sterile and melancholic secrecy. I was even counselled against abstinence and warned about the possible deadly consequences of my stubborn defiance of natural obligations. Ginn, who as a nurse knew a thing or two about the “indiscreet” facets of geriatrics warned me about it, and I presume that, being at the time in her early thirties, she had a vested interest and was sounding me out regarding my attitude towards being sexually active in my eighties! Of course I dismissed the thought outright at the time, it struck me as ludicrous, just as ludicrous as if someone had told me, thirty years earlier, that I would fall madly in love and screw like a dog in my fifties. The surprises that we leave ourselves open to when we are so busy girding our heads with synthetic laurels and false assumptions! A little while after this experience, a sporty and good looking lady in her fifties parked her motor-home next to my pad, and as we became acquainted and found out that we shared and enjoyed common interests, the prospect of a possible liaison became perceptible. So one evening I came straight out with it and I told her point blank, -I am an old man and you are infertile, therefore our interest and affection for each other should be based strictly on affinities, companionship and cooperation towards spiritual growth….
In the morning the motor-home was gone.
Apocalypse Now happened soon after that. He had seen the movie a few times before, so he had not bothered to check the rating. Unknown to him this happened to be a later version: Apocalypse Now- Redux, which included a steamy sex scene in the middle of the steamy jungle. NO! NO! But yessirry! Up comes the brainless beast!
The Sint was furious. He felt betrayed, bushwhacked. It had taken years of perseverance and evasive action to achieve total abstinence and he had been so proud of it, only to fall victim to a lurid and banal accident, or maybe a plot so outrageous that he could not turn off the set. He had to do something, something disgusting and senseless to express his revulsion. He had to shame himself so completely, so mightily that shock waves, tsunamis of horror would traverse and convulse all nine circles of consciousness, drown the whole shebang in shame!
-Elijah…Elijah… Thus doest thou glorify me? He muttered as he shook the beast and tossed his head looking here and there for something, for escape. The flare gun on the bed-stand caught his eye. -What?! Blow it out? It has come to that?
-Bastard Nature! I am watching APOCALYPSE NOW FOR CHRISSAKE!
He grabbed the flare gun, loaded it and with his eyes glued to the screen he masturbated. He groaned in pain as the beast ejaculated and its execrable secretion squirted into the cavity of the barrel. Letting out a bestial, wounded howl, -MY CUP BRIMMETH OVER! He bolted out of bed, naked he ran out into the night, the wounded warrior. He pointed the gun straight up at the stars, fired, and as the flare rocketed skyward, a mighty roar…
-FUCK YOUUU!

***

It is the ides of March.
Silent she stood, the wretched woman
Like a wipe
Beside her besmeared hero,
To appease not the virtuous
If such there were
But the outraged hypocrites
who rise and fall with their false icons
And athirst with vengeance, unfailingly usurp their gods.

The whole world is a battlefield,
As many as have set out
By their dreams have been undone.
Heroes to the world
Slaves to nature.
Slain
On their shining shields.

O how I feel for him! Not her! No, not her at all! No one has the right to feel innocent, wronged, and pine their trust betrayed when the pink blinders are shattered. But he, a strong, strongly tortured man felled mean by the same insignificant and vile incubus that prowls my miserable nights. Yield! Yield! It demands, as it offers me a virgin child in a dark closet, and I gawk at the puffy slit that owns my mind and draws my hand to clutch my inflated vanity. O how I know his struggle, how I admire the way he bounced off the bottom with an apology that knew of defiance more than humility while she stood drowned, sunk in her pink dreams. And I resist the little devil, wake myself away from that luring closet and head for the water closet instead, but I cannot piss. It does not slacken to allow me even such small relief. I try different angle, but it is so stubborn, a bone that, even if I could release and empty the bladder, which is doubtful, I would miss the bowl entirely. So, as I am forced to wait, I think the man will break, he is not weak enough to survive shame. I on the other hand, am so weak, I thrive in shame. And defeat.
So they will have their revenge terrible. The impoverished are merciless towards their fallen heroes.

***

Robert Latimer Crucified,
Pray for us!


Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
(He) held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea…


Mind that mind, its function is to lie.

Through the magic of technology I rode my male madness a couple of laps on the Australian Grand Prix with Raikkonen. On a cosmetic commercial I made myself a wanted object, then clad in a saffron robe I have, looted store of Lhasa. Am I funny or what? Then of all things (don’t ask me where I have been all these years), as an Israelite I just found out that as a member of a tribe beloved by omnipotent God I still found it prudent to acquire the bomb. Funnier still! I suppose that had God not wisely provided it (the foreskin) he could never have order’d cut off…so it is just as plausible that as well as excesses he might provide some wants to make his children feel helpful, self sufficient and proud. After a break I heard G. Dyer telling me that “I” can change my mind and put it to better uses.… What? Did I miss something?
Perhaps “I” has built this mind too high, too close to heaven or the hot sun. The gibberish “I” utters seems to make perfect sense to this funny identity that can only be confirmed by doubt. But how can I possibly put store in doubts? And what about doubting my doubts? Like I wrote to Nickle, I am beginning to think that I am insane, well aware that to think so implies a certain amount of sanity which is ipso facto invalidated if this judgement happens to be correct. On the other hand, what does it mean if this judgement proves to be wrong?


E mail from Howie.

On campus we had professional students. I spent 8 years on campus which was probably the most exhilarating time of my life. But now I feel I am truly a student; totally unprofessional, content to a point of boredom for others, and conforming to the freshness of each day. I enjoy my creature comforts more than ever. I read from old books where I find a language I can keep pace with and that is not so hurried as to make a point. I learn or not. I pass and fail, re-learn & re-fail to re-learn.
I know not the source of inspiration nor do I care. Is there anything new under the sun for someone or something to take credit? Perhaps I am too selfish to care. What is important to me is that I am... and the driving question is 'how insignificant or all encompassing is that?
It is difficult for me to imagine that I leave off where my skin ends and yet I am conditioned to consider otherwise. That conditioning makes it difficult for me and others to live but alienated lives in separation of each other, and to focus on differences rather than similarities. We have created for ourselves a conceptual existence where the empowerment of difference is the only meaning, so we are therefore required to live with remembered perceptions, the past; rather than be content with being in the now. We are alone not together unless some of us can conceptualize a purpose. Under those conditions, I am terrorized by the use of words like happiness, love, honour, integrity...etc.
I feel I am somehow extorting myself...h

Your short declaration of authenticity has illuminated my S.E.M.I. screen!
Life is extortion?
Love is extortion!

What the world needs now is love sweet love
Not just for some but for everyone!

Isn’t that the invalidation of love’s appeal and function? Can you imagine the devastating consequences were it possible? The total collapse of all our institutions, family, finance, proprietorship, sports, defence, natural selection and Hollywood!
Extinction! Something to hope for as Edward Carpenter did when reflecting on how many beasts had been eliminated in the past by natural selection he expressed the hope that by such means: Perhaps in his infinite mercy God will remove this Man!
It looks to me that it will be man who will find a way to do so, but you can bet your ass it won’t be through unconditional and indiscriminate love.
Years ago I asked Eric, how does one go about telling the manyheads that what they hold most precious, most noble, that which appears to be their best attribute and holds the greatest promise, is what divides, creates inequality, injustice, conflict and war. That love is to evolution, the rennet, the drug, the spell, the original sin, the necessary motive!
He just said, -You don't!




Episode 31


I want a floor, four walls, a roof, and a window.
O.k. And where do you want the door?
I don’t need a door.
Oh…you must have a door!
Why? I am not going anywhere and I don’t expect visitors.
Still, you have to have a door!
I don’t see why, but if I must–
Put it there but then you don’t need to build that wall.
What! A door but no wall?
Exactly, can you do that?
…I don’t know.

Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part by that experience.
As I drove further and further away from Sipiweske, cultivation steadily diminished, and long before I reached the U.S. border the ratio between forest and cultivation was reversed so that where before patches of forests huddled here and there as if gathered to protect and maintain a secret of old (goodness! Where did that come from?), now the forest prevailed and the open fields of farming appeared as isolated and precarious footholds of a trend that had apparently lost its momentum. (Travelling the other way the opposite conclusion might occur to the insensitive eye.) It was as if I had crossed another border, from a region that had yielded to man and had acquired some of its character to one in which It was shaping the life of the intruders. Soon even these insular homesteads gave way to the forest, and now only the occasional small lot appeared along the road carved out of the bush to make room for some sad ram-shackle buildings to come together in a fashion that reflected neither natural nor artful, but rather suggesting some kind of pathology, a sudden extraneous disturbance perhaps.
At the border the officer very courteously greeted me, went about his task which took a few minutes then wished me a good trip.
Nothing to it! He had not found the weapon and so I assumed I should have no problems re-entering Canada later on. I was after all, just an old gizzard going to bother his kids in Ontario for something to do with his subsidized obsolescence. There! How lucky for me that subsidized obsolescence has come in under the radar of natural selection and how terrible for those X number of unknown slaves somewhere, who are forced to produce so much more than they are allowed to keep so that I may get my big fat minimum pension at the end of the month. The running shoes I am wearing are made out of at least 67 separate pieces each! 134 (perhaps more) in toto. More than footwear, they are a pair of miniature Chartres for my feet. I have been studying them from the moment I bought them on sale for $29.99. Three years now, but I have not yet broken the code. I am not Champolion but I sense that there is a lot of meaning sewn together in those 67 pieces of bas-reliefs, friezes, steles, intarsi, interlacing traceries and what have you, plus two Romanesque rosettes each! A subject worthy of a Pierre de Montreuil, and just as interesting to me, is that I can’t imagine what those slave kids who sewed them together might think of us. What I did figure out though, is that if we had to make do with what we could produce on our own in this country without slaves, we’d be lucky to have shoes of any kind. The simple reason that we are no longer living in sod huts is that modern means of transportation have connected us to areas of greater poverty. My mother made me shoes one time. She made the soles by winding and sewing into shape a length of rope. The tops she made with pieces of overalls cotton, then told me to keep my eyes open for road repairs, because if I were to walk over some fresh liquid tar, the shoes would last much longer. Ah, too much tar and they would last for ever! I didn’t luck out that way, although south of Bologna one dark chilly night right after the war, my cousin and I were travelling south by mezzi di fortuna (by whatever means) when we came upon a small bridge that had just been rebuilt and it felt warm there. Attilio said to me,
-Claudio, it is warm here!
It was, I could barely see him as he bent down to feel the freshly laid surface.
-Here you feel it! Nice and warm! He said cheerfully.
I bent down and felt it, nice and warm indeed and I was so very tired.
-Let’s lie down and sleep here. If a truck comes by, we can’t miss it!
No trucks went by all night; we slept like logs. When a truck did come along early in the morning we were glued to the road. So we actually missed the truck that we could not miss. So far as I know our coats are still there, maybe under layers and layers of new asphalt.
I had mixed feelings about losing that coat. Mom had made it by hand out of military tent canvass. Did a good job, let me tell you; it must have been hard on her fingers. The only thing was that it was almost like a cuirass, and it wasn’t that warm. It may have been good in the rain and some protection from bullets and shrapnel, but the war was over. On top of it all, travelling by mezzi di fortuna usually meant that you had to run and jump on those old trucks as they rumbled by, which, although we employed the strategy of boarding them at a sharp curve or a steep upgrade, nevertheless required some speed and agility. I had already lost one shoe scrambling up on one of those trucks. Now I had no coat. By the time we got to my cousin’s home eight days later, sleeping wherever and eating whatever, tired and dirty, I must have been quite a sight. One of the advantages of living on the narrowest band of immediacy and basic priorities is that considerations of style or looks do not register. Today we have the opposite situation, the Johnses wave-length prevails. More people are pierced, tattooed, deodorized and siliconed because it is difficult to assume a mastership identity in an environment of general and growing security.
In my case this new challenge of abundance manifests itself in a very vexing way inside my fridge. The food that constantly piles up in there! No matter how much I manage to eat there is always more, a real problem. I am forced to eat almost continuously to keep up with what those slaves produce as means to achieve subsistence for themselves. We have to find a way to make them slow down a bit. No, not to stop! We cannot be expected to be able to take care of our “needs” after these have spiralled almost out of control in our effort to help them out.
Large homes, double garages, three bathrooms, Jacuzzis, two cars.... Hehee-hee! Leaf blowers! How wonderful it is to watch a grown man with helmet, visor and earmuffs–a Knight in Armour practically–chase a few leaves down the sidewalk. No one in the industrialized world can produce the equivalent of what he will have owned and consumed in his lifetime. Speaking for myself, I would like it very much if I could set up an equation to figure out how many slaves I've got working for me, because I think I could let go of a few rather than be forced to increase my physical activities to get rid of the increasing calorie intake. As it is, invisible slavery is a problem I cannot control. I can’t do anything about it except to adjust. And to think that at my age, my great grandparents sought the least busy and preferably darker corner of the house to sit quietly so that my grandfather, the only wage earner and not a slave owner, would be reminded as little as possible of the burden they represented. Quite justified, especially considering that my maternal grandfather had been blessed with seven Opera heroines and only one Opera hero. Grand father was crazy about Opera. My mother was named after La Gioconda. In the late eighteen hundreds (I think) he had migrated to New York, and as a mechanic and plumber, he had done very well, but since his wife would not agree to join him there, after a couple of years he sold everything except a beautiful Edison Gramophone and the largest collection of opera cylinders in existence and returned home. Romilda told me that on summer weekends he would install his marvel on the table under the fig tree and play opera to the assembled population of the suburb. Anyway, I think that both Socrates and Marie Antoinette were right! You cannot blame the slave for being hungry and horny, any more that you can find error in the spirit of Adam Smith’s system of perfect freedom. I think that life is essentially a problem of design. I cannot speak for the vegetables and the rocks but I think I am correct in identifying the problem–as it relates to the animal kingdom, to which I belong–in its tubiform configuration whereby in having an intake opening at the front and an eliminating hole at the rear its disposition is naturally oriented and incrementally moved in line with its mouth and away from its anus.
At Warnock, I went to a supermarket, bought pipe tobacco, a couple of fried chicken wings, fries and a pop. I ate in my van in the parking lot and when I finished I grabbed the flare gun from the overhead storage, put it in with the rest of the garbage and dropped it in a dumpster. I had proven to myself that I could cross the border with it and now I no longer had any excuses to hang on to it, in fact I felt I would be diminished by doing so. Sentimentalia can only serve to top up the scarce measure of the present, and I can’t think of any stage of life as sad as that when something in the back of a drawer somewhere might attest to a greater worth than the plain incontestable fact that I Am! That I am very close to my personal and ultimate defining moment, the moment when I, the weak, the ephemeral, the confused and fearful consciousness, must stand as equal against the eternal and infinite.









Part 3
Episode 32


If I come up with something brilliant
Heroic or, God forbid, a noble concept,
I may do so at the expense of my integrity.

By some misspelling of the code, I have been made resistant to dissolving into the theme of my age and culture, and have neither assumed a stage role nor delegated my fate to a personal saviour-god. I am left exposed and vulnerable on all sides–without and within–incomplete in skill, form and thought. I have however, perceived that I am the essential half of the mystery. A wonderfully intractable restless dis-harmony. Is this what the scholastics referred to as the intentional inexistence of an object? I have Carmina Burana on by the way; I think that the Tavern Song fits this hermetic theme, though I have no idea what they are singing.
A faction of determinism suggest that I should refer to myself as an “It” rather than an “I” or even a “He”, for I must not be whole so that I may experience being. Hence I cannot ever initiate any action or thought but only react in time and space to my external dimension, which the I–if used properly–should refer to and intend as, inclusive rather than discrete, and simultaneous, rather than sequential. Seen in this way, cause and effect are one. It is expedient but inaccurate to think, -It rained and I got wet, as it would be to say, -I rained and It got wet. Dumbo does everything, plays all the parts and plays them well, it is only in our perception of them that we are cast, out and taking credit or blame for our involuntary actions, we create a cosmology based on a presumption. You know the proposition that given: “a million monkeys going at a million typewriters and so on.…” It makes me laugh because it goes by most of us that it has already happened! Dumbo has produced Shakespeare and has done so even before the invention of the anticipated typing machines! I suppose this also proves that given a limitless budget and no particular aim, drama will develop first, followed by technology.
On this point the idiot was right. After seeing the mysterious neighbour that eventful morning, I was convinced that this strange town had been evoked out of the theory of forms when absent mindedly I had stumbled into it. Usually expectation prompts the familiar and conventional into being, but when the mind is inattentive, as mine often is, or like in dreams, the mental golden ratio is free to wander and I may not be sure upon awakening if I am the same man I was when I fell asleep.
So I had decided to prove that the town and all the people in it were of another world. So I drove down to the camp ground, pulled out my air mattress and started blowing in it. I intended to circumnavigate the town on it and prove the river was not a river, the town not a town and what the hell, the world not a world.
I am not coming! Said the idiot.
What?
This world! That World! What the hell is the difference?
Excuse me!?
I SAID…I AM NOT COMING!
You can imagine my perplexity. I am not even a bona fide diagnosed schizophrenic. I just talk to myself once in a while. O.K. I do more than that sometimes! Like when I do something stupid in driving, but I know that it is me yelling at myself! So what did he expect to accomplish by such a vain threat? Was he going senile? Am I going insane? I don’t know if I told you this before and if I did no problem, I am old enough to be allowed. I became verbally incontinent a while ago…. It all started quite innocently after I broke up with Ginn, HA! I keep saying that I broke up with her, and of course this is the way I saw it at the time, but the truth is more interesting and it bears at least a mention. What really happened was that she manoeuvred me into doing the actual nasty deed. I don’t know why she felt it necessary...social conscience? The Super Ego? Whatever! Little by little she made my position so intolerable, so degrading that I was left with no alternatives. She behaved as if I had become nothing more than a bad addiction, a conscientious drug. She kept coming to the love nest but I knew she hated herself for it. Love’s heady flush swoops lovers to fuse in a blast of immolating blissful sex, but sex cannot even grope back to love. She could not break her carnal tyrant, so she had me do it. I found out a bit later that she had had another sailor lined up, probably a better one and also, probably, with a better sail boat. Anyway, I couldn’t blame her any more than I could blame myself for being host to preponderant forces.
To be condemned of falling short
Of the things I cannot do…
Which is full price to pay to take credit for the things that I simply can do! What profit for nature is the confusion that is kindled within when, without sacrifice, but mere mental juggling we are enticed to believe in our autonomy! To stand as if man were author of himself without giving up anything!
Eventually I came down to reality and accepted the fact that as usual, I had been duped twice, going into it and getting out of it, and then again duped in thinking that to live alone the rest of my life was after all, what I had always thought should be my aim. Now I hold this maybe to be true: That unless everyone is against me, and that unless I am at irreconcilable odds with every-thing and every-one in this world, I am still a mere cog in a big machine, the aim of which is to work itself to destruction.
And maybe not.
But so it was that feeling pretty good about providence and my prospects, as I went to bed one night by my lonesome, I said to myself:
-Good night Claudio!
-Thanks, and good night to you too!
That was nice of me. Certainly permissible, perhaps even logical. I decided I should also have a dog. A very big dog–a Pooka dog! It went well too. Nice warm bed, little cabin, full fridge, daimon good company, reasons to be happy! Of course often we argue, sometimes we work it out and other times we pout. But in general he is good to have around. A couple of nights ago for instance, he pointed out a reason to celebrate that had evaded me. I was in bed tossing and turning, waiting and waiting for sleep.
-Hey Claudio, he said, -isn’t it nice the way we can lie on one side for a while and then if we tire of it, or just for the pleasure of it we can turn over to the other side? And that we are still able to do so without breaking a bone. And don’t you like feeling your skin rubbing against the linen as we turn and then gathering our body within the warm spot? It reminds me of Gordy when he said that when he was a kid growing up in Timmins he hoped that he would get a job as a janitor someday so that he could sleep near the furnace where it was nice and warm. That is all he worried about. They were poor. They must have lived in a shack. It reminds me of aunt Romilda…
-O good!
-And uncle Serafino’s wife…What was her name, do you remember?
-Wasn’t it Milka?
-You mean we had two aunts Milka?
-Yeah, I think so!

You know, Ginn reminded me of her, she had that wicked sense of fun! It has been said of me that I won’t bother with anything that is not silly, wicked or weird. Romilda loved mischief, wickedness. Poor aunt Milka, to live right next door to her and married to Serafino, who was considered relatively rich but so stingy or so very cautious (hard to judge now) that those occasions when Eneo (my big brother) got permission to take me for a visit, he’d have to promise my mom that when it came time to lunch he would make double sure that we got to the wash basin before they did, when the little bit of water allowed for the communal wash was clean.
It is still amazing to me that neither Serafino nor aunt Milka ever caught on to the mystery of the shrinking wood pile. She must have thought that her blood was getting thinner, that winters were getting colder or maybe even that wood no longer burned as hot. And the best is that the kitchen table was right against the window that looked onto the back yard and smack across from the damned wood pile. I can just see uncle Serafino sitting there having breakfast and Milka watching him and thinking,
-Is he going to look? He is avoiding it.
-And Serafino, -If I take a look it will upset her. If I don’t, she will know I am avoiding it for her sake and that too will upset her. I wish I had never commented on it. Still, she is using more every year! But she insists that she is not! How can that be? It wouldn’t be any good to move the wood pile in behind the shed, nor to move the table.
He just did not know what to do. They had been married for 31 years and she had always been a good economizer and did not eat much. Those were the qualities of a good wife.
On cold days, after Serafino left for work she immediately turned the damper down and when it got very chilly she’d go visit Romilda next door. Romilda was good company, told good stories, and she kept her place so nice and warm. Romilda of course, knew almost to the minute when Milka would be arriving, so she’d stick the last piece of wood into the stove and open the damper.
-Oh Romilda it’s so cold today, oh it is so nice and warm here!
-Milka dear! Come, come and sit by the stove! Here is your chair, sit down dear and get warm, I'll fetch a bit more wood for you! You sit dear, then we will have coffee, I will be right back.
There was always a pot of coffee on the hot stove. As Milka sat there thinking how lucky she was to have her niece right next door, Romilda was grabbing a good arm full of wood from Milka’s big wood pile.
Milka couldn’t figure it out; Romilda’s husband made much less than Serafino, also they had two kids, two girls and yet she seemed to manage very well. She was always of good humour, never worried and so helpful. Romilda did most of the shopping for her and Serafino had expressed great pleasure with the wine she bought for them, which pleased Romilda very much since she always took some for herself and topped the bottle with water.
-Romilda mia, Milka had said to her -Serafino is so happy with the wine, it’s nice and strong! So strong that I can add a little bit of water to it you know! And it is still better than the Acquetta I used to get from Irene.

-I loved the little jigger of framboise aunt Milka gave me and Eneo before we left to reward us for our visit. And then at last came the suspenseful moment when she produced her little coin poke, opened it and with deliberate solemnity placed some coins in Eneo’s receiving palm one by one as she droned her usual parting words and recommendations.
O the movies! Tom Mix!
Yeah! But I have to confess that I actually enjoyed the visits. I enjoyed connecting with family; it was I suppose, a simple reward mechanism promoting tribal bonds. I hardly remember any of the movies, the only really memorable, really really unforgettable movie was the one the school took us to see. A whole bunch of scrawny, knobby-kneed rickety kids to see a blatant propaganda film about the war in Libya. The experience can only be understated since we were half-starved, flee-bitten rags and bones reeking of diesel, which mothers rubbed on our scalps to control the flees, we could have blown up the place but for a spark!
-And the bed bugs! You remember the women setting the bedsprings on fire?
-That wasn’t then, that was later in Bologna.
-O Yeah, when we were billeted at the ex cadet’s academy.
-No! You weren’t there, so how would you know unless you are me and therefore you don’t exist!
-What do you mean I wasn’t there? How would I know?
-That’s the point. You don’t know! I am just talking to myself! If I kept my mouth shut you would disappear.
-No I wouldn’t, I would jump up and down inside like a Mexican bean! And I was there, I just didn’t talk out loud!
-You are just a toy! Get behind!
-So who do you think is listening when you are mentally talking in your head?
-Oh gimme a break!
-No come on! You yourself have said that all being is the process of dividing.
-So?
-So try to do without me next time you have a question!
-I ask myself! I don’t ask you!
-That’s illogical! Why would you ask yourself something to which you do not know the answer?
-It’s just a way of posing a problem.
-Division, division, division!
-Multiplication, multiplication!
-That too!
-Of course! Me, you and the world are a Trinity. The observed, the observer, and the observation. Or Meinong’s elements involved in the thought of an object: The act, the content and the object.
-I like Meinong, why don’t you read me something by him. I am tired of Socrates, that most rabbinic of Greeks.
-Yeah, he can be infuriating. But Meinong is too difficult for me even though his theory of objects that don’t exist could apply to Wawanesa. I think a la Meinong sometimes, but a square circle I cannot grasp.… A circle square on the other hand…almost.




Episode 33


At the academy we slept on mats on the floor. In the beginning, we were only four or five families camped at the back of one of the two dormitories. Each family hung blankets on ropes, creating a small private space. Like most military barracks, the layout was two dormitories with the stairs, the latrines and the sergeant’s room between them. The top of the stairs was where I used to wait for that sick old man on a “prescription diet” to return with his canteen of steaming chicken noodle soup. The rest of us barely subsisted on a steady diet of “pea soup,” which was pea flour boiled in water prepared on a defective, sputtering diesel fuel stove by which it acquired a strong diesel engine aroma. On Sunday mornings we were treated to a cup of watery chocolate prepared on the same stove and with the resulting similar mechanical connection. As soon as that old man started out with his empty canteen I would go and take my position at the top of the stairs and wait for that heavenly aroma to pass me by. Ah to be that hungry again!

I just had to have some! So after consulting with mom and with her blessing, I set off to the camp infirmary infused with the kind of ardour that would inflame the heart of a knight on a noble quest, albeit in my case it happened to be a canteen of instant chicken noodle soup. And I was so proud of my initiative and resolve that I put in a heck of a performance. I described to her all the symptoms that I thought would lead to a precise diagnosis of extreme chronic chicken soup deficiency and the damned bitch played right along.
-Does it hurt here?
-Yes.
-Here?
-O yes, yes!
-Here too?
-O yes, there too! The bitch! By the time she was finished, I hurt all over, so she had her diagnosis.
-Goodness! We must do something about it. She got a bottle out of the cabinet and nearly filled a water glass with a dense awful liquid.
-Drink, drink it all up!
-I thought that she had bought my story and that as soon as I had finished swallowing the castor oil she would write me a prescription for soup of essence of beatified chicken. I wonder now, how Victor Frankl would have dealt with a similar opportunity and how an untested great soul like Joseph Campbell would have faired. Is it not fraudulently presumptuous to moralize on virtue by mere intellectual exertion? One must walk for a mile in Victor Frankl’s shoes. One must be so hungry to be rapt to ecstasy by a passing canteen of instant chicken soup.
-Good boy! She said checking the empty glass, -you will be all better now. Off you go!
What!? Paradise denied; I had the shits for three days!
Ach, maybe two. But I learned that one doesn’t go to the doctor expecting sympathy or understanding. Yet not much after that my chillblains got so bad in that cold dormitory that all my fingers and toes swelled and split open. The itching was a torture. So I went back to her and this time she told me that the chillblains would go away in spring. Even so, I am still going to doctors and still not getting any sympathy. In my view medicine has not improved a darn iota. I suffer from insomnia; they say I am depressed.
I know depression for Christ sake! Sergio was depressed!
When the first trainload of our defeated soldiers stormed overnight into our dormitory and crashed on the floor I was asleep. I woke up in the morning to a strange sound I had never heard before. I got up to go to the bathroom and found the whole floor completely covered by a tangled mass of snoring human parts. I waited and waited till I could not hold it any longer and then I had to walk over them. Amazingly only a couple of them stirred and one of them, without moving, opened his eyes for a moment and looked up at me as if from inside a very deep and empty place. Then, when his eyes closed, I felt weird, as if for a moment I had not been there. An hour or so later they were still there in the same position in which they had succumbed a few hours earlier, when a couple of soldiers ran up, stood at the top of the stairs and began hollering and whistling. Here and there just a few heads rose above the indistinct tangled mass which kept on heaving and snorting. Those who did respond to the calls sat up and began to poke those next to them so that slowly the whole animal began to stir and groan. Others torsos struggled up, arms stretched up, eyes were rubbed, most of them looked around sleepily and confused as though they had no idea how they got to be there. When the soldiers at the landing, who had kept up their loud calling, thought that the ragged stinking mass animal was sufficiently conscious to be delivered the magic words:
-Come on men, we’ve got a train! YOU ARE GOING HOME!
The immediate galvanizing of a couple hundred bodies being struck and jolted up by a sudden and simultaneous flaring of an identical searing desire produced a start and a sound peculiarly similar to sudden mass panic. The surreal scene registered in a seldom-reached recondite part of my consciousness where indistinct notions stir briefly, as if to find an appropriate perch but failing, quickly dissipate leaving me with a vague sense of loss. I stood there and gaped as the whole floor scrambled up, amassed in the direction of the stairwell, pressing and slowly shrinking, dwindling and disappearing like an inert load down a shoot. When even the sound of them tumbling away had died completely, the place felt unusually silent and empty. The dormitory that was left behind was no longer just that, what in time had become a familiar simple space was no more, it had changed. Mostly empty again, but somehow alien now, or wrong somehow.
The voices of those of us who were left sounded hollow too. Poor men! Who knows how long…how far from home they have been!
Years later I happened to be in Italy when they were celebrating their remembrance of these cyclical insanities. The Italian Mother was in attendance. She was named so because she represented all Italian mothers’ sacrifice, and as such she was selected to lay a wreath at the monument of the Unknown Soldier. As she did so, I heard the announcer remind the viewers that She had lost six!–SIX!–Imagine!–six of her sons, one by one in the various battlefields of the second World War. Here again I feel sort of like an evacuated space visited by a disturbing, indistinct and non-referable notion. I felt outraged! How could they reminisce and celebrate madness? And yet, unconsciously a new one was automatically recorded for future references. The machinery recalibrated and the patrimony enriched so that future transactions may be advantaged or–depending on the demand and perception–distorted, or crippled. Hell! If indeed I am the sum of my memories, I am a cripple!
A minute later all the more compassionate and resistant bladder systems rushed to the latrines, and right after that the women got busy on pest control, and by the women's animated activities, exclamations and astonished comments nature’s remarkable resources and opportunistic aptitude was unintentionally acclaimed. These visitations went on for a few days; then we were mercifully relocated to a nearby convent, though not without an attached contingent of those pesky invaders. They moved us to the convent because of the expected increase of train-loads of soldiers and prisoners repatriating from Russia, Germany and the Balkans. At the convent we were assigned a typical monk's cell which consisted of a small bedroom with a single bed and an armoire, plus a small sitting room with a table and a chair. There were five of us, plus Attilio, who had happened by with a contingent of repatriating prisoners and had decided to stay for a while. On occasion though, waves of human flotsam that we had witnessed at the academy were repeated on a smaller scale when newly arrived refugees from Istria and Fiume, for whom no billet could be found, were temporarily assigned as guests to our cells. At one time we hosted a family of 13 plus a young girl who had been separated from her family and so had attached herself to our guests. And wouldn’t you know it! I fell in love with her. Reminiscing about this now, I can see that certain idiosyncrasies of mine were already well established. Anyway, I have a party-time recollection of that period. I don’t recall any cases of depression during the war years, and the more depressing post-war period that followed, except, as I mentioned, for Sergio. He, as befitted a young hero of the resistance and a war amputee, had been assigned the sergeant's quarters at the academy, and the poor young man had fallen in love with my sister, who was so beautiful that she could have sunk a battleship. Sure enough, she also had correspondingly ambitious and determined plans based on her assets, which most assuredly were formulated in response to a great fear that otherwise she might share her mother’s fate. This single-minded purpose, unwavering courage and a straightforward manner, allied to her stunning beauty, proved a potent combination with more than one young partisan. Before Sergio she had totally disarmed another dashing young partisan commander who, in his hour of triumph, had the misfortune to find her among his prisoners.
A couple of days before the war ended, she and my dad took off on their bikes to Varese where my brother was recovering from a wound in a military hospital. They were bringing him civilian clothes (V2 to Italian soldiers), with the idea of spiriting him out of there before the war ended and–in a region bristling partizans–the anticipated retaliatory orgy began. My dad had figured it to be a matter of a week or two. He had overestimated the historic event. The war ended the day the tree of them started on their way home. They got arrested with many others who had waited too long to desert and deploy their V2s, and were scrambling to get to home base. Close to the Swiss border, anyone of military age in civvies was presumed to be an escaping fascist. And like after Caporetto, in Farewell To Arms, suspicion was enough. Tic-tac-toe, to the firing squad you go. I believe three hundred thousand civilians where tic-tac-toed in that region. It would have been their fate but for the fact that this young and dashing partisan commander who had been up in the mountains who knows how long, took one look at my sister and was arrested on the spot by a lightening testosterone attack. She was beautiful, eighteen and had spunk! He hesitated, my sister charged. After a while he ordered everyone else captured that day to the wall, and the three of them back to their cells until he had time for further interrogations. During the day the cell got filled up again; in the morning everyone was sent to the wall and the three of them back to the commander’s office for interrogation. My dad whimpered, my brother did his best not to shit himself and my sister held the floor. When the commander decided to shoot dad and brother but let her go she exploded.
-You shoot them, you have to shoot me too!
Trying to be of help, his aide reminded the commander that she probably had been a whore to the Germans and fascists just as the town’s folks–especially the women–had yelled at her when the prisoners had been brought in. Livia made her stand and declared that she was a virgin and if he didn’t believe her he should summon a doctor to examine her and verify it! She had more guts than Dick Tracy, let me tell you. Back to the cell! More interrogations followed, and perhaps the commander began to investigate my dad’s plaintive, insistent claims that he had always hated Mussolini and that he had always been actively antifascist. Which was true in a way, but right then everyone claimed and acted as though he had been the only true fascist in the whole country. That sudden unexplainable mass displacement from fascism to communism left me reeling as if in the middle of a storm, an unseen cargo deep inside an unknown hold had shifted suddenly and thrown me overboard. My hero hung from his feet outside a gas station in Milan, and Stalin, another hero, had instantly taken his place, as my mother, fearing the worst, wept inconsolably. As days passed and radio news issued by the provisional revolutionary government reported increasing success in the captures and eliminations of fascist elements on the run and my mother kept crying, I felt betrayed and bitterly confused amidst absurd celebration of renewal. I think that only a world later at the Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto I may have reached and in some ways surpassed such personal identity demolition.
Secretly I remained a Fascist for a long time, and only very slowly I became apolitical or maybe just disenfranchised. I don’t see how any of the kids who, like me, had been so thoroughly indoctrinated could turncoat any more than I could. Yet some, or even most, may have adjusted, and this I think may be in the end the greater–albeit necessary–tragedy. When the 900 days in Leningrad are done with, the cycle resumes, the grinding millstone starts rolling again. In the great Crystal Cathedrals and Capitol Hills and all other cesspools of societies, men of “good will” lay the foundation for the next great reckoning. It is a closed system, infinitely profligate and at the same time perfectly thrifty so that there is no room to extemporize. “The first Morning of Creation wrote / What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.”
I was nine when my class was taken to watch a patriotic movie. I had been chronically hungry all my life, in fact I probably experienced hunger even before I was born. I have been told by my older siblings, that I was on the way in France. Dad had a brother there, Uncle Garibaldi, Near Toulon. So dad had moved the whole family there in hope of finding work. It was the height of the depression, and this turned out to be another of my dad’s failed attempts to improve our situation. Eventually it was decided that pregnant mom and two kids would have a better chance to survive if they could be sent back to stay with her parents. The hat was passed, and obviously just enough funds to by tickets were raised, and so, on the third class of the Orient Express, mom kept fainting. Siblings panicked, thinking that she was dying, and crying, went begging for food. The Orient Express was then a marvellous example of the class system, which is man’s elegant interpretation and application of the natural system which mandates the survival of the fittest, so I am quite sure that it must have been really hard for my siblings to separate like-fated passengers from whatever food they might have been fortunate to possess. It has occurred to me that nature–much like king Herod–had precipitated the world into a depression just to eliminate me, and then, having failed, but barely, to do so, drove it straight into the second world war. And maybe not. Anyway, those must have been very hard times for my mom, who was very proud and very self sacrificing. I hated that part of her. I swear I did not see my mother sit at the kitchen table and eat for months at a time. I kept asking her why she didn’t eat with us; she kept reassuring me with what I knew was a lie, that she had already eaten. And although I had been with her all day and knew it to be a lie, being a famished kid, the same mechanism that prompted her to lie also disposed me to find her lie acceptable. Fiume was a small industrial city with practically no contiguous agricultural hinterland. It is a rocky Carso region, only marginally pastoral. Cities are bad places to be in time of war. The war effort becomes the absolute priority, civilians’ food and amenities become very scarce, cities’ streets very clean. Also a very good reason was necessary to obtain a permit to travel to a farming region less than a hundred kilometres away, where all the food piled up and rotted as there is was no means to ship it to markets. It was not Leningrad, and my mom told me that things never got as bad as during the first world war. Yet I couldn’t imagine worse until I heard that during the Leningrad siege botanists that worked at the institute where they preserved and nursed specimens of the largest seed collections in the world, starved to death in the midst of that plenty rather than to eat the seeds that where vouchsafed for posterity. Of course, then came Monsanto. To hell with posterity, be here now, is the motto of profit. Anyway when I heard about Stalingrad the concept was driven home. There I may have deserved the castor oil treatment.
The movie was about the mistreatment and humiliation of the “heroic” Italian prisoners of war in North Africa. The highlight so far as we kids were concerned was close-ups of the dining table at the English officers’ mess. When it showed that table heaped with salamis and sausages, turkeys, Provolone, Manicottis, Lasagna, tiramisu, and so on, it provoked an instantaneous epidemic of tooth pissing, the like of which I have never witnessed before or since. Visceral thunders and a flood of saliva! And when the ugly bastards (Italian actors of course) bit into those juicy meats, or tossed chunks of salami or succulent beef steaks to those fat and ugly Mastiffs, you could have made bayonets with the body of hatred that materialized in that crummy movie house.

-You are cranky all of a sudden!
It just struck me that nothing I have experienced, suffered or enjoyed had any value above the contingent because to prescind from the ever popular fairy tales and myths which only work peripherally, I experienced nothing that might indicate an ulterior plausible purpose, a redemptive scope of sorts. In this vacuum I see neither challenge nor objective that is worth the fuss, with the exception of the universally shunned challenge present in death. It is the only challenge that as never been met straight on. And since all other prospects have historically proven untenable in the cold light of reason, what remains are but two inescapable conclusions:
Life is a spurious struggle devoid of meaning or lasting gain, and thus as in the words of Ecclesiastes, totally vain.
OR: It is the crucible in which a meaningful quiddity may be stripped off the crass body to provide the spirited energy necessary to blast and incinerate the ego, shattering the universal spell in a supernova class event.
I have witnessed a similar event only twice, when at the moment of reaching the BIG O, two of my sex partners, overwhelmed by it, cried out -I WANT TO DIE!
It came as a shock, then awe and deep reflections. What had prompted them to feel so? Was the act of procreation a death-wish? A union between man and the divine through death or some kind of death drive of which Cioran spoke. A peak experience, not out of anger, despair, or surrender, not Mishima’s Seppuku, which sublimates both revulsion and anger. Let those beasts be relegated to life. Nor should it be devalued as a means to inspire revolt as in the case of Thich and Diem’s bar-b-qs. These well meaning monks and the passionate Yung Werthers could only reinforce the tragic power that like a fortress imprisons us all. It must be approached as a celebration, a fiat, a triumph. One bold step into the unknown.

In her youth aunt Romilda worked at the Fabbrica Tabacchi that I helped guard that magic night. One day a tape worm eappeared on the cement floor of the shop! The girls kept busy rolling cigarettes as the manager launched into a furious tirade against seditious elements who had planted that filthy stuff in order to slander the glorious and benevolent fascist regime.
-What sedition?! She whispered to me as though he was right there, she had a devilish spark in her green eyes. -It just slipped out of some poor girl. And then, still whispering as presumably the Commissario went on ranting and raving, -You can’t hold those things in once they start to slip out you know! The harder you squeeze the faster they slide out! And so there it was! Two meters of it coiled like linguine on the beautiful Fascist cement floor!
-The regime that had saved the Nation and given us an Empire!…where filthy things like this do not happen! Not in our glorious nation.… And then like Rigoletto or some other damned opera character, he demanded the name of the traitor.
-IL NOME! IL NOME! VOGLIO IL NOME! (The name! I want the name!)
-What opera is that from, do you know?
-All of them!
-He-he-hee–yes!
When I was in Italy a few years before she went insane, I went to visit them in Genova. I did not let them know I was coming, and at the time I was wearing a full black cape complete with an Alpino hat–A Robin Hood style –sporting a very long black feather. I rang the intercom out on the side walk and she came to the window to see who it was. She could not recognize me at that distance, and it had been many years since she had seen me, plus, like I said, I was traveling in costume. But she recognized the outfit; she had been seduced and abandoned by a dashing Alpino as she often recounted, and after one look at me she waved me up hurriedly. -Oh what a beautiful Alpino! Come up Come up! Come up!
-She was something else!
-Lia is just like her.
-Yes yes! Just like her mother. It is nice that Lia and Livia, inseparable in their youth, have kept close all these years. Put them together even now after more than sixty years and they grab the world by the arse. NUTS has been their motto; they saw only ridiculous nuts.
Daimon joined me in singing their song: Se tutti I bechi…

If all the nuts
Carried a lamp
Good gracious!
What a nice–bright–world!
Darkness be damned
Let us nuts
Have sway!

-Now you can sing too!
-It is one of my favourites, the other one is about the submarines.




Episode 34


Trouble started when spontaneous replays of my past crimes began popping up before my mind’s eye, unexpected and unwanted, provoking sonorous and embarrassing laments of frustration and guilt. If “An unexamined life is not worth living,” a worthless life of ignorance would have been bliss! Yet it would not have been a choice by then; it was too late for that. A singular concatenation of chance events had installed me in the centre of such unique chaos that no existing formula could resolve it, either by assimilation or reduction. Clearly it was not my destiny to go quietly from a pseudo-existence into an amorphous recycling heap. And so, the whole had to adjust to an apparently insignificant anomaly, and forced to gestate a concept that was antithetic to its own nature. Indeed this must be so for any act of pure and spontaneous creation to take place.
So half Knight, half Universe, Sir Gameteus with a limp mattress on the shore of a mythical river face to face a unique kind of mutiny. I cannot just dismiss it, and though it is a lovely summer day to float down this river, and I am all excited about it, the idiot has taken the wind out of my sails.

***

I was driving east along a solitary stretch of a secondary highway when I saw what looked like a humdinger of a summer storm piling up straight ahead. I turned on the radio and soon a local station confirmed it with repeated Severe Weather Warnings.




Episode 35


I have never seen a super cell in real time, so as I approach this weather leviathan I am awash in a blinking early afternoon slue of sunshine which seems to end abruptly against this awesome dark front that rises from the ground up to enormous heights and as far as I can see to the north and south like an advancing monstrous juggernaut the colour and apparent consistency of a humongous load of fresh asphalt. A Himalaya of Asphalt! I am driving from a luminous golden Turner straight into the belly of a black Goya. Severe Weather Warnings–you ain’t kidding!
As we advance towards each other I get a sense that the contingency is transformed to a close and weirdly personal confrontation.
I am excited and apprehensive, driving my Rosinante with my pseudo Sancho Panza down this straight desert road that, like a precise cicatrix, cuts through the forest like a jousting gauntlet. Galloping towards each other, me against a Saturnine man-devouring monster.
I listened to the repeated radio warnings, and tried to make out if the approaching storm showed a noticeable rotation. Was I heading into a hurricane or a tornado?
-DO I want a tornado?
-NO! Yes! NO! Maybe not a Tornado.
-YEAH! What the prick! A tornado!
I had never experienced this trinity: Me–a celestial monster–a stupid little man and FEAR!
-LOOK AT THAT! LOOK AT that monster!
-I SSEEE IT, Daimon. I S-S-SSSSSeee it! B-B-B Beautiful! Pppowerful–F-Fucking tremendous!
-Why am I stuttering?
-NNo! Sorry, it is m-m-meee, when I g-get Ec-sssited.
I thought of pulling to the side but I could not stop, not even slow down, I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, the eagerness of getting lost, of driving off the cliff of reality with Potoxotomy Phil or whatever is that rodent’s name. I have trouble spelling words, I have never had a good memory and most of all I don’t have a photographic memory. But heck, words are abstract symbols right? Off the cliff with this ephemeral-surfaced bloom of an ancient rhizome of wonder which may be but the reflected bejewelled net of Indra.
-UH?
-Never mind.

I watched two leaves
Floating down a small stream
Caught by a small eddy
They spun and danced.
In the eye of it they touched
became tangled
wobbled and laughed
then one was torn by the current,
abducted,
one remained.
I dipped my hand to feel the water…
I felt my hand!

-G-G-GO F-F-FOR IT!
-Slow down.
-LOOK! LOOK THERE!


About a mile ahead, slightly to my left, lit up by the sun to a glowing pearly brightness against the backdrop of this ominous advancing darkness, a long, straggling flock of snow geese began to move across my wind-shield frame like the incandescent notes of a visual splendour playing a symphony of breathtaking contrasts of forms, light and darkness. This fulgent band strung along the full width of my field of view now, counterpointing brilliantly the ominous weather with levity and brio. The luminous pentagram festooned the border between the clashing fronts and then, of a sudden, I mean instantly and magically, it disappeared. I was stunned. I focused and squinted but I could not make them out. The event was over. Behind me, a cloud must have moved over the sun and they had disappeared.
-THEY WERE NOTES!
-WOW! That was magic!
But it is all magic. The Wizard played my music for me! A moment later big rain drops started to hit, and since I had just recently coated my wind-shield with RainAway these transformed into a continuous rollicking burst of beads which caused me some internal giggles, soon smothered by a sudden eerie darkness, wild wind buffeting, gut-splitting cracks of blinding lightening and a roaring Niagara. Within minutes I slowed down to a crawl. The headlights did not help the visibility in that dark cataract, if anything they highlighted its fury, leaning forward, eyes and mouth wide open, I felt as if I had wandered into the belly of the night-storm of the soul and then the fleeting thought of stopping, of surrender enraged me so that I closed my mouth, forced myself to lean back and accelerated slightly. As long as I could still see the watery outlines of the centre white line I was not going to yield to the monster!
-Bring it on! Give it to me! I roared -TAT TVAM ASI!
-She probably didn’t have underwear.
-WHAT!?
-I SAID ,he raised his voice over the din, -THAT SHE PROBABLY DIDN’T HAVE UNDERWEAR!
-WHO? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
-The poor girl with the tape worm, he explained calmly and condescendingly. It irritated me. What a time to switch subjects.
It reminds me that a couple times I was pressed to serve my mom as an auxiliary bra. She would take me along on some errand just so that, like a little gentleman, I would take her arm in such way that it would seam natural for her upper arm to be folded under her breasts to support and stabilize them.
-You could slow down!
-What? Are you afraid?
-Slow down!
-HUMMA KAVULA!
No, because impulsively I had switched on the improbability drive and suddenly I was out there! Orlando on a rocky ledge above the forest in the middle of a live G. Dore with a tenebrous heaven hovering the supine newborn moist earth. There I was, standing, wet, glistening, naked with my trusty Durlindana raised to capture Zeus’ bolts of anger to fulgurate my soul and forge it to that noble temper that cannot yield because it simply cannot, or will not contemplate fear.
Awe, yes, even though it is related to fear. The Knights of the Round Table having had a vision of the Holy Grail behind a shroud were immediately inspired to take off in the quest of seeing it unveiled, each on his own entering the forest at its darkest most forbidding place. That day at Tetrahedron Park, where I had gone to pause and reflect before the start of my own quest, unable to endure any longer that fiercely luminous expanse, I retreated out of the clear-cut into the smothering darkness of the pluvial forest. Clear-cut areas, whatever their shapes, have very straight borders so that the transition from a bright, sunny, open landscape to a underworld kind of gloom is a matter of a couple of steps. And it is like an underworld; you can wander for days in those old stands and not hear or see a bird, a fern, a mouse, not even a squirrel, nothing! There is less life in those forests than in a desert! In them one life form has become so dominant that it permits no other forms to get a hold and to exist. So thoroughly have those massive firs claimed the sky and intercepted–high above the ground–every ray of direct light that, although not in total darkness, wandering at the base of those pillars in that grey limbo I felt strangely dissociated and remote, like a ghost, haunted by the greater spectre of a life immersed in a vast and stable population of nearly identical replicas. When the collective finds its stride individuals forget theirs. That is why the knight entered the forest alone and where there were no paths. And speaking of groups, thinking and wondering how the notion of individuality and free will can persist when we are so predictably similar, so well adapted to our environments as to seem as models of design and mass production, one would only have to have seen the funeral cortège of the “great leader” Kim Il Sung. As the immense crowd wept hysterically and uniformly, soldiers marched behind the great corpse, moving in such perfect mechanical synchronicity that I experienced a glitch as my mental process could not decide whether to interpret the rhythmic formations as a unit or as a group. It produced, momentarily, a fibrillating spasm that alternated between both. It was an awesome, unsettling experience. But even more revealing when it comes to frightening insights, a seemingly banal line delivered in the movie “Groundhog Day” stands out for me as the most chilling of all.
In a scene she is asked, -So what do you want out of your life?
And she replies simply and as a matter of fact, -Oh I don’t know…what everyone wants I suppose…a career…fall in love…get married…have kids.

In P’yonyang THEY are marching




Episode 36


The storm raged on. He again called on me to pull up and wait it out, saying that we had all the time in the world, and that I didn’t have to prove anything, but I had to keep going. It was like being on top of a mountain and all the lands of the world that are spread out before you are offered to you, if you would just admit to something greater, but you realize that the tempter is no one other than the you that would not.
-By the way, Sergio’s room was not at the top of the stairs. It was at the far end of the other dormitory.
There he goes again! I don’t know what got into him, maybe electrical interference. But yes, yes! Goodness yes! He was right. I was right there that day, in the empty dormitory when Sergio’s door opened and was about to step out when he saw me. I had never seen him in suit and tie and I curiously noted that the limp right sleeve was neatly tucked into his side pocket.
-Ha! Claudio, come in a minute please.
He let me into his room, closed the door, went to the shelf and came back with a German pistol. A Luger I believe it was, he dropped it on the bed, went back to the shelf for the box of shells, which he dropped on the bed beside the gun, and asked me to load it for him. I was familiar with that type of pistol, I knew how to do it and did so, feeling proud of it and glad that I could be of help. I handed it to him expecting some praise and maybe some explanation, but all he did was thank me, show me to the door and close it behind me. I was puzzled, so I hung around, thinking he might be going to do some target practice, which I would not want to miss. It must have been a few minutes later when his friend showed up, a nice young Armenian boxer. He stopped to say hallo to me and was just asking me if I had seen Sergio when we heard the shot.

It took what seemed hours to drive through the storm, but finally I got out from under it, but not relieved because I kept an eye on the storm in the side mirror and I soon realized that the storm had changed direction and, ominously, it was gaining on me. I was being stalked by a mean storm! I sped up and went as fast as the van had ever gone for what seemed another couple of hours and it was still on my tail when I finally got to the border, and then it stopped and just hung around keeping its distance. That big mountain of meanness hovered, perhaps regrouping or maybe just waiting because it didn’t want witnesses. Well I’ll be damned! I had just had the longest must intense drive of my life, feeling as tense as a strung out telegraph wire, absent-mindedly answering a bunch of brief questions, when the polite young man told me that it is only an hour and a half drive from Warhead! I nearly jumped out of the open window to get at his throat!
-WHAT?
-Well didn’t you say that you crossed at Warhead?
-Yes I did!
-So what did you do all this time?
-ALL WHAT TIME?
-The six hours which you declared was the length of your stay, did you do some shopping at Warhead?
-NO! I just bought a pack of pipe tobacco… I went through a hell of a storm though!
-Did you stop along the way then?
-No I drove right through!
Had he asked how my drive had been, I could have come up with some interesting generalities but to give the experience a precise
-Sir…
measure of time seemed impossible now, I certainly could not come close to his requirement. In fact, the more I tried the longer it seemed to have been. Eight hours, maybe more. Had there been a mother spaceship
-Sir!...
hidden inside that mountain of asphalt? I could not account for the missing eight or ten hours and I do not believe in alien abduction; I think it is a transference phenomenon or syndrome, payback for the crazy things we do to animals in the wild in the name of science and their welfare. I never liked crossing borders, always felt ve victis!...and that time I took my octogenarian mother for a visit in the state of Washington and I had to translate some brainless questions while keeping a straight face. You should have seen the look she gave me when point blank I asked her:
-Are you at present or have you ever been a member of a terrorist or anarchic organization, and is the purpose of your visit to engage in such activities against the people and government of the United States? I don’t remember the exact word formula but believe you me, I am not inflating the substance of it one iota, in fact I couldn’t! And, oh how I dislike yellow slips of paper…
The young man had come out of his booth and was politely tapping me on the arm, holding out a slip of yellow paper in which every box had been checked.
-Sir,sir, sir! Please proceed to the inspecting station and hand this in. Just pull up there and someone will take care of you. Are you alright?
-Yes, fine, thank you so so much!

Believe it or not, it was another large academy dormitory we were in, this time just north of Naples. A long line of naked men with the yellow slips was inching with some trepidation towards a single desk at the end of the dormitory. Behind the desk sat a doctor and a pretty young nurse. As each in turn got up to it, we presented our yellow cards and our penises for inspection. We were instructed to hold our pricks up and then squeeze them under the watchful eyes of the two. Following my presentation and their observation, the doctor said something to the nurse which she noted down in a big ledger. I did not understand English but it seemed to me an easy conjecture that on one line of that ledger was my name and a column under the heading of prick squeezed, and there, where the two crossed, forming a little square my future was set. I am a slow learner, very slow at assimilating data and drawing some general assumptions from experiences and observations which could form and activate a sense of caution, if not scepticism, regarding future expectations, but in spite of the events I have described to you so far and many more disheartening disasters, I maintained a totally idiotic optimism about the future. So, having passed the prick test, I was ushered into a small room where another deranged man in white frock and mask, armed with a giant hand-operated pesticide sprayer, applied with quick and deft pump actions the proper puffs of flying colours to my naked body. My right of passage to the new world thus confirmed, sporting three big patches of yellow powder–on my pubic hair, my arse and my head–I joined a fraternity of equals with identical signs of a privileged induction. Now, I chose to relate this odd sequence of scenes with deliberate brevity, relying on your imagination to fill in the blanks with apt material of your reserve and choice, so if the scene of a long line of naked men of all sizes and shapes making their way to a desk at the end of a large empty hall has functioned as desired and has thus caused (paraphrasing I.A. Richards) an experience to occur in your mind that is similar to the original experience, and is in fact caused in part by that experience, you should enjoy the liberty to do whatever you wish with it. As a foot note, vanity survived. A bunch of naked, yellow-blotched men did their best to defuse and to cover up the effect of such strange and demeaning experience by kibitzing and laughing as they dashed into their clothes. I have observed the same reaction in chickens and even budgies, proving, I suppose, that man is not the only animal to blush. After being violated, Aunt Virgilia’s chickens ran off in panic, but as soon as danger retreated they stood high on their legs, stretched their necks, beat their wings and let out a loud and daring cockle do. But of these men I should add that they had survived a war. Anyway, I was nearly eighteen then, and indeed a vague notion that not everything may be that different or well with the new world should have, at least on the basis of the aforementioned experiences, rang a little bell way in the back of my mind to recall me to a well known adage, rediscovered later by McLuhan – All the World is a Village.




Episode 37


I was in trouble. Out came two willing and able young ladies. Very young, pretty, pleasant, and uniformed in more ways than by cloth. They were the ideal type for the job. Highly trainable and obviously well trained. Scrupulous in doing their job well, not to overlook details, and above all not to make assumptions and–god forbid–use common sense! They went into and at my van and I sat on the bench as they instructed me to do. I checked out the position of the storm which had been responsible for a time dimension incongruity that I found curious but also very enervating. Perhaps I had been adducted by an alien mother-ship and then the memory of it was erased, and equally possible life is an abduction, with, very likely, a similar result. I had to accept that the young officer knew the distance between the two border crossings, yet in no way and by no stretch of the imagination could I accept that it should have taken me a maximum of two hours to drive! But the thing was that I could account for every minute of the drive, and besides, I adhered and maintain my pet theory that such abductions were nothing more than shock-transference which westerners bring on themselves by swooping down in their noisy flying crafts on innocent and confused animals, shoot them down with drugs and conduct intrusive procedures on them to satisfy our species' concern about their health and population, which is to provide us with sport. So what could account for the undeniable impression of a much longer drive? The storm had lodged itself, black and ominous, right above the big smoke stack of the local pulp mill. The stench made me appreciate that the stench of paper manufacturing would elicit, subliminally, a pleasant sense of security and stability on its inhabitants. Yet I was compelled to admit the possibility…ha! the highest probability, that I had been similarly manipulated all the time by less obvious and more insidious and unpleasant factors. Could the mind ever formulate a thought for its own sake, its own aesthetic, a mere thought in which the ego was not the primary interest of the equation? Just the number forty for heaven’s sake, O.K., 42. Not a chance! I am at war with myself, against myself and I am programmed to lose the war so that I may be good to the whole. Pascal speaks of two souls as a single personality could not account for such boundless presumption at one instance and total spiritual prostration at another. I would end this Pensee# 417 to end with incurable recidiflunkymisticgofer! As the two carried on in there I considered asking them, since they were going about their task so thoroughly, if they wouldn’t mind keeping an eye open for a cassette of mine–Beethoven’s Hammer Clavier sonata # 29 in b flat major. I look for it every time I go through all my life support junk in there but it has always eluded me. That’s when I was reminded of the flare gun, and I decided not to push my luck.... I sat and I sat. Invisible to me through the tinted glass, the two carried on. Once in a while one would come out and walk up to me with a little plastic container or glass jar.
-Excuse me sir. What do you keep in this vitamin container?
-Bicarbonate of soda!
In the mean time, I saw others, fishermen mostly, drive in, present their yellow slip, rush back to their trucks to fetch a bag of potatoes which they dropped in a dumpster and then drive off. As I sat there, casting a glance now and then at the black cloud poised to pounce on me, I watched more than half a dozen drivers go through the same routine. They drove pick ups trailing large fishing boats hermetically covered with tarps. They could have had a couple of atomic bombs concealed under there. But all they were asked was:
-Have you potatoes?
They all did! That still amazes me! Group think indeed! Not only were they driving similar pick-ups, trailing similar, big, tarp-covered boats, but even their potatoe bags appeared to be of the same size and brand.
But I tell you, if I ever want to nuke Ottawa, I know I have to get myself a ten pound potato bag.

-Excuse me again, what do you keep in this container?
-That is gelatin; I hope it will improve my guitar playing!
By and by I began to enjoy the stupidity of the ordeal, the smell of rotten eggs, the fishermen moving ahead of me in line to bomb Ottawa, the inane questions, the eight dollar bridge, the missing six-ten hours, the cloud hovering above the mill waiting for another chance to wallop me.
Just the same, when I was told to see the immigration officer inside, I thought it behoved me to lodge a moderate complaint.
-WAS ALL THIS NECESSARY?...! I am just an old fart with a beat up old van full of junk going to visit my kids in Ontario!
And that is when I heard those odious words for the first time in this country.
-I am sure you understand sir, that we are only doing our duty.









Part 4
Episode 38


NIHIL OBSTAT


E-mail from Margot.

Dear Claudio, I feel very strongly that I must remove myself from this situation. You are unable to live every day life… it leaves me feeling that I am sitting on the edge of a cliff. … I would rather bow out now than feel the pain of your dramatic whipping. I wish you well and hope, etc. etc. Love M

And so now I see only the backsides of men. My lamp is lit as I search for a face man. A man, of intellect, culture and refinement, a successful man and admired, who might be overcome and exclaim woefully: In the midst of the walk of my life I find myself in a forest dark!
I hear instead -The most important thing for us is our family.


The end of Pinocchio is a disquieting experience. (The blue fairy has naturally rewarded Pinocchio for his good deeds and turned him into a real boy. A real boy in spiffy clothes, a really nice cottage, and what the heck, she also made Gepetto decades younger. So Pinocchio is very happy and asks Gepetto where the wooden marionette had hidden itself. Gepetto points at it slumped lifeless on the floor leaning against a chair.) So this is now the tremendous scene: You can see Gepetto, the real boy Pinocchio and the abandoned wooden Pinocchio. Wow! But the boy Pinocchio laughs! I could swat the stupid brat! He laughs at his former self and says, -O I looked so ridiculous then, and how happy I am now that I am a real boy!

GRRRRR!




Episode 39


Even my very own Mary Magdalene has denied me. It is now unanimous: At long last I am considered insane by all! I am filled with joy. How could I get anywhere as long as I had the approval of even one member of this insane world? I was not trying hard enough that’s all.
Wonderful! Family, friends, tribe, culture, hope, beauty knowledge and love….
Those nice-fitting curved lines of the yoke….
All gone, all gone.
This town also, turned out to be just another jar of pickles…pickles of various denominations. And so now in this world of mine there are only the backsides of men…. Only the backsides of men like I said, pickles. Luckily for me, I had decided a long time ago that if genius and insanity share an unguarded soft border, my best bet was to aim for folly and hope to– No! Not hope–nor plan–as Andre would, but expect–that’s the word! Yes, expect to stray now and then onto an adjacent state. I am pleased with my madness, it is creative, personal, and unlimited. Admittedly I could be as loony as Flo and not have a clue, but what harm to it? No harm in a small deviation on such humongous feed-lot of lunacy. I like the idea of being crazy like Alfonso even if I am not learned as he. By heart I only know the Hail Mary and the Lord’s prayer and in two languages to boot. A Miracle! And when, during a telephone conversation, I casually told Ewin that I could recite them in Latin, a living, walking, and talking Wikipedia who, like Gordy, genuinely worries about my soul, he jumped at it, insisting that we pray together on the phone. Ask Erwin anything about math, physics, architecture, navigation, medicine, and other sciences and the reply comes prompt, elegant and textually accurate. He sounds like a genius to me. I am absolutely amazed. So does Alfonso on matters of philosophy, history and art, Nickle on logic, Richard Thomas on music and literature, yet not one of them have kept a little…a smidgen of their brains unencumbered! Not a tiny spy hole to peer out onto the wild of truth. And then there was my old school-mate Catello who remembered absolutely everything that met his senses and who, on my visits to Italy, for the price of a couple of beers and a few cigarettes, delighted me for hours telling me stories and stories about me of which I had no recollection at all. IT WAS MAGIC in a way. Almost ineffable, like trying to imagine infinity, or even better, one of my favourite mental burrs–if an infinite number of beans can fill an infinite space. I sat listening to my deeds and misdeeds, feeling like I was watching a movie. My brother, the family historian, was so vexed by this lack of memory that on a visit to Fiume (now Rijeka), after a 30 years absence, he had me march with him a few blocks from our hotel and then stand together in front of a large building and look at it. -Now do you remember? He asked me after a minute or so. I had no idea what he expected me to remember, some event perhaps. The polished brass sign beside the great open portal was in Cyrillic and did not help…nothing. Not a clue.
-This is where you went to school! He said at last. It was as if I had seen it for the first time. Matteo said that falling on my head off Serafino’s roof could have done it. I was comatose and my mother freaked out in screaming terror when she came to wake me in the morning; my head and face had swelled up to the size of a beach ball. Coming to think of it, I don’t think we had beach balls then. Or maybe I just don’t know…I remember the floating devices though, common were the dried up ornamental gourds on a twine, cork bricks on canvass vests next, and I remember seeing a kid with a patched old car tube! I tell you, the non plus on the beach was a beat up old car tube. On the beach the kid with a car tube was king! Now why do I remember these things? Weird things, but of no consequence. And why do I remember things I would rather not to remember? the unpleasant, painful or shameful? So actually my life is comprised entirely of weird, unpleasant and shameful things! Wow! Play “My Way” Regrets I have a few... Hell, just to make sure that my brain was well scrambled, a couple of years later I did it again, on my face this time!...broke nose, teeth, and went into a deep, deep sleep at the base of the three meters diving board at the Riviera. As a consequence I grew up to be the opposite of an enfent prodige. What would that be? I could not memorize information. In high school I had to invent my own mathematics. On one test I surprised everyone and myself, when I was the only one in the class to have passed a test that had not been meant for our class but for a higher grade. That should have told me right there and then that good pupils are dumb and that severe concussions may induce originality or some other interesting and sometimes practical intuits about unpractical behaviour. But now my short-term memory is going too, and it does not seem to me that this follow-up produces corresponding beneficial results. I start saying something or doing something and freeze! I am standing in the middle of the room with a raised finger like Augustus at the shore of Ostia. My vocabulary is shrinking, plus I can’t spell worth a damn, I have to wing it as I go and do the best I can, you know, mainly faking it, which I am good at it by now, and on the silver lining side of it, since my mind is not cluttered with knowledge, at times I catch an up-draft quite unexpectedly and soar high like an eagle. Yesterday I went orbital with delight on a stupid commercial that probably had gone by me a hundred times. Yet of a sudden those seemingly inane words produced a scaled down lightening in my brain.
-Future friendly quick picker upper! Not the greatest I know. I mean advertising has been elevated to the highest state of art. On average, the finest nuggets of literature and theatre come in thirty-second spots and perhaps their influence on our culture will prove greater than any other established and so called legitimate fields. The devil loves advertising, that’s why. That’s where I heard the most important thing for us, is our family. From a life insurance commercial. A tremendous truth in a banal setting. I can’t really explain why these particular pieces had such an effect on me. There is something more than the obvious clever superficiality. And maybe, just maybe, I was in the right or receptive mood. I can tell you that the-superdooper-quick-picker-upper bit cheered me up tremendously. I was in a very good mood all day after that! Eric’s challenge on E-mail not only did not bother me, but its gravitational influence swung me on to an even higher orbit.

Eric’s e-mail: (by the way, I have no idea what prompted this)

-“Yes to life!
even in its most inimical facets, yes to brutality violence ignorance?
Yes says the matrix: be like me the original mother who constantly creating gives up even her highest forms and expressions into the turbulent flux of appearance" So what do you say how will it be will you lie there like Kerouac watching the cross float in front of you over and over Struggle with this my father never mind all else but fix your mind on this: Do I believe that Jesus the Messiah existed as a man? That he walked the desert in Palestine two Millennia ago? As I approach the end of my life I hear it everywhere in every birdsong in every branch that which got you the disease must now get you well What galvanized you and intensified and interested you what sucked your mind out of your head and into itself when you were a little ciccino? Whatever lies there, whatever that was is where the lies begin to be unravelled have to go back to that I know this now.
- Have a face off with Jesus!
-WHAT? Jesus Christ formaldehyde!
-face the historical lie that you were fully immersed in long before the Adriatic ever clamped its irons around your little ankles my poor Claudius Pater the Lame…

-Mmmm yes! The second seduction but… Fuck you! GET OUT OF MY WAY JESUS! You are all wrong, all wrong! Even your sex is wrong! You have no right to interfere, to intercede. Get out of my way you…you great deceiver of the unworthy and helpless. It is my privilege to face Satan even as it is my exclusive privilege to fail. You swindler, robbing me of my sins! Wiping off my debt. My debt, my guilt!
The scoundrel!
-Here Claudio, he says, -I have died for you! You are now saved and forever unable to save yourself…forever more in my debt! In effect he pickles me and preserves me forever more in a state of failure! He steals my guilt and walks away with my soul! No thanks. It is Satan’s offer that I understand as the divine gift! It is the duel to death. He challenges me.… I have to fight for my own salvation and if not, perish and go to hell…with Virginia! As I should!
-Sacrilege!
-Who said that!?
Sacrilege you say? But can’t you see that the way to heaven is through downtown hell…and vice versa! Sacrilege is Grace Eventually @ the Chopra center for well being dot com. That is what and where sacrilege is. Oh what a devil an angel makes! How can anyone possibly wash away my guilt? By making me even more stupid than nature had so cleverly disposed? And anyway, guilt cannot be undone; I should know this because I am riddled with guilt and I've thought hard and long about it. I can erase the memory of it or run time backwards so that I and my malice, along with those who have suffered, are sucked back out of existence and yet the deed, the pain I have caused is not undone. The deed is beyond time, beyond any type of evanescence or pearlification. No true teacher could promise absolution by the same deal that he himself had rejected in the desert!
-The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. -All this I will give you, he said, -if you [just] will bow down and worship me.
So what does Jesus do? He shows me paradise and declares -Acknowledge me, and it is yours! I am the door he says, -I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Well, get thee behind me Satan!
THERE IS NO FUCKING DOOR! There is no use for it! Oh but let me be clear about this, when I say Satan you think Babau, Beelzebub or the sleazy fox and blind tom cat or some other monstrous, evil creature and I really think of a soft-spoken, charming and maybe even well-meaning individual, like Chopra, Mother Theresa, the dodolai lama. These are the successful spiritual pushers, and though I strongly suspect Christ did not start out that way he quickly underwent the usual demonic process that offers salvation on a silver platter, starting, I am sure, even before Nicea and still going strong. On to boobieland!
-I am chaos. I desire, ardently desire, chaos by the same measure that the terrifying light is advancing into the darkness. I desire it. Ha ha-ha! Listen to me! I DESIRE! Language is the confounding tongue numbing tower. I think! I love! I will! Aren’t all these I's just as paradoxical as I THIRST?
-Truly the heart grows hard and the mind wicked in sweet pursuits.
-There you go!
In “The Last Temptation Of Christ,” the tempter is the sweetest of angels. It lures Christ down from the cross to a life of comfort and pleasure. And shit! You know…I got horny watching Jesus screw Mary!
-And yes, you felt shame, ha-ha!
-Christ yes! I thirst! I Covet! Deliverance my friend, true deliverance comes tremendous!
-Yes, I know, I am repeating myself again. So, WHO IS GUILTY OF ME? Whose doing am I, and whose pot? Fear not bad potter! Come forth so that I may show you my mercy…. But the potter heard my call in the garden, and was afraid because he knew what he had done and he hid from me. Fie, fie, fie! Pah, pah, and all that!
-Fascinating…
-O well, enough already.

Took a break, went for a walk along the levee. The sun fulgent on the high Rockies’ peaks with their winter hoods on and flowing scarves around their shoulders. The line of poplars along the bank of the Columbia river have dropped their summer dress at their feet where they stand, ready, for winter comes. Cold air tweaks my nose on this pumpkin kind of day and a delicate sweetness visits me, dispatches all other cares and makes the spirit rise like a sweet song. Here on the bank for a few moments I feel clean, complete and right! Spring comes to renew the task, to plant fresh over the dead, the decay. I am tired, too ripe for spring.
Fall is my season, reward of labour. Then comes rest, and so I gather my spirit and we lie down on the bounty of summer past to winter’s sleep. An ancient wind returns. It swoops down from the bright glaciers, down through the valley and over the river. Landing on the leaves, and like a spirit dog it runs about under the poplars, swirls up some leaves here and there. It too, feels winter come. It too, looks for a place to bed down.

Mind Brother! Mind brother…where are you?…
O Mind Brother...do stay if you must. I feels it will find you when I’s gone.

Then I fell asleep thinking of Donlan. I have been given this day, a feud of sorts with another poet and a message from another world.
My putative son in Padova is going out for dinner. He will provide well for his body, I am sure, much better than I can, or even care, to imagine. But I bought myself a bottle of the green fairy and had a snort or two, or more
And then, wobbly, I made my way to the shore of the Columbia. I sat in the setting brilliance of the sun…what? Ninety two million miles behind mount Begbie! Big throne room, me on the throne bench, my tired body and mind kind of left me there. Kind of, and I heard youthful voices walking by, I heard voices of spring on the loan of blissful slumber and laughter. Those voices may have passed a tired old man on a bench, but that tiredness felt so good, so right, so royal. You may hate me if you will, but as I lie here I know where your gold is buried, and you seek it elsewhere.

Now, where were was I? Ah yes, Pater the lame!…before the Adriatic ever clamped its irons around your little ankles… Yes! THE SECOND SEDUCTION! She held me by the hand and led me a couple of steps–just a bit more than ankle deep–into the clear, almost invisible water of the Adriatic, then paused. I looked down at my feet immersed in this transparent, unintentional entity that stretched out as far as I could see, and felt the tiny swells go by me without pressing, just sliding up and down my legs with a cool and gentle tension. Unsure about it, I looked up at her, and her smile said -Yes! It is O.K., I am giving this to you, it is good, take it. I had trusted my first seduction without reservations because at that point it related to a closed and protective relation, but now I was asked to extend that trust to something awesome and quite beyond that range of limited and simple needs. This thought evokes the cave again. Oh the comfort of the shadows, reticent comfort of the eye which is accustomed to the penumbra. The mind tethered to its narrow safety hesitated before the divine light. I think now, that it would have been better for me if she had dragged me into the strange element kicking and screaming, plunked me down, splashed me, and let me yell until the awesome magic of it had been exorcised by simple strain and terror. But she had been tender, patient, loving…to I–the sacrifice.

Quasimodo,
Oh yeah, extolling the merits of age and taking stock of my attributes…a bit like enjoying artificial reef building, in which I am the designated new section. Those are arresting, tectonic-like events that form deep engrams– veritable canyons in the landscape of the psyche that become like deep riverbeds which direct the turbulent flaw of all subsequent experiences. In this river one can only wish to step into it but once, since in reality one can never step out of it. What I am trying to say is that I had an unforgettable, Pinocchio moment one day as I was bicycling from Laveno towards Rovate, aiming to get back to my inconsolable mother before dark. I was tired, hungry, miserable and about half the way home, when on a desolate stretch of roller-coaster road, a young man jumped in front of me, grabbed my bike by handlebar and hijacked me. He took me off the seat, turned my bike around, lifted me and placed my butt on the frame’s top tube and started pedalling back towards Laveno with incredible eagerness and energy….
I have to tell you that in them days, kids’ interactions with grown-ups were on the level of house-trained puppies, or if you will, adhered strictly to the need to know basis, which in practice amounted to next to nothing. We had free run and freedom of expression out in the yard or on the street with other kids, but once called in or summoned for whatever reason by an adult, we became quiescent, obedient and passive adjuncts to their contingencies, strife and fortunes. The great gap that existed between the generations was dictated as most customs are, by the economy of the time. Dad was number one, the provider, the law, and your stock soared if you just got an occasional smile or an en passant tap on the head from him. Mom provided all the constant nurturing that kids need and the corporal punishment deserved, but she never acted as a liaison to her world. On the contrary, she protected us by not letting transpire any of the realities that concerned and afflicted her generation. We were kid–kids! Dumb and happy as long as we had reason to believe that our parents were in control. To protect us from knowing better and continue to be carefree was my mother hardest task and her greatest gift.
Then Came War.
I attribute to the events of this period, at an age when a kid begins to feel secure enough to begin exploring, the difficulty that I had all my life in finding–if not Sakura–a perch in a predictable, orderly, or at least apparently stable environment. The way I see it is that we start out from a mother and family–innermost orbit–adding others as we go, winding up in the end within a complex, dynamic but constraining structure, that resemble a Ptolemaic astrolabe, which though it may not correspond to reality, is however, adequate to establish one’s position and a sustainable measure of balance to wither on. Just when I was sufficiently confident of my lower orbits, the whole thing came crashing down on me. So when the young hero of the resistance hijacked me, I said nothing. I didn’t complain, whine nor weep, I just clammed up. The whole situation seemed too absurd to elicit any kind of reaction. My mind went numb and, after nearly two hours of sitting on the frame, my legs as well. I had volunteered to go searching for them mostly because I could not stand by all day long watching my mother sinking deeper and deeper in despair. So, after tearfully grateful blessings and warnings, I got on my bike, and out of selfishness, left her standing on her via dolorosa. But if the going was partial relief, coming back unsuccessful after a long day was crushing, bitter payback. From town to town along the route the three of them might have travelled, I went, located the police stations or provisional government's headquarters, and asked to check their list of prisoners. I have no idea what I might have said had they turned on one of those lists, -Please sir, my mother is crying! I suppose I might have told them that my dad had always hated Mussolini…. Anyway, every morning for about two weeks I took off, impelled more by despair than even a hint of hope. The day of this particular imprint, I was on my way back after a long ride when this young man jumped in front of me, grabbed the handlebar and hastily commandeered me and my bike. He explained that he had not seen his mother and or his girlfriend in I don’t recall how long. Turned my bike around, heaved me up astride the bar and started pedalling like mad back in the direction I had just come from. My heart sank, but something of a strange and intriguing nature was trying to locate itself in some department of my tentative hold on an emerging, barely intelligible pattern of reality. Here I was, sitting astride the frame of a small bike with no gears on a long stretch of roller-coaster road cutting through the pre-alps. This big strong young man awkwardly pedalling at an incredible speed, huffing and puffing and tumbling a streak of exhortations on the back of my head and neck.
-Hang on, hang on! He kept repeating as he pedalled on and on, taking me farther and farther away from my destination, while unbeknownst to me, my legs were falling into a deep, deep sleep. On downhill stretches he would volunteer disconnected episodes of life up in the mountains, on the run, hunted, hungry and so on. Nothing of it seamed to fit anywhere or to coincide with any perplexing motif in the disconcertingly askew panorama that was unreasonably demanding recognition. Had he mentioned the custom of bestiality, the weird notion would have bounced around inside my head like a frightened bird inside a room. When events are so weird, the best is to let the window open and hope they find their way out. Spiros told me of Greek partisans–I suppose dashing young communist rebels up in the mountains–making love to chickens when yearning for their paramours. Ha, and yes! With an a la carte option of chopping off of their heads during orgasm. There, just another Ripley notion bouncing around in my head quite weird and seemingly irrelevant, yet not dismissable, so just keep the window open. So I learned about this frugal use of chickens, which by ending in the pot permitted the nourishment of the body after it had soothed the soul. He was about my age when after the war, the Greeks went on a few extra innings with a revolution of unimaginable sanguinity. This young kid had helped his family’s income following military mopping-up operations in the mountains by collecting the heads of killed insurgents, which he then brought down to the towns’ squares where he was paid–literally–by the head. He also told me that it is surprisingly hard work to cut off a man’s head, and that a back-basket full of heads is very heavy. And I was complaining….
The inference quarried from the hard rock of reality is that in a stable and prosperous environment, man cultivates urbanity and its trappings, which a few sick chickens or some other gratuitous catastrophe may shatter in a blink of an eye. Today happens to be Earth Day, and as I go over these events of my childhood, I chuckle on hearing a pundit predict that one more great breakthrough in science–like fusion, for instance–will give us the means to put everything aright and usher in an era of security, prosperity and peace for evermore. Evermore? Hell! One more major scientific breakthrough and this planet is toast.




Episode 40


If you think about a it;
In the land of the blind
The one eyed man
Is a very lonely individual.


The very worst part of those worst of times, was getting back to my desperate mother with the fangs of failure tearing mercilessly at that quivering clutch of hope and desire. I knew where she would be when I finally got back. Just outside the town, past the small cemetery, straining her burning eyes down that solitary long stretch of road to catch sight of the faintest movement the very instant it appeared. Whenever I got back early from my fruitless expeditions, she released her pent up emotion on me in a torrent of anguish and gratitude that shamed my effort and magnified my bitter sense of failure. She would then take me home, and prepare me something to eat. Potatoes were on the menu quite often at that time. O! What my mother could do with a couple of tubers, a bay leaf and a touch of tomato paste! I have tried many times since to duplicate that culinary feat but failed miserably, even though I had many more ingredients at my disposal. I had to accept in the end, that potatoes just would never be the same. Then if there was still some daylight when I had finished stuffing my face, we would hit the road again. Both of us would scan the horizon with equal intensity. We would walk just past the little walled cemetery from which we could see, but barely, the point where the road forked out in two directions. It may have been only a kilometre, but it seemed like the end of the world. If something came into view, we would start towards it. If it appeared to be more than one person, perhaps three, her sobs would quicken her pace. I strained to recognize them to prevent her becoming too excited with hope and then having to share her bitter disappointment.

O Mother, O Mother!
Why has thou betrayed me!
Every birth is a betrayal
Every Father and Mother,
Abraham.
Every child, Isaac.
And neither God nor goat anywhere.


But then, there is deliverance…or something greater.


A times, when these distant images acquired enough definition to be the right number, and even resemble them, she would loose it completely. Breaking out at full speed (which by the way was not yet up to par, since the injury sustained to her legs in a train bombing wreck), all I could do then was to run along-side of her as she cried -IT IS THEM! IT IS THEM! Since even I could not see enough to be certain, I knew it was not possible for her to see anything through her tears other than what she so desperately wished to see. And a few times even, after I could see clearly that it wasn’t them and told her so, and begged her to stop running, she would still SEE THEM! Then eventually she would come to an abrupt stop and a moment of complete stillness, as what was left of her soaring emotion paused, cracked and turned into a rolling avalanche of sobs and a rain of tears. Slowly she would recollect herself and then we would turn back towards home. Trouble was that she would often turn her head to take another look, and then–wouldn’t you know it–someone else had appeared in the distance. So we went through it again and again until dark and total exhaustion.
I relived this caving in, this collapsing feeling many years later when my child became very sick. But unlike Abraham, I had not even the dubious mitigating benefit of faith; I simply had incurred the grandest and gravest of responsibility by just plainly being a natural and unconscionable ignoramus. His pain should have been mine and mine alone. Yet I could not in any way take upon myself even the smallest part of it. He–Isaac–had to bear the sin of Abraham, and Abraham could only watch and feel guilt. Guilt! What value can it have? I had put him to life and thence to death as surely as if I had created him and then slit his throat! Yet before the court of King Custom this thoughtless, irresponsible, selfish procreating idiot is perceived innocent because his guilt is not understood. Hence he must condemn himself.

Polenta with president's choice unsalted, Normandy-style cultured butter and parmesan cheese. MMM!


Episode 41


I was lying on the side of the road propped up on one elbow with the bike beside me, waiting to feel the familiar tingling in my legs to start. I thought that I really did not like this whole thing, and that I didn’t really care to play any more. I was completely paralysed from my butt to my feet. When the young man had put me down I just crumpled to the ground like a cripple, so it was very nice of him to carry me and my bike across the road to my return side and to take a couple of seconds to reassure me that I would be alright in a minute or two, that my legs had just fallen asleep, then up the steep narrow path he scampered on wings of love! As I watched him disappear I hated him, his happiness, his mother and his girlfriend as I hated the thought that in being delayed I would have to witness the celebrations and rallies that would be taking place in all the towns late in the afternoon on my way back from yet another failed mission. I hated the thought that his happiness had added to my grief and that I would have to pedal like he had if I didn’t want my mother to worry about me on top of everything else. And most of all I hated that I would have to do it propelled, not by wings of love like that young man, but bitter despair. Love sucks. Everybody is hooked on this damned drug, it totally screws up our minds and even our language. “I Love You” makes no syntactic sense since the subject is also the patient. And if you could buy a fix, your run the risk of being arrested. In the struggle between good and evil, beauty, pleasure and love are the tools of the devil and poor old God has to work with horror, pain guilt and death. I must become drug free to disconnect myself from this matrix and its administration of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, childish grandiosity and tender attachments.


At night,
all night long
she paces around in her pyjamas
sometimes naked,
she just can’t be still.
It is my mind.
The birds have their nests
foxes dens,
I had to have a mind without a derrière.



Episode 42


More e-mail. Two messages.

First message, more second hand shit from Eric:

… Get off your fucking mountain and you might see what's under it.

It is impossible to do or, even to think something unselfish. Try something simple. Plant a cabbage, like I said, for its own sake. Try it! Take a seed, make a little hole in the dirt and put it in. Sounds simple doesn’t it? You cannot do it! Nobody can. I cannot help a bug, I cannot plant a seed, nor can I save a man, or do anything at all unless it is for me, good for my self-image actually, because there is no me, maybe not even in the priority of the actual. I am a stem cell mutating to be a functional part of the social monster of which I am a minor member.
This Easter in Vancouver’s harbour–where at Christmas the birth of Christ is celebrated by a procession of luxury yachts alight–scuba divers went to work planting Easter Eggs underwater.
The other message was from my niece, Elaine.

-Uncle Claudio,
your mother died…

Oh so much suffering!
And where under the heavens
Can there be so vast an ocean of bliss
To keep afloat such a cargo of despair?
If this god is the best that man can conceive
I shall keep my guilt and seek mine among beasts and vermin.

She walked up and down that stretch of road for seventeen days, and wept seventeen nights. Some time ago, Howie confessed to me his bitterness towards his mother because she had been just an insensitive lump of flesh, a non-entity, an appendage to his callous and domineering father. He was stunned when I expressed my envy.
Seventeen days she pined away, while unknown to us my sister held her ground. Some years later, my brother told me that he shat his pants every time they were called out of their cell, although it always turned out to be for further interrogations. Curiously, when much later I reminded him of it, he could not remember the embarrassing pants part of it…
And I know how that feels too. When Dante and I were held up at gun point by a band of Tito’s partisans, I was so scared that my guts started flapping like a flag in a gale. All I could do was to stare down the machine gun barrel and squeeze my sphincter with all my will and all my soul, because it was there, at that usually dependable blind iris where ,when facing imminent demise, mind and body felt the urge to betray the usually vain impostor and perform a deep act of contrition and submission in a genuinely religious singularity.
Is that how the cosmos came to be? By incontinence rather than intent?
My mother is dead. No living being was more precious and more troublesome to me.
She was hanging by a thread the last few years. I remember the last time I visited her, how she peered into my eyes. I noticed that there was not a glint of light in her eyes. It was as if she was looking for me, but not where I stood before her, but deep down among her shadows.
A day or so before she died I was camped by another quiet Northern Ontario lake, when it occurred to me that she was hanging on and on because she was waiting for me. I resolved that I should not make her wait, that I should go sooner than planned. As soon as possible. So I gave up on my plan to drive on to Clear Lake and see the kids. This was as good a time and a place as any. I decided to drive to Chapleau, pick up my e-mail, maybe send out a few last words. I should have known right there and then that after all she would not want me to do that. So, she let go. Or so I thought, out of motherly love! Yet a mother cannot love her child. Either way, it sucks.




Episode 43


Once I had a house
Kids dogs and cats
And a fine young wife
With a luminous watch!


-Twice!
-Yeah, rub it in!

I was referring to Veronica, the mother of my children and the only wife I ever had with a luminous dial watch. Speaking of nuisance though, on my last telephone conversation with Lawrence, I asked him how he was doing. He has a bad heart, a bad stomach and who knows what all, and is generally struggling to hang on. His peritoneum fills up with fluid. His legs and arms are withering as his girth expands ,to make him feel and look I think) like a grotesque giant weevil, then it is time to get him to the garage and drain him. Remarkably, he is still at his easel painting away and just as always, equally remarkable, he still insists in understating adversities. -Yes, he says stoically, -it is a nuisance.
Bravo! I said to myself but then I wondered, he is approaching the moment of truth, if ever there is such thing, and whenever it comes, a thousand years hence or in a few moments, all that led up to it is meaningless, as Ecclesiastes avowed. The moment you gaze into the great void is your last and only opportunity, to act, and especially, to act well, which is not to perform, and to my thinking, to be swept by one’s own performance at that point is to miss the whole point. A good actor may maintain the illusory persona and achieve what others may regard as admirable fortitude, but right then the extreme moment is wasted in pretense. We are not programmed to face death, we are emotionally and mentally a one-way kind of transistor; hence we are apt to blow the only chance we have to be authentic. To die heroically to insure that one’s image lives on, is the final failure. In which case, rather than the strong silent type, I would opt for the operatic. Veronica did it that way. She lived through hell with great passion. She loved Opera. To her, Opera was life and life was Grand Opera. Form had to serve passion and drama to attain its ultimate expression. Life, the great tragedy. I would rather be swept away and shredded to pieces by a gale of terror, be overpowered by a tempest of anger and despair than quietly grin and bear, with stoical determination, merely to maintain a thin-shelled, hollow image of toughness and superiority. Because, no matter what role one may have played up to that point, somewhere in the pit of the stomach–the heart-mind– impulses arise and stir up a mob of passions, which are vexingly insensitive or even scornful of form. And I know that deep beneath that big, impressive macho appearance, Lawrence is very vulnerable, and like anyone else he defensively cultivates a dissimulating persona.
Not long ago, he confessed to me that when he received official notice that his divorce had become final, he had to look for a place to sit. Not long after that, he was diagnosed with cardio-myopia, which in common language is referred to as a broken heart. People can make you sick, people can break your heart! Or more likely, you make yourself sick to accommodate or justify the sentiments of those on whom you are emotionally dependent. In my case, when I broke up with Veronica, I lost most of my inhibitions, which allowed me the freedom to behave like a total idiot. I was 49, penniless and foot loose. That was the time I visited aunt Romilda. I was travelling on a very tight budget. Hitch-hiking, walking, sleeping in boxcars, railroad stations and, whenever possible, crashing in on some nice soul refuges such as Ashrams. My favourite, was the Lama Tzong Kapa Buddhist institute in Tuscany. I had learned many years before at the Anthroposophical centre in Arlesheim-Switzerland, that all I had to do to blend in in such spiritual places was to walk as though I was walking on eggs. In fact I happened to be at the above Tibetan Buddhist centre in my weird outfit and matching state of mind when the Dodolai Lama visited the place. I even attended his lecture with a bunch of cow-eyed dodos who had come from all over the world for the great occasion. As I had suspected, The Great Dodo had absolutely nothing to say apart from the memorized platitudes which serve not to illuminate but to obfuscate whatever ails you. People have this attraction for personalities. I sat for a while, and when I began feeling that I had to scream, I simply walked out on the assembly, walking out on him, and doing so barely touching any of those eggs.
I got to aunt Romilda’s place in Genova!
Many years later, Lia, her daughter, informed me that I reeked like a giant anchovy. She claimed that her whole apartment smelled for days, even after she had washed my back pack and all my clothes. I had found a curious but very cheap and very efficient source of fuel: Bread, Olives and Anchovies. I figured, quite accurately, at the time that I was getting about four kilometres to the anchovy. It allowed me to go anywhere in Italy for next to nothing! Of course, by the time I got to Genova, with some spills along the way, I was well oiled and running smoothly like a top, but smelly. Tell you the truth, it did not bother me in the least. I was indeed a striking figure with mantle, hat and feather, playing my harmonica everywhere as I went. When it rained I used to cover the back pack with my ample mantle, which must have made me look like a very tall Quasimodo. Also ,whenever it rained, the night shelter of choice for the homeless and brainless, was the train station waiting rooms–second class of course. You should know that these waiting rooms, apart from being of different dimension, are of the same sparse and stark utilitarian style all over Italy. They are large rooms with wooden benches against three of the four walls, and usually one or two long, large and heavy woodfn tables. The characters that congregated at this particular second class waiting room on a dreary October night in Leghorn were beyond theatrical. One guy with a big head actually tried to sleep standing up leaning against a radiator. Another sported a suitcase for the occasion, while another one kept teasing him, claiming that he was just pretending to be a traveller, and that his suitcase was empty or maybe contained some old newspapers. There was a drunk navy sailor lying on his back on top of one of the tables snoring loudly and fitfully, and I was sitting with a lady and her young lady in attendance at the other table, having tea. By a very creative play of providence, this elderly lady was elegantly attired with garments, accoutrements, paraphernalia, glasses, gloves etc. representing every major style of the last hundred years. Moreover, her young lady in waiting had brought along two large bags from which she produced tablecloth, towels, chipped, but fine china, teapot, and everything you would need for high tea, minus...oh, what matters, the tea. It was all very stylish and my fish smell did not seem to affect the elegant mood. She turned out to be the Baroness Dell’ Acoelia; her passion had been horses and music. She loved riding on her estate but never did so side saddle which, she informed me, was a big NO-NO in her day. I found myself to be extemporaneously le Comte de Saint Germain. But of course! I happened to be in Leghorn to participate in a secret cabalistic covenant which was to usher in, with propitiatory pomp, the age of Aquarius. I reminded her that I had the pleasure of attending one of her famous balls–which she was delighted to hear–and that I had also accompanied one of her illustrious ancestors on the fourth…mm–maybe it was the fifth crusade–about which she demonstrated genuine surprise. I drank a lot of tea, more tea than I ever though I could stand ,as her lady in waiting was so taken by my presence and our good time, for which she largely credited me , that she kept refilling my cup out of immense gratitude, while the guy with the suitcase tried to ignore the persistent heckler, the uniformed sailor snored and grumbled in stupor, and the standing man marked time like a living clock as his large head keeled steadily forward, albeit against some semiconscious resistance, which revealed with the accuracy of a Swiss movement (I think) the various wavelengths of sleep he was traversing. Then, when his massive head had sagged enough to shift his barycentre, he’d start falling forward like a stiff, which woke him with a start. Catching himself in the nick of time, he straightened and composed himself, positioned his heavy head straight above his body and recommenced to measure a new cycle. A good time was had by everybody, I think. I drank too much tea, as I said, and that is why this age of great changes began in the W.C. of the rail station in Leghorn a bit ahead of the time, anticipated by celestial calculations and my occult confrères.

And the devil saw what he had done and he was pleased.




Episode 44


Contemplating the terrifying horror of it…
Were I to say to it-
“Stay!”

This thought had prompted a question, a ghostly question which remained imprisoned in the castle tower of that awesome landscape at the Pillars of Hercules. Something in that spectacular vista kept screaming at me to see and understand something beyond the senses, something of the horror of failed responsibility, false beauty and negative power. I had disturbed it, I had touched the untouchable and now I had to face its full wrath.
Notwithstanding the fact that if you are everywhere you are no where in practice, how horrendous it must be to be God! To be omnipotent, omniscient omnipresent! Imagine what it would be like if you had the supreme misfortune of bumping into an overzealous genie that would grant you any and all your wishes, actualizing all your thoughts for ever and ever the moment they arose. You would be God, the most miserable being conceivable, the immortal queen bee of the universe. How lucky I am then that in a world of limited, contested opportunity, I should have been fitted at birth with two relentless Red Dwarf boots, called, Want and More. And most of my life I chose to believe that where Want and More lead was where I actually wanted to go.


I must learn to spurn
That temptress
Because I know her,
From the inside,
Like Gepetto.

Back in the shade of a pine plantation along the shore of the lake, on a carpet of pine needles, great silence. Only a fly buzzes by now and then and the hushed sound of a zephyr combing through the pines. In the distance the Precambrian hills are of a dark, heavy green under a pale sky. A few fluffy white clouds left behind by yesterday's rain seem lost, and in the middle of this lake, the surface fizzes with sunlight. This peace, this northern silence to which the solitary loon recalls me, proclaims that everything is right with the world. A world that feels as empty now as I do, and like those green hills and the clear emptiness above, lets neither eye nor mind wander further.
I am a deserted island.
Maybe a castaway,
O Wilson, I am so sorry! WILSOOON....




Episode 45


I had left my child at the day-care centre of the Alexandria library....
Solon saw me; he asked what I was doing there. I told him I had come to see my son and that I had brought the Kabala with me, hoping he could help me with the Tetragrammaton and other questions...but he was too busy playing with the others.
-So what are you going to do now? Enquired the wise old fool
I laughed.
He nodded.
To him of good understanding, few words are needed.
To him who knows, words are an annoying noise.
But the Tetragrammaton of course! The DNA-like code, the blueprint of the whole Universe. What does it take? Is it two men? A couple of days? Maybe Steven and I could do it by telephone, restart the universe. How does it go? Four sounds…chanted continuously…right inflection…. O Jesus… the boundless and the inscrutable, the supernal soil in which are concealed the archetypal ideas or forms of all.... Maybe Steven remembers how it goes.... A hell of a telephone bill if we don’t get it right. And of course there is only one way of doing it right, against infinite ways of doing it wrong. Like most things. Motorcycles too.
Eichmann and Wiesenthal! YES! If anybody could have done it, they could have…I am sure, with M Monroe–without a doubt!
Seventeen days! Livia must have driven that dashing young partisan insane. After a while, he did not want to interrogate them anymore and instead began to enquire into my father’s claim that he had been one of them from day one of the Fascist Era. So one day, this guy, Favero was his name, with whom my father had discussed politics, and I am sure, had declared his genuine hatred of Mussolini and his gang, came to us with the news. They were alive! He had vouched for them and he was off on his small motorcycle to bring them home. I remember very little, in fact nothing! Nothing at all about my mother’s reaction. Was I jealous? Like the other 99 sheep? Very likely. What I remember is that we went to that road on the edge of town, and waited. She must have been half out of her mind. Arona was the place. I had gone that far on my bike! Damn it! I remember pleading with the Carabiniere on duty to tell me if the Ianora were among the prisoners. And he had reassured me that they had no one by that name. Arona was a long way damn it! It amazes me that I was able to go that far. I was only twelve. There and back in one day, all by myself, it must be more than 150 km. And thinking about it now, just as amazed that my poor dad, for whom an effort like that would be unthinkable under normal circumstances, had biked with Livia even farther in that failed attempt to get my brother home before the day of reckoning.
It took Favero most of the day on the motorbike to get there and back, and anyway, four of them on board, three of whom were nothing but skin and bones, rode home on that bike. I remember I kept at a distance from them when they were reunited. I really remember only that, that being distant. Maybe I just didn’t want to be there, but I had nowhere else to be.




Episode 46


Eric was overjoyed to see me, and as kids do, he ran and jumped in my arms. Not like him at all, I should have known something was wrong.... He had a large filleting knife in his hand; without me knowing I had an ice pick in mine!
It drove right in, just under and to the side of his left eye.
-Oh god I am sorry dad! He said before I could utter a sound.
I was horrified and started pulling it back....
-I have to pull it out Eric! I cried
-Yes I know, he replied. -PULL! Pull dad! He urged me. It was hard. As I struggled and the pick started coming out, I felt my life draining out of me, and this I knew was in direct proportion to my effort and progress. At about three quarters of the way I realized that the amount yet to pull and the life force left in me were exactly equal.

I was twelve years old for God’s sake…. Sasha’s age in “The Enemy At The Gate”. I had just lost the war, the bad guys had won, my mother had cried and cried. Then I found out the good guys had really been the bad guys and vice versa. And like I said, Wiesenthal hunted down Eichmann; they should have got together, hugged each other and cried and cried instead, like my mother. And then, after they had cried themselves out of tears, they should have intoned the Tetragrammaton, and chanted until they either dropped dead or the world was redone. But no, oh no! Vengeance is so sweet. All the good things are so bad really. No wonder Satan was so pleased with himself on the sixth day. He had a self-sustaining system going that would only stop producing evil if all the good parts were taken out of it! Well! Great balls of fire, who would ever in his “right” mind think of that, uh!? Some crazy guy in a cave in India, I suppose. But how do you suppose he would get around to quenching his desire to quench his desire? A diabolic scheme, uh? Well, not so fast my friend. Not so fast! And then I have to leave you hanging, save to say that I cannot fathom where the road ends but I can hazard a guess where it starts, its lowest point–Nearest to Thee, O Lord.
Speaking of pleasure, one day when I was pedalling on my sad quest, I chanced upon fifty grams of butter in a small store! You have to know that bread and butter was my passion, my love. I had dreamt about it for years! And so I completely forgot about mother crying. I forgot about my brother, sister and dad, and began searching for bread. I hit every store along the way. Bread was usually available, that is to say, if you could call it that even though at the time it was enriched with sawdust and marble dust and who knows what else to stretch the already dubious rice flour a bit, and so make it heavier at the same time and help profits. But to have bread and butter together? Like Wiesenthal and Eichmann doing the tetra! I was in a crisis within a crisis within…yeah. I was in possession of rare, precious butter which was melting and I had not bread. Bread! I had to have bread! Nowhere and no how could I get a slice of lousy fucking bread. I have to confess that on that day I pedalled more for a piece of bread to go with my precious butter than I had previously done to save my family and bring joy to my mother. And I was hungry too! And yes, my mother was crying, but my mind was napped by hope and desire. I could not eat the fucking butter without bread. And when on the outskirts of a town I went by a pockmarked wall splattered with fresh blood, I suddenly felt the urge to throw my stupid precious butter at it. Splat! I didn’t know what made me think that but now I wish I had done it. Instead I hung on to it as it was transforming itself in my hands in order to escape me. So I ate the smeary monster. It was disgusting, and I hated myself for it, I hated the war, the liberation, the world! My Mother?… And Howie was so appalled! How could I envy our dim-witted uncaring mother? He-hee-heee! Hell, I would have adopted Annie as mother so many times in my life. And this knowing that I “loved” my mother. Of course I wouldn’t know better. Then, like Howie I would envy another poor bugger like me. Can anybody be happy? Well yeah, but happiness must remain as fugacious as Romanini’s cuckoo clock.




Episode 47


I had met the couple on a cold winter day when I was staying at Nickle’s homestead and studio. As I have mentioned, Nickle has adopted a rustic, rugged life style which, based on discomforts and hardships, promoted a macho image. Because of this need, everything around him has to be oversized, rough, heavy, difficult and damned uncomfortable. Everything, from his cast iron pots and pans, to the liners boots he puts on in the morning as a ritual intended to announce his daily challenge to the world, is for me an amusing mise en scene until I stay at his place and I am forced to adapt to it. Like going down to his outhouse in the morning when it is forty below, just getting there is a challenge. Even just getting out of that studio of his can be scary, or indeed deadly, if you get locked in that tiny vestibule he built that serves no other purpose than to remind you just how fragile an inconvenience your life really is. I presume that he had designed that very small vestibule as a buffer between the fierce Ontario elements and the slightly less fiercely cold interior, but knowing him, and knowing how cold it can be in that little box, and how infernally difficult those frost-sticky latches are to operate, I suspect that neither comfort nor economy was the spirit behind it. I manage to get out of the first double planked door into this upright freezer type of wooden box which juts out from the main building and thus is as cold as all outside…and ah, colder I think. I can’t explain scientifically what happens when you are in a small box in which the inside temperature is the same as the outside temperature, but it feels a lot colder. It might be the proximity of the frosted walls, or the cold steel of those heavy, monstrous latches that stick to your hands and which, when you are in such a perilous place, take on a semblance of torture devices, perverse mechanical challenges that become increasingly unwieldy as their proper functioning becomes correspondingly more critical. So, to repeat, I manage to get out of the first door’s arc of swing and set the latch, and just for a few moments, if I am lucky, my life is temporarily in suspense. Closing the door behind me is an act of faith, which is, as most acts of faith are, imposed by circumstances which are usually veiled but not here. It means that I hope that the door that I just closed behind me in order to have room to open the next one will open. If the next one is frozen shut or the heavy frosty wrought-iron latch is as mean as it looks! And to think that I built those latches for Nickle, heavy and unwieldy because I knew exactly how his mind works, me freezing to death in that cubicle would be very ironic. I am between two very solid, heavy, double planked doors in a stand up coffin with a tiny glass pane on either side. It is a kind of Precambrian roulette; all it takes is a moment of panic when struggling with the next bolt, and then perhaps you decide to retreat and the one you just struggled to bolt securely won't let you back in. Lawrence loves telling stories. “Claudio died, frozen to death by the latches he made for me,” would give him joy for years! And here I am with a cigarette in my mouth and a mug of hot coffee in my hand, trapped! He has offered me a four pound size coffee tin and plastic lid as a decadent alternative to my call to nature. My self-image would not allow me to cede. It wasn't even my brand of coffee. And here I have to confess a peculiar decadence of mine. The reason I faced the vestibule trap with the added handicap of a steaming mug of coffee is that whenever I am camping, or places such as this studio, in lieu of a bidet, I use coffee, double-double. A bit of it poured on a wad of paper towels to wipe my ass. Ah! At is a moment of bliss. I highly recommend it. There are a few luxuries I will not deny myself in life, and this surely is one. I may have to deny myself many other things, but among ass holes mine is Nabob. Now then, when and if I finally get through the ordeal and get out, I have to walk down a treacherously icy path to that other frost-lined box that presents the additional danger of doubling as a black powder and ammunition shed. I walk gingerly down, holding before me the precious cup of hot stimulant and douche as my nose drip gets thinner and longer. The damned drip does not freeze, it gets long, threatening my cigarette first and the my coffee. Inside I am forced into another close-quarters ordeal, plus gunpowder. Shivering, numb, cold fingers, steaming coffee, cigarette, belt, pants, underwear, nose drip, all have to be dealt with with precision and speed, while my will to live plummets! And then, suddenly I attain Satori…. No! more like Illumination! I realize that I am in that nasty situation because I do not know the truth. I don’t even know if there is a truth besides those temporary concoctions that bloom here and there as conditions change. Eichmann’s diligence in his task was not less justified than the diligence with which he was prosecuted. And I was experiencing a crisis inside a freezing outhouse for the same reason. I don’t even know what I am doing right now! But basically, I am doing what I am doing because I don’t know what I am doing. Isn’t that a corker? I mean what was I doing in Moscow for heaven’s sake? Was there no food for me to eat in Atlanta? No place to sleep? What is anybody doing? Where is Elvis for Chrissake? Do you think they know what they are doing in Georgia now? No way. WILSOOON!
So, assuming then that my ass did not freeze to that searing plastic toilet ring, and that I did not blow up the place, that I was successful in my mission, that I survived re-entry and that I got back to the very relative warmth of the studio, I would then be too frazzled and distraught to regale myself with the merited sense of accomplishment like Nickle does. He has thermometers hung on trees and buildings all around the place. He wants to make sure that when the liquid silver sets below the lowest line, he can stand there in his big boots, oversized sweater and oversized toque and declare to himself:
-Goodness what a tough old bird I am!
I do not celebrate hardships, so all I can think after such a trial is -Why the hell am I here?
Then there is the food. He has this cast iron cauldron simmering away on the wood stove. Chicken soup he calls it. He has a pot of it on the stove all winter long, and there are still traces of the original brew he started late in the fall when the pot goes cold in late spring. When a meal is taken out, he simply tops it up again with a couple of limp carrots, a piece of chicken, some other unidentifiable veggies he fetches from a plastic pail, adds some water, et voilà, poulet au pot au feu REDUX! The place smells like a glue factory. And it is cold. It is cold and there are winter landscape paintings hung on every wall.
Right over my bunk, an icy landscape of Lake Superior’s Old woman's bay! How well I remember that place. Brrr! However, I am fascinated by one of his more recent paintings. I have to admit that in the beginning I was sceptical about his technique. It seemed a waste of expensive oil colours. But there on the wall opposite to Old Woman’s Bay, hung a winter scene of a frozen river, snow-covered conifers and some hills in the distance. Though at first I thought I was experiencing a strange optical illusion, I realized in time that although everything in it had the stillness of a midwinter day, everything was actually vibrating with light and interior energy. It was active, alive beneath its exterior secrecy.




Episode 48


Enter Elmer and Annie. More precisely, Elmer with Annie in tow, like a balloon on a string follows a kid, swerving and bouncing off things. Elmer stops in the middle of the room and Annie stops behind and a little to his side. She is small, blondish, no age. She is wearing pink pants, canary yellow jacket and a burgundy coloured stove pipe hat. Adorable. Lawrence and I are seated beside the wood stove. The chicken pot is bubbling away. Elmer and Lawrence start discussing a building project involving pouring cement and laying cinder blocks. Elmer and Annie are the contractors. As the consultation progresses, Annie, who had stopped in mid stride like a kid playing a game, darts quick worried glances here and there without moving. Elmer, a rather big man of about sixty, with a bald round head and face which looks like something that may have been fired from an old cannon, has planted himself in the middle of the large studio and seems completely unaware of her. After a couple of minutes, Annie makes a quick-step dash to another location, like an invisible x marked the spot, and freezes there, seemingly in the right place, but soon begins darting glances again. I figure she is checking around to see if maybe there is another, better x some place else. One never feels quite settled, never happy, not completely, because one does not know the truth. I can tell that Annie does not know, and so she has to look for a better x.
Cannon ball goes on, oblivious to her predicament. She is not sure where she aught to be, but it seems that it does not really matter. She should have been told by Elmer where she was supposed to stand. But he didn’t for some reason that I cannot know because I do not know Annie that well. In fact I have never seen her before. I ought to believe that! So Annie is on her own in trying to figure out where she ought to be. Not easy. After another minute or so, she tries another location, only to try yet another a little later on. It does not seem to concern the big man that his wife and partner does not know where she aught to be, and that this is causing her a kind of wild little animal distress. Usually in a situation like this I would be prompted to the rescue. In fact, I thought of offering her my seat, but her dilemma was too charming for me to spoil it. The whole time they were there, Cannon ball stayed planted on the spot where he had stopped, like a man who knows where is Xs are, and little Annie never found hers. Upon leaving, as they were about to go through those terrible doors, Lawrence called out to Annie, -Oh by the way, I love your hat Annie! I thought that was nice of him.
This other this time I met with them because Dawn was looking for someone to do some cement work at her place. Immediately I suggested Elmer and Annie to her. I thought of them because, since my first encounter with them, I have learned that if asked to throw it in with the contract Elmer, will play the fiddle and Annie will dance. I could not think of a better reason for Dawn to hire them. Lawrence told me of an occasion when Elmer had put in a bid for a job which happened to match a bid by another contractor. The man who needed the job done declared that he didn't know what to do. So Elmer went to his pick up, came back with the fiddle and played a jig as Annie danced.
Then said Elmer, -But can the other one do this?
Elmer and Annie got the job of course, and I was going to do my best to get them to do my daughters project. I didn't even wait for her approval. I jumped in my van and drove to their place. It was a small, trapper-like cabin at the edge of town. As I drove in the driveway, I saw them working in their yard. I noticed Annie was wearing a pair of yellow work gloves far too big for her. I told Elmer the purpose of my visit. Annie went on with her chores as Elmer listened and then agreed that he would be interested in the job. Then I told him that I had heard that he played the fiddle and was eager to hear him play.
-O.K. Come on in.
I followed him into the cabin. On the wall above a bed were two old violins. He took one down. On the other wall I noticed a mandolin.
-What about Annie?
-Annie! Elmer called out to her, -come and play the mandolin. O, I was not expecting that. She came immediately, took the mandolin off the wall and stood facing him with her big yellow garden gloves on and mandolin at the ready.
-You will have to take the gloves off, he said.
She took them off, and again stood at the ready. He placed his foot on a stool beside the bed, leaned over a bit and started playing. Annie stood facing him. Her eyes were riveted on him, her face flat, expressionless, in absolute concentration. At his signal she started strumming. I saw that she was playing open chords. Of what I know about fiddle tunes it was very nice, but what I found really interesting was Annie's focus.
-Well, that was wonderful! I said sincerely.
Elmer ignored my compliment as he got ready to play another.
-Slower, was Elmer's simple instruction to Annie, and he started. Annie stood facing him, and sure enough played slower, open cords as before, her attention complete.
-Wonderful! Just wonderful!
Again Elmer ignored me. They were getting ready for another. I realized that to Elmer it was part of a formula.
-Up and down, he said to Annie this time.
This was a faster jig. It was astonishing, sure enough she was playing open chords up and down, but what was her mind doing as she looked so intently at his face? And even more amazing to me was the thought that these two had kids! Take your gloves off...up and down, slow. Wouldn’t that be nice uh? I mean, if we didn’t have to know but could just be told? And on the other hand how could Elmer put up with that blank immobility waiting for a command?
Is this how I would behave in the presence of God?
And would God want that?
After the third piece, I felt a little ashamed of myself. I decided to mention the violin. -It's a wonderful violin, I said, though I know absolutely nothing about violins either. -Great sound! I don’t know a great sound from any other. O what matters.
-It is a Guarneri.
-A Guarneri? I exclaimed. Is it possible he is talking about a Guarneri del Gesu? I don’t really know much about a Guarneri either.
-Yes it is a Guarneri, he repeated, a bit annoyed, then went on to tell me how he got it from this old fellow. How a mouse had chewed two holes in it to build a nest and how he had fixed them, and how this Guarneri might be the same that had disappeared from the Ontario Museum many years before.




Episode 49


Two holes? Why two? I wondered. But no, I don’t think I really want to know.
Nature loves idiots. This grasping, seeking, reaching, flaunting, what is it for? Look at Annie, she does what she is told and only because she is told. But most of us are more like mockingbirds.


Clever fellow that mockingbird
He sings other birds’ songs,
So when I hear a mockingbird
I hear him not.
E tu! My son
Why do you sing to me that song of love?
But do not all men
And all birds also do the same?
Does not the moon dance upon the ripples
And all things that live burn and are consumed in that glory?

Mmm…polenta was good by the way. Reminds me of Muris and my little friend shooting down flying fortresses.
The Olympics, “For the glory of sport!” REALLY!?
And I am still here, a year after my ascension was rained out. And in all the time that I have been here I have not made any more enquiries about Quasimodo. I am afraid to find out either way.

I went back to Rovate many years later. But first, since I had to go through Varese, I went up to Campo di Fiori. This was the resort hotel that had been converted to a military hospital during the war, and where my brother was sent when he was wounded. A beautiful place on an alpine meadow with and awesome view. On the grounds, I chanced upon an old man–about my present age–doing some gardening. I said to him, -In a place like this one should live to at least a hundred.
He looked up, rather annoyed, and after a moment of deliberating as to what kind of fool he was dealing with, he said wryly, -To do what?
One of a few great questions that I have bumped into. Another was quite unexpectedly from Gordy. I just got an e-mail from him, that he is up in Barriere doing who knows what, but anyway, it reminded me of his question, which came after some spaghetti I cooked which he still raves about, a bottle of wine he brought, and a rambling philosophical conversation. -Do you think that this place might be Hell?
I was really taken aback by that old man question and the way he peered into my eyes as if he was seeing only darkness. I had to defer replying; I am still working at it. I have thought about it a lot.
What precipitated that terrible fugue from Muris (my little paradise), to Rovate (my little hell), was my brother getting wounded and hospitalized there at Campo dei Fiorie. If Muris was not paradise, it sure was, for me, a real Katzenjammer Kids kind of place. And there was food, food, food! All the food that could not find its way to the cities was piled up there. My poor mother had to secretly bury some of the chickens that were given to us by kind neighbours.
My sister pointed at the biggest, fattest chicken we had ever seen and said to mom
- I want that one all to myself!
You have to consider that her stomach must have been the size of an egg by the time Fiume was declared a war zone, and we and all the civilian population were evacuated. But my sister always had character and not too much of a mind, so that when her abundant character imposed something on her little mind there was little one could do to budge it. She must have sat at that chicken for two hours. My mom attempted to take the plate away before she could finish it, but Livia would not have it. She was determined to put a full-grown chicken inside of an egg, as if to exact revenge on years of deprivation. And by golly, she did it, although for many years afterwards she could not so much as to look at another chicken. So when Livia had told that dashing young partisan captain that he had to shoot her too, she had meant it and he had understood that somehow. She was not afraid of anything or anybody, so she was also very forthright. Right after the war, she and Lia, her inseparable cousin, and just as nutty case as her, wrangled mom’s permission to pay a visit to their friends (boyfriends most likely) in Fiume, which had been occupied by Yugoslavia. Permits to travel there were issued in Trieste by the English army, which occupied the Trieste zone. The cousins were in one of those happy, silly, giggly moods when into the Sergeant’s office they went. Seated at the desk was an English army sergeant sporting one of the most magnificent curled and stiffly-waxed English sergeant handlebar moustaches. One look and the two exploded with laughter. Red in the face, the sergeant yelled,
-OUT!
They had no place to stay in Trieste, so they took council, promised they would not laugh and tried again a couple hours later. Of course, as soon as they saw him again they broke their promise.
-REIDIKULO, EH?
-O yes! Yes yes… Whirling their index fingers on the side of their faces.
-OUT! OUT! OUT!
They were forced to sleep at the train station. The next morning, after rehearsing and swearing that they would not laugh, they started out again, but on the way there they went through all the details of those previous episodes, adding some gratuitous speculations and coloraturas of their own, laughing all the way, so that by the time they got there they didn’t stand a chance. Now, every time I pick up Eric’s copy of Kaufmann’s portable Nietzsche, I have to get past Fredrick’s ridiculous moustache. Why do we need flash-cards, and then hang on to the old ones when new ones are the fad?
And speaking of flash cards, I watched the Terry Evenshon movie after he completely lost his memory, and I realized that we all use flash cards. We even flash them on to ourselves. And the words of that old man at the Alpine meadow struck so deeply because what he had clearly intimated was, that given time, even Paradise gets boring. That eventually, I would have yearned myself out of Paradise! Yearning…yearning! Is there no end to it?
That long stretch of country road was not as long as I remembered it, and Rovate was an even smaller hamlet, and so was the little walled cemetery. I don’t know what I had expected to relive there, but there was nothing. I had some time to spare, so I went in the cemetery for the first time. I was stunned. I knew that in these parts of Italy, and especially around Genova, the cult of death was a serious and flourishing business, but I could not have imagined to what extent. The place was crammed with impressive and remarkably fine monuments of the best marbles, granites and of bronze. As my gaze slowly swept around this astonishing collection of art, it was arrested by a life-size group in bronze that I would have thought technically impossible to execute. An I still think so as I recall it now. And then absolutely impossible to understand the rationale which its conception and execution had satisfied. I stared at a life–LIFE SIZE–bronze group of a farmer leading a team of oxen, pulling a farm wagon loaded to heaven with hay, on top of which sat two happy kids. Thinking about it now, I am forced to reflect, that whereas Reason can do little to expand its limits and so is forced mostly to reinterpret its stock, madness cannot be constrained because its limits are imagination, opportunity, resources, and space, which I think, are infinite. Yet reason, is only relative sanity and madness is only relative insanity. Perhaps it is so because Man is only half the measure of all things.

If Jesus had moved into cabin number four, I could not have believed it any less. He is haunting me, he is surreal, or unreal! And yet he is. Or was, or is not, or was not.
I resisted for a long time going back to visit Paradise lost. A few years after the earthquake that devastated the zone, I finally took a chance. San Daniele was already rebuilt, and in Muris the row of tiny alpine houses where we had lived had withstood the quake and were now covered with a protective, transparent fibreglass roof. They had become a patrimony of antiquity. I stood at the bottom of the road that led to them, where the town gave way to open fields of 4 meter high corn. POLENTA! We kids used to hide in them corn fields. I stood where the town’s water well used to be, and by the roadside ditch into which we dove, one inglorious day. To the south, San Daniele’s skyline rose on a low hill above the fields and vineyards, and it was in that direction, right over the town, that a narrow and long band of stars used to appear just before sunrise early every morning. With a spectrometer, my weird, bespectacled but learned little friend informed me one day, those shiny stars would be revealed to consist entirely of shiny aluminium. When that band of aluminium stars appeared just above San Daniele, we were obliged to join our familis in a cave on the side of the hill. It was a cave that had been dug out to serve as an ammunition dump during the First World War. But the cave was large and had small ventilating tunnels, which we used to sneak out unseen and rush down by the well to man our anti-aircraft battery. My friend had all the ammo and could fire on command, so I was appointed gunnery officer while he lowered his pants and pointed his gun up as high as he could as I shouted the coordinates. By then there were hundreds of fortresses and super-fortresses humming above us on their way to southern Germany from bases in the south of Italy, each leaving a vapour trail that eventually spread out to cover the whole sky. So many it would be hard for us to miss.
-Azimuth this, velocity that….FIRE!
-O, just a minute!
-…!?
-Now! NOW!
-FIRE!
-Pararooom-blhblh!
One day, the son of a gun actually hit one. Or so it struck me at the moment. Just as he fired there was a bright flash on one of the wing motors of the shiny flying fortress I was actually looking at through my binoculed hands.
-You got one! My mouth open, I watched as the plane broke formation and something small dropped out of it.
-A bomb! It dropped a bomb!
-Don’t be silly! said my not-so-learned friend. -You can’t see a bomb!
Never before, nor since, have I won a dispute so quickly and compellingly.
The sound of the blast was such that I was literally beside myself for an instant. Somehow my consciousness and my body were separated, very much as it clearly happens under certain conditions to animated cartoons characters.
You know, the big hill above the town from the top of which the Italians and the Austrians used to fire at each other over the wide bed of the Tagliamento river, used to be all green pasture. Nice thick grass grew, on which we used to slide down on our bums. Not so many years later, as the economy changed and grazing animals became unprofitable, the forest reclaimed its domain.
Of course, San Daniele is still known for its Prosciutto, but nowadays, hardly anyone in the region bothers to raise pigs. The hams come from Eastern Europe, go in one side of a warehouse, get stamped with the San Daniele logo, and out the other. Another interesting thing is that what made this Prosciutto and salami so succulent was in great part due to the cruel treatment these animals were subjected to. I remember asking someone, -Why was the pig kept in a small and completely dark cell where he could hardly move? And the answer to the secret of tasty pork products was that in a totally dark and small cell there was hardly any point in moving. So the pig ate and slept, got fat, and the muscles tender and sweet. To which I might now add with savvy, and dreamt of those ten minutes a day he was let out in the courtyard so that his cell could be cleaned. Dreams surely must add that je ne sais pas to the flavour of the meat that dreams. Even more interesting to me in recalling this incident is that I remember being totally satisfied with the explanation. It made sense. Holy cow! I just picked some dried crud out of my nose and out with it came a bouquet of whiskers, enough to make a little brush to calligraph a short Haiku. Another mystery! How is it that with age my nose and ears become so fecund? Never mind that, I was really shocked yesterday. I found a wood tick climbing up my neck. And these British Columbia ticks are deadly. So I got worried. I took my clothes off, and with my small mirror I attempted to inspect my back and underside. Gee! Even my ass hole isn’t what it used to be! And the pendulous scrotum with the balls hanging askew could hardly–even at the best of times–have fitted the bill and been the centre of such commotion. But there it was! Nature is not a very good mother, nah, the worst, even a sea turtle is better. Yet she endows creatures with such tremendous solicitude for their own offspring. When my mom received a newspaper clipping from a friend in Fiume, in which my brother was reported gravely wounded following a strafing attack on the ferry in which he was travelling, she went nuts. My dad happened to be with us, I don’t know whether on leave or what, but what I want to say again is that in these kinds of situations he promptly and unquestioningly assumed a supporting role to my mother. We packed furiously, and since my uncle Ernesto had procured a hand cart to take our luggage to San Daniele, no one bothered to count how many arms would be travelling. So we stuffed all our things into suitcases and bags, plus food! Lots and lots of, beans, polenta, salami, cheese. Fact is that we were going to a part of Italy where we had no contacts, knew no one, and the idea of taking along a lot of food surely made sense. But this turned out to be a big problem, because travelling by any means–usually trucks–meant logistical movements on foot from one part of a city to another. I lucked out; I was assigned to stand guard while the three of them took as much as they could a few blocks away then left Livia there to guard those bags while my mom and dad hurried back to my pile. And then on top of it, truckers would take one look at all our luggage and baulk, or overcharge handsomely, as they accused us of being engaged in contraband, which placed them at risk. It was winter, freezing rain, my clothes frozen stiff, my mother was burning inside, there were air raids; it was not a good trip. It was my chase out of paradise. And a thought seed was planted, which after an extremely long gestation, eventually germinated and got me to argue on the net, about what love–the love we experience–really is. Fons malorum.
This guy who went by the pseudonym of I AM IN MENSA, wrote:
-Is this the way to get to the top of the post?
Poor thing! I wonder who put him in there!
This process of elimination is set up so that we really serve it best when we are at our worst.


So now, remembering the shooting down of a flying fortress, I got linked to the memory of the stick-man that I killed and threw in the dumpster when I was at Eric’s. Damned links! Anyway, I am thinking that if, based on my premise that I am half of everything, that in fact in a hyper-math structure, every single thing is half of everything, then in a “Forbidden planet” scenario whereby the flying fortress was hit by my learned friend’s fart was real as is my thought that the stick-man is not dead. That he is maybe uncoiling and growing into a vengeful super-hero, and that it is coming after me. Just as I think that these things are happening they become part of my reality. I had acted impulsively, and in my haste I did not foresee the possible consequences. I should have taken him to Monster Park and thrown him over the wall to be forever imprisoned with all those other monsters. Or, at least as long as the statues of the two lovers guarding them still stood. Long enough maybe. Damn! Another regret ! Sure, what I did is understandable; I was minding my own business happily picking up some food out of the dumpster when the stick-man comes out of the store. True, I did, for a moment, think of taking that newspaper on the wall beside the dumpster, but never decided to actually do so. I didn’t really want it because it was a very thick, bulky paper like the Saturday New York Times (I think), and so I thought it could not be serious stuff. And just then, here he comes and he starts chewing me up about stealing his newspaper. -It's down there in the toolbox! I said.
But he sneered at me, real mean for a stick-man. -You were gonna take it! You were gonna take it, I know, weren't you?
And I said, -No I wasn't, and he kept accusing me, and I tried ignoring him and that got him even more riled up and nasty.
-I know your kind! and he went on and on, calling me no good bum, dumb, dirty scum, and all that.
And that’s when, very calmly I said to myself, -I don’t have to take this! He is just a stick-man! And although I am not violent–I abhor any kind of violence–I felt that it did not behoove me to take his shit. So I grabbed him by the neck and bent his head back and then I went on folding him like I would a thin wire clothes hanger. I was aware that I was killing him, but also thought that nobody would mind. And though he was as tall as I, by the time I was finished, he was crumpled up into a hand-size ball. Then, unceremoniously, I threw him in the dumpster.
I killed a stick-man! Jesus, what next? And for a long time I didn’t think of him, and I thought I suppose, that nothing would come of it. But one is never rid of thoughts or deeds, and in this forbidden planet all those things are out there, and they keep you pinned in with fears. Yes, I should have gone to Monster Park and thrown him over the wall Maybe Chris is in there….




Episode 50






Monster Park.

3, enclosure
1, female lover
2, male lover
4, temple
5, castle
6, road
X, ME.


And wouldn’t it be something if after meeting a successful man who laments, -Poor me! Why did I work so hard to bury my self? If I met a beautiful young lady who resented having been fitted with milk glands, and holding them up to the sky said, -So this is all you had in mind for me?...Screw you!

Monster Park struck me as a very weird place, a place alien to all my experiences and even my rather unconventional expectations. But before I could think of exploring and speculating about the town, I had to summon up the courage and to think of a suitable approach to woo the young maiden that stood at the entrance of town anxiously waiting for someone other than me to appear in the distance. She was not what I would consider beautiful, but her expression of faltering hope, steadied by a seemingly overwhelming surge of desire, reminded me of my mother on that other lonesome road. I saw in her that same expression of longing for which I must have felt a great jealousy, and this prompted in me a sudden lust that could not be denied. The fact that she was no more than a sturdy, if wholesome specimen typical of a farm maiden, nothing more indeed than a healthy, well equipped reproductive organism nearly three meters tall, and moreover made of solid granite, made no difference to my mind. I lusted for that desire. I had to be the object of that desire; I had to have her. She completely ignored all my efforts, of course. It was obvious that I could not usurp the true object of her desire. Her bondage was so strong that I didn’t even exist for her. Shamelessly, I tried to climb up on her, vaguely thinking that I might ravish her somehow, in spite of everything. In time I had to desist, and though no longer that interested in the strange enclosure behind her, the ruins of the castle which together with her formed a strange and spooky complex, I began exploring, hoping to make some sense of it. The massive walls and large, equally formidable solid metal gate in front of which she stood were incongruously too big, too high and massive relative to the area they enclosed. A cursory examination revealed signs that the gate had never been opened and possibly had never been meant for that use! What could possibly be in there…King Kong? Was she the sacrifice? Perhaps, on the other side of it, I thought as I headed there. And there I was stunned! A blind rage mingled with revulsion welled in me, and immediately decided that I should rush back to tell her, but just as suddenly my anger was driven off and replaced by a sense of impotent anguish that froze me on the spot. I examined the cruel symmetry of it as if hoping to find a flaw that would nullify its effect. But no, it was perfect: At the exact opposite side of the square enclosure where the young maiden waited, and in front of an identical gate, stood her young lover. He was looking down the road in the opposite direction with the same riveting expression of desire and anguish. It was evident that they were destined by more than their attitude and location to wait for each other for ever as they stood, back to back, against this stupid structure like bookends, with the whole wide world before them. I examined the gate carefully but found not a crack or a pin hole anywhere! I checked the lower corners of the gate where it abutted to the wall, where dogs posted their claims and men relieved themselves on occasion, and even these areas were pristinely inviolate. I could hardly believe this since previous experiences with similar ancient structures were usually corroded right through at those particular locations. I was feeling the surface with my hand when I was startled by a voice behind me, -No, you cannot see inside, it said. -No one can! I stood up and turned around just as an old man walked past me. I had a lot of questions so I quickly joined him, and even before I had formulated my first question he started telling me the story:
It happened a long, long time ago. At the time, a young prince reigned here. He was a nice young man, loving husband, father of two beautiful children and–everyone agrees on this–a most benevolent ruler, a philosopher-king adored by everyone, vassal and serf. The old man sat down on a park bench in the shade of a Tiglio tree, planted his cane between his feet, leaned on it, and continued in a monologue tone that did not seemed to be addressed to me, or anyone for that matter. -One day the young lord thought it would be nice to turn the square, which had been just an open space, into a beautiful park, with trees, flowers, playground, fountains and statues for the edification and recreation of his subjects. He hired a renowned master mason and sculptor from the great city, and work on the layout, ground clearing, and procurement of material began. The mason had not been here more than a couple of days when a distinguished man, accompanied by an assistant, arrived at the castle in a fine coach loaded with luggage and some strange-looking apparatuses. Following this arrival, the mood of the town, which had been puzzlingly sombre, became noticeably cheerful, only to plunge back to near despair level a few days later when said passenger's carriage and contents left. The next day, when the master mason had finished consulting with the major-domo on some details of the project, he enquired about the strange visit and the obvious effect it had on the townsfolk. -Our beloved master, the old man told him, is grievously affected with a malady of evil eye character that has resisted all efforts to be exorcized or cured by any means. The moment his eyes close to sleep he is assailed by visions of strange and unspeakably horrible monsters. He simply can never sleep! Pious men and famous doctors have come and gone over the years but his plight, which is shared by all of us, remains unrelenting and hopeless.
The master mason was deeply moved by this story and could not stop thinking about it, so much so that when he began studying a large block of marble, trying to envision the figure he was to deliver from within it, what appeared in his mind instead, although not well defined, was the image of a fierce monster. He was startled at first, but soon it occurred to him that his brief vision may have been a positive sign relating to the sad situation that had preoccupied him. And then it came to him that where medicine, science and hocus pocus had failed, art might prevail. He sent for the major-domo. -I had an idea, said the master mason to him, -regarding your master. I believe that if your master were to describe to me those fiendish manifestations that invade his mind, one by one and in every detail, and I were to render them in stone with great accuracy, I could capture these evil entities and immobilize them in their own immovable features. The Lord was told and he agreed to try it. The mason worked with a passion he had never experienced before as an artist. His had always believed that his art was rooted in magic and capable of expressing it, but the closest he had come to achieving its full potential was when he designed and built, for a pious cardinal, a rather small chapel, of which every feature, from pews to common implements and familiar ornaments were doubled in size, creating a sudden, unsettling and hopefully humbling effect on the faithful within. But though the result had met his anticipated effect and his work was praised, secretly he was very disappointed. He had failed, and what made his failure even more bitter was that he could not pinpoint what it was exactly that he found wrong or disturbing about it. Now he had another chance to test his potential as an artist, as to the level of dynamic and working magic! And a much better chance at that! And indeed it did not take long for this magic to reveal its power when, as the image that was described to him began emerging from the block of marble, the Lord reported later a similar and corresponding attenuation or loss of concreteness of features in that particular denizen of his nightmares. In good time, one by one, as these were completed, they disappeared from the lord’s mind, until not one haunted the lord’s nights. By then, the other masons had raised the walls and built the gates as you have seen them, ostensibly to keep out of the citizens' view such unpleasant features, and to reassure them against any possibility of escape. But no doubt the magic worker had a more crucial reason for the great walls, gates and finally, the statues of the two lovers separated by their own unflinching desire and commitment. Certainly you will have noticed that the lovers are sculpted of the best granite, not marble, an obvious yet subtle choice, as granite will outlast marble by a very long time…. And no, it is not known why the mason felt it necessary to consign them to such a sad fate.
The old man was silent for a while but I did not speak. -What I told you, he resumed, is all that is really known about it. You may hear other stories, like how once the pleasures of life had been restored to him, he celebrated and never stopped celebrating, becoming more and more immoderate in his pursuit of pleasure. You may hear that he soon repudiated his hitherto beloved wife, cloistered his daughter and forced his boy into soldiering. That he levied higher and higher taxes to pay for his selfish pursuits and a growing court of sycophants that had been attracted by his extravagance. What is certain though, is that not long after he was made well, the inhabitants began leaving, and town and castle eventually fell into ruin. What became of him is not known either. The town you see here now has been reclaimed only recently in its history. One may speculate as to the real cause of what befell this place a long time ago, and it could have happened just as it is rumoured, but in that case, what really befell the Lord is not understood, nor did anyone see the need to understand it. He took one hand off its perch to thumb over his shoulder at the wall behind us, -People know things without understanding them. Everyone knows that those monsters in there are really monsters. But who can tell?









Part 5
Episode 51


…And then the flesh was made word.


Notes.

-Prison break
-1 is at least 3.
-From chance to finality
-O.K. God, I forgive you!


I felt that I had procrastinated enough, it was high time for me to deal with my failure. At least so that I will not have failed completely in vain. But before I could start, I felt the necessity to try to figure out just how it compares to others if indeed, it was a failure. Initially, I placed it at the top of the list, but as soon as I did a mob of memories gathered at the Bastille, clamouring for justice. O how many I had failed! Among them I saw Huguette, Nana, Pierre, my mother, Veronica, lovers, friends, family and even dogs, worms, insects, and spiders. Finally, and more clearly than any, I saw my kids! What blinding stupidity had bestowed on me the audacity to perform a few godly stunts just for the hell of it?
-I want to have a baby, she had said.
I remember mulling it over for a few minutes as seriously as if she had announced that she wanted a fur coat. -We can afford it, I said to myself, and if it would make her happy, why not? Just like that! Thousand of years earlier I had made the connection between the sexual act and the miracle of birth, but I didn’t and still do not now comprehend the significance and consequence of this knowledge. It never dawned on me that this revelation was an opening to a position of immeasurable responsibility and a life-long obligation. Connetre oblige. All I cared then was that it made me a god and that I needed a symbol. A big prick. Every time I increase my potential, I fail to meet the obligations that come with it. I split the atom and the first thing I do with it is a bomb. This is why –if you wondered about it–I keep a picture of myself when I was the Tsar of all Russias to remind me just how difficult I can make things for myself by being in a vainglorious lopsided orbit around my self. Also, I must admit, to console myself when I am having a bad day. When I feel stupid and helpless, I look at it and know that things can never get that bad. Yet the evil of the day always seems sufficient. This led me to ask myself how was it possible for me to be a fool and to know it at the same time. Is there an absolute fool to refer to? Or is it that I could be stupid and more stupid at the same time? Or do I wobble back and forth and so can get a fix now and then? Or maybe, just maybe, that I am emerging out of the swamp of the brain. Have I ever really seen the stars? Has anyone? Then as I am trying to get these dried and sharp bread crumbs out of my bed this saltinbanc mind switches to a new routine; it wants to see if the logic of “I want to have a baby” could be put to the test of falsifiebility.
It tries again and again, and eventually it comes up with something that seems sufficiently inane and outrageous.
-Claudio, I am on the phone with Webber, -would you terminate Quint for me, would you do that for me hon?
-Quintus? Why?
-No particular reason, I just feel like it.
-O well, if you feel like it, of course I will... And what do you want me to do with him?
-Just put him in the freezer, we will have him for Xmas.
The improv performance went on and on–I don’t want to bore you with all the details, I am keen to mention that later, when she said that she was going to try the same recipe she had used in cooking his placenta a few weeks earlier, which, she reminded me, I had liked so much, I exercised my artistic license in choosing Zinfandel as one ingredient, not because it seemed to be culinary more suited than Burgundy, let’s say, but because the sound pleased me. Quint au Zinfandel had a ring to it of almost naughty gaiety, whilst Burgundy or–God forbid–Bordeaux, would have made it sound rather challenging, if not sombre. Since the gustibus non disputandum est, and being well aware that some taste buds may have been stimulated, I will pass on that the best way to procure the main ingredient for this recipe is through a midwife. But of course, you must have thought as much. I have had spleen, and I think that placenta might be similar in taste. Can’t be worse than lung anyway; I hated lung steaks! Yuck! Don’t even think about it.

On then to Mount Niut! Where the most banal of circumstances proved more than sufficient to thwart the most daring exploit ever attempted or even conceived by a demigod.

“By Goles, Peregrine, it’s past twelve o’clock already!” he ejaculated.

-FR… Mmm…No! FF…. Mmmm, I don’t know! O what matters!


What heavy honor
To be so ugly.


First I must tell you that I was not heading towards Mt Niut. At the time I did not even know it existed. I was heading in the opposite direction, as a matter of fact, towards the Valhallas. Since I had decided against the desert and in favor of the mountains, the Valhallas seemed an obvious alternative. Not the Selkirks, the Kootenays or Boogaboos. I was readying my chariot of the gods and getting rid of a lot of accumulated garbage. So I was going to the dumpster….
-Jesus Christ! I can’t take it any more. I just can’t….I give up!
-What is it now?
-Did you not see him?
-That guy?
-Yes, damnation! I came here because I wanted to be alone, do a bit of skiing, maybe write, mind my own business and not get involved. Is that too much to expect?
-So why do you think it concerns you?
-Ah don’t ask me why, I feel responsible. I just feel responsible for every terrible thing that happens within my presence. I know it does not make sense but I do.
-Well, let me reassure you, you are not responsible for this Quasimodo, Marlow, nor anyone nor anything. You are playing, a game that satisfies your childish craving for importance at the price of guilt, with implications that do not apply to you in any way. And face it, you'd rather suffer unjustifiably than to accept your insignificance. You feel pain for the Marlows and cut worms because it elevates you, if only in a pathological way.
-FUCK YOU!
-Thanks.
-The moment I laid my eyes on him I felt guilt. I sucked my breath and I heard myself saying, -Oh Jesus, what have I done, what have I done now? Or, was it you saying it?
-Definitely not me.
-Aaaaaah! Is someone else here now? Come on, let there be legions! Wouldn’t that be nice? I am already colony! Daimon ignored my facetious outburst. I love being ignored. Being dismissed requires effort, which is sufficient proof of my uniqueness, while being recognized or appreciated is a real downer since it declares me in the normal range, which means acceptable to someone else’s trashy expectations. Being appreciated makes me feel like an empty beer can! That most common and yet so exquisitely wonderful artefact that is completely overlooked and ignominiously disposed of once its function of delivering its grossly inferior content has been performed. And damn it, if every aspect of me is anything but functional, and if from my elbow to my mind, and my emotions, do not combine ultimately to smother my essence. Javert must have felt so, he knew that there had to be more to him than a role, but he could not stop functioning as the arm of the law, that faceless monster whom he served and by which he was rewarded with recognition, security and most of all, power. Albeit power over his miserable equals. Power which he could not give up since it had become his identity, which he secretly loathed so much that eventually he sought escape and redemption by drowning himself in a sewer.
Daimon kept on ignoring me as I went on packing, to irritate him, I extemporized a silly cantilena as I went.

Eich-mann!
Wiesen-thal!
And Mari-lyn-Mon-roe,
Tch-tch-tch!
The arms of the law.

The Anch-orite is-on-strike
And The Sty-lite took-a-hike
Tch-tch-tch!
This…You-should-know!


I suppose it was lucky for me that I was moving out just as this Quasimodo guy was moving into the cabin next to mine. I would have had Jean Valjean in the cabin to the left and Quasimodo to the right. I have never figured out what that would have made me. I have been back a year almost, and though often tempted, I have not made any further efforts to find out whether I had imagined this character because in the end I felt it would be irrelevant since I feel that dreams, nightmares and hallucinations, although isolated, internal and ephemeral events, are just as real and especially valid when they can arouse such intense emotions, terror, foreboding or awe. Indeed they, at times, do an equally good job as the extended experiences in demanding recognition, attention and reflection, and thus often affecting what we consider the real world. A Daniel-class dream extends my awareness beyond the range and domain of my senses and the routine concern and administration of useful data. When I am standing on that very narrow ledge high above a black, bottomless void, I am confronted with a mightily accurate and disconcerting view of my waking condition. Yet what can I do about it? Up on a high crag, on a maliciously narrow ledge with my back pressed against the rock facing, an impenetrably dark bottomless void. I cannot move since my balance is so precarious that I must even keep my breathing very shallow. Heck, one sigh would expand my thoracic cage enough to shift my weight like the guy with the big head at Leghorn and topple me. And gee, do I ever like having myself a deep sigh! Maybe aspirate a tiny prayer while doing so.
Since my aspirated “Jesus what have I done now!” when I laid my eyes on Chris that day, I have been inspired to practising aspirated elocution. I guess I should call it in-locution. Instead of breathing out words I suck them in. Hell, no one deserves then anyway! Since I have no one to talk to, the cashiers are my main victims.
-How are you today?
-I am fine! I am fine, thanks! And I am in love with Gordy!
Just unsaying that fills both my lungs to hurting, but it really gets to them. On top of it I have found out that clicking the T's like in Arapesh becomes easy when sucking in words. Talking normally, it is very difficult to click the T's. The cashiers are uncomfortable; they process me very quickly. I sound like the Godfather with a very unusual condition and a denture problem to boot. I might aspirate my uppers and suffocate right there. Right after the war in Bologna, when the going was tough and all kinds of talents surfaced that for a few miserly Liras, this guy would pierce his limbs, cheeks and tongue with large knitting needles, and at the end he would swallow a large pocket watch the diameter of a medium onion. He would lower it by its chain to his stomach and invite me and other onlookers to press our ears to his belly to hear it tick. Jesus! And the most surprising part to me was that when he pulled the watch out, it came out clean! No bits of spaghetti or peas’ skins! But then fasting was very common. Maybe the T-clicking is not in the Arapesh language though. They are the ones with the funny math, and who knows, maybe they click too. Anyway, their math is not really funny, just very cumbersome. Of course, just as maybe they think our math is funny, or there is something strangely wrong with us, since we obviously feel the need and are somehow able to spew out numbers in the billions and trillions and make extraordinary calculations with apparently little effort, and of course, to their minds, for no logical reason. One might wonder why would these people want to know how many stars there are–visible and not visible–and how far away? And what does one really know when one knows that? Does he expect some to go missing? Is it more important than knowing how many leaves there are in the forest? Maybe! But then all that knowledge is expressed in a sound! One Gazillion say, and they all marvel at that one word! And then maybe these strange people know something about words that we don’t know yet.
Everything is possible and nothing certain, which in fact makes the second part the cause of the first. Reminds me of the king who wanted to learn all the wisdom of all the books of his great library but could not find the time to read. Maybe you heard it, and maybe not…. Oh what matters! Anyway he convoked all the great scholars of his land and told them to distil all the knowledge of those volumes into one book….
-NO! NO! Not possible Sire!
-Do as I command or off with your heads!
Years later they present the fruit of their labour–a very thick book. -Are you confident that you have done exactly as I commanded you and have not omitted anything?
-Yes Sire! T hey reassure him with obvious pride.
-I am pleased, he said, -however I have even less time now, and since you have achieved what you claimed then to be impossible, do it again and concentrate all this knowledge into one chapter.
This order was followed by greater lamentations, implorations and tearing of long white hair than the first time.… -Or off with your heads!
Years later, success again. It is a rather long chapter as chapters go. But everyone is pleased. However, by this time the king is curious, plus, maybe like me, he forgets what he reads almost immediately. So, -One page, he decrees…utter dismay.… -Or off with your heads!
Years later the same scene again. -This too had seemed impossible, yet you now assure me that you have accomplished it to your satisfaction. So do my bidding one last time and reduce this page of knowledge into one word….
-One WORD! AHHHH!….
-Or off with your heads! Eventually the very wise and very old men returned and presented to the king one sheet of paper on which was written only one word.
Before he would even look at it he asked them, -Are you satisfied that this is the word wherein is summed up all of mankind’s wisdom?
Their response was unanimous, earnest and I think, humble. -Yes Sire, it is!
The king nodded approvingly, raised the paper and read the word.

MAYBE

So now I am looking at the pile of books that I have read and forgot almost simultaneously, and I wonder what to do with them. Cremate them or bury them in the rabbinic tradition. I suppose I should take one book along and read it over and over again. Then I have this great idea. I could pile them up against a wall and then tonight when it is dark and I can’t sleep, stand on them and finally find out exactly how narrow that ledge is. I need my measuring tape, which is in my beautiful Star Craft conversion ’93 Chevy van, which is making a strange rattling noise when I get there. I open the door. The noise stops. I close it, it starts again. I do it again, same thing. I figure I left some electrical thing on. I have to check the battery, I try starting it; nada. When I saw it in the parking lot on three flat tires covered with leaves and berries, it looked abandoned and I thought of stealing it but then decided to leave a note on the wind shield with my email address. -Yes, came the reply almost immediately, -have bought another and I have no place for it. I have to get it out of there. Runs good, some minor electrical issues and not so slow tire leaks.
Hell, everything is electric in it, seats, mirrors, locks, windows, bed-seat, antenna etc., and everything works but when it wants to, which usually is when I don’t. Lately it has been trying to lock me out. Once it succeeded. I started it to warm it up one morning, and went back to the cabin for some reason and then it wouldn’t let me back in. Sometimes it tries to lock me in and–I swear!–it takes me places I don’t want to go and tries to poison me with antifreeze fumes. Gee, I am getting ready to move to Nakusp where my great misadventure started a year ago and give it another go. But one can’t make out the logic in the flight patterns of the legless blind fly, and after about four hours, various trips to NAPA, the hardware store, a consultation with my neighbour, I disconnect the battery, and finally got my tape measure, piled up my books against a wall and tried standing on them, which is all I wanted to do in the first place. Nothing doing, very wobbly, but heck, the hard-cover copy of “A History Of Philosophy” by B.A.G. Fuller is thick and solid enough for the purpose. So, if by now you are dying to know, for a 5’10” and a 170 pound guy wearing #10 size shoes, the ledge would have to be 7 inches, provided the rock face above it is near perfectly perpendicular, which–just now–I doubt. I think it leans back a wee bit, how much I don’t know, so in the end I don’t know how narrow the ledge really is.

***


Episode 52


Email from Karonne. I am surprised. I thought she too, had given up on me.

- Just thinking about you a lot lately and wondering how and what you are doing. Hope you are well. K

- I am very well thank you, I am in my natural delusional state... thinking of it, to really do well I would have to eliminate the stickman for good... So- how are you and how are you progressing?

- I have a teacher student arrangement by phone. I screw up my progress daily.

-Yes, yes, A pre-Socratic philosopher equated life's drive to a weight... it is the nature of weight to want to go down, at no point of his descent can this drive be satisfied, if it comes to rest on a hook or on a narrow ledge it will still feel the desire to go down...

-In that case, what IS progress? Is a life without hope of growth more realistic?
I envy you your delusions. At least you have some entertainment. This is a time when I am diminishing and I am sorting out how much of it, if not all, is just ego, so used to being recognized, now wondering why nothing is happening. Contentment is a word I can hardly imagine.

- Going down I guess, which could be up too, same thing right? Or: ”Each will bring forth after their own kind" Sometimes the bible actually gets it right. A fig will bring forth figs and so on. Life therefore- will bring forth life (People in our case) and the many flavors of life and that is all it cares. Do not despair. Look elsewhere.

And then a bigger surprise. Out of nowhere and three years or so Gordy drops in.
I am pleased to see him, when he isn’t drunk and slurring thick incomprehensible sounds he can be interesting, and he isn’t drunk, though he comes in with a bottle. He looks well, a bit pudgier and older with a brush hair cut which, since he had a transplant done by someone, whom I strongly suspect as a student might have been a tree planter in summer, looks exactly like a white bristle brush. He makes me think of a novelty shop...maybe some cheap doll. He starts right away telling me of his latest sex exploits. One with a Philippino on Padres Island who had had a bad hysterectomy done on her and one about a retired couple he stayed with one night. She came to his room in her kimono and stood by his bed. He reached under the kimono and she was wet. He got aroused, so she dropped her kimono and that was the end of it. -I just could not do it! He said to me. I didn’t know what to say.

I hate the tension when I am on that ledge and I don’t know how many times I have told myself that the next time I am there I should take a bold step forward and see what happens. But shit no! It does not come to me and I keep my back glued to the rock and try to breathe very shallowly. That I can’t remind myself of the alternative, like if being stuck up there is the best I can hop,e for is really disappointing. At least Gordy has his prick to hang on, but then I’d rather not.

On the burning bridge which Eric and I must traverse quickly or be consumed by the flames, I feel even worse…I think. Because poor Eric, sick, tired and frightened, lags dangerously farther and farther behind as he cries out to me for help. For some reason I am not able or allowed to help. I was never warned that this play station I was assigned to came with a curse. On the contrary, I was urged to play, and it was in playing that I had placed him on the burning bridge which he alone would have to cross. Out of despair I elect to do the only thing I can. I yell at him instead, and do so as harshly as I can muster it out of my immense anguish. Other times dreams toy with my obsession to know what this life is all about. In one, I am a small man sitting on a couch with a small wife in a small house watching a large TV. I am bored, she is bored, we are bored. Suddenly and absolutely unexpectedly I am struck by an idea. I am electrified! I haven’t had an idea in years. And this is a big idea. I am so excited that I try to tell her about it and maybe get her excited. But she frowns and responds scornfully as if I had suddenly taken leave of my senses, whatever that might mean or entail. Very well, I am undaunted, I feel totally awake, alive! So I tear off to the nearest balloon store. It is a small dark store and behind the desk stands a small proprietor. He looks bored, I am excited. He frowns at my excitement. I tell him I need a big BIG BALLOON! He goes to the back and comes back with a big balloon. -NO! No, I cry excitedly, -I want a really big balloon! The BIGGESTER! He comes back with a big weather balloon. -BIGGER! Much, much bigger!
-I don’t have anything bigger, he replies, bored and now also bothered.
-BUT I NEED ONE! I need the BIGGEST BALLOON! He shakes his head.
But then his face lights up, he seems excited now. -YES! I remember a special order so long ago! It was never picked up! Then he rushes to the back of the store again and after a minute or so he comes back with a great hopeful smile, dragging what looks like will be a huge balloon when inflated. -THIS ONE! He ejaculates excitedly.
-YES! YES! I drag the thing to the nearest garage and inflate it. It is big, HUGE! The size of city bus at least. I tie it with a piece of yellow plastic rope…Jesus! A yellow plastic rope! Just like in my other dream…. Why did I say it was a dream? I cannot know that…. No! Fuck, that was not a dream…or was it? No…and what is this one? Anyway, happy as I can be, I am on my way home with it and it doesn’t bother me a bit that crowds of people stop and watch in disbelief and shake their heads.
When I get to my small house the balloon is way too big. I can’t tell what my wife is thinking of it, probably because she doesn’t know herself, but I know it is not approval. I don’t care, I am so enthused, although it is clear that the house is too small for the balloon. I try to shove it in through the porch’s sliding doors. Perhaps if I take the door out altogether and even the frame! I fetch my tool box, though in my heart of hearts I know it is not going to work. I don’t know the answer, so I am about to go trying one thing or another, but before I can start ripping off the door frame my little wife provides me the solution. She throws out most of my stuff, slams and locks the door, then does the same with the sliding doors, and closes all the windows, and finally draws all the curtains to boot, so that my little house is now blind to me in my glory. Great! Now what? I know. I grab a few of my things, and with the balloon in tow, I get out of town and keep on walking until I get to a deserted place.
For a long while it proves to have been the right decision. The balloon makes me happy and I don’t feel the need for anything else. I play with it all day long. I bounce it as high as I can and wait for it to drop slowly back to me. I balance it on my head, I roll it over me, I charge full speed into it and sometimes I take it for a long walk. I am happy. One day I am bouncing it up in the air trying to make it go higher and higher when at the highest point ever reached the balloon bursts! And as I stand there shattered, staring at the spot where it had suddenly disappeared like a soap bubble, a small whirling object draws my stunned mind to focus on it. It flutters down in a joyful spiral like a maple key… Its seed! Quickly I realize also that this means that there will now be Balloon seasons. I can’t decide at the moment if I like the idea.
Most of my recurring or memorable dreams are commentaries, and though more or less puzzling, like the guy waiting for me on top of the mountain, or me going on an expedition to discover the New Jerusalem which I “know” is in a forested valley behind this big mountain, but although after repeated, thorough searches I should come to the conclusion that the city is not there, that maybe I should look somewhere else, I can’t because I just know it is there. I keep missing it somehow.
Other times the meaning is embarrassingly clear.
I am sitting with wife and three kids in the living room watching TV. We are not a happy family. Being gathered in the living room is not as bad as on the raft of the Medusa, but that may be only because there is a lull in the storm…like the TV is shining now, and love, which has cat’s claws, is resting her paws on the armchair. I have a terrible itch on my left upper arm right under my two inoculation rosettes and I start scratching. Apparently I have been scratching before because it is like a signal for them, and in perfect unison they yell at me,
-Don’t scratch! There is nothing there!
That really pisses me off, so I dig my nails in and rip a chunk of skin off. Lo and behold,- Get a load of this you stupid guys! Three little devils fall onto the floor. They have cute little devil’s faces with little horns and a look of complete surprise that matches our own. Their cover blown, they start scampering towards the cold air register situated under the couch on which I am sitting. I realize that I have to prevent it and at the same time that there is only one thing in the world that will kill the creepy little devils, and just as I am about to dash over towards it, Andre who is nearest to it, bolts into action. He grabs the glass snow ball and rushes it to me. Jesus, I have such a soft spot in my heart for that guy because he is so hard-wired to gain security by being helpful. He has what I call the White Knight complex, which amounts to striving for security by being exploitable, and wouldn’t you know it!…he married Lady Sitwell. Anyway I get the glass snow ball just in time. It is of a most common scene naturally, the one of a little log cabin on a green lawn with a picket fence, a Xmas tree and a peacefully grazing deer. So I smash it quickly and let the contents rain on the three little devils. That’s plain right? I mean anything plainer than that would be Dvorak’s cello op. 104. I have no idea where this analogy came from, nor if it is valid, but to hesitate is to have lost already. So then comes this balloon crypto. O.K., I have got some pieces, like maybe dreams and thoughts also evolve in response to conditions. The Creator could have watched a coral head for a while and: -Jesus, you guys give me a head ache! You reach out and pull in, reach and pull! Why don’t you get organized, specialize and collaborate! Some of you can make up the brain, others the stomach, some the eyes, others the arms, spleen or whatever, and then maybe fins or even legs to get around…pick up your bed and walk, Walk, observe, apply and eventually build yourself a gill netter with sonar and everything. So that is where I got the idea that I am a colony, like the bees and ants, but all packed together! But then he takes off and says nothing about eating each other. That is very stupid or very callous. Lately I have been thinking that the process may work the other way around. Like I said to Ed, -I like the idea of God the birther, as someone to appeal to, to give thanks or to curse. Him fashioning an image of himself out of mud is appealing and easy to understand, whilst the reverse–mud flung in every arrangement until…eventually…. Well heck, mud to God via Shakespeare! But is just as easy or inevitable! Of course easy may present a serious difficulty for this theory to be acceptable to the maybe crunchers. But not inevitable.

-Do not dally, said one dream, and in the other the best idea I ever had, bursts. I have known brainiaks and it seems to me they all had one thing in common–as much imagination as sponges. Alfonso was the only notable exception. A scholar and a brainiak, but the dense cloth of relationships that knowledge weaves with the thread of perception was flawed here and there, and moth-like holes let some light through, which formed weird patterns. Oh hell!.... I have just caught a glimpse of a note below. It is about the “Do not dally” story!
Since you probably know that mountains can wait better than anything, and that if you are still at it with all this overburden you are not firmly matriculated, this one has just queued up like all the others, totally out of order.
I received my call ! It sounded of course, like the Lord’s voice, and as clear as the morning angelus in a sleepy and peaceful countryside, I heard its command, -Arise Claudio! Arise and get going, make haste, above all do not dally…the way will be shown to you.
Lickety-split I was on my way. I like the way dreams dispense with details, as if obstacles imposed a penalty when the concept alone is deemed insufficient without laborious physical representation. And shazam! I am at a cross-roads in a vast open plain watching three very long columns of people heading off in three different directions. They are singing happily. Singing and dancing, they proceed, playing cymbals and tambourines. I have to talk to the leader, et voilà! I am at the head of one column talking to its leader. He looks like a well-known bad actor. -I have been summoned by my master, I say. -I was told I will be shown the way.
-This is the way! He declares, raising a big book. -We also were summoned to Him! And we were given the instruction in His own words! Follow us!
-Uh…where are those others going? I ventured.
-Pay no attention to those fools! We have The Lord’s true words, you must follow us!
But I guess I was unconvinced, because the next thing I know I am talking to the second leader, who looks like the first and holds a similar big book, according to which, I am told, -The others are the fools! Bingo! Same again with the third leader. Dilemma!
But then I think of another question, and tic-tack-toe I ask each one, -What about that other direction? Why is no one going that way?
And at least they all agree on this. -That leads into a terrible desert, there you will surely die, no one that goes there shall live!
What to do, what to do? I was told not to dally. And then it came to me that I had misspoken towards the conventional when I said that I had been summoned, and a fundamental difference to our calls had been missed. They had been summoned to Him, but my voice had clearly commanded me to “get going!”
So a point in favour of my neotheism, maybe.
Now, when digging down to bedrock for gold, a bit of colour now and then helps.


Marlow would not stop with the silverware. On Christmas Eve he barged in and stood by the door, leaning on the table looking like a ghost. Would I take him to the hospital? Of course! I admired the guy. I admire any guy who drives one of those logging trucks up and down these mountains. And he was fighting the after-effects of cancer of the pancreas and/or, I am not sure, withdrawal from heroine. In spite of it, he worked hard and long hours, not only driving but also constantly repairing the old truck. I could hear his beat up old truck start up at one thirty. I am not kidding you. One thirty in the morning! And not be back again 'till four or five in the afternoon, if he got back at all. He had so many mishaps and breakdowns. Then he got the flu, and that jump-started the pancreas problem and/or drug problem, which meant about three trips a day and long waits at the hospital. His car didn’t work, he didn’t have the money to fix it, and so I spent most of the holidays in the parking lot. Then as he was just getting over it, I got it, and my resistance to his requests reached its lowest point. Money for his prescriptions, for his groceries, for tobacco. To put gas in my van so he could get all those things, plus often go to MacDonald's which, on my pension, I rarely allowed myself.
Soon he was taking food out of the fridge, borrowing this and that. He drank up the bottle of home-made green fairy I kept for special occasions, and one day he even “borrowed” my porch light-bulb because his porch light-bulb had burned out. That did it for me. I mean, people in need must cultivate a special grace. Daimon and I debated the issue several times a day. I have a little bit of money in my saving account which I keep–I may have said this before–if I meet an irresistible dentist, a persuasive mechanic or a silky undertaker. I told him that I could only lend him what I could spare from my pension, and he understood and agreed gratefully, but then, for ten or twenty dollars more he could conjure the most incredible disasters and/or pains. The debate centered on whether I had the right to deny him my savings just because I might need them someday, while his needs were immediate. According to my principles, he had more right to them than I did, even though he went to MacDonald's, drank my rum, walked in with muddy boots and took my light-bulb. In principle at least, he had the right to run my account down to zero. It was only after he started coming in the middle of the night, to get the keys to my van, or to raid my fridge, that I remembered the light bulb and broke down. I told him to go to hell and that I never wanted to see him again. And just to make sure I gave notice and began packing.
I was left with bleeding ears, half deaf, minus 500 dollars and a sense of failure, but on the plus side, I didn’t feel guilty about Eric, who could have used that money just as well or better. To me, that was progress. For the first time, I did not feel that my family had precedence to my resources, that if I lived and reacted on merit and need rather than genes and emotions for a million years, I could disengage people from the matrix that is the cause of all our big problems. Of course it is hard to imagine what a world of equality and justice would be like. Dull? Maybe…. Unless….
Then after that, Chris happened. A young man with an enormous kidney-shaped face with a huge, and I mean huge, eye…the size of a large grade A egg as a matter of fact, sunny side up in the middle of his left cheek, and a very small right eye tucked under a massive overhanging brow. His chin like a huge boulder, and his mouth like a cave-opening bordered with irregular and slanted stalagmites and stalactites, which drew my mind to Avery. The kidney shape was due, probably, to the fact that a small portion of the right part of his face was of normal size, whilst the rest of it was that of a giant. Since the giant part had to be attached somehow to the normal size portion of it, it had been forced to bend and pull in, so to speak, so that in the end all the features were utterly disproportionate and askew.
I was taking the garbage to the dumpster and he was getting something out of his SUV, which had its head-lights on. I told him that as I went by, and he turned to thank me, which he managed to do with obvious difficulty. I kept on walking, but in shock, and my mind held on to the image of that enormous eye. I tried to appear completely unperturbed, natural! How ridiculous.
That’s when, somewhat inexplicably, I felt a tormenting sense of guilt, which was expressed in those words I mentioned earlier, -Oh Jesus! What have I done? What have I done! As soon as I dumped the garbage I hurried back. I just had to do something, say something, maybe just break down and cry. He was inside, the door was open, so I knocked and walked in, pretending that I had not seen the place since the new owner had fixed it up. Managing somehow to be ridiculously natural again, I was able to ignore the largest-ever pink elephant in the room as I introduced myself properly, to tell him that I was moving out just as he was moving in.
To which he responded with a Sibylline gravity that the effort of just uttering those words inflected on them, -Yes I know. Then I said something about how nicely the place had been redone, and right after that, at the supreme point of my stupidity, I ran out of things to say. Nothing came to me, even as I felt that there was so much left unsaid. The young man showed superb restraint I must say. In his place I would have been rolling on the nice new floor.
I have to note something strange about this event. Around the time that I was doing my two mantras yoga, I set my mind to remember all my dreams and, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I succeeded beyond my expectations. Therefore, I went through a period when I consciously dreamt all night long, night after night. I remembered them vividly and in every particular and when I woke I could not decide if I was still in a dream or awake. Besides feeling exhausted in leading two parallel lives, I was also very confused. I needed to know where I was immediately on awakening. Fortunately I soon noticed that in my dreams people and places had no names, and that the reverse was also true and dependable. Therefore, if I had ever stumbled on the New Jerusalem in my recurring dream, I would have not been able to put a name to it, let alone seeing a sign to that effect on the side of the road. On the other hand on that balmy and soft summer night when Ginn and I left the fiesta going on in the square and walked down a steep lane through an olive grove, which as we went the night slowly absorbed, leaving only a suggestion of branches and a of a low stone wall in the reflected pale light of the steeple above us, and as we were stitched into this insubstantial dreaminess by swarms of enthused fireflies, Ginn, who had never seen or imagined such spectacle, was inspired to strip and drop her clothes as she went, to the wafting sound of the Lumbada. And though I felt I was floating in a dream, and although it may seem too tenuous an argument on which to base such a crucial distinction, I knew then, as I know now, that she was Ginn and that the place was Roseto Monfortore and that only by those sounds alone, could reality be affirmed.
With Chris in this instance, though I know the place and his name, I am still sure it never really happened.
Later, I had to fight the temptation to go see him again, because the more I thought about him the more unreal he seemed. Had I dreamt him? Should I change my program and stay? What could I do for him? I could certainly learn something from him, but what if there was nothing special about his mind? And how could that possibly be? I managed to find that day more and more garbage to take to the dumpster, but I never saw him again. Did he have a nose? I don’t remember. There was so much to look at and at the same time not to look at. And why, when I talked to him, I chose to address myself to the very big eye? I remember feeling that the small one was of no consequence. It seemed so small in that gigantic face! But did he see me through the large one? Did my vanity presume that I should be seen through the big one?
When I move, I rearrange the universe. Indeed I should not move, I should not even exist.
Being is an offence.
I am definitely legless and blind. You would think that eventually I will have to collapse to the centre, but I am not sure of anything any more. Just for a moment though, when I was confronted with my spontaneous reaction of shock, I felt like I was the monster. Zarathustra spoke about it when he encountered the ugliest man. He says that he felt ashamed that he had looked at him. Ashamed, I believe, not at having laid his eyes on him, but at having reacted in a predisposed way. Chris did that for me. Poets often stand in this misty vale where the song of the nightingale and their deep voiceless passions well up and meld, pining for another state of being and consciousness that is soft and unrutted, in which they may become suspended and timeless, and at any distance a reader may also be dissolved by those words and be joined therewith–a guy in Bismark, North Dakota, maybe.
And fail. For every time they try to see clear, they stand in the way.
The mind giveth and the mind taketh away.

Eric is in love, and he is in Europe and high on natural drugs. So must spin the carousel and weave the spell.
I am presently rather high too, amidst mountains.



***
Episode 53


In this hemisphere
In these mountains
Sunlight has drained upwards
To the sharp rocky tips
& Night comes stealthily
The earth has turned to its right side
To sleep.
Then it is night,
Alone.
Darkness has invaded my van,
My rectangular screen
Glows oddly bright.

So, is it here that I shall surrender? Do I know how to surrender? Is it not that only man complete is allowed to die? Now that, like a rock ripped from the face of a high mountain, I have lost my edges, now that I have been ground and rounded and somewhat polished so that I could easily roll down to the ocean, I rest on top of an esker, a mound of chips, bones of the fallen and ground-down. Was my sin that I found myself in the path of a great glacier?–of a force which I could only oppose whimsically? And what about my virtue? Would the glacier have ground me down just the same?
Chris didn’t happen just now; I have been carrying the dead rope walker all along. And so I am deformed; half of me has not kept pace.... This reminds me of Meera!
A deer comes out of the bush to lick the gravel road. I am five km in from the small town of New Denver, but in the morning I hear a lawnmower start up and quit several times. It just would not up and run. I felt I was too close to civilization and moved another five km deeper into the forest. Patpatpat…patpat…pat…….pat. Same thing again! I couldn’t believe it, but I moved another 5 km right away. This time I was close to a babbling brook. After a while I began hearing voices. This is very distracting because I can almost make out what they are saying, so I listen hard, even though I know it is useless. The first time that that happened to me, I was tenting in the high desert beside the Thompson River and across from a main rail line. Naturally there the voices spoke Chinese. I was there forty days. Towards the end I was beginning to speak Chinese. I don’t like noisy brooks, so I moved in and up another 5. Patpatpat…patpat…pat……..pat! Again! Finally it got through to me that the recalcitrant lawnmowers were grouse going through their spring mating ritual.
That’s another thing they did to those pigs in San Daniele. Castration. I said to Heinz that castration would have been the best thing for me, maybe everybody. He did not agree, but when I think that I didn’t even err into that drug as I would have with cocaine let’s say. That drug was already in me, getting set up to take over my youth—hell, most of my life! Are drug companies busy researching an anti-aphrodisiac? Can you imagine being free of that demonic urge? Hell, it could start that chain of events that would devastate our economy and destroy all our institutions. Anyway after I had finally kicked the dirty habit-or so I thought–I met a young French adventuress in La Paz. She owned a “Crepes & Baja Adventure Tours” business on the Avenida 16 de Septiembre. I told myself over and over that she only appeared to be beautiful because she was the perfect fix for anyone under the influence, which I was not. That artists and poets are potheads, druggies and slaves. And that I was not! But just in case, since her place was very close to my hotel, I had to sneak out and take a long detour to wherever I was going. Still at times, since the hotel had only one entry, she spotted me before I could make it to the corner.
-Sergio! She’d call, smile and wave, -Sergio!
She never got my name right. I mumbled Claudio, she heard Sergio. I kind of like it actually. It reminded me of Sergio that had me load his gun so that he could shoot himself. One fiesta evening the Avenida was very crowded so, being lazy, I crossed it and started down towards El Paseo Obregon, thinking that she could not see me through the crowd. But just to be sure, and feeling a bit prankish about the stupid situation, I feigned a severe case of palsy, throwing in a bit of Saint Vitus dance. I was hunched and dragging the left part of my body along, flailing my right arm like Rigoletto, as violent spasms jerked my head, grimaces distorted my face, and drooling mouth when I crossed the intersection opposite to her Crepe and Phony Adventures place. I mean I was in real bad shape, my mother wouldn’t have recognized me. I had just managed to heave my ravaged body up on the side-walk when I heard her happy voice right behind me.
-Sergio!
Frozen into a human pretzel for a moment, I decided that the only thing I could do was to switch to another prankish scenario. I was in the mood actually! The whole situation was so stupid! I resented having to sneak past her place just because she may have had a crush on me. I could have told her the truth. That her crepes were not exceptional and that I did not intend to be polite by trying to take advantage of her interest in me. Trouble is, as you can appreciate, that saying something like that or worse, though it should, it would not have elicited a positive response. In part because language, which has evolved to build and frame the conventional, has in turn became a tool in guarding and promoting the same. So I continued flailing my arms, but now as if fighting through dense under-brush with snags and thorns. I turned my head slowly just enough to see her out of the corner of my eye. She was in a convertible with a friend at the wheel that had just pulled in behind me as I stepped onto the side-walk. She had a happy to see you smile in spite of my terrible condition. The crowd had closed in as a some floats were rolling up the Avenida. She was not in a hurry, and I was stuck.
-What are you doing?
I was turning my body, struggling against some dense brambles, ducking under a branch, pulling some nasty thorns off my clothes, and an awful thing off my hitherto paralysed left side. I managed to complete my turn, free myself from ensnaring jungle, change my expression from grimacing to smiling, finally relax and lean on the car door as she beamed eagerly.
-Ah Meera! I called her Meera, as in Mira Ceti -Ah Meera, you would never believe it!
-Oh come on! Tell me!
-Are you sure?
-O please yes! Tell me!
-O.K., I will then! Oh Meera…I began to say, not knowing what came next. -Out of mine eyes…out of mine own eyes! Ah…an immense dark forest of a sudden did sprout magically and…looking back at it, I am lost in it…and, you may have noticed it, trapped in it I am. It is its intent to tear me apart…. Yet I must struggle on…I know not how…to the palace of wisdom yonder there…in a vineyard…under a great high cliff. The grandest, of alabaster and studded with jewels, with great shafts of sunlight as columns supporting a great vault of mystery infinite…where-from star clusters hang as chandeliers and spiral galaxies, rose fenestrations are bidding the soul further, and my master has summoned me thereto; I must answer his call. On the spur of the moment I was rummaging through the attic of reveries to put pieces together as I could, except, except the first part. Where the forest did sprout out of my own eyes. I liked that, and I thought it was worth the effort to add as much as I could on to it. -And then Meera, out of my own mouth did a gushing cataract pour, and there came all manner of sounds, sweet as sirens’ bewitching songs and most frightful too…and then…and then still… more, out of my left inner ear a dragon uncoiled, a horribly old dragon with few TSN scales left and strange, awkward kinds of movements, and with his toothless jaws he seized my left side and held…as if terrified, he held on, lest my left side would become free and join my right side on to my quest. I was struggling thus, when, luckily for me, I heard your sweet voice call my name, and you broke the horrible spell and have set me free Meera! Yet though tormented and furious I was but a moment ago, only now I know fear.
-FEAR! WHY?
-Because now I am beholding…beauty!
There! I did it again. Language–like Meera–may prove to be a wonderful inconvenience.
I left the next day, took the palace with me to work on some details. Never saw her again.

Zarathustra drove to town a couple of days ago, went to the market, contracted a virus. Last night he had to get up to pee. In my van I have been using a modified bottle from liquid detergent for the job. Nice red plastic bottle with a handle and a white screw top. I can see it in the semi-darkness, usually no problem getting my decommissioned baby-maker into the large orifice. I sleep naked, never could do otherwise, very nice when you have another body beside you in a quotation marks position, but even as an apostrophe, it is the way for me. It was cold; as I got out of bed I started trembling violently. It wasn’t even as chilly as other nights, but right away the operation seemed most unlikely to succeed. The one hand was wiggling my dick, the other shaking the bottle, and it looked like t-t-the t-t-twaynnn m-m-m-m-m-may n-n-nevvvver m-m-meeet-t-t!… My frazzled mind! And now I was laughing too. I had to get it in there, but how? I was convulsive! Finally, I forced my legs together, grabbed the bottle with both hands, pressed it hard in the groove between my legs and slowly slid it upwards. It worked! Docking successful. I didn’t even attempt to put a sock on it when I was finished. I got into the habit of wearing a sock over that private part because nowadays it drips a bit long after I am finished and standing naked in a cold dark van. So, since when camping it is easy to wash socks, and sheets–not so. Fits good too! With the elasticized part over balls and cock, it can stay on all night and I don’t even know it’s there. In fact I was parked on a dirt road above Pavillion Lake one morning when two cops drove up and got me out of bed. They wanted to know (besides–I am sure–why was I wearing a long crimson silk sock on my genitals), if I had noticed any vehicles driving up the road. Only then I realized I was naked except for that sock. A Pietro’s special I happened to have on that morning. I steal Italian cashmere sweaters when I visit Pietro, and although I don’t wear long socks, this one time, for no reason other than their gaudiness I suppose, I stole this colourful Italian pair. And yeah, I must confess, I enjoy them in my own way.


Why do I write? Why did Friedrich write? Had he had an uncle like me, he might have been spared the ordeal. I mean the guy was a mess. In a small, cold rented room, with migraines, dyspepsia, insomnia and failing eyesight, and maybe a chronic case of nagging syphilis, with two shirts and two old suits, the seat of his pants worn to a shine as he sat for hours on end, doing what? Why did he write? Did he feel he owed to his fellow man? Was it anger, jealousy? Did he crave approval? Of course!
-Hey Friedrich, stop writing that nonsense! Shave your ass and let’s go camping at the Cinque Terre. We’ll check out some brothels when we get to Leghorn.... This shit is no good for you boy! You need to get laid! This shit is no good for anybody! Especially since it is very likely the fancy kind of shit which people like to rub on themselves like dogs do!

-FAME! Alfonso yelled back. - THAT’S WHY! We are here to do great things in order to achieve FAME! And if not, to help others do it…. That’s all!
So now I know why I write, but I am a bit shaken up by his peremptory and exasperated outburst. So I decided to not to debate the point. I have two good reasons for it; the first one, is that for a while now I have been aware that there is a funny old man (an alter ego I guess) doing and saying all the things I do at exactly the same time I do. Sometimes…maybe often actually, but it only registers sometimes, people react to the old man and not to me. An understandable case of mistaken identity to which I have resigned myself without much ado. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of this funny old man, when inadvertently, he goes by a store mirror or–ghostlike–a store window, but most times I know I have been a victim of this stalker by the reaction I get from the people I am trying to impress. And although I hardly ever do it nowadays, he never fails to interlope, if even in jest, I demonstrate a sexual attraction towards a pretty young woman. The second reason is that I can tell that this idea had come to him from on high. So I mull it over. To achieve Fame?… But it seems to me that fame by itself, without any reference to a deed, is like the legless, blind fly. It has no legs, but it can fly, and it can fly but it has no destination because it can’t see, and if it cannot see it, maybe it isn’t there. So what is the point of this fly? Where can this idea go? I Have fewer brain cells left in my head than I have teeth. In fact I like to claim that I have only two, and so they have to go like hell just to make it possible for me to solve the problem of peeing in a detergent bottle in the dark. So how are they going to make something out of this material? Then, slowly I begin to like it. I begin to realize that I have been trying for years for a concept as absurd as this! A genuine idea in the machine that has not been contrived as a test, but has germinated because the hostile environment was the right condition for a stimulation like some seeds only germinate after a destructive fire. And this idea cannot be dealt with, his emotional outburst indicated it, because it is not something he has made up–on the contrary something that happened and can unmake him.
Seemingly appeased, Alfonso starts again with a long list of people who have achieved fame, -They are here! He tells me, -All these famous people are here…HERE NOW!…to help us achieve fame! I am sitting in his large studio, which is panelled in oak, mostly covered by book shelves, and I am sitting at the very large and impressive desk on an ornate chair, while opposite to me, Alfonso is seated on a similar chair, silently reading one of his manuscripts. There are piles of manuscripts, and pillars of books on the desk. Books everywhere, in both living and dead languages. I am trying to attribute to this concept of fame some property, insubstantial and intractable, exists and may act upon my imagination like a pheromone. But the two cylinder machine that I am fitted with cannot do anything with it. And then, although not nearly as tidy, as I stare at the tiled floor, I am reminded of the bishop’s office. I must have been 5 years old then. I am sure I had never before been in an office like it, let alone in a bishopric’s office, and I am equally certain that I had never heard of Freud, nor been to the Sistine and seen Michelangelo’s creation of Adam. I am immobilized by fear (march slave), but I feel that my presence there was disposed by a will that pre-empted even the notion of opposition, and that the reason for it was similarly beyond my ken. The bishop was dressed in white (Bishop of Rome?), and standing beside him, dressed in black, a nun, his secretary, I suppose. I was standing in front of her as she held on to my shoulders and the three of us stood before the huge desk watching dad retreat towards the open double door. He was bowing and waving at me reassuringly, more emphatically so as he got closer and closer to the threshold and as the two heavy doors began to swing shut. And maybe this is the clue to understanding Alfonso’s paradox. I was then of an age when self and self-assuredness are in the early stages of formation, yet watching my dad leaving, I experienced impotence in its fullest devastating manifestation.
Is it then possible in some situation to know something for which there is no knowable correlated opposite?
So my dad is backing up slowly, bowing submissively, waving at me ineffectively and smiling idiotically as the three of us stand like chess pieces on a tiled floor and the great doors inexorably, continue to close and dad has to get one more stupid adieu wave in before they close forever, and his hand gets caught and crushed, and the doors are closed now, and I stare at my dad’s index finger pinched between the doors, hanging on the crack and bleeding. And I scream.
To this day I also remember being comforted by my mother’s and father’s presence but feeling dis-concertedly betrayed at her reassurance that it had been only a dream, and of her urging me to regard it as if it had never really happened somehow. But then I am sitting in a plane trying to fill in a customs declaration and I have to ask the guy sitting next to me where our flight originated. I haven’t a clue. I seem to remember only those things that I would wish to forget because they are disturbing, or at best puzzling, and to forget anything that might be useful or just plain fun. In fact, thinking of it, I remember asking the guy next to me, and the look he gave me, but I still don’t remember his answer. Was it Milan? Zurich? Amsterdam? But then what does it really matter?
Veronica was helpful. I would go back home once a year, mainly to spend time with my mother, so around Christmas I would be on the lookout for an early spring flight to Europe, but not Italy because once I got there, I wouldn’t have the heart to leave her to do a bit of tourism. Flights to different airports satisfied in part my desire to see places, even if doing so mostly from a train or a bus. When I found a good deal–let’s say Frankfurt–I would check with Veronica because she could tell me if I had been there already, and even if I would or wouldn’t mind going there again. So how the hell could I have acquired a healthy and balanced view of my life experience? But this does not matter either. The thing I have been asking myself now and then for seventy years is, how could I have dreamt of a place like that, with all kinds of details that had never met my senses, and of meanings which I had never intellectually approached? William James et al would say that it is impossible. So I am sitting in Alfonso’s studio and I am asking myself where did it–me and Alfonso–come from? And the reassurances I can review from science, religion and philosophy suddenly sound remarkably similar to my mother’s well meaning betrayal about the nature of dreams. Everything is possible and nothing is certain, and I would say that the uncertainty is related to the infinity of possibility, so that when The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto happened, and Eric happened to need a spinal tap, and the doctor happened to have a black nurse beside him, who happened to hold Eric by the shoulder as I happened to wave idiotically, reassuring, and the three of them happened to stand there like chess pieces, and the elevators’ door happened to slide shut, that scream of mine that had happened decades earlier happened to reverse itself and be reabsorbed into that tiny spark from which it had escaped so long before, which as it happens, makes me now wonder if it happened to be necessary in the first place given that it may have happened just to prove that it is not possible or worse, not real.
I am reading what I believe to be a transcript of one of Alfonso's latest séances. In it Luicino, or Giulio Cesare Vanini, as he liked to call himself, dictates to Alfonso…. This too may be happening to prove that it isn’t happening, but it is delightfully bizarre and very interesting, as most of his stuff is, and as it touches on little-known events of almost forgotten famous people, peculiarly informative. So I ask Alfonso if I could have a copy of these twenty or so pages. I'd like to study it. He hesitates, he is unsure. I can’t figure why. Then his face lights up.
-I will call him on his cell phone and ask him, he says, and he starts looking for his phone, which is buried under piles of transcripts. Call who? I asked myself stupidly. Who the hell does he have to phone? It is his transcript! I watch him as he dials and then I listen incredulously as moments later he is asking Giulio CesareVanini permission for my request. G.C. Vanini was burned at the stake in the sixteen hundreds, for heaven’s sake. Yet Vanini wants to know a little bit about me before deciding. Shit! Now I feel entitled to want to know a bit more about Vanini before I can decide–I don’t know exactly what.
I listen as Alfonso tells Giulio Cesare Vanini, that I am a good friend, that I am here on a visit, that I come frequently, that I live in Canada, and that in Canada I live in a motor home and travel all over. After this brief propitiatory introduction, he asks Vanini again if it would be alright for me to have a copy of their latest dialogue.
Suddenly Alfonso appears very excited. -Vanini wants to talk to you! He is about to hand me the phone; now I am very very excited! I don’t know how much of my excitement is due to the fact that I may be talking to Giulio Cesare Vanini on a cell phone, and how much of it is simply due to the fact that in a moment I may be talking to none other than G.C. Vanini. But just as he is about to give me the phone, Vanini has to say something else. Alfonso seems even more excited. He reports to me, -He knows you! He says happily. -He knows you! If it is possible I am even more excited now. -Here…he wants to talk to you…. Oh just a minute…. And as he goes on with Vanini again, I ask myself what the hell I should say to him. -Yes, Yes…says Alfonso, then he turns to me, -Do you have a thing hanging in your motor home? I am now playing for time, I pretend that I am thinking about it. I mean you should see all the damn things that I have hanging in that old van of mine...hell…motor home of mine. Everything is hanging, everywhere!
-Yes I do! I report back finally, feeling very pleased with myself.
-Something important? Alfonso asks me. Obviously Giulio Cesare Vanini is on to something about me that now unexpectedly even I want to know. I decide that I have to think about it for a second. Hell everything that gets hung must be important one way or another. As I reflect, I see from the expression on his face that more delightful surprises are coming my way. Alfonso, I think, interprets my perplexity as astonishment. I decide to reinforce his opinion, so I think: Soup ladle, mirror, light-bulb two desiccated pieces of Venezia salami…a big elastic band that I just could not throw away, a first prize blue ribbon that I won at a kite flying competition…no, that was not there then, that came much later…. Jesus! And dad’s Iron Cross. When he offered it to me, I was trying to express honour but I was really surprised that he had deserved it somehow…and I didn’t feel I deserved it either. I found out eventually that they give those away to any soldier that had survived six months in the front lines and did not get a chance to surrender. Where? Ha, Yougoslavia I guess, maybe twenty kilometres from Fiume…occupied territory. When I arrived in Canada fairly soon after the war, I was often asked my nationality. To my reply, on a few occasions, I was immediately and derisively offered the gesture of surrender. I could never tell them that, having experienced war, mingled with heroes and witnessed some cases of bravery, I was rather proud of the fact that Italians were notorious for their readiness to surrender. But hell, my dad had two of those medals! He may have heard the occasional sniper fire. But two? So I made a key holder of it and attached the key to the apartment in Salerno, which had been sold, and so I hung it there. Not so much as a precious memento but because I had been asked to modify the keys so that turning the three-way lock would be easier for him, and the way I did it turned out interesting; it looked a bit like the profile of a Greek warrior with one of those plumed helmets.
- Yes! It is very important to me! I reply solemnly.
-You see! He knows! Then to Vanini, -yes, he does!
As I am patched through by land line to Vanini’s cell phone to–I imagine to an undisclosed somewhere in heaven–Alfonso quickly whispers to me that Vanini is driving to Naples, on his way to borrow fifty Euro from his mother.
-Pronto!
-Ha Claudio, I was just telling Alfonso that you may certainly have a copy of…(I don’t remember the word he used, some fancy word) provided you hang it with that special thing you have hanging in your Motor home.... Will you do that?
-You bet!




Episode 54


To do as I would
and not just as others would not,
I had to start somewhere


Has been wet and cold. It is the end of April and snow patches hang on their winter’s saddles. I have no idea how long it will be before I can attempt to summit one of these mountains. If indeed I can summit anything. I keep in shape walking up the bush road as far as I can to where the snow gets too deep, then, having worked up a sweat, I stop by the creek on my way back and have a dip in a small pool. I am lucky I can do this and that I have not bumped into a bear. I have seen tracks on the road and one of them near where I am parked was just deep enough that I could take a measurement. Seven or eight inches across the front pad. Scary! On top of it, I have seen an isometric map of the area in a store window, White Grizzly Area it said. So I am also lucky that I have not found out yet what it feels like to have a big lump of snow heave itself up on its hind legs and growl at me. I have more and more difficulty with the reality factor. It is no longer possible for me to tell what is real and what is a dream or an illusion. Would Rene have started from my present position? Hell yes! I am trying to visualize this Great Dumpster with a bunch of minuscule guys crawling all over it like blind ants, when a small pick-up with box top and canoe drives down the road and parks next to my van.
-Hello, and hello, and the weather and all that. He is a man in his sixties, very serious about catching fish. One side of the padded back is occupied by three outboard motors, two gas-driven outboard engines of different power, one electric, and one chain saw. On the other side, a deep-cycle battery for the electric outboard motor, one emergency battery, a compressor, four cans of gasoline, fish radar, boxes and boxes of lures, which alone he estimates at 6,000 dollars. Cameras (to take pictures of the fish), DVD player, camping equipment, food etc. The ceiling is completely covered with fishing rods and reels. There is just enough room left on the floor for him to slide into his sleeping bag at night and be encapsulated in all his gear. King Tut. He tells me a bit about his life, the usual ups and downs and how a while back he took a course to be a clown, which somehow led him to the Dakotas, where he switched to another course and became a certified shaman. Following this he found out that he had the gift. He gives me his shaman business card.

Tommy Tom (dragonhead)
Shamanic Facilitator and Teacher
Soul Retrievals & Extractions

I am staring at it…in some unseen farmer’s field a flock of birds that had been pecking away are suddenly spooked into flight. Some are scattered and others scarcely hang on to the fringes of the formation, which sways and banks, and so it is stretched and torn as its cohesive strength is weakened by ever so slight an individual response to danger. A few more manoeuvres re-establish the proper rhythm and then–but with only a few still missing–the reformed flock lands on a nearby tree. But where the hell did I wind up?




Episode 55


Finally it has stopped drizzling; I go for a walk. The sun breaks and slashes through the wet black trunks like laughter. I can hear it or feel it, not sure…and then yes, I see it! Like a ribbon or a streamer amidst the black trunks, a long gold chain moves, shiny, slowly upwards toward the golden sun. From the dank forest it rises and toward the sun it goes. It is a thin long length of chain made of round links, on the leading end of it new links appear, adding to the length of it, at the same time at the rear, links regularly disappear. It makes the chain appear to be moving, yet neither the chain nor any of its links move at all. Some appear at the front as some disappear at the back. So my senses tells me it is moving, while my mind tells me it is not. Who the hell should I believe! It moves and it does not move…Eppur si muove! Shut up Galileo! I am going nuts!
Now I also see that within those circles, which may be golden halos, there are faces…faces of famous people. I don’t know most of them, but oh! There goes Pythagoras! They are all famous people! Alfonso was right, uh…I know him, I know him! I quickly scan through the whole length of it. And there is Stalin! Stalin? Couldn’t be Stalin for heaven’s sake. And while I stand there staring at this incredible vision moving though the sky without really moving, I see Renee. I almost missed him trying to figure out Stalin, and he has moved…ach he has not moved but he has come close to the end of the not moving but relatively moving chain. And quickly, desperately, call out to him, -Renee did you mean the chain? The question made no sense, and before he could reply he reached the end and disappeared. This is crazy! By jiminy! They are famous people! I watch a dozen blink on and off as section of the chain heads into the source of a shaft of sunlight like a snake enters a burrow and slowly disappears into it. I can hardly breathe. Einstein, I would have recognized him, I could have asked him who frizzled his hair! I have been dying to know that. I should have asked Rene if he meant the link, the links, or the chain! Shit. I could kick myself, How could I know the answer to this if I don’t really understand my own question! Was it moving or not? OH WHAT MATTERS! What matters!
The sky closed in on the ray of sunlight in which the chain had been illuminated and so it is cut off. I catch the tail-end of it, then it is over and I am puzzled by what it was, what it meant. A moment later it starts drizzling again. It was a moving gold streak, I reflect, it was given its motion and its direction by the new links forming and the old links disappearing. To my mind’s eye it appeared moving, not fast nor slow, but solemn. In fact it did not really move at all! Shit! it did, didn’t it? But it was solemn, wasn’t it! Or was it a joke? What is wrong with me? How come I still do not recognize my art, my brand, my deception? It seems that no matter what direction I set out in, or what field I seek to explore, I keep bumping into a part of myself that I can’t recognize or claim, and so I am deceived to ascribe to it the reflections of my own mixed up attributes. I am a solipsist, I see nothing other than myself! This thought cheered me up. It always does; it is my refuge. I elect myself the creator of all things just so that I alone can suffer the iniquities I imagine. Thus the young girl dying of cancer suffers and trembles only in my mind. Which is not really my mind….
Later, walking back to the shore the event seemed like a pleasant thing to stumble on, like a secret. That is when I noticed that the gravel road was moving under my feet. I was walking slowly, marking tempo with my long shepherd’s stick, but it was not I who was moving through the forest but everything around parading by me as if I were spinning a grandiose squirrel cage. I have never observed this phenomenon before! Perhaps not since my infancy. And so I watched the ground and the forest set in motion by my will, respecting laws of motion and principles of perspective, but somehow it seemed to me that it was all a show, or a virtual reality and this cheered me up more, which is to say that I felt stupidly happy. And then I decided to stop of a sudden, and sure enough everything came to a stand-still. I tested their attention and promptness by sneakily moving just my head slightly to one side and sure enough, they did not miss it. I was laughing and dancing on my way back to camp when I came upon a big chunk of white birch log so rotten that a good portion of its bark had split open and lay flat beside the road, and Behold!
-Oh Quit that!
-Ugh, O.K. And look! the log bark said to me, -pick me up and take me to your camp, put me in the fire pit and light a fire so that I too may laugh and dance! It has been so cold, so wet and dreary for nearly a month now, that I started thinking that these mountains don’t want me here, but now this piece of bark wants my friendship. Heck I can use it. You must know that the first thing a normal person thinks of doing as soon as he makes camp, is to go far and wide to gather wood to make a fire. I never do. Unfailingly the wind turns and blows smoke on my face no matter how many times I change my position, and if you want to warm up you better just go for a walk. Now I was tempted, although it had been so wet that I didn’t think the old bark would even light up, never mind dance for me. And look! Like it had read my thought, -I will, it promised, -and I will dance and I will perfume the air like no other tree can! That did it. I pick it up, and I was shaking off some of the mushy pulp that was stuck to it when a pick-up with two guys in it taking their dogs for a run came by and stopped.
-Did you find any gold yet? One of them asked, laughing.
I realized that I had been here too long. I had started a rumour, -There is a crazy old fart back there, looking for gold.
-No! But I am not looking for gold.
-What are you looking for old man?
-I am looking for the Ubermensch!
-What’s that?
-A rare kind of diamond that forms around an impurity.
But I am not looking for him, he is looking for me, and I am not ready yet. My mood stolen by a stranger for the prize of one idiotic chuckle. I carried that piece of birch bark by its ear back to camp like I was going to show it that it wouldn’t burn, never mind dance for me. I dumped it on the wet fire pit on top of wet charred butts of logs and wet ashes and went to the van to fetch paper and the lighter. And at first it looked like I was to be proven right because I could not even get the paper bag to light up, even though it had been inside the van. But then, just as I was going to give up, the paper bag caught fire and still doubtful, I dropped it and quickly gathered the cedar kindling that someone had sheltered under the picnic table, because I felt that if I was to prove myself right I had to give it an honest effort to prove myself wrong. And damn it if the little pile of cedar kindling didn’t light up! I gathered more kindling some twigs and sure enough I had a good little fire going. But as I placed this soggy flat piece of birch bark on the fire, I still didn’t think it would burn, let alone dance for me. And Be-look! I was amazed! No sooner did the flame lick at it than it started to move, like it was alive of a sudden! The middle part swelled and rose, then twisted, then sank back down as one end of it rose now and started curling up and rolling itself in, and it continued rolling like a mad Dervish, tighter and tighter, and cracked and hissed until the whole peace had rolled and gathered into a tube from which a fragrant thin column of thick smoke rose, making me expect a genie to form and laugh, hovering over me. I was amazed enough, let me tell you, nearly spooked since I couldn’t have known that this would happen.
Then I bent down to get a good sniff of it and sure enough I found it indeed of a very pleasant fragrance. And Look! I was bent down so, scooping the smoke with my hand and wafting it to my nose to savour it feeling, astonished and exceedingly cheerful, when the whole thing burst into flames and it laughed at me like a naughty kid. And then suddenly my eyes where out there over the lake looking down on me. I saw the mountains and down there, I saw an old man bent over a fire scooping handfuls of smoke and a crackling small fire laughing at him. I saw things that I wasn’t even looking at, like I saw the small lake where Tommy Tom the dragonhead had gone fishing, and I saw that the whole surface of the lake was completely covered as a bowl of water might be sealed with Saran wrap, by tiny transparent wings, so tiny that normally I would not have been able to see even close up, unless I had my reading glasses on and my nose almost touching them! Yet, from way up there somewhere, I could see all these tiny wings that didn’t need to fly any longer, cover the whole surface of the lake. Tiny Tinker Bell kind of wings, and then as I was looking at them, I saw that just below them, tinier little creatures, zillions of them, were wriggling excitedly this way and that and all over. And look! As I was observing these almost invisible little wrigglers, thinking in great amazement that there were little lives in them spurring them on even as body parts and bits of their ancestors were still floating all around them, I decided to follow one of these little creatures. There was great urgency and zeal in his activity. Egmont Overture. I supposed that he was feeding on smaller creatures that had been attracted by the decomposing bodies or perhaps even feeding on them directly, and it occurred to me that the urge to live animating this little creature was equal to mine or that of an elephant. I was once one of these wriggly things, or half of one, when the world was for the plucking, and life was the thrill of getting it right, getting it whole! That! That lets no one get away, and following it, a wise man is not better off than a fool, and it doesn’t help a bit to be big and brave.
-Hey little fellow! I heard my voice call out to him, -don’t you know that according to the Orphic school, these activities of yours, that are a response to an irrepressible urge are not worth doing? I mean, you must consider them as just a precondition to becoming the overman. You must overcome that which has the power to direct your little mind and your minute energy. You must stop your natural urges and yearn to be the overman. This is just…just–
-Goodness me! The golden chain!
The image of that gold streak reconnected me and I found myself bent over the dying fire laughing into the cup of my hand.
-DID YOU SEE THAT?
-The wings and the little fellow all charged up and ready to go. Arriba-arriba-arriba? Yes…so cute.
-Go where?
-Hell! Nowhere himself, But did you not see the chain move, or change its position, thanks to the links materializing at one end and dematerializing at the other?
I did, but though at the moment I was fascinated, now I felt a sense of revulsion welling up inside. It was the work of the Deceiver again! Just as he had disguised himself as the sweetest of angels to deceive Christ and he had made heavenly messengers appear as monsters to be immured by our fears. He had used an image most pleasing to my psyche to hide the life-eating dragon. O I know, he is dead and never existed, yet his business is flourishing. It may just be that man, as all living things, is one of nature’s acquired habits. Nature seems clever to us but it sure shows us no sign of wisdom, or conscience…nah not even cleverness. DUMB! To it, man is just right the way he is. You know it is in the nature of habits to keep doing things that work, no matter what. So we are befuddled and hide the other behind the mark of the beast, monsters, death, and keep going with sex, shopping, fame and whatever we find blissful. The Matrix right? Soap opera to great demonic art.
In a book about God and the evolving universe, I found a bibliography of a hundred or more titles of what could be a best seller’s list in any well-run infernal place; they were all inspirational, uplifting, enlightening etc…. Not one of those books would have made it in the garden of Eden before the fall, hell! I bet you they are rarely found even in a luxurious vacation hotel. I must say though, that the moving gold chain that did not move was a good one. Daimon figured it out before I did. The links never moved, nor did the chain really–it changed its location without moving because it was an abstraction. Never the same chain because never all the same links. Perhaps all things that move or appear to do so, do it this way. I shall call it Herodotus’ chain. And yet it moved! Like watching the light bulbs flashing on and off on a celestial marquee. The little fellow was on for a while that’s all, so am I, and you, and so everything seems to be in motion, is all…and maybe not, hell the little fellow just reminded me of A. Rubinstein.
I stood beside the grand piano at the Oval Room of the Ritz Carlton in Montreal, watching this other little zealous wriggler practising for the evening concert. What did possess this small man with tiny hands, hands that would have been better suited to be those of a simple watchmaker, to wriggle and wriggle and wriggle? Fame, right? And when they applauded him, did they not really applaud themselves? Their sophistication and their power to make this old little thing wriggle like crazy for them! So, up to a point Alfonso was right. Fame must have hit that pompom-waving young lady like a bolt of lightening and retuned her as a pulcelle. And that stupid old man on a slim chance, and on his last lap, forfeited what little integrity beachhead he had to wallow for nearly two years in that dung pit and now he and the process he had engaged smell as it should. O! The Pit! -Not now! Later…. But you know, what really gets me, is the young ones! To get out of bed at 4:30, bundle up, drive through a snow storm, dive into a piss pool and swim back and forth for hours. And just like a man and a woman in the middle of a good fuck will not suddenly become enlightened, stop cold and exclaim, -Hell we are just doing what nature intended us to! So will the swimmer keep going and going. But let’s say that it might happen in the middle of a lap or a good fuck, what would they do? Would they go contrary, like do the opposite…whatever that may turn out to be, or would they more likely go with their Want & More boots, as if what was ordained was their intention and desire alone? Yes, yes.
After a while I just had to walk down to that lake to verify, or not, that vision of little transparent wings covering the whole lake and see with my own eyes and reading glasses those little creatures, and maybe tell them that it was all right after all because the chain did move that way. A breeze was blowing when I got there and all the wings had been swept off the surface and piled up as billowing foam on to the shore where I stood. I scooped up a heaping handful of this froth to examine it closely, and I found it–as I expected–at that point to consist of tiny transparent wings mostly, with some black spindly legs mixed in, and some tiny black specks that I though might have seen the world, or at least that part of it that concerned their contribution to the movement of the chain…hell! HELL! The Arapesh are not concerned with the numbers, the totals and results, but their substance or essence! That’s why they don’t bother after 4 or 5! There is no sense to it. Anyway, I just intercalated this, though now as I go over and over again…. Shit! Yes it can happen in writing as well! But as I was saying, I stood there in another Dore/, and indignantly I raised a scoop of frothy remains up against the heavy leaden sky and yelled:
-NOW, WHO DID THIS?




Episode 56


Do as thou would is the law, but I didn’t know what that could possibly be, so I started out by my tenth principle; I did what others would not, or watched them and did not what others would. And wouldn’t you know, it turned into a habit. A tiny counter-habit if I may say, a reactionary of no consequence, a puppy’s ear on a big book maybe, oh but what a fool! And my timing is good too! I can plant on fresh ground and never reap one or two fruits. I may not even get to see one germinate, so I will be spared.
I left the day after. I don’t like being laughed at even though I am much more ridiculous than anyone may suspect. Laughter is very thinly disguised violence. And I had other reasons. I discovered that my foam mattress had turned black with mould, I was low on supplies, and Trail has a very good Italian food store. I could check my e-mail, plus being south of there, the weather might be more clement to me. It was not, of course, but for some reason after that unsettling encounter my demeanour must have changed, maybe just a fraction, but enough that I noticed quite a shift in the way strangers took to me. I couldn’t account for it any other way. I was axle-deep in slush and mud and two guys helped me out. After that, seeing a couple of boiled eggs cooling in a pot on a snow bank and thinking that maybe that was all I had to eat on that Easter day, they offered me money. I have been getting a lot of warm, good-will smiles lately. Total strangers have come up to me and politely enquired about my state, and even asked me if I needed anything. It used to be that if I happened to go by a dumpster at the back of a grocery supermarket I may have elicited a leery “Get away from that dumpster you old fool!” kind of look from some young employee. Like I don’t know how hard it is to get in and then out of those things! How do they know that I do think of it though? People in general behave differently than they used to towards me. I am usually too engrossed in working up the details of my great plan to be bothered enough to figure out what is going on around me.
So I am going about my business, wearing whatever, walking with a bit of a stoop. Ah yes, maybe more than just a bit. It is- among other things- the result of sleeping across the back of the van which is not as wide as I am tall. It is getting there though! But not quite there yet. Anyway, I sleep cramped up, I walk hunched, my head hangs down a bit because of it, and yes, my mouth is open a bit like a fish out of the water sometimes, as my gaze absently surfs the pavement just ahead of my canary yellow work-boots, but it wasn’t until the day a young Galahad at the Sally Ann placed a two dollar coin in my hand that I had to take stock of my new image. I had allowed myself to become old and obviously careless about my image, something that I would have considered inadmissible and embarrassing in the past and now with just a tweak from that guy’s laughter, I realized that it isn’t bad at all, rather somewhat charming. I was an object of concern, people wished to help and to let me know that they cared. The curious thing is that I lack nothing and I am enjoying a kind of freedom that previously had always stayed out of my reach no matter how much my means and my position improved.
So I go to the Sally Ann to see about a foam mattress. They didn’t have any in the store, but I drove around to the back lane and sure enough I spied what appeared to be a good piece standing up among old spring mattresses behind the dumpster and against the wall. I was trying to extricate this piece of foam when a young tall Galahad came out the back door with a bag of garbage. I mumbled something about my back and he helped me with it right away. So after we got it in the van I fumbled through my pockets for some change to pay for it but came up with less than a dollar. I was looking a bit disappointed at the coins in the palm of my hand when the young man fished out of his pocket a two dollar coin and dropped it in my hand with the other coins. This quick, unexpected action of his confused me for a moment, but as I looked up questioningly I saw a big happy grin in his face. And so I smiled and accepted it gratefully. I suppose that at this great smorgasbord of life where everyone believes in piling up as much as their plate can hold, mine looks rather empty. The thing is that I don’t need much and I take only what I need, and some choice bits they are! I have found a new part to play, cheerfully I ham it up whenever the occasion arises.

Most honourable warrior!
Your fierce nobility and mighty purpose is well known to me!
And clearly, in its splendour your countenance is clothed,
Which is, My lord, as blinding as the newly risen sun.
I pray you to honour me with a moment of yours
To pause from your quest–which is worthy beyond praise
And hear how my own soul is also,
both bound and driven by a great need.
I am pursuing another enemy of mankind
The scoundrel may have escaped your notice and your fury
Since he is masterfully disguised and thus as ubiquitous as he is pernicious.
And, if you don’t mind my saying so, o mighty and noble Sir
More despicable and malevolent than anything that walks and breathes,
Since he himself is first victim to the poison he spreads.
You see, My Lord, it has fallen upon me a task akin to yours
And to help me dispatch such an insidious foe
And rid the earth of his accursed sway,
I would require a length of that King’s gut, if you could spare.
If not, then at least if you would grant me the use of the Last Pope’s Gut
as soon of course, you will have made it available.
O noble knight, this nefarious enemy of ours
Does not wield a sword or great power, nor wears he a golden crown.
Modesty guised, on his head, laurels he wears,
and he chirps! He chirps and he coos, so is his deadly disguise!

-HOT DOG!... You mean a POET? You are not kidding me! RIGHT?
-Of course not My Lord!
-Uh…Harmless I would have thought, if not altogether edifying.

-Indeed My Lord! As he sees himself thus he is seen.
And though one may be bemused at his mushy utterances
That begin as dark passions welling up from the gross quarters of his entrails,
No one is wary! And thus the fool, content in his dimness,
And what miserable bits of windfall may, now and then, come his way,
Others he contaminates, and others yet he creates of himself
And turns he them from the truth and to the worship of darkness itself!
Regarding harm or edifice, I urge you to bear in mind that the gravest of harm
Comes not from an avowed enemy, formidable as he may be, but from those
In the highest regard!

-Ah, yeah…I get all that! You talk funny old man, you know that uh? Uh I guess you know! Uh…let me see…. It seems to me that to protect oneself from a few syrupy lyrics one may have to get rid of one of the innocent pleasures of life. Uh…. There are pleasures in life...You remember...right? So what is the harm if they come up with another song about Diana? I mean they have done that long before uh-uh, long before they learned to pull carrots out of the ground! Right? Uh, so what is the big deal old man?

-No My Lord, he ought not abstract,
sublimate and confer virtue on conduct and beauty on places
function to conceal and origin and purpose.
It behoves us be proper to serenade the object of our desire
directly, singing thusly of penis, ovaries and testicles!
We do not, do we my lord!
Ha-ha! No…uh, sometimes! Yeah but no, the answer is no. I see where you are going with this…or do I?

-Nor should we proclaim as nature’s intent, what in our stupor we define as beauty, for nature neither cares or knows of it
-Nor do birds sing! Did you know that My Lord? The lark says,-I am a lark! I am male! This is my territory! Mate come! Others stay out! You have no idea how sick I am of yet another love song, yet another ballad, a twit, a verse, a sweet flower, a sonnet of a bird, or gorgeous sunset, or a beautiful tree. I am sick to death of troubadours and poetasters! I AM SICK TO DEATH OF THEM ALL!

-Yeah, yeah, cool, its cool old man. I am with you old man. I am with you! Yes it might very well be just as you say old man! Never thought of birds that way, I have to say…like, -Others, stay the fuck out! Might sound good in Lark!

-Forgive me My Lord, so heavy is my burden! I am so sick of it all!
Shame upon shame is man! And there are so many more layers Sire!
So many things fall from the sky as one approaches eternity.
So many things fall from their heavens!

-Yeah!... I Bet they do! Uh I can see that…cool! I tell you what. This here length of rope, is not The Last king’s Gut….

-Sire, it is not?

-Nope! It is not even gut. It is plastic and not a King’s plastic, just the Home Depot kind, actually. And as far as procuring The Last Pope’s Gut, u …well I would be fooling myself if I thought there was much of a chance. But if this yellow rope is of any use to you, you are most welcome to it! Seems to me that you need it a lot more that I do.

-Sire, plastic you said?
-Yap! Pure plastic.
-You don’t say!... PURE plastic!
-Yeah, uh take it! Yes…there you go…go get them old man! You go get them!
His steed rumbled away. I was left standing there with a coil of pure plastic yellow rope.
Nice fellow that young knight. In parting he left a nice smile. I still have it some where.

I hung around a few more days. I tried to get Daimon to help me with the hypothesis that if a great marquee could be said to be made up of numbers and these numbers formed infinite random operations, we could have a universe with no mass, no dimension, no time and no energy, as numbers have none of these properties. It would suit me just fine, because I keep hanging on to the possibility that none of my experiences have actually happened at any level, except on the operations of numbers. But Daimon is taciturn lately, come to think of it, he has never said anything about my plan! I mean he’s been stuck with a prick in a cage all this time so you’d think he should be looking forward to liberation, but he never said anything about it. Now he is giving me the silent treatment.
-Hey Daimon, I have just figured out that in seventy five years I have produced 16 tons of shit!
-………..
-So it made me wonder if our innate curiosity that leads to knowledge and exploration of space is nothing more than nature’s practical solution to the problem of stagnation.
-…………
See? Nothing! I am missing something. Nature abhors inactivity. On the premise that, if math could express the visible universe it could just as well have created it, I tried to figure out what could be an unknown property of numbers that would magically conjure an infinite variety of events, including ninjas maybe, in a virtual space and time? I replaced C.A.G.T, with numbers, 0,2,1,3. Then 1,0,3. No, try 0,1,2,3. I am not getting anywhere and I don’t expect to. What the hell do I know? And that is probably my best asset. I am very ignorant. Prof. Fernbach looking at my organic photoelectric cell, scratched his head and said, -Claudio, if you knew anything about science you would never have tried it. So I go on; I try Arapesh multiples of four for a while.
But then I have a better idea, I start chanting, an incantation, -One…. Two.… Tri-ni-ty…sounds like…and Mary-lynn Mon-roe. I am hoping to induce the mind into a state of Gestalt and thus dislodge the mystery which abides within the blind spot of the mind. Scatoma, One…Two…Tri-ni-ty, when I became aware of things around the van that moved in time with my cadence, -One…Two…Tri-ni-ty! I did not flinch, and as my vision grabbed my full attention, what I saw was a bunch of monks in black frocks, with strings of large prayer beads hung around their necks. Slowly and silently they surrounded my van, in step with One …Two…Three-ni-ty!. Then they just stood there in silence. I am freaking out. What the fuck? And way out here? It didn’t seem to me that anything good could come out of it. It feels as wrong as it seems unreal, yet there they are! I kept still as I tried to decide what it was that I should do; I couldn’t think of anything at all, no tree for my frightened thoughts to alight on. This is ridiculous! I mean what could be the M.O. for a contingency like this? I am camped all alone in a clearing deep in the wilderness and a bunch of black monks file out of the bush and surround my van? Should I masturbate? No, I got mad!
-YOU TURKEYS!!! WHAT THE HELL YOU WANT???
I swear it! They turned into turkeys and fled!




Episode 57


Next morning I decide to move I still had more than three months, lots of time to get in good shape. I will drive to Trail, pick up the bottle of green fairy I ordered, some cheese, olives, bread and so on. So while I am waiting for the coffee to perk, I get my white socks out of the box and lay them in a row on the bed. Then as colonel Klink used to do, I go through my roll call routine. I have been doing this before I move to another site since I discovered that even my socks are abandoning me, escaping, probably with the help of the mouse underground network. I can’t keep mice out and socks in. Only the crimson plutocrats remained staunchly loyal. I have chinked this van all over with steel wool, still they get in! They get busy just as I try to go to sleep. I yell at them, kick the side of the van and then try telepathy, -I am not St. Francis! I hate you! I don’t really, but I don’t want them near me for their own protection, because no matter how hard I try not to hurt them, these critters usually come to grief on my watch. And I hate inflicting pain, I HATE PAIN period! And though I don’t know much, I feel that the necessity of pain completely invalidates even the grandest and most elegant design. I have personally demolished the grand illusion many times. Once by the flick of a switch, I roasted a mother mouse and her newborn babies simply because she had decided that the oven was a dandy place in which to carry on with the miracle of birth, and at the same time I had happened to fancy pizza.
-GET OUT! It’s like I am the devil; these stupid pilgrims think that this van is heaven-sent and I am trying to shoo them away. What didn’t I do for them at the cottage! And maybe…no! for sure that is wrong too, since I did it for myself. Now Daimon would hit the roof here, because I am getting ahead of…way ahead of myself, to when, after my failure I had decided that I had to eat crow. But hell, I am not writing a story, I am performing an autopsy on a life. I can intercalate an incision here or there, throw in Cohen while I am at it, -Everybody knows! Or maybe T.H. Ford, -16 tons, and what have you got? And my timing is right for once! It is too late for me to see anything come out of it, and best of all I can dump all this shit on the internet and not have to deal with the guardians of stagnation, not give a hoot about the public’s need for comfort and the editor’s bottom line.

I stayed at the old cottage. The “cottagey smell” as Eric calls it, is eighty years of accumulated mouse shit. The cottage is curing in it, will probably last another eighty years. The bottom of the kitchen cupboard is where I set the humane rat trap. I lay in bed under a huge cerulean bear, reading “The Principles of Psychology” by James William and I hear the trap door snap. Before I go to sleep I catch on average, half a dozen mice. I dump the catch in a white, plastic, five-gallon bucket, and reset the trap. I place the bucket out on the porch overnight because, not their fault, they stink. In the morning I find that to keep warm, the cute, totally innocent little throbbing bundles of wavering emotions have stacked up on top of each other in a small pyramid. Their black-red, no–clack! protruding clack eyes look up and obviously behold a huge monster. Now I know that my seventeenth-century enlightened friend Nickel will chuckle and maybe shed a tear for me as he reads this. Fact is that great minds have formed a shivering pyramid at the bottom of this bucket of mystery while on the other hand…to seduce an imbecile or to save him for that matter, quel probleme! So, what matters, what matters….
After about a week l’imbecile gave it up. By then three mice had escaped, leaping out of the deep plastic pail. One had committed suicide, and one had a terrible accident which crippled it, and was lost at sea. I am not making this up, it is just too painful and too long to write their terrible stories. I will just make the effort to tell you about the last tragedy. I had stopped collecting them. I would just set the trap before going to bed and in the morning while having my coffee I would take my single captive down to the beach, open the service end of the trap and swing it hard to eject the captive far out into the lake. The idea was to instil in them a strong aversion to the cottagey smell of my place so that they would be encouraged to look for accommodation elsewhere. An early morning swim after a long chilly night in isolation should do that, I thought. The last one was caught during the night and I did not get up to put the trap out on the porch. He bothered me all night. I would get a little sleep and then be awaken by the sound of a struggle. A lively one I thought, rattling the steel trap trying to get out. It was even more bothersome than the clicking sound of them chewing on old dry wood. The sharp clicking and tempo gave me visions of a mouse sitting at a small typewriter, writing away with great zeal his own logbook of maybes.
When morning finally came and I took a look I was shocked. Nothing seems to equal tragedies in imagination! The miserable creature had smashed his snout into the spy grid of the service door at the opposite end of the rat trap. He had done so with such force that his nose and some teeth had crushed through and became stuck. He had his four paws pressed against the grid and was trying to pull his bleeding snout free with waning energy. He had been at it all night, pulling in desperate jerks, waking me up, and then exhausted, resting for a while, letting me sleep a bit. I figured that when the trap door snapped shut behind him it startled him and instinctively he bolted forward with the prodigious speed that these critters are capable of. Oh Lord, Oh Lord! If thou canst look after even the smallest of your creatures what could you possibly mean to me? But how stupid of me! God is in the interstices…everybody, even a child knows that, right? Step on a crack, break your mother’s back! After a frantic what-to-do moment, I decided to get a small plastic sandwich bag and gently placed the door and the mouse in it and with great care I made it as airtight as possible. When I checked a while later, it was not working. I tried to improve the seal. Later, still alive and suffering. Amazing how small a crack it takes to support life. Had to try something else, my ineptitude was prolonging his agony; that makes me angry. I picked up a barbecue rod, took aim, practised my swing, and in my ardent desire to put him out of misery as soon as possible, I failed to notice the little door’s flanges, which were sticking up higher than his little head, and that the weight of the door, and the mouse on it, rested on the mangled part of his snout that protruded onto the wooden hand rail. So, bang! The skewer hits the metal flanges, which drives the door down against the rail, which drives the snout up and out and the body of the mouse momentarily backwards, finally free! But this prompts the mouse to leap forward, which drives him into the clear plastic sandwich bag. Startled, confused, I spring into action. I remove the bag with my prey in it, I seal it tight and secure the seal with a clothes-pin. When I come back a few minutes later, I am relieved to see that he is at peace at last. It has been a long and horrendous night. It is still chilly out here on the porch and his breath has fogged up the inside of the plastic bag so I can just make out that he is now belly up with one rear paw clearly visible as it is raised high and presses against the thin plastic. Though my thought awareness is slow and the symbolism lost on me at the moment, instinctively my index finger draws slowly towards it with a tenderness that is not apparent in a similar gesture in the Sistine chapel. Gently, oh ever so gently! It is brought to touch this pale pink high five. Then I cried, just as I did earlier on mount Niut after I killed my mother again. No tears, no bawling, just a stunned silent expressionless angst.


No one ever lived that did not need help.









Part 6
Episode 58


Castaway on digit island in a digit ocean
building myself a makeshift raft
ugliest looking thing you ever saw! But is it crazy enough?

After that bit of self-pity, got drunk. Raised a p.s. banner on the beach and hobbled to bed thinking that I was going to sleep like a babe. Yeah sure! Big mistake to sit to pee. I can’t see it, I can’t hear it, I can’t even feel it. Did I pee? Was it much? Was it a strong flow? Am I done? Is my prostate taking revenge on me like Howie said it might? I don’t know when exactly the war of the sexes began but I know that the first recorded engagement happened over the toilet…OK, maybe the second. Put the seat down when you finished if you have to, but don’t sit. The best is that I don’t even have to! I guess I am just too old and tired to keep fighting. They should make a small concession at least, and modify–adding a little pool of water up front. Those decadent Europeans not only have bidets, but also a bowl with a raised ledge so that one can examine one’s shit before it goes. Hell, up on Les Ecourses after dark we went to the outhouse with an axe! Stuck it down the hole and swung it around a bit. One does not want to sit on the sharp tip of a frozen stalagmite. On the ledge, the shit sits there like on an altar and when you turn around to flush you can’t help seeing it. So you can check the colour, smell, quantity, firmness, and if you are the queen or the pope or some rich hypochondriac, you can go on with other things, leaving an expert to flush it for you after it has been examined and approved.
This reminded me–that is how my mind works: it gets a hold of a ball of thread and it has to unravel it no matter how long it takes, only to find a message at the other end that usually says do not unravel. Anyway, it reminded me that in the downstairs toilet right above the bowl Eric has pasted the official portrait of Benedict XVI. It never fails to cheer me up. Benny is looking at the camera and is supposed to be smiling. Heeheee! I could just see a bunch of cardinals going over all the pictures and tearing their hair out. They must have had ten fits! A kind of lecherous grimace that makes me cringe because I don’t know if he is after my soul or my ass. -O Marcello, Marcello, surely you can do better than this! Obviously the personal photographer could not, because there it is. The best he could do poor man. Anyway, Benny has reinstated the existence of hell. I never even knew it had been abrogated!
So this day I went to the toilet to get the broom and I am now sweeping, giggling and going, -O yes Virginia, there is a hell! O yes dear…there is a hell! And Eric, sitting at the lap top is laughing through his nose.
Then I take the dust pan out to the garbage can and I find the biggest caterpillar I ever saw crawling across the cement patio. Pale green with some false eye spots at the back. Diana would love seeing it, so I pick it up and I am looking for a place to keep it till she comes home from work. Right beside the garbage pail there is a Chinese cast-iron lantern. I swing open the door and stick it in there. He his too big to get through the decorative designs, hell, he is the size of an organic banana. He can’t get away and he'll be safe. Yeah right!! When Eric takes a break from Zenning people on the net, I tell him to come see. I swing open the little sanctuary’s door and behold a scene from hell unfolding inside the cathedral. The blind legless moth is squirming and twisting on the floor in pain and blind terror as a tiny spider is scampering all over him biting, stinging and spinning restraints around the biggest, juiciest spider’s dream ever. The spider is so blown away by the size of his sudden fortune that he pays no attention to my finger intruding. The audacity! He might as well be a Chihuahua taking down a greyhound bus, and it looks to me like he is now going to take me on as well rather than let go of such a prize. I hate spiders but I hate pain more; bravely I rescue the poor thing. The spider stops spinning and struggling now and just stands in his empty cathedral looking crushed. Why do I make these crazy things happen around me?
I am in bed with my crimson plutocrat on, still a bit drunk, resigned to another sleepless night. Mind is going a mile a minute, concatenating the most disparate events and even linking with a principle of mine that has no bearing on this parade, or so it seems. This principle harks over to the Forbidden Planet, and WWII and its cause which, contrary to the opinion of historians who believe it a sequel to the first one which had been caused by the cyclical necessity of redistribution of wealth by violent means, which, by the way, I feel is upon us again. Jesus, where was I? I am now intercalating on intercalations, which is a good sign! To follow the meandering of the mind as it twists and turns, good, bad, outrageous, insane and contradictory, making no concession to form and especially to narcissism. I must let the thoughts fall as they may…like, at the time of that mass insanity I could never quite dismiss the thought that it had to do with me–that they were after me, that I had caused it somehow. Grosso modo, this other principle suggests that if I were to experience an original concept, a concept that is not derivative, not a spin-off of any known conventional phenomenon, then its extended expression would pop into existence at that precise instant with consequences that are unimaginable. I have never experienced an original thought, nor am I aware of anyone who did, at least not since the big bang. I think I should drop one of my other principles in order to instate this one. I have to respect my self imposed quota of ten.
Then I am in the darkest of nights and my young knowledgeable friend is not with me. I feel alone extremely, and it is not a band of stars coming at me this time. What I see coming at me and half a million other people, is a humongous wave of hellish explosions and fire. I watch it approaching. It is coming straight at me so I cannot even experience fear, since it is impossible to escape. Instead I stand there and I think, -Come! Come! I have nowhere else to be! But I have the strange sensation that it is not really me saying it. Come! Come! And it does come, but now it isn’t quite what it is. It is not a carpet bombing. Or it is, but it is something else at the same time. Something like the matrix. It is all round me…and then it is past me…gone. It is all over and 45,000 people have been blown up or barbecued alive.
I stand there feeling empty, immaculate, untouched, and something that is not me says quietly, -They have missed me again.
It is like that numb place you wind up when you are all charged for action but you have absolutely no clue of any possible action. So charged up and so in want of direction that anyone in uniform can say, -Wear this, go there, get in the box car! Have a shower. And it is done. And it is done because your individual mind has been stripped bare and it cannot produce a single spark of illusion and hope. Thus was Sunnenshine tortured to death by three old farts in uniform in the presence of his own son, among hundreds of inmates who stood watching like zombies because they had been told to do so. They stood in formation and watched because they had nowhere else to be. In normal good times this numbness doesn’t appear objectionable. I mean, so what if I feel the need to have a tattoo or hang coloured lights at Xmas. Peace or war, I am only as smart or as brave as a ball in a crazy pin ball machine.
I slept a while and woke up horny. Maybe my sock was on tight or pinching somewhere, or maybe it had something to do with me worrying about my prostrate, it happens rarely now. It happens rarely now mainly because I stand guard. Mind goes, Guard> Swiss guard> Pope Benedict> Toilet> Grin> Boner> I am Benedict> I am in my Papal quarter, I am The Pope and I am not the Pope. However the Pope has a boner, an incubus right? What to do? And don’t tell me he does not get horny now and then! He might try as I do, mentally recite the Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer simultaneously and consecutively, but the mind that is offering this solution is the same mind that is torturing him and wants him to touch himself. I know that later the same mind will help him patch it up with God, a sincere act of contrition–a promise to Jesus Christ. It is interesting that the Latin word for mind and to lie is the same. So it is in Italian, and mendacious in English. So the mind allows me the use of it to carry on with the business of writing encyclicals and saving souls, but not to thwart the function for which it has evolved. So Benny, he tries but the mind presses on and I cajole him, -Well, just hold it! See how firm…how hard it is! You can’t deny that its vigour is reassuring and comforting, is it not so? It doesn’t hurt anything does it? Ah! And doesn’t it feel good uh? Just stroke it a bit. Ah go ahead! It will alleviate the prostate problem too. It is simply natural, good hygiene.
He jumps up, grabs the crucifix and shoves it in my face, -GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN!
I am a taken aback moment, then I grab the end of my tie with a smiling pink Mickey Mouse in a pale blue field and stick it to his face, -NO WAY JOSE!
Yeah, besides my crimson sock hanging down to my ankles, I wear a tie in bed. Actually I wear the tie all the time, it is my ripcord. Now you are thinking that this guy is really crazy, but I am not so crazy that I would wear earrings like Eric does. What good would that be? I started wearing the tie after taking a few serious tumbles with my mountain bike way out in the bush and up these mountains. I figured I might break my back or classically, a hip, and lie beside my bike for days. So far I have been very lucky, I have only broken my right index finger, twice. Actually once in the bush when I fell off the bike and landed on it, and then again when biking through town, thinking who knows what, and I crashed into the back of a parked truck. As you can appreciate, I have a talent for getting into scrapes, and at the time I decided that I might as well wear a ripcord in bed too. So there. And speaking of form and function, I took the tie off my good friend Fulvio in a crowded subway car in Rome. A ritual undressing in public because Fulvio had declared earlier that a man is not dressed and cannot be taken seriously unless he wears a tie. So now you know the wherefore of this ridiculous stand-off in the Papal apartment. Him in a white nightgown and me…you know. Two stupid horny old men acting ridiculously because confronting a situation that was intelligence-proof. A bit later I heard in a faint tremolo, -God…help! O please God help me!

-God, help! Please God, help her! My mother prayed silently. She hardly ever turned to God. But this poor little woman had to get to Fiume where her son lay wounded, maybe dying, in the hospital and the train was full, so full! The train was so full of people and of bags and suitcases so full of genuine S. Daniele prosciutto, salami, cheese polenta and all God’s good things that could not get to the cities because nature had commandeered the bulk of the transportation system to help in the effort of destroying me. And to think that if those times come again it will be so much worse. My parsley is now at least a thousand miles away! Anyway, when God moved the people on the train to make a supreme effort, hands reached out and levitated the little lady on board, mother thanked Him with tears of joy. Later when the train picked up speed on a downhill stretch it became the first train to be blown up by Tito’s partisans. Out of that tragedy I got to baby sit my immobilized mother through quite a few bombing raids and assist helplessly as she lived through the hellish fear of being buried alive again, and a beautiful encyclopedia. Enciclopedia Hoepli. Milano. Following the blast and crash she was buried for hours under tons of salami, polenta, train pieces, corpses and under all that waste, in a small burrow she came face to face with the little old lady for whom she had interceded. -All I could see were her eyes, she kept repeating when she was delirious, -I could not stop looking at those eyes. The Encyclopedia was acquired quite involuntarily after my mother was finally dug out and an ambulance became available. Knowing that he had no hope of finding our own pig and polenta, my father promptly claimed two big and heavy suitcases that happened to be close at hand. In a train which, according to indisputable logic, should have contained nothing but salami and polenta, some crazy nut had to provide the exception. That weird precedent established a trend from which I would seldom be spared.
I don’t know if it was Benny I heard or me. Like in that horrible nightmare under the chattering palms.... Now I forget what I was going to say next…wonderful! Really, just as well!
X marks the spot. I have built a big pile of life's detritus and buried a magic floret in it. I am not good at hiding things, but then you are not likely to find what you’d rather not no matter how manifest. Besides, I did not need to hide it, God is the hiding place of choice for such dangerous knowledge. But if, in spite of it all you do find it, and you recognize this word, keep it to yourself…above all do not go preaching it. Not all can play.
-I curse my food, the air I breathe, the rising sun. This cheers me up! It means I am alive, I am all alone, therefore sufficient. I don’t want to be God, I don’t even want a passing flit of ecstasy. All I want is one shot at a dimension that is totally absent in a life of quiet despair or of glamour frenzy, and I have it, and I have always had that one shot! Speaking of hollow glamour, I took it up with Benny again when I was putting on my sock last night. I was taking care in placing the elastic just so.
–So Benny, don’t you feel better now?… AH come on with it! Did you not sleep like an angel?
-Well, more like a devil, but I haf to admit I didn’t haf to get up in the night to pee. Cute accent, more pronounced,.
-It is so unsettling…so unsettling!
-Ha-ha! Unsettling because you chose the wrong fairy tale, then took it literally and hung on. You would have done better with Pinocchio you know? And then not so literally…. Like there also is Cinderella, the Wizard’s Apprentice, The Dumb Watchmaker, Snow White and so on. A whole bunch!
-It is the Tempter, He never ceases, He vants me to fail! To betray Jesus!... Mea culpa, mea culpa…mea maxima culpa!
-There you go again! Benny, listen to me, there is no Jiminy Cricket. No blue fairy. No Telos, and God is just a diversion. What there is, is a will. One Will Only! You have one shot at it! You obsess and keep tinkering with this old raft of yours, which I must say is a damn sight better looking craft than mine, but it is no good to you in the middle of the desert. It is a hell of a thing to drag along, and the more you add to it the less likely it is of being any use to you. But I couldn’t get through to him, he cannot let go. The mind is like a barnacle, where it attaches itself, there it starts dying.
I have to cut. It is too much of a struggle to go on with this, and it keeps growing and growing. I cut and cut and it grows two new head every time and then the stone gets heavier and heavier, poor me. Write the garbage, ut and slash and burn as if nobody will read or would ever want to. He-heee and he! Close!
-CUT, CUT, CUT!
-O.K! O.K.!
Now who the hell was that? Anyway,to follow the meandering of this mind as far as possible from vanity, and as close as possible to real poetry…. Which, as I said, would be like dancing wildly around the subject being ever so mindful not to light right upon it. -Ha-ha that’d be nice!... Maybe you can. I hate poets; I hate all deceivers. I may be forgiven anything but preaching. If I am caught preaching, kill me. Love ugh…. I went to the doctor for more sleeping pills and mentioned my night trips to the can. Was I being punished for my obstinate abstention? Could he prescribe me an anti-aphrodisiac so that I could rent some porno movies and laugh myself to death? One could! I could! Can you imagine what a love scene would look like if the libido was completely suppressed?
I said, -Doc, what is one to do?
-Best thing is to have sex regularly. Bless his pipped soul and alphabetized mind, I have been imagining things and laughing to tears for days. This very nice old couple I know, his hands shake and her hands are badly deformed by arthritis, and then this very cute little neighbour of mine came for a visit and by and by she offered to sleep with me one night if I would, to find out if I liked it. If I didn’t she would move to the couch 'till morning. How nice, really. I declined politely. If you can’t give it away or give it up, it is not yours. Even life isn’t really worth anything to you until then. Goodness me what it takes for an idea to fly! I might as well tell it to the mountain!
I did. I drove up past the dump, half the way to the hot springs. I let it all out monosyllabically. I just had to tell somebody. By the way, I found out later that it was Benny I heard. It was on a sunny warm day, I was naked on the beach and lo and behold, the beast came up to have a look. I let him even, though I had told him long ago not to even bother getting up! Pee and shut-up! I even teased him by pinching my nipples to see if they were still connected to those urge activators that commandeered most of my life. Sure enough they too were still in working order, but a moment later when blood pressure had increased enough for the beast to stand I felt a terrible sharp pain, and I looked at it. I had not used it in years and so it had quietly atrophied at nearly a 90 degree angle. The angle that it generally assumes as it rests at the bottom of my jockey shorts. I am now sexually challenged as well as abstinent. It could not have been me then that I heard at the Papal quarters. Heck I knew that!




Episode 59


I have just returned from a poem.
I have been given this day,
A feud of sort with a poet. (mmmh! Am I repeating myself?)

Email from Howie. A message from another world, a world I left behind in a trailer. I sent him something by E. Cioran, and he responded! I thought he was dead.

I read some, scanned the rest. He used, as a intimation of death "lovers in the height of happiness", I knew then I was dealing with a disillusioned sophist and probably a guilt-ridden post-catholic to boot. He has much more to say to you than to me; as his expression is that of a 22 year old during the height of a Depression between two world wars. (War to me was getting rickets and collecting silver foil from cigarette boxes)
He says to objectify the intensity of the inner spirit. To objectify him would be to renounce your individual investigation. So read him as the young poet he is, then go back to role playing the interesting life the world has fostered for you...h

I bought myself a bottle of the green fairy
And had a snort or two or more
And then wobbly I made my way
To the shore of the Columbia and sat in the sun
The brilliance of a throne
And my tired body and mind kind of left me there.
I heard youthful voices walking by
voices of spring
Those voices may have passed a tired old man on a bench
But that tiredness felt so good, so right.
Now you may hate me if you will
But I know where your gold is buried
And you go on seeking it elsewhere.


-There! It is done! I cut this monster’s head. I was getting tired of it anyhow, tired hell! I am exhausted. There are days when I am not able to put together a paragraph. Maybe you have noticed. Anyway, on to the last entries.
Lawrence, with a big grin on his face when I arrived. Out of habit I respond with a similar grin so that we both appear to be happy to see each other, even when we both know by now that friendship, like any other relationship, is commerce. To him, I am material for good stories to entertain the occasional patron or plain art seeker that drops in. Story, like everything else about him, is a sort of currency he uses to stimulate commerce. My sculpture of hopping mad Orlando Furioso stands on the shelf beside his rocking chair, not so much because he likes it, which he does, but because when someone shows interest he can launch into a well-rehearsed good story which adds charm and elevates the tone of the business at hand, plus it improves the odds of a transaction.
-Is Eric here?
-No, Linda drove me, she is gone to work.
-How is Linda?
-She is a darling. She is always there when I need her and I am never there when she needs someone. There is tea. The X-large Xmas card of Burks Falls he had been working on for years, is gone. Sold to so and so he tells me.
-The thought of moving in with her and maybe digging her a well did cross my mind. But I can only keep my best foot forward for a very short time nowadays, if at all. It wouldn’t last, and she deserves better. Richard wore pretty big shoes. Most of all I don’t want to get hooked back in that absurd rigmarole, and as you know she is still very sexy.
-Nice boots! I look at my boots. He is passionate about boots.
-They cost me eight thousand dollars.
-Oh, that much!
-Yes, I picked them up at Eric’s, I had no boots when I came. So if I factor in my expenses and the truck I bought him, it amounts to that. I have good boots and I am nearly broke.
-What are you going to do?
-I am hitching a ride with you to Wawa, then bus the rest of the way. Maybe my old van is still where I left it. Then go on from there.
-And live in the van?
-Yeah, I have done O.K. the last three or four years.
-I always thought you would come to no good in the end.
-In the end?... Actually I feel that the opposite might be the case. And no, maybe not! When I left this morning I felt like the Capro Espiatorio, walking away from my tribe and taking all their sins with me. I am a mess, The place I left is a mess, Eric is a mess, and so I suspect is his pretty young wife. Yeah, big mess everywhere. Considering the mess, you wouldn’t think that I got to be here thanks to a long uninterrupted line of successes. Every damn thing alive in the world today is here because all its previous generations had met the strict qualifications and passed the rigorous tests with flying colours. You look at the world and you think, Jesus Christ what a mess! Yet just by being here we represent the best, the cutting edge, the state of the art! There must be two conflicting agendas at work here…. Or like in Cube, a headless blunder, don’t you think?
-Where did you leave the van?
-Up on mount Niut.
-Where is that?
-The Niut range…Niwt-Imn in Egyptian. I thought it appropriate for a Ianos. It is up in the Chilcotin, near Mount Waddington. He was steering me back towards the part he wanted to hear. Nickle is not the least interested in my hyperbolic speculations because he has figured out the world in all its rigid details and so he cannot stand doubts, contradictions or despair, whilst I am not alive unless I bleed...haemorrhage!
-Oh, very nice!
-Yeah.
I had been in the region twice before in summer. Once vacationing with my friend Fulvio and once prospecting. Both times I had beautiful summer weather. In desperation I drove up there hoping for good weather. Yeah, my plan called for good weather, I had to have a beautiful day and a beautiful sunset. How stupid of me! I moved around a lot, I would move from a dark depressing Dore' to a luminous Monet only to see it turn into another Dore' in no time. Actually I could have timed it! I didn’t think of it at the time because it was so amazing. I would find a Monet, park right in the middle of it, get out of the van, look up at the blue sky and watch the dark clouds drift in and pile up right above my head until it was another God-damn Dore'. I felt like Charlie Brown. It never failed and it was contrary to my principles. I am not sure which one…the unknown principle. I kept hoping that around the seventeenth of July, the wettest coldest summer on record would end. It would have been majestically Wagnerian if the sun would conquer and burst out in all its glory right on cue. But by the time I decided to make M. Niut my last stand, my mood was as black as Dore’s china ink. Of course with the constant rain and chilly weather came mosquitoes like I have never experienced in B.C. And I hate mosquitoes! Bad mood affected my thinking, my behaviour. Near despair one day I opened a bottle of my home-made beer…ach, make that Van-Made brew. It was as flat as my mood and beer cannot get flatter than that, but not unpleasant tasting, and thinking that it would not get any better in the damp cold van, I drank the whole litre. If tobacco imitates life, since it is almost as addictive and almost as likely to kill you in the end, alcohol, can be controlled, and in the right dosage it is a good antidote to it–very liberating. I had not felt so good in ages and it lasted all day.
The next day I opened another bottle of this miraculous van-brew, drank it eagerly, but nothing, not even a buzz! I was losing it, I became compulsive. For one thing I could not go to bed until I freed all the bugs trapped inside my van. They go up and down the glass panes and I know that though some of them are so small that they are barely visible, they have feelings, they feel trapped like I do. Like when I am riding this bus that is taking me up the mountain to the place I want to go. I am the only passenger. The driver wears a fedora. Why is he wearing a hat like that? It is a small bus, like a school bus. Bench-like plastic seats, no frills, the rest all metal, aluminium, I guess. We are closing in on the place, I get a glimpse of it through the trees. It looks like a B&B in a kind of mausoleum style. The driver almost misses it, swerves and brakes to a jolting stop in front of the gate. I have arrived finally, this is it! My destination at last! I get up and go for the door and there is no fucking door! I look again, and there is no fucking door, just metal walls. I am like pointing at the metal wall where a door should be, a door Dammit! There is no Fucking door! I glare at the driver, point at the wall and scream, but he doesn’t move or say anything, he just sits there with his smart fedora squashed down to his ears looking straight ahead, ignoring me. No fucking door! I look at the back for the emergency door, no emergency door either. It makes me wonder how I got in it now. I don’t remember how I got in it. Was I born in this fucking bus like a gnat inside a Mexican bean? Should I jump? So I start jumping inside the bus because I figure that if I am a gnat inside a Mexican bean having a nightmare, jumping up and down might still work! Nickle is suffocating on chuckles, tears in his eyes, one hand reaches under the shirt to tighten up the belt that holds the tennis ball that holds his gut in. I am trying to communicate the misery of that morning, and of the death of hope, and his impertinent mirth puts pressure on his hernia, presses on the yellow tennis ball. My incredible disastrous defeat becomes a trivial matter of balancing mirth and pain under a tennis ball. I let him have a minute to adjust it properly, because I worry that if he miscalculates the hernia might swallow the yellow tennis ball and I'll have to take him to the garage.
Anyway, for an hour or so before it gets dark, I invert a liquor shot glass to trap the bugs against the pane and then I slide a card between the pane and the rim and let them out through a side-vent. Some of them are so small that I can hardly see them, I have to slide the card in very carefully. No sooner do I sit down thinking that my job is done for the night than I see another one. And then another one, and so on. In the end I have to go over every window with my powerful # 2.5 reading glasses. Oh, but I still kill mosquitoes. This bothers me.
The highlight came a couple of days before F. Day. I was taking a walk when the coyote that might get to eat “me” crossed the road just ahead of me. I was delighted to see him. He was big, healthy looking, with a nice grey summer coat and he also had a good look at me. It was a bit like going to Desjardins in Montreal and selecting the nice lobster you want to eat. What more could a man want? Right? But then there was the stupid grizzly and the damned mosquitoes. The grizzly kept complaining about my being there. He let out some mournful sounds. He was not happy and though I was not really scared, because I knew he could have had me for a snack any time if he had wanted to, he did make me nervous. The way things were going I was a ball of nerves. But speaking of being scared, I have been really frightened only twice out there in the wild. The first time was when I was attacked by a fish in the Thompson river, and the second time by a partridge….
-Are you alright? He nods, but I can tell he is in pain. So I give him a minute.
-I was having a dip sitting shoulder deep in a calm pool, when this laacon like monster stuck his ugly head out of the water, big open mouth full of sharp teeth and mean-looking eyes zooming straight at me. I realized later that it had been one of those big ugly salmons, springs maybe, who happened to be going after a fly, which happened to be flying straight towards yours truly, who, on short notice, tried his best to master the trick of running on water. I give him another minute but then I decided not to tell him about the partridge attack.
So, when failure comes from a totally unexpected quarter and it comes disarmingly triumphant, I cannot be bitter about it, maybe not even feel defeated, because I never really stood a chance. I’m up in the morning after another miserable cold and wet night inside my small pup tent, squadrons of mosquitoes are hanging on the screen flaps and I hear the grizzly trashing around the camp site. I am about to spray my arse with repellent before I run out to have a shit, and think maybe the bear is attracted to my sweet-smelling arse, and I am thinking that this is my appointed day! F. DAY! I can’t even laugh. It is supposed to be perfect. I grab my small pack, crawl out of my bright orange cocoon backwards, it shakes and makes a swishing…maybe a hissing sound that startles the grizzly, who runs away a few quick strides, then, just as quickly he stops, turns around and stands facing this strange creature. I was so mad I could have torn him to pieces, so I glared straight at his eyes and yelled as loud as I ever yelled, which can be pretty damn loud…-I AM OUT OF HERE!... YOU CAN HAVE YOUR FUCKING MOUNTAIN! O.K?! Which further confused the grizzly since he knew fuck-all about distinctions and so he naturally assumed that I was yelling at him. I don’t know bear language and so I may be wrong, but though he kept his eyes on me and stood as big as the Shaq, he lowered his nose slightly and turned his head to one side a tiny angle, so that his eyes now looked at me indirectly, askance and, I thought, guiltily. The thing that I missed at the time was that at that moment I forgot me for a second, and I felt what the bear felt so clearly that for that second I was him…. I turned around and walked away. Big bears too, can have nightmares.
A few minutes later Nickle pointed out that the bear was probably a young grizzly, an adolescent male, the most unwanted thing in the forest. The mother doesn’t want him, his siblings don’t want him, the older males and females don’t want him, and then poor thing, even I had to get on his back. I hope it doesn’t screw him up altogether. In fact, he wasn’t half as big as the giant I saw a few days earlier, down the mountain. Had he been that big I might not have yelled at him. I might not even been alive by then. But a day or two earlier, I had come across his tracks, and I figured his front paws pads to be over seven inches wide on a hard-packed road.
I didn’t tell Nickle about the partridge because it would be too frustrating to fail to convey my anguish, my great shame. I was really devastated by that senseless tragedy. In fact, it more than anything else, had put an end to my grandiose undertaking. It happened on the eve of my ascension. I was deeply disappointed and angry with myself because I knew that I could never have planned a scenario for a more certain failure. Everything had to be perfect! I felt that I had earned the right for everything to be perfect! Yeah right!
I was walking with my long crook, chewing on my bile when out of nowhere a monstrous serpent-like creature dashed for my feet. It had a sharp beak, ruffled-up scales on its neck and delta swept-back pointed horns. A huge viper? A mythical monster for a terrifying moment, and a moment later, a harmless partridge. This turned my fright into blind fury; I swung my staff and sure enough I couldn’t have missed. It was as though my epiphany, my enthusiasm and years of preparations, followed by months of frustrations and finally defeat and despair had all been a set up, a grand scheme to drive me to this senseless and utterly shameful act of rage. I had come to Mount Niut not to do a great deed but to kill a stupid “mother.” I tell you, mothers have to be the stupidest creatures. Lovers next, I suppose, and then fathers. I have to rewrite the ending.
I came for a bold conclusion, to put an end to half of all this madness, to ante up and assume my full dimension. I found instead my starting point. A victim still! A monster again? I have to tell you that for a moment, a hell of a long moment on this bed of sharp distinctions, I did think so, that I had failed…that all was lost. Hahaha-ha! Not so! NOT SO! One cannot get anywhere unless one finds the starting point first. Life, life, that narrow ledge! As long as I live I am on it. There I cannot avoid thinking “What If– What if not?” ONE STEP! That one and only omnipotent act of will to life absolute. Life beyond measure which had been mercifully but tragically and comically hidden by the image of the divine. The true function of religion...well you know. Anyway! The first commandment rewritten, -I am your will, you shall have no other will before me. The supreme commandment that calls for me to overcome my primeval fear, my natural limit…. Failing that, to climb another Mount Niut, or some other glittering make-believe to avoid the challenge, day in and day out, and to sweet suffocate on a long syrupy sigh….




Episode 60


Second epiphany

And because I had finally recognized that mortal things do not befit a mortal, as Pindar sang, they are his moira that stultify and defeat him, I was inspired to do something to commemorate the event. I was camping on a beach and what was at hand were rocks! So what came out of it was an upside-down, drunk, anthropomorphic, Eskimo Inukshuk with his mukluks kicking gaily at heaven.
It was hilarious, besides being emblematic, or at least symptomatic of my recalcitrant ways, and as I was about to leave I wished that someone could take a picture of it for me. And (with me wonders never cease) here comes synchronicity in the person of Mister John MacFarland in a canoe on one of his legendary trips to nowhere, for lack of better reason, heading straight for it to take a picture. We talked, and by and by he asked me how we might fare in the afterlife.
-Nothing doing then! Too late! This is it! I told him. -It is here and now–heaven and hell spread out before you. You make it here or you have never been, period. Look not yonder. This is the crucible. Here you can forge yourself into Zeus or be turned to slag. How can anyone think that all this is but a divine playground, a hobby or an experiment. No-sirry! This is it. This is the all or nothing event of becoming, and knowing it gives you the power to choose what it is going to be for you and affect the whole shebang in the doing. It is like a main switch has been provided. It is big, big magic, yours and mine. Click!
All limitations gone! The only act of omnipotence!
You see when you are, when you are anything at all, you are that and nothing also. The void and only the void, is the state of omni-potentiality, anything or everything. The so-called state of becoming, and I can't describe what it is like, because it is the moment of truth...the Tao. But I can tell you that it requires an act of true faith and that when you have that kind of faith you are virtually omnipotent.
Yeah, limitations, that what it is all about, you can have them on or off. Nothing is lost, potentially all is gained. So what if you have to give up a dubious and miserable reality. Something that is in effect like those dreams one does not recall in the morning! So is life, with only one major difference; now that I am ON, the off switch is available to me, this entitles me. Apart from this, I is but a label on a ephemeral event, part of a humongous fractal process to which I am but a swirl fading in the distance. Folly, especially wilful and brave folly, evades the thresher. Everything else goes to the granary where the seeds, with only their mathematical code-links, will be stored and then in them time be planted and reactivated for another season and another try. Nature can do no more than provide for the best possible odds and that the rest is up to us. In Jesus' words: Be ye perfect, or he who loves this life looses it...he who rejects it wil have everlasting life...etc. By the way, I talked to Constantine about these biblical inconsistencies and contradictiions because I often wondered how they could have evaded his sharp discernment, or is mom's. I said, -Hey Tino.... Ach no, I said. -My divine emperor! How is it that these contradictory statements evaded your sharp judgement and found their way into the sleek and pragmatic presentation the bishops cooked up for you?
-Not at all in fact. I imposed those on them, these ideas tickled my intellectual fancy and my mother agreed that they should be included, just in case they proved valuable to some exceptional future philosopher or theologian.
-Ach, that is simply wonderful, thank you! I just could not see how they would have slipped up on such radically controversial propositions.
-Yes, in fact they objected heatedly, they pointed out that including them would lead to confusion among the faithful. I retorted that for confusion to occur one must first provide a mind, and that we were not confronted with a problem of that sort. Anyway, in fine I had my way, and as you can see I was proven right. Mindless people are predictable, and all I cared about, as you may suspect, was their heroic mindlessness, which they were obviously capable, was that it could infuse some verve in my anaemic empire. I was wrong on that point of course. It did not help; once a social cycle is on a down-swing the historical remedy is war against a neighbouring society and as it happened, I was not aware that there were any left or that they were worth the effort....

And yeah, in P’yongyang, WE are marching.




Episode 61


He lied to me, the emperor lied to me! I could hardly believe it. I went away kind of satisfied about the explanation but then I started mulling it over. And what would not go down was that bit of injecting some verve, loyalty and preferably fanaticism into the blood of the empire. But hell! The early Christians would accept martyrdom for themselves and their families rather than fight! They went to their deaths singing like it was a festival! That extreme dedication to their belief, that fanaticism was precisely what he must have considered so dangerous to the welfare of the society. So if you can't lick them, join them. In this case, persuade them to join. Paul got the message on the way to Damascus. I never studied that part of this historical event I was only concerned to glean out of that smorgasbord of Nicea, the true Jesus. I knew from the beginning that before Jesus, religion in the Greco-Roman world was a matter of trying to influence one's horoscope by propitiating one god or another, or a combination of them; there were many choices. After Jesus though, this playing the odds was no longer possible because he brought to the forum an idea so radical that upon examination proved impossible to evade. People then, were forced to choose one way or the other. He had brought a sword into the world. Be perfect, he said, -You must die and be reborn of the spirit. You must hate this life–heaven is within you–and all of this in the here and now. The kingdom of heaven is spread before you. That is why the young man who had a rich life walked away greatly troubled. Jesus preached the 'thou art that' here and now! This life was not a stage, this was it. And in a world where life was brutish and short, this proposition caught on. By it, they were transformed, they seemed immune to fear, this awesome transformation had given them the power to overcome their deepest emotions and this inspired others to embrace this overcoming, this transcendence of one's natural physical condition and despair. After Nicea, Martyrdom went out like a light almost.
Still interesting though, how did some of these radical ideas survive? There must have been a faction among the bishops who fought tooth and nail to preserve the original doctrine, and these sayings of Jesus were included in the gospels to appease them, but it was too little, and the old and less demanding propitiatory custom prevailed, with the addition of yet another intercessor. Jesus Christ the saviour.




Epilogue


Life, whether in its brutal or idyllic aspects , stands in the way of man’s spiritual progress with its demands, lures and subterfuges. Yet man's aspirations cannot be denied and so religious institutions, particularly the three major western religion, have found ground to arise, establish and grow to almost universal assent by offering tailored doctrines which are spiritual compromises enabling its adherents to feel that they can thus manage and satisfy both conflicting demands of his nature. What is most demeaning and most destructive to man in this arrangement, is that in the exchange he is encouraged to feel helpless, to resign himself and consign the fate of his soul to the mercy of divine grace, thus defaulting on his potential, shirking on his responsibilities and–as it regards his character–relegating it to the embryonic state of a still-born creature. The enormity of this tragedy is that life is also the only real connection to our eternal and supreme essence. I have wandered for years now on this loom of deception, making now some progress, now backsliding and restarting, now confused and now enlightened, but one thing I never considered doing was to give up, to surrender, because life is ceaseless striving: -Would that strife may cease among gods and men… wished Homer, but soon the fundamental fallacy for a system of opposites was pointed out. Life, existence, is striving. Striving to get from under, striving to get on top, then striving to maintain, and in the end even striving to keep striving! And in striving, failure is implicit, it would not be striving nor strife without the risk of failure. And isn’t it absurd that assuming that we do indeed have a soul or a budding spiritual dimension, major religions assures us that we need not strive or risk anything to deserve it or secure it? According to Christianity in fact ( the only doctrine about which I feel competent enough to speak for) one only needs to believe in Christ the saviour to insure oneself a glorious and eternal spiritual experience. It is as though the purpose of this great experiment is not to risk, but to give up.
I have accepted risk and failure, I would fail over and over again rather than believe even if for an instant that to fulfil my spiritual potential all that is required of me is to throw myself at the mercy of a divine personal saviour. I am Gameteus, I am the essential half and state of becoming of all there is. I am out of the pit, I am free! I am ALONE!

Email from Alessandra,
Ciao zio, mi ricordo quando mi dicesti che avresti pisciato in testa a chi stava nella fossa quando ti chiedevano una mano, perchè tu te ne eri tirato fuori, SI IO HO PROPRIO la sensazione di stare in quella fossa, allora ti domando - come te ne sei tirato fuori? - C'è una strada..!?

There was a bit more to the story she referred to in her unexpected message. Quite a bit more indeed! In that vision I was not going to resign like everyone else to being there in that dark pit and I was not going to make the best of it like some suggested: Why don’t you find yourself a nice quite spot somewhere, build yourself a cosy place, yeah with a white picket fence and a white bicycle on the lawn. Most of them were not that kind, they took great pleasure in jeering and laughing at me because no one had ever made it out of the pit and so, in their minds, no one could, but there was Claudio, day and night, at that stupid wall. He just could not get it into that silly head of his that it wasn’t possible and that he should be content like all others, with what was available like everyone else. One day I made it though. I don’t know how, most of the time visions do not go into details. But, there I was, standing on the rim of it looking down at all of them that used to mock me and were now bursting out in cheers. They were hailing me as their hero and beseeching me to help them, to tell them how they could follow my example and escape from the dark deep pit and their limitations. But for some reason I did not understand, nor really question it, at that moment of glory on that edge looking down at those miserable creatures, something told me that I had to piss on them before I walked away. That I had to do that! What seemed curious to me about it, was that I was not prompted to piss on them as they went on hailing and imploring me, as an act of sweet personal revenge. Not at all! If anything, it felt like I would be doing my duty towards the poor bastards. I would be helping them in some way. So it was like I was performing an act of pure and selfless kindness. Upon further reflection, and trying whenever I can to bring into play some solipsism or the priority of the actual, I thought that maybe in this case the effect produced the cause. I was pissing on them in the actual, hence I was placed out of the pit by that act. So how you will get out depends on how you will have acted when you are out.



The wheels on the large wooden horse should have been a dead give-away.
Nature still puts wheels on all her “gifts” and we still wheel them home.

And then we make bayonets... Bayonets, nay, one bayonet! is an indictment on all humanity just as one suffering child is on the whole of nature. Yet this is so because there is as yet no true communication between the creative force or Logos and its creaturely consciousness, experience and intelligence. Because of it, the creative force goes forth like a blind fury while its living senses are cut off and hurled into the maelstrom and consumed. What made the situation irreversible and hopeless in the first place, was the persistent tragic misconception that the responsibility, power and discretion to bridge the gap and hence give direction and order and thus to make sense of it all, rested with the creative force or Logos. It did not. It rested with us, its hypocritical humble all too humble creatures.

And so. still in this state, -In P’yongyang, I, I and I and I and I! are marching.



                                                          O Beauty! O endless love-life-drunken world!
                                                   O Beauty! O endless love-life-drunken world!