CHURCH OF ART

So I left the parking lot and went a whole 75 feet before I realized that I still had time to spend so I came back, parked, and then went into the bar where I found a pal and his girl sitting there at the bar. I had a whiskey and then engaged in animated banter of a sort that I can only have with certain people. This friend is notorious in town for being a womanizer and a hoodlum in general not to mention being rambunctious beyond toleration sometimes. But, when we get on a roll it’s like having a great sword fight that is so fun you don’t care who wins. I try to steal his women and fool him but he’s aware of every nuance and quick on the draw. The girl was drunk and I complemented her on her spatial temporal skills as she tilted a martini so far over that the surface tension of the liquid was the only thing keeping it in the glass. Then she promptly poured half a glass of water down her front. Well it was a great 20 minutes but then I went to my destination, which was a so called artist’s salon where I proceeded to have my head dunked under such foreign water that I could only sit and look at my fingers. Three artists presented their work for speculation. There were some good photos and one story. But all and all it reminded me of being in church many years ago when I sat wondering what the fuck those people were talking about. I just could not empathize with the concerns being presented and the thought that kept going through my head was, “How can so many people be like this?” The only thing I found slightly interesting was that I noticed all three of the presentations had one common thread within their media. And that was the relationship gone bad, or gone away, or gone crazy. And it made me wonder about the playground of church and art. I realized that I really was being  creeped out in the same way a church used to creep me out because I don’t believe what the people are saying. And the symbols met nothing to me. People were oohing and aahing at things that I just couldn’t see and it occurred to me that they were grooming each other and stroking delicate veneers of confidence. I do believe that great art really does come from great wells. It’s a ridiculous thing but everything I’ve ever seen or read about it would support that idea. Last night, I realized that these people’s version of life and its meaning was so overly concocted and spattered with sophistry that the art itself was just a little thing in the background. Way too much extraneous material! Way too much cold analysis mixed with what would appear to me to be treacle emotion. The most frightening thing was thinking, “What if it’s not treacle emotion?” THAT’s the part that makes me feel like a Martian. I just can’t believe my ears.  Anyway, I really felt like I was back in a church where everything was fundamentally wrong and deeply disconcerting to me. But we just can’t stop trying to make magic out of our ho hum lives. I don’t blame anyone for trying. I liked drinking in the parking lot. I drove the LB home and listened to her rational and comfortably sensible version of things while we sat on the porch and had a night cap. These people give me energy. There’s no doubt about it. But I’m not sure it’s positive.  I just wish the notion of church was not so oddly connected to artistic endeavors. It give me the chills down  my neck.

DELTA HEAT

It has been unusually warm for the last couple of days but today it has been downright hot. It shouldn’t bother me but it does bother me and I was trying to figure out why. And then I realized that it’s because the sun is in the wrong place for it to be hot. Should I be so used to things being a certain way? During the last ice age, sea levels were several hundred feet below where they are now. There were large swaths of land that are now buried under tons of dark water. So I wonder what it would be like to know that the paths you took and the places from which you woke have vanished. That the views and horizons that marked your spot simply cannot be found anymore. I’ve been slaving away all day on the roof of my house where every now and then I’ll stop and look out at the fields and hills. I imagine fish and whales swimming down the valley fifty thousand years from now. I imagine my house as a long lost shipwreck subsumed by the weather  but maybe leaving some chunk of cinderblock or footer under the ocean. And then I wonder about days and nights that were lived out where there was air and stars, in a place that had bearings and maybe even a name. Sometimes I’ll come in late after boozing and smoking. I’ll pass out and then wake up some hours later in the smallest hours. I’ll will open my window and this cold sweet smell will wash over my face. I think that I’m smelling chlorophyll and oxygen but it reminds me of water because it really does flow over my face in a very perceptible way. I would give just about anything to have five minutes of seeing time around fifty thousand years from now. I don’t know what would be the point, but I’d want to see it and I know just where I’d want to be… if I could find it.

THE CHILD BEARING SKY

Well I saw three hundred centuries go up in smoke while the ground rolled under my feet and millions of creatures scattered in no direction.  The horizon thundered and white light sizzled across the weeping grasses while any little thing containing water steamed inside out. There was a rumble so low and chthonic that I thought it would make me sick but I was too thrilled by the scenery to be overcome and everywhere I turned I saw what I knew to be the last things visible. Light was twisting into strange afterglows irradiated by trillions of trillions of mad electrons and broken matter that knew nothing but the immutable laws of the universe. “We’re trying to make a star.” I told the girl. She was terrified but she was also young enough to be deceived about the nature of time… if only I could hold myself together enough to concoct a suitable story.  ”Can we live on a star?” She asked. What do you say? “We came from stars.” I replied. “But can we live there now?” she asked. So I wondered. Do I want the last story I ever tell to be a lie? And there it is. The crux of my choices… the social instinct or the truth. Would I ever ever grasp the destructiveness of the truth within the social sphere? But the social sphere was now a tiny bubble of two. And then I realized an awful thing. I was torn between the welfare of this child’s last moments and my own desire to simply look at the scenery and contemplate the implications of the absolute end. Did I have it in me to give up something, unobserved by any judge or jury of peers? Could I comfort this girl with a story about living in stars while I watched the curtain come down? There was not time for deliberation and when I realized the nature of my dilemma I thought, “I never was a person.” So I picked her up and started walking toward the wall of steam and dust rolling at us while the sky disappeared and the sun whimpered a solemn so long. We were warm and happy. There was no explanation beyond and somehow it came to me that there needn’t be. That was that.

CANTHUS

I just can’t figure it out. I love where I live but I never want to be there. I am constantly hopping in my truck and just going somewhere else. A cup of coffee in Staunton. A run in Buena Vista. A stroll in Covington. And sometimes I think that no matter where I am, I want to be somewhere else. When I’m far away from home then I yearn to go back. It’s such an amazing feeling to roll up to the house and see that it’s still there while various pets creep out of the bushes and contemplate trespassers and non-trespassers. But then I want to leave again after a few days. If I had a good jet I would fly a thousand miles away every day. I would love to have tea in Afghanistan, eat a chunk of opium, and shoot rocks with a rifle. Then come home and hop in the bathtub for a beer and a book. All within an hour or two. But when I think about it more seriously I begin to wonder if I have a little problem. Namely, I might just want to get out of my skin. I don’t think I’m ever comfortable unless I’m out like a light, and then, well I don’t even know it. When I’m as happy as happy can be I know it’s transient so I’m uncomfortable. When I’m moving I’m sort of comfortable. Last night I was sitting in a dreadful place looking out of a giant window. I was staring at this flag which was undulating very gracefully and I thought of a dancing girl’s hand. There were small violet lights speckling on the outside and amber lights reflecting on the inside. There was an eyeful of stuff. And I realized that I was sort of comfortable… because I was somewhere other than where I was. What a pickle! PS. It just hit me. It’s because of the ship maybe.

INSIDE OUT

Well last night I went for another run up the quarry hill. It’s a great run though it sets your heart pounding as hard as your feet. Fortunately, I have lots of diversions. First I stopped at the giant drain that servers the quarry lake and while I was looking down into the giant hole that had water falls on all four sides, I saw that I was being spied upon by a beaver who was swimming a serpentine pattern about thirty feet away. I tried to coax it over to me and it came pretty close but beavers don’t listen much better than cats or dogs. I don’t know why animals mesmerize me so much but I watch them like other people watch TV, all the time wondering what is going through their minds. I imagine their prime thought is something like, “is it edible?” I continued running keeping my ear open for other trespassers and quarry people until I got to the top. It was just about dark but there was a giant hole in the sky to the west which was glowing blue and pink. I climbed around looking at the explosion line and the painted rocks that denoted charges. It was a odd contrast between the cold, beautiful, twilight and the devastation done to the mountain. There are facades of natural stone, aged and revealed by years and then there is the facade of stone where the hill has been blown away from itself. It looks messy and unnatural even though it is simply a giant wall of stone. I climbed around bulldozers and trucks that are as big as my whole house. It makes you feel like an ant. I could see cars coming down 29 miles away. Little white dots coming and little red dots going. When it was finally dark I went down into the maw of the most hungry thing. It’s this machine that’s buried in concrete and stone on the side of the mountain. I went down the catwalks and stairs until I was in the bottom. There is an abnormal green light and a coat of dead grey dust on everything. I went through tunnels and carefully worked along pipes that kept me out of the fine slime. There are no foot prints down there but mine and I love it. My path is like a giant U, going down one side and up on the other. When I get to the machine it is still hot and the whole space smells like grease and metal. The machine is a giant funnel big enough to dump cars into. It has a post in the middle that looks like a chess pawn and this thing shakes so violently that it smashes boulders into small rocks. This is where the mountain is reduced, digested, and then spit out onto a perfectly uniform hill below. I just don’t know what to think about it. I really love the machines that make me stand and stare. Especially the giant brutal machines. I wonder about the people who think on that scale and how it happens. But I wonder about eating a whole mountain too. Later, I’m driving into town, on the way to the diner, and I wonder how much of that mountain I’m driving on and how much of it has been molded into buildings and side walks. It may be all around me even when I’m miles away. Well, I guess that’s something.

THE PLACES

Well I was just putting my head down for some desperately needed sleep when I thought of something that would be better thought about while looking out the window. I was looking and thinking, thinking and looking. I just couldn’t shake something into sense. But then I noticed that two horses had escaped and were running around the yard. So I got out of bed, got dressed, found a halter, and worked on rounding up the horses. I finally caught one, Leary, who kept jerking his head up and trying to tear off my arm. I got him in but the other escapee wouldn’t cooperate. I tried all sorts of tricks but none of them worked. So I just stood there and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if a hunter’s errant shot hit me between the eyes? Wouldn’t it be nice to see what it was like all those years ago when there was simply nothing to fret about?” Well, of course, I don’t want to be shot between the eyes but I would give just about anything for some peace in my head. I am notorious for not planning very far ahead in my life which has always worked out fine for me. I’ll have an idea which I start working on and then something’s done… that’s it. But now I not only don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, I don’t even know what I’m going to do right now. How bizarre to realize that a wild messy life has spoiled me rotten. I simply cannot feel bad for myself even though I do feel bad. The slightest self pity strikes me hard and immediately as pathetic. I have just about everything I could possibly want but some important something seems frightfully out of my hands or maybe beyond my reach and I don’t even know HOW to worry. But something creeps in that is very much like a worry. A really wild worry that can’t be wrangled into repose or hope. Some brew of elation and sadness that will not mix into a tolerable draught but instead makes for a frantic mind which is looking for a part of me that can understand it. I guess that’s it. Frantic. I feel frantic. But I just can’t be frantic. I can’t. I get these snippets of pure bliss that seem to wash away in the torrent leaving me blinking and addled. I want bliss. Why would any one want anything different? Finally I threw the halter at the resistant horse and he bolted through a little path into the weeds and back to the fields. I don’t know what else things can do but work out somehow. I would be more comfortable if I knew, but I don’t suppose I ever will. Actually, I think I just need a nice bout of sleep which I intend to arrest, cuff, cage, and interrogate through the night.

FURIOUSLY TIME

The good and the bad. They’ve certainly happened to me in the last few days. There’s this movie called Shoot the Piano Player that is a beautiful little French film about some trouble between various people. It’s a great movie but one scene catches my attention most. A man and woman are lying in bed and the man’s eyes are shut. The woman is lying with her head turned to the man and she has beautiful happy eyes and a lovely smile. She’s telling him about himself and the film keeps flashing away from them and then coming back so that they may have shifted slightly or moved their eyes but there is this wonderful sense of time going by and there’s this sense of them reveling in their proximity and their discovery of each other within the larger scheme of what’s going on around them. I don’t know why I’m so taken by that segment of the film but it hits me every time. Well since I am perhaps the luckiest person on earth I had this very scene play out at my house during the last few days. A lovely friend has been visiting and this morning it was just like in the movie. We would wake up to the wind rattling the windows or the coyotes howling at a train whistle and we’d lie there looking at the sky racing by and the birds floating around over the mountains. I’d look down at her face and just think, “How could I be here?” It’s very innocent but I swear, in some strange way, it’s more enticing than anything. There’s nothing more to say about it. I’m terribly lucky. Now… the flip side of the coin. The piper’s price, so to speak. The other day we’re out messing around with the horses and the dog. I jump up on Sasha’s ding dong of a horse, Leary, and I’m flopped across his back lying on my stomach. The dog does something that makes the horse buck. So I fly up in the air and miraculously land on my feet right behind the horse. For one thousandth of a second I’m thinking, “whew, that was close,” then the horse kicks me right in the crotch. Good god all mighty, “Have I just been kicked in the balls by a horse?” The thought of it is more horrible than the reality. I fell down to the ground and worked on elements of composure. The girl thought I got kicked in the chest and I told her it kicked my in the front of my thigh. All in all it was not too bad. My eyes didn’t even water. If that horse would have given me a full fledged kick I think I’d be somewhere else now. So, how many people can say it? “I got kicked in the balls by a horse. And I’m lucky.” It’s true.

WALKING ELSEWHERE

It’s very soft and quiet except for a barely audible clicking which indicates the system is alive. I can see the waves of dust rolling across prairies which span hundreds of kilometers and when they run into a glitch in the land the clouds rush upwards, thin out, and then coalesce near the ground to continue their roaming. On the little screen I can see a woman sitting, bouncing her foot to some rhythm from her earpods. Her hair is dyed black but she’s fooling no one. She’s had her husband, her kid, and her life… she blew it. The radio cracks slightly and a broadcast of Bill and Melinda Gates comes through. They’ve saved another 150K children in Africa. The interviewer, who is clearly on crack, asks them about the millions of starving people helped back in the early eighties via food programs and who are now over one billion starving people. They are speechless.  I turn off the communicator and continue walking. I enjoy the ticking in my helmet because it is so delicate and its presence augments the silence in between. A chime rings twice and three messages come through. Friends from earth sending invitations and notifications of their various causes and businesses. Into the trash. The ground lights up with a deep blue glow and I am walking within the giant letter M which stands for Matelda, the new shop. The word Matelda is being beamed onto the poor planet by a laser as part of an advertising campaign. Matelda has taken off like a rocket. It is a business that literally sells ideas. You walk in, plop down your card, and you will be given an idea that you can take home to your husband or your wife and unless they see the receipt they will think that you actually thought of something. Matelda has gone solar, to use the vernacular. The blue light vanishes and I continue walking. I can see my pod just over the horizon. It’s the size of a needle point but the unusual refraction of light allows for some incredible visual acuity. Oh to see!  If I could just see things clearly! Who knows?  During the interviews I admitted that I didn’t know and that’s how I wound up here. Everyone else knew, or so they would say. But I admitted, “I don’t know.” The ground lights up again. I am walking across a nipple that is three hundred kilometers in diameter. They’re showing porn on Mars again. At least they cut to the quick on that I thought. Why waste time trying to attract attention with tripe? It’s all about getting the eyes. Two eyes are worth exactly 34 dollars per second. I refused to look at things though. That is, I refused to look at things that were created specifically to attract attention. Probably 5 billion eyes were  trained in on Mars which was now clearly visible to the naked eye as the atmosphere on earth had mutated into something like a giant magnifying glass. The giant nipple began to move and then I was in the flesh which gave the whole scene a pallid very neutral hue. I lost just about every single person I knew to attention. The incessant quest for eyes ate them up. I tried to tell them that they were insecure and they replied that it was just for fun. They danced and were filmed up by gigs of memory which poured into the cauldron of streaming monotony. Finally, one day I woke up and realized that I didn’t know a soul on earth. There may have been ten billion bodies but all I saw was  one teeming carpet of skin bent on subsuming every fleck of everything and turning it into meaningless spectacle and streamlined agreement. When they packed me up and shot me off I laughed into the communicator and said, “Aim me for the twat on Mars!” And that was the last time they talked to me. But it worked out perfectly. I do my job. I’m growing the little mugs in their dishes and vials. I’m learning genetics and ashtanga. Once a week I let my results go down the beam and they deposit some money in a building somewhere. I learned how to imagine everything I need and I found that there’s just no limit.

AU

Well yesterday I was out in the hills with a friend climbing around the mountains and slipping down the leaves. I climbed up onto some rocks and found this tiny puddle of water with one leaf in it. I wondered why there was a tiny puddle of water there while everything else was dry. I was on my hands and knees looking at this small puddle when a drop of water hit me on the head. I looked up and a couple of seconds later another drop of water hit me in the eye. What a discovery! The most microscopic water fall on earth! The one drop water fall. I tried to video it but no matter where I moved the drop of water would hit me in the face and not land on the lens of the camera. There didn’t seem to be the slightest breeze but the drop of water would curve and weave in a different path every time. It was an astonishing find and so I have begun work to get this waterfall on the endangered species list. Is this whacked? If you believe in relativism, particularly social relativism, and then you look at facebook, you will see that it is extremely difficult to be any more whacked. But I will strive.

CRAM

I was out of town only 48 hours or so and came back to this: Two giant holes dug by dog, one industrial vacuum cord eaten by dog, horses missing, one note on door implying that I really should help my neighbor win political office by serving as a greeter on voting day and another note on door notifying me that my addition, which is wildly out of compliance via the dreary code, has been picked by the county as the winner of a surprise inspection. My response? Fuck ‘em all! But of course I’ve been welding my ass off trying to make my tower into something less deadly before tomorrow’s inspection and I’ve run numerous implausible scenarios through my mind which I will present to the inspector. Also, I WILL volunteer to be a server for my neighbor so that if he is elected as a supervisor I can take revenge on the inspections department. I filled in the holes and repaired the vacuum cleaner cord. I found the horses hiding up in some woods, covered in burrs, and just as phenomenally stupid as ever since, as usual, they can figure out how to escape but not how to return. I just received my new passport yesterday and I’m itching to leave. But, I wonder, what would I come back to? Blah, blah, blah.