Please join me today, if you will, for a little time traveling into a distant past…
_______
“What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well.”
Haruki Murakami
________
“The world and society in 1913 looked like this: life is completely confined and shackled…the most burning question day and night is this: is there anywhere a force that is strong enough and above all vital enough to put an end to this state of affairs?
A thousand-year-old culture disintegrates. There are no columns and no supports, no foundations anymore. They have all been blown up. The meaning of the world has disappeared.”
Hugo Ball
FLIGHT OUT OF TIME
1927
Well, the world hasn’t changed much, at least not for the better…
________
“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
John Milton
(engraved in Olde English in the wood above a doorway in the New York City Public Library)
________
“”All poems are occasional, the products of circumstance…”
Goethe
________
“Every poem is a response to an exterior or interior stimulus. The circumstance is that which surrounds us and which, whether as obstacle or spur, is the origin of the poem, the accident that provokes its appearance. But the circumstances are neither explanations nor substitutes for the poems, they are autonomous realities. Poems are born from a circumstance and yet, as soon as they are born, they free themselves and take on a life of their own.”
Octavio Paz
________
I just came across this old classic that I wrote like 20-plus years ago. It must have been intended as the beginning or the introduction of another book I forgot to write. Whatcha gonna do? A.D.D has got a hold of me. I`m all over the fucking place. I`m much more suited to writing these short form Street Journals with their intentionally erratic flow. Whatever, here it is….
RUBICON
“The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.”
Franz Kafka
rubicon – a point that when passed, allows no return…
I remember the emerald green grass and the trees and the vast, blue ocean. I recall the warm summer breezes and the songs of the crickets in the misty nights, and in the darkness, the smell of jasmine, gardenias…at least I THINK I remember these things.
It seems to me that despite this urban jungle into which I was born, all my best memories are of the natural world, the edge places, when I was alone, away from the howling chaos of the city. I walked down empty paths, hard to find, and sometimes found that these paths went nowhere at all, which is where I wanted to be. I dreamed empty dreams and awoke on a sunlit beach in a cartoon world where nothing was what it seemed, nothing was real. I staggered down long, broken boulevards with junkyard vistas and convenience store oases. There were shopping mall churches and great towers of high finance and the clone housing of gated communities. The land was torn and abused, a landscape as surreal as the moon and every bit as desolate. I walked in a bubble, a shell, an armor, but it was never enough. This city had a way of penetrating any protection and could leave you feeling like a used-up whore on Hollywood Blvd. at 5am. You’ve probably figured out by now this magical city that I speak of, this land of dreams and nightmares, this plastic palace; this is Los Angeles, the town of my birth.
Southern California has been pillaged and plundered more than any territory in the U.S. Never has there been a land more ridiculously over-developed, more polluted, more swarmed upon by the virus of human greed. They take so much and give so little. They destroy nature to make room for more and more corner mini-malls. They turn rivers into sewers. They smother the Earth with urban sprawl. But this is not an environmental study. This is not an EPA report or a bulletin to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. This is a series of stories brought together as one – a scattered potpourri of strange tales from one man’s life, unto a point. It is a portrait of a traveler and an artist and a goddamned fool. It’s the story of a fairly intelligent man who often went against his better instincts despite the consequences, who stormed ahead fearlessly, dead-reckoning for oblivion. It’s just some stuff that happened. Many stories have a linear format or a plot, something that connects them in a nice and neat manner. But sometimes that is just too easy and convenient to be real. All that connects my tales is the thread of life itself. Real life often makes no sense and things just happen and we all sit around wondering why. It’s enough to make your fucking head spin but the problem with me is that I just keep blundering forward in the dark, dizzy and stupid, without a clue, a man possessed. Looking back, I was impulsive and reckless and lazy. I don’t see that much has changed. I am fully aware of the many things I’ve done wrong, but I’m not sorry. This is us. This is humanity, ugly and beautiful in all our imperfections. Perhaps this thought process makes me all the more a fool. Not to worry. Someday, we’ll all be dead.
As to what happened, I can neither decipher the hidden meanings of the past nor predict the future. I can no more discern the purpose of these things than I could make sense of the random patterns of waves on the boundless oceans. You’d think there’d be a reason, a bond, so to speak, to tie all these things together, but if there is, I have yet to figure it out. Things in life seem to have an obscure and chaotic way of working out in the end, just not the way that you planned them. Therein lies the mystery… the elusive and unpredictable element of surprise. And please, ask yourself this simple question; without surprises, would life really be worth living? If you are expecting a nostalgic trip down memory lane, one filled with family picnics and warm fuzzy kittens and frisbees and Hallmark greeting cards, you’re in for a big fucking surprise. If you think you’re in for a Charles Dickens-like tale of orphaned, lost youth, barefoot and dirty faces, once again, you’d be disappointed. Expect philosophical rambling, pointless sentences that end suddenly, problems without solutions, and of course, questionable punctuation. There is no equation for this madness. Expect real life…no answers, just the brutal and unadorned truth. This is Los Angeles, a microcosm of the whole world, at the dawn of a new millenium…
I’m not even going to waste my time or yours telling you about my childhood. Everybody likes to blame their adult problems on things that happened in youth or on their parents. Of course, a small fraction of our psychological make-up can be linked to our younger years. But, in the end, it holds little importance in the person one becomes as an adult. It’s how you’re able to take the beatings along the way, how you face up to this hopeless shitstorm that we call life. It’s standing up to brutal odds, bravely walking your own path- these things are the most revealing. My childhood was fine…no excessive beatings, no one kept me in the basement or fed me dog food. My family and all my friends’ families were classic LA divorce scenarios, nothing surprising there for those in the know. In fact, my whole family clan is a classic textbook example of rotting family values, by the simple reason that this so-called “family” had disintegrated into nothingness by the time I was fourteen years old, a non-entity. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…all of them, I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. The only redeeming factor in that equation was always dear mom. She’s a sweetheart…one of the good ones in this ridiculous life. My friends were fun characters, although I see none of them now. I grew up at the beach; surfing, skateboarding, lurking at 7-11, and all the other thrilling and destructive activities of young beach punks. It was a golden time in a golden land. The ocean was always my best friend. Sunset was a ritual, a magical time of day. The things I worried about then are laughable now in the face of all I’ve seen. Problems rolled off me like water off a ducks’ back. The world seemed a dirty but well-lighted place with endless possibilities. The future looked bright and exciting, and like every kid with stars in his eyes, I had many various huge and important dreams that changed every month. I always had great expectations of myself, but actually living up to these lofty standards of mine, well, THAT WAS ANOTHER STORY. But I had a hell of a lot of fun trying, in my own deliberately lazy and half-assed way. I often expected everything to come to me, but as I got older, the blunt reality of it all clubbed me in the head; if you want something in life, you have to put yourself out there and TAKE IT…….
THB3
________
________
This is NOT the whole 584 line poem but rather some of my favorite parts. In light of all that I have read over the years, it is my opinion that, even in part, this is the best poem ever written. Read it while listening to a Frederic Chopin piano composition, preferably one of his “Nocturnes”, and you will see what I mean…
Sunstone
by Octavio Paz
(Piedra de Sol)
“A crystal willow, a poplar of water,
a tall fountain the wind arches over,
a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,
a course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving:
the calm course
of the stars or an unhurried spring,
water with eyes closed welling over
with oracles all night long,
a single presence in a surge of waves,
wave after wave till it covers all,
a reign of green that knows no decline,
like the flash of wings unfolding in the sky,
a path through the wilderness of days to come,
and the gloomy splendor of misery like a bird
whose song can turn a forest to stone,
and the imminent joys on branches that vanish,
the hours of light pecked away by the birds,
and the omens that slip past the hand,
a sudden presence like a burst of song,
like the wind singing in a burning building,
a glance that holds the world and all
its seas and mountains dangling in the air,
body of light filtered through an agate,
thighs of light, belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock, cloud-colored body,
color of a brisk and leaping day,
the hour sparkles and has a body,
the world is visible through your body,
transparent through your transparency,
I travel my way through galleries of sound,
I flow among echoing presences,
I cross transparencies as though I were blind,
a reflection erases me, I`m born in another,
oh forest of pillars that are enchanted,
through arches of light I travel into
the corridors of diaphanous fall,
dressed in the color of my desires,
you go your way naked as my thoughts,
I travel your eyes, like the sea,
tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,
the hummingbird burns in those flames,
I travel your forehead like the moon,
like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,
I travel your belly like your dreams,
I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way,
the endless corridors of memory, the doors
that open into an empty room
where all summers have come to rot,
jewels of thirst burn at its depths,
the face that vanishes upon recall,
the hand that crumbles at my touch,
the hair spun by a mob of spiders
over the smiles of years ago,
I search without finding, I write alone,
there`s no one here, and the day falls,
the year falls, I fall with the moment,
I fall to the depths, invisible path
over mirrors repeating my shattered image,
I walk through the days, the trampled moments,
I walk through the thoughts of my shadow,
I walk through my shadow in search of a moment,
writing of fire on a piece of jade,
crack in the stone, queen of snakes,
column of mist, spring in the rock,
lunar circus, aerie of eagles,
anise-seed, thorn tiny and mortal,
thorn that brings immortal pain,
shepherdess of valleys under the sea,
gatekeeper of the valley of the dead,
liana that drops from the cliffs of vertigo,
tangling vine, poisonous plant,
resurrection flower, grape of life,
lady of the flute and the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, salt in the wound,
branch of roses for the man shot down,
snow in August, gallows` moon,
writing of the sea on basalt rock,
writing of the wind on desert sand,
the sun`s last will, pomegranate, wheat,
there`s nothing in front of me, only a moment
chiseled from the dream, torn from the zero
of this night, lifted by hand, letter by letter,
while time, outside, gallops away,
and pounding at the doors of my soul
is the world with its bloodthirsty calendar,
all is transformed, all is sacred,
every room is the center of the world,
it`s still the first night, and the first day,
the world is born when two people kiss,
a drop of light from transparent juices,
the room cracks half-open like a fruit
or explodes in silence like a star,
I follow my raving, rooms, streets,
I grope my way through corridors of time,
I climb and descend its stairs, I touch
its walls and do not move, I go back
to where I began, I search for your face,
I walk through the streets of myself
under an ageless sun, and by my side
you walk like a tree, you walk like a river,
and talk to me like the course of a river,
you grow like wheat between my hands,
you throb like a squirrel between my hands,
you fly like a thousand birds, and your laugh
is like the spray of the sea, your head
is like a nebula, a star between my hands,
the world grows green again when you smile,
eating an orange,
—when was life ever truly ours?
when are we ever what we are ?
we are ill-reputed, nothing more
than vertigo and emptiness, a frown in the mirror,
horror and vomit, life is never
truly ours, it always belongs to the others,
life is no one`s, we are all life–
bread of the sun for the others,
the others that we all are–
door of being, dawn and wake me,
allow me to see the face of this day,
allow me to see the face of this night,
all communicates, all is transformed,
arch of blood, bridge of the pulse,
take me to the other side of this night,
where I am you, we are us,
the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined,
door of being: open your being
and wake, learn to be, form
your face, develop your features, have
a face I can see to see my face,
to see life until its death, a face
of the sea, bread, rocks and a fountain,
source where all our faces dissolve
in the nameless face, the faceless being,
the unspeakable presence of presences…
I want to go on, to go further, and cannot:
as each moment was dropping into another
I dreamt the dreams of dreamless stones,
and there at the end of the years like stones
I heard my blood, singing in its prison,
and the sea sang with a murmur of light,
one by one the walls gave way,
all the doors were broken down,
and the sun came bursting through my forehead,
it tore apart my closed lids,
cut loose my being from its wrappers,
and pulled me out of myself to wake me
from this animal sleep and its centuries of stone,
and the sun`s magic of mirrors revived
a crystal willow, a poplar of water,
a tall fountain the wind arches over,
a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,
a course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving”
- • • •
One of my paintings that is still in NYC somewhere was based on these words…
BLANCO
by Octavio Paz
The world a bundle of your images
From yellow to red to green,
pilgrimage to the clarities,
the word peers out from blue
whirls.
The drunk ring spins,
the five senses spin
around the centripetal
amethyst.
Dazzle:
I don`t think, I see
–not what I see,
the reflections, the thoughts I see.
Precipitations of music,
crystallized number.
An archipelago of signs.
Translucence,
mouth of truths,
clarity effaced by a syllable
diaphanous as silence:
I don`t think, I see:
–not what I think,
blank face of forgetting,
radiant void.
I lose my shadow,
I walk
through intangible forests,
sudden sculptures of the wind,
endless things,
sharpened paths,
I walk,
my steps
dissolving
in a space that evaporates
into thoughts I don`t think…
The unreality of the seen brings reality to seeing
- • • •
To me, these next two poems define New York City…the one of dreams…the one that lingers and haunts me like a scar upon my soul…
INTO THE MATTER
by Octavio Paz
Roar of engines
swollen river
whiplashing whistles
squeal of brakes
babble
flailing neon
knife wounds of electric light
Multicolored night
decked with signs
blinking letters
the leering wink of numbers
Night of countless tits
and a single bloody mouth
cats in heat monkeys panicked
Night in the bones
skeleton night
the headlights touch your secret plazas
the sanctuary of the body
the ark of the spirit
the lips of the wound
the wooded cleft of the oracles
City
heap of stones
in the sack of winter
Night grows
the tide grows
grim towers with fear at their throats
houses temples domes
petrified time
great masses of dream and pride
winter brands them with its cruel irons
stones chewed to the bone
by the century and its acids
the nameless evil
the evil with all the names
cyst
fixed
in the marrow of iron
in the blind joints of stone
City
a clock strikes
between your thighs
too late
too soon
Ages of smoke
battle in your skull
in your bed
the doomed centuries make love in sorrow
City of indescribable facade
crumbling memory
your demented speech
woven with reason
runs through my veins
your syllable ringing in my ears
your interminable phrase
As though suffering from loss of blood
the moon
rises over the rooftops
The moon
like a drunkard falls on its face
Stray dogs
pick the moon`s bone clean
A convoy of trucks
runs over the bodies of the moon
A cat crosses the bridge of the moon
The butchers wash their hands
in the water of the moon
The city stretches out in its alleys
goes to sleep in the empty lots
The city has become lost in its outskirts
Today one could say all the words
a skyscraper of bristling words
an enormous meaningless city
a grandiose incoherent monument
a miniature babbling Babel
others built you
the masters
the venerable immortals
seated on their rickety thrones
others made you the language of man
gibberish
crumbling words…
- • • •
COMING AND GOING
by Octavio Paz
Muddy November:
stained stone, bruised bone,
uncertain palaces.
I crossed through arches and over bridges,
I was alive, in search of life.
In a lunar room
the light lost its blood. Fish-men
exchanged cold reflections.
I was alive and saw many ghosts,
all made of flesh and bone, all of them greedy.
Tower of topaz and blood,
black tresses and amber breast,
the subterranean lady.
Tiger, heifer, octopus, ivy in flames:
she burned my bones, sucked my blood.
Bed an extinct planet,
night and body a mirror-trick,
lady a mountain of salt.
The sun of the high plains eats my remains:
I was alive and went in search of death.
_________
_________
“It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.”
Don DeLillo
AMERICANA
__________
This ridiculous old tale might have been my first attempt at a short story. The problem is that there is really no plot and no characters. It`s just a bunch of babbling, although it is, perhaps, somewhat amusing at times. It`s an immature story written with no clue what I was doing or what I was trying to say. If you don’t try though, you’ll never write anything at all, so at least I made the effort. Here it is…
LOOK INTO THE SUN
by THB3
+ + +
(The contradictions in everything somehow agree with each other)
+ + +
I was having a vivid dream…
Some kind of bizarre solar storm or magnetic field had knocked the Earth off its normal orbit around the sun. Exceedingly drastic weather changes were taking place all around the globe as we spiralled ever closer to oblivion. It was like that old “Twilight Zone” episode; desperate mobs of people, no fresh water, rising seas, smoke, fires, screaming- terror in the streets. Everyone was fighting and sweating for survival as we fell towards our burning star…
In accord with the nature of dreams, for some untold and senseless reason, I was at the top of a giant skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. It was some kind of penthouse or lush office. Just poor me and two beautiful women. Indeed, no sense to it at all…just the way it was, in the dream, that is. With a certain disturbing detachment, we calmly watched the chaos unfold all around us in the city far below. LA sprawled endlessly in flames. We sipped vodka-tonics and martinis while having off-the-wall, stupid conversations on trivial topics that were outdated and no longer relevant at all. We even had ice! Go figure…
“So you actually like Sammy Hagar better than
David Lee Roth? What, are you nuts, woman?!?”, I said to the leggy blonde with the green eyes.
“Yes, I do,” she replied, smiling, “I think he has a better voice.”
“HA! Well, that’s just insane, girl! I think his voice sucks, not to mention, Diamond Dave was a showman. When he left Van Halen, they were finished as far as I’m concerned.”
“I agree with you, Reverend,” said the brunette with the glittering dark eyes and velvety black hair, “and Dave was way sexier.”
I raised my eyebrows in mock contemplation, “What about now?”
She didn’t answer.
“It’s like when Lionel Ritchie left the Commodores…those guys were DONE. Alright ladies, I got one for ya…who would win in a fight; Batman or Superman?”
The dark one says, “But weren’t they Superfriends? You know, the League of Justice and all?”
“Good point, babe, but forget that. This is just speculation…what if?”
Blonde says, “Well, theoretically speaking, I think Superman would win, without a doubt…he’s like…invincible.”
The brunette replies, “True, but what about all those cool gadgets Batman has? You know, he’s a thinker…wouldn’t you assume he’d be clever enough to grab some kryptonite?”
Blonde replies,”Well, honey, it’s not as if you can just buy kryptonite at a convenience store…I mean, doesn’t it come from another planet?”
“Aaahhhh, there’s the rub…” I say.
Brunette: “Wait, what about Robin? That’s two against one..”
“Robin’s a pussy!” I snap.
“Good point,” they reply simultaneously.
“Hmmm…nice….valid arguments, girls. Spoken like true professionals. Oh well, I guess we’ll never know for sure. After all, the Earth is spinning into the goddamned sun. Surely, our time is limited. We could be dead any minute now.”
Indeed, every minute was getting hotter and hotter. We had been moving closer throughout our rambling conversations on a plush leather couch. Their soft bare legs thrown over mine, ice
clinking in glasses beaded with droplets of moisture. Sweat, hot breath, suddenly a blur of flesh, limbs tangled in passion, reaching for something new, something better, something real and spontaneous and beautiful- reaching for the sun, as it were. Amazing, fascinating, twisted……
Later, we lay in one another’s arms, I between them, breathing and listening as our planet hurtled gracefully into a ball of fire. We stared out the giant picture window. We held each other, the three of us, and at last, that calm, detached feeling was stripped away, layer by layer. A nameless fear began to take over. The sky was filled with thick, black smoke. A helicopter fell from the heights like a burning stone. It was so very hot. The sun had gotten so big, that it filled the window, gigantic and red and terrifying, a searing ball of flame and gas that burned out our eyes as we stared into it in horror. The window exploded and we were showered in broken glass. Our skin began to melt together. The girls whimpered hopelessly but somehow, I found a hidden well of strength within.
I whispered, “Don’t worry, girls…everything will be better now. Everything will be just fine.”
And I meant it. I think I smiled about then. The light filled my blinded eyes and for a minute, I could see again…
With a start, I woke up. I was in the living room of a house in the hills with all my clothes on and one shoe missing…utter confusion. I was lying sprawled in the corner of the room, bathed in a morning sunbeam. My head was pounding and I was a sweaty mess with a plugged-up nose and blazing red eyes. Alcohol still coursed through my veins and music reverberated in my seemingly hollow skull. I was insane and vital and alive and filled with crazy ideas and half-baked dreams. I always had been. What a disappointment though; to wake up in a daze on a rug in fucking Hollywood.
So my car was stolen a while back, maybe five months before. Fool that I am, I had no theft insurance. I laid around for a month or two and then, on a whim, I traveled with a friend by car to deepest Mexico. Just two crazy clowns in a Scout International truck, hell bent for Colima. There, I spent three insane months but that is another story of volcanoes and Toltec ruins and sugarcane fields and shantytowns. When I returned home, I was immediately reminded of how much it sucks ass not having a car in Los Angeles. I’d spent most of my money south of the border so I accepted the fact that for now, I was just going to have to work and wait awhile before I could get a new automobile. And next time, I planned on getting theft insurance!
So it was on that fine, sunny day with a vicious hangover, that I wandered down out of the hills on foot and found myself standing at the side of the road in Cahuenga pass, with two shoes on of course. I saw the people driving by, helter skelter, two out of three on cell phones, and when the light turned red, they all just stared at me like some kind of zoo exhibit. Every once in a while, a lady would do a double take, looking at me twice with what I’d like to think was lust in her eyes, but more likely, it was disdain. To be standing at a bus stop in this superficial and materialistic metropolis- a city of cars and drivers- well, frankly, it was embarrassing. I might as well be holding a cardboard sign that says “ugly, broke and stupid…please help.” I didn’t let it bother me too much though. My mind is usually elsewhere anyway. Some ladies would roll their eyes and screech off in a cloud of dust. Others would smile with just a hint of something like pity in their eyes. I never knew what to expect. Sometimes, people would give me rides…male or female. I never hitchhiked, it just happened. I’d been picked up by Mexican gardeners, strippers, a plumber in his company truck, queers, a particularly lovely Thai girl, some older German woman, two backpackers from Sweden…and any number of characters and denizens of the city. The funniest was the time I got picked up by an Iranian tweaker in a black IROC sportscar. He was jabbering nonsense and hitting the meth pipe with his bad skin and black hole eyes as we drove down Highland into Hollywood. Now, that shit was funny. Finally, the bus came rumbling out of the smog of the San Fernando valley. I looked behind me and saw a gorgeous brunette in a silver Benzo looking at me. Suddenly ashamed, I turned away and stepped on the funny wagon. It was filled with mutants. I sat down wearily with a sigh of angst and tried to figure out exactly where the hell I was going. It didn’t really matter anyway. We were only on a fucking bus in Hollywood, CA- land of plastic dreams, silicone tits, and shattered hopes…we rolled down the hill and into it.
Later, I sat there at Canter’s with glassy eyes, staring at my eggs benedict. Before, I’d had a craving, but what the hell was I thinking? This place was only good at 4am after a night of drunken debauchery. I continued staring listlessly at the runny eggs swirling like giant yellow eyes boring into my soul until my own eyes glazed over and I blinked. The waitress interrupted my trance, “More coffee, hon?” I looked up slowly. Holy Mother of God, that waitress was old! She should be retired, playing Bingo or Bridge with her friends at the convalescent home or baking cookies or apple pie for her video-game-playing, bratty grandkids. She should be in Punta Gorda, Florida, playing shuffleboard…not here…anywhere but here. It just isn’t fair. They’ll steal your soul if you let them. “Sure,” I replied from a distance, “thank you, my dear.”
“First time I’ve been thanked today.” she grumbled as she limped away in her white, orthopedic shoes. The crazy ceiling in that place was starting to spin and the walls were closing in on me. I broke out in a cold sweat. I ate a piece of toast, drank three glasses of water, paid the bill and got the hell out of there. I lurched out the front door and was again blinded by the sunlight. In that insane dream, it had seemed fascinating, like an epiphany. But at that moment, I was very glad to have my sunglasses. Shaded from the light, I began to walk up Fairfax and I instantly lapsed into one of my cartoon-vision reveries.
So, there I was again, sitting in some bar on Hollywood Boulevard…was it the Frolic Room?….ahhh, no matter. There was booze. It was sometime after midnight and I’d been at the scotch for hours, chain-smoking, thinking, sulking, and talking to random weirdos. No clubs for me. No trendy night spots with red velvet ropes and stupid looking bouncers wearing headsets and drenched in Drakkar cologne. No Paris Hilton, no Lindsay fucking Lohan. Just me and some cheap scotch in a stinking dive bar. A little slice of heaven, no less. And even here, the Industry talk. She had me cornered. She had been yapping for fifteen minutes straight without taking a breath; just babbling on and on about herself, her imminent acting superstardom, name-dropping…oh yeah, baby, the WHOLE BIT. Needless to say, it was a pleasure. My mood was going downhill fast, a runaway train…I was getting desperate. I retained about 2.5 percent of her tiresome, inane ranting and raving.
“So, Billy Zane is a good friend of mine and he turned me on to this acting teacher, but she’s soooo expensive. She’s really good though, she’s changing my life, I’m definitely improving my performances, and I guess the money doesn’t matter, my daddy’s paying anyway. I’m actually taking five classes a week! It’s like a full-time job, it keeps me insanely busy, but I REALLY want to be a famous actress. It’s like I’ve known for…”
“Do you want a star on your door?” I interjected.
She hardly paused or slowed down. “Well, YES, of course I do! It’s like I’ve known that I was talented since I was 4 years old. When I was a little girl, I used to put on elaborate song and dance shows in my living room for my family and neighbors, so I guess it’s all meant to be, it’s just in the stars, you know? Anyway, I was at this party in Malibu last Saturday. I was talking to Tori Spelling when Christina Applegate walked up and said….”
Great Caesar’s Ghost! I have GOT to get rid of this lunatic bitch, what is she on meth?!? I think, maybe if I hit her with some gibberish, she’ll go away. Or maybe I should just hit her. No, no, calm down, there’s got to be a solution here.
I look at her with dull, glazed eyes, “Your breath stinks, woman…”
“What did you say?” she says.
“Your WHAT hurts?!?” I replied.
“Oh, you’re so funny…” she laughs, and continues her monologue.
She’s not biting. Oh fuck, time to pull out the big guns. “Do I know you?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s simple…have we met before? Are we intimate, lifelong friends? Because if not, I’m a little more than baffled about you giving me your instant autobiography, your life story about your long road to the Academy Awards. You’re a walking Wikipedia!”
I couldn’t take it anymore. It felt as if my head was going to explode. This girl was a vampire, sucking the life out of me. I was suddenly really exhausted, although, to give her just a little credit, it could have been the scotch. Nonetheless, I was in a vacuum. All semblance of reality and/or reason was long gone.
“I mean, come on, girl, did I ask for this wealth of valuable information?”
She was dumbfounded. She looked like a deer in the headlights.
“Huh? I mean…no…I guess you didn’t.”
“TRUE. I did NOT. And do you wanna know why? Because I don’t fucking care…not even a little bit. Your story interests me about as much as old reruns of ‘Who’s the Boss’. I’ll bet you know Alyssa Milano too, right? Tell her to call me. Seriously, I’d rather be at a Bible study than listening to you! I’d rather join the church of Scientology and read ‘Dianetics’ with a bunch of brainwashed lunatics while waiting for the spaceships. I’d rather put on Nikes and drink poisoned kool-aid. I’d rather be home, reading Hustler and smoking weed, staring at the cracks in my ceiling. I’d rather be listening to Huey Lewis and the News and shooting China White into my fucking eyeball while getting my cock sucked by a 47 year old Reno whore! Anything is better, than listening to your stupid acting stories!….” I pointed dramatically across the room, “Hey! Is that Val Kilmer?!” I made an abrupt exit. She was left standing at the bar looking as bewildered as a white country girl dropped off in Compton. Looking back on this incident, I suspect I might have been a little hard on her. I doubt she lost any sleep over it. She probably just found another victim to torture. She probably thought that I was the one on speed.
What the hell am I doing? Is this what it’s all about? Is there no end to this madness? Sometimes, I’m so tired of struggling, that I just stop trying entirely. I just sit around and wait to see what will happen next. I let it all come to me at random. After all, what would life be without the element of surprise? And in the end, Death; and who really knows what that means? The black door, the Grim Reaper knocks suddenly, black cloak and all, no appointment necessary, time to go. Time has no meaning, except the meaning that we give it.
The streets of Koreatown were quiet and empty. Street lamps in halos of night mist. A single night mockingbird sings songs of loneliness. The moon is a burning stone in an uncaring and starless black sky. My footsteps fall softly on the dirty sidewalks. There is no one but me. I enter my shitty apartment building just north of Olympic on Catalina. The halls were dark with dingy and frayed wine-colored rugs, half the lamps burnt out. It smelled of cigarettes, cheap liquor, and spicy food. It may be Koreatown, but my building was full of Mexicans. I opened my door and it hit my bed frame, as usual. I entered my 12 foot by 14 foot studio. I live in a box, I thought. I looked out my dusty window at the little courtyard 2 floors below. There is a single pair of filthy gray boxer shorts flapping on the clothesline in the faint night breeze. I was a man standing alone in a window in the wee hours of the morning, staring at dirty underwear. The moon watched me in disinterested silence. I sighed discontentedly. The death clock was ticking. A cockroach scuttled across the wall. I didn’t bother to get up and kill it, his time would come soon enough anyway. There’s plenty more where he came from. I poured a belt of Cutty Sark scotch in a glass, took a slug, and flopped down on my bed. I laid there, staring at the cracks in my ceiling. Looks like I got my wish, see? Dreams DO come true.
At this juncture, it seems like this story should be going somewhere, right? Perhaps a car chase, or a shootout, or a sex scandal. Yeah, sure, maybe I should turn this into a real Tom Clancy super spy thriller. Maybe I’ll just sit here and blow sunshine up your ass. But no. I think I’ll give it to you straight instead. How the fuck we get up everyday, I do not know. Maybe it’s curiosity. What’s gonna happen today, you know? Where does it all lead? Often enough, I find myself thinking how sad and meaningless it all seems. Why do we do it? For love or money or fame? Necessity? Because we are here and we have no choice? Most of the time we’re just slaving away, trying to keep our heads above water, so it can’t be for fun. Me on a tropical beach somewhere with a beautiful woman, a good book or two, some cold beers and the sun shining down upon us. These are my greatest joys, so simple, really. Otherwise, I might as well watch TV until my eyes bleed. In any case, something is bound to happen soon, right? You’d think. But let’s face it, people…day to day life can be pretty ordinary. Routine; the slow and silent killer. We watch things happen on TV or in the movies, we screw around on our computers, fiction or reality, no matter. Reality is a different kind of beast. We wait, we wonder, we watch. We use up our time on this Earth doing nothing at all. When something does happen, we wish everything would go back to normal. We long for our security and our comfortable routines. We live in our shells, safe and sound, always screaming for more….MORE. This is the paradox of living.
Life goes on, and even in our idle monotony, we are living it.
THB3
Japan
February 12, 2023
The Street Journals 