It won’t be long now. “You want some vitamin ‘C’?” “Hell yes.” They each pop 2000 mg and bounce out the door, well primed, back into the streets, back onto Rocinante. She roars. She’s ready. Owen’s ready, they’re all ready. “Let’s rock, dude.” In the streets at night you glimpse timeless moments of the past relived. Night after night for thousands of years small groups of men have stood by campfires burning in lunarian solitude, and very late at night, when the moon calls the shots, you still see them standing there, tending the fires. You are one of them. A fire-watcher. You’ve spent many years in the fire-watching clan, and if you fuck it up now, that’s where you’ll return. Look at them now, the fire-watchers, the infants of lunacy — the fires burn a little smaller now, sometimes not at all — yet they gather in groups of three or more and stand in circles exchanging bits and pieces of a message sent from a distant place and garbled upon arrival. They stand there until the messages comes through loud and clear, which often requires a lifetime or two, or ten-thousand. They are the nameless, faceless ones from whence you arose. They beckon your return, but you ignore their calling. Down through the grottos, down through downtown, through the financial district, down beneath the Oakland bridge near the bay, they reach the DV8 club. The exterior front is black and lifeless, yet there is activity in the streets — a stalwart processional towards the line in the rear. “Come on, dude, to hell with the line,” Patrick says, they dismount and walk to the front of the line, the bouncer recognizes them as Kennel Klub employees and lets them pass immediately. “Club courtesy, dude, nothing sweeter.” “No doubt.” The hallway is dark and filled with lost souls and wriggling shadows. Down the hallway, they walk up an unfinished stairway to the second floor. That’s where the party is. The place appears fire-lit from the vague incandescence of eleven-watt bulbs, and a few actual fires in a series of rooms recently converted from a warehouse and office spaces. Acid house music permeates the air. The scene permeates that thin veil of reality and penetrates the surreal. The purest party exists in the realms of the surreal. Parties comprise the manifestations of an ethereal set of idylls, and only when the litmus visions test pure, whatever the content, does the gathering transcend the dim realm of the phenomenal plane. And this is a damn fine party. Never have you felt such intensity. There must be five-hundred souls here hell bent for hellraising. Winding through the maze of half-finished corridors, passing the offices now serving the wonts of decadence. In each room there exists a separate party, a separate reality. This is the way life ought to be perceived — as a series of separate realities, rather than one dull labor-inclined monstrosity. The main room writhes — growing , shrinking, swelling, swollen, bulging, grinding and wiggling — the music is loud but bearable. A few empty kegs lay scattered on the floor, sucked dry. Two bartenders in the corner pour drinks in frantic efforts to keep up with the thirst of the guests, in vain. And all they have is vodka, and mixers. A couple sea breezes, a couple dollars in the tip jar, and you’re set to explore the party. Indeed. Rare, it is, to find such a labyrinth. A sociological wet dream. A veritable melange of neurosis, psychosis, schizoid personalties, nymphomaniacs, exhibitionists, and, of course, the inevitable delusions of grandeur. The delusionals run the show tonight, wreaking of the mossy musk immortal. Patrick’s disappeared, but you don’t feel alone. Not one iota. The music bleeding into the colors and the crowds, garnished in black leather and lace and silk and nylon, yet so much color. The fires in some of the rooms, semi-contained, the smoke rising into the forty -foot ceiling space above, drifting into the bay, leaving no trace of decadence. Slinky lassies and swanky lads colliding — one chick squats down on her knees sucking a guy off in the corner. They’re both dressed in black, black hair, ashen skin — she’s going at him good, and she’s wiggling in time to the music with her arms out stretched and he’s standing in the corner holding himself up with the back of his head. He looks like Joey Ramone in a porno. A man with leopard skin flaps covering his groin and his ass leads a half-naked woman in a leather G-string around on a leash and collar, stopping intermittently to make her eat fire. They say there just having fun. She gets down on all fours and he sticks a flaming ball into her mouth, just for fun. Now the couple in the corner has switched and she’s bent over in the corner with her hands against the wall and he’s humping away, and she’s still dancing, keeping time to the frenzied acid-house mantra-rhythms. The fires burn brighter, a gaggle of girls wander by awestruck, slack-jawed at the spectacles before them. You feign indifference, but actually you’re recording every moment. It’s moments like these that make the writing worthwhile. These true moments of epiphany. Pass the blood wine and the fleshy pudding and let’s grope and gorge. Feast! Reveling in the sweet odors of our glandular fluids and the truculent passions and indulgences of the human soul. This party is not about spirit, it’s about soul. The dark and fecund — the feminine side of things. The bitches and witches throwing a grand guignol. Who said women don’t know how to party? They were wrong, dead wrong. Men promote the light, the hydrogen ethos aflame, the chains of flesh broken and untethered, assail upon the ether. Women, on the other hand, ooze up from the earthen depths and chain the male’s spirit to the primal. It’s nothing biased or sexist or intentional, that’s just the way it works. But just because they’re dangerous, that doesn’t mean they don’t throw mean shin-dig. No sir, er, no ma’am. What ever. Stick him in, jack him around, pump him until he comes. You gals know the routine. You know how to get what you want. The moon incites orgies, the fertile oceans retaining water, the molten core growing impatient, discontented with her clogging ventricles. She wants to let herself blow in one massive orgasm — her first big one in sixty-five million years. She deserves it. She’s been patient. Showing the maternal patience only a woman could muster. But when she blows, you move-your-ass or incur the torturous wrath. And once she blows, there’s just no stopping her. But first she throws a party. A killer party. Then she castrates you when you’re not paying attention. Castration is one of women’s favorite themes. Cleopatra likes her eunuchs. So does Caesar. Something about the deprivation of the seed, the loss of procreative potential, the denial of lineage — the end of the line. Something about the control one retains over a company of eunuchs. They no longer care for passion. A few men fall at every party, but many escape. Castration is the frontal lobotomy of the human body, and for this they pay top-dollar. For free booze and a quickie. They’re all pairing off now, grouping, regrouping, the party climaxing one more time, though the bartenders begin to grow weary. Some pass out in the corners, asleep in their urine. They’ll be castrated by full dawn. Unaware of specific genders, preferences, alluring personas of death, pairing off, grouping, regrouping, and depart as the music grows redundant. The moon fades off to New Dheli — let them deal with it for awhile. The ghouls grimace at sign of first light.. The trip thins out under the influence of marijuana and cheap ethyl alcohol. It is time to return to the ghetto. Patrick is nowhere to be found, Owen hops on Rocinante, turns the key, starts the motor, and rides a wheelie down Franklin, dizzy with the images in his head. Intense, yet soothing visions in their own twisted and deviant fashion. He rides back towards the Green Tortoise, looking forward to the day he will write the images down, storing each moment for posterity. It is all he lives for. * * * Owen awakes late in the afternoon, feeling like someone threw him into the path of a runaway steamroller. The ghetto is quiet for a Saturday, he rises and walks over to the office for a shower. The water pressure in the shower is lame, but the water feels soothing, brings him back to the world of the living like a soggy slap from a damp rag. Nearly human again. Back to flesh and blood, back to testosterone, back to labor, and the incredible sadness he bears almost every waking moment. Joy. On the porch, Monte basks in the warm sun. Owen hops out of the shower, throws on a pair of shorts and walks out onto the deck to sun himself dry. “Morning.” “Hardly. Rather, I say, it’s almost three.” “I was out late.” “When did you find your way back?” “About six-thirty this morning.” “Must have been a raucous party.” “Quite. I won’t forget that one for awhile. What did you do?” “Sat around here fiddling with my John Thomas. I always miss the good parties.” “I’ll tell you what: The Beat Farmers are playing Slim’s tonight. Why don’t you come with. It’ll be a helluva show.” “Do we need to obtain tickets, or something like that?” “Let me call Slim’s and see if I can get us in on club courtesy. If not, we’ll hit Ticketmaster downtown.” “Sounds marvelous.” “Let me wake-up a bit, then I’ll make the calls. You want to go for a beer later?” “I’m going to read here for a moment or two, but give me a shout later. I’m sure I could be persuaded to quaff a couple pints.” “If you’re going to do the Beat Farmers, you’ll want to drink more than a couple.” “Who are the Beat Farmers anyway, some country-folk band.” “No, not hardly. The Farmers, well, there in their own genre. There’s nothing quite like them. I could play you some tapes, but it just doesn’t do them justice. But you’ll see.” “Sounds like a grass roots band to me.” “No it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.” * * * “The ghosts from these western lands are going to rise up against English yams, like a tumbleweed, on a reckless course these barbed-wire fences can’t keep us apart. Where are the heroes that sang the old songs? You recognize a hero ‘cause he don’t belong. We gave up our youth and model railroad trains, picked up guitars and we changed our names. With the experience of a tortured youth, you turn up the music and go in search of the truth . . . “ “It takes a young man’s life, and it probably will, mining for gold in them Hollywood Hills.” The Farmers sound killer tonight. They’re always at home on the stage, but they seem to love San Francisco. Joey’s donned a tapered, black suit. He looks like an undertaker. Country Dick looks better than the last time you saw him — of course, that was right after his bout with thyroid cancer. Rolle thumps away, tattooed and bikerish, laying in the stout bass line. And then there’s Jerry Rainey. Talented guitar player, that boy. Not quite as vaudevillian as Dick and Joey, but entertaining nonetheless. One of the few hard core bands left in America, the Beat Farmers. One of the few bands who lives according to the rockin’ minstrel’s creedo: to entertain, to take you away to their world, if only for an hour or two. They know what you come there for. At night they wander in droves to the taverns and music clubs, disco dives and dumps. Just serve liquor and they come. Get another beer. Monte’s having fun, that’s good. Give him a good stiff dose of American rock-and-rolling rhythm and blues. You’re going to miss all this when you go to Europe. This is an American creation: the Beat Farmers, the ambiance, the kids in cities all over the country dancing about banging their heads in unison to the simple back beat. Supposed to effect the rhythms of the heart. Maybe that’s what you’ll jones for: the rhythm. Yes, the rhythm — the drums and the bass line, the vocals and leads, and the relative feelings of normlessness that exist within any well-done show. Lift you up and fly you off, that’s the best musicians. George Gershwin, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Amadeus Mozart, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton . . . and the Beat Farmers. They all have this in common: They know what you came there for. “Well my brain is sore and there’s lumps upside my head. Some teenage girl is sleeping in my bed. And if I don’t lie down quick, I believe that I’ll get sick. “I found myself another lost weekend.” Rochelle is here. Well, there goes a good evening. Just smile and nod and ignore her and maybe she’ll go away. She’s sporting her new ‘tough-chick’ attitude. More power to her. She remains a spoiled little rich girl at heart. Monte hands you a beer brewed in the Welsch village he grew-up in. They have it on tap here at Slim’s. It tastes a little flat. “Now, I got some money, and the plan’s in my head, but the keys to the world ain’t so easy to get . And just who would know this, any better than I. I’ve been trying to find it, for most of my life. . . turn off the TV, get outta my way. I am the future. I am today.” Joey looks like he needs a fix, looks like he’s jonesing. Maybe it’s the coke. It’s a hard road to haul, playing the clubs night after night and never really going anywhere. They could never transfer this atmosphere to a concert hall. The intimacy dies under such grandiose conditions. And the Farmers feed on intimacy. The chaste qualitative ideal seeks not the eyes of thousands, merely a lively group of interested disciples. Just a few who came to dance, to spread their wings and fly. Who needs a body anyway. “I make my way around this town, from Market to the park. Where no holy man in his right mind would venture after dark. I bless the cops and lady-men, and the fireplugs and the signs, and the trestle down on Tenth Street, where I lay me down tonight. The whole damn world is beautiful, in this holy light, and I don’t feel the cold wind blow ‘cause God is here tonight . . . now all you down-and-outers, lay down your head, sleep tight, ‘cause I’m keeping an eye out for you, and God is here tonight.” Just like going to church. The revival. The soaring of the spirit from the grey matter into the ten-thousand colors of the transcendental ethos. Your wings spread wide now. They barely fit the dance floor. There’s a strange sensation in your stomach. Cramps. Definitely cramps. What the hell? Keep dancing. They’ll go away. Forget it. What the hell has gotten inside you. Something’s growing. Something dark and heavy and furious. Just keep dancing and it’ll go away. But it’s growing. This should not be allowed. Yet there lies beauty in this festering tumor. Fate’s trying to show you something. Are you paying attention? Fate’s trying to give you a lesson. Did you bring your pen and paper? This will, no doubt, be a doosey. Country Dick takes center stage and the show suddenly resembles a campfire sing-a-long. Dick sings ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ in true hobo fashion. “One evening as the sun went down, the jungle fires aburning. Down the tracks came a hobo hiking and he said ‘Boys, I’m not turning’. I’m headed for a land that’s far away, beside the crystal fountain. So come with me, we’ll go and see, the Big Rock Candy Mountain. “In the Big Rock Candy mountain, there’s a land that’s fair and bright. Where the handouts grow on bushes, and you sleep out every night. Where the boxcars all are empty, and the sun shines everyday, with the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees, the lemonade springs where the blue bird sings, in the Big Rock Candy mountain. In the Big Rock Candy mountain, all the cops have wooden legs, and the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay hard-boiled eggs, the farmer’s trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay — I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow, where the rain don’t fall and the wind don’t blow in the Big Rock Candy mountain, boys,” he sings, and the entire room begins whistling the little jog of the bridge, a hearty jig of sorts, light and giddy, like a camp fire song, made beautiful through the whistling in unison. “In the Big Rock Candy mountain, you never change you socks, and little streams of alcohol come a trickling down the rocks, the brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind, there’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too, in the Big Rock Candy mountain.” More whistling, you’re whistling along with them, loving every minute. Two hundred people, most of whom you don’t know, and yet everyone knows what to whistle. It creates a common bound beyond loyalty of any institutions, because we each take the whistling on our own terms, but everyone knows it’s big rock candy mountain, of course. “I’ll see you all, this coming fall, in the Big Rock Candy mountain.” Country Dick Montana meets the mark of entertainer extrodiannire’. He is always ‘on’, as the pop catch-phrase goes. He plays the outlaw long rider to a tee, but you can look in his eyes and still glimpse the prophetic sadness, the weighted suffering, the terrific amount of energy spent for the indulgent pleasures of a room full of people. And people wonder why musicians kill themselves. Hell, they do it on stage night after night, stands to figure such a notion slips from the bands of tone and timbre and melody. Go figure: passion gets physical. Passion wreaks both creative and destructive havoc. Passion rapes, kills, and spawns progeny in the aftermath. And Dick’s pillaging right now and you could be there with him, savoring every moment if it weren’t for these damn cramps. Savoring the nightly birth of decadence anew. Blowing off the barnacles, as it were. Let the bastards rot on the beach, amid the corpses of their own kind. Society shackles the Great Men, breaks them, convinces them to enjoy the herded life. Caterwaul! Call the Nargan and the Stars and the Cheshire Cat to come and cut the iron anklets of mediocrity. Call the Ubermensch. There is no such thing as ‘governmental reform’. Government exists for the sole purpose of controlling inhabitants. Nothing more. Fuck the Disneyland Deathcamps, let’s rock. Generation thirteen belongs to the great clan of the stoics. Heraclitus, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Zeno the Stoic, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Bruno, Spinoza, Schelling, Schopanhauer, Nietchtze, Bergson, and Generation Thirteen, or ‘Generation X’. We’re all a little stoic here. The Pagans and the stoics live in the same neighborhoods, shop the same markets — but the Pagans have more fun. Pan is a stoic from way-back-when. The glory days before Jesus ambled along and stuffed love in the dream. Kindness and compassion looks nice on paper, but no matter how you slice it up: people die. That’s the mortality thing. Nasties await at every turn. You can’t insulate life from the nasties, all you do is shift the strike — from physical to financial. Bastard Capitalists. To hell with the dollar bill. Humans were meant to excel in both body and mind. Remove that nasty, shift to financial, and living becomes stale and bitter, tasting more like a paycheck than fresh flesh. There’s nothing better than fresh meat. That’s they way humans are. Money won’t do diddley outside a place to spend it. Thus the value of an executive, an office boy, or a yes-boy bureaucrat becomes relative. Take away their paycheck and what do you have? Jobless balls of mortified jisim. Humans have forgotten a primary building block in the foundations of transcendence: One must go to the mountains and live on their wits, and sit, and sit , and sit and await Nirvana, and go from there, usually to a bar. The goal remains: transcend Nirvana. Take it one, or twenty, steps beyond, lick you finger and see which way the astral winds blow. Call the Ubermensch, go for a joyride. Go an inch too far. Go beyond the forefathers. Avatar! That’s why we’re hanging out on planet Earth: to live and learn and apotheosize. “Here, here I stand just, just one man. So small in the universe, but here on Earth I’m a big, big man. Don’t, don’t force my hand. Don’t, don’t try and take my land. I may be small in the Universe, but here on Earth, I’m a big, big man. “Here where we live by the law of the land, don’t need advice from no company man, Who complicates life with a legalized plan. Cross me twice and you’ll understand. I’ll spell it out for ya, if ya need it man: There’s an unwritten law that I hold in my hand . . . “ Killer groove, boys. Love living life large. But it would be better if it weren’t for these damn cramps. . . feeling vaguely nauseous . . . dance the cramps away, but they persist. Feeling downright ill. Better head to the bathroom . . . it’s time for the Big Spit. It’s going to come up whether you like it or not. Better run while you can. Owen runs for the toilet, makes it just in time to puke-up a stomach full of bile and beer. The band keeps playing, but he’s out of it now. He feels better, but the knot still twists in his gut. Ordering water, he returns to the stage, tries to forget about it, but the sensation persists. Drinking glass after glass of water, trying to flush his system, but the water comes right back up. “Some people like to rock, some people like to roll. Me, I like to sit around and satisfy me soul. I’ve always got my shades, drugs and booze I crave, and that’s the way I want to be when someone digs my grave. YUP! I belong to the Beat Generation, I don’t let anything boggle my mind. I belong to the Beat Generation, and everything’s going just fine. “Some people say I’m lazy, and that my life’s a wreck. Hell, that stuff doesn’t phase me I get unemployment checks. I like my women short, I like my women tall, and that’s about the only thing I really dig at all. YUP! I belong to the Beat Generation, I don’t let anything boggle my mind. I belong to the Beat Generation and EVERY THING’S GOING JUST FINE!“I once knew a man who actually worked from nine to five, just to pay his monthly bills was why he stayed alive. So keep your country cottage your house and lawn so green, I just want a one-room pad where I can make the scene. . . “ We are the Beat Generation, and nobody fucks with us. We are all generations ball into one. Our parents were middle-class idealists, and from that we’ve gained both practicality, passion and wholistic understanding. Our grandparents were tough as nails. We’re somewhere in-between. We know what’s up: nothing. We know what playing by the laws of social restraint land you: nothing. We know where politics leads to: nowhere We know only that we came to raise hell. So be it. The Farmers wind it up, and the moment they leave the stage Owen is out the door. “Something’s up with my gut.” “I say, I’m feeling a bit nauseous as well.” “I think it was that damn hometown brew of yours. Mold spores, or something like that. Whatever the hell it is, made me sicker than a dog.” “Indeed.” Owen and Monte roll out of downtown and zip back to the land of bagnios and blight. They make it back just in time for Owen to run into the bathroom and puke, he does so, and joins Monte on a bus outside the warehouse. Someone always sleeps on any bus left on the street, to keep it from being brutalized. “You enjoy the show there, Englishman?” “Rather, I say, I did. I’ve never seen anything quite like that.” “And you never will dude. There’s no other band quite like the Beat Farmers.” “Well it’s definitely an American thing.” “Well that’s one redeeming quality of America: we gave the world rock and roll.” “I don’t know if I’d say it was redeeming, but it’s unique, to be sure.” “I think rock and roll best reflects the American attitude, in spirit if nothing else.” “Better than the Star Spangled Banner ?” “To hell with that shit. Francis Scott Key ripped the whole thing off.” “See, so it is reflective of America.” “Yeah, reflective of white boys in general.” They both laugh, then Owen gets up and leaves the bus they’re sitting in, and goes to the bathroom, comes back out and bids Monte goodnight and slinks off to his Bedroom. Gardner comes back tomorrow, so tonight is the last night in a bed. After that, it’s tent city. Feeling a little better, Owen drifts off to sleep, happy with the way things decay. He’s happy to get back to his tent, his backpack, and the open road. Traveling remains the greatest expression of freedom a man offers to the world, bar none. Greater than the Sistine Chapel, greater than Mount Rushmore, greater then the Mona Lisa, greater than the forty-foot Buddha, greater than the Sphinx, greater than the Mayan empire — travelers live and create in the realm of the sublime. Nomad’s land. The pinnacle most pure. What greater man exists than the hobo, the nomad, the eternal wandering boy — you can live to be a thousand years old living on the road. You gain power over the common man once you’ve broken the shackles of social contract, once you break addiction to society and bid a fond adieux to the massive daily sacrifice they call career. Life amid the brain-dead herds: scary thought. Seeing the same people day-in, day-out, year round, performing the same tasks, collecting the same paycheck, living in the same house, drinking the same beer, eating the same food, watching the same damn crap on devil television, thinking the same thoughts over and over, sexing the same woman over and over — life becoming dull and stale and bitter by the day — that’s no way for a human to live. Life was never meant to be ‘mediocre.’ Life, more than anything, is a Rite of Passage. And passage is what traveling’s all about. Herodotus, Balthazar, Melichor, Swift, Gaspar, Marco Polo, Gotama, Keroauc, Drugpa Kunleg — These men traveled and beheld wonders. You travel not merely to take-in the terra, but to eye-witness the miracles happening day after day. N’er a day passes when the Earth doesn’t dance for some lost soul. And all you have to do is pay attention to Time, Fate and Irony. Traveling long enough, remaining a humble collector of cultures and purveyor of miracles, beholding the terra and wonders of life upon it, assembling them in patchwork fashion, taking only the finest pearls and aligning them into the most beautiful necklace in the name of Sophia — then you gain passage. Passage from the Vision Quest, passage from the moment to the eons, passage from the babbling lords asleep at the wheel, passage from mortal suffering, passage from the quagmire of sexual frustration and the frigid peaks of Zen-stoicism. Passage from the tin-stamped idols and crying carnie preachers, passage from the yey and ney saying political orators with a flare for the masturbatory. Passage from the green, green pastures and tar-paper shacks into the boundariless wilds of the Universe. That’s a passage for you. That’s one worth writing down. You need only travel long enough to accomplish it. Writing it, that’s the easy part. Living it, that’s the bitch. * * * Sundays are quiet in the barrio. The junkies shoot-up all-night-long, then jones in the morning sun; the hoodlums hit the beach and the crackheads sleep-in. Only the droves of vagrants wander the street, scooping up empty bottles and cans, rolling the carcasses, scouring the dumpsters, trying to remember who they once were. A group of urchins walk by the warehouse window, one of them is sort-of cute, with oversized breasts for her frame. Huge tits. Owen watches from his bed as they walk past his window with the iron bars. They appear dirty and delirious. On Sunday the stress-level drops, if only a notch or two. Owen rises, walks over to the office to make coffee. Upon returning, he sees a large, long-haired hippy on a tired ten-speed. The guy looks Native American, though not full-blooded. With the carafe full of dark, black coffee Owen walks down the sidewalk, looking at the guy riding figure eight’s on the broken down ten speed in the street in front of the warehouse. “Good morning,” he says, pulling up to the curb, “I’m glad somebody’s up. I don’t have my key.” “Who are you,” Owen asks, with his ghetto face on. “I’m Gardner Kent. I own the Tortoise.” Owen’s jaw drops. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. How was Europe?” “Marvelous, but it’s good to be back. How’s things going here?” “We’ve got the warehouse well underway. I’m out of here in two weeks, but I expect to finish it by then.” “Sounds great. So I hear you’ve been using my room.” “Just keeping an eye on the place.” “Not a bad idea. Think I could get in there today?” “I’ll get it cleaned-out for you this morning.” “Great. Well, go have your coffee and relax. Don’t worry about it right away. I think I’ll go sailing this morning anyway, so there’s no hurry.” “You sail?” “You bet. I’ve got a fifty-foot wooden schooner down in the harbor. She’s an old beauty. I’ll bet you’d like her.” “I’ll bet I would, too.” “Maybe you’ll come sailing with us sometime.” “I’d love it.” “Wade says you’re a helluva worker.” “I’m a writer by trade, but I do what I can.” “Writer, huh, well, we’ll have to sit down and have a good talk. I’ll bet you’ve got some good stories to tell.” “A few. I’m working on one right now. Actually the Green Tortoise has something to do with it. I see a musical in this place. The yard would make a great set.” “All right, then. Well, we’ll talk about it, think I’m going to have a bike ride, then a shower, then a sail. You be around this afternoon?” “Should be.” “See you then.” “Pleasure to meet you Gardner,” Owen says, extends his hand. Gardner and he shake and lock eyes, as men-of-honor do in a stout handshake. Gardner’s eyes gleam the glint. He is an old spirit. They met before in another life, perhaps in battle, perhaps while drinking a beer, and they both realize this upon exchanging stares. Gardner smiles, Owen smiles back and a friendship rekindles. Gardner’s spirit gleams with the wisdom and power of the warrior. Owen sees the antediluvian scars below the flesh. They part, feeling as though an appointment long-since-missed finally comes full-circle. And when your lost amid the world of squares, trapezoids, rhumbus’, octagons, pentagons, rectangles and the like, there’s nothing finer than finding a fully-twisted circle. For within the twisted circle lies infinity. ∞ ∞ ∞ Infinity, the boundless abyss: home or hell? The beauty of running the gamut, the endless figure eight, forever locked in chronosynclastic infundibulal bliss, forever wrapped in monasticistic onaism. The dreams of the monk paling in comparison, reeling at the horrors of eternity. Wretching at sanguinarian piles of the damned, alive only with maggots. The perfect ricochette: in, out, and around. Around. That’s a key. These things don’t work out like this for no reason. There’s always a reason, somewhere. That particular reason may exist in an entirely different dimension, but it exists nonetheless. It all exists. The worlds of ghosts and gods and multiple universes and separate realities and parallel dimensions, nemesistic black holes, the monolithic, fated nexus on it’s way to destroy the Sun — floating along in the cryptocrystalline voids of time and space, passing through dimensions like one might a train-station turnstile — it all exists on one level or another. Why? Because our brains say so. Because we believe so. Because the mighty message receiver in our brain pan says it’s just that way. Abracadabra. Oh, stop it. You’re fucked-up and you’re letting your head run off at the mouth. Always running off at the mouth. Can’t you shut up, just for a moment? Just relax and enjoy the ride home. Let the cold night wind snap you out of it. Sniff the breeze, breathe in the moon, slowly waning. Only two more Sunday nights left. You’ll miss the Sundays at the Kennel. World Beat night. Women from all over the world. Beautiful women. Exotic women. Erotic women. Multi-shaded women, each beautiful in their own shade. Olive, sandstone, amber, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry — all colors, all shades, all tastes and smells and the quizzical quips of femininity. You find them all quite entertaining, each in their own way. April was there tonight. You should have taken her home. She would have you if you pursued the issue beyond casual conversation and heavy flirting. Wrap her up, take her home. This Friday. This Friday for sure. There are only two Fridays left, and this is one worth nabbing. Owen pulls up to the warehouse to find one of the young urchins he’d seen first thing Sunday morning, sitting underneath the streetlight. It’s the girl. “Hey, who lives here?” “I do.” “I’ll fuck you for twenty dollars. I need some food.” “I don’t have twenty dollars to give you. I could loan you ten, but you don’t need to worry about the sex thing.” “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll do you for ten.” “We have to go break the twenty. Do you have a coat?” “No.” Owen goes inside the warehouse to get the girl a coat, his head spinning. Grabbing her an insulated vest, she climbs on back and they drive off together, looking for a convenience store. It’s four in the morning and not much is open. Owen drives two miles down Industrial, two miles farther than he wanted to be driving with a hooker on his bike. Finally, they find one. It’s crowded, the fluorescent lights blaring, as usual. A line of weirdos, vampires, ghouls and what not, waiting before the counter, he grabs a soda and takes his place in line with the freaks, the dirty little street chick standing at his side. They make an odd pair. They do not fit together and everyone in the store knows what the hell is going on. Go figure. Can’t just sneak in and sneak out. Put on a show every time. Well, enjoy it, you voyueristic bastards. That’s right. I’m breaking a twenty, then we’re going to go screw. What’s it to you. He pays for the soda and a pack of smokes, they leave the store. Everyone watches them leave. He sees them in the reflection in the glass. Owen feels the rage boiling up, lets it go. They board Rocinante, and head back for the warehouse. “Would you mind if we stopped and I got some of my smoke?” “Where do you need to stop.” “It’s on the way. Turn right up here.” They turn right off into one of the neighborhoods of Bay View. One of the purest-hearted ganglands of San Francisco. “It’s cool,” she says, “They know me. Here, here, it’s right up here. See that guy.” There’s a shadow up ahead, turning into a boy of seventeen or so with dark skin and black eyes full of everything, and nothing at all. “Stop here.” “What’s up.” “Looking for a friend.” “Who do you know.” “I know Shirley. She hooked me up. Shirley say come up here and tell you she said it’s cool.” “I don’t know you. Don’t know if I can serve you.” “I know Shirley, damnit. You see what’s going on here. Now serve me!” “My brother Larry will serve you.” She slaps him the ten and he backs into the shadows as an overweight boy in an Oakland Raiders stadium jacket pops up from behind a car and slaps her hand, and Owen drives off as she slaps the tiny, white rock in her mouth. “I think it’s okay,” she says, “I can taste the stuff. Alright. It tastes good,” she says and she mumbles shit like that all the way back to the warehouse. The intensity wanes. They hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. He’d sat there looking straight forward, keeping his chin up, not looking at them. Nothing between them, save for the natural friction of worlds colliding. It was an odd feeling he’d never truly felt before, but he was sure feeling the remnants of it now driving out of the neighborhood and back onto Third Street. The girl sits behind him, coddling the rock with her mouth, and mumbling. They get back to the warehouse, he brings the bike in, they climb up to the roof above the office where his tent awaits. He pulls out the hooka. “Can you use this?” “That’ll do,” she says, breaks the rock into two chunks, drops one chunk in the bowl, sparks up three matches and lights it. Her eyes grow wide as she sucks on the hooka, looking as though she might up-and-combust right there. Holding the hit, he feels her heart surge, her head roar and then slam into park, she blows the smoke out. It smells like chemicals. She giggles. She’s fixed. She pulls off her shirt, revealing her tits. They’re large and pointy and firm. Owen drops his pants and she’s on him, her face in his groin, taking him in her mouth, slobbering, tonguing, licking, bobbing, Owen wraps his hands in her greasy hair. She’s a dirty one. She needs a shower. He wants to cum in her hair. She needs to wash it anyway. He lets her go at it for a few minutes, then spins her around, plops her on the bed and pulls her shorts off, spreads her legs. She spreads them willingly. He thinks about a condom, blows it off. He hates condoms. “Go ahead, stick it in me. It’s already wet.” Fuck it. Just lighten up and take her now. Just do her. That’s it. Think primal. You’re a thug now, or so you’ve been cast, so do her like a thug. That’s it. Feels good when it’s some stranger off the street. Do her now, never see her again. Isn’t that the blueprint for good sex. Move from one to the next, never suffering from relapse in the throes of monogamy — isn’t that the path to salvation? Feel her unfeeling you. She doesn’t care, she doesn’t know, she does this all the time. Why aren’t you wearing a condom. Her groin smells like burning tires. She needs a good delousing. But it’s that wildcat thing. Bumping into some bimbo and fucking her on the spot, then sending her away. Isn’t that what women are for? Take this one now. Just take her. What’s she worth? Not a plug nickel. Ten dollars — get your money out of her, cum in her hair. That’s it. Just let it fly. Owen pulls out and cums on her chest and hair. She smells bad. He gets up off her, she reaches for her shirt and pulls it on. The cum on her chest makes the shirt stick. “Well, I’d let you stay the night, but my boss wouldn’t like it.” “I understand. I got these people. They’ll be up soon. They let me sleep in their garage, as long as I get home before sunset.” “I guess you missed that.” “They’ll be up soon. Thanks for the money.” “Thank you,” he says, she walks out the door. Owen goes back up to the roof and crawls in his tent and falls asleep feeling very seedy. He fights the urge to leave immediately. Whangs of loneliness shoot through his being. He wants to get the hell out of the ghetto. Then again, who doesn’t want to get the hell out of the ghetto. It’s little wonder that people who find themselves condemned to hell-on-Earth choose death. It’s all they have to live for. * * * “So what are you planning to do with the cottage?” “Fix it up, someday, I imagine. Bloody well need to come across a chap who can lend a hand, though. I’m no carpenter.” “I’ve got a proposition for you.” “And what might that be?” “Let me stay in your house for a year or so and write this book I’ve been working on, and I’ll refurbish the cottage.” “I think I could go for that. Actually, I’d been thinking of suggesting the same thing. No one lives their at present. My caretaker lives in Wales, you could write her for the keys.” “Give me her address. I’ll write her. Hold that motor up a little more, could you?” “It’s bloody heavy.” “No shit. I’ll tell you what: I’ll get underneath it and lift the bastard up and you get these two carriage bolts in.” “Right.” Owen jumps underneath the massive exhaust fan, lifts the platform with the full-flat of his back, hands on his knees for support. “I think it’s a fine idea.” “Oh, it’ll be perfect for you. There’s a quaint village up the road, people come by the place once a week selling bread and vegetables, I say. It’s quiet, idyllic — the north of France and all that rot. The perfect place to write.” “Sounds like it to me. I’d have to develop a library, but that wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.” “Well, there it is, then. We’ll go for a grog or two and I’ll get the address for you. I believe I’ve some pictures somewhere. I’ll check. You’ll need to wire it off soon, if you depart in less than a fortnight.” “No doubt. You got those damn bolts in place.” “Just about. Hold your water Samson.” “Get stuffed.” “Bugger it. That ought to hold the bitch.” Owen comes out from underneath the platform, lowers the scaffold to the floor, twenty-feet below. “Hungry?” “I could take a bit of supper.” Owen flips the switch on the control box and the scaffold lowers to the ground. “So, Central America.” “Guatemala, I believe. Costa Rico. Belize.” “I’ve heard good things about Belize.” “I understand it’s marvelous.” “How long you plan on staying down there?” “Two, perhaps three years.” “Maybe we’ll hook up. I want to get around that part of the planet.” “Perhaps. Small world you know.” “Indubitably. France really isn’t that far from Central America, on the planetary scale of things.” “Just an ocean and a sea away.” “You could sail there.” “That may take awhile. I need to learn to sail first.” “Not a bad plan, mate.” “What are you doing for lunch.” “I’ve some groceries in the pantry, I’d planned to eat there.” “Why not take in this Hof Brau place down the street. It’s cheap and the food is real. What do you say?” “I wasn’t going to dine out at all, but I suppose once won’t hurt.” “Once. You know, I say once a lot — once, just once — but I always end up doing it again.” “Isn’t that the way it is.” “There are many ways that ‘it is’, but sure-as-hell that’s one of them.” “Oh, really now, save it for someone who cares.” “You coming with, you pompous, British ass?” “Oh, I suppose.” They head off, riding Rocinante. Owen feels exhilarated. Things are coming together. Finally, coming together. Maybe now, in Europe, you’ll find a little satisfaction. * * * Whip it benign! Befriend the maligned! Defrock the feigned blind who in doctrine remind the masses entwined, that they’re a people inclined to the bridle and bind, that their action’s designed by the rational mind, that their intent to make war fares all good and kind, that their passions align with the working-class grind, that they’re humble and loyal and seek to decline, in a manner refined, these wicked who shine, these stout Pagans primed, these hoodlums defined as the dregs of our time, by calling for a battle. In all camps you hear them howling. So release the wild dogs! Then poison the bogs and castrate the frogs who warn them in fogs of wrenches ‘mid cogs, of the gentry who flogs rampant notions agog, through writ and strong nog, through stale dialouge, through jejune demagogues — watch them wallow like hogs, watch their arteries clog, liver’s rotting from grog, laying fallen like logs in the rabble. We aim to cease their endless prowling. And to do this we may, in guignolian way, put a stop to their bray, their donkeyed display of the jackass who plays with demonic dismay, by making them dance in a frenzied bourree, shooting straight at their feet as they as they beg for a stay, and laughing like hell when the key’s thrown away, and they’re sentenced to life, for a joint and a knife, and for refusing to turn tattle. Fear not the big dog’s growling. For he knows not whom he bites. * * * We pause now for a brief message from the Great Hall of Asgard. Listen: Great news! I’ve found a deified sucker to caretake the Pantheon. He’s in the bathroom now, relieving himself, and as such I have a moment or two to wind up the story. God’s have big bladders, so it may take awhile. You’ll never guess who it is. Can you guess? It’s Elvis! Elvis has come to watch the Pantheon, whether he knows it or not. Sometimes Elvis fails to catch on. So be it. I will step out for a breath of ether, will leave him in charge, and WHAMMO! I’m off into the cosmos, traveling once again. The stage is set for the grand finale’. Let’s just get it over with and get on with our existence, what say. “Shall we go, you and I, while we can?” Thank you for your attention. * * * You’re in link mind-for-mind with the station that rocks the Pantheon: station K-T-H-O-R. Thundering to you live from the Great Hall of Asgard. We now present our third segment in the docudrama of the deified: The Demise of Clause. * * * Part III: The Demise of Clause “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous. Here we are, now, entertain us.” — Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” One moment everything exists, then it all turns to ether. The Golden Gate, the Golden Cane, the pyramid building, the pastel Victorians laid in like cracker boxes against the backdrop of the steep hills and violet-capped mountains, the hookers, the religious zealots of all creeds: Islamic, Jewish Orthodox, Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucius, Druid, New Age Crystal Hugger, Atheist, Agnostic, Ba’Hai, Elvisist, Heartless Capitalists, Hedonist, Wicca, Wonka, Hindu, the Unification Church, Metal Church, the Church of Sex and Money, the Church of Loving Tenderness, the Freak Brothers, the Grateful Deadheads, Zionists, Sophists, Anarchists, Rastafarians, Mayans, Incans — all beliefs accounted for, existing there amid the gracile glamour of the Financial District and Nob Hill slapped against torrential intensity of the Tenderloin and Bay View. Bay View. Right. Death’s back door, more like it — the Green Tortoise, the Kennel Klub, Kara, April, Ted and Andre’ and the kids, the Oakland Bridge, the ethnic restaurants, La Pria Suisa, the street corner prophets, the jack-off parlors, Broadway, Market Street, the theaters, museums, temples of wisdom, the pawn shops, Washington park, Golden Gate park, awrithe with secrets, the plethora of head shops, anarchist book stores, coffee houses, seal rock and the Cliffhouse, the Pacific Ocean, Upper and Lower Haight, each complete with their respective junkies laying outside the doorways begging for a fix — the Armadillo pub, with the tragically beautiful raven-haired barmaid, the wealth of exotic trees and shrubberies, the colloquially-eclectic corner markets, the stately slums and morbid mansions, side by side. All this packed, literally packed, into an undulating peninsula in the bay. It was all there a moment ago, then the thrust of the turbine engines kicked in, laying you back in your seat, the plane lifts off the ground and all you have left is memories, and the stories, some of which will never be written. The going away party — with all the groups dancing and eating at the same time Sister Sledge sings ‘We are Family’ — dancing, drinking, tripping, moving from group to group and entertaining, bouncing from room to room changing personas like sweaty T-shirts — an excellent night, indeed. That same night you laid with Kristin, touching, kissing, caressing, fondling, — an excellent wake in the guise of a going away party. No, that will never be written. The last night in town with April, blowing off the Kennel Klub so you could ride to Richmond and track her down, make love until the wee hours of the morning, then ride home, sleep for an hour, wake up and pack like the dickens — that will never see the black-white light of pen and paper. And the Green Tortoise. Yes, the Tortoise. You could write a book solely about the Tortoise. Skinning the old city transit bus rivet-by-rivet, the incredible abundance of gumption and wisdom and serenity contained behind the dilapidated facade, the barrio depression that seethes into your bones — a life not worth living — Gardner Kent and Wade Laughter, the intimacy one finds in fixing buses, the yard, that incredible yard — yes, easily a book. Better yet, a musical. Did you ever capture the purest essence of the San Francisco party? We shall see. Now it’s all a dreamscape anyway. Now there are airports, airport bars sans character, clockwork orange stewardesses, uncomfortable seats — the clean and sterile atmosphere — that’s the most difficult facet to adjust to. You’re not used to being clean. This little girl beside you , she is clean. She looks like a cheerleader. She smells clean and fresh, you smell seedy. It oozes from your pores, this essence of the leather-dark power devoured. Outside the city it sticks out like elephantitus of the nuts. You’ve lost it completely now. Rocinante is gone, sold for the same price you bought her: five-hundred-dollars. She will be sorely missed, like a fond right arm. This is her epitaph. Fare thee well, dear Rocinante. Never before has there existed such a faithful beast. A toast! Raised gin and tonics leveed on high! Hail the faithful spirit of the ghost in the machine! May we ride together again on the highways of the time and space. You served us well, Rocinante, and for that may you be granted immortality. May you die in your sleep and find Nirvana. See you there. Clouds across Nevada now. California gone. Things begin to break up. Were you ever really there? Yes, the seed inside seals it. A layover in Minneapolis, then Amsterdam. Back into the shit after one day in the sterility of society. Already you crave return to the throbbing heart of decadence. The dull-witted attitude, the aversion to the nasties festers like a rash. Such loathing you feel for the docile herd. Let them find their necks in slaughter’s noose. If you move fast enough, the Federales, the gestapo mind police, they never catch up. It’s the thieves you need to watch for. * * * “Where you heading, son?” “Amsterdam, then France, then Spain, maybe down into Africa, across to India, you know, making the Big Loop.” “Well, hot damn! Let me buy you a drink.” “Okay.” The traveling salesmen orders two more drinks from the bartender in the airport of Minneapolis. She appears indifferent, disinterested in the lives of the thousands of people from all over the world passing through and plopping down to drinks on her bar stools. She has more important things to worry about. Things like her hair. “Yeah, I’d like to quit the whole deal, trade the briefcase for a backpack, but I’m too old for that now. Got to stick to airport bars, hotels, restaurants. I guess you could say I’ve gotten complacent.” “You’re only as old as you feel,” Owen says, feeling old, yet trying to act optimistic. “How long before you board?” “I’ll need to get down there after this one.” “Well, here’s to you, damn it. A man after my own heart.” “To the travelers.” “To dying behind the wheel.” “Preferably off a cliff at high-speed.” “Damn straight. Say there, cutie, why don’t you get the world traveler here a shot for the road. I’ll buy it. What’s your poison?” “Grand Mariner®.” “Serve us up a snifter of that, sweetheart. Make it two.” The bartender gets the drinks, the dude kicks out ten bucks for the round, with a three-dollar tip. For three dollars the guy gets a friendly, albeit distant, smile. “Thanks. You let me buy you a beer to wash it down with?” “No, hell no. I’ve got money. I’m sure you’re on a shoestring. Keep your money. It’s all tax deductible anyway.” “Good point.” “See you in the newspapers.” “Preferably before the obituary.” “Cheers.” They drink, and Owen feels the heavy orange liquid flowing down his throat and burning into his gut, feels the mellow buzz wash into his head. He’s getting tight. The barmaid files her nails, the salesmen picks his teeth, two middle-aged women sit at a table near the rear of the bar, babbling back and for as only women babble. They appear deeply-engaged in gossip, chattering, oblivious to the world around them, dwelling on airing the private lives of their friends and acquaintances. They desperately seek a life of their own. Most people need a life of their own. If people spent the same amount of time worrying about their own life, as they spend worrying about the lives of others, the social crisis of the nineties wouldn’t exist. Society. The word rings bitter and ironic in your vocabulary. “Political society exists for the sake of noble living.” Yeah, right. Society, the concept, the terms, the mores and values, were forged from the fires of power and control, rather than pride and nobility. There’s nothing noble about functional interdependency. The parameters of society await on the borders of the fringe like a barbed-wire fence, electrified, verified, modified, new and improved and monitored by the watch dogs of the mediocre. You jump the fences as they sleep. The tiny club is lined with electroplated chrome and imitation leather, ambianced with elevator music — standard decorum for an airport bar. The salesmen’s alright, but he desperate. He needs someone to talk to — someone to live through vicariously, if nothing else. It makes Owen ill, so many people without a life of their own, so many people afraid to get their lazy butts up off the couch and jump from the workaday doldrums out into the world and swim around for awhile and collect stories of their own, rather than relying on the endeavors of others. Seems most people need icons, heroes and role models, seems like they can’t make their own decisions and choices as to the nature of Quality. They need someone to point it out for them, they need someone who’s not afraid of a little adventure. They need someone who’s not afraid to be excellent. “I’d better make for that plane. You know how the international flights are.” “Hell yes, if you don’t get there an hour beforehand, they sell your seat.” “And keep your money, to boot.” “Alright world traveler, get on with it. But write me into a story sometime.” “Okay. Thanks for the drinks.” “Money well spent, I say.” Owen hoists the massive red backpack up onto his shoulders, grabs the day pack and begins charging down the terminal. There is a moving sidewalk to his right, but he chooses to walk — something about riding on a conveyor belt, something too mechanical. With the pack he’s a spectacle — a giant in the world of the little people. That’s the way it feels at least. Everyone looks at him with fear, promptly stepping out of the way, turning to stare as he strides down the terminal, until he reaches his gate. “I need to see your passport and boarding pass.” Owen shows her the documents, she finds them in order, checks his backpack, instructs him to have a seat. Like everyone else in the airport, she looks tired. Taking a seat, taking For Whom the Bell Tolls from his day pack, he picks up where he left off. Somewhere in the remote mountains of Spain, fighting the fascist, the ignorant rebels, the mystic old lady, living in a cave through the winter, Rabbit, little Rabbit . . . Hem was on a roll when he kicked this sucker out. Hem was on a roll, or a role, pretty much until the day he blew his head off. That was his big mistake. He was close, so close — then he took his favorite chrome-plated shotgun and suckled the muzzle. He just couldn’t bear getting old. Too much whiskey for Bwana. And when he couldn’t make Islands in the Stream click, and Garden of Eden went stagnant on him, when he had to stop drinking and smoking, when he didn’t have the energy left to run over the regulars at Sloppy Joe’s, he made a dramatic exit. Hem always loved the dramatic, for as stoic as he was. He loved to put on a good show. And, like Daffy Duck, he just couldn’t resist the ultimate act of the showman: to kill yourself as a means of obtaining public approval. Suicide, however, meant that he’d have to do it all over again. Perhaps that’s what he wanted in the end, despite his climb to the lofty peaks, he wanted to try it again. Still, he sought satisfaction. “Flight number 137, KLM Dutch airways nonstop to Amsterdam is now boarding at terminal 23.” Owen stuffs the book into his pack, walks to the entry way, gives his ticket to the attendant. They check his passport, he boards the plane. He is on his way to Amsterdam. Barring an invigorating crash into the murky waters of the Atlantic, Owen would walk the streets of the Red Light district by morning. His stomach feels tight, tingling with anticipation as he walks through the walkway and onto the gargantuan overseas jet. The plane looks exquisite in the crystalline air of the sub-Arctic Minneapolis night, highlighted by the five-thousand-watt metal halide lights illuminating the path to the runway. He can hardly wait for the takeoff, hardly wait to feel the thrust of the turbine engines. The thrust reminds him of Rocinante. He walks into the cabin of the plane, thinking about his lost motorcycle. The interior of the plane is large for such a vessel — seven seats across, two next to either window and three in the center — and he can actually stand, unhunched, in the aisles. Joy. He finds his seat. The plane is uncrowded, so he sticks his day pack in the seat to his right and settles in for the twelve hour flight. He feels a little tight, still he anticipates the gin and tonic after takeoff. He reads again, trying to take his mind off the plane. “He was thinking: taking heads is barbarous. But proof and identification is necessary. I will have trouble enough about this as it is and who knows? This of the heads may appeal to them. There are those of them who like such things. It is possible they will send them all to Burgos. It is a barbarous business. The planes were muchos Much. Much. But we could have done it all, and almost without losses, with a Stokes mortar. Two mules to carry the shells and a mule with a mortar on each side of the saddle. What an army we would be then! With the fire power of all these automatic weapons. And another mule. No, two mules to carry ammunition. Leave it alone, he told himself. It is no longer cavalry. Leave it alone. You’re building yourself an army. Next you will want a mountain gun.” Hem. Always such the man’s man, Hem. Coldhearted, sensitive, intelligent, able to kill in the blink of an eye, able to rule the world and please himself with the palm of his own mighty right hand, but it all fell away for the love of a young, nubile woman. The classic case of testosterone permeated adrenaline with just enough estrogen to make it interesting. Toss in the castrated bull-ball frustration, linked with the tendency towards the bipolar, and the general lack of concern for anything at all, save for pencil and paper, and you’ve got the makings of a great writer. And Hem was a decent writer, but to the end afraid to bare his soul. He covered the trail with trout-fishing anecdotes and forested metaphors. He created characters of inner-strength, insanity and intellect, yet there remained the tight-assed philosophy of the common man — afraid to dance, afraid to be sensitive, afraid to shake off the testosterone for just a moment dance like dickens and feel Universal Love, if only for a moment. Of course, there’s no such thing as love, save for the theory. Nothing merely happens. There is always pain and sacrifice involved. But to dump the world and forget yourself, lose yourself in rhythm and melody, that’s the way you keep the barnacles off. You fucked up, Hem, you let the barnacles collect too long. And when you finally tried to shake them, it was too late. Scrap her and start over. What the hell. What’s one more life in the realm of the eternal, eh? There’s always next time. They announce the takeoff, the stewardesses scooting to-and-fro, pulling the door closed, sealing the hatch, going through the spiel about seat belts, life rafts and oxygen masks in English, Dutch, French and German. Owen’s heard it many times, but never in so many languages. He likes the multilinguality of the airline. He awaits, however, the thrust, and he gets it. Skirting the terra at two-hundred miles an hour, the landscape nothing more than a whipping blur. He resists the urge to let out a mighty “YEEEHAAA,” as the plane lifts off the ground. That’s when he notices the girl, locked in a couple rows ahead, sitting in a seat by the window. Light brown hair up in a bun, tight little body, cute nose and dimpled chin — her face smoothly symmetrical. She’s looking out the window, then turning to write in her diary. He can see she’s impassioned with the diary. Her writing appears a bit frantic. Owen knows they have a lot in common — writing and traveling, if nothing else. The jet reaches cruising altitude, the seat belt and no smoking signs come off the drink wagons roll out, but first they come around with hot towels. Several of stewardesses are young, blonde-haired blue-eyed Danish women, which make the flight that much more pleasant. A hot towel from a beautiful woman, smiling at you, then another one, another looker, hands you a two Tanqueray and tonics, courtesy comp, no less . . . what could be better? The traveling chick wants to smoke, and so she moves back to the smoking section, sits in the aisle seat across from Owen, drinking, smoking and writing. That makes it better. “Are you from California,” she says to him with a thick accent. The accent melts like butter as it runs through his ears. “Yes, I’m coming from San Francisco” “Oh, I have just travel California. It is so beautiful. I did not want to leave, but my visa expired. I am travel.” “I travel, too. I’m a writer.” “I write also! I am working now on writing my experience from travel in California. I live in Los Angeles for a week, and I would go to the houses and knock on the door and say ‘I am travel from Europe, may I sleep on your floor, or some thing such, and they would let me! I stay there seven days and not once did I pay for hotel. Everyone was very nice to me.” “You got lucky.” “Lucky, no, I do not think so. I think I am careful about who I ask. I am travel, and I have no money, to speak of — so no one bother me. I make many friends. I think the Americans are good people overall.” “There’s a few who aren’t too bad.” “Not so. There are many.” “So what’s your name?” “I am Sabil.” “You need another beer, Sabil.” “I would love one.” Owen hails one of the women, asks for another beer and another bottle of gin. Sabil lights another cigarette. She is beautiful. “So how long will you be in Amsterdam?” “Only a few days. I’m on my way to France to start writing a novel I’ve been working on. I’ve got a farmhouse there, in the North. Are you French?” “No. I am from Belgium. I board another plane in Amsterdam.” “What do you do there?” “I work with my friends in a theater there. We are an artists collective’. We produce our own sets and write the plays, from the beginning on up, eh?” “That sounds fun.” “It is much fun. I am missing my friends these days.” “Excited to get back to Belgium?” “Oh, yes, sure. But I cannot wait to travel again. Already I am missing the road.” “You’re a woman after my own heart.” “So what do you write?” “Fiction mostly. I was a journalist who decided to tell the truth, so I started writing stories. Real stories. Stories from the old school of storytelling. Travel stories, bar stories, lunacy stories, those seem to be my favorites.” “I would like to read your work.” “Come on down to France sometime, we can exchange stories.” “You must stop and visit me in Brussels. I will show you around, you can meet my theater group — oh, you must stop and see me.” “I think that could be arranged easy enough.” “Would you like another bottle?” “Please,” Owen says, feeling quite giddy. Fate has such a way with games. Sometimes they’re fun games, sometimes they’re a bitch. This is one of the fun ones. The passengers begin to bed down, one-by-one, the cabin lights fade and the reading lights twinkle and die, like aged suns. Owen and Sabile continue talking and drinking and smoking until the wee hours, bonding. They share jokes quietly between themselves, share stories of their lives and their beliefs about creating quality and traveling. By the time they finally decide to sleep, they are good friends. One makes friends fast when traveling. * * * In the morning they awake over Scandanavia. The ladies flow out from the four service areas like the nymphite attendants at the Bacchanal with fresh fruit and hot towels and hot bread, juice and coffee. Sabil still sleeps, and Owen sits in his chair across the aisle, admiring her. She’s cute, this Belgian lassie. Worthy of a side trip to Belgium. What the hell, he thinks, taking juice and coffee and bread for two. One of the women hands him a hot towel. He sets the breakfast aside and lays back, placing the hot towel over his face. The towel feels soft, the hot moisture opening up his pores, sucking up the grime. Wiping his flesh, he brings the towel away from his face, only to see Sabil watching him. “Morning.” “Good morning,” she says, smiles a sleepy, wistful smile that makes Owen tingle. “Have a good sleep?” “I had many dreams. I think you were in one of them.” “Cool. Hey, I grabbed some coffee and juice for you,” he says, hands her the beverages. “That was very nice of you.” “Hey, no problem.” She drinks her coffee black. She’s a tough one, this bonnie lass. The cabin of the plane quietly begins to rustle to life as he sits there, watching her drink her morning coffee. She doesn’t mind the watching. When he looks away, looks over to the stewardesses or the other passengers, she studies him. Owen sees her out of the corner of his eye. He like this watching. It’s a good sign. They share their morning banter flying over Iceland, sharing stories, making plans for there next meeting, which would be in a week or so. In a half-an-hour the plane lands, and they are in Amsterdam. He has arrived. “How long do you have before your next flight?” “I have an hour-and-a-half.” “Let me get my pack and we’ll have another coffee. I’ll be right back.” “Okay, Owen Dunum, here is my address just in case,” she says and flashes that damn smile again. Owen tingles away to pass through customs and get his pack. The customs agent looks indifferently at his passport, hands is back to him without stamping it, allows him to pass. Waiting at the luggage conveyor, Owen surveys the airport, which looks something more like a mall than an international airport. Extremely bland and tasteless modern architecture — fifty foot ceilings, lots of chrome on grey white tile, lots of glass. Nothing special. His pack rolls out, his walking stick still strapped to the side. Beneath the many layers of electrical tape on the handle of the stick lie six hits of acid obtained as a going away present. The handle appears unharmed. Owen hoists the pack up onto his back and heads back to have coffee with Sabil, but can’t cross back through customs. He looks for her on the other side, yet knows she’s in the coffee shop, waiting. Owen tries desperately to sway the customs official, but he’ll have nothing to do with the idea. After fifteen minutes of trying to figure a way around he gives the idea up, and leaves the airport. On the way out he passes two more customs agents, pointing at him and giggling. “Oh, you have a stick,” One of them says, and Owen smiles and nods, and thinks about Sabil. The address is there, she is only a train ride away. Already you’ve got connections. Things are going to work out just fine. Outside the airport cars and shuttle buses scamper about, shuttling people to and fro. He finds a bus heading towards the towne centre, driven by an older Dutchman who looks at Owen with disgust from the moment he walks up to the bus and pays his fare in American money. The driver charges him more for not paying in guilders. His pack barely fits through the door. Owen, stuffs it through, boards the bus and waits, feeling tired and a little disoriented. A group of ten Japanese business men board the bus, clamoring amongst themselves, acting giddy. They’ve come for the same reason he has. They’ve come for the decadence. The old bus driver knows this, and he’s obviously appalled. He plops down in the driver seat and cranks the Dutch Christian radio station and they wheedle off down the four lane super highway for Amsterdam. Everything looks more modern than Owen expected. These first few moments in Europe, with all the stories of the buildings and the landscapes, museums, restaurants, cathedrals seem misplaced in time. He may as well be in Pennsylvania. The factories pass by, Owen feeling let down, then as they near the rim of the city the buildings become older, the architecture more ornate, the houses more characteristic of what he figured Europe to look like. It popped up out of nowhere. One moment there were modern concrete block factories, the next moment aged brick streets and buildings with shake shingle and red clay rooftops. This is more like it. This is the way you’d figured things to look. The needle-thin streets, the houses tall, lanky and steadfast, the collection of cosmopolitan oddballs hanging out in the sidewalk cafes, the archaic bicycles — they stand out more than anything. Life spawns from an earlier era. There are signs of technology, to be sure. Computers, modern restaurants, neon, light emitting diodes, newer autos — high-tech, without a doubt. Yet there remains a heritage thick and lusty. There remains culture. Americans harbor deep obsessions with technology. They live for it. They crave the latest models, with the enhanced labor saving devices, LED readouts, on-board computers, cellular phones, pagers, a thousand channels of cable, five-foot television screens — anything that does their thinking for them, anything grand and gouche. America is the high-tech wonderland of innovations for the world . The best defense systems, the best theme parks, the highest office buildings, these comprise the wares. In America life has been reduced to a lugubrious thousand volumes of crunched numbers and twisted bureaucratic doggerel and ‘have a nice day’. Nothing more. Americans care only for the free flow of currency and the chance to become wealthy beyond one’s wildest fantasies. This is not so in Europe, in Amsterdam. You see it in the design of the buildings and in the attitudes of the people on the streets. Many of them are poor, and so shall they remain that way. Poor like their families before them. The sole idea of money bloodlust lingers not in the aged bricks of Amsterdam. Their wont writhes in the qualitative. You taste the passion in your lobes, like nectar. You inhale the air and your olfactory senses run rampant. In the passing blur aboard the bus you pass a plethora of stories in every inch of the wake. Stories dating back two-thousand years before the birth of Christ and the entropic decay of his intentions. Most humans never really get it, this bum-fuck bus driver included. The bus pulls into the circle near a great fountain. The Japanese business men near the brink of self-control, driven mad by the exotic women walking amid the shops and streets. The old bus driver appears pale, sweating profusely, irritated. Owen asks him for the name of a good hostel, he snorts at having to provide this extra effort to the likes of such a heathen. He scribbles an address on a piece of paper, barks out a set of shoddy directions, jumps aboard his bus and skitters off for the airport. Owen looks at the note, it says this: “JEUGDHERBERG/ NJHC KLOVENIERSBURGWAL” And, while he knows German, this means nearly nothing to him. Everything seems disorienting, and the sensation pleases him. Hoisting the pack onto his pack, he makes off like Frankenstein through the cobbled streets in search of decadence. In search of The Cult of Sex and Anarchy. They all came this way, you sense the residue of their presence. Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Miller. Henry Miller. He was here. You smell his pungent musk. The ex-pat brats all wandered these streets, yet they knew they could never write them. Henry, dear Henry, could you not decipher the images aplenty? They said you were a loon, they said you were unreadable — and for this your wrote ‘The Tropic of Cancer’. That showed them. But you never even mentioned Amsterdam. How could you ignore it? How could you ignore the pathos and the ethos? How could you forget this wild libido? Life here appears deliciously foreign. You love it. We love it, don’t we Henry. Paris is fine, to be sure, but this place reeks of zeal. The cars wheedle amid the streets like mastodons in tar pits. Allow the pedants to pass. Learn from them. Your petrol is useless in this pre-cambrian aftermath. Stand aside. Believe not in the underpinnings of technology. They crumble beneath your feet like brittle shale rock. Seek the savage. Hem took his whores, Fitzgerald got sick, Stein bought herself some fine Asian crotch, but they never told a soul. They never wrote it down. How could they avoid it? Even the junkies laying in the gutter smell pristine. The canals wreaking of urine and diesel, the multitudes of exotic fragrances, the hashish billows from the pubs and coffee houses. This place beseeches description. This place begs to be written. Yet the stories remain garbled through drunken word-of mouth. Where the hell is that hostel anyway? Wandering aimlessly, wanting only to dump the back and grab a bar stool, Owen seeks out the hostel, which he stumbles upon after an hour of trodding along the back streets and the three main streets which comprise the red light district. It’s a Christian youth hostel. The bastard sent him to a fucking mission. Owen laughs at the irony of a Christian dwelling in heathen central, walks inside. The paternal air strikes him immediately. He loathes it. The list of rules alongside the registrar’s desk run on and on. No drugs, no fornication, no loud music, no fighting, no parties. No fun of any kind whatsoever. Feel guilt and pray like hell for salvation. The place brims with geeks and throwbacks flagellating themselves amid the guilt-ridden Christian iconography poorly painted on the dull, gray walls. The red light district is no place for Christian tendencies, but for a good laugh, Owen decides to spend the night. Registering, checking the pack at the desk, obtaining his cot assignment from a man who resembles a camp counsellor, he takes his claim ticket and strolls up the stairs to the bunk rooms, wading through the gangs of listless disciples praying for modicum pseudo purity. Foolish mortals, they know nothing of purity. He finds his bunk, changes clothes, and immediately heads back out into the streets to find a pub. He won’t be staying here long, that’s for damn sure. Drink off the rest of the day, come back, sleep, shower and get the hell out of this worthless excuse for a hostel. Walking down to the corner, turning left, he comes upon a small beer pub called ‘The Other Place’. It has a decadent feel to it, so he goes inside. A small place, perhaps the size of a large bathroom with a bar and two tables, he feels comfortable immediately. A sign in the bar advertises a local marijuana beer, which he orders from the large-breasted, red-haired bartendress. He asks to see the hashish menu, selects an eighth of sticky green kind bud, borrows a pipe and promptly gets stoned silly. It’s what he came there for. The barmaid and the two men sitting on the thick wooden stools at the bar speak Dutch, occasionally glancing over in his direction. They’re talking about him, and after a few minutes the girl walks over to him, asks him in English: “We’ve got a bet. Are you from Norway?” Owen looks around, looks slightly embarrassed, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m from America.” “You don’t look American.” “Thank you. That makes me happy. I don’t want to be considered an American.” She laughs, says something to the two men in Dutch, and they laugh also. Owen speaks German to them. “Moutchest du ein andere bier trinken?” “Oh, shit! Don’t speak German!” One of the men says to him. Thank you for the beer, yes, thank you, but please speak English. I hate German.” “It’s such a hard-nosed language,” says the barmaid. “How would I ask you in Dutch.” “Wil yo noch an birchen trinken.” “Wil yo noch an birchen trinken. Okay, thanks, I’ll remember that.” Serving up the beers, drawing one for herself, they sit together speaking English, teaching Owen Dutch, as the bar maid rolls a cigarette using a large paper. She takes a golf-ball sized chunk of hashish from her purse, breaks off a small piece, waving her lighter underneath it, heating it slightly, then lacing the cigarette by sprinkling it on the tobacco. Lighting it, she passes it around to the three of them across the bar. She’s a fine looking wench, long legs, well-marbled though not lumpy with cellulose, large, firm breasts, freckled face, green, pleasant eyes, tomboy demeanor — a fine, handsome looking woman indeed. Owen takes an instant liking to her, feels at home in this small pub called ‘The Other Place’. “Why do you call this bar ‘The Other Place’?” “The owner has a bar called Excalibur on the next street over. It’s a larger pub, very touristy. That was actually his first bar. We used to come over and hang out here, when it wasn’t a pub. We called it the other place, so when he opened it, he called it The Other Place. Seemed a fitting name.” “Makes sense.” “We thought it worked quite well.” “Stop the talking, man, the cigarette is burning.” Owen takes a big drag from the joint, feels the tobacco burn and the hashish expand in his lungs. It’s good sandy brown hashish and the sweet taste lingers in his mouth. He passes it on to the guy next to him, an average-sized chap appearing to be in his early thirties, dishwater brown hair, oversized proboscis, calm grey-eyes — something of a Danish mutt. He takes a long, slow drag from the fag and lets it waft from his mouth to the atmosphere, expanding and churning over the rock of that potatoesque nose. “Do you live in Amsterdam?” “I grew up here, but I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia for the last two years. Came in two weeks past. Working down there. Hell of a place. Hell of a people, the Saudi’s. Can’t even get a beer. What do you make of a people like that. Damn religious. Pray all the bloody time. Work when they’re not praying. No way to live, I say. You need a bar you can sit in and smoke and drink. Don’t you agree?” “Without question. I hate it when you can’t find a decent bar.” “Amsterdam brims at the lip with decent pubs and taverns. Take your pick. I’ll take you to a few of them tonight.” “Sounds like a plan.” “Wil yo noch an birchen trinken?” “Ashablief.” “Ich mochte drei mehr Bieren, bitte.” “No German!” “Three more beers, please.” “That’s better. Sure thing, love.” Saskia draws the beers, and Owen looks around the bar, looks at the walls plastered with memorabilia. Panties, bras, nylons, T-shirts, shoes, hats, concert stubs, a dick-shaped bong, condoms, assorted chunks of Harley Davidsons, autographs, photographs, records, posters, pinups and postcards, murals, bumper stickers, masks, mutilated mannequins, a battered French horn, a wig well worn, a bota bag, torn — this memorabilia adorns this tavern forlorn, in a space no larger than a small studio apartment. There’s a story behind every square inch. It could take years to decipher the entire history. “I’ve got this one chaps,” she says, setting the Heinekein draws in front of them.” “Dankevil, Sas.” “Saskia, can you recommend a good hostel. I’m staying up at the Christian youth hostel and, well, it sucks.” “Oh they’re a bunch of freaks alright. That place is fucked. The people who come down from there, they cause trouble.” “I’ll bet. Nothing worse than a bunch of twisted Christians.” “There’s a place up Voorburgwal a couple blocks up on Armsteeg 12, called The Last Waterhole. They’re cool. It’s twenty-four Guilders a night, but you come and go as you please, they don’t check on you, you can smoke in the rooms.” “Sounds more like the place I was looking for.” “Go up three blocks and turn left, cross the canal and then jog a half block and you’ll see a small street. Armsteeg. It’s down in the middle of the section.” “Well, I’ve paid to stay the night at this place, so I will. But first thing in the morning, I’m finding a new hostel.” “This place is a good one. But look around. Here, I’ll write the address down for you. God damn, you could pass for Norwegian anyplace.” “If I only spoke Swiss, it wouldn’t be a problem.” “So what are you doing in Amsterdam.” “Passing through on my way to France. I’ve got the keys to a cottage in the north. I’m going to live there for a year and write. I’ve been laying the groundwork for my second novel, and I’m ready to start writing. I stopped over in Amsterdam for a quick vacation.” “You’ve come to the right place for that.” “So I hear. I’m going to do some exploring.” “Exploring! That’s what it’s all about. Picking at the nooks and crannies, prying artifacts from the hands of the dead, cleaning them up and selling them for an astounding profit, that’s what life’s about. What’s say, you Swiss gorilla, to an exploration of the local pubs?” “Sounds fine by me.” “Fine, then. Now drain that bastard and let’s get moving.” “You work tomorrow, Saskia?” “I open up at ten.” “I’ll come in for coffee,” Owen says, smiling a somewhat drunken smile. “Have it brewing first thing. Hope you like it strong.” “Strong is the only way to drink it.” “You’re no American.” “I know. I think I was born in the wrong country.” “Come on, man. You’ll see her again in the morning.” They walk out onto the Voorburgwal, the sun faded to black and the atmosphere wafts with the musk of the bachannal. In the sunlight people think of commerce. When the sun sets it’s party time, anywhere you travel. Amsterdam, of course, proves no exception to the rule. At night the streets take on the air of the perpetual carnival . That’s a constant, as well. The French Quarter, the Red Light District, upper Haight, Hollywood and Sunset, Daytona Beach, Rush street, Caye Caulker — most cities keep one. A heart of decadence. Shuffled off archaic sections, the blighted, the distinctly urban —it’s what most cities were founded on: trade, gambling and prostitution. Some section sheltered from the sunlight —shacked away in a closet by day, sported with perverse pride all night long. Night after night, in whatever spot you might pick, in whatever place devoted specifically to decadence, there’s a party. There’s always a party. And the party always feels roughly the same. It’s the finer points that separate a good party from a lame party. Number of bars, availability of sex, drugs and live music, presence of cops — better yet lack thereof, these factors denote a party’s intensity. And now, as Owen walks along the streets of the Red Light district, walking along with two guys fresh from Saudi Arabia, Owen figures Amsterdam to be one of the better parties he’s had the happiness of attending. The normally reserved, clean cut tourists nearly run wild, ragged and rampant, dizzy with consumption, they mingle with the scammers and punks. They lean on them like long lost friends. Soon they’ll get robbed, but for now they’re having fun. The multitude of trendy bars begin to swell, loud with lurid banter, writhing with conversation and whoops and howls of pleasure. And it’s early yet. “Quite a place, eh?” “That’s for damn sure.” “You can get anything you want here.” “So I gather.” “Watch yourself, though. There’s thieves everywhere.” “I gather that, too.” “Just watch your back. Here, turn here. It just down this street.” Shadows beat the streetlights in Amsterdam. The streets are full of them, shadows; and the scattered high-pressure sodium and incandescent beacons of order don’t stand a shot in hell, so to speak, at shedding illumination on the plethora of Ghouls, ghosts, travelers, tourists on a binge, pickpockets, evil hobnob, bikers, hikers, devils, saints and martyrs, hooligans, junked up zombies, serpentine crackheads, Japanese ‘business men’, and the whores. Of course, the whores — the abundancy of sex for sale! The knickknack shops draw iron-plated shades over tinted windows, acringe before the onslaught of the heathens robed in velvet shadows, lithe with lifeblood night. There’s no holding this back. The cops step to the fringes of the district and simply contain the party. Simply tolerate it. Come in when the bars close and clean up the drunkards and send the hoodlums scampering like rats, then call it a night. “Here this is the place.” They walk into a dimly-lit English-styled pub, slightly packed. It’s a little bigger than The Other Place, but not that much. “This is a nice place, eh?” “Yeah, it’s fine.” “You can get liquor here if you want. What are you having.” “Whiskey sweet.” “I’ll get this one.” “Thanks.” Adorned completely in dark oak, wooden casks lining the wall near the low-hung ceiling, the bar feels quaint, though crowded and cloudy. Owen feels the beer and the jet-lag creeping over him like a thick fog. Perhaps it’s just the bar. The drinks come, the conversation lags, you finish the drink and excuse yourself from the two, saying nothing personal, claiming simple fatigue. There’s the usual exchanging of addresses, the usual obligatory promises to write. “Once a month,” the guys says, “We write once a month. We should keep in touch.” Sure, no problem. And the time will pass on, with you meaning to send them off a short cable, just something to let them know you still trod amongst the dregs, but it never materializes. Walking back along the Voorburgwal, alone. That’s better. The only places open are the bars, sex shops and video parlors. The whores stand behind glass doors with little red orbs glimmering above. Along the mainstreet, none of them look worth the paying for. Tomorrow night, when you’re fresh, then find a good one. Tomorrow night you run the gamut. The Other Place overflows with obnoxious armchair party boys and girls swilling beer and making fools of themselves. Saskia is gone, some lanky biker guy tending in her place. You’ll see her in the morning for coffee. Fuck it. Back to the Christian Youth Hostel. As you draw near the place your stomach and bowels tighten, your mouth goes dry — such a dreary homecoming. At the desk they check you out. Make sure you’re not crazy with decadence, give you a good delousing, allow you to pass. Bastards. The place feels like a converted catholic high school. Quiet, dull, guilt-ridden rooms and passageways with the stench of the disinfectant and sweat socks. Horrid place — sleep the night and then get the hell out. The bathrooms sport both florescent and ultraviolet lights, hung with precision over the stainless steel sinks and white linoleum counters, vaguely resembling a morgue scene from a cult science fiction B-movie. Something Kubrikian. There’s a guy grooming — picking his nose hairs, flossing, shaving methodically. He appears emaciated, almost cancerous. Dark circles make his sinkhole eyes appear more sunken than they are, his long gangly arms waterpipe thin, with pock marks and zits across his shoulders and back. No body hair covers his pallid flesh. You’d need to tie a board to his ass if he’d take a fat hooker or he’d be liable to fall in. He’s giving you the rat like glances out of the corners of his black, sagging eyes. Fuck him. Take a piss, hit the sack. Leave with the dawn. The bunk room holds about fifty — a fucking gymnasium convert. You were right, this used to be a school. Some kid’s jacking off beneath the covers, thinking nobody knows what he’s up to. Everybody knows. Sex parlors all over the place and the guy’s jacking off in bed. Across the floor, some little dweeb lays in your cot. Claims it’s his. To hell with him. Let the little bastard have the bunk. There are plenty. No sense banging anybody up. Just a little sleep, that’s what you need, that’ll set you straight. A brief respite, then back to the party. Just a little sleep. Just until dawn. Owen finds a cot a couple rows down. The guy beneath the blankets pants quietly to himself, the springs squeaking softly in the darkness. Laying down in the bottom bunk, Owen lays his head back on the stiff, starched pillow and smiles to himself. He’s made it. Finally getting somewhere. It’s about time. Stay here three or four days, head through Belgium, hang with Sabil, mosey on down to the north of France and start writing. Ready to start writing now. Head’s full of images. Beautiful, decadent images. Cyrstalline pure — dark, swollen, grinding and moist. The lights in the room come up and a group of African boys break the silence with bad jokes and urban banter, laughing, braying, shadow boxing, rattling the bunks, taunting the helpless nerdy Christian boys, keeping Owen awake, in a place where he’d rather be sleeping. “You guys want to find a bunk, shut-up and lie down, or go somewhere else. Personally, I’m here to sleep. So shut the hell up!” “Oh, yeah, what you going to do about it, man.” Owen says nothing, but flashes him the steel-eyed bouncer look that he’s learned so well. The two lock eyes. The boy’s a wild dingo. Formidable to some, if out of nothing more than sheer rage. His buddies look away, wanting nothing to do with the confrontation. Within the locking of eyes, within this moment of sizing up strengths and weaknesses, the battle can be fought and won or lost. It’s all in the eyes. Owen gives the kid a good-sized bolt of energy within this moment of eye contact, kid wants nothing more to do with it. “Ah, fuck you, overgrown mother fucker,” he says, stomping out of the room, shutting off the lights, his buddies slinking out behind him. Once again the room is quiet and dark. Sleep lightly, foolish warrior. You’ve made your enemies fast. Wake up with your balls in your mouth, you could, if you fall in too deep. He’s a sneaky one, jackal boy. Sleep with one eye open, that’s the way. Watch your own ass. You’re in Amsterdam now, damn close to France. Damn close. Nothing to stop you now. Just take it easy. Don’t flip out and watch your money, what little you’ve got. Hang out, have some fun, smoke yourself silly, then head for the country. Nothing to stop you now. * * * Waking at first light, showering, shaving, eating a dismal breakfast in the Christian cafeteria, Owen leaves the hostel around seven a.m., backpack in tow. The Voorburwal quiet now, sunny, pleasant, with the debris from the evening before scattered along the buildings, floating in the murky canal, strewn about from end to end. The litter is all that’s left from the night before. You can tell a lot about the progression of a party by the contents of the midden. Midden. The key lies always in the midden, hidden from the untrained eye in the guise of a pile of shit. And, judging from the garbage, there was quite a fest here last night. There’s a blowup doll floating in the canal, multitudes of plastic Heinekein cups scattered like lilies at a wake, a dash of discarded clothing. A fine fest, indeed. Walking up the sidewalk past the pubs, now closed, now dark and silent, taking in the residual images of the endless guignol, Owen walks up to one of the bridges along the canal. Armsteeg. Turning left he heads down a glorified alley and finds The Last Waterhole huddled away on the fringe of the Red Light district. He knocks on the door, and a sweet, dark-haired girl with puppy-brown eyes and a thick cockney accent answers, and invites him in for tea and hashish. They smoke, drink the tea, share some casual conversation, then she shows him the bunk rooms. Six bunks to a room. Come and go as you please. “You need to leave the rooms for an hour, around nine,” she says, showing him the second room, a smaller one on third floor, “Sissy comes in to clean, and it’s just easier that way. Gets a chap out into the morning, what. Have a walk, a cup of tea somewhere, it’s not so bad, really.” “Seems fine to me.” “Well, what’s say we take care of the registration, then you can go up and grab a bunk.” Owen signs the card, buys a small lock for his locker, hauls his pack up the stairs, and promptly lays down for a nap. Sissy comes in to clean around nine, Owen gets up, and leaves her to her business. She’s another cockney cutie, this Sissy. Far less talkative than her buddy, though cute nonetheless. Much better than the Christian place. Nice to have a couple cute Brits caring for things. And no presence of tension whatsoever. Indeed, this is what you came here for. The streets are still quiet at nine. The morning is bright and clear, with a brisk winter chill in the air. Most of the restaurants remain closed. Owen walks up to Zeedijk and finds an open gyro place. Small, white-tiled and sterile, but open nonetheless. Ordering a gyro and steak fries, he sits at the thin counter facing the wall, reading. The place is open to the morning air and Hemingway is in Spain fighting the fascists, walking the path of a dead man, the world nears a state of revolt over property and economics, the demigods rising right and left — all of them claiming to be the ‘one true leader of men’ — yes, the civilized world nears the brink of extinction on this bright, sunny morning in Amsterdam. Everything’s going just fine. The gyro tastes heavy and filling, the spiced meat, onions, tomatoes, sour cream dill sauce, greasy steak fries with mayonnaise on the side, for dipping — the meal hits the mark. Owen finds himself ravenous and devours the entire plate in a flash, then walks up the Voorburgwal to The Other Place for morning coffee. Saskia is there, looking perky “Ah, morgen, Owen, Hoe gaat het met jou?” “Excuse me?” “I say ‘how are you’ in Dutch. We need to work on your Danish.” “You teach me, okay?” “Sure. Coffee?” “Dankevil.” “That’s better,” she says pouring the coffee. Strong, dark and enlivening, the coffee, with cream for the topping. Perfect. Owen lights a cigarette, loads the little wooden throwaway pipe, looks through the Danish newspapers, picking up this and that. He reads the Danish fairly well. Very close to German. A little more relaxed, it seems, than Hoch Deutsch, more relaxed, even, than the varied colloquial dialects. Danish sounds more pleasing to the ear. German sounds like a mad dog barking. Ich komme morgen mit hunds! “So you’re a writer, eh?” “Working on it. I finished a novel six months ago, I’m going to France to begin another” “What’s it about?” “This and that. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” “I have a story for you, since you’re a writer, your the best one to tell. Want to here it?” “Sure.” “Well this is just a theory of mine, but you know the song Yankee Doodle Dandy?” “Uh-huh.” Well in Danish, Jan Kee, is a common name for the boys, you understand?” “Yes.” “So there were many Danish immigrants to America, and many of them were named Jan you see? Jan Kee. Yankee. I think that is the where the word came from” “Yankee Doodle, keep it up. Yankee doodle dandy. Mind the music and your step and with the girls be handy.” “That’s right. That’s the song.” “Sort of derogatory, with today’s connotations.” “What isn’t. It all has to do with sex, no?” “I suppose.” “More coffee?” “Ja, ashablief.” “You look so cute when you speak Dutch. I will have to teach you more.” “I look forward to that.” “Did you move from the Christian hostel?” “Hell, yes. Left there early this morning. Went to the place you recommended. Much better. Thanks for the suggestion.” “Sarah’s pretty sweet, eh?” “She’s way cool. Made me tea and rolled a cigarette right off.” “I’m sorry. Would you like me to roll a cigarette?” “If you’d like. That’s not what I was saying, though.” She waves her hand at him, as if to shrug off the thought of it, pulls a ball of hash and a package of Drum® tobacco from her satchel, takes one of the large rolling papers and rolls up another sugar cone-sized joint, lights it, and they sit there in the small tavern smoking hash, chatting, and drinking coffee. Owen feels the cynosure of yet another perfect moment. Saskia, the hash, the dark coffee, the eclectic pub, the whores await in the windows, the live sex shows, the myriad of restaurants and museums, the canals, centuries of passion in the air all wrapped in a red cellophane wrapper and labeled Amsterdam. Certainly the makings of a perfect moment. Certainly nearing the critical mass for a clandestine composition of ether and musk. The fragrances here smack of pineal arousal. The smell of history! They call the wolf — alone or otherwise. Permeating the air, demanding total concentration. Osiris padding her nest, awaiting the arrival of the vestal virgins sacrificed in homage to her house — she lights her pungent incense, blows it off to Amsterdam. The wafting fragrance incites the denizens — enrages their hoary beasts and calls the lambs to fest. Pan plays the fluted reeds and the women begin squirming in throbbing opulence, bodies gyrating, prancing and leaping in full frolic, the thick mead and mushrooms waiting in the town square, by the fountain. The fountain next to the bridge. The bridge across the river. The river at the foot of the mountain. The mountain fingering the sky, the ionosphere, the ozone, the great black vacuum beyond — it’s all writhes to life when Pan plays his flute, when Bacchus holds the first ceremonial grape between his wine-stained teeth — Bes kicks in on the talking drum and the women swoon and the men take to stomping and waving their fists, flailing about in epileptic fits of reverie as they place the virgins on the altar, as the elder king prepares to die. Humans perform these acts in hopes of pleasing the gods, normally to no avail. The token gift of mortality, per se, means nothing to the immortal. They come for the show. Humans revel in exhibitionistic tendencies, humans live to put on a show. Fighting over the spot light sun, they scratch and claw and kill in hopes of scoring a gig at the pantheon. In a metasonambulistic stupor they follow the waking dream, dwell in the Mayan sunshine of the never ending drama, discovering immortality in their own ignorance. There is no better story than that of a man who stumbles on to fame and fortune by always being in the right place at the right time unconsciously. Unaware that fame or fortune stands in his midst. Time, Fate and Irony always get a rousing round of thunder and lightning from the pantheon. They love that shit. Grotesque characters marred and disfigured by their own guilt or stupidity — or, better yet, coincidence, yet who succeed in rising to the realm of Nirvana, through a series of accidents. The gods are misfits at heart. Mutants, if you will. They relish seeing their story told again and again. It’s all that keeps them alive. It drives them to nothing less than greatness, nothing short of godliness. But a god likes to get out ... a god likes to hang loose . . . a god likes to have a good time, and for all others around them to have a good time. Often, it is, they insist on it. This insistence remains the ultimate act of the Arbitrary Constant: extract the soul of your audience as payment for entertainment rendered. They turn it over to you willingly. And you in turn admonish them with stories of grandeur, enhanced and edited, songs and dances and lights and sounds and blind red rage and dull blue torpor, heightened awareness and precognitive dissonance, triharmonic resonance, three-chord rock. Indeed, a good show. But sometimes you need to get away, hang with the fellow incarnates, and really delve into the depths of Hedonism, exploring far beyond the most raucous daydreams of the common man. Delve into the blithe regions of recreational power and procreation. These are the toys of the gods. And with these toys, one creates perfect moments. And perfect moments are beautiful . . . until they reach critical mass and explode in your face. Then it’s just showbusiness. Owen and Saskia chat the morning away, comparing cultures, swapping jokes, drinking beer, smoking hash and genuinely enjoying each other’s company. She’s a good talker, Saskia. Her pleasant, soothing voice and demeanor compliment her rugged good looks. She speaks the truth, or something close to it. Saskia allows the time to pass like a water-cut stone mountain river — her tone rising to rapids howling off the falls, falling to the whispering depths of the channel center. She’s beautiful, like a river, and the source, of course, springs from her dulcid, bright green eyes. Owen thinks he could watch those eyes for a long time, while listening to her soft, slightly raspy voice. Perhaps while fondling her rust-colored hair and kissing her freckled face. So they chat, the morning bleeding into afternoon, and around one a young man comes in and joins them — opening the door, allowing the sunlight to spill in from outside. The sunlight intensely bright, almost painful, makes them squint. “Close the door, Martin, you’re blinding us!” “A little sun is good for you vampires.” “Very funny. A beer?” “Dankevil.” They speak in Dutch for a moment, too fast for Owen to understand. “I’m sorry Owen, that’s rude. Owen this is Martin, Martin, Owen.” “How’s it going.” “How do you do.” “Owen’s a writer.” “What do you write?” “Fiction. I write fiction now in order to tell the truth. “I see. Myself, I write poetry.” “Poetry, now that’s closer to the truth than fiction.” “I find it so.” “Get anything published?” “I’ve two small books published locally. I don’t worry too much over publishing. I write. That’s what matters.” “Cheers.” “So what of you? Publish anything?” “Regionally, in the states. I had a book in the door at one house, but they’re a large, conservative textbook publisher, so it fell through. I’m working on another right now. Don’t care to sweat over publishing, either. A writer writes. And when they’re not writing they’re sitting around somewhere thinking about writing. Figure the publishing thing just falls in line after a while.” “With any fortune at all.” “With any Fate.” “Salude.” “Saskia, join us for another round?” “How about some shots?” “What do you have?” “We have this homemade schnapps. Very good stuff. The mint is so strong, it opens all your tubes, you know?” “Let’s try it.” Saskia pours out three shots, Owen buys the round, they hold the shot glasses in the air, and toast. “To friends from distant places,” she says, smiling at Owen. “To writing, for writing’s sake,” says Martin. “To the publishers and editors, god love ’em: may they rot in hell.” “Salude.” They drink, the shots taste strong and heavily-laden with spearmint and peppermint . . . and, of course, alcohol, the combination of the three promptly blows Owen’s ‘tubes’ wide open. Bronchial, nasal, esophageal, intestinal, vascular, glandular, excrecitory, every last tube in his body dilating in one splendidly expulsive overture. He blushes. “Good stuff is right. That shit’s killer.” “Have I not told you this?” “I know. I’m just confirming your statement.” “I see. Can I buy you a beer to wash that down?” “Ja, Ich trinke noch ein bierchen, ashablief.” “Ja, klar. We’ll have you speaking Dutch in no time. I like when you speak Dutch. Don’t you think he’s cute when he speaks Dutch, Martin.” “I wouldn’t know about that,” says Martin, he and Owen grimace at each other, playfully, they all laugh, Saskia draws the beers and Owen feels at home, among friends. The day winds on with the three of them bantering about politics, religion, philosophy, poetry and rock and roll. Nothing unsung, nothing new. Same old bar banter. But the talk flows freely, uninhibited by the notions of political correctness, manners and what not. Customers come and go, Saskia waits on them, but always returns to the conversation. “Government sucks.” “Well, I live on the dole. I live off the government. Many people here live on the dole. Our unemployment rate is something like twenty-two percent . . . and the government here is really quite, how you say . . . progressive. Yes, that’s it. You, if you wanted to move to Amsterdam you would go file for citizenship, then go apply for the dole and within two weeks they find you an apartment and give you six-hundred guilders a month. They’ll give you a vehicle if you want it. The government here doesn’t fuck with you, as they do in America. “Oh, they love to fuck with you in America. Every chance they get. The bureaucracy over there just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I’m just waiting for it to topple. That’s when things will get interesting. That’s when we’ll see who’s got gumption.” “It’s not like that here.” “Hell no! Everything’s legal here.” “No,” says Saskia, coming from the other side of the bar. “Everything is tolerated. Not legal. There’s a difference.” “Of course.” “I couldn’t live under the conditions in America.” “America loves art, but loathes artists,” Owen says, feeling the effects of the schnapps upon his tongue, “They find their complete lack of interest in money and work pathetic, discourage creative thinking in the schools and on television. Especially on television. There seems to be this never-ending quest for homogeny. The blanding of a culture, rather then the enhancement. They despise the artist, until the artist becomes rich or begins to paint landscapes. Pheasant painters, we call them. Sitting around sucking down Geritol and prune juice painting pretty sunsets. I hardly call that art. Art hurts. Art drives you mad, at times; exalts you at others. That’s just the way it is. With the good ones, at least.” “Most of the good artists I know are mad-as-hatters.” “Goes with the territory. No other way around it. Passion, inspiration, procreation — damn volatile set of tools for human to work with. Ever been truly inspired? Quite a feeling really. You’re walking around, minding your own business, when all of a sudden WHAM! you get nailed with an idea. The idea flowers and blossoms into a tightly-woven serpentine vine of concepts and images. You’re lost between the veil of reality and the bliss of passion. You can think of nothing else, save for the idea, now deeply rooted in the most remote regions of your psyche — if it’s really a dandy. Knocks you flat on your ass. Schizophrenic, the ancient Greeks called it — ‘touched by the Gods’. And that is the way you feel when you’re inspired. As though some force reached out from behind the thin veil of the sensual and profane and tapped you on the brain and set your mind ablaze. Blows you to bits. And from there you scrape the pieces back into a pile and sort out the details of the gem just handed to you. And people call that ‘crazy’. Sorry, I know I’m babbling. But these bastards, they never give you a break. Tow their line or get locked up or degraded publicly. What’s up with that?” “I have this friend,” Saskia says, “she paints the most spectacular pictures, but she can’t take care of herself very well. Sometimes she wears the same clothes for days. If people didn’t stop by and visit her, bring her food, make sure things were okay, well she’d be in a real world of pain. She’s a great painter, but she completely lacks common sense.” “I wish I could be more like that. Sometimes I feel too attached to my body.” “I know this feeling,” says Martin, rolling a cigarette. “I know this feeling all to well. I take walks late at night, very often you know, because I find myself not sleeping. Thinking about things all the time. I do most of my writing at that time. Walking the streets, without the presence of people, I lose myself. I cannot lose myself in a crowd, as do most. I always know who I am and when I am.” “I know the feeling. I think it’s easier to lose yourself when there’s no one else around. Walking at night, with the availability of spiritual energy waxing, nearly swollen with ample amperage, that’s when the voices are most clear. Pure fucking bliss, isn’t it? To listen to that sweet chorus, strange and harmonic, nearly droning — the sonants and consonants drifting in and around one another — the voices speaking with perfect meter. Beyond the iambic pentameter. Something more perfect than the most pristine soritic monologue. Don’t you think?” “I find it wonderful.” “It’s all that gets me out of bed in the morning. I’ve been with them so long now, to be without them would leave me nearly naked.” “I understand.” “Most people just think I’m crazy.” “I quote your American cult-hero Captain Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise: ‘In an insane society, the sane man must appear insane.’” “Well put.” “It was one of Rodenberry’s,” he says smiling. “Not bad for a poor Dutch poet.” “Bugger off, you overgrown Norwegian bastard!” “Irish, actually.” “You don’t look Irish,” Saskia says, “you don’t look American, either. You look like you’re from Norway.” “Well I’ve got that going for me.” “Now if you only spoke Swedish.” “Uff-da.” “That’s a start.” Saskia gets off work around five and the tall, somewhat goofy looking biker dude from the night before takes her place. She introduces Owen before she leaves, kisses him on the cheek. The pleasant little scene puts him in good graces with the new bartender, so he stays for one more beer. The sun sets, the radiant pink and orange glow illuminating the whorehouse windows across the street. This new bartender seems pleasant enough, though not too bright. Not quite right in the head. Then again, who is? He takes a liking to Owen, seems already to know Martin, so he opts to share with them the joys of a good find. “Look at this, he says, taking a large, bright green marijuana bud from a plastic baggy in his leather jacket. The bud is about eight or nine inches long, and about as thick as a silver dollar. “Is this just a mule-dick-of-a-bud, or what he says, flashing it in their faces, checking to make sure no one is looking. “It’s a fine looking bud.” “I went to get the supply for the bar and he showed me this bud and, damnit, I just had to have it.” “That’s understandable.” “Christ, you don’t even want to smoke it.” “Oh, I’m going to smoke it alright. Come back at close and I’ll roll up a big joint.” “Cool. What time you close?” “One.” “I’ll see you then. Martin, what are you up to?” “I think I’ll head home for awhile, maybe come back out later.” “If not, let’s meet for coffee, here, tomorrow.” “Sounds good to me. I need to shower, maybe have a quick nap. Maybe I’ll see you this evening,” Owen says, smiling, nodding and feeling a tad weary, he opens the door and heads out into the evening. Things are picking up on the strip. By nine or ten they’ll run at wailing pitch. By Friday things will be out-of-hand. So it goes. Owen walks up the sidewalk, taking in the feelings, smelling the disorienting odors coming not from the red light district but from the surrounding homes and hotels. Distinctly different fragrances. Different spices, colognes, perfumes, cleaning supplies, methanes, musks — they lace the air like angel dust, causing life to turn liquid, peering through the rain barrel reality at the display, poking at it, making it ripple, looking on as it stratafies into the ten-thousand separate entities. Elegant and heathen entities. Demure and decadent entities. The alluring and the grotesque, the subtle and slimy, their melding produces striking images. The ambiance here appears austere on the surface. Pragmatic, anal retentive, seemingly void of pleasure — beyond that, however, beyond the quaint eurosurface of Christian dogma, beyond the iron gates and the thick solid-core oak doors and the stolid handmade bricks Pan sits in an ox-blood leather high-backed smoking chair, smoking. His horns have grown long, curling like a ram’s, his cloven hooves need trimming, as does his goatee. Playing his pipes softly, but with zeal, he performs for those who come to call. Singing the old songs, he is, singing to those who remember him. The Christians have systematically destroyed the history of the Pagans, like the Chinese systematically destroyed the Tibetan Buddhists. But both ideologies thrive on the streets. Both find sanctuary in the hollows of the seekers, the spiritual junkies, the outlaw monks, vision quest journeymen, ascetic luminaries, backwoods hippies, the impassioned rocker savants — within these groups and on their periphery the elder gods perform nightly. Drugpa Kunleg drops by with a six pack and he and the horny Pan banter about the trivialities of immortality with a giddiness reserved for Kindergarten. Aphrodite drops by to give them both a blow job. Just having a little fun, is all. A blowjob . . . that sounds decent right now. Perhaps a decent lay. It’s all here for you to pluck from the trees. Snip from the vines like beefsteak tomatoes ripe for the picking. Glorious decadence abounds! To roll in a vat of nectar filled with wine and naked women, that’s what you’re looking for . . . Owen smiles at the thought of a large oak vat filled with well-marbled lassies in the buff stomping white grape wine with adoring toes, and expands the scene into a full-blown orgy as he strolls on down the street to his hostel. Sara is gone and some somber guy sits behind the desk, reading. He looks at Owen’s receipt with vague disinterest and waves him upstairs. Walking up the stairs past the shower room, Owen feels the beer burbling in his gut, pulsating in his veins. He feels weary. The bunkroom smells clean and generally sterile, albeit old, there in the fading light of dusk. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, he strips down, pulls on a pair of black gym shorts, walks back downstairs to the showers. Cleansing crystalline water, you wash away the scum from the bar. Bring us peace. Lifeblood of life itself, you take away the slim of this world. Show no mercy. You make the filthy pristine, you wash away the bullshit, you renew the ancient, you defy decay. Give us ardor. You give us the power to scale mountains, to chew through the limestone and granite and come out smiling, in need of your services. We cannot live long without your dulcet graces. We are but minerals without the boons of your cool, clear nectar. Fill us to the lip, and beyond. And soap, soap, the acrid lye of mortal man-kings, soap, the lord of purity, soap kills the bacteria, soap destroys the external vermin of the macrobiotic, but water. Water, tender, brutal saint of the earthen forces, you wash away from within the sordid residues of the urban wastelands. Grant us life immortal. So, there it is then. You’ve made your ode to the water goddess, now bathe. Hot water feels good. The misting. Let it all slide away. You’re here and you’re on your way to the north of France to write another novel. Things are moving along quite well, don’t you think? All you have to do is show up, and live through a brief sojourn in France. Doesn’t sound so bad, eh? Things work out, right? So why are you so fucking angry. Shake it off, man. Let San Francisco slide away to the land of fantasy and truth. Let San Francisco become fiction. Dump it all and be humble or you’re going to get fucked with. You’re looking for a row. You call the dreggy dogs to battle. Cease the this incessant calling, or they will come. Nobody needs the dregs. Let them writhe in the cul-de-sacs in delirium, jonesing for a fix. You’ve nothing to prove to anyone among them. Let lying dogs die. That’s it. Enjoy this little tour, perhaps pass through Brussels and look up Sabil, then drag your heathen ass down to France and get writing, before new stories start coming in. That’s the plan. Two more days in Amsterdam, then south, to the north of France. It’s that simple. Turning off the shower, toweling the water from his body, Owen feels refreshed. Ready for the nighttime festivities. Fresh as a lily-of-the-valley at a sunrise funeral. The evening light is gone and it’s dark in the bunkroom, Owen switches on the fluorescent light above the sink, casting a dull grey-blue light throughout the room. Opening his locker, he notices that it’s bent near the bottom, but he pays no attention to it. Going through his fanny pack, he comes across the pictures of the house that Ian had given him. The place resembles a paradise he’d once dreamed of. Quiet, dilapidated, rustic, off the beaten path. Way off. Ian had said the peddlers come by with breads, and meats and vegetables, he’d never have to leave. He could rise in the morning and write all day, if he felt like it, uninterrupted by the tedious rigors of mortal living. He senses it coming close now. Very near, indeed. The book is almost done. And all you have to do is show up. Owen dresses, pulls out his walkman and the two small speakers and drops in the Meat Puppets ‘Forbidden Places’. He has the room to himself, save for one dude across the aisle who’s not home, so he plops down on his bunk and loads the small, wooden pipe. The marijuana tastes green and sticky and delicious. He blows smokes rings with a smile on his face, just like the Cheshire Cat. He feels relaxed and comfortable. Amsterdam suits him. Yes, sir, my kind of town. My kind of town. Anything you need. Anything to keep you going. Drugs, sex and rock-and-roll. What more is there to life? Work? Hah! Work is for fools, unless the work is for art. That is the only kind of work worth doing. It’s the only kind that lasts. There are people who labor here, of course — somebody needs to keep the party running — many, however, do nothing at all. The difference is this: here it’s accepted. There’s just not enough work for the people, so a few of the people take the opportunity to branch off into the more esoteric occupations, like painter, or poet, or thief. In a tourist town, it’s easy to be a thief, and there’s more money involved than with painting or poetry, so it’d be good odds on the availability of thieves, were you in dire need of a scammer or a pickpocket, or even a mugger. What you want, man. What you need. Keep your eyes on your cash and on others around you. You’re acting cocky and the hoodlums love nothing more than to fuck with the overconfident. Give them nothing to feed on. Enjoy your vacation, take a whore or two, drink and smoke yourself silly, then get the hell out of here before somebody fucks with your world. They will fuck with you in Amsterdam, if you give them half a chance. Or less. Seeking ravenges in the night. The smell of musk and rutting hangs in the air, mixed in with the fog coming in off the canals and floating inland. It gives the Christians nightmares. Owen leaves the sanctuary of the hostel and steps into the night, draws a deep breath and smiles. The smell of decadence and stale ocean air drives him primal. Walking back down the street towards the pubs he feels his inner wolf snapping at the lock on the cage. Snapping at the lock, its jowls locked in wild fibrillations, both steel grey eyes fixed on the keyhole, the canine searching, stabbing for the tumbler that releases the latch. Snapping at the lock, the gate swings open and he bolts without a moments hesitation. The wolf runs freely now. And this wolf came to party. The other place is packed, so Owen wanders through the alley to Achterburgwal and down the way to the Excalibur. Adorned with stout-hearted oak beams, the tavern vaguely resembles something from the medieval period, save for the big screen television, electric lighting and what not. The ambiance is pleasant however, so Owen decides to grab a bar stool and drink something other than a beer. Something a little more potent. Something a little more liquorish. “Whiskey seven, ashablief,” he says to the cute blonde bar maid, smiling. She blushes, smiles back and goes to make his drink. The bar is reasonably uncrowded, considering — a table of tourists plopped down at a table across from the bar jabbering endlessly about how mush better things are in America. If they like things so damn much in America, why, then, don’t they stay there. Ugly Americans. They’re ugly at home or abroad. They don’t require the home court advantage to make idiots of themselves . . . just a soap box and a few cheap beers and in no time at all they’ll let you know exactly how they feel about your part of the planet and how much better things are over on their plot. The grass is never greener to an Ugly American abroad. Greener pastures lie only in North America. Balderdash. If life flows along so damn fine in the states, why travel? Stay at home, invite a few friends over for bar-b-que, watch some baseball, or football and drink bad beer and talk about nothing, and believe nothing except what you’re told, and live the nothing life that everyone else lives — live out the collective pursuit of the American Dream, which is nightmarish by human standards. Happy, glassy-eyed suburbanites strolling mindlessly up and down the quaint walking paths nodding pretentiously at one another, as though they’re all involved in some dire, dull drama unfolding daily. Get real. Really. Get a life. The only great social crisis is that people, most people, have forgotten what it is to be alive. To actually feel the blood, the hormones, the enzymes, endocrine, endorphins, testosterone and adrenaline coarsing, pulsating within the confines of their flesh. To wont for the wilds. To feel true passion and curiosity. To quest for paradise! America is not a paradise. America is a economic brothel. That is all. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” originally read: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Real Estate.” They changed it to a concept more esoteric so as not to appear greedy. Greed and jealousy: the building blocks of the American Dream. The barmaid brings his drink over, Owen pays her, slips her a one guilder note. She nods politely, takes the bill and sticks it in her satchel. You should introduce the concept of a tip jar, here in Amsterdam. Sitting at the bar, smoking, drinking, Owen wishes like hell that this obnoxious dude from Boston, incessantly yammering, would simply fall over dead. That would be the end of it. They would drag his sorry ass out of the tavern and throw it the canal. Perhaps they could set it on fire and send it back to America. Although some might see that as being politically incorrect. It would get the message across. Shut the fuck up. Or find yourself floating in the canals, your body slowly sucked towards the icy hush harshness of the Atlantic, bloating and pickled, like an unwanted scrap of carcass from a pig roast. Foolish mortal! Your life’s worth fills not the bladder of a young goat. In the old days I would simply grab my broad sword, spin, and take your head with one brief swipe. Smite you in mid-sentence, I would have, about a thousand years ago. Oh! for the days of honest human interactions. Things were fine until the philosopher kings came up with this little gem: “Political society exists for the sake of noble living.” Yeah, right. Who said that? Solon? Solomon? Ahknaton? Justineine? Hammarubi? Whoever. Damn western thinkers, anyway. Noble living. Fuck that shit. Political society exists to protect the weak from the strongest members of the species. Political society exists so mooks like this can sit in taverns throughout the world babbling obnoxiously, telling bad jokes, without fear of losing their head. Political society allows the weak and ignorant to breed. There’s nothing noble about hiding behind a beastial bureaucratic brute — shouting insults at the top of your lungs, then running behind the loaded gun of big brother lawman and begging asylum under the guise of civility. Fuck all that. Fight your own damn battles. “Dude, tone it down a bit.” “What’s this chief? Am I pissing you off? What the hell? Look at me, I’m pissing the big man off. What the hell. Let me buy you a drink, chief. I don’t mean to be pissing people off. I’m just enjoying my vacation. You know how it goes, right? Let me buy you a drink, chief.” “Well, you can if you want, it’s not necessary; but don’t call me chief.” “What’s your name, then?” Owen hesitates for a moment, “Owen,” he says with the flat bouncer tone in his voice. He wants nothing to do with this yokel. And this buying of drinks normally leads to conversation, and Owen doesn’t feel like talking. Not to this jackass, at least. The guy orders the drinks, slaps Owen on the back, the handshaking, social introduction — Marty, financial consultant from Boston, here for a week of frolic, mostly drinking, and so on. Nothing special. Another round of handshakes then turning to his friends he continues his drunken monologue, but with a tad less zeal. Not much less, though not nearly so obnoxious. Owen sits at the bar, listening to ‘Enter Sandman’, by Metallica, drinking the stiff whiskey and seven. The bar maid thanks him for toning the guy down a notch, she smiles again, and Owen sees her teeth. Beautiful face, bad teeth. He smiles back, but his gut feels tight. He loads the pipe. Finish the drink, then head out into the night and pluck a whore from the vine. Let’s go exploring. Haven’t really done that yet. Get your ass out of the bars and go buy a woman god damnit! That’s one of the things you came here for, right? Whores from all over the world, reasonably disease free —true professionals. Yeah, that’s it. Find a good one. What should she be? Asian? European? African? Who the hell knows. A good one, though. Full-breasted, eyes asparkle, perky ass — one worthy of payment. You ought to be able to find one who fits the order. The problem, of course, will be finding one with the right eyes. If she’s got the right look in her eyes, she hides the imperfections built-in to her body and face. If she has fire in her soul, it’ll show in her eyes. Most whores have dead eyes. It goes with the territory. Not their fault, however, it’s all the men who destroy and degrade their spirit over time. Too much fucking wears them thin. It’s not the men’s fault, either. That’s just the masculine nature: To kill in the heat if conquest. Owen finishes the drink, thanks the bar maid, heads back out into the night. The air feels restrictive, yet the red lights still glow above the doors in the along the streets and in the alleys, like lighthouses in a brothel, like portals to the docks of the soul. Voyeuring the windows in the homes of glass-house-legends, that’s where we are. It’s another world down here, below the grade of the sidewalk. The alley, old and uncared for, the men pacing the pavement with the hunger in their eyes. No vibes like this before, these intense feelings of starvation. They’re here with six-hundred guilders in their pocket, and a semi-hard-on lying coiled, held back by nothing more than a thin patch of cotton-denim or polyester. They seek the perfect porking. In the dim glow of the red lights they rip the pleasant persona mask from their face and reveal their true nature — nature vaguely reminiscent of the hedonist, of the pagan. Most of them, however, lack the zeal, lack the stout-hearted glee accompanying acts of guiltless decadence. The Christians have seen to that — made them ashamed of their hormones. They’re bitter and lonely, they’re frightened of Death, yet they walk his parlored halls seeking his company. Death is here, of course, Death is everywhere. Surly bastards. They seek vengeance against Death, not sex. You’ve got to feel sorry for the women, witnessing this sordid spectacle, enduring this mecca to fear and loneliness night after night. You’d think it would drive them bonkers. . . and what’s up with that? What drives them to dress in slinky lingerie and stand in a doorway and fuck and suck for, what, six, eight, ten hours a day — the drooling, the slobbering, the sweating, the sensations of a stranger’s probing, pricking penis, mouth, and what not. What’s up with that? Do they succumb to the pinnacle of female nature — the nuturing concubine, Mary Magdelene eternal. That’s when they’re at their best. That’s an old story. Not as old as music, not as old as the idea of piracy and pillage, not as old as the desire to alter reality, but an old tale nonetheless. But that’s still not it. They succumb to money. Pure and simple. Make of it what you will, talk about abuse and fucked up childhoods. Hell, we’re all fucked up here. That’s not an excuse. Money — the devil-cash-duckets — that’s what gets them on their back . . . or on their knees . . . or on their belly — money. Payment for services rendered. Payment for passage implied. Payment for a momentary frolic in secret garden. Payment for a brief peek through the portal. Owen walks down the thin alley, looking at the women. Most are not worth the taking. Like the men who seek them out, they are tired and bitter. Just doing their time. Many of the Asian women look fine, yet distant in the eyes. They don’t want to be there, and he can’t blame them for it; but if you’re going to go to the trouble of procuring a prostitute, you might as well find one that smiles. Exploring the alleys, backtracking, walking past the windows for a couple hours or more, Owen searches for the smiling prostitute. Most of them are not worth paying for, save for this pert-chested brunette in a captain’s long-tail dress jacket — royal blue with gold embroidered epilets. She’s smiling a wide, white-toothed smile, her eyes sparkle, her legs, long, slender and exposed, she looks like the lass for the night. He’d walked by her once or twice, hadn’t seen anything better, so on the third pass he stops at her door. She opens it. “Hi,” Owen says, feeling clumsy. “Hello.” “So, uh, so like, what’s the deal.” “Would you like to come in?” “Sure.” She opens the door wide, allowing him to move inside, then pulls a curtain over the window. “It’s fifty guilders for fifteen minutes, for either a fuck or a suck. Your choice,” she says, walking up yet another thin stairway, allowing Owen to gaze upon the soft brown cheeks of her ass, to a small, clean loft apartment with a kitchenette, bathroom and bed. The bed, of course, dominates the living room. “What’s your name?” “Brett. What’s yours?” “Owen.” “Do you have the money, Owen?” “Yes,” he says, producing a small wad of guilders, counting out fifty, handing it to her, she takes the money and sticks it in a small strong box in the closet. “Why don’t you go ahead and take off your clothes,” she says in a rather mechanical tone of voice. The whole scene feels mechanical. Not arousing, not seductive, nothing like that. He might as well have been picking up a pack of smokes and a soda from a corner convenience store. Something like that. He removes his leather jacket, boots, sweater, pants, T-shirt, long johns, and after a moment of consideration, his socks. All the time she’s sitting on the bed, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, watching him. “You have a lot of clothes.” “It’s cold out there, wandering the streets.” “You should find yourself a girl and stay at home.” “I might say the same thing.” “Oh, I have a girlfriend, don’t you worry about that. The clock is running, what’s it going to be a fuck or a suck?” Owen tilts his head to the left, mocking the decision making process, looks her curiously in the eyes and says,” I believe, this evening, I’ll have a fuck.” “Alright then, come here,” she says, patting the bed. Standing, he walks to her, she lays down on her back wearing only her black high heels, spreading her legs like a soda fountain, exposing her perfectly manicured pubes and the picturesque petals of her vagina and the silicon buried like toxic waste beneath her breasts. You can almost see the scars if you look close enough Her spirit resides in a surgically-improved, fatally flawless body. The image of quality, yet the presence of something extremely cosmetic. Something aesthetically superfluous. Something not-of-this-planet. Something from a dreamy sonambulistic ectasy. Something distant and ethereal that you touch, but the essence of which remains out of reach. Something not someone. Something unconquerable to be conquered. Owen mounts her. “May I kiss you?” “No. No kissing.” “May I kiss your breasts?” “Okay. Here put this on,” she says, handing him a condom. “You do it.” She grabs his cock gingerly, but with the confidence and prowess only a professional knows how to offer. His dick might as well Big Gulp slurpee. He looks in her eyes: nothing but superficial sparkle. She’s not there with him, and he not with her. There’s a millennia between them. She slips the condom over his semi-hard penis, licks her hand, moistens her cunt and slips it in. She doesn’t feel too loose, for a whore. Not too bad at all. He takes a few strokes at her, testing the waters. She appears perfect. Thick, curly brown hair, soft puppy-brown eyes, long gazelle like legs, pert tits and ass, slightly upturned nose — picture perfect. As he begins to break into a rhythm, Owen notices her form. Legs propped-up, toes pointed, shoulders thrown back, her mammalian orbs succulent to the tongue. She’s a good one, this lady of the evening. Indeed. An excellent choice, but you might as well be watching a film. This one’s flesh neither sends nor receives. Nothing but static. Nothing but dead air. She wants nothing but the money. This one’s spirit wonts not for the taking, gives nothing but her flesh. And sexing flesh without spirit rates near necrophilia in the metaphysical realm. Might as well hump on a freshly-dead corpse. Might as well hump a sofa. Well, maybe it doesn’t go that far. She’s alright, this one. She aims to please. Doesn’t let herself go to shit. I suppose that’s why she hides. Stroke, stroke, stroke. It’s worth the money merely to take a brief run at this gorgeous body. So she’s had a hundred-thousand men. So what? She still feels tight. If only she’d give up a little soul. Just dispense a modicum of spirit, she’d make you cum. Most men couldn’t give a rats ass about spirit — that’s why she hides. Most of these morons must wander in here drooling on her, concerned with flesh and flesh alone. Poor girl. You could give her something if she’d let you. You could make her warm inside, but she’ll never ask you in. Well, she might, but it would cost a thousand guilders, or more. Stroke, stroke. Initially, you’d have to buy her for the evening, night after night for week or so ... at two hundred guilders an hour for eight hours a day. Sixteen-hundred guilders a night. So it would cost around ten-thousand guilders just to give her a little life force. Oh well, her loss. Remove money from the equation, no problem. but she’d never have it. What a pity. Perfectly fine woman wasting herself on the soilent seed of strangers. It’s a living, eh? We’re all prostitutes here, those of us jailed in flesh. Creating, not creating; thinking, unthinking — all whores trapped and for the taking. Might as well enjoy her. You paid your nickel, now take her. That’s the idea, right. Pay her and plug away. That’s why she’s standing in the window. Standing behind a window, inviting anyone who will pay to enter her abode and probe her until they usurp their fill, or cum in her hair. Or until the clock runs out. “Is their some problem.” “No, no at all.” “Your time’s almost up. What, doesn’t it cum?” “Not in fifteen minutes, it doesn’t.” “You should stay longer.” “I don’t have the money.” “That’s too bad.” “Tell me about it. I’d love to spend an evening with you.” “I like it better when they stay for awhile,” she says, looking distant, looking off towards the tiny kitchen. “I like it better that way.” “I wish I could. That had to have been the fastest fifteen minutes of my life. I’d like to spend more than a night with you,” Owen says, dressing. “I’d like to spend something like a fortnight, or better.” “I’m going to get out of here someday. I’m only doing this for a season or two, then I move from this place.” “I can’t blame you for that.” “I need to go back to work.” “Maybe I’ll come back.” “Please do.” She follows Owen down the tiny stairway to the door, bids him good-bye in that same mechanical tone. A vague sadness passes between them, that rare shared despondency common to outlaws and outcasts. There’s desperation in her soft, pleading brown eyes. She wants him to take her away, but there’s nowhere to go. Nowhere. They stare at each other for a moment, Owen smiles a sardonic smile, walks out into the street. That moment of sadness marked the first genuine emotion displayed, he thinks, walking down the street, it made it worth the fifty guilders. All he’d wanted was a little affection, a little understanding. She appeared as though she might have given it up, but now she is gone and wind howls a frosty gale from the north, the alleys still brim with the lost souls wandering, the smell of rutting and opium ooze from the porous mortar, the fragrances of jasmine and grease permeate the bricks, the mortar and bricks make stolid walls, like the thick persona masks of a prostitutes. Amsterdam embodied. Owen smells her perfume drifting from his skin. They appear so real, hookers — exposing themselves to the worst of the nasties daily, fondling the lonely, loathesome dregs, perpetuating the desires of perverted politicians, religious zealots and the half-men of the business world, absorbing the frustrations and fears and fantasies of humans from all streets and avenues, so real, so giving; yet behind the mask they’re as fucked up as anyone else. When the fat boils away, skimmed from the top and set to cool in the pantry, one discovers the stock in the base, so to speak. That’s when one discovers the quality of their hambone personality. What’s all this with the soup metaphors? You must be hungry. Time for feeding. Time to head to the video parlor and then the bar and then off to a peaceful slumber in the hostel. A couple more days of decadence and then off to the north of France for Tai Chi’ and espresso in the morning, vino all day long, absinthe at night. Hell yes, the north of France. That’s just perfect.. But don’t you think it’ll be just a tad difficult to write an American novel in Europe? Shouldn’t you be with the kids at the concerts, scouting for up and coming deities? To hell with it. The removal is for the best. Make you nostalgic for it. Hang out for a year or so, write it all down, then head for Africa. Be a good show in Africa. For now, however, you need to get to that hole. The story stands ready to birth. If you lose yourself in adventure now, you’ll gain experience, but destroy a novel. Find that hole, boy. This suckers going to bust wide open if you don’t write it down, and then you’ll be a fine mess. You need to drop this big ball of evil growing inside you. Write it down and send it off to the winds, to the gods, to the pantheon in declaration. A brief memo on the status of planet Earth: Situation normal: all fucked up. Stop. Please send more beer. If you could wire such a memo, that’s about all you’d have to say, other than “Beam me up, Scotty.” Humans: One-hundred thousand years later, still don’t know what the hell is going on. Foolish mortals. Will you never learn? Must the gods destroy you time and again, one great nation after another, before you learn that great nations and humanity can only exist on a purely theoretical plane? To bring sacred and mundane ideologies together in the name of political society creates the perfect ambiance for suicide. Humans prove this theorem throughout eternity, reenacting the events as though life were a tabloid drama’s first unfolding. Like the discovery of Elvis on the Riviera. Silly humans. Nothing sinks in. Gods and Governments cannot peacefully coexist simultaneously in the phenomenal realm. They are both creatures of charisma, cognition and catharsis and tend to run amok when placed in the arena of ‘reality’. Yea, verily! The mortals ‘Reality’ — the place they hold the big shows. The ‘no-fly zones’ and ‘peace keeping missions’ carried on behind the veil of the covert action. The highest technology, the best lights and sounds and methods of destruction and torture — the greatest methodology for systematically controlling one’s audience. Government is the small-minded mortals answer to the question “What is god?” Only a god betters the display of hogwash set forth by any given government. The two engage directly — the Gods strike hard, then Government retaliates, and so on, and so forth until every last mortal dreg has been blown to Pluto, at which point the two giants smile at each other , clapping shoulders, and stroll off into the cosmos to find some other race to poison with their intoxicating blends of logic, mysticism and story-telling. Gods and Governments: the most lethal combination of toxins know to humanity, and then some. And the outlaws and outcasts and artists tend to be hypersensitive to such an entanglement. It makes them want to run and hide. It makes them want to swallow Drano® and blow their guts up and out of their bodies like the eruption of a thousand volcanoes, disgusted with the sloth of the dinosaurs grubbing in their midst. When social order breaks down and the giant’s knees quake with the knowledge of its demise, then rises the outlaw artists and outcasts from the shadowed crannies, taking the foolish mortals off guard and conquering them in true evolutionary fashion. In true revolutionary fashion. Survival of the fittest creatures, that’s the way we do things downtown. “Intensity and duration,” Owen says to himself, walking into the Danish version of a fast food joint. “Somewhere between intensity and duration coupled with focus and luminosity. That’s the key,” he says, realizing then that people are watching him talk to himself. He blushes and looks at the wall of food. . . . you could take her with you to France. The walls of the store are yellow, white and sterile. Four guys in white chef’s smocks stand behind the counter turning out greasy egg-rollesque concoctions filled with mystery meats and vegetables. They place them behind the multitude of small window boxes in the wall. You pump guilders in the wall and the wall gives you some type of mildly palatable food. Food reserved for the latter part of the evening. Food reserved for curtailing a late night binge. Processed food product. Owen grimaces at the thought of eating, then plugs the wall and removes two mystery meat rolls, leaves the acrid atmosphere of the store and slowly strolls back to the hostel munching on something or other that doesn’t taste too awful. Some sort of curried beef with veggies. The streetlights cast an incandescent glow over the bricks, the canals, storefronts, bars and brothels. Owen feels relaxed. Crossing the canal, still and stagnant, he heads for the hostel. It’s early yet — time for a moment of respite, then back out into the shit. Back out into the night. Back to that burning ring of fire again, again. What drives this constant fascination with the party? Give it a rest. Take a night off. You’ll feel better for it the next day. They won’t miss you for one evening. Hold up and enjoy a moment of serenity. Fuck that. We’ll have loads of serenity in no time at all. Shitloads of serenity. Suckle as much decadence as humanly possible, and then some — hit the ground running. You’re going to write a story about the neo-Pagans soon and you’re going to want to writhe with the scent of the drugs and sex for the next year or so. You’re going to need it for the motivation, if nothing more. Crave nothing, desire everything for damn sure. You’ll want the residue. You’ll scrape your veins for resin. You’ll need the lingering hangovers and toxic remembrances . . . and the musky scent of the parlors. You’ll want to be able to remember what you found so damn fascinating. You’ll want to remember what you came here for. Here, not just to Amsterdam, not just to Europe, not just to the Western hemisphere, but to remember why the hell you came to planet Earth in the first place. There’s a score or two to settle down here. That’s it. A tab or two to pay. Something left over from a former life. Something you need to overcome. And you shall overcome. Whatever the hell the dragon, you shall slay it or die trying. And if you die there’s always next time. Always a next time . . . that’s one of the few beautifully eternal aspects of mortality: if you fuck it up, you ride again until you get it right. That’s life in the Big Wheel of Samsara. The Big Wheel — breaking out of the Big Wheel. Getting the fuck off the wheel — that’s why you’re here. That’s why there’s a next time. And within the decadence lies a key. Not the whole ring, but a key nonetheless. Wandering the Earth, roving between the ascetic and indulgent picking up keys: Truly traveling . . . letting the wind speak to you and reopen the child’s mind congealed. What is this, the way things firm up in your head. You can’t find the keys when things in your head set to curing. You search for ways to continue to see things as for the first time, as a child, so you can continue to gather keys that unlock doors; yet here, thousands of miles away from Graceland, even further from San Francisco, things are still the same. You don’t see the keys. Why not? Maybe it’s a western thing, maybe things would seem different in Bangcok, maybe not. Maybe it’s a human thing. Maybe nautical distance has nothing to do with it. Maybe the distance lies within the realms of the mind and the ability to perceive the different dimensions existing simultaneously side by side in a breadth no larger than a whisper. Maybe you’re not looking hard enough. Maybe too hard. That’s the bitch with the metaphysical: the good guide books are few and far between and even then difficult to convert into an actual cognitional structure. Difficult to put the damn thing into gear. Your tool box is the universe, and the various tools required float and flit about you, offering their services sometimes, eluding you on other occasions. Dim mortal bastards hounding you constantly, sucking up any show of power you might exude in defense — they never let you rest. Suppose that’s a good thing though. Keeps the intensity at a constant pitch. Because if you whirr, if you vibrate, at precisely the proper frequency, you’ll get through. The ‘frequency’, however, fares a rare commodity on the metaphyscial market. One finds oneself paying top dollar. The Spirit sells the Soul, buys the frequency for departure from the wheel. Simple, eh? Not so. The value of one’s soul then comes into question. You’ll get more for an old soul, say, than a young soul. Young souls are easy prey for perspective buyers. To become immortal you sell your soul a thousand times a minute for a thousand millennia, yet retain focus, luminosity and ‘frequency’. This is the test of the wheel of Samsara. This is what you came here for. * * * Whip it away! Pallored flesh that betrays, in intimate ways, caged spirits that gaze through the imprisoned haze, through the embodied maze of mortal malaise, through the trial and strife of dog-a-day life, through the death ascertained when a man takes a wife, through that moment of pain when they bury the knife so deep in your gut that you writhe all arife, from your lungs blows a wail better saved for a fife, and you try to persuade the serpentine maid with scythe and with sickle already displayed that to leave you for dead fares a much finer fade, more stolid and staid than the butchering blade, dying slow in the street while the dogs gnaw your feet, while your muscles and flesh turn to carrion meat, left to slowly retreat from the battle’s defeat, lacerations replete, gores and gouges complete, stench of blood sickly sweet in the sun’s stilling heat, spared to contemplate her favor. She feigns fawn and leaves you bleeding. Bore straight for the core! Nothing less, nothing more. ’Tis your last dying chore mid this transcentient rapport, with your intestines splayed on the soft forest floor, to luminate, focus and venerate lore, to pinhole your rage for a war with The Whore. To exhale and set soar with the force of a boar! To exonerate notions that mortals deplore, then laugh in their face and give them what for. For you’ll bed not a shred of respect from the dead, not an ingot bereaved for vain suffering ensheathed in dendritic recedes, in the hollows and reeds, in the baubles and beads of corpulent deeds, for that thought which proceeds from Balkanian creeds and the desperate need — to swell and exceed with candor and greed, to destroy fresh minds with the golden-tongued seed, to impale the saints and incarnates impede, into prison stampede those minds who’ve been freed — their strong spirits sprouting like an unwanted weed in a garden decreed for fear and ignorance to breed, fires of brimstone to feed, these notions, they plead, as the drive to succeed and the Kingdom of Heaven to savor. They think much of mindless heeding. So as you lay dying, fresh-split innards afrying, frothy blood launched aflying from your torn lungs defying institutions belying all the dogma of vying, all the ghosts in the wiring, all the zealots desiring your immediate retiring to the fields of the plow and the knacker, rise up off your butt, leave cleaved guts in the rut of the scalped-cap road cut, and without asking why heave your soul to the sky! From your body untie all the tethers that bind said spirit to mind and then exit this grind with the fervor inclined for a human once blind whose vision supine doth blossom on vine, then shoots on through the amberesque lacquer. For the only true gain you can ever obtain from existence within the phenomenal plane, from the life of dim and the dull and mundane, from the life of lame flesh shall ever remain, to harness your strength and relinquish disdain, to dispense with moot games of the tame and the vain, power and knowledge retain, fear of death set to wane, as the dame drinks the bane, as the black poisoned liquid seeps in through her veins, to look in her eyes, then laugh and proclaim, “Immortality reigns o’er the realms of Samhain and to traipse those domains n’er I’ll waiver!” Leave the Earth like light afleeting. For now you fight the deities. * * * You’re in link mind-for-mind with the station that started Elvis, station K-T-H-O-R. Thundering to you live from the halls of Asgard. We now conclude ‘The Demise of Clause’. * * * In the last days before the passage of Jesus from mortal dimensions to immortal dimensionlessness, they feasted, climaxing, of course, with the infamous Last Supper. No one at the supper read him the last rites. They were too drunk at the time. Jesus read incantations to himself after the disciples passed out, creating the script from thin-aired inspiration after the lot of them ate and drank their fill and lay about him, snoring loudly. Celebrating his death with snorts of monoharmonic sonambulism. That’s an apostle for you. It’s easy, even fun, to celebrate, and sleep, when the prepassage wake isn’t in your name. The party’s fun when you’re nothing more than a follower, or a disciple. It wasn’t so much fun for Jesus. Jesus walked the extra mile, and in the end paid the tab for all those who might follow him. And, further, those who would not. This was all quite unnecessary. An incarnate need not die to save the wicked. They’ll save themselves, eventually. Poor J.C.. Always the showman at heart, Jesus, he suffered far beyond the comprehensions of the poor. Nobody suffers like the poor, except a prophet. A prophet suffers for the poor, the doomed, the wicked, the lost. All of them. Carries their weight like terminal luggage, always paying their bill in blood, and to show their gratitude they slay him. And mortals kill their kings young. They prefer to remember them in their youthful, vibrant days; as opposed to their declining years. Jesus-shit-out-of-luck-on-the-cross wouldn’t look nearly so enigmatic were he in the grotesque form of a twisted old man. Infantile spirits reserve the iconography of the ‘old man’ for those who’ve completed the passage. Something about a god’s hair growing long and white, the beard flowing endlessly throughout the stars like the whisps of the milky way, something about the image of a kindly, paternal old progenitor that makes dim mortals giddy. Something mystically nostalgic. Some ancient image mortality reserves for the immortal. This notion, consistent with many of the beliefs held by mortals, misses the mark by a light-year or two. Death of the flesh is but the beginning for those whose spirit ascends to the realms of the incarnate — those who gather all the keys, place them on the ring and unlock all the doors in proper succession, those who obtain the wisdom and power to comfort the deities and remain luminous. And luminescence spawns from the minds of the young. Focus tends to evoke images of the elders, but luminosity drives the focus through. Luminosity is the nectar that focus lives to exude. Focus is the pipeline; luminosity the liquid within, unattachment drives it home. And one remains luminous by retaining the eternal mind of the child. Age has nothing to do with it. Age is a quantitative pragmatism of time desperately attempting to lasso a qualitative ideal. Indeed . . an endless game of hide-and-go-seek. Or perhaps kick the can. Olly, olly oxen free. The hostel is full, that figures. The weekend is upon us. You’ll need to leave on monday and head south or you’re going to run out of money. Money, remember? That paper you keep kicking out of your pocket as though it were unwanted trash aflame. Well, it is trash — something better left to the bankers, may they rot in the hell of their worst enemie’s choosing, but at the time functional nonetheless. At least until you reach your landing point in France. Bring her in nice and smooth and you’ll have one more successful travel under your belt. And a good one at that. Just keep your nose up and out of the shit for a couple more days. Just enjoy Amsterdam, then flee and run like mad for France. It’s as simple as that. Owen lay in bed, thinking. There is far too much snoring and coughing from the other bunks for sleeping, so he lays there mulling it all over in his head. Mulling it over one more time. The heaters run at full, but the windows are cracked to prevent the spread of bacteria, so the air in the room hangs freezer-cold and crisp. Some guy across the aisle hacks rhythmically, having smoked too many cigarettes throughout the course of the evening. It’s definitely a smoker’s hack. His hacking brings Owen back from thinking. “Hey, you man, you need to stop that coughing. Please. You need to stop the coughing or go to sleep in the outside.” Some big German with long wild and wavy silver-white hair says, sitting up in his bed. The big German looks at Owen, “I know this type of coughing,” he says, lighting a cigarette, “it will not stop. He will cough like this all night and none of us will have any sleep at all.” “Not much we can do about it,” Owen says in a quiet voice, “he’s trying to suppress it.” “I know this type of coughing. It will not stop. Hey there, man, maybe you should smoke another cigarette. Maybe that will stop it.” The man in the bed curls up in the fetal position, turns over, says nothing, pretends not to hear, and coughs. Owen sits up in bed and loads his pipe. The flame from the lighter blinds him for a moment in the dark of the room. The Church of England’s carrilon strikes three as Owen draws on the small wooden pipe. He hands it to the big German. “Ah, yes. Perhaps this will help us sleep through the coughing, eh?” “Perhaps.” The man in the bed gets up and walks over to the sink, draws a glass of water from the tap, comes back to the bunk and joins them smoking. He lights a cigarette. “I can’t stop coughing,” he says. “We know,” Owen says mildly. “Maybe you should get up, walk around a little outside or something.”\ “That might help. It’s these bloody cigarettes, you understand. Both men nod their heads in the dark. “If it were my coughing, I would not burden you. I would leave the building. But the choice is yours. When I was in prison, we could not leave our cells when a man had this with the coughing all night long. We had to lay there and listen to him cough, then take it up with him in the yard the next day. Yet some men still woke up with their throats slit in the morning, you know?” In the dark Owen sees the coughing guy grimace and look at the floor. The big German snickers. “Do not worry, my friend, you are in no danger. I was only making the conversation.” “It’s alright. I feel my coughing fit subsiding.” “It will be better for all of us.” “Why were you in Prison?” Owen asks, wondering if the answer were better left unsaid. “I killed a man in a fight. It was an accident. I no longer fight.” “That’s probably not a bad idea.” “It was not my fault. This man, he had a condition. Something in the heart. He began hounding me in a pub in Hamburg on night, always trying to start me fighting. Later, when I became drunk, I agree to fight him. We go outside, he throws a couple punches, I hit him once in the chest and he falls over dead. Gestorbt, you know?” “Ja, Ich verstehe Deutsch.” “Wißt du Deutsch? Kannst du sprechen?” “Ich spreche ambischen Deutsch.” “You have a fine accent.” “It needs work. I can’t speak quickly yet.” “You’ll learn.” There’s a rustling in a bunk at the far end of the room. The coughing guy lays down, Owen sees a scrawny little dude with brown hair slinking around near the door. He reminds Owen of Golum, from the hobbit. He sports a particularly bad aura. Even without seeing in his eyes, Owen sees the dull shit-brown glow. Watching him leave the room, Owen and the big German lay back down in their bunks. “Tomorrow you will sit and drink a beer with me, eh?” “Sure. We’ll have a beer.” “Cough, cough.” “We’ll have beers, but we may never have sleep.” “Just try to zone it out.” “This is very difficult for me. Perhaps I shall go to sleep upstairs.” “Might be more quiet.” The big German picks up his pillow and blanket and leaves the room. Owen hears his heavy footsteps on the stairs, then they vanish as he hits the concrete floor above. The room reverberates with snoring and hacking. Owen returns to thinking, feeling sleep a little closer now. Kick the can, yes. That’s more like it. There’s a metaphor for immortality. Kick the can and you’re safe from the one deemed ‘it’. It, of course, is Death. And if you’re wiley enough, you kick the can and you’re ‘safe’. The big question is what happens next, once one transcends this kicking of cans. Where does one go once one actualizes their incarnate potential. Incarnates In Transit. Maybe because it’s the end of a millennia, perhaps because we near the throes of the apocalypse, but there seems to be a multitude of incarnates on the rise. All the old demons returning to their traditional haunts. Perhaps it signals a return to the demonic perspective. Ontological and demonic, that’s where we’re heading unless we break the cycle, which is not at all probable. Humanity resists taking that next step out of the cave, so it’s back to the days of dragons and the waking, walking dead, pelting the battlefields with the implements of their demise. So be it. But there’s going to be a butt load of prophets running about clamoring for transcendence. An exodus of the mind! They will deem it the time to move beyond the reptilian nature of the cerebellum, beyond the mammalian nature of the mesencephalon to the point of the brain nearest ‘The Source’, the telencephalon. To break the cycles of birth, death and rebirth. To defy the kingdom Animalia from whence they grew, to defy the species Homo Sapiens sapiens once and for all. A new species is on the rise: Homo Sapiens transendus will be the nomenclature, imposed by the Aristoteleans in an attempt to tie the breed to the planet. The attempt will be unsuccessful, and this bright new group of incarnates will rise above mere mammalian limitations. There will be hurdles to leap, of course, but existence without hurdles is meaningless. Existence for the sake of subsisting accomplishes nothing. And the now evolving transcendus will be there to light the pathway. The old stories will be told, the names of the Elder Gods spoken, and the Great Walls of Society will crumble around the sapien’s camp. Without society to protect them, Homo Sapiens sapiens will find themselves, by and large, defenseless. Using only minute portions of their brain’s capability, they will scurry like rats, fleeing with fear and confusion in an attempt to regress to the mundane. The attempt will be based in futility, and they will cower in droves, huddled like dogs in a hurricane as the new breed of incarnates ascend. There will be no Great War between nations; there will be massive casualties, however. Deaths resulting from a simple collapse of the weltanschuang , an upheaval, then ascension. The ideologies of social institutions will collapse under their own weight, just as the dinosaurs egress in the Mesozoic era, so runs the fate of mammalian life here and now, near the end of the Cenozoic era. All dominant species decline and fall. That’s just the way evolution works. And to discover evolution, then deny it rights to affect change upon humanity is illogical. Humans must evolve — rise and decline and transmogrify, just like everything else organic. Evolve, that is, until we evolve ourselves right-the-fuck out of our bodies. At this point humans will actually accomplish something beautiful, something worthwhile, something significant, something substantial . . . or insubstantial, as it were. Until then, we remain nothing more than a glorified pack of primates. Until then, we remain nothing more than land locked cave dwellers who can read and write and do some math. And then there’s this of the thinking, of course — the loss of sleep, lack of blackness in response to hypersensitive cognition. There’s that, too . . . The scrawny little dude sits up in his bed, the movement catches Owen’s eye so he lay there watching him. At first it appears he’s looking for a match, but he’s not. He’s going through their pockets — forepockets, backpockets, quickly and quietly. With lithe stealth the kid hits three pairs of pants, then slimes his way back to his bunk. No one sees anything, save for Owen. Well, well, well . . . the little dipshit just made the situation a little more complex. What to do about this little man, what to do, indeed. To forget about it, call the concierge or just get up right here, right now, and kick his impovershed, thievin’ ass, that is the question. Bastard. Stupid little junkie bastard! Why the hell couldn’t do it somewhere else? Why the hell did you have to see it? What a complete moron. Hell beat him just to teach him a lesson. Word up. That’s what you ought to do. That’s the code amongst those in the counter culture: if you steal from your peers, you get the shit kicked out of you. That’s the way it works on the streets. Roll the rich, scam society, but don’t fuck with the poor folk. We’re all poor as dung down here and when somebody dicks with your stash you handle it amongst the counter culture. No cops, that’s the key. Nobody wants johnny law walking around waving his dick in your face — asking questions, filling out forms, dragging everyone off to jail on priors. No, cops are never a good idea. It’s not that we hate cops, we just feel better when they’re not around, ain’t that right Buk. So that means kick his butt or let it slide . . . let it slide, yes sliding, that sounds like a fine idea — sliding off into the abyss, finally into sleep. Say something to him in the morning. Let him know not to fuck with you. * * * Owen awakes to a nearly-empty room. The snoring apparently, had come from ghosts. All the bunks stand empty, save for one at the far end of the room. The scrawny brown-haired dude lay asleep, looking something like a corpse. Even in repose his aura looks like shit. Rising from the bunk, unlocking his locker, taking his dock kit from the day pack, locking it up, he notices that one of the lower corners of the locker door is bent. He thinks nothing of it and goes downstairs to shower. The water feels warm and invigorating. He feels good today. Clearheaded, almost giddy. Things are going to work out well, he thinks, with the warm water running down his body, sprayed in a fine mist from the water-saver shower head. He thinks about buying his ticket to France today, then going for coffee and hashish with Saskia. Saskia. Saskia proved to be an interesting find. Quite a woman, indeed. Too bad she’s got a beau, he thinks, feeling a slight twinge in his groin as images of her long red hair, green eyes and large firm breasts, soft auburn freckles lightly shading milky white skin flow across him all wrapped up within that beautiful name. He decides to buy his ticket, then go spend the morning with her, drinking coffee, smoking hashish and comparing American and European cultures. Martin would be there no doubt, and they could discuss poetry all day long. It would be a fine day. A fine day, indeed. Turning off the water, toweling himself dry, dressing, Owen walks back up to the bunk room. The bathroom door slams shut as he reaches the top of the stairs. The scrawny thief boy is up and about, Owen looks at his locker — still locked. The bathroom door opens and the kid takes off like a shot down the stairs. Owen grabs his leather jacket from underneath the bunk and checks his money and passport — present, accounted for. Breathing a sigh of relief, he takes his brush from the dock kit and combs his long blonde hair while he looks out the window at the new day in Amsterdam. It would be a fine day, and tomorrow he would leave for France. Well, Belgium first, then France. Owen smiles, finishes with his hair and pulls on long johns and his faded blue jeans, thick wool socks and hiking boots, then unlocks the locker to grab his fanny pack. His fanny pack is gone. He pulls everything out of the locker, looks underneath the bunk, but the pack is gone. He checks the bathroom, finds a few squares of toilet paper splattered with blood, still the pack is gone. The keys, the map, the addresses, the pictures, the phone numbers — all the resource material gone. The only item in the pack of junkie interest is, or was, an airplane-sized bottle of vodka. His passport and money remain in his possession, yet now he has no destination, no means of contacting anyone involved — Monte or the elderly woman in Wales — that’s all gone and done with. Sabil is gone, too. Owen grabs his jacket, tells the woman on duty what’s happened, and leaves the hostel to find either his pack or the punk who cobbed it. That’s just not stealing fair and square. If you’d left it laying on the bed, it would have been a different story, but that’s not how it was. Little fuck. Slimy slinky boy — fling you back to the great beyond! If you find him, he’s going headlong into the canal. That’s a promise. A promise guaranteed. Owen makes a sweep of the neighborhood, the canals, crevices and alleys, but finds nothing. Making his way to the Other Place, he continues eyeing the canals, checking garbage cans for so much as a familiar matchbook. Nothing. It’s gone. France, the cottage — the safe haven for writing — all that he came here for is gone. He walks into the bar. “Morgen, Owen. Kaffee ?” “Ashablief.” “How goes it with you this morning?” “Well, it was a fine morning until a half-an-hour ago. Now it’s shit.” “What happened?” “Little junkie dude got into my locker this morning while I was in the shower, got my fanny pack.” “Your fanny pack?” “Yeah, you know, that pack that I have in here all the time, fits around my waist . . . “ “Oh, yes. Oh my god, Owen. Did he get your money?” “No, well a couple bucks in change, perhaps. Nothing important to him. I still have my passport and money.” “Well that’s better than nothing.” “Yes, this is true. But it’s like this: I’ve got three-hundred bucks and change, a novel about to pop out, and nowhere to go. I bought a one-way ticket, so there’s no way back to the states. I have friends in Spain and Belgium, but the little bastard got all the addresses, keys and whatnot. In this case, however, it’s all the whatnot that really hurts.” “So you’re fucked.” “You could look at it that way. I prefer to look at it as the interesting side of traveling.” “What’s interesting about it?” “This is where it gets weird. In this case, I believe, really weird. I’m going to have to crash land now, you know what I mean.” “Yes. Let me roll a joint,” she says going for her purse. Owen sits near the front of the bar looking out the window, looking far away. The cigarette between his fingers burns away, the ash growing longer, beginning to bend, but he sits there staring indifferently at everything. Nothing matters now. Nothing at all. You’re going to go down hard. All hands on deck. Stow the book, then take her down the best you can. You can make this work. You can land safe in Madrid. Maybe. It all depends on the kids back in San Francisco — whether they’ll hook you up with Carlos — have to see about it though, not a guarantee at all. So lock it all down tight, drop into survival mode, then think your way out of this. You’ve always managed before. Now you’ve got a fine game going. One of the best ever, in fact, and you should make use of it. You’ll move through this, no problem. You always get through. Always. “Owen?” Saskia says, Owen snaps back with such force that he jumps. She hands him the large funnel-cone cigarette. “Are you alright? I didn’t mean to shock you. You must have been very far away.” “Just thinking.” “You think a lot.” “Some say I think too much.” “Oh yes, those people who don’t think.” “You can never think too much.” “I agree. More coffee?” “Please,” he says, and lights the cigarette, draws on it until the cherry glows bright red, inhales deep the thick tobacco and fine hashish smoke, exhales, hands it to Saskia. “I need to come up with some options.” “Such as?” “Well, for example, I could stay here and try and gut out the winter. How’s the work situation here.” “Very poor. Many people on the dole. That’s your best bet: apply for citizenship, then in two weeks you can apply for the dole.” “See, that’s one option.” “I would let you live with my boyfriend and I, but it would be very crowded. Our place is small.” “I understand . . . wouldn’t ask it of you anyway.” “Oh, if we had a little more space it would be fine. I like having you around, Owen.” “That’s a nice thing to say. Thanks. I like being here. I could see myself living here, but I don’t know that I could write here. Too much stimulus.” “You’d get used to it.” “I would, but I’d loose this book. I need to get to someplace that I can burrow in and write. I’m thinking someplace warm. Spain, perhaps. Morocco, Portugal — someplace with a beach. Someplace I can fish the ocean for food. I can’t work right now. I’ve got to write, you know. Soon. I’ll freak out.” “I know a guy like that. He’s a painter, though. And sometimes he quits his job and paints. That what he does. That’s what he’s doing now, painting.” “So you savvy?” “I savvy. Poor guy,” she says, and touches his face gently, softly. It makes Owen tingle. He looks in her eyes and knows she understands. They share a moment locked in eye contact, exchanging stories of woe and delight, exchanging pheromones like comic books, swapping, desiring, sneaking peeks at this and that; and like a comic book saint she gives him energy — Earthen energy — grounding, stabilizing energy that allows his tumultuous spirit time to think. She makes him glow. They remain locked that way for a minute or an eternity, then draw back. Owen feels a little better, and he looks at her shimmering countenance. She’s a healer, damnit. He recognizes the feeling, it’s just that he’s used to giving rather than receiving it. He smiles a deep smile. “Thanks, I needed that. It’s a pleasure to meet another healer.” “Men have told me that I have magical powers.” “I believe you do,” he says, she flashes a coy smile. “But you know that, of course.” “Really?” “Really,” he says, knows she’s hiding it. “It’s okay, you know. You can talk to me about it.” Pausing for a moment, she turns and gets herself a cup of coffee, comes back to the bar. “It’s weird, you know, I remember even as a little girl being able to look at people and understand what they were about and what they were feeling. Bodies glow when I look at them, you know, glow different colors.” “You see their auras.” “Yes, that’s it. That’s the word.” “And growing older you found you could alter their auras by focusing on them, entering the soul through their eyes, right?” “Right. Something like that.” “So naturally you became a bartender.” “Naturally,” she says, glowing herself. She has a beautiful pink aura. “So you like Amsterdam, Owen Dunum?” “I love it here.” “You should stay here, I think. You’d fit in well.” “We’ll see. At this point that’s an option.” The door opens and Martin walks in. He’s a good looking chap, in a kind, sensitive sort of way. Definitely the eyes of a poet. Soft blue-grey eyes with the perpetual impression of tearing, his ruddy skin and wavy dishwater blonde hair . . . a good kid, indeed. A true poet. “Morgen, Martin.” “Morgen, Owen, Saskia.” “Kaffee?” “Dankeville. Hoe got et met jou?” “Nicht so gut.” “It must be bad, you’re speaking German.” “Little bastard ripped me off while I was in the shower this morning.” “Did he get your money?” “No. Keys to that farmhouse, the map, my addresses . . . all the important stuff.” “So you’re fucked.” “I try to look at it like this: ‘unexpected travel invitations are dancing lessons from the gods’, to paraphrase from the Books of Bokonon.” “Who’s that?” “A character created by an American writer named Kurt Vonnegut, ever hear of him?” They both shake their heads. “Perhaps I’ll send you some if I’m ever back in the states. I don’t intend to head back there for some time, but when I do I’ll be sure and mail you some.” “So what are you going to do now?” “Well, Saskia and I were just sitting here discussing that when you came in. We were talking about me staying here in Amsterdam.” “That would be very nice, but I think you’ll have trouble finding work. Your best chance is to go on the dole.” “So she said. Are you on the dole?” “Oh yes, the take care of everything. Listen: you go over tomorrow and apply for citizenship, then the dole, and they hook you up with everything — a flat, six-hundred guilders a month . . . even a car if you want it.” “You have to wait in line all day, though, I’ll bet.” “Oh sure. It will take you a day to do each thing.” “I hate waiting in lines.” “It may be a problem then. Do you think you could find the house in France?” “That’s the bitch. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, near a village so small that it’s not on a map. Ian wrote the directions down. My mistake was not memorizing them. But even if I could find the house, I’d have to break in. I’d have no way of proving to the Gendarmes when they showed up, and the would show up, that I was supposed to be there. So, ultimately, I would probably wind up in a French prison. I like prison less than I like waiting in lines.” “I don’t blame you for that.” “So France is out of the question. I don’t speak French. My best bet, I think, is Spain. Malaga, perhaps. I have a friend of a friend in Malaga, and a friend in Madrid. And there’s a beach in Malaga . . . there it is then. Let’s drink a shot of that schnapps to Malaga, what do you guys say?” “I’ll drink to it.” “I’ll get the shots.” “May as well get a round of beers, Saskia. We’ll need something to wash the shot down with.” “Of course,” she says, and grabs the bottle of schapps and pours the shots, then goes for the draughts. “I think you’re handling this well.” “No reason to work myself into a lather. Getting wild will accomplish nothing. Got to remain calm in situations like these, or you’re fucked.” “Here are your beers. I’ll buy the shots.” “To Malaga.” “To Malaga, any port in a storm.” “To Malaga, salud.” “And now all I have to do is make it there,” Owen says, they clink their glasses, the toast erupts in dialouge, into soliloquies lithe and glib. They converse through the morning and late into the afternoon, drinking and discussing the important things in life: writing, art, traveling, metaphysics — the conversation rarely lulls. The debate runs passionate at times, whimsical at others — febrile philosophical banter, coupled with much hearty laughter. Most of it from Owen. Most of it covers old ground. It is said a man who laughs a little too loud and a little too long is a man with a problem on his mind. Owen laughs long and hard at the seemingly endless ironies of life that day, sitting there with Martin and Saskia. He never lets on for a moment, other than the laughter, that he is freaked right-the-fuck-our of his skin. Never lets them know for a moment that he knows where he stands. If he shows them that the beast is loose now, they’d think him crazy. Best keep a straight face. But his demon is free now. Running the show, as it were, at the helm. It will see he makes it through. It always takes care of him in times like these. So sitting there on a barstool, laughing, frolicking, yammering, shadowed by the whorling vortex of the crossroads whining in his ears like a motor under a power surge, Owen tells another joke. Can you hear me above this noise? Legba is there, Legba of the Divine Horsemen, the Old Man of the Crossroads, sitting there with him in the guise of a beautiful bartender and an unemployed poet. The god comforts him as best he can, buying beers and hashish, providing stimulating conversation. When it comes time leave the sanctuary and eat, Owen barely hears the whining. It will return soon, but for now it is far, far away. Martin goes off to nap, Saskia to care for her beau, and Owen walks the streets of the Red Light district alone, his head racing near the point of vertigo. So here we are just you and me kid, this is living. This is the only way to fly — to plummet. What you going to do now, overeducated travel boy? Where’s all them books when you need them? I’ll tell you where — you got a hundred pounds of books in your backpack looking like ballast. You’re a walking fucking library. They will be the first to go. Those and the fucking clothes. Stupid motherfucker. Think you’re smart do you? If you were smart you’d have kicked that little bastard’s ass the moment you saw him digging through pockets. That would have solved everything. But no, you had to let him go. Well he went alright, and he took a little piece of you with him. Where’s metaphysics going to get you now? You could be philosophical about it, and freeze. Stick and move. You need to pick a point and go with it. Get someplace warm. You can’t live outside all winter long. This is November. Winter is only beginning. Find a beach. For now find food. Can you hear? The whining returns. Make a decision. Land here or fly south and try to take it down somewhere warm. Spain isn’t as tolerant of vagrants as Holland. Especially big ayrian vagrants. Our forefathers took care of that, decadent bastards. Spain is a complete unknown. Here you know a little, you have a few connections; but it’s more urban than San Francisco. Deeper imagery, more decadent, more wholeheartedly pagan — you’d never write well here. Too much stimulus, to many adventures to be had. You need to be away from people to do this thing . . . that’s why you left the City in the first place . . . to get away. And you thought you were fucked in San Francisco, well you’ve managed to crank it up a notch or ten. Seeing as you’re fucked and all, why don’t you spend another fifty guilders and get a whore. That would seal the deal for sure. If you’re going to be homeless, why not have a final fling. Life’s a fling, is it not? Is that not the way you see it, bright boy? A game of horseshoes. Your toss. Better ring that fucking bell this time or your ass is mine. Put you through the ringer, I will, if you fuck this one up. Take you years to get your head back. Guaranteed. You can get out, but you’re going to have to hold it all together. Duct tape it if you have to. Duct tape holds it all together. Duct tape makes it whole again. Life on the fringe for both mortals and avatars becomes ragged at times, but duct tape keeps you up and running. Duct tape never lets you down. From the day Man first cracked his favorite hunting club, he hath sought the perfect fastener. One-hundred-thousand years later, Man discovers duct tape and begins patching his dwellings with the durable, cloth-woven instant flexible steel. Duct tape holds it forever, or somewhere close. Duct tape, surely, remains one of the greatest gifts of the gods. If you could only sheath your spirit in duct tape you could survive the wrathful deities without complication. Duct tape repels the nasties, healing instantly, flexibly, any wounds they might inflict. That little rocker at the tower of Babel, that never would have happened if they would have had duct tape. And those Jericho walls would have taken a thousand times more abuse. Some say the Chinese used duct tape to build the Great Wall. Duct tape purchased from the Vikings, who got it from the druids, who pinched it from the gods. Something like that. Duct tape! your surface shields us from the campfires of mortal existence. Heal our wounds. You splint the breaks that bind us. Make us whole. For mortal men and women you arose from the minerals of the earth. Keep us together. In the glory of the gods you are touted as a substance most pure. Grant us peace in duct tape transit. Enable us to weather the throes of fleshy living. Fling the horseshoe, ring the bell. It’s that simple. Buy your ticket fist thing in the morning. You have tonight to find some woman to take you in. That’s the only logical way of staying here — find some woman to shack up with for the winter. First food, however, then woman. You need fuel. You need something to run on other than high hopes and duct tape. Owen walks down the Voorburgwahl, finds an open gyro place, sets down to a greasy gyro and fries, with sour cream and mayonnaise on the side. He devours the meal without stopping to breathe. As the blood runs to his gut, his light-headedness fades. He feels relaxed, ready and willing to deal with the problem at hand. He pays for the meal and returns to the street to seek a woman for the winter. It’s a long shot, he thinks, walking back up the street, two blocks, turning left and walking up towards the Excalibur, but the only thing left at this point are long shots. As opposed to short shots. “Very funny,” he mutters to himself, walking up the cobbled brick sidewalks, the dim, incandescent lamps lighting the street, shimmering in the slime of the canal, flick-flittering amid the throngs of tourist prey yammering about like goats before the sacrifice. Owen passes through them with contempt as he makes his way up the block to the Excalibur. He empathizes with disgruntled postal workers, scorned lovers, and the other sociopathic maniacs delicately balanced between the fringe and the profane, wanting nothing more than to turn on people in general and vent the rage welling inside, destroying them all. Owen considers it for a moment, casually, then opts for after dinner drinks, rather than a murder spree. He turns left, walks into the bar. A group of deliriously giddy tourist pups leave the place as he walks through the door, and leaves the bar quiet, nearly empty. Owen bids them an unspoken ‘good riddance’ and sits down at the bar proper. It’s the blonde barmaid again. You can see her breasts as she bends over to wash the glassware. It’s a good seat, and Owen decides to keep it for the evening. She looks up, smiles at him, leans back and her pert tits fall in line behind the low-cut grey sweatshirt. “What can I get you?” “A snifter of Grand Mariner®, and a draught of Heineken®, ashablief.” She smiles at him again, goes to get the drinks. She has a pretty face — wavy blonde hair and dark blue eyes, still bright, but bad teeth. She washes glassware quite well, however, and Owen thinks he could overlook the teeth. She brings the drinks, Owen pays her, she smiles again, all teeth. Owen thinks about spending the winter with her . . . probably some guy at home. There’s a feeling of complacency about her. Something tranquil. She’s not hungry. Or desperate, for that matter. Owen lights the cognac, watches the cerulean blue flame dance about inside the snifter, then blows it out and sips at the warm nectar. Sipping, then swirling, sipping again — there’s nothing quite like Grand Mariner®, he thinks, swirls and sips again. The bar feels dark and calm, the view pleasurable . . . if it could all stay just like that, everything would be fine. If you could find a woman for the winter. That’s the way Kamper would handle it, that’s what he’d tell you to do, at least for the time being. Snow one. You can do it if you want to — if you need to — and now is one of those times. Now all we need is a good target. This barmaid won’t do. She’s not looking. Perhaps an older woman . . . perhaps . . . The dulcid silence shatters as another group of brain-dead tourists set upon the bar, sporting their typical loud and obnoxious demeanor. Looks like a group of investment banking football players, or some other semi-lucrative ilk. Owen grumbles in his beer. There’s a couple women, with four guys, they swagger around, then plop down at a round table across the room, about ten feet from the bar. They commence to howling before they order. The barmaid looks at Owen. “Amateurs,” he says, and she giggles. Maybe there’s hope for her yet.. The barmaid walks over to their table to take the order, the howling turning to snickering, an ugly American brand of sneering that Owen has come to loathe. One of the women in the party starts speaking to the barmaid in Dutch. An older woman, with an alcohol-weary face, graying black hair, and a local, judging from the barmaid’s response. And judging from the tone of their conversation, a local of some disrepute. She doesn’t want to serve the woman, whomever she is. They speak to each other rapidly, quietly, in Dutch, then the blonde reluctantly agrees, takes their orders and walks back behind the bar to get the drinks. She no longer smiles. The woman at the table begins babbling in a mythical language somewhere between Danish and Middle English. She’s wearing a Denver Bronco baseball cap, and an Oakland Raiders sweatshirt. The woman vaguely resembles a drunken American sports fan, but crazy. Really crazy. Eavesdropping on her diatribe, Owen finds himself fascinated with her speech. Half-gibberish, half-genius, he picks her for a scammer. A drunken lush con, scamming drinks off tourists. Small time, small thinking little hoodlum girl growing old, that’s what she is. He recognizes the smoothness of the gibberish, designed to make the individual appear harmless and pathetically charming. Or perhaps it comes to her naturally. It is perplexing the way Fate listens and directs the scene. Sometimes it takes years for things to come around, sometimes it takes moments. Look at this. Look here — there’s the target. Might as well paint a bull’s-eye on her soft, pallored ass in fluorescent hunter orange. And it’s an easy kill, at that. Guiltless. It never hurts to scam a scammer. Keeps them on their toes. Puts fire in their belly. She’ll be over here soon. Just bide your time. She’ll come to you. We’ll go from there. She rambles on incessantly in her self-induced dialect, the group of tourists growing weary of the monologue, their attention spans drifting away to more profane pastures, drifting off to the giant screen television sporting European M.TV®, a far more radical and risque’ version of its catholicized mother in the states. Nudity, swearing, gratuitous eroticism — all the things the censors kill in the states, and this seems far more interesting to them than this little Dutch girl babbling with no apparent motive, other than to drink their beer. They would rather look at television. They came to Europe to watch television. Indeed. They came to Europe to stay in Americanized hotels and eat Americanized European foods and ride on tour buses and boats and trains, guided through the city as though it were some passive entity long since departed from existence. A fossil, as it were. They pass through, always the spectator, looking at life from the protective buffers encasing them. Always unwilling to participate. Get off the plane, get on the bus, go to the hotel, go down to the bar and watch television. It’s what they live for. And when it reaches the point where everyone at the table ignores her, she walks over to the bar. “Hey, your a big guy.” “Last size they had.” “No, god damnit, I mean you’re fucking huge. Ain’t he fucking huge, Stella.” “He’s a big boy, alright,” Stella, the barmaid, says, not looking up from the glassware she washes so beautifully. “So where you from? Norway? You’re not from here. I’d have seen you before. I’ll be damned if you’re not the spitting image of Thor.” “So they tell me. You can say I’m from Norway if you want.” “No. You’re from America. I can tell by your accent.” “And where are you from.” “ I’ve lived all over. Dublin, Liverpool, London, Brussels. Born here though. Lived here longer than anywhere else. You buy me a drink?” “Sure.” “Scotch and water, Stella,” she says, Stella looks at her, says something in Dutch. “I’ll be alright. I’m no trouble tonight. I swear.” Stella gives her a look, gets the drink, Owen pays for it. “I can’t buy your drinks all night.” “It’s just one drink.” “I know. I’m just telling you I can’t afford to buy you drinks all night.” “No one said anything about that.” “No, no they didn’t. I was just telling you what’s up.” “What’s your name anyway?” “Owen. And yours?” “Lucy.” “Lucy, eh? That’ll work I suppose.” “So what are you doing in Amsterdam?” “Well I was passing through. I don’t know about that now.” “You’re going to stay?” “Thinking about it. Some little bastard got into my locker when I wasn’t looking, got every reason I had for being here.” “That sucks shit.” “Tell me about it.” “What do you do?” “I’m a writer.” “I write poetry, you know. Want to hear one.” “Okay,” he says, and sounding something like a drunken skipper Lucy breaks back into that mythical dialect. She has a lovely meter — her words bouncing off each other in near-perfect iambic pentameter, spoken with a Middle-English edge, yet it’s all gibberish. Authentic middle-European lunatic babble. To confirm this he looks over to Stella, pretty Stella, who now stands behind the bar with her face twisted up so tight in an incredulous expression, that he thinks it might realign her teeth. Lucy’s eyes are set too close together, that’s the first thing you notice. Then you notice the desperation. Certainly, she’s desperate. Groping, confused, disillusioned. She never left the party when she was young. Never for a moment. And now she’s old and graying quickly and she craves the energy of the young. She tries to stick a vein, to suck it out, though no one will have her. She comes off obvious and ugly. She snarls as she rambles off her prose, spat like bullets from her tight, thin lips, her clandestine rhetoric understood only by the demons to which she recites. She nearly speaks in tongues, but there’s a nonsensical pattern to the rhyming — something childish and ancient. After all these eons, she’s never learned. Still playing the buffoon. Still the town idiot. Still the white trash debutante of Amsterdam. Not an ideal target, but there’s no time for being picky. Lucy goes on for awhile, until she realizes she’s losing her audience, then she stops abruptly and goes back to speaking English. “What don’t you like it?” “I don’t understand a word of it. You’ve got a nice meter, though.” “It’s Yiddish.” “Like hell it’s Yiddish,” says Stella, “it is gibberish.” “Oh, what the hell do you know.” “Yiddish, for one.” “Bugger off, Stella.” “Don’t make me come out there and kick your ass.” “I’d like to see you.” “Done it before, Luc, you know that.” “I’ve got it written down at home. I’ll show you.” “I’d love to see it,” says Stella, “Why don’t you bring in tomorrow.” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll show it to you when I’m ready.” “Ein anderer bierchen, ashablief?” “Just say, noch an bierchen, ashablief,” Stella says, flashing a nice smile, “Don’t speak German.” Owen smiles back, then looks at Lucy and the smile, which in the course of a snowjob should rarely take leave of one’s lips, sagged like the neck of a hanged man. “So you going to buy me another drink, or what?” “I suppose. What do you think, Stella?” “I think you ought to save your money.” “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t spend the money.” “Thanks a lot, Stella,” Lucy says, on the verge of throwing a fit. Tears welling up in her eyes “What the fuck punta, What the hell I ever do to you?” “Oh, hell I’m just kidding. Get her the damn scotch, Stella,” Owen says, loading the small ebony pipe. It’s a pleasant feeling to be able to sit in an open bar and smoke marijuana. That’s something different. Something better then running off to a car, to an alley, to a nearby apartment — slithering off like some decrepit breed of human, as a result of a life-style choice. This is the glory of America, land of the free, he thinks, lights the pipe. “You shouldn’t smoke that stuff,” Lucy says, “That stuff makes you crazy.” “This stuff keeps me sane.” “I won’t smoke it no more. Makes me crazy. What you write, anyway?” “Fiction. I write fiction now. I used to be a journalist, but I tried to tell the truth. You can’t tell the truth in journalism, because you’re too busy being objective. So I started writing fiction. Fiction is closer to the truth than people like to think,” he says. Stella brings the round, he pays for it, tips her well. More fond looks all around. Maybe she’s more hungry than he’d anticipated. She sure smiles a lot. Then Lucy butts in, breaks the moment. “You write, what, horror, adventure, mystery, what?” “I tell stories.” “You going to write a story about me?” “Probably.” “Why’s that?” “Because I think you’re a character. A twisted character, but a character nonetheless.” “Well, that’s an awfully nice thing to say.” “I’m happy you see it like that.” “So you working on something now?” “Ready to. Had intended to, until this whole thing went down at the hostel. Don’t quite know where I’m going to go to write it now. Thinking about Spain. Thinking about staying here, but there’s no place to stay, really, and I don’t feel like sleeping outside.” “I can’t blame you for that. Why don’t you come live with me?” Bingo. “Oh, I couldn’t do that.” “We could work it out. The place is small, but you could live there and write for as long as you want. There’s a small room in back. You could sleep there and write and maybe just do some chores around the house for your rent or something. We’ll be able to find something for you to do, I’m sure of that.” “We’ll see. I couldn’t commit to something like that without seeing the place first.” “Let’s go there.” “I don’t want to leave the bar just yet.” “We could leave, take the transit to the flat and be back within the hour. What do you say?” “I say I would like to finish the drink I just bought. And I refuse to chug it. After that, we can go check out this place of yours. I’m sure I’ll just be in the way, but we’ll see.” “It won’t be a problem. It’ll be a pleasure having a hunk like you around.” “Excuse me?” “Oh, I just mean for protection.” “Whatever.” “That room will be just perfect for you. It’s kind of small, but I think you’ll be able to work it out, you know.” “We’ll see,” Owen says, lights a cigarette and pretends to be mesmerized by the dark amber liquid swirling around the belly of the snifter. They sit there for a moment, suffering through the silence. It’s an uncomfortable silence, common to people who, though personally unaccustomed to each other, find themselves thrust into intimate interactions. Interactions breaching social norms. The silence breaks as the group of tourists rise from the table and prepare to move on. They bid Lucy goodbye from across the room, walk quickly to the door. Now it’s just the three of them — Stella, Lucy and Owen sitting at the far end of the bar. If only you had Rocinante. She could help if she were here. She could take you away from here to someplace warm for a helluva lot less than it’s going to cost to take a train. But she’s not here and you need to buy that train ticket first thing tomorrow morning. Unless, of course, you decide to stay with old Lucy, here. Something to look into, perhaps. At least go see the place. Might be a way out . . . and you don’t want to let that slip away. “Let me finish this cigarette and we can go, if you want.” “You’ll love it, I swear,” Lucy says. Stella walks away, shaking her head. “Piss off, Stella. Never mind her. She’s just pissed because I fucked her boyfriend. It was his idea. Went upstairs to the bathroom one night, he’s up there playing pool. I mind my own business, but he follows me into the bathroom and fucks me. Right upstairs there,” she says, pointing upstairs at the bathrooms. “Why didn’t you tell him not to?” “What the hell. He gave me twenty-five guilders afterward. He’s not a bad guy. Kind of cute, really. Ain’t your man cute, Stella?” “Finish the drink and leave, Lucy,” Stella says, then starts swearing at her quietly in Dutch. Lucy shrugs it off. “Let me go piss and we’ll get out of here,” she says, rises off the barstool like a queen, attempts to gracefully execute her way across the bar and up the stairs. She fails miserably, but manages to make it up. Stella watches her with disgust, then walks over to where Owen is sitting at the bar, leans over to speak to him and her shirt falls open, again. Owen tries not to look. “Watch out for her,” she says. “She’s nothing but trouble. She will cause you nothing but trouble. I guarantee it.” “Thanks for the advice, but between you and I, I’m probably going to wind up on a train for Spain tomorrow.” “I wish you could stay longer. Saskia says you’re very nice to talk too.” “You know her?” “Oh, sure. We’ve been friends for a long time.” “I like Saskia.” “She’s great, eh?” “Nice to talk to.” “She knows Lucy. If you need to ask someone else about Lucy, ask Sas.” “I think I’ll be able to take your word. Are you working tomorrow?” “Tomorrow’s my night off. I’ll probably go over to The Other Place.” “Maybe I’ll see you there before I leave.” “That would be a pleasant suprise,” she says, Lucy comes back down the stairs, grabs her nylon sports jacket from the round table, walks up to the bar and tosses back the remainder of her scotch. “Let’s go.” “Maybe see you later, Stella.” “Perhaps,” she says, and leaves him with that toothy smile. The two walk out into the street, and Owen immediately senses the distance between himself and this small crazy woman to his right, fights the urge to run, resigns himself to at least going to see the place. “Tell me about this place of yours.” “It’s across town, away from all this shit. Nice and quiet. You’ll like it there. There’s one thing, though . . . see I live there with my dog and my boyfriend — the dog sleeps in the room where you’ll be staying — so I hope you don’t mind sleeping with my dog.” “You’ve got a boyfriend? What’s he going to think about me staying there?” “Oh, hell, he won’t mind. And if he does, you just kick his ass. He’s such a puss,” she says, fondling his bicep through his leather jacket. “A hunk like you’d have no problem. He’s a drunk anyway. Drunk most of the time. Probably won’t even know your there. You just keep me happy. Boyfriends’s got a temper though. Might have to kick his ass a couple times before he gets the idea.” “Uh-huh. And it’s a big dog, then?” “Big black Great Dane. Nice to cuddle up with, though. Bloomin’ lovely piece of dog. You’ll get along fine.” “We’ll see. Take a left here.” They walk through an alley, passing by an African then an Asian prostitute, standing there looking slut-sultry in their respective doorways. Owen thinks about dumping her now, just walking away from her and into the web of a hooker, then decides against it. Just go and see the place. They cross over to Voorburgwahl, turn right and walk up to the stone bridge spanning the canal. They begin to walk across the bridge. “It’s just up here.” “You’re staying at The Last Water Hole! I can’t go in that place. No way, no way. Can’t go anywhere near there. “Why can’t you go in there?” “Well, what are you going to do if somebody tries to kick my ass?” “Why would somebody want to kick you ass?” “Well, Jimmie says I stole his leather jacket, but I didn’t steal his jacket, see. It was that bitch Janine. She fucking stole it and blamed it on me. I didn’t steal shit. She hates me. Says I fucked her boyfriend. Fuck that. I didn’t steal nobody’s jacket. But even if I did or didn’t, it doesn’t matter. If anyone knows me in there, they’ll kick my ass.” “Why don’t you wait right here, then. I’ll go get my stuff and come back.” “Wait, you got a pen and paper?” Owen takes his notebook from his jacket, hands it to her. She writes her address and phone number on the back page, along with the ’24 hours-a-day’ standing invitation, hands it back to him. “Just in case we lose each other.” “Just in case someone tries to kick your ass while I’m gone?” “Yeah, yeah. Nobody’s going to kick my ass. I’m too god damn fast. That’s for sure. Now get your backpack, Blondie, and let’s make that train.” “I’ll be right back.,” Owen says, looking at her, then turning and walking away. Not a chance, babe. Crash or no crash. Not a chance in hell. If she were a looker, it might be worth it. Hell, she’s not even worth the energy. Rather lay dying in the gutter than spend the winter with a mad bitch like that. . . and her boyfriend to boot. The dog you could deal with, he thinks, walking into the hostel, bidding the night desk clerk a good evening, he goes upstairs to his bunk and lays down with all his clothes on. Wait for a half-an-hour or so, then head back out. She’ll be gone by then. She won’t wait around very long. She’s not the type. Just lay here for a awhile and relax. Find your focus. Where the hell’s that focus anyway? Little old man usually kicks in by now. Usually lets you know where to go. Where the hell is he when you need him? Probably off flitting about in the cosmos, off in some alley shooting heroin. He’s a junkie at heart, the old man. But he always gives you good advice. Always keeps you out of trouble. So where the hell is he when you need him? He’s off now because your demon has the helm and you know it. You kicked the old man out in San Francisco, don’t you remember? Told him to hit the road. You killed him in the desert, then told him to get lost forever in San Francisco. So he’s gone now, when you need him, because you sent him away. The demon’s at the wheel, now, and he’s going to drive this rig right the fuck off the edge. Just try and beat him. You said you could beat him no problem. Remember that? Told him to go fuck a forest nymph. The old man would have told you to kick his ass, or to get the hell out. He wouldn’t have stood for that sort of rubbish — picking pockets in the night. You were too busy upholding the code of the street, though you watched it broken before. So who wins in that situation? Fucking piece of trash. What kind of shit is that? Should have wailed on him right then and there. Damnit! Bugger him and bugger you and bugger this whole damn gig. We’re going down boys, and there ain’t a damn thing we’re going to be able to do about it. Damnit to fucking hell! Alright, alright. Too late for all that now. Keep a clear head. Don’t get angry. Don’t freak. Too late for that now. You can bring this one in smooth. You always manage, remember. You always land smooth, or at the very least unscathed. So you’ll be alright. Just try to relax and enjoy the ride. Because, at this point, the ride is all you’ve got left. * * * Owen waits for an hour-and-a-half, laying on his bunk, watching the drunks slowly drift into the room, fall face first onto their bunks and pass out. He continues thinking on the present dilemma, finally decides to go downstairs to the bar and have a nightcap. He takes his passport and money and walks down the stairs, through the lobby and into The Last Waterhole. The bar is well-lighted and composed entirely of polyurethaned knotty pine, the finish gives the entire bar a brilliant sheen which nearly blinds Owen as he walks through the door. He thinks of donning his duct-tapped sunglasses. The bar is quiet and uncrowded and decorated in the euro-styled Old West fashion. Bandanas and banners and baseball caps adorn the edges, wagon wheel lights hang so far from the ceiling that Owen would have to duck to walk around the room. He walks over to the bar, dodging wagon wheels. There’s a surly looking guy behind the bar with an enormous gut, apparently breaking down the bar. “You still serving.” “You got time for couple.” “Whiskey water, please.” “You’re that guy that got ripped off, right.” “Word travels fast around here. Yes, I suppose you could say that.” “Let me buy you a couple, man. That really sucks.” “Thanks. Think I’ll take you up on that.” The guy’s hands are large and tattoo-covered, the ink beneath his skin working it’s way up his arms and out the top of his shirt. He has graying black hair, and the dead look in his eye. He’s a walking casualty, but he makes a damn fine whiskey and water, Owen thinks, watching him pour the drink. He slides it across the bar. “On the house, man.” “Thanks. You’re mighty kind.” “Hey, we’ve all been there.” “Oh, hell yes. Always a fresh hell. .” The guy laughs, then goes back to closing up the bar. Owen sits at the bar, reflects on the course of events over the last seven months. It’s only been seven months. Feels more like seven years. He feels tired, ready to dig a hole in the earth and begin writing. It’s a big story, but if you can finish it, it’ll be a keeper. “Time for one more?” “No problem. So what did this guy look like, anyway?” “Scrawny little shit — greasy, stringy brown hair, pockmarked face, about five foot six.” “What’s that in meters?” “A little under two meters.” “Little bastard was in here tonight. Kicked him out for trying to pick this woman’s purse. Little German bastard.” “German. That was my guess.” “Oh shit yes. He’s a little scum. I wish I’d have known that was the one. I would have saved him for you.” “I wish I’d been drinking here instead of the Excalibur.” “That’s a decent pub, don’t you think.” “I like it. Like the Other Place better.” “More local.” “That’s where the fun is. Fuck the tourists.” “Without tourists we’d all be fucked. We’ve got to make a living.” “I suppose. Hey thanks for the drinks,” Owen says, tosses a couple guilders across the bar. “No problem. It’s the least we can do. If that little fuck comes in here, I’ll hold him for you, I swear. Hey, sorry, but you’re going to have to toss that back. Need to close down the bar.” “That’ll work,” Owen says, slams the drink, bids the barman goodnight and heads back upstairs, feeling like sleep. Maybe tonight there would be a good sleep, he thinks, a little sleep will make things better. Be able to deal with things better. Just a little sleep. A brief respite, that’s all you need to set you right. * * * The swing-sited blade of the reaper sits to the left-hand-side of the master at the feast, spinning the records, calling the dance. We await the next tune. The room is black, clouded with shrouded smoked lungs hanging from the ceiling, the swill runs rampant. Reap the pleasures mirth, boy. Dine. Suckle sweet blossoms, boy, drink deep the nectar, the fecund honey mead. Why does he bray? the jackal man calling. Why must we wander the streets? The dark eyes sullen, searching, seething with? Vermouth. The red neon rings like carnival barkers begging for those to ride. “Fifty guilders!” they say. “Four bucks, four bucks.” Red lights sing the soul fecund . . .red lights find me lost, defunct.. A bark from the window, the carnal banter, bare breast and all, give a tap on the window and says without gall: “I’ll fuck you and suck you, fifty guilders for all.” Vermouth. And it’s another cheap night in Amsterdam. The words break unevenly now, utterly split like waves against crestfallen cliffsides. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep will bring us back. Sleep will make us one again. The voice’s crystal shatters to chards and inside they break loose and run in thousand different directions. Not even sunlight makes them scatter, though no sun shines now, they fear not the brilliant light of the nearby star. They remain for the duration like vultures at carrion, to pick the bones clean of flesh, to hone the sinew and decorate the nest with clumps of hair and rotting eyeballs. The Church of England gongs three times. A cock should crow, but there is only silence. Silence and the breathing of those lost to repose. Captive by the pillow monsters. Where the hell are those damn pillow monsters? The night passes slowly, given to thoughts afleeting and notions of desperation and grandeur. Visualizing the happy landing. There is only wreakage now. Landing matters not. It’s nearing the end now. You can feel it. Things will work out. It will end and there will be pain, but then there will be healing and, if you’re really lucky, you’ll live to fly again. You’ve lost an engine now, boy. Heinekein flows from the taps like blood fondling furiously the therapeutic old chagrin of the steady drinker. You feel it inside you. Growing now. Spawned, cursed and growing. It’s only and embryo, but with a mass equal to that of the cosmos. It’s suits you to lay here, than dapple with the carnival barker. Vermouth. Find the busty babe of kin and shade bought and paid to be laid, brought again from the din as a fish in the market from frying pan to fire. Leave forever the fine gentle curves of her breasts, her bonnie blossom musk — bleeding, braying — the blood red bricks of Amsterdam. Where shall you sit that you might finally lick your wounds? Where once more to be whole. Farther off the path, seeking, searching for what? For what? You dare not venture query. You find yourself lapsed in time of need, find you calm in time of frenzy. Your penis writhes with the scum of crackville U.S.A. Heal the chard or die. Though what can one do in a world gone haywire, except sink into a more elaborate siesta. Technology calls for drastic measures, for drastic means of mind expansion. We stand before a new age! We no longer suit the role of cosmological buffoon. We no longer retain that innate innocence endowed to us in the dawn of the species. We understand far too much about power, synthetic, organic and ethereal to ignore the inevitable. We perish ignoring our extraordinary talents. The time nears for the avatars to rise and usher in the coming millennia! The ushering, of course, will not be pretty. There will be much bloodletting and this of the removal of heads. They take the heads because that’s where the brain lies. The human brain is the most efficient means of contacting the ‘Great Source’ when one finds themself in mortal form of flesh and blood. Blood is the food of vampires. Vital only for organic sustance. The brain, however, the brain! Such an amazing device, yet mortals resist using it for fear of what they might find, what they might hear on the line, so to speak. But the brain, truly, is the only way out of here once and for all. And to accomplish that, one must face the wrathful deities, which brings us to the present situation: You are here, wrathful deities abound. Begin fighting. Or lay down and die and damn yourself to try again. It’s that simple. You call yourself warrior, so go for it. If you don’t, you may never have the opportunity again. Not in this life at least. You want out of Samsara, you whine about it incessantly to anyone who’ll listen. Now’s your chance. Jump. Go out kicking. Don’t let them take you alive. You know the routine. You’ve done the drills since you were a wee revolutionary vandal. Well, this is no drill. This is as real as it gets. Struggle, conflict and the endurance of sheer will, that’s what this is about. You asked Fate for a challenge, and a challenge was granted you. You told Fate you were bored, so Fate said, “Here, have some fun.” Some fun, eh? And things are just getting started. Now the fun really begins. Owen lay in his bunk, listening to the sounds of sleep. The raspy, steady drawing of air through congested, tar-coated lungs providing the background score to the cacaphonic images whirling in his head. He wants the images to go away so he can sleep. Sleeping sounds wonderful, but his head won’t stop working. Feeling anxious, he gets up and walks across the room to the sink, fills his stainless steel mug with water. The water tastes cold and refreshing, but the image of the stark room filled with bunks, the stainless steel mug, the whole institutional scenario makes him feel something like a hostage. The door, however, remains open. There’s a window to the left of the sink. Through it, Owen sees the Church of England. The heat rising from the register beneath it makes the church appear liquid. Owen leans on the sill and looks out on the city near dawn. The church bell winds up, gongs four times, slow and methodical, as it has for hundreds of years. The ringing of the last strike hangs in the air for a minute, the hanging pitch in his ears sparking off a new set of images. Looking out on the rooftops, Owen senses the history of the setting. History older than anything he’s felt before. It feels solid and wondrous. They don’t renovate much, here in Amsterdam, and then only the facades. They leave the posterior and interior seemingly unaltered. The backsides of the buildings consist of chicken wire and twisted iron wood, fastened in patchwork fashion to the brick. It’s amazing how it doesn’t collapse to the ground. Held aloft through sheer will alone. The windows are small and thin. Owen sees a thousand ghosts in the courtyard. He sees the spirits of housewives throwing pails of slop and bathwater off the small porches adorning the doors, sees the small wispy children playing on the rooftops. Sadly enough, most of the male ghosts are working. Patching the crudely-hewn porches, chicken coops and stairways, killing chickens — some of them stand with their foot up on the railing, smoking. Smoking ghosts. Owen stands at the window until the belltower strikes five. His head won’t stop working. Won’t stop going over the whole chain of events. It’s overheating. It’s winds up tighter and tighter beneath his skull cap, like an electric motor under power surge. Certainly nearing critical mass. Certainly it will shut down and rest. Certainly it’ll blow a breaker. But for now it runs like mad, drawing power faster than provided. Owen rubs his face with his hands, goes back to bed and tries to sleep. Things will work out fine, he thinks, if he can sleep just a bit. A brief reverie, that’s all he needs. A little R.E.M., and things will be dandy. Laying in the bunk, Owen looks out the window at the end of the room. It’s false dawn. Soon enough it will be real dawn and the day will be here and he will have to face it, and buy that damn train ticket to somewhere. Somewhere warm. Somewhere to land. Probably to Carlos in Madrid. Carlos, that is, if Poncho Via gets his phone number from Ted. He reminds himself to make a note to call Kara. Buy the ticket, call Kara, then go for coffee. But first, try and get a little sleep. Yeah, that’s right. Try and get a little sleep. See if you get any sleep. You don’t deserve anything, stupid motherfucker. You deserve nothing but what you’ll get. Just try and drift off. Just try and get a little satisfaction. * * * Dawn breaks, and Owen watches the wax from dark to light. The deep blue fading to grey, then rising back to brilliant azure. It is morning. Owen rises wearily from his bunk, washes his face in the sink. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to see his eyes. Dressing, donning his duct-tapped leather jacket, his duct-tapped Vaurnets®, he heads out into the morning, feeling thoroughly disoriented. The streets are deserted, save for a few zealous merchants enroute to their shops. Owen wanders the streets, thinking. “Hey dude, you looking for some killer hashish?” Owen turns to the voice behind him, sees a small, barrel-chested dude, with a thick crop of jet black hair and olive skin motioning to him from an alley. The kid joins him on his walkabout, falling into pace, nearly running alongside him. “Man, I’m for real. This is the best. Better than you’ll find anywhere.” “Dude, let me ask you something: why should I buy from you when I can go into anywhere in town and get the same stuff, and not have to deal with the street peddlers like you? What do you want for your hash? “ “Fifteen guilders a gram. The best deal in town.” “Twenty-five guilders for three-and-a-half grams in the bar.” “No way.” “The Other Place, dude. There undercutting you nearly fifty percent. No, that’s alright.” “I’m Ahmid. Who are you?” “Owen.” “Come back to my apartment, Owen, and I will show you.” “No thanks. I have things to do. You’re welcome to walk along with me if you want, but I’m not looking for anything. Don’t try to sell me anything. Alright.” “Alright.” “You from Amsterdam, Ahmid?” “Belgium, I come here for the tourist season, then go back to Brussels.” “I’ll bet you’re no tourist, though.” “I’m a business man.” “Uh-huh. I know who you are.” “A guy’s got to make a living. Man, come back to my apartment. It’s only up the alley. I’ll cut you a deal. Really. Give me a chance.” Owen stops walking in front a small touristy gift shop on the main drag, just a few blocks away from the train, and looks at the little dude. He’s seen this guy a hundred times all over the world. These boys never cut deals. They’re businessmen. Two bicycle cops round the corner, walking their bikes. The dude shoots off into the alley, vanishes. The motion startles Owen, and he instinctively walks into the gift shop to avoid contact with police. This, of course, draws their immediate attention and they walk up in front of the gift shop and look at Owen pretending to look at postcards. The clerk gives Owen a cold look. “I think they want to talk to you,” he says. Owen walks out of the store, feeling irritated. “Something I can do for you, officers?” “Let me see your passport,” says the black officer. Owen takes it from his jacket, hands it to him. He rifles through it. “This is unstamped. You’re an illegal. We ought to take you down right now.” “What the hell are you talking about? They didn’t stamp it at the border. They just looked at it. I asked if I needed a stamp and the guy said no. It’s not my fault. What’s the deal? I haven’t done anything. I was walking along, minding my own business. I don’t know who the hell the little punk was. If you’re going to search me, go ahead. I don’t have shit. I was robbed, though, but I suppose that makes no difference to you.” “Yeah, we know about your kind. Are you staying here?” “Just passing through.” “Well, we’re keeping our eye on you.” “Fine. You do that. And keep your eye out for the little bastard who stole my day pack.” “There’s nothing we can do about that.” “That’s what I figured. Can I go now?” “You stay out of this area. If I see you here again, I’ll take you down to the station.” “Whatever, dude.” Owen says, walks away before he says anything more. He’s in no mood to deal with the likes of their ilk. He feels exhausted, walking down the street to the train station. Buy your ticket, get a little sleep on the train. Once you’re on the train, things will be fine. Just make it to the damn train. Preferably without getting arrested. The train station bristles with activity — people running off to this place and that, saying hello, bidding ado — running for their lives. Owen finds an open ticket window. The guy behind the counter looks like an anal-retentive twit, proves the assertion the moment he opens his mouth. “What.” “I need ticket prices to Majorca and Madrid.” “We don’t run to Majorca, sir, that’s an island. We run to Valencia.” “Fine. Valencia and Madrid, then.” Snorting and snuffing during the entire conversation, the twit quotes him the prices first in guilders, then in dollars. Owen feels to weary to make the conversion. Valencia is out of reach. Madrid will leave him with an even fifty dollars. Buying the ticket to Madrid, he gives the guy a don’t-fuck-with-me look and walks away. What, has the whole world gone completely anal? What the hell is wrong with people. You’re not carrying a gun, not armed to the teeth, not scamming drugs to tourists . . . what the fuck? People see a large, blonde long hair in a leather jacket and they immediately assume you’re there to raise hell. Not that raising hell is not beyond you, but it’s silly to think you’d want to walk around smashing anything and everything in your path. That lost it’s appeal when you were fifteen. There fare far finer realms in which one frolics free. But when they treat you like a thug, when they fail to give you the benefit of the doubt, when they despise you for how you LOOK , sometimes you want to give them the thug show, just to make it interesting. But they’d never understand that it was merely a show. They’d never fathom an acting out of their insecurities and deepest fears realized. Yet more critically relevant is that acts of direct and obvious physical violence remain the worst of all possible choices. In the light of the new age, physical violence turns passe’, unless the governments provoke it, which is normally the case. Thus, an armageddon ensues. There is always a choice. It’s far more cruel to torture mentally. To leave the body in tact and twist the mind beyond recognition, at which point death avatars from curse to blessing. The mental, the physical — the high and low roads, respectively. Humans have the potential to be the masters of their destiny, if only to the extent of choosing the high road or the low road. One finds blood and butchered remnants along both roads, but the branches and arteries run downhill. Gravity pulls anything organic downhill. Drags it down to the low road. Blood pools and coagulates in the ruts and washboard cuts of the low road. “You take the low road, and I’ll take the high road, and I’ll be in Scotland before ye.” Owen leaves the station humming an old Scottish diddy, and pondering the ethics of moral high ground. The cops see him and give him a dirty look as he crosses the square back to the relative safety of the Red Light district, ticket for departure this evening in pocket. Silly cops. They leave whores and bars and junkies their space, it would seem. Keep them penned up. They’d probably make it an island if they could. Keep the tourists safe for proper capitalism. Owen walks back the district, heading to the Other Place, wondering which brand of thief he finds more palatable: the government, on one hand, who takes what they want, when they want it, who kills whomever they deem fit to die, who tells you they’re robbing you for your own good, tell you it’s money for protection; or, on the other hand, the little punk who gets in your pants while you sleep, or your locker while you shower. The common variety petty thief rodent. Definitely, he prefers the rodent. The rodent takes his life in his own hands merely so that he might feed his jones and, perhaps, eat. There’s something disgustingly saintly about that. Pathetic, yet divine. Necessary. Keeps people on their toes. He’s sure got you on your toes. “Precisely my point,” Owen says, answering himself outloud. He’s startled by the sound of his own voice. The streets now swell with maggots in the form of brain-dead tourists, so he quickens his pace to get to the bar. “You wouldn’t have any whiskey, would you Saskia?” “No, only the schnapps. You need a shot with your coffee?” “Schanpps will work,” he says, and she turns to get the drinks. “I’m on the train at six-thirty tonight.” “So you decided, no?” “Yes. I’ve enough to make it to Madrid.” “I don’t like Madrid.” “That’s as far as I could get.” “It’ll be cold there, too.” “I’ll hook up with Carlos, or find work. It’ll be alright.” “Sure. You seem like the type who lands on his feet.” “Hit the ground running, that’s what I say. How about a beer?” “You must come here before you go. We’ll have a going away party for you.” “Oh, hell, you don’t have to do that.” “No, it’ll be fun. I’m sure Martin will be here. We’ll talk. It’s been so nice having you around to talk to. I’ll give you my address. Will you write me if I do that? I’d like to know if things work out.” “Sure. I’ll write.” “So I’ll give it to you this afternoon, just to make sure you come here before you leave.” “I’ll be here. Where else would I be? I love it here. I’m sad I have to leave, really. But I just feel like I need to move south, you know? Find that bridge, or that beach, or whatever and sit down and start writing.” “I want you to send me a copy of it when you get it published.” “I’ll do that. Hell, you’ll probably be in it. Don’t be surprised.” “I’ll drink a shot to that,” she says, pulling up two shot glasses, filling them. They drink the shots, and Owen feels that thick-headed morning buzz settling in, warming his gut, numbing his mind, and perhaps availing a midday nap. The voices don’t usually come during the day, usually. Maybe he’ll get lucky. “Shots are on me, you save your money.” “Thanks, I appreciate that.” “No problem. I know how it is on the road.” “You travel a lot?” “Road trips most of the time. Most of them on the back of Harley Davidson’s®,” she says it as though ‘Harley Davidson’s® were the English word for motorcycle. “I like Harley’s, I just don’t know if I could trust one for a road trip,” Owen says, feeling the babble coming on. “Harley’s run forever, but they need a butt load of maintenance. Now, take my old Rocinante. She’s a Yamaha®. And I’ll tell you straight out and with out hesitation that she was by far and beyond the best piece of machinery I’ve ever had the happiness of owning. Bought her for five-hundred dollars coming down from Alaska in ’88, in Milwaukee. We were lost and looking for a brewery, I recall, and I just saw her there in the yard. I knew then and there that I’d found a gem. Rode her fifteen thousand miles, down through the middle American west, southwest into the desert, Baja, and all the way up the coast to San Francisco and all that needed fixing were the rear brakes. Had to put a new rear tire on her in the desert, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t just run. Sold her for Five-hundred dollars in San Francisco. That’s how well they hold their resale value. That money from her sale is all gone now. You realize that? I traded her away to come her and I came here and now I don’t have shit and I’m stranded and what I could really use is Rocinante. If she were here, things would be better. Much better, you know?” Saskia nods her head, give him a soft, empathetic look. “You look tired,” she says. “Didn’t sleep last night.” “You ought to sit with me here, have a couple more shots and a couple more beers, then go nap. How’s that sound. We’ll get you asleep. Here, I’ll roll up a cigarette. Just relax. Let Saskia care for you, eh?” “You’re a good bartender, Saskia. The best.” “I am lucky. I have a good job. I make better money than most of my friends, and my boyfriend is on the dole, so we’re set up. When you have things, you care for people who need it, you know?” “That attitude is rare in America.” “Americans are selfish.” “Most of them, true enough, but there are exceptions. Not many, mind you. I’m technically an American.” “I don’t like to think of you as American,” she says, handing him a joint, then going for a couple more shots. “I like to think of you from Norway, or maybe even a Dutch boy. You like Holland?” “What I’ve seen of it.” “Amsterdam is very different from the rest of Holland. Very conservative. Over in Rotterdam, where they have the — what do you call them? Windmills, yes that’s it — over there they’re strict. Traditional, you know. Amsterdam is the only place where you get away with it. Here everything’s tolerated.” “And for that matter, only in the Red Light District.” “There are other districts where they party.” “That may be so, but every time I leave the Red Light district, I get hassled by the cops. They all think I’m a drug dealer or something.” “You are rather conspicuous.” “Precisely the reason I would make a lousy drug runner. I don’t blend.” “No, I don’t imagine,” she says pouring herself a cup of coffee. There’s a lull in the conversation, and Owen feels the potent schnapps dulling his overworked brain. He’s happy for the respite. Sleep comes soon. He welcomes it. “Owen, I think you should stay in Amsterdam. I think you’d fit in . . . we’d get to have you around all the time. I wish we could figure out a place for you to stay.” “I’ve bought the ticket. Is it possible to return it?” “No.” “Well, there it is, then. Off to Madrid. I’ll have to come back here again, though. I’ll miss it here. This place is like San Francisco, in a way. It would take years to sort through all the various forms of deviance, all the fetishes and psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorders, eccentricities, schizo-affectives and full-blown schizophrenics — European style. You guys are thick with it over here. It’s wonderful. I’ll bet it’s better than Paris.” “I don’t like Paris. Too snooty, too expensive.” “I’ll be passing through Paris.” “Good luck.” “Thanks. I’ll need that. What do you say? One more and I go hit the bunks and come back here around, what, three?” “Ja, sure. You just make sure you come back.” “I’ll come back.” She pours the shots, raises her glass. “To safe landings in Madrid.” “I’ll drink to that. Salude.” “Cheers.” The third shot does it. Owen feels sleepy. He bids Saskia good-bye, tries to leave her a few guilders, but she’ll have none of it. He leaves the quiet solitude of the bar and heads back out into the day, now in full swing. Thin autos trundling up the streets only inches from the lackadaisical pedestrians strolling along the sidewalk. Everything’s so small compared to American cities. Walking along, feeling out of synchronization with time and space, Owen feels like a giant ogre. A no-sleeping-buzzed-before-noon grizzly-bear ogre, out of place with time and space. They’ll have you in a zoo, if you’re not careful, like a gorilla. Can you feel the separation between yourself and these others? Can you feel the distance. In the states it’s one thing. But here . . . here! The presence of all the history speaks exodus to your soul. You understand this better than anything ever before. You never fit in, in America. But here . . . here! You’ve walked these streets for a thousand years. You know every nook and cranny. You rode through here once, on horseback, a long, long time ago, with a two-handed broadsword thudding heavy on your back. You rode through and, took your fill and departed, hundreds of years ago. Even back then, Amsterdam fared a fine place to party. You took whatever you wanted, or you burned the place to the ground. Always, this has been the way of the Viking. And you’re a good one. They ve neither forgiven nor forgotten you. You see it in their eyes. The fear and loathing. They don’t hide it behind a smile and ‘have a nice day’. Hell no. If they hate you, they don’t say anything . . . it’s all in the way they stare at you, even if your looking. They’re not afraid to show their disgust. That, you can respect. They’d just-as-soon cage you up and throw dung at you. Once again you’re cast as a thug. Thor the thug. It’s going to be damn hard to break that mold. And surely this recklessness of yours isn’t going to help any. You’re going to go down and it won’t be pretty. Perhaps not, but you can’t be sure of it. You’ve got to prepare for the worst. Reconcile the whole thing with death, or fail miserably. Death’s never been a problem, eh? Well, here he is. Face him or fail, and spend the next decade healing. You’ll be alive, but you may not make it out with your unbroken spirit in tact. Hold it together with duct tape. Duct tape holds anything. Almost. Owen beelines for the hostel, which he finds unattended. He walks slowly up the stairs to the bunk room, freshly-linened. Falling fully clothed onto his bunk, he tries to sleep. And the sleep comes lightly, but not the solid sleep one needs to regain one’s wits. Not a healthy sleep at all. Semiconscious and feverish, haunted with voices comes the repose, like a fog wafting lugbriously over a stone wall. Beta waves at best. And though he lay very still, sinking grave deep into himself and thinking only of the color black, seeing only black on the big screen in his mind, still the grim thoughts berate, taunting him, making dreaming impossible. Certainly, this is the ugliest part of an overactive brain: the inability to shut the damn thing off. This respite will keep the body going, while the mind whirrs and flutters, unable to think strategically, critically, unable to fight the current, should the current swell and try to sweep you over the falls. You feel yourself flowing along with the current now. You’ve come all this way, only to be smashed on the rocks. Traversed an ocean to decadence. It is Rome. It is Babylon. It shakes an ancient tail to the mind primeval. Simply Amsterdam. The money flows free like a cut jugular with no sense of loss. It is the French Quarter. It is San Francisco Traversed the ocean to decadence, like trade winds to your soul, you try and wash away the candy cane world, until you find yourself deserted, then you run like a bleating goat off to who knows where. Finally, traveling again. Yes, yes, yes . . . this is what you need, this is where you feed. The sense of the transitory, of fleeting moments and life gone haywire. The is the feeling of normlessness. You want nothing, you fear nothing, you are free. This is true anomie that breaks the child’s mind open like a gourd. “Welcome back to travel,” says my demon. It is Rome. It is Shangri-la. This living daze, this junkie’s haze reclined to see vast visions. Your mind wanders now, lost in the machine of its own making. Searching for the button that makes it hum once again. Searching for the cog that makes it breathe fire into life once more. So close. It is Babylon. It is Bancock. And in this cat’s crocked cradle will you find true delight. In this orgy din devle you the depths of Pan’s appetite. Pan, you see, sits alone, overlooking the dance. You climb to him as though entranced. “Fill me up!” you cry to the high Pagan skies. “Make me cringe with passion! Make me shudder with inspiration! Make my knees quiver with the comprehension of greatness! Make me cum with the wide open bliss of nonstop decadence!” He looks to you, smiles a snaggletoothed grin, and these words fall from the sky for the first time: “In duct tape transit.” In a land ruled by the dogs of war and the swine of leisure, in a sensual world fatalistically resigned to the tortures of mortal flesh, in a civilization where monuments to mediocrity find fond fanfare and the Eye of Fatima oversees and undermines the roots of nearly every human interaction, where resides the young immortals seeking true release? “In duct tape transit.” In duct tape transit on the blood-red bricks of Amsterdam. The bricks, jagged and unsteady beneath your feet, the hashish wafting, mixing with the stench of urban decay and the souls of last night’s marauding rotting in the alleys with the trash and the rats. What can you do but love it here? Sip the simple suckling wind, keep your feet in time with him who calls the dance of frenzied whim, thank the flowers for the bloom. Hold the lotus blossom to the wise, strip the candor from the their eyes, peel the secret from within. Hold a candle to the lot, to find your soul’s own padded pot. And if you fail to charm, if you fail to disarm all weapons which harm, then sound the alarm. I’ll not let you down. What happens to a generation born into the ravenges of technocracy? “In duct tape transit.” Where finds young incarnates desiring the rise to deity, strange new humans with the fire of a thousand souls unwilling to make the sausage grinder jump into the staid world of commerce? Do they cower in the far corners of the world, removed from the societies of noble living and the pursuit of capital gains? Do the seek the shrouds of lightless caves and remote mountain tops? Where lives the young prophets caught amid the wash of mortal flesh? “In duct tape transit.” The ‘civilized’ world stews in the ignorance of its own juices, and the arrogance of generations past, who lived as they live — one step out of the cave, one foot in the grave. And when the young idealists come along, speaking of the grand gift presented so long ago to the humans, desiring to use this gift to the fullest, desiring nothing less than to change the face of perception thusly written, they find nothing but frightened and ferocious denunciation. They find themselves scorned by mediocracy, scorned by the systems that spawned them. They find themselves moving forward, whilst the cave dwellers shower them with rotting fruits and vegetables. This wayward movement towards greatness, towards the ascension of the spirit of heights omniscient bliss, is by far the most difficult journey a human attempts in the flesh. This path wreaks of rotting fruits and vegetables thrown from a crowd of angry, ignorant onlookers, thrown from a group of spectators and armchair warriors unaware of the many worlds surrounding them. They know only what they see on television. What television tells them they should know. Before television, there was radio, before that there was the Guttenberg press, but only the elite could read, so the philosopher kings handed down the information via word of mouth. The town crier was the first television, if you will. And from day one, the philosopher kings have despised the wandering ascetics, visionaries and seekers of wisdom, who refuse to listen to their falsehoods. Political society is a sham; further, a mockery of a sham. The muse will speak to anyone who will listen, will tell them all there is to know, if they commit themselves to the path of the ideal, the sublime, the immortal. The muse speaks to those who commit themselves to walking the path of rotting fruits and vegetables, ascending into ether, and leaving nothing for the reaper. Follow the path, and everything will be alright. These are the words of the gods. Owen opens his eyes. He feels weary. His body heavy, his head light, he rises slowly up from the bunk. It’s time to pack. It’s time to go to his next wake, then make the death train for Spain. Reminding himself to call Kara before he goes to the Other Place, stowing his gear in the massive, red backpack, Owen looks forward to the train, looks forward to sleeping. Everything would be okay, if only he could sneak a little repose from his overactive brain. He hoists the pack onto his back and walks down the stairs. Sara is at the desk, looking charming. “Well, I’m off.” “Where you heading?” “Spain, now. Try to hook up with a friend. Make the best of it, you know.” “That’s what I like about you Americans. You’re always so undaunted,” she says, flashes him a big smile. He gives her a big undaunted smile back, she tells him to write, he says he will, bids her good-bye, knows he will never see her again. Leaving the hostel, feeling secretly daunted, feeling something like a walking zombie, Owen walks down the alley to the bridge, crosses the canal of the Voorburgwahl, walks down the street, like a traveling circus. The pack makes him look gargantuan. Passing by a shop window, Owen sees his reflection. Truly, an image of a side show freak. The lack of sleep shows in his eyes. Bleary, just a little crazed, sunken, highlighted by the ever emerging dark circles — his eyes, at the moment, remind him of the eyes of chronic street-roaming transients he’d observed and interviewed in the name of sociology, in the name of science. Observation is no longer necessary. He is one of them now. He’s a participant . The distance between he and the transient world is no longer great. He shares the sidewalks, now, with the great homeless herds of the terminally transient and perpetually confused. Yes, one of them now. People gawk, as usual, but even this gives him no great pleasure. Ignoring them, he decides it’s too early to call Kara, so he moves down the street, life in tow, to the Other Place. Saskia waits behind the bar for him. For him. That alone gives him the strength to go on. He walks into the bar. “That’s a big pack you have there.” “One of the biggest packs they make. Sixty-five-hundred cubic inches.” “And you still can’t fit your whole life in it, eh?” “Go figure. Traveling heavy, I know, I know. I wasn’t really counting on much road work. That was a big mistake I’m packing a portable library of thirty books or so. More books than clothes. I don’t know what the hell to do with them now,” he says, dropping the pack in the corner of the bar. “I don’t want to throw them off as ballast, but it may damn well come to just that.” “Here, have a beer.” “Thanks.” “Martin will be here soon. He just stepped out for a moment. Did you have a good nap?” “Yeah, sure. Slept like a wee lad, I did.” “You’ve still got that funny look in your eyes.” “I’m sure I’ll sleep on the train.” “You didn’t sleep at all, did you.” “No. But it’s alright. I’ll be alright once I make the train. Bugger all that, for right now. I’ve got the ticket, will make the train without difficulty. Pleasant to be amongst friends right now, though. Feeling a little detached, I am, from everything.” “That’s the lack of sleep. That will drive you mad faster than anything else. You’ve got to sleep.” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I don’t feel that bad, physically. My body feels okay. It’s my brain with the methane, you know. I’m brain farting like nobody’s business. Yet I know that this, too, shall pass,” he says, and manages a beaming smile. Always smile bright. Always leave them laughing. Never let them see pain in your eyes. That’s not what they come for. They come for the show. And a show you must give them, or they hang you out to dry. Guaranteed. “You’re funny.” “Try to keep a sense of humor. Helps to laugh at your situation, I’ve found, no matter how hopeless. In fact, the more hopeless the situation, the more you laugh like hell.” “What if you can’t laugh?” “That’s where the trouble starts, when you take things to seriously,” he says as Martin walks into the bar. Martin walks in, sits down, and looks at the pack in the corner. “That’s some pack,” he says, “I’d hate to be carrying that thing around. Christ, it probably weighs more than I do.” “Damn close, I’ll bet.” “You actually put that thing on your back?” “Only when I have to carry it.” “Well, we’re all here. Should we start the party?” “Best to kick it off with a round of shots, don’t you think?” “I think that’s a fine idea,” she says, sets up three shots. “To the road.” “To the road,” says Owen, raising his shot. “May the wind blow warm, may your boots never wear thin with holes, may you always find friends to help you along the trail, and may you find the beach you are looking for.” “I’ll drink to that.” They clink glasses, drink the shots, and then Saskia serves up another round of beer. “I think we’d better split one more of those marijuana beers,” Owen says, “I’m buying. That is one delicacy I will sorely miss. Why don’t you set us up with one after this round.” “My pleasure.” “Here, Owen, this is for you,” Martin says, handing him two packs of Drum® tobacco, a loaf of bread and some thin-sliced ham and swiss cheese. “Damn, Martin, that’s awfully kind of you.” “No problem. I have traveled before on an empty stomach, find very little pleasure in it. Besides, it’s karma, you know? I help you, keeps things right for me. I’m a poor poet. We have to do those kind of things when we can.” “I understand. Mighty thoughtful of you,” Owen says, clapping Martin lightly on the shoulder. “Here this is my gift,” Saskia says, handing him a package. Inside the package Owen finds a bottle of Grand Mariner® and a copy of Easy Rider magazine. “Damn, Sas, Grand Mariner® must cost a fucking fortune over here.” “Actually, I get a good deal on it over at Excalibur.” “Well that makes me feel better. This is so cool,” Owen says, feeling the beginnings of tears welling up in his eyes. The lack of sleep is making him punchy, emotionally vulnerable. He shakes it off, keeps smiling. “You guys kick ass, I’m telling you. You’re making it damn hard to leave.” “That’s the idea. This way, you see, you’ll have to come back,” says Saskia. “I’ll be back,” Owen says, and a young group of local women pass the window, beating on a man dressed in a Dutch Santa Clause suit with umbrellas, purses and books. The three of them watch the spectacle pass, Martin and Saskia watch it, nodding and winking to each other. To Owen, however, it’s a scene out of the Twilight Zone. Beautifully surreal. “What the hell was that?” “That’s Clause, it’s almost Christmas you know.” “Yeah, so why were they pummeling him?” “In Amsterdam, if you see Clause on the street and he has no gifts for you, you can beat on him. He’s always supposed to have a little something to give you — tobacco, candy — something like that. If he has nothing, you trounce him.” “They don’t hurt him though, eh?” “Most times, no. Every year, though, one Clause or another will turn up in the hospital.” “Interesting custom.” “You have no such custom in America?” “No, not yet. We shoot an occasional Santa Claus in drive-by’s now and again, but I’ll tell you what, the way things are in the states right now, that’s a custom that could easily work its way across the ocean to America. Americans beat up on everything else. Santa Claus should be no exception. It’s all for graft anyway.” “You know it.” “Let’s have that marijuana beer now. Wil yo noch ein bierchen triken, ashablief?” “Sure,” Martin says. “Hey, your Dutch is really improving.” “I like Dutch better than German. More pleasant to the ear.” “I knew you would,” Saskia says, pouring the beer into two steins.” “You’re not going to drink with us?” “I can’t drink this stuff. I’ll get too fucked up. Goes right to my head. I may have just a sip.” “Take whatever you like.” “Just a sip.” Sipping at the marijuana beer, dark and potent, Owen looks around the bar one last time, trying to memorize every last detail, every last layer. He wants to remember the odd trapezoidal shape of the barroom itself — the bathroom, like a phone booth, four feet away from the bar stools, the floor and walls surfaced with thick, frontieresque planking, painted over with layers drunken signatures, quips, quotes, quibbles and bits of customers from all over the world. Most of it in black and red paint, ink and blood. Over this layer, a fine yellowing from massive amounts of smoking. Then comes the underwear layer. Brassiere’s, teddys, jockey shorts, silken panties, boxers, crotchless, edible, leather, lace, nylon — all of these garments hang from the walls covered with a another layer of the smoke-yellowed passage of time. Then you notice the various trophies. The hats and bongs and dildos, pictures postcards, shirts, boots, mannequin parts all entwined with such sublime placement that you could never think to move one thing. Owen thinks about adding to it, decides to leave his oldest traveling bandanna. “Here, I want to add this to your collection. It’s been with me on the road for five years. I think this would make a fine home to retire it in.” “Where do you want to put it?” “Let’s put it on the mannequin head,” Owen says, pulls a bar stool back to the head and ties the bandanna on. “You need to sign it.” “Alright.” Owen signs: “LIVING LIFE IN DUCT TAPE TRANSIT. OWEN DUNUM ’90" “What’s that mean?” “Just something I’ve been thinking about lately. I don’t quite know how to define it yet. Something to do with a life-style, though. Something to do with a way of looking at the world. I’ve noticed similarities about people who receive and understand transmissions from the source of the qualitative ideal. They tend to understand the same basic set of ideas pertaining to knowledge, power and creation as a whole From Gilgamesh on forward. They know how to put on a great show. When you look at the lives of prophets, saints and martyrs, mystics, myths and legends, you discover this: they were all human once. They are normally tortured internally by their own passions, tortured and killed by those who followed them, and most importantly, they all understood what it meant to communicate their ideas to their followers, all understood what it meant to give them what they came there for. They come for the show. And all great humans understand this. Take any one of them, with a few exceptions, of course, in the tortured and killed part, but not many, by gum, and they all lived the same life-style. There are exceptions, like I say, but not too damn many. And there’s a way this brand of human holds things together in the midst of chaos while traveling. They hold it together with duct tape, if they’re smart. Duct tape will hold anything. Am I making any sense?” “Sort of. You lost me there somewhere near the end. What’s duct tape got to do with it” “Duct tape heals the chard; or rather, duct tape holds the chards together. I was raised in the land of jerry-rigging, in a place where you sometimes, many times, needed to use bailing wire, duct tape, electrical tape, fencing wire, whatever you could find to keep things running, to hold things all together. See?” “I understand what you’re saying,” Martin says, “I live that sort of life.” “I think there’s a lot of us who do. More than most people think.” “Not just prophets, myths and legends?” “No, that’s where it originates.” “So are you a myth or a legend, Owen Dunum?” Saskia asks with a wry, cattish smirk. Owen drains the last of the beer in his glass. “I’m a traveler. I have been a traveler for thousands of years, because the ways of the nomad never change. When I gain enough focus and luminosity to pass through the wrathful deities, I will pass beyond, and continue to travel in omniscience. That’s where the real fun begins. This is the warm up, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be going through this time. I think I’ve got it figured out. I think I always try to fight the wrathful deities, rather than pass through them. That’s where I’ve fucked up for eternity, you know? Thus far, always in the midst of wrath, always in the heat of battling the deities. You can’t fight them, you must pass through them while remaining focused. See, that’s where I’ve always fucked up. This time, though, aye, this time it’s different. I’ve got it figured out. I can get though, if I just allow myself to pass beyond, rather than fight,” Owen says, realizes that he’s babbling. ”That’s the way I see it.” Saskia and Martin both nod their heads in unison, and he knows he lost them. “But to hell with all that. How about another round of shots.” “There’s a fine idea,” Owen says, feeling a good head coming on. He’ll be sleeping on the train for sure. Setting up the shots, they raise their glasses in toast. “To omniscience.” “Fuck, yeah, I’ll toast omniscience. Excellent choice, Martin.” “To fucking omniscience,” Saskia says, and they clink the thick shot glasses in unison. “How much time you have left?” “I’ll need to head for the train station in half-an-hour. Time for a couple more beers,” he says, Saskia gets her purse from the closet and begins rolling a cigarette. Taking a nice chunk of hashish, waving a lighter underneath it to dry it out, she sprinkles a generous portion of resinous mixture in the cigarette. “Remind me to roll one for you before you go.” “I think I can remember to do that.” “Owen, you bastard, I don’t want you to go. You and I, we could have a lot of fun together. I could show you all over Amsterdam. It’s a damn shame.” “We’ll see each other again, Martin. I have a good feeling about it.” Martin nods, but they both know they may never meet again. That’s the way things are on The Road. The three of them sit in powwow now, with a full head of steam, sit at the corner of the bar and discussing the world’s problems, and never solving anything. Owen savors this last moment of frolic and friendship. He knows that moment he walks out that door, he is off and on his own. Ahead of him lay the expanse of the great unknown. Many a time, it were, that he’d sat right there, relishing the last few moments of peace, full of adrenaline and testosterone in the calm before the storm. This time, however, things are a little different. This time there is very little money, very little food, and it’s cold. Damn cold. Winter is no time to travel sans supplies. He recalls the image of Agnes Varda’s Vagabond. The opening scene: a traveler lying frozen to death in a ditch. The movie backtracks and tells the story of how she got there, but that image of her wearing a pack and black leather jacket, frozen solid in a cul de sac with the vineyards of northern France in the background, has never left his memory. He’s never been able to shake it. He remembers seeing the movie, then going out with a buddy and drinking a bottle of Yukon Jack®, thrashing about the town, running wild, climbing like a monkey up a four-story cement sand elevator, and in the end getting busted for trespassing. He’d gone into this long rambling story about the movie and traveling and passion and intellect, talking the cop’s ear off for an hour or so, and they’d released him without pressing charges. All because of that image. And now he sits there, gearing up to travel speed, heading into the same territory, during the same time of year that the heartless northern winds froze many a listless wanderer. He awaits the challenge, ready for anything. He resigns it all, right then and there, to Fate. “You’re awful quiet.” “Getting my mindset right.” “I suppose it’s about that time, eh?” “Yeah, I think I should go early and get a good seat. Need to make a phone call, stuff like that. I want to thank you both for your kindness. I mean, it’s only been a few days, and I feel like I’ve known you both for years.” “I’m there,” says Martin. “I feel like I’ve known you all my life.” “I think we’ll stay in touch one way or another.” “Let me see you wear that pack,” Martin says. Owen hops off the stool, stows the presents and dons the pack while Saskia tends to her purse. “He looks damn fine with that pack,” Saskia says, and Owen blushes. “Oh my god, you blush. That’s just too much.” “Martin, damnit, take care of yourself. And keep on writing your poetry.” “I would say the same to you,” he says, Saskia comes around from behind the bar, gives him a big hug and a kiss on the lips and they send Owen off with the fond farewells and promises to keep in touch. Owen leaves the shelter of the bar and he is off. The street feels springy beneath his feet. He blood rages, full of adrenaline, so much so that his whole body shakes with the energy produced. He walks pointedly to the train station, finds a phone, and goes through the rigmarole of making an overseas call to San Francisco. “Hi, it’s me. I’m not here. Leave a message or piss off,” rings Kara’s voice from the answering machine. Owen, grimaces, waits for the damn beep. “Kara, this is Owen. I’ve only a few seconds. Look, I got robbed here in Amsterdam, and I’m making an attempt at a crash landing in Spain. The France thing is fucked. I need you to talk to Ted, and find Carlos’ phone number so that I can get ahold of him when I get to Madrid. I’ll call you when I get there. I’ve only a few bucks left, so it’s really important that I hook up with Carlos. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye.” Owen hangs up the receiver, bows his head, hoping the message gets through. The station is crowded as Owen walks about looking for the proper platform, and he finds it without incident. The pack however, with the bed roll, daypack and tent strapped to the back, won’t fit through the door. Owen drops the pack, pulls the tent and the day pack off, and drags the rig sideways down the wafer-thin corridor of the train, until he finds an unoccupied compartment. Each compartment has six high-backed seats, with a thin glass wall on the aisle side, and an exterior window on the other. There’s a thin privacy curtain you can pull across the glass wall. Stowing the gear on shelf, pulling the curtain halfway, Owen plops down into the soft chair. He’s made the first train. The first leg of the landing. So far, so good. Well, there it is then. The first of three, if you’re lucky. You’re going to need to bust and hump to make the three perfectly. Easy to miss a train in Europe, it is. In Europe, trains run on time, run to the second, in fact. And if you’re not there they leave without you. It’s that simple. Then you’re stuck. If you miss the train, you spend the night in the train station, or wander the streets. You can’t spend the money on a hostel. Save it for food and beer. Save it for items important. Save it for Madrid. For now, just relax. Take it easy. Find your center. Be the ball, and all that rot. It’s all you have left to do. The glass door opens and a svelte, dishwater blonde traveling boy enters the compartment, nods to Owen, stows his gear, grabs a window seat across the way, looks out the window. He’s a young traveler. His eyes are wide and bright and wise with innocent notions of grandeur, and dramatic expectations. He reminds Owen of how he felt when he first started traveling, so many years ago, it seems. The boy makes him feel a tad dated, but it’s reassuring to know the next generation, too, harbors its share of nomads carrying the torch. The door opens again and an Asian guy sits down in the middle chair next to the boy. Nodding their hello’s, the silence between them remains. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, but an honest one. Not one of them feels like saying anything at the moment. There’s a lurch, and the train begins to move, right on time. So long Amsterdam, brazen city of my heart. For you will I forever pine. For you will I lay awake at night, calling softly your name, over and over, Amsterdam, Amsterdam — saying it so that I might awake and find myself once again embraced in the velveteen wraps of your febrile decadence. Farewell, fond harlot. You’re one of the best. You remain a San Francisco in my soul. We are forever bound, you and I, as couples groping in the night. Blood unto blood, poison unto poison and we shall never be apart. Indeed. We shall meet again, you and I, for we share some unfinished business. And the meaning of life is this: Taking care of business. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Life is but a dream and the meaning of life is taking care of business. And the business here remains unfinished. That’s the way you see it. No one else need live by the beliefs you call your own, except you, and many of your beliefs concern this business of waking dreaming. You are not alone, however. It works for the Mayans and Incans, it works for the Buddhists and Taoists, Bedouins, Wiccans, Druids, Haitians, Babylonians, Mesopotamians . . . no, not alone at all. You’re in good company, in fact. Now dream on, dude. Dream like a motherfucker. Dream yourself right-the-fuck out of this mess. That’s taking care of business at this point. “Do you mind if I smoke,” says the Asian guy, snapping Owen back from a distance. “I don’t care,” Owen says looks at the traveling boy, who shrugs his shoulders indifferently. Taking a pack of Drum® from his pocket, the Asian sprinkles a modicum of tobacco in the center of a rolling paper, then takes a small, plastic baggy from the pouch, filled with a bone-white beige powder. He fills the remaining space on the paper with the powder. He’s a bit shaky, so he leans over the ashtray to roll the cigarette. He rolls it, leaves sprinkles of heroin in the ashtray. Owen and the boy stare at him incredulously. He looks at the two of them, smiles. “Something for my skin,” he says, maintaining a grin that sends shivers up Owen’s back. He a dangerous one, this guy. One to keep an eye on. He’s sloppy, too. There’s heroin fragments all over the ashtray. He lights the smoke, fills the compartment with an acrid sort of smell, something like burning plastic seat covers. The boy opens a window and the smoke is sucked out, but the smell lingers. The cigarette burns quickly, lasting only a minute or so as the Asian sucks it down with a vengeance. Something for my skin. . . Food to a starving man, fucking junkies . . . can’t take your eyes off them for a moment. They hear the conductor coming down the hall, the guy extinguishes the roach quickly and throws it out the window, but there’s still shit all over the ashtray. “Dude, clean up your mess,” says the boy. He has a Norwegian accent. The conductor is in the compartment behind them, and moving with extreme efficiency. The Asian’s eyes are fucked up, filled with harmony and rage, now quelled, and he makes a couple lame swipes at the area around the ashtray, and flips the lid shut. The conductor comes into their cabin. He looks grand and important, nothing short of an icon. An historical enigma, he is, probably serving the railroad and the ambience collective of Europe one-hundred fifty years or better. Owen’s seen him in a thousand movies where trains were part of the movie. Like bartenders behind the bar, if you take a train, there’s always a conductor. Well, here he was in all his glory. You don’t see dudes like this in America very often, full of pride and ethnicity. He walks in, gives the three of them the hairy eyeball, and asks for their tickets. He looks at the ashtray, looks back to the three of them. The conductor checks the tickets, eyes the ashtray again, says nothing. Owen doesn’t like the feel of it. The conductor leaves and the three of them sit in the cabin in silence, Owen and the boy looking out the window, the Asian guy staring off into space, lost on the slopes of his junkie’s haze. Taking a bandanna from his pocket the boy pulls the ashtray from its holder, Owen opens the window and they dump the contents to the wind, then wipe the surface clean. No fingerprints, no resin, everything’s clean. “I’ve got a little hashish,” Owen says to the boy, “I suppose we should smoke it before Rotterdam. Interested?” “Sure. Nobody minds the hashish.” Owen takes the joint Saskia rolled, they open the window and smoke it, and while neither one says a word, they share stories. They’re silent stories only a traveller hears. They’re stories singing songs of The Road. The boy’s not a bad singer. It’s amazing what a conversation two people can have without speaking, sharing a moment of silence together. This type of exchange is common amongst travelers, this of not speaking. It comes from the silence and the eyes. They smoke the joint, the train whirring past the tulips and windmills on the outskirts. Telling stories, passing the cigarette, finishing it right as they pull into Rotterdam, the boy looks to Owen and speaks. “I’m going to find a new cabin,” he says as the train comes to a slow halt. “Cool. I’m staying here. I’m clean, now, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.” “Thanks for the smoke.” “See you on down the line.” “You know it,” the boys says, smiles, and departs. The Asian guy leaves as well, looking nervous, and for the moment Owen is alone again. He takes For Whom the Bell Tolls from his daypack and begins reading, but it’s not really necessary. He’s living the story now. Indeed. You become the story now. You become the narrator. Caught it like a wave, you have, and now you shall ride until it breaks, turning to foam on the shores of some distant beach. Reading adventure is unneccessary when one surfs the peak of a bonafied tour through hell. The fascists are here, making things difficult; the revolution swells in the vast hearts of rebels worldwide. Rebels who desire to rise up against fascism and authoritarian rule, Big Brother and the Police State, and tell them all to mind their own damn business. Tend to their own lemming lives. Care for their own kind. That’s the way revolutionaries handle things — taking care of it amongst themselves. The conservatives wax nostalgic for a return to the early 1990s and we’d love nothing more than to give it to them. Everyone carries sidearms, there is little to no industry, no Harrison Narcotic Act, no prohibition, and the government has very little say about what people do on their own land. The central government is weak. Nearly lame. This includes the ‘enforcement’ branch of the government — that, too, should be weak. The government, in fact, should have nothing to say about morality, reality or totality. This remains up to the perception of the individual. In the very etymology of the word, government implies oppression and control. Government seeks to control the social organism, by controlling the individual parts with declarations of self-pity. Declarations like the theory of Functional Interdependency, and the Society of the Common Man. For ten-thousand years, the society of the affable, mammalian common man has fallen to the institutions of they created to serve them, as serf might serve a feudal lord. Not the other way around, not controlling the people. Alas, ultimate control is forever the result of bestowed authority when the weak willed ask for boundaries to their insecurity and fear. They fear the truth. And the truth is this: life is a struggle amidst chaos with the only controlled variable being death of the flesh. That’s a given. Yet there is nothing to fear. Not a damn thing. There is only survival of the Universal Will to Create binding us all beyond the flesh. And only the strongest survive, or die trying. That’s life: A story for which you can never find a suitable ending, save for death, unless you figure out a way to go beyond death. Then you’ve got something. Then you’ve a decent story to tell. Traveling beyond the gates of the Goblin City, beyond the Valley of Shadow and Despair, to the hallowed Realm of the Reaper who sits on a throne of human skulls bound with cartilage and tendons, the ghouls of War, Famine, Pestilence and Flood split on either side, oozing black bile and reeking with the stench of perpetual decay. To look them all in the eyes and slay all five in a mighty fury and move beyond . . . now that’s a story worth telling. Or merely to fight them and live to tell about it. Merely surviving. That’s no slouch. But it’s still not passing beyond. It’s still a story flesh and bone and blood, a story of earth, wind, fire and water. But there’s more to a story than the basic elements. And the first baby-step beyond the life within the primary elements is the exodus of mind from body. Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that to attain immortality one must not sleep for six nights and seven days. You’ve a good start, according to this logic. If all goes as planned, you’ll be immortal in a couple days. Immortal, according to Mesopotamian legend, of course. But not even Gilgamesh could make it. Gilgamesh, however, never beheld the splendors of duct tape. The sliding glass door opens, and an olive-skinned man and a young boy enter the compartment. The man obviously has money, judging from his suit and elaborate array of gold and precious stones gracing his hands and wrists. He smiles at Owen, bids him hello, and instructs the boy to sit. The boy sits, and the man stows a travel bag and briefcase. Owen continues reading. He feels the guy looking at him. “How far are you headed?” he says. “Madrid. And yourself?” “Israel. Tel Aviv, actually. That is our home.” “You’ve a ways to go.” “We disembark in Paris, actually, and board a plane from there.” “Ah, well then. You’ll be home in no time.” “It is a business trip, I’m afraid. My son must return to school, and I to my work.” “What do you do?” “I’m a diamond merchant in Tel Aviv.” “I see.” “Oh, it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I’m not an obscenely wealthy man. I make a comfortable living, enough to care for my family, but I work all the time. I know what a fourteen hour day feels like, believe me. My work requires me to travel a great deal.” “That’s not so bad, getting paid for traveling.” “It becomes more difficult with a family.” “I imagine,” Owen says, looking at his son. He stares out the window, completely removed. He’s in Tel Aviv with his friends, no doubt. He yearns for the safety of their numbers. “Forgive my son, he is shy.” “I understand,” Owen says, the boy looks over at him, Owen nods and balefully smiles, the boy acknowledges him dutifully, then turns back to the window. “My name is Itsak Mochabin,” the man says extending his hand. “Owen Dunum,” he says, giving the guy a firm handshake. “What is it that you do, Owen?” “I’m a writer.” “What do you write?” “Predominantly fiction at this point, but I came up through the ranks writing journalism.” “Published?” “Regionally.” “That’s a start. So you’re going to Madrid to write?” “No, actually I’m going to Madrid, then south from there. I had a place lined up in France — a little cottage in the north, but that got screwed up in Amsterdam, so now I’m heading south in search of a warmer climes. “You were robbed?” “Yes. Little bugger got in my locker when I wasn’t looking.” “That’s a shame.” “Sometimes things like that happen. When it does, you buckle up and keep moving. Never end up ‘dead-in-the-water’.” “Spoken like true traveller.” “Not feeling much like a true traveller at this point. I should have seen him coming. I did see him coming, as a matter-of-fact, and I failed at resolving the situation. So this train ride, what was supposed to be a pleasant descent to the north of France, it now an emergency landing. This is my first crash. This is the first time I missed my destination. I’ve traveled almost one-hundred-thousand miles in four years, and I took a year of that to go back to school, dropout again, and write my first novel.” “Where’s your first novel now?” “With a friend of mine in California, sitting on a bookshelf, unpublished. Had it in the door at Harcourt, but nobody wants experimental-controversial fiction from an unknown writer. Hell, nobody wants literature at all anymore, unless it’s dry, stylized pap.” “You must keep with it. If it’s in your heart, you must pursue at any length, your passion. I’ve a feeling about you. You’re different from most of the travelers that I meet. You’ve got something in your eyes,” he says, and Owen looks away and blushes. “Well, that’s awfully kind of you to say.” “I need to be able to read people in my business. Do you know what I mean? I need to know what they’re about. The diamond business isn’t all champagne and caviar. There are good dealers and shady ones, and I deal with both of them. And I must be able to distinguish one from the other. You’re one of the pure ones. I can tell,” he says, smiles, and whacks Owen with a whopping load of energy, good energy. Soothing energy. Much needed energy. Owen soaks it in as they stare at each other, locked in eye contact, exchanging stories for a moment, in silence. He likes this diamond merchant from Tel Aviv. He’s a powerful, compassionate man. An authentic enlightened human, and a consort gift from the gods. Or just another taunt. A single fire extinguisher for a vessel engulfed in flames. Owen takes it nonetheless. The two of them spend the three-hour ride to Brussels bantering back and forth, discussing the international politics, the cultural differences of America, the European community and the Middle East. “They dislike people from the Middle East up here.” “They dislike a lot of things up this way, I imagine. The authorities don’t think too much of me, either.” “I assure you, Owen, they find you far-less threatening than I. Look at you, big, strapping aryan with a backpack and long hair. They know, essentially, what you’re about.” “Or so they think.” “Point taken. With myself, however — a modestly wealthy Israelian diamond wholesaler — they always think we’re running cocaine. You watch. When we pull into Brussels. They’ll board the train and search me.” “No, I think they’ll search me.” “We shall see.” “We shall.” They change the subject back to writing as the train slows down, pulling into Brussels, home of Sabil, whom he would never seen again. Beautiful Sabil. He remembers her in a moment of silence as they sit at the stop. A group of gendarmes board the train. A group of three — an older man and two young men armed with M-16 assault rifles, uniformed in iconographic fashion. Their uniforms reflect history rather than efficiency, and for that they are beautiful. Bright red and blue uniforms with capes and oval cylinder soldieresque caps, stripes and grand lapels, and armed to the teeth. They make their way through the train, searching people at random. When they pass back by Owen’s compartment, they stop, and the older gendarme enters, looks at the three of them, and asks to see their passports. He looks briefly at Owen’s, hands it back, looks up at the massive pack stuffed up on the luggage rack, then turns to Itzak and demands to see his bags with a wave of his finger. They proceed to search him, his luggage, his son’s luggage, his son — everything. The two younger gendarmes stand outside in the aisleway at attention, weapons locked and loaded, looking like coldhearted killing machines. Owen feels sorry for them, as he feels sorry for all young minds beaten and hammered into the form of killing machines by the military. They would kill him on command, just like a dog. Owen watches as they humiliate Itzak, rutting through every conceivable crevice. They whole scene is pathetic. They assume his guilt, and even when they find nothing, they still show him disgust and conceit and Owen thinks maybe hanging out in Belgium wouldn’t be such a hot idea, anyway. The search takes a few minutes, and when they finish they depart without a word, and soon the trains lurches once again, next stop: Paris. Owen feels curious about Paris — city of love and art. A city whose name carries more weight in the world of artists than Shangri-la. Paris, city of the world. Home of the thirties ex-patriot, and soon he would be there himself, on flames, but passing through it nonetheless. “You see what I mean?” Itsak says, a little flustered. Beneath his olive skin and in his eyes Owen sees the humiliation. “Yes, and I’m sorry you had to go through that. It’s unusual for me not to be searched, so from that viewpoint it was interesting, though just a little embarrassing for you I imagine.” “I have grown used to it over the years. It’s actually a good thing you were here. Keeps them honest. If you know what I mean.” “Indeed. Always good to have witnesses around for things like that.” “You understand what I’m talking about now?” “Of course.” “So where are you thinking of traveling after Madrid?” “South to Morocco, I believe. Work my way east across the Atlas Mountains, across northern Africa to Egypt. I have a friend whose father works in Egypt. I don’t know his father, don’t know where he is, but this friend of mine holds Egypt in high regard. He says you can feel truly intense energy in the marketplace. Then I want to work my way over to India, and eastward on to Tibet, Burma, then Bancock, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, then back to San Francisco where I started. The Big Loop, I like to call it.” “You’ve got a long journey ahead of you.” “It’s just something to keep me busy.” “No, no, it’s much more than that. You shouldn’t belittle yourself. Listen: You must come through Tel Aviv,” he says, scribbling his home phone number and address on the back of his business card and handing it to Owen. “You can stay with me and my family, and I will show you Tel Aviv. It, too, is a wonderful city.” “I look forward to seeing it.” “A trip around the world, that will give you something to write about.” “Actually, I already have something to write about. I’m looking for a place to write it, hoping for a quite beach in southern Spain.” “I hope that you find it.” “I’ll find it,” Owen says, looking out the window of the train into the black Belgium night. They’ll cross over into France soon. With the way his luck is going, the train will probably pass within a couple miles of Monte’s cottage. Probably right through his damn backyard. And Owen will be sitting there, missing it. “It’ll work out,” he says grimacing a grin, “ It always works out somehow.” * * * From the blackness Paris explodes. Its entrance neither subtle nor refined, not finished over with the smooth glossy surface of glass and aluminum; rather, from the train Paris first appears grand and gothic, amply constructed entirely of steel and stone, flesh and blood. Undeniably Paris. The image emerges with such force that it knocks you all the way back to the nineteenth century. From the blackness the train emerges into a great cul de sac of iron, masonry and shattered boulders. Beyond the horizon of the wall, you make out shapes and shadows of buildings, but it’s all backdrop. Better to arrive during the day. Coming into Paris and seeing an archaic stone wall, leaving the architecture in the murky night with whisps of steam and fog convoluting the picture further seems a bit anticlimactic, yet this wall tells the story if you read the writing on it, so to speak. Certainly, it is no ordinary wall. It’s a Parisian wall. The French have a stigma attached to their culture: they’re known for whimpishness, twistishness, snotishness — but there’s nothing frail about their architecture, about their wonts to construct the gothic. Unmatched in the pursuit of the aesthetic, Paris. Judging from the writing on the wall. Rolling along the rails, the gentle sway of the train — like a cradle’s rocking, the clack of the seams beneath the iron wheels, halide lights illuminating the night, you read the writing on the wall. The train begins slowing. You are now in Paris. You trod the path of the writers whom you so admire — Hemmingway, Miller, Fitzgerald, Twain, Bukowski — they’ve all sang their odes to Paris, and now you, too, sing your songs to Our Lady of the Loving Storyteller. Here’s your shot. Start singing. What you going to sing about? Sex, drugs and rock and roll? No, not at this point. That’s all far, far away now. That lay in the ruins of your weary imagination in the form of one-hundred-billion images, some shattered, some in tact. No, the party’s over, big boy. Now you’ve a different song to sing. This one’s about a passing comet. A living, breathing ball of fire, fresh from the flames of the inferno, Dante style. Still ablaze, in fact. Your first offering to Paris is a splash of color across the horizon. A tincture of scarlet-amber-sunsplash in motion momentarily illuminating the heavens. An intensely brief song of life near the speed of light. That’s no shit, eh? Life near the speed of light. Faster than you’ve ever gone before. Keep your nose up. Most people would’ve blown apart long ago, but you’re holding it together. You’ve made Paris, but there’ll be no sitting at the sidewalk cafes sipping wine and watching women. No sir, this is a song about a comet now, a song about moving faster than most people, even the good ones, dare to move. Most of your cohorts would’ve gutted it out in Amsterdam, or fled back to the states. The states will be your grievous fate is you fail to land smoothly in Madrid, if you’re lucky. You need to find a place to sleep. What are you going on — four, five days without sleep? No problem. You’ll keep going until you find a decent spot and that’s all there is to it. Hook up with Carlos in Madrid, and everything will work out. The train slows, pulls into the station. Itsak’s boy is asleep. He wakes him, Owen gets up out of the chair and brings his pack down from the rack. From his daypack he takes his train ticket. “Itsak, what time is it?” “One-thirty in the morning, Paris time.” Owen looks at the departure time for his next train. The next train departs in one hour and fifteen minutes. He considers this plenty of time. The train comes to a halt, Itsak and his son disembark, Owen drags his gear through the thin aisle and off the train onto the crushed rock and beholds Paris. Paris! Rising before him like some great gothic iron beast, Paris! The train bay stands at the wait as he secures the pack, strapping the tent and the day pack to the back of the Mountain Smith®, a little teary-eyed, he walks towards the monolithic station. The pack rests on his shoulders and lower back, heavy and overloaded, but the carries the weight without difficulty. His head up, Owen plunges into the cinema icon. He understands why artists mecca to the city. Even this ass-end entrance to the metro is majestic. Whisps of steam blowing across the scene for dramatic effect. Indeed. The perfect taco. He enters the station, looks at the clock — one-forty-two. The interior of the station proves not nearly so awe-inspiring. High ceilings with nonthreatening robin’s egg blue walls and smoothly finished cement floors frame the surroundings, Owen’s excitement subsides as he realizes that it’s just another train station. Just one more obstacle to overcome, one more monolithic kiosk to chew his way through. The walls are void of maps or directions. Most everything is closed, except for the currency exchange. A small line of people await, turning one currency into another. He doesn’t bother with the exchange. Following the stairway, Owen begins searching for his next train. The stairway descends down far below street level to a platform and a ticket booth. Owen steps up to the window, asks the woman behind the window if she might point out the path to his next train. She gives him a map, shows him the departure point: in the Gare across town. All-the-fuck-the-way across Paris. Clock says one-fifty. With indifference she tells him to buy a ticket for the next tram across at the ticket machines out on the platform, but the machines only take francs. She doesn’t exchange currency, tells him to go back upstairs and get francs. Racing back up the stairs, full gear in tow to the exchange window, Owen begins to sweat. The lady behind the window wants to close down, and Owen has to plead with her to exchange his currency, and then there’s the ten-dollar minimum, he tells her he only needs enough to buy a ticket across town, but she keeps pointing to the sign, saying nothing, and just thumping the sign with her index finger. He gives her ten American dollars and she returns the equivalent in francs, less the two-dollar exchange fee. They exchange surly looks and Owen races back down to the platform to buy the ticket. Clock says one minute after two, ante meridian. He hears the buzzing of the fluorescents over head, buzzing like a beehive with the queen bitch bee calling for his blood, the sound of the buzzing gnawing his cerebrum. He hears it now and he can’t block it. The buzzing lights begin to orchestrate his thinking, turning it all to static. The link is garbled. Integrity compromised. He looks at the ticket machines, shakes his head and tries to make it work. Translate the French to Latin and figure it out. No can do. All that comes back is the buzzing of the sickly white lights, buzzing like Death at his nape. “Where you going, man?” says a voice from out of nowhere. Owen spins around to find a short, broad-chested black transient with brilliant yellow eyes looking right into him. Right through the garble and the confusion to the depths of his soul. “Where you heading, my friend?” says the man. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, disheveled tennis shoes, an olive-green overcoat, he looks like many transients, save for his eyes. He has beautiful golden eyes. “I need to buy a ticket to the this Gare de Ausslitz, “ Owen says, somewhat desperate, showing him the destination on the map. “You have money?” “I have money.” The transient takes him to the right machine, tells him how many francs to insert, tells him what time the next train is coming. “You just missed a train. The next one comes in fifteen minutes.” Clock says two-ten. “Do you think I’ll make it across town? My train leaves at quarter-til-three.” “You will make it,” he says, smiling, slowly nodding his head. There’s a serenity eminating from this homeless man who appeared, apparently, from ether. There had been no one on the platform a moment ago. Owen finds him no street-variety transient. He’s not a beggar, as such. He’s something special. Owen senses it, but he’s too tired to react. “Can I give you money.” “I don’t want your money. You get to where you’re going,” he says with that same blissful expression of inner peace on his face. Owen thanks him, begins to walk out onto the platform turns around to ask him his name, and he is gone. Vanished, just like that. Owen sits down on a concrete bench, rolls a cigarette, waits for the train. It feels damn nice to sit down, ticket in hand. Moving, still, with direction and intent. Moving forward, rather than bouncing off the robin’s egg walls like a whacked-out whirling derbish. And all because of that transient wisp of ether. Smoking his cigarette, wiping the sweat from his face with a bandanna, Owen suddenly realizes he just met Narakajapa, God of the Subterranean Traveler. He sits back against the rounded wall of the tunnel with a stupid grin on his face, giggling quietly to himself for a moment, they laughing out loud. The laughter echoes throughout the tunnel. Finally, Fate sends a guide. Always when you need it the most, that’s when you find the guides. They’ve always been there for you in one form or another, but they usually intervene before the situation becomes this dire. This time Fate waited until your sorry ass dangled only centimeters from the pit. This time Fate strings you along. You’ve broken ranks. You killed the Buddha on the roadside. That’s what this is all about. You spat on the face of Fate, grinned, said ‘is that the best you got’, among other conflagratory jabs and punches, thinking yourself pretty damn invincible, so Fate says: “you want some travel? I’ve got some travel for you.” And it hands you this garbled ball of train stations and fluorescent lights, authoritarian robots candy coated with the red light district to make sure you’d take the bait. And, like a true cocky moron, you took the bait. You lost respect for Fate, for your own personal demon, and for yourself. There’s a good story for you, a story of a clandestine, celestiocene setup. You remember this story, eh? Write it here and now, as you plunge to the earth all afire. You can write it, no? You still write, no? You’ve that much comprehension left, eh? To know when you’ve been suckered and at least retain the sense to make something of it. And this will be interesting. Oh, this is going to be a mud drag, honey. The whole Pantheon going to knock the shit out of you. Give you just enough to keep you fleeting forward. They snap at you in motion, near the speed of light. It’s more painful that way. Blindfold you, spin you around, give you a stick and tell you to start swinging, then they knock you down, drag you to the outskirts of town and crucify you, celebrating the wickedness of mortality. If you’re lucky, you get the guillotine. Though many consider that far too humane for a marauder of Fate. Drawing and quartering, nice and slow, keeping them alive as long as possible. Caring for the wounds to stop the bleeding, then rubbing salves of salt mixed with ground nettles deep into the lacerations to produce the most intense writhing, then wash them clean and cover them with aloe vera and vitamin E. Then bind your arms and legs to horses and rip you into quarters. So goes the final chapter of many a myth and legend: death by admirers. Gods die grizzly deaths, all in the name of show business. “I know, I know. But I can only do it once.” says Daffy, floating up to heaven in a satan suit A tram arrives, Owen drags his gear onto it. Once again, he curses engineers for making everything so damned small. He yanks the pack through the door, yanks it through the aisle, and plops it down on a seat near the front of the car. The sweating returns. He feels feverish, disoriented, but very much alive. The adrenaline courses in his veins and ventricles where once pure crimson blood flowed so soothing. He puts on his sunglasses, the duct-taped Vaurnets®, to shield his bugging eyes from the ever present fluorescence still chewing at his brains. The maggots inside his skull, chomping and chewing indulgently on his mind, on the thing he’s worked so diligently to construct beyond the capacity of millions now falls frail around his feet while some yuppie moron sits across the aisle staring at him with a shit-eating grin on his face. He wants Owen to smile back, and he does not. He’s inside himself now. Taking it all in, stowing everything important, all energy focused on his being. He will make the next train. Emerging from the underground, Owen looks out the window at Paris passing, France afleeting, fleeing like tourists from true travel He should be out there, beyond the safety of the gilded cage. He should be wandering the streets, playing with the gamine waifs, discovering the sewers, drinking in the cafes, and instead he sits on a metro tram and watches it pass by. Yes sir, it’s Paris alright. But being in Paris doesn’t mean shit unless spend few nights wandering the streets. Wandering the streets late at night fares the only decent want to get to know any city. Yet, in lieu of wandering, Owen finds himself blazing on through like a passing comet, ever nearing the speed of light. So goes the song of the comet. * * * Clock says one-thirty-six when Owen disembarks the tram into a station bigger than the one he left. It looks the same — the smoothly-finished concrete walls, floors and ceilings, the robin’s egg blue nonthreatening him to the point of nausea, and besides the name of the gare, Gare de Ausslitz, and a few advertisements, there’s nothing. No signs, no timetables, nothing. Owen enters the labyrinth of hallways running. He suddenly understands where M.C. Escher got the idea for ‘Stairways’. Four or five levels, perhaps a thousand — stairways going up and down and left and right and not sign-number-one to be seen. Hallways trundling off to nowhere, stairways leading to locked doors, the robin’s egg wall and the fluorescent lights taunting him, daring him to try a find the train in the gare, hidden away like some damn precious gemstone, tucked away in this hellhole like the scabbard of Allah. Sweating profusely, the pack weighing on his back, dizzied by the fluorescent lights, Owen runs the stairs, up and down, this left then that right then left again, swearing in a hot muttering voice that rings like the hiss of a snake in this Parisian oubliette called a depot. It’s at this point that he begins cursing Paris with that same snakelike hiss. Descending a stairway in the middle of nowhere, he stumbles upon a Parisian couple billing and cooing in the corner — a brown-haired, green-eyed boy with a svelte aryan babe lavishing, languishing, in the oozing sentiments of love. The scene is entirely nauseating. “Do you know where I can find the train to Irun?” Owen says, sparing the social amenities for lack of time. The two immediately cease cooing to turn and look at Owen. There eyes grow wide with fear, and the girl slowly backs around behind the boy, who flashes a grimace then, squares his shoulders somewhat begrudgingly. There’s more terror in his eyes than the steely cold stare of a man ready to defend himself. “Please, the train to Irun, do you know where the platform is? The train to Irun,” Owen says, but they continue to stare at him, hypnotized like deer in the headlights. Owen throws up his arms in frustration, letting off a guttural primal scream to aid the release of pressure and dashes off down another hallway at full speed in search of this elusive train to Irun. Up this stairway, down another, left, left, right, up, down, down, left, up and suddenly the platforms stands before him with one train on the tracks, the conductors closing it up for departure. Owen sprints down the platform and makes the train as it begins moving. Ten seconds later and it would have been gone. He boards the train, winded. He made it. Checking his ticket, eyeing him as though he were a terrorist, the conductor points him down the aisle to his bed. A bed! Surely you will sleep now. Surely there will be sleep, now, after all this. He drags the pack down the hall, the thinnest aisle yet, compiled by the fact that the unlighted aisleway is full of people looking out at Paris in the dark. At this point, Owen doesn’t give a hoot about Paris. Paris, as he sees it now, can fuck off. Fuck right off. The pack binds on the walls and bounces off the people as he drags it indifferently down the aisle, as though it were a corpse. The sleeper, of course, is dead center in middle of the extended car. Go figure. No one says anything to him, they just try and get out of the way and then the pack thumps off their legs and passes. Owen finds the compartment, opens the door, wakes the middle-aged woman inside from her slumber, but it doesn’t matter. She mumbles something in French, he doesn’t understand. Opening her eyes, adjusting to the glare, she lays in the lower bunk looking at him, stunned and dreamy-eyed, and nervous. Owen doesn’t say anything. Dumping the pack in the corner of the room, taking off his boots so that his overheated feet might breathe, he rolls a cigarette, turns off the light and climbs up onto the top bunk. In the dark he lights the cigarette, lays on his stomach and watches the French countryside roll on by. This is the painful part — watching the gothic architecture and rolling idylls, picturesque cottages pass and vanish into the distance. Not stomping the terra, but sitting behind another damned window, that’s the bitch. Laying here like a lump watching as it all blows by. But it’s a bad time of year to hitch the highways of France, of Europe, for that matter. Paris in the spring — that’s the time for wandering, not dead middle December. Still cold as hell out there. You damn well better hope for warmer climes in Madrid, hope that Kara got Carlos’ number from Ted . . . you’ve a great deal riding on hope at this point. And lots and lots of hope is no way to travel. You should be moving forward, counting on nothing at all. Counting on worst-possible scenario, that way you don’t deluge yourself with expectations. Expectations, thus far on this journey, lead to nowhere fast. Your request for satisfaction was long ago denied. Now you ride the express route to nothingness. This no longer bears any resemblance to a vision quest. You broke the rules fighting the flow and calling the shots yourself despite the memos from Fate, and that gets you nowhere fast. That’s when you crash. This current rages beyond traveling speed, far beyond the apathetic rapids of society, far beyond the near stagnant creeks of the middle-class, far beyond the lackadaisical ponds of Walden. Indeed. Now you ride a traveling tsunami in a kayak. Since the dawn of man, traveling remains unchanged. Traveling remains a Precambrian, canyon-cutting torrent in the realms of human understanding. The only thing more intense: balls-out war. War, however, remains by-and-large a collective phenomena, and a worthless Rite of Intensification. Traveling is personal. This is very personal. This battle rages between yourself and the wrathful deities whom you’ve offended. You certainly pissed somebody off, somewhere. Perhaps in another dimension. Who the fuck knows. You know this: that Fate, once befriending you, now throws a rope around your neck and drags you through mud laden broken glass and rusty scrap metal, stopping long enough to assure you’re still alive, then returning to the driver’s seat, and dragging you on down the Road. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except focus, luminosity and the ascension of the spirit. The flesh is stupid enough to take it. You no longer need sleep. You may never sleep again. Behold this waste of time most grand! Ten years of your life, you’ve wasted to dreamland. Ten years! Imagine all that you might have accomplished in those ten years. Imagine what you might have learned before now! You might have learned that sleep remains unnecessary to the ascension of the spirit. Sleep, in fact, delays the avatar. Utnapishtim said, “As for you, Gilgamesh, who will assemble the gods for your sake, so that you may find that life for which you are searching? But if you wish, come and put it to the test. Only prevail against sleep for six days and seven nights .” Utnapishtim no sooner said this then Gilgamesh was asleep. He slept for seven days. Seven days! You can’t seem to sleep for seven minutes. Here you are, in bed, with your head running off at the mouth, again. Perhaps some water. Slipping down off the bunk, Owen grabs his stainless steel mug from the day pack and goes down the hall to the end of the car. In the small bathroom, he washes his face, relives his bladder, and fills the mug from the drinking water spigot next to the sink, walks back down the now nearly-deserted aisleway to his cabin. Opening the door, quietly closing it, he goes to the window and rolls another cigarette, lights it, and stands at the window looking out at the countryside. “It’s late. You should sleep,” says the woman in the lower bunk. There’s both concern and irritation in her voice. Owen scoffs lightly. “I wish I could,” he says, never breaking his stare from the landscape beyond the train. She doesn’t say anything. He turns and looks down at her shadow in the darkness. “I believe that I’ve lost the inclination to sleep,” he says matter-of-factly, ”I used to need sleep, but I don’t anymore. Beyond all that now. Why don’t you sleep for the both of us, what say?” Silence. She’s nervous again, so he turns back to the window, smoking, drinking the cool water, cold in the steel mug, his head babbling incessantly. He can’t seem to shut the damn thing off, or even shut it out. His mind tearing though the files of information like a madman, tossing papers and doctrines and essays and theories, books, journals, critiques, dialogues, monologues, films, photographs, records, tapes and compact discs in a frenzy, scrambling them in the amid the billions of dendrites in his mind, the very nature of his being looking for solutions to this problem, finding nothing but facts, figures and spiritual pep talks. Nothing substantial. Nothing truly sublime. Nothing ethereally concrete enough to spring him from this jam, save for, perhaps, the Arbitrary Constant. No incantation he might speak and whisk himself away to Shangri-la. Nothing like that. An incantation would be a bonus right now. A ‘Get-Out-of-Jail-Free’ card, tucked away and pulled out in a dire moment of need. No, none of that now. Only a smoke and a mug of cold water, the terra of France slipping away before his eyes, and his mind draws more power than it can handle. Overheating his cerebellum like a motor caught in the peak throes of a power surge. Simultaneously, he feels rage, bliss, ecstasy, exhaustion, exhilaration, stalwart depression, maniacal enlightenment, he hears the humming of the spheres and the wailing of the demons in Middle Earth. He solves the riddle of the Sphinx — the lion’s heart within mankind, the lion’s heart reclining supine amid the grandeur of intellectual speculation, the lion’s heart of man seeking to be whole, rather than half-beast, half-god, strangling those who fail the riddle — as though the Sphinx were a side show freak at a carny fest. Press the button, solve the riddle. Throw the baseball, knock the milk bottles over, win the kewpie doll, it’s just that easy, solving riddles. The irony is this: a riddle is a joke. One of the greatest wonders of civilization exists as an ode to comedy. But it’s humor to the death. At this point, Owen would be relieved to be locked in a to-the-death game of riddling with a god-beast. At this point, that would be a pleasure. Something you could see. Like that time spent as a bouncer in Daytona Beach . . . bouncing beach scum down the one-hundred-yard pier. Shoving this one particularly slimly little fuck all the way down to the stairs, when he gets to the end, he makes the furtive move — reaches inside his jacket and all the time you watch him wondering whether he’s got a knife or gun in there, he draws out numchucks, and you’re relieved. Only numchucks. Only numchucks, only a sphinx. You’d rather fight fire breathing dragons than take both barrels of a travel gone bad between the eyes. Which is precisely what you’re going to do. Stop that. Stop all that shit. You’ve got to stop thinking your going to crash, or you will crash. Maybe now you want to crash, eh? Maybe the idea intrigues you. Maybe your fascinated with the idea of the bottom of the pit. Maybe you want to see the end of the line. For the first time, really see it. Lick the bootheel of life, is that it? Is that why you refuse to sleep? You must be a closet masochist emerging. Do you love the pain? Do you live to writhe or write. Perhaps both. Perhaps writhing is the only way to keep yourself writing. Perhaps pain, like sex, is a portal to the eternal. Perhaps stimulation of any sort is a portal to immortality. Perhaps sleep deprivation is a portal. Sustenance deprivation of any sort, substance excess of any sort. The junkie and the wandering ascetic, they dwell close in character. They both stand on the thresholds of omniscience. The wandering sage, however, uses the portal to pursue the path. The junkie stands agape at the portal, unable to act on his visions. Portals remain but a window, not a path. The Path! Ah, yes, the primary reason for traveling: creating your path. Hacking your way through what you might consider virgin terrain, and always finding remnants of others passed that way long before you. This saddens you, on one hand, because you realize that you’ve a long way to go and that other have trodden the terra before you to the Source of the matter. Still following the overgrown paths of humans throughout the eons. Eventually you’ll strike new ground. That’s what you tell yourself, right? Eventually you’ll do something that no one else has done before. Eventually you’ll do something undeniably great. You tell yourself this to keep you going, pump sunshine up your butt daily to get you out of bed. Bed, yeah right, bed. Not. And why not bed? In order to discover virgin territory, of course. For it is written thus: discovering virgin territory beats-the-hell out of sleeping. Or is it the other way around? * * * At dawn, the clouds hanging thick and low and puffy, drifting along in the sky like wasted cotton balls, the sleeper train pulls through the Pyrewees mountains into Irun, crossing the border into Spain. Owen watches the mountains, barren with winter passing by, wide awake. As the train nears the depot, Owen drags the pack to the rear, before the aisleway becomes congested. He feels dull and zombie-like, moving ever forward never straight. The air feels a little more tempid, but not much. Certainly not enough to call Irun a winter home. The train slows to a stop, he pulls the pack down, hoists it onto his back and files down the people chute to the border crossing. The air smells fresh and crisp and it breathes him back to life. Holding his head up as he passes the two bleary-eyed border commandos, Owen crosses into Spain. They don’t give him a second look, don’t ask to see the passport he holds up in the air in front of them, nothing. They just watch him walk past with dopey grins on their faces. Owen figures this is better than a body search, moves forth into the train station. The station looks much more aesthetically pleasing than the two he saw in France, though a tad gaudy. High ceilings garnered with gold plating and ornate castilian crimson trim, marbled floors — the place feels more like a temple than a depot. A garish clock on the far south wall says the time is six-forty-five. His train departs at quarter-after-eight. Owen goes immediately to find the train, finds it right outside the platform. Everything’s in order. Walking back into the depot, Owen sets the pack down beside a bench, buys a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice from a vendor in the corner booth, returns and sits with his pack to relax in the grandeur of the depot before boarding. The hot coffee thins his blood and the caffeine revives his will from recline. The juice taste like nectar. He feels revived, refreshed. Sitting in the depot for a half-an-hour or so, Owen enjoys the spaciousness of the station, the warm feeling of the golden walls, the lack of bleating hoards of morons, the lack of tiny compartments. Things feel better now. He’s in Spain, and everything’s going to be alright, he thinks, sitting there on the floor of the depot. Owen stands up, stretches, walks outside to the platform. The train is gone. Gone. He looks at the tracks where the train sat, where the train runs on down the line without him on it. He missed the fucking train. Clock says seven-twenty. “¿Que hora es?” Owen asks the man at the ticket window. “Eight-thirty, sir.” “Do you realize that your depot clock is an hour-and-ten minutes slow? I missed my damn train, because you guys can’t keep your clocks set! What the hell is that? This is a train station, damnit!” he says, realizes he’s losing his temper. “I apologize, sir. I’ll see what I can have done about the clock. There’s a train departing in ten minutes that will take you to the outskirts of Madrid. You can transfer to the main station from there.” “Which train?” “Number thirty-four departs on track five. It will take you to Madrid.” Owen walks away from the booth feeling the gumption draining, hissing from the ever present leaks in this journey from one hell to another. Crossing underneath the tracks via an underground tunnel, lugs the pack up the stairs to the platform and onto the deserted train. There’s not one person aboard, so Owen selects a cabin near the rear of the rear car. When the train pulls away from the station, he has the cabin all to himself. Drinking in the solace, guzzling it greedily like a man gone too long without water, Owen rolls a smoke, grabs his Walkman® and The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, takes off his boots and snuggles back into the chair, staring out the window at the scrub brush flora and frigid desert flats passing by. That ever winding road, passing by, passing beyond. Out beyond his reach now. “We were moving away from the border, looking for somewhere to sleep. The two of us sharing the driving, two hitchhikers slumped in the backseat. I sneaked a quick look in the mirror, she gave me a smile. “I said is anyone hungry? Should we stop for awhile? “So we pulled off into a levee, her dress blew up over her head “I said, ‘Would you like to come with me’? She said, something foreign under her breath. And the sun shone down and her lovely young legs, and I thought to myself, she’ s much too young for you. And I lay down beside her with tears in her eyes. . . “ The music runs on, Clapton’s guitar and Sandborne’s sax bringing tears to his eyes, striking the deepest chords of his being, when combined with Waters voice howling and moaning. It’s excellent road music. Reflective, sad, soft, intense, manic-depressive traveling music, and at this precise moment, mirrors his state-of-mind, which becomes more shaky and surreal by the minute. You feel very near the edge, very near the gate between the ethereal and physical realms of existence. Very near, indeed, though twice before you’ve been nearer than now. Once when you were a wee lad, a pubescent hoodlum full of blissful frolic and hormonal rage, you wrecked your bike on a dirt track, splitting your bladder, bursting your appendix and bruising your stomach, but the handlebar on which you were nearly impaled never broke the skin. You lay in the hospital for two days with a gut full of urine and blood, very near the gate for the first time in this life. They finally figured it out when you were only moments away from passing through. That was the first time. That was when you first became deeply introspective. You spent two years virtually alone through puberty, alone for one of the more social times in a child’s life. You did it again when you were nineteen — drew into yourself and away from others, and nearer to the bridge. It doesn’t bother you to be alone with yourself as it bothers most. You, in fact, prefer it. There’s plenty of things in your mind to keep you occupied. A million stories to rewrite, refine, reread, distant locales of future destinations, films to watch, memories to savor, gods to behold. Many games to keep you intrigued and off into your own world, which is the best place you’ve discovered so far. Your world fits inside your head. This makes it easy to travel. Even here in the middle of Spain, far removed from anything resembling a home, you can be at ease. This of the not sleeping, that’s typical. Though it usually doesn’t manifest itself so unendingly. Sleep will come when sleep is ready and until then just enjoy the ride. It’s reassuring to know the gate still stands where you left it. You camp outside the walls and feel at home, watching the wandering lost and listless spirits in search of their final repose. Which for most of the them means a round-trip ticket back to the physical world, in one form or another, on planet Earth, or some other planet, somewhere out there. Pick one. There must be millions of inhabited planets in the Universe. In the whole Universe, in a space definable as both ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’, surely there exists other life. It runs with the odds. It fits snugly into Murphy’s laws, Galeleo’s and Einstein’s. It just makes sense. Sense in the grandest picture procreating existence on the physical side of things. Sense from the perception of a god. That’s the whole idea behind humanity: to avatar. Thousands of millions come along so that a handful might rise up and gain omniscience, but the truth is this: that all those people who follow also hold within themselves the ability to rise. It’s in their blood, dormant, like yeast. They may not find it in this life, but it grows there amid the weeds of fear and confusion, often taking thousands of years to install solid roots. You know this only through the transmissions received from questions asked, pondered at a great distance from the body when you were very near the bridge. Shit, you could set up a hot dog stand at the entrance for all the times you’ve stood there, looking through the gate and across the bridge at the brilliant visions beyond, but never daring to leave your body behind. No, no leaving the body. Not yet. Though soon, perhaps. You might go at anytime. Want to buy a hot dog? Owen smirks, quietly staring out the window at Spain. Spain resembles the images he created of Europe — bouncing between ancient rolling hills, once mountains, dropping to sparse plains dappled with stucco-walled cottages covered with the dried-blood, cut-clay pot rooftops. Just as he’d imagined it. Bonafied European stylings devoid of people — just as he desires it for the moment. Owen doesn’t want to see humans right now. The whole human race can go take a flying fuck at the moon, for all he cares. “ . . .And I opened my eyes, and to my suprise (beep, beep, beep) There were Arabs with knives at the foot of the bed! Right at the foot of the bed. Oh my god how did they get in here. I though we were safe home in England.” Swaying like an ocean vessel, the train careens around the side of a mountain, drops down, slows, and pulls into a town. Owen doesn’t find out what town. He doesn’t care anymore. It’s just another town between he and Madrid. Madrid is within reach. It isn’t much, a long shot at best, but a shot at a safe landing nonetheless. If it weren’t for the damn book there would be no concern for landing at all. You could fly on, as a true traveler, not a care in the world. That’s what makes traveling possible: simply not caring where you’re moving, but that you move at all. Breaking inertia and moving, moving, moving, if that damn story weren’t beginning to birth in your head. It makes you slow, pregnant. It makes you want to dig a hole in the ground, rather than soar amid limitless horizons. It’s this conflict within yourself that’s causing the bad travel. Nothing else. It’s a haul now, not a travel. It ceased to be travel when you sold Rocinante. It ceases to be travel as the book takes form. Shuddering forth, beginning to crawl, the train moves on. A lanky dark-haired boy walks by once, then turns around and enters the cabin. They nod hellos and the boy sits in the far chair across the aisle, near the door. He’s an intelligent looking chap — dark, nonthreatening eyes and thick-rimmed glasses with lenses to match. A college boy, without a doubt. Owen knows the territory well, recognizes that distant, academic look in his soft brown eyes. “Do you speak English?” Owen asks, feeling a little like a tourist for having asked it. “Very little. ¿Yo habla Espanol?” “Um pukito.” “Deutsch?” “Ja, Ich spreche Deutsch.” And there it happens. A beautiful thing takes place, so uncommon in America. Two people communicate, trundling through three languages until they find one common to both of them. It’s a wonderful process, flipping from language to language. For Owen, it makes the entire journey seem worth it. “Wie heißt du?” “Ich heiße Owen. Wie Heißt du?” “Ich heieße Stefan,” the lad says, smiles at him, and the continue speaking in German, getting to know one another in that same manner one discovers from Kindergarten on forward. “Wo liebst du?” “Ich liebe aus Avila mit meinen Mutter und Vatter, aber Ich habe fur drei jarhen im Universitat studieren. Dann liebe Ich aus Franfurt. Verstehst du?” “Ja, Ich veresthe. Ich habe fur acht jahren im Universitat studiern.” “Wirklich?” “Ja, klar. Ich bin eine geshriftschrieber. Was studiert du?” “Ich studiere die Computer und die Fabrik. Und du, was hast du gelernt?” “Sociologie und Englisch. Ich habe zwei hauptfachs, aber Ich studiert keine mehr im Universitat. Ich bin jetzt einer studenten aus dem Welt. Ich wandere aus heir zu da, vom stadt zu stadt. Ich suche von das Weltanschaung, von das hochanschuang. Versthest du mir?” “Ja, Ich verstehe. Du sprechst gutes Deutsch.” “Nein. Ich habe sehr veile zu lernen.” “Deine Deuthsch ist Nichts zu schlect. Es machts nicht. Ich verstehe du. Wo liebst du ins America?” “Ich komme aus California.” “California? Wirklich? Ich habe im California wanderen. Ich mage es da sehr veile. Es ist beides schoones und murkwurdig, weißst du?” “Ja. Ich glaube das auch. Die Baumen und die Berge, die Ocean, viele aus den meistens schoonestens frauen; ja, Ich weiß was du hatte gesehen. Wo gehst du im California?” “Ich gehe bei Los Angeles, San Diego und Lake Tahoe. Ich nehme meine hrucksack und spaziergegangen gehen. Wann nacht kommen, dann Ich zelten an dem Berge, und so weiter.” “Hoffenlicht, Ich sehe California eigene. Farhens in dem blaue mit meinem motorrhad, siehst dem Redwoods, lieben in dem Berge. Ich motche das am bestens.” “Ja, klar.” “Hast du hunger?” “Ja, Ich habe nicht essen.” “Ich habe am bischen Brot und Kaise, beides sind frisch. Mochtes du etwas?” “Klar. Ich habe am bischens Metz.” “Laßt uns essen!” Combining their foods, they create two respectable sandwiches. The sandwiches look divine. They resemble deities waiting to be worshipped in the ancient eating ritual. Owen suddenly realizes just how hungry he is, realizes that he hasn’t eaten for a couple days. Eating the sandwiches in a ravenous silence, holding court and worshipping food, Owen and his new friend share a bonding meal. He likes this introverted Spanish college boy. He sports a decent mind. Owen knows this by looking into his eyes, as the boy looks out the window on the aisle side of the train. Silence flows pleasantly between them, lacking the discomfort and distance common between new acquaintances. Owen devours his sandwich. The boy eats half and wraps the second half in wax paper. Both feel satisfied. “Wo gehst du jetzt, Owen?” “Ich gehe heute zum Madrid. Meine freund liebst da. Hoffenlicht, Ich kanne ihm finden.” “Du wiest nicht die Addresse oder der Telefon nummer?” “Nichts. I muß meine freund im California anrufen.” “Sie weißt es?” “Nein. Sie sprechst zu einanderer freunden, dann spreche Ich zu ihr.” “Ach! Das ist nicht so gut. Gutes Gluck.” “Danke. Ich denke, Ich nehme das. Ich denke, Ich brauche gluck.” “Veiliecht.” “Motchest du ein cigarette,” Owen says, producing the pouch of Drum® from the day pack, rolling a smoke. “Nein. Danke. Ich rauche nicht.” “Ist es eine problem ob Ich rauchen?” “Nein, es machts nicht.” Owen lights the smoke, opens the window a couple inches to pull the smoke from the cabin, settles back into the chair. They spend the day that way, nestled in the cabin by themselves, jabbering in German, comparing notes on college, on tavern life, on traveling. The flow is such that Owen never once feels incapable of expressing his thoughts in German. This Stefan proves an easy character to converse with. Owen feels grounded. He praises this calm in the eye of the storm. They pass through Pompalona, and Owen watches the town pass, mesmerized by the fortress-like castles and the idyllic sandstone acropolis haphazardly laid out on the scrub brush plain. He understands why Hemmingway liked Pompalona so much. Owen would probably like it, too, if it were possible to stop. It’s sort of like shopping when the stores are closed. Window shopping, that’s the suburban phrase, is it not? Is that not what you’re doing now? Window shopping? Truly, traveling the suburban way. You disgrace the League of World Travelers clinging to the trains in such a dependent manner. Clinging like a baby possum to its mother’s back , you are. Clinging to for protection and solace — it lacks honor. It defies the Code of the Road. It stinks of denial, avoidance, cowardice, and all the other things a traveler despises. It stinks of tourism, though you know it’s pure at the root. Indeed. Bugger all that tourist shit. Let’s just cease with the insults. This lacks touristic essence by the very nature of the situation, by the fact that you’re going down in smoke and flames and smiling about it. Moving forward, severely daunted, but smiling nonetheless. That’s your only saving grace at this point: your smile. The fact that you sit here in a livetrap shark-bait coffin , not sleeping when you should be sleeping, writing, always writing, and deriving perverse pleasure in watching yourself go down in flames — this denies whatever touristian notions the critics might apply. So fuck the critics, and the tourists for that matter. To hell with the lot of them. Let them sit in million-dollar multinational offices seeking soft, feel-good stories about long walks over wooden bridges and other such feckless tripe. They seek not the searing passion of those plunging headlong into procreation. They fear the white hot presence of the Creative Source, unless it’s stylized and tamed within the dungeonesque lairs of editor’s tables, deftly butchered like beef in a slaughterhouse — pulverized, pasteurized, tenderized, processed and seasoned. Hammered out beyond recognition, producing a final product neither grotesque nor offensive, neither curious nor overwhelming; but frigid rhetoric written within the confines of acceptable thinking. Fuck acceptable thinking. That kind of thought never got anyone anywhere relevant. It creates nothing but the perpetuation of the status quo. It perpetuates window shopping. It perpetuates housekeeping and orderly lines and linear thinking, rational conduct, civic pride and the curiously undemocratic notion of the salvation of the state being watchfulness in the citizen. Spy on your neighbor. That’s where pap leads those who follow — down the beaten path, forever window shopping, forever spying on their neighbors with hopes of glimpsing something gritty, obscene or illegal. Looking out at life, removed from the essence of physical existence, removed from sensual experience. Traveling avails by far the single most sensual experience a human withstands, perhaps next to sex or enlightenment. And one finds both during traveling. A veritable melange of sensual pains and pleasures, auto-erotic mysticisms, auto-psychotic incantations, whimsical derivations on torture and bliss, nihilistic flights of fancy to the loftiest peaks known to mortals, then down into the village to dance around the fires and make love to the native women while under the wide-eyed surge of mescaline or peyote. Experiences like this beat-the-living-shit-out-of window shopping. Leave it throat-slit bleeding in the gutter with blood flowing over polyester fabric assailed with Hawaiian print flowers, over white Polo® pants tennis pants, down varicose legs to the deck shoes, and out onto the endless pavement slowly covering the planet. That’s where window shopping gets you. “What do you thinking?” Stefan asks in English. It sounds odd to hear it spoken, and spoken incorrectly at that, after speaking beautiful German. “Window shopping. You understand?” Stefan nods, understanding the words but not the concept. Owen doesn’t know the expression for window shopping. It doesn’t translate, like ‘road trip’ doesn’t translate. The idea doesn’t translate with the phrase. Owen lets it slide. The train pulls into Guadalajara, and Stefan departs with best wishes, leaves Owen the remainder of his meat. Owen thanks him for the food, watches him walk down the aisleway and leave the train. The train pulls out, the conductor passes by the booth and tells him that Madrid is the next stop. There it is then. Madrid. The final destination. The end of the line. * * * You’ve always made out well while traveling. Look at you: twenty-six years old and already sergeant-at-arms in the League of World Travelers. A fit and strapping young man, you are, full of academia and rage, and at this point crazed with grandeur. You’ve lived through hellish lives in Florida, Alaska, California, New Mexico, Montana and everywhere in-between and some places beyond. You’ve always returned with more money and experience lining your pockets than you left with. Not bad for a college boy gone haywire, not bad for a passive-aggressive, hypersensitive-obsessive stoic intellect. You’ve always done well. Always, except for this time. Though what you’ll lack in money upon your return, balances out with experiences gained. If you consider a scale, completely topped-out and tipped over, as balanced. And the beauty of it is this: balance exists on such a scale, if only in potentiality. It’s a wreck, but the potential for balance exists within any sort of chaos. Moving ever forward like a car wreck, gaining the potential, someday, to attain great balance. Today is not that day, not the day for balance, but a day for focus. You’ll be in Madrid in half-an-hour. The moment of reckoning nears! The agonizing bliss of total enlightenment soon shall be yours! Are you prepared to know the full essence of the white-hot wisdom? Sophia kommt morgen mit hund! Sophia arrives soon with a bull whip and a thousand rounds of ammo, handcuffs, fishnet stockings, fuck-me-pumps, red-hot pokers, and leather. She stops nothing short of strapping your naked ass to a cactus and spending a couple days in the desert with you, discussing metaphysics, taking occasional pot shots, playing William Tell-Burroughs when she doesn’t like your answer, rubbing your groin, sucking your dick hard as a rock, then whapping your balls with an openhanded slap and laughing in your face. So reads the true personality of Sophia, of Sapientia possessed. “You seek the Wisdom of Sophia, little Thor incarnate? Well let me show you how we do things downtown in the Pantheon,” she says, backs up and unloads a clip around the edges of your head. “Say it! Say it! You say it you little shit! I am Sophia, I am Fata Morgana, I am Queen of Existence! I am A-number-one!” To which you reply: “You, my fond Sophia, are without question of royal lineage. The blue blood flows in your veins, chilling the hot scarlet essence of passion to the frigid Calvinesque climes of scientific method. Yes, you are a queen, Sophia. You are a queen bitch.” And at this point, of course, she brings out the red hot poker. But that’s no big deal. What’s a little fried flesh between deities, eh? It’s only flesh and blood. Flesh and blood have always been a cheap, highly-disposable commodity. People trade flesh for mere pennies everyday. Religious and political institutions see to that. And if you break the ranks, they take it out on your flesh by putting it into a box. But what’s a little flesh? Not much, without the spirit to keep it alive. When this train stops you hit the ground running. Move forward and let nothing stand in your path. Keep your nose up and don’t lose momentum. If you keep momentum you’ve a shot at making it through. Focus. Focus isn’t a problem in these moments of clarity, but the clarity will break up at some point, and that’s when focus is most important. You’ve come this far. What’s a few more hours sans sleep? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just don’t think about sleeping. Don’t think about anything at all, just keep moving. “This is as close to Madrid as we go, sir. You’ll want to get off here.” “Thank you.” Feeling focused, Owen grabs his gear and prepares to depart. While focused in spirit, his physical brain flutters and fibrillates in the skull cap, writhing for repose. He holds it together, the train stops and he marches off it, moving forward. The wind blows an arctic breeze across the plain of Spain, frigid and piercing as Owen leaves the sanctuary of the train. It’s misting, as well. Owen looks up and beholds the skyline of Madrid on the eastern horizon, lit with high-pressure sodium bulbs lending to the city a bright red glow similar to, say, the fiery pits of Hades. Here he is, in hell. He thinks about how the postcard picture of him in hell would look, smiles. As the train pulls away from the station, leaving him behind, Owen realizes where he is. He stands smack on the outskirts of the ghettos of Madrid. There is nothing quaint or idyllic about it. The postcard just got better. Perhaps, he thinks, he should have a camera, so he could recapture this moment on film. He looks to the skyline, the image reminds him of New York city, as do the yips and howls from the hoodlums observing him from the blackness. He knows those yips, yaps and bird whistles well. They’re circling him now, checking him out. Hoisting the pack onto his back, he begins the walk up the tracks to the depot. The yipping follows. Then the day pack breaks loose from the pack, topples to the ground. That’s it. That’s it. Keep it coming. I can take it. He stops there in the blackness to fix it, jerry-rigging the broken strap, tying it together, fastening it with duct tape, and finishing the hundred yard walk up to the depot. It stands out like a beacon in the night. An acrid, fluorescent beacon, though a lighthouse nonetheless. “Do you have a phone?” Owen asks the waitress behind the snack counter in the middle nowhere. Amazingly, several people patronize the stop. People, no doubt, waiting for a train. The waitress looks at him stupid, like a dog. “¿Donde esta Telefono, por favor?” he tries again, slightly irritated now. The different languages scramble in his mind and he wants to mix them all together and just speak whatever comes out. Gibberish, most probably. She points over to a tall red phone hidden away on the far end of the counter. It looks like an overgrown house phone, blood red. Owen thanks her, sets the pack down by the door, walks over to the phone. The phone system is different from Amsterdam’s system, which is different from America’s phone system, which is entirely different from this system altogether — Owen curses people’s failings to invent the universal, tries figuring out just how to make a phone call to the states. It doesn’t work. He fails miserably, and he curses himself for not being able to think through it. Then he realizes that he’s muttering to himself, and that the whole restaurant is watching him, compounding the frustration. He feels another primal eruption coming on, but quells this one long enough to escape the snack bar. He snatches the pack up, drags it along like a ghost drags the woes and wages of his life, like clanking chains and treasure chests laden with leaden bricks. Thinking about dumping his library, then dismissing the thought, for the moment, Owen buys a ticket for the tram from where he is, Vallecas, to Chamartin, nearer the city center. He feels better knowing where he is going from here, and the clarity returns, the rage receding for the moment into the recesses of the swampy glands in which it resides. Once you find the center, things will be okay. You get your bearings and we roll out from Chamartin to either an evening with Carlos or a night in the bushes. Surely there will be a phone at Chamartin. Call Kara, go from there. Sleep comes soon now. Something come soon now. Something sleep, or something more like a breakdown. Scotty’s calling up from engineering — “He can’t take it much longer, captain! I can’t ‘old ‘er together!” That’s it. Keep up the joking. Keep on laughing and forgetting. If you can do that you’ll fly on out of here. “Hold her together, Scotty,” comes the reply. Stay on target. Yeah, right. If we’d have stayed on target, we’d be in France right now. There is no fucking target anymore. You’ve got to give up this idea of a landing pad. It probably doesn’t exist, at least tonight, and you’re counting on it like there’s a fucking limo waiting for you at Chamartin. Well, I’ll tell you this: there isn’t shit waiting for you at Chamartin, except another station. You need to find an alternate plan. The tram arrives, Owen boards it. The doors are wider, as well the aisles, and he maneuvers the pack without difficulty into the chair beside him. This is the last train. He’s done chasing trains for awhile. He decides to walk or hitch from here on out. Let the commuters have the trains. Riding deeper into the heart of Madrid, Owen window shops the city. It looks structured and modern. Extremely modern. Dismally modern — constructed of steel, prefabricated stone and glass — the tall skyscrapers hounding the gods for money, interstates and beltways filing and shuffling at high-speed, huge well-lighted billboards terrifying the consumer into spending hard-earned cash on crap, your basic metropolis. His heart sinks slowly into his gut as he watches the uniform concrete, steel and glass monstrosities pass by, and he knows then that Madrid was a lousy idea. The realization comes as no great suprise. Clicking and swaying, the tram rolls on through the mammoth station Atocha, he rides on through Recoletos, Nuevos Ministerios, and on up to Chamartin, staring vacantly out the window, then disembarks when the train stops. There’s a phone, a real phone, right outside the door. He’s on it, dialing the international code, the area code, and then the phone number. This is the Moment of Truths. This is when he finds out whether he’s landed safely. Feeling the sweat breaking out on his face, arms and back, the phone rings through. “ . . . Hi, it’s me. I’m not here. Leave a message or piss off.” Beep. “Kara, it’s Owen. I’m in Madrid. I need to get ahold of you. I’ll call tomorrow,” he says, hangs up the phone. Well, there it is then. You’ll be spending the night in the bushes. What’s say we go and find a spot to crash, eh? Take some time off. Let the world spin without you tonight. A few hours sleep and you’ll be straight again. You’ll be able to think without skipping all over hell. Won’t that be nice? Not skipping about the terra demetia yammering like a worn-out record. Cerra la java. Turn off the faucet. Get out of these fucking train stations and hit the real world again. Looking for a door, going from platform level to the level, he finally finds the main floor. Brightly lit, packed to the gills with people bustling and crowding, nuns and children and tourists and cops and Spanish militia, and Owen, luminating like a sore thumb. Freaking out, unable to breathe in such a constricted environment, he stays in the station long enough to convert the remainder of his cash into pesatas, then nearly runs for the door. The moist, to-the-bone-blast of arctic air nails him immediately. It’s going to be a shitty night to sleep in the bushes. Madrid is not on iota warmer than Amsterdam. At least not tonight. A lousy idea, indeed. The scene before him looms large, impersonal and unfriendly, composed of interstates and multinational corporate high-rises. Owen beholds them as though they were the Smaug, as though the city and the station were Scyllia and Charibdis, as though they were great beasts which would smother him without so much as batting a reptilian wing. Right then and there Owen decides he hates Madrid. Or perhaps it’s the lack of sleep. Either way, he finds a cab driver who’ll take him to a hostel. Fuck the bushes. Fuck the bushes. You begin sleeping in the bushes, and wake up in jail. You know these cities. Keep it clean for the tourists, that’s their creedo. This place reeks of theme park mentalities. It’s the last of the money, but it’s going to go away anyhow. It beats the shit out of a jail cell. And besides, fifteen bucks won’t do you a lick of good when you’re frozen solid underneath a hemlock tree, or a rose bush. The cabby has trouble lifting the pack, Owen grabs it and stuffs it in the trunk. The cabby looks at him in awe, Owen smiles and shrugs his shoulders wearily and gets into the backseat of the cab. “¿Donde esta hostel?” “Si, senior.” he says, roars off away from the train station, headed for downtown. In back, Owen grimaces at the city. The city sports every trait he had hoped it would not. Large, expensive, expansive, impersonal, corporate, authoritarian — precisely the sort of crap he’d tried desperately to avoid. Riding through the city now, here at the end-of-the-line, he finds himself surrounded by all he’d tried to evade. Winding in and out of interstate, the cab descends upon the urban center. It looks grand and gothic, like Paris, yet with a modern ambiance. Statues of Spanish heros and legendary conquistadors saddled upon mighty steeds, all eyes aflame with the glory of a god and the blessings of the king, gracing the beltway along the main drag. It all looks beautiful, the fountains, the statues — and Owen can window shop no longer. He tells the driver to drop him here, the driver protests, yielding nonetheless. He lets him out in financial district of Madrid, but it doesn’t matter. Owen pays the cabby, takes the pack from the trunk and begins walking the streets, pleased to be removed from mass transit. Airplanes, trains, taxis, buses — he’s never liked those mass methods of human herding, and he doesn’t want to start jonesing for it now. Rage is all that keeps him moving. Rage against the wheels of destiny, against the accepted lines of mediocrity humans created for themselves, and the barriers they create against anyone else who might come along and try to do something different, rage against all accepted institutions of social control, against society in general. Somehow this whole mess was society’s fault. He blames society, walking along the amid the grotesque display of wealth glittering along the streets of Madrid, but deep down he knows the fault lies within his actions. Fighting the urge to plunder, Owen sudden becomes aware that his Viking drives the rig now. The child, the old man, the sensitive mystic, the woman, the politician, the whacked-out manic depressive — they’ve all gone to sleep. Only the Viking stands now, steadfast and stoic, eyes fixed a thousand years ahead, walking along terra firma as he’s walked for eons, barely existing on the phenomenal plane. The feeling is both exhilarating and terrifying, but Owen’s thankful for the power surge. He allows the Viking to take control. If any one of his personalities will see him through, it will be the Viking. That’s what Vikings do best. A couple approaches him on the sidewalk, Owen striding in full gait with the big, red backpack strapping and swaggering, eyes locked forward. He towers over the couple, and they scurry out of the way like sheep. Owen smiles. He has things under control now. He has himself under control, and that’s all that matters. He’s tired of being pleasant, tired of making himself seem smaller than he is, in order not to intimidate the throngs of midgets surrounding him. Yes sire, make it so. Now it’s going to be just Owen, the real Owen, the Owen that’s bigger than most people, the Owen who thinks with the best of them, who sets out to do what he pleases and accomplishes any damn thing he sets his mind to. That’s the Owen in charge now. It’s all this pussyfooting around other people that caused this trouble in the first place. If you would have come over and been yourself. This self, rather than the cocky thug, you might have had a shot. But that’s all fucked now, so let us dispense with the pleasantries and move on with the business at hand: the business of survival. That is what you had in mind, was it not. Survival? Or would you prefer to perish, to languish away here in Spain in the middle of winter. I thought not. Well, my lad, the way I see it, you need a rest. And there’ll be no rest in the bushes. Find yourself a hostel, take yourself a shower, and for the Odin’s sake, lad, get some sleep. A couple more days like this and you’ll be a god. And once you’re a god, there’s no going back, only forward, ever forward, into eternal omniscience. And that’s a travel best reserved for a later date. Come back from the edge, lad. Trust me. * * * “Do you have a room?” Owen asks the voice on the speaker. “Yes, we have a room. I’m on the seventh floor. You take the elevator,” she says. Walking up the stairs, feeling stubborn, Owen drags the gear up the stairway. On the seventh floor of a building that looks more like an office building that a residential arms, he finds the door to the hostel and knocks. A women opens the peep hole in the middle of the wide mahogany door, looks at him. “You said you had a room.” “No, No we have no rooms.” “You just said you did!” “No. I’m sorry. No rooms!” she says, slams the peep hole, at which time Owen hears an entire barrage of bolts and chains sliding and locking into place behind the door. He stands there, dumbfounded. The rage begins to boil, so he runs back down the steps, trying to trot it off without smashing anything. He wants to yell so loud that he shatters the windows, but all that escapes his lungs are frustrated snorts and sighs — he fights the desire to pound the ground so hard that he splits a crevice in the Earth. Leaving the building, walking on down the block, past a couple bars, past the shops, the diamond stores, the designer dress shops, the banks, the streets devoid of trash or people, Owen realizes, really understands, for the first time what it feels like to be the minority, and a homeless minority at that. It sucks. We’re all humans here damnit! You’ve always lived by that, always respected people for what was inside them rather than the color of their skin. Judging people by the color of their skin — that shit’s for Neanderthals. It’s petty and superficial and stupid — you’ve never lived like that a day in you life and yet now you find that people are more than willing to treat you like a freak, when you’re down and out, though you intend no harm. Though you seek only solace.. You’re merely a passing nomadic artist, one of thousands, but because you’re so damn big, because you haven’t slept in days, because you’ve got that distant, tortured look in your eyes, well, people just don’t want to take a chance on dealing with you. Look at these pedestrians now. They stop walking, stand aside, and watch you walk by like you’re some sort of sideshow freak, when all you’re looking for is a decent night’s sleep. “Come on by, come on in the bigtop and gawk at the gorilla boy!” It’s the evil in their own hearts that makes for fear and loathing. They fear what they would do if they had your size and strength, they loathe that you have something special. Fools! So little they know. Size is more burden, than advantage. More curse than blessing. With the exception of steroid-addled professional athletes and garden variety psychotics, big men don’t like to fight. When you’re bigger than most people, and you carry along with you the responsibility of great physical power, of being able to shag a great deal of damage at the drop of a hat, on a whim, or a dare, you learn to think before your actions. When you’re young and your body still gangles and lanks and slops and stumbles through the puberty years — you fight, it’s no big deal. But when a matured man learns his full range of motion, grows into the body, learns its capabilities, when he learns to fight at bouncer’s stations from coast to coast — dealing with ignorant, indigent malcontents and drunks from all over the world, when he learns to channel and focus, rather than diffuse thought, he becomes dangerous entity to the meek mortals around him, he considers fighting less of an option, because it’s just not worth it. It’s beastial. At the point where he can kill a man with one well-placed blow, thrown in focused anger, he desires to fight no longer. There was a time long ago that the strongest and the biggest men ruled the world. They still do. The strongest men of wisdom, however, learn that true strength lies in more thoughtful weildings of power. True strength blossoms in the muscle of the mind. The battles of the next century will be fought on the lofty fields and high roads of the cognitive conscious and subconscious minds, leaving nothing but dementia to the conquered. And a pleasure, it will be, to meet them there on the field hardball rhetoric. To fight the old warriors again, dead center in the Pantheon. A day, it will be, to remember. Indeed. Ascension of the spirit is by far more important than mundane physical prowess. Seek the next dimension. Muscular strength is a useful tool, despite the burden, but it doesn’t make you a god. That’s something altogether different. Down the street, he finds a hostel on the fourth floor of another office building. This landlady eyes him with open reticence for a moment, then allows him entry. The hostel is made-up of several rooms in the back of her home. The television babbles out some live Spanish talk-show-game, the sound of the TV makes him nauseous. An old woman watches the box with a vacant stare in the living room, pulling her old eyes away from the cathode ray long enough to gawk, only vaguely-conscious as the younger woman leads him through the tall catacombed hallways to the rear of the building. “No drugs. No loud music. Shower’s down the hall. You get one shower per day with the room, the rest are extra. I’ll turn the hot water back on.” “Thank you. I’ll be leaving in the morning.” He tries to smile and connect on a human lever with her, but she resists. She hands him the key, he hands her twelve pesatas, and she leaves him in the room. Alone, at last. Several weeks passed — the Green Tortoise, in fact, since he’s had a room to himself. It feels grand to be alone. And alone in a decent room, at that. All hardwood bed, desk and dresser, high ceilings, clean sheets. It’s the shit. Owen rips off his clothes, gets naked, sits on the bed and rolls a cigarette, remembers the bottle of Grand Mariner® that Saskia bought for him, removes it from the day pack. The bottle looks dark and brown and inviting. Finding a water glass in bathroom, warming it beneath the hot water faucet in the sink, he pops the cork on the liquor, fills the glass half-full, using half of the liquid in the small bottle. Lighting a small camping candle, he flicks off the light and sits in the dimly-light room, buck naked, smoking the thick Danish tobacco, drinking the full-bodied orange cognac, and experiencing a perfect moment. Probably the last perfect moment he will have for a while, he thinks, so he indulges it, embraces it as though it were a child. This moment, these last dabblings in clarity, this is your last shot at putting it all together. The laboratory, this petri dish you call your body, and the computer analyzing it — your brain, nears critical mass. Tomorrow you cynosure and explode. You know it without calling Kara. You’ll call her tomorrow and something will be fucked-up. Take it as wrote. Tonight you must pull your entire being into the tightest possible ball, stow it, secure it, shield it from everything, lest it burn upon reentry. The best travellers carry all that they need condensed to a core, hidden and protected off in some distant region of the mind. Hidden, perhaps, in the bottomless abyss of dead storage, but very much alive. It enables them to retain some semblance of themselves while surviving the often brutal speeds of traveling with the whim of a jester. You know this is possible, because you’ve been working with the theory for years. Ever since you discovered the Demon Box. That’s what set you off. The Demon Box — the defiance of the Second Law of thermodynamics. The thwarting of entropy. It set Clausius on his ear, then Maxwell, then Kesey, and now you. It’s that damn arbitrary constant. The implications of an ‘arbitrary constant’ proven and applicable in mathematical form reorders the way we see ourselves and our relationship to the Universe, assuming the variable exists beyond the equation. Truly, something to seek out, something to apply to your sphere. It allows for multiple dimensions of existence, and the production of energy in a closed system. And it all started when you were a wee college lad on the prairie. Bright-eyed, relatively innocent, naive and hungry, you were then, when you stumbled across the Demon Box. You understood it, but you lacked the tools to utilize it. You’ve come quite a ways from the sullen, subtle prairies, from the throes of Midwestern angst and academia. Traversed land and sea, fought foes, found friends, nymphs, sages, witches, prophets, mystics, gods and goddesses — many enlightened elite of the Source have come to call in the last few years, and you want to put every-last-one-of-them in that sphere, smooth along the inner edges. Their powerful images create a formidable web composed to house the memos and memories of the elder gods, the young avatars, the wandering ascetic nomads, the story tellers, muses, minstrels, thespians, theosophs, apostles, disciples, wretched poets, the insane philosophers, the transient luminaries. All those who’ve come along your path and dropped the white-hot pearls of wisdom in your unsheathed palm. All these passing shadows form the foundation of why you’re here. You pull the pearl, the image of the shadow, shuck the rest, the patch it all together and put it in the sphere. Passing through the memories flesh and spirit, patching them together in duct tape transit. It’s the only way to travel, if you seek velocities very near the speed of light. Energy equals mass times velocity squared, and WHOOSH! you race with the reflections from distant galaxies, if you remain focused, if you remain an unwavering band of light. Your receiver tells you so, and Einstein concurs. Unwavering bands of light, that’s the ultimate goal of the individual’s spirit. To rejoin brother-sister sunbeam. To return to a state of pure illuminescence. Indeed. All well and good, but we’re flesh right now, remember? So quit fawning over this idea and that theory. Stow it. Stow it all, then seal it up tight and stick it away somewhere. Put it back in the science folder of high school memories. That’s all fairly dead and useless, least likely to burn these already molten images. Stick the new book in there. It, too, is molten. It simmers away, images bubbling into cohesion, coming closer all the time. It should not be disturbed. It should be protected at all costs. As Fate has given it to you, so will it try to destroy it. Fate said, “Heh, buddy, come here. I’ve something special to show you. Take a gander at this,” and he shows you his glowing oracle orb, and, always hungry, you touch it. It floods you with power. With a whipping strike he buries it in your gut. “This is something special,” he says, his gnarly face and lack of teeth typically cryptic and grotesque in the California night. “It’s special,” he says, “but you can never tell a soul. You can never write it down. Here’s a story, a good, strong story. Take it in your gut. Don’t you dare say a word about it.” That’s Fate for you. And from this whole gig, years later when you’ve healed, when you’ve pulled the orb from your innards and healed, you’ll regain a healthy respect for Fate the methods of it’s teaching. And by then the story will be told, and you and Fate will have patched things up . . . with duct tape, of course. It’s a shitload of work, but some gods got to do it. It’s not fun to be god. It’s not fun, your shoulders burdened with the mountain-weighted destiny of humanity. Never has been, never will be. The pop psychologists call it a ‘Christ Complex’, probably for simplicities sake — that damn institution of Christianity spewing it’s un-Christ-like doctrine all over everything. There’s more to it than Jesus Christ. Jesus was way cool, but there’s more to it that one deity. Jesus, of course, was one of many incarnates. Street corner prophets stand in the traffic screaming“REPENT! REPENT!” when they should be screaming “ASCEND! ASCEND!” Repenting gets you nowhere. The idea is to rise beyond the twilight zone, not fall to your knees in perpetual sadness, angst and despair. Standing here at the gate between the physical and the ethereal dimensions, Legba overseeing the action as he’s done for thousands of years, some god selling hot dogs, and waiting for that moment to cross the bridge, building up momentum now, nearer than ever. So close you can lick it with your tongue and you’ll be stuck to the gate for eternity. There’s no spring thaw. The Dali Llamas, the hardcore Tibetan Buddhists, they climb to the top of the Himalayas and sit there on the edge of a mountain top to come here, pining away for immortality, climbing so far into the tantric chants, hankering so hard for omniscience, that low and behold, they attain it. It is possible. Entirely too possible. It’s what the human spirit is all about. “ASCEND! ASCEND!” And it’s not even completely necessary to go to a mountain top. You can do it here, say. Yes, indeed. Mad in a hostel in Madrid. What an excellent place to phoenix. We’ll be in a looney bin in half-an-hour, we start ascending here. Call it in. Hit the American Embassy up for a ticket. They’ll loan you the fare, to be repaid of course. Uncle Sam cares for his subjects, but he charges top dollar. And gets it back with interest, normally paid in blood. Blood. Yes, blood. Blood you can handle. It’s the payment in soul and in spirit that hurts. But that’s why you’re loading the pod. Burn what you will of the conscious memory. These last moments will be saved for you when you need them. Just stow it and get it out of your consciousness. Bury it in the shop class file. Shop class. The trade-school of public education. It was there, however, in shop, that you learned of the concept of the Renaissance Man, and knew then that you wanted to be one someday. A man who does everything. You’ve learned all the trades, all the facets of construction, but it was only to know them, not to live by them. It’s the books that set you on fire. It’s knowledge that makes you hungry. Life would be meaningless without the pursuit to increase the capacity of the brain, to increase the potential. Sure, it’s useful to know how to build your own house, but what you going to do once it’s built? You don’t’ even need a house, for that matter, there’s always the mountain tops, always distant desert mesas. There’s always Shangri-La. Owen lay in bed, thinking too much. Rising, he throws on a pair of shorts and walks down the hall to the shower to try and shake it off. Shake everything off. The shower room is the size of a walk-in closet, clean and sterile. Closing the door, locking it, he starts the shower and strips. The water feels amazing. Divine! One appreciates the pleasure of a hot shower after being deprived of it for days on end. Worlds on end, it seems to him now, though only a two days has passed It’s been a rough two days, and the warm water against the back of his neck, running down his broad shoulders and back, down his thighs — the convextion brings his blood to the surface, brings his body bliss. Shake the world off. That’s all he wants. The problem is that the world rests not on his back, but in his gut. He’s taken it inside him now and the only thing left to do is die or write it out. A million showers won’t make it go away. He tries to remember, there in shower, just where it was that the scene took place, whether is was a gradual descent, or a moment wiped from memory, or lost in the frenzy of the Bacchanal. Maybe it happened in a bar, perhaps the ghetto . . . the little crackhead hooker. Indeed. Leave it to a hooker to fuck everything up. That was your lowest moment, there in the Bay View. That’s when you were most vulnerable. Warning lights went off and you ignored them and now the evil’s inside you, festering, glowing, growing, consuming, providing bliss and pain, torture and pleasure, all rolled up in a tight ball of blinding rage that will kill you unless you release it. Normally it kills, maims, destroys, you know the story. Well, you’ve touched it now, taken it in, and now the real game begins. Removing it and regaining balance and purity. You lost all that when you killed the Buddha rat in the desert. Killing the Buddha calls power. Power loathes effrontery from humans, which is why it’s considered such an accomplishment to wrestle with it and survive. There’s nothing soft or polite about power. Oh, she sports her dainty qualities, normally for appearance, for the sake of the show, of entertaining; but the spirit driving incarnates to perform, that entity fares no gentle master. Often, myths and legends die grizzly Grimmesque deaths because of their fondlings of power, winding up woven as folktale into the fabric of human history. But they were all human once. Once upon a time, now and then forever. And they all, at one time or another, found themselves impaled upon that same toxic orb that infiltrates your being right now. And it tore them all to shreds. The water turns cold, Owen shuts the faucet down, towels off with the small white cotton linens provided, pulls his shorts back on and returns to his room feeling clean, but disoriented. The floors tilts like a fun house, the shadows flitting and flickering, the walls wobbling, the ceiling liquid, but he makes it back to his room, back to his bed. He blows out the candle, curls up and closes his eyes tight, but the images continue the barrage. Whirling about, taunting him, keeping him from sleep like lost night spent on Bald Mountain. A Friday night, at that. Counting sheep is useless, they find themselves burned to mutton before they make it midway over the fence. From the center of the black hole, dragons, griffins, ghouls, ghosts, gargoyles and other grotesques emerge, ready to flail. A hot time in the ole’ Abyss tonight. Something happening in every corner. Blow jobs for everybody. Sucks and fucks for free. Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. What you want? What you need? We got it all. There’s a party in the Pantheon. We got the best of everything. We got it all, baby, why don’t you come in and stay a spell. Have a drink, a leg of lamb, take a whore. Fuck yeah, take two. Tab? What tab? It’s all free, motherfucker. Anything you want. Anything you need. Don’t you worry about the tab. That will all be taken care of. Perhaps you could sing a song? So it goes. It gets grizzly from there. It’s common survival banter, about Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame. It’s accepted as a Principle Law of the entertainment industry. And why? Because not many can withstand the white-hot intensity of such power for more than a few minutes, before suffering complete blowout. Like lemmings, only a handful reach maturity. Only the wise lemmings realize another year. Most young incarnates explode within fifteen minutes, the result of spontaneous incarnate combustion. Some withstand a couple hours, a handful withstand the span of written human history, as myths and legends and prophets — they were all flesh once. But the spirit within the flesh, the captured band of roving light, shone so bright that to this day, every one remembers, civilization finds itself unable to forget. The luminescence of their entity gives them hope that one day they, too, might shine so bright, that they also might become religion. You want to create a religion? You want to become a god? You need only find a charismatic figure, then conceive, construct and maintain a set of ideals and ldylls which define your theories on the origins of the universe and the human’s place in it, a harmony attainable through a set of rituals and beliefs, and topped off with your prophecy of the apocalypse, and presto! In a couple thousand years you’ve got yourself a bonefied institution, slathered with the name and the image of the charismatic leader. Conception, construction and maintenance. Nothing to it. It’s the greatest trick in the world, but you can only do it once. Thus speaketh Daffy Duck. Or Gilgamesh. So reads the irony of Gilgamesh: the fact that we understood the wholistic human condition five-thousand years ago, as well as we understand it right here and now. We live the lives of cartoon characters over and over, performing that one great trick: the act of spontaneous combustion. Very little has changed. It still takes seven sleepless nights to become a god. The beastial, Enkidu to the celestial Gilgamesh, Daffy Duck to Bugs Bunny — the dichotomy exists precisely as it has since the Dawn of Man. Nothing has changed, save for the advent of better tools. These tools, however, distract us from ourselves. They throw us from the natural cycle of evolution. They distract us from our destiny. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, HAH! Idle hands are the off-ramp to perfect bliss! The time draws near for adapting changes to the story of humanity. It’s what the waiting slackers slack for. Awaiting that first step back into the cycle of evolution, paying the tab for leaving, and evolving. Ascension! This accounts for the increase in social tension, whining at a deafening pitch. This accounts for the rise in street corner prophets, but a few of the canaries in the coal mines. Our absence causes slacking within the taut bands of evolution, followed, of course by the inevitable whiplash. The artists scream for the apocalypse, for the dawn the day after, when we return to the business at hand, which is this: Ascension. Or, as Darwin would put it: the evolution of the species. And this exodus has nothing to do with skin color, nothing much to do with skin at all, or country of origin, religious institution, social organization, political affiliation, sexual orientation, mutually assured proliferation and destruction, or any other archaic notions that humans treat with such reverence and respect. No sir. This has to do with the transmogrification of an incohesive mass into a congruent band of energy. Chaos to order, it’s that simple. Put it in the box. Chaos comes at dawn, slowly nearing. And the only thing left in order will be what’s locked up and hidden away, for the moment, for the next couple weeks, in the Demon Box. Or the Demon Sphere, as it were. A sphere travels better than a box. A sphere has far more relevance to the universe than a box. Triangles, pyramids, create the strength assumed by the belligerent, arrogant and demanding efficiency of the box. The sphere requires no such support, only contents to give it strength. And by morning you should have that sucker crammed full. The images alone give it girth. Beneath the telencephalon of the arbitrary constant, in the mantle of the sphere you pack the theories, theorems, poems, postulates, paradigms and juxtapositions of the theosophs and philosophers and metaphysicists, laying them in side by side with little regard to time, manner and place. They are theories, by gum, and they should try and get along. Marx snuggled up with Miller, Spencer next to Spinoza, Plato next to Piaget, Zeno and Zarathustra, they’ll get along no doubt, Burroughs next to Baudelaire, Tolstoy next to Hunter S. Thompson, Bakunin next to Boethius, St. Thomas Aquinas next to Aristotle, Machievelli next to Malraux, Wordsworth and Wilde, Camus next to Comte, Kesey next to Kant, Hegel and Hippolyte Taine, Bertrand Russell and Joshua Reynolds, Berethed next to Beardsley, Vonnegut and Voltaire’, Ganghis Khan and Jung and Goethe and Socrates together in a four-way just for shits and giggles, Poe running free just to keep things interesting, layering them in there side by side, boiling them together, into an epistemic bouillabaisse, and skimming what rises to the surface. Packing them all away with the rest of it. It’s important, though not directly relative to survival of the flesh. The aged elders fry in the fiery throes of reentry. The new flesh rocks on. The sphere nears completion. Shrouded in rhetoric of Qualitative Ideal are the mystics, sages and shaman. They defy the intellect and preach intuition. Intuition is the heart of procreation. Intuition drives intellect, like a verb — the incarnates of the core. Utnapishtim, Osiris, Anubis, Oden, Zeus, Siddartha, Christ, Krishna, Shiva, Allah, Moses, Mohammad, Legba, Quixecotal, Lao-Tsu, Chuang-Tsu, Drugpa Kunleg, Confucius, Narakajapa, Loa, Lennon, Ghandi, Bugs Bunny, Gilgamesh, Daffy Duck, Elvis, Einstein, Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, Basho, Ixion, and all those in-between, pump them like molten love into the core, then seal the sphere tight in duct tape. Seal it hard. Inscribe, ”These are your brothers” on the seal of the sphere. They are brothers amongst themselves. The primary difference between intellects and intuitives centers on semantics and intuition. Intuition separates incarnates from critics. Intuition is what makes for a good show. Always, they come for the show. It matters equally what you say as how you say it. Humans think intuition is something derived from the gut, from the most primitive part of the brain, from the reptilian brain. This theory lacks logic. We consider the intuitive closer to the qualitative ideal than the intellect. It figures, then, that intuition arises not from the primordial brain, but from transmissions received by the telencephalon. Intuition is nothing short of a satellite link-up to the Source. Intuition emits not from below, but from above. Intuition transcends intellect, descends upon it, and intellect methodically sorts it out later. Foresight of action fares faster than action or reaction. To see the strike prior to the action itself, that is intuition. That’s what makes a good show. Intuition is the origin of Zen, something intellect only begins to understand. Intellect, the mammalian, the friendly, docile, subservient part of the mind that needs parameters, lines, windows, holes and bars. The reptilian, of course, requires the most rigid parameters of all. Yet the intellect remains the trade school of human understanding, housing only the tools for sorting through particulars and renderings from the qualitative ideal. The intuitive entertainers, they get concert halls instead of classrooms. They create, rather than critique. From the catharctic they compose, rather than the cognitive. Intuitives nexus and cynosure, which is why so many prophets die young. They no longer need the flesh. It’s as simple as: focus, luminate and fly. But at the moment you’re about as focused as the Hubble telescope looking at Alpha Centari. No, this is not time for flying. You’ve the sphere stuffed to the gills with everything you’ll need to tell the story, and as the first ashen grey lights of dawn break the curtain of this, the last hostel, you seal the sphere and send it off to shop class, to a closet in the paint room locked in a titanium box where it will remain untouched until such time as you search through the wreakage and come across it, open it, and remember who you are and what your about. The reentry will trash everything you’ve constructed over the last five years, but what the hell. What’s the fun of building something if you can’t burn it and build anew. It heals back stronger each time you trash it, like broken bones and lacerated flesh, but better. Much better. The sun lights the room now, on the thoroughfare the traffic swells, the vendors open their gates and windows. It is morning. Sitting up, swinging his feet sluggishly from the bed, Owen plops his elbows on his knees, his face into his hands, rubs his head and stares at the floor. It’s morning. Morning. He empties the ash tray, sticks the now empty liquor bottle in his day pack, and rolls another cigarette. His lungs feel raspy from the long night of chain smoking. Coughing, he thinks about cutting back when he returns to the states. Returning to the states. The thought of it , combined with the traffic and the noise of stock brokers in the streets makes him nauseous. Owen lights the smoke, takes one drag, puts it out, and goes to the bathroom to wash his face. In the mirror, his eyes come back to him sunken, swollen and delirious. It’s little wonder no one will speak to him. He looks just a little insane. A smile no longer disguises the facade. Looking in the mirror, he realizes he looks like shit. Shrugging it off, washing his face again, brushing his teeth, he moves lugubriously through the morning, not really wanting to leave the room, knowing he must leave within the hour. His feet fall heavy on the floor as he moves about the room, packing, breathing labored, his brain hot, smoldering, slowly beginning to burn. Looking out the window, the first pangs of agoraphobic anxiety flare within his mind, heating the base of his skull. Breaking out in feverish morning sweat, he dons the pack, bids the lady good-bye and walks out into the world to face final hours in Madrid. He never made it here. He entered the gates of Madrid and fell over dead. A couple blocks from the hostel, he finds a payphone, call Kara. She answers. “Hi, honey! Hey, it’s good to here from you! How’s the trip going.” “I’m not going to brag.” “Oh, come on let me hear the story.” “Not much to tell. Little bastard got into my locker while I was in the shower, got the keys, addresses, directions, pictures — everything except money and passport, which rendered me pretty-well-fucked.” “Why didn’t you just go to France anyway. You could have found it.” “I don’t know that I could have found it, and had I come across it somewhere in the remote north, broken in and setup housekeeping, I would have had no proof of permission to be there and the gendarmes would have dragged my ass off to prison. I didn’t come here to go to prison. There are plenty of opportunities to go jail in America.” “So what are you going to do?” “Well, that’s sort of why I was trying to get ahold of you. Did you get Carlos’ phone number from Ted?” “Yeah I talked to him. He’s been looking for it, but he can’t find it. He’ll probably find it in a week or so. Why don’t you just hang out?” Silence. “Owen, you there?” “Yeah, I’m here.” “Why don’t you just plant it for a few days. Ted will find the number eventually.” Owen breathes for a moment, trying to quell the rage. “I don’t think you understand the situation, Kara. It’s winter, I’m out of cash and outside for the duration, and they hate me here in Madrid. And to top it off I can’t sleep and I’m wandering around like a fucking zombie. I’m fucking Frankenstein here! Don’t you understand? Things are fucked up. I’m coming in.” “Where are you going?” “Probably back to Nebraska.” “NEBRASKA! What the hell are you going there for. Oh, god damn it. That sucks. You’ll never get away from there. You’ll be trapped there forever in that conservative prairie panty waste. Why don’t you come here?” “To California? Oh, I’d love to. But I can’t write there for the same reason I can’t write here: money. Look at you. What time do you have? You work fifty hours a week to stay alive. I work fifty hours-a-week, or better, and party on the weekends — and there will be no writing. I need to find a place and dig a hole. This book is ready to birth.” “You just have to make it over there for a few days. Give him a couple days.” “I don’t think you understand, Kara. I’ve stopped sleeping. I can’t think straight, head’s running off at the mouth, nothing’s clicking. It just isn’t happening, you know?” “Oh! You always give up so easy!” “Ya know . . . that’s really easy for you to say, there in your nice warm house, with your little job and paychecks, with money in your pocket, food in the fridge and a liquor store across the street. Damn easy for you to say. You want to trade places? I wonder what sort of shape you’d be in if you hadn’t slept for a week. I wonder how ready you’d be to hang out.” “I’d be fine.” “BULLSHIT! You’d be crying like a fucking puppy and you know it. I’ve seen you tired, just a little tired, and you get cranky and irritable. I know what you’re like when your cold and hungry and tired. I think you’d have given up long ago.” “Yeah, right, whatever.” “Hey, yeah, right, whatever. Thanks for your help, NOT!” he says, mimicking her, and slams the receiver back into the cradle and she is gone. It is over. The sun breaks through for a moment, Owen opens the payphone door and sits by his pack, rummaging through a set of dog-eared business cards that he’s stored in the day pack rather than the fanny pack. They’re all numbers of people in the states. He finds the tattered, soft grey card he is looking for, it says this: C. ‘DUG’ RALLEE 471-1987 Owen considers the card for a moment, staring vacantly at the bold caps lettering and the name formed within their suspended mystical boundaries. He doesn’t want to make the call. To make the call means to eat crow, so to speak. The crow is a messenger of the dead, and Owen doesn’t want to have to eat it. Not at all. He’s had enough of death for awhile. Although anything sounds good to eat now, he remembers the food that Stefan left him, then remembers that he left it on the train. Owen feels stupid, looks at the card, stands up and goes back into the booth. “Hello.” “Hello. It’s me.” “I know that. How’s it going. Didn’t expect to hear from you this soon. You have everything set up there in France?” “No. Everything here is pretty much fucked.” “What happened?” “Robbed.” “Yeah, that happens.” “I need to borrow a plane ticket back to the states, back to Nebraska.” The voice on the other end snickers, giggles, then bust out into a full blown laugh attack and Owen begins eating this crow he’s laid in front of himself. “Alright, alright. That’s enough. Cover me on this one, you know I’m good for it. I’d stay in the shit, but I need to start writing. If I stay here, I lose this book.” “Maybe the next one will be better.” “I want to write this one first. Can’t just going tossing books overboard like that. Too many good stories stand few a far between. Spot me a ticket, Dug, damnit. I’ll pay you back. Look at it this way, this will give you something to hold over me. What do you say?” “Won’t be able to do dick about it until tomorrow. Can you make it that long?” “I’ll just go wait in the airport.” “It’ll probably be United®, check there first. You owe me big, dude.” “I know, I know. Believe me, I thought about it before I called. I appreciate the shit-out-of-it, though. You’re really saving my ass here.” “I told you, you were going to crash.” “Piss off, Dug. We’ll talk about it when I get back.” “Oh yes, we’ll talk, we’ll talk,” he says beginning another snicker fit. “Right. Well, fuck right off then, talk to you in a couple days, asshole.” The snickering continues for a moment, then Dug regains his composure. “I’ll come get you at the airport. We’ll talk.” “I’ll tell you all when I see you. Owe you one. Later,” Owen says, hangs up the phone. “Well, there it is then,” he says aloud, “hauling it all in.” Donning the pack, he walks over in front of the Prado. The sun disappears again, and a fine cold mist moistens the air and everything in it, including Owen Dunum. Dropping the pack by a marble bench, he walks up to the statue of Vasquez, set in bronze smack dab in front of the museum. He sits at his easel, his wild hair waving perpetually in the ethosphere of the aesthetic. He looks mad and grand and glorious, there, painting away feverishly forever. He has been placed in the eternal state of his labor of love, painting. Owen beholds the statue, admiring Vasquez’s fireball hair and impassioned gaze, the way his hands holds the brush, the arc of his wrist, the way his feet are firmly planted on the ground in a wide base, as though braced for the shock of receiving a distant transmission — the pure image of the artist at work. Standing there in the light rain, cold, starving, exhausted, Owen beholds the image of the artist in gothic grandeur there in front of one of civilizations greatest museums, and the whole trip culminates to critical mass and explodes right then and there, and he burns. The anger rises over the rim of the lip now, spilling over into the real world. His thoughts become manifestations of hyperreality. He transcends the physical world then and there. He ascends. The ascension Owen likens to having your throat slit with a sharp razor during orgasm, but better. The realization comes upon him like a soft breeze, enters his being, then howls like a northwest gale. Vasquez painted. Vasquez lived in Spain when in fleshy form, and ‘decent society’ hated him for it, scorned him, spat on his shoes when he might have begged food and drink, called him a worthless lout, a drunkard, ‘just another worthless painter’, a wart on the face of humanity. Humanity, en masse, has acted thusly towards artists, probably since the first homo hablis stayed home from the hunt to paint stories on stone. He was probably used for bait. The social organism tends to see the artist as a virus, a cancer, a boil within the effluvium of the beast, see it as the result of mental illness, drugs, trauma, poor genetics, or environment. They always find one reason or another to despise the breed of humans who refuse to play rat race with the rest, all the while proclaiming their love and appreciation of beauty and art. And the artist works away, seeking beauty in the qualitative ideal, beaten and mocked, shunned, ostracized, slavenly driven by his passion, often crazed with inspiration, by the transmissions he finds it so difficult to block from his thinking. He creates something from his thought, and it is good. He likes what he creates, likes the feeling of the transmissions humming through his mind, and giving them form in and entirely different dimension, like Legba allowing spirits to enter the physical realm, flowing through the portal of passionate procreation. Procreation fares one of the finest portals next to divine enlightenment. In the flesh, though, a generalized passion for everything proves most efficacious for attaining immortality. Passion cultivates the immortal self. As such, passion makes most mortals highly uncomfortable. They lack the same intensity displayed by the inspired, find their intensity irregular and frightening. Gentlemen prefer bronze. They prefer bronze artists to flesh, prefer paint to blood, when it comes inspiration. Society likes the product, loathes her mediums of creation, loathes the shaman who pull these extraterrestrial creations from one dimension to another, humans who from ether create gemstones, who turn lead into gold. This ability tends to inspire both awe and terror in the masses. People, ignorant people, tend to like the idea of three dimensions. Keeps things simple. Keeps everything relative to time and space. Keeps everything more mechanical and less quantum. Keeps everything in order, keeps things in long linear rows running left to right, left to right. Or right to left and up and down in Chinese. Either way, for thousands of years humans have been cataloging and labeling, ordering, replicating, enhancing, filing, cross-referencing, rectifying, alphabetizing, random sampling, and computerizing the world and the various forces acting upon it, and damned if the race as a whole isn’t drawing close to the end of that little project, begat from Aristotle and the great gay Greek civilization, the various Chinese dynasties, ancient Babylon, Mesopotamia, all expired. Humanity might have finished earlier, if they didn’t continually destroy this compiled information over and over in the name of God, much of it doctrine speculating on the nature of god. But they always destroyed it, as in the Crusades, or the desecration of Tibet, the witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, whose presence is still felt to some degree, haunting Madrid, a toothless old ghost, but present nonetheless. And then somebody, somewhere sat down and started writing it down all over again. Just because you destroy written information, that doesn’t mean it goes away. Destroying, denying, desecrating the truth prolongs and increases the agony of the inevitable. Which is the evolution towards transcension, of course. Owen continues standing there in the rain in front of the statue, locked in the throes of vision and enlightenment one finds at the end of the line, his thoughts still manifest and cinematic in hyperreality. Mundane reality lies back a few hundred million miles or so, just a hop skip and a jump from the great hall. It’s just Vasquez and him and the rest of the Pantheon swirling together in glorious bliss. Dancing their god dance together. There is music in the air and the harmonic cacophony of the rubbing of the spheres. We’re swirling together now, all ether, and everything is fine. Omniscient bliss and torture — it all exists simultaneously. Everything exists simultaneously in the grandest state of elegance emanating from the heart of the qualitative ideal. The idea has always been this: to attain the purity ruminating in the heart of the qualitative ideal. Artists, prophets, myths, legends, sages, mystics, gods, they all tap that same source. Same damn source every time. They might color it differently, might pursue different paths, might represent the ideal in one of its many forms, yet continually you discover the one thing that makes them great: this knowledge of the arbitrary constant wherein lies the qualitative ideal. Enshrined in the greatest of all Man’s material creations: duct tape. An incarnate spends thousands of lives honing his energy, perfecting the link between spirit and source, climaxing in a brilliant blossom so bright, illuminating the physical world with such radiance rivaling the quasar, a radiance so brilliant that it takes thousands of years for it to fade. They arrive on the planet, pass through their existence tortured by the knowledge of all these worlds aswirling about them, yet find themselves encaged in binding flesh. They seek to ascend to the heights they know exist. This knowledge one finds a constant where incarnates are concerned. And for these noble and extraordinary acts of will and wont, they are promptly put to death, then touted as a god. So runs the story of many an incarnate, passing between the flesh to the bronze, and then pantheon, returning to pass through humanity every so often, often in small packs, to check on the mortal stock and see if they’ve actually learned anything. They often find the progress grossly retarded, so much so that the phrase ‘human progress’ nears the infamous realms of the oxymoronic. A running joke around the pantheon, humans. They never seem to get it right. Never seem to be able to collectively break the loop in which they finds themselves shackled. Always destroy themselves quarrelling over details. Details, in fact, loom as the great Destroyer of Humanity. Details create the woven red-tape rope with which we willingly tie the noose and hang ourselves high. This process is commonly known as building the Kingdom of God on Earth. God, however, doesn’t really have much to do with it. Nothing much at all. This world is a mortal dream. Gods don’t give a fuck about efficiency. Power is infinite! Power survives mortals and immortals alike. Humans have access to this same procreative potentiality, they just haven’t figured out how to use it yet, as a collective whole. Many prefer particularism. And you know what they say about that. Parts is parts. Owen looks away from the statue, feels strikingly numb, as though he’d just received a billion megawatt blast from out of nowhere. He is fried. Reentry begins. He falls now after soaring high enough to touch the lip of the pantheon, after sensing the blinding white magnitude brunt of omniscience. He falls to his knees, blown out. Tapped out. Wobbling back to the bench, he lay down to restart his heart and lungs, momentarily paralyzed. His breathing comes back, circulation takes a little while longer, but soon he is back in Madrid, Spain, planet Earth. The trip is over now, finally shot its load. Finally. He’d wondered how long it would hold out before it all blew to hell, and now he knew. Now, finally, he’s discovered the light at the end of the tunnel. It will always be there like this waiting for him, the bottom rung. Or the top, depending on which side you’re on. Most things seem to work that way, he thinks, dimly aware of the feeling coming back into his legs. Bolstering the energy to make it to the airport, he thinks ahead to new adventures. He is fucked up now, charred and hammered beyond recognition. There’s going to be a few years of painful healing and rebuilding, but he’ll have her up and running again, without question. The flesh fights to perform the dances called by their spirit, struggles forever to express and learn, transmit and receive. It is what we, as gods of the beasts, do best, which is to communicate simultaneously with the Universe. That’s what the idea of omniscience is all about. Omniscience creates the veil separating the mortal from the immortal. And if a human conceives of a word to describe a dimension of the all-knowing, then such a dimension exists, and is attainable, at least in rudimentary form, from within the confines of flesh. This process takes thousands of years, of course, but the final product is certainly something to behold. Sometimes, they even make a statue. Owen looks up from his reverie, sees an elderly American tourist taking a picture of him tapped out there on the marble bench. He wants to get up and dance for the man. Frolicking about him, performing for him, giving him something to take a picture of, and scaring-the-living-shit-out-of-him, since the old man seems to find him so entertaining, then he remembers his fatigue and lay there allowing the old man his picture. Just another picture of Christ on the cross, or Socrates after he drank the poison, Dionysus after being drawn and quartered — humans hold no image higher than that of tortured spirits in the flesh. Self-divined marytring always leaves them clamoring for more, either way it gets grizzly. Mutilation of the flesh, desecration of the spirit, that’s been standard operating procedure for time immemorial. Tragedy over comedy. Aggression over pacifism. Government over Anarchy. It’s high time for a little evolution revolution. And we will evolve whether we like it or not, whether we desire to run back into the cave and quiver by the fire, or face the dawning of the deities. Either way, transcension takes place. We can make it easy, or we can make it difficult. Owen’s money, what little he has left, he would put it all on the evolution being difficult. Humans like it rough. They like to get slapped around a little. Or so it would seem. Something to get their dander up. Something to make them rise beyond the bestial. Something better than beastial. Something stupendous. Something celestial. Thus you stand before the council of your peers, the critics, and the lot of them, and then, both as slowly and painfully as possible, martyr yourself before their very eyes. Gets them every time. But you can only do it once. Doesn’t really matter, though, because it’s all just showbusiness anyway. And when the crowd is the toughest it’s ever been — surly, arrogant, ignorant, ignoble, hardened and drunken and belligerent, bitter and angry and insolent, when they berate the sidewings, throwing rotting fruit and flesh, clamoring to see the greatest show on earth, it’s best to just buck up and take it . . . well, take it like a god. * * * Whip it away! Defy the dull fray! Assail and assauge for a life without age, for a spirit whose meat lies in dormant retreat in the far-fathomed depths of Atlantis. For we exist as a gang, as the yin to the yang, as an Adam and Eve to the elusive Big Bang, as a master to servants who for freedom do pang, and for the wisdom to grace them non-gratis. The master laughs and keeps them working. And they slave for these lots, these yang-balanced sots, these ignorant tots, whose absence of thoughts keeps them low in the pots, whose wealth of stupidity repletes them with trots, only knows what to be by what’s hot and what’s not, afraid to revel the secrets they plot, what they have and have not, and the pact that they signed with their mothers. In death bird nests see them lurking. For we are the trend! The servants unpenned! The incarnates ascend and with duct tape defend their rights to transcend, to the heavens befriend, brokenhearted to mend, mortal man to rescend, to the lonely god send bright white light so to lend, like a hand to a friend, like a push ‘round the bend, give them strength to decree this, THE END. * * * You’ve been in link mind for mind with station K-T-H-O-R, thundering to you live from the Hall of Valhalla. Stay tuned for Elvis, grinding all the way through the end of the century. Thanks for listening! * * * EPILOGUE LOUNGE “Did you have a nice stay in Madrid?” “Uh-huh.” “What did you do?” “I saw the Prado.” “Do you have a receipt?” “No. I saw the outside of the Prado. The statue of Vasquez, mainly.” “What else did you do?” “Stayed in a hostel.” “Do you have a receipt?” “Yes,” he says, shows her the stub. “Where did you come from?” “Amsterdam.” “Did you take a train?” “Yes.” “Do you have a receipt?” “What did you do in Amsterdam?” “Oh, well, you know, took in the local culture.” “Where did you stay?” “In a hostel.” “Do you have a receipt?” “Did you see any museums,” she asks, still trying to smile. “I rarely left the Red Light district.” “Do you have a receipt?” “They don’t give many receipts there.” “Just a moment,” she says, returns with the manager. “Hello,” he says, “Have you had a nice stay in Madrid?” “Uh-huh,” he grunts, tired and becoming irritated with the whole act of boarding a plane. “What did you do?” “Not too damn much.” “Do you have any receipts?” “These are all my receipts, right here in front of you strewn out all over the counter.” “I understand that, sir, I’m just trying to determine what you did while you were in Madrid.” “If you must know, I sat out in front of the Prado in the rain, with the pigeons. That was the extent of my stay.” “Do you have a receipt?”
In the shadowed corridors of creativity, where the flicker of neon meets the hum of a distant jazz, Kevin M. Cowan weaves his tapestry—a noir symphony of words, sound, and code. His prose whispers like the rustle of forgotten pages, each line a ghostly echo of stories untold, while his music drifts through the ether, a haunting melody that lingers in the mind's twilight. As a technologist, he navigates the digital labyrinth with a magician's touch, conjuring worlds where the mechanical and the mystical dance in a delicate pas de deux. In this chiaroscuro realm, Cowan's work stands as a testament to the beauty of shadows and the power of the unseen, a siren
Kevin M. Cowan is a writer, technologist, and artist whose work spans novels, AI development, drumming, and filmmaking. From his fiction roots in Nebraska to experimental media projects and cutting-edge AI, Kevin blends storytelling, sound, and code into one creative continuum. Explore his world — one story, rhythm, and idea at a time.
Music. Video. Visuals arts. All composed or curated by Kevin.
Neo, Archive Guide
