"Jesus, I gotta take a piss."
I insisted on stumbling down the hall on my own. It was all a blur because of the shock, the trauma, the morphine and not being able to wear my glasses since my head was all bundled up, my ear sewn back to my head.
They wanted to help me, but I insisted on going in the bathroom by myself.
It was not easy, by I managed to pee, weaving and wavering. And then suddenly, my consciousness was obliterated by an incredibly intense flash of light. It was as if I had been struck by lightning.
Dang...I thought....I've been saved.
But as I flushed the toilet I made out a blurry object in the toilet bowl. WTF? Is it a turd? A turd with a string tied to it?
As I had blumbered about I had knocked something off of the bathroom sink counter. A curling iron fell into the toilet as I pissed. It was plugged in.
When I emerged from the bathroom, my eyes ablaze with intensity, they cried, "Oh look....look! He has seen the light!"
When they asked me, had I...had I seen the light? I simply said yes to get them off my back and wondered how I would deal with that erection that smelled like burnt hair and if I would figure that out before or after I knew who and where I was.
***
Sometimes I think it hardly matters what we believe, other times I
believe it barely matters what we think. It's like an old friend who'd
been pressing faith said to me, restraining his anger, when I said it
would be more honest to go to the slaughter house on Sunday than church
"well what DO you believe in, man!" Why do I have to believe anything, and if so why must I proclaim whatever that might be? Isn't it all just a stale pretzel of salty denial burning away in our childish tummies, either way?
I can believe you without believing what you believe and you could save my life without my ever knowing your name for the mystery often ends where the definitions begin.
***
I once new a man who was in love with this beautiful woman. He could not stop talking about her, he could not stop thinking about her. It was hard to be around him except for the rare moments when he realized how ridiculous he had allowed himself to become. He tried everything he could think of to win her affections. Gifts, wonderful words, supremely organized suprise parties, a well modulated display of devotion even though she had cycled through two or three romances while he remained obsessed with her. Then I went away and travelled and did not see this man for quite some time. One day in a waiting area of LAX I we spotted each other. We caught up on our lives and actually had enough time to remenis . I asked him about the woman, how she was, if anything ever happened between them. "No," he said, "one night I had a dream that I asked her to marry me and she said no and laughed in my face. In a rage I took her throat in my hands and strangled her. When I awoke I was horrified. It felt so real I was sweating and shaking. It was then I realized my so called love was just a dream." He laughed a bit, shaking his head, "in fact," he added "I've come to the conclusion that this whole shooting match is just a dream."
His flight boarding gate called.
We shook hands and embraced like brothers that seldom parted.
I have not heard from him since.
***
Scream me the change unimagined in the fire of revolt. Let the poor and the bourgeois lock arms in an unstoppable rush of the castles. Scream what Kafka said so long ago “the world order is based upon a lie.” Let the fury of the masses rise in a flood to drown out the vile clowns of propaganda and let the politicians, bankers and kings, bow down before our feet and beg us for mercy as we instruct them on how to reorganize society and save some small piece of what we now call life for our progeny - for if we don't, in two generations there will be nothing left to breathe but fire.
***
Mozart, I think it was, said shitting and believing were two very
different things. A quote I am reminded of quite often. Somewhere in
the trajectory from Parmenedes to Badiou something is lost in
translation. Spiritual & intellectual flatulence have evolved to the
point where opinion exculpates explication with such routine precision
that one can shit to it in standards weight & measures as well as 3
decimal digital time pieces. And yes, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde all
these opinions are just somebody else's ideas anyway, so why care we?
Raw fish covered in chocolate smeared on our death masks to a soundtrak
of La Traviatta backwards. But are you so devout that if the devil
himself thrust an upside down toilet plunger in your face, one from the
dirtiest bar in Scotland, and filled in with the blood of Christ - could
you drink it? And could you do it while Helen of Troy dropped her robes
and threw herself at your feet begging you not to? And what does Job
say at the end of it all, the worst day in his life, when he goes into
the crapper and there is no toilet paper? Is it perhaps like that mad
Frenchman said (ah, which one, you murmer, there are so many...) yes,
yes...I believe it was Cocteau, how did he put it? something like...if
there is a god I imagine him having a childlike omnipotence wherein he
places a chameleon on a plaid fabric just for shits and giggles. The
sorrowful and the joyful mysteries together or dissolved can elevate or
cramp the center of one's star. What wish would god grant you in a form
of unimaginable shape? That ancient indecipherable echo in your dreams.
Angels falling in black fluttering droves to hell. Uriel falling asleep
on the moon. How long can we be watched before the universe explodes
from boredom and our stench gets us banished to another dimension?
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