The snow fell in little snow cones, fluffy ones unlike any he had ever seen. They were the pancakes of holey snowflakes, the kind that you saw in memories. They layered themselves upon the earth along with rain water until they took hold and began to pile up and before he knew it the ground was white and he realized he might have to dig his car out again, another thing, just one more on his way to total financial destitution.
It didn’t matter. Just one more thing. The world was swirling up white, high and so wildly above him that there had to be some other way to think of the world than in terms of his own inevitable failure in some way that will send him off the playing field of life, and soon probably, with his head hung in shame. Boredom was the main thing he would have to continue to hold at bay, the very boredom of things that did not exist, but caused him boredom because he wished that they did: baseball games, women, restaurants, movies, bars and the ability to buy a beer inside of them. He spent five dollars the night before on a burrito because he received an extra day’s work at the shop and he figured that if you work twelve hours straight that you should be allowed a burrito now and then. Didn’t quite seem fair that you worked your life away and were not allowed to buy a burrito, which he knew was basically the way that things were.
He was stealing from himself as he ever marched in chase of that ever in front of him ten dollars per hour. He was mostly a loser in the hunt. At times he had made eleven or twelve. Once he made fourteen, but when he thought about it he was mostly under that ten dollar mark. He was one of the ever unworthy and so he would always be. He knew it now after receiving a notice in the mail by his new medicaid provided doctor that warned him that besides high blood pressure he also had high cholesterol and high blood sugar. And to think he did it all for Jesus. Hardly seemed fair.
But he didn’t really mind anymore. It didn’t really matter. Sometimes he thought it didn’t matter because he himself no longer mattered and he had to accept that just so that he could believe that the little things didn’t really matter. All of the tricks of the mind over the years had become convoluted until he could look in the mirror and see someone who even he didn’t quite believe was very worthwhile to be around. Fat, old. At least he wasn’t strikingly ugly. No friends. The only thing that he had going for him was that he could afford his room and that his car continued to work even though he now had to climb out of the passenger side window to get out since the passenger door finally broke, the last of his doors to succumb, until he was left without a single working door. Such was life. Oh well. he could climb out of the window. He looked at his calendar and counted down the time when he might be able afford to have someone look at it. One week, two weeks. Two weeks. He would have to climb out of the window for two weeks. A forty nine year old man. Oh well. It didn’t matter.
He had a feeling though that some things did matter but he didn’t know how to put a finger on it. All that mattered had something to do with others who had others. If you had nobody, absolutely nobody then nothing could ever really matter, not really, and you’ve got to think that things matter to change your situation, but you can only do that, well…it is a cycle, mattering not mattering. It gets confusing after awhile as to what is needed to change and soon only the image in the mirror is important, the memory of it, the way that you saw yourself as fat, but slightly handsome, but fat, fatter than you actually saw yourself, you knew, or were coming to know.
He was starting to realize that he was a fat man. He had always considered himself thin, had one of those strange minds that could look into a mirror and see a thin, svelt, young buck when in fact it was the total opposite. This mask was being pulled from his eyes though and he was beginning to see himself the way that other people saw him. In this way he could understand why he had no friends. He wouldn’t want to be his friend either. Too old, ugly, fat, well, not ugly, just fat and tall and old and nothing. Nothing left really to consider viable. A ten dollar per hour forty-nine year old man who climbs out of his car window wherever he goes.
He places himself out head first, bends himself at the waist and pushes out and places his hands on the ground. his feet hook on the top of the door itself and he pushes. He was pleased to know that he would not have to roll whenever he got out, that he could just put his hands on the ground and then put his feet through the window and then get out with only his hands and feet ever touching the world. Not too bad. He could do his two to three weeks. Oh well.
Outside, it was a saturday night. He had 84 dollars in the bank and in two weeks he would have to pay rent of 550. He would get paid before then and he would be able to do it. He was glad of this. He also got financial assistance, food stamps, and they saved his life. He would otherwise have to move back to the family property where he destroyed his life for Jesus and he couldn’t do that. Being in exile in a strange new eastern land of Boston was much better. He had found a copy of the New Yorker and read three quarters of an article of an artist who sold toilets for $100,000 and helped fix up the ghetto. The artist admitted that he was a hustler and he seethed when he read that because he himself was a Christian and wanted to fix up the ghetto and always thought that hustlers were what caused the ghetto to be horrible in the first place, but that he should have used that mentality to get what he wanted done.
Just the idea of being slick in order to achieve something irked him. Maybe its Robin Hood-like, but its anti- who he was. He didn’t want to be mean to save the world. He wanted to do it by being simple and simply good. Didn’t work. Everybody hated him in the end. He remembered reading a passage in a novel about a boy who was so good that a Mennonite principal fantasized about putting a meat hook through the child’s eye and dragging him through the city. This is what happens to the good. People want you gone. They can’t stand the good, the nice, the thing that Jesus wanted everybody to be.
He sat and thought about the fact that Jesus wanted him dead and was doing it by making him suffer. That was the jist of christianity. Turn the other cheek. Always be good until everybody slaps you down until you are dead. You are only a successful Christian if you have a rock for your pillow and rocks for pillows is pretty much what he got. They took him apart eventually, the property, made him remove every stick of lumber on the grounds. Sometimes he thought he had started a church, but his idea of Jesus was not like that. His idea of Jesus was one of invisibility. Jesus was spirit and spirit was good and good could change lives and putting a name on spirit and goodness in the world was wrong because some people had different cultures. All cultures should be celebrated, all respected. Even the idea that there is no good should be acknowledged and illustrated through the growth of ideas that he helped to foster at his establishment. Love was more powerful than any ideology and should not be afraid to stand up against all comers. Love can handle everything.
But the reality was that the goody goody thing made people hate him. They couldn’t stand him until his partner destroyed him and took everything away which sent him into a tailspin and he had to move away to escape sheer depression and knowledge of hopelessness. He was tired as he sat there and looked out at the pancake snowflakes falling in front of his window, tired of thinking about it, wondered when this failure thing would end, when he would just fail once and for all now that he had nothing left to give to anybody, had nobody to give the rewards to and had changed everything about himself in a land that didn’t belong to him and didn’t care about him and never would. Oh well. It didn’t really matter.
He waited for the subject to die out in his head. The perpetual crying over spilt milk. Years gone by, fifteen, done, failures everywhere and still chasing that ten dollars and failing miserably. No change. No change ever. Other people changed, grew, made money, but he didn’t. All things stayed the same on that front. Nothing ever changed. He was as he was when he was sixteen years old working at Taco Bell, back when they fried the tacos on the premises. His legs had gone out from working at a standing job too long in the summer and he had that against him too. There was no more upward projection of his hopes and dreams, only a rumination on the ever moving downward crawl. And it was a crawl. It wasn’t even a spiral. it was the slow crawl down the backside of the mountain. Just down. End of story. Oh well. He would be dead soon.
This thought frightened him. When he read about his blood sugar he feared the worst and couldn’t think of it. He liked to eat fat and sugar, basically, and stayed away from vegetables and he figured that he would eventually have to pay for this, but the poor eat this type of food to fill holes in their souls as well as their bellies. It was okay. He could start exercising and eat better if he wanted to, but he would just have to find the will, which was the hardest thing to find. The will was never there anymore. There was no will to do anything at all, but he did everything he needed to do, but why? There was no reason to know why. He didn’t care anymore about any of it. He openly admitted that everything he did, everything he aspired to was for the dollar. Was open about it to himself and he knew because of it that nothing truly mattered. He would exchange one dream for another if he could just have enough money to live without worry. He was tired of the whole game. He would never be considered special no matter what he chose to do. Any success he had wouldn’t matter, not really. He just wanted money now. Screw the fame. He didn’t need it because he knew he would never get it. Oh well.
Then one day an alien came down and took him away. He looked up and the sky was black but he was moving forward in it. Beside him was a strange beast, naked unlike anything he had ever seen before, and it was sitting in front of a console of lights like on a tv spaceship. He was inside of a ufo he knew and he didn’t really care about the fact that he might die because at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the mundane reality of chasing after ten dollars per hour anymore. The alien talked to him in a strange voice but he could tell it was english. The alien spoke english.
You are an alien species to my planet and you are going home with me. do you understand? it said.
Yes, I said….I had become the alien.
You were taken away from your world because you are a standard specimen. You are the only one taken and you will be tested upon although you will not be harmed. Do you understand?
Yes. I think so.
He thought about the idea of the tests and spoke up.
What kind of tests?
Mental tests, physical tests. you will not be bisected. You will be allowed to live and eventually we will assimilate you into our society.
Society?
We have a thriving society. My planet is outside of the range of your universe, but our atmospheres are similar, oxygen. You will need a breathing tube for awhile until we can alter your blood properly and then you will be fine.
He went silent. The universe wizzed by and he saw planets off to his right and left, or they were moons or, well, he admitted, he didn’t know what they were. The sky was mostly just black with stars around just like you could see on a clear night on earth. The beast did not speak after that but then he spoke up.
What is your planet like?
Oh, we have various things to do. We have water. Our architecture is different. We have the elements, four seasons, actually, two suns. Like I said we’re pretty advanced in a lot of ways. We have been around about four million years longer than you technologically so we’ve learned quite a bit.
Are you and us the only species?
Oh no. There are millions of inhabited planets around the multiverses. We’ve been to many of them, like I said we are very advanced. We can learn languages quite easily, an average one of us knows millions of languages so you will have no problem talking to any of us on the planet.
So you are probably pretty advanced morally too, I mean, you don’t eat people like me or anything, right?
Oh no. we’ve learned how to gather our sustenance in proper fashion. None of us are hungry as you would say.
Do you work?
Oh no, nobody works as you understand it, but we stay busy experiencing new things. This is just one of the things that I do because I want to. We can all go to other planets and I grew fond of earth long ago as a young being. I would watch the planet and its inhabitants and was fascinated with the way things are. There are many fans of earth and its people, but it is an acquired taste really. There are many more fascinating planets, but few have creatures that are as complex, how do you say, emotionally as earth creatures.
We think a lot.
Yes you do. I was always intrigued by that notion, a creature that thinks and feels deeply. I always compared that to us where we think and we feel, but we do not pine, and we do not do as you do, lament while still functioning in your society. To me it was always like hearing a somber tune and it registered to me as quite beautiful. Earth music, classical works, are some of the most treasured items to all of us. The earth is well known for its musical interludes and for this alone you will be popular. There are a few of you there, but not many. We don’t like to upset the system, but we were watching you and you were on a downward spiral and we knew that you would not mind, and besides, you’re good. I liked that.
You liked that I was good?
Yes. To me that is what matters. Someone who does not have to be bad in order to get what they want in life even if it means that they slowly wither away and die. Thats where you were headed anyway so i thought I would just step in and stop the progression. You’ll see. You’ll be thankful for what I did and maybe you’ll decide to go back. Of course you will be allowed if you choose, but, you wont want to, most likely, unless, but what I can tell, you really don’t have anybody left in your life.
No.
No.
I’m sorry. I know. You are a lonely and confused man with very few good years left before him. Well, you have been rescued. We’ll help you out. You won the lottery.
The creature made a sound like laughter and he smiled. Should he believe the creature? He hoped so. The fact was that he really didn’t much care. The creature was right. He had nothing to really live for on earth and anything was better than waiting around to die while working your fingers to the bone for ten dollars an hour. Nobody cared if he was there or not. Not really. He watched the black sky and stars move slowly by him. The creature and he sat inside of the capsule and he enjoyed the creature’s company although he did not know how to read the beast. He just sensed that the creature liked him, that he was special to the creature and it made him feel proud, proud enough to sit up in his chair and for the first time in a long time hold his chin out and turn his head in just such a way that told him that he was alive again.
I punched Townsend because I snapped. I used to be a nice guy until the government got a hold of me and I became a newshound which meant I had to start hating real bad because of the stupidity that points to various things like fascism and shit. I’m not afraid of communism. Everybody knows that’s bullshit. Liberal, though, liberal all the way, but I gave that up too when I punched Townsend. Townsend is my second cousin on my mother’s side. Fuck it, I figured. Let the world go fuck itself.
There is one thing that all these people got that are screaming this or that on the news and it’s this: they’re getting paid. Hapless shmucks like me, formerly nice guys, are not getting paid yet reacting to all of the bullshit in the newspaper. When you get paid it is much easier to dedicate your life to goodness and fairness and the American way or to convolute it. It all makes sense at the end of the day when you are sucking down that Martini and eating that pasta salad on the sidewalk restaurant in front of hobos and people walking by wondering what it would be like. To eat the linguini, I mean, to have some sort of life. It’s too expensive anymore to have much of a life.
Hell, I do alright. Park cars on Main. Shit, the kids are everywhere. Where do they get that money? They must save up or else their parents keep them suckling on the card. Whatever it is, there is definitely reason to believe that the better looking you are, the more money you’re going to get. Age? Shit, age is the only religion left. Money is a shy God that you can turn from if you really want to through various methods, some of them could be drugs or alcohol or the standard God or nature, but the worship of the young is forever.
I’m 46 years old. If I didn’t have a job on this sidewalk parking for Luigi’s I wouldn’t be allowed to look at any of these kids. You’re not allowed to make eye contact with anybody under 40 out here. With the job and all, it’s sometimes okay, with the uniform and all that, but without the uniform? Forget it. You make eye contact with someone in their 20s and they’re likely to scream. What do you want! Do you want my youth! Are you a vampire! What do you want! Why do you stare at me! Everybody stares at everybody so nobody looks at anybody anymore. Women know if you’re looking at their behind from 30 feet away. People don’t need eyes anymore. We’re all one big eyeball making sure we’re not devoured by vampires or attacked from the side by werewolves. Werewolves and vampires, all the rage at the movies right now for a reason. This is who we are or at least our fearful selves think we are. We might as well be then. What the hell? Why not?
I park a car for this broad, this tough bitch, had to be 6 feet tall, tan dress falling over these golden skinny shoulders, obviously a fashion model type. L.A. is full of them. The beautiful and the young and how can you complain? This town was built around them to feed the beauty starvation of most of the rest of the country. So this broad, I call them all broads, it’s what my father would call them if he was still alive, this broad comes out of this Mercedes with this Italian suited gentlemen and goes into Luigis and there’s this hobo, I call them hobos. Why the fuck not? This hobo he‘s walking just up the street and goes “yeeeeeee” or some shit like that. She and Valentino go into Luigi’s and I’m thinking, “what kind of asshole would yell and disrupt such beauty as that?” Sure she’s gotten everything she has by laying on her back, probably anyway, sure, she’s only skin deep, to me anyway and anybody whose poor like me, but she’s beautiful. Let beauty be for its own sake. What if we all looked like this shit hobo whose walking up the street towards me still panting from his “yeee,” his eyes all googly, drunk as shit, so I think of Townsend, how when I hit him, his eyes spun around in his head before he hit the floor.
“Dude, have you no respect?” I say to him.
He stops and leans back and forth and looks at me. He’s sizing me up. He’s one of those crazy hobos who you think might hit you if you talk to him. Didn’t have a lot of that placid “I’m done” thing about him. He says nothing. Sizes me up. I’m in a monkey suit and I’m a big motherfucker. His James Bond is leaking out of his ass as he looks at me. He could attempt a big move on account of the monkey suit, but he couldn’t get past my size.
“That lady is going to lunch,” I tell him and he stops. “Dressed up all nice and you come along and spoil her romantic date. People like you make people like that hate people like you until they want to kill you guys, wipe you off the planet, then they make laws about you guys and pretty soon the only place you got left to go is up your mama’s ass, you friggin’ prick.”
I was about to lay the guy out. He’d really pissed me off. This guy with his wild white hair that I couldn’t tell was gray or blond and just filled with dirt. Then this guy looks at me and surprises me.
“She’s pretty,” he says. He then lowers his head, realizing that I might pummel him, which I wouldn’t because I didn’t want to lose my job, then starts mumbling to himself. She’s pretty. He said it like a baby boy. Like a kid looking at a picture of his mama. She’s pretty. So, this broad held so much for this guy, so much love and joy and everything good that he yips at her and scares her half to death, makes her date think of going for his tiny, silver revolver that he probably kept in his shoe, and me want to slam him in his head with my knuckles. All because he had an impulse as innocent as a child wanting a fucking balloon. She’s pretty. And he walks away mumbling.
This is L.A., the rich and the poor, the beautiful and the ugly, the old and the young, the seen and the un-seeable, the vampires and the werewolves. This is where the dreamers come, and rightly so, because there is an industry here for them. This is where the dreamers die, too. It’s everything there is all thrown together. It’s a good thing, really, because otherwise you’re stuck in a no name shitsville town somewhere hated by people who are just like the people in L.A., no different.
Everything is all this everywhere else too, except you don’t get a chance to realize it, because things are cleaner everywhere else. Things are stuffed away a lot nicer there. Here you can see it so even guys like me, no education, full of hatred for the society for the most part, can understand and come to grips with the unfairness of it all. Having life’s ugly realities right in front of your face all the time is like having a 24 hour shrink telling you why you’re nuts. After awhile you get it and it’s not that bad anymore.
Anyway, I punched Townsend. He said to me that Sarah Palin was going to be the president and God hated fags and Muslims and Glenn Beck was a prophet and I told him that his corporate theocracy was going to fuck everybody. Then he told me not to curse, that God didn’t like it and when he realized his child was there he got a little too close and I punched him. One for the devil, I guess. I feel bad about it. I ain’t got nobody anymore. I’ve alienated everybody I’ve ever known. Got no family, got no love of any sort, sleep in a room I rent from an old lady, barely making it on my car-parking job. I used to fancy being more than this, but the newspaper sort of fucked me over. You see, I was a good kid. My mother was a good mother and my father a good father, I like to think for the most part anyway, it’s just that they were uneducated and scared. They didn’t know what to tell me and when push came to shove I didn’t have it in me to go rub shoulders with the people I needed to rub shoulders with to make it in the world. Simple as that. I was scared.
I’m rubbing my face right now in the way that you do when you’re just flabbergasted at the notion of what you’ve become. Do people do that? Do other people just rub their faces and then look up like a lizard around them and realize that they’ve missed the boat, that the God of age appropriateness has smitten them from ever making it in the realm that they fancied themselves to belong when they were a kid? I did. I just did. I rubbed my face and thought that, looked out at the street and thought that.
I came to L.A. in 1990. I was a big guy, always a big guy. Back then being a big guy was a good thing. Being 25 and a big guy can get you a job bouncing in bars or allow you to fuck scared girls, the kind who like big dogs and would eventually go on to drive big cars paid for by guys, unlike I ever became, with big wallets. Big used to be good. Now big is bad. Big is very bad, because everybody is scared. Anyway, I started selling cars back in Michigan when I was 22. I ended it when I was 25 because I always liked the movies and since I fancied myself a big seller and I read this magazine article about a money guy who secured big money for movie projects, I moved to L.A.
Shit didn’t work out. I could never get anything going. I was somehow always wrong for everything out here. Little guys didn’t appreciate the threat of terror that I could impose through my demeanor. This worked in Michigan. You stand there, puff out your chest a little bit, make sure they know you’re a tough guy who’s decided to be nice to you because you’re special, you’re their friend now, you’re their ally who’s going to put them into a nice model and beat the shit out of anybody who gets in the way of their happiness.
It’s the same way out here, but they don’t use the muscle as much. A little guy with glasses can do just as much as long as his hands are soft. It’s the other way around out here. Personality counts out here and style. You can be big, but there’s something else. It’s almost as if people can smell whether or not you come from a Brady Bunch home. If you didn’t, like I didn’t, they’re a little bit scared, but they don’t say it. They try to match your innate ferociousness with their own copy of it, but it just makes them feel uncomfortable and they don’t want to work with you. They don’t want anything to do with you. They want to work with someone who’s got what they got, or they think they got: class. Never really considered myself to have class, but that’s what they want; class and lots of it.
Oh, well. I don’t go around crying. Wasn’t as good a salesman as I thought. Tried to get some money for this guy I met at a bar once. He said he had a great film and I told him I was a producer and he said “yeah!” and he was all happy and he went on and told me about this story about this guy who rides this giraffe across the Mojave desert. I thought about that. A giraffe might be expensive, but I called around and found out that you could actually get a giraffe for a price, but you couldn’t ride it. Turns out you could ride an elephant for a price though and the writer guy changed his story to riding an elephant across the Mojave desert. It was easy and would only cost a few million to shoot. I was still under the impression that since films could go for much more than a couple million to make that getting this amount of money was something totally do-able. I was on board. We had the script. The writer would direct. He would find the cinematographer and the crew and all that and I would find the money.
Well, I looked for the money. I made phone calls and more phone calls and more phone calls. I went to a dentist’s convention because that’s how I heard some guys got started. I was happy to be an independent. I didn’t need the big studios. All I really wanted was to be one of those people who can afford to eat linguini in these patio restaurants and leave the leftovers on the bench for hobos. Didn’t work out that way. Time after time I got flat out different variations of the flat out No. Not interested. Hard times. Can’t help you. All of our money is tied up now. Can take a proposal, but can’t guarantee anything. I wrote out a long proposal. The writer wrote a nice long treatment. I took a meeting with maybe 20 people, but every time there was that something, that nameless something that ties in with vampires and werewolves and soft skin and Michigan tough. They thought I was a hack off the street, a player, and I guess I was because I had nothing, really, to back it up. I had no education, no contacts, no L.A. history. I was just another guy coming into town to play the game. They could see it in a second. I would have to play the martini game and play it well if I were to do that, but when I tried I always fell flat. I ended up sitting at the bar drinking an imported beer waiting for some shmuck to sit next to me which was perceived as a trap. Talk to me and you die. They could see me from a mile away. So I quit.
I didn’t quit right away. I kept trying. I kept the elephant story around for dumb luck’s sake, but dumb luck didn’t like me either. I took on a few more stories by luckless writers over the years all while working stupid jobs until finally I ended up parking cars in 2000 and have been ever since. A few years ago I decided that even though I killed my own dream after awhile, making believe that everybody was a piece of shit and the world was a piece a shit, I would try something new. I would try to write my own story. If I was to make it in this town I would have to do something else and what can you do at that age, 43, that didn’t take beauty or money to make you legit in the eyes of others? I thought about it. I always liked that giraffe idea, but it couldn’t get made. The thing’s back is too curved to ride. But what if you took a giraffe and made it a baby giraffe and gave it a little kid to take care of it and then the end of the world would come, a big bomb or something from bin Laden and the zoo would go crazy and this kid would find the giraffe and since everybody had left the remains of the city there would be this giraffe and this boy and they would move through the world together? I started writing about this giraffe and this boy and it made me feel good. I was doing something again. I walked a little taller day to day. I was going to make a statement about something that I’d all but lost over the years, goodness, just plain, innocent goodness and light.
The news had made me crazy over the years, although I didn’t know it then. I’d become a student of current events because it gave me a sense of purpose, but I needed something more. I started writing my giraffe story and when I was finished I put it away and started writing another. The next story was about a man who thought that he could fly, jumped out of a window, broke every bone in his body, but when he healed he found that he was perpetually lifting up off of the ground. I had him flying around the neighborhood, looking into windows, flying over New York City. Everything. It was a flying fest. He got shot with b.b. guns. They wrote articles about him. Everything. But he still couldn’t get a date. He was too weird. Then one day this one chick decides that she can accept a flying guy and they fall in love. It was a great story. I put that one away and I started another one. Number two. The next one was about a war guy who shoots up this Vietnamese village, decides that killing babies isn’t a good thing for his conscience so joins the other side and kills other guys like him, Americans, who shoot up innocent little babies. This one scared me a little bit because I thought they might come after me, what with bin Laden and all, but I wrote it anyway. I stuffed it into my drawer and felt that same pride again. Three.
After number three I took the screenplays out of my drawer and had copies made. I wrote up some good treatments on each one of them and paid this lady to correct them. After the revisions I started making phone calls and sending what they call “query letters” to agents and producers. I was back in the game. I wrote five more screenplays and got hundreds more rejections.
After awhile I realized that it wasn’t the answer and I quit. I started drinking and smoking pot. I’d sunk to the lowest I’d ever been. I started hanging out with the guys on Venice Beach on my days off. My face got darker and darker and the circles under my eyes deeper and deeper. I’d had enough. Work didn’t know about my becoming a hobo on my days off and after work. Sometimes people from work would see me out there, sitting with the gutter punks, but they also knew I was a writer because I kept up the charade. I told them I was working on some real Bukowski-type shit. There eyes would light up and they would go “oh.” That’s all I needed, that little “oh” and I could keep on drinking and keep my job.
There are guys with a lot of money who hang with these guys. They’re from the street and made it big so they like to hang because it keeps them grounded. They go home to sirloin though, not chuck. It keeps them young. I guess I was the same way. In a way, I found the only people who really understand me. Don’t get me wrong. These hippies are really no different than anybody else. They’re all age-ists. You can’t take that away from anybody. They all judge on beauty. Rank will never go away. If you talk to one of these guys today, they’ll walk past you tomorrow without a word. Nobody trusts nobody. But I took a little human companionship here where I could without expecting anything back. Like with the rest of the world, I stayed on the surface. By this time I believed that there was nothing else. I’d come to accept this shit circumstance of existence, how everybody is afraid of everybody, how everybody is a lie to everybody else and truth only happens one on one in extremely lucky circumstances; like the kid with the giraffe and the woman who loved the flying guy. I accepted it. I accepted everything and with it, I accepted my age and the fact that the only way to go is down.
I was the flash guy. I was the guy who talked a lot when I drank. I was the yip guy like I was talking about, that’s why I got so mad at that guy on the street. The yip guy’s got no boundaries and all in the name of freedom, man, freedom. Yip, yip, yip, yip! Be a vampire, let the girls rub their noses and mothers herd their children. Hey it’s all in the animal nature. We’re all zoo animals and some of us have been released to the streets. The drink did this to me. It worked out fine, too, because I worked in the day. Come four o’clock I was sipping my vodka and Gatorade on the boardwalk. This L.A. thing was working out after all. But then I punched Townsend. Why did I punch Townsend?
When we were kids, Townsend and I were friends. We played in the neighborhood together and walked to school together since our families lived practically next door to each other. Townsend was the “Timmy” of the neighborhood. He was a small kid. I was a big kid. One time this group of girls came by and surrounded Townsend and wanted to kick his ass because he was little, no other reason. They were older than him, too. He was just about to get the shit beat out of him when I came along. I stopped the beating even though these girls were tough and could have taken me. I stood up to them. They were really just pussies, as most girls are, afraid of spiders and the future and just about everything else. Human nature, man, human nature.
Me and Townsend would be taken to Tigers games by our fathers together and eat ice cream and get plastic helmets and ice cream in plastic helmets. We both got pennants for our rooms and we would spend time together playing games and just being kids together. Then we grew up. Townsend went on to become a manager at a discount store, then a regional manager and then even further up than that; a real good spot in a corporate office in Detroit. I sold cars then moved to L.A. I was the hero. When Townsend came out to L.A. we met up and then I punched him.
I’ve thought over and over about it, the reason I punched Townsend in front of his wife and kid, and can come to only one conclusion: God is dead. It just hit me as Townsend recited his game plan for the universe, starting with the United States. First God would take over with the help of the corporations. Then God would make sure that people like me never got to be me in the first place. He would take away all the alcohol and all of the sinful dreams. He would make sure that the dirty and poor were stashed carefully away out of sight so as not to disturb the dreams of those little innocent children that Jesus begged to come to him. Flowers would start to bloom. Everything would be great.
The newspaper had soaked into me. This was my only claim to adulthood, the fact that I followed the news. But the news had seeped so far down into me that I had been poisoned by it. All of the unfairness of everything based on human nature itself was mixed up like a witches brew by the perpetual insanity of what was happening in the political realm.
All I saw was a bad situation getting worse driven by people who supposedly wanted good in the world dictating to the rest of us, who loved only evil, how to live our lives. Then Townsend came along as this new philosophy was making headway and I snapped. I punched him. But it wasn’t Townsend that I punched. It was everything that I had become. It was everything that I thought that I was, but wasn’t. It was all of the realities that I had come to accept, but that had made my life darker by accepting them. I had laid claim to hard fact, embraced it just to survive. But it had made me bitter whenever I saw that hard fact was becoming harder and harder because of people who thought they were good, but were only being manipulated by the people who truly brought about hard fact; the monster corporations that just didn’t give a shit about anything but their bottom line.
So I punched him. In so doing, I punched myself. I realize this now. By punching Townsend it was revealed that I was on a suicide mission living day to day in this world of non-opportunity and bias. I was pouring gasoline on the fire by being the watchdog of a world that didn’t want to be watched. Current events gave long legs to my hidden anger about my circumstances that stretched longer and longer and finally rooted like a tree only to grow branches that were oddly dead even as they grew. Long dead branches. Long dead roots. The news was the water, Townsend was the gardener that day, and I snapped and I punched him. That left me with exactly nobody else. Nobody. I was utterly alone in this world.
So I quit the news. I quit the world. And funny, when I did, the tree immediately pulled up by its roots and fell. You know your life is fucked up when you must punch somebody to be free, but this is what happened. I owe Townsend an apology, and I think he will be back, but I owe him an apology and a thank you. Now my brain is free. It is being colored in again slowly, little veins of new color seeping into the rest of the brain that is dead gray, but at least no longer blackened. But it is happening, slowly but surely, it is happening. I am a baby again. I am new. I have regained my innocence by releasing the burdens of the world, by no longer trying to hold on to a semblance of rightness and goodness by fighting for it by reading the newspaper. Who will I become when I am filled in again? I am certain that it will be someone completely different from who I was before I punched Townsend. It will be an easier and lighter me. The hard God is dead. If there is a new God I think He will be kinder. He won’t want to be hard. In the meantime, I park cars. I got the giraffe screenplay out again the other day. I will call Townsend tomorrow. It’s been two weeks. Something just had to give.
Johnny didn’t use his words very much. Some of the other kids would get Johnny to chase him and then he’d spit a little bit and they’d have to dodge it and he’d smile and stuff, but I’d stop them after awhile because Johnny didn’t know better and he got all goofy.
Sometimes I was Johnny’s buddy. The teacher gave Johnny buddies, kids who didn’t treat him bad and would look out for him. Sometimes we’d go out on the grass and walk around or Johnny would throw the basketball through the hoop. He was pretty good at throwing underhand and made a lot of shots and stuff. Mostly Johnny was just in his special class and sometimes in class with the rest of the kids so he could act like he was a normal kid. But normal was one thing he wasn’t. He was all retarded.
My brother last year told me that Johnny pooped his pants once at school and the teacher had to clean it up. I never saw that. I don’t believe that happened. Johnny always tried really hard to do good, but sometimes he couldn’t quite do it right. Last year was the last year I was with Johnny because I went to middle school and Johnny stayed back. But I still think about Johnny a lot, especially because I used to be the biggest blabber mouth all the time growing up and Johnny didn’t say hardly anything at all. But there was one time when he spoke and I’ll never forget it because it was the day when he saved me from getting beat up by these kids who called themselves the Master Blasters of Disaster.
I wasn’t scared of anybody last year, but these kids all thought they were cool and then they all started calling themselves the Master Blasters of Disaster and they started running up behind Johnny and one by one smacking him on the back of the head like he was a retard, which he was, but wasn’t. He was Johnny. He had Down Syndrome. One day I was playing basketball when I look over and see Johnny with his shorts down around his knees and this kid squirting a squirt gun at his dingie. I ran over there so fast and first pulled up Johnny’s pants and then hit that kid square on the mouth. He thought he was tough, but he wasn’t. You’re not supposed to let Johnny do stuff like that. If he’d of taken more time to figure out how to treat Johnny that kid would have known better. Well then this kid, the next day, he comes up to me when I’m eating my snack and he says to me that he calls me out, but this time he’s got four of his friends behind him. I’m not scared of him and I tell him okay so we go out to the grass, way out far by the fence and he throws a punch and then I throw him down and I’m on top of him when all these other kids jump on top of me. I fought the best I could, but I got hit a lot and it hurt and the only thing that stopped it was when the playground teacher blew her whistle at us.
I saw those kids every day and they would say stuff to me and I would just ignore them most of the time except for when they fooled around with Johnny. Then they’d all look over at me. I knew that none of them wanted to try and take me by themselves so they’d leave him alone. I could see that they wanted to try and prove something with me. I didn’t care. I was ready when they were.
Those kids left me alone pretty much. Sometimes they’d ride by me real close on their bikes when we’d all walk home, but I never had any trouble. I was the second fastest kid in the fifth grade. They all knew who I was. At recess I just went about my ordinary business. Sometimes I was Johnny’s buddy at recess and we’d play basketball or Johnny would just sit down and dribble the ball. Johnny liked to dribble the ball until he got bored and then he just sat there staring at the ground.
I remember one time wondering what it was really like to be Johnny, so I sat down next to him and I didn’t say anything to him like I usually do. The teachers all want you to tell Johnny he’s cool and stuff all the time, but I get tired of that. I wondered, sitting there that day, what it’s really like to be Johnny, not The Cool Guy, but just Johnny. I’ve played at it a lot since then by myself, in my own mind, but I only played at it once with Johnny. It’s easy if you let your imagination run away with you. It’s like you open your mouth and let your eyes roll back in your head. It was like my body fell all loose and stuff and my tongue was sort of sticking out. Everybody plays like they’re retarded sometimes, but I did it then not to be mean but to find out what it’s like to be Johnny. I guess I thought a little bit that if I could feel what it feels like to be Johnny then Johnny would feel better being the way that he is.
So we sat there on the pavement and I looked off into the sky all spacey and stuff. Then I remember Johnny looking up at me all blank at first and then he smiled really big, like he knew what I was doing or, if he didn’t know what I was doing, he was happy that I was there or something. I don’t know. He just smiled and then went boo boo boo boo boo pizzapizzapizza. Johnny always said pizzapizzapizzapizza. He could do it over and over again. That was an easy thing to get him to stop saying because all you had to do was say “no pizza” and his eyes would light up and he’d realize that since there wasn’t no pizza around that he shouldn’t be saying pizza. Sometimes in class he’d lift his hands up and start twirling around a little bit or kicking a little bit or going “yeeaaahhh.” The assistant teacher lady would tell him to use his “inside words” which I guess was code for shut up. But he was mostly good in class. But he couldn’t speak very well. He didn’t have his words unless you really made him say them, then he’d spit and stutter them out and if he did you would have to congratulate him and it was all pretty stupid because you shouldn’t have to be congratulated just to say a stupid word.
But I did it too. Everybody did. Most of the kids were always really nice to him. It’s funny to think that someone can’t find their words. But when you think about how Johnny is, I mean, when you think about how it felt to, like, be Johnny, with your head all spinning around and your eyes all rollee pollee and stuff and your mouth open and feeling really stupid just like you’re retarded, then you kind of understand what it feels like not to have no words. When I sat on the pavement and played retarded with Johnny, he saw me and laughed at me. He didn’t need words to think something was funny. He laughs just fine. But I guess we all got to have words to make it in this life. I know it would be a lot harder for me if I couldn’t speak. They say that’s why he went poo on the playground, because he couldn’t tell the assistant teacher lady who was watching him that he had to go poo and because his brain is all rollee pollee all over the place all he could do was just go poo. So words are important. It’s just that you can’t get Johnny to say them much.
But none of that mattered much when the Master Blasters of Disaster cornered me in a vacant lot one day when I was trying to steal a pomegranate off this tree that everybody steals them off of. It was right across from the school. It was right before school started and I was walking to school when I cut through the vacant lot and climbed up the wooden fence just high enough to pull one down. Then I heard that kid Kenny yelling at me, the one I beat up, that I was stealing pomegranates. It was Kenny and Donny and those other two kids whose names I don’t know and one kid I’d never seen who was really big and I figured must go to the middle school already. But they all run up to me and I get down and drop my pomegranate and start to run, but these kids are chasing me. They’re yelling that they’re going to kick my ass and I know they mean its not them who are going to do it, but its the big kid who’s going to do it and I got real scared because he was big and I’d never seen him before and he was running faster than any of them. He was going to catch me if I didn’t run faster. I ran like I’d never ran and I was just about to get over the fence and into the school yard when I felt this hand on the hood of my coat and this big kid just pulled me backwards and I fell flat on my back.
This kid lifted me up by my hood and pushed me up against the fence and put his face right up to mine and called me a pussy. Then he pulled me down and put his knee on my chest and started smacking my head. Kenny was yelling Pussy! Pussy! at me real loud from behind the big kid. The big kid was flicking my eyebrow really hard and then he started hanging a loogie over my face. Just when he did that I heard Johnny. I guess he’d saw me and come out to see me to tell me Pizza or something. He came up and just started yelling real loud “Pussy! Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!” And he was saying it over and over and over again all crazy like. He’d never done that to any other word I’d ever heard of except Pizza and now he was doing it to this kid who was big like a house and I’m thinking this kid is going to let me go and then jump over that fence like I was about to do and beat up Johnny. Instead, all of the kids just started laughing at Johnny from the other side of the fence, including this big kid.
“Look at the retard,” the big kid said.
All the other kids started spitting and saying “pizza, pizza, pizza” at Johnny and Johnny flung up his hands. He couldn’t get that word Pussy out of his head and this big kid had me by the neck and he was all the time pushing me harder and harder into the ground. Suddenly Johnny let the word go and he walked up to me and he put his finger through the fence and rubbed my cheek with his pointing finger. That’s the finger he uses to count with in class.
“Danny,” he says. I say “good!” completely forgetting about this big kid because Johnny had never said my name before and I was happy that he was using his words. Then this big kid, and I’ll never forget this, he hawked up this loog from deep down in his stomach and he spit it right in my face. It’s not a pleasant feeling being spit at. It’s about as gross a thing that can happen to a person. As I’m blinking it away out of my eyes I hear Johnny from behind me “pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy” and then “puh!” Johnny’s spit went right over my shoulder into the face of the big kid. And it wasn’t one of his weakling Johnny spits, which was like a sissy spit, but a real loog. A real one. I turned around and yelled at Johnny. “No spitting, Johnny!” Then he spit again, but this time he just spit on himself over and over again. He was getting crazy. He was losing it. I could see that even as the big kid threw me aside and started climbing the fence to go beat up Johnny. I jumped up and grabbed the kid’s foot and tried to hold him the best that I could, but he just started kicking and he kicked me in the head and I fell down. The next thing I knew this kid was on the other side of the fence standing there looking down on Johnny who had gone back to saying pizzapizzapizzapizza.
“Run, Johnny! Run. Run to class. Go!” I screamed this through the chain link, but Johnny just smiled and then looked up at the big kid who was getting another big loogie ready to spit into Johnny’s eye.
“Run, Johnny, Run!”
“Pizza, pizza, pizza.”
The big kid spit a loog bigger than the one he spit at me into Johnny’s face and then he pushed him down. At that all the kids got scared because they thought somebody was coming. The big kid jumped back over the fence in like half a second and he kicked me in the leg as he passed me.
“Jerk!” I screamed as he ran away, but he wasn’t listening anymore. All those guys were laughing and saying “pussy, pussy, pussy.” I looked over at Johnny and he wasn’t moving. He was just sitting there on the other side of the fence with his legs crossed looking down at the ground. He was maybe mumbling a little bit. I climbed over the fence and sat down beside him. This kid had hawked an ugly loogie all over his forehead and it just sat there and dripped down over his eye.
“Johnny? Johnny?”
But Johnny wasn’t saying nothing. Eventually he looked up at me and I didn’t know if what I saw was a tear or what, but it sort of looked like a tear, but I didn’t have a chance to tell because his face changed and he said “Pussy!” and for the first time I saw something in his eyes that seemed normal. For just a half a second I knew exactly what he was talking about because he’d shown anger as he said it and then looked away, looking, I know, for that big kid who’d done us both so wrong.
“Yeah, he’s a pussy,” I said. “Cool guy, Johnny. You’re the cool guy,” I said. Then we touched thumbs like the Fonz and walked to the bathroom and washed ourselves off.
The day of the attack Grandy Blackwolf was in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Shelton in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The television was on and Grandy was underneath the kitchen sink welding a pipe that should not have been welded. After releasing the connection he would have to re-connect it, install a new faucet and then a new toilet. After that he would give an estimate on bringing water back into a long abandoned, waterless bathroom outside of their garage.
“Tom, Tom!” said Mrs. Shelton. The sound of the word made Grandy stop what he was doing, pull out from under the sink and look at what Mrs. Shelton was doing. She was watching t.v.
“Tom! They bombed the twin towers!”
Tom walked into the living room from the hallway and stared at the television set. Grandy stood up and inched over to the television set too. Smoke poured from the top floors of the World Trade Center. The three of them stared at the television set in shock as the rest of the world was doing that day. None of them knew what to say until Tom said it.
INT. DAY Close up on head of Nazi Robot 21224. VO screams and mayhem in background. VO of children being removed from mother. Voices of Nazi Robots barking commands. Furniture being toppled, etc. Title/Credits. Typed words on screen: 2014. North American Annex – Tennessee Sub-Quadrant – of The Greater German Domain. Sixty-nine years after The Great Vanquishing of the United States of America by Adolph Hitler. Screaming crescendoed. Total mayhem. CUT TO: INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Digital numbers multiply ultra fast. CUT TO: EXT.DAY Robot close up. VO mayhem. CUT TO: INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers accelerate even further, even faster. Volume meter in red. Word: “prohibited” underneath. CUT TO: INT.DAY Close up of robot. VO mayhem continues. Children being taken away. Woman Screaming. Children crying. Gunshot. Only children crying. INT. COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers suddenly stop. They stay there frozen a moment and then begin to go backwards until it is merely the alternation of the numbers 1 and 0. INT.DAY Close up of robot. Robot goes into motion amidst children crying and the commands of other robots behind him. He exits. Sunshine is on his face. He continues to move, soon leaving all sounds behind. CUT TO: EXT.DAY.ROAD Robot walks alone down road. CUT TO: INT.COMPUTER SCREEN 1 and 0 with 0 staying on longer than 1. EXT.DAY.ROAD The robot stops as he hears an approaching car. CUT TO: INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers roll again. Volume goes up. Words: 2004 BMW sl44 model, registrant Cara Anderson, Millsville, Tennessee, sub-quadrant, 20, two brothers, Layne, 23, Michael, 26, mother, Tiffany, 49,Father, Gabriel,51, single, Junior Class, Goebbels Institute of Mass Communication, Art and Design. 2016. CUT TO: EXT.DAY Close up as he stands there. INT. COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers replace words. A brief coordinate outline of car and then the word: Disable. INT.DAY.CAR Cara’s car suddenly goes dead. At first she is perplexed, but when she pulls over the robot is standing there. CARA (Groaning) Oh,God. Cara gets out of her car. The robot stands there. CARA Well? No response. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers pick up speed and roll at calm pace. EXT.DAY.AT CAR CARA Well? You obviously need my help. Aren’t you going to get in? No movement by robot. CARA Look, I mean, look at it this way, sir, I’m not going anywhere unless you get into my car and let me take you where you need to go. Are you in trouble? No movement by robot. CARA You wouldn’t have disabled my car if you didn’t need my help…sir…and by law I must take you anywhere you want to go. So, where do you want to go? INT. COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers rolling fast again. Volume control. Audio replay is in red. Arrest number ac5563876245axs, Janet Miller, 30, deceased, bullet, NR63869 induced fatal capture, children received for re-education, Terry, 8, Jason, 6, Tia, 3. Eighth infraction from quota. 3:23 p.m., Tuesday… EXT. DAY.AT CAR CARA Well? INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Words suddenly replaced by fast numbers. Then numbers slow down, stop, and then begin to go backwards until, once again, they alternate between one and zero. EXT.DAY NR21224 gets into car. INT. CAR. DAY They sit there. Cara looks at him like she is waiting for him to turn the car back on and then tries the ignition. The car starts and they pull out. EXT.DAY.ROAD Car pulling away. INT.DAY.CAR Silence. NR21224 faces road. Cara is young and curious and keeps looking over at him. CARA I’ve never really driven before with a Nazi Robot, I mean, are you guys all as…diligent as some people say you are? Oh, I should just shut up. Silence. I mean aren’t you going to even tell me where you want to go? I mean, okay, please, sir, where may I deliver you this fine sunny day? No response. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Nothing but the slow alternating 1 and 0. INT.CAR.DAY CARA I don’t get it. Why won’t you answer me? If there is one thing I know about NR systems it’s that they are very good at speaking up when it comes to commands. Are you broken? No response. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN The 1 and 0 slows until it is just the 0. INT.DAY.CAR CARA Oh, my God. You’re broken. Cara laughs. Well, then, this an odd turn in the proverbial road of life, isn’t it? What should I do with you? Should I just drop you off with the Gestapo somewhere? You’re supposed to tell me, you know. I could get in trouble here. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN The numbers begin to roll fast again. The word “Drive” appears. INT.DAY.CAR NR21224 Drive. CARA Drive. Okay. Drive. We keep doing that then. Sounds good. Drive. Silence. So, that was some Blood Flag Festival,huh? Do they let you guys go to that? I probably shouldn’t tell you this but I think I had a couple too many celebratory steins if you know what I mean. You got to stop and smell the roses, right? No, I guess you wouldn’t know what I mean. Silence. Do you like music? She turns on radio. Dance beat plays. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers spike. Volume goes into red. Words: Accelerated beat. Forbidden. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 quickly grabs her wrist and holds it. CARA Ow. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN. Numbers shoot all the way down to zero. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 let’s go of her wrist. She turns off radio. CARA You’re not going to re-educate me for that are you? INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Just 0. The word “No” appears. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 No. CARA No? You just witnessed a foul and you say you are going to do nothing? Oh my God, you are broken. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Still just 0. INT.CAR.DAY CARA I always wondered why all the Nazi Robots aren’t given eyesight. You’re like bats in the dark, but, I guess you really wouldn’t know this, but you know people by their faces more than anything. I don’t have a face to you, but you know I exist. I always thought that was a little weird. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers pick up speed. A few computer co-ordinate images appear. The car, numbers, a girl’s co-ordinate outline, numbers, a computer co-ordinate flower outline,numbers, a computer co-ordinate sun outline,numbers, then the girl outline again, numbers. Then the words: flower, sunshine, odd pets. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 Flower. Sunshine. Odd pets. CARA (Laughs) Where did that come from? You’re my favorite Nazi Robot. INT. COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers roll calmly between one and ten. INT.CAR.DAY CARA I mean why didn’t they give you guys any video capabilities? INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers spike again. In one corner of screen is a new meter with a high number on it. Underneath are the words Video Code Protocol 7956jlm-4226- Emergency Activation Sequence. The other numbers continue to rise with great speed. They then slow down to a stop. They then begin to fall. The words: Highway 9-3 – Road Marked Fuhrer’s Peak. Go now. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 Highway 9-3. – Road Marked “Fuhrer’s Peak.” Go now. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Video protocol number stays static. Main number goes down until it is once again 1 alternating with 0. After a moment the video protocol number begins to count down. INT.CAR.DAY CARA Fuhrer’s Peak? You’re not going to kill me are you because I don’t think local Nazi Robots are programmed to do that unless you’ve done something really, really bad? INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers continue to alternate between 1 and 0. Underneath are the words: Flower, Sunshine, Odd Pets. The video countdown continues. INT.CAR.DAY NR21224 Flower, Sunshine, Odd Pets. CARA Good. Here we go then to see or whatever some flowers, sunshine and maybe an odd pet at Fuhrer’s Peak. I was going to get my hair done for the Perfection Rally, but you can’t beat Sunshine, Flowers and Odd Pets. CUT TO: EXT.DAY.CAR Car drives up mountain. CARA (VO) How about a little music? I’ve got just the thing for you. Symphony by Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer. They continue up the mountain, finally making it to Fuhrer’s Peak. They get out of the car and look out over the world. It is beautiful. CARA If you could only see this. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Just 1 and 0. Countdown continues. Word: Flower. EXT. DAY.MOUNTAIN NR21224 Flower. CARA You want a flower? Yeah, sure, I can find you a flower. She runs off and picks a flower and brings it back. NR21224 Place on external receptor. CARA Huh? NR21224 Forehead. She places flower against his forehead. INT. COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers spike. Quick coordinate image of flower. Corner countdown. EXT.DAY.MOUNTAIN Cara removes flower from his sensor and smells it. She smiles at him. NR21224 Sunshine. CARA Haha! Sunshine! You’re actually commanding me to bring you sunshine! It’s all around you! It’s in the air! You can’t feel it because you don’t feel but it is here. If you could feel you would know. Sunshine is everywhere and it is one of the things that make people very happy. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Alternating 1 and 0 turn into just 0. Countdown continues. EXT.DAY.MOUNTAIN NR21224 extends arms. Raises palms then puts them back down and lowers arms. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN 1 and 0 again. Countdown in corner. Quick coordinate outline of girl. Words: odd pets. EXT.DAY. MOUNTAIN NR21224 Odd pets. CARA There are no odd pets around here. There might be a squirrel or raccoon or something but they’re not really pets. You can’t pet them. You know, touch them, feel them. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Just number 0. EXT.DAY.MOUNTAIN CARA You can’t feel them because you can’t feel. So sad. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Just 0 and countdown. EXT.DAY.MOUNTAIN CARA Come here. She goes to him. Faces him. Touches his sleeves. Gets on her tippy toes and kisses him on the forehead sensor. INT.COMPUTER SCREEN Numbers spike at fast pace when suddenly the countdown ends and the words: emergency video activation enabled. EXT.DAY.MOUNTAIN Through a fuzzy fish eyed type of lens we see Cara’s face moving back from NR21224 the moment after the kiss. She holds the flower and wears a peaceful, loving smile. NR21224 moves forward. Cara stops him briefly. CARA Where are you going? NR21224 walks past her. CARA What are you doing? NR21224 keeps walking in the direction of the cliff’s edge. CARA What are you doing? He moves determinedly forward. CARA No.No! He moves to edge and looks back at Cara through the fish eye. No sound. CARA (Soundlessly) Don’t. There’s hope for you. I care about you. NR21224 steps off of the cliff and terminates himself. Cara falls to her knees, picks the petals off the flower and cries. CUT TO: BLACK
Modern man/woman is in a predicament unlike they’ve ever been in before. I refuse to call this the “travails of the information age” because before technological advances made information as readily available as watching the evening sunset, there was still the fact of the over-abundance of image in need of processing and this feat has been no small one by any means.
What I mean by being in an altogether new predicament comes from my belief that not only are we being given information, but the competitive human spirit is tying the assimilation of that information into our economic well-being. The onslaught of the computer age has left most people grateful, and yet perplexed, as to not only how to use its machines but what the meaning of these machines is.
There is no easy answer to this quandary. Man has given himself a mechanical brain, a brain that disseminates information, if not in the same way, then in a way that mimics it. This predicament, some would say, is no predicament, but a joy, a way to make it so that our own brains do not need to work harder than it has to.
Unfortunately, our brains are also our minds and our minds continually seek, but irrationally. It does not seek to know like a computer, but to feel, to experience.
The artist is an example of both the victim and victor over the chronological mindset of computers and the almost virile power that this heightened mechanical process can inject into the previously virgin soul.
We are supple beings. We meld into the latest thing as if we were born ready to fall into its arms even if when we were born it had not yet existed. The utilitarian power of computers is undeniable, but can we really ask ourselves to strive towards a purely rational mode of thought when perhaps the creators of this world, its leaders, mentors, sages were among some of the most psychedelic of minds?
Can we ask the two worlds to merge in Peoria?
But the worlds are merging. We are becoming softened to the realities and being given a chance to say either “yes” or “no” to them via the images of internet and t.v. We have given ourselves over to the wiser powers. Those of us who want money or prestige attempt to break into the inside circle of software-creating hives where they will be accepted by a fearless leader whose original vision came anywhere and everywhere but from a computer.
In a way we accept the “trips” that others have taken at the expense of taking our own. Timothy Leary understood the nature of computers, saying in essence that it is the new high for the coming millennium.
But there is something false in it. Just as a word cannot be what it connotes, we, too, cannot be where we “go.” In fact, we go nowhere except into our own minds.
True, the computer we use is our tool, where images are given to us and we grasp or duck them. The accepted images cling to us like burrs to our socks. The dreaded ones pass on only to be accepted by somebody else. When we are thus so well fed then how can we turn away from our feeder, the giver, the mother?
There is no straight line walked simply in this world unless it is away from something. That which we accept needs be taken deeply into the soul.
A Buddhist, when he sits, often does so facing a blank wall. A modern man needs the pictures. The artist needs the rounding out of the pictures in a search for meaning or structure.
The philosopher needs to turn off the screen.
I use a computer to write. I have a screenplay writing program, a graphic-design program and I have been an avid user of e-mail. This is not about using the computer. I’ve watched children stare in amazement at educational programs. I do not want to rid the world of a scourge which is not a scourge.
My aim is to perhaps make one person who needs to, consider the nature of their modern existence. Perhaps my first concern is only for myself. When my faculties of discernment become too thinned and I insist on placing more and more food on my plate as if to devour all of the food in the world in the shortest amount of time will make me healthy, happy, wise and strong, then I am fooling myself.
The mis-education in our society is not that we learn too little, but that we learn too much. We don’t take the time to sift through what we’ve already got and allow the natural connections to unfold in a manner that we may see.
I don’t blame our educational system per se, for we only want what everybody else wants, teachers included, that is, to give to children the necessary tools that they need to live productive and happy lives.
But there are too many accidents. Too many deaths. Too much violence. Too little acceptance for difference. Too much hate stemming from too much pain. There is no one panacea for our societal ills. There is no one answer. We are ill-equipped to ask the proper questions whenever two or more are gathered. One mind believes in reality as such and the other believes in a different world. All that we can ask is that “we get along” as Rodney King so poetically and simply stated it.
We need to unplug our worlds at times and ironically enough, after we do, we then need to plug back in and take a few more strides towards the ever flowing stream of technology, political kindness which some would perhaps call an oxymoron and the rosebud, never to be picked mind you, of an infant dream where morality is as the whirlpool and our greatest feat is not to dive, but to hold sacred without knowing fully or even expecting to in this life, its answer blurred yet glistening like a diamond in a stream.
Before the night fell the grasses swayed. All life was somber and still. A cricket bleeted alone as crickets always do, this one, too early to sing, waiting for night as the orange sun disappeared behind the mountain.
The water of the lake was smooth, not a ripple, grasses grew out of there too. Tall grasses sticking up like trees with thick stems and the brown, very brown, dark brown almost browner than the trunks of the trees on the shore stalks, as I said, stood perfectly still.
What happens when the stopping begins. Eyes wide open we seek movement. The poets always sing of themselves in the whisps of winds and sways of leaves, but when selves disappear the remaining former proof lives on, soulless, unknowing, lost.
Too much silence can kill a man says huxley. But huxley doesn’t know anything. He cuts corn down when seasons of corn cutting come. He rushes out to strip the land and comes home a richer man for a season, the good season, in between the times of waiting and loneliness.
The poets are always looking for friends in nature. Somehow they know how to relate. Sunshine becomes God and moon the almighty mother. Loneliness doesn’t grip them. They don’t need the flesh and blood of their soul sisters or their brothers. We all fall down.
And stories, expanding in underwater silence, our talents bubbles bursting upon the water’s skin. If we could tell our stories, let our stories come up and be as real to each other as they are to our all too often unknowing selves, then we could breathe.
But breath is but another dream, another wasted thought to the drowning man, his story and his being watching the round orb of the sun blur and decrease. Eyes on deck. Keep watching says you, but the poet knows that even the underworld is there for him to relate to. Even then.
There is no choice but to do what you want to do. They’re always saying to do what you love, but then people always wonder. They think maybe they should do what they love while they’re doing what they have to do. I can see their point.
It ain’t easy to become Scorsese if you ain’t Scorsese; if you’re a filmmaker. You’ve got to pay your dues. Why? Because you’ve got no choice. The world is as it is and to change it for your desire to have life work out for you and everybody else does not change the fact of what is. As they say: as so it is, so as so it is, as so it is so, so it is as it is so.
In effect, if you do what you want to do it will be better than doing what you don’t want to do because you will have to do what you want to do eventually anyway and it might as well be now.
That’s why you should become a big fish. The small fish will gobble you up one snip at a time. Till you fall to the bottom upside down staring at the room of Timmy.
You have better things to do than give your life over to nonsense when you could be giving your life over to sense if that sense includes your ability to have the wherewithal to take the most minimal of jobs within your industry.
The next Scorsese would never do that, yeah, well, you know, need I again say it? Christ. You’re not Scorsese!
And once again, plopped down into helplessness. I don’t even remember the subject matter at hand.
Writing is a very strange endeavor. In fact, society now tells me, although I had come to believe completely the other way, that writing or talking to yourself actually means that you are not three cracks shy of a fiddlestick as opposed to being the manager of the last McDonalds on the moon. So, in the interest of mental health, I will choose to write what I am thinking even though I am thinking what I’m thinking already. So, I do it for you, don’t I? Well, not necessarily for you. I’m sure if I were to do this it would be for me as well but it is meaningless to me if you aren’t involved in the process and I don’t even know you.
It must have to do with my ego, my desire to write. I need to believe that I am worthy in your eyes through my words. But that is nonsensical. Everybody thinks. Is one person’s thought any greater than another person’s thought? I suppose it is when it deals in morality. If your thought makes my life difficult and my thoughts do not make your life difficult then my thoughts could be said to be better than yours. More important. Well, what if what you need is to have a difficult life though? In other words, I could challenge you with my words as well so I could make you uncomfortable with my words. That can be a good thing because I am actually trying to help you. But if I harm you with my words then I am correct in stating that my words would, in that case, be worse than your words, unless you were trying to harm me too. A word can be a weapon or word can come in and save the day without lifting a finger.
But we hate words, don’t we? We get sick of them. Everybody is blabbing. The Internet is blab central. There is so much noise in the world today that a little patch of silence can go a long way in the sanity of a human being. Words are being used all the time by so many different types of people. It’s just too much isn’t it? Apparently not.
A word is an ambassador for the soul. We don’t know what the soul is but we have an idea. It is somewhere way down deep like inner space, a place that if we got to, we would be inside of in the same way we would be inside of a cathedral. Words we use like underwater rescue balloons. We hatch one and then we hold on as it takes us to the top, into hospitable air we live. Pop. After the words have provided sustenance, the ability to live more peacefully in this world, we begin the float back down again, only to rise back up. But it’s never-ending, isn’t it, the need to rise again and again through words.
Words words words words words. You can live inside of a word. Entire novels have been written by a writer having glanced inside of a stranger’s window. There are worlds inside of words, even individual words. Try this one out for size: rappel. Once again, the notion of going deep, rappelling into the soul, discovering new things there, seeing different color shades, sunsets, orange blue skies on fire. A world that does not exist except in your imagination. Dog. A breathing, furry friend whose notion of you is like your notion of God in a lot of ways or a father or a mother. A dog is God to God’s dog. Wait. That doesn’t make sense! But we try, don’t we? Even if it means we’ve become bad poets and bad philosophers, we keep trying.
We keep putting the words together because without the words we almost feel as though there is no journey. We all want to go on a journey. Why? Because of the stories, because of the images that will produce words in the future. Not that we’re after the words but we’re after the experience that the words can help us to remember, moments of utmost life, thrilling living, love if you’re lucky.
Our memories are good and bad. Sometimes all we want to do is just escape the words that arise from memories and other times we want nothing more than to keep the flow going; love, beauty, music, poetry. Regret, loss, last chances, gone people forever. It is a mixture of good and bad always for each of us.
As children we grow up believing that to know the dark edges of existence is important for survival. Writers, the creators of words, are especially haunted by this idea that they’re husked mollusks in a world too rough. They have to experience and know and not be afraid of the dark. To do this they direct their eyes towards the night where ugly things squirm and lose control and threaten you. To stare down evil is an admission that you have integrated good inside of you sufficiently, for everybody knows that good can destroy evil. Of course, sometimes it’s the other way around too. Hence the motive of the daredevil to stare down evil death.
So, underneath the laying down of word after word after word is fear too. The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung perhaps would have called it the shadow, the other side of our personality that we are enthralled with, to some degree, because we know that it is controlling us. Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But that evil that you see is not you. It is the fear of the opposite of you, and as a human being you are aware that if you were not capable of being the opposite of you, in other words, a beast, if need be, then you can die. The world can scoop you up and dump you right in the garbage dump.
You don’t want that. Nobody wants to be dumped in the garbage dump of life. No, we all want to run free and fly and climb and speak and dream and then we want to do it again and again and again. Then we grow up. Sadly.
When we grow up that’s when we feel fear for the first time. It doesn’t come right away, hopefully, although for some people it does very early. Usually when you feel the fear, you’re well advanced into adulthood. Something horrible happens to you, something odd and off color and stilted and real, usually at the hands of a criminal or an act of God that can come in the form of death of those around you, can come in the form of becoming prey for the first time.
A sign that you’ve seen and experienced this adult fear, using a clinical term, is when you have post-traumatic stress disorder; PTSD. The brain races where the mind needs just a few words. Now the mind has millions of words and they rush through you like a firehose so that when that flow hits you it comes through your body and it lifts you up off of your perch, you pace across the room, you can’t sleep, you get down on your knees and you pray, you try to meditate, to get it away from you.
And so, we arrive back at why we use words in the first place; partly to alleviate fear, to help ourselves get through the fear, a fear so great that it should not be allowed into the soul of man. Humans should not be allowed to see the darkest, most evil aspects of their fellow man, but some of us become monsters and we can’t avoid all the monsters all the time. Sometimes it’s our turn to see the monster.
But those monstrous fears producing monstrous words in our heads, often the result of monstrous people doing monstrous things, once we are safe, have no more power over us. With time we can bring ourself back to a slow doable pace again inside of our minds and the words can rise again and we can relish them again. We can smile at the word dog we can dream again at the idea of rappelling into a new world.
We shall overcome with time and with the proper words due to a conquering of our fears, only after our suffering of course. So, words aren’t there for me to impress you. They’re there for you to impress yourself with when I give them to you, when I place them into your soul from my perch way up here.
And maybe just maybe you will hear me and if my words are good then they can be fruitful for you and I can know that I am doing something good for somebody today. I, perhaps, helped to lift them up from the bottom of the ocean as your spirit was sinking. That seems to be even better than just writing for my ego. I’d much rather do it to help save your life. But you have to promise to do the same for me and you can do that by living a good life and if so, may chance bring our lives to meet.
The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite 