The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

Skid row poor. Beat down. Nothing but. Black. Wandering some, purple power. Lost souls. Of course you’d say that. Wanna know the real world? Can’t get away from it. Have to talk about it. Nobody wants to know the real world. It’s all bullshit. And you’re there whether you want to be or not.
In our world we see nothing but chain stores, fancy shops, people who did good, young people who walk down the street oblivious to us. The walls are harder for us. There’s much less hope. We see everything but there isn’t any beauty in it. We catch highs where we can because we know the Christian right would kill us either way with their chewing tobacco, their church going blondes and good jobs where they make upwards of 20 dollars an hour or more. We know all this as we ride our bikes or walk down the street or look for something to eat. Some of us have money. Some of us don’t.
I’m talking about the socio-economic class of nothingville, where the older guys sit around and think they’re involved, but they’re pushed aside because they’re too old to make new. We know what’s going down. How everything is based around sex and beauty. You see a young average looking guy walking with a beautiful blonde and you know he’s a lawyer and you understand something about the world in that everything fits together. Money and blondes and their kids and the way they think it’s supposed to be and the way that it is and how they’re walking on tightropes and dare not fall off. And all the girls rub their noses when you walk by. You don’t know why really except you’re ugly and dirty. It’s a natural reaction, but you get sick of seeing them always referring to snot whenever you’re around.
When you were younger and more innocent they used to lick their lips when they saw you. They couldn’t help it. Now they rub their noses and they can’t help that either. Did the world change or did you? You think about this all the time. You figure it’s you then you know it’s you and eventually you drop out completely, stop looking into the doors of the bars and clubs because you know that the girls want someone who doesn’t stink and if there’s anything that you do it’s stink. You stink to high heaven as they say.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. You used to have a talent and you used to believe that there was something in the world for you because you had a talent, but that talent fell away when you saw that the people that the talent is for were fickle and meaningless and you’d wander away and pretty soon you didn’t care anymore. Without an audience there was no reason to have a talent. To have a talent for money was just as meaningless as having a talent for the people who just didn’t care. After awhile you stopped caring yourself. Stopped taking care of yourself until you walk down the street and it’s obvious, everybody knows, and the girls rub their noses. The girls rub their noses.
Thought never ends. This is something you realize from your philosophical days before you realized that Camus was right that the only legitimate philosophical question was whether or not to kill yourself. Nothing matters out here. The world is pitted inside of a corporate monster. Architecture is the same. It’s purpose regimented and intact. There is no store-keeper, there is no love for you or anybody outside of money, but you don’t have that. There is no love. The world is a piece of shit and that’s as un-poetically truthful as you can get. You can’t gloss that up.
People live with their institutions and glass walls and revenue streams while you live outside of it all. You’re not clean enough to join them and the something inside of you that won’t mend won’t allow you to fill out a resume anyway. You know you would quit after a short while because you would feel like a slave and this form of meaninglessness is even more meaningless than simply walking around and seeing these places that provide jobs. You’re not a slave. You don’t have money, but at least you are you and it is it, but the hunger and fear and bullshit of not having a job hurts and after awhile wears you down, but you still can’t go to the other side. It’s hell there.
Hate. Hate of yourself for every mistake you ever made, for every bridge you ever burned. Hate. Pure un-adulturated hate. The eyes fall numb forward in the eye socket, not wanting to close, hating being open, but you got sleep last night so you’re awake. Doesn’t matter. Better to be asleep. Don’t have to be here if you’re asleep. Drugs are the only salvation for you in the city. Drugs lost s of drugs. As many drugs as possible. Because it steals the time before you have to die. It’s much grander than a 9 to 5. Drugs take the bite out of this American wasteland. It teaches you that you have an essence worthy of an emotion, even if the emotion is fake. You’ve got memory and you’ve got a little bit of hope when you’re on drugs because your mind takes you to places that you wouldn’t go otherwise. It at least takes you out of your depression or makes you forget about it.
Everybody is on drugs in the big, big city. What the fuck do they expect? These Kentucky Fried Chicken corporate lords in St. Louis, Missouri or Chicago, Illinois or New York City sucking down their ten dollar martinis and chomping on their 50 dollar steaks as they think about who they’re going to fuck next or how their kids are doing. We don’t have kids around here. We are the kids. It doesn’t matter how old you are. If you are around here, of us, you are a kid. You were left out of adulthood. It just passed you by and you are a kid. Now, kids can be ignored. The Christian right does a good job of that. They do their tough love on the kids and they don’t even know them personally. It’s all a scam for Jesus freaks to have more 50 dollar steaks and more kids.
You see them in the glass windows eating two together, sometimes three or four. They’re fashion conscious, they’re even liberal, want to see good come of the world, but they’re ordering those Tom Collins’s anyway and that special dish they heard about then they’re going to their little art functions and eat cheese and wine and then back to their lofts and watch television and maybe make love or read or do something intellectual.
But the kids aren’t. They’re left to their own devices to die if need be. To be the representatives of the darker corners of society and everybody lets them, just watches them go. It’s ingrained in the society. It’s ingrained in the churches who blame and blame and blame so they won’t have to care. These churchies who backed lil’ Hitler in Washington because, and they won’t tell you this, they make shitloads more money through him than they do through more Christian like democratic candidates. Money trumps the real Jesus every time. Shit. There is no meaning when Christians aren’t even Christians. Then it’s ludicrous. They should go to churches that worship money instead of using this guy who was hung on a cross to do their business for them. It’s hypocritical and ultimately evil. If I were Jesus and I was with God I would be doing a lot of spitting out of my mouth with these “Christians.” It’s stupid how evil they are, how self-deceiving. I wonder if there are any real Christians out there. Maybe one or two, but I haven’t met them.
But smile! Everybody smile because if you don’t they’ll shoot you, at least lock you up. Try not to smile too much when you’re on drugs or a yuppie fuck will come after you and stick his nightstick up your ass. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…
Whatever happened to witnessing? There’s a question for you. They know they won’t make it very far with their modern philosophy of Jesus, the modern American Jesus who will kill you if you look at Him funny. I don’t like this Jesus, in fact, I think that this Jesus is the Devil in disguise. Isn’t that odd, how the devil can impersonate Jesus? But he does.
All things are turned around for me. Jesus is evil. Everything is weird. You’ve dropped everything that you had. All hope is gone and you realize you did it out of anger. You said enough things unthinkingly that you will never be able to return to an older part of your life ever again. The words were too strong, the impression made too great. Friends that fell away will never return and you know you can’t make new friends because you no longer care. Even words. I gotta go…