Friday, February 16, 2024

Dying Of The Lies

Oh, the sins of a lonely soul.

I agreed to go to church with my friend because I had nowhere else to go and did not want anyone to know that.

The sermon was titled "Lonely Is The Liar" and all sorts of things went through my head, as if it were directed at me. Is this why I was invited?

I drastically wanted to get up and walk out but that would have been social suicide. But to my final regret it was just the opposite...

After the service of a thousand years I was finally free. My friend said we could go out the back way and avoid meeting the priest. Was my friend ashamed of me? Or was my friend ashamed for inviting me under false pretenses? Lonely is the liar.

Either way I did want out with as little exposure as possible.

We descended through the basement where the church artifacts are kept. It was like a huge labyrinth of crisscrossing stairways and light was sparse. I felt we'd stepped back into medieval times

I blindly followed my friend but we soon got lost. We heard a rustling noise down the end of one of the countless hallways to find a doorway with a privacy ribbon across it.

It was the priest's quarters! He was masturbating in the bathroom. So we frantically turned our back on that way out.

It's holy when he does it!

Places after that got mustier and dustier. There were a bunch of old robes laying about on a stairway leading up. My friend felt sure that was the way but I was exhausted and decided to stay back for a bit.

I never saw my friend again. No trace anywhere, as if fallen into an abyss. Now what??

I remembered Rambo stuck in a cave using a torch to detect air flowing out. I gathered the old robes and wrapped them on a cross, setting them aflame. I'd worry about the blasphemy later.

To my shock it actually worked as I came to an out-of-use entryway with broken glass in the doors. I could see the outside at last!

Then dozens of sheriff's cars came screeching up and deputies with guns drawn came pouring out. Someone yelled, "Shoot the fucker!"

Had I triggered an alarm? Even if it wasn't me they were intent on shooting I didn't want to be caught in the crossfire. We all know how cops fantasize about shooting people.

I stumbled back down the stairs back into the dark passageways, my torch burning out. There was no going back. Or forward.

How did I even get here?? Oh, God, what can I do?

I could have just left during the service when I wanted to and avoided this nightmare! Why do I always think it's wrong to do what I want? I have a right to my feelings! I was terrified of not sparing others' feelings. I must face up! Dishonesty was my downfall. Now I die alone in the dark, knowing what I need to know too late.

Silent darkness engulfs me. I deem myself unlovable and deserving to die, so why even try?
Then, like a miracle, I heard a woman's voice calling out my name, pleading for me, like I'd always wanted to hear. Her voice echoed through the chambers.

No way could I let her see me like this, to know what a lying cowardly idiot I've been! I'll find her when I get out so she can see me in my best light!

But I did so want to cry out, every instinct and desire in my body yearned for her. A little voice kept asking, "Why am I staying silent?"

It's only when her voice stopped did I realize my horror: there is no reason for silence. Eternally too late, I called back until my voice gives out but the chance I thought would always be there is gone forever.

I was going to only let her see me after I got out but she was the way out.

We're all looking for something to live for and to die for. I crumple down in final despair. For my lies I do die but there was no reason why.

If you cling to your life, you will lose it.
But if you let your life go, you will save it.




Friday, January 19, 2024

Sureeling In The Years

Peering mirages through a Dali Impossible Desert I see masses of purposeless people...leading is a hero complex, a Man Without Purpose..."Now we have purpose!" they chant in follow accord...the Man Without Purpose - defiant to his ending - heads them to cliffs where buffalo were once driven...I ask a passing woman why she chants as such. "I'm not chanting, you idiot's idiot! I hate chanters a-chanting!"...none noticed me but all felt fear, eyes woefully shut to draw worth from the Man Without Purpose...one follow-man reads my thoughts. "Do not tell us what you see," he insists with stubborn pitchfork. "An open eye destroys faithless hope."

A smokey line in the not so distance took me to a city on mountain high. A house of refined fineness burned as a man with robotic smile stood proudly by out front...when I remarked on his flaming dilemma he shook my hand with both hands imploring, "I thank you for your concern. You're a good man."...then he gave a wink to deport myself. "I hope you'll say as much of me someday."...that seemed a curious profit as I reached the edge of the orderly block a wind blowing in a far away voice cried: "We're the city on the hill! The best there's never been!"

In the city square, every building has a steeple, stores and temples alike, the banks tallest of all...a man in a fiery fast car to be envied screeched up beside me...his Contorted Face turns to me to explain, "Suburban urban pain is the worst!"...then he twisted-turned forward-backward to the rear view mirror. "The dream trapped forever within."...as he reversed back to where he'd run from in Sisyphean defeat

Loosened Children mobbed me as coal mine canaries.
"We're in trouble!" "We're in trouble!" "We're in trouble!" "We're in trouble!" "We're in trouble!"
I suffered to ask why.
"It's our parents!" "It's our parents!" "It's our parents!" "It's our parents!" "It's our parents!"
"Do you want to take me to them?"
They silenced in deafening disappointment. "Oh, no," they rejected in unison. "It's so hard raising parents nowadays," their furrowed brows sighed. "They just won't listen."
A Singled Mother accompanied by hungry mouths to plead of her own making asked me, "Food, please, food."...I informed her I had no food..."Then where can we get what truly we are owed as fellows beings?"..."From those who have food?"..."No, that would be wrong. They told us so."..."They told you wrong."..."I'm not one to think unpleasant thoughts of others."..."But you just said it's a human right!"..."I'm only moral when disconnected."...thus she pleasantly starved in the land of plenty

Storming towards me with panther lust eyeing fresh meat was a Man Undisputed..."I'm angry! Angry, I tell you! This insanity must stop or it will be the end of all of us!"..."I would not dispute that."..."Of course not! I'm a man of the season of reason. Once I have the Final Answer we'll be saved! So betray me please with an answer."..."Love?"..."Love! Never love. I do know what the answer is not!"..."If you didn't know what you not know then you'd know what you do know."...he quizzed his head for a lost moment. "I know I want to be angry."


My eyes turned to the night sky where I swam among star dreams dancing in the infinity of a future already passed, singing songs of boundless joy with knowledge of light both known and unknown causing me to lift my arms in released delight, at last.

Then a Mob Of Politic Saviors spots me as they'd been Jacobin informed by the Man Undisputed of my certain lunacy. "You fool! We found the answer: Magic Rocks. Rocks is all you need! We had them implanted in our Elongated head. Come with us to Impossible Desert. In the sand an unmade man will save us/you/all!"...as I stared at the loveless eyes boring me I knew I had finally come full encirclement.


Monday, January 01, 2024

Billion Ways To Be A Bum


Me unfunded

Some of the crowd I used to run with call me "Howard Hughes" now. But they are gone for a reason, living only in the corner of my eye. Can a bum have real friends anyway?

I scrape by day after day, staying mentally intoxicated; living inside my head where I can make true things untrue - and untrue things true.

I've got nowhere to go, floating in the vacuum of space, grasping on emptiness. Any scrap of life I do find is immediately used as fuel for my lying mind. With a billion dollars (1.2) at my disposal I technically can do anything I want. So why do I feel so trapped?

I'm just like the wino who funnels every cent he finds to stay in his bottle. Put a wino in a penthouse and that's me.

I hide in esoteric mania on Mercury and Mars, where any truth I find remains unknown to this world. Do you know how disorienting it is to see the stars from a different planet? With all reference points lost, one is wholly at the mercy of one's thoughts.



An even bigger wino than me

Dying alone isn't much of a plan. I searched every goddam crook and crevice but cliche as it is, only love is real. Maybe it's only me but I can't find a way around it. There's no end game to anything else, only a series of dead ends.

I read where it would cost 250 million to air condition Texas prisons. Last summer here in Dallas was excruciating so that headline stuck out to me. I could write a check to cover that cost.

But it's not money that's holding them back as much as being possessed with crucifying Jesus. That's where the real battle would be, on the spiritual plane.

How's a wino going to win that fight? Especially when the truth does not suffice. I would need help.

What's to be done? (Probably what every wino says)



Saturday, November 25, 2023

Goupil: Final Report, USA (Classified)

OVERVIEW:

Goupil, Born c. 1973; Marseilles, France. 5'11, 82 kg.

Following is pieced together from worldwide intelligence and police reports and subject's diary.

At 17, subject killed his girlfriend in a heated argument. From this incident he was unable to recover.

Tied to a guilt that hounded him until death, he judged himself a killer, a fate from which he believed could not rise above.

Attaching himself to criminal elements on the French docks, the subject made his first for-hire kill at 19.

His reputation grew over time as that of a "reliable man". Connections were made overseas making him an international commodity of the highest order.

Subject kept to himself with an extremely low profile. This was fueled by the fact he did not trust himself with another personal relationship.
His career both peaked and crashed in Russia on an assignment originating from Senator [CLASSIFIED], after which the subject himself became the target as a possible loose end.

He self-documented his time on the run, psychologically breaking down as his self-myths shattered, leaving him in a hazed state of confusion.

Searching for lost redemption and grasping for impossible hope, he strayed into religion, online political forums, and self-exposure in a fast food drive-through.

Still, through this time he was able to remain connected to the reality of his legal situation and was able to evade pursuit though much of it was due to his unexpected life choices throwing off law enforcement.

With the walls closing in on him over time, realizing escape meant merely treading water with no resolution in sight, subject ended his wasted life.

A full accounting of the subject's activities is still ongoing by French authorities, hoping to solve past assassinations on French soil. All references to Senator [CLASSIFIED] were scrubbed beforehand.


Monday, November 20, 2023

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God Revisited

It's been a good 25 years since I walked into Premiere Video, Dallas's legendary movie rental store, and saw this snarling face of Klaus Kinski. I had a standing rule never to rent a film based on its cover alone. In this case I (thankfully) violated it.

From the initial haunting scene descending from the mists of the mountainside into the depths of the Amazon jungle, we're taken on an odyssey of insanity. Watching the film, one senses the terror of being trapped in a whirlpool, hoping against hope for a way out. It never comes.

Kinski is the perfect vehicle for this madness, a single-minded agent of destruction whose purity in thought lies in its absolute devotion to power. His way must rule! Only when it's too late does anyone stand up to his beloved delusions.

I had a chance to view it on the big screen at the famed Texas Theater last week. And, boy, did it blow my socks off. Not just its enlarged presence on the big screen, but as a commentary on the suicide of our time. I can't tell you how many moments I wanted to scream out loud, "This is us!"

Even the first time watching this I said to myself, "What the fuck are they doing dragging that stuff through a jungle?" The "civilized people" taking vestiges of civilization wherever they went in some sort of fantastical delusion, reality be damned. The environment must adopt to them.

"This is us!"

The more dire the situation the more they cling to vain illusions of a future: passing laws, nominating a king, instituting a social structure. In stubbornly adhering to these rituals signifying nothing, the more they seal their fate while floating down a river into oblivion; running out of food, driven onward possessed by a false sense of entitlement. This is us.

Our pretense is everywhere, ceaselessly propagating our madness can continue forever. We're all supposed to be in on the joke, congratulating ourselves on our cleverness of lying and "getting away" with it. But just like the grotesquely doomed party of Aguirre, we only become more pathetic, more ridiculous, and more farcical by the day - until nothing is left.





BONUS FILM REVIEWS:

Anatomy of a Fall 7.5

I had my doubts while watching this on where exactly it was going with the story. Turns out my fears were mislaid by a rewarding ending. The film is an outstanding commentary on how peoples' lives look from the outside as compared to the inside. Or, at least, that was the intent. It does succeed in many ways but they failed to fully flesh out the story. The wife keeps saying there was more to their marriage than just the negative aspects that came to light. Fair enough. SHOW IT. Show us what brought you two together and the flower of love once nurtured. That would have been a home run instead of a triple.

The Holdovers 4

What a mess this film was. For some reason it was set in 1970 but the dialogue is very 2023. That's just the beginning of the contrivances for characters that have no real grounding and a story with no underlying truth. This was written wholly with the audience in mind as to what will get the most applause from moment to moment. These people simply had nothing to say regardless of how badly the film wanted to believe it has something to say.

Napoleon 1

Another Ridley Scott spectacle film. This will thrill the mouth-breathers who will be taken in by the huge battle scenes and allegedly kinky bedroom dialogue. Good for them! But while Scott is many things, he never has been and never will be a storyteller. I'm a huge Blade Runner fan and his broken narrative style worked perfectly for that film but only in an outlier case like that does it excel. The director is also highly defensive about his utter lack of historical accuracy and as a Napoleon fan I can tell you I don't know who that character is up on the screen, but it's definitely NOT Napoleon (or even a hint of Josephine).

Instead, the names were used as outlines to be filled in whole cloth from whatever commercial fantasies the filmmaker dreamed up. Scott's offensive response to those who criticized this approach was to say, "Get a life!" I suggest he should take his own advice to prevent any further waste of time and energy (his and ours).

Thursday, November 09, 2023

Romancing The Stoned


Wonder if they had him sign a waiver

my life is trash
i am trash
i smell like trash


some earth girl told me "no one is trash, we are all valuable"
i asked her if i could my rub my hard dick on her nice soft leg
then she said i was trash

i have that kind of power
 
i saw some fancy blonde chick in a giant ass white suv stop at the intersection
i wanted to rush up to her and say "mmmmm! you smell good!"
then she'd scream, go home, wail about how "something must be done about all these smelly homeless people!"

i have that kind of power

i could woo her with lines like "i used to shit inside too"
then she'd do her utmost to vote me out of existence

i belong to the army of the fallen
every day our numbers grow stronger
the number of yet to fall grows weaker
guess how that will turn out!
 
we have that kind of power

blondie stands barefoot on her marble floor demanding the world can be no other way

don't worry blondie, i got a spare trash bag for ya



Sunday, November 05, 2023

Un-Bonded

By virtue of his 00 designation, Bond has a license to kill. It is not, however, a license to live.

*****

Oh, no. No way. This will never happen.

The minute Q branch brought out the device for him (were they smiling?), Bond's instinctive rejection was resolute and final. The scuba gear was for deep sea ice water with a special air tank designed for its user to be shot from a cannon with an ersatz umbilical cord deep into the sea where the user would have minutes to spare before death by compression.

"It's fully vetted, sir," claimed the technician, reading Bond's face.

Bond snorted with a wry smile and walked away.

It had always been a fine line he walked between being useful and being used. The difference, of course, being life and death. While Bond would never say he has no appetite for danger - bordering on a need - he kept it in balance with his survival instincts. It's the other fellow's job to die. Thus, when called before M for an explanation, Bond refused.

"So you'll not give me a reason then?" mused the wrinkled face of the ex-admiral.

Bond had never tested the old man like this before. He was about to see a side he'd never seen.

Bond shrugged. In observing the time it took M to form a response, 007 saw the respect the man had for his instincts and the futility of arguing with them.

"You understand this is not my decision. I have to revoke your 00 designation. In consideration of your considerable contribution in the past you may continue your time in the service in an administrative capacity, if that suits you."

The idea of that revolted him as much as the scuba contraption. "No, sir, it does not."

"Then let me leave you with this thought: Once you go out that door, there's no coming back."

M's final card played, Bond laid his gun on the desk and walked out. He, too, had no choice.

*****
The myriad of thoughts racing through Bond's mind while sipping whiskey alone in his flat were beyond his consciousness to record; a near death experience flashing before him.

He remembered The Promise, when he first entered the service, his rationale for taking orders in the first place: "If they ever cross the line, I'm quitting. No ifs, ands, or buts. I'm out, end of story."

As the days passed his peace with leaving had only grown stronger. No, he had not been rash or hasty. He did not overreact. For the first time in his life, time was on his side. It dawned on him that the day the service would cross the line was inevitable. He'd simply been pushing it out of his mind.

For whatever reason, Bond had always been drawn to Battersea Park. He'd sit on a bench overlooking the Thames and dream of 18th century naval ships, when Britain came to rule the seas. But sitting here now he felt something different. He noticed the soft sun, the glistening greenery, the mysticism of the shire.

Good God, how they'd laugh back at the office if they knew the thoughts in my head!

M was right about one thing, though: there's no going back.

*****
Though Bond no longer haunted the "good old boy" bars of his past, preferring rather a local pub that granted him a more lively view of the world, he knew contact was imminent.

The psychology of the man the service picked was obvious: send a younger version of himself. And as he approached Bond in his booth, the man certainly had all the boxes checked - except one. Bond was his own man while his opponent clearly was not.

The sent man was all grins and charm as he put out his hand. "Why, if it isn't 00 coward!"

The comment was loud, intended to be overheard, to rattle Bond.

Bond stood as the man arrived, gripped his outstretched hand and sheepishly replied, "You win! I can never hope to match your repartee."

The man had been prepared for anything but surrender. Truth was, Bond was incensed that such a juvenile comment was meant to fluster him. But it was the fake Bond who was now flustered.

"Sorry about that. Was a stupid thing to say. It's just that's there's a general consensus you skipped out when the going got rough. If there is a bomb embedded in the ocean floor it has got to be defused. I don't have to tell you what's at stake."

"Oh, bloody hell, you're right! Put that damn contraption on me and give me a shot at disarming the blasted thing."

The man squirmed trying read Bond's famous deadpan expression. "Well, uh, there's no coming back, of course."

Bond's eyes were drill bits into the man's mind. "But, of course," agreed Bond, still giving nothing away.
It's impossible to counter-punch a man who won't punch. Bond threw him a lifeline, flashing an ironic smile. "Kind of makes this entire conversation pointless, doesn't it?"

The knockout blow had its effect, the man dropping his facade, in a struggle for his life.

"I understand how you feel. I read your file. I was recruited like you were. I had my doubts when these pompous buggers made their pitch but I couldn't get their words out of my head."

Bond sipped his martini, recalling that same moment for him - the moment he made The Promise. At least he was being treated with more respect. He leaned back to let the man continue.

"So I think I know how you feel, this sense of betrayal. I've struggled with it myself." In this the man is being genuine, thought Bond. "But I've learned there's two types of evil in the world: both good and bad. We use the good evil to protect us from the bad, so to speak. It's how we ensure the future. And as ridiculous as this sounds, that's a pragmatism I've had to face."

Bond's sense of self-preservation went on red alert. He had no doubt of the struggle possessing the man's soul, of trying to live beyond the crossed line, crying out for both help and murder with the same voice.

"Sounds like a conversation for your pastor," Bond blithely responded, buying time has he calculated the situation.

The man's presence left the moment. "You could say I've already had it."
The 'pastor' in this case would be an overlord in the secret service sanctioning the job - as if one man can sanction another man's murder in the eyes of God.

Could Bond defeat this man? Yes. Could he defeat every man sent to kill him? No. Bond had come too far to look over his shoulder the rest of his life.

Sliding out from the booth, standing as an easy target mere feet away, Bond looked at the man as one who'd faced death before. Everyone must pay for one's sins. Time to pay for mine.

"Then do what you musn't," he offered, his gaze never leaving the man's now anguished face.

Like all assassins, the man had been programmed, cajoled, bribed, and punctured into making the hit. Bond was simply giving him a sense of his immortal soul.

Then something unexpected happened: the man retched, turning his head, coughing and puking on the bench. He felt used, a sucker on a fool's errand, placing blood on his hands like a Roman crucifier, wrecking his own future. No "good" evil, after all.

Bond left the man to himself, slipped out the back door, and checked into an anonymous hotel.


*****
CODA: In ancient Japan, the country was divided between East and West. Ishida of the West took over Osaka castle, an impregnable fortress. His plan was to take hostages from the families of the clans there to force them to his side. First on his list to kidnap was Gracia Hosokawa, the beloved and admired wife of a powerful general. Literate and multi-lingual, she changing her name with her conversion to Catholicism.

Only his plans went awry as Gracia let herself be killed before she'd let herself be taken hostage. The fury and outrage over this bungled attempt forced Ishida to abandon his plans for hostages. In this way, also, the plan to eliminate Bond was discarded.