Suddenly, the body is in osmotic shock. The medium has changed. The organism struggles to adapt to...strangeness... to a shift within the field...
There is no clearly discernible, causal link between the motion glimpsed and the present quivering state of the body, but a vague intuition of connection mounts. No thought will hold. The body is in immediate crisis. If there were only time to think, the problem could be solved--logically. Yes. Without interference from the senses the truth would be revealed; within the quiet interiority of a numb body ideas would form. But the body remains electric, run a-tilt on sensation, unable to defend against incoming stimuli. It finds itself in a medium that is the same, yet disturbingly different--altered. Perhaps--yes--it's the realization of the simultaneity of sameness and difference that's...shocking.
Yes. Oh, yes.
But the thought won't hold.
It's happening again.
Just a glimpse--then feelings of confused familiarity and fantasia. Illusion? Reality? HORROR?
There--something happened--is happening. Again. Again. Again. Paralyzed in anticipation of future shocks the body becomes as motionless as a still-born corpse. No breath is drawn. Stupefaction settles toward a steady state.
Then... periodically, always without warning, waves of convulsive violence rack the apparatus. The muscles tense and slacken in a Vidas dance of nervous discharge. The eyes bulge and roll, staring helplessly and hopelessly at nothing.
No thought is possible. The body is in crisis.
Tortuously, a hunger for pleasure is formed.
Desire consumes one death after another feeding frenzily upon itself in an auto-cannabalistic orgy of savage annihilation.
You've come a long way, Baby. Fucking, eating, shitting, sucking, and groping your way toward this stupor--toward this nowhere to be found satisfaction in an always increasingly terrifying world-out-there filled with the everyday matter-of-factness of butchery and carpet bombing white guys hell-bent on controlling production and the political economics of some indistinct, over-mediated, media saturated nightmare of jobs and domesticity.
You can run, but you can't hide.
You know you're gonna have to drag that on again, off again, sometimes trying to think mind/carcass to the corporate factory where you slave to get paid to forget who you are and to forget that pain that you so pride yourself in 'cause it represents the only crazy notion of gain and success you ever had.
Blink.
Something--there--near the horizon. A movement. A blurred figure, dancing spasmotically like a floater over a page of dense, obscure text.
Try to focus--only--concentration causes drift. There. On the periphery. No. Absence again in an out-of-the-margin sort of way. Too bad. Another miss.
"Wait a minute. What is this--this self-indulgent, rap- jive, rock-and-roll resistence to doing the right thing. Is This Entertainment?"
"There's nothing, nothing-at-all, to be accomplished by painting pictures of ecstatic pain in lurid colors of hyperverbal, manic jibberish, and then slobbering them into the here-and-now. Be serious. Grow up. Sm-m-m-e-l-l-l-l the coffee. Get with the program."
"You are one sick, out-of-sync MotherFucker, did ya know that."
"Here is America, healing itself, and you just seem to be getting crazier."
"America is a butt-fuck to decency."
Stupa--stupe--stupefaction--stupefy--stupendous--stupid (dull, dense, crass, dumb)--stupidity--stupor. Something happened--is happening in this same/different condition of greatly dulled or completely suspended sense or sensibility (this drunken ______), in this state of extreme apathy or torpor resulting often from stress or shock. There's a sort of Max Headroom kinda fra-fra-fragmentation---
There. The nose is pressed flat against the pane, and vision is impaired by the fog of breath. Here. The body is sandwiched between four by eight sheets of plate glass, the mind alternately mesmerized by the glitz and flash of mannequins in motion talking about responsibility and approriateness, then deadened by flatliners discussing holography and war and a need for bipartisan unity in the face of mountains of economic indecision.
"Well, I just say no. That's my philosophy. I call it evangelical negativism. I say no to my boss. I say no to salesmen. I say no to Art. And, I say no to therapists who suggest I lie down and make myself comfortable."
"Resistence is futile, you know."
"Well, it's all there is."
"Maybe."
"You know. Insight isn't all its cracked up to be."
Maybe a vacation. A get-a-way. Without asking who it is that's going or whether there's really anywhere to go or not--and certainly never hoping for a rendezvous. Just get away- -somewhere. There's gotta be a map of this mess.
(Picture it. An almost illegible crumple of parchment filled with arcane runes and thin blue lines snaking across an all but empty page and leading to paradise, or at least to a sleazy hotel where neither sex shaves and the bellhops don't fret about Baudrillard.)
"Where did that come from?"
"From singing the blues..."
"Something happened--is happening here...what it is, as they say, ain't exactly...jazzed."
The room is empty. The lights are on, but no one's home.
The walls are spattered with the lacerated anonymity of splayed, dismembered pin-ups cropped and scissored onto a floor littered with popcorn...sticky from ejaculations.... Through an open door, the sound of an open sewer, clogged with newspapers and old videocassettes--twisted tapes streaming over the edge of toilets into urine puddled on the cracked linoleum. The t.v.'s going. Loud squawking heads...arguing unconscious pseudo-issues ...channels change constantly--without rhythym or reason--in a machine gun parody of the rat-tat-tat paralogic of hysteria and infotainment spewed from weightless anchors. The pictures flip and flicker with a programmed format forgotten and left to blink...blink...blink...offering less than a sound bite of audio snatched along with a glimpse of this or that flash--of... --there--in the margin of vision--caught out of the corner...of an eye.
It's sad, really--this parade of decapitated, zombie generals and flag-waving autopatriots with fat round babies smiling through mouths smeared with asparagus puree.
What, exactly, is one to make of this phantom public of formulas and shit and soiled dreams?
Somewhere--out there--in the vast stretch of no-man's-land, are proud fathers in baseball caps and running shoes advertising a plethora of sporting goods and beer. These men are proud to be making America safe for prejudice and injustice by sticking to their guns and refusing to believe anything they didn't learn in kindergarten.
Yes. The sins of the fathers....
And that's it, isn't it? All in the Name-of-the-Father.
Look in the mirror--what do you see? The old man...just staring and wishing things were different and...in the eyes--a glint of something--rage? Yes. A Porky Pig kinda urra-urra- urra-urrage, a haunting emp-empt-empt-emptiness.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT--RAGE--RAGE--AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT.
And there you have it. Dad's dying all his life inside 'cause there ain't really no pride in being somebody else's nigger no matter what color you're born, but he says "yassah" with the best of them and refuses to have respect for any man who isn't his social superior and, by God, he hates as intensely as any xenophobe, especially those enemies selected for demonization by the State 'cause there ain't nuthin' like a scapegoat to rid a body of poisonous contradictions. YES. IN THE NAME OF GOD AND ALL THAT'S HOLY--BOMB THE FUCK OUT OF THEM. KILL THE BASTARDS. THEY DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET WITH GOOD GOD-FEARING PEOPLE 'CAUSE THEY AIN'T HUMAN--THEY JUST DON'T VALUE HUMAN LIFE THE SAME AS US--THEY'RE DIFFERENT, FOR CHRISSAKES---!
Out of the mouths of babes.... This is my body. That is your body. I see your blood, but I never feel your pain.
A chip off the old block.
Being on line never felt so fine: Free to explore. Free to choose. Free to decide.
Questions?
Ain't this a fine fettle of kitsch: reduced to a snarling dog by the kindest and gentlest people in the world.
So, you ask, why don't you leave?
Who knows. Cowardice is the first word that pops into mind. Its how one knows one is truly American. Deep below the shop-til-you-drop distraction of desire is a cancerous self- loathing and cogent understanding of fear as being-in-the-world.
One stands alone and humilated, confronted with nonsense and helpless to convey the sense of meaninglessness and absurdity. A joke? A nightmare?
Hey...Smile. Think positively. Take some responsibility for this life you've created. KNOW THIS: through self- validation and a realization of your worthiness EVERYTHING can be yours. YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL. A fountain in your yard...a Rolls Royce...what are your priorities, my friend?
"You're a fool...a fool...a fool..."
Reduced beyond snarling to driveling and staring into the gaping mouth of Hell. What's the point?
"There is no point."
Lay down. Roll over. Sit up. Bark for a bone. Go shopping. Become a Star. BELIEVE. Don't ask so many questions.
It's all for your own good and given from the heart by those who know better, and so--there's really no reason to bother your pretty little head with thinking when doing is all there is anyway--especially, doing what you're told.
"This is not a conspiracy. You're paranoid."
"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"They have only good intentions."
"Yeah, well the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
"There's no dream in the world, you know, like the American Dream...on your back...wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, black leather boots--yeah--looking like Marlon Brando without any pants--and fucking Melanie Griffith--yeah--her sucking your cock and then fucking you hard with someone videotaping and cheering you on...someone who actually knows how to use a camcorder...not some rank amateur. Hell no. A professional. An artist. Maybe...yeah...some asexual voyeur in a mop-top wig and wrap- around sunglasses promising everybody, including you and your fuck, fifteen minutes of fame."
The hallway stretches on forever it would seem. So many doors. The sort of place you find yourself after dreaming that you're falling--one of those: oh-my-god-don't-hit-bottom-'cause- you'll-die-if-you-do falls. The kinda place that makes you sick to your stomach and induces vertigo 'cause the floor slopes down forever and the walls run like merging rails toward the horizon ...and something ominous, something terrifying...toward THAT-DOOR-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO-OPEN-NO-MATTER-WHAT--and you're sure someone's still watching--or maybe your watching someone else--at the end of the hall--someone who's dancing as fast as they can-- dancing themselves into a blur.
You ask, "Is this really happening."
Vague, ill-defined, on the tip-of-your-tongue. A memory. Some--UR--beginning.
There was this thought. Thinking...This thought... thinking...something...it must have all begun...it must have started...When? This memory of...a figure...a shadow...this place...What is this place?...this?...Remember...Remembering ...Look...Look...A sight...A Site?
Door after door after door. The Doors. Ah, Morrison with a hard-on doing erotic politics--now that's a sight.
There's nothin' like A-HANGIN' to clear the mind.
All the world is but a stage...
So perform fool...Sing for your supper...
Work. Work. Work.
Slave for a wage and wage sterile war on the ungodly with nintendo precision and without shedding a drop of blood or a tear. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.
"Welcome to my couch", said the therapist to the fly-by- night jack-of-all-trades. "How do you feel?"
"If anything meant anything...the Rebel with a Cause would find the means to an end rather than looping endlessly to the end without means. There seems to be only this...chiasmus...this treadmill for the lumpen..."
"So, wash your bowl. Yes. Eat and wash. Yes. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Go for a walk. Read something else."
Isn't this exciting. Surrounded by a cast of thousands aspiring to bloodless living after days of thanksgiving at the malls. Yes. The weekend. Saturday Night Live--more t.v.-- movies--fun--fun--fun--relief from the tedium of the work-a-day week...dance...dance...dancing...
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE AND NOT A DROP TO DRINK...
"Whaddaya want, anyway?"
"Nothing. NOTHING AT ALL."
Transformation. Metamorphosis. From one THING to another. So simple and so terrifying. And always without the least warning, as though the Cosmos was proud of its discourteousness. One more thing, then one more thing.
"Whar-da-hellya been, Buoy? Whatchu'ben upta sa long?"
"Nowhar. Ain't been nowhar...ain't been doin' Nutten'... ain't nutten TO do."
For just fifteen-fucking-minutes--the thing to be would be a famous machine, he said...an intelligent machine...or maybe not...maybe a BEAUTIFUL machine...like...UR...Madonna...
YEAHS.
Canned laughter.
On and on...drool and slobber...
Money and pain...money and pain...
Oh, the thrill is gone...gone...gone away...and the body sits...unable to move...motionless...suspended in...time...time and time again...paralyzed...staring blankly...then a tingle in the fingers...a thought...from somewhere--nowhere...
"It's like pulling teeth to get a word out..."
Blank...Blink...Sputter...
Washing and hoping and hoping and...
Nothing...not a thing...just the furious suffocation of a fish out of water.
The mourning after. Don't look back.
"Trust that she's there," the Devil said.
Right. No way. Just a glance...for reassurance.
Fade to black.
"Farewell."
Reverberation.
A sexy echo, then silence.
The body thinks itself as a skeletal foot tapping out a new beat... a distinctively blues bass line rhizomatically scribbles itself into a sassy horn riff accompanied by the swish and whoosh of brushes on a drumhead. Some state of mind peculiar to itself unravels as an improvisation of licks and runs, blending cool trickles and hot, orgasmic rushes into plateaus of sustained pleasure that are simply nowhere but, nonetheless, jazz the moment to the limit of the What Is. Here the alienated Moi finds a home among tangles of half-thoughts and undifferentiated emotive forces that suggest an eerie otherness co-resident in the vastness of a multi-dimensional consciousness. Making contact is touching and caressing Desire itself.
A Heart's Desire--the only truly monstrous shape-shifter-- offers the All with the nonchalance of a Hollywood Boulevard lygophiliac turning tricks curbside after a bump and grind evening inside windows of painted insults and racelights. Long legs framed alluringly by a Porche window...sell heaven and disease for a day's pay. Each adolescent cocksman who succumbs broods in the house that Jack built reflecting on his hipness and the history of western transcendence, and wetting his lips as he remembers slipping his tongue into the fever of Alice's rabbit- hole.
Oh, God yes.
Throbbing temples and several hundred sweaty revelations later absolutely NOTHING matters.
Ride the ox 'cause it's yours. The permanent condition of psychedelic oneirism that befalls one after multiple bi-fucks of logic and episodes of autofelatio is beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated schizopragmatics and could never be confused with common satori. No. This is both/and/neither/nor-ness. The absolute relativity of anxiety-ridden Hereness charmed by the blissful extraneousness of never-mind. Remember. Be-Where-Now. Bark and howl at the moon. Profane the night. Doo-wah-diddee-diddee-doo-diddee-dah.
Yeah...yeah...yeah.
Scat. Be-bop. Hip-hop. Scooby-doo.
"What a lovely penis," she said, staring at the exposed glans. "It's perfectly circumcised."
"You have lovely labia majora," he said. "May I lick your ears?"
Before bedding, a control load was fired and the results recorded so that we could see what effect the bedding had on accuracy. There is considerable disagreement about how an action should be bedded. Some prefer to have contact only in the tang area and the recoil/lug receiver area. Others like contact all along the full length of the receiver. Some like to bed two to four inches of barrel ahead of the receiver ring. Some bed the entire action and barrel the whole length of the forend. Oh, Baby...Oh, Oh, Oh, BA-A-A-by! Yes! Yes! Oh, God...Yes! ...the whole length of the forend!