Missive the Thirty-Sixth
Gone Astray
Most Beautifully.
DATELINE: Friday, November 17, 2000, at 2330 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company
Old Albert, resident of South Babylon, told me he'd rather be set for life than go to the factory five or six times a week. He wants an income, free and clear, so he can follow his dreams without the necessity of chasing a payday. He wants to be high and dry on the golden beaches of Avalon.
The last time I went to South Babylon, I brought back a payday and a headache. As far as Avalon's concerned, it's so far away I can't fathom it.
Everywhere I looked in Albert's domain, multiple manifestations of sordid human dynamics were happening like so many episodes in the syndicated soap opera. I didn't care to deal with them, those perpetrators of their own sufferings, but they were forcing my hand.
I mean, the last thing they wanted to hear was an expression of love, a tune of harmony, casual reports about accomplishment, or declarations of admiration. They wanted to rip and tear at one another like jackals. My meat was so fresh they were slavering.
Ole Poison's Lips Rose and Fell Like a Sump.
One guy was grumbling about blood in his urine. His gut jutted over his belt like the slabs of greasy meat I spied a dangling o'er the puffy edges of white-bread buns on his double burger. The other wage slaves called him Ole Poison. Leaning on an idled machine, he launched a tirade against the besotted younger son of the boss man. "The sorry little shit. He's freeloadin' on the old man's boat," the gross old slob said. "Gets drunk, lays in bed 'till way past noon, don't show up for work days at a time. He knows his old man won't fire him." Ole Poison sneered in his practiced way, his moist lips rising and falling like a sump. He looked to the left, back to the right, motioned to me to come closer. "Let me tell you this joke about two niggers…."
Upstairs, the artists were jockeying for position. They were scrambling for primacy in a mad pecking order they had constructed as a monument to their wretchedness. They laid traps filled with gossip and falsehood for any who might wander into their psychic ambush. The hallways between them were like moats; they glowered and frowned, sighed loudly, mumbled imprecations. Hunkered down behind their Macintosh computers, they harbored hatreds for one another that clouded the spaces 'round their offices like some greenish, just-sprayed pesticide might obscure a field of sick beans in the foggy mist of a delta morning.
One of them, a chuckling old slut whose husband had left her for young boys, bragged about her young lover. He would be moving in soon to help her with the girls. He had a new leather couch, too. She sucked deeply on her Marlboro and scratched the sores on her legs. She was worried about some form of pending litigation.
In the broad warehouse, two men shouted curses at one another.
The Bosses Pretended They Had More at Stake.
These were the troops, mind you. Their plebian tales were milquetoast compared to the machinations and intrigues, the couched hostilities and long-held jealousies of the managers and bosses, who pretended they had more at stake than the peons -- but that's entirely another story, one we can save for the ice storm. (Do get ready. Prepare. The ice storms are coming.)
See that hank over there? Get up and rattle its chain. He'll scream about death and the devil, lunge at you in a fury. Don't worry. The chain is short and tethered securely to the Tower.
Can you wonder then, why the essence of my quest is to find passage back to the Garden? I figure that my emergence from the womb represented the moment of my expulsion from Eden. I can recall the moment of my birth, but not a moment sooner. I wonder if the far side of this veil of tears will return me to the Garden. I dwelled there once before, I just know it. I dined on blessed manna, on warm mother's milk, on sweet primal honey.
This is all there is, all there is to it. The fame, the fortune, the power didn't come to them. Expectation was dashed on the jagged rocks of indolence and miscalculation. They were reekin' and screekin' in absolute obscurity. They didn't know how to work through their angst. They didn't even know what it was.
"The immediate manifestations of reality are primarily artificial in your recent frame of reference," Oksob said, rousing in the opposite loft.
Musk, Alabaster, A Legion of Bootlickers.
The seer would see it all, stick his head in the door, counsel us to surrender and accept it. "Sex, money, power: Each and all can be had. The feel of firm breasts in your hands, the lithe one thrusting against you, smells of strange musk; unlimited funds, keys to mansions and limousines, marble, alabaster, and diamond; the power to inspire legions to do your bidding: You can have it all! They will come, groveling, to your table. They will pay the homage of the bootlicker to your glorious name."
They were claiming the authority of religion, these necro-miscreants at the factory door; they were telling me they are the water and the blood. They were accusing me of pouring numinous chemicals into Old Poison's sump. I let the door hit me in the ass.
Albert caught me in the parking lot, asked a question. "What if you try to release something that isn't imprisoned?"
What if you seek to destroy the Spirit by destroying the individual with your sacrificial religion? What do you think becomes the sacrifice? Your imagination is crushed upon the altar of fear. In the darkness of your dogma, the light of personality is snuffed out by the foul breath of the minion. It smells like a putrid sulfur.
"Not mine," old Albert countered. "Not my identity. I'll fight on."
I Don't Trust Your Conclusions.
The battles against the Doubles are generational as much as they are philosophical, but who has time to stop and judge the matter. So what if we don't trust one another's conclusions.
"You believe your extended and extreme isolation gives you the upper hand," he said. "Go now. Go from here. Now."
Ha! He would never know how I learned, secretly in the dark of night, to check the reactionary impulse and suppress the bluster. He was incapable of understanding how I became the solitary soul; how I manage the solitude to avoid the lures of dependence, and turn the seclusion to my obscure advantage. He doesn't know how many dark-bent spirits are on the prowl, eager to devour the opposite men. He needs all the allies he can muster, fresh stock for his shelves, a well-forged shield. I, too. I have gone astray most beautifully.
"The basis of the Art is the dissolution of the bodies," the seer replied. "In the ashes of the dissolution, a formula arises. The Art is transformed."
WATCH FOR MISSIVE THE THIRTY-SEVENTH
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