Loser Friendly

5/19/96

LOSER FRIENDLY
The advantage of being socialized, of participating in society and having a family and possibly even of becoming a member of your local and/or national community, is that you participate in a shared lunacy so you don't stick out like a sore thumb.

When you're an unsocialized crank like myself, you reveal your crackpottery every time you open your mouth. It's like the last moments of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," in which the final human survivors try desperately but unsuccessfully to hide their human traits from the aliens-posing-as-humans who surround them. But there is this difference. I, a crank, am just as alien, as essentially inhuman, as you the socialized lunatics. Nay, I'm more alien and less human than you. At least you have families. At least you occupy, or occupied before you were downsized, corporate niches. At least some of you spent the better part of your adult lives interacting with your fellow humans in your capacities as lawyers, doctors, military officers, prostitutes, pushers, politicians, above-ground-swimming-pool-installers, race track touts, subway token clerks, portrait photographers, waitresses, and educators.

I, on the other hand, merely played at interacting professionally with my fellow human beings. I didn't have my heart in my work because I either had no heart, or was so out of touch with my heart that it was effectively irretrievable. I was a young eccentric well on his way to becoming an old crackpot, and this is my cautionary tale. Read it to your children at night so that they don't become a crank like me.

The key to being a crank was realizing, in that entity which I laughingly refer to as my heart, though it is not my heart, but a grotesque facsimile that I have manufactured over the years from odds and ends picked up on the street, in storm drains, and between the roots of trees, the key, as I say before I so rudely interrupted my mad burbling with more mad burbling, was to admit to myself what a thoroughgoing loser I was.

When I confessed as much to my friends, they gasped and told me to shut up and to never mention the subject again in mixed company. But I went on, matter-of-factly explaining that I was indeed a loser, that I had lost out on all the things of this world----family, social standing, economic security, self-respect, psychological and physical health and God knows what else. Others had won these things and I had lost them if I had ever had them or I had never succeeded in winning them in the first place and I was tired of pretending otherwise in my private or my public life. I was a complete loser. I stood revealed before the world, though the world doubtless had perceived the truth about me years before, possibly even at the moment of my birth.

I can imagine the obstetrician, seeing me poking my miserable red wrinkled head out of my mother's womb: "What a fucking loser! Who let this fuckhead out of the bag! Go back, go back, there's no future for you out here!" But I heedlessly made my way into the world in order to play out the cruel joke which turned out to be my life.

And eventually, which is to say in early middle age, after a long bout of physical and mental illness, I got the punchline. I'll never be like other people. As a friend said immediately after I announced at a social gathering that I was a loser: "You're not a loser, Doug, don't say that of yourself. You're just.....different." And everyone, myself included, had a hearty laugh. They laughed with relief that I was the loser and they weren't, and I laughed with relief at not pretending to be anything else. But they also laughed at her embarrassment. She clearly agreed with my painful self-assessment. But she could barely stand to spit out that word "loser" in public. It was the worst obscenity she knew, and if she admitted that a friend of hers was a loser then, by extension, she would be admitting that, despite her professional success, she had one foot in loserdom herself. So she groped until she stumbled upon that all-encompassing euphemism, "different," which is almost as dispiriting and politically correct a word as "special."

OK, fine. If your inner editor can't bear to read words written by a loser because you're afraid that they'll somehow rub off on you, and they just fucking might, then think of me as different, as scarily special. Think of me as a major fuck-up, who is constitutionally incapable of obtaining anything he sets out to obtain, whose best laid plans invariably come to naught. I'm Robert Burns' wee beastie, and my humble home is regularly laid waste by marauding plows, so regularly that I've decided it's hopeless to even scheme and dream because that way lies misery.

I never get any of the things I think I want. I'm tired of wanting. It's a very heavy burden. I could imagine it being a lighter burden if I frequently, or at least occasionally, hooked and landed what I was angling for. But I am like a fisherman fishing in a sewer. The best I can hope for is to gaff the odd turd, because that's all that swims around my hook.

Why don't I drop my hook in a different stream? Every stream becomes the Los Angeles River when I drop my hook in it. That's the nature of cranks and losers.

Now you see that I'm equating cranks and losers. And you may object that cranks are charmfree eccentrics, but they aren't necessarily losers. But I say that cranks are necessarily losers. Because cranks don't belong. And what they say doesn't make sense. They may think they know where they are or what they are talking about, but the sensible the world can clearly see cranks have lost their way and their sense of humor about having lost their way. Cranks don't have fun, they are the object of fun. Cranks take life seriously. But life doesn't take cranks seriously.

Cranks are lost to others and to themselves. Therefore they are, in the fundamental sense of the word, losers. You may object that I still have a sense of humor, that I have not lost my sense of humor about myself, that I feel compelled to make myself the butt of most of my jests. But do I feel FREE to mock myself? If my humor, my self deprecation, is the result of a compulsion, is it humor at all? Or am I merely spanking myself in public to gratify the masochist in me?

I assure you, I have no sense of humor. There is nothing free about my spirit. I am thoroughly earthbound. I am all compulsions. Not for me those moments of self-perception which deliver me from myself. I am always lost to myself yet trapped in myself. It's the worst of both worlds and the natural refuge of the true loser.

Loser loser loser. What else is this but the dirtiest label in the American language. Child molestor? Don't make me laugh. Michael Jackson and Roman Polanski are child molestors, but who would dare call them losers? They enjoy the best this world has to offer. They are celebrated by fans as they flit from mansion to mansion with their retinues of sycophants. If they aren't winners, who is?

Is mass murderer a dirtier label than loser? Stalin was a mass murderer of epic proportions and he died a winner's death, in his own bed, a head of state, surrounded by a circle of truly frightening colleagues and ghouls breathlessly awaiting the passing of his final breath. Or let's take a homelier example. Harry Truman. Didn't he order the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Doesn't he therefore qualify as a mass murderer? Yet who would characterize him as a loser? After committing his highly publicized double act of mass murder, he beat Tom Dewey in a campaign for election to the highest office in the land. How can we characterize such a man as anything but a winner? So even if Harry Truman was a mass murderer, he was a winner, which makes him better than a loser. Therefore mass murderers are better than losers.

Can a mass murderer be a loser? Mass murderers are by definition winners, because they won and their victims lost. When the bombs went off, Harry won and the Nagasakians and Hiroshimians lost. When a hunter puts a bullet in the brain of the elephant, who is the winner and who is the loser? The elephant loses his life and the hunter wins a trophy and the self-esteem which comes from knowing he has destroyed something precious and rare and wonderful and beautiful.

That's what makes the name of O.J. Simpson so magical. He pulled himself out of the slums of Oakland to blaze a trail of wins which seems to have no end in sight. He won the Heisman Trophy, he won the admiration of millions of couch potatoes and tailgate partiers, he won the heart of Nicole Brown Simpson. When he went head to head with Nicole and Ron Goldman, he came out of the scrimmage alive, and they didn't. Another win. And when he fled in the Bronco and came back home....who says you can't go home again?....he won or re-won the hearts of millions more fans. Then he and his dream team went head to head with Marsha and Chris, and lo and behold, the endzone! Acquittal!! Another victory to the man who knows not the meaning of loser.

Winners, if they go out at all, go out on top. Look at Adolph Hitler. Sure, things got a bit rough in the bunker in Berlin. But he knew how to end on an upbeat. He married, in the last hours of his life, the lovely, the charming, Eva Braun! And so what if his world was crumbling about his head? He was still in charge, was he not? Didn't the other gangsters and morons in the bunker view him as Der Fuhrer, right up to the moment he fired a bullet into his brain? So what if he wiped out tens of millions, so what he brought Armageddon to his homeland. The man went out on top. He was CEO of a blue chip nation for 13 exciting years. If this isn't a winner, what is?

Likewise, Saddam Hussein. Sure, he seemed to lose Desert Storm. But who's running Iraq? Saddam. And what are you running? Your own household? Or does your spouse wear the pants in your family? So Saddam lost a major war, and you didn't, yet he's a bigger winner than you. So what does that make you?

So you were right in being concerned that my loser-itis is contagious and that reading my words might give you, at the very least, a minor infection. But maybe this article will work like cowpox, which, in times past, protected milkmaids against the ravages of smallpox. That is, perhaps a minor infection of loser-itis will activate antibodies in your system, protecting you from the chronic, terminal loser-itis from which I suffer.

If you do contract a full-blown case of loser-itis as a consequence of reading this article, you have my sincerest apologies. And let me give you some advice: Once you set out down the trail of tears, of losing, don't look back. Set down the burdens of your former aspirations. Drop all pretence of trying to amount to anything, of being a person of value to yourself and others. If you cannot be free of anything else, at least free yourself of that.

There now. Can't you feel something relax in your chest? There's no need to worry any longer, the jig is up! You're a loser loser loser, and all your best efforts to the contrary will simply end in squalid defeat. So why even try?

Real estate with no money down? No Mr. Wu for you! Thighmasters and buttblasters? Who are you trying to kid? You're letting your body go, your finances go, your mind go, your spirit go. You're signing up for a postgraduate degree in Dumpster Diving. The siren song of the gutter is calling, calling, calling to you, and you're answering.

Congratulations, buster. You're not only well on your way to becoming a 14 carat loser, you're also a certifiable crank. Your opinions are now worthless to the rest of us. How can anything you say be of value? You're a loser! You are, by definition, an idiot! And a nutcase!

You no longer need to take thought before you speak, because no matter how much you think, you're going to sound like a crank, a crackpot, a loser, when you finally open your big, foolish, yap. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not take a ride on the Reading Line. Go directly to jail, motherfucker.

You have officially lost. Turn in your funny money to the winners. Sign over your utilities and your hotels and your fancy lot on Park Place. You are on the outside, looking in, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, but mostly for worse and in sickness.

How does it feel? Is it a relief? Do you wonder why you tried so hard all those years to be an insider? Does admitting you're a loser make you feel as if you've found yourself? Are you finally at home? Don't delude yourself. You'll never find yourself and you'll never be at home. That's the story of, that's the glory of, losers. It's why you feel so goddamn cranky. You're a crank, motherfucker, and there's no sense fighting your fate.

Nothing you have to say from here on out will make sense to the winners or the wannabe winners of the world. You're on the downward path, you're a dead duck. They're saying never say die. They know there are only a limited number of brass rings out there, but at least they're reaching for them. They'll reach for them if they have to dislocate their shoulders! They'll reach for them if their arms turn black and gangrenous and their eyes turn to marbles. It's the American Way!

And the last thing they want to hear, unless it's for comic relief, is the ranting of crackpot losers who gave up reaching, who don't even have enough hope to buy lottery tickets! Crackpots are so crazy they don't even have the sense to be desperate. They look desperate to the winners of the world, but they're beyond hope and hopelessness alike.

Crackpots act as if they think they're making sense. They babble like brooks and make no more sense than brooks, than birdbrains. Their chatter is music to the ears of winners, who, as the serious people of the world, feel compelled to make sense. So crackpots, losers, and fools do have a place, a placeless place, in this world. We're here to entertain the winners, to give them a laugh. Our craziness and fecklessness assures winners that their lives make sense and are truly headed somewhere. We are what not to be, where not to go. We are living cautionary tales. And our little lives are such a joke we're good for a laugh! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

In this sense, we are found. We are found, by the winners of the world, to be losers. Even if we are lost to ourselves, those who know where they stand know where we lie in relation to them. They know who they are, and they know who we are. They know they are making sense, and they know we are chattering and gibbering like simians.

It's a kind of consolation. Sure I feel cranky all the time, sure I'm lost and defeated and have none of the prizes of this world. But at least I have a function. I'm a signpost. This way madness lies.

--FIN--

Tired

5/18/96

TIRED
I'm tired of complacent, cowardly, academic bureaucrats. I'm tired of mental midgets. I'm tired of drunken bullies bashing heads in the Los Angeles Coliseum. I'm tired of Al Davis. I'm tired of Al Davis moving back and forth between here and Oakland. I'm tired of Al Davis's ugly white pants, his uglier face and hair, and his stupid sentiments. I'm tired of thinking how many yards Marcus Allen might have gained in Los Angeles if Al Davis had used him right.

I'm tired tired tired. I'm tired of writing this. I'm tired of using tired rhetorical tricks to advance my banal agendas. I'm tired of reading housewives' fatuous comedy columns in the paper. I'm tired of reading professional male chauvinist journalists' columns in the paper.

I'm tired of writing by positing a peeve and opposing another peeve to it. I'm tired of working out so hard I exhaust myself. I'm tired of women who work out very very hard and still don't have good bodies. I'm tired of the fantastically shapeless, sloppy physiques of middleaged men who somehow expect to score with young women with perfect bodies.

I've come to a sticking point here, and I admit it.

I'm tired of being chastened. I'm just plain tired. Writing like this doesn't energize me, it exhausts me. I'm tired of quietly building up to writing sessions which amount to shit. I'm tired of having breakthroughs which quickly become breakdowns. I'm tired of biting my tongue during my mother's outrageous antics. I'm tired of extending myself to her and getting my tentacles sawed off. I'm tired of the way she uses her own refusal to see as an excuse to rip apart the family. I'm tired of respecting behaviour which deserves no respect. I'm tired of having been given life by a woman who has spent the last 4 decades trying to bust my balls. I'm tired of spoiled bourgeois bitches who try to take out their frustrations on their men.

I'm tired of doctrinaire feminists. I'm tired of hearing Rush Limbaugh say "feminazi." I'm tired of hearing Rush Limbaugh say anything. I'm so tired I'm going to go lie down in darkness. I'm tired of remembering. I'm tired of remembering all the things in my life I did wrong. I'm tired of picturing myself going back and doing them right, and I'm tired of picturing myself going back and doing them wrong again. I'm tired of how wrong everything in my life has turned out to be. I'm tired, very tired, of snobs.

I'm tired of the miserable material conditions of my existence. But I'm grateful for the roof over my head. I'm tired of my emotional desert. I'm tired of paying $39 a month to a gym I almost never use. But I'm glad to have the option of going there. I'm worried that if I drop my membership in the Y, I'll decide, 2 weeks later, that I want to rejoin. I'm tired of paying all my bills with money I don't have. I'm tired of watching my credit card balances mount to the high heavens.

I'm tired of making minimum payments on my credit cards and wondering when I won't even be able to make those. I'm tired of not being a father, but if I were a father, that would exhaust me. I'm tired of being middleaged, and I'll be even more tired of being old. I never tired of being young, though youth often made me miserable.

I'm tired of hearing about lives more successful than mine. I'm tired of seeing beautiful movie stars who wouldn't think of dating me. I'm tired of being hustled by women with whom I don't want to be publicly identified. I'm tired of hustling women who don't want to be identified with me. I'm tired of dating women who are, at best, platonic friends. I'm tired of being a male escort.

I'm tired of not being Bobby Bonds, Jr., or Ken Griffey, Jr., or some other impossibly young, black, rich, sports superstar who has his pick of beautiful groupies. I'm tired of being horny and obscure and poor. I'm tired of imagining myself to be talented and unrewarded.

I'm tired of beholding the spectacle of the unworthy being rewarded by a society gone mad. I'm tired of contemplating, in biographies and documentaries, the tragically unrecognized and unrewarded lives of the greats of the past.

I'm tired of having receding hair and a thick waist. I'm tired of knowing that it's all downhill from here. I'm not tired of feeling as if I'm just beginning my life, but I'm tired of beginning my life from scratch every morning of every day. I'm tired of not creating momentum for myself with the previous day, or year, or decade. Why can't I be a body in motion which, once set in motion, continues along that path at a constant velocity? Why must I be slowed by friction and air resistance? And I'm tired of wondering if air resistance is friction, as well. Air resistance is not friction. Friction is friction and air resistance is air resistance. But air resistance can cause friction which can superheat objects moving through air at high velocities.

I'm tired of wondering if I'm broken forever. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of giving myself peptalks. I'm tired of self-flagellation. I'm tired of words. I'm tired of coming to a grinding halt. I'm tired of being undermined by those who claim to love me best.

Is there any chance I'll accelerate instead of slowing down? And is acceleration really any better than deceleration? I'm tired of remembering childhood fights I won, and I'm tired of remembering childhood fights I lost. I'm tired of trying to remember what went wrong with my life, and I'm tired of suspecting that nothing is wrong.

I'm tired of feeling tired. I'm too tired to be enraged by my fatigue. I'm tired of hearing about depression---mine or yours. I'm tired of hoping to go on to my reward. I'm tired of taxes.

I'm tired of flossing, tired of brushing, tired of going to the dentist. I'm tired of good health and of bad.

I'm tired of the North Woods. I'm tired of yearning for flow and timelessness in my life. I'm tired of these words right here. And I'm tired of this one, as well. I'm tired of rhetorical devices. I'm tired of being a raving rhetorician. I'm tired of writing well, and I'm tired of writing less than well, and I'm tired of writing badly. I'm tired of anticipating my readers' reactions to what I write. And I resent not having any readers.

I'm tired of making invidious comparisons between myself and Alexander Solzenitsyn. I'm tired of wishing that a whaling ship had been my Yale and my Harvard College. I'm tired of studying Greek declensions. I'm tired of the AIDS plague. I'm tired of wondering how senile Ron Reagan has become. I'm tired of imagining Nancy Reagan, ruling the nation with the aid of an astrologer.

I'm tired of high concept movies. I'm tired of lascivious biographies of dead movie stars and moguls. I'm tired of Hollywood's self-congratulation. I'm tired of wishing I were a bigshot movie director. I'm tired of wishing I had the perks of an art hero, any kind of art hero. I'm tired. I'm tired of saying I'm tired of being tired, and I'm tired of hearing myself say I'm tired of being tired.

I'm tired of having to fight my way toward my own truth, and I'm tired of hearing other people say the same about themselves. I'm tired of my own self-dramatizing histrionics. I'm tired of peevishness---my own and others'.

I'm tired of not being more broadminded. I'm tired of not being more narrowminded. I'm tired of yearning for the peace and quiet of Wayne, Nebraska, in the 1950's. I'm tired of remembering Wayne's beautiful little turn of the century brick library. I hope it's still there, still being used by kids.

I'm tired of remembering Wayne's municipal pool, and its roller rink, and I'm tired of the way the prairie stretched out endlessly beyond them. I'm tired of the way silos dotted the landscape. I'm tired of the bountiful earth. I'm tired of the sound of grasshoppers, hopping from leaf to leaf in summer cornfields.

I'm tired of remembering trout course through a Pennsylvania stream, and I'm tired of the beauty of the Cumberland Valley. I'm tired of what a successful kid I was, and I'm tired because my childhood was the highpoint of my life. I'm tired that I'm not a father myself, but I'd be even more tired if I were a father.

I'm tired of my own rhetoric, but I don't seem to be able to help myself. I'm tired of spouting rhetoric in spite of myself. I'm tired of a world in which there is no place for the joy of rhetoric. I'm tired of cutting myself off at the pass, and I'm tired of getting in my own way, and I'm tired of not being able to get out of my own way.

I'm tired of beautiful women, and they seem less than thrilled by me. I'm tired of wanting women I can't have. I'm tired of wishing I had someone to take care of me. I'm tired of feeling sorry for myself and I'm tired of denying that I do.

I'm tired of words, I'm tired of syntax, I'm tired of vocabulary. I'm tired of style and I'm tired of editing. I'm tired of having an overstocked inventory of mad essays. I wish that I could write like an avenging angel. I wish I could create worlds of the imagination which my readers could happily inhabit.

I'm tired of being a literary trickster. I'm tired of feeling like I'm at the bottom of the literary food chain and I'm tired, very tired, of writing like an avenging solipsist. But not as tired as I am of those who exhort me to get involved with the human race. I want to say: Solipsists of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your Narcissicism. But I'm too self-absorbed to take to the barricades.

I'm tired, very tired, of writing sentences with I in them. But I'm too self-absorbed to change now. I would very much like to write something that mattered to you, but I don't know you and I hesitate to speak to or for you. I'm too tired to reach out to you, but not too tired to evade you if you reach out for me. I'm sick of myself, tired to death of myself, all I know is myself, and I see myself through a glass darkly, through a glass wearily, through a glass filled with fatigue.

--FIN--

Ask Me

5/14/96


ASK ME

Don't ask me to care I am unemployed and don't know where the rent is coming from. Don't ask me to care that mankind is overrunning the planet and extinguishing all the best species. Don't ask me to care that I'm not coming up with anything new. Don't ask me to care that I'm in the grip of despair. Don't ask me to care that I eat the air.

Don't ask me to care that I loathe many of the same people I love. Don't ask me to care that those closest to me and farthest from me have been fucking with me since the beginning. Don't ask me to care that I'm a conscript in the War of the Babies. Don't ask me to care that personalities like Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone and Mike Eisner and Don King and Jesse Helm and Elizabeth Dole and Richard Simmons and Sally Jesse Raphael and KoKo the Maneating Chimp thrive in this society.

Don't ask me to care that I am required to pay car insurance, but 20% of California drivers carry none. Don't ask me to care that I've got to take a pee. Don't ask me to care that I am in despair, despair, despair. Don't ask me to care that we are evaporating into thin air, thin air, thin air. Don't ask me to care that I wear a heavy leaden crown.

Don't don't don't. Ask ask ask. Me me me. To care. Don't ask. Care? I care about everything. And nothing. That's the way it's done, isn't it? Is it a good idea to care too much about any one thing? Is it a good idea not to care about anything? Is caring an idea at all,or is it an emotion, or it is a big ball of hokum, sold to gullible yokums?

Care? Don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to buy what you're peddling, and I promise not to sell you mine. Let's mutually agree to keep our own junk in our own garages. Next time I hold a garage sale, I'm just going to carry two items: ecstasy and despair. Don't ask me to care which, if either, you're foolish enough to buy. Feel free to bargain with me. I'll sell at any price....so long as I like the cut of your jib, and maybe even if I don't.

Don't don't don't, don't ask me to care. Don't ask me to care about your career. Don't ask me to care about the state of your hemorrhoids. Don't ask me to care about your relationship to your parents, and I won't ask you to care about mine. Don't ask me to care if you care. Don't ask me to care if I care. Don't don't don't, ask me to care.

OK. If you insist. Ask me to care. Ask me to care about any damn thing you want. Ask me to care if the crocuses are pushing through the snow. Ask me to care what happens to retarded children when they grow up and try to make their way in the world. Ask me to care about murdered Bosnians, fried Nagasakians, slaughtered Tutsis, poached Hutus, cindered Iraqis, clobbered Aztecs, butchered Seminoles, massacred Sioux, drowned Bengladeshis, bombed Lebanese, martyred Vietnamese, buried-alive Chinese, exploited Tahitians, and betrayed Poles. Ask me to care about pink armbands and Star of David armbands. Ask me to care about the States of Israel and Palestine. Ask me to wear a red ribbon on my lapel and tie a yellow ribbon round my old oak tree.

Ask me to care about the children I'll never father. Ask me to care about the children others have fathered and abandoned. Ask me to care about the words I never wrote and the words I did. Ask me to care about bicycles. Ask me to care about air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin. Ask me to care about the state of the South Bay storm drains. Ask me to care how it feels to bicycle, by coast, to Manhattan Beach and back. Ask me about promiscuity among the youth of South Bay communities.

Ask me how it makes me feel to see, as I whiz by on my bike, a young Amazon playing volleyball in a dayglo swimsuit. Ask me whether I worship the shape of her legs and ass. Ask me whether I would be indifferent to the prospect, however unlikely, of sexual congress with such a one.

Ask me how hard it is to be my mother's son. Ask me whether all my college classmates who are still alive, as well as some of those who aren't, have surpassed me in material well-being. Ask me if my life has value to anyone, anywhere. Ask me if I despair. Ask me if I care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I despair. Ask me if I care if you care if I care if you despair. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.

Ask me if I care you still owe me for that bike I sold you on trust. Ask me if I feel betrayed. Ask me if I care whether I feel betrayed or not. Ask me if I feel deceived by you. Ask me if I care whether I feel deceived. Ask me if care whether a bunch of Yuppies in the grip of midlife crises died on Mt Everest yesterday.

Ask me if I care. Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.

Ask me, if I don't care, why I read the newspaper. I read to find out what it is I don't care about, of course. Or, if you prefer, I will care about it. I will care about it all. I will care what Ann Landers advises "Horny in Houston" to do with her unrequited lust. I will care what my horoscope says. I will care what M. L. Rosenthal's point of view is. I will try to be more attentive to the words of William Safire. I will attend to Anthony Lewis and Art Buchwald and Maureen Dowd and William Buckley. Well, I don't know about William Buckley. Is it OK if I just read his son's tobacco satire, and leave it at that?

I will care about whatever you suggest I care about. Should I care about the state of health of your immediate family members? So be it. Should I care that you haven't been laid in 6 months, and that your spouse seems to be getting some strange? I'm caring, I'm caring.

Should I care that children in the Sub-Sahara region are suffering from malnutrition? Can you hear? That's my stomach, growling with sympathetic hunger pangs. Should I care that I appear to sound cynical? My profoundest apologies. I'll do my best to appear sweetly sentimental from here on out.

Should I care that Mother Theresa is a better person than I am? I prostrate and prostate myself before her public image. I abjectly apologize to the Goodness Police and beg them to please officer, please, let me off just this once. Should I care that Donald Trump has more debt than I do? I care, Donald, really I do. But don't look back, I'm gaining on you. And Donald? When you're done with Marla, if there's anything left, would you pass her to me?

Should I care that Donald has dandy digs in Trump Towers, while I rot in a rathole? I care, I swear I do. Should I care that my unfancy car and flat and clothes and income and social standing make me less than desirable in the eyes of some fabulous looking women? I care, I swear I do, I care.

Should I care that I'm not at the top of my form every waking moment? Should I care that the world's not beating a path to my door? Should I care that I don't stride the earth like a colossus? Should I care that my dad, whatever our misunderstandings, really loves me? Should I care that I have, at last, found a way to express myself? Should I care that I despair of ever publishing what I write or ever reaching others' hearts with same?

Should I care I'll never get to heaven, on this earth or in the afterlife? Should I care that little old ladies are lavishing big bucks on toy dogs while children in Haiti starve? I care, really I do. I care about every fucking thing if it makes you happier, if that's what it takes for you to love me. I care about reaching you. I care about being on your side and lending you a hand. Just as much as I care about butting heads with you and smacking you down.

I care about sunsets, and puppy dog tails, and sugar and spice. Sure I do. I promise I do. I care about the state of the union. I care about who's elected in the upcoming gubernatorial campaign. Actually, I just like saying gubernatorial. Mayoral has a ring to it, too. I care that you were born with an ugly raspberry birthmark across your cheek, and that you were led, by a late night infomercial, to purchase a cosmetic product which hides the birthmark, but which makes you look as if you've been bobbing for apples in plaster of Paris. I care whether or not to capitalize the Paris in plaster of Paris. I care about common nouns and proper nouns alike.

I care about body odor. I care about carbuncles. The bigger and juicier the better. I care if you've got polyps in your nose. I care that I can't seem to write a sentence that doesn't have I in it. I care that I rant and declaim, but am not creating a fully-imagined, fictional, world in which you can live. I care that these words don't free me and you from the burden of self-consciousness.

I care that there was no room at the inn that icy night in Nazereth, or rather, Bethlehem. I care that the Lord Whateverhisnamewas was crucified and rose again that I may live and care. I care about and believe in all the world's religions, especially yours. I just want to make you happy. What can I do to make you happy? Tell me what you believe in, and I'll believe in it, too.

I care that I am writing now. I care that I am being productive. I care that I cannot make money from what I am doing right now. I care that my bills are mounting. I care that my mother willfully and skillfully misconstrues everything I say and do. I care that this is the way of mothers, who give us life so that they can make us leap through hoops of fire.

I care that the mailman will soon bring the mail, which, in my case, will include plenty of bills but no checks. I care that my memory's going. I feel delivered from everything I am forgetting. I care that I'm dying on my feet. I care that this is the way of the world. I care that healthy young female humans are naturally attracted to healthy young male humans, not to unhealthy middleaged subhumans.

I care that the sun is shining like a mocking brass bell in the pitiless California sky. I care that this piece is going nowhere, that you can dive into it anywhere, that you can take a slice of it from anyplace you please and leave the rest for dead. I care. I really fucking care.

I care that for me the writing process is completely mysterious, like stumbling through underbrush in the dark. My mind is a machete which is losing its edge. I've lost my bearings and can't remember if I'm in the Amazon or New Guinea. Everyone I meet looks like the Wild Man of Borneo, so maybe that's where I am.

I care, I really care, that Japan is denuding the forests of Indonesia while back in Kyoto, zen nature worship proceeds apace. I care that the big cats of the world are being extinguished to make Chinese medical nostrums. Would I care any more or less if these ground up tiger bones actually cured anyone of anything? Do I care if the body parts of endangered species have a placebo effect? Do I care if powdered rhino horns really make Taiwanese more potent?

Do I care that something seems to be happening to the corners of my lips? That they don't provide the seal that they once did, that they are leaking, that I'm drooling all over my computer? Do I care that my family has excellent genes, that I may have inherited a strong, longlasting heart along with my low I.Q.?

Do I care that this piece seems to be going on forever? Do I care that I am not writing an epic novel which will be saluted by all the critics? Do I care that a big movie deal isn't in the offing? Do I care that I'm a marginal man? Do I care that many Americans are addicted to money, but that there is not yet a 12-step program for them, because it's OK to be a rich bitch and/or sonuvabitch? Do I care that I can't bring to mind the name of that cockney asshole who brings us the lives of the rich and famous?

Do I care that someone, somewhere, is eating better than I am, fucking better, sleeping better, digesting better, listening better, running better, singing better, loving better, writing better? I care, I swear I really care.

Do I care that I am a pitiless individual? Do I care what hypocrisies you entertain?

Do I care that Francois Truffaut was a cinematic genius who discovered, late in life, that his genetic father was a Jewish dentist who somehow survived the Holocaust? Do I care that I was hatched from a platypus egg, and that my parents scooped me from the billabongs of the outback and brought me to American disguised as the bastard kookaburra offspring of a wallaby?

Do I care that I can no longer remember my national origins, or that I was a son of the pioneers? Do I care what color my skin is? Do I care what color your skin is, or how straight my hair is, or how round your eyes are, or how broad my nose is?

Do I care what you believe in? If it'll make you any happier, I'll believe in it, too. If you feel you must kill me in order to convert me, take your best shot. But it really won't be necessary. I'll convert to whatever tickles your fancy.

Do I care that America lost the Vietnam War? Did America lose it? Did it only win it when it lost it? What was it the Vietnamese won? Vietnam? Is that something I want? Is Vietnam something you want? What would you do with it if you had it? Would it be a burden, or could you carry it lightly? If you promise to carry it lightly, I'll give it to you. There. Is everything okay now?

Do I care that Andrew Lloyd Webber, with his suspect musical virtuosity, makes scads of money, as do Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, but that the Captain and Tenille and Tony Orlando and Dawn have seen better days, and that Andy Gibb will see no more days at all? Do I care, really care, that Albert Einstein was way, way, smarter than I? Better he than I be burdened with all those brains.

I wouldn't have known how to wear them lightly.

Do I want to take the time and effort to try to find what's positive in rap? Do I miss H. Rap Brown, and can I remember what he said when what he said was being reported? Is he as eloquent now as he was then?

What does an 8-track sensibility do in a digital age? Retool or despair? Should it care?

When I watch "All Quiet on the Western Front," why does it make me weep? Do I really care what happened to a bunch of fictional Germans in World War One? Do I care that I am sodden, saturated, sopping with despair? I care. I really, really care.

Do I care that Bobby DeNiro gained 60 pounds to play Jake DeMotta? Do I care that Martin Scorsese is a living cinematic legend? Do I care that The Pawnbroker left me speechless the first time I saw it? Do I care that director Arvin Brown's 1972 staging of Long Day's Journey into Night left me sobbing?

What if I cried me a river. Would I care? Should I care? Should you care? Why should you care? You'd have to be crazy to care. I'd have to be crazy to care if you cried yourself a river, but if it'll make you any happier, I'll care.

What does it take for me to write? I have to make it my number one priority. I have to forget that I'm unemployed and in debt. I have to forget what sells. I have to be rested. I have to give it my very best self. I have to set down exactly what I hear in my head. I have to go beyond despair. I have to despair and not despair.

If I don't write exactly what is in my head, I'm not writing, I'm lying. And there's no pleasure in that, no matter how much money I'm paid to do it. It's too much work to try to keep the lies straight. Anyway, I won't be paid whether I whether I am true or false to my inner voice, so I may as well be true to it and obediently transcribe it.

I wish I could create a fully imagined fictional reality for you if that's what you would prefer to read. I just want to make you happy. But if speaking my mind does not make you happy, then you should find and read the words which do make you happy. Or maybe you should write them yourself.

The question is: Is my first priority making you happy, or is it setting down the words I hear in my head? Am I here to write what you think you want to hear? What if the words in my head are what you think you want to hear, but you don't realize that until after you hear them? What if I'm speaking for both of us when I say this?

Why do I feel so fresh and sharp today? Why do I feel I could bury you in words? Is it because the weather is cool, and the birds outside are singing their hearts out? Is it because I've made my peace with my shaky prospects for the future?

Right now a car alarm is blasting outside my window. Do you think it's bothering me? Do you think it's breaking my concentration? Do you think it's throwing me off my serve?

If this is what I am writing, how the hell am I going to make a living as a writer? What if writing this way makes me unsuited to do anything else for a living, but I can't make a living writing this way? Then what am I doing here? Making a dying? Are these words sealing my doom?

Why am I taking pleasure in them? Because they're slow suicide? Why are you reading them? In order to watch an author disintegrate, immolate himself in his own language?

Am I a Buddhist monk, protesting the war in Vietnam by burning himself in a Saigon street? Isn't it a little late for that? And are these words really so hot I can flambe myself with them?

Am I an informer in Soweto, dying with a burning tire wrapped around him? Am I a Spanish witch being subjected to auto da fe? Am I, am I, am I, going up in smoke?

Are these words a brand? Do they sear into my flesh and make a smell like burning eggs? If I am frying myself with my vocabulary, how long will it be before I'm an ash with nothing left to burn? When this piece is complete, will I be a pile of gray dust in the shape of a Doug which you can knock into nothingness with a puff of air? Will I , will I, will I care?
-FIN-

Ode to Joy

5/11/96

ODE TO JOY

Right now, May feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Right now, June feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Spring feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Right now, time feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Right now, jerk off mags feel like a gigantic waste of my time. Right now, auto insurance feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Right now, everything feels like a gigantic waste of my time. Stargazing feels like a waste. Whalewatching feels like a waste. Girlwatching feels like a waste. Waistwatching feels like a waste.

Music appreciation: a waste. Gluttony: second, third, and fourth helpings of waste. Moderation and the golden mean: a double waste, an immoderately moderate waste. Politics: worse than a waste. Taking a dump: waste waste waste. Flushing: Waste of water and time. Philosophy: braindrain. Money: A waste of spirit in an expense of shame. Getting my rocks off: Sounds tempting, but don't waste the Big O on me. Family? Everyone should have one----except moi. Pets? Set 'em down. Cars? Flatten 'em. Runway models? Fatten 'em. Music execs? Bury 'em in platinum. Herman Wouk? Don't make me puke. King Farouk? A royal kook. Betty Boop? Out of the loop. Beyond Baroque? An inside joke. God? A ling cod, an old sod. Yo' mama? Mamarama. Strippers? Jam their zippers. Coke? Up in smoke. Cops? Paste 'em. Criminals? Waste 'em. Electric chairs? I'll take a pair. Prison? Derison. Heaven? Seven come eleven. Hell? Swell.

Fine clothes? Rags will do nicely. Nakedness? I'd offend my own eye. The truth? Which one? Lies? Sties in our eyes. Darkness? That I might be able to see. Chill? Let me think...I might be able to warm up to that...if it didn't make me ill. Icebergs? Entomb me in one. I'll take a round the world voyage. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll bump into another Titanic and take us both down. The future? Looks black black black. Yoga? Why don't you just crack my back on a railroad track and make a swift end of it? Gymnasiums? I'd rather have a chalazion. Animals? Give me naugahyde. Plants? Only in unheated cans with plenty of preservatives. Blubber? I do it every day. Trees? Are for the birds. Turds? Now your talking my language. Wars? I carry my own, it's psycho-civil; I'm seceding from myself, then crushing my rebellion.

Bosses? Line 'em up against the nearest wall. Workers? What are they, chumps? Cancer? I'll take a double dose, and top mine with chemotherapy and cobalt. Barium enemas? Only if you first hang me upside down from a meathook. Homework? Should ruin every child's life. Sentiment? Is for the soft. Boxing? Back to bare fisticuffs! I want to see eyeballs rolling like marbles round the ring. Slavery? Just the obscenity we need to revive. Jazz? For buppies. Rap? May it demoralize everyone in America under the age of 21. Bank robbery? Why the fuck not. And you, bank guard. Yeah, it's me, the guy with the pantyhose over his head and larceny on his mind. Kindly put a bullet in my ear on my way out, will you please? If I get any farther than the sidewalk it'll feel like a career, and we can't be having that.

Presidents? Put 'em all under house arrest in a Motel 6. Minimalls? I glory in them. The Internet? Just the denatured non-experience I yearn for. Green grass? Up your ass. A sharp stick in the eye? Shish kabob me brain, immediately. Depression? I'll take two, acute and chronic, and toss in some unhealable lesions, will you? Veterans of Foreign Wars? Yes! What a joy to down doughnuts with them on a Wednesday evening at the old Legion Hall, and afterwards, we'll go bowling!

Slipped discs? I'd like one between every cracked vertebra. Physical health? You can have mine. Endangered species? Clear 'em off the map! Hudson's Bay? The toilet of the Great White North. The Gulag Archipelago? Bring it back and stick me in it, I'm weeping with nostalgia!

The Champs Elysee? Stick it up your Arc de Triumph. Blue skies? Bring 'em down, and the birds that fly in them. Rainbows? Broken promises. Planets? Stick 'em in your hat, put it on your head and call it curls. Bugs? I'll take a heaping dumpster-full. Microbes? A trillion, please, in my frontal lobes. Fungus? Get it among-us. Despair? Can't you smell it in the fresh Spring air?

Unemployment? Yes! And with no compensation! Roofs? Off they come! Bring on the monsoon! Comets? Don't make me vomit. Rhinestones? In the Queen's cunt! Oatmeal? As much as you want. More than you want. And no raisins or brown sugar topping!

Sandwiches? Stale shit sandwiches only. Conscription? For everyone. Commitment? To the nearest asylum. Declevity? Yes, but no levity. Cavities? Drill me to oblivion, Doctor, I am your obedient pain-slave.

Drive-ins? They're so great to be alive-in. Kodiak bears? Maul me, momma. Toupees? Make mine slippery. Sy Sperling's hair club for men? I want permanent dismembership. Hatfields and McCoys? Bring back, and arm with assault weapons, the boys. Neanderthals? Welcome to The 21st Century, y'all, prognathous jaws and all. Infected genitals? I'll take seven dozen u-renitals.

I'm beginning to feel ever so much better. Thanks for hearing me out. Michigan Malicia? Give 'em more clout. World Trade Center? Bomb it benter and benter. Fear? Draw me near. Hopelessness? I bleatingly confess. Sex? Only with Tyrannosaurus Wrecks. Loneliness? Yes, I embrace it, I'm so blessed.

Craps? Snake eyes. Snake eyes. Snake eyes. Roulette? Bet it all on double zero. Emperors? I'll take Nero. What about Caligula? I couldn't give a figula. Fistulas? Love 'em, yearn for 'em, especially on limp wristulas.

Draft me murder me flay me tax me divorce me betray me abandon me deceive me exploit me ravage me loot me pollute me enslave me infect me vivisect me, eviscerate me, plait me, upbraid me, berate me, castrate me, tar me, feather me, run me out on a rail, lynch me, pinch me, steal my youth and age me old, get inside my head and make my brain a jello mold.

Make every night be Sunday night, make every morning Monday morning. Give me a 4 hour daily commute on the 405 Freeway. Appoint me dogcatcher to the world, and let rabies run rampant amongst my fourfooted furry friends. Darken the sky, vanquish the light, cast me in shadow, morning noon and night. Never thank me when you can wank me.

Wake me wake me wake me from this urban nightmare. From here on out, I want my misery rustic. Rust all my tools. Scatter my bones. Strip me of my loved ones and I'll roam the fields alone. Make my epitaph the cry of the northern loon.

Bore me bore me bore me silly. Willy nilly. Ignore me. Give me Bob Dole. Stick my head upon a pole. Gaily 'doze me into a mass grave. Celebrate the cowardly and desecrate the brave. If you can't cremate me, flop my naked limbs like angel hair, like fish bait, like the forgotten legions of the damned, into a hole of my own making.

Array the hordes of Genghis Khan before me. Give me an ultimatum which I cannot accept. Storm my walls, sack my city, rape my women, slaughter my children, make a pyramid of the skulls of my countrymen, and save me out for special torture.

I'm a Crusader, climbing a crenulated wall, taking cauldrons of hot pitch in my face. I'm a Saracen, skewered by a Christian sword.

I'm the abandoned 4th wife of a fertile, syphilitic, nomadic patriarch, giving birth, after 36 hours of lonely labor,in a cougar-infested mountain meadow. No midwife is in sight.

The sun is going down on my world. When I awake, all is scoured, waxed, sparkling, and running and flying backasswards towards the beginning of time. The buffalo and the passenger pigeon return en masse, a hundred million billion strong. High plains Indians gallop through the thundering herds. Moctezuma's lost city stands again, a gleaming fairy dream in the Mexican mountains.

Backwards spins the world round the sun as sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths reclaim the Miracle Mile. Oil fields devolve and coagulate: dinosaurs shake the earth. Amphibians backstep, tail-first, into the sea, become armored fish, become trilobites. Now algae rules supreme. Now life becomes chemistry, predating the first, Frankensteinian, vitalizing, bolt.

Rocks are my only companions. They glow orange in a volcanic orgy. I am present at the birth of planets. Stars explode. Blackholes suck light into the back of beyond. I am face to face with the Prime Mover of the Universe. I interrogate my Creator at great length, under bright lights. I put the electrodes to the private parts. I force my Maker to confess His/Her perversity.

I don't, I snarl, appreciate being the butt of this cosmic joke. I refuse to get it, adamantly refuse to get it, refuse to hear the bell, open the door, pick up the phone, though I'm desperate for a wake-up call from a lifetime of sedation, from a five billion year coma. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. It's five minutes to midnight. My eyes are on the secondhand. Every instant is an eternity. This prank's gone on long enough. No more mystic wank. I'm alone, awaiting my punchline, and Goddammit, I expect to receive it, I will only accept it, I demand it, in the form of an apology.

--FIN--

Home and Away

5/9/96

HOME AND AWAY

"What is your original face before
your father and mother were born?"

OK. I admit. I'm unbalanced. So what else is new. And what are you going to do about it? Nada. That's what I thought. Hiding behind your facade of pseudo-sanity. You're crazier than any of us! Because you pretend to be sane!

How can you hope to be cured if you won't admit you're sick! And if you are playing a role in this sick society you are most certainly sick yourself. Do you think you can just don the mask of a participant when you go to work, and peel it off when you come home? By participating you become a participant! When does the masquerade cease? When you come home from work and blow it out your ass before your astonished and horrified family? When you fart around the golf course? When you fall physically ill and go under the surgeon's knife? It's all part of the play, the unending play.

The play in which I play the fool. Not that there aren't many parts for fools in my play. Our play. Let's put on a show! we say. And here it is. The garage show to end all garage shows.

World wars, depressions, plagues, exultations, assassinations, mass exoduses from and entrances into asylums...it's all here for our delectation. We've all been given our lines. Every morning there's another shooting call to answer. In fact, we shoot all through the night as well.

The hours are long, very long, in this play, this movie, this travesty, this farce, this tragedy. Sometimes we're death at the box office. Not one living soul comes to see us, but still we're acting our hearts out! Other times, when we're desperately yearning for privacy, the whole world turns out to stare and glare at our shame. And once every million scenes or so, everything blends together beautifully. We're at the top of our form, we're beautiful, and noble, and we're doing just what God intended us to do, we're practicing the craft we've spent our whole lives perfecting, and miracle of miracles, the whole neighborhood comes out to see us!

Ever afterwards, or at least until our next disaster, which is probably right around the corner, the memory of our triumph is seared in the minds of our fellow humans! Not to mention in our own minds! Yes! We are our own best audiences, seated in the amphitheaters of our skulls, watching our own antics. It's a theater in the round, and the stage is all around us. It's surround-sound. Except when we have blackouts. Then we can't remember, or at least deny, what the hell we did and said. Unless others give us our notices and insist on what they saw and heard us do. And when we blackout, the reviews tend to be hideous. No! we cry. That was someone else! An actor who looked like me, sounded like me, coincidentally had my stage name!

And once in a while a forgiving critic tells us not to take it to heart, that some other bastard wrote our part and we had no choice but to play it. But we know in our souls that even when we blackout we make up our lines as we go along because we are not only actors but also playwrights and directors and stage managers and ticket takers, all rolled (roled) into one, in a production of our own making.

Now the weird thing is that not only are we all playing roles in this gigantic pageant called life, but some of us are playing roles within roles. We are players, actors. And it is only as actors that we get a chance to be something "real," to be firemen or soldiers or lovers or fathers or mothers.

Because those of us who are playing truly dedicated actors are never anything else in "real life." Those of us whose primary fealty is to the life of the imagination are all too aware that we only pretend to belong to families, fight for our countries, bring home the bacon. Do you know when we REALLY love, and hate, and murder, and save, and transgress, and redeem? Do you know when we really ACT? Act with our whole hearts? When we act, on stage, or before the camera, or before heaven's eye, or in the public eye, or in the mirror of our mind's eye. Then we speak the lines that others have written for us, or the lines we are writing for ourselves. That is when, at last, we inhabit our characters and discover who we are.

We players are the ultimate subversives. We are not to be trusted. Or perhaps we are most to be trusted because we are more keenly aware than anyone that we are just playing at being human beings, that we are just playing at being participants in this society, this cosmos.

We know, deep inside, that we are aliens, sent here from another world. We merely clothe ourselves, for a few years or decades, in flesh suits. We learn languages, but none are our mother tongues. We are exiles in this universe, but we can remember nothing specific of our homelands, of the paradise from which we came and to which we truly belong.

And that is why we struggle to recreate that world, that world we cannot remember, but for which we yearn every living and sleeping moment. We roam this planet like ghosts, looking for a way back home, and, in our groping despair, our failure to be anything but displaced persons, we call ourselves players, actors, artists, tricksters, spies, fools, panhandlers, politicians, sculptors, writers, painters, prostitutes, entertainers, comics, architects, musicians, weavers, cardsharps, hustlers, showboats, channelers, seers, prophets, preachers, and palmists.

We are all from an alien cosmos, a parallel universe. But some of us seem to have forgotten it. Some of us actually believe, or pretend to believe, that this world is our home. We play our roles earnestly, humorlessly. We believe what we believe, do what we do, the world is what it is, and that is all there is to it. No nonsense! We are soldiers, priests, mothers, even artists, even actors! Some of us actually believe that we are actors! We forget that we came from somewhere else. We think that we are what we pretend to be.

Look at this actor over here, in this unemployment line. He not only believes he's an actor, he believes that he's an unemployed actor. I know he's playing an unemployed actor. What he really is is a being from a parallel universe which cannot be known by the mind of man, puny, benighted, man.

And here's another actor. He's a star, or at least he believes he is. And he plays heroes in the cinema. And as if his lack of irony about himself weren't already ridiculous enough, he also has deluded himself into believing he actually IS a hero.

He plays cowboys in the cinema, and so he has bought a ranch in Montana, though he was born and bred in Brooklyn. He rides his horse on his newly purchased range, and imagines he cuts quite a figure with his expensive boots and sunglasses....until his horse steps in a gopher hole and catapults him into a barbed wire fence. And there he is, home and alone on the range, and just for a moment, as he disentangles the barbs from his torn shirt, he sees that he is laughable.

Now he has two choices. Does he feel shame, and desperately hope that no paparazzi in an overhead helicopter snap photos of him while he's down and bleeding on his bruised keester? Or does he laugh? Does he get the joke of himself? Does he see that he was only playing at being a moviestar cowpoke, and that in his movies, he was playing again, and that he was also only playing at being an actor, and that he was playing at being a human being as well? Does he keep laughing at he realizes that he really doesn't know what he is, that his whole life has been a masquerade?

And if he has laughed this hard, this long, does he then wonder what it is he will do with the rest of his life? What else does he know how to do but pretend to be a human pretending to be an actor pretending to be a cowboy hero? His fans take him for a movie star. His wife, if he has one, takes him for a husband. Shouldn't he just go along with the joke? If he remembers this laugh for the rest of his life, if he stays true to this realization, will his ability to manage in the world be devastated? Can he get the joke of his life every living moment of his life and still go on?

Will laughing at himself this way lead to despair and disability? Will he, once he disentangles himself from that barbed wire, be able to climb back on his horse, if his horse hasn't broken its leg? Will he be able to go on with his life, or will he just sit there, on the lone prairie, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh?

And if, somewhere in his soul, he always and ever afterwards is laughing, what is he laughing at? At what a deluded fool he is? At the memory of that other place, that placeless place, which was, is, and always will be his true home? Will he know, from here on out, in his heart of hearts, that there is only one truth that matters, and that truth is heartbreaking, and that is that we are all lost, and know not who or where we are, and that we only find our way when we realize as much?

Will he then dedicate the rest of his life to phoning home, to keeping up the wires between the self that he is in this world and his true self, the self that he has always been, the self from whose breast he was torn when he was born?

Will he know that his life is a double, and perhaps a triple or even a quadruple exposure, that he inhabits one world overlaid upon another? Will he forget himself from time to time, or perhaps for years at a time? Or will he always keep that covenant which was that laugh, that laugh he had at his own expense?

And if he stops laughing, but remembers the echo of his laughter, how will he find his way back to the joy he once felt at realizing he was nothing and nobody? Will he go back to making movies, and try to make a movie that shares his joyful realization with the world? Will he stay on his ranch, and keep riding the range, and hope that one day his horse will step in another gopher hole and send him flying so that he will once again come to his senses by losing all sense of who he thinks he is?

Is there a heavier burden with which to saddle a child than to make that child believe that he or she is somebody? Of course the child is somebody. Of course the child is nobody. Don't fence him in without giving him the key to the corral. Or must each of us figure out for ourselves how to get out of our corrals---the corrals others have built for us as well as the corrals of our own making? And if we are able to get ourselves out, will we also be able to get ourselves in?
--FIN--

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

5/4/96

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

I'm trying to get to a feeling. The feeling of being loved. Does anyone really love me? Does anyone really love me that I love back? Do I really feel much love? Is it important to feel love? Is it important to cultivate love within one's self? Is it important to cultivate the capacity to accept and enjoy the love of others? Is love suspect? Does it really exist? Is it a kind of drug? Is love the real opiate of the people?

Where does one go to learn about love? Orgy houses? Aren't they the loneliest places on earth? Is there anything more emotionally barren than the seeker at the orgy, searching for physical intimacy with strangers?

Where does one learn how to love? Where does one learn how to accept and appreciate the love of others? And do I mean the same thing by the word that you mean?

Love is a four letter word. Is it a lie? Is it a feeling, or a deed?

Can we trust poets who are primarily concerned with impressing us? Can we trust those who use words to advance their own agendas instead of exploring their own truths? Can you trust these words, my words? Can I trust you, the reader?

I'm writing, I'm write write writing along. Can I trust the act of writing? Is my faith in this process misplaced? Am I writing merely to advance my own selfish needs? Is there love in this act, in these words? Can I somehow put love in these words so that you read them and feel the love? Is this some kind of shellgame I'm playing with words instead of shells? Am I inviting you to bet your time and energy and hope that there is love under one, or possibly all, of these words?

And if you lifted up these words, one by one, and found the pea of love under each one, or at least some, of them, would you know what to do with that love? Or would you simply consider yourself a winner, would you simply congratulate yourself for winning the bet, for being so clever, for not being outsmarted?

What if, I'm not saying it's true, but just suppose what if I weren't trying to outsmart you. What if I actually managed to hide love in every word? Even if you lifted up the words, even if you took the time and energy to lift up the words, would you be able to see and hear and feel and taste and touch the love?

How dare I say I'm putting love in these words. Who's to say what's in my heart, really. Aren't I just playing games with you? And who the hell are you that I should be sending love to you in my words. And who the hell am I that I should be sending love to you in my words? And who the hell are you that you should be receiving it into your heart, that you should be seeing it in every word, hearing it, feeling it, touching it, tasting it?

What is love? Is it a warm mushy feeling? Is it the opposite of hate? Am I wishing you well?

If, when I hate you, I wish you harm, then when I love you, do I wish you well? And what is well for you? Physical health? How can I send you physical health in these words? Prosperity? If I really wished you prosperity, shouldn't I be sending you money?

How can I send you love in a letter? In order to give you love, don't I have to be there, sitting beside you, giving you warm looks, meeting your needs? If you are a man, and you experience love through sex with a woman, how can I, another man, be of assistance to you? By pimping for you? Or, more respectably, by matchmaking for you?

If you are a woman, a lonely woman who wants to marry a wealthy, socially respectable man, how can I, an impoverished man outside the social pale, be of service? You want what you want, and when you get it, you may be willing to call it love.

I'm not a genie in a bottle. I'm just a humble writer. Maybe I can't put love in these words. Maybe the best I can do is try to entertain you. Maybe I ought to try to be funny. If I make you laugh, will you consider yourself entertained? And if I make you laugh hard enough, will you entertain the possibility that I have tried to put love in my jokes so that I can pass that love on to you?

Let's pretend that I have somehow figured out a way to put love in my language. And let's pretend that you're capable of extracting that love from my words, not only extracting it but feeling it. Does that make us lovers? Do we complete a circuit, a bliss loop, when I put love in on my end and you take love out on yours? What if I'm dead by the time you read this? Is ours still a circuit, a circle? Isn't the circle broken by my death?

Will you be more likely to find and feel love in my words if you don't have to pay for the privilege of reading them, if I give them to you for free? Or will you be more likely to believe that there is love, or whatever it is that you call love, or whatever it is that you need, in these words if you pay for them? And the more you pay to read them, the more value will you find in them?

Aren't I asking an awful lot of these words? Am I completely out of my mind? How could I send love to you in them? What if you are a devil, what if you are a re-incarnated Hitler, sitting there, reading my words. Even if I really did feel love, even if I were clever enough and openhearted enough to put it in my words, would I want to send my love, in the form of my words, to you, Hitler?

What kind of love would that be? Mindless love. Indiscriminate love. Crazy love. Worthless love?

Is love for everyone? Or is it only for those we know, for those we know who deserve it? Should we love only those it makes sense to love? Or should we madly, blindly, send it out into the universe. Should love be like rain, falling where it may, restoring the earth, stirring green shoots in young hearts and old alike?

Is there a part of the earth which does not deserve rain? Is there a desert so terrible, so dry, so deadly, that the sky should not rain upon it?

Is there a person so terrible, so hurtful, that we should withold our love from him or her? What's the worst thing in the world that can happen if we send love out to anyone who will receive it? Will some of that love be wasted?

Do we have a limited quantity of love in our hearts? Should we ration it out so that the most deserving, or needy, or appreciative, get the lion's share?

What if there were an infinite quantity of love in our hearts? What if it were impossible to drain our hearts of love? Are there different ways of loving? Is there a way of loving that drains our hearts, and another way that leaves our hearts continually full, full of love?

Should we love only that which deserves to be loved, and hate that which deserves to be hated? How much hate do we have in our hearts? Enough for everything that deserves it? How do we decide what to hate?

Can I send hate in these words? What if I have character flaws I'm unaware of? Is it possible that hate might leak into my words and make these words toxic to you if you should happen to read them?

How can you protect yourself from my hate? How can I protect myself from yours? How can I open myself to your love without also opening myself to your hate? How can you open yourself to the love in my words, if there indeed is any, without also opening yourself to the hate?

Is the love I put in my words love for you, or is it a generalized love, or maybe a love for mountains, or birdsongs, or fast cars, or money, or shapely women? What good does it do me to share my love of summer storms with you? What good does it do you?

What if I hate a certain kind of bug and I convey my hatred and disgust of that bug to you so that you, too, imagine you feel hatred and disgust for that bug? Does that make that bug hateful and disgusting?

Suppose I loved vanilla ice cream cones, and I talked about vanilla ice cream cones in such a loving fashion that, when you read my words, the words acted like a love potion and made you fall in love with vanilla ice cream cones? Would that be dangerous? Could you hurt yourself by eating too many of them?

What if I were so talented and clever I could describe cigarettes to you in a way which made them seem wonderful. Maybe I couldn't make you love them, but at least I could make you want them. Would that make me a dangerous man? Would you want to be careful about accepting the emotional message I placed in my words?

Suppose I told you that several of my family were chainsmokers who died of lung cancer? How do you think I would feel about men and women who placed messages in their words and pictures, messages that said cigarettes were a good thing to use? Do you think I would feel as if those cigarette messages were packets of love, or of hate, or of death?

What agenda would I imagine those men and women with their paeans to tobacco were advancing? A loving agenda? A greedy one? Should I receive their cigarette messages with an open heart? Should I be suspicious of what they are saying?

How can, I wonder, anyone in the world make his or her living advancing the cause of substances which addict, cripple, and even kill? The people who do so, do they do it out of love?

When a man drops a bomb on another man, does he ever do it out of love? Does he always do it out of hate?

Suppose a man sends a message out into the world that convinces thousands and millions of readers to hurt themselves and/or others. That message might be in the form of words, or images, or you name it. Can such a man ever be motivated by love, or is he always motivated by hate?

Does it ever make sense for us, the readers, the viewers, ever to accept hate into our hearts? If we do take that hatred into our hearts, what will it make us do? Will it just sit there? Can we filter it out? Can we neutralize it or make it harmless? Should we ever act on it? Will we act on it whether we want to or not? Are we helpless in the face of messages of hate?

Are we robots? If we are told to hurt or kill or destroy in convincing fashion, must we obey? What if we are told to kill ourselves? What if we are surrounded by messages, seeming messages of love, which are really messages telling us to kill ourselves?

What if we are told that cigarettes are wonderful, that they taste good, and that we ought to smoke them? Should we take those messages into our hearts and lungs? What if smoking was a form of slow suicide? What if there were people out there telling us to kill ourselves? Should we accept their words, their images?

If their words and images go into our eyes and ears, into our brains, can we get them out of there? Or will we act on them in spite of ourselves?

Suppose it were true. Suppose there were people who made their livings persuading other people to kill themselves. What kind of people could do that? Persuasive people. Tricky people. People who believe that others must die so that they can live.

Suppose this is a letter. Suppose I am writing it to people who make their livings persuading other people to kill themselves or others. Suppose I have loved ones who have died as a result of such persuasion.

Would I be crazy to try to put love in such a letter? Would it make more sense for me to send love or hate to people who have persuaded my loved ones to kill themselves? If I were crazy enough to try to send love, in these words, to people who have persuaded my loved ones to kill themselves, how would I do it?

Would I suggest that they forgive themselves for having persuaded millions of people to kill themselves? Would I suggest that they stop persuading millions more to kill themselves? What if they had mates and children to feed? What if they were part of a great American industry? If I loved them, would I suggest that they stop making a living? How could I possibly suggest, in a loving fashion, that they stop making a living persuading other people to kill themselves?

---FIN---

Work as I Knew It

5/3/96 WORK AS I KNEW IT

Why is it that I get that sense of impending doom every time I ask an ATM machine to give me my checking balance? Because my checking account is having a permanent near-death experience. It's hovering above my neighborhood cash machine, calmly observing me as I desperately try to resuscitate it with checks from my credit cards, which are, of course, nearing their own near-death experiences.

I guess I ought to knuckle down and get a job. But you know what I've discovered during my seven month (so far) sabbatical? I'll tell you in a minute. First you should know that I, as administrator of my own life, saw fit to award myself this sabbatical for years of unremitting labor. And, as is so often the case with self-administered benefits, this ad hoc leave of absence includes neither salary nor eventual return to my previous place of employment. One takes one's leave at one's own volition and one sometimes finds one's behind out in the parking lot at the local 7-11, offering to wash windshields for whatever the market will bear.

But to return to the question of what I have discovered. I have discovered that work, as I knew it, was bad for my health. It wore me out and gave me, literally, a tremendous pain in my backside.

In fact, the whole time I was working at my previous place of employment, I felt as if I were sitting on a Maori war axe. I spent most of my free time and money going to mainstream and alternative healers, shopping, in vain, for an axe-ectomy. But as long as I was planted at that desk, in toxic proximity to that employer, the pain remained. It was, in fact, my constant companion at work and at home, weekday and weekend, prone and supine, vertical and horizontal, awake and asleep. Yes, even in my sleep the pain remained, for I would dream of being cured, only to wake up to find myself more wretched and twisted than ever. Ceaselessly, sciatically, I danced the lumbago.

Worldclass orthopedic surgeons x-rayed my spine, pronounced it more deformed than that of an octogenarian hunchback, and offered to give me operations more complex and expensive than the construction of the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge----and with an 85% chance that I'd be left a gibbering basket case who'd need a staff of five to spoonfeed me apple sauce.

Neurologists tested my strangulated nerves, found them deader than a ten year old bargain battery from Sav-On, tsk-tsked, and asked me if I had become incontinent yet. "No, not yet," I'd lightly say, "that's an experience I'm still looking forward to." Count on a neurologist to shine you the sunny side of life. I can just imagine them breaking the news about an especially virulent brain tumor: "Well, there's a round thing in your head, and it's not your brain, and it's smaller than a breadbox and bigger than a golfball. But it won't be smaller than a breadbox for long."

But I digress. And digress and digress and digress. The long and short of it was that I, not getting the cheap and cheery cures I had hoped from mainstream medicine, began to trip the light fantastic into the world of alternative medicine. And I do mean trip, because that pain in my lumbar region so numbed out my left leg, so clumsified me, that I made Gerald Ford look like Nureyev. Let me say this about the innumerable chiropractors, rolfers, physical therapists, acupuncturists, deeeep tissue massagers, and various and sundry crackpots and witch doctors to whom I made my desperate petitions: None of them worked for free, for the sheer joy of healing....which was, in my case, a good thing for them----because they did not heal me.

What they did do was deal my checking account a series of mortal blows which made me wonder if it was a closet bulemic, secretly binging and purging behind my back. All I knew was that I kept making hefty deposits, and the next time I checked my ATM, the deposits, and then some, would be gone, and a tiny voice would come from the wide-open beak of the bank machine saying, "Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!"

After five years of gainful employment which proved to be, in my case, five years of painful impoverishment, I concluded that I could not run to daylight on a treadmill. Weary of my role as office Quasimodo, and facing the fact my job was plunging me deeper into financial debt as well as a sort of oxygen debt of the soul, I resolved to go into debt on my own time.

That was seven months ago, and I suppose a happy ending to this sad tale would be that my born-again financial resurrection is just around the corner, that I have finally found a way of supporting myself joyfully, on my own terms, without giving myself a pain in the lumbago, by doing the one thing I have found I was always specially cut-out to do, if only I had had the courage and daring to realize it: phone marketing chia pets.

But no. I'm not just taking a bungee cord plummet into the Valley of Deepdish Debt, I'm freefalling without a bungee cord, golden parachute, or severance package to my name. I dive like a fragment of The Challenger, the earth rushes up to meet my face, and I'm laughing my head off. Why? Because my back feels great!

Suddenly, in mid-air, I'm graceful again!

Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of work and debt, I have charted a course directly for debt, and a terrifying maelstrom it is proving to be. But I'm trying to keep a cool head as my craft spins in currents beyond my control because my time, though perhaps growing short, is at last my own. --FIN--