Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

29. THE ‘LANCE CORPORAL’S WITNESS’ REPORT:

‘Save as nothing and regret even less take nothing from no one and answer to fewer’ these were the sorts of mottos pasted around the youngsters’ high faces on nearly every subway kiosk and stairway one can see amazing youth stupid youth the grand dialectic of time and space in constant revision and arguing back and forth over and anew with one another but one needs to ask the question about ‘do we really want to live this way?’ and then try to answer it but the only way to do so is by OBSERVATION strict as one can and there’s never really an answer because – face it – everything IS ! and what does one see but passing styles and regency regenerations and everything new is old again and try to learn from the past but don’t repeat it or however the motto would go IF it were presented gloriously by the same presenters and it’s always the army I see (watch that guy ramrod straight crew haircut walking tall and regimented like solid lace walking INTO his bank of choice) trying to run things by a stropism and a militarism of thought and attitude – they try to run LIFE as a military camp wherein nothing untoward can happen and only that which is preferred and pre-ordained occurs and that’s what you hear on the midnight morning news - happy faces smiling faces stupid faces dumbass faces EVERYTHING within bounds and far out of reach but even that guy walking along looks over everything stiffly and scans like an eagle the old world he sees BUT NOT for the adventure of creation or the joy of discovery but for the slow and sorry preservation of anything that already is (and since it’s changing constantly) always under revision and always in collective agreement with the ‘powers’ of the moment WELL THEN he’s really going nowhere fast ahead of his own curve and misleading himself into thinking of preservation while vanguarding a horrible constant change and ‘he would be the keeper of the flame and he would try to beat the shepherds back’ but nothing would occur in such a world except the static of the status-quo appropriated all by someone else and the notes from the Lance Corporal are written on the backs of his two hands but HE CAN’T READ and avoids all else ‘NO MORE CHEVROLETS nothing that must be kept cold no more sudden moves everything as of old’ (well there’s a maybe and ‘gimme an A’) – on the palms of their hands on the soles of their feet on the walls of their houses they wrote all their names in blue ink stained deep and just before dawn they disappeared and left the scene THEY ATE sweets until they were sick they fell asleep on the concrete floor and the next morning the newspapers it seemed all tried to make sense out of what had supposedly occurred but no one found a key reason for any of it and there didn’t anyway seem to be any reason or feeling to the excuses that were given (“as it turned out” he heard the newsman saying “the family had been under observation for three months for a variety of what were once called (under the old regime) ‘anti-social crimes’ but which would today and in our own society of course be passed over as nothing more than foolery and flippant individual freedoms yet of course there are still countries in which such offenses are considered serious in fact worthy of death and in this case it was just that summary sentencing and execution which had taken place as clan members and neighbors from the family’s home town massed and paraded to their very doorstep - and they each were taken out one at a time and beaten to death with sticks and pole-axe handles and the reaction in this country was horror and distaste as movements suddenly arose to question both WHY and for HOW LONG we as a nation are and shall be advancing such a society as this expending manpower firepower and great sums of money to promote such a state and PERHAPS that is the question of the day for it does merit some consideration” but then as I think about it I wonder what’s really the difference between what they do and what the militarism of thought does to us all IT’S ALL THE SAME in some lousy futuristic way and I think of the drunks passing out from fear or wonder and the small children with nowhere left to go and the small countries which have run out of coastline and the tall weird men who talk ceaselessly of black holes and random encounters and all the depths of their supposed ‘space’ and its science while they mill about holding martinis in withered hands and the corner Polish guy wiping down the tables (‘yes sir yes sir three bags full’ like a nursery rhyme from the netherland) and whatever it’s been has been a long time SEE SEE the black man outside of Birdland he staggers and shimmies and tries to get cash but nothing unlike him is heading his way accidental moments collect the same sort of guilt (‘and where are you now ? I’ve been waiting so long but no one has come and I’m sitting alone’) and everything is overdone and everything is locked and everything is regrets and malfeasance and timber-locks along some Utah border where they fell trees and go about killing bear and antelope and any other mammal which still lingers late (some PALEO MEXO PROTO whatever ZAIC they wish to call the past) for we live in overflow and lava fills the deck - and they all stared back at me but I couldn’t tell if I was smiling anymore OR EVEN IF I’D EVER SMILED AT THEM.