Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

83. ACCEPTANCE AND SILENCE:

And a lot of my own life has just been about acceptance and silence too - just the manner and means of how I was brought up and the idea of not bucking and just instead accepting kindly everything that was and staying quiet about it too and even if you knew anything different or if you knew something was wrong just stay silent about it and keep going on - never let others see you falter or doubt and certainly never make a scene or go out on a limb and all that was something I had to get over and work at un-realizing and by myself I considered it an improvement and a gain to get out of that system of intimidation and control - so at least now I can speak my mind when and how I can or as best I choose to and even though that's true and prevalent I still fight those old demons everyday and it's like some fair Bedinghouse of shame with rooms here and there that I still inhabit even though I've tried checking out hundreds of times already and pretty much then I still live more in my memory than anything else - certainly not in this present-day of horrid horrors and one percent representation - and in that way I'm a person far out of my time and a black stranger out on the edges and fringes of things speaking another tongue donning other clothes and thinking completely different thoughts while living in a complete other reality - and all that's painful too mind you - and it's very difficult for me to get on and stay on but here I am like some sidekick wastrel of Hell just walking quietly past whatever it is you're doing and I can't emphasis enough the pressure needed to make the handle turn - you'd see eventually - and that old cabin in the woods being dreamt about all the time IT IS a real place and actually does exist and a lot of my own personal mysteriousness too I now feel comes from harboring the repressions which were stuffed back inside me during all those years of ACCEPTANCE and SILENCE which both make for a really lousy brew : white picket fences and gates that squeak and eyes in the back of the head so as to see what others are looking at after you pass and all of this is just another form of the PARANOIA which runs the realm anyway and the sooner gotten out of it one is the better off for it all one also is and that probably ends up counting for more than windy whistles on the tarmac or flying off to Algeria or seeing old movies on the back of the cab or whatever - the world is now all the world and no longer broken up or fragmented like it once was : we see the same places everywhere we go and the same fruitless dumb-ass people and parents and kids and concerns and rivalries likes hates dislike loves favoritisms and misunderstandings too and they're ALL like simple lemmings lining up for the jump and ten minutes later or after a while they're all drunk anyway and slowly getting louder and looser and stupider too and this time it's in MY backyard and I have to listen to the crap all through their drunken night : just like that right from the 'git-go' it's already unfair and the tables are already turned against me and it's the same fifty people anyway everywhere you go they're all you ever meet.

82. CARPATHIA - THE SEQUEL:

A person can't go around blaming others for everything which transpires seemingly against them nor can one point fingers constantly or pick at this or that trait here or there to show explanations for the nature of things - the reason one CANNOT do that is because it is too simple a means of ferocity and too transparent a manner of pushing onto others the things that one should deal with personally and any disorders of such nature are at root now found to be chemical anyway (as my aunt used to say of my father - and something to the effect of 'he should not be so proud and protective of himself it CAN be treated with medicine it's all chemical and it's just something out of balance - but he of course won't listen') and maybe so : neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists and social scientists have made huge strides in understanding now why people do the things they do - even murderers for that matter - and it's probably important knowledge but it's had the effect of reducing the scope of the 'human' self - 'Man is the measure of all things' declared the Greek philosopher Protagoras milleniums ago but in the age here of new science the individual is found to be like a cork bobbing on the currents of giant forces of evolution brain chemistry stress and upbringing and human consciousness therefore is declared to be merely an 'epiphenomena' of the deep and controlling mental processes that lie within and this goes so far as to having many scientists now doubting that there is anything like FREE WILL or as they put it 'free will does exist but it's a perception and not a power or a driving force - people experience free will and they have a 'sense' that they are free but the more it's scrutinized the more you realize they don't have it' - so therefore the scope for individual action as free will and choice has been reduced and with it so too has the scope for morality - the language of which has been reduced to a language of 'determinism' ('what MADE him do it' or 'why they kill') - ideas which run down the background factors that lead people to become mass murderers and the like and responsibility is then shifted outward from the individual to wider forces (guns environment place etc.) or they wind up merely calling a perpetrator 'troubled' - more ACTED UPON than ACTING so it seems that ALL OF SOCIETY at this time is 'renegotiating' what might be called the 'Morality Line' the spot where background forces stop and individual choice and individual responsiblity begins and now we are at the strange point (in these very late days) when the people who explain behavior by talking about individual character are confused and losing ground while (societal forces again) the poeple who 'explain' behavior by talking about biology and chemistry and social science are assertive and on the march and I SURELY KNOW IT they will triumph in the end and our resultant society will bear all the newer earmarks of fear and paranoia and restrictions and checks 'against' instead of 'for' and this straitjacket will descend and be used against the larger will of all the things which once passed for creativity and individual power and people shall be coerced and meek and powerless dull and stupid and they won't even know it and the powers above them who hold these reins and pull these strings shall have complete and utter control over everything and to make it ALL WORSE they SHALL learn and have and control and use the means of manipulation upon millions by the weird new power of their words and actions : mark me the world will suffer and be made the worse for it : for it's true and we are NOT going back and this idea of chemistry and science and/or brain or evolution will NOT be put back into the bottle and we'll have to listen to them endlessly and all their horrid screeds against reality - for they now seek an unrealizable ideal state and their entire means of LIFE and MANIPULATION are to be set up in the quest for it (unattainable though it be) and they shall then LIE enough to make others believe it can be and perhaps HAS BEEN attained - we are helpless poor and pitiful now and shall be so forever - and they shall talk about it as if it was nothing.

81. NOTHING MORE BORING THAN BORING:

Skulls and bones and carnivores and Jane Goodall looking through the bars watching great apes go to and fro and she wants to speak of Gombe but says nothing of any import as I try to realign the senses to make sense of something near me and the weather has taken some fierce turn for the worse twisting trees and ripping them from the ground like corkscrews in reverse action and water is everywhere lashing windows and drains and streets are clogged with water while cars and trucks and people wait and I watch the secretaries rushing home with umbrellas held open as they leap or try to over puddles and all the old solid men with their determination head forth looking down across acres of plane and ocean - do they wonder where they are or are they imagining a sea? - and as much as I'd like an answer there is none and the cathedral along Fifth Avenue remains gray in the rain and mist while everything seems reflected in a somber springtime light in some awkward double-vision of movement and distortion : yellow taxis in a rippled effect and big buses seemingly made of wavey clay both enormous and wet and I'm still trying to remember what I heard about Charles Whitman but can't recall whether the tower or Austin was more important to what occured : Dallas Tacoma Ft. Washington Tarrytown Albany Paterson and Troy : they're all the same in a little way and some meaningless parody each of a hot dog stand and a bakery like some Allentown on the Seine if ever that could be : I want to be cured I want to be sane I want to be listened to I want some gain I want a name and each of those factors walks with me wherever I go along these old streets and avenues built of dredge and doubt and the two men with signature gloves are smoking cigarettes in the alcove of some building near where the doorway to their tavern sits and some girls are just then walking quickly by oblivious to what they are - all beauty and grace under pressure without comment or note - and a loading-dock worker is standing idly by maybe awaiting a truck or wasting his final moments on a long and dreary shift and there are department stores and expensive stores jewelry stores and make-up stores beauty and clothing in one fell swoop as an anima to the eye of all the beholding masses - nail stores and hair salons candle shops and sporting goods : one insane world of commerce 'midst the vagaries of wants and desires but who can stare back and who can care that everyone has everything they need but they just don't know it yet and I wonder if it's ME who is consoling time or time which consoles me (neither has a need nor reason neither) and had I the chance I'd just as swiftly walk away and enter another realm - the more magical one of chiming doors and rhyming notions in some twenty-six letter kingdom of goodness : the flower shop itself is drooping the nightclub is shuttered for day the barbershop bears no customers for trimming the bookstore has had its day and people are walking in two's and in three's speaking someone's name or chattering in that amiable way which shows how sublime this negative feeling can be - the world is a sordid place an assorted place an assortment of grace a sort of a trace and a soaring base from which to trace the nature of GRACE (which is all we really inherit) and the dooming light of the Sentinel the Devil with the flaming sword is the only figure we get to meet before we greet the horde who've met the Lord and by such means are great books written page by page and one by one and word by word until we're done (and like the drilling-master says : 'there's nothing more boring than boring')...

80. A RESULTANT UNCERTAINTY OF GRIEF:

There's a certain nervousness about everywhere and everywhere one goes there are people jittery with their own brands of uncertainty and compensation for everything around them which represents the 'unknown' to them : and quite frankly there's nothing to be done about it BECAUSE it is a reaction to uncertainty and a reaction of which people have no control over and probably can't even understand - I think of grandparents with thirty or forty photos on their mantlepieces and on their walls which purport to show their earthly family wherever it has been spread to - sons and daughters nieces and nephews grandkids and everything else whether Minnesota or New Mexico California or Maine they show them all and WHY? because it's a bulwark against abandonment and uncertainty it's a kind of notch in the barrel of indifference of which everyone is afraid or aware and unsure of - indifference rears its head and whether or not it's 'ugly' or just a head of any sort they never know quite what to do with it - thus church steeples thus factory chimneys thus stores and products thus consumption (not the disease but the quest - which is probably the disease of the modern man anyway) any of which accumulate matter and an ethos to stave off the resultant uncertainty of drift and abandonment which is man's state of affairs no matter what else (listen ! listen to that baby's screech at birth and hear that wailing too).

79. GOVERNED BY MEGALOMANIACS (Something You Can Hold 'til a Cold December):

Usually a harsh creature of habit (or a creature of harsh habit) or a big fan of absurdist fiction or anything else can be brought to the fore and hypnotized by dice and the allure of an 'other' to recall or say what thoughts come to the surface and now Lo and Behold ! we have them all the same crawling all over the televised screens - misogynist hogs holding their daggers erect in their filthy hands and spouting stern rhetoric and garbage for everyone else to listen to and nod and NO ONE reacts or even sees instead they stare glumly forlorn and wonder again only about their own tomorrows : fantasy parks and men with markers the hammer the cleaver the axe : I am left in dismay standing alone wondering about what I'm in the middle of thinking about yesterday and forgetting today and if I stoop to write a letter it's a letter of intent to run away fade out disappear and I walk right up to the face of this Rudy Grillo fellow and say "I say old chap what's keeping you now ? still selling bullshit by the pound?" and he talks back to me like a statue and says "yes sure and did you know or have you forgot already it was me who invented Multiple Listings for I once was a great real estate leader" and I said "pshaw to all that prove it or I believe nothing you say" and then just like that two days later he's dead and his son's driving a taxi right to the gravesite and no one says a word while he snorts three pounds of pure cocaine during an afternoon alone and the entire car stinks and the odor's outrageous too and then Claudia comes down from upstairs to show me her cunt with the new piercing she's gotten and I say "Claudia Claudia your vulva needs no embellishment you should enjoy it for what it is and your downtown Disneyland - take it from me - needs no extra help or decoration either" and she laughs and says "Ha! I know exactly what you mean and so does Kurt [her truck-driving boyfriend who's right then out on the road somewhere driving across Pennsylvania] so while he's away let's me and you what say TRY this out for size and see how it works!" and I start laughing and she says "c'mon now baby don't fail me on this" so we get down to action and I test her reaction and the TV tube she's got playing is saying over and over [so I thought I heard] "an invasion is imminent an invasion is imminent" and she says "good for me ! that's just what I was hoping ! INVADE ME you fool!" and it was all over in a flash as I filled with my drool her gash and just like that I say "Jesus Jiminy Claudia - do you even know what's going on ? who's President now and what's going to happen?" and she says "can you tell me what crop circles are?" and I start to explain but give it up after a minute - figuring I'd told it simply enough and she's caught the drift - and she says "oh thanks - I really had no idea what they were and I heard people talking about them at the Knox [Tavern] the other night and I wanted to join in but wasn't sure what they meant" and I said "that's OK they're really not important to you anyway - now that you're suitably pierced they'll leave you alone - they're repelled by metal in humans" and she said "oh I'm so disappointed at that" and then the man on her TV said the President had died and the succession was taking place in an orderly fashion and any further news would be broadcast at eleven and Claudia oh Claudia said "my God we live in such interesting times INTERESTING I mean to say very - can you help me clean up this mess?" and I said "sure stay put don't move a thing you make a very interesting sight".

78. MICHAELANGELO LAUGHING:

I remember some blues lyric by somebody which went - 'nobody loves me but my mother/and she could be jivin' me too' - and it sometimes made me laugh as I said it even though I could never remember the tune for it or what it went to and one day while I was at the museum I'd gone to looking at pictures and there were in this section many sorts of old religious paintings and Jesus-and-Mary's and loving mother/son paintings and a lot of that very old pious stuff that used to be painted to illustrate chapels and the like for illiterate people who otherwise needed illustrations to get their faith going and I thought of that lyric in such a context and started wondering if those people any of them could get the humor out of such a juxtaposition - like would they laugh or smile at this or would none of the humor or lightness of it come through and instead of that dour burdensome old heavy weight of faith and doom I wanted to understand where lightness and whimsey came in and how it connected to faith or if it could be or ever was but of course just the same museums are no places to do that either : fat art-guards standing around in silly little museum ID jackets with that blank hour-after-hour stare they put on so as not to really 'connect' with people or make eye contact or anything but instead just stand around vacuous and present as they have to and it was something of a wonder to see such a guy standing there and not taking anything in - of course I didn't know their thoughts and perhaps just perhaps they loved each minute of it all and had favorite paintings and places and stories of their own about the art but I wanted to just go up to the guy and say 'hey pal ! that's a Giotto right next to you get it?' but I never did and just walked around wondering and anyway they weren't 'all' fat just some and they reflected the same mix as the people in the crowd - those somber art students on the benches referring back to textbooks or drawing lines and writing notes and comments about what they see and the old ladies peering as if it all were some kinetescope of old into which if they put a nickel and waited for the movement and action to begin (alas it never did) or the lone art lovers and the romancers in couples on art-dates swooning together their generous likes or dislikes about what they see - out of towners and Oklahomians in gayly patterned colors and clothing from somewhere else both freshly laundered and pert as can be touring distant lands and cultures for a fortnight of hollow joy and spendthrift daring - as such it was always fun but not as much as the fun of the old irony which had always it seemed been missing for centuries - with both Rabelais and Pascal notwithstanding I guess - but I never did see Michaelangelo laugh then did I?