Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

114. AND NOBODY KNOWS FROM NOTHING:

There's nothing worse than a cowboy on a vendetta whose posse has left him abandoned halfway down the trail - that's the sort of stuff which fills Boot Hill with bodies and gets many a man in trouble in those old western stories but back in the time I'm talking about there was a certain form of anarchy about - which had people running off quite often in three directions at once and never really sure who was following them or behind them for support - and no one really listened to what was being said they just instead all wanted to add to the noise and I remember plenty of times seeing truly cacophonous mobs of silly people at be-ins or love-ins or mobilizations or whatever they wanted to call their activism in great wads of sweaty folk rambling through the park or blabbering about at Union Square or down in the Village or uptown too and they were all a really useless sort responding to messages from bullhorns and screaming loudmouths and politicians of one stripe or another going on about their Americanism and peacefulness and all that but all anyone really wanted - in whichever order you placed it - was as usual sex television fun and entertainment and maybe some food too - that's all it ever was : the same silly and trite generational voices as ever going on about the same things as ever before too - almost constantly anyway since like 1924 - socialists drinkers artist-types intellectuals students and rabble-rousers ending their nights at Chumley's or some downtown collectivist watering hole to discuss what it was they'd just all done and it's still like that today with just the glamor of it all being different and when I hear people say 'God Bless America' I wonder if they really meant to say 'Godless America' or when they say 'Pray for Peace' I wonder if they really mean 'Prey for Peace' which is all much more really like it is anyway but nobody comes near anymore speaking the truth or getting things straight so I'm never surprised and when I go back to some of the places I used to know it's all a really sad jumble for me to see now what it's all become - a cheap stupid carnival filled with pretension and fashionistas or gay/lesbian crossovers of whichever persuasion enough to make me glad at least to see some heterosexual commingling going on but try as I might I can never make any sense out of the present day - buildings all retouched or re-faced into horrific and sorrowful mimics of what they once may have been and nothing old or neglected around anymore left and everything's now got horrific value and horrible prices and costs attached and nobody knows from nothing what they're defending or what's there to be defended either and no matter no one cares.