Dream Twenty-One: Aftermath.

Dream Twenty-One: Aftermath.

I was at a bar downtown that had a mural beside its patio entrance in Actuality. I was arranging to meet with my girlfriend, who had painted that mural. James Joyce was pouring drinks, doing a poor job mediating a drinking contest betwixt J.D. Salinger and (what’s his name?) Hunter S. Thompson, which was beginning to turn brutal. Fats Domino was playing cards with Chester Bennington and Chuck Berry; David Bowie, who had hair like Michelangelo’s David, but thankfully was clothed in glam attire, was dealing.

Across from me, and at a distant table, sat Franz Kafka. We just finished his sixth hard cidre; he’d been buying, and I poured us shots from each bottle. Franz told me that no matter what he did, no matter how cruel the world was to him, he could never escape the feeling of persecution. I told him that it was probably either a Cancer thing or a Jewish thing. At this point, we were approached by a portly, clean-shaven man with a classic combed-over haircut. He spoke in an English accent, somewhere betwixt cockney and the Queen, with but a tinge of Nordic or German, and he offered each of us our next round. I agreed to a Whiskey Sour, minus the aborted chicken fetus. Kafka got a Moscow Mule.

When our patron returned, asking for a seat which Kafka reflexively extended even prior to the question, he introduced himself as Richard (pron. Re-Card) Wilhelm (Will Helm, not unlike Ed Helms). He warned us that he had to show us a little trinket from the Far East, that we might not fear that he was reaching for his gun. His hand was in the inside of his coat jacket, save for one extended thumb that covered the coat flap, when our waitress, Debbie Harry, dressed with neon class minus a left shoulder strap, brought his stout ale. At first, it looked as though he was about to tip her, because he withdrew three coins. Then Blondie asked: Is that the I Ching? He replied that it was. She said “Rock on!..!” as he turned back to face us and she took her leave, exposing a tattoo of dancing twins on the hind of the aforementioned shoulder.

Richard Wilhelm cast the coins six times, as Kafka recorded the results for us on a napkin, with his Owl’s Feather Quill. Richard then explained what I can only guess was this old translation by him:

“If you are a passionate soul, you must find a better time to find kindred spirits. In these times, they are only curious legends, bas-relief, dead poets.”

We sat at the bar. A man sat to my left named Alasdair. I heard him speaking to Kafka, at my right, about how he was kicked out of a bar once called Plan Nine alehouse. He said that nowadays people only care about how you make them FEEL, not how Good you ARE, and that these people don’t give a damn about whether or not they SHOULD feel that way. He explained that in Days of Yore men and women would strive to orient their affects in accordance with a fixed set of principles, calling them the stars to every wandering bark, and they would never let their affects supplant their reasoning. I thought then of Daniel Sinclair from Palomar College, and how I worried about whether or not it was mature to allow my feelings direct expression without being filtered through my values. I did not realize I’d spoken aloud until Kafka whispered in my ear: your feelings ARE values. But only if you put them first. I then remembered the distinction between I.N.F.P. and E.N.F.P: the former but his values FIRST, whereas the latter was inclined to USE values to further an emotivist agenda.  

Alasdair was kicked out because he did not meet the age requirements. As the Bouncer was removing him, Alasdair recited his complaint to the entire bar. He even mentioned that Blondie was not yet of age, though Joyce defended her right to work there. Alasdair called Joyce her Guardian Angel, complaining spitefully about Air Signs as Muhammad Ali removed him from the premises. As this happened, I overheard Muhammad stage whisper that Alasdair was right, but that we goats had to do our jobs no matter what.

I bought Debbie a drink, to spite the system. We shared a booth during her lunch break, overlooking the street corner, where a man was helping a female patron from the neighbouring bar to stand as she was trying to find refuge from him in a thin tree. Debbie and I talked about the Office. She told me that despite the long-running romance between Andy and Erin, most viewers found the two of them so repulsive together that it was only practical and predictable to have them split, to have Andy avenged to his heart’s delight so as to dampen his fall, and then to have them keep their professional distance. But I complained that Andy LOVED Erin, and that he was a Good Man who only wanted to balance a tormented family life with a job for which he was qualified to be the next Michael Scott, wherein like Mike he had to answer to a gang of selfish creeps, acting as both their Underdog and Scapegoat. I explained that Alasdair was right, and that Erin broke up with him based only upon how he made her FEEL, and not how she SHOULD feel about him based on Merit. And that no Man of Merit can allow his virtue to be stolen by vicious people.

It was not long before Blondie recognized me. She told me that this blind date had started on a keen if unexpected note. We both laughed. I told her that I was surprised to find her here. She explained that both she and Alasdair came here too young. They died alongside Virtue Ethics and Rock and Roll.

I put on a playlist of my own device on the jukebox. Blondie and I danced to the Talking Heads and Fleetwood Mac for the remainder of the night. James did not intervene. Salinger won the drinking concert; Hunter had to take a cab.

It’s funny; I remember asking Alanna if she listened to Blondie. I started listening to them on Sunday the Eighth of this upcoming Month. I’d never realized hitherto that it was International Women’s Day, remembering it as the Day that She Betrayed Me. I recalled it as Unholy Sunday, and ever since then Sundays were ordeals for me. I used to think it was because Leo was strong on Sunday and I had problems with both my own weak ego and my Father. But it was just lingering trauma. For years I would tell Alanna that she made the wrong choice that day, and that Feminism was the work of the Devil: an emotivistic agenda, devoid of virtue and value, that enthroned the Will (as all Satanist disciplines do) at the expense of Justice, making possible, as Alasdair MacIntyre had explained, the use of men as means towards ends, a violation of the Categorical Imperative, otherwise known as the Golden Rule. I did not recognize her own agenda at the time: her attempts to use the culture in order to climb me and my comrades to the top. Ironically, only the weak bars in the ladder gave her leverage.

When she replied to my text, she said, “No. But..,” sent me a photo of her portrait of Debbie Harry, and then said, “I know how to draw her.” That all ways stuck with me. To HER mind, Debbie WAS Blondie. The woman was the band. And I was betrayed not out of the Power of Love, which I had to accommodate in a spirit of chivalry and humility, but rather that Love of Power that I witnessed on Unholy Sunday.

As the bar closed, Blondie and I decided to climb up onto the roof from the patio. I let her go first, for safety, and because I loved the view. (Pervert that I am, I guess.) I reminded her: reach for the weak rungs in the ladder. They will all ways, though you might never expect it, take you further up than the strong ones. She replied that the strong ones, if she were tied to them, would drag her further down when swimming in Deep Water. And I retorted that while the weak ones give her something to hold on to, she should tread cautiously, for they will snap under her feet and be her downfall that way.

At the top, we found that the Café was a lot less glamorous. Blondie said: “I guess that the weak ones let me down after all.” There was a tent that smelled of whiskey and vomit. Out from thence emerged Neil Young, an aging hippie that was all so Not Yet Dead. He told us plainly to leave his house, saying “you can’t keep doing this, man.” So we took the stairwell back down to Earth. Blondie advised that we hit up Chicago next. I asked if she would not prefer Cleveland. She said that Chicago was on their way. It was a means to an end, entertaining as an end in and of itself, but hardly the Hall of Fame.

Dm.A.A.