LEARY:

I listen to Leary

In a pre-recorded vocal sample.

Looping as he casts his loopy

Theory. That we’d follow his

Example.

And I know he did his best.

But I remember I was never much

Impressed. I knew this back in

Middle School. And I will not

Be made a little fool.

How he’d crusade against

The tyranny of all authority.

Soon he had to answer even

To his own majority.

Soon he like a cancer

Spread the tall tales of

His own superiority.

Soon even the Cosmic Dancer

Grew tired of his seniority.

Alan Watts had warned him

Art Linkletter scorned him

Ginsberg wrote about him

With a Howl.

Father Time endowed him

With a scowl.

Crime denied him

A return across each

Bridge he’d burn.

The gods seemed to abandon him.

As he rode upon a phantom whim.

Philip K. Dick condemned him

As do I and for the same damn

Tragedy. Icarus took to the sky

But never had a strategy.

And of course those loopy words

Work well but only in the same

Closed loop: that there is only

Solidarity within the troupe.

He subtly suggests that on the contrary

He offers Hope. Of truly Universal Unity

Without a comfort that could help us

Cope. He says therefore to screw the

Pope and clergy. And engage in

Orgiastic dramaturgy.

And he urges me

To purge me of the curse

That is the olden way.

And I am left much worse off

Than before for listening to

What he absolutely had to say.

For if he will condemn each path

That leads me back to This Reality,

Then could he not throw out and out

Of wrath all Solidarity in Actuality?

For what is Shakespeare without

Rhyme or reason? What is friendship

If it’s treason? Who’d defend a killer

Who here lies and there hides his

Will under a pious disguise?

Why must I level with the

Murderers when I could revel

In Peacemakers? All for fear

That when you return to the

Herd you won’t have any

Takers.

Why must I forsake the Quakers?

And the Mormons?

And Zen monks?

What can I discover

That I won’t simply

Recover now in

Chunks?

You threw the babe of Human

Friendship out with the bath

Water of conceit. And in your

False camaraderie oddly you

Fell into your own deceit.

And what you brought to me

Was so apparent that your

Sign of birth was knowingly

Transparent.

All the parents you despised

For fear of parenthood. And all

The men you analyzed who wanted

Only to be Understood.

And in disguise of a much

Greater Good than any old

Inherited conception.

You gave way for the great mystery

Of Evil then to parrot your own self

Deception.

And when you said in that loop

Think for yourself. I think then:

For My Self. Is that all that I

Have to live for?

When she asked me what the Self

Was. Prior to her death from

Drugs.

I found a reason to forgive her.

But what is forgiveness,

Pity, mercy when the word of

Evil is abolished? When the

People cannot trust a common

Knowledge?

When the colleges are rape

Machines and dogs will run

Amok. I say: fuck you, Leary.

Fuck your theory of never

Giving a fuck.

Here’s the fuck I give to you:

For there’s no truck in living through

This Life with open mind and no

Convictions except those bred by

Addictions.

Part of me is lived in an eternal fiction

And the other in maternal fact and time.

Under your paternal jurisdiction,

I forego this paradigm.

Modernity supplied it

And humanity denied it.

And it was not vanity that

Spoke with such authority you

Fear.

MacIntyre liberated us with pain.

And a desire not in vain.

When Ram Dass had a heart attack

He tossed your fire out into

The rain.

[You offered Solidarity

Only within a narrow group.

And those who sought it anywhere

Besides you called a troupe.

For you defied the Other

Like a child defies its

Mother. And without an

Adult’s rhyme or reason.

And I could have told your story

Of a war-torn scorn in prose.

But as it goes: I know

That it would have been

Treason.]

Dm.A.A.

Epilogue: 640 mots.

They said he was a guy who just did drugs

And played guitar. I thought that it

Was more and that they could not see it

From afar.

A door into an other World.

Devoid of all pretension.

And tight rope-walking spaceman hurled

Into the next dimension.

What if all of the designers

Who had made your favourite games

Were all drug pushing maligners

Who could never feel the shame.

What if it was never real?

The claims that it had shared her

Suicidal woes. And what if its own

Solitary aims and subtle games

Nobody knows?

Because it claimed that all I said

Was so conveniently in my favour.

Like I’d let it all get to my head

Inflamed by its behavior.

But have I not earned the right to savour

What I lost? And if the flavor that I order

Here is Justice. Must it not be that I should

Enjoy the frost? And mindless of the

Cost.

A kind man will enjoy his kindness

If it is reciprocated. He could be

As easily moved to the blindest

Rage if he is baited.

What was convenient for him

Then to omit at my expense:

That he’d supplied an addict

That I loved with drugs

With sex for recompense.

And she believed she was not used

And it could be excused. And so she

So refused to listen. Even as I shouted

Of the ruse.

He raped and killed her

When he willed her out of my

Perfection. And so chilled is

Still my blood for all the blood

That had been spilled by her

Selection.

Her rejection had meant nothing

Next to the one loss I feared.

And sex was something that I never held so

Dear. But they would not adhere

For when they’d hear the psychopathic

Side. How quickly they would side against

My wrath in service to its pride.

She died because I never could omit

In my Great Hope any detail.

That given the entire scope

They’d help her to escape and cope

And Truth and Goodness would prevail.

But what had been the central issue

Clear in every symptom as a pock

Marked zit. Was that I was a victim

And that he was only ever it.

But it was this same griping

Over problems at the very core.

That made it so impossible to solve them.

When my throat was growing sore.

For what lies deep at the core

Of all the lies and washes up

On every shore.

Is thrown back easily

Into the water. That he

Bought her like a whore

Was more than I could bear then to repeat

Or to believe. But all the more I wanted

Them to see the Truth and to relieve.

But what had been so central

Was to them so marginal and

Petty. I could not conceive of it

For this I never had been ready.

And the ones who knew the whole extent of it

Did nothing. But it’s true that they are guilty of it

Too. At least one man here: he did something.

And when it refused, all self-excused

To make amends for what it had the

Nerve to take from friends:

The One Love of my Life.

And Her Life towards meeting its

Ends.

I thought that would be enough

Without the details to convince.

But the Devil lives in all the details.

And she sails with him as with a Prince.

A Prince of Darkness will embark on this:

To rape and murder his closest friend’s

Chosen bride.

I did not know what part to say

To sell it to you that it was not

Justified.

But it must be true to form now

You are all informed that

She has died.

Now: are you now so deformed

As to hold on to every norm

And pride?

Dm.A.A.

a List of Lies:

List of Lies:

You’re not better than any one.

No one owes you anything.

No one cares.

You are deficient.

Right and Wrong are Relative.

You do not deserve Justice.

You can’t tell people what to do.

Most people know the Truth.

There is no Objective Reality.

Silence is never Consent.

People who do not obey don’t care.

The Group is Right.

All of this is necessary.

You earn your keep.

You are Crazy.

There is Nothing More to Life.

It doesn’t matter if you die.

Dm.A.A.

Being, apparently.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Dream Eight: 1341.

I came to on an other planet. I felt hungover. I guess that this must have been how the writers for Great Glass Elevator felt when they penned their psychedelic hit “Drunk on Another Planet”. A little water droplet fell from the sky, waking me from sleep in a false awakening. I brushed it from my eye and I beheld Sue.

Happy Chang’s had relocated to an other solar system. I think it was Altarf or something. It was insanely bright, but we were far from it. And it was night.

Sue explained. At some point she was approached by a paranormal investigator, disguised as a Drug Enforcement Agent, who confided in her that there were extraterrestrials in their very home town. He offered her husband release from prison for the Health Code violations if she complied with his project. She agreed to act as human bait for the Aliens. But when she met them she was converted. They came from a planet that had for nineteen thousand million years (19,000,000,000) suffered from suicidal depression. Happy Chang’s was relocated to this planet plagued by sadness in order to heal it.

Sue and I took a transport towards the City Hospital in order to visit the White Knight. As we rode a mechanical Trilobite over the landscape, I realized that we were in the midst of the largest junk yard that I had seen since Wall-E. She explained to me that this entire Nation was an enormous Landfill for other planets to dump their refuse into. Hence its Capital City was called Garbage. And we were on our way there.

Upon arrival to Garbage National Hospital, we were escorted by two twin robots up two separate spiral staircases that interlaced like a double-helix. Finally we reached a dome-shaped room who[se] exterior, save for the floor, of course, was entirely translucent to the skyline. At its center lay the White Knight, writhing in restraints as various instruments operated upon him with laser beams. Sue explained to me that his D.N.A. was being re-written. He would be reborn a more loyal friend and potent ally, and his betrayal of Earth would be pardoned because Earth had herself betrayed its people, and to be loyal to the disloyal is foolish and only obligates us, by the example that it sets, to sacrifice ourselves for those who had betrayed us.

I asked Sue how she felt living in Garbage Nation on Planet Xanax. (A reference of course to the Radiohead song that was supposed originally to have been so entitled.) She laughed and told me that happiness is no good if you do not share it. I accepted that.

Later, I was granted access to an Observatory. Here there was a Library and a Computer entirely for my use. The other planets had donated it as mere refuse. Upon this rock I built my Church. I had not given up yet on Earth. I vowed to one day come back down to Earth and to finish the Chess Game. And this time, I would play for keeps; no stalemates. I had too much to avenge.

This much was my initial theory:

WHITE:

Rook One: Rob.

Knight Two:

Bishop Three: Stephanie.

White Queen: Awilda.

White King: Arthur.

Bishop Six: Joker?

Knight Seven:

Rook Eight: Mike.

BLACK:

Rook One:

Knight Two: The Blackened Knight. (convert.)

Bishop Three: Stephanie. (convert.)

Black Queen: Alanna?

Black King: Dmytri.

Bishop Six: Joker?

Knight Seven: Kyle?

Rook Eight:

After some time, I gave up trying to figure it all out. But upon waking I realized that Arthur had not even made an appearance in this DREAM SERIES. So I revised my chart. Here it is reproduced, to the best of my ability:

(The waking was of course a false awakening. I woke up next to the White Knight. I returned to the Observatory. Dawn was breaking; it would be fatal to stay here for long. I knew what I had to do, though. I began by typing up my final guesses:)

WHITE:

Rook One: Rob.

Knight Two: The Blackened Knight,=.

Bishop Three: Stephanie.

White Queen: Bianca.

White King: Kresten.

Bishop Six: Joker.

Knight Seven: The White Knight.

Rook Eight: Mike.

BLACK:

Rook One: Kyle.

Knight Two: The Blackened Knight. (convert.)

Bishop Three: Stephanie. (convert.)

Black Queen: Alanna.

Black King: Dmytri.

Bishop Six: Joker. (double-agent.)

Knight Seven: The White Knight. (Convert.)

Rook Eight: Sue.

It was the best that I could do. As azure light swam in I created a flow chart. I had to figure out how all of this had happened. Again: I reproduce it for you now only to the best of my Earthly Ability:

1.        Rob and I had to rescue the dogs.

2.      Kresten followed us.

3.      We lost Kresten’s tail.

4.      He was picked up by the Joker.

5.      The Joker, urged by Kresten, began to follow us.

6.      If the Joker was Anthony, which would make sense considering that Anthony had dreamt of driving the same van, then Anthony did this prior to visiting the Theatre. (Again: pardon the revision. At least I did not revise the chronology.)

7.       After the flood Anthony was picked up again by Kresten. Around this time he acquired a Flame Thrower.

8.      The van was a Police Van, so they had to keep it out of sight of Schrader. They waited for Schrader to leave before they paid a visit to the Antique Disposition.

9.      Shortly thereafter they spotted me and W.K. trying to leave. They identified those bikes as their own. At some point (again: pardon me.) their bikes, which appeared in Anthony’s Dream, were stolen from the Van and sold to a Pawn Shop.

10.   They pursued us. Anthony shot Kresten in the face. He ran over the Head of the Scapegoat. Kresten became the Faceless Man. Anthony, dressed as the Joker, escaped.

11.      The faceless man found some means of Time Travel. Perhaps Anthony showed it to him when he found out how to warp space-time in His Dream, so that he could go back to his old Elementary School, seeing it EXACTLY AS IT HAD BEEN WHEN HE LEFT IT, (proving, granted that Chaparral could afford renovations since we graduated from it, that he had literally travelled back in time) and then warp into the Theatre.

12.    Kresten went back in time through the same portal so that he could be in the Theatre on the night of the Performance. His intent: to assassinate Rob.

13.    Having failed to do so, he traveled further back in order to stage a dognapping that would set all of these events in motion. He all so tailed Mike, the other rook, and slashed his tires. He thought that this would undo history. But that only reflected his own, rigid causal view of time. In fact, he had only produced what was inevitable. A determinist would theoretically understand this. But in reality it was never Determinism but rather Teleological Progression that had produced these events. Reality did not come causally OUT of the past INTO the Future; it came FROM THE FUTURE INTO THE PAST. Hence Kresten’s time-traveling produced the foundation for its own occurrence IN THE PAST.

I had yet to figure out what all of this had to do with Korea. At this moment, someone barged into the Library that I would never have expected: my parents. They were out of rehab, and they told me to come home. I told him that I did not want to, lying, of course, because I intended to without their knowledge or interference. Mother told me that Pumpkin had gotten better. The shot had only ever been medicine for his leg to heal.

As she spoke her face came ablaze. The Sun Altarf was Rising. I told my parents, laughing manically, that everything would be all right. “I will fight no more forever. I’m gonna be perfect from now on.” So relieved was I that I would not move until we were all swallowed in Blazing White Light.

And I awoke.

Dm.A.A.