LIVE IN CONCERT

Have you ever noticed how the mind has this interesting ability to rearrange bits of itself into new pictures? To take its component parts and order them in a novel way to create a slightly different version of reality than the one expected?

For instance, there are those dreams that I have…often set in places familiar to me as a child…though something is just a little…off. At first I don’t notice it. Everything is more or less how I remembered it: The living room, with the metal things that looked like painted-over pie plates near the ceiling of the unused chimney column where rumor has it the wood stoves used to vent… over…the two living room chairs—one short and squat, the other thin and tall, like a married couple of some sort—floral in their nudity, their mustard colored covers removed for cleaning as a Tall Person vacuums the…rug… dark green as underwater grass and nearly as long…

…so then I turn toward the front door and go out into/onto the covered over partially in-ground porch we used to have, the one that looked like an underground cow stall with the light coming in from the west though the porch was only exposed to eastern sun with the cobwebs hanging between the shelves of ornate triangular boxes next to the…wait…we didn’t have a porch like this…in fact, that house was torn down a few years ago…and believing I know that, it melts before my eyes like a really convincing wax sculpture on an August afternoon without shade.

Just a little detail will catch my eye, though its significance doesn’t register at first. Then I notice that something is not quite right, that something is definitely out of place. But for a while I’ll just go along with that reality, as though knitting with my toes was something I did everyday as a matter of course.

But after a while I go hey—wait just a minute here. My house doesn’t usually have wheels and go driving around the neighborhood. Something is a little fishy… But in a lucid world I know how to drive my largely symbolic house wherever I want. If only lucid living were so literal…

But sometimes, it’s really hard to tell from the information processed by the mind. Sometimes I see something in external reality and it’s just so unlikely to occur in my universe that I start questioning whether my head is putting information together again in a novel way, or whether the squeeze bottles of hot pink whipped vegetable oil butter substitute really DO exist. Is it more likely that Lord of the Flies has been adapted into a post-modern game show, or that my head is being “cute” again?

See, I kicked the TV habit and haven’t voluntarily done it in nearly fifteen years, so when I am exposed to second-hand noise (since the insidious box is nigh impossible to avoid entirely in this culture), there can be some misunderstandings. In some things I am way less gullible than most viewers, but in other ways I am profoundly more gullible. I’ve never believed that professional wrestling or presidential elections were “real,” but sometimes my discretion arbitrarily swings the other way.

Crystal Gravy, for instance, had me going for years. It was several years ago—back when making liquids clear by any chemical means whatsoever was hip for about fifteen seconds. During that time, I saw, quite by accident, a commercial for a product called Crystal Gravy. The thick, clear, viscous liquid glooped dramatically across the mashed potatoes while an over-enthusiastic choir of women sang of the joys and wonders of Crystal Gravy. I was horrified. It reaffirmed my mistrust and fervent avoidance of the box. I mean, that’s just wrong.

I found solace for my consumer traumatization by sharing my pain with others. Often, the listener was incredulous, but none had seen the dreaded commercial, nor the even more dreaded product itself, so my story was only partially believed. But it was true! I swear I saw it!

Eventually someone clued me in… Crystal Gravy was a satire, a joke about commercials. Ooohh…now I get it. Who knew? It wasn’t nearly as weird as some of the “real” things I’d accidentally been exposed to when perusing the culture, and Crystal Gravy didn’t sound much nastier than Crystal Anything Else which wasn’t chemically suited to be clear. It was America still recovering from the late eighties—people would buy anything and call it food if they thought it might get them laid.

This strange ability of the mind to put together components in unique ways and present them to one as a probable reality has, on occasion, landed me in strange situations in which I would not have otherwise dreamt of being.

Do you dig the carnival? The ones where nine tenths of the thrill of the ride is knowing that you have put your life in the hands of a drunk guy with a one syllable name whose lifepath as a carnie is motivated by a desire to meet chicks? The ones where if you eat the candy apples there is sure to be a wet clean-up on the midway under the ferris wheel? Do ya dig?

Well, I do. My partner in metaphysical crime and I were out tooling about on the backroads a county’s width outside the city limits in the hot pink (Mystic Magenta—whatever—it’s hot pink) convertible, when loe and be holed, there was the Fairground all lit up like Christmas time. Way too good to pass up. Find a parking space. Rides! Whoo Hoo!

It was strange how much it cost to get into the fair…but then again we’d gotten free tickets for years, so who knew? Someone was actually nice enough to give us an unused ticket in the parking lot, so we only had to purchase one to get both of us through the gate. Gosh…I don’t remember smelling so much, um, recreational foliage, at last year’s county fair. Huh.

Tons of people over by the big grandstand…wonder what’s up. Probably a tractor pull or something. Screw it—I’m here for the rides! Rides! Rides! Where the hell are the rides? Nothing. Not a one. Unless you counted that spinning contraption that they were strapping kids into, one at a time, while a guy in a big cowboy hat spun them around and upside down with a rope.

Hmm. That was odd. Well, we may as well at least check out the livestock pens while we’re here. But…they’re…all…closed. What kind of a…?

We look at one another. We look at the Fairgrounds. We watch a really really drunk guy insult a sheriff on horseback and then get arrested. We look at each other again. We dig our tickets out and actually look at them for the first time.

Billy Ray Cyrus. Live. In Concert.

Oops. Faux f*&#$%g pas. Where, exactly, was the gate? I think that if we run, we can be back in the car and down the road before the singing starts. Think of the ticket price as a luxury tax paid for a lifetime completely devoid of Billy Ray Cyrus. Never thought I’d see THAT ticket stub in our scrapbook.

Fairgrounds + lots of people + lights does not necessarily = carnival.

Funny how we put those little pieces together trying to make a picture that looks like a reality we’re expecting to see. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes its head twists around backward as its legs unfold from beneath the gold foil band exposing a small set of wings with which to carry it away to mate in the rainforest with that butterfly who made the stock market crash. Crystal Gravy could have been real…many things of a much more inexplicable nature are called real by this world. I mean, Billy Ray Cyrus is real, right? How thick and immutable is that line between what is and what could be real? Is it a ten-meter thick wall made of pure…

Nitrogen? Novocain? What was that stuff that Superman couldn't handle…? Pop culture section of brain grinding to a halt... Let’s just go with…

...steel? Or is it a gauzy curtain blowing in the breeze? When we think of who we are, do we just creatively arrange bits of ourselves from past perceptions, or do we allow for who we are to exist as it is now, independent of the past or future? Do we, as Emerson suggests, become what we think about all day? Or is what we think about all day an extension of who we have become? How much does one change the other? If there is no spoon, does it matter if it's made of crypt o’nite?

I’ve noticed how the mind has this interesting ability to rearrange bits of itself into new pictures, to take its component parts and order them in a novel way to create a slightly different version of reality than the one expected.

A FUGITIVE OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY

I am giddy. Giddy I tell you. With excitement.

I vacillate quickly between giddily excited and nauseously anxious, the former being a completely up feeling feeling, and the latter being a slightly downpulling up feeling. Both rise from the pit of the stomach, but the former keeps going while the latter both sinks and rises.

Koyaanisqatsi blares out behind me—I’m not sure if there are cats hissing or if that’s just the music. Some day this will sound reasonable, logical, expected, but now I have no idea what’s going to happen next. When life is out of balance, I wouldn’t think it safe for it to move so damn fast. I can barely keep up—choirs of electric angels sing celestially sweeter the faster they go go go… like a gospel on speeeeeed godgawd that’s quick for psychedelic church music like this.

All is insanity and a kitten claws at the doo0r.233…well he’s in now, and getting groovy all over the plate full of soggy used to be my tea catnip freaking over the ceiling fan, little head circling round and round upturned skyward perched as high up on the back of the chair as he can get to his prey. He’s got me trained to lift him up to play with the mylar’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ribbons hanging from it anytime he asks.

Choir. Calliope. Calliope Choir.

Heavenly figures on a merry-go-round in slow motion soft focus spinning all hazy and meaningful around the background blue sky with obligatory little fluffy white bunny tail clouds—it’s in slow motion—that’s how you know it’s meaningful. Smiles and instantaneous expressions not frozen but melting in time, moving but moving through the molasses of time as opposed to the usual warm knife self through butter time… slowing down the instances, slowing down the moments, to show their meaningfulness, the…dare I say ‘poignant’ ness as they slip away so quickly, more quickly even than is being shown (slow motion and all though it is) slipping away in a kind of cheerful but maudlin way, like a propeller beanie with a black veil. All sort of dada goth inside my head… caught between maniacal glee and melancholy.

Could it really be this easy? Could it be? Could it be? We’ll see…

I’m a schizophrenic directed by Felini—I’m more than a little confused, but the soundtrack is fantastic. I keep trying to walk off of the set but can’t seem to find the exit. If I have to be in this damn movie then at the very least I insist that I get to write, direct, and star in it. If not, I walk.

The police have mostly left, I think. I was hearing a ruckus, but then again I’m always hearing a ruckus of one kind or another. But this ruckus sounded ‘real’, i.e. like a ruckus that other people could hear too. I decided to glance outside and the place was surrounded. One of the searchlights came right at me as I approached the upstairs hall window, and I instinctively ducked. There were cops everywhere—some on foot, some on wheels, some with flashlights, some in the alley behind the house, some in the parking lot shining lights on the backyard. If I were as paranoid a person as I sometimes suspect that I am, I would have said that they really were out to get me, then called out in a loud clear voice “I surrender!” through the dark and open window. Thankfully the thought that they could have been after me never occurred to me so I continued to sit there quietly.

I heard one cop call to another that she had heard a scream from over thataway and then heard someone jump the fence over here. They swarmed, they coordinated, they ran their drills for real out there in the backyard, giant cop silhouettes dancing voodoo style against the brick back of the Catholic church across the alley.

There’s never any resolution to these early morning voyeured confrontations with the law. I knew, even as it all transpired, that there would be no payoff for my vigilance. I knew, with utter certainty, that at some as yet undesignated time in the future, I would be going to bed with no idea whatsoever of what happened to the fugitive apparently on the loose. No matter how long I stayed perched silent and peeping over the sill with both eyes and ears glued on the backyard and environs, I was certain to experience no conclusion to the situation. Oh sure, there was that chance… but I’d sat hyper-vigilant at too many windows in my lifetime of nights and I know that there is never any satisfaction. For to even watch the drama for one brief moment is to wonder for the rest of the night whether or not there is a fugitive lurking in your midst. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be drama.

****************
If you think that you hear someone breathing behind your refrigerator, it’s probably just the ice maker. I know that it sounds really really real, and it is. It genuinely does sound like someone breathing behind your refrigerator—you’re not crazy; it’s a mistake anyone could make. I’m telling you this so that you don’t have to go to the trouble of smudging your major kitchen appliances in the middle of the night like I did. It made me feel a bit better, but even so, I kept my spear in my hands and really kept an eye on it whenever I was in the kitchen for the rest of the night. It made me jump once or twice, but I brandished my spear so it stopped startling me.

It really does sound like someone breathing.
****************

Eventually, two returned to the four wheel drive cop vehicle parked next to the parking lot out back. They made sure to make all of the last ditch attempts at spotting the assailant, reflexively shielding their eyes from the four am ‘sun’ looking off in the distance across the sea of darkened backyards accepting that no, indeed, he/she/it wouldn’t be caught tonight, at least not right now tonight, got into the cab and slowly tooled off.

But they’re still out there. I can hear them a few blocks southeast of here, still searching around, still shining the searchlights into backyards, hoping to see the telltale sign of lightening fast movement darting around the side of a house. The night wears on, and the eavesdropper in me doesn’t want to shut the window for fear that there will be something to hear that I won’t.

The dogs know the score, though. They communicate across the neighborhood—hey—he’s over there! He’s over there! Now I’m not sure where he is… now I’m not sure where he is…now I’m not sure where he is…now I’m not—hey—he’s over there! Over there! Over there! Over… now I see him too! Hey—over here! Over here!

Fear of crime notwithstanding, I found the view from the back window to be quite enjoyable. I was looking out at the sky through the trees and had that ‘nostalgic’ feeling again, that homesickness for my life, a longing for the current moment when it has become a past moment sometime in the future. I don’t know exactly what that is or to what part of my mind it makes sense, but there’s that feeling again. Perhaps nostalgic isn’t the right word, but I don’t know which word is. What’s that thing that French people feel? Ennui? Maybe that’s what I’m feeling. Maybe I’ve been reading too much French literature and a part of my psyche has become curious about what it would be like to be French. A longing… a longing for something which is already present…what is that?

The dogs are quiet now, which leads me to believe that it probably is safe to simmer down and relax, crack out the now cold Southern Comfort bottle from where it sits nestled chilly in the freezer. Aahhh… herbal tea. Just the way Janice used to make it. Well, maybe not exactly, but my liver will get a lot more miles to the gallon. I made the Moroccans pipe down earlier so that I could hear the drama, but I’ve motioned for them to start up the show again. I keep looking over my shoulder—that one flute player keeps giving me fish eye of the hairy variety.

But now the calliope music has started up again, and everything is more or less Ok in the world and I doubt that external reality will give me another reason to look over my shoulder tonight. All is quiet on the western front. I can safely put my spear into the laundry hamper and relax.

It’s strange, though… I think about my idea of who I am and wonder how it is that I feel relieved to see my house surrounded by cops. My feelings are so ambivalent… People with guns, permission to use them, and a belief in power games freak me out. On the other hand, I’m happy to see them. Why do I believe that I would be in any kind of danger anyway? What makes me so sure? I was once a fugitive… it could easily be me out there bounding across lawns and scampering clanging over chain link.

Though I’d be quieter about it. But that’s not the point…

The point is… who am I who hopes that the fugitive will get caught so that I can have the illusion of safety for one night? Though really, I think, the true illusion is fear and I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at. Why am I so sure that I’m in danger, just because somebody has done something to cause cops to chase them? There are lots of things that are illegal but not really dangerous—most things, really. Mayhaps I assume that someone would have to be dangerous in order to be worth chasing, but maybe it’s one of those ‘if you run I can’t help but chase you’ relationship ruts that I’ve seen cats and dogs fall into.

I think I make the assumption that all who are chased are dangerous because I know that I should have been considered such during my brief time as a fugitive, though in fact I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have expected anyone else to know that, though. Who would have believed that there was never any danger of me hurting anyone? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it all from inside my own head. If I was outside my head, I’d'a chased me around and considered me dangerous just like they did.

But knowing that, I also know how quickly they’ll give up, even when it looks like they’ve got a real nut-job on their hands, so this 'oh well we’ll just be heading home now' attitude which yon deputies hath adopted doesn’t make me feel so jolly well and safe.

Is that what getting older means? Is it really so simple as being the one sitting huddled at the window wondering what’s going on instead of the one running from the cops? I don’t look as suspicious as I used to, but I still feel as though I look suspicious, which I probably don't. I’m mostly law abiding, though come to think of it, I was more so when I looked suspicious. Back then I feared the law so I tried to obey it all the time…except when I was drunk…or pissed off… but other than that, I paid attention. Now, I don’t get drunk, or pissed off, but I kind of ignore the laws that I think are stupid. The ones I don’t see any point to. Which granted, aren’t that many, so it probably all balances out in the end. I am neither a more nor less law abiding citizen than I used to be, but now I look less suspicious. But what does that mean, exactly? What makes one suspicious, and of what, for what, to what purpose?

Perhaps I just have difficulty discerning between ‘looks suspicious’ and ‘feels paranoid.’

But now I sit in the safety of my house, worrying, if however slightly, about an ambiguous fugitive roaming outside through the lawns. Is my inquiry pure or have I just been infected by another French philosopher? Am I overidentifying with external reality again? I think so. I wonder if the French have a word for that.