The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

On the Road is Don Quixote told from the viewpoint of Sancho Panza/Sal Paradise/Jack Dulouz; the tale of the hurting, death-filled, craftsman sitting alone in New York City, waiting to be struck, waiting for his life on the road to begin, and then it did, not with some old knight of the dolorous face, but a young knight, a true knight-errant of America, Cassidy, Moriarty, and Sancho Panza, both squire and amanenuensis, goes along, looking for windmills.

He finds women, and strange far off cities on hills, and is promised islands and riches and all of that — Sancho, fat, still broken, in love with the bottle, as nervous as the rest of us when it comes to girls, thatsaid, could still light up a room with his darkbrow when he walked in it — and genderbending Moriarity, first-one, dancing in the moonlight with Old Queer Alan Ginsberg — what songs did those two sing? Cold-water flats in New York City. Here, in the post fin-de-seicle ultramodern new, I sit in Greenwich Village, their Village, after long travels, by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and environs — —

Who am I, echoing into the wishing well, deep dark, down below, coins chinking against the hewn stone sides, slippery with watermoss. What price freedom? Even revolutionaries have to die, Sancho Panza the first, dying in my father’s town, unmourned, unloved, unknown, as the United States carried on, ripping itself apart — the Empire still exists, says the Horselover, dead-now, cybernetic simulacra missing in America, that Black Iron Prison, Tricky Dick’s Ghost still in charge, the Undead King, where is Cassidy, where is Moriarity, where is our Knight-Errant Quixote, Zorro, Batman, Superman, Heroes dressed in pantyhose, silk stockings — when I was a child, my goal was to wear my underwear on over my pants —

We have the CultureMachine, and the MoneyMachine, and the FoodstuffMachine, and the TrinketMachine, and the ServiceMachine, and all these little submachines dancing along their subroutines, factors of production, neomarxist Adorno-style systems of control, post-historical paradise, while we rape and pillage the beautiful Edenic-rest of the world. The Empire still exists. Where goes Quixote? Disappeared at a Dead concert — and now I go to Phish concerts — everything is new again, happy days are here again, can’t keep banging your head against the wall, it hurts.

I lay in bed, under a red sheet and a blue comfortor, echoed behind my head in my two pillows, typing on a black computer whose 15-inch monitor glows too brightly for these night-eyes; to my left, a small wooden dresser, where I keep my clothes, next to that a half-size plastic shelving unit, the top sags under the weight of four books, an empty tissue box (know what that means), alarm clock sits on top of Finnegan’s Wake, my cellular telephone (almost forgot how to spell it, they’re just cellphones now, postnyms and retronyms, strange) plugged into the power strip that sits on the wooden floor, above this shelving unit is a framed print of Jasper John’s American Flag; in front of which, hangs my fuzzy blue bathtowels, big one, hand towel, and big one, then a fake plastic partition-door keeping me off from the living room, and then a large bookshelf-like structure, with a couple of other pictures stacked up, then some binders and papers, then a few of my law books (that’s right, I’m reading law presently), some more pleasure-books and DVDs, my wallet, watch and keys, and below that, on the bottom rung, precariously close to the dustmites my suit and shirts. On the other side, back up, some toiletries, some school (office) supplies, some papers, and then some laundry supplies. On the side of the structure is a shoerack type pocket thing, containing my dress shoes and umbrella. At the foot of the bed, cutting across at a sharp diagonal, is the sole window, looking out onto a small negative air space between our two townhouses, and a pole through which the hotwater flows in the morning, noon, night, sometimes, and a wicker table I mean to dispose of. That’s my room — small but large enough for this one, a double bed, books, computerized devices. 21st century chic. I am poor now, may be poor later, that’s ok — I only spent $23 today, half of that on groceries, milk, orange juice, and Raisin Bran Crunch. Shall I practice the art of KMart realism? Shall I go into those shiny plastic action figures that peopled my imaginary playfield twenty years ago? He-Man, and Lion-O, and Optimus Prime? Skelator, Mumm-Ra, and Megatron? Or talk about the science fiction apocalypses I witnessed as a child, Terminator 2 and Independence Day, Godzilla Remake, and the Lord of the Rings reduced to cellulite? Or how I spent the high holidays of my Third Grade Year reading through the original Tolkien, sweetly seduced by tales of hobbits? Absolute reality — absolute simulacra. Hyperreal. Ultramodern. Alone in the middle of nowhere on a farm in Tennesee, I eat mushrooms, and dream of what the aliens would think, seeing the human monkeys dance to loud music. I think that they would be impressed — I think that God, if he existed, would be impressed — the fun and wonder we have created.

Yes we die. Still, we die. But the fun and wonder we have created — the easy death as opposed to the hard death — the rich life as opposed to the poor life — the full life, well-lived, followed by the deep dreamless sleep — as soon as I stop typing, typing thought-fossil-graphemes out into the noosphere, I will slipslip into an analogous sleep — yes, yes, yes, there are windmills out there, masquerading as giants, masquerading as windmills, and there are yet Dean Moriaritys out there, Father Deans and Baby Deans, and several thousand Sancho Panza’s, waiting to be their shieldbearers. Quest on, Knight, the Questing Beast exists, continues, the Fisher King is wounded, who does the Grail serve, what secrets lie within the hidden sanctums of the Black Iron Prison, who will go there, to what ends, the ends of the earth, I dance ecstatic before the Ark of the Lord, I go to renew the promise, the Relationship, the Great Connection, Rainbow Connection, someday we’ll find it, the lovers, dreamers, me, I love you, Nina, I love you, Nina, I love you, Nina, and I wish that you were with me now, sick babygirl, sweet baby james. Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey, the romantic poverty of youth, the unbounded optimism of all tomorrow’s parties — oh baby sweet baby jane oh baby oh sweet baby jane — what kind of song will I sing tomorrow? What kind of song will I sing?

Imagine walking down the street, passing the other pedestrians. While doing this, you are a participant in their life and they are participants in theirs — from this basic interaction, this exchange, all other things in our society become possible — though we can never completely close the circle, and there are always both solipsistic doubts and actual failures of the parallax view, evolution of our mindframes have converged so as to allow us the Common Language and Common Mental Field upon which that language rests so that we can communicate with each other and help each other with our sand castles.

The drug — that strange chemical which changes the variables and alters the field — damages the common field, and while subjective experience is heightened, the community suffers in that one man has chosen to go alone. An ethical question arises as to the extent the community as a community should censure the anti-social whose only harm to society is his willing non-participation — nevertheless, the problem as a problem is a real one without any judgments made.

This is why it is so difficult to talk to your girlfriend when you are high, why you wouldn’t want to raise or deal with children with such a state.

The next obvious question is whether mutual drug-taking restores the communal field, within the bounds, or whether it is the (SAT analogy) mutual masturbation to regular communication’s full-fledged intercourse. If a tree falls in a forest, but I’m the only one to hear it, is ther a significance to it?

Is there a significance to the larger individual qualia that can never be validated by outside experience? Clearly, Western Culture, with it’s focus on the building of tall buildings, emphasises the common and deemphasizes the individual — ironically, considering the persistence of that fierce individualistic meme still so prevalent in 21st American Culture — but is the inner intoxication (and let’s expand this intoxication to those induced sua sponte by sages, mystics, bodhidharms, and the like) devalued because it cannot be shared? Or can it be shared? While the initial drugtaking experience may be scattershot and result in a endless multifurcation of parallax-views as every one and harry pursues their own private giggles, perhaps with repetition and training, the landscape of the new field can be explored and systematized so as to allow the shared experience that we use to structure our Quotididian Business Affairs can be reimagined in the Mental Pyrotechnics Arena.

The issue of danger is a real but separate one. My interest here is only the isolating effects of the intoxicant, and how, perhaps, they can be overcome. If overcome, what skyscrapers, what Towers of Non-Babel will the psychonauts, fellow travelers, construct for themselves. The 1960s? Second Summer of Love, Manchester? 100,000 Phish fans in the Everglades? Black Rock City, ra ra ra? New rules, new civilizations; new crimes; new pains; old world loses its luster.

In the foggy dark of twilight, a dirty empty diner on the industrial edge of the Vast World City, I wait, trembling, nails bitten down, jittery, grinding at my back teeth, untouched coffee before me, scratching at my nicotine patch.

The whiteman walks through the door, impossibly tall, stooping to come in, he is white, but he is dressed in cream, and he walks up, sits down across from me, and smiles at me with yellow teeth. He opens his mouth  and takes out an albino cockroach and hands it to me. It tickles at my hand as the voices at the edge of my mind begin to talk over one another, screaming quietly, I can hear the fear in their voices, tickling, white legs on my palm, the whiteman’s hand covering my own —

He opens his mouth again, about to say something, and the cockroach in my hand is gone. He nods at me, rises, and walks out of the diner.

Just like they said, I think. I corral my legions, and they go silent. I open my hand. In it is a page ripped from a book, thin, like drug paper. I look at it. The page number, 362, is highlighted, as is the chapter title, Corinthians.

An address. A clue. What I sought.

Crystal Ball. Location TBD. Women in cubist Spring 2009 Comme De Garcons dresses, you cannot see their faces. Noise rock blaring from potted plants. Nude waiters and waitresss passing out pills and philtres. Lights blink in rhythm. Young Vagabond Debutante-Son, in a black and white three-piece, laughs uncontrollably as he turns a flute of liquid over and over — it clings to the glass, it is non-Newtownian fluid, ooz, Mirrors surround the room, come up and down like stalagmites and stalactites, forming columns — the guest list is exclusive, someone famous is in the corner, lighting the hair of a model on fire as she laughs uncontrollably, dark drugs are at work in this place — a naked girl walks past, bleeding from a thousand cuts, eyes red and tear-stained, but she is silent and elsewhere — and old woman, in a large Queen Elizabeth dress looks on, as a young dark-skinned man goes to work under her skirts — she talks all the while with an impossibly old old man, attended by his own young dark-skinned man. Flamedancers dance in the middle, as young howling lordlings take deep drinks of kerosene and spit at them, the dancers dart out of the way, but flames lick at their feet. Uproarious laughing.

Took a boat to Spain. Disembarked in view of Gibraltar. Began walking. Up the way of Hannibal. Past two mountains. Into the great valley. Green autumn woods. Cities. Roads. Disappear. Clocks run backwards. Differentiation falls away. Animals attend my trail. Suspicious watchings. Eyes blinking. Deer. Rabbits. Wolves. Once there were others, other speakers. Now I am alone. I speak to myself. To the animals. I name them. I am the first. I am the last. I am the watcher. My eyes encompass the forest. Beginning with my own body, my limbs, which I can feel, and then beyond, the world extends. One experience. I am Man. Being. Knowing. Knowing I walk, without knowing why.

I come to a crumbled snakeskin. I continue past it.

Hef and Hut sit down down to a tea party after twelve o’clock two, and flipbook through a picturegame of the Great Masters of Old 20th and make figurative small talk to each other while the time runs out.

Hef says “I like reds and blues” and

Hut says “I like greens and boxes”

Hef says “The rain grass is lovely”

Hut says “Swans all around”

Hef says “drops on a polychromatic slick dream”

Hut says “dream?”

Hef says “dream green dreams”

Hut says “trees?”

Hef says “very old, the oldest”

Hut says “change your eyes you’ll change the art”

Hef says “trade an ear for some eyeglasses?”

Hut says “broken lady down the stairs”

Hef says “knights in shining armor”

Hut says “ten indians in a row”

Hef says “custards’ last stand churns its own butter, with cows brought in from Ithaca”

Hut says “Penelope waits”

Hef says “who gives her pleasure?”

Hut says “I I never thought of that, forgot about her ladyparts”

Hef says “How can you forget, I’m master of revels”

Hut says “dance of the visible, ineluctable modalities”

Hef says “how do you remember that, Hutty?”

Hut says “prodigious memory or an angel touched my philtrum”

Hef says “After we are dead all will be remembered”

Hut says “You’ll sit with Jesus and I’ll sit with Mom”

Hef says “if it could only be”

Hut says “the weight of nothing”

Hef says “apophatic”

Hut says “what’s that button on your chestbump?”

Hef says “brandmark for the squashedbugs”

Hut says “squeaky voices cry out from the rocks?”

Hef says “old goatmaster is at the returns counter for store credit”

Hut says “gold melts down to lead cannot reverse the process”

Hef says “sure just play the tape backwards”

Hut says “cant”

Hef says “synapses?”

Hut says “know any jokes?”

Hef says “a fox burying his grandmother?”

Hut says “an old chestnut”

Hef says “dance of the sugarplums?”

Hut says “darwindance did it”

Hef says “hot potatoe”

Hut says “spelled wrong”

Hef says “nopenope”

Hut says “think so”

Hef says “should we go?”

Hut says “not going to play that game, we won’t”

Hef says “waiting for a bus to come”

Hut says “it comes, the schedules are printed”

Hef says “you can’t read in your dreams – wrong side of the bed”

Hut says “I don’t believe in brains. My thought proceeds by way of gravity forcing water through a sieve”

Hef says “equally plausible, granted, without finer instruments”

Hut says “the instruments are strong”

Hef says “which is essential, player or played?”

Hut says “riddles within riddles. brass or woodwind?”

Hef says “bassinets and oboes.”

Hut says “a superior ursus is dormant til post meridian”

Hef says “Ho, scaliwag, defend your post”

Hut says “the foundations are pegged in quicksilver mud”

Hef says “safe, quicksilver defies entropy”

Hut says “holy god of shortcuts”

Hef says “the shorter route”

Hut says “does it come?”

Hef says “no, it does not come, just death”

Hut says “what then?”

Hef says “darkness”

Hut says “what then?”

Hef says “darkness”

Hut says “afraid”

Hef says “just dreamless sleep”

Hut says “do trees dream?”

Hef says “green dreams”

Hut says “do trees dream?”

Hef says “green dreams.”

Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

Humans are just monkeys, and monkeys aren’t smart. One monkey, particularly dumb, unweighing of consequences, short-sighted, in pain, jealous, rises up, takes a weapon, easily obtained, and shoves it into the soft underbelly of a smarter man who does not expect to die.

The pain is sweet in the smart man’s mouth, sweet and unexpected, his head is light, looking down at his shirt and watching the blood bloom out — and then the pain becomes unbearable and the man slumps down — looks up at the dumb one, dumb one looking back — smart man begins calculating at breakneck speed, trying to rationalize his way out of his predicament, trying to identify the chain of mistakes that led him to this moment, dying on the sidewalk. He feels hands going through his pocket, grabbing a music player, and a wallet. He tries to speak but cannot muster the strength — it’s becoming increasingly hard to think, though he realizes what is happening, realizes he is dying, the fear is overwhelming his rational mind, still, grasping, hoping, maybe an ambulance will come — maybe someone will see — but no, the street is empty and he is bleeding quickly —

He reaches out and trys to grab the dumb one’s arm but doesn’t have the strength. The dumb one slinks away from what he did, from his brother on the ground, the voice of your brother sings, he thinks, old sundayschool memory, and he runs into the shadows.

The fear overwelms the smart one; it goes, it goes, it goes, he thinks of his wife, his children, his parents, he thinks of them again, trying to hold on to that, tears running down his head, maybe maybe maybe he’ll be ok, screaming, screaming if he could, he goes, he goes, he goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts oh it hurts oh it hurts oh it hurts so much angie angie oh it hurts angie come back to me oh angie come back come back oh oh oh oh oh