TALES OF TOMORROW/Soothing Soup and Sandwich Stories for All Weather Situations

johnirvingmoss2@gmail.com

BEGINS AS ....


Today is the day to begin a new adjustment on things to come. To suggest this theme, Things to Come, is simply, I think, to say our collective tribe as a closed society to all outsiders may be coming under attack soon. The early stages of insurrection may soon be underway. We must call a gathering, a meeting of the Head Council, in order to consider immediate priorities regarding evacuation and defense of the tribe. I find the matter of our history important enough to begin the discourse of the Head Council on Things to Come.
Our beginning arose at the dawn of the last thawing of the Third Ice which, as some of you may know, lasted for four millennia. However, we slept, as you already know, during that period. Your teachers have consulted me on updated knowledge that has been edited for your benefit regarding where we are now. Today we will begin to prepare for the fall, as you know is written as The Fall, resurrected because we can no longer afford to assist those foreign devils with their 10-X Death Raider squadrons raiding our progeny, our future, our destiny, whatever that may mean or not mean to you, brothers and sisters of my tribe. We are calling this urgent Head Council meeting due to the fact that we have come under attack from those 10-X scavengers who would have us surrender our wives and children as their fresh slaves as they rally their quest for galactic domination over our sacred rights to the land and heavens as decreed from the sacred texts of our forefathers.
First, of all, we must begin to build the trajectory for launching our counter response to those great devils that would, God unwilling, destroy our Seven Worlds held by Great Mother Empress Milky Way. Today we must begin construction of our Great Intergalactic Prey Bird, GIPB, nicknamed 'Chippie,' our great defense against the demon scourges that would have our hides as winter wrap and our souls for inebriation.
Early in the morning.The sky is very bright this morning for some reason, more than likely due to my strange new vivid dream state during the night I think. I remember now, the stars being very bright in a clear sky just before I went to bed, I stared up at our Great Mother the Milky Way where I saw what I thought to be a vision of some sort, a woman bearing a halo, or light, about her presense. At first I though she was looking at me but soon thereafter I realized the presentation, or vision, was just there like a subject in a painting, like the famous Mona Lisa known to have come
down through the ages from the Outer World.
Momma G? What's for breakfast? I am so hungry?
Egg eyes and toast with your favorite, blue pine juice.
Oh, yeah! I shout. Then I knew that I'd have a great journey today after eating and bathing.
The ridge cut through the bluff is as clear as oasis water. I decide here I will go to the Great Forest, my first move of the journey. I have a friend of the Great Forest I will consult before continuing on my great adventure.
Momma! I, now, recall shouting.
Yes, what is it now, my son?
What should I wear today? I quietly ask when she appears suddenly before me. I am going to the Great Forest through the ridge cut to find my friend that holds residence there in the wood. I have been learning themes on the time-space continuum from him.
Make sure you bear your light staff. I need my son to come home from the wood.
Yes, Momma.
My dream state has become more vivid and increasingly recurring thematically, apparently a mind state that is new to me. I cannot recall repeitive visions of this sort among all previous years of my youth. I awoke today, having slept on the main couch situated somewhere between the living and dining rooms and reached for my former girl friend, now common law wife, only to find she had disappeared to the kitchen, an unknown factor upon my first departure from that which may be considered my dream state.
Today is very bright in stark contrast to all the rain we have been having with its dim, cloudy, overcasts bringing on a kind of foreboding malaise, one always placing me in a kind of half-awake stupor personality state. Now she arrives with a hot cup of coffee and sits on the couch next to me. We are both quiet and the java is too hot for me to sip at the moment and then this is when I turn on our portable radio where an opera is happening --CARMEN, I believe, with Domingo and Battle, although I wish it were OTHELLO with the divine diva. I consider myself not from the excessively learned classes of the bourgeoisie. My just announced annotation regarding the aforementioned may or may not be confirmed.
However, another day has arrived and my coffee is hot, too hot to sip, for the moment. That moment is over and now I am facing another day as the time is merely eleven in the morning.
Sweet Baby, my common law wife, is in her study, a former bedroom, doing her hieroglyphic translation, or interpretation, whatever, and whenever I attempt to ascribe this spurious adjudication regarding her academic proclivity, I get stuck, like a wheel spinning in vain, in muddy yuck. I have had my porridge of oatmeal and maple syrup with black sugar in black coffee and now I am in the sphere or realm of thought where I begin to contemplate "...things to Come" during the course of this new day.
It is now evening and I am sitting in our coffee shop listening to Brazil 66 and the rendition of the tune Fool on the Hill although it sounds like the Beatles' version yet, more than likely it's some unknown band playing elevator music. I am beginning to wonder about my next move on the game board as far as the rest of today goes. Sweet Baby is off and running around in our Baby Benz doing things that women do when they are not around their men. Those things I would rather not contemplate simply because, if you will allow for that, are no longer relevant, only more redundant when it comes down to a youth romanticism now gone. That is not to say say that I am an old creature, yet, perhaps, this may merely suggest that the time-space continuum factor, if there is such a thing, may be playing a major role here, and now, and as, perhaps also, this may be just another worn out theme on any thematic discourse herein that may be viewed as my worthy attempt at itduring contemplation on this thematic discourse, what ever it is, we
occasionally denote as the here and now. And now I am getting along with another day and the dream state of my previous sleep, a few hours ago, I am recalling as somewhat peculiar as I cannot get a clear visual review of events having taken place there even though I feel something odd about what had taken place. I am awake and up on my couch having had my black coffee. Sweet Baby is in our lions' den, Grandma's former bedroom, studiously at work on her academic obligation. I first arose at 5:00 am this morning due to an annoying drone sound of some sort only to realize it was my neighbor's car. His exhaust manifold must need servicing or he is simply unaware of its dreadful sounding drone noise. I have just eaten my lunch consisting of a salami with cheeze on white sandwich bread and listening to the afternoon classics programme on my portable Memorex radio, a decent sounding audio contraption, Levine conducting a Wagner number. Sweet Baby sits next to me revisiting her voluminous texts. She and I had devoured a can of sardines with a slice of the white bread earlier during lunch this midday.
Saturday morning.
Today I started out on a half decent note, not a musical note, merely my designation of this morning's mood. The garbage collection Surrounding Grandma's Place had gone out of proper order, having missed the previous trash retrieval. The cleanup became my first task of the day. Sweet Baby started her Elizabethan Theatre screaming drama during my alley tidy down which may or not be determined by certain professionals of the medical industry as a mild nervous breakdown or just her way, most likely perhaps, of exercising a necessary expression, one I defer to as her Virginia Wolfe syndrome. Miss Virginia mysteriously creeps aboard whenever discovering some off-the-wall anomaly regarding her archaeology texts. Maybe she becomes enchanted, maybe bewitched, whatever that can mean, when crossing paths with some freakish knowledge when scrowling through hieroglyphs of a bygone era possibly still in existence on some parallel plane. During my yard chore she charged out of the cafe shouting. I'm going off to connect my do-be biz, you motherless bastard!
Well, gee wiz, now. Don't we all have do-be biz to do? And then I reply with a sinister grin to my raving companion, I love you but goodbye! I get that last hard knocks stare from Sweet Baby seconds before she burns the rubber down to the Benz's alloy metal rear wheel base.
And now it is quiet once again. The weather is pleasant. The cool breeze ofaround 65 degrees makes all things bright and sunny. No problem now.
I dreamdt of my son the previous night, very vivid as in a video, what I now defer to as the strange phenomena of a dream's landscape, sort of like a movie presentation on so-called high definition TV. What else can describe this bizarre awareness reaffirming my encounter with some alternate reality geeks go insane attempting to rationalize, whatever that may mean, once again. Different tributaries coming from the same main river? Should I decide to row my boat more gently down the stream?
Late in the afternoon.
I remember that morning bearing properly my light staff through the Great Sand dunes
anticipating the prearranged meeting with my friend residing in the Great Forest where upon I looked, startled, witnessing a recon squad of the dreaded intergalactic strike fighter 10-X ISF patrolling the perimeter of our planet. I felt fear for the first time during my journey, having cleared the final of three hundred dunes I had encountered along the way. The fear, for some unknown reason, had begun to subside when my Great Forest appeared.
When evening arrives the horizon and landscape remain very red, hot and barren as its orange-red glow emanating from Death Star AB in our Fourth Quadrant, the nucleus of Alpha B zone, sets the evening in sharp contrast with the pitch black cool night that would soon be upon us and the Great Forest. The dim red glow on the two of us, its source the Great Sand, is the only light separating us, residing at the edge of the forest, from its pitch black depths.
These things, as I defer to them from my childhood, I pray may be key essential factors to your battle success against the impending usurper of our Great Way. The final element is upon us as our Great Master is going into His Great Transition you already know is the red giant phase. The predicted nova, a written, as you are also well aware of, is already upon our next generation as well. First, of all, your task is to defeat the 10-X Quadrant colonialists. We have superior battle techniques along with upgrades on our strategic military technological prowess to defeat the rats who would rather have us as a favor additive for their Petrified Everglade cockroach stew.
Thursday night.
My dream recall of the previous night, I denote now as my slumber travels, suddenly has evolved into a kind of sharper clarity accompanied by a continuuing theme, as in a novel, story ot tale from a place long ago and far away. It is as though I am resuming the page I have been reading, a great tale of literary fiction.
Today I am scheduled to ride the southbound commuter train for the big metro some folks I know refer to as the little big metro as the city appears to mimic, as human twins often do as sibling rivals, is positioned a great distance north as accorded with any GPS vector covering our easten seaboard. Upon my arrival in the little big metro I notice a very pronounced contrast with fashion. Both men and women are wearing T-shirts with blue jeans, topping this extremely casual modality connoting personal style, connecting a variety of sport jacket of suit coat, whatever the onlooker may determine the garment to actually be. Back in my town, now two hours north, our apparel is more of the traditional Oxford shirt with dress or casual slacks suggesting a quick hop into the full blown power suit with matching coat, neck tie the option of course, coexisting with the majority wearer of the grunge affect worn by our distinguished society of those disengaged from social requirements of our established society. The purpose of this visit to the Little Big Metro is I am looking for a certain coffee shop believed to be owned by an acquaintance I had the pleasure of running into on the way out of our java cafe Grandma's Place. She was coming through the door just as I was leaving for a quick jaunt to our east coast shoreline, a place of lagoons, shallow bay inlets that wedge into a vast black tarmac that appears to draw a line in the sand with thew sky blue canopy above and the sea. This special place for is approximately midway up our eastern seaboard. I go there atleast twice a year searching for artifacts of nay previous culture that may suit the fascination of my loyal java house clientele.
Having introduced ourselves upon where she said it was her second time here at Grandma's Place and thought my place rather interesting, this mysterious woman seems to hold a spell over me. I must admit I was captivated by her charm. Then and there she dropped the bomb of irony on me, that she has a coffee shop, too, down in the Little Big Metro.
Here I am in the little big metro looking for her place of quiet talk and strange bedfellows, my anticipated presumption, as I move through the horde of these big city folk who appear to move at a rate suggesting the world may be coming to an end soon. Eventually I found what I had come to the big city for. Her shop My Little Diamond in the Ruff is right before me now. I stand staring at this strange, small and very quaint establishment. The sign on the door reads CLOSED. Okay, I am thinking to myself. Reluctantly, having looked up and down the vast boulevard at a quick glance, I peep through the window. Suddenly a very unsettling, if now downright strange, sensation comes over me. Just what, as I cannot put my finger on for some reason, I do not know. All I do know is that I am beginning to feel I have just become the hunted and not the hunter. It is midnight and all I really feel like doing is getting to my cheap motel room a soon as the swift angel can get me there. A bed, a pillow and my ext dream should be much more preferable than the reality scenario before me on this boulevard to living hell.
Now I have returned, again walking through the wall of orange fog.
The desert is dry, very hot out here yet very cool under the blue pine palms of the oasis where my friend and I are sitting on a juba rock that forms a promontory precipice appearing to be suspended over an expanse of a million dunes composed of red dust and golden sand, a combination that tends to hynotize if not paralyze any traveler attempting to cross Devils' Anvil, named for its soul searing temperature at high noon. Around midnight this area of our planet is designated Home of the Ice Princess for temporarily freezing the devils in a block of ice.
Hello, my friend. How was you journey? My friend is very passive with a physical countenance obviously very disciplined as I observe his gaze that appears to be focused on the horizon and the heavens at once, like a cross-eyed person appearing to be looking at you yet not looking at you, only somewhere else, some unknown place, stretching onlookers' imaginations beyond credulity.
It was okay most of the passage until I saw the 10-X Quadrant Death Ship squadron coming toward the dune ridge I had been straddling. My instinct had forced me to dive down into the steep pitch black embankment beneath me.
Yes. My companion said, The effect of a realm totally absent of light. Alpha B, our dwarf star to the north of 10-X Quadrant, has a gravity pull no light source can defy. How did you manage your way out of the dark side of the dune, my friend?
My reply, I said looking at my friend, to your query is forthcoming. I managed to exit the dark side of the dune. Any further introspective regarding my exit from the base of the dune I deem irrelevant. Do you agree, my friend?
Yes, he answered, continuing his stare across the dunes without so much as a flicnch of an eyelid. An awareness new to me invoked the notion that I had been sitting before a stone monument mounted on the edge of the precipice. The minute I left my hotel room the humidity hit me like it would have hit a baker's brerad loaf just plopped into a hot oven from a cold refrigerator. It took me a moment to adjust to the drastic climate shift. I could not believe what I was experiencing heat wise, let alone the volume of human traffic on the boulevard. I figured during the previous night, my first night alone in the little big metro, that I should pay another visit to the quiet house My Little Diamond in the Ruff I had first discovered the day before. I did just that, exiting the Little Big Metro's Metrorail, running down its escalator stop Lakeview Terrace, and now back on the block, the boulevard, so to speak. The perpetually CLOSED neon light sign held my disappointment as if it were one of those lost moments in time. The super speed rollercoaster-like subterranean monorail man made snake train had been packed, making me feel like a sardine ready for liberation on a saltine cracker. I peered through the shop window for a quick look only to find myself caught in some kind of hypnotic grip not affording me my quick mental mental photographic snapshot of the cafe's interior. The would be snapshot had become a mental video take instead, and of quite some length in time --several minutes to say the least-- recording just about everything within visual depth afforded by the daylight emanating from the boulevard. The thing that had gripped me most of all is a certain stuffed animal head I noticed hung about a huge fireplace suggesting as vast red brick hearth heralding a chimney large enough for the fattest Santa Clause of the all to scramble down and up in a minutes notice. For some reason I could not manage to recollect such an animal, or being, possibly, as one of our Mother Earth's creatures.
From childhood we all become, I am supposing now, familiar with our planet's family of beings and creatures alike. Pondering the unfamiliar thing suspended above that great hearth suddenly freed from the spellbound hold the place had held over me, thereupon forcing me to feel as if I had just returned to our planet after having visited another. Turning around about face, shoving my hands into my trouser pockets, I shot --left to right-- another broadside view of the big boulevard, only to stop midway between both extremes. It was there I stood, the curbside of the sidewalk where I notice a woman of average height and build. I wave to her, suddenly realizing she may be the proprietor of the place where I now stand. The odd thing was I received no wave in return to my physical gesture.
Hi.
Surely, it must have been her, the new acquaintance from Grandma's Place. The thing that frustrated me a bit about her is I could not thoroughly convince myself that that was really the same woman. This notion of mine may have been due, perhaps, to the large black eyewear covering a good portion of her face.
Dressed in all black, her all weather style of apparel forced me in some uncanny way to inconspicuously ponder the iconoclastic demeanor she presented against the backdrop of the boulevard. She stood statuesque adjacent to me at not so great a distance, looking across the boulevard as if pondering me as well.
My query now is --was it me, My Little Diamond in the Ruff, upon where she had fixed her unreadable countenance upon my vexed soul, perhaps? My natural instinct kicks in, forcing me to flee, recalling now that I could no involuntarily initiate an action, any action, to split this scene.
I felt a bizarre sensation, like a kind of paralysis one may witness in the animal kingdom, when, for example, a helpless rodent becomes frozen stiff, suddenly transfixed by the eyes and hiss of the snake. I simply could not or would not move from my present position. With hands still buried in my pants pockets, my left clutching my keys, the other gripping my blackberry, I found it straining not to look back at her as I tried desperately to look as relaxed as possible when I most certainly was not, struggling, on the other hand, actually trying to scrutinize anyplace other than where she stood. I really cannot recall much more than what may have ocurred of personal notice during that point in time applicable to my sudden departure from the little big metro, the freak scenario I chose to ignore when revisiting the nature of my hurried exit. Yesterday's excursion to the little big metro turned out to be anything other than what I anticipated pervious to my hunt for Lady L wearing big sunglasses with unknown eyes.
It is another morning of sunny and bright fall weather now, requiring no more than mid season outerwear, although I notice some of my loyal patronage wearing heavy winter coats, most certainly for style as early morning around my township is known to sneak in a chilly harbor chill on occasion. Sweet Baby is serving our coffee house specialty, two steaming hot cups brewed of a blend from the Orient, a new market for us because tea is the traditional export from that part of our planet. With the slice of Chinese ginger crumb cake, Sweet Baby served, employing her flair for sexual eloquence. I sit with a regular customer whose appearance at our Grandma's Place can be clocked at exactly the top of the ten oclock morning hour. Apparently he troubled about some personal matter, presumably, as I observe his behavior to be a bit more nervous than his regular composure. He is the typical every other day kind of guy around here. I discuss with him with brief chit chat on things to chit chat about, crossexamining news items relegated to the ecomomy mostly. He may be retired, who knows, as an account for a transnational marketing consortium and has held dearly to this very day his book of schemes for becoming millionaire rich. Obvious to me or anyone observing that that would be highly unlikely according to the contrived framework of reference for his big rip off then off to the jungle like a burnt out case. He confided to me he had never come anywhere near success, to steal his way across the border for the open sea and the next formidable continent with a bag full of hot booty. It seemed high time I spoke before my timed departure, exercising elucidated parameters of fantasy most of us tend to lock up in the back of our minds until the liquor spills them out on the table cloth like a knocked bottle of savignon white over a red snapper fish cuisine, all originated, of course, from his spurious assertions about data entry into hijacked account router conduits.
I said, finally, to my loyal every other day patron, You seem a trite edgy this morning. Am I correct with what I am observing?
Yes, I must confess, my dear colleague. Certain criteria pertaining to, how would one say, my great train robbery, a most inappropriate metaphor, I assure you, sir, associated with my confession, leaves me betwitched, bothered and, most of all, bewildered. Having downed his cup with one final swig, he continued his rebuttal. I have performed a successful, however dastard, action against those blood sucking mosquitos, the owner and his senior henchmen, who've contributed nothing to their maniacal charlatan's success, only to leave me, incarcerated behind the glass and steel walls of their carpeted hell hold, as their indentured slave.
Taking notice, not of him, only of a patron who has entered Grandma's Place, I quip, Apparently your nerves have not yet determined whether or not you've truly succeded, or, as a matter of fact, have truly failed. My concern about my dear friend's world, success or failure, became instantly irrelevant. Promptly I rise from his regular table by the window facing the plaza with its seemingly mile high monument exalting some military victory over some invading usurper of our states' sovereignty. As expected I received no reply to my heralding pronouncement assessing his personal affairs. I bid farewell to my familiar acquaintance upon going to meet our new patron of the house who had just entered. George is a likeable fellow. I engaged him with the usual comaraderie I extend to all of my guest.
Hello, George, I said, opening the greeting with my usual handshake. Great weather we're having. Wouldn't you agree?
I certainly would, my dear fellow. Agree you ask? By George, why not? That would be the infamous King George, my annotation, as that would pertain, perhaps to your assertion that this so-called weather, a factor rendering some sort of claim, if any, we may hold with a higher power. Or is it powers, my dear comrade in arms? Am I carrying this morning's chant a trite too far as that adjunct may apply to your fine establishment when considering, if not merely observing, these parts. Then he switched on to another subject, some philosophical mind bender. Have you ever come across a theme, I believe it to be something in the order of a so-called Socratic Scale. "Fools idiocy." Ring any bells? And may this, my highly dubious reference, concern you and I for the moment?
George, I replied, my dear fellow, aside from "comrade in arms," I've never been the military, not yet. However, your metaphors amaze me. Keep them coming.
He, having wildly fired his "...comrade in arms" shot, and I seated ourselves at the second front window table, both tables seating two only.
The time for me to split the scene so I rose from the from the front window setting facing down my loyal every-other-day patron whom I had taken a keen notice of. He continued to bare the rather successful grin that beamed contrarily to his previous nervous forebearance.
Sweet Baby came over to the front window table where I sat within earshot of my new patron and not so new patron on a certain que, a show of my forefinger held up high.
My queue announces that I am splitting our coffee house scene.
Promptly exiting Grandma's Place to meet with my next scheduled engagement, a visit to one of my town's more prominent of the graveyards here, bearing flowers of proper course for a certain deceased person having possessed some notoriety with our township's society register, I was scheduled to meet with a certain notorious narcotics kingpin well known back down in the little big metro. He now claims to me he has reformed himself and the bad boy ways associated with his international playboy persona, if not his shoes, flashy patent leather black and white wing tips. He outrageously claims also that he has traded the old ways for his new good choir boy servant act, his new act of course, for church he says, not to mention state, which he never would divulge to anyone, not even in the confidentiality clause to his contract with the heirarchical religious connections he had forged as cover against bounty hunters seeking his smoldering ass for reward offered by the international police seeking to silence his slick foxy charade on common folk humanity.
Merely an obligation I behold to my beloved church and state, he reaffirmed, as if reading my mind's estimation of his change in personality, closing with "comrade." After a brief silence between us I laid a wreath of red and white chrysanthemums on the grave marker we were standing on.
As I began walking through the fall leaves of red, brown and gold I could help but think about the time when growing up how my house was situated in front of a funeral home. This circumstance forged, I believe to this very day, some special relationship I may harbor concerning the finality death connotes, without strings attached, as it may exist, let us say, in the naivete of youth. On the contrary, my feelings of finality as I walked away from my meeting with the living and the dead were actually of a new beginning.
I have the feeling that a new beginning, another chapter pertaing to my reality is about to unfold. My trip to the Little Big Metro holds some degree of influence regarding this new sense of things to come. Looking over my shoulder I see that King, the notorious drug kingpin from the little big metro, has not moved from the position held fast to while holding discussion with me at the grave marker. Both of us are dressed in all black, ties included, with the exception of our white shirts and white handkerchiefs hallmarking a conservative fold visible as a straight white line on our lapel pockets. The two of us never remove our dark eyewear as we discuss things having gone and things to come.
I stop at a considerable distance, on a grassy knoll, watching King walk away from the grave and disappear over a knoll in the far distant sector of the graveyard.
I decided, after leaving the land of the dead, that it would be better to assume the two hour walking distance back to my town. I was alone the entire stroll with the exception of cows grazing and horses romping in nearby meadows at play. During the initial stages of my walking adventure I took heed to an awareness of the birds chirping very excitedly in the woods. Suddenly, along with a mist that arose from the pasture ahead, the birdsong ceased. Initially I was not cognizant of the phenomenon until my thoughts became centered on Sweet Baby. Upon leaving Grandma's Place I had an unsettling feeling about the look on her face. I could read her face always for face value, so to speak, without further pretention on alternate possibilities regarding our sacred relationship as friends and lovers. When I returned to our coffee cafe she was gone.
When I had first come across the CLOSED sign posted on the door of our coffee shop I knew then and there my promonition about Sweet Baby may have born fruition, meaning having come true. My first thoughts about my impending dilemma concerning the whereabout of my companion were focused on King, the dope lord I had just met with at the graveyard. Why? The question is why had I focused on him regarding my current crisis, somehow, I fathomed, was related to the unannounced departure of my common law wife, finding myself now designating her in legal jargon, other than friend and lover. Grandma's Place was empty. Barren. There was not a soul in the place. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Hell.
I snatched the morning newspaper, My Town Gazette, only to learn that the headlines, ALL IS QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, offered no respite from my feeling of loss. Why soldiers from my town were falling on the battlefield went well beyond my immediate comprehension, my knowing that their sacrifice had something to do with the preservation of our political status quo heralding ideals that come into conflict with cultures abroad. I have always felt that one's backyard is the best, if not only, to exalt themes related to a person's political preferences. Defend the Motherland. Fight for the Fatherland. All legitimate ideas until the exportation of that preference, along with commodities for trade, begins to interfere with another man's house, abroad.
So, I am sitting down confused not knowing not knowing what my next move will be. BRING THE MIA'S HOME. The news column expressed what I am feeling about the vanishing of my my bosom buddy. What one does not know may tantamount to torture of the soul, the unknown adjunct eclipsing closure, like a blackout when the moon and sun cross each others' path. My impulse at this given moment is to get up and play a selection from the house music library. I choose a selection suitable for the mood I am currently experiencing. The selection I find suitable. I begin to relax with an alcoholic beverage, Tequila Sunrise, trying my hardest to rub out this day's events, although nightfall it seems is nowhere in sight. I decide I will get up and out of Grandma's Place, too somber here, as if the gray light of twilight about the place is a foretelling of things to come in frightening ways. Should fear be the mind killer then I must get up and going before my mind gets killed. The city park plaza in my town is quiet except for loud chirping from the birds' singing. Automobile traffic is nonexistent around here and the only other human being, as far as I can tell, is the maintenance engineer pruning a flower bed of red and white tulips. Suddenly a black cat notices me and assumes a cat's position when observing another intelligent being, front legs propping up the upper body as he or she squats on rear hind. With head tilted, the creature stares at me. A bizarre telepathy seems to suggest the animal is communicating, asking me, Why are you the only human of interest, for some uncanny reason, around these parts?
Who are you? Boss Tom? I ask, Maybe you're Tom's whore and the boys down at the water front feasting on rotten fish, giving you a sorely needed break from your morning routine of group sex with them, she obviously having received my query in a disconcerting way.
At that moment I thought, This is a good time to pack a book bag and head for the coast. There would be my personal santuary for solace from recently occurred events governing the politics of this world I am caught in with the rest of humanity during this here and now.
My drive this morning is very quiet on the silvery snake-like roadway twisting through the rolling hills of forest and cultivated pastures. I roll my truck windows halfway down and turn off its radio country blues station. I hear the rush from the fauna in the wood, water rushing with the wind rustling the brush, a combination offering a new sensation on the senses. I should arrive at the coast shortly. My anticipation is rising as I want to greet the ocean with a clear mind, free from the clutter of recent days gone by. The coast has yet to arrive sooner or later I surmise as my thoughts now drift back through events of a day or two ago. The disappearance of Sweet Baby, the mysterious acquaintance with Lady L., King, the dope dealer on the run, the regular clientele and new patron of our coffee cafe is now running my ship of thoughts aground as I attempt to find a way of avoiding these matters constantly under my scrutiny.
The coast appears.
Ha! There she blows! I shout, inside of myself, not out, Dare she be, aye mates? She's a twixin an' vexin me main like a true crawler fer de trade. Ride her you sea scabs! Up with the main on her jest like ye would one a madam penny's pub pussies back in trenchtown! Ride her, ye good fer nothin' deck swabbin sea scabs! Ride her ! Ride her! Ha ha ha ha! A ha..., feeling like old Captain Ahab must have felt when spotting his whale of an obsession Moby Dick, the whale made famous in English letters. I shift gears into off-road mode and brake to a stop where I get out of the cab with binoculars. I view the pier jutting out about half a city block into the dark gray sea. The water appears choppy and the wind begins to howl with a groaning moan that desires, apparently, to scare the hell out of anyone approaching the beach. The corroded wooden fish shack is still perched at the pier's head, not having succumbed to a flash gale from a seasonal Down Easter known to wreak havoc on the coast once in a blue moon, so the folks around these parts say. A pelican stands erect on the roof just above the hardly readable corrugated red, white and blue sign: SCURVY DOG'S PLACE wine women whiskey welcome hung lopsided at the top of the entrance. The fisherman's wharf is deserted. I lower my eye spy specs, hoist my travel sack over my shoulder and head for the pier.
There were no steps to the pier. The ladder made of split pine branches haphazardly nailed to two pine trunks, appeared immersed about three feet beneath the beach head surf. I got soaked up to my thighs when grabbinbg a hold of the makeshift staircase leading to its deck of weatherworn planks. Standing upon arriving, without making any attempt to put a foot forward, I stood motionless like the pelican on the roof. Crashing through the planks could not be that horrific. The water depth seemed negotiable should such an unfortunate happenstance, my falling through the pier, occur. What was not negotiable, I had begun to consider, was what may lay beneath the surface of the black water beneath the pier. I asked myself, as I made my way back down the ladder, What things could there be under this thing? I headed for the woods in search of a branch that might serve the suitable purpose of extension pole, long enough to test the water sodden planks or catch my plunge if needed during my advance toward the shack. On my way several floor boards fell through and I almost fell through to the sea with them if were not for the pine staff I clung to dangling sixteen feet above the surface of a not so calm sea. Managing after a rigorous contest with gravity I was able to hoist myself back on deck and face the trophy of the challenge, the door to the ramshackle shanty. A heavy padlock, appearing to have lost its sole purpose to rusted door hinge bolts embedded in the rotting wood surface of the door made suddenly clear a sudden swift kick should bring the door down. My kick boxer leg thrust achieved that end. The door, released from its feeble suspension, fell back slowly, finalizing its departure from its host with a very loud boom. The boom was louder than anyone would have anticipated. A powerful gust of wind followed the crashing down of the door, almost blowing me back down through the pier's rotted surface and almost to a certain watery grave, I surmised, having considered the probable variety of deadly objects possibly hidden below the surface of the sea beneath the pier. To my appreciable chagrin fish tarp netting, making a convenient makeshift hammock quite sturdily in place a half a dozen feet above the floor, suspended between the front and rear wall, forced me to reconcider the structural integrity of the decaying seafront dwelling. Several wooden whiskey kegs were stacked in a way suggesting a step stool to a fisherman's, if not any other kind of waterfront person, snooze abode. The bar, entertained by five bar stools, listed like a slow sinking ship. A keg of rum, tilted like the leaning Tower of Pizza, heralded the head of the bar beneath coat-of-arms engraved iron drinking tumblers suspended with fishing cord, each one hanging above a chair. The tumblers made the sound of bouy gongs as they banged against one another whenever a gust of wind from the trade blew in and as i climbed up into the hammock when the gusts died and the gonging ceased.
The sudden quiet had become overwhelming, forcing me to reconsider leaving or staying, as I had come prepared to stay for the night.
Midnight under a full moon.
I fell asleep in the hammock at dusk. I awoke to find it was night and the full moon, visible from the window at the head of the bar, flooded the interior with a blue light, a temporary light source I soon found out. Blackness filled the place as the moon escaped beyond a cloud. The moon, reappearing an hour later in the open doorway, brougt the blue lights back on and with it the presence of a human. To my astonishment an old man, a seafarer kind of fellow, sat at the bar drinking rum from a tumbler, its fragrance was quite pungent. He asked, You drunk mate? as if he had known me from a place other from where we now shared space together in this tiny bar on the edge of an abandoned pier jutting into a moody and unpredictable sea. Maybe you were just sleeping it off. Now you're sober it seems to me, pal.
Who are you? I ask again, Is this your place?
This here, mate, is anybody's place who just so happens to come here.
Where do you come from? I believe I am beginning to sound like a police interrogator so I decide to cool down a bit with line of questioning, considering the somewhat odd set of circumstances regarding the two us us.
From around here, pal, the seasoned sailor sailor replied, asserting a new authority.
I chose to rebut as candidly as possible considering my precarious position up in the hammock, bound like a twisting grouper fish ready for the grill. The coast. A good distance west of here. I decide to nap regardless of the stranger's presence.
My talk with my friend of the Great Forest had come after a few hours of my staring at him with his silence and my mind perplexing view of the sand dunes. His forecast of our world ending made the intended indelible mark on my naive psyche like a judge's gavel hammer of condemnation on a convicted felon. Our world was coming to and, two fold. The supernova expected from our red giant's enslavement from the worm hole that entered our quadrant at the dawn of the Third Ice, stopping all matter near our home planet in Quadrant, has become the first primary concern for our tribe. The second matter at hand, the race of killer invaders threatening our culture, unnerved by incomprehensible galactic anomalies, had begun their conquest of our sovereign part of the quadrant. I began to think about our tribe and the consequences inevitable facing our culture as a civilised species holding respectable real estate and political chips within our sector of the galaxy. Our people need an exit from our world, as we know it, not necessarily based on the evasion factor, alone, placating the invaders from Quadrant 10-X as the other factor. the time-space continuum as we discussed on the precipice of the ridge cut overlooking the Great Dunes, my friend of the Great Forest and I, revealed to me the imperative our tribe faces --escape from our world. My friend conveyed in confidence to me that I have been chosen as one of many diplomatic emissaries whose mission is to establish an alternate link with the World Z, translated from the human language, English, as Earth, a planet in the lower Eighth Quadrant of our galaxy. The mission is clandestine, a covert operation designed to deceive the 10-X Rat Race hell-bent on devouring our species in light of the impending doom for us all here in Quadrant 10-X. The Rat Race factor may disrupt our overall mission plan. Our job is to transport our tribe, through mental telepathy, to Earth. Our security will be based on the knowlege that the Rat Race has been thoroughly destroyed upon our final deparrture from our home Quadrant 10-X. Preventing any security breach is my mission as I sit and realise the seriousness of the job I am being held responsible for upholding. The Rat Race was never responsible for the creation of the technology claimed by the species with their iron clad reassurance article of constitution adjudicating superiority over our people, automatically suspending our right to exist. And, on the other hand in contrast, our technology is of a unique nature, thoroughly different. During the Third Ice period the world of the Rats, a species of human-like beings, however, not quite human to say the least about them, embraced with awe an event that had radically altered their civilization. They had been a static culture, a civilization without change. Development as we know it never existed with the Rat Race. What that peculiar state of being, to us humans, meant or how it may have come about is an anthropological puzzle. Some scholars argue this may have been due to written laws and codes of conduct established at some beginning point that were never allowed to change may regard the basic static order their world exemplified.
The sea had calmed a great deal. The gray skies of World War II movie reel realism --Japanese kamikaze bombers spitting fire on the American navy, were gone. Cobalt blue. The bluest eye. Realizing the night before was a dream, I soon realized upon coming to my senses that actually I had been in a half state between the dream reality and awake world, the state I have come to know as purgatory. As in the religious texts and as ascribed in their many passages --the middle passage so-to-speak, this purgatory lay between the deep unconscious and the living awareness where things happen there more attuned to the living world rather than that of the dead, or spirit world as relegated to the unconscious realm. Anyway to shorten what would be a very long passage, there had been a party of sorts, of wine, women and drunken sailors all having happened just beneath the hammock I cat napped in and all therein as if I had been there or maybe not been there. This realm is differentiated from deep sleep abode. Its realm is identical to the surrounds of the sleeper, only the players, character actors within it, appear to possess a supernatural timelessness, or historical even, countenance about their personages.
Another long hot summer day in the Little Big Metro had me saying, ....dead heat on a merry-go-round. All this dog day dead calm heat, like being a cat on a some hot tin roof 'round here, to the wino crouching in front of the estranged coffee again. The boulevard is quiet. It is Sunday morning when even the birds don't get up and about with their usual consternation over the sun having returned to light their new day. I figured now would be a good time to stroll over to The World War One Speakeasy, a turn-of-the-century, 20th, fashioned clip joint, and complete facsimile of the authentic version.
The joint was a few blocks south on the boulevard, just a few from where I stood peering into My Little Diamond in the Ruff. I was met upon entering the joint by an early teen woman dressed like a whiskey tavern burlesque queen.
Hi, she said, speaking in what sounded like a clipped version of a particular Arabic dialect infused with British colonial Duke of Earl class English. Her red chocolate complexion and kohl laced eyeliner appeared to highlight emerald green eyes, suggesting invitation rather than resignation.
Hello, I said, wondering if I should be the one to speak next as there was a brief pause in our introductions and my first time entry into the speakeasy. The place was spooky to mention the least about the moodiness of the joint. My first impulse was to seek a spot for immediate refuge from what began to feel like unpardonable scrutiny from some unknown source. She did not speak, just held her charmed gaze fixed on me eye to eye. I broke her, sudden and unreadable, glare by focusing on a table with two chairs in a remote corner of the empty sailors tavern. The joint reeked of seafarers revelry before and after the maiden voyage.
I broke for the table in the dark unlit corner near the bar where an open door, presumably leading to the rear of the joint, where, maybe, a kitchen and an exit to an alley would provide escape should the front entrance with steel bar reinforcement become blocked as the joint's femme fatale gendarme sat erect in a chair in front of the barred-in entrance looking at me without the introduction seduction she had laid on my gullible need for somewhere to go if not merely something to do. I felt like a trapped fox after chasing trick rabbit. I challenged the urge to remain seated in the dim corner where the sunlight from the rear exit had shone on me like some source for intergallactic transport. Upon that rfealization I decided to transport myself through the exit, giving up any notion of what may be at the other end of the galaxy. With no human interference abounding, I found myself in an alley leading to the boulevard and, ironically, back in front of My Little Diamond in the Ruff. The only difference about the block was the tin cup beggar had gone from his perch in front of the estranged coffee shop.
My stroll through the Little Big Metro began to reveal certain phenomena seeming connected to, an intuitive notion I have been harboring recently, the sudden radicalization of a culture suddenly confronted with the de-cloaking of an ominous presence never known. The culture has a static perceptionof the universe it exist within, a reality that could always be predetermined. Then came along the introduction of an advanced technology.
Inhabitants of Earth appear capable of utilizing the new knowledge but are not fully prepared to grasp its power for altering any previous perception of what may have been previously conceived as the real world because the source of the knowledge , up until now, had been previously undetected by the human race of planet Earth on the MW galaxy. This is to say; unknown until now.
My impulse was to run as far as I could get before exhausting myself to the point of dehydration. I did just that --run, where I concluded my jog on a city park bench, comfortably in the shade from the searing sun, in the center of the city. A giant obelisk with strange yet familiar etchings refracted the sunlight making the stone structure appear golden. An acre of grass patch and a young mossy oak tree where the only things green and where little dogs on leashes met on schedule while their masters arranged discreet meetings. A woman appeared next to me wearing a mini skirt and knee high boots and a pink chemise blouse, the kind women wear who bear fantasies about becoming rich and famous.
I have tickets to the opera. Do you enjoy opera? Well, actually I am hawking them. A friend gave them to me for a service I performed for him over at the City Council for the Arts office.
I chose not to stare at her although I did steal a quick glance. She was the young woman from the speakeasy. You are following me? I asked, before realizing that my somewhat paranoid query may have been way out of line. The distance from our first face to face meeting could not have been more than a few blocks at most.
Do you enjoy opera? She forced her Q & A suddenly, jarring my unsuspecting naivete, standing from her very close perch next to me, her skinny legs parted, revealing a very provocative invitation for seduction. The gazelle-like countenance stunned me when compounded with her graceful beauty.
Yes, I answered, yes, I do, a bit shaken by what seemed an invite to something unclear yet reassuring at the same time.
Well, here. She seemed to more than just insist I 'Take these tickets'. I'm hungry. I need a burger. Can you get with that, dude? A mere burger for what I have to offer in return for your offer in return for your purchase.
Purchase? I said, You are soliciting a stranger, my dear. I could be a Jack the Ripper. Heard of him? Didn't your momma ever teach you '....never talk to strangers when alone in the concrete jungle', I said.
It's not like you offered me the chocolate, Mister-Whatever-Your-Name-Is, when I sat next to you. This is the only bench in this dog poop patch downtown traffic switchback city park plaza. On top of that, it wasn't me who sat here first, she said.
What do you have to offer for the burger, aside from the opera date? I retorted, all pissed off.
That's a very uncanny reply, she stated, directing her deep gaze into my mind as if searching for something deep within me. 'What do you have to offer for the burger, aside fom the opera date?,' you ask? A burger is a burger as far as I am concerned. MAD. Mutual and assured destruction --of both.
Well, I said, probing out of sheer curiousity rather than stark naked presumptuousness, I will go for the opera offer and nothing else. I got the sudden feeling of being scanned like a grocery item on the checkout counter. I get the feeling you're learning stuff about me, I said, without holding any reluctance to a quick reply with something substantive, hoping her jam her guarded probe into my personal affairs. Stuff I may not even know about myself. Let me adjust the annotation. Things related to the dust broom closet of my life's data archive. You know. Any good memories strike a bell, sugarplum? Or is it the bad one's you prey upon?
Oh, Good Lord, you are nothing but 'MAD.'
In what way? I implored, not getting the point of her suggestion I may be crazy.
I am not that easy, Mister-Whatever-Your-Name-May-Be. I am married as in a formal marriage complete with license and formal wedding flicks to boot. My husband is a very loving, honest, sincerely dedicated and most honorable, to what most would consider 'our bonded relationship.'
Bonded? The word bonded threw me for a spell. I felt it may have been kind of heavy handed considering the flippant circumstances of our second meeting. She was the young lady from the speakeasy.
The flight, as it turned out, had been less difficult than I anticipated. She was right. It became apparent to every one of the immediate spectators that I had never been on a camel.
Not bad for the first time, my friend, the harem master said, bearing a hint of humor, golden glitter and sarcasm with a smirking smile I could not readily put my hands on. The expanse of sand dunes was so vast it made me dizzy. Was this the edge of the world? The caravan had to be at least a mile in length with the number of camels in the triple digits. My dizzy spell evaporated on the arrival of dusk, a quite strange celestial phenomenon of colors totally to new my planet earth sensibilities. A posse of armed women, about a hundred or so, strutted past my section of the caravan that had come to a halt. Sitting atop my kneeling beast of burden, the animal seeming to be under nothing suggesting being under any kind of burden as she chewed on something much like a tobacco farmer chewing on a wad of cud. The head dominatrix, I had suddenly realized, was the speakeasy girl. She removed her face covering where upon her frown turned into smiling beam upon recognizing me. In some strange way I was able to translate her Arabic.
Hey there! I shouted to her over the talking grunts of the camels.
Shouting back in the Queen's English, You want to come with us? Mister-Whatever-Your-Name-May-Be? She had asked, as if her statement was meant to be received as compulsory.
Not so sure about just how to reply, somewhat confused about the consequences of my soon to come response, You're damned right! I exclaimed.
Damn Right? She asked, her beam turning back into a frown.
That means yes! I shouted and her beam returned.
She removed a not so small and not so light in weight shock assault weapon strapped to her voluptuous bosom, handing to the gun over to me on my dismounting my chosen steed of the sand voyage. Now you may protect all of us with this, she said, referring to the gun she'd just given me.
Pondering my need for such a device, I asked, Where are we going?
We are on an exploratory journey seeking the edge of the sand, she answered emphatically, a matter of fact nonchalance to her tone of voice. A Bird of Prey squadron of 10-X ISF zoomed above the camel train disappearing within seconds.
I thought there was going to be an attack, I told her, assuming there was something eminent in the air when she insisted I take the weapon with no questions allowed.
No. No attack. She had stated her reply coarsely as we strode about fifty some steeds up ahead to a tent where a dozen harem masters sat smoking on a big hookah with one hose, passing the snake-like tube from man to man, its smoke rising up to the top of the flapping canvas structure like a cobra's spiraling head.
Go there. Sit with the men. I will come back for you very soon. She demanded. I watched her move up the train line until she and her band of warrior sex slaves were virtually out of my line of sight. The harem masters started to laugh.
Hey, guys? What's so funny? I cannot be that amusing, I pronounced, worst of all, unnanounced. Their laughter suddenly stoppped. Serious gazes grabbed my attention in a way that meant one more blunder and there goes my head.
Can I join you for a smoke? I plead in English. They looked at each other with looks of severity to utter amazement, then, to my relieved chagrin, they broke out laughing again.
I was offered the pipe.
My friend of the Great Forest appeared. I sat on a square stone cube, among many such cubes, situated near the perimeter on a vast marble floor appearing to be on a summit point of some kind with a clear view of the desert below. Nightfall had come and the light from fires were flickering outlining the camel train in the far distant. Gas lamps burned at three points on the elevated platform. He sat on the same seat, his back to mine. How has your expeditionary work on planet Earth been? Much success? Or, have you failures to report?
I have not yet made a determination as to whether or not the shadow forces that abound there, connected to my presence, are Rat Race.
How soon will it be before your speculation may be affirmed? He queried.
Soon, I said.
My answer went unchallenged by my mentor. We sat in silence for a spell, a few hours, pondering the Orion constellation and its many metaphors, one appearing to me to be a belly dancer dancing in slow motion. Becoming transfixed by the galaxy queens's sensual movements, I awakened to a light in the center of her forehead, the center of Orion, growing larger and brighter upon instantly filling the glazed stone promontory with an intense pulsing orange glow. A 10-X ISF Bird of Prey performed a silent landing on the platform of square blocks, near where I sat alone, within the space of the flaming gas lamps. Only the cobra like hiss of the spacecraft's integral lamp broke the silence of the night. She appeared, slowly walking, as if gliding from the spaceship toward me.
She was the girl of my dreams.
The dominatrix princess of femme fatale warrior sex slaves from the caravan is the same young woman from the Little Big Metro city plaza, who'd taken me on to her private jet and flew me to this desert.
I am Ny Jha, was what she had relayed to me without opening her mouth. I realized my mentor had gone when she said for me to go with her.
Where to now, Princess Ny Jha? I asked.
I have an errand to do. A task I must fulfill. Follow me now, She commanded. And I did, follow her, finding my self in a copilot's station in a two seated cockpit with her as the craft's commander beside me. We are preparing for a full scale invasion from the Rat Race any time now according to reliable transmissions from field intelligence, the princess explained as we zoomed olver a front line column of 10-X ISF.
My calculation is we surpassed at least a thousand craft per second. The princess then continued her reiteration. They are to be the first wave of the counterattack initiating the deception shock assault as merely the first stage of the battle.
The new year has come and, now, gone.  What words will be spoken now?  This is not a diary's poetic entry.  The game is reality, like 'Mortal Combat' on a video display --where ever, meaning, as I enter this new world '....what dreams may come?'  You speak of the tongue, yet you may know not from what tongue I am speaking from.  Back in My Town those who may know of the vernacular of things gone, automatically, sense the underlying theme --'...things to come.' This new course of events may be heralding or traumatic, even, for those whose lives lay in the balance between true awareness and bullshit.
We walked for a distance on the shoreline  Deserted island.  Shipwreck.  Pirate stuff like  Blue Beard.  Sweet Baby had returned and My Town, once again, arose at the dawn of another day.