The Conversation

We were in the semblance of a great conversation. Since it was late it abruptly ended but everything he had told me, everything we had exchanged in the form of our dreams and experiences lay good and fast in my brain.

"I will tell you," he had begun, "about the way men are. Men are angry at life, they are growlers at their fate, they escape as they can, they kill from time to time, they aspire to the stars and that which stands in their way becomes their enemy. So, with that as a background, let's take one man, my friend Niles Brah who always complained, oh yes, complain, complain, complain heaven help me he could do nothing else. I said to him, Niles, you complain too much you need to visit some fabulous place that is out of your mind, that is out of the range of your mind, that is completely away from anything which you know. Fine, he said, where is that? I paused not knowing what to answer since it seemed very apparent to me that he would brush my suggestion right off. So, I took down a large volume in my library. A blue covered volume about 6" thick and used rarely, but definitely used. I opened to the middle section which had on one side a slick photograph of an abstract, golden city that was not named. There was intensely small, leaping text on the other page. A few words I still remember. 'Dreams', 'burrowing', 'gratuitous', 'pathetic' were the main ones. We read the text together and stared at the picture and he suggested that it suggested to him something unattainable and therefore suspect. He began complaining again. It is all so unattainable and then he began to break down and cry. Oh for God's sake, don't cry, complain I don't care. But now I know that you hate that I complain, that I am a complainer, well, I don't care, I don't care what you think or anyone thinks we are all unattainable to ourselves. No, we must go step by step. That is, start from a discernible point, a tiny unambiguous point made from the tip of a fine, razor sharp pencil tip. There, now think of any other point in the universe. He was about to protest I could see this and I stayed him with my hand. It is immeasurable for certain but that is the point! Let us define ourselves. We could be anywhere in the universe and know where and what we are that is all. That is what you want isn't it? Absolutely! he shouted. Will I have to pray and serve you? You are a madman I answered. But a particularly modern version of the madman. Not the raving type but the stubborn type. You want to be mad because the specialists have convinced you that madness is a power and you desire power. You go mad, you desire power you go madder and you have no power so now you are frustrated. But, madness is still a Muse for you. You will not have to do anything but connect the points that I draw for you. Do that and you will prevent that great complaint that rises in you from time to time. Perpetual complaining, isn't that filthy of you? You are hard on me, get to the next point. You have one point and you are trying to draw me the second point will you do that? Well, now, you have thrown me off balance and made me think. I was on a roll. We will put the second dot somewhere on the north side of the star Antares. Oh stop , stop it I don't know where these things are. Stop all of this. I am going to leave you now you are no god for a second I thought you were a god but you are a nobody who knows what the name of stars are. So, so long, I am going to try and find a woman in the city tonight but I doubt if I can find any healthy one's. The healthy one's stay indoors these days and drive expensive cars. They watch television with their pet dogs and eat popcorn- well fine I will find one who is on her way home. I will comment on her dog and offer it a bone. But, even then, I will be suspicious and demand to look through her closet and refrigerator, yes, dammit, her refrigerator because they were right when they said you are what you eat; the people say that all the time and they are sincere. You are what you eat. I will not judge her but I will leave if what she eats does not appeal to me. Well, that is my immediate future. I wish I could wait around for your story on Antares but I must go to the city now. The ugly falling down city that is a crypt so be it I feel half dead as it is. Good-by I will see you sometime, perhaps in two months. So, my friend says, he left and I haven't seen him or heard from him since. I hope nothing happened to him because he is the type that could get into trouble in a city. He would walk down a poor street and say the wrong thing and get jumped by a gang and left for dead but I hope I am wrong. In the immediacy of the moment I felt the need to relieve myself. I did so in a private room and came back but my friend was missing. Well, he is gone, I will sit down and read a book. The chair did not fit me well but I sat and made a noise that I couldn't identify and then opened the volume about how to make ten million dollars in the stock market. Ah yes, that is what I want to do. Actually six million would be enough but they said ten million so I wasn't going to complain. I wanted to buy a baseball team. I wanted to build it by scratch, player by player, coach by coach from the minors to the majors. Oh , that is silly I thought in a more meditative mood. You could put that ten million dollars to better use. An enormous tower for instance that would penetrate the atmosphere and poke out several feet into the universe. Obviously it would be equipped with life support systems but would be completely clear so that one would have an unobstructed view from the ground to the universe. That would take ten million or so. Perhaps, when I am wistful, I could buy a concubine of Mormon women I hear they are not jealous. I forgot that I was reading and went to the television set and turned it on. Immediately, the screen was filled with a huge blue object that turned out to be the wing of a bird. My first thought was a primitive one that I think men must have had when he watched birds fly. If men were meant to fly he would have wings. But then, immediately after that, one raises the question, well, why didn't he have wings? Why would nature make him inferior in that way? I was depressed watching television, it always does that to me. It sucks something from me every time I watch it as though it is really watching me to suffer and sucking something precious from me. A preacher was ranting on the next channel that I was not giving him any money. DON'T YOU WANT TO GET TO HEAVEN? DON'T YOU WANT TO BE SAVED? He was frothing and sweating. I took the book I had been reading and put it into an envelope and mailed it to the address that was on the television screen. It was late. The post office is closed I thought to myself. I may run into gangs with machine guns. But, God knows that I was attempting to help the preacher; it is the thought after all. Placated in this fashion I took the book out of the envelope and began to read it again, turning the TV down. On the screen there was a love scene. A famous actresses had one breast fully exposed, for a moment, and I thought why would a famous actress want to expose her breast? It did not excite me. The scene dissolved and then came wild dancing, wild dancers selling tennis shoes, they were dancing like madmen, in and out, in and out a dozen arms flinging upward simultaneously. Do they make ten million dollars for this? Whatever, I became engrossed with the possibility of making ten million dollars from the stock market. It said, buy low, sell high. At first I thought they meant the disposition of the person. Ah, this is too difficult. It is too difficult to make ten million dollars. I will watch the beautiful breast on the screen and be satisfied. I will get in my auto and drive to Istanbul. Yes, that place which I have been fascinated in from grade school. I will shout in the Hagia Sophia and then drive out the money changers. I will disparage Moslems and run from them to the Aegean Sea. I will rent a trireme and make it to Carthage and find Augustine and tell him I have seen the future and he shouldn't worry about things. Stay libertine I will say, your god dies in a few centuries. Now I have pangs of guilt. I have done something wrong, made a taboo. It frightens me. I expect the door to knock and the taboo police to wrestle me to the floor. ON BEHALF OF SOCIETY WE ARREST YOU. They will take me to the empty hollow room several stories high where your voice resounds and a judge will ask me if I have committed the taboo. I will not answer and then finally will say, if you insist yes I did it but it was only a fantasy, a private joke, the order remains I am no threat to it. He will yell at the top of his lungs, his voice will fill the room, YOU MAY ONLY DREAM AMONG THE DEAD LIMBS OF THE OUTER TREES AMONG THE TOMBS OF THE ANONYMOUS, BY THE HILL OF VISCERA.

So, I was sent to the Hill of Viscera for six months hard labor. They had there among the other riff-raff an amazing fellow. He told me that he was from Slu and that he had amazing powers. For one, he could see the thoughts of other people when he desired. For two, he could make himself as old or as young as he desired. He was not immortal he assured me but almost. Do you want to see what a five million year old man thinks about? Yes, I answered, please show me. He did something that I was sure was the mark of a wizard and then, without changing any outward appearance, began to speak like an old five million year old man. And he began to tell me, from the beginning, everything that he had seen in his long life. He had seen the death of kingdoms and of the bureaucracy and had seen the polar caps melt twice and then freeze in an ice age. He had seen travelers from other planets attempting to root themselves on the planet despite enormous resistance from the natives, Ah old man, I finally interjected, stop it is too much. This is too much information for me I must stop it and think about where I am. Well, I was by the Hill of Viscera. It was a russet-colored hill rising on an angle to a sparse clearing of trees, their boughs empty and sad looking. Throughout the valley that extended for what seemed a mile or so, there were the figures of prisoners, of penitents who had been placed there by the Judges. Tremendous energies were released as they drove the source of the taboos out of them, that is, the guards who were dressed like Paladins. Each had a pikestaff fifteen yards I would say. They marched stiffly and correctly throughout the valley and could be seen marching in pairs up the Hill of Viscera. I was profoundly afraid of the guards. They wore no expressions and only a few spoke. When they spoke it was direct and to the brain and, more importantly, to the very root of the taboo. The mind felt sick. The words of the guard whirled and spiraled out of control convulsing the victim who rolled on the ground, writhing and creating, throughout the valley, a field of energy. While incarcerated in this fashion I pined for the television set and the book on the stock market. I could see them in my minds eye. I imagined them better than they actually were. Well I never got use to the Hill of Viscera. Only once was I tempted to go up the Hill and see what you could see from its plateau. Though nothing had been said I assumed it was forbidden for prisoners to go up, I began to go up. My intention was to go up and then go down the other side. I hid behind a rock, crouched so low I could smell the heat of the dirt. It was night. It was moonless and I figured I could make it in ten minutes. But as I was preparing to leap from the rock and steal my way up the hill a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. I turned and it was the ageless man. His eyes were filled with terror. His face was contorted as if he were going to yell at me. "You must not do it."

"What do you figure I am going to do?"

"You are going to climb the hill and find the way out. You will find the other side and that is not wise for a free man."

"You speak strangely. You speak like one of them, one of the guards."

"I am the guards. I am you. I am them all. Trust me, don't go up the hill."

My heart was pounding and I was dumbfounded that the ageless fellow would stop any attempt to escape, even explore. But he spoke as one with authority.

Clocks and calendars were forbidden and I was entertained the whole time by the ageless man who would tell me what the imperial Paladins were thinking about all the time. Their thoughts were not pleasant. There were angry and resigned thoughts that you would have assumed belonged to the prisoners. Nonetheless.

In the end they released me on a city street in a city I had never been to. I was given a package of currency and the key to a hotel room. From one world to the other! That is what I couldn't stand. That is what almost drove me insane. And my abode. Who was taking care of the abode? Such were my thoughts as I walked through the city. Most people ignored me and went about their business. But I noticed that when I moved from one crowd to the next there would be one person looking very intently at me. It spooked me. They began to drive me on a course I hardly gave any consent too. I found myself in front of a palatial hotel, decked out in fresco's and white paint......

Oakland, 1980
David Eide

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