i wish i could truly and in detail tell you how i came to the begininng of this occurrence but i can not. That remains in the realm of the drunken night before. I remember something about being on a highway and having 3 different cars needing to go to the same place (one of us had procured food and we were trying to eat together (which only then occurred to me to be a daily sacred thing to be done with others-the intimacy of breaking bread, its ritual nature subconscious). In the end it just didn’t work out.
i was pulling a trailer behind my SUV when i pulled into Stewart’s garage and the food was so nicely packed in 2 coolers with ice, very orderly and i was struck by this because i am not very orderly at all. At some point in my life i had decided that the time spent being orderly was time poorly spent, that i would rather live in disorder and use “orderly” to develop my mind. In the end this theory would turn into nothing more or less than the manifestation of a sick mind, the palpable, empirical expression of varying depression, mood, etc.
This realization raised a pain in me, a rampant sadness toward all the elemental differences we have from each other, especially those we love so much. It’s monumentally self soothing to articulate our sincere acceptance of difference only at the ethnographic and sociological level. I have profound difference from my doppleganger best friend. I fear these will never go away and were only manifest during our group seeking years (14-25). At that time we are like planets that whirl their separate but gravitational courses. The ensuing fissure would prove for me heartbreaking.
And this brings us to the thorny issue of authenticity. Find 2 women aquaiantances who have worn the same dress to a function and you will not observe the pleasure of serendipity but angst that such was not foreseen. Possibly one of the women will feel suspiciously bitter that her authenticity was stolen by her other.
We are all inundated by the same sirens (advertisements) that promise us a specific identity. We have become estranged from finding out about ourselves directly, we need a medium to tribalize us. Once tribed we pretty much ignore each other. Hemingways quote “copying is the most sincere form of flattery” seems not to have foreseen our present advertising ubiquity.
Our adornment seems the opposite of the indigenous. To rebel through dress would guarantee their shunning. Inversely we have hoards of corporations ready to sell individuality to millions. To wit the rise of the tattoo. That one is a real head scratcher but, unlike Hemingway holds true to the observation “every act of rebellion is at the same time one of conformity.”
Perhaps we can blame it on sheer population numbers. Tribes are small and exclusive. They are tradition and authenticity writ large. Us in our millions must experience an existential angst of belonging and rebelling at the same time. May you live in interesting times.
Perhaps we all deep down detest mass society and culture except the Phd.s awarded in droves studying it. We are panicked at being lost in a horde and feel authenticy fade as it takes psychic reality with it. We get rare spkrinkles of the abdication of difference. One popular singer prattles on about her bass player and ends by saying all these compliments are because she wants to be like her. How outrageous of a desire at this point in sociopsychic history. The singer reaches across the chasm and its void to connect with the other not politically but personally, a voice in our wilderness that authenticity is our achilles heel.
Sorry about the prattle. Back to the story.
Postmodernism, for the brief days it shined, rejected the admonission of style (because of how it was constructed) and said “nobody is going to deprive me of aesthetics” but that lasted a minute and now we are all mired down (or up) in mass misunderstanding of critical theory and our suicidal urge toward identity politics. Now everyone is always and only critical about every thing and every idea, and any authority to speak on any of these things has melted away somehow and now nobody listens, nobody thinks, they have nothing to learn, they just want to speak and be heard and maybe in doing so somehow validate that they have been here (“i was here”) Graffiti-the ejaculation of their existential anguish in the time of their impending extinction.
Sorry about the prattle. Back to the story.
When i had finished putting in the 2 coolers with food i had a a lot of serious trouble backing out the trailer (far too little experience) because i had thoughtlessly pulled in nose first, kind of forgot about the whole trailer thing. This brought to mind that one of my best childhood friends, who was a nationally ranked sailor and openly prided himself in his impeccable navigational skills, was once asked by my father to move a car out from under our carport. He hit the right rear of the car and took out a load bearing pillar. I don’t think he has ever gotten over this foible in his entire life.
So i backed up, pulled forward over and over again feeling as though I were building a sandcastle, knocking it down, rebuilding it into what seemed like an eternity.
By the time I was ready to pull out of the driveway, something ontological had drastically changed. It wasn’t really a driveway anymore it was perhaps a construction site underway at Stewart’s house which presented to me 2 diverging dirt roads into unfamiliar woods.
My oldest brother immediately took charge of this clusterfuck (of course we weren’t going to ask Stewart because he might be asleep (really of course because only girly men ask other men how to get out of a pickle). Older brother did some figuring and thinking whose position of authority we would blindly follow. He assured me to take the left dirt road, go past the next dirt road on the right, and the next one on the right and then go straight (so many lefts and no rights rattled around in my subconscious).
I follow his directions going straight and i just don’t reconnect with concrete, nothing to take me back to “civilization.” I am seriously lost in the woods, no Hansel and Grettle to ask directions (I am a girly man in that situation).
The worry and fear coursed through my body like malevolent lightning. I had only experienced this kind of existential dread once before. We were kids playing hide and seek. As I hid I experienced a mild panic that I had hidden so well that no one would find me. As time progressed, unfound, I felt in some way that I didn’t exist anymore at all. When I heard the shouts of the other children in the distance having moved onto another game without missing me at all I felt a lack of belonging that I have never gotten over. The terror and indignation of hiding and having no one look for you.
Well here I was lost again preparing for the pain of not being missed. I came upon a moored air balloon (which I luckily had enough familiarity to fly it). I abandoned the SUV for the balloon reasoning that by raising my visibility I would be found and rescued.
As i travelled from that perspective looking down trying to make sense out of the different patchwork of plots of lands, dirt roads, some hard roads but it doesn’t really make much sense from the air unless you happen to be a land/air surveyor. Recall what the ground looks like when you are flying commercial 20 minutes before landing. The patchwork below makes no sense to most of us because we have never thought carefully about how being on the ground might make some sense (if you are building a straight road and you come to a mountain we just know you have 3 choices, go around it, tunnel through it or ONLY switchbacks, never straight up and over. How did we “learn” that? By observing the switchback paths that mountain goats make NATURALLY. Surely we later perfected this by the engineer’s efficient “cut and fill” math and its ensuing EFFICIENCY (oh how much of our knowledge represses its origins in our observance of nature????).
Before i had transitioned from the ground to the stupifying perspective above I heard on the radio that somehow my being missing was a big viral occurrence to the masses. There had been quite a long dry spell and one of the State Trooper’s undercarriage had started a brushfire.
Now if you can remember the whisper game in kindergarten where “sue is nice” ends up “let’s murder the teacher” imagine that “game” where every single person has a device that whispers to them, often with the sophistication communicable in less than 150 words but throw in the fact that the intelligence level of the people with these devices are at about 6th grade. This victim lost in the woods has rapidly become some terrorist that is trying to burn the town down.
I felt as though I was looking down at a map but maps do not have fires spreading and people scattering about like furious ants. Is what I’m seeing real? A controlled burn, practice for firefighters? It’s impossible to tell.
This leap from victim to villain is nothing new at all. In fact, it has a notorious history with the thorny problem of cause and effect with which it is deeply embedded. Untrained minds burned witches at stakes, the German people buying en masse a conclusion that jews are the cause of such and such, or more recently the conclusion that math is racist because the amount of mathematicians is below the population level of blacks in our society. Strange how I never hear that sports are racist in that 80% are black when only 15% of the population. At least get creative people; athletes are modern day gladiators who destroy their bodies to the delight of the ruling classes.
So now citizens on the ground are joining in the search (who wants to miss the excitement and continue to pour coffee) and as more bad things happen (one group is certain that another individual is responsible for the mayhem and are kicking the shit out of him), every mishap that happens on the ground will ultimately and finally be my fault and each travesty in its minute detail is quickly disseminated to the furious hive of people below and it builds until the point where they seriously need a bonafide culprit onto which their rage can unfurl.
The crowd grows and grows. More fires break out. A beautiful young marathoner speeds frantically through the woods and accidentally impales herself on a split tree and the crowd watches her die for 5 horrific minutes as she speaks goodbyes to her family and loved ones into out held cell phone video cameras.
Watching from the air I am sickened that these citizen searchers could have just stayed out of this, and am horrified that the wrath of their foolish curiosity will be laid at my grave. Why do humans rush headlong into dangers they are not even aware of, not have any business other than curiosity of getting into? Fascination, desire, escape from the quotidian (in all its horrors?) Why was Pandora’s box opened? Why did Lot’s wife look back after expressly warned? All I know is that the more injured, the more killed, the more melted the scales of justice, the bigger the turn toward the barbaric, a zealous thirst for a violent vengeance only a pyshcosexual release could satisfy.
My soul is in unremitting terror. The only hope I have is that they are looking on the ground and negotiating its obstacles. I actually have hope that the balloon will carry me to safety away from the throngs baying for my blood. I’m covering more ground because I have no obstacles but this is being countered by the sheer number of searchers showing up from everywhere.
This warm feeling of hiding very well and being sought by throngs washes over me; I am wanted, but not for good reasons, but I am well hid, and I feel the rush of existence, quite different from my experience in the hide and seek game.
This omnipotent feeling is ripped away from me the second i see helicopters and planes join the search (they will definitely be looking at the ground AND looking straight ahead, where i am, not looking for me just looking where they are going so they don’t crash into each other They will accidentally see me where they did not expect, just like WWII radar gave us the TV set.
Upon seeing these aircraft I wet myself. This had only happened to me once before. A sadistic headmaster in my grade school brought me in front of the class to be whipped with a thin flexible cane. Several lashes in and urine began to streak out of my shorts and down my legs. The other students immediately laughed uproariously. The shame inflicted by my classmates made the lashings distant like an echo.
i’m hoping for night to fall to help me escape but it doesnt. It seems like time in standing still. It has itself turned against me like any other force of nature, wind, etc. There are countless livid ants, bees, scorpions and snakes down there seething for me but my last hope is that when I come down law enforcement will find me and will not let the ecstacy of violence take place, that they will snatch chaos from the drooling mouths of the masses and be the force of law and order.
When i finally, sorrowfully, tearfully, filled with trepidation come down i am lucky and there is a police officer there. He is at first very professional in apprehending me, I admit to being the one they are looking for, I put my hands behind my back, i am very compliant and deeply want my fate decided by the copper and high cool legal minds, not by an incensed mob. I am so hoping that only the cops have guns and that will be enough to prevent an orgy of violence. But I am well aware that I live in a country where guns are as common as people and many could have joined this chase strapped.
The cop that insulates me from the chaos, calms me with the promise of order. This gives me some relief but I sense my subconscious is reading his and that both of us are hyper aware of the danger, that the “thin blue line” will not hold (after all we have always known that individuals and small groups can be kept in check by law enforcement, but if the populace they serve turns on them en masse they are screwed because of the cop/policed ratio-you would need the military when say, you saw the police fleeing from a mob.
The law man put handcuffs on my wrists outstretched behind my back. Word of my capture lit up every cellphone in a 5 mile radius also pinpointing where I was. The copper is trying to summon backup but they are having trouble getting through the throngs, like starting at the back of Woodstock and trying to make your way to the stage.
Through the cacaphony I could make out “my brother has 3rd degree burns over half his body” and “watching that impaled woman die will haunt me forever.”
As crazy as it sounds, when you are in a situation like this you cling onto hope: 10 choppers might descend and airlift you out, the cops might have a scenario you’ve never heard of before.
But then again that fleeting hope can indeed slowly melt off like a morning dew. This is how I felt when the cop who was doing his best to protect me was tossed aside like a human cotton ball.
With my hands still cuffed behind me the frenzied crowd started hoisting me up and into a tree. I knew that Christ had died from asphxiation, having lost the strenth to hold himself up so he could breathe. I assumed they were trying something similar to that. Any hope I had was gone at this point.
The furious mob could not really position me to suffocate so they tried sourcing up a rope to hang me by the neck. They soon found out that a noose is a very specific type of knot and none of them knew how to tie one.
Their sloppy loop was not efficacious and at this point, sure that my life was lost, I decided to go down speaking.
I screamed that they had lost any humanity that they ever had and had descended into the animality from which they had arisen. I yelled that the only reason I was being murdered in this fashion was because I fit our societies perfect scapegoat; I was a white, heterosexual male. The crowd became nonplussed for a fraction of a second and began my murder with much greater determination motivated by their uncomfortable need to shut me up.
I continued, “would a woman, a woman of color, a woman of color with a disability be on my receiving end?” “Of course not, that doesn’t fit today’s scapegoat. “I’m Hitler’s jew and you are his people and you will be remembered in the same way. Is there one amongst you brave enough to stop this travesty?” “Scratch that, you are all pagan, satan worshipping, materialistic nihilists to your core and just as you have turned on me with these poisons that I’ve named, you shall each in your turn find your throat ripped out by a person who was your neighbor the day before.”
An ex military marxman was in the crowd about 150 yards away and took it upon himself to end this horrific spectacle. No victim, pogrom over. Since I had by then well resigned myself into God’s hands, was actually crying out for it interspersed with my vitriol to the filth below me, I couldn’t help laugh as I heard the marksman’s rounds whizzing by me m0t breaking any flesh.
The crowd grew disgusted with no sight of blood. They ripped me from the tree. Someone had produced an ax. I again laid out their horrible future based on tribalism, as colorfully but as understandably as I could (since we have been so dumbed down by our miracle devices) reminding them that the far left recently proclaimed anit-semeticism as acceptable.
As the axe hovered above my neck I hissed “your politics leads only to tribalism where you will live in perpetual fear of others and barely eek out an existence. You can’t see it but you are not going forward but backward into darkness, chaos, and hell on earth.”
The axe fell its viscous blow and sepeaated my head from my body. But the strangest thing happened. We must have been teleported instantly to South America. My severed head continued speaking to the horror of those within earshot. My lips began to rattle off unendingly and perfectly from the begining, every work of magical realism ever published.
The petrified crowd gingerly took my head and put it in an ambulance. They wanted no more part in what they had done and collectively wrung their hands about it, if they could undo it, how it would affect every second of the rest of their lives.
Their only solace came by being rid of the head and the hopes that those wiser than them could somehow save them from what they had done.
vignettes 