Gobo

I may not know that much about money, but I know a lot about language, and money is a form of language. And I know that the more you say shit that doesn’t mean anything – threats that can’t be backed, promises that can’t be made good – the more your words lose meaning. Lack currency. Lack value. And just become mouth farts.

The umbrella doesn’t need you. But you need the umbrella. Likewise, money for a rainy day. I anticipate the rumble of a foreign sky. These are strange days. The world has turned apocalyptic.  The chuff & whine of construction trucks can be heard nearby. This is a reassurance. The airplane is a meditation in flight. It means that a transitive verb walks into a sentence & sits down on a noun & begins impregnating the world with possibilities & fungus. Parsley & deer. When Sartre talks about Being, I don’t think this is what he means. Is there anything more lonesome than an empty floor at Sears? These are the shipwrecks of a single breath.

I remember taking a bath in a dilapidated house on Balbach Street in San Jose, circa 1973. It was just that. A simple acknowledgment of water. We move forward: December, 1974. It’s the year of the gas crisis & Kohoutek Comet. Low on gas near Coos Bay. I spotted a phone booth & phoned the state patrol for information about a nearby gas station that might be open. They couldn’t say. Life today remains uncertain. But they say there’s another solar eclipse in 2024. We can see it in San Antonio. But will I still be alive? Will there still be a planet? An Alamo? A Mississippi? A Slip N Dip? Bats? Armadillos? Mad Max siphoning gas on a desert highway?

Let me show you a frog. It will not be a real frog, but a frog in the form of a word. A frog of the mind. Which is a frog with membranes between the toes, & a word that can do that if you can do that, imagine that, imagine a membrane, thank you. Thank you for imagining a frog. Think of it as squirming in your brain. Like a big idea. How many things that we consider ours are external to us, come from elsewhere? Or, at least, are the fruit of some other force. I’m wrapped in skin. A frog. And then there’s coincidence. Coincidence is a membrane in time. Wrapped in a dog. 

This will walk beside you until we get somewhere. I’m equipped to perceive the imperceptible. It’s a whole new sensation. You only get one life. Dip the oar, pull it, dip it again, pull it. Sooner or later you’ll find yourself somewhere. Alive & wet in the rain. One’s life coming to an end. You feel the immediate, the imminent, the actual. The universe at large. The horror of eternity. And it’s everywhere. Infinity hurts the head. So yeah, I have pixies in my hair. Angels mowing the lawn. Martin Luther King & Jesus playing chess. Emma Goldman leading a Pilates class.