The Wasteland Paper
Myrtle the Cat came to me in a dream last night (or, as the Greeks would say, a shadow contained in the shadow of a dream). “I like mystic poetry,” she said.
“Myrtle,” I cried, “Myrtle, why must you be a cat? Your beauty is too deep to be filled with fur!”
But, as Descartes said, animals have no souls. But, as Milan Kundera said, Descartes was wrong. I agree with Kundera, for one recalled glimpse of the non-existent Myrtle in her gloriously fantastic coat of no-coat and perhaps all-coat constructed of hopes and sighs, perhaps this sentence shall never end, perhaps I shall continue to add meaningless words and at some unfathomable moment in the future it will assume some structure of its own.
My paper tells me I must not turn it over until told to do so, and so, like a patriotic citizen in a secure society, I must observe, stare at the others around me, discover the sinister thoughts which lurk deep, deep within the malignancy of their vaguely A-rab and (dare I say?) Communistic eyes.
Neil, I charge you to continue this glory!
Ay, there is the rub! Tis it. Nobler to become, as some would say, existential, or to exist merely in the sense of nonsensical existing with a lack of knowledge of said existence? In simpler terms: to fry one’s own brains to nothing, or not to fry one’s brains to nothing. That is the question. Does an acknowledgment of one’s own impending mortality negate the existence of that end to existence? Hell no. So I pray thee heed these words, and spread them to all you know.
For those about to rock, I salute thee, party on, dear stoners, party on.
MUSIC VIDEO. And so, surrounded by innumerable robots attacking left and right, Dox and his robot dog Spitz dodged the metal spires falling around them. A fireball flew across the passage and the two warriors halted. The Music halted. The flames halted. Time halted, began and stopped in front of them what the <expletive deleted> where they supposed to think? A tank appeared in the center of the room while a bearded man in a black shirt descended from his levitating foot stool. Inside the rat of birds were humans. Humans sloshing in the unimaginable heat. Burning and screaming. Burning and screaming wait, a pause, the heat cools and a breath of fresh air blows across my face. Stop. The death continues.
Like rivers words forever flow and oh, the sounds. That’s a line from one of my stories, ohh. And then we started machine-gunning the cattle O! The poor defenseless cattle O!
La linea la linea del mundo sin razas, sin fronteras, una nueva declaracion de la realidad. Green grow the rashes-o, green grow the rashes-o, I shall stop that line (linea) del pensamiento. Enough, enough, enough of the scarves and enough of the waves, there is beauty being kindled and extinguished, and for every smile there is a tear.
The glaring sun bore down on the barren apocalyptic wasteland. A solitary gust of wind rippled across the bleak landscape. Red sunlight splashed across the concrete aberrations that were a series of scattered gray dots.
The souls of the eternally trapped were lifted upwards, wafting frictionlessly through the thin atmosphere. Below, the earth pulsed with rancor as mechanical birds screeched electrically. Flying sections of ejected molten lava exploded across the celestial sphere.
Multiple circuits he says? Well to that I show you that central figure…what?…I’m awake? I lie on a broken bench in the heart of Central Park. There’s a woman telling me to follow her with her stagnant arm. Watch out, there are small children crawling around in baskets. They block me path. What am I to do?
Vociferous thoughts
Copious copy
Inundated information
Timeless trinkets
Useless euphonies
Rancorous rakes
Only their sharp sticks across my brain, what am I to do. The room is dark, but I can still see what is going on. No x-ray or any of that technical <expletive deleted>. This is my brain in overdrive.
I write now in the great sleep, over and above a Physics textbook. Numbers? Well, sure! By all mans, or means, or the Golden mean, or the Golden men, as some might say. E^(i*a) = cosa + isina. Leonard Euler’s formula, that.
Well, start out with a hamster. Now, name him Frank, Juanita, even Abdul, it doesn’t matter (just not Carl, for God’s sake, no Carl!). Now, you take this hamster, this demon, this usurper, this by-all-means (by all mans) –not-Carl of a Beelzebub, you give him some crackers, plentiful yet warped saltine crackers. Then you read of him and read to him and sing to him and sing of him, sing happy songs and songs of woe, sing to him of love until his breast becomes a well of tears, and then keep singing, sing peace unto his breast (as some might say, by all means, connections eh zuh meh huh?). I will sing of murderers, but not to them. Those who do, do murder through them. Thought that little number up a while back, yessiree. Lord, lord, but I am tired, the inevitable exhaustion has come down like death, biting at my hands, witnessing the collapse and fall of my ability for metaphor. My imagination has to stretch but mercy me I just can’t stop the writing, though I hear it creak and moan as its boundaries are swollen, cry out, cry out as if fit to break.
Defenseless under the night our not-Carl in no-furistic stupor lies.
Oh, the armaments which thunder strike the walls have sapped the joy say from out my soul (from out my very soul, I say!).
Los pàjaros. I can quote foreign poetry, just like Mr. Eliot (that anti-Semite), just not the French. Here’s a little piece from my tremendous pal Antonio Machado.
Silenciosa y sin mirarme
La muerte otra vez pasò
Delante de mi. “Que has hecho?”
La muerte no respondiò.
Bounded by Rhombi. Hippopotomi. All the wonders of the world. Roots grow up, elves work in the sun, broken hearts can fly away.
I admit that there is not that much thought which is going into this specific part of this specific literary excursion, I have exhausted the limits of exhaustion and now stoop over this page with soul fit to crack.
Haha, crack.
Oh, intelligent humor.
Well let’s snatch us a glimpse into the scientific world, if we may.
p. 395: Refraction of light: when light strikes the top of a block plastic (as in figure 17-39, of course), (“of course” added) faint beams of light are reflected from the surface, but a bright beam goes into the block.
I have connected art with science, the mind with the soul, Rilke with organic chemistry, everything with everything and nothing with nothing, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Shawls? But what of circles?
AND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD,
UPON LOVE’S BETTER MYSTERY
Well and what if they still want to frown at me, pretend to laugh if you will I know a bit more than I let on I went to a psychologist (one or six they usually prescribe pills and more psychologists) she told me that I didn’t like to let other people know what I was thinking did I no no I don’t especially I keep all those slight madnesses and flapping birds inside their little vacuum with a blue sky and ancient mists and beautiful columns of laughter and stone where ancient deeds echo in the corridors the ancient beautiful corridors where everything’s real and I’m alone the cracked and crumbling passages and images of my old, staring up and misted mind where they belong, where they belong I say keep los pàjaros hermosos within their own souls so they can find out and there are the ships the ancient strong and bloody ships with the languid waters of the sea of death deep-swooping from the dark heaving sides sighs sides and sighs; sighs in the bush, sighs at night and in the misty dawn of my misted wooded soul dawn at mist and noon at breeze I could keep writing forever forever but what is eternity does it endure a day or a part of a day The wasteland corresponds to the different elements first earth then air then fire then water the fifth must be a combination the fire sermon blood and iron of the iron chancellor I turn to poetry as others turn to prayer to keep the pain away I seek a harmony to make love easier to bear to hold the pain at bay wrote that one last night so it’s all a circle a small one we are all points on a unit circle, bounded in a nutshell but kings and queens of infinite space, of our own lonely misted corridors with laughter in the breeze.
I am so, so very tired. Tired to the extent that I am almost incapable of writing, incapable of fighting, nourish, sustain me in the night, I do not have the will to fight.
Well, I’ve had a bit of rest, but you know me, I daren’t catch a winkle of sleep.
The cat and the serpent fornicated in the savage land. The savage land, the savage hand, the savage band…of savages.
Oh where in this dark and sultry land shall a lost and lonely pancake go? Where is the friendly pancake hand? Where the pancakes I used to know?
Strictly speaking, a pythmen reduced the tens and the hundreds in Greek numeration to their unit equivalents. Strictly speaking of course.
Oh, the tetragrammaton. Oh, whose characters sum to 72.
Tripping down that old country lane, doodoodoo, I was never one to use all the fancy words but I do in my insecurity try to pass myself off as smart, I do. I do like the strawberries, I do. Oh, the strawberry swirl, it simply swirls. Oh the seaside gurls, your head simply swurls. Oh, Ulysses, it makes the head swurl.
Ulysses? Wasteland? Eh?
Joyce. A Catholic who has lost the faith. Waste Land? Eh? I, for one, feel that, like a young earthquake’s birth. The circle bends, circular bend, bendular circ, Circe, Ulysses science unit circle Pythagoras Archimedes BEND!
I am physically incapable of staying awake much longer. Capable awake in. A sleep which is not quite the sleep of death. El tiempo no transcurra. But in that sleep of death what dreams may come. Que el sueño sea verdad. Mi juventud sin amor. I cannot think. Among the rocks. Wasteland eh? Buh bam…
Yes and these conversations are always a bit tense, well a bit more than a bit. I always end out lonelier than I was before which doesn’t seem to make that much sense but I hold it up as a fact that even though I can’t live without them I’d be happier without them because I’m so tense and angry and it’s all so lonely he said yes he said I do declare.
Well here we are, locked outside these trembling walls where howls are muffled in the dust. What was once here? What? There, anywhere, I cannot say, I am so very dead today.
Let us supper in the city of the dead, where our thoughts will be our own. This wasn’t the best of ideas, now me thinks.
Well, my actually lines (lineas).
By the waters of leman I sat and wept
A reference to psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, yea and where we wept when we remembered Zion. Remarks on the exile of a people from their holy land, here used to invoke a spiritual banishment and loss loss, oh loss. Leman refers to a lost lover, I believe we all know a little about that we all have lakes which swell with our tears.
The reference to Lake Leman (another name for Lake Geneva) refers to the loss of the purity and the spirituality of love, the purity of poetry, the purity of love poetry, “Leman” employed in similar method by George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s pilgrimage, Canto IV, if I remember correctly, “I have not loved the world, nor the world me,” all that.
Further references to the dissolution of love, through the dissolution of poetry (and underscored by the form of a Eliot’s poem, a dramatic break): “Sweet Thames, flow softly, till I end my song. Sweet Thames, flow softly, for I speak not loud or long.” Direct reference to a poem about love and marriage by one Edmund Spenser (made famous by his epic the Fairie Queene”), starting with E and ending with –alion but with the exact name eluding me at this non-existent and shattered time I shall simply quote the refrain, written in the style of the day and dredged up from the murky lakewater of my memory: “Sweete Themmes, flow softly, till I end my Songe.” Second line added by Eliot. Who was a fine poet but not a fine man. Yes, love does dissolve, and that right soon, this very scene provides ample evidence.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear.
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress. Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness lady were no crime…But at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near…Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still yet we will make him run.
That’s pretty much the gist. More Marvell: The wanton troopers riding by have shot my fawn and it will die.
More on the significance of mythology and allusion later on in the fun, because I like to hide it, I’m an asshole like that.
“Oh, it sets me heart a flutter.”
“Eh?”
“The wee lasses!”
“That’s disgusting.” (pulls out hammer)
“And that! And that!” Blood gets everywhere, alas, alack, where have all the flowers gone?
When I think of a king, at nightfall. When I think of this scene which I have imagined so desperately and well and now see it played out in all its horrible and opposite reality. When I think of how little I’m actually writing in all these slightly (just a little, eh!) less than sane pages, oh, it gets to me, you can see how it would. But enough of me, how are you? I’m fine thanks.
Time for a break.
Ready… … … …BREAK!
The sky is fading like an accustomed pain. And soon, due to the cultural emptiness of those in the lost generation (not us, but we’re lost enough!) all our love will fall like rain upon a blasted shore.
If I were more awake, or alone, I could write a dialogue. Oh well, maybe later.
(A drawing of Francis the Hyperbola)
Gabe
Blustein
4:30 pm the next day bile in the mouth and a raging headache I’ve had enough cigarettes for a lifetime all in one night. I am not capable of thinking except for the one persistent message from my brain that it has been flooded with too many foreign substances and can no longer process and is taking everything out on me. Hiccups and acrid burps what did I eat last night or is it those menthol cigarettes. Short of breath but I haven’t even got up and walked around today so it must be due to all that smoke lost track of it at some point or I never kept track. One whole day without a face to face conversation although I probably slept through most of the bad parts and I’m not as unlucky as <generic male #1> or <generic male #2> who were retching repeatedly into the small hours of the morning and again after the sun came up. Still that was pretty useless, no point no goals and nothing accomplished, just a wasted day and wasted opportunities. A 24 hour zombie, sleep is not really a consolation and the sun has gone down by now I should have taken a walk earlier but I can’t think of anything I would possibly enjoy doing at this moment too early to go to sleep I just woke up 4 hours ago and I can’t read more than a sentence at a time without getting distracted by abstract thoughts that are problems without solutions so why am I worrying about them in the first place just wasting time when I could be doing any other thing anything else but this would be good for my mental doldrums right now. Phone is ringing oh wait that’s just some high-pitched noises in my mind because dial tone is sounding in my ear. The internet gets pretty boring reloading electronic New York Times and reading about hell of stupid shit I guess my own circumstances are nothing compared to most of the world where bombs go off and ethnic extremists commit genocide. Not that that changes anything I think I just need some happy people that are carefree and don’t worry about these sorts of things. Anyway that was a really bad idea and large amounts of alcohol with nicotine aftertaste and some weed just to get tired is not good for my mind I don’t want to think about what that does to my body, not to mention 6 cups of coffee a few mixed with Bailey’s for flavor. At least I didn’t need shoes or any other clothes today but shit I need to get out of this house and out of Piedmont it’s fucking decadent and worthless just kills your mind and body. Money idleness and a lack of purpose is a recipe for nights like these it was supposed to be some kind of benchmark but fuck that it wasn’t any different than another night I didn’t learn anything so what was the point of that? Is someone going to tell us or do we just go on guessing and carelessly ingesting whatever is on the table without regard to future consequences.
Razor thin corridors of light penetrate the antediluvian complex, an achievement of perceived greatness now left to disintegrate into dust a mile below the earth’s periphery. Cracked shards of the moon are dispersed randomly through the Heavens. Fragments of a once-glorious whole were left to rotate eternally around a lifeless rock of radioactive ampleness. This rock had taken an overdose of nuclear hostility that inexorably climaxed in a white burst of puissance that exterminated the slim candle of flickering humanity and ended all questions of philosophy and eternity.
But what is the meaning of existence if the universe is just a series of rocks in orbit, dancing Newton’s dance in their programmed routes? No commencements, no destinations, just ovals on a star chart. Are these movements life? And blazing cores of iron at the center of stars? Dissipating comets of ore racing across the cosmos chased by arcing tails? All follow the machinations of Einstein’s absolute definitions, and these actions can be predicted precisely. The calculations can be extrapolated indefinitely to reach in a clear path through the corridors of the space-time continuum.
She stared vacantly into the crimson sunset as frothing waves reflected from her pupils. Dungeons and dragons were transparent across the blood-red sky, years flashing in and out of memory with no time in between. Cities and faces were one accidental apparition that never existed but for a transient moment, and was forevermore unattainable. Detritus of fragmentary thought rained down, showering her with bursts of comprehension that could never be consummated. The weather was stirring.
The ghost lurked relentlessly, grimly clutching a baseball bat and contemplating the purpose of his search. An ageless woman sat on a slab of calcium twigs, twin black abysses gazing from the eyeless sockets. Rays of wisdom emanated through the medium, illuminating and elucidating the damned existence until it surged back into the opaque darkness. The bat fell to the floor and rested among the ivory fragments. Bony apertures swayed precariously atop windy spires, but in the absence of currents of air there was only a desperate silence, interrupted randomly by echoes of souls fallen from astronomical heights into the cavernous murkiness. Twilight was suspended against the stratospheric wall in a state of untouchable vitality.
Further along the hallways of time, another mural of desolation projected itself abjectly into apathetic retinas of titanium creations, the spawn of forgotten scientific experiments.
The stranger paused on a burned plantation, crops of corn singed by licking flames. Cries of gunfire spat at the silence of rural tranquility, and he lifted his cargo and resumed his flight.
The soldier lectured the ungrateful native with words of liberations, words that bounced against closed ears and fell to the ground in pieces, unacknowledged.
I didn’t ask for you.
Leave, the humiliation is unbearable.
Strands of fire connected their eyes
Gunshots sung out and a pregnant mother crumpled to the ground
The spiral radiated outwards in pulses of pain
The scent of flesh lingered on the fields of Verdun
A family of refugees trekked through the sea
Blank eyes stared up at the souls of their shoes
The contents of a soldier’s broken knapsack were spilled out
Dinner for the first time in days
Fluorescent reflections projected from the TV onto glass
Images of surging riots and bloodshed
A calm retirement facility remains unaffected
Check mate. A clamor of voices
Nurses roll in food in silver trays
Sleeping comatose can only imagine
At the University of Joseph students are instilled with fine moral values and
just the right amount of knowledge, but not too much
No fornication
A student said Can I teach the class
Your values are unappreciated leave.
Corruption of the youth is inexcusable.
Socrates died for us so our thoughts would be free
Hemlock gave birth to an unsung martyr.
Did you sell the piano?
Nobody had any money.
Now we can’t eat tonight.
There is a black market for teeth downtown
You can get yours removed
What good are teeth without food?
There is a lady at the corner selling dirtcakes.
What do those taste like?
Not like anything really, they are awful hard though.
That cat has a rat in his mouth, let’s get it.
Here’s a big rock let’s kill the cat too.
The emaciated cat turned and scurried into a hole in the sidewalk
Sullen gazes followed it longingly
The knowledge core has been detonated!
I know you don’t need it any more
I set you free.
There is nothing now, it’s destroyed.
None of it mattered, nothing is lost.
Terrorists gazed at their lifetime project realized
Church bells clanged midnight into the deserted city
This is where I end and you begin.
The Revolution had grown stagnant with complacency.
Che stared over his shoulder in wonder
Was all I taught a hoax?
He ran into the flames headfirst
Flames ran across the prairie and chased the foxes out
And Solomon decreed unto David
I shall confer upon you my knowledge
With these tools will you receive the bread of my kingdom.
I need not your antiquated ideas
The meaning of these philosophies has expired and they have no relevance.
Solomon bled out the terminal breaths of life within him
Do not follow the path of sin, lest it consume you
I charge you with the trust of the people of Israel
You must not violate the sanctity of this responsibility.
Run to your dreams father
Your usefulness is at an end here
Birds chirp from tree branches and cars hum
The din is without cessation
There is a robbery next door
But those sirens are headed to a reported murder
I need to buy some shoes it’s my sole concern
Let’s go to Wal-Mart they sell everything.
Maybe they even make those police cars.
Now I’m just running away but no matter how far I go the din is still close beside me
Michael Johnson has his own problems
The roaring ornament in the sky is carrying 911 passengers
Bound for Oakland International Airport
The chair is oscillating back and forth, about to tip over
And my papers and thoughts along with it
Scattering to the ground with the autumn leaves
I made a successful foray in my first time shopping today
I bought some Leather Expectations shoes
It turns out they are construit du matériel synthétique
But they are as good as the real thing the store assures me
This is for Ireland not for money
Don’t sell out your country for profit
Columbia is not our problem you’ve lost sight of our objectives.
Drug money lubricates the wheels of this organization.
We are here to fight, not to sell drugs or teach Columbians how to make bombs.
Are you going to the police?
I still value the rights of the people.
With your skills any criminal organization in the world would hire you for your technical expertise and combat experience.
I don’t need any money. I have a purpose still and you have sold yours to the highest bidder.
Cry if you want but I’m just being a realist.
The acceptance of failure is not possible for me.
Then next time we cross paths, it may be with guns drawn.
A dance of death facilitated by bullets
Why is that woman hanging?
Because she was very bad.
But ma, what did she do?
She slept with a man before she was married and despoiled her family’s name and honor
Her brothers hung her in the interest of the family.
Why did they have to kill her?
Because things like these are done to spite one’s family
It is the greatest insult one can make
The shadows are crawling over green chairs
Dusk is descending gloomily
The children went into the house to eat
So there is nobody to watch from the porch
The vodka is empty
So there is no warmth even artificial
The rocking chair is a cage that won’t let you escape
And won’t let the light in to reach you
I got the Lord
I don’t need no stupid education
My government is divine providence
Heathen mine is the kingdom of Heaven
The mosquito is committing genocide on hemoglobin cells
I assert your prejudice against Mexicans
Lord and Bush save me, for we are all sinners
Jesus died for you and you’re not even grateful.
How did Jesus die for my sins?
You’re Jewish aren’t you. You’ll burn in hell for eternity.
At many times I ponder the revolution of the spheres. I’m afraid that more than anything I like the sound of the words, like “Emancipation Proclamation” or “aeronautical engineer.” This writing isn’t really taking off so well, dipping and singing like a bird in flight.
When the king ascends, the birds
shall growl.
Tears shall wet the final stone.
They tell me time passes.
Maybe your time; For
if I am not you, how can your time be mine?
Albert Einstein
Can you answer for the hour and the power you save it?
I order the screw that bid
you it could make beauty out of chaos
like Hitler
Swing your legs up and
Repeat after me
Climb into the lights of Hong Kong and watch the disintegration of civilization [if you could call it such a thing] I suppose it all depends on your definition. One day I swear the skyscrapers invading Jupiter’s space will finally kill the people it’s been killing all along. But we never saw it coming they scream…
AHA. You pass. Time doesn’t.
The
growling will henceforth transform into hissing of bomb shatters above the
clatters of a nearly uninhabited boulevard. It will look as though Hong Kong
has gone on a voyage through the reflection of the drowning sea. Salmon will
need to swim downstream.
Lots of water
meat
fruits and vegetables
saturated fats
genetically engineered tomatoes and potatoes
and genetically engineered marijuana crops
naturally grown (green) tobacco no additives or DDT or pesticides
And the rain thundered down from the red sky like thunderbolts of the eternal fury of Zeus, ominously announcing the coming of the healer, long-awaited and heralded by all peoples of this gray earth.
Jesus
save me from your followers