Here we go again.
***
You find yourself at John Jay College on a Saturday. You’re in a classroom filled with elderly white men, a few women, and some young, black teenagers. A man with the build of a retired linebacker gone soft plays three audio-tapes in succession. One is a speech by John F. Kennedy. The next is a speech by Martin Luther King, both about the vital and desperate struggle for freedom. The third speech is from a different kind of man. No JFK and no MLK, he. His voice says it is willing to give his life for the struggle, but what his struggle is is not what he might want you to believe.
We’ll call this third man Leon Lathule and perhaps he is a shadow.
The soft linebacker, with grave seriousness and a dramatic fat man’s sigh, pushes up his glasses and turns off the last tape. In about five minutes, after the lyric sheet has been distributed, he will be leading everyone in singing a German-derived piece of classical music.
***
She’s talking to the man on the phone, the one who put out the full-page ad in the Village Voice and the New York Press about two months after the felling of the towers. The full-page ads are for a video the man has produced which he believes to be vitally important for the people living through the national trauma-trance they’ve recently entered. He’s even offering copies to members of the NYPD and NYFD free of charge.
It’s questionable how intent and means converge here, of what consists their essential nature. Does he really aim to wake people up? Is he really awake himself? Or is he just a man residing under a different trance and aiming to direct others under its roof?
She wants to believe that she’s ordering a video from a place of detachment. Or from some place of ironic superiority. Deeper, she wants to believe it’s to find out what’s really going on. Maybe it’s just to scare herself. She really doesn’t know, at all. At all.
The man on the other end of the line may be a shadow.
***
He’s a college kid carrying a crucifix through town. Maybe you’re wondering why. Maybe he’s wondering what you’ll think. Perhaps he’s found college to be just another artificial environment, like all the schools before, like all the other towns where he’s lived and the cities where he’ll live in the future, places where he’ll walk just up to the edge of the island, here then here, then there, only to find the fence before the waters.
He’s a college kid carrying a crucifix. No Christian, he. Hasn’t been one for awhile. Not quite an atheist, either, though he can play the part when it suits him. He’s carrying a crucifix through town and maybe you’re wondering why. Perhaps, he’s waiting for someone or something else to tell him why he’s doing it. Maybe he’ll get his answer when the smiling man in the pick-up truck stops to ask him. Or maybe when the police pull up to ask him. Or maybe when he gets back to campus to find out what’s happened since he left that morning…
***
I’m in my room about four a.m. and I’ve been sleeping. Now? Not so much, not exactly. Something has crept up and laid down beside me, I can feel it. It’s touching me and the fear is automatic–that lizard brain fear of the unknown. And here I am saying the Our Father because it’s seemed to work before.
***
At least he doesn’t find himself floating without control, counter-clockwise, above his bed and above his body, right after the pressure, the pain, the electric crackle in his head and the loud pop like the largest of fuses being tripped.
At least he’s not waking up to see the man in the white sheet staring down at him as he lays in bed, his fear mixing with anger as he yells at the spectral Klansman to get the fuck out of here, get out.
***
There’s a dog emerging from the woods, his face mannish. It flows like an ocean wave, not quite solid. The dog walks straight out of the woods and up to the back door. And the dog speaks in Portugese, now in Spanish, as a knowing mother lets it into the kitchen. They haven’t seen this dog for a long time, see. And the mother’s child–well, he crouches down as the dog nuzzles his ear and begins to whisper.
The boy wakes up with pupils dilated, and they stay that way for the rest of the day.
***
We’re in a small, cramped room with twenty other people at some New Age center that rents out to a variety of groups: aromatherapists, hypnotists, religious groups. We’re checking out some emissary of a turbaned Indian guru, now dead physically, but only morally at that time. We watch as, five minutes into the presentation of this guru’s spiritual path, an irritable woman instigates a fight with a non-plussed lady with a handbag over seating. The irritable one leaves in a huff as the presenter pleads for us to all be light and peace and love.
***
We’re in an apartment while a good-hearted woman with curious metaphysics talks about how George Bush, Sr. was “definitely aligned” with the forces of darkness, but that W. is “trying to be a good man”, groping towards light. It’s easy to want to believe this. It’s only November 2001, after all. Even Leon Lathule’s people seem to spin this same line, at least for a while.
But they don’t know the dreams we’ve had.
She used to be a lawyer, this woman. Now she is a New Age mystic, affiliated with some Mystery School in the mountains. A Mystery School with a website. Years later, we do a web search on her and find out that she now claims to be in telepathic contact with Satya Sai Baba, the Indian guru who conjures watches and miraculous ash, and whose brand of incense burns in many a stoner’s apartment.
Satya Sai Baba may not be the Sai Baba, is he? He may be a shadow.
***
You don’t even know what or why. You’re barefoot and walking from Astoria, over the bridge, into Manhattan, down to the Financial District, across the bridge and into Brooklyn. You’re dropping tiny skulls at intersections from a chinese necklace a friend gave you that he found in some store tucked away on some shitty block, easy to miss.
You’re seeing plenty of spray-painted skulls on the sidewalk as you go. Maybe it’s the frequency to which you are entrained. Maybe your actions are your answers, but you don’t quite comprehend it.
What we see, is it just so much shadow? What about those things that we do?
He doesn’t know. She doesn’t either. Hell if I do.
You don’t even know what or why.
***
And here we go again.
Huh?
I’ll stick my neck out here and risk appearing a dolt, but where is it we are going again? Obviously I missed the first pass through it.
Is there a previous post I missed that will clarify this for me?
Feeling thick and befuddled,
HCE
I’ve put some breaks in there that’ll maybe make the different segments easier to follow, but it’s intentionally cryptic. Where there’s a reference to an essay that’s already been written here, I’ve linked to it. Where I’m referencing some certain obscure-ish figure who people aren’t necessarily going to be familiar with, I’ve put in a link there, too. (With one exception, where instead I’ve renamed that person.)
Mostly, this piece refers to personal experiences and/or areas of speculation that I will be writing about in due time with considerably more detail and much less mystery.
You can consider it a warm-up, a teaser. Or, perhaps a work of literary fact-shun.
Out of curiosity, what other impressions (aside from the befuddlement), associations and reactions did you get from this one?
“Dear me. Look what has happened to our poor cousin Neddy.”
“He’s fallen into the water again!”
I’ve been out of touch and out of pocket, a week since i’ve had a chance to check on things here…
As I recall it, my only other impression was that you were making an effort to talk about matters that were best approached only obliquely. The outlines of the drawing only.
Gave me the feeling that all the pieces of this post pointed to the same thing somehow.
HCE
[...] presidential advisors, the movers and shakers of Washington. But being a spook, a shadow has its perks, too, I [...]