*
The red light district, it was set up as a hallucination -- a visual puzzle designed to keep people from thinking sustained thoughts such as this one -- or thoughts any longer than this one -- thoughts that might burst like a lion through the hoop of sorrow into another world -- but the marketers had decided and recommended.... oh they had done their work.... and so the colors flashed just barely off the beat -- so that whenever a bit of human mentation threatened to sprout, the flashing lights would burst into your visual field and kill it. As a movie this red district would have had no tracking shots a la Max Ophuls, only a series of disoriented quick cuts, frenetic like the kind of television show whose whole purpose is to make sure the viewer doesn't click the remote or remember anything at all including what was just said, no, already forgotten. The whole thing was exciting, but nothing that could be followed and cut loose. You were meant to live short term, just sensing everything... or everything but the One you could not sense in this immediate way. So vice was a powerful tool for keeping God out of the picture. And the quick cuts were meant to cut God like flesh.
The tourists gaped at the billboards with their subliminal changes. Slippage, despair. Hey, everywhere, utterly nude hostesses advertising car batteries, life insurance and the coldest wettest beer. The weirdness wasn't just the images of these hostesses but the way people, that is, mostly men would now take them for granted, forcing them to be outrageous to be noticed at all.... for all this slavelike labor of being sexy. So was there a sadness, a reflective sorrow behind the fake allure? Oh it seemed so. But all they were there to do was sell things.
The convict, the Christian, the ridiculous knight tied his imaginary horse in the bower next to a giant performance space -- or was it a casino? or was it a bar? or just a warehouse? -- which was the place where Don now lived, prodigal son of a Father that our air's perfumed insecticides -- country fresh incense of forbidden love -- tried to whoosh away with its spray. I think I said that already, did I? but the sensory overload in this neighborhood has emptied my head! Did I already say this too? Because you couldn't think a straight thought in this place, the atmosphere was too heavy and twisted and off. And yet God was said to be here, even here, lowering hooks to catch the humans and save them. The hooks would have to be extreme, to be sure.
*
The bouncers Sans Foy and Sans Loy, 2 huge ugly brothers, blocked the door with their elbows. Behind them giant posters of Duessa holding up a Coke. She would be performing tonight.
What kind of luck you got today? Sans Foy asked Sans Loy. Then Sans Loy said to Sans Foy, I got the best of luck today, brother, and pulled a rabbit's foot out of his pocket. The foot was still bleeding and still twitching, very fresh. God help me, tell me that the blood is not real. Would this be part of the allegory? Because they say that writers use allegory for 2 different reasons: 1) to express things that can't be stated in any less mysterious way; and 2) to mask the direct expression of all of the things in the world too horrible to be said directly. In other words, to say what must be said but is too horrible to say.
Because sometimes it is a sin to hide the truth and equally a sin to tell the truth. And that's when you have to ask for help from the bag of magical evasions.
The brute Sans Loy put the rabbit's foot back into his pocket while the foot continued to try to run away. There was a rabbit's scream but it was imaginary, it hadn't happened. This is a personal gift from Duessa, he said.
And the 2 of them refused to let anyone in and they beat the people who tried. Their uncle Sans Joy was a miasma in the back alley that was trying to swallow up stray pedestrians and cars.
*
So staring at the 2 bouncers, you felt nausea flood your heart and overcome it, a familiar sensation alas. Your head still worked but somehow it didn't care to. It was pulling in its horns. In this neighborhood people laughed a lot and were very afraid. But the ridiculous knight was maybe too dense to catch the ordinary signals. He walked up to them and committed one of the sins he was known for: he lost his temper big time. First breaking the nose of the closest one, he leaned to the side and disabled the kneecap of the other. So immersed in violence he became violent. Crying, get away from me you goons, he pushed his way into the warehouse, stood open mouthed at the the tapestries of blood that hung like brochures until their slaughterhouse smell overcame him and he began to totter. And someone knocked him out from behind, felling him like the flat of a sword.
*
He collapsed through hallucinations and a vision of Don lying buckled to the wall, connected to an electric prod. Did you come to rescue me? Don asked. But Dave wasn't listening. He lay like one dead.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment