Holiday Magic

_ Do you believe?

_ I answer questions. Belief is a child's garden. One doesn't need to believe. We make it fit, man... or some such rationale. Some people like to fly kites; others wave flags. I find it more than a little embarrassing when someone starts spouting off about their beliefs. One doesn't need to believe to feel the immediacy of the sleek, cold body of a seagull coursing through a winter wind, or the strange yellow light in its eye as it turns to you. One doesn't need to believe in anything in order to appreciate our transient lives. One need not believe to do anything but believe. I answer questions.

_ Fair enough... fair enough indeed. Howsaboy?

_ Susceptible.

_ Do you have people after you?

_ I have people after me; I have people before me; I have people up the wazoo.

_ Does that bother you?

_ The wazoo? No. Once I experienced the radiant immediacy of what I can only call joy - true knowing prior to reason. Since then nothing regarding the stilted world of people much matters anymore. Refract and redact and act accordingly... Not me, chief. Besides, I'm not quite sure that during the great age of exploration anyone found the wazoo.

_ Follow the crowd. You'll find it.

_ You follow the crowd if that suits your fancy.

_ We need participate in the world.

_ What world? The world of man? Fuck the world of man. Did you hear me? Fuck the world of man. Those five syllables will set you free.

_ Of course... Why didn't I think of that?

_ The world of man... what a laugh! You know what the world of man is? It's thoughts about thoughts piling up like snow, and snow melts. It's like shit in the elephant cage at the zoo, except for the fact that elephant shit doesn't melt. It dries up and blows away. We're breathing it in now. We, except for our insistent delusion, are insubstantial. You, despite your new clothes and holiday glow, are breathing in the dust of someone's burnt corpse. We are forever insubstantial - we will be forgotten. A snowflake melting miles above the great expanse of a desert has more substance than the drivel-laden thoughts of the vulgar mind. Such thoughts own us, move us around as does someone orchestrating a group picture. Fuck the world of man!

_ Someone didn't have their kale this morning...

_ Is desire ever laid to rest amidst the exhortations of the crowd? Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick... the egg scrambler plies his trade; a fork swirling in a small metal bowl... tick, tick, tick, tick, tick... someone - the scrambler -  can't take it anymore and sobs. He is grief-stricken; all the while others await their eggs. Somewhere in a not too distant lavatory a great and majestic Cleveland steamer sails under the flag of the Smiling Whatever. Say what?!

_ What?

_ Human reproduction has been outlawed. Now we can truly care.

_ Whew...

_ I'm not so sure I care what you or anyone else thinks...What are we to do?... I'll tell you a story. I once sat on Santa's lap as a kid. I told him what I wanted. Do you know what he said to me as my aunt snapped pictures?

_ No.

_ He said, "How does it feel to want, kid?" I was a polite boy and not understanding, I said, "Excuse me?" He smiled, mugging for the camera, no doubt, and said, "Fuck you, you little turd." I wasn't sure if I, at such a tender age, was ready to incorporate that into my imagined life.

_ You thought your life was imagined?

_ I knew it was because things kept changing even when I didn't want them to and I had to continually adjust. That continual adjusting was the work of my imagination, born of previous imaginings.

_ I'm not so sure...

_ Save it for someone who farts through silk. My circumstance is the circumstance of living. One circumstance, infinite in scope, produced by imagined relations between imagined people, places and things. It need not be considered one of many for it is infinite in its scope.

_ That doesn't make sense.

_ Of course it doesn't. Any equation, any cosmology, which contains an infinite factor is, simply put, beyond our understanding. It doesn't make sense... You said it, not me. Be glad it doesn't make sense. Linguini doesn't make sense. It's like a straw hat on an Eskimo.

_ I'm not so sure...

_ Be sure. Stop with the bullshit. The alphabet in my soup is ordered differently than that floating in your bowl. The status quo is nothing you will ever see, taste, smell, touch or hear. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick... The man - the eggs are like cement - stifles a sob. No one likes to see a grown man cry. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick... Can you do that somewhere else? I - it was I scrambling the eggs - ran screaming from the kitchen, trying desperately to catch my breath. Everything was collapsing around me. Wave after wave of grief surged through my mind imagined. I shifted my attention - it of a sterling changelessness - and entered another infinite circumstance. I shrieked. Another infinite circumstance?! Such was not possible! I acted happy and everyone around me was put at ease.

_ What about your aunt?

_ My aunt inquired as to what Santa said. " Did he promise you nice toys?" I was a polite boy, not given to lying. I told her what he said; I told her he said, " Fuck you, you little turd." She never spoke to me again. She sends me five hundred dollars every December. Did you ask me if I believe?

_ Uh...

_ All anything does is change, and belief in the face of continual change is far from liberating. Belief is used as a coping mechanism, or a place saver, while one waits for a more compliant circumstance. It is then that you've successfully paved the path to delusion and gained the admiration of the people peopling your dream.

_ Well...

_ I enjoy watching things corrode; I feel at home among the corrupt for it is there that the light shines brightest. That being said, let's talk about the future.

_ Let's.

_ I sure would like to be an unclear physicist. That would be fun. I don't know anything about smashing atoms but I could learn. That would be fun.

_ Like bartending... that's fun once you learn how to mix drinks.

_ Precisely, old bean. Now how about some chai?

_ Being an unclear physicist is no different than being a bartender. This is this. This is what you do to turn this into that. This becomes that. How did it happen? The same way anything and everything else happens. Don't blink; and don't stare. I have a feeling you'll do very well as an unclear physicist.

_ Please don't look at me over the top of your glasses, at least not today... Don't you know? Today is Vitamin D Day... for you, for me, and for those with poor circulation.

_ Bring it on, girlfriend. I was going to ask if you had a good Christmas.

_ I guess you just did, saving the world a question mark. You are relentless... What am I supposed to say?

_ Yes?... Yes would be fine.

_ I don't have Christmas; and Christmas doesn't have me. I don't live a life that requires me to get 'ready'; I don't live a life that requires me to assume the insanity at large.

_ Or that... that suffices. I was commenting to my star - I have a star named after me - that there's not enough complaining in the world. Have you noticed that? People don't complain the way they used to. Whatever happened to the life that we once knew?

_ It got swallowed up. It got shat out, pissed out, puked out and re-plated as today. Even the sunshine is regurgitated; however you are not to dismay, for holiday magic is afoot.

_ How do you know?

_ How do I know?

_ How do you know?

_ My pubic hair on the right side above da runt fell out without so much as a howdy-do, or a looky here. There's your holiday magic. That's how I know.

_ Chai?

_ Considering my loss it's a wonder I don't list to the left. Yes.

                                                                ********

... Just watch. Watch while watching, watch while engaging. Just watch.

... It's all been said before, and it'll all be said again. A straight line is the first lie.

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