From: The land of the walking dead

Zombies from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The greatest movie ever made…in my humble opinion. Notice how each Zombie moves in tandem. Metamorphized into undead deadness. Each sharing a singular goal. Craving a love only acts of cannibalism will satisfy.

A young Zombie, from the same film, eating her Dad.

Well…there’s just no escaping the human need to express familial affection. We all live to consume and be consumed by others until…there’s just one of us left.

The winner, I suppose, eats itself.

The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy. Some snakes, such as rat snakes, have been known to consume themselves.^[5] Wikipedia

Makes sense.

Empathy and sharing…the desire to create world peace…the need to offer a safety net to those indigent souls left out in the cold…in short, to all you leftist Utopian Jesus-loving commie suck-ass liberal dipshits that believe in the perfectibility of human nature…I would say, you probably occupy a dream world.

The Fundamental Realities

The ship is sinking. The water is icy cold. Lifeboats are in short supply. The rich own the lifeboats. They were good to you when times were good. Now that the situation has become dire, well, I’m afraid your inalienable rights are disputable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration Of Independence.

Self-evident?

Fergetabout it….

I got a little knocked off my game yesterday

It happened while composing my last Blog post, entitled RUBBER TRAMP. Writing the piece, I stumbled onto this little jewel of a website called Our Vie Adventures. Check out the link. It’s all about a young couple (to me they’re young) who live in a Toyota Odyssey Motorhome and travel the United States visiting all the National Parks. They encapsulate all the vibrancy of youth. That’s to say, they’re young, beautiful, in love, full of hope and promise, and determined to build a wonderful world, a utopia, based on Liberal Values. Maybe a bit of Bernie Sanders Socialism tossed in for spice. Plus a need to combat global warming and protect endangered species. They could be Flakes. But these two are smart and resourceful. They acquire sponsors for their trip. They organize through social media and a like-minded pack of friends and relations. They have positive energy! While traveling, The beautiful lady gives birth to a beautiful baby. (They’ve since added a second baby!) And they are HAPPY. They exude Health and well-being.

Even their cat is happy.

Reading Our Vie blog posts left me thinking maybe there’s hope for Humanity. Which knocked me off my game. That is to say, the site left me confused.

I mean, I know what I know: life sucks and then you die.

Wishing for a thing does not make it real. WISHING is a Hypothetical imperative.

REALITY is the categorical imperative.

I spent yesterday afternoon in a kind of a slump. Believing I’ve been wasting my time and energy on my NEGATIVITY and GLOOM. Even ashamed of myself for being a sour old rat’s ass while these beautiful young people are working for a better world. Fuck’n A Hell. I oughta be ashamed of myself.

Until finally THE REAL DEAL dawned on me.

The reality of the situation. It came upon me suddenly, in the dark, coming awake in my sordid Mini-van, around 12 a.m., parked on Nevada Street, my backup stealth spot, not so good as The Marina Parking lot cuz of the traffic, but doable. It dawned on me, all the love and truth and beauty of this van life’n couple, this perfect couple, is based on sound principals of Biological Science.

When you’re young you think different.

It’s Darwinian. Hope and Idealism, Truth and Beauty, are necessary for people of child bearing age. I never thought this way when I was a kid. But most normal people do. You’re bringing kids into the world you need to think well of the world. A kind of self-imposed utopian delusion clouds your thinking. But not self-imposed. Imposed by a higher power. A force. The same force that dooms us in the end.

Sneaky bastard, this Force.

Hope is just an illusion after all.

Wow….I’m so glad I thought this thru.

I feel a whole hell of a lot better…

The Dead Letter Office

I’m sitting at the office. Staring across the room at the immobile dude. He aint moving. He may be asleep, which is against the rules. Nobody’s bugging him today.

I’m sharing a table with my pal Dirk. Dirk runs the Cruising Club, a floating barge where Lawyers come to drink, dance and pretend they are nautical. Dirk is extremely nautical. He built his 40 foot trimaran from scratch.. Owned it since he was 19. (that’s more than fifty years!) Sailed it to Mexico and back three times and is currently replacing the engine. Dirk handles problems at the Cruising Club. The former Commodore of the club made Dirk port captain, meaning he handles the tricky stuff, like docking boats in bad wind and helping drunken members back onto their boats from the bar. Lucky for Dirk, the Cruising Club has almost zero actual boaters.

the Cruising Club where drinks are never on the house…

Dirk lives free on his boat at the Cruising Club. I envy and admire his position there. A free liveaboard moorage with a shower room and occasional dinners and drinks at the bar not to mention the companionship of quite attractive middle aged women and even more attractive older women who are for all intents and purposes wildly hungry for male companionship is sort of like being in the cat bird seat. But today we are not discussing his good fortune. Today I’m talking about the immobile dude. I don’t know why. Maybe because today for some reason he reminds me of somebody.

“Bartleby the Scrivener.” I say.

“Who’s that”

“It’s a short story by Herman Melville. Full title is “Bartleby the Scrivener: a story of wall street.” I read it in college.”

“I started Moby Dick. Couldn’t get through it.”

“Same here. Nobody gets through Moby Dick. Even the cliff notes are tough to get through. I got through em for the final. Maybe I got a C on that one.”

Dirk reads books. He got through all 20 volumes of the Patrick O’Brian  Aubrey–Maturin series. I’ve read a lot more books than Dirk has, because that’s what I do, but I’ve never gotten through an entire series.

“Bartleby aint about the sea. It’s about this dude who works in a law office, copying documents. The character in the story, Bartleby, reminds me of that dude over there. See him.”

“The guy just sits?”

“Yeah…that’s the one.”

“I see him in here all the time. He don’t do nothing. Just sits.”

“That’s why I call him the immobile dude. Comes in here, orders coffee, sits in a chair and stares at…nothing.”

“Take away the phones, that’s what everybody else is doing.”

“I used to think he was a mental case. Now I don’t know.”

“So why’s he remind you of this other guy?”

“Bartleby…I reread the story last night. Sitting in my mini-van, griming out, somehow I clicked on Bartleby. Means more to me now than it did when I first read it. I was a kid when I first read it. Didn’t get it. Bartleby is a guy that for some reason or other decides he don’t wanna work in this law office no more. The Narrator of the story, an Attorney, asks him to proofread a copy and Bartleby responds by saying “I would prefer not to.” Just up and says it. Until then he was the hardest worker in the office. Attorney is so shocked he don’t know what to do. So for the time being he does nothing. From that point forward everything goes south. Bartleby keeps working at the office but he increasingly announces that he prefers not to do certain tasks. This unnerves the Lawyer. But he doesn’t fire him. He can’t. For some reason he’s unable to do what any normal employer in his position would do–fire Bartleby. Time passes. One day Bartleby announces he would prefer not to do any work at all. He’s not quitting, he’s just not working. He continues to hang at the office. Turns out he’s sleeping at the office, living on corn nuts or some shit, I forget, some kind of nut. Finally the Attorney fires him. Not because he wants to, because other Lawyers are talking about him behind his back. His reputation is on the line. But even after the Lawyer fires Bartleby, it doesn’t end. Bartleby refuses to leave the premises. So the Lawyer moves! But that doesn’t work, either. The new tenants have Bartleby arrested for vagrancy. The Lawyer visits him at the jail and arranges for a Grub Man to bring him food.”

“They still do that in Mexican Jails.”

“The Attorney pays the Grub Man to bring him real food, not the nuts he’s been living on. But Bartleby would prefer not to eat real food. He would prefer to be left alone in the prison yard. When the Lawyer approaches Bartleby to urge him to eat, he finds him dead. Bartleby starved himself to death.”

“Your Immobile dude doesn’t look like he misses any meals.”

“I don’t know if the story is even about Bartleby so much as it’s about The Lawyer and his reaction to Bartleby. The Lawyer…you couldn’t just call him a push-over. The last part of the story, the Lawyer learns of a rumor that prior to coming to work at his firm, Bartleby worked at the New York Dead Letter Office. He dealt with lost souls. The Lawyer utters the last line of the story, ‘Ah, Bartleby!…Ah, Humanity!’ “

Dirk nods. “I read where they get 90 million dead letters a year.”

“That’s a lot of dead souls.”

“No shit.”

“I kind of get Bartleby now. It’s about the walking dead. Bartleby knows he’s doomed. There’s a lot of Bartleby’s walking around. They’ve given up. The Lawyer in the story is not doomed, not in the same way as Bartleby. But he understands. That’s what sets him apart from the others. That’s why he puts up with Bartleby. Tries to help him. He knows its a lost cause but he needs to at least try.'”

Dirk stares past me at the immutable dude. “Does this mean you’ll be helping him?”

“Hell no.”

“No?”

“I would prefer not to.”

Herman Melville, a washed-up writer before he turned 50. Spent the final twenty years of his life working as a New York Customs Inspector. The work involved tedious labors not unlike a Postal Worker. Melville was unable to do any serious writing during that time. He resigned his position. Spent the last weeks of his life writing Billy Budd. Left unfinished at Melville’s death, the novella was finally published in 1924 to universal acclaim.

How many walking dead are there?

All of us. None of us will outlive life. Even the exalted figure of Donald Trump will sooner or later cease to be living among us. A thousand years, or two thousand or ten thousand years from now, he’ll be like Ozymandias.

The sooner the better?

I didn’t say it. Saying shit like the above these days can land you in trouble. I got no guts these days. No spine, either. I never did. These are times that try men’s souls, a man with more guts and spine than me once said. Am I one of the walking dead. Oh, yeah. I’m one of you. I’m on my way out. But not for a long time if I can help it.

Yesterday I visited my storage facility. Looks like this.

Pretty grim. Reminds me of a prison.

Inside, equally grim. long hallways leading nowhere.

Lined with cubicles….spaces reserved for the walking dead.

Here’s mine:

#321. That’s my number. I only remember it because it’s printed on a business card one of the walking dead gave me at the office. I used to try and stack my shit neatly inside my space. Now I just toss it in there like it’s fresh shit. I like Rubbish. I like my old cloths and tools and cords and aged micro-wave and many other things that often get tossed away.

What’s nice is the Hight of these spaces. You can cram a lot of shit on top of more shit until…..you’ve got yourself a wall of shit.

Pretty tall, eh? If you notice the plumbing pipe at the ceiling (and you happen to be Gloomy, like me) you’re probably thinking what I’m thinking. A perfect post to sling a noose. sling one of my long cords over that pipe and presto. That would be a kick, would it? Hang yourself in your own storage space. Serves those bastards right, what they charge us.

Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking Gloomy’s gone over the edge. He’s no longer a member of the walking dead. He’s slipped into the “Doomed” category. He’s gonna end up like Bartleby, dead by his own hand. Or like the immobile dude, regressed to a vegetable, living in that fetid van of his. NOT TO WORRY! I’m not one of those. Not yet anyway.

But just cuz I’m still with the walking dead don’t mean I can’t sympathize with the Doomed. I’m like Bartleby’s Boss. The Attorney. I feel bad for these people. I’ve know quite a few of them in my day. Quite a few. They’re the special people. Not crazy. No, no, no. Not crazy at all. Just Doomed. They feel all the unjust shit…all the way to the bone.

And some of them have the talent to play it back.