Only Forward

From Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad’s Mass

Three Eared Amazon Rabbitress Seeks Miniature Kangaroo for Matrimony and Hopping Good Times
Squirrel with Pearl Earring Takes Elderly Couple on Fine Arts Sail to Monkey Island
Nebbish Tailor Learns Perils of Salacious Cutups from Bagdad Bevy of Honest Maidens
Placid Islanders Lose Innocence but Gain Fraternal Maturity in Land of Kootsie Boobie
Wan Widower Yearns Overdue Entry to Eternity where Everyone Waits

"Boyoboyo boyo! Nobbie sure was a berry busy book writer!"

"Yup, and when your Abba died, Kinko’s stock sunk 22 points."

They paused.

A sleek black convertible pulled partway up the drive distracting from their tasks. One tire dug heavy into overgrown grass and, blazing, a fender projected obliquely into the street.

Both stood staring. 

Gretchen Sarah Ider raised soft eyes to catch the wide ones of Stanislaus Anthony Imerese. Purposefully, she trotted from the open garage toward the ancient driver with Stan starting a slow ten paces behind. 

A large boney palm with ring weighted fingers beckoned her to hurry. They curled and unfurled imperiously beneath a watchband of gold glowing brighter than the gauzy morning sunlight. Its owner caught Stan gazing at blueblack numbers starkly visible beneath their arm’s hair, heavy straight and dark. A quick eyebrow arch, more amused than challenging, jerked Stan Imerese to shift quickly back and away.

“Come here so I see you better.” The dark papyrus hand cupped her chin, lifting her face for its man’s satisfaction. “Every time you grow more into your beauty. Do you know that? Do you study and learn? Does fat papa keep you busy at books? Books keep lovely girls from troubles. Do you know? He should know.”

He surveyed her calmly. An upturned palm extended a silent invitation for her to grasp it, and she cautiously complied. “He inside?” He shrugged toward the doomed house with his chin.

“He’s boxing and sorting more," she explained in sad resignation.

“Hmph. Go tellem I’m here. Right?”

Gretel loped quickly into the house.

“So you’re helping Avram? You’re his friend.” The same shrug. “Any timetable yet? He wait for market to bounce back?” The old man shook his head, pleasurably dismayed at the world's inextinguishable folly.

Another man, younger but shrunken in limp squatness, sat forward facing and impassive beside him. “Meet my son, Benny. Benny! Say hello to the friend of Avram!”

Benny turned a childish smile. His thin voiced squeaked, “Hi, pleased to meetchew. My name is Benny,” and Benny, once his greeting was requited, turned again silently forward. 

“This my son, Benny.” Now the old man's shrug was just a small shift of one shoulder. “So, Avram still think he gonna rent?” He frowned at the strangeness of the idea. “Nobody want place like this now. Is good for 1972, not now. He need look forward. Not back.”

Holding himself rigid, Avram Matteus Ider strode bravely from the empty house. In his jolliest voice he called out, “Thanks for coming over here! Was just thinking of calling!”

The old man nodded derisively. His yellowed t-shirt, a sleeveless wifebeater, cast sharp contrast with his car’s opulence but also with his obvious age. His sleepy passenger was decked just as incongruously in a faux leather jacket nearly as glossy black as the open convertible whose motor purred like a fed feline considering a playful pounce.

“Just move along. Quiet! Move! Move! Look forward. Follow commands. Help me watch out for you. Go. Go quickly! Don’t slow the lines! Be wise. Be intelligent! Move! Help me help you. Stay silent. Just go. Look forward. Move! Stay in line! Quietly!  Quickly! Look forward only. Move! Believe me! Only forward. Just go.”

From both sides, out of the night’s dark cold, came eye stabbing lights dazing enough to sharply enforce harsh shouts, guttural commands, and earnest urgings from all directions to look straight ahead and move forward. And terrified, uncramming themselves from fetid boxcars, they moved forward. Only forward.

                           Gravity. No grace.

“Avram! Avram! When you gonna finish? You can’t move this along? Again, I say let me help you. Matuski I could send with trucks. They bring to auction, bring to New England, to the goddam dump! Believe me. This so unnecessary. You should get going. Move this along. Look forward, not back! Whachu waiting for?”

“We’re almost finished. Made a lot of progress today! Stan’s a great helper here. I jest gotta sort this all out my own way.”

“Look. You think you’re so well fixed? All you need just send kid to college? You crazy? You don’t know what can happen. And Sheila. She’s gonna need pretty soon. The way she spend? Pretty soon!” The idea seemed gleefully pleasing in some wry way. And then with more mockery, “Soon you be the only man. Everything will be on your shoulders. Then what, huh? Huh?”

“Everything’s alright. I’m taking care of it. Ok?” Abe was smiling, but there was a glint of warning too.

Shaking in anger he squeezed the plastic bottle, farting semisweet chocolate syrup over mounds of dark ice-cream. Spitting in his ear now, she raged on. “Don’t hide behind that child! Don’t make like she’s frightened of just me. She’s frightened of THIS! Of us! Of you! Of my father. Our history. Everything! Not just me!”

Refusing to look at her and refusing to answer, he scooped in another scoop and shook the bottle to force forward a strong stream that soon pooled up from the bottom of the broad bowl. “You are disgusting. That’s so sick! THAT is an addiction! You’re gonna eat all that now? That’s how you deal with life’s problems? I’m waiting for you to put on your big boy pants and get all this settled. And don’t walk away again!”  

“They won’t fit over my fat pampers,” he half mumbled, half spat. Bowl bearing, he stumbled away.  And seething, she followed.

                      There beneath the blue suburban skies.

“Look. Whaddya think you get for this place? They just knock down and put up something decent. Sell for a million twenty-five, a million thirty to some damn fool. So you get 600, 680? Let me help you. I take off your hands for 750, 800. I do what I can. She gets it all anyway, you know. You know that, doncha? And Benny. I know you’ll do right for Benny. Benny? Benny! Benny! Say hi to Avram, willya, sweetheart?"

“Benny!” Abe lumbered gaily to the passenger side. “Benny! Good to see ya! Pops got you out for a nice ride? Ya need a shave, Benny. Don’t they shave ya at that place, Benny? Huh?”

“Hi Abey! They shave Benny tomorrow!” Benny playfully whisked his bristly whiskers. “When you gonna visit Benny again, Abey? Benny had fun last time!”

Once they pulled away, leaving tire tracks on the lawn, Stanley turned wide eyed to Abe. “That’s him huh?”

“That’s him. King of the Moneyjews. Wouldn’t put it past he made Roy Cohn suck him off just to givim AIDS. That’s him, alright.”

“He doesn’t get out of the car?”

“It hurts for him to walk now.”

“It hurts you to seem doesn’t it.”

“Everything hurts.”

From Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad’s Mass

Under the North Hamster Sky

Seething, I pulled up to a rural ice cream stand. There was only one other car. Old with a little rust, its bumper sticker read, "Reelect Trump"

From my car I saw them emerge from the section marked "Fried Food". The man was burly though not especially big. His white beard was tufty. He could have died it black, tied ribbons lit with fuses, and passed for Edward Thatch. His t-shirt said, "We are the 100%.
"

Giving what I thought was my best Sicilian stink eye, I glared into him as he shuffled to their car. He stared back. 
Then he smiled. He waved, almost shyly, like a child might with a hand raised barely above his belt line.

Carefully, he pulled and pushed himself into the passenger seat. His woman drove him away.



https://www.streamlygredible.com/

Credo Credulamus of unReformed DisOrthodox Chelonialism:

Turtles,
   all the way down.
Turtles
   all the way up
Turtles
   all the way in
Turtles
   all the way out


Acknowledgement: Worship: A Love Supreme

Turtles:
infinite,
ubiquitous
existing, absorbing, emitting, propagating, expanding, contracting, melding, unfolding, enfolding, suffusing, infusing, mutually trespassing, and endlessly blinking in and out 
in 8 edgeless dimensions of ceaseless creation
densely distorted by the porous selves of our four dimensional sense shells.


Resolution: Universality: A Love Supreme

Turtles:
each a multiverse insinuating into every planck of every universe
each enveloping all
each procreating ever new permutations through fission, fusion, explosion
each ever changing
an infinity of contingencies:
eight dimensional constellations of spiraling 

   Johns, Pauls, Georges, and Ringos, (first)
    Raphaels, Michelangelos, Donatellos, and Leonardos, (second)
    Bachs, Dylans, Coltranes, Mozarts, Gershwins, Joe Hills, Primas, and Irving Berlins (third)
    Michaels, Gabriels, Lucifers, Clarences, and Tiny Tims (fourth)
    Alfred E. Newmans, Karamazovs, Yossarians, Blooms, Falstaffs, and Harry Potters (fifth)
    Dantes, Homers, Joyces, Miltons, Chaplins, Shakespeares, and Bulwer-Lyttons (sixth)
    Camus, Platos, Aristotles, Nietzsches, Snoopies and Yodas (seventh)
   Johns, Pauls, Georges, and Ringos (eighth)
            Spiraling within and throughout all harmonies



Pursuance: Creation: A Love Supreme

Unexhausting in astonishment, salvation, climax, and transcendence

Unremittingly creating



Psalm: Gratitude: A Love Supreme

Sea of Holes
It's All Too Much
Nothing's Too Much: Just Outta Sight
You Know My Name

Look Up the Number
Like 'Maxwells Silver Hammer
Uncompletely 'Pataphysical
And that's not all!


O bla Di
O bla Da

UIKEYINPUTUPARROW



. . .

UIKEYINPUTDOWNARROW

Bohm Bohm Bohm Bohm Bohm boomerang Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad’s Mass

Stepping Out of Our Selves

The insights of George Lakoff may well be vitally important for taking responsible populist measures to hold the idiot elite (0.1%) accountable and, perhaps, to realize more of the possibilities of democracy.  Responsible populism is here defined as any collective movement well seeped in an appreciation of the necessity of preserving, curating, and periodically reforming fragile but essential democratic institutions.

Certain words and images may activate "moral frames", but these frames are tightly integrated with "identities" and affiliations whose primal urgencies reach so much deeper than morality, perhaps much deeper than any notion of either culture or individuality.  Some words, symbols, and incantations may simply bypass all instincts even remotely associated with what we might recognize as morality.  Potent cultural symbols trigger reactions that can emerge directly from the id, experienced viscerally and in animating fantasies that "hold" us in (or at least seductively promise) much desired enchantment states: trances that can climax in powerful releases of stress and energy.

Of course, this sounds (and is) both loopy and crazy. Hypnotic trances are founded in repetitive patterns that undermine the rational.  But as much as rationality provides humanity with tools and controls now absolutely necessary for civilized survival, rationality is clearly an adaptive overlay to more basic cognitive and limbic structures.  It should not be forgotten that democracy also is an overlay of adaptive institutions for regulating more primitive systems of command and control.

Our need for enchantment, however it may develop in the course of a lifetime, does not diminish as our childhood seems to fade. Human language may have some formative roots in song (chanter). Religion may be complex elaborations on dramatic and ecstatic dance.  All of us seek trance everywhere including in the most repetitive labor so often made more bearable by music and daydream.  We need common songs to coordinate our activities.  We need shared fantasies to harmonize our sentiments.  We need these even more when time and space may physically isolate us

In school, we learn about the early 19th century "Romantic Reaction" to the "Enlightenment Rationalism" of the late 18th century. But “rationalism" just like reactionary atavism may be nothing more than just another set of ways to reorient our focus and imagination.

The reactionary by definition is associated with older ways or at least mythologized versions of the past.  It tends to have its causes articulated by older intellects well seeped in the use and misuse of cultural symbols.  With its ties to traditional religious imagery and the resources of established power, the reactionary often has a significant advantage when it comes to manipulating seminal triggers. The prime example may still be German Nazism. The Nazis used pre Christian mythological imagery (offered to them on a platter by the likes of Wagner and the Grimms) to invoke nationalist and racist atavism. The Swastika is a symbol much more ancient and primal than any Germanic “folk” identity.  We may never escape a basic human longing for thrilling enchantment, but we can try mightily to enchant ourselves and each other in ways that transcend the gratifications of resentment, revenge, humiliation, violence, and domination.

American Movement Conservatism is relentless in invoking fantasies of freedom and individuality.  It knows just how to trigger the terror of being stripped of both and then absorbed into collectivist annihilation.  But, at the same time, it also conjures affirming sensations of belonging and unity within a folk well able to protect necessary resources from enemies and even take such resources by force if survival may seem to require this.  History easily provides many examples (convincing enough to satisfy some rational demands) that this type of mind frame is important for collective survival. But because it has been malignly possessed by irresponsible guardians of private wealth, American Conservatism is unable to appeal to urges for the types of freedom and unity that can only be sustained by vigorous institutions of democracy.

We all, at least at times, strive to experience being "free" and “self" determined.  Such "experiences" are not necessarily bad things to strive for . . . whatever they might mean.  But freedom and self-determination will always mean different things to different people because both are chimeras.  Regardless of our imaginings, we cannot survive as isolated individuals just as we could never totally lose ourselves in some collective, no matter how fearsome, or comforting, or exclusive, or enveloping it might be.

Whether or not we long for isolation or belonging, we are all vulnerable to urgent needs to "appear" to be one thing or another whether it's "strong and independent" or "loyal and compliant".    Under pressures imposed by the imagined judgments of others, we can sometimes reassure ourselves of an ability to "fake it until we make it".  We may also be constantly tortured by unnerving possibilities of being unmasked. 

But these are challenges we are probably condemned to "play" about as we navigate and develop within cultural contexts.

We can never "touch" reality (whatever it is), but we can try to create or conjure ideas and structures others will invest their attention and imaginations into in ways that bring benefits that seem shareable - and which minimize consequences that could curdle our dreams for our “selves” and our children.

Outside

I am the gray spring rain wetting black trees,
glistening dark pavement.

flattening patchy grass
putting glow in the whitened sky

dotting tall windows and mist frowning faces

I was snow and oceans.

glaciers and geysers
underground

I will be rivers fed with storm drains

earthworms, weeds, fish, and fowl.

corn, rice, cattle, and swine

vapors rising from swamps

I will be in frosty breaths on frozen mornings

the wet parts of sighs,

the drool on pillows,

the dampness in bedsheets,

the spittle in spite,

the flow of blood,

the slipperiness of tears, sniffles, kisses, and love

in comets that streak in far realms unmeasured.

Anne Again

Again,

an eyeful of face breaking 

young and fragile, toothless and wan, 

oracled to the breaths of time

as concrete breathes through gritty sand on moist mornings,

as oily pavement gasps under dull puddles

splattered by straggle steps:

blind, mute, rushed

passing flat windows that bat shadows without glint into thickened air.

The cruel cold spring cannot melt what won't 

but will be swept, 

and lashy winds dash down black streets into blank fields and walls.

We are only parts of ourselves held together by incompleteness

our parts fly inside and between us,

their own parts dwarfing all things, 

generating new dimensions that 

pull and push and twist what make us and make us and make us

as we fly apart and fall into ourselves.

Again.

The People Thang

Back to Democracy: A Bloody Slide Show

Thrash: So this bitch tells me if you’re so smart why ain’t ya rich?

Warlord: No way.  That's check, by the way.

Thrash: Oh yeah.  So I looks at her and says if you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart.

Warlord: Forked that interview.  Checkmate, bro.

Thrash: Word.  AW MAN! Should have stood my ass up and walked out right then . . .  

Warlord: Don’t look, but here come Sox and he got Fatback and Fair in tow.

Thrash: Those two again?  

Warlord: I gotta talk with Sox.

Thrash: Wait in line bro.  I got unfinished business with that cat.  Yo Sox!  Yo Sox!

Sox:  Thrash, my friend.

Thrash: Yo. Hey, my main man!  Hey "Little Dudes Two" too.

Fatback and Fairy nod amiably, but warily.  They smile at Warlord.

Thrash:  Yo Sox.  Why ain’t you down with the people man?  The people gotta rule.

Fatback grimaces and rolls an eye at Warlord.

Sox: The people?  People like you?

Thrash: Yo, I’m a people. Warlord’s a people.  The little dudettes is people. We’s all people.  Even Warlord’s old fella who made his pile selling jellcaps to them Zulus off 125th St.  He's people. We’re all people, man.

Sox: And all people can rule themselves?

Thrash: Who else gonna rule them gramps?  You?  Fatback?  The rap king of his choosing?

Sox: Boy, ifs all peoples can rule their own selves than why don’t they?  Why don’t you?

Thrash: Ain’t nobody but me rules me. But don’t pretend you don’t know the problem, man.  The Man is the problem, man.

Sox: The Man?  Uh huh.  Here we go now.  Just who, by the freaking way, is this "the Man"?

Thrash:  You know what I mean.  He be evicting whole buildings to build a parking garage.  He be closing factories when people already don’t have jobs.  He be shooting us down in the streets.  Leaving us to bleed out on the pavement like he wouldn’t do a dog.  He give us Bantu schooling too, yo.

Sox: And what grade did you finally manage to finish?

Thrash: Yo Gramps.  I dropped out as soon as I knew how, and that was the only thing to do.  I wasn’t learning nuthin’ there.  I’m an autodidact now.  And I’m a teacher too.  Ain’t I, Warlord?

Sox: You an auto sumthin’, alright.  You think anyone can quit school and keep reading and learning like you do?  (Sox puts air quotes around “learning”.)

Thrash: Maybe not man, but I ain’t the only one. But we’s all gots our strengths and weaknesses.

Sox: Sure enough, but can peoples rule themselves without learning?

Thrash:  Well, I grant you some peoples gonna do more learning than others gonna do.

Sox: Did you answer my question though?

Thrash: What is your question, old man? There’s ruling oneself and then there’s democracy where we rule each other.

Sox: Breakin’ it down, now.  That’s good.  That’s good.  . . . Ok.  Ruling oneself?  Can everyone rule his or her own self?

Thrash: Sure.  Why not?  We makes our choices and takes the consequences.

Sox: And are all people equally qualified to understand their choices and the consequences of those choices?  Do all people even know what all their choices are?

Thrash:  Yeah.  I got you.  I feel you, Daddy.  Everbody needs some guidance now and then.  That goes without saying.

Sox: And all people need the same amount of guidance?  Some don’t need more and some don’t need less.  And who’s qualified to be a guide?

Thrash: Well you know that all depends.  If I wanna know how to fix a bicycle, I ain’t gonna ax you.  But I know where to find you if I wanna learn some highfalutin BS Mr. Interlocutor jujitsu.

Sox:  So you’re saying that it all evens out.  Everbody gives and receives the same amount of guidance in their personal lifes?

Thrash:  Yeah, I’ll stick with that.  It all evens out over time.  Sure. You just gots to look at the la-onnng run, grampoops.  The long run, yeah.

Sox: Is you including or excluding simpletons, the heartbrokens, small children, dreamers, old age dementeds, juicers, crackheads, regular crazies, and the criminally insane?

Thrash: Well, little kids gonna grow, and the old seniles had their day.  You know that.  But I’ll grant you some people ain’t so right in the head.  Some people born less damaged.  Some people more.  Some people get damaged or damage themselves.  But most of that’s not even damage, that's just normal variation man.  Sometimes the extreme is where you gotta be. If all crazies didn't have something to say once in a while, nobody'd be listening to you!  That's for sure!  But mostly the lunatics stay on the fringes and don't even know about each other and wouldn’t have nothing to do wit each other if they did.

Sox: Ok. Ok.  Ok. Fair enough.  But is you saying that everyone else who's not off the hook is the same in their mental capacity to take care of themselves?

Thrash:  They’s differences.  They’s differences.  I said that, ole Man. But in some ways that don’t matter.  And in some ways it’s a plus even.  We all learn from each other, bro.  Even mental defectives.  Like I said, even they got something to offer if we only know how to look.

Sox: Admirable.  Admirable.  Like “The Fool on the Hill.”

Thrash: That’s right.  That’s right.  “He know’s they’re the fool.”

Fatback and Fairy sing:  “And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.”

Warlord chimes in: “Well on the way, head in a cloud. The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud.”

Sox:  Ok.  What about democracy now?

Thrash:  Well it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?  Everybody does their part.  And no one gets too big in the head.

Sox:  You finally starting to interest me, boy.  Now how do you suppose we prevent anyone from getting too big in the head?

Thrash:  By paying attention man.  If someone doing wrong and talking shit, we shout em down or turn away.  And if someone doing right and making sense and maybe even seeing a little farther down the road than the rest of us - we still got to pay attention, ask questions, criticize, keep him on his toes and we keep on our toes.  Cause he may be a genius or he may be crazy, he may be good or he may be evil, or it might just depend on the day, the dice, or the weather.

Fatback:  Sox, I like that.  I like that a lot. I’m gonna start a 'Cademy someday and teach people how to do like what he’s saying.

Fairy:  I’ll be your first pupil, man. That’s for me.  But after a while, I’ll found my own 'Cademy.

Fatback: Oh no you won’t, fool.  You can’t call it a 'Cademy.  That’s mine.  You gots to call yours something else, man.  It’s only fair.

Fairy: I’ll think on that, bro.  It’s all about keeping track of what’s being done and what’s being said.  If there’s a lie or lies, peoples gotta know how to see em.  You can’t call out lies, if you can’t see em.

(With wide big grins Fatback and Fairy high five and fist bump.)

Sox:  Well my, my, my.  My son, you're getting universal endorsement and acclaim.  You should be getting worried about now.  So, for a democracy, that's all you need?  Vigilance?

Fatback: And the education and training to be able to know what to pay attention to.

Fairy: And the practice and guidance to be able ask questions and make points effectively.

Fatback:  And patience and courage when lots of people are sucked in by bad, every day a bad hair day, bad dudes.

Thrash: Well, if only we had that.  If we had that, that might be all we needed.   I mean everything else might just flow from that.  I mean if we had that or most of that, we could probably build anything else we need. Everything else!  So the question you should ax now is, why don't we have that.  Why are we so far away, man?

Sox:  That there is a very good question.  So, why are we so far away?

Thrash:  That's the Man, man.  He just want people to be smart enough to follow orders and mind the machines.  He don't want nobody knowing how to think and asking questions.  He don't want questions about why he makes 1000 times more than somebody humping his butt when he don't work at all - or if he do, he sure don't work 1000 time harder.  Not even 10 times harder maybe.  No, he just want them to be able to read the instruction manual and to believe your Big Lies.

Sox:  My Big Lies?

Thrash:  Oh yeah!  Don't be saying that you don't be preaching that everyone should know his place and love where they're at.  And don't you two be nodding your heads, or I'll be raising a knot on the both of them.  Cause that's what you'd deserve and justice is everyone getting what they damn deserve.

Sox: Do I say that we have justice here and now?

Thrash:  No, I know what you say.  I know what you say.  You say justice and perfection is just somewhere outta reach in some upsidedown fifth dimension green pastures of perfection somewhere else anywhere but here.

Sox: Do I say we shouldn't be working towards justice even if it's always a guiding mirage?

Thrash: Who knows what you say?   Have you ever noticed most people can’t make heads or tails of you?  Some people say you got wisdom.  Other people think they know better.  I heard what your old lady told ya the other day.

Sox:  Zan got a lot of opinions and she ain’t shy about saying ‘em.

Thrash: She tear you a new one every other day!

Sox: Well I like to think I deserve her.  At least I try to.

Thrash: So we back to justice now?

Sox: Well, I think we should be talking how the guiding myths of a people should guide them toward justice.

Fatback and Fairy: No justice, no peace.  No justice, no peace!

Sox:  How does a people get closer to peace and justice?   Can they do it by following leaders?

Thrash: That’s a part of it.

Sox: But it’s not enough, is it?

Thrash: Like I say, it’s gotta come from the people themselves.

Fairy (quoting):  “If I could lead you to the promise land, I wouldn’t do it.  Cuz someone else could come, turn you around and lead you right back out again.”

Fatback:  The thing is: the right kind of myth is a guidance that stays inside people, guides them, and helps them guide each other.

Thrash:  But, the Man!  The Man gets ahold of the myths and twists them so they lift him high and push everybody else down.

Warlord: Yes.  If he can, he will.  A scorpion is a scorpion.  A frog is a frog.  A lamb is a lamb, and a lion is a lion.

Fairy: But if he can’t, he won’t.

Thrash:  What gonna stop him?

Fairy:  The people paying attention.  

Warlord: There really ain’t no one “the Man”.  Big shots don’t like other big shots getting too big headed or playing them.

Fatback: The Big Myth can help stop him.  It might help him stop himself.  It might help the people stop him.

Thrash:  Ain’t no myth that The Man hasn’t hijacked - if he didn’t make it up himself in the first place.

Sox: Do think some evil tyrant or wannabe can make a myth that’s gonna live and grow inside people?

Thrash: They can make people feel scared, or small, or weak, or shameful, or alone.  That’s some mighty mojo.

Sox: Well do you think that if people are bound to cherish that kind of myth with no escape, that they are fit to rule themselves?

Thrash:  Well, they do.  A lot of them do.

Sox: So won’t those people then be ruled by others?

Thrash: Well, yeah.  But only for a time.  I mean that won’t last.

Sox:  It won’t last?  It seems to last.  Why won’t it last?

Thrash:  Because it’ll explode.  Or the air will just leak out over time.  Or people will just shrivel up and die.  But they won’t. They won’t.  They want to live.  They want to be good.  They want to be free.  They want to be good and good to each other.

Sox: Do they?

Thrash: Well.  Little children.  Look at them.

Sox: They don’t kick and hit and bite each other?  Take each others’ toys and lollipops?

Thrash:  They gots to be guided.

Sox: What if those thats guides them believe they are alone, and weak, and shameful, and must be led by the better and the best?

Thrash: Nobody’s gonna teach that to their own sons and daughters!

Sox: No one?

Thrash:  But that’s why we gotta smash down the myths.  It’s only myths make people believe crap like that so they teach it to their kids.  

Sox: But you already said that without myths people gotta rely on leaders and teachers.

Thrash: Did I say that?  

Fatback: I think you agreed that people need myths to help them guide themselves from inside.

Thrash:  But the myths get twisted and hijacked by the Man.

Warlord: Or by the people themselves.

Fatback: What is there in this world that can’t be twisted or perverted?

Sox: Who do you really think makes these myths?

Thrash: Well teachers and leaders play a big part.

Sox: And who plays the other part?

Thrash: Ok.  It has to be the people themselves.

Sox: And who perverts these myths more? The leaders or the people?

Thrash: Yeah they both do.

Fatback: So you just said that leaders and teachers together make myths - and together, in their own way, they fuck ‘em up.

Thrash: Yeah.  I said that.  I’ll say that.

Sox: Do you wanna give up on this “people rule” jag now?

Thrash: No Sox.  I can’t do that.

Sox:  How can you not give up?

Thrash: We can build better and better myths over time.

Fatback: And teach other to think, and share ideas, and ask questions

Fairy: And to watch over each other and to know lies when you see ‘um

Warlord: Even you telling them to yourself, man.

Sox: Can a people do that, Thrash?

Thrash:  Not today.  

Sox: Tomorrow?

Thrash: Maybe tomorrow.

Sox: Maybe tomorrow?

Thrash: Tomorrow isn’t just a day.  It might take many tomorrows.

Sox: And will you live through enough tomorrows to see the day?

Thrash:  I don’t have to.  I just gotta do the best I can to get us all closer.

Sox:  But isn’t that your myth?

Thrash: It may be a myth, but I don’t have to believe it.

Sox: You don’t?

Thrash: No, I just gotta do the best I can.

Sox: Even though you don’t believe?

Thrash: I got no other choice.  We got no other choice.  All the other choices are worst.

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