UNITED STATES—He counted aloud on his fingers then he said to himself: “Eight times. Eight nervous breakdowns.” Muttering he wrote: ‘Three in the last two years.’ The polished black haired, fifty five year old man seated at a cramped table proceeded to write down his next sentence in Upper Case: ‘Who the hell gets through eight nervous breakdowns and out the other side? I’m as hard as f*cking nails. A real Diamond Geezer. No one can mess with me, on either side, whichever place. I know all the connections made to get us through this.’ His next paragraph began: ‘I’m still here because I can tell this tale, I can report back, I appear to be functioning ok.’
“Opps! SORRY!” Natalie said, as she was bumped into this man sitting, by two noisy kids competing for the door to get out into the Malibu summer. She had been his beard upon a time and had not seen him for years. Deciding that today was not the day to pick up where they had last left, she was grateful that he was too engrossed in writing something down that he didn’t even look up and see that it was her. This particular Coffee Bean was her favorite, even when she went through phases of not drinking coffee she would still come here and make-believe she was somewhere else. It had been the fifth time she had gone to get her hair cut and still ‘they’ couldn’t get it right. ‘I mean its NOT rocket science, is it?’ was her bankrupted currency call these days. She could hear Benjamin say in her head: ‘Bitches got paid to cut her hair wack.’ She knew she just knew, that he was right. Why were people SO patronizing? ‘I’m not in a bloody bell jar. I see them, why don’t they see me?’ She was in the process of figuring it out. And she was too tired and broke to care much for her appearance anymore, not that that had made any difference to her life over the years. So WHAT exactly WAS the problem? What were the blocks she kept hitting over and over? ‘Fuck it, I’ll swing by the Club and pretend to be working on my computer perhaps that will cheer me up’.
Walking past the newspaper stand to her car she noticed the International headlines: ‘Shootings in Sousse, June 26th. Lone gunman opens fire on Tunisian holidaymakers; 30 Britons reported dead. Part of the 2015 Ramadan Attacks; Target: European tourists.’
And then, she laughed out loud: ‘The Queen, it was reported was ‘shocked!’ Further on she read, so were the ministers and other parliamentary leaders.
“SHOCKED”? The only thing here that’s shocking is the balls these psychos have to hide behind the word ‘shocked.’ Although, knowing of and reading about most of the British types these days it came as no surprise to Natalie that everyone would lemminize in sync with being in the condition of ‘shock’. With this spreadsheet it was obvious that…in a sweeping generalization, none of these present day Britons knew the meaning of the word ‘shock’ let alone feel it. She couldn’t help but repeat another of Benjamin’s regular phrases: ‘Crumbs, all of ‘um.’ ‘Arrogant, bigoted, bastards’ is what her brother might call them if they were on the other side to his kind. Unfortunately for Natalie, they were on the same side as her racist, homophobic, infantile bell end of a brother. WHY was she thinking of him again? Knowing that the expression on her face was changing into an unpleasant look, she joked to herself that the Look about to appear and settle in her face till the anger she felt inside subsided, could have inspired a passer by with the catchy title ‘Angry Bird.’ Another of Benjamin’s jokes remembered, softening the edges of the fathomless divide she felt most times. Her brother was a character similar to The Thief in Peter Greenaway’s: ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.’ That is, if the movie had fully explored his character below the tip. Her brother, Nathanial’s one weakness, can you believe this… is that he wants people to like him. How lost can one be in THIS world! And she laughed, relaxing her pinched and thunderous face once again.
A call came through from New York it was her art installation photography friend.
“Are you still making your jewelry pieces? I need a new Bollocks bracelet.”
‘I’ll see what I can do when I get back. I have to switch contractors. I had a run in with Felix on 47th. I flipped the Russian’s little joke. They’ve sniggeringly been calling me the ‘F*cking-C*nt lady’ so after he tried to swindle me a few 100 bucks I said, in front of all of them: ‘That’s right Felix, No one cares, you’re right about that. But you know, I’d rather be the F*cking-C*nt lady than a f*cking Cat Lady.’ They thought I didn’t know about their little secret. Priceless. Which reminds me Oulevar’s got a Saturday Night Live segment coming up in the Fall.”
“No way! What’s he doing?”
“His cat expressions. He’s perfected three they may ask for another so for his encore he’s practicing a fourth”.
After hanging out at the Club Natalie decided to go straight to this month’s Beef & Whine. The Next Loca text, fondly referred to by the regulars as ‘Next!’ came through while she was playing pool. Audrick had booked three of Mr. C Beverly Hills Hotel suites. Audrick, one of her closest friends had upped and left New York in the noughties to try his luck in LA with his infamous party Nites. These monthly throw offs were so sort after because just like his bipolar barometer, they swung like the balls of a baboon. No one could predict how each would go and as the Beef & Whine mission describes: ‘It is not the location that makes the event a success but how one feels inside.’ He really did have a knack of getting The List to check themselves and their actions. Once it was held on Romaine & Sycamore during the local soup kitchen run. This Nite saw this street suddenly light up with food trucks of every cultural and culinary delight, the homeless and despairing pariahs of society all mingling for free food and drinks with The List while DJ Dave (originally a Londoner via the L.E.S’s regular Sunday Reggae mix at Orchard Bar) played track after track of undeniably, pant creaming beats. Word. A Nite to remember, with someone giving out tees and hoodies; ‘Cash Only’ blazoned in fonts and graphix for all.
Natalie soon grew tired of the knowing glances and gossiping whispers following her through the suites, busting bubbles of prismic laughter “…Come on, how are they going to pay her off, what’s the figure on all of that?” “Look! The most famous non-famous person…” “Isn’t she now called ‘The Secret Revealed’ or the ‘Inverted Space Particle?” “A-ha ha ha HA”. Oddly enough as she approached the door past her reflection she turned into a metaphor: An 80s soap star standing in Grand Central Station in 2013 saying her thank you’s amidst a mushrooming of tittering, glittering small creatures below the gold constellations. It was her turn to laugh.
She left the party early and ran into Mother & Son LLC in the elevator. “Haven’t I seen you before? In Munich, Arthotel maybe?”
“Possibly so, we spend a lot of our time in hotels.” Mother said. “A bit of Jewish camping without the religion.” Mother said, tongue-in-cheek. Mother & Son LLC got off the floor above the party and glided soundlessly across the carpet. Natalie was fascinated. She had felt something very new and exhilarating, even the elevator doors recognized a change, a surge of fresh energy as the elevator shot her back down to the lobby.
Directly above the Beef & Whine party Mother & Son LLC were about to go to work. It was time: Mother was at the sync: She noted: 12:11am, looked away then back at the digital just as the next second turned into 12:12, looked away then back to see the clock change to 12:13, again she looked away and back as the next second blinked into 12:14. And one more time turn: 12:15am. She was totally present. It was time to begin, to set some Snap-Backs in motion. This was going to be a big one, she was about to surf the globe, literally, from the 12th floor at Mr. C Hotel on Pico. All ready. She could feel the backup from the Maharishi’s golden domes in Fairfield, Iowa breaking through the fabric with their 24/7 chanting.
The density of the world’s words thought under the heliopause needed some re-pointing in the cognitive process. A shift required subcortically: The pareidolia combined with apophenia in the process of hierophany. Creating actual physical Snap-Backs as the tension is released from an overload of negative holds. Mother Signs and surfs delicately, holding steady, with ultrasonic help from specific corners across the globe. Repeat, Repeat: ‘Einstein said best believe in a friendly universe’. Redirect from the sun’s burn. Psychic Snap-Backs.
Sometimes her husband worked through her: And it was his little joke to lift her bare feet into pumps, four, five inch, sexy pumps as he helped her Sign for the big times, clearing the garbage stinking up the present, unblocking the future flow. This time was no exception. There was a lot of clearing to be done. Surfing the globe was no easy task. At times he would knock her down to her knees to get her to check the carpet for small errors, perhaps a coin had been misdirected; Check heads over tails. Sometimes her son’s great aunt, a supreme musician from a small, and Tardis-like island helped them from the far end of the Caribbean.
Mother felt as tall as a giant when she was Signing. Bending down to pick something up below her feet was like stretching down, down, bordering the giddy. Elevating some while demoting others. During the night Mother would look over at her five yr old son proudly, as she watched him Sign, smiling when he counter-Signed. He was a natural and with some guidance he would become an exceptional asset to all the worlds.
Have you seen someone Sign? It’s scary and ultimate, precious and precise. Signing is different from the rituals of most religions in its fully activated, clear, open space and use of what’s present. The Buddhist monks say be mindful and focus on each single action, even when washing the dishes and take care of the thoughts that are passing through. Detach from the stream. Be mindful, even with the crumbs left after a meal.
There are some out there who do not require an audience participation, who do not depend on anyone else to make elemental changes. They live precariously in the Valhalla or the Niflheim of the mind.
There was 4am noises traveling down the elevators spewing out into the lobby:
“Wow! It felt like the earth was moving under my feet or was that in my head?”
“HAHA! I KNOW, I felt it too, DJ Dave rocks!”
Before Mother & Son LLC checked out like a dog marking its territory, Mother left a little piss in the bed after the clearing Snap-Back.
THAT SAME TIME: 6 hours ahead, London:
‘He counted how many times he had experienced a nervous breakdown it was eight. Enough for anyone at the age of fifty-five. He was pressurized. As hard as nails. Pressurized, a real Diamond. No one dared mess with him now, not since they knew that he had been to the other side and had come back over half a dozen times. What they really wanted now were reports. They were waiting for the reports to come in. He was an articulate and lucid survivor. He had gone through all the madness anyone could handle alone. Now way beyond and totally fearless he didn’t give a sh*t and sweated no one. So he sat to write it all down: His journey…’ Perhaps this should be the opening paragraph this visually un-distinguished man thought to himself as he sipped a tea in Starbucks.
“Opps! SORRY, I’m SO sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Merry-Jade said, as she knocked the pencil from out of his hand in the crowded half-light of Starbucks on Portobello. She was in London for a short second, in a show along with some artists who were now creating quite a noise beyond the art world. One of these was an artist who had made a name for himself painting large murals of famous paintings like Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ on the sides of bombed out buildings in war zones like Syria. ‘Opportunist Art by Azzam’ some were saying. ‘Belittling the severity and criminality of ‘war’ in this Age’. ‘How insulting to describe that as graffiti.’ The recent terrorist attack in Tunisia following close on the heels of the Mount Kinabalu story featuring those pathetic, arrogant, Euro-backpacking fools in Malaysia really had an Art world debate buzz. Add the royal sellout stamp of approval on the pawn stars used by the movers and shakers within the art world over the past 25 years on both sides of the Atlantic, laundering Money = a No SURPRISE! No contest.
Boy, this was going to be good. Merry-Jade said to her self as she entered Electric House.
“I foresee a clamoring of art schooled artists desperate to get their name out there throwing paint at every war-torn building incorporating face-painting parties for the children whose lives are shattered beyond belief, thread bare and thrown against the jagged rocks of a conflict zone.”
“And the materialistic-ly developed world is SHOCKED at the lone youth terrorist.”
“A grim baby-boom born from the ‘captivating world of Art Photography’ ready to be primped framed then delightfully juxtaposed with the Eames and the Faberge behind the sofa in a Tribeca conversion”.
“The art world has only its self to blame. Let’s welcome The Purge.’”
Merry-Jade left the Club in good spirits to make her way back to Whitechapel. She was house sitting a friend’s building on Newark St. A sound grew closer as if appearing from the future ‘Fan Me Saga Boy Fan Me’ played out from a speeding car enjoying the ride from Westbourne Grove to Notting Hill.
By Jane Gang
