THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 2, "MAD DOG in a SILVER FOG" :: CHAPTER 2, EPISODE 3

 

THE INITIALS!

  

Brendan twists now, slowly, in summer's starry noose... turkey sandwiches, foodstamps, war is not healthy stickers slapped on police cars, angry politicians on televisions: "LSD has to be controlled because it is colorless and what... oh, yes, tasteless!" Naked shoeshines and Hobbits, levitating the Pentateuch!... spare change, initials... FBI, SDS, LDS, NFL-CIA... Sunday gusts on downstairs Chinese windchimes casting haunted shadows on the circus wall of dirty politics and bankrupt gurus; wonder and belief flaking off grimy databases. "Heaven and earth have no connection with man," observed Wang Ah-shih, in the eleventh century, "eclipses and earthquakes have their natural law, and should not be feared..."

I have a biannual duty to perform at the behest of Barry Freiberg... support our old hostages, tie yellowed ribbons round cold idiots in their clean jails. Prison is upstate, a fork away from Dog School through snow, a postcard paradise with barbed wire. Some of the trustees make toys... smoke curling from chimneys, Satan's workshop...

Mark Cobb shambles forth in kung fu slippers to receive his cigarettes and three Adam Threats after these are searched for contraband and two bared breasts carefully cut out with razors by the screws; an equal, opposite response to ZORC. The last true believer, and why not... for only the Revolution will set him free!

And somewhere in Salamanca's barrio the torturer, Francisco Pom, draws circles in the room behind Naxroth's black door. "No man I injured did not provoke sanction," he declares, awaiting no Mark Cobb Revolution but the Restoration after. Church and state having abandoned him, the creed gathers in more ancient throats. The Kan... Uayax lizard kings... pierced funerary crosses so the empty throne would vitiate any convergence of healing powers towards their center, adorning their walls with skulls and demons out of Breughel.

So here comes... Brian Palin! walking Pom's old streets in judgment's stupor; almost as feted as an honorary Nueve since Carneval; he worries about his park, investors, tumbling blocks of limestone (well, papier mache, at least!). I had never seen him wave the white feather but, last night, he almost appeared to plead, asking Vasquez what effect the violence might have on the business climate... so abruptly overturned by the KM!

"I should blame our unfaced fellow upon anarchists. The drugs, Communists..." Vasquez waves his hand, gesturing with a smoke, "... and birth control, of course." When the repression outlaws Tiparillo Slims, outlaws shall seek sanctuary in the Vatican where Swiss Guards will defend, with pikes, the Viceroys of Il Papa.

"After all, violence is endemic to your own country. Your television!" further scowled the priest as Neil Lamont, beverage in fist, edged into our circle at Delfinas.

"Violence, tell me 'bout it Rev! Did you know more violence takes place behind the commercial state... stage, sorry... than upon it?"

"I did not," Rufo admitted. "But I wouldn't be surprised... this is Los Angeles of which we speak?"

"New York." Vasquez shrugged archly... all holes from whence Yanquis crawl towards and from the same. "Bud tell you about this last month? No? Well, this actor we bring in for perfume shots... oh, right, cologne, stinkwater's what it is, regardless of gender... he just lost it. Snapped! Name of Mazzolini... calls himself Martin for reasons obvious... well, he's tobacco-sensitive. Chuck McCarthy, our director of photography, lights up a weed and this fuckin' Off-Off Broadway bum, who can't even land strange neighbor parts in sitcoms, goes berserk. Swung a chair at the Chuckster, missed, overturned the glass table with all the colognes on it, swung again and hit him with the chair this time. Forty seven stitches."

"Yes, well there certainly is New York for you," the padre sighs. "No discipline to your violence, no ritual..." 

 

TOMORROW:

"PIGS' EAR SOUP!"

Chinese history and philosophy may be found...

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