We were coming back into the Vortex, and I started getting
a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. We hit that cyclone energy belt
where the vibes were strong and always twisting. When the Indians lived here,
the sun was God. Now there is an unseen God. This God is everyones
extreme image of himself as righteousness personified. And it is O.K. to
do wrong if you are convinced youre right. Great Evangelical Giant
took the sun for his own. Right. Righteousness. Right Wing. What did all
this mean? Why were there rightists and leftists? Right and left. I learned
about this in school. Before that it was just like the sun. Now right and
left like a mysterious kaleidoscope gradually pulling apart and going back
into another form... always operative eternal rhythm and pitiful man crudely
trying to duplicate the process with his mechanical-swastika gears. And that
vestigial pineal gland shaped like a tornado right at the ass of the brain.
Worse than that, the time warp in the Sargasso Sea! Like curtains closing
together and ruffling back. It was like that time I took those pills J. had.
J. went to the doctor, the shrink, because he thought he was becoming too
homosexual. The shrink gave him some right-handed pills which stimulate the
right side of the brain. J. laid em onto me, old me, Id have
snake dreams. They were kind of like psychic energizers but just energize
the right side. I went around cussing and gritting my teeth, ready to fight
anyone or kick anyones ass who got in my way. the whole side of my
head felt lopsided, like the right side was swollen. I had all kinds of snake
dreams. Ah fuck this town and I took off for San Francisco. As always the
end pad of eternity going on out there in that condemned mess. As always
going farther west and at the end of west where you cant go any farther,
I felt again the feminine suck of San Francisco. Its energy was all cunt.
Suck City. Her twin peaks bloomed before the skyline. A string of jewels
wound around her body. A seething jeweled vibrating cunt that will always
take you in... in... into that bottomless cunt pit of eternity and you
cant even feel yourself being sucked in until you realize there is
very little direction in your own breath. San Francisco... end of the line
transgender station... change here for all points. I got off the bus and
walked over to Bobs. He had come up from Big Sur and rented a pad in
the Haight. He had tried to move a piano in and it fell into the stairwell
crashing into the wall. There he left it and played a tune upon entering
and leaving. The back side of it made an excellent harp. He was one of the
first Big Sur Indians to settle in the Haight. His house was full of visionary
paintings in day-glo color and candles, beads, Gods eyes. We shot up
some smack and listened to Bobs Schubert String Quartet which has an
extraordinary sweetness to it. I walked down to Jones St. in the Tenderloin
knowing Id find Betty and Frank down there and no sooner than I got
there I saw Frank who was out hustling a few odd jobs.
I got a room in an alcoholic pensioner hotel and watched old men fight. You get old and you never killed, you keep wanting to kill... You havent had your release, havent carried out your orders- Cain- from the great apes who learned they can kill because SUBCONCIOUSLY they are haunted by the strange vapors swirling through the bottomless pit of existence. You get feverish, jumpy. The world is passing you by. There is an imbalance in the chromosomes the antimatter forces are keeping side by side with the life forces. It is a race against time against odds as great in number as all the namable items in the universe. The need to kill is somehow retained in the masculine ego setup. Youve got to apply the personality makeup to the old ape and ass routine. That is also the basis for the swastika. The symbol evolved from and early model of men on their hands and knees with their noses in each others ass. The easiest place to break individual will and reform it into the precision gear-like mechanical process is, of course, the army. The whole psychological and power set up of war can be seen in the swastika. The mechanism reaches out in right angels like a gear claw. It resembles iron and metal. We feel the residue in the billion little manly decisions we make daily, while we commit genocide, massacre the ghost dancers. Afraid of death, in everyday politeness we open the doors for each other to turn our backsides.
from The Last of the Moccasins by Charles Plymell, Mother Road Publications, 1996; first published in 1971 by City Lights Books.