THE CROSSROADS AT MIDNIGHT

Did you know human-beings are at best 0.01% human? The rest being everything else : animal, vegetable, mineral, atoms, ions, protons, neurons, elemental electro-magnetical frequencies, natural and supernatural, the psyche, the spirit, the soul, the imagination.. all carries weight into eternity! Apparently it’s a biological fact at the moment of death the body dramatically loses weight, and it’s not just flesh, blood and bone, it’s everything else, finally released from its’ 0.01% over-taxed incorporated burden passing into the 99.99% of an ongoing energized consciousness in perpetual dialogue with itself, debating the merits of everything versus everything else imaginable! The only thing un-imaginable : the void! To be imaginatively avoided at all costs, that black hole of comatose unconsciousness not even aware it’s awaiting the next big bang to re-spark its’ plugs, re-charge its’ battery and fire up its’ engines for a refreshed rebellion against nothing in particular!

It’s been suggested that the greatest gift this 0.01% humanity has been given is the gift of choice. Which can be a blessing or a curse, at decisive or indecisive moments. But if we choose well, if we choose wisely, if we choose good and if we choose often, we will be soundly prepped for that moment of death when we will have two choices left.. We can choose the white light, enter through the white-lit tunnel into a heaven where everything and everybody you have already loved is waiting patiently for you to join them in a perpetual love-fest. Or you can choose the blue light, take a chance on love, spin eternity’s wheel of fortune, hop onto a never-ending whirligig, merry-go-round, roller-coaster, helter-skelter of every love you have never even imagined never mind experienced in this too-particular lifetime, not even in a Jane Austen novel! Either way, it’s a lovely thought, truly a no-end of love conquers all!

Unless, of course, you’ve already made your choice, in a moment of 0.01% madness, driven to distraction, despair, doubts or fear of the unknown. .Or an over-arching self-worthiness that demands immediate gratification, recognition and reward in this world and let the 99.99% of everything else be damned.. Lured by the siren-song of fame and fortune, power and wealth and access to barely imaginable delights and pleasures of flesh, blood, bone and ego, you have turned up at the crossroads at midnight to meet with the devil you know, or think you know, or thought you knew ( the President of CBS?) to negotiate a deal, make you an offer you can’t refuse : all your earthly dreams come true! Your imagination flooding the known universe, your image proliferating like sardines released from an Alaskan cannery, disciples worshipping at your iconic feets, baited breath lynch-pinned on your every word, your every move, shrug, smile, pout, frown, lip-sync or tic-tac-and-toe! A legend in your own time and beyond, alive or dead, both human and immortal - a bit like Frank Sinatra. - swimming-pools, movie-stars, a star among stars, more stars at the MGM in Las Vegas than there are in the heavens! “So what do you think, Santa, baby, am I made of the right stuff, do I have what it takes????”

“Please, just call me Old Nick Nolte, or Colonel Tom” - ground and space control, the missing link between life on earth and life on Mars! Hands up anybody who thinks David Bowie really knew something we don’t? “And sign this contract, in blood, don’t have any ink on me, besides blood is more binding, I’ll have your DNA on file should you decide to change your mind, I’ll just bump you off and clone a new ewe, I’ll call you Dolly Parton this time, a cash-cow by any other name…And you don’t need to read it all, your basic packaging, distribution, marketing formalities, but do note the highlighted blind-eye non-disclosure clause and the small-print no-loophole copyright infringement addendum. My lawyers will take care of everything else. So if you’ll pop your adopted moniker on the un-dotty line you can be on your way, if not to heaven I’ll see you in Vegas, Elvis!” “Thankyouverymuch!!!!” Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the crossroads!

For all who have eyes to not see, ears to not hear and lips to only speak when spoken to (lest ye shall offend somebody!) the oracles have spoken on our behalf! The mermaids are singing all over the place, Starbucks round every corner, Alice behind every counter dispensing the toxic Kool-Aid, feeding your head with all manner of phantasmagorical disfigurations : maddening hatters, marching hares, white rabbits, pink elephants (or vice-versa?) doped-up caterpillars sitting atop mushroom-clouds, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Clubs, the Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Spades, the King of Rock ’n ’Roll, the Queen of England, the Wizards of Oz… all these Skull ‘n’ Bonesmen behind the scenes with their lap-tops and mocha-lattes GPS-ing you up the Yellow Brick Road to Dreamland, Wonderland, Fairyland, Disneyland, La-La Land, Van Diemen’s Land, the Land of Our Fathers, the Fatherland, the Motherland, the Holy Land of Zion, Land of Hope and Glory, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave! Fortune favors the brave, those who are willing to march into Hell at their master’s command, if only to prove they are not cowards and are capable of hate as well as the next man! Cause it’s hate that pushes this world forward and what’s love got to do with it anyway? Hate far more dynamically expedient to divide and conquer the world!

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Tonto! My faithful companion…Till suddenly this special effect tornado twists your rainbow back to black-and-white…Except for the red-alert flashing…Kemo Sabe’s gone all confucius and Confucius he say “where the fuck are we??? My faithful companion??? I think we’re in a war-zone!” They can hear the horn-conch trumpets sounding, the uniforms are being donned, the weapons distributed and half the civilized world is marching proudly off into the Valley of Golgotha to slaughter or be slaughtered by the other half! Two halves make a Holy War! Unfortunately one half thinks it’s holier than thou, needs to eliminate the other half to make the world whole again, at least half of it, but a lot more wholesome? More holes in the Antarctica than in Blackburn, Lancashire! But that’s another story.. It’s like splitting the atom to bring peace to the world, whatever pieces are left, we’ll piece ‘em back together with a very smart grid, roll out the 5-G, a global village virtually floating in the space between humanity’s ears, all the world glued to the same facebook-page sharing what little piece of their mind they have left, same screen, same channel, same story, same movie, same super-bowl-game…Oblivious to what’s going on outside the frame : Lucifer is rising from the stands, good-godliness dangling by a thread from His coat-tails, all the Fallen Angels on their feet applauding their master’s triumphal ascent to the top of the Yankee Square Garden, the Albert Hell, the Washington phallus….

“Let me introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste! You can call me Jumping Jack Screaming Lord Sutch! I like to pop up un-expectedly out of a coffin, with a knife between my teeth, a noose in my right hand, kissing a skull, jerking off and being sodomized at the same time, in top-hat-and-tails, a bit like Fred Astaire, only drenched in blood and with a toilet-seat wrapped around my neck! Shock and awe therapy for the un-initiated, disarming all complacency and blind optimism! Beauty has surrendered to the Beast! And if you can’t take the heat, stay out of Hell’s Kitchen! My black magician bankers have cooked up my books, my scientist sorcerers cloned shape-shifting lifetime actors, my wizard alchemists transformed debased nature into gold, gold into wealth and wealth into the power to rule the world! Vengeance is mine saith the Lord! Which Lord? The Lord of the Flies? The Lord of the Rings? Lord Kitchener? I want you!!! For World War One, World War Two, World War Three strikes you’re out!!! I may look like an angel, I may walk like an angel, talk like an angel, I may look like a god…but I’m the Devil in Disguise! Wasn’t only Cary Grant working under an assumed name!

You either believe it or you don’t. But if war is Hell, who else but the Devil would command anybody into it and convince ‘em it’s the only way to get to Heaven? If God is Love, who else but the Devil would convince you that God takes sides, even against Himself? Who else but the Devil would uproot the Earth and collapse the heavens to Las Vegas? Who else but the Devil would convince you that compassion, empathy, basic human-decency and respect for all living things is some infantile naivety that has no place in the “real world’? Who else but the Devil would convince you that reality is most realized in artificial spectacles!?

These are fair questions? Can anybody tell me what an unfair question is? If somebody asks you to donate to a worthy cause.. like The Clinton Foundation, which is working tirelessly to eliminate poverty and greedy evil-doers from the face of the earth, especially them muslims,, them pesky Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, cause they’re all a bunch of conspiring psychopathic un-democratic power-hungry war-mongering terrorist motherfuckers obsessed with espionage, propaganda, chaos and undermining the US currency! Seventy-five dollars gets you an American flag! A couple of billion gets you Argentina, you can retire in innocence-fucking luxury!!

Pick a number from won to lost. Add the number of days in a hundred years, plus the number of hours in a thousand minutes, multiply the sum by the sum of itself, divide the sum by the number of weekends in a million decades, then subtract the number of times you’ve asked yourself “who the fuck am I and what the fuck is going on here???” And the answer will always come back to zero, for without nothing something would cease to exist and everything else would be meaningless. It’s the magical formula for not reaching a conclusion till you come to the end. Nothing is what it seems to be. The only mystery : who was that masked stranger in the midnight at the crossroads crooning “ooby-dooby-dooby-doo” in a haunting falsetto??? Didn’t sound like Frank Sinatra at all….

postscript :

I stood before a big metal door, terrible faces wrought in the bronze, This voice called out from above, I think it was in my own head.. “And are you ready now?” I replied to myself “well, I think I am…?” The door swung open. I’m in this big roundy room, on the walls great mosaics of unspeakably heroic circumstance. And I asked myself “what is the meaning of this?” I answered myself “we must imitate the rose!” And suddenly all these rose-petals started falling from the ceiling, falling into the shapes of beautiful young men and women in crimson robes and gowns, all dancing together so slow and measured, each gazing rapt into the other’s eyes, like for all the world they were all so young and so in love for the first time! And in the mist of it all, a solitary veiled figure, flitting to and fro between the dancers, like it was Eros Himself, it was Love Itself, that no man, no human has ever looked in the face, only felt its’ force through their own eyes : such a terrible beauty, such an un-ending pity, un-yielding trust and un-appeasable desire… This beautiful young petal-woman invited me into the dance, black lilies in her hair, I neither said yes nor no, was simply swept into the mist of it all.. And I knew a profundity deeper than the darkness between the stars, and a love could surely breathe fresh life into the rocks and the winds and the waters of this world… as we danced on, so slow and measured… Till suddenly I knew, I knew in the horror of my heart that my soul was being drunken up, slowly but surely the veil had been lifted from Love’s eyes, and the darkness of the whole world, this world I’d lost and left behind, shrouded me over.. slow as the dampers of hell…as I crumpled all trembling to my knees.. pleading for mercy.. if only on my own poor soul!

Hands up anybody who thinks “faith” is just getting out of bed in the morning and not feeling the need to look see if the floor’s still there? The rest, use your imagination!