P.S., Transversed Round One entry
P.S., Transversed
A Tech No' Logical Story Related to or perhaps in The World
© CW Kelson III 2007 All Rights Reserved
CDM 2007
pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man
to reform and transform waste.
the transformation of waste
…
is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man.
25th Floor The Patti Smith Group
www.pattismith.net
Stone steps, stone walkway, overlooking the cathedrals and myriad bronze Buddha, down far below in the valley, men, women, and children plied their day to day tasks, making money, spending money, just fighting to get enough food to eat or feed their families. In the fields all around the city, the poor worked the land, tilling and toiling to produce the food to feed the burgeoning masses. The jungle reaches up from all around, the clear cut and fires still unable to utterly dominate the scenery and place it into submission.
"Coffee beans come and get some coffee beans?" the small child asked in a soft, plaintive voice. Pushing a small cart ahead of her tired foot, the other leg ending in a stump gained on birth to make her more efficient as a beggar and street vendor, the cart with straps a semi-rest and a place to maintain balance with moving at a low gliding hop, with only two wheels, made of recycled hubcaps imported from Hong Kong stolen off some rich Tong leader's car, it was getting too short by far for the scrap of flesh that moved it along, peddling the roasted coffee beans for drinking or chewing.
"Coffee beans come and get some coffee beans?"
Thailand, all the ladies standing there, waiting in an endless row, waiting to see if someone will come to marry them, to take them away from the sordid life of the endless nights, pious Catholics by day, spread legged and sweaty all the night long, working for a few baht to trade in for euros on the scant days the rate favors them. Otherwise they are exchanging dignity and love for an hour or so at a time of their company
[Pic 3]
But the sweat, liquor and spent seed comes after night arrives, once the sun goes down, so do they. During the daylight though, it is look for life, love, a nice man to take them away from the sordid life the all chose in alternative to what could have lain ahead of them.
Gutter punks drift away on tides of opium and mescaline slashed with simple tobacco, dancing along to tunes downloaded into their minds, memes that etched the songs of hate and discontent rending them incapable of conscious decision. Their feet in designer shoes, all made locally of course, kept out of the filth lining the inner city sanctums. This is the status quo here in the developed world.
PS wandered along, passing up the odd man out, strolling and surveying the wares on display, quality is a variable, like all others, still the few men seemed more interested in the shortness of life lived, perhaps to find one less broken to the saddle than one with more time under her skin.
All of them are in the same business that PS is in, how to get the most of what is needed to survive with the least wear and toil on the flesh, with the fewest scars on the heart and soul, all the while making a living as honestly as possible, and turning the time and tides to an advantage, recycling the flow of life, in one tangible form or another, into something else entirely different. The insects are not so bad way up here, away from the stench of the slums and the reek of alcohol induced actions. Up here on the long cobbled stone walkway where the ladies all stand around, waiting for a rich man from the city, or a tourist to walk past, and whisk them away from the life they know, in Phuket, Bangkok, or one of the other cities scattered about the verdant and lush jungle country side.
Just a short change of heart awaits PS somewhere far and away from this dismal place, where the tale has begun. Just living in a wicked age is difficult enough, without all the predators that come along with such a time as this. Monsters, freaks, geeks, the unknown, the scary and the lost ones, all making their way along roads used and abused too many times before the start of civilization. All working to beat the man, tax the system till it can no longer support the downtrodden, and then sift through the wreckage they have left behind in the fall.
Down far below under the canopy the watchers lurk, waiting to find more uses for those that walk the land. They keep an eye out on the variables, the ones that sit outside of the norm, that walk the edges of societies, as well as stand in their way for what they think things should come out as, how the world should play its tune, and the melody and harmony of cooperation and toeing the line, is all they are really interested in. Not the loves and foibles of humanity. So they slink away into the darkness created with tree cover while PS stands there looking out over the edge, before they too turn away and head towards the airport, to arrive back many hours later, in the city on the ocean shore, where several compatriots wait for instructions and edification of the goals PS has in mind.
Days or weeks past since PS was standing on that high road, watching all the women waiting for life to come and save them, the time since then spent mostly in travel, airlines not being the way they should be, it took so much longer than necessary.
All too many hours, watching sun rises and sun sets occur, while staring out of dirty windows as large and small aircraft took off and landed. Sometimes an errant dirigible would wind its way across the shocking blue skies, moving to destinations unknown. Sometimes a fat bellied steamcar would chug its way down forgotten roads while PS walked from one bus stop to another one, miles or towns away from the previous. All this time moving is spent in contemplation of the state of affairs. How the worlds had spun and turned all the same until that single day, when it no longer made a lick of sense. Waking up that day to find love had moved out in the middle of the night. That suddenly former friends no longer knew the names of their loved ones, and things prowled the city streets using the homeless for their feasts of sinew and plasma. All of it had shifted in some sense over the course of a night filled with sleep and terrors wrapped up in the cold and clammy sheets.
The sun rose that day, the old missive of Red Sky at Night, Sailors Delight, Red Sky at Morning, Take Warning, never more true than that sunrise. Blood orange red, staining the landscape until it rose high enough to clear the pollution and then it all was wrong somehow. Something had happened, and PS was still searching for the cause.
The first few days were freakish, running into people that no longer knew who PS was. Finding empty bank accounts, strange shadows in the darkest of alleyways, as well as the misshapen suddenly all about the place, freaks and geeks, sideshow performers as well as the tatted and pierced were everywhere. No longer just the fringe, the edges of the map had curled over and taken over the center of things.
This is when the search for meaning took on an entirely new definition. That was when traveling from country to country, all on an expired passport that was never questioned, never challenged, became the norm, working to find the answers that were elusive so far.
Along the oceans it was more the way that PS remembered it, like the moderating influence of the waters extended to reality. Farther away from bays and lighthouses, the odder it seemed to feel, yet few seemed to sense it. All was the same, reality tv ruled the nights while fashion and anorexia dominated the lack of self esteem during the daylight hours, with the endless levels of want for more ruined marriages and stomachs with equal panache.
Still the feet were in motion now, and there was no stopping the inertia that had built up over that long last night of semi-normality.
We've been living in the shadows all our lives
Where it's stand in line and don't look back and don't look left and don't look right
So we hide our eyes and wonder who'll survive
Waiting for the night...
Run Straight Down by Warren Zevon
Back across the ocean in another country, another world in practicality, nearly reality, PS moves from place to place, heading in a winding tortuous fashion to the small tourist town trap shop on the west coast where the others were waiting.
The situation with the powers in charge that are gouging them of their life savings and leaving them homeless on the streets like stray curs gone feral. This has been the situation for decades before the start of Ps' crusade to find out what went wrong. How it all ended up in the state that it has arrived at. No where near to an answer, seems the clues lead to dead ended streets, deserted moors in desolate countrysides, abandoned morgues and refuse bins where discarded lives have all lost the battle with entropy. None of the clues PS has found leads to a single source, nothing concrete, and nothing tangible to the eyes or ears or sense of touch. It flickers on the outskirts of the eyes, the peripheral vision is the only place that it all starts to coalesce, then it dries up and drifts away on the winds like spiderwebs on the night breezes.
Nothing adds up, 2 and 2 does not equal 4 when all the disparate facts and suppositions are placed side by side, Instead they add up to weird things, the strange and unnatural moving in the shadows between the day before it got odd, and the next morning. So PS went and found a few friends, who didn't get all the pieces, but had seen enough to wonder some of the same things. Banded against the night, a small coterie of misfits all looking into the cracks in the world to find out what was crawling there.
There were mistakes made, people died, packs of wild dogs ripping the innocent and defenseless into misshapen bloody pieces, all the while the feeling that something was moving behind the scenes would grow, the farther away from the small towns and suburban streetlights PS and friends would go. The inner cities and the deepest, old growths were the worse places. There things moved and used straight razor like fangs or claws on the unwary.
But that was the past, leading up to the trip to Thailand, the searching for more answers in the flesh dens and storefront rental brothels, back to the land where it all seemed to start at. Down the many long miles, cabs, cars, trains, aircraft, buses and walking all keeping to the hard places that made more sense, to the tired old shop along the waterfront where TM and the others waited to find out what PS had or had not found. There had been no rational reason to look there, and perhaps it had all be for naught.
Up to the front of the place, the garish lights and tacky B-movie spaceship looking like it had made a landing, which while not perfect, was one that would have been walked away from. Mannequins lurked on the overhang and inside, while the whine and whirr of drills, needle guns, nail guns and tattoo machines all made a ratchet and cacophony on the inside, Transversing the inner labyrinth, until the back of the storefront was reached.
[Pic4]
In there were the core crew, TM, a few others, that tall geek PS could never remember the name of, the bearded guy with the taste for snails he found on the sidewalk and would de-shell and pop into his mouth regardless of the poison hazards or not. The core crew were there, sitting around, some getting more ink placed into hard to reach places, the scent of stale blood on the floor mixed with ash and tar from the rooftop across the alley.
"Everyone outside, talk time." PS utters without preamble, then watching the bodies file into the inner courtyard area, TM and the tall geek the first out, the first to stare PS down, the first to just challenge it all. A grandfather clock counted of seconds, long ones, passing while the small motley gathered out there.
[Pic 2]
"There was nothing to be found there in Thailand, it was for nothing." PS Stands there defiant to the others, will defense need to be made of the decision to pool and seem to squander scant resources for that long trip.
"It is the same there as here, they don't remember what they lost that night, and it all is just for nothing, no reason at all."
"It makes no sense at all, it is like blinders are in place, no one sees what is clear, is obvious, damn it all, I don't get it." The frustration, the blank looks, the dim accusatory glances there of the others, some milling around, the tall one and TM just shuffling their feet, Mr. Snail wondering what is going on by the vacant look in his eyes, suddenly bending down and picking something off the ground.
"Why do I even bother with you all, look, he eats snails, fer the love of sanitation, they are poisonous, how can he eat them and live."
The rest all turn to see the shell cracked and the little slimy thing going straight into the waiting mouth, tongue slightly extended to take the mucus covered thing, almost as if taking Communion on a warm Sunday Morning Mass.
[Pic1]
"See, that is so wrong, why can't you all see that? What is wrong with you people?" PS is about screaming at this time, hair flying all over the place, the wind whipping the loose clothing as it does the mannequins on the store front.
In disgust PS just stops the rant. Stares at the assemblage about the small area in the back part of the shop where the search to ascertain answers began, then comes the admission.
"Lately", PS says, "I have dreamt of captivity, held down, tied into a maze of stone"
Then there comes a long slow pause, like a slow sip of too hot coffee, trying to not burn the tip of the tongue, the roof of the mouth, the back of the throat, before speaking again to the assemblage.
"I do not feel a kinship with those that walk this earth.", then "I do not feel like any of them at all, not even my fellow misfits."
Head bows in shame, shame of speaking the mind, saying the words out loud, but then TM spoke up, " You talk like you know everything, but you know nothing."
PS looks up at him, at TM, wondering how he could utter such a statement, surprise running rampant across the face.
TM continues on with the verbal chastisement, "You sit there, whining and complaining about things you know nothing about. You have no connection to humans; never let yourself feel connected to people, or places, or even things, only to you. No wonder you're trapped, because you are. Trapped with no where to go, not even a means to remake yourself into another image, the great one unable to even recycle their own self."
TM bursts into deep, raucous belly laughter, mocking all that has gone on, and will go on in the life of PS. The shame, the ridicule, the humiliation of it all bringing tears to the eyes. PS stands there unable to do a single thing, there is no refutation. He stomps his stunty legs, his half sized body in contrast to his full sized head, and extra large sized mind and ego.
"You should go recycle yourself; you are not fit to be around." With that pronouncement Tim turns on his heels, and walks out the side gate, away from PS standing there staring at his wide receding back. The others watch him leave as well, before they too turn and head out of the same way, not even dignifying the occasion with the front entrance.
There are no words to be said as they all left, as PS stood there all alone, standing in the cold sunlight streaming down, as the noises of the car, trucks, vans and SUVs all wandered mindlessly up and down the busy road in front of the store with the little fake spaceship, with the decorated mannequins, all a symbol for the world and its absurdity especially since the change came over the reality that might have never existed, save in a solitary mind.
PS turned and followed them all out the side gate, with no destination in mind, save to avoid the night terrors wandering the daytime streets and the ugly truths that haunt hearts during the nighttime hours.
. 
