Saturday, March 28, 2009

it'sahugi'llneverhaveagain


of course kids, yes, indeed, sure, sure i am still riding. what on earth else would i be doing with myself (a haunting question)?





and by golly, certainly i am still writing (though mainly with pen and paper these days). what else in god's green acres is there to do with one's self (a haunting question)?



allright now hIrSch, keep this thing light. keep it light boy, keep it light, light and crispy, and good lord kid, keep it short because peoples don't have the time, you see, they ain't gots the time, you hear me? light, that's the key, light

also, people don't care

okokok but first just a moment of gravity which is this:

the most powerful and important thing in life is not forgiveness by others but the ability to forgive one's self and i have learned that i cannot -...- despite tremendous effort -...- cannot achieve the most powerful and important thing in life

and just allow me one more second of solemnity, please, just one second:

yes, there was what i guess one would call a pause but a pause implies a temporary stop and an eventual resumption and stops and resumptions insinuate that things actually happen and what i have learned is that nothing actually happens if you don't believe that anything happens which it doesn't and so there was no pause and there is no play and there will be no stop and i fear fast forwards but if i could -...- if i could -...- i would rewind given the chance and my god i'd rewind and i'd change all that happened which might seem hypocritical because i just said that nothing happens but the thing is -...- as much as i want to believe that -...- i.e. that nothing happens -...- i don't and so what happened did and that's why i want the rewind because i'd go back to that cave in columbus and change it all, every last second of it, and i wouldn't let what happened happen but this is impossible, so, in the meantime, i just close my eyes real hard and try to believe that nothing happens (and that what did happen didn't) and that there was no pause but hell there was a pause and i can't stop thinking of it and they say everything that happens is god's will but sometimes i wish god's will wouldn't

the end of that, my word i give

proof for belief (love and god being exceptions) and so here you go my dear little children, see below for the honest to krishna truth that hell's bells yessssirrreee bob i be riding again kids (see how light this is?), i'm back in the saddle boys, back in the saddle again as they say in western iowa:











so now that we've got that out of the way, i gotta say that there are many a people here in india which is where i am lads and lassies, quite a few i must say, and even though they stalk and harass and stare at me ad nauseaum and despite those sweet precious little boys who chucked stones at me as if i were some sort of an adulterer and notwithstanding that darling child who threw a cucumber at my head, i tell myself they're just curious you see, curious as to who this bearded man is, and once you don't let it all annoy the hell out of you anymore, once you submit and acquiesce and surrender and you eat the cucumber that split open and is laying on the ground and you just toss your hands up and say johnny rockets, you realize that most of these folks are mighty kind and dandy and for proof of this here is a photo depicting some fine fellows who run a sticker shop and they made me a sticker of my name, hIrSch, and they said "hey boy, what color you want your name to be there kiddo?" and i says back to them, i says, "give me something pink, chaps, something pink!" and that's what they do and that's what they did



and then there was this woman, all these women, and she is carrying water on her head god bless her and what i've seen is that it's the women who get things done around here and i hate to generalize but the men are a bit on the lazy side of the spectrum and maybe i'm wrong but i'm just going by what i see and what i see is what i believe and what i don't see is what i don't believe and i saw this and believed it




now, ain't you gonna go shoving words down my mouth cause i'm not saying that men don't do nothing as this photo testifies, i'm just saying that, by and large, women get it done, that society would collapse without them, and that i love my mom




and when i went into this flooded cave i thought, "well i'll be, this is a fine, fine cave," and i got out my camera and right as my pointer finger came down on the smooth little button, this goldblessed barnstorming bat comes barreling down right on me and i juked out of the way and then i said "jiminy crickets!" or "hell's bells!" (can't remember which right now)




them ain't birds my little darlings, no, no, them ain't no birds in that tree (although one day a bird in a tree did shizzzznit upon me (i ain't kiddin' (i's a walking down this street looking for a watermelon and i stopped this man and asked him where i could find a watermelon which is what i was looking for and he starts pointing and just then i felt this hot splattered slime on me arm and i looked down and hell if there weren't a slurry of black and white cream dripping and drooling all over and we both looked up and he says, "bad luck" and doesn't finish the watermelon instructions which means i didn't find what i was looking for which be the story of my life but don't feel sad or sorry for me cause i ain't worth it, i'm just an organism sucking in the oxygen and pumping out the dioxides of carbon and i'll die soon enough and it'll all be over and in less than one hundred years ain't gonna be one person on this planet who'll remember me so it'll be like i never was))), but back to the point, them ain't birds in that tree








them are monkeys of all the godforsaken creatures on this earth, and they're all the hell over here and, now don't tell anyone, but they scare the bejeesus out of me because, i mean, well, check out the face on that sucker, lord almighty it looks like a gold blessed human and people say evolution but if evolution is true why do we still have monkeys because shouldn't they all have evolved by now?






kiddos, i'll never get it, i'll just never get it and i ain't saying it's wrong and i ain't saying it's right i'm just saying that it is and that this is someone's shanty and they've jerry-rigged it and strung ropes and wires and all sorts of gizmos and gadgets and that red thing you see, well, that's a satellite and right now at this very moment they're watching american idol (which is me)





it's life on the frontier out here, stage coaches and all, on these lonely indian roads where life is a step back but really a step forward but i won't get into that because this is supposed to be light and crispy



alls i wants is my bread, beard, and my crumbs and an abandoned posh hotel to provide me some shade and a nice little backrest, it's all i want and i got it and was incredibly pleased and god how i love to eat alone my dear children because i am a weird eater and when i eat around others they sit and stare and ask questions and i hate stares and questions and sure, sure i make my own home(-less)made jam and it's quite easy and here is the recipe you just
chew whatever fruit is the cheapest and then regurgitate it on your bread and you lick it all around evenly and whammo jammo, you gots jelly without all the added sugar, color, preservatives, and pesticides (though i do miss the cancer accelerators)


but when i saw this i said "hell" or "jimmy james and johnny too" but either way, i followed it with a "what's you doing with my road kids, dadgumit now, stop this nonsense and whatchya doing here boys?!?"






early one morning i hear a guy yelling and i'm telling myself just to ignore him but i couldn't so i looked and he's waving me over and he makes me tea and one glass turned into two and you just can't beat that smile or that palm, i mean lord look at that man's palm and i learned my lesson, of which india has taught me plenty, and that's that you must acknowledge everything whether it happens or it doesn't happen and regardless of whether you believe anything happens you must acknowledge it and i'm here to tell you that this tea did happen and lord it was good and hit the spot and god bless that man and if that is god's will i agree with god's will in this case because this man deserves a good blessing even without a sneeze




and speaking of tea these guys call me out and say "come drink tea little boy, come drink tea"
and i says ok but then they says they gotsta go get the water from a well and then they gotsta find some branches to burn and then they gotsta get some sugar and i says to meself (in my mind) "hell's bells this gonna take forever," so i tells them, "well, thanks but i gotsta be going kids, i gotta stay on the road and go boys," and i hit it and got going to get gone from everything but as i'm going i says to meself (in my mind) "hell, billy, what your problem kid?, what your problem because you know you ain't gots nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get wherever that isn't and these fellas inviting you for tea and you gonna refuse? what the hell your problem kid?" so i u-turn it and come back to them and we gather and burn and brew and pour and share and the thing of it was that my stomach had been off all day and after that tea hit it everything was soothed and smoothed and i felt like a million buckaroos and so i thanked them profusely and cursed myself for even thinking about not stopping and off i went


but then the darndest thing happened because whap-shap-bizzznap i got hit by a motorcycle and down i went and out came the blood and bicycle parts went flying and bending and breaking and there i am face down on the road and that (forgive me for this word) bastard didn't even stop to check on me and even my chin was a-bleedin' and now i gots a bloody bright red beard and soon enough a million people came from nowhere to help me but the thing was i didn't give a golddern about myself the only thing i cared about was my bike because my role on this earth is to suffer (a role i am fulfilling oh so well) so the hemoglobin and dna deposits were of no concern but my poor little bike, oh my little children, my poor, poor little bicycle just a-layin' there and now all the traffic's stopped and a-lookin' at me and i just tend to my bike and that sanguine fluid is covering my leg and seeping through my shirt but who can care, who can care about one's self when there is a piece of metal depending on you and so i did some surgery and after eternities got rolling again all the more wobbly and that's when i looked at me knees and elbows and shoulder and rubbed my chinny-chin-chin and i says, "ouch" and i tried to plug myself up cause i was leaking all the hell overs the place

and so then i got to thinking about how if i hadn't a stopped for tea then that motorcycle wouldn't a hit me and how maybe i should have followed my original gut inclinations of not stopping and i thought how maybe it was god's will for me to get whacked as punishment for my previous and future sins and so maybe it was meant to be no matter what and then i thought how maybe if i hadn't a stopped for tea i would a gotten hit by a mac truck or something else and been splattered right there in the middle of india and if that were the case i thought how i should a thanked god, yes, thanked god for getting smacked by the motorcycle versus the mac truck but then that gots me to thinking how god could have prevented it all, i mean to say, i could have had my tea and not got hit by nothing and i was wondering why god didn't give me that option and i guess this is where "blind faith" comes in where you just chalk everything up to god's will and say things like "god has a plan" but sometimes i wish i could take an eraser and pencil of my own to that plan, maybe while god was going to the bathroom or something, and he'd never know and i could change just a couple of things, just a few

and to top it off i stopped at a little roadside eatery and i asked for some bean sauce and i gave that little man my plastic peanut butter jar i been carrying with me since canada and that's four years ago kiddies and hell if that dahl wasn't piping hot and melted the jar all to hell and back again and i thought i could salvage it but it broke in two and split down the middle and was unsalvageable and so i took me a knee and said a prayer and said my goodbyes and that was that and i moved on and left it all behind as i do with all things and people


so so many camels here in india




and i like 'em, camels that is, and also money moustaches


in fact, one day i made up a lilliputian poem, and it went a little something like this:

a
caminal
is
an
animal

and

a
moustache
without
a
beard
is
a
little
weird

and, well, i had a good laugh at that one and then i kept going (just like this fellow)



and all these temples just everywhere and one time they even let me in during worship and there was fire and smoke and saxophones and lord those drums and overwhelming and intense incense and idols and statues and bowing and kneeling and ashes and it was all strange and newfangled to me and then i thought about if they came to a christian church in america and tried to tell their friends and they would say, "yeah, they believe in this guy named jesus who is god but who is not god because he is the son of god and so it's like two gods but they say it's one so that they are monotheistic but the thing of it is it's really three gods because there's also this holy spirit component too but back to the jesus guy they actually eat this man's, i mean god's, flesh and they even drink his blood but really it's just bread and wine but they believe it's flesh and blood and the thing is this woman who was a virgin gave birth to jesus but she was a virgin" and so, my brothers and sisters, the indiosynchronicity is in the eye of the beholder and what is familiar and commonplace is where-you-is-born dependent and god bless jesus and god bless vishnu and god bless allah and god bless buddha and god bless me and god bless you and if reincarnation is how it all goes down then let me come back as a cow here in india or as an ant anywhere because i love ants and anywhere is fine with me







me bowels was loosey, goosey, and lord almighty juicy and it was probably because i was drinking water from sources like this:



but, my little ones, when you're donkey'ing around in the desert and the choice is no water or that water, you shuffle the deck and hope you don't get jacked

but i got jacked, kids, i got jacked and my intestines got whacked and my gall bladder shriveled to a small little sack and i was full of bile that i left in piles across those desolate miles and i was in a heap of hurt and squatting in fields often with audience and what could i do but let 'er rip because it was either in a field with an audience or soil in my shorts and if the truth must be told, as it must, it was sometimes a combination of the two and then i ran out of things to wipe with and i said hell but as heaven would have it there was a village nearby so i began a hunt and hell's bells my little children, mercy did not shineth upon me and farts weren't just farts and i was a mess and my poor little duodenum and my collapsing colon and even my semicolon; they was all twisted and tied and braided and lashed and i still had stuff inside me desperate for freedom and me desperate with wanting to provide emancipation but i had not a scrape of nothing left to wipe with so i - with sphincter in full contraction and atp running low - dashed around this little village trying to find anything and nothing was to be found and then as it always happens the english speaker finds me and tells me "we do not use those things, we use our hands" and then he reaches out and shakes my hand and i gotta go, i mean, i gotta go and then i see a little old man selling peanuts and candies and i see he's got a newspaper and load almighty i hope he's already read the thing so i make my hand gestures hopefully indicating that i would like to buy that newspaper off him and he starts to hand it to me and i'm so thankful but then he's incredulous and i'm thinking hell kiddo, if you only knew what's about to happen and the tragic consequences it will have for both your little shop here and my shorts but the thing is he picks up the paper and by now of course i've got a crowd following me and i am in pain i mean toe-scrunching-biting-the-inside-of-my-cheeks-eye-squinting pain, and he starts saying whatever it is he's saying and he points and they all look at the paper and then they all look at me and then back at the paper and i'm thinking what in tarnation's going on here meanwhile focusing on that continual sphincter contraction and by now i've got sweat droplets popping out on my upper lip and forehead in anticipation for the event that must happen oh so muy pronto and then he - thank the load and cheesus rice - he hands me the paper and heavens to betsy i grab it and then i'm incredulous because, strike me dead at this very moment if i'm lying, there i am, and of course there i was, but what i mean to say is that - may allah end my life if i am lying - there i was right there on the gold blessed front page of this paper, a dashing picture i must say, with a story in hindi to boot and this is india, boys and girls, this is india, this mad, mad country where any and everything happens but the symphony of my organs suddenly roared into a crescendo and so i sprinted to my bike and i sat hard on that seat of mine which was helping to act as some sort of crude cork and found a place to drop my drawers and there was a massive no false alarm evacuation and having given off so much guano, it was time for clean-up and i got out that newspaper and took a look at myself and just couldn't bring myself to wipe myself with myself feeling it would be some sort of blasphemic sacrilege, and so i delved into the other pages and ended up using the hindi version of dennis the menace and thereby saving myself and remaining righteous to the edicts of this sign because i didn't urinate, i just pooped, although the consistency and color of the whole shabang might lead one to believe i not only violated dennis the menace, but also this sign



and just in case you ain't believed me





there was this homeless man in a city and i seen him and he was sleeping in the gutter and i asked for blessings for him and i wondered how sore he woke up every morning and then i thought to myself how i'd give him my old sleeping mat because i'd just got me a new one and the old one was green and the new one was grey and i walked with that green mat over to that gutter to that man and i says to that man, "here man, here you go, sleep softly and may god bless" and then he put his hands in a prayerful gesture and bowed to me and it made me uncomfortable and i shook his hand and walked off and i thoughts to meself how i'd done something good and then i was wracked with guilt and a soreness in my abdomen because if i'd really wanted to do something "good" i'd a given him the new sleeping pad instead of handing him a hand-me-down and hell i felt awful and the next morning i saw that old man and he was still asleep and under him was that green mat and i apologized to him (in my mind) and kept going and then i saw these guys and thought how i could buy them a tractor but that if i really wanted to help them i'd give them everything i ever had, have, or will have in this world and how anything else is worthless and falls short and then i thought about how it's nothing or all and how much i want to have full devotion to something, anything but how in the meantime everything just seems to be stuck in the middle




holy temples, a holy river, holy ablutions...but for me, wholly no solutions





this cheese had a bit of an almondy aftertaste



this is always for them yet only a moment for me and i wonder if there will ever be an always for me



lord knows where they're taking this little girl but let us all close our eyes and hope that wherever it is that it's somewhere special and that there are many marshmallows and ladybugs and dewdrops on tulips






it was a triumvirate of beards, this, because you see i was sneaking off into this field because i'd spotted me a little hut to hide in for the night but i didn't have enough giddyup because these guys, these shieks i should say, found me and hell if the two of them ain't had swords to boot and i says to meself, "this is it kid, this is it, you gonna die right here right now (and i felt strangely relieved)" but that fella on the right, he says in english, "you want to sleep here?" and i says to meself (in my mind), "honesty is the best policy" and so i says, "yes, if it's possible," and he says, "anything's possible," and i smile and agree and we shake hands and he says no one will bother me and they disappear and then it's just me and my lonely beard which was the shortest of the three and i couldn't even blame that particular shortness on cold weather or nothing and i thought how i should be a sheik because the beard requirement's already got a check mark by it and to have a check mark next to the sword-draped-from-shoulder requirement would be pretty sweet




and here's where i slept and so i'm down and dirty again kids, down and dirty every night and i love it and let this be said, and take it to heart, whenever i shower in this world, it is for the olfactory of others because i hate showers and want to live in a world where humans smell like humans because it just makes sense, it's all about the pheromones buddies, it's all about the pheromones



pilgrims, i, a line, a temple, gurus, sacred texts, candles, music, genuflections...but kids, i still didn't find god....



....hey! maybe that's god....oh wait, that's me ... but wait, maybe that's it!



so here the deal and i believe it's a good deal for all, bordering on a royal flush even, and the deal is this and it's that you won't be hearing from me for a while because the computers are hard to find and the power cuts and my unsaved pulitzer words get lost forever and it takes me away from the level i am trying to reach and that level is one of enlightenment, bliss, fulfillment, happiness, utopia, nirvana, even beyond nirvana -...- to make that leap from an arahant to a bodhisattva -...- and to reach this degree, this status, i need to be moving, be in motion, be on the road and hear (and actually listen to) the silence and be away from places like i am sitting in right now because if i am to become the statue that you soon will see, if i am to attain what this piece of marble has attained, i need to be away, from everything, from here, from there, from me, from you; so i ask for your allowence of my absence, it will not be permanent (though it might be) but it will be a little while because...



...that statue has it and i don't and this is where i am now




and so you can see i've much much meditating to do and i need to do it and so i will and i apologize for that unfortunate nose of mine but what can one do?, i know it's a bit of an atrocious enormity but i kind of like it and actually, as a little prelude to whet your pallate, my next blog is actually (maybe) going to be 100% unconditionally and unmitigatedly entirely about my face and so my little bambinos, in the meantime (which, for all our benefits i hope is kindtime), look forward to the next second of your life because it could be your first