WHITE BUFFALO: The Story of a Mayan Prince

BOOK THREE

WHITE BUFFALO: “There goes another refugee.”

[I don’t even remember who this love
poem is about]

You all taught me to not think.
Playing liar’s poker.
We’re all soaked in radiation.
Felito and his date got wiped
out in a bike wreck, and I knew
it was all over. Snow in June.
Ashes in the fireplace blow
over anybody, the dead are buried
and the wounded move on. A
turtle on its back, inertia,
like a deer hung up in a bob-wire
fence, Ted and I pore over Gardner’s
photos of a ravaged America,
Camp Fort Hell and Damnation,
razors in our boots,
studying a parade of saboteur shades,
bandannas on our skulls,
we part ways. I get a room
at the Inn at the end of the trail,
to mull on the res publica
and res pulchrae, which is nothing.
Ain’t no thing.

Paul McLean
February 1, 2010

>

I consulted with the Tarahumara
I visited with the Cubano
Tribal or ideological, we
Surfed the tube, in a shared text
in the guts of America,
not friends exactly, but Wayfarers,

A rug dealer, a white man
smoking brown cigarettes,
weeps over my paintings on a Thursday
with a whiskey back, another snapshot

Alberto: I’d rather be single,
than married to a professional whore
[“I make the women beautiful.”]
One night he wakes me with a rap
on my window, I roll out of the single
bed, blade in hand, in a crouch,
Alberto hushes his date,
who giggles, as I scan the room,
creep to the window, peer out
into the night, while they hide,
on the stairs, and I return
to my dreams, never having
awakened.

NOTES: “I’ll take one, if you take one!”
WB to a comrade, Mutt and Jeff,
Tit and Tat, Mona Lisa [NO RECOLLECTION]
& Khadaffy, high from labor or grog,
“Here’s to Life
Here’s to Me & Here’s to You
& If we disagree, to Hell
with You!” Gino calls it spic jive
for holy rocknrollers, Ride to
[Destination illegible]
“I’m getting burned out, fried,
bent and twisted out of shape,
by society’s pliers.” Better than
[Kubler’s shape of time] a couple
of Kids, to Mexico or Uganda, the
Door’s wide open, and White Buffalo:
Mexicans aren’t allowed in this country,
Unless they work.” “We’re all refugees,
now.” The alien is a cyclops.

Hilda was the friend of DH Lawrence
& was beautiful long before Alberto
migrated here, she drove to Taos
in her convertible Cadillac, powder
blue, wearing a scarf, knew not a soul,
before the great WAR, a confidante,
flashing stones, silver, guns
in the glove compartment, proud
weathered, recalling Patsy Cline
late night poker games with hard drinkers,
They don’t make’m like that no more.
Nothing artificial about her. Alberto
was wrong. I’m looking at Dance on
the monitor & well aware of its
artificial screen, and still, the man
does not own her, or make her beautiful,
the dance does, and the artificial
person kills dance. So, we dance.
& Shiva kills the corporation,
while the Cuban strums his guitar,
& Fidel strokes his ghostly beard,
& the professional goes weird,
& Hunter smokes his cherry on a stick,
& all the dreamers of that stupid era
enrich themselves eternally &
long into the starless night, no
games to play or win, we had our party,
like the fragrance of pinon after spring
rain, in the desert, below the bloody
peaks, draped with water, frozen
dreams, to thaw next spring, partly,
some going up to the clouds, some
seeping underground, some trapped
in pipelines, flowing down and down
and all around, this way or that,
leaking here and there, seeking a seed,
to sprout, to live a while, to reach
for the sun, to strain to the light,
to rise as Speed would say, RISE,
to die, to whither and dry in the sun,
the sun they wanted with all their
might, knew only through skin, flower,
and new seed, by French a dance,
a Destroyer of Worlds, that one,
from Bhagavad Gita until now, one
ladder, one voice, one arc of the shoot,
one pink cloud, the cloud fucking
with the mountain as Gino said,
all the same and not one different,
when my hands were quivering, not
from DTs, and which art from addiction,
and YES, says the Stewart, and accept
your proposition Rudy, your spiritual
riches, the girl the house the money
too, so I can visit Auntie Aina
or Uncle Sam in Hanalei, diving
with Honu, in the reefs or body
womping at Kailea, turned upside
down at Polihale, or tossing aside
my wheelchair at Waimea Canyon,
for the engine that don’t stop
Ever, choosing Life, a life,
a girl, a humble home, and enough.

The wind is a sea
I approach delirium
trembling, waiting
for Medicine Tea

No meal in 3 days
the dogs circling my altar
not a dollar to my name
not a thing on me I own
only in me, thirst and
hunger, mine to let go.

JP & me laugh over
telephone wires
talking, friends
of summer, of fishing
& new songs, new days,
Janet, in this dream
buys me lunch,
a blue road, curving
obstacles of no matter.
No matter at all.

Another prayerful drawing
- Stick with your art
They all say, my dear friends,
my ghosts, my lovers, my kin.

ON PAGE 19 You arrogant hipsters
cannibalizing tourists
buying Christian babies in Haiti
ARTSTARS buying babies
Vegetarians on pretense
Pushing principles of non-
engagement & anger management
praying to your plastic god,
asset-free only, quivering
hands in the offering basket
if you can get away with it,
YOU ARE a marvelous artificiality,
a new brand of unreality,
ambitious as death’s escape,
fueled only by your fear of it,
lurking in shadows at the fireside,
O but I get it, you aged like Queens,
barren, bitter, in love only
with your regrets & despised enemies
your parents, the breeders, the ones
who gave you life, the greatest gift
of two people, so proud you divorced
them, and like a snake with Eve,
titled yourself ARTIST, with no leader,
no hero, no damsel to rescue, no
kingdom to serve, to die to honor,
only critics, court buffoons,
entertainment for bored courtesans,
whose myth fades with each second
that recedes, to be replaced,
by a wrinkle, sloth of wit,
appeal for lust reciprocated
with rejection, an annoyance,
a hanger-on, a barfly, a boor,
a bore, an ornament of spite,
a swindler, a nabob, a mite.
Skittering across the floor
of the desert, a scorpion,
whose poison has no bite,
no fang, no prick, whose
gesture yields no delight,
a jester, now contrite,
whose rear window seizes
no light, the vultures circle
a square, a pot to piss in,
a relic, a frieze, a victim
of wind, a victim of acid,
deformed of visage, deformed
of phlegm, no alchemy to preserve,
no arts to disturb, to abjection,
no lure, no bait - inevitable,

>

ON PAGE 18 it is water the weary
desire, for the desert is real,
and at Babe’s we trafficked in the un-
real, real, who was a one-armed
veteran, who chortled corridos

- I couldn’t believe it, when
he died, until I saw the paper,
read the notice

RED TED’S BLESSING [Terrible Ted]:
The only thing can calm you me or any
body else is the love of most holy
Yahweh, through the salvation of his only son
Emanuel> I still see him on the haunches
of that a-historic beast, loping across
the chemical sands of White Sands
the proving grounds, where I survived
the onslaught of tarantulas, while
devouring the content of a shoebox
of drugs, seeing half a continent
in a month, including Yosemite, under
a full moon, by El Capitan, when
a deer walked right up to me
in my stupor. Paul was there,
the son of a birdman, an artist.
No one gave us permission. No one
could stop us. We ripped the seats
out of the brand new Elkhart custom
van and rode the freeways in one
giant loop, from Chinatown to Santa
Fe, reading Louis L’Amour and making
prayerful drawings, posing next to
Redwoods, on acid at the Grand Canyon,
then Vegas, and neon, in the Rockies,
at the top, further - I didn’t know
what was happening to me. I have
been so lucky. God bless the Middle
Class. God bless the Highway. God
bless RocknRoll, so much I named my
black wolf dog after it, and I would
blow smoke in his ears, before we
crept into the night, into the Pecos
Wilderness.

>

THE CHEMICAL GIANT and other love stories
by Pablo Bruto ***

- A sermon first delivered in June of 88
in the Church of What’s Happening Now
- the very reverent Red Ted, graduate of
UT Austin, presiding.

>

…

>

Rudy loved Hawkings. I can’t write much
about this conversation, without giving
away too much, of what you’re require not to,
but suffice to say, the key’s in the lock
and the turning’s done. The bad guys don’t
win this time, and they never have, and they
never will, but that don’t matter much
to the young soul in the battered coil.
Usually. It was a pretty Santa Fe sunset
or sunrise. I looked into the clouds
and met each Thunder by name.

>

In order to close out the text,
a dimensional move is required,
bringing the back to front…
Folding time, upon a moment of grief
of loss, the death of a creative action,
THE creative action, not THE Magazine LA,
which is dead, not Art LA, which is postponed,
not a meet with Juan Devis, not Durga Devi,
who will never meet a fate periodical or
be put off,

this Revolution was never televised,
was not dependent on new media, convergent
media, declassification or de-definition,
POP, or TCP/IP, not a New Genre, never
transmedia [maybe trance medium], the old
ways in no need of transparency, inherently
harmonious with degrees of light, passages,
finely woven tapestries of sentience,
not contingent, unboxed by origin, ever
unpredictable by man or the insatiable
artificial person, who must blast big
holes in human experience to encourage
dependence,

“You ask why
I write this book
It is written
in the name of Freedom
She [anthropomorphized
though not as an artificial personhood
but as an affiliation
with love
passion
devotion]
I write this book
I sign it [PJM]
my first child »

What I could not conceive then
was forgiveness, yet now acknowledge
for the natural persons in the story
absent survivor’s remorse

No artificial forgiveness
for artificial persons.
EVER. NEVER. NEVER. EVER.

- and for all you semi-artificial
natural persons, we’ll meet in the Matrix,
the Rhizome, and according to the portions
the percentages of your sublimation,
so will forgiveness attach.

ON PAGE 29 you will discover
another prayerful drawing
depicting your share of paradise
[or so I believe, though what to do I know?]

ON PAGE 28 it becomes clear
no natural person is abstract enough
to embody FREEDOM more than as projection,
unless the water molecule bonds with the
Flow, as prescribed, which introduces
the notion of liquids and resistance
as a science of estimates and reticulation

AMERICAN F/”made to undress in the wilderness”
of Yosemite - with correct nomenclature - arisen
from a grave mistake in the hunting of natural persons
Because guns don’t kill people, artificial persons, do -
Jefferson in Paris, American dawn - a late model
Chevy, making out, creating window views like Drucker
A looking glass, strapped onto the sun like wings
a late-night delirious love, as one calendar ends
and all are obviated. Lizard love at dawn. No
Tyrannosaurus or Rex. Lex and a Thesaurus as replacements,
a mechanical reproduction, on the assembly line,
sung to the tune of “All I Have To Do Is Dream”
by the Everly Brothers.

Freedom is beans and rice
a seed garden in spring
a ridge of blue shadows
a twilight hunt through the grove
a known  trail
wine and a table
circled with friends and family
laughter, song

A couple should never vow unilaterally
Not a man, sure
In the tongue of the artificial person
For their love will surely die,
while the artificial succeeds them,
a moron [not the computer]
- the Alpha is not the Omega,
the Zero is not the One.

no union can be forged
on a lie. That man can think
a person to life.

Only Freedom teaches the Master
the lesson, that no man is the owner
of another, and not one kingdom built
by the slave has yet sustained
& never one will. The greatest King
- the best example for all -
was Edward Longshanks felcher son
who died in screeching agony,
red hot poker up his arse. Freedom
was in that room. no hand on
the instrument, no word to exclaim
no eyes to see, no joy, disdain.

The corporation is Edward 2,
both father and son, black-robed
creator long since turned to dust,
a parasite, unnatural, a golem
interminable, by law established,
by Law to be laid low. If you
should meet a corporation
on the Road, Kill him. This
is prey you cannot devour,
cannot pray over, and thank,
comfort in transition and
return to the earth.

Trust no artificial person.
Trust no artificial song.
Trust no artificial art
Trust no artificial love.
Trust nothing artificial,
for nothing that cannot trust,
is trustworthy. Trust is the
foundation of love,
as each child reveals
and art is a love of children
and so is the song.
The artificial person is the KILLER
of all these and beauty,
Yosemite, Yosemite!

People, songs, art and love
Are not property, so Freedom
Sings, in trust!

Trust fears no artifice,
Freedom fear naught.
No terror artificial
can touch Freedom.
Freedom does not torture.
Freedom does not hide slavery
with names, with distance
or trickery, or flattery,
or payoffs and policy.
Freedom is not plastic.
Freedom is not petrochemical.
Freedom is not money.
Freedom is not ownership society.
Freedom is not managed,
Freedom is chosen, not parceled…

On and on.

White Buffalo: “Life is like sucking honey
off a thorn.”

The Signmaker smudges me
with his peyote fan,
saying in this Time,
as in all times,
a few hold the world together,
and a few try to tear it apart,
and we choose and we choose
and this is Freedom,
which will never lose.

JR: “I am not a killer,
but I know how to kill.”

The artificial teacher
whose education is “the rags
of bondage [White Buffalo]”
instructs his followers
with this or that.

Freedom is unteachable,
but must be learned,
then chosen, and therein
is the crux.

>

THE ESSAY ON THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION by Pablo Bruto III

[Traverse]

>

SCENE:
There’s a dead dog in a tipi of stones
killed by a truck on the frontage road.
The flies, ants, and other critters
take over now. They make a buzz.
The rot is awful in the early summer heat.
The carcass looked peaceful enough,
at the start of the process. In my grief,
I get this puppy corpse mixed up with my

Boy - does that get the party started!

Dear Dead President. You were no hero.

You were the embodiment of a specific
strain of American selfishness, a brand
of narcissism, which in finer folk is
tempered by actual innocence and sober
determination, an agrarian sensibility,
a spirit of practicality, and a balance
of pride, derived of self-representation,
self-determination, within the context
of shared vision, commonwealth, rooted
in principles of equality, governed by
an overarching adherence to justice,
as a form of accountability. You acted
as if your role is the typical American,
but as has become clear, yours was a
pantomime. You were a puppet, a
marionette. Your masters were bankers,
the grim-faced Yankees, whose threaded
patterns of avarice and mendacity mimic
the open source of our new web. The lovers
of accumulated wealth and doctored
anonymity, unlike the beautiful structure
of Bill & Bob’s venture. Your handlers
love lineage, as with the hemophilliacs
and the cake-eaters, as opposed to the
progressions of Dalai Lamas or MacLean
[Duart] Clan Chiefs. Your scriptwriters
adore alliances and secret society,
exclusion and the invisible hand. Adam
Smith’s hand of greed joined with others’
bones, nodding skulls and ancient chants.
Every variety of debauch catalogued,
every ceremony of spiritual elevation
challenged. In the end, the reproduction
of self, from self, the end for the means.
Self-improvement, not by realization,
but by genetic manipulation or surgical
enhancement. The big Scheme of Things.

As the stream beds bake in the ever more
fiery sun. As the wind delivers ash or
earth to concrete wastelands. Private
armies of once-great nations of freeman
to serve the petty and venal aspirations
of the earthly Lairds & wannabe hierophants.
The long views are inevitably mediocre
and prone to trivialities in the short
term, the type that cost lives and livings.
Lack of conscience is the defining trait
amongst your Base, fiends that they are,
and worth the guillotine’s metal in all
instances. Fuck them and you.

I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. It is
my albatross. I salve the self-inflicted
wound by recognizing my youthful stupidity,
my desire to not conform, as my Mountaineer
peers knew better, good Union people, and
hunters, warriors in times of war, not
pretenders. Now, to their prolonged shame,
they are your staunch advocates, to their
detriment.

[SCENE: THE ANTI-ABORTIONIST]

In our play you are the doctor, or rather
you play the doctor, and in your skeletal
spectral fingers is the scalpel. On the table
is the infant, and at your side the nurse
Nancy. With great extravagance of gesture
you resolve to not carve into the child’s
flesh. In a gracefully charming soliloquy,
though hardly eloquent, only stilted - you
seemed always a little worried you would
forget the lines - the man who would be
President, the most powerful man in the
free world, only proved himself the man
whose great gift was pretense of power, as
proxy, not as the great stewards, but as
a buffoon, a clown dressed as a lead man,
a pimp, a seller of himself, but with
himself his greatest fortune, the free
world, to a cadre of dwarfs and inbreeds,
imbeciles with mannerisms and lisps as
ancient as their bloody homes, sustained
desperation is their  greatest marvel,
in not achievement, though they count
those as proudly and carefully as those
of their enemies they destroy from a
distance or in contrived circumstance.
The bomb is for them the dream. The drone
is their wet dream. The corporation is
their personhood and community. They own
without owning. They kill while eating
rich fare. This for the Geppetto is the
finest of realities, inducing a sensation
that refinement of the physical experience
is best accomplished remotely. While
chains of causalities bind the natural
ecology, the Manager, not a man, but a
Man, a Superman in a Super Class [not our
DC Superman, but Nietzsche’s], a capitalized
Man, a founder, descendant of founders, the
prime survivors - What delusion! - For each
is to die and that is not divine. It is what
we do on our timeline that defines the divine.

Oh, and THAT CHILD ON THE MESA begins to speak
in a voice none can dissemble and a language
none other can dictate, for the mighty of this
realm own nothing but their breaths and not even
this, when not-knowing is not the point, only
a point of origination, and knowing is pointless.

[REAR PROJECTION ON SILK, BACKSTAGE]

In real time, the same time, Man’s time, to
which he ascribes the qualities of timelessness,
as He imagines them to be, and which they are
decidedly not, Man pines for the era of his
ancestors’ wildings, by carriage and crop,
in the visitation of whores, offspring, in the
appearance of purity, a throne. Dispensation
by seal. A coat of arms, an armored manikin,
harking back to more dangerous history, clever
contrivances and courtly utterance, beyond
Romance, before its invention, the nuance,
the comedy of errors, the Bastille, the Gold
of the New World, salvation by florin,
Michelangelo’s dying slave, plagues and rats,
corruption and Apocalypse >

[MONTAGE]

< the diseased Oak, bedrock of civilization,
conquest of heathens [War on Terror], pilgrimage
and finally the creative destruction of spiritual
monopoly, in art once again the Confession, only
with no sin, since lesser souls are susceptible
to stain, or else history would speak differently

[SCENE}

So: the baby on the table does speak differently
So:: Man endows nurse with the power to kill baby,
pretending to refuse her that right, sure that
she will redouble her efforts, take up the blade,
make the cut, the ceiling above them glass, added
incentive.

[FROM THE SHADOWS, STAGE RIGHT]

: Be creative. Be innovative. Be entertaining.
:: We are all artists.

HIGH PRIEST:
But lo, behold! Tis the Dimensional Age!
The Age of Organization Man, the Epistemological
Era is done!

DOKTOR SPEEDKILLS:
[AS MERCURY]
Lateral and flat, horizontal!

WHITE BUFFALO:
*Find a cave or a ledge, and stare at a beetle.
*Study stone, fresh water and clouds, in that order, then ocean.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE, REAL TIME]

: I watched “Up in the Air” and the Backpack metaphor
(I thought) might be really effective to a person who
has never entered the woods with a gun, knife & grief
to meet Bear, with no expectation of survival, no
pre-awareness of the purpose of the task, no concern
about the outcome, no anticipation of rescue, no other
plans. Who lives out of two small carry-ons for as many
years, and longer, as a mode, a movement. Man fails to
discern THIS is the human condition. No psychology. No
culture study, but immersion without division. No over,
no under, only provisions and an evolving itinerary. No
time, only timing. No divorce between here and anyplace
else.

GAMEMASTER:
In the dimensional all is revealed as what it is.

WHITE BUFFALO:
What an amazing time to be alive.

NARRATOR:
The new media is contingent on the electrical grid.

*The Thunders rule the grid.
*The Spider rules the web.

GAMEMASTER:
Man does not.

THUNDER: Ha. Ha.

NARRATOR:
Every Man who builds a dungeon with gold
will live in it and die.

>

COMMENTARY:
: I remember now. The lunch with Red Ted occurred
before the trek up Monte Luna/Sol and the encounter
with the black bear. Ted offered asylum from the person
and event that I was evading [detail omitted]. What is
clear is abortion is clearly a factor, and cause + effect
a dynamic. Certainly psychological response is pertinent.
Theology cannot be excluded. On the timeline the moral
component is “forgiveness,” which admittedly is not
a philosophical concern, but more a spiritual matter.

QUESTION:
: Does the separation of theological and philosophical
schema directly coincide with emerging democratic mores?

> Followup: Separation of Church & State - does this apply
to states of being, especially duplicate states, which are
not identical to secondary states?

OBSERVATION [RE. “We exist and don’t exist all at once.”]:
BK - [OUTSIDE ASSERTION] I exist and I exist all at once.
Which makes me, what,
four times as existant as most people?

RESPONSE:
PJM - I think you underestimate here. In your case, each one
of your existing selves + other existing self, therefore
has another other existing self, which I suppose means
there are an infinite number of you, which I guess is true
of all double positives.

>

VERSION 2.0

[THRUST STAGE]

NARRATION:
A classic chase scene. The setting - several square miles
of high desert terrain. The bear has been separated from her
cub. The man has been separated from his baby. Grief conjoins
the two players.

Director and cast: Sentience is the shared medium.

- Many unknowns apply as motivation. Do we know what causes
a young man to smoke a spleef with a guy who looks like
a band member of ZZ Top, drink a couple of beers, then
stroll out into the fringe area of a wilderness, with no
water or food?

- What about the bear? We know a cub was treed in Santa Fe
the next day. What’s the likelihood that these events are
unrelated?

- Would we characterize the arc in terms of crisis or
obstacle, seemingly insurmountable?

- It is a binary system [Sun & Moon]. What about the
feminine element?

- What about insanity? The whole scenario seems totally
implausible. What kind of vehicle transports Paul to the
embarkation point?

- It’s a mustard-colored Jeep Cherokee. Is this detail
somehow germane?

- I’m  just trying to develop a visual atmosphere. We
need tone, people.

- According to the author, the build-up is relaxed, one
of the reasons Paul is unprepared for the dramatic intensity
that follows. He had visited Ted once before, on the Blue
Moon, and felt confident he would have no difficulty re-
tracing his steps to rendezvous on the pinnacle of Monte Sol
at Red Ted’s hooch and dog camp. Obviously, this expectation
was unfounded.

- Don’t these people have jobs?

- I believe Paul was painting most of the time, and working
construction-type gigs to pay bills.

- The receipts show he was spending much of the day in local
pubs.

- The record is somewhat fuzzy. It doesn’t appear as though
he was sleeping at all.

- What role does sleep deprivation play in the description?

The trace program point of origination exists somewhere
east of Santa Fe, by Wilderness Gate on Wilderness Way,
a subdivision consisting ofluxury homes, and St. John’s College,
a liberal arts institution [See Map].

The primary landmarks are two mountains, which indigenous people
have over thousands of years of continuous habitation in the region
come to regard as possessing certain identifying qualities. Local
myth tells of a giant who guards the pass between the two mountains.
The elevation is between 6-9,000’.

The air quality is generally very high, as is visibility. It is
an arid ecology. Wildlife is plentiful, although the influx of a
considerable new human population has induced a variety of stresses
on the environment.

Hiking trails are fairly common, and mountain bikers and runners
and their pets are users of the recreational areas close by,
including some parks like Atalaya. Some tension exists between
home owners and advocates of community land use.

- Is now a good time to bring up the interplay among the Tres
Gentes? Each of the cultures views the setting through not-necessarily
complementary lenses. Which perspective should we as representers
choose for depicting the narrative trajectory? Indian, Spanish
Colonial or American POVs carry baggage and provide context.

- Keep in mind that Santa Fe was undergoing Aspenization when
the event occurred. The emergence of the Internet was still on
the collective horizon. There were no cell phones, no digital
cameras or vocal recorders. The means of documentation were
entirely analog.

- Could a bear chasing a man happen today the way it did then?

- I don’t think so. The quarry would be tweeting every chance
he could, or texting animal control. Paul certainly would have
brought bottled water with electrolytes with him, and granola
bars.

- I think they had granola bars then.

- When was this - ‘87 or -8? Ronald Reagan was President. The
stock market was crashing, right? The go-go 80s were blowing
up and the Berlin Wall was coming down. Ollie North in uniform
testifying in front of the Senate [and Al Gore] occupied the
national consciousness. The Berlin Wall was about to fall.
Unions had been busted. It was the New Wave era, when the likes
of the Talking Heads overtook mainstream mainstays from the
hippie age. The punks were mostly gone. In America, the Mall
was rising to prominence. The AIDS epidemic was on. The Human
Genome Project was funded. Prison populations, driven by the
rise in crack cocaine business and its effects, were expanding
at an alarming pace. It was the decade of Trump and Bernie
Goetz, when Wall Street and the American Terror problem in the
Middle East began to dominate the economy and political discourse.

- How did Paul land in Santa Fe, after graduating from Notre
Dame?

- He had a motorcycle wreck. Head trauma, studies have shown,
can cause behavioral deviation.

- New York City overwhelmed him.

- Van Gogh’s paintings were being auctioned for record prices,
with “Irises” garnering over $50 Million. Art palaces were springing
up in the oil baron cities and on the East Coast. The art stars
of POP replaced the Abstract Expressionists as the current Super Class/
neo-Robber Baron constellations formed in the first big Post-War
de-regulation boom.

- So, this is the context.

- Do you remember Jim Bakker? Rock Hudson? This is the day the
sexual revolution died.

- What a fucking mess.

TECH Description:
The bear’s pursuit of the author is depicted as
double POV. The two-camera configuration is staged as a symmetric
flip screen array. The rendering is accomplished onstage [not
in editing software [See “Swimmers” video]/ The moves are

1) Correct orientation
2) Flip horizontal/composite mode darken/lighten {throughout}
3) Flip vertical
4) Flip horizontal

>

THE SEVEN SYMBOLS by Pablo Bruto III

“There’s about a Communist behind every woodpile.” - Terrible Ted

[The recounting of the author’s encounter with a black bear on Monte Luna and Monte Sol in Santa Fe, New Mexico, mostly from notes in a quasi-poetic forma, recorded not long after the event, and which, in the digital present, may raise some questions as to the nature of identity, as a binary or time-space-based function of memory and reproduction.]

Out on Monte Sol, in the Vortex,
{This story is True, to my best recollection.}
the Bear was either hungry or horny
or susceptible to attractions beyond my ken,
or capacity to describe, A Howling,
A terrible hue and cry, A Blue Moon,
Coyotes in packs roam the ridges, singing,
The ghosts of Mexican Wolves, joining the Chorus
[The High Priest gave me a Book of Horus]
The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Tibetan one also,
The clamor of baying to tell the Wanderer BEWARE
be wary, where crows and ravens battle with you
for sustenance, food includes YOU, made of water,
as in the GILA, where the Mechanic had set us adrift,
the ecosystem designed to digest you, needs your
water, the vehicle for dreaming,

COLT the sole soul brother, “getting dark, too dark
to see,” everywhere once under water, agua, giant lizards
roaming the vast seas in relentless foraging for prey,
by the night of the moonlights starry starry, and I see
it now as Vincent did, due to surgery, but then my optics
were skewed or distorted or warped by chemicals, mostly,
food for thought, devoured at Bert’s Burger Bowl, with Freddie,
a St. Bernard mix, minus neck flask, and Thunder his lover,
a miniature pincer, humping by the carry-out window, for two
hours, while we laughed, Teddy and I, and gobbled green chile
and cow meat on white bread, milk shakes and fries, All-
American. I gave him a stereo, which he later threw down
the mountainside, when the batteries died, that idiot, High
Morals, Morale low.

From these notes: we spoke of pregnancy, Junior High School
fellatic enlightenment, a lower Chakra activator, the intermingling
of liquids, juices, & I had a Dream, fast forwarding the tape,
a Bear Dream: I see a procession of Souls, at first perfected
beautiful and whole, transmigrating as in floatation, or elevation,
directional hovering, moving, over treacherous precipices,
backbones of stones, the same ones through which I stumbled
exhausted to this place, then the procession indicates devolution,
the intermixing of mutant strains, children with appendages protruding
from their necks, bulbous useless digits or growths… They plead
with me for salvation, or at least normalcy, and failing the mean,
chemicals.

These are your children.

>

PERFORMANCE ELEMENTS

Stage Direction for “I Love You, Monster”

Narrative: DREAM SEQUENCE/MONTAGE

[Monitors over the stage screen 80s-grade video
featuring long-hair slasher rock band]

Song:

U maul & poke my baby in drunk madness [YADDA YADDA]
Brand fingerprints body with 9 digit No.s [YADDA YADDA]
Pricked gourd with venom/anti-venom needle [YADDA YADDA]
CRACK HEADS - red bricks, cop-lights or dream sticks [YADDA YADDA]
Metal rulers on skin, nuns in black n white [YADDA YADDA]
Ratchet/wrench the volume down, down [YADDA YADDA] [YADDA YADDA]
- p-p-pop THE RENTS pills or electric towers [YADDA YADDA]
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

[Sung one time, then resampled digitally and distressed in real time.]

>

[Stage with radio towers, images of Very Large Array adorn the theater. Stage 1 is Pros. Low Hum pervades environment {12 Tones}. No gels in sequence {Black & White, with Flash patterns, as in lightning}

[Projections of documentary photographs/film from various labor movements]

[Tom Joad soliloquy audio output and strobed visual projection on silk suspended parallel to floor from grid]

[STAGE MANAGER MIXES AUDIO IN THE AUDIENCE’S HEADPHONES, each row with independent sound array and tone score]

[Homeless man in Army fatigue jacket, filthy jeans, weathered roper boots, dreadlocks {red], thick prescription glasses with duct tape repairs, flannel shirt, dancing madly back and forth stage right]

CHORUS:

“COME ON BABY
F*** ME TONIGHT
UNDER THE MOONLIGHT
LIKE THE COYOTES DO!”

[Chorus by Red Ted]

>

[HIGH PRIEST on APRON, CENTER STAGE; spoken once, digitally repeated, with layered variations]

A Prayer:

I can’t figure this out. Which is more real? Electronically-speaking. Amen.

[JUST IN FRONT OF BACKCLOTH]

>

[SCRIM, UNFURLS, SEMI-OPAQUE AT OBLIQUE, STAGE LEFT {see production sketches}]

A Bad Drawing.

>

[MULTIPLE SOURCE DATA, ANIMATION/LIVE VJ MIX]

Song 2: (IN THE MANNER OF LOUNGE SINGER)

On the Mountain in May
The storm swallowed up the day
The wind it did blow
The townfolk flew
& all this po’boy can say

Is -

(IN THE MANNER OF DELTA BLUES)

Jive to me missy in the mo’nin’
Jive to me missy in the mo’nin’
Jive to me missy
Jive to me missy
Jive to me missy in the mo’-o-nin’

>

“Not a bad sermon fo’ a small cong’e’gation.” - Andrew the Bar Drunk

[MEME]

>

We exist and don’t exist all at once.

>

Many years later, to summarize, I accompanied a friend
to the end of the Red Road. Returning to this world
meant confronting waste, ugliness, neglect, evil, in all
its manifestations - well not, all, but enough - talk
about nausea, as fleas feast on your lower legs,
pesticides of no consequence, unbearable heat, broke,
living on brisket and walking, walking - as the hosts
looked elsewhere, and lust, greed, envy, plus four,
predators abounding, the worst exposed, nearly too much
to take, the poor defeated brother on the corner of
South Congress, weeping and begging for help as a
thousand cars sped past… Like returning from space.

>

“Minutes accumulate like the skulls of the weak”
Whiling away the hours with the fellows, these impetuous
swivers… to use the old term. Prior to YouTube. I must
have been reading Barth and the Sotweed Factor. Ebenezer
- I don’t think the movie has been made. I included a
notation on Job and connected this to employment, or
unemployment, which may advance the narrative to Berryman,
and Dream Songs, and the dimensional array of dramatic inventions
formed as “players” or “characters” - as in Joyce or Pynchon
or Elliot, “actionable” as facets of the author within the
contextual narrative, super-voce, or masked in the manner
of the pantheon, or godly courts, in a progression from
abstract to imagined, then asymmetrically migrating
to Buddhist formulations, as in a scroll depicting a
procession, the movement of the figures animated behind
the eyes of the viewer, not as the illusion of motion,
in a frame-action sequence with space between each cell,
but in a seamless quicktime wraparound configuration,
stitched by hand or cursor, clicks and toggles, but
then how to account for Bukowski, the wife beater, the
drunk, Berryman too, on good authority, but I’m reading
the manuscript online “hey, Pablo” Which is what my
Norteno plevy called me…

>

When I traveled to Scotland I met Sir Freake, which was
fine, but we never managed a conversation in print. Now
there are Zeelio and Milo and 4D Tommy and Veronica.

I
miss the ones in this text.

>

I miss Terrible Ted and Bruce Colors, not Robert The
who had his ferocious partner Black Douglas, whose
living ghost the mothers of England used to frighten
their children to sleep. I miss the curly mangy locks
of Ted’s dreads & his many many scars, his Spanish
greetings through fucked up few remaining teeth, his
eyes behind those always broken or differnt glasses
indicating fierce intent, a well of wrath, and mirth.
When we all got high, I felt completely alive in the
aftermath, walking through the Santa Fe darkness. If
you’ve tried it there, you know what I’m talking about.
“When I depart everything lives”: Berryman leapt off
the bridge in Minneapolis. “during the time he drowned.
The laundry lived” and 4D Faulkner… As Dad lay
dying last November, I thought of you William, or
Mississippi, but the difference is I had photos of
Mom and William David McLean in the hospital room
in Charleston (West Virginia) and the multiple
cameras didn’t capture all or even most of anything
that matters, which is a sad thing about prose, or
writing, though I’m partial to Wilfred Owens I prefer
David Jones, thanks to John Matthias, Yvor notwith-
standing. & Huron (the poet, not the Indian, not
the lake) - a Viking metapoet, sketching mindlessly
next to Tom Duffy, whose name I remembered by
picturing in inner spatial continuum the man
on his ridiculous hybrid bicycle, or his strange
fingers rubbing the 1st edition Dickens serial
tracts, twinkling like a star in the desert night
or a reflection of the moon on the Pacific,
long since breathing his last exhalation, shuffling
into the claustrophobia-inducing graduate classroom
which I stole into after threatening the Norton
Anthology guy, Leslie, and I don’t know what I
could have proven by being there or writing this,
other than words follow one through life, but
so do the shades of these people, their impressions.
I don’t know whether they exist now by virtue
of my memorializing them. But I hope so. It isn’t
the same thing as a painting.

>

So when Doktor Speedkills tells me he is a good
storyteller, or when the ancient Jewish Indian
trader calls me one last fall, decades later,
I can generate comparisons, at least, that never
fail to lift the bar. At least I made the gesture
though possessing negligible skill, to consecrate
the coming and goings of a few veritable people.
Who were remarkable to me, for whatever reason.
I nicknamed them so they wouldn’t worry I would
rat them out, because we were illegal so much
of the time. Tiny, Gandalf: “Relax - If we didn’t
feel comfortable with you, you wouldn’t be here.”

Morris the Cat, brother of a famous regional painter
[He beatdown Doktor later, which shocked me - naive,
I was, thinking we were all on the same team, but
there was no team, and it was no game, except “you
bet your ass.” I owe the High Priest [was this Marcel?]
$5… yes, extrapolating from the next line > I mistook
the string of nights survived as a ceremonial arc
& though I know it’s not true, I’m not certain I was
not right.

So I drew a chart like Maciariello’s, in red & black
ink, The High Priest, Owl Sundown, Mr. Greenjeans,
Randy, Cathy & Jade, The Gamemaster a/k/a Tiny,
Gandalf, Doktor Speedkills, Lou Dom & Don, Damon,
Doktor Snakeskin, Chile Verde, The Tuna, Rug Ron,
Tauro, Pablo, Maurice, Felito & Felita, Colors,
The Bag Lady with Money, Fia & Lie, Terrible Ted,
RocknRoll & Blackie, Donut, Gay Bertha, The Barker,
Tom O’Dude, Didondee, Glen & Mac, White Buffalo,
Berto, White Buffalo [again], Beal & Howdy, Dakota
& Shine, BarBar, Jewels, RW, Dewdrop, BonBon,
The Violent Femmes, Noe, Jack Good & Trasher…

no directionals, on grid paper, a Sipapu sign
at the top of the page, infinity on its side [8]
at the bottom - I remember most, but not all,
and each has his or her own story, but there are
many not on the list, and where are they all now?
Most dead. All beyond touch. None of their numbers
in my cell phone. There were no cell phones then.
There were military radios, basically.

“You have to get to know your characters” [Gamemaster]
“before you write about them.”

[At the end of the first section, I drive to Jemez
with Frances - I think this is the one where she
vomits & I propose to her… Was this the one where
the herd of elk, dozens of them, maybe hundreds,
crossed the highway, and one bull made giveaway
to protect the rest? Sometimes the repetition
of trajectories, due to dissimilarity in details,
causes jitters or confusion in the recounting
of events. Tragic circumstances do alter the
recollection of a sequence, like a blow to the
head, or a rip in the fabric. We were doing our
best to trigger anomalous outcomes, as in chemistry.]

>