NOTE:
As explained below, I wrote this whole entry before attending my own family's holiday festivities (we had already attended my sweetheart's family's banquet; and a day of restlessness separated the events, during which I was tormented by anxieties). But I'm adding this short italicized intro here AFTER having attended my own family's festivities, for I feel the need to report that the event went well: so well, in fact, that I now worry that the following "interim" entry contains thots that are unjustly harsh, due to their being influenced by so much anticipatory stress. But I give them in their uncensored & unfiltered form, for the sake of honesty. I want to uncover the ugly parts of my soul, as well as the pretty parts (if there be any), in this public-private journal. I just hope I don't end up hurting anyone's feelings. So take my blab with a heaping helping of patience. Think of me as a tiny dog and harmless that screams yip-yip-yip when you pass: I'm only angry cuz I'm scared.
Dear diary,
I am making this confession IN ADVANCE OF my own family’s No-thanksgiving (my in-laws’ affront was on Thursday, and one day sits in-between these horrors-of-horrors, which is today, 24 Nov. 2018, which is eleven times more evil than Friday the 13th), so I gotta just let my thots wander here, otherwise the anticipation will make me too uptight. I’m already a little uptight.
[In the next paragraph, I shall use the American idiom wheel and deal, which means: to engage in commercial or political scheming, especially unscrupulously. As in "The wheeling and dealing of the Wall Street boom years."]
More than usual, these holidays make me think of children. Even tho my in-laws’ get-together was a mercifully child-free affair, the missing sister (one of the siblings was absent because she lives on a faraway planet made entirely of gypsum board) has a litter of kids, and people end up talking about them: So-and-So is six now and starting to learn how to wheel and deal; Name Removed just turned two, he sure looks like he’ll make a good banker; and the female newborn is taking well to her Christian indoctrination.
& now when I go to my own mother’s house at 4 p.m. today, the event will center upon my brother Paul’s new kid, whose name is Frank Booth Ray. Paul is the first and only member of the Ray Clan’s "Oregon Trail" Generation who’s bothered to spawn.
Xennials (also known as the "Oregon Trail" Generation and Peer Group Catalano) is a neologistic term used to describe people born during the Gen. X or Millennial Cusp years, typically from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
I say, my brother Paul dared to father a child. I myself don’t dare: I’m your typical selfish male. I want all the time and space to myself; I ain’t sharin my gruel with no brat. If I were Jesus, I would not suffer the little children to come unto me.
Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14)
Fuck that heaven. But if it’s unavoidable that I attend, then let me be locked up in adults-only heaven. Cuz they got guiltless orgies there, cuz everyone’s unashamed and naked. And their eyes are wide shut. (Cuz it’s heaven, thus only the LORD can behold the proceedings.)
Anyway, as I say, later today, at the Ray Fam House Jam, in order to honor the young life in our presence, everyone will be trying to cut way back on their alcohol consumption and to forgo using swear words. Speak only clean language...
For the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:6)
I say, on account of the youth, often, during the holidays, we put an extra effort into avoiding so-called dirty language. Genesis 3:14; Don’t curse that snake, God.
Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.
That’s a Proverb of Hell (by William Blake) which I quote here a lot. I wish these high holy days were more of a blessing, I wish there were less that is bracing about them; but it’s a perfect nightmare: the baby-boomer generation, which begat us all, invented a tradition that’s so stressful it drives one to a life of drinking and swearing; whereafter the formal proprieties that provoked this rebellious behavior, of course, prohibit such behavior, which prohibition drives one to further depths of debauchery.
It’s somewhat thrilling, now that I think of it.
I assume that this is why people choose to become sailors. You ever heard that saying “He curses like a sailor”?
Moreover, in the ancient days of 2018, when the world was still uncivilized, if one wanted to participate in an all-female love fest, one would need to visit a “sailors’ den”; for that was the sole place where bliss could writhe freely.
What is it about sailors that makes them so advanced? I say that it’s because they travel the world. Their custom is to sail the seven seas in a sieve, and stop at all the interesting places. Now when you meet strangers, you always put your best face forward. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, so instead of teaching new acquaintances your culture’s Ten Commandments, you just break both tablets and begin the dancing and merrymaking.
And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the hotel’s powder room, the people gathered themselves together unto Bryan Ray the Counterpoet, and said unto him, “Up!!! make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that dragged us out of the Wasteland of Finance, we wot not what is become of him.”
And Bryan said unto them, “Suffer all of your neck chains to be gathered unto me.”
And all the people brake off the copper chains which were adorning their necks, and brought them unto Bryan. And he received them at their hand, and put them all into the microwave, which was larger than the cauldron used by the witches at the start of the play Macbeth, and the microwave wrought on high for seventy-seven seconds, whereafter it dinged, and Bryan retrieved the melted globules from the oven, into his heat-proof mittens, and he fashioned the result with a graving tool and made a shapely molten calf, as of a leg, which he then smoothed into the form of a full human female: and he said, This be thy goddess, America, which brought thee up out of the Wasteland of Finance.
And when Bryan stepped back to admire his latest creation, he decided that it would appear more alluring if he added a plinth for it to pose upon; and Bryan issued a formal complaint, and said, “To morrow we shall dedicate a feast to this LADY”; for he titled his goddess in opposition to Jehovah (the LORD), and her name was unspeakable.
And the citizens of Apple Valley in Minnesota rose up early on the morrow, and offered peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And then they gathered to screen the motion picture Wrong Cops (2013), together as a congregation, for that was the community’s favorite film. And then they rose up to play again.
But meanwhile, back in the hotel’s powder room, the LORD said to Moses, “Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the Wasteland of Finance, have beautified themselves: They have turned aside quickly out of the way which thy cronies commanded them: they have made them a sexy goddess, and have worshipped it, and have toasted spirits thereunto, and said, ‘This be thy goddess, America, which has brought thee up out of the Wasteland of Finance’.” And the LORD said unto Moses, “I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-nippled chorus: Now therefore let me alone, that my desire may wax hot for them, and that I may ogle them: and dream of making them a great nation.”
And Moses besought the LORD, and said, “MILORD, why doth thy lust wax hot against these sailors, which thou hast brought forth out of the Wasteland of Finance with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the managers and stockbrokers speak, and all of the landowners and executive officers say, ‘For mischief did Jehovah set our wage-slaves free from their jobs, to slay them on the battlefield of revolution, and to consume them from the face of paradise’? Turn thou therefore from thy lovingkindness, and repent of this attraction for thine own subjects!!”
And the LORD God repented of the kiss which he intended to blow to his people. (Exodus 32:1-14)
So it was hard to find a good substitute for all the words in the above plagiarization, because I had to make all the Israels into Americas, and I changed “land of Egypt” into “Wasteland of Finance”, etc… cuz I wanted to drape my own value system over the value system of the ancient days. I’m conceited enough to think that my way is better. Or, maybe if I try to be more fair, I’d say that THAT idea had its day, and now the time has arrived for OUR ways to dominate. And we’re all about love. Poetry, artworks, sensuality, kindness, forgiveness. No more money: forgive all debts. No more physical war; that’s vulgar: do warfare only via thot, on behalf of the Imagination.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
*
That last quote is Blake again, from his preface to Milton. These are the thots that I have, while I wait for Thanksgiving to attack. Just imagine having to put up with ME as your visitor, on this very important day. Would you find it worth the trouble of serving me turkey? I hope you would. I’d like to celebrate the holiday with you. But what would we be celebrating? Are we truly saying “Thank God for helping us to eradicate those previous tenants of this fine apartment! We slew them fair-and-square, and cleaned the bloodstains from off the walls; and now our children can’t guess the deeds that fortified their substratum! We’ll send our little Frank Booth Ray to college, where he’ll be unable to ignore the concept of rape, because he’ll either see, hear about, or participate in…
Or is it possible to avoid both raping and being raped? I myself have been lucky enough to’ve enjoyed a rape-free existence, unto this instant (and, one hopes, forever). But, as Edgar always sez in the play King Lear,
. . . the worst is not
So long as we can say "This is the worst."
That means, if my jaws are still flapping about enjoying this life hereto, then Jehovah still has an opportunity to overhear my jubilation and pounce upon it. For Jehovah is not contractually obliged to follow us around while clearing our pathway of danger. He is what he is: present one minute and absent the next. He goes wherever he goes. Like an elder sibling with an autocar. Rape-free and child-free.
I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again: Why does God consent to bless the womb of victims of rape with the miracle of life? And I’m not trying to make an argument for abortion, here; I’m just raising a conundrum regarding sanctity.
But I also (what’s the opposite of “frown upon”?) smile on abortion. And if you were to ask me “Hey, stupid, how would you like it if your mother had aborted YOU!?” — Verily, verily, I say unto thee: I’d prefer that to my present existence. Not that I’m desirous of death; what I really want is stability, which requires cold cash. But if my mom had opted to abort me, then I wouldn’t be here right now, having to stare at this ugly interface on a computer screen while composing popular blog posts. I’d be nine million different stars gestating. Or I’d be the frog that pilots the planet Mercury. (He lives in the milky core and drives always in a circle.) My point is this: I ain’t gettin reborn as no amoeba. My atoms are so complex that they’ve developed memories, which are transferable to new beings. That’s like a rich man discovering that he really can take his wealth into heaven! Even if all you do is stockpile old video game consoles in your garage; as soon as you reach the pearly gates, you can cast your possessions at God, and God will feel pain.
!!!
Damnitall, I’ve run outta time. Now I gotta go to work, and then race over to celebrate Turkey Day Two: Revenge of the Fuck Act. Because, never forget, all children are upshots of some Fuck Act. And I do not exclude in vitro fertilisation. Even poems are Fuck Acts (alternative reading: "Fuck Ax"). But the children deriving therefrom are superior to your globs of physical matter: your zygotes, your blastocysts and yolk sacs. What takes you nine days to fabricate, I can think in no time — and times infinity.
So, ya got me: I plead guilty to being a Poetry Supremacist.
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