Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Old Man on Old Knees Finds Meaning of Life

When he isn't mocking the plight of Asian countries Oggy supplicates himself before God Almighty and serves penance on his bony knees for sins that chase him through sleepless nights. Did he whisper "nigger" once when he was eleven? Did he fail to find that Creamsicle stick that he threw at Nick one afternoon at the Pierce Island Pool in dreamy humid New England air in 1983? Did he run over a squirrel during his flight over the Big Sur Mountains in a 1967 VW micro bus that had been worked on by every stoned hippy vagabond for 35 years and thus kicked out of gear into neutral at random and dangerous (uphill) moments distracting Oggy from the road ahead (as he fumbled with the stick and watched the logging truck hurtle toward him from behind) and the squirrel decided to cross the road at that very moment and never saw the other side...did he really write a mocking news story about destruction in Japan? Would he write this same article if a tsunami had wiped out La Paz, Mexico where a piece of his heart still resides on the sandy steps of his immortal beloved? these and other crimes haunt him and in the tenth century sinners like Oggy were tormented with leather straps and poked with holy spikes in the back or tortured rightly on a bed of nails. Here's the kind of thing Oggy will work on in 40 years. Look, that's Oggy in the middle holding the scroll hahahaha it reads, "He did the best he could..." How far we have come that Oggy can walk among you and be served food in diners and sleep in libraries. But that does not sooth his disturbed heart. Only penance can do that so Oggy has taken the art of the benedictine monks who decorated their basilicas literally for centuries using mosaic tiles and fresco mortar and blood and flesh from their worthless, unforgivable, ego-saturated knees. Has he learned his lesson? Has Oggy shattered a million perfectly formed tiles into ten million tiny pieces that he must reassemble on his knees? Has this task, enough to break the spirit of any hollow-eyed monk, brought toothless humility to Oggy or will he again march through the 6 story high racks of hockey equipment to demonstrate his aloofness? It is easy to be holy on the top of a mountain. Yes, put the screws to a man and have him on his knees for weeks and months. Tell him to hunt a quarter mile away for a dinosaur jock strap wayne greztky signature edition and watch his reaction as his electric forklift battery dies weakly and the chirping of hand held wireless guns call and answer each other through the vast warehouse of commercial masquerade. Then you will know his mettle. You will know how aloof and holy he really is. A million pieces and the dry flesh of wrinkled fingers and swollen joints accompany his pre-diabetic swelling prostate . Oggy's opinion is that he is stronger than any penance and will wear it down like the ocean against a Japanese nuclear power plant...he will not forgive himself and he can not be forgiven but given enough time he will learn to arppegiate his minor 7th flat 5 chords in all keys. He won't be broken as his loyalty/fidelity to his own misery is indefatigable. But he sees the silver lining on the outer edges of his self-absorption and that lining is the material for a work that will be the literary equivalent of this mosaic...in fact mosaic of misery is a type of theme that runs through the entire Santa Cruz story, broken tiles that Oggy must reconstruct but there is not enough time and so he pleads with everyone to STOP EVERYTHING so that., you see, the TILES CAN BE RECONSTRUCTED EXACTLY AS THEY WERE. but this is insane, say the city council members, and this is not practical say the revolutionary pot dealers with unregistered dogs and children who deny their social security number and the homeless prophets with their battery operated radios and cans of dented dreams from the discount rack of family survival all say, "What?" because the hissing in their ears is not static from the radio that has no antennae but is rather the damage irreparable to their inner ear drums that sounds like locusts in the night sky over an Alabama swamp. They don't know what you mean that things should ever stop. Stop? They can't stop and anyway look at this growth on my toe it itches real fucking bad and I ain't got no food and look AT MY BABY IN THE SWIFT RIVER! Don't you got no sense to dive in after the dogs of war! HAHAHAHAHA! And Oggy, only Oggy, would not heed their plodding ascension to another insane time, only Oggy would think there MUST BE A WAY TO STOP EVERYTHING SO IT CAN BE FIXED...BECAUSE IT CAN"T BE FIXED IF IT KEEPS MOVING. Like fixing a moving airplane...impossible,,,,unless....unless you pretend it isn't impossible....either speed up or slow it down...that they can just be convinced to stop,,,,and the mayor will listen to you and impose a mandatory moratorium ON EVERYTHING. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN FOR THE TILES... ANd the WOLVES! WHAT ABOUT THE WOLVES? All tiles and broken pieces of broken tiles... So, you see, this mosaic project will not amend the broken bones of his soul but it will give Oggy a better method of defining his madness and thus translating it into something his computer will eat and shit out to others. It is in fact a kind of symbolic representation of his goal to reassemble the universe into the orderly system THAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE! But why did he break the tile then? Why break what is not broken? Because that process of reassembling the million pieces that were foolishly broken is the act that Oggy is being denied because the mayor will not mandate the reversal of insane progress. "WE NEED TO THINK IT OVER FIRST! PLAN IT OUT": "There is no time for that. We are falling." "No! No, we..." "We're falling in the sky to our deaths and you can't stop." "I can. I can fly." "No, you are falling like me and you can't fly and you can't stop." "That's defeatist talk." "That's true. And you are flapping your wings." "Yes." "Stop. Stop flapping. Just sit at your desk.," "No. The desk is hurtling downward." "Yes it is. Sit and work." "And die." "Yes." "Never. Not until all the tiles are put back IN ORDER!"
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.