Ernie Jitterbugs with Paul

As I stare out the window of a schoolbus driven for 32 years by a man falsely identified as Ernie, roadside reflections cast from the other side reveal images of life’s false realities. Both are real, but only one is true.

Ernie’s real name is John. No one cares. Neither does he. John was captive--- Ernie is free.

As the bus rolls on the endless highway, I gain access to Ernie’s MKULTRA-fueled vision of truth. It is colorful and warm. The muzak ceases as an unseen captain declares “Ship dead ahead governor” and our captain recasts our voyage to a fab submarine.

I’ve never said ‘fab’ before, I think I’ll use it again sometime.

A surrounding voice states "we are on the dark side and if you look inward you'll see a pig flying over the wall." I look inward and see our vessel precariously drift through the Sea of Holes in a cloud of Green—or is it the Sea of Green in a Mind of Wholes? I feel whole and as this surrealization continues, the world continues to expand through the telling scent of Jitterbug Perfume.

I realize that the present from Aunt Lynn in ’84 presents a new presence of mind for us all. Past gifts of kindness 22 years later become future impulse purchases for a college student searching through racks of dusty books for dusty answers to dusty questions that in the end will turn us all to dust.

I stop upon a familiar name--- Tom Robbins. My Tom Robbins is not a famous author—he’s a guy that I toked up with at a creek in the blistering Tennessee summer of 2004 (who just happened to be a teacher at the high school that I just graduated from). I should make some witty pun about high school but I choose not to because I learned more in that smoke-filled summer than in those four years.

My Tom Robbins taught me about the importance of me.

Their Tom Robbins taught me that immortality is a choice and that we can beet life. That’s B-E-E-T, but I’ll let you work that one out.

Unbeknownst to me (or to either Tom Robbins), the key is found in three postcards that rain free from the leaves still bound by this liberating book of Dance and Olfactory Pleasures. From these postcards, I start to construct the Seven Layers to the Meaning of Life.

Level One: The ever-present war that rages between Apollo and Pan for supremacy. Apollo has Diana while Dionysus backs Pan. Order against pleasure; sacred love squares off against the unchaste fuck. I remind myself that gods do not die until we stop believing in them and although Olympus is a world away, a single man-child on a stage in Athens must decide their fate. With this decision I too become a god because I believe in me.

Level Two: Washington’s San Juan Islands

Level Three: Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.” Marley may have sampled it, but the truest musical message ever was in the original.
When possible, get off the bus and get on the train.

Level Four: Your first fuck

Level 4.1: Your second fuck (and so forth…)

Level Five: Maurice, The Rocket, Richard, Slapper and (most importantly) Tenacity.

Level Six: My sister’s ultrasound this afternoon and the virgin knowledge that I am going to have a niece (this was written the night before she found out, but I’m sure that it is a niece). The love and greatness that child brings to the world even though she will not meet it for another four months. She will do great things. She will also have failures. She will live, she will love and she will create.

Level Seven: Smile-- you are loved and so are they.

The Prayer of the Pass(ed)over

You, like my own father, fucked up his own life by fucking the wrong woman while being fucked up. Now I am orphaned in a world of Wal-Marts and WMD’s, McDonalds and mass suicides, the killers on the Left and the killers on the Right, Baghdad and Blacksburg-- both are East of Eden.

Cain—the original tourguide—went out of business because of an oversaturated market. We all share his trade, marked by common paths full of double crossing bridges long burnt to rubble.

These days even Abel has a stand filled with brochures of maps to the stars—the closest any of us can hope to get to Heaven. He charges $3.75, the same price of the Chinese food dinner that now upsets my stomach and reminds me of you.

In our name you prey,

All men