A story of one soul during two lives

Transmigrant Blues by Indi Riverflow

Archive for the ‘Transmigrant Blues’ Category

Is it the story of a girl having flashes from her past life?
…or a writer imagining his future destiny?
Is the girl insane? Is the writer vain?

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How hard will they look, though, really? Why did they go to all the trouble of scaring the bejeesus out of us with the hour-long sermon on the futility of escape, if we were really so hopelessly trapped? Starting to think it’s all just hype.

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Like an unwelcome long-lost lover who presumptuously returns and resumes residence without the tiniest accounting of possible changes in the interim, my alter ego has been pulling harder on the reins. Eager to pick up where he left off, diving into bed without noticing the new aftershave in the medicine cabinet or neckties in the closet. Ignoring the comprehensive remodeling the place has undergone in the past decade and a half, and the half-mad protests of the mistress: I have my own life, there’s no place for you here anymore…

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The problem, according to Llewellyn Reece, is that the ego, the sense of identity, is only partially inherent in the soul. Mostly it is a mask, based on your true self, but modified by time and place and circumstances. So when the keywords activate the memories, sufficient disparity might exist between past and present personae that for some time they might compete with each other for dominance. It hadn’t been of much concern at the time, since, whether I cared to admit it or not, preservation of ego had been precisely my goal, and I had felt it large and sturdy enough to survive any transformation. It hadn’t occurred to me that the new me might resent this. Selfish, but almost the opposite, since the net result is a total disregard of one’s own future needs.

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Crazy Bear was loaded to the gills, in more ways than one, so it was wise as well as lucrative to humor the dope-crazed madman. It was also fun, if you had a sense of humor; I-Victor, that is-knew him from the crackpot circuit. We made a casual friendship over the years out of an intense acquaintance, getting along, I suspect, primarily because we were both out of our minds. He had guided me along my first, fitful explorations of that which cannot be explained, but can be perceived by the sensitive, and instructed me in the fundamentals of the Art.

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Occupying a rather more modest nook next door is the Society to Restore Natural Selection, which is a new one to me. Girlish curiosity overcoming my haste, I skim a handbill: (more…)

I edge away from the entrance to the Cult of Cuckoo Ca-Ca, pick up my pace to quickly get beyond the horrible groaning inside the Masochist Gym & Sauna, and consider crossing the street entirely to avoid what I at first take to be an Episcopal Church, of all things-what on Earth is that doing here?-but calm down when I realize it is actually the E-piss-go-pal, a homosexual watersports collective and Ecstacy-drenched dance club.

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The chapel/dance floor is mostly deserted, as the action/services here are a strictly nighttime affair, but the Holy DJ is installed behind the Eternal Turntables, spinning the electronic hymns of the faith, and five or six psychedelic dervishes are still furiously contorting their way to dance enlightenment, with and without glowsticks, before him. Holoprojectors cast animated abstractions on every crevice of every wall, and multicolored lasers pierce the thick cloud of haze emitting from what I presume is the Sacred Smoke Machine.

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Well, it’s not a disaster. Obviously the Order, enhanced by my large “offering,” moved to more spacious and luxurious quarters. Maybe Melvin knows where they moved. I knock.

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Unbeknownst to me (though it was a predictable enough fuck-up), as I prated on about Socrates and his death sentence for corrupting the youth, among my unwilling audience sat the vengeance-oriented father of the school’s biggest and most incorrigible dealer, a sloppy, juvenile operator unconcerned with consequences because he knew he’d never truly face them.

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The prevalence of crack in Washington, D.C. shows that not only is the Pentagon actively importing cocaine, but that they are also too lazy to ship it much further than Capitol Hill.

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“Hi, Class!” I say, striving to sound cheerful yet cool.

“Hi, Victor!” the class chants back at me.

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The program, brainchild of Warden Cleevenhoff, is the only one of its kind, as my course is the sole offering of Sunny Oak’s continuing education curriculum, and is not attached to any attempt at a degree.

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“I call this ‘Murican Pie’.” He drains another voice-cracking tendril of phlegm from his gullet.

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“You need a war,” Mr. Pink stated, sinking comfortably into the red- cushioned plushness of the Throne.

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Shrub nodded, emerging from his daze. His father had made a humiliating gaffe once, in referring to the anniversary of that infamous attack, which had brought Murica into Double-U Double-U Eye-Eye; it would be good to supplant the event in the public memory. “But how do we get Juhpan to bomb us again? They sells us so many flying carpets these days.”

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The people of Murica were duly outraged. They took to the streets and demanded the heads of Assume Ibeen Plottin’ and Madman Insane. Evidence emerged that these shadowy figures with the strange names had masterminded a plot in which everyone in or from Rug Country was implicated, except, of course, the Hash-fiends who had actually done the deed at Mr. Pink’s behest.

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Stephen King? More like Salman Rushdie. “Thank you, Trombone, that was…interesting.” Seditious? Libelous? Paranoid? A good way to get yourself permanently silenced?

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“John Barth,” I insist. “We talked about fucking metafiction when we read fucking Lost in the Fuck-I mean, Funhouse. Metafiction. Who can tell me what it means?!”

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It feels good to walk out of prison, even after only an hour. Bad vibe doesn’t begin to describe it. Penitentiaries, are, after all, the closest thing to Hell which actually exist.

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“Okay, I want to talk about Ireland. Specifically, I want to talk about the Famine. About the fact that there never really was one. There was no famine. See, Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes. All of the other food, meat fish vegatables were shipped out of the country under armed guard to England while the Irish people starved.

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“Suddenly I was in danger. I’ve never been in a fight in my life; throughout school I’d always bribed a tough kid to be my bodyguard. And as a teenager I had become a pacifist. I knew that this skinny punk could hurt me. So I gave him the four bucks or so I had in my pocket, and said, ‘Here, now you’ve got more than me.’ And I felt guilty telling that monstrous one-quarter-of-one-percent truth. While literally the case for the moment, it was a cruel mockery, for he would never have as much, no matter how hard he tried, than I had won in the lottery of birth.”

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He takes a scoopful of hummus with his pita bread. “The novelty wore off after a week or so. One day I scored a ten-dollar bill from this guy with his son. A cop had pulled him over for DUI, but having the kid in the car had gotten him a break. He was supposed to cool it for a few hours before trying to drive. ‘Son,’ he said. ‘Remember Old Pappy, the nice old man from in front of the corner store? He’s in Heaven now, but I always give to the street people in his memory. I want you to always do the same.’ It brought tears to my eyes, but also a sick feeling to my stomach, which though empty, was still counterfeit. I was nothing like sweet Old Pappy.”

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A lump rises to my throat. “What do you see?” Crazy Bear sees auras and animal totems, and is regarded by several mutual acquaintances as a gifted clairvoyant. According to his third eye, I am, like him, a bear; though he claims I am a diminutive, lusty koala, while he himself is a Ukrainian black bear. The totem represents the last form, his theory holds, that a given individual occupied, prior to being human.

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Maybe I’ll cast a spell when I get home. Haven’t done that in forever. Seemed easier just to buy things. My spiritual health, I realize with a heart- stopping flash, has never been more precarious. When did I get to be so…worldly?

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She produces a small vial of amber liquid. “Laced with DMSO for fast action.” I stick out my tongue. “How deep do you want to go?” I hold up three fingers. She administers three hundred micrograms, more or less, first to me, then herself. The alcohol solvent mildly burns my tongue. I momentarily see stars. My belly tumbles in anticipation. My skin tingles.

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Llewellyn’s job is to sort and search these files, divining interconnections between them and leading the mouse pointer to the likeliest prospects. It is an inexact science, to say the least-but, with history to corroborate recollections of notable avatars, it is actually less so than, say, psychology, in which my past-life regression therapist holds a distinguished Ph.d.

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Llewellyn gazes at me quizzically. “I just composed the first line of Ulysses,” I explain.

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“Do you want to talk about it?” Llewellyn inquires softly. She has been sitting patiently, while I absorb the implications of a lifetime.

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“Sorrow sometimes teach a lesson well,
And I know that good can come from bad
So let’s look into that morning Star
‘Cause you know just who you are…”

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“Maybe three months until you start showing symptoms, if that. From there, it’s rapidly downhill. Bedridden in six months. Your type of malignancy has a survival rate of about five percent at a year. There are always miracles, of course.”

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Suicide suddenly seems very attractive.

Guns are for psychos; hanging and wrist slashing for halfhearted gestures. I’ve always been terrified of heights and there’s no way on Goddess’s green Earth I’m spending my last seconds watching a sidewalk or ocean rushing up on me. I’ve gotten plenty of that in cold-sweat nightmares.

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Maybe this is the wrong approach. There is opportunity, true, to embrace death in my own fashion; but do I thereby win? Is blinking out with a minimum of discomfort and maximum dignity the only available goal? It seems meager.

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Fortunately, I live not far from the hospital, and soon arrive in my crescent-shaped driveway, pulling in behind the RV and boat. I unravel the various locking mechanisms and punch in the alarm deactivation sequence.

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The music turns queer, distorted, choppy, sounding nothing like the well-worn Israeli psy-trance tracks that I know I set to play. It’s as if it’s being twisted through a time warp, so I’m hearing some beats and tones before the ones they follow.

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When I open my eyes she is before me, a radiant angel in a shimmering pale blue gown, quite literally glowing with K-glare and the background of strobes. Her lips are moving, but, curiously, making no sound; then I remember the fifty decibels of music, to which I had become totally numb. I quickly reduce it to conversation level.

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I stretch and blow out a pungent cloud of smoke rings. “I want to go to a concert or rave every night for the rest of my life,” I declare, passing the joint. “Come party with me. We’ll spend all my money. We can have large orgies here. I want to dance my life away.”

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“And you find magic from your God
And we find magic everywhere
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith in common ground the best that they were able.
Where does magic come from?
I think magic’s in the learning…”

-Dar Williams, “The Christians and the Pagans,” Mortal City, Razor
&Tie Entertainment/Burning Field Music c.1996

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But you’d have to be a Fool not to wonder, if Genesis is as accurate and direct as the New York Times: who did Adam and Eve’s children mate and breed with?

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I stumble inside to discover to my surprise and chagrin that it’s well after one p.m. Noon had come and gone without me even taking note of the shifting angle of sunlight and shadows. I must pay attention! I may have less than a hundred of those left. For that matter, it might have been the last one.

To Hell with notes. If the stream is meant to feed the river, there will be no stemming the tide when it rises. Just footnote it in my mental filing cabinet under: Heaven and Hell are states of mind. I’ll know what that means.

I strip and step into the shower, noting with distaste a thin layer of flab pervading my fleshbag. Soft living. My metabolism had gotten too accustomed to periodic lapses in the food stream to maintain the litheness of youth. I’m not designed for prosperity. Oh well. I’ll die fat and happy.
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To what end have I cut off half my life, the better half, out of mourning for a girl that even at the time I knew was not quite right? Time to put Molly away, filed properly as only the latest in a lifetime of love failures. It’s not about her. She was grossly inappropriate even if she had been inclined. I was addicted to Molly, like the ravers I was writing about. Artimitateslifeimitatesart. She fulfilled my primitive need for a facsimile of love, just as pills make fuzzy candykids hug kiss and screw every random stranger in the name of chemically enhanced affection.

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“You’ve gotten too dependent on the shortcuts, Victor. I think you know it’s for the best if you try to cope with the real world on its terms for a while. Why don’t I keep your gear safe for the time being, and bring it back when you’re more centered? Anything you try to do right now will backfire. Look at yourself. Regressed to infancy. I’m not without sympathy, but, shit, man, you knew better. Controlling others by magic-that was Hitler’s trip. The Dark Side of the Force, my friend. You’re lucky it didn’t work. That means there’s hope for you, you sabotaged it yourself, knowing that if you won her that way you could never say an honest word again. Black magic never pays.”

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I didn’t die, and life without magic turned out to be bearable, if not nearly as enjoyable and somewhat duller than the hallucinatory realm of infinite interconnectedness where I’d written my novel and danced the transcendent jitterbug with ghosts. Now I sleep regularly, and some of the things I say make sense. Life is more peaceful, anyhow.

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My Porsche suddenly seems pathetic and obscene. Families of four subsist on far less than this non-functional, difficult-to-maintain cliche of opulence cost. I resolve on the spot to sell it and donate the money to Crazy Bear’s food bank on Religion Row.

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I dash back across Objective without even checking the status of traffic and reach the sidewalk safely in time to be blown nearly over by the wind displacement of an angrily honking semi-trailer truck. Right on the edge, that’s where the real living is!

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I make my way through “Box of Rain” and a soulful if off-key rendition of “Black Muddy River” before switching over to the Marley clan, Bob’s “Rivers of Babylon” and Ziggy’s “It’s a Beautiful Day” and “One Good Spliff,” which inspires me to take an ambitious toke from my stealth pipe. Praise Jah. I cough through the chorus reprise before surrendering to silence. Before it seems that very much time has passed, I find myself confronting Illustration Avenue and the parasitic profit establishments operating on its periphery.

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