💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › magazines › HOE › hoe-0916.txt captured on 2022-06-12 at 12:46:01.

View Raw

More Information

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

                ,...
                $$
                $$T""P$$ba,  ,gd&P""T&bg.   ,gd&P""T&bg.              
 ggggggggggg    $$    $$$b d$$    $$b d$$   $$$b   ggggggggggg
 """""""""""    $$    $$$ $$$    $$$ $$$bxxP&$&P   """""""""""
                $$    $$$ T$$    $$P T$$                      
 $$"""""" "    """"    $$$  "T&$bxxd{body}amp;P"   "T&$bxx$$


   " """"""$$
 """                    """"""                                         """
 ggg                        "Activated Charcoal"                       ggg
 $$                          by -> Tocoblock                          $$
 $$                                                                   $$
 $$              (* HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #916 -- 11/30/99 *)          .,$$
 `"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'

	My raw earth cannot be lost.  Even young I knew that chance
 sometimes has its way with you, that the truest and most real may
 evaporate, might disintegrate, might appear never to have been there at
 all.  But I witnessed raw earth, living infinite possibility, I nearly
 touched it, and when it faded I never thought to follow it.  I was sure
 it would return, Arthur-like, when most needed.  Where once there was
 certainty at least, at least there is still hope, so I have not yet lost
 everything.  All the sad night, under-lit slick streets where nothing,
 nothing can ever be completely clean have not convinced me otherwise,
 although I have often been stranded on these very streets screaming
 inwardly for the smallest glimmer of anything worthwhile, some reason to
 live or die, wondering if I, too, was finally fading to Avalon and if
 Avalon might secretly be hell.
    	On these streets I had cliche death-thoughts and thought, "Why
 bother?" as I thought why bother about anything and found no answer and
 so pressed on wishing there could be a difference between what I saw when
 I closed my eyes and what I saw when they were open and thought, "This is
 death of imagination." and thought this, finally, is balance, outward,
 inward, and wished, dimly, that it could at least be horrifying but it
 was not but was just nothing, nothing at all.
    	Now I knew joyless passion, the miserable non-misery of endless,
 uncontrollable mundane repetition and I thought, "Sex also becomes this,
 eventually."  And so it had.  Even Prometheus probably felt nothing
 before long, who waited for pain then felt pain, waited for pain then
 felt pain, until it was all the same and was neither pain nor waiting.
    	The black spots on reality that came just before the stomach pump
 were only windows to the slick streets and were also meaningless death,
 and I tried to sleep, to embrace them as I had embraced them before the
 overdose, slowly taking pills one at a time for two hours, but the doctor
 kept me awake so I could actually drink these streets as prescription, as
 activated charcoal, and live to see them again in reality and be stranded
 there again, where there are too few street lamps and no reason to move
 and so you just move anyway.  I would later spit this stuff out, but it
 has a way of staying with you, of commanding revulsion at the thought of
 eternal existence.  This was the cold night; these were the throes of
 soul dying, which is not a painful death but is slow.  In this light I
 told myself a joke and shrieked, because in this light humor was bitter
 punishment, reminding me not to attempt movement and to abhor meaning.
    	I remember being visited in a prison by Christ.  I mean quite
 literally that I was locked in a filthy cell, hungry, did not know if I
 was to be released because I was there for no reason.  At once I knew
 that I was not alone and I was at peace.  I knew I had to learn the
 Lord's Prayer and I knew whom I had to learn it from.  The person who
 taught me later became insane, kept stable on a steady diet of
 psychotropic pills, and now I know the Lord's Prayer and I remember that
 for a brief moment I was at peace.  I remember that I was at peace; I
 cannot remember what peace felt like, but I know it didn't feel at all
 like balance.
    	The sun eventually came up.  It grew warmer and I could see, but
 the streets are still there, superimposed on everything that should have
 meaning, that should be beautiful but isn't.  The activated charcoal has
 a way of staying with you.  Sometimes I wish I had not drunk the pure
 street the doctor gave me but had slept instead.  If the spots had
 finally come to rule my field of vision, maybe I would have been allowed
 a more pure hell, unsullied by the illusion of possible escape or the
 memory of raw earth.  If god would only abandon me entirely, rare
 glimpses of beauty might not create such an ache, such briar guarded
 denial, and then there would be no need to wander, vaguely hoping to
 encounter some accidental redemption.
	I read once that a certain tropical island is home to a species of
 turtle that crawls from the sea to the strand once in its life to lay
 eggs.  When finished, it is turned onto its back by wild dogs and
 devoured alive.  For this it is born.  If this is life, when do the dogs
 come that it might finally be ended?  Or better, when will I finally
 discover my dog nature and turn to devouring?

[--------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #916 - WRITTEN BY TOCOBLOCK - 11/30/99 ]