Abused By Illusions

I persuaded a gruff Tampa Bay area delivery driver to allow me to tag along on his mad cap Tampa Bay area thrill ride. He was resistant at first but I was soon able to persuade him to cooperate. It was simple really all I had to do was flash some pictures of said driver exiting a *furry party taken some days ago by my agents in the areas seedier underbelly. This thrill ride was sure to allow me to survey the natives in their natural environment while the city teemed in the natural swirl of pandemonium that is a hallmark of most modern major U.S. cities.

Million dollar homes within blocks of boarded up dilapidated buildings and housing projects created an interesting fresco for one, such as myself, with a trained eye in the art of neo-optic semi-synaptic psychological deconstruction. For sale signs line the streets here like psychotic exemplars on a multicultural American economic and social cancer screening. I first observed that the street people prevalent on the streets look as if the derive much more from the mainstream than they once did. Designer shirts coupled with ragged trousers and bed rolls recite a visual narrative that currently sweeps the urban scape of United States major metropolitan areas. The mantra of continual upward mobility has somehow trans morphed into the nightmare of downward economic and social spiral. Some have blamed the alchemist of finance for this seemingly new phenomena. Here, however, I will not digress to further muddy the waters with my own dribblings of sentimental utterances. The economic situation of the country is in utter chaos even the most blind among us can see this clearly.

In upscale neighborhoods Lotus, Mercedes, Royals Royce, and various and sundry luxury automobiles aprise the careful observer of continuing economic prosperity for the top tier of an increasingly top heavy economic house of cards. The slums in contrast speak volumes of the spreading want and despair gathering, like ominous storm clouds, over our cities both large and small. One can almost smell the coming storm on the stagnant air wafting through the city here. There is a foreboding feeling in the air at both mainstream bistros and back alley sandwich shops. Now and then I catch fleeting glimpses in the corners of tearing eyes an eerie expectation of the other shoe dropping and the reverberations toppling the entire unsteady house of cards that our nation has become.

Most, though, seem oblivious as they meander throughout the city. They appear as cybernetic androids following some long forgotten pattern seemingly embedded deep within some long forgotten urban program.

The psycho delivery driver, that has become my guide akin to the ghost of prosperity past, mumbles to himself in a vernacular that seems to crawl from deep within a Louisianan Bayou. He assails me with a physical presence and ironic commentary giving his van the electrified atmosphere of a ceremony being held at an ancient blood letting temple.

The interior milieu of the van coupled with the driver's banter makes the environment queerly stifling yet at some strange sublime level also enlightening. This modern prophet of diesel fumes and artery clogging greasy spoon fare is a keen observer of the human condition with an apparent doctorate in fecal frivolity. He has the ability to turn the most mundane of objects and the people we pass into brilliant frescoes of gastric rupturing hilarity.

Periodically he seems to doze and his blue collar chariot list either to the side of the road or into oncoming traffic. As I awaken him to avoid leaving the road or an almost certain collision I sometimes notice an almost dreamy look in his eyes. This aberrant yet strangely innocent look seems to invoke happier times and environs from a past most different than his present.

We end our wild ride through the streets at a boarded up building emblazoned with a skull icon. He explains to me that this building was used as the location shoot for the apartment building in the movie, "The Punisher." His stubby fingers jab toward a large building scaping the sky like a gigantic talon. That building, he explains, is where the climax to the same film was shot.

We end our day in a small Cuban restaurant enjoying my first Cuban sandwich. The contrast of the slightly greasy meat and hard crusted bread is ample analogy to this city which we have traversed. This the city named, Tampa, supposedly by native Americans to mean the place of the fiery sticks. Cities such as this derive their flavor from the contrast between both its' people and structures. We visit them and through our observations savor them much like my first taste of a Cuban sandwich. In the process we satiate not only our desire to know a new place but also to know a little bit more about ourselves.

*Furry parties are people that hold fetish parties where everyone dresses up as stuffed animals for sexual gratuitous purposes.

Days pass and I find myself running from the spirits of past, present, and future. I watch as the oblivious soak up the uncaring sunshine of the Gulf Coast. The sea of body language testifies to a myriad of broken dreams and resilient unfulfilled hopes. Their cares evaporating off their well oiled bodies flickers like some satanically tainted celluloid clip from an ancient Lawrence of Arabia film.

They come here to the edge of the ocean to hear the earth sing its sad soothing lullaby. The surf, for them the disenfranchised of both God and man, is natures non-pharmaceutical antidepressant. They are akin to a terrestrial reenactment of the whales that swim from the depths of the deep blue sea to beach themselves. Both, ceremonial acts of a noble but troubled species, touches me and in some twisted way makes me feel less critical of my own personal demons. The noise of the surf becomes an auditory baptism of all the negativity that has built up and corrupted both my mind and spirit.

Both man and beast come to this boundary between terra firma and the deep blue sea in hopes of banishing the melancholic demons tormenting them. I am surrounded by the jinn of these lost souls. Jinn, in some cases so fierce, that they can fling a man a mile or more. They soon pick me up and begin to bounce me from dune to dune in hopes of being rid of me. As I am tumbled like a discarded rag doll I hear bits and pieces of their lunatic liturgies.

A banal parade of garishly appareled adolescents march by, fueled by hormonal storms, casting their path down the sand like a drunken sailor on shore leave. They have not reached the level of desperation promulgated by their parents but seem to be furtively pursuing the family tradition. The surf whispers to me, in a nearly perceptible voice, secrets that it is never quite able to convey in spite of its seeming desperation.

I am saddened by memories bobbing on the waves of my consciousness. Memories of when I was an active participant instead of always the exiled observer in the corner. Depressed by my banishment from the corporal world and the current estate of desolation which I now find to be my domicile.

I wiggle my toes in the warm sand as i relish the siren song of the rushing surf which seems to wish to envelop me. I ponder if in fact I will ever be able to escape my self imposed exile here. Will my spirit rise from the ashes, like the phoenix of old, to once again soar magnificently upon the brilliant wings of my dreams? I call out to the now darkening horizon in a voice that my mind scantily recalls as the voice of my childhood. "Please send us, your abandoned children, that which can only be called redemption!"

Valentines Day, a holiday created by corporate ghouls to extract filthy lucre out of life's only pure emotion. An orgy of bittersweet confections, cheap heart effigies, and dying roses.

A day to say the things we should be saying everyday. Overcome by the break neck pace enforced by an alleged civilized society we forget. Unconciously we know, in this like so much more, how we have traded the actual for the figurative.

Today we should jump off the demon eyed horse of this lunatics merry-go-round and grab hold, if only briefly, of that which can give our breaking hearts true respite. Stopping for just one second to the search the chasms of our tattered souls for that which is not ephemeral but eternal.

Let us search today for the path leading out of this transmuted funhouse of the heartbroken and spiritually maimed; which has become so much less than fun. We drunkenly lurch first one way then the other in flight from the spectral hauntings of our own human failings.

Finally we are caught as we cross a set of tracks right before the exit. Our heads held firmly to the tracks by the sinewless talons of fear that has replaced our heart. In the distance we hear that most fearful sound of approaching inevitability!

Happy bittersweet confections, cheap heart effigies, and dying roses day!

A new millennium a decade underway. The me generation, raised in the orgy of consumption that had been the 1980's, was beginning to gray and sag. I embarked on a trip to see if meaning still existed in these Disunited States of America. Or had hope and promise for the future been bled away to become the nightmare of Paranoia and Terror as the idiot box had been screeching at us for nearly a decade. Was I prepared for such a trip? Or would the madness and paranoia hanging low and heavy across the crumbling infrastructure engulf me as it had so many. Not taking any chances I had arranged for an arsenal at my final destination to fend off threats both real and spectral.


They pick me up at the site of my planes crash, for aren't all landings merely controlled crashes anyway, cleverly disguised as 1980's refugees. Out of the corner of my eye, my perception heightened by the five in-flight drinks , I can see their more sinister reptilian features flicker before once again shimmering back to that of 80's refugees today big hair has been replaced by thinning graying hair. Well that is except for the one that they call Papa Bear (did he eat all his cubs?) who wears his 80's mane like some sort of Zuli-Swilli tribe badge of courage! (Wouldn't his pop be proud --back hand delivered -- Bip)

I see that this trip is going to be one of those strange ones, no LSD needed, flashbacks saved from previous decades enough to fuel the wild ride coming. Hours or so it seems, steel belts humming an insane lullaby on the asphalt, co2dependence (a leopard by species) --a friend just made, doing the driving, as we circle round and round and round again the airport roundabout desperately seeking our egress from this TSA militarized zone! The seal, once again his flippers smelling of someone elses fish, screams for co2dependence to turn left as Papa Bear grips the oh shit handle like some joystick of the damned and screams no right!

The group is birthed out into Florida (land of the newly wed and the nearly dead) after bribing the polyester tufted highwayman stuffed in the glass booth. Birth pangs are quickly apparent as Papa Bear squeals (sounding like a squirrel birthing a watermelon) a languid line of curses about co2dependence's inability to drive.

Heading at breakneck speed, adrenaline and collective thirst propelling us, we careen into a house of spirits on the motherless Florida highway. The seal and I search up and down the isle for the perfect mood setting spirit. Pacing the aisles, like two deviants recently kicked from the last methadone clinic on the planet, we decide on two half gallons as one might not be enough in case of shipwreck or disaster. We quickly bribe the state licensed bootlegger and make our way back to the SS Hades and begin to bring her aft. Screech! We have forgotten a tobacco gift to appease the god of sand fleas and unrequited hopes. We reenter, the state licensed bootlegger, like a universal miracle morphs into an exotic tobacconist and extorts us for our pitiful two pack offering.

Back on the motherless Florida highway we head toward Papa Bear's suburban home for the damaged, disillusioned, and delusional. An animal shelter of sorts, it's exterior in compliance with the tightly packed decor of the surrounding suburb. Papa Bear, like the cat lady of lore, quickly introduces the scribbler to his grotto of broken miscreants.

The biggest alligator I ever encountered, with a goatee, meets us at the door and does what apparently is the standard security check for this refuge of the damned. I am in fear for what seems like hours, of a coming body cavity search, before he scowls and finally allows me to pass unmolested into the bowels of this sinister feeling grotto.

As I descend further into this grotto of the sick and twisted I become aware of a rabbit and a toucan chirping back and forth to each other in some indiscernible language. They each have a small laptop device and appear to be playing one of the latest devil worshiping games so popular among the younger set of heathens.

The seal enters the room occupied by the rabbit and toucan as each, almost looking as though it is synchronized, rolls his eyes. The seal, based upon the loud noises he is emitting, seems to be working himself into an orgasmic frenzy of sorts in his constant search for mislaid mullet. A panda emerges from down some unseen hall and scolds the seal imploring him not to awaken what he describes as a viscous kung fu skunk whom apparently is his mate. (What would that pair give one? A skanda or a punk?)

Suddenly a spider monkey races down the hall and burst into the room like a bullet fired from old scratches own gun. It squeaks that the seal has awoken it and its ferret mate. The seal pulls from his bag of tricks one of the many barbed sticks he carries there and pokes the spider monkey with it causing a large commotion. The entire house seems to chirp like some insane fun-house newly relocated from the lower tier of Hell. A roar is heard from Papa Bears cave as he burst down the hall sending the approaching toucan on a tumultuous spin across the room

I now know that I am in the thick of the most dangerous assignment ever. I am frozen in absolute paranoia and terror. Screw my editor for sending me on such an insanity laden suicide mission into the very heart of darkness . As vertigo begins to overtake me I open the first half gallon taking a long draw ....................Updates Later...............