- The Lunatic woke and came out in the morning....it was 8 in the evening.
He sat on a sidewalk trash can until 3 in the morning.
As I crept up behind him along side a building, he could not see me.
But I heard him begin to speak.
He said,
"But oh Man!"
"Where is our humility?"
"Can you see what the great minds of the Modernists have done to us?!"
"But can it really be Christ the hope?"
"Can it be so simple and so complicated that we forgot how it is that we blaspheme?"
"Did we rule him out for some thing better, or for the sake of our own vanity?"
"For even the protestants rely on they're own interpretation.."
"Is our authority really our own vanity?"
"Chesterton and Belloc knew.....they knew."
"Kerouac the st. Augustine of our times....he knew."
"But, somewhere, poor old Luther forgot."
"Marx the genius who must have forgotten to add God when designing a perfect society."
"Lilith, the great emasculator and baby killer and destroyer of families......"
"Refusing modesty and humilty for hate and ego and the right to be immoral."
"Who are our children?"
"Who are our fathers."
"Where is our Holy Mother?"
"Where are the meek?"
"Woman where is thine veil?" . . . .
"In this mass transit society of emediate gratification, no one understands aquiring a taste."
"Instead of a cigarette....a candy bar."
"Instead of caviar.......that same old slop from mass media."
"Once again the savages have invaded Rome."
"But for me,"
"I see..."
"I see giant icons of the Mother Mary....and Fidel Castro luming down with big shifty eyes and a big cigar in his mouth."
"I see Machiavelli and Charles Bukowski, arms over shoulders singing drunkin Irish songs and pointing with sarcastic grinns."
"Laughing at the confused failings of the great expanse of the 'American know how'."
"But as Americans we cling to the hopes that computers, technology, materialism, wieghts and measures, the here and now, the great myth, will some how save our souls."
"BUT...!"
"Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us."
- And the Lunatic went and confessed.
Hanging off a priests ear, he confessed.
For he knew he was mad and he knew there was only one hope....
That latin god Jesu Christe, the God man from the Jews.........
And as I stopped following him some where in the back streets of the dewy morning night.
Just above my spot on the sidewalk, held up in another run down hotel room, my past was jabbing at me again....as it had everyday since she left.
"I miss my wife, I miss my wife," would spew from my mouth uncontrolably every now and again and at least once a day....for 7 years.
mental scar hiccups
nagging shame.
but not as bad as it used to be. shortly after she left state and took the kids, i would wander around New Orleans with outbursts of frequent screams and sobbing.
i couldn´t leave the city because anywhere else the police would have taken me away.
the fifth of wiskey a day did little back then. so at nite after the fifth i´d go out drinking.
even travelers have a home, for me it´s cheap hotels that let you smoke.
it´s a never ending search for a spot on the sidewalk and a hotel that´ll let you smoke.
sometimes days and nites sleeping on buses and trains searching.
sometimes a good spot but no cheap hotel.
sometimes cheap hotels, but they wont let you work the spot. so back on the bus to another city so i can sleep on the bus.
it´s a gamble.
in the winter a thick tuff suit jacket and fedora, cargo pants and slip on sneakers....not white ever.
in the summer cargo capris, sandal flip flops and a vest i make out of a suit jacket. after the winter the fedora has usually thinned out enough for the summer heat.
i buy as i go, i don´t lug. one bag is all i need. holds my rig and personals.
working outta the pockets, slight of hand is the gimmick for the quick ten minute show, for the curious or those with time to kill, ten fifteen minutes then the hat is passed. usually the first show is just less then the price of a room.
4 or 5 shows could get me through the day. but if i can, i work all day to forget my problems.
in the states i would prefer to live outta my van. driving hundreds of miles, from pitch to pitch.
truck stops with cheap private showers in the morning and cup of tea.
i come from a long line of sidewalk shifty eyed losers. when i´m in a crowd, i´m the one who looks like trouble from your grandpa´s past....maybe your great grandpa´s, maybe worse.
i remember when i was younger, lookin at old guys like that downtown and thinkin, "that`s what i´ll be"...well here i am.
for us it´s hard now, private property regulations, and less foot traffic in the states....and the spots in europe are closing up.
cops, shops, and bad guys are the set backs to the job.
cops and shops wanna shut you down and the bad guys are looking to take what they saw you make.
so on my back i stare at the cheap neon lite on the ceiling of my room.
it´s lonely, but it´s less trouble then a woman.. . . .
As a sidewalk performer I gotta code I live by and even though I fall short in so much of my life I try very hard to stick to this code.
below is an excerpt of an article i found on the internet i'm a huge fan of Dashiel Hammit the writer of the "Maltese Falcon"
This is a picture of humphrey bogart he played sam spade in the movie version.
HERE'S THE ARTICAL-
This code of behavior — which harks back to the credo of the post-World War I Hemingway code hero — would become part of the standard equipment of later hard-boiled detectives in film. But while later detectives such as Philip Marlowe were capable of feeling compassion and a certain amount of empathy for other human beings, it is Sam Spade's personal code alone that makes him a hero and is, in the end, the source of his redemption.
Indeed, the negative aspects of Spade's character make his ultimate sacrifice all the more affecting — despite his cynicism and his somewhat cruel nature, despite his negative feelings toward Archer, and despite his love for Brigid, he is determined to see that Brigid pays the price for murdering his partner, because his personal code demands it.
"When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective, everywhere."
It should be noted that factors originating outside of the film itself also contributed to the effectiveness of Bogart's portrayal of Spade and the audience's appreciation of Spade's ambiguity as a hero. At this point in his career, Bogart had yet to play a genuine hero.
He had been a star of the second tier for years, but he was best known for his portrayals of cold- blooded killers and gangsters, often being gunned down in the last reel by the star, such as James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson. . . . i can't post the final scene of the movie here, but you can go to it and watch it.
it has to be the most moving scene i have ever scene in film and fully illustrates the point of the artical....it's really incredable.
here's the link;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npsYzr5RcMU . . also i though you might like this little music video. . .
