William walks downtown to The Moose. He has been texting Pamela and is suppose to meet her. William enters the narrow bar at the ground level of the dilapidated Howard Apartments. He spots Pamela in a corner booth talking with two friends. William wiggles his way to the bar first and orders a whiskey, then zigzags toward Pamela.
“Hey there.” William says. Pamela turns and smiles.
“Oh good, you made it.” Pamela says, scooting over to make room. William slides into the booth. “These are my friends Cassie and Frank. Frank is a painter and Cassie teaches Kindergarten.”
With greetings exchanged William settles in, sipping his whiskey. Pamela returns to a conversation with Cassie as Frank looks on, bored.
“Hey,” William says, trying to break into the conversation. “Anyone hear about the attack on the homeless camps under the Reserve Street Bridge?”
“I saw something on Twitter.” Frank says. “There’s at least one dead homeless person, and a bunch injured. This country has gone off the deep end.”
“People are afraid,” Cassie exclaims, “and they have that fear stoked and directed away from anything that could threaten the people in power.”
“Is that what you teach your Kindergartners?” Frank goads her. “Are you teaching them to be good little revolutionaries and revolt against that totalitarian authority you have over their little school lives?”
“Very funny, Frank.”
“Whatever you’re teaching them,” William says, “it’s probably better than this.” William reads from his phone:
“Suppose there are prophets among you, or those who have dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles, and the predicted signs or miracles take place. If the prophets then say, ‘Come, let us worship the gods of foreign nations,’ do not listen to them. The LORD your God is testing you to see if you love him with all your heart and soul. Serve only the LORD your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him. The false prophets or dreamers who try to lead you astray must be put to death, for they encourage rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of slavery in the land of Egypt. Since they try to keep you from following the LORD, your God, you must execute them to remove the evil from among you.”
“Old Testament?” Pamela asks.
“Yeah, Deuteronomy 13: 1-5. I took an Understanding the Bible course last semester.”
“Do you now understand the Bible?” Frank asks.
“I understand why this world is moving toward cataclysm, I think, and it has a lot to do with what made the Biblical cut. Actually, it has more to do with what didn’t make the cut.”
“Next you’re going to say Christians justify violence similar to those fucking Muslims we’re currently dispatching to Muslim Valhalla where their virgins are waiting to orgy-fuck their ghosts! Are you a terrorist, William?” Frank asks.
“Frank, you’re drunk.” Cassie says.
“Correct,” confirms Frank, “I am drunk. But for the record, that’s better than being a terrorist sympathizer.”
“Why are you even talking about Muslims?” Pamela asks point blank. “The media is saying it looks like WOOF is behind the bombing.”
“And some homeless guy put the bomb in the rafters, so what? The homeless are getting what’s coming to ‘em, the Muslims are getting what’s coming to ‘em, and we’re all eventually going to get what’s coming.”
“Which is what exactly?” William asks. “What, Frank, you want to get real? I got a homeless guy in my place right now. He escaped the shit that went down earlier tonight. What do you say, Frank? Wanna go confront him?”
Pamela puts her hand out, unseen, beneath the table. William feels her touch.
“Sorry Frank.” William says.
“Is that true?” Cassie asks.
“Yeah, it’s true. He was huddled next to a dumpster behind Zularia.”
“Is he ok?” Pamela asks.
“I don’t know.” William replies.
“Of course he’s not ok, he’s a homeless person in Zula. Did you hear what city council is proposing to do with them?” Frank asks.
“No, what?” replies Cassie.
“They’re going to be rounded up and taken to Fort Zula, where we kept Japs and Italians during WWII.”
“That’s messed up,” says Pamela.
“You think they’ll still try and do that? After tonight?” Pamela asks.
“Yeah,” William says. “In fact, it will be even easier to justify now. They can claim they’re doing it to keep homeless people safe.”
“Yep, the old IT’S FOR YOUR SAFETY yarn.” Franks says. “Works every time.”
“Remember last fall, when that supposedly progressive councilwoman, Katherine Gropple, used the excuse of keeping woman safe downtown to pass that ordinance banning sitting on sidewalks?” William asks.
“I remember reading about that in the paper,” Pamela says. “Isn’t she an LGBT advocate?”
“Allegedly,” William says with disdain.
“Wait, you’re not turning on the liberal elites in this town, are you William?” Frank asks, sensing another button to push.
“It’s funny the things you see and hear being a bike courier,” William replies. There’s one state Senator in particular who is a total mess. She was forced out from the non-profit she used to launch her political career, but it was kept all hush hush.”
“Scandalous,” Cassie exclaims.
“The higher you climb certain ladders, the more the rules change, and by change I mean don’t apply. I’m beginning to understand that there is a far-reaching realm of dark permissiveness just beneath the glossy surfaces where most of us exist, blissfully ignorant.”
“You’re just figuring that out?” Frank chuckles. “What a fucking epiphany—there’s darkness in the world! Quick, alert the media!”
“Um, no, they are the ones who provide the gloss, Frank.” William retorts.
“Oh, yeah, of course. It’s all a grand conspiracy and everyone in the media is in on it. Illuminati Mason reptilians are scurrying about shape-shifting and making the world a horrible place. Tell me, William, did we land on the moon? “
“I’m glad you mentioned the moon, Frank, because just recently an implant in my brain was triggered when I dropped acid and now Jim Morrison is literally a living presence in my head and he’s been directing me to read crazy books and write songs about secret Christians and evil Archons and a plot to use the moon, which is more like a satellite, to access a different dimension before the dark planet swings around on its oblong orbit and the extraterrestrial cultivators of earth suck out our consciousness. And gold, they really like gold for some reason, but Jim hasn’t gotten that far yet.”
William stops speaking and holds Frank with a long, unblinking stare. Frank stares back. Pamela and Cassie look from one to the other. Then Frank busts out laughing.
“That was fucking awesome, man. Jesus, that look on your face, so goddamn serious. You had me going good there for a sec.”
William shrugs his shoulders.
“Frank, we should get going.” Cassie suggests.
“That sounds like a good idea.” Pamela says.
“Sure, fine, let me just odor—er, I mean order—one more shot.” Frank says
“How about no?” Cassie says. The way she says it, it’s not a question, and Frank has the good sense to just nod his head and grab his coat.
They amble out of The Moose to the sidewalk. Cassie and Frank say good bye and stumble toward the bike trail. Pamela turns to William.
“I have to be up early tomorrow…”
“Sure, I get it.” William says quickly.
“You didn’t let me finish. I have to be up early, but I’ll be free later if you want to watch a movie or something.”
“Oh.” William says. “Sure, just text me tomorrow. I don’t have any plans.” William puts out the awkward vibe that says ‘I don’t know what to do next so just hug me’, which is precisely what Pamela does.
“See you later.” She says.
“Yeah, see you later.” William echoes back.
*
William surveys the frenzy of verse, nodding. A few scratch-outs and tweaks, but overall, not bad. It’s the first poem William has put to page since reading a bunch of books that have proven difficult to assimilate while carrying on the day to day logistics of living. The poem:
what crept out
when the door cracked
open? a squeak?
a peek of light?
before they could see
the sight The Doors saw
they were smacked low
then speed-tuned tight
friends, lovers, switched
facemasks for the agency and
subjects were danced into webs
“they dropped like flies” it was said
O Jim of my inner chamber!
O Kurt of my youth!
my pledge is True Detective
to know what they did to you
to sing on the waves still
surging toward some unholy
break, some final deluge
to snuff us out
so the agency got
copious with the keys
turning doors into gravestones
to slow the star-seeds
good try, fuckers
but you won’t stop
the rise of the Gnostics
even though you dropped
Martin and Malcolm
Janis and Jimi
Robert and John
Jim and Marley
and so many others
to keep us from spying
the source of the light
Mr. Mojo’s still riding
Drugs as Weapons Against Us is a book where the worrying for William starts working in a different direction.
The experiences William credits with his own personal development—a few profound and sometimes terrifying acid and mushroom trips—seem to have been part of a culture war waged by intelligence agencies against the evolving consciousness of the 60’s. For some reason William finds the book heartbreaking.
“What the fuck is poetry going to do about it?” William exclaims. The walls don’t answer, verbally. They do breathe images, though, from the twisted assemblages of collage that branch out across the walls.
The implications of Drugs as Weapons Against Us are staggering. Some of the most inspirational figures of the counter-culture now carry the taint of collusion with dark forces. It’s not enough to say CIA. It’s not even enough to say evil. There’s something more, something William has always felt faint hints of, but never had the words. William still doesn’t have the words.
William looks at his bike and decides a little ride would be a good idea. He grabs his helmet and gloves and heads outside.
As William bikes the numbered streets to the river trail his mind wanders over the psychic terrain he’s been exploring. This terrain has increasingly delved into matters of the occult, a topic that has interested William only peripherally. Now he’s reading about Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons and many other characters responsible for darkening the landscape of the 20th century. Of course the initiates probably wouldn’t see it that way, thinking instead they bring enlightenment—repurposing light from Lucifer, so to speak. William isn’t so certain.
In the poem William just wrote the agency getting copious with the keys could be interpreted as a reference to drug smuggling, an activity the CIA was and probably still is heavily involved in. William is fine with that interpretation, because it’s true. But there is another aspect of what the keys could mean—the Keys of Enoch—though admittedly not many people would probably know who John Dee and Edward Kelley are, let alone anything about the possibility that an Enochian working was started by Aleister Crowley in the Algerian desert on December 4th, 1909. (When William read this he was chilled at the date. He looked at his phone just to make sure: 12-4-2015. Shit!)
The implication for the four watchtowers (not material towers the way we terrestrials would think of them) was apparently not good, because those watchtowers help keep the fallen ones on earth from bringing down the chaos. If not for their protection, a being like Choronzon, the Dweller of the Abyss, could be unleashed.
This seems to be what many strains of zealotry desire: to usher in the apocalypse. William is reminded of an article he came across online about a conversation George Bush had with the president of France, claiming to see Gog and Magog at work in Iraq. Had Evangelical fervor infected the White House? According to the article, Reagan saw Gog as Russia, so there was precedent.
What Crowley started, Jack Parsons continued with something he called the Babylon Workings in 1946. For Jack, the occult was a path beyond his accomplishments in science. It wasn’t enough to have established the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and further the militarization of the world above; of sky moving into space where the stars and planets live. Jack wanted to open it up wider, speed up the shift to the age of Horus and let the light of Lucifer shine!
Were they successful? Did they fail? Have World Wars and the perpetual, a-symmetrical, transnational violence of the 21st Century been the consequence of occultists bringing down the watchtowers?
As William peddles his bike he thinks about all the dystopian television he’s been watching over the last few years: Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Breaking Bad, True Detective. It’s like the culture is feeding on it. American culture, at it’s darkest—not only SELF-destructive, but GLOBALLY destructive. Once manifest destiny reached the west coast, it went berserker across the globe.
Is this what The Doors tapped into half a century ago in southern California?
Interesting, William thinks, as he approaches the California Street bridge. Synchronicities, or what others would dismiss as coincidence, have been happening to William like little hiccups of weirdness most his life, but they seem to be increasing in frequency now.
William comes to a halt on his bike and takes a seat on a bench overlooking the river. He takes out his phone, almost out of habit more than interest in what’s happening in the world. He scans his Twitter feed for a few seconds when the headline jumps out at him:
House formerly owned by Aleister Crowley, then Jimmy Page, Burns Down
“Goddamn it!” William shouts, subduing an impulse to chuck the phone in the river. Then, refusing to be overtaken by the weirdness, he takes out his journal and a pen and starts writing some lyrics about tv shows, trying to ignore that today, the 23rd of December, smack between the Winter solstice and the alleged birth of Christ, Aleister Crowley’s former abode near the dark waters of Lochness just burned to the ground.