Bloodstone

That was too much.  All of it.  People still don’t believe it.  It hasn’t even started yet.

It’s the great new uncertainty.  Sad.  Pale-coloured urine you can barely squeeze out.

You wonder why this happened to you.  And what’s going to happen.  It’s a big family.  Are they all like that?

Come on down you’re gonna luv it.

Might as well start early.  Start early and end early. That’s what I say.   Let us rejoice.  It’s not over yet.  As Nietzsche observed: One’s own struggle will go on.  Nietzsche lost his mind.  It was too bad.  It was a beautiful mind.  He died in 1900.  What a cool year to die in.  Easy to remember.

But if you get nothing out of reading this there’s one thing you’ve got to  remember: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” is the boring-est book you’ll ever come across.

I read “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” one summer while lolling around several afternoons on a clothing-optional beach.  A nude beach.  Or beach where people with no clothes are, weather depending.  “Wreck Beach”.  Because everybody was wrecked.  Or maybe it was just me.  Doubt it.  Sunshine Supermen and women, boys and girls frisbee-ing in the surf, butt naked.

Maybe it was the translation, but the book was a “Penguin Classic” paperback with a florid image of Nietzsche’s head sporting that horrible moustache.  “Also Spoke Zarathustra” brought out the masochist in me and I forced myself to read all of it, with pleasure.

Remember what I said.  Awful.  Don’t let this happen to you.

Which reminds me.  We’ve often said, how could this have happened?  Like that time when I said, “Lene Lovich probably isn’t her real name.” And you said, “Really?”

I’ve never forgot that.  I’m serious.

So now we understand what’s going on here. The fight gets intense-er.  It’s the new normal.  Same as the old normal.  Those days when you worked for that organization?  Forget it.  Never coming back meaning time to act now.

The future’s what we need to think about and tomorrow may be too late.  Let’s get on with it.  You first.

No, I’m kidding.  Kidding kidding kidding.  Get out your talismans.  Your ya-ya’s.  Your amulets and prayer beads and complete, 200 piece Jello™ airplane wheel set from the 60s with images of vintage aircraft complete with rack like a poker chip rack because we’re gonna be wishing and hoping and praying everything’s going to be all right and this is just filler.  It’s a place to get somewhere else.

These people are actually pretty funny in many unintentional ways.  It’s a game of chance anyway.  Everything.  They didn’t start it.  They won’t finish it.

I was down on Wreck Beach the afternoon I finished Nietzsche and I was with one of the most beautiful girls.  She was built, as we used to say and maybe still do.  I felt lucky.  Fortunately, we were just there as friends.  Or unfortunately.  But it was just one of those afternoons and I had a car.  You couldn’t drive to the beach but you could drive to the top of the trail down to it.  I knew this person.

We’re lying together, side by side.  Casual.  I was good at faking along as casual.  It was a time in my life when I didn’t have a lot else to do.  This nude guy comes along, a little older than me, and hunkers down in front of us.  “Nietzsche, eh?” he says.  Everybody talked like that in those days.  Eh?  Eh?  He was talking about Nietzsche but he was staring straight at my friend lying there on her back.  And I don’t think things have changed much.