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Angels and Madmen: An Odyssey of Flesh and Spirit  The prelude, prologue, author's warning and selected  excerpts.

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Angels and Madmen

An Odyssey of Flesh and Spirit

Prelude

History is sparsely studded with great personages who have fought and suffered the penultimate battle—the battle of flesh and spirit—and won. You could name them on one hand, perhaps two. There have been untold more of course, untold because historians in all their myopia and ethnocentrism, tell so little. We don’t study this quest for Enlightenment—the actualization through spirit/mind of the truth and meaning of our existence—in school because as a society, despite our self lauded technological advances, we are still little more than relatively clever, territorial heathens protecting our own physical and psychological turf. 

We are extremely wary of religion in school, and of a state religion, and rightly so. But what has Enlightenment to do with religion? The notion of an absolute Truth existing beyond our ability to write an equation for, cork in a test tube, or slather up with religious dogma scares the holy collective hell out of our ‘scientific’ worldview.  Far too many of us still haven’t the slightest clue that a science of Enlightenment even exists, that at the very core of all religion, including Christianity, there is an actual experiential methodology for expanding one’s awareness into a state of indescribably profound inner peace, and for living and expressing our lives through it.  It’s focus is first inward, (yikes!), its laboratory the inner universe of the human spirit/mind, a spirit/mind that has been proven experientially countless times to be part and parcel with the very universe that created it, and to hold the key to the greatest mystery of all—Truth.  There is no greater challenge, no greater adventure, no greater courage than that demanded by the proactive processes by which Enlightenment may be realized. Everything else, this mad muddled plod we take through everyday life, is just getting our wits about us; getting the nerve up to face ourselves. 

The only real proof ever for the individual is in the actual true and aware experience of the individual. An absurd irony then, how the strident pragmatists among us (‘I’ll believe it when I see it’) tout so many scientific 'facts' and theories they have never seen or experienced as gospel, and scoff out of hand at something so near, dear and personally provable as their own states of conscious awareness.   

To make matters worse for the factory-programmed individual, which is very nearly all of us to one degree or another, institutionalized religion, that great gasping dinosaur, does precious little to bring clarity.  Indeed, quite the opposite could be easily argued; that through sheer dogmatic malpractice it succeeds only in further muddying the waters, inciting zealotry, atheism, apathy and worse.  Little wonder the earth wobbles; wobbles under the polar weight of pain and confusion that reigns supreme over the planetary psyche. So here we spin, ever faster, ever nearer to our own worst nightmare, simply because we refuse to open new eyes and act skillfully on what we see.  Why ruin a good sleepwalk when surely The Hotel Earth has the alarm clock set and ready for the eleventh hour? 

Two reasons: 1) The 11^th hour has 60 minutes. 2) The Snooze Button.  

Prologue

These novels will give way, by and by,

to diaries or autobiographies--captivating

books, if only a man knew how to choose

among what he calls his experiences

that which is really his experience, and how

to record truth truly.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Caged desperation.  This is where it began.  I was in the midst of a spiritual-psychological crisis during the late winter of the 20th century, living in a small but plush cabin my brothers had helped me build in a beautiful manzanita forest near Santa Cruz, California. It was quiet, secluded, and very comfortable. This in fact, was a big part of the problem: it was a comfortable torture. A nameless depression led to a sloth and torpor so deep that I could scarcely be bothered to leave the house, doing so only a few nights a week to work as the surliest bartender west of the Pecos.  I hated the telephone, screened every call, answered only when I felt like it, which wasn’t often.  I had become a recluse, and an arrogant one at that.  I knew far too much for my own good and not enough to do me any. While the world focused busily on its responsible madness I focused on the world, studying and contemplating it from my mountain lair, writing about it but no longer living much of it.  And no, I never considered sending bombs through the mail, unless of course you count my screenplays. 

My writing suffered in the wake of the increasing frustration this lack if living brought, and to smooth the rough spots I used increasing amounts of dope and alcohol.  It is difficult enough to live forwardly while by necessity writing backwardly—that is to say, about the past—but when you cease to live at all you cut off vital sources of motive energy.   And when I lost the ability to tap the Source through meditation, something I had done quite successfully for extended periods previous, the unchecked frustration and anger fueled by intoxicants created a downward spiral that could only be reversed by strong and persistent will, or by getting a good bounce off rock bottom. I became so depressed by my complete and utter inability to live out what I believed in, I actually feared slipping into madness. I understood my problem quite clearly even while in the midst of it, but grew increasingly helpless to do anything about it. What really gnawed at me was that I had no particular reason to be depressed, I just was, and that in turn made me even more depressed. Such is the nature of the beast.  I really needed a good slapping the shit out of, but no one stepped forward. 

Finally, inevitably, I met the infamous Abyss.  I’ve made better acquaintances, but none so definitive.  It became immediately clear that there would be nothing so comforting as rock bottom for me. My fate, should I continue to indulge the dull void of my weakness, would take me far deeper than that. Standing on the edge and peering into the proverbial pit, I had two choices: slip into the belly of blackness, or reach into the belly that was holding my manhood ransom and grab hold.  Being a big fan of color, not to mention said manhood, I chose the latter.  It was life time again, and though I didn’t know it then, I had five years of banging around the world ahead of me that would effect the ‘good slapping the shit out of’ I so needed.

The whole of the process, the wildly serpentine dream and occasional nightmare that would unfold across three continents and a dozen countries to fuel the venting that follows, continues. I suspect, to one degree or another, it always will. Through it all---I should like to point out---through the vortex of sex and depravity and danger and adrenaline, even in the black grip of depression, I have never lost sight of the light at the end of the long dark night—to which this book, as irreverent and X-rated and maniacal as it is in places, points most directly, and hopefully, most profoundly.  

BXS

Bangkok, Thailand

January, 2003

 Author’s Warning Label

I’m not holed up in this smog-choked Asian steam-pit living like a roach on a keyboard to pull any punches. I’m not here to tickle your armchair travel fancy or add further weight to your new adventure backpack.  I just dropped by on my way to Enlightenment for a last dip in the beaver pond, and got caught up in the reeds.      

If you are looking for artistic prose, proper grammar, good manners and political correctness, then you have come to the wrong book. If you are looking for every sentence and paragraph to lead seamlessly to the next and for every chapter to weave into a tidy tapestry connecting the very last word with the very first in a spine rushing epiphany, then again, you have come to the wrong book.  Nothing against tidy literature mind you, just that it’s too often too tidy; not enough shit on the page. This is my story, my ride, you're invited, but I’ll shit where I please.  Life connects, everything connects, whether you can see it or not, and mostly you can’t on account of all the shit.  Meaning trumps order, regardless of our conditioned handicap of seeing life through a linear lens. The trick is in discovering meaning without looking for it, in simply opening up and allowing it to seep through the invisible prophylactic with the reservoir tip we humans slip on every morning to protect us from true human intercourse.  Easier said than done, but it is only the doing that counts, only through living a life of open awareness that we may realize our deepest being. And so this is my often flailing attempt at living a more open and aware life, or rather, my begrudging translation of it. 

Included in the narrative are a whole lot of really bad words, new words, scything social, scientific political and religious commentaries, introspections, meditations, spiritual adventures and anecdotes, wild episodes with some of strangest and funniest people you will ever run across, random acts of senseless humor, streams of consciousness, correspondences, sports scores, stock quotes, beauty tips, great quotes from the famous, the infamous and the anonymous, and sexual content—lots of it—hot and delirious, mystic and magical, raunchy and ridiculous.

So come on board if you will or don’t if you won’t it’s your loss and I do mean that sincerely. Just one last thing before we get started in earnest: Please do your best to check your mental baggage at the door: your superior Gucci, your staid and steady Samsonite, your tree hugging Eagle Creek, or whatever the hell else you over-packed.  Just open up the old brainpan, dip it into this River Blasphemy and let me slosh around awhile. Rip me if you will when you’re done, it won’t be difficult, minding that I promise nothing save a good seat, a few laughs, the odd nugget and a good mule kick in the ass. Anything more to be gained, and there is a fair bit, is completely up to you. I take no responsibility for the thickness of your pre-shrunken head.

**************************************************************************************************************

 Selected Excerpts 

We need not still our passions, but only cultivate our understandings...

                                                         -William Blake

She came into my life like a primordial ooze, slowly, inexorably, carrying within her the blueprint of my   evolution. She was a highly complex spiral of subtle contradiction, a labyrinth of thoughts and emotions that thwarted every attempt at decoding with yet another twist in the strand. Her utter self absorption was at first impenetrable, and any hope of reaching her with any shred of reality had to be wrapped skillfully with the ribbons of her vanity...

...Bangkok is at once a cynical and innocent whore, an amorphous mystic with dark-angel eyes, a succubus with a permanent address. She doesn’t welcome you; she drapes herself over you, the air like monk’s robes soaked in sweat and carbon monoxide, the women like you’re the next last man on earth. It’s a place where you can be a monk for a month or a whore for a year and it’s all for one and one for a song: a ditty for a Buddha and an anthem for a cunt...  

...On the balcony looking towards the wat one morning I caught one of those marvelous only in Thailand sights, of saffron robed monks under elegant yellow umbrellas strolling past the Nitro Nympho Fantasy Bar, just as nice young Mormons in thin black ties rolled by on thick black bikes. Neither religion paid much heed to the other, or to the naked bar front, which only hours before had been packed with mostly Western businessmen proposing mergers and acquisitions with gaggles of giggling young Thai body-industrialists....

...The Indian bureaucrat had been burning for over three hours when his head finally exploded.  It was not a loud explosion; the sound likening to a large stone falling on concrete, but it was of sufficient force to split the skull into nearly perfect halves, revealing an enlightened government official at long last. The intuitive right hemisphere was, naturally, the first to exit the cranium, followed duly by the analytical left—two sizzling afterthoughts fueling the fires of rebirth...    

...Threats to the Kumbha Mela from Pakistani Muslim terrorists included attacks from the air. I speculated over bomb dropping and strafing. The good colonel affirmed in that peculiar India fashion of a half nod, half shake of the head that seems to mean ‘why not?’ and said, ‘Just imagine the killing a kamikaze pilot could do crashing an airliner into so many millions of bodies?’  It was too horrendous to imagine for long, so the thoughts were quickly filed away, only to come exploding back to consciousness in New York eight months later... 

...As we drive off to find the Juna Akhara, Digs dives in to documentary mode by shooting and conducting a mobile interview with Tom and Jerry of the Samadhi Film Project.

DIGS: So, what’s the Samadhi Film Project all about?

TOM: Well, Samadhi, or the Enlightenment experience, is what we hope to offer the world through our films.

DIGS:  What films would those be?

TOM: Films to be. We’ve got money, and that’s half the battle.

DIGS: Cool. How did you manage the financing without a track record?

JERRY: (Interrupting) Dope, man.

TOM: Hemp! Hemp.

DIGS: Dope? You mean you’re drug dealers?

TOM: No! No! Hemp! 

Jerry is rolling a rather portly spliff now, and it isn’t exactly hemp.

TOM: We’re based in Holland. It’s tacitly legal to grow there. We sell seeds and other hemp products around the world. 

DIGS: Marijuana seeds.

TOM: Best in the world. And we market hemp for a variety of uses. Virtually unlimited really, from clothes to rope to soap.

DIGS: Dope-on-a-rope?

TOM:  Cute. 

DIGS: So what’s your purpose here at the Kumbha Mela?

TOM: Images. You just can’t hire 30 million extras, but you can come here and shoot them. We’ll use some of the footage later in a feature film we’re doing that I’m writing and directing.

DIGS: What’s the film about?

TOM: About a guy who comes to India in search of Enlightenment, only it’s a selfish enlightenment.  But as the story unfolds, as we see his character arc, he goes from a selfish mindset to a universally selfless and ecological one.

DIGS: Cool. How so?

TOM: He uses his power to raise awareness about the toxic harm world industry is doing to the earth, and gets the United States to legalize hemp. Other nations soon follow suit, and through the widespread use of hemp the planet is detoxified.

DIGS: (Laughs) Hemp Man to the Rescue! Wicked. Does he have a big “H” on his chest and fly around on a giant doobie?

Jerry giggles, gently kissing his portly and popping into his mouth.  Tom senses a Digs trademark, mockery, and is something less than pleased...

God seen in

a mystic submarine,

munching on

a blowfish spleen

A kaleidoscope of hope

lost inside

designer dope

Of thee I sing....

...spiral staircase eyes, black and swirling in ecstasy...and pain. Delicious hind, taught and feline, raised in a tantalizing arc, beckoning empty like death row porn...  Dark mind set aflame with urgent clarity; a squadron of napalm geese blazing through an acetylene dream... Far corners turn to centers, revolving, undulating, tumbling, exploding from zero to infinity and back again, inside out, outside in, enfolding and unfolding, careening in meaning, meaning nothing. The geese have flown the dupe, burnt to a synaptic crisp. Dawn sears the psyche, the supernal slain by the mundane... God that coffee smells good...

"A map stands in relation to the territory it covers as our idea of reality stands to reality." ---Korzybski

Individually we see the madness,

together we blindly contribute,

alone we die.

"...Who the fuck stole this man's cobra? C'mon, fess up, who snaked the snake?" 

"Do not speak unless you can improve on silence." ---Ancient Buddhist Sage

Silence is the voice of God.

Listen.

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