ha ha ho ho hee hee.
ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
follow me. i'll fix you supper.
i know who you are.
save your breath for the climb.
yip! yip! ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
personally, i prefer stevie wonder, but what the hell. those cowgirls are always bitching because the only radio station in the area plays nothing but polkas, but i say you can dance to anything if you really feel like dancing.
neither do i.  ha ha ho ho hee hee.
clockworks.
the clockworks is one reason that i am here on siwash ridge. i accepted the invitation to be initiated as a shaman by an aged siwash chief who was the principle outside confederate of the clock people.
he was a degenerated warlock who could turn urine into beer, and the honor that he extended me gave me rights of occupancy in this sacred cave on this far-away siwash ridge. i came to the dakota hills to construct a clockworks of my own.
but unlike the clockworks of the clock people, my ticks more accurately echo the ticks of the universe.  . ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
during the second world war i busted out of tule lake detention camp; as a japanese-american, i had been put there and watched over. i found refuge with the clock people, who discovered me in a snow bank, near dead, i had been climbing across the sierra nevada mountains.
the clock people mistook me for chinese. and the name stuck. in the same way that all indian tribes came to be labeled "indians" through the ignorance of an italian sailor with a taste for oranges, it is only fitting that "indians" misnamed me. the clock people, however, are not a tribe, rather they are a gathering of indians from various tribes. they have lived together since 1906.
the pivotal function of the clock people is the keeping and observing of the clockworks. it is a real thing, and is kept at the center, at the soul, of the great burrow. insofar as it is possible, all clock people deaths and births occur in the presence of the clockworks. aside from birthing or dying, the reason for the daily visits to the clockworks is to check the time.
these people have no other ritual than this one. likewise, they have but one legend or cultural myth: that of a continuum they call the eternity of joy. it is into the eternity of joy that they believe all men will pass once the clockworks is destroyed. the destruction must come from the outside, must come by natural means, must come at the will of this gesticulating planet whose more acute stirrings thoughtless people call "earthquakes."
the earth is alive. she burns inside with the heat of cosmic longing. she longs to be with her husband again. she moans. she turns softly in her sleep. in the eternity of joy, pluralized, deurbanized man, at ease with his gentle technologies, will smile and sigh when the earth begins to shake. i loved those loony redskins, but i couldn't be a party to their utopian dreaming. after a while it occurred to me that the clock people waiting for the eternity of joy was virtually identical to the christians waiting for the second coming. or the communists waiting for the worldwide revolution. or the debbies waiting for the flying saucers. all the same. just more suckers betting their share of the present on the future, banking every misery on a happy ending to history. well, history is ending every second - happily for some of us, unhappily for others, happily one second, unhappily the next. history is always ending and always not ending.  ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
yes, everything is getting worse. but everything is also getting better.
i want to go back to the clock people. i kind of miss those fool redskins and wonder what they're up to. what's happened to jelly?
you mean she's dead?
easy come, easy go.
i can't help it if i grew up in an antipoetic culture. language will be different when i'm with the clock people though. they're from an oral tradition. and i'm not talking about what you horny hop toads do in bed every night.
the world isn't going to end, you dummy; i hope you know that much. but it is going to change. it's going to change drastically, and probably in your lifetime. the clock people see calamitous earthquakes as the agent of change, and they may be right, since there are a hundred thousand earthquakes a year and major ones are long overdue. but there are far worse catastrophes coming.  unless the human race can bring itself to abandon the goals and values of civilization, in other words, unless it can break the consumption habit -- and we are so conditioned to consuming as a way of life that for most of us life would have no meaning without the yearnings and rewards of progressive consumption. it isn't merely that our bad habits will cause global catastrophes, but that our operative political-economic philosophies have us in such a blind crab grip that they prevent us from preparing for the natural disasters that are not our fault. so the apocalyptic shit is going to hit the fan, all right, but there'll be some of us it'll miss. little pockets of humanity. like the clock people. like you two honeys, if you decide to accept my offer of a lease on siwash cave. there's almost no worldwide calamity -- famine, nuclear accident, plague, weather warfare or reduction of the ozone shield -- that you couldn't survive in that cave.
suppose that you bear five or six children with your characteristics. all in siwash cave. in a postcatastrophe world, your offspring would of necessity intermarry, forming in time a tribe. a tribe every member of which had giant thumbs. a tribe of big thumbs would relate to the environment in very special ways. it could not use weapons or produce sophisticated tools. it would have to rely on its wits and its senses. it would have to live with animals -- and plants! -- as virtual equals. it's extremely pleasant to me to think about a tribe of physical eccentrics living peacefully with animals and plants, learning their languages, perhaps, and paying them the respect they deserve.
that's your problem.
listen to the way i'm babbling. that bullet must have loosened one of my transistors. don't pay any attention to me. you've got to work it out for yourself. the westbound choo-choo leaves mottburg at one-forty. i want to be on it. will you drive me to the station?
schedules! ironic how i have to follow timetables in order to get back to the clockworks.
don't ever bet against paradox, ladies.
if complexity doesn't beat you, then paradox will. ha ha ho ho and hee hee.