The constant beacon that guides the voyages of The Jolly Roger is the
will to partake in a profound society that values the reading and writing
of literature. This generation has been denied a literary voice
in the popular culture while being denied its literary
heritage on the college
campus. The Jolly Roger exists to deliver both. While she remains
perpetually prepared to battle nihilists, resentniks, fringe feminists,
slackademics, and intellectually-indifferent administrators upon the
tumultuous political seas, the captains never forget that The Good Ship's
primary purpose is to gain Treasure Island and unearth the dream of a
Literary Renaissance. Treasure Island is that tropical locale which has
of late become concealed by the postmodern fog. It is located where yer
heart and mind intersect. It is yer soul, and X marks the spot upon the
immortal map of the human spirit, the Book. Arghrgrhr! Who stands forth
to deny that the immortal soul exists? What insolent scurvey dog pipes up
that the world's children should be denied two-parent families and a
literary renaissance? What corporate or government pawn stands forth to
deny this Captain and his stalwart crew the world's greatest treasures,
which time cannot tarnish and the salty water cannot rust? Argrhgrhr!
The silence is music to me ears.
Literature is superior to politics, and in a representative
democracy, where the people lead the politicians, and the poets lead the
people, the poets must follow God. Thus it will be ensured that
literature is not replaced by politics, Divinity is not replaced by
government bureaucracies, and children are not denied their Natural Right
to be cared for by those who conceived them. There are those shallow
scholars who cannot
discern the difference between art and politics, between creation and
criticism, between the family and the state, between intellectual private
property
and literary socialism, between Shakespeare and Maya Angelou, and they tend
to be the most adept at shamelessly securing
government funds and commandeering tax supported institutions at the
monetary and cultural expense of the greater society. Those with a
conscience are put
at a disadvantage in the politicized arena, as the deeper soul seeks the
essence of knowledge rather than the appearance of knowledge, and the
essence often runs counter to the tax-subsidized postmodern scholar's
appearance. As George Orwell noted,
One must be wary when taking
up arms and opposing the
sea of literary socialists, for in battling nihilists and lashing out at
the postmodern fog, one runs the risk of falling in. 'Tis the
formidable paradox of
postmodern nihilism which makes artists out of the desecrators, creators
out of the conformists, free-thinkers out of
all who agree, victims out of the cultural oppressors, and compassionate
leaders out of self-serving, bureaucratic followers.
Argrhrgrh! As hard as it sometimes is, we maverick pirates of the
Western Soul must bravely take the liberal grape shot, forgive the
resentniks for their vices of envy, jealousy, sloth, university vanity
presses, gluttony, pornography, Woodstock II, adultery, women's
studies departments, arrogance, degrees in education, divorce, and
vengeance,
turn the other cheek, and write the words that we were placed us upon this
earth to write. (At least until we run out of cheeks.) The amoral liberal
boomers, who deconstructed the classical lighthouses and set our heritage
adrift, will get theirs, I say, and Justice shall be realized in the Grand
Scheme.
But for the moment we must refrain from becoming mired in their
nihilism, engaging in their petty politics, and being distracted by their
tax and tuition-funded literary decoys. We must not waste our talents
petitioning postmodern administrators who long ago tossed overboard the
ballast of their eternal souls along with the context in which right and
wrong and good and evil exist. For they have not a soul to harbor our
words. We must keep an even keel as we sail the
straight and narrow on our unalterable course on towards Treasure Island.
The WWW has opened a channel heretofore unknown to the individual artist
and intellectual in all of history, and we would be wise to take
Shakespeare's advice.
Standing upon the brink of summer out here on Ocracoke Island, with
malice towards none and charity towards all, and the sun sinking behind me
over America, I calmly await the literary dawn that this generation is
destined to behold. And I here leave ye with chapter five of the THE
DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP, in which Cliff (Drake's little brother) and Timber
leave the pseudo-grunge Chapel Hill band scene behind and hop a
Northbound train, so as to voyage on up to Princeton University and
investigate the suspicious suicide of Drake Raft. Armed with a treasure map
that Drake
sent to Cliff, they're embarking on the ultimate adventure, during which
they'll be called upon to avenge the spirits of the Greats.
Avast now! Have yerself a safe and relaxing summer, and when ye go to the
beach in search of the White Whale and that ungraspable phantom of life, I
hope that ye venture forth in yer jollyroger.com t-shirt, armed with a copy
of THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP and MOBY DICK. I invite ye to
read a Great Book this summer, or a few of them, and write some reviews
which we'll proudly fly from one of THE JOLLY ROGER's. Take a cruise
with Nietzsche or St. Augustine or Melville or Homer, and let us know
how their immortal words relate to yer predicament. Let Socrates
examine yer life and render it in eternal words. Ponder the profound,
set yer spirit down in ink, and send it on in to the captain at captain@jollyroger.com. That's an
order!
The leaves were big, full and deep green now, and the sky was
every bit a Carolina blue as the leaves were green, with a slight breeze
rustling through the trees ever so softly; so it seemed the leaves were
whispering to me, and the mourning doves were up on the telephone wires,
and it seemed they were mourning about something I'd lost-- not about
death or like anything morbid, though, but I couldn't think of anything
I'd lost, 'cept for my bike key-- but really I hadn't lost it-- I knew
where it was, down on the bottom of Jordan Lake. And there was that big
old tabby cat mewing at me, trying to let me in on something. He used to
sneak on into our house, and beat up on Morag and Angus, and eat all their
food, and stuff, 'til the one time a few years ba ck I set my amp right
next to the food, and when he came on in I ripped out the intro to
Metallica's Sandman and gave him a seizure. Seriously-- it was like he
was ridin' out a speedball, or something-- I felt bad, and I was gonna
take him to the vet 'cause he had passed out, but then he came to and
bolted, and I hadn't seen him since, 'til then. A cricket kicked up his
song as I walked on by, and there was a dog over by the Parson's barking
off something secret to me, and I tried my best to understand them all,
and discern what they were saying, but there was no way I could make head
or tail of it, or anything, even though I could tell that it was something
totally profound.
And there was Cliff! Waiting up for me down by the Totem Pole
tree, smokin' his pipe-- he was using his dad's cherry tobacco again, I
could smell.
"You're cutting it close dude," Cliff said. "But I figured you were just teasin'."
"Dude-- I saw the ghost." I was out of breath.
"What'd it look like?" Cliff jumped up. I saw he'd printed out the treasure map. He'd been drawin' on it with like a red pen and a protractor. "Like an old man?"
"Yeah dude-- like with a beard."
"Whoah! A long white beard?"
I nodded.
"Uncle Walt." Cliff nodded.
We followed Sand Run down towards where it flowed into the
Blood-Run River, where the tracks lay. Well Cliff was flyin' up high, you
could tell by that smile on his face, and I was too, like on account of
going some place totally new, with a dead man's treasure map. And though
we'd forgotten a walkman or a box, it was like of no matter, or anything,
Ôcause when you're feeling up like this, you don't need any other music
other than just the burbling of water rushing over rocks and logs and
such, and like a friend's voice.
There wasn't any train for awhile, 'cause it was running late, or
something, so we had to wait around a bit. Cliff had along his fishing
rod, and we found a salamander, and hooked it, and ten minutes later Cliff
hauled in a trout like I'd never seen before. Cliff hadn't ever seen one
like it neither, though he was certain it'd been stealing his bait right
of his hook all last summer; and he figured it was rightfully his, 'cause
he'd fed it as if it was one of his own, and had made it into a good
breakfast for two.
The whistle of a far off train came cold and clean through the
air. It was Southbound, the first one, so it was of no use to us, but ten
minutes later there came along a Northbound one, with all five engines
operating, and stuff, so we knew it was long.
We waved to the engineers and let about fifty of the cars pass, while it
slowed for the curve. First along were a few tanker cars which wouldn't
have made for too comfortable a ride, and then along came some flatbeds
with truck trailers on 'em, and after that came along the rest of the
flatbeds with dried-out tobacco bales-- flatbed after flatbed after
flatbed, and we took what looked like the best deal, and hopped on one of
them big old flatbeds, half of it stacked with bales of tobacco and the
other
half empty. We lay down flat so as not to be conspicuous as we passed on
through the residential neighborhooded area. Well it was a long train,
and we couldn't see the caboose, 'cept for the times we were on curves, on
account of the freight cars in between, but most all of it was tobacco,
and it smelled good, too. Cliff was psyched he had along his pipe.
The sun, it looked like it was following us and losing ground,
sinking towards the tracks behind us, as we headed on East some, on closer
to the coast so we didn't have to climb the purple Appalachians off in the
distance, Cliff said. Well it was the prettiest June evening I could
remember, ever, and it seemed we were following along with the storm front
a bit, which made sense as we were goin' East, 'cause it grew a bit more
cloudy for awhile. But all the same, the clouds were all breaking up, and
all
of a sudden Cliff noticed this rainbow-- the train was headed straight
underneath it, like it was a big huge gate or something, archin' over our
path. At first it was really faint, and only half a rainbow, but then it
just kept on growing and growing, and pretty soon there were two of them,
and since we were on the coastal plain we could see the arcs in their
entirety, from the grove of trees away off in the distance from which they
sprang, to the corn feed silos where they sank back under. It was all
so like perfectly magnificent, with the colors and everything glowing so
superior against the great black and gray sky off in East, and the eight
o'clock sun bustin' on through in the West, where it was meltin' all the
lingerin' clouds away, and lettin' the blue peek on through and dominate
as well. I felt I was in a photograph for a calendar or something, 'cause
the fields were the most resplendent green, is how Cliff described it, and
the rainbow so vivid and sharp that you could see you could go sliding on
down it, if only you could catch up with it. I'd tried once, on Cliff's
moped, but it wasn't fast enough-- the moped. I'd been going for the pot
of gold, but like the whole rainbow disappeared before I even got close,
and this train, fast as it was, wasn't doing much better. And all of
everything kind of took on that strange pinkish hue, like it always does
after an evening's rain storm, when the light enhances all of the
different shades of the spring greens, and the green fields become totally
fluorescent, and psychedelic-- though not in a cheesy way, like on the
side of a Volkswagen bus, but like in an honest, natural way. There was
this one cloud, separate from the rest, hanging away up there like a
lonesome pink cotton ball, and Cliff saw it too, and said it was a strange
and lucky thing to see just one cloud like that, with nothing else around,
and he said he'd heard it was a good omen, and an angel, most likely, and
it seemed that way, too. Though most anything would have on an eve as
completely pleasant as this.
"An angel," I nodded. "Just like you, even though you need a haircut."
Cliff laughed and like punched me in the arm. "Fag."
"Man, I was only trying to snag my pedal."
"Apple thievin'. . . And then you tried to pull this one on me, under the waterfall. 'What're you thinking about?' Just like a girl."
"Yeah, well that some pretty serious stuff, like you're dad was saying, though."
"I guess, but like hey, what does it change?"
I shrugged.
"It's pretty funny, really, if you think about it." Cliff laughed.
"I mean life. I can't see how anybody ever takes anything seriously-- you
know? I mean just look." He stretched his arm straight out and slowly
waved it across all the fields, and the sun and the sky and the rainbow,
like he was painting 'em 'cross the landscape.
After a bit Cliff brought out some books he'd brought with us to
help us enjoy nature and everything. He had the Boy Scout Field Book--
the old non PC one, he said, which had less pictures of diverse people in
communities, or whatever, and more knots and lashings, and useful things,
like how a rainbow worked, and it had star charts and things, so he could
name 'em all, and get full use out of the night sky. He explained to me
how a rainbow got projected on up there, but I was too busy watchin' 'em
fade
to listen too close to how they worked, so I forget, but he put it all in the appendix. He'd brought that book along for me, which he was always trying to get me to read-- The Catcher in the Rye. He said it was easy reading and stuff, but still, like
I said, I'm the type who'd rather play baseball than read about it.
Well it was totally a feeling and a half for sure, with the wind
tousling through your hair, and with the way you had to squint when
looking forward, and how it was hard to breathe-- just like when Cliff
snuck Drake's MGB out with the top down, only twice as cool. It was about
eight-thirty or so now; we could tell by how the sun was just a couple of
widths above the horizon, and pretty cool it was becoming out here on the
flatbed, cruising along at like somewhere over sixty. Now and then we'd
hit one of those fresh, cold pockets that begin appearing at this time in
the early summer evenin', creepin' out of the trees and reachin' out with
their misty fingers as the whole world's preparing to get dark. Suddenly
Cliff grabbed my arm and cocked his head, like he was listening for
something, and I heard it too-- music coming from like some away far off
distant place. There was a heavy bass line that I know I'd heard before,
but I couldn't place it with a song for sure. We kept on listening,
trying to assign it a direction, but it seemed like it was coming from
above, slow and steady, not choosing to grow louder, nor becoming any
fainter either.
"It's a concert at the Richmond Pavilion." Cliff all of a sudden got this smile on his face-- "You recognize that now? It's Lollapalooza! Dude! It's G'n'R!"
The train had slowed down for the winding terrain, and it slowed down still even more, groaning up the tilting grade. We crested up over the hill; the bass-line picked up a melody, and the music all of a sudden became real, and beautiful, and everything
. Welcome to The Jungle crashed into its ending, and the air was flooded
full with all the white static of a million people screaming. I felt bad
for Axl and Slash, now that like everybody'd forgotten 'em and they had to
play Lollapalooza. But it kinda made 'em alternative or something, not
bein' known, so maybe they were happy.
"Sweet!" I got up. "Let's go, dude."
"We saw Mallapaloozer last year." Cliff said.
"It's different bands."
"No it's not." Cliff said. "We don't have tickets."
"We didn't have tickets last time. C'mon."
"No way-- not now." Cliff shook his head and smiled. "We've got to catch the beginning."
"The beginning of what?"
"This." He was just sittin' there, with his knees tucked up under his chin, lookin' out West.
"What's this?"
"All the fields after dark, and things."
The train was creepin' along pretty slow for the sharp curves, windin' along a ridge, and I wanted so bad to jump off right now, but I could see Cliff wasn't getting up.
"C'mon man-- you're killing me. Let's go--"
Just then the train came grindin' 'round on by a rail road
crossin' where a whole crowd of people were waitin' to cross after havin'
parked their cars like a half a mile away. Over half of 'em were like
metal heads with their t-shirts and all and they gave us a big cheer soon
as they seen us, along with like Satan salutes. We saluted 'em back, and
they were yellin' for us to toss 'em some bales of tobacco. Five of 'em
got the idea to hop on with us, along with like their two cases of Rolling
Rock, and ride in to the stadium-- they thought that's what we were doin'.
One of 'em was selling tye-dye t-shirts. The shirt said, "My #%$@ smells
like Rose's." We told 'em we didn't have the money-- they were twenty
bucks a piece. He asked us if we wanted to
buy some reefer, and we told him we didn't have any money for that either. He told us we could stop on by Absolute t-shirts in Galvistone Virginia, next time we were on through with money, to pick some up, if we wanted-- also he was opening one in Colum
bus, Ohio. The one with like five nose rings asked us how good our
tickets were, and Cliff told 'em we weren't goin'; we'd already caught 'em
at Walnut Creek. Some of them'd heard of the place, and one told us we
ought to go again all the same, 'cause it's the coolest live show, 'cause
nobody else gets all coked out for their audience and kicks ass like Axl
does.
"I'd yank him by his red hair." He demonstrated on his friend. "And beat the crap out of his skinny ass if I ever caught him on the street without his body guards, but I'll admit he can sing-- I'll give him that much, but I'm tellin' ya-- I'd beat the
#!&% out of him, first chance I got."
He'd ripped a hole in the bale and he was chawin' on some of the
tobacco-- he nodded like it was pretty good, and all his friends were
gettin' some leaves of their own. It was the seventeenth G'n'R show he'd
been to, he told us, and he knew it so well that he always knew exactly
when and where in each song Axl was going grab himself, and the bald one
sittin' closest to us in the Winger t-shirt said, "You're pretty cool,
Joe." And Joe told him to shut up, and whipped the beer can he was holding
at him, but like it missed, except some beer spray got blown on me.
"Where you boys headed?"
"Princeton, New Jersey."
"No #@!% , huh-- hey, y'all guys hear that?" The bald one said to his friends. "Them all is trekin' up to Princeton-- that's a hip town. Y'all ought to look up my uncle Ishmael up there-- he's a janitor in one of the dorms up there. Fancy assed rich
mother#%$&in' place man-- I rode this here train up there once-- remember to keep a lookout for highway signs-- you'll be going along Route One for awhile, or else you'll be in New York before you know it. Happened to me twice, but like she turns around,
once she dumps off all this #@!% ." He hit a bale of tobacco. "Y'all will dig it. Preppy chicks are cool-- you know, long straw blond hair. Billy goat fluff, you can bet." He nodded. "It's hip-- really hip. If you dig the right stuff-- you'll dig
it. Know what I mean?" He winked. "Why ya goin' for?"
"Runnin' from the law." Cliff said.
He threw his head back and laughed like a madman. "No #@!% ? What'd you do? Track mud or somethin' in your mammy's kitchen? Hey y'all guys hear that? These two says they's runnin' from the law. #@!% --"
"We like shot our principle." Cliff said it totally straight faced, and like they all stopped their laughing.
"Whoah, whoah, whoah-- you boys serious?"
"Yup." I nodded. "He was playin' tough guy."
Cliff pulled out the wad of hundred dollar bills he had. "And we scored some cash."
"Hey! You said you didn't have any money!"
"Man oh man. It's wrong. Man-- it's wrong." Said the one in the Nirvana T-shirt, shakin' his head. "Why'd-- how'd it happen?"
"Like he wouldn't let us play our Nirvana." Cliff told him.
"Yeah." I said. "It was the last day of school, and he was playin' tough."
"Whoah-- that's just plain wrong." This one called Elijah said. I
didn't think that he could talk. "Don't they teach you the difference
anymore?" His forehead was all wrinkled up and he was starin' wide eyed.
"I don't understand you guys anymore-- I don't. Like we'd flick school,
and like maybe talk back and smoke a bowl, but like you guys these days
are just lost-- you're lost. And you know what it is? You know?" He
leaned forward. "It all started going wrong when Morrison OD'd. Then
Hendrix bit the dust, and after that Lennon was shot, and the Kennedy's.
I mean they were like the only ones who really understood world love and
peace and all that. It just goes to show you there's a devil, man, that
every single saint of that generation was murdered. Think of all the
unsung Lennon songs-- the unwritten Hendrix riffs, the lost volumes of
Morrison's poetry. I mean that stuff would've saved you guys. It is not,
and it cannot, come to good. Woodstock II sucked. It was awful."
"You suck, Larry." The Winger t-shirted dude said.
"My name's Elijah."
Elijah turned back to us. "Armageddon, man." He held up his
beer. "Yeah, I'll drink to that. The world's #%$&ed." Like all his
friends were gettin' ready to jump. We were right by the stadium now. It
was like huge, and people were flockin' in by the hundreds. I wanted to
go so bad, but like I knew I wouldn't, 'cause like Cliff and all his
fields and stuff or whatever. Elijah was starin' at us, like he was
pissed at us.
"Dude, your friends are jumpin'." Cliff told him.
He closed his eyes. "Future fires are lit from fires of the past.
The free-love generation's debt is vast." Then he like jerked his head
around and like opened his eyes wide and like laughed. It totally freaked
us. "That which begins with rain shall end in fire." His hair hadn't
been washed in like twenty years, and I doubt that any other part of him
had been either.
Like when Elijah jumped he kind of landed funny, and fell over,
and the Joe dude said, "You're pretty cool Larry." And Larry said
something back about his name being Elijah, and then something about how
Joe was damned, but they were like receding and we couldn't hear exactly
how it was that Joe was screwed. But it was good enough to inspire Joe to
take a swing, though he kinda missed, and Larry reeled back for his turn--
I mean Elijah. He did it slow enough to give everyone plenty of time to
pull 'em apart. They all chugged their final beers and headed on towards
the gate. Joe chugged two final beers, I counted, and then some of Larry's which he gave to him, right before our flatbed rounded a bend and they vanished behind a grove of pine trees.
We had a pretty good view into the stadium as the train rounded it
up on a ridge. We could see the Pepsi big screen TV's over the sea of
people, and I told Cliff he was being a lame ass, but he wouldn't budge.
Up on the TV they were flashing, "show your b_ _ _ s." And then there was
a man on the stage who I made out, just barely, with a video camera, and
he'd aim it at some chick, and if she was like one of the leather wearin'
ones, or kind of fat, it seemed, she'd pull up her shirt, and like unhitch
her bra, when she caught herself up on the TV. But if it was some pretty
normal chick, like in a t-shirt, they'd just get all embarrassed, and like
wouldn't show anything, 'cept for their bra, maybe. The whole crowd was
cheerin' em on, and one chick, I won't tell you what she did, but she
wasn't exactly the kind of waif person you see in Gap ads, and I looked
away, but it sent a powerful roar up into the night air.
The sky went from light blue in the west off to our left, through
deep blue, to black, in the East, except for like where the concert threw
up a silvery haze. The train finished up with all the windin' terrain,
and it picked itself up again, just as Guns and Roses kicked into
Estranged. Well I couldn't believe that-- here they were playin' with
their coolest song of like all time, and I was glidin' away at over sixty
knots an hour, all 'cause of you know who. I looked at Cliff, and he was
just sittin' with his knees tucked up under his chin, lookin' the other
way, towards the Western horizon where it was pitch dark except for a
tiny, tiny glow from where the sun had gone under. And I looked out there
too, but like I couldn't see anything, except for darkness and fields and
stuff.
"Check that out man-- it's awesome." He was gazing, all glassy
eyed, out westward, with this fine line of a smile. "Like when the night
swallows that last tiny piece of light-- it's cool." Well whatever-- if
you ask me, though, forests are cooler than fields-- it's like there's
stuff in them.
As we pulled up to the top of another hill Slash was floatin' out
his final Estranged guitar solo to the universe, and I closed my eyes and
let the noble melody carry me away and it was beautiful and made me feel
like totally how I just had this afternoon after the storm, like hollow,
but a sort of noble hollow, like something's died, and faded, and gone,
but like here we are, and we've got to move on, and there's something
beyond the music, beyond all that you hear and see, beyond all that people
say.
Like there's the inexpressible, and that's what the music was saying, or
almost saying-- it was crying 'cause it could come close, but no matter
how noble the intention nor how strong the will or whatever, it would
never capture it, though at least it knew of its existence and paid homage
to the ungraspable phantom. I looked and the stadium was away out of
view. The music sounded like it was comin' from nowhere and everywhere at
the same time, but then we crested over the top of the hill, and the train
picked up like a roller coaster, and the melody drowned in the
clackety-clack. The bass line and drums vanished pretty quickly after
that too, and the music died.
We just lay upon that flatbed, on our backs, gazing on up at the
wondrous sky which was powdered white with stars. I'd never seen so many,
with the solid white stripe of the Milky Way painted across the dome,
splittin' the sky in two. Cliff tucked some
tobacco in his pipe and after like seventeen tries, cupping his hand
about it to shield it from the wind, he finally got it lit-- it was cool
the way the matches like lit up his face. He offered it to me, but I
prefer the smell of tobacco when it's not
burning. Plus the air was perfect and the sound of it rushin' on by with
the constant clickety clack, clickety clack, was totally soothing and sent
me off into the highest high I'd ever been. And neither of us were saying
nothing except for when we'd cross over a rail road crossing where the
gates had gone down and the red lights were flashing away and the bells
were clangin'. Then Cliff would tell me to listen for the doppler shift,
which is like how the pitch of the clanging would be high until you got
there; then all of a sudden it would drop low as you passed on by. I
asked him why they had 'em change notes like that, but he said there
wasn't nothing changin' intrinsically with them, or anything, but only our
relative perceptions. He explained how it happened, but I kinda forget.
It sounded like he was makin' it up, so I wasn't listenin' so well. I
think he talks about it in our physics appendix.
"Look at that." Cliff said just layin' there. "Just look at that-- don't that beat all? Just the stars-- there's nothing as infinite as looking up."
"Yeah." It was pretty cool.
"You know the only place infinity exists is in the human mind? No one's ever found it anywhere else."
He got up after a bit and climbed up on the bales on our car which were stacked to form a platform about ten feet above the car. I followed him on up atop 'em, usin' the ropes which kept the tarps down as handholds-- it was all soft and padded and stuff
, up there, on top of the bales, and made layin' down totally comfortable.
"You know how far you can see by just looking up?" Cliff asked. "You can see forever, you can. When you look at the closest star, Alpha Centuri right up there, you can see four years back in time. It makes you want to cry."
"Say what?"
"It takes four years for light to reach us from that star."
"Like isn't light instantaneous? I mean you turn on a light, and like there it is."
"No way man, it goes at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a
second, so it sure looks instantaneous, but it isn't. And check it out,
so like that closest star you're seeing there is four years times three
hundred sixty five days in a year times twenty four hours in a day times
sixty minutes in an hour times sixty seconds in a minute times one hundred
and eighty-six thousand miles a second, miles away. Which is like twenty
three thousand billion miles away, dude-- and some stars are like a
thousand light years away. Anyway, that's how far back in time you're
looking when you look at them."
Nobody said anything for awhile. And there I saw like this weird
light-- like orange, away off on the Eastern horizon, following alongside
us through the trees. I told Cliff to look, and asked him what it was,
and he couldn't figure it out, but then it grew a bit bigger after a
couple of minutes, and we both called it out at the same time, "The
moon!"
"Jinx." We both said.
"Double Jinx."
"Triple Jinx."
"The moon." We both said, and we were safe. It was totally cool,
'cause I'd never seen a moonrise-- not from the very beginning, and here
she was comin' up pretty quick. She was magnified about four times bigger
than usual, and orange, and about as bright the sun, it seemed, though of
course that couldn't happen, 'cause Cliff told me how moonlight was just
sunlight bouncing off the moon, and he drew a picture of like where she
was relative to us.
"Over spring break I was like walkin' that one road where they've
got everyone's names in stars," Cliff said, danglin' his legs over the
edge of the bales of tobacco and takin' a puff on his pipe. "And I was
over on the Sunset Strip too, and down by Melrose-- visiting my cousin,
and if you think the scene in Chapel Hill's lame, like LA totally sucks."
He blew the smoke out and it whipped on behind us in the breeze. "At
least way back when, in the eighties, G'n'R were being honest to
something, but there's no honesty there now-- it's your job to provide
some illusion for our generation of losers." He bit on the stem of his
pipe and the bowl glowed a bright orange. "First off you have to sing the
same old songs night after night, and when that gets boring, there's no
way out, 'cause all your agents and record companies who're pumping and
squeezing you for every last dollar, and they'd already have booked you
four thousand shows, and you couldn't breach the contract or nothing, or
else they'd sue you for all you were worth, and dump you in jail for
life-- you know? "
"Yeah-- like agents don't do crap, so like why do they get 'em in the first place?"
"It's this Government thing. Since the band can take care of
itself, gettin' laid and makin' money, it's up to the government to serve
the interests of the less endowed people, like the agents, who can't get
any on their own. It's just the way the system got done, by Thomas
Jefferson, to make sure that people who can't do anything can still get
money-- so he invented lawyers."
"That ain't fair."
"No, and that's why I'm going into something where there isn't any exploitin' like that, or almost none, except for those hacks who write those quantum-God coffee-table books, like Einstein's Dreams."
"Yeah? What?"
"Physics dude-- it's the last honest unexploited field concerned only with the truth, and I'm gonna be a physicist, like Albert Einstein."
I had no trouble laughing out loud, and I did so, like right in
his face, 'cause he was talkin' trash, and I told him that he might be
smart, or something, but that he'd never be no Einstein with the way he
was always cutting school, and never paying attention to what his teachers
said; always tryin' his hardest to do the opposite of the establishment
people, like readin' the wrong books and stuff, just like what Guns and
Roses were doing, but all the facts didn't stop him, as usual.
"You've been brainwashed worse than I thought." He tipped his pipe
to me. "Why rebellion's right just up Einstein's alley, and I'm not
talkin' the phony type of rebellion, like your favorite band back there,
who are the establishment. You think they invented growing your hair long
and making heaps of money off of doing illegal substances and recording it
all? No-- that was the Beatles. These days it's all set up for you, like
a formula, and they sign a group of pretty-lookin' guys up, 'cept for
Metallica, who made it on sheer talent, but like that was centuries ago.
The Hollywood experts run them through the machines, and out they come a
new band, full of the most refined top-notch rebellion. All you have to
do is write some lyrics which say absolutely nothing of consequence, and
they'll be approved. And all the feminists and things love the industry,
'cause like the Phish bands are makin' language irrelevant and the neon
all-important, and that helps the feminists out in their mission of
writing
things that suck so that people stop reading and thinking, so like they
and their wacko friends can become great writers. If you're in a band
there're twenty lawyers and PR men and agents who're combinin' their
efforts and figurin' out what laws are OK and good for you to break. If
you want to see the greatest conformists just watch MTV." He offered me
his pipe but like straight tobacco smoke's pretty gnarly-- breakfast
always tastes like it for the next three days. "Now Einstein, on the
opposite hand, is the most genuine rebel in all history. Why he never
made concessions for anybody. He never compromised with any agents, he
never smoked dope or anything to become shallower so that your typical
loser could dance to him, and about teachers? He had as much use for
teachers as you have for a bra, 'cause like he knew naturally that
curiosity is more important than knowledge; and all those people standing
up at the head of the classroom, trying to pound old, useless knowledge
into him, and culture, and stuff; why they were just distractions.
Usually what he'd do is go off and find a quiet place to think on his own,
away from all the power mongers; somewhere where he could look up at the
sky and wonder what it was like to catch up with a light beam.
And you know he didn't even start talking until the fifth grade, 'cause it
took education five years to grind him down to where he could be
understood by other people. But he didn't waste much time after that, oh
no, he went right out and founded the fourth dimension."
Well I'd had enough of Cliff's stories for one day. "Now I know you're lying, 'cause like two weeks ago we learned that there're three, and like I was listening, 'cause it's neat stuff. Just look in front of you. There's length, and there's width, and
there's height, going up and down, and anyone knows there ain't no more. Where'd you put it?"
"And I bet you learned it from a teacher, too. Well there's a
fourth, and it's just as good as the other three, and maybe even a little
better, 'cause you can't get lost in it, and it keeps right up with you
wherever you go. It's time, and it's expanding all about us, at the speed
of light, and if we go that fast, we get rotated into it, and it looks
like we have no length; just like when how you rotate a stick in three
dimensions," he demonstrated with his pipe. "And then you can't go any
faster, because your mass becomes infinite, and there's no amount of
energy in the universe that can give you that extra push up to the speed
of light, no way-- your mass is the amount of space-time you exclude."
"So what if you do go faster than light?"
"You can't get going no faster. It's the law, 'cause as you catch
up with expanding time, there's no more time, as it dilates and slows on
down, and approaches zero, cause it's no longer going through you, and
you're right up with it, rotated into it, so you can't accelerate any
more, 'cause you need time for the propagation of energy, in order for you
to accelerate."
"That's not true at all, dude-- look here." I hit the light on my watch. "See, here we are, moving along at all Kingdom Come, and look, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two. The seconds are tickin' by quick as ever." I had him cornered.
"You can't see it from your own reference frame, Beavis-- that's
the first thing you've got to understand, 'bout relativity, dude. Why do
ya think they call it rel-a-tiv-it-y? Whenever you're travelin' along in
a reference frame, everything looks normal to you, which is why I suppose
you can always sees everyone's faults so much better than your own. And
then, you never notice these effects until you're moving along at
something upwards towards the speed of light, which is faster than fast,
like how I
already told you."
Well all his malarkey and pudding got me thinking, and I saw a hole in it all straight-away. "So if like we were two twins, and one of us done and got on a space ship, like suppose you got on one, and. . ." Well just as I was saying it, there I saw the
moon had arisen up in the trees. There she was, following along with us
as fast as we were going, and she wasn't any shorter, so I knew it was all
science fiction he was telling me, and it kind of pissed me off, that he
thought that he could pull one over me of that magnitude, and I just kept
my mouth shut. I wasn't too pissed, though, 'cause like that was just
Cliff, and he never meant any harm by it, or anything-- it was just a game
to him, like tennis or something.
So I just lay back, lookin' up at the big dipper, and I picked out
the North star, by the two stars at the end of the cup part of the dipper.
If you connect 'em the line also goes through Polaris, and I saw how we
were headed straight on towards it. The slaves used to follow it to
freedom, Cliff said, but I knew they were on an underground railroad, so
like they couldn't see it, and I just let him kid to himself. Hey--
whatever gets him off.
This crazy feeling suddenly hit me and set my heart going. What
it was was that I could tell I was a long way from home. All of Chapel
Hill flashed in front of me, and I saw Dave and Riff at the Cradle, and
like they'd talked Jeff into covering for me at the gig, and it was all
loud and smoky and stuff. And here I was, somewhere in the North-Eastern
foothills of Virginia, I guessed, on the most beautiful night ever. I
turned to thank Cliff, but he was snorin' away. What a feeling it was,
'cause I hadn't ever been beyond the border of North Carolina.
