Since the Tamlinmediaco is the worlds most important website and hence unemployable, and largely invisible in not one, but two countries comprised largely of english speakers I do take increasing comfort in the knowledge that those less fortunate then I can use the opportunities opened up by my banishment to secure employ,memt for themselves and thereby support their famiies, friends and religious institutions of the denomination of their choice.

The wonder of the current era is that all it takes is a mind sufficiently shallow and a life sufficiently isolated to obtain the wisdom required to tell others what life is all about - and to be paid for it. Real money, not promises, not praise, not constructive criticism, but real, actual money that can be brought to any commercial enterprise and exchanged for goods and services of the exchangers option.

Oh glorious day. For half the work is done already. There is an ever unfolding carousel of events that must call forth description and appraisal of entertainment value.

There's the inauguration.

"Most of the people in the inauguration this year were rich. The ladies wore very nice and expensive dresses. The authorities said that the demonstrations against the inauguration were small and easily handled"

There's the super bowl

"Once again this year the giants of the gridiron are thundering in the orgy of power and strength known as the super bowl. They are thundering heavier this year perhaps because of revelations (Then that word is edited out due to the fear of lawsuit.) They are thundering even heavier this year *maybe* because of allegations that the use of body enhancing steriods in professional sports is common.. But the cloud of gloom brought about by the criminal charges cannot dampen the excited spirits of the excited fans who this year are more excited then ever at what promises to be an exciting showdown in the sun.etc."

And then there's the Oscars

"This years Oscar ceremony was a real treat. Excitement ran high. The ladies wore very nice and expensive dresses. Claims that rampant video piracy were bankrupting the industry were for the moment forgotten as the stars and moghuls put on a brave face by appearing wealthy and unconcerned and wishing each other well. "This is one night we only want to think of the art," said Bruce Blutarsky, star of the ongoing "Iron Hammer" series of films who was accompanied by the lovely Maureen Moldavia, his co-star in his latest action epic who said the same thing. etc."

When I was young, say nine or ten I ascertained that the world did not pay a great deal of attention to the attitudes and , dare I say it, yes, expertise of children. I found this irksome and if truth be told the passing years leading to presumable manhood have not changed my feelings. Children are shaped, formed, bent, spindled and mutilated and there's not much that can be done inasmuch as they are the virtual property of their parents.

I am not about to suggest a solution, be it the behaviorist prisons of B.F.Skinner or the let it all hang out day camps of Bertrand Russell. Dogs, it is said, resemble their owners and the same is not completely untrue of children and their parents. In many cases this is a good thing. By modeling ourselves after someone we develope a consistant worldview, which may be right or wrong in specific instances, but spares the disconnectedness of the parentless child.

In my case however, as a child I came upon a solution to the problem of thinking about things that children were not expected to think about, namely I became a versatile "quoter." Knowing my thoughts were held to be worthless I would think of someone who had gravitas and was known to the person I was speaking to and tell them that my thoughts were those of the respectable source. There, I confess. I nearly always got away it, untill one time in early high I told an art teacher I had been to Andy Warhol's Factory. I knew a lot about Warhol and could usually fake it, but he called my bluff and asked me where it was.

I could have lied and said someone had taken me there but that would make the plot a little too heavy, so I didn't answer and the teacher was nice enough to leave it at that.. But especially since I have been online I have returned to my old habit of using other people to say what I'd like to say. Since I don't an multimillion dollar organization to supply 'credentials" however worthless, I feel a need to prove the feasibility of my observations by noting others, important people, people that are paid large sums of money, in some cases, have had similiar observations.

Suffice to say not everyone agrees with me on every count. And I have another constraint which is that as someone on "the outside" of the blessed collection of those with credentials anything I say attacking the method of the distribution of credentials is suspect as sour grapes.

The middle ages, something of a hobby with me, are interesting because other then the didactic, which is to say spiritual writing, much of what was said, and presumably thought was pessimistic. This was with good reason. Freedom in a real sense was collapsing everywhere. The percentage of people who were serfs grew year by year and the disparity between the nobles and the peasants did as well. The peasants, of course, were illiterate and many of them simply accepted their fate. The complainers were usually the better educated.

That's an interesting point, namely that the ruling class by and large was not vastly smarter then the rest. They were usually advanced becasue they were good with weapons, and claims to chivalry aside, they were not squeamish about using those weapons on the neighbors. Let's not delude our selves the man of violence and ambition gains most not from strangers but from friends, or former friends.

Those who were highly educated, some Bishops, some lawyers and high governemnt officials often tried to keep a lid on things. They tried to control the rampaging warriors and knights, with mixed success. So that is why much medieval writing is concerned with how people pought to behave towards each other and to make as clear as possible the difference between a good knight and a bad knight.

Of course I, and others have noticed great similiarities between then and now and our concerns are shared by people across the political spectrum. In the macrocosim there's the growing strength pf single specific heirarchies, like feudal estates and in the microcosim there's a sense that there's too much power in too few hands. Unfortunately as long as the one keeps happoening, the macrocosim the other is inevitable.

As words carry little wieght with a savage so too reasonable words carry little wieght against savage words.

Returning to what I started to say then, in observing others those who I find to be puppets of whatever strongman is paying them I don't quote. They are often like broken records, they stay in attack mode and attack not ideas but people either individually or collectively. I don't know if there's enough money in the world to get me to be like that, but in any case I don't think I'd be all that good at it. Among other things it must be tremendously boring to always look at things from the same viewpoint.

.

In evaluating daily commentaries then, I've learned to recognize methods used by people to create the four or five hundred words needed every week in order to be paid. This is no easy task, especially when you're too lazy or too self important to get out and learn things. The broken record school is the worst. Something happens according to what TV says and a few days they explain why it supports their opinion which just happens to be the opinion that those in power would like the public to latch onto. Sometimes, often indeed, it borders on ludicrous. The public scratches their heads and tries to make sense of things that, on the surface at least, put their rulers in a bad light. Only after a steady diet of carefull explainations does the public realize that the ruler couldn't possibly have meant for anythng bad to happen to anyone as a result of what they did. My favorite example of this is Rush Limbaughs explanation of the Iraq prison torture/murder revelations as "like a fraternity hazing, just kids having fun."

Another distatefull school is named after a famous retort by "the great communicator" and is called the "there you go again" school. It insists that anything contrary to what it wants to increase iut's power is said by a unitary body of single minded idiologes. It is classic Stalinism, do not attack the argument, attack the person who is making the argument.

Either of these two styles is indicative either a weak mind or a strong paycheck or, as is often the case, both. A less offensive but still useless style is the "minor parrot" school. A contemporary instance is the leader is a gambler. This indicates that the actions, though controversial are not made with malevolent intent. As in the Stalinist method, again, no one can judge intent. We can sum up these styles of word manufacture for money as contingent on one major idea and that is to separate cause from effect.

Of the more legitimate writers you can be behind, ahead or above a story. The least glamorous is behind, or sweeping up, that's when you try to set the record straight by mentioning what are called "facts". This is usually best done in book form and the 24/7 news cycle does not like facts. It likes surprise.

The better writer will get ahead of a story by going out on a limb and saying what the results of actions will be. Sometimes they are right and sometimes wrong but are far less often vacuous or redundant. The third method , which is comparitively rare is what I call getting above a story. As John Lennon said of the Beatles "We're not the captains, we're in the crows nest." The reason it is rare is one needs perspective and that only comes from a broad knowledge both of individual personality types and historical preceedents. It's difficult to find people like this because one does not get paid for general knowledge. (God knows I can attest to that :-) but rather they get paid for keeping their noses to the grindstone. So you know about flower shows but little about horticulture.

The holders of equity agree to transfer small percentages of their equity to defensive and offensive forces for the purposes of maintaining and increasing equity. An essential premise is that this does not impact upon those who don't hold equity and therefore must work. Churchill was a doll in at least one sense. He was certainly no enemy of personal property but he had too much experience to disregard the interplay of emotion and reason. Emotion feels good but is transitory. I would not venture too far into guessing how he thought but am willing to suggest he was aware that as a group, mankind, given the option of emotion or reason will choose the former and thus many of his efforts, however emotional they may have seemed, were to the end of contravening that tendency.

Thus, the task of telling the truth, or even common sense, has never been easy.

The superior fighter anticipates the actions of his opponent.

This is not done by guessing what the opponent will do.

This is not done by presenting the opponent with a novel situation in the effort to elicit a predictable response. Though such method is at times used against opponents of poor skills it is not good form.

Anticipation of the opponents actions is best gained by a complete knowledge of the immediate moment.

What do we mean by complete knowledge of the immediate moment?

Knowledge of the environment
Knowledge of the opponent
Knowledge of the self
Knowledge of that which is beyond knowing, or. the void

(TBATA, Book Three, Oral transmissions)

A little bit about how the net promulgates misinformation. For some odd reason I found myself looking up a Donovan lyric. He's a sweet guy, a pussycat in a world of tigers and lions. Most rock stars are very ambitious and self centered. The successful ones get to mask it by starting charities to end world hunger and eliminate nuclear weapons, or developing chronic addictions, but it doesn't hide the fact that they need to be in the spotlight one way or another. Gotta be a bigger man then dad, you know.

And I am the same way. When I hear about some pretty boy being hired for a million, writing their memoirs full of world weariness at 22, or even getting a good review, I get all cramped up inside. "What are these idiots thinking?" I say to myself. "Can't they see the obvious transparency of the shtick?" That's why I haven't had a decent nights sleep in years. It bugs me. When I make dinner for one I think to myself, "Jesus, Tony Blair's got a personal cook and chauffeurs - How the hell does that make sense?" It doesn't and that is why I am so miserable mostly and forever on the edge of despair.

This is why most rock artists don't last. They are like Jim Morrison, the songs last forever but as soon as the attention wavers they start to act silly and wind up up getting deaded.

Donovan on the other hand was and is different. His songs sounded ephemeral and were. They made no lasting impression on anyone, but me, and yet he himself is going to live forever, or at least untill ninety nine. He's not that great a lyricist. He's not like Dylan and myself, pouring over Alan Lomax books to get that authetic flavor. Scan the lyrics and the same words reappear constantly, crystal, glass, velvet, birds and the seashore. I eat it up, just like I eat up the whole sword and sorcery bag.

I finally figured out why. Man, this cat is from another world. He comes from about as far from the outer boroughs of Manhatten as you can get and still speak english. No guys in black leather jackets ever beat him up on the way to school. The sidewalk in front of his house wasn't so filled with motor oil and grease you could skate on it any time of year. Like it was real pretty; damask, and crinoline and all that stuff that I never found out what actually was. And in his songs were girls in pretty clothes with long whispy golden hair who met him at art galleries and they'd laugh and go back to her place and they'd never even ask for money.

Man, oh manachevitz what I'd do to live a life like that. To wander along the seashore pondering the clouds. It showed he had real class. And a classy guy gets classy babes. I don't know if I ain't ever gonna get like that way. I bet he never gave a thought to being paid. Where I come from that's all anybody thought about 24/7, getting paid and the goddamned job. When the job was over they'd drink themselves silly so they could forget, until the next day, then they'd do the same thing again. Then they'd die. Gone.

What was it Ray Davies said? "She bought a hat just like Princess Marina" There was once more princes and dukes and kings and earls in Brooklyn then in all of western europe. The only difference was they didn't live in palaces and didn't marry princesses or wealthy American girls looking to add some cachet to the family fortune.

Anyway so, felling wistful, I look up some Donovan lyrics. The lyric websites mostly stink, They are loaded with pop-ups and flash and junk html. None of them has a simple album by album format. After awhile i came upon "Wear your love like heaven," which was a top ten hit and I noticed that the lyric was way off, words like Prussian Blue , Alizarean Crimson, and Rose Carmethine were replaced by someone's phonetic interpetation, which is understandable to some extent, although the lyrics were printed on the record and on the rereleased record.

On a hunch then I went to the next site in the Google list to find that the lyric there was also wrong, in exactly the same way. A few more sites and I realized that someone a few years ago posted maybe on a newsgroup this weird version, which makes no sense whatsoever but now is the version seen on the most accessed sites. It's a good example of how a germ of misinformation, without correction, spawns new generations of misinformation. The file was probably collected by spider, or robot and the reason these crummy sites are on pages 1,2, and 3 of the search engines is because, as we know there are ways to rig the selection process. You can use generic terms, you can set up dummy sites that send traffic to your main site and thereby increase your standing, you can research the web bots and find the words that trigger specific reactions or you can even just put a lot of terms into the unseen html.

I am not really complaining. On a scale of things, if it were important to enough people it would be fixed, but, of course, it is data from the past. The point being that when information has to "fight" to be accessed then the network will favor the most contemporary information. There are programs that promise to get you higher up in the search heirarchies and I've considered them, but it's one of the many things that would take away from the essential deal here. I don't have the time. It's like e-mail and a million other things. You have to do what you're good at. I can't fake being an oakie, or a child of nature. I can be drawn to such things but the experience isn't there.

It's amazing when you begin to see the sources of things. Tolkien drew alot from Snorri Stulstrom. There's french bands almost indistinquishable from Madonna, who got there first. But in the winner take all world getting to the 98th percentile doesn't matter. You have to get to the top. For instance Dan Brown's making a ton of money on the Da Vinci Code, but the earlier books were just as commercial and he did the same exact things, the chick with brains and tits, the mysterious secret powers, the toungue in cheek hints that he was actually writing a Roman a clef, it was all there but it didn't click until he keyed into the current mood, but it was only a matter of time. Would I read it? Heh, that would be bringing coal to Newcastle. Never kid a kidder.

The object remains to do as little slog work as possible. Let other people do the research, like with the Harry Potter books. You don't have to be smart you just have to be smarter then the next guy about something the next wants to know more about. To paraphrase A.Conan Doyle when all the evidence has been collected and it comes down to the truth or the myth, print the myth, no matter how impossible in absurd it is in light of the truth.

From my vantage both musically and in terms of literature or writing I can usually recognize the myth, often because they are so consistant. The truth has rough edges, the myth is smooth as silk and goes down easy.

To succeed you have to take chances that other people either cannot or will not take. These "build your self esteem" characters can only take you half way there because that's built on the idea that if you can sway people you can finagle them but it's besides the point because anyone dumb enough to fall for that is too dumb to be world class and that's what you need. Look at Clinton for example, the really bright ones like Reich smelled the wind and left early. My feeling is you do people favors and the one's on the ball will repay, the rest, who need's em?

As far as stealing goes you have to expect it. When you start out and people see you're on to something they figure they can steal from you 'cause you can't hit 'em back, because you're weak- and they are right. Many firms take a few punches and they are on the floor. And the big boys don't think twice. They move on to the next target of opportunity, meaning the next little guy who can't fight back. If anything rather then remorse they are encouraged, feeling they done right for themselves and their beloved major shareholders. They'll steal your personnel, they'll crush your support systems and most importantly they will steal your ideas, get them to market first and palm it off as their own, all the while betting you're just gonna vanish like so many others. Then you get accused of being second rate and an imitator.

Then when you get a little closer to viability a new strategy takes over. All of a sudden the welcome mat, meaning "welcome suckers" is withdrawn. Now they don't want to have anything to do with you. Now you're not the pal they will stab in the back, now you're a competitor. You see it in the way they regard your product. Before it was "great, but not commercial enough without enhancement," and they want to know everything they can learn about it because they want to steal the idea figuring you're going to go nowhere with it.

But as time goes by and the thing starts to take shape all of a sudden it's miraculously transformed into something nobody wants. No part of it is any good.The reason it's no good is it has become too complex for them to rip off and they know if they build a market for it (yes, kids, you don't want stuff because you need it you want it because you are told you want it)- that you will cash in on their publicity often with a better product.

It's like sex. If a girl brings along a male friend who's obviously unsuited for her the boyfriend is happy. but the more suitable he is the more the boyfriend is pissed off. I mean there's times recently when people slam the door in my face and i feel good about it, because it tells me there's nothing behind the door. and whoever the doorkeeper is is afraid you're gonna move in on his territory. Both the artsy fartsies and the superkewl professionals can KMA as far as I care. Putney sez the four and six account has got to have soul.

(Enter Norma Deren) okay, what's going on here?

(Tamlin) I'm coming to grips with things, facing up to reality. I've decided that if nothing else happens to change the situation I'm am going to engage the Spinoza Scenario.

Moving to the Netherlands?

No, even more serious then that. I've decided I am .. well the Tamlinmediaco is too important to let falter

Of course

It's too important to me, to ALF , to you and most of all to the world.

Agreed If we don't save the world it won't save us.

Reductio ab nullifacto nixit, as I used to say to my tutors when I was a boy.

And ALF would say, "No way, Jose"

If the world is deaf , dumb and blind to it's own good then we, all of us, have a responsibilty to persevere nevertheless

silence

I mean I thought of putting one of those paypall banners on the site , but it would spoil everything. I just can't bring myself to do it. I have too much pride. Besides which it demeans everything we stand for. We stand for the best, for fairness, generosity and i need, inside, to feel that we really are as far beyond the standard way of doing things as everyone says we are.

You still have the floor

Right. There's got to be a way. i am not talking estethics here I am talking practicality, like Henry Ford paying a decent wage and selling cars that could be bought by anyone and were not just a luxury item.

Ford turned out to be a tyrant.

Yeah, I know, and so did Disney and I can't say the end justifies the means. The wasteland hardens one. But someones got to , not carry the banner, but walk the point.

silence

It's the old cliche' how do you win the rat race without being a rat?

Do you want me to answer that?

You don't have to tell me .That I know. Leave the labyrinth.

We love the labyrinth, don't we?

Twists and turns, a house with a thousand rooms, a million mysteries, don't I know it.

To be a spy in the house of love

Yeah, and where do all the doors lead? to the final door, and nothing. Death. Gone.

Hmm, go on

It's shattering, of course, but I am not exactly without resourses in that direction. If I have gained one thing from supporting ALF all these years it is that. A knowledge he doesn't even know he has.

I sometimes think ALF, in feigning being a human is the most human being I know.

(laughs) He can lie with best of them

Perhaps he will, but don't tell him that.

Yeah, so anyway if worst comes to worst and nothing happens I'm going to have to get a job.

Tamlin, you are an Elf. Elves don't work, they sing and dance and be kind to trees, but they never work.

My father worked

Your father was a complex individual. His relationship with James Otis was equally complex. James was for intents and ;purposes the Prince of the Earth. If one percent of what Otisco and it's earlier incarnations was known all of human history would have to be rewritten. It puzzled me for a long time and it stil does but I think that in as close a way as possible for Otis to love anyone he loved your father.

I don't mean sexual, although James had sex with women, men, boys, girls and animals when the occassion arose, but there was something about your father he needed, perhaps a connection with the past. It was the same with you, admit it. He did everything b possible to hire you without losing face in front of "the boys" becasue you were a part of your father and by owning you he could symbolically own your father.

Yeah?

I've got news for you. Otis was impotent, that's why his successor, Walter White isn't working out. He has a daughter. And the way of Otis is never born in a person, the person has to be conditioned to where they exist only on the outside. their insides are eaten away. They get that haunted llok and they are forced into continuous displays of existance where they become obivious to the idea that anyone is any different from them. That's why you think of them as pyschotics. The very fact that you can realize that means you're not that far gone

The bridge

huh?

Uh, nothing

And anyway, so your father was a very presentable man. Otis had a sadistic side. If he had any fault it was he liked humiliating people. In ordinary case when we humiliate people they get angry and fight back. In Jame's case that didn't matter. There was nothing anyone one earth could do to harm him. He had that much power. He was never sick a day in his life, no one ever laid a hand on him until the very lkast momkent when the bullet tore into his heart.

Why did that happen?

James Otis was Satan. Now there's a new Satan for he cannot die as we think of it. But Satan comes into being because of something both out there and in here, another dimension, like me, I'm a ghost so I exist mostly in another dimension, but it's much smaller and closer to the four dimensions known as reality then the one where Satan is given form and content.

The MAYA?

Yes and no. The MAYA is portrayed as a dancing girl. She is all movement but once the dance stops she vanishes. And her dance itself is an illusion, not like the fluctuation of molocules or atoms, but created by the fluctuations of our transient and unstable perception. You could almost see her as Satans consort although they never touch. The music that they dance to is pain and the dancefloor is made first with the bodies and then with the souls of those they have deceived.

So if Otis was the devil and he danced with the MAYA where did my father fit in.?

Your father was a very presentable man. He would show up at board meetings, at conferences, at personal interviews and he would be the official face of Otisco. That's all he did. He gave people ideas and Otisco had so much leverage, in real financial terms that people listened to him. As I was saying James himself was sadistic and even though his victims could not stike back he would often kill them if they were guilty of insufficient admiration. They'd be dead before he had extracted every last penny from them.With his sadism there was an element of vanity. Otis could shape shift but he could never be as attractive to people as your father who could only alter his appearance slightly. And Tamlin, you are like your father in that way. You are physically beautiful, or handsome as the case may be.

No I'm not

Yes, sou are you're very presentable yourself. If you weren't such a hermit it would bring you no end of problems.

Is ALF presentable?

I don't know, don't ask me. I'm the last one to ask that of. You know, at a distance beautiful women tend to favor minds and power. It's the plain Janes that fall for guys like you, movie stars. But up close, when there's no one looking people fall for people that are about as attractive as they are.

I'm not interested in girls. I never really got around to that part of things.

You're interested in power, wealth, possesions, all the things you regard as your birthright.

They are what I grew up with.

Yes, I suppose so. If someone's got to be in that position it may as well be you.

Mrs. Bloom?

Ha (she laughs) "Oh well, as well him as any other." Sure, I am familiar with that reasoning and when I was alive I probably lived that way. When I was alive I never met any man who was very much different from any other. They were all the same in kind with only the degrees different.

And now?

I had a girlfriend once, a very pretty girl, who could have her pick of the boys and she said what she valued most in a man was femininity. It was a glib thing to say and it indicated she had never really had to grow up.

Yeah, so ALF is different huh? from other guys?

Tamlin, I'll be one hundred percent honest with you and I don't want you to ever tell another soul this

What? What is it?

He doesn't deserve me. Once i realized how pathetic most men are and how little difference there was between them I went into a massive state of depression. It didn't help, having a father like mine who was a certified genius and a mother who was an airhead. So i decided to find the most unlikable, miserable, erratic unstable personality i could find. I figured that way i could treat him anyway i wanted and it wouldn't make any difference because the guy would be completely oblivious to everything that happened around him. It's worked out very well.

That was ALF?

Exactly

Wow

Now you know.

And you love him?

Heh. I let him love me.

Wow It's not like i imagined it

Lifes a bitch and then you die, but in my case I died and then became a bitch

ALF doesn't mind?

Him? He's unconnected. He doesn't have the slightest idea what I think of him, because he doesn't have the slightest idea what anyone thinks of him. He's an alien for God's sake. He has no idea what goes on in the heads of humans or former humans. For me, he's perfect. Other women may want more out of a relationship, but I could do without that stuff as long as he obeys my every command and doesn't give me any back talk.

To each his own i guess

Someday you may find a woman who sees through you. Maybe you'll marry her. good luck

Yeah, well, i gotta go think things out

He leaves

You idiot

(Enter ALF)

Ah, Mon Cher

Time off?

Never, I need a psychic renewal and you're my pyschic reneweresser

Tamlin was just here. He's down in the dumps. He put's up a brave face but he's really scared. He knows so much about everything he feels he doesn't fit anywhere.

Yeah, there's a lot of that going around

I'm a little down too. I've got missing womb syndrome. It's my time of the month and old habits die hard I guess

That's a drag

Tell me a story ALF

"Bout what?

Anything, whatever comes to mind

Okay, Let's see, one time I'm hitchiking

Good, I like those stories

Right, and it's in the hills, north of Nashville I get picked up by this guy in a twelve wheeler. He's going to Cleveland. We weren't sayin' much. Come around eleven o'clock we're in the hills, maybe West Virginia and there's an ICC check point up ahead.

The cabs on them rigs are big an the long haulers have sleeping compartments right behind the drivers seat. You get a big one and you get pulled over the driver'll say "just get back there and whatever happens don't do nothing." You climb back there cover up in a sleeping bag and that's that .Once or twice I was so tired I fell asleep.

But this cab I'm in the time I'm talkin' about was only small and filled with a lot of junk and I had the guitar too. So, that option was out. We pull in line behind a few other trucks and the driver says to me. "You get out, walk down the road till the woods starts up again and I'll pick you up."

I look outside and there's nothing but woods all around. I've had experiences where people take you to the middle of nowhere, then they say, "Over that ridge is the highway, or town or whatever." And there's nothing there. That's suppossed to be a joke and if it's cold you keep walking and if it's warm you just sack out in the woods.

So, I am apprehensive till the truckdriver says "Look, either do what I say, or get arrested." and that's the magic word, arrested. And he says,"and don't open the door too wide." Sure. So I climb down from the cab with a knapsack and a guitar, scoot over to the side of the road and there was a gully there, about maybe 20 feet down, maybe more and it was very easy to get to the bottem. Only took me one step.

When I got up and realized no bones were broken I had planned on going up the other side, into the woods and then walk down to where the guy would pick me up, but it was sandy like and would have been no end of trouble to climb. So I look up and there's stars and i hear the moters of the rigs but all i can see is up. I think. If I can't see them, they can't see me. So I started walking down the gully. I figured i'd tell 'em i was a long distance hiker or something.

And so i walk by where they're are doing the checkouts, for wieght mostly and also they check to see you got a license to drive one of them things. I could hear them talking plain as day, i could see the flashlights moving around. No more then thirty feet away from me and if one fellow had decided to take a leak i'd be nailed. But the Lord was with me and nothing happened.

Finally I'm down about a quarter mile where the woods come close to the road again and i manage to get out of the gully. It's been a while, maybe twenty minutes, can't tell, when you're on the run you lose your sence of time. I'm standing in the woods watching as one by one the rigs are passed through. By the time they get to me they're in about high second or third gear which is about fourty five and a twelve wheeler going fourty five doesn't stop on a dime.

I start counting the trucks, five, six, seven, wondering if maybe I'm goin' be there all night. It's a little after midnight. Finally one truck starts up. They looked the same to me from the front down a quarter mile, but I'm listening and I hear this one and it's more purring then howlin' Didn't quite put it into third.. And he coasts along into where the woods starts I see the door open and a voice calls "Hey kid, you there?"

I run run like wildfire, hop in the cab and we're off.

We didn't hardly say much. I said "Everything okay?"

He said "Goddamned cops got nothing better to do."

That meant he was clean. We got to Cleveland about four thirty. He dropped me off at a diner, which considering i had less then five dollars on me fit my budget. I guess it just goes to show you sometimes you can squeak through.

And you what, Norma? I felt like a king. There were all these people handing me off from one to another, protecting me, guiding me, telling me their stories, even if they couldn't talk so good like what I can. They were keeping me safe from the bad things and bad people and places, warning me, telling me where and who to avoid, be it criminals or cops, because I was the stranger and inside, I think they knew, they knew there was one chance in a million I'd get through to where I was going and they sure weren't going to be the one to throw the monkey wrench at me.

That feeling grew inside me and it kept growing and that's what keeps me going.

That's right partner

That's right partner

they leave

"Argentum vivum nostrum non est aegentum vivum vulgare: imo argentum vivum nostrum estaqua alterius naturae, quae reperiri potest supra terram, cum in actionem venire non possit per naturam, absque adjutorio ingenii et humanorum manuum operationibus"

-Lully

"Our Mercury is not common Mercury or Quicksilver. Our Mercury is a water which cannot be found on earth, for it is not made or manifested by the ordinary course of nature, but by the arts and manual operations of man. "

Long live the Virtual State

-Tamlin

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