Okay, before we begin I'll give you a few clues as to what is about to happen. In plainest terms the skills of the ALF are constantly tested against those of others - some of these others were are aware of and most of them we are not. To survive, it must adapt to the new competitors, many of whom are created by forces and force fields that did not exist in the time of the creation of the ALF. As such it's experience can can become a liability in that it will tend to expect attacks and killing death rays such as it has known in the past.
In addition to this, since the entire conflict happens primarily on the supre-sensory planes of existence those who would be by nature allies of the ALF do not always recognize him as such and create actual obstacles to their own survival. There are many among us who, misled or confused who prefer the seeming life of ease promised by and increasing abstract set of false moral axioms to the life of vigilance and struggle given to those guided only by the powers of love.
The ALF is a multidimensional creature. How this works, I haven't the foggiest notion. It is not an active multi or poly dimensionality and as with most mystics the greater awareness is found at those times of the least consciousness.
Very briefly. consider some of the definitions of the shamen. I jest that the shamen is not unlike the cosmic bus driver, who takes us here and there but does not always transform us.
Anyway one of the standard definitions of the shamen is "he who has been to the end of time." Call it the end of time, call it the end of the world, that experience seems to be fairly common among shamens, and it's one that I note doesn't seem to translate well to our knowledge. Again, I use words specifically. I could have said that the experience doesn't translate to our language but that is not true. Not only have we no words to describe the mystic experience, but even were we able to communicate knowledge without words we should be at a failure to do in this case because we are referring to two entirely different forms of knowledge.
FWIW/ To be accurate, language is a form of knowledge and the words or symbols that we use in such language we may call the content. Content is shaped by form and form in turn is generated by content. I don't know how abstract all this sounds but it's fairly elementary - eg "form follows function" as the architects would say.
The mystical aspect comes to play in this sense. As any philosopher will tell you in order to communicate with each other we have agree, at least temporarily , on what the terms of discourse mean. We must speak a common language. to give you a very easy definition of form an content we need only think of the tea cup and the liquid tea within. The tea cup provides the form of the liquid and the tea is the content. This is for most of us in daily life, all we need to know.
But a deeper understanding reveals something else which is that if, as above the words or symbols used in sentences are the content we need only look closer to see that they are also the content and form of some newer duality.
The well known joke among fractal theorists is having listened to a physicist tell how the world is made of atoms and sub atomic particles and forces etc, a little old lady stands up and says "the world is a platform resting on the back of a turtle."
The lecturer then correctly asks what the turtle is standing on, and the lady replies "it's turtles all the way down." This means there are an infinite number of turtles standing on an infinite number of platforms.
Suffice to say ordinarily, infinity is a difficult thing to wrap ones mind around, but once you go into non euclidian space it's a simple thing.
Another aspect that comes into play is the confusion of form and content. Simply put, for instance, a skilled rhetorician may convince us that something is true, when it is not. Or, our liking, or aversion to a thing may color our understanding of what it is. Or, we may find that the terms we use are evolving.
In human behavior it is said that custom often evolves, once written down , into law. When something is a law we say it is true.
There's a zen procedure that coincides with classic syllogisms which is used to determine the truth or falseness of a statement. It does this by removing one leg of the dialectic.
The classic syllogism is
All men must die
Aristotle is a man
There fore Aristotle must die
The zen variant is
Before satori one chops wood and carries water
In Satori one does not chop wood or carry water
After Satori one chops wood and carries water.
This implies, obviously, that there is no way to conclusively identify or differentiate an enlightened being from anyone else. It's amusing because many a would be boddisatva would like at least a small notice of their status, but such is not the case.
This is also known as the scientific method - which says if something can't be proven then it ain't so - no matter how much we want it to be so.
Right, well, so ALF is sitting by the seaside. He always goes there when he has important things to meditate on. For me the sea side is always coney island, but it could be anywhere. The other shore is the land of the blessed and it is the ideal of this that leads us forward. Ocassionaly the three graces, or muses pass by They are Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia . They have different names, depending on who you ask and at times exchange roles, but represent things like, joy, comic poetry and dance. ALF gets along with them well, much to the consternation of some, because they are responsive to many of the things ALF does well and as well because, being themselves not human they are free from many of the prejudices of humans.
But also on the boardwalk is an old crone, sometimes called Fata Morgana, or even Morgan LeFay, and she plays an endless game of tarot solitaire. She is indifferent to ALF's survival and at times appears malevolent but by the rules of her own upbringing is not allowed to take an active role in the lives of mortals.
What she can do is interpret the tarot cards in whatever way she likes and then force the powers in the cards to act according to her will. She alone, even more then her, of all creatures on earth is aware of the full extent of ALF's abilities.
Both she and ALF are shape shifters in perception. They share many abilities but she is far older then ALF. Both are hermaphroditic to a degree. There was once a movie called The Alien, the main character of which was described as a perfect killing machine. This is not our ALF, but it may be in someway related to him, a offshoot from a family tree that evolved over eons. The ALF's primarily attribute is survival and it is an almost perfect survival machine. As we know for thousands of years there have been hints of the awareness of the ALF among humans. They call him Werewolf, Golem, Vampire, and even that being known among the elevated as "the Prince of the Earth," but he is none of these things. I call to your attention as well that he, like I, is, in the course of the life span of his species, only having entered adult hood in recent eras.
And his abilities are not so different from those that humans possess, only exaggerated. Among human doctors it is the highest skill to be able to diagnosis an illness and this is nothing new. The names change but the process is the exact same. So too the shamen is able to enter the body of his or her patient and remove that disturbance from the norm that may threaten the well being of the person.
Or consider the judge who must listen to the accounts given by self interested parties and decide which one is most accurate. That is what the ALF does although I make note that it is not done to enhance our well being as much as to eliminate threats to it's existence.
You may note that in recent years we make much less reference to the ALF's prophetic abilities, but they remain and they are, again the result of eons of evolution and almost a lower level apprehension of changes in the gravitational field that we live in. It is not unlike a person feeling a shift in the atmospheric pressure that heralds a storm. Again I not that the ability, primitive as it is, has only value in survival terms . It's very difficult to benefit from prophecy in it's true form, but there have been times when he withdrew from circumstances without knowing quite why and that proved useful.
In the following story the Fata Morgana sends an emissary to the ALF. This comes in the form of a young man who would like to have a chance to be a pop star. His Name Is Bob Big Boy. What he does is he uses a far more powerful method of persuasion them most people would come up with.
For instance one way to get what we want is to threaten, to say we will get what we want and by accepting this the loser minimizes their loses.
A second slightly more devious method is to appeal to the persons sense of power. Flatter them the way a politician will flatter the public. Tell them they are so great that they won't miss whatever it is you propose to take from them and further more the choice of your having benefited them will gain for you everlasting fame and good will.
There are other forms of persuasion: pity, pride, prejudice, but Morganna knows they cannot overcome the card that shows up most often in ALF's future, namely the fool. He is in a way too stupid to understand the logic of attempts to divert him from that and they which he loves. So the emissary must use another technique
He appeals to ALF's sense of justice, fairness and decency. He says that he deserves a chance, that he is and has always been a good person and that the ALF, if he too is a good person, must by the laws of the golden rule relinquish his role.
This is rather simple psychology and most of the time it works. Mankind on it's journey to the stars has long been the victims of tiny minorities within it and those minorities know that it is impossible for, for instance a pharaoh and a few priests to rule hundreds of thousands of their country men. The way it is done is to convince the masses to willingly relinquish their freedom out of a sense of love.
Look, in the Tamlinmediaco, we may say things in a way that's unusual, but we are still in the thick of the battle to survive in an America that has lost it;s way. don't be fooled by the temporary well being of the stock market - how many times does it have to crash and burn before you realize it's a racket? I don't have health insurance. I can't get my teeth fixed and haven't had the offer of a decent job for so long I can't remember.
And I regard the way the focus keeps shifting away from my needs and the needs of those like me as a personal insult. May be we deserve it. We should march in the street more often, who knows? My gut feeling is we are ignored not because there are so few of us, roadkill from the reagan revolution, but because there are so many of us and our problems are going to take real effort to help.
I have no problem with President Obama and I think that his actions are in many cases so self evidently correct that one wonders where the hell our leaders have been for the past thirty years?
Which is to say there's a lot of fourty and fifty year old males that are too ashamed to admit to themselves or others the real truth of their circumstances. And since they don't have money to spend they have lost their attraction as an audience - but all I can say is - don't give up = keep going - and even if there is no brighter day it's better to go down fighting then just surrender.
It's better to be hated then ignored in this game
And finally I must add that this story represents a change that will immediately impress itself upon the readers of the past tales as such. In "TOYA ("Tales of the young ALF,") In "The Alien" and in those tales of his adventures here at the Tamlinmediaco he has known only victory.
But now things are different. Do not forget that when all is said and done it was the New World Unifier, a tyrant, a dictator and an evil selfish man, who's party eventually gained control of the homeworld. The people willingly chose him just like a willful woman might choose a "bad" man simply because she can. Oh Perverse humanity!
Alf discovered there comes a time when skill is not enough. He was superbly trained since early childhood to rule and administer fairly and with the best interest of all at heart. But the world he was prepared for no longer exists.
He may be a classic hero figure, prepared to defend the weak and helpless but his time has passed. There is a parallel here to our own world and time where skill and ability are secondary to the ability to fit into the evolving structures of human society.
What we are told but we find impossible to believe is what Hannah Arndt told us she observed in the leaders of the third reich, which was that it was not directed nor supported primarily by wicked geniuses, nor demented mental deviants but rather by the most ordinary people imaginable who simply saw their chances and took them.
What we find it furthermore almost impossible to believe is things have not changed that much. As we witness the growth of a master equity class some call them thieves, others call them extraordinarily capable but in reality they combinations of being in the right place at the right time and an ability to work with others. That they merit their enhanced lives is not for me to judge.
Even that love which moveth the stars may not suffice to guarantee the good health and happiness of we on earth. As Harry Nillson said "If you didn't have a heartbreak you wouldn't have a love song."
Ah, if it were only so easy, if it were only so easy to fall in love again with some one new. If only, as the fortunate remind us we could retrain, find new occupations , ones that were current. But, for better or worse there comes a time when we don't want to retrain, we don't want to fall in love again. There may be some truth there for life is short and no love seems greater then a first love.
Then again, the whore may seem attractive because she is easy to obtain. And there are not a few putative wise people, of both sexes, that would suggest love is at all times a Iiability. It locks us into a time and place, experiences shared that once shared can never come again. Such wisdom though sooner or later rings false, because it is not love alone, but life itself that progresses, from birth through childhood, adulthood, old age and eventually death.
Men like to think they are self reliant. That's why they don't like to ask for help, or even directions. They also never like to admit they are in trouble. A man's supposed to be strong, like James Brown. Huh.
Another thing though is as they age they get cynical about other men's and women's intentions. They've been burned a few times and pain stays with them. That's why companies like young workers - they will believe the promises made to them more often then older men. They also work for less, believing that the future is bound to be better. So they suffer in silence. They die. Some of broken hearts, some of broken dreams, and some just show up at the same place at the same time and subject themselves to the humiliation of having their thoughts read by people who know very little about how they came to the place they are at.
But then we all die don't we? Everybody dies. All fall down. Perhaps the ancient bards were on to something when they said it mattered not how we lived but how we died. The ranting and raving is over. The battles have been won, and lost and now there is only truth and love.
So, if the ALF clings to his skills let us be merciful and allow him at the least his illusions, for it is not impossible that someday we may find ourselves in the same predicament. I have cast my lot with him because, maybe it's the elfblood, but I'd rather stay in his world of illusions of the fair, the kind and the true, then in a world of the strong, the rich and the beautiful.
Hence forth then he shall not know victory that is not intermingled with defeat. His adversaries grow deeper in their understanding of him and thus will appear more as ghosts, projections, of his own perceptions and desires. Their swords pierce deeper, knives cut wider. No longer will he be the ring giver, the gift giver, the chosen or even the prophet of the chosen. Now such victories as he is capable of will increasingly fade and be replaced by survival.
For you I don't know if I would have it any other way but this is the only way I know the stories to have been in actuality. Other of his stories have astounded us, fascinated us, inspired us, but from now things will be different as we stand by silently and watch a story unfold that seems to come not from without - from a far distant galaxy-- but from within, because in the end his story, the quest to remain needed, wanted and loved is our quest. The difference between the two shall vanish.
Prepare yourself then, as well as you can for the groundbreaking story that is about to follow as ALF's very existence as a fictional character is threatened by the seemingly superior claim to our love made by Big Boy Bob.
The following is a true transcription of a monologue by the ALF
"Ten years ago, on easter sunday of 1999, I had a mystical experience. I've spoken of it before and have little to add other then when the moment comes, call it the epipthany if you like, it is never what you had imagined it to be. It is both more and less then what one would imagine. In my case a youth inspired long by the promise of some sort of enlightening experience, some revelation that would make sense of everything, had long since begun to sink under the waters and waves of others indifference.
Strange to say I wasn't looking for it and it was not a pleasant nor unpleasant experience. My life at the time was not going anywhere. As the saying goes, if you can't get along with someone perhaps it's their fault, but if you can't get along with anyone, perhaps you ought look elsewhere for the source of your alienation.
What happened in literal terms is I drove a car north from Long Island, across the Throggs Neck Bridge up to new
Paltz which, it being Easter afternoon was nearly devoid of people on the street. I went to a pond I know there and gazed down to see a girl was sitting by the waterside, apparently gathering stones and oblivious to the surrounding world. Then I drove on north to Lake George, which is a resort from the 19th century. It being early in the season it was abandoned so I walked around and looked at the painted soldiers, the rather smallish carousels, the boats that would in several week give rides on the nearby lake, the food emporiums, the fun house, etc. All empty.
yet, If I were to point to any time in my life when I entered a distant world it would be then. It gave me a strong and I believe a true vision of what it is like to inhabit a life without love. We are then mere shells of existance.
Our bodies experience things but our souls know nothing of that, and they wither. Sometimes they die.
Against such realizations of which I speak measures of success or failure become useless. Perhaps there is the victory. All about in my life I have seen the cost of uselessness, how it robs life of all it has to offer, and how ultiimately we must rely upon ourselves to carry this burden.
But I was fortunate, as the sun was setting the radio played a tune by Sarah Mclachlan called Angel. As it happens she wrote it about a keyboard player who'd recent'ly o'd. His father was a famous musician as well, Mike Melvoin and as such. He had all the lucky breaks but one. He became a junky. I got a better tune then was maybe coming to me. Or maybe not. One mustn't be too judgemental about these things
Changing Faces
I sat with Bob's Big Boy neath the seventh sun of that endless summer. The Elysium Tractor Company was hawling away what remained of last weeks earthquake. "Never messed up once, did you not?" I said in an attitude more of mystery then wonder.
"Not If you don't count the tuna fish fiasco," He said, nervously
Big Boy was nervous for a good reason. He wasn't used to being on the spot. He was the picture of perfect health. If he wasn't married already he at least had someone in line, for that purpose, to that end. He was a young man who had never broken a sweat in his entire life and I was there to rubber stamp his application. He would make us a fair amount of money. He'd go on television and display a positive face at all times. Then in ten or twenty tears he'd betray us, in the name of efficiency of course. He'd take his carefully cultivated contacts and clients and start a competitive business, for he was the kind of person to always be seeing new horizons - a consummate chess player.
He had done remarkably well thus far. He had seemingly mastered the art of discovering what was really important to the firm and leaving the other things to be done by the niave and the gullable. My intutition was that this was more a result of inside information then of superb risk assessment. He had even outlasted the tunafish fiasco, a test given to all on the fast track to see how they'd react to a constant stream of bad news. My own feelings were the tunafish test was outdated, since if you knew that the test was deliberate you could simply ignore it. Plus there was something a little more disturbing. That he had be given special information was potentially bad enough, but what if he hadn't and he simply didn't care?
Bad news to him was water washing down a ducks back. Those who withstood it best were either of the highest moral caliber, or the lowest. The altruists among us fought on because they wanted to spare those around them excessive pain. But, as well, the psychotics among us fought on because they were indifferent to the pain being afflicted on others.
"Devil or angel , who are you?" I asked silently. Then he began to speak aloud about the period of stress he'd recently undergone. He made a pretty good case for having been ripped off and generally mistreated. I'd heard it all before.
"Oh that?," I said, "That was a test, of course. There was no way you could have succeeded. There has been as of yet no one who has ever succeeded. We subject applicants to the Fish fiasco to see how well and how long they hold up under the pressure of situations they have no control over. Then if we want we have a option of termination at any time, and as well can use any actions engaged by the applicant while under duress for leverage at a future time."
Bob looked perpenplexed
"I'm certain you understand what I'm saying" I said in a dry tone of voice.
"You knew?"
"Knew what?" I asked
"That the deal was rigged"
I immediately took offense. "Now Big Boy, that's not clever of you to say, not clever at all, not what I would say, not at least what I would say were I in your shoes, and believe me there was a time, not so long ago when I was in your shoes."
"You were in my shoes?" He said
"Sure," I replied. "In Asia Minor"
There was a silence for a few moments as BB Boy digested the seemingly impossible suggestion that he and I could ever have had anything in common. Inside he regarded me as a freak a hold over from the days before talent made all the difference. Then he continued:
"Universal Crossword Puzzle Theory says that it's a matter of recursive assignation of the components, like enigma. But still the deeper you get into the complexity of the arrangement the less reliable the shapes of the remaining pieces will be. At the deepest level there is no telling one shape from another."
"Good, good," I said, and then added, "while some suggest that in fact the pieces are not all there, that begs the question. If we, or I were to artificially limit the number of pieces that would be "Cheating"
"And you'd never do that?," the lad inquired.
"Of course not! " I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I couldn't sleep at night nor look at myself in the mirror with a straight face."
Then I found myself in reverie, a montage of memories, the time I snapped at that kid "stop breaking my balls,"
'the time I looked up my hero and left him passed out on a barroom floor in Long Island City, the stock phrases, "We feel that the market for this sort of thing has reached a plateau and are looking for something different,' the times I led people on, making appointments I knew I'd never keep - all in the name of keepin the ball rollin, keep on keeping on.
And "potential" - we feel you have potential, which means "you gotta do exactly what we tell you and you'll still be screwed in the end." The times we encouraged people to send "only your best material" and then handed that off to a person professional enough to mask the parts they lifted.
I been burned too. I'm still looking for that hooker with a heart of gold. I'm still pretending that the people I hire are telling me what they really think and not what they know I want to hear. And I prefer that to the one note Johnnies. The tough guys who never get off the stick. The saint's with the knives in the back pocket. I look up and the kid is still sitting there across the table from me, not saying a word.
I begin "If you had a choice of a lifetime of work and fame and success that in the end meant nothing to you but a means to an end, or a lifetime of despair and solitude which meant the same thing which would you choose?
The young man replied,"Well that's like the story of the hundred and fifty foot elephant. There was a king in hindustan, a good king who wished only for peace on peace so he sent out notice to the wizards and wisemen of the earth to create a weapon that would guarantee peace on earth. This all conquering weapon was a herd of hundred and fifty foot tall elephants. When they were only young they were seventy feet tall and required ladders to reach their saddles. When they had reached maturity they stood, painfully , but when they tried to walk they fell down on broken legs that could not support their weight.
The enemy arrived and over ran the king of hindustans forces and soon he was mortally wounded. He cried to the wise man, "This, this is what you offer me for victory." "I did not offer victory," the wise man said, "you did not want victory, you wanted peace and this I have granted you - the peace of the dead." With this he sat back, apparently pleased with himself.
Now this had changed the mood of the interview completely. He was well trained but beneath it there was that same thirst for power one saw in so many others. He was the phony mafiasco making people a deal they could not refuse based on power he did not possess. He was bluffing. ALways bluffing. Then the question I always wonder about came to to my mind.
"What do you want to do this for?"
"It's exciting. I love it. I love telling stories. I love empowering people and seeing them have a chance to see their dreams come true.
"But what of your own dreams? Don't you have any dreams of your own you'd like to see come true?"
"Look," he said with a hint of righteous indignation,"If you are trying to push me into saying that I'd be just as happy doing something else don't waste you breath." Well. that was decisive enough.
Then, as if the sun had come from behind a cloud, his mood changed yet again and he said, "Look, I'd like a chance at it . Maybe it's so that I don't really have the potential, maybe all I'll ever be is mediocre, or worse, but I owe it to myself to make a try at it.
Everyone deserves a chance to be the best they can be.
He was lying through his teeth
He kept on,
"At the end of the day all a person can truthfully say is they did their best. If I can say that then I believe I'll be able to sleep at night ."
I thought to myself "Oh, crap. Do people still believe that shit? That I am supposed to care for you because you "overcame obstacles on the path to self realization?" My initial reaction, believe it or not was something like pity. Then i came to my senses. That tiny voice of experience raised a peep. I would not be investing in Big Boy's future. He didn't love me. He never took a wrong turn in his life and half of what I know is the result of wrong turns
Slowly something dawned on me and as it did it robbed from me that most precious of motivations - the good fight. Bob was not , like so many in this business, some sort of latent sadist who searched only for a venue in which his brutalization of others could be accomplished without reprisal, nor was he an inbred psychotic, a weakly constructed person to whom the notion that he would be anything but deserving was completely alien. These persons could be made to see the error of their ways. He was something else.
In the briefest of moments all had became clear. My soul was washed in the blood of the lamb. The benevolent indifference of the universe spread though every pore of my being. I face the future the past and the present with benign love and atonement.
It was like that moment in 1984 when Winston Smith realizes that his salvation lies in the care of and submission to Big brother. Waves of consequent understanding flowed through my now opened mind.
Big boy requires nothing to merit our love. He is perfect, immaculate in all things and there in lies the final truth. What he knew on some level and what we can never know is that he needs do nothing more then be in order to merit our love. Neither he nor any other being, god or mortal ever could force obeyance - that must be freely given and the less of a reason to love him the more likely we were to do so.
High above a thunder cloud appeared and as it went higher and higher into the empyrean it seemed to take the form of a multi thousand petaled rose - and upon each petal of the rose was an image of Big Boy. An image that conveyed nothing - that revealed nothing and that concealed nothing.
Limitless voices joined in endless harmonies sang hossannahs from one end of the universe to the other.
Tears filled my eyes as I thought of the suffering that Big Boy had underwent all to accept my obedience. What needs he who has all? My young son stood at my feet begging for attention but I cast him aside - for he only reminded my of my imperfections.
My wife and soul mate gazed at me from the depths of my heart and I knew I could never accept her love without accepting the love of Bob first.
Big Boy Boy from who's hand pours the balm of the universe.
Who's words are as nectar to the afflicted
Who gets paid for every damn thing he has to say about any damn thing on earth.
The smiling face of the technostate. The endless scorekeeper. He who recognizes our pain.
There's a post office on the moon. On the walls are first class postage stamps. Those who go to this post office may send a letter anywhere and to anyone they like, wherever they be.
Then he was floating in the air about fifteen feet above me. His arms stuck out. He was mouthing the same words over and again, which I read in the silence
"You're a bum. You're a dirty no good bum."
When I awoke I was an old man. My hair was grey, my lips were dry and several teeth were missing. The world I now saw was not the world I had once known. Attempting to stand I found my legs wobbled and barely supported my flabby body. That which happens to all had happened to me.
A waitress came by and said "Will that be all , sir?"
"All?," I said, ""Yes, that is all. What do I owe you?"
She shook her head sideways and said "Your money is no good here. See you tomorrow and have a great day"
She walked away and I began walking down the boardwalk, not really knowing in truth my destination. But I would come to something. I always do.
the ALF
collated and transcribed by Tamlin
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