The View From the Basement Window, Part1

It was a sunny Saturday morning on the last day of May, and I was seventeen years old when I died.

I staggered the long mile home, weaving from side to side on the road, crawled downstairs, vomited once in the doorway of my bedroom, then fell over on my back onto the cot. Then I died.

In retrospect, it seemed like an inspired plan. Kids were getting killed every year at my high school on the alcohol fueled drive to their ad hoc aftergrad parties, so the local parents decided they’d had enough and organized one of their own at the rec centre, one where they could supervise and dispense the libations themselves. After you paid your ten-dollar admission, the booze was free, but if you drove you had to leave your keys with an adult, and you didn’t get your car back until the next day.

This was a resounding success for eight years and there were no recorded casualties, until the town Christers and other temperance fanatics who were certain they knew best pushed to cancel the yearly bash and banded together instead to create a ‘dry’ aftergrad-- and as expected, kids started die on the road once again. At least they got to meet their maker early, and were spared the holy intercession of Kenny Copeland and Benny Hinn.

But I’d had too much, and even with food served, I was well past the point of no return.

Dead, I woke up about five hours later. I was still drunk--- and would be pleasantly for the remainder of the day ---which involved a trip to Calgary, 180 miles away. Sobriety poked it's way into the cotton candy well-being around six pm, on my way back.

As I got up, I noted the puke in doorway was gone, perhaps mom had cleaned it up, but there wasn’t even a damp spot on the carpet. I made my way to the shower to wash the chunks of fried chicken and crud out my hair and beard. You see, I’d also thrown up in my sleep, sprawled on my back.

But apart from a feeling of disconnection I was fine. It all seemed a little otherworldly, but I attributed that to the after effect of the rum. We picked up my uncle and returned home to prepare for the funeral. My grandfather had passed the week before.

And then, as June wore on and I fudged my way through final exams, there were the dreams.

There was the grave I visited in the town to the south of my parent’s home. It was my grave. I remember the morgue at the small hospital that had just opened. I didn’t go to the funeral but I went to the wake and no surprise, Granddad was there and he told me he was just waiting around for the bus to the afterlife. I asked him if he’d had any regrets and he said he wished he hadn’t married Grandma, and I said ‘amen to that’. He asked me if I had any and I said I wished I’d let the little number I’d been making out with who was now sitting alone sobbing in my living room drag me down by the railroad tracks for my grad present, he whistled and said, ‘crying shame boy, maybe next time around’.
The dreams grew more baroque after that, and the new normal became the norm. Next time around did come around after its fashion, and of course it didn’t last, but at least it arrived. But since the day I died I could never shake the suspicion this, all of this, including these words I write and the laptop I compose them on, are a product of anoxia—of a 17 year old brain that refuses to give up and decides instead to live a lifetime in a moment. Decades later, at the corner of my eye, I see my young life choking itself out in a dark basement in slow motion as if through aquarium glass.

Some might say I was reacting to the death of my grandfather and trying to work it out through dreams, but I must admit while I liked the old man I wasn’t especially sad he was dead. He died at seventy from stomach cancer, a long, lingering demise I wouldn’t wish upon anyone--so truth be told, I was relieved he’d passed away. And thirty more years pass, as life is but a dream. So, reluctantly, I now surrender to the shadowlands.

I wake in the morning and it’s a warm, beautiful day even though it’s actually an illusion. The pictures I paint and the words I write don’t exist as existence might be measured by you, the figment that reads this, but regarding them is pleasurable. I embrace phantoms of my own design, and the draughts I drink and food I take is the product of dying senses forced to improvise. Reality itself is something I rarely encounter, but when I land it’s not something I’m qualified to describe, except that the afterlife seems to be pretty damned good when I recognize that I’m in it. All I can say beyond this is that it’s more real than here in the shadowlands, but I’ll be patient, the bus hasn’t arrived yet.

In the meantime, it’s safe to amuse myself. There’s faith, isn’t there? That’s always amusing, especially when it’s revealed for the chimera it deserves to be. Unless it’s faith in what I’ve created… but why not enjoy the visual and verbal narratives I compose instead, and yet the world I’ve conjured in the last microseconds of life, what an amazingly strange and dark place it’s grown to be. Heavenly shades of night are falling. It’s Twilight Time.

You might ask how anyone can construct an elaborate fantasy like this all around themselves at a critical juncture, for example--- the moment of their death; but how am I different from many of you? Really, how can I do otherwise, when I recall the most elaborate public art spectacle of all time was on my birthday? Coincidence?... I think not.

In New York in the 1960s these used to be called ‘happenings’, performed to the applause of the snapping of fingers; then this sleight of hand became the province of illusionists to cause buildings and airliners to disappear for entertainment-- so in the age of ‘reality TV’ how much of a stretch in the imagination is it for it a crude fabulism to become a raison d’etre and point of policy for an imploding society’s cultural fugue? And whilst the aim was to entertain and mystify, not inform, as any intrigued member of the audience might, I began to ponder how the trick was pulled off. It’s idle speculation of course, but in the absence of elusive truth and after years of reflection I realize how easy it could be to execute, once the timing was figured out.

It’s been described by better authorities on the subject than I. The performance was by remote control, with drone aircraft. Now really, if a bunch of teenage girls use these devices with minimal training, how difficult can it be to someone familiar with them? Remember, a drone is a drone is a drone, whether it’s a Predator or an RB-66 or a 767; all it requires is the equipment on board. As for crashing it into a skyscraper or a pentagon, a transponder is in each target building (preferably high off the ground), the drone locks onto the assigned frequency, and the operator sits back and watches the fun… and boom! when the task is complete, they might feel moved to celebrate a job well done.

Now we have to imagine what happened to the people in the airplanes, and this is where we use the old switcheroo. You see, there weren’t one set of drones, there were two. One set was programmed to crash into buildings, and the others filled up with people, baggage, flight attendants, small bottles of bourbon, etc. and as these approached altitude, their operators took over and the cabins depressurized. As this occurred, (and this is the touchy part) one flight of drones intersected another, flight signals were exchanged, and then the empty drones flew into the buildings and the drones filled with people went… somewhere else.

This might have looked suspicious if there hadn’t been a NORAD exercise going that morning. As it was, aircraft were flying in all directions, and as the first two hit the WTC, I’ll bet things started to go awry. Pandemonium, by the way, is the name of that beautiful woman distracting you from the magician’s sleight of hand, and much can be accomplished when she suffers a wardrobe malfunction.

But where did the people go? I will concede that baggage was found at the WTC site, but body parts from the passengers? Please direct me to the document stating that they found any DNA evidence from any passenger at the WTC, I’d love to read it. There is an allegation that they were landed (at least Flight 93) at a holding facility, then executed (don’t worry, it’s just a needle to put you to sleep for a while), but it’s more expedient to dispose of them in the Atlantic Ocean. An aircraft intersecting the ocean vertically at 600 mph doesn’t leave much evidence, and what little there is can be found 16000 feet down.

The Flight 93 drone was shot down, probably by an F-16 using similar equipment. Military men will do as they’re told, but the more mouths left out of the loop the better.

Now I know this all sounds far-fetched, but it’s my anoxia experience, and anyway all of this technology was readily available to the US Government … and other countries… for a decade or more by the time 2001 rolled around. But who would benefit from this action? If you’ve ever seen Murder on the Orient Express, you learn that sometimes it’s more a question of ‘Who wouldn’t?’ than ‘Who would’…

Then there were the towers themselves, collapsing into their own footprint. In more innocent times I used to enjoy watching them do this on TV, until one day they mysteriously stopped televising local controlled demolitions of derelict buildings. Why? To be sensitive to the memory of the victims of 9-11? Or was it to erase the similarity between ‘modern marvel’ and ‘crime of the century’ from public consciousness? Hmmmm…. But one thing I do distinctly remember from the day, and it was listening to Larry Silverstein (more than once) saying they’d have to ‘pull the building’ (WTC7) because it was burning and in danger of falling down… it never occurred to me at the time that it takes weeks to set something like that up… unless you already have the charges in place.

Josef Goebbels once said that the masses were more likely to believe an enormous lie than a small one, and there is a reason for this--- we’re herd animals, and our sense of scale reflects this; most of us want to feel safe and secure so we focus our sights on the now, the immediate need, and by extension we want to entrust our elected officials and the apparatus that supports them with the longer view to keep our future secure. But when an enormous hand pulls the curtain away to show us the monsters operating the murderous machinery running what we believed was a flawed, but ultimately good reality, we turn away and declare what a beautiful day it is outside, because to do otherwise would be, for some, to stare into the face of madness and chaos. Then apathy would take over, and we would withdraw into ourselves, and civilization, such as we measure it, would end.

And as much as I pray for this end myself, I can speculate but I can’t impose my vision upon you, my dear imaginary reader, because I live in a land of phantasm, where nothing is as it seems on the best of days. I merely describe and depict what I see in the shifting light---an impressionist if you will, and I choose my entertainments carefully in this place, as you will have to choose for yourself in yours

Where Do I Begin?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. There was a divergence somewhere.

It was supposed to be better… didn’t you believe it was going to be better? I did.

We were going to have bases on the moon… world peace, a twenty hour work week. The first two are a wash, and I’ll bet some of you wish you had 20 hours a week, those that have any at all seem to work 50. But I had a strange dream as a child in 1970. It was May 2034, and everything looked basically the same, and there were still pick-up trucks. Everything was recognizable. It disturbed me, but it’s still 24 years away.

I’ve had a profound sense of disconnect that has grown like an August weather bomb just on the other side of that hill over the last two decades--- this was all supposed to be different. But I feel the change coming now, the black clouds are moving in. What was supposed to be now begins to interpose itself upon what is. It’s been held back for a long time. And it’s angry.

‘Different’ has almost arrived.

I was conceived here, grew up here, and in my early adulthood, visited from time to time. And now I begin, near the end. I’m back, and I’ve come home to die.

Death is transformation, and in what form and what time you or I have left has not been revealed, so I myself wait calmly and amuse myself. But the disease I have is terminal, and I know it, and feel it. Some of you reading this have it too, and are now only gradually realizing it.

Sorry.

It has many names, but I prefer to call it anti-chance.

Tough Luck.

I’ve left this blog fallow for several months now, waiting for the moment, and finally it’s time.

Welcome to my world, and to my valley. Adversity makes strange bedfellows, but I’ll be gentle. I’ll try to enlighten and amuse with my bag of tricks. It’s going to be a long night.

And when morning comes, whether difference means some sort of transformation into a more exalted state is better left for hindsight. You’ll forgive me if I sound pessimistic, but this way if the world changes for the better I’ll be pleasantly surprised, and if it slides down the toilet I’ll be right.

Win-win.