What is Happening in the World Today?
We all want the world to spit out its truth to us, but the world doesn’t. Not far from the neighborhood where wants torment their users, is the residence where Lauren and Antoinette make their home. They are sitting on the couch, watching a sitcom, sometimes laughing tiny smiles at the tiny quirks the show characters pronounce with utter ease, as they are contrived and must seem natural. Occasionally in their assembly they return to themselves and notice each other in the process.
Antoinette is particularly good at self examination, and I don’t mean by that that she is truly able to observe herself but simply that she expends an inordinate amount of time doing it; while Lauren perhaps because of her profession is more inclined to analyze others. As the television continues to clamor for attention, Lauren’s devotion is paused while biting into melted cheese on a wheat-cracker, which she significantly blands by weighing its caloric content. This permits her to further pause and notice her exposed red blush painted toes, while noting that Antoinette had socks on for she was always bordering on cold. Antoinette’s particular set of socks were full of colorful circles, imbued with meaningful woolen restrain. Lauren thought to herself, (Antoinette still enjoying the show) “My sensitive darling wears socks most of the time because she can’t take all that stimuli that would arrive through exposed feet, maybe we wear clothes because we became hypersensitive and not instead because we could be moralists or cold.”
Antoinette was subdued by the absent presence of her lover, she senses that she is now watching the show alone and this bothers her, “Can I keep her attention?” In all verbal reality the truth was that in this relationship the Sun was Antoinette and the revolving planet was Lauren, but Antoinette was an emotionally unstable sun, she didn’t realize that Lauren wasn’t going to go anywhere because Suns have a maximum gravitational hold on their planets and more terrifying have a tendency to swallow them whole. Someday Lauren would be all within Antoinette and what must have truly troubled Antoinette, because unbeknownst to her was that Lauren might not satisfy her, that perhaps the grandeur of her Sun emotions would not find a double star. That in a sense, Antoinette had to make her partner explode into being her passionate lover and that working at it might be the static state of their relationship.
To reconnect the disconnect Antoinette grabbed Lauren’s hand and kissed it, and the TV show lost in the ratings; the two lovers then playfully kissed and Lauren busied herself in Antoinette’s bosom hiding underneath her hair. But Antoinette kept on thinking as she caressed Lauren, “We share so much but so much remains unfulfilled, if only my lover would quench her thirst with me, but she won’t, she is afraid to let go, she doesn’t trust me enough, I am not enough to gain her trust, I am her first woman lover, she must seek another and another, she won’t find fulfillment within us…”
And these terrorism of thoughts careened through Antoinette’s neurons, but again, wholly unaware that the berserk essence was hers, that the uncontrolled raging fire was within her, and that the incredible but restrained passions that she attributed to Lauren were indeed hers. But again, Antoinette’s examination of their relationship was wholly self contrived, Antoinette was worried that Lauren would abandon her, never truly willing to say to herself, “I could be dissatisfied here,” instead she would say, “my lover is dissatisfied with me.”
Ironically and equally troubling and perhaps the reason why the precarious relationship was working out. Lauren was afraid that she could not satisfy Antoinette, which was why she kept some distance from her Sun, it was as if to say I do have my independence from you and if you decide to leave me I could still survive. But of course that wasn’t true either. There are not many truths that one can consider absolute, but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a planet without a sun and Lauren must have been aware of this, and now she was helplessly in love with Antoinette and helplessly trying not to drown from her knowledge of it. In other words there was a mutual and natural repelling trepidation between the two lovers, and somehow this quantified their orbiting around one another. Only Lauren, as one might expect of a planet, never contemplated that she could be the one that could leave the relationship, she never felt that kind of independence. While Antoinette considered from an odd internal sequestration perspective, “I am doomed to love you, you are my planet, mine, mine, and even though you might never become my shining star equal, I will stay with you because I am doomed to love you.”
Neither considered that the relationship could be doomed from their perspective, it was the other that was going to fail it. Such was the trigger that had the hammer pulled back. And yet it was innocuous enough that the tension could be ignored, they were both equally learning about themselves and each other, even their love making had not wholly crossed into the boundaries of sanctity, it was still carnal, they were still satisfying cravings and urges, seemingly mostly satisfied with gentle releases of what could be grander, the essence of love unleashed without fear. They were not there yet, still Lauren could remember the first time that she felt Antoinette truly love her, in that room in the convent, where all the inhibitions of the world had amalgamated to form a church, there, for odd reasons, in that bed, in that room, with those laughs, and even with Habakkuk looking on, both women had felt free of spirit to commune.
Yes that had been the moment where their love first dared to say “I am here.” And then things started to get complicated, work, even cleaning the dishes and where to put the dirty clothes got in the way of love’s soul expression, and now the fears, both lovers not wholly aware of each others incessant “I want more buttered croissants from you.” and not aware that neither was more than now, because they were, in this instance, everything that they could be to each other, and no more.
Habakkuk is on his bed, he is wondering why the world continues with such hostility, he has transcended his transcendental phase; and he is debating what to do with himself now, he thinks maybe he will start a business, he knows how to make excellent burritos, he will open a burrito stand. He loves pork, he doesn’t know if it is good to serve pork, part of his transcendental residue self tells him that maybe it is not a good idea to serve pork; and he would have to keep at least two sets of knifes one for the pork and one for the fowl, though he had heard that you could wash the knife before cutting either and still not violate some immutable law somewhere, but he wasn’t knave enough to accept that. Finally he decided that his Burrito Hut, would serve only pork burritos and that was that.
Pork meat is one of the great things in the universe, you can love it because it is not impossible to love it, chicken meat is the neutral meat, it tells your taste buds I will accommodate myself to you, don’t worry about my fowl, there isn’t a good reason to not to eat chicken, even vegetarians think they are not cheating when they eat chicken, and when we speak of meat we are not necessarily speaking of chicken. Which is probably why the inoffensive bird is not requested or mentioned in bible sacrifices. In fact they always like to sacrifice 70 bulls, 100 goats, 25 boars but you don’t ever hear of anyone wanting to get on good with gods offering them chickens. Even one pig must be a better sacrifice offering than a thousand chickens. Now there is cow meat, nothing bad to say about cows, milk is one of the finest products, and used either as a drink or to make pancakes or any of a thousand and one things, milk is a wonder product, and so is the meat from a cow, but the meat from a cow is not as tasty as the meat from a pig. Pig’s meat, from shoulder to ass is great tasting; the Cubans with their Lechon could easily be cooks in heaven, and Mexican carnitas, nada que decir!
Why do certain religions deny themselves pork? It is because they don’t want to feel like they are being opulent, they don’t want to indulge, they want to deny themselves the most exquisite meat in the universe, PIG! And through personal denial they can then say to themselves that they are not Cretans, Plebeians, Commoners, Pagans like the rest of us. But then Habakkuk reasons, that to deny one’s self a creature that god has exemplified as the swine of the earth is to deny one’s self of god. “I can not deny myself what god has created because that is to deny myself of god.” And so it was that finally our former pimp looking prophet Habakkuk decided to finally get himself a job so that the characters in this book would not appear as needlessly unemployable upper class denizens.
Habakkuk then started walking the city, to find the perfect Burrito home for the perfect burrito. He had not a penny to his name nor could we expect him to understand burrito mass production and quality assurance day after day. Habakkuk might have succeeded in creating burritos for himself that were fine pleasure, but what of the lady that didn’t want any beans on her burrito, or the Mexican punk raised on cheap fillers that wanted his burrito with more rice, or the old car plant worker that liked beans with pork but didn’t see the need for tortillas, and frankly found them offensive after NAFTA and the maquiladoras. There would certainly be the customer that would want his money back, too hot too cold, and of course there would be bad sales days when the burritos would exceed the number of customers, and Habakkuk wasn’t economist enough to determine and add the supply and demand cost factor to his burrito prices. Habakkuk was sure that if he just added the cost of the beans, avocado, garlic, tomatoes, pork, onions, salt, cumin, peppers and tortillas that that was that. But of course there wasn’t just that, there was the rent and the electricity and the labor involved in buying and selecting the goods, and so on, so in his head, Habakkuk had a burrito that was undervalued and rightly to him, highly competitive in the market; the only thing he needed was his burrito hut.
We should however not worry ourselves with the possible success or not of Habakkuk’s burrito hut because a post transcendentalist can not possibly be searching for anything meaningful in this life. More he is wasting our time, Habakkuk doesn’t belong here, not in this book nor in this world, that he hasn’t realized it won’t mean that the entire world will not combine its energies to make him aware of it. If the world has to make sure that Habakkuk never has a lover, then that is how it will be, if it means that the burrito hut will be a case study of disaster and tragedy combined, then so be it, the world will tell this post transcendentalist that he is no more, that he hasn’t got a chance, that the perfect burrito sold in the perfect location to the perfect clientele will not be enough to survive, is one of the ways that the world happenings expire.
Lauren had fallen sleep, this was usually the case, while Antoinette continued to scan the channels for a good murder mystery or something historical, as she was changing the channels she noticed one particular ad, why she noticed it she did not yet know, they were selling a unique collection of clothing, priced at an incredibly affordable price, everything about the clothes spoke of expensive, unique, and full of character, yet as she was watching the sales number counter on the side of the screen kept on going up and up, which would of course contradict anything that the spokes lady was saying, “unique” was next to “1500 in inventory” and the dizzying number, “803 sold, 804 sold, 805 sold…” and some times the elegant clothes with character and uniqueness were selling so fast that the sales ticker had to skip numbers to keep up. And Antoinette instead of considering purchasing some for herself before demand would drive them out of circulation and make them a collectors edition, was trying to picture all of the people buying this, her mind’s eye was holding this image of all these people across America or the world calling in orders, and all of them doing precisely the same thing, and closely synchronized and Antoinette thought, “what does this mean? what induces these people to all make the same decision? what drives them to make the call? to give their credit card number? to want to get to the clothing items before the next person? they are all doing this at the same time, are they motivated by the same urge? what do they share in common? (and with grimace on her face) And do they really believe that polyester could be all those wonderful things?” Antoinette hated polyester even well designed polyester even polyester touched by Princes Diana.
She promptly fell asleep next to her honey neither to sleep comfortably on the couch, but neither with the energy to drag the relationship into the bedroom.
Antoinette is particularly good at self examination, and I don’t mean by that that she is truly able to observe herself but simply that she expends an inordinate amount of time doing it; while Lauren perhaps because of her profession is more inclined to analyze others. As the television continues to clamor for attention, Lauren’s devotion is paused while biting into melted cheese on a wheat-cracker, which she significantly blands by weighing its caloric content. This permits her to further pause and notice her exposed red blush painted toes, while noting that Antoinette had socks on for she was always bordering on cold. Antoinette’s particular set of socks were full of colorful circles, imbued with meaningful woolen restrain. Lauren thought to herself, (Antoinette still enjoying the show) “My sensitive darling wears socks most of the time because she can’t take all that stimuli that would arrive through exposed feet, maybe we wear clothes because we became hypersensitive and not instead because we could be moralists or cold.”
Antoinette was subdued by the absent presence of her lover, she senses that she is now watching the show alone and this bothers her, “Can I keep her attention?” In all verbal reality the truth was that in this relationship the Sun was Antoinette and the revolving planet was Lauren, but Antoinette was an emotionally unstable sun, she didn’t realize that Lauren wasn’t going to go anywhere because Suns have a maximum gravitational hold on their planets and more terrifying have a tendency to swallow them whole. Someday Lauren would be all within Antoinette and what must have truly troubled Antoinette, because unbeknownst to her was that Lauren might not satisfy her, that perhaps the grandeur of her Sun emotions would not find a double star. That in a sense, Antoinette had to make her partner explode into being her passionate lover and that working at it might be the static state of their relationship.
To reconnect the disconnect Antoinette grabbed Lauren’s hand and kissed it, and the TV show lost in the ratings; the two lovers then playfully kissed and Lauren busied herself in Antoinette’s bosom hiding underneath her hair. But Antoinette kept on thinking as she caressed Lauren, “We share so much but so much remains unfulfilled, if only my lover would quench her thirst with me, but she won’t, she is afraid to let go, she doesn’t trust me enough, I am not enough to gain her trust, I am her first woman lover, she must seek another and another, she won’t find fulfillment within us…”
And these terrorism of thoughts careened through Antoinette’s neurons, but again, wholly unaware that the berserk essence was hers, that the uncontrolled raging fire was within her, and that the incredible but restrained passions that she attributed to Lauren were indeed hers. But again, Antoinette’s examination of their relationship was wholly self contrived, Antoinette was worried that Lauren would abandon her, never truly willing to say to herself, “I could be dissatisfied here,” instead she would say, “my lover is dissatisfied with me.”
Ironically and equally troubling and perhaps the reason why the precarious relationship was working out. Lauren was afraid that she could not satisfy Antoinette, which was why she kept some distance from her Sun, it was as if to say I do have my independence from you and if you decide to leave me I could still survive. But of course that wasn’t true either. There are not many truths that one can consider absolute, but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a planet without a sun and Lauren must have been aware of this, and now she was helplessly in love with Antoinette and helplessly trying not to drown from her knowledge of it. In other words there was a mutual and natural repelling trepidation between the two lovers, and somehow this quantified their orbiting around one another. Only Lauren, as one might expect of a planet, never contemplated that she could be the one that could leave the relationship, she never felt that kind of independence. While Antoinette considered from an odd internal sequestration perspective, “I am doomed to love you, you are my planet, mine, mine, and even though you might never become my shining star equal, I will stay with you because I am doomed to love you.”
Neither considered that the relationship could be doomed from their perspective, it was the other that was going to fail it. Such was the trigger that had the hammer pulled back. And yet it was innocuous enough that the tension could be ignored, they were both equally learning about themselves and each other, even their love making had not wholly crossed into the boundaries of sanctity, it was still carnal, they were still satisfying cravings and urges, seemingly mostly satisfied with gentle releases of what could be grander, the essence of love unleashed without fear. They were not there yet, still Lauren could remember the first time that she felt Antoinette truly love her, in that room in the convent, where all the inhibitions of the world had amalgamated to form a church, there, for odd reasons, in that bed, in that room, with those laughs, and even with Habakkuk looking on, both women had felt free of spirit to commune.
Yes that had been the moment where their love first dared to say “I am here.” And then things started to get complicated, work, even cleaning the dishes and where to put the dirty clothes got in the way of love’s soul expression, and now the fears, both lovers not wholly aware of each others incessant “I want more buttered croissants from you.” and not aware that neither was more than now, because they were, in this instance, everything that they could be to each other, and no more.
Habakkuk is on his bed, he is wondering why the world continues with such hostility, he has transcended his transcendental phase; and he is debating what to do with himself now, he thinks maybe he will start a business, he knows how to make excellent burritos, he will open a burrito stand. He loves pork, he doesn’t know if it is good to serve pork, part of his transcendental residue self tells him that maybe it is not a good idea to serve pork; and he would have to keep at least two sets of knifes one for the pork and one for the fowl, though he had heard that you could wash the knife before cutting either and still not violate some immutable law somewhere, but he wasn’t knave enough to accept that. Finally he decided that his Burrito Hut, would serve only pork burritos and that was that.
Pork meat is one of the great things in the universe, you can love it because it is not impossible to love it, chicken meat is the neutral meat, it tells your taste buds I will accommodate myself to you, don’t worry about my fowl, there isn’t a good reason to not to eat chicken, even vegetarians think they are not cheating when they eat chicken, and when we speak of meat we are not necessarily speaking of chicken. Which is probably why the inoffensive bird is not requested or mentioned in bible sacrifices. In fact they always like to sacrifice 70 bulls, 100 goats, 25 boars but you don’t ever hear of anyone wanting to get on good with gods offering them chickens. Even one pig must be a better sacrifice offering than a thousand chickens. Now there is cow meat, nothing bad to say about cows, milk is one of the finest products, and used either as a drink or to make pancakes or any of a thousand and one things, milk is a wonder product, and so is the meat from a cow, but the meat from a cow is not as tasty as the meat from a pig. Pig’s meat, from shoulder to ass is great tasting; the Cubans with their Lechon could easily be cooks in heaven, and Mexican carnitas, nada que decir!
Why do certain religions deny themselves pork? It is because they don’t want to feel like they are being opulent, they don’t want to indulge, they want to deny themselves the most exquisite meat in the universe, PIG! And through personal denial they can then say to themselves that they are not Cretans, Plebeians, Commoners, Pagans like the rest of us. But then Habakkuk reasons, that to deny one’s self a creature that god has exemplified as the swine of the earth is to deny one’s self of god. “I can not deny myself what god has created because that is to deny myself of god.” And so it was that finally our former pimp looking prophet Habakkuk decided to finally get himself a job so that the characters in this book would not appear as needlessly unemployable upper class denizens.
Habakkuk then started walking the city, to find the perfect Burrito home for the perfect burrito. He had not a penny to his name nor could we expect him to understand burrito mass production and quality assurance day after day. Habakkuk might have succeeded in creating burritos for himself that were fine pleasure, but what of the lady that didn’t want any beans on her burrito, or the Mexican punk raised on cheap fillers that wanted his burrito with more rice, or the old car plant worker that liked beans with pork but didn’t see the need for tortillas, and frankly found them offensive after NAFTA and the maquiladoras. There would certainly be the customer that would want his money back, too hot too cold, and of course there would be bad sales days when the burritos would exceed the number of customers, and Habakkuk wasn’t economist enough to determine and add the supply and demand cost factor to his burrito prices. Habakkuk was sure that if he just added the cost of the beans, avocado, garlic, tomatoes, pork, onions, salt, cumin, peppers and tortillas that that was that. But of course there wasn’t just that, there was the rent and the electricity and the labor involved in buying and selecting the goods, and so on, so in his head, Habakkuk had a burrito that was undervalued and rightly to him, highly competitive in the market; the only thing he needed was his burrito hut.
We should however not worry ourselves with the possible success or not of Habakkuk’s burrito hut because a post transcendentalist can not possibly be searching for anything meaningful in this life. More he is wasting our time, Habakkuk doesn’t belong here, not in this book nor in this world, that he hasn’t realized it won’t mean that the entire world will not combine its energies to make him aware of it. If the world has to make sure that Habakkuk never has a lover, then that is how it will be, if it means that the burrito hut will be a case study of disaster and tragedy combined, then so be it, the world will tell this post transcendentalist that he is no more, that he hasn’t got a chance, that the perfect burrito sold in the perfect location to the perfect clientele will not be enough to survive, is one of the ways that the world happenings expire.
Lauren had fallen sleep, this was usually the case, while Antoinette continued to scan the channels for a good murder mystery or something historical, as she was changing the channels she noticed one particular ad, why she noticed it she did not yet know, they were selling a unique collection of clothing, priced at an incredibly affordable price, everything about the clothes spoke of expensive, unique, and full of character, yet as she was watching the sales number counter on the side of the screen kept on going up and up, which would of course contradict anything that the spokes lady was saying, “unique” was next to “1500 in inventory” and the dizzying number, “803 sold, 804 sold, 805 sold…” and some times the elegant clothes with character and uniqueness were selling so fast that the sales ticker had to skip numbers to keep up. And Antoinette instead of considering purchasing some for herself before demand would drive them out of circulation and make them a collectors edition, was trying to picture all of the people buying this, her mind’s eye was holding this image of all these people across America or the world calling in orders, and all of them doing precisely the same thing, and closely synchronized and Antoinette thought, “what does this mean? what induces these people to all make the same decision? what drives them to make the call? to give their credit card number? to want to get to the clothing items before the next person? they are all doing this at the same time, are they motivated by the same urge? what do they share in common? (and with grimace on her face) And do they really believe that polyester could be all those wonderful things?” Antoinette hated polyester even well designed polyester even polyester touched by Princes Diana.
She promptly fell asleep next to her honey neither to sleep comfortably on the couch, but neither with the energy to drag the relationship into the bedroom.
posted by Ricardo Correa at
8/31/2006 05:43:00 PM
