Hi, I'm mejeffdorchen welcoming you to the Moment of Truth, the one moment during the broadcast week when the truth breaks the shackles of the psychic prison of extreme capitalism and raves at the top of its lungs, naked in in the city, wild in the streets.Here's an unoriginal idea for ya. Life under extreme capitalism in the information age is a collage of images, sounds, tastes, odors, texts and textures. Here's one: A bus stop poster of a big toe with a rainbow beaming out from under the nail, the crackling strains of Adolph Hofner's 1940s brand of South Texas Czech Bohemian swing, the rotten-flesh stench of tannery bilge bubbling in the river, crumbs of dried plaster on your fingers, the peanutty taste of nutrageous.
Here's another one: And we'll show you real life fight clubs caught on tape on Fox News at 9. A shard of glass falling from a skyscraper and piercing your skull. A fish smell on your shirt. Fast food packages on the grass.
The dragnet closes around George Ryan and his scheme to reap bribe money by licensing incompetent drivers who will kill motorists whose organs will in turn find their way into the paranoid governor's cryogenic stockpile. The name Dan Oulette in the credits of a short documentary about a woman waiting for her husband to be paroled. The sound of Steve Forbes screaming as his eyeballs are squeezed out, his scrotum is slit open, and his testicles are yanked out and shoved into his eye sockets. The smell of pot outside in the Loop. The relief of taking off a too-tight hat.
People often write in their suicide notes as if they will still be around to experience the effects of their suicide on other people. If a child asks another child, "What should I draw?" the reply in the majority of cases comes back, "Draw an elephant." And yet the CIA and the Pentagon are even now supplying arms and military training to people who tomorrow will be declared the enemies of freedom and American interests. What seems to be the fragrance of a delicate cheese turns out to be the redolence of someone's feet. The crackle of cellophane. Stucco.
A fish trophy is not the same as the inappropriateness of a fish trophy as a wedding gift. Yet it will inevitably be the fish trophy, rather than its inappropriateness, that will bear the brunt of the bride and groom's scorn. The images evoked in your mind when you hear the words "underground railroad." What a child remembers when he or she remembers the smell of stagnant water in the foundation of a yet-to-be-built building.
Under the romantic oppression of swelling autumn, who does not weep for the rainforest? I don't ask if buying and eating ice cream from Vermont is a valid form of rebellion. I ask, who will not be moved to wish an end to the capitalist-driven destruction of the earth? Who? And will those who are not moved please take one step forward onto the highway?
What is your way and where are you finding your way to? What is along the way? Damp air. The smell of hot cedar planks. A ruin. A post-nuclear holocaust movie. The foley paintings of a cityscape for such a movie. The act of painting such foley paintings. The appearance of those foley paintings on grainy film. The appearance of that film on video. The appearance of that video on your tv. The smell of feet that turns out to be the fragrance of a delicate cheese. The image of the video of the foley painting in the mind of the foley painter as she sits in a sauna.
Money. A man dressed as money. A man dressed as money on television. The influence of television on the distribution of money. The influence of money on what gets on television. The circular reasoning that says it's okay that people with a lot of money have more say about how money gets distributed than people with only a little. The tooth-gnashing anguish of trying to understand how anyone thinks that's okay. The image of all those people who think that's okay dripping to pieces from radiation sickness in a post-nuclear holocaust landscape. The relief of the final stages of digestion.
Life is a procession of collages; they crossfade in staggered shards. Like going your way home on acid wandering off the path into a million cluttered places along the way. As you go, let the vague memory of our destination influence your journey -- our destination being the eventual advent of a just and joyous society in which the power of money has been annihilated, and the only measure of success is our collective joy in a world meant for the enjoyment of all living things.
All of you on this journey are blessed. The rest of you are imprisoned in a Hell of your own making. How I pity you.
I'm mejeffdorchen and this has been the Moment of Truth.
Notice: The copyright on these essays will only be invoked if someone besides Jeff Dorchen tries to make a profit with them or uses them without giving Jeff credit.
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