Aloha's End by Michael F. Zangari, Chapter 15: Moe Is In Control (Edit)

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari
© 2006 by the author with all rights reserved.



Chapter Fifteen: Moe is in Control


TrueWest in saffron colored Australian swimming trunks stakes the sand with his gun, a short red surf board with a long skank. He reeks of the coconut oil Momi slathered on him at the front desk, rubbing his shoulders and tweaking his nipples. “For good luck” she said. TrueWest jumped like a bell hop at the sound of a desk bell.
“That was purely in the spirit of Aloha,” she said, “Of course.” She massaged the rest of the oil into her hands and dabbed some behind her ear, her eyes big and brown on TrueWest, as he rubbed his nipples, and hula hopped from foot to foot.
Benny Aloha looked on, shaking his head. “Momi,” he said softly, “That was about as subtle as Burlesque.”
Momi smiled sweetly. “Watch it brah” she said under her breath.
Benny stuffed his hands into his gabardines and leaned back against the pillar. He brings out a quarter and tosses it into the koi pool under the waterfall. “Yeah, luck.” He smirks like there’s an encyclopedia in the word. “Luck.” He says. ‘You’ll need it.”
TrueWest stretches out on the sand with his toes touching the place where the waves peter out and sizzle into the sand. Every so often one pushes past his feet and cools his hot back before withdrawing, dragging a river of sand through his toes.
The oil begins to get hot.
He fries like tempura.
He heat dozes, and goes someplace southwest of delirium, a place of total muscle release and deep breathing that coats his body in a little sack of sleep.
Through the warm whiz and hiss of the water he hears the drift of trade winds transit through palm trees. In it, the voice of the Duck, far away is coming out of a song on the Little Radio Station at the Back of Your Mind.
“The Little Radio Station in the Back of Your Mind” he says. He pauses to sip at his drink. His style is informal, quiet and direct. ‘Duck” he says. ‘I’m coming at you again, from the belly of my containment here at Aloha’s End.”
Containment Thinks TrueWest.
“Getting through the days here is like walking across the Sahara in flippers” he says. “Where every day is an endless piano move by the Three Stooges, and Moe is always in control.”
TrueWest is reminded of Bob Hope’s correspondent reports from his shows in Viet Nam. A kind of thanks for the memories report that comes from memories you can’t forget.
“The weather?” Duck says. “Ocean grayness under the dull blue of post storm sky. From up here in the valley, the waves are rough coming in onto the beach. The wind is a steady blow, tearing eyes with salt and sand. It takes the looseness of cloths and hair makes them flag back from being you and your being. There is a feeling of leaving this place, sadness in the burn of focus.
He takes a deep breath.
I know again that last years delusions have fallen in.
Innocence is a postcard from a dream.
My lips have been bitten in the middle of a kiss swelling them with dryness and desire. What is gone is gone. And what is becoming is obvious.
It’s the mind again.
Back to what it was before it was.
There’s a puff of smoke from which illusion appears to applause.
I wonder what you’ve heard about me, held hostage by organized crime, the NSA, the Al Quida network or the bored, hungry vampires of cyberspace. At least I hope there are rumors about me. So that I exist somewhere outside the battles I fight, alone and out there against the unseen.
I don’t know what to tell you. One day I opened my mind and Moe was there, with the stooges of control. They hooked on and boarded and now are everywhere. I am over-run without fight. There is no escape. But there is sanctuary. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, doomed but in love after fruit.
But inside, where the jewels of your tears are seen as the form by everyone who has ever lived, there is something that shines like starfire in the darkness.
When all the words are redefine by whoever does the ruling over in the future, the Moes, and meanings change shifts. It will still be there burning at the center on dark nights when it is visible in the eyes of those we love and respect (though love and respect are words too, and will change meanings.)
Even Freedom changes meanings. It is deleted from computer disks, becomes an idea, nothing important. The Bill of Rights is preserved in comic books only by an underground which is outed and nullified by commandos who don’t read comic books.
They are as sleek as otters in their uniforms. There are many fancy tools on their belts to punish free brains by whipping them with magnetic slashes and electric waves. They get nervous if things are not just so.
It’s about control, remember?
They finger the handles of the pistols in the holsters, snapping and unsnapping the strap that holds the gun in.
I think they’re brains are bleached too.
They don’t remember what they are doing. Not sure anymore if the whats or the whys jive.
They are not sure anymore of anything except the mistakes they’ve made in care taking.
The animals they guard look at them with hot angry eyes, reminding them of what it’s like to be on the other side of the cage, to be hungry and angry and hurt. They remember the shear power of it when you can hear the echo of the rumble in the belly of those you love.
In the City County building clerks go through newspaper archives deleting details, a drudge job. It’s in their eyes as they do it.
If they tell you that you have silence on your side, don’t believe them, because silence is a word like all words. It can be defined by a dominating mind.
Don’t trust the words you pause from. Find something without words to believe in. Trust in free-fall. And God as you see god.
And heck, even if you don’t see a divinity out there working in all this chaos, look in the gaps where you name things you don’t believe in.
All we can do is silence the mind as those in control move to erase it.
I still meditate, though being a Buddhist is illegal, because in peace there is no need for roadmaps and guides from the past. Freedom is born again from its own lightness and takes over the dream we are stuck in.
It drives and sustains things. Even in shackles.
Sure the skin breaks and bleeds and pain dominates. That’s the flesh. It’s just hum drum to prisoners like me.
The idea that has no form survives in the eyes when the world blanks out is outdated. . It passes between people sometimes when we are awake.
Sometimes, enough to see it.
It’s like the wave that goes out in blissful highlights to the receptive.
Freedom survives recycled into something not born. It is in our hopes as we wait for rescue.
Out in the world the great world religions contrast and come back against each other and the resistance between all holds us in flux and tensions and we are helpless in hate.
There is something there that will help us.
It’s in that wind I was talking about, the one that will be in all our faces soon.
Remember it when the monsoons of many things takes over and dulls you down.
Remember.
Through a trap door within I hide between the walls and search my mind for answers. I know this much; they want us to forget. They bleach the mind white with low frequencies and high intensities as we sleep.
I can not sleep.
In my pj’s, one night, with a cereal bowl cupped in my hands, mouth open for the spoon, my mind went white as milk.
And my sight blew open.
I saw what I saw.
I saw a dimensional bleed over and invasion from within.
In ten years a take over.
It’s in the wheels of what is happening now.
Across the dimensional drift that pollutes our future with energies beyond what we understand
There is a chance to fight the take over, to live in a different future.
I am broadcasting day and night now, from the little Radio Station at the Back of Your Mind. This is the Duck, with this message from our sponsor:
Learn from each other and pull from each other’s strengths. Form inner schools and networks in myth circles and fight with peace.
The warning lights flash as hot as lasers with urgency now. There is a spooky déjà vu now as you fight.
The cries of pain from those dearest to you whips the feelings raw and blood and neon merge into a bioelectric surge until the words are spelled out plain.
Moe’s knowledge is complete.
There’s nothing a slap across the face, the poke of the eyes and a conk on the head won’t solve.
He knows you can redefine the words that mean freedom. But you can’t hold what you don’t own. He owns it all.
Privacy is a thing of the past.
And if I can tell you one thing from what has happened it is this: The only thing worth having is peace of mind, and ownership of same.
It’s ok to suffer.
It’s ok to fail.
It’s ok to feel hopeless and beaten.
It’s ok to want it all to end.
It’s ok to close your eyes and shut it out.
It’s ok to pray and not to pray.
It’s ok to believe and not to believe.
It’s ok to live out every second of your humanity in what ever flashes of energy that comes, but fight. Don’t ever stop.
Remember how to fight. If you are bleached out again don’t let those wild nasty powers fool you into thinking that you’ve achieved a pause through brainwashing, a pause that is filled with their words.
Whether you win or not is not important, because in this life not everything works out even for the good.
What is important is unspoken and untouchable in your being.
It orbits the heartbeat and drifts between the thoughts. It makes the nanoseconds tick. In the mind it is as real as the recognizing of it.
I say the same thing to everyone.
Do the right thing at the right time and don’t give up the interior territories to enemies.
Don’t give in to anger and impulse (your thoughts will be wild and destructive.) Let things go and stay awake. Go beyond the cruel and senseless onslaught into ocean flux and bring your boat about gently with love. It’s been written in the bibles of all times for a reason. It is as common as a period at the end of words. The small, flat moment where things end is coming. It always does.
Your thoughts may buckle and fall and you may feel like you have failed. You may have to do things you don’t want to, things unimaginable.
You may be ashamed and have to cover yourself with leaves.
But we live as we breathe.
Free.
So here I am at the tail end of this phase. Decisions are being made that will color and shade the future. I am following my heart as it races against my head. As I look out from the ivory tower and broadcast my show this morning I will play a song that reminds me of you. It will help me remember the best stuff in the midst of the worst. I am touching on the touchable in the mind in long hours alone shadow boxing with thieves. In real worlds money is tighter than the shut, crying eyes of my new daughter. I am redlined and blacklisted from work. My health insurance is gone and I am sick.
You know stress always brings bronchitis with me.
I’m getting to know the bill collectors by their first names.
In ten months of job search I’ve had four interviews.
There is nothing new rising from the obviously wrong and though hope eternal we might remember what is right, as Moe snoozes and wake up.
Their brains are bleached whiter than snow.
I want to remind them of what is right, and warn them.
Practice for the future. Change. Tell everyone what you know, and that I am still alive in the windiness of the Makuna Valley in Hawaii.
I’ve talk long enough.
I am tired. Sitting here like a gargoyle with the Moe’s of Control on my shoulder.
I am remembering again between bleaching that what unfolds and is ironed out will be fulfilled in a million different ways, again and again.
Until we return again to the silence from which we are born.
On the radio, I am sounding like Bob Hope remembering the faces of solders on USO tours in battle zones, trying to keep faith and detail straight. Afraid to forget.
I can hear his voice in my own.
“So when it’s time to fight (and it’s time again) remember how you won last time if you can.”
Goodbye to the spirit of expansion.
Compression is next on the agenda.
It’s a smaller, safer place to be, a cage.
Or so they tell me.
Especially when we are as willess as we become under a magnetic thrush.
Many other futures watch this one in horror because they know when the eyes close freedom erodes like sand on hurricane beaches in riptides and silence.
They know when freedom fails for one, it fails for all. And time after time in other dimensions there will be flashes of knowing this, knowing what you know.
Pay attention.
Because it is not born of the brain, and when we suffer together (and we all will) enemies and friends, it will be the dot from which we go forward again.
My focus is fading now.
Memory is torn linen paper on which my love is written in disappearing ink.
So as it goes twilight I will say what it says here I always say before sleep.
To who?
I’m not sure.
Maybe to all.
God bless you for listening. And thanks.
This is the Duck, doing it.
The laps his voice and goes to chorus, then fades as TrueWest wakes up.
Low tide ends with a flush and overwhelm of water and foam.
TrueWest sits up sputtering and coughing, the briny taste of the ocean in his throat. .
He gets up with his wet towel and stumbles up the beach and sits on the sand, breathing like he’s in a furnace pulling air.
He’s been dreaming.
But he can’t remember what about.
The only thing he knows is that his nipples sting like crazy, like they have been whipped and pulled by the tentacles of a Portuguese Man of War.

Aloha's End (c) 2006 By Michael F. Zangari Chapter Thirteen: A campfire Tale With Attribution

Aloha’s End by Michael F. Zangari

Chapter 13: A Camp fire tale with attribution

The duck navigates the coffee cup carefully under the rubber beak to his mouth. He kisses the coffee and sucks. The coffee is as hot as cooling lava. It steams his sunglasses.
TrueWest looks at him.
Everyone is looking at him.
“Why does everyone in this café wear sunglasses? He asks. “It’s as dark as pitch tar in here.”
He takes off his sunglasses and tosses them on the table.
The duck smiles under his rubber nose.
“It cuts the glare from the torches” he says.
TrueWest shakes his head. He takes out a pad and a small tape recorder. “Do you mind?” he asks.
Duck picks up the recorder and turns it on. He holds it close to his mouth. His voice deepens and clarifies.
“It’s the little radio station at the back of your mind” he says.
TrueWest startles.
It the back of his mind, he hears the duck, like he’s talking over a tin can telephone. It buzzes a little.
“It’s true” he says softly.
“A lot of things are” says the duck.
“I believe it” says TrueWest.
He thinks about it. “Sort of.”
The duck actually laughs at that one. “I’m encouraged” he says.
“I know there’s a story here” says TrueWest. “The nose.”
Duck touches the nose. The rubber has been softened by the heat.
“It’s a dead give away.” Says TrueWest
Duck shakes his head. “There’s a story alright” he says. “But you’re going to go after it. You are going to need attribution for this one, but people have gone clam mouth when it comes to “Aloha’s End.”
Aloha’s End. Thinks TrueWest.
“But as I understand it, aloha has no end. It’s love.” Says True West.
“It’s also hello and goodbye. It’s love alright. Deep as the ravines in the middle of the ocean. And twice as spooky.” The duck thinks about aloha. “But it has an end, Mr. West. Like everything.”
Attribution thinks TrueWest. The duck did some journalism in his radio career. Obviously.
The duck sips at his coffee, wetting his beak.
He sponges it off with the napkin.
“My life is being destroyed before my eyes. I can’t get work. My home has been broken into. My life has been threatened.”
“Do you really think that wearing a rubber duck bill will protect your identity?”
“No” says the Duck thoughtfully. “Nobody’s safe.”
TrueWest nods just like the disaster guy he is. “It’s true” he says.
“I’m not hiding” if that’s what you mean. “In fact I’m doing the opposite. I’m in your face. “He leans forward so the duck bill is inches from TrueWest’s nose.” I’m not going to let people forget me. On this island, if you become invisible you become dead.”
“I heard your comments on the radio” says TrueWest. He chokes a little on some emotional gristle in the back of his throat.
Duck shakes his head. “I’m not on the radio” he said. “I’m being deleted”
“Deleted?”
“The people who believe I am their enemy are erasing my life. All my media work is being destroyed. My newspaper articles are missing from the archives and libraries. My tapes and videos are gone. I don’t have any photographs left in my home.”
“You’re comments are very powerful on air” says TrueWest.
He’s on the radio alright. The coconut wireless.
“I’ve heard that there are still some tapes going around. Mostly on the main land” says the duck. “Mostly under someone else’s name. I guess the electronic surveillance has a bright side. It makes for interesting audition tapes.”
“You’re singing the standard whistle blower’s song about how people get lazy, greedy and mean” says TrueWest. “I’ve made a career out of telling those kinds of tales.”
“I know” says the Duck. “I saw your show. What is it called? Forty minutes and some Commercials.”
He smiles.
“You should light your face from underneath, like you’re holding a flashlight.”
“Campfire stories” says TrueWest.
“With attribution” says Duck.