Dear Valued Customer

Posted by MEATGRINDER on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Dear Valued Customer,

We are very pleased to announce… FUCK YOU! Your bullshit company is so unsophisticated and lazy that you can’t be bothered to have your junk mail robot print out my fucking name? If you don’t even know my name, why the hell should I even listen to one word you have to tell me? Suffice it to say I was fed up with San Diego, fed up with my life drama, fed up with my life. The trip couldn’t have come a moment too soon, and to be completely honest I needed the money. I board the private G5 jet after a shower and a breakfast burrito, then shoot due north at 500 mph to Alaska. This is the first stop on this backwards around the world journey.

We fly out of San Diego on what is touted as a grand adventure. I am cynical yet curious at the same time. My companions’ desire enlightenment but they do not want to risk anything to get it. They have no idea of sacrifice or pain, every accommodation booked is 5-star, every vehicle is top notch – driver included. If something is one minute later than expected, tantrums ensue, anger, frustration, bitterness, suffering. Suffering because the locals don’t speak English. Suffering because the locals don’t wear haute couture. Suffering because the locals are slow, lazy, different. There is no attempt to understand, only piles of demands for answers and results. Answers and results that can and will never come.

It’s funny, the thing they are so vexed by is actually the key to the whole equation. Suffering. Suffering is the commonality between every motherfucker on this planet. It is a part of the human condition. They surround themselves with luxury to try and learn of beauty and meaning, but these things are everywhere if you can learn to see it. Freedom is individualistic. If you ask me, I can show you the path to the appreciation of things, meaningful communion with the world, and serenity, but you must walk the path. When most people meet me, or read this blog, or hear me speaking they immediately judge me. All they see is suffering. You call me vile. Judge my pain. Condemn my words. What you don’t see is my serenity, not despite the strife of living, but because of it. Everyone imagines me so miserable, but it is in the most wretched moments that I am the most at peace.

Life is change. Life is the inevitability of sickness and death. Impermanence, pain, and an unavoidable darkness. Struggle after struggle. Horror after horror. This is not just somebody else’s fate, this is mine. Modern American society can be viewed as the struggle to suppress these things. Seeking ignorance, comfort, and a mindless peace. The peace of humans before the fall from grace. The peace of animals. An attempt to get back into the garden of eden. This is the path away from enlightenment. This is self delusion. This is why I seek horror, relish in it. I have been wounded by the enjoyment of this world. I have been wounded by pleasure. I must then explore the world of horrors, of mortal terrors. I am a seeker, but I have no expectation. I have no use for ceremony or ritual. People seeking the ignorant peace of animals seek the defiance of truth. This is slavery. I seek the enlightened tranquility of consciousness. This is mastery. Some people choose to exist in stubborn ignorance. Fuck ‘em. Zombies.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need rarified states of consciousness to churn out some bullshit answer to the human dilemma. I’ve been shot at, rocketed, mortared, punched, kicked, beaten with clubs, and bombed. I’ve killed men, women, children, and beasts. This is not the answer. The sensations are only temporary. This does not elicit penetrating truth into the nature of reality. Most people actually use it to embolden their ignorance. Rarified states of consciousness are more a bragging point to fool them into thinking that they have the ‘answer’. They’re just lying to themselves under the premise of being better than those who have not experienced this one strange thing. It’s all lies.

That’s what my clients think. They are looking to check the box on some fringe locations to give them the edge in parlor discussions. Fuck it, what do I care, I’m getting paid. The moment I’m on the road, the moment this ‘deployment’ began, I immediately settle into my business mindset. All bullshit back in the world ceases to exist, only doing the job right and making some coin while doing it matters now. My heart seals up like an airlock while my brain dials into the subtle subtext of everyday life. I love it.

This has happened to me before, being seduced by wanderlust. The world, like a magnificent whore, calling out to me. The whoring road, arms open wide, riddled with wounds, whispering the promise of a thousand unheard of pleasures. The plea of a leper – join me, break bread with me, drink from my cup. Latex lips that whisper the promise of cruel kisses. Like the boy who fell in love with the prostitute who gave him his first blowjob. Spinning the globe, looking at fanciful places whose mere names you cannot pronounce. Time zones, dates, language, currency, customs – all transient. Even night can be avoided if you just keep moving fast enough in the right direction. And if night can be avoided, then maybe even death.

Strange memories echo in my mind. My subconscious, now dialed into focus, is telling me something. There was a time back at old Scolari’s Office, before they renamed it and replaced the motley assortment of locals with white gold wearing Persians in black silk shirts. I picked up this hooker from the end of the bar. Her face looked like somebody had used it for batting practice. Don’t ask me why, but I took her back to my place. She wanted to get after it, go heels to jesus. Me, not so much. We talked. I played acoustic guitar. She sang, softly, horribly. The old lady downstairs was banging on my door. It was a hot summer night. I was sweating, drinking booze to kill the heat, to kill my restless mind. I was nearly passed out on the couch. The whore ate the dried crumbs of week old leftovers off the roach patrolled dishes piled up on my counters. Emptying pizza boxes of rock hard crusts. She asked me what I was into, I said travel and poetry. She said she was into licking arm pits. She said that they are the most neglected part of the human body. Funny, I always thought it was the brain – now maybe I think it’s the soul.

We arrive in Anchorage, quaint little town. Alaskans in other parts of the state love to hate Anchorage. As one old joke goes, Anchorage isn’t in Alaska, but you can see Alaska from there. The city is low-rise, automobile-dominated, and thoroughly 20th-century. If you happen to forget where you are, just take a second look. All the cars have mud spray on their undersides, and you are caged in by 5 mountain ranges. I dump my kit in the hotel room then we take a private charter flight up to Mt. McKinley. The pilot was a madman. Insensitive, careless, spouting unasked for advice. The Korean lady in the front seat sat patiently, like an old worn out sponge, absorbing his filth.

Bush Pilot, “Hey lady, you don’t smell at all. Usually you Koreans smell like vinegar, it’s all that formaldehyde that you drink over there. I can’t hardly stand it. But not you, you don’t smell at all.”

Expensive seafood dinner, strong vodka drinks, it’s midnight – still light. Two drunken Indians stumble down the road, drinking from a Sprite bottle that is not filled with Sprite. Go into a local place, ‘Bumpy’s’, meet a fish hatchery worker. He says I’m relaxed like a local, but I’m writing in my notebook like a tourist. I tell him I’m a local everywhere I go. He tells me about some 30” rainbow trout he caught. We go to another bar, then to a strip club – he’s never been. He gets suckered in by the first fat stripper that winks at him. I get a double lap dance then throw up in the bushes outside. He follows me out and immediately falls down, drunk off his ass. They don’t let us back in.

We cab it back to town. It’s 1:30 am and the sun is starting to rise. We missed the 45 minutes of darkness watching naked women dance under neon lights. I could lose myself in this place. The land of the midnight sun. A haunting, ghostly glow. Our dying star burns orange just out of view, like a forest fire on the horizon. You don’t know what’s day or night, like a rustic Vegas. I lose myself in the afterglow of the zombie sun. The undead sky eternally illuminated. There was a time when I saw black spots on the sun. It was in Afghanistan. Sweat burning my eyes, dust in my teeth, I stared into the sun. I thought that was it at the time, but I was wrong. This, right here, is the end of the earth.