America starts to feel the tab of acid she had put under her tongue kick in, hoping for a revelation or at least a few moments of surrender. In her mind now crawling with bizarre and insane thoughts of mundane and profound nature, she feels the breath of doom brush the back of her neck. It tickles a little, you know, feels like the breath of a lover and she presses her hand there on her neck longingly, smiling. There's a sound to the feeling of it, a playful sound, playful like the breath of a lover on the back of your neck, a tinkling sound maybe like finger bells?
I've come unhinged, she thinks, throwing back her head and laughing out loud. Just breathe, she advises herself wisely.
I feel like I’m not functioning at a very high level these days, she continues her thinking out loud speaking to no one in a high pitched voice that rises a little hysterically at the end. America laughing at the understatement of it all, laughing a little too hard a little too long – American can't stop laughing but really, really, if you think about it - it's pretty funny, right?
Sometimes you have to laugh, she reassures herself, sighing heavily.
She thinks a little wildly - O, wow, feels like I just need to sit down and really relax for a while. Maybe out in the mountains along a stream or something or maybe out on the ocean or on the shore along the beach somewhere where the waves are washing up rhythmically - you know? somewhere peaceful and quiet. Yeah, that sort of vibe right there, that's the ticket.
But the fantastic, carnival pace of free market capitalism and its attending political theater of the absurd demand virtually the opposite from her. It demands war, actually, lots and lots of war, continuous, unending war. America had gone for all her life but a mere handful of years without some of that war and even in those times of brief respite, she still had felt war baring down upon her. She feels the full weight of it, this ponderous momentum of war that is not a drum beat, no not all all, rather a mind numbing thumping as if an elephant the size of a continent were stomping the ground right next to where she is standing. After hundreds of years of war, America feels so achingly sick of war that she can barely bring herself to get out of bed in the morning.
And the noise! The noise was the worst of it all, America, looking all around her desperately now, not hearing that feeling of doom as a lover's playful breath on the back of her neck and not hearing that feeling as the light tinkling of finger bells but rather as a thunderous cacophony of millions of people telling so many lies and all at once all speaking so loudly and so goddamn fast that the sound of it seems to travel right through her bones in painful vibration following her anywhere she might choose to go?
I'll go mad! She wonders – no wait a minute, wait a minute … I've already gone mad shit that should be obvious to anyone paying any attention at all … throwing her head back again and laughing out loud, laughing insanely, tears streaming down her face. That's what anyone watching would think, just another totally deranged woman wandering aimlessly alone through New York City laughing insanely tears streaming down her sad face. Nothing to see here, people - move along now, move along.
America’s eyes glow as if inner lit, beaming crazily like the headlights of cars on the crowded city street at dusk. She had eaten at least a 1000 mics of some really nice, clean acid maybe an hour ago and America is peaking out now. She feels fully how lost she has been caught up in the pace of it all and how impossible it is to pull herself out of the narrow, noisy, metallic stream that seems to rush her along with it at a ridiculously, preposterously increasing pace. She sits down on an empty bench watching the throngs jitterbug past her in a kaleidoscope of whirling, streaming colors all running together in fantastical, frenzied motion.
Suddenly America, eyes beatifically closed, feels that she is merely a Dove cooing softly high up in a branch under the friendly auspices of a warm, afternoon sun and she puts her head back this time not laughing but smiling ... I am only a Dove, yes, just sitting peacefully here in this warm, afternoon sun, actually feeling the sun warm on her upturned face and neck as the nearest streetlight kicks on in the last faint glow of dusk.
Ah, but the peace and stillness she craves seems such a tenuous dream, so hard to hold on to it, but she tries keeping her eyes tight and insisting that the thing I am is a Dove, just a lone Dove, quiet and soft and real. But America can't quite shake that underlying feeling that is more like a racehorse pumped up on amphetamines and steroids, eyes lulling around in its head, nostrils flaring, heart pounding like a freight train in its chest, running faster and faster, over these many decades until in the midst of an unholy cacophonous outrage of lies and commerce and slaughter, America finds herself now running flat out as hard as she possibly can run simply to stay in the same place.
I must embrace this gaudy merry go round if I want to really milk this trip for all its worth, America insists to herself with a sudden, blinding flash of clarity. The wars O the wars! … they are so very far away, after all? And the needless, hopeless suffering of the masses that will wait, won't it? I mean, where are they to go, their wretchedness stretching now as it does from sea to shining sea? Right now these colors are so bright and so clear and so beautiful and the walls are breathing in concert with me in this lovely, syncopated harmony and PLEASE Dear God Almighty PLEASE! for just one moment in time please let me forget all the abuses of men ...
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