Page 75 - The Myth and the Moment

Evening

are too much like high tea at the euthanasia clinic. Must be some little
joint along Sunset where I can catch a bite. Ah, the ubiquitous
hamburger stand, now reveling in the euphemistic glory of ‘fast-food
restaurant.’ An empty stool, a place at the altar of Moloch. Bring on
the fatted calf—or its deep-fried by-products.
“Give me a cheeseburger, fries, and a cup of coffee with cream.”
“You mean a coffee light?”
“Right.”
Of course, you teen-age Neanderthal. Why would I mean
something meaningless? Pour any kind of white liquid you want into
my coffee; meaning applies only to the color, the surface quality.
Underneath, within, embedded in the matrix of everything formerly
natural, are the slow poisons of petrochemistry. Sometimes the faster
poisons of radioactivity, sometimes the instant death of metallic
pollutants. The young have adapted to their artificial environment
with a new fatalism; I’ve heard it in a dozen different ways: ‘Hey,
man, there’s so many things out there to get me, that, hey, what’s the
difference?’ Live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse: the creed
of nihilism. Was Jefferson right, do we need a revolution once every
generation? Yes, if the inevitable reaction produces middle-America;
no, if sooner or later, the right revolution occurs. Jefferson definitely
did not foresee the destruction of public education by the ruling
classes. Another short-sightedness. Must be related to zero-sum
notions of the earth’s bounty: I’ll get more by letting you have less;
stay ignorant so you won’t know what you’re missing or who took it
away from you. A nation of soda-jerks.
Mm, sustenance! Sliding across Formica in a Styrofoam
sarcophagus. More salt? Turn into that pillar, yet. How long since a
blood-pressure test, old Nate? Oh, yeah, that trailer parked in the
shopping center; reading was useless, of course. Goes up and down,
like everything else in the body. Down and up, perhaps, in the case of
this food. No, got to keep it down and force the metabolism to feed
the brain. Why no test for thought pressure? Tie the inner-tube
around your head, pump it up and see how hard your mind can push
back. God, my energy is sapped. Maybe caffeine will goose my
nervous system into some useful activity. What was that poem I
wrote: something about how the nerves are supposed to act like
porpoises guiding a whale to safety, but a few cups of coffee turn

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