Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (15 page)

Mr Nixon completely stopped fucking Mrs Nixon. It touched its shrivelled red quivering cock. 'This is America, disgrace of the West, slave manufacturer in the void of two oceans.'

The Angel of Death tried to bark back to this dog who had summoned it. But it was unable to talk for the same reason. Kissinger's small ad hoc group of arms experts had been unable to bark to Kissinger.

The Angel knew that Nixon had summoned it not to bark but to be used to kill us off. Is the American inability to speak, is despair a mask of revolution?

Being unable to talk to anyone, it said to itself, The Angel Of Death Or Thomas Hobbes Barks Arguments To Itself On Whether Evil Is Necessary In The Canine World 'Is there any reason for me to be alive, though I'm not alive? In short, I'm asking "What is canine?" or "Who am I?"

'Part of me functions just cause it functions. Examples: shitting, sleeping, wanting to not be cold, heart beating. Are there any other parts of me? Yes. I can make decisions. I imagine or fantasize. These activities are dualistic and conditional worlds. Canine worlds, then, are material (just are), dualistic, and conditional.

'What is it to decide? Decision either involves thinking or it doesn't. This is only true in the dualistic world. A decision that doesn't involve thinking resembles shitting. A decision that's composed of thinking's composed of more than one thought,

for it's difficult to think only one thought. For a dog. It's more difficult to stop thinking completely. If decision involves thinking, the dualistic world of canines is ideational.

'How do I have such decisive thoughts? Either my mind, where thoughts occur, if they do, resembles a radio receiver. Or, I want. Does such wanting resemble shitting? Is it thoughtless? Have I been taught to learn whatever and however I want?

'What I'm asking is whether there's any possibility that a dog's life can have meaning.

'Look at particulars. If you're American, always look at particulars. These are the particulars of my life: When I was a puppy, I lived among rich dogs because my family was haute bourgeoisie; I was a special mutt in dog society because I was trained to think that way. I lived on the outskirts of, in the lowest part of, society because I worked a sex show; then I believed that I deserved to be shat on, that if I didn't pull myself up by non-existent bootstraps out of the muck I would die, and that I had to be very tough. I was a member of a certain group - the art world - whose members, believing that they're simultaneously society's outcasts and its myths, blow up their individual psychologies into general truths. Do these three canine identities have anything to do with each other? What meaning can such a life or voyage possibly have?

'Are my actions ever free? Can I behave totally intentionally? America's the land of freedom. That is, America's the land of the myth or belief of freedom. Why? Cause in England, the Motherland against which America revolted for the sake of freedom, a dog's life had been (and is) determined by the class and history into which it was born. The American dogs didn't want to live dogs' lives. They wanted to make their own lives and they succeeded. The self-made American dog has only itself and it must make success, that is, survive. It isn't able to love, especially, another living dog.

'What, then, is a dog's life? When I was alive, dogs regarded me as a wise dog because I was so stupid. So I said to the dogs who were disgusted by these prisons of self-determinacy, "You have to understand that we don't know anything. Don't kill

each other for no reason at all freedom revolution. I don't even know if what I'm saying at this moment means anything."' A Tenant Speaks Back To The Angel Of Death, Thomas Hobbes

'But when we're starving, we don't think. Thinking and thinking about revolting rather than revolting's for the élite who're educated to think.' The Angel Of Death, Thomas Hobbes

'Are you dogs, dogs? Do you act without thinking? Will you always act stupidly and thoughtlessly? Do you even know what gives you pleasure?' The Puerto Rican Tenants Reply

'We don't know what pleasure is, Mister.' The Angel Of Death, Thomas Hobbes

'As I've already said, but I have to say it again, don't I, I act from thoughts or I don't act from thoughts. In order to feel pleasure, I have to know I'm feeling pleasure. Pleasure happens to a dog only in the ideational world.

'"I like my life." "I feel good about my life." Consider these statements. In this context, meaning and pleasure, both forms of consciousness,'re intertwined.

'So how can you, dogs, feel good about your lives? How can the lives of the poor be worth anything?' The Puerto Rican Tenants In Unison

'Our lives aren't worth anything.' The Angel Of Death, Thomas Hobbes

'So the hell with your lives. As for my life. Do I feel pleasure? I'm dead. The cut-off head is moving across the floor. The monster has entered the museum of wax. When do I feel good about my life? When I feel my life's full of possibilities - hope - and when I feel I'm useful to my society - good actions. Canine pleasure and meaning, then, reside in hope and good actions.

'What is this hope and good actions? As I've said before so I have to say it again: I think either by receiving thoughts or by wanting. Warning's either thoughtless or, being taught, resembles receiving. In short, I'm a dog. My hope and actions're mechanical.

'Am I contradicting myself? Contradictions only exist in the

dualistic world, whereas machine parts operate non-dualistically. Machine parts can have any relations to each other; machine parts need power, not certain logical relations, in order to work.

'What is this power which is the basis of a dog's life? Think of any example. Any example. Money. A dog has to make money. Especially in this city with rents or landlords the way they are. A dog has to make multo money in this city. Now how can a dog, a dog, make money? It rolls its joint and sells it to a sucker. There're lots of suckers who're dogs. Thus, the joint-roller or dog makes money by owning something another dog who might not be a joint-roller wants. The maintenance of a dog's life or of dog-like life depends on unequal (power) relations between the subjects or dogs. In this case, the relations are those of ownership and desire. The operations of machine parts depend not only on power but also on unequal power relations (a definition of power).

'All of this is true. Doggish life depends on unequal power relations or the struggle of power. This is the society in which we live. The life of a dog, even if the dog's dead like me, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short. The condition of a dog is a condition of war, of everyone against everyone: so every dog has a right to everything, even to another dog's body. This is freedom.

'What, then, holds canine society together? Is it only war?' The Puerto Rican Tenants In Unison

'The only thing we know in our lives is death.' The Angel Of Death

'Does war have to depend on death?' It looks at the Puerto Ricans. 'Against what, then, can you revolt? Yourselves? If all is death?' The Puerto Ricans

'We're not revolting. We're revolting.' The Angel Of Death

'Death's revolting. This is the Free World. What was the first political revolution that caused this Free World? Baby Doc. Is canine historical cause-and-effect this simple? How do I know what I don't see or know? Every day what I see is death. My only pleasure in my daily life is absence.'

The Tenant Who First Spoke Out Speaks Softly

'So it doesn't matter if we think or not.' The Angel Of Death

'The American Revolution or American freedom is a mask of death. Our nihilism and dying must be the mask of our revolution.' Having barked this, the Angel of Death turned back to Mr and Mrs Nixon, who had stopped fucking and were staring wide-eyed. Mr Nixon

'Our country doesn't allow negativity,' Mr Nixon barked. 'There's no nihilism in this country.' The Angel Of Death

'What is my nihilism?' asked an angel rhetorically. A Portrait Of An American Family

'I was in the middle age of my life,' an angel barked to Mr Nixon. 'Ahead of me there was (I saw) nothing. Behind me were only events that had ended and become memories or regrets. I was in lightlessness doubly: I didn't understand; everything (in my life) had failed and ended. The Dreaming Of The Doggish Heart Is Death

'I ran away from New York back to my family. I ran into my father's arms.

'"Why have you come back here?" daddy barked to me.

'"New York is hell. You don't know how hellish capitalism really is. Daddy, I was wrong to leave here. I ran away to the city because I didn't feel normal in a normal household and, wanting to be me, I wanted to express me. In the city, in order to stay alive, I sucked cocks while their owners held guns to my head. At the same time, I was scared. All the time I was so frightened of men, I kept running after men who might protect me, especially, cause I was so frightened of men I didn't want anything to do with them, after men who didn't want me. Love was rape and rejection. If I wasn't loved, I couldn't fit into this marketplace or world of total devaluation. I fit in perfectly. I believed I was on Mars. I had no conceptions how to live on Mars. Either my education had been inadequate or faulty or I wasn't who I was born to be.

'"Day after day, I grew older. None of my characteristics changed. I was still unbearable and dream-ridden. Day after

day, I cried more and more. My only reaction to continuous devaluation was autism and, now and then, hatred. What could I hate? What did I know? I was totally powerless because I couldn't exist. Crying was the only activity I was capable of doing. A few days ago, I totally left. You're the only sweetness I've ever known."

'"You were perfectly right to come back here." Mommy was cooking corn muffins. "This is where you belong; you've never belonged anywhere else. The family is the only refuge any of us has. Daddy and I've been discussing this."

'I ate part of my corn muffin. My father hugged me and got part of my corn muffin all over me. "Do you really want me?" I couldn't believe it was possible for me to be happy.

'"Your mother and I have always loved you. That's who parents are. Because of our love, baby, you came into this world; you came into this world with our love."

'I couldn't reply.

'"You ran away from this. It's normal for children to break from their parents. You wanted to wallow in the outside world. You wallowed in all the hatred and filth that is outside. Nowadays, only the family stands against hatred and filth. On a political level, hatred is revolution. On a social level, it's chaos. On a personal level, self-destruction. You existed in revolution, chaos, and self-destruction. That is your and your kind's banner.

'"Our love can save you from the graveyard of the poor of the city. Being part of a family is safe."

'I was crying so deeply because I had been so scared and scarred by fear that I was no longer able to accept love, I had to run to the bathroom to cry.

'"You've come back to prison of your own free accord," my mother barked when I returned from the bathroom.

'"You're my property," daddy amended. "From now on, you will do whatever I woof you to do and, more important, be whoever I order you. This is a safe unit." The Angel Of Death Recounted Its Death

'My father further barked that since the US prisons had become privatized so that, in accordance with NBC, electrocutions could be televised, my family was going to strap me

into a leather chair. They strapped me. They left the room. On a TV set in its bedroom, my father watched me be electrocuted.'

The Angel of Death finished its speech to Mr and Mrs Nixon, 'Get out of this country as quickly as you can. The only way it's possible to be canine and survive is to be a traitor. Traitors're stupid and Jewish. That's history for you. May your only freedom be and is suffering until you can die.'

The Impossibility Of Dreaming

Don Quixote got rid of Nixon. Death had won Don Quixote's first assault against America. Death lies everywhere. The green and yellowed plains house nuclear weaponry. The cities stink. Of beggars with real cut-off legs held together by wires, sitting next to four-million-dollar buildings. Of artists who're so uneducated they don't know there's no chance of becoming anything else but a beggar, of becoming a successful artist. There's no sexuality. When dying takes all the time, there's no time. Nature is abomination. Nixon, a minor fact in nature, no longer mattered.

Don Quixote realized that defeating Nixon isn't defeating America and that to defeat America she had to learn who America is. What is the myth of America, for economic and political war or control now is taking place at the level of language or myth.

'First,' Don Quixote asked, 'how did America begin? What are the myths of the beginning of America?'

Answer: The desire for religious intolerance made America or Freedom.

Explanation: Puritans and Quakers founded the north-eastern portion of the United States. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the method of instruction was the sermon and the place of instruction, the New England meeting-house. Theology, or politics, took place, not as in the Mother Country on the level of theory, but in terms of praxis: these New Worlders had left England not because they had been forbidden there to worship as they wanted to but because there they and, more important,

their neighbors weren't forced to live as rigidly in religious terms as they wanted.