The Televisionary Oracle (32 page)

“Welcome home, Rapunzel Blavatsky,” Madame Blavatsky breathed.

What was she talking about?

“This is the spot you first came into the world this time around,” she said. “Do you not remember? It is Magda’s apartment. Though Jerome stayed here now and then, too.”

A glimmer of memory told me she probably spoke the truth. This was the place on Wilkes Circle in Santa Cruz where I had lived until Vimala came and took me away. A welter of odors bloomed, as if my sense of smell had just turned on. The mildew on the wall was the strongest. From the tracks of brown streaks, I surmised that rain had leaked through the roof and watered the green patch on the yellowish plasterboard. I could also smell the lacquered blonde wood that comprised the broken-legged coffee table, wilted chrysanthemums in a Mason jar on top of the TV, and a grocery bag full of empty pickle
jars next to the entrance to the kitchen. My grown-up mind judged these aromas as unpleasant, but some more primal sense swelled with sweet nostalgia.

“See that thing over there in the corner?” Madame Blavatsky said. “It looks like a television? It is in fact a Televisionary Oracle, heavily disguised of course. It is the generative power behind this Drivetime experience you are enjoying.”

“You mean it’s a
symbol
of the generative power?” I asked, confused.

“No, no. It is the actual
source
of your visit here with me. Although as I said, you would never be able to perceive it in its raw state—it would be invisible—so it has disguised itself as a television. Come with me now.”

I followed Madame Blavatsky down the hall to the apartment’s only bedroom. If this place was what she said it was, I was now in the room where I was born, where my brother died. Could it be? It was so small. There was only one piece of furniture here, a beautiful round wooden table, which stood in dramatic contrast to everything else.

The Grail cup I had sold—the beloved artifact of my adoptive mothers’ ancient mystery school—was set in the middle. It was filled to the brim with a thick red liquid. Around it were platters filled with hot sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, creamed potatoes, corn chowder, artichokes, black olives, and strawberry cheesecake.

From under the table, Madame Blavatsky pulled a thin rubber hose and a red and black Supersoaker squirtgun. The latter was the size of a small rocket-launcher. With the tube she siphoned liquid from the Grail into the Supersoaker. When she was finished, she beckoned me to approach her. She brought the muzzle of her weapon up close to my mouth. I opened wide and she shot a dose inside. I couldn’t place the taste. It was salty and smoky and slightly bitter. It didn’t make me gag, but I was glad to have no more than one swallow. A pungent, astringent tang remained in my mouth for some time afterward.

“Take and drink of this,” Madame Blavatsky intoned after she squirted, “for this is the Chalice of Your Blood, a living symbol of the new and eternal covenant. It is the mystery of faith, which will be shed for many, that they may attain tantric jubilation and kill the apocalypse.”

She handed me the gun and gestured for me to feed her.

“But first, repeat what I said,” she commanded, “only say ‘Chalice of
My
Blood.’ ”

I did this. When I finished, she spoke.

“Here is how I plan to kill the apocalypse, Queen Grail-Stealer. I will help you build a global network of moon lodges. Sanctuaries to compassionately murder the death culture. Havens where it is always once upon a time, far from the nine-to-five crimes against the rhythms of sleep and love. Death to Pizza Hut! Long live Menstrual Hut! From Kuala Lumpur to Seattle to Tierra del Fuego, may all women everywhere get their four days of resurrection every month!

“And all men, too, for that matter. They need it even more than we do, do they not? Otherwise they just go on and on and on and on—their poor bodies do not have a built-in mechanism to slow them down like ours do—and they never stop to peer into the heart of their own darkness. Which is why they find evil
everywhere else
except in themselves, and create it
everywhere else
, and fight it
everywhere else
.

“Menstrual huts will kill the apocalypse. Four days of darkish down time a month will allow us all the regular breakdowns we sorely need. No more pushing and pushing until our shadows are forced to bite us in the butt.

“Like you always say, Rapunzel, everyone who believes in the devil
is
the devil.”

Actually, I had never said that in my life.

“There is another way I am slaughtering the end of the world,” she continued. “I am going to help you work on producing and promoting a global festival that will take the place of the apocalypse. ‘Twenty-Two Minutes of World Orgasm’ is what we will call it. I want it to martial some of the same climactic juice as the phallocratic
grande morte
, but sublimate it into a more
petite
, if still monumental,
morte
. Sort of an erotic version of New Year’s Eve plus the Superbowl plus the original Woodstock plus the end of a big war. At the appointed minute of the appointed day—have not decided exactly when yet—I will help you try to get every single adult on the planet to maximize their bliss simultaneously.”

She gestured for me to dose her again with the Supersoaker.

“One more technique for murdering armageddon I would like to testify about,” she said. “It involves stopping the genocide of the imagination
in
my own
imagination. Like for instance, right now I am imagining sex with candy bars … and homeless oil company presidents digging for food scraps in garbage cans … and a psychedelic mushroom cloud sprouting from the penis of a nine-hundred-foot-tall Christ … and the Dalai Lama channeling Salvador Dali in testimony against Salvadoran death squads … and Dionysus and Eleanor Roosevelt dramatizing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice at a sacred shopping mall in Tadzhikistan … and a new kind of aphrodisiac that stimulates compassion as much as lust.”

Madame Blavatsky took the Supersoaker from me and shot it crazily at the walls. “Look out all you phallocratic ass-souls. Rapunzel and I will soon be spraying your decaying creation with bolts of the liberated imagination.”

Then she placed the Supersoaker gently in my arms and addressed me. “Have I inspired you at all? Would you like to add anything to your previous testimony? What exactly are you doing—what would you like to do—to kill the apocalypse?”

“I think for now, if it’s OK with you,” I say, “I’m just going to start slow. I promise that to kill the apocalypse I will pick blackberries in the rain and dance around bonfires while singing freedom songs with mysterious friends. Amen.”

W
e can’t decide whether you remind us more of Captain Ahab in his mad pursuit of Moby Dick or Sir Galahad in his pure-hearted search for the Grail. Sometimes you seem irrationally obsessed with an unworthy quarry that brings out dark though creative sides of your nature. Other times your struggle appears to be a holy quest that’s forcing you to access the wild, smart goodness that is your birthright. We suppose it’s possible that both are true. Maybe that’s exactly the point.

M
y solo career as a humble bard was fun, but it was utterly off the media’s radar screen. Even local Bay Area publications ignored my creations and performances. After a couple of years of anonymity, I grew antsy to return to the cultural wars with more intensity. I felt I wasn’t living up to my potential.

There was one very auspicious development during my sabbatical from rock music, however. As I worked to refine my analysis of “entertainment crime,” I felt I was making myself immune to its ravages. Maybe, I reasoned, I’d even become savvy enough to save my own soul no matter how symbiotically I joined with the corporate beast. I fantasized that I could remain a dionysian clown-priest even in the face of enormous record sales, splashes on the covers of national magazines, and relationships with hordes of lawyers, accountants, bureaucrats, and journalists whose values were as different from mine as the Dalai Lama’s are from Bill Gates’.

Buoyed by this vision, I decided I would launch a band and snag a record deal perfectly tailored to my vision. I would trick the corporate beast into selling us to the mass audience with the very same machinery that I satirized and howled about. What a coup it would be. I would exploit the entertainment criminals for my success at the same time that I educated our fans about how evil they were. I would outwit their ability to turn everything they touched into neutered simulation, and bring the people of Earth crafty celebrations that inspired spiritual awakening and smart love. I would gain all the advantages of
being a rockstar without turning into one of those ghastly monsters.

Thus was spawned World Entertainment War, my band and performance art support group.

Our songs wrote themselves. Our stage show evolved and matured with breathtaking artistry, and in close alignment with the vision I’d formulated from the beginning. I felt like a magician returning from exile, like an orphaned genius who’d finally found his long-lost family. Soon we were headlining weekends at the biggest club in Santa Cruz, the Catalyst. Next we made the leap to the greater Bay Area and built an underground following in grassroots clubs like Komotion and the Paradise Lounge. It wasn’t long before we were headlining major venues like Slim’s and the Great American Music Hall and the Kennel Club.

Finally, I felt, record companies were ready to hear what we could do. With nine thousand dollars from a benefactor, we crafted an eight-song masterpiece in a San Jose warehouse studio, working exclusively during the graveyard shift to save money. Soon I was sending out our newborn artifact, along with my poetic propaganda disguised as a bio.