Chapter 1 : Sacrilege as Entertainment – Or “Russian Mail Order Brides” – Or ‘Goring of the Critic’ – Or . . . ( dot com )
“What is the problem with Modernity?”
Is the cool and voluntary public criticism of the vacuum-like, holotropic emptiness of looming buildings screeching upwards like the exclamation marks on the scrawled out thesis paper of the caffeine indoctrinated concoctioner of complex financial instruments; — too great a discouragement to his “freedom of speech” ?
The clauses and by-clauses that differentiate speech from effort – pointing out with fingers lifted with a well-meaning goodwill – in the pointing direction of suggesting the marked distinctions to be made between Wisdom and Intellection the same as between Speaking and Doing,- a tad disheartening to She who is an avowed moderniste?
Do contemplations of Scope and Scale, the Method and the Man, the Cause and Effect, – On fruitful love of foundations, and objections to the fruitless, banal, vapid, and inessential breathe an inadvertent automatic act of antagonism in face of the one Sneezing with the greatest whimper while leaning on the sides of the gasoline four wheeler with the greatest bang – just by the happenstance of co-existence?
Indeed, it appears that they do – all of these – do exactly as premised – bringing to the surface without any concession the all luminous answer. Answer, of course, to the Question “What is the problem with Modernity” – In the neat, unfolding, order of the questions, the neat order of answers offer a spontaneous and immediate damnation,- an instant transfiguration – when those that regard transcendental balance, natural truths, and fertility of hummus as sacred, in a discussion of Modernity, with those that swear by principles of the modern order of things in all its quantitative categories all arising potentiality of a two-way conversation are done away with by the latter – for, no where are the terms “screeching”, “indoctrination”, “discouragement”, “antagonism”, “disheartening”, “sneezing” and “whimper”, more immediate in assaulting the senses-extraordinaire with their commentaries presented in the form of neat stacks of inter-copulated sagging of neon-colors; — than in the form of the frenzies and forays, and hectic assays of corrugated hard-boiled surfaces of fist-flattened world order edifices, a hunch or a stoop here and there casting a staunch frown, with an illicit and odious gastric look about it — and a whole pantheon of holes carved in the black heart of concrete- widely indoctrinated into gullible consciousness of the multitudes to forcefully symbolize an absolute archetypical representation and diktat of what was once regarded and understood by the term “windows”.
Chapter 2 : The Scythe. The Rape. The Insolence : “What does Ourobouros eat for breakfast, mom?”
Indeed, in the face of a scythe like perdition upon the planetary resources, with trees and rubber being flattened into paper and tire in an era of bad writing and the digital revolution, – where mortar and cement do not curb the absolute contempt towards mountains and brooks – to accommodate new hotels and grandiose ski-rinks – no concessions wheresoever is permeable to the natural.
Thus it is that a profligate bevy of the un-nature, massing, hoarding, belching, and rallying, and commandeering the most downright internal element of natural refuge in man , down to the solaceless, irradiated entrails, foregoing all sweetness – or even neutrality in regards of the senses, with a contempting malice and coldness, that only the concrete in the street can assuage, commiserate, or reconcile, by the virtue of its flat emotionless blackness – it lays abundant, self-evident, conspicuous retorting like a snide and insipid cartoon : “Indeed, what is the problem with Modernity.”
James Howard Kunstler has finally spoken to the serpentine highway. He has reticulated outwards from his armchair by the use of his two grips, rising out of as one cast outwards from some deep breath of inner fire-side chat after some long and necessary condition of infirmity, – James Howard stood up with a spine erect, and gazed Sensibly into the outdoors with a connoisseur’s resolve, and decided to take a Stroll on behalf of the Americas – and as he slides his warming toes into the walking ricotta cheese colored Summer sandals – he feels the despair of the Taiwanese entering him through the crack of his toenails.
Chapter 3 : The Homo Economicus and his Tryst and Triumph ( with the Armchair) .
Harnessed forward by a new will to Breathe Life, as half-fumbling, yet determined, he reaches for the walking staff – he feels in his musculature the plight of half of the purloined sixteen hour stitchcraft of one half of the Penang Peninsula ; fastening his tie into a loose and disambiguous knot, – he may just as well sense the asphyxiation of Xi-Ching, reaching for the impalpableTao.
He feels so prodigious that, nearly a venerable septuagenarian from a venerable Baltimore, Maryland- he could find himself serenading Mulan from the open hatch of a time-traveling Messerschmitt, while gunning down the mercenaries of the evil red dragon.
Ah! The dear man! Stare at him! Leaving, frolicking out, into his green lawn, the surface skin of his varicose veins groping for the Soil of Providence itches centimeter by centimeter – doused by silent protocols of paid for pesticides, irrigated by the hissing nozzles of a gurgling water making a fuss about nothing and dripping into an acre of Baltimore – where Pumpkins will not grow this Halloween, but yet the queer effect of this puerile charm of water mechanics would be just as morose – in the event of a Martial Law in the District of Columbia later in the year.
James Howard Kunstler – stares with a forlorn and twitching despair into the blues of the skies, clouds sloping gently on the knolls of firmaments, – the heavy fog stream of the chemtrail pathway is reminiscent of the propeller airplanes every child in the world had wanted to fly at the age of Seven– and every child in wanting it had imagined the cinematic American Dream as produced by Walt Disney, Incorporated.
As he stares ( into the great abyss of Two Thousand and Nine ) – James Howard urinates into his lawn – a clear stream of rivulets, cascading outwards like a revolution of quantum, newly christened, fractals, unto a rose undershrub on his “plot” like a torrent written about in one of Pearl S. Buck’s novels about the Chinese Boxer Uprising.
Chapter 4 : The Homo Aquarius : He Lets the Water Loose .
As such, James Howard Kunstler is heroic, new, – and unknown to his countrymen. He thinks, letting out the water that had bottled up in him for so long like a dead sea crying in the wilderness, – a spokesperson appearance at “Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)” in Silicon Valley, was the closest he would in this modern life come to a resolution with his birthright name – ‘Kunstler’ – ‘Craftsman’ – or more allegorically interpreted ‘Hierophant – Defender of Eternal Tradition’.
His eyes closed, James Howard imagines Grecian frescoes, venetian paintings, Schiller’s poems, and lavender farms. The Appalachians , Sedona Valley, — the Himalayas. He imagines it, yes – and he imagines, a good old country song – ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ – he imagines Berlioz’s century, and Mongolian throat music, and the letters of Thomas Jefferson, and how perfectly pretty was Sally Hemmings in a white bonnet. The rhapsodies of the Age of Pisces blaze through his cerebellum – the Center of Mental and Physical Balance – as so greatly moved, tottering, he ponders the lines of Goethe. “In God’s good Time.”
He opens them ( his eyes ) and indulgently cranes his neck back. Only inches away, ‘The Baltimore Herald’ lies ensconsed in a shrink wrap like a packet of used kindergarten napkins. The headlines are too big for an adult to understand, and make little sense as they are written only for those who have attained the aptitude to speak the English Language ( America’s first language ) – to the level of an average thirteen year old.
Chapter 5 : Holy Mayors, and Money Rabbis , Xanadu, and the Scent of Rosebud.
Pained, the over-educated Howard slightly scoffs with a feeling of alienation, bends down, and Squints : “ Mayors, rabbis, arrested in NJ corruption probe.” James Howard stares emptily, remembering the international herald tribune headlines from the nineteen hundred and twenties.
Slightly panting, he mutters to himself “Didn’t they call the author of Great Gatsby an anti-semite?” - shuddering, yet not disillusioned – he reminds himself of the dangers of radical stereotypes – as he thinks of “The War on Terror”, the neon signs Nine Eleven and Seven Eleven flashing in his head like alternative psychedelic chromium ink projections – as his head buzzes with a thousand and seven uncategorizable radical stereotypes and feints, gasping in his intellections, – hopeless and prostrated before the collective phenomena of his times - James Howard looks down into the Soil in confusion – his heart and mind link up like a Starbucks Coffee Company Platinum Membership grade Ethernet cable and gain exponential speed like a eight year old’s mind on the psychiatrically enforced and administered Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder drug Aderrall, his thoughts gain immunity to prevailing prejudice, and rote instructions, – he races past the headlines of pharma frauds and the recent $1.4 billion lawsuit against Lilli Pharmaceuticals and Zyprexa, and heroically transcends his own mind – and in an outburst of the Composer Brahms’ famous Requiem “All flesh is Grass”, – he stares into the bush – his cascading urine demonstrates an uncontestable powerpoint presentation like trickle down effect – gently ripping through the Cherokee brown top soil, careening like a small brook, bubbles arising, and small plucking sounds – as if intimidations to his own heart beats, – the gentle sonor of chickadees singing, and the final dusk ushering, a scent of flowers in spring bloom – a crane flies by – Kunstler is struck in the incandescence of a natural daze in a single volume of complete and effervescent Awe.
He feels acknowledged, vindicated, and spoken for. The urinary stroll after a dark night of the soul has proven redeeming for him – and thereby, automatically for all Men on Earth. Where an uncategorizable confusion was probing, where unrecalcitrant ugliness was vast. Where intersections blurred, he remembers not so long ago he felt the warmth in his hands, that he wanted to go out for a stroll, he wished to clutch close his walking staff, and he syncopated around his neck his favorite deep blue corduroy tie, the armchair transformed and transmuted itself into a lawn – and by further transmutation of serendipity – the word lawn – had revealed itself as a revelation more powerful in the ineffable essence of the word – Soil. “The meek shall inherit the Earth”, which he had read somewhere on some kind of a gray welfare state building – but he defers the truth to no further intellection – no matter how tempting – emancipated, he feels an embrace releasing him from his cramps, once again, into his favorite things.
“Rosebud”.
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Alexander K. Rai, MSMA ( A member to a Society of Mutual Admiration ) is an American Constitutionalist, Freethinker, Classical Scholar, and Entrepreneur from Philadelphia. He lives in Scandinavia as an American Expatriate who supports Ron Paul’s style of delivering the newborn, and though originally had wished to be a peripatetic hermit of pure Spirit, has presently elected to direct his energies of monogamy to emancipating universal human consciousness, advocating fellowship and sincerity and a passion for healing in all nations, The Truth, and genuine and articulate free enterprise built on Quintessentially American and Primeval Qualities of Self Reliance and Paleo Conservation with a firm and indelible emphasis on the role of ethics, co-creation, relevance, and reciprocity. He makes it a daily aim and studious mission to intemper his continuously diminishing indignation at “the phenomena” with Asamese lapsang tea. His Conscious Media Flagship Company is appellated ‘Green Therapy Global’ and advocates Holistic Integration of Ideas and Applications with an Earth Bound directive and a Conscious regard for “The Soil”. He was nominated by repetitive external solicitation as a Marquis’ ‘Who’s Who in America’ edition 2009 in which his name has been listed on inexpensive paper and economy grade indigo ink, and has never graduated from any Private or Public Institution of Mass Education, and if the Solar Flares do manage to “trickle down” through the Hole engineered by Tesla Science and Wernher Von Braun, – without a doubt, he never will nor will anyone in the graduating Class of 2012 – anywhere.
