Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

What she didn’t know was that he’d already memorialized her, his m.o. being to machinegunfire anyone stepping from the back of a car, shoot now, look later. As he sorted everything from that night for his boss, he came across some pix of the gleek arriving at the gala with her mom… the tried&tru stepping out shots, and the little gleek did not disappoint. She was an unknown, & usually Jerzy threw some civvie stinkweed into Harry’s snatch batch to sweeten the punch. Giftbag swagger jagger. Upskirt warmer-uppers. Twatcherazzi twizzle sticks. But this time, he destroyed all of the illicit images of the gleek, even those she asked him to take on the sidewalk. It just felt like the right thing to do.

He pulled on the glass dick & coughed out the smoke, & when he was finally able he said outloud “You’re a good man Charlie Brown.”

. .

Harry’s problemo was one thing, THE PROBLEM was another.

Jerzy turned over THE PROBLEM in his head, THE PROBLEM being: How to see the face of God? At least he’d identified it, which had taken a lot of luck & hardwork. The answer was out there like the xxx-files once said. Jerzy wanted to see the face of G-d— NOT the false American Idols before him not Hov, not I–Veen, not Puppetmathers (making them smaller & smaller in his ), but the face of The Eternal.

But one thing haunted him:

What if he was allowed to see the face of G-d & did so, righteous & transcendent, w/o realizing it was the WRONG G-d?

The hummingbird & the mantis held the answer.

After careful meth odical scrutiny & further accumulation of much crack plaque Jerzy unpacked the disturbing parable of bird & insect. (He called it parable because in so doing it placed mantis & hummingbird outside of Time. It was easier to consider them if they resided in a place outside Time, in parable form.) G-d said to an as-yet-formless thing: Give me your Soul, your Spirit, your Energy, & I will make you into that magnificat of Mystery: blurry venerated magnificence called Hummingbird. All who see you will know I touched you, that you did know me & saw my face, & that I did favor you. In you I shall be forever immanent. And the 1st formless thing said, “I accept & do praise you, forever & ever.” & G-d said to another as-yet-formless thing: Give me your Soul, your Spirit, your Energy, & I will make you into that magnificat of Mystery: patient, aloof, anomalous gladiator, that vatic king called Mantis. All who see you will know I touched you, that you did know me & saw my face, & that I did favor you. In you I shall be immanent. And the 2nd formless thing said, “I accept, & do praise you, forever and ever.” And upon assuming those forms he had bestowed like raiments they wondered when they would be allowed to see His face. But until then, they happily did go about their new lives, fulfilling their natures & natural destinies.

The mantis was patient, & assumed the position of prayer, whether on wings in flight or at rest upon hillside ground or poised in acquiescence upon leaves dead, or still green. And the mantis heard a Voice say, Come, stand by the sugarwater of this bird feeder, & take care to hide, for that is where you shall see my face. So the mantis took up near-invisible sentry by the sugarwater of bird feeders, wherever he might find them. The hummingbird was patient too, though the G-d saw fit to place upon its tiny quivering shoulder the mantle of impatience, & while impatience appeared to be its nature such was His art in camouflaging the hummingbird’s supreme forbearance. The hummingbird heard a Voice too & the Voice said, Follow me to the place where you shall soon see my face, but the Voice was always careful to be a flower away. Still, the faithful thing beat its wings ceaselessly toward It, for that too was its nature, an unending faithfulness to the G-d that gave it form. And the mantis prayed by the bird feeder in monk’s simple cloak to see the face that His Maker had promised would manifest, & G-d said to him, You must kill the thing that comes to nourish and feed from this sugar, this water, & the mantis listened blindly, an assassin of His love, & did murder the hummingbird. But in the cruel & unforgiving instant of its kill, the mantis understood he would never see the face of G-d, and that he had killed his sister, the sister who had been promised the same as he; the G-d that had given them both life had taken care to make certain his sister, in her last moments, was fully aware that her brother was going to impale her, that she would die poleaxed by her brother’s spiked leg as it hairtriggered from just beneath the very arm that it prayed with, her brother had been ordered by the G-d that made them to kill his sister for sport, & at the same time she realized she too would have done the same, that was her only solace (one which the G-d did not anticipate), that if ordered so she would have massacred her brother in obedience to her G-d, their Maker. & now the mantis was alone, and alone with his revelation. In the horror of his predicament, he cannibalized himself — in merciful mercilessness their G-d had made it his nature to devour other mantises & so devouring itself was both a penitence & a cleansing of Soul and Spirit, thus ending the cycle of betrayal (until He chose for it to begin again, which He always did, out of boredom & for sport). Before the mantis died he cursed such a G-d, & for such heresy his G-d reconstituted him long enough to promise the mantis he would make him into the hummingbird, the mantis’ sister, mother & wife, he would make him a flower-hoverer next time, and promised too that before the hour of his impalement & death, his heartbreak at the further revelations of the perfect senselessness & sadism of this our life would be so much more exquisite than the suffering the mantis had last experienced, the G-d saw fit to tell his creation the misery he’d endured before cannibalizing itself would be increased a millionfold — out of G-d’s boredom, & for His sport.

Jerzy read that a motto of the Navy Seals is, “3 is 2, 2 is 1, & 1 is none.” What does it mean? That one should never enter a battle alone, without an ally, & one should assume that before victory or even before battle allies will be lost.

You can’t do 1 of anything… “1 is the loneliest number.” Who sang it? 3 Dog Night. The 3 again: (A whisper: 1ovine, 2-Hov, 3-Em) “3 is 2, 2 is 1 & 1 is none.” Listen to Ecclesiastes: “2 are better than 1, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, 1 will lift up the other. But woe to 1 who is alone & falls & does not have another to help. If 2 lie together, they keep warm; but how can 1 keep warm alone? & tho 1 might prevail against another, 2 will withstand 1. A 3-fold cord is not quickly broken.”

(A whispernet: 1-Suge, 2-Pac, 3-Jerzy)

Listen to the rhythm of the trimesters:

1, 2 & 3.

The Known, the Unknown, the Unknowable.

He, she, them — the merging.

ICM, CAA, WME.

Listen to the secret language of the 4th Trimester.

Listen.

Listen, & you will hear the demiurge, the golem. . . . . ….

. .

Earlier, Bolt told Tom-Tom that someone from production had asked how old Rikki was. He was guessing they might want him to join in the fun. Tom-Tom said I’m his fucking manager & he aint doin nuthin for FREE. Somebody wants to give him a bj, they’re gunna have to PAY, & guess what, they pay ME.

She told Rikki to find the ID she got made in MacArthur Park for when he was auditioning on that piece of shit movie, just in case Antwone Fisher wanted to hire him but had trouble with him being a minor. Tom-Tom knew they never liked using minors if they could help it cause you always had to provide a teacher, give em nappy breaks, yadda yadda, all this xtra costly dumbshit. When she learned the star of the porno was the one who wanted to confirm that Rikki was legal, Tom-Tom wasn’t surprised. Early on, she saw the two hanging out between takes, & it was clear from their body language that they were in the courtship phase so often preceding consensual unprotected double-pen.