Part 8: Conservation of Momentum

I took a cab to the airport. The driver was a mass of jelly, rolling from side to side in his seat as we turned corners. He breathed heavily and kept the CB turned up, chuckling at the dispatcher's comments.

In the air I tried to get comfortable in the confined seats. After the exhilaration of takeoff, flying is as much fun as sitting inside a circus cage.

I slept for a while, then woke when they brought through the breakfast service. I inspected the eggs and regretted I wasn't in First Class.

I read the paper for a while. A member of the Gorilla Anti-Defamation League had written a letter to the editor, decrying the "media transformation of peaceful, docile herbivores into stereotypically vicious, aggressive King Kongs."

There was a story about an ex-magician named Awesome Amos who went around debunking the results of scientific experiments. Recently an experimental physicist had claimed to have captured on film the passage of a magnetic monopole. This was a hypothetical particle which had only a single polarity--a magnet with just a south or a north pole.

The Awesome Amos said the alleged photograph of a magnetic monopole was faked. The reason was obvious: magnetic monopoles didn't exist. The Awesome Amos could produce an equivalent photograph with one hand tied behind his back, he said. The monopole "trace" had appeared on a photographic negative deep inside a cave. "Put me in a cave," said Amos, "and I'll get you a full-color photo of a Penthouse model."

The temperature was 84 degrees coming into L.A. shortly before 11 a.m. L.A. was my old stomping ground, and it felt good to be home. I went by the Hertz counter, then took the Hertz bus to the lot on Airport Boulevard. I drove the T-Bird down to Manchester, then took the 405 freeway to the Wilshire exit and Westwood.

I went into the Old World Westwood and had a Belgian waffle for breakfast. Some Swedish businessmen at the next table were getting briefed by a native. I think he said Nicky Blair's and Spago were trendy spots. And when the weather gets rainy, he feels it in his elbow and wrist.

Heading back to the car, I walked by a store called Alexandria II, and went in and bought a book by Paul Williams about Philip K. Dick. The SF writer intrigued me because he thought he had communicated with extraterrestrial intelligence, and had written a couple of novels based on the experience: Valis and Radio Free Albemuth. I got the car out of the parking lot and caught the Santa Monica and Pasadena freeways east.

I took the South Orange Grove exit in Pasadena. I drove slowly, looking for the 1071 address where Parsons had died. It was on the west side of South Orange Grove, between Arlington and Madeline Drive. Whatever used to be there wasn't any longer, 1071 to 1079 being an apartment complex called The Georgian.

I parked the car and walked down Madeline, which was lined with large palms. I crossed Grand, and then I could see the Arroyo Seco through an opening in the trees. Some houses sat on the incline into the Arroyo. They were buried behind cactuses and tropical plants, with rooftops level with the street. I turned right on Arroyo Boulevard, which skirted the edge of the gully. Eventually I passed a small wall lined with stones. Below, through the trees rising up from the bottom, I could see a horse path, and beyond that the Arroyo's far side: a sharp wall of vertical sand capped by trees and brush.

Just before I reached the old San Rafael bridge, I found a trail formed partially from a buried set of stone steps which wound its way through overhanding brush to the bottom of the Arroyo. A couple of miles further up would be Devil's Gate Dam, where the GALCIT group--the Suicide Club--had done their early rocket tests. The birth place of both American and Chinese missiles.

I walked along the Arroyo's sandy bed under the bridge. Among the graffiti at the base of the bridge was a large drawing of an eagle whose wings overarched the legend

DEUTCH LAND

spelled just like that. Along with a couple of swastikas.

A man and a woman rode by on horseback, and saw me looking at the drawing. "That's pre-Columbian artwork," the woman commented in passing.

I realized she was partially correct, although the skinhead artist probably hadn't had that in mind. I recalled once when I had purchased Rudyard Kipling's book Under the Deodars in a used bookstore, I had been startled to find an encircled swastika along with Rudyard Kipling's signature on the front cover. Doubleday, Page & Company, of Garden City, New York, had thought nothing of putting out an authorized edition with an imprinted swastika in 1911. I had later seen swastikas in the British Museum on Greek silver plates from the 3rd century B.C, and on Bronze Age pottery in a museum in Vienna.

I continued to walk up the Arroyo. To walk along this part of the Arroyo was an experience in time reversal. The city disappeared. And if you ignored the concrete sluice that ran along one side of the bed, you could imagine little had changed from the days the Arroyo had supplied acorns and water to the Gabrielino Indians.

Apparently it wasn't so dry back then.

This whole area, extending from South Orange Grove, where I had been looking for Parsons' old address, down into the part of the Arroyo above the San Rafael bridge, had once formed part of Busch Gardens, one of Pasadena's biggest tourist attractions before it closed in the depression of the 1930s. Then the Bohemians had moved in. And the kids who were determined to send rockets into outer space.

I followed a path that lead out of the Arroyo to California Boulevard. I walked by a house behind which was a garage apartment. A bare-chested man was standing out front, hosing down the lawn. Back at South Orange Grove I turned right and looked for 1003, the erstwhile address of the headquarters of the California O.T.O. If it had still existed, it would have been almost at the corner with Arlington, but now the nearest adjacent numbers were 995 and 1021.

I got into the T-Bird and drove on up the street, past the Wrigley Mansion where the floats for the Rose Parade lined up in starting formation each New Year. I turned south down Green Street, and made my way to the Pasadena Hilton, parked in the garage, and carried my travel bag through the hotel to the lobby. I got a room on the 10th floor overlooking Los Robles and downtown Pasadena.

There was something eerie about being in Jack Parsons' hometown. He was starting to feel real. I felt a tinge of excitement. But, for some unknown reason, there was also a faint sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
 

Trisha was lying with her legs crooked over the end of the couch. She was wearing shorts and halter.

If I went for girls, I could really go for this one, Sheri was thinking.

"What you need is an inflatable body guard," Trisha said. "One of those blow-up virile young studs who look tough and scare off other mammalian aggressors."

Sheri had been accosted on the street, and she was somewhat upset.

"I should of thought of that before going to Carolina's. Anyway, I could hardly saunter down Locust dragging a rubber Rambo."

"A little misdirection helps. You succeed through symbolism. Hitmen for Ialdabaoth have been hanging around my family for generations, ever since they ran Araunah off the threshing floor."

Sheri considered this in puzzlement. "Come again?"

"Thank you, I'm sure I will. A second coming, as it were."

"Tell me what you're talking about."

"I'll tell you a story, but first a little song and dance," Trisha said, swinging her legs up and off the couch. "Why don't we get out of this heat trap?"

"If we're going out, maybe we should pick up Helen down the street."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want Morleykins overdosing on her own excremeditation. She can amuse/confuse us with more Dog Star doggerel."

"You sound as if you doubt the utility of Helen's channeling."

Sheri herself had little opinion on the matter. She thought of herself as the quintessential observer. A collector of observations. She viewed Helen's channeling with the same detachment that she might give an automobile turning a street corner.

"She's passing off metaphysical re-runs as the new fall season."

"You've heard her stuff before? Where?"

"Would you believe me if I told you?" Trisha's lips bore the trace of a smile. But only a trace.

"Damn it, Trisha. You're driving me crazy."

Down the block a ways, they ascended the steps and knocked at Helen Morley's door.

"It's not me that's crazy," Trisha replied. "I don't spend my days holed up in Hermes' stacks, sorting through the obituarial effluvium of twentieth-century three-brained semi-consciousness."

"I like what I'm doing. Besides, you're the one that told me about the job. If I'm crazy, it's by your contrivance."

"The invisible hormone at work. Hello, Morleykins." Helen stood in the doorway looking pretty in pink, the All-American girl.

"Greetings and salivations," Trisha continued. "Sheri and I were wondering if you would like to go out and engage in some Old Age carnality. Say we visit my old friend Bacchus."

"You want to see Helen do something carnal," Sheri said, "you should have seen her at the Mauvaises Arts Ball."

"Right, Morleykins. The word is out that your behavior reinforces the adage that women should be obscene and not heard. One should beware of psychopomps bearing gifts."

Helen shrugged, not understanding the allusion:

"Channeling is not good or bad per se, but whether you channel good or bad spirits."

"Environmentally speaking, one woman's channel is another woman's Love Canal," Trisha replied. "According to Xenocrates, the daemons are intermediate hierarchies of beings between man and the One. Each planetary spirit, for example, is a living being. Each person also has his own ruling daemon which always has more influence than any other daemon: the person's own Holy Guardian Angel."

"I have nothing to do with demons."

"Neither did John Dee. He was always hurt when people accused him of sorcery. After all, he was only talking to the angels. It's all a matter of semantics. On one occasion the angels suggested that Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley swap wives, which they apparently did."

"The angels neither marry nor give in marriage," Helen said. "That doesn't mean, however, they don't have sex."

"How right you are, Morleykins. Straight and narrow, yeah, tight is the path that leadeth to righteousness. The Immaculate Conception is conceptual emasculation. And here we are at the Bacchanal."

"Am I dressed for this?" Helen again. "I could go back and put on a black leather mini-skirt."

"Bacchus was never picky about clothes. When in doubt, take them off."

"Who wants to propose a toast?" asked Sheri, when the libations arrived.

"To the Age of Horus," Trisha responded. "To the Crowned and Conquering Child."

"The Age of Yuppies, you mean."

"No, first was the Age of Isis, the age of Goddess worship and matriarchy. Then came the Age of Osiris, the years of patriarchy, with the solar-phallic Gods. These Gods, like the phallus, would die and rise again: Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Jesus, Mithra. Finally, this century saw the beginning of a third age, the Age of Horus, the warrior God successor to his parents. A time of androgyny, whimsy, and cruelty: childhood years."

"Who said this was the Age of Horus?"

"The subject of your employer's fancy: the Great White Beast himself."

"Who are you calling Beast: Hermes or Aleister Crowley?"

"To tell the Thoth, I'm not actually sure."

"Where does that name come from, `The Beast'? Or `Beast 666'?" Helen wanted to know.

"According to Crowley's official court testimony, the `Beast 666' means `sunlight.' `You may call me Little Sunshine,' he once said."

"Not a very good name to scare Christians with: Beware the Little Sunshine Power arising in Europe!" Helen mused.

"That happens in 1992," Sheri said. "I read the prophecy in some book. `Final barriers to commercial intercourse are removed in the European Economic Community. Then all nations drink of the wine of Babylon's fornication! No man may buy or sell absent a gold-backed ecu!' But seriously, let's face it: can anything good come out of Europe? The only European tourists I see around here are culturally backward nitwits. Or maybe it's just that intelligent Europeans stay home cultivating their vineyards."

"Speaking of tourists, I'm going to L.A. tomorrow," Trisha said.

Sheri felt a chill. "Why are you going to L.A.?"

"I must be about my father's business," Trisha replied.

"You have a father? I thought you sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus." Sheri wasn't able to hide her sarcasm.

"No, that was sister Athena. War Goddesses don't fuck. Athena remained virginal, like Joan of Arc, and devoted her energy to killing off men. It's fitting she was cerebrally born with the help of Hephaestus's axe."

"Life would be so simple if there were only one Goddess. And, of course, her Only Begotten Daughter."

"Monotheism has got to be history's dumbest idea," Trisha said. "It was started by that crazy Egyptian, Akhenaton, who decided there was only one God, the Sun-God Aten. The virus got spread around, by Moses and Mohammed among others, and the world's been infected since with deadly strains of Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem mono. One God, One Way, One Truth, One Country, One Flag, One Mind, One World, One Art, One Flavor, One Purpose, One Race, One Sex, One Scripture, One Party, One Music, One Relation, One Process, One Orifice, One Sense, One Geometry, One Literature, One Idea, One Channel, One Energy, One Mass, One Frequency, One Horn, One Devil, One Marriage, One Life, One Orgasm, One Savior, One Sheriff, One Virgin, One Element, One Duality, One Origin, One Money, One Time, One Beast, One Path, One Law."

"At least we know there is more than One World," Sheri responded. "There is a multiplicity of parallel universes. In some of these, Schrodinger's Cat died for your sins."

"Sheri's going to give us a lecture on physics," Trisha commented dryly.

"The key question is, Who Killed Schrodinger's Cat? In Schrodinger's experiment a cat is enclosed in a box with a radiation detector. If random radiation arrives the detector activates a mechanism which breaks open a vial of poisonous gas, which in turn kills the cat."

"That's a rather gruesome experiment," Helen said.

"Now before you open the box, the quantum wave function contains a superposition of states. There are states in which the cat is alive, and states in which the cat is dead. The cat is both alive and dead."

"Sounds like a cat, alright."

"But when you open the box and look, it's either one way or the other. For example, you open the box and you see the cat is dead. What killed the cat? According to one interpretation, it was the act of observation that collapsed the wave function into a single eigenstate. Since in this eigenstate the cat is dead, clearly the observer killed the cat."

"Now I understand why in the old days kings slew the bearers of bad tidings," Trisha said. "If a messenger had chosen the wrong eigenstate, he had it coming to him."

"According to another view--the many world's interpretation--the act of observation splits the current universe into a multiplicity of different universes. In some of these universes the cat is dead, while in others the cat is still alive--just as indicated by the original quantum wave function."

"That's a lot of universes. But what good does it do you if in the current universe your cat's dead."

"Well, there's always the comfort that in some other universe some other you possesses a living feline."

"What we need is Schrodinger's Rat to gnaw a tunnel between those two universes." Trisha.

"That would be convenient, but confusing. Imagine the shock you would give the other you, when she met her doppleganger petting a dead cat."

"Imagine her shock when I switched my dead cat for her living one," Trisha replied. "But, being me, she would understand."

"How do you know the other you is a `she'?" Helen wanted to know.

"Because you were a `she' before the box was opened. It might be different, however, at the moment of conception. If the universe splits at that time, the polarities might be reversed in some of the alternative worlds." Sheri.

"Seems I've heard this before. You split open Adam's side, and out steps Eve." Helen.

"You split open Eve's side, and out steps Adam. Next you have an orgy with yourself and fall into a post-coital depression." Trisha.

"According to some Gnostics, the Fall of man was the fall into the physical world, the descent into matter," Helen said.

"The Gnostics always had material hang-ups," Trisha responded. "Which proves they needed physical therapy. What is the significance of spirit and light without matter and darkness? That's precisely what's wrong with New Agers. They don't understand that existence is the interplay between dualities. All things fornicate all the time."

"The Fall," Sheri interrupted, "was the emergence of self-consciousness: Adam and Eve saw their nakedness and they were ashamed. According to Julian Jaynes in The Emergence of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, prior to about 1000 B.C. communications from the brain's right hemisphere were received as auditory hallucinations and were interpreted as messages from the Gods. This process ended when man became conscious in the modern sense, i.e. self-conscious."

Trisha wrinkled her nose. "That theory ignores the fact people are still getting as many messages from the Gods as they ever did, maybe more. Moreover it retains the arrogant academic metaphysical belief that man--particularly any full professor--is the highest evolved intelligence in the universe, and hence must have created the Gods."

"Maybe that's what the Apocalypse is all about: an academic plot to destroy the Gods by annihilating the human race."

"Or it could be simply a further evolutionary stage of self-consciousness. We are going to enact the End of the World so we can watch it happen on the evening news."

"The End of the World is the end of consensus reality. Everyone becomes apocalyptic when their everyday assumptions are violated: the subway goes on strike; the president is discovered to be a crook; your daughter is sleeping with an alien."

"Better that she's sleeping with a migrant worker than being used for breeding purposes by humanoids from the Crab Nebula."

"There are Christians who believe in a `Secret Rapture'. Maybe that's what alleged abductions by space aliens really are: the Christian secret rapture. Only the true believers didn't know their God was interested in warm bodies for medical experiments. Promise them paradise and they'll line up in front of the labs."

"The Apocalypse could be the revenge of Gaia," Helen interjected. "Mother Earth is destroying the virus of human civilization, and will continue to do so as long as it threatens her existence."

"But suppose human civilization is the brain of Gaia. Wouldn't the brain kill the body before launching a direct attack on itself?" Sheri asked, looking at Trisha. Sheri was herself uncertain why she wanted confirmation.

Trisha thought for a minute. "It's possible. But suppose human civilization is Gaia's asshole. Then we're in for some heavy shit for sure."

With that thought, the three called for more libations.