III. Interstate 40. Amarillo.
Wilderado Rest Area.
Population: 149,230
Elevation: 3,000
Climate: Arid
Topography: High plains
Historical Oddity: Albiates Flint Quarry National Monument, where Indians
from all over North America got their flint.
Category: Ranching, oil, natural gas, and world's largest helium deposit.
Telling Detail: Home of Pantex, where American nuclear weapons are
assembled.
Prominent Amenity: New Mexico.
Best One-word Description: Remote.
Insight: Stanley Marsh 3rd oversees a crop of half buried Cadillacs on
his ranch.
1. Tarzan? You there?
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
1b. This is nothing more than being triply or doubly awake,
conscious.
–Novalis
* * *
1c. A old hillbilly tells his old lady he's goin into town to
apply for social security retirement. "How you gonna prove you age," she says.
"You aint got no birth certificate." "Easy", the old boy says.
"I'll just unbutton my shirt and show em all the gray hairs on my chest."
"While you're at it," his wife says, "why don't you unbutton your pants and
apply for disability?"
–Mud Flap
* * *
2. Dance, Nietzsche?fn1
Come on. Europeans haven't known how to dance since they locked their pelvises at Sumer.
–Dr. Detroit
* * *
3. Take the banana outa your mouth when you talk, boy.
–Rodeo Star
* * *
4. We're overdue to revive and put back in general use the word
"sophist."
–Fritz
* * *
5. Man, you better make up your mind, boy.
–Half a Dollar
* * *
5b. Without ecstasy–a gripping consciousness which displaces
everything–this is worth very little.
–Novalis
* * *
6. No, tailoring is the oldest profession.
–Trail Boss
* * *
7. Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.
–Ramrod.
* * *
8. How long, King? Ask the children. They are earth's current
resident experts on bondage.
–Widow's Might
* * *
9. There are aspects of our being–such as disease–which,
when thought about, reveal that the age has hardly begun.
–New Adam.fn2
* * *
10. I don't guess I'm good enough to talk to.
–Lone Stranger.
* * *
11. When the two-backed beast gets going, the going gets tough.
–Wild Man.fn3
* * *
12. This sweet young thing, couldn't have been a day over fifteen,
goes to confession and tells the priest she let her boy friend put his hand on her knee,
and the horny old priest asks is that all he did, and she tells him, no, then he got his
hand up under my panties, and the old priest is breathin hard and says, and then what, and
she says, then he put his hand on my hair-pie and started tickling my you-know-what. And
the priest, who's bout to have a heart attack, says, what'd he do then, and she says,
nothin, on account then my mother walked in.
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
13. Circumcision explains so much about our barbarism. More than
clothes, more than religion, more than science.fn4
–Hyundai Hunk.
* * *
14. He's a real muddy-mind.
–Beer Belly
* * *
15. As long as it's my size shit, there ain't really nothin to
worry about.
–Star Truck
* * *
15b. Imagination is the miraculous sense which can replace all
other senses and which is already so much under our control. While the external senses
appear to be wholly subject to mechanical laws, imagination is bound neither to the
present nor to contact with external stimuli.
–Novalis
* * *
15c. Prejudices and passions are for the imagination what fog,
blinding light, and colored glasses are for the eye.
–Novalis
* * *
16. Stick that where the sun don't shine.
–Falcon
* * *
17. We are going to stop speaking. Rather: we are in the early
stages of developing languages far purer than those historically derived languages we now
use, and methods of communicating which will so exceed the present rate of transfer of
information between persons that spoken language as we know it will seem as primitive as
pictographs do to us now. It is likely there will be an age and a society wherein spoken
language will be considered not merely impolite but downright obscene.
–New Adam.
* * *
18. Paradox is the pattern of taboo for our rational tribe.fn5
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
19. Somebody tell that crackerhead to shut up before he gits us
all arrested.
–Bar Ditch.
* * *
20. Charles Ives did it better.fn6a
–Backdoor Man
* * *
21. My daddy's dyin of cancer, so we throwed him a July the Fourth
party. Believe me, we throwed a party. Me and my family drunk enough for the whole state
of California and then some. You shoulda seen Daddy, he had this big grin ear to ear for a
week. Course now he's back in the hospital on them drugs that make him throw up all the
time.
–Lone Stranger.
* * *
22. The most dangerous idol of every age is the always-present
sense of apocalyptic importance. The people in Kampuchea (or wherever) in 913 (or
whenever) had the same sense of self-importance, disgust with their rulers, and impending
doom as did those in France in 1790, and as we do now.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
23. Pearls before swine: pity the student whose teacher teaches
the wrong lesson.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
24. Haven't you heard? Science is dead.
–Fritz.
* * *
25. Buncha old boys was hangin out at their bar in Odessa one
night and got to complainin about the tap beer. They start in to arguin and finally it
gets plumb serious, so one of them takes a sample to get it analyzed. Next night he comes
back and they say, what's the word, and he says, well, the vet says that horse ain't fit
to be worked.
–Mud Flap.
* * *
26. With the speed of light, Shiva, unmoving, dances circles
around Kali.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
27.
–Where all the women in the Rest Area?
–They restin.fn6b
* * *
28. Unsullied the steed, however sullied the rider.fn7
–Pat Angeli.
* * *
29. Mark thrice, America!
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
30.
–I aint gonna chase him, you chase him.
–He aint got his radio on. I tried to talk to him while ago.
* * *
31. Maybe it's not the first trick, but Nature finesses us all
with a lead of the surface of diamonds, with which the singleton kind is always caught,
leaving the queen high.
–McLoony Tunes.
* * *
32. 1 : 0 = Tat tvam asi : neti neti.fn8
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
33. Shiva's grand jeté is a sigh to behold too.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
34. You gotta be lost if you gotta chase another truck to find out
where you're goin, right?
–Road Runner.
* * *
35. Those who come in flying saucers are giving AIDS to the enemy.
–Rubber Duck.
* * *
36. An end to hunger, indeed. Metaphysician, feed thyself!
–Mahalia.
* * *
37. Only an amorphogenetic religion such as science could come up
with the concept of entropy as central.
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
38. Gimme me a minute and I'll put a eyeball on that.
–Mercan Beauty.
* * *
39. Only a paleotribal religion such as judeo-christian-islam
could come up with the concept of nature as enemy.
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
40. The world language is already here. We are immersed in it, and
speak it every night, just as animals "think," only they don't know they think.
Remember, we used not to know we think.
–New Adam
* * *
41. How is it that congruent emblems often produce such different
results? Think of Thales watching the ocean, the rain, and sweat.
–UFO
* * *
42. The only way to learn the way out of the maze is to go all the
way in.
–Cam's Gillette.
* * *
43. As we are amused and apalled by an earlier age's use of
leeches to bleed humans, our perception of the "uninhabited" planets will amuse
and apall a future age.fn9
–New Adam
* * *
44. Japan was the true imperialist of the end of the 20th century:
they gave nothing and took everything.
–Horny Teen
* * *
45. What scars are formed by hating war? And by hating those who
do not hate war?
–Mahalia.
* * *
46. Now you don't pay no attention to him. I done had him once. He
acts like he the man with the $6 million pecker, but if it is, it needs a major overhaul.
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
47. Beware of whimsical metaphysics. Look where Lewis Carroll got
England.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
48. Well, bless my heart. Looks like I did somethin right for a
change.
–Smokestack.
* * *
49. Is Wittgenstein laughing? No, I think not. I get that there
are whole universes for his kind where he now miserably pursues other tails like his own.
The image is of frantic movement along multiply-entwined Moebius strips.
–Tinfoil Seagull.
* * *
50. Art that is neither erotic nor consoling is profoundly
subversive: it lulls the unwary into thinking that all art is at most decorative.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
51. Parzifal spends years learning to search, and then finds the
grail only when he drops his horse's reins.
–Fritz.
* * *
52. Two old truckers just about ready to retire was talkin. One of
em says, I hear there's places over in Paris where women'll pay a hundred dollars for a
good screw. The other one thinks about this for a minute and says, So what. Who can live
on two hundred dollars a month.
–Mud Flap.
* * *
53. Timeless (that lets us out), footloose (so much for the
satyrs), and morose (there go the roses). What's left but culture?
–McLoony Tunes.
* * *
54. I wanna wet your wick and wash your weenie.
–Billy Boy
* * *
54b. Nothing is more contrary to the spirit of a fairy tale than a
moralistic fate, a nexus of necessity. A fairy tale is genuine, natural metarchy. Abstract
worlds, dream worlds, conclusions from the abstract, etc., with regard to the condition
after death.
–Novalis
* * *
55. Art posits non-art. Such arrogance.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
56. The urge to silence is almost overwhelming. Spoilsport
puritans we shall always have with us. "Stop that fun! I want to hear myself
not-think!"
–Bullwinkle
* * *
57. Quanz noc lei moh holainik, kri'kria glinnit.
–UFO
* * *
58. What percentage of those who have tongues on this
oh-so-lingual planet do not speak?
–Horny Teen
* * *
59. Prisms, facets, matrices, vortices and we think we have to go
to other galaxies to find the alien other.
–Gamekeeper.
* * *
60. I need some lipstick on my dipstick.
–Tasmanian Devil.
* * *
61. The idylls of the age: clipped hair, clipped tones, clipped
cocks.
–Horny Teen
* * *
61b. The destruction of the theory of contradiction is perhaps the
highest task of higher logic.
–Novalis
* * *
62. Y'all heard the one about the doctor caught in bed with the
old farmer's wife. The doctor looked up, grinnin like a shit-eatin possum and said he was
takin the poor sick woman's temperature. Whereupon the farmer aims his 20-20 right at the
bed and says, I know what you're doin, Doc. All I got to say is, that thing better have
numbers on it when you pull it out."
–Mud Flap
* * *
63. To enunciate imagined warmth clearly is the fate of all arctic
peoples.fn10
–Mr. Camp
* * *
64. Mountainous climbs require mountainous climes, and are
meaningful only and precisely there.
–Cottonpicker.
* * *
65. Bach wants warmth. Is that O.K.?
–All Fingers.
* * *
66. The cleverly painted hovels of the tribes of Europe tell us
much about our origins, and that's all they tell us. They are mute about, because ignorant
of, the tropical future.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
67. Don't go messin with him, hon. He's got a dick like a fungo
bat.
–Wild One.
* * *
67b. Ecstasy–inner light phenomena = intellectual
visualization.
–Novalis
* * *
67c. Children are still terrae incognitae.
–Novalis
* * *
68. Violence rampant notwithstanding, America is still the root of
the open tribal future.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
69. Money rampant notwithstanding, Japan is still the last
blossoming of the closed tribal past.
–Mixmaster
* * *
70. This is not John Lilly's finger pointing at the moon. This is
John Lilly's finger pointing at the moon.fn11
–UFO
* * *
71. High play is the most serious thing in the world, especially
to those who love apples.
–Mr. Snowtree.
* * *
72. Philanthropy–or what passes for it in this
world–will be the death of us yet.
–Jack Flash
* * *
73.
–How you built?
–Little smaller than average, I guess.
–Suits me. I'll be right over.
* * *
74. The tragedy of Vietnam is that it brought America to Asia,
which didn't work. The miracle of Vietnam is that it brought Asia to America, which shows
signs of working.
–Hyundai Hunk.
* * *
75. These too gay guys is goin to a masquerade ball, and one of em
comes home from the Safeway with two dozen cans of Eagle Brand milk. He opens the cans and
says to his friend, Now pour it all over me. I'm goin as a wet dream.
–.38 Special
* * *
76. Aside to the more distant future or to the more prescient
inhabitants of the near present: For a good foundation on which to build a proper
understanding of the 20th century, read Reich, Purdy, and Seth. Follow by a comparative
study of advertisements from the beginning, middle, and end of the century. Read Myra
Breckinridge and watch the movie three times. Find and contemplate at length a car (do not
drive it). Conclude by reading Bettelheim's Symbolic Wounds. Then study Francis Bacon.
–Ken Russell, Jr.
* * *
77. Head man lookin for a long dong.
–Tasmanian Devil.
* * *
78. Blake saw too much, and too little.
–Tinfoil Seagull.
* * *
79. That old gal's so fat, if somebody told her to haul ass she'd
have to make two trips.
–Mother McCree.
* * *
80. Seeds that my age does not want planted, or tended, or
harvested. No wonder we are hungry all the time.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
81. Any century in which Glenn Gould dies at fifty has big
problems.
–All Fingers.
* * *
82. Time is the mannerist manifestation of physicality.
–Fritz.
* * *
83. The Bible is all plot and no continuity, while a freeway is
all continuity and no plot.
–McLoony Tunes.
* * *
84. Ideologues are the ultimate, decadent, civilized luxury, and
one that the Third World can least afford.
–Ramrod.
* * *
85. Monotheism = western brainspeak.
–Gray Wolf
* * *
86. Remember: as the century waned, Norman Brownfn12 and the Fugs came back.
–Ken Russell, Jr.
* * *
87. Not Mozart. Not Bach. Handel.
–All Fingers.
* * *
88. When my dick gets hard, sugar, it draws up so much skin I
can't close my eyes.
–Totalled
* * *
89. Ex cathedra, you say? Of course. Try it some time.
–Fritz.
* * *
90. Understand why Bosch's peoplefn13 are not smiling, and you will understand why this
is not arrogant.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
91. You think you are what you think you eat.fn14
–Jack Flash
* * *
92. California was Europe at the end of its tether.fn15
–Horny Teen
* * *
93. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
–Mahalia.
* * *
94. What did Hermes really steal?fn16
–Rubber Duck.
* * *
95. Leibnitz too was on a right track. Monads that extend
themselves to learn the benefits and possibilities and dangers of non-isolation.
–Mercan Beauty.
* * *
96. This century is blind to itself, and unfeeling. The Anesthetic
Age.
–Wild Man.
* * *
97. My century wanted sleep, and I gave it alarm clocks.
–Fritz.
* * *
98. You want to play Columbus? You cry because there are no worlds
left to conquer? Try clouds. Try sleep. Try dreams. Try the heart. We live and we sleep
still in emotional hovels worse really than the crude houses of cave men and women. We
don't even have an emotional Praxiteles yet, much less a Sullivan or a Wright.
–New Adam
* * *
98b. All vital beginnings must and it is a powerful breakthrough
be antimechanically oppsed to mechanistic behavior.
–Novalis
* * *
99. This here old doctor comes home one day and finds his pretty
young wife in bed with a man, and they's fuckin to beat sixty. The old doc opens his bag,
whips out his scalpel and cuts it right off with one stroke while it's still inside the
old girl. She jumps up screamin, Get some bandages, he's bleedin. Fuck the bandages, the
man shouts, Get me a corkscrew!
–UFO.
* * *
99b. All life is a transcendent process of renewal which, on first
glance, seems to be a process of destruction.
–Novalis
* * *
100. Sciencists and religionists get on poorly because both try to
live the same myth.
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
101. Boys holding hands? I'm ready.
–Horny Teen
* * *
102. Y'all know the difference between a BMW and a cactus? The
pricks are on the outside of the cactus.
–Mud Flap
* * *
Amarillo Notes
1It's amazing how often
Nietzsche–who thought dance was the highest art–pops up on the night channels of
the American road.
2What about pain, Adam?
Not to mention other crudely addressed problems (zits, ring-around-the-collar,
mockingbirds, etc.).
3One can only wonder
where Wild Man came across Shakespeares coital figure of speech.
4See Bruno Bettelheim,
Symbolic Wounds.
5I refrained from
including Mr. Camp's favorite dictum ("1=0; all is one and all is many"),
thinking it was too abrasive for the main text.
6aBackdoor Man admired
Ives' ability to be an insurance clerk by day and a radical composer by night. He was fond
of ending conversations by saying, "Remember, the schizoid shall inherit
America").
6bThe innocent reader
should know that Interstate rest areas are used by frequent travelers, especially
truckers, for quite a bit more than resting. Traffic in illicit substances and illicit sex
is common in the earlier morning hours. The curious reader may locate such spots by
referring to the truckers' bible, the Rand McNally Motor Carriers' Atlas.
7The image is Hindu, from
the Bagavadgita (the soul as rider, the body as steed).
8More Hindu stuff. Tat
tvam asi = thou art that. Neti neti = not this, not that.
9New Adam claimed to have
visited several of the planets in dreams, discovering that some of the dead live there. In
that dimension, Mars, he said, is a veritable Eden.
10A recurring theme on
the Interstates is the sense of warm place. Variants on the idea of a tropical or
sub-tropical future kept coming up. Hence the later references to Brazil, etc.
11UFO has confused John
Lilly (Center of the Cyclone) and R.D. Laing (The Politics of Experience).
12Life against Death,
Love's Body.
13In the triptych, The
Garden of Earthly Delights.
14Jack Flash is playing
games with Ludwig Feuerbach's German pun, "Man ist, was man isst" (you are what
you eat).
15H.G. Wells early in
the century thought the European mind was at the end of its tether.
16See Norman O. Brown,
Hermes the Thief.
The Texas Tao
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