Mea Culpa!
Memories can only be harvested from the dead. Plato would have
loved her. “Miss Perception” was an
equal opportunity stripper. She displayed her wares nightly at the Old Howard
Theater in the Scollay Square section in rancid Boston long before the ‘Big
Dig’ ran over budget. Eddie got us seats next to JFK one Friday night. Jack previewed
what Bill Clinton could do with a cigar. We were 15. Eddie’s dad was in the
mafia. Jack was only a Congressman at the time. But, he had big ideas. Maybe. She descended from the ceiling riding a
white baby grand piano. To the strains of ‘The
Stripper’ from the David Rose orchestra, she seductively masked her
intimate parts with skillful twirls of a long, pink feather boa. What a sight! Pure Platonic essence of politically
correct stripper. She was the first Buddhist Eskimo in an iron- lung to strip
for JFK. Mea culpa!
Lewd, shouting, cat-calls, lascivious whistling from drunks
and trolls down front was only outdone by the stench of stale, cheap, booze and
putrid tobacco. No less a personage than Thomas Ava Edison had season’s seats
in ‘the bald section’ in the front
rows. Mea culpa!
Regret, like guilt and worry, is the interest paid on a debt
you never owed in the first place. Those are vices not virtues. Regret erodes
the soul. Guilt corrodes the mind. Where’s the sense in that? Name something you regret. If you can, then
you’ve stopped praying. When do you feel guilt? If you feel it, then you are
unforgiven, and “…deserves got nothin' to
do with it...” Oh. You’re not worthy? Then you have not confessed. Who is
worthy of your confession? Who can show you mercy? Who can absolve you? Why do
you need absolution?
Shrinks think everyone can be shrunk. But not the Irish of
course. Shrinks see love as necessary frustration to fill their rice bowls.
They measure the mind with models. They make the models. But the models break
every few years. So, they make more models that also break very soon. Sanity
outwits them and their models thanks to the Irish. They are part of what they
seek to measure. They’re mechanics tinkering with carburetors in a world that
no longer uses carburetors. Back to square one. Mea culpa!
Data points. That’s it. Mathematics. Number. The mind is
nothing more than the sum of its data points. If they can only put those into
an algorithm, then they can predict love, hate and freedom. They could program
sanity. But that’s insane. The data points are part of the data points they use
to collect data points they record as data. They never get information. Only
data. They never get knowledge. Only information. So they make shit up. Anyone
who consults a shrink should have his head examined. They traffic in guilt
models.
We are the models and the model makers. No one tries to fly a
model plane or drive a model car except children. No one mistakes the model for
the thing modeled except adults. That’s why there’s religion and porn. Both are
models of things adults can’t be. Why do we love God? We can’t ever be God. We
didn’t invent God. For the same reason we can never measure up to porn. Thanks
to our models of God and porn, dogs have five legs and the Buffalo can now use
the same toilette as our new national mammal, the Bison. There’s a sane model
for every insanity.
Artists understand this. They live it. They make no pretense
about reality, truth, goodness or beauty. They make shit up and laugh at the
critics. The more worthless their art the higher the price it fetches. They
laugh. Pointy heads find ‘meaning’ in their work. They laugh. Collectors hoard
their junk. They laugh. Only the tax man wipes the grin off their face. It’s
easy for them to be free. They have already died anyway. Their art is just
their dead skin left behind to be admired or hated by idiots.
Priests have the right idea. Be a conduit, a pipeline, a
middle man, a gap in the fingers of God. Genius idea. Grace flows back and forth from God to souls through
priests wicked or not. Mortification of the flesh greases the pipe. Christening
washes sin away. Confession begs forgiveness. Penance accepts mercy. Communion
nourishes faith. Confirmation trains soldiers. Marriage breeds babies.
Ordination makes more profligate pipes and zig-zag popes. Then, it’s Saturday
night again at the Old Howard. Time to take off your clothes. Time to start all
over again with Cupcake Cassidy and Miss Perception.
"Mea culpa, mea culpa. Ego te absolvo!”
Extreme unction. Ah! The best saved for last. The last rites
should be the best writes for Mrs. Wright right now. Ego te absolv0! Sprinkle, sprinkle holy water. Pee with a tranny. Bow
your head and anoint your eyes. Put salt on your tongue. Don’t forget to rend
your garments. But don’t charge too much for the mourning just because truth
has been betrayed. Grief goes on sale this afternoon. Hurry in for best
selection. Mea culpa!
We laid some wood upon his back and walked beside him up the
hill.
We shook our fists in his bloody face and beat his back with
iron rods.
We cast lots for his cloak.
There, in the afternoon air of a day in Spring, we slew him.
Sky’s blood washed our sin.
Shaken earth toppled temples of stone in our hearts.
Unction became extreme.
We put him in the ground as the child asked, “Will he grow again as flowers do?” We
are old this day we were so young.
“Who told
you that you were not meant to suffer?” said the decrepit Cardinal
lowered into Fellini’s mud bath. Mea culpa!
So, take a sturdy candle.
Light it twice for you and me.
Put it on a raft of bark. Nudge out to sea.
When the candle is extinguished, my soul is home at last, home and free.
“Mea culpa...
Mea culpa…
Mea maxima
culpa.”
My soul is a memory harvested from the dead.
____________________________________________
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